Part 8

"You are the Tom Day who had a native's head cut off," said he; "now tell me the story," which Tom presently did. A native had shot at him without provocation. Some one said: "Don't shoot; it's a white man." "A white man can cut a bullet as well as another," was the native's reply as he fired. Tom put his hand to his ear, found that the shot had grazed it and his head, and the blood was running from the wound. Infuriated, he rushed into the house for his rifle, but when he got back, the man frightened at what he had done, had disappeared. Tom tried to persuade the people standing about to go after the man, pinion him, and fetch him back to be tried. To this they objected; they could not get him, they said, as he was a chief and had people to protect him. One of the men came close to Tom. "Better we kill him," he said in a low voice, which Tom imitated. "If you do," was Tom's answer, "fetch me the head." Then turning to us with an apologetic air he explained that "If I had not asked to see the head they'd just have gone and killed some poor, inoffensive fellow and I'd never have known the difference." That night he was called up by the men who had the head, sure enough. "I made 'em stick it up on the wall," said Tom, "and then I got a light and looked at it. I jerked it down and slung it as far as I could; and, by golly, the old woman was in the way, half scared to death, and it took her on the side of the head and knocked her down, and I had to pour three or four pails of water over her, for she had fainted dead away."

"And after that," he continued with an air of virtuous indignation, "they wanted to make trouble about it in Sydney--they said I had killed a man. What did they mean by it, I'd like to know? I never killed no man; I only told them to fetch his head so I could be sure it was him."

It was very cold last night and my bed and tent and things nearly blew away; I could not leave them and go below where it was warmer, but had to stay and hold on to my belongings lest I should lose them entirely; so to-day I lashed everything securely. No one stayed on the hatch but Lloyd and me. The onions alongside Lloyd's and my beds are decaying, and smell horrid, as do a great lot of sharks' fins drying over our heads.

_15th._--Waked to find that we were lying off Tapituea, Tin Jack's station. He had packed the day before and was all ready to land, his pig tied up and lying on deck. Tapituea looks a large and dreary island, the whole lee side submerged, making it very dangerous. We could not venture inside the lagoon, and even if we did we should have to anchor far away from the landing-place. It was a long time before any one came on board, but finally a Hawaiian who spoke a little English came out in his canoe. As Tin Jack appeared to be rather depressed with the news from his place, and it was almost impossible to land his stuff, we left Tapituea and ran on to Nanouti, where he thought he might prefer to stop. He has a sort of partner at Nanouti, known as "Billy Jones's cousin." The partner was soon on board, a man with a big head and one hand blown off by dynamite. A new arrangement was made with Tin Jack, who said he preferred staying in the ship as long as possible. We are now to carry him on with us, and land him at Nanouti as we return. A pleasant-looking young native came on board with the trader. He wore a rosary round his neck, which reminded me that there were Catholic missionaries on the island; I therefore made a little parcel of four Catholic pictures for them, and Louis put in his card; Tin Jack added a bag of garlic.

We left Nanouti before dinner, had a beautiful golden sunset, and are now steaming on to somewhere else, Apemama,[15] I trust. To-night the evening star is extraordinarily brilliant, with the blue fire of a diamond. Last night Mr. Hird came to the hatch and called out in a most excited voice: "Osbourne, we are just passing the equator!" Lloyd jumped out of a sound sleep and ran aft, crying: "Where is she? I don't see her!" It was a sorry joke; we were crossing the line, and it was not Captain Reid's schooner, on which we had passed so many delightful months.

[15] It seems easier to explain our relation with Tembinoka, King of Apemama, at whose island I hoped we would call, by giving an extract from a former diary written on the trading schooner _Equator_:

We have been now about a month on the island of the redoubtable Tembinoka, an absolute monarch, who holds the lives of his subjects (our own also) in the hollow of his hand. He says: "I kill plenty men, him 'praid (afraid) now. I no kill any more." That he does not mean to kill any more his subjects do not believe, nor I, quite, myself. He once shot five men, one after another, as they sat in a "_moniap_" (native house) where they had been brought to be examined by him concerning some breach of his laws. There were seven men in all, but two escaped and are still at large in another island. He says his father had a head house where he hung up the decapitated heads of his enemies--or in other words, people who differed in their opinion from him or whom he did not like (a friend of ours afterward saw this _moniap_ with its grisly decoration of skulls). No missionaries and no white people are allowed on Tembinoka's islands (he rules over three) with the exception of Johnny, an inoffensive, dying "poor white," who lives some four miles from the village. We did not know in the least whether we should be allowed to remain, and waited with some anxiety for the appearance of his Majesty. In the meantime the whole ship was in a commotion, scouring the decks and getting everything into apple-pie order. I did not know that the _Equator_ could be brought to such a pitch of cleanliness. Finally the King's steps arrived, were made fast to the sides, and the royal boat was seen to put out. We thought it more dignified to remain in the cabin and show none of the curiosity we felt concerning this very remarkable man. We had been told that he was grossly stout, and that was all the description we had been able to get from the stupid people we had talked with; consequently, we were not prepared to meet the most magnificently royal personage that it has yet been our lot to behold, a gentleman by nature and a king every inch of him. He gave us a long and careful study; afterward he said it was first the eyes and then the mouth he judged by. We passed muster, Louis's eyes being specially commended, and were told to come ashore and remain as long as we liked as his guests. The next day we chose a spot where we thought it would be pleasant to live, and Tembinoka ordered his men to carry houses and set them up there for us. The captain and Lloyd stayed at the King's palace all night; the next morning they were alarmed to see Tembinoka shooting into the village with a rifle. He explained that his men were lazy and should be at work, so he was reminding them that accidents were possible. The whole trembling village set to work like bees, and by the time I came over, one sleeping house was up, a little thatched bird-cage with flaps on all sides to raise or lower as one likes, and an opensided cook house for Ah Foo (a Chinese servant we brought from the Marquesas). The King sat on a mat and directed proceedings. He motioned me to sit beside him and asked for a cigarette, of which he is very fond. Whenever a native has to pass the King, or come near him for any purpose, he must crouch and crawl; even his Majesty's own sister did so when she came to join our party.

* * * * *

We have had a little ripple of excitement on the usually smooth current of our existence. To go back to the beginning: Soon after we were settled in "Equator town," as we call our hamlet, the King proposed sending the royal cook to learn from Ah Foo. The man was an insolent, handsome fellow, with no intention of either learning or working, and either lay on the floor of the kitchen or squatted smoking, while Ah Foo, who was in mortal terror of Tembinoka, prepared the dishes which the royal cook, without doubt, passed off as his own productions. This went on for some time, and as the King's meal hours are the same as our own, interfered a good deal with Ah Foo's work and consequently our comfort. The climax was reached when the cook, too lazy to walk down to the well for a can of water for himself, came softly behind me as I was watering my plants and impudently snatched a dipperful from my pail. We then took the first opportunity to let the King know how things were going, advising him to send a man who was willing to learn. Since then his Majesty's steward, a capable, serious man, has accompanied the cook. Shortly after our complaint we heard several rifle-shots from the palace, and soon after met the cook, who passed us hurriedly, without the usual salutations, his countenance bearing the marks of furious anger and fear. It seems that he had been the King's target, running and crouching behind piles of stones, the bullets flying after him. Tembinoka came over a few days later and apologised for having possibly alarmed or annoyed us. He said he had no intention of killing the man, which he might have done easily, being a dead shot, but only wished to frighten him. He said he had killed enough people to show the rest what he could do, but thought it a good plan to remind them occasionally that he had a rifle and the power to use it as he pleased. "More better him 'praid" (afraid), were his words. As may be imagined, the cook bears us no good will, knowing that our complaints had turned that fearful rifle against him. However, he dropped his insolent airs and became almost obsequious.

* * * * *

Since we have been here, the schooner _Tiernan_ came in for copra. While she was lying in the lagoon, the King spent most of his time aboard and some seven hundred dollars of his money (he spent neatly one thousand on the _Equator_); then he got very drunk, going on steadily a little worse or a little better, according to his headaches. Day before yesterday, he gave a feast and dance to which he did not invite us. At noon he came to say he would lunch with us. His eyes were wandering and his voice excited and almost boisterous. It was plain that royalty was not far from being vulgarly drunk. We could see that he had been worried by our visits to the palace having ceased and wished to have an understanding that there was no ill feeling on either side. He demanded beer, saying that he had been drinking gin and port wine, and dozed off in his chair, starting up in a few moments much mortified. I noticed that even in this stage of semi-intoxication, he used his knife and fork in our fashion, and not as he had learned from the "South Sea merchants." It is an unending pleasure to hear the King say: "I want to go home." There is an element of appeal in it, reminding one of a child who can bear the tedium no longer. It is always directed to Louis or, he being absent, to me as his representative. He wanted to go home very soon after that luncheon. In the evening we could hear the dancers in the big "speak house," clapping, stamping, and singing. The sounds were so savage, so like an immense pack of dogs fighting in a mass, that we did not realise what it was, but thought that some form of riot was going on. An absolute tyrant like Tembinoka walks amid dangers of which he is fully conscious. Tembinoka dead drunk was not an idea to contemplate with serenity, and the sound of a single shot did not tend to reassure us, so we laid our pistols where they would be handy. Louis's idea is that no one would attack the King unless he were absolutely certain of killing him instantly, in which case we had better wait here until the enemy came for us. I think on the contrary, that the commission of so enormous a crime would make a pause. The terrors of the deed would fill the childish minds of the natives to the exclusion of anything else and there would be a short time of confusion in which nothing would take place but shoutings and aimless running about; then would be our time to rush in and take possession of a stout wooden house inside the palace walls, and the King's arms, and really the King's throne. There would always be the chance, a very slight one, to be sure, that we might still be in time to save the King's life. I do not quite understand what Louis's tactics would be, but aside from any other consideration, there must be but one commander and he should be absolute even though the others do not agree with him.

After the shot (which was only aimed at a dog, though that we could not know) we listened and found that there was no interruption to the singing and dancing, which reassured us. In the night, Louis, being restless and not sleepy, took his flageolet and wandered off into the woods, playing as he walked, until I lost hearing of him. About midnight, or a little later, I was out a short distance from the house watching with some anxiety for his return. Pretty soon I saw him coming along the main path toward our house. I also saw a dark figure dogging his steps. I called to him, telling him what I had seen. He was convinced that it was an hallucination of mine and I was quite ready to believe him, but as we talked I caught sight of the man running toward the palace. I pointed him out to Louis, who dashed off in pursuit. When the man saw he was outdistanced, for Louis is a fine sprinter, he turned the face of the cook, smiling suavely. I heard "sea language" in Louis's biggest voice, and saw him leaping strangely in the moonlight, like a grasshopper. He came back in fits of laughter, saying he had kicked the cook, who fled in terror.

Ever since the cook found we had turned against him I have had an uneasy feeling that some one was about our sleeping house in the night, and several times I was certain a hand was cautiously feeling about inside our door flap. It seemed a foolish notion, so I had said nothing about it until this night, then Louis said he, too, had distinctly heard the same thing. We cannot complain to the King for he would kill the man instantly, and we do not go so far as to desire his death. We have not seen or heard from him since. Ah Foo thinks he has gone away in fear of his life. I have it in my heart to be sorry for the fellow, for his terror must be extreme, and we who have brought this upon him belong to the feared and hated white race.

* * * * *

We are getting to be rather anxious concerning the _Equator_. She was to be gone two weeks, but it is now over a month since she left us. The _Tiernan_ met her at Butaritari, she leaving the day before Captain Saxe of the _Tiernan_. Captain Reid intended to go to Maraki to take a man known as "the poisoner" over to another island, Taravao, I think. Now Taravao is so near to Maraki that Peter Grant had been over there in a small boat. There may have been trouble in Maraki--certainly it was imminent--which has kept the captain, but still it is a long time. He promised, if the schooner were lost and he was saved, that he would make his way here somehow. In these dangerous and uncertain waters one is easily made uneasy. Fortunately for us, the _Tiernan_ was able to let us have some stores. Our salt beef was finished, and we were absolutely sickened of wild chickens shot by Ah Foo with the King's gun.

I had a little strip of coral dug out, got rotted leaves from under a tree, put them into the hole, and into this I emptied the half-decayed filth that was left in the onion basket. I should think I have nearly two dozen onions now growing finely. I have invented a salad for Louis of which he is extremely fond. In all these islands there is one cocoanut that has a sweet husk, used for cleaning the teeth. In Butaritari the baron often caused me great embarrassment by chewing a brush for me. This sweet nut when green has a little crisp portion at the stem end which I cut up and made into salad with oil and vinegar, or rather oil and lime-juice, as we have no vinegar. We have put out a bottle of sour toddy hoping to get vinegar from that.

* * * * *

My diary ends here, abruptly; I had too much on my hands to find any further time for writing diaries, for Ah Foo fell ill, and I must be cook, purveyor, housemaid, and what not, as well as nurse. Ah Foo announced his illness (something alarmingly like diphtheria) in these words, "Me sick: no can work; no can cook--no good any more--more better you kill me, now," offering Louis, as he spoke, a large, keenly sharpened carving knife and his bared throat ready for the sacrifice. He was severely ill for some days, needing almost constant attention. His undisguised surprise that I would stoop to nurse a Chinaman was pathetic, and his gratitude afterward was sometimes shown in unexpected and embarrassing ways, as, for instance, when he insisted on shooting several men who waked me from an afternoon nap by singing Christmas songs beneath my window; or when he proposed to burglariously enter a trader's house to steal something for me that could not be procured otherwise.

It seemed a rash thing to let the _Tiernan_ sail away without us as we had finished, not only our own supplies, but the King's also. True, Mr. Lauterbach, the mate of the _Tiernan_, let us have several kegs of salt beef, and Reuben (which was the nearest we could come to pronouncing his name), the King's majordomo, had fetched three big hawkbill turtles from another island. The turtles were for the King's own larder, but he sent us a generous portion of each; we, of course, divided accordingly when we opened our kegs of beef. But these provisions would soon be finished, and if, as we each feared but dared not say, the _Equator_ were lost, "cocoanut steaks" might become our sole diet. Indeed, I had packed the most of our belongings in some large camphor-wood chests ready to go on board, and we had even chosen our bunks when a picture of Captain Reid's face if he arrived to find us gone rose before my mind's eye. "Louis," I suddenly whispered, "I don't want to go." Without a question Louis immediately cancelled our passage and the _Tiernan_ sailed away without us. Not many days afterward she capsized and sank in a very odd way. A heavy gale that had piled the sea up into enormous waves was followed by a dead calm. The _Tiernan_, lying quite helpless, was rolled over, further and further, until she "turned turtle" and sank. Years after the mate, Mr. Lauterbach, whom I had supposed to be drowned, came to see me in San Francisco. He, he told me, with some natives, managed to turn over a boat that floated out upside down from the schooner. With only the carcass of the ship's pet pig which they had picked up and what rain fell from the sky for sustenance, the boat went drifting off. I am not sure that they had an oar, but Mr. Lauterbach caught a native sleeping-mat that was floating on the water; the castaways took turns in holding up this mat, which thus served as a sail. They could not hope for a rescue in these unfrequented waters, so Mr. Lauterbach tried to work toward an inhabited island with only the position of sun and stars for guidance. When he did make land, after an incredible length of time to have lived without food or water, there were, as I remember, only himself, one man and a demented woman left living in the boat. None of our party, except, perhaps, Ah Foo, would have been able to endure such hardships--if, indeed, we had not gone straight down with the schooner--the most likely thing to happen. So it was as well that I asked to go back to our meagre fare to await the _Equator_.

_16th._--Early this morning we were lying outside the lagoon of Apemama, just alongside the little island at the entrance. There was no sign of life, so, after waiting awhile, a boat with Mr. Henderson, Tin Jack, and Louis went to find out the reason. They came back with the news that the King was away visiting his island of Kuria, so off we started to hunt for him. Arrived at Kuria, a boat came out to tell us that the King was ill from the sequelæ of measles; also it brought an insulting letter to Mr. Henderson, signed by the King but written in a white man's hand; Mr. Henderson, very angry, showed the letter to Louis, who proposed that he should be present at the interview with the King. To this Mr. Henderson consented. Of course we all went on shore; Louis and Lloyd and I took our presents with us; from Louis a chibouk, from Lloyd a filled cartridge-belt with a sheathed dagger, mine being the King's own flag after my design. I thought it very generous of Mr. Henderson that he advised me to keep my flag back in case the King came on board, so we might get a better effect by breaking his colours man-of-war fashion--this after the insulting letter and before what promised to be a very unpleasant interview.

Our black fellows pulled us across in splendid style, passing the King's returning messenger, who made a fine though unsuccessful spurt to catch up with us. As we rowed along the beach surprised cries of "Pani! Pani!" (Fanny! Fanny!) ran through the _moniaps_ (native houses) where the King's wives were sitting. The King, looking older and thinner, received us in the native fashion with no apparent astonishment. The presents were given, and then Lloyd and I left the party to get their explanations over, the King smoking his chibouk the while with great enjoyment, while the cartridge-belt hung over his shoulder.