The Project Gutenberg eBook of Island honor
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Title: Island honor
Author: Murray Leinster
Release date: February 27, 2024 [eBook #73053]
Language: English
Original publication: Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Co, 1926
Credits: Roger Frank, Sue Clark
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ISLAND HONOR ***
Island Honor
[Illustration]
Island Honor
by MURRAY LEINSTER
Author of “Sagebrush Slings the Bull,” “Grist,” etc.
A DREADFUL CHOICE WAS PUT UP TO THIS AGED RULER OF AN ISLAND
PEOPLE; A CHOICE FEW MEN WOULD CARE TO FACE, AND UNDER THE
TROPIC STARS A WHITE MAN OR SO HELPED HIM TO DECIDE--IN TRUE
AMERICAN FASHION
Quite miraculously, there was an opening in the mangrove swamps and what
looked like a river or harbor beyond. Such things are not to be expected
when you have been very much bored by two days of unvaried contemplation
of mangrove swamps on the one hand, and totally empty sea on the other.
So we on the _Shikar_--most promising name for a devilish slow and
unexciting tub--tacked in. There were three of us and two native boys
and we thought we were being very daring and reckless, coasting down the
China Sea in a fifty-footer.
The miracle continued. We did not ground on a bar. It was a river of
sorts. A kite rose heavily from something unpleasant on a sand-bank and
soared away. And then we saw a white man’s house with a flag floating
from a flagpole before it, which was most miraculous of all. And that
was where we found Vetter.
I don’t know what nationality he was, though this part of the world was
French. He wasn’t that, I’m sure. We went ashore and met him and found
that he considered himself lord of all creation, and wasn’t at all
averse to converting us to his own belief. Technically, he was political
agent for Kuramonga. None of us envied him the job. Neither did we feel
called upon to console him with an extended visit. But the hunting
looked promising and we dropped anchor for the night at least. And then
when the soft tropic night had fallen we were too lazy to be polite and
call on him.
“I want to kick him,” said Cary, puffing smoke at the stars. “I haven’t
any reason, but I want to kick him. So for my manner’s sake, if you
chaps go ashore tell him I’m dead or something and couldn’t come.”
There was a jungle off to the right somewhere and we could hear the
night noises coming from it over the water. Little squeakings, and once
a scream like a human being’s, which was probably a monkey, and once,
very far away indeed, a snarl that would have made your blood run cold
if it hadn’t been muted by the distance.
“Tiger, that,” said Cary hopefully. “Maybe we can get Vetter to let us
have some beaters tomorrow and take a shot at him.”
The doctor grunted.
“Breeding season,” he said. “Why not play leap-frog with a locomotive?
More healthy. And no beaters will tackle them now.”
“If Vetter tells them to go, they will,” insisted Cary. “He’s got those
natives under his thumb. They’re scared to death of him.”
“Paranoiac,” grunted the doctor. “He thinks he’s lord of creation.”
It was curious. You saw that about Vetter the minute you met him.
Perhaps he was a little mad on the subject of himself. Perhaps it was
Kuramonga that did it, because Kuramonga is the last place on earth that
God made, and it was finished up with swamps and malaria and jungles and
bad water that couldn’t be worked in anywhere else. They used to send
men somebody had a grudge against, to Kuramonga, to drink themselves to
death for the glory of _la belle France_. But Vetter liked it. He was
the only white man in a hundred miles, and he had twenty little Annamite
soldiers to keep his district in order with. He’d seemed much more
anxious to impress us with his wonderful hold over the natives than to
talk about anything else. He had said more or less flatly that he was
the law and the prophets and most of the religion in Kuramonga. And he
gloried in it.
Cary, in white duck trousers and nothing else, reached out of his
hammock and gave himself a push to swing a little for a breeze.
“Damned luxurious beggar,” said the doctor enviously. “Get out of that
hammock and let somebody else have a chance.”
I rose to tilt him amiably on the deck when I heard a little noise above
the lapping of the river waves. Somehow, it sounded furtive, and so it
wasn’t a time for fooling.
“Listen!” I said sharply. There was a splash of a paddle.
“Dacoits?” asked Cary hopefully. “Thinking maybe they can slip over the
side and rush us?”
He beamed and slung his feet out of the hammock, to get some guns from
below. Cary was always hopeful of trouble.
“We’re right in front of the Residency,” said the doctor dryly, “and
Vetter has a steam launch. They know it. Don’t be an ass. Dacoits? No!”
Cary hesitated. Then somebody called to us across the water. Very
softly, in Malay, as if they didn’t want to be heard on shore.
“They want to come aboard,” grunted the doctor. “Get your guns if you
like, Cary, but you might want to put on a shirt, too. There’s a girl
with them.”
Cary swung down the companionway and the doctor stretched himself
luxuriously in the hammock. A dark shape took form in the moonlight. It
was a regular Malay dugout with three natives in it. A man in the bow
and another in the stern, with a girl between them. They came on the
_Shikar’s_ deck as Cary reappeared with both arms full of guns.
Cary got the first look at the girl, and he dropped the guns and looked
foolish. The doctor grunted and offered to get lights, but the two men
protested politely but very sincerely against it. They sat down and
exchanged polite phrases with the doctor, who was the only one of us who
could talk decent Malay.
I sat back and wondered, feasting my eyes on the girl.
Sixteen--seventeen--eighteen? I don’t know. I do know she was at the
prettiest age any girl could be. Malay all through, yes. But her skin
was fair as mine and her eyes were wonders. There was grace and pride
and blood and breeding in every move she made. She looked at the doctor
mostly, quietly and composedly, but her eyes alternately flamed and
brooded. Now and then she glanced at the two men.
And one of them was an old chap, white haired and stately, with a
ceremonious looking kris on one side of his sash and an old percussion
pistol on the other side. In the moonlight you could see his clothes
were all of silk, and mighty fine quality, too. Not at all the sort of
thing a man would wear who made a habit of paddling himself around. The
other man was a well-set-up young chap with eyes like a hawk who looked
like a young prince out of the Arabian nights. Somehow, you’d take to
those two.
You just imagine it. Us three white men, disheveled and half-dressed, on
the deck of a fifty-foot schooner in an unmapped harbor with the furtive
jungle noises a hundred yards away. Talking to these three who’d come
out of nowhere, dressed like princes and a princess in a dream. Off on
the other side of the river there was Vetter’s house with a light
burning somewhere and his toy soldiers standing guard while he slept.
And those three silk-clad figures sitting on our deck, regarding us with
a poise and courtesy that made me feel like a clumsy fool.
The old chap twisted his mustache gently and looked at us. He was the
picture of an honorable gentleman, somehow. Brown skinned, but you liked
him. He asked quietly if he might ask advice for his daughter, without
Vetter hearing that he had asked.
“You understand,” said the doctor, “if there’s anything we ought to
repeat to him--anything political----”
“No, _Tuan_,” said the old chap gravely. “I am Buro Sitt.”
The doctor sat up at that, and so did I. I’d heard a yarn or so about
him. He’d fought the French to a standstill, years back, and he’d been
licked. But he’d fought like a gentleman and when it was over he took
his medicine like a man. One or two old-time Colonials had yarned to us
in Saigon about the fighting in times past and an ancient colonel had
sworn that Buro Sitt was the finest fighter and the most chivalrous
opponent that ever gladdened the heart of his enemy.
“Go ahead,” said the doctor. “I know you. I’d like to shake hands.”
Buro Sitt did not move, but he bowed very politely.
“It may be, _Tuan_,” he said, “that you understand the ways of we _Orang
Malagi_.” He talked quite impersonally. “You know that our ways are not
as your ways. But you know that we have our honor, also.”
“Yes,” grunted the doctor. “Especially Buro Sitt.”
Buro Sitt’s face did not change.
“My daughter desires to go to the house of the _Tuan_ Vetter,” he said
without an inflection in his voice. “She loves him. But I would ask your
advice before she goes.”
Cary moved abruptly. The younger of our two visitors caressed the handle
of his kris with fingers that quivered suddenly. The girl stared at us
defiantly--and then her eyes clouded with abysmal shame. But a moment
later they were flaming.
“Well?” asked the doctor. His face did not even move a muscle.
“There is another woman in the _Tuan_ Vetter’s house,” said Buro Sitt.
“Who also loves him. Will it be the custom of the white men to send her
away when my daughter goes to him?”
“He might,” said the doctor tonelessly, “and he might not. It would be
considered disgraceful to him among other white men to have one woman
living in his house if he were not married to her. It would be doubly
disgraceful to have two. And of course it would be called disgraceful in
the women. They would be scorned by all white men. Not
scorned--despised.”
The girl’s face did not change. She was staring defiantly at the three
of us. The younger man caressed the handle of his kris.
“Would you, then,” asked Buro Sitt woodenly, “point out to him that he
should send away this other woman when my daughter comes to him?”
The doctor held up his hand. He looked grim, all of a sudden.
“Buro Sitt,” he said quietly, “you are lying.”
Buro Sitt’s hand dropped to his sash with a sudden movement. Then he bit
his lip.
“Royal blood,” said the doctor, “does not speak as you are speaking.
Royal blood does not send royal blood to be a white man’s mistress. And
especially, royal blood does not speak of its disgraces. What’s back of
this, Buro Sitt?”
There was sheer agony in Buro Sitt’s eyes.
“_Tuan_,” he said, as if the words were wrenched from him, “if you were
a man and a _raja_, and your honor as a man were against your honor as a
king, what could you do?”
It might seem funny to think of a petty princeling--Buro Sitt could not
be more--speaking of his honor as a king, but it wasn’t funny then.
“Once,” he said fiercely, “I led a thousand fighting men. I fought
against the French. When it was ended, there were fifty left. Now there
are six hundred men again who follow me. Their lives are in my hands,
and their women, and their children also. And the _Tuan_ Vetter has
demanded my daughter.”
He was telling the truth this time.
“You’re going to fight?” demanded the doctor. “It’s folly; suicide!”
Buro Sitt’s hands clenched.
“Suicide?” he echoed bitterly. “If that were all! I am _raja_ of my
people. If I die, they fight--and are killed. All of them. And enough
men have died for me before, Allah knoweth. Speak to him,”--he pointed
to the young chap who was caressing his kris. “My daughter was to have
been his wife. There are two hundred swords that follow him. And yet, if
we rise----”
He was shaking all over.
“If we rise--ruin,” he said bitterly. “My people slain, my villages
burned, my children slaughtered! That is the price of the honor of a
man, _Tuan_. And for their lives, Vetter demands my daughter. Which”--he
clenched his teeth in the quintessence of bitterness--“is the price of
the honor of a king.”
Cary moved. He was listening to the old chap now, looking from him to
the girl and back again.
“You mean,” said the doctor slowly, “Vetter will set a gunboat on your
people if you keep your daughter from him, no matter how?”
“If she stabs herself!” said Buro Sitt, his voice breaking. He looked
swiftly at the younger Malay and then his eyes went suddenly blank again
as he got control of himself once more. “So she will go to him, _Tuan_.
As the ransom for my villages, and the ransom for my people’s lives.”
Cary began to talk angrily, spouting what Malay he knew with his whole
vocabulary of Chinese thrown in to make his meaning clear. The main
point of his speech was that he’d like to wring Vetter’s neck and would
do so at the first favorable opportunity. Buro Sitt listened without a
flicker of expression on his face. He had himself in hand again.
“_Tuan_,” he said evenly, to the doctor, “will you speak to him, and
urge that he sends away this other woman? It will not even be safe for
my daughter. There is always poison----”
“I’ll remember,” said the doctor, not quite directly.
“The blessing of Allah be upon you,” said Buro Sitt evenly.
He swung down into the canoe. The girl and the young man followed him.
They drifted off into the darkness, where the jungle noises began at the
water’s edge. For a little while there was no sound but the lapping of
the river waves and the furtive noises that came out of the squirming
mass of vegetation.
Then the doctor said thoughtfully, “I wonder what he’s really up to.”
“It isn’t what he’s going to do,” said Cary angrily. “It’s what I’m----”
“You’re going to do nothing,” said the doctor calmly. “Vetter thinks he
is lord of creation, which he isn’t, but he is the lord of Kuramonga.
Also he has some little tin soldiers. You can’t do anything direct, and
as for reporting him--Well, we’re civilians and foreigners to boot. The
powers that be would pay absolutely no attention to us. We’d better
leave it up to Buro Sitt.”
“But he can’t do anything,” protested Cary angrily, “and I can kick
Vetter, anyhow.”
“Buro Sitt,” said the doctor, “can’t kill Vetter, because Vetter’s
doubtless arranged that if he’s scragged Buro Sitt will get the blame.
And he can’t kill the girl, because Vetter would trump up a rebellion on
him if he did, and his record is bad. His villages would be wiped out at
once. But----”
“Do you mean you’re going to stand by and watch?” demanded Cary
furiously. “Let that beast Vetter----”
“I’m going to do what Buro Sitt wants me to do,” said the doctor. “I’m
going to do nothing whatever but sit still and look on. And, of course,
remember what Buro Sitt told us. I don’t like Vetter. He’s a paranoiac.
And it’s always unhealthy to have even an ordinary swelled head.
Anywhere, Cary,” he added kindly, “Anywhere at all. So I just wonder
what Buro Sitt is going to do.”
Cary and I wrangled for an hour about it. The thing did look
cold-blooded. A white man in a position where he could demand Buro
Sitt’s daughter--which would cost him his honor as a man--on penalty of
ravaging his people and destroying them--which would certainly
compromise his honor as a king. A _raja_ counts himself the equal of any
king, anywhere. And Buro Sitt had led his people to disaster once
before. He’d taken out a thousand men and brought back just fifty. He’d
feel now as if he had to make up for that.
Then the doctor shut us up and turned in. Cary woke everybody up in the
middle of the night to suggest that we kidnap the girl by arrangement
and let the young chap who wanted to marry her know where to find her.
The doctor threw a shoe at him and went back to sleep.
“Son,” he told Cary, “you forget two things. Buro Sitt did not come out
here to ask us to lecture Vetter. He did have a reason for coming out
here. And Vetter has a swelled head. Go to sleep.”
A minute later he was snoring.
I woke at sunrise, listening to noise of the surf down at the sea
splashing and roaring among the mangrove roots. It’s always strangely
loud at daybreak. And the jungle was making noises as the night things
went to their hiding places and the day things came out again. And
presently a boat came out from Vetter, asking us not to go away because
he’d have something amusing to show us that night.
We guessed more or less what it was, from our opinion of Vetter and Buro
Sitt’s call. But we didn’t leave. We loafed on the boat all day and Cary
talked morosely about how pretty the girl was and wondered what her name
was and how old she was. And the doctor fished.
Meanwhile I wondered how Buro Sitt, who was obviously Malay, could be a
_raja_ up on the China Sea, and learned that about one in four people up
there are Malays, the other three-fourths being Chinese and so on.
And then night came on and the jungle that had looked very tropic and
pleasant during the day began to make unpleasant noises. And Vetter sent
his steam launch for us to come and see what he had to show.
The doctor had it right when he said Vetter thought he was lord of
creation. Political agent over a district nobody else wanted, with a
gunboat coming in every six months or so. Twenty little soldiers to back
him up. Not even a telegraph line to connect him with the outside world.
But in his own district he was the Almighty.
Vetter’s soldiers were stiff as ramrods. They saluted when we came
ashore and took us into a room to wait for him. He kept us waiting, like
an emperor. When he came in he was strutting. Oh, he thought he was the
great old Bhud, all right. He clapped his hands for drinks, and his
servants served him with exquisite haste. Then he flung himself into a
chair and grinned at us.
“You’ve come from the north,” he reminded us. “Japan, and China, and so
on. Not very respectful to white men, these Asiatics, eh?”
We agreed politely.
“I will show you,” he said, showing his teeth in a grin, “how a strong
man treats these swine. _I_ keep them under.”
He held out his open hand and clenched it like he was crushing
something. He didn’t wait for us to say anything. We weren’t important
except as an audience. But he wasn’t crazy. He just had a case of
swelled head that had been aggravated by authority, and he wanted to
show off. He was feverishly anxious to show off. He believed he was lord
of creation, and some people with that belief are pitiful, and some are
amusing, but Vetter managed to be unpleasant.
“There’s a _raja_ here,” he told us, grinning, “traces back his ancestry
to the _rajas_ of Malacca, in the thirteenth century. Proud as hell.
Royal to his fingertips. Now watch!”
Big, and beefy, and dark, with the close-shaved hairs showing through
his skin. He lay back in his chair and grinned at us.
“I’m a white man,” said Vetter, “so I demand royal honors, no less. Once
Buro Sitt--this _raja_--refused his taxes. He said he would appeal to
Saigon. And the gunboat came in the harbor two days later. Buro Sitt
came down with his retinue to meet it. Very much armed. He was going to
complain of me. Of me! Only the marines from the gunboat and my men were
on their way to his village. My men opened fire at sight of the guns his
men carried. Like any Malays, they fired back. He lost fifteen men and
we burned one of his villages.”
He winked at us, and laughed. I don’t think he was French. Not all
French, anyway.
“The gunboat _capitaine_, he reported Buro Sitt in a revolt, and that I
had him well under control. Buro Sitt paid the tax--twice over,” he
added significantly. “That’s the way to treat these swine.”
Cary scowled. I began to understand that Buro Sitt was right when he
said Vetter would ruin his people if he weren’t obeyed. I began to get
very unfond of Vetter.
“Indeed?” the doctor grunted.
Vetter took it for admiration. He was crazy with self-applause anyhow.
Ordinarily, admiration of one’s self isn’t a very healthy occupation,
but Vetter thrived on it. He went on to explain further.
“Royal honors I demand,” he grinned. “I am a white man, and a white man
is royal, while I’m the white man. You’d think Buro Sitt had had enough
of a lesson, eh? But no. Two weeks ago I marched through his chief
village. I looked for royal honors. He did not offer them. I was
patient. I asked him why he did not receive me as a _raja_--a sultan and
his overlord. He said I was only a Frenchman, so----”
A sort of hubbub started off in the jungle somewhere. Vetter grinned
nastily.
“This is the result.” He waved toward the window. “I thought I’d show
you how I treat these swine. I told Buro Sitt his impertinence meant he
meant to revolt. He’d have to give me a hostage for good behavior. His
daughter.” Vetter laughed exuberantly. “A hostage, you understand. And
she will taste every particle of food I eat, so Buro Sitt will not dare
poison me.”
The doctor grunted again.
“He won’t?”
“Not he,” Vetter nodded wisely, and grinned again. “I shall make love to
her, of course. One does. I shall be to her as a god--a kindly god. But
to her father I----”
The noise in the jungle drew nearer and louder. Then one of the sentries
challenged sharply. There was an answer, and then the shrill and nasal
reply of the sentry to the corporal of the guard.
Vetter waited, grinning. Presently two soldiers escorted Buro Sitt and
the girl into the room. The young chap with the hawk-like eyes was
nowhere about. Buro Sitt looked absolutely impassive, though his
nostrils were distended a little. The girl--well, she was white and
queerly silent.
Vetter looked Buro Sitt up and down.
“Since when,” he asked in Malay, without any polite prefix, “are you
permitted to wear arms into my presence?”
Buro Sitt, without a word, handed over his kris to one of the soldiers.
His antiquated pistol followed. Vetter snapped at his soldiers and they
went out. Buro Sitt was like a stone image. Vetter looked at us out of
the corner of his eye. Then he laughed.
“Your daughter,” he said insolently to Buro Sitt, “will taste all my
food hereafter, lest there be poison in it.”
“I understand, _Tuan_,” said Buro Sitt evenly.
“And she will share my room,” added Vetter grinning, “lest a snake be
placed in that.”
“I understand, _Tuan_,” said Buro Sitt.
His nostrils looked white, somehow. It was a pretty horrible thing to
watch, Buro Sitt handing over his daughter--sacrificing his honor as a
man to keep faith with his people as a king.
“Then,” said Vetter insolently, “you may go.”
Buro Sitt bowed. Then he said, “But I beg, _Tuan_, that you send away
that other woman, lest she poison both you and my daughter. Women are
jealous, _Tuan_.”
Vetter looked at him for an instant through half-closed eyes.
“I’ll have a drink.” He clapped his hands and ordered a siphon and a
glass. When the servant brought it in he ordered the girl to mix him a
drink.
Then he got up and walked over to Buro Sitt and laughed in his face. It
was just showing off, you know, making a _raja_ of the best blood in the
East watch his daughter perform a servant’s work for a white.
She brought the glass, deathly white and with flaming eyes. Vetter took
it, then laughed.
“She will taste all I eat and drink,” he reminded Buro Sitt. He motioned
to her to taste it.
Staring at him defiantly, she raised it to her lips, and Vetter snatched
it away and threw it on the floor.
“So soon?” he laughed. “And willing to drink too! But there is a mirror
on the wall, my dear. I saw you drop a little white powder in it. We
would have died together, eh? But it is much better to live.”
He sat down and laughed while I saw Buro Sitt quivering and
almost--almost leaping for him. But two soldiers came rushing in. They’d
heard the crashing glass. And they led Buro Sitt away, with more despair
on his face than I thought any human being could show.
I waited for a signal from the doctor, but he looked on composedly.
Vetter turned to us, laughing.
“One needs to be omniscient, eh? To know their secret thoughts. There is
no other woman. That was for you. So that when I died of poison you
would report that I and--she”--he jerked his thumb negligently at the
white-faced girl--“were poisoned by a jealous woman.”
“I see,” said the doctor dryly. So did I. It fitted in nicely. Buro
Sitt’s call of the night before and his talk of another woman would make
us into witnesses that Vetter had been poisoned through jealousy. And it
was quite clear that Buro Sitt was ready to see his daughter die too if
it were any way necessary.
But Vetter believed he was all powerful, and the events of the last five
minutes had given him extra proof. So he grinned and nodded a farewell
and pushed the girl--shaken and shivering now--before him and left us.
For all the world it was like a king or something dismissing his
attendants. Vetter’d only wanted us for an audience, and now the show
was over.
But Cary was raving. He turned to the doctor, his fists doubled, wanting
to go and half kill Vetter. And I wasn’t any too peaceable myself. Not
heroism, you know. Just ingrowing dislike of Vetter. He didn’t act like
a white man should.
“We can’t interfere,” said the doctor coolly, “only when we’ve got proof
that will stick in the teeth of Vetter’s say-so. And we haven’t.”
There was a little noise. A queer little noise, like a sick man
coughing. Then a little thud. Then nothing. The doctor looked grim.
“I think we’ve got it now,” he said, with his mouth twisted wryly.
He put his hand in his pocket and went streaking to where Vetter had
gone. I thought I heard the murmur of his voice. Then he came back. He
was smiling, but most unpleasantly.
“You were mistaken,” he said pleasantly, “if you thought you heard me
talking to anybody. Vetter is sick. Very sick. Cary, go to the boat and
get my medicine-case. And you,” he said to me, “you tell the sergeant in
command of the soldiers that Vetter is sick with fever brought on by
excitement, and there mustn’t be any noise. Not even challenges. And
certainly no shooting. Not under any circumstances.”
We went. The doctor’s face was curious; grim and queerly amused. But I
knew he hadn’t found exactly what he expected when he chased Vetter. I
knew just what had happened the minute he let me in the room. There was
nobody in the room but Vetter. The girl had disappeared. The doctor made
me help him, and it was an unpleasant job.
When Cary came back, the doctor kept him busy on errands to the
soldiers. He kept the soldiers busy, getting hot water hotter and cold
water colder and generally occupied with duties that certainly weren’t
guard-duty. And bringing sheets and pillows and one thing and another.
Cary, at the door, always growled that he’d no taste for trying to keep
Vetter alive. Cary was sentimental about a pretty girl.
The sun had just risen when the doctor stopped. We came out of the
sick-room and he told me to tell the sergeant the news. I went and broke
it as positively as I knew how. Vetter was dead, of fever with
complications. And the sergeant shuffled uneasily and said that the
gunboat would be due in a week more.
I went back, and Cary was staring at the figure on the bed that we’d
drawn a sheet over. There were one or two suspiciously wet spots on the
floor, but Cary didn’t notice them, or think that they looked as if we
had been scrubbing there.
He stared at the figure. Then he tiptoed over and drew back the sheet
from the face. Curious to look at a man you cordially disliked, when
he’s past being disliked any more.
“What was the matter with him?” asked Cary.
“Fever,” said the doctor.
I felt very weak and sick from the reaction from what we’d had to do,
but I grinned feebly.
The doctor handed Cary a package that was wrapped up in part of a sheet;
he wanted it dropped overboard in deep water. The handle stuck out of
it, and the handle was that of the kris the young Malay with the
hawk-like eyes had been caressing while he sat with Buro Sitt on our
boat deck.
“M-my God!” said Cary, shaken and sick. “He--he----”
“He died,” said the doctor firmly, “of fever. A special sort that always
follows paranoia. I’m a doctor and my report will stand, if we get him
buried before the gunboat gets here. Fever, Cary, fever.”
And his report did stand. I heard later that the next Political to take
Vetter’s post made shocked reports of how Vetter had been mistreating
the natives. He had Grossly Exceeded his Authority, and all that sort of
thing. Every effort would have to be made to restore the loyalty to _la
belle France_ that Vetter’s actions would have undermined. That meant,
of course, scrupulously fair treatment thereafter.
But it struck me as rather humorous that the doctor met Vetter’s
successor later on and listened for half an hour to hair-raising
accounts of the evil deeds Vetter had done.
“_M’sieur_,” said the new Political, excitedly, “it is incredible that
he was not _assassiné_! That he died naturally, of fever, _c’est
incroyable_!”
“Oh, not at all,” said the doctor. “That’s the price one pays for not
taking things in time. Vetter had paranoia, and he didn’t do anything to
cure himself. His ‘fever’ was the inevitable price of his neglect.”
In my mind I was contrasting Buro Sitt, with the price that had been set
on his honor as a man, and the greater price set on his faith with his
people. But just then a young doctor laughed at the doctor’s ignorance
in speaking of Vetter’s death as the price he paid for not trying to
cure his paranoia--which is usually nothing more or less than a swelled
head, or the belief that one is lord of creation.
[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the February 10, 1926
issue of Short Stories Magazine.]
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