POT LUCK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 151, 27 June 1936, Page 13 (Supplement)

POT LUCK.

CULLINGER was cook on the Cora no —they promoted liim to the title of "steward" when old Billinger, of Billinger and Bargo, shipowners (two sailing ships and a rusty, rotten tub of a coasting steamer that had once been a smart passenger boat of the Island Steam Packet Company), fitted the Corano with four cabins and advertised cheap passages for traders and poorpocket visitors to the Pacific ports and islands. Captain Jarvin, the skipper, was a corpulent contradiction of the rule that good-tempered men are fat. He had two chins and plenty of stubble on them; he had small eyes and a large appetite; his belly was rather like a round barrel than a round goblet, and his legs in blue trousers looked like tree trunks. He was a good skipper for a rotten sailing ship, and the sinister kind of trading that bordered on robbery —sometimes with violence —and he was hated by everyone except two women—one white and legally married to him in Sydney, and the other copper-bronze and quite as legally married by island law, and living on Apemama. Cullinger, like many famous chefs, was tall and thin, and had a wife and six children in Cardiff. He was scraping up enough savings to get his eldest boy into the merchant service on the goldlaco side, and in eternal fear of losing his job. Pie was just the right kind of meat for a bully like Jarvin, and Jarvin knew it. » • • • Once, when Jarvin had struck him a blow across the face because he had fished a cockroach out of the stew, Cullinger had taken a step forward, his thin, pale face grown scarlet. Jarvin heaved his big bulk out of the screwed down chair and rasped: "Threatening me, are you? You insubordinate swine. I'll report you to the owners when we get back. Half the trouble on this ship starts in the galley. Here —take this foul-cooked stuff back and cook me some fresh in half an hour —and be darn quick about it." He thrust the soup plate containing the stew so savagely into Cullinger's hands that half of the stuff spilled over the cook's shaking hands and worn suit. Two days later Jarvin beat his cook along the deck with the buckle-end of his belt, to the loud-voiced joy of the ship's toadies, who thereafter made Cullinger their butt, and were encouraged to the game by Jarvin; but a few of the older seamen went about their work with sober faces and dark thoughts in their hearts.

Mutiny was a mug's game, and jobs not easy to find, but they hoped to get even with Jarvin some day —and they liked the kind-hearted, meek cook. However, there comes a day when the meek inherit the earth, especially when they shed their meekness, for a meek worm that turns becomes more savage than an alligator and far more brainy. Cullinger was whipped, bullied, scorned and cursed up and down the Pacific for five years, and then the Corano tried to mount an unchartered reef.

There were enough boats for all, and plenty of time. The Corano was old and rotten, but she had been built; the skipper and all hands left her hanging off the reef in a slight, sleek swell, and, as they were 011 their, way to Apemama and among the atolls, had not much doubt that steady steering would put them in sight of land of some kind.

By dawn the skipper's boat—in which the cook and four of the best seamen were collected —had last touch with the other boats. Jarvin rated them for brainless fools; but the probability was that they preferred Jarvin's room to his company after disaster, and, like most toadies, deserted a fallen chief. Cullinger was the first to sight the islet, and thither they rowed steadily, baling all the time, for the boat was rotted badly between the thwarts, and by the time they grounded her 011 the lagoon befell of a tiny atoll she was ready to sink. Cullinger's first thought was water; he knew where to look for it 011 an atoll, and breathed a sigh of relief when he found it. Food was another matter. There was one coconut grove, and that small and young; tho islet appeared to have been swept a few years ago by a tidal wave. Cullinger whistled softly to himself and called the others to help gather a few nuts. Jarvin, wet, enormous and miserable, sat elephantinely 011 the beach staring over the blue water ol the lagoon with his little eyes, and taking no'share in the work. The crew, with Cullinger in command, returned before the heat of noon, sweating with a load of palm tree wood, some coarse, dry grass of the island, and a few £rreen nuts. Jarvin had idled by the lagoon, and lie, like the men, was sweating.

The cook cut open a coconut and carried it to liim to drink. One of the crew. Balden by name, called out: "Here, let that twine get his own drink and fodder. He isn't skipper any; longer."

(SHORT STORY.)

(By P. Hoole Jackson.)

Jarvin's face flushed. He had expected this, and his inertia had been due more to fear than fat. His big head jerked up in surprise when Cullinger made an ill-concealed motion with his hand to the others, and heard Balden reply: "Aye, of course, I'd forgot that, Cully. You're skipper now. Let him have his drink." "Host come and sit in the shade here, cap'n," said another seaman who had been assisting the others to rig up a shelter of palm fronds, leaves and their jackets. "It's no good sweating yourself to a shadow in the hot sun." Jarvin jerked his head towards them suspiciously, then looked back sharply at Cullinger, who was making another gesture which he tried to hide. Jarvin's blood went cold. Ho understood. He was the fattest man on the island, and there was no food. He put down the coconut shell and felt inclined to vomit. Best fall in with them for the time. He must try and repair the boat when they slept. He accepted their invitation to lie in the shade. One of thein sat up and fanned him during the hottest hour, and Jarvin felt shivers alternate with feverish fits. "What the devil's that?" he asked, waking fearfully from a half-doze in the heat of the afternoon. A rasping sound came from behind the shelter. "Only cookev sharpening his knife," .soothed ojie of the recumbent crew lazily. "Here—you —Cullinger!" called Jarvin. "What you doin'? —there isn't any meat to cut here—and where did you get that knife'!" Cullinger appeared round the shelter, fingering the razor-edge of his big boning knife. "Slipped it in my belt, case we might need it," ho answered carelessly, "there ain't 110 meat, that's true, but you never know —besides it might bo useful if any savages blows along." Jarvin know well enough that Cullinger was as well aware as he that there wero 110 inimical natives within 300 miles, but he did not argue. Cullinger looked powerful and confident, and stripped to his trousers—muscular and tough. • • • • Cullinger woke from sleep to find Jarvin toiling at the boat. He leaped to lii.s feet. "Here, you mustn't work in tho sun, cap'n," lie said solicitously. "I'll liavo a. look at her. Why, she's dead rotten," he added, as he drove his heel 'through the weak plank. "Good job we didn't think of getting away in her. Xow do go and sit down, cap'n. We'll do tho work. It—it ain't your place." Early next morning Jarvin woke to find that Cullinger had built a cookhouse of stones and lumps of coral. Across this, on a palm bole, was suspended a huge iron pot such < s was once traded to natives. This, Cullinger explained, 110 had found in tho palm

grove, rusted and full of large spiders. He was boiling it out to clean * it, lie explained. Jarvin vanished that night. He lay sweating in his hiding place while Cullinger and the crew roamed the small area of the islet calling his name. They searched for him, mostly at the same hour every day. Weeks dragged by. Jarvin' heard them singing. He was half starving; his clothes hung in shreds; he had to drink, like an animal, at night at the water hole; he fed on fallen coconuts, and killed a crab with a stone and ate it raw. He grew gaunt and thin. "If a ship don't come in sight to-morrow, we'll beat the island for him," Cullinger said. "How long d'you think we can hold on, Cully?" one of them added. "A week—if we finds him," said Cully. " 'Bout two days if we don't. We'll be forced to draw lots then. It's that or starve." ♦ » # • A few days later they beat the island with shouts and curses. They found his lair and chased him to the lagoon. There lie turned at bay. He faced them with trembling lips and childish rancour. "You won't get much meat ofl' me," he mouthed. And then, seeing 110 relenting in their attitude, he fell on his knees and forgot lie was a man. Cullinger walked up to hi 111 and kicked him to his feet. "Look out there," he said, pointing over the lagoon. A steamer was making the island-with steady speed. "That's the Flamora," added Cullinger. "The Flamora's been here once and left a cache of tools, timber, and tinned meats. We found it the first day. We wanted to make you pay for all the rotten things you've done to us, so we made you think we were going to make you into 'long pig.' "We guessed the stuff had been left here about two months by the growth over the cache. Reckoned it would be about six weeks more before she got back. It was—l reckon it's the healthiest six weeks you've lived for the last :J0 years, Captain Jarvin—and you'll keep your mouth closed, or we'll sign our affidavits to carelessness in loss of the ship and previous misuse of position." j "You devils!" cried Jarvin, the memory of all the nights of sweating fear and daily torture in his foetid hiding place strong within him, but the others were running to the beach, waving and shouting like schoolboys. People not in the know think that it is because of his thin, lithe body that island traders call him "Captain Long Pig." Good stories will out in spite of promises, but Captain Jarvin has lived the sting out of the taunt —and it is said that he is so kind to cooks that there is always a mile-long queue of them waiting at Batavia if the hint is out that Captain Jarvin needs a new one.