The Ebbing Of The Tide - George Lewis Becke (best books to read ever txt) 📗

the rail with the fateful bag and hand it to the supercargo.

"Be the powers, ye're in a mighty hurry for the money," said Lannigan, roughly, taking it from him, "ye might ax me if I had a mouth on me first."

The supercargo laughed and put a bottle of gin on the table, and Lannigan's fertile brain commenced to work. If he could only get the supercargo out of the cabin for a minute he meant to pick up the bag, and declaring he was insulted get it back into his boat and tell him to come and count it ashore. Then he could get capsized on the reef and lose it. They were always having "barneys," and it would only be looked upon as one of his usual freaks.

*****


"What the deuce is that?" he said, pointing to a hideous, highly-coloured paper mask that hung up in the cabin.

The supercargo handed it to him. "It's for a man in Samoa--a silly, joking body, always playing pranks wi' the natives, and I thoct he would like the thing."

"Bedad, 'tis enough to scare the sowl out av the divil," said Lannigan.

Just then a mob of natives came aft, and the two men in the cabin heard the captain tell them to clear out again. They were saucy and wouldn't go. Hekemanu had told them of the failure of Lannigan's dodge, and they had an idea that the ship would take him away, and stood by to rescue him at the word of command.

"I'll verra soon hunt them," said the supercargo, with a proud smile, and he put the mask on his face. Tariro made a bolt on deck and called out to the natives that the supercargo was going to frighten them with a mask.

*****


Instead of wild yells of fear and jumping overboard, as he imagined would happen, the natives merely laughed, but edged away for'ard.

The schooner was in quite close to the reef; the water was very deep, and there was no danger of striking. She was under jib and mainsail only, but the breeze was fresh and she was travelling at a great rate. The wind being right off the land the skipper was hugging the reef as closely as possible, so as to bring up and anchor on a five-fathom patch about a mile away.

"Here, quit that fooling," he called out to the supercargo, "and come aft, you fellows! The ship is that much down by the head she won't pay off, with the helm hard up."

One look at the crowd of natives and another at the shore, and a wild idea came into Lannigan's head. He whispered to Tariro, who went up for'ard and said something to the natives. In another ten seconds some of them began to clamber out on the jib-boom, the rest after them.

"Come back!" yelled the skipper, jamming the helm hard up, as the schooner flew up into the wind. "Leggo peak halyards. By G--d! we are running ashore. Leggo throat halyards, too!"

The mate flew to the halyards, and let go first the peak and then the throat halyards, but it was too late, and, with a swarm of natives packed together for'ard from the galley to the end of the jib-boom, she stuck her nose down, and, with stern high out of the water, like a duck chasing flies, she crashed into the reef--ran ashore dead to windward.

*****


No one was drowned. The natives took good care of the captain, mate, and supercargo, and helped them to save all they could. But Lannigan had a heavy loss--the bag of copper bolts had gone to the bottom.



THE COOK OF THE "SPREETOO SANTOO"--A STUDY IN BEACHCOMBERS

We were in Kitti Harbour, at Ponape, in the Carolines, when, at breakfast, a bleary-eyed, undersized, more-or-less-white man in a dirty pink shirt and dungaree pants, came below, and, slinging his filthy old hat over to the transoms, shoved himself into a seat between the mate and Jim Garstang, the trader.

"Mornin', captin," said he, without looking at the skipper, and helping himself to about two pounds of curry.

"Morning to you. Who the deuce are you, anyway? Are you the old bummer they call 'Espiritu Santo'?" said Garstang.

"That's me. I'm the man. But I ain't no bummer, don't you b'lieve it. I wos tradin' round here in these (lurid) islands afore you coves knowed where Ponape was."

"Are you the skunk that Wardell kicked off the Shenandoah for stealing a bottle of wine?" said the mate.

"That's me. There was goin' ter be trouble over that on'y that the Shennydor got properly well sunk by the _Allybarmer_ (history wasn't his forte), and that ------ Wardell got d------d well drownded. Hingland haint a-goin' to let no Yankee insult nobody for nuthin'--an' I'm a blessed Englishman. I didn't steal the wine. Yer see, Wardell arst me off to dinner, and then we gets talkin' about polertics, an' I tells 'im 'e wos a lyin' pirut. Then he started foolin' around my woman, an' I up with a bottle of wine an'----"

"Why, you thundering liar," said Garstang, "you stole it out of the ward-room."

"I wouldn't call no man a liar if I was you, Mister--by G----, that Chinaman cook knows how to make curry."

He ate like a starving shark, and between mouthfuls kept up a running fire of lies and blasphemy. When he had eaten three platefuls of curry and drunk enough coffee to scald a pig, the skipper, who was gettin' tired of him, asked him if he had had enough.

Yes, he had had enough breakfast to last him a whole (Australian adjective) week.

"Then clear out on deck and swab the curry off your face, you beast!"

"That's always the way with you tradin' skippers. A stranger don't get no civility unless he comes aboard in a (red-painted) gig with a (crimson) umbrella and a (gory) 'elmet 'at, like a (vermilion) Consul."

The mate seized him, and, running him up the companion way, slung him out on deck.

*****


"What do you think of him?" asked the skipper, a man fond of a joke--it was Bully Hayes. "I thought I'd let you all make his acquaintance. He's been bumming around the Ladrones and Pelews since '50; used to be cook on a Manilla trading brig, the _Espiritu Santo_."

Then he told us how this wandering mass of blasphemy got his name of "Spreetoo Santoo." While in the brig he had been caught smuggling at Guam by the guarda costas, and had spent a year or two in the old prison fort at San Juan de 'Apra. (I don't know how he got out: perhaps his inherently alcoholic breath and lurid blasphemy made the old brick wall tumble down.)

After that he was always welcome in sailors' fo'c's'les by reason of his smuggling story, which would commence with--"When I was cook on the _Espiritu Santo_" (only he used the English instead of the Spanish name) "I got jugged by the gory gardy costers," &c, &c.

*****


When we came on deck he was sitting on the main-hatch with the Chinese carpenter--whose pipe he was smoking--and telling him that he ought to get rid of his native wife, who was a Gilbert Island girl, and buy a Ponape girl.

"I can git yer the pick o' the (crimson) island, an' it won't cost yer more'n a few (unprintable) dollars. I'm a (bad word) big man 'ere among the (adjective) natives."

Hung looked up at him stolidly with half-closed eyes. Then he took the pipe out of his mouth and said in a deadly cold voice--

"You palally liar, Spleetoo."

*****


He slouched aft again presently, and asked the mate, in an amiable tone of voice, if he had "any (ruddy) noospapers from Sydney."

"What the devil do _you_ want newspapers for?" inquired Hayes, turning round suddenly in his deck-chair, "you can't read, Spreetoo."

"Can't read, eh?" and his red-rimmed, lashless eyes simulated intense indignation. "Wot about that 'ere (red) bishop at Manilla, as wanted me to chuck up me (scarlet) billet on the _Spreetoo S antoo_ and travel through the (carnaged) Carryline Grewp as 's (sanguinary) sekketerry? 'Cos why? 'Cos there ain't any (blank) man atween 'ere an' 'ell as can talk the warious lingoes like me."

"Here," said the mate, giving him two or three old Maoriland newspapers--"here's some Auckland papers. Know anybody there?"

"No," he answered, promptly, "not a soul, but he knowed Sydney well. Larst time I wos there I sold old Bobby Towns L6,000 worth of oil--a bloomin' shipful. I got drunk, an' a (blank) policeman went through me in the cell and took the whole blessed lot outer me (scarlet) pocket." (Nine bad words omitted.)

"Bank notes?" queried Bully.

"No, sov'reigns--(gory) sov'reigns."

*****


He asked us if we had seen any men-o'-war about lately, and said that the captain of H.M.S. -------- had wanted to marry his daughter, but he wouldn't let her marry no man-o'-war cove after the way that ------ Wardell had treated him. He thought he would go back to Sydney again for a spell. His brother had a flaming fine billet there.

The Cook of the "Spreetoo Santoo" 243

"What is he?" asked Hayes.

"'E's a (blessed) Soopreme Court Judge, wears a (gory) wig big enough to make chafin' gear for a (crimson) fleet o' ships; 'e lives at Guvment 'Ouse, and Vs rollin' in money an' drinks like a (carmine) fish. I thought I might see somethin' about the ------ in a (blank) Sydney noospaper. I'll come in for all his (ensanguined) money when 'e dies."

Bully gave him a bottle of gin after a while. Then he hurriedly bade us farewell and went ashore.



LUPTON'S GUEST: A MEMORY OF THE EASTERN PACIFIC

A long sweeping curve of coast, fringed with tall plumed palms casting wavering shadows on the yellow sand as they sway and swish softly to the breath of the brave trade-wind that whistles through the thickly-verdured hummocks on the weather side of the island, to die away into a soft breath as, after passing through the belt of cocoanuts, it faintly ripples the transparent depths of the lagoon--a broad sheet of blue and silver stretching away from the far distant western line of reef to the smooth, yellow beach at the foot of the palms on the easternmost islet. And here, beneath their lofty crowns, are the brown thatched huts of the people and the home of Lupton the trader.

*****


This is Mururea. And, if it be possible, Mururea surpasses in beauty any other of the "cloud of islands" which, lying on the blue bosom of the Eastern Pacific like the islands of a dream, are called by their people the Paumotu. And these people--it is not of very long ago I speak--are a people unto themselves. Shy and suspicious of strangers, white or brown, and endued with that quick instinct of fear which impels untutored minds to slay, and which we, in our civilised ignorance, call savage treachery, they are yet kind-hearted and hospitable to those who learn their ways and regard their customs. A tall, light-skinned, muscular people, the men with long, straight, black hair, coiled up in a knot at the back, and the women--the descendants of those who sailed with broken Fletcher Christian and his comrades of the _Bounty_ in quest of a place where to die--soft-voiced, and with big, timorous eyes.

*****


'Twas here that Ben