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The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton, a fiction by Louis Becke |
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Chapter 13 |
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_ CHAPTER XIII We were thirteen long weary days between Apamama Lagoon and Kusaie, whose misty blue outline we hailed with delight when we first sighted it early one afternoon, forty miles away. Calms and light winds had delayed us greatly, for as we crawled further northward, we were reaching the limit of the south-east trades, which, at that time of the year, were very fickle and shifty. Not a single sail of any description had we seen, though we kept a keen lookout night and day; for, after being ten days out from Apamama, I began to feel anxious about our position and would have liked to have spoken a ship, fearing that the current, in such calm weather, would set us so far to the westward that I should have difficulty in making the island if we once got to leeward of it. Day after day had passed with the same unvarying monotony--light winds, a calm, then a brisker spell of the dying trades for a few hours, or a day at most--then another calm lasting through the night, and so on. But our spirits very seldom flagged, and we contrived to make the time pass somehow. Lucia, whose face and hands were now browning deeply from continuous exposure to the rays of a torrid sun worked with Niabon at dressmaking, for she had brought with her half a dozen bolts of print; and, as they sewed, they would sometimes sing together, whilst I and my two trusty men busied ourselves about the boat--scrubbing, scraping and polishing inside and out, cleaning and oiling our arms; or, when a shoal of bonita came alongside, getting out our lines and catching as many of the blue and marbled beauties as would last us for a day or two. But our chief relaxation, in which the two young women always joined us, was two or three hours of "sailors' pleasure" i.e., overhauling all our joint possessions, clothing, trade goods of all sorts, and carefully restowing them in the boxes in which they were packed. Tepi's wound by this time was quite healed--the bullet had gone clean through the fleshy part of his arm, and then struck an oar which was lashed to the rail. He had got a nail from me and drove it through the lead into the wood--to be preserved as a memento of the fight. On the evening of the day on which we sighted the blue peaks of beautiful Kusaie, the sky began to look ugly to the eastward, and at daylight it was blowing so hard, with such a dangerous sea, that I decided not to attempt to enter the weather harbour--Port Lele--though that had been my intention, but to run round to the lee side to Coquille Harbour, where we could renew our fresh provisions, spell a day or two, and be among friends, for I knew the people of Kusaie pretty well. We got into the smooth water of Coquille just in time, for no sooner had we dropped anchor at the mouth of a small creek which debouched into the harbour through a number of mangrove islets, than it commenced to blow in real earnest, and terrific rain squalls drenched us through and made us shiver with cold. The natives, however, had seen us, and presently, as soon as the rain ceased, three canoes appeared, each manned by five men. They welcomed us very heartily and urged us to come to the village--which was less than a quarter of a mile away. We were only too delighted to get ashore again after thirteen days' confinement on our little craft, so hurriedly packing a couple of boxes with dry clothing, and some articles for presents for the people, we put on the cabin hatches, made everything else snug on board, and half an hour later were all in the chiefs house, warm and dry, and telling him and his family as much about ourselves as we thought advisable. As soon as it could be cooked, they brought us an ample meal of hot baked fowls, pigeons, and fish, with a great quantity of vegetables--taro, yams, breadfruit, and sweet potatoes. The very smell of it, Tepi whispered to me, made his teeth clash together! We remained with these hospitable people for four days. There was nothing that they would not do for us--no trouble was too groat, no labour was aught but a pleasure to them. They brought the _Lucia_ round to a small sandy beach near the village, discharged her, carried everything up to the houses, and cleaned her thoroughly inside and out, and then put her in the water again for us. When we bid them farewell and sailed, the boat's deck was covered with baskets of freshly-cooked food and a profusion of fruit, and Lucia and Niabon were accompanied on board by every woman and girl in the place, some of whom wept unrestrainedly, and begged them not to venture their lives in such a small boat, but to remain on the island till a ship touched there, bound to the islands of the further north-west. Before finally parting with our kind friends I gave them twenty pounds of tobacco, which, though we had still four hundredweight left, was still our most valuable trade article, and would have to be disbursed carefully in future, and Lucia gave the chief's daughter a very handsome gold ring of Indian manufacture, though at first the girl declined accepting so valuable a present. [Illustration: A glorious silver moon in the sky 174] We lost sight of Kusaie within ten hours, for we had a slashing breeze, which carried us along in great style, and all that night we sat up, none of us caring to sleep, for there was a glorious silver moon in a sky of spotless blue, and the sea itself was as a floor of diamonds. Niabon and Lucia, I must mention, had insisted on standing watch ever since we had left Apamama, and they certainly helped us a lot, for both could now steer very well, and took pleasure in it. The former, with Tepi, was in my watch, the latter was with Tematau, who, like all Eastern Polynesians, was a good sailor-man and could always be relied upon. We had now sailed over a thousand miles; and every day--every hour I gained more confidence in myself, and the resolution to make one of the greatest boat voyages across the Pacific had been ever strengthening in my mind since the day I looked at Chart No. 780 in Krause's house at Taritai. What could I not do with such a boat and two such men as Tepi and Tematau, after we had landed Lucia and Niabon at Guam in the for north! We would refit the boat, and then turn our faces south once more, and sail back through the Western Carolines on to wild New Guinea--Dutch New Guinea, and run along the coast till we came to one of the few scattered Dutch settlements on the shores of that _terra incognita_. Tepi and Tematau would stick to me--they had sworn to do so--had told me so in whispers one bright night, as we three kept watch together and Lucia and Niabon slept. Niabon! What a strange strange girl she was! I should find it hard to say goodbye to her, I thought; and then I felt my cheeks flush. Say goodbye to her--part from her! Why should we part? Was I so much her superior that I need be ashamed of asking her to be my wife? What was I, anyway, but a broken man--a man whose father, my sole remaining relative, had nearly twenty years before told me with savage contempt that I had neither brains, energy, nor courage enough to make my way in the world, thrown me a cheque for a hundred pounds, and sneeringly told me to get it cashed at once, else he might repent of having given it to me to squander among the loose people with whom I so constantly associated. And I had never seen or heard from him, and never would. But I had that cheque still, for there always was in me a latent affection for the cold-faced, unsympathetic man who had broken my mother's heart, not by open unkindness, but by what the head gardener whisperingly told me (when she was lying dead, and I, sent for from college to attend the funeral, went to his cottage to see him) was "silent, inwisible neglect, Master James; silent, inwisible neglect. That's wot killed her." For the servants loved my poor mother--their opinion of my father they discreetly kept to themselves. So I had kept the cheque, for burning with resentment against him as I was at the time, I remembered the words of my mother's last letter to me, written with her dying hand. "Try hard to please him, James. He is very cold and stern, but I am sure that, deep down in his heart, he loves you well." That letter, with the cheque inside it, was now yellowed, and the writing faint, but I had kept them both. I would write to him some day, I had thought, and send him back the cheque, and my mother's letter as well, and then perhaps the hard old man would forgive me, and write and say "Come." But the years went by, and I never wrote, and now it was too late, after fifteen had passed. Very likely he was dead, and had willed his money to churches or hospitals, or some such charities, and I should always be "Jim Sherry, the trader," to the end of my days, and never "James Shervinton, Esq., of Moya Woods, Donegal." Well, after all, what did it matter? I thought, as I held on to the forestay, and looked at the now paling moon sinking low down on our lee, as the glow of the coming sun tipped a bank of cloud to windward, with a narrow wavering ribbon of shining gold. I had nothing at which to grumble. My fifteen years of wandering had done me good, although I had not saved money--money, that in my father's eyes brought, before eternal salvation in the next world, primarily the beatitudes of some county eminence in Ireland and British respectability generally in this. Unless my father was still alive, and I could know he wanted to see me before he died, I should never go home--not after fifteen years of South Sea life. Why should I not accept what Fate meant for me, and my own inclinations told me that I was destined for? I was intended to be "Jim Sherry, the trader,"--and I should ask "Niabon, of Danger Island," to be "Jim Sherry's" wife. Why not. I had never cared for any woman before except in a fleeting, and yet degrading manner--in a way which had left no memories with me that I could look back upon with tender regrets. She and I together might do great things in the South Seas, and found a colony of our own. She had white blood in her veins--of that I felt certain--and where Ben Boyd, of the old colonial days, failed to achieve, I, with a woman like Niabon for my wife, could succeed. Ben Boyd was a dreamer, a man of wealth and of flocks and herds, in the newly-founded convict settlement of New South Wales, and his dream was the founding of a new state in the Solomon Islands, where he, an autocratic, but beneficent ruler, would reign supreme, and the English Government recognise him as a Clive, a Warren Hastings of the Southern Seas. But the clubs of the murderous Solomon Islanders--the country of the people in which he had already planned out vast achievements on paper--battered out his brains almost under the guns of his beautiful armed yacht, the _Wanderer_; and the name of Ben Boyd was now alone remembered by a decayed village and a ruined lighthouse on the south headland of Twofold Bay, in New South Wales, where, in the days of his prosperity, he had erected it, as a guide to the numerous American and English whaleships, which in those times traversed the Pacific from one end to the other, and would, he imagined, eagerly avail themselves of the quiet, landlocked harbour to repair and recruit, and sell their cargoes of sperm oil. But they never came, and his dream was ended ere his life was gone. Yes, I would ask her, as soon as I had an opportunity of speaking to her alone. It was true that she had once told me that she would never part from Lucia--and Lucia had often spoken to me of their plans for the future. But, my vanity whispered, she would listen to me She cared for me, I was sure, and would not long hesitate. We were certain to meet with at least one missionary going through the Carolines, and he would many us. If we did not, it would not matter--there were half a dozen Spanish priests in Guam. Then after our marriage I would go on in the boat to Amboyna, where I had a business friend, a rich trader--a man who liked and trusted me, and who would give me a thousand, ay, two thousand pounds' worth of trade goods for my pencilled I.O.U. in his notebook. Then I would buy a little schooner, and sail with Niabon to the islands of the south-eastern Pacific, and begin trading. I would make Rapa, in the Austral Group, my head station, or else Manga Reva in the southern Paumotus--Niabon should decide. The low cloud to windward lifted, the red sun leapt from the sea-rim, and then I felt a soft hand on my arm. "What are you thinking of, Jim? I called you twice, but you did not hear. I believe you were talking to yourself, for I twice saw you throw out your arm as if you were speaking to some one." "I believe I was, Lucia," I replied with a laugh. "I was day-dreaming." "Tell me, Jim," she said softly, so softly that her voice sank to a whisper. "Not now, Lucia. Wait till we get to the next land." And then in all innocence I added, as I looked at her, "How bright and happy you look, Lucia! I think you grow more beautiful every day." She lifted her eyes to mine for one instant, and I saw in them a light I had never seen before. _ |
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