that fringed the beach, and I found it to be a coffee-grinder fuelled,
if you please, with sawed lengths of lignum-vitae--a furnace of wood at
something like five dollars a stick in most countries! I should have
liked to see the face of a block-maker of my acquaintance at such
vandalism. But here it is nothing of the sort. Little else in the way
of indigenous scrub grows on Cristobal.
Mechanically gravitating toward Dad's split-bamboo abode, I came upon
him seated on a log, staring meditatively at the crumbling skeleton of
what had been, or was at one time going to be, a ship.
"Why didn't you finish her?" I shouted into his "best" ear.
He stared at me in a daze, then burst forth in Spanish, until I
succeeded in convincing him that he might as well talk double Dutch.
"Of course, of course," he muttered. "I forgot; Lord, how I forget!
It's queer to me that I can speak English at all after all these years;
but I can; that's something, isn't it?"
"Sure thing," I yelled; "keep it up. Tell me why you didn't finish your
ship."
He pondered the matter; then spoke slowly:
"I told you of the other I built--and why. Well, I ran her on a
reef--splinters in five minutes. Took the heart out of me for a bit,
that did.
"Then I began to think of that loot again. I do still, for that matter;
can't help it. You see, I think I know where it is. So I started on
this one." He nodded toward the hulk, silhouetted against the
crimsoning sky.
"I'd got to the planking when it occurred to me I'd want a partner for
the job, at my age; and who could I trust? They'd slit your throat for
ten dollars in those days. They murdered the present owner's father in
cold blood. I wouldn't put it beyond 'em to do the same to this one if
it wasn't that he's a smart lad and carries the only firearms on the
island.
"No one's come here since, no one that I'd trust.... Then, too, what if
I found the stuff? What good would it do me--now?" He spread out his
delicately shaped hands in a deprecating gesture. "I should die in a
month if I left here. Finest climate on earth, this is...." Suddenly
he laughed--a low, reminiscent cackle of mirth.
"But that wasn't all that decided me. I'd got to the planking,
Guayaquil oak it was, and I was steaming it on when a nail drew, and the
plank caught me in the chest, knocked me six yards, and broke a rib.
It's broken yet, I guess; there was no one to mend it. Well, that
finished it. I wasn't meant to build that ship."
He stopped abruptly and stared down at his battered rawhide shoes.
The inference was obvious.
"Well, what about it?" I suggested.
He looked up at that.
"I've been thinking about it ever since you came here," he confessed.
"I'll go with you; but mind this, you mustn't curse me if nothing comes
of it. I don't promise anything. All I say is I think I know where the
stuff is, if someone hasn't got it."
"I'll let you know to-morrow," said I, and left him sitting there.
Was the man senile? There was nothing to make one think so. Was he a
liar? There was equally nothing to prove it. At least half his story
was a matter of island history.
We of the dream ship held a board meeting on the subject of loot that
evening. We discussed it from every angle, and came to the conclusion
that with the present atrocity called a motor auxiliary and the weather
conditions of the group, we might take three days over the business and
we might take three months; that the chances of finding something were
outweighed by the risk of losing the ship, and that we were in pursuit
of something visionary, anyway, so we had better get on with it.
The voting went two to one against, and I leave you to decide whose was
the deciding voice.
I give this interview with Dad for what it is worth, and simply because
I see no prospect of undertaking the search as it should be undertaken.
I am aware that it reads like the purest romance, but it is true in
every particular, as any one will soon discover on visiting Wreck Bay,
Cristobal Island, in the Galapagos Group.
The old man still waits there on the beach for a ship and someone he can
trust; but judging by his frail appearance (he is seventy-seven), he
will not wait much longer.
Often during the days that followed I found myself standing at the dream
ship's rail, looking seaward to a dim outline of mountains against the
blue, and wondering.... But only the ash heap knows.
*THE MARQUESAS ISLANDS*
_The real South Seas--Big-game shooting
extraordinary--A case of thwarted ambition_
[Illustration: Chapter IX headpiece]
*CHAPTER IX*
_The real South Seas--Big-game shooting
extraordinary--A case of thwarted ambition_
We of the dream ship were "watering," or rather transferring, three
hundred gallons of a doubtful-looking fluid from the beach reservoir of
Cristobal to the ship's tanks by means of kerosene tins, a rickety
landing-stage swarming with sand flies, and an equally rickety dinghy.
We were, in fact, enjoying a spell, to the accompaniment of vast
quantities of cocoanut milk, before setting sail for the Marquesas,
three thousand miles distant, and were in no mood for an interruption,
which is probably why it came. A pigmy figure on the landing was
apparently dancing a hornpipe and emitting strange cries.
"Who is it, and what the ---- does he want?" I queried with customary
amiability.
"It's the _comisario_," said Steve, with binocular upheld in one hand
and a brimming cocoanut shell in the other, "and he's probably found
that we need a bill of health or clearance or something."
I believe I sighed. I have a notion that Steve swore, and I am quite
sure that we rowed ashore and interviewed the _comisario_, the handsome
youth whose silk socks and passionate tie contrasted strangely with his
surroundings. He still danced.
"He says that it is necessary that he should accompany us," Steve
translated.
"To the Marquesas?"
"To anywhere."
"Really? And where does the necessity come in?"
After still further variations of the hornpipe and a prodigious outflow
of Ecuadorean Spanish, the following was evolved: They were after him--a
trifling indiscretion in the matter of issuing grog licenses to the
peons. The Ecuadorean Government was to blame. They expected an
official to live on twenty dollars a month and nothing else! How was it
possible? Moreover, the President himself, elected on a wage basis of
forty-dollars-a-month-and-bring-your-own-blankets, would be getting the
boot in a short three months, and with him went everyone--everyone!
What was then to happen to the officials he had placed in power? More
important still, what was to happen to this particular official? He
must accompany us. It was the only possible solution. He would work.
_Carramba_, how he would work! and for nothing but his passage to
anywhere--anywhere!
Steve and I exchanged glances. The entire crew of the dream ship was,
as I think I have before mentioned, exceedingly tired of cooking. The
_comisario_ seized on our silence.
Maybe we thought he could not work?
With a dramatic gesture he tore from his neck the passionate tie, from
his feet the silk socks, from his back a virulently striped shirt, and
stood revealed in a natty line of undervests.
"Poor devil!" said I, thinking of the dream ship's fo'c's'le in a
seaway.
"Poor nothing!" said Steve. "He wants work; let him have it."
And that was how Senor ----, hereafter known as Bill, came to join the
dream ship.
We sailed, and continued to sail before a steady southeast "trade" for
twenty-two days, during which the _comisario_ suffered alternately from
seasickness, homesickness, and sheer inability to do anything but smoke
cigarettes and sleep; our water tanks, under the magic wand of the
Galapagos beach reservoir, transformed themselves into aquariums of
energetic animalcules; and our entire biscuit supply crumbled to dust
under the onslaughts of a particularly virulent red ant.
But these be incidentals to life aboard dream ships, and, at the first
sight of Nukuhiva they faded to little more than amusing memories.
We had reached our goal! The South Sea Islands were ours! It was hard
to realize. At the sight of gorgeous Nukuhiva gliding toward us over
the sparkling blue water I remember looking round at the good old ship
that had slowly but steadfastly carried us all these thousands of miles,
and wondering what she thought of it all. I am aware that the idea of a
ship having thoughts savours of senile decay, but that is what passed
through my mind at the time, and has passed through it a hundred times
since.
More nonsense has probably been written about the South Sea Islands than
about any other part of the world. The library novelist, the
globe-trotting journalist, and a reading public athirst for exotic
romance have all contributed to this end: so that here, at the outset of
attempting to describe what we of the dream ship saw there, I find
myself at a loss. In short, "these few remarks" may be taken as an
apology and a warning.
I have nothing to offer on a par with the standard article, such as
struggles with sharks, conflicts with cannibals, or philandering with
princesses. My line, I fear, is facts as I find them.
A fine island is Nukuhiva--as fine an example of volcanic formation as
one will find anywhere. Sheer walls of cloud-capped rock six thousand
feet high, some literally overhanging the crystal-clear water, and all
embossed and engraved with strangely patterned basalt. There are
pillars, battlements, turrets, so that with half-closed eyes it seems
one is approaching a temple, a mediaeval castle, a mosque of the East.
And the valleys--deep, river-threaded, verdure-choked valleys fading
away into mysterious purple mists. But it is little better than an
impertinence to attempt a description of Nukuhiva after Melville's
"Typee."*
*See Appendix.
For once the monstrosity in our engine-room was induced to exert three
of its four cylinders, and we entered the harbour of Tai o Hae in style.
It was as well, for a trim trading schooner flying the French flag was
at anchor close inshore, and her entire crew lined the rail to see what
manner of insect had invaded her privacy.
"Where are you from?" hailed a surprisingly English voice as soon as our
anchor-chain had ceased its clamour.
"London," we chorused.
"Well, I'm damned!" came a response, evidently not intended for our
ears, but audible nevertheless.
In rather less than three minutes a whaleboat-load of visitors was
aboard the dream ship, and the silent bay echoed to a fusillade of
question and counter-question.
Followed a dinner at the trading station on a wide, cool veranda, where,
under the influence of oysters, California asparagus, fowl, bush pig,
taro root, and French champagne, we became better acquainted with our
hosts--two as amiable Frenchmen as ever I met. They represented a
trading company of Papeete and Paris, and lived as only Frenchmen appear
to know how to live.
The Marquesans, we gathered over coffee and cigars, were dying rapidly.
Consumption. Introduced in the form of Panama fever by labourers
returning from canal construction. The fever afterward developed into
the white plague by reason of the natives' unresisting, if not
acquiescent, nature. And when all were gone, what then? Chinese.
The Chinese appear to be the answer to most questions in the South
Pacific to-day. They come; it costs them but fifty dollars to land; and
after that they grow--_mon Dieu_, how they grow!
And can nothing be done? A shrug of the shoulders and the offer of a
refilled glass are the answers of the Frenchman. But a short time now
and he personally will be in a position to return to his beloved Paris,
or Marseilles, or Brittany.
But we had lately returned from dealing with the Boche; so had our
hosts. We drank respectively to the Royal Field Artillery, the
Mitrailleurs, the Machine-gun Corps, and the incomparable French
Infantry. What of it, if we continue the sport on the morrow, among the
wild cattle and goats of Nukuhiva? To-morrow, then, at five o'clock.
The schooner, scheduled at daylight to load copra worth five hundred
dollars a ton, was cheerfully detained for the trip, and loaded to
capacity with bottled beer, coughing Marquesans, and a varied armoury of
firearms.
We sailed down a coast that it is a sore temptation to describe and
landed by whaleboat on a surf-pounded beach. Thereafter we plodded,
crawled, and stumbled over as vicious a country as it is possible to
imagine--crumbling shale, razor-edged ledges, and deceptive tableland of
knee-high grass that only served to hide the carpet of keen-edged
volcanic rocks beneath.
And the heat! But a representative of the incomparable infantry led the
way; and who would not follow to the death, out of very shame? At each
halting place the _elan_ of this same representative seemed to increase.
Sitting crosslegged on a rock in the meagre shade of a scrub tree, he
would discourse on any subject under the sun, while his audience gasped,
emptied the perspiration out of their boots, and cursed the _cantine_ (a
gigantic native bearing an almost as gigantic sack of bottled beer) for
lagging.
I was under the impression that the game was to have been wild; hence my
surprise when a herd of something like a hundred and fifty goats of all
ages, from the bearded and maned veteran, or "stinker," down to the
daintiest kid, cavorted up to our resting-place and sniffed at us
inquisitively. It was necessary to fling stones to keep some of the
more daring at bay.
So much for goat-hunting in the Marquesas. It is evident that these
beasts are so "wild" that they know nothing of man; who shall say they
have missed much in consequence?
[Illustration: _The Dream Ship Passes from Atlantic to Pacific;
At St. Lucia, West Indies_]
The cattle are a different matter. Shy as deer, they must be warily
stalked and shot mostly on the run, at anything from a hundred to a
hundred and fifty yards; also, they have an engaging habit of turning
when wounded and giving the huntsman the worst possible time in their
power, which in the case of a hefty bull or cow with calf is not
inconsiderable.
[Illustration: _Launching Outrigger Canoe in the Marquesas;
Pascal, the Pearl-diving Non-starter_]
There must have been a herd of something like fifty grazing on the
precipitous hillside, and the first shot, fired by an over-anxious
Marquesan, against strict orders, sent them scuttling like antelope out
of the valley and over the ridge. One fine bull received his medicine
from my trusty little Winchester on the very brink, collapsed, and
rolled like an avalanche of meat to the bottom.
We bagged four of this herd, and the Marquesans fell on them, quartering
and selecting with extraordinary skill, and finally carrying one hundred
pounds each of solid meat to the beach five miles below. How this last
feat was accomplished by a band of ramping consumptives I have no
notion, though I saw it done. I only know that after carrying two
rifles and a gun over the same country I literally tumbled on to the
beach, bruised and bleeding and trembling from sheer fatigue. Even the
representative of incomparable infantry admitted to being tired, and,
thank heaven, he looked it!
It had been a successful day, I was given to understand, and there
followed in consequence song and dance aboard the dream ship until dawn
touched the peaks of Tai o Hae.
A native dance is a dreary and monotonous affair to the average white
man, because he does not take the trouble to understand. He sees before
him an assembly of posturing, howling natives, and seldom realizes that
he is witnessing a pageant of history that has never been written or
read.
The performance opened with a pantomimic representation of the cruise of
the dream ship. According to the actors' ideas, all aboard suffered
acutely from seasickness, were utterly unable to stand upright, and
continually looked for land under the shade of an upraised hand. Our
vigour in battling with storms was extraordinary; we stumbled over
rope-ends, clung to the rigging, nearly capsized, and one of us fell
overboard, to be rescued, amid shrieks of laughter, by means of a
boat-hook and the seat of his pants.
We were a joke, there was no doubt about that, and any one who takes a
ten-thousand-mile journey in a twenty-three-ton yacht to the Marquesas
and wants to be taken seriously had better go elsewhere.
From such trivialities the performers passed on to what was evidently
their stock repertoire--the history of the Marquesas as handed down from
father to son. It was all there in gesture and chant--mighty battles
with their neighbours the Paumotans, cannibalism, peace, the advent of
the white man with his rum, the plague that still consumes them, and all
enacted without resentment.
That is the most astounding thing, that these people who were living
their own lives, and surely as happy lives as ours, bear no ill will for
the incredible sufferings our civilization has brought among them.
Perhaps they do not think, and if so it is as well.
Conceive yourself, if you can, oh, denizen of Park Lane, Fifth Avenue,
or Champs Elysees, a healthy, upstanding, unclad savage of-the South
Seas, and living your own life.
You may be a cannibal; and are there no cannibals, and worse, west of
Suez? You will be a warrior and fight for your country and your
womenfolk. Is there anything wrong about that?
You will have a stricter moral code than most white folk, but that
cannot be helped. You will hunt and fish and gather fruit for your
family--in fact, you will live in the only way you know how to live, in
contentment.
One day an extraordinary-looking object called a white man presents
himself and informs you that you are not living in the right way at all.
A much better way, according to this gentleman, is to exchange a ton of
your cocoanuts for a bottle of rum or a death-dealing instrument made of
rusty iron.
You are a tolerant sort of person, and you listen and drink his rum.
The next day you have an insufferable headache, and, logically
concluding that he has poisoned you, you kill him.
But that is not the end. Replicas of him keep arriving, and you find
you need his rum and his rusty iron, the one for its elevating
properties, the other for its dispatch in dealing with enemies. Still
more replicas arrive, but of a different order. Many of them are
kindly, well-meaning men, and great talkers. They tell you that they
have found a God--the only God--and you must worship him in their way.
The trouble is that each has a different way, but they are all right,
and they all prove it by the same book.
Preserve me from the futilities of theological argument; but I met at
Tai o Hae a Seventh Day Adventist missionary, an earnest, clean-living,
kindly man, without a spark of humour in his composition. He was
consumed by a genuine and mighty fervour to demonstrate to the native
Marquesan that he was keeping the Sabbath on the wrong day.
"Does that matter so very much?" I asked him, and that was all I had a
chance to ask. Apparently it did matter. And he was getting converts.
Why? Because the native is not slow to discover that by embracing
Seventh Day Adventism he gets two days of rest in the week.
Elsewhere I have met Roman Catholic, Mormon, Latter-Day Saint,
Presbyterian, and Anglican Church missionaries, all at work in the same
field, all earnest, well-meaning men, and each convinced that he is
right.
Is it any wonder, then, that after listening to them all the dazed South
Sea Island native asks himself what all the pother is about, and,
finding no satisfactory answer to the conundrum, turns to his tangible
rum bottle?
To revert to safer topics, there is pearl shell in the Marquesas. The
representative of incomparable infantry told us so while we sat on his
incomparable veranda one morning, consuming large quantities of _papia_,
rolls, honey, and coffee, each in his particular brand of pyjamas.
The information brought upon our serene lives at Tai o Hae the white
man's blight of avariciousness. Was this thing possible, with shell at
one thousand dollars a ton delivered at Philadelphia? Yes; he, the
incomparable, had seen it through a water-glass, in anything from five
to fifteen fathoms, between the islands of Hivaoa and Tahuata.
Why had it not been prospected? It was doubtful if any but he and the
natives knew of its existence. Undoubtedly it was worth looking into.
He made us a present of the information to do with as we willed. His
cook was an old Paumotan diver, who would no doubt accompany
us--Pascal!--accompany us to the island, a bare ninety miles distant. We
could take samples of shell to the company in Papeete, and no doubt make
arrangements--Pascal!--arrangements with them to advance working capital
in return for a lien on the shell--Pascal!!!
"Monsieur." An enormous Paumotan native stood in the doorway smiling
benignly.
He would accompany us. He would cook, and he would dive.
We sailed that evening, the deck being littered with green bananas, live
chickens tied by the leg to bulwark stanchions, a rabbit, firewood, a
stove composed of a kerosene tin half filled with earth, and--Pascal.
There was apparently nothing this extraordinary man could not do. He
knew every island of the Marquesas like the palm of his hand. He could
produce savoury messes from a kerosene tin, remain under water three
minutes, discourse entertainingly in pidgin-English, French, German,
Marquesan, and Paumotan, and secure a ship's provisions without the
annoying triviality of paying for them.
"But whom do we owe for all this?" I asked him, eyeing the menagerie
that surrounded us.
Pascal smiled and waved a hand.
"Rabbit no money," he informed us; "chickens, bananas, all no money. Me
get um."
Here surely is a solution of the high-cost-of-living problem. Take
Pascal to the profiteering areas and the thing is done.
Dawn revealed to us Tahuata close abeam. Each island of this group
seems more lovely than the last: waterfalls pouring three thousand feet
to the sea, blow-holes at the base of rocky cliffs that spray the air
with spindrift and miniature rainbows, deep bays with coral beaches at
their head.
But the beauties of nature were not for us on this occasion; we were
prospecting. It was a serious business. There might be money in it.
After this I can scarce believe that in Paradise itself the white man
will not be dogged by the curse of opportunism.
Leaving the dream ship at anchor a cable's length from shore, we took to
the dinghy and explored the floor of the ocean thereabouts through
water-glasses, consisting of wooden boxes with glass bottoms. This was
the place, Pascal informed us, and, sure enough, there was shell, old
barnacle-encrusted shell, but widely scattered.
What of a few samples? Pascal grinned and shook his head. "Shark," he
muttered, apologetically; which, being interpreted, meant that he
refused to dive.
[Illustration: Men with water-glasses in boat]
He pointed out that in the Paumotus it was different. In the Paumotus
there was always a reef-surrounded lagoon where few sharks found
entrance. In the Paumotus men dived in couples as a safeguard. In the
Paumotus----
In vain we pointed out that we happened to be in the Marquesas and not
the Paumotus; that he had been hired to dive in the Marquesas; that we
were really very angry--in the Marquesas. He grinned.
[Illustration: _A Man of the Atolls_]
In rather less than half an hour, and to Pascal's utter amazement, we
had put him and his belongings ashore, paid him his wages, and were
under way for Tahiti.
Ah, Monsieur of the incomparable infantry, I rather suspect you of
pulling our legs. Or was it that your innate enthusiasm ran away with
you? Or that we should have been less hasty? I do not know. All I know
is that you spoke truth; there is shell in the Marquesas--and it is
likely to remain there.
[Illustration: _Off Nukuhiva, Marquesas Islands_]
As the South Pacific Islands become more widely known, which they are
rapidly doing, the Marquesas are bound to attract the attention they
deserve. Apart from their scenic grandeur and healthful climate, they
are as fertile a group as any in the Pacific, and more so than most. It
has been proved that cotton of the best quality flourishes there, as
well as sugar cane and every other tropical product, and there are
thousands of acres of knee-high, well-watered pastures for the stockman.
Since this visit to the Marquesas I have been living in France, to which
country the group belongs, and I have not yet met a Frenchman who knows
of their existence. In fact, the average Frenchman's ignorance of his
own possessions is nothing short of amazing.