Three or four years passed by, during which time the writer cruised
about from island to island in the North and South Pacific--sometimes
living ashore as a trader, sometimes voyaging to and fro among the many
groups as supercargo or recruiter in the labour trader; and then one day
the schooner, in which I then served as supercargo, reached Samoa, and
there I accepted the dignified but unsatisfactory financial position of
inter-island supercargo to a firm of merchants doing business in Apia,
the distracted little capital of the Navigator's Island. At this time,
the late Earl of Pembroke, the joint author with Dr. Kingsley of "South
Sea Bubbles," was in Apia Harbour in his schooner yacht _Albatross_, and
every day we expected to see the French Pacific Squadron steam into the
port and capture the numerous German ships then laying at anchor there.
But the gallant Admiral Clouet, who commanded, disdained such work as
this--he was willing and eager to fight any German warships that he
could come across, but had no inclination for the inglorious task of
seizing unarmed merchantmen.
For two years or so I remained in the employ of the trading firm. Hayes
then lived in Apia--or rather at Matautu, on the east side of Apia
Harbour. When I say lived there, I mean that Samoa was his headquarters,
for he was absent six months out of the twelve, cruising away in the
North West Pacific among the Caroline and Marshall Groups. His house
at Matautu Point was sweetly embowered in a grove of coco-nut and
breadfruit trees, and here the so-called pirate exercised the most
unbounded hospitality to the residents and to any captains (not Germans)
visiting Samoa. Sometimes we would meet, and whenever we did he would
urge me to come away with him on a cruise to the north-west; but duty
tied me down to my own miserable little craft, a wretched little ketch
of sixty tons register, that leaked like a basket and swarmed with
myriads of cockroaches and quite a respectable number of centipedes and
scorpions.
But it so came about that that cruise with Bully Hayes was to eventuate
after all; for one day he returned to Samoa from one of his periodical
cruises and told the owners of the aforesaid basket that he could sell
her for them to the King of Arhnu--one of the Marshall Islands--for
quite a nice sum. And the owners, being properly anxious to get rid of
such a dangerous and unprofitable craft before she fell to pieces, at
once consented.
Hayes sailed in the _Leonora_ in the month of November, and it was
agreed that I was to follow in _The Williams_ (that being the name of my
semi-floating abode of misery) in the following month, and meet him at
Milli Lagoon, in the Marshall Islands. Here we were to doctor up the
wretched little vessel as well as we possibly could, and then send her
over to the Island of Arhnu in the same group, and defraud the monarch
of that place of £1,000 by handing over the vessel to him.
Of the miseries and hardships of that voyage from Samoa to the Marshall
Islands, I shall not speak. After a passage of forty-three days we
reached Milli Lagoon, where we found Hayes awaiting us in the _Leonora_.
The moment our anchor had touched bottom, I packed up my traps and told
Hayes I had done with _The Williams_, and refused to go any further
in her unless she was carried on the deck of another vessel. With his
carpenter--a pig-eyed Chinaman--he made a survey of the vessel, and then
told me that she was so rotten and unseaworthy that he would not take
delivery of her. The captain, a gin-sodden little Dutchman, and the crew
were given quarters on shore at the house of Hayes's local trader, where
they were to remain till some passing ship gave them a passage back to
Samoa. The ketch was then beached, as Hayes considered that she might
eventually be patched up sufficiently to sell to the King of Arhnu, when
the _Leonora_ returned from her cruise to the islands of the North-west
Pacific, in six months' time. As I had received no salary from my
employers for nearly twelve months (and did not expect any), I consented
very cheerfully to this arrangement, and then agreed to sail with Hayes
as supercargo.
We sailed from Milli Lagoon for the Kingsmill Group a week later, and
visited nearly every island in the cluster, buying coco-nut oil and
other produce from the natives and the few scattered white traders. At
Arorai, the southernmost island of the group, we found the natives in a
state of famine owing to a long and disastrous drought. The condition
of these poor people was truly pitiable to see, and the tears came to
my eyes when I saw them, scarcely able to stand, crawling over our
bulwarks, and eagerly seizing the biscuits and dishes of boiled rice
that Hayes gave them with an unstinting hand. They begged us most
piteously to take them away somewhere--they cared not where, Samoa, Fiji
or Queensland--where they could work on the plantations and at least
get food. Five of them ate so voraciously, despite all our endeavours to
prevent it, that they died the following day. On the following morning,
Hayes called several of the head men of the island into his cabin, and
told them that if they were willing, he would take one hundred of the
people--men, women, and children--to the German trading station and
plantation at Ponapé in the Caroline Islands. Here, he told them, they
would have to work for three years for 5 dollars per month each. If, at
the end of six months, they found that the Germans did not treat them
well, he would bring them back again to their own island on his
next voyage to Ponapé. They accepted his offer with the strongest
protestations of gratitude, and before noon we sailed with over a
hundred of the poor people on board. Before we left, however, Hayes gave
the remainder of the population nearly a ton of rice and several casks
of biscuits. "You can pay me when the sky of brass has broken and the
rain falls, and the land is fertile once more," said the so-called
pirate.
We made a quick passage to the Caroline Islands, touching at Kusaie or
Strong's Island on our way, and on a Sunday evening swept into Jakoits
Harbour on the island of Ponapé before a strong trade-wind. Here we made
engagements for our passengers with a German planter, and two days later
we again were at sea, bound for the western portion of the Carolines.
For the following three or four months, the brig cruised among the
other islands of the Western Carolines, buying copra and turtle-shell
in considerable quantities; for the much-maligned "Bully," despite his
moral obliquity of vision in his commercial dealings with the merchants
of Tahiti and other Polynesian ports, yet possessed the confidence of
the wild Caroline Islanders to a remarkable degree. Then we returned to
Ponapé, where we remained a month, wooding and watering and cleaning the
ship's bottom by the aid of native divers of both sexes.
Leaving Ponapé we drifted rather than sailed back to the eastward,
and one morning in March we again saw the verdant heights of beautiful
Kusaie or Strong's Island, about ten miles away. On our first visit we
had anchored at Coquille Harbour, a lovely lake of deepest blue, on
the lee side of the island, where the king had supplied us with all
the provisions we wanted; and Hayes had promised to return again in six
months and buy a large quantity of coco-nut oil that his Majesty was
keeping for him: and in pursuance of that promise the _Leonora_ had now
returned to the island.
As the breeze freshened we worked up to Lelé, the principal harbour of
the island, where Togusâ, the king, resided, and in a few hours we were
boarded by a number of white men, whom we had last seen at two lonely
spots near the equator called Pleasant and Ocean Islands. In a few
minutes we learnt that in consequence of their lives being in imminent
danger from the natives, they, accompanied by their native wives,
families, and over one hundred natives connected with them by marriage,
had escaped from the islands in two whaleships, and landed at Kusaie,
where they were at that moment causing old King Togusà a terrible amount
of trouble by their wild and insolent demeanour. Their leader was a
white-haired old ex-man-of-war's man, named Harry Terry. He was the
doyen of the hardy, adventurous class among whom he had lived for over
fifty years, and though exceedingly fond of square gin, was a thoroughly
decent old fellow, and tried to restrain his own and his comrades'
native followers as much as possible. Harry, when he came on board,
was accompanied by about half a dozen other white men, all armed with
revolvers, and all half-seas over. After a brief consultation with
Hayes, they agreed to pay him a thousand dollars to take them and their
belongings to Eniwetok (or Brown's Range) and Arrecifos (Providence
Island) two large atolls situated about 10 degrees North. Both of these
places were very thinly populated, and Arrecifos was Hayes's secret
rendezvous in the North Pacific. His was the first ship that had ever
sailed into its lagoon, and the vast groves of coco-nuts that clothed
the low-lying island had decided him to return there at some future time
with native labourers and turn the coco-nuts into oil. The traders were
highly delighted at the prospect of securing homes in two such places
to themselves, and agreed to sell Hayes all the oil they produced during
the next five years, and give him one barrel out of every five as
a tribute of recognition of his ownership of Providence Island and
Eniwetok.
On the following day the whole lot came on board, and we left Lelé
Harbour to proceed down the coast to a little harbour named Utwe, where
Hayes intended to water the ship and buy fresh provisions for the voyage
to Providence Island. Just before we sailed, the King and Queen--the
latter a very pretty and charming little woman about five-and-twenty
years of age--came on board to make some purchases from my trade-room,
and I had the distinguished honour of fitting on and selling to Queen Se
a yellow silk blouse and two pairs of patent leather shoes. His Majesty,
who was a curious combination of piety and inborn wickedness, and spoke
whaler's English with great facility, bought about 200 dollar's worth of
prints and cutlery, and then proceeded to get drunk. He said that he was
very glad the _Leonora_ was taking all the white men away from Kusaie,
as he was afraid of their Pleasant Island retinue killing him and all
his people, and taking possession of the island.
By the time Queen Se had finished and paid for her purchases her
royal husband fell in a heap upon the cabin floor, and a number of
twenty-dollar gold pieces, which he carried in a leather pouch at his
waist, fell out and rolled all over the cabin. The Queen at once picked
them up, and concealed them in the bosom of her dress, telling me with
a smile that she would come on board again when we returned from
Arrecifos, or as she called it, Ujilong, and spend them. Shortly
afterward, her women attendants carried his Majesty up on deck, and
Hayes sent him ashore in one of our boats; and then, with our decks
filled with the noisy, excitable Pleasant and Ocean Islanders, and the
white traders rolling about among them in a state of noisy intoxication,
we got under way, and, with our yards squared, ran down the coast within
a cable length of the reef.
*****
Three days later we were driven ashore in a fierce north-westerly gale
and the trim little _Leonora_ sank in Utwe Harbour in fourteen fathoms
of water.
The story of the wreck of the _Leonora_ in Utwe Harbour has been told by
the writer in another work, so I will now merely describe some incidents
of our stay on the island. First of all, however, let me make some brief
mention of the island and its people. Kusaie is about thirty-five miles
in circumference and of basaltic formation, and from the coast to the
lofty summit of Mount Buache, 2,200 feet high, is clothed with the
richest verdure imaginable. The northern part of the island rises
precipitously from the sea, and has no outlying barrier reef, but from
the centre the land trends westward and southward in a graceful slope
towards the beautiful shores of Coquille Harbour. The southern portion
is enclosed by a chain of palm-clad coral islets, connected at low water
by reefs, forming a long, deep lagoon, the waters of which teem with
fish and turtle. This lagoon was used as a means of communication
between the village of Utwe Harbour, where the _Leonora_ was wrecked,
and the village at Coquille, and all day long one might see the
red-painted canoes of the natives passing to and fro over its glassy
waters, which were, from their enclosed position, seldom raffled by any
wind, except daring the rainy or westerly wind season. There were but
three villages of any size on the island--that at Lelé, where the King
and his principal chiefs lived, Utwe or Port Lottin, and Moût or Leasee,
on the shores of Coquille Harbour. At this latter place I lived most of
the time during my stay on the island.
We were enabled to save a considerable amount of stores from the wreck,
as well as some arms and ammunition. There were also a bull and two
cows, which formed the remainder of a herd of cattle that Hayes had
running on the island of Ponapé; the rest--some forty head or so--had
been stolen from there by his one-time bosom friend and colleague, the
notorious Captain Ben Peese.
The natives of Strong's Island were but few in number--about four
hundred all told--and although a very handsome race and possessed of
the very greatest intelligence, were dying out rapidly. In 1825, when
Duperrey, the French navigator, visited the island he estimated the
population at eleven thousand, and Don Felipe Tompson, an Englishman in
the Spanish Navy, who was there long before Duperrey, relates that
the houses of the people formed an almost continuous line around the
southern and western coasts. The introduction of European diseases made
terrible ravages among them in 1828, and then about the year 1856, when
the whole of the population were converted by American missionaries and
adopted European clothing, pulmonary disease made its appearance and
swept them away literally in hundreds.
Within a week after the loss of the brig Hayes and our passengers came
to an agreement to build a town on the south shore of Utwe. They were to
give Hayes the services of their native followers and help him to build
dwelling-houses and store-houses for the manufacture of coco-nut oil.
Hayes had accused--and with perfect truth--the Strong's Islanders of
stealing a number of articles from the wreck, and demanded compensation
from the King, who agreed to pay him an indemnity of a million
coco-nuts. These were to be collected by our crew and the Ocean and
Pleasant Islanders belonging to the traders. It was Hayes's intention to
remain on the island till a passing sperm-whaler called there, and then
charter her to take the ship's company and all the rest of the traders
and natives to either Providence Island or Samoa.
In a month quite a town had been built, and a great sea wall of coral
stones built to keep the sea from encroaching on the northern side.
Standing apart from the rest of the houses was Captain Hayes's
dwelling-house--an enormous structure, a hundred and fifty feet long and
fifty wide. Here he ruled in state, and from his door watched his boats,
manned by their savage crews, pulling to and fro on their mission of
collecting coco-nuts. These, as soon as the boats touched the stone
wharf he had built on the west side of the sea-wall, were carried up to
the "Plaza" of the town, where they were quickly husked by women, who
threw them to others to break open and scrape the white flesh into a
pulp. This was then placed in slanting troughs to rot and let the oil
percolate down into casks placed at the lower end. On the other side of
the "plaza" were the forge, carpenter's shop, and boat-builder's sheds,
all of which bustled with activity, especially when the dreaded eye
of the captain looked over toward them. Two hundred yards away was the
Kusaiean village of Utwe, a collection of about twenty handsomely built
houses, and all day long the pale olive-faced Kusaiean men and women
would sit gazing in wondering fear at the fierce Pleasant Island women,
who, clothed in short girdles of grass called "aireere," sang a savage
chant as they husked the nuts. In front of Hayes's house was hung the
_Leonora's_ bell, and at noon and at six in the evening, when it
was struck, the whole of the people who toiled at the oil-making and
boat-building would hurry away with loud clamour for their meals. It
was a truly exciting scene to witness, and were it not for the continual
drunkenness of most of the white traders, who could be seen staggering
about the "plaza" almost at any time, a pleasant one.
After a while, however, Hayes and the white traders began to quarrel,
and dreadful bloodshed would have followed; for the Pleasant Islanders,
who were all devotedly attached to their white masters and were all
armed with Snider rifles and cutlasses, were eager for their white men
to make an assault upon Hayes and the crew of the _Leonora_. One night
they gathered in front of their houses and danced a war-dance, but their
white leaders discreetly kept in the background when Hayes appeared
coming over toward them. He walked through the throng of natives, and in
a very few minutes, although he was unarmed, picked out the biggest man
of the lot and gave him a bad mauling about in the presence of every one
in the village. One of the traders, a young American of thirty or
so, named "Harry," at once declared that he was not going back on
the captain, and would stand by him to the last, whereupon the others
sullenly withdrew to their respective houses, and the trouble ended for
the time.
This "Harry" was formerly a boat steerer on an American whaleship, from
which he had deserted, and had been living on Pleasant Island for some
years. He had four wives, whom he described as "the three Graces, with
another chucked in," and though a rough, dare-devil fellow, he was, with
the exception of old Harry Terry, the only one of the lot that was not a
hopeless drunkard and ruffian. By one of his wives, a native of Sikaiana
or Stewart's Island, he had two children, both girls. They were then
about eight and ten years of age respectively, and were, I often
thought, the loveliest specimens of childish beauty imaginable, and at
the moment when their father stepped out from among the other traders
and declared his intention of standing by Captain Hayes, each had a
heavy navy revolver which their father had given them to carry in case
he needed the weapons.
In the course of a month or so I had a serious disagreement with
Captain Hayes over his treatment of a deputation of Strong's Islanders,
and I left the settlement at Utwe, and removed to Leassé, the village
at Coquille Harbour. The principal man in the place was a native named
Kusis, with whom, and his wife Tulpe and daughter Kinié, I lived
during the remainder of my stay on the island. And, although more than
twenty-five years have passed and gone since then, I can never forget
the kindness, warm-hearted hospitality, and amiability that filled their
simple hearts to overflowing.