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CHAPTER XV - CRUISING IN THE SOLOMONS
"Why not come along now?" said Captain Jansen to us, at Penduffryn,
on the island of Guadalcanar.
Charmian and I looked at each other and debated silently for half a
minute. Then we nodded our heads simultaneously. It is a way we
have of making up our minds to do things; and a very good way it is
when one has no temperamental tears to shed over the last tin-of
condensed milk when it has capsized. (We are living on tinned goods
these days, and since mind is rumoured to be an emanation of matter,
our similes are naturally of the packing-house variety.)
"You'd better bring your revolvers along, and a couple of rifles,"
said Captain Jansen. "I've got five rifles aboard, though the one
Mauser is without ammunition. Have you a few rounds to spare?"
We brought our rifles on board, several handfuls of Mauser
cartridges, and Wada and Nakata, the Snark's cook and cabin-boy
respectively. Wada and Nakata were in a bit of a funk. To say the
least, they were not enthusiastic, though never did Nakata show the
white feather in the face of danger. The Solomon Islands had not
dealt kindly with them. In the first place, both had suffered from
Solomon sores. So had the rest of us (at the time, I was nursing
two fresh ones on a diet of corrosive sublimate); but the two
Japanese had had more than their share. And the sores are not nice.
They may be described as excessively active ulcers. A mosquito
bite, a cut, or the slightest abrasion, serves for lodgment of the
poison with which the air seems to be filled. Immediately the ulcer
commences to eat. It eats in every direction, consuming skin and
muscle with astounding rapidity. The pin-point ulcer of the first
day is the size of a dime by the second day, and by the end of the
week a silver dollar will not cover it.
Worse than the sores, the two Japanese had been afflicted with
Solomon Island fever. Each had been down repeatedly with it, and in
their weak, convalescent moments they were wont to huddle together
on the portion of the Snark that happened to be nearest to faraway
Japan, and to gaze yearningly in that direction.
But worst of all, they were now brought on board the Minota for a
recruiting cruise along the savage coast of Malaita. Wada, who had
the worse funk, was sure that he would never see Japan again, and
with bleak, lack-lustre eyes he watched our rifles and ammunition
going on board the Minota. He knew about the Minota and her Malaita
cruises. He knew that she had been captured six months before on
the Malaita coast, that her captain had been chopped to pieces with
tomahawks, and that, according to the barbarian sense of equity on
that sweet isle, she owed two more heads. Also, a labourer on
Penduffryn Plantation, a Malaita boy, had just died of dysentery,
and Wada knew that Penduffryn had been put in the debt of Malaita by
one more head. Furthermore, in stowing our luggage away in the
skipper's tiny cabin, he saw the axe gashes on the door where the
triumphant bushmen had cut their way in. And, finally, the galley
stove was without a pipe--said pipe having been part of the loot.
The Minota was a teak-built, Australian yacht, ketch-rigged, long
and lean, with a deep fin-keel, and designed for harbour racing
rather than for recruiting blacks. When Charmian and I came on
board, we found her crowded. Her double boat's crew, including
substitutes, was fifteen, and she had a score and more of "return"
boys, whose time on the plantations was served and who were bound
back to their bush villages. To look at, they were certainly true
head-hunting cannibals. Their perforated nostrils were thrust
through with bone and wooden bodkins the size of lead-pencils.
Numbers of them had punctured the extreme meaty point of the nose,
from which protruded, straight out, spikes of turtle-shell or of
beads strung on stiff wire. A few had further punctured their noses
with rows of holes following the curves of the nostrils from lip to
point. Each ear of every man had from two to a dozen holes in it--
holes large enough to carry wooden plugs three inches in diameter
down to tiny holes in which were carried clay-pipes and similar
trifles. In fact, so many holes did they possess that they lacked
ornaments to fill them; and when, the following day, as we neared
Malaita, we tried out our rifles to see that they were in working
order, there was a general scramble for the empty cartridges, which
were thrust forthwith into the many aching voids in our passengers'
ears.
At the time we tried out our rifles we put up our barbed wire
railings. The Minota, crown-decked, without any house, and with a
rail six inches high, was too accessible to boarders. So brass
stanchions were screwed into the rail and a double row of barbed
wire stretched around her from stem to stern and back again. Which
was all very well as a protection from savages, but it was mighty
uncomfortable to those on board when the Minota took to jumping and
plunging in a sea-way. When one dislikes sliding down upon the lee-
rail barbed wire, and when he dares not catch hold of the weather-
rail barbed wire to save himself from sliding, and when, with these
various disinclinations, he finds himself on a smooth flush-deck
that is heeled over at an angle of forty-five degrees, some of the
delights of Solomon Islands cruising may be comprehended. Also, it
must be remembered, the penalty of a fall into the barbed wire is
more than the mere scratches, for each scratch is practically
certain to become a venomous ulcer. That caution will not save one
from the wire was evidenced one fine morning when we were running
along the Malaita coast with the breeze on our quarter. The wind
was fresh, and a tidy sea was making. A black boy was at the wheel.
Captain Jansen, Mr. Jacobsen (the mate), Charmian, and I had just
sat down on deck to breakfast. Three unusually large seas caught
us. The boy at the wheel lost his head. Three times the Minota was
swept. The breakfast was rushed over the lee-rail. The knives and
forks went through the scuppers; a boy aft went clean overboard and
was dragged back; and our doughty skipper lay half inboard and half
out, jammed in the barbed wire. After that, for the rest of the
cruise, our joint use of the several remaining eating utensils was a
splendid example of primitive communism. On the Eugenie, however,
it was even worse, for we had but one teaspoon among four of us--but
the Eugenie is another story.
Our first port was Su'u on the west coast of Malaita. The Solomon
Islands are on the fringe of things. It is difficult enough sailing
on dark nights through reef-spiked channels and across erratic
currents where there are no lights to guide (from northwest to
southeast the Solomons extend across a thousand miles of sea, and on
all the thousands of miles of coasts there is not one lighthouse);
but the difficulty is seriously enhanced by the fact that the land
itself is not correctly charted. Su'u is an example. On the
Admiralty chart of Malaita the coast at this point runs a straight,
unbroken line. Yet across this straight, unbroken line the Minota
sailed in twenty fathoms of water. Where the land was alleged to
be, was a deep indentation. Into this we sailed, the mangroves
closing about us, till we dropped anchor in a mirrored pond.
Captain Jansen did not like the anchorage. It was the first time he
had been there, and Su'u had a bad reputation. There was no wind
with which to get away in case of attack, while the crew could be
bushwhacked to a man if they attempted to tow out in the whale-boat.
It was a pretty trap, if trouble blew up.
"Suppose the Minota went ashore--what would you do?" I asked.
"She's not going ashore," was Captain Jansen's answer.
"But just in case she did?" I insisted. He considered for a moment
and shifted his glance from the mate buckling on a revolver to the
boat's crew climbing into the whale-boat each man with a rifle.
"We'd get into the whale-boat, and get out of here as fast as God'd
let us," came the skipper's delayed reply.
He explained at length that no white man was sure of his Malaita
crew in a tight place; that the bushmen looked upon all wrecks as
their personal property; that the bushmen possessed plenty of Snider
rifles; and that he had on board a dozen "return" boys for Su'u who
were certain to join in with their friends and relatives ashore when
it came to looting the Minota.
The first work of the whale-boat was to take the "return" boys and
their trade-boxes ashore. Thus one danger was removed. While this
was being done, a canoe came alongside manned by three naked
savages. And when I say naked, I mean naked. Not one vestige of
clothing did they have on, unless nose-rings, ear-plugs, and shell
armlets be accounted clothing. The head man in the canoe was an old
chief, one-eyed, reputed to be friendly, and so dirty that a boat-
scraper would have lost its edge on him. His mission was to warn
the skipper against allowing any of his people to go ashore. The
old fellow repeated the warning again that night.
In vain did the whale-boat ply about the shores of the bay in quest
of recruits. The bush was full of armed natives; all willing enough
to talk with the recruiter, but not one would engage to sign on for
three years' plantation labour at six pounds per year. Yet they
were anxious enough to get our people ashore. On the second day
they raised a smoke on the beach at the head of the bay. This being
the customary signal of men desiring to recruit, the boat was sent.
But nothing resulted. No one recruited, nor were any of our men
lured ashore. A little later we caught glimpses of a number of
armed natives moving about on the beach.
Outside of these rare glimpses, there was no telling how many might
be lurking in the bush. There was no penetrating that primeval
jungle with the eye. In the afternoon, Captain Jansen, Charmian,
and I went dynamiting fish. Each one of the boat's crew carried a
Lee-Enfield. "Johnny," the native recruiter, had a Winchester
beside him at the steering sweep. We rowed in close to a portion of
the shore that looked deserted. Here the boat was turned around and
backed in; in case of attack, the boat would be ready to dash away.
In all the time I was on Malaita I never saw a boat land bow on. In
fact, the recruiting vessels use two boats--one to go in on the
beach, armed, of course, and the other to lie off several hundred
feet and "cover" the first boat. The Minota, however, being a small
vessel, did not carry a covering boat.
We were close in to the shore and working in closer, stern-first,
when a school of fish was sighted. The fuse was ignited and the
stick of dynamite thrown. With the explosion, the surface of the
water was broken by the flash of leaping fish. At the same instant
the woods broke into life. A score of naked savages, armed with
bows and arrows, spears, and Sniders, burst out upon the shore. At
the same moment our boat's crew, lifted their rifles. And thus the
opposing parties faced each other, while our extra boys dived over
after the stunned fish.
Three fruitless days were spent at Su'u. The Minota got no recruits
from the bush, and the bushmen got no heads from the Minota. In
fact, the only one who got anything was Wade, and his was a nice
dose of fever. We towed out with the whale-boat, and ran along the
coast to Langa Langa, a large village of salt-water people, built
with prodigious labour on a lagoon sand-bank--literally BUILT up, an
artificial island reared as a refuge from the blood-thirsty bushmen.
Here, also, on the shore side of the lagoon, was Binu, the place
where the Minota was captured half a year previously and her captain
killed by the bushmen. As we sailed in through the narrow entrance,
a canoe came alongside with the news that the man-of-war had just
left that morning after having burned three villages, killed some
thirty pigs, and drowned a baby. This was the Cambrian, Captain
Lewes commanding. He and I had first met in Korea during the
Japanese-Russian War, and we had been crossing each ether's trail
ever since without ever a meeting. The day the Snark sailed into
Suva, in the Fijis, we made out the Cambrian going out. At Vila, in
the New Hebrides, we missed each other by one day. We passed each
other in the night-time off the island of Santo. And the day the
Cambrian arrived at Tulagi, we sailed from Penduffryn, a dozen miles
away. And here at Langa Langa we had missed by several hours.
The Cambrian had come to punish the murderers of the Minota's
captain, but what she had succeeded in doing we did not learn until
later in the day, when a Mr. Abbot, a missionary, came alongside in
his whale-boat. The villages had been burned and the pigs killed.
But the natives had escaped personal harm. The murderers had not
been captured, though the Minota's flag and other of her gear had
been recovered. The drowning of the baby had come about through a
misunderstanding. Chief Johnny, of Binu, had declined to guide the
landing party into the bush, nor could any of his men be induced to
perform that office. Whereupon Captain Lewes, righteously
indignant, had told Chief Johnny that he deserved to have his
village burned. Johnny's beche de mer English did not include the
word "deserve." So his understanding of it was that his village was
to be burned anyway. The immediate stampede of the inhabitants was
so hurried that the baby was dropped into the water. In the
meantime Chief Johnny hastened to Mr. Abbot. Into his hand he put
fourteen sovereigns and requested him to go on board the Cambrian
and buy Captain Lewes off. Johnny's village was not burned. Nor
did Captain Lewes get the fourteen sovereigns, for I saw them later
in Johnny's possession when he boarded the Minota. The excuse
Johnny gave me for not guiding the landing party was a big boil
which he proudly revealed. His real reason, however, and a
perfectly valid one, though he did not state it, was fear of revenge
on the part of the bushmen. Had he, or any of his men, guided the
marines, he could have looked for bloody reprisals as soon as the
Cambrian weighed anchor.
As an illustration of conditions in the Solomons, Johnny's business
on board was to turn over, for a tobacco consideration, the sprit,
mainsail, and jib of a whale-boat. Later in the day, a Chief Billy
came on board and turned over, for a tobacco consideration, the mast
and boom. This gear belonged to a whale-boat which Captain Jansen
had recovered the previous trip of the Minota. The whale-boat
belonged to Meringe Plantation on the island of Ysabel. Eleven
contract labourers, Malaita men and bushmen at that, had decided to
run away. Being bushmen, they knew nothing of salt water nor of the
way of a boat in the sea. So they persuaded two natives of San
Cristoval, salt-water men, to run away with them. It served the San
Cristoval men right. They should have known better. When they had
safely navigated the stolen boat to Malaita, they had their heads
hacked off for their pains. It was this boat and gear that Captain
Jansen had recovered.
Not for nothing have I journeyed all the way to the Solomons. At
last I have seen Charmian's proud spirit humbled and her imperious
queendom of femininity dragged in the dust. It happened at Langa
Langa, ashore, on the manufactured island which one cannot see for
the houses. Here, surrounded by hundreds of unblushing naked men,
women, and children, we wandered about and saw the sights. We had
our revolvers strapped on, and the boat's crew, fully armed, lay at
the oars, stern in; but the lesson of the man-of-war was too recent
for us to apprehend trouble. We walked about everywhere and saw
everything until at last we approached a large tree trunk that
served as a bridge across a shallow estuary. The blacks formed a
wall in front of us and refused to let us pass. We wanted to know
why we were stopped. The blacks said we could go on. We
misunderstood, and started. Explanations became more definite.
Captain Jansen and I, being men, could go on. But no Mary was
allowed to wade around that bridge, much less cross it. "Mary" is
beche de mer for woman. Charmian was a Mary. To her the bridge was
tambo, which is the native for taboo. Ah, how my chest expanded!
At last my manhood was vindicated. In truth I belonged to the
lordly sex. Charmian could trapse along at our heels, but we were
MEN, and we could go right over that bridge while she would have to
go around by whale-boat.
Now I should not care to be misunderstood by what follows; but it is
a matter of common knowledge in the Solomons that attacks of fever
are often brought on by shock. Inside half an hour after Charmian
had been refused the right of way, she was being rushed aboard the
Minota, packed in blankets, and dosed with quinine. I don't know
what kind of shock had happened to Wada and Nakata, but at any rate
they were down with fever as well. The Solomons might be
healthfuller.
Also, during the attack of fever, Charmian developed a Solomon sore.
It was the last straw. Every one on the Snark had been afflicted
except her. I had thought that I was going to lose my foot at the
ankle by one exceptionally malignant boring ulcer. Henry and Tehei,
the Tahitian sailors, had had numbers of them. Wada had been able
to count his by the score. Nakata had had single ones three inches
in length. Martin had been quite certain that necrosis of his
shinbone had set in from the roots of the amazing colony he elected
to cultivate in that locality. But Charmian had escaped. Out of
her long immunity had been bred contempt for the rest of us. Her
ego was flattered to such an extent that one day she shyly informed
me that it was all a matter of pureness of blood. Since all the
rest of us cultivated the sores, and since she did not--well,
anyway, hers was the size of a silver dollar, and the pureness of
her blood enabled her to cure it after several weeks of strenuous
nursing. She pins her faith to corrosive sublimate. Martin swears
by iodoform. Henry uses lime-juice undiluted. And I believe that
when corrosive sublimate is slow in taking hold, alternate dressings
of peroxide of hydrogen are just the thing. There are white men in
the Solomons who stake all upon boracic acid, and others who are
prejudiced in favour of lysol. I also have the weakness of a
panacea. It is California. I defy any man to get a Solomon Island
sore in California.
We ran down the lagoon from Langa Langa, between mangrove swamps,
through passages scarcely wider than the Minota, and past the reef
villages of Kaloka and Auki. Like the founders of Venice, these
salt-water men were originally refugees from the mainland. Too weak
to hold their own in the bush, survivors of village massacres, they
fled to the sand-banks of the lagoon. These sand-banks they built
up into islands. They were compelled to seek their provender from
the sea, and in time they became salt-water men. They learned the
ways of the fish and the shellfish, and they invented hooks and
lines, nets and fish-traps. They developed canoe-bodies. Unable to
walk about, spending all their time in the canoes, they became
thick-armed and broad-shouldered, with narrow waists and frail
spindly legs. Controlling the sea-coast, they became wealthy, trade
with the interior passing largely through their hands. But
perpetual enmity exists between them and the bushmen. Practically
their only truces are on market-days, which occur at stated
intervals, usually twice a week. The bushwomen and the salt-water
women do the bartering. Back in the bush, a hundred yards away,
fully armed, lurk the bushmen, while to seaward, in the canoes, are
the salt-water men. There are very rare instances of the market-day
truces being broken. The bushmen like their fish too well, while
the salt-water men have an organic craving for the vegetables they
cannot grow on their crowded islets.
Thirty miles from Langa Langa brought us to the passage between
Bassakanna Island and the mainland. Here, at nightfall, the wind
left us, and all night, with the whale-boat towing ahead and the
crew on board sweating at the sweeps, we strove to win through. But
the tide was against us. At midnight, midway in the passage, we
came up with the Eugenie, a big recruiting schooner, towing with two
whale-boats. Her skipper, Captain Keller, a sturdy young German of
twenty-two, came on board for a "gam," and the latest news of
Malaita was swapped back and forth. He had been in luck, having
gathered in twenty recruits at the village of Fiu. While lying
there, one of the customary courageous killings had taken place.
The murdered boy was what is called a salt-water bushman--that is, a
salt-water man who is half bushman and who lives by the sea but does
not live on an islet. Three bushmen came down to this man where he
was working in his garden. They behaved in friendly fashion, and
after a time suggested kai-kai. Kai-kai means food. He built a
fire and started to boil some taro. While bending over the pot, one
of the bushmen shot him through the head. He fell into the flames,
whereupon they thrust a spear through his stomach, turned it around,
and broke it off.
"My word," said Captain Keller, "I don't want ever to be shot with a
Snider. Spread! You could drive a horse and carriage through that
hole in his head."
Another recent courageous killing I heard of on Malaita was that of
an old man. A bush chief had died a natural death. Now the bushmen
don't believe in natural deaths. No one was ever known to die a
natural death. The only way to die is by bullet, tomahawk, or spear
thrust. When a man dies in any other way, it is a clear case of
having been charmed to death. When the bush chief died naturally,
his tribe placed the guilt on a certain family. Since it did not
matter which one of the family was killed, they selected this old
man who lived by himself. This would make it easy. Furthermore, he
possessed no Snider. Also, he was blind. The old fellow got an
inkling of what was coming and laid in a large supply of arrows.
Three brave warriors, each with a Snider, came down upon him in the
night time. All night they fought valiantly with him. Whenever
they moved in the bush and made a noise or a rustle, he discharged
an arrow in that direction. In the morning, when his last arrow was
gone, the three heroes crept up to him and blew his brains out.
Morning found us still vainly toiling through the passage. At last,
in despair, we turned tail, ran out to sea, and sailed clear round
Bassakanna to our objective, Malu. The anchorage at Malu was very
good, but it lay between the shore and an ugly reef, and while easy
to enter, it was difficult to leave. The direction of the southeast
trade necessitated a beat to windward; the point of the reef was
widespread and shallow; while a current bore down at all times upon
the point.
Mr. Caulfeild, the missionary at Malu, arrived in his whale-boat
from a trip down the coast. A slender, delicate man he was,
enthusiastic in his work, level-headed and practical, a true
twentieth-century soldier of the Lord. When he came down to this
station on Malaita, as he said, he agreed to come for six months.
He further agreed that if he were alive at the end of that time, he
would continue on. Six years had passed and he was still continuing
on. Nevertheless he was justified in his doubt as to living longer
than six months. Three missionaries had preceded him on Malaita,
and in less than that time two had died of fever and the third had
gone home a wreck.
"What murder are you talking about?" he asked suddenly, in the midst
of a confused conversation with Captain Jansen.
Captain Jansen explained.
"Oh, that's not the one I have reference to," quoth Mr. Caulfeild.
"That's old already. It happened two weeks ago."
It was here at Malu that I atoned for all the exulting and gloating
I had been guilty of over the Solomon sore Charmian had collected at
Langa Langa. Mr. Caulfeild was indirectly responsible for my
atonement. He presented us with a chicken, which I pursued into the
bush with a rifle. My intention was to clip off its head. I
succeeded, but in doing so fell over a log and barked my shin.
Result: three Solomon sores. This made five all together that were
adorning my person. Also, Captain Jansen and Nakata had caught
gari-gari. Literally translated, gari-gari is scratch-scratch. But
translation was not necessary for the rest of us. The skipper's and
Nakata's gymnastics served as a translation without words.
(No, the Solomon Islands are not as healthy as they might be. I am
writing this article on the island of Ysabel, where we have taken
the Snark to careen and clean her cooper. I got over my last attack
of fever this morning, and I have had only one free day between
attacks. Charmian's are two weeks apart. Wada is a wreck from
fever. Last night he showed all the symptoms of coming down with
pneumonia. Henry, a strapping giant of a Tahitian, just up from his
last dose of fever, is dragging around the deck like a last year's
crab-apple. Both he and Tehei have accumulated a praiseworthy
display of Solomon sores. Also, they have caught a new form of
gari-gari, a sort of vegetable poisoning like poison oak or poison
ivy. But they are not unique in this. A number of days ago
Charmian, Martin, and I went pigeon-shooting on a small island, and
we have had a foretaste of eternal torment ever since. Also, on
that small island, Martin cut the soles of his feet to ribbons on
the coral whilst chasing a shark--at least, so he says, but from the
glimpse I caught of him I thought it was the other way about. The
coral-cuts have all become Solomon sores. Before my last fever I
knocked the skin off my knuckles while heaving on a line, and I now
have three fresh sores. And poor Nakata! For three weeks he has
been unable to sit down. He sat down yesterday for the first time,
and managed to stay down for fifteen minutes. He says cheerfully
that he expects to be cured of his gari-gari in another month.
Furthermore, his gari-gari, from too enthusiastic scratch-
scratching, has furnished footholds for countless Solomon sores.
Still furthermore, he has just come down with his seventh attack of
fever. If I were king, the worst punishment I could inflict on my
enemies would be to banish them to the Solomons. On second thought,
king or no king, I don't think I'd have the heart to do it.)
Recruiting plantation labourers on a small, narrow yacht, built for
harbour sailing, is not any too nice. The decks swarm with recruits
and their families. The main cabin is packed with them. At night
they sleep there. The only entrance to our tiny cabin is through
the main cabin, and we jam our way through them or walk over them.
Nor is this nice. One and all, they are afflicted with every form
of malignant skin disease. Some have ringworm, others have bukua.
This latter is caused by a vegetable parasite that invades the skin
and eats it away. The itching is intolerable. The afflicted ones
scratch until the air is filled with fine dry flakes. Then there
are yaws and many other skin ulcerations. Men come aboard with
Solomon sores in their feet so large that they can walk only on
their toes, or with holes in their legs so terrible that a fist
could be thrust in to the bone. Blood-poisoning is very frequent,
and Captain Jansen, with sheath-knife and sail needle, operates
lavishly on one and all. No matter how desperate the situation,
after opening and cleansing, he claps on a poultice of sea-biscuit
soaked in water. Whenever we see a particularly horrible case, we
retire to a corner and deluge our own sores with corrosive
sublimate. And so we live and eat and sleep on the Minota, taking
our chance and "pretending it is good."
At Suava, another artificial island, I had a second crow over
Charmian. A big fella marster belong Suava (which means the high
chief of Suava) came on board. But first he sent an emissary to
Captain Jansen for a fathom of calico with which to cover his royal
nakedness. Meanwhile he lingered in the canoe alongside. The regal
dirt on his chest I swear was half an inch thick, while it was a
good wager that the underneath layers were anywhere from ten to
twenty years of age. He sent his emissary on board again, who
explained that the big fella marster belong Suava was
condescendingly willing enough to shake hands with Captain Jansen
and me and cadge a stick or so of trade tobacco, but that
nevertheless his high-born soul was still at so lofty an altitude
that it could not sink itself to such a depth of degradation as to
shake hands with a mere female woman. Poor Charmian! Since her
Malaita experiences she has become a changed woman. Her meekness
and humbleness are appallingly becoming, and I should not be
surprised, when we return to civilization and stroll along a
sidewalk, to see her take her station, with bowed head, a yard in
the rear.
Nothing much happened at Suava. Bichu, the native cook, deserted.
The Minota dragged anchor. It blew heavy squalls of wind and rain.
The mate, Mr. Jacobsen, and Wada were prostrated with fever. Our
Solomon sores increased and multiplied. And the cockroaches on
board held a combined Fourth of July and Coronation Parade. They
selected midnight for the time, and our tiny cabin for the place.
They were from two to three inches long; there were hundreds of
them, and they walked all over us. When we attempted to pursue
them, they left solid footing, rose up in the air, and fluttered
about like humming-birds. They were much larger than ours on the
Snark. But ours are young yet, and haven't had a chance to grow.
Also, the Snark has centipedes, big ones, six inches long. We kill
them occasionally, usually in Charmian's bunk. I've been bitten
twice by them, both times foully, while I was asleep. But poor
Martin had worse luck. After being sick in bed for three weeks, the
first day he sat up he sat down on one. Sometimes I think they are
the wisest who never go to Carcassonne.
Later on we returned to Malu, picked up seven recruits, hove up
anchor, and started to beat out the treacherous entrance. The wind
was chopping about, the current upon the ugly point of reef setting
strong. Just as we were on the verge of clearing it and gaining
open sea, the wind broke off four points. The Minota attempted to
go about, but missed stays. Two of her anchors had been lost at
Tulagi. Her one remaining anchor was let go. Chain was let out to
give it a hold on the coral. Her fin keel struck bottom, and her
main topmast lurched and shivered as if about to come down upon our
heads. She fetched up on the slack of the anchors at the moment a
big comber smashed her shoreward. The chain parted. It was our
only anchor. The Minota swung around on her heel and drove headlong
into the breakers.
Bedlam reigned. All the recruits below, bushmen and afraid of the
sea, dashed panic-stricken on deck and got in everybody's way. At
the same time the boat's crew made a rush for the rifles. They knew
what going ashore on Malaita meant--one hand for the ship and the
other hand to fight off the natives. What they held on with I don't
know, and they needed to hold on as the Minota lifted, rolled, and
pounded on the coral. The bushmen clung in the rigging, too witless
to watch out for the topmast. The whale-boat was run out with a
tow-line endeavouring in a puny way to prevent the Minota from being
flung farther in toward the reef, while Captain Jansen and the mate,
the latter pallid and weak with fever, were resurrecting a scrap-
anchor from out the ballast and rigging up a stock for it. Mr.
Caulfeild, with his mission boys, arrived in his whale-boat to help.
When the Minota first struck, there was not a canoe in sight; but
like vultures circling down out of the blue, canoes began to arrive
from every quarter. The boat's crew, with rifles at the ready, kept
them lined up a hundred feet away with a promise of death if they
ventured nearer. And there they clung, a hundred feet away, black
and ominous, crowded with men, holding their canoes with their
paddles on the perilous edge of the breaking surf. In the meantime
the bushmen were flocking down from the hills armed with spears,
Sniders, arrows, and clubs, until the beach was massed with them.
To complicate matters, at least ten of our recruits had been
enlisted from the very bushmen ashore who were waiting hungrily for
the loot of the tobacco and trade goods and all that we had on
board.
The Minota was honestly built, which is the first essential for any
boat that is pounding on a reef. Some idea of what she endured may
be gained from the fact that in the first twenty-four hours she
parted two anchor-chains and eight hawsers. Our boat's crew was
kept busy diving for the anchors and bending new lines. There were
times when she parted the chains reinforced with hawsers. And yet
she held together. Tree trunks were brought from ashore and worked
under her to save her keel and bilges, but the trunks were gnawed
and splintered and the ropes that held them frayed to fragments, and
still she pounded and held together. But we were luckier than the
Ivanhoe, a big recruiting schooner, which had gone ashore on Malaita
several months previously and been promptly rushed by the natives.
The captain and crew succeeded in getting away in the whale-boats,
and the bushmen and salt-water men looted her clean of everything
portable.
Squall after squall, driving wind and blinding rain, smote the
Minota, while a heavier sea was making. The Eugenie lay at anchor
five miles to windward, but she was behind a point of land and could
not know of our mishap. At Captain Jansen's suggestion, I wrote a
note to Captain Keller, asking him to bring extra anchors and gear
to our aid. But not a canoe could be persuaded to carry the letter.
I offered half a case of tobacco, but the blacks grinned and held
their canoes bow-on to the breaking seas. A half a case of tobacco
was worth three pounds. In two hours, even against the strong wind
and sea, a man could have carried the letter and received in payment
what he would have laboured half a year for on a plantation. I
managed to get into a canoe and paddle out to where Mr. Caulfeild
was running an anchor with his whale-boat. My idea was that he
would have more influence over the natives. He called the canoes up
to him, and a score of them clustered around and heard the offer of
half a case of tobacco. No one spoke.
"I know what you think," the missionary called out to them. "You
think plenty tobacco on the schooner and you're going to get it. I
tell you plenty rifles on schooner. You no get tobacco, you get
bullets."
At last, one man, alone in a small canoe, took the letter and
started. Waiting for relief, work went on steadily on the Minota.
Her water-tanks were emptied, and spars, sails, and ballast started
shoreward. There were lively times on board when the Minota rolled
one bilge down and then the other, a score of men leaping for life
and legs as the trade-boxes, booms, and eighty-pound pigs of iron
ballast rushed across from rail to rail and back again. The poor
pretty harbour yacht! Her decks and running rigging were a raffle.
Down below everything was disrupted. The cabin floor had been torn
up to get at the ballast, and rusty bilge-water swashed and
splashed. A bushel of limes, in a mess of flour and water, charged
about like so many sticky dumplings escaped from a half-cooked stew.
In the inner cabin, Nakata kept guard over our rifles and
ammunition.
Three hours from the time our messenger started, a whale-boat,
pressing along under a huge spread of canvas, broke through the
thick of a shrieking squall to windward. It was Captain Keller, wet
with rain and spray, a revolver in belt, his boat's crew fully
armed, anchors and hawsers heaped high amidships, coming as fast as
wind could drive--the white man, the inevitable white man, coming to
a white man's rescue.
The vulture line of canoes that had waited so long broke and
disappeared as quickly as it had formed. The corpse was not dead
after all. We now had three whale-boats, two plying steadily
between the vessel and shore, the other kept busy running out
anchors, rebending parted hawsers, and recovering the lost anchors.
Later in the afternoon, after a consultation, in which we took into
consideration that a number of our boat's crew, as well as ten of
the recruits, belonged to this place, we disarmed the boat's crew.
This, incidently, gave them both hands free to work for the vessel.
The rifles were put in the charge of five of Mr. Caulfeild's mission
boys. And down below in the wreck of the cabin the missionary and
his converts prayed to God to save the Minota. It was an impressive
scene! the unarmed man of God praying with cloudless faith, his
savage followers leaning on their rifles and mumbling amens. The
cabin walls reeled about them. The vessel lifted and smashed upon
the coral with every sea. From on deck came the shouts of men
heaving and toiling, praying, in another fashion, with purposeful
will and strength of arm.
That night Mr. Caulfeild brought off a warning. One of our recruits
had a price on his head of fifty fathoms of shell-money and forty
pigs. Baffled in their desire to capture the vessel, the bushmen
decided to get the head of the man. When killing begins, there is
no telling where it will end, so Captain Jansen armed a whale-boat
and rowed in to the edge of the beach. Ugi, one of his boat's crew,
stood up and orated for him. Ugi was excited. Captain Jansen's
warning that any canoe sighted that night would be pumped full of
lead, Ugi turned into a bellicose declaration of war, which wound up
with a peroration somewhat to the following effect: "You kill my
captain, I drink his blood and die with him!"
The bushmen contented themselves with burning an unoccupied mission
house, and sneaked back to the bush. The next day the Eugenie
sailed in and dropped anchor. Three days and two nights the Minota
pounded on the reef; but she held together, and the shell of her was
pulled off at last and anchored in smooth water. There we said
good-bye to her and all on board, and sailed away on the Eugenie,
bound for Florida Island. {1}
Content of CHAPTER XV - CRUISING IN THE SOLOMONS [Jack London's book: The Cruise of the Snark]
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