Wednesday the Tenth, A Tale of the South Pacific. Allen Grant

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      Wednesday the Tenth, A Tale of the South Pacific

      CHAPTER I.

      WE SIGHT A BOAT

      On the eighteenth day out from Sydney, we were cruising under the lee of Erromanga – of course you know Erromanga, an isolated island between the New Hebrides and the Loyalty group – when suddenly our dusky Polynesian boy, Nassaline, who was at the masthead on the lookout, gave a surprised cry of "Boat ahoy!" and pointed with his skinny black finger to a dark dot away southward on the horizon, in the direction of Fiji.

      I strained my eyes and saw – well, a barrel or something. For myself, I should never have made out it was a boat at all, being somewhat slow of vision at great distances; but, bless your heart! these Kanaka lads have eyes like hawks for pouncing down upon a canoe or a sail no bigger than a speck afar off; so when Nassaline called out confidently, "Boat ahoy!" in his broken English, I took out my binocular, and focused it full on the spot towards which the skinny black finger pointed. Probably, thought I to myself, a party of natives, painted red, on the war-trail against their enemies in some neighboring island; or perhaps a "labor vessel," doing a veiled slave-trade in "indentured apprentices" for New Caledonia or the Queensland planters.

      To my great surprise, however, I found out, when I got my glasses fixed full upon it, it was neither of these, but an open English row-boat, apparently, making signs of distress, and alone in the midst of the wide Pacific.

      Now, mind you, one doesn't expect to find open English row-boats many miles from land, drifting about casually in those far-eastern waters. There's very little European shipping there of any sort, I can tell you; a man may sometimes sail for days together across that trackless sea without so much as speaking a single vessel, and the few he does come across are mostly engaged in what they euphoniously call "the labor-trade" – in plain English, kidnaping blacks or browns, who are induced to sign indentures for so many years' service (generally "three yams," that is to say, for three yam crops), and are then carried off by force or fraud to some other island, to be used as laborers in the cane-fields or cocoa-nut groves. So I rubbed my eyes when I saw an open boat, of European build, tossing about on the open, and sang out to the man at the wheel:

      "Hard a starboard, Tom! Put her head about for the dark spot to the sou'-by-southeast there!"

      "Starboard it is!" Tom Blake answered cheerily, setting the rudder about; and we headed straight for that mysterious little craft away off on the horizon.

      But there! I see I've got ahead of my story, to start with, as the way is always with us salt-water sailors. We seafaring men can never spin a yarn, turned straight off the reel all right from the beginning, like some of those book-making chaps can do. We have always to luff round again, and start anew on a fresh tack half a dozen times over, before we can get well under way for the port we're aiming at. So I shall have to go back myself to Sydney once more, to explain who we were, and how we happened to be cruising about on the loose that morning off Erromanga.

      My name, if I may venture to introduce myself formally, is Julian Braithwaite. I am the owner and commander of the steam-yacht Albatross, thirty-nine tons burden, as neat a little craft as any on the Pacific, though it's me that says it as oughtn't to say it; and I've spent the last five years of my life in cruising in and out among those beautiful archipelagos in search of health, which nature denies me in more northern latitudes. The oddest part of it is, though I'm what the doctors call consumptive in England – only fit to lie on a sofa and read good books – the moment I get clear away into the Tropics I'm a strong man again, prepared to fight any fellow of my own age and weight, and as fit for seamanship as the best Jack Tar in my whole equipment. The Albatross numbers eighteen in crew, all told; and as I am not a rich enough or selfish enough a man to keep up a vessel all for my own amusement, my brother Jim and I combine business and pleasure by doing a mixed trade in copra or dried cocoa-nut with the natives from time to time, or by running across between Sydney and San Francisco with a light cargo of goods for the Australian market.

      Our habit was therefore to cruise in and out among the islands, with no very definite aim except that of picking up a stray trade whenever we could make one, and keeping as much within sight of land, for the sake of company, as circumstances permitted us. And that is just why, though bound for Fiji, we had gone so far out of our way that particular voyage as to be under the lee of Erromanga.

      As for our black Polynesian boy, Nassaline, to tell you the truth, I am proud of that lad, for he's a trophy of war; we got him at the point of the sword off a slaver. She was a fast French sloop, "recruiting" for New Caledonia, as they call it, on one of the New Hebrides, when the Albatross happened to come to anchor, by good luck or good management, in the same harbor. From the moment we arrived I had my eye on that smart French sloop, for I more than half suspected the means she was employing to beat up recruits. Early next morning, as I lay in my bunk, I heard a fearful row going on in boats not far from our moorings; and when I rushed up on deck, half-dressed, to find out what the noise was about, blessed if I didn't see whole gangs of angry natives in canoes, naked of course as the day they were born, or only dressed, like the Ancient Britons, in a neat coat of paint, pursuing the French sloop's jolly-boat, which was being rowed at high pressure by all its crew toward its own vessel. "Great guns!" said I, "what's up?" So, looking closer, I could make out four strapping young black boys lying manacled in the bottom, kicking and screaming as hard as their legs and throats could go, while the Frenchmen rowed away for dear life, and the Kanakas in the canoes paddled wildly after them, taking cock-shots at them with very bad aim from time to time with arrows and fire-arms. Such a splutter and noise you never heard in all your life. Ducks fighting in a pond were a mere circumstance to it.

      "Tom Blake!" I sang out, "is the gig afloat there?"

      "Aye, aye, sir," says Tom, jumping up. "She's ready at the starn. Shall we off and at 'em?"

      "Right you are, Tom!" says I; "all hands to the gig here!"

      Well, in less than three minutes I'd got that boat under way, and was rowing ahead between the Frenchmen and their sloop, with our Remingtons ready, and everything in order for a good stand-up fight of it.

      When the Frenchmen saw we meant to intercept them, and found themselves cut off between the savages on one side and an English crew well-armed with rifles of precision on the other, they thought it was about time to open negotiations with the opposing party. So the skipper stopped, as airy as a gentleman walking down the Boulevards, and called out to me in French, "What do you want ahoy, there?"

      "Ahoy there yourself," says I, in my very best Ollandorff. "We want to know what you're doing with those youngsters?"

      "Oh! it's that, is it?" says the Frenchman, as cool as a cucumber, coming nearer a bit, and talking as though we'd merely stopped him with polite inquiries about the time of day or the price of spring chickens; while the savages, seeing from our manner we were friendly to their side, left off firing for a while for fear of hitting us. "Why, these are apprentices of ours – indentured apprentices. We've bought them from their parents by honest trade – paid for 'em with Sniders, ammunition, calico and tobacco; and if you want to see our papers and theirs, Monsieur, here they are, look you, all perfectly en règle," and he held up the bundle for us to inspect in full – with a telescope, I suppose – at a hundred yards' distance.

      "Row nearer, boys," I said, "and we'll talk a bit with this polite gentleman. He seems to have views of his own, I fancy, about the proper method of engaging servants."

      But when we tried to row up the Frenchman stopped and called out at the top of his voice, in a very different tone, all bustle and bluster, "Look out ahead there! If you come a yard closer we open fire. We want no interference from any of you Methodistical missionary fellows."

      "We ain't missionaries," I answered quietly, cocking my revolver СКАЧАТЬ