THE BOAT'S CREW.
Presently, as we headed towards the black object on the horizon,
Nassaline stretched out that skinny finger of his once more (no amount
of feeding ever seemed to make Nassaline one ounce fatter), and cried
out in his shrill little piping voice, "Two man on the boat! him makey
signs for call us!"
I'd give anything to have eyes as sharp as those Polynesians. I looked
across the sea, and the loppy waves in the foreground, and could just
make out with the naked eye that the row-boat had something that looked
like a red handkerchief tied to her bare mast, and a white signal
flapping in the wind below it; but not a living soul could I distinguish
in her without my binocular. So I put up my glasses and looked again.
Sure enough, there they were, two miserable objects, clinging as it
seemed half-dead to the mast, and making most piteous signs with their
hands to attract our attention. As soon as they saw that we had really
sighted them, and were altering our course to pick them up, their joy
and delight knew no bounds, as we judged. They flung up their arms
ecstatically into the air, and then sank back, exhausted, as I guessed,
on to the thwarts where they had long ceased sitting or rowing.
They were wearied out, I imagined, with long buffeting against that
angry and immeasurable sea, and must soon have succumbed to fatigue if
we hadn't caught sight of them.
We put on all steam, as in duty bound, and made towards them hastily. By
and by, my brother Jim, who had been off watch, came up from below and
joined me on deck to see what was going forward. At the same moment
Nassaline cried out once more, "Him no two man! Him two boy! Two English
boy! Him hungry like a dying!" And as he spoke, he held his own skinny
bare arm up to his mouth dramatically, and took a good bite at it, as if
to indicate in dumb show that the crew of the boat were now almost ready
to eat one another.
Jim looked through the glasses, and handed them over to me in turn. "By
George, Julian," he said, "Nassaline's right. It's a couple of boys, and
to judge by the look of them, they're not far off starving!"
I seized the glasses and fixed them upon the boat. We were getting
nearer now, and could make out the features of its occupants quite
distinctly. A more pitiable sight never met my eyes. Her whole crew
consisted of two white-faced lads, apparently about twelve or thirteen
years old, dressed in loose blue cotton shirts and European trousers,
but horribly pinched with hunger and thirst, and evidently so weak as to
be almost incapable of clinging to the bare mast whence they were trying
to signal us.
Now, you land-loving folk can hardly realize, I dare say, what such an
incident means at sea; but to Jim and me, who had sailed the lonely
Pacific together for five years at a stretch, that pathetic sight was
full both of horror and unspeakable mystery. For anybody, even grown men
long used to the ocean, to be navigating that awful expanse of water
alone in an empty boat is little short of ghastly. Just think what it
means! A stormy sheet that stretches from the north pole to the south
without one streak of continuous land to break it; a stormy sheet on
which the winds and waves may buffet you about in almost any direction
for five thousand miles, with only the stray chance of some remote
oceanic isle to drift upon, or some coral reef to swallow you up with
its gigantic breakers. But a couple of boys!--mere children
almost!--alone, and starving, on that immense desert of almost
untraveled water! On the Atlantic itself your chance of being picked up
from open boats by a passing vessel is slight enough, heaven knows! but
on the Pacific, where ships are few and routes are far apart, your only
alternative to starvation or foundering is to find yourself cast on the
tender mercies of the cannibal Kanaka. No wonder I looked at Jim, and
Jim looked at me, and each of us saw unaccustomed tears standing half
ashamed in the eyes of the other.
"Stop her!" I cried. "Lower the gig, Tom Blake! Jim, we must go
ourselves and fetch these poor fellows."
At the sound of my bell the engineer pulled up the _Albatross_ short and
sharp, with admirable precision, and we lowered our boat to go out and
meet them. As we drew nearer and nearer with each stroke of our oars, I
could see still more plainly to what a terrible pitch of destitution and
distress these poor lads had been subjected during their awful journey.
Their cheeks were sunken, and their eyes seemed to stand back far in the
hollow sockets. Their pallid white hands hardly clung to the mast by
convulsive efforts with hooked fingers. They had used up their last
reserve of strength in their wild efforts to attract our attention.
I thanked heaven it was Nassaline who kept watch at the mast-head when
they first hove in sight. No European eye could ever have discovered the
meaning of that faint black speck upon the horizon. If it hadn't been
for the sharp vision of our keen Polynesian friend, these two helpless
children might have drifted on in their frail craft for ever, till they
wasted away with hunger and thirst under the broiling eye of the hot
Pacific noontide.
We pulled alongside, and lifted them into the gig. As we reached them,
both boys fell back faint with fatigue and with the sudden joy of their
unexpected deliverance. "Quick, quick, Jim! your flask!" I cried, for we
had brought out a little weak brandy and water on purpose. "Pour it
slowly down their throats--not too fast at first--just a drop at a time,
for fear of choking them."
Jim held the youngest boy's head on his lap, and opened those parched
lips of his that looked as dry as a piece of battered old shoe-leather.
The tongue lolled out between the open teeth like a thirsty dog's at
midsummer, and was hard and rough as a rasp with long weary watching. We
judged the lad at sight to be twelve years old or thereabouts. Jim put
the flask to his lips, and let a few drops trickle slowly down his burnt
throat. At touch of the soft liquid the boy's lips closed over the mouth
of the flask with a wild movement of delight, and he sucked in eagerly,
as you may see a child in arms suck at the mouthpiece of its empty
feeding-bottle. "That's well," I said. "He's all right, at any rate. As
long as he has strength enough to pull at the flask like that, we shall
bring him round in the end somehow."
We took away the flask as soon as we thought he'd had as much as was
good for him at the time, and let his head fall back once more upon
Jim's kindly shoulder. Now that the first wild flush of delight at their
rescue was fairly over, a reaction had set in; their nerves and muscles
gave way simultaneously, and the poor lad fell back, half-fainting,
half-sleeping, just where Jim with his fatherly solicitude chose to lay
him.
Tom Blake and I turned to the elder lad. His was a harder and more
desperate case. Perhaps he had tried more eagerly to save his helpless
brother; perhaps the sense of responsibility for another's life had
weighed heavier upon him at his age--for he looked fourteen; but at any
rate he was well-nigh dead with exposure and exhaustion. The first few
drops we poured down his throat he was clearly quite unable to swallow.
They gurgled back insensibly. Tom Blake took out his handkerchief, and
tearing off a strip, soaked it in brandy and water in the cup end of the
flask; then he gently moistened the inside of the poor lad's mouth and
throat with it, till at last a faint swallowing motion was set up in the
gullet. At that, we poured down some five drops cautiously. To our
delight and relief they were slowly gulped down, and the poor white
mouth stood agape like a young bird's in mute appeal for more
water--more water.
We gave him as much as we dared in his existing state, and then turned
to the boat for some clue to the mystery.
She was an English-built row-boat, smart and taut, fit for facing rough
seas, and carrying a short, stout mast amidships. On her stern we found
her name in somewhat rudely-painted letters, _Messenger of Peace:
Makilolo in Tanaki_. Clearly she had been designed for mission service
among the islands, and the last words which followed her title must be
meant to designate her port, or the mission station. But what that place
was I hadn't a notion.
"Where's Tanaki, Tom Blake?" I asked, turning round, for Tom had been
navigating the South Seas any time this twenty years, and knew almost
every nook and corner of the wide Pacific, from Yokohama to Valparaiso.
Tom shifted his quid from one cheek to the other and answered, after a
pause, "Dunno, sir, I'm sure. Never heerd tell of Tanaki in all my born
days; an' yet I sorter fancied, too, I knowed the islands."
"There are no signs of blood or fighting in the boat," I said, examining
it close. "They can't have escaped from a massacre, anyhow." For I
remembered at once to what perils the missionaries are often exposed in
these remote islands--how good Bishop Patteson had been murdered at
Santa Cruz, and how the natives had broken the heads of Mason and Wood
at Erromanga not so many months back, in cold blood, out of pure lust of
slaughter.
"But they must have run away in an awful hurry," Tom Blake added,
overhauling the locker of the boat, "for, see, she ain't found; there
ain't no signs of food or anything to hold it nowheres, sir; and this
ere little can must 'a' been the o'ny thing they had with 'em for
water."
He was quite right. The boat had clearly put to sea unprovisioned. It
deepened our horror at the poor lads' plight to think of this further
aggravation of their incredible sufferings. For days they must have
tossed in hunger and thirst on the great deep. But we could only wait to
have the mystery cleared up when the lads were well enough to explain to
us what had happened. Meanwhile we could but look and wonder in silence;
and indeed we had quite enough to do for the present in endeavoring to
restore them to a state of consciousness.
"Any marks on their clothes?" my brother Jim suggested, with practical
good sense, looking up from his charge as we rowed back toward the
_Albatross_, with the _Messenger of Peace_ in tow behind us. "That might
help us to guess who they are, and where they hail from."
I looked close at the belt of the lads' blue shirts. On the elder's I
read in a woman's handwriting, "Martin Luther Macglashin, 6, '87." The
younger boy's bore in the same hand the corresponding inscription, "John
Knox Macglashin, 6, '86." It somehow deepened the tragedy of the
situation to come upon those simple domestic reminiscences at such a
moment.
"Sons of a Scotch missionary, apparently," I said, as I read them out.
"If only we could find where their father was at work, we might manage
to get some clue to this mystery."
"We can look him up," Jim answered, "when we get to Fiji."
We rowed back in silence the rest of the way to the _Albatross_, lifted
the poor boys tenderly on board, and laid them down to rest on our own
bunks in the cabin. Serang-Palo, our Malay cook, made haste at the
galleys to dress them a little arrowroot with condensed milk; and before
half an hour the younger boy was sitting up in Jim's arms with his eyes
and mouth wide open, craving eagerly for the nice warm mess we were
obliged to dole out to his enfeebled stomach in sparing spoonfuls, and
with a trifle of color already returning to his pale cheeks. He was too
ill to speak yet--his brother indeed lay even now insensible on the bunk
in the corner--but as soon as he had finished the small pittance of
arrowroot which alone we thought it prudent to let him swallow at
present, he mustered up just strength enough to gasp out a few words of
solemn importance in a very hollow voice. We bent over him to listen.
They were broken words we caught, half rambling as in delirium, but we
heard them distinctly--
"Steer for Makilolo ... Island of Tanaki ... Wednesday the tenth ...
Natives will murder them ... My mother--my father--Calvin--and Miriam."
Then it was evident he could not say another word. He sank back on the
pillow breathless and exhausted. The color faded from his cheek once
more as he fell into his place. I poured another spoonful of brandy down
his parched throat. In three minutes more he was sleeping peacefully,
with long even breath, like one who hadn't slept for nights before on
the tossing ocean.
I looked at Jim and bit my lips hard. "This is indeed a fix," I cried,
utterly nonplussed. "Where on earth, I should like to know, is this
island of Tanaki!"
"Don't know," said Jim. "But wherever it is, we've got to get there."