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Rum Business

By Russell N. Thomas

> r rHIS rum,” remarked Trader Tom 1 as we sat on his verandah over looking the lagoon at Motu-iti one

evening, “is probably synthetised from

natural gas—l hear they have in vented a process—and flavoured with a coal-tar derivative. What a time they must have had in America in prohibition days! I don't wonder

they resorted to rum-running to get

something fit to drink. Apropos of

rum-running, did you ever meet Charlie the Chaplain?”

“Charlie Chaplin?”

“No, Charlie the Chaplain was what everyone called him. He was around this Group once, and I thought you might have. He had actually been a chaplain once, though you wouldn't have known it, and his first name was really Charlie. Or so he said.”

AS a profession the church must have been a little trying for such a high spirited lad; it seemed there had been a slight misunderstanding over some church funds, and when the head deacon, who acted as treasurer, finally decided that an explanation was urgently necessary, he found that Charlie had vacated his digs about two hops ahead of him and left town.

He never returned; they got a new preacher, and it was learned that Charlie had gone on the stage.

He made a far better actor than he had a parson, but it was when the full severity of prohibition hit America that he discovered his real metier, and he be came quite a big .noise in the gangster world. Whether he eventually made Chicago too hot to hold him ana found it advisable to take a long holiday I didn’t hear, but he was for a time on a rum runner, and one trip at least brought him to Papeete.

I was staying there at the time at a hotel on the water-front, and one very hot afternoon was idly watching a ship coming in through the pass. This was a somewhat unusual-looking craft. It was hard to define, but she looked somehow different from the usual freighter. So, when she had tied up, I strolled over to the wharf for a close-up. While there, I got into conversation with a man from on board, who was obviously something more than merely one of the crew; but his exact status was not easy to deter mine, and he wasn’t giving away any in formation about the ship. None of them were; they were all tight-lipped and mysterious, but five minutes after her mooring lines were fixed it was no secret that she was a rum-runner.

The week before, another ship had put a lot of cases of spirits ashore, and the morning after the new arrival these were taken out of the sheds and stacked on the wharf, where the crew started breaking them open. Each dozen bottles was then neatly sewn up in gunny cloth with two ears for handling. The bundles of bottles were then put aboard.

I’ve seen some ships low in the water, but I never saw anything like this. By the time they had finished, the hawse pipes were down to the water and she looked like a half-tide rock.

WE had been hearing something about her in the meantime, for nothing ever remains a secret in an Island port very long. A man from the ship yard had been aboard to do some repairs;

he said she had diesels enough to power a were not received and no one e be got a board, but you could see racks ut - nties on the bulkheads through the ports, and I would have very much liked to have lifted the tarpaulin covers off some of the hardware on deck for a in America in aboul 1 as tough-looking an I ever saw afloat. j met Charlie—the man I had spoken t 0 on the wharf—again later. He was in French Louie’s bar with half a dozen of the men off the ship, and it was clear that something was wrong. They all sat

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there was thunder in the air, and it seemed that Charlie was somehow in pretty bad trouble, whatever it was.

After a time they got up and left, all except Charlie, and it was easy to see he was U P against it. I saw him glancing towards me every now and again, when ever he thought I wasn’t looking.

Summing me up—and presently he came over to my table and with a word f aDoloev sat down ..Traded aren’t vou" ” he asked Jnt ft in one “ ? rcnlied G°t it in one, I replied. 1 w° nder lf you could , tell "J®* said “if you know some place where could lie low for a while? You know these parts pretty well, I guess-at. least you have the air of being very much at home in this burg That bunch of th.eyes aboard are all sored up at me and its ten to one I’ll be floating ars-uppards in the lagoon by midnight to-night, with a shiv in my ba ck. unless I can get away out of this before djgfcWouM you .ike to be a pal to a stranger and ten me

wb^’ e 1 can go. .

thls . ** rS o’ s^ ld ‘ n What 15 a H about, anyway. Don t tell me any thing you don t want to, but you are asking me rather a lot and I want to know just I should stand if I helped you. . ... . . .

IT appeared that on the previous trip 1 the cargo had been hi-jacked. There had been a scrap, a lot of damage done, and what was left of the cargo barely covered expenses. Somehow a suspicion started that the hi-jacking was done by some of Charlie’s gang who were known to be on the coast at the time, Nothing was said to him. but the rest of the ship’s gang started quiet inquiries, and they had apparently received some interesting information by radio and the man which they had picked up in Papeete. think I double-crossed them,”

Charlie said, “but wherever they got that dope from beats me; I wouldn’t do a thing like that on them.”

I thought this over for a while. “How much of all this is true?” I asked, H e shrugged his shoulders. “I’m in an exceedingly dangerous position even as 1 sit here> ” he said . “i’ V e nowhere to go and ril pro bably be dead before morn ing.”

After all (I thought to myself) the poor devil is evidently in fear of his life. He’s probably as bad as the others; maybe worse, but somehow I don’t like the idea of him being slaughtered in cold blood.

I’ll take a chance and do it.

“You know the corner between the American Consulate and the Post Office?”

I asked him. “Wait for me there; I’ll be along in a taxi. Just hop in.” « ♦ • “Where are you taking me?” asked Charlie a few minutes later.

“To the ‘Tropic Bird’ —at least, that is our ultimate destination.” ‘‘But we’re leaving town?”

“We certainly are. One of your pals was keeping his eye on you while you were waiting for me—the one in the check suit.”

"Lucky for me you spotted him—l didn’t. I’ll leave myself in your hands.”

“Okay, brother. Got a gun on you?”

“You bet.”

“Hand it over.”

“Not on your life! I’ve never felt the need of a gun so much.”

But after some argument he saw sense—the French draw the line at target practice—and handed his gun over. In a few minutes I dumped him at an old tumble-down native shack well off the road in a lonely spot where no one would think of looking for him. The taxi move had been a complete surprise to Check-suit, who had been left stand ing, so he seemed safe enough for the time being.

“Look out for centipedes,” I told" him; “there are probably dozens in that old thatch and they’ve a bite like a red hot pincers. I’ll be back for you after dark in a dirferent car. So long.”

WHEN I got back to the outskirts of the town I dismissed the car in a side-street, giving the driver the tip to say nothing if he was questioned, and walked back to my hotel, I saw nothing more of the sinister collection of toughs off the ship. When night fell I got a car from another garage and went to collect Charlie. I’d seen the captain of the “Tropic Bird” in the meantime and arranged what to do.

“But he’ll be found before we leave port and dumped ashore by the police so hard that he’ll make a dent in the wharf,” the captain had objected when I broached

the subject.

“Hide him in the hold.” ‘‘Like hell, I will! There’s going to be no more beach-combers who’ve outstayed their welcome diguising themselves as sacks of copra aboard of my ship. And we’re leaving Papeete, not entering it, so we couldn’t pull that dodge. Say, and who is this guy, and what is it all about, anyway?”

I told him. ‘‘Well, have it your own way, but of ill the crazy things I’ve known you do, this is the craziest. And where do we put him ashore?”

“Motu-Niu.”

“But that’s a private island. And what do you suppose old man Henshall will have to say about it? He’ll be as wild as hell and refuse to take him.”

“He’ll say plenty, no doubt. But he’ll find use for him. He’s been wanting another white man there for some time, partly for company and partly to help with the labour, but couldn’t afford to offer enough to make it worth anyone’s while to stay. This bird will be glad to work for nothing or next to nothing until this affair has blown over and Henshall will jump at the chance of hav ing him.

“But if he does refuse, what then?

I'll have to bring him back here and his papers won’t be in order, and then I’ll be out of luck.”

“You can say you picked him up at sea.”

“I could say a lot of things. But as you’re so set on it, I imagine you must have some pretty damn good reason for what you are doing, and I’ll do my best.

By the way, what is the fellow’s name?”

“Charlie Henshall.”

“Same name as the man you are tak ing him to. eh?”

“Yes, maybe it was the name that gave

me the idea. He’ll be all right there; Motu-Niu isn’t a bad little place at all and he might even want to stay.” he did,” said Trader Tom, as he poured out some more of the synthetic rum. “On the trip, Charlie was most concerned at first in putting as much distance as possible between himself and his former shipmates; then when all danger ivas past he began to ask questions about the kind of place it was that he was go ing to. I told him all I could remem ber about the island, and when 1 mentioned the owner’s name he be came thoughtful, and I could see there was something on his mind. ‘ What nationality is he?’ he asked, and I told him, American.” ‘‘Well, everything turned out very well. Charlie and Henshall took to one another like long-lost brothers— which was perhaps hardly surprising —because when they came to com pare notes they found that that was just exactly what they were”

Miss Marian Betham, of Apia, Western Samoa, died in the Government Hospi tal on November 24, of heart failure. She was one of the junior members of the Union Steamship Company’s branch in Apia..

News of the death of Mr. Harold Syd dall, formerly of Apia, and more recently of North Auckland, was received with regret by his many Western Samoan friends. When he lived in Apia, Mr.

Syddall was a partner in the firm of Andrew and Syddall.