THE REAL BULLY HAYES

Waipa Post, Volume 47, Issue 3359, 26 August 1933, Page 10

THE REAL BULLY HAYES

THE RAW MATERIAL OP A ROMANTIC LEGEND.

(By " Makaira.")

Since depression and adverse rates of fpreign exchanges threw their ugly shadows across the bright landscape of Australian finance, it has become the fashion—an excellent and interesting fashion, too—for those who desire relief from the eternal daily round to take a trip among some of the more accessible islands of the South Pacific. Sailing over those romantic seas, it will not be long before the voyager learns from the wireless man, or the assistant purser, or some other hardy ddc'psea sailor, the legend of Bully Haiyes, last of tjh'e buccaneers. A magnificent bearded figure, dowered with the strength of Hercules, the form of Apollo, the manners popularly ascribed to princes, linguist, diplomat, m'usician, seaman, in spite of his beard a great lover, kind-hearted, chivalrous, he led a busy life up and down the broad Pacific. When not engaged in knocking out giant bullies armed to their unbrushed teeth, or rescuing l damsels in distress, he was performing amazing deeds of lawless adventure, which he carried off with gay insouciance. His ship, the Leonora, was as marvellous as himself, able to outsail all pursuers, even steam-powered Warships, irrespective of the direction of the wind. The legend oi? Bully Hayes .is in fact a substantial asset of the Island tourist trade, and it will probably not be long before some enterprising steaimer agent has a statue put up to him.

BORROWED PLUMES. It scorns a shame to turn upon so romantic a figuile the col:, unsentimental eye of histony, but, seen through it, Hayes appears as a very contemptible rascal, strutting in stolen raiment. The man who had more or less right to such a garb was Captain Ben Pease, and Bully Hayes' sneak-thief personality had been dirguiscd in Pease's well-deserved reputation as an enterprising and courageous scoundrel. The romantic raiment was altered to fit by Louis Beekc, trimfmed by the vivid Mephistophelian mind of J. F. Archibald, o* the "Bulletin," and given the correct swaggering cut by Rolf Boldrewood and Albert Dorrington.

According to official documents, W,illia,m Hayes was the son of a Mississippi bargeirjan. As a iad he robbed his father, and bolted to escape the consequences. This youthful exploit sumimarises most of his subsequent career; he was always robbing someone who trusted him. and bolting. Some time in the middle fifties he was put ashore with other? at Fiji, from an American ship, for attempted nVutiniy. For the next 10 years he turned R'is attention to any rascality which did not show too much risk to his carcase, gradually working up to command of a small schooner, with which Ire- kidnapped and stole as opportunity offered. He earned his nickname of Bully hy his brutality toward defenceless native crews. To any able-bodied white man who stood up to him he was essentially the gonial pacifist—unless he could get behind him with a belaying pin. Then, but only then, he was really dangerous.

There were interludes of shore rascalities in New Zealand. Western Australia, and elsewhere. lie was a pleasant-faced rascal, fair and fat, wifch a wheedling tongue and such a taste for assorted matrimony that it wexv gross understatement to term him merely bigamist. WK REAL BUCCANEER. Uy she fetor sixties Hayes had wv:\A; up .-» close association with Uenjamin Pease, a small wiry, energetic ex-lieutenant of the UvnVed States Navy, who commanded a brig, the Water Lily, and hazed his villainous crew of international scounvh\>!s in proper Yankee fashion. Together with a fast schooner, the Malolo. Pease had stolen the brig from the William's family in Honolulu, sons of the missionary. He chartered the vessel to a syndicate in Shanghai for " timhov trading to Ponape." Timber trading was a comprehensive term which covered manly other activities, kidnapping and slave dealing, looting native villages and lonely trading stations, piracies on native craft, opium running, and what not. Association in such affairs landed Hayes under consular arrest at Saimoa in 1870, a very frightened rascal with the wind properly up. But Pease stack to him, blufljed the consul, got him to let Hayes come aboard the Water Lily to check his chronometers on Hayes' "word of {honour <' fo return, and sailed away with him.

HAYES* GRATITUDE. Putting into Guam, Peas-} was arrested by the Spanish authorities over a matter of outrages in the Carolines, sent to Manila, Handed over to the United States Navy, and given four months' gaol in Shanghai. His trusted friend, Hayes, took the opportunity to steal the Wiatcr Lily, the rascally crew being agreeable enough at the prospect of release from. Pease's ironhanded discipline. There is considerable reason to suspect that Hayes arranged the whole mattfr of his benefactor's arrest. A Her his release that strenuous individual tried hard to get within reach of Hayes, but was

m,urdered by natives at the Bonin Islands, before he could effect his purpose. Otherwise, the Hayes legend would never have come into being.

THE APOTHESIS OF A RASCAL. The twice-stolen, thrice-named brig, Water Lily-Pio'neter-Lebnara, did Iriq't bring Hayes much luck. A hurricane struck Bohapc while she was at anchor, and she becaime a total Hayes cleared out in a boat, jeacfotf Guainj, and bluffed the Spanish authorities to let him; sail by an American whaler to iS'an Francisco. Thereat* hung about the waterside with a gro, awaiting a chance to steal a suitable .small craft. iThey succeeded; in Hayes' usual cheap swindling fashion, and got clear of the Golden/Gate. A few days later they iquiaWeiiecE, Hayes rushed below for a pistol, '"fte nigger hit him over the head /with a billet of wood as he camle- up -the ladder, and that was the ignoble end of a cheap rascal.

A British warship called into Ponape, and the captain reported to the authorities in Sydney that he had re-moved-fram the island " a young man named Lewis Beck, an undesirable influence among the natives." This, of course, Was Louis Beckc, who, in later years, under tuition of J. F. Archibald, put his island yarns into often exquisite shape, and invented the Hayes legend. Wlhat artist in words, as was Becke, could resist the sonorous chesty nalm'e of Bully Raises in preference to Ben Pease; what seeker for a popular best-seller hero, the cheerful, fat, rumbustious fraud to a wicked little weazened devil of an ex-gentlemlan whose best effort at geniality was a vehointous snarl, and w'hos-e. one aim! in life- was to instil fear into what passed for souls among his villainous crew? .'