Part 15 (1/2)
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 n.i.g.g.e.rs 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 ash.o.r.e 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 ash.o.r.e Bob Ridley with his two companions and Jack were planning _how the job was to be done_.
Two boats came ash.o.r.e 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.
The mate of the _Inga_ was a raw-boned Yankee from Martha's Vineyard.
Fearless, and yet watchful, he had struck the tall renegade as ”a chap as was agoin' to give them trouble if they didn't stiffen him fust in the cabin.” It was then noon, and as eight bells struck the crew began to get dinner. The mate, before he went below, took a look at the sh.o.r.e and fancied he saw the boat shoving off with the captain.
”Yes,” chimed in Wilkins, one of the guests, ”that's him; he's got a boat-load, and all the canoes comin' off 's a lot of our own n.i.g.g.e.rs bringin' off cocoa-nuts.”
”Then let's get dinner right away,” answered the mate, who knew the captain would make sail as soon as ever he found his ”punkins” safe aboard.
Had he known that the captain was lying staring up at the sun on the hilltop among the dwarf palms, he might even then have made a fight of it, short of half the crew as he was.
It was not to be.
They went below--he and his guests, the third mate and the carpenter; the cooper was left in charge of the s.h.i.+p.
The boats and canoes came alongside at once, pulling hard. Suddenly the cooper heard a cry from a man in the waist of the s.h.i.+p that chilled his blood, while over the bulwarks swarmed the copper-skinned crowd, knife and club in hand. As he rushed to the companion, the tall renegade looked up and saw the time had come.
Then began the butchery. The s.h.i.+p's officers rushed on deck, leaving behind only the negro steward and a boy with the three convicts. Two shots were fired in the cabin, after which the three demons hurried up to join in the mele. In ten minutes there was not a man of the crew alive, except the cooper in the maintop, with a b.l.o.o.d.y whale-spade in his fast relaxing grasp. Brady and Bob were agreed ”to give the old cove a chance to get eat up by the sharks,” and ironically advised him to take a header and swim ash.o.r.e. But the cooper, with his feet dangling over the futtocks and his head sunk on his chest, made no sign. He fell back as a streak of red ran slowly between the planking of the maintop and trickled down the mast to the deck.
It was a disappointment when the white murderers gathered in the cabin to find so small a quant.i.ty of rum in the _Inga's_ lazarette. But they were consoled by two bags of Mexican dollars--”Money for the punkins,”
grinned Brady, which would buy them twice as much as they wanted when next s.h.i.+p came along. And then as the princ.i.p.al business was over, the harmony began, and amidst rum and unholy jesting, a division of the effects in the cabins was made, while unto Jack and his myrmidons were abandoned all and sundry that could be found for'ard.
When the heavy-laden boats had been sent again and again to the sh.o.r.e, a fire was lighted in the cabin by the tall renegade, and the white men pushed off. But it suddenly occurred to Messrs. Ridley and Brady that ”such a h.e.l.l of a blaze might be seen by some other blubber-hunters a long way on a dark night,” so the boat was put back and the brig hurriedly scuttled. And you can drop a lead line close to the edge of the reef anywhere about Ocean Island, and get no soundings at forty fathoms.
Soon after we anch.o.r.ed an urgent message was sent to the Captain by King Tokusar and Queen S, imploring him to come ash.o.r.e and advise them. The Captain had of late seemed averse to going anywhere without my company, and asked me to come with him. So, getting into the whaleboat, we were pulled on sh.o.r.e, landing at a ma.s.sively-built stone wharf which formed part of the royal premises.
I may here mention that the headquarters of the American Mission had been at Kusaie for many years. The people were all Christians, and to a certain degree educated. Their island took rank, therefore, as the most successful result of missionary enterprise in the North Pacific.
A native college had been built, to which were brought from outlying islands those natives who were destined for the ministry. However, about a year previously the Board of Mission had changed their headquarters to Ebon, an island of the Marshall group, leaving but one native missionary on Kusaie in charge of the flock. His name was Likiak S. There are coloured Chadbands as well as white ones; and for pure, unmitigated hypocrisy the European professor would have had but little show in a prize contest.
The head of the American Mission, Mr. Morland, had built himself an exceedingly comfortable stone house in Ll. As he was away at present in the brig _Morning Star_, his residence was occupied by his fellow-worker, Likiak S, his wife, and an exceedingly pretty girl named Kitty of Ebon, who acted as housekeeper to Mr. and Mrs. Morland when at home.