The Call Of The South Part 25

The young warrior who held the cage, set it down, and striding up beside the Man Who Knew Everything dealt him an open-handed back-hand blow on the side of the head--a favourite trick of Samoan wrestlers and fighters--and Marchmont went down upon the matted floor with a smash.

I thought he was killed--he lay so motionless--and in an instant there flashed across my memory a story told to me by a medical missionary in Samoa, of how one of these terrific back-handed "smacks" dealt by a native had broken a man's neck.

However, in a few minutes, Marchmont recovered, and rose to his feet, spoiling for a fight The natives regarded him with a sullen but a.s.sumed indifference, and drew back, looking at me inquiringly. The matter might have ended seriously, but for two things--Marchmont was at heart a gentleman, and in response to my urgent request to him to apologise for the gross affront he had put upon our host--did so frankly by first extending his hand to the man who had knocked him down. And then, as he never did things by halves, he came with me to Asi and said, as he shook hands with him:--

"By Jove, Mr. Asi, that man of yours could knock down a bullock. I never had such a thundering smack in my life."

The chief smiled, then said gravely, in English, that he was sorry that such an unpleasant incident had occurred. Then, after--with its many attendant ceremonies--we had drunk our bowls of kava, and were smoking and chatting, Asi asked Marchmont to let him examine his gun and rifle (Marchmont had a Soper rifle and one of Manton's best make of guns; I had my Winchester and a fairly good gun). The moment Asi saw the Soper rifle his eyes lit up, and he produced another from one of the house beams overhead, and said regretfully that he had no cartridges left, and was using a Snider instead. Marchmont promptly offered to give him fifty.

"You must not do that," I said, "it will get us into serious trouble.

Asi"--and I turned to the chief--"will understand why we must not give him cartridges to be used for warfare. It would be a great breach of faith for us to do so--would it not?"

Keenly anxious as he was to obtain possession of the ammunition, the chief, with a sigh of regret, acquiesced, but Marchmont sulked, and for quite two hours after we had left the rebel village did not exchange a word with me.

After getting over the range, and whilst we were descending the slope to the southern littoral, some mongrel curs that belonged to our carriers, and had gone on ahead of us, put up a wild sow with seven suckers, and at once started off in pursuit. The old, razor-backed sow doubled and came flying past us, with her nimble-footed and striped progeny following. Marchmont and I both fired simultaneously--at the sow. I missed her, but my charge of No 3 shot tumbled over one of the piglets, which was at her heels, and Marchmont's Soper bullet took her in the belly, and pa.s.sed clean through her. But although she went down for a few moments she was up again like a Jack-in-the-box, and with an angry squeal scurried along the thick carpet of dead leaves, and then darted into the b.u.t.tressed recesses of a great _masa'oi_ (cedar) tree, which was evidently her home, followed by two or three game mongrels.

Dropping his rifle, Marchmont ran to the trees, seized the nearest cur by the tail, and slung it away down the side of the slope, then he kicked the others out of his way, and kneeling down peered into the dark recess formed by two of the b.u.t.tresses.

"Come out of that," I shouted, "you'll get bitten if you go near her.

What are you trying to do? Get out, and give the dogs a chance to turn her out."

"Bosh! Mind your own business. I know what I'm about. She's lying inside, as dead as a brickbat I'll have her out in a jiffy," and then his head and shoulders disappeared--then came a wild, blood-curdling yell of rage and pain, and the Man Who Knew Everything backed out with the infuriated sow's teeth deeply imbedded into both sides of his right hand; his left gripped her by the loose and pendulous skin of her throat. One of the native boys darted to his aid, and with one blow of his hatchet split open the animal's skull.

"Well, of all the born idiots----" I began, when I stopped, for I saw that Marchmont's face was very pale, and that he was suffering excruciating pain. A pig bite is always dangerous and that which he had sustained was a serious one. Fortunately, it was bleeding profusely, and as quickly as possible we procured water, and thoroughly cleansed, and then bound up his hand.

As soon as we got to Siumu I hurried to the house of the one white trader, and was lucky in getting a bottle of that good old-fashioned remedy--Friar's balsam. I poured it into a clean basin, and Marchmont unhesitatingly put in his hand, and let it stay there. The agony was great, and the language that poured from the patient was of an extremely lurid character. But he had wonderful grit, and I had to laugh when he began abusing himself for being such an idiot. He then allowed a native woman to cover the entire hand with a huge poultice, made of the beaten-up pulp of wild oranges--a splendid antiseptic. But it was a week before he could use his hand again, and his temper was something abominable. However, we managed to put in the time very pleasantly by paying a round of visits to the villages along the coast, and were entertained and feasted to our heart's content by the natives. Then followed some days' grand pig hunting and pigeon shooting in the mountains, amidst some of the most lovely tropical scenery in the world.

Marchmont killed a grand old tusker, and presented the tusks to the local chief, who in return gave him a very old kava bowl--a valuable article to Samoans. He was, as usual, incredulous when I told him that it was worth 10, and that Theodor Weber, the German Consul General, who was a collector, would be only too glad to get it at that price.

"What, for that thing?"

"Yes, for that thing. Quite apart from its size, its age makes it valuable. I daresay that more than half a century has pa.s.sed since the tree from which it was made was felled by stone axes, and the bowl cut out from a solid piece." It was fifteen inches high, two feet in diameter, and the four legs and exterior were black with age, whilst the interior, from constant use of kava, was coated with a bright yellow enamel. The labour of cutting out such a vessel with such implements--it being, legs and bowl, in one piece--must have taken long months. Then came the filing down with strips of shark skin, which had first been softened, and then allowed to dry and contract over pieces of wood, round and flat; then the final polishing with the rough underside of wild fig-leaves, and then its final presentation, with such ceremony, to the chief who had ordered it to be made.

I explained all this to Marchgiont, and he actually believed me and did not say "Bosh!"

"I thought that you made a fearfully long-winded oration on my behalf when the chief gave me the thing," he remarked.

"I did. I can tell you, Marchmont, that I should have felt highly flattered if he had presented it to me. He seems to have taken a violent fancy to you. But, for Heaven's sake, don't think that, because he has been told that you are a rich man, he has any ulterior motive. And don't, I beg of you, offer him money. He has a reason for showing his liking for you."

I knew what that reason was. Suisala, the chief of Siumu, had, from the very first, expressed to me his admiration of Marchmont's stalwart, athletic figure, and his fair complexion, and was anxious to confer on him a very great honour--that of exchanging names. Suisala was of one of the oldest and most chiefly families in Samoa, and was proud of the fact that the French navigator Bougainville had taken especial notice of his grandfather (who was also a Suisala) and who had been presented with a fowling piece and ammunition by the French officer. As I have before mentioned, physical strength and manliness always attract the Samoan mind, and the chief of Siumu had, as I afterwards explained to March-mont, fallen a victim to his "fatal beauty".

One morning, a few days after the presentation of the _tanoa_ (kava-bowl) to the Man Who Knew Everything, a schooner appeared outside the reef and hove-to, there being no harbour at Siumu. She was an American vessel, and had come to buy copra from, and land goods for, the local trader. There was a rather heavy sea running on the reef at the time, and the work of shipping the copra and landing the stores proved so difficult and tedious that I lent my boat and crew to help.

Unfortunately Marama was laid up with influenza, so could not take charge of the boat; I also was on the sick list, with a heavy cold.

However, my crew were to be trusted, and they made several trips during the morning. Marchmont, after lunch, wanted to board the schooner, and also offered to take charge of the boat and crew for the rest of the day. Knowing that he was not used to surf work, I declined his offer, but told him he could go off on board if he did not mind a wetting. He was quite nettled, and angrily asked me if I thought he could not take a whaleboat through a bit of surf as well as either Marama or myself. I replied frankly that I did not.

He snorted with contempt "Bosh. I've taken boats through surf five times as bad as it is now--a tinker could manage a boat in the little sea that is running now. You fellows are all alike--you think that you and your natives know everything."

"Oh, then, do as you like," I replied angrily, "but if you smash that boat it means a loss of 50, and----"

"Hang your 50! If I hurt your boat, I'll pay for the damage. But don't begin to preach at me."

With great misgivings, I saw the boat start off, manned by eight men, using native paddles, instead of oars, as was customary in surf work.

Marchmont, certainly, by good luck, managed to get her over the reef, for I could see that he was quite unused to handling a steer oar.

However, my native crew, by watching the sea and taking no heed of the steersman, shot the boat over the reef into deep water beyond. But in getting alongside the schooner he nearly swamped, and I was told began abusing my crew for a set of blockheads. This, of course, made them sulky--to be abused for incompetence by an incompetent stranger, was hard to bear, especially as the men, like all the natives of their islands (Rotumah and Niue), were splendid fellows at boat work.

However, the boat at last cast off, and headed for the sh.o.r.e, and then I saw something that filled me with wrath. As the lug sail was being hoisted, March-mont drew in his steer-oar, and shipped the rudder, and in another minute the boat was bounding over the rolling seas at a great rate towards the white breakers on the reef, but steering so wildly that I foresaw disaster. The crew, in vain, urged Marchmont to ship the steer-oar again, but he told them to mind their own business, and sat there, calm and strong, in his mighty conceit.

On came the boat, and we on sh.o.r.e watched her as she rose stern up to a big comber, then down she sank from view into the trough, broached to, and the next roller fell upon and smothered her, and rolled her over and over into the wild boil of surf on the reef.

The Man Who Knew Everything came off badly, and was brought on sh.o.r.e full of salt water, and unconscious. He had been dashed against the jagged coral, and from his left thigh down to his foot had been terribly lacerated; then as the crew swam to his a.s.sistance--for his clothing had caught in the coral, and he was under water and drowning--and brought him to the surface, the despised steer-oar (perhaps out of revenge) came hurtling along on a swirling sea, and the haft of it struck him a fearful blow on the head, nearly fracturing his skull.

Fearing his injuries would prove fatal, I sent a canoe off to the schooner with a message to the captain to come on sh.o.r.e, but the vessel, having finished her business, was off under full sail, and did not see the canoe. Then the trader and I did our best for the poor fellow, who, as soon as he regained consciousness, began to suffer agonies from the poison of the wounds inflicted by the coral. We sent a runner to Apia for a doctor, and early next morning one arrived.

Marchmont was quite a month recovering, and when he was fully convalescent, he kept his opinions to himself, and I think that the lesson he had received did him good. He afterwards told me that he determined to sail the boat in with a rudder purely to annoy me, and was sorry for it.

When he was able to get about again as usual, the devil of restlessness again took possession of him and he was soon in trouble again--through the bursting of a gun. I was away from Apia at the time--at the little island of Manono, buying yams for the ship which was getting ready for sea again--when I received a letter from a friend giving me the Apia gossip, and was not surprised that Marchmont figured therein.

"Your friend Marchmont," so ran the letter, "is around, as usual, and in great form, though he had a narrow squeak of having his head blown off last week through his gun bursting while out pigeon-shooting up by Lano-to lake. It seems that it was raining at the time, and the track down the mountain to the lake was very slippery. He had Johnny Coe the half-caste, and two Samoans with him. Was carrying his gun under his arm and going down the track in his usual careless, c.o.c.k-a-hoopy style when he tripped over a root of a tree and went down, flat on his face, into the red slippery soil. He picked himself up again quick enough, and began swearing at the top of his voice, when a lot of ducks rose from the lake and came dead on towards him. Without waiting to see if his gun was all right, although it was covered with mud, he pulled the trigger of his right barrel, and it burst; one of the fragments gave him a nasty jagged wound on the chin and the Samoan buck got a lot of small splinters in his face. After the idiot had pulled himself together he examined his gun and found that the left barrel was plugged up with hard red earth. No doubt the other one had also been choked up, for Johnny Coe said that when he fell the muzzle of the gun was rammed some inches into the ground."

When I returned to Apia with a cutter load of yams, I called on Marchmont and found him his old self. He casually mentioned his mishap and cursed the greasy mountain track as the cause. At the same time he told me that he was beginning to like the country and that the natives were "not a bad lot of fellows--if you know how to take 'em".

Then came his final exploit.

There is, in the waters of the Pacific Isles, a species of the trevalli, or rudder fish, which attains an enormous size and weight. It is a good eating fish, like all the trevalli tribe, and much thought of by both Europeans and natives, for, being an exceedingly wary fish, it is not often caught, at least in Samoa. In the Live Islands, where it is more common, it is called _La'heu_ and in Fiji _Sanka_. One evening Lama, one of the Coe half-caste boys, and I succeeded in hooking and capturing one of these fish, weighing a little over 100 lb. In the morning the Man Who Knew Everything came to look at it, was much interested, and said he would have a try for one himself after lunch.

"No use trying in clear daylight," I said; "after dusk, at night (if not moonlight), or before daybreak is the time."

"Bosh!" was his acidulous comment "I've caught the same fish in New Zealand in broad daylight." I shook my head, knowing that he was wrong.

He became angry, and remarked that he had found that all white men who had lived in foreign countries for a few years accepted the rubbishy dictum of natives regarding sporting matters of any kind as infallible.

Refusing to show me the tackle he intended using, at two o'clock he hired a native canoe, and paddled off alone into Apia Harbour. Then he began to fish for _La'heu_, using a mullet as bait. In five minutes he was fast to a good-sized and l.u.s.ty shark, which promptly upset the canoe, went off with the line and left him to swim. The officer of the deck of the French gunboat _Vaudreuil_, then lying in the port, sent a boat and picked him up. This annoyed him greatly, as he wanted, like an idiot, to swim on sh.o.r.e--a thing that a native would not always care to do in a shark-infested place like Apia Harbour, especially during the rainy season (as it then was), when the dreaded _tanifa_ sharks come into all bays or ports into which rivers or streams debouch.

That evening, however, Marchmont condescended to look at the tackle I used for _La'heu_, said it was clumsy, and only fit for sharks, but, on the whole, there were "some good ideas" about it; also that he would have another try that night. I suggested that either one of the Coe lads or Lama should go with him, to which he said "Bosh!" Then, after sunset, I sent some of my boat's-crew to catch flying-fish for bait. They brought a couple of dozen, and I told Marchmont that he should bait with a whole flying-fish, make his line ready for casting, and then throw over some "burley"--half a dozen flying-fish chopped into small pieces.

He would not show me the tackle he intended using, so I was quite in the dark as to what manner of gear it was. But I ascertained later on that it was good and strong enough to hold any deep sea fish, and the hook was of the right sort--a six-inch flatted, with curved shank, and swivel mounted on to three feet of fine twisted steel seizing wire. My obstinate friend had a keen eye, even when he was most disparaging in his remarks, and had copied my _La'heu_ tackle most successfully, although he had "bosh-ed" it when I first showed it to him.

Refusing to let any one accompany him, although the local pilot candidly informed him that he was a dunderhead to go fishing alone at night in Apia Harbour, Marchmont started off about 2 A.M. in an ordinary native canoe, meant to hold not more than three persons when in smooth water.

It was a calm night, but rainy, and the crew of the French gunboat noticed him fishing near the ship about 2.30. A little while after, the officer of the watch saw a heavy rain squall coming down from the mountain gorges, and good-naturedly called out to the fisherman to either come alongside or paddle ash.o.r.e, to avoid being swamped. The clever man replied in French, somewhat ungraciously, that he could quite well look after himself. A little after 3 A.M. the squall ceased, and as neither Marchmont nor the canoe was visible, the French sailors concluded that he had taken their officer's advice and gone on sh.o.r.e.

About seven o'clock in the morning, as I was bathing in the little river that runs into Apia Harbour, a native servant girl of the local resident medical missionary came to the bank and called to me, and told me a startling story. My obstinate friend had been picked up at sea, four miles from Apia Harbour, by a _taumualua_ (native-built whaleboat). He was in a state of exhaustion and collapse, and when brought into Apia was more dead than alive, and the doctor was quickly summoned I at once went to see him, but was not admitted to his room, and for three days he had to lie up, suffering from shock--and, I trust, a feeling of humility for being such an obstinate blockhead.

His story was simple enough: During the heavy rain squall his bait was taken by some large and powerful fish (he maintained that it was a _La'heu_, though most probably it was a shark), and thirty or forty yards of line flew out before he could get the pull of it. When he did, he foolishly made the loose part fast to the canoe seat amidships, and the canoe promptly capsized, and the fore end of the outrigger unshipped. Clinging to the side of the frail craft, he shouted to the gunboat for help, but no one heard in the noise of the wind and heavy rain, and in ten minutes he found himself in the pa.s.sage between the reefs, and rapidly being towed out to sea. He tried to sever the line by biting it through (he had lost his knife), but only succeeded in losing a tooth. Then, as the canoe was being dragged through the water broadside on, a heavy sea submerged her and the line parted, the shark or whatever it was going off. Never losing his pluck, he tried in the darkness to secure the loose end of the outrigger, but failed, owing to the heavy, lumpy seas. Then for two anxious, miserable hours he clung to the canoe, expecting every moment to find himself minus his legs by the jaws of a shark, and when sighted and picked up by the native boat he was barely conscious.

He learnt a lesson that did him good. He never again went out alone in a canoe at night, and for many days after his recovery he never uttered the word "Bosh!"

CHAPTER XXIX ~ THE PATTERING OF THE MULLET

It is a night of myriad stars, shining from a dome of deepest blue.

The lofty, white-barked swamp gums stand silent and ghost-like on the river's bank, and the river itself is almost as silent as it flows to meet the roaring surf on the bar of the rock-bound coast fifteen miles away, where when the south-east wind blows l.u.s.tily by day and dies away at night the long billows of the blue Pacific roll on unceasingly.