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A MODERN BUCCANEER
[Illustration]
I desire to acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. Louis Becke, author of
_By Reef and Palm_, as to the South Sea Island portion of _A Modern
Buccaneer_, with the exception of the chapter headed "Poisoned Arrows,"
which is founded upon the diary of a Whaling Cruise by my late father.
[Illustration: _Boldrewood's "Modern Buccaneer"_ _Walker & Boutall sc._]
A MODERN BUCCANEER
BY
ROLF BOLDREWOOD
AUTHOR OF 'ROBBERY UNDER ARMS'
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
1894
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT
1894
BY
MACMILLAN AND CO.
_First Edition (3 Vols.) April 1894_
_Second Edition (1 Vol.) October 1894_
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
MY FIRST VOYAGE 1
CHAPTER II.
WILLIAM HENRY HAYSTON 13
CHAPTER III.
IN SAMOA 20
CHAPTER IV.
SAMOA TO MILLÉ 32
CHAPTER V.
THE BRIG LEONORA 41
CHAPTER VI.
CAPTAIN BEN PEESE 62
CHAPTER VII.
CRUISING AMONG THE CAROLINES 74
CHAPTER VIII.
POISONED ARROWS 87
CHAPTER IX.
HALCYON DAYS 111
CHAPTER X.
MURDER AND SHIPWRECK 121
CHAPTER XI.
A KING AND QUEEN 159
CHAPTER XII.
"MY LORDS OF THE ADMIRALTY" 189
CHAPTER XIII.
H.M.S. ROSARIO 206
CHAPTER XIV.
NORFOLK ISLAND--ARCADIA 225
CHAPTER XV.
EPITHALAMIUM 255
CHAPTER XVI.
A SWIM FOR LIFE 277
CHAPTER XVII.
"OUR JACK'S COME HOME TO-DAY" 303
A MODERN BUCCANEER
CHAPTER I
MY FIRST VOYAGE
Born near Sydney harbour, nursery of the seamen of the South, I could
swim almost as soon as I could walk, and sail a boat at an age when most
children are forbidden to go near the water. We came of a salt-water
stock. My father had been a sea-captain for the greater part of his
life, after a youth spent in every kind of craft, from a cutter to a
man-of-war. No part of the habitable globe was unfamiliar to him: from
India to the Pole, from Russia to the Brazils, from the China Sea to the
Bight of Benin--every harbour was a home.
He had nursed one crew frost-bitten in Archangel, when the blankets had
to be cut up for mittens; had watched by the beds of another, decimated
by yellow fever in Jamaica; had marked up the "death's-head and
cross-bones" in the margin of the log-book, to denote the loss by
tetanus of the wounded by poisoned arrows on Bougainville Island; and
had fought hand to hand with the stubborn Maories of Taranaki. Wounds
and death, privation and pestilence, wrecks and tempests were with him
household words, close comrades. What were they but symbols,
nature-pictures, the cards dealt by fate? You lost the stake or rose a
winner. Men who had played the game of life all round knew this. He
accepted fortune, fair or foul, as he did the weather--a favour or a
force of nature to be enjoyed or defied. But to be commented upon, much
less complained of? Hardly. And as fate had willed it, the worn though
unwearied sea-king had seen fit to heave anchor, so to speak, and moor
his vessels--for he owned more than one--in this the fairest haven of
the southern main. Once before in youth had he seen and never forgotten
the frowning headlands, beyond which lay so peerless a harbour, such
wealth of anchorage, so mild a clime, so boundless an extent of virgin
soil; from which he, "a picked man of countries," even then prophesied
wealth, population, and empire in the future.
Here, then, a generation later, he brought his newly-wedded wife. Here
was I, Hilary Telfer, destined to see the light.
From the mid-city street of Sydney is but a stone's throw to the wharves
and quays, magnificent water-ways in which those ocean palaces of the
present day, the liners of the P. and O. and the Orient, lie moored, and
but a plank divides the impatient passenger from the busy mart. Not that
such stately ships were visitors in my school-boy days. Sydney was then
a grass-grown, quiet seaport, boasting some fifty thousand inhabitants,
with a fleet of vessels small in size and of humble tonnage.
But, though unpretending of aspect, to the eager-hearted, imaginative
school-boy they were rich as Spanish galleons. For were they not laden
with uncounted treasure, weighed down with wealth beyond the fabled
hoards of the pirates of the Spanish Main, upon whose dark deeds and
desperate adventures I had so greedily feasted?
Each vessel that swept through the Heads at midnight, or marked the
white-walled mansions and pine-crowned promontories rise faintly out of
the pearl-hued dawn, was for me a volume filled with romance and
mystery. Sat there not on the forecastle of that South Sea whaler,
silent, scornful, imperturbable, the young Maori chief, nursing in his
breast the deep revenge for a hasty blow, which on the return voyage to
New Zealand and the home of his tribe was to take the form of a massacre
of the whole ship's company?
Yes, captain and officers, passengers and crew, every man on that ship
paid the death penalty for the mate's hard word and blow. The insult to
a Rangatira must be wiped out in blood.
The trader of the South Sea Islands was a marine marvel which I was
never weary of studying.
I generally managed to make friends with one or other of the crew, who
permitted me to explore the lower deck and feed my fancy upon the
treasures from that paradise with which the voyager from an enchanted
ocean had surely freighted his vessel. Strange bows and arrows--the
latter poison-tipped, as I was always assured, perhaps as a
precautionary measure--piles of shaddocks, tons of bananas, idols,
skulls, spears, clubs, woven cloth of curious fabric, an endless store
of unfamiliar foreign commodities.
Among the crew were always a few half-castes mingled with the grizzled,
weather-beaten British sea-dogs. Perhaps a boat's crew of the islanders
themselves, born sailors, and as much at home in water as on land.
Seldom did I leave, however unwillingly, the deck of one of these fairy
barques, without registering a vow that the year in which I left school
should see me a gay sailor-boy, bound on my first voyage in search of
dangerous adventures and that splendidly untrammelled career which was
so surely to result in fortune and distinction.
Then the whaleships! In that old time, Sydney harbour was rarely without
a score or more of them. In their way they were portents and wonders of
the deep. Fortune failed them at times. The second year might find them
far from full of the high-priced whale-oil. The capricious cetacean was
not to be depended upon in migration from one "whaling ground" to
another. Sometimes a "favourite" ship--lucky in spite of
everything--would come flaunting in after an absence of merely eleven or
twelve months--such were the _Florentia_ and the _Proteus_--full to the
hatches, while three long years would have elapsed before her consort,
sailing on the same day and fitted up much in the same way, would crawl
sadly into Snail's or Neutral Bay, battered and tempest-tossed, but
three-quarter full even then, a mark for the rough wit of the port, to
pay off an impoverished crew and confront unsmiling or incredulous
owners.
Every kind of disaster would have befallen her. When she got fast to a
ninety-barrel whale, her boats would be stoven in. When all was well, no
cheery shout of "There she spouts!" would be heard for days. Savage
islanders would attack her doggedly, and hardly be beaten off. Every
kind of evil omen would be justified, until the crew came to believe
that they were sailing with an Australian Vanderdecken, and would never
see a port again.
* * * * *
The grudging childish years had rolled by, and now I was seventeen years
of age--fitted, as I fully believed, to begin the battle of life in
earnest, and ardent for the fray. As to my personal qualifications for a
life on the ocean wave, and well I knew no other would have contented
me, let the reader judge. At the age when tall lads are often found to
have out-grown their strength, I had attained the fullest stature of
manhood; wide-chested and muscular, constant exercise with oar and sail
had developed my frame and toughened my sinews, until I held myself,
with some reason, to be a match in strength and activity for most men I
was likely to meet.
In the rowing contests to which Australians of the shore have always
been devoted, more particularly the privileged citizens of Sydney, I had
always taken a leading part. More than once, in a hard-fought finish,
had I been lifted out fainting or insensible.
My curling fair hair and blue eyes bore token of our Norse blood and
Anglo-Norman descent. The family held a tradition that our surname came
from Taillefer, the warrior minstrel who rode in the forefront of Duke
William's army at Hastings. Strangely, too, a passionate love of song
had always clung to the race. "Sir Hilary charged at Agincourt," as
saith the ballad. Roving and adventure ran in the blood for generations
uncounted.
For all that trouble arose when I announced my resolve. My schoolmates
had settled down in the offices of merchants, bankers, and lawyers, why
could not I do the same? My mother's tears fell fast as she tried in
vain to dissuade me from my resolution. My father was neutral. He knew
well the intensity of the feeling. "If born in a boy," he said, "as it
was in me, it is his fate--nothing on earth can turn him from it; if you
stop him you will make a bad landsman and spoil a good sailor. Let him
go! he must take his chance like another man. God is above the wave as
over the earth. If it be his fate, the perils of the deep will be no
more than the breezes of the bay."
It was decided at length that I should be allowed to go on my way. To
the islands of the South Pacific my heart pointed as truly as ever did
compass needle to the North.
I had read every book that had ever been written about them, from
Captain Cook's _Voyages_ to _The Mutiny of the Bounty_. In my dreams how
many times had I seen the purple mountains, the green glow of the fairy
woodlands, had bathed in the crystal streams, and heard the endless surf
music on the encircling reef, cheered the canoes loaded with fruit
racing for their market in the crimson flush of the paradisal morn, or
lingered amidst the Aidenns of the charmed main, where the
flower-crowned children of nature--maidens beauteous as angels--roamed
in careless happiness and joyous freedom! It was an entrancing picture.
Why should I stay in this prosaic land, where men wore the hideous
costume of their forefathers, and women, false to all canons of art,
still clung to their outworn garb?
What did I care for the sheep and cattle, the tending of which enriched
my compatriots?
A world of romance, mystery, and adventure lay open and inviting. The
die was cast. The spell of the sea was upon me.
* * * * *
My father's accumulations had amounted to a reasonable capital, as
things went in those Arcadian non-speculative days. He was not
altogether without a commercial faculty, which had enabled him to make
prudent investments in city and suburban lands. These the steadily
improving markets were destined to turn into value as yet undreamed of.
It was not thought befitting that I should ship as an apprentice or
foremost hand, though I was perfectly willing, even eager, for a start
in any way. A more suitable style of equipment was arranged. An
agreement was entered into with the owner of a vessel bound for San
Francisco viâ Honolulu, by which a proportion of the cargo was purchased
in my name, and I was, after some discussion, duly installed as
supercargo. It may be thought that I was too young for such a
responsible post. But I was old for my age. I had a man's courage and
ambition. I had studied navigation to some purpose; could "hand reef and
steer," and in the management of a boat, or acquaintance with every
rope, sail, and spar on board of a vessel, I held myself, if not an A.
B., fully qualified for that rank and position.
Words would fail to describe my joy and exultation when I found myself
at length on blue water, in a vessel which I might fairly describe as
"our little craft," bound for foreign parts and strange cities. I
speedily made the acquaintance of the crew--a strangely assembled lot,
mostly shady as to character and reckless as to speech, but without
exception true "sailor men." At that time of day, employment on the high
seas was neither so easy to obtain nor so well paid as at present. The
jolly tars of the period were therefore less independent and inclined to
cavil at minor discomforts. Once shipped, they worked with a will, and
but little fault could be found with their courage or seamanship.
Among other joys and delights which I promised myself, had been a closer
acquaintance with the life and times of a picturesque and romantic
personage, known and feared, if all tales were true, throughout the
South Seas. This was the famous, the celebrated Captain Hayston, whose
name was indeed a spell to conjure with from New Zealand to the Line
Islands.
Much that could excite a boyish imagination had been related to me
concerning him. One man professing an intimate knowledge had described
him as "a real pirate." Could higher praise be awarded? I put together
all the tales I had heard about him--his great stature and vast
strength, his reckless courage, his hair-breadth escapes, his wonderful
brig,--cousin german, no doubt, to the "long low wicked-looking craft"
in the pages of _Tom Cringle's Log_, and other veracious historiettes,
"nourishing a youth sublime," in the long bright summer days of old;
those days when we fished and bathed, ate oysters, and read alternately
from early morn till the lighthouse on the South Head flashed out! My
heroes had been difficult to find hitherto; they had mostly eluded my
grasp. But this one was real and tangible. He would be fully up to
description. His splendid scorn of law and order, mercy or moderation,
his unquestioned control over mutinous crews and fierce islanders,
illumined by occasional homicides and abductions, all these splendours
and glories so stirred my blood, that I felt, if I could only once
behold my boyhood's idol, I should not have lived in vain. Among the
crew, fortunately for me as I then thought, was a sailor who had
actually known in the flesh the idol of my daydreams.
"And it's the great Captain Hayston you'd like to hear about," said Dan
Daly, as we sat together in the foc'sle head of the old barque
_Clarkstone_, before we made Honolulu. Dan had been a South Sea
beach-comber and whaler; moreover, had been marooned, according to his
own account, escaping only by a miracle; a trader's head-man--once,
indeed, more than half-killed by a rush of natives on the station. With
every kind of dangerous experience short of death and burial he was
familiar. On which account I regarded him with a fine boyish admiration.
What a night was it, superbly beautiful, when I hung upon his words, as
we sat together gazing over the moonlit water! We had changed our course
owing to some dispute about food between captain and crew, and were now
heading for the island of Rurutu, where fresh provisions were
attainable. As I listened spellbound and entranced, the barque's bows
slowly rose and fell, the wavering moonlight streamed down upon the
deck, the sails, the black masses of cordage, while ghostly shadows
moved rhythmically, in answering measure to every motion of the vessel.
"You must know," said Dan, in grave commencement, "it's nigh upon five
years ago, when I woke up one morning in the 'Calaboose' as they call
the 'lock-up' in Papiete, with a broken head. It's the port of the
island of Tahiti. I was one of the hands of the American brig
_Cherokee_, and we'd put in there on our way to San Francisco from
Sydney. The skipper had given us liberty, so we went ashore and began
drinking and having some fun. There was some wahines in it, in
coorse--that's whats they call the women in thim parts. Somehow or other
I got a knock on the head, and remimbered nothing more until I woke up
in the 'Calaboose,' where I was charged with batin' a native till he was
nigh dead. To make a long story short, I got six months 'hard,' and the
ship sailed away without me.
"When I'd served my time, I walks into the American Consulate and asks
for a passage to California.
"'Clear out,' says the Consul, 'you red-headed varmint, I have nothing
to say to you, after beating an inoffensive native in the manner you
did.'
"'By the powers,' says I to myself, 'you're a big blackguard, Dan Daly,
when you've had a taste of liquor, but if I remimber batin' any man
black, white, or whitey-brown, may I be keel-hauled. Howsomdever, that
says nothing, the next thing's a new ship.'
"So I steps down to the wharf and aboord a smart-looking schooner that
belonged to Carl Brander, a big merchant in Tahiti, as rich as the
Emperor of China, they used to say. The mate was aboord. 'Do you want
any hands?' says I.
"'We do,' says he. 'You've a taking colour of hair for this trade, my
lad.'
"'How's that?'
"'Why, the girls down at Rimitara and Rurutu will just make love to you
in a body. Red hair's the making of a man in thim parts.'
"Upon this I signed articles for six months in the schooner, and next
day we sailed for a place called Bora-bora in the north-west. We didn't
stay there long, but got under weigh for Rurutu next day. We weren't
hardly clear of Bora-bora when we sights a brigantine away to windward
and bearing down on us before the wind. As soon as she got close enough,
she signalled that she wanted to send a boat aboard, so we hove to and
waited.
"Our skipper had a look at the man who was steering the boat, whin he
turns as pale as a sheet, and says he to the mate, 'It's that devil
Hayston! and that's the brigantine he and Captain Ben Peese ran away
with from Panama.'
"However, up alongside came the boat, and as fine a looking man as ever
I set eyes on steps aboord amongst us.
"'How do ye do, Captain?' says he. 'Where from and whither bound?'
"The skipper was in a blue funk, I could see, for this Bully Hayston had
a terrible bad name, so he answers him quite polite and civil.
"'Can you spare me half a coil of two-inch Manilla?' asks the stranger,
'and I'll pay you your own price?'
"The skipper got him the rope, the strange captain pays for it, and they
goes below for a glass of grog. In half an hour, up on deck they comes
again, our skipper half-seas over and laughing fit to kill himself.
"'By George!' says he, 'you're the drollest card I ever came across.
D--n me! if I wouldn't like to take a trip with you myself!' and with
that he struggles to the skylight and falls in a heap across it.
"'Who's the mate of this schooner?' sings out Hayston, in such a changed
voice that it made me jump.
"'I am!' said the mate, who was standing in the waist.
"'Then where's that Mangareva girl of yours? Come, look lively! I know
all about her from that fellow there,' pointing to the skipper.
"The mate had a young slip of a girl on board. She belonged to an island
called Mangareva, and was as pretty a creature, with her big soft eyes
and long curling hair, as ever I'd seen in my life. The mate just trated
her the same as he would the finest lady, and was going to marry her at
the next island where there was a missionary. When he heard who the
strange captain was, he'd planted her down in the hold and covered her
up with mats. He was a fine manly young chap, and as soon as he saw
Hayston meant to take 'Taloo,' that was her name, he pulls out a pistol
and says, 'Down in the hold, Captain Hayston! and as long as God gives
me breath you'll never lay a finger on her. I'll put a bullet through
her head rather than see her fall into the hands of a man like you.' The
strange captain just gives a laugh and pulls his long moustache. Then he
walks up to the mate and slaps him on the shoulder.
"'You've got the right grit in you,' says he. 'I'd like to have a man
like you on board my ship;' and the next second he gripped the pistol
out of the mate's hand and sent it spinning along the deck. The mate
fought like a tiger, but he was a child in the other man's grasp. All
the time Hayston kept up that devilish laugh of his. Then, as he saw me
and Tom Lynch coming to help the mate, he says something in a foreign
lingo, and the boat's crew jumps on board amongst us, every one of them
with a pistol. But for all that they seems a decent lot of chaps.
"Hayston still held the mate by his wrists, laughing in his face as if
he was having the finest fun in the world, when up comes Taloo out of
the hold by way of the foc'sle bulk-head, with her long hair hanging
over her shoulders, and the tears streaming down her cheeks.
"She flings herself down at the Captain's feet, and clasps her arms
round his knees.
"'No, no! no kill Ted!' she kept on crying, just about all the English
she knew.
"'You pretty little thing,' says he, 'I wouldn't hurt your Ted for the
world.' Then he lets go the mate and takes her hand and shakes it.
"'What's your name, my man?'
"'Ted Bannington!' says the mate.
"'Well, Ted Bannington, look here; if you'd showed any funk I'd have
taken the girl in spite of you and your whole ship's company. If a man
don't think a woman good enough to fight for, he deserves to lose her if
a better man comes along.'
"Taloo put out one little hand, the other hand and arm was round the
mate's neck, shaking like a leaf too.
"'I'm so sorry if I've hurt your wrists,' says he to the mate, most
polite. Then he gave some orders to the boat's crew, who pulled away to
the brigantine. After they had gone he walked aft with the mate, the two
chatting like the best friends in the world, and I'll be hanged if that
same mate wasn't laughing fit to split at some of the yarns the other
chap was spinning, sitting on the skylight, with the Captain lying at
their feet as drunk as Davy's sow.
"Presently the boat comes alongside agin, and a chap walks aft and gives
the strange captain a parcel.
"'You'll please accept this as a friendly gift from Bully Hayston,' says
he to the mate; and then he takes a ten-dollar piece out of his pocket
and gives it to Taloo. 'Drill a hole in it, and hang it round the neck
of your first child for luck.'
"He shakes hands with her and the mate, jumps into the boat, and steers
for the brigantine. In another ten minutes she squared away and stood to
the south-east.
"'Come here, Dan,' says the mate to me; 'see what he's given me!' 'Twas
a beautiful chronometer bran new, in a splendid case. The mate said he'd
never seen one like it before.
"Well, that was the first time I ever seen Bully Hayston, though I did a
few times afterwards, and the brigantine too.
"They do say he's a thundering scoundrel, but a pleasanter-spoken
gentleman I never met in my life."