Kitabı oku: «The Ebbing Of The Tide», sayfa 13
IN NOUMÉA
Chester was listening to those charming musicians, the convict band, playing in Nouméa, and saw in the crowd a man he knew—more, an old friend, S–. The recognition was mutual and pleasing to both. They had not met for six years. He was then chief officer of a China steamer; now he was captain of a big tramp steamer that had called in to load nickel ore. “Who,” exclaimed Chester, “would ever have thought of meeting you here?”
He laughed and replied: “I came with a purpose. You remember Miss –, to whom I was engaged in Sydney?”
Chester nodded, expecting from the sparkle in S–‘s dark brown eye that he was going to hear a little gush about her many wifely qualities.
“Well, I was in Sydney three times after I saw you. We were to be married as soon as I got a command. Two years ago I was there last. She had got married. Wrote me a letter saying she knew my calmer judgment would finally triumph over my anger—she had accepted a good offer, and although I might be nettled, perhaps, at first, yet she was sure my good sense would applaud her decision in marrying a man who, although she could never love him as she loved me, was very rich. But she would always look forward to meeting me again. That was all.”
“Hard lines,” said Chester.
“My dear boy, I thought that at first, when her letter knocked me flat aback. But I got over it, and I swore I would pay her out. And I came to this den of convicts to do it, and I did it—yesterday. She is here.”
“Here?” said Chester.
And then he learnt the rest of Captain S–‘s story. A year after his lady-love had jilted him he received a letter from her in England. She was in sad trouble, she said. Her husband, a Victorian official, was serving five years for embezzlement. Her letter was suggestive of a desire to hasten to the “protection” of her sailor lover. She wished, she said, that her husband were dead. But dead or alive she would always hate him.
S– merely acknowledged her letter and sent her £25. In another six months he got a letter from Fiji. She was a governess there, she said, at £75 a year. Much contrition and love, also, in this letter.
S– sent another £25, and remarked that he would see her soon. Fate one day sent him to take command of a steamer in Calcutta bound to Fiji with coolies, thence to Nouméa to load nickel ore. And all the way out across the tropics S–‘s heart was leaping at the thought of seeing his lost love—and telling her that he hated her for her black frozen treachery.
As soon as he had landed his coolies he cautiously set about discovering the family with whom she lived. No one could help him, but a planter explained matters: “I know the lady for whom you inquire, but she doesn’t go by that name. Ask any one about Miss –, the barmaid. She has gone to New Caledonia.”
He asked, and learned that she was well known; and S– wondered why she had brought her beauty to such a climate as that of Fiji when it would have paid her so much better to parade it in Melbourne.
The evening of the day on which his steamer arrived at Nouméa a man brought him a letter. He showed it to Chester.
My darling Will,—Thank God you have come, for surely you have come for me—my heart tells me so. For God’s sake wait on board for me. I will come at eight. To live in this place is breaking my heart. Ever yours, –
She came. He stood her kisses passively, but gave none in return, until she asked him to kiss her. “When you are my wife,” he said, evasively. And then—she must have loved him—she burst out into passionate sobs and fell at his feet in the quiet cabin and told him of her debased life in Fiji. “But, as God hears me, Will, that is all past since your last letter. I was mad. I loved money and did not care how I got it. I left Fiji to come here, intending to return to Australia. But, Will, dear Will, if it is only to throw me overboard, take me away from this hell upon earth. For your sake, Will, I have resisted them here, although I suffer daily, hourly, torture and insult. I have no money, and I am afraid to die and end my sufferings.”
Captain S–, speaking calmly and slowly, placed money in her hand and said, “You must not see me again till the day I am ready for sea. Then bring your luggage and come on board.”
With a smothered sob bursting from her, despite the joy in her heart, the woman turned and left him.
Then S– went up to the Café Palais and played billiards with a steady hand.
There was a great number of people on board to see Captain S– away. Presently a boat came alongside, and a young lady with sweet red lips and shiny hair ascended to the deck.
“Hèlas!” said a French officer to S–, “and so you are taking away the fair one who won’t look at us poor exiles of Nouvelle.”
With a timid smile and fast-beating heart the woman gained the quarter-deck. In front of her stood the broad-shouldered, well-groomed Captain S–, cold, impassive, and deadly pale, with a cruel joy in his breast.
The woman stood still. There was something so appalling in that set white face before her, that her slight frame quivered with an unknown dread. And then the captain spoke, in slow, measured words that cut her to her inmost soul.
“Madam, I do not take passengers!”
No answer. Only short, gasping breaths as she steadied her hand on the rail.
And then, turning to one of the Frenchmen: “M. –, will you request this—this lady to go on shore? She is known to me as a woman of infamous reputation in Fiji. I cannot for a moment entertain the idea of having such a person on board my ship.”
Before the shuddering creature fell a man caught her, and then she was placed in the boat and taken ashore. Of course some of the Frenchmen thought it right to demand an explanation from S–, who said—
“I’ve none to give, gentlemen. If any of you want to fight me, well and good, although I don’t like quarrelling over a pavement-woman. Besides, I rather think you’ll find that the lady will now be quite an acquisition to you.”
But S–‘s revenge was not complete. He had previously arranged matters with his engineer, who presently came along and announced an accident to the machinery—the steamer would be delayed a couple of days. He wanted to see her again—so he told Chester.
“It was a cruel thing,” said his friend.
“Bah!” said S–, “come with me.”
In the crowded bar of the café a woman was laughing and talking gaily. Something made her look up. She put her hand to her eyes and walked slowly from the room.
As the two Englishmen walked slowly down to the wharf the handsome Captain S– whistled cheerily, and asked Chester on board to hear him and his steward play violin and piccolo. “By God, S–,” said Chester, “you have no heart!”
“Right you are, my lad. She made it into stone. But it won’t hurt her as it did me. You see, these Frenchmen here pay well for new beauty; and women love money—which is a lucky thing for many men.”
THE FEAST AT PENTECOST
There was a row in the fo’c’s’le of the Queen Caroline, barque, of Sydney, and the hands were discussing ways and means upon two subjects—making the skipper give them their usual allowance of rum, or killing him, burning the ship, and clearing out and living among the natives.
Half of the crew were white, the others were Maories, Line Islanders, and Hawaiians. The white men wanted the coloured ones to knock the skipper and two mates on the head, while they slept. The natives declined—but they were quite agreeable to run away on shore with their messmates.
The barque was at anchor at one of the New Hebrides. She was a “sandalwooder,” and the captain, Fordham, was, if possible, a greater rascal than any one else on board. He had bargained with the chief of the island for leave to send his crew ashore and cut sandalwood, and on the first day four boatloads were brought off, whereupon Fordham cursed their laziness. One, an ex-Hobart Town convict, having “talked back,” Fordham and the mate tied him up to the pumps and gave him three dozen.
Next day he started the boats away during fierce rain-squalls, and told the men that if they didn’t bring plenty of wood he would “haze” them properly.
At dusk they returned and brought word that they had a lot of wood cut, but had left it ashore as the natives would lend them no assistance to load the boats.
The spokesman on this occasion was a big Maori from the Bay of Islands. Fordham gave him three dozen and put him in irons. Then he told the men they would get no supper till the wood was in the barque’s hold—and he also stopped their grog.
“Well,” said the captain, eyeing them savagely, “what is it going to be? Are you going to get that wood off or not?”
“It’s too dark,” said one; “and, anyway, we want our supper and grog first.”
Fordham made a step towards him, when the whole lot bolted below.
“They’ll turn-to early enough to-morrow,” said he, grimly, “when they find there’s no breakfast for ‘em until that wood’s on deck.” Then he went below to drink rum with his two mates, remarking to his first officer: “You mark my words, Colliss, we’re going to have a roasting hot time of it with them fellows here at Pentecost!”
At daylight next morning the mate, who was less of a brute than the skipper, managed to get some rum and biscuit down into the fo’c’s’le; then they turned-to and manned the boats. At noon the second mate, who was in charge of the cutting party, signalled from the shore that something was wrong.
On Fordham reaching the shore the second mate told him that all the native crew had run off into the bush.
The chief of the island was sent for, and Fordham told him to catch the runaways—fourteen in number—promising seven muskets in return. The white crew were working close by in sullen silence. They grinned when they heard the chief say it would be difficult to capture the men; they were natives, he remarked—if they were white men it would be easy enough. But he would try if the captain helped him.
An hour afterwards the chief was in the bush, talking to the deserters, and taking in an account of the vast amount of trade lying on board the barque.
“See,” said he, to the only man among them who spoke his dialect—a Fijian half-caste from Loma-loma—“this is my scheme. The captain of the ship and those that come with him will I entice into the bush and kill them one by one, for the path is narrow–”
“Good,” said Sam the half-caste, “and then ten of us, with our hands loosely tied, will be taken off to the ship by two score of your men, who will tell the mate that the captain has caught ten of us, and has gone to seek the other four. Then will the ship be ours.”
“Halloa!” said the mate of the barque to the carpenter, “here’s a thundering big crowd of niggers coming off in our two boats, and none of our white chaps with ‘em. Stand by, you chaps, with your muskets. I ain’t going to let all that crowd aboard with only six men in the ship.”
The men left on board watched the progress of the two boats as they were pulled quickly towards the ship. They hardly apprehended any attempt at cutting-off, as from the ship they could discern the figures of some of their shipmates on shore stacking the sandalwood on a ledge of rock, handy for shipping in the boats.
“It’s all right,” called out the mate presently, “the niggers have collared some of our native chaps. I can see that yaller-hided Fiji Sam sitting aft with his hands lashed behind him. Let ‘em come alongside.”
“Cap’en been catch him ten men,” said the native in charge to the mate, “he go look now find him other fellow four men. He tell me you give me two bottle rum, some tobacco, some biscuit.”
“Right you are, you man-catching old’ cannibal,” said the mate, jocosely, “come below.” As the mate went below with the native at his heels, the latter made a quick sign by a backward move of his arm. In an instant the ten apparently-bound men had sprung to their feet, and with their pseudo-captors, flung themselves upon the five men. The wild cry of alarm reached the mate in the cabin. He darted up, and as he reached the deck a tomahawk crashed into his brain.
No need to tell the tale of the savage butchery on deck in all its details. Not one of the men had time to even fire a shot—they went down so quickly under the knives and tomahawks of the fifty men who struggled and strove with one another to strike the first blow. One man, indeed, succeeeded in reaching the main rigging, but ere he had gained ten feet he was stabbed and chopped in half-a-dozen places.
And then, as the remaining members of the crew sat “spelling” in the jungle, and waiting for the skipper’s return, there came a sudden, swift rush of dark, naked forms upon them. Then gasping groans and silence.
There were many oven-fires lit that night and the following day; and although the former shipmates of the “long, baked pigs” were present by the invitation of the chief, their uncultivated tastes were satisfied with such simple things as breadfruit and yams.
That was the “wiping-out” of the Queen Caroline at Pentecost, and the fulfilment of the unconscious prophecy of Captain Fordham to his mate.
AN HONOUR TO THE SERVICE
The Honourable Captain Stanley W– believed in flogging, and during the three years’ cruise of the frigate in the South Pacific he had taken several opportunities of expressing this belief upon the bluejackets of his ship by practical illustrations of his hobby. He was, however—in his own opinion—a most humane man, and was always ready to give a dozen less if Dr. Cartwright suggested, for instance, that Jenkins or Jones hadn’t quite got over his last tricing up, and could hardly stand another dozen so soon. And the chaplain of the frigate, when dining with the Honourable Stanley, would often sigh and shake his head and agree with the captain that the proposed abolition of flogging in the British Navy would do much to destroy its discipline and loosen the feelings of personal attachment between officers and men, and then murmur something complimentary about his Majesty’s ship Pleiades being one of the very few ships in the Service whose captain still maintained so ancient and honoured a custom, the discontinuance of which could only be advocated by common, illiterate persons—such as the blue-jackets themselves.
The frigate was on her way from Valparaiso to Sydney—it was in the days of Governor Bligh—and for nearly three weeks had been passing amongst the low-lying coral islands of the Paumotu or Low Archipelago, when one afternoon in May, 182- she lay becalmed off the little island of Vairaatea. The sea was as smooth as glass, and only the gentlest ocean swell rose and fell over the flat surface of the coral reef. In those days almost nothing was known of the people of the Paumotu Group except that they were a fierce and warlike race and excessively shy of white strangers. Standing on his quarter-deck Captain W– could with his glass see that there were but a few houses on the island—perhaps ten—and as the frigate had been nearly six weeks out from Valparaiso, and officers in the navy did not live as luxuriously then as now, he decided to send a boat ashore and buy some turtle from the natives.
“If you can buy a few thousand cocoanuts as well, do so, Mr. T.,” said the captain, “and I’ll send another boat later on.”
The boat’s crew was well armed, and in command of the second lieutenant. Among them was a man named Hallam, a boatswain’s mate, a dark-faced, surly brute of about fifty. He was hated by nearly every one on board, but as he was a splendid seaman and rigidly exact in the performance of his duties, he was an especial favourite of the captain’s, who was never tired of extolling his abilities and sobriety, and holding him up as an example of a British seaman: and Hallam, like his captain, was a firm believer in the cat.
On pulling in to the beach about a dozen light-skinned natives met them. They were all armed with clubs and spears, but at a sign from one who seemed to be their chief they laid them down All—the chief as well—were naked, save for a girdle of long grass round their loins.
Their leader advanced to Lieutenant T– as he stepped out of the boat, and holding out his hand said, “Good mornin’ What you want?”
Pleased at finding a man who spoke English, the lieutenant told him he had come to buy some turtle and get a boatload of young cocoanuts, and showed him the tobacco and knives intended for payment.
The chiefs eyes glistened at the tobacco; the others, who did not know its use, turned away in indifference, but eagerly handled the knives.
All this time the chiefs eyes kept wandering to the face of Hallam, the boatswain’s mate, whose every movement he followed with a curious, wistful expression. Suddenly he turned to the lieutenant and said, in curious broken English, that cocoanuts were easily to be obtained, but turtle were more difficult; yet if the ship would wait he would promise to get them as many as were wanted by daylight next morning.
“All right,” said Lieutenant T–, “bear a hand with the cocoanuts now, and I’ll tell the captain what you say;” and then to Hallam, “If this calm keeps up, Hallam, I’m afraid the ship will either have to anchor or tow off the land—she’s drifting in fast.”
In an hour the boat was filled with cocoanuts, and Lieutenant T– sent her off to the ship with a note to the captain, remaining himself with Hallam, another leading seaman named Lacy, and five bluejackets. Presently the chief, in his strange, halting English, asked the officer to come to his house and sit down and rest while his wife prepared food for him. And as they walked the native’s eyes still sought the face of Hallam the boatswain.
His wife was a slender, graceful girl, and her modest, gentle demeanour as she waited upon her husband himself impressed the lieutenant considerably.
“Where did you learn to speak English?” the officer asked his host after they had finished.
He answered slowly, “I been sailor man American whaleship two year;” and then, pointing to a roll of soft mats, said, “You like sleep, you sleep. Me like go talk your sailor man.”
Hallam, morose and gloomy, had left the others, and was sitting under the shade of a toa-tree, when he heard the sound of a footstep, and looking up saw the dark-brown, muscular figure of the native chief beside him.
“Well,” he said, surlily, “what the h– do you want?”
The man made him no answer—only looked at him with a strange, eager light of expectancy in his eyes, and his lips twitched nervously, but no sound issued from them. For a moment the rude, scowling face of the old seaman seemed to daunt him. Then, with a curious choking sound in his throat, he sprang forward and touched the other man on the arm.
“Father! Don’t you know me?”
With trembling hands and blanched face the old man rose to his feet, and in a hoarse whisper there escaped from his lips a name that he had long years ago cursed and forgotten. His hands opened and shut again convulsively, and then his savage, vindictive nature asserted itself again as he found his voice, and with the rasping accents of passion poured out curses upon the brown, half-naked man that stood before him. Then he turned to go. But the other man put out a detaining hand.
“It is as you say. I am a disgraced man. But you haven’t heard why I deserted from the Tagus. Listen while I tell you. I was flogged. I was only a boy, and it broke my heart.”
“Curse you, you chicken-hearted sweep! I’ve laid the cat on the back of many a better man than myself, and none of ‘em ever disgraced themselves by runnin’ away and turnin’ into a nigger, like you!”
The man heard the sneer with unmoved face, then resumed—
“It broke my heart. And when I was hiding in Dover, and my mother used to come and dress my wounds, do you remember what happened?”
“Aye, you naked swab, I do: your father kicked you out!”
“And I got caught again, and put in irons, and got more cat. Two years afterwards I cleared again in Sydney, from the Sirius.... And I came here to live and die among savages. That’s nigh on eight years ago.”
There was a brief silence. The old man, with fierce, scornful eyes, looked sneeringly at the wild figure of the broken wanderer, and then said—
“What’s to stop me from telling our lieutenant you’re a deserter? I would, too, by God, only I don’t want my shipmates to know I’ve got a nigger for a son.”
The gibe passed unheeded, save for a sudden light that leapt into the eyes of the younger man, then quickly died away.
“Let us part in peace,” he said. “We will never meet again. Only tell me one thing—is my mother dead?”
“Yes.”
“Thank God for that,” he murmured. Then without another word the outcast turned away and disappeared among the cocoa-palms.
The second boat from the Pleiades brought the captain, and as he and the lieutenant stood and talked they watched the natives carrying down the cocoa-nuts.
“Hurry them up, Hallam,” said Lieutenant T–; “the tide is falling fast. By the by, where is that fellow Lacy; I don’t see him about?”
As he spoke a woman’s shriek came from the chiefs house, which stood some distance apart from the other houses, and a tall brown man sprang out from among the other natives about the boats and dashed up the pathway to the village.
“Quick, Hallam, and some of you fellows,” said Captain W–, “run and see what’s the matter. That scoundrel, Lacy, I suppose, among the women,” he added, with a laugh, to the lieutenant.
The two officers followed the men. In a few minutes they came upon a curious scene. Held in the strong arms of two stout seamen was the native chief, whose heaving chest and working features showed him to be under some violent emotion. On the ground, with his head supported by a shipmate, lay Lacy, with blackened and distorted face, and breathing stertorously. Shaking with fear and weeping passionately as she pressed her child to her bosom, the young native wife looked beseechingly into the faces of the men who held her husband.
“What is the meaning of this?” said Captain W–‘s clear, sharp voice, addressing the men who held the chief.
“That hound there”—the men who held their prisoner nearly let him go in their astonishment—“came in here. She was alone. Do you want to know more? I tried to kill him.”
“Let him loose, men,” and Captain W– stepped up to the prisoner and looked closely into his dark face. “Ah! I thought so—a white man. What is your name?”
The wanderer bent his head, then raised it, and looked for an instant at the sullen face of Hallam.
“I have no name,” he said.
“Humph,” muttered Captain W– to his lieutenant, “a runaway convict, most likely. He can’t be blamed, though, for this affair. He’s a perfect brute, that fellow Lacy.” Then to the strange white man he turned contemptuously:
“I’m sorry this man assaulted your wife. He shall suffer for it to-morrow. At the same time I’m sorry I can’t tie you up and flog you, as a disgrace to your colour and country, you naked savage.”
The outcast took two strides, a red gleam shone in his eyes, and his voice shook with mad passion.
“‘A naked savage’; and you would like to flog me. It was a brute such as you made me what I am,” and he struck the captain of the Pleiades in the face with his clenched hand.
“We’ll have to punish the fellow, T–,” said Captain W–, as with his handkerchief to his lips he staunched the flow of blood. “If I let a thing like this pass his native friends would imagine all sorts of things and probably murder any unfortunate merchant captain that may touch here in the future. But, as Heaven is my witness, I do so on that ground only—deserter as he admits himself to be. Hurry up that fellow, T–.”
“That fellow” was Hallam, who had been sent to the boat for a bit of line suitable for the purpose in view. His florid face paled somewhat when the coxswain jeeringly asked him if he didn’t miss his green bag, and flung him an old pair of yoke-lines.
The business of flogging was not, on the whole, unduly hurried. Although “All Hands to Witness Punishment” was not piped, every native on the island, some seventy or so all told, gathered round the cocoanut-tree to which the man was lashed, and at every stroke of the heavy yoke-lines they shuddered. One, a woman with a child sitting beside her, lay face to the ground, and as each cruel swish and thud fell on her ear the savage creature wept.
“That’s enough, Hallam,” said Captain W–, somewhat moved by the tears and bursting sobs of the pitying natives, who, when they saw the great blue weals on the brown back swell and black drops burst out, sought to break in through the cordon of blue jackets.
their arms and carry him to his house; but his strength was not all gone, and he thrust them aside. Then he spoke, and even the cold, passionless Captain W– felt his face flush at the burning words:
“For seven years, lads, I’ve lived here, a naked savage, as your captain called me. I had a heavy disgrace once, an’ it just broke my heart like—I was flogged—and I wanted to hide myself out of the world. Seven years it is since I saw a white man, an’ I’ve almost forgotten I was a white man once; an’ now because I tried to choke a hound that wanted to injure the only being in the world I have to love, I’m tied up and lashed like a dog—by my own father!”
The island was just sinking below the horizon when the burly figure of boatswain’s mate Hallam was seen to disappear suddenly over the bows, where he had been standing.
“A very regrettable occurrence,” said Captain W–, pompously, to the chaplain when the boats returned from the search. “No doubt the horror of seeing his only son a disgraced fugitive and severed from all decent associations preyed upon his mind and led him to commit suicide. Such men as Hallam, humble as was his position, are an Honour to the Service. I shall always remember him as a very zealous seaman.”
“Particularly with the cat,” murmured Lieutenant T–.
