The Modern Old Man of the Sea—Fifty Pounds!—A Human
Octopus—Adrift at Sea—Sorrow—Saved—In Tonga—Our Old
Man’s last Hiding-place—Retrospect.
THE perspective of things as seen after a lapse of years seems gifted
with a visionary light that has no relation to the normal outlook of the
intellect. The most commonplace objects and incidents, when seen and
thought over in the pale light of memory, become tinged with that
indefinable glamour, that something which men call poetry. A wind-blown
ship far at sea with trailing spars and torn sails beating its way into
the sunset; a bird travelling silently across a foreign tropic sky; a
wild girl singing by a lagoon; a dead tree tossing its arms on a windy
hill; an old gentleman with a little clerical hat bashed over his eyes;
the remembrance of a tiny, golden-eyed girl, with a bit of blue ribbon
in her hair as she sprang into your farewell arms when you said good-bye
and went off, a boy, on your first voyage to sea—I say, all these things
seem to be the landmarks, the promontories of the shores one has hugged
as one sailed across the wild seas of life.
And, in looking back, that old gent of the South Sea Organization seems
to stand out, not so much as a wicked, eccentric individual, as he does
of a type that represents nine-tenths of the men whom one is doomed to
knock up against in one’s pilgrimage along this shore of hope and sudden
chills, wrecks, and buffeted dreams.
I know that that old man came to us in the guise of a benefactor who
would bestow wealth on O’Hara and on me, whereas he turned out to be a
Nemesis wrapt up in the vilest disguise, a Nemesis who seemed to take
some vindictive delight in the frailties of youth, and was guilty of
unwarrantable cruelty to a child’s innocence. I have sometimes thought
that neither he, nor the Organization itself, ever existed in this world
as men know things to exist; that I once lived in a phantasmagorial
world of ghostly sunlight and shadow that was haunted by an aged man who
wore side-whiskers, clung to my back like an Old Man of the Sea, and
successfully throttled my faith in supreme goodness. It was our lack of
funds and the old man’s abundant wealth that brought the whole business
about. And, though I know that the lack of funds on the one side and an
abundance of funds on the other side has brought about the direst
disasters beneath the sun, still, I feel that the sorrow that came to us
through that old fellow is worth recording.
I think it was the very next day that O’Hara and I saw our chance of
luring the old gentleman away from the Organization to see if he was
really in earnest about that fifty pounds he said he would give to the
first one who got him safely away. In the little that we had seen of him
we observed that he was weak where native girls and dancing-women were
concerned. When O’Hara had acquainted him with the fact that there was a
great tribal-dance on down in the village of Takarora, that the chiefs
were going to pow-wow and the _meke-girls_ eat fire and dance, he took
hold of our hands, and begged us to take him to see the sight.
“I’ve read a bit about these people in books, but, dear boys, I’d really
like to see the grandeur of primitive life in the natural state.” So
spake that old man. Then off we went, with the old gent in our company,
down the forest track.
“I never _did_ see a place like this,” said O’Hara, as we both gave a
startled jump—two dusky, faun-like creatures had suddenly peered through
the tasi-ferns and exotic convolvulus festoons, and, seeing our white
faces, had given a scream and sped off to their homestead in the pagan
village. The old gentleman placed his hand on his heart, took a swill
from his brandy-flask, and said it was enough to give one syncope to
live in such a blasted heathenland. Then he reshaped his clerical hat,
that had been bashed in by a banyan bough, and once more followed us
through the interminable growth of camphor, sage-palm, and all that
mysterious assemblage of twisting trunks and vines that nature fashions
where the sunlight burns with fiery heat.
When we got to the native village the girls, clad in decorative
festival costume, were dancing away in full swing. On the
forum-lecture-stump that faced the village green stood some pagan
philosopher, spouting for all he was worth about the new edict passed
by the missionaries—prohibition of rum-selling on Sundays.
“What’s he saying, Soogy?” said I, as that haunting kiddie rushed up to
us, for we never could get rid of him. Then Soogy told me, in pigeon
English, that the old pagan chief was shouting:
“Down with the brown man’s burden! Down with the cursed white man
wrapped in clothes!”
I must admit he looked a nasty old heathen as he put forth his dark
chin, lifted his face to the forest roof, and called on the old heathen
gods to hear the prayers of their faithful child. When he had finished
he took a huge nip from the kava calabash, and the native girls
commenced to give a fascinating two-step whilst the next chief oiled his
hair and prepared for a speech.
“Now’s your chance!” said I to O’Hara, for the old gentleman seemed in
the most convivial of moods as he stared at the dancing maids. I confess
that I was not good at giving a hint to a man who had promised fifty
pounds if a certain thing was done for him and had apparently forgotten
all about his promise. As O’Hara sidled up to the old gentleman’s side,
I remained within comfortable earshot.
“Hard times these,” said my pal, as he looked first towards the old man
and then towards the dancers. Still the old fellow stared in a vacant
way, fingered and readjusted his pince-nez as the stout chiefess did a
most peculiar somersault while performing the heathen tango. O’Hara got
desperate; it got on his mettle to be ignored like that. He sidled up a
little closer to the old man, and I distinctly heard him say, as he
stared in an absentminded way in front of himself: “Hard times these;
wish there was a chance of getting fifty pounds, somehow!”
It wanted some pluck to give a hint like that, I can tell you. The old
fellow had a freezing way with him too. Polish does hang on one when one
is born where the missing bank-managers hail from. Yet O’Hara did the
trick; for the old fellow stared on for a long time as though he’d not
heard a word, then he turned quietly to my comrade and said: “I suppose
you really could get me safely away to Lakemba, so that I could catch
the next boat?”
O’Hara at once unfolded part of his scheme to the old chap, who seemed
mighty pleased at the way O’Hara presented the matter to him. The scheme
was that we should hire one of the large, full outrigger-canoes from the
natives, and paddle the old man across the mile or so of ocean that
separated us from Lakemba. We happened to know that at Lakemba there was
a schooner due to sail for Honolulu, and the old fellow knew as well as
we that it was an easy matter to get a boat from Honolulu to San
Francisco. So the matter was arranged.
Then O’Hara went off to the shore village, made all his plans, hired a
large outrigger-canoe that could hold twenty warriors, and decided that
at the first opportunity we should clear out with the old man, for we
thought that we could kill two birds with one stone and get away to
Honolulu in the same schooner. But since man proposes and God disposes,
nothing came off as arranged, excepting that we did succeed in getting
away from that place. The old man seemed as pleased as Punch after that
scheme had been so rosily presented to him. When we got back to the
shanty we discovered that the old gentleman had presented each member
with a five-pound note, and that they were all drinking his health from
the large barrel of rum he had specially purchased for them. They all
put out their horny hands and one after the other gripped his hand,
looking quite affected as he called them “My dear sons,” and ordered the
native girls to serve out the rum. I saw his old eyes shine as he looked
into their wicked faces. They were not all villainous-looking; some were
as honest as the sunlight, were castaway sailormen, or traders who had
arrived at that Organization as _bona fide_ travellers who would rest
there a while.
* * * * *
A special concert was given on the old chap’s behalf that night. The
native women from Tambu-tambu came in and danced on the saloon
_pae-pae_. Oaths and wild reminiscences were in full swing. The old
gentleman became loquacious, sat with lifted finger telling Billy Bode a
naughty story, and everyone listened with deep respect. For those wild
men instinctively felt that the old fellow was an _oasis_ in the desert
for them. He had promised them twenty pounds apiece and another barrel
of the best rum ere he left the Organization’s roof, consequently his
interest and safety were _their_ interest and safety, and when suddenly
a tremendous crash came at the Organization’s front door, they rose _en
masse_! In a flash they saw the promised rum and “twenty pounds apiece”
in danger. In a moment they were on the defensive. Piff! the packs of
half-shuffled cards dropped on the table bench; puff! went forty bearded
lips, and out went forty tallow candles—candles that were suspended from
the low roof in gin bottles. That old gent must have thought a human
octopus with ten thousand arms and legs had seized him! Every “man jack”
of them had made a grab at him in the darkness—crash! down went the vast
lid of the emergency barrel; they had lifted him bodily to the roof, and
then, with a mighty thrust, so that he was sure to fit in (for he was
stout) they had crashed him into that gigantic tub!
Someone opened the door and let the moonlight in. It gleamed across the
stubbily whiskered, wild-looking faces of the men of the shanty, faces
flushed with drink and the thought that the prisoner in the tub, who had
promised such wealth, might be seized and taken down to Suva in chains!
It seemed that fate stared with determined eyes when those scarred faces
looked on the new-comers, who stood like shadows at the doorway. There
was no doubt about it; they were men-hunters! Then there was a lot of
bustling and whispering, fearful efforts, and big bribes were promised
to allay suspicion, as eight of the stoutest Organization members sat on
the lid of the tub, grim determination on their faces, a resolve in
their eyes to sell their lives dearly ere they gave up that mighty hope
with side-whiskers and such promises!
When those surveillants went away, quite convinced that they were on the
wrong track, the whole shanty’s crew breathed a sigh of relief. It
sounded as though a young hurricane slept there, and had stirred in its
sleep as a score of “Phews!” of delighted relief went across the hot,
rum-smelling compartment, as one by one the candles were relit. Swiftly
taking the lid off the emergency barrel, they dragged forth the old
gentleman. Their hearts were touched by the sight they beheld. His eyes
rolled, his clerical hat looked like a broken pancake stuck on his head,
it was smashed flat through the sudden uncalculated fall of the heavy
lid in the darkness.
“What was that?” he wailed, as he recovered consciousness, and the light
of reason flickered across the pupils of his sunken eyes.
“Nothing much,” said someone soothingly, as they pushed his smashed hat
into shape. It was like attempting to stand a corpse on its feet, ere
_rigor mortis_ had set in, when they tried to stand him up.
“Blimey! he’s a-going, blest if ’e ain’t,” said one. Then they poured
some rum down his throat.
Rum seemed to have its virtues, for the old man made a wonderful
recovery after the dose was poured down his throat. Half an hour
afterwards he was singing “Little Annie Rooney’s my sweetheart,” and
telling jokes. Then he sang again till his voice got wheezy, telling
tales as he banged his fist on the bench, and nudged the men in the
ribs, while they roared with laughter! Still he drank on. “Rum! Rum!”
shouted he. Then he stood up on the bench and danced with a stout native
woman from Tambu-tambu village. The delight of the women and the shanty
members was such that they nearly raised the roof with their wild
encores and shouts. He did a two-step dance! He mimicked the
indescribable barbarian contortions of that native woman’s monstrous
antics! He smacked her bare arms, pinched her tawny flesh, winked like
an old _roué_, showing conclusively what manner of man he really was.
The native children peeped through the shanty doorway, and when they
observed that fashionable old gentleman dancing away with a woman of
their own land, they shrieked with delight. The atmosphere of the Stone
Age seemed to hang about the old man as the derelicts around him cheered
every “turn” he gave, as he repeatedly recaught each “fine careless
rapture”!
Then the hubbub subsided, and one by one the drunken audience fell
asleep. Old Tideman, who was a crank on astronomy, crept outside with
his telescope to look at the stars. The wide-open door revealed the
moonlit palms just outside and the few straggling figures of sulu-clad
natives who had crept from afar to listen to the songs of the wild white
men! The last that was seen of the old man that night was when he went
off down the track, his little clerical hat bashed over his eyes, his
arms waving as he tried to make his companion understand how he admired
her frizzly mop hair and lustrous eyes. For it was the fat native woman
with whom he had danced a Fijian jig on the bench table! O’Hara grinned
when he met the old gent in the morning. He responded by giving him a
freezing stare, as though he hardly knew him! He looked quite pious, as
though he only indulged in plain milk diet and studied ecclesiastical
problems. He looked bad though; one can’t bribe the liver and make its
overflow look blushing and rosy red when it’s really a bilious green!
The night of debauchery had aged him considerably. His hands shook; he
didn’t know which way to go. First he picked a flower, chewed it, then
wiped his mouth and his clammy forehead. O’Hara went straight into
business then, and said:
“I’m clearing out to-day. I’ve hired a fine outrigger-canoe that’s big
enough to hold twenty.” Then he looked square into the aged fugitive’s
face, and asked him if he was coming along with us.
He was as pleased to get away from that place as we were, that was very
evident, for he decided to go away with O’Hara and myself at once. There
was no need for secrecy, the shanty was quiet as the grave; for the
sleeping reprobates were making up by day for sleep lost through the
night. Only the forest banyans sighed as we three crept away into the
shadows, and then even the wail of the derelict captain’s concertina
faded away as we plunged into the dense wood. When we arrived at the
native village we found, to our disgust, that the man who had promised
to lend us the canoe was out fishing in it.
“It’s no good getting ratty, guv’nor,” said O’Hara, as the old fellow
began to swear, and said he’d go back to the Organization. We breathed a
sigh of relief when the native boat-owner at length returned. In a
moment we were off, bound for the shore. The old man dropped his
walking-stick in his hurry; we were all anxious to get away. As we went
down the long grove of feathery palms and giant breadfruits the stars
were shining over the sea. We could feel the cool drifts of wind coming
in as they stirred the wild odours of half-dead forest flowers and
decaying pineapples. As we tramped down the soft shore-track we saw the
fireflies dancing in the bamboos that grew high up on the edge of the
rocky slope above us, far ahead. It seemed as though we were looking
through a telescope and could see myriads of tiny worlds sparkling and
dancing far away in infinite space.
When we arrived down by the big shore lagoon, there lay the large
outrigger, floating on the still water, just as the native told us it
would be. He trusted us. For were we not “noble Papalagis”?
Not a soul was in sight as we stepped into that strange craft. In a
minute or two we had pushed off into the deeper water. We were both dab
hands at paddling. The scene looked like some picture of enchantment,
some picturesque landscape out of an Arabian Nights’ entertainment. Only
the dipping of the paddles which rippled the glassy oil-painting-like
stillness of the creek’s water gave a certain reality to the mystic
scene. The old man might have been some weird old “Pasha of many tales”
starting off on a voyage into fairy-land with a clerical hat on. It was
only the swelling on the side of his head where he had been thrust into
the emergency barrel that reminded one of gross, mundane things.
It was a terrifically hot night. The sea just outside was perfectly calm
and wonderfully bright. On the horizon shone the large, low, yellow
moon, bringing into relief the wild inland shores, gullies, buttressed
banyans, and belts of mangroves that grew down to the ocean’s edge.
The moon looked like some far-off, phantom tunnel-way as the ornamental
prow of our canoe turned and glided silently, making straight for its
ghostly rim, due south. The old fellow’s face was turned towards its
magnificent mystery; O’Hara sat in the centre of the canoe, and I aft.
We were not more than twenty yards from the shore then. It really _did_
look as though we were paddling away from some enchanted isle; only the
cry of some strange night-bird and the leap of a tidal wave over the
reefs, as it splashed into the lagoon’s still water, made a feeble,
ghost-like noise.
“It’s quite safe, fellows, I suppose?” queried the old man, as he looked
anxiously about him.
“Safe as houses,” O’Hara replied. Then he said, “What’s that?”
We all looked shoreward. Out by the edge of the promontory we distinctly
saw a tiny phosphorescent splash as though some strange animal had
darted from the forest and dived into the deep water.
We still watched, then we distinctly saw shivering lines of silver
ripples stealing towards us, coming fast, trembling and spreading
swiftly on the ocean’s perfectly calm, moonlit surface.
“It’s something big swimming under the water. Begorra! a shark coming
for us!” said O’Hara. The old gent shot up on his feet with fright and
nearly upset the canoe! I think my comrade and I looked a bit palish as
the uncanniness of that movement of the unseen came straight for us.
“Wish I’d brought a revolver. By St. Patrick! who’d ’ave thought things
was a-going to swim after us under the blasted water?”
“Keep still; don’t move!” said I, my heart in my mouth, for the ripples
were within thirty yards of our canoe, and still no sign whatever of the
cause of that mysterious movement beneath the water.
Then we stared as though we’d sighted a ghost; up poked a tiny curly
head, two bright, beautiful eyes were staring reproachfully at me!
“Good Lord!” I gasped; “it’s Soogy!”
We pulled him into the canoe. O’Hara used an awful swear word, said
unprintable things. As for me, I felt some strange, haunting kind of a
fear come over me as the child sat there.
“You go tryer and getter away from your little Soogy?” said that weird
child.
“No,” said I, shaking my head, feeling guilty as I replied, “No, Soogy,”
half apologetically! Then I said: “We were coming back to-morrow
morning. How on earth did you know we were out here in a canoe?”
The little fellow’s eyes brightened; he simply looked at me earnestly
for a while, then said:
“I knower all ’bout you! The wind blow in cave by sea and tell me all.”
“Well, I’m blithered and damned if that kid won’t bring us bad luck,”
said O’Hara.
Soogy had calmly got to the rear of the canoe, had taken the
steering-rod, and had started to guide us with the splendid precision of
a native child. The prow was toward the south, bound for the isle of
Lakemba.
“I suppose you know your way?” suddenly said the old gentleman, as he
leaned forward, struck a match, and lit a cigar.
O’Hara never answered, simply looked contemptuously at the
white-whiskered face as the mouth sent up curling whiffs of blue smoke
into the clear moonlit air. We were out in the deep ocean by then,
paddling for all we were worth. The distance by night took one quite out
of sight of land; even by daylight the nearest shore-line in the
farthest distance looked like a blue blotch on the horizon.
I think we had been paddling about an hour when the moon suddenly went
out and seemed to leave a puff of bright smoke behind—it had gone behind
a cloud.
“That was sudden-like!” said O’Hara.
It was a puff of wind; it blew the old gentleman’s hat off.
“Hope it’s not going to blow,” was my mental comment, as once again a
breath came down from the sky and stirred the glassy surface. The old
fellow saw the look in our eyes, and, guessing that things were not as
well as they could be, said: “Why didn’t you tell me we had to go out of
sight of land? I’d never have risked this; I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t,” he
muttered to himself. Then without further warning it came—crash! a
typhoon was on us. The first blast nearly blew the outrigger out of the
water. The only reason that it didn’t turn turtle was that the outrigger
contrivance had been constructed by the superior savage intellect. It
seemed that the bright worlds of stars and sea had been sponged off the
map of existence, as we clung to each other, and the mountainous seas
heaved their backs and began to roar like thunder around us. The old
fellow had lost his nerve, he wept and implored us to save him; but
O’Hara and I were very busy saving ourselves in that chaos of dark and
wind and ramping seas.
Soogy was there all right, I felt his hand clinging to my leg.
“Keep still! For God’s sake, don’t move!” we both cried, as the old man
came to our end of the canoe, nearly upsetting our planet, for such that
craft was to us. Soogy had taken a paddle to help O’Hara and so keep her
head on to the tremendous seas, but it was no use; she slewed round and
went broadside on, and so the seas swamped us. But still we did not
sink. Those stout bamboo poles kept the craft buoyant and steady as
compared to what would have happened had they not been there. For Soogy
was sitting on the dancing outrigger, balancing it as the big seas came
on and tried in vain to turn us upside down! Ah, he was a plucky little
beggar, quite devoid of fear. We three men simply gave up the ghost so
far as making intelligent efforts to save ourselves were concerned.
O’Hara clung to me, I clung to O’Hara, and the old fellow clung to us
both. The hot, terrific wind hissed, shrieked over us as we felt the
canoe go up—up! on the mountainous seas, then down—down! into the
terrible thundering valleys as the angry waters fell. Then once again we
were climbing the travelling hills that were drifting us away far out
into the vast solitude of the Pacific Ocean!
It seemed as if that dark and roaring wind hung over our heads for
infinite ages. How we clung to that outrigger and were not washed away
is a mystery that is connected with Providence and that word
“inscrutable.” When dawn at length brightened all the east, I lifted my
head half fearfully. Soogy was huddled beside me, O’Hara on the other
side, so tight that we were wedged in. The old gentleman had managed to
fix his head and neck under the forward canoe-seat in such a way that he
had become a part of the canoe itself! His bald head, through sea-water
repeatedly washing over it, had become quite bluish-looking. By some
miracle his clerical-shaped hat still lay just beside him. When O’Hara
softly pulled his coat to see if he was still alive, he half opened his
eyes and rolled them in a pathetic way. The fact that he still lived
relieved our loneliness. The wind had ceased, but the swell remained,
huge rolling hills of glassy water rising and travelling at about four
knots an hour. We immediately commenced to bale out the canoe, using a
calabash and a tin which we discovered beneath the seat. Soogy and the
old man helped O’Hara and myself in this task. We all felt deeply
thankful when the sun burst out over the great waste in all its tropical
vigour. Soogy began to sing, and cheered us up. None of us seemed to
realize the true state of affairs, that we were out of sight of land,
were castaways on the Pacific, our paddles gone, and only about two
pints of water in a rusty tin can!
The hot sunlight soon dried our soaked clothing.
The old fugitive became transformed. The erstwhile freezing look in his
eyes had gone, and was replaced by a gleam of friendly appeal to us! It
was quite evident that he saw things as they were, and had admitted
O’Hara and myself into his social circle, so to speak. He gave us
cigars. To our relief he discovered some matches in his breast pocket;
they were damp, but we placed them on the rim of his clerical hat and
they soon dried in the hot sunlight. That hat had gone through
something! To this day I cannot look at a clerical hat without thinking
of typhoons and tropic skies shining over wastes of water surrounded by
illimitable skylines.
We commenced carefully, and drank a very small drop of water each. We
made several attempts to make paddles out of the spare calabash and the
slit wood of a canoe seat, but it was no good. We were drifting at about
four knots an hour to the north-east.
As the hours went by we began to realize our position. And yet, somehow,
it seemed incredible that we should be cast away on those lonely waters
so easily.
“A ship is sure to pass us soon,” said O’Hara.
“Of course it is,” I replied, as our aged companion put his hand to his
brow and repeatedly scanned the horizon. I even laughed, and so did
O’Hara, and I thought of my old sea-adventure books, and felt quite a
romantic hero of the tropic seas. But I soon began to feel very
unheroic, and felt inclined to laugh on “the other side of my mouth,” as
they say. It was the coming of night that made the romantic novelty wear
off. There’s nothing in the world like the shadows of night coming over
the heads of castaways to make them sadly _realize_, so I should think.
Reality came down on us like a huge, Fate-like hand, and seemed to
crush, smash us as though we were bedraggled flies on a mighty
window-pane!
Night was a nightmare with a myriad starry eyes. Thirst had us in its
grip, but we dare not drink the tiny drop of water that remained in the
can. I fell asleep for five minutes, but only managed to fall off into
some gulf of misery that was mixed up with the horror of death and
castaway canoes. Then O’Hara and I sat up and started to sing a
sea-chanty, to cheer up the old gentleman and little Soogy. But, withal,
Soogy was plucky enough. As for the aged fugitive, he started to carry
on in a terrible way, and kept crying out: “Lost at sea in a boat! Lost
at sea in a boat!” Then he got sleepy and mumbled it out in a pathetic,
far-away tone, and got on our nerves more than I can express in cold
words.
I once fancied that I saw the light of a passing vessel, but it soon
died away, whatever it was.
“May the Holy Virgin protect us all!” said O’Hara.
Then dawn came. Soogy stopped singing songs. The sight of the child’s
bright, fevered eyes and parched lips unnerved us. O’Hara did the worst
thing he could do, gave the child a tiny drop of spirit as he lay
moaning out on the twisted bamboo grating of the outrigger. Soogy tried
hard to buck up, but his small frame hadn’t the lasting power that our
larger frames possessed. At the end of the second day, as near as I can
remember, we realized our position, and knew that we were floating on
the very edge of eternity. The old man became quite brave. His eyes lost
all the old cunning and craft that I had so particularly observed in
them. Even then, my numbed senses seemed to realize that it was only the
worldly world that makes men bad, the earthly values of things inspiring
them with greed till their darker passions overgrow their better
qualities as weeds overgrow and strangle flowers.
We shared out the last drop of water. The old gentleman gave Soogy a
part of his share, and we did likewise. O’Hara became quite religious,
in the true sense of that much misused word. Through the whole day and
night we never ceased lifting our weary heads to stare on the skyline.
But no vessel passed. The old man placed his large red handkerchief over
Soogy. It was a terrible sight, as Soogy’s hands tossed, to see the
blisters on the little arms. But it was no use waving to the hot tropic
sun as it shone up there in the cloudless sky.
“We’re done for,” said O’Hara; then he, too, lay down again, and seemed
to grow careless as to whatever might happen.
That night Soogy revived in a wonderful way. I was lying in a
semi-conscious state when I felt someone gently touch my arm.
“You sorry for Soogy?” said a far-away-sounding voice. The child was
staring in my eyes in a strange, quiet way.
“Perhaps I’m dreaming,” I thought, as a great sense of the unreal came
over me. My heart began to thump and my senses to whirl and swim. O’Hara
and the old man were lying just beside us, perfectly quiet, as though
dead. I stared into the eyes of the wistful little face.
“Is it you, Soogy?” I said in a hushed voice, as I lifted my aching
head. “Dear God!” I muttered, as I realized something for the first
time, while the child’s eyes stared into my own. I felt that I had never
seen such soft, beautiful eyes before. Floating there, under the stars
of the tropic seas, nothing seemed too strange or wonderful to occur. A
terrible sorrow possessed me as I touched the soft, tiny hand, and
pressed my lips to those pleading lips! For a little while, that seemed
like a thousand years, Soogy huddled beneath the folds of my coat.
“You come to me if I die, come to heathenland?” Such was what a faint
voice, like far-off music, whispered in my ears. I cannot say one word
of all that I whispered into the child’s ear. I said mad things, I know.
“I happy now, Papalagi,” whispered that faint, strange voice.
At daybreak Soogy died.
O’Hara laid the silent form out on the edge of the outrigger’s grating.
All that day O’Hara and I kept our backs turned towards that silent
form, lying there, face downwards. I told O’Hara to lay Soogy like that.
I couldn’t stand seeing those earnest eyes staring all night up at the
merciless infinity of stars.
The old fugitive became insane. We only saw his head move; he had
covered it over with a bit of sacking to keep the sun’s rays off.
“Forgive me, Cissie—forgive me, Cissie; keep the keys—keep the keys,” he
kept saying over and over again in his delirium. The sky was no longer a
sky to me, it was a monstrous slab lying over a mighty vault wherein the
dead still breathed as they floated and tossed their arms in agony on
illimitable waters.
Soogy’s death seemed to revive O’Hara and me; yet we said very little to
each other. It was a world of dreams that we stared in, some
phantasmagorial existence where only death whispered as the outrigger
plopped in the star-mirroring deep around us. O’Hara was no longer my
pal in sorrow; we had become rivals in some terrible struggle of
will-power. The energy of the whole universe seemed to be wholly
concentrated on one vital move on the tremendous chess-board of that
phantasmal world of water whereon we drifted. O’Hara and I were the
sorrowing slaves of Fate; nothing else existed, only he and I and the
dreadful thought as to which one of us must put forth our hand and make
that terrible move. It was inevitable that one of us must do it, for on
those tropic seas there was no other way than to crawl out on the
outrigger and push that small dead form into the vast depths that moved
around us. The tropic moon loomed on the horizon. It might have been the
uprising sun, for all I knew, in that world of horror that I had been
plunged into. I looked over the canoe’s side and gazed into the glassy
depths. I saw a great shark gliding along under the surface. It seemed
natural that it should be there, waiting for us. I gazed in a languid,
interested way as that cannibal of the deep turned softly over on its
back and revealed its shining belly. Its cruel, monstrous mouth looked
like some materialized jaw of pallid hate as it softly snapped at my
shadow that lay in the moonlit deep, and severed it in two! Then O’Hara
dissolved into some cobweb-like substance and was blown away on the puff
of wind that crept across the hot seas.
Dawn came like a mighty torrent of silver and swept across the silent
world of waters. I felt that I was floating across shadow-seas. For a
little while I heard a faint moaning and felt cool sea-water slashing
over me. I tried to move, but something held my feet down in a merciless
grip. It was all the more terrible because I realized in some mysterious
way that I was far at sea on that castaway canoe. The fact was, that a
breeze had sprung up and the canoe was being tossed wildly to and fro.
Why none of us was thrown out is a mystery. Anyhow, the blow was of
short duration, for I suddenly lifted my head, and saw O’Hara and the
old gentleman lying perfectly still beside me. Then the world seemed to
change again: night fell over the sea. Again I watched that silent form
lying out on the grating. Again the dawn sent grey wings along the
eastern horizon. It was then that I became strangely calm, and, terrible
as the sight was, as that child lay dead on the grating of the canoe, I
smiled and looked upon it all as the most commonplace of experiences.
“Good-bye, Soogy,” I said, then I gently pushed the small figure from
the bamboo-outrigger. Some terrible spell of curiosity gripped me. I
stared down into the water in wistful fascination, as, leaning over, I
watched the spot where the ripples spread, where the small form had gone
down, down into the clear, still ocean depth at dawn. I could still
distinctly see Soogy sinking down into the grave! It looked like the
figure of some tiny child imaged in some vast crystal mirror as down,
down it went. Only the mournful cry of a solitary sea-bird, as it passed
across the sky and sent a shadow over that wandering grave, broke the
stillness. Then I saw the figure begin to sway rhythmically to some deep
ocean current. Presently it looked no bigger than a penny
terra-cotta-coloured doll.
Ah, I had hoped to find that it was all a dream as I still watched,
rubbed my eyes, and hoped with a terrible hope. I well knew, as that
tiny remnant of mortality faded from sight, that I was living in some
terrible sorrow of reality. I thought of those forest dances away in
Fiji, of the weird, tender glances of those deep, golden-iris eyes, when
Soogy crept out of the forest palms to make my bed. I remembered the
sweet, weird song the heathen child had sung to me, and how the
witch-like little singer had stared across the camp-fire till I had felt
some strange fright! But the mystery of it all had vanished, for, on the
second night after the storm, O’Hara and I had discovered the
truth—Soogy was no boy at all, but a half-caste Polynesian girl!
A great silence seemed to come over the world after Soogy sank from
sight. And then my dreams were broken, and I fancied I could hear the
breakers beating against eternity. Someone touched me softly on the
brow, and a voice said:
“Try and stand on your feet; we’re saved, pal.”
I half realized something, and sat up. I looked immediately to the
southward and saw the eternal wastes of sea-skyline, then I glanced
round and noticed that our canoe was tossing about on a heavy swell just
off a rocky coast. We were so near the reefs that I could head the
soughing of the wind along the bending tracts of shore palms (it turned
out to be the Tonga Islands). O’Hara was sitting on the bamboo grating
of the canoe’s outrigger. His face appeared extremely thin and was
ghastly pale. The aged fugitive sat huddled by the prow, his battered
clerical hat held in his trembling hand, his chin on his chest, a wild
look in his eyes. They both looked like emaciated phantom-figures, quite
unreal. Only at that moment in my life did I realize in a flash how we
mortals are but shadows moving through some dream that divides our
existence from the boundless reality of the great shadowland. True
enough, too, I had awakened from a terrible reality into a darker dream.
“The child’s gone!” said O’Hara.
“I know,” I muttered in a vacant way before I realized the truth. Then,
in the terror of dawning realization, I gasped out, “Where’s Soogy?”
“She must have been washed away by the squall last night,” said O’Hara,
and his voice was as gentle as a girl’s.
* * * * *
After that tragical experience we were taken in by the missionaries at
Tonga and treated with the kindness that is always shown to shipwrecked
men wherever they may go. We soon recovered physically from the
buffeting of our castaway voyage. I know that in the comfort of life
under secure conditions in Tonga, the old gentleman’s freezing look
almost came back to his little blue eyes; but when he discovered that I
was a professional violinist as well as a vagabond troubadour, his
manner became almost polite. This deeply-rooted conventional attribute
of the old man’s was the more noticeable when I secured a position at
Nukualofa as Court violinist to King George of Tonga,[8] also a
munificent salary that was considerably augmented by gifts from the head
missionaries, who willingly paid me for my solos at the mission-room
concerts. My Irish comrade could hardly believe his eyes when I stood on
the primitive platforms of the native villages and became an
enthusiastic appealer to the souls of the pagan Tongans. I recall that,
when I played and conducted the royal string band in the native
wedding-march on the marriage of some prince of the old dynasty, the
Queen of Tonga presented me with an exquisitely carved tortoise-shell
comb from her hair. Indeed, I was doing exceedingly well, considering
that I had no letters of introduction. This kind of thing went on for
nearly three weeks, when a full-rigged sailing-ship, the “Orontes,”
dropped anchor off the island. Its sails gleaming in the sunset, shining
like beautiful signals of romance, called me, till the old roaming
spirit, asserting itself, shattered all my ambitions over kings, queens,
missionaries, Court appointments, and salaries. The “Orontes” was bound
for Ysabel, Solomon Isles, and British New Guinea. When I went aboard
her and interviewed the skipper, telling him I wanted a berth, he shook
his head, and said he could get a dozen Kanakas for the price of a
drink, as good as any white men, any day. And so, when the “Orontes,”
with her sails bellying to the winds, bowed to the sunset on her long
voyage across the Pacific, O’Hara and I lay huddled on old sacks in the
deep gloom of the _forepeak-hold_, where we had secured the cheapest
berth—as stowaways!
Footnote 8:
King George of Tonga died recently, 1918.
In my imagination I can still see O’Hara’s grimy, unshaven face as he
sits in the gloom beside me, puffs his short pipe, and drinks at regular
intervals from the water-bottle. The rats squeak.
“Don’t smoke, for Heaven’s sake,” I say, as O’Hara strikes another match
on the ship’s iron side. I feel sick enough in that stuffy hold as the
vessel pitches to the swell. Then, as I sit there amongst the strong,
evil-smelling merchandise of our wandering argosy, I place my fiddle on
my knee and go “pink-e-te ponk-e-te,” pizzicato style, as my fingers
strum out an old English melody.
“For God’s sake, shut up, pal!” says O’Hara, as we hear the sailormen
tramping on the deck just overhead, as they go on watch in the silence
of the hot tropic night.
But all that’s past now. My Irish comrade went out of my life years ago.
And I suppose the old fugitive, with his clerical hat, has long since
paid his last debt, and kind men have hidden his artful face in that
place where no living man will search to find him. As for the Charity
Organization, it has most probably discarded long ago its primitive
style and locality, and now maybe does its good work from some more
palatial institution in the remoter islands of the Pacific. With the
advancement of civilization things are carried on in more sumptuous
style. Indeed, I would not be surprised to hear that the new Charity
Organization Hermitage, that welcomes the homeless derelicts who have
flown in haste from the western cities, has a gilded dome and spire
peeping from a solitary forest of some remote isle of the southern seas.
Possibly a secret cable runs under the Pacific, running straight from
its guarding seclusion, sending out warnings to its prospective
protégés. Indeed, even in those far-off days, Bones’ establishment at
Fiji had depots that extended to the extreme points of the civilized
world. And it was marvellous how often the keen surveillants of the
Australian seaboard cities were baffled in their search for missing
bank-managers, etc. So wags the world, things only apparently changing
as one age appears to differ from another age. It is only the hearts of
men that remain the same, as the centuries pass and fashions change, so
that men may open their doors inwards instead of outwards, and so sit
and dream that the moral codes of the world have become reversed. Even
my rose-coloured spectacles remain the same; though they have become
somewhat dimmed, I can still fix them on and gaze with hopeful eyes on
the wondrous pageant of life that moves with me along the great vagabond
track. And many times have I sought to lend them to sad men and women
who staggered beside me, yes, as they stared blindly through their bits
of smoky glass. But sometimes I shiver with dread at the possibility
that I may some day grow wise and restrained, and no longer love
fairy-tales, fallen, sinful men, and beautiful women of four years old.
And so I often rekindle my camp-fire and sit alone, so that I may hear
the forest trees singing overhead. It is then that O’Hara comes back out
of the shadows; and, as I play my violin, sings some rollicking Irish
song. And, strange as it may appear to some, when the log fire is
burning low, a misty pageant passes before my eyes. One by one my old
tribal poets, attired in all the primitive majesty of tattoo and
tapu-robes, stalk by me, and pass silently down the moonlit banyan
groves. ’Tis then that the call comes again; for I am the doomed rolling
stone that gathered the magical moss of these memoirs and all that has
made me know how little men are, and humbly realize that I have chanced
to live universally instead of only roaming in my boots over the wide
spaces of this beautiful world. In this wise I have found and placed
carefully down any little campfire-gleams of interest which my book may
possess, as well as having found my religion in some sorrow of the
eternity of all things past. I still jog along, carrying my staff and my
violin, and weighted swag of dreams, as I roam along the forest track.
And, though I have many years to travel ere I become old, I can say in
the deeper sense of its meaning:
There’s not a flower along the wild hillside,
Or song-bird of the woods that sang and died,
But it has kinship with the winds that blow
O’er memory’s forest trees of long ago.
And not a beggar in the distant lands
But I am with him, heart and soul and hands—
To help him carry his old swag of dreams
In some great twinship of our shattered schemes;
As deep within my heart I hear the chime
Of night winds tolling all the bells of Time—
In some old belfry of the stars they ring
The songs the dead men dream and cannot sing.
Even the bluest, grandest ocean of the world exists in my mind only as
some deep, solemn hymning that tells the briefness of mortal existence.
Sometimes, when I hear the wind blow in the night, my thoughts go flying
out to the wide Pacific that heaves under the stars, and is, to me, the
vast, wandering grave wherein ill-fated Soogy, the native child, sleeps.
THE END
------------------------------------------------------------------------
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
End of Project Gutenberg's South Sea Foam, by Arnold Safroni-Middleton