Part 14 (1/2)
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 quant.i.ty 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 pa.s.sed, 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 s.h.i.+p. 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 G.o.d made me, I'll trice you up to the mainmast, and let a n.i.g.g.e.r 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 Utw 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 s.h.i.+p'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 mat,”
_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.”