After about a week the _Mizpah_ had filled the _Siai_ with yams,
plantains, and fresh vegetables for the disease-stricken prisoners at
Samarai; and Moreton and Judge Winter, having completed their court
work, sailed away for that port. The Judge’s parting words to me were:
“Keep within touch of the mail schooner, Monckton; the Mambare is going
to claim a pound of corpse for every ounce of gold, and there will be
vacancies enough for you before long.” “Very good, sir,” I said; “pay
me enough and feed me fairly, and I’ll willingly furnish 150 lbs. of
prospective corpse, when you need it.” Then came Winter’s slow smile:
“You will be neither adequately paid nor decently fed in the Service,
but, like the rest, you will come when called. Good-bye.” Very sadly I
watched the disappearing sails of the _Siai_; and then turned rather
disgustedly to my work and the society of my New Guinea boys and Billy,
for another long period.
We then tried sending the divers down in the deep channels surrounding
the mud banks from which the natives collected their small pearl shell,
in the hope of finding larger shell containing pearls. But we found
the water was too muddy and disturbed for the ordinary diver to see
the oysters; the native skin-divers in the shallower water were able
to feel them with their feet, and then scoop them into baskets. The
heavy leaden-cased boots of the divers in dress, however, prevented
this being done, and the few shells they obtained, by groping on the
bottom with their hands, would not pay expenses. I then tried a new
plan. Sending the three luggers to trade for native curios at Kavitari,
with the idea that I might again sell them in Samarai, I commenced
operations with the dredging apparatus with which I have mentioned the
_Mizpah_ was fitted. This scheme would have worked well but for two
reasons: the first, that the _Mizpah_ was old and rotten; the second,
that the mud or sandy bottom, on which the pearl oysters lay, was
studded with coral mushrooms and boulders.
Our _modus operandi_ was this. Working up to windward of the
oyster-bearing bank, we used to cast the dredge overboard, and then,
clapping on all sail, scud before the wind, dragging the dredge in the
mud behind us. At intervals we would heave-to, haul up the dredge with
its load of oysters, and repeat the process. Unfortunately, we would
haul up about two or three dredge loads, and then, suddenly the dredge
would land against a coral lump and bring the vessel to all standing.
If the _Mizpah_ had been new and strong she might have stood it, but
as it was the straining opened her seams and made her leak like a
sieve. The result of which was to convince me that unless I abandoned
my dredging, I should have no _Mizpah_ left under me. Some years
afterwards my plan was attempted by a trader with several stoutly-built
vessels; but an Ordinance was passed by the New Guinea Legislative
Council forbidding the fishing for the Trobriand species of pearl shell
by means of dredging, for fear of clearing out the breeding ground of
the oyster and thus destroying one of the staple foods of the natives.
Upon this last failure, I summoned Billy and the luggers and we stood
away for the Straits between Ferguson and Normanby Islands. Here,
however, though we obtained a small quantity of shell of first-class
quality, unusually large and clean, the water was so deep--twenty-three
to twenty-five fathoms--that I did not care to continue working there.
Here I made the acquaintance of a great friend of Moreton’s, the
Rev. William Bromilow of the Wesleyan Methodist Mission; a splendid
type of man and missionary, whose friendship I was to enjoy for many
years. The Mission Station is built on the island of Dobu, an extinct
volcano; the only evidence of volcanic action at this time being a
hot spring bubbling up in the sea, over which small vessels used to
anchor, to allow the hot water to boil the barnacles and weeds off
their bottoms. The native yam gardens run right up and into the old
crater of the volcano. Here the natives have a curious way of fishing,
using kites which they fly from their canoes. The kites have long
strings descending from them, ending in a bunch of tough cobweb. The
cobweb dancing over the surface of the water attracts the fish, which,
snapping at it, get their teeth entangled in its tough texture and are
thereupon secured by a man or small boy swimming from the canoe.
I found at Dobu my old Chasseurs d’Afrique friend, Louis, settled down
on a small island as a copra maker and trader. He told me that he was
utterly tired of knocking about and had settled there to end his days;
he was making about £5 per week at his business, and had got together
a fine collection of pigs and poultry. Louis’ days were to end, poor
devil, sooner than he expected; but that is later. He had a small
fleet of canoes, which he sent out daily to buy cocoanuts, paying for
them with trade tobacco; he then manufactured the kernels into copra.
When the natives’ fishing failed, he dynamited fish and traded them
instead of tobacco for cocoanuts; when their fishing was good, and he
had no demand for the catch, he salted and dried it and then disposed
of it at native feast times. Louis begged me to join him, and settle
down to a lotus-eating and untroubled life with enough for our wants,
and no danger and worry. He said, “We will order a good cutter for our
trading, have plenty of papers, books, tobacco, and wine of the best,
and when I die, you can take the business.” “That’s all very fine,
Louis,” I said; “but how old are you?” “Fifty-seven,” replied Louis.
“Well and good,” I remarked, “but you are over thirty years ahead of
me; your life has been lived, while mine has just begun! What would
you have said thirty odd years ago, when you were a young soldier, if
a similar proposition had been made to you?” “I should have said, God
damn! not I!” said Louis. “Well, Louis,” I replied, “I am afraid that
must be my answer to you now.” The time came when I weighed anchor and
left Dobu, taking, as a parting present from Louis, a large native pot
full of eggs, a dozen clucking fowls, a squealing porker for my crew,
and a most ornate French tie-pin, which some one in Samarai afterwards
stole. Poor Louis! the next time I met him was in the hospital at
Thursday Island, he having blown off his fore-arm in dynamiting fish.
He had been taken to Samarai in the Mission vessel, and from there sent
on to Thursday Island in the _Merrie England_.
From Dobu we sailed south and rounded Normanby Island finding
everywhere, in likely pearl-shell localities, shell of a size and
quality better than any other in the world, but water too deep for us
to work it successfully. The shell always lay at a depth varying from
twenty-eight to thirty fathoms; a depth that, however tempting the
outlook, simply spelt suicide on the part of the diver volunteering to
work it, and manslaughter on the part of the owner sending him below.
From the south end of Normanby Island we stood north to Cape Vogel on
the mainland, sounding and prospecting the bottom all the way, but with
no payable results. At Cape Vogel, or Iasa Iasi as the natives call it,
an epidemic of influenza attacked the Malays and Billy, leaving my New
Guinea boys and myself the only effective members of our little fleet.
Finding, therefore, that for a short time my working vessels--the three
luggers--were useless, I left them at anchor at Iasa Iasi and stood
north again with the _Mizpah_, intending to explore the little-known
regions of the north-east coast for signs of pearl shell. This coast
of New Guinea was then regarded by traders--and in fact by all
Europeans--as a wild region inhabited by savage cannibals and unsafe
to touch upon, much less trade with. The navigation of its waters was
also regarded, and rightly so, as highly dangerous. Odd ships, heavily
armed, such as men-of-war and the _Merrie England_, had touched at
certain points but had really made no permanent impression; and the
natives of the coast were therefore practically in the same state as
they had been prior to the advent of the European.
Some twelve miles north of Cape Vogel we discovered a large
island-studded harbour with a deep water entrance, called by the
natives Pusa Pusa; this harbour is about twelve square miles in extent,
it is marked on no chart, but is probably the best natural harbour on
this coast of New Guinea. The _Mizpah_ was the first European vessel
to enter it, and in fact its existence had not been suspected before.
Some years later, when I was Resident Magistrate of the North-Eastern
Division, I piloted the _Merrie England_ into it through the deep-water
channel. The Commander and the ship’s officers spoke in high praise of
it as an anchorage and harbour, but the then Governor, Sir George Le
Hunte, summed it up in these words: “An admirable place for exploration
by steam launch, slowly, however, filling up by deposit of mud from
rivers.” With all due respect for vice-regal sapience, I beg now to
remark that--Firstly, there are no rivers flowing into Pusa Pusa
Harbour; secondly, the bottom consists of coral sand and is subject to
great scour; and thirdly, the value of a harbour lies in its safety for
shipping and not in its suitability for a scenic or picnic resort. Pusa
Pusa is the only harbour existing between China Straits and Cape Nelson
where ships of large tonnage can lie in safety. Its entrance is masked
by islands, hence ships by the dozen may sail past without having any
idea of what lies behind them; only a prowling pearl-hunting vessel
such as mine was likely to nose her way into the entrance.
As we sailed in we came suddenly upon a few natives camped upon the
beach of a small island, with whom--after a little difficulty--we
established trading relations, and from whom I purchased several fine
specimens of gold-lip shell, which they told me they had found washed
up on the beach. In this place every indication pointed to shell:
namely, strong tidal scours in narrow passages, sandy coral-studded
bottom and quantities of the submarine plant, which divers maintain
grows only where pearl shell is to be found.
From Pusa Pusa we fled back as fast as sail could drive us to Iasa
Iasi to fetch the luggers, only to find that they were still incapable
of moving--much less working. During the absence of the _Mizpah_, a
wandering pearl-fishing lugger, owned by a man called Silva, had joined
them, he having come to discover what we were doing. Finding my own
boats _hors de combat_, I told Silva of my discovery of Pusa Pusa and
asked him to come and prospect the harbour, suggesting that, if we
found anything worth having, we should work it together and keep its
discovery secret. Silva protested for some time, saying that he did
not like the north-east coast at all, and had only come to the point
at which we were then lying in the hope of discovering what my boats
were doing; he finally, however, consented to venture into Pusa Pusa
providing the _Mizpah_ went with him. Accordingly the _Mizpah_ and
Silva’s lugger sailed for that harbour, while the _Ada_, _Hornet_, and
_Curlew_ remained at Iasa Iasi awaiting the convalescence of their
crews or further orders from me.
On arrival at Pusa Pusa, Silva donned the diving dress and descended,
only to ascend in about ten minutes, holding a large shell in his hand
and gesticulating to have his helmet removed. He said that it was a
good shell bottom, promising very well indeed, but that immediately
on descending he had met a groper larger than any he had ever seen,
and he would prefer to remain on deck until the fish had had time
to remove itself. Half an hour elapsed, Silva descended again, and
almost immediately signalled, “Pull me up.” Pulled up accordingly he
was; he then complained that he had met a shark, and that--though as
a general rule he did not mind sharks--this particular one was longer
than the _Mizpah_, and he thought he preferred to be on deck! Again we
waited perhaps an hour, and again Silva descended, and again came the
urgent signal, “Pull me up.” Upon his helmet being removed, he at once
demanded, with many oaths, that his whole dress should be taken off;
and then, seizing a tomahawk, he declaimed: “The first time I went down
in this blank place I met a groper, the next time I met a shark as big
as a ship, the last time there was a ---- alligator, and if any man
likes to say there is shell here I’ll knock his ---- brains out with
this tomahawk!” A hero of romance would now have donned the dress and
descended, but I freely confess that I--as an amateur--was not game to
take on a work that a professional diver threw up as too dangerous.
Doubtless Silva’s rage was increased by the extraordinary effect air
pressure has upon a man’s temper when diving. A diver may be in a
perfectly amiable mood with all the world while the dress is being
fitted on, but the moment the face glass is screwed home--the signal
for starting the air pump--he begins to feel a little grievance or
irritation; as he descends, this feeling increases until he is in a
perfect fury of rage against every one in general and usually one
individual in particular. After that, he spends his time in wondering
how soon the dress can be taken off in order that he may half-kill
that particular person, usually the tender, for some wholly imaginary
offence. Another peculiar fact is, that the moment the face glass is
removed and he breathes the ordinary air--even though he may have come
up boiling with rage against some special individual--the bad temper
evaporates like magic and he wonders what on earth caused his anger.
This has invariably been my experience, and other divers have told me
they have felt the same sensations. There is usually a perpetual feud
between the diver on the bottom and the men on deck working the air
pump. The diver always wants sufficient air to keep his dress distended
and also to keep himself bobbing about on the bottom; if he gets too
much he can let it pass away, by releasing the valve of his helmet; if
he gets too little, he can signal for more, but there is no tug signal
on the life-line for less air.
A diver’s helmet is really not a helmet in the ordinary acceptation of
the term, but is a small air chamber firmly bolted to the corselet and
incapable of movement from any volition on his part. He simply turns
his head inside it and looks through either side or front glasses,
exactly as a man looks through a window. A diver’s most real danger
is probably the risk he runs of being drowned when on his way to the
surface, and it occurs in this way. After a time the best of diving
dresses becomes leaky to a more or less extent, and the water that
finds its way through, settles about the feet and legs. Divers become
quite accustomed to having their dresses filled with water up to the
knees and even to the thigh; the water is no inconvenience to them
whilst upright on the bottom, and they are very rarely conscious of
it. Well, suppose a diver has his dress full of water to the knees or
thighs; as he ascends, he may involuntarily or by accident allow his
body to assume a horizontal position, in which case the water at once
rushes into the helmet, overbalances him, _i.e._ really stands him on
his head, and drowns him inside his dress.
In a diving dress every beat of the air pump is perfectly audible to
the diver, and any irregularity or alteration of the pace, at which the
air-pump wheels are turned, is to him irritating in the extreme--an
irritation he invariably works off by signalling for more air and
thus increasing the manual labour at the pumps. It takes four men,
straining hard, to keep a diver properly supplied with air at any
depth over twenty fathoms. One of the greatest discomforts a diver has
in the tropics is the smell of warm oil, more or less rancid, with
which the pumps charge his air; I have had to struggle hard to prevent
being sick, and I leave to the imagination the beastly situation of
a man, with his head confined in a small helmet, overcome by nausea!
Another exasperating thing is the scroop made by a grain of sand or
grit getting into the plunger of the air pump, which is only comparable
to the feeling caused by a drop of water falling upon one’s head at
regular intervals.
Apart from the noise of the pump beats, communicated through the air
pipe--which, by the way, is rather comforting, as it shows one is not
completely cut off from the upper world--the under seas seem absorbed
in extreme silence and gloom, and unless one is in a current or tide,
in a sort of unholy calm. One of the things which appear as most
remarkable is the lessening of the weight of objects in the water; for
instance, a fully accoutred diver can hardly waddle on the deck of his
ship, but as he descends, his weight seems to become less and less
until he can bob about in a fairy-like manner on the bottom. The same
lessening of weight applies equally to inanimate objects; and it is a
common trick, when competing vessels are working upon a small patch of
shell, for the diver of one of them to pull his rival’s anchor out of
the ground and tangle its anchor round the fluke, with the result, that
the vessel drifts off with the tide or the wind, towing her diver after
her. A lot of time is thus wasted in pulling him up and working back
against tide or wind to her old station.
I have spoken of pulling up a diver; this is not literally true, as a
diver really ascends of his own volition, by closing his helmet’s air
valve and thus blowing out his dress with air. The “pulling in,” when
the water is calm, merely consists of taking up the slack of the air
pipe and line and, when there is a tide or current, of hauling him
along the surface to his vessel. Great care has to be exercised by
him in coming to the surface, as, should his ascent be too fast, he
may smash his helmet on the bottom of his boat or lugger. The usual
way is in a half-lying position on the back and with one hand on the
air valve, watching carefully for the light near the surface, and for
the shadow of the vessel’s hull. Occasionally, though it very rarely
happens, a diver’s air valve sticks; in which case, he at first rises
slowly from the bottom, but as the pressure of the water decreases, the
pace of his ascent increases, until at last he is rising at such a pace
that he shoots violently above the surface. The first thing that shows
those on board the lugger what is happening is a splash, and the sight
of the diver floundering about on the surface nearly suffocated by
pressure of air.
From Pusa Pusa, the _Mizpah_ and Silva’s boat returned to Iasa Iasi;
and when I had rejoined my luggers, Silva sailed away for Sudest, being
by this time quite convinced that nothing was to be gained by shadowing
my boats. I found that my crews were at last recovering, and departed
with them for the islands of Tubi Tubi and Basilaki. On the way we
called in at Awaiama Bay on the coast of the mainland, in order to
replenish our fresh-water supply, the water obtainable at Cape Vogel
being brackish and disagreeable to the taste. Here I found Moreton
with the _Siai_; he was engaged in buying land from the natives for
a man named Oates. New Guinea law did not permit the sale of land by
natives to any other than the Crown; the Crown could then transfer to
the European applicant. Oates had come up from Sydney in a cutter of
some twenty tons burthen, accompanied by his wife and family, which
consisted of a son and daughter, aged respectively about fourteen and
seventeen, their intention being to start a cocoanut plantation. He had
formerly been the master of the _Albert McLaren_, the Anglican Mission
vessel; but this latest speculation of his was not fated to turn out
well. The first thing that happened was that his daughter became
disgusted with the prospect, and, on the family visiting Samarai, she
took the first opportunity of departing for Sydney, where I believe
she married a draper and, I trust, found life happier than she had in
New Guinea. Then his wife died and was buried by the son, as Oates
himself was delirious at the time with malarial fever and all the
native servants had fled. Finally Oates died also, and the unhappy boy
had to bury him as well. This boy, Ernest Oates, afterwards entered
the service of Whitten Brothers and eventually became manager of their
branch at Buna Bay, and he was still in that position when I finally
left New Guinea. After a most strenuous ten years, he was endeavouring
to scrape together enough money to start a small business of his own in
Sydney--something quiet and contemplative, like growing mushrooms.
I remember, some years after the death of his parents, an extraordinary
performance on the part of this lad. He was then stationed by Whitten
Brothers at the mouth of the Kumusi River as their agent, and had
charge of a receiving store for goods landed at that port, which had to
be sent up the river to Bogi, a mining camp. With the exception of a
few Samarai boys, Ernest Oates was absolutely alone, living surrounded
by some thousands of particularly dangerous natives. He possessed two
fire-arms, one, a Winchester repeating rifle, for which he had a large
store of cartridges; the other, an old Snider with only some half-dozen
charges. By some means or other, he broke the lock of his Winchester,
and therefore was left with the weapon for which he had practically no
ammunition. At this time a large alligator collared several pigs from
near the store and narrowly missed securing odd boys of his. Whilst
Oates was sitting on his verandah one evening, he noticed the alligator
crawl out on a mud bank and, with its mouth wide open, proceed to
go to sleep. As he did not wish to use one of his sparse supply of
cartridges, the idea occurred to him of creeping over the mud and
throwing a dynamite cartridge down the reptile’s throat. No sooner did
the thought come than it was acted upon; crawling over the mud he got,
unperceived, to within a few feet of the saurian and, standing up,
hurled his cartridge. Unfortunately, as he threw the explosive, his
feet burst through the hard, sun-baked crust of mud, and he sank to
the waist with a plop and a yell; his boys, who were keenly interested
spectators, dashed to his assistance, but with little hope of reaching
him before the alligator. Luckily, however, he had attached a very
short fuse to his charge, and the dynamite exploded, wounding the
reptile’s tail and causing it to turn round and snap at an imaginary
new enemy. This allowed Oates’ boys to come up, drag him from his hole,
and drive off the alligator with their spears.
Oates’ father, “Captain” Oates as he was usually called, once gave me
the peculiar pleasure--as a magistrate--of receiving a complaint about
myself. I was relieving Moreton at the time as Resident Magistrate at
Samarai, and had been engaged, to the common knowledge of all traders
and labour recruiters, in a punitive expedition to Goodenough Island.
Having finished my work there, I took the _Siai_ across to Cape Vogel
with the intention of searching for unsigned or kidnapped boys, by
running unseen down the coast in the night and boarding any labour
vessels I might find bound for the Mambare gold-fields, either rounding
or anchored off East Cape. Labour vessels had a trick of starting their
little games when the cat in the shape of the _Siai_--or _Black Maria_
as their owners called her--was safely out of the way.
It was a rough boisterous night, dark as the inside of a black cow,
and blowing nearly a full gale; the _Siai_ was showing no lights as I
did not want her seen, nor did I want her movements reported by the
natives; and as she was crowded with men, I could afford to carry on
sail until the last minute, which I accordingly did. Passing Awaiama we
sighted the lights of a vessel hove-to outside the harbour, and, as we
ran close down to her, there came a brilliant flash of lightning from
behind us, which for a moment illuminated her like day, and allowed us
to identify her as Oates’ cutter, the _Rock Lily_; whereupon we sheered
off and passed her at about sixty feet distance. At East Cape I found
no vessels, and accordingly went on into Samarai.
Two days later Oates arrived and, coming into the Court House, told me
he had a complaint to make about a strange ship. “Two nights ago,” said
he, “I was hove-to off Awaiama: the night was dark and the weather so
rough that I did not care to move either towards Samarai or back into
the harbour. My lights were burning well, when suddenly there came
a flash of lightning, and by it I saw a black schooner; I could see
thirty feet of her keel out of water, your worship, and she was then
setting a topsail! It’s the mercy of God I was not run down; she had
no lights, and I want her found and her captain fined.” I sympathized
greatly with Oates, and sent to the Subcollector of Customs for a list
of vessels which had entered the harbour during the past two days;
naturally the officer never dreamt of including the Government vessel
in the list, for, in the first instance, her movements did not concern
him, and, in the second, he knew that as she carried me, I must know
as much or more about her than he did. Oates scanned the list of
luggers, cutters, and Mission boats, but there was no black schooner
of the description he gave. “Captain Oates,” I said, “are you certain
it was not a nightmare you had?” Oates choked with indignation. “She
was four times the size of any vessel on this coast; my whole crew saw
her and got the fright of their lives. Devil, even a binnacle light
she carried.” “Very good, Captain Oates,” I said; “you see we can get
no information about her from the Customs, but I will undertake that
we will bring your mysterious craft to book the first time the _Siai_
finds her; it is a very serious offence for a merchant ship to sail
without lights.”
From Awaiama we sailed for the Conflict Group, a circle of small
islands surrounding a lagoon of a few miles in circumference. These
islands were afterwards purchased from the Crown by a man named
Wickham, who intended to use the lagoon for the propagation of sponges,
and the island for cocoanut growing. I don’t know what sort of success
he made of the cocoanut growing, but I doubt if the sponges could
have proved profitable, as Arbouine told me that the sponge trade was
entirely in the hands of a small corporation of Jews, by whom they were
bought at their own price and sold again wholesale at whatever amount
they liked to fix. The high prices paid by the users of large sponges
of fine quality are not due to the cost of fishing for them, nor to
the expense entailed in their preparation, but are created simply by
the ring. I believe, however, that the curing of the finer quality of
sponges is a trade secret possessed only by the corporation, but I
can see no reason why an expert chemist should not discover a process
equally good, as it really only consists of bleaching the fibrous
tissue of the half-animal, half-vegetable sponge.
My boats did not linger long at the Conflict Group, as there was
nothing in our line there, so accordingly we went on to Tubi Tubi,
where again we found that, though the reefs abounded in an infinite
variety of wondrously beautiful shells and bêche-de-mer, shells of
the sort we were seeking were conspicuous by their absence, with the
exception of a few of the black-lip variety.
Bêche-de-mer is a sort of sea slug, ranging in size from six inches
to two feet in length, and from one to six inches in diameter. It is
highly prized by the Chinese, who use it for soup making: considerable
quantities, however, are now used in London, Paris, and Queensland for
the same purpose. The fish lies like a Bologna sausage on the bottom,
and is easily brought to the surface by naked divers; it varies in
value from £200 per ton downwards according to the size, variety, and
skill displayed in curing. The curing is really a very simple matter:
should the operation be done on board, the fish or slugs are simply
thrown into a four-hundred-gallon tank set in brickwork upon the deck
and boiled vigorously in their own juice for a couple of hours; they
are then smoked like a ham in a smoke-house for a night. They come on
board flabby gelatinous objects, unsightly to the eye and loathly to
the touch; they go away packed in sacks, hard little objects like lumps
of perished india-rubber. The liquor exuded by boiling bêche-de-mer has
peculiar properties: it will burnish copper until it becomes like gold,
and should clothes be dipped in it before being washed, it will remove
every particle of grease or dirt, leaving them, after washing, like the
finished work of a good French laundress. The most valuable variety of
bêche-de-mer, at the time I write of, was the “teat” fish, so called
from having two peculiar rows of teat-like excrescences along the
belly; it should not have been the most valuable, as the red fish had
at one time been more appreciated by the Chinamen; but they were now
regarded with suspicion, as several of their people had been poisoned
from partaking of that particular delicacy. Slander said, that Nicholas
the Greek had caused the deaths and spoilt the market for red fish by
boiling a quantity of them in a copper boiler.
From Tubi Tubi we ran close by the islands of Basilaki and Sariba
to Samarai, having little luck on the way. The Basilaki natives
had a somewhat unpleasant experience prior to the Proclamation of
a Protectorate by the British Government over the southern portion
of New Guinea. They had cut out a trading vessel and murdered the
crew, with the result that a man-of-war, the name of which I have now
forgotten, was sent to punish them. Upon the appearance of the warship
they fled into the bush, where the sailors were unable to follow them.
In order to inflict some punishment, the ship shelled the principal
village, doing, however, no real harm to the thatched huts; several
of the shells also failed to explode as they pitched upon the soft
coral sand. As time went on, a great feast was held in that village,
and the old shells, picked up by the natives, were used instead of
stones to support the extra cooking pots. Gaily the natives danced,
well were the fires stoked, until suddenly the explosion of three or
four twelve-pounder (or heavier) shells spread devastation amongst the
packed natives. The _manes_ of the murdered crew may have waited long
for revenge, but when it did come, it certainly arrived in a wholesale
way.
On arrival in Samarai I paid off my luggers and Billy, which left me
with a bare fiver to pay off the _Mizpah’s_ crew, each individual
member of which was entitled to that amount; and the _Mizpah_, after my
unsuccessful cruise, was so mortgaged that I could not hope to obtain
any money on her. I called my New Guinea boys together and explained
the difficulty. “All right,” said my coxswain, “you pay me off before
the Government officer and I’ll give you the money back, then you can
pay off the next man and he will do the same, and so on until we are
clear of the Government and can sail in search of money somewhere.”
This I did, and, at the end, still possessed the odd five pounds I had
paid them off with; then they all signed on again with me for another
voyage. There was at that time no fee to be paid for either signing a
crew on or off.
About this time an awful hurricane struck the islands, wrecking and
sinking many ships, amongst others the _Nabua_, a new vessel chartered
by Burns, Philp and Co., laden with copra and bound for Samarai. This
vessel was somewhere north of East Cape when struck by the hurricane;
the crew, terrified by the fury of the storm, let go the anchors when
off the coast, and finally abandoned her. They then came into Samarai,
reporting that she had been swamped and had sunk at anchor--a story
which was accepted by all. I, however, had my doubts about this; and
when Burns, Philp and Co., as agents for Lloyds’ underwriters, put her
up for sale at auction, I made the one and only bid of five pounds--my
last five pounds--for the hull and cargo, and she was knocked down to
me for that amount.
After buying the _Nabua_, I left in the _Mizpah_ for the locality where
she was supposed to have foundered, and then got into communication
with the coastal natives. “You remember the big wind of a few days
ago?” I asked. “Yes,” was the reply. “You saw a vessel at anchor off
the shore, a vessel that sank during the gale?” “Yes,” again was the
answer. “Is there any rock near where she anchored?” “Certainly,”
came the reply; “we will show it you for payment.” For a pound of
tobacco they piloted the _Mizpah_ until we were over a rock shaped
like a pinnacle or sugar loaf, which was submerged about two fathoms,
but which would in rough weather and a heavy sea have only about two
feet upon it. “I thought so,” I said to myself; “a strong new vessel
such as the _Nabua_, with her hatches battened down and laden with a
light bulky cargo like copra, never would have been swamped at anchor;
she must have cracked a plank and have been sunk by a leak.” My boys
dived near the rock and reported that there was an anchor with a chain
attached, leading into water too deep for them to descend into.
Hastily I sailed back into Samarai, stirred up a drunken ship’s
carpenter named Niccols--who was also a good diver--and induced two
friends of his, who owned trading luggers, to accompany me back to
raise the _Nabua_. As I had no money, I made the bargain that they
should get fifty pounds apiece if we raised the vessel, and nothing
if we failed. Back accordingly we went. Harry Niccols descended, and
coming up announced he had found the _Nabua_ lying on a shelf on the
bottom leading into deep water, and held there by her anchor. The tide
apparently, after the gale had subsided, had drifted her away from
the rock, upon which she had struck, in a seaward direction. With the
exception of one plank smashed under her counter, Harry reported she
was uninjured, and he also said that she was palpably light from the
nature of her cargo and consequently easy to lift. After getting the
luggers over her, Harry descended again and made fast our anchor chains
to her chain plates, and then with small difficulty we lifted her with
our winches, until she was awash between the two luggers. Just then
the _Merrie England_ hove in sight round the point, and seeing us, she
dropped her launch, which came puffing alongside with a letter from
Judge Winter asking me to go on board at once. I guessed that the Judge
wanted to take me off somewhere, and I accordingly impressed upon Harry
Niccols and the lugger owners the immediate necessity of beaching our
recovered vessel and mending her plank before taking her to Samarai;
this they promised to do.
The work for which the Judge wanted me kept me away for six weeks; I
was, however, congratulating myself meanwhile upon the fact that, when
I went again to Samarai, I should have the proceeds of the sale of
a valuable vessel and cargo to collect from Burns, Philp and Co. My
hopes were doomed to be dashed to the ground, for, when I eventually
reached Samarai, Mr. Arbouine knew nothing about my salvaged ship.
On finding Harry Niccols, that worthy told me that they had got
the _Nabua_ up safely, and had nailed some canvas over the hole in
her stern and pumped her out; then, as they were on the point of
beaching her to repair her plank, a trading cutter came in sight,
from which--in the joy of their hearts at having so easily made fifty
pounds a man--they had bought a keg of rum, upon which all hands had
got drunk. Whilst still under the influence of liquor they had decided
to sail for Samarai with the unmended _Nabua_ fastened between the two
luggers. In China Straits they had got into a tide rip and had been
compelled to release the _Nabua_ in order to save the luggers from
foundering, whereupon she had of course filled and sunk in deep water.
I accordingly lost my ship, and they, their fifty pounds; the damned
fools had never even landed her cargo, which was worth twelve pounds
per ton, and would have paid us handsomely for our work and trouble.
At Samarai I found some money remitted to me from New Zealand,
sufficient to pay off my New Guinea boys and allow me a holiday to that
country; so to New Zealand I accordingly went _viâ_ Port Moresby, Yule
and Thursday Islands.