MARTIN LUTHER'S STORY.
For the next two days we went steaming ahead as hard as we could go in a
bee-line to the northeastward, in the direction of the Duke of
Cumberland's Islands; and it was two days clear before those unfortunate
boys, Jack and Martin--for that was what they called one another for
short, in spite of their severely theological second names--were in a
condition to tell us exactly what had happened, without danger to their
shattered nerves and impaired digestions.
When they did manage to speak--both at once, for choice, in their
eagerness to get their story out--here's about what their history came
to, as we pieced it together, bit by bit, from the things they told us
at different times. If I were one of those writing chaps, now, that know
how to tell a whole ten years' history, end on end, exactly as it
happened, without missing a detail, I'd get it all out for you just as
Martin told us; or better still, I'd give it to you in a single
connected piece, between inverted commas, as his own words, beginning,
"I was born," said he, "in the city of Edinburgh," and so forth, after
the regular high-and-dry literary fashion. But how on earth those clever
book-making fellows can ever remember a whole long speech, word for
word, from beginning to end, I never could make out and never shall,
neither. What memories they must have to do it, to be sure! It's my own
belief they make it up more than half out of their own heads as they go
along, and are perfectly happy if it only just sounds plausible. But
anyhow, Martin Luther Macglashin didn't tell us all his story at a
single time, or in a connected way; he gave us a bit now and a bit
again, with additions from Jack, according as he was able. So being, as
I say, no more than a free-and-easy master mariner myself, without skill
in literature, I'm not going to try to repeat it all, word for word, to
you precisely as it came, but shall just take the liberty of spinning my
yarn my own way and letting you have in short the gist and substance of
what we gradually got out of our two fugitives.
Well, it seems that Jack and Martin's father was, just as I suspected, a
Scotch missionary on the Island of Tanaki. He lived there with another
family of missionaries of the same sect, in peace and quiet, as well as
with an English merchant of the name of Williams, who traded with the
natives for calico, knives, glass beads and tobacco. For a long time
things had gone on pretty comfortably in the little settlement; though
to be sure the natives did sometimes steal Mr. Macglashin's fowls or
threaten to tie Mr. Williams to a cocoa-nut palm and take cock-shots at
him with a Snider, out of pure lightness of heart, unless he gave them
rum, square gin or brandy. Still, in spite of these playful little
eccentricities of the good-humored Kanakas, who will have their joke,
murder or no murder, all went as merrily as a wedding bell (as they say
in novels) till suddenly one morning a French labor-vessel--I suspect
the very one we had intercepted in the act of trying to carry off
Nassaline--put into the harbor in search of "apprentices."
She was a very bad lot, from what the boys told us; a genuine slaver of
the worst type; and she stirred up a deal of mischief at Makilolo.
[Illustration: NATIVES OF THE ISLAND OF TANAKI. Page 58]
On the shore the Chief of Tanaki was drawn up to receive them with all
his warriors, tastefully but inexpensively rigged out in a string of
blue beads round the neck, an anklet of shells and a head-dress of a
single large yellow feather.
"Who are you?" shouts the chief at the top of his voice. "You man a
_oui-oui_?"
"Yes," the Frenchman shouts back in his pigeon-English. "Me de commander
of dis French ship. Want to buy boys. Must sell them to us. Tanaki
French island. Discovered by Bougainville."
"No, no," says the Chief in pigeon-English again. "Tanaki no belong a
man a _oui-oui_. Tanaki belong a Queenie England. Capitaney Cook find
him long time back. My father little fellow then; him see Capitaney, him
tell me often. Capitaney Cook no man a _oui-oui_; him fellow English."
The other natives joined in at once with their loud cry, "Chief speak
true. Tanaki belong a Queenie England. Tanaki no belong a man a
_oui-oui_. If man a _oui-oui_ want to take Tanaki, man a Tanaki come out
and fight him." And they threw themselves at once into a threatening
attitude.
"Have you got any Englishmen here?" the French skipper called out, to
make sure of his ground.
"Yes," says the missionary--our boys' father--standing out from the
crowd. "Three English families here. Settled on the island. And we deny
that this group belongs to the French Republic."
At that the Frenchman pulled back a bit. When he saw there was likely to
be opposition, and that his proceedings were watched by three English
families, he drew in his horns a little. He knew if he interfered too
openly with the missionaries' proceedings, an English gunboat might come
along, sooner or later, and overhaul him for fomenting discord on an
island known to be under the British protectorate. So he only answered
in French, "Well, we're peaceable traders, Monsieur. We don't want to
interfere with the British Government. Consider us friends. All we
desire is to hire laborers." And he landed his boat's crew before the
very face of Macglashin and the Tanaki warriors.
At first, as often happens in these islands, the natives were very
little disposed to trade with the strangers in boys or women, for they
were afraid of the Frenchmen; and Macglashin and the other missionary
did all they knew to prevent the new comers from carrying off any of the
islanders into practical slavery. But after awhile the Frenchmen
produced their regulation bottles of square gin (that's what they call
Hollands in the South Pacific), and began to treat the Chief and the
other savages to drinks all round, as much as you liked, with nothing to
pay for it. In a very short time the Chief had got so much liquor aboard
that his legs wouldn't answer the rudder any longer, and he began to
reel about like a perfect madman. Most of the other full-grown men
natives followed suit before long, and lay down on the beach half dead
with drunkenness. Perhaps the liquor was drugged; perhaps it wasn't; but
anyhow, in spite of all the missionaries could do, the shore before
nightfall was in a condition of the wildest and most bestial orgies. The
men, in what the newspapers call "a high state of vinous exhilaration,"
were ready to sell their boys and girls, or anything else on earth for a
little more gin; and as the missionaries were naturally helpless to
prevent it, the Frenchman was soon driving a roaring trade in flesh and
blood against the drunken savages.
The business-like way they went to work, Jack and Martin told us, was
horribly disgusting. The women, indeed, they tried to wheedle and
cajole--"You like go along a New Caledonia along a me? Only three yam
times; then ship bring you back again. Very good feed; plenty nyam-nyam.
Pay very good. Pay money. Lots of shop. You buy what you like: you buy
red dress, red handkerchief, beads like-a-chiefie. No fight; no beat; no
swear at you. You good girl; I good fellow master." But if they couldn't
induce them, by fair words and promises and little presents of cheap
French finery, to put their mark to their sham indentures, then they
just knocked them down with a blow on the head, dragged them by their
hair to the boats hard by, and got their fathers or husbands to put
their marks, and receive a few dollars and some red cloth in payment.
As for the boys, they handled them like so many animals in a market.
"Turn round, _cochon_! Show me your faces! _Mille tonnerres_, let me see
how you can run, you dirty young blackguard!" They examined them as a
veterinary would examine a horse. "Why, there was our little fellow,
Nangaree," Jack said to us with deep concern--"Nangaree, that used to
clean up things for mother at the mission-house: his father sold him for
twenty dollars. The captain looked at his legs, and at the glands in his
throat, to see if he'd had the chicken-pox and the measles. Then he said
to his mate, 'This lot's cheap enough. He's a first-rate lad, and can
speak English. He'll do for the hold. Bundle him along!' And the mate
caught him up by the scruff of his neck and hauled him to the boats,
kicking and screaming; and that was the last we saw of poor Nangaree!"
For three days and nights, it seems, this horrible inhuman market or
slave-fair went on upon the beach, the Frenchmen taking care to keep the
natives well primed with spirits all the time, till they'd got their
hold full, and were prepared to sail away again with their living cargo.
Then at last they upped anchor, and out of the harbor. But before they
went, the skipper, it appears, who was angry at the missionaries for
having interfered with him, and was afraid they might report his
proceedings to the British Government when next the mission ship came
that way on her provisioning rounds, took aside the Chief in a
confidential chat, and tried to inflame his mind, all mad drunk that he
was, against the English residents. Apparently he had made so good a
three days' work of it with his horrible trade, and found it so
convenient to draw his supplies from this remote and almost unvisited
island, that he thought it would be nice if before his next visit he
could get rid altogether of these meddlesome strangers. He didn't want
European witnesses to crop up against him in future; so he told the
Chief, with a great show of confidence, that Macglashin and his friends
were not English at all, but Scotch; and he pointed out that it was
uncomfortable for the natives to be interfered with in their trading
operations by a set of white-livered curs who objected to the selling of
boys and girls into temporary slavery. Surely a Chief had a right to do
as he would with his own subjects! What else he said, Heaven knows, but
this is what happened as soon as the French, with their horrid cargo,
had got well clear of the unhappy island.
That very afternoon, the Chief, beginning to get sober again, but
quarrelsome from headache and the other after-effects of a long debauch,
came round to the mission-house in a towering rage, and asked the
unsuspecting missionary, "Say, white man, are you a Scotchman?"
"Yes," says Macglashin, not knowing what was coming. "I'm a Scotchman,
Chief, certainly. I was born in Scotland."
The Chief laughed loud. "Ha, ha," he said, "then Queenie England no take
care a you. No send gunboat to shoot us all dead, if man a Tanaki come
up and kill you."
At that Macglashin grew alarmed, and answered, "O, yes! The Queen of
England would certainly avenge us." And he tried to explain the exact
relation in which Scotchmen stood to the British crown--that they were
just as much British subjects as Englishmen, entitled to precisely the
same amount of protection. But the Chief couldn't be made to understand.
The French skipper had evidently poisoned his mind against them. "Man a
Tanaki don't want no Scotchman interfere with Chief when him go to sell
him boy and him woman," the savage said angrily. "Tanaki belong a
Queenie England. Queenie England no want Scotchman interfere with people
in Tanaki. Scotchman better keep quiet in him house. Queenie England no
mind Scotchman."
And no amount of reasoning produced any effect upon him.
The missionaries went to bed that evening with many misgivings. They
felt that for the first time, so far as the natives were concerned, the
powerful protection of the British flag was now practically withdrawn.
They were alone, as strangers, among those excited black fellows.
At dead of night, while the two boys slept, a horrible din outside the
mission-house awoke them. They looked out, and saw the red glare of
torches outside. A frightful horde of Kanakas, naked save for their
war-paint, drunk with the Frenchman's rum and armed with his Sniders,
surrounded the frail building in a hideous mob of savagery. As Martin
put his head out of the lattice a bullet came whizzing past. He withdrew
it for a moment, terrified, and then looked out again. As he did so the
other Scotch missionary appeared upon the veranda, half-dressed, and
holding up his hand in dignified remonstrance, began in Kanaka with his
gentle mild voice, "My friends, my dear friends, ..." Before he could
get any further, the Chief stepped forward, and aiming a blow at his
gray locks with a sacred native tomahawk, felled the peaceful old
teacher senseless to the ground. Martin shuddered with horror. The old
man lay weltering in a pool of his red gushing gore, while the savages
danced in triumph over his prostrate body, or smeared themselves with
great lines and circles of his warm heart-blood.
"Come on!" the Chief cried in Kanaka. "Kill all! Kill every one! They're
taboo to our gods. Don't fear their gunboats. Queenie England won't
trouble to protect a Scotchman!"
Then began a hideous orgy of wild lust and slaughter. The savages rushed
on, drunk with blood and rum, and dragged out the wife and children of
the other missionary, whom they brained upon the spot, before the
terrified eyes of the trembling Macglashins. The trader Williams ran up
just then, with his revolver in his hand, followed by two faithful black
servants from a neighboring island; but the French skipper had been
cunning enough there too. "Him a Welshman!" the savages cried. "Queenie
England no care for him!" For indeed he happened to be born in Wales.
And they shot him down as he came, before he could open fire upon them.
Then they turned to massacre the Macglashins, the only remaining
Europeans on the island.
But just at that moment a sudden idea seemed to strike the Chief. He
cried out, "Stop!" The savages fell back and listened with eagerness to
what was coming. Then the Chief shouted out again in Kanaka--"I have a
thought. The gods have sent it to me. This is my thought. We have killed
enough for tonight. Let us catch them alive and bind them. Next moon is
the great feast of my father Taranaka. I have an idea--a divine idea.
Let us keep them till that day, and then, in honor of the gods, let us
roast them and eat them."
[Illustration: THE SAVAGES FELL BACK. Page 70]
The whole assembly answered with a wild shout of delighted
assent--"Taranaka! Taranaka! Our great dead Chief! In honor of Taranaka,
let us roast them and eat them."
So they rushed wildly on upon the defenseless white family, bound them
in rude cords of native make, and carried them off in triumph to
Taranaka's temple tomb in the palm-grove.
And that was as much as we could allow the boys to tell us at a time, of
their strange adventures. We were afraid of overtaxing their strength at
first, and tried to confine their attention as much as possible to
tinned meats and sea-biscuit soaked in condensed milk; though I'm bound
to admit that as soon as they began to recover appetite a bit, they
addressed themselves steadily and seriously to their food, with true
British pluck and perseverance. In spite of the terrors from which they
had just escaped, they did the fullest justice to Serang-Palo's cookery.