Produced by Al Haines.
[Illustration: Cover]
[Illustration: 'SO CLOSE THAT MANY OF HER PEOPLE COULD BE RECOGNIZED.'
_See p._ 268.]
TOM WALLIS
A TALE OF THE SOUTH SEAS
BY LOUIS BECKE
Author of 'Wild Life in Southern Seas'
'By Reef and Palm' 'Admiral Philip' etc.
WITH ELEVEN ILLUSTRATIONS BY
LANCELOT SPEED
SECOND IMPRESSION
LONDON
THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY
4 BOUVERIE STREET AND
65 ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD
1903
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. Father and Sons
II. Captain Ramon Casalle and his Men
III. How Tom lit a Fire on Misty Head, and what came of it
IV. Captain Sam Hawkins and the Lady Alicia
V. The Captain of the Bandolier
VI. Tom meets some Strangers on Wreck Reef
VII. Northward to the Solomons
VIII. Captain Bully Hayes comes on Board
IX. The Fight on Board the Leonie
X. Tom and Maori Bill go on a Boat Voyage
XI. Jack and his Father hear Good News
XII. Henry Casalle also hears Good News
XIII. Jack has Misgivings
XIV. The Malolo sails in Search of Tom
XV. On Alofi Island
XVI. The ending of the Boat Voyage
XVII. Back to Fotuna
XVIII. Together at Last
XIX. Outward Bound
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
'She was running before the Wind' . . . _Frontispiece_
'She was soon run out of the Shed'
'He lay stunned and Helpless'
'How's that, my Son?'
'A Black Wall of Sea towered high over the Rail'
'Old Sam clambered up to the Fore-yard'
'He saw a Man in the Dress of a Priest'
'I'll pound the Life out of you'
'Mr. Wallis turned the Key'
'I shall say "No," said the Girl'
'The Crew at once struck up a Canoe Song'
TOM WALLIS
CHAPTER I
FATHER AND SONS
Northward from an Australian city, and hidden from seaward view by high
wooded bluffs and green belts of dense wind-swept scrub, there lies one
of the oldest and quaintest little seaport towns on the whole eastern
sea-board, from the heat-smitten rocks of Cape York, in the far north of
torrid Queensland, to where, three thousand miles to the south, the
sweeping billows from the icy Antarctic leap high in air, and thunder
against the grim and rugged walls of stark Cape Howe.
The house in which the Wallis family lived stood at the foot of one of
these bluffs, within a stone's throw of the beach, and overlooking the
bar; and at night time, when the swift outward rush of the river's
current met the curling rollers from the open sea, the wild clamour and
throbbing hum seemed to shake the walls of the old-fashioned building to
its foundations. But to the two Wallis boys--who were born in that
house--the noise of the beating surf, the hoarse shrieking notes of the
myriad sea-birds, and the sough of the trade wind through the timbered
slopes, were voices that they knew and understood, and were in a manner
part and parcel of their own adventurous natures.
Let me try and attempt to draw, however rudely, an outline of a picture
of their home, and of the sight that every morning the two lads saw from
their bedroom window, before they clattered downstairs into the
low-ceiled old-time dining-room, to each eat a breakfast that would have
done credit to a hungry bullock-driver.
First, then, the wide, blue Pacific--would that I could see it
now!--sparkling and shimmering in the yellow sunshine, unbroken in its
expanse except for the great dome of Kooringa Rock, a mile from the
shore, from which, when the wind blew east, came the unceasing croak and
whistle of ten thousand gulls and divers, who made it their rendezvous
and sleeping-place.
To the north, on the other side of the roaring, restless bar (the house
was on the southern horn of the entrance to the harbour), there ran a
long sweeping half-mooned beach, ten miles from point to point of
headland, and backed at high-water mark by a thick fringe of low,
scrubby timber, the haunt of the black wallaby, and the refuge from
pursuit of mobs of wild cattle. Not a dozen people in the little
township had ever been through this scrub on foot; but Tom and Jack
Wallis knew and loved every foot of it, from the sandspit on the
northern bank of the river to the purple loom of the furthest cape.
Further back still from this narrow belt of littoral, the main coastal
range rose, grey and blue in the distance, monotonous in its outlines,
and its silence broken only by the axes of a few wandering parties of
timber-getters, who worked on the banks of the many streams rising in
the mountain gullies, whose waters joined those of the great tidal river
on its way to the ocean.
Southward from the bar, the coast presented another aspect; high cliffs
of black, iron-stone rock stood up steep-to from the sea, not in a
continuous straight line, but in broken irregular masses, forming
hundreds of small deep bays with lofty sides, and beaches of large
rounded pebbles or snow-white sand. This part of the shore was so wild
and desolate, that except themselves, a human being would seldom be seen
about it from one year's end to the other, and the boys only went there
during the crayfish season, or during an easterly gale, when from the
grassy summit of one of the highest cliffs they loved to watch the
maddened boil of surf far below, and catch the exhausted gulls and
boobies, that sought refuge ashore from the violence of the wind amid
the close-set, stunted herbage growing just beyond the reach of the
flying spray. Iron-bound and grim-looking, it did not extend more than
six or seven miles; and then came another long stretch of sandy beach
for thrice that distance, banked up by lofty sand-dunes covered with a
network of creepers, and a saline herb known as 'pig-face.'
Behind the sand-hills were a series of brackish lagoons, whose waters
were covered with flocks of black swans, pelicans, and half a dozen
varieties of wild duck and other waterfowl, which were seldom disturbed
by any of the few settlers round about, who were too lazy to wade
through water after a duck, although some of them would ride all night
to steal a calf or a bullock. These lagoons had, here and there, narrow
passages to the sea through the sand mounds, and where this was the case
the waters were literally alive with fish--bream and whiting, and
kingfish and trevally, and--but there, the memory of those happy, happy
years of boyhood amid such rough and wild surroundings is strong with
Tom Wallis still. For the lads, as their father sometimes said, were
born in a civilized family by mistake--Nature having intended them to
have black skins and woolly hair, and to hunt paddymelons and wallabies
with boomerang and waddy, like the survivors of the tribe of blacks who
still led a lingering existence along the shores and around the tidal
lakes and inlets of that part of the country.
Of the town itself near which they lived little need be said, except
that it was very quaint, and, for a new country like Australia,
old-fashioned. Once, in the early days of the colony, it promised to
become a thriving and prosperous place. Many retired military and
civilian officers had been given very large grants of land in the
vicinity of the port, upon which they had settled, and at one time many
hundreds of convicts had been employed by them. Besides these, there
was a large number of prisoners who toiled on the roads, or in the
saw-pits, or up on the rivers felling timber, under the supervision of
Government overseers. These wretched men were generally marched to
their work every morning, returning to their barrack prison at night
time. There had been at first a company of soldiers stationed at the
port, but when it was discovered that the place was ill-chosen for a
settlement--in consequence of the shifting nature of the bar--they were
withdrawn to Sydney with all the prisoners, except those who were
assigned to the settlers as servants or workmen. Then most of the
principal settlers themselves followed, and left their houses
untenanted, and their cleared lands to be overgrown, and become
swallowed up by the ever-encroaching scrub, which in those humid coastal
regions is more an Indian jungle than bush, as Australians understand
the word 'bush.' With the soldiers went, of course, the leading civil
officials, and the little seaport became semi-deserted, grass grew in
the long, wide streets, and the great red-bricked barracks and
Government storehouses were left to silence and decay.
Nearly twenty years after the breaking up of the settlement as a penal
establishment, Lester Wallis and his young wife had settled in the
place. He had formerly been in the service of the East India Company,
where he had accumulated a small fortune. During a visit to Sydney, he
had met and married the daughter of one of the Crown officials, an
ex-naval officer, and, loth to return to the trying climate of India,
decided to remain in Australia, and enter into pastoral pursuits. For a
few thousand pounds he bought a small cattle-station at Port Kooringa,
and, in a measure, became the mainstay of the place, for, in addition to
cattle-raising, he revived the dying timber industry, and otherwise
roused the remaining inhabitants of the little port out of their
lethargic indifference. But fifteen years after he came to the place,
and when his two boys were fourteen and thirteen years of age
respectively, his wife died, after a few hours' illness. The blow was a
heavy one, and for the time crushed him. He withdrew himself almost
entirely from such society as the place afforded, dismissed most of his
servants, and lived for more than a year in seclusion, in the lonely
house facing the sea. His affection for his children, however, came to
his aid, and did much to assuage his grief.
'Jack, my lad,' he said to the elder boy, one day, as they were riding
along the northern beach, 'we must stick to each other always. You and
Tom are all I have in the world to love. Had your mother lived, I
should have liked to have returned to England and ended my days there.
But she is gone, and now I have no desire to leave Australia. We shall
stay here, Jack; and you and Tom shall help me till you are both old
enough to choose your future.'
Jack, a sturdy, square-built youngster, with honest grey eyes, nodded
his head.
'I shall never want to leave you and Kooringa, father. I promised
mother that before she died. But Tom says he hopes you will let him go
to sea when he is old enough.'
Mr. Wallis smiled, and then sighed somewhat sadly. 'Time enough to
think of that, Jack. But I would rather he thought of something else.
'Tis a poor life and a hard one. But why do you not want to be a
sailor?'
Jack shook his head. 'I should like to be an explorer--that is, I mean
if you would let me. I should like to cross Australia; perhaps I might
find Dr. Leichhardt'--and his eyes glistened; 'or else I should like to
ride round it from Port Kooringa right up to Cape York, and along the
Gulf of Carpentaria and the coast of Arnhem's Land and West Australia,
and then along the Great Bight back to Kooringa. It would make me
famous, father. Mother said it would be more than ten thousand miles.'
Mr. Wallis laughed. 'More than that, Jack. But who knows what may
happen? Perhaps I may buy some cattle country in Queensland some day;
then you shall have a chance of doing some exploring. But not for some
years yet, my boy,' he added, placing his hand on his son's shoulder; 'I
do not want to go away from Kooringa yet; and I want to come back here,
so that when my time comes I may be laid beside _her_.'
'Yes, dad,' said the lad simply; 'I too want to be buried near poor
mother when I die. Isn't it awful to think of dying at some place a
long way from Kooringa, away from her? That's what I told Tom the other
day. I said that if he goes to sea he might be drowned, or bitten in
halves by a shark, like the two convicts who tried to cross the bar on a
log when they ran away. Father, don't let Tom be a sailor. We might
never see him again. Wouldn't it be awful if he never came back to us?
And mother loved him so, didn't she? Don't you remember when she was
dying how she made Tom lie down beside her on her bed, and cried, "Oh,
my Benjamin, my Benjamin, my beloved"?'
'Yes, my lad,' answered the father, turning his face towards the sea,
which shone and sparkled in the bright morning sunlight. Then the two
rode on in silence, the man thinking of his dead wife, and the boy
dreaming of that long, long ride of ten thousand miles, and of the
strange sights he might yet see.
From the broad front verandah of the quiet house, young Tom had watched
his father and brother ride off towards the town, on their way to the
river crossing which was some miles distant from the bar. Once over the
river, they would have to return seaward along its northern bank, till
they emerged upon the ocean beach. They would not return till
nightfall, or perhaps till the following day, as Mr. Wallis wished to
look for some missing cattle in the scrubs around the base of rugged
Cape Kooringa, and 'Wellington,' one of the aboriginal stockmen, had
already preceded them with a pack-horse carrying their blankets and
provisions, leaving Tom practically in charge, although old Foster, a
somewhat rough and crusty ex-man-of-war's man, who had been Mrs.
Wallis's attendant since her childhood, was nominally so. He with two or
three women servants and the gardener were all that were employed in,
and lived in the house itself, the rest of the hands having their
quarters at the stockyards, which were nearly half a mile away.
Tom watched his brother and father till they disappeared in the misty
haze which at that early hour still hung about the beach and the low
foreshore, although the sun had now, as Foster said, a good hoist, and
the calm sea lay clear and blue beneath. Then something like a sigh
escaped him, as his unwilling eye lighted upon his lesson-books, which
were lying upon the table of a little enclosure at one end of the
verandah, which did duty as a schoolroom for his brother and himself.
'Well, it can't be helped,' he muttered; 'I promised dad to try and pull
up a bit--and there's the tide going out fast. How can a fellow dig
into school books when he knows it's going to be a dead low tide, and
the crayfish will be sticking their feelers up everywhere out of the
kelp? Dad said three hours this morning. Now, what does it matter
whether it is this morning, or this afternoon, or this evening? And of
course _he_ didn't think it would be such a lovely morning--and he likes
crayfish. I wonder if he will be angry when I tell him?' Then,
stepping inside, he called out--
'Foster, where are you?' There was a rattle of knives in the pantry,
and then the old man shuffled along the passage, and came into the
dining-room.
'What now, Master Tom?' he grumbled; 'not at your lessons yet? 'Tis
nine o'clock----'
'Yes, I know, Foster. But, Foster, just look at the tip of Flat Rock
showing up already. It's going to be a dead low tide, and----'
'Don't you dare now! Ah, I know what you're going to say. No, I won't
have it. Leastways I won't argy over it. And don't you disobey
orders--not if all the crayfish in Australy was a runnin' up out o' the
water, and climbin' trees.' Then, screwing his features up into an
affectation of great wrath, he shuffled away again.
Tom's face fell, and again a heavy sigh escaped him, as he looked at the
shimmering sea, and saw that beyond the bar it was as smooth as a
mountain lake. Then he quietly opened the Venetian shutters of the
dining-room, and let the bright sunlight stream in.
'It's no use,' he said to himself, 'I can't work this morning. I'll try
and think a bit whether I shall go or not.'
Over the mantel in the dining-room was a marine picture. It was but
rudely painted in water-colours--perhaps by some seaman's rough
hand,--and the lapse of five and twenty years had dimmed it sadly; but
to Tom's mind it was the finest painting in the world, and redolent of
wild adventure and romance. It showed as a background the shore of a
tropical island, the hills clothed with jungle, and the yellow beach
lined with palm trees, while in the foreground the blue rollers of the
ocean churned into froth against a long curve of coral reef, on which
lay a man-of-war, with the surf leaping high over her decks, and with
main and mizzen-masts gone. On the left of the picture was a beautiful
white-painted brig, with old-fashioned rolling topsails and with her
mainyard aback; and between her and the wreck were a number of boats
crowded with men in uniform, escaping from the ship.
Often when the house was silent had Tom, even when a boy of ten, stolen
into the room, and, sitting cross-legged on the rug, gazed longingly at
the painting which, to his boyish imagination, seemed to live, ay, and
speak to him in a wild symphony of crashing surf and swaying palm trees,
mingling with the cries of the sailors and the shrill piping of the
boatswain's whistles. Then, too, his eyes would linger over the
inscription that, in two lines, ran along the whole length of the foot
of the picture, and he would read it over and over again to himself
gloatingly, and let his mind revel in visions of what he would yet see
when he grew old enough to sail on foreign seas, as his father and his
uncle Fred Hemsley had done. This is what the inscription said:--
'The Wreck of the Dutch warship Samarang on the coast of Timor Laut; and
the Rescue of her Crew by the English brig Huntress, of Sydney,
commanded by Mr. William Ford, and owned by Frederick Hemsley, Esquire,
of Amboyna; on the morning of May 4, 1836.'
* * * * *
Half an hour later old Foster clattered suddenly along the verandah,
peered into the schoolroom, and then into the dining-room, where Tom sat
in a chair--still gazing at the picture.
'Rouse ye, rouse ye, Master Tom. Your eyes are better than mine. Here,
look'--and he placed Mr. Wallis's telescope in the boy's hand--'look
over there beyond Kooringa Rock. 'Tis a drifting boat, I believe. Kate
tells me that it was in sight an hour ago, before your father and Master
Jack went away, and yet the foolish creature never told me.'
Tom took the glass--an old-fashioned telescope, half a fathom long, and
steadied it against a verandah post.
'Have you got her?' asked old Foster.
'Yes, yes,' answered the boy, quickly, his hand shaking with excitement;
'I can see her, Foster. There are people in her ... yes, yes, and they
are pulling. I can see the oars dipping quite plainly. What boat can
it be?'
'Shipwrecked people, o' course. What would any other boat be doin' out
there, a comin' in from the eastward? Can you see which way she is
heading?'
'Straight in for the bar, Foster.'
'And nothing but a steamer could stem the current now, with the tide
runnin' out at six knots; an' more than that, they'll capsize as soon as
they get abreast o' Flat Rock, and be aten up by the sharks. Master
Tom, we must man our boat somehow, and go out to them. Then we can
pilot them in to the bit o' beach under Pilot's Hill, if the current is
too strong for us to get back here. But how we're going to launch the
boat, let alone man her, is the trouble; there's not a man about the
place but myself, and it will take the best part of an hour to send Kate
or any other o' the women to the town and back.'
'Never mind that, Foster,' cried the boy; 'look down there on the
rocks--there are Combo, and Fly, and some other black fellows spearing
fish! They will help us to launch the boat, and come with us too.'
'Then run, lad; run as hard as ye can, and bring them up to the
boatshed, an' I'll follow as soon as I get what I want.'
Seizing his cap, Tom darted away down the hill, across the beach, and
then splashed through the shallow pools of water on the reef towards the
party of aboriginals; whilst old Foster, calling out to Kate and the
other women to get food ready against his return, in case it might be
wanted for starving people, hurriedly seized some empty bottles and
filled them with water; then, thrusting them into Jack's fishing-basket,
which hung on the wall of the back verandah, he followed Tom down to the
boatshed, where in a few minutes he was joined by the lad himself, and
four stalwart, naked black fellows and their gins, all equally as
excited as the old sailor.
The boat was a long, heavy whaleboat, but she was soon run out of the
dark shed under the hill, and then into the water.
[Illustration: THE BOAT WAS SOON RUN OUT OF THE DARK SHED.]
'Jump in, everybody,' said old Foster, seizing the steer oar, and
swinging the boat's head round to the open sea.