The Call Of The South Part 5

One calm Sunday night we were in sight of Funafuti lagoon, and also of a schooner which I knew to be the _Hazeldine_ of San Francisco. She, like us, was becalmed.

In the middle watch I went on deck and found the skipper and second mate drunk. The mate, who was below, was about half-drunk. All three men had been drinking heavily for some days, and the second mate was hardly able to keep his feet. The captain was asleep on the skylight, lying on his back, snoring like a pig, and I saw the b.u.t.t of his revolver showing in the inner pocket of his coat.

Presently rain began to fall, and the second mate called one of the hands and told him to bring him his oil-skin coat. The man brought it, and then the brutal Swede, accusing him of having been slow, struck him a fearful blow in the face and knocked him off the p.o.o.p. Then the brute followed him and began kicking him with drunken fury, then fell on the top of him and lay there.

I went for'ard and found all the natives on deck, very excited and armed with knives. Addressing them, I begged them to keep quiet and listen to me.

"The captain and mates are all drunk," I said, "and now is your chance to leave the ship. Funafuti is only a league away. Get your clothes together as quickly as possible, then lower away the port quarter-boat.

I, too, am leaving this ship, and I want you to put me on board the _Hazeldine_. Then you can go on sh.o.r.e. Now, put up your knives and don't hurt those three men, beasts as they are."

As I was speaking, Max the bos'un came for'ard and listened. (I thought he was asleep.) He did not interfere, merely giving me an expressive look. Then he said to me:--

"Ask them to lock me up in the deck-house".

Very quietly this was done, and then, whilst I got together my personal belongings in the cabin, the boat was lowered. The Yankee mate was sound asleep in his bunk, but one of the Nuie men took the key of his door and locked it from the outside. Presently I heard a sound of breaking wood, and going on deck, found that the Gilbert Islanders had stove-in the starboard quarter-boat and the long-boat (the latter was on deck).

Then I saw that the second mate was lashed (bound hand and foot) to the pump-rail, and the captain was lashed to one of the fife-rail stanchions. His face was streaming with blood, and I thought he was dead, but found that he had only been struck with a belaying pin, which had broken his nose.

"He drew a lot of blood from us," said one of the natives to me, "and so I have drawn some from him."

I hurried to the deck-house and told the bos'un what had occurred. He was a level-headed young man, and taking up a carpenter's broad axe, smashed the door of the deck-house. Then he looked at me and smiled.

"You see, I'm gaining my liberty--captain and officers tied up, and no one to look after the ship."

I understood perfectly, and shaking hands with him and wishing him a better ship, I went over the side into the boat, and left the brig floating quietly on the placid surface of the ocean.

The eight native sailors made no noise, although they were all wildly excited and jubilant, but as we shoved off, they called out "Good-bye, bos'un".

An hour afterwards I was on board the _Hazeldine_ and telling my story to her skipper, who was an old friend. Then I bade good-bye to the natives, who started off for Funafuti with many expressions of goodwill to their fellow-mutineer.

At daylight a breeze came away from the eastward, and at breakfast time the _Hazeldine_ was out of sight of the _Alfreda_.

I learnt a few months later that the skipper had succeeded in bringing her into Funafuti Lagoon, where he managed to obtain another crew.

CHAPTER VI ~ "MaNI"

Mani was a half-caste--father a Martinique n.i.g.g.e.r, mother a Samoan--twenty-two years of age, and lived at Moata, a little village two miles from Apia in Samoa.

Mani's husband was a Frenchman named Francois Renault, who, when he was sober, worked as a boat-builder and carpenter, for the German "factory"

at Matafele. And when he was away form home I would hear Mani laughing, and see her playing with her two dark-skinned little girls, and talking to them in a curious mixture of Samoan-French. They were merry mites with big rolling eyes, and unmistakably "kinky" hair--like their mother.

It was a fortnight after the great gale of 15th March, 1889, when the six German and American warships were wrecked, that Mani came to my house with a basket of fresh-water fish she had netted far up in a deep mountain pool. She looked very happy. "Frank," she said, had not beaten her for two whole weeks, and had promised not to beat her any more. And he was working very steadily now.

"That is good to hear, Mani."

She smiled as she nodded her frizzy head, tossed her _tiputa_ (open blouse) over one shoulder, and sat down on the verandah steps to clean the fish.

"Yes, he will beat me no more--at least not whilst the shipwrecked sailors remain in Samoa. When they go I shall run away with the children--to some town in Savai'i where he cannot find me."

"It happened in this way," she went on confidentially: "a week ago two American sailors came to the house and asked for water, for they were thirsty and the sun was hot I told them that the Moata water was brackish, and I husked and gave them two young coco-nuts each. And then Frank, who had been drinking, ran out of the house and cursed and struck me. Then one of the sailors felled him to the earth, and the other dragged him up by his collar, and both kicked him so much that he wept.

"'Doth he often beat thee?' said one of the sailors to me. And I said 'Yes'.

"Then they beat him again, saying it was for my sake. And then one of them shook him and said: 'O thou dog, to so misuse thine own wife! Now listen. In three days' time we two of the _Trenton_ will have a day's liberty, and we shall come here and see if thou hast again beaten thy wife. And if thou hast but so much as _mata pio'd_ her we shall each kick thee one hundred times.'"

(_Mata pio_, I must explain, is Samoan for looking "cross-eyed" or unpleasantly at a person.)

"And Frank was very much afraid, and promised he would no longer harm me, and held out his hand to them weepingly, but they would not take it, and swore at him. And then they each gave my babies a quarter of a dollar, and I, because my heart was glad, gave them each a ring of tortoisesh.e.l.l."

"Did they come back, Mani?"

Mani, at heart, was a flirt. She raised her big black eyes with their long curling lashes to me, and then closed them for a moment demurely.

"Yes," she replied, "they came back. And when I told them that my husband was now kind to me, and was at work, they laughed, and left for him a long piece of strong tobacco tied round with tarred rope. And they said, 'Tell him we will come again by-and-by, and see how he behaveth to thee'."

"Mani," said in English, as she finished the last of the fish, "why do you speak Samoan to me when you know English so well? Where did you learn it? Your husband always speaks French to you."

Mani told me her story. In her short life of two-and-twenty years she had had some strange experiences.

"My father was Jean Galoup. He was a negro of St. Pierre, in Martinique, and came to Samoa in a French barque, which was wrecked on Tutuila.

He was one of the sailors. When the captain and the other sailors made ready to go away in the boats he refused to go, and being a strong, powerful man they dared not force him. So he remained on Tutuila and married my mother, and became a Samoan, and made much money by selling food to the whaleships. Then, when I was twelve years old, my mother died, and my father took me to his own country--to Martinique. It took us two years to get there, for we went through many countries--to Sydney first, then to China, and to India, and then to Ma.r.s.eilles in France.

But always in English ships. That is how I have learned to speak English.

"We lived for three years in Martinique, and then one day, as my father was clearing some land at the foot of Mont Pelee, he was bitten by _fer-de-lance_ and died, and I was left alone.

"There was a young carpenter at St. Pierre, named Francois Renault, who had one day met me in the market-place, and after that often came to see my father and me. He said he loved me, and so when my father was dead, we went to the priest and we were married.

"My husband had heard much of Samoa from my father, and said to me: 'Let us go there and live'.

"So we came here, and then Frank fell into evil ways, for he was cross with me because he saw that the pure-blooded Samoan girls were prettier than me, and had long straight hair and lighter skins. And because he could not put me away he began to treat me cruelly. And I love him no more. But yet will I stay by him if he doeth right."

The fates were kind to Mani a few months later. Her husband went to sea and never returned, and Mani, after waiting a year, was duly married by the consul to a respectable old trader on Savai'i, who wanted a wife with a "character"--the which is not always obtainable with a bride in the South Seas.

CHAPTER VII ~ AT NIGHT

The day's work was finished. Outside a cl.u.s.ter of rudely built palm-thatched huts, just above the curving white beach, and under the lengthening shadows of the silent cocos, two white men (my partner and myself) and a party of brown-skinned Polynesians were seated together smoking, and waiting for their evening meal. Now and then one would speak, and another would answer in low, lazy tones. From an open shed under a great jack-fruit tree a little distance away there came the murmur of women's voices and, now and then, a laugh. They were the wives of the brown men, and were cooking supper for their husbands and the two white men. Half a cable length from the beach a schooner lay at anchor upon the still lagoon, whose waters gleamed red under the rays of the sinking sun. Covered with awnings fore and after she showed no sign of life, and rested-as motionless as were the pendent branches of the lofty cocos on the sh.o.r.e.

Presently a figure appeared on deck and went for'ard, and then a bright light shone from the fore-stay.

My partner turned and called to the women, speaking in Hawaiian, and bade two of them take their own and the ship-keeper's supper on board, and stay for the night Then he spoke to the men in English.

"Who keeps watch to-night with the other man?"

"Me, sir," and a native rose to his feet.