* Captain Cook.* The Spaniards—two Spanish ships fitted out by theViceroy of Peru had visited these islands before Cook.
“But then,” he went on to say, “O friends of my heart, we must be careful, for these men of Fakarava are allaitos(fighting men), and no ship hath ever yet been inside the great lagoon, for the people swarm off in their canoes, club and spear in hand, and, stripped to the loins, are ready to fight to the death the stranger that sets foot on their land.”
Somewhat disquieted at this intelligence, the master of theQueen Charlottewas at first in doubt whether to venture inside or not; but, looking round him and noting the eager, excited faces of his white crew and their native messmates, he decided at least to attempt to see for himself whether there was or was not pearl shell in the lagoon.
By this time the brigantine was within a mile or so of the entrance, which, on a nearer inspection, presented no difficulties whatever. As the vessel passed between the roaring lines of surf that thundered and crashed with astounding violence on the coral barriers enclosing the placid lagoon, a canoe shot out from the beach a quarter of a mile away, and approached the ship. But four natives were in the tiny craft, and when within a cable-length of the brigantine they ceased paddling, and conversed volubly with one another, as if debating whether they should venture on board the strange ship or not. Paddles in hand, they regarded her with the most intense curiosity as a being from another world; and when, the ship bringing up to the wind, the anchor was let go, a loud cry of astonishment burst forth from them, and with a swift backward sweep of their paddles the canoe shot shorewards like an arrow from a bow full fifty feet astern.
Clambering out on the end of the jib-boom, Upaparu seized hold of a stay and hailed them in a semi-Tahitian dialect, thelingua francaof Eastern Polynesia—
“Ia ora na kotore teie nei aho!” (“May you have peace this day!”), and then, bidding them await him, he sprang overboard and swam to them. In a few minutes he was alongside the canoe, holding on the gunwale and holding an animated conversation with its crew, one of whom, evidently the leader, at last bent down and rubbed noses with the Tahitian in token of amity. Then they paddled alongside, and after some hesitation clambered up on deck.
Tall and finely made, with light copper-coloured skins deeply tattooed from their necks to their heels, and holding in their hands wooden daggers set on both edges with huge sharks'-teeth as keen as razors, they surveyed the vessel and her crew with looks of astonishment. Except for a narrow girdle of curiously-stained pandanus leaves, each man was nude, and their stiff, scanty, and wiry-looking beards seemed to quiver with excitement as they looked with lightning-like rapidity from one object to another.
Advancing to them with his hand outstretched, the master of the brigantine took the leader's hand in his, and pointed to the poop, and Upaparu told them that the white chief desired them to sit and talk with him. Still grasping their daggers they acceded, and followed Shelley and the Tahitian chief to the poop, seated themselves on the deck, while the crew of the brigantine, in order not to embarrass or alarm them, went about their work as if no strangers were present.
In a very short time Upaparu had so far gained their confidence that they began to talk volubly, and answered all the questions he put to them. “Pearl shell? Yes, there be plenty of it. Even here, beneath the ship. Let us show thee!” and one of them, springing over the side, in another minute or two reappeared with a large pearl shell in his hand, which he placed in the hands of the master of the brigantine.
Convinced that he had done well in venturing inside, Captain Shelley strove his utmost to establish friendly relations with his visitors, and so far succeeded, through the instrumentality of the Tahitian chief, that the leader of the natives, who was a leading chief of the island named Hamanamana, promised to show them where the thickest patches of pearl shell lay in the lagoon. Then, after making them each presents of a sheath-knife and some other articles, the master and his officers watched them descend into their canoe again, and paddle swiftly back to their village, which lay within full view of the ship, a quarter of a mile away.
At a very early hour on the following day, the ship was surrounded by some fifty or sixty canoes, all filled with natives of both sexes, who proffered their services as divers, and seemed animated by the kindliest feelings towards the white men. Lowering the largest boat, the master, accompanied by Upaparu and the other Tahitians, was soon on his way to a place in the lagoon, where his guides assured him there was plenty of pearl shell. For some hours the first and second officers watched their captain's movements with the liveliest anxiety; for, despite the apparent friendliness of the natives, they were by no means confident.
But when, four hours later, the master returned with nearly a ton of pearl shell in the boat, and excitedly told them that their fortunes were made, the young men could not but feel highly elated, and sought by every means in their power to increase the good impression that they and the rest of the ship's company seem to have made upon the islanders.
That night, when the natives had returned to the shore, and the bright blaze of the fires shot out across the sleeping lagoon, and their voices were borne across the water to those in the ship, the two young officers sat and talked together on the poop. A month or two in such a place as this and they would be made men, for it was evident that no other vessel had yet been inside the lagoon, which undoubtedly teemed with pearl shell. And up for'ard the white sailors and their dark-skinned shipmates grew merry, and talked and sang, for they, too, would share in the general good luck. Then, as the lights from the houses on shore died out, and the murmur of voices ceased, the crew of theQueen Charlotte, officers and men, lay down on deck and went to sleep.
One for'ard and one aft, the two sentries paced to and fro, and only the slight sound of their naked feet broke the silence of the tropic night. Now and then a fish would leap out of the water and fall back again with a splash, and the sentries watched the swell and bubble of the phosphorescent water for a minute or so, and then again resumed their walk.
But though so silent, the darkness of the night was full of danger to the unsuspecting ship's company of theQueen Charlotte. A hundred yards away, swimming together in a semicircle, were some two hundred savages, each with a dagger in his mouth and short ebony club held in the left hand. Silently, but quickly, they swam towards the dark shadow of the brigantine, whose lofty spars stood silhouetted against the white line of beach that lay astern.
Suddenly fifty naked, dripping savages sprang upon the deck, and ere the sentries could do more than fire their muskets the work of slaughter had begun. Nearly all the white seamen, and many of the Tahitians, were lying upon the main hatch, and these were slain almost ere they had time to awake and realise their dreadful fate. As the loud reports of the sentries' muskets reverberated across the motionless waters of the lagoon, the master of the brigantine and his two officers awoke, and, cutlasses in hand, tried bravely to defend those terrified and unarmed members of the crew who had not yet been slaughtered. For some ten minutes or so these three men, with Upaparu beside them, defended the approaches to the poop, and succeeded in killing no less than fifteen of their assailants. Swinging a short, heavy axe in his right hand, the Tahitian chief fought like a hero, till a club was hurled at him with such force that it broke two of his ribs. As he sank down he saw the wild rush of naked bodies pass over him, and heard the death-cries of the first and second officers, who, borne down by numbers, were ruthlessly butchered. After that he remembered no more, for he was dealt another blow on the head, which left him stunned.
When he came to his senses in the cold grey of the morning he found the ship in possession of the people of Fakarava, and of all his shipmates but two remained alive—Captain Shelley and a seaman named Ray; all the rest had been slain and thrown overboard.
Apparently satisfied with the dreadful slaughter they had committed, the natives now began plundering the ship, and Captain Shelley, who seems to have been spared merely for the same reason that Upaparu was not killed—because he was a chief, and therefore sacred—had to sit by and watch them.
After stripping the vessel of everything movable, and even taking all her canvas except the spanker and topsails, the natives went ashore, and their leader, addressing Upaparu, told him that the ship was at liberty to go away.
With the aid of the seaman Ray and the gallant chieftain, Captain Shelley managed to get under weigh, and sailed for Tahiti, which he reached safely. Here he stayed for some months, and then, having made a new suit of sails from native mats, he returned to Port Jackson to relate the story of his fateful voyage.
About north-west from turbulent and distracted Samoa lie a group of eight low-lying coral atolls, called the Ellice Islands. Fifty years ago, when the white cotton canvas of the ships of the American whaling fleet dotted the blue of the Pacific from the west coast of South America to the bleak and snow-clad shores of the Siberian coast, these lonely islands were perhaps better known than they are now, for then, when the smoky flames of the whaleships' try works lit up the night-darkened expanse of the ocean, and the crackling of the furnace fires and the bubble of the boiling oil made the hardy whalemen's hearts grow merry, many a white man, lured by the gentle nature and amiable character of the Ellice Islanders, had built his house of thatch under the shadow of the rustling palms, and dwelt there in peace and happiness and overflowing plenty. Some of them were traders—men who bartered their simple wares, such as red Turkey twill, axes, knives, beads, tobacco, pipes, and muskets, for coconut oil and turtle shell. Others were wild, good-for-nothing runaways from whaleships, who then were generally known as “beach-combers”—that is, combing the beach for a living—though that, indeed, was a misnomer, for in those days, except one of these men was either a murderer or a tyrant, he did not “comb” for his living, but simply lived a life of luxurious, sensuous ease among the copper-coloured people with whom he dwelt. He had, indeed, to be of a hard and base nature to incur the ill-will or hostility of the denizens of the eight islands.
Twenty years had passed, and, save for a few wandering sperm whalers, the great fleet of the olden days had vanished; for the Civil War in America had borne its fruit even put upon the placid Pacific, and Waddell, in the Confederate cruiserShenandoah, had swept northwards from Australia, bent on burning every ship that flew the hated Stars and Stripes. So, with fear in their hearts, the Yankee whaling skippers hurried into neutral ports for shelter; and not a day too soon, for the rebel war-vessel caught four of them at Ponapé Island, burnt them and went up to the Arctic to destroy the rest.
Then followed years of quiet, for only a very few of the whaleships returned, and, one by one, most of the white men wandered away to the far distant isles of the north-west, taking their wives and families with them, till there were but five or six remaining in the whole Ellice Group.
Among those who sailed away one day in a whale-ship was a trader named Harry. His surname was never known. To his fellow white men and the natives of the island of Nukufetau on which he lived he was simply “Harry”; to those of the other islands of the group he wasHari Tino Kéhé, Big Harry.
It was not that he was wearied of the monotony of his existence on Nukufetau that had led Harry to bid his wife and two children farewell, but because that he had heard rumours of the richness in pearl-shell and turtle-shell of the far distant isles of the Pelew Group, and desired to go there and satisfy himself as to the truth of these sailors' tales; for he was a steady, honest man, although he had run away from his ship, a Sydney sandal-wooding vessel; and during his fifteen years' residence on Nukufetau he had made many thousands of dollars by selling coconut oil to the Sydney trading ships, and provisions to the American whalers. A year after his arrival on the island he had married a native woman named Te Ava Malu (Calm Waters). She was the daughter of the chief's brother, and brought her husband as her dowry a long, narrow strip of land richly covered with countless thousands of coco-palms, and it was from these groves of coconuts that Harry had earned most of the bright silver dollars, which, in default of a strong box, he had headed up in a small beef keg and buried under the gravelled floor of his thatched dwelling-house.
Children had been born to him—two fair-skinned, dark-eyed, and gentle-voiced girls, named Fetu and Vailele. The elder, Fetu (The Star), was a quiet, reserved child, and had her father's slow, grave manner and thoughtful face. The younger, Vailele (Leaping Water), was in manner and her ever merry mood like her name, for she was a restless, laughing little maid, full of jest and song the whole day long.
When the time came for Big Harry to say farewell, he called to him his wife and the two girls—Fetu was fourteen, and Vailele twelve—and, bidding them lower down the door of plaited thatch so that they might not be observed, he unearthed the keg of dollars, and, knocking off the two topmost hoops, took out the head. Then he took out nine hundred of the bright, shining coins, and, placing them in the lap of Te Ava Malu, quickly headed up the keg again, and put it back in its hiding-place.
“Listen now to me, O wife and children,” said he in the native tongue. “See this money now before us. Of the nine hundred dollars I shall take seven hundred; for it is to my mind that if these tales I hear of these far-off islands be true, then shall I buy from the chiefs there a piece of land, and get men to build a house for me; and if all goeth well with me, I shall return here to Nukufetau within a year. Then shall we sail thither and dwell there. And these other two hundred dollars shalt thou keep, for maybe a ship may come here, and then thou, Te Ava Malu, shalt go to thy father and place them in his hand, and ask him to go to the ship and buy for me a whaleboat, which, when we leave this land together, we shall take with us.”
Then, giving his wife the two hundred dollars, he placed the rest in a canvas pouch slung round his waist, and, embracing them all tenderly, bade them farewell, and walked down to the shining beach to where the boat from the whaleship awaited his coming.
Drawing her children to her side, Te Ava Malu stood out upon the sand and watched the whaler loosen her canvas and heave up anchor. Only when the quickclick, clickof the windlass pauls reached their listening ears, as the anchor came up to the song of the sailors and the ship's head swung round, did the girls begin to weep. But the mother, pressing them to her side, chid them, and said that a year was but a little time, and then she sank down and wept with them.
So, with the tears blinding their eyes, they saw the whaler sail slowly out through the passage, and then, as she braced her yards up and stood along the weather shore of the island, they saw Big Harry mount halfway up the mizzen lower rigging. He waved his broad leaf hat to them three times, and then soon, although they could see the upper canvas of the ship showing now and then above the palms, they saw him no more.
Seven months had come and gone, and every day, when the great red sun sank behind the thick line of palms that studded the western shore of Nukufetau, Fetu and Vailele would run to a tall and slenderfautree that grew on their mother's land, and cut on its dark brown bark a broad notch.
“See,” said Vailele to her sister on this day, “there are now twenty and one marks” (they were in tens) “and that maketh of days two hundred and ten.”
“Aue!” said the quiet Fetu. “Cut thou a fresh one above. One hundred and fifty and five more notches must there be cut in the tree before Hari, our father, cometh back; for in the white men's year there are, so he hath told me, three hundred and sixty and five days.”
“O-la!” and Vailele laughed. “Then soon must we get something to stand on to reach high up. But yet, it may be that our father will come before the year is dead.”
Fetu nodded her dark head, and then, hand in hand, the two girls walked back to their mother's house through the deepening gloom that had fallen upon the palm grove.
Ten miles away, creeping up to the land under shortened canvas, were a barque and a brig. No lights showed upon their decks, for theirs was an evil and cruel mission, and the black-bearded, olive-skinned men who crowded her decks spoke in whispers, lest the sound of their voices might perhaps fall upon the ears of natives out catching flying fish in their canoes.
Closer and closer the ships edged in to the land, and then, as they opened out the long white stretch of beach that fringed the lee of the island, they hove-to till daylight.
But if there were no lights on deck there were plenty below, and in the barque's roomy cabin a number of men were sitting and talking together over liquor and cigars. They were a fierce, truculent-looking lot, and talked in Spanish, and every man carried a brace of revolvers in his belt. All round the cabin were numbers of rifles and carbines and cutlasses; and, indeed, the dark faces of the men, and the profusion of arms that was everywhere shown, made them look like a band of pirates, bent upon some present enterprise. Pirates they were not; but they were perhaps as bad, for both the brig and the barque were Peruvian slavers, sent out to capture and enslave the natives of the South Sea Islands to work the guano deposits of the Chincha Islands.
At one end of the cabin table sat the captain of the barque—a small-made, youthful-looking man, of not more than twenty-five years of age. Before him was spread a sheet-chart of the Ellice Group, and another of the Island of Nukufetau, which he was studying intently.
Standing at the back of the captain's chair was a short, stout, broad-shouldered man, with a heavy black moustache and hawk-like features, who followed with interest the movements of the captain's slender brown hand over the chart. This was Senor Arguello, the owner of the two vessels, and the leading spirit in the villainous enterprise.
“There is the passage into the lagoon, Senor Arguello,” said the young captain, pointing to the place on the chart; “and here, on this islet, the last one of the three that form the western chain of the atoll, is the native village. Therefore, if we can succeed in landing our boats' crews between the islet and the one next to it, we can cut off all chances of the natives escaping in that direction.”
“Good, Captain Martinas. But what if they escape into the forest?”
“As you see, Senor,” said the captain politely, “the islet is but narrow, and offers no chance of concealment unless there are mangrove scrubs in the wider portions. We can secure every one of them in a few hours. There is no possible way of escape but by the sea, and that we have provided against—the brig's boats will watch both sides of the islet, three on the lagoon side, and two on the ocean side.”
“Excellent, Captain,” said the fat ruffian Arguello. “I must compliment you upon your exactitude of your arrangements. I trust that we shall be as successful here as we were at Nukulaelae.{*} Captain Hennessy,” and here he bowed to a man who sat at the other end of the table, “will, I am sure, see that none of these people are drowned in their silly efforts to escape, as occurred at other places.”
* Nukulaelae was almost entirely depopulated by theseslavers.
Captain Peter Hennessy, once a dashing officer of the Peruvian navy, now a dissipated, broken-down master of a slaving brig, for answer struck his hand heavily on the table, and swore an oath.
“That was not my fault. But, by the God above me, I am sick of this business! I undertook to sail the brig and fill her with natives, but I did not undertake to have a hand in the bloody deeds that have happened. And now that I am on board, I may as well tell you all that the moment I see a shot fired at any of these poor devils I back out of the concern altogether.”
“The brave Captain Pedro is tender-hearted,” sneered the young captain of the barque, showing his even white teeth under his jet-black moustache.
“No words from you, Captain Martinas,” retorted the Irishman. “I am prepared to go on now; but mind you—and you know me—the first man that I see lift a rifle to his shoulder, that man will I send a bullet through, be he black or white.”
Then, with a curt nod to his fellow-associates in crime, the captain of the brigChacahucostrode out of the cabin, and calling his boat, which was towing astern of the barque, he got into her and pulled off to shore.
Just as the first flushes of the rising sun tinged the sea to windward with streaks of reddish gold, the decks of the slavers bustled with activity. Boats were lowered, and the crews of cut-throat Chilenos and Peruvians swarmed eagerly into them, and then waited for the signal to cast off.
Suddenly the look-out on the barque, who was stationed on the foreyard, hailed the deck and reported that three canoes had pushed off from the beach and were paddling towards the ship.
A savage curse broke from Porfiro Arguello. He and Martinas had hoped to get part of the landing party posted between the two islets before the natives could see the ships. Now it was too late.{*}
* Three vessels were engaged in this nefarious business, abarque and two brigs. The most dreadful atrocities werecommitted. At Easter Island they seized nearly the wholepopulation; at Nukulaelae, in the Ellice Group, they leftbut thirty people out of one hundred and fifty.
“Let all the boats go round to the port side,” said Martinas. “The canoes will board us on the starboard side, Senor Arguello, and once we get these people safely on board we shall still be in time to block the passage between the islets.”
The boats were quickly passed astern, and then hauled up alongside on the port side; and Martinas, having signalled to the brig to do the same with her boats, lest the natives, seeing armed men in them, should make back for the shore, quietly lit a cigar and waited.
On came the three canoes, the half-naked, stalwart rowers sending them quickly over the ocean swell. In the first canoe were four men and two young girls; in the others men only. Unconscious of the treacherous intentions that filled the hearts of the white men, the unfortunate people brought their canoes alongside, and, with smiling faces, called out in English—
“Heave a rope, please.”
“Aye, aye,” responded a voice in English; and the natives, as the rope was thrown to them, made fast the canoes and clambered up the sides, the two girls alone remaining in the first canoe, and looking with lustrous, wondering eyes at the crowd of strange faces that looked down at them from the barque's decks.
Ten minutes before Martinas had ordered two sentries who stood guard, one at the break of the poop and the other on top of the for'ard deckhouse, to disappear; and so, when the natives gained the deck there was nothing to alarm them. But at the heavy wooden gratings that ran across the decks, just for'ard of the poop and abaft the for'ard deckhouse, they gazed with eyes full of curiosity. As for the main hatch, that was covered with a sail.
“Good morning, cap'en,” said the leader of the natives, a tall, handsome old man about fifty. “Where you come from?”
“From California,” answered Martinas, making a sign to one of his officers, who slipped away down to the main deck.
“What you come here for, sir?” resumed the native amiably; “you want fowl, pig, turtle, eh?” And then, unfastening a small bag tied round his naked waist, he advanced and emptied out a number of silver dollars.
“What is that for?” said Martinas, who spoke a little English.
The native laughed pleasantly.
“Money, sir.” And then he looked round the ship's decks as if seeking something. “Me want buy boat. Where all your boat, cap'en? Why boat no here?” pointing to the davits and the pendant boat-falls.
“Sea break all boat,” said the Peruvian quickly. And then, seeing the look of disappointment on the man's face, he added, “But never mind. You come below. I have handsome present for you.”
“All right, cap'en,” answered the old man with a pleased smile, as he turned and beckoned to the other natives to follow him.
An exultant smile showed on the grim features of Senor Arguello as he saw the captain's ruse. But just then the second mate came up.
“The girls won't come up on deck,” he muttered in Spanish to the captain. “They laugh, and shake their heads.”
“Let them stay, Juan, until I get these fellows below quietly. Then let one of the boats slip round and seize them.”
Great results sometimes attend upon the merest trifles, and so it fell about now, for by a simple accident were some hundreds of these innocent, unsuspecting people of Nukufetau saved from a dreadful fate; for just as Mana, who was the chiefs brother and the uncle of the two poor half-caste children in the canoe, was about to go below, followed by his people, one of the boat's crew on the starboard side dropped the butt of his musket heavily on the naked foot of a young Chileno boy, who uttered an exclamation of pain.
Wondering where the cry came from, the old native, before he could be stayed, ran to the port side and looked over. There, lying beneath him, were four boats filled with armed men.
Suspicion of evil intent at once flashed through his mind, and, springing back, he gave voice to a loud cry of alarm.
“Back, back, my children!” he cried. “There be many boats here, and in them are men with guns and swords.” And then he and those with him rushed for the break of the poop, only to meet the black muzzles of carbines and the glint of twenty cutlasses.
Alas! poor creatures, what hope was there for them, unarmed and almost naked, against their despoilers? One by one they were thrown down, seized, and bound; all but the old man, who, with his naked hands, fought valiantly, till Martinas, seizing a cutlass from a seaman, passed it through his naked body.
With one despairing cry, the old man threw up his arms and fell upon his face, and Martinas, drawing out his bloody weapon, ran to the side and looked over. The canoes were there, but the two girls were gone.
“Curses on you, Juan!” he shouted. “Why did you not seize them?”
But Senor Arguello, with a grim smile, took him by the arm and pointed to where Juan, the second mate, was chasing the two girls in his boat. At the sound of the struggle on deck they had jumped overboard, and, fearless of the sharks, were swimming swiftly for the reef, not a quarter of a mile away.
Standing on the poop-deck of the barque, the captain and Arguello watched the chase with savage interest. Halfway to the shore they saw Juan stand up and level his carbine and fire. The ball struck the water just ahead of the two girls, who were swimming close together. Then, in another two or three minutes, Juan was on top of them, and they saw the oars peaked.
“Saints be praised! He's got one,” said Arguello. “They are lifting her into the boat.”
“And the other little devil has dived, and they will lose her. Perdition take their souls! A bullet would have settled her,” said Martinas. “She will easily get ashore now and alarm the whole village.”
Then, with a volley of oaths and curses, he ordered the rest of the boats away to the little strait separating the two islets.
But ere they had sped more than halfway to the shore, the girl who had dived had swum in between the jagged, isolated clumps of coral that stood out from the reef, and rising high upon a swelling wave, they saw her lifted bodily upon its ledge, and then, exhausted as she was, stagger to her feet and run shorewards along its surface.
On, on, she ran, the sharp coral rock tearing her feet, till she gained the white sand of the inner beach, and then she fell prone, and lay gasping for her breath. But not for long, for in a few minutes she was up again, and with wearied limbs and dizzy brain she struggled bravely on till the houses of the village came in sight, and the wondering people ran out to save her from falling again.
“Flee! flee!” she gasped. “My uncle, and Fetu, and all with them are killed.... The white men on the ships have killed them all.”
Like bees from their hives, the terrified natives ran out of their houses, and in ten minutes every soul in the village had fled to the beach, and launching canoes, were paddling madly across the lagoon to the main island of Nukufetau lagoon. Here, in the dense puka and mangrove scrub, there was hope of safety.
And, with rage in their villains' hearts, the slavers pursued them in vain; for before the boats could be brought round to the passage the canoes were nearly across the lagoon. But two of the canoes, being overloaded, were swamped, and all in them were captured and bound. Among those who escaped were the wife of Big Harry and her daughter Vailele.
That afternoon, when the boats returned to the ships, Captain Peter Hennessy and his worthy colleague, Captain Martinas, of the barqueCid Campeadorquarrelled, and the young Peruvian, drawing a pistol from his belt, shot the Irish gentleman through the left arm, and the next moment was cut down upon his own deck by a sweeping blow from Hennessy's cutlass. Then, followed by Arguello's curses, the Irish captain went back to his brig and set sail for Callao, leaving Martinas to get the better of his wound and swoop down upon the natives of Easter Island six weeks later.
And down below in the stifling, sweating hold, with two hundred miserable captives like herself, torn from various islands and speaking a language akin to her own, lay the heart-broken and despairing daughter of Big Harry of Nukufetau.
And now comes the strange part of this true story. Two years had passed, when one cold, sleety evening in Liverpool, a merchant living at Birkenhead returned home somewhat later than his usual hour in a hired vehicle. Hastily jumping out, he pulled the door-bell, and the moment it was opened told the domestic to call her mistress.
“And you, Mary,” he added, “get ready hot flannels, or blankets, and a bed. I found an unfortunate young foreign girl nearly dead from cold and exhaustion lying at the corner of a side street. I am afraid she is dying.”
In another minute the merchant and his wife had carried her inside, and the lady, taking off her drenched and freezing garments, set about to revive her by rubbing her stiffened limbs. A doctor meanwhile had been sent for, and soon after his arrival the girl, who appeared to be about sixteen years of age, regained consciousness, and was able to drink a glass of wine held to her lips. For nearly an hour the kindly hearted merchant and his wife watched by the girl's bedside, and with a feeling of satisfaction saw her sink into a deep slumber.
The story she told them the next day, in her pretty broken English, filled them with the deepest interest and pity. She had, she said, been captured by the crew of one of two slave ships and taken to a place called Callao. On the voyage many of her ill-fated companions had died, and the survivors, upon their arrival at Callao, had been placed upon a vessel bound to the Chincha Islands. She, however, had, the night before the vessel sailed, managed to elude the sentries, and, letting herself drop overboard, swam to an English ship lying nearly a quarter of a mile away, and clambered up her side into the main-chains. There she remained till daylight, when she was seen by one of the crew. The captain of the ship, at once surmising she had escaped from the slave barque, concealed her on board and, the ship being all ready for sea, sailed next day for Japan. For nearly ten months the poor girl remained on board the English ship, where she was kindly treated by the captain and his wife and officers. At last, after visiting several Eastern ports, the ship sailed for Liverpool, and the girl was taken by the captain's wife to her own lodgings. Here for some weeks she remained with this lady, whose husband meantime had reported the girl's story to the proper authorities, and much red-tape correspondence was instituted with regard to having her sent back to her island home again. It so happened, however, that the girl, who was deeply attached to the captain's wife, was one day left alone, and wearied and perhaps terrified at her mistress not returning at dark, set out to look for her amid the countless streets of a great city. In a very short time she was hopelessly lost, and became so frightened at the strangeness of her surroundings that she sank exhausted and half-frozen upon the pavement of a deserted street. And here she was found as related.
For some months the girl remained with her friends, the merchant and his wife, for the captain of the ship by which she had reached Liverpool had, with his wife, consented to her remaining with them.
One evening, some few months after the girl had been thus rescued, a tall, sunburnt man, dressed like a seaman, presented himself at the merchant's house and asked to see him.
“Send him in,” said Mr.——
As the stranger entered the room, Mr. —— saw that he carried in his hand a copy of a Liverpool newspaper.
“I've come, sir,” he began, “to ask you if you are the gentleman that I've been reading about——”
Just then the door opened, and the merchant's wife, followed by a girl, entered the room. At the sound of their footsteps the man turned, and the next moment exclaimed—
“My God! It's my little girl!”
And it was his little girl—the little Fetu from whom he had parted at Nukufetau two years before.
Sitting with his great arms clasped lovingly around his daughter, Big Harry told his tale. Briefly, it was this:—After reaching the Pelew Islands and remaining there a few weeks, he had taken passage in a vessel bound to Manila, in the hope that from that port he could get a passage back to Nukufetau in another whaler. But the vessel was cast away, and the survivors were rescued by a ship bound for Liverpool. Landed at that port, and waiting for an opportunity to get a passage to New Bedford, from where he could return to his island home in a whaler, he had one day picked up a paper and read the account of the slavers' onslaught upon the Ellice Islands, and the story of the escape of a young half-caste girl. Never dreaming that this girl was his own daughter—for there are many half-castes in the eight islands of the group—he had sought her out, in the hope that she would be pleased to hear the sound of her native tongue again, and perhaps return with him to her native land.
Nearly a year passed before Big Harry, with his daughter Fetu, sailed into the placid waters of Nukufetau Lagoon, and of the glad meeting of those four happy souls there is no need to tell.
Denison, the supercargo of theIndianawas always reproaching Packenham, the skipper, for getting the ship into trouble by his inconsiderate and effusive good-nature—“blind stupidity,” Denison called it. And whenever Packenham did bring trouble upon himself or the ship's company by some fresh act of glaring idiotcy, he would excuse himself by saying that it wouldn't have happened if Nerida had been with him that trip. Nerida was Packenham's half-caste Portuguese wife. She was a very small woman, but kept her six-foot husband in a state of placid subjection and also out of much mischief whenever she made a cruise in theIndiana. Therefore Denison loved her as a sister, and forgave her many things because of this. Certainly she was a bit of a trial sometimes to every living soul on board the brig, but then all skippers' wives are that, even when pure white. And Nerida's doings would make a book worth reading—especially by married women with gadabout husbands like Packenham. But on this occasion Nerida was not aboard, and Denison looked for trouble.
For four days and nights the littleIndianahad leapt and spun along, before a steady southerly gale, rolling like a drunken thing a-down the for'ard slopes of mountain seas, and struggling gamely up again with flattened canvas from out the windless trough; a bright, hot sun had shone upon her swashing decks from its slow rosy dawn to its quick setting of fiery crimson and blazing gold; and at night a big white moon lit up an opal sky, and silvered the hissing froth and smoky spume that curled in foaming ridges from beneath her clean-cut bows.
The brig was bound from Auckland to Samoa and the islands of the north-west, and carried a cargo of trade goods for the white traders who hoisted theIndiana'shouse-flag in front of their thatched dwellings. Packenham thought a good deal of this flag—it bore the letters R. P. in red in a yellow square on a blue ground—until one day Hammerfeld, the German supercargo of theIserbrook, said it stood for Remorseless Plunderer. Some one told this to Packenham, and although he gave the big Dutchman a bad beating for it, the thing travelled all over the South Seas and made him very wroth. So then he got Nerida to sew another half turn in red to the loop of the P, and thereby made it into a B.
“That'll do fine,” he said to Denison. '“Bob Packenham' instead of 'Robert Packenham,' eh?”
“Ye-s,” answered, Denison thoughtfully, “I daresay it will be all right.” And a month later, when Captain Bully Hayes came on board theIndianain Funafuti Lagoon, he gravely told Packenham that a lot of people were saying the letters stood for “Bloody Pirate.”
But all this has nothing to do with this story.
As I have said, the brig was running before a stiff southerly gale. Packenham came on deck, and flinging his six feet of muscular manhood upon the up-ended flaps of the skylight, had just lit his cigar when Alan the bos'un came aft and said that the peak of Tutuila was looming high right ahead, thirty miles away.
“Bully old ship!” said the skipper, “give theIndianaa good breeze that catches her fair and square in the stern and she'll run like a scared dog with a tin-pot tied to his tail. Denison, you sleepy beast, come up on deck and look at Samoa the Beautiful, where every prospect pleases and only the German trader is vile.”
And so as he and Denison sat aft on the skylight drinking their afternoon coffee and smoking their Manilas, and the brown-skinned native crew sat below in the dark and stuffy foc's'le and gambled for tobacco, theIndianafoamed and splashed and rolled before the gale till she ran under the lee of the land into a sea of transparent green, whose gentle rollers scarce broke in foam as they poured over the weed-clad ledges of the barrier-reef into the placid waters or the islet-studded lagoon encompassing the mainland about the village of Sa Lotopa.
Then as some of the merry-hearted kanaka crew ranged the cable, and others ran aloft to clew-up the sails, Packenham steered the brig between a narrow reef-bound passage till she brought up abreast a sweeping curve of sandy beach, shining white under the wooded spurs of a mountain peak two thousand feet above. Back from the beach and showing golden-brown among the sunlit green lay the thatched houses of a native village, and as the brig came head to wind, and the cable clattered through the hawse-pipes, the brown-skinned people ran joyously down to their canoes and swarmed off to the ship. For they all knew Pakenami thekapeni, and Tenisoni the supercargo, and Alan the half-caste bos'un, and the two mates, and the Chinaman cook, and every one else on board, and for years past had laughed and joked and sang and hunted the wild boar with them all; and sometimes lied to and robbed and fought with them, only to be better friends than ever when the white men came back again, and the skipper and Denison made the young men presents of meerschaum pipes and condemned Snider rifles; and Alan the Stalwart “asked” every fourth girl in the village when he got drunk at a dance and denied it when sober, yet paid damages like an honourable man (2 dols, in trade goods for each girl) to the relatives.
In a few minutes the first batch of canoes reached the ship, and the occupants, men, women, and children, clambered up the brig's side, and then rushed aft to the poop to rub noses with Packenham and Denison, after the custom of the country, and then for a time a wild babble of voices reigned.
“Hallo, Iakopo, how are you!” said the skipper, shaking hands with a fat-faced, smiling native, who was clad in a white duck suit, and was accompanied by a pretty, dark-eyed girl; “how's the new church getting on? Nearly finished, is it. Well, I didn't forget you. I've brought you down the doors and windows from Auckland.”
Iakopo (AnglicèJacob), who was the local teacher and rather a favourite with theIndiana'scompany, said he was very glad. He was anxious to get the church finished before the next visit of the missionary ship, he said. That vain fellow Pita, the teacher at Leone Bay, had been boasting terribly abouthischurch, and he (Iakopo) meant to crush him utterly with these European-made doors and windows, which his good friend Pakenami had brought him from Nui Silani.
“You bet,” said the skipper; “and what's more, I'll help you to take the shine out of Pita. I'll fix the doors and windows for you myself,” and he winked slily at the teacher's daughter, who returned it as promptly as any Christian maiden, knowing that Nerida wasn't on board, and that she had nothing to fear.
“I wish to goodness that fellow hadn't come aboard,” grumbled Denison to Packenham, after the missionary and his daughter had gone ashore. “Peter Deasy and the Dutchman don't like it, I can see, or they would have been aboard before now. No white man likes boarding a shipaftera native teacher, and both these fellows are d——d touchy. The chances are that they won't come aboard at all to-day.”
“That's true,” said the captain thoughtfully; “I didn't think of that.” (He never did think.) “Shall I go ashore first, and smooth down their ruffled plumage?”
Denison said he thought it would be a good thing to do. Deasy and the Dutchman (i.e., the German) were both independent traders, who had always bought their trade goods from and sold their produce to theIndianafor years past, and were worth humouring. So Packenham went ashore, leaving Denison to open out his wares in the brig's trade room in readiness for the two white men.
Now both Peter Deasy and Hans Schweicker were feeling very sulky—as Denison imagined—and at that moment were talking to each other across the road from their respective doorways, for their houses were not far apart. They had intended boarding the ship the moment she anchored, but abandoned the idea as soon as they saw the teacher going off. Not that they disliked Iakopo personally, but then he was only a low-class native, and had no business thrusting himself before his betters. So they sat down and waited till Denison or the captain came ashore.
Peter wore a pair of clean white moleskins and a bright pink print shirt covered with blue dogs; and as the lower portion of this latter garment was hanging outside instead of being tucked inside his moleskins, quite a large number of dogs were visible. Hans, dressed in pyjamas of a green and yellow check, carefully starched, smoked a very bad German cigar; Deasy puffed a very dirty clay dhudeen.
Presently one of Hans's wife's numerous relatives ran up to him, and told him that the captain was coming ashore, and the atmosphere at once cleared a little. Deasy was the elder trader, and by right of custom expected the skipper would come to his house first. Hans, however, was the “warmest” man of the two, and thoughtheshould be the honoured man, especially as he had the larger quantity of copra and other island produce to sell Packenham. Both men were very good friends at that moment, and had been so for years past. They had frequently lied manfully on each other's behalf when summoned before the Deputy-Commissioner for selling arms and ammunition to the natives. But while in social matters—such as getting drunk, circumventing the missionaries, and making fools of her Majesty's representatives—the two were in perfect and truly happy accord, they were often devoured with the bitterest business jealousies, and their wives and relatives generally shared this feeling with them. And as Mrs. Deasy and Mrs. Schweicker each had a large native following who all consideredtheirwhite man was the better of the two, the question of commercial supremacy between Peter Deasy and Hans Schweicker was one of much local importance.
As the word was passed along that the captain was coming, the female inmates of the two houses each surrounded their respective head, and looked anxiously over his shoulders at the approaching visitor. Deasy's wife had put on her best dress; so had Schweicker's. Pati-lima—otherwise Mrs. Peter Deasy—who was a huge eighteen stone creature, with a round good-humoured face and a piping childish voice, had arrayed her vast proportions in a flowing gown of Turkey-red twill, and the radiant glory thereof had a pleasing and effective background in the garments of her three daughters, who were dressed in 'green, yellow, and blue respectively. Manogi—Mrs. Schweicker—who had no children, and was accounted the prettiest woman in Samoa, was clothed, like her husband, in spotless white, and her shining black tresses fell in a wavy mantle down to her waist. Unlike Pati-lima's daughters, whose heads were encircled by wreaths of orange blossoms, Manogi wore neither ornament nor decoration. She knew that her wavy hair drooped gracefully down her clear-cut, olive-hued face like the frame of a picture, and set off her bright eyes and white teeth to perfection; and that no amount of orange blossoms could make her appear more beautiful. So in the supreme and blessed consciousness of being the best-dressed and best-looking woman in the whole village, she sat behind her husband fanning herself languidly, and scarce deigning to answer the Deasy girls when they spoke to her.
Presently the boat touched the beach. The captain jumped out, shook hands with a number of natives who thronged around him, and stepped along the path. Half-way between the white men's houses was the unfinished church, and near to that the teacher's house, embowered in a grove of orange and lemon trees. As Packenham walked along he looked up the road, smiled and nodded at the Deasy and Schweicker crowd, then deliberately turned to the left and walked into the teacher's dwelling! And Manogi and all the Deasy women saw Miriamu, the teacher's daughter, come to the open window and make a face at them in derision. Peter and Schweicker looked at each other in speechless indignation.
“The swape av the wurruld!” and Deasy dashed his pipe down at his feet and smashed it in small pieces, “to go to a native's house first an' white min sthandin' awaitin' his pleasure. By the sowl av' me mother, Hans, devil a foot does he put inside my door till he explains phwat he manes by it.”
“Shoost vat you mide expeg from a new chum!” replied Hans, who had lived in Australia. Then they both went back to their respective houses to await events.
Now Packenham meant no harm, and had not the faintest idea he was giving offence. But then, as Denison said, he never would think. Yet on this occasion he had been thinking. Iakopo had told him that he had collected enough money to pay for the doors and windows right away, and then Packenham, who knew that this would surprise and please Denison, told the teacher that he would call for the money when he came ashore.
“Come to my father's house first—before you go to the white men's,” said Iakopo's daughter, with a side look at the captain. She hated all the Deasy girls and Manogi in particular, who had “said things” about her to Denison, and knew that they would feel furiously jealous of her if Packenham called at her father's house first. And Packenham said he would do so.
Half an hour passed, and then the skipper having been paid the money by the teacher, and having smoked a couple of cigarettes rolled for him by Miriamu, said he must go. And Miriamu, who wanted to triumph over the Deasy girls and Manogi, said she would come too. On the Scriptural principle of casting bread upon the waters she had given Packenham some presents—a fan, a bottle of scented coconut-oil, and two baked fowls. These she put into a basket and told her little brother to bring along—it would annoy the other girls.
During this time Deasy and Hans had been talking over the matter, and now felt in a better temper. Manogi had said that Denison was a more important man than Packenham.Hewouldn't have gone into the teacher's house first; and then most likely Miriamu, who was no better than she ought to be, had called the captain in.
“Why let this vex thee?” she said, “this captain for ever forgettethfaà Samoa(Samoan custom), and hath been beguiled by Miriamu into her father's house.”
After awhile Deasy and Hans agreed with her, and so when Packenham came up to them with outstretched hand, they greeted him as usual; but their women-folk glared savagely at Miriamu, who now felt frightened and stuck close to the captain.
“Bedad, it's hot talking here in the sun,” said Deasy, after Packenham had shaken hands with Mrs. Deasy and Mrs. Hans and the girls, “come inside, captain, and sit down while I start my people to fill the copra bags and get ready for weighing.”
“Veil, I don't call dot very shentlemanly gonduck,” grunted Hans, who, naturally enough, wantedhiscopra weighed first so that he could get away on board the brig and have first pick of Denison's trade room.
Deasy fired up. “An' I tell ye, Hans, the captain's going to plase himself intoirely. Sure he wouldn't turn his back on my door to plase a new man like you—-”
Manogi pushed herself between them: “You're atoga fitiman (schemer), Paddy Deasy,” she said in English, with a contemptuous sniff.
“Yes,” added Hans, “you was no good, Deasy; you was alvays tarn shellous——”
“An' you're a dirty low swape av a Dutchman to let that woman av yours use a native wor-rud in the captain's hearin',” and Deasy banged his fellow-trader between the eyes, as at the same moment Manogi and Pati-lima sprang at each other like fiends, and twined their hands in each other's hair. Then, ere Manogi's triumphant squeal as she dragged out a handful of the Deasy hair had died away, half a dozen young lady friends had leapt to her aid, to be met with cries of savage fury by the three Misses Deasy, and in ten seconds more the whole lot were fighting wildly together in an undistinguishable heap, with Deasy and the Dutchman grasping each other's throats underneath.
Packenham jumped in on top of the struggling mass, and picking up three women, one after another, tossed them like corks into the arms of a number of native men who had now appeared on the scene, and were encouraging the combatants; but further movement on his part was rendered impossible by Miriamu, who had clasped him round the waist and was imploring him to come away. For a minute or so the combat continued, and then the tangle of arms, legs, and dishevelled hair was heaved up in the centre, and Deasy and Hans staggered to their feet, glaring murder and sudden death at each other.
Freeing himself from the grasp of the minister's daughter, who at once leapt at Manogi, Packenham seized Schweicker by the collar, and was dragging him away from Deasy when he got a crack on the side of his head from Manogi's mother, who thought he meant to kill her son-in-law, and had dashed to the rescue with a heavy tappa mallet. And then, as Packenham went down like a pithed bullock, there arose a wild cry from some one that the white captain was being murdered. Denison heard it, and with five of theIndiana'screw, armed with Winchester rifles, he jumped into the boat and hurried ashore.
By this time some thirty or forty stalwart Samoans, under the direction of the teacher, had flung themselves upon the women who were still rending each other in deadly silence, and in some way separated them. Packenham was lying apart from the rest, his head supported by a white-haired old native who was threatening every one present with the bloody vengeance of a man-of-war. Deasy and Hans were seated on the sward, still panting and furious. Deasy had one black eye; Hans had two.
“Are yez satisfied, Dutchy?” inquired Deasy.
“Shoost as mooch as you vas!” answered the German.
Now here the matter would have ended, but just at that time Pati-lima, who was being fanned by a couple of her friends, caught sight of the slight figure of Manogi, her white muslin gown torn to ribbons and her bosom heaving with excitement. Her beautiful face, though white with rage, was un-marred by the slightest scratch, while Pati-lima's was deeply scored by her enemy's nails. This was hard to bear.
Raising herself on one elbow, Mrs. Deasy pointed contemptuously to Manogi's husband and called out—
“Ah, you conceited Manogi! Take home thy Germanpala-ai(coward). My man hath beaten him badly.”
“Thou liest, thou great blubbering whale,” was the beauty's scornful reply; “he could beat such a drunkard as thy husband any day.”
The two women sprang to their feet, and were about to engage again when Denison ran in between them, and succeeded in keeping them apart. Deasy and Hans looked on unconcernedly.
“What is all this?” said Denison to Packenham.
Packenham groaned, “I don't know. An old woman hit me with a club.”
“Serve you right. Now then, Deasy, and you, Hans, send all these women away. I thought you had more sense than to encourage such things,” and then Denison, who excelled in vituperative Samoan, addressed the assemblage, and told the people to go home.
Still glaring defiance, the two factions slowly turned to leave the field, and again all would have been well but for Manogi, who was burning to see the thing out to its bitter end. So she had her try.
Pati-lima came from Manono, the people of which island eat much shell-fish, and suffer much in consequence from the sarcastic allusions of the rest of the Samoan people. And they don't like it, any more than a Scotsman likes his sacred haggis being made the subject of idiotic derision. So as the two parties moved off, Manogi faced round to Pati-lima.
“Pah!Manono ai foli” (Manono feeds on shellfish).
“Siamani vao tapiti elo” (Germans gorge on stinking cabbage) was the quick retort of Mrs. Deasy, who pointed scornfully at Manogi's husband, and instantaneously the whole assemblage, male and female, were engaged in hideous conflict again, while Denison and his boat's crew, “Wond'ring, stepped aside,” and let them fight it out.
What the result would have been had not the encounter been stopped is hard to say; but in the midst of this second struggle the young yellow-haired local chief bounded into the fray, and smote right and left with a heavy club, ably seconded by Denison and his men and lakopo. The appearance of the chief was, however, enough—the opposing factions drew off from each other and retired, carrying their wounded with them.
“What a brace of detestable ruffians!” said Captain De Groen, of her Majesty's shipDawdler, to Denison a day or two afterwards. The doctor of the man-of-war had gone ashore to patch up the wounded, and Denison had been telling the commander how the affair occurred.
Now Captain De Groen was wrong. Both Deasy and Schweicker were as decent a pair of men as could be found in the Pacific—that is to say, they did no harm to a living soul except themselves when under the influence of liquor, which was not infrequent. But it was all Packenham's fault. Had he kept clear of the teacher's house, Deasy and Hans would not have felt affronted, Manogi and Pati-lima would not have said nasty things to each other, and Denison would not have been reported upon officially by her Majesty's High Commissioner for the Western Pacific as a person who, “with a Mr. Packenham, master of the brigIndiana, incited the native factions of Sa Lotopa to attack each other with murderous fury.”