Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories

The white man’s answer was quick and to the point. He would not send his child away; either the boy remained with him on shore or they both returned to the ship and sought out some other island.

“Good,” said Charlik with cold assent, and turning to his people he commanded them to provide a house for the white man and his boy, and bring them food and mats for their immediate necessities.

An hour or two afterwards, as the ship that had landed him at Lêla sailed slowly past the white line of surf which fringed the northern side of the island, the captain, looking shoreward from his deck, saw the white man and his boy walking along the beach towards a lonely native house on the farthest point. Behind them followed a number of half-nude natives, carrying mats and baskets of food. Only once did the man turn his face towards the ship, and the captain and mate, catching his glance, waved their hands to him in mute farewell. A quick upward and outward motion of his hand was the only response to their signal, and then he walked steadily along without looking seaward again.

“Queer fellow that, Matthews,” said the captain to his mate. “I wonder how the deuce he got to the Bonins and where he came from. He’s not a runaway convict, anyway—you can see that by the look in his eye. Seems a decent, quiet sort of a man, too. What d’ye think he is yourself?”

“Runaway man-o’war’s man,” said Matthews, looking up aloft. “What the devil would he come aboard us at night-time in a fairly civilised place like the Bonin Islands as soon as he heard that the Juno, frigate, was lying at anchor ten miles away from us there. And, besides that, you can see he’s a sailor, although he didn’t want to show it.”

“Aye,” said the captain, “likely enough that’s what he is. Perhaps he’s one of the seven that ran away from Sir Thomas Staine’s ship in the South Pacific some years ago.”

And Mr. Matthews, the mate of the barque Oliver Cromwell was perfectly correct in his surmise, for the strange white man who had stolen aboard the ship so quietly in the Bonin Islands was a deserter from his Majesty William IV.‘s ship Tagus. For nearly seven years he had wandered from one island to another, haunted by the fear of recapture and death since the day when, in a mad fit of passion, he had, while ashore with a watering party, driven his cutlass through the body of a brutal petty officer who had threatened, for some trifling dereliction of duty, to get him “a couple of dozen.”

Horror-stricken at the result of his deadly blow, he had fled into the dense jungle of the island, and here for many days the wretched man lived in hiding till he was found by a party of natives, who fed and brought him back to life, for he was all but dead from hunger and exposure. For nearly a year he lived among these people, adapting himself to their mode of life, and gaining a certain amount of respect; for in addition to being a naturally hard-working man, he had no taste for the gross looseness of life that characterised nine out of every ten white men who in those days lived among the wild people of the North Pacific Islands.

Two years passed by. Brandon—for that was his name—realised in all its bitterness that he could never return to England again, as recognition and capture, dared he ever show himself there, would be almost certain: for, in addition to his great stature and marked physiognomy, he was fatally marked for identification by a great scar received in honourable fight from the cutlass of the captain of a Portuguese slaver on the coast of Africa. And so, in sheer despair of his future, he resolved to cast aside for ever all hope of again seeing his native land and all that was dear to him, and live out his life among the lonely islands of the wide Pacific.

Perhaps, as he looked out, at long, long intervals of years, at the sails of some ship that passed within sight of the island, he may have thought of the bright-faced girl in the little Cornish village who had promised to be his wife when he came home again in the Tagus; but in his rude, honest way he would only sigh and say to himself—

“Poor Rose, she’s forgotten me by now; I hope so, anyhow.”

So time went by, slowly at first, then quicker, for the young native woman whom he had married a year before had aroused in him a sort of unspoken affection for her artless and childlike innocence, and this deepened when her first child was born; and sometimes, as he worked at his old trade of boat-building—learned before he joined the King’s service—he would feel almost content.

As yet no fear of a King’s ship had crossed his mind. In those days ten years would go by, and save for some passing merchantman bound to China by the Outer Route, which would sweep past miles away before the strong trade wind, no ship had he seen. And here, on this forgotten island, he might have lived and died, but that one day a sandal-wooding brigantine was becalmed about four miles away from the island, and Brandon determined to board her, and endeavour to obtain a few tools and other necessaries from her captain.

With half-a-dozen of his most trusted native friends he stepped into a canoe, and reached the brigantine just as night began to fall. The master of the vessel received him kindly enough, and gave him the few articles he desired, and then, suddenly turning to him, said—

“I want another man; will you come? I’m bound to Singapore with sandal-wood.”

“No, thank you, sir. I can’t leave here. I’ve got a wife and child.”

The seaman laughed with good-humoured contempt, and sought to persuade him to come, but Brandon only shook his head solemnly. “I can’t do that, sir. These here people has treated me well, and I can’t play them a dirty trick like that.”

After some little bargaining the natives who had come with Brandon agreed to return to the shore and bring off some turtle to the ship. It was still a dead calm, and likely to continue so all night, and Brandon, shaking the captain’s hand, got into the canoe and headed for the island.

As they ran the bow of the canoe upon the beach Brandon called loudly to his wife to come out of the house and see what he had brought from the ship, and was instantly struck with alarm at hearing no answer to his call. Running quickly over the few hundred yards that separated his house from the beach, he lifted up the door of thatch and saw that the house was empty—his wife and child were gone.

In a moment the whole village was awake, and, carrying lighted torches, parties of men and women ran along the path to seek the missing woman, but sought in vain. The island was small and had but one village, and Brandon, puzzled at his wife’s mysterious disappearance, was about to lead another party himself in another direction to that previously taken, when a woman who lived at a house at the extreme end of the village, suddenly remembered that she had seen Brandon’s wife, carrying her child in her arms, walking quickly by in the direction of a point of land that ran far out from the shore on the lee side of the island.

In an instant he surmised that, fearing he might go away in the ship, she had determined to swim out to him. The moment he voiced his thought to the natives around him, the men darted back to the beach, and several canoes were at once launched, and in the first was Brandon.

There were four canoes in all, and as that of the white man gained the open sea, the crew urged him not to steer directly for the brigantine, “for,” said they, “the current is so strong that Mâhia, thy wife, who is but a poor swimmer and knows not its strength, hath been swept round far beyond the point—and, besides, she hath the child.”

For nearly half an hour the canoes paddled out swiftly, but noiselessly, the men calling out loudly at brief intervals, and every now and then Brandon himself would call.

“Mâhia! Mâhia! Call to us so that we may find thee!”

But no answer came back over the dark waters. At last the four canoes approached each other, and the natives and Brandon had a hurried consultation.

“Paranta,” said the steersman of the nearest canoe, “let us to the ship. It may be that she is there.”

The man who sat next to the speaker muttered in low tones, “How can that be, Kariri? Either the child hath wearied her arm and she hath sunk, or—the sharks.”

Plunging his paddle deeply into the water, Brandon, brought the head of the canoe round for the ship, the faint outlines of whose canvas was just showing ghostly white half a mile away through the thin morning haze which mantled the still unruffled surface of the ocean.

Urged swiftly along by the six men who paddled, the white man’s canoe was soon within hailing distance of the brigantine, and at the same moment the first puff of the coming breeze stirred and then quickly lifted the misty veil which encompassed her.

“Ship ahoy!” hailed Brandon. “Did a woman and child swim off to you during the night?”

Almost ere the answering “No” was given, there was a loud cry from one of the other canoes which had approached the vessel on the other side, and the “No” from the brigantine was changed into—

“Yes, she’s here; close to on the port side. Look sharp, she’s sinking,” and then came the sound of tackle as the crew lowered a boat that hung on the ship’s quarter.

With a low, excited cry the crew of Brandon’s canoe struck their bright red paddles into the water with lightning strokes, and the little craft swept swiftly round the stern of the brigantine before the just lowered boat had way on her.

There, scarce a hundred yards away, they saw Mâhia swimming slowly and painfully along towards the ship, to the man whom she thought had deserted her. With one arm she supported the tiny figure of the child, and Brandon, with a wild fear in his heart, saw that she was too exhausted to hold it many seconds longer.

“Quick! Quick, man, for the love of God!” came in loud, hoarse tones from the captain of the brigantine, who stood on the rail holding to the main rigging, and drawing a pistol from his belt he sent its bullet within a few feet of the feeble swimmer.

Only another ten yards, when, as if aware of the awful fate that awaited her, Mâhia half raised herself, and with dying strength held the child out almost clear of the water. And then, as her panting bosom wailed out her husband’s name for the last time, there pealed out upon the ocean a shriek of mortal agony, and he saw her drop the infant and disappear in a swirl of eddying foam. Ere that awful cry had ceased to vibrate through the morning air, a native had sprung from the canoe and seized the drowning child, and the agonised father, looking down into the blue depths, saw a running streak of bubbling white five fathoms beneath. Again the native dived, and followed the wavering track of white, and presently, not fifty feet away, they saw him rise with the woman on his arm, her long black hair twining around his brawny neck and shoulders.

“By God, he’s saved her!” cried the mate, as both his boat and Brandon’s canoe reached the native simultaneously, and they reached out their hands to take hold of the motionless figure.

“Paranta, turn thy eyes away,” said a native, and flinging his arms around the white man, he forced his face away as the diver and his burden were lifted into the boat.

A shuddering sob stirred the frame of the mate or the brigantine when he saw that only the upper half of the woman’s body was left.

II

With the captain of the sandal-wooder, the broken-hearted wanderer, had taken passage, and one day, as he watched the movements of his child as it frolicked with the rough seamen of the brigantine, the haunting fear of discovery returned to him in all its first force of three years before. A kindly remark made by the rough but good-natured skipper led him to reveal his story, and the seaman’s face fell when the deserter asked him if he thought it possible he could ever return to England with safety.

“No, I don’t. You might but I can tell you that a man with a figure like you—6 ft. 1 in. if you’re an inch, and with a cut across the face—wouldn’t miss being found out. And look here, ‘tisn’t even safe for you to come to Singapore. There’s many a King’s ship around these parts, and the chances are that some of the company of any one of ‘em would recognise you—and you know what that means. If I were in your place I would try and get away in an American whaler. Once in America you’ll be safe enough. The best I can do for you is to put you ashore at the Bonin Islands. There’s bound to be whalers in there next season, making up northwards to the coast of Japan and Tchantar Bay.”

One day they sailed slowly into a little land-locked harbour in the Bonin Islands, and Brandon, grasping the kind-hearted skipper’s hand, bade him goodbye, and went ashore. Here, among the strange hybrid population of natives, half-bloods, runaways from whale-ships, and Portuguese, he found employment at boat-building, and for another three years lived contentedly enough, working hard, and saving what little money he could. Then came the Oliver Cromwell and reported that an English frigate which was at anchor a few miles away at another harbour would be at his then refuge on the following day.

Without saying a word of farewell to his rough and wild associates, he had taken his bag of honestly-earned money, and going on board the barque at night, besought the master to give him and the boy a passage away to any island in the Caroline or Marshall Groups at which the vessel could conveniently land them.

At noon next morning the barque was under way, and as she rounded the point the lofty spars of the frigate showed up scarce a mile distant, and Brandon, with a pistol in the bosom of his shirt, sat and trembled till the Oliver Cromwell was well away from her, and the frigate’s white sails had become hull down.

For week after week the barque sailed past many a palm-shaded isle, with its belt of gleaming beach within the fringe of beating surf, and the brown people came out from their dwellings of thatch and shouted and bawled to the men on the passing ship; but at none of these would the captain land the deserter, for the natives were reputed to be savage and treacherous to the last degree.

At last the green peaks of Kusaie which shadowed the deep waters of Lêla Harbour were sighted; and here once more the wandering man sought to hide himself from the world.

III

The sun was high now, and the boy Harry, now a strong, sturdy-limbed youngster of seven, as he splashed about, called loudly to his father to come and bathe too.

“Come, father,” he called. “See, the sun is between the big and little peaks, and to-day it is that you and I go to Utwé in the new boat.”

At the sound of the boy’s voice Brandon came to the door of his hut, and stroking his bearded chin, smiled and shook his head.

“Aye, aye, Harry. Come in, boy, and eat something, and then let us away to the king’s boat-shed. To-day the people of Utwé shall see the new boat, and Charlik goes with us.”

“Father,” asked the boy, as he ate his food, “when shall we go away from this place? Kanka, the priest, said to me yesterday that by and by the king would build us a new house in the village—when you had finished another boat.”

Brandon shook his head. He had found Charlik a hard master during the time he had lived on the island; for although both he and the boy were well treated in some respects, the savage and avaricious chief kept him constantly at work, and Brandon was beginning to weary of his existence.

Just as the trade wind began to whiten the tops of the long, sweeping ocean rollers, the new boat built by the king’s white man slid out from the wooded shores of Lêla, and, under a great mat sail, sped down the coast towards the native village called Utwé.

Seated beside Brandon was the grim-faced Charlik, who was in high good humour at the speed shown by the boat, and promised to build him a new house within a few weeks. For nearly two hours the boat spun southward along the line of thundering breakers on the eastern shore, till Brandon hauled to the wind and ran inside the narrow passage to Utwé Harbour. And there, right before them, lay at anchor the very frigate he had so narrowly escaped at the Bonins!

Before the astonished king could prevent him the deserter had run the boat ashore on a shelving patch of reef, and seizing his boy in his arms, sprang out and made for the shore.

He would escape yet, he thought, as he sprang from ledge to ledge of coral rock, until he gained the beach. In the thick forest jungle he would at least be safe from pursuit by the ship’s people.

Taking the boy by the hand, he set out at a run past the line of native houses which dotted the beach, and to all inquiries as to his haste he made no answer. Suddenly, as he turned into a path that led mountain-wards, he found his way blocked by an officer and a party of blue-jackets.

“Halt!” cried the officer, covering him with a fowling-piece. “Who are you, and why are you running like this?”

“That is my business, sir,” he said. Then the officer sprang at him.

“Surrender, you villain! I know you—you are one of the men we want.”

He turned like lightning, and, with the boy in his arms, sped back again towards the beach in the hope of getting a canoe and gaining the opposite shore of the island. But his pursuers were gaining on him fast, and when the beach was reached at last he turned and faced them, for every canoe was gone.

The officer motioned to his men to stand back.

“Brandon, there is no chance for you. Do not add another crime to that which you have already committed.”

“No, sir; no. I shall do no more harm to any one in the King’s service, but I will never be taken alive.”

He pressed the muzzle of his pistol to his heart, pulled the trigger, and fell dead at their feet.

OXLEY, THE PRIVATEERSMAN

I

All day long the Indiana, Tom de Wolfs island trading brig, had tried to make Tucopia Island, an isolated spot between Vanikoro and the New Hebrides, but the strong westerly current was too much for her with such a failing breeze; and Packenham, the skipper, had agreed with Denison, his supercargo, to let Tucopia “slide” till the brig was coming south again from the Marshalls.

“Poor old Oxley won’t like seeing us keep away,” said Denison. “I promised him that we would be sure to give him a call this time on our way up. Poor old chap! I wish we could send him a case of grog ashore to cheer him up. But a thirty miles’ pull dead to windward and against such a current is rather too much of a job even for a boat’s crew of natives.”

But about midnight the breeze freshened from the eastward, and by daylight the smooth, shapely cone of the green little island stood up clear and sharply defined from its surrounding narrow belt of palm-covered shore in a sunlit sea of sparkling blue, and Denison told the captain to get the boat ready.

“Ten miles or so isn’t much—we can sail there and back in the boat.”

Tucopia was a long way out of the Indiana’s, usual cruising ground; but a year or so before a French barque had gone ashore there, and Denison had bought the wreck from her captain on behalf of Mr. Tom De Wolf. And as he had no white man on board to spare, he had handed his purchase over to the care of Oxley, the one European on the island.

“Strip her, Jack, and then set a light to her hull—there’s a lot of good metal bolts in it. You shall have half of whatever we get out of the sale of her gear.”

And so old Jack Oxley, who had settled on Tucopia because forty-five years before he had married a Tucopian girl, when he was a wandering boat-steerer in the colonial whaling fleet, and was now too shaky to go to sea, shook Denison’s hand gratefully, and was well satisfied at the prospect of making a few hundred pounds so easily.

A quiet, blue-eyed, white-haired, stooping old man with a soft voice and pleasant smile, he had bade Denison goodbye and said with his tremulous laugh, “Don’t be surprised if when you come back you find my old hull has broken up before that of the wreck. Eighty-seven is a good age, Mr. Denison. However, I’ll take things easy. I’ll let some of my boys” (his “boys” were sons of over forty years of age) “do all the bullocking8 part of the work.”

When Denison reached the landing-place he was met by a number of the old whaler’s whitey-brown descendants, who told him that Jack was dead—had died three months ago, they said. And there was a letter for the supercargo and captain, they added, which the old man had written when he knew he was dying. Denison took the letter and read it at once.

“Dear Mr. Denison,—Tom and Sam will give you all particulars about the gear and metal from the wreck.... You asked me one day if I would write you something about the privateer I sailed in, and some of the fights in which I was engaged. You and Captain Packenham might like to read it some day when time hangs heavy. Sam will give you the yarn.... Goodbye. I fear we shall not meet again.—Yours very truly, John Oxley.”

A few days later, as the Indiana was sailing northward from Tucopia, Denison took out old Oxley’s yarn. It was written in a round schoolboy hand on the blank pages of a venerable account-book.

“Old as I am now I have never forgotten the exultant feeling that filled my bosom one dull gray morning in February, 1805, when I, John Oxley, put my weak hands to the capstan bars to help weigh anchor on board the Port-au-Prince at Gravesend, and the strange, wild thrill that tingled my boyish blood at the rough, merry chorus of the seamen while the anchor came underfoot and the hands sprang aloft to make sail. For I was country-born and country-bred, and though even in our little town of Aylesbury, where my father was a farmer, we were used to hearing tales of the sea and to the sight of those who had fought the king’s battles by land and sea, I had never until that morning caught sight of the ocean.

“Two weeks before I, foolish lad that I was, had been enticed by two village comrades into a poaching venture, and although I took no actual part therein—being only stationed as a watch on the outskirts of Colstone Wood—I was seized by two of Sir John Latham’s keepers and taken away to the county gaol. I will not here attempt to describe the days of misery and shame that followed, and the grief and anguish of my parents; for although Sir John and the other county magistrates before whom I was brought believed my tale when I weepingly told them that I had no intention of poaching (and, indeed, I did not actually know that my two companions were bent upon so dangerous an enterprise) and my punishment was but light, yet the disgrace was too much for me to bear. So ere the sting of the whipping I received had died away I had made up my mind to run away to London and get some honest employment, and trust to time for my father’s forgiveness. My sister Judith—Heaven bless her loving heart—to whom alone I made known my purpose, sought with tender words and endearing caresses to overcome my resolution; but, finding her pleading was of no avail, she made heart to dry her tears, and, giving me half a guinea, which a month before had been given to her by Lady Latham, she folded me in her arms, and, kissing me a last goodbye, as I stood with her at midnight behind my father’s barn, bade me God speed.

“‘Goodbye, John,’ she whispered, ‘’twill surely break mother’s heart, I fear, when she knows you have gone.’

“So, whispering back a promise that I would find some one in London to write to her for me and tell her how I fared, I gently took poor Judith’s loving arms from around my neck, and ran as hard as I could across the field into the high road; for every moment my courage was failing me, and when I reached a hedge and lay down to rest awhile, my mother’s face rose before me, and I thought I heard her tender voice crying, ‘My boy, my boy! Has he gone without a last kiss from me?’ Twice did I rise up with tears running down my cheeks and resolve to go back and at least receive her farewell kiss and blessing, but my boyish pride came to my aid, and with a choking sob I lay down again and waited for the morning.

“It took me some days to reach London, for it is a long journey from Aylesbury, and then for nearly a week I endured much hardship and misery, for my starved and dejected appearance was such that no one would give me employment of any sort, and my half-guinea became exhausted in buying food. But weak and wretched as I was, my courage to go on in the course I had taken was still unshaken; and, although it was a bitter winter, and I all but perished with the cold, I managed to always obtain some sort of shelter at night-time.