CHAPTER V ~ MUTINIES
Mutinies, even at the present day, are common enough. The facts concerning many of them never come to light, it is so often to the advantage of the after-guard of a ship to hush matters up. I know of one instance in which the crew of a ship loading guano phosphates at Howland Island imprisoned the captain, three mates and the steward in the cabin for some days; then hauled them on deck, triced up the whole five and gave them a hundred lashes each, in revenge for the diabolical cruelties that had been inflicted upon them day by day for long months. Then they liberated their tormentors, took to the boats and dispersed themselves on board other guano ships loading at How-land Island, leaving their former captain and officers to shift for themselves. This was one of the mutinies that never came to light, or at least the mutineers escaped punishment.
I have witnessed three mutinies—in the last of which I took part, although I was not a member of the ship's crew.
My first experience occurred when I was a boy, and has been alluded to by the late Lord Pembroke in his “Introduction” to the first book I had published—a collection of tales entitled By Reef and Palm. It was a poor sort of an affair, but filled my boyish heart with a glorious delight—in fact it was an enjoyable mutiny in some respects, for what might have been a tragedy was turned into a comedy.
With a brother two years older I was sent to San Francisco by our parents to begin life in a commercial house, and subsequently (of course) make our fortunes.
Our passages were taken at Newcastle (New South Wales) on the barque Lizzie and Rosa, commanded by a little red-headed Irishman, to whose care we were committed. His wife (who sailed with him) was a most lovable woman, generous to a fault. He was about the meanest specimen of an Irishman that ever was born, was a savage little bully, boasted of being a Fenian, and his insignificant appearance on his quarter deck, as he strutted up and down, irresistibly suggested a monkey on a stick, and my brother and myself took a quick dislike to him, as also did the other passengers, of whom there were thirty—cabin and steerage. His wife (who was the daughter of a distinguished Irish prelate) was actually afraid of the little man, who snarled and snapped at her as if she were a disobedient child. (Both of them are long since dead, so I can write freely of their characteristics.)
The barque had formerly been a French corvette—the Felix Bernaboo. She was old, ill-found and leaky, and from the day we left Newcastle the pumps were kept going, and a week later the crew came aft and demanded that the ship should return to port.
The little man succeeded in quieting them for the time by giving them better food, and we continued on our course, meeting with such a series of adverse gales that it was forty-one days before we sighted the island of Rurutu in the South Pacific. By this time the crew and steerage passengers were in a very angry frame of mind; the former were overworked and exhausted, and the latter were furious at the miserly allowance of food doled out to them by the equally miserly captain.
At Rurutu the natives brought off two boat-loads of fresh provisions, but the captain bought only one small pig for the cabin passengers. The steerage passengers bought up everything else, and in a few minutes the crew came aft and asked the captain to buy them some decent food in place of the decayed pork and weevily biscuit upon which they had been existing. He refused, and ordered them for'ard, and then the mate, a hot-tempered Yorkshireman named Oliver, lost his temper, and told the captain that the men were starving. Angry words followed, and the mate knocked the little man down.
Picking himself up, he went below, and reappeared with a brace of old-fashioned Colt's revolvers, one of which—after declaring he would “die like an Irishman”—he pointed at the mate, and calling upon him to surrender and be put in irons, he fired towards his head. Fortunately the bullet missed. The sympathetic crew made a rush aft, seized the skipper, and after knocking him about rather severely, held him under the force pump, and nearly drowned him. Only for the respect that the crew had for his wife, I really believe they would have killed him, for they were wrought up to a pitch of fury by his tyranny and meanness. The boatswain carried him below, locked him up in one of the state-rooms, and there he was kept in confinement till the barque reached Honolulu, twenty days later, the mate acting as skipper. At Honolulu, the mate and all the crew were tried for mutiny, but the court acquitted them all, mainly through the testimony of the passengers.
That was my first experience of a mutiny. My brother and I enjoyed it immensely, especially the attempted shooting of the good old mate, and the subsequent spectacle of the evil-tempered, vindictive little skipper being held under the force pump.
My third experience of a mutiny I take next (as it arose from a similar cause to the first). I was a passenger on a brig bound from Samoa to the Gilbert Islands (Equatorial Pacific). The master was a German, brutal and overbearing to a degree, and the two mates were no better. One was an American “tough,” the other a lazy, foul-mouthed Swede. All three men were heavy drinkers, and we were hardly out of Apia before the Swede (second mate) broke a sailor's jaw with an iron belaying pin. The crew were nearly all natives—steady men, and fairly good seamen. Five of them were Gilbert Islanders, and three natives of Niué (Savage Island), and it was one of these latter whose jaw was broken. They were an entirely new crew and had shipped in ignorance of the character of the captain. I had often heard of him as a brutal fellow, and the brig (the Alfreda of Hamburg) had long had an evil name. She was a labour-ship (“black-birder”) and I had taken passage in her only because I was anxious to get to the Marshall Islands as quickly as possible.
There were but five Europeans on board—captain, two mates, bos'un and myself. The bos'un was, although hard on the crew, not brutal, and he never struck them.
We had not been out three days when the captain, in a fit of rage, knocked a Gilbert Islander down for dropping a wet paint-brush on the deck. Then he kicked him about the head until the poor fellow was insensible.
From that time out not a day passed but one or more of the crew were struck or kicked. The second mate's conduct filled me with fury and loathing, for, in addition to his cruelty, his language was nothing but a string of curses and blasphemy. Within a week I saw that the Gilbert Islanders were getting into a dangerous frame of mind.
These natives are noted all over the Pacific for their courage, and seeing that mischief was brewing, I spoke to the bos'un about it. He agreed with me, but said it was no use speaking to the skipper.
To me the captain and officers were civil enough, that is, in a gruff sort of way, so I decided to speak to the former. I must mention that I spoke the Gilbert and Savage Island dialects, and so heard the natives talk. However, I said nothing of that to the German. I merely said to him that he was running a great risk in knocking the men about, and added that their countrymen might try to cut off the brig out of revenge. He snorted with contempt, and both he and the mates continued to “haze” the now sulky and brooding natives.
One calm Sunday night we were in sight of Funafuti lagoon, and also of a schooner which I knew to be the Hazeldine of San Francisco. She, like us, was becalmed.
In the middle watch I went on deck and found the skipper and second mate drunk. The mate, who was below, was about half-drunk. All three men had been drinking heavily for some days, and the second mate was hardly able to keep his feet. The captain was asleep on the skylight, lying on his back, snoring like a pig, and I saw the butt of his revolver showing in the inner pocket of his coat.
Presently rain began to fall, and the second mate called one of the hands and told him to bring him his oil-skin coat. The man brought it, and then the brutal Swede, accusing him of having been slow, struck him a fearful blow in the face and knocked him off the poop. Then the brute followed him and began kicking him with drunken fury, then fell on the top of him and lay there.
I went for'ard and found all the natives on deck, very excited and armed with knives. Addressing them, I begged them to keep quiet and listen to me.
“The captain and mates are all drunk,” I said, “and now is your chance to leave the ship. Funafuti is only a league away. Get your clothes together as quickly as possible, then lower away the port quarter-boat. I, too, am leaving this ship, and I want you to put me on board the Hazeldine. Then you can go on shore. Now, put up your knives and don't hurt those three men, beasts as they are.”
As I was speaking, Max the bos'un came for'ard and listened. (I thought he was asleep.) He did not interfere, merely giving me an expressive look. Then he said to me:—
“Ask them to lock me up in the deck-house”.
Very quietly this was done, and then, whilst I got together my personal belongings in the cabin, the boat was lowered. The Yankee mate was sound asleep in his bunk, but one of the Nuié men took the key of his door and locked it from the outside. Presently I heard a sound of breaking wood, and going on deck, found that the Gilbert Islanders had stove-in the starboard quarter-boat and the long-boat (the latter was on deck). Then I saw that the second mate was lashed (bound hand and foot) to the pump-rail, and the captain was lashed to one of the fife-rail stanchions. His face was streaming with blood, and I thought he was dead, but found that he had only been struck with a belaying pin, which had broken his nose.
“He drew a lot of blood from us,” said one of the natives to me, “and so I have drawn some from him.”
I hurried to the deck-house and told the bos'un what had occurred. He was a level-headed young man, and taking up a carpenter's broad axe, smashed the door of the deck-house. Then he looked at me and smiled.
“You see, I'm gaining my liberty—captain and officers tied up, and no one to look after the ship.”
I understood perfectly, and shaking hands with him and wishing him a better ship, I went over the side into the boat, and left the brig floating quietly on the placid surface of the ocean.
The eight native sailors made no noise, although they were all wildly excited and jubilant, but as we shoved off, they called out “Good-bye, bos'un”.
An hour afterwards I was on board the Hazeldine and telling my story to her skipper, who was an old friend. Then I bade good-bye to the natives, who started off for Funafuti with many expressions of goodwill to their fellow-mutineer.
At daylight a breeze came away from the eastward, and at breakfast time the Hazeldine was out of sight of the Alfreda.
I learnt a few months later that the skipper had succeeded in bringing her into Funafuti Lagoon, where he managed to obtain another crew.
CHAPTER VI ~ “MÂNI”
Mâni was a half-caste—father a Martinique nigger, mother a Samoan—twenty-two years of age, and lived at Moatâ, a little village two miles from Apia in Samoa.
Mâni's husband was a Frenchman named François Renault, who, when he was sober, worked as a boat-builder and carpenter, for the German “factory” at Mataféle. And when he was away form home I would hear Mâni laughing, and see her playing with her two dark-skinned little girls, and talking to them in a curious mixture of Samoan-French. They were merry mites with big rolling eyes, and unmistakably “kinky” hair—like their mother.
It was a fortnight after the great gale of 15th March, 1889, when the six German and American warships were wrecked, that Mâni came to my house with a basket of fresh-water fish she had netted far up in a deep mountain pool. She looked very happy. “Frank,” she said, had not beaten her for two whole weeks, and had promised not to beat her any more. And he was working very steadily now.
“That is good to hear, Mâni.”
She smiled as she nodded her frizzy head, tossed her tiputa (open blouse) over one shoulder, and sat down on the verandah steps to clean the fish.
“Yes, he will beat me no more—at least not whilst the shipwrecked sailors remain in Samoa. When they go I shall run away with the children—to some town in Savai'i where he cannot find me.”
“It happened in this way,” she went on confidentially: “a week ago two American sailors came to the house and asked for water, for they were thirsty and the sun was hot I told them that the Moatâ water was brackish, and I husked and gave them two young coco-nuts each. And then Frank, who had been drinking, ran out of the house and cursed and struck me. Then one of the sailors felled him to the earth, and the other dragged him up by his collar, and both kicked him so much that he wept.
“'Doth he often beat thee?' said one of the sailors to me. And I said 'Yes'.
“Then they beat him again, saying it was for my sake. And then one of them shook him and said: 'O thou dog, to so misuse thine own wife! Now listen. In three days' time we two of the Trenton will have a day's liberty, and we shall come here and see if thou hast again beaten thy wife. And if thou hast but so much as mata pio'd her we shall each kick thee one hundred times.'”
(Mata pio, I must explain, is Samoan for looking “cross-eyed” or unpleasantly at a person.)
“And Frank was very much afraid, and promised he would no longer harm me, and held out his hand to them weepingly, but they would not take it, and swore at him. And then they each gave my babies a quarter of a dollar, and I, because my heart was glad, gave them each a ring of tortoiseshell.”
“Did they come back, Mâni?”
Mâni, at heart, was a flirt. She raised her big black eyes with their long curling lashes to me, and then closed them for a moment demurely.
“Yes,” she replied, “they came back. And when I told them that my husband was now kind to me, and was at work, they laughed, and left for him a long piece of strong tobacco tied round with tarred rope. And they said, 'Tell him we will come again by-and-by, and see how he behaveth to thee'.”
“Mâni,” said in English, as she finished the last of the fish, “why do you speak Samoan to me when you know English so well? Where did you learn it? Your husband always speaks French to you.”
Mâni told me her story. In her short life of two-and-twenty years she had had some strange experiences.
“My father was Jean Galoup. He was a negro of St. Pierre, in Martinique, and came to Samoa in a French barque, which was wrecked on Tutuila. He was one of the sailors. When the captain and the other sailors made ready to go away in the boats he refused to go, and being a strong, powerful man they dared not force him. So he remained on Tutuila and married my mother, and became a Samoan, and made much money by selling food to the whaleships. Then, when I was twelve years old, my mother died, and my father took me to his own country—to Martinique. It took us two years to get there, for we went through many countries—to Sydney first, then to China, and to India, and then to Marseilles in France. But always in English ships. That is how I have learned to speak English.
“We lived for three years in Martinique, and then one day, as my father was clearing some land at the foot of Mont Pelée, he was bitten by fer-de-lance and died, and I was left alone.
“There was a young carpenter at St. Pierre, named François Renault, who had one day met me in the market-place, and after that often came to see my father and me. He said he loved me, and so when my father was dead, we went to the priest and we were married.
“My husband had heard much of Samoa from my father, and said to me: 'Let us go there and live'.
“So we came here, and then Frank fell into evil ways, for he was cross with me because he saw that the pure-blooded Samoan girls were prettier than me, and had long straight hair and lighter skins. And because he could not put me away he began to treat me cruelly. And I love him no more. But yet will I stay by him if he doeth right.”
The fates were kind to Mâni a few months later. Her husband went to sea and never returned, and Mâni, after waiting a year, was duly married by the consul to a respectable old trader on Savai'i, who wanted a wife with a “character”—the which is not always obtainable with a bride in the South Seas.
CHAPTER VII ~ AT NIGHT
The day's work was finished. Outside a cluster of rudely built palm-thatched huts, just above the curving white beach, and under the lengthening shadows of the silent cocos, two white men (my partner and myself) and a party of brown-skinned Polynesians were seated together smoking, and waiting for their evening meal. Now and then one would speak, and another would answer in low, lazy tones. From an open shed under a great jack-fruit tree a little distance away there came the murmur of women's voices and, now and then, a laugh. They were the wives of the brown men, and were cooking supper for their husbands and the two white men. Half a cable length from the beach a schooner lay at anchor upon the still lagoon, whose waters gleamed red under the rays of the sinking sun. Covered with awnings fore and after she showed no sign of life, and rested-as motionless as were the pendent branches of the lofty cocos on the shore.
Presently a figure appeared on deck and went for'ard, and then a bright light shone from the fore-stay.
My partner turned and called to the women, speaking in Hawaiian, and bade two of them take their own and the ship-keeper's supper on board, and stay for the night. Then he spoke to the men in English.
“Who keeps watch to-night with the other man?”
“Me, sir,” and a native rose to his feet.
“Then off you go with your wife and Terese, and don't set the ship on fire when you and your wife, and Harry and his begin squabbling as usual over your game of tahia."{*}
it resembles our “knuckle-bones”.
The man laughed; the women, pretending to be shocked, each placed one hand over her eyes, and with suppressed giggles went down to the beach with the man, carrying a basket of steaming food. Launching a light canoe they pushed off, and as the man paddled the women sang in the soft Hawaiian tongue.
“Happy beggars,” said my comrade to me, as he stood up and stretched his lengthy, stalwart figure, “work all day, and sit up gambling and singing hymns—when they are not intriguing with each other's husbands and wives.”
The place was Providence Atoll in the North Pacific, a group of seventeen uninhabited islands lying midway between the Marshall and Caroline Archipelagoes—that is to say, that they had been uninhabited for some years, until we came there with our gang of natives to catch sharks and make coco-nut oil. There was no one to deny us, for the man who claimed the islands, Captain “Bully” Hayes, had given us the right of possession for two years, we to pay him a certain percentage of our profits on the oil we made, and the sharks' fins and tails we cured. The story of Providence Atoll (the “Arrecifos” of the early Spanish navigators, and the “Ujilang” of the native of Micronesia) cannot here be told—suffice it to say that less than fifty years before over a thousand people dwelt on the seventeen islands in some twelve or fourteen villages. Then came some dread disease which swept them away, and when Hayes sailed into the great lagoon in 1860—his was the first ship that ever entered it—he found less than a score of survivors. These he treated kindly; but for some reason soon removed them to Ponapé in the Carolines, and then years passed without the island being visited by any one except Hayes, who used it as a rendezvous, and brought other natives there to make oil for him. Then, in a year or so, these, too, he took away, for he was a restless man, and had many irons in the fire. Yet there was a fortune there, as its present German owners know, for the great chain of islands is covered with coco-nut trees which yield many thousands of pounds' worth of copra annually.
My partner and I had been working the islands for some months, and had done fairly well. Our native crew devoted themselves alternately to shark catching and oil making. The lagoon swarmed with sharks, the fins and tails of which when dried were worth from sixty to eighty pounds sterling per ton. (Nowadays the entire skins of sharks are bought by some of the traders on several of the Pacific Islands on behalf of a firm in Germany, who have a secret method of tanning and softening them, and rendering them fit for many purposes for which leather is used—travelling bags, coverings for trunks, etc.)
The women helped to make the oil, caught fish, robber-crabs and turtle for the whole party, and we were a happy family indeed. We usually lived on shore, some distance from the spot where we dried the shark-fins, for the odour was appalling, especially after rain, and during a calm night. We dried them by hanging them on long lines of coir cinnet between the coco-palms of a little island half a mile from our camp.
But we did not always work. There were many wild pigs—the progeny of domestic stock left by Captain Hayes—on the larger islands, and we would have great “drives” every few weeks, the skipper and I with our rifles, and our crew of fifteen, with their wives and children, armed with spears. 'Twas great fun, and we revelled in it like children. Sometimes we would bring the ship's dog with us. He was a mongrel Newfoundland, and very game, but was nearly shot several times by getting in the way, for although all the islands are very low, the undergrowth in parts is very dense. If we failed to secure a pig we were certain of getting some dozens of large robber-crabs, the most delicious of all crustaceans when either baked or boiled. Then, too, we had the luxury of a vegetable garden, in which we grew melons, pumpkins, cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, etc. The seed (which was Californian) had been given to me by an American skipper, and great was our delight to have fresh European vegetables, for the islands produced nothing in that way, except coconuts and some jack-fruit. The lagoon teemed with an immense variety of fish, none of which were poisonous, and both green and hawk-bill turtle were captured almost daily.
How those natives of ours could eat! One morning some of the children brought five hundred turtle eggs into camp; they were all eaten at three meals.
That calm, quiet night the heat was somewhat oppressive, but about ten o'clock a faint air from the eastward began to gently rustle the tops of the loftiest palms on the inner beaches, though we felt it not, owing to the dense undergrowth at the back of the camp. Then, too, the mosquitoes were troublesome, and a nanny-goat, who had lost her kid (in the oven) kept up such an incessant blaring that we could stand it no longer, and decided to walk across the island—less than a mile—to the weather side, where we should not only get the breeze, but be free of the curse of mosquitoes.
“Over to the windward beach,” we called out to our natives.
In an instant, men, women and children were on their feet. Torches of dried coco-nut leaves were deftly woven by the women, sleeping mats rolled up and given to the children to carry, baskets of cold baked fish and vegetables hurriedly taken down from where they hung under the eaves of the thatched huts, and away we trooped eastward along the narrow path, the red glare of the torches shining upon the smooth, copper-bronzed and half-nude figures of the native men and women. Singing as we went, half an hour's walk brought us near to the sea. And with the hum of the surf came the cool breeze, as we reached the open, and saw before us the gently heaving ocean, sleeping under the light of the myriad stars.
We loved those quiet nights on the weather side of Arrecifos. Our natives had built some thatched-roofed, open-sided huts as a protection in case of rain, and under the shelter of one of these the skipper and I would, when it rained during the night, lie on our mats and smoke and yarn and watch the women and children with lighted torches catching crayfish on the reef, heedless of the rain which fell upon them. Then, when they had caught all they wanted, they would troop on shore again, come into the huts, change their soaking waist girdles of leaves for waist-cloths of gaily-coloured print or navy-blue calico, and set to work to cook the crayfish, always bringing us the best. Then came a general gossip and story-telling or singing in our hut for an hour or so, and then some one would yawn and the rest would laugh, bid us good-night, go off to their mats, and the skipper and I would be asleep ere we knew it.
CHAPTER VIII ~ THE CRANKS OF THE JULIA BRIG
We were bound from Tahiti to the Gilbert Islands, seeking a cargo of native labourers for Stewart's great plantation at Tahiti, and had worked our way from island to island up northward through the group with fair success (having obtained ninety odd stalwart, brown-skinned savages), when between Apaian Island and Butaritari Island we spoke a lumbering, fat-sided old brig—the Isabella of Sydney.
The Isabella was owned by a firm of Chinese merchants in Sydney; and as her skipper (Evers) and her supercargo (Dick Warren) were old acquaintances of mine and also of the captain of my ship, we both lowered boats and exchanged visits.
Warren and I had not met for over two years, since he and I had been shipmates in a labour vessel sailing out of Samoa—he as mate and I as “recruiter”—so we had much to talk about.
“Oh, by-the-way,” he remarked as we were saying good-bye, “of course you have heard of that shipload of unwashed saints who have been cruising around the South Seas in search of a Promised Land?”
“Yes, I believe that they have gone off to Tonga or Fiji, trying to light upon 'the Home Beautiful,' and are very hard up. The people in Fiji will have nothing to do with that crowd—if they have gone there.”
“They have not. They turned back for Honolulu, and are now at Butaritari and in an awful mess. Some of the saints came on board and wanted me to give them a passage to Sydney. You must go and have a look at them and their rotten old brig, the Julia. Oh, they are a lovely lot—full of piety and as dirty as Indian fakirs. Ah Sam, our agent at Butaritari, will tell you all about them. He has had such a sickener of the holy men that it will do you good to hear him talk. What the poor devils are going to do I don't know. I gave them a little provisions—all I could spare, but their appearance so disgusted me that I was not too civil to them. They cannot get away from Butaritari as the old brig is not seaworthy, and there is nothing in the way of food to be had in the island except coco-nuts and fish—manna is out of season in the South Seas just now. Good-bye, old man, and good luck.”
On the following day we sighted Butaritari Island—one of the largest atolls in the North Pacific, and inhabited by a distinctly unamiable and cantankerous race of Malayo-Polynesians whose principal amusement in their lighter hours is to get drunk on sour toddy and lacerate each other's bodies with sharks' teeth swords. In addition to Ah Sam, the agent for the Chinese trading firm, there were two European traders who had married native women and eked out a lonely existence by buying copra (dried coco-nut) and sharks' fins when they were sober enough to attend to business—which was infrequent. However, Butaritari was a good recruiting ground for ships engaged in the labour traffic, owing to the continuous internecine wars, for the vanquished parties, after their coco-nut trees had been cut down and their canoes destroyed had the choice of remaining and having their throats cut or going away in a labour ship to Tahiti, Samoa or the Sandwich Islands.
Entering the passage through the reef, we sailed slowly across the splendid lagoon, whose waters were as calm as those of a lake, and dropped anchor abreast of the principal village and quite near the ship of the saints. She was a woe-begone, battered-looking old brig of two hundred tons or so. She showed no colours in response to ours, and we could see no one on deck. Presently, however, we saw a man emerge from below, then a woman, and presently a second man, and in a few minutes she showed the Ecuadorian flag. Then all three sat on chairs under the ragged awning and stared listlessly at our ship.
Ah Sam came off from the shore and boarded us. He was a long, melancholy Chinaman, had thirty-five hairs of a beard, and, poor fellow, was dying of consumption. He told us the local news, and then I asked him about the cargo of saints, many more of whom were now visible on the after-deck of their disreputable old crate.
Ah Sam's thin lips parted in a ghastly smile, as he set down his whisky and soda, and lit a cigar. We were seated under the awning, which had just been spread, and so had a good view of the Julia.
The brig, he said, had managed to crawl into the lagoon three months previously, and in working up to an anchorage struck on one of the coral mushrooms with which the atoll is studded. Ah Sam and the two white traders went off with their boats' crews of natives to render assistance, and after some hours' hard work succeeded in getting her off and towing her up to the spot where she was then anchored. Then the saints gathered on the after-deck and held a thanksgiving meeting, at the conclusion of which, the thirsty and impatient traders asked the captain to give them and their boats' crews a few bottles of liquor in return for their services in pulling his brig off the rocks, and when he reproachfully told them that the Julia was a temperance ship and that drink was a curse and that God would reward them for their kindness, they used most awful language and went off, cursing the captain and the saints for a lot of mean blackguards and consigning them to everlasting torments.
On the following day all the Hawaiian crew bolted on shore and took up their quarters with the natives. The captain came on shore and tried to get other natives in their place, but failed—for he had no money to pay wages, but offered instead the privilege of becoming members of what Ah Sam called some “dam fool society”.
There were, said Ah Sam, in addition to the captain and his wife, originally twenty-five passengers, but half of them had left the ship at various ports.
“And now,” he concluded, pointing a long yellow forefinger at the rest of the saints, “the rest of them will be coming to see you presently—the tam teives—to see wha' they can cadge from you.”
“You don't like them, Ah Sam?” observed our skipper, with a twinkle in his eye.
Ah Sam's reply could not be put upon paper. For a Chinaman he could swear in English most fluently. Then he bade us good-bye for the present, said he would do all he could to help me get some “recruits,” and invited us to dinner with him in the evening. He was a good-natured, hospitable fellow, and we accepted the invitation with pleasure.
A few minutes after he had gone on shore the brigantine's boat came alongside, and her captain and three of his passengers stepped on board. He introduced himself as Captain Lynch Richards, and his friends as Brothers So-and-So of the “Islands Brothers' Association of Christians “. They were a dull, melancholy looking lot, Richards alone showing some mental and physical activity. Declining spirituous refreshments, they all had tea and something to eat. Then they asked me if I would let them have some provisions, and accept trade goods in payment.
As they had no money—except about one hundred dollars between them—I let them have what provisions we could spare, and then accepted their invitation to visit the Julia.
I went with them in their own boat—two of the saints pulling—and as they flopped the blades of their oars into the water and I studied their appearance, I could not but agree with Dick Warren's description—“as dirty as Indian fakirs,” for not only were their garments dirty, but their faces looked as if they had not come into contact with soap and water for a twelvemonth. Richards, the skipper, was a comparatively young man, and seemed to have given some little attention to his attire, for he was wearing a decent suit of navy blue with a clean collar and tie.
Getting alongside we clambered on deck—there was no side ladder—and I was taken into the cabin where Richards introduced me to his wife. She was a pretty, fragile-looking young woman of about five and twenty years of age, and looked so worn out and unhappy that my heart was filled with pity. During the brief conversation we held I asked her if she and her husband would come on board our vessel in the afternoon and have tea, and mentioned that we had piles and piles of books and magazines on the ship to which she could help herself.
Her eyes filled with tears. “I guess I should like to,” she said as she looked at her husband.
Then I was introduced to the rest of the company in turn, as they sat all round the cabin, half a dozen of them on the transom lockers reminding me somehow of dejected and meditative storks. Glad of an excuse to get out of the stuffy and ill-ventilated cabin and the uninspiring society of the unwashed Brethren, I eagerly assented to the captain's suggestion to have a look round the ship before we “talked business,” i.e., concerning the trade goods I was to select in payment for the provisions with which I had supplied him. One of the Brethren, an elderly, goat-faced person, came with us, and we returned on deck.
Never before had I seen anything like the Julia. She was an old, soft-pine-built ex-Puget Sound lumberman, literally tumbling to decay, aloft and below. Her splintering decks, to preserve them somewhat from the torrid sun, were covered over with old native mats, and her spars, from want of attention, were splitting open in great gaping cracks, and were as black as those of a collier. How such a craft made the voyage from San Francisco to Honolulu, and from there far to the south of the Line and then back north to the Gilbert Group, was a marvel.
I was taken down the hold and showed what the “cranks” called their trade goods and asked to select what I thought was a fair thing in exchange for the provisions I had given them. Heavens! Such a collection of utter, utter rubbish! second-hand musical boxes in piles, gaudy lithographs, iron bedsteads, “brown paper” boots and shoes eaten half away by cockroaches. Sets of cheap and nasty toilet ware, two huge cases of common and much damaged wax dolls, barrels of rotted dried apples, and decayed pork, an ice-making plant, bales and bales of second-hand clothing—men's, women's and children's—cheap and poisonous sweets in jars, thousands of twopenny looking-glasses, penny whistles, accordions that wouldn't accord, as the cockroaches had eaten them up except the wood and metal work, school slates and pencils, and a box of Bibles and Moody and Sankey hymn-books. And the smell was something awful! I asked the captain what was the cause of it—it overpowered even the horrible odour of the decayed pork and rotted apples. He replied placidly that he thought it came from a hundred kegs of salted salmon bellies which were stowed below everything else, and that he “guessed some of them hed busted”.
“It is enough to breed a pestilence,” I said; “why do you not all turn-to, get the stuff up and heave it overboard? You must excuse me, captain, but for Heaven's sake let us get on deck.”
On returning to the poop we found that the skipper of our vessel had come on board, and was conversing with Mrs. Richards. I took him aside and told him of what I had seen, and suggested that we should make them a present of the provisions. He quite agreed with me, so turning to Captain Richards and the goat-faced old man and several other of the Brethren who had joined them, I said that the captain and I hoped that they would accept the provisions from us, as we felt sure that our owners would not mind. And I also added that we would send them a few bags of flour and some other things during the course of the day. And then the captain, knowing that Captain Richards and his wife were coming to have tea with us, took pity on the Brethren and said, he hoped they would all come to breakfast in the morning.
Poor beggars. Grateful! Of course they were, and although they were sheer lunatics—religious lunatics such as the United States produces by tens of thousands every year—we felt sincerely sorry for them when they told us their miserable story. The spokesman was an old fellow of sixty with long flowing hair—the brother-in-law of the man with the goat's face—and an enthusiast. But mad—mad as a hatter.
“The Islands Brothers' Association of Christians” had its genesis in Philadelphia. It was formed “by a few pious men to found a settlement in the South Seas, till the soil, build a temple, instruct the savages, and live in peace and happiness”. Twenty-eight persons joined and seven thousand dollars were raised in one way and another—mostly from other lunatics. Many “sympathisers” gave goods, food, etc., to help the cause (hence the awful rubbish in the hold), and at 'Frisco they spent one thousand five hundred dollars in buying “trade goods to barter with the simple natives”. At 'Frisco the Julia, then lying condemned, was bought for a thousand dollars—she was not worth three hundred dollars, and was put under the Ecuadorian flag. “God sent them friends in Captain Richards and his wife,” ambled on the old man. Richards became a “Brother” and joined them to sail the ship and find an island “rich and fertile in God's gifts to man, and with a pleasant people dwelling thereon”.
With a scratch crew of 'Frisco dead beats the brig reached Honolulu. The crew at once cleared out, and several of the “Brothers,” with their wives, returned to America—they had had enough of it. After some weeks' delay Richards managed to get four Hawaiian sailors to ship, and the vessel sailed again for the Isle Beautiful. He didn't know exactly where to look for it, but he and the “Brothers” had been told that there were any amount of them lying around in the South Seas, and they would have some trouble in making a choice out of so many.
The story of their insane wanderings after the Julia went south of the equator would have been diverting had it not been so distressing. The mate, who we gathered was both a good seaman and a competent navigator, was drowned through the capsizing of a boat on the reef of some island between the Gilbert Group and Rarotonga, and with his death what little discipline, and cohesiveness had formerly existed gradually vanished. Richards apparently knew how to handle his ship, but as a navigator he was nowhere. Incredible as it may seem, his general chart of the North and South Pacific was thirty years old, and was so torn, stained and greasy as to be all but undecipherable. As the weary weeks went by and they went from island to island, only to be turned away by the inhabitants, they at last began to realise the folly of the venture, and most of them wanted to return to San Francisco. But Richards clung to the belief that they only wanted patience to find a suitable island where the natives would be glad to receive them, and where they could settle down in peace. Failing that, he had the idea that there were numbers of fertile and uninhabited islands, one of which would suit the Brethren almost as well. But as time went on he too grew despondent, and turned the brig's head northward for Honolulu; and one day he blundered across Butaritari Island and entered the lagoon in the hope of at least getting, some provisions. And again the crew bolted and left the Brethren to shift for themselves. Week after week, month after month went by, the provisions were all gone except weevily biscuit and rotten pork, and they passed their time in wandering about the beaches of the lagoon and waiting for assistance. And yet there were two or three of them who still believed in the vision of the Isle Beautiful and were still hopeful that they might get there. “All we want is another crew,” these said to us.
Our skipper shook his head, and then talked to them plainly, calling upon me to corroborate him.
“You will never get a crew. No sailor-man would ever come to sea in a crate like this. And you'll find no islands anywhere in the Pacific where you can settle down, unless you can pay for it. The natives will chivvy you off if you try to land. I know them—you don't. The people in America who encouraged you in this business were howling lunatics. Your ship is falling to pieces, and I warn you that if you once leave this lagoon in her, you will never see land again.”
They were silent, and then the old man began to weep, and said they would there and then pray for guidance.
“All right,” said the skipper, “go ahead, and I'll get my mate and the carpenter to come and tell you their opinion of the state of this brig.”
The mate and carpenter made an examination, told Captain Richards in front of his passengers that the ship was utterly unseaworthy, and that he would be a criminal if he tried to put to sea again. That settled the business, especially after they had asked me to value their trade goods, and I told them frankly that they were literally not worth valuing, and to throw them overboard.
Ten days later the Brotherhood broke up—an American trading schooner came into the lagoon and her captain offered to take them to Jakuit in the Marshall Islands, where they were certain of getting a passage to Honolulu in some whaleship. They all accepted with the exception of Richards and his wife who refused to leave the Julia. The poor fellow had his pride and would not desert his ship. However, as his wife was ailing, he had a small house built on shore and managed to make a few hundred dollars by boat-building. But every day he would go off and have a look round the old brig to see if everything on board was all right. Then one night there came a series of heavy squalls which raised a lumpy sea in the lagoon, and when morning broke only her top-masts were visible—she had gone down at her anchors.
Richards and his fellow-cranks were the forerunners of other bands of ignorant enthusiasts who in later years endeavoured to foist themselves upon the natives of the Pacific Islands and met with similar and well-merited disaster. Like the ill-fated “La Nouvelle France” colony of the notorious Marquis de Ray, all these land-stealing ventures set about their exploits under the cloak of religion. One, under a pretended concession from the Mexican Government, founded a “Christian Redemption Colony” of scallywags, loafers and loose women at Magdalena Bay in Lower California, and succeeded in getting many thousands of pounds from foolish people. Then came a party of Mormon Evangelists who actually bought and paid for land in Samoa and conducted themselves decently and are probably living there now. After them came the wretched Percy Edward band of pilgrims to found a “happy home” in the South Seas. They called themselves the “United Brotherhood of the South Sea Islands”. In another volume, in an article describing my personal experiences of the disastrous “Nouvelle France” expedition to New Ireland,{*} I have alluded to the Percy Edward affair in these words, which I may be permitted to quote: “The Percy Edward was a wretched old tub of a brigantine (formerly a Tahiti-San Francisco mail packet). She was bought in the latter port by a number of people who intended to found a Socialistic Utopia, where they were to pluck the wild goat by the beard, pay no rent to the native owners of the soil, and, letting their hair grow down their backs, lead an idyllic life and loaf around generally. Such a mad scheme could have been conceived nowhere else but in San Francisco or Paris.... The result of the Marquis de Ray's expedition ought to have made the American enthusiasts reflect a little before they started. But having the idea that they could sail on through summer seas till they came to some land fair to look upon, and then annex it right away in the sacred name of Socialism (and thus violate one of the principles of true Socialism), they sailed—only to be quickly disillusionised. For there were no islands anywhere in the North and South Pacific to be had for the taking thereof; neither were there any tracts of land to be had from the natives, except for hard cash or its equivalent. The untutored Kanakas also, with whom they came in contact, refused to become brother Socialists and go shares with the long-haired wanderers in their land or anything else. So from island unto island the Percy Edward cruised, looking more disreputable every day, until as the months went by she began to resemble in her tattered gear and dejected appearance her fatuous passengers. At last, after being considerably chivvied about by the white and native inhabitants of the various islands touched at, the forlorn expedition reach Fiji. Here fifty of the idealists elected to remain and work for their living under a Government... But the remaining fifty-eight stuck to the Percy Edward, and her decayed salt junk and putrid water, and their beautiful ideals; till at last the ship was caught in a hurricane, badly battered about, lost her foremast, and only escaped foundering by reaching New Caledonia and settling her keel on the bottom of Nouméa harbour. Then the visionaries began to collect their senses, and denounced the Percy Edward and the principles of the 'United Brotherhood' as hollow frauds, and elected to abandon her and go on shore and get a good square meal. What became of them at Nouméa I did not hear, but do know that in their wanderings they received much charitable assistance from British shipmasters and missionaries—in some cases their passages were paid to the United States—the natural and proper country for the ignorant religious 'crank'.”