The day's work was finished. Outside a cluster of rudely built
palm-thatched huts, just above the curving white beach, and under the
lengthening shadows of the silent cocos, two white men (my partner and
myself) and a party of brown-skinned Polynesians were seated together
smoking, and waiting for their evening meal. Now and then one would
speak, and another would answer in low, lazy tones. From an open shed
under a great jack-fruit tree a little distance away there came the
murmur of women's voices and, now and then, a laugh. They were the wives
of the brown men, and were cooking supper for their husbands and the two
white men. Half a cable length from the beach a schooner lay at anchor
upon the still lagoon, whose waters gleamed red under the rays of the
sinking sun. Covered with awnings fore and after she showed no sign of
life, and rested-as motionless as were the pendent branches of the lofty
cocos on the shore.
Presently a figure appeared on deck and went for'ard, and then a bright
light shone from the fore-stay.
My partner turned and called to the women, speaking in Hawaiian, and
bade two of them take their own and the ship-keeper's supper on board,
and stay for the night. Then he spoke to the men in English.
“Who keeps watch to-night with the other man?”
“Me, sir,” and a native rose to his feet.
“Then off you go with your wife and Terese, and don't set the ship on
fire when you and your wife, and Harry and his begin squabbling as usual
over your game of _tahia_.”{*}
* “Tahia” is a gambling game played with small round stones;
it resembles our “knuckle-bones”.
The man laughed; the women, pretending to be shocked, each placed one
hand over her eyes, and with suppressed giggles went down to the beach
with the man, carrying a basket of steaming food. Launching a light
canoe they pushed off, and as the man paddled the women sang in the soft
Hawaiian tongue.
“Happy beggars,” said my comrade to me, as he stood up and stretched his
lengthy, stalwart figure, “work all day, and sit up gambling and singing
hymns--when they are not intriguing with each other's husbands and
wives.”
The place was Providence Atoll in the North Pacific, a group of
seventeen uninhabited islands lying midway between the Marshall and
Caroline Archipelagoes--that is to say, that they had been uninhabited
for some years, until we came there with our gang of natives to catch
sharks and make coco-nut oil. There was no one to deny us, for the man
who claimed the islands, Captain “Bully” Hayes, had given us the right
of possession for two years, we to pay him a certain percentage of our
profits on the oil we made, and the sharks' fins and tails we cured.
The story of Providence Atoll (the “Arrecifos” of the early Spanish
navigators, and the “Ujilang” of the native of Micronesia) cannot here
be told--suffice it to say that less than fifty years before over
a thousand people dwelt on the seventeen islands in some twelve or
fourteen villages. Then came some dread disease which swept them away,
and when Hayes sailed into the great lagoon in 1860--his was the first
ship that ever entered it--he found less than a score of survivors.
These he treated kindly; but for some reason soon removed them to Ponapé
in the Carolines, and then years passed without the island being visited
by any one except Hayes, who used it as a rendezvous, and brought other
natives there to make oil for him. Then, in a year or so, these, too,
he took away, for he was a restless man, and had many irons in the fire.
Yet there was a fortune there, as its present German owners know, for
the great chain of islands is covered with coco-nut trees which yield
many thousands of pounds' worth of copra annually.
My partner and I had been working the islands for some months, and had
done fairly well. Our native crew devoted themselves alternately to
shark catching and oil making. The lagoon swarmed with sharks, the fins
and tails of which when dried were worth from sixty to eighty pounds
sterling per ton. (Nowadays the entire skins of sharks are bought by
some of the traders on several of the Pacific Islands on behalf of a
firm in Germany, who have a secret method of tanning and softening
them, and rendering them fit for many purposes for which leather is
used--travelling bags, coverings for trunks, etc.)
The women helped to make the oil, caught fish, robber-crabs and turtle
for the whole party, and we were a happy family indeed. We usually lived
on shore, some distance from the spot where we dried the shark-fins, for
the odour was appalling, especially after rain, and during a calm night.
We dried them by hanging them on long lines of coir cinnet between the
coco-palms of a little island half a mile from our camp.
But we did not always work. There were many wild pigs--the progeny of
domestic stock left by Captain Hayes--on the larger islands, and we
would have great “drives” every few weeks, the skipper and I with our
rifles, and our crew of fifteen, with their wives and children, armed
with spears. 'Twas great fun, and we revelled in it like children.
Sometimes we would bring the ship's dog with us. He was a mongrel
Newfoundland, and very game, but was nearly shot several times by
getting in the way, for although all the islands are very low, the
undergrowth in parts is very dense. If we failed to secure a pig we were
certain of getting some dozens of large robber-crabs, the most delicious
of all crustaceans when either baked or boiled. Then, too, we had
the luxury of a vegetable garden, in which we grew melons, pumpkins,
cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, etc. The seed (which was Californian) had
been given to me by an American skipper, and great was our delight to
have fresh European vegetables, for the islands produced nothing in
that way, except coconuts and some jack-fruit. The lagoon teemed with
an immense variety of fish, none of which were poisonous, and both green
and hawk-bill turtle were captured almost daily.
How those natives of ours could eat! One morning some of the children
brought five hundred turtle eggs into camp; they were all eaten at three
meals.
That calm, quiet night the heat was somewhat oppressive, but about ten
o'clock a faint air from the eastward began to gently rustle the tops of
the loftiest palms on the inner beaches, though we felt it not, owing to
the dense undergrowth at the back of the camp. Then, too, the mosquitoes
were troublesome, and a nanny-goat, who had lost her kid (in the oven)
kept up such an incessant blaring that we could stand it no longer,
and decided to walk across the island--less than a mile--to the weather
side, where we should not only get the breeze, but be free of the curse
of mosquitoes.
“Over to the windward beach,” we called out to our natives.
In an instant, men, women and children were on their feet. Torches of
dried coco-nut leaves were deftly woven by the women, sleeping mats
rolled up and given to the children to carry, baskets of cold baked fish
and vegetables hurriedly taken down from where they hung under the eaves
of the thatched huts, and away we trooped eastward along the
narrow path, the red glare of the torches shining upon the smooth,
copper-bronzed and half-nude figures of the native men and women.
Singing as we went, half an hour's walk brought us near to the sea. And
with the hum of the surf came the cool breeze, as we reached the open,
and saw before us the gently heaving ocean, sleeping under the light of
the myriad stars.
We loved those quiet nights on the weather side of Arrecifos. Our
natives had built some thatched-roofed, open-sided huts as a protection
in case of rain, and under the shelter of one of these the skipper and
I would, when it rained during the night, lie on our mats and smoke
and yarn and watch the women and children with lighted torches catching
crayfish on the reef, heedless of the rain which fell upon them. Then,
when they had caught all they wanted, they would troop on shore again,
come into the huts, change their soaking waist girdles of leaves for
waist-cloths of gaily-coloured print or navy-blue calico, and set to
work to cook the crayfish, always bringing us the best. Then came a
general gossip and story-telling or singing in our hut for an hour
or so, and then some one would yawn and the rest would laugh, bid us
good-night, go off to their mats, and the skipper and I would be asleep
ere we knew it.