“Mrs. Clinton, I shall try to reach a settlement near here. There we may
be able to put you ashore.”
She only smiled vacantly, and with a feeling of intense pity Adair saw
her again bend her head and heard her talking and crooning to the dead
child.
“Sure 'tis God's great pity has desthroyed her raison, poor darlin',”
muttered a grey-headed old prisoner named Terry; “lave her alone. We'll
take the babe from her by an' by.”
Between the boat and the faint blue outline of the distant land lay the
rounded wooded slopes of Montagu Island, showing a deep depression in
the centre. As the boat sailed round its northern point a small bay
opened out, and here in smooth water they landed without difficulty.
Carrying Mrs. Clinton to a grassy nook under the shade of the cliffs,
she unresistingly allowed old Terry to take the infant from her arms,
and her dulled eyes took no heed of what followed.
Forcing their way through the thick, coarse grass that clothed the
western side of the island, and disturbing countless thousands of
breeding gulls and penguins, Adair and Terry dug a tiny grave on the
summit under a grove of low, wide-branched mimosa trees, and there the
child was buried.
As they were about to descend, the old man gave a shout and pointed
seaward--there, not a mile away, was a large ship, whose many boats
showed her to be a whaler, and quite near the shore a boat was pulling
swiftly in towards the landing-place.
Rushing down to their companions they gave the alarm, and then a hurried
consultation was held.
“We must meet them,” said Adair, “we can't hide the boat. If they mean
mischief we can take to the woods.”
In another five minutes the newcomers saw the little group and gave a
loud, friendly hail. Stepping out from his companions, who followed him
closely, Adair advanced to meet the strangers.
A young, swarthy-faced man, who steered, jumped out of the boat and at
once addressed him. He listened with interest to Adair's story that they
had escaped from a ship that had gone ashore on the coast some weeks
before, and then said quietly--
“Just so. Well, I'm glad that I can assist you. I've just come from Port
Jackson, and am bound to the East Indies, sperm-whaling. Come aboard,
all of you, and I'll land you at one of the Dutch ports there.”
Adair's face paled. Something told him that his story was not believed.
What should he do?
The captain of the whaler beckoned him aside. “Don't be alarmed. I can
guess where you come from. But that doesn't concern me. Now look here.
My ship--the _Manhattan_, of Salem--is a safer place for you than an
open boat, and I'm short-handed and want men. You can all lend a hand
till I land you at Amboyna or Ternate. Is that your wife?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what are you going to do--stay here or come aboard?”
“We accept your offer gladly,” answered Adair, now convinced of the
American's good intentions.
“Very well; carry your wife down to the boat while my men get some
gulls' eggs.”
*****
For two weeks after Mrs. Clinton was carried up the whale-ship's side
she hovered between life and death. Then, very, very slowly, she began
to mend. A month more and then the _Manhattan_ hove-to off the verdant
hills and shining beaches of Rotumah Island.
“You cannot do better than go ashore here,” the captain had said to
Adair a few hours before. “I know the natives well. They are a
kind, amiable race of people, and many of the men, having sailed in
whale-ships, can speak English. The women will take good care of Mrs.
Clinton” (Adair had long since told him hers and his own true story);
“have no fear of that. In five months I ought to be back here on my way
to Port Jackson, and I'll give her a passage there. If she remains on
board she will most likely die; the weather is getting hotter every day
as we go north, and she is as weak as an infant still. As for yourself
and old Michael, you will both be safe here on Rotumah. No King's ship
has ever touched here yet; and if one should come the natives will hide
you.”
That evening, as the warm-hearted, pitying native women attended to Mrs.
Clinton in the chiefs house, Adair and Terry watched the _Manhattan's_
sails disappear below the horizon.
*****
There for six months they lived, and with returning health and strength
Marion Clinton learned to partly forget her grief, and to take interest
in her strange surroundings. Ever since they had landed Adair and old
Michael Terry had devoted themselves to her, and as the months went by
she grew, if not happy, at least resigned. To the natives, who had never
before had a white woman living among them, she was as a being from
another world, and they were her veriest slaves, happy to obey her
slightest wish. At first she had counted the days as they passed; then,
as the sense of her utter loneliness in the world beyond would come to
her, the thought of Adair and his unswerving care for and devotion to
her would fill her heart with quiet thankfulness. She knew that it
was for her sake alone he had remained on the island, and when the six
months had passed, her woman's heart told her that she cared for him,
and that “goodbye” would be hard to say.
But how much she really did care for him she did not know, till one
day she saw him being carried into the village with a white face and
blood-stained garments. He had been out turtle-fishing, the canoe had
capsized on the reef, and Adair had been picked up insensible by his
native companions, with a broken arm and a deep jagged cut at the back
of his head.
Day by day she watched by his couch of mats, and felt a thrill of joy
when she knew that all danger was past.
One afternoon while Adair, still too weak to walk, lay outside his house
thinking of the soft touch and gentle voice of his nurse, there came a
roar of voices from the village, and a pang shot through his heart--the
_Manhattan_ was back again.
But it was not the _Manhattan_, and ten minutes afterwards four or five
natives, headed by old Terry, white-faced and trembling, came rushing
along the path.
“'Tis a King's ship!” the old man gasped, and then in another minute
Adair was placed on a rude litter and carried into the mountains.
It was indeed a King's ship, bound to Batavia to buy stores for the
starving settlers at Port Jackson, and in want of provisions even for
the ship's company. Almost as soon as she anchored, the natives flocked
off to her with fruit, vegetables, and such poultry as they had to
barter. Among those who landed from the ship was a tall, grave-raced
Sergeant of Marines, who, after buying some pigs and fowls from the
natives on the beach, had set out, stick in hand, for a walk along the
palm-lined shore. At the request of the leading chief, all those who
came ashore carried no weapons, and, indeed, the gentle, timid manner of
the natives soon convinced the white men that there was no need to arm
themselves. A quarter of a mile walk hid the ship from view, and then
Sergeant Matthews, if he did not show it, at least felt surprised, for
suddenly he came face to face with a young, handsome white woman dressed
in a loose jacket and short skirt. Her feet were bare, and in one hand
she carried a rough basket, in the other a heavy three-pronged wooden
crab-spear. He recognised her in a moment, and drawing himself up,
saluted, as if he had seen her but for the first time.
“What do you want?” she asked trembling; “why have you come here--to
look for me?”--and as she drew back a quick anger gave place to fear.
“No, Madam,” and the sergeant looked, not at her, but away past her, as
if addressing the trees around him, “I am in charge of the Marine guard
on board the _Scarborough_. Put in here for supplies. Ship bound to
Batavia for stores, under orders of Deputy-Commissary Bolger, who is on
board.”
“Ah!” and she shuddered. “Matthews, do not tell him I am here. See, I am
in your power. I implore you to return to the ship and say nothing of my
being here. Go, go, Matthews, and if you have pity in your heart for me
do all you can to prevent any of the ship's company from lingering about
the village! I beg, I pray of you, to ask me no questions, but go, go,
and Heaven reward you!”
The sergeant again saluted, and without another word turned on his heel
and walked leisurely back to the boat.
An hour before sunset, Adair, from his hiding-place in the mountains,
saw the great ship fill her sails and stand away round the northern
point. Terry had left him to watch the movements of the landing party,
and Adair but waited his return. Soon through the growing stillness of
the mountain forest he heard a footfall, and then the woman he loved
stood before him.
“Thank God!” she cried, as she clasped her hands together; “they have
gone.”
“Yes,” he answered huskily, “but... why have you not gone with them? It
is a King's ship,... and I hoped--oh! why did you stay?”
She raised her dark eyes to his, and answered him with a sob that told
him why.
Sitting beside him with her head on his shoulder, she told him how that
morning she had accompanied a party of native women to a village some
miles distant on a fishing excursion, and knew nothing of the ship till
she was returning and met Sergeant Matthews.
“And now,” she said, with a soft laugh, “neither King's ship nor
whale-ship shall ever part us.”
*****
Another month went by all too swiftly now for their new-found happiness,
and then the lumbering old _Manhattan_ came at last, and that night her
captain and Adair sat smoking in the latter's thatched hut.
“That,” said the American, pointing to a heavy box being borne past
the open door by two natives, “that box is for Mrs. Clinton. I just
ransacked the Dutchmen's stores at Amboyna, and bought all the woman's
gear I could get. How is she? Old Terry says she's doing 'foine.'”
“She is well, thank you,” said Adair, with a happy smile, and then
rising he placed his hand on the seaman's shoulder, while his face
reddened and glowed like a boy's.
“Oh, that's it, is it?” said the American with a good-natured laugh.
“Well, I'm right pleased to hear it. Now look here. The _Manhattan_ is
a full ship, and I'm not going to Port Jackson to sell my oil this time.
I'm just going right straight home to Salem. And you and she are coming
with me; and old Parson Barrow is going to marry you in my house; and in
my house you and your wife are going to stay until you settle down and
become a citizen of the best country on the earth.”
*****
And the merry chorus of the sailors, as they raised the anchor from its
coral bed, was borne across the bay to old Terry, who sat watching the
ship from the beach. No arguments that Adair and the captain used could
make him change his mind about remaining on the island. He was too old,
he said, to care about going to America, and Rotumah was a “foine place
to die in--'twas so far away from the bloody redcoats.”
As he looked at the two figures who stood on the poop waving their hands
to him, his old eyes dimmed and blurred.
“May the howly Saints bless an' kape thim for iver! Sure, he's a thrue
man, an' she's a good woman!”
Quickly the ship sailed round the point, and Marion Clinton, with a last
look at the white beach, saw the old man rise, take off his ragged hat,
and wave it in farewell.