At length Tommy Rous’ boarders all departed. His health seemed to be
somewhat better, for a while at any rate, and I felt that I could
leave him with a clear conscience. As I was thoroughly sick both
of prospecting for gold and hotel-keeping, I purchased the cutter
_Mizpah_, and manned her with a crew of six Papuans, getting also
the Resident Magistrate’s permission to arm them. At the same time
I chartered from Messrs. Burns, Philp and Co. the luggers _Ada_,
_Hornet_, and _Curlew_, fully equipped with diving plants and crews of
Malays and Manilla men; and also engaged Billy the Cook, late of the
_Myrtle_, to take charge of the three, bound under the guidance of the
_Mizpah_, on a general prospecting voyage for pearl or mother-of-pearl
anywhere in the Coral Sea, the latter commodity then having a value
of about £150 per ton, with the chance--a very remote chance it is
true--of valuable pearls being found in the shells. The _Mizpah_
was fitted with a deep-sea dredging apparatus, having, prior to my
purchase, been owned by a scientist, a Dr. Wylie, who had come to New
Guinea, I was told, in search of the deep-sea nautilus.
Leaving Samarai we rapidly ran down to East Cape, when, coming to
anchor, Billy came on board my boat to discuss a plan of action for
my venture. At the very beginning Billy and I differed, to my future
loss I must own; for had I taken his advice as then tendered, I should
have made a fair profit instead of ending in a heavy loss. Billy’s
advice was that we should proceed to an old pearling ground well known
by him, and worked for many years, off the island of Sudest, and
commence operations there, where we were certain to make a few hundreds
in a short time. My idea was to search for an entirely new ground,
where we might make many thousands in a few weeks, off the shores of
Goodenough Island. Billy, finding that I was fixed in my views as to
our procedure, persuaded me to wait several days at East Cape, fishing,
and to send a boat into Samarai for salt to cure the fish.
We fished in this manner. Firstly, we stationed men at the masthead
to view the approach of shoals of trevalli passing through the narrow
channels, and then sent out boats to throw amongst them dynamite
cartridges with a twenty-second fuse attached. The explosion of the
cartridges stunned the fish, and enabled them to be raked in by the
boys forming our crews. Secondly, we sent the divers down armed with
small spears, and they speared the cod which had been attracted by the
dead fish or the diver. The ordinary rock cod, groper, or more properly
gorupa, has no fear of a diver in dress, and will swim up and gaze into
the face glass of the helmet, and hence falls an easy victim to the
spear. It is, however--with the exception of the octopus--the diver’s
greatest enemy, from the same lack of fear. No real diver is afraid of
the shark, but all dread the greater codfish.
The shark at best is a most cowardly scavenger of the sea; much
preferring, even when hungry, to gorge on carrion than to kill its own
prey. And even when made bold by hunger, it is readily frightened away
by the sudden emission of air bubbles from the valve in the diver’s
helmet. A diver, when approached by a large shark, seldom troubles
much, so long as the fish does not get too near to his air pipe. He
fears that, because sharks have an unpleasant habit of suddenly rolling
over and snapping at a fairly quiescent object. Should a shark’s
attention, however, prove too persistent, the diver signals for the
fullest possible pressure of air, and then either walks towards the
fish or, if it is higher up and interfering with his air pipe, rises in
the water and suddenly turns on his valves; result, immediate flight of
Mr. Shark.
The codfish, however, is afraid of nothing, and will nose up to a
diver, smell round him until it discovers his naked hands, and then
bite them off. Owing to this unpleasant trait on the part of the
codfish, the first and important duty of a diver’s tender is to wash
the former’s hands thoroughly with soap, soda, and warm water before
he descends, in order to remove any trace of perspiration or grease
from them. A diver’s hands are the sole portion of his body outside the
diving suit, the dress ending at the wrists, where thick india-rubber
bands prevent the admission of water and expulsion of air. Should a
diver meet a large groper, the only thing to be done is to either
ascend twenty or thirty feet and drift out of the short-sighted fish’s
range of vision or, if there is no tide or current, rise to the
surface. Then he can lower a dynamite cartridge or two, which will
either kill, wound, or frighten the beast away. A groper, I have been
told by divers, and my own experience bears this out, will never pursue
a diver or leave the bottom; it is sluggish in the extreme. These fish
grow to an immense size. I have myself seen a fish so large that, when
his mouth was open, the lower jaw was on the bottom and the upper
jaw above the level of one’s helmet. My own opinion is that, as the
cachalot preys upon the larger, so the gropers prey upon the smaller
form of octopi; otherwise I fail to see how so slow and bulky a fish,
a fish too that is not a carrion feeder, can possibly catch enough food
on which to live.
I have mentioned a diver’s tender. This person and the diver are
usually engaged together, and in most cases have been close friends
and associates through many engagements. The tender’s duties are to
keep the air pumps, dress, pipes, etc., in apple-pie order, to hold
the diver’s life-line and air tubes while he is below, and to receive
his signals and communicate them to the master of the vessel. On this
man’s constant watchfulness the life of the diver depends. At the time
of which I write, all signals from a diver at work were conveyed by
numbered jerks on the life-line. I believe now, however, the diver’s
helmets are fitted with a telephone, through which he speaks direct to
his tender. The submarine telephone must add immensely to the safety
of the diver, for by its means he can explain exactly what he wants or
what difficulty he is in.
For instance, I have known the case of a diver landing his leg in
a large clam shell, which of course immediately closed upon it,
the shell weighing probably three or four hundred pounds and being
fastened to the bottom. The man signalled “pull up.” The tender passed
on the signal, and after the life-line had been tugged and strained
at for some time, ordered it and the pipe to be slacked under the
impression that it was fast round a coral mushroom. The result was,
that before another boat could be summoned and a second diver sent down
to ascertain the trouble, the first man had exceeded his time limit
and was stricken fatally with divers’ paralysis. Had the diver then
possessed a telephone, a second line could have been sent down to him
by a heavy iron ring slid down his own life-line, and by him have been
attached to the shell; whereupon man and shell together could have been
hoisted by the ship’s winch.
Having collected and salted our fish, we sailed away for Dawson
Straits, between Ferguson and Goodenough Islands. My intention was
to prospect the narrow sea lying between the latter island and the
Trobriand group for pearl shell; the north-eastern coast of Goodenough
Island was at this time merely marked on the Admiralty charts by a
dotted line, with the terse remark, “Little known of the northern
shores of these islands.” In Dawson Straits we drilled our crews for
some days in their routine work, whilst I accustomed myself to the use
of a diver’s dress. Billy the Cook, I regret to say, flatly refused to
have anything to do with work under the water.
Our method of procedure was this. Firstly, by sounding, we found a
level sandy bottom of anything under twenty fathoms. Pearl shell is
peculiar for growing only on a perfectly flat surface. Then the vessel
was hove-to or allowed to drift with the current, while the anchor
was lowered some ten feet beneath the vessel’s keel. The diver then
descended by the anchor chain, and seated himself astride of the
anchor. At his signal it was lowered until within about six feet of
the bottom, the vessel then being allowed to drift while the diver
scrutinized the bottom for signs of pearl shell. Upon his sighting
shell, he gave two sharp tugs at his life-line, which meant, “Slack
life-line and pipe, let go anchor.” Immediately upon giving his signal
and finding his life-line and pipe released, the diver leapt from the
anchor, the anchor dropped, and he began work. For sign of shell it was
sufficient to see certain marine plants, which almost invariably occur
under the same conditions as pearl shell. The diver when below water is
in supreme command of the vessel through his tender, and there can be
no possible excuse for disobeying either his first or second signals.
The first, consisting of one tug on his life-line, meaning “More air,
I am in great danger, pull me up.” The second, of two tugs, meaning
“Slack all, I am on shell.” One peculiar thing about pearl shell is,
that it only occurs in payable quantities where tidal currents are very
strong. Where the current runs at less than three knots, though one
may find shell, it is rotten and worm-eaten; where the currents are
strong it is clean and thick. My own impression is that a strong force
of water is necessary to tear and distribute the spawn from the parent
oyster; when that force is lacking disease and degeneracy set in.
There are many theories as to the causation of pearls in the pearl
shell; the most common is the particularly idiotic one of a grain of
sand, or other foreign body, inserting itself within the shell and
setting up an irritation which causes the oyster to build round the
intruder a smooth coat of pearly matter. This theory is senseless on
the face of it. From its natural habitat every pearl oyster must have
thousands of grains of sand or other bodies lodged against its lips in
each tide. The lips of a pearl oyster consist of a curious vascular
membrane tapering to a slimy filmy substance at the outer edge;
assuming a small speck of sand came it would adhere to the slimy edge,
if a larger body the lips would close. Granted that a foreign article
passed the lips, the outer skin of the fish is a very tough thing, and
it would be almost impossible for the grain of sand, or other matter,
to penetrate to where lie the glands which secrete the substance
forming the pearly lining of the shell. A fact which shows the fallacy
of the theory is this: that though one may remove the multitudinous
skins of the pearl until whittled down to nothing, it is impossible
ever to discover in the centre of the pearl as a core a grain of sand,
or anything differing from the pure composition of the pearl. If, in
one chance out of ten millions, a grain of sand passed the lips of the
shell and lodged on the skin of the fish, the next tide would wash it
away again. No! Plainly, from the small percentage of pearl-bearing
oysters, the pearl is a disease, and, I hold, not due to extraneous
causes. Just as uric acid produces stone or gravel in humans, so does
some similar irritant produce the pearl in the oyster. I leave it to
other and wiser heads to say what the origin of the pearl is; I only
say emphatically what it is not.
In Dawson Straits we remained some days prospecting the bottom without
luck, and meanwhile discovered a passage behind the island of Wagipa to
a secure anchorage for small vessels. Here the _Mizpah_ lay for some
days while the luggers continued prospecting, and here I had my first
experience of hostile natives. The natives of Goodenough Island at this
time enjoyed a most unenviable reputation, being generally regarded by
traders as hostile and treacherous in the extreme. Until the day of
which I now write, we had not come into contact with them, save a few
canoes manned by vegetable-vending natives.
On this day, being tired of sticky salt-water baths, I landed with
three or four of my crew, and followed a small stream inland to where
a waterfall occurred in a gully. Here the falling water had scooped
out a hole about three or four feet deep. Sending my boys back to the
mouth of the gully I stripped and, standing in the hole, indulged in a
shower bath under the fall. Whilst I was so engaged, revolver and rifle
lying on my clothes some few feet away, a native walked out from the
bush, suddenly caught sight of me and, giving a loud screech, promptly
hurled his spear at me and then fled. I jumped from the water hole as
the spear flew, and instead of catching me in the chest it caught me
just above the knee, fortunately just as my knee was jerking upwards in
my jump, the spear therefore turning to one side, and merely tearing a
slit in my flesh and skin, the scar of which, however, I carry to this
day. My yells brought up my boys, who running straight into the flying
native, caught and held him. As soon as my bleeding was staunched,
we hauled him off on board the _Mizpah_, where we found that he had
a slight knowledge of Dobuan, a language with which one of my crew
was acquainted. After we had soothed down his funk a little (for he
fully expected to be immediately killed and eaten, as the Goodenough
Islanders were themselves cannibals), he was asked what he meant by
hurling his spear at me. His explanation was that he was returning from
an expedition inland, that he had never seen a white man before, and
when he saw me disporting in the water he had taken me for a devil, and
flung his spear with the laudable intention of killing a devil before
turning to flee from the uncanny thing.
Satadeai was the name of my new acquaintance, a man whose friendship I
was to enjoy for many years afterwards; in fact, when later I became
Resident Magistrate of the Eastern Division, I appointed him village
constable for his tribe, a dignity which I believe he still enjoys.
After we had soothed the feelings of Saturday, as I now called him,
I presented him with some beads and a tomahawk and landed him again;
telling him at the same time what our quest in the vicinity was, and
offering him safe conduct at any time he or his people liked to come
with vegetables for our little fleet. From this time Saturday became
a regular visitor to the _Mizpah_, bringing fresh yams, taro, curios,
etc., for sale; and also bringing me men to assist in working the air
pumps of the diving plant, a manual labour of the heaviest description
when divers are in deep water.
On one occasion he brought me as a present a curious, almost circular,
tusk, a tusk so old that the outer covering of enamel had worn off and
antiquity had tinged it a pale yellow. The tusk was mounted in native
money, small circular disks formed from the hinges of a rare shell,
and hung on a sling to be worn round the neck. I thought the thing was
an ordinary boar’s tusk of unusual shape and size; Saturday, however,
told me the following amazing yarn. He said that at the summit of
Goodenough Island, or Moratau, as the natives called it, there lived an
enormous snake with curious long and curved teeth, a snake so large and
powerful that it was beyond the power of man to capture or destroy it.
Goodenough Island, I might remark in passing, is the highest island of
its size in the world; Mount York, its highest peak, being over 8000
feet. Well, some generations before, there had lived on Goodenough a
mighty hunter of Saturday’s tribe and family, and on one occasion the
hunter had ascended the mountain with the intention of killing the
snake. Finding, however, that it was beyond the powers of mortal man
to slay, he had surrounded its lair with sharp-pointed stakes driven
firmly into the ground. When the snake emerged again, it had entangled
or caught one of its curved tusks on a stake, and in its struggles to
escape tore away the tusk, which Saturday now presented to me.
Afterwards in New Zealand I showed the tooth to Sir James Hector,
who pronounced it to be a tusk of the Sus Barbirusa, a hog deer; an
inhabitant of the East India Islands and an animal not known to exist
in New Guinea. This tusk I afterwards gave to a friend of mine, Richard
Burton of Longner Hall, Shrewsbury, in whose possession it now is;
a gift that later caused me to be severely dealt with by Professor
Haddon of anthropological fame, the professor holding that I should
have presented it either to the Royal Anthropological Institute or the
British Museum. I am now of opinion that this tusk was wrongly assigned
by Sir James Hector to the Barbirusa, but rightfully belongs to an
animal not then known to science, though many years later reported by
me as existing on the Owen Stanley Range, at a height of about 12,000
feet, on the mainland of New Guinea. The discovery of this animal and
its description, however, occurs at a later stage of my life in New
Guinea.
When we sailed from Wagipa, Saturday accompanied me on the _Mizpah_
to the north-east coast of Goodenough Island, where he acted as
interpreter for us. And being by this time fully acquainted with the
object of our search, he induced the natives to guide us to a large
patch of “saddle back” shell, which he and they assured us contained
large quantities of the “stones” we valued. He was right in his
statement, the shell was there in large quantities, and the shells
held--a most unusual thing--large numbers of perfect-looking pearls.
But, alas! the shell, for some unknown reason, was so soft as to be
valueless, one could crush it between the hands; and the pearls,
though beautiful to look upon when first obtained, lost their lustre
in a single day and could be readily scratched with the finger nail.
Saturday was the only New Guinea native that I ever knew who was
anxious to go down in a diving dress, a wish on his part to which I
sternly refused to accede.
The Goodenough Islanders are a somewhat remarkable race; of small
physique, they speak a language peculiar to themselves; the men are
liars, treacherous and subtle, but at the same time brave and capable
of great attachment to any person for whom they have a regard. Some
time after I first saw them, the small wiry men from Goodenough Island
proved to be the best porters that New Guinea could furnish for the
deadly work of carrying for the Northern Division. The common arms of
the men were half a dozen light throwing spears, made from the black
palm and having an effective throwing range of some thirty yards, a
short triangular-bladed spear for use at close quarters, and a sling
and stones. As a general rule ordinary pebbles of about the size of
a billiard ball were hurled from the slings; but the slinger usually
carried a couple of carefully hand-wrought stones resembling a pullet’s
egg in shape but pointed at both ends, which he flung from his sling
on special occasions; that is, at times when he had a good clear
opportunity of hitting his enemy, and wished to make no mistake about
it. The effective range of these slings was up to two hundred yards
on the level. They had an extraordinary habit of attaching a tail or
cracker to the pouch of the sling, which, upon the stone leaving the
pouch, made a sharp noise not unlike the crack of a rifle.
In their hill villages, usually placed upon commanding points or spurs,
they build round stone towers covering all approaches. The purpose of
the towers was this. A man when using a sling on the level could only
use it at such a length as to reach, when whirled, from the bent arm
to the ground. If standing on a flat-sided tower, however, the limit
of the length of sling he could use was only decided by his strength
and the weight of the missile he meant to hurl; and the greater the
length of the sling and weight of projectile, the greater the effective
range. Therefore a village possessing stone towers was, to all intents
and purposes, a fortified position, as its slingmen could outrange,
and assail with heavier missiles, any attacking force armed with the
sling. Stones from a pound to a pound and a half in weight were hurled
from the giant slings plied by the slingers on the towers. Goodenough
Islanders, therefore, provided with the towers, were really, at the
time of which I write, impregnable against any force unarmed with
rifles. They also had a most extraordinary system of yam cultivation.
Instead of making their yam gardens on the flat in good alluvial soil,
they built circular stone walls beneath their villages on the slopes;
and then laboriously carried earth in baskets and filled up the walls
behind, until they formed a succession of artificial terraces on which
they grew their yams. Certainly the yams there grown were larger
and better than any others I have seen, but the labour in the first
instance must have been appalling. The gardens also had the advantage
of being covered by sling fire from the village towers, and therefore,
I suppose, were held to be safe from raiders. Lunacy, from what I
could learn, was very common among these islanders; I believe due to
in-breeding for many years. Totemism, the great preventive against
in-breeding, apparently did not exist among them.
South from Wagipa, on the northern shores of Ferguson Island, lies
Seymour Bay, a short distance inland from which there exists a country
of great volcanic and thermal action. There, a hot stream flows to the
sea; and there also exists a lake containing, according to an analysis
I had made of its waters, a huge quantity of the gouty man’s friend,
lithium; whilst, surrounding its waters, there are acres and acres,
feet deep, of pure yellow sulphur.
My pearl fishing on the northern shores of Goodenough came to an
abrupt end. Billy the Cook had foregathered with me one night on
the _Mizpah_, when our divers and tenders had asked permission to
collect on one boat, the _Ada_, for a Malay jollification; the crew
of the _Ada_ meanwhile visiting friends on the other vessels. When
morning came there was no _Ada_, and no divers or tenders; and Billy
gently suggested to me that they had taken a pleasure trip to the
Trobriands. The first thing to be done before we could sail in search
of our truants was to return Saturday to his home on Wagipa, as the
law did not then permit any unindentured natives being taken more than
twenty miles from where they lived, except for the purpose of being
indentured, or as it is called “signed on.” Saturday made it very clear
indeed that if we landed him at the point at which we were then, the
chances were greatly in favour of his finding his way into a cooking
pot instead of his home. It would not do to send the _Hornet_ with him,
because, firstly, the crew were only armed with knives, and secondly,
they were quite likely to follow the evil example of their mates and
sneak off on pleasure bent. I thought of sending Billy in the _Curlew_
with a couple of armed boys, he having his own rifle and revolver;
but my boys objected to leaving my own vessel, and Billy said he was
a married man and had not shipped to be sent alone into a Goodenough
harbour. Also he pointed out that I might require the full strength
of my New Guinea boys, the only men I could depend on, to deal with
our confounded divers and tenders when we found them. The result of
our deliberations, therefore, was the loss of two valuable days in
returning Saturday.
Upon landing that worthy native we struck straight away from the
Straits to the Trobriands, and had a horrible nightmare of a passage,
for coral mushrooms and reefs seemed to strew the sea like plums in a
pudding. Safe enough to navigate amongst when the sky was clear, they
were, however, a deadly peril during the passage of a rain squall. The
danger of a coral mushroom lies in the fact that it is so small that
the sea seldom makes any noise upon it, also it springs up so suddenly
from the bottom that the lead line proves no safeguard against it. No
bottom at fifty fathoms one minute, a nigger head or mushroom with its
head a couple of feet below the surface the next, is the pleasing habit
of the sea between Goodenough Island and the Trobriands.
We did not attempt to sail at night, but either anchored over a
submerged reef or hung on to the lee side of a shallow one, with
our anchor on top of the reef and a kedge out astern. It is a risky
proceeding anchoring in small vessels among coral, where the depth of
the water is more than six fathoms, if unprovided with diving gear, or
more than twenty, if fitted with that apparatus. For in nine cases out
of ten, the chain or anchor becomes entangled in the coral mushrooms,
and it is necessary for a man to go down and clear it before the
anchor can be raised. Sometimes even a diver is unable to clear the
tangle, especially if there is much current or wind keeping the vessel
straining at her anchor; and in that case the last resource is to heave
the chain in until it is up and down--that is, descends in a vertical
line from the ship’s bow to the bottom--and fasten big charges of
dynamite fitted with burning fuses to a heavy iron ring, and slide them
down the chain in the hope of smashing away the obstruction. Even this
method sometimes fails, as some coral is of a dense cheesy consistency,
and capable of resisting for a long time repeated explosions of
dynamite. When this occurs, then one loses a valuable anchor and chain,
a loss one cannot afford too often.