The Call Of The South Part 20

I little imagined that within two years I should have a rather similar experience to that of Rogers, though in my case it was a very brief one.

Yet it was all too long for me, and I shall always remember it as the weirdest experience of my life.

I have elsewhere in this volume spoken of the affectionate regard I have always had for the Samoan people, with whom I pa.s.sed some of the happiest years of my life. I have lived among them in peace and in war, have witnessed many chivalrous and heroic deeds, and yet have seen acts of the most terrible cruelty to the living, the mutilation and dishonouring of the dead killed in combat, and other deeds that filled me with horror and repulsion. And yet the perpetrators were all professing Christians--either Protestant or Roman Catholic--and would no more think of omitting daily morning and evening prayer, and attending service in church or chapel every Sunday, than they would their daily bathe in sea or river.

Always shall I remember one incident that occurred during the civil war between King Malietoa and his rebel subjects at the town of Saluafata.

The _olo_ or trenches, of the king's troops had been carried by the rebels, among whom was a young warrior who had often distinguished himself by his reckless bravery. At the time of the a.s.sault I was in the rebel lines, for I was on very friendly terms with both sides, and each knew that I would not betray the secrets of the other, and that my only object was to render aid to the wounded.

This young man, Tolu, told me, before joining in the a.s.sault, that he had a brother, a cousin, and an uncle in the enemy's trenches, and that he trusted he should not meet any one of them, for he feared that he might turn _pala'ai_ (coward) and not "do his duty". He was a Roman Catholic, and had been educated by the Marist Brothers, but all his relatives, with the exception of one sister, were Protestants--members of the Church established by the London Missionary Society.

An American trader named Parter and I watched the a.s.sault, and saw the place carried by the rebels, and went in after them. Among the dead was Tolu, and we were told that he had shot himself in grief at having cut down his brother, whom he did not recognise.

Now as to my own weird experience.

There had been severe fighting in the f.a.galoa district of the Island of Upolu, and many villages were in flames when I left the Port of Tiavea in my boat for f.a.galoa Bay, a few miles along the sh.o.r.e. I was then engaged in making a trip along the north coast, visiting almost every village, and making arrangements for the purchase of the coming crop of copra (dried coco-nut). I was everywhere well received by both Malietoa's people and the rebels, but did but little business. The natives were too occupied in fighting to devote much time to husking and drying coco-nuts, except when they wanted to get money to buy arms and ammunition.

My boat's crew consisted of four natives of Savage Island (Niue), many of whom are settled in Samoa, where they have ample employment as boatmen and seamen. They did not at all relish the sound of bullets whizzing over the boat, as we sometimes could not help crossing the line of fire, and they had a horror of travelling at night-time, imploring me not to run the risk of being slaughtered by a volley from the sh.o.r.e--as how could the natives know in the darkness that we were not enemies.

f.a.galoa Bay is deep, narrow and very beautiful. Small villages a few miles apart may be seen standing in the midst of groves of coco-nut palms, and orange, banana and bread-fruit trees, and everywhere bright mountain streams of crystal water debouch into the lovely bay.

On Sunday afternoon I sailed into the bay and landed at the village of Samamea on the east side, intending to remain for the night We found the people plunged in grief--a party of rebels had surprised a village two miles inland, and ruthlessly slaughtered all the inhabitants as well as a party of nearly a score of visitors from the town of Salimu, on the west side of the bay. So sudden was the onslaught of the rebels that no one in the doomed village escaped except a boy of ten years of age.

After being decapitated, the bodies of the victims were thrown into the houses, and the village set on fire.

The people of Samamea hurriedly set out to pursue the raiding rebels, and an engagement ensued, in which the latter were badly beaten, and fled so hurriedly that they had to abandon all the heads they had taken the previous day in order to save their own.

The chief of Samamea, in whose house I had my supper, gave me many details of the fighting, and then afterwards asked me if I would come and look at the heads that had been recovered from the enemy. They were in the "town house" and were covered over with sheets of navy blue cloth, or matting. A number of natives were seated round the house, conversing in whispers, or weeping silently.

"These," said the chief to me, pointing to a number of heads placed apart from the others, "are the heads of the Salimu people--seventeen in all, men, women and three children. We have sent word to Salimu to the relatives to come for them. I cannot send them myself, for no men can be spared, and we have our own dead to attend to as well, and may ourselves be attacked at any time."'

A few hours later messengers arrived from Salimu. They had walked along the sh.o.r.e, for the bay was very rough--it had been blowing hard for two days--and, the wind being right ahead, they would not launch a canoe--it would only have been swamped.

Taken to see the heads of their relatives and friends, the messengers gave way to most uncontrollable grief, and their cries were so distressing that I went for a walk on the beach--to be out of hearing.

When I returned to the village I found the visitors from Salimu and the chief of Samamea awaiting to interview me. The chief, acting as their spokeman, asked me if I would lend them my boat to take the heads of their people to Salimu. He had not a single canoe he could spare, except very small ones, which would be useless in such weather, whereas my whaleboat would make nothing of it.

I could not refuse their request--it would have been ungracious of me, and it only meant a half-hour's run across the bay, for Salimu was exactly abreast of Samamea. So I said I would gladly sail them over in my boat at sunset, when I should be ready.

The heads were placed in baskets, and reverently carried down to the beach, and placed in the boat, and with our lug-sail close reefed we pushed off just after dark.

There were nine persons in the boat--the four Salimu people, my crew of four and myself. The night was starlight and rather cold, for every now and then a chilly rain squall would sweep down from the mountains.

As we spun along before the breeze no one spoke, except in low tones.

Our dreadful cargo was amidships, each basket being covered from view, but every now and then the boat would ship some water, and when I told one of my men to bale out, he did so with shuddering horror, for the water was much blood-stained.

When we were more than half-way across, and could see the lights and fires of Salimu, a rain squall overtook us, and at the same moment the boat struck some floating object with a crash, and then slid over it, and as it pa.s.sed astern I saw what was either a log or plank about twenty feet long.

"Boat is stove in, for'ard!" cried one of my men, and indeed that was very evident, for the water was pouring in--she had carried away her stem, and started all the forward timber ends.

To have attempted to stop the inrush of water effectually would have been waste, of time, but I called to my men to come aft as far as they could, so as to let the boat's head lift; and whilst two of them kept on baling, the others shook out the reef in our lug, and the boat went along at a great speed, half full of water as she was, and down by the stern. The water still rushed in, and I told the Samoans to move the baskets of heads farther aft, so that the men could bale out quicker.

"We'll be all right in ten minutes, boys," I cried to my men, as I steered; "I'll run her slap up on the beach by the church."

Presently one of the Samoans touched my arm, and said in a whisper that we were surrounded by a swarm of sharks. He had noticed them, he said, before the boat struck.

"They smell the bloodied water," he muttered.

A glance over the side filled me with terror. There were literally scores of sharks, racing along on both sides of the boat, some almost on the surface, others some feet down, and the phosph.o.r.escence of the water added to the horror of the scene. At first I was in hopes that they were harmless porpoises, but they were so close that some of them could have been touched with one's hand. Most fortunately I was steering with a rudder, and not a steer oar. The latter would have been torn out of my hands by the brutes--the boat have broached-to and we all have met with a horrible death. Presently one of the weeping women noticed them, and uttered a scream of terror.

"_Le malie, le malic!_" ("The sharks, the sharks!") she cried.

My crew then became terribly frightened, and urged me to let them throw the baskets of heads overboard, but the Samoans became frantic at the suggestion, all of them weeping.

So we kept on, the boat making good progress, although we could only keep her afloat by continuous baling of the ensanguined water. In five minutes more my heart leapt with joy--we were in shallow water, only a cable length from Salimu beach, and then in another blinding rain squall we ran on sh.o.r.e, and our broken bows ploughed into the sand, amid the cries of some hundreds of natives, many of whom held lighted torches.

All of us in the boat were so overwrought that for some minutes we were unable to speak, and it took a full bottle of brandy to steady the nerves of my crew and myself. I shall never forget that night run across f.a.galoa Bay.

CHAPTER XXV ~ A BIT OF GOOD LUCK

Between the southern end of the great island of New Guinea and the Solomon Group there is a cl.u.s.ter of islands marked on the chart as "Woodlark Islands," but the native name is Mayu. Practically they were not discovered until 1836, when the master of the Sydney sandal-wooding barque _Woodlark_ made a survey of the group. The southern part of the cl.u.s.ter consists of a number of small well-wooded islands, all inhabited by a race of Papuans, who, said Captain Grimes of the _Woodlark_, had certainly never before seen a white man, although they had long years before seen ships in the far distance.

It was on these islands that I met with the most profitable bit of trading that ever befel me during more than a quarter of a century's experience in the South Seas.

Nearly thirty years pa.s.sed since Grimes's visit without the natives seeing more than half a dozen ships. These were American or Hobart Town whalers, and none of them came to an anchor--they laid off and on, and bartered with the natives for fresh provisions, but from the many inquiries I made, I am sure that no one from these ships put foot on sh.o.r.e; for the inhabitants were not to be trusted, being warlike, savage and treacherous.

The master of one of these ships was told by the natives--or rather made to understand, for no one of them knew a word of English--that about twelve months previously a large vessel had run on sh.o.r.e one wild night on the south side of the group and that all on board had perished.

Fourteen bodies had been washed on sh.o.r.e at a little island named Elaue, all dreadfully battered about, and the ship herself had disappeared and nothing remained of her but pieces of wreckage. She had evidently struck on the reef near Elaue with tremendous violence, then slipped off and sunk. The natives asked the captain to come on sh.o.r.e and be shown the spot where the men had been buried, but he was too cautious a man to trust himself among them.

On his reporting the matter to the colonial shipping authorities at Sydney, he learned that two vessels were missing--one a Dutch barque of seven hundred tons which left Sydney for Dutch New Guinea, and the other a full-rigged English ship bound to Shanghai. No tidings had been heard of them for over eighteen months, and it was concluded that the vessel lost on Woodlark Island was one or the other, as that island lay in the course both would have taken.

In 1868-69 there was a great outburst of trading operations in the North-West Pacific Islands--then in most instances a _terra incognita_, and there was a keen rivalry between the English and German trading firms to get a footing on such new islands as promised them a lucrative return for their ventures. Scores of adventurous white men lost their lives in a few months, some by the deadly malarial fever, others by the treacherous and cannibalistic savages. But others quickly took their places--nothing daunted--for the coco-nut oil trade, the then staple industry of the North-West Pacific, was very profitable and men made fortunes rapidly. What mattered it if every returning ship brought news of some b.l.o.o.d.y tragedy--such and such a brig or schooner having been cut off and all hands murdered, cooked and eaten, the vessel plundered and then burnt? Such things occur in the North-West Pacific in the present times, but the outside world now hears of them through the press and also of the punitive expeditions by war-ships of England, France or Germany.

Then in those old days we traders would merely say to one another that "So-and-So 'had gone'". He and his ship's company had been cut off at such-and-such a place, and the matter, in the eager rush for wealth, would be forgotten.

At that time I was in Levuka--the old capital of Fiji--supercargo of a little topsail schooner of seventy-five tons. She was owned and sailed by a man named White, an extremely adventurous and daring fellow, though very quiet--almost solemn--in his manner.

We had been trading among the windward islands of the Fiji Group for six months and had not done at all well. White was greatly dissatisfied and wanted to break new ground. Every few weeks a vessel would sail into the little port of Levuka with a valuable cargo of coco-nut oil in casks, dunnaged with ivory-nuts, the latter worth in those days 40 a ton. And both oil and ivory-nuts had been secured from the wild savages of the North-West in exchange for rubbishy hoop-iron knives, old "Tower"

muskets with ball and cheap powder, common beads and other worthless articles on which there was a profit of thousands per cent. (In fact, I well remember one instance in which the master of the Sydney brig _E.

K. Bateson_, after four months' absence, returned with a cargo which was sold for 5,000. His expenses (including the value of the trade goods he had bartered) his crew's wages, provisions, and the wear and tear of the ship's gear, came to under 400.)

White, who was a very wide-awake energetic man, despite his solemnity, one day came on board and told me that he had made up his mind to join in the rush to the islands to the North-West between New Guinea and the Solomons.

"I have," he said, "just been talking to the skipper of that French missionary brig, the _Anonyme_. He has just come back from the North-West, and told me that he had landed a French priest{*} at Mayu (Woodlark Island). He--the priest--remained on sh.o.r.e some days to establish a mission, and told Rabalau, the skipper of the brig, that the natives were very friendly and said that they would be glad to have a resident missionary, but that they wanted a trader still more.

Furthermore, they have been making oil for over a year in expectation of a ship coming, but none had come. And Rabalau says that they have over a hundred tuns of oil, and can't make any more as they have nothing to put it in. Some of it is in old canoes, some in thousands of big bamboos, and some in hollowed-out trees. And they have whips of ivory nuts and are just dying to get muskets, tobacco and beads. And not a soul in Levuka except Rabalau and I know it. You see, I lent him twenty bolts of canvas and a lot of running gear last year, and now he wants to do me a good turn. Now, I say that Woodlark is the place for us. Anyway, I've bought all the oil casks I could get, and a lot more in shooks, and so let us bustle and get ready to be out of this unholy Levuka at daylight."

* This was Monseigneur d'Anthipelles the head of the Marist Brothers in Oceania.