THE HAVEN IN THE CORAL RING.
It seemed as if the storm-fiend were satisfied with the mischief he had
accomplished, for immediately after the disaster just described, the
gale began to moderate, and when the sun rose it had been reduced to a
stiff but steady breeze.
From the moment of the accident onward, the whole crew had been exerting
themselves to the utmost with axe and knife to cut and clear away the
wreck of the masts and repair damages.
Not the least energetic among them was our amateur first mate, Nigel
Roy. When all had been made comparatively snug, he went aft to where his
father stood beside the steersman, with his legs nautically wide apart,
his sou'-wester pulled well down over his frowning brows, and his hands
in their native pockets.
"This is a bad ending to a prosperous voyage," said the youth, sadly;
"but you don't seem to take it much to heart, father!"
"How much or little I take it to heart you know nothin' whatever about,
my boy, seein' that I don't wear my heart on my coat-sleeve, nor yet on
the point of my nose, for the inspection of all and sundry. Besides, you
can't tell whether it's a bad or a good endin', for it has not ended yet
one way or another. Moreover, what appears bad is often found to be
good, an' what seems good is pretty often uncommon bad."
"You are a walking dictionary of truisms, father! I suppose you mean to
take a philosophical view of the misfortune and make the best of it,"
said Nigel, with what we may style one of his twinkling smiles, for on
nearly all occasions that young man's dark, brown eyes twinkled, in
spite of him, as vigorously as any "little star" that was ever told in
prose or song to do so--and much more expressively, too, because of the
eyebrows of which little stars appear to be destitute.
"No, lad," retorted the captain; "I take a common-sense view--not a
philosophical one; an' when you've bin as long at sea as I have, you'll
call nothin' a misfortune until it's proved to be such. The only
misfortune I have at present is a son who cannot see things in the same
light as his father sees 'em."
"Well, then, according to your own principle that is the reverse of a
misfortune, for if I saw everything in the same light that you do,
you'd have no pleasure in talking to me, you'd have no occasion to
reason me out of error, or convince me of truth. Take the subject of
poetry, now--"
"Luff," said Captain Roy, sternly, to the man at the wheel.
When the man at the wheel had gone through the nautical evolution
involved in "luff," the captain turned to his son and said abruptly--
"We'll run for the Cocos-Keelin' Islands, Nigel, an' refit."
"Are the Keeling Islands far off?"
"Lift up your head and look straight along the bridge of your nose, lad,
and you'll see them. They're an interesting group, are the Keelin'
Islands. Volcanic, they are, with a coral top-dressin', so to speak. Sit
down here an' I'll tell 'ee about 'em."
Nigel shut up the telescope through which he had been examining the
thin, blue line on the horizon that indicated the islands in question,
and sat down on the cabin skylight beside his father.
"They've got a romantic history too, though a short one, an' are set
like a gem on the bosom of the deep blue sea--"
"Come, father, you're drifting out of your true course--that's
poetical!"
"I know it, lad, but I'm only quotin' your mother. Well, you must know
that the Keelin' Islands--we call them Keelin' for short--were
uninhabited between fifty and sixty years ago, when a Scotsman named
Ross, thinking them well situated as a port of call for the repair and
provisioning of vessels on their way to Australia and China, set his
heart on them and quietly took possession in the name of England. Then
he went home to fetch his wife and family of six children, intendin' to
settle on the islands for good. Returning in 1827 with the family and
fourteen adventurers, twelve of whom were English, one a Portugee and
one a Javanee, he found to his disgust that an Englishman named Hare had
stepped in before him and taken possession. This Hare was a very bad
fellow; a rich man who wanted to live like a Rajah, with lots o' native
wives and retainers, an' be a sort of independent prince. Of course he
was on bad terms at once with Ross, who, finding that things were going
badly, felt that it would be unfair to hold his people to the agreement
which was made when he thought the whole group was his own, so he
offered to release them. They all, except two men and one woman,
accepted the release and went off in a gun-boat that chanced to touch
there at the time. For a good while Hare and his rival lived there--the
one tryin' to get the Dutch, the other to induce the English Government
to claim possession. Neither Dutch nor English would do so at first, but
the English did it at long-last--in 1878--and annexed the islands to the
Government of Ceylon.
"Long before that date, however--before 1836--Hare left and went to
Singapore, where he died, leaving Ross in possession--the 'King of the
Cocos Islands' as he came to be called. In a few years--chiefly through
the energy of Ross's eldest son, to whom he soon gave up the management
of affairs--the Group became a prosperous settlement. Its ships traded
in cocoa-nuts (the chief produce of the islands) throughout all the
Straits Settlements, and boat-buildin' became one of their most
important industries. But there was one thing that prevented it from
bein' a very happy though prosperous place, an' that was the coolies who
had been hired in Java, for the only men that could be got there at
first were criminals who had served their time in the chain-gangs of
Batavia. As these men were fit for anything--from pitch-and-toss to
murder--and soon outnumbered the colonists, the place was kept in
constant alarm and watchfulness. For, as I dare say you know, the Malays
are sometimes liable to have the spirit of _amok_ on them, which leads
them to care for and fear nothin', and to go in for a fight-to-death,
from which we get our sayin'--_run amuck_. An' when a strong fellow is
goin' about loose in this state o' mind, it's about as bad as havin' a
tiger prowlin' in one's garden."
"Well, sometimes two or three o' these coolies would mutiny and hide in
the woods o' one o' the smaller uninhabited islands. An' the colonists
would have no rest till they hunted them down. So, to keep matters
right, they had to be uncommon strict. It was made law that no one
should spend the night on any but what was called the Home Island
without permission. Every man was bound to report himself at the
guard-house at a fixed hour; every fire to be out at sunset, and every
boat was numbered and had to be in its place before that time. So they
went on till the year 1862, when a disaster befell them that made a
considerable change--at first for the worse, but for the better in the
long-run. Provin' the truth, my lad, of what I was--well, no--I was
goin' to draw a moral here, but I won't!
"It was a cyclone that did the business. Cyclones have got a
free-an'-easy way of makin' a clean sweep of the work of years in a few
hours. This cyclone completely wrecked the homes of the Keelin'
Islanders, and Ross--that's the second Ross, the son of the first
one--sent home for _his_ son, who was then a student of engineering in
Glasgow, to come out and help him to put things to rights. Ross the
third obeyed the call, like a good son,--observe that, Nigel."
"All right, father, fire away!"
"Like a good son," repeated the captain, "an' he turned out to be a
first-rate man, which was lucky, for his poor father died soon after,
leavin' him to do the work alone. An' well able was the young engineer
to do it. He got rid o' the chain-gang men altogether, and hired none
but men o' the best character in their place. He cleared off the forests
and planted the ground with cocoa-nut palms. Got out steam mills,
circular saws, lathes, etc., and established a system of general
education with a younger brother as head-master--an' tail-master too,
for I believe there was only one. He also taught the men to work in
brass, iron, and wood, and his wife--a Cocos girl that he married after
comin' out--taught all the women and girls to sew, cook, and manage the
house. In short, everything went on in full swing of prosperity, till
the year 1876, when the island-born inhabitants were about 500, as
contented and happy as could be.
"In January of that year another cyclone paid them a visit. The
barometer gave them warning, and, remembering the visit of fourteen
years before, they made ready to receive the new visitor. All the boats
were hauled up to places of safety, and every other preparation was
made. Down it came, on the afternoon o' the 28th--worse than they had
expected. Many of the storehouses and mills had been lately renewed or
built. They were all gutted and demolished. Everything movable was swept
away like bits of paper. Lanes, hundreds of yards in length, were
cleared among the palm trees by the whirling wind, which seemed to
perform a demon-dance of revelry among them. In some cases it snapped
trees off close to the ground. In others it seemed to swoop down from
above, lick up a patch of trees bodily and carry them clean away,
leaving the surrounding trees untouched. Sometimes it would select a
tree of thirty years growth, seize it, spin it round, and leave it a
permanent spiral screw. I was in these regions about the time, and had
the account from a native who had gone through it all and couldn't speak
of it except with glaring eyeballs and gasping breath.
"About midnight of the 28th the gale was at its worst. Darkness that
could be felt between the flashes of lightning. Thunder that was nearly
drowned by the roaring of the wind an' the crashing of everything all
round. To save their lives the people had to fling themselves into
ditches and hollows of the ground. Mr. Ross and some of his people were
lying in the shelter of a wall near his house. There had been a schooner
lying not far off. When Mr. Ross raised his head cautiously above the
wall to have a look to wind'ard he saw the schooner comin' straight for
him on the top of a big wave. 'Hold on!' he shouted, fell flat down,
and laid hold o' the nearest bush. Next moment the wave burst right over
the wall, roared on up to the garden, 150 yards above highwater mark,
and swept his house clean away! By good fortune the wall stood the
shock, and the schooner stuck fast just before reachin' it, but so near
that the end of the jib-boom passed right over the place where the
household lay holdin' on for dear life and half drowned. It was a
tremendous night," concluded the captain, "an' nearly everything on the
islands was wrecked, but they've survived it, as you'll see. Though it's
seven years since that cyclone swep' over them, they're all right and
goin' ahead again, full swing, as if nothin' had happened."
"And is Ross III. still king?" asked Nigel with much interest.
"Ay--at least he was king a few years ago when I passed this way and had
occasion to land to replace a tops'l yard that had been carried away."
"Then you won't arrive as a stranger?"
"I should think not," returned the captain, getting up and gazing
steadily at the _atoll_ or group of islets enclosed within a coral ring
which they were gradually approaching.
Night had descended, however, and the gale had decreased almost to a
calm, ere they steered through the narrow channel--or what we may call a
broken part of the ring--which led to the calm lagoon inside. Nigel Roy
leaned over the bow, watching with profound attention the numerous
phosphorescent fish and eel-like creatures which darted hither and
thither like streaks of silver from beneath their advancing keel. He had
enough of the naturalist in him to arouse in his mind keen interest in
the habits and action of the animal life around him, and these denizens
of the coral-groves were as new to him as their appearance was
unexpected.
"You'll find 'em very kind and hospitable, lad," said the captain to his
son.
"What, the fish?"
"No, the inhabitants. Port--port--steady!"
"Steady it is!" responded the man at the wheel.
"Let go!" shouted the captain.
A heavy plunge, followed by the rattling of chains and swinging round of
the brig, told that they had come to an anchor in the lagoon of the
Cocos-Keeling Islands.