Benbow’s Return—The Old Blackbirder at Home—The Broaching of the Rum
Barrel—A Musical Evening—Benbow and his Daughter—Fatherly
Discretion
FOR several days Grimes and I sweated away unloading a schooner that
arrived from Papeete with stores and lay in Hatiaeu Bay. Being cashless,
we were obliged to work at times. The heat was terrific. I wore white
duck pants, a dirty shirt and a native hat made out of a banana leaf,
and we both looked like sunburnt niggers. One night as we crept home
along the Broom Road, dying for a drink—for we’d been working in the
schooner’s coal hold—we heard sounds of wild revelry issuing from the
grog shanty. Waylao’s father, Benbow, was back in Tai-o-hae!
The fun had commenced, and the shellbacks had welcomed him home like a
lot of expectant, ragged schoolboys.
Benbow was something of a Captain Kidd. I have kept his correct name
back, but it will not hurt his posthumous reputation to say that he had
been one of the old-time blackbirders, and he was indeed a wonder, if
half of his yarns about himself were true. He was a burly, typical
Britisher, with a big beard of reddish hue, fiery, like his temper, and
very expressive-looking eyes.
Though the shellbacks and derelicts of those days congregated eagerly in
that little parlour of his snug homestead, they trembled in their
sea-boots when he roared at one hint of contradiction. Yet a kind word
at the critical moment made those blue, steely eyes of his soften. He
was the biggest bluffer I’ve ever met.
Benbow gave me twenty dollars to go to his place and play the fiddle, so
I know all about his idiosyncrasies. I think I would have accepted the
job if only for the fun of the entertainment. That old cottage fairly
shook on those spree nights. Should one rash member of that convivial,
unshaved troop express doubt of his host’s word, the great Tai-o-hae
gathering became plunged into the deepest gloom.
It is recorded in the Tai-o-hae annals of beachcomberism how the great
meeting of shellbacks at a certain date of the year had been suddenly
dispersed in the very midst of a glorious beano. Like the voice of Doom,
Benbow had yelled forth his fierce invectives. Men still live in those
parts who can recall how the echoes of the night hills recorded, like
some mighty gramophone, the voice of their exasperated host.
“Shiver me timbers! You doubt me? By God! Eh? You doubt me? You dare,
you son of a b—— nigger!” Then would come the final crash, as, lifting
old Lydia’s family heirloom—a war-club—he would strike the rim of the
mighty keg of rum, the bung of the barrel of fiery liquor that had been
specially broached to celebrate his return home. One more crash and the
bung was driven into the head. Ere the awestruck, broken-hearted
shellbacks rose and filed out into the homeless night, they would gaze
pathetically in silent appeals. Benbow was relentless. Out into the
night they would go, muttering deadly imprecations on the one who had
doubted Benbow and so brought unutterable sorrow on their heads.
But often the winds of Fate blew fair, and the cottage in the hills
trembled with ribald song, as, with his red, bushy beard shaking, Benbow
sat enthroned in his old arm-chair. Behind him the old grandfather clock
merrily ticked, as he yelled forth some chantey:
“Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest,
Yo! ho! ho! for a bottle of rum!”
Then would come the chorus from a choir of wrinkled, pulsing, groggy
throats as those ragged, sunburnt shellbacks clinked their rum mugs.
Those derelicts would roar forth glorious toasts to the glory of the
most highest—Benbow—as eyes looked into “eyes that spake again, and all
went merry” in Tai-o-hae. Old Lydia steamed from head to feet as she
shot to and fro replenishing the rum mugs. Father O’Leary would hear
“the sounds of revelry by night” in the distance, lift his arms to the
sky and say: “Oh, those white men!”
I know it nearly broke the drums of my ears the first time Grimes and I
responded to the invitation. They sang _Blow the Man Down_ that night,
and the ancient sea-song reminded me of my first voyage on a sailing
ship. It is a melody that seems to mysteriously express in a few bars
the true atmosphere of ocean life. As those old shellbacks sang it, in
their inimitable style, I fancied I saw the old wooden ships going down
the English Channel when the world was young. I saw the old sailors
singing that capstan song as they toiled. I saw their bearded,
crooked-nosed faces shine in the moonlight as they climbed aloft,
disappeared among the wide grey canvas sails, and vanished in the sky a
hundred years ago.
It was only when the night grew old, when Benbow’s fist struck the table
with indisputable conviction, and all the assemblage enthusiastically
believed his yarn that their songs resembled chaos.
Some banged mugs on the table, others thumped the floor with their
sea-boots, as their bearded throats roared out the choruses. No
barbarian cataclysm of joyous sound could outrival that pandemonium of
jangled melody. It resembled the steam-organ of a circus roundabout with
the pipes at full blast and out of tune. It seemed that the stops, the
bassoons, clarionets, double basses, horns, sopranos, cymbals, bagpipes,
drums, faint tinkles of the banjo and weird piston-rods of sound still
crashed forth, toiling on in some terrible ensemble as the great musical
engine broke down.
Ye gods! it was a pandemonium! Grimes and I stood at the door seeking
fresh air that night. We couldn’t stand it.
The natives came creeping across the hills. They heard that singing from
afar. Those awestruck Marquesans looked like happy ghosts as they crept
beneath the moonlit bread-fruit trees and listened. What did they think
of it, the great white man’s barbarian festival?
“Go it, allee samee nicee!” said one great tattooed warrior from Anahao
when Grimes gave him a bit of _tabak_ (tobacco).
Once more the roof of Benbow’s cottage vibrated as the chorus of _I owe
Ten Shillings to O’Grady_ struck the silence of those South Sea hills.
In the middle of the songs came the hubbub of various calls for rum,
terrible oaths and enthusiastic encores. It sounded like some mighty
gramophonic record coming on telegraph wires through the earth’s centre,
rumbling and humming from far-off civilisation, from the other side of
the globe, ay, from London town itself, as the thousand echoes struck
the silent hills of heathendom. The native children also flocked across
the slopes. Standing on their curly heads, they clapped their tiny
hands, and fairly screamed with ecstatic delight as they shouted
“Joranna!” One little dusky beggar, who was stone blind, but had ears,
wrung his tiny hands, and ran round and round under the moonlit
coco-palms. I saw his little tawny face gleam with joy in the moonlight
as once again came the thunder of that jovial chorus:
“I owe ten shillings to O’Grady;
He thinks he’s got a mortgage on my life.
He calls on me early every morning,
At night-time sends his wife!”
(Here came tremendous crashes of sea-boots, thumping mugs, and shouts of
“Go it, you b—— son of a sea-cook!” Crash! Thump! Then a howl of extreme
delight as old mother Lydia lifted her chemise and danced!)
“He wants me to pawn the grand piano!” came the second verse, followed
by the “Ta! Ra! Ra! Ra! Ra!”
No living musician, no Wagner of wordy mirth could describe the
expressive thunder of that final “Ta! Ra! Ra! Ra!”
“It’s glorious, Grimes,” said I. “Listen to the echoes of advancing
civilisation, the echoes of the ghostly footfalls of the coming tramp of
white men, salvation armies, bands of hope, the advance guard of the
great unwashed! Hear it, Grimes? It’s the sound of the great sign of the
London Cross arriving under the Southern Cross, that cross up there
inscribed in gold letters across the vault of infinity—the oldest cross
in existence.”
By this time the natives had commenced to dance on the hills. Though
they had been converted, they forgot their vows and joined in with the
white man’s hilarity. I saw their legs go up in the moonlight! They
looked so happy. The very sight of those handsome, tattooed men and
fine-looking Marquesan girls inspired me. I turned to Grimes and rattled
off _ex tempore_:
“O Grimes,
They’ll come! they’ll build a church, stone prison walls;
Catch wild men by their huts who dare to sing:
Erect a gallows. When its trap-door falls
Civilisation will be in full swing!
Maybe, they’ll read these lines, my modest pun
On loveliness and truth beneath the sun.
They’ll say: ’Who wrote such words of unbelief?
Some poet wretch, no doubt, they are so neat.’
Alas! ’tis true that white men cooked like beef
Were welcomed in South Seas and found a treat!”
I can see Grimes’s grin in the moonlight now. The tune was fine. Of
course I didn’t mean it exactly as I sang it. Nor is there any need to
explain what I really meant. No one but a fool would suggest that
missionaries and men who strive to do their best are not a thousand
times better than the millions who are _not_ missionaries.
Dear old Grimes! Writing in this strain brings back the old memories.
I often dressed him up, lent him a white collar and nice clean tie, and
very well he looked. It’s true that when I took him to the Presidential
Ball, given by the French commissionaires at Papeete, he got drunk,
disgraced me, went on his knees before the President’s wife, kissed her
hand, and murmured “Vivy L’Impératrice.” I must admit she was a
fascinating creature. He cried afterwards and begged my forgiveness. But
there! my memories of the hallowed Grimes are too sacred to recall his
little failings.
But to return to the home-coming of Benbow. As I have said, there was a
terrible rumpus when he arrived. He came to the grog shanty ere he went
up to his home, accompanied by Ken-can, his chief mate, who had a face
like a death’s-head and on his lips a sinister, everlasting grin.
Ken-can was a mystery, and, God knows, he looked one. They even hinted
in the shanty that he had once been a hangman in Sydney. Be that as it
may, no one on earth knew why Benbow liked, or even tolerated, that
shadow-like, silent figure by his side. He seldom spoke, his eyes seemed
always staring, as though he knew his destiny, and moved towards it with
a grin. He looked and behaved, for all the world, like a peaked-capped,
ragged, walking scarecrow, watching over old Benbow and striving to
frighten off his jolly pals. He would stand at the shanty door while
Benbow drank, waiting like some Nemesis. When Benbow was in his
homestead, and the shellbacks roared forth their songs, that ragged
figure would stand before the door, staring at the stars. Waylao would
run by him half scared out of her wits, as if he were a ghost.
He roused my curiosity, and one night as he stood outside the shanty
staring up at the heavens I asked him for a match, put out my hand to
receive it, and lo! I touched nothing—the figure, that sardonic face,
had vanished.
“Rum,” you say. Well, perhaps you haven’t lived near Tai-o-hae. It may
have been a joke of Ken-can’s; he knew that we discussed him, and called
him “that mystery.” He looked unearthly enough for a joke of any subtle
kind.
Well that night when the beachcombers were sitting in Benbow’s snug
parlour roaring forth song in the good old style, while their host was
reviving his wonderful tales of his good old blackbirding days, Waylao
crept out of the forest, returning from her tryst. The sounds of that
rollicking chorus told her that her father was home from sea. She was
trembling, for she had just crossed the hollows where the officials had
but a few days before found a dead convict, an escape with gyves still
gripping his cold wrists. As the girl approached her home she saw that
everlasting figure, Ken-can, standing at the door, pointing with his
finger to the stars. His shadow on the moonlit taro patch by the door
was the first hint of his presence to Waylao. That shadow stood erect in
the moonlight, magnified on the mossy slope in front of the brightly lit
parlour window. Even the bearded faces of the shellbacks, lifting mighty
shadow rum mugs to their lips, were distinctly visible on that little
slope outside.
Waylao crept by Ken-can with her face half averted; like a
terror-stricken child she rushed by him, entered the doorway and nearly
fell into her mother’s arms. I could easily understand Waylao’s fright,
for I had often felt that way myself, in the dark. Old Benbow embraced
his daughter. His pride at seeing her developed beauty was immense. He
held her in his arms as he sat there in the old chair surrounded by his
ragged, impecunious courtiers. Old Lydia opened her mouth with
astonishment and pride as Benbow told of his wonderful deeds.
Grimes became quite sentimental as he gazed at Waylao: it was he who
suggested that the crew should arise and drink her health. His voice, as
he sang beside me, sounded quite sweet as he joined in each old English
song that the wild men of the sea yelled.
Benbow ordered Waylao out of the room ere he began to tell the latest
Tahitian love stories. He prided himself on being a wise and just
parent. “Mates,” he said, as he gave a knowing wink, “it’s best to keep
such tales from young ears, and so let a girl remain innocent of such
ribaldry.”
Grimes and I saw her that night. We were just off home to the hulk when
she came out of the little room. Grimes hiccupped, and gave her a
flower, falling forward gallantly on one knee and kissing her hand as he
presented the innocent gift. Waylao looked very pleased, as I held
Grimes’s arm tightly and helped him away, and she waved her hand till we
got out of sight. When I look back and reflect, I feel how much better
it would have been for her to have died that night, so dark was the
morrow and the many morrows to come.
In a week Benbow had sailed away; he was off to New Caledonia. The rum
barrel was empty, and the shellbacks were blessing his name for all the
joy he had brought them.
After that night Grimes and I secured a berth on a tramp steamer. We
went to Honolulu and to Samoa on a trip that lasted three months.
When we returned things were much about the same. Many of the old faces
were still there. Some had left and had been replaced by others who were
as wonderful in their way as my former friends. Uncle Sam was delighted
to see me again. The old Scotsman’s face beamed with pride as Grimes
treated them all to saloon drinks, and Mrs Ranjo put on her holiest
smile and even blushed at times. Of course one must bear in mind that I
seldom drank strong liquor. I have explained that this one virtue of
mine was due to a weak stomach. But it was no good offering those old
shellbacks religious tracts and olive oil to make them smile. I wanted
to see them happy, and so I had to treat them to the juice of the grape:
it was the golden key to the temples of their dreams.
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