He it was who discovered the mineral, and especially the precious stone treasures of the island. At his advice the piracy was only carried on as a side issue, and the development of the island seriously attended to.
The young man had always had an agent in Paris, through whom, and his friends in Amsterdam, Vienna, and 'Frisco, all pillage could be disposed of.
A yacht would pick up a pirate or so from the New Decameron, at a given spot, and get them into Europe. Once in, all was simple. There was an amateur thespian among the pirates who evolved miraculous changes out of the emissaries. If you had seen the young man entering Amsterdam as a perfectly made-up Shylock, you would never have recognised him.
John Tucker, when the vast stores of precious stones began to be worked, centupled the business, and yet no one, bar a few trusty agents who were rapidly becoming millionaires, had any idea where the stones were coming from.
Gradually a civilised and very contented community arose. The natives took readily to European habits, and a class distinction among them arose, a distinction based on no rank or holding, for the island had been common property, but solely on ability: the cleverer and the more attractive rose, thus forming a little aristocracy. Of such were the elite, whom I have mentioned, who, with the whites, thronged the terraces of the Deux Races.
Though clothes were not insisted on throughout the island, it was an accepted etiquette that some, at any rate, should be worn in a cafe. The 'some' was an easy-going measure. It meant filmy draperies for the women, pyjamas, as a rule, for the men, and a loincloth for the waiters.
Helena lazily sipped some native wine, and her eyes wandered from Samura's to the sea. Both were beautiful, the blue and the black. She had some sort of determination to be true to John Tucker, but-she was a bundle of buts and ifs-but, if he should go back to his mechanical copulation, and if she was to lose outside joys because of a rash promise of fidelity-well-she didn't quite see it.
Samura had conquered. Taking a key, with a roguish wink, from the maitre d'hotel, Helena had slipped upstairs. Samura soon followed. The little cabinets particulim were very dainty. A table, some chairs, a profusion of flowers, and a great luxurious couch formed the furniture. A curtain-hidden alcove held all necessary toilette requisites.
Helena lay back on the couch, her knees up, her little hands clasped behind the golden sea of her hair, as Samura entered and turned the key behind him.
'Your eyes are more blue than the sky where dwells the great God you ivory people worship,' he began; 'your hair is as the sea of gold on the tables of the money changers; your breasts are like the twin snowy volcanos of Toisaro when the beacons kindle at the peak'
This was better than John Tucker, with his, 'That damned mine's stopped again.'
'You may kiss me, Samura,' she whispered.
Gently and long he kissed, and while their lips were one, deftly rid the girl of the little clothing she wore. She looked at him languorously as he stripped, as the young blood of Europe changed into the wild god of the woods.
They melted into each other's embrace.
'Thy breath is the scent of the wild honey,' he told her.
'And yours that of the flowers when the dew has kissed them.'
She thought of John Tucker's powerful whiskey blast, and shuddered.
Gracefully, oh, so gracefully and tenderly he slipped upon her. Their hearts beat fast in unison, their twining fingers, the collusion of their knees, the heave of their close-pressed stomachs, the soft courtship of their cheeks seemed to bring a love that was not love, and a lust that yet was not wholly lust into being in every part of their bodies.
Samura slipped his phallus into the throbbing vagina. The great nature joy, the dominant passion of the beast en rode was there below their bellies, but both Samura and Helena would have found it difficult to say whether there was greater ecstatic thrill in the communion of their natural organs than in the touch of foot to foot, of nipple to nipple, navel to navel, and, especially, of hair to hair.
The brains of both were aflame with wild passionate droughts.
It is so, when the woman gives herself to her master because she yearns to bear him a child, her heart slips to her vagina, waiting to open the portals of that temple, her womb.
But when there is no thought of children; when the connection is all for the countless little lusts that live in the brain and the body, the fuck feeling may come just as well out of the shin bone as the cunt.
Samura thrust up and up, his eyes closed; he could see his darling just as well in the dark. They were gripped as to be one being, but their actions were slow. Simultaneously they felt the spunk descending the spinal column, and simultaneously they climaxed.
Samura felt his little one twine a tress of her golden hair round his neck, and heard a whispered, 'Don't move, mio can,' when the boom of a gun seemed to shake the house and the glasses rattled on the table.
Hastily they got up. Samura, first at the window, shouted, 'It is the ship, the ship.'
Helena's toilet was almost as brief as her dressing, and she was on the quay in time to see the New Decameron swing into the bay, before her lover had got his trousers on.
The quay was agog with excitement. Over the hills, summoned by the gun, poured the mineworkers. John Tucker, who had been having his balls tickled by a native boy while he worked out his calculations, swore a great oath, kicked the boy, swung himself into the trailer of the superintendent's motor cycle, and was whirled to the seaboard.
CHAPTER TWO. From 'Afloat' to 'Ashore'
John Tucker was late. The pirate who had in other days been known as the Earl of Wimbledon, was aboard the New Decameron before John Tucker was on the pier.
The air was pregnant with expectancy. These simple savages had learnt the value of the cargoes brought home by the great ship and their eyes were greedy with longing.
The chains raided, and the New Decameron came to anchor two stones' throw from the shore.
Heavy barges surrounded her, while into the launches dropped some of the pirates and their guests.
The soft chuchottement of the natives mingled with the excited Anglo-Saxon of the resident pirates when it was seen that ladies were amongst the arrivals.
John Tucker frowned. This means more fucking and less work,' he muttered. Little Helena, holding his arm, was curiously jealous.
Lady Tittle, panting but smiling, was first handed on to the jetty steps. Hony followed her, fragrantly rosy and young. Her Cuban flapper friend, Miss Jepps, the Sisters Lovett and the attendant Madge followed. The Earl of Wimbledon (late) whom we shall know in this book as 'Mike' introduced them to, and gave them into the charge of John Tucker. That worthy was gruffly civil, but it was left to the courtier-like Samura to convey the very unexpected guests to the great cafe to wait till all arrangements were complete. Helena, accompanying, felt a jealousy she couldn't quite understand. She didn't altogether like the look of Hony.
Lady Tittle, as she passed through the murmuring throng, as her eye took in the sumptuous surroundings and the all evident scent of money, was very happy. Her bad old middle-aged heart rejoiced.
Next the men captives: behind the high coaming forrard stood Herr Kunst, intensely excited as the lovely vista of the island town panoramaed into view. Mr. Silverwood, Moss Hell, Billy Neale, Hannibal McGregor and Lord Reggie Cameron were grouped behind him. The young man came with them, and another formal presentation to John Tucker followed.
Mr. Silverwood, whose face looked like a dried-out grate in the early morn, was at once given into the charge of the island doctor, a charming young ex-house-physician of St James's Hospital, London, who had left in a hurry for being too obliging in procuring illegal operations. He was a slim, anaemic young man, whose bark was not so bad as his bite, for his special pills had been known to keep patients for days confined to the smallest and most necessary room in the house.