The Ebbing Of The Tide

“‘What is it?’ I commenced again, when Tierney slowly raised his clenched and shaking hand and touched me.

“‘Look,’ he said, in a strange, quivering whisper, ‘in the name of God, man, what is that?’”

“I followed the direction of his shaking hand. It pointed along the broad, golden stream of moonlight that ran from close under our stern right across to the low, black line that we knew was Ailuk Island. For a moment I saw nothing, then, suddenly, amid the wild boil of the surf in Auriki, I saw a boat, a white-painted boat with a black gunwale streak. One person seemed to be sitting aft with his face drooping upon his breast. The boat seemed to me to be in the very centre of the wild turmoil of waters, and yet to ride with perfect ease and safety. Presently, however, I saw that it was on the other side of the reef, yet so close that the back spray from the curling rollers must have fallen upon it.”

“Pushing Captain Tierney away from him, Brayley suddenly seemed to straighten himself, and taking a step in advance of us he again hailed—

“‘Boat, ahoy!’

“The loud, hoarse cry pealed over the waters, but no answer came from the silent figure, and then Brayley turned towards us. His bronzed features had paled to the hue of death, and for a moment or two his mouth twitched.

“‘For God’s sake, Tierney, call the hands and lower the boat. It is nothing from the other world that we see—it is my daughter, Tessa.’

“In a second the old man sprang into life and action, and in a shrill voice that sounded like a scream he called, ‘Man the boat, lads!’

“Before one could have counted twenty the boat was in the water, clear of the falls, and Tierney and Brayley, with a crew of four natives, were pulling swiftly for the other boat.”

“In a few minutes they reached her, just as a big roller had all but got her and carried her right on top of Auriki. I saw Brayley get out of our boat and into the other, and lift the sitting figure up in his arms, and then Tierney made fast a line, took the strange boat in tow, and headed back for the ship.

“When the boat was within speaking distance, Tierney hailed me—‘Get some brandy ready—she is alive.’”

“We carried her into the cabin, and as Brayley bent his face over the poor, wasted figure of his child, the hot tears ran down his cheeks, and Tierney whispered to me, ‘She is dying fast.’

“We all knew that as soon as we looked at her. Already the grey shadows were deepening on the face of the wanderer as we gathered around her, speaking in whispers. Suddenly the loud clamour of the ship’s bell, struck by an unthinking sailor, made the girl’s frame quiver.

“With a look of intense pity the captain motioned to Brayley to raise her head to try and get her to swallow a teaspoonful of water. Tenderly the trader raised her, and then for a moment or two the closed, weary eyelids slowly drew back and she gazed into his face.

“‘Thank God,’ the captain said, ‘she knows you, Brayley.’

“A faint, flickering smile played about her lips and then ceased. Then a long, low sigh, and her head fell upon his breast.”

“At daylight we hove-up anchor and stood on our course for Brayley’s Station on Arhnu. Just as we rounded the south end of Ailuk Island we saw the Lahaina, schooner, lying-to and signalling that she wanted to speak. Her skipper came aboard, and hurriedly shaking hands with us, asked if we knew that Jack Brayley’s little Tessa had gone adrift in his boat ten days ago.

“Silently Tierney led him to the open skylight and pointed down to where she lay with her father kneeling beside her.

“‘Poor man!’ said the skipper of the Lahaina. ‘I’m real sorry. I heerd from the natives that Tessa and two native girls and a boy took the whaleboat, for a joke like, and she said she was going to meet her father, as she had seen him in her sleep, an’ she reckoned he was close to on the sea somewhere. I guess the poor thing’s got swept to leeward by the current. They had a sail in the boat.’

“‘Aye,’ said Tierney, ‘a squall must have struck the boat and carried away the mast; it was snapped off short about a foot above the thwart.’”

“When we ran into Maduro Lagoon three days afterwards our flag was half-mast high for Tessa Brayley, and for her father as well—for we had found him the next morning on his knees beside her, cold and stiff in death, with his dead hand clasped around hers.”

AT THE EBBING OF THE TIDE

Black Tom’s “hell” was one of the institutions of Samoa. And not an unpleasant hell to look at—a long, rambling, one-storeyed, white-painted wooden building, hidden on the beach side from ships entering Apia Harbour by a number of stately cocoanuts; and as you came upon it from the palm-shaded track that led from the brawling little Vaisigago towards the sweeping curve of Matautu Point, the blaze of scarlet hibiscus growing within the white-paled garden fence gave to this sailors’ low drinking-den an inviting appearance of sweetest Arcadian simplicity.

That was nineteen years ago. If you walk along the Matautu path now and ask a native to show you where Tom’s house stood, he will point to a smooth, grass-covered bank extending from the right-hand side of the path to the coarse, black sand of Matautu beach. And, although many of the present white residents of the Land of the Treaty Powers have heard or Black Tom, only a few grizzled old traders and storekeepers, relics of the bygone lively days, can talk to you about that grim deed of one quiet night in September.

Tamasi Uliuli (Black Thomas), as he was called by the natives, had come to Samoa in the fifties, and, after an eventful and varied experience in other portions of the group, had settled down to business in Matautu as a publican, baker and confectioner, butcher, seamen’s crimp, and interpreter. You might go all over the Southern States, from St. Augustine to Galveston, and not meet ten such splendid specimens of negro physique and giant strength as this particular coloured gentleman. Tom had married a Samoan woman—Inusia—who had borne him three children, two daughters and one son. Of this latter I have naught to say here, save that the story of his short life and tragic end is one common enough to those who have had any experience of a trader’s life among the betel-chewing savages of fever-haunted New Britain. And the eldest daughter may also “stand out” of this brief tale.

Luisa was black. There was no doubt about that. But she was also comely; and her youthful, lissom figure as she walked with springy step to the bathing-place at the Vaisigago gave her a striking individuality among the lighter-coloured Samoan girls who accompanied her. Yet to all of us who lived in Matautu the greatest charms of this curly-haired half-caste were the rich, sweet voice and gay laugh that brightened up her dark-hued countenance as we passed her on the path and returned her cheerful “Talofa, alii!” with some merry jest. And, although none of us had any inclination to go into her father’s pub. and let him serve us with a bottle of Pilsener, Luisa’s laughing face and curly head generally had attraction enough to secure, in the course of the day, a good many half-dollars for the 50lb. beef-keg which was Black Tom’s treasury.

It gave us a shock one day to see Luisa emerging from the mission chapel with a white-haired old man by her side—married. The matter had been arranged very quietly. For about two months previously this ancient had been one of Black Tom’s boarders. He was from New Zealand, and had come to Samoa to invest his money in trade, and being, perhaps, of a retiring and quiet disposition the sight of Mr. Thomas Tilton’s innocent-looking dwelling attracted him thither. Anyhow, old Dermott remained there, and it was noticeable that, from the day of his arrival, Tamasi Uliuli exacted the most rigid performance of morning and evening devotions by his family, and that the nightly scenes of riot and howling drunkenness, that had theretofore characterised the “hotel,” had unaccountably toned down. In fact, burly old Alvord, the consular interpreter, who had been accustomed to expostulate with Tom for the number of prostrate figures, redolent of bad rum, lying outside on the path in the early morning, showing by the scarcity of their attire that they had been “gone through” by thieving natives, expressed the opinion that Tom was either going mad, or “was getting consairned” about his sinful soul.

The knowledge of the fact that old Dermott had so much worldly wealth stowed away in his camphor-wood trunk, may have had (doubtless it did) the effect of causing this remarkable change in Tom’s daily conduct. Dermott, in his way, was sourly religious; and, although not understanding a word of Samoan, was fond of attending the native church at Apia—always in the wake of Luisa, Toe-o-le-Sasa, and other young girls. His solemn, wrinkled visage, with deep-set eyes, ever steadily fixed upon the object of his affection, proved a source of much diversion to the native congregation, and poor Luisa was subjected to the usual Samoan jests about the toe’ina and ulu tula (old man and bald head), and would arrive from the church at her father’s hell in a state of suppressed exasperation.

The happy marriage had been celebrated by Tom and his clientèle in a manner befitting the occasion and the supposed wealth of the bridegroom, Then none of us saw Luisa for a week at the bathing-place, and her non-appearance was discussed with interest at the nightly kava-drinking at half-caste Johnny Hall’s public-house. Old Toi’foi, duenna of the kava-chewing girls, used to say solemnly that the old man had Luisa locked up in her room as she was vale (obstinate), and sat on a chair outside and looked at her through a hole in the wall.

An hour after midnight on one of those silent tropic nights when naught is heard but the muffled boom of the ocean swell on the outer reef, a shot rang out through the sleeping village, and then a long wail as of some one in mortal agony or terror. Léger, the Canadian carpenter at Macfarlane’s store, was, in company with Alvord the Swearer, and Pedro the Publican, and marry of us general sinners, up late at the kava-bowl when Leva, the prettiest girl on the Point, and the most notorious nymphe du beach in Apia (there are no pavements in Samoa), dashed in amongst its with the announcement that “Luisa was dead.” In another ten seconds we kava-drinkers, with unsteady legs but clear heads, were outside on our way to Black Tom’s house, which was within pistol-shot.

An old man with a throat cut from ear to ear is not a cheerful sight at any time, and we turned quickly away from where he lay on the once spotless white bed, now an ensanguined horror, to look at poor Luisa, who lay on a mat on the floor, gasping out her brief young life. Her head was pillowed on her mother’s bosom, and down her side the blood ran from the jagged bullet-hole. On a chair sat the herculean figure of Black Tom with his face in his hands, through which splashed heavy tears. Slowly he rocked himself to and fro in the manner of his race when strongly moved; and when he tried to speak there only struck upon our ears a horrible gasping noise that somehow made us turn again to the awful thing on the bed to see if it had aught to say upon the matter.

Luisa spoke but little. The kind-faced, quiet-voiced missionary doctor told her that which she already knew too well; and then we drew away while he spoke of other things, and we saw the look of dread and horror on the comely young face pass away and a faint smile part the lips that were already touched by the grim shadow of coming dissolution. Some of her village playmates and companions, with wet cheeks, bent their faces and touched her lips with theirs, and to each she sighed a low To Fa of farewell, and then she looked toward the shaking bent figure in the chair and beckoned him over. With noiseless tread he came, and then, with her very soul looking at him from her great, death-stricken eyes, she murmured, “Fear not, my father, my mouth is covered by the hand of Death; farewell!” *****

The sound of the soft lapping of the falling tide came through the open window as Luisa spoke again to Toë-o-le-Sasa, the Maid of Apia—“E Toe, e pae afea te tai?” (“When is the tide out?”) And the girl answered with a sob in her throat, “In quite a little while, O friend of my heart.”

“Ua lelei. (It is well.) And as the waters run out so does my soul float away!” and she turned her face to her mother’s bosom. And as we went softly out from the room and stood upon the path with the lofty palm-plumes rustling above us, we saw the first swirling wave of the incoming tide ripple round Matautu Point and plash on Hamilton’s beach. And from within the silent house answered the wail of Death.

THE FALLACIES OF HILLIARD

I

With clenched hand grasping the two letters—the one that sank his last hope of saving his plantation, and the other that blasted his trust in human nature—Hilliard, the planter of Nairai Viwa, walked with quick, firm step to his house, and sat down to think awhile. The great cotton “burst-up” had ruined most men in Fiji, and although long delayed in his case the blow had crushed him utterly.

An angry flush tinged his set features for a few seconds as he re-read the curt, almost savage denial, by his father of the “couple of thousand” asked for. “A fool to resign his commission in the Service and go into a thing he knew nothing about, merely to humour the fantastic whim of a woman of fashion who will, no doubt, now sheer very clear of your wrecked fortunes.”

Ten minutes previously when Hilliard, who had thought his father would never see him go under for the sake of a couple of thou., had read these lines he had smiled, even with the despair of broken fortune at his heart, as he looked at the other letter yet unopened.

Kitty, at least, would stick to him. He was not a maudlin sentimentalist, but the memory of her farewell kisses was yet strong with him; and his past experiences of woman’s weaknesses and his own strength justified him in thinking that in this one woman he had found his pearl of great price.

Then he read her letter; and as he read the tappa mallets at work in the Fijian houses hard by seemed to thump in unison with the dull beats of his heart as he stared at the correctly-worded and conventionally-expressed lines that mocked at his fond imaginings of but a few breaths back.

Jimmy, the curly-headed half-caste who had brought him his letters from Levuka, had followed in his steps and was sitting, hat in hand, on the sofa before him when Hilliard raised his face. The fixed pallor had left his bronzed cheeks. For an instant the face of another man had passed before him—Lamington, his one-time fellow-officer, whom every one but Hilliard himself looked upon as being “first in the running” with the woman who had pledged herself to him. But, then, Lamington himself had told him that she had refused him, heir to a big fortune as he was, and they had shaken hands, and Lamington had wished him luck in his honest, good-natured fashion. “Perhaps,” and here the dark flush mantled his forehead, “he’s tried again and she’s slung me. And I… what a damnably unpleasant and quick intuition of women’s ways my old dad has! I always wondered why such a fiery devil as he was married such a milk-and-water creature as my good mother. By –, I begin to think he went on safe lines, and I on a fallacy!”

The stolid face of Jimmy recalled him to the present. He must give up the plantation and take a berth of some sort. From the sideboard he took a flask of liquor and poured out two big drinks.

“Here, Jimmy, my boy. This is the last drink you’ll get on Nairai Viwa. I’m burst up, cleaned out, dead broke, and going to hell generally.”

Jimmy grunted and held out his brown hand for the grog. “Yes? I s’pose you’ll go to Levuka first? I’ll give you a passage in the cutter.”

Hilliard laughed with mingled bitterness and sarcasm. “Right, Jimmy. Levuka is much like the other place, and I’ll get experience there, if I don’t get a billet.”

“Here’s luck to you, sir, wherever you go,” and Jimmy’s thick lips glued themselves lovingly to the glass.

Hilliard drank his oft quietly, only muttering to himself, “Here’s good-bye to the fallacies of hope,” and then, being at bottom a man of sense and quick resolution, he packed his traps and at sunset went aboard the cutter. As they rippled along with the first puffs of the land-breeze, he glanced back but once at the lights of Nairai Viwa village that illumined the cutter’s wake, and then, like a wise man, the hopes and dreams of the past drifted astern too.

And then for the next two years he drifted about from one group to another till he found an island that suited him well—no other white man lived there.

II

The laughing, merry-voiced native children who, with speedy feet, ran to the house of Iliâti, the trader, to tell him that a visitor was coming from the man-of-war, had gathered with panting breath and hushed expectancy at the door as the figure of the naval officer turned a bend in the path, his right hand clasped with a proud air of proprietorship by that or the ten-year-old son of Alberti the Chief.

Iliati with a half-angry, half-pleased look, held out his hand. “Lamington!”

“Hilliard! old fellow. Why didn’t you come on board i Are all your old friends forgotten?”

“Pretty nearly, Lamington. Since I came a cropper over that accursed cotton swindle I’ve not had any inclination to meet any one I knew—especially any one in the Service, but”—and his voice rang honestly, “I always wondered whether you and I would ever meet again.”

“Hilliard,” and Lamington placed his hand on the trader’s shoulder, “I know all about it. And look here, old man. I saw her only two months ago—at her especial request. She sent for me to talk about you.”

“Ah!” and the trader’s voice sounded coldly, “I thought, long ago, that she had reconsidered her foolish decision of other days and had long since become Mrs. Lamington. But it doesn’t interest me, old fellow. Can you drink Fiji rum, Lamington? Haven’t anything better to offer you.”

“I’ll drink anything you’ve got, old fellow, even liquid Tophet boiled down to a small half-pint; but I want you to listen to me first. I’ve been a bit of a scoundrel to you, but, by God, old man, I exchanged into the beastly old Petrel for this cruise expressly to find you and make a clean breast of it. I promised her I would.”

“Confound it all, Lamington, don’t harrow your feelings needlessly, and let us have the rum and talk about anything else.”

“No, we won’t. Look here, Hilliard, it sounds beastly low, but I must get it out. We met again—at a ball in Sydney more than two years ago. Some infernal chattering women were talking a lot of rot about the planters in Fiji having very pretty and privileged native servants—and all that, you know. She fired up and denied it, but came and asked me if it was true, and I was mean enough not to give it a straight denial. How the devil it happened I can’t tell you, but we danced a deuce of a lot and I lost my senses and asked her again, and she said ‘Yes.’ Had she been any other woman but Miss –, I would have concluded that the soft music and all that had dazed her. It does sometimes—lots of ‘em; makes the most virtuous wife wish she could be a sinner and resume her normal goodness next day. But Kitty is different. And it was only that infernal twaddle caused it and made her write you that letter. A week hadn’t passed before she wrote to me and told me how miserable she was. But I knew all through she didn’t care a d–about me. And that’s the way it occurred, old man.”

Hilliard’s hand met his. “Say no more about it, Lamington; it’s a mea matê as we say here—a thing that is past.”

“But, good God, old fellow, you don’t understand. She’s written ever so many times to you. No one in Levuka knew where you had gone to; there’s thousands of islands in the South Seas. And this letter here,” he held it toward him, “she gave to me, and I promised her on my honour as a man to effect an exchange into the Petrel and find you.”

“Thanks, Lamington. You always were a good fellow.” He laid the letter on the table quietly and rose and got the rum.

A young native girl, with deep lustrous eyes shining from a face of almost childish innocence, had entered the door and stood with one bare and softly-rounded arm clasped round the neck of Alberti’s little son. Her lips parted in a smile as Lamington, with a gasping cough, set down his glass after drinking the potent spirit, and she set her brows in mock ferocity at Hilliard who drank his down like an old-time beachcomber.

“By Jove, Hilliard, what an astonishingly pretty face! She could give any New Orleans créole points. Time you got out of this before some of the Rotumah beauties make you forget things; and oh, by the way, I’m forgetting things. Remember you are to come aboard and dine with us to-night, and that you’re in indifferent health, and that Captain –, of Her Majesty’s ship Petrel is going to give you a passage to Sydney.”

At an angry sign from Hilliard the girl disappeared. Then he shook his head. “No, Lamington. I appreciate your kindness, but cannot accept it. I’ve been here two years now, and Alberti, the principal local chief, thinks no end of me; and he’s a deuced fine fellow, and has been as good as ten fathers to me. And I’ve business matters to attend to as well.”

Lamington pressed him no further. “Lucky devil,” he thought. “I suppose he’ll clear out in the trading schooner to Sydney, next week; be there long before us any way, and I’ll find them well over the first stage of married infatuation when I see him next.”

Another hour’s chat of old times and old shipmates in the Challenger and Lamington, with his honest, clean-shaven face looking into the quiet, impassive features of the ex-officer, had gripped his hand and gone, and Hilliard went over to the house of Alberti, the chief, to drink kava—and see the old French priest. From there, an hour afterward, he saw the cruiser with wet, shining sides dip into the long roll of the ocean swell, as with the smoke pouring from her yellow funnel she was lost to sight rounding the point.

Said the son of Alberti to Léla, the innocent-faced girl with the dancing, starlike eyes and red lips, as they stood watching the last curling rings of the steamer’s smoke—“And so that is why I knew much of what the papalagi from the man-of-war said to your Iliâti; Alberti, my father, has taught me much of your man’s tongue. # And, look thou, Léla the Cunning, Iliâti hath a wife in his own country!”

“Pah!”—and she shook her long, wavy locks composedly, and then plucked a scarlet hibiscus flower to stick in front of one of her pretty little ears—“what does that matter to me, fathead? I am she here; and when Iliâti goeth away to her she will be me there. But he loveth me more than any other on Rotumah, and hath told me that where he goeth I shall go also. And who knoweth but that if I have a son he may marry me? Then shalt thou see such a wedding-feast as only rich people give. And listen—for why should I not tell thee: ‘Tis well to starve thyself now, for it may be to-morrow, for look! fathead, there goeth the priest into thy father’s house, and Iliâti is already there.”

A TALE OF A MASK

Lannigan, who lived on Motukoe, was in debt to his firm. This was partly due to his fondness for trade gin and partly because Bully Hayes had called at the island a month or so back and the genial Bully and he had played a game or two of poker.

“I’ll give you your revenge when I come back from the Carolines, Lannigan,” said the redoubtable captain as he scooped in every dollar of the trader’s takings for the past six months. And Lannigan, grasping his hand warmly and declaring it was a pleasure to be “claned out by a gintleman,” bade him good-bye and went to sleep away from home for a day with some native friends. Tariro, his Manhiki wife, had a somewhat violent temper, and during the poker incident had indulged in much vituperative language outside, directed at white men in general and Lannigan in particular.

“See, thou swiller of gin, see what thy folly has brought us to,” said the justly-incensed Tariro, when he came back, and with her took stock of his trade goods; “a thousand and five hundred dollars’ worth of trade came we here with, and thou hast naught to show for it but five casks of oil and a few stinking shark-fins; and surely the ship of the malo (his firm) will be here this month.”