Call of the Caribbean/Chapter 5

V.

OF course we were visited and inspected by the natives from a nearby village. They were as treacherous as those of Vanikoro, however, and after seeing that we were well armed and too careful to lay our rifles down, they must have given up hope of a surprise attack—although I expect the sight of so much wealth must have made their eyes water.

We had known better than to try to get any of the Kanakas from the schooner to go with us. But we tried our luck with the islanders. When they heard where we were going they refused pointblank to join us. The interior, they said, was tabu.

Moreover, they declared firmly that they had never seen any village or habitation of the dwarfs—the “small fellow men”—of the hills. Some of them admitted seeing the pygmies, or hearing of them. According to their statements, the strange folk of the interior were hard to see. I did not pay much attention to this talk, but Stuart questioned the niggers closely. While he was doing it, I bargained for a pair of their clumsy dugouts.

This brought Johnny Gorai to me.

The Santo native who called himself Johnny Gorai must have been fifty or sixty years old, with a wrinkled face shining with grease and a pair of leaky eyes. He wore the braided black and gold coat of a Hutch naval officer—probably imported at price of many pounds of copra from a Sydney theatrical costumer, and a few hibiscus flowers in his wool. Nothing else except a very dirty lava-lava.

He was, he said, “a good fellow pilot altogether.” As proof he showed me two scraps of paper, given him by skippers who had visited the island. One read:

The other was still less flattering.

The two papers made Stuart smile. Through the “willing pilot,” however, we secured two fairly large dugouts at a trifling cost in tobacco. These, being fitted with outriggers, were stable and suitable for one man to paddle.

They would get us and our duffel up the River Jordan, and I hoped, back again, We really needed another man for a guide and a possible interpreter. I made an offer to the islanders again to accompany us, but they hung back.

Johnny Gorai hesitated for some time; then he said that he would go with us as far as the “top -side hills.” Evidently he meant- the farther summits of the mountains. As this was as far, or probably farther, than the headwaters of the Jordan, we accepted his offer and signed him on at wages of half a stick of tobacco and found for each day of the trip and a new sheath knife together with our tent when we got back to the beach.

These terms were very liberal, and Johnny Gorai made much of them, haranguing his fellows until we stowed our stuff in the canoes and departed. I took the native in mine, being careful to keep him in the bow.

The river was sluggish and the banks were distant enough to insure safety from a spear ambuscade. I had noticed that the islanders had few rifles. But I kept a careful lookout that first day and selected our landing site on a knoll where the palms were thinly scattered, allowing us a chance to repel any raid.

You see Johnny Gorai most likely believed that he could knife either one or both of us and win immortal fame as well as wealth by the exploit. Consequently his fellows would be likely to follow us along the stream to have a hand in the massacre if opportunity offered.

The first thing I did on landing and making camp was to deprive Johnny Gorai of his sheath knife which I found, as the note had stated, in the tail pocket of his treasured coat. The islander was indignant.

“What for you white fellow man take ’em knife belong Johnny?” he said plaintively. “Suppose small fellow boys along mountains catch Johnny, kill him plenty quick, my word!”

This, naturally, had no effect in persuading me to risk my life and that of my companion at Johnny Gorai’s hand. Jack Stuart, however, was interested in the native’s mention of the dwarfs and questioned him further.

The account of the dwarfs in the interior of Santo, according to our friend, was more of a legend than anything else. He believed that they had been seen from time to time in the foothills, although he had never laid eyes on them. But he said quite decidedly that no village of the “small fellow boys” was known to exist.

“Where have they been seen?” asked Stuart.

“No see ’em altogether,” said Johnny Gorai.

He explained this remark in the following manner. The dwarfs of the hills had made their presence felt mainly by raids on outlying villages of the coast folk. They had carried off pigs, yams, and fowls and even dogs. When pursued they had vanished back into their retreats swiftly.

“Probably it was merely one tribe of the coast fellows raiding the other,” I suggested, pegging down the tent.

Johnny Gorai denied this. Said the dwarfs had been followed into the hills, but had not been found in a body. It was dangerous, he asserted, to pursue them too far. The hills of Santo were nearly impassable.

“Looks like a nigger story, Jack,” I told the lad. “You may be sure that if there was a village of these dwarf chaps, the people on the coast would know of it.”

“Maybe not. I have heard of some tribes that had their habitations where they couldn’t be found.”

“Such as—where?” I asked, rather nettled by the assured way in which he spoke.

“Oh, above the earth or under it,” he said vaguely, and I returned in disgust to my tent.

After dinner we took our pipes a short distance away from the embers of the fire, leaving Johnny Gorai grumbling in front of the tent. If any raid was planned on our camp, I was going to be sure that our “pilot” got the full effect of it and not us. Stuart and I had agreed to stand watch in turn, for we were not in exactly safe surroundings.

We were reasonably sure, of course, that the coast natives had not followed us in canoes, and they could not possibly have kept up with us by running through the dense mangrove thickets on the banks. Still, with Johnny Gorai about, it paid to take precautions.

While we smoked, we talked over our schedule of travel. We would go, we decided, as far as the river went without wasting time. Once at the source of the Jordan we would hide the canoes with some of the provisions and make our way to the nearest mountaintop where we could get an idea of the country.

Mind you, we had no conception of the location of Don Quiros’ city. I let Stuart do the talking, for I wished him to be author of everything we did. In this manner I hoped that he would become discouraged sooner than if I joined in his plans.

No, I did not think we would find the lost city of Jerusalem, or rather its ruins. Still less did I believe we would find any trace of the men of Don Quiros. Knowing the almost impenetrable vegetation of some of the larger islands, I thought that our search would be made difficult enough to convince Stuart that the task was hopeless.

Of course I said nothing to him, other than to agree to what he proposed. I had come with him because there was no way of turning him—a lad of age and his own master—back from the venture and I wanted to bring him back alive and sound.

Yet his plans were sensible, surprisingly so. Only I did not believe the ruins we were looking for existed. He said that Don Quiros had certainly gone up the river; that he had undoubtedly followed it far from the coast, as the purpose of the wanderers was to found an isolated settlement; that we would he likely to guess, from the nature of the country, where the Spaniards had landed.

The lad’s eagerness wrought upon me, and I felt a glimmering of the hope that had drawn him to Santo.

Yet I had no belief in his venture. I did not think we would even see the fugitive tribe that was called dwarfs, not knowing that I was to see this, and stranger things, before I again set foot on the Madeleine.