We were in Kitti Harbour, at Ponape, in the Carolines, when, at
breakfast, a bleary-eyed, undersized, more-or-less-white man in a dirty
pink shirt and dungaree pants, came below, and, slinging his filthy old
hat over to the transoms, shoved himself into a seat between the mate
and Jim Garstang, the trader.
“Mornin', captin,” said he, without looking at the skipper, and helping
himself to about two pounds of curry.
“Morning to you. Who the deuce are you, anyway? Are you the old bummer
they call 'Espiritu Santo'?” said Garstang.
“That's me. I'm the man. But I ain't no bummer, don't you b'lieve it. I
wos tradin' round here in these (lurid) islands afore you coves knowed
where Ponape was.”
“Are you the skunk that Wardell kicked off the Shenandoah for stealing a
bottle of wine?” said the mate.
“That's me. There was goin' ter be trouble over that on'y that the
Shennydor got properly well sunk by the _Allybarmer_ (history wasn't
his forte), and that ------ Wardell got d------d well drownded. Hingland
haint a-goin' to let no Yankee insult nobody for nuthin'--an' I'm a
blessed Englishman. I didn't steal the wine. Yer see, Wardell arst me
off to dinner, and then we gets talkin' about polertics, an' I tells 'im
'e wos a lyin' pirut. Then he started foolin' around my woman, an' I up
with a bottle of wine an'----”
“Why, you thundering liar,” said Garstang, “you stole it out of the
ward-room.”
“I wouldn't call no man a liar if I was you, Mister--by G----, that
Chinaman cook knows how to make curry.”
He ate like a starving shark, and between mouthfuls kept up a running
fire of lies and blasphemy. When he had eaten three platefuls of curry
and drunk enough coffee to scald a pig, the skipper, who was gettin'
tired of him, asked him if he had had enough.
Yes, he had had enough breakfast to last him a whole (Australian
adjective) week.
“Then clear out on deck and swab the curry off your face, you beast!”
“That's always the way with you tradin' skippers. A stranger don't
get no civility unless he comes aboard in a (red-painted) gig with a
(crimson) umbrella and a (gory) 'elmet 'at, like a (vermilion) Consul.”
The mate seized him, and, running him up the companion way, slung him
out on deck.
*****
“What do you think of him?” asked the skipper, a man fond of a joke--it
was Bully Hayes. “I thought I'd let you all make his acquaintance. He's
been bumming around the Ladrones and Pelews since '50; used to be cook
on a Manilla trading brig, the _Espiritu Santo_.”
Then he told us how this wandering mass of blasphemy got his name of
“Spreetoo Santoo.” While in the brig he had been caught smuggling at
Guam by the guarda costas, and had spent a year or two in the old prison
fort at San Juan de 'Apra. (I don't know how he got out: perhaps his
inherently alcoholic breath and lurid blasphemy made the old brick wall
tumble down.)
After that he was always welcome in sailors' fo'c's'les by reason of
his smuggling story, which would commence with--“When I was cook on the
_Espiritu Santo_” (only he used the English instead of the Spanish name)
“I got jugged by the gory gardy costers,” &c, &c.
*****
When we came on deck he was sitting on the main-hatch with the Chinese
carpenter--whose pipe he was smoking--and telling him that he ought to
get rid of his native wife, who was a Gilbert Island girl, and buy a
Ponape girl.
“I can git yer the pick o' the (crimson) island, an' it won't cost yer
more'n a few (unprintable) dollars. I'm a (bad word) big man 'ere among
the (adjective) natives.”
Hung looked up at him stolidly with half-closed eyes. Then he took the
pipe out of his mouth and said in a deadly cold voice--
“You palally liar, Spleetoo.”
*****
He slouched aft again presently, and asked the mate, in an amiable tone
of voice, if he had “any (ruddy) noospapers from Sydney.”
“What the devil do _you_ want newspapers for?” inquired Hayes, turning
round suddenly in his deck-chair, “you can't read, Spreetoo.”
“Can't read, eh?” and his red-rimmed, lashless eyes simulated intense
indignation. “Wot about that 'ere (red) bishop at Manilla, as wanted
me to chuck up me (scarlet) billet on the _Spreetoo S antoo_ and travel
through the (carnaged) Carryline Grewp as 's (sanguinary) sekketerry?
'Cos why? 'Cos there ain't any (blank) man atween 'ere an' 'ell as can
talk the warious lingoes like me.”
“Here,” said the mate, giving him two or three old Maoriland
newspapers--“here's some Auckland papers. Know anybody there?”
“No,” he answered, promptly, “not a soul, but he knowed Sydney well.
Larst time I wos there I sold old Bobby Towns £6,000 worth of oil--a
bloomin' shipful. I got drunk, an' a (blank) policeman went through me
in the cell and took the whole blessed lot outer me (scarlet) pocket.”
(Nine bad words omitted.)
“Bank notes?” queried Bully.
“No, sov'reigns--(gory) sov'reigns.”
*****
He asked us if we had seen any men-o'-war about lately, and said that
the captain of H.M.S. -------- had wanted to marry his daughter, but
he wouldn't let her marry no man-o'-war cove after the way that ------
Wardell had treated him. He thought he would go back to Sydney again for
a spell. His brother had a flaming fine billet there.