Kitabı oku: «Wednesday the Tenth, A Tale of the South Pacific», sayfa 3

"Why, how did you come to know our names?" he exclaimed, astonished. "You must be as sharp as a lynx, Captain."

"That's not an answer to my question I asked you," I replied with as much sternness as I could put into my voice, looking at the poor fellow's starved white face. "But as a special favor to a deserving fellow-creature, I don't mind telling you. I'm as sharp as a lynx, as you say, and a trifle sharper: for no lynx would have looked for your names on the flap of your shirts – There, that'll do now; don't try to talk; just answer me quietly. Where do you come from, and where do you want us to go to?"

Martin lifted up his face and answered with becoming brevity, "Tanaki."

"That's better!" I said. "That's the sort of way a fellow ought to answer, when he's more than half-starved with a week at sea. But the next thing is, where's Tanaki?"

"It's one of the group that used to be called the Duke of Cumberland's Islands," the boy answered faintly, yet overflowing with eagerness. "They lie just beyond the Ellice Archipelago, nearly on the line of a hundred and eighty, as you go towards the Union Group along the parallel of"…

"Now, my dear boy," I said, "if you run on like that, as I said before, I shall have to turn you adrift again in your open boat at the mercy of the ocean. Do be quiet, won't you, and let me look up your island?"

"We can't be quiet," Master John Knox put in eagerly, "when we know they're going to murder our father and mother and Calvin and Miriam, on Wednesday morning."

"Just you hold your tongue, sir," I said, pushing him down again on his bunk, "and wait till you're spoken to. Now, not another word, either of you, till I've consulted my chart. Jim, hand down the Admiralty sheets again, there's a good fellow, will you?"

Jim handed them down, and we commenced our scrutiny at once. We soon found the Duke of Cumberland's Islands, and as good luck would have it, found we were steering as straight as an arrow for them. The direction of the wind had not misled us. But no such place as Tanaki could we still find anywhere.

"It used to be called 'The Long Reef,'" Martin said, looking up; "but now we call it by the native name, Tanaki."

"Oh! The Long Reef," I said; "why didn't you say so at first? I know that well enough by sight on the chart; but I never heard it called Tanaki before. That accounts, of course, for the milk in the cocoa-nut. Jim, hand along the calipers here, and let's measure out the course. Two – four – six – eight," I went on, looping along line of sailing with the calipers. "A trifle short of eight hundred miles. Say seven hundred and eighty. And we have till Wednesday morning. Well, we ought to do it."

"You'll be in time to save them, then!" the elder boy cried, jumping up once more like a Jack-in-the-box. "You'll be in time to save them!"

"Will you be quiet, if you please?" I said, poking him down again flat, and holding my hand on his mouth. "O, yes! I expect we'll be in time to save them. If only you'll let us alone, and not make such a noise. We can do nine knots an hour easy, under all steam; and that ought to bring us up to Tanaki, as you call it, by Wednesday morning in the very small hours. Let's see, we've got four clear days to do it in."

"Five," the boy answered. "Five. To-day's Friday."

"No, no," I replied curtly. "Will you please shut up? Especially when you only darken counsel with many words. You're out of your reckoning. To-day's Saturday, I tell you."

And in point of fact, indeed, it really was Saturday.

"No, it's Friday," Martin went on with extraordinary persistence.

"Saturday," I repeated. "Knife; scissors: knife; scissors."

"But we got away from Tanaki eight days ago," the boy declared strongly with a very earnest face; "and it was Thursday when we left. I kept count of the days and nights all that awful time we were tossing about on the ocean alone, and I'm sure I'm right. To-day's Friday."

"Jim," I said, turning to my brother, "what day of the week do you make it?"

"Why, Saturday, of course," Jim answered with confidence.

I went to the bottom of the companion-ladder and called out aloud where the boy could hear me, "Tom Blake, what day of the week and month is it?"

"Saturday the sixth, sir," Tom called out.

"There, my boy," I said, turning to him, "you see you're mistaken. You've lost count of the time in this awful journey of yours. I expect you were half unconscious the last day and night. But, good heavens, Jim, just to think of what they've done! They've been out nine days and nights in an open boat, almost without food or drink, and they've come all that incredible distance before the high wind. Except with a ripping good breeze behind them they could never have done it."

"For my part," said Jim, looking up from his chart, "I can hardly understand how they ever did it at all. I declare, I call it nothing short of a miracle!"

And so indeed it was: for it seemed as though the wind had drifted them straight ahead from the moment they started in the exact direction where the Albatross was to meet them.

I'm an old seafaring hand by this time, and I may be superstitious, but I see the finger of fate in such a coincidence as that one.

CHAPTER IV.
MARTIN LUTHER'S STORY

For the next two days we went steaming ahead as hard as we could go in a bee-line to the northeastward, in the direction of the Duke of Cumberland's Islands; and it was two days clear before those unfortunate boys, Jack and Martin – for that was what they called one another for short, in spite of their severely theological second names – were in a condition to tell us exactly what had happened, without danger to their shattered nerves and impaired digestions.

When they did manage to speak – both at once, for choice, in their eagerness to get their story out – here's about what their history came to, as we pieced it together, bit by bit, from the things they told us at different times. If I were one of those writing chaps, now, that know how to tell a whole ten years' history, end on end, exactly as it happened, without missing a detail, I'd get it all out for you just as Martin told us; or better still, I'd give it to you in a single connected piece, between inverted commas, as his own words, beginning, "I was born," said he, "in the city of Edinburgh," and so forth, after the regular high-and-dry literary fashion. But how on earth those clever book-making fellows can ever remember a whole long speech, word for word, from beginning to end, I never could make out and never shall, neither. What memories they must have to do it, to be sure! It's my own belief they make it up more than half out of their own heads as they go along, and are perfectly happy if it only just sounds plausible. But anyhow, Martin Luther Macglashin didn't tell us all his story at a single time, or in a connected way; he gave us a bit now and a bit again, with additions from Jack, according as he was able. So being, as I say, no more than a free-and-easy master mariner myself, without skill in literature, I'm not going to try to repeat it all, word for word, to you precisely as it came, but shall just take the liberty of spinning my yarn my own way and letting you have in short the gist and substance of what we gradually got out of our two fugitives.

Well, it seems that Jack and Martin's father was, just as I suspected, a Scotch missionary on the Island of Tanaki. He lived there with another family of missionaries of the same sect, in peace and quiet, as well as with an English merchant of the name of Williams, who traded with the natives for calico, knives, glass beads and tobacco. For a long time things had gone on pretty comfortably in the little settlement; though to be sure the natives did sometimes steal Mr. Macglashin's fowls or threaten to tie Mr. Williams to a cocoa-nut palm and take cock-shots at him with a Snider, out of pure lightness of heart, unless he gave them rum, square gin or brandy. Still, in spite of these playful little eccentricities of the good-humored Kanakas, who will have their joke, murder or no murder, all went as merrily as a wedding bell (as they say in novels) till suddenly one morning a French labor-vessel – I suspect the very one we had intercepted in the act of trying to carry off Nassaline – put into the harbor in search of "apprentices."

She was a very bad lot, from what the boys told us; a genuine slaver of the worst type; and she stirred up a deal of mischief at Makilolo.

On the shore the Chief of Tanaki was drawn up to receive them with all his warriors, tastefully but inexpensively rigged out in a string of blue beads round the neck, an anklet of shells and a head-dress of a single large yellow feather.

"Who are you?" shouts the chief at the top of his voice. "You man a oui-oui?"

"Yes," the Frenchman shouts back in his pigeon-English. "Me de commander of dis French ship. Want to buy boys. Must sell them to us. Tanaki French island. Discovered by Bougainville."

"No, no," says the Chief in pigeon-English again. "Tanaki no belong a man a oui-oui. Tanaki belong a Queenie England. Capitaney Cook find him long time back. My father little fellow then; him see Capitaney, him tell me often. Capitaney Cook no man a oui-oui; him fellow English."

The other natives joined in at once with their loud cry, "Chief speak true. Tanaki belong a Queenie England. Tanaki no belong a man a oui-oui. If man a oui-oui want to take Tanaki, man a Tanaki come out and fight him." And they threw themselves at once into a threatening attitude.

"Have you got any Englishmen here?" the French skipper called out, to make sure of his ground.

"Yes," says the missionary – our boys' father – standing out from the crowd. "Three English families here. Settled on the island. And we deny that this group belongs to the French Republic."

At that the Frenchman pulled back a bit. When he saw there was likely to be opposition, and that his proceedings were watched by three English families, he drew in his horns a little. He knew if he interfered too openly with the missionaries' proceedings, an English gunboat might come along, sooner or later, and overhaul him for fomenting discord on an island known to be under the British protectorate. So he only answered in French, "Well, we're peaceable traders, Monsieur. We don't want to interfere with the British Government. Consider us friends. All we desire is to hire laborers." And he landed his boat's crew before the very face of Macglashin and the Tanaki warriors.

At first, as often happens in these islands, the natives were very little disposed to trade with the strangers in boys or women, for they were afraid of the Frenchmen; and Macglashin and the other missionary did all they knew to prevent the new comers from carrying off any of the islanders into practical slavery. But after awhile the Frenchmen produced their regulation bottles of square gin (that's what they call Hollands in the South Pacific), and began to treat the Chief and the other savages to drinks all round, as much as you liked, with nothing to pay for it. In a very short time the Chief had got so much liquor aboard that his legs wouldn't answer the rudder any longer, and he began to reel about like a perfect madman. Most of the other full-grown men natives followed suit before long, and lay down on the beach half dead with drunkenness. Perhaps the liquor was drugged; perhaps it wasn't; but anyhow, in spite of all the missionaries could do, the shore before nightfall was in a condition of the wildest and most bestial orgies. The men, in what the newspapers call "a high state of vinous exhilaration," were ready to sell their boys and girls, or anything else on earth for a little more gin; and as the missionaries were naturally helpless to prevent it, the Frenchman was soon driving a roaring trade in flesh and blood against the drunken savages.

The business-like way they went to work, Jack and Martin told us, was horribly disgusting. The women, indeed, they tried to wheedle and cajole – "You like go along a New Caledonia along a me? Only three yam times; then ship bring you back again. Very good feed; plenty nyam-nyam. Pay very good. Pay money. Lots of shop. You buy what you like: you buy red dress, red handkerchief, beads like-a-chiefie. No fight; no beat; no swear at you. You good girl; I good fellow master." But if they couldn't induce them, by fair words and promises and little presents of cheap French finery, to put their mark to their sham indentures, then they just knocked them down with a blow on the head, dragged them by their hair to the boats hard by, and got their fathers or husbands to put their marks, and receive a few dollars and some red cloth in payment.

As for the boys, they handled them like so many animals in a market. "Turn round, cochon! Show me your faces! Mille tonnerres, let me see how you can run, you dirty young blackguard!" They examined them as a veterinary would examine a horse. "Why, there was our little fellow, Nangaree," Jack said to us with deep concern – "Nangaree, that used to clean up things for mother at the mission-house: his father sold him for twenty dollars. The captain looked at his legs, and at the glands in his throat, to see if he'd had the chicken-pox and the measles. Then he said to his mate, 'This lot's cheap enough. He's a first-rate lad, and can speak English. He'll do for the hold. Bundle him along!' And the mate caught him up by the scruff of his neck and hauled him to the boats, kicking and screaming; and that was the last we saw of poor Nangaree!"

For three days and nights, it seems, this horrible inhuman market or slave-fair went on upon the beach, the Frenchmen taking care to keep the natives well primed with spirits all the time, till they'd got their hold full, and were prepared to sail away again with their living cargo. Then at last they upped anchor, and out of the harbor. But before they went, the skipper, it appears, who was angry at the missionaries for having interfered with him, and was afraid they might report his proceedings to the British Government when next the mission ship came that way on her provisioning rounds, took aside the Chief in a confidential chat, and tried to inflame his mind, all mad drunk that he was, against the English residents. Apparently he had made so good a three days' work of it with his horrible trade, and found it so convenient to draw his supplies from this remote and almost unvisited island, that he thought it would be nice if before his next visit he could get rid altogether of these meddlesome strangers. He didn't want European witnesses to crop up against him in future; so he told the Chief, with a great show of confidence, that Macglashin and his friends were not English at all, but Scotch; and he pointed out that it was uncomfortable for the natives to be interfered with in their trading operations by a set of white-livered curs who objected to the selling of boys and girls into temporary slavery. Surely a Chief had a right to do as he would with his own subjects! What else he said, Heaven knows, but this is what happened as soon as the French, with their horrid cargo, had got well clear of the unhappy island.

That very afternoon, the Chief, beginning to get sober again, but quarrelsome from headache and the other after-effects of a long debauch, came round to the mission-house in a towering rage, and asked the unsuspecting missionary, "Say, white man, are you a Scotchman?"

"Yes," says Macglashin, not knowing what was coming. "I'm a Scotchman, Chief, certainly. I was born in Scotland."

The Chief laughed loud. "Ha, ha," he said, "then Queenie England no take care a you. No send gunboat to shoot us all dead, if man a Tanaki come up and kill you."

At that Macglashin grew alarmed, and answered, "O, yes! The Queen of England would certainly avenge us." And he tried to explain the exact relation in which Scotchmen stood to the British crown – that they were just as much British subjects as Englishmen, entitled to precisely the same amount of protection. But the Chief couldn't be made to understand. The French skipper had evidently poisoned his mind against them. "Man a Tanaki don't want no Scotchman interfere with Chief when him go to sell him boy and him woman," the savage said angrily. "Tanaki belong a Queenie England. Queenie England no want Scotchman interfere with people in Tanaki. Scotchman better keep quiet in him house. Queenie England no mind Scotchman."

And no amount of reasoning produced any effect upon him.

The missionaries went to bed that evening with many misgivings. They felt that for the first time, so far as the natives were concerned, the powerful protection of the British flag was now practically withdrawn. They were alone, as strangers, among those excited black fellows.

At dead of night, while the two boys slept, a horrible din outside the mission-house awoke them. They looked out, and saw the red glare of torches outside. A frightful horde of Kanakas, naked save for their war-paint, drunk with the Frenchman's rum and armed with his Sniders, surrounded the frail building in a hideous mob of savagery. As Martin put his head out of the lattice a bullet came whizzing past. He withdrew it for a moment, terrified, and then looked out again. As he did so the other Scotch missionary appeared upon the veranda, half-dressed, and holding up his hand in dignified remonstrance, began in Kanaka with his gentle mild voice, "My friends, my dear friends, …" Before he could get any further, the Chief stepped forward, and aiming a blow at his gray locks with a sacred native tomahawk, felled the peaceful old teacher senseless to the ground. Martin shuddered with horror. The old man lay weltering in a pool of his red gushing gore, while the savages danced in triumph over his prostrate body, or smeared themselves with great lines and circles of his warm heart-blood.

"Come on!" the Chief cried in Kanaka. "Kill all! Kill every one! They're taboo to our gods. Don't fear their gunboats. Queenie England won't trouble to protect a Scotchman!"

Then began a hideous orgy of wild lust and slaughter. The savages rushed on, drunk with blood and rum, and dragged out the wife and children of the other missionary, whom they brained upon the spot, before the terrified eyes of the trembling Macglashins. The trader Williams ran up just then, with his revolver in his hand, followed by two faithful black servants from a neighboring island; but the French skipper had been cunning enough there too. "Him a Welshman!" the savages cried. "Queenie England no care for him!" For indeed he happened to be born in Wales. And they shot him down as he came, before he could open fire upon them. Then they turned to massacre the Macglashins, the only remaining Europeans on the island.

But just at that moment a sudden idea seemed to strike the Chief. He cried out, "Stop!" The savages fell back and listened with eagerness to what was coming. Then the Chief shouted out again in Kanaka – "I have a thought. The gods have sent it to me. This is my thought. We have killed enough for tonight. Let us catch them alive and bind them. Next moon is the great feast of my father Taranaka. I have an idea – a divine idea. Let us keep them till that day, and then, in honor of the gods, let us roast them and eat them."

The whole assembly answered with a wild shout of delighted assent – "Taranaka! Taranaka! Our great dead Chief! In honor of Taranaka, let us roast them and eat them."

So they rushed wildly on upon the defenseless white family, bound them in rude cords of native make, and carried them off in triumph to Taranaka's temple tomb in the palm-grove.

And that was as much as we could allow the boys to tell us at a time, of their strange adventures. We were afraid of overtaxing their strength at first, and tried to confine their attention as much as possible to tinned meats and sea-biscuit soaked in condensed milk; though I'm bound to admit that as soon as they began to recover appetite a bit, they addressed themselves steadily and seriously to their food, with true British pluck and perseverance. In spite of the terrors from which they had just escaped, they did the fullest justice to Serang-Palo's cookery.