Book 2 - Chapter 14

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_ BOOK II CHAPTER XIV

Frewen showed his letters to the agent Beilby, who corroborated Raymond's statement in every particular regarding the money that could be made by growing cotton on an organised system with native labour, and with proper machinery to clean and pack it; and he also bore out the planter's remarks about the danger that attended small vessels employed in the black labour trade.

"You have seen a good deal of the natives of the South Sea Islands, Captain Frewen, and know what desperate cut-throats are those of the Western Pacific Groups. Two small trading vessels of my own have been cut off within the last five years, and every soul massacred, and the vessels looted and then burnt. It is a most difficult matter to keep a swarm of natives off the decks of a vessel with a low freeboard, all they have to do is to step out of their canoes over the rail, and if they are bent on mischief they can simply overpower a small vessel's company by mere weight of numbers. You will be surprised to hear that, even now, some of the Sydney trading craft use the old-fashioned boarding nettings, and their skippers only allow a certain number of natives on board at a time. But with a large vessel like the _Esmeralda_, this very great source of danger--the low freeboard--is absent; and besides that, you can carry a crew large enough to squelch any attempt at a rising, if, after you get them on board, your gentle passengers took it into their heads to attempt to possess themselves of the ship."

"Just so. And I have heard of several instances where Honolulu and Tahiti labour vessels have been captured, even though they carried large crews and were well armed."

"Exactly! Just carelessness. You never know, when you have a hundred or so of these savages on board, what they may do. They all know that they are going to a foreign country to work on sugar or cotton plantations for three years, at the end of which they will be paid for their labour in guns, powder, beads, calicoes, &c, &c. Well, they come on board perfectly content, and all goes well for a week or two, until some of them begin to notice that the crew are not keeping such a good watch over them as they did when they first came on board. These fellows begin the mischief. 'Why should we not kill the white men on board?' (they will argue) 'and help ourselves to _everything_--guns, pistols, powder, and bullets, cutlasses, grog and tobacco, and all the other riches in the ship? It is much better than working for three years for one gun and one keg of powder and bag of bullets, a knife or two, and a few other things, and then bringing them back to our own country to be despoiled of them by our relations.' Do you understand, Captain Frewen?"

"Quite."

"Well, they lie low and wait, and when the opportunity comes the beggars set to work with a vengeance-Only three years ago one of the Hawaiian Islands labour vessels recruited ninety Gilbert Islands natives to work on the new sugar plantations near Honolulu. They behaved themselves splendidly--for they were well treated--for about a fortnight, and the skipper of the vessel (an old hand in the island trade) allowed them to lie on deck at night, feeling sure that they would give no trouble. More than this, he even told his officers and crew to discontinue carrying their Colts' pistols. The result was that one night, when the watch were taking in sail during a squall, the natives took possession of the brig, killed the mate and all the men of the watch who were on deck, and would certainly have slaughtered every one of the ship's company had it not been for the captain himself; who, hearing the noise, rushed up from below armed with a whale-ship bomb gun, loaded with slugs. He fired right into the mob of natives on the main deck, killed three or four, and wounded twice as many. Then the second mate and the rest of the watch below came tumbling up, headed by a big Nova Scotian A.B. He was a tremendously powerful fellow, and had armed himself with the carpenter's broad axe, and in a few minutes he cut down five of the natives, one of whom was the ringleader. Then the steward and supercargo turned up with nine-bore double-barrelled shot-guns, loaded with No. 1 shot, and they and the bluenose{*} practically saved the ship, or with their four shots they laid out nearly a dozen more natives, and the others bolted down to the hold and asked for quarter. Ah, Captain Frewen, there is nothing like buckshot or slogs to squash a mutiny. You most get some nine-bore guns made here to take away with you."

* A "bluenose" is a sailor's term for
a Canadian or Nova Scotian.

"Thank you for the suggestion, Mr. Beilby. But whalers' bomb guns--which can be easily procured in Sydney--are better still. You can load them with a small charge of powder and crushed rock salt, which won't kill a man, but which will prevent him from doing any mischief for a long time. When I was a boatsteerer some years ago on a New Bedford whaler--the _Aaron Burr_--we had serious trouble with about thirty Portuguese negroes we picked up off the coast of Brazil. They were in two boats, and were deserters from a Brazilian man-of-war, which had gone ashore off Santos. Many of our men were down with fever of some sort, and these black gentry (who were all armed with knives), thinking that the after-guard was not able to cope with them, came aft and told our skipper that if he did not give them all the liquor they wanted they would throw him overboard, set fire to the ship, and go ashore again. He seemed to be very much frightened--he was an undersized, quiet man--and begged them to go on deck and remain there whilst he and the steward and such of the officers who were not ill with fever would get up a keg of rum from the lazzarette. Then--he spoke Spanish pretty well--he asked them not to be too hard on him. He would treat them as gentlemen, &c., and, with apparently trembling hands, he gave them boxes of cigars, and addressed them as if they were caballeros of the highest rank whom he was delighted to honour. Some of them cursed him for an Americano, but the majority were too hugely elated at the prospect of a keg of ram to say more to him than to hurry up with it.

"He did hurry up with a vengeance, for in five minutes he and the mate had each loaded a bomb gun with a heavy charge of sheet-lead slugs. They rushed on deck together, and with a warning cry to our men to get out of the way, they fired into the negroes, who were squatted about on the main hatch smoking their cigars and waiting for the rum. The effect was something terrifying, for although none of them were killed, fully half of them were wounded, and their groans and yells were something horrible. We did not give them much time to rally, for all of us who were well enough made a rush, and with belaying-pins and anything else which came to our hands drove them over the side into their boats."

"Then get some of those bomb-guns, captain, by all means. I think I have seen one--a thing like a bloated blunderbuss without the bell mouth."

"That's it," said Frewen with a laugh; "it is not a handsome weapon, but we whalemen do not go in for 'objects of bigotry and virtue.' A bomb-gun is made for a practical purpose--the stock is almost solid metal, and altogether it is no light weight."

During the following two weeks both Frewen and the agent were very busy. The former, with a gang of shore carpenters, was engaged in preparing the 'tween decks of the ship for the reception of the native passengers, and constructing two movable gratings to go across the upper deck--one for'ard and the other aft--which, whilst they would practically allow the natives the free run of the deck, would yet prevent them from making any sudden onslaught on the crew.

Beilby, whose long experience of the South Sea Islands trade especially fitted him for the task, devoted himself to the work of fulfilling Raymond's orders as to the trade goods required, and in three weeks the _Esmeralda_ was again ready for sea.

And when, under full sail, she passed down the harbour towards Sydney Heads bound for beautiful Samoa, her captain's heart swelled with pride as the crews of a score of other ships cheered, "Bravo, _Esmeralda!_" _

Read next: Book 2: Chapter 15

Read previous: Book 2: Chapter 13

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