“Mauki” Hickson and I were coming across from the big native town at
Mulinu'u Point to Apia one afternoon when we met a dainty little white
woman, garmented in spotless white. Hickson, touching his hat, walked on
across the narrow bridge that crosses the creek by the French Mission,
and waited for me on the other side.
This tiny lady in white was a lovable little creature. There was not a
man in Samoa but felt proud and pleased if she stopped and spoke to him.
And she could go anywhere on the beach, from respectable Matautu right
down to riotous, dissolute Matafele, and make her purchases at the big
store of Der Deutsche Handels Plantagen und Sud See Inseln Gesellschaft
without even a drunken native daring to look at her. That was because
every one, dissolute native and licentious white, knew she was a good
woman. Perhaps, had she been married, and had she had a yellow, tallowy
skin and the generally acidulated appearance peculiar to white women
long resident in the South Seas, we wouldn't have thought so much of
her, and felt mean and contemptible when she taxed us in her open,
innocent fashion with doing those things that we ought not have done.
But she had a sweet, merry little face, set about with dimples, and soft
cheeks hued like the first flush of a ripening peach; and when she spoke
to us she brought back memories of other faces like hers--far-away faces
that most of us would have liked to have seen again.
*****
Just by the low stone wall, that in those days came close down to the
creek, the little lady stood under the shade of some cocoanuts, and
spoke to me.
“Who is that horrible, sulky-looking half-caste?” she said, jerking her
sunshade towards my late companion.
“That is Hickson, Miss Milly,” I said--a very decent, steady fellow,
with a white man's heart.
“Decent! steady! and with a white man's heart!” and Miss Milly's
pink-and-white cheeks reddened angrily. “How I hate that expression!
No wonder all sorts of horrible things happen in these dreadful islands
when white men will walk down the road with a cruel, remorseless wretch
like Hickson--the man that murdered his sister.”
“You should not say that, Miss Milly,” I said. “Of course that is the
common report, spread about by the captain of the German brig----. But
that is because Hickson nearly killed him for calling him a nigger. And
you must remember, Miss Milly, that I was there at the time. Hickson
was our second mate. His sister was killed, but it is a cruel thing to
accuse him of murdering her; he was very fond of her.”
“Oh dear! I am so glad to hear some one say it isn't true,” and the
bright eyes filled. “They say, too, she was such a pretty little thing.
How ever did she get to such a terrible place as Ponape? Come up and see
uncle and me before you go away again. Good-bye now, I'm going to buy a
water-bag at Goddeffroy's.”
*****
I think that Hickson must have guessed that he had formed the subject
of the conversation between the little lady and myself, for after we had
walked on a bit he said, suddenly--
“I think I'll go aboard the _Menchikoff_ and ship; she wants some hands,
and I would like to clear out of this. Except two or three that have
known me for a long time, like yourself, every one looks crooked at me.”
“I think you are right, Hickson, in going away. Samoa is a bad place
for an idle man. But won't you come another trip with us The old man{*}
thinks a lot of you, and there's always a second mate's berth for you
with him.”
* The “old man,” i.e., the captain.
Hickson's eyes flashed fire. “No! I'd as lief go to hell as ship again
with a man that once put me in irons, and disgraced me before a lot of
Kanakas. I've got White Blood enough in me to make me remember that.
Good-bye,” and he shook hands with me; “I'll wait here till the
_Menchikoff's_ boat comes ashore and go off and see Bannister.”
Poor Hickson. He was proud of his White Blood, and the incident he
alluded to was a bitter memory to him. Could he ever forget it? I never
could, and thought of it as I was being pulled off on board.
*****
It was at Jakoits Harbour--in Ponape--that it happened. Hickson and I
were going ashore in the long boat to buy a load of yams for our native
crew, when he began to tell me something of his former life.
His had been a strange and chequered career, and in his wanderings as
a trader and as a boatsteerer in a Hobart Town whaler, he had traversed
every league of the wide Pacific. With his father and two sisters he
had, till a few years or so before he joined us, been trading at Yap, in
the Western Carolines. Here the wandering old white man had died. Of his
two sisters, one, the eldest, had perished with her sailor husband by
the capsizing of a schooner which he commanded. The youngest, then
about nine years old, was taken care of by the captain of a whaler that
touched at Yap, until he placed her in charge of the then newly-founded
American Mission at Ponape, and in the same ship, Hickson went on his
wanderings again, joining us at Tahiti. And I could see as he talked to
me that he had a deep affection for her.
“What part of Ponape is she living on?” I asked.
“I don't know, I'm sure. Here, I suppose; and if you don't mind, while
you're weighing the yams, I'll go up to the mission-house and inquire.”
“Right you are, Hickson,” I said, “but don't forget to get back early,
it's a beastly risky pull out to the ship in the dark.”
We went into a little bay, and found the natives waiting for us with the
yams, and Hickson, after inquiring the way to the Mission, left me.
*****
Ponape in those days was a rough place. It was the rendezvous of the
American whaling fleet, that came there for wood and water and “other
supplies,” before they sailed northward along the grim coasts of Japan
and Tchantar Bay to the whale grounds of the Arctic Seas.
And sometimes there would be trouble over the “other supplies” among the
savagely licentious crews of mixed men of all nations, and knives would
flash, and the white sand of the beaches be stuck together in places
with patches and clots of dull red. It was the whalers' paradise--a
paradise of the loveliest tropical beauty, of palm-shaded beach and
verdure-clad mountain imaginable; a paradise of wonderfully beautiful
and utterly, hopelessly immoral native women; and, lastly, a paradise of
cheap native grog, as potent and fiery as if Hell had been boiled down
and concentrated into a small half-pint.
It was dark, and the yams had all been brought and stored in the boat
before Hickson returned. By the flickering light of a native fire in a
house close by I could see that something was the matter with him. His
face was drawn, and his black eyes gleamed out like dully burning coals
from the thick wavy hair that fell about his temples.
“I'm sorry I'm late,” he said, and the moment he had spoken I knew
by the dangerous huskiness of his voice that he had been drinking the
native grog.
Staggering into the boat, he sat down beside me and took the tiller.
“Give way, _fanau seoli_ (children o hell),” he growled to our crew of
Samoans and Rotumah boys, “let us get these yams aboard, and then I'm
coming back to burn the ------ mission-house down.”
Slowly the heavily-laden boat got way on her, and we slid away from the
light of the native fire out into the inky blackness of night. Beyond a
muttered curse at the crew, and keeping up that horrible grinding of
the teeth common enough to men of violent passions when under great
excitement, Hickson said nothing further till I asked--
“Hickson, what's the matter? Couldn't you find your sister?”
He sat up straight, and gripping my knee in his left hand till I winced,
said, with an awful preliminary burst of blasphemy--
“By God, sir, she's gone to hell; I'll never see poor little Kâtia
again. I'm not drunk, don't you think it. I did have a stiff pull of
grog up in the village there, but I'm not drunk; but there's something
running round and round in my head that's drivin' me mad.”
“Where is she?” I asked.
“God knows. I went to the mission-house and asked for the white
missionary. The ------ dog wasn't there. He and his wife are away in
Honolulu, on a dollar-cadging trip. There was about three or four of
them cursed native teachers in the house, and all I could get out of
them was that Kâtia wasn't there now; went away a year ago. 'Where to?'
I said to one fat pig, with a white shirt and no pants on him. 'Don't
know,' says he, in the Ponape lingo; 'she's a bad girl now, and has left
us holy ones of God and gone to the whaleships.'”
Coming from any other man but Hickson I could have laughed at this,
so truly characteristic of the repellent, canting native missionary of
Micronesia, but the quick, gasping breath of Hickson and his trembling
hand showed me how he suffered.
“I grabbed him and choked him till he was near dead, and chucked him in
a heap outside. Then I went all round to the other houses, but every
one ran away from me. I got a swig of grog from a native house and came
right back.” Then he was silent, and fixed his eyes on the ship's lights
seaward.
I could not offer him any sympathy, so said nothing. Lighting our pipes
we gazed out ahead. Far away, nearest the reef, lay our brig, her riding
light just discernible. A mile or two further away were three or four
American whalers, whose black hulls we could just make out through the
darkness. Within five hundred yards of us lay a dismantled and condemned
brig, the _Kamehameha IV._ from whose stern ports came a flood of light
and the sounds of women's voices.