PIRATES AND CANNIBALS

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 151, 30 June 1928, Page 21

PIRATES AND CANNIBALS

"Cannibal Nights." By Captain H. E. Eaabe. London: Geoffrey Bles. fifty years ago sailing ships were numerous and good sailors hard to get. Ship masters in those days often had trouble to obtain a crew, but as long as a man was a good sailor and ablebodied there1 were no questions asked and no papers inspected. Hence it was in 1874 that H. E. Eaabe, then a youngster of 16 or so, having managed to stow away on a Yankee clipper bound for Australia, was accepted as one of the crow. In Sydney, however, he was shanghaied, awaking to find himself on board the Nova Scotia barque Emma P. bound/for the Islands. The barque was a "prospecting trader" or, less politely, a privateer; "no wages wore paid on a prospecting trader; everybody worked on a percentage basis. It took a genius in tho art of bookkeeping to figure, out what was due to every man, and woe betide the unscrupulous supercargo who tried to cheat—he simply disappeared. No Courts were resorted to; we recognised no laws. On the high seas we flew our own flag and scoffed at all others." Under such conditions Captain Eaabe naturalJy had many adventures amongst the Solomon Islands and elsewhere in the Pacific: orgies of rum drinking, hurricanes, fights with natives, cannibal feasts, and murders for the sake of pearls were all in the day's work and provide the material for a book of recollections appropriately dedicated to Jack London. "Only a few men," writes tho author, "can think back to the South Seas as they were in tho '70's, when many ships entering those mysterious waters disappeared without a trace; when cannibalism and piracy were rampant, and only tho freelance roving traders dared to venture forth into those obscure regions to barter with the treacherous natives and to face the perils of uncharted coral reefs, savagery, and starvation. Few of those early traders are alive now, for the South Seas demanded a heavy toll." t After reading "Cannibal Nights" there are not many who will want to see the return of tile "good old days": the Southern Seas as they now are seem decidedly preferable to what they were 50 or 60 years ago, but that does not mean that "Cannibal Nights" is not worth reading.