FISH(I know not of what species, but tastier than most of the tropical varieties.)BOILED FOWL(And not the wretched victim of malnutrition emanating from most tropical barnyards; nor served undecapitated as appears usual in the Islands.)ROAST PORK(Which must have subsisted during its lifetime on something more nourishing than coral.)VEGETABLES:SWEET POTATOESTARO ROOTSWEETS:COCOANUT PUDDING(The core of cocoanuts stewed in milk squeezed from the meat of the nut, a dainty warranted to send the restaurant connoisseur into ecstasies if it ever reaches him, which is unlikely.)Over rum, emanating from the dream ship, as the local supply of liqueur was retained for strictly medicinal purposes, the history of Palmerston Island was unfolded.What any student of Island history knows is that it was discovered by Captain Cook in 1774 on his second voyage, though some authorities claim it to be the "San Pablo" of Magellan, the first island discovered in the South Seas; that on his third and last voyage Cook landed again to get fodder for his starving cattle; and that later on it came under the critical notice of theBountymutineers, who, after a thorough spoiling in luxurious Tahiti, decided against Palmerston as their future home.But what everyone does not know is the history of the Masters family who now occupy the island.One William Masters, as fine an old English sea-dog as ever came off a whaler, took a fancy to the place in 1862, leased it from the British Government, and, not believing in half measures, took unto himself three native wives. By each he had a large and healthy family that he reared in strict accordance with his own standards of social usage.That they were sound standards is evidenced in the people of Palmerston to-day. They read, write, and speak English, this last with an accent vaguely reminiscent of the southwest of England. They are courteous, hospitable, and honest to a degree little short of startling these days, and although naturally inbred, they do not show it mentally or physically.The islets scattered round the reef have been equally distributed amongst the descendants of William Masters's three wives, who now number ninety-eight, and under the authority of the island council, presided over by "Mister Masters himself," are worked to such purpose that they produce a thousand pounds' worth of copra per year.I have Palmerston securely pigeon-holed in my own mind as the spot of all others in which, when the time comes, to sit down and wait for the end. The outside world, in the shape of a schooner from the Cook Group, intrudes itself but once a year. The ordinary infirmities to which flesh is heir are non-existent. The lagoon and the neighbouring islets are a mine of interest to the naturalist or sportsman, and the people have a charm that is all their own.One thing alone troubles the Masters of to-day. To whom do they and their island belong? The war has changed all things. The Cook Group, two hundred and seventy-three miles to the southeast, of which Palmerston has now been declared a far-flung unit, is administered by New Zealand. Is "Mister Masters himself" to be taxed, governed, and generally harried by a people who hardly existed when his father took over the island? It looks like it. Here is as fine an example of the communal system worked out on a practical and prosperous basis as will be found in the world to-day. Why, and again why, cannot incipient administrators be induced to leave well alone?A tour of the tiny settlement is worth while. Not long ago a French brigantine rammed the reef on a clear night of stars, while the crew, including the lookout, was below playing cards, with the result that Palmerston settlement to-day is for the most part built of ship's timbers and planking, companions, portholes, bunks, and miscellaneous brass fittings.The little church, which is in course of construction and meantime serves as a school house, boasts walls and pulpit composed entirely of panelled doors from the hulk; and fine old seasoned timber it is.The recognized playground is outside the church door under the palms, where a cricket pitch entices all and sundry. But the real playground of Palmerston is the boat passage in the reef, through which a mill race rushes at each turn of the tide. Here the multitudinous offspring of William Masters disport themselves on every contrivance that floats, from a full-fledged sailing-boat to a weather-board, and at the rate of knots sweep yelling round tortuous curves to or from the sea.The dream ship, riding at anchor outside the reef, became the centre of attraction, and finally added to her many accomplishments by becoming a bargain store.It may be remembered that on setting out from England we had laid in certain commodities known as "barter." Well, they were still aboard—slightly mildewed, but aboard—for the good and sufficient reason that we had not been able to get rid of them. It appeared that our ideas on the subject of "barter" were archaic. Nothing short of silk stockings, real gold watch chains, gramaphones, and gin is acceptable in the Islands these days. How could we offer such a discriminating public rusty jew's-harps?But here was an opportunity not to be missed. "Sale! Sale!! Sale!!! Heart-rending reductions!" was the notice I suggested nailing to the mast, but there was no need. The entire population of Palmerston tumbled aboard like an avalanche, and gigglingly surveyed our effects outspread on the engine-room hatch.To any one requiring the services of a thoroughly efficient window-dresser and salesman, I can heartily recommend Steve. Until the occasion of the dream ship's jumble sale I had, it appears, misjudged the man. Prose poems to a piece of voile (double width, slightly soiled and cunningly displayed on an arm) fell from his lips like rain. Imitation leather belts, looking glasses conveying a somewhat distorted reflection, near tortoise-shell haircombs, rusty knives, even jew's-harps, each and all possessed some sterling virtue of which I had been ignorant until enlightened by Steve. And they "went." It was my humble duty to make a note of the sales, and there was no keeping tally of them. In twenty minutes our "counters" were bare, and our customers clamouring for more.And this was not all. From below, where Peter was supposed to be conducting a kind of ice-cream social without the ice-cream, came the unmistakable sounds of "barter," and when we mere males had succeeded in fighting our way through a solid mass of femininity, it was to behold her surrounded with a drift of every domestic commodity from raspberry jam to a safety-pin."They wanted them so badly, poor things," she confessed to me after the fracas, but did not succeed in hiding from me the embers of battle in her eye. Brothers are awkward things.[image]The National Sport at Palmerston Island—Shooting the Pass;Dragging a Boat through the Reef PassIt was only when the last boatload of cheerful humanity had taken its departure, and we of the dream ship were dividing the spoils, that it was discovered by a closer reference to the invoices we had sold everything atcost!Four more days we spent at Palmerston for the simple reason that we could not tear ourselves away.It was a pleasant thing of an evening to wander over the firm wet sand of the beaches hand in hand with singing children, while a tribe of dogs leapt after mocking sea birds, or splashed into rock-pools snapping at the fish.[image]The Taro PatchPerhaps the tide had turned, and one by one the coral mushrooms reared fantastic shapes out of the still waters of the lagoon—a gambolling elf, a ship under full sail, a mammoth bird or beast. It was difficult to realize one was not in fairyland—and an unworthy task at that. But again, even here, there entered the tragic touch of the South Seas. A thin spiral of blue smoke rose from the smallest of the islets across the lagoon, and I asked who lived there. A brother and sister, I was told, lepers."We're going to have shell in the lagoon as soon as we can get some by the schooner," "Mister Masters himself" told me on the veranda one evening. "Ought to do well enough. And we could run a few cattle here, too. But a schooner a year isn't much good to a man, is it?"I admitted that it could hardly be called a "service.""I'd have a proper passage dynamited in the reef," he went on, presently, "and you could do a bit of trading between here and the Cooks and Tahiti. And you could have a house here, and Matha to look after you—if you'd care to stay."I looked at him, at Palmerston, at the dream ship, and regretfully shook my head."Not yet," said I.Au revoir, little island. Some day in the not very distant future a decrepit, irritable old man will return to your hospitable shores in search of peace; and if you are then as you are now—which Heaven send!—he will assuredly find it.SAVAGE ISLANDThe Island called "Savage" including the ordeal byHospitality[image]Chapter XIV headpieceCHAPTER XIVThe Island called "Savage," including the ordeal byHospitalityWhen Captain Cook discovered Niué in 1774, he christened it "Savage Island," and went on his adventurous way without landing because of the ferocious appearance and demeanour of the natives.They, poor fellows, protest to this day that the great navigator's title is a misnomer, that they have ever been as peaceful a folk as any in the South Seas, and that the true cause of their ancestors' objection to a landing-party was their fear of white men's diseases, of which they had heard painful accounts.We of the dream ship could sympathize with both parties. On the one hand, the track of infection is scored deep across the fair face of the Pacific, and on the other we had never beheld such a villainous-looking horde of natives as came to greet us at Niué. There were hundreds of them, each in a remarkably seaworthy type of dugout canoe painted black, so that the whole resembled a mammoth shoal of porpoises as they leapt from wave to wave.This, however, is where the resemblance ended, for the porpoise is a sleek and silent gentleman, and the Niuéan is anything but that. He catches sight of a dream ship gliding slowly along his coasts under power, hurls himself into his canoe and paddles, yelling like a maniac, in her wake. He then rears himself on end, waves his paddle, and yells some more. By Herculean efforts he gains on her, comes alongside, grins malevolently, and yells into one's very face.No wonder Captain Cook thought better of his shore-leave.Yet when one comes to know these people better, as we of the dream ship did during the ensuing week, they are the most inoffensive, good-natured, open-hearted creatures imaginable. This naval reception was their idea of a really touching welcome. They were glad to see us—they are glad to see any one on Niué. Appearances are against them, that is all.No sooner had we dropped hook at Alofi, the deepest bay around this iron-bound coast, than we were boarded by three gentlemen of a magnificence, in their crisp white drills, that put us to shame. But we of the dream ship had suffered this type of indignity so often that we were used to it. Besides, the magnificence of our visitors was happily only external, though they proved to be the Resident Commissioner, the Judge of the High Court, the Judge of the Native Land Court, the Collector of Customs, and the Postmaster; the Registrar of Courts and the Registrar of Births, Deaths, and Marriages; and the Chief Medical Officer.[image]Boat at islandAlthough, as I have said, there were only three of them, that is what they were, and you must separate them by the semicolons. Clearly they do not believe in overstaffing on Niué.The first glad news to reach our ears was that we had missed a hurricane by three days. Oh, yes, Niué had them occasionally, and before now had been swept bare, but this particular one had passed like a ravening beast a few miles to the eastward. Had we seen or heard nothing of it?We shook our heads in infinitely grateful negation, and the Postmaster—I beg his pardon, the Commissioner—exchanged a thoughtful glance with the Chief Medical Officer whom, it is to be feared, we had already christened "Doc." They had asked because the Cook-Group schooner that visited Niué with the unprecedented frequency of five times a year was considerably overdue. But we must come and live ashore; there was Government House, and the Law Courts, and the Gaol to spread ourselves over at a pinch.And that was how we of the dream ship came to be so royally treated on Savage Island.Legend has it that a great god of the past, with one foot firmly planted in the Tonga Group and the other on Raratonga, took it into his head to lift Niué out of the sea, and one can almost believe it. It is of weird formation, known scientifically as "upheave coral," and consists of two terraces, the lower ninety feet above sea level, and the other, two hundred and twenty feet, the intervening space being slashed with deep chasms. In short, Niué is nothing more than an atoll hurled bodily out of the sea by some mighty convulsion of the earth's past. One can clearly see that what was once the reef is now a mighty cliff and that the lagoon inside it is now a coral basin, pitched high and dry.And this hybrid of an island is wonderfully fertile. On the terrace, that I cannot help looking upon as the reef, cocoanuts, bananas, and most other tropical products grow to perfection, while the lagoon—I should say valley—is thickly timbered with ebony and other hard woods. How came they to be there, considering they were never planted by human hand? Perhaps the Island Hercules who dragged the atoll from the sea saw fit also to cover its nakedness. No other solution of the problem presents itself."It's a queer spot," I was told during a motor tour of the Island by what is called "road," though it more closely resembles a coral switchback—"as queer as its people until you come to know them. But try and remember yourself at the age of thirteen, and you have the average adult Kanaka. Several of them joined up voluntarily with the Maori contingent during the war, and wear service ribbons in their hair if they can find no other place for them."Disease is our great trouble. The Niuéan has always been a born wanderer, and he brings things back with him; but we're getting it under by keeping them at home, and making failure to report a penal offence. They've always been hard workers, too. We planted fifteen thousand nuts on Armistice Day, and away back this was a favourite hunting ground for 'black-birders' on account of the Niuéan's appetite for toil. Bully Hayes, the well-known South Sea buccaneer, used to come here often, and, when he couldn't get men, took women—cargoes of them—to sell down in the leisure-loving Societies."Those? Graves. They've always buried their dead alongside the tracks, and we saw no reason to interfere. Good grave, coral, like a sponge—everything into the sea in no time. On top? Oh, that may be anything from a canoe to a pair of old boots. They have the same idea of 'laying the table' with the deceased's personal belongings as so many others. I nearly stole one of them once. It was a perfectly good sewing-machine, and my wife had nothing to run up curtains and things with when we came here. But I thought better of it. You have to go warily with these gentry."At this juncture the long-suffering car plunged axle-deep into a quagmire of disintegrated coral, and refused to emerge until an army of Niuéans—advancing on us like a devastating host—attached themselves to its various parts and, by sheer manpower accompanied with indispensable yelling, dragged it forth.[image]Mr. Masters himself (with beard) boards the Dream ShipWe were close to a village, and thepieamakers were at work. As a sidelight on the painstaking industry of these people, their preparation of arrowroot for food is illuminating. In an age when machinery does everything but—I was going to say "talk," but correct myself advisedly—it is a lesson in certain virtues that we of to-day seem to have mislaid.[image]The Dream Ship Bargain SaleOnly one family works at a time, and brings its own implements. A stretch of coral sand is selected, and staffed with men, women, and children. The old women scrape off the discoloured rind of the roots with splintered cocoanut shell and throw them into a palm-leaf basket which the children rinse in salt water and carry to the men. They in turn grate the root into a coarse powder with instruments made of cylindrical-shaped pieces of wood bound at intervals with sinnet, the powder falling on to finely woven mats which are carried away by girls and tipped into a cradle of bamboo and cocoanut-fibre. This acts as a filter, through which salt water is poured while a man kneads the powder into a dough with such energy that he has to be relieved at frequent intervals.The white spectators, if any, are then politely requested to retire while the final process of kneading and washing in fresh water is in progress, as it has been satisfactorily established that their mere glance turnspieasour.Not wishing to dispute the fact, we complied—with the exception of Mrs. Commissioner's little girl, who had long cherished a desire to see the forbidden rite. Peering from behind a coral boulder, she was caught in the act and chased headlong and crying with fright before a shower of stones, to be comforted by her mother but severely reprimanded by the Commissioner, who is very rightly a stickler for etiquette where "his people" are concerned.In these matters of form, convention, tradition—call it what you will—we of the outside world are inclined to imagine that we hold a monopoly, but such is far from being the case. The average South Sea Islander's codes are as numerous as, and far stricter than, ours, and when we deign to visit him with our particular brand of etiquette, and leave with the notion that we have in any way impressed him with our superiority, we make a vast mistake.Inwardly (it is to be hoped), it causes us considerable amusement to note the "quaint customs of a picturesque people," but how often does it occur to us that our own antics are equally ludicrous to them, and that we are at a disadvantage in that our hosts are invariably too polite to show by word or look that we have infringed their code of ethics?In this respect I have always remembered a visitor to China who was consumed with uncontrollable mirth at the spectacle of chop-sticks in action, the while he proceeded to fill himself with his knife.Peter informed me that the chief trial she endured while moving in savage circles where it is impossible to converse was the necessity of wearing a more or less permanent smile; and I sympathized. We were in good company, for I believe Royalty is afflicted in the same way. But when you come to think of it, what else can you do with your face when confronted with a stonily staring multitude that you wish to impress with the fact that you are having a good time? It is a problem, the only solution of which to my mind is to carry a cheerfully expressioned mask, and don it as occasion demands.Mrs. "Doc" had given up going with her husband on his rounds for this very reason. She said she found herself after a tour of inspection carrying a stationary smirk into private life, and it frightened her.An occasion for the mask of appreciation, if we had chanced to carry one aboard the dream ship, presented itself the following evening. The paramount Chief of Niué very kindly invited us to a feast, and after consuming inordinate quantities of filling food, we sat, and continued to sit, while our host delivered an oration very ably translated by a pupil teacher from the mission school:The paramount Chief of Niué, misnamed Savage Island, was overwhelmed by the honour we had done him in choosing his little island to visit—we who were used to the beauties and luxuries of the great outside. We must be brave warriors to cross so many miles of tempestuous ocean in order to see him and his people [the mask of modesty, please!]. Our ship, too, though small, must have been built by great artisans to have carried us so far and so safely.... When we returned, would we describe to the great King all that we had seen on Niué, and convey to him the loyalty of his subjects?It was a neat speech, calling for a neat answer which, unfortunately, I have ever been incapable of supplying. But there was always Steve. After his unrivalled exhibition at the dream ship's jumble sale he was "called upon" by frenzied nudges in the ribs, and the confidence was not misplaced. Exactly what the dream ship would have done without Steve, I tremble to think.[image]Thursday Island Pearling LuggersThe after-dinner speeches disposed of, Peter, in a confessedly comatose condition owing to a super-abundance of heat and food, yet with her own particular brand of smile securely in place, came in for special attention. The ladies of Niué do not speak; they act. The paramount Chieftainess advanced upon her with a beautifully woven hat in one hand, and with the other attempted to rid her of her existing headgear. Unfortunately, and amidst general consternation, it failed to come adrift on account of the pins, but this was soon remedied, and the gift securely wedged into place amidst loud applause.Time was when the Niuéans were the best hat-makers in the South Seas, but with the introduction of the Panama their product has fallen into disrepute. It is hoped by acclimatizing the Panama plant to revive the industry.[image]In the Old Days of the "Floating Station" SchoonerBut Peter's adventures that day were not over. To quote from her invaluable diary:"On our way back to Government House we met an aged and bent woman who stood still in the middle of the road and literally gibbered at us. When I tried to pass, she caught hold of my hand and shook it with astonishing vigour for one of her decrepit appearance."I asked 'Doc' what it was all about, and he told me the poor old thing had walked fifteen miles to see the woman in man's clothing! But she thought she had been deceived because I was wearing unmistakable skirts, and looked too weak to do all the wonderful things she had heard about me."The 'Doc' told me further that she must have started before daylight in order to walk that distance, for she was very feeble. I felt terribly embarrassed, as I had neither money nor any trinket with me that I could give her. But, feeling in my pocket, I discovered a little comb I always carry, and also a tube of lip-salve, as my lips dry and crack in a hot climate, and these I handed to her, the latter because it was bright and shiny."She evidently realized what the comb was for, but twisted the cosmetic in her poor old fingers and looked puzzled until the top fell off and the creamy-white substance protruded. This she instantly bit off and chewed with evident relish. I do sohopeI gave satisfaction."So, aboard the dream ship and away, carrying with us grateful memories of many kindnesses from Niué and its government. May they both prosper as they deserve!The last farewell we received from this Island called Savage was a fearsome-looking inhabitant on the top-most peak of the reef—I should say terrace—waving a scarletsi-si, and yelling blue murder. But we of the dream ship knew better.THE FRIENDLY ISLANDS AND THE ENDOF THE DREAMThe island thatwassavage—Dream's end, and a fewrealities[image]Chapter XV headpieceCHAPTER XVThe island thatwassavage—Dream's end, and a fewrealitiesSouth, and still south, the dream ship sailed, until the neighbourhood of the "southerly-buster" began to make itself felt in a league-long swell.We were heading for Tonga Tabu, the southern-most island of the Friendly group where we might turn and sail almost due west for Australia in open sea, instead of picking a precarious and anxious way through the close-meshed network of islets, rocks, and submerged reefs that littered the more direct route.Even so, we came nearer to disaster amongst these alleged Friendly Islands than we had throughout the entire voyage. Cook so christened them on account of the contrast of his reception here compared with Niué, but we of the dream ship suffered a reversed order of things, and consequently beg to differ with the great navigator.On the fourth day out from Niué we sighted the group, but decided not to proceed as there are no lights on these outlying reefs, and we had been warned by every island skipper of consequence that a vessel "sights" and "hits" one of them as near simultaneously as no matter. So we hove-to on the tail-end, the very mildly wagging tail-end, of a "southerly-buster," and turned in.Throughout the night we took it in turns to go on deck at intervals and see that we were not drifting on to anything, and, save for the eternal dirge of the sea that fills the night in the vicinity of any group of South Pacific Islands, all was well. Yet with the sudden sunlight of dawn in these latitudes, we stood aghast at the scene confronting us: on all sides waves, an apparently complete circle of breaking combers, their emerald-green bodies and white-capped heads flashing in the sun. To all appearances we were as effectually trapped as a rat in a cage. Yet how was the thing possible? If there were an inlet into this inferno of reefs there must assuredly be an outlet.The engine was called upon, and responded nobly. During that day we systematically searched for a loophole of escape, and found none, until toward evening we glided through a passage no more than fifty yards wide, and to our intense relief found that it led to the open sea.While hove-to the previous night the dream ship must have executed a miracle by drifting into a narrow-necked horseshoe of coral; that was all. And to some it may appear that we were an unconscionable time in finding a way out, but for the benefit of such I would point out that the inside of the horseshoe, as is often the case, was littered with broken reefs, each forming an apparent outlet which on closer inspection proved to be nothing of the sort. In short, I would commend those with a taste for maze-solving to visit the Friendly Islands.I was not surprised to learn later that local trading craft, equipped with a band of lynx-eyed Kanakas, never sail at night in these waters. Apart from the constant danger of known reefs, others have a knack of appearing and receding in the most uncanny way, so that no chart issued can keep track of them.In this connection a most enthralling theory engages the attention of the South Sea student. It is his firm belief that what is now the "milky way" of the Pacific was at one time a vast coral and volcanic continent; that it has subsided here, and been upheaved or erupted there, until broken into a myriad fragments, and that the day may still come when Nature will elect to raise them from the deep, welded once more into a mighty whole.As has been said before (if it were not sufficiently evident without saying at all), I am not a scientist, but the existing indications in support of this theory meet even the casual observer at every turn in the Pacific Ocean to-day. There is a wall on Easter Island, not unlike the great wall of China, but which runs for a short distance and then plunges aimlessly into the sea. Where did it begin? Where did it end? What mighty city did it embrace? On Pitcairn there are the remains of a former and highly advanced civilization. On Lord Howe Island, a mere rock sprouting three thousand feet out of the sea four hundred and eighty miles from the Australian coast, there are sixty different species of land shell, 50 per cent. of which are not to be found anywhere else in the world. How do they come to be on Lord Howe? Land shell cannot swim. In the Carolines, you may look down into the water of lagoons and see the remains—mosaic floors and broken walls—of a submerged city.So, from east to west, and from north to south, this mighty ocean of the Pacific holds its secrets of forgotten lands and peoples.As for the dream ship, not content with escape from a coral death-trap, we sailed out, and still out to the open sea, until nothing short of a gale could carry us into danger, and there hove-to again for the night. There was nothing else to be done. What was more, and owing to an oversight attributable to no one but myself, we had no large-scale chart of Tonga Tabu, so that it took us three days of searching and three nights of heaving to before we found the eastern pass through the reef and waited with international code flag flying for the pilot.[image]Natives in canoeWe could see his station and flagstaff on a sandspit, but no flag in answer to our own. We waited, and continued to wait, while a three-knot current carried us up the ever-narrowing channel to within fifty feet of the coral bar at its end. And then it was that the motor auxiliary that I have so consistently reviled throughout these pages vindicated itself by saving us from certain destruction. It went! Literally inch by inch it fought the current for the hour or more we were obliged to wait on that pilot's pleasure.I can hear the "expert's" wail of enquiry: "Why not have anchored?" My answer is that I should like to see him try. Is he aware that coral alters all one's preconceived ideas of seamanship? Does he know that although the passage walls were not more than fifty feet from either side of us, the water between was unfathomable; that to put out a kedge was equally hopeless because exposed coral is nothing more than a brittle honeycomb that breaks like pie-crust; that—— But I refuse further enlightenment. Let my imagined critic learn from experience as I was forced to do.At long last the pilot came, in an outrigger canoe that was swept from under his feet by the current as he clambered aboard. He did not know... He thought our code flag was a burgee, that we were a local trading cutter, that we were almost anything but what we were. There are moments too full for words, and this was one.The Friendly Islands have a real queen and a consort, and I reported that pilot to both of them, though my plaint merely elicited a charming smile from the one and the suggestion of a whisky-and-soda from the other. It's a way they have in the Islands.I fear this account of Tonga Tabu will be unsympathetic, and for that reason I would suggest the perusal of several excellent books on the subject. For me it was a place of tragedy, and as such remains with me to this day. My views are jaundiced; let them lie! All I know is that in the island capital of Nukualofa there is a club, and from that club emerged a genial gentleman who, had I known what I know now, would never have set foot aboard the dream ship. He came, he saw, and we repaired to the club."Do you want to sell that boat of yours?" he asked me."No," said I."Willyou sell her?" he corrected himself."Not for what any sane man would care to pay," I told him."And what is that, may I ask?"I named a figure sufficiently preposterous to raise a laugh from most people. But the genial gentleman did not laugh."You would take no less?" he suggested bravely."Not a cent," said I. "As a matter of fact——""I suppose a draft on —— will satisfy you?""What's that?" I stammered."I'll take her," said the genial gentleman. "I was saying that...."But I heard no more. I had sold the dream ship!Confession is said to be good for the soul, but I have not noticed much improvement in the state of my own since making the above statement. Imagine parting for pelf with a home that has conveyed you across twelve thousand miles of ocean. Or, better, try to imagine selling your best friend, and you have some idea of my feelings since the transaction. And there was no going back on it. I have not the moral courage of such deeds. The draft lay on the table before me, I had a pocket full of money, and no ship. I have never been so miserable in my life.It took me the best part of an hour's aimless wandering over the powdered coral roads of Nukualofa to summon the necessary courage to break the news to the crew of the dream ship, but by the end of that time I had some sort of scheme evolved. Between the Friendlies and Australia there were no islands of particular interest, anyway. We would continue our journey by steamer—it would be a pleasant change—and in New Zealand or Australia I would invest my ill-gotten gains in a far more magnificent vessel than the dream ship.On this "more magnificent" craft, we would carry out our original programme of cruising up the Queensland coast to the islands of the northwest Pacific, and so home via Java, Colombo, and the Suez Canal, thereby avoiding the monotonous passage between the Friendlies and Australia. Rather clever, I thought. Nevertheless, I prefer to draw a veil over the communication of this brilliant scheme to the rest of the crew. Peter did not speak to me for the rest of the day. I verily believe she hates me, but not a tithe more than I hate myself. It is enough that we took our departure by steamer according to schedule, and without daring to look back on the good ship we had left behind. The heart had gone out of things; the dream was ended.Or rather it had merged into a nightmare. We proceeded to rub shoulders with a horde of fellow-passengers who no doubt regarded us as unattractive as we regarded them; to consume beef-tea or ice-cream at eleven o'clock, and push lumps of wood about the deck with a stick for want of something better to do.Is there anything more wearisome than a steamer voyage—after sailing your own ship? You sleep throughout the night instead of breaking the twenty-four hours into the sensible segments of four "on" and eight "off." You are called by a smug-faced steward instead of being gently squeezed or roughly shaken into life by the previous "watch"; and instead of commanding your own destinies at the tiller under the stars, you watch others doing it in brass buttons and electric light from a bridge. You begin to wonder if your tie is straight, if it would be permissible to rid your chafing neck of the unholy contrivance encircling it.As for your fellow-passengers, they are—to a man, and to a woman—gross from over-indulgence of one form or another—mostly food and drink, and their interests are as far removed from yours as the stars. You begin to see how the average sailor-man feels in "polite society," and your heart goes out to him."How's the wind?" Ah, of course, it makes no difference to this smoke-belching machine that bears you at thirteen knots, and according to schedule, toward civilization. See that wave? The big fellow with the curling top! Isn't he twin brother to the one you met in the Caribbean when...No, no. Give us the "sleepy" twelve-to-four watch, and even a "cooking week" aboard the dream ship that we may be content once more.Already, we were changed to each other's eye. Oftentimes I stood with Steve on the promenade deck, and his well-known figure, camouflaged at the moment under a natty blue suit and collar and tie complete, would fade and merge like a dissolving view into a brown-skinned, happy savage in towel and sola topi. And as for Peter—she was no longer the Peter we had known for a happy ten-month, but a female slave to every twist and quiff of convention. And it was my doing ... all my doing. Or can I thrust the blame on other shoulders after the fashion of brother Adam? Is it not our women-folk who make convention necessary at all to men who, if they followed natural instincts, would revert to the enviable savage?At Apia, Samoa, Steve was so heartily tired of his environment that he left the ship. He said he could scent civilization afar, and would have none of it. He had met a military official ashore who had offered him a post in the Government on the strength of his war services, and he had accepted. He would stay there in Samoa until I had found another dream ship, when he would join her on receipt of a cable, and continue with us over the remaining half of the world.He made this promise with an ironical twinkle of the eye that puzzled me at the time, but which has since been abundantly and painfully accounted for.He left in a native outrigger canoe, hugging his knees on a pyramid of bananas, while the remainder of "the crew" waved him farewell from the steamer's rail, and turned sadly away. A better mate for any venture calling on the best qualities of a man never breathed. Here's to him, "down under," and may that cable not be long delayed!
FISH
(I know not of what species, but tastier than most of the tropical varieties.)
BOILED FOWL
(And not the wretched victim of malnutrition emanating from most tropical barnyards; nor served undecapitated as appears usual in the Islands.)
ROAST PORK
(Which must have subsisted during its lifetime on something more nourishing than coral.)
VEGETABLES:SWEET POTATOESTARO ROOT
SWEETS:COCOANUT PUDDING
(The core of cocoanuts stewed in milk squeezed from the meat of the nut, a dainty warranted to send the restaurant connoisseur into ecstasies if it ever reaches him, which is unlikely.)
Over rum, emanating from the dream ship, as the local supply of liqueur was retained for strictly medicinal purposes, the history of Palmerston Island was unfolded.
What any student of Island history knows is that it was discovered by Captain Cook in 1774 on his second voyage, though some authorities claim it to be the "San Pablo" of Magellan, the first island discovered in the South Seas; that on his third and last voyage Cook landed again to get fodder for his starving cattle; and that later on it came under the critical notice of theBountymutineers, who, after a thorough spoiling in luxurious Tahiti, decided against Palmerston as their future home.
But what everyone does not know is the history of the Masters family who now occupy the island.
One William Masters, as fine an old English sea-dog as ever came off a whaler, took a fancy to the place in 1862, leased it from the British Government, and, not believing in half measures, took unto himself three native wives. By each he had a large and healthy family that he reared in strict accordance with his own standards of social usage.
That they were sound standards is evidenced in the people of Palmerston to-day. They read, write, and speak English, this last with an accent vaguely reminiscent of the southwest of England. They are courteous, hospitable, and honest to a degree little short of startling these days, and although naturally inbred, they do not show it mentally or physically.
The islets scattered round the reef have been equally distributed amongst the descendants of William Masters's three wives, who now number ninety-eight, and under the authority of the island council, presided over by "Mister Masters himself," are worked to such purpose that they produce a thousand pounds' worth of copra per year.
I have Palmerston securely pigeon-holed in my own mind as the spot of all others in which, when the time comes, to sit down and wait for the end. The outside world, in the shape of a schooner from the Cook Group, intrudes itself but once a year. The ordinary infirmities to which flesh is heir are non-existent. The lagoon and the neighbouring islets are a mine of interest to the naturalist or sportsman, and the people have a charm that is all their own.
One thing alone troubles the Masters of to-day. To whom do they and their island belong? The war has changed all things. The Cook Group, two hundred and seventy-three miles to the southeast, of which Palmerston has now been declared a far-flung unit, is administered by New Zealand. Is "Mister Masters himself" to be taxed, governed, and generally harried by a people who hardly existed when his father took over the island? It looks like it. Here is as fine an example of the communal system worked out on a practical and prosperous basis as will be found in the world to-day. Why, and again why, cannot incipient administrators be induced to leave well alone?
A tour of the tiny settlement is worth while. Not long ago a French brigantine rammed the reef on a clear night of stars, while the crew, including the lookout, was below playing cards, with the result that Palmerston settlement to-day is for the most part built of ship's timbers and planking, companions, portholes, bunks, and miscellaneous brass fittings.
The little church, which is in course of construction and meantime serves as a school house, boasts walls and pulpit composed entirely of panelled doors from the hulk; and fine old seasoned timber it is.
The recognized playground is outside the church door under the palms, where a cricket pitch entices all and sundry. But the real playground of Palmerston is the boat passage in the reef, through which a mill race rushes at each turn of the tide. Here the multitudinous offspring of William Masters disport themselves on every contrivance that floats, from a full-fledged sailing-boat to a weather-board, and at the rate of knots sweep yelling round tortuous curves to or from the sea.
The dream ship, riding at anchor outside the reef, became the centre of attraction, and finally added to her many accomplishments by becoming a bargain store.
It may be remembered that on setting out from England we had laid in certain commodities known as "barter." Well, they were still aboard—slightly mildewed, but aboard—for the good and sufficient reason that we had not been able to get rid of them. It appeared that our ideas on the subject of "barter" were archaic. Nothing short of silk stockings, real gold watch chains, gramaphones, and gin is acceptable in the Islands these days. How could we offer such a discriminating public rusty jew's-harps?
But here was an opportunity not to be missed. "Sale! Sale!! Sale!!! Heart-rending reductions!" was the notice I suggested nailing to the mast, but there was no need. The entire population of Palmerston tumbled aboard like an avalanche, and gigglingly surveyed our effects outspread on the engine-room hatch.
To any one requiring the services of a thoroughly efficient window-dresser and salesman, I can heartily recommend Steve. Until the occasion of the dream ship's jumble sale I had, it appears, misjudged the man. Prose poems to a piece of voile (double width, slightly soiled and cunningly displayed on an arm) fell from his lips like rain. Imitation leather belts, looking glasses conveying a somewhat distorted reflection, near tortoise-shell haircombs, rusty knives, even jew's-harps, each and all possessed some sterling virtue of which I had been ignorant until enlightened by Steve. And they "went." It was my humble duty to make a note of the sales, and there was no keeping tally of them. In twenty minutes our "counters" were bare, and our customers clamouring for more.
And this was not all. From below, where Peter was supposed to be conducting a kind of ice-cream social without the ice-cream, came the unmistakable sounds of "barter," and when we mere males had succeeded in fighting our way through a solid mass of femininity, it was to behold her surrounded with a drift of every domestic commodity from raspberry jam to a safety-pin.
"They wanted them so badly, poor things," she confessed to me after the fracas, but did not succeed in hiding from me the embers of battle in her eye. Brothers are awkward things.
[image]The National Sport at Palmerston Island—Shooting the Pass;Dragging a Boat through the Reef Pass
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The National Sport at Palmerston Island—Shooting the Pass;Dragging a Boat through the Reef Pass
It was only when the last boatload of cheerful humanity had taken its departure, and we of the dream ship were dividing the spoils, that it was discovered by a closer reference to the invoices we had sold everything atcost!
Four more days we spent at Palmerston for the simple reason that we could not tear ourselves away.
It was a pleasant thing of an evening to wander over the firm wet sand of the beaches hand in hand with singing children, while a tribe of dogs leapt after mocking sea birds, or splashed into rock-pools snapping at the fish.
[image]The Taro Patch
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The Taro Patch
Perhaps the tide had turned, and one by one the coral mushrooms reared fantastic shapes out of the still waters of the lagoon—a gambolling elf, a ship under full sail, a mammoth bird or beast. It was difficult to realize one was not in fairyland—and an unworthy task at that. But again, even here, there entered the tragic touch of the South Seas. A thin spiral of blue smoke rose from the smallest of the islets across the lagoon, and I asked who lived there. A brother and sister, I was told, lepers.
"We're going to have shell in the lagoon as soon as we can get some by the schooner," "Mister Masters himself" told me on the veranda one evening. "Ought to do well enough. And we could run a few cattle here, too. But a schooner a year isn't much good to a man, is it?"
I admitted that it could hardly be called a "service."
"I'd have a proper passage dynamited in the reef," he went on, presently, "and you could do a bit of trading between here and the Cooks and Tahiti. And you could have a house here, and Matha to look after you—if you'd care to stay."
I looked at him, at Palmerston, at the dream ship, and regretfully shook my head.
"Not yet," said I.
Au revoir, little island. Some day in the not very distant future a decrepit, irritable old man will return to your hospitable shores in search of peace; and if you are then as you are now—which Heaven send!—he will assuredly find it.
SAVAGE ISLAND
The Island called "Savage" including the ordeal byHospitality
[image]Chapter XIV headpiece
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Chapter XIV headpiece
CHAPTER XIV
The Island called "Savage," including the ordeal byHospitality
When Captain Cook discovered Niué in 1774, he christened it "Savage Island," and went on his adventurous way without landing because of the ferocious appearance and demeanour of the natives.
They, poor fellows, protest to this day that the great navigator's title is a misnomer, that they have ever been as peaceful a folk as any in the South Seas, and that the true cause of their ancestors' objection to a landing-party was their fear of white men's diseases, of which they had heard painful accounts.
We of the dream ship could sympathize with both parties. On the one hand, the track of infection is scored deep across the fair face of the Pacific, and on the other we had never beheld such a villainous-looking horde of natives as came to greet us at Niué. There were hundreds of them, each in a remarkably seaworthy type of dugout canoe painted black, so that the whole resembled a mammoth shoal of porpoises as they leapt from wave to wave.
This, however, is where the resemblance ended, for the porpoise is a sleek and silent gentleman, and the Niuéan is anything but that. He catches sight of a dream ship gliding slowly along his coasts under power, hurls himself into his canoe and paddles, yelling like a maniac, in her wake. He then rears himself on end, waves his paddle, and yells some more. By Herculean efforts he gains on her, comes alongside, grins malevolently, and yells into one's very face.
No wonder Captain Cook thought better of his shore-leave.
Yet when one comes to know these people better, as we of the dream ship did during the ensuing week, they are the most inoffensive, good-natured, open-hearted creatures imaginable. This naval reception was their idea of a really touching welcome. They were glad to see us—they are glad to see any one on Niué. Appearances are against them, that is all.
No sooner had we dropped hook at Alofi, the deepest bay around this iron-bound coast, than we were boarded by three gentlemen of a magnificence, in their crisp white drills, that put us to shame. But we of the dream ship had suffered this type of indignity so often that we were used to it. Besides, the magnificence of our visitors was happily only external, though they proved to be the Resident Commissioner, the Judge of the High Court, the Judge of the Native Land Court, the Collector of Customs, and the Postmaster; the Registrar of Courts and the Registrar of Births, Deaths, and Marriages; and the Chief Medical Officer.
[image]Boat at island
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Boat at island
Although, as I have said, there were only three of them, that is what they were, and you must separate them by the semicolons. Clearly they do not believe in overstaffing on Niué.
The first glad news to reach our ears was that we had missed a hurricane by three days. Oh, yes, Niué had them occasionally, and before now had been swept bare, but this particular one had passed like a ravening beast a few miles to the eastward. Had we seen or heard nothing of it?
We shook our heads in infinitely grateful negation, and the Postmaster—I beg his pardon, the Commissioner—exchanged a thoughtful glance with the Chief Medical Officer whom, it is to be feared, we had already christened "Doc." They had asked because the Cook-Group schooner that visited Niué with the unprecedented frequency of five times a year was considerably overdue. But we must come and live ashore; there was Government House, and the Law Courts, and the Gaol to spread ourselves over at a pinch.
And that was how we of the dream ship came to be so royally treated on Savage Island.
Legend has it that a great god of the past, with one foot firmly planted in the Tonga Group and the other on Raratonga, took it into his head to lift Niué out of the sea, and one can almost believe it. It is of weird formation, known scientifically as "upheave coral," and consists of two terraces, the lower ninety feet above sea level, and the other, two hundred and twenty feet, the intervening space being slashed with deep chasms. In short, Niué is nothing more than an atoll hurled bodily out of the sea by some mighty convulsion of the earth's past. One can clearly see that what was once the reef is now a mighty cliff and that the lagoon inside it is now a coral basin, pitched high and dry.
And this hybrid of an island is wonderfully fertile. On the terrace, that I cannot help looking upon as the reef, cocoanuts, bananas, and most other tropical products grow to perfection, while the lagoon—I should say valley—is thickly timbered with ebony and other hard woods. How came they to be there, considering they were never planted by human hand? Perhaps the Island Hercules who dragged the atoll from the sea saw fit also to cover its nakedness. No other solution of the problem presents itself.
"It's a queer spot," I was told during a motor tour of the Island by what is called "road," though it more closely resembles a coral switchback—"as queer as its people until you come to know them. But try and remember yourself at the age of thirteen, and you have the average adult Kanaka. Several of them joined up voluntarily with the Maori contingent during the war, and wear service ribbons in their hair if they can find no other place for them.
"Disease is our great trouble. The Niuéan has always been a born wanderer, and he brings things back with him; but we're getting it under by keeping them at home, and making failure to report a penal offence. They've always been hard workers, too. We planted fifteen thousand nuts on Armistice Day, and away back this was a favourite hunting ground for 'black-birders' on account of the Niuéan's appetite for toil. Bully Hayes, the well-known South Sea buccaneer, used to come here often, and, when he couldn't get men, took women—cargoes of them—to sell down in the leisure-loving Societies.
"Those? Graves. They've always buried their dead alongside the tracks, and we saw no reason to interfere. Good grave, coral, like a sponge—everything into the sea in no time. On top? Oh, that may be anything from a canoe to a pair of old boots. They have the same idea of 'laying the table' with the deceased's personal belongings as so many others. I nearly stole one of them once. It was a perfectly good sewing-machine, and my wife had nothing to run up curtains and things with when we came here. But I thought better of it. You have to go warily with these gentry."
At this juncture the long-suffering car plunged axle-deep into a quagmire of disintegrated coral, and refused to emerge until an army of Niuéans—advancing on us like a devastating host—attached themselves to its various parts and, by sheer manpower accompanied with indispensable yelling, dragged it forth.
[image]Mr. Masters himself (with beard) boards the Dream Ship
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Mr. Masters himself (with beard) boards the Dream Ship
We were close to a village, and thepieamakers were at work. As a sidelight on the painstaking industry of these people, their preparation of arrowroot for food is illuminating. In an age when machinery does everything but—I was going to say "talk," but correct myself advisedly—it is a lesson in certain virtues that we of to-day seem to have mislaid.
[image]The Dream Ship Bargain Sale
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The Dream Ship Bargain Sale
Only one family works at a time, and brings its own implements. A stretch of coral sand is selected, and staffed with men, women, and children. The old women scrape off the discoloured rind of the roots with splintered cocoanut shell and throw them into a palm-leaf basket which the children rinse in salt water and carry to the men. They in turn grate the root into a coarse powder with instruments made of cylindrical-shaped pieces of wood bound at intervals with sinnet, the powder falling on to finely woven mats which are carried away by girls and tipped into a cradle of bamboo and cocoanut-fibre. This acts as a filter, through which salt water is poured while a man kneads the powder into a dough with such energy that he has to be relieved at frequent intervals.
The white spectators, if any, are then politely requested to retire while the final process of kneading and washing in fresh water is in progress, as it has been satisfactorily established that their mere glance turnspieasour.
Not wishing to dispute the fact, we complied—with the exception of Mrs. Commissioner's little girl, who had long cherished a desire to see the forbidden rite. Peering from behind a coral boulder, she was caught in the act and chased headlong and crying with fright before a shower of stones, to be comforted by her mother but severely reprimanded by the Commissioner, who is very rightly a stickler for etiquette where "his people" are concerned.
In these matters of form, convention, tradition—call it what you will—we of the outside world are inclined to imagine that we hold a monopoly, but such is far from being the case. The average South Sea Islander's codes are as numerous as, and far stricter than, ours, and when we deign to visit him with our particular brand of etiquette, and leave with the notion that we have in any way impressed him with our superiority, we make a vast mistake.
Inwardly (it is to be hoped), it causes us considerable amusement to note the "quaint customs of a picturesque people," but how often does it occur to us that our own antics are equally ludicrous to them, and that we are at a disadvantage in that our hosts are invariably too polite to show by word or look that we have infringed their code of ethics?
In this respect I have always remembered a visitor to China who was consumed with uncontrollable mirth at the spectacle of chop-sticks in action, the while he proceeded to fill himself with his knife.
Peter informed me that the chief trial she endured while moving in savage circles where it is impossible to converse was the necessity of wearing a more or less permanent smile; and I sympathized. We were in good company, for I believe Royalty is afflicted in the same way. But when you come to think of it, what else can you do with your face when confronted with a stonily staring multitude that you wish to impress with the fact that you are having a good time? It is a problem, the only solution of which to my mind is to carry a cheerfully expressioned mask, and don it as occasion demands.
Mrs. "Doc" had given up going with her husband on his rounds for this very reason. She said she found herself after a tour of inspection carrying a stationary smirk into private life, and it frightened her.
An occasion for the mask of appreciation, if we had chanced to carry one aboard the dream ship, presented itself the following evening. The paramount Chief of Niué very kindly invited us to a feast, and after consuming inordinate quantities of filling food, we sat, and continued to sit, while our host delivered an oration very ably translated by a pupil teacher from the mission school:
The paramount Chief of Niué, misnamed Savage Island, was overwhelmed by the honour we had done him in choosing his little island to visit—we who were used to the beauties and luxuries of the great outside. We must be brave warriors to cross so many miles of tempestuous ocean in order to see him and his people [the mask of modesty, please!]. Our ship, too, though small, must have been built by great artisans to have carried us so far and so safely.... When we returned, would we describe to the great King all that we had seen on Niué, and convey to him the loyalty of his subjects?
It was a neat speech, calling for a neat answer which, unfortunately, I have ever been incapable of supplying. But there was always Steve. After his unrivalled exhibition at the dream ship's jumble sale he was "called upon" by frenzied nudges in the ribs, and the confidence was not misplaced. Exactly what the dream ship would have done without Steve, I tremble to think.
[image]Thursday Island Pearling Luggers
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Thursday Island Pearling Luggers
The after-dinner speeches disposed of, Peter, in a confessedly comatose condition owing to a super-abundance of heat and food, yet with her own particular brand of smile securely in place, came in for special attention. The ladies of Niué do not speak; they act. The paramount Chieftainess advanced upon her with a beautifully woven hat in one hand, and with the other attempted to rid her of her existing headgear. Unfortunately, and amidst general consternation, it failed to come adrift on account of the pins, but this was soon remedied, and the gift securely wedged into place amidst loud applause.
Time was when the Niuéans were the best hat-makers in the South Seas, but with the introduction of the Panama their product has fallen into disrepute. It is hoped by acclimatizing the Panama plant to revive the industry.
[image]In the Old Days of the "Floating Station" Schooner
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In the Old Days of the "Floating Station" Schooner
But Peter's adventures that day were not over. To quote from her invaluable diary:
"On our way back to Government House we met an aged and bent woman who stood still in the middle of the road and literally gibbered at us. When I tried to pass, she caught hold of my hand and shook it with astonishing vigour for one of her decrepit appearance.
"I asked 'Doc' what it was all about, and he told me the poor old thing had walked fifteen miles to see the woman in man's clothing! But she thought she had been deceived because I was wearing unmistakable skirts, and looked too weak to do all the wonderful things she had heard about me.
"The 'Doc' told me further that she must have started before daylight in order to walk that distance, for she was very feeble. I felt terribly embarrassed, as I had neither money nor any trinket with me that I could give her. But, feeling in my pocket, I discovered a little comb I always carry, and also a tube of lip-salve, as my lips dry and crack in a hot climate, and these I handed to her, the latter because it was bright and shiny.
"She evidently realized what the comb was for, but twisted the cosmetic in her poor old fingers and looked puzzled until the top fell off and the creamy-white substance protruded. This she instantly bit off and chewed with evident relish. I do sohopeI gave satisfaction."
So, aboard the dream ship and away, carrying with us grateful memories of many kindnesses from Niué and its government. May they both prosper as they deserve!
The last farewell we received from this Island called Savage was a fearsome-looking inhabitant on the top-most peak of the reef—I should say terrace—waving a scarletsi-si, and yelling blue murder. But we of the dream ship knew better.
THE FRIENDLY ISLANDS AND THE ENDOF THE DREAM
The island thatwassavage—Dream's end, and a fewrealities
[image]Chapter XV headpiece
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Chapter XV headpiece
CHAPTER XV
The island thatwassavage—Dream's end, and a fewrealities
South, and still south, the dream ship sailed, until the neighbourhood of the "southerly-buster" began to make itself felt in a league-long swell.
We were heading for Tonga Tabu, the southern-most island of the Friendly group where we might turn and sail almost due west for Australia in open sea, instead of picking a precarious and anxious way through the close-meshed network of islets, rocks, and submerged reefs that littered the more direct route.
Even so, we came nearer to disaster amongst these alleged Friendly Islands than we had throughout the entire voyage. Cook so christened them on account of the contrast of his reception here compared with Niué, but we of the dream ship suffered a reversed order of things, and consequently beg to differ with the great navigator.
On the fourth day out from Niué we sighted the group, but decided not to proceed as there are no lights on these outlying reefs, and we had been warned by every island skipper of consequence that a vessel "sights" and "hits" one of them as near simultaneously as no matter. So we hove-to on the tail-end, the very mildly wagging tail-end, of a "southerly-buster," and turned in.
Throughout the night we took it in turns to go on deck at intervals and see that we were not drifting on to anything, and, save for the eternal dirge of the sea that fills the night in the vicinity of any group of South Pacific Islands, all was well. Yet with the sudden sunlight of dawn in these latitudes, we stood aghast at the scene confronting us: on all sides waves, an apparently complete circle of breaking combers, their emerald-green bodies and white-capped heads flashing in the sun. To all appearances we were as effectually trapped as a rat in a cage. Yet how was the thing possible? If there were an inlet into this inferno of reefs there must assuredly be an outlet.
The engine was called upon, and responded nobly. During that day we systematically searched for a loophole of escape, and found none, until toward evening we glided through a passage no more than fifty yards wide, and to our intense relief found that it led to the open sea.
While hove-to the previous night the dream ship must have executed a miracle by drifting into a narrow-necked horseshoe of coral; that was all. And to some it may appear that we were an unconscionable time in finding a way out, but for the benefit of such I would point out that the inside of the horseshoe, as is often the case, was littered with broken reefs, each forming an apparent outlet which on closer inspection proved to be nothing of the sort. In short, I would commend those with a taste for maze-solving to visit the Friendly Islands.
I was not surprised to learn later that local trading craft, equipped with a band of lynx-eyed Kanakas, never sail at night in these waters. Apart from the constant danger of known reefs, others have a knack of appearing and receding in the most uncanny way, so that no chart issued can keep track of them.
In this connection a most enthralling theory engages the attention of the South Sea student. It is his firm belief that what is now the "milky way" of the Pacific was at one time a vast coral and volcanic continent; that it has subsided here, and been upheaved or erupted there, until broken into a myriad fragments, and that the day may still come when Nature will elect to raise them from the deep, welded once more into a mighty whole.
As has been said before (if it were not sufficiently evident without saying at all), I am not a scientist, but the existing indications in support of this theory meet even the casual observer at every turn in the Pacific Ocean to-day. There is a wall on Easter Island, not unlike the great wall of China, but which runs for a short distance and then plunges aimlessly into the sea. Where did it begin? Where did it end? What mighty city did it embrace? On Pitcairn there are the remains of a former and highly advanced civilization. On Lord Howe Island, a mere rock sprouting three thousand feet out of the sea four hundred and eighty miles from the Australian coast, there are sixty different species of land shell, 50 per cent. of which are not to be found anywhere else in the world. How do they come to be on Lord Howe? Land shell cannot swim. In the Carolines, you may look down into the water of lagoons and see the remains—mosaic floors and broken walls—of a submerged city.
So, from east to west, and from north to south, this mighty ocean of the Pacific holds its secrets of forgotten lands and peoples.
As for the dream ship, not content with escape from a coral death-trap, we sailed out, and still out to the open sea, until nothing short of a gale could carry us into danger, and there hove-to again for the night. There was nothing else to be done. What was more, and owing to an oversight attributable to no one but myself, we had no large-scale chart of Tonga Tabu, so that it took us three days of searching and three nights of heaving to before we found the eastern pass through the reef and waited with international code flag flying for the pilot.
[image]Natives in canoe
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Natives in canoe
We could see his station and flagstaff on a sandspit, but no flag in answer to our own. We waited, and continued to wait, while a three-knot current carried us up the ever-narrowing channel to within fifty feet of the coral bar at its end. And then it was that the motor auxiliary that I have so consistently reviled throughout these pages vindicated itself by saving us from certain destruction. It went! Literally inch by inch it fought the current for the hour or more we were obliged to wait on that pilot's pleasure.
I can hear the "expert's" wail of enquiry: "Why not have anchored?" My answer is that I should like to see him try. Is he aware that coral alters all one's preconceived ideas of seamanship? Does he know that although the passage walls were not more than fifty feet from either side of us, the water between was unfathomable; that to put out a kedge was equally hopeless because exposed coral is nothing more than a brittle honeycomb that breaks like pie-crust; that—— But I refuse further enlightenment. Let my imagined critic learn from experience as I was forced to do.
At long last the pilot came, in an outrigger canoe that was swept from under his feet by the current as he clambered aboard. He did not know... He thought our code flag was a burgee, that we were a local trading cutter, that we were almost anything but what we were. There are moments too full for words, and this was one.
The Friendly Islands have a real queen and a consort, and I reported that pilot to both of them, though my plaint merely elicited a charming smile from the one and the suggestion of a whisky-and-soda from the other. It's a way they have in the Islands.
I fear this account of Tonga Tabu will be unsympathetic, and for that reason I would suggest the perusal of several excellent books on the subject. For me it was a place of tragedy, and as such remains with me to this day. My views are jaundiced; let them lie! All I know is that in the island capital of Nukualofa there is a club, and from that club emerged a genial gentleman who, had I known what I know now, would never have set foot aboard the dream ship. He came, he saw, and we repaired to the club.
"Do you want to sell that boat of yours?" he asked me.
"No," said I.
"Willyou sell her?" he corrected himself.
"Not for what any sane man would care to pay," I told him.
"And what is that, may I ask?"
I named a figure sufficiently preposterous to raise a laugh from most people. But the genial gentleman did not laugh.
"You would take no less?" he suggested bravely.
"Not a cent," said I. "As a matter of fact——"
"I suppose a draft on —— will satisfy you?"
"What's that?" I stammered.
"I'll take her," said the genial gentleman. "I was saying that...."
But I heard no more. I had sold the dream ship!
Confession is said to be good for the soul, but I have not noticed much improvement in the state of my own since making the above statement. Imagine parting for pelf with a home that has conveyed you across twelve thousand miles of ocean. Or, better, try to imagine selling your best friend, and you have some idea of my feelings since the transaction. And there was no going back on it. I have not the moral courage of such deeds. The draft lay on the table before me, I had a pocket full of money, and no ship. I have never been so miserable in my life.
It took me the best part of an hour's aimless wandering over the powdered coral roads of Nukualofa to summon the necessary courage to break the news to the crew of the dream ship, but by the end of that time I had some sort of scheme evolved. Between the Friendlies and Australia there were no islands of particular interest, anyway. We would continue our journey by steamer—it would be a pleasant change—and in New Zealand or Australia I would invest my ill-gotten gains in a far more magnificent vessel than the dream ship.
On this "more magnificent" craft, we would carry out our original programme of cruising up the Queensland coast to the islands of the northwest Pacific, and so home via Java, Colombo, and the Suez Canal, thereby avoiding the monotonous passage between the Friendlies and Australia. Rather clever, I thought. Nevertheless, I prefer to draw a veil over the communication of this brilliant scheme to the rest of the crew. Peter did not speak to me for the rest of the day. I verily believe she hates me, but not a tithe more than I hate myself. It is enough that we took our departure by steamer according to schedule, and without daring to look back on the good ship we had left behind. The heart had gone out of things; the dream was ended.
Or rather it had merged into a nightmare. We proceeded to rub shoulders with a horde of fellow-passengers who no doubt regarded us as unattractive as we regarded them; to consume beef-tea or ice-cream at eleven o'clock, and push lumps of wood about the deck with a stick for want of something better to do.
Is there anything more wearisome than a steamer voyage—after sailing your own ship? You sleep throughout the night instead of breaking the twenty-four hours into the sensible segments of four "on" and eight "off." You are called by a smug-faced steward instead of being gently squeezed or roughly shaken into life by the previous "watch"; and instead of commanding your own destinies at the tiller under the stars, you watch others doing it in brass buttons and electric light from a bridge. You begin to wonder if your tie is straight, if it would be permissible to rid your chafing neck of the unholy contrivance encircling it.
As for your fellow-passengers, they are—to a man, and to a woman—gross from over-indulgence of one form or another—mostly food and drink, and their interests are as far removed from yours as the stars. You begin to see how the average sailor-man feels in "polite society," and your heart goes out to him.
"How's the wind?" Ah, of course, it makes no difference to this smoke-belching machine that bears you at thirteen knots, and according to schedule, toward civilization. See that wave? The big fellow with the curling top! Isn't he twin brother to the one you met in the Caribbean when...
No, no. Give us the "sleepy" twelve-to-four watch, and even a "cooking week" aboard the dream ship that we may be content once more.
Already, we were changed to each other's eye. Oftentimes I stood with Steve on the promenade deck, and his well-known figure, camouflaged at the moment under a natty blue suit and collar and tie complete, would fade and merge like a dissolving view into a brown-skinned, happy savage in towel and sola topi. And as for Peter—she was no longer the Peter we had known for a happy ten-month, but a female slave to every twist and quiff of convention. And it was my doing ... all my doing. Or can I thrust the blame on other shoulders after the fashion of brother Adam? Is it not our women-folk who make convention necessary at all to men who, if they followed natural instincts, would revert to the enviable savage?
At Apia, Samoa, Steve was so heartily tired of his environment that he left the ship. He said he could scent civilization afar, and would have none of it. He had met a military official ashore who had offered him a post in the Government on the strength of his war services, and he had accepted. He would stay there in Samoa until I had found another dream ship, when he would join her on receipt of a cable, and continue with us over the remaining half of the world.
He made this promise with an ironical twinkle of the eye that puzzled me at the time, but which has since been abundantly and painfully accounted for.
He left in a native outrigger canoe, hugging his knees on a pyramid of bananas, while the remainder of "the crew" waved him farewell from the steamer's rail, and turned sadly away. A better mate for any venture calling on the best qualities of a man never breathed. Here's to him, "down under," and may that cable not be long delayed!