III
Three or four years passed by, during which time the writer cruisedabout from island to island in the North and South Pacific--sometimesliving ashore as a trader, sometimes voyaging to and fro among the manygroups as supercargo or recruiter in the labour trader; and then one daythe schooner, in which I then served as supercargo, reached Samoa, andthere I accepted the dignified but unsatisfactory financial position ofinter-island supercargo to a firm of merchants doing business in Apia,the distracted little capital of the Navigator's Island. At this time,the late Earl of Pembroke, the joint author with Dr. Kingsley of "SouthSea Bubbles," was in Apia Harbour in his schooner yacht _Albatross_, andevery day we expected to see the French Pacific Squadron steam into theport and capture the numerous German ships then laying at anchor there.But the gallant Admiral Clouet, who commanded, disdained such work asthis--he was willing and eager to fight any German warships that hecould come across, but had no inclination for the inglorious task ofseizing unarmed merchantmen.
For two years or so I remained in the employ of the trading firm. Hayesthen lived in Apia--or rather at Matautu, on the east side of ApiaHarbour. When I say lived there, I mean that Samoa was his headquarters,for he was absent six months out of the twelve, cruising away in theNorth West Pacific among the Caroline and Marshall Groups. His houseat Matautu Point was sweetly embowered in a grove of coco-nut andbreadfruit trees, and here the so-called pirate exercised the mostunbounded hospitality to the residents and to any captains (not Germans)visiting Samoa. Sometimes we would meet, and whenever we did he wouldurge me to come away with him on a cruise to the north-west; but dutytied me down to my own miserable little craft, a wretched little ketchof sixty tons register, that leaked like a basket and swarmed withmyriads of cockroaches and quite a respectable number of centipedes andscorpions.
But it so came about that that cruise with Bully Hayes was to eventuateafter all; for one day he returned to Samoa from one of his periodicalcruises and told the owners of the aforesaid basket that he could sellher for them to the King of Arhnu--one of the Marshall Islands--forquite a nice sum. And the owners, being properly anxious to get rid ofsuch a dangerous and unprofitable craft before she fell to pieces, atonce consented.
Hayes sailed in the _Leonora_ in the month of November, and it wasagreed that I was to follow in _The Williams_ (that being the name of mysemi-floating abode of misery) in the following month, and meet him atMilli Lagoon, in the Marshall Islands. Here we were to doctor up thewretched little vessel as well as we possibly could, and then send herover to the Island of Arhnu in the same group, and defraud the monarchof that place of L1,000 by handing over the vessel to him.
Of the miseries and hardships of that voyage from Samoa to the MarshallIslands, I shall not speak. After a passage of forty-three days wereached Milli Lagoon, where we found Hayes awaiting us in the _Leonora_.The moment our anchor had touched bottom, I packed up my traps and toldHayes I had done with _The Williams_, and refused to go any furtherin her unless she was carried on the deck of another vessel. With hiscarpenter--a pig-eyed Chinaman--he made a survey of the vessel, and thentold me that she was so rotten and unseaworthy that he would not takedelivery of her. The captain, a gin-sodden little Dutchman, and the crewwere given quarters on shore at the house of Hayes's local trader, wherethey were to remain till some passing ship gave them a passage back toSamoa. The ketch was then beached, as Hayes considered that she mighteventually be patched up sufficiently to sell to the King of Arhnu, whenthe _Leonora_ returned from her cruise to the islands of the North-westPacific, in six months' time. As I had received no salary from myemployers for nearly twelve months (and did not expect any), I consentedvery cheerfully to this arrangement, and then agreed to sail with Hayesas supercargo.
We sailed from Milli Lagoon for the Kingsmill Group a week later, andvisited nearly every island in the cluster, buying coco-nut oil andother produce from the natives and the few scattered white traders. AtArorai, the southernmost island of the group, we found the natives in astate of famine owing to a long and disastrous drought. The conditionof these poor people was truly pitiable to see, and the tears came tomy eyes when I saw them, scarcely able to stand, crawling over ourbulwarks, and eagerly seizing the biscuits and dishes of boiled ricethat Hayes gave them with an unstinting hand. They begged us mostpiteously to take them away somewhere--they cared not where, Samoa, Fijior Queensland--where they could work on the plantations and at leastget food. Five of them ate so voraciously, despite all our endeavours toprevent it, that they died the following day. On the following morning,Hayes called several of the head men of the island into his cabin, andtold them that if they were willing, he would take one hundred of thepeople--men, women, and children--to the German trading station andplantation at Ponape in the Caroline Islands. Here, he told them, theywould have to work for three years for 5 dollars per month each. If, atthe end of six months, they found that the Germans did not treat themwell, he would bring them back again to their own island on hisnext voyage to Ponape. They accepted his offer with the strongestprotestations of gratitude, and before noon we sailed with over ahundred of the poor people on board. Before we left, however, Hayes gavethe remainder of the population nearly a ton of rice and several casksof biscuits. "You can pay me when the sky of brass has broken and therain falls, and the land is fertile once more," said the so-calledpirate.
We made a quick passage to the Caroline Islands, touching at Kusaie orStrong's Island on our way, and on a Sunday evening swept into JakoitsHarbour on the island of Ponape before a strong trade-wind. Here we madeengagements for our passengers with a German planter, and two days laterwe again were at sea, bound for the western portion of the Carolines.
For the following three or four months, the brig cruised among theother islands of the Western Carolines, buying copra and turtle-shellin considerable quantities; for the much-maligned "Bully," despite hismoral obliquity of vision in his commercial dealings with the merchantsof Tahiti and other Polynesian ports, yet possessed the confidence ofthe wild Caroline Islanders to a remarkable degree. Then we returned toPonape, where we remained a month, wooding and watering and cleaning theship's bottom by the aid of native divers of both sexes.
Leaving Ponape we drifted rather than sailed back to the eastward,and one morning in March we again saw the verdant heights of beautifulKusaie or Strong's Island, about ten miles away. On our first visit wehad anchored at Coquille Harbour, a lovely lake of deepest blue, onthe lee side of the island, where the king had supplied us with allthe provisions we wanted; and Hayes had promised to return again in sixmonths and buy a large quantity of coco-nut oil that his Majesty waskeeping for him: and in pursuance of that promise the _Leonora_ had nowreturned to the island.
As the breeze freshened we worked up to Lele, the principal harbour ofthe island, where Togusa, the king, resided, and in a few hours we wereboarded by a number of white men, whom we had last seen at two lonelyspots near the equator called Pleasant and Ocean Islands. In a fewminutes we learnt that in consequence of their lives being in imminentdanger from the natives, they, accompanied by their native wives,families, and over one hundred natives connected with them by marriage,had escaped from the islands in two whaleships, and landed at Kusaie,where they were at that moment causing old King Togusa a terrible amountof trouble by their wild and insolent demeanour. Their leader was awhite-haired old ex-man-of-war's man, named Harry Terry. He was thedoyen of the hardy, adventurous class among whom he had lived for overfifty years, and though exceedingly fond of square gin, was a thoroughlydecent old fellow, and tried to restrain his own and his comrades'native followers as much as possible. Harry, when he came on board,was accompanied by about half a dozen other white men, all armed withrevolvers, and all half-seas over. After a brief consultation withHayes, they agreed to pay him a thousand dollars to take them and theirbelongings to Eniwetok (or Brown's Range) and Arrecifos (ProvidenceIsland) two large atolls situated about 10 degrees North. Both of theseplaces were very thinly populated, and Arrecifos w
as Hayes's secretrendezvous in the North Pacific. His was the first ship that had eversailed into its lagoon, and the vast groves of coco-nuts that clothedthe low-lying island had decided him to return there at some future timewith native labourers and turn the coco-nuts into oil. The traders werehighly delighted at the prospect of securing homes in two such placesto themselves, and agreed to sell Hayes all the oil they produced duringthe next five years, and give him one barrel out of every five asa tribute of recognition of his ownership of Providence Island andEniwetok.
On the following day the whole lot came on board, and we left LeleHarbour to proceed down the coast to a little harbour named Utwe, whereHayes intended to water the ship and buy fresh provisions for the voyageto Providence Island. Just before we sailed, the King and Queen--thelatter a very pretty and charming little woman about five-and-twentyyears of age--came on board to make some purchases from my trade-room,and I had the distinguished honour of fitting on and selling to Queen Sea yellow silk blouse and two pairs of patent leather shoes. His Majesty,who was a curious combination of piety and inborn wickedness, and spokewhaler's English with great facility, bought about 200 dollar's worth ofprints and cutlery, and then proceeded to get drunk. He said that he wasvery glad the _Leonora_ was taking all the white men away from Kusaie,as he was afraid of their Pleasant Island retinue killing him and allhis people, and taking possession of the island.
By the time Queen Se had finished and paid for her purchases herroyal husband fell in a heap upon the cabin floor, and a number oftwenty-dollar gold pieces, which he carried in a leather pouch at hiswaist, fell out and rolled all over the cabin. The Queen at once pickedthem up, and concealed them in the bosom of her dress, telling me witha smile that she would come on board again when we returned fromArrecifos, or as she called it, Ujilong, and spend them. Shortlyafterward, her women attendants carried his Majesty up on deck, andHayes sent him ashore in one of our boats; and then, with our decksfilled with the noisy, excitable Pleasant and Ocean Islanders, and thewhite traders rolling about among them in a state of noisy intoxication,we got under way, and, with our yards squared, ran down the coast withina cable length of the reef.
*****
Three days later we were driven ashore in a fierce north-westerly galeand the trim little _Leonora_ sank in Utwe Harbour in fourteen fathomsof water.
The story of the wreck of the _Leonora_ in Utwe Harbour has been told bythe writer in another work, so I will now merely describe some incidentsof our stay on the island. First of all, however, let me make some briefmention of the island and its people. Kusaie is about thirty-five milesin circumference and of basaltic formation, and from the coast to thelofty summit of Mount Buache, 2,200 feet high, is clothed with therichest verdure imaginable. The northern part of the island risesprecipitously from the sea, and has no outlying barrier reef, but fromthe centre the land trends westward and southward in a graceful slopetowards the beautiful shores of Coquille Harbour. The southern portionis enclosed by a chain of palm-clad coral islets, connected at low waterby reefs, forming a long, deep lagoon, the waters of which teem withfish and turtle. This lagoon was used as a means of communicationbetween the village of Utwe Harbour, where the _Leonora_ was wrecked,and the village at Coquille, and all day long one might see thered-painted canoes of the natives passing to and fro over its glassywaters, which were, from their enclosed position, seldom raffled by anywind, except daring the rainy or westerly wind season. There were butthree villages of any size on the island--that at Lele, where the Kingand his principal chiefs lived, Utwe or Port Lottin, and Mout or Leasee,on the shores of Coquille Harbour. At this latter place I lived most ofthe time during my stay on the island.
We were enabled to save a considerable amount of stores from the wreck,as well as some arms and ammunition. There were also a bull and twocows, which formed the remainder of a herd of cattle that Hayes hadrunning on the island of Ponape; the rest--some forty head or so--hadbeen stolen from there by his one-time bosom friend and colleague, thenotorious Captain Ben Peese.
The natives of Strong's Island were but few in number--about fourhundred all told--and although a very handsome race and possessed ofthe very greatest intelligence, were dying out rapidly. In 1825, whenDuperrey, the French navigator, visited the island he estimated thepopulation at eleven thousand, and Don Felipe Tompson, an Englishman inthe Spanish Navy, who was there long before Duperrey, relates thatthe houses of the people formed an almost continuous line around thesouthern and western coasts. The introduction of European diseases madeterrible ravages among them in 1828, and then about the year 1856, whenthe whole of the population were converted by American missionaries andadopted European clothing, pulmonary disease made its appearance andswept them away literally in hundreds.
Within a week after the loss of the brig Hayes and our passengers cameto an agreement to build a town on the south shore of Utwe. They were togive Hayes the services of their native followers and help him to builddwelling-houses and store-houses for the manufacture of coco-nut oil.Hayes had accused--and with perfect truth--the Strong's Islanders ofstealing a number of articles from the wreck, and demanded compensationfrom the King, who agreed to pay him an indemnity of a millioncoco-nuts. These were to be collected by our crew and the Ocean andPleasant Islanders belonging to the traders. It was Hayes's intention toremain on the island till a passing sperm-whaler called there, and thencharter her to take the ship's company and all the rest of the tradersand natives to either Providence Island or Samoa.
In a month quite a town had been built, and a great sea wall of coralstones built to keep the sea from encroaching on the northern side.Standing apart from the rest of the houses was Captain Hayes'sdwelling-house--an enormous structure, a hundred and fifty feet long andfifty wide. Here he ruled in state, and from his door watched his boats,manned by their savage crews, pulling to and fro on their mission ofcollecting coco-nuts. These, as soon as the boats touched the stonewharf he had built on the west side of the sea-wall, were carried up tothe "Plaza" of the town, where they were quickly husked by women, whothrew them to others to break open and scrape the white flesh into apulp. This was then placed in slanting troughs to rot and let the oilpercolate down into casks placed at the lower end. On the other side ofthe "plaza" were the forge, carpenter's shop, and boat-builder's sheds,all of which bustled with activity, especially when the dreaded eyeof the captain looked over toward them. Two hundred yards away was theKusaiean village of Utwe, a collection of about twenty handsomely builthouses, and all day long the pale olive-faced Kusaiean men and womenwould sit gazing in wondering fear at the fierce Pleasant Island women,who, clothed in short girdles of grass called "aireere," sang a savagechant as they husked the nuts. In front of Hayes's house was hung the_Leonora's_ bell, and at noon and at six in the evening, when itwas struck, the whole of the people who toiled at the oil-making andboat-building would hurry away with loud clamour for their meals. Itwas a truly exciting scene to witness, and were it not for the continualdrunkenness of most of the white traders, who could be seen staggeringabout the "plaza" almost at any time, a pleasant one.
After a while, however, Hayes and the white traders began to quarrel,and dreadful bloodshed would have followed; for the Pleasant Islanders,who were all devotedly attached to their white masters and were allarmed with Snider rifles and cutlasses, were eager for their white mento make an assault upon Hayes and the crew of the _Leonora_. One nightthey gathered in front of their houses and danced a war-dance, but theirwhite leaders discreetly kept in the background when Hayes appearedcoming over toward them. He walked through the throng of natives, and ina very few minutes, although he was unarmed, picked out the biggest manof the lot and gave him a bad mauling about in the presence of every onein the village. One of the traders, a young American of thirty orso, named "Harry," at once declared that he was not going back onthe captain, and would stand by him to the last, whereupon the otherssullenly withdrew to their respective houses, and the trouble ended forthe time.
This "Harry" was
formerly a boat steerer on an American whaleship, fromwhich he had deserted, and had been living on Pleasant Island for someyears. He had four wives, whom he described as "the three Graces, withanother chucked in," and though a rough, dare-devil fellow, he was, withthe exception of old Harry Terry, the only one of the lot that was not ahopeless drunkard and ruffian. By one of his wives, a native of Sikaianaor Stewart's Island, he had two children, both girls. They were thenabout eight and ten years of age respectively, and were, I oftenthought, the loveliest specimens of childish beauty imaginable, and atthe moment when their father stepped out from among the other tradersand declared his intention of standing by Captain Hayes, each had aheavy navy revolver which their father had given them to carry in casehe needed the weapons.
In the course of a month or so I had a serious disagreement withCaptain Hayes over his treatment of a deputation of Strong's Islanders,and I left the settlement at Utwe, and removed to Leasse, the villageat Coquille Harbour. The principal man in the place was a native namedKusis, with whom, and his wife Tulpe and daughter Kinie, I livedduring the remainder of my stay on the island. And, although more thantwenty-five years have passed and gone since then, I can never forgetthe kindness, warm-hearted hospitality, and amiability that filled theirsimple hearts to overflowing.