The white cloud mantle that had enwrapped the wooded summit of Lijibal
was slowly lifting and fading before the red arrow-rays of the tropic
sun--it was nearly dawn in Lêla Harbour. A vast swarm of sooty terns,
with flapping wing and sharp, croaking note, slid out from the mountain
forest and fled seaward, and low down upon the land-locked depths of
Lela a soft mist still hovered, so that, were it not for the deadened
throbbing beat and lapping murmur of the flowing tide, one might have
thought, as he looked across from land to land, that the high green
walls of verdure in whose bosom the waters of Lela lay encompassed were
but the portals to some deep and shadowy mountain valley in a land of
utter silence, untenanted by man.
But as the blood-redness of the sun paled and paled, and then changed
into burnished gold, the topmost branches of the dew-laden trees
quivered and trembled, and then swayed softly to the sea-breeze; the
fleecy vapours that hid the waters of the harbour vanished, and the dark
bases of the mountains stood out in purest green. Away out seawards,
towards the hiss and boil of the tumbling surf, tiny strips of gleaming
sandy beach showed out in every nook and bay. And soon the yellow
sunlight flashed through the gloomy shadows of the forest, the sleeping
pigeons and the green and scarlet-hued parrakeets awoke to life amid the
sheltering boughs, and the soft, crooning note of one was answered back
by the sharp scream of the other. Along the mountain sides there was a
hurried rustling and trampling among the thick carpet of fallen leaves,
and a wild boar burst his way through the undergrowth to bury in his
lair till night came again; for almost with the first call of the birds
sounded the hum and murmur of voices, and the brown people of Léla
stepped out from their houses of thatch, and greeted each other as they
hurried seaward for their morning bathe--the men among the swirl and
wash of the breaking surf, and the women and children along the sandy
beach in front of the village.
Out upon the point of black and jagged reef that stretched northward
from the entrance to the harbour was the figure of a young boy who
bathed by himself. He was the son of the one white man on Strong's
Island, whose isolated dwelling lay almost within hail of him.
The father of the boy was one of those mysterious wanderers who, in the
days of sixty years or so ago, were common enough on many of the islands
of the North Pacific. Without any material means, save a bag of silver
dollars, he had, accompanied by his son, landed at Lêla Harbour on
Strong's Island from a passing ship, and Charlik, the king of the
island, although at first resenting the intrusion of a poor white man
among his people, had consented to let him remain on being told by the
captain of the ship that the stranger was a skilful cooper, and could
also build a boat. It so happened that many of the casks in which the
king stored his coconut-oil were leaking, and no one on the island could
repair them; and the white man soon gave the native king proof of his
craft by producing from his bag some of a cooper's tools, and going
into the great oil shed that was close by. Here, with some hundreds
of natives watching him keenly, he worked for half an hour, while his
half-caste son sat upon the beach utterly unnoticed by any one, and
regarded with unfavourable looks by the island children, from the mere
fact of their having learned that his mother had been a native of a
strange island--that to them was sufficient cause for suspicion, if not
hostility.
Presently the king himself, attended by his mother, came to the oil
shed, looked in, and called out to the white man to cease his work.
“Look you, white man,” he said in English. “You can stop. Mend and make
my casks for me, and some day build me a boat; but send away the son of
the woman from the south lands. We of Kusaie (Strong's Island) will have
no strangers here.”
The white man's answer was quick and to the point. He would not send
his child away; either the boy remained with him on shore or they both
returned to the ship and sought out some other island.
“Good,” said Charlik with cold assent, and turning to his people he
commanded them to provide a house for the white man and his boy, and
bring them food and mats for their immediate necessities.
*****
An hour or two afterwards, as the ship that had landed him at Lêla
sailed slowly past the white line of surf which fringed the northern
side of the island, the captain, looking shoreward from his deck, saw
the white man and his boy walking along the beach towards a lonely
native house on the farthest point. Behind them followed a number of
half-nude natives, carrying mats and baskets of food. Only once did the
man turn his face towards the ship, and the captain and mate, catching
his glance, waved their hands to him in mute farewell. A quick upward
and outward motion of his hand was the only response to their signal,
and then he walked steadily along without looking seaward again.
“Queer fellow that, Matthews,” said the captain to his mate. “I wonder
how the deuce he got to the Bonins and where he came from. He's not a
runaway convict, anyway--you can see that by the look in his eye. Seems
a decent, quiet sort of a man, too. What d'ye think he is yourself?”
“Runaway man-o'war's man,” said Matthews, looking up aloft. “What the
devil would he come aboard us at night-time in a fairly civilised place
like the Bonin Islands as soon as he heard that the _Juno_, frigate, was
lying at anchor ten miles away from us there. And, besides that, you can
see he's a sailor, although he didn't want to show it.”
“Aye,” said the captain, “likely enough that's what he is. Perhaps he's
one of the seven that ran away from Sir Thomas Staine's ship in the
South Pacific some years ago.”
And Mr. Matthews, the mate of the barque _Oliver Cromwell_ was perfectly
correct in his surmise, for the strange white man who had stolen aboard
the ship so quietly in the Bonin Islands was a deserter from his Majesty
William IV.'s ship _Tagus_. For nearly seven years he had wandered from
one island to another, haunted by the fear of recapture and death since
the day when, in a mad fit of passion, he had, while ashore with a
watering party, driven his cutlass through the body of a brutal petty
officer who had threatened, for some trifling dereliction of duty, to
get him “a couple of dozen.”
Horror-stricken at the result of his deadly blow, he had fled into the
dense jungle of the island, and here for many days the wretched man
lived in hiding till he was found by a party of natives, who fed and
brought him back to life, for he was all but dead from hunger and
exposure. For nearly a year he lived among these people, adapting
himself to their mode of life, and gaining a certain amount of respect;
for in addition to being a naturally hard-working man, he had no taste
for the gross looseness of life that characterised nine out of every
ten white men who in those days lived among the wild people of the North
Pacific Islands.
Two years passed by. Brandon--for that was his name--realised in all its
bitterness that he could never return to England again, as recognition
and capture, dared he ever show himself there, would be almost certain:
for, in addition to his great stature and marked physiognomy, he was
fatally marked for identification by a great scar received in honourable
fight from the cutlass of the captain of a Portuguese slaver on the
coast of Africa. And so, in sheer despair of his future, he resolved
to cast aside for ever all hope of again seeing his native land and all
that was dear to him, and live out his life among the lonely islands of
the wide Pacific.
Perhaps, as he looked out, at long, long intervals of years, at the
sails of some ship that passed within sight of the island, he may have
thought of the bright-faced girl in the little Cornish village who had
promised to be his wife when he came home again in the _Tagus_; but in
his rude, honest way he would only sigh and say to himself--
“Poor Rose, she's forgotten me by now; I hope so, anyhow.”
So time went by, slowly at first, then quicker, for the young native
woman whom he had married a year before had aroused in him a sort of
unspoken affection for her artless and childlike innocence, and this
deepened when her first child was born; and sometimes, as he worked
at his old trade of boat-building--learned before he joined the King's
service--he would feel almost content.
As yet no fear of a King's ship had crossed his mind. In those days ten
years would go by, and save for some passing merchantman bound to China
by the Outer Route, which would sweep past miles away before the strong
trade wind, no ship had he seen. And here, on this forgotten island, he
might have lived and died, but that one day a sandal-wooding brigantine
was becalmed about four miles away from the island, and Brandon
determined to board her, and endeavour to obtain a few tools and other
necessaries from her captain.
With half-a-dozen of his most trusted native friends he stepped into
a canoe, and reached the brigantine just as night began to fall. The
master of the vessel received him kindly enough, and gave him the few
articles he desired, and then, suddenly turning to him, said--
“I want another man; will you come? I'm bound to Singapore with
sandal-wood.”
“No, thank you, sir. I can't leave here. I've got a wife and child.”
The seaman laughed with good-humoured contempt, and sought to persuade
him to come, but Brandon only shook his head solemnly. “I can't do that,
sir. These here people has treated me well, and I can't play them a
dirty trick like that.”
After some little bargaining the natives who had come with Brandon
agreed to return to the shore and bring off some turtle to the ship. It
was still a dead calm, and likely to continue so all night, and Brandon,
shaking the captain's hand, got into the canoe and headed for the
island.
As they ran the bow of the canoe upon the beach Brandon called loudly to
his wife to come out of the house and see what he had brought from the
ship, and was instantly struck with alarm at hearing no answer to his
call. Running quickly over the few hundred yards that separated his
house from the beach, he lifted up the door of thatch and saw that the
house was empty--his wife and child were gone.
In a moment the whole village was awake, and, carrying lighted torches,
parties of men and women ran along the path to seek the missing woman,
but sought in vain. The island was small and had but one village, and
Brandon, puzzled at his wife's mysterious disappearance, was about
to lead another party himself in another direction to that previously
taken, when a woman who lived at a house at the extreme end of the
village, suddenly remembered that she had seen Brandon's wife, carrying
her child in her arms, walking quickly by in the direction of a point of
land that ran far out from the shore on the lee side of the island.
In an instant he surmised that, fearing he might go away in the ship,
she had determined to swim out to him. The moment he voiced his thought
to the natives around him, the men darted back to the beach, and several
canoes were at once launched, and in the first was Brandon.
There were four canoes in all, and as that of the white man gained the
open sea, the crew urged him not to steer directly for the brigantine,
“for,” said they, “the current is so strong that Mâhia, thy wife, who is
but a poor swimmer and knows not its strength, hath been swept round far
beyond the point--and, besides, she hath the child.”
For nearly half an hour the canoes paddled out swiftly, but noiselessly,
the men calling out loudly at brief intervals, and every now and then
Brandon himself would call.
“Mâhia! Mâhia! Call to us so that we may find thee!”
But no answer came back over the dark waters. At last the four canoes
approached each other, and the natives and Brandon had a hurried
consultation.
“Paranta,” said the steersman of the nearest canoe, “let us to the ship.
It may be that she is there.”
The man who sat next to the speaker muttered in low tones, “How can that
be, Kariri? Either the child hath wearied her arm and she hath sunk,
or--the sharks.”
Plunging his paddle deeply into the water, Brandon, brought the head
of the canoe round for the ship, the faint outlines of whose canvas was
just showing ghostly white half a mile away through the thin morning
haze which mantled the still unruffled surface of the ocean.
Urged swiftly along by the six men who paddled, the white man's canoe
was soon within hailing distance of the brigantine, and at the same
moment the first puff of the coming breeze stirred and then quickly
lifted the misty veil which encompassed her.
“Ship ahoy!” hailed Brandon. “Did a woman and child swim off to you
during the night?”
Almost ere the answering “No” was given, there was a loud cry from one
of the other canoes which had approached the vessel on the other side,
and the “No” from the brigantine was changed into--
“Yes, she's here; close to on the port side. Look sharp, she's sinking,”
and then came the sound of tackle as the crew lowered a boat that hung
on the ship's quarter.
With a low, excited cry the crew of Brandon's canoe struck their bright
red paddles into the water with lightning strokes, and the little craft
swept swiftly round the stern of the brigantine before the just lowered
boat had way on her.
There, scarce a hundred yards away, they saw Mâhia swimming slowly
and painfully along towards the ship, to the man whom she thought had
deserted her. With one arm she supported the tiny figure of the child,
and Brandon, with a wild fear in his heart, saw that she was too
exhausted to hold it many seconds longer.
“Quick! Quick, man, for the love of God!” came in loud, hoarse tones
from the captain of the brigantine, who stood on the rail holding to
the main rigging, and drawing a pistol from his belt he sent its bullet
within a few feet of the feeble swimmer.
Only another ten yards, when, as if aware of the awful fate that awaited
her, Mâhia half raised herself, and with dying strength held the child
out almost clear of the water. And then, as her panting bosom wailed out
her husband's name for the last time, there pealed out upon the ocean a
shriek of mortal agony, and he saw her drop the infant and disappear
in a swirl of eddying foam. Ere that awful cry had ceased to vibrate
through the morning air, a native had sprung from the canoe and seized
the drowning child, and the agonised father, looking down into the blue
depths, saw a running streak of bubbling white five fathoms beneath.
Again the native dived, and followed the wavering track of white, and
presently, not fifty feet away, they saw him rise with the woman on his
arm, her long black hair twining around his brawny neck and shoulders.
“By God, he's saved her!” cried the mate, as both his boat and Brandon's
canoe reached the native simultaneously, and they reached out their
hands to take hold of the motionless figure.
“Paranta, turn thy eyes away,” said a native, and flinging his arms
around the white man, he forced his face away as the diver and his
burden were lifted into the boat.
A shuddering sob stirred the frame of the mate or the brigantine when he
saw that only the upper half of the woman's body was left.