small ones, which would be useless in such weather, whereas my
whaleboat would make nothing of it.

I could not refuse their request--it would have been ungracious of
me, and it only meant a half-hour's run across the bay, for Salimu was
exactly abreast of Samamea. So I said I would gladly sail them over in
my boat at sunset, when I should be ready.

The heads were placed in baskets, and reverently carried down to the
beach, and placed in the boat, and with our lug-sail close reefed we
pushed off just after dark.

There were nine persons in the boat--the four Salimu people, my crew of
four and myself. The night was starlight and rather cold, for every now
and then a chilly rain squall would sweep down from the mountains.

As we spun along before the breeze no one spoke, except in low tones.
Our dreadful cargo was amidships, each basket being covered from view,
but every now and then the boat would ship some water, and when I told
one of my men to bale out, he did so with shuddering horror, for the
water was much blood-stained.

When we were more than half-way across, and could see the lights and
fires of Salimu, a rain squall overtook us, and at the same moment the
boat struck some floating object with a crash, and then slid over it,
and as it passed astern I saw what was either a log or plank about
twenty feet long.

"Boat is stove in, for'ard!" cried one of my men, and indeed that was
very evident, for the water was pouring in--she had carried away her
stem, and started all the forward timber ends.

To have attempted to stop the inrush of water effectually would have
been waste, of time, but I called to my men to come aft as far as they
could, so as to let the boat's head lift; and whilst two of them kept
on baling, the others shook out the reef in our lug, and the boat went
along at a great speed, half full of water as she was, and down by the
stern. The water still rushed in, and I told the Samoans to move the
baskets of heads farther aft, so that the men could bale out quicker.

"We'll be all right in ten minutes, boys," I cried to my men, as I
steered; "I'll run her slap up on the beach by the church."

Presently one of the Samoans touched my arm, and said in a whisper that
we were surrounded by a swarm of sharks. He had noticed them, he said,
before the boat struck.

"They smell the bloodied water," he muttered.

A glance over the side filled me with terror. There were literally
scores of sharks, racing along on both sides of the boat, some almost on
the surface, others some feet down, and the phosphorescence of the water
added to the horror of the scene. At first I was in hopes that they were
harmless porpoises, but they were so close that some of them could have
been touched with one's hand. Most fortunately I was steering with a
rudder, and not a steer oar. The latter would have been torn out of my
hands by the brutes--the boat have broached-to and we all have met with
a horrible death. Presently one of the weeping women noticed them, and
uttered a scream of terror.

"_Le malie, le malic!_" ("The sharks, the sharks!") she cried.

My crew then became terribly frightened, and urged me to let them throw
the baskets of heads overboard, but the Samoans became frantic at the
suggestion, all of them weeping.

So we kept on, the boat making good progress, although we could only
keep her afloat by continuous baling of the ensanguined water. In five
minutes more my heart leapt with joy--we were in shallow water, only a
cable length from Salimu beach, and then in another blinding rain squall
we ran on shore, and our broken bows ploughed into the sand, amid the
cries of some hundreds of natives, many of whom held lighted torches.

All of us in the boat were so overwrought that for some minutes we
were unable to speak, and it took a full bottle of brandy to steady the
nerves of my crew and myself. I shall never forget that night run across
Fвgaloa Bay.




CHAPTER XXV ~ A BIT OF GOOD LUCK

Between the southern end of the great island of New Guinea and the
Solomon Group there is a cluster of islands marked on the chart as
"Woodlark Islands," but the native name is Mayu. Practically they were
not discovered until 1836, when the master of the Sydney sandal-wooding
barque _Woodlark_ made a survey of the group. The southern part of the
cluster consists of a number of small well-wooded islands, all inhabited
by a race of Papuans, who, said Captain Grimes of the _Woodlark_, had
certainly never before seen a white man, although they had long years
before seen ships in the far distance.

It was on these islands that I met with the most profitable bit of
trading that ever befel me during more than a quarter of a century's
experience in the South Seas.

Nearly thirty years passed since Grimes's visit without the natives
seeing more than half a dozen ships. These were American or Hobart Town
whalers, and none of them came to an anchor--they laid off and on,
and bartered with the natives for fresh provisions, but from the many
inquiries I made, I am sure that no one from these ships put foot on
shore; for the inhabitants were not to be trusted, being warlike, savage
and treacherous.

The master of one of these ships was told by the natives--or rather made
to understand, for no one of them knew a word of English--that about
twelve months previously a large vessel had run on shore one wild night
on the south side of the group and that all on board had perished.
Fourteen bodies had been washed on shore at a little island named Elaue,
all dreadfully battered about, and the ship herself had disappeared and
nothing remained of her but pieces of wreckage. She had evidently struck
on the reef near Elaue with tremendous violence, then slipped off and
sunk. The natives asked the captain to come on shore and be shown the
spot where the men had been buried, but he was too cautious a man to
trust himself among them.

On his reporting the matter to the colonial shipping authorities at
Sydney, he learned that two vessels were missing--one a Dutch barque of
seven hundred tons which left Sydney for Dutch New Guinea, and the other
a full-rigged English ship bound to Shanghai. No tidings had been heard
of them for over eighteen months, and it was concluded that the vessel
lost on Woodlark Island was one or the other, as that island lay in the
course both would have taken.

In 1868-69 there was a great outburst of trading operations in the
North-West Pacific Islands--then in most instances a _terra incognita_,
and there was a keen rivalry between the English and German trading
firms to get a footing on such new islands as promised them a lucrative
return for their ventures. Scores of adventurous white men lost their
lives in a few months, some by the deadly malarial fever, others by the
treacherous and cannibalistic savages. But others quickly took their
places--nothing daunted--for the coco-nut oil trade, the then staple
industry of the North-West Pacific, was very profitable and men made
fortunes rapidly. What mattered it if every returning ship brought news
of some bloody tragedy--such and such a brig or schooner having been cut
off and all hands murdered, cooked and eaten, the vessel plundered and
then burnt? Such things occur in the North-West Pacific in the present
times, but the outside world now hears of them through the press and
also of the punitive expeditions by war-ships of England, France or
Germany.

Then in those old days we traders would merely say to one another that
"So-and-So 'had gone'". He and his ship's company had been cut off at
such-and-such a place, and the matter, in the eager rush for wealth,
would be forgotten.

At that time I was in Levuka--the old capital of Fiji--supercargo of a
little topsail schooner of seventy-five tons. She was owned and sailed
by a man named White, an extremely adventurous and daring fellow, though
very quiet--almost solemn--in his manner.

We had been trading among the windward islands of the Fiji Group for six
months and had not done at all well. White was greatly dissatisfied and
wanted to break new ground. Every few weeks a vessel would sail into the
little port of Levuka with a valuable cargo of coco-nut oil in casks,
dunnaged with ivory-nuts, the latter worth in those days Ј40 a ton. And
both oil and ivory-nuts had been secured from the wild savages of
the North-West in exchange for rubbishy hoop-iron knives, old "Tower"
muskets with ball and cheap powder, common beads and other worthless
articles on which there was a profit of thousands per cent. (In fact, I
well remember one instance in which the master of the Sydney brig _E.
K. Bateson_, after four months' absence, returned with a cargo which was
sold for Ј5,000. His expenses (including the value of the trade goods he
had bartered) his crew's wages, provisions, and the wear and tear of the
ship's gear, came to under Ј400.)

White, who was a very wide-awake energetic man, despite his solemnity,
one day came on board and told me that he had made up his mind to join
in the rush to the islands to the North-West between New Guinea and the
Solomons.

"I have," he said, "just been talking to the skipper of that French
missionary brig, the _Anonyme_. He has just come back from the
North-West, and told me that he had landed a French priest{*} at Mayu
(Woodlark Island). He--the priest--remained on shore some days to
establish a mission, and told Rabalau, the skipper of the brig, that the
natives were very friendly and said that they would be glad to have
a resident missionary, but that they wanted a trader still more.
Furthermore, they have been making oil for over a year in expectation of
a ship coming, but none had come. And Rabalau says that they have over a
hundred tuns of oil, and can't make any more as they have nothing to put
it in. Some of it is in old canoes, some in thousands of big bamboos,
and some in hollowed-out trees. And they have whips of ivory nuts and
are just dying to get muskets, tobacco and beads. And not a soul in
Levuka except Rabalau and I know it. You see, I lent him twenty bolts of
canvas and a lot of running gear last year, and now he wants to do me
a good turn. Now, I say that Woodlark is the place for us. Anyway, I've
bought all the oil casks I could get, and a lot more in shooks, and
so let us bustle and get ready to be out of this unholy Levuka at
daylight."

     * This was Monseigneur d'Anthipelles the head of the Marist
     Brothers in Oceania.

*****

We did "bustle". In twenty-four hours we were clear of Levuka reef and
spinning along to the W.N. W. before the strong south-east trade, for
our run of 1,600 miles. 'Day and night the little schooner raced
over the seas at a great rate, and we made the passage in seven days,
dropping anchor off the largest village in the island--Guasap.

In ten minutes our decks were literally packed with excited natives, all
armed, but friendly. Had they chosen to kill us and seize the
schooner, it would have been an easy task, for we numbered only eight
persons--captain, mate, bos'un, four native seamen, and myself.

We learned from the natives that two months previously there had been a
terrible hurricane which lasted for three days and devastated two-thirds
of the islands. Thousands of coco-nut trees had been blown down, and the
sea had swept away many villages on the coast. So violent was the surf
that the wreck of the sunken ship on Elaue Island had been cast up in
fragments on the reef, and the natives had secured a quantity of iron
work, copper, and Muntz metal bolts. These articles I at once bargained
for, after I had seen the collection, and for two old Tower muskets,
value five shillings each, obtained the lot--worth Ј250.

I had arranged with the chief and his head men to buy their oil in the
morning. And White and I found it hard to keep our countenances when
they joyfully accepted to fill every cask we had on the ship each for
twenty sticks of twist tobacco, a cupful of fine red beads and a fathom
of red Turkey twill! Or for five casks I would give a musket, a tin of
powder, twenty bullets, and twenty caps!

In ten minutes I had secured eighty tuns of oil (worth Ј30 a tun) for
trade goods that cost White less than Ј20. And the beauty of it was that
the natives were so impressed by the liberality of my terms that they
said they would supply the ship with all the fresh provisions--pigs,
fowls, turtle and vegetables that I asked for, without payment.

As White and I, after our palaver with the head men, were about to
return on board, we noticed two children who were wearing a number of
silver coins, strung on cinnet (coir) fibre, around their necks. We
called them to us, looked at the coins and found that they were rupees
and English five-shilling pieces.

I asked one of our Fijian seamen, who acted as interpreter, to ask the
children from where they got the coins.

"On the reef," they replied, "there are thousands of them cast up with
the wreckage of the ship that sank a long time ago. Most of them are
like these"--showing a five-shilling piece; "but there are much more
smaller ones like these,"--showing a rupee.

"Are there any _sama sama_ (yellow) ones?" I asked.

No, they said, they had not found any _sama sama_ ones. But they could
bring me basketfuls of those like which they showed me.

White's usually solemn eyes were now gleaming with excitement I drew him
and the Fiji man aside, and said to the latter quietly:--

"Sam, don't let these people think that these coins are of any more
value than the copper bolts. Tell them that for every one hundred pieces
they bring on board--no matter what size they may be--I will give them
a cupful of fine red beads--full measure. Or, if they do not care for
beads, I will give two sticks of tobacco, or a six-inch butcher knife of
good, hard steel."

(The three last words made White smile--and whisper to me, "'A good,
hard steal' some people would say--but not me".)

"And Sam," I went on, "you shall have an _alofa_ (present) of two
hundred dollars if you manage this carefully, and don't let these people
think that we particularly care about these pieces of soft white metal.
We came to Mayu for oil--understand?"

Sam did understand: and in a few minutes every boy and girl in Guasap
were out on the reef picking up the money. That day they brought us
over Ј200 in English and Indian silver, together with about Ј12 in Dutch
coins. (From this latter circumstance White and I concluded that the
wrecked vessel was the missing Dutch barque.)

On the following morning the reef at low tide presented an extraordinary
spectacle. Every woman, boy and girl from Guasap and the adjacent
villages were searching for the coins, and their clamour was terrific.
Whilst all this was going on, White, and the mate, and crew were
receiving the oil from the shore, putting it into our casks, driving
the hoops, and stowing them in the hold, working in such a state of
suppressed excitement that we were unable to exchange a word with each
other, for as each cask was filled I, on the after-deck, paid for it,
shunted off the seller, and took another one in hand.

At four o'clock in the afternoon we ceased work on board and went on
shore to "buy money".

The village square was crowded with women and children, every one of
whom had money--mostly in English five-shilling pieces. Some of these
coins were bent and twisted into the most curious shape, some were
imbedded in lumps of coral, and nearly all gave evidence of the terrific
fury of the seas which had cast them up upon the reef from a depth of
seven fathoms of water. Many were merely round lumps, having been rolled
over and over among the sand and coral. These I demurred to accepting
on the terms agreed upon for undamaged coins, and the natives cheerfully
agreed to my decision.

That day we bought silver coin, damaged and undamaged, to the value of
Ј350, for trade goods worth about Ј17 or Ј18.

And for the following two weeks, whilst White and our crew were
hammering and coopering away at the oil casks, and stowing them under
hatches, I was paying out the trade goods for the oil, and "buying
money".

We remained at Mayu for a month, until there was no more money to be
found--except a few coins (or rather what had once been coins); and then
with a ship full of oil, and with Ј2,100 worth of money, we left and
sailed for Sydney.

White sold the money _en bloc_ to the Sydney mint for Ј1,850. The oil
realised Ј2,400, and the copper, etc., Ј250. My share came to over
Ј400--exclusive of four months' wages--making nearly Ј500. This was the
best bit of trading luck that I ever met with.

I must add that even up to 1895 silver coins from the Dutch barque were
still being found by the natives of Woodlark Islands.




CHAPTER XXVI ~ MODERN PIRATES

Piracy, as most people are aware, is not yet quite extinct in Chinese
and East Indian waters, despite the efforts that have been made to
utterly stamp it out. But it is not generally known that along the
shores of Dutch New Guinea, on both sides of the great island, there are
still vigorous communities of native pirates, who will not hesitate to
attack even armed trading vessels. These savages combine the business
of head-hunting with piracy, and although they do not possess modern
firearms, and their crafts are simply huge canoes, they show the most
determined courage, even when attacking a vessel manned by Europeans.

The annual reports of the Governors of Dutch, German and British New
Guinea, detailing the murderous doings of these head-hunting pirates,
are as interesting reading as the tales of Rajah Brooke and Stamford
Raffles, and the practical suppression of piracy in the East Indian
Archipelago, but seldom attract more than a few lines of comment in the
public press.

In writing of pirates of the present day, I shall not go beyond my own
beat of the North and South Pacific, and speak only of events within my
own personal knowledge and observation. Before entering into an account
of some of the doings of the New Guinea "Tugeri," or head-hunter
pirates, I shall tell the story of two notable acts of piracy committed
by white men in the South Pacific, less than ten years ago. The English
newspapers gave some attention to one case, for the two principal
criminals concerned were tried at Brest, and the case was known as the
"Rorique tragedy". Much comment was made on the statement that the King
of the Belgians went to France, after the prisoners had been sentenced
to death (they were Belgian), to personally intercede for them. The
French press stigmatised His Majesty's action as a scandal (one journal
suggesting that perhaps the pirates were pretty women in men's garb);
but no doubt King Leopold is a very tender-hearted man, despite the
remarks of unkind English people on the subject of the eccentricities
of the Belgian officers in the Congo Free State--such as cutting off
the hands of a few thousands of stupid negroes who failed to bring
in sufficient rubber. There are even people who openly state that the
Sultan of Turkey dislikes Armenians, and has caused some of them to be
hurt. But I am getting away from my subject The story of the Roriques,
and the tragedy of the _Niuroahiti_ which was the name of the vessel
they seized, is one of the many grisly episodes with which the history
of the South Seas is so prolific. Briefly it is as follows:--

About the end of 1891 the two brothers arrived at Papeite, the capital
of Tahiti, from the Paumotu Group, where, it was subsequently learned,
they had been put on shore by the captain of an island trader, who
strongly suspected them of plotting with the crew to murder him and
seize the ship. Nothing of this incident, however, was known at Tahiti
among the white residents with whom they soon ingratiated themselves;
they were exceedingly agreeable-mannered men, and the elder brother,
who was a remarkably handsome man of about thirty-five, was an excellent
linguist, speaking German, French, Italian, English, Dutch, Spanish and
Zulu fluently.