SOUTH SEA REMINISCENCES.

Auckland Star, Volume XL, Issue 193, 14 August 1909, Page 15

SOUTH SEA REMINISCENCES.

A YARN BY MOONLIGHT By LOUIS BECKE (Specially written for the "Star") PART 1 Many years ago, when I was earning a comparatively honest living in New Britain, trading" for the famous Emma Coe mow .Mrs Kolbe of Ralum) 1 contracted fever and elephantiasis and tinea dcBquamans —otherwise known as "scaly 6 kin" —and various other diseases incidental to the trader's lot in the South Seas, and decided to leave the country antl niake back for the Caroline or Marshall groups where a man could sleep decently without being disturbed by the point of a spear tickling his liver. .My predecessor ion the station (which was in Kabaira Bay end the "furthest west." on New Britain) was the Hon. G. S. Littleton—a nephew of the late Lord Lytton—and had been speared as lie lay reading in his cane ■lounge one night. A native who had a grievance against him crept up to the •house and carefully getting the point oi his slender .spear over the sill of the open window he drove it clean through Littleton's body and the cane lounge as well and pinned his to the earthen floor. Then he went away, feeling that he had had his utu and had done the proper tiling, for Littleton had not acted squarely with him over a certain'-fnat-ter which 1 may here relate, as briefly as possible. Littleton's native cook ran away from him for some cause, and Little ton being a short-tempered man sent this particular native in pursuit of him with instructions to bring the man back, or, if he refused to come, to shoot him. And he gave the emissary a rifle and cartridges. The cook, being an obstinate person —perhaps he was a member oi the New Britain Cannibal Cooks' Union and was under their thumb —refused lo return, and so Littleton's agent promptly shot him and went back to the white man for payment for the job which had been fixed at a ilask of powder and twenty sticks of tobacco. Much to his Indignation Littleton repudiated the matter, refused to pay him, and also kicked him. Now, as the old time Maoris would say, this was not at all "correct" and deserving of the greatest censure. The man had carried out his engagement and the white man had bilked him. Some months later H.M.S. "Beagle" came into Kabaira Bay and the murderer was arrested and taken to Fiji for trial. There being no witnesses against him he was acquitted, and the missionaries made a tin god of him, pumped the blessed truths of Christianity into his black-red-mud coloured carcase and sent him back to Kabaira Bay in the mission ship, with a box of clotliing and a bos of trade and a Fijian Bible weighing, so my neighbour Charlie Cook said, ten pounds. Charlie gave him two sticks ol tobacco for it, as the paper on which it was printed was thin and tough and made excellent cartridge paper and wadding.

Now this brand whom the pious missionaries had plucked from the burning became a great nuisance. Discarding the beautiful store clothes given to him by the holy man, he 6talked about stark naked from village to village with a bunch of spears in one hand and a club in the other, boasting that he would kill another white man and then go back to Fiji and get more clothes and trade. But one day he was found dead in the bush with a bullet-hole through his dirty head of countless greasy curls. I don't know who did it. It wasn't mc for I was laid up with fever. But the ways of Providence are most mysterious.

Charlie Cook, who used to keep an alleged hotel in Apia in the bright old days, said that my ailments were my own fault, and that if I had drunk a quart bottle of JDIvZ every day the fever wouldn't have looked at mc; lie was a great believer in "square-face," and was firmly of the opinion that it would cure anything, from lock-jaw to curvature of the spine. On the other hand Proctoi, the wooden-legge.d recruiter of the German labour schooner "Nuiafou," said that I was living in too lonely a spot and was brooding over the fact that in addition to Littleton there were buried inside the station fence tlie bodies of a Captain Murray of the "Loelia" cutter and two of his crew who had all been clubbed by the natives in a quarrel over a few measly bags of copra. And the wooden-legged man —who had a kind heart—sent mc a demijohn of old Bourbon whisky, he. advised mc to "buck up" and clear out.

I did clear out and went to Emma Coe's head sUition at Mioko (Duke of York's Islands) where she was running a big trading business in conjunction ■with Tom Farrell of Auckland. They treated mc very well and although neither of them were by any means unkind or stingy people I could see that Farrell was anxious fur mc to either get better or go away, as he was building a new copra house with Puget .Sound redwood planking and had only the exact number of planks, and if 1 died he would have to go four short.

I disliked the idea of dying on Mioko Island, for Jots of white people there were dying day by day and the crude and inartistic manner in which they were buried would have made any self-respect-ing corpse fidget. These people were the remnants of the Marquis do Ray's illfated "Xeuvillc Franco" expedition to 2s T ew Ireland and had been brought from there by Tom Farrel in their steamer the Genii and a cumbersome old barque of 1800 tons—the ".Marquis de Ray." This part of the expedition consisted of French people and Tom was making a very good thing out of it as he had possession of both steamer and barque and both had some thousands of pounds' worth of stores on board, which Farrell quite justly annexed in return for the protection he afforded them and his duties as supervising undertaker. Tom was a great man and ought to have been a Bishop, and Emma toe would have made a great general, for .she was one of the pluckiest women that ever lived and ■fifteen years before when she was living in Samoa about thirty-seven men wanted to marry her, but she would "ha" none of them." Heaven bless her for the way she fed mc and other fever-racked traders in New Britain; she was the soul of hospitality. Now 1 am getting away from my subject—l don't exactly know what it is. but I have a lot of things to write about and they all come •tumbling over one another in such a rush that 1 am getting confused and slinging punctuation to the winds. I did intend to tell a story about an old loafer 1 met at Jaluit and the lies lie told mc about Bully Hayes, Ben lVcse, the Yankee missionaries and myself. Onl}- a few days ago I met a Captain Mc at the Devonport Ferry and we began to exchange reminiscences when a rude fellow took us up the street but that has nothing to do with my story and I am in a great hurry.

Bidding good-bye to the genial hostess of Mioko aud Tom Farrell, who gave mc a kindly farewell grunt for not dying on the premises, I crossed over to HernBheim's station at Matupi ie New Bri-

tain. The Hernsheim brothers were known as "Black" Hernsheim and "White" Hernsheim. The former was a fine handsome man, formerly a sea captain, and was as dark as a Calabrian peasant, but a "whiter" man never stepped. His brother was a remarkably fair complexioned man and that is all I know about him for I never saw him.

The llernsheim linn offered mc a trader's berth in the Marshall Group, and next day 1 went on board a fine new German barque, the "Louisa" of Elsfleth, Captain Kuhn, bound for Jaluit. As we were heaving up, 11.M.5. 'Beagle came into Blanche Bay, to punish some natives for having eaten a Samoan missionary. She was a clumsy little tub of a fore and aft schooner, (no steam) and carried a crew of twenty-five men, one heavy gun, a rocket tube and a consequential captain who would always take the word of an unctuous, smug native teacher before that of a respectable trader. The "Beagle" was one of five similar but staunch tubs built by old John Cuthbert of Sydney for the supervision of the labour trade. They were all fore and aft rigged and could do about five knots an hour under favourable circumstances and with ail canvas spread. Bob Randolph of Apain. in the Gilbert Group, who once piloted one of these unique specimens of naval constructure through the group greatly hurt the commander's feelings by saying that the fleet should be designated as the "ffour-and-a-hafters" inasmuch as that appeared to be their limit of speed. But Randolph—or Randall as he was more generally known —was au extremely rude man and didn't care a hang what he said and when Capt. Pugb of the "four-and-a-hufter" "Reynard" came to Apain to arrest the native murderer of old Jack Keys the trader. Randolph lent him (Pugh) a nine pounder cannonade from which the man was blown to smithereens in front of Bob's house as a shocking example. Next morning Bob went on board tlie "Reynard for breakfast and the commander asked him if the natives had "interred the remains." "No," said Bob, "there were none to inter except a chunk of about 4 lbs which my fox terrier brought into my house last night. And I ain't allowed him to eat meat since he was a pup. So I gave him a licking." The skipper of the "Louisa was a young man of five and twenty and a fine seaman but too fond of carrying on too much canvas through his desire to make a quick passage, and this bete noir (to his crew) soon began to trouble him again after a week's calm off the Sir Charles Hardy Group, at tho S. end of New Ireland. The wind came away from the westward, then shifted half round the compass with continuous rain squalls, but he kept every stitch of canvas set and every now and then would come the cry, "All aback for'ard," and the yards were boxed about till the crew were almost exhausted with their continuous labours, for most of them had fever. After each rain squall tho wind would die away, and then come from some unexpected quarter with a bang, blow for a quarter of an hour and then drop as dead as a stale pancake. The barque was overmasted, and the mate, knowing this, remonstrated with the skipper, who resented it, and told him to mind his own business, which was tc obey orders, and attend to his own end of the ship.

At ten o'clock I turned in and was : soon asleep. The barque was then eloie-hauled with nearly all sail set, thrashing along under a stiff squall over a smooth sea, hugging the long and lofty coastline of New Ireland so closely that one would imagine the skipper ! wanted to wear off the paint and polish the port side of the ship against the rocks. I was just going off into my usual nightmare superinduced by eating liver sausage at supper, when I was awakened by a very peculiar sensation —the ship seemed to come to a sudden stop and began to make peculiar noises like a cow choking with a bono in ber throat, and then heeled over to port. Then came the crashing of spars and hoarse cries from the dock. Jumping out of my bunk, I landed with both feet on tho skipper's Newfoundland dog which was sleeping in my cabin, and the poor bea.sfc promptly buried bis teeth in the calf of my eleobanbinsed left leg. Hushing on deck T found that the barque was making a stern board and on the port side there was a hissing, seething wall of water coming up as high as the rail. My hair stood on end as stiff as priming iron with fright, and then suddenly some of the head stays parted and the fore nnd main top gallant masts and yards rame tumbling down on deck, mixing themselves Uip with the wreck of the fore royal mast aud yard. and almost at the same moment the roaring squall shut un with a snap, and the "Loui=a" righted herself and stood up tremblin?ly. like a ben on a hot griddle. Such a holy mei=s up of a good shin T bail never before experienced, though T had beard of such instances. Th P German sailors;, who were as fine a lot of men as one could wish to see, went about the work of cleaning away the wreckage sick as tlicv were nnd their hoarse cries as they bowled out the curious names of some of the sails interested mc greatly and made mc forget my bleeding leg. Suddenly there came a cry of "Fire!"

One of the foremast spars had landed, end on, on top of tho galley, the fire in which was alight, smashed through, nnd-"busted up" the stove, igniting the cook's tin of kerosene oil. I wan at once irresistibly reminded of a yarn that Ben Hird, Henderson and Macfarlane's supercargo, told mc about the schooner •Saucy Jack whose ear-ringed Greek steward bad tried to murder him, and had been put in irons in the fore-peak. The Creek, being a most unconscionable person, with no "correct" ideas, then set fire to tlie schooner, and was supposed to have jumped overboard in his irons; this was quite "correct" of him and thoroughly a la Maori. But some of the crew maintained that he did not commit such a dutiful act, and in proof thereof—when the fire was put out—■ brought Ben Hird and the skipper some incinerated bones they had found in the fore-peak. The boatswain, however, said that they were the bones of one of the ship's pigs which, in some unaccountable way. had sought refuge down the fore scuttle. Anyway it doesn't matter and I am in a hurry to get to the yarn about the old loafer at Jaluit, and the awful lies he told mc and Lesemann, the skipper of tlie Franiziska, and M.-.a'maa, when we were fishing off the jetty one moonlight night.

Now, in conclusion, about the "Louisa" and her "ratty" skipper. 'When I saw that 1 was not going down to an untimely grave, I became quite self-pos-sessed and turned in again, although the captain urged mc to lend a band in clearing away the wreckage. I pointed out to him thnt not only was it the dawn of a Sabbath dny, and that I. being a passenger, need not desecrate it. bivt also that his dng bad nearly severed the calf of my lee, nnd I called upon him to give mc some arnica. He flung his keys at mc nnd told mc to go to the medicine chest and help myself. I did so, and then got a bottle of kunnnel

from the steward and went to my cabin. The dog came in whilst I was dressing my leg and I cheerfully let him lick the arnica-soaked bandage. He at once began to claw his lips and then fled on deck with a weird howl. (To be concluded.)