I Waited Until My Hand Was a Bit Steady 166
“Good!” cried Niâbon exultingly, as both Tepi and myself fired together and three of the native paddlers who were sitting facing us, rolled over off their seats, either dead or badly wounded, for in an instant the utmost confusion prevailed, some of the crew evidently wanting to come on, and the others preventing them. By this time the first boat was within easy pistol range the other, which was much larger and crowded with natives, being about forty yards astern of her, but coming along as hard as she could, two of her crew in the bows firing at us with a disgusting kind of a foreign army rifle, whose conical bullets were half as big as pigeon's eggs, and made a deuce of a noise, either when they hit theLucia, or went by with a sort of a groanlike hum.
“Take this,” I said to Niâbon, giving her my Deane and Adams pistol, “and do you and Tepi keep off those in the nearest boat if they come on again.”
But she waved it aside, and seizing Tematau's carbine, stood up and sent her first shot crashing through the timbers of the boat.
“Quick, Tematau,” I cried, “get another rifle and fire with me at the second boat. Let ours come to the wind—it matters not.”
Picking out one of the two fellows who were shooting so steadily at us from the bows of their boat, I fired and missed, but another shot did for him, for he fell backwards and I saw his rifle fly up in the air and then drop overboard.
This was enough for them, for the steersman at once began to slew her round, and then he too went down as a bullet from Tematau took him fair and square in the chest, and we saw the blood pouring from him as he fell across the gunwale. In another ten seconds they were paddling away from us, leaving the other boat to her fate.
“That is enough,” I cried to Tepi, who I now noticed for the first time was bleeding from a bullet wound in the left arm, which had been hurriedly tied up by Lucia, “that is enough. Put down your gun. There is now no one in the second boat shooting at us.”
“They are lying down in the bottom,” said Niâbon, “we can see them moving, but some have dived overboard, and swum ashore. See, there are four of them running along the reef.”
“Let them go, Niâbon,” and then I turned to Lucia. She was deathly pale, but had all her wits about her, for although she could barely speak from excitement, she had some brandy and water ready for us.
“Thank you,” I said, as I poured a stiff dose into the pannikin, and taking first pull, passed it on to Tepi and the other man. “Now we must have a look at that boat. We can't leave wounded men to drown.”
The wind was now very light, but the boat was so near that we were soon alongside and looking into her. There were three dead, two badly wounded, one slightly wounded man, and one unhurt man in her. The latter looked at us without the slightest fear, even when Tepi, picking up a carbine, thrust the muzzle of it almost into his face. Niâbon gently took the weapon from Tepi's hand, laid it down and waited for me to question our prisoner.
“Is the white man dead?” I asked.
“Ay, he died but now. The bullet went in at where the ribs join.”
To make sure that Tally was really dead I got down into the boat. He was lying on his face and was dead enough, though he had evidently lived until a few minutes previously.
I jumped on board theLuciaagain, and looked anxiously around. There was still a light air, but the tide was now setting in, and I did not want our boat to be carried back into the lagoon again. Then I turned to the prisoner, and asked him if he could tell me why he ought not to be shot. He made a gesture of utter indifference, and said he didn't care. Did I think he was a coward, he asked? Could he not have swum ashore? The king would kill him to-morrow.
Pitying the poor wretch, I gave him a pipe, tobacco, and matches, and told him to help my men put the dead and wounded men on the reef, as I wanted the boat. The people at the fishing village, who had been watching the fight throughout from a safe distance, were within sight, so telling the prisoner he must go to them and get them to carry their dead and wounded up to the houses before the tide covered the reef again, I sent him off with Tematau, Tepi, and Niâbon. Their gruesome task was soon done, and the boat rid of her ensanguined cargo; then as soon as she came alongside again, I called Niâbon on board, and telling her to steer, went into the smaller boat and took theLuciain tow.
As we slowly crept out through the passage, we saw the fisher folk come down to the reef, and, lifting up the three dead men, carry them away, others following with the wounded. It was not a pleasant sight to see, nor even to think of, now that it was all over, and so we none of us spoke as we tugged at the oars.
We got outside at last, and then ceased towing, as a light air carried us well clear of the outer reef. Coming alongside, we stepped on board, after having pulled out the boat's plug. Then we watched her drift astern to fill.
At dawn when I was awakened, after a good four hours' sleep, Apamama was thirty miles astern of us, and we were running free before a nice cool breeze, steering N.W. for Kusaie Island, the eastern outlier of the Carolines, eight hundred miles away.
The two women had not heard me move, and were both sound asleep, their faces close together and their arms intertwined.
We were thirteen long weary days between Apamama Lagoon and Kusaie, whose misty blue outline we hailed with delight when we first sighted it early one afternoon, forty miles away.
Calms and light winds had delayed us greatly, for as we crawled further northward, we were reaching the limit of the south-east trades, which, at that time of the year, were very fickle and shifty. Not a single sail of any description had we seen, though we kept a keen lookout night and day; for, after being ten days out from Apamama, I began to feel anxious about our position and would have liked to have spoken a ship, fearing that the current, in such calm weather, would set us so far to the westward that I should have difficulty in making the island if we once got to leeward of it.
Day after day had passed with the same unvarying monotony—light winds, a calm, then a brisker spell of the dying trades for a few hours, or a day at most—then another calm lasting through the night, and so on.
But our spirits very seldom flagged, and we contrived to make the time pass somehow. Lucia, whose face and hands were now browning deeply from continuous exposure to the rays of a torrid sun worked with Niâbon at dressmaking, for she had brought with her half a dozen bolts of print; and, as they sewed, they would sometimes sing together, whilst I and my two trusty men busied ourselves about the boat—scrubbing, scraping and polishing inside and out, cleaning and oiling our arms; or, when a shoal of bonita came alongside, getting out our lines and catching as many of the blue and marbled beauties as would last us for a day or two. But our chief relaxation, in which the two young women always joined us, was two or three hours of “sailors' pleasure” i.e., overhauling all our joint possessions, clothing, trade goods of all sorts, and carefully restowing them in the boxes in which they were packed.
Tepi's wound by this time was quite healed—the bullet had gone clean through the fleshy part of his arm, and then struck an oar which was lashed to the rail. He had got a nail from me and drove it through the lead into the wood—to be preserved as a memento of the fight.
On the evening of the day on which we sighted the blue peaks of beautiful Kusaie, the sky began to look ugly to the eastward, and at daylight it was blowing so hard, with such a dangerous sea, that I decided not to attempt to enter the weather harbour—Port Lelé—though that had been my intention, but to run round to the lee side to Coquille Harbour, where we could renew our fresh provisions, spell a day or two, and be among friends, for I knew the people of Kusaie pretty well.
We got into the smooth water of Coquille just in time, for no sooner had we dropped anchor at the mouth of a small creek which debouched into the harbour through a number of mangrove islets, than it commenced to blow in real earnest, and terrific rain squalls drenched us through and made us shiver with cold.
The natives, however, had seen us, and presently, as soon as the rain ceased, three canoes appeared, each manned by five men. They welcomed us very heartily and urged us to come to the village—which was less than a quarter of a mile away. We were only too delighted to get ashore again after thirteen days' confinement on our little craft, so hurriedly packing a couple of boxes with dry clothing, and some articles for presents for the people, we put on the cabin hatches, made everything else snug on board, and half an hour later were all in the chiefs house, warm and dry, and telling him and his family as much about ourselves as we thought advisable.
As soon as it could be cooked, they brought us an ample meal of hot baked fowls, pigeons, and fish, with a great quantity of vegetables—taro, yams, breadfruit, and sweet potatoes. The very smell of it, Tepi whispered to me, made his teeth clash together!
We remained with these hospitable people for four days. There was nothing that they would not do for us—no trouble was too groat, no labour was aught but a pleasure to them. They brought theLuciaround to a small sandy beach near the village, discharged her, carried everything up to the houses, and cleaned her thoroughly inside and out, and then put her in the water again for us. When we bid them farewell and sailed, the boat's deck was covered with baskets of freshly-cooked food and a profusion of fruit, and Lucia and Niâbon were accompanied on board by every woman and girl in the place, some of whom wept unrestrainedly, and begged them not to venture their lives in such a small boat, but to remain on the island till a ship touched there, bound to the islands of the further north-west.
Before finally parting with our kind friends I gave them twenty pounds of tobacco, which, though we had still four hundredweight left, was still our most valuable trade article, and would have to be disbursed carefully in future, and Lucia gave the chief's daughter a very handsome gold ring of Indian manufacture, though at first the girl declined accepting so valuable a present.
A Glorious Silver Moon in the Sky 174
We lost sight of Kusaie within ten hours, for we had a slashing breeze, which carried us along in great style, and all that night we sat up, none of us caring to sleep, for there was a glorious silver moon in a sky of spotless blue, and the sea itself was as a floor of diamonds.
Niâbon and Lucia, I must mention, had insisted on standing watch ever since we had left Apamama, and they certainly helped us a lot, for both could now steer very well, and took pleasure in it. The former, with Tepi, was in my watch, the latter was with Tematau, who, like all Eastern Polynesians, was a good sailor-man and could always be relied upon.
We had now sailed over a thousand miles; and every day—every hour I gained more confidence in myself, and the resolution to make one of the greatest boat voyages across the Pacific had been ever strengthening in my mind since the day I looked at Chart No. 780 in Krause's house at Taritai.
What could I not do with such a boat and two such men as Tepi and Tematau, after we had landed Lucia and Niâbon at Guam in the for north! We would refit the boat, and then turn our faces south once more, and sail back through the Western Carolines on to wild New Guinea—Dutch New Guinea, and run along the coast till we came to one of the few scattered Dutch settlements on the shores of thatterra incognita. Tepi and Tematau would stick to me—they had sworn to do so—had told me so in whispers one bright night, as we three kept watch together and Lucia and Niâbon slept.
Niâbon! What a strange strange girl she was! I should find it hard to say goodbye to her, I thought; and then I felt my cheeks flush.
Say goodbye to her—part from her! Why should we part? Was I so much her superior that I need be ashamed of asking her to be my wife? What was I, anyway, but a broken man—a man whose father, my sole remaining relative, had nearly twenty years before told me with savage contempt that I had neither brains, energy, nor courage enough to make my way in the world, thrown me a cheque for a hundred pounds, and sneeringly told me to get it cashed at once, else he might repent of having given it to me to squander among the loose people with whom I so constantly associated. And I had never seen or heard from him, and never would. But I had that cheque still, for there always was in me a latent affection for the cold-faced, unsympathetic man who had broken my mother's heart, not by open unkindness, but by what the head gardener whisperingly told me (when she was lying dead, and I, sent for from college to attend the funeral, went to his cottage to see him) was “silent, inwisible neglect, Master James; silent, inwisible neglect. That's wot killed her.” For the servants loved my poor mother—their opinion of my father they discreetly kept to themselves. So I had kept the cheque, for burning with resentment against him as I was at the time, I remembered the words of my mother's last letter to me, written with her dying hand.
“Try hard to please him, James. He is very cold and stern, but I am sure that, deep down in his heart, he loves you well.”
That letter, with the cheque inside it, was now yellowed, and the writing faint, but I had kept them both. I would write to him some day, I had thought, and send him back the cheque, and my mother's letter as well, and then perhaps the hard old man would forgive me, and write and say “Come.” But the years went by, and I never wrote, and now it was too late, after fifteen had passed. Very likely he was dead, and had willed his money to churches or hospitals, or some such charities, and I should always be “Jim Sherry, the trader,” to the end of my days, and never “James Shervinton, Esq., of Moya Woods, Donegal.”
Well, after all, what did it matter? I thought, as I held on to the forestay, and looked at the now paling moon sinking low down on our lee, as the glow of the coming sun tipped a bank of cloud to windward, with a narrow wavering ribbon of shining gold. I had nothing at which to grumble. My fifteen years of wandering had done me good, although I had not saved money—money, that in my father's eyes brought, before eternal salvation in the next world, primarily the beatitudes of some county eminence in Ireland and British respectability generally in this. Unless my father was still alive, and I could know he wanted to see me before he died, I should never go home—not after fifteen years of South Sea life.
Why should I not accept what Fate meant for me, and my own inclinations told me that I was destined for? I was intended to be “Jim Sherry, the trader,”—and I should ask “Niâbon, of Danger Island,” to be “Jim Sherry's” wife. Why not. I had never cared for any woman before except in a fleeting, and yet degrading manner—in a way which had left no memories with me that I could look back upon with tender regrets. She and I together might do great things in the South Seas, and found a colony of our own. She had white blood in her veins—of that I felt certain—and where Ben Boyd, of the old colonial days, failed to achieve, I, with a woman like Niâbon for my wife, could succeed. Ben Boyd was a dreamer, a man of wealth and of flocks and herds, in the newly-founded convict settlement of New South Wales, and his dream was the founding of a new state in the Solomon Islands, where he, an autocratic, but beneficent ruler, would reign supreme, and the English Government recognise him as a Clive, a Warren Hastings of the Southern Seas. But the clubs of the murderous Solomon Islanders—the country of the people in which he had already planned out vast achievements on paper—battered out his brains almost under the guns of his beautiful armed yacht, theWanderer; and the name of Ben Boyd was now alone remembered by a decayed village and a ruined lighthouse on the south headland of Twofold Bay, in New South Wales, where, in the days of his prosperity, he had erected it, as a guide to the numerous American and English whaleships, which in those times traversed the Pacific from one end to the other, and would, he imagined, eagerly avail themselves of the quiet, landlocked harbour to repair and recruit, and sell their cargoes of sperm oil. But they never came, and his dream was ended ere his life was gone.
Yes, I would ask her, as soon as I had an opportunity of speaking to her alone. It was true that she had once told me that she would never part from Lucia—and Lucia had often spoken to me of their plans for the future.
But, my vanity whispered, she would listen to me She cared for me, I was sure, and would not long hesitate. We were certain to meet with at least one missionary going through the Carolines, and he would many us. If we did not, it would not matter—there were half a dozen Spanish priests in Guam. Then after our marriage I would go on in the boat to Amboyna, where I had a business friend, a rich trader—a man who liked and trusted me, and who would give me a thousand, ay, two thousand pounds' worth of trade goods for my pencilled I.O.U. in his notebook. Then I would buy a little schooner, and sail with Niâbon to the islands of the south-eastern Pacific, and begin trading. I would make Rapa, in the Austral Group, my head station, or else Manga Reva in the southern Paumotus—Niâbon should decide.
The low cloud to windward lifted, the red sun leapt from the sea-rim, and then I felt a soft hand on my arm.
“What are you thinking of, Jim? I called you twice, but you did not hear. I believe you were talking to yourself, for I twice saw you throw out your arm as if you were speaking to some one.”
“I believe I was, Lucia,” I replied with a laugh. “I was day-dreaming.”
“Tell me, Jim,” she said softly, so softly that her voice sank to a whisper.
“Not now, Lucia. Wait till we get to the next land.” And then in all innocence I added, as I looked at her, “How bright and happy you look, Lucia! I think you grow more beautiful every day.”
She lifted her eyes to mine for one instant, and I saw in them a light I had never seen before.
“Te fanua, te fanua! te fanua umi, umi lava!” (“Land, land! a long, long land!”)
As we, the “watch below”—Niâbon, Tepi, and myself—heard Tematau's loud cry, we sat up, and saw a long, dark line pencilled on the horizon right ahead, which we knew was the great lonely atoll named Providence Island on the charts, and called Ujilon by the natives of the North-Western Pacific.
It was daylight of the sixth day out from Kusaie, and as I stood up to get a better view of the land I was well satisfied.
“We have done well,” I said exultantly to Lucia, who was steering: “three hundred and forty miles in five days—with a two-knot current against us all the way!”
Saw a Barque Lying on the Reef 182
I did not know my way into Ujilon Lagoon, for I had never been there before, so I now had some trouble in picking up one of the two passages on the south side of the great atoll. At seven o'clock, just as we were entering it, we saw a barque lying on the reef about half a mile away to the northward. She was a good lump of a vessel—apparently of about seven or eight hundred tons, and the remnants of some of her upper canvas still fluttered to the breeze. We could discern no sign of life about her, nor were any boats visible; but we had no time to examine her just then, so sailed on across the lagoon, and, instead of dropping anchor, ran gently on to the beach of a densely wooded island, for the water was not only as smooth as glass, but very deep, the “fall” from the edge of the beach being very steep.
In an hour we had lightened the boat sufficiently to float her along a narrow waterway, which wound a sinuous course through the solid coral rock into a little basin or natural dock, where we could board her at either low or high water, without wetting our feet, though she had a clear fathom of water under her keel.
The lagoon seemed alive with large and small fish—none of which, Niâbon said, were poisonous, like two thirds of those of the Marshall Island atolls, and the beaches and sand-flats were covered with small golden-winged plover, who displayed not the slightest fear of our presence, letting us approach them within a few yards, then rising and settling down again. From where we were we could see but seven of the chain of fifteen islands which comprised the atoll; all of these were thickly covered with coco palms, bearing an enormous crop of nuts, and here and there groves of jack-fruit and pandanus broke the monotonous beauty of the palms by their diversity of foliage.
No traces of natives were visible, though I knew that there were a few—about thirty all told—for the redoubtable Captain Bully Hayes, who claimed Ujilon as his own, and whose brig was the first ship to enter the lagoon, had I knew established friendly intercourse with them. Two years before, I had met the famous captain at Anchorite's Islands—to the north of the Admiralty Group—when he had given me a description of Ujilon and its marvellous fertility, and had tried to induce me to go there with him with a gang of natives, and make oil for him. But although he made me a most liberal offer—he was a most delightful man to talk to, was the “South Sea pirate”—I did not trust him well enough, despite his merry, laughing blue eyes, jovial voice and handsome face, for he was a man who could be all things to all men; and the blue eyes sometimes went black, and the smooth, shapely hand that was for ever stroking the long flowing beard, liked too well to feel a trigger in the crook of its forefinger. So I laughingly declined his offer—even when, as an extra inducement, he pointed out to me a very handsome young Marshall Island girl, who would do the station honours for me at Ujilon.
“All right, Mr. Sherry,” he said, “please yourself;” and then over another bottle of wine, he gave me some further particulars about the great atoll, and told me of how it had taken him two months to get into communication with the few inhabitants; and of the particular island on which their village was concealed amid a dense grove of pandanus palms. But that was two years ago, and I had forgotten much that he had told me. However, as I intended to remain at Ujilon for two or three days, it was likely that we might come across them—they were very quiet and inoffensive people, so there was no danger to be apprehended from a meeting.
By noon we had our temporary camp made comfortable, and were having dinner when five natives made their appearance—three men and two women—coming towards us in a canoe. They landed without the slightest hesitation, and sat down with us; but we found that they spoke the Marshall Island dialect, which none of us but Niâbon could speak, and she but slightly. However, we managed to worry along, and to our surprise learned that Hayes had been at the island in his famous brig, theLeonora, only a month before, and that for a year and six months previously, seventy Line Island natives had been working on the islands under the supervision of a white man, making oil for the captain, but most of them, and the white man as well, had left the atoll in the brig, for Hayes had been so well pleased with the result of their work that he invited forty of the seventy to come on board and go with him to Ponapé, in the Carolines, for a month's recreation and “feasting” on that beautiful island.
He Had Sailed 188
So with forty of his sturdy Line Islanders, and seven hundred barrels of coco-nut oil, he had sailed; and now, said our five friends, he would soon be back—perhaps in two days—perhaps in ten, or twenty, or more, for how could one tell what the winds would be? He was a good man, was the captain, but hot and sudden in his anger, over-fond of women who were good to look at, and cruel to those who sought to cross his desire; but generous—always generous—and kind to those who were weak and ill, giving them good medicine and rich food; tins of the red rich fish calledsamaniwhich came from his own country, and biscuit and bread such as white men eat. Ah, he was a good man was “Puli Ese” (Bully Hayes).
“Ask them about the wretched ship on the reef,” I said to Niâbon, repeating the first question I had tried to put to them, but which they did not answer, so eager were they to tell us about Captain Hayes and themselves; “ask them all about her—when did she run ashore, and where are the crew?”
Ah, the ship, the great ship! they replied. She had run up on the reef one night four moons ago, when the sky was bright and clear, and the wind blew strongly; and when in the morning they discerned her from the village, the white man had two boats manned to go to her assistance, but as the boats approached, two cannons fired heavy balls at them from the deck of the ship; and although the white man (Hayes's trader) tied his handkerchief to an oar and held it upright, the people on the ship continued to fire on the boats with the big cannons, and with muskets, and then, when one man was hit by a bullet and died quickly, the white man cursed those on the ship for fools, and turned the boats shoreward again, saying that those on board could perish before he would try to help them again. By sunset three boats, filled with men, had left the ship and sailed to the south. In the morning the white man (whom I knew from their description of him to be a well-known and decent South Sea trader named Harry Gardiner) boarded the ship and began to remove all that was of value on shore. Her hold was filled with all sorts of goods in barrels and cases, and when “Puli Ese” came, three months later, he was well pleased, not only for the seven hundred barrels of oil, but with the many things that had been gotten from the wrecked ship.
We promised our new friends to come up to their village—where they and about twenty of their fellow islanders lived with the remainder of Bully Hayes's Line Island contingent—on the following day, and sent them away with a few trifling presents. As they said they could walk back, and I wanted to have a look at the wreck, they cheerfully agreed to let their canoe remain with us.
About four in the afternoon, as the heat of the sun began to relax, I determined to set out in the canoe. Tematau and Tepi had gone across to the weather side of the island with my gun to shoot plover and frigate birds, of which latter, so the natives had told us, there were great numbers to be found on the high trees to windward. Lucia and Niâbon were resting in the shade, but the latter, when she saw me pushing the canoe into the water, asked me to let her come also.
“Yes, of course; and you too, Lucia. Won't you come as well?” I said.
“No, Jim. I feel very lazy, and I'm always so afraid of canoes,” she said with a smile, “and do be careful and not be capsized; look at all those horrid sharks swimming about—I can see nearly twenty of them from where I am sitting.”
Both Niâbon and I laughed at her fears—the sharks were not man-eaters, as we knew by their black-tipped fins, though the species were dangerous when bad weather made the fish on which they preyed scarce; then they became vicious and daring enough, and would at times actually tear the oars out of the hands of a boat's crew. However, Lucia would not come, saying she would await the return of the men and pluck the plover which they were sure to bring back with them.
“Very well, Lucia,” I said, “we'll leave you to yourself. Imusthave a look at the barque, and find out her name. Wrecks have always had an attraction for me; and, besides that, I want to get a sheet or two of copper to nail over our stem, which was badly hurt when we ran ashore in Apamama Lagoon.”
In another minute or two Niabon and I started, she sitting for'ard and I aft. The wind had died away, and the surface of the lagoon was as smooth as glass, and, through the crystal-clear water, we could discern the glories of the gorgeously-hued coral forest below. Is there such another sight in all the world as is revealed when you look down upon the bottom of a South Sea atoll.
Ah, no, there cannot be! And here as I write, there is before me the cold German Ocean, heaving and tumbling; grey, grim, and sullen under a dulled and leaden sky, and snowflakes beat and beat incessantly upon the opened windows of my room. Out upon the moor there is a flock of snow-white seagulls, driven to land by the wild weather, and as I gaze at them, fluttering to and fro, their presence seems to creep into my heart, and their wild, piping notes to say, “You will go back, you will go back, and see some of us again; not here, under cold skies, but where the bright sun for ever shines upon a sea of deepest blue.”
For half an hour or more we paddled in silence over the smooth waters of that sweet lagoon, the bow of the canoe kept steadily on towards the wrecked barque; and as I looked at the graceful figure of my companion, with her dark, glossy hair flowing over her back and swaying to and fro with every stroke, and saw the graceful poise of her head, and the backward sweep of her two little hands as she plunged her paddle into the water, and withdrew it swiftly and noiselessly, I felt that I could not, I must not delay in asking her to be my wife. Not that her physical beauty had so wrought upon my feelings—I was above that, I thank God, and a level brain—but because I felt that I loved her, ay, honestlylovedher, and that she was a good and true woman, and our union would be a happy one.
It took us much longer than we anticipated in coming up to the stranded ship, or rather to the inside edge of the reef on which she lay, high and dry, half a mile further to seaward. Taking my hammer and a blunt chisel—to prize off a sheet of copper—we made the canoe fast to a coral boulder, and set off across the reef, which gave forth a strong but sickly odour caused by the heat of the sun acting on the many-coloured and many-shaped marine organisms and living coral.
Niâbon, whose feet were protected by strongtakka(sandals woven of coco-nut fibre), stepped lightly and swiftly on before me; I with my heavy boots crushing into the brittle, delicate, and sponge-like coral, startling from their sunbaths hundreds of black and orange-banded sea-snakes—reptiles whose bite is as deadly as that of a rattlesnake, but which hastened out of our way almost as soon as they heard our footsteps. Here and there we had to turn aside to avoid deep pools, some of which, though not more than ten fathoms in width, were as blue as the ocean beyond, their rocky walls starting sheer up from their bases to the crust of the reef.
At Last We Reached the Ship 194
At last we reached the ship, and stood under her bowsprit. She was standing almost upright, wedged in tightly between three huge boulders, one on her port, and two on her starboard side, and I saw that she had struck with great violence, for just abreast of her foremast there was a jagged hole through which we could see into her lower hold. The natives had told us that there had been an unusually high tide when she ran ashore, and had it not been for her bringing up against the boulders, she might have torn her way over the reef into the lagoon, as she was under a strong press of sail, and the sea was smooth, and the stars shining brightly. Most of her copper had been stripped off by Hayes, but later on I found all I wanted by crawling under the bilge, and prizing off a few undamaged sheets.
“Let us find out her name before we go on board,” I said to my companion. “She's a foreigner, I'm sure.”
Walking round to her stern we looked up and saw her name,Agostino Rombo, Livorno, painted in white letters.
“Ah, I thought she was a foreigner, Niabon. I fancy we shall find a strong smell of garlic as soon as we get on deck.”
Turning up along the port side, we soon found an easy way of getting on board, for just abreast of the mainmast Hayes's Chinese carpenters had cut down the main deck from the water-ways to the bilge, so as to give free access to the upper and lower holds.
We first examined the lower hold, which contained about two hundred tons of New Caledonian nickel ore, and which, valuable as it was, Hayes had not troubled about removing. In the 'tween deck there was nothing to show of what the main portion of her cargo had consisted—everything had been removed, and only great piles of dunnage remained, and I came to the conclusion that theAgostino Romboof Leghorn had been bound from some Australian port to China with a general cargo, when her incapable skipper ran her ashore—to Bully Hayes's satisfaction and benefit.
Ascending from the dark and silent 'tween decks, where our footsteps and voices echoed and re-echoed as though we were walking and speaking in some mountain cavern, we ascended to the main deck into the fresh, sweet daylight, though the sun was now low down on the western sky, and the first thing that attracted our attention was a lengthy notice on the mainmast, carefully and neatly painted on a sheet of copper. And as I read it, I could but laugh at Captain Hayes's natural American business instincts, combined with his usual humorous mendacity—
“Notice to Wrecking Parties.
“I, William Henry Hayes, master and owner of the brigLeonora, of Shanghai, hereby notify all and sundry that the barqueAgostino Rombo, of Leghorn, as she now lies on this reef, has been purchased by me from Captain Pasquale Lucchesi, and any person attempting to remove any of her deck-houses, spars, anchors, or cables, or certain nickel ore in the lower hold, are liable to be indicted for piracy. But all anchors, cables, and ground tackle generally may be removed on payment of 250 dols. to my native agent on this island.”
From the main deck we ascended to the poop, and went below into the now darkening cabin, which we found was gutted of everything of value, except the captain's and officers' bedding, which had been tossed aside by Hayes and his crew, and which even the natives of Ujilon had regarded as too worthless to take away, though many a poor sailor man, shivering in northern seas, would have clutched at them as eagerly as a Jew pawnbroker would clutch at a necklace of pearls or a diamond-set tiara. The panelling of the main cabin was painted in white and gold, and presented a very handsome appearance, and on the door of every stateroom was an exceedingly well-painted picture of some saint renowned in history—evidently the owners of theAgostino Rombowere of pious minds. Underneath one of these pictures, that of St. Margaret of Hungary, was scribbled in pencil, “Maggie is my fancy. Frank Hussey, mate brigLeonora.”
I scratched out the ribald words with my knife, and then we went up through the companion to the poop, and looked along the deserted deck, whose once white planking was now cracking and discolouring under the fierce rays of the torrid sun, to which it had been exposed for four months.
We sat down together on a seat, which was placed for-ard of the skylight, and gazed at the lofty masts and spars, which, denuded of all their running gear, stood out stark, grim, and mournful against the rays of a declining sun. On the fore-topgallant yard a frigate bird and his mate stood, oblivious of our presence, and looking shoreward at the long, long line of verdure clothing the islets four miles away.
“Simi,” said Niâbon, clasping her little brown hands together at the back of her head, and leaning against the skylight, “we must return to the canoe ere the tide riseth, for, see, the sun is low down, and Lucia will think that some harm hath befallen us if we delay.”
She spoke in Samoan, the language she generally used when we were alone, for she could express herself better in it even than in English, so she said, though both Lucia and myself had often told her, not banteringly, that her English was sweet to hear.
“Heed not the sinking sun, Niâbon,” I replied, in the same language, “the tide will not yet cover the reef for an hour or more, and the night will be bright and clear.... Niâbon, turn thy face to me.”
I took her hand and drew her closer to me.
“Niâbon, I love thee. I have loved thee since the time when thou first saidst to me, 'Shall I give thee sleep?' And for ever since hast thou been in my mind. See, I have loved no other woman as I love thee, and it is my heart's desire to make thee my wife.”
She drew herself away from me with blazing eyes.
“Thy wife, thy wife! Simi, what madness is this? Hast thou no eyes to see? Is thy mind so dull that thou dost not know that Lucia hath loved thee, and that even at this moment her heart acheth for thy return. Dost thou notknow?”
“I care not for her but as a friend,” I said hotly; “'tis thee alone I desire. Thou art always in my mind, and I will be good and true to thee, Niâbon; for I love thee well. Be my wife. Together thee and I——”
The angry light in her eyes died out, and she placed her cheek to mine.
“Simi, I care more for thee than for any one in the world, save Lucia, and Lucia hath all my heart and all my love. And she so loves thee, Simi—she so loves thee that it is her heart's desire to be thy wife.... Come, dear friend, let us return and forget all but that Lucia awaits.”
She passed her hand softly over my face, pressed her lips to my forehead, and then I followed her down from the silent deck on to the reef, and thence onwards to the canoe.
All that she said to me that night as we returned over the stilly waters of the lagoon to our companions, I cannot now remember; I only know that as she sat facing me, and I paddled slowly and dreamily along, I promised her, dully and mechanically, to tell Lucia that night that I loved her.
“And she and thee will be happy, very happy, Simi. Her heart went out to thee from the very first. And children will come to thee, and I shall see them grow—the boys strong and brave as thou art, and the girls fair and sweet as Lucia—and yet shalt thou have thy heart's desire, and be spoken of as a man who did a great deed... a great voyage... and all that hath been done by the three men of whom thou hast so often thought will be but as little compared with this voyage of thine. And she so loves thee, Simi; ah, she so loves thee.”
The soft murmur of her voice enthralled, took such possession of me mentally and physically, that I know not what I answered except that I said again and again, “Ay, I love her, I love her, and I shall tell her of my love, and that she, and she alone, is my heart's desire.”
How long we were in getting back to the island I cannot tell, but I do remember that it was quite dark, and both Niâbon and myself were paddling vigorously when we heard Tepi's load hail of welcome, and a canoe shot up on the beach, and Lucia came towards me with outstretched hands.
“Jim, oh Jim! I thought you were never coming back,” she said.
I folded her in my arms and kissed her. “Lucia, dear, dear Lucia! Will you be my wife? For I love you,” and then, scarcely knowing what I was doing, I strained her almost savagely to my bosom, and kissed her upturned face again and again.
“Jim, dear, dear Jim,” and her soft arms were around my neck, “and I love you too! I have loved you almost from the day you first came to Taritai, and Niâbon has told me that one day you would tell me that you loved me... that some day you would speak... Jim dearest, bend down; you are so tall, and I am so little; ah, Jim, I am so little, but my heart, dear, is so big with love for you, that I feel that I could takeyouin my arms, and kiss you as you now kiss me. Jim, dear, I never, never knew what love meant till now.”
A bright burst of flame illumined the beach, and Niâbon with a torch in her hand was standing at the water's edge.
“The night is fair and good, and the wind is from the east. Let us away, dear friends.”
Her voice seemed to reach me as if from far, far away, though her dark face with the deep luminous eyes were so near, and, as she spoke, the boat, with Tepi and Tematau standing erect and waiting, grounded gently on the strand.
“Yes, yes, we shall sail to-night,” I cried exultantly, as I again pressed Lucia to my heart, and showered passionate kisses upon her lips, “we shall sail, Lucia my dearest; on, and on, and on, to the north-west, my beloved, till we come to our journey's end, and you and I shall never part again, no never, never, my dearest.”
“Ay, never, never shall ye two part again,” cried Niâbon, casting down her torch; “man with the strong and daring hand, and woman with the fond and tender heart. Thy lives are forever linked together. Quick, give me thy hand, Lucia, my dove, my own, my own!” She sprang towards us, and took Lucia's hand in hers, and almost tore off her wedding ring, and then flung it far out into the lagoon.
“Sink, sink, thou ring of misery—thou golden circle which should have meant love and trust and happiness, but brought naught but hate and treachery and poison to her who wore it. Sink, accursed thing.”
“Oh, Jim, Jim!” and Lucia turned her streaming eyes to mine, “it was my wedding ring, and whenhegave it to me, I think he loved me, wicked and cruel as he was afterwards. Oh, Niâbon, Niâbon!” In a moment Niâbon's arms were around her. “My sweet, my sweet! thou art to me more than life,” she whispered, “I love thee so, Lucia. I love thee so that I would die for thee! Heed not the ring, for now thou hast beside thee a good man—true, brave, and strong—one whose love will forever shield thee. Come, my dearest, come with me to the boat.”
They went down the beach together, with arms around each other's waists, and their footsteps guided by the still-burning torch lying on the sand. I followed, and in another minute I had the tiller in my hand, and told Tepi to push off, as Tematau ran up the jib.
“How now for the passage?” I cried, as I slipped my arm around Lucia's waist, and her lips met mine, “how now for the passage, Tepi? Canst see? Canst see, Tematau?”
Niâbon placed her hand on mine.
“Have no fear, Simi. The wind is fair and the passage through the reef is wide, and the ship on the right hand is a good guide. See, her masts stand out clear against the sky. And give me the tiller, for thou and Lucia are tired. So sleep—sleep till the dawn, and Tematau and Tepi and I shall keep watch through the night. How shall I steer?”
“North-west, north-west,” I muttered, as Lucia laid her cheek to mine, “north-west, but call me if the wind hauls to the northward.”
She bent oyer Lucia and touched her face softly.
“Sleep, dear one, sleep till dawn,” she said in a whisper, and then with a smile she turned to me.
“Simi, thou too art tired, and must sleep even as Lucia sleepeth now. See, her eyes are closed. How sweet and fair she is as she sleepeth! Ah, how sweet! So, let me touch thy face.” She pressed her soft hand on my brow, and then, with Lucia's head pillowed on my breast, I slept.