Blown to Bits: The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago by R. M. Ballantyne (red novels TXT) 📖

“Are the Keeling Islands far off?”

“Lift up your head and look straight along the bridge of your nose, lad, and you’ll see them. They’re an interesting group, are the Keelin’ Islands. Volcanic, they are, with a coral top-dressin’, so to speak. Sit down here an’ I’ll tell ’ee about ’em.”

Nigel shut up the telescope through which he had been examining the thin, blue line on the horizon that indicated the islands in question, and sat down on the cabin skylight beside his father.

“They’ve got a romantic history too, though a short one, an’ are set like a gem on the bosom of the deep blue sea.”

“Come, father, you’re drifting out of your true course—that’s poetical!”

“I know it, lad, but I’m only quotin’ your mother. Well, you must know that the Keelin’ Islands—we call them Keelin’ for short—were uninhabited between fifty and sixty years ago, when a Scotsman named Ross, thinking them well situated as a port of call for the repair and provisioning of vessels on their way to Australia and China, set his heart on them and quietly took possession in the name of England. Then he went home to fetch his wife and family of six children, intendin’ to settle on the islands for good. Returning in 1827 with the family and fourteen adventurers, twelve of whom were English, one a Portugee and one a Javanee, he found to his disgust that an Englishman named Hare had stepped in before him and taken possession. This Hare was a very bad fellow; a rich man who wanted to live like a Rajah, with lots o’ native wives and retainers, an’ be a sort of independent prince. Of course he was on bad terms at once with Ross, who, finding that things were going badly, felt that it would be unfair to hold his people to the agreement which was made when he thought the whole group was his own, so he offered to release them. They all, except two men and one woman, accepted the release and went off in a gun-boat that chanced to touch there at the time. For a good while Hare and his rival lived there—the one tryin’ to get the Dutch, the other to induce the English Government to claim possession. Neither Dutch nor English would do so at first, but the English did it at long last—in 1878—and annexed the islands to the Government of Ceylon.

“Long before that date, however—before 1836—Hare left and went to Singapore, where he died, leaving Ross in possession—the ‘King of the Cocos Islands’ as he came to be called. In a few years—chiefly through the energy of Ross’s eldest son, to whom he soon gave up the management of affairs—the Group became a prosperous settlement. Its ships traded in cocoa-nuts, (the chief produce of the islands), throughout all the Straits Settlements, and boatbuildin’ became one of their most important industries. But there was one thing that prevented it from bein’ a very happy though prosperous place, an’ that was the coolies who had been hired in Java, for the only men that could be got there at first were criminals who had served their time in the chain-gangs of Batavia. As these men were fit for anything—from pitch-and-toss to murder—and soon outnumbered the colonists, the place was kept in constant alarm and watchfulness. For, as I dare say you know, the Malays are sometimes liable to have the spirit of amok on them, which leads them to care for and fear nothin’, and to go in for a fight-to-death, from which we get our sayin’—run amuck. An’ when a strong fellow is goin’ about loose in this state o’ mind, it’s about as bad as havin’ a tiger prowlin’ in one’s garden.

“Well, sometimes two or three o’ these coolies would mutiny and bide in the woods o’ one o’ the smaller uninhabited islands. An’ the colonists would have no rest till they hunted them down. So, to keep matters right, they had to be uncommon strict. It was made law that no one should spend the night on any but what was called the Home Island without permission. Every man was bound to report himself at the guard-house at a fixed hour; every fire to be out at sunset, and every boat was numbered and had to be in its place before that time. So they went on till the year 1862, when a disaster befell them that made a considerable change—at first for the worse, but for the better in the long-run. Provin’ the truth, my lad, of what I was—well, no—I was goin’ to draw a moral here, but I won’t!

“It was a cyclone that did the business. Cyclones have got a free-an’-easy way of makin’ a clean sweep of the work of years in a few hours. This cyclone completely wrecked the homes of the Keelin’ Islanders, and Ross—that’s the second Ross, the son of the first one—sent home for his son, who was then a student of engineering in Glasgow, to come out and help him to put things to rights. Ross the third obeyed the call, like a good son,—observe that, Nigel.”

“All right, father, fire away!”

“Like a good son,” repeated the captain, “an’ he turned out to be a first-rate man, which was lucky, for his poor father died soon after, leavin’ him to do the work alone. An’ well able was the young engineer to do it. He got rid o’ the chain-gang men altogether, and hired none but men o’ the best character in their place. He cleared off the forests and planted the ground with cocoa-nut palms. Got out steam mills, circular saws, lathes, etcetera, and established a system of general education with a younger brother as head-master—an’ tail-master too, for I believe there was only one. He also taught the men to work in brass, iron, and wood, and his wife—a Cocos girl that he married after comin’ out—taught all the women and girls to sew, cook, and manage the house. In short, everything went on in full swing of prosperity, till the year 1876, when the island-born inhabitants were about 500, as contented and happy as could be.

“In January of that year another cyclone paid them a visit. The barometer gave them warning, and, remembering the visit of fourteen years before, they made ready to receive the new visitor. All the boats were hauled up to places of safety, and every other preparation was made. Down it came, on the afternoon o’ the 28th—worse than they had expected. Many of the storehouses and mills had been lately renewed or built. They were all gutted and demolished. Everything movable was swept away like bits of paper. Lanes, hundreds of yards in length, were cleared among the palm-trees by the whirling wind, which seemed to perform a demon-dance of revelry among them. In some cases it snapped trees off close to the ground. In others it seemed to swoop down from above, lick up a patch of trees bodily and carry them clean away, leaving the surrounding trees untouched. Sometimes it would select a tree of thirty years growth, seize it, spin it round, and leave it a permanent spiral screw. I was in these regions about the time, and had the account from a native who had gone through it all and couldn’t speak of it except with glaring eyeballs and gasping breath.

“About midnight of the 28th the gale was at its worst. Darkness that could be felt between the flashes of lightning. Thunder that was nearly drowned by the roaring of the wind an’ the crashing of everything all round. To save their lives the people had to fling themselves into ditches and hollows of the ground. Mr Ross and some of his people were lying in the shelter of a wall near his house. There had been a schooner lying not far off. When Mr Ross raised his head cautiously above the wall to have a look to wind’ard he saw the schooner comin’ straight for him on the top of a big wave. ‘Hold on!’ he shouted, fell flat down, and laid hold o’ the nearest bush. Next moment the wave burst right over the wall, roared on up to the garden, 150 yards above high-water mark, and swept his house clean away! By good fortune the wall stood the shock, and the schooner stuck fast just before reachin’ it, but so near that the end of the jib-boom passed right over the place where the household lay holdin’ on for dear life and half drowned. It was a tremendous night,” concluded the captain, “an’ nearly everything on the islands was wrecked, but they’ve survived it, as you’ll see. Though it’s seven years since that cyclone swep’ over them, they’re all right and goin’ ahead again, full swing, as if nothin’ had happened.”

“And is Ross the Third still king?” asked Nigel with much interest.

“Ay—at least he was king a few years ago when I passed this way and had occasion to land to replace a tops’l yard that had been carried away.”

“Then you won’t arrive as a stranger?”

“I should think not,” returned the captain, getting up and gazing steadily at the atoll or group of islets enclosed within a coral ring which they were gradually approaching.

Night had descended, however, and the gale had decreased almost to a calm, ere they steered through the narrow channel—or what we may call a broken part of the ring—which led to the calm lagoon inside. Nigel Roy leaned over the bow, watching with profound attention the numerous phosphorescent fish and eel-like creatures which darted hither and thither like streaks of silver from beneath their advancing keel. He had enough of the naturalist in him to arouse in his mind keen interest in the habits and action of the animal life around him, and these denizens of the coral-groves were as new to him as their appearance was unexpected.

“You’ll find ’em very kind and hospitable, lad,” said the captain to his son.

“What, the fish?”

“No, the inhabitants. Port—port—steady!”

“Steady it is!” responded the man at the wheel.

“Let go!” shouted the captain.

A heavy plunge, followed by the rattling of chains and swinging round of the brig, told that they had come to an anchor in the lagoon of the Cocos-Keeling Islands.