Book Two—Chapter Eleven.
Mutiny on Board—Far to the South’ard.
“Nothing certain at sea except the unexpected.” The truth of this was sadly exemplified by the terrible calamity which had befallen the Sea Flower—and befallen her so suddenly, too!
Only one week ago she was sailing over a rippling sea on the wings of a favouring breeze, every wavelet dancing joyously in the sunlight. On board, whether fore or aft, there was nothing but hope, happiness, and contentment. Till—
“The angel of death spread his wings on the blast.”
Now all is terror and gloom—a gloom and a terror that have struck deep into the heart of every one who knows what death and sorrow mean.
A breeze has sprung up at last, and both Halcott and Tandy have reluctantly come to the conclusion that it will be better to steer for colder weather. So southward the Sea Flower flies, under every stitch of canvas, with studding-sails low and aloft. Shall the plague be stayed? Heaven alone can tell!
As it is, the depression hangs like a dark, foreboding cloud over the ship.
No one cares to talk much by day or by night. The men sit silently at their meals, with lowered brows and frightened looks. They eye each other askance; they know not who may be the next. They even avoid each other as much as possible while walking the decks. Hardly will a man volunteer to nurse the sick. The hammocks containing these hang on the lee side, and the crew keep far away indeed.
But they smoke from morn till night.
Halcott himself and little Fitz are the only nurses, and both are worn out for want of rest. With their own hands they sew up the hammock of the dead, unhook it, lift the gruesome burden on to the top of the bulwark, and, while the captain with uncovered head raises his eyes to heaven and utters a prayer, the body is committed to the deep, to be torn in pieces next minute by the tigers of the sea.
Poor little Nelda! She is as merry as ever, playing with Bob or the ’Ral on the quarterdeck, and it is strange, in this ship of death, to hear her musical voice raised in song or laughter in the midst of silence and gloom!
No wonder that, hearing this, the delirious or the dying fancy themselves back once more in their village homes in England.
Nelda wonders why the captain, who used to romp and play with her, tries all he can now to avoid her; and why little Fitz, the curious, round-faced, laughing, black boy, with the two rows of alabaster teeth, never comes aft.
Halcott himself never goes below either. He insists upon taking his meals on deck. Nor will he permit Tandy or Ransey to come forward. If he can, he means to confine the awful plague to the fore part of the ship.
They say that in a case of this kind it is always the good who go first. In this instance the adage spoke truly.
Terrible to say, in less than a fortnight no less than thirteen fell victims to the scourge. But still more, more awful, the crew now became mutinous.
Luckily, all arms, and ammunition as well, were safely stored aft.
Durdley was chief mutineer—chief scoundrel! Out of the fourteen men left alive, only four were true to the captain, the others were ready to follow Durdley.
This fellow became a demon now—a demon in command of demons; for they had found some grog which had been in charge of the second mate—who was dead—and excited themselves into fury with it.
Durdley, the dark and ugly man, rushed to the screen-berth where Halcott was trying to ease the sufferings of a poor dying man.
He was as white as a ghost; even his lips were pale.
Beware of men, reader, who get white when angry. They are dangerous!
“Here, Halcott,” cried Durdley, “drop your confounded mummery, and listen to me. Lay aft here, my merry men, lay aft.”
Nine men, chiefly Finns and other foreigners, armed with ugly knives and iron marline-spikes, quickly stationed themselves behind him.
“Now, Halcott, your game’s up. You brought this plague into the ship yourself. By rights you should die. But I depose you. I am captain now, and my brave boys will obey me, and me alone.
“You hear?” he shouted, for Halcott stood a few paces from him, calmly looking him in the face.
“I hear.”
“Then, cusses on you, why don’t ye speak? You’ll be allowed to live, I say, both you and Tandy, on one condition.”
“And that is—?”
“That you alter your course, and steer straight away to the nearest land—the Falkland Isles—at once.”
“I refuse. Back, you mutinous dog! back! I say. Would you dare to stab your captain? Your blood be,”—here the captain’s revolver rang sharp and clear, and Durdley fell to the deck—“on your own cowardly head.”
There was a wild yell and a rush now, and though the captain fired again and again, he was speedily overpowered.
The revolver was snatched from his hand, and he was borne down by force of numbers.
But assistance was at hand.
“Now, lads, give it to them! Hurrah!”
It was Tandy himself, with the four good men and true, who had run aft between decks to inform the mate of the mutiny.
All were armed with rifles, but these they only clubbed. So fiercely did they fight, that the mutineers speedily dropped their knives and iron marline-spikes, and were driven below, yelling for mercy like the cowards they were.
The captain, though bruised, was otherwise intact. Nor was Durdley dead, though he had lost much blood from a wound—the revolver bullet having crashed through the arm above the elbow, and through the outside of the chest as well. But two Finns lay stark and stiff beside the winch.
Even to tragedy there is always a ridiculous side or aspect, and on the present occasion this was afforded by the strange behaviour of Bob and the Admiral during the terrible mêlée. It is not to be supposed that Bob would be far away from his master when danger threatened him.
Seeing Ransey Tansey, rifle in hand, follow his father to join in repelling the mutineers, it occurred to him at once that two might be of some assistance. It did not take the faithful tyke a moment to make up his mind, but he thought he might be of more use behind the mutineers than in front of them. So he outflanked the whole fighting party, and the attack he made upon the rear of Durdley’s following was very effective.
The ’Ral could not fight, it is true, but his excitement during the battle was extreme. Round and round the deck he ran or flew, with his head and neck straight out in front of him, and his screams of terror and anger added considerably to the clamour and din going on forward. The poor bird really seemed to know that men were being killed, and seeing his master engaged, he would fain have helped him had he been able.
Of the ten men then who had mutinied three were wounded, including the ringleader, two were dead, and the remaining five were now taken on deck and roped securely alongside the winch to await their sentence. The deck was quickly cleared of the dead, and all evidences of the recent struggle were removed.
Durdley resembled nothing more nearly than a captured bird of prey. He was stern, silent, grim, and vindictive. Had he not been utterly prostrate and powerless, he would have sprung like a catamount at the throats of the very men who were dressing his wounds, and these were Tandy and Halcott himself.
Yet it was evident that he was not receiving the treatment he had expected, nor that which he would have dealt out to Halcott had he fallen into his hands.
“Why don’t you throw me overboard?” he growled at last, with a fearful oath. “Sharks are the best surgeons; their work is soon over. I’d have served you so, if my lily-livered scoundrels had only fought a trifle better, hang them!
“Ay, and you too, Mr Tandy, with your solemn face, if you hadn’t consented to take us straight to land!”
“Keep your mind easy,” said Halcott, quietly. “I’ll get rid of you as soon as possible, you may be well sure.”
“Do your worst—I defy you. But if that worst isn’t death, I’ll bide my time. I’d rather die three times over than lie here like a half-stuck pig.”
During the fight little Nelda was in terrible distress, and, but for Janeira, she would doubtless have rushed forward, as she wanted to do, in order to “help daddy and ’Ansey.”
Bob was the first to bring her tidings of the victory.
He came aft at full gallop, almost threw himself down the companion-way, and next moment was licking the child’s tear-bedewed cheeks.
She could see joy in the poor dog’s face. He was full of it, and trying as much as ever dog did try to talk. Perhaps he never fully realised till now how awkward it is for a doggie to want a tail. But he did what he could, nevertheless, with the morsel of fag-end he had.
“Don’t cry, little mistress,” he was trying hard to say, “don’t cry. It’s all right now. And it was such fun to see them fighting, and I fought too. Oh, didn’t I bite and tear the rascals just.”
Even the ’Ral seemed to know that the danger was past and gone for a time, and nothing would suffice to allay his feelings save executing a kind of wild jig right on the top of the skylight—a thing he had never done before.
But although quieted now, Nelda was not quite content, till down rushed Ransey Tansey himself. With a joyful cry she flew to his arms, and he did all he could to reassure her; so successfully, too, that presently she was her happy little self once more, playing with Bob on the quarterdeck, as if nothing had happened. Blissful childhood.
The condition of affairs, after the ship had penetrated into the regions of ice and snow, was not an enviable one, although there was now a rent in the dark cloud that hovered over the Sea Flower—a lull in the terrible storm.
Durdley was progressing favourably, and making so rapid a recovery that, in case he might cause more mischief, he was put in irons. But the other wounded men, probably owing to their weak condition, had died.
The five others were allowed to go on duty. Halcott refused to accept their offered promise to behave leal and true. What is a promise, even on oath, from such bloodthirsty villains as these?
“I do not wish either promise or apology,” he told them plainly. “Your conduct from this date will in some measure determine what your future punishment may be. Remember this, we do not trust you. The four good Englishmen, who fought for myself and mate, are all armed, and have orders to shoot you down without one moment’s grace if they observe a suspicious movement on your part, or hear one single mutinous word. There! go.”
The ship’s course was altered now, and all sail made to round Cape Horn.
No doubt the cold had been the means of eradicating the dreadful plague. Yet Halcott was a man whom no half-measures would satisfy.
There was plenty of clothing on board, so a new suit was served out to every seaman, the old being thrown overboard. Then the bedding and hammocks were scoured, and when dry fumigated. Sulphur was burned between decks, and hatches battened down for a whole day. Every portion of the woodwork was afterwards scrubbed, and even the masts were scraped. This work was given to the mutineers, and a cold job it was. The men sat each one in the bight of a rope, and were lowered up or down when they gave the signal.
Halcott was very far indeed from being vindictive, but long experience had taught him that mutinous intentions are seldom carried out if active occupation be found for body and mind.
“I breathe more freely now,” said the captain, as Tandy and he walked briskly up and down the quarterdeck.
“Heigho!” said Tandy, “we no doubt have sinned—we certainly have suffered. But,” he added, “I thank God, Halcott, from my inmost soul, first that you are spared, and secondly, that my little innocent child here and my brave boy Ransey Tansey are still alive and happy.”
“Amen! And now, Tandy, we’ve got to pray for fine weather. We are rather underhanded—those wretched Finns may break out again at any moment. They will, too, if not carefully watched.”
“You have a kinder heart than I have, Halcott, else you’d have made that scoundrel Durdley walk the plank, and hanged the rest at the yardarm, one by one.”
“The worst use you can put a man to is to hang him,” said Halcott, laughing.
“But will you care to land on the island we are in search of, with these fellows?” asked Tandy. “Mind,” he added, before Halcott could answer, “I take no small blame to myself for having engaged such scoundrels. Want of time was no excuse for me. Better to have sacrificed a month than sail as shipmates with such demons as these.”
“Keep your mind easy, my dear friend; I’ll get rid of them, by hook or by crook, before we reach our island.”
“It relieves me to hear you say so, but indeed, Halcott, ’twixt hook and crook, if I had my way, I should choose the crook. I’d give the beggars a bag of biscuit and a barrel of pork, and maroon them on the first desert island we come in sight of.”
I do not know that Halcott paid much attention to the latter part of Tandy’s speech. He was at this moment looking uneasily at a bank of dark, rock-like clouds that was rising slowly up to the north and east.
“Have you noticed the glass lately, Tandy?” he said quietly.
“I’ll jump down and see it now.”
“Why,” he said, on returning, “it is going tumbling down. I’ll shorten sail at once. We’re going to have it out of that quarter.”
There was little time to lose, for the wind was already blowing over the cold, dark sea in little uncertain puffs and squalls. Between each there was a lull; yet each, when it did come, lasted longer and blew stronger than those that had preceded it.
The barque was snug at last. Very little sail indeed was left on her; only just enough to steer by and a bit over, lest a sail or two should be carried away.
Of the four trustworthy men, one was Chips the carpenter, the other old Canvas the sailmaker. The latter kept a watch, the former had been placed in Tandy’s.
It was hard times now with all. Watch and watch is bad enough in temperate zones, but here, with the temperature far below freezing-point, and dropping lower and lower every hour, with darkness and storm coming down upon them, and the dangers of the ice to be encountered, it was doubly, trebly hard.
It takes a deal to damp the courage of a true British sailor, however, and strange as it may seem, that very courage seems to rise to the occasion, be that occasion what it may. But now, to quote the wondrous words of Coleridge’s “Ancient Mariner—”
... “The storm-blast came, and he
Was tyrannous and strong;
He struck with his o’ertaking wings,
And chased us south along.
“With sloping masts and dipping prow.
As who pursued with yell and blow
Still treads the shadow of his foe,
And forward bends his head.
The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,
And southward ay we fled.
“And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold;
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.
“And through the drifts the snowy clifts
Did send a dismal sheen:
* * * * *.
“The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound!”
Yes, the good barque Sea Flower was driven far, far to the southward, far, far from her course; but happily, before they reached the icy barrier, the wind had gone down, so that the terrible noises in the main pack which the poet so graphically describes had few terrors for them.
The wind fell, and went veering round, till it blew fair from the east. A very gentle wind, however, and hardly did the barque make five knots an hour on her backward track.
Others might be impatient, but there was no such thing as impatience about Nelda, and little about Ransey Tansey either. Everything they saw or passed was as fresh and new to them as if they were sailing through a sea of enchantment.
The cold affected neither. They were dressed to withstand it. The keen, frosty air was bracing rather than otherwise, and warm blood circulated more quickly through every vein as they trod the decks together. How strange, how weird-like at times were the snow-clad icebergs they often saw, their sides glittering and gleaming in the sunshine with every colour of the rainbow, and how black was the sea that lay between!
The smaller pieces through which the ship had often to steer were of every shape and size, all white, and some of them acting as rafts for seals asleep thereon—seals that were drifting, drifting away they knew not, cared not whither.
Sometimes a great sea-elephant would raise his noble head and gaze curiously at the passing barque, then dive and be seen no more. Shoals of whales of a small species afforded our little seafarers great delight to watch. But these went slowly on their way, dipping and ploughing, and looking neither to the right hand nor to the left. The porpoises were still more interesting, for they seemed to live but to romp and play and chase each other, sometimes jumping right out of the water, so that it is no wonder Nelda imagined they were playing at leap-frog. Nelda, when told that these were schools of porpoises, said,—
“Oh, well, and school is just let out, I suppose; no wonder they are happy. And the big whales are their mothers! They are not happy because they are all going to church, quiet and ’spectable like.”
The myriads of birds seen everywhere it would be impossible here to describe. Suffice it to say that they afforded Nelda great delight.
Bob was as merry as ever; but when one day the ’Ral walked solemnly aft wearing a pair of canvas stockings right up as far as his thighs, both Tandy and Halcott joined with the youngsters in a roar of hearty laughter. There was no more dance in that droll bird, and wouldn’t be for many a long day. “A sail in sight, sah! A steamer, sah!” It was little Fritz who reported it from the mast-head one morning, some time after the Sea Flower had regained her course, had doubled the Cape, and was steering north-west by west.
The stranger lay to on observing a flag of distress hoisted, and soon a boat was seen coming rapidly on towards the Sea Flower.
The steamer was the Dun Avon, homeward-bound from San Francisco, with passengers and cargo.
The captain himself boarded her with one of his men, and to him was related the whole sad story as we know it. “We have a clean bill of health now though,” added Halcott; “but we are short-handed—one man in irons, and five more that we cannot trust.”
“Well,” said the steamer captain, “I cannot relieve you of your black hats, but I’ll tell you what I can do: I shall let you have four good hands if they’ll volunteer, and if you’ll pay them well. And I should advise you to set your mutineers on shore at the entrance to the Strait of Magellan, and let them take their chance. You’re not compelled to voyage with mutineers, and risk the safety of yourselves and your ship. Now write your letters home, for my time is rather short.”
The four new hands were four hearties, as hard as a mainstay, as brown as bricks, and with merry faces that did one’s heart good to behold.
Was it marooning, I wonder? Well, it doesn’t matter a great deal, but just ten days after this the mutineers were landed, bag and baggage, on the north cape of Desolation Island, not far from the route through the far-famed strait. With them were left provisions for six weeks, guns, ammunition, and tools.
I never heard what became of them. If they were picked up by some passing ship, it was more than they deserved.
“At last,” said Halcott, when the boat returned—“at last, friend Tandy, an incubus is lifted off my mind, and now let us make—
“All Sail for the Island of Gold.”
End of Book Two.
Book Three—Chapter One.
“A Sight I shall Remember till my Dying Day.”
Captain Halcott sat on the skylight, and near him sat Tandy his mate, while between them—tacked down with pins to the painted canvas, so that the wind might not catch it—lay a chart of a portion of the South Pacific Ocean.
At one particular spot was a blue cross.
“I marked it myself,” said Halcott; “and here, on this piece of cardboard, is the island, which I’ve shown you before—every creek and bay, every river and hill, so far as I know them, distinctly depicted.”
“The exact longitude and latitude?” said Tandy.
“As near as I could make them, my friend.”
“And yet we don’t seem to be able to discover this island. Strange things happen in these seas, Halcott; islands shift and islands sink, but one so large as this could do neither. Come, Halcott, we’ll work out the reckoning again. It will be twelve o’clock in ten minutes.”
“Everything correct,” said Halcott, when they had finished, “as written down by me. Here we are on the very spot where the Island of Misfortune should be, and—the island is gone!”
There was a gentle breeze blowing, and the sky was clear, save here and there a few fleecy clouds lying low on a hazy horizon.
Nothing in sight! nor had there been for days and days; for the isle they were in search of lies far out of the track of outward or homeward-bound ships.
“Below there!”
It was a shout from one of the new hands, who was stationed at the fore-topgallant cross-trees.
“Hallo, Wilson!” cried Tandy running forward. “Here we are!”
“Something I can’t make out on the lee bow, sir.”
“Well, shall I come up and bring a bigger glass?”
“One minute, sir!”
“It’s a steamer, I believe,” he hailed now; “but I can’t just raise her hull, only just the long trail of smoke along the horizon.”
Tandy was beside the man in a few minutes’ time. “This will raise it,” he said, “if I can focus aright. Why!” he cried next minute, “that is no steamer, Tom Wilson, but the smoke from a volcanic mountain or hill.”
Down went Tandy quickly now.
“Had your island of gold a chimney to it?” he said, laughing. He could afford to laugh, for he felt convinced this was the island and none other. “There wasn’t a coal mine or a factory of any kind on it, was there? If not, we will soon be in sight of the land of gold. Volcanic, Halcott—volcanic!”
“Keep her away a point or two,” he said to the man at the wheel.
“There were hills on the Island of Misfortune, but no signs of a volcano.”
“Not then; but in this mystery of an ocean, Halcott, we know not what a day or an hour may bring forth.
“Let me see,” he continued, glancing at the cardboard map; “we are on the east side of the island, or we will be soon. Why, we ought soon to reach your Treachery Bay. Ominous name, though, Halcott; we must change it.”
Nearer and nearer to the land sailed the Sea Flower. The hills came in sight; then dark, wild cliffs o’ertopped with green, with a few waving palm-trees and a fringe of banana here and there; and all between as blue a sea as ever sun shone on.
“It is strangely like my island,” said Halcott; “but that hill, far to the west yonder, from which the smoke is rising, I cannot recognise.”
“It may not have been there before.”
“True,” said Halcott. But still he looked puzzled.
Then, after bearing round to the north side of the island, past the mouth of a dark gully, and past a rocky promontory, the land all at once began to recede. In other words, they had opened out the bay.
“But all the land in yonder used to be burned forest, Tandy.”
Tandy quietly handed him the glass.
The forest he now looked upon was not composed of living trees, but of skeletons, their weird shapes now covered entirely by a wealth of trailing parasites and flowery climbing plants.
“I am satisfied now, and I think we may drop nearer shore, and let go the anchor.”
In an hour’s time the Sea Flower lay within two hundred yards of the beach.
This position was by no means a safe one were a heavy storm to blow from either the north or the west. There would be nothing for it then but to get up anchor and put out to sea, or probably lie to under the shelter of rocks and cliffs to the southward of the island.
The bay itself was a somewhat curious one. The dark blue which was its colour showed that it was deep, and the depth continued till within seventy yards of the shore, when it rapidly shoaled, ending in a snow-white semicircle of coral sands. Then at the head of the bay, only on the east side, stretching seawards to that bold promontory, was a line of high, black, beetling cliffs, the home of those wheeling sea-birds. These cliffs were of solid rock of an igneous formation chiefly, but marked here and there with veins of what appeared to be quartz. They were, moreover, indented with many a cave: some of these, it was found out afterwards, were floored with stalagmites, while huge icicle-like stalactites depended from their roofs.
Rising to the height of at least eight hundred feet above these cliffs was one solitary conical hill, green-wooded almost to its summit.
The western side of the bay, and, indeed, all this end of the island, was low, and fringed with green to the water’s edge; but southwards, if one turned his eye, a range of high hills was to be seen, adding materially to the beauty of the landscape.
The whole island—which was probably not more than sixteen miles in length, by from eight to nine in width—was divided by the river mentioned in Captain Halcott’s narrative into highlands and lowlands.
The day was far advanced when the Sea Flower dropped anchor in this lovely bay, and it was determined therefore not to attempt a landing that night. Halcott considered it rather an ominous sign that no savages were visible, and that not a single outrigger boat was drawn up on the beach.
Experience teaches fools, and it teaches savages also. Just a little inland from the head of the bay the cover was very dense indeed; and though, even with the aid of their glasses, neither Halcott nor Tandy could discover a sign of human life, still, for all they could tell to the contrary, that green entanglement of bush might be peopled by wild men who knew the Sea Flower all too well, and would not dare to venture forth.
The wind went down with the sun, and for a time scarce a sound was to be heard. The stars were very bright, and seemed very near, the Southern Cross sparkling like a diamond pendant in the sky.
By-and-by a yellow glare shone above the shoulder of the adjacent hill, and a great round moon uprose and sailed up the firmament as clear and bright as a pearl.
It was just after this that strange noises began to be heard coming from the woods apparently. They were intermittent, however. There would be a chorus of plaintive cries and shrieks, dying away into a low, murmuring moan, which caused Nelda, who was on deck, to shiver with fear and cling close to her brother’s arm.
“What on earth can it be?” said Tandy. “Can the place be haunted?”
“Haunted by birds of prey, doubtless. These are not the cries that savages utter, even during an orgie. But, strangely enough—whatever your experience may be, Tandy—I have seldom found birds of prey on the inhabited islands of the South Pacific.”
“Nor I,” said Tandy. “Look yonder!” he added, pointing to a balloon-shaped cloud of smoke that hovered over a distant hill-top, lit up every now and then by just such gleams of light as one sees at night penetrating the smoke from some village blacksmith’s forge. But yonder was Vulcan’s forge, and Jupiter was his chief employer.
“Yes, Tandy, that is the volcano. But I can assure you there was no such fire-mountain, as savages say, when I was here last.”
“To-morrow,” said the mate, “will, I trust, make every thing more plain to us.”
“To-morrow? Yes, I trust so, too,” said Halcott, musingly. “Shall we go below and talk a little?”
“I confess, my friend,” Halcott continued, after he had lit his pipe and smoked some time in silence—“I confess, Tandy, that I don’t quite like the look of that hill. Have you ever experienced the effects of a volcanic eruption in any of these islands?”
“I have not had that pleasure, if pleasure it be,” replied the mate.
“Pleasure, Tandy! I do not know of anything more hideous, more awful, in this world.
“When I say ‘any of these islands,’ I refer to any one of the whole vast colony of them that stud the South Pacific, and hundreds of these have never yet been visited by white men.
“Years ago,” he continued, “I was first mate of the Sky-Raker, as bonnie a brig as you could have clapped eyes upon. It afterwards foundered with all hands in a gale off the coast of Australia. When I trod her decks, second in command, I was a bold young fellow of twenty, or thereabouts; and I may tell you at once we were engaged in the Queensland black labour trade. And black, indeed, and bloody, too, it might often be called.
“We used to go cruising to the nor’ard and east, visiting islands here and islands there, to engage hands for working in the far interior. We arranged to pay every man well who would volunteer to go with us, and to land them again back home on their own islands, if they did wish to return.
“On these expeditions we invariably employed ‘call-crows.’”
“What may a ‘call-crow’ be, Halcott?”
“Well, you know what gamblers mean on shore by a ‘call-bird’ or ‘decoy-duck.’ Your ‘call-crow’ is the same, only he is a black who has lived and laboured in Queensland, who can talk ‘island,’ who can spin a good yarn in an off-hand way, and tell as many lies as a recruiting-sergeant.
“These are the lures.
“No matter how unfriendly the blackamoors among whom we may land may be, our ‘call-rooks’ nearly always make peace. Then bartering begins, and after a few days we get volunteers enough.”
“But they do attack you at times, these natives?”
“That’s so, Tandy; and I believe I was a braver man in those days than I am now, else I’d hardly have cared to make myself a target for poisoned arrows, or poisoned spears, so coolly as I used to do then.”
Nelda, who had come quietly down the companion-way with her brother, seated herself as closely to Captain Halcott as she could. She dearly loved a story, especially one of thrilling adventure.
“Go on, cap’n,” she said, eagerly. “Never mind me. ‘Poisoned spears,’—that is the prompt-word.”
“These black fellows were not of great height, Tandy,” resumed Halcott.
“Savages,” said Nelda. “Please say savages.”
“Well, dear, savages I suppose I must call them. They were almost naked, and many of the elder warriors were tattooed on cheeks, chest, and arms. All had bushy heads of hair, and were armed with bows and arrows, spears and clubs, and tomahawks.
“But,” he added, “it was generally with the natives of those islands from which we had already obtained volunteers that we had the greatest trouble. The ship I used to sail in, Tandy, was as honest as it is possible for such a ship to be, and I never saw natives ill-treated by any of our crew, though more than once we had to fight in self-defence. The reason was this. Many ships that had agreed to bring the blacks back home, broke their promise, which, perhaps, they had never intended to keep. When they returned to the islands, therefore, to obtain more recruits, bloodshed was almost certain to ensue. If one white man was killed, then the revenge taken was fearful. At a safe distance the whites would bring their rifles and guns to bear upon the poor savages, and the slaughter would be too dreadful to contemplate. If the unhappy wretches took shelter in their woods or jungles, these would be set on fire, till at last a hundred or more of them would fling their arms away, hold up the palms of their hands in token of submission, or as on appeal for mercy, and huddle together in a corner like fowls, and just as helpless. The whites could then pick and choose volunteers as they pleased, and it is needless to tell you there was nothing given in exchange.
“Our trouble took place when we returned to an island, having found it impossible to bring the natives we had taken off back with us. This they looked upon as cheating, and they would rush to arms, compelling us to fire upon them in self-defence.
“Well, we were constantly on the search for new islands. The natives on these might threaten us for a time, but the ‘call-crows’ soon pacified them. The beads and presents we distributed, coupled with the glowing accounts of life in Queensland which the ‘crows’ gave these poor heathen, did all the rest, and we soon had a cargo.”
“And this species of trade was, or is, called black-birding, I think,” said Tandy.
“It was, and is now, sub rosa.
“But I was going to tell you of a volcanic eruption. Before I do so, however, I propose that we order the main-brace to be spliced. For this is an auspicious night, you know, and I have not heard a jovial song on board the Sea Flower for many and many a day.
“Janeira!”
“Yes, sah. I’se not fah away, sah.”
And Janeira entered, smiling as usual, and as daintily dressed as a stage waiting-maid.
“Pass the word for Fitz, Janeira, like a good girl.”
“Oh, he’s neah too, sah. At you’ service, sah!”
Fitz had been in the pantry eating plum-duff, or whatever else came handy. The pantry was a favourite resort with Lord Fitzmantle, and Janeira never failed to put after-dinner tit-bits away in a corner for his especial delectation.
“Now, Jane, you shall draw some rum, and, Fitz, you must take it for’ard. Here is the key, Jane; and, Fitz, just tell them for’ard to drink the healths of those aft, and sing as much as they choose to-night.”
“Far away then, Tandy and Nelda,” said Halcott, resuming his narrative, “to the west of this island, farther away almost than the imagination can grasp, so solitary and wide is this great ocean, there used to be a small island called Saint Queeba. Who first found it out, or named it, I cannot tell you, Tandy, but I believe our own brig was the first that ever visited it in a black-birding expedition.
“The population seemed to be about three thousand, and of these we took away at least one hundred and fifty. The poor creatures appeared to have no fear of white men, and so we concealed our revolvers and entered into friendly intercourse with them.
“The island was a long way from any other, and this probably accounted for its never having been black-birded before.
“We returned from Australia almost immediately again after landing our recruits, and I for one felt sure the natives would welcome us.
“So we brought extra-showy cloth and the brightest beads we could procure.
“They did welcome us, and we soon had about half a cargo of real volunteers.
“We were only waiting for others to come from the interior; for the wind was fair just then, and we were all anxious to proceed to sea.
“The very evening before the arrival of the blacks, however, the wind went suddenly down, although, strangely enough, at a great altitude we could see scores of small black clouds scurrying across the sky. Finally, some of these circled round and round, and combined to form a dark blue canopy that gradually lowered itself towards the island.
“Soon the sun went down, a blood-red ball in the west, and darkness quickly followed. It was just then that we observed a fitful gleam arise from the one and only mountain the island possessed. Over this a ball of cloud had hung all day long, but we had taken little notice of it.
“‘I’ve never seen the like of that before, mate,’ said the skipper to me, pointing at the slowly descending pall of cumulus.
“‘Nor I either, captain,’ I replied.
“I couldn’t keep my eyes off it, do what I would, for dark though the night was that strange cloud was darker. It seemed now to be sending downwards from its centre a whirling tail, or pillar, which the gleams that began to rise higher and higher from the developing volcano lit up, and tongues of fire appeared to touch.
“‘It’s going to be a storm of some kind, Halcott,’ said my skipper. ‘Oh, for a puff of wind, for, Heaven help us, lad! we are far too near the shore.’
“‘I have it,’ he cried next minute. ‘Lower the boats and heave up the anchor.’
“I never saw men work more willingly in my life before. Even the blacks we had on board lent a hand, and no sooner was the anchor apeak than away went the boats, and the ship moved slowly out to sea.
“We had got about three knots off-shore, when, happening to look back, I saw a sight which I shall remember to my dying day.
“The black and awful whirling cloud had burst. If one ton of water came down like an avalanche, a million must have fallen, with a deafening roar like a thousand thunders.
“It seemed as if heaven and earth had gone to war and the first terrific shot had been fired.
“For a time the mountain was entirely enveloped in darkness; then up through this blackness rose high, high into the air a huge pillar of steam. This continued to rise for over an hour, with incessant thunder and lightning around the base of the hill. Rain, almost boiling hot, fell on our decks, and hissed and spluttered on the still water around the ship, compelling us to fly below or seek the shelter of tarpaulins.
“This ceased at last, and now we could see that the volcanic fire had gained the mastery; for the flames, with huge pieces of stones and rocks, were hurled five hundred feet at least into the starry sky.
“For many hours the thunderings and the lightnings over that devoted island and around the hill were such, Tandy, as I pray God I may never see or hear again. There were earthquakes, too; that was evident enough from the strange commotion in the water around us, and this was communicated to the ship. The best sailors on our brig could scarcely stand, far less walk. Towards morning it had partially cleared, although the lightning still continued to play, fork and sheet, above the base of the volcanic hill. We could now see streams of molten lava pouring down the mountain’s side, green, crimson, and violet.
“Very lovely indeed they were. But ah! then I knew the fate of those unhappy inhabitants was to be a terrible one. It would be a choice of deaths, for in less than half an hour the isle was one vast conflagration. We saw but little more of it even next day, for the lava was now pouring into the sea and a cloud of steam enveloped the scene of tragedy.
“Our decks were covered with dust and scoriae, and this fell steadily all that day.
“We had managed by means of the boats to work off and away fully fifteen miles. This was undoubtedly our salvation; for presently we were struck by a terrible tornado, and it required all our skill to keep out of the vortex.
“While it was still raging around us, an explosion away on our port quarter, where the island would be just then, seemed to rend the whole earth in pieces. Many of our crew were struck deaf, and remained so for days. Our ship shook, Tandy, fore and aft, quivering like a dying rat. She seemed to have no more stability in her then than an old orange box.
“An immense wave, such as I had never seen before, rose in the sea and swept on towards us. The marvel is that it did not swamp us.
“As it was we were carried sky-high, and our masts cracked as if they were about to go by the board. Smaller waves followed, and the gale that brought up the rear drove us far away from the scene of the terrible tragedy before the sun rose, redder than ever I had seen it before, for it was shining through the dust and débris of that broken up island.
“I left the trade soon after this, Tandy. I was tired and sick of black-birding.
“But in my own ship, two years after this, I visited the spot. The island was gone; but for more than a mile in circumference the sea was strangely rippled, and gases were constantly escaping that we were glad enough to work to windward of.
“But listen! our good little crew is singing. Well, there is something like hope in that—and in the sweet notes of Tom Wilson’s violin. He’s a good man that, Tandy, but he has a history, else I’m a Hottentot.
“Well, just one look at the sky, and then I’ll turn in, my friend. We don’t know what may be in store for us to-morrow.”
And away up the companion-way went Captain Halcott.
Book Three—Chapter Two.
“I See a Beach of Coral Sand, Dark Figures Moving to and fro.”
Next morning broke bright and fair. Not a cloud in all the heaven’s blue; not a ripple on the water, just a gentle swell that broke in long lines of snow-white foam on the crescent shore—a gentle swell with sea-birds afloat on it. Ah! what would the ocean be to a sailor were there no birds. The sea-gulls are the last to leave him, long after all other friends are gone, and the land, like a pale blue cloud far away on the horizon, is fading from his view.
“Adieu! adieu! away! away?” they shriek or sing, and as the shades of evening are merging into darkness they disappear. But these same birds are the first to welcome the mariner back, and even should there be no land in sight, or should clouds envelop it, the sight of a single gull flying tack and half-tack around the ship sends a thrill of hope and joy to the sailor’s heart. On the deep, lone sea, too, Jack has ay a friend, should it be but in the stormy petrel, the frigate-bird, or that marvellous eagle of the ocean, the albatross itself.
Those birds floating here around the Sea Flower so quietly on the swell of the sea looked as happy as they were pure and lovely. No whiteness, hardly even snow itself, could rival the whiteness of their chests, while under them their pink legs and feet looked like little twigs of coral.
The morning was warm, the sun was bright; they were moving gently with the tide, careless, happy. As he stood there gazing seawards and astern—for the ship had swung to the outgoing tide—Halcott could not help envying them.
“Ah!” he said half aloud, “you are at home, sweet birds; never a care to look forward to, contentment in your breasts, beauty all around you.”
Then his thoughts went somehow wandering homewards to his beautiful house, his house with a tower to it, and his lovely gardens. They would not be neglected though. It was autumn here. It would be spring time in England, with its buds, its tender green leaves, its early flowers, and its music of birds. Then he thought of his dog. Fain would he have brought him to sea. The honest collie had placed his muzzle in his master’s hand on that last sad evening of parting, and glanced with loving, pleading eyes up into his face.
“Take me,” he seemed to say, “and take her.”
Her was Doris. His—Halcott’s—own Doris; the lovely girl for whom he had risked so much, for whom he would lay down his life; the girl that would be his own fair bride, he told himself, if ever he returned. Ah! those weary “ifs!”
But he had looked into the dog’s bonnie brown eyes.
“Friend,” he had said, “you will stay with Doris. You will never leave her side till I come back. You will watch her for me.”
And he remembered now how Doris had at that moment thrown herself into his arms, and strained him to her breast in a fit of convulsive weeping.
And this had been the parting.
“What, Halcott,” cried Tandy’s cheerful voice, “up already! and—and—why, Halcott, old man, there is moisture in your eyes!”
“I—I was thinking of home, and—well, I was thinking of my dog.”
“And your Doris. Heigho! I have no Doris, no beautiful face to welcome me home. But look yonder,” he added, taking Halcott’s arm.
Little Nelda stood at the top of the companion-way, the sunlight playing on her yellow hair, one hand held up to screen her face, delicate, pink, yet so shyly sweet, and her blue eyes brimful of happiness.
Just one look she gave, then, with arms outstretched, rushed gleefully towards her father. Next moment she was poised upon his shoulder, and Tandy had forgotten that there was any such thing as danger or sorrow in the world.
The two men walked and talked together now for quite an hour. Indeed, there was very much to talk about, for although they had made the island at last, they had no idea as yet how they should set about looking for the gold which they were certain existed there.
They had not made up their minds as to what they should do, when Janeira rang the bell for breakfast, and with Fitz was seen staggering aft with the covered dish.
“Jane, you look happier than ever this morning. What is the matter? Has some beautiful bird brought you a letter from home?”
“De bootiful bird, sah, is Lawd Fitzmantle, and see, sah, dat is de letter from home.”
She lifted the dish cover as she spoke. Beautiful broiled fish caught only that morning over the stern, but oh, the delicious odour would have revived the heart of a dying epicure!
“Babs is going to be very good to-day,” said Tandy to his little daughter after breakfast.
“Better than ever, daddy?”
“Yes, much, because I’m going on shore with Captain Halcott here and two men.”
“And me?”
“No, not to-day, dear. We’re going to climb that high hill and look all round us, and perhaps put up a flag; and Ransey will let you look through a spyglass to see us, and we’ll wave our hands to you. Now will you be better than usual?”
“Ye-es, I think I’ll try. And oh, I’ll make the Admiral look through the spyglass too, and when you see him looking through, you must wave your hand and fire your gun. Then we’ll all—all be happy and nicer than anything in the whole world.”
It was not without a feeling of misgiving that Halcott and Tandy left the boat that had taken them on shore, and took their way cautiously towards the bush. There was hard work before them and the two sturdy fellows, Chips and Tom Wilson, whom they had brought with them—hard work to penetrate through the jungle and to effect an ascent of the hill they had already named the Observatory—hard work and danger combined.
The crew of the boat stood gun in hand until they saw the party safe into the bush, then, more easy in their minds now, rowed slowly back to the ship. For if savages had been hiding under cover, the attack would have been made just as the party was stepping on shore.
The exploring party kept to the extreme edge of the bush after penetrating and searching hither and thither for a time, but neither track nor trail of savages could they find. But they came across several little pathways that led here and there through the jungle, and at first they could not make out what these were. They learned before long, however; for Bob, who had gone on ahead a little way, came suddenly and excitedly rushing out from a thicket. In his mouth he held something that Tandy imagined was a rat, but the shrieking and yelling behind the dog soon undeceived him, and, lo! there now rushed into the open a beautiful little boar and a sow. The former flashed his tusks in the sunlight. He wanted the baby back. It was his, his, he said, and his wife’s. He felt full of fight, and big enough to wage war against the whole world for that baby.
Tandy made Bob drop it, which he did, and it ran squealing back to its mother. The boar, or king pig, said he accepted the apology, and would now withdraw his forces. And he accordingly did so by scuttling off again into the bush. These wild dwarf-pigs and a species of rock-rabbit were, they found afterwards, about the only animals of any size the island contained.
After this trifling adventure they fought their way through a terrible entanglement of bush, till they reached the foot of the hill.
The men had brought saws and axes with them, and were thus enabled by cutting here and whacking there to make a tolerably good road. When they reached the hill they found themselves in a woodland of beautiful trees. Walking was now easy enough, and in about an hour’s time they reached the summit of the hill and sat down to luncheon.
Eager eyes were watching their progress from the ship, for the upper part of this mount was covered only with stunted grass and beautiful heaths, among which they noticed many a charmingly-coloured lizard—green with crimson markings, or pale blue and orange—but they saw no snakes.
Tandy turned his glass now upon the barque, and there sure enough was Nelda with the Admiral by her side. He waved his coat, and twice he fired his gun. From the hill on which they stood the view was lovely beyond compare. They could see well into the highland part of the island, with its rolling woods, on which the fingers of autumn had already traced beauty tints; its bosky glens; its rugged rocks and hills; its streaks of silvery streams; the lake lying down yonder in the hollow, with something like a floating garden in its centre; and afar off the vast expanse of ocean.
Look which way they would, that sea was all before them, only dotted here and there far to the northward with islands much smaller than the one on which they stood.
High up on the top of the volcanic hill a white cloud was resting, and its dark sides were seamed with many a waving line, the channels down which lava must have run during some recent eruption.
“Ha!” said Halcott presently, “now I can understand the mystery of the burned forest. At first, when we landed here, we believed that the black-birders had been ahead of us; but no, Tandy, no, it was nothing but the lava that fired the forest.”
But strangely enough, however, not a sign of human life was anywhere visible.
Was there any way of accounting for this? “What is your theory, Halcott?” said Tandy. Halcott was lying on the green turf, fanning himself with his broad hat.
But he now lit his pipe. Like most sailors, he was capable of calmer and more concentrated thought when smoking.
“Tandy,” he said slowly, after a few whiffs of the too seductive weed—“Tandy, we have luck on our side. Those blackamoors have fled helter-skelter at the first signs of the eruption. Nothing in the world strikes greater terror to the mind of the ordinary savage—and precious ordinary most of them are—than a sudden convulsion of nature.”
Another whiff or two.
“What think you, men,” he said, looking round him, “came up with the fire and the smoke from the throat of that volcanic hill?”
“Stones and ashes,” ventured Chips.
“Stones and ashes? Yes, no doubt, but demons as well—so the dusky rascals who inhabited this island would believe—demons with fire-fierce eyes, tusks for teeth, and blood-red lolling tongues; only the kind of demons that at home nurses try to frighten children with, but more dreadful to those natives than either falling stones or boiling rain.
“That is it, Tandy; they have fled. Heaven grant they may not come back. But if they do, we must try to give them a warm reception, unless they are extra civil. Meanwhile, I think that old Vulcan, at his forge in yonder hill, has not let out his fires. They are merely banked, and he is ready to get up steam at a moment’s notice.
“Why, Tandy, what see you?”
The mate of the Sea Flower was lying flat on the green hill-top, with his telescope resting on Bob’s back.
“I see—I—see,” he said, without taking his eye from the glass, “a little island far away, a level island it is.”
“Yes. Go on.”
“I see a beach of coral sand, dark canoes like tree-trunks are lying here and there, and I see dark figures moving to and fro, and many more around a fire. The beach is banked behind by waving plantain or banana-trees, and cocoa palms are nodding in the air.”
“Then,” said Halcott, “I was right, and those savages you see, Tandy, are the natives of this Island of Gold—for we shall call it the Isle of Misfortune never again—the very natives, Tandy, who fled from this place when Vulcan’s thunders began to shake the earth.”
Slowly homewards now they took their way, and just as the sun was westering stood once more upon the coral beach. The boat was speedily sent for them, and they were not sorry to find themselves once more on board.
Fine weather continued, with scarcely ever a breath of wind, for a whole week. But this could not always be so. The ocean that stretches from the shores of South America far across to New Zealand and Australia is Pacific by name, but not always pacific by nature, and terrible indeed are the gales and circular storms that sometimes sweep over its surface.
So, knowing this, Halcott and Tandy determined to seek, if possible, a safer anchorage or harbour.
It was with this view that they extended their explorations, and made little boat excursions round the rocky coast. These last Nelda, much to her joy, was permitted to join. Looking over the boat’s gunwale, far down into the depths of the clear, transparent water, she could see marine gardens more lovely than any she had ever dreamt of.
“Oh,” she cried, “look, daddy, look! That is fairyland. Oh, I should like to go down and see a mermaids’ ball.”
After rounding the promontory, with its bold, bluff cliffs frowning darkly over the deep, they came to the entrance to the river.
This river was fed by springs that rose far inland, and so wide was it at its mouth that the mariners hoped it would make a most excellent shelter and harbour for the Sea Flower. Alas, greatly to their disappointment, they found it barred across.
And no other spot could be found around the island coast.
By paying out the anchors; however, which, getting a firm hold of the coralline bottom, were almost bound to hold, Halcott believed the Sea Flower could weather almost any storm.
In this he was sadly mistaken, as the sequel will show.
It was determined now to penetrate into the highland part of the isle itself, and make their first grand plunge for gold. If this could be found in sufficient quantities, their stay on the island need be but very brief.