CHAPTER XXII

Otago Witness, Issue 2862, 20 January 1909, Page 79

CHAPTER XXII

Black Pedro Diuz and I we're sitting undsr the thade of a great maso'i tree that greAv on the summit of a lofty spur oi the range of mountains that traver&es the beautiful island of Upolu in Samoa (the Navigators' Inlands). Below us the placid, deep blue water of Fagalca Bay encompassed a beach of snoAr-white sand, end fringed with graceful coco palms, whose long fron-ds drooped motionless ; for it aa au tow aids sunset, and the trade Avind had died aAvay. Now and then we could hear the murmur of voices ascending from the native village, three hundred feet beneath us, and could see a party of Avomen and children bathing in the crystal waters of a mountain stream that debouched between the village and the fouthern headland of the bay. Anchored within a stone's throve of the beach was a small, white-painted cutter of twenty-five tons, with a boat lying along&ide. "Give a hail, Pedro, and let us get down." I taid. '"We have had a grand day's shooting, and I am staTA'ing." Pedro gaA'e a loud hail, and in an instant three men appeared on the deck of the little vessel.. Tavo got into the boat

'and pulled to shcss, Ssfards a house on the beach which si&id apart from the ,' native village. Ts*eu my companion and JI, taking up our guns and heavy load of pigeons, descended the narrow path that wound from the summit of the spur down to the bay. That little cutter was ours, and so also ■was the house, ■« liich was our trading station. The name of the village was Salimu, and of the many lovely spots in fair Samoa there is none lovelier than the deep, mountain-encompa££ed bay of Fagaloa. Now let me tell how it was that the fourth mate of the Pocahontas and I came to be in Samoa, for two years had passed since I said good-bye to Warrington and , his band of treasure-hunters on Cocos Island. For a month or co we had cruised to the southward of Cocos, and having taken four more whales, Captain Guest steered for the inlands of the Phcenix Group, situated ! about three degrees south of the Equator, where for the following ten weeks we did very well, killing fourteen more whales, among which were two enormous ; bull cachalots. j During all this time I tried hard to , learn all the navigation and seamanship 1 I could, and the days passed so pleasantly 1 that I began to look upon the ship as ' my home, and was quite satisfied when one I day Captain Guest said to be with a ' smile : I "Well, Mi Blake, we are having real j good luck, and when we shall see Samoa or Tahiti -I really can't tell. So you'll have to put up with it." "I don't mind, captain, if we don't i ccc either place within the next six I months." I had on several occasions, much to my delight, taken the place of the lad Larry in the 'fourth mate's boat, the injury to j his foot having quite crippled him, owing to his carele-ssners, till at last it became ! so bad that he could not get about without a crutch. The captain did all he could, but no benefit resulted, and he was really glad when one day Are spoke a homewardbound whaler, the St. George, of New London, the skipper of which offered to give Larry a passage home. The St. George was a "full" ship, and in addition to her valuable cargo of oil she had ion board a lump of ambergris weighing i 301b, which had been picked up on the i beach of one of the Marianne Islands. I ] looked at it with great curiosity, having i heard so much about the substance. The j captain told me it was worth lOdol per | ounce in its crude state, but hen cleaned }of the cuttle fishes' beaks with which it j was permeated, and properly refined, it | would bring 25d0l per ounce. Ambergris, !eo experienced whalemen isay, is really ! the result of constipation of the bowels j of the &perm whale, for it has been found in the anal canal of the great creatures, but more often it is picked up at sea, floating on the surface," or found on the beach, where it has been washed on shore. The cachalot (sperm whale) ii> the member of the cetacean family that is able to attack and devour the giant octopus — 'that hideous and dread terror of the deep — for his mighty lower jaw, with its mon*strous teeth, can crush a whaLeboat into matchwood and make short work even of an octopus. All of this monster's huge ; body and tentacles the cachalot can digest, j except the parrot -like beak, which is as hard as glass, and although he crushes and splinters it, the fragments remain in his stomach as would pieces of broken marble in the utomach of an animal. During the time we were cruising among the Phoenix Islands we had the company of two colonial Avhalers — the Fanny Fisher and the Onward, — both of Hobart Town, Tasmania ; and one calm day the boats' crbv.s of all three ships exchanged visits Ito "gain" (gossip) with each other. I j boarded both the colonial ship.-, which j fctuzck me a-, being dirty and ill-found, ' ai.d presented a marked contrast to the l neatiitts. and cleanliness of the Pocahontas. I The master of the Onward, who was an j American, paid us a visit, and told us that a fe« montho before, whilst cruising among ,' the Solomon Islands, he put into a bay for vood tmd water on an island which appeared to bo uninhabited. He was just about to anchor when five very large 1 canoes, crowded with armed savages, sudI denly appeared and made r dash for the I ship. Two of the canoes succeeded m getting alongside, and a number of the natives tried to board, but were beaten off by the crew, who used whale spades, lances, and hatchets. Fortunately there was a good breeze, and tlie ship was able to wear and escape ; but had she anchored I efore the canoes attacked she would certainly have been out off. After trying out the fourteenth whale | killed in the Phoenix Group, we did not see a sign of another for nearly a month, ■whea we sighted a small "pod" off the inland of Atafu, one of the Tokelau or Union Group, but before the boats could get up to thorn they became "gallied" (frightened) and made off to windward at such a rate thai Captain Guest signalled to the boats to give up the chase. The whales had gone round the east side of Atafu Islnnd, which is* very low ard densely covered with coco palms, as are nearly all the Equatorial Pacific atolls, and when the boats returned Mr Walker reported that he had . c eer> a small dismasted vessel of about 20 to 30 tons drifting about poms four mile* from the eastern iliore of the islands. So far as he could see there was no one on board, and finding that there was no chance of overtaking the whales he was about to pull up to and examine her when he saw the ship's recall signal. "Well, we'll go and have at look at her. Mr Walker. If she is four miles off land she won't liav-s time to pile herself up on the rpef before we get round to the east side." There was a fair hieoze. and within an hour, as we rounded the northern end of the island, we caught sight of the derelict,

and at the 6ame time the lookout alofthailed the deck. "What is it?" shouted the mate. "I can see over the tops of the trees into the lagoon, sir. There is a village on the west side, and the natives havft launched four canoes, which are paddling across to the east side. I think they ar2 making for the dismasted vessel, sir." "Then we must get to her first," sai<§ Captain Guest to Mt Walker. "Finding/? are keepings, and maybe she is wortl* keeping. These Atafu natives are a guig ' lot and won't interfere with us." (To be continued.)