myself; the Frenchman saying that I was the type of young ne’er-do-well
under which the colony of Queensland was sinking; while the captain
just as vehemently persisted (for the time being only) that it was such
as I who had made the British Empire! The complimentary view of Captain
Mins’s made very little practical difference in his treatment of me,
which from the beginning had been marked by coldness and dislike. In
fact, I could not help perceiving, for all their wrangling and apparent
disagreement, that the pair were fast friends. It was I, not Frenchy,
who was the outsider on that ship. Indeed, I count some of those lonely
days on the _Belle Mahone_ as the very bitterest part of my life, and I
wished myself at home a thousand times.
My only friend on board was Lum, the Chinese cook, whose circumstances
were so akin to mine that we were drawn together by a common instinct.
He, too, was condemned to solitude, having little in common with
our crew of Rotumah Islanders, who shunned him like a leper; while
I, as the reader knows, held a scarcely better position among the
after-guard. When his work was done, Lum and I used to smoke cigarettes
together under the lee of a boat, or, if it rained, within the stuffy
confines of his cabin next the galley. He was a mine of worldly wisdom,
for there was nothing he had not done or had not tried to do, from
piracy to acting on the stage; and he would unfold the tale of his
experiences with such drollery and artlessness that his society was to
me an endless entertainment. Poor Lum! there was little of the seamy
side of life he had not seen, scarcely a treachery he had not endured,
in the years he had followed the sea.
Our first port was to be Lascom Island, an immense atoll which had
remained uninhabited until Bibo & Co. took possession of it in the
eighties. Their intention had been to extend its few cocoanut-palms
into one vast grove, and for this purpose they maintained a force
of half a dozen indentured labourers from Guadalcanar, who were
superintended by a white man named Stocker. It was for the purpose of
carrying this Stocker supplies and inspecting his year’s work that we
were here to make our first call.
We reached the island late at night, and lay off and on till dawn. The
daylight showed me a narrow, bush-grown strip of unending sand, which
stretched in a great curve until lost to view beneath the horizon. As
far as the eye could reach, the breakers were thundering against the
huge horseshoe with a fury that made one sick to hear them. Of all
forsaken and desolate places it has ever been my lot to see, I search
my memory in vain for the match of Lascom Island. Once, however, that
we had opened its channel and made our hesitating way into the lagoon
beyond, I found more to please me. Skimming over the lake-like surface,
with every stitch drawing, and the captain in the crosstrees conning
the ship through the gleaming dangers that beset us on every hand, it
was indeed an experience not to be recalled without a thrill. We had
need of a lynx eye aloft, for the lagoon was thick with coral rocks,
and the channel, besides, was so tortuous and so cramped that one false
turn of a spoke would have torn our bottom out.
I let myself down beside the dolphin-striker, and sat there above our
hissing bows, enjoying as I did so an extraordinary sense of danger
and exhilaration. At times it seemed to me as though we were sailing
through air, so transparent was the medium through which we moved,
so clear the tangled coral garden that lay below. From my perch I
contemplated the gradual unfolding of the little settlement towards
which we were tending: first of all a faint blur, which gradually
became transformed into a grove of cocoanuts; bits of white and brown
which resolved themselves into houses and sheds; a dark patch on the
lagoon shore that I made out to be a sort of pier; then, last of
all, the finished picture, in which there was nothing hid, or left
to the imagination to decipher. There was something most depressing
in the sight of this tiny village, with its faded whitewash, its
general appearance of lifelessness and decay, and above its roofs the
palm-tops bending like grass in the gusty breeze. Nothing stirred in
the profound shade; not a sound came forth to greet us; and, except for
a faint haze of smoke above one of the trees, we might have thought the
place abandoned. I remembered that Stocker was in likelihood planting
cocoanuts with his men, perhaps miles away on the wild sea-beach; in
my mind’s eye I could see him pursuing his monotonous vocation, a
miserable Crusoe toiling for a wage. My thoughts were still running in
some such channel when I was suddenly startled by the apparition of a
man who came running out of the shadow with a bundle in his arms. It
was a flag, which he fixed to the halyards of the staff and slowly ran
up. When it was half-mast high he twitched it loose, displaying the
British ensign upside down. Then, as I was still gazing at him, he made
fast the ropes and hurried down to the pier.
Realising that something must be wrong on shore, I climbed back to the
deck and hastened to where Old Bee and Frenchy were standing aft. I
think the former must have seen the question on my lips, for he gave
me such a swift, angry look that I dared not open my mouth, but slunk
behind Frenchy in silence. He, the trader, must have just endured some
such rebuff himself, for he was in a frightful ill humour, and swore at
me when I tried to whisper in his ear. To learn anything from Babcock
was impossible, for he was jumping about the topgallant forecastle,
clearing the anchors and getting in the head-sails. When the vessel had
been brought to a standstill near a rusty buoy, a boat was cleared and
lowered, and we all got into it with alacrity: Old Bee, Mins, Frenchy,
and I, and a couple of hands to pull.
We were met at the pier by some natives in singlets and dungaree
trousers, who gazed at us as solemnly as we gazed back at them. One
grizzled old fellow was spokesman for the rest,--Joe, they called
him,--and he told us, with a great deal of writhing (as though he
had pain in his inside), that Stocker was dead. He had died ten days
before, “of some kind of sickness,” as Joe called it; and lest we had
any doubt about it, we were pressed to walk up to Stocker’s house and
see for ourselves. For, fearing that they might subsequently be accused
of making away with him, they had left Stocker’s body untouched in the
bed where he had died. The fact was palpable enough before we had gone
a hundred yards in the direction of a little house, which from the
distance looked very quaint and pretty. But I forbore to follow the
others any further in the investigation they were obviously inclined to
make, and I struck off from them to examine the settlement alone.
I have good reasons for thinking that it had been planned originally
for other purposes than that of merely sheltering a gang of indentured
labourers. It was to have been the entrepôt or hub of a huge South Sea
system, and from its central warehouses a whole empire of surrounding
groups was to have been supplied. Indeed, the whole project had so far
taken shape that large sheds had even been erected for the commerce
that was destined never to come, and commodious houses raised for the
managers and clerks whose contracts were still unwritten. I wandered
at will through those crumbling rooms, some of which had never been
occupied, though they were now in decay; and along the grassy street
on which they had been made to face. I found a battery of four small
cannon covering the approach from the pier; a dozen ship’s tanks
filled with rain-water (the only kind obtainable on the island); and
in a shuttered room I stumbled over a hundred Snyder rifles shining
in the dark. But what riveted my attention most was the interior
of a long, low warehouse full of wreckage. Here, in mouldering,
unsorted confusion, had been thrown all that a dozen years had seen
salvaged from the sea: binnacles, hatches, yards and canvas, old
steering-wheels, blocks, and strange tangles of gear and junk that
seemed scarcely worth the saving. Here were life-belts in the last
stages of rottenness; odds and ends of perished cargoes; barrels of
tallow; twisted drums of what had once been paint or varnish; some
cuddy-chairs of the folding kind; and a quantity of boards, barnacled
and water-worn. I must have spent the better part of an hour turning
over all this stuff, and in reconstructing in my mind the bygone ships
from which they had been taken; musing on the fate of those who had
once sailed them so unwisely that Lascom Island had been their final
port and its bursting seas their grave.
When at last I emerged again into the open air, I perceived with relief
that our boat still lay beside the steps of the pier, for I had no
desire to be left alone on Lascom Island even for a single hour. I
counted for so little on board the ship that I had a panic fear that
they might go to sea again without me, and I accordingly returned to
the seamen who were smoking under the lee of a palm. We waited there a
long time before we were aroused by the sound of voices and the sight
of Old Bee and Frenchy walking slowly towards us. The old rogue looked
pale and agitated; he had his arm through Frenchy’s, and was speaking
to him with intense seriousness and a volubility quite unusual. He
seemed pleading with the trader, urging him apparently to something
distasteful, something that was perpetually negatived by Frenchy’s
bullet-head and his reiterated “No, sare; no, sare; it is eempossible.”
“I’ll make it seventy-five a month,” quavered Bibo, “and all found.”
Again the Frenchman shook his head.
“Ask anysing else, sare,” he said; “but this, oh, no. But why not the
boy?” he added.
“That young ass!” cried Old Bee.
“I won’t stay here alone, if that’s what you mean,” said Frenchy. “But
if you’ll run down to Treachery Island and let me get a girl there,
I tell you, sare, I will do it for the seventy-five. But alone? Good
Lord! I’d follow Stocker in ze mont’.”
Bibo groaned aloud. “It’ll take a day and a half to run down there, and
all of three to beat back,” he said; “and you might be a week getting a
girl.”
Frenchy shrugged his shoulders. “Old Tom Ryegate’s there,” he said.
“He’ll do ze thing quick enough if I make it worth his while. They say,
too, that he’s in with the Samoan pastor there, Jimmy Upolu. Brice of
the _Wandering Minstrel_ told me he was at Treachery three years ago,
and picked up ze prettiest woman in the island for sixteen pounds. Told
me he gave four pounds to Tom, four to ze pastor, and the rest to ze
woman’s folks in trade. He was in such a damned rush he couldn’t wait
to cheapen things--just paid his money and went. But she was a tearing
fine piece, he said.”
Old Bee hardly seemed to listen to him. “I suppose _you_ don’t care,”
he said bitterly, “but this business is going to put me two weeks
behind and maybe lose me the shell at Big Muggin. Of all cursed luck,
who ever had the match of it? First to last, this island has been
a millstone round my neck, one everlasting drain and bother. What
with the rats, and Charley Sansome’s D. T.’s, and the lawsuit with
Poppenheifer, and this business of Stocker’s, I tell you, Frenchy,
I’m clean sick of it. It’s just money, money, money all the time, and
I don’t believe I’ve ever made enough out of it to buy me a suit of
clothes!”
He stopped speaking when he caught sight of me, and stepped down into
the boat without another word. Frenchy, too, said nothing as we pulled
back to the ship, but chewed at his mustache in a moody, impatient
way. But once on board, the captain was called below, and an animated
discussion ensued in the main cabin. Through the open skylight I could
not forbear overhearing a little of what was said, and I gathered that
Mins was joining with his employer in trying to persuade Frenchy to
remain on the island in Stocker’s place. At least, I caught Frenchy’s
explosive remonstrances, and half-jeering, half-angry efforts to
extricate himself from their snares. Apparently he succeeded only too
well, for Old Bee, somewhat half-heartedly, at last proposed Babcock’s
name. At this the captain himself was up in arms. Wasn’t he doing with
one white mate when he ought by rights to have two? Nothing would
induce him, he said, to surrender Babcock; nor would he, in such a
case, answer for the safety of the ship, nor for the insurance were she
lost. Then he turned the tables completely by proposing that Old Bee
himself should stop on the island! This was received by Frenchy with
a roar of laughter and a blow of his fist that shook the cabin. Old
Bee did not take it with the same good humour, but broke out furiously
that he might as well throw up the cruise at once. Mine, of course,
was the next name to come up, and Frenchy was sent to bring me before
the meeting. I am ashamed to think what a fool they must have thought
me, for instead of offering me the seventy-five dollars a month--not
that I would have taken the job for a million--Old Bee held out the
inducement of ten a week. From the manner in which he spoke to me, and
the bullying tone of his voice, it was not easy to gather whether I was
asked or ordered to go ashore in Stocker’s shoes; and it is my belief
that if I had knuckled down in the slightest he would have dropped the
first formula altogether. But I had overheard too much to be taken at
a disadvantage. Besides, I shrank from the proposal with every fibre
in my body, and was determined not to be put ashore except by force.
My repulsion was so unconcealed; and it was so plain that I could be
neither threatened nor cajoled; that more than once Frenchy burst out
with his great laugh, and even Mins smiled sourly at my vehemence. Old
Bee did not long persist in the attempt to override my resolution; he
had always taken an unflattering view of my capabilities, and even as
a planter of cocoanuts I had perhaps excited his distrust. Besides, I
would not do it. There was no getting over that!
I was thankful at last to be dismissed, even at the price of a stinging
word or two. What were words in comparison with a year on Lascom
Island! I went and locked myself in my cabin, and blocked the door of
it with my trunk, so fearful was I that I might in some way be tricked
or dragged ashore. I dared not emerge until long after the anchor had
been weighed and the sails set, and even then I came out of my room
with the utmost caution. When I reached the deck, the settlement was
already far astern and the ship heading through the western passage for
the sea. Lum told me that we were running down to Treachery Island, and
gave me some hot bread and tea in the galley in place of the lunch I
had lost.
I had read of South Sea paradises, but at Treachery Island I was soon
to see one for myself. After the desolate immensity of Lascom, it was
delightful to reach this tiny isle, with its lagoon no bigger than the
Serpentine and its general appearance of fertility and life. As we
ran close along its wooded shores, and saw the beehive houses in the
shade, and the people running out to wave a greeting to our passing
ship; as we saw the drawn-up boats, the little coral churches, and the
shimmering lagoon beyond, on which there was many a white sail dancing,
I thought I had never in all my life imagined any place more beautiful.
Nor did I think to change my mind when we hove to off a glorious
beach, and dropped the ladder for a score of smiling islanders to swarm
aboard. I loved the sight of their kindly faces after the sullen looks
that had so long been my portion; and my heart warmed towards them as
it might to some old and half-forgotten friends.
When a boat was lowered, I kept close at the heels of Old Bee, Frenchy,
and the captain as they descended and took their places; and I followed
their example with so much assurance that it never occurred to any one
to say me nay. The captain swore at me for jumping on his foot, but
that was all the attention I received. Frenchy was the hero of the
hour, and his gay sash and tie and spotless ducks were the occasion
of many pleasantries at his expense. Even Old Bee condescended to
tease our beau on the subject of the future Mrs. Frenchy; and at the
home thrusts and innuendoes (not all of which I could understand) the
captain’s red face deepened into purple as he shook with laughter and
slapped his friend upon the back. Frenchy pretended not to like it,
and gave tit for tat in good earnest; but it was evident that he was
prodigiously pleased with himself and the others. With his chest thrown
out, his black brush of a mustache waxed to a point, and his military,
dandified air, Frenchy seemed more low, more indefinably offensive,
wicked, and dangerous than he had ever appeared to me before.
Every one was in a high good humour when we reached the beach, where
special precautions had to be taken in order to spare Frenchy’s finery
the least contamination; and we were soon walking up together through
a crowd of islanders to the trader’s house. Tom Ryegate was there to
meet us, a benignant-looking old man with a plenitude of grey hair,
a watery blue eye, and a tell-tale tremor of his hands. A closer
inspection revealed the fact that Tom Ryegate was soaked and pickled in
gin, a circumstance which perhaps accounted for the depressing views
he took of life and for his somewhat snarling mode of address. When
the news had been passed, and Stocker’s demise talked over, with some
very unedifying reminiscences of the deceased’s peculiarities, the
conversation was brought gently round to the business in hand.
But on the subject of girls Tom Ryegate was a broken reed. We might
be able to pick up a likely young woman, or we might not. “It all
depended,” he said, without adding on what. The fack was that things
wasn’t as they used to be on Treachery; the niggars had lost all
respeck for whites; it was money they cared for now, nothing but money.
It made old Tom Ryegate sick to think of it; it was all this missionary
coddling and putting ideas into their heads. Why, he remembered the
day when you could buy a ton of shell for a trade gun; when a white
man knew no law but what seemed good to him. But it was all changed
now; them days was passed for ever; the niggars had no more respeck for
whites: it was all money, all money.
This dreary and unsatisfactory monologue was the preface to a recital
of all his recent troubles. Mrs. Captain Saxe had been kind enough to
bring him back his daughter Elsie. Captain Mins would remember his
little Elsie? No? Well, it didn’t much matter; howsomever, as he was
saying, she had been educated in the convent at Port Darwin--for an
island girl there was no better place than a convent (here’s luck,
gentlemen). She was sixteen, and that pretty and nice-behaved that he
almost cried when he saw her! And white? Why, you couldn’t have told
she was a quarter-carste, she was that white. At first they had got
along together very nicely, for she was no slouch of a girl, and could
cook and sew, and play her little piece on the zither in the evening,
and sing! Sing? Why, you just orter hear that girl sing! And to see her
kneel down at night and pray in her little shimmy, it made him feel
what a bad old feller he was--by God, it did--and so far to leeward of
everything decent and right. Well, well, it went along so far nigh six
months (drink hearty, gentlemen; Mr. Bibo, sir, here’s my respecks),
and he had no more thought of what was a-coming than a babe unborn.
There was a half-carste here named Ned Forrest, who did a little
boat-building and traded a bit besides. Not a bad chap for a
half-carste, only he fancied himself overmuch, and thought because
he could read and drink square-face that he was as good as any white
man. It made him sick, the airs that feller put on at times. Imagine
his feelings, then, when this Forrest up and asked him one day for
permission to marry Elsie, and said a lot of rot about their being in
love with each other! Just animalism, that’s what he called it. His
Elsie, who had been bred up a lady in Port Darwin! Hadn’t he said that
the niggars were losing all respeck for whites? He booted the swine
off his verandah, that’s what he did, and he gave Elsie such a talking
to that she cried for three days afterwards. He thought she had had a
passing fancy for the swine, but he bade her remember her self-respeck
and just let out a few things about the feller to put her on her guard
like. But though she promised to give him up, she took it kind of hard.
He used often to find her crying and moping about the house, and, like
a fool, had thought little of it. He did think enough of it, however,
to go to Jimmy Upolu--that’s the Summoan native pastor here--to forbid
him to marry the pair if they had in mind any hanky-panky tricks.
By God, it was well he did so, for what was his surprise to find
that Forrest had been trying to get round the pastor for that very
purpose--mending his boat, stepping a new mast in it, and lending
a hand generally with the church repairs. The pastor was a crafty
customer and had a considerable eye for the main chance, but he was a
sight too far in Tom’s debt to go against him. Tom had only to raise
his hand and Jimmy was as good as bounced off the island, for Jimmy’s
no pay, and a complaint at headquarters would settle his hash. So he
didn’t mince matters with Jimmy, but told him flat out that there must
be no marrying Elsie on the sly.
That done, he gave the girl another dressing down. Pity he hadn’t
thrashed her, like he had often done her ma, but it wasn’t in flesh
and blood to lash your own daughter. So he let it go at that, and
arranged with Peter, the king, to run up some kind of a charge against
Ned Forrest, so that the next man-of-war might deport him. Luckily
Ned was a British subject, and it would have been strange if the navy
captain wouldn’t have taken the word of a responsible white merchant,
not to speak of the king’s and the missionary’s, against a dirty swine
of a half-carste. Howsomever, no man-of-war came,--they never do when
they’re wanted,--and things went on from bad to worse.
One morning he awoke to find that Elsie had skipped out. Yes, by God,
gone with the half-carste! At first he couldn’t believe it; but when he
went off in a tearing rage to see the pastor, he found a crowd gathered
round the church door, all chattering at once, like niggars do. They
made way for him, and what do you think he saw on that door, so help
him? A regular proclamation in English and native, saying as how Elsie
Ryegate and Edward George Forrest had taken each other for husband and
wife, for better or worse, for sickness or sorrow, until death should
them part, and a lot of stuff besides about the pastor and the king
both refusing to perform the marriage ceremony. It was well written,
that he would allow, though it made him wild to read it. He tore it
down and put it into his pocket for evidence, and went on to see Jimmy
Upolu. Jimmy was in fits too, for if people got to marrying one another
in that church doorway, what would become of Jimmy’s fees?
But though Jimmy could talk, he wasn’t much of a hand to do things.
What missionary niggar is? He wouldn’t hear of no trial, let alone a
little idea with a stick of dynamite. He could think of nothing better
than excommunication and talking _at_ him from the pulpit--a fat lot
he’d care for either, would Forrest! It seemed nothing could be done,
for without the pastor and the king where would be the use? A man had
to be keerful these days: the natives were losing all respeck for
whites, and them men-of-war fellers were as likely to take a niggar’s
word as his own. Wasn’t it sickening! Well, so it all ended in smoke,
and Elsie and Ned set up housekeeping together. He had never clapped
eyes on her but once, when she threw herself on her knees before him,
right there in the dirt, and said she’d die if he wouldn’t forgive her,
and please, wouldn’t he let the pastor marry her and Ned? It was a
tight place for a father--a father as doted on that girl. But a filthy
half-carste! Who could stomach such a swine for his daughter? He told
her he’d rather see her stretched dead at his feet; that’s what he
said, just like that, and walked on. It was hard, but a man must do
his dooty. That was the last he had seen of her--the last he wished to
see of her till she’d quit that feller. If she’d do that, his poor,
dishonoured girl, she’d never find her father’s door closed against
her; no, by God, it stood open for her night and day.