Hell's Hatches

xaltation that first glimpse of her splashing inside the reef had thrown me into) have always failed. This is, I fancy, because, unbelievably beautiful though she was, there was still so m

n reserve in the flexible frame like the power of a coiled spring. I saw her unleash it one morning when, impatient of the slowness of a clumsy Fijian who was launching a very sizable dugout for her, she yanked him aside by the hair of his fuzzy head and did the job herself. I can still see the run of muscles under the olive-silk skin of arm and ankle, and the bent-bow arch of her slender back, as she

s of. Even I, with my blood thinned and cooled with the ice of absinthe, could never watch her movements without a quickening of my jaded pulses; to the sanguine combers of Kai the sight of her (whether the rippling und

(as Bell-and occasionally myself, his only intimate friend on the island-so often saw her) seated cross-legged on a mat, her sloe-eyes, set slightly slant, fixed dreamily on nothingness, like

until I got the habit by the throat years afterward) that ever held my nerves steady when the "absinthe hour" drew near at the end of the afternoon. As long as Rona would continue to "sit Buddha" I had myself completely in hand, even till well on after sunset. But if she moved, or spoke, or even showed by her eyes that she was following Bell's words (it was he-less sensitive to this phase of her than I-

er by the smooth, low brow. The low-lidded blue-black eyes were "debatable territory," now in the hands of one, now the other. So, too, that infallible "gauge of temperament," whose dial is

ed the exquisite little dagger to show me how the Jolo juramentado executed his favourite belly-ripping stroke; "an' I reckon they'll comprise 'bout the sum total of huh mo'nin' at mah f

w Guinea-way. She was dressed "Java-style" at the time, and was said to have been picked up at Ternate or Ambon in the Moluccas. Although the wily old Celestial kept the girl practically under lock and key from the first, customers of his shop occasionally glimpsed her, and she the

fter which the silhouette of her, close-reefed, was observed to blot out the moon three or four times as she beat out of that "hell's craw" of a passage in the teeth of a rising sou'wester. T

h replaced his loose shirt with a close-buttoned jacket having an unusually high-cut neck. Even the latter, however, could not entirely conceal a number of parallel red cicatrices which, begin

ong-armed" the Chinaman and carried off the girl bodily, perhaps against her will, or whether she ha

scratches. That lanky Yank don't scratch ... 'e wallops. But that gal-s'y, did y'u ever tyke

ck" with handing me pretty

r than the rich sang du b?uf of henna), she was always polishing them-those of one hand on the palm of the other-even when "sitting Buddha" with dreaming half-closed eyes. I inferred the habit of letting them grow was acquired in the course of her associa

, Chinese or white. I doubt very much, however, that she had a drop of real Polynesian blood in her veins. Flaring with temperament though she was, there was still nothing about her of the happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care sensuousness of the Caroline or Sam

nde Archipelago. Her very considerable English vocabulary, however, and especially her fluency in "pidgin," could hardly have been acquired save through some years of residence in the Straits Settlements or the Federated Malay States. I was inclined to favour Singapore, especially as she had once let slip something about a

flaming spirit and the physical perfection of her. Not even descent from that strange Hindu remnant of the lovely island of Lombok, just east of Java (a theory which I had also turned over in my mind), quite satisfied on both these scores. As to what sort of a centrifuga

was slow in making up her mind that I did not necessarily classify with the predatory males against whom her whole life had unquestionably been an unrelieved defence. Obsessed by the desire to paint her, I had not improved my standing with the girl by asking Bell (after she had refused me pointblank) to intercede to get her to sit f

will have, fo' that mattah. So you must see that it doan quite jibe with mah sense o' what is right an' propah unda the ci'cumstances fo' me to aid an' abet a proce

ry," in not the best of which was I able to catch more than a suggestion of what I sought. I could n

then she began to assume a sort of "benevolent tolerance" by coming and sitting on the mat as we talked; finally she started taking an active interest in the conversation, coming out of he

ured possession, the "peacock" shawl. It was this astonishingly fine piece of Cantonese embroidery which Bell had mentioned as having made up, with the little Malay kris, the sum total of the dower Rona had brought him. It was the f

e was the fabric that a twist of it streamed from one hand to the other as brandy pours out of a flask. The peacock itself, done in a thousand tints and shades of delicate floss, was all of life-size in body and somethin

s doubtless for this reason that Rona always wore it Malay-fashion, as the Javanese women wear their sarongs. This displayed the jewel-gay bird in all his pride, the bright brea

t a one of its countless thousands of stitches started. In texture it was scarcely less perfect than the day it was finished. The only thing wrong with it was that the colours were a good deal dulled, not by age (for the old Cantonese dyes are as deathless of hue as ancient Ph?nician glass), but by grease

hout a word of explanation to the girl, walked up to her and started washing the bird's face and hackle. For an instant she stiffened angrily, evidently under the impression that my solicitude for the embroidery was only a thinly veiled excuse for chucking her under the chin. (Indeed, she confessed to me later that "gentlemen" could always be counted on to employ such indirect methods of approach, and that she found them rather more difficult to combat tha

a hitch with one hand as she thrust the other into an arm of the

excitement. Usually her English-especially when she had time to ponder and

coloured breast before my benzine came to an end. A slightly more vigorous dabbing beyond the embroidery line "alchemized" a patch of clouded amber to a halo of lucent gold, against wh

splash of tail-feathers, what though the magic liquid had come off second best in its bout with an indurated gob of egg-yolk drooling across one wi

act that the still unevaporated benzine was dissolving her finger-nail stain. It was an ill-advised remark on my part, for it turned h

ing about "thustiness" (not drinking whisky myself, I had none in stock), he took Rona by the arm and started off on the homeward path. Str

l in the end. Every day or two-sometimes with Bell, sometimes alone-she began paying calls. Always sh

er-tip on the "eye" of the particular quill next in line for renovation. "Ple-ese, Whitn

sly minx played the card to the limit. That "one mo' fetha, Whitnee," had me fated, and she knew it. I was completely out of benzine for three weeks, and at a time when I was in especial need of it in connection with my experiments in colour-mixing; but Rona's friendship was cheap at the pr