



Produced by David Widger





AMONA; THE CHILD; AND THE BEAST

Plus THE SNAKE AND THE BELL and SOUTH SEA NOTES

From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other Stories"

By Louis Becke

T. FISHER UNWIN, 1902

LONDON




AMONA; THE CHILD; AND THE BEAST'


Amona was, as his master so frequently told him--accentuating the remark
with a blow or a kick--only "a miserable kanaka." Of his miserableness
there was no doubt, for Denison, who lived in the same house as he did,
was a daily witness of it--and his happiness. Also, he was a kanaka--a
native of Niue, in the South Pacific; Savage Island it is called by the
traders and is named on the charts, though its five thousand sturdy,
brown-skinned inhabitants have been civilised, Christianised, and have
lived fairly cleanly for the past thirty years.

Amona and Denison had the distinction of being employed by Armitage, one
of the most unmitigated blackguards in the Pacific. He was a shipowner,
planter, merchant, and speculator; was looked upon by a good many people
as "not a bad sort of a fellow, you know--and the soul of hospitality."
In addition, he was an incorrigible drunken bully, and broke his wife's
heart within four years after she married him. Amona was his cook.
Denison was one of his supercargoes, and (when a long boat of
drunkenness made him see weird visions of impossible creatures) manager
of the business on shore, overseer, accountant, and Jack-of-all-trades.
How he managed to stay on with such a brute I don't know. He certainly
paid him well enough, but he (Denison) could have got another berth from
other people in Samoa, Fiji, or Tonga had he wanted it. And, although
Armitage was always painfully civil to Denison--who tried to keep
his business from going to the dogs--the man hated him as much as he
despised Amona, and would have liked to have kicked him, as he would
have liked to have kicked or strangled any one who knew the secret of
his wife's death and his child's lameness. And three people in Samoa did
know it--Amona, the Niue cook, Dr. Eckhardt, and Denison. Armitage has
been dead now these five-and-twenty years--died, as he deserved to
die, alone and friendless in an Australian bush hospital out in the
God-forsaken Never-Never country, and when Denison heard of his death,
he looked at the gentle wife's dim, faded photograph, and wondered if
the Beast saw her sweet, sad face in his dying moments. He trusted
not; for in her eyes would have shown only the holy light of love
and forgiveness--things which a man like Armitage could not have
understood--even then.

She had been married three years when she came with him to Samoa to live
on Solo-Solo Plantation, in a great white-painted bungalow, standing
amid a grove of breadfruit and coco-palms, and overlooking the sea
to the north, east, and west; to the south was the dark green of the
mountain-forest.

"Oh! I think it is the fairest, sweetest picture in the world," she said
to Denison the first time he met her. She was sitting on the verandah
with her son in her lap, and as she spoke she pressed her lips to his
soft little cheek and caressed the tiny hands. "So different from where
I was born and lived all my life--on the doll, sun-baked plains of the
Riverina--isn't it, my pet?"

"I am glad that you like the place, Mrs. Armitage," the supercargo said
as he looked at the young, girlish face and thought that she, too, with
her baby, made a fair, sweet picture. How she loved the child! And how
the soft, grey-blue eyes would lose their sadness when the little one
turned its face up to hers and smiled! How came it, he wondered, that
such a tender, flower-like woman was mated to such a man as Armitage!

Long after she was dead, Denison heard the story--one common enough.
Her father, whose station adjoined that of Armitage, got into financial
difficulties, went to Armitage for help, and practically sold his
daughter to the Beast for a couple of thousand pounds. Very likely such
a man would have sold his daughter's mother as well if he wanted money.

* * * * *

As they sat talking, Armitage rode up, half-drunk as usual. He was a big
man, good-looking.

"Hallo, Nell! Pawing the damned kid as usual! Why the hell don't you let
one of the girls take the little animal and let him tumble about on the
grass? You're spoiling the child--by God, you are."

"Ah, he's so happy, Fred, here with me, and----"

"Happy be damned--you're always letting him maul you about. I want a
whisky-and-soda, and so does Denison--don't you?" And then the Beast, as
soon as his wife with the child in her arms had left the room, began
to tell his subordinate of a "new" girl he had met that morning in Joe
D'Acosta's saloon.

"Oh, shut up, man. Your wife is in the next room."

"Let her hear--and be damned to her! She knows what I do. I don't
disguise anything from her. I'm not a sneak in that way. By God, I'm not
the man to lose any fun from sentimental reasons. Have you seen this
new girl at Joe's? She's a Manhiki half-caste. God,