Ah Cho was twenty-two years old.He was happy and good-natured, and it was easy for him to smile.While his body was slim in the Asiatic way, his face was rotund.It was round, like the moon, and it irradiated a gentle complacence and a sweet kindliness of spirit that was unusual among his countrymen.Nor did his looks belie him.He never caused trouble, never took part in wrangling.He did not gamble.His soul was not harsh enough for the soul that must belong to a gambler.He was content with little things and simple pleasures.The hush and quiet in the cool of the day after the blazing toil in the cotton field was to him an infinite satisfaction.He could sit for hours gazing at a solitary flower and philosophizing about the mysteries and riddles of being.A blue heron on a tiny crescent of sandy beach, a silvery splatter of flying fish, or a sunset of pearl and rose across the lagoon, could entrance him to all forgetfulness of the procession of wearisome days and of the heavy lash of Schemmer.
Schemmer, Karl Schemmer, was a brute, a brutish brute.But he earned his salary.He got the last particle of strength out of the five hundred slaves; for slaves they were until their term of years was up.Schemmer worked hard to extract the strength from those five hundred sweating bodies and to transmute it into bales of fluffy cotton ready for export.His dominant, iron-clad, primeval brutishness was what enabled him to effect the transmutation.Also, he was assisted by a thick leather belt, three inches wide and a yard in length, with which he always rode and which, on occasion, could come down on the naked back of a stooping coolie with a report like a pistol-shot.These reports were frequent when Schemmer rode down the furrowed field.
Once, at the beginning of the first year of contract labour, he had killed a coolie with a single blow of his fist.He had not exactly crushed the man's head like an egg-shell, but the blow had been sufficient to addle what was inside, and, after being sick for a week, the man had died.But the Chinese had not complained to the French devils that ruled over Tahiti.
It was their own look out.Schemmer was their problem.They must avoid his wrath as they avoided the venom of the centipedes that lurked in the grass or crept into the sleeping quarters on rainy nights.The Chinagos--such they were called by the indolent, brown-skinned island folk--saw to it that they did not displease Schemmer too greatly.This was equivalent to rendering up to him a full measure of efficient toil.That blow of Schemmer's fist had been worth thousands of dollars to the Company, and no trouble ever came of it to Schemmer.
The French, with no instinct for colonization, futile in their childish playgame of developing the resources of the island, were only too glad to see the English Company succeed.What matter of Schemmer and his redoubtable fist? The Chinago that died? Well, he was only a Chinago.
Besides, he died of sunstroke, as the doctor's certificate attested.True, in all the history of Tahiti no one had ever died of sunstroke.But it was that, precisely that, which made the death of this Chinago unique.The doctor said as much in his report.He was very candid.Dividends must be paid, or else one more failure would be added to the long history of failure in Tahiti.
There was no understanding these white devils.Ah Cho pondered their inscrutableness as he sat in the court room waiting the judgment.There was no telling what went on at the back of their minds.He had seen a few of the white devils.They were all alike--the officers and sailors on the ship, the French officials, the several white men on the plantation, including Schemmer.Their minds all moved in mysterious ways there was no getting at.They grew angry without apparent cause, and their anger was always dangerous.They were like wild beasts at such times.They worried about little things, and on occasion could out-toil even a Chinago.They were not temperate as Chinagos were temperate; they were gluttons, eating prodigiously and drinking more prodigiously.A Chinago never knew when an act would please them or arouse a storm of wrath.A Chinago could never tell.What pleased one time, the very next time might provoke an outburst of anger.There was a curtain behind the eyes of the white devils that screened the backs of their minds from the Chinago's gaze.And then, on top of it all, was that terrible efficiency of the white devils, that ability to do things, to make things go, to work results, to bend to their wills all creeping, crawling things, and the powers of the very elements themselves.Yes, the white men were strange and wonderful, and they were devils.Look at Schemmer.
Ah Cho wondered why the judgment was so long in forming.Not a man on trial had laid hand on Chung Ga.Ah San alone had killed him.Ah San had done it, bending Chung Ga's head back with one hand by a grip of his queue, and with the other hand, from behind, reaching over and driving the knife into his body.Twice had he driven it in.There in the court room, with closed eyes, Ah Cho saw the killing acted over again--the squabble, the vile words bandied back and forth, the filth and insult flung upon venerable ancestors, the curses laid upon unbegotten generations, the leap of Ah San, the grip on the queue of Chung Ga, the knife that sank twice into his flesh, the bursting open of the door, the irruption of Schemmer, the dash for the door, the escape of Ah San, the flying belt of Schemmer that drove the rest into the corner, and the firing of the revolver as a signal that brought help to Schemmer.Ah Cho shivered as he lived it over.
One blow of the belt had bruised his cheek, taking off some of the skin.
