"Old Mary" - George Lewis Becke (best way to read ebooks TXT) 📗

born here. When Robert returned in the _Taunton_ he brought with him a cargo of European stores and comforts for our new home, and in a few months we were fairly settled down. From the first American whaleships that visited us he bought two fine whaleboats and all the necessary gear, and then later on engaged one of the best whalemen in the South Seas to superintend the business. In the first season we killed no less than six sperm whales, and could have taken more, but were short of barrels. The whaling station was at the end of the south point of the harbour, and when a whale was towed in to be cut in and tried out the place presented a scene of great activity and bustle, for we had quite two hundred natives to help. Alas, there is scarcely a trace of it left now! The great iron try-pots, built up in furnaces of coral lime, were overgrown by the green jungle thirty years ago, and it would be difficult even to find them now.

"The natives, as I have said, were very wild, savage, and warlike; but as time went on their friendship for my husband and myself and children deepened, and so when Robert made a voyage to Port Jackson or to any of the surrounding islands I never felt in the least alarmed. I must tell you that we--my husband and myself--were actually the first white people that had landed to live on the island since the time of the _Bounty_ mutiny, when Fletcher Christian and his fellow mutineers tried to settle here. They brought the _Bounty_ in, and anchored her just where your own schooner is now lying--opposite Randle's house. But the natives attacked Christian and his men so fiercely, and so repeatedly, though with terrible loss to themselves, that at last Christian and Edward Young abandoned the attempt to found a settlement, and the _Bounty_ went back to Tahiti, and finally to Afita, as the people here call Pitcairn Islands.

"Four years passed by. My husband was making money fast, not only as a trader among the Paumotus and the Society Islands, where he had two small vessels constantly employed, but from his whale fishery. Then came a time of sorrow and misfortune. A South Seaman, named the _Stirling Castle_, touched here for provisions, and introduced small-pox, and every one of my poor children contracted the disease and died; many hundreds of the natives perished as well. My husband at this time was away in one of his vessels at Fakarava Lagoon in the Paumotu Group, and I spent a very lonely and unhappy seven months before he returned. Almost every morning, accompanied by one or two of my native women servants, I would ascend that rugged peak about two miles from here, from where we had a complete view of the horizon all round the island, and watch for a sail. Twice my heart gladdened, only to be disappointed again, for the ships on both occasions were Nantucket whalers. And then, as the months went by, I began to imagine that something dreadful had happened to my husband and his ship among the wild people of the Paumotus, for when he sailed he did not expect to be away more than three months.

"At last, however, when I was quite worn out and ill with anxiety, he returned. I was asleep when he arrived, for it was late at night, and his vessel had not entered the harbour, though he had come ashore in a boat. He awakened me very gently, and then, before I could speak to him and tell him of our loss, he said--

"'Don't tell me, Molly. I have heard it all just now. But, there, I'm home again, dear; and I shall never stay away so long again, now that our children have been taken and you and I are alone.'

"After another year had passed, and when I was well and strong again, the whaleship _Chalice_ of Sag Harbour, Captain Freeman, touched here, and the master came on shore. He was an old acquaintance of my husband's, and told us that he had come ashore purposely to warn us of a piratical vessel which had made her appearance in these seas a few months before, and had seized two or three English and American ships, and murdered every living soul of their crews. She hailed from Coquimbo, and her captain was said to be a Frenchman, whilst her crew was composed of the worst ruffians to be found on the coast of South America--men whose presence on shore would not be tolerated even by the authorities at any of the Spanish settlements from Panama to Valdivia. Sailing under French colours, and professing to be a privateer, she had actually attacked a French merchant brig within fifty miles of Coquimbo Roads, the captain and the crew of which were slaughtered and the vessel plundered and then burnt. Since then she had been seen by several vessels in the Paumoto archipelago, where her crew had been guilty of the most fearful crimes, perpetrated on the natives.

"My husband thanked Freeman for his information; but said that if the pirate vessel came into Tubuai Lagoon she would never get out again, except under British colours. This was no idle boast, for not only were my husband's two vessels--which were then both at anchor in the lagoon--well armed, but they were manned by English or English-blooded half-caste seamen, who would have only been too delighted to fight a Frenchman, or a Spaniard, or a Dutchman.

"Ah, 'tis so long ago, but what brave, rough fellows they were! Some of them, we well knew, had been transported as convicts, and were, when opportunity offered, drunken and dissolute, but to my husband and myself they were good and loyal men. Two of them had seen Trafalgar day in the _Royal Sovereign_ under Collingwood when that ship had closed with the _Santa Anna_ and made her strike. Their names--as given to us--were James Watts and Thomas Godwin. After the fleet returned to England they got into mischief, and were transported for being concerned in a smuggling transaction at Deal, in Kent, in which a preventive officer was either killed or seriously wounded--I forget which. Their exemplary conduct, however, had gained them a remission of their sentences, and the Governor of New South Wales, who was most anxious to open up the South Sea Island trade, had recommended them to my husband as good men, Godwin having been brought up to the boatbuilding trade at Lowestoft in England, and Watts as a gunsmith.

"About ten days after the visit of the _Chalice_ my husband left in one of his vessels for Vavitao--only a day's sail from here. He wanted me to go with him, but I was too much interested in a large box of English seeds, and some young fruit trees which the Governor of New South Wales had sent to us, and so I said I would stay and watch our garden, in which I took a great pride. He laughed and said that I must not forget to look out for 'Freeman's pirate' as well as for my garden. He never for one moment imagined that the French vessel would turn up at Tubuai.

"He took with him Thomas Godwin and William Myson, leaving Watts, who was master of the other vessel, with me, to attend to the whaling.

"A week after he had sailed I set out to walk to the north end of the island, where my children were buried. I had with me an active native boy named Tati--who was carrying some plants and seeds which I intended planting on and about the children's graves--and two young women. We started early in the morning, for I intended staying at the north end till late in the afternoon, whilst the two girls went crayfishing on the reef.

"About noon I had finished my labours, and then, as it was a beautifully bright day, I climbed a hill near by, called 'The White Man's Lookout,' which commanded a clear view of the sea all round the island. It had been given this name by the natives, who said that Fletcher Christian and his fellow-mutineer, Edward Young, had often ascended the hill and gazed out upon the ocean, for they were fearful that at any moment a King's ship might appear in pursuit of their comrades and themselves.

"I was again feeling somewhat anxious on account of my husband. He should have returned a week before, for there had been no bad weather, and I knew that his business at Vavitao should have kept him there only a day at the most. But the moment I gained the summit of the hill my heart leapt with joy, for there were two vessels in sight, one of which I at once recognised as my husband's. They were about a mile distant, and were running before the wind for the harbour. The strange vessel, which was a brigantine, was following close astern of our own schooner--evidently, I thought, my husband is showing her the way into the lagoon.

"Just as I was preparing to descend the hill my little companion, the native boy, Tati, drew my attention to four canoes which, in company with a boat from Captain Watts' schooner, were approaching the vessels.

"'Ah,' I thought, 'Watts has seen the vessels from the whaling station, and is going out to meet them.'

"But presently something occurred which filled me with terror. When the boat and canoes were quite close to the vessels, they both luffed, and fired broadsides into them; the boat and two canoes were evidently destroyed, and the two remaining canoes at once turned round and headed for the shore, the brigantine firing at them with guns which I knew to be long twenty-fours by the sharp sound they made. In a moment I knew what had happened--my husband's ship had been captured by the French privateer of which Captain Freeman had told us, and the Frenchmen were now coming to seize our other selves lying anchored in the lagoon.

"Tati looked at me inquiringly.

"'Run,' I said, 'run and tell Uasi (for so the natives called Captain Watts) that the master and his ship have been captured by an enemy, who will be upon him very quickly, for the boat and two of the canoes he has sent out have been destroyed, and every one in them killed. Tell him I am coming.'

"The boy darted away in a moment, and I followed him as quickly as I could; but Tati reached the harbour and was on board Watts' schooner quite half an hour before me, and when I went on board I found the vessel was prepared to defend the entrance to the harbour. Captain Watts had swung her broadside on to the entrance, boarding nettings were already triced up from stem to stern, and on the schooner's decks were fifty determined natives, in addition to the usual crew of twenty men, all armed with muskets and cutlasses. The four 6-pounders which she carried, two on each side, were now all on the port side, loaded with grape-shot, and in fact every preparation had been made to fight the ship to the last. Watts met me as soon as I stepped on board, and told me that before my messenger Tati had arrived to warn him he had heard the sound of the firing at sea, and at once surmised that something was wrong.

"'Soon after you left the house, Mrs. Eury, some natives sighted the two vessels to the north-east and I sent the boatswain and four men off in one of the whale-boats, little thinking that I was sending them to their death. Four canoes went