The Call Of The South by George Lewis Becke (rocket ebook reader .TXT) 📖

The large boats were armed with swivels and muskets, and a furious engagement ensued. The natives were driven from the water, but succeeded in taking off their wounded chief, who expired as he reached the shore.

"After the death of Hennean, the name of the chief we had slain, the inhabitants of Massacre Island fled to some other place, and left all things as they were before our attack upon them, and our men roamed over it at will. The skulls of several of our slaughtered men were found at Hennean's door, trophies of his bloody prowess. These were now buried with the honours of war; the colours of the _Antarctic_ were lowered half-mast, minute guns were fired, and dirges were played by our band, in honour of those who had fallen untimely on Massacre Island. This was all that feeling or affection could bestow. Those so inhumanly murdered had at last the rites of burial performed for them; millions have perished without such honours...it is the last sad office that can be paid.

"We now commenced collecting and curing _beche-de-mer_ and should have succeeded to our wishes, if we had not been continually harassed by the natives as soon as we began our efforts. We continued to work in this way until the 28th of October, when we found that the natives were still hostile, and on that day one of our men was attacked on Massacre Island, but escaped death through great presence of mind, and shot the man, who was the brother of the chief Hennean. Our man's name was Thomas Holmes, a cool, deliberate Englishman. Such an instance of self-possession, in such great danger as that in which he was placed, would have given immortality to a greater man. We felt ourselves much harassed and vexed by the persevering savages, and finding it impossible to make them understand our motives and intentions, we came to the conclusion to leave the place forthwith. This was painful, after such struggles and sacrifices and misfortunes; but there was no other course to pursue. Accordingly, on the 3rd of November, 1830, we set fire to our house and castle, and departed by the light of them, taking the _beche-de-mer_ we had collected and cured."

So ends Mrs. Morrell's story of the tragedy of "Massacre Island". She has much else to relate of the subsequent cruise of the _Antarctic_ in the South Pacific and the East Indies, and finally the happy conclusion of an adventurous voyage, when the vessel returned safely to New York.

If the reader has been sufficiently interested in her story to desire to know where in the South Pacific her "Massacre Island" is situated, he will find it in any modern map or atlas, almost midway between New Ireland and Bougainville Island, the largest of the Solomon group, and in lat. 4 deg. 50' S., long. 154 deg. 20' E. In conclusion, I may mention that further relics of the visit of the _Antarctic_ came to light about fifteen years ago, when some of the natives brought three or four round shot to the local trader then living on Nisan. They had found them buried under some coral stone _debris_ when searching for robber crabs.



CHAPTER V ~ MUTINIES

Mutinies, even at the present day, are common enough. The facts concerning many of them never come to light, it is so often to the advantage of the after-guard of a ship to hush matters up. I know of one instance in which the crew of a ship loading guano phosphates at Howland Island imprisoned the captain, three mates and the steward in the cabin for some days; then hauled them on deck, triced up the whole five and gave them a hundred lashes each, in revenge for the diabolical cruelties that had been inflicted upon them day by day for long months. Then they liberated their tormentors, took to the boats and dispersed themselves on board other guano ships loading at How-land Island, leaving their former captain and officers to shift for themselves. This was one of the mutinies that never came to light, or at least the mutineers escaped punishment.

I have witnessed three mutinies--in the last of which I took part, although I was not a member of the ship's crew.

My first experience occurred when I was a boy, and has been alluded to by the late Lord Pembroke in his "Introduction" to the first book I had published--a collection of tales entitled _By Reef and Palm_. It was a poor sort of an affair, but filled my boyish heart with a glorious delight--in fact it was an enjoyable mutiny in some respects, for what might have been a tragedy was turned into a comedy.

With a brother two years older I was sent to San Francisco by our parents to begin life in a commercial house, and subsequently (of course) make our fortunes.

Our passages were taken at Newcastle (New South Wales) on the barque _Lizzie and Rosa_, commanded by a little red-headed Irishman, to whose care we were committed. His wife (who sailed with him) was a most lovable woman, generous to a fault. _He_ was about the meanest specimen of an Irishman that ever was born, was a savage little bully, boasted of being a Fenian, and his insignificant appearance on his quarter deck, as he strutted up and down, irresistibly suggested a monkey on a stick, and my brother and myself took a quick dislike to him, as also did the other passengers, of whom there were thirty--cabin and steerage. His wife (who was the daughter of a distinguished Irish prelate) was actually afraid of the little man, who snarled and snapped at her as if she were a disobedient child. (Both of them are long since dead, so I can write freely of their characteristics.)

The barque had formerly been a French corvette--the _Felix Bernaboo_. She was old, ill-found and leaky, and from the day we left Newcastle the pumps were kept going, and a week later the crew came aft and demanded that the ship should return to port.

The little man succeeded in quieting them for the time by giving them better food, and we continued on our course, meeting with such a series of adverse gales that it was forty-one days before we sighted the island of Rurutu in the South Pacific. By this time the crew and steerage passengers were in a very angry frame of mind; the former were overworked and exhausted, and the latter were furious at the miserly allowance of food doled out to them by the equally miserly captain.

At Rurutu the natives brought off two boat-loads of fresh provisions, but the captain bought only one small pig for the cabin passengers. The steerage passengers bought up everything else, and in a few minutes the crew came aft and asked the captain to buy them some decent food in place of the decayed pork and weevily biscuit upon which they had been existing. He refused, and ordered them for'ard, and then the mate, a hot-tempered Yorkshireman named Oliver, lost his temper, and told the captain that the men were starving. Angry words followed, and the mate knocked the little man down.

Picking himself up, he went below, and reappeared with a brace of old-fashioned Colt's revolvers, one of which--after declaring he would "die like an Irishman"--he pointed at the mate, and calling upon him to surrender and be put in irons, he fired towards his head. Fortunately the bullet missed. The sympathetic crew made a rush aft, seized the skipper, and after knocking him about rather severely, held him under the force pump, and nearly drowned him. Only for the respect that the crew had for his wife, I really believe they would have killed him, for they were wrought up to a pitch of fury by his tyranny and meanness. The boatswain carried him below, locked him up in one of the state-rooms, and there he was kept in confinement till the barque reached Honolulu, twenty days later, the mate acting as skipper. At Honolulu, the mate and all the crew were tried for mutiny, but the court acquitted them all, mainly through the testimony of the passengers.

That was my first experience of a mutiny. My brother and I enjoyed it immensely, especially the attempted shooting of the good old mate, and the subsequent spectacle of the evil-tempered, vindictive little skipper being held under the force pump.

My third experience of a mutiny I take next (as it arose from a similar cause to the first). I was a passenger on a brig bound from Samoa to the Gilbert Islands (Equatorial Pacific). The master was a German, brutal and overbearing to a degree, and the two mates were no better. One was an American "tough," the other a lazy, foul-mouthed Swede. All three men were heavy drinkers, and we were hardly out of Apia before the Swede (second mate) broke a sailor's jaw with an iron belaying pin. The crew were nearly all natives--steady men, and fairly good seamen. Five of them were Gilbert Islanders, and three natives of Niue (Savage Island), and it was one of these latter whose jaw was broken. They were an entirely new crew and had shipped in ignorance of the character of the captain. I had often heard of him as a brutal fellow, and the brig (the _Alfreda_ of Hamburg) had long had an evil name. She was a labour-ship ("black-birder") and I had taken passage in her only because I was anxious to get to the Marshall Islands as quickly as possible.

There were but five Europeans on board--captain, two mates, bos'un and myself. The bos'un was, although hard on the crew, not brutal, and he never struck them.

We had not been out three days when the captain, in a fit of rage, knocked a Gilbert Islander down for dropping a wet paint-brush on the deck. Then he kicked him about the head until the poor fellow was insensible.

From that time out not a day passed but one or more of the crew were struck or kicked. The second mate's conduct filled me with fury and loathing, for, in addition to his cruelty, his language was nothing but a string of curses and blasphemy. Within a week I saw that the Gilbert Islanders were getting into a dangerous frame of mind.

These natives are noted all over the Pacific for their courage, and seeing that mischief was brewing, I spoke to the bos'un about it. He agreed with me, but said it was no use speaking to the skipper.

To me the captain and officers were civil enough, that is, in a gruff sort of way, so I decided to speak to the former. I must mention that I spoke the Gilbert and Savage Island dialects, and so heard the natives talk. However, I said nothing of that to the German. I merely said to him that he was running a great risk in knocking the men about, and added that their countrymen might try to cut off the brig out of revenge. He snorted with contempt, and both he and the mates continued to "haze" the now sulky and brooding natives.

One calm Sunday night we were in sight of Funafuti lagoon, and also of a schooner which I knew to be the _Hazeldine_ of San Francisco. She, like us, was becalmed.

In the middle watch I went on deck and found the skipper and second mate drunk. The mate, who was below, was about half-drunk. All three men had been drinking heavily for some days, and the second mate was hardly able to keep his feet. The captain was asleep on the skylight, lying on his back, snoring like a pig,