No Man's Island

Front matter

No Man's Island

A Complete Novel

by

Chapter I

I

TO MOST of us an aquarium seems an unlikely place for a diver to choose in which to spend a holiday. Sam Manning thought differently. And the aquarium at Kapiolani Park at Waikiki is different. It is an out-of-doors institution and one may smoke and watch the strange shapes and vivid colors of the occupants of the tanks in a combination of pleasure and comfort that was most acceptable to Manning.

Romance and poetry to the contrary, your deep-sea diver does not take in much of the sub-surface life while he’s at work. There are too many things to look out for: life-line, air-pipe, signals, currents, to say nothing of the actual work in hand. Then too the helmet-glasses get misty in spite of the vinegar film used to keep them clear. Like, as not, the water is roily, and it is ten to one the diver is working in a place that more nearly resembles a neglected backyard than a sea-garden aglow with color.

But there was a streak of romance, and not a narrow one, in the composition of Manning. And, when he could do so at leisure, he liked to see through the glass of the tanks the tropical, underwater beau ties that he missed at Pearl Harbor, where he had just completed a contract at the Naval station.

Striped and splotched trigger-fish in blue and gold, or black and scarlet; strange, darting shapes of silver, azure and flaming red, spotted eels, sulking squid, gorgeous anemones, like orchids of the sea, vivid marine growths, spiny sea-urchins, nightmare crabs, live coral, live sponges; a fascinating display ever shifting is kaleidoscopic review. Manning refilled his pipe, seated in the scattering shade of date-palms opposite the tank labeled Hippocampidæ, which Manning translated as sea-horses.

He played chess once in a while, and the striking resemblance of the mailed fishes, with their prehensile tails and elongated snouts, to the knights of his favorite diversion always fascinated him. Just now his attention was divided between them and a man whom he had observed, more or less closely, for the past hour.

The stranger was a riddle to Manning and the diver liked to solve such riddles. To begin with, he was dressed in a slop suit of serge that was shapeless as a collection of gunny sacks but could not hide the erect figure, the broad, square shoulders and narrowing hips of the man. He was painfully thin, but Manning sensed muscles and well-coordinated strength and action. Clad like a common sailor, evidently of the sea, Manning was sure that the man belonged aft, that he was one who gave orders rather than obeyed them.

He was pretty certain that the man was both hungry and broke. He knew that the stranger had glanced at him more than once with a look that was a part of the puzzle. It had held a hint of entreaty. Only a hint, tempered by pride that showed in the tilt of the well-shaped jaw, the carriage of the well-shaped head. It was a tentative hail to one who might or might not answer in kind.

In the look had been a suggestion of recognition. And this Manning reciprocated to a certain extent. He could not place the man and he prided himself upon his recollection of faces. Their former meeting must have been under different circumstances, he decided. The chap had been through a sickness of some kind, he fancied. Clothes and additional poundage made a vast difference.

“He’s a Yank,” decided Manning, “but he’s no stranger in these latitudes. And he’s got a good nose.”

Manning was a crank on noses. He liked the way the stranger, if he was a stranger, wore his, jutting out in an aquiline aggressiveness from between gray eyes; curving down, lean and well sculptured, ending above a close-clipped mustache that accented a firm mouth.

“About thirty,” he placed his age. Manning had just topped forty. The other was close to six feet, perhaps a trifle over the fathom. Manning was five-feet-ten, solid, vigorous.

The man regarded the fishes apathetically, hands in his pockets, frowning, opposite the Hippocampidæ. The tank might have been empty for any real attention he gave it though he was looking straight at the glass front that reflected his lean visage to Manning, who once again thought he caught that speculative glance.

“He’s no ,” the diver decided. “I like him. And he looks as if he needed a lift, if it’s only a friendly word. Rum place for him to come if he’s feeling the way he looks.”

Generous always, with the generosity happily leavened by inherent caution and a habit of going about things methodically, Manning got up and strolled over nearer to the sea-horses, ranging up alongside the other.

“Funny little beggars, ain’t they?” he said. “Don’t seem like fishes, somehow.”

“Ran into a whole herd of ’em one time,” he went on as the other did not answer. “Herded in the cabin of a wreck I was goin’ through in twelve fathom of water. I’ll bet there was four or five hundred of ’em.”

The man turned swiftly, eagerness in his eyes, his thin body tensing.

“You’re a diver?”

The gray eyes were ablaze with hope, boring at Manning. There was the note in his voice of a marooned sailor who, almost hopeless, suddenly sees a ship’s boat coming round the point and hails it, with a certain incredulity. It was a deep-sea voice with a ring to it that confirmed Manning’s impression that the man was used to issuing orders.

“That’s been my job for twenty-odd years,” he answered. “Name of Manning. Sam Manning.”

“Manning—Manning?”

The brows of the other knitted, lines of effort showing above them in a struggle for recollection. Then his face cleared.

“You were at Tahiti in—let me see—1913. Working on the hull of the Esperance?”

“Correct.”

Manning still cudgeled his brains in vain for the connecting links of memory.

“I used to watch you from the wharf. Don’t know that I met you. But you may have heard of me. I was there selling pearls. My name’s Hooper, Tom Hooper of Huapai.”

Now his voice held a note of entreaty. It was almost as if he had had reason lately to doubt his own identity, or had had it questioned, Manning thought shrewdly.

“It seems to fit in somewhere,” he said slowly. “But I can’t just place it. Pearls? And you’ve got the handle of captain, I’m thinking.”

Hooper nodded a trifle impatiently.

“I don’t look much like Hooper of Huapai just now,” he said. “I met one man this morning who ought to know me and he said he didn’t. I am not sure whether he lied or not. But Tom Hooper of Huapai is fairly well known in Tahiti. Or was. ‘Lucky’ Hooper they called me. I handled more pearls than the rest of them. My own. Tahiti is the clearing-house for pearls, you know.”

“Yes; I’ve heard so. I’ve never dived for ’em. Never had anything to do with ’em. But2”

Manning’s face suddenly lightened.

“Did you own the three-masted schooner in the harbor that time? The only three-master there. A beauty—called the—the2”

“Moanamanu. The Ocean Bird."

“Yes, sir. The Moanamanu. I remember that schooner. I’ve always had a notion to own a schooner myself. I’ve put in so much of my life under the surface I like to sail on top by contrast for the joy of it. Sail—not steam. A beauty, that schooner. She’s not with you?”

“She’s lying in ten fathoms inside a double reef, half-way between the Galapagos and the Marquesas.”

“Tough luck. You ran her ashore?”

“I didn’t. But I was in her.”

The man who had named himself Hooper, Lucky Hooper of Huapai, had been subjecting Manning to close inspection, a searching inquisition that began and ended eyes to eyes. And Manning did not resent it. Inwardly he chuckled. The apparent derelict had assumed the act of investigation, conducting it as a natural privilege. He liked the rising of Hooper above clothes and obvious circumstance.

“You said you were a diver?” queried Hooper after a quick glance to see if any one was in earshot, or so Manning interpreted it. “Deep-sea, I take it.”

“Anything down to twenty fathoms.”

“Are you working?”

“Just got -through. Haven’t made up my mind whether I’ll sign up again or not. I’m a bit stale after a steady spell. Expect to lay off for a week or so, anyway.”

Hooper nodded.

“Got your own outfit, I suppose?”

“Two suits, one with oxygen tank. Four assistants. Why?”

He countered sharply with the question. A grim twist of an approving smile showed on Hooper’s face.

“You may imagine I’m not rolling in wealth just now,” he said. “But there’s a reason. I think I can explain it satisfactorily to you.” His voice got a little bitter but changed again. “I know the kind of job you did at Tahiti,” he went on. “I know your reputation. You’ve only got a hazy recollection of me. I am not in a position to offer credentials. And I am in a hurry. To offset what I know of you, and you don’t know of me, I’ll give you a share in my secret. It’s a business proposition. I need a partner. I need a diver. Have you got any money, Manning?”

SUCH a conversation, overheard, might have seemed incongruous. The wrong man appeared to be putting a question of that kind. But it did not seem out of the way to Manning. Odd bits of memory were piecing themselves together about Hooper of Huapai. And he did not doubt that this was the man. He was quite certain the chap was neither crook nor adventurer.

He had met many of them in his calling and invariably there had been something about them that gave them away. They had been too specious, too overdressed for their roles, one way or the other. This chap was straight, in his opinion, and he had taken some time that morning to make it up. Once fixed, Manning was ready to back it.

“I might get hold of some,” he said. “Why? Why a diver? Sunken treasure?”

“Yes. Sounds fishy, I suppose. Man told me so this morning the minute I broached it. Said Honolulu was fed up on those sorts of yarns. He meant the Coco Island expedition. The old scallawag that put across that deal let in a bunch of Honolulu men. I’ve been told a good many things in the last forty-eight hours that I couldn’t resent openly. I look like a beachcomber, I’ll admit. It’s sunken treasure. Pearls. Inside the hold of the Moanamanu. And it’s a strange sort of yarn, with only my word to prove it. I was discharged from the Seaman’s Home two days ago with a dollar and this suit of slops. But I've got to take in some one. You look like a godsend, doubly, because you’re a diver. There’s a double reason, to my mind, for haste, though you may not look at it in that way. But I can offer you an inducement, if you take any stock in what I’m saying.

“There’s a third of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in it, Manning, for your share, if you’ll put up for a craft of some sort, outfit, grub and crew. The diving part of it’s easy. The rest isn’t. There are risks.”

Manning looked at a sea-horse twined about a stalk of seaweed.

“Suppose you come back with me on the car to Honolulu,” he said. “And talk it over. I’ve got rooms there where we can go over the thing at length. We’ll have supper together and go into it afterward. I’m hungry.”

Something leaped into Hooper’s eyes at the word “supper.” Hunger is a hard thing to control. But his voice was even.

“Suits me,” he said. “What have we got to go by? Have you got any charts there of the Southern Pacific?”

“That’s my business. Yes, I’ve got a lot of them.” He glanced at his watch. “We can just catch a car,” he said. “Come along.”

There were two or three soldiers on the car, part of the island garrison. Manning saw Hooper regarding them interestedly.

“Making quite a military and Naval base out of the Islands,” he remarked casually. “Big work at Pearl Harbor. With a general eye to the Japanese, I fancy. They’re swarming here. Eight of ’em on this car. But I hope we don’t have any more trouble for a while. Got a chance for real preparedness, now. Good thing the war’s over.”

“Were you in it?”

The inquiry was not casual. Manning looked at Hooper with some surprize. The tone was bitter; there was a flash in his eyes.

“I was under it,” Manning answered. “I did what they set me at. It didn’t take me across. Kept me busy at the Navy yards. How about you?”

“I was out of it,” said Hooper, his voice bitter. “But it wasn’t my fault. And now the war’s over, or as good as over, 2 it.”

The repressed feeling in his words, ending in the clipped oath, gave Manning food for thought. It made him the keener to hear Hooper’s story. But he was not going to talk about it on the car, if the other had seemed willing. And Hooper relapsed into a broody silence.

Chapter II

II

SAM MANNING, master diver, had cozy quarters in a narrow, short and twisty lane that runs between Beretania and King Streets. Three of his assistants were quartered elsewhere between contracts. The fourth, Fong, a Chinaman of placid countenance and uncertain age, acted as Manning’s cook and house-boy.

Fong was a man of parts. He had been with Manning for eight years after the diver had rescued him from a nasty bit of trouble at Singapore. For which he believed Fong, with reason, grateful. In many ways he was invaluable. He could repair a diving-suit as deftly as he could scramble eggs or make a bed. Manning trusted him at the air-pump. Fong had even gone down successfully with the suit that had the oxygen gas-tank attachment.

After supper, while Manning and Hooper smoked, Fong clattered with the dishes, then poked his head in at the door.

“Me go along Chinatown now,” he said. “You wan’ something mo’?”

“You’ll bunk here tonight, Hooper? Fong, fix up a bed. Got plenty of hot water?”

“That all fix,” said Fong with a grin. He had an uncanny way of forestalling things but Manning wondered a little. “I sabe him stop,” Fong went on. “I fix um bed, put out pajamas, fix um wateh fo’ bath. All time I sabe Cap’n Hoopeh. Plenty too much he skinny now, but I sabe him along that time Tahiti. Sabe him ship. T’lee masts. Schooneh.”

His grin widened at the look of astonishment on both their faces. Manning knew the capacity of Fong’s memory. Hooper narrowed his eyes and then his face cleared.

“You knew my cook, Qui Ling?”

“Sure. Qui Ling sabe me. Plenty. Where Qui Ling now?”

A shadow darkened Hooper’s face.

“I don’t know, Fong. I wish I did. I hope he’s safe.”

“Huh! Qui Ling he plenty sabe to take care of Qui Ling. He win fo’ty dollar from me that time along Tahiti. Goo’ night.”

“There’s an endorsement,” said Manning as the door closed.

“Out of the sky.”

“Good enough for me,” rejoined Manning. “I’m glad it happened, Hooper. Not that I doubted you but for your own sake.”

“I’m glad myself. I’ve got a queer yarn to spin. Where are those charts?”

Manning produced the roll and Hooper selected one of them. He flattened it on the table Fong had cleared, weighting it down with books, and picked up a pencil, poising it for a minute and then bringing it down with a light swoop that left a dot on the map in a wide space of ocean.

“There it is,” he^, said. “Due north of faster Island, close to the line. One hundred and nine-twenty, east longitude, three-seventeen south. I won’t swear to the exact reckoning, but it’s close enough, and it’s the only landfall within thirteen hundred miles, north, south, east or west. I got at the figures with some difficulty. But they’ll serve.”

“All right,” said Manning, his eye's on the tiny speck. “Go ahead, Hooper.”

“I am going to cut it as short as possible,” said Hooper. “It’s all past history. If you are interested when I get through I’ll enlarge on details.

“Here is Huapai.” He used the pencil again to indicate the position. “Lies between the Paumotus and the Tubuai Archipelago. Belongs to neither. The chief I bought it from owed no sovereignty to France. It was my headquarters. I went in for pearls, hunting virgin lagoons, looking up half-born atolls, where there is no soil on the reef as yet with the coral awash. They are the richest. I was a pearl prospector and I made a study of the game. Both of finding and selling.

“I had been holding ever since the war started, waiting for it to end and prices to go up. But I forgot about the pearls after I read about Belgium. All my news came by way of Tahiti and I got it in chunks. I thought America would have to get into the scrap. I knew I would, sooner or later. The Lusitania settled it. I started for San Francisco in the Moanamanu on a four-thousand-mile trip, as a steamer would make it. I took my pearls along. I didn’t know just what I was going to do except to offer my services as sailing-master.

“I had a vague idea of buying or building a fast chaser for submarines with my pearl sales. I thought they would have their U-boats in the Pacific before long. I took along my supercargo, Thompson, who was as eager to get into it as I was, Neilssen, first mate of the schooner, Scandinavian and neutral, ’Pulu, the second mate, Tahitian, and my full crew of Tahiti boys. I figured to send them all back under ’Pulu from San Francisco, either in the schooner or by steamer.

“We barely got half-way. The wind failed between the trades, as usual, but we had worked up to about two hundred miles south and west of Clipperton Island when the German raider came tearing out of the eye of the sun and chucked a shell across our bows. It was heave to or sink. We flew the American flag and you’d have thought us small game for them but we suited their purpose; all was fair to them in war, and they took us.

“I wasn’t overpolite to them. They couldn’t understand why I had nothing in the hull and only a little trade stuff aboard and I told them plainly that I was on my way up to the U. S. A. to join in the scrap. I wasn’t even politic. I was boiling over at the time. The raider sent an oberleutnant aboard by the name of Steiner and I insisted on pretending his name was Schweiner. Which didn’t help matters?

“He told me America would never get into the war, unless it was on the side of Germany. He told me the vessels in the Pacific trade were getting a bit shy of raiders and that they were going to use the Moanamanu for a decoy. They shipped off ’Pulu, all the native boys and Qui Ling, my cook, in two of my boats to get to land as best they could. Let them take grub and water and let me give them their reckoning and a compass. ’Pulu is a good man and I hope they made it. They were right in the equatorial counter-current and that helped them. Neilssen they took aboard the raider.

“Thompson wasn’t backward about say ing how he felt about things and Steiner, after he had signaled the raider, told us we two were too eager to get into the fighting to be given a seat in the boats. We might get through. So we were to be kept on the schooner because they were a bit crowded on the raider. That was a fast steamer taken from some South American line, German owned. I wouldn’t wonder if it had been built with the purpose in mind. Steiner brought a few men aboard and they tried to make me and Thompson help navigate. When we wouldn’t they stowed us in the trade-room.

“They fitted up a wireless on the schooner. The raider would stay below the horizon and the schooner would sail along, sending out S. O. S. signals and flying a flag of distress. When a ship would answer, giving position and coming up, the raider would get ready. And Thompson and I would see the whole thing through the ports.

“It worked well. They didn’t get my pearls. I stowed them in a belt the minute they fired the shell at me and, when I knew we weje to be kept aboard and how they were going to use the schooner, I hid them in a safe place before they thought to search me. If I couldn’t have them myself I wasn’t going to make them a present of a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of pearls.

“NEVER mind the details of what they did. The war’s over. They played their game too long. It couldn’t last forever. Landed or picked-up boats’ crews gave the details and an Australian battle-cruiser came scooting up over the horizon one afternoon under forced draft, flinging steel. There was a nasty sea running; it was working up to a gale, but it would have done your heart good to see that shooting. The raider was making a running fight of it and both of them came up fast toward us in the schooner where Thompson and I had our eyes glued to the glass of the ports, yelling at every hit. I imagine the raider made all of twenty-two knots but the cruiser was on top of her with thirty, with bigger guns and longer range.

“It was like boys throwing rocks at a can in a mill-pond, with the raider the can, and mighty accurate throwing. Lead-colored sea, leaden clouds over the lowering sun, the lead-colored cruiser coming up hand over hand, spewing fire and steel, and the raider limping along over the angry sea, going down a mass of smoke and flame, stern first.

“Then they turned their attention to us. I don’t suppose they knew we were aboard. That was part of the fortune of war. I’ll say this for Steiner. He knew how to handle my schooner. It was getting dark; wind and sea were heavy; we were a hard mark to hit and, though we could only guess at what they were doing on deck, I know he shortened canvas and reduced the target while keeping all sail she could stand in that gale.

“Squalls were breaking and Steiner sailed right into the heart of one, clawing into it, curtained off from the cruiser. It must have blotted us right out, but the cruiser kept after us and one shell got our main mast, grooving half its thickness away.

“We fled through that night like a booby with a broken wing before a hurricane. The mainmast went by the board and we could hear them trampling the deck and cutting the mast away where it banged against the side. A gale is always worst to those below. It seemed to me the hardest I have ever known. Every hour that wind strengthened. We couldn’t keep our feet, and Sid about the floor in the lurch and lunge of the schooner. They had taken all the furnishings out of the traderoom but the shelves, a small table and a couple of chairs, but we had a rare time dodging those in the dark, with a flash of phosphorus whenever a wave surged along over the ports. The Moanamanu was flung from surge to surge like a chip in a millrace. Helm and sail useless. I’ve an idea we were under bare poles, with maybe a rag of headsail.

“We lost the cruiser, inevitably. I reckon it was about two in the morning when we struck. I’m combining what I learned later with what I knew at the time, Manning. Somewhere about two in the morning we hit the outer reef of the island Steiner named Sckwarzklippen—Black Cliffs. It was a thousand to one shot that we ever struck it though currents may have helped swing us to it. It has a double reef. There are two entrances, not opposite each other, and we didn’t find either of them in that welter of storm.

“We hurdled that first barrier without striking and we crashed across the inner reef with the coral ripping out the lower strakes and leaving us hung up by one jag of rock in her stern, bows down and in the lagoon, wind and wave still battering at us.

“Even that gale could not do much to that twice-belted lagoon. The spume was flying like wet snow in a blizzard and the wind lashed at the sheltered water but, compared to the turmoil outside, it was a millpond. Steiner got off two boats. One splintered into toothpicks when it was launched.

“They may have forgotten us. But they left us in the traderoom, locked up. We tore the shelves down and used the table and chairs for clubs and rams with the water rising fast to our waists on the slanting floor. Once the schooner lurched and we went down, striking out in that trap, believing it was all over.

“But we smashed the door down and scraped through the panels, scrambling on deck and going overside just as a big wave, all streaky with green fire, came thundering over the outer reef, shattered, gathered itself, came on and spent its strength on the stern of the old Moanamanu, sending it to the bottom in ten fathoms, well inside the lagoon, my pearls inside of her.

“Thompson and I made a little beach in a bit of a cove that bottomed a wrinkle in an obsidian cliff. Black sand, we found it, when the dawn came. Thompson had his scalp torn somehow and I was badly bruised. But we were safe for the time and we found some mussels to chew. No water, no fire. We were glad to lie in the sun and nurse ourselves for a bit.

“We didn’t know then if the Germans had got ashore or not. But, while we were talking things over, a whale-boat passed us with Steiner in the stern sheets and the men rowing the German man-of-war stroke, choppy and hard. They saw us but paid no attention. They were out looking for stuff from the wreck. Presently they came back, loaded up, and went by us as if we had been a couple of penguins. In an hour or so they returned and picked us up.

“Schwarzklippen is made up of a hollow crater with a narrow promontory leading to a cone. That cone is covered with bush and palms. The inner walls of the crater, sloping to the lagoon, the same, with two or three streams cascading down all the time. On the slope facing the sea the wall is terraced, partly by nature, partly by man, and paved with great blocks a fathom long.

“On the lower terrace there are great images of gray lava with crowns of red tufa on their heads, all the way from four feet to forty on their pedestals, staring out to sea. The same sort of images they have on Easter Island. Put there by the same prehistoric race, I imagine. The natives on the island are a tribe of Melanesians under a chief named Tiburi. They have only been there for about five generations and they know nothing about the origin of the statues. They only worship them.

“Behind the statues there are caves running away back and communicating with caves on the beach below them that are filled with water, even at ebb tide. Steiner made his camp on the terrace. Thompson and I were allowed to build a grass house on the beach. They kept the whale-boat in one of the lower caves, with the oars and mast taken up to the camp when they were not used.

“Thompson and I were allowed to do all the work we could stagger under. We fished for them and gathered fruit and did kitchen chores. We were prisoners to them, who were also prisoners of the sea. I don’t know that they treated us overbadly though they weren’t overconsiderate.

“The natives came around in canoes that first afternoon and some of them clambered down trails on the crater slopes. They tried to make a demonstration and got the worst of it. Steiner had managed to get arms ashore and some ammunition. Later he made friends with them, in a way. They thought he and his men were gods. They had a different idea about us until we convinced ’em to the contrary.

“Steiner showed Tiburi a few tricks and fixed up some sort of a pact that lasted until they began to get familiar with the women and carried off some of the younger ones. Then Tiburi sulked and went off to the cone. He was still afraid of the guns. Some of the natives stuck with Steiner, those who didn’t get along with Tiburi, for one reason and another.

“They showed Steiner and his crowd how to make kawa and white alcohol from the root of the ti plant. They began to spend most of their time drinking and singing and Steiner’s authority weakened. Discipline got slack and Tiburi attacked. But they beat him off. The promontory is a regular knife-edge and Steiner didn’t dare tackle it to clean them up.