A Modern Buccaneer

There were on board two children, a boy and girl – Toby and Kitty – natives of Arurai or Hope Island. They were the Captain's particular pets, in right of which he allowed them full liberty to tease any one on the ship.

He was strongly attached to these children, and often told me that he intended to provide for them.

Their father, who was one of his boat's crew, had fallen at his side when the natives of the island had boarded the vessel. On his next cruise he called at Arurai and took them on board, the head chief freely giving his permission to adopt them. I mention this boy and girl more particularly, because the American missionaries had often stated in the Honolulu journals "that Hayston had kidnapped them after having killed their father."

His story was that on his first visit to the Pelew Islands with Captain Peese, the vessel they owned, a small brigantine, was attacked by the natives in the most daring manner, although the boarding nettings were up and every preparation made to repel them.

He had with him ten seamen – mostly Japanese. Captain Peese was acting as first mate. An intelligent writer has described these Pelew islanders, the countrymen of the young Prince Lee Boo, whose death in England caused genuine sorrow, as "delicate in their sentiments, friendly in their disposition, and, in short, a people that do honour to the human race."

The Captain's description of the undaunted manner in which fifty of these noble islanders climbed up the side of the brigantine, and slashed away at the nettings with their heavy swords, was truly graphic. Stripped to the waist they fought gallantly and unflinchingly, though twelve of their number had been killed by the fire of musketry from the brigantine. One of them had seized Captain Peese by his beard, and, dragging him to the side, stabbed him in the neck, and threw him into the prahu alongside, where his head would have soon left his body, when Hayston and a Japanese sailor dashed over after him, and killed the two natives that were holding him down, while another was about to decapitate him. At this stage three of the brigantine's crew lay dead and nearly all were wounded, Hayston having a fearful slash on the thigh.

There were seventeen islanders killed and many badly wounded before they gave up the attempt to cut off the vessel.

The father of Kitty and Toby was the steward. He had been fighting all through like a demon, having for his weapon a carpenter's squaring axe. He had cut one islander down with a fearful blow on the shoulder, which severed the arm, the limb falling on the deck, when he was attacked by three others. One of these was shot by a Japanese sailor, and another knocked down by the Captain, when the poor steward was thrust through from behind and died in a few minutes.

The Captain spoke highly of the courage and intelligence of the Pelew islanders, and said that the cause of the attack upon the vessel was that, being under the Portuguese flag – the brigantine was owned by merchants in Macao – the natives had sought to avenge the bombardment of one of their principal towns by two Portuguese gunboats a year previously.

Hayston afterwards established friendly relations with these very people who had attacked him, and six months afterwards slept ashore at their village alone and unarmed.

From that day his perfect safety was assured. He succeeded in gaining the friendship of the principal chiefs by selling them a hundred breech-loading rifles and ten thousand cartridges, giving them two years' time to pay for them. He also gave nearly a thousand dollars' worth of powder and cartridges to the relatives of the men killed in attempting to cut off the brigantine.

Such was one of the many romantic incidents in Hayston's career in the wild islands still further to the north-west. That he was a man of lion-like courage and marvellous resolution under the most desperate circumstances was known to all who ever sailed with him. Had not his recklessness and uncontrollable passions hurried him on to the commission of deeds that darkened for ever his good name, his splendid qualities would have earned him fame and fortune in any of those national enterprises which have in all ages transformed the adventurer into the hero.

One day, while we sat talking together, gazing upon the unruffled deep, – he had been explaining the theory of the ocean currents, as well as the electrical phenomena of the Caroline group, where thunder may be heard perhaps six times a year, and lightning seen not once, – I unthinkingly asked him why he did not commit his observations to paper, as I felt sure that the large amount of facts relating to the meteorology of the Pacific, of which he was possessed, would be most valuable, and as such secure fitting recognition by the scientific world.

He smiled bitterly, then answered, "Hilary, my boy, it is too late. I am an outlaw in fact, if not in name. The world's doors are closed, and society has turned its back on me. Out of ten professed friends nine are false, and would betray me to-morrow. When I think of what I once was, what I might have been, and to what I have now fallen, I am weary of existence. So I take the world as it comes, with neither hope nor fear for the morrow, knowing that if I do not make blue shark's meat, I am doomed to leave my bones on some coral islet."

And thus the days wore on. We still drifted under cloudless skies, over the unfretted surface of the blue Pacific, the brig's sails ever and anon swelling out in answer to the faint, mysterious breeze-whispers, to fall languidly back against her spars and cordage.

Passing the Nuknor or Monteverde Islands, discovered by Don Juan Monteverde in 1806, in the Spanish frigate La Pala, we sailed onward with the gentle N.E. trades to Overluk, and then to Losap. Like the people of Nuknor, the Losap islanders were a splendid race and most hospitable. Then we made the Mortlock group, once so dreaded by whaleships. These fierce and warlike islanders made most determined efforts to cut off the whaleships Dolly Primrose and Heavenly City. To us, however, they were most amiable in demeanour, and loud cries of welcome greeted the Captain from the crowd of canoes which swarmed around the brig.

Then commenced one of the reckless orgies with which the brig's crew were familiar. Glad to escape the scene, I left the brig and wandered about in the silent depths of the island forest.

The Captain here, as elsewhere, was evidently regarded as a visitor of immense importance, for as I passed through the thickly populated villages the people were cooking vast quantities of pigs, poultry, and pigeons.

The women and girls were decorating their persons with wreaths of flowers, and the warriors making preparations for a big dance to take place at night. I had brought my gun with me, and shot some of the magnificent pigeons which throng the island woods, which I presented to the native girls, a merry group of whom followed me with offerings of cocoa-nuts, and a native dish made of baked bananas, flavoured with the juice of the sugar-cane.

I could not have eaten a fiftieth part of what was offered, but as declining would have been regarded as a rudeness, I begged them to take it to the chief's house for me.

On my return a singular and characteristic scene presented itself. I could not help smiling as I thought what a shock it would have given many of my steady-going friends and relatives in Sydney, most of whom, if untravelled, resemble nothing so much as the inhabitants of English country towns, and are equally apt to be displeased at any departure from the British standard of manners and morals.

The Captain was seated on a mat in the great council-house of the tribe, talking business with a white-headed warrior, whom he introduced as the king of the Mortlock group. The women had decorated the Captain's neck and broad breast with wreaths – two girls were seated a little farther off, binding into his hat the tail-feathers of the tropic bird. He seemed in a merry mood, and whispering something to the old man, pointed to me.

In a moment a dozen young girls bounded up, and with laughing eyes and lips, commenced to circle around me in a measure, the native name of which means "a dance for a husband."

They formed a pretty enough picture, with their waving arms and flowing flower-crowned hair. I plead guilty to applauding vociferously, and rewarding them with a quantity of the small red beads which the Mortlock girls sew into their head-dresses.

Thus, with but slight variations, our life flowed, if monotonously, pleasantly, even luxuriously on – as we sailed to and fro amid these charmed isles, from Namoluk to Truk, thence to the wondrously beautiful Royalist Islands, inhabited by a wild vigorous race. They also made much of us and gave dances and games in honour of our visit.

And still we sailed and sailed. Days passed, and weeks. Still glided we over the summer sea – still gazed we at a cloudless sky – still felt we the languorous, sighing breath of the soft South Pacific winds.

Day by day the same flock of predatory frigate birds skimmed and swept o'er the glittering ocean plain, while high overhead the wandering tropic birds hung motionless, with their scarlet tail-feathers floating like lance pennons in relief against the bright blue heavens.

Now, the Captain had all a true seaman's dislike to seeing a sea-bird shot. One day, off Ocean Island, Jansen, the mate, came out of the cabin with a long, smooth bore, which he proceeded to load with buck shot, glancing the while at two graceful tropic birds, which, with snow-white wings outspread, were poised in air directly over the deck, apparently looking down with wondering eye at the scene below.

"What are you going to shoot, Jansen?" inquired the Captain, in a mild voice.

The mate pointed to the birds, and remarked that his girl wanted the feathers for a head-dress. He was bringing the gun to his shoulder, when a quick "Put down that musket," nearly caused him to drop it.

"Jansen!" said the Captain, "please to remember this, – never let me see you or any other man shoot a sea-bird from the deck of this ship. Your girl can live without the feathers, I presume, and what is more to the point, I forbid you to do it."

The mate growled something in an undertone, and was turning away to his cabin, when Hayston sprang upon him like a panther, and seizing him by the throat, held him before him.

"By – ! Jansen," he said, "don't tempt me too far. I told you as civilly as possible not to shoot the birds – yet you turn away and mutter mutinously before my men. Listen to me! though you are no seaman, and a thorough 'soldier,' I treat you well for peace' sake. But once give me a sidelook, and as sure as God made me, I'll trice you up to the mainmast, and let a nigger flog you."

He released his hold of the mate's throat after this warning. The cowed bully staggered off towards his cabin. After which the Captain's mood changed with customary suddenness; he came aft, and began a game with Kitty and her brother – apparently having forgotten the very existence of Jansen.

The calm, bright weather still prevailed – the light air hardly filling our sails – the current doing all the work. When one afternoon, taking a look from aloft, I descried the loom of Kusaie or Strong's Island, on the farthest horizon.

"Land ho!" The watch below, just turning out, take up the cry as it goes from mouth to mouth on deck. Some of them gaze longingly, making calculations as to the amount of liberty they are likely to get, as well as the work that lies before them.

Early next morning we had drifted twenty miles nearer, whereupon the Captain decided to run round to the weather side of the island first, and interview the king, before going to Utwé or South harbour, where we proposed to do the most of our trading.

Suddenly, after breakfast, a serious disturbance arose between the Chinese carpenter and Bill Hicks, the fierce Fijian half-caste, who was second mate. The carpenter's provisional spouse was a handsome young woman from the Gilbert group, who rejoiced in the name of Ni-a-bon (Shades of Night). Of her, the carpenter, a tall, powerfully-built Chinaman, who had sailed for years with Hayston in the China Seas, was intensely jealous. So cunning, however, was she in evading suspicion, that though every one on board was aware of the state of affairs, her lawful protector suspected nothing.

However, on this particular morning, Nellie, the Hope Island girl, being reproved by the second mate for throwing pine apple and banana peel into the ship's dingey, flew into a violent rage, and told the carpenter that the second mate was stealing Ni-a-bon – and, moreover, had persuaded her to put something into his, the carpenter's, food, to make him "go maté," i. e. sicken and die.

Seizing an axe, the Chinaman sallied on deck, and commenced to exact satisfaction by aiming a blow at Ni-a-bon, who was playing cards with the other girls. The girl Mila averted the blow, and the whole pack fled shrieking to the Captain, who at once called upon Bill for explanation.

He did not deny the impeachment, and offered to fight the carpenter for Ni-a-bon. The Captain decided this to be eminently right and proper; but thought the carpenter was hardly a match for the mate with fists. Bill promptly suggested knives. This seemed to choke off the carpenter, as, amid howls from the women, he stepped back into his cabin, only to reappear in the doorway with a rifle, and to send a bullet at the mate's head, which missed him.

"At him, Billy," cried the Captain, "give him a good licking – but don't hurt his arms; there's a lot of work to be done to the bulwarks when we get the anchor down again."

The second mate at once seized the carpenter, and dragging him out of his cabin, in a few minutes had so knocked his features about that he was hardly recognisable.

Ni-a-bon was then called up before the Captain and questioned as to her preference, when, with many smiles and twisting about of her hands, she confessed to an ardent attachment to the herculean Bill.

The Captain told Bill that he would have to pay the carpenter for damages, which he assessed at ten dollars, the amount being given, not for personal injury, but for the loss sustained by his annexation of the fascinating Ni-a-bon.

At sunset we once more were off Chabral harbour, where we ran in and anchored —within fifty yards of the king's house.

CHAPTER X

MURDER AND SHIPWRECK

We found the island in a state of excitement. Two whaleships had arrived, bringing half a dozen white men, and who had a retinue of nearly a hundred natives from Ocean and Pleasant Islands. The white men had to leave Pleasant Island on account of a general engagement which had taken place; had fled to the ships for safety, taking with them their native wives, families, and adherents.

The other men were from Ocean Island, a famine having set in from drought in that lovely isle. They had also taken passage with their native following, to seek a more temporarily favoured spot. The fertility of Kusaie (Strong's Island) had decided them to remain.

Strange characters, in truth, were these same traders, now all quartered at Chabral harbour! They were not without means, and so far had conducted themselves decently. But their retinue of savage warriors had struck terror into the hearts of the milder natives of Kusaie.

Let me draw from the life one of the patriarchs of the movement, on the occasion of his embarkation.

Ocean Island, lat. 0° 50′ south, long. 168° east.

A fantastic, lonely, forbidding-looking spot. Circular in form, with rounded summit, and a cruel upheaved coral coast, split up into ravines running deep into the land. Here and there, on ledges overlooking the sea, are perched tiny villages, inhabited by as fierce and intractable a race of Malayo-Polynesians as ever lacerated each other's bodies with sharks'-tooth daggers, after the mad drunkenness produced by sour toddy.

Mister Robert Ridley, aged seventy, sitting on a case in his house, on the south-west point of Paanopa, as its people call Ocean Island, with a bottle of "square face" before him, from which he refreshes himself, without the intervention of a glass, is one of the few successful deserters from the convict army of New South Wales. At the present moment he is an ill-used man. For seven years he has been the boss white man of Paanopa, ever since he left the neighbouring Naura or Pleasant Island, after seeing his comrades fall in the ranks one by one, slain by bullet or the scarce less deadly drink demon. Now, solitary and saturnine, he has to bow to Fate and quit his equatorial cave of Adullam, because a mysterious Providence has afflicted his island with a drought.

From out the open door he sees the Josephine, of New Bedford, Captain Jos Long, awaiting the four whaleboats now on the little beach below his house, which are engaged in conveying on board his household goods and chattels, his wives and his children, with their children, and a dusky retinue of blood-relations and retainers; for the drought had made food scarce. Blood had been shed over the ownership of certain cocoa-nut trees; and old Bob Ridley has decided to bid farewell to his island, and to make for Ponapé in the Carolines. So the old man sits alone and awaits a call from the last boat. Perhaps he feels unusual emotion stirring him, as the faint murmur of voices ascends from the beach. He would be alone for awhile to conjure up strange memories of the past, or because the gin bottle is but half emptied.

"The Josephine, of New Bedford!" he mutters, as a grim smile passes over his bronzed, sin-wrinkled countenance; "why, t'other one was from New Bedford too. This one's larger – a six-boat ship – and carries a big afterguard. Still the job could be done agin. But – what's the good now! If Joe, the Portuguese, was here with me I'd say it could be done." Another gulp at the "square face." "Damn it! I'm an old fool. There's too many of these here cussed blubber-hunting Yankees about now. Say we took the ship, we'd never get away with her. Please God, I'll go to Ponapé and live like a d – d gentleman. There's some of the old crowd there now, and I a'n't so old yet."

And here, maybe, the old renegade falls a thinking afresh of "the other one" from New Bedford, that made this very island on the evening of the 3rd of December 1852.

Out nearly two years, and working up from the Line Islands towards Honolulu, the skipper had tried to make Pleasant Island, to get a boat-load of pigs for his crew, but light winds and strong currents had drifted him away, till, at dawn, he saw the rounded summits of Ocean Island pencilled faintly against the horizon, and stood away for it. "We can get a few boat-loads of pigs and 'punkins' there, anyhow," he said to the mate.

The mate had been there before, and didn't like going again. That was in 1850. Sixteen white men lived there then, ten of whom were runaway convicts from Sydney or Norfolk Island. He told his captain that they were part of a gang of twenty-seven who had at various times been landed from whalers at Pleasant Island in 1845. They had separated – some going away in the Sallie whaler, and others finding their way to Ocean Island. Now, the Sallie was never heard of again, the mate remarked. The captain of the Inga looked grave, but he had set his heart upon the pigs and "punkins." So at dusk the brig hove to, close to the south-west point, and as no boats came off the skipper went ashore.

There were nearly a thousand people on Ocean Island then, and he felt a trifle queer as the boat was rushed by the wild, long-haired crowd, and carried bodily on shore.

Through the gathering darkness he saw the forms of white men trying to push their way through the yellow crowd of excited natives. Presently a voice called out, "Don't be scared, mister! Let the niggers have their way and carry up the boat."

He let them have their way, and after being glared at by the red light of cocoa-nut torches borne by the women, he was conducted to one of three houses occupied by the six gentlemen who had arranged to leave the continent of Australia without beat of drum.

Bob Ridley's house was the scene of rude and reckless revelry that night. A jar of the Inga's rum had been sent for, and seated around on the boxes that lined the side of the room the six convicts drank the raw spirit like milk, and plied the captain for news of the outer world two years old. Surrounding the house was a throng of eager, curious natives, no longer noisy, but strangely silent as their rolling, gleaming eyes gloated over the stone jar on the table. Presently a native, called "Jack" by his white fellow residents, comes to the door and makes a quick sign to Bob and a man named Brady, who rose and followed him into a shed used as a cook-house. Jack's story is soon told. He had been to the brig. She had thirty-two hands, but three men were sick. A strict watch was kept by the mate, not more than ten natives were allowed on board at once. In the port bow boats and the starboard quarter boats hanging on the davits there were two sailors armed with muskets.

Another of the white men now slunk into the cook-house where the three talked earnestly. Then Brady went back and told the captain that the brig was getting into the set of the outer currents, and would be out of sight of land by daylight unless he made sail and worked in close again. Upon which the captain shook hands all around, and was escorted to his boat, promising to be back at daylight and get his load of "punkins."

Brady and two others went with the captain for company, and on the way out one of his new friends – a tall, ghastly creature, eternally twisting his long fingers and squirting tobacco juice from his evil-seeming mouth – told the captain that he "orter let his men take a run ashore to get some cocoa-nuts and have a skylark." When they got aboard the captain told the mate to take the sentries out of the boats, to make sail, and run in close out of the currents, as it was all right. The captain and the guests went below to open another jar, while the mate and cooper roused up the hands who were lying about yarning and smoking, and told them to make sail. In the house ashore Bob Ridley with his two companions and Jack were planning how the job was to be done.

Two boats came ashore at daylight, and in addition to the crews there were ten or a dozen liberty men who had leave till noon to have a run about the island. The captain still bent on his "punkins," took a boat-steerer and two other hands to put the coveted vegetables into bags and carry them down to the boats. The pumpkins, Ridley said, grew on his own land quite close; the men could pick them off the vines, and the natives carry them down. So they set off up the hill until the pumpkin patch was reached. Here old Bob suddenly felt ill, and thought he would go back to take a swig at the rum jar and return, but if the captain wanted a good view from the top of the island Jack would show him round. So leaving the men to bag the pumpkins, the skipper and Jack climbed the path winding through the cocoa-nuts to the top of the hill. The sun was hot already, and the captain thirsty. Jack, out of his hospitable heart, suggested a drink. There were plenty of cocoa-nuts around growing on short, stumpy trees, a couple of which he twisted off, and without husking one with his teeth, as is often done, cut a hole in the green husk and presented it to the skipper to drink from. The nut was a heavy one; taking it in both hands the doomed sailor raised it to his lips and threw back his head. That was his last sight of the summer sky that has smiled down on so many a deed of blood and rapine. For Jack at that moment lifted his right arm and drove the knife to the hilt through his heart.

As Jack hurried back to be in good time for the "grand coup" – the cutting off of the brig – he saw that the boat-steerer and his two hands had finished gathering the pumpkins. Two bags were filled and tied, while beside them were the three bodies of the gatherers, each decently covered with a spreading cocoa-nut branch. The ten "liberty men" had been induced by a bevy of laughing island nymphs to accompany them along the ledge of the steep coast cliff to a place where, as Jack had told them, they would find plenty of nuts – a species of almond peculiar to Ocean and Pleasant Islands. Half-an-hour's walk took them out of sight and hearing of the Inga, and then the "liberty men" saw that the girls had somehow dropped behind, and were running with trembling feet into the maze of the undergrowth. The startled men found themselves in an amphitheatre of jagged rough coral boulders, covered over with a dense verdure of creepers, when suddenly Brady and fifty other devils swept down upon them without a cry. It was soon over. Then the blood-stained mob hurried back to the little beach.