Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories

“Is she coming up at all?” said Rothesay quietly, speaking in a low voice.

“No, sir,” answered Jensen steadily, but looking straight before him; “she did come up a point or so a little while back, but fell off again; but the wind keeps pretty steady, sir.”

Rothesay stood by him irresolutely, debating within himself. Then he walked up to the mate.

“Mr. Williams, send another man to the wheel, and tell Jensen to come below. I want to speak to him about Bougainville; he knows the place well, I have been told. And as neither you nor I do, I may get something out of him worth knowing.”

“Ay, ay, sir,” answered the Welsh mate. “But he’s mighty close over it, anyway. I’ve hardly heard him open his mouth yet.”

A minute or two passed, and Jensen was standing at the cabin-door, cap in hand.

“Come in,” said Rothesay, turning up the cabin lamp, and then he said quietly, “Sit down, Proctor; I want to talk to you quietly. You see, I know you.”

The seaman stood silent a moment with drooping eyes. “My name is Jensen, sir,” he said sullenly.

“Very well, just as you like. But I sent for you to tell you that I had not forgotten our former friendship, and—and I want to prove it, if you will let me.”

“Thank you, sir,” was the reply, and the man’s eyes met Rothesay’s for one second, and Rothesay saw that they burned with a strange, red gleam; “but you can do nothing for me. I am no longer Proctor, the disgraced and drunken captain, but Jensen, A.B. And,” with sudden fury, “I want to be left to myself.”

“Proctor,” and Rothesay rose to his feet, and placed his hands on the table, “listen to me. You may think that I have treated you badly. My wife died two years ago, and I–”

Proctor waved his hand impatiently. “Let it pass if you have wronged me. But, because I got drunk and lost my ship, I don’t see how you are to blame for it.”

A look of relief came into Rothesay’s face. Surely the man had not heard whom he had married, and there was nothing to fear after all.

For a minute or so neither spoke, then Proctor picked up his cap.

“Proctor,” said Rothesay, with a smile, “take a glass of grog with me for the sake of old times, won’t you!”

“No, thank you, sir,” he replied calmly, and then without another word he walked out of the cabin, and presently Rothesay heard him take the wheel again from the man who had relieved him.

Two days later the Kate Rennie sailed round the north cape of Bougainville, and then bore up for a large village on the east coast named Numa Numa, which Rothesay hoped to make at daylight on the following morning.

At midnight Jensen came to the wheel again. The night was bright with the light of shining stars, and the sea, although the breeze was brisk, was smooth as a mountain lake, only the rip, ripy rip of the barque’s cutwater and the bubbling sounds of her eddying wake broke the silence of the night. Ten miles away the verdure-clad peaks and spurs of lofty Bougainville stood clearly out, silhouetted against the sea-rim on the starboard hand. The wind was fair abeam and the ship as steady as a church, and Proctor scarce glanced at the compass at all. The course given to him was W.S.W., which, at the rate the ship was slipping through the water, would bring her within two miles of the land by the time he was relieved. Then she would have to go about and make another “short leg,” and, after that, she could lay right up to Numa Numa village.

Late in the day Rothesay had lowered one of the ship’s boats, whose timbers had opened under the rays of the torrid sun, and was keeping her towing astern till she became watertight. Presently Proctor heard a voice calling him.

“Peter, I say, Peter, you got a match?”

Looking astern, he saw that the native who was steering the boat had hauled her up close up under the stern.

“Yes,” he answered, taking a box of matches out of his pocket and throwing them to the native sailor. “Are you tired of steering that boat, Tommy?”

“No, not yet; but I wanted to smoke. When four bell strike I come aboard, Mr. Williams say.”

Two bells struck, and then Proctor heard Williams, who was sitting down at the break of the poop, say, “Hallo, young shaver, what do you want on deck?”

“Oh, Mr. Williams, it is so hot below, and my father said I could come on deck. See, I’ve got my rug and pillow.”

“All right, sonny,” said the mate good-naturedly; “here, lie down here on the skylight.”

The child lay down and seemed to sleep, but Proctor could see that his eyes were wide open and watched the stars.

Four bells struck, and Proctor was relieved by a white seaman, and another native came to relieve the man who was steering the boat, which was now hauled up under the counter. Just then, as the mate called out, “Ready about,” Proctor touched the child on the arm.

“Allan, would you like to come in the boat with me?”

The boy laughed with delight. “Oh, yes, Peter, I would like it.”

Proctor turned to the native who was waiting to relieve the man who was steering the boat. “You can go for’ard, Jimmy, I’ll take the boat for you.”

The native grinned. “All right, Peter, I no like boat,” and in another moment Proctor had passed the child down into the boat, into the arms of the native sailor whose place he was taking, and quickly followed. As she drifted astern, the Kate Rennie went about, the towline tautened out, and a delighted laugh broke from the boy as he sat beside Proctor and saw the white canvas of the barque looming up before him.

“Hush!” said Proctor, and his hand trembled as he grasped the steer-oar. Then he drew the child to his bosom and caressed him almost fiercely.

For half an hour the barque slipped along, and Proctor sat and steered and smoked and watched the child, who now slumbered at his feet. Then the stars darkened over, a black cloud arose to the eastward, the wind died away, and the mate’s voice hailed him to come alongside, as a heavy squall was coming on. “And you’ll have trouble with the captain for taking his boy in that boat,” added Williams.

“Ay, ay, sir,” answered Proctor, as he looked at the cloud to windward, which was now quickly changing to a dullish grey; and then he sprang forward and cut the tow-line with his sheath-knife.

Five minutes passed. Then came a cry of agony from the barque, as Rothesay, who had rushed on deck at Williams’s call, placed his hand on the tow-line and began to haul it in.

“Oh, my God, Williams, the line has parted. Boat ahoy, there, where are you?”

And then with a droning hum the squall smote the Kate Rennie with savage fury, and nearly threw her over on her beam ends; and Proctor the Drunkard slewed the boat round and let her fly before the hissing squall towards the dimmed outline of Bougainville.

For two days the Kate Rennie cruised off the northern end of Bougainville, searching for the missing boat. Then Rothesay beat back to Numa Numa and anchored, and carefully examined the coast with his boats. But no trace or Proctor nor the child was ever found. Whether the boat was dashed to pieces upon the reef or had been blown past the north end of the island and thence out upon that wide expanse of ocean that lies between the Solomons and New Guinea was never known, and the fete of Proctor the Drunkard and his innocent victim will for ever remain one of the many mysteries of the Western Pacific till the sea gives up its dead.

A PONAPEAN CONVENANCE

“Here also, as at Yap, the youngest wives and sisters of the chiefs visited the frigate.... Somewhat shocking at first to our feelings as Christians.... Yet to have declined what was regarded by these simple and amiable people as the very highest token of their regard for the officers of the expedition, would have been bitterly resented.... And, after all, our duties to our King and Queen were paramount… the foundation of friendly relations with the people of this Archipelago!… The engaging manners and modest demeanour of these native ladies were most commendable. That this embarrassing custom was practised to do us especial honour we had ample proof.”

Chester, the trader, laid down the book and looked curiously at the title, “A Journal of the Expedition under Don Felipe Tompson, through the Caroline Islands.” It was in Spanish, and had been lent him by one of the Jesuit Fathers in Ponapé.

“Ninety years haven’t worked much difference in some of the native customs,” thought he to himself. “What a sensation Don Felipe would have made lecturing at St. James’s Hall on these pleasantly curious customs! I must ask Tulpé about these queer little functions. She’s chock-full of island lore, and perhaps I’ll make a book myself some day.”

“Huh!” said Tulpe, Chester’s native wife, whipping off her muslin gown and tossing it aside, as she lay back and cooled her heated face and bared bosom with a fan, “‘tis hot, Kesta, and the sun was balanced in the middle of the sky when we left Jakoits in the boat, and now ‘tis all but night; and wind there was none, so we used not the sail.”

“Foolish creature,” said Chester, again taking up his book, “and merely to see this new white missionary woman thou wilt let the sun bake thy hands and feet black.”

Handsome, black-browed Tulpé flashed her white, even teeth as she smiled.

“Nay, but listen, Kesta. Such a woman as this one never have I seen. Her skin is white and gleaming as the inside of the pearl-shell. How comes it, my white man, that such a fair woman as this marrieth so mean-looking a man? Was she a slave? Were she a woman of Ponapé, and of good blood, Nanakin the Great would take her to wife.”

“Aye,” said Chester lazily; “and whence came she and her husband?”

“From Kusaie (Strong’s Island), where for two years have they lived, so that now the woman speaketh our tongue as well as thee.”

“Ha!” said the trader quickly; “what are their names?”

She told him, and Chester suddenly felt uncomfortable.

Two years before, when spending a few idle months in Honolulu, he had met that white woman. She was waiting to be married to the Rev. Obadiah Yowlman, a hard-faced, earnest-minded, little Yankee missionary, who was coming up from the Carolines in the Planet. There had been some rather heavy love-passages between her and Chester. He preserved his mental equilibrium—she lost hers. The passionate outburst of the “little she missionary,” as he called her when he bade her goodbye, he regarded as the natural and consistent corollary of moonlit nights beneath the waving palms on white Hawaiian beaches. When he returned to Ponapé he simply forgot all about her—and Tulpé never asked him inconsiderate questions about other women whom he might have met during the six months he was away from her. He had come back—that was all she cared for.

“I wonder how Tulpe would take it if she knew?” he thought. “She might turn out a bit of a tiger.”

“What are thy thoughts, Kesta?” And Tulpé came over to him and leant upon his shoulder. “Is it in thy mind to see and talk with the new missionary and his wife?”

“No,” said Chester promptly; “sit thou here, wood-pigeon, and tell me of the customs I read of here.”

She sat down beside him, and leant her dark head against his knee, fanning herself the while she answered his questions.

“As it was then, Kesta, so is it now. And if it were to advantage thee I should do likewise. For is it not the duty of a woman to let all men see how great is her love for her husband? And if a great chief or king of thy land came here, would I not obey thee?”

Chester laughed. “No great chiefs of my land come here—only ship-captains and missionaries.”

She turned and looked up into his face silently for a few moments, then rose.

“I know thy meaning now. But surely this mean-faced missionary is not to be compared to thee! Kesta, ‘tis the fair-faced woman that is in thy mind. Be it as you will. Yet I knew not that the customs of thy land were like unto ours.”

“What the devil is she driving at!” thought Chester, utterly failing to grasp her meaning.

Early next morning Tulpe was gone.

****

“Deny it not, white woman. If thou dost not love my husband, how came it that yesterday thou asked his name of me? See now, I deal fairly with thee. For three days will I stay here although thy husband is but as a hog in my eyes, for he is poor and mean-looking, while mine is–, well, thou shalt see him; and for three days shalt thou stay in my house with my husband. So get thee away, then—the boat waits.”

Pretty Mrs. Yowlman fled to her room and, wondering whether Chester knew, began to cry, while Tulpé sat down, and, rolling a cigarette, resignedly awaited the appearance of the Rev, Obadiah Yowlman.

An hour afterwards the Rev. gentleman came in with Chester, who had walked across the island on discovering Tulpé’s absence.

“No, thank you,” he said to the missionary; “I won’t stay now.... Some other time I will do myself the pleasure of calling upon Mrs. Yowlman, and yourself… You must excuse my wife having called upon you twice. She is deeply imbued with the native customs and observances, and I—er—sincerely trust she has given no offence.”

Then took he Tulpé’s hand and led her, wondering, back to his home. And Tulpé thought he and the white woman were both fools.

IN THE KING’S SERVICE, SOME EPISODES IN THE LIFE OF A BEACH-COMBER

I

The white cloud mantle that had enwrapped the wooded summit of Lijibal was slowly lifting and fading before the red arrow-rays of the tropic sun—it was nearly dawn in Lêla Harbour. A vast swarm of sooty terns, with flapping wing and sharp, croaking note, slid out from the mountain forest and fled seaward, and low down upon the land-locked depths of Lela a soft mist still hovered, so that, were it not for the deadened throbbing beat and lapping murmur of the flowing tide, one might have thought, as he looked across from land to land, that the high green walls of verdure in whose bosom the waters of Lela lay encompassed were but the portals to some deep and shadowy mountain valley in a land of utter silence, untenanted by man.

But as the blood-redness of the sun paled and paled, and then changed into burnished gold, the topmost branches of the dew-laden trees quivered and trembled, and then swayed softly to the sea-breeze; the fleecy vapours that hid the waters of the harbour vanished, and the dark bases of the mountains stood out in purest green. Away out seawards, towards the hiss and boil of the tumbling surf, tiny strips of gleaming sandy beach showed out in every nook and bay. And soon the yellow sunlight flashed through the gloomy shadows of the forest, the sleeping pigeons and the green and scarlet-hued parrakeets awoke to life amid the sheltering boughs, and the soft, crooning note of one was answered back by the sharp scream of the other. Along the mountain sides there was a hurried rustling and trampling among the thick carpet of fallen leaves, and a wild boar burst his way through the undergrowth to bury in his lair till night came again; for almost with the first call of the birds sounded the hum and murmur of voices, and the brown people of Léla stepped out from their houses of thatch, and greeted each other as they hurried seaward for their morning bathe—the men among the swirl and wash of the breaking surf, and the women and children along the sandy beach in front of the village.

Out upon the point of black and jagged reef that stretched northward from the entrance to the harbour was the figure of a young boy who bathed by himself. He was the son of the one white man on Strong’s Island, whose isolated dwelling lay almost within hail of him.

The father of the boy was one of those mysterious wanderers who, in the days of sixty years or so ago, were common enough on many of the islands of the North Pacific. Without any material means, save a bag of silver dollars, he had, accompanied by his son, landed at Lêla Harbour on Strong’s Island from a passing ship, and Charlik, the king of the island, although at first resenting the intrusion of a poor white man among his people, had consented to let him remain on being told by the captain of the ship that the stranger was a skilful cooper, and could also build a boat. It so happened that many of the casks in which the king stored his coconut-oil were leaking, and no one on the island could repair them; and the white man soon gave the native king proof of his craft by producing from his bag some of a cooper’s tools, and going into the great oil shed that was close by. Here, with some hundreds of natives watching him keenly, he worked for half an hour, while his half-caste son sat upon the beach utterly unnoticed by any one, and regarded with unfavourable looks by the island children, from the mere fact of their having learned that his mother had been a native of a strange island—that to them was sufficient cause for suspicion, if not hostility.

Presently the king himself, attended by his mother, came to the oil shed, looked in, and called out to the white man to cease his work.

“Look you, white man,” he said in English. “You can stop. Mend and make my casks for me, and some day build me a boat; but send away the son of the woman from the south lands. We of Kusaie (Strong’s Island) will have no strangers here.”

The white man’s answer was quick and to the point. He would not send his child away; either the boy remained with him on shore or they both returned to the ship and sought out some other island.

“Good,” said Charlik with cold assent, and turning to his people he commanded them to provide a house for the white man and his boy, and bring them food and mats for their immediate necessities.

An hour or two afterwards, as the ship that had landed him at Lêla sailed slowly past the white line of surf which fringed the northern side of the island, the captain, looking shoreward from his deck, saw the white man and his boy walking along the beach towards a lonely native house on the farthest point. Behind them followed a number of half-nude natives, carrying mats and baskets of food. Only once did the man turn his face towards the ship, and the captain and mate, catching his glance, waved their hands to him in mute farewell. A quick upward and outward motion of his hand was the only response to their signal, and then he walked steadily along without looking seaward again.

“Queer fellow that, Matthews,” said the captain to his mate. “I wonder how the deuce he got to the Bonins and where he came from. He’s not a runaway convict, anyway—you can see that by the look in his eye. Seems a decent, quiet sort of a man, too. What d’ye think he is yourself?”

“Runaway man-o’war’s man,” said Matthews, looking up aloft. “What the devil would he come aboard us at night-time in a fairly civilised place like the Bonin Islands as soon as he heard that the Juno, frigate, was lying at anchor ten miles away from us there. And, besides that, you can see he’s a sailor, although he didn’t want to show it.”

“Aye,” said the captain, “likely enough that’s what he is. Perhaps he’s one of the seven that ran away from Sir Thomas Staine’s ship in the South Pacific some years ago.”

And Mr. Matthews, the mate of the barque Oliver Cromwell was perfectly correct in his surmise, for the strange white man who had stolen aboard the ship so quietly in the Bonin Islands was a deserter from his Majesty William IV.‘s ship Tagus. For nearly seven years he had wandered from one island to another, haunted by the fear of recapture and death since the day when, in a mad fit of passion, he had, while ashore with a watering party, driven his cutlass through the body of a brutal petty officer who had threatened, for some trifling dereliction of duty, to get him “a couple of dozen.”

Horror-stricken at the result of his deadly blow, he had fled into the dense jungle of the island, and here for many days the wretched man lived in hiding till he was found by a party of natives, who fed and brought him back to life, for he was all but dead from hunger and exposure. For nearly a year he lived among these people, adapting himself to their mode of life, and gaining a certain amount of respect; for in addition to being a naturally hard-working man, he had no taste for the gross looseness of life that characterised nine out of every ten white men who in those days lived among the wild people of the North Pacific Islands.

Two years passed by. Brandon—for that was his name—realised in all its bitterness that he could never return to England again, as recognition and capture, dared he ever show himself there, would be almost certain: for, in addition to his great stature and marked physiognomy, he was fatally marked for identification by a great scar received in honourable fight from the cutlass of the captain of a Portuguese slaver on the coast of Africa. And so, in sheer despair of his future, he resolved to cast aside for ever all hope of again seeing his native land and all that was dear to him, and live out his life among the lonely islands of the wide Pacific.

Perhaps, as he looked out, at long, long intervals of years, at the sails of some ship that passed within sight of the island, he may have thought of the bright-faced girl in the little Cornish village who had promised to be his wife when he came home again in the Tagus; but in his rude, honest way he would only sigh and say to himself—

“Poor Rose, she’s forgotten me by now; I hope so, anyhow.”

So time went by, slowly at first, then quicker, for the young native woman whom he had married a year before had aroused in him a sort of unspoken affection for her artless and childlike innocence, and this deepened when her first child was born; and sometimes, as he worked at his old trade of boat-building—learned before he joined the King’s service—he would feel almost content.

As yet no fear of a King’s ship had crossed his mind. In those days ten years would go by, and save for some passing merchantman bound to China by the Outer Route, which would sweep past miles away before the strong trade wind, no ship had he seen. And here, on this forgotten island, he might have lived and died, but that one day a sandal-wooding brigantine was becalmed about four miles away from the island, and Brandon determined to board her, and endeavour to obtain a few tools and other necessaries from her captain.

With half-a-dozen of his most trusted native friends he stepped into a canoe, and reached the brigantine just as night began to fall. The master of the vessel received him kindly enough, and gave him the few articles he desired, and then, suddenly turning to him, said—

“I want another man; will you come? I’m bound to Singapore with sandal-wood.”

“No, thank you, sir. I can’t leave here. I’ve got a wife and child.”

The seaman laughed with good-humoured contempt, and sought to persuade him to come, but Brandon only shook his head solemnly. “I can’t do that, sir. These here people has treated me well, and I can’t play them a dirty trick like that.”

After some little bargaining the natives who had come with Brandon agreed to return to the shore and bring off some turtle to the ship. It was still a dead calm, and likely to continue so all night, and Brandon, shaking the captain’s hand, got into the canoe and headed for the island.

As they ran the bow of the canoe upon the beach Brandon called loudly to his wife to come out of the house and see what he had brought from the ship, and was instantly struck with alarm at hearing no answer to his call. Running quickly over the few hundred yards that separated his house from the beach, he lifted up the door of thatch and saw that the house was empty—his wife and child were gone.

In a moment the whole village was awake, and, carrying lighted torches, parties of men and women ran along the path to seek the missing woman, but sought in vain. The island was small and had but one village, and Brandon, puzzled at his wife’s mysterious disappearance, was about to lead another party himself in another direction to that previously taken, when a woman who lived at a house at the extreme end of the village, suddenly remembered that she had seen Brandon’s wife, carrying her child in her arms, walking quickly by in the direction of a point of land that ran far out from the shore on the lee side of the island.

In an instant he surmised that, fearing he might go away in the ship, she had determined to swim out to him. The moment he voiced his thought to the natives around him, the men darted back to the beach, and several canoes were at once launched, and in the first was Brandon.

There were four canoes in all, and as that of the white man gained the open sea, the crew urged him not to steer directly for the brigantine, “for,” said they, “the current is so strong that Mâhia, thy wife, who is but a poor swimmer and knows not its strength, hath been swept round far beyond the point—and, besides, she hath the child.”

For nearly half an hour the canoes paddled out swiftly, but noiselessly, the men calling out loudly at brief intervals, and every now and then Brandon himself would call.

“Mâhia! Mâhia! Call to us so that we may find thee!”

But no answer came back over the dark waters. At last the four canoes approached each other, and the natives and Brandon had a hurried consultation.

“Paranta,” said the steersman of the nearest canoe, “let us to the ship. It may be that she is there.”

The man who sat next to the speaker muttered in low tones, “How can that be, Kariri? Either the child hath wearied her arm and she hath sunk, or—the sharks.”

Plunging his paddle deeply into the water, Brandon, brought the head of the canoe round for the ship, the faint outlines of whose canvas was just showing ghostly white half a mile away through the thin morning haze which mantled the still unruffled surface of the ocean.

Urged swiftly along by the six men who paddled, the white man’s canoe was soon within hailing distance of the brigantine, and at the same moment the first puff of the coming breeze stirred and then quickly lifted the misty veil which encompassed her.

“Ship ahoy!” hailed Brandon. “Did a woman and child swim off to you during the night?”

Almost ere the answering “No” was given, there was a loud cry from one of the other canoes which had approached the vessel on the other side, and the “No” from the brigantine was changed into—

“Yes, she’s here; close to on the port side. Look sharp, she’s sinking,” and then came the sound of tackle as the crew lowered a boat that hung on the ship’s quarter.

With a low, excited cry the crew of Brandon’s canoe struck their bright red paddles into the water with lightning strokes, and the little craft swept swiftly round the stern of the brigantine before the just lowered boat had way on her.

There, scarce a hundred yards away, they saw Mâhia swimming slowly and painfully along towards the ship, to the man whom she thought had deserted her. With one arm she supported the tiny figure of the child, and Brandon, with a wild fear in his heart, saw that she was too exhausted to hold it many seconds longer.

“Quick! Quick, man, for the love of God!” came in loud, hoarse tones from the captain of the brigantine, who stood on the rail holding to the main rigging, and drawing a pistol from his belt he sent its bullet within a few feet of the feeble swimmer.

Only another ten yards, when, as if aware of the awful fate that awaited her, Mâhia half raised herself, and with dying strength held the child out almost clear of the water. And then, as her panting bosom wailed out her husband’s name for the last time, there pealed out upon the ocean a shriek of mortal agony, and he saw her drop the infant and disappear in a swirl of eddying foam. Ere that awful cry had ceased to vibrate through the morning air, a native had sprung from the canoe and seized the drowning child, and the agonised father, looking down into the blue depths, saw a running streak of bubbling white five fathoms beneath. Again the native dived, and followed the wavering track of white, and presently, not fifty feet away, they saw him rise with the woman on his arm, her long black hair twining around his brawny neck and shoulders.

“By God, he’s saved her!” cried the mate, as both his boat and Brandon’s canoe reached the native simultaneously, and they reached out their hands to take hold of the motionless figure.

“Paranta, turn thy eyes away,” said a native, and flinging his arms around the white man, he forced his face away as the diver and his burden were lifted into the boat.

A shuddering sob stirred the frame of the mate or the brigantine when he saw that only the upper half of the woman’s body was left.