John Frewen, South Sea Whaler. Becke Louis

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СКАЧАТЬ and socketed his oar, and looked at the officer.

      “I refuse, sir,” he said quietly.

      “Then come aft here,” cried Frewen quickly, with hot anger in his tones.

      “No, sir, I will not. I said I would neither lift iron nor steer a boat again,” was the dogged reply.

      There was no time to lose. Giving the steer oar to the man pulling the “after-tub oar,” the officer sprang forward and picked up the harpoon just in time, Randall jumping aft smartly enough, and taking the tub man’s oar. Ten seconds later Frewen had buried his harpoon up to the socket in the whale, and the line was humming as the boat tore through the water. Then, still keeping his place, he let the whole of one tub of line run out, and then hauled up on it and lanced and killed his fish quietly. Cheyne apparently took no notice, though his heart sank within him when Frewen came aft again, and looked at him with mingled anger and reproach.

      Some one of the boat’s crew talked of what had occurred, though Frewen said nothing; and that night Cheyne was placed in irons by Keller’s orders. At the end of a week he was still manacled and almost starving, but he steadfastly refused to do boatsteerer’s duty. Then the captain no longer placed any check on himself, and he swore that he would either make the half-caste yield or else kill him. And he did his best to keep his word.

      Nearly a month passed, and then, at Frewen’s suggestion, all the officers waited on the captain and begged him to release the unfortunate man; otherwise there was every prospect of the crew mutinying.

      “Is he willing to turn to again?” he asked.

      “Not as boatsteerer,” replied Frewen.

      “Then he shall stay where he is,” was the savage retort.

      Five or six days later Frewen went to Cheyne, who was now confined in the ‘tween decks, and implored him to give in.

      “Very well, sir. To please you I will give in. But I mean to desert the first chance.”

      “So do I. I am sick of this condition of things. There are three other men besides yourself in irons now.”

      “Who are they, sir?”

      “Willis, Hunt, and Freeman.” (The two latter belonged to his own boat, and had been ironed because they had refused to eat some bad beef. Frewen himself had told Keller that it was uneatable, and again angry words passed between them.)

      Cheyne was released and resumed his old place in Frewen’s boat, and the officer then sounded the rest of his men, and found they were eager to leave the ship. So he made his plans, and he and Cheyne quietly got together a small supply of provisions and a second breaker of water.

      They waited till the ship was well among the Friendly Group, and Upolu Island was three hundred miles to the north, and then were given the needed opportunity—when the mate’s boat was destroyed by the big bull whale, which was then struck by Cheyne.

      “Boys,” shouted Frewen to his crew, as the boat tore through the water, “I’m not going to kill this whale awhile. He’ll give us a long run, and is taking us dead to windward, away from the ship. But before it gets dark I’ll give him a bomb.”

      He successfully carried out his intention. Just as darkness was coming on he hauled up on his line and fired a bomb into the mighty creature; it killed it in a few seconds. Then they lay alongside of the floating carcase, spelled half an hour, had something to eat, and then Cheyne, who had a sense of humour, wrote the scrawl to Keller and tied it round the whift pole.

      “Now, lads,” cried Frewen, “up sail! It is a fine dark night, and we should be forty or fifty miles away by daylight.”

      And so, whilst the Casilda burnt flare after flare throughout the night, the adventurers were slipping through the water merrily enough, oblivious of the cold rain squalls which overtook them at midnight, as they headed for Samoa.

      CHAPTER III

      When Frewen allowed Cheyne to write the pencilled note to Captain Keller, he did so with a double purpose, for he and Cheyne had carefully thought out and decided upon their plans. In the first place, the dead whale would convince the ship’s company that he and his boat’s crew had “done the square thing,” by killing and leaving for their benefit the best and largest whale that had yet been taken, and that although they were deserting (and consequently losing their entire share of the profits of the cruise so far, which would be divided with their former shipmates) the rich prize they were leaving to the ship would prove of ten times the value of the boat in which they had escaped. In the second place he wished to put Keller on a false scent by naming Savage Island (or Nine, as it is generally known) as their destination; for Keller knew that the island was a favourite resort of runaway sailors, but that a suitable reward offered to the avaricious natives would be sure to effect the capture and return to the ship of any deserters from the Casilda.

      Cheyne’s father was an English master mariner, who, tired of a seafaring life, had settled as a trader in the beautiful island of Manono in Samoa. He there married a daughter of one of the leading chiefs, and himself attained to some considerable influence and property, but lost his life in an encounter with a rebellious clan on the island of Upolu. He left two children: Randall, a lad of sixteen, and Marie, a girl two years younger. The boy went to sea in a whaler, and at the age of twenty-four had an established reputation as one of the smartest boatsteerers in the Pacific. Only once after four years’ absence, had he returned to his native country, when he found that his sister, who had just arrived from Australia, where she had been educated, was about to be married to one of the few Europeans in the country—a well-to-do planter and merchant, named Raymond, and that his mother had also married again, and settled in New Zealand.

      Satisfied as to his sister’s future happiness, he saw her married, and again turned his face to the sea, although Raymond earnestly besought him to stay with and help him in his business. He made his way to Honolulu, and there joined the Casilda, then homeward bound, and, as has been related, he and the second officer soon became firm friends.

      At the south-east point of the island of Upelu, there is a town named Lepâ, and for this place the boat was now steering. The principal chief of the district was a blood relation of Cheyne’s mother, and he (Cheyne) knew that every hospitality would be given to himself and Frewen for as long a time as they chose to remain at Lepâ.

      “After we have seen Mana’lio” (the chief) “we shall consider what we shall do,” said the boatsteerer to Frewen. “I expect he will not like letting us leave him, but will be satisfied when he knows that you and I want to go to my sister’s place. These big Samoan chiefe are very touchy in some things.”

      On the afternoon of the third day out, the land was sighted, and just as the evening fires were beginning to gleam from the houses embowered in the palm-groves of Lepâ, the boat grounded on the white hard beach, and in a few minutes the village was in a pleasurable uproar, as the white men were almost carried up to the chief’s house by the excited natives, who at once recognised the stalwart Cheyne.

      Mana’lio made his relative and Frewen most welcome, and treated them as very honoured guests, whilst the rest of the boat’s crew were taken possession of by the sub-chiefs and the people of the town generally, carried off to the fale taupule or “town hall,” and invited to a hurriedly prepared but ample repast.

      On the following morning, Frewen called the whole of his boat’s crew together, and told them it would be best for them to separate. “Each of you four men say you don’t want to go to sea again—not for a long time at any rate. Well, Mana’lio, the chief here, СКАЧАТЬ