We had breakfasted, and were lying on the deck chatting and reading, as the _Leonora_ glided over the heaving bosom of the main--the sun shining--the seabirds sailing athwart our course with outstretched, moveless wings--the sparkling waters reflecting a thousand prismatic colours, as the brig swiftly sped along her course--all nature gaily bright, joyous, and unheeding. Suddenly one of the wounded men, Henry Stephens by name, raised himself from his mat with a cry so wild and unearthly that half the crew and people started to their feet.
"My G.o.d!" he exclaimed, as he sank down again upon his mat, "I"m a dead man--those infernal arrows."
"Poor Harry!" said Nellie, who by this time was bending over him, "don"t give in--by and by better--you get down to bunk. Carry him down, you boys!"
Two of the crew lifted the poor fellow, who even as they raised him had another fearful paroxysm, drawing his frame together almost double, so that the men could scarcely retain their hold.
"Carry him gently, boys!" said Hayston; "go to the steward for some brandy and laudanum, that will ease the pain."
"And is there no cure--no means of stopping this awful agony?"
"Not when teta.n.u.s once sets in," said Hayston; "it"s not the first case I"ve seen."
The other man was quite a young fellow, and famed among us for his entire want of fear upon each and every occasion. He laughed and joked the whole time of the fight with the Santa Cruz islanders, said that every bullet had its billet, and that his time had not come. "He believed," he said, "also that half the talk about death by poisoned arrows was fancy. Men got nervous, and frightened themselves to death."
He was not one of that sort anyhow. He had laughed and joked with both of us, and even now, when poor Harry Stephens was carried below, and we could hear his cries as the increasing torture of the paroxysms overcame his courage and self-control, he joked still.
The day was a sad one. Still the brig glided on through the azure waveless deep--still the tropic birds hung motionless above us--still the breeze whispered through our swelling sails, until the soft, brief twilight of the tropic eve stole upon us, and the stars trembled one by one in the dusky azure, so soon to be "thick inlaid with patines of bright gold."
"Reckon I"ve euchred the bloodthirsty n.i.g.g.e.rs this time," said d.i.c.k, with a careless laugh, lighting his pipe as he spoke. "This is "Twelfth night." That"s the end of the time the cussed poison takes to ripen, isn"t it, Nellie?" he laughed. "It regular puts me in mind of old Christmas days in England, and us schoolboys counting the days after the New Year! What a jolly time it was! Won"t I be glad to see the snow, and the bare hedges, and the holly berries, and the village church again?
Dashed if I don"t stay there next time I get a chance, and cut this darned slaving, privateering life. I"ll--oh! my G.o.d--ah--a--h!"
His voice, in spite of all his efforts, rose from a startled cry to a long piercing shriek, such as it curdled our blood to hear.
Hayston came up from the cabin, followed by Nellie and the other girls.
All crowded round him in silence. They knew well at the first cry he was a doomed man.
"Carry him down, lads!" he said, as he laid his hand on his forehead and pa.s.sed it quietly over his cl.u.s.tering hair--"poor d.i.c.k! poor fellow!" At this moment another frightful spasm shook the seaman"s frame, and scarcely could the men who had lifted him from the deck on which he had been lying control his tortured limbs. As they reached the lower deck another terrible cry reached our ears, while the continuous groaning of the poor fellow first attacked made a ghastly and awful accompaniment to the screams of the latest victim.
As for me, I walked forward and sat as near as I could get to the _Leonora"s_ bows, where I lit my pipe and awaited the moment in which only too probably my own summons would come in a like pang of excruciating agony. The gleaming phosph.o.r.escent wavelets of that calm sea fell in broken fire from the vessel"s side, while the hissing, splashing sound deadened the recurring shrieks of the doomed sufferers, and soothed my excited nerves.
Now that death was so near, in such a truly awful shape, I began seriously to reflect upon the imprudence, nay, more, the inexcusable folly of continuing a life exposed to such terrible hazards.
If my life was spared I would resolve, like poor d.i.c.k, to stay at home in future. The resolution might avail me as little as it had done in his case.
As I sat hour after hour gazing into the endless shadow and gleam of the great deep, a strange feeling of peace and resignation seemed to pa.s.s suddenly over my troubled spirit. I felt almost tempted to plunge beneath the calm bosom of the main, and so end for aye the doubt, the fear, the rapture, and despair of this mysterious human life. All suddenly the moon rose, sending before her a brilliant pathway, adown which, in my excited imagination, angels might glide, bearing messages of pardon or reprieve. A distinct sensation of hope arose in my mind. A dark form glided to my side, and seated itself on the rail.
"You hear eight bell?" she said. "Listen now, you all right--no more poison--he go away." She held my hand--the pulse was steady and regular.
In spite of my efforts at calmness and self-control, I was sensible of a strange exaltation of spirit. The heaven above, the sea below, seemed animate with messengers of pardon and peace. Even poor Nellie, the untaught child of a lonely isle, "placed far amid the melancholy main,"
seemed transformed into a celestial visitant, and her large, dark eyes glowed in the light of the mystic moon rays.
"You well, man Hil"ree!" she said in the foc"sle vernacular. "No more go mat. Nellie so much glad," and here her soft low tones were so instinct with deepest human feeling that I took her in my arms and folded her in a warm embrace.
"How"s poor d.i.c.k?" I asked, as we walked aft to where Hayston and the rest of the cabin party were seated.
"Poor d.i.c.k dead!" she said; "just die before me come up."
The people we had brought for the big firm, mostly Line Island natives, were quiet and easily controlled. Hayston now and then executed orders of this sort, though he would have scorned the idea of turning the _Leonora_ into a labour vessel. He was naturally too humane to permit any ill-treatment of the recruits, and having his crew under full control, always made matters as pleasant for these dark-skinned "pa.s.sengers" as possible.
But there were voyages of very different kind,--voyages when the recruiting agents were thoroughly unscrupulous, caring only for the numbers--by fair means or foul--to be made up. Sometimes dark deeds were done. Blood was shed like water; partly from the fierce, intractable nature of the islanders--sometimes in pure self-defence. But "strange things happen at sea." One labour cruise of which Hayston told me--he heard it from an English trader who saw the affair--was much of that complexion. We had plenty of time for telling stories in the long calm days which sometimes ran into weeks. And this was one of them.
One day a white painted schooner, with gaff-headed mainsail, and flying the German flag, anch.o.r.ed off Kabakada, a populous village on the north coast of New Britain. She was on a labour cruise for the German plantations in Samoa.
Not being able to secure her full complement of "boys" in the New Hebrides and Solomon groups, she had come northward to fill up with recruits from the naked savages of the northern coast of New Britain.
In those days the German flag had not been formally hoisted over New Britain and New Ireland, and apart from the German trading station at Matupi in Blanche Bay, which faces the scarred and blackened sides of a smouldering volcano springing abruptly from the deep waters of the bay, the trading stations were few and far between.
At Kabakada, where the vessel had anch.o.r.ed, there were two traders. One was a noisy, vociferous German, who had once kept a liquor saloon in Honolulu, but, moved by tales of easily acc.u.mulated wealth in New Britain, he had sold his business, and settled at his present location among a horde of the most treacherous natives in the South Seas. His rude good nature had been his safety; for although, through ignorance of the native character, he was continually placing his life in danger, he was quick to make amends, and being of a generous disposition and a man of means, enjoyed a prestige among the natives possessed by no other white man.
His colleague--or rather his opponent, for they traded for opposition firms--was a small, dark Frenchman, an ex-bugler of the Cha.s.seurs d"Afrique, who had spent some years of enforced retirement at New Caledonia. His advent to New Britain had been made in the most private manner, and his reminiscences of the voyage from the convict colony with his four companions were not of a cheerful nature.
Ten miles away, at the head of a narrow bay that split the forest-clad mountains like a Norwegian fiord, lived another trader, an English seaman. He had been on the island about two years, and was well-nigh sickened of it. Frequently recurring attacks of the deadly malarial fever had weakened and depressed him, and he longed to return to the open, breezy islands of eastern Polynesia, where he had no need to start from his sleep at night, and, rifle in hand, peer out into the darkness at the slightest noise.
The labour schooner anch.o.r.ed about a mile from the German trader"s house, and about two hours afterwards the boat of the Englishman was seen pulling round Cape Luen, and making for Charlie"s station. This was because all three traders, being on friendly terms, it would have been considered "playing it low down" for any one of them to have boarded the schooner alone.
The day was swelteringly hot, and the sea between the gloomy outlines of Mau Island and the long, curving, palm-shaded beaches of New Britain sh.o.r.e was throwing off great clouds of hot, steamy mist. As the Englishman"s boat was about half-way between the steep-wooded point of Cape Luen and Kabakada, she altered her course and ran into the beach, where, surrounded by a cl.u.s.ter of native huts, was the station of Pierre. This was to save the little Frenchman the trouble of launching his clumsy boat. Pierre, dressed in white pyjamas, with a heavy Lefaucheux revolver in his belt and a Snider rifle in his hand, came out of his house. Addressing his two wives in emphatic language, and warning them to fire off guns if anything happened during his absence on board the schooner, he swaggered down the beach and into the boat.
"How are you, Pierre?" said the Englishman, languidly. "I knew you and Hans Muller would expect me to board the schooner with you, or else I wouldn"t have come. Curse the place, the people, the climate, and everything!"
The little Frenchman grinned, "Yes, it ees ver" hot; but nevare mind.
Ven ve get to de "ouse of de German we shall drink some gin and feel bettare. Last veek he buy four case of gin from a valeship, and now le bon Dieu send this schooner, from vich we shall get more."
"What a drunken little beast you are!" said the Englishman, sourly. "But after all, I suppose you enjoy life more than I do. I"d drink gin like water if I thought it would kill me quick enough."
"My friend, it is but the fevare that now talks in you. See me! I am happy. I drink, I smoke, I laugh. I have two wife to make my caf and look aftare my house. Some day I walk in the bush, then, whouff, a spear go through me, and my two wife will weep ven they see me cut up for _rosbif_, and perhaps eat a piece themselves."
The Englishman laughed. The picture Pierre drew was likely to be a true one in one respect. Not a mile from the spot where the boat was at that moment were the graves of a trading captain, his mate, and two seamen, who had been slaughtered by the natives under circ.u.mstances of the most abominable treachery. And right before them, on the white beach of Mau Island, a whaler"s boat"s crew had been speared while filling their water casks, the natives who surrounded them appearing to be animated by the greatest friendliness.
Such incidents were common enough in those days among the islands to the westward of New Guinea, and the people of New Britain were no worse than those of other islands. They were simply treacherous, cowardly savages, and though occasionally indulging in cannibalistic feasts upon the bodies of people of their own race, they never killed white men for that purpose. Many a white man has been speared or shot there, but their bodies were spared that atrocity--so in that respect Pierre did his young wives an injustice. They would, if occasion needed it, readily poison him, or steal his cartridges and leave him to be slaughtered without the chance of making resistance, but they wouldn"t eat him.
"It"s the _Samoa_," said the German, as he shook hands with us. "And the skipper is a d--d Dutchman, but a good sort" (having once sailed in a Yankee timber ship, trading between Sydney and the Pacific slope, Hans was now an American), "and as soon as it gets a bit cool, we"ll go off.
I know the recruiter, he"s a chap with one arm."
"What?" said the Englishman, "you don"t mean Captain Kyte, do you?"
"That"s the man. He"s a terror. Guldensterns pay him $200 a month regular to recruit for them, and he gets a bonus of $10 each for every n.i.g.g.e.r as well. We must try and get him a few here to fill up."
"_You_ can," said the Englishman, "but I won"t. I"m not going to tout for an infernal Dutch black-birder."
As soon as a breeze set in the three traders sailed off. The schooner was a fine lump of a vessel of about 190 tons register, and her decks were crowded with male and female recruits from the Solomon group.
There were about fifty in all--thirty-five or forty men and about a dozen women.
The captain of the schooner and his "recruiter," Captain Kyte, received the traders with great cordiality. In a few minutes the table was covered with bottles of beer, k.u.mmel, and other liquor, and Hans was a.s.serting with great vehemence his ability to procure another thirty "boys."