A Modern Buccaneer

"Do you mean to allow such brutality to be practised on a poor girl? Why, I believe she is dying!"

He said nothing, except "Come below." Sitting down at the table, he said, "I will not punish that boy. But I would be glad if you will see him, and induce him to treat the girl kindly."

I called George, who was in the deck-house playing cards, and asked him what he would take for Terau.

The lad thought for a moment, and asked me if the Captain had told me to come to him about her?

I said, "Yes! he had." But that I wanted him either to give or sell me the girl, adding that he had better be quick about it, as Terau seemed sinking fast.

"Oh! if that is so, you give me what you like for her. Don't want no dead girls 'bout me."

I called up three of the crew as witnesses, whereupon George sold me the victim of his brutality for ten dollars and a German concertina.

"Now, George," I said, "I am going to put Terau ashore, and if you touch her again, or even speak to her, I'll knock your infernal soul out of your black body."

He grinned, and replied that he was only too glad to get rid of her; and returning into the deck-house, began at once to play on the concertina.

A few days after this transaction we touched at Ngatik or Los Valientes Island, and I was pleased to find here a trader whose wife was a native of Pleasant Island.

I asked them if they would like to have Terau to live with them, and the wife at once expressed her willingness as well as joy at seeing one of her own countrywomen.

Returning on board, I inquired of Terau if she would not like to go ashore and live with these people, who would treat her kindly. During my ownership she had regained her strength in great degree, Nellie having agreed to attend on her, and the Chinese steward saw that she had nourishing food.

She preferred to go ashore, being still afraid of George's ill-treatment; I did not tell her of the trader's wife being a countrywoman, trusting it would prove a joyful surprise. I was not mistaken. The two women rushed into each other's arms, and wept in their impulsive fashion. I felt certain that here poor Terau would receive kind treatment.

Before returning on board the trader told me that Terau had related her story to them, and that the Ngatik women, who were in the house, told her to make the white man who had been so kind to her "the present of poverty." This ceremonial consisted in her cutting off her hair close to the head, and, together with an empty cocoa-nut shell and a small fish, offering it to me. The trader said this was to express her gratitude – the empty shell and small fish signifying poverty, while the gift of hair denoted that she was a bondswoman to me for life.

I felt sorry that the poor child should have cut off her beautiful hair, which was tied round the centre with a band of pandanus leaf, and put in my hand; but I felt a glow of pleasure at being able to place her with people who would be good to her; and thanking her for the gift, to which she added a thick plate of turtle shell, I said farewell, and returned to the brig.

The Captain called me below, and shook my hand.

"I'm glad," he said, "that poor girl has left the ship; but I must repay you the money you gave George for her."

This I refused to take. I felt well repaid by the unmistakable gratitude Terau had evinced towards me from the moment the Ocean islander and I had carried her pain-racked form below.

CHAPTER VIII

POISONED ARROWS

The weather had changed, and been cloudy and dull for several days. We were all rather in the doldrums too. We had been bearing eastward on the line. Suddenly Hayston said, "Suppose we put in at Santa Cruz. We want the water casks filled. I'm not very fond of the island, for all its name. Sacred names and bloodshed often go together with Spaniards. However, I know the harbour well, and the yams are first-rate." So at daylight we bore up, at eight bells we entered the heads with both anchors bent to the chains, and at noon were beating up the harbour. By two o'clock we cast anchor in thirty fathoms. Out came the canoes, and we soon began trading with the natives.

We kept pretty strict watch, however. The men, to my fancy, had a sullen expression, and the women, though not bad-looking, seemed as if it cost them an effort to look pleasant.

Our girls wouldn't have anything to say to them. Hope Island Nellie, in particular, said she'd like to shoot half of them; that they'd killed a cousin of hers, who was only scratched with a poisoned arrow, and that it was one of the Captain's mad tricks to go there at all.

However, Hayston, as usual, was spurred on by opposition to have his own way, and to do even more than he originally intended. He told me afterwards that he only wanted to get some yams in the harbour, and that the water would have held out longer – until we got to a known safe island.

So on Sunday we sent two boats on shore, and got the casks filled with water immediately. Our provisions were taken out and examined. Trading with the natives went on merrily.

On Monday the weather was fine. We got a couple of rafts out with water, and laid in yams enough to last for the rest of our cruise. Hayston laughed, and said there was nothing like showing natives that you were not afraid of them. "Eh, Nellie? What you think now?"

"Think Captain big fool," said Nellie, who was in a bad temper that morning. "Ha! you see boat crew; by God! man wounded – I see them carry him along."

Sure enough, we could see the two boats' crews coming down to the beach. They were carrying one man, while two supported another, who seemed hardly able to walk. "Get out the boats!" roared Hayston. "I'll teach the scoundrels to touch a crew of mine."

All was now bustle and commotion. Every man on the ship that could be spared, and Hope Island Nellie to boot, who had begged to be allowed to go with the attacking party, and whose ruffled temper was restored to equanimity by the chance of having a shot at her foes, and avenging her cousin's death. We left a boat's crew watch, and made for the shore, Nellie sitting in the bow of the Captain's boat with a Winchester rifle across her knees, and her eyes sparkling with a light I had never seen in a woman's face before. It was the light of battle come down through the veins of chiefs and warriors of her people for centuries uncounted.

We left a couple of men in each boat, telling them to keep on and off until we returned; the wounded men were carefully laid on mats in one of their own boats; and forth we went – a light-hearted storming party, and attacked the town of the treacherous devils. Hayston was in a frightful rage, cursing himself one moment for relaxing his usual caution, and devoting the Santa Cruz natives in the next to all the fiends of hell for their infernal causeless treachery. He raged up again and again to the cluster of huts, thickly built together with palisades here and there, which made excellent cover for shooting from, backed up by the green wall of the primeval forest. I could not but admire him as he stood there – grand, colossal, fearless, as though he bore a charmed life, while the deadly quivering arrows flew thick, and more than one man was hit severely. Only that our fire was quick and deadly with the terrible Winchester repeaters, and that the savages – bold at first – were mowed down so quickly that they had to retreat to a distance which rendered their arrows powerless, we should have had a muster roll with gaps in it of some seriousness. Hayston was a splendid rifle shot, and for quick loading and firing had few equals. Every native that showed himself within range went down ere he could fit an arrow to his bowstring. And there was Hope Island Nellie by his side, firing nearly as fast, and laughing like a child at play whenever one of her shots told.

Then the arrows grew fewer. Just before they ceased I had fired at a tall native who had been conspicuous through the fight. He fell on his face. Nellie gave a shout, and loaded her own rifle on the chance of another shot, straining her bright and eager eyes to see if another lurking form was near enough for danger. Well for me was it that she did so! Staggering to his feet, a wounded native fitted an arrow to his bow, and sent it straight for my breast before I could raise my gun to my shoulder. Nellie made a snap shot at him, and, either from exhaustion or the effect of her bullet, he fell prone and motionless.

I felt a scratch on my arm – bare to the shoulder – as if a forest twig had raised the skin. "Look!" said Nellie, and her face changed. As she spoke, she passed her finger over the place, and showed it bloodstained. "The crawling brute's arrow hit you there. Let me suck the poison. If you don't" – as I made a gesture of dissent – "you die, twel' days."

"Don't be a fool!" said Hayston. "You're a dead man if you don't. As it is, you must run your chance. Some of these fellows will lose the number of their mess, I'm sorry to say."

So the girl, who had been but the moment before thirsting for blood, and firing into the mob of half-frightened, yet ferocious savages, pressed her soft lips on my arm, like a young mother soothing a babe, and with all womanly tenderness bound up the injured place, which had now begun to smart, and, to my excited imagination, commenced to throb from wrist to shoulder.

"Strange child, isn't she?" laughed Hayston. "If she'd only been born white, and been to boarding-school down east, what a sensation she'd have created in a ball-room!"

"Better as she is, perhaps," said I. "She has lived her life with few limitations, and enjoyed most of it."

The excited crew rushed in and finished every wounded man in a position to show fight. Nellie did not join in this, but stood leaning on her rifle —la belle sauvage, if ever there was one – brave, beautiful, with a new expression like that of a roused lioness on her parted lips and blazing eyes.

As for Hayston, he was a fatalist by constitution and theory. "A man must die when his time comes," he had often said to me. "Until the hour of fate he cannot die. Why, then, should he waste his emotions by giving way to the meanest of all attributes – personal fear?"

He had none, at any rate. He would have walked up to the block without haste or reluctance, had beheading been the fashionable mode of execution in his day, chaffed his executioner, and with a bow and a smile for the handsomest woman among the spectators, quitted with easy grace a world which had afforded him a fair share of its rarest possessions.

By his order the town was fired and quickly reduced to ashes, thus destroying a number of articles – mats, utensils, wearing apparel, weapons, etc. – which, requiring, as they do, considerable skill and expenditure of time, are regarded as valuable effects by all savages.

The attack had been early in the day. We cut down as many cocoa-nut trees as we could, and finally departed for the ship, towing out with us a small fleet of canoes, to be broken up when we got to the brig. The sick men were sent below, and such remedies as we knew of were applied. They were – all but one – silent and downhearted. They knew by experience the sure and deadly effect of the poison manufactured among the Line Islands. Subtle and penetrating! But little hope of recovery remains.

About four o'clock next morning we began to heave at the windlass, and got under weigh at eight. The wind was light and variable, and our progress slow. As we got abreast of the hostile village we gave them a broadside. But the sullen devils of Santa Cruz were not cowed yet. A second fleet of canoes swarmed around the ship. They made signals of submission and a desire to trade, but when they got near enough sent a cloud of arrows at the ship, many of which stuck quivering in the masts, though luckily no one was hit. Their yells and screams of wrath were like the tumult of a hive of demons. We were luckily well prepared, and we let them have the carronades over and over again, sinking a dozen of their canoes, and doing good execution among the crews when their black heads popped up like corks as they swam for the nearest canoes. While this took place we unbent the starboard chain, stowed it and the anchor, and clearing the heads, bade adieu to the inhospitable isle.

On the next day all hands were engaged in cleaning our armoury, which it certainly appeared necessary to keep in good order. Hope Island Nellie polished her Winchester rifle till it shone again, besides showing an acquaintance with the machinery of the lock and repeating gear was nothing new to her.

"You ought to make a notch in the stock for every man you kill, Nellie," said Hayston, as we were lying on the deck in the afternoon, while the Leonora was gliding on her course like the fair ocean bird that she was.

Nellie frowned. "No like that talk," she answered. "Might have to put 'nother notch yet for Nellie – who knows?"

"Who knows, indeed, Nellie?" answered the Captain. "None of us can foresee our fate," he added with a tinge of sadness, which so often mingled with his apparently most careless moments. "We don't even know who's going to die from those arrow scratches yet."

Here the girl looked over at me. "How you feel, Hil'ree?" she said, as her voice softened and lost its jesting tone.

"Feel good," I said, "think getting better."

"You no know," she answered gravely. "You wait." And she began to count. She went over the fingers of her small, delicately-formed left hand, – wonderful in shape are the hands and feet of some of these Island girls, – and after counting from little finger to thumb twice, touched the two first fingers, and looked up. "How many?" she asked.

"Twelve," I said; I had followed the counts with care, you may be sure.

"Twel' day, you see," she said; "perhaps you all right – perhaps" – and here she gave a faint but accurate limitation of the dreadful shudder which precedes the unspeakable agonies of tetanus.

"Nellie's right," said Hayston; "keep up your spirits, for you won't know till then whether you're to go to sleep in your hammock in blue water or not."

This was a cheerful prospect, but I had come through many perils, and missed the grim veteran by so many close shaves, that I had grown to be something of a fatalist like Hayston.

"Well! if I go under it won't be your fault, Nellie! So, Captain, remember I make over to her all the stuff in my trade chest. Send any letters and papers to the address you know in Sydney, and a bank draft for what you will find in the dollar bag. Nellie will have some good dresses anyhow."

"Dress be hanged!" quoth Nellie, who was emphatic in her language sometimes. "You go home to mother yet;" and she arose and left hurriedly. Poor Nellie!

In that day when we and others who have sinned, after fullest knowledge of good and evil "know the right and yet the wrong pursue," shall be arraigned for deeds done in the flesh, will the same doom be meted out to this frank, untaught child of Nature and her sisters? I trow not. I must say that for a day or two before the fated twelfth which Nellie so stoutly insisted upon, I felt slightly anxious. What an end to all one's hopes, longings, and glorious imaginings, to be racked with tortures indescribable before dying like a poisoned hound, all because of the instinctive, senseless act of a stupid savage!

To die young, too, with the world but opening before me! Life with its thousand possibilities just unrolled! One's friends, too, – the weeping mother and sisters, whose grief would never wholly abate this side of time; the old man's fixed expression of sorrow. These thoughts passed through my brain, with others arising from and mingled with them, as I left my hammock early on the twelfth day. I dressed quickly, and going on deck, that daily miracle occurred – "the glorious sun uprist."

The dawnlight now began to infuse the pearly rim, which, imperceptibly separating from the azure grey horizon, deepened as it touched the edge of the vast ocean plain. Faintly glimmering, how magically it transformed from a dim, neutral-tinted waste to an opaline clarity of hue – a fuller crimson. Then the wondrous golden globe heaved itself over the edge of our water-world all silently, and the day, the 19th of October, began its course.

Should I live to see its close?

How strange if all this time the subtle poison should have lurked in one's veins until the exact moment, when, like a modern engine of devilry – an infernal machine with a clock and apparatus – set to strike and detonate at a given and calculated hour, the death-stroke should sound!

We had breakfasted, and were lying on the deck chatting and reading, as the Leonora glided over the heaving bosom of the main – the sun shining – the seabirds sailing athwart our course with outstretched, moveless wings – the sparkling waters reflecting a thousand prismatic colours, as the brig swiftly sped along her course – all nature gaily bright, joyous, and unheeding. Suddenly one of the wounded men, Henry Stephens by name, raised himself from his mat with a cry so wild and unearthly that half the crew and people started to their feet.

"My God!" he exclaimed, as he sank down again upon his mat, "I'm a dead man – those infernal arrows."

"Poor Harry!" said Nellie, who by this time was bending over him, "don't give in – by and by better – you get down to bunk. Carry him down, you boys!"

Two of the crew lifted the poor fellow, who even as they raised him had another fearful paroxysm, drawing his frame together almost double, so that the men could scarcely retain their hold.

"Carry him gently, boys!" said Hayston; "go to the steward for some brandy and laudanum, that will ease the pain."

"And is there no cure – no means of stopping this awful agony?"

"Not when tetanus once sets in," said Hayston; "it's not the first case I've seen."

The other man was quite a young fellow, and famed among us for his entire want of fear upon each and every occasion. He laughed and joked the whole time of the fight with the Santa Cruz islanders, said that every bullet had its billet, and that his time had not come. "He believed," he said, "also that half the talk about death by poisoned arrows was fancy. Men got nervous, and frightened themselves to death." He was not one of that sort anyhow. He had laughed and joked with both of us, and even now, when poor Harry Stephens was carried below, and we could hear his cries as the increasing torture of the paroxysms overcame his courage and self-control, he joked still.

The day was a sad one. Still the brig glided on through the azure waveless deep – still the tropic birds hung motionless above us – still the breeze whispered through our swelling sails, until the soft, brief twilight of the tropic eve stole upon us, and the stars trembled one by one in the dusky azure, so soon to be "thick inlaid with patines of bright gold."

"Reckon I've euchred the bloodthirsty niggers this time," said Dick, with a careless laugh, lighting his pipe as he spoke. "This is 'Twelfth night.' That's the end of the time the cussed poison takes to ripen, isn't it, Nellie?" he laughed. "It regular puts me in mind of old Christmas days in England, and us schoolboys counting the days after the New Year! What a jolly time it was! Won't I be glad to see the snow, and the bare hedges, and the holly berries, and the village church again? Dashed if I don't stay there next time I get a chance, and cut this darned slaving, privateering life. I'll – oh! my God – ah – a – h!"

His voice, in spite of all his efforts, rose from a startled cry to a long piercing shriek, such as it curdled our blood to hear.

Hayston came up from the cabin, followed by Nellie and the other girls. All crowded round him in silence. They knew well at the first cry he was a doomed man.

"Carry him down, lads!" he said, as he laid his hand on his forehead and passed it quietly over his clustering hair – "poor Dick! poor fellow!" At this moment another frightful spasm shook the seaman's frame, and scarcely could the men who had lifted him from the deck on which he had been lying control his tortured limbs. As they reached the lower deck another terrible cry reached our ears, while the continuous groaning of the poor fellow first attacked made a ghastly and awful accompaniment to the screams of the latest victim.

As for me, I walked forward and sat as near as I could get to the Leonora's bows, where I lit my pipe and awaited the moment in which only too probably my own summons would come in a like pang of excruciating agony. The gleaming phosphorescent wavelets of that calm sea fell in broken fire from the vessel's side, while the hissing, splashing sound deadened the recurring shrieks of the doomed sufferers, and soothed my excited nerves.

Now that death was so near, in such a truly awful shape, I began seriously to reflect upon the imprudence, nay, more, the inexcusable folly of continuing a life exposed to such terrible hazards.

If my life was spared I would resolve, like poor Dick, to stay at home in future. The resolution might avail me as little as it had done in his case.

As I sat hour after hour gazing into the endless shadow and gleam of the great deep, a strange feeling of peace and resignation seemed to pass suddenly over my troubled spirit. I felt almost tempted to plunge beneath the calm bosom of the main, and so end for aye the doubt, the fear, the rapture, and despair of this mysterious human life. All suddenly the moon rose, sending before her a brilliant pathway, adown which, in my excited imagination, angels might glide, bearing messages of pardon or reprieve. A distinct sensation of hope arose in my mind. A dark form glided to my side, and seated itself on the rail.

"You hear eight bell?" she said. "Listen now, you all right – no more poison – he go away." She held my hand – the pulse was steady and regular. In spite of my efforts at calmness and self-control, I was sensible of a strange exaltation of spirit. The heaven above, the sea below, seemed animate with messengers of pardon and peace. Even poor Nellie, the untaught child of a lonely isle, "placed far amid the melancholy main," seemed transformed into a celestial visitant, and her large, dark eyes glowed in the light of the mystic moon rays.

"You well, man Hil'ree!" she said in the foc'sle vernacular. "No more go maté. Nellie so much glad," and here her soft low tones were so instinct with deepest human feeling that I took her in my arms and folded her in a warm embrace.

"How's poor Dick?" I asked, as we walked aft to where Hayston and the rest of the cabin party were seated.

"Poor Dick dead!" she said; "just die before me come up."

The people we had brought for the big firm, mostly Line Island natives, were quiet and easily controlled. Hayston now and then executed orders of this sort, though he would have scorned the idea of turning the Leonora into a labour vessel. He was naturally too humane to permit any ill-treatment of the recruits, and having his crew under full control, always made matters as pleasant for these dark-skinned "passengers" as possible.

But there were voyages of very different kind, – voyages when the recruiting agents were thoroughly unscrupulous, caring only for the numbers – by fair means or foul – to be made up. Sometimes dark deeds were done. Blood was shed like water; partly from the fierce, intractable nature of the islanders – sometimes in pure self-defence. But "strange things happen at sea." One labour cruise of which Hayston told me – he heard it from an English trader who saw the affair – was much of that complexion. We had plenty of time for telling stories in the long calm days which sometimes ran into weeks. And this was one of them.

One day a white painted schooner, with gaff-headed mainsail, and flying the German flag, anchored off Kabakada, a populous village on the north coast of New Britain. She was on a labour cruise for the German plantations in Samoa.

Not being able to secure her full complement of "boys" in the New Hebrides and Solomon groups, she had come northward to fill up with recruits from the naked savages of the northern coast of New Britain.

In those days the German flag had not been formally hoisted over New Britain and New Ireland, and apart from the German trading station at Matupi in Blanche Bay, which faces the scarred and blackened sides of a smouldering volcano springing abruptly from the deep waters of the bay, the trading stations were few and far between.