POISONED ARROWS
The weather had changed, and been cloudy and dull for several days. We
were all rather in the doldrums too. We had been bearing eastward on the
line. Suddenly Hayston said, "Suppose we put in at Santa Cruz. We want
the water casks filled. I'm not very fond of the island, for all its
name. Sacred names and bloodshed often go together with Spaniards.
However, I know the harbour well, and the yams are first-rate." So at
daylight we bore up, at eight bells we entered the heads with both
anchors bent to the chains, and at noon were beating up the harbour. By
two o'clock we cast anchor in thirty fathoms. Out came the canoes, and
we soon began trading with the natives.
We kept pretty strict watch, however. The men, to my fancy, had a sullen
expression, and the women, though not bad-looking, seemed as if it cost
them an effort to look pleasant.
Our girls wouldn't have anything to say to them. Hope Island Nellie, in
particular, said she'd like to shoot half of them; that they'd killed a
cousin of hers, who was only scratched with a poisoned arrow, and that
it was one of the Captain's mad tricks to go there at all.
However, Hayston, as usual, was spurred on by opposition to have his own
way, and to do even more than he originally intended. He told me
afterwards that he only wanted to get some yams in the harbour, and that
the water would have held out longer--until we got to a known safe
island.
So on Sunday we sent two boats on shore, and got the casks filled with
water immediately. Our provisions were taken out and examined. Trading
with the natives went on merrily.
On Monday the weather was fine. We got a couple of rafts out with water,
and laid in yams enough to last for the rest of our cruise. Hayston
laughed, and said there was nothing like showing natives that you were
not afraid of them. "Eh, Nellie? What you think now?"
"Think Captain big fool," said Nellie, who was in a bad temper that
morning. "Ha! you see boat crew; by God! man wounded--I see them carry
him along."
Sure enough, we could see the two boats' crews coming down to the beach.
They were carrying one man, while two supported another, who seemed
hardly able to walk. "Get out the boats!" roared Hayston. "I'll teach
the scoundrels to touch a crew of mine."
All was now bustle and commotion. Every man on the ship that could be
spared, and Hope Island Nellie to boot, who had begged to be allowed to
go with the attacking party, and whose ruffled temper was restored to
equanimity by the chance of having a shot at her foes, and avenging her
cousin's death. We left a boat's crew watch, and made for the shore,
Nellie sitting in the bow of the Captain's boat with a Winchester rifle
across her knees, and her eyes sparkling with a light I had never seen
in a woman's face before. It was the light of battle come down through
the veins of chiefs and warriors of her people for centuries uncounted.
We left a couple of men in each boat, telling them to keep on and off
until we returned; the wounded men were carefully laid on mats in one of
their own boats; and forth we went--a light-hearted storming party, and
attacked the town of the treacherous devils. Hayston was in a frightful
rage, cursing himself one moment for relaxing his usual caution, and
devoting the Santa Cruz natives in the next to all the fiends of hell
for their infernal causeless treachery. He raged up again and again to
the cluster of huts, thickly built together with palisades here and
there, which made excellent cover for shooting from, backed up by the
green wall of the primeval forest. I could not but admire him as he
stood there--grand, colossal, fearless, as though he bore a charmed
life, while the deadly quivering arrows flew thick, and more than one
man was hit severely. Only that our fire was quick and deadly with the
terrible Winchester repeaters, and that the savages--bold at first--were
mowed down so quickly that they had to retreat to a distance which
rendered their arrows powerless, we should have had a muster roll with
gaps in it of some seriousness. Hayston was a splendid rifle shot, and
for quick loading and firing had few equals. Every native that showed
himself within range went down ere he could fit an arrow to his
bowstring. And there was Hope Island Nellie by his side, firing nearly
as fast, and laughing like a child at play whenever one of her shots
told.
Then the arrows grew fewer. Just before they ceased I had fired at a
tall native who had been conspicuous through the fight. He fell on his
face. Nellie gave a shout, and loaded her own rifle on the chance of
another shot, straining her bright and eager eyes to see if another
lurking form was near enough for danger. Well for me was it that she did
so! Staggering to his feet, a wounded native fitted an arrow to his bow,
and sent it straight for my breast before I could raise my gun to my
shoulder. Nellie made a snap shot at him, and, either from exhaustion or
the effect of her bullet, he fell prone and motionless.
I felt a scratch on my arm--bare to the shoulder--as if a forest twig
had raised the skin. "Look!" said Nellie, and her face changed. As she
spoke, she passed her finger over the place, and showed it bloodstained.
"The crawling brute's arrow hit you there. Let me suck the poison. If
you don't"--as I made a gesture of dissent--"you die, twel' days."
"Don't be a fool!" said Hayston. "You're a dead man if you don't. As it
is, you must run your chance. Some of these fellows will lose the number
of their mess, I'm sorry to say."
So the girl, who had been but the moment before thirsting for blood, and
firing into the mob of half-frightened, yet ferocious savages, pressed
her soft lips on my arm, like a young mother soothing a babe, and with
all womanly tenderness bound up the injured place, which had now begun
to smart, and, to my excited imagination, commenced to throb from wrist
to shoulder.
"Strange child, isn't she?" laughed Hayston. "If she'd only been born
white, and been to boarding-school down east, what a sensation she'd
have created in a ball-room!"
"Better as she is, perhaps," said I. "She has lived her life with few
limitations, and enjoyed most of it."
The excited crew rushed in and finished every wounded man in a position
to show fight. Nellie did not join in this, but stood leaning on her
rifle--_la belle sauvage_, if ever there was one--brave, beautiful, with
a new expression like that of a roused lioness on her parted lips and
blazing eyes.
As for Hayston, he was a fatalist by constitution and theory. "A man
must die when his time comes," he had often said to me. "Until the hour
of fate he cannot die. Why, then, should he waste his emotions by giving
way to the meanest of all attributes--personal fear?"
He had none, at any rate. He would have walked up to the block without
haste or reluctance, had beheading been the fashionable mode of
execution in his day, chaffed his executioner, and with a bow and a
smile for the handsomest woman among the spectators, quitted with easy
grace a world which had afforded him a fair share of its rarest
possessions.
By his order the town was fired and quickly reduced to ashes, thus
destroying a number of articles--mats, utensils, wearing apparel,
weapons, etc.--which, requiring, as they do, considerable skill and
expenditure of time, are regarded as valuable effects by all savages.
The attack had been early in the day. We cut down as many cocoa-nut
trees as we could, and finally departed for the ship, towing out with us
a small fleet of canoes, to be broken up when we got to the brig. The
sick men were sent below, and such remedies as we knew of were applied.
They were--all but one--silent and downhearted. They knew by experience
the sure and deadly effect of the poison manufactured among the Line
Islands. Subtle and penetrating! But little hope of recovery remains.
About four o'clock next morning we began to heave at the windlass, and
got under weigh at eight. The wind was light and variable, and our
progress slow. As we got abreast of the hostile village we gave them a
broadside. But the sullen devils of Santa Cruz were not cowed yet. A
second fleet of canoes swarmed around the ship. They made signals of
submission and a desire to trade, but when they got near enough sent a
cloud of arrows at the ship, many of which stuck quivering in the masts,
though luckily no one was hit. Their yells and screams of wrath were
like the tumult of a hive of demons. We were luckily well prepared, and
we let them have the carronades over and over again, sinking a dozen of
their canoes, and doing good execution among the crews when their black
heads popped up like corks as they swam for the nearest canoes. While
this took place we unbent the starboard chain, stowed it and the anchor,
and clearing the heads, bade adieu to the inhospitable isle.
On the next day all hands were engaged in cleaning our armoury, which it
certainly appeared necessary to keep in good order. Hope Island Nellie
polished her Winchester rifle till it shone again, besides showing an
acquaintance with the machinery of the lock and repeating gear was
nothing new to her.
"You ought to make a notch in the stock for every man you kill, Nellie,"
said Hayston, as we were lying on the deck in the afternoon, while the
_Leonora_ was gliding on her course like the fair ocean bird that she
was.
Nellie frowned. "No like that talk," she answered. "Might have to put
'nother notch yet for Nellie--who knows?"
"Who knows, indeed, Nellie?" answered the Captain. "None of us can
foresee our fate," he added with a tinge of sadness, which so often
mingled with his apparently most careless moments. "We don't even know
who's going to die from those arrow scratches yet."
Here the girl looked over at me. "How you feel, Hil'ree?" she said, as
her voice softened and lost its jesting tone.
"Feel good," I said, "think getting better."
"You no know," she answered gravely. "You wait." And she began to count.
She went over the fingers of her small, delicately-formed left
hand,--wonderful in shape are the hands and feet of some of these Island
girls,--and after counting from little finger to thumb _twice_, touched
the two first fingers, and looked up. "How many?" she asked.
"Twelve," I said; I had followed the counts with care, you may be sure.
"Twel' day, you see," she said; "perhaps you all right--perhaps"--and
here she gave a faint but accurate limitation of the dreadful shudder
which precedes the unspeakable agonies of tetanus.
"Nellie's right," said Hayston; "keep up your spirits, for you won't
know till then whether you're to go to sleep in your hammock in blue
water or not."
This was a cheerful prospect, but I had come through many perils, and
missed the grim veteran by so many close shaves, that I had grown to be
something of a fatalist like Hayston.
"Well! if I go under it won't be your fault, Nellie! So, Captain,
remember I make over to her all the stuff in my trade chest. Send any
letters and papers to the address you know in Sydney, and a bank draft
for what you will find in the dollar bag. Nellie will have some good
dresses anyhow."
"Dress be hanged!" quoth Nellie, who was emphatic in her language
sometimes. "You go home to mother yet;" and she arose and left
hurriedly. Poor Nellie!
In that day when we and others who have sinned, after fullest knowledge
of good and evil "know the right and yet the wrong pursue," shall be
arraigned for deeds done in the flesh, will the same doom be meted out
to this frank, untaught child of Nature and her sisters? I trow not. I
must say that for a day or two before the fated twelfth which Nellie so
stoutly insisted upon, I felt slightly anxious. What an end to all one's
hopes, longings, and glorious imaginings, to be racked with tortures
indescribable before dying like a poisoned hound, all because of the
instinctive, senseless act of a stupid savage!
To die young, too, with the world but opening before me! Life with its
thousand possibilities just unrolled! One's friends, too,--the weeping
mother and sisters, whose grief would never wholly abate this side of
time; the old man's fixed expression of sorrow. These thoughts passed
through my brain, with others arising from and mingled with them, as I
left my hammock early on the twelfth day. I dressed quickly, and going
on deck, that daily miracle occurred--"the glorious sun uprist."
The dawnlight now began to infuse the pearly rim, which, imperceptibly
separating from the azure grey horizon, deepened as it touched the edge
of the vast ocean plain. Faintly glimmering, how magically it
transformed from a dim, neutral-tinted waste to an opaline clarity of
hue--a fuller crimson. Then the wondrous golden globe heaved itself over
the edge of our water-world all silently, and the day, the 19th of
October, began its course.
Should I live to see its close?
How strange if all this time the subtle poison should have lurked in
one's veins until the exact moment, when, like a modern engine of
devilry--an infernal machine with a clock and apparatus--set to strike
and detonate at a given and calculated hour, the death-stroke should
sound!
We had breakfasted, and were lying on the deck chatting and reading, as
the _Leonora_ glided over the heaving bosom of the main--the sun
shining--the seabirds sailing athwart our course with outstretched,
moveless wings--the sparkling waters reflecting a thousand prismatic
colours, as the brig swiftly sped along her course--all nature gaily
bright, joyous, and unheeding. Suddenly one of the wounded men, Henry
Stephens by name, raised himself from his mat with a cry so wild and
unearthly that half the crew and people started to their feet.
"My God!" he exclaimed, as he sank down again upon his mat, "I'm a dead
man--those infernal arrows."
"Poor Harry!" said Nellie, who by this time was bending over him, "don't
give in--by and by better--you get down to bunk. Carry him down, you
boys!"
Two of the crew lifted the poor fellow, who even as they raised him had
another fearful paroxysm, drawing his frame together almost double, so
that the men could scarcely retain their hold.
"Carry him gently, boys!" said Hayston; "go to the steward for some
brandy and laudanum, that will ease the pain."
"And is there no cure--no means of stopping this awful agony?"
"Not when tetanus once sets in," said Hayston; "it's not the first case
I've seen."
The other man was quite a young fellow, and famed among us for his
entire want of fear upon each and every occasion. He laughed and joked
the whole time of the fight with the Santa Cruz islanders, said that
every bullet had its billet, and that his time had not come. "He
believed," he said, "also that half the talk about death by poisoned
arrows was fancy. Men got nervous, and frightened themselves to death."
He was not one of that sort anyhow. He had laughed and joked with both
of us, and even now, when poor Harry Stephens was carried below, and we
could hear his cries as the increasing torture of the paroxysms overcame
his courage and self-control, he joked still.
The day was a sad one. Still the brig glided on through the azure
waveless deep--still the tropic birds hung motionless above us--still
the breeze whispered through our swelling sails, until the soft, brief
twilight of the tropic eve stole upon us, and the stars trembled one by
one in the dusky azure, so soon to be "thick inlaid with patines of
bright gold."
"Reckon I've euchred the bloodthirsty niggers this time," said Dick,
with a careless laugh, lighting his pipe as he spoke. "This is 'Twelfth
night.' That's the end of the time the cussed poison takes to ripen,
isn't it, Nellie?" he laughed. "It regular puts me in mind of old
Christmas days in England, and us schoolboys counting the days after the
New Year! What a jolly time it was! Won't I be glad to see the snow, and
the bare hedges, and the holly berries, and the village church again?
Dashed if I don't stay there next time I get a chance, and cut this
darned slaving, privateering life. I'll--oh! my God--ah--a--h!"
His voice, in spite of all his efforts, rose from a startled cry to a
long piercing shriek, such as it curdled our blood to hear.
Hayston came up from the cabin, followed by Nellie and the other girls.
All crowded round him in silence. They knew well at the first cry he was
a doomed man.
"Carry him down, lads!" he said, as he laid his hand on his forehead and
passed it quietly over his clustering hair--"poor Dick! poor fellow!" At
this moment another frightful spasm shook the seaman's frame, and
scarcely could the men who had lifted him from the deck on which he had
been lying control his tortured limbs. As they reached the lower deck
another terrible cry reached our ears, while the continuous groaning of
the poor fellow first attacked made a ghastly and awful accompaniment to
the screams of the latest victim.
As for me, I walked forward and sat as near as I could get to the
_Leonora's_ bows, where I lit my pipe and awaited the moment in which
only too probably my own summons would come in a like pang of
excruciating agony. The gleaming phosphorescent wavelets of that calm
sea fell in broken fire from the vessel's side, while the hissing,
splashing sound deadened the recurring shrieks of the doomed sufferers,
and soothed my excited nerves.
Now that death was so near, in such a truly awful shape, I began
seriously to reflect upon the imprudence, nay, more, the inexcusable
folly of continuing a life exposed to such terrible hazards.
If my life was spared I would resolve, like poor Dick, to stay at home
in future. The resolution might avail me as little as it had done in his
case.
As I sat hour after hour gazing into the endless shadow and gleam of the
great deep, a strange feeling of peace and resignation seemed to pass
suddenly over my troubled spirit. I felt almost tempted to plunge
beneath the calm bosom of the main, and so end for aye the doubt, the
fear, the rapture, and despair of this mysterious human life. All
suddenly the moon rose, sending before her a brilliant pathway, adown
which, in my excited imagination, angels might glide, bearing messages
of pardon or reprieve. A distinct sensation of hope arose in my mind. A
dark form glided to my side, and seated itself on the rail.
"You hear eight bell?" she said. "Listen now, you all right--no more
poison--he go away." She held my hand--the pulse was steady and regular.
In spite of my efforts at calmness and self-control, I was sensible of a
strange exaltation of spirit. The heaven above, the sea below, seemed
animate with messengers of pardon and peace. Even poor Nellie, the
untaught child of a lonely isle, "placed far amid the melancholy main,"
seemed transformed into a celestial visitant, and her large, dark eyes
glowed in the light of the mystic moon rays.
"You well, man Hil'ree!" she said in the foc'sle vernacular. "No more go
maté. Nellie so much glad," and here her soft low tones were so instinct
with deepest human feeling that I took her in my arms and folded her in
a warm embrace.
"How's poor Dick?" I asked, as we walked aft to where Hayston and the
rest of the cabin party were seated.
"Poor Dick dead!" she said; "just die before me come up."
The people we had brought for the big firm, mostly Line Island natives,
were quiet and easily controlled. Hayston now and then executed orders
of this sort, though he would have scorned the idea of turning the
_Leonora_ into a labour vessel. He was naturally too humane to permit
any ill-treatment of the recruits, and having his crew under full
control, always made matters as pleasant for these dark-skinned
"passengers" as possible.
But there were voyages of very different kind,--voyages when the
recruiting agents were thoroughly unscrupulous, caring only for the
numbers--by fair means or foul--to be made up. Sometimes dark deeds were
done. Blood was shed like water; partly from the fierce, intractable
nature of the islanders--sometimes in pure self-defence. But "strange
things happen at sea." One labour cruise of which Hayston told me--he
heard it from an English trader who saw the affair--was much of that
complexion. We had plenty of time for telling stories in the long calm
days which sometimes ran into weeks. And this was one of them.
One day a white painted schooner, with gaff-headed mainsail, and flying
the German flag, anchored off Kabakada, a populous village on the north
coast of New Britain. She was on a labour cruise for the German
plantations in Samoa.
Not being able to secure her full complement of "boys" in the New
Hebrides and Solomon groups, she had come northward to fill up with
recruits from the naked savages of the northern coast of New Britain.
In those days the German flag had not been formally hoisted over New
Britain and New Ireland, and apart from the German trading station at
Matupi in Blanche Bay, which faces the scarred and blackened sides of a
smouldering volcano springing abruptly from the deep waters of the bay,
the trading stations were few and far between.
At Kabakada, where the vessel had anchored, there were two traders. One
was a noisy, vociferous German, who had once kept a liquor saloon in
Honolulu, but, moved by tales of easily accumulated wealth in New
Britain, he had sold his business, and settled at his present location
among a horde of the most treacherous natives in the South Seas. His
rude good nature had been his safety; for although, through ignorance of
the native character, he was continually placing his life in danger, he
was quick to make amends, and being of a generous disposition and a man
of means, enjoyed a prestige among the natives possessed by no other
white man.
His colleague--or rather his opponent, for they traded for opposition
firms--was a small, dark Frenchman, an ex-bugler of the Chasseurs
d'Afrique, who had spent some years of enforced retirement at New
Caledonia. His advent to New Britain had been made in the most private
manner, and his reminiscences of the voyage from the convict colony with
his four companions were not of a cheerful nature.
Ten miles away, at the head of a narrow bay that split the forest-clad
mountains like a Norwegian fiord, lived another trader, an English
seaman. He had been on the island about two years, and was well-nigh
sickened of it. Frequently recurring attacks of the deadly malarial
fever had weakened and depressed him, and he longed to return to the
open, breezy islands of eastern Polynesia, where he had no need to start
from his sleep at night, and, rifle in hand, peer out into the darkness
at the slightest noise.
* * * * *
The labour schooner anchored about a mile from the German trader's
house, and about two hours afterwards the boat of the Englishman was
seen pulling round Cape Luen, and making for Charlie's station. This was
because all three traders, being on friendly terms, it would have been
considered "playing it low down" for any one of them to have boarded the
schooner alone.
The day was swelteringly hot, and the sea between the gloomy outlines of
Mau Island and the long, curving, palm-shaded beaches of New Britain
shore was throwing off great clouds of hot, steamy mist. As the
Englishman's boat was about half-way between the steep-wooded point of
Cape Luen and Kabakada, she altered her course and ran into the beach,
where, surrounded by a cluster of native huts, was the station of
Pierre. This was to save the little Frenchman the trouble of launching
his clumsy boat. Pierre, dressed in white pyjamas, with a heavy
Lefaucheux revolver in his belt and a Snider rifle in his hand, came out
of his house. Addressing his two wives in emphatic language, and warning
them to fire off guns if anything happened during his absence on board
the schooner, he swaggered down the beach and into the boat.
"How are you, Pierre?" said the Englishman, languidly. "I knew you and
Hans Muller would expect me to board the schooner with you, or else I
wouldn't have come. Curse the place, the people, the climate, and
everything!"
The little Frenchman grinned, "Yes, it ees ver' hot; but nevare mind.
Ven ve get to de 'ouse of de German we shall drink some gin and feel
bettare. Last veek he buy four case of gin from a valeship, and now le
bon Dieu send this schooner, from vich we shall get more."
"What a drunken little beast you are!" said the Englishman, sourly. "But
after all, I suppose you enjoy life more than I do. I'd drink gin like
water if I thought it would kill me quick enough."
"My friend, it is but the fevare that now talks in you. See me! I am
happy. I drink, I smoke, I laugh. I have two wife to make my café and
look aftare my house. Some day I walk in the bush, then, whouff, a spear
go through me, and my two wife will weep ven they see me cut up for
_rosbif_, and perhaps eat a piece themselves."
The Englishman laughed. The picture Pierre drew was likely to be a true
one in one respect. Not a mile from the spot where the boat was at that
moment were the graves of a trading captain, his mate, and two seamen,
who had been slaughtered by the natives under circumstances of the most
abominable treachery. And right before them, on the white beach of Mau
Island, a whaler's boat's crew had been speared while filling their
water casks, the natives who surrounded them appearing to be animated
by the greatest friendliness.
Such incidents were common enough in those days among the islands to the
westward of New Guinea, and the people of New Britain were no worse than
those of other islands. They were simply treacherous, cowardly savages,
and though occasionally indulging in cannibalistic feasts upon the
bodies of people of their own race, they never killed white men for that
purpose. Many a white man has been speared or shot there, but their
bodies were spared that atrocity--so in that respect Pierre did his
young wives an injustice. They would, if occasion needed it, readily
poison him, or steal his cartridges and leave him to be slaughtered
without the chance of making resistance, but they wouldn't eat him.
* * * * *
"It's the _Samoa_," said the German, as he shook hands with us. "And the
skipper is a d--d Dutchman, but a good sort" (having once sailed in a
Yankee timber ship, trading between Sydney and the Pacific slope, Hans
was now an American), "and as soon as it gets a bit cool, we'll go off.
I know the recruiter, he's a chap with one arm."
"What?" said the Englishman, "you don't mean Captain Kyte, do you?"
"That's the man. He's a terror. Guldensterns pay him $200 a month
regular to recruit for them, and he gets a bonus of $10 each for every
nigger as well. We must try and get him a few here to fill up."
"_You_ can," said the Englishman, "but I won't. I'm not going to tout
for an infernal Dutch black-birder."
* * * * *
As soon as a breeze set in the three traders sailed off. The schooner
was a fine lump of a vessel of about 190 tons register, and her decks
were crowded with male and female recruits from the Solomon group.
There were about fifty in all--thirty-five or forty men and about a
dozen women.
The captain of the schooner and his "recruiter," Captain Kyte, received
the traders with great cordiality. In a few minutes the table was
covered with bottles of beer, kummel, and other liquor, and Hans was
asserting with great vehemence his ability to procure another thirty
"boys."
Kyte, a thin man, with deep-set grey eyes, and a skin tanned by twenty
years' wanderings in the South Seas, listened quietly to the trader's
vapourings, and then said, "All right, Hans! I think, though, we can
leave it till to-morrow, and if you can manage to get me twenty 'boys,'
I'll give you five dollars a head for them, cash."
The traders remained on board for an hour or two, and in the meanwhile
the captain of the schooner sent a boat ashore to fill water casks from
the creek near the trader's house. Six natives got in--four of whom were
seamen from the schooner and two Solomon Island recruits; these two
recruits led to all the subsequent trouble.
Kyte was a wonderfully entertaining man, and although his one arm was
against him (he had lost the other one by the bursting of a shell), he
contrived to shoot very straight, and could hold his own anywhere.
He was full of cynical humour, and the Englishman, though suffering from
latent fever, could not but be amused at the disrespectful manner in
which the American spoke of his employers. The German firm which in a
small way was the H.E.I.C. of the Pacific; indeed, their actions in many
respects, when conducting trading arrangements with the island chiefs,
were very similar to those of the Great East India Company--they always
had an armed force to back them up.
"I should think you have natives enough on board as it is, Captain
Kyte," the Englishman was saying, "without taking any more."
"Well, so I have in one way. But these d--d greedy Dutchmen (looking the
captain and mate of the schooner full in the face) like to see me come
into Apia harbour with about 180 or 200 on board. The schooner is only
fit to carry about ninety. Of course the more I have the more dollars I
get. But it's mighty risky work, I can tell you. I've got nearly sixty
Solomon boys on board now, and I could have filled down there, but came
up along here instead. You see, when we've got two or three different
mobs on board from islands widely apart they can't concoct any general
scheme of treachery, and I can always play one crowd off against the
other. Now, these Solomon Island niggers know me well, and they wouldn't
try any cutting off business away up here--it's too far from home. But I
wouldn't trust them when we are beating back through the Solomons on our
way to Samoa--that's the time I've got a pull on them, by having New
Britain niggers on board."
"You don't let your crew carry arms on board, I see," said the
Englishman.
"No, I don't. There's no necessity for it, I reckon. If we were anywhere
about the Solomon Islands, and had a lot of recruits on board, I take
d--d good care that every man is armed then. But here, in New Britain,
we could safely give every rifle in the ship to the 'recruits'
themselves, and seeing armed men about them always irritates them. As a
matter of fact, these 'boys' now on board would fight like h--l for us
if the New Britain niggers tried to take the ship. Some men, however,"
and his eyes rested on Pierre, Hans, and the captain, "like to carry a
small-arms factory slung around 'em. Have another drink, gentlemen?
Hallo, what the h--l is that?" and he was off up on deck, the other four
white men after him.
The watering party had come back, but the two Solomon islanders (the
recruits) lay in the bottom of the boat, both dead, and with broken
spears sticking all over their bodies. The rest of the crew were
wounded--one badly.
In two minutes Captain Kyte had the story. They were just filling the
last cask when they were rushed, and the two Solomon islanders speared
and clubbed to death. The rage of the attackers seemed specially
directed against the two recruits, and the crew--who were natives of
Likaiana (Stewart's Island)--said that after the first volley of spears
no attempt was made to prevent their escape.
The face of Captain Kyte had undergone a curious change. It had turned
to a dull leaden white, and his dark grey eyes had a spark of fire in
them as he turned to the captain of the schooner.
"What business had you, you blundering, dunder-headed, Dutch swab, to
let two of my recruits go ashore in that boat? Haven't you got enough
sense to know that it was certain death for them. Two of my best men,
too. Bougainville boys. By ----! you'd better jump overboard. You're no
more fit for a labour schooner than I am to teach dancing in a ladies'
school."
The captain made no answer. He was clearly in fault. As it was, no one
of the boat's crew were killed, but that was merely because their
European clothing showed them to be seamen. The matter was more serious
for Kyte than any one else on board. The countrymen of the murdered boys
looked upon him as the man chiefly responsible. He knew only one way of
placating them--by paying some of the dead boys' relations a heavy
indemnity, and immediately began a consultation with five Solomon
islanders who came from the same island.
* * * * *
In the mean time the three traders returned to the shore, and Hans, with
his usual thick-headedness, immediately "put his foot in it," by
demanding a heavy compensation from the chief of the village for the
killing of the two men.
The chief argued, very reasonably from his point of view, that the
matter didn't concern him.
"I don't care what you think," wrathfully answered the little trader, "I
want fifty coils, of fifty fathoms each, of _dewarra_. If I don't get
it"--here he touched his revolver.
Now, dewarra is the native money of New Britain; it is formed of very
small white shells of the cowrie species, perforated with two small
holes at each end, and threaded upon thin strips of cane or the stalk of
the cocoa-nut leaf. A coil of dewarras would be worth in European money,
or its trade equivalent, about fifty dollars.
The chief wasn't long in giving his answer. His lips, stained a hideous
red by the betel nut juice, opened in a derisive smile and revealed his
blackened teeth.
"He will fight," he answered.
"You've done it now, Hans," said the Englishman, "you might as well pack
up and clear out in the schooner. You have no more sense than a hog. By
the time I get back to my station I'll find it burnt and all my trade
gone. However, I don't care much; but I hope to see you get wiped out
first. You deserve it."
* * * * *
All that night the native village was in a state of turmoil, and when
daylight came it was deserted by the inhabitants, who had retreated to
their bush-houses; the French trader, who had walked along the beach to
his station, returned at daylight and reported that not a native was in
his town, even his two wives had gone. Nothing, however, of his trade
had been touched.
"That's a good sign for you," said the Englishman. "If I were you,
Pierre, I would go quietly back, and start mending your fence or
painting your boat as if nothing had happened. They won't meddle with
you."
But this was strongly objected to by his fellow-trader, and just then a
strange sound reached them,--the wild cries and howls of chorus, in a
tongue unknown to the three men. It came from the sea, and going to the
door they saw the schooner's two whaleboats, packed as full of natives
as they could carry, close in to the shore. Instead of oars they were
propelled by canoe paddles, and at each stroke the native rowers fairly
made the boats leap and surge like steam launches in a sea-way. But the
most noticeable thing to the eyes of the traders was the glitter of
rifle barrels that appeared between the double row of paddlers. In
another five minutes the leading boat was close enough for the traders
to see that the paddlers who lined the gunwales from stem to stern had
their faces daubed with red and blue, and their fighting ornaments on.
In the body of the boats, crouching on their hams, with elbows on knees,
and upright rifles, were the others, packed as tightly as sardines.
"Mein Gott!" gasped Muller, "they have killed all hands on the schooner
and are coming for us. Look at the rifles." He dashed into his
trade-room and brought out about half a dozen Sniders, and an Epsom
salts box full of cartridges. "Come on, boys, load up as quick as you
can."
"You thundering ass," said the Englishman, "look again; can't you see
Kyte's in one boat steering?"
In another minute, with a roar from the excited savages, the first boat
surged up on the beach, and a huge, light-skinned savage seized Kyte in
his arms as if he were a child and placed him on the land. Then every
man leaped out and stood, rifle in hand, waiting for the other boat.
Again the same fierce cry as the second boat touched the shore; then
silence, as they watched with dilated eyes and gleaming teeth the
movements of the white man.
For one moment he stood facing them with outstretched hand uplifted in
warning to check their eager rush. Then he turned to the traders--
"The devils have broken loose. Have you fellows any of your own natives
that you don't want to get hurt? If so, get them inside the house, and
look mighty smart about it."
"There's not a native on the beach," said the German, "every mother's
son of them has cleared into the bush, except this man's boat's crew,"
pointing to the English trader; "they're in the house all right. But
look out, Captain Kyte, those fellows in the bush mean fight. There's
two thousand people in this village, and many of them have
rifles--Sniders--and plenty cartridges. I know, because it was I who
sold them."
Kyte smiled grimly. There was a steely glitter of suppressed excitement
in his keen grey eyes. Then he again held up his hand to his followers--
"Blood for blood, my children. But heed well my words--kill not the
women and children; now, go!"
Like bloodhounds slipped from the leash, the brown bodies and gleaming
rifle barrels went by the white men in one wild rush, and passed away
out of sight into the comparatively open forest that touched the edge of
the trader's clearing.
* * * * *
"There they go," said Kyte quietly, as he sat down on the edge of the
trader's verandah and lit a cigar, "and they'll give those smart niggers
of yours a dressing down that will keep them quiet for the next five
years (he was right, they did). Well, I had to let them have their own
way. They told me that if I didn't let them have revenge for the two men
that I would be unlucky before I got to Samoa,--a polite way of saying
that they would seize the schooner and cut our throats on the way up. So
to save unpleasantness, I gave each man a Snider and twenty-five
cartridges, and told them to shoot as many _pigs and fowls_ as they
liked. You should have heard the beggars laugh. By the way, I hope they
do shoot some, we want pork badly."
"Hallo, they've got to Tubarigan's, the chief's bush-house, and fired
it!" said Muller.
A column of black smoke arose from the side of the mountain, and in
another second or two loud yells and cries of defiance mingled with the
thundering reports of the Sniders and the crackling of the flames.
The little Frenchman and Muller played nervously with their rifles for a
moment or two; then meeting the answering look in each other's eyes,
they dashed into the trees and up the jungle-clad mountain side in the
direction of the smoke and fighting.
* * * * *
The native houses in New Britain are built of cane, neatly lashed
together with coir cinnet, and the roofs thatched with broad-leaved
grass or sugar-cane leaves. They burn well, and as the cane swells to
the heat each joint bursts with a crack like a pistol shot.
"Look now," said Kyte to his companion, pointing along the tops of the
hills. Clouds of black smoke and sheets of flame were everywhere
visible, and amidst the continuous roar of the flames, the crackling of
the burning cane-work of the native houses, and the incessant reports of
the Sniders, came savage shouts and yells from the raiders, and
answering cries of defiance from the New Britain men, who retreated
slowly to the grassy hills of the interior, whence they watched the
total destruction of some four or five of their villages. These
bush-houses are constructed with great care and skill by the natives,
and are generally only a short distance from the main village on the
beach; every bush-house stands surrounded by a growth of
carefully-tended crotons of extraordinary beauty and great variety of
colour, and in the immediate vicinity is the owner's plantation of yams,
taro, sugar-cane, bananas, and betel nuts.
In the course of an hour or two the Solomon islanders ceased firing, and
then the two white men, looking out on the beach, saw a number of the
beaten villagers fleeing down to the shore, about half a mile away, and
endeavouring to launch canoes.
"By ----!" exclaimed Kyte, "my fellows have outflanked them, and are
driving them down to the beach. I might get some after all for the
schooner. Will you lend me your boat's crew to head them off? They are
going to try and get to Mau Island."
"No," said the Englishman, "I won't. If Pierre and the German are such
idiots as to go shooting niggers in another man's quarrel, that's no
reason why I should take a hand in it."
Kyte nodded good-humouredly, and seemed to abandon the idea; but he went
into the house after a while, and came out again with a long Snider in
his hand.
In a few minutes the Solomon islanders began to return in parties of two
or three, then came the two white men, excited and panting with the lust
of killing.
Kyte held a whispered consultation with one of his "boys,"--a huge
fellow, whose body was reeking with perspiration and blood from the
scratches received in the thorny depths of the jungle,--and then pointed
to the beach where four or five white-painted canoes had been launched,
and were making for an opening in the reef. To reach this opening they
would have to pass in front of the trader's house, for which they now
headed.
Kyte waited a moment or two till the leading canoe was within four or
five hundred yards, then he raised his rifle, and placing it across the
stump of his left arm, fired. The ball plumped directly amidships, and
two of the paddlers fell. The rest threw away their paddles and spears,
and swam to the other canoes.
"Now we've got them," said Kyte, and taking about twenty of his boys,
he manned his two boats and pulled out, intercepting the canoes before
they could get through the reef into the open.
Then commenced an exciting chase. The refugees swam and dived about in
the shallow water like frightened fish, but their pursuers were better
men at that game than they, and of superior physique. In twenty minutes
they were all captured, except one, who sprang over the edge of the reef
into deep water and was shot swimming.
* * * * *
There were about five-and-twenty prisoners, and when they were brought
back in the boats and taken on board the schooner it was found that the
chief was among them. It may have occurred to him in the plantation life
of the after time that he had better have stayed quiet. The Englishman,
disgusted with the whole affair, went off with the other white men,
leaving his boat's crew for safety in the trader's house, for had the
Solomon islanders seen them they would have made quick work of them, or
else Kyte, to save their lives, would have offered to take them as
recruits.
The two other traders decided to leave in the schooner. They had made
the locality too warm for themselves, and urged the Englishman to follow
their example.
"No," he said, "I've been a good while here now, and I've never shot a
nigger yet for the fun of the thing. I'll take my chance with them for a
bit longer. The chances are you fellows will get your throats cut before
I do."
* * * * *
However, the schooner arrived safely at Samoa with her live cargo, but
Kyte reported to his owners that it would not be advisable to recruit in
New Britain for a year or two.