Years ago, in the days when the “highly irregular proceedings,” as naval
officers termed them in their official reports, of the brig _Carl_ and
other British ships engaged in the trade which some large-minded people
have vouched for as being “absolutely above reproach,” attracted
some attention from the British Government towards the doings of the
gentlemanly scoundrels engaged therein, the people of Sydney used to
talk proudly of the fleet of gunboats which, constructed by the New
South Wales Government for the Admiralty, were built to “patrol the
various recruiting grounds of the Fijian and Queensland planters and
place the labour-traffic under the most rigid supervision.” The remark
quoted above was then, as it is now, quite a hackneyed one, much used
by the gallant officers who commanded the one-gun-one-rocket-tube craft
aforementioned. Likewise, the “highly irregular proceedings” were
a naval synonym for some of the bloodiest slaving outrages ever
perpetrated, but which, however, never came to light beyond being
alluded to as “unreliable and un-authenticated statements by discharged
and drunken seamen who had no proper documentary evidence to support
their assertions.”
The Australian slave-suppressing vessels were not a success. In the
first place, they could not sail much faster than a mud-dredge. Poor Bob
Randolph, the trader, of the Gilbert and Kingsmill Groups, employed as
pilot and interpreter on board, once remarked to the officer commanding
one of these wonderful tubs which for four days had been thrashing her
way against the south-east trades in a heroic endeavour to get inside
Tarawa Lagoon, distant ten miles (and could not do it), that “these
here schooners ought to be rigged as fore-and-afters and called
'four-and-halfters; for I'll be hanged if this thing can do more than
four and a half knots, even in half a gale of wind, all sail set and a
smooth sea.” But if the “four-and-halfters,” as they were thenceforth
designated in the Western Pacific, were useless in regard to suppressing
the villainies and slaughter that then attended the labour trade, there
was one instance in which one of the schooners and her captain did some
good by avenging as cruel a murder as was ever perpetrated in equatorial
Oceania.
One Jack Keyes was a trader on the island of Apiang, one of the Gilbert
Group, recently annexed by Great Britain. He was very old, very quiet
in his manner, and about the last kind of man one would expect to see
earning his living as a trader among the excitable, intractable native
race which inhabit the Line Islands. His fellow-trader, Bob Randolph,
a man of tremendous nerve and resolution, only maintained his prestige
among the Apiang natives by the wonderful control he had learnt to
exercise over a naturally fiery temper and by taking care, when knocking
down any especially insulting native “buck,” never to draw blood, and
always to laugh. And the people of Apiang thought much of Te Matân Bob,
as much as the inhabitants of the whole group--from Arorai in the south
to Makin in the north--do to this day of quiet, spectacled Bob Corrie,
of wild Maiana, who can twist them round his little finger without an
angry word. Perhaps poor Keyes, being a notoriously inoffensive man,
might have died a natural death in due time, but for one fatal mistake
he made; and that was in bringing a young wife to the island.
A white woman was a rarity in the Line Islands. Certainly the Boston
mission ship, _Morning Star_, in trying to establish the “Gospel
according to Bosting--no ile or dollars, no missn'ry,” as Jim Garstang,
of Drummond's Island, used to observe, had once brought a lady
soul-saver of somewhat matured charms to the island, but her advent into
the Apiang _moniap_ or town hall, carrying an abnormally large white
umbrella and wearing a white solar topee with a green turban, and blue
goggles, had had the effect of scaring the assembled councillors away
across to the weather-side of the narrow island, whence none returned
until the terrifying apparition had gone back to the ship. But this
white woman who poor old Keyes married and brought with him was
different, and the Apiang native, like all the rest of the world, is
susceptible to female charms; and _her_ appearance at the doorway of the
old trader's house was ever hailed with an excited and admiring chorus
of “_Te boom te matân! Te boom te matân!_” (The white man's wife.) But
none were rude or offensive to her, although the young men especially
were by no means chary of insulting the old man, who never carried a
pistol in his belt.
One of these young men was unnecessarily intrusive. He would enter the
trader's house on any available pretext, and the old man noticed that he
would let his savage eyes rest upon his wife's figure in a way there was
no mistaking. Not daring to tackle the brawny savage, whose chest, arms,
and back were one mass of corrugations resulting from wounds inflicted
by sharks' teeth spears and swords in many encounters, old Jack one day
quietly intimated to his visitor that he was not welcome and told him to
“get.” The savage, with sullen hate gleaming from cruel eyes that looked
out from the mat of coarse, black hair, which, cut away in a fringe over
his forehead, fell upon his shoulders, rose slowly and went out.
*****
Early next morning old Keyes was going over to Randolph's house,
probably to speak of the occurrence of the previous day, when his
wife called him and said that some one was at the door waiting to buy
tobacco.
“What have you to sell?” called out the old man.
“_Te moe motu_” (young drinking-coconuts), was the answer, and the old
man, not recognising the voice as that of his visitor of the day before,
went unsuspectingly to take them from the native's hand, when the
latter, placing a horse-pistol to the trader's heart, shot him dead,
with the savage exclamation--
“Now your wife is mine!”
The poor woman fled to Bob Randolph for safety, and, dreading to remain
on the island, went away in a schooner to her home in New Zealand.
Nearly a year passed, and then a man-of-war came and endeavoured to
capture the murderer; but in vain, for the captain would not use force;
and “talk” and vague threats the natives only laughed at. So the ship
steamed away; and then the natives began to threaten Randolph, and talk
meaningly to each other about his store being full of _te pakea_ and _te
rom_ (tobacco and gin). A long, uneasy six months passed, and then the
little “four-and-halfter” Renard, Commander ------ sailed into Apiang
lagoon, and the naval officer told Randolph he had come to get the man
and try him for the murder.
*****
The commander first warped his vessel in as near as possible to the
crowded village, and moored her with due regard to the effectiveness
of his one big gun. Then, with Randolph as interpreter, negotiations
commenced.
The old men of the village were saucy; the young men wanted a fight and
demanded one. Randolph did his part well. He pointed out to the old men
that unless they gave the man up, the long gun on the ship would destroy
every house and canoe on the island, even if no one were killed. That
meant much to them, whereas one man's life was but little. But, first,
the natives tried cunning. One and then another wretched slave was
caught and bound and taken off to the naval officer as the murderer,
only to be scornfully rejected by Randolph and the captain. Then the
officer's patience was exhausted. If the man who murdered Keyes was not
surrendered in an hour he would open fire, and also hang some of the
chiefs then detained on board as hostages.
Randolph's gloomy face quickened their fears. This captain could neither
be frightened nor fooled. In half an hour the slayer of the trader was
brought on board. The old men admitted their attempt at deception, but
pleaded that the murderer was a man of influence, and they would rather
the two others (who were absolutely innocent) were hanged than this one;
but their suggestion was not acted upon. The trial was just and fair,
but short, and then Randolph urged the captain to have the man executed
on shore by being shot. It would impress the people more than hanging
him on board. And hanging they regarded as a silly way of killing a man.
The naval officer had no relish for work of this nature, and when
Randolph told him that the natives had consented to execute the prisoner
in his (Randolph's) presence (and the captain's presence also if
necessary) he, no doubt, felt glad. Bob Randolph then became M.C., and
gave his instructions to the old men. The whole village assembled in
front of Randolph's to see the show. An old carronade lying in the
corner of the copra house was dragged out, cleaned, and loaded with a
heavy blank charge. Then the prisoner, sullen and defiant to the last,
but wondering at the carronade, was lashed with his back to the muzzle,
and, at a signal from one of the old men, a firestick was applied to the
gun. A roar, a rush of fragments through the air, and all was finished.
Bob Randolph's fox-terrier was the only creature that seemed to trouble
about making any search for the remnants of the body. Half an hour
afterwards, as Bob was at supper, he came in and deposited a gory lump
of horror at his master's feet.