



Produced by David Widger





RIDAN THE DEVIL AND OTHER STORIES

By Louis Becke


Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company 1899



     CONTENTS:

     RIDAN THE DEVIL

     A MEMORY OF 'THE SYSTEM'

               CHAPTER I

               CHAPTER II

               CHAPTER III

     A NORTH PACIFIC LAGOON ISLAND

     BILGER, OF SYDNEY

     THE VISION OF MILLI THE SLAVE

     DENISON GETS A BERTH ASHORE

     ADDIE RANSOM: A MEMORY OF THE TOKELAUS

     IN A NATIVE VILLAGE

     MAURICE KINANE

     THE 'KILLERS' OF TWOFOLD BAY

     DENISON'S SECOND BERTH ASHORE

     A FISH DRIVE ON A MICRONESIAN ATOLL

     BOBARAN

     SEA FISHING IN AUSTRALIA

     AN ADVENTURE IN THE NEW HEBRIDES

     THE SOUTH SEA BUBBLE OF CHARLES DU BREIL

     THE WHITE WIFE AND THE BROWN 'WOMAN'

     WITH HOOK AND LINE ON AN AUSTRAL RIVER

     THE WRECK OF THE LEONORA: A MEMORY OF 'BULLY' HAYES

     AN OLD COLONIAL MUTINY

     A BOATING ADVENTURE IN THE CAROLINES

     A CHRISTMAS EVE IN THE FAR SOUTH SEAS




RIDAN THE DEVIL

Ridan lived alone in a little hut on the borders of the big German
plantation at Mulifenua, away down at the lee end of Upolu Island, and
every one of his brown-skinned fellow-workers either hated or feared
him, and smiled when Burton, the American overseer, would knock him down
for being a'sulky brute.' But no one of them cared to let Ridan see him
smile. For to them he was a wizard, a devil, who could send death in the
night to those he hated. And so when anyone died on the plantation he
was blamed, and seemed to like it. Once, when he lay ironed hand and
foot in the stifling corrugated iron 'calaboose,' with his blood-shot
eyes fixed in sullen rage on Burton's angered face, Tirauro, a Gilbert
Island native assistant overseer, struck him on the mouth and called him
'a pig cast up by the ocean.' This was to please the white man. But it
did not, for Burton, cruel as he was, called Tirauro a coward and felled
him at once. By ill-luck he fell within reach of Ridan, and in another
moment the manacled hands had seized his enemy's throat. For five
minutes the three men struggled together, the white overseer beating
Ridan over the head with the butt of his heavy Colt's pistol, and then
when Burton rose to his feet the two brown men were lying motionless
together; but Tirauro was dead.

Ridan was sick for a long time after this. A heavy flogging always did
make him sick, although he was so big and strong. And so, as he could
not work in the fields, he was sent to Apia to do light labour in the
cotton-mill there. The next morning he was missing. He had swum to
a brig lying at anchor in the harbour and hidden away in the empty
forehold. Then he was discovered and taken ashore to the mill again,
where the foreman gave him 'a dose of Cameroons medicine'--that is,
twenty-five lashes.

'Send him back to the plantation,' said the manager, who was a mere
German civilian, and consequently much despised by his foreman, who had
served in Africa. 'I'm afraid to keep him here, and I'm not going to
punish him if he tries to get away again, poor devil.'

So back he went to Mulifanua. The boat voyage from Apia down the coast
inside the reef is not a long one, but the Samoan crew were frightened
to have such a man free; so they tied him hand and foot and then lashed
him down tightly under the midship thwart with strips of green _fau_
bark. Not that they did so with unnecessary cruelty, but ex-Lieutenant
Schwartzkoff, the foreman, was looking on, and then, besides that,
this big-boned, light-skinned man was a foreigner, and a Samoan hates
a foreigner of his own colour if he is poor and friendless. And then he
was an _aitu_ a devil, and could