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.And on this small deck, in addition to the crew, were the "return" niggers from three far-flungplantations. By "return" was meant that their three years of contract labour was up, and that, according to contract, they were being returned to their home villages on the wild island ofMalaita. Twenty of them-familiar, all, to Jerry-were from Meringe; thirty of them came from theBay of a Thousand Ships, in the Russell Isles; and the remaining twelve were from Pennduffryn onthe east coast of Guadalcanar. In addition to these-and they were all on deck, chattering andpiping in queer, almost elfish, falsetto voices-were the two white men, Captain Van Horn and hisDanish mate, Borckman, making a total of seventy-nine soul
