A Modern Buccaneer Part 27

Harry refused to advise the king, and then taking a good look at the white men present, said, "Well, good-bye, King Tokusar! I am going back to my station--the station I am minding for Captain Hayston. I have six men and four women all armed, and the American flag on a pole in front of my door; and the first man that attempts to do me any mischief, white, black, or yellow, _I'll shoot him_. You can ask the white men from Pleasant Island if I am not a man of my word. They know me."

Harry then got into his boat and pulled on board the man-of-war, where the first lieutenant very kindly allowed him to see me. I felt sincere regret at parting with Harry, telling him to beware of the other traders. I repeated what had been told me by Kitty of Ebon and Lalia. He laughed, and said he was always prepared, and meant to do justice to the trust reposed in him by Captain Hayston. "I'm the wrong man," he said on leaving, "to abandon any station and property left in my charge." Then, with oft-repeated wishes that we might meet again, after hearing of the Captain's safety we parted.

Then came again good simple Kusis and his people with Lalia. She had in charge little Kitty and Toby. Poor Toby clung to my legs and sobbed as if his heart was breaking, when I told him that I did not know when the Captain would come back again. If no one else loved his master Toby did, and I tried in vain to a.s.suage his grief. I was glad to hear from Lalia that she was going to young Harry's place with the two children. There I knew they would be well treated and cared for.

"Look!" said she, pointing to the little fellow, "the Captain had two good friends besides yourself, young Harry, and the n.i.g.g.e.r Johnny, but this little fellow has never ceased crying for 'Captin' since he left the village in South harbour. Never mind, little Toby, we will wait and the 'Captin' will be sure to come;" and then she stooped down, and tried by kissing and coaxing to prevent him from giving utterance to his doleful wails and sobs of grief.

Lalia told me, as with glistening eyes and trembling hands we said farewell, that her one hope now was to be able to get back to her distant home on Easter Island, that Captain Hayston would return with a ship; and, if he went towards Samoa or Tahiti, take her with him for that portion of the many thousand miles that lay between Strong's Island and her native land. That he would do this she felt confident. "For,"

she said, "he once told me that he would stand by me if I was in trouble--it was when we were all washed ash.o.r.e together--you remember?

_and he never breaks his word_."

Whatever Lalia's past life had been, I could never help admiring her many n.o.ble traits of character. I owed her life-long grat.i.tude for her heroic self-sacrifice on the fateful night of the wreck of the _Leonora_; by me, at least, she will never be forgotten. Poor Lalia!

Brave, loving, lovely child of the charmed isles of the southern main!

reckless alike in love and hate, who shall judge? who condemn thee? Not I!

Kusis, Tulp, and Kinie clung to me as if they could not bear to say farewell. I see before me often the honest, kindly countenance of Kusis as, with his hand clasped in mine, he looked trustfully into my face and made me promise that some day I would return and live with him once more. And so freshly at that time came the remembrance of the happy days I had pa.s.sed in his quiet home, dreaming the hours away within sight of the heaving bosom of the blue, boundless Pacific Ocean, so deliciously restful after the stormy life of the _Leonora_ and her wild commander, that I believe I really intended to return to Strong's Island some day; but, as we used to say at Sydney college, "_Ds aliter visum_."

Queen S sent me a letter as follows:--

DEAR FRIEND,--Kitty Ebon send Lalia to see you. We all very sorry, but must not say so, because Mr. Morland very strong man now. Where you think Captain Hayston go in little boat? I 'fraid he die in boat. I very sorry for Captain--very kind man--but bad man to natives sometimes.

QUEEN S.

Enclosed were these pencilled lines from Kitty of Ebon:--

MY DEAR FRIEND,--All the people from Mout been to Mr. Morland to ask why you are in prison, and he says you will be hung for stealing a ship. We all very sorry, all Mout people love you very much--and me too. Good-bye, dear friend, come back to Kusis and Mout people, for I don't think you be hanged in Fiji.--Your sincere friend,

CATHERINE EBON.

But when the light-hearted blue-jackets manned the capstan and merrily footed it round to lively music, and the great steamer's head was pointed to the pa.s.sage, my thoughts were far away, where in fancy I discerned a tiny boat breasting the vast ocean swell, while sitting aft with his face turned to the westward, his strong brown hand on the tiller, was the once dreaded Captain of the _Leonora_; the lawless rover of the South Seas; the man whose name was known and feared from the South Pole to j.a.pan, and yet through all, my true friend and most indulgent commander. With all his faults, our constant a.s.sociation had enabled me to appreciate his many n.o.ble qualities and fine natural impulses. And as the black hull of the _Rosario_ rose and fell to the sea, her funnel the while pouring forth volumes of sable smoke, the island gradually sunk astern, but the memories connected with it and Captain Hayston will abide with me for ever.

Harry Skillings I never saw again, but heard that he went to Truk in the North-west Carolines. Black Johnny was murdered in New Britain. The other Harry with his native wife fell victims to the treacherous savages of the Solomon Islands. Jansen died a few years since on Providence Island. Some of the other traders and members of the crew I have heard of from time to time, scattered far and wide over the Isles of the Pacific. Lalia died in Honolulu about five years since, constant in her attempts to reach her distant home on Easter Island.

CHAPTER XIV

NORFOLK ISLAND--ARCADIA

And now, my innocence and lack of complicity in Hayston's irregularities having been established, a revulsion of feeling took place in the minds of the captain and officers of the _Rosario_ with regard to me.

After the fullest explanations furnished by the traders and others, backed up by the manifest sympathy and good-will of the inhabitants of Strong Island, it became apparent that some sort of reparation was due to me. This took the form of a courteous invitation to accept a pa.s.sage to Sydney in H.M.S. _Rosario_, and to join the officers' mess on the voyage. "I'm afraid that we acted hastily in your case, Mr. Telfer!"

said Captain Dupont. "You have been thoroughly cleared of all accusations made against you. I am bound to say they were very few. And you seem chiefly to have acted as a peacemaker and a power for good. I have gathered that you are anxious to rejoin your friends in Sydney. I shall be glad to have your company on the return voyage. What do you say? I trust you will not refuse; I shall otherwise think you have not forgiven my apparent harshness."

Thus pressed to return to family and friends--from whom, at times, in spite of my inborn roving propensities, the separation had cost me dear--what could I do but thank the manly and courteous potentate, and comply with an invitation so rarely granted to a South Sea adventurer. I was the more loth to lose the opportunity as there had come upon me of late a violent fit of homesickness which I in vain strove to combat.

I had in truth now no particular reason for remaining at Kusaie, or indeed anywhere in the South Seas. Hayston was gone; his magnetic influence no longer controlled my will, as in our first acquaintance.

The _Leonora_--our pride and boast, our peerless floating home--no longer "walked the waters like a thing of life," but lay dead, dismantled, dishonoured on the ruthless coral rocks which had crushed the life out of her on that fatal night.

I realised now with thankfulness that I had narrowly escaped being liable as an accessory for some of Hayston's ultra-legal proceedings--to call them by no harsher name.

How often, indeed, in the reckless daring of boyhood is the fatal line crossed which severs imprudence from crime! The inexorable fiat of human justice knows no shade of criminality. "Guilty or not guilty," goes forth the verdict. There is no appeal on earth. And the faulty, but not all evil-natured victim, is doomed to live out all the years of a life branded as a felon, or maddened by the fears which must ever torture the fugitive from justice!

If I stayed in the South Seas on my present footing, nothing remained but the trader's life, pure and simple. I had little doubt but that I could make a living, perhaps a competence in years to come. But that meant exile in every sense of the word. Complete severance from my kindred, whom my soul yearned to see again; from the friends of my boyhood; from the loved and lovely land of my birth; from the thousand and one luxuries, material and intellectual, which are comprehended in the word civilisation. I had slaked my thirst for adventure, danger, and mystery. I had carried my life in my hand, so to speak, and times without number had doubted whether I should retain that more or less valuable possession for the next ten minutes. I had felt the poisoned arrows at Santa Cruz hurtling around me, even hiss through my waving locks, when the death-scratch summoned a man on either hand. I had nearly been "blue sharks' meat" as Hayston phrased it, on coral strand amid "the cruel crawling foam." All chances and risks I had taken heedlessly in the past. But now I began to feel that I must p.r.o.nounce the momentous decision which would make or mar my future career. The island life was very fair. For one moment I saw myself the owner of a trading station on Pingelap or Arurai. I am sitting in a large, cool house, on soft, parti-coloured mats, surrounded by laughing girls garlanded and flower-crowned. Around and above, save in the plantation which surrounds the house, is the soft green light of the paradisal woodland illumining its incredible wealth of leaf.a.ge, fruit, and flowers. Before me lies the endless, azure sea-plain. And oh, my sea! my own, my beloved sea!--loved in childhood, youth, and age, if such be granted to me! In my ears are the magical murmurous surge-voices, to the lulling of which I have so often slept like a tired child. Fruit and flowers--love and war--manly effort--danger--high health--boundless liberty,--all things necessary to the happiness of primeval man, before he became sophisticated by the false wisdom of these later ages, should I not possess in profusion? Why, then, should I not remain in this land of changeless summer--this magic treasure-house of all delights of land and sea?

Long and anxiously did I ponder over my decision. Those only who have known the witchery of the "summer Isles of Eden," have felt the charm of the dream-life of the Southern Main--the sorcery of that lotus-eating existence, alternating with the fierce hazards and stormy delights which give a richness to life unknown to a guarded, narrowed civilisation--can gauge my irresolution.

I had well-nigh resolved to adhere to the trader's life--until I had made a fortune with which I could return in triumph--when I thought of my mother! The old house, with its broad, stone-paved verandah came back to me--the large, "careless-ordered" garden with its trailing, tropical shrubs and fruit-trees--the lordly araucarias, the boat-house, the stone-walled bath wherein I had learned to swim--all came back in that moment when memory recalled the scenes and surroundings of my early life. I could hear a voice ever low and sweet, as in the days of my childhood, which said, "Oh! my boy! my boy! come back--let me see my darling's face before I die."

I was conquered--the temptations of the strange life, with its sorceries and phantasms, which had so long enveloped me, were swept away like a ghost-procession at dawn. And in their place came the steadfast resolve to return to the home of my youth, thenceforward to pursue such modes of life as might be marked out for me. In a new land like my birth-place, with a continent for an arena, I had no fear but that a career would open itself for me. In no country under heaven are there so many chances of success, so many roads to fortune, as in the lone wastes upon which the Southern Cross looks down. On land or sea--the tracks are limitless--the avenues to fortune innumerable. Gold was to be had for the seeking; silver and gems lay as yet in their desert solitudes, only awaiting the adventurer who, strong in the daring of manhood, should compel the waste to disclose its secrets--only awaited the hour and the man.

For such enterprises was I peculiarly fitted. So much could then be said without boast or falsehood on my part. My frame, inured to withstand every change of temperature which sea or land could furnish, was of unusual strength. By hard experience I had learned to bear myself masterfully among men of widely various dispositions and characters. I took my stand henceforth as a citizen of the world--as a rover on sea and land--as more than a suppliant to fortune, a "Conquistador."

The homeward voyage being now fairly commenced, I began to speculate on the probabilities of my future career. During the years which I had pa.s.sed among the islands I had acquired experience--more or less valuable--but very little cash. This was chiefly in consequence of our crowning disaster, the wreck of the _Leonora_. But for that untoward gale, my share of the proceeds of the venture would have exceeded the profits of all my other trading enterprises. As it was, I was left, if not altogether penniless, still in a position which would debar me from making more than a brief stay with my friends in Sydney, unless I consented to be beholden to them for support. That I held to be impossible. For a few weeks I felt that my finances would hold out. And after that, was there not a whole world of adventures--risks, hardships, dangers, if you will--all that makes life worth living--open before me; the curtain had fallen upon one act of the life drama of Hilary Telfer.

What of that? Were there not four more, at least, to come?

Even the princess had not arrived. There had been a "first robber" on the boards, perhaps--even more of that persuasion. But the princ.i.p.al stage business was only commencing--the dnouement was obviously far off. Thereupon my hopes rose as if freshly illumined. My sanguine nature--boundless in faith, fertile in expedient--rea.s.serted itself.

Temporarily depressed, more in sympathy with Hayston than with my own ill-luck, it seemed more vigorous and elastic in rebound than ever. The memory of my island life became faint and dreamily indistinct. The forms of Hayston, the king and queen, of Lalia, with sad, reproachful gaze--of Hope Island Nellie, lifting a rifle with the mien of an angered G.o.ddess--of Kitty of Ebon, incarnate daughter of the dusky Venus--of the bronzed and wrinkled trader, with blood and to spare on his sinewy hand--of young Harry and the negro Johnny. All these forms and faces, once so familiar, seemed to recede into the misty distance until they faded away from my mental vision.

With them pa.s.sed into shadow-land the joyous life of my youth--of the untrammelled, care-free existence--such as no man may find again in this world of slow, tracking care and hasty disenchantment. "Was I wise?" I asked myself again and again, in quitting it for the hard and anxious pursuits of the Continent? Were there not a dozen places besides Strong's Island where I should be welcomed, fted, caressed, almost worshipped as a restored divinity? Was it well to abandon the rank which I had acquired among these simple people? Was it-- But no. For ever had I made the decision. Once resolved, I disliked changing my plans. Burdened with a regret which for days I could neither subdue nor remove, I adhered unflinchingly to my resolution, and addressed myself to the steady contemplation of the future.

Now had commenced for me a new life--a new world socially speaking. The quiet reserve and unemotional bearing of the British officer was subst.i.tuted for the frank accost and reckless speech of the island trader or wandering mariner. I was prompt, however, to a.s.similate the modish bearing of my companions, and a.s.sisted by some natural alertness, or perhaps inherited tendencies, soon became undistinguishable from the honourables and lordlings of the gun-room. Upon my repose of manner, indeed, I was often complimented. "By Jove, old fellow," one of the offshoots of the British aristocracy would say, "one would think you had been at Rugby or Eton. And I suppose you have never seen England.

Certainly you have the pull of us in make and shape. I can't think how they grow such fellows,--more English than the English,--with your blue eyes and fair hair, too, in these G.o.d-forsaken regions."

"Because," I said, "I am of as pure English blood as yourself; have been reared, and moulded, and surrounded by English people, and have all the traditions of the old country at my fingers' end. For the rest, I hold that this end of the world is more favourable to the growth of Anglo-Saxons, as you call yourselves, than the other."

"Well! it looks like it, I must say," said my new friend. "I only hope that when the time comes for fighting, by sea and land--and, mark my words, come it will--that you will be found as stanch as I think you are."

"Be sure we shall be," said I. "We have inherited the true English 'grit,' as Americans say. You all said _they_ couldn't fight when their war began; when it finished, the world gave a different verdict. We are our fathers' sons, neither more nor less. The bull-dog and the game-c.o.c.k still fight to the death in our country. Many a time have I seen it. And so will we when our time comes, and when we think it worth our while."

We carried an order from the New South Wales Government to call in at Norfolk Island--once the ocean prison of the more desperate felons of the old convict rgime, who had been replaced by the descendants of the Pitcairn islanders. They, in their turn the descendants of mutinous sailors and Tahitian women--now the most moral, G.o.d-fearing, and ideally perfect race on the face of the earth.

What a miracle had been wrought! Who could have imagined that the last days of a rough old sailor, spent among the survivors of a group of savage women who had butchered their mates, could have so firmly fixed the morale of a whole community that virtue should have indelibly impressed itself upon a hundred families. Sydney lies about S.S.W. from Kusaie, but to avoid pa.s.sing through the dangers of the New Hebrides, and the reef-studded vicinity of New Caledonia, a direct south course with a little easting was decided upon.

We made Norfolk Island, the distance being about two thousand miles, in ten days' easy steaming from Strong's Island. This lovely island was discovered by Cook in 1774.

A military man writing of it in 1798, draws a comparison between it and Sydney much to the disadvantage of the latter. "The air is soft (he says) and the soil inexpressibly productive. It is a perfect section of paradise. Our officers and their wives were sensibly affected at their departure, and what they regarded as banishment to Sydney."

Another officer writing of it in 1847, says: "It is by nature a paradise adorned with all the choicest gifts of nature--climate, scenery, and vegetable productions; by art and man's policy turned into an earthly h.e.l.l, disfigured by crime, misery, and despair."