Dennis Wheatley - The White Witch of the South Seas

Indignantly the officer refused; whereupon Gregory turned to James, who was standing in the doorway of the hangar, and said, `Would you oblige me by persuading this fellow to do as he is told.'

With a grin, the huge James advanced on the Major. Sudden fear showed in his eyes. Putting up one hand as though to fend James off, he began to unbutton his tunic. Two minutes later, with a hangdog expression he was standing there naked.

`Now you,' Gregory said to the pilot. Realising that it was futile to refuse, he, too, stripped to the buff. Meanwhile James had been going through the Major's pockets. In one there were a couple of letters and he read out from an envelope, 'Comandante Andorache Fournier.' He then picked up the pilot's jacket, fished a pocketbook from it and announced, `Lieutenant Jules Joubert.'

Gregory smiled and said, `Messieurs Fournier and Joubert, I am happy to think that, in this delightful climate, being deprived of your clothes for a while will cause you no inconvenience, apart, perhaps, from a few mosquito bites. We will now leave you to contemplate the eternal verities; or, if you prefer, how extremely displeased with you General Ribaud will be when you try to explain to him how it came about that you failed to carry out his orders.'

James collected the clothes, carried them into the other hangar and dumped them in the aircraft, then locked the doors of both hangars. As they turned away, Gregory said, `Naked and without shoes, I don't think there is much chance of their breaking out; but we daren't leave them there for long, in case someone comes out here and finds them. Do you know of a place where we could hide them safely for a few days?'

After a moment's thought, James replied, `There are some caves a few miles away up in the hills. No one would come upon them there, and some of my men could be relied on to guard them.'

`Good. I'm afraid, though, that Fournier was right. The erratic flight of the aircraft over Yuloga will have suggested to the Russians that a fight was taking place on board. Ribaud will be informed of that, and he is no fool. He is almost certain to assume that if we did get control of the plane we would make for your own island. Probably the best chance of keeping our freedom would be for us to retire to those caves ourselves, anyway for the time being.'

`Oh, we certainly need not do that.' James' voice had taken on a new note of authority. `Commandant Elboeuf, the Resident, is a spineless old creature and there are no troops stationed on the island, only a Sergeant and six gendarmes. My people would never allow them to arrest us and the police would not dare force the issue. My bure is only about a mile away, on this side of the town. We will go there first and I'll send a reliable man down to find out if anything unusual is happening at the gendarmes' barracks. But I'm still in the dark about much that has been going on. What exactly, did take place between you and General Ribaud?'

`Of course you are.' Gregory smiled. `I had no chance to tell you while we were in prison, and I couldn't talk about it while we were in the plane with those two Frenchmen.' As they walked quickly along an upward sloping dirt road through the jungle, Gregory then related to James how he had blackmailed Ribaud and what had come of it. When he had done he added:

`I ought to have foreseen that, although we were old friends, he might consider it his duty to trick me, and he darned near did. Unfortunately, too, we are far from having finished with him yet. Once he knows for certain that we are here he can fly troops in to get us. Even if we refuelled the aircraft, and forced Joubert to fly us on to Fiji, we'd still not be in the clear. There is a charge of attempted murder pending against you and he could apply for a warrant of extradition. You could go into hiding for a while, but not indefinitely; because to do so would mean your having to abandon everything. To do that would ruin your whole life; so, somehow or other, we've got to do a deal with him.'

`I don't see how we can,' James said gloomily.

`Neither do I at the moment. And the devil of it is we have precious little time to think in. The signal from Yuloga will be to the effect, “Aircraft failed to land, appeared to be out of control,” so apparently only a mechanical fault, and Ribaud's people wouldn't wake him up in the middle of the night to give him a message of that kind. But it will be on his desk this morning; so at any time from nine o'clock on we can expect the sparks to fly.'

By this time they had mounted the rise and emerged from the jungle. Ahead of them, in a broad, open space, stood an exceptionally large and lofty bure with round about it a number of smaller ones. As they approached, a man appeared in the open doorway of the big pure. On seeing James, he gave a cry of delight, fell on his knees and bowed his head. His

master greeted him kindly but, instead of moving for them to enter, he remained kneeling there. James turned aside, smiled at Gregory and said:

`No High Chief ever enters his own or any other house by the back door; and no inferior may ever pass behind a High Chief when he is seated, even to serve him at table. In the islands there are many such customs as these. The people think them right and proper, so continue to observe them willingly.'

To one side of the burs there was an oval swimming pool, at the far end were shaded swing hammocks, basket chairs, tables and a small bar; while, round about were hibiscus bushes, cannas and pepper plants in blossom, and frangipani trees, the creamy flowers of which filled the air with a heady scent.

As they came round to the front of the burs, Gregory found himself looking on one of the most beautiful panoramas he had ever seen, A spacious garden sloped away down the hillside. In the forefront there were carefully tended beds of many coloured flowers. Along the side slopes and lower down, so as not to obstruct the view, were splendid specimen trees: mangoes, breadfruit, magnolias and giant figs that bure only miniature fruit.

Below, shaped like a sickle moon, spread the long sweep of the bay. In the centre, looking so clear in the early morning light that one might have thrown a stone on to a roof top, nestled Revika, the island's capital. The town consisted of no more than a few brick buildings and some half hundred wooden ones; but on either side of it along the coast, half hidden in groves of palm trees, there peeped out the thatched roofs of scores of bures. The beach on the extremity of the left horn of the bay was hidden by massed trees of vivid green, the right horn was a mile long stretch of gleaming white sand.

In the little harbour of Revika there were several schooners and a number of small motor boats, the phut phut phutting of one of which could be heard clearly as it made its way towards the harbour mouth. Further out, half a dozen canoes, with outriggers and great red triangular sails, were already

on their way to the fishing grounds, each leaving a rippling wake on the calm surface of the water inside the lagoon. Two miles out the waves broke in a thin, creaming line on the coral reef that protected it. Beyond the reef were two small islands that seemed to float between the deep blue of the sea and the paler blue of the cloudless sky. Both of them were thick with… palms that, in the distance, looked like clusters of yellow green feathers. Not far from the shore a patch of the mirror like water suddenly danced and sparkled in the sun t light it was a shoal of flying fish breaking surface.

`What a wonderful situation you have here,' Gregory remarked. `It must be one of the most beautiful views in the South Seas.'

`It is,' agreed James. 'But down by the coast the scenery is not quite up to that in several other islands. The loveliest of all, I think, is Western Samoa. There is a stretch of forty miles there, where the road winds along within sight of the sea and for long distances only a hundred yards or so from it. You could not describe it as a built up area, but for its whole length, instead of scattered villages, there are, at short intervals, houses with pretty gardens. They are mostly native bures, of course, and unlike those in Fiji or here, their thatched roofs are supported by poles between which are reed curtains that can be let down in times of bad weather. Normally the colourfully clad people who live in them can be seen going about their daily tasks, and the interiors are always neat and clean. Against a back drop of palms and jungle, which slope up to the heights behind them, they are enchanting.!