The Cannibals and Mr. Buffum

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIII, Issue 16, 20 October 1909, Page 50

The Cannibals and Mr. Buffum

By

CHARLES BATTELL LOOMIS

-W jV HE delightful thing about Uncle «I I Eli, Connecticut farmer, was > that his mendacity was perfectly shameless. He had lived in Oakham with never a break for fifty years, And all his voyages had been sailed jbefore he was twenty, but he could tell 'yarns to admiring summer folk or to store loungers that were so full of anachronisms as one of Shakespeare’s plays, and in more than one of his adventures )t>n tropic isles when he was a boy the automobile figured. ! Somehow, Unde Eli was so honest and Bo guileless-looking, and he was such a Sand-hearted man, that no one ever {thought of doubting his stories while he gras telling them. The Oakham store was typical of its 3cind—a white, slant-roofed building with a second-storey verandah and a generous approached by a wide flight of Steps capable of accommodating twenty glared” men. Opposite towered lofty elms, that roofted the wide road on which games of and wicket employed the time 0f the more elderly on summer evenings, youngsters thought wicket too slow t£nd would have liked to play baseball Ihere, but wicket had been played at (that particular spot ever since “Squire” (Beckley was a boy, and so baseball was Relegated to other quarters. , Uncle Eli was one of the best of the Urteket bowlers, and one evening, after

it had grown too dark to play, he had. turned a handspring just to show tha>. seventy-year muscles were lithe if you took care of them. He took his seat on a shoe-case thai was standing by the door and fannel himself with his hat. “Hot as the Sea of Aden,” said he, looking round with a hope in his min i that bore immediate fruit. “Kind of a good night to tell one of them sea-yarns of yours, Uncle Eli,” said Bill Newton. “Well,” said Eli, with a quaint smile, “I guess you’ve heard most of the yarns I know about the places I’ve visited in any time, but I don’t know’s I ever told you about old Buffum and the cannibals. ’ As Uncle Eli never repeated his yarns, there were not wanting many loiterers to tell him to go ahead. A cannibal story was always alluring. The old man helped himself from Bill’s pouch, and then he began. “I was makin’ my second voyage on the ship Alary and Ellen out of Gloucester. We had taken a millionaire of the name of Buffum aboard, because he wanted to see if sea-air and plain livin’ would give him back the stomach he had begun life with. “He was a pompous old duck and I didn’t like him. Wealth never appealed to me to any great extent, and I couldn’t see why this old chap should act as if he was presidin’ at a board meetin’ of mil-

lionaires when he was the only man on board the vessel that wasn’t earnin’ his livin’. “But he smoothed his grey side-whis-kers and looked solemn and nodded to the captain as if he was the scum of the earth. And the captain always nodded to him as if he was the scum of the earth. “We’d reached that p’int in the In-

dian Ocean where there’s always a whirlpool, and before we knowed what was cornin’ we was in the midst of it and twirlin’ end for end like one of these, spinnin’-jennies the children make. “I was so seasick that I asked the captain ef he’d excuse me from dooty for the afternoon; and the captain was s® seasick that he excused me; although it warn’t his way to excuse anybody from anything. “We whirled for a couple of hours, and at last we got to the centre of the pool and was sucked down. “I’ll never forget that. The noise was something terrible, like as if the hull ocean was b’ilin’ at once, and as I saw the blue sky above me and reflected on everything I’d ever done since I was born, I’d have given a dollar bill to be safe on shore again. “After a while the sound stopped, and I felt wet all over, and the next I knew I was ciingin’ to a spar, and near by was the millionaire on another spar and beyond him was a box a-floatin’ in the water. “‘Hello!’ says I to the millionaire, although I’d never spoke to him before. “Can you tell me the nearest way to the coast?’ says I. ' “ ‘l’m a stranger in these parts,’ says he, with the board-meetin’ manner still on him. “ ‘Stranger and stranger,’ said I, meanin’ the two of us. ‘Well, I hope we’ll find what we want in that ther’ case, and I hope we won’t be cast on a cannibal shore,’ says I. “He didn’t answer, for, you see, I was only a cabin-boy' and he was one of the richest men in Boston, and his mother was a Saltonstall. . “Water was warm, as is always the case in them tropic seas, but it warn’t too warm for comfort, and as we had floated away from the whirlpool owin’ to some force that I never could rightly understand but am willin’ to accept, there warn’t no danger of immejiate dissolution. And, by the way/ the rest of the crew had be’n picked up by a passin* vessel when they come out of the whirlpool, so things might ha’ be’n worse. “We could see land about a league to the windward of. us—l say to the windward, but I don’t know if it was or not, only in tellin’ a sea-yarn you’ve got to lug in sea-terms to make the thing natural. “I says to the millionaire, ‘lf I had a hatchet I’d open that case and see if it contained anything of an eatable nature.’ “Just then I see something floatin’ on the water, and I paddled over on tho spar, usin’ my hands and legs. I’m blest if it warn’t an axe with a basswood handle. I suppose that’s what kep’ it afloat. “I picked it up, and paddled over "to the box and asked tho millionaire to lend a hand, but he said he was hayin’ all he could do to keep afloat, sp I gave him a contemptuous look, and I got to work at the cas« and found it was one of these ' handy; companions,’ as they used to call ’em.

There was a house on Commercial-street in Boston used to pack ’em for seafirin’ folk, puttin’ in things that would come in handy if a person was shipwrecked. •But before I started to make a raft, I says to the millionaire a few plain words. I wasn’t 18, but I was always independent, and felt that, barrin’ cir-

cumstances, I was as good as the next man, and I was sure 1 was better than this old screw who’d made his money skinnin’ folks, and so I says: ‘Look here, Mr. Buffuni ’—that was his name, Alonzo Buffum—‘ we are two human bein’s, and I have the advantage over you by 40 years. Let it be share and share alike of work, and when we come to civilisation, if we do ever git there, I’ll promise not to butt into your set if you’ll promise not to try to effect an entrance into the society I’m used to, and which wouldn’t like you.’ "Well, he said something in a hotpotato voice about impudence, and then I quoted Emerson to him. I forgit what I quoted, as I haven’t read him since I growed up, but when I was a boy I used to know him down to Concord, and I liked the feelin’ of independence he put into youngsters like me, although I didn’t always understand what he was drivin’ at. “What I quoted made him wince, and I see that he see the p’int and that both of us was free and equal in the eight of cannibals, excep’n’ that I was juicier. “Then I ripped off the cover of the Case,' and found that ther’ was two lifepreservers in the top. That’s what had kept it afloat. I gave him one, and when I fixed it over his shoulders he said, ‘ Thank you,’ and that was the first I knowed he had any humanity in him at all. “The openin’ of that case was just like Christmas celebrations in a Sunday school. “First there was a dozen cans of soup and an alcohol lamp and a bottle of alcohol and a five-pound package of assorted nails and a hammer and a lookin’-glass and a dozen packages of plug tobacca and a compass and a bottle of Medford rum and a bottle of Jamaica ginger and a bottle of cholera mixture and a dozen, or so cans of Chicago beef and a ham and a carvin’-knife and a box of clothes-pins and a package of hairpins—these last was of surprisin’ use to us, although at the moment of flndin’ them I thought them unnecessary, I havin’ no back hair and Buffum none, on top. “Then there was a pair of carpet •lippers, too small for me, but they just fitted Buffum; and there was a couple

of pairs of bathin’-suits, which we put on at once, as there was no tellin’ who we’d meet when we got ashore. “There was lots of other things, includin’ enough four-inch plank to make a fair-sized raft. Buffum warn’t no earthly use with the hammer or the axe, so I had to build it myself, and it was dark before we finished, but when

it was done I lit a lantern I found—■ also found a can bi’ kerosene—and we made soup over the chimney with a little Yankee contraption. "I never was much on soup before that, but the sea air and the exercise gave me such an appetite that I thought that soup was most lickin’ good, and so did Buffum. Asked for a second helpin’, which gave me a poor idee of his table manners. “Oh, I forgot to say that the last, thing we found in the box was a phonograph, with recordin’ and reproducin' cylinders. That seemed useless as thr> hairpins at the time, but in the end ifsaved our lives. “I remember it was the time of the gold excitement in Californy, and the cylinders were wrapped up in a San Francisco paper that told of the arrival of the Argonauts of ’49. They had just come to town, and were whoopin’ things up before beginnin’ diggin’. Funny how things like that will stick by. you. “We lay to all night, and at sun-up next mornin’ I h’isted the little leg-of-mutton sail that we had found in the box, together with one of these here portable masts, and I fastened the aluminium rudder to the place I chose as stern, and we sailed for the shore. “It was a beautiful beach, splendid for bathin’, and the first thing we did after we had landed and pulled our raft up above, high tide was to take a seabath. It was most exhilaratin’ after our long exposure, and I dare say it saved our lives. “Then we set up the bread-mixin’ machine, and I built an oven out of file bricks that had been packed away in the handy companion, and used some of the drv yeast we found in a cardboard box. It didn’t make as good bread as liquid yeast would have made, but still wo warn’t in a position to carp—that is, T wasn’t. I believed that the broad disagreed with old Buffum. “Of course, it was some hours before the bread was ready, and wo took a couple of pails and went blaekberrvin’, and got a couple of quarts of Lawton blackberries, and also some Asiatic berries that I don’t know the name of. but they was acrid and good for nothin’ but eannin’. “When the bread was baked, I told Buffum to set the table, and I took

some fishin’-tackle and swum out to beyond the breakers, and havin’ baited my hook with an Asiatic helgamite that I found under a rock, I caught a bluefish in no time, and if we didn’t have a nice dinner I miss my guess. We did lack salt. Queerest thing they should have left salt out of the handy companion! But old Buffum went up into the woods a little ways, and he found a piece of rock-salt that we ground fine in the coffee-mill, and it did fairly well, although it was kind of brackish. “So far we hadn’t seen a person, or even a footprint, but just as we was eatin’ our dessert of blackberries and cream-puffs—the cream-puffs was in hermetically sealed jars, and they was as fresh as when they had been made in Boston six months before—we heard a wild halloo, and a band of cannibals came down on us. “There were seven of ’em as naked as a babe, but riot half as helpless, and when I saw ’em I thought our jig was up; but I'd heard from fellers that had travelled a good deal that music and an absence of fear was splendid safeguards among savage folk, and so I begun to hop up and down and sing, “In My Prison Cell I Sit, Thinkin', Mother Dear, of You.’ Buffum looked as if he thought I'd gone plumb crazy, and he started and ran for- the sea, intendin’ to put water between him and them. “But I just glanced at them, and sang harder than ever, and I also put some coffee in the bean into the coffeemill—they was among the things that had come in the handy companion—• and I ground the coffee fine, and the noise of that added to my own voice made ’em feel that I was no ordinary person. “They made a wide turn to the right to pass me, and went right out into the water to catch Buffum. “He looked so foolish actin’ the part of a coward that I stopped singin’, and began to roar with laughter, and that made all the cannibals stand stockstill and stare at me. It seems they’d never heard laughter before, and I learned afterward that when I laughed they made sure I was a god of some kind. “But as soon as I stopped laughin’, they waded on out after Buffum, and Ire begun to tell.’em who he was. ■ “ ‘l’m one. of the richest men in Bos■tori,’ says he, ‘and my influence is great. If you spare me, I’ll send you-a .'ransom so big.that you won’t have to lift a. hand for the rest of your da vs.’ “Of course, he might as well kept his mouth shut, for cannibals can’t talk English—that is, they ain’t born with the ability. But I found out, one thing,

They couldn’t swim, and as Buffum w.ta tall he was able to wade oat further than they, and as they had no weapons he was in no immejiate danger of anything but death from drownin.’ “But he didn't realise that his tallness gave him an advantage over them, and he stood there and shivered in the water, almost bein’ knocked over by the waves. Luckily the tide was go’n’ out. “But, in spite of his fear, he kept on tellin’ ’em who he was. ‘l’m no ordinary man,’ he says. ‘Just let me get at my cheque-book, and I can draw cheques that would pay for solid blocks of buildin’s with all the modern improvements on this island. I’m too thin,’ says he, ‘to be of any use for eatin,’ but if you spare my life, and get word to my folks, your names’ll be in every paper in the United States, and I can give you tips on the market.’ “That was too much for me, I remember, and I sings out: ‘What do ycu suppose they’d know about tips on the market, even if they understood a word of what you're sayin’? You’ve got to learn their language,’ I says, ‘and then, maybe, you'll impress ’em with your all-fired importance.’ “Then I had a happy thought. I picked up a piece of wood that the waves had washed ashore, and I made signs to the chief of the cannibals that I wanted to show him something, laughing fit to kill all the while so’s he’d be impressed. “He come up kind of gingerly, and I made little circles in the sand to represent money, and then I slapped my thigh as if I was bittin’ my changepocket. I thought perhaps they had dealt with traders of some kind, and they evidently had, for the cannibal chief said a word that sounded like ‘shillin’.’ 1 said ‘shillin” after him, and pointed to the pictures in the sand, and he nodded his head and pointed to the sea, an made a noise like a steamer’s whistle, as much as to say that he had seen money on a steamer—evidently an English steamer from their havin’ shillin’s. “I was pretty good at drawin’, and I drew a big picture of the millionaire, only I put sailor’s clothes on him, and • made his poekets, bulgin’ with money, and droppin’ out’to the ground and formin’ heaps. “The chief was surer than ever I was a god- then, because them cannibals can t draw at all, -arid he understood what I meant, and the frightened chap in the water had heaps of money. Then I made signs >that it', would .ill go to ■ hint - aha his' liehr- and assigns forever if he wouldriot' W ’ us and cat us. : “Well,. the renatf apt of that cannibal for that idee'was laughable. He shvok

tris head, and came over to the picture •nd spit on it. That was pretty good English, I thought, and I saw that fluffum's influence wasn’t go’n’ to be sexy much, in spite of his wealth. Of course, when a man lives on an island, and has all the fish he can catch and all the birds he can bit with a club—penguins they call ’em—and all the fruit he can shin up and get, or pick Jtrom the bushes, includin’ fine Lawton blackberries at nothin’ a quart, money Ain’t worth a cent to him. “While I was explainin’ just who Buf£mn was, and also tryin’ to explain by

Signs the social position of Baek Bay families —which I found hard to do—a ■ort of a seventh wave of a' seventh wave Borne up, and, catchin’ Buff uni unawares, Sanded him on the beaeh right at the fleet of the cannibals, and they nabbed Bum. “As soon as the chief saw they had him, he left me, evidently thinkin’ that lone meal at a time was all they wanted, tand the howlin’ mob of savages run huffum out of sight on the double-quiek. “I stood there like a fool until they had dropped over the sandhill, and then I ran over to the handy companion, and jbegun rummagin’ to find a firearm of feme sort, but if you’ll believe it, there Warn’t even a toy pistol. “But I did come across the phonograph, •nd the very minute I saw it I thought friat there was an invention that would *ome in very handy. “I was pretty sure that the cannibals •could fatten Buffum for a day or two, because there wasn’t even pickin’ on him •s he was. “I thought a minute, feelin’ kind of Mesperate, and then a plan of full growth Borne into my head and I went over to a jpa'm-tree and climbed to the top of it, from which I could see the "‘-ire island. It was about four miles lon(* Xd three miles across, and, except fov a few sandhills, it was level. 1 saw the huts s>f the cannibals in the centre of it. There 3vas about twenty of 'em. Bememberin’ ithe census reports, and how they reckon five to a family in large cities, I reckoned that twenty huts would mean about a hundred cannibals: “I slid down again and hunted up a-field-glass, and then .1 climbed up again, •nd saw the seven leadin’ Buffum along, •nd they’d got word to the village by means of signs of some sort—those savages have the telephone beat by native (contrivances—but anyways the fellers in frie interior about two miles away knew fruit dinner was cornin’ to them, and they were all standin’ on a big sort of sandclune and I was able to count ’em, and there was just ninety-three. I tell yov> them census fellers hits it pretty close. “But one hundred cannibals against one Yankee boy with nothin’ but his jvits and the handy companion was kind tof undue odds ag’in mo. Of course Buffum didn’t count. Without his money he .Was cipher plus naught equals nothin’. “I had spied out the cannibals because T wanted to see if they was out of earshot, and findin’ they was, I. set the phonograph on the closed lid of the handy companion, and I begun to make • record. First I hollered into it like thunder, then I laughed as hard as 1

could, and then I sung ‘Shoo Fly’ into it, and ended with another beller. “Then I tried the thing to see how she’d work, and I had half a mind to smash it with the axe for insinuatin’ that my voice sounded as bad as that. “Now, when the cannibal chief had first come to me, he had said something that sounded kind of dignified, and then he had drawn himself up and pointed to his chest, and I felt pretty middlin’ sure that he was sayin’, ‘I am the chief—■ that is, in his own cannibal language. “I used to have a pretty quick ear to catch unfamiliar sounds, and I took an-

other cylinder and talked and hollered and sang into it pretty much as before, endin’ up with these remarks of the chief. Then I tried it, and it sounded just like his words, although the voice was squeakier. Even in them days phonographs warn’t perfect. “'Now,’ says I, ‘if I can only get those cannibals to the point of believin’ that they have offended the Great Spirit, I’ll be able to get Buffum out - of their clutches, and they may be able to help us in gettin’ back to civilisation —and the Baek Bay.’ “When I had finished preparin’ the phonograph, I climbed the tree with it and fixed it in a cleft between two branches, trustin’ to luck for a chance to use it. “Well, the chance come very soon. While I was up there, I saw the party of seven had reached the village, and that there was a great commotion in camp. Evidently the chief had told ’em that there was a stouter person left behind, and the hull kit and crew of ’em was cornin’ to get me. “They had chained Buffum to a thick

post, and some one was feedin’ him chunks of something to fatten him. “I’d wondered how I’d manage to work the phonograph, but when I saw them cornin’ I had a new thought and stayed up in the tree, covering the machine so that it couldn’t be seen from below. “I wasn’t afraid. I knew if the thing didn’t work I’d be food in a day or two, but I warn’t more’n eighteen and I had the confidence of youth. I was also bent on showin’ old Buffum that brains was better’n money any day in the week, and the Baek Bay didn’t cut much ice in the Indian Ocean. “Along they come a-runnin’, and when they reached the place where I had been, the chief looked out to sea, and then he clapped his hands and flung ’em apart to show that I had vanished. “But an old woman, or squaw, or whatever you would call a female cannibal, happened to glance up and saw me in the tree, and she told the chief and he looked up. Then he raised his voice, and looking at me, he said something commandin’ that sounded like ‘Mobi yana!’ “I guessed that he was saying’, ‘Come down,’ so I said it after him, raisin’ my voice as if askin’ a question, and he nodded his head and looked considerable surprised to think that I knew his language to any extent whatever. Which was a p’int in my favour. “I nodded my head also, and begun to open and shut my mouth as if I was eating’ something, and pointed to myself. He shook his head, but he also instinctively patted his stomach, and I knew what that meant, so I was on my guard against a sudden surprise. “I started to come down, but before doin’ so I bellered, and then I gave a short sharp yell, and then I sung ‘Shoo Fly,’ and then I laughed, but I didn’t say what he’d said, which meant, ‘I am the chief.’ I wanted that to come later. Then I hid what I was doin’ by interposin’ my body, and wound up the machine and she begun to whir. “When I was halfway down, the phonograph reached the talkin’ part, and I clasped the trunk of the tree with my legs and leaned back sailor-fashion, lookin’ down at the cannibals with my mouth tight shut. “Out of the tree far above me came the sounds I had made a minute before, as if they was on their way up to the skies, and that's what I wanted the chief and his people to think was happenin’. I wanted him to think I was the ruler of that part of the world. “And he did think so, you bet. I’ll never forget the way his mouth opened and his eyes begun to pop. And all the squat, pot-bellied, black-skinned cannibals around him stared and gawped like one of these comic pictures of a countryman on Broadway. “When the machine had finished ‘Shoo Ely,’ and the laughin’, it said ‘I am the chief,’ and the hull bunch of ’em turned and run into the water. Geewhittaker, but I’d like to have died laughin’ and I did laugh, for I knew that laughin’ was one of my strong holds. “Frightened is no name for it. Those fellers would have given me anything they owned, they were .so sure that I was a Great Spirit. A num who could

leave his voice behind him and yet haw it say things was something they didn’t meet every day in the week. “I knew I was perfectly safe then, so I slid down and walked around a little on the balls of my feet to make me higher, and I looked at ’em with the whites of my eyes showin’ pretty big, and then I had another inspiration and I said ‘Mobi,’ which I calculated meant ‘Come,’ and I said it pleasantly, and the chief he said after me ‘Mobi?’ as if askin’ a question, and I nodded my head and he come out of the water, and I rubbed my cheek against his, havin’ read in a boy’s book that that was the proper thing to do to a savage. I’ve learned since that it’s an insult to some of them East Indian tribes, but it was just the thing with these people, and I found out afterwards that it was a clincher and showed that, although I was a spirit, I was a good spirit. “After that, there warn’t anything too good for me. I believe they would have let me eat Buffum if I had so desired, but Buffum was too rich for my blood—as the boys say. “The first thing I did was to make ’em understand that they must release Buffum. I took a stick and I drew a picture in the sand showing Buffum chained to a stake and bein’ fed, and that nearly keeled the chief over, that I should know what they had done to him. Of course, field-glasses were unknown to him, and I took precious good care not to let him see them. “Somehow he took it into his head that Buffum was my servant. Some of the men, by the chief’s orders, cut some cane, and they wove a mat out of it and placed me on it, and I rode in state to their village. Buffum was tickled to death to see me. “ ‘Oh, save me, save me! ’ says he, as soon as I hove in sight. “ ‘You’re all right,’ I says to him. ‘You’re not worth savin’, you coward, but I’ve made it right with the chief and you’re to be released.’ “Bein’ only eighteen, I suppose I was what the boys nowadays call chesty, and maybe I ought not to have talked the way I did to a man who lived on the Back Bay when he was to home and who could have bought out all my relatives back to the landin’ of the Pilgrims, but I didn’t like him and I showed it. “It was funny to see the way the chief acted when he’d released Buffum. Ha made signs for him to wait on me, takin’ from my tones that I was reprovin’ my servant, and from that time on Buffum had to look after me. I told him it was no wish of mine, for I’d be’n taught by my mother to respect gray hairs to a certain extent, but after all, I thought, if he hadn’t grubbed so hard after money, maybe he wouldn’t have had so many gray hairs and so wouldn’t have be’n entitled to so much respect. “I might have been king of that island to this day, and there’s wuss places, but when after a month a British steamer stopped there to see if they could get any ivory, I wasn’t sorry to take passage on her. I’d taught them blackskins it was wrong to eat human bein’, and I’d taught ’em to treat Buffum as if he was a man instead of a money-grubber, so I felt I’d done some good in the Indian Ocean. “And I climbed that pa’m and got the phonograph, but I dropped it coinin’ down and smashed it or I might have it yet.’’ “Did the cannibals give you anything to remember ’em by?” asked Bill Newton, as Uncle Eli rose to stretch his legs. During the recital not a person had said a word, which was something of a tribute to the old man. “They gave me a big ivory tusk worth a good many pounds, but I mislaid it.” “Did Buffum ever pay you for savin* his life?” “Well,” said Uncle Eli, “he done pretty well for him. When he got back to Boston and I’d gone to Gloucester, he wrote me a postal. All it said onto it was: “Buy C. T. and X. to-morrow.’ That was a tip, and if I’d had money I’d have bought C. T. and X. and would have made thousands, as she went up twenty p’ints in two days, but a sailor on shore never has much on hand and I was no better’n other sailors. “But it showed that the meanest man may have good instincts, and since that day I’ve had no hard feelin’s for old Buffum.”