Five-Skull Island And Other Tales of the Malay Archipelago

IT was in Batavia I met him--at the Hôtel des Indes--the leather--
visaged, stormy-voiced ruin of a very powerful man. I shall call him
Thurston. He laughed when I spoke of Five-Skull Island.

"Where they found the five skeletons?" he said. "I see you've made
the Aru voyage. Or was it the Ké? Lived in Ké once myself!"

"Yes! Would he take anything?"

He would, and did--then did again, and expanded.

"You're a young chap to have gone poking down into that out-of-the-
way corner. Not trade, I can see! Money to throw away, eh? Or was it
Science? Never mind! About this Five-Skull business! People here will
tell you I'm the man that sailed a prahu single-handed from Ké to
Celebes. Well--I didn't! Six of us left Ké--the others stopped half-
way--at Five-Skull Island. Don't care if I tell you!"

And here--a little dramatized--is what he did tell me.

* * * * *

"The wind at last!" said Thurston, and sat up. "Také!"

Také wasn't beside him. The edge of dawn made that clear enough, and
the white man got sleepily to his feet.

"Gone for water, perhaps!" The bamboo-joint jars had been left beside
the hole, and there Thurston found them. But he found no Také. With
the men, amongst the pandanus, was she? No men were there! Thurston
rushed out into the clear again and looked to where the prahu should
have been moored. Well-away nor'-westward, a shadow upon the dimness
showed him where she was now.

The deserted laughed--a fearful sound in that portentous loneliness--
and walked back to look for his rifle, not expecting to find it. He
didn't!

Mechanically he lit his pipe. "Tight place this time, Jim Thurston!--
unless you can hang it out on water! Water? Why, they've got none!"
and off he rushed to count the tubes at the hole. All there!--
forgotten in the sneaking hurry.

Thurston's teeth snapped together with the significance of this. He
glanced at the fierce-faced sun, already peering into a remorselessly
cloudless ether. "No rain! They must come back! But, curse it! they've
got my Winchester!"

* * * * *

Thurston had come to the Archipelago with theories about the Child of
Nature. Most of these he dropped in Borneo, and the few he carried
with him to the Moluccas were fewer still when he started again south-
east. Down in Ké, amongst the Papuans, he parted with them all but
one--but that one he took away with him. He also took Také. Také was
the theory--Savage Fidelity, bound in dingy brown.