_A Life on the Ocean Wave--Where They kept the Dynamite--How far from
an Iced Drink?--The Peacefulness of a Pacific Calm--A Golden Dust
Heap--Among the Rookeries--Sailing on the Land--All about Guano._
THE pirate captain was gone when the schooner reappeared off Niué, and
a certain ancient mariner had taken his place. Things were not quite
so exciting on the _Duchess_ under the new régime, but the order which
reigned on board was something awful; for the ancient mariner had been a
whaling captain in his day, and on whaling ships it is more than on any
others a case of “Growl you may, but go you must,” for all the crew.
The ancient mariner was as salty a salt as ever sailed the ocean. He had
never been on anything with steam in it, he was as tough as ship-yard
teak, and as strong as a bear, though he was a grandfather of some
years’ standing, and he was full of strange wild stories about the
whaling grounds, and odd happenings in out-of-the-way comers of the
Pacific--most of which he seemed to consider the merest commonplaces of
a prosaic existence.
We suffered many things from the cook, in the course of that long
burning voyage towards the Line. The _Duchess’s_ stores were none of
the best, and the cook dealt with them after a fashion that made me
understand once for all the sailor saying: “God sends meat, and the
devil sends cooks.” Pea-soup, salt pork and beef, plum duff, ship’s
biscuit, sea-pie--this was the sort of food that, in the days before
I set foot on the _Duchess_, I had supposed to form the usual table of
sailing vessels. I fear it was a case of sea-story-books, over again.
What we did get was “tinned rag” of a peculiarly damp and viscous
quality, tea that usually tasted of cockroaches, biscuit that was so
full of copra bugs we had to hammer it on the table before eating it, an
occasional tin of tasteless fruit (it ran out very soon), and bread that
was a nightmare, for the flour went musty before we were out a week,
and the unspeakable cook tried to disguise its taste with sugar.
Board-of-trade limejuice, which is a nauseous dose at best, we were
obliged, by law to carry, and I think we must have run rather near
scurvy in the course of that long trip, for the amount of the oily,
drug-flavoured liquid that the mates and myself used to drink at times,
seemed to argue a special craving of nature. But _à la guerre comme à
la guerre_--and one does not take ship on a Pacific windjammer expecting
the luxuries of a P. and O.
We were not going direct to Malden, having to call first at Samoa and
Mangaia. Three days of rough rolling weather saw us in Apia, about
which I have nothing to say at present, since I paid a longer visit to
Stevenson’s country later on. We had about forty native passengers to
take on here for the Cook Islands and Malden. There was nowhere to put
them, but in the South Seas such small inconveniences trouble nobody.
I am very strongly tempted here to tell about the big-gale that caught
us the first night out, carried away our lifeboat, topsail, topgallant,
and main gaff, swamped the unlucky passengers’ cabin, and caused
the Cingalese steward to compose and chant all night long a litany
containing three mournful versicles: “O my God, this is too much
terrible! O my#God, why I ever go to sea! O my God, I never go to sea
again!” But in the Pacific one soon learns that sea etiquette makes
light of such matters. So the wonderful and terrible sights which I saw
once or twice that night, clinging precariously to anything solid near
the door of my cabin, and hoping that the captain would not catch me out
on deck, must remain undescribed.
Nearly seven weeks were occupied by this northern trip--time for a mail
steamer to go out from London to New Zealand, and get well started on
the way home again. We were, of course, entirely isolated from news and
letters; indeed, the mails and papers that we carried conveyed the very
latest intelligence to islands that had not had a word from the outer
world for many months. Our native passengers, who were mostly going up
to Malden Island guano works as paid labourers, evidently considered
the trip one wild scene of excitement and luxury. The South Sea Islander
loves nothing more than change, and every new island we touched at was
a Paris or an Ostend to these (mostly) untravelled natives. Their
accommodation on the ship was not unlike that complained of by the
waiter in “David Copperfield.” They “lived on broken wittles and they
slept on the coals.” The _Duchess_ carried benzoline tins for the
feeding of the futile little motor that worked her in and out of port,
and the native sleeping place was merely the hold, on top of the tins.
[Illustration: 0325]
“Do you mind the dynamite remaining under your bunk?” asked the ancient
mariner, shortly after we left Samoa.
“_Under my bunk?_”
“Yes--didn’t you know it was there? The explosives safe is let into the
deck just beneath the deck cabin. I’ll move it if you’re nervous about
it--I thought I’d tell you, anyways. But it’s the best place for it to
be, you see, right amidships.” And the ancient mariner, leaning his six
foot two across the rail, turned his quid, and spat into the deep.
“What do we want with dynamite, anyhow?” asked the bewildered passenger,
confronted with this new and startling streak of local colour.
“_We_ don’t want none. The Cook Islands wants it for reefs.”
“Oh, leave it where it is--I suppose it’s all the same in the end where
it starts from, if it did blow up,” says the passenger resignedly. “What
about the benzoline in the hold, though?”
“Every one’s got to take chances at sea,” says the captain, easily.
“The mates have orders to keep the natives from smokin’ in the hold at
night.”
And at midnight, when I slip out of my bunk to look on and see what
the weather is like (it has been threatening all day), a faint but
unmistakable odour of island tobacco greets my nose, from the opening
of the main hatch! Benzoline, dynamite, natives smoking in the hold,
one big boat smashed, one small one left, forty native passengers, five
whites, and three hundred miles to the nearest land!
Well, _à la guerre comme à la guerre_, and one must not tell tales at
sea. So I don’t tell any, though tempted. But I am very glad, a week
later, to see the Cook Islands rising up out of the empty blue again.
We have had head winds, we have been allowanced as to water, we are all
pleased to have a chance of taking in some fruit before we start on the
thousand miles’ run to Malden--and above all, we leave that dynamite
here, which is a good thing; for really we have been putting rather too
much strain on the good nature of the “Sweet little cherub that sits up
aloft, to keep guard o’er the life of poor Jack,” this last week or two.
If proof were wanted that the cherub’s patience is about at an end, our
arrival at Mangaia furnishes it--for we do take fire after all, just a
couple of hundred yards from shore!
It does not matter now, since half the natives of the island are about
the ship, and the case of explosives has just been rowed off in our only
boat, and the blaze is put out without much trouble. But, two days ago!
Well, the sweet little cherub certainly deserved a rest.
*****
Now the _Duchess’s_ bowsprit was pointed northwards, and we set out on
a thousand miles’ unbroken run up to Malden Island, only four degrees
south of the Line. For nine days we ploughed across the same monotonous
plain of lonely sea, growing a little duller every day, as our stores of
reading matter dwindled away, and our fruit and vegetables ran out,
and the memory of our last fresh mess became only a haunting, far-off
regret. Squatting or lying about the white-hot poop in the merciless
sun--which burnt through our duck and cotton clothing, and scorched the
skin underneath, but was at least a degree better than the choking Hades
of a cabin below--we used to torture each other with reminiscences
and speculations, such as “They have real salt beef and sea-pie and
lobscouse and pea-soup, and things like that, every day on Robinson’s
schooner; no tinned rag and musty flour”; or “How many thousand miles
are we now from an iced drink?” This last problem occupied the mates and
myself for half a morning, and made us all a great deal hotter than we
were before. Auckland was about 2,300 miles away, San Francisco about
3,000 as far as we could guess. We decided for Auckland, and discussed
the best place to buy the drink, being somewhat limited in choice by
the passenger’s selfish insistence on a place where she could get really
good iced coffee. By the time this was settled, the captain joined in,
and informed us that we could get all we wanted, and fresh limes into
the bargain, only a thousand miles away, at Tahiti, which every one had
somehow overlooked. Only a thousand! It seemed nothing, and we all felt
(illogically) cheered up at the thought.
Late in the afternoon we came near attaining our wish for a temperature
of thirty-two degrees in rather an unexpected way. The bottom of the
Pacific generally hovers about this figure, some miles below the burning
surface, which often reaches the temperature of an ordinary warm bath;
and the _Duchess_ had a fairly narrow escape of going down to look for
a cool spot without a return ticket. A giant waterspout suddenly formed
out of the low-hanging, angry sky that had replaced the clear heat of
the morning. First of all, a black trunk like an elephant’s began to
feel blindly about in mid-air, hanging from a cloud. It came nearer and
nearer with uncanny speed, drawing up to itself as it came a colossal
cone of turbulent sea, until the two joined together in one enormous
black pillar, some quarter of a mile broad at the base, and probably a
good thousand feet high, uniting as it did the clouds and the sea
below. Across the darkening sea, against the threatening, copper-crimson
sunset, came this gigantic horror, waltzing over leagues of torn-up
water in a veritable dance of death, like something blind, but mad and
cruel, trying to find and shatter our fragile little ship. Happily, the
dark was only coming, not yet come; happily, too, the wind favoured
us, and we were able to tack about and keep out of the way, dodging the
strangely human rushes and advances of the water-giant with smartness
and skill. At one time it came so close that the elephant trunk--now
separately visible again--seemed feeling about over our heads, although
the captain afterwards said it had been more than three hundred yards
away--and the immense maelstrom underneath showed us the great wall of
whirling spindrift that edged its deadly circle, as plain as the foam
about our own bows. Every one was quiet, cool, and ready; but no one
was sorry when the threatening monster finally spun, away to leeward and
melted into air once more. A waterspout of this enormous size, striking
a small vessel, would snap off her masts like sticks of candy, kill any
one who happened to be on deck, and most probably sink the ship with the
very impact of the terrible shock.
“One doesn’t hear much about ships being sunk by waterspouts,” objected
the sceptical passenger to this last statement.
“Ships that’s sunk by waterspouts doesn’t come back to tell the
newspapers about it,” said the captain darkly.
Life on a South Sea schooner is not all romance. For the officers of
the ship it is a very hard life indeed. Native crews are the rule in
the South Seas, and native crews make work for every one, including
themselves. Absolutely fearless is the Kanaka, active as a monkey aloft,
good-natured and jolly to the last degree, but perfectly unreliable in
any matter requiring an ounce of thought or a pennyworth of discretion,
and, moreover, given to shirk work in a variety of ingenious ways
that pass the wit of the white man to circumvent. Constant and keen
supervision while at sea, unremitting hurry and drive in port, are the
duties of a South Sea mate, coupled with plenty of actual hard work on
his own account. I have known a case where a small schooner was leaking
badly, many days from port, and almost constant pumping was required.
The pump broke while in use; and the watch, delighted to be released,
turned in at eight bells without having done their spell, and without
reporting the accident. The water gained steadily, but that did not
trouble them; and when the mate discovered the accident, and set them to
mend the pump at once, they were both surprised and grieved!
“Watch and watch” is the rule on small sailing-vessels: four hours on
and four hours off, day and night, except for the “dog watches,” four
to six and six to eight in the evening, which create a daily shift in
order that each man may be on watch at a different time on successive
days. Always provided, of course, that the ship has any watches at all!
I _have_ sailed in a Pacific schooner where the crew spent most of their
time playing the accordion and the Jew’s harp, and slept peacefully all
night. In the daytime there was generally some one at the wheel; but at
night it was usually lashed, and the ship was let run, with all sails
set, taking her chances of what might come, every soul on board being
asleep. One night the cook came out of his bunk to get a drink from the
tank, and found the vessel taken aback. The whole spirit of South
Sea life breathes from the sequel. He told nobody! The galley was his
department, not the sails; so he simply went back to his bunk. In the
morning we fetched up off the northern side of an island we had intended
to «approach from the south; having, strange to say, somehow escaped
piling our bones on the encircling reef, and also avoided the misfortune
of losing our masts and getting sunk.
If there is a good deal of hard work on most schooners, and something
of risk on all, there is also plenty of adventure and romance, for those
who care about it. One seldom meets an island skipper whose life would
not furnish materials for a dozen exciting books. Being cut off and
attacked by cannibals down in the dangerous western groups; swimming for
dear life away from a boat just bitten in two by an infuriated whale;
driving one native king off his throne, putting another on, and acting
as prime minister to the nation; hunting up a rumour of a splendid pearl
among the pearling islands, and tracking down the gem, until found
and coaxed away from its careless owner at one-tenth Sydney market
prices--these are incidents that the typical schooner captain regards
as merely the ordinary kind of break to be expected in his rather
monotonous life. He does not think them very interesting as a rule, and
dismisses them somewhat briefly, in a yarn. What does excite him, cause
him to raise his voice and gesticulate freely, and induce him to “yarn”
relentlessly for half a watch, is the recital of some thrilling incident
connected with the price of cargo or the claims made for damaged stuff
by some abandoned villain of a trader. There is something worth relating
in a tale like that, to his mind!
The passenger on an island schooner learns very early to cultivate a
humble frame of mind. On a great steam liner he is all in all. It is for
him almost entirely that the ships are built and run; his favour is
life or death to the company. He is handled like eggs, and petted like a
canary bird. Every one runs to do his bidding; he is one of a small but
precious aristocracy waited on hand and foot by the humblest of serfs.
On a schooner, however, he is ousted from his pride of place most
completely by the cargo, which takes precedence of him at every point;
so that he rapidly learns he is not of nearly so much value as a fat
sack of copra, and he becomes lowlier in mind than he ever was before.
There is no special accommodation for him, as a rule; he must go where
he can, and take what he gets. If he can make himself useful about the
ship, so much the better; every one will think more of him, and he will
get some useful exercise by working his passage in addition to paying
for it.
Here is a typical day on the _Duchess_.
At eight bells (8 a.m.) breakfast is served in the cabin. The
passenger’s own cabin is a small deck-house placed amidships on the main
deck. The deck is filled up with masses of cargo, interposing a perfect
Himalayan chain of mountains between the main deck and the poop. It is
pouring with tropical rain, but the big main hatch yawns half open on
one side, because of the native passengers in the hold. On the other
side foams a squally sea, unguarded by either rail or bulwark, since the
cargo is almost overflowing out of the ship. The _Duchess_ is rolling
like a porpoise, and the passenger’s hands are full of mackintosh and
hat-brim. It seems impossible to reach the poop alive; but the verb
“have to” is in constant use on a sailing-ship, and it does not fail
of its magical effect on this occasion. Clawing like a parrot, the
passenger reaches the cabin, and finds the bare-armed, barefooted mates
and the captain engaged on the inevitable “tin” and biscuits. There is
no tea this morning, because the cockroaches have managed to get into
and flavour the brew; and the cabin will none of it. The captain has
sent word by the native steward that he will “learn” the cook--a strange
threat that usually brings about at least a temporary reform--and is
now engaged in knocking the copra-bugs out of a piece of biscuit and
brushing a colony of ants off his plate. Our cargo is copra, and
in consequence the ship resembles an entomological museum more than
anything else. No centipedes have been found this trip so far; but the
mate-stabbed a big scorpion with a sail-needle yesterday, as it was
walking across the deck; and the cockroaches--as large as mice, and much
bolder--have fairly “taken charge.” The captain says he does not know
whether he is sleeping in the cockroaches’ bunk, or they in his, but he
rather thinks the former, since the brutes made a determined effort to
throw him out on the deck last night, and nearly succeeded!
It grows very warm after breakfast, for we are far within the tropics,
and the _Duchess_ has no awnings to protect her deck. The rail is almost
hot enough to blister an unwary hand, and the great sails cast little
shade, as the sun climbs higher to the zenith. The pitch does not,
however, bubble in the seams of the deck, after the well-known fashion
of stories, because the _Duchess_, like most other tropical ships, has
her decks caulked with putty. A calm has fallen--a Pacific calm, which
is not as highly distinguished for calmness as the stay-at-home reader
might suppose. There is no wind, and the island we are trying to reach
remains tantalisingly perched on the extreme edge of the horizon, like a
little blue flower on the rim of a crystal dish. But there is plenty
of sea--long glittering hills of water, rising and falling, smooth and
foamless, under the ship, which they fling from side to side with cruel
violence. The great booms swing and slam, the blocks clatter, the masts
creak. Everything loose in the cabins toboggans wildly up and down the
floor. At dinner, the soup which the cook has struggled to produce,
lest he should be “learned,” has to be drunk out of tin mugs for safety.
Every one is sad and silent, for the sailor hates a calm even more than
a gale.
Bonitos come round the ship in a glittering shoal by-and-by, and there
is a rush for hooks and lines. One of our native A.B.s produces a huge
pearl hook, unbaited, and begins to skim it lightly along the water at
the end of its line, mimicking the exact motions of a flying-fish with
a cleverness that no white man can approach. Hurrah! a catch! A mass of
sparkling silver, blue, and green, nearly twenty pounds weight, is swung
through the air, and tumbled on deck. Another and another follows; we
have over a hundred pounds weight of fish in half an hour. The crew
shout and sing for delight. There are only seven of them and five of us,
but there-will not be a scrap of that fish left by to-morrow, for all
the forecastle hands will turn to and cook and eat without ceasing until
it is gone; after which they will probably dance for an hour or two.
To every one’s delight, the weather begins to cloud over again after
this, and we are soon spinning before a ten-knot breeze towards the
island, within sight of which we have been aimlessly beating about
for some days, unable to get up. Our crew begin to make preparations.
Tapitua, who is a great dandy, puts two gold earrings in one ear, and
fastens a wreath of cock’s feathers about his hat. Koddi (christened
George) gets into a thick blue woollen jersey (very suitable for
Antarctic weather), a scarlet and yellow pareo or kilt, and a pair
of English shoes, which make him limp terribly; but they are splendid
squeakers, so Koddi is happy. (The Pacific islander always picks out
squeaking shoes if he can get them, and some manufacturers even put
special squeakers into goods meant for the island trade.) Ta puts on
three different singlets--a pink, a blue, and a yellow--turning up the
edges carefully, so as to present a fine display of layered colours,
like a Neapolitan ice; and gums the gaudy label off a jam tin about his
bare brown arm, thus christening himself with the imposing title of “Our
Real Raspberry.” Neo is wearing two hats and three neck-handkerchiefs;
Oki has a cap with a “P. & O.” ribbon, and Union Steamship Company’s
jersey, besides a threepenny-piece in the hollow of each ear. Truly we
are a gay party, by the time every one is ready to land.
And now after our thousand mile run, we have arrived at Malden.
Malden Island lies on the border of the Southern Pacific, only four
degrees south of the equator. It is beyond the verge of the great
Polynesian archipelago, and stands out by itself in a lonely stretch of
still blue sea, very seldom visited by ships of any kind. Approaching it
one is struck from far away by the glaring barrenness of the big island,
which is thirty-three miles in circumference, and does not possess a
single height or solitary tree, save one small clump of recently planted
cocoanuts. Nothing more unlike the typical South Sea island could be
imagined. Instead of the violet mountain peaks, wreathed with flying
vapour, the lowlands rich with pineapple, banana, orange, and mango, the
picturesque beach bordered by groves of feathery cocoanuts and quaint
heavy-fruited pandanus trees, that one finds in such groups as the
Society, Navigator’s, Hawaiian, and Cook Islands, Malden consists simply
of an immense white beach, a little settlement fronted by a big wooden
pier, and a desolate plain of low greyish-green herbage, relieved here
and there by small bushes bearing insignificant yellow flowers. Water
is provided by great condensers. Food is all imported, save for pig
and goat flesh. Shade, coolness, refreshing fruit, pleasant sights and
sounds, there are none. For those who live on the island, it is the
scene of an exile which has to be endured somehow or other, but which
drags away with incredible slowness and soul-deadening monotony.
Why does any one live in such a spot? More especially, why should it
be tenanted by five or six whites and a couple of hundred Kanakas, when
many beautiful and fertile islands cannot show nearly so many of either
race; quite a large number, indeed, being altogether uninhabited? One
need never look far for an answer in such a case. If there is no
comfort on Malden Island, there is something that men value more than
comfort--money. For fifty-six years it has been one of the most valuable
properties in the Pacific. Out of Malden Island have come horses and
carriages, fine houses, and gorgeous jewellery, rich eating, delicate
wines, handsome entertainments, university education and expensive
finishing governesses, trips to the Continent, swift white schooners,
high places in Society, and all the other desirables of wealth, for two
generations of fortunate owners and their families. Half-a-million hard
cash has been made out of it in the last thirty years, and it is good
for another thirty. All this from a barren rock in mid-ocean! The
solution of the problem will at once suggest itself to any reader who
has ever sailed the Southern Seas--guano!
This is indeed the secret of Malden Island’s riches. Better by far
than the discovery of a pirate’s treasure-cave, that favourite dream
of romantic youth, is the discovery of a guano island. There are few
genuine treasure romances in the Pacific, but many exciting tales that
deal with the finding and disposing of these unromantic mines of wealth.
Malden Island itself has had an interesting history enough. In 1848,
Captain Chapman, an American whaling captain who still lives in
Honolulu, happened to discover Malden during the course of a long
cruise. He landed on the island, found nothing for himself and his crew
in the way of fruit or vegetables, but discovered the guano beds, and
made up his mind to sell the valuable knowledge as soon as his cruise
was over. Then he put to sea again, and did not reach San Francisco for
the best part of a year. Meantime, another American, Captain English,
had found the island and its treasure. Wiser than Captain Chapman, he
abandoned his cruise, and hurried at once to Sydney, where he sold the
island for a big price to the trading firm who have owned it ever since.
This is the history of Malden Island’s discovery. Time, in the island,
has slipped along since the days of the Crimea with never a change.
There is a row of little tin-roofed, one-storeyed houses above the
beach, tenanted by the half-dozen white men who act as managers; there
are big, barn-like shelters for the native labourers. Every three years
the managers end their term of service, and joyfully return to
the Company’s great offices in Sydney, where there is life and
companionship, pleasant things to see, good things to eat, newspapers
every day, and no prison bar of blue relentless ocean cutting off all
the outer world. Once or twice in the year one of the pretty white
island schooners sails up to Malden, greeted with shrieks and war-dances
of joy; discharges her freight of forty or fifty newly indentured
labourers, and takes away as many others whose time of one year on the
island has expired. On Malden itself nothing changes. Close up to the
equator, and devoid of mountains or even heights which could attract
rain, its climate is unaltered by the passing season. No fruits or
flowers mark the year by their ripening and blossoming, no rainy season
changes the face of the land. News from the outer world comes rarely;
and when it does come, it is so old as to have lost its savour. Life on
Malden Island for managers and labourers alike, is work, work, all day
long; in the evening, the bare verandah and the copper-crimson sunset,
and the empty prisoning sea. That is all.
The guano beds cover practically the whole of the island. The surface on
which one walks is hard, white, and rocky. This must be broken through
before the guano, which lies a foot or two underneath, is reached. The
labourers break away the stony crust with picks, and shovel out the
fine, dry, earth-coloured guano that lies beneath, in a stratum varying
from one to three feet in thickness. This is piled in great heaps, and
sifted through large wire, screens. The sifted guano--exactly resembling
common sand--is now spread out in small heaps, and left to dry
thoroughly in the fierce sun. There must not be any trace of moisture
left that can possibly be dispersed; for the price of the guano depends
on its absolute purity and extreme concentration, and purchasers
generally make careful chemical tests of the stuff they buy.
When dried, the guano is stored away in an immense shed near the
settlement. If it has been obtained from the pits at the other side of
the island, eight miles away, it will be brought down to the storehouse
by means of one of the oddest little railways in the world. The Malden
Island railway is worked, not by steam, electricity, or petrol, but by
sail! The S.E. trade-wind blows practically all the year round on
this island; so the Company keep a little fleet of land-vessels,
cross-rigged, with fine large sails, to convey the guano down to
the settlement. The empty carriages are pushed up to the pits by the
workmen, and loaded there. At evening, the labourers climb on the top of
the load, set the great sails, and fly down to the settlement as fast
as an average train could go. These “land-ships” of Malden are a bit
unmanageable at times, and have been known to jump the rails when
travelling at high speed, thus causing unpleasant accidents. But the
Kanaka labourers do not mind a trifle of that kind, and not even in a
S.E. gale would they condescend to take a reef in the sails.
As it is necessary to push these railway ships on the outward trip, the
managers generally travel on a small railway tricycle of the pattern
familiar at home. This can be driven at a fair speed, by means of arm
levers. Across the desolate inland plain one clatters, the centre of a
disk of shadowless grey-green, drenched clear of drawing and colour by
the merciless flood of white fire from above. The sky is of the very
thinnest pale blue; the dark, deep sea is out of sight. The world is
all dead stillness and smiting sun, with only the thin rattle of our
labouring car, and the vibration of distant dark specks above the
rookeries, for relief.
The dark specks grow nearer and more numerous, filling the whole sky
at last with the sweep of rushing wings and the screams of angry bird
voices. We leave the tricycle on the rails and walk across the
thin, coarse grass, tangled with barilla plants, and low-growing
yellow-flowered shrubs, towards the spot where the wings flutter
thickest, covering many acres of the unlovely, barren land with a
perfect canopy of feathered life. This is the bird by which the fortunes
of Malden have been made--the smaller man-o’-war bird. It is about the
size of a duck, though much lighter in build. The back is black, the
breast white, the bill long and hooked. The bird has an extraordinarily
rapid and powerful flight. It might more appropriately be called the
“pirate” than the “man-o’-war” or “frigate” bird, since it uses, its
superior speed to deprive other seabirds of the fish they catch, very
seldom indeed exerting itself to make an honest capture on its own
account. Strange to say, however, this daring buccaneer is the meekest
and most long-suffering of birds where human beings are concerned. It
will allow you to walk all through its rookeries, and even to handle
the young birds and eggs, without making any remonstrance other than a
petulant squeal. The parents fly about the visitors’ heads in a perfect
cloud, sweeping their wings within an inch of our faces, screaming
harshly, and looking exceedingly fierce, with their ugly hooked bills
and sparkling black eyes. But that is their ordinary way of occupying
themselves; they wheel and scream above the rookery all day long,
visited or let alone. Even if you capture one, by a happy snatch (not
at all an impossible feat), you will not alarm the others, and your
prisoner will not show much fight.
The eggs lie all over the ground in a mass of broken shells, feathers,
and clawed-up earth. Those birds never build nests, and only sit upon
one egg, which is dirty white, with brown spots. The native labourers
consider frigate-bird eggs good to eat, and devour large numbers, but
the white men find them too strong. The birds are also eaten by the
labourers, but only on the sly, as this practice is strictly forbidden,
for the reason that illness generally follows. The frigate-bird, it
seems, is not very wholesome eating.
It is not in the insignificant deposits of these modern rookeries that
the wealth of the island lies, but in the prehistoric strata underlying
the stony surface crust already mentioned. There are three strata
composing the island--first the coral rock, secondly the guano, lastly
the surface crust. At one time, the island must have been the home of
innumerable myriads of frigate-birds, nesting all over its circumference
of thirty-three miles. The birds now nest only in certain places, and,
though exceedingly thick to an unaccustomed eye, cannot compare with
their ancestors in number.
The schooner called on a Sunday, and so I could not see the men at work.
One of the managers, however, showed me over the labourers’ quarters,
and told me all about their life. There is certainly none of the
“black-birding” business about Malden. Kidnapping natives for plantation
work, under conditions which amount to slavery, is unfortunately still
common enough in some parts of the Pacific. But in the Cook Group,
and Savage Island, where most of the labourers come from, there is no
difficulty in obtaining as many genuine volunteers for Malden as its
owners want. The men sign for a year’s work, at ten shillings a week,
and board and lodging. Their food consists of rice, biscuits, yams,
tinned beef, and tea, with a few cocoanuts for those who may fall sick.
This is “the hoigth of good ’atin” for a Polynesian, who lives when
at home on yams, taro root, and bananas, with an occasional mouthful of
fish, and fowl or pig only on high festival days.
The labourers’ quarters are large, bare, shady buildings fitted with
wide shelves, on which the men spread their mats and pillows to sleep.
A Polynesian is never to be divorced from his bedding; he always carries
it with him when travelling, and the Malden labourers each come to the
island provided with beautifully plaited pandanus mats, and cushions
stuffed with the down of the silk-cotton tree. The cushions have covers
of “trade” cottons, rudely embroidered by the owner’s sweetheart or wife
with decorative designs, and affectionate mottoes.
From 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. are the hours of work, with an hour and
three-quarters off for meals. There is nothing unpleasant about the
work, as Malden Island guano is absolutely without odour, and apparently
so dry and fine when taken from the pits, that one wonders at the
necessity for further sifting and drying. Occasionally, however, one of
the workers develops a peculiar intestinal trouble which is said to be
caused by the fine dust of the pits. It is nearly always fatal, by slow
degrees. Our schooner carried away one of these unfortunates--a Savage
Island man who had come up to Malden in full health and strength only
a few months before. He was the merest shadow or sketch of a human
being--a bundle of bones clad in loose brown skin, with a skull-like
face, all teeth and eye-sockets--he could not stand or walk, only creep
along the deck; and he was very obviously dying. Poor fellow! he longed
for his own home above everything---the cool green island, sixteen
hundred miles away, where there were fruit and flowers in the shady
valleys, and women’s and children’s voices sounding pleasantly about the
grassy village streets, and his own little pandanus-thatched cottage,
with his “fafiné” and the babies at the door, among the palms and
oranges above the sea. But the schooner had a two months’ voyage to
make yet among the Cook and other groups, before Savage Island could be
reached; and Death was already lifting his spear to strike. We left
the poor fellow as a last chance on Penrhyn Island, a couple of hundred
miles away, hoping that the unlimited cocoanuts he could obtain there
might do him some good, and that by some fortunate chance he might
recover sufficiently to take another ship, and reach Niué at last.
The guano of Malden Island is supposed to be the best in the world. It
is extremely rich in superphosphates, and needs no “doctoring” whatever,
being ready to apply to the land just as taken from the island. As the
company are obliged to guarantee the purity of what they sell, and give
an exact analysis of the constituents of every lot, they keep a skilled
chemist on the island, and place a fine laboratory at his disposal.
These analyses are tedious to make, and require great accuracy, as a
mistake might cause a refusal of payment on the part of the purchaser.
The post of official chemist, therefore, is no sinecure, especially
as it includes the duties of dispenser as well, and not a little
rough-and-ready doctoring at times.
The temperature of the island is not so high as might be expected from
the latitude. It seldom goes above 90° in the shade, and is generally
rendered quite endurable, in spite of the merciless glare and total
absence of shade, by the persistent trade-wind. Mosquitoes are unknown,
and flies not troublesome. There are no centipedes, scorpions, or other
venomous creatures, although the neighbouring islands (“neighbouring,”
in the Pacific, means anything within three or four hundred miles) have
plenty of these unpleasant inhabitants. The white men live on tinned
food of various kinds, also bread, rice, fowls, pork, goat, and goat’s
milk. Vegetables or fruit are a rare and precious luxury, for the
nearest island producing either lies a thousand miles away. Big yams,
weighing a stone or two apiece and whitewashed to prevent decay, are
sent up from the Cook Islands now and then; but the want of really
fresh, vegetable food is one of the trials of the island. It is not
astonishing to hear that the salaries of the Malden officials are very
high. A year or two on the island is a good way of accumulating some
capital, since it is impossible to spend a penny.
The native labourers generally leave the island with the greatest joy,
glad beyond expression to return to their sweet do-nothing lives at
home. Why they undertake the work at all is one of the many puzzles
presented by the Polynesian character. They have enough to eat and
enough to wear, without doing any work to speak of, while they are at
home. Usually the motive for going to Malden is the desire of making
twenty-five pounds or so in a lump, to buy a bicycle (all South Sea
Islanders have bicycles, and ride them splendidly) or to build a stone
house. But in most cases the money is “spreed” away in the first two
or three days at home, giving presents to everybody, and buying fine
clothes at the trader’s store.
So the product of the year’s exile and hard work is simply a tour among
the islands--in itself a strong attraction--a horribly hot suit of
shoddy serge, with a stiff white shirt, red socks, and red tie, bought
up in Malden from the company out of the labourer’s wages, and proudly
worn on the day the schooner brings the wanderer home to his lightly
clad relatives--a bicycle, perhaps, which soon becomes a scrap-heap;
or, possibly, a stone house which is never lived in. The company has the
labour that it wants, and the money that the labour produces. Every one
is satisfied with the bargain, doubtless; and the faraway British farmer
and market-gardener are the people who are ultimately benefited.