TALES AND SKETCHES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5502, 29 February 1896, Page 1

TALES AND SKETCHES.

ON THg BE/fcH, A TRUE TALE OF THE PACIFIC. In a recent riiunber of the Pall Mall Gazette (writes our London correspondent) an anonymous contributor supplies a sketch of the end of one of those beachcombers of the Pacific islands whom Stevenson caused to liv^ for us in. his South Sea novels. This poor wreck (isayij the " "Wanderer") lay dying on a sihall island far away from any effectual medical or other, help. I found: him in a wretched native hut, which „in twenty-seven years' residence in' the village he had done nothing to improve, although the houses of the natives? around him were palaces compared ..to !his .own. He must have been a man of abotit sfcty yoars, an-d his faca and even Jiis language when I first saw him were curiously refined; his white hair fell on both sides of a, face, upon which neither the climate nor the habits of drunkenness for which he was a byeword among the natives had as yet made any serious inroads : but there was tliat j stamped upon it which Bhowed, hut too clearly, that he was about to pass from, a world where the only lessons he had learned were those of selfishness and sin. To step from the magnificent realisation outside of "the glows and glories of the broad belt of the worid " into the miserable hut, which neither the breeze, nor the fact' that all the mats (the only kind of door known in these houses) were carefully drawn up, could mate tolerable, was indeed a contrast, and a strange one. Squatted round all the cirole of the hut were some dozen , natives, mostly women, chattering all together over the ultimate division of. the dying man's goods, most of which had been carried away from his house under his very eyes while he lay helpless, though perfectly conscious, suffering tortures which no pen could adequately describe. His body, raoked with the pains of internal cancer, was beside a prey to the most awful sores, and nothing but his face escaped their ravages— a face upon which the hand of Death had set his droadful ißeal. T__E RECOLLECTIONS OF A BEACH-COMBER. The first and obviouß thing to do was to dear away all the women from tho hut savA one, who appeared to be his wife, from the extreme anxiety she betrayed as to hilt; share in the division of the spoil ; fcherbxt was to endeavour if possible to alleviate the torments of the unfortunate man, at least by sympathy and kindly Bpeecja. He was terribly anxious to speak, and poured forth in language which sometimes stumbled into a native phrase or word his agonies and his deserted condition. _?or weeks he had lain there untended and practically alone, his behaviour tp the, natives when he was in he_lth not having been snch as to inspire ainfidohce or gratitude! ■ - : '-s'hey had taken no further trouble over him than to call .daily at his houses and point out to him the devil .who, waa waiting for hini when he (lied ; his wife, the latest of a long succession, had gone off to her . people, ahd only came back upon the news of the neaj: approach , of death. After this confidence he relapsed for some hours into stupor ,and silence. > I He -.revived cprimder-** ably in the.'late afternoon under^' the influence of some brandy I had brought with 'me, and although his mind was never . quite at his command, yet in the torrent of volubility which ensued a curious and pathetic history patched and pieced itself together, a history of a life marked *with sign-posts of crime and sin, beginning from a decent home of farmer folk in Connaught, before the great famine — a house (for I know the place well) where the blue turf smoke was, even as he raved, floating up to meet the morning mists as they drifted seaward from the heather-clad hills. Then followed a glimpse of the miserable lif e of a stowaway on a floating hell of a sailing-ship, of Australia, and the diggings in the early times, and then a mere Kaleidoscope of island life and island villainy ; yet from the fragments of his mutterings one could put together the settings of tbese ever-changing glimpses of his wonderful life, an existence of alternate storm and calm, like the bosom of that great ocean where he had passed his life. One seemed to hear among the thick and broken utterances the cataract roar of the great seas, tp be with him in those tnoments of tra___ig-schconer life when a mistake at the wheel or a moment's hesitation would end for ever the lives and the •doubtful fortunes of her doubtful crew. Them there were picture of the still lagoon, with its setting eternally, monotonously the same, of feathery palms and azure seas, and dull-brown swift-beaten reef; and of the prolonged debauch in such a place, where the local trader, and the crew arid master of the ship, celebrate their reunions in copious and fiery gin, -t may be for.a week, or it Amay be for longer still. Then the clearing of the ship from these ■places, with the crew still drunk, and the captain little better,' with their store of copra or shell, and accompanied by some half-terrified, half -delighted native girls, to be oast on shore helpless, ill-treated, and perhaps ♦ half dead- with beating, at the next island call. Then there were memories of shipping black boys from those islands, where every man is on Bis guard lest he become the prey — aye, and the food — of those he , seeks to prey upon; and then the long, dull stay in the village where I found him, his ups and downs of fortune, the wars of .the natives, the ruin of his plantation, and all that goes to make the life of the small trader hard, if sometimes lucrative. . THE END. The man was never really consfijous, yet he catalogued tp me a gallery of portraits of messmates and shipmates, ot. native men, and 9-ten women ; many of the latter he professed to have loved, but they all ended in the same way and left him for one of their own colour. Hq showed no craven fear of death ; he had faced it imminent in too many forms to be afraid of it now, nor did one note of sorrow or repentance sound distinct above the Bordid chronicle of his ill-spent life. It seemed, indeed, more of an involuntary outpouring of experienqe tp the rare fellow-white man, such as would * "have taken place in a bar-room, or oyer a stiff glass of gin, than the death-bed confession of a curiously wicked and adventurous life. Even as he told, the darkness leaped up out of the east, the crickets burst into their shrill inugiQ in the palms, .the trade wind ceased tp roar and rustle in the trees, and the hush pf a tropic dusk f-gll on all the land; when that, too, passed, a moon bright as only moons here can ever be, lit up the beach and cast the shadow of the tall palms clearly upon the brilliant sand, while their leaves took a marvellous metallic lustre, and the dark forma of great bats flitted through their gathering'shadows. Around from many a native, hut rose the surly chant of the missionary hymn, or the monotonous . prayer of the native pastor, in sharp contrast to the misery of the fellow-creature vfao, in spite of all their profession of charity and love, was left alone to die. Later, when their evening m-gal was over, by twos and threes the' natives emerged for their moonlight stroll, pausing in their raongß and laughter to look in at the siok man, and going on their way with the outspoken assurance, that this time the devil Would not have to go away empty-handed. As the shadow of the night deepened so ffid that other shadow make its way upon ■ by miserable patient. He grew less voluble, and, indeed, only recovered .conscious/jess of his position enough to tell me j

r : — . ' ... ' where he had hidden his secret store of money, which he begged me to take and keep, if only to disappoint those "damned niggers." I assented, thinking that perhaps in. far-off Connaught there might be somehow some kith or kin of the lonely waif to whom this money might prove a windfall j and then I talked to him of his home, and tried to remind him that there was a God. At this he .broke out into execration too terrible for words, ahd, launching into inveotives against the mis_ionari<}s> became so excited that his impending death drew near with rapid strides, Aaid there, in his sordid hut beneath the splendour of that glorious moon, and the cold watch-fires of the host of heaven, to the sound of the well-known thunder of the reef, and the first gentle .whisper of the springing land breeze, the light faded from his eyes, in which alone remained the one clue to his birth and country, that indescribable something which is neither smile nor tear, which ever shows itself in moments of peril or exaltation, and is the birthright and birthmark inalienable and ineradicable of the Celt. Then .in the middle of one terrific blasphemy, the last distinguishable word of which was " God/ his spirit passed the barrier reef of this world, and floated out " to where beyond these voices there is peace."