By Reef and Palm Part 11

The island had but very few inhabitants--perhaps ten or twelve men and double that number of women and children. No ship, they told us, had ever entered the lagoon but Bully Hayes' brig, and that was nine years before. There was nothing on the island to tempt a trading vessel, and even the sperm whalers, as they lumbered lazily past from Strong's Island to Guam, would not bother to lower a boat and "d.i.c.ker" for pearl-sh.e.l.l or turtle.

At the time of Hayes' visit the people were in sore straits, and on the brink of actual starvation, for although there were fish and turtle in plenty, they had not the strength to catch them. A few months before, a cyclone had destroyed nearly all the coconut trees, and an epidemic followed it, and carried off half the scanty population.

The jaunty sea-rover--than whom a kinder-hearted man to NATIVES never sailed the South Seas--took pity on the survivors, especially the youngest and prettiest girls, and gave them a pa.s.sage in the famous LEONORA to another island where food was plentiful. There they remained for some years, till the inevitable MAL DU PAYS that is inborn to every Polynesian and Micronesian, became too strong to be resisted; and so one day a wandering sperm whaler brought them back again.

But in their absence strangers had come to the island. As the people landed from the boats of the whale-ship, two brown men, a woman, and a child, came out of one of the houses, and gazed at them. Then they fled to the farthest end of the island and hid.

Some weeks pa.s.sed before the returned islanders found out the retreat of the strangers, who were armed with rifles, and called them to "come out and be friends." They did so, and by some subtle treachery the two men were killed during the night.

The woman, who was young and handsome, was spared, and, from what we could learn, had been well treated ever since.

"Where did the strangers come from?" we asked.

That they could not tell us. But the woman had since told them that the ship had anch.o.r.ed in the lagoon because she was leaking badly, and that the captain and crew were trying to stop the leak when she began to heel over, and they had barely time to save a few things when she sank.

In a few days the captain and crew left the island in the boat, and, rather than face the dangers of a long voyage in such a small boat, the two natives and the woman elected to remain on the island.

"That's a mighty fishy yarn," said Packenham to me. "I daresay these fellows have been doing a little cutting-off business. But then I don't know of any missing vessel. We'll go ash.o.r.e to-morrow and have a look round."

A little after sunset the skipper and I were leaning over the rail, watching the figures of the natives, as they moved to and fro in the glare of the fires lighted here and there along the beach.

"Hallo!" said Packenham, "here's a canoe coming, with only a woman in it. By thunder! she's travelling, too, and coming straight for the ship."

A few minutes more and the canoe was alongside. The woman hastily picked up a little girl that was sitting in the bottom, looked up, and called out in English--

"Take my little girl, please."

A native sailor leant over the bulwarks and lifted up the child, and the woman clambered after her. Then, seizing the child from the sailor, she flew along the deck and into the cabin.

She was standing facing us as we followed and entered, holding the child tightly to her bosom. The soft light of the cabin lamp fell full upon her features, and we saw that she was very young, and seemed wildly excited.

"Who are you?" we said, when she advanced, put out a trembling hand to us, and said: "Don't you know me, Mr Supercargo? I am Nerida, Taplin's wife." Then she sank on a seat and sobbed violently.

We waited till she regained her composure somewhat, and then I said: "Nerida, where is Taplin?"

"Dead," she said in a voice scarce above a whisper; "only us two are left--I and little Teresa."

Packenham held out his hands to the child. With wondering, timid eyes, she came, and for a moment or two looked doubtingly upwards into the brown, handsome face of the skipper, and then nestled beside him.

For a minute or so the ticking of the cabin clock broke the silence, ere I ventured to ask the one question uppermost in my mind.

"Nerida, how and where did Taplin die?"

"My husband was murdered at sea," she said and then she covered her face with her hands.

"Don't ask her any more now," said Packenham pityingly; "let her tell us to-morrow."

She raised her face. "Yes, I will tell you to-morrow. You will take me away with you, will you not, gentlemen--for my child's sake?"

"Of course," said the captain promptly. And he stretched out his honest hand to her.

"She's a wonderfully pretty woman," said Packenham, as we walked the p.o.o.p later on, and he glanced down through the open skylight to where she and the child slept peacefully on the cushioned transoms. "How prettily she speaks English, too. Do you think she was fond of her husband, or was it merely excitement that made her cry?--native women are as p.r.o.ne to be as hysterical as our own when under any violent emotion."

"I can only tell you, Packenham, that when I saw her last, five years ago, she was a graceful girl of eighteen, and as full of happiness as a bird is of song. She looks thirty now, and her face is thin and drawn--but I don't say all for love of Taplin."

"That will all wear off by and by," said the skipper confidently.

"Yes," I thought, "and she won't be a widow long."

Next morning Nerida had an hour or two among the prints and muslin in the trade-room, and there was something of the old beauty about her when she sat down to breakfast with us. We were to sail at noon. The leak had been stopped, and Packenham was in high good-humour.

"Nerida," I inquired unthinkingly, "do you know what became of the ALIDA? She never turned up again."

"Yes," she answered; "she is here, at the bottom of the lagoon. Will you come and look at her?"

After breakfast we lowered the dingy, the captain and I pulling. Nerida steered us out to the north end of the lagoon till we reached a spot where the water suddenly deepened. It was, in fact, a deep pool, some three or four hundred feet in diameter, closed in by a continuous wall of coral rock, the top of which, even at low water, would be perhaps two or three fathoms under the surface.

She held up her hands for us to back water, then she gazed over the side into the water.

"Look," she said, "there lies the ALIDA."

We bent over the side of the boat. The waters of the lagoon were as smooth as gla.s.s and as clear. We saw two slender rounded columns that seemed to shoot up in a slanting direction from out the vague, blue depths beneath, to within four or five fathoms of the surface of the water. Swarms of gorgeously-hued fish swam and circled in and about the ma.s.ses of scarlet and golden weed that clothed the columns from their tops downward, and swayed gently to and fro as they glided in and out.

A hawk-bill turtle, huge, black, and misshapen, slid out from beneath the dark ledge of the reef, and swam slowly across the pool, and then, between the masts, sank to the bottom.

"'Twas six years ago," said Nerida, as we raised our heads.

That night, as the PALESTINE sped noiselessly before the trade wind to the westward she told me, in the old Funafuti tongue, the tragedy of the ALIDA.

"The schooner," she said, "sailed very quickly, for on the fifteenth day out from Funafuti we saw the far-off peaks of Strong's Island. I was glad, for Kusaie is not many days' sail from Ponape--and I hated to be on the ship. The man with the blue eyes filled me with fear when he looked at me; and he and the captain and mate were for ever talking amongst themselves in whispers.

"There were five native sailors on board--two were countrymen of mine, and three were Tafitos [Natives of the Gilbert Islands].

"One night we were close to a little island called Mokil [Duperrey's Island], and Taplin and I were awakened by a loud cry on deck; my two countrymen were calling on him to help them. He sprang on deck, pistol in hand, and, behold! the schooner was laid to the wind with the land close to, and the boat alongside, and the three white men were binding my country-men with ropes, because they would not get into the boat.

"'Help us, O friend!' they called to my husband in their own tongue; 'the white men say that if we go not ash.o.r.e here at Mokil they will kill us. Help us--for they mean evil to thee and Nerida. He with the yellow moustache wants her for his wife.'