Publisher's Synopsis
From the whaleboat, up the low side of the Arangi, and over her six-inch rail of teak to her teakdeck, was but a step, and Tom Haggin made it easily with Jerry still under his arm. The deck wascluttered with an exciting crowd. Exciting the crowd would have been to untravelled humans ofcivilization, and exciting it was to Jerry; although to Tom Haggin and Captain Van Horn it was amere commonplace of everyday life.The deck was small because the Arangi was small. Originally a teak-built, gentleman's yacht, brassfitted, copper-fastened, angle-ironed, sheathed in man-of-war copper and with a fin-keel of bronze, she had been sold into the Solomon Islands' trade for the purpose of blackbirding or niggerrunning. Under the law, however, this traffic was dignified by being called "recruiting."The Arangi was a labour-recruit ship that carried the new-caught, cannibal blacks from remoteislands to labour on the new plantations where white men turned dank and pestilential swamp andjungle into rich and stately cocoanut groves. The Arangi's two masts were of Oregon cedar, soscraped and hot-paraffined that they shone like tan opals in the glare of sun. Her excessive sail planenabled her to sail like a witch, and, on occasion, gave Captain Van Horn, his white mate, and hisfifteen black boat's crew as much as they could handle. She was sixty feet over all, and the crossbeams of her crown deck had not been weakened by deck-houses. The only breaks-and no beamshad been cut for them-were the main cabin skylight and companionway, the booby hatch for'ardover the tiny forecastle, and the small hatch aft that let down into the store-room.
