A Modern Buccaneer

CHAPTER XIV

NORFOLK ISLAND – ARCADIA

And now, my innocence and lack of complicity in Hayston's irregularities having been established, a revulsion of feeling took place in the minds of the captain and officers of the Rosario with regard to me.

After the fullest explanations furnished by the traders and others, backed up by the manifest sympathy and good-will of the inhabitants of Strong Island, it became apparent that some sort of reparation was due to me. This took the form of a courteous invitation to accept a passage to Sydney in H.M.S. Rosario, and to join the officers' mess on the voyage. "I'm afraid that we acted hastily in your case, Mr. Telfer!" said Captain Dupont. "You have been thoroughly cleared of all accusations made against you. I am bound to say they were very few. And you seem chiefly to have acted as a peacemaker and a power for good. I have gathered that you are anxious to rejoin your friends in Sydney. I shall be glad to have your company on the return voyage. What do you say? I trust you will not refuse; I shall otherwise think you have not forgiven my apparent harshness."

Thus pressed to return to family and friends – from whom, at times, in spite of my inborn roving propensities, the separation had cost me dear – what could I do but thank the manly and courteous potentate, and comply with an invitation so rarely granted to a South Sea adventurer. I was the more loth to lose the opportunity as there had come upon me of late a violent fit of homesickness which I in vain strove to combat.

I had in truth now no particular reason for remaining at Kusaie, or indeed anywhere in the South Seas. Hayston was gone; his magnetic influence no longer controlled my will, as in our first acquaintance. The Leonora– our pride and boast, our peerless floating home – no longer "walked the waters like a thing of life," but lay dead, dismantled, dishonoured on the ruthless coral rocks which had crushed the life out of her on that fatal night.

I realised now with thankfulness that I had narrowly escaped being liable as an accessory for some of Hayston's ultra-legal proceedings – to call them by no harsher name.

How often, indeed, in the reckless daring of boyhood is the fatal line crossed which severs imprudence from crime! The inexorable fiat of human justice knows no shade of criminality. "Guilty or not guilty," goes forth the verdict. There is no appeal on earth. And the faulty, but not all evil-natured victim, is doomed to live out all the years of a life branded as a felon, or maddened by the fears which must ever torture the fugitive from justice!

If I stayed in the South Seas on my present footing, nothing remained but the trader's life, pure and simple. I had little doubt but that I could make a living, perhaps a competence in years to come. But that meant exile in every sense of the word. Complete severance from my kindred, whom my soul yearned to see again; from the friends of my boyhood; from the loved and lovely land of my birth; from the thousand and one luxuries, material and intellectual, which are comprehended in the word civilisation. I had slaked my thirst for adventure, danger, and mystery. I had carried my life in my hand, so to speak, and times without number had doubted whether I should retain that more or less valuable possession for the next ten minutes. I had felt the poisoned arrows at Santa Cruz hurtling around me, even hiss through my waving locks, when the death-scratch summoned a man on either hand. I had nearly been "blue sharks' meat" as Hayston phrased it, on coral strand amid "the cruel crawling foam." All chances and risks I had taken heedlessly in the past. But now I began to feel that I must pronounce the momentous decision which would make or mar my future career. The island life was very fair. For one moment I saw myself the owner of a trading station on Pingelap or Arurai. I am sitting in a large, cool house, on soft, parti-coloured mats, surrounded by laughing girls garlanded and flower-crowned. Around and above, save in the plantation which surrounds the house, is the soft green light of the paradisal woodland illumining its incredible wealth of leafage, fruit, and flowers. Before me lies the endless, azure sea-plain. And oh, my sea! my own, my beloved sea! – loved in childhood, youth, and age, if such be granted to me! In my ears are the magical murmurous surge-voices, to the lulling of which I have so often slept like a tired child. Fruit and flowers – love and war – manly effort – danger – high health – boundless liberty, – all things necessary to the happiness of primeval man, before he became sophisticated by the false wisdom of these later ages, should I not possess in profusion? Why, then, should I not remain in this land of changeless summer – this magic treasure-house of all delights of land and sea?

Long and anxiously did I ponder over my decision. Those only who have known the witchery of the "summer Isles of Eden," have felt the charm of the dream-life of the Southern Main – the sorcery of that lotus-eating existence, alternating with the fierce hazards and stormy delights which give a richness to life unknown to a guarded, narrowed civilisation – can gauge my irresolution.

I had well-nigh resolved to adhere to the trader's life – until I had made a fortune with which I could return in triumph – when I thought of my mother! The old house, with its broad, stone-paved verandah came back to me – the large, "careless-ordered" garden with its trailing, tropical shrubs and fruit-trees – the lordly araucarias, the boat-house, the stone-walled bath wherein I had learned to swim – all came back in that moment when memory recalled the scenes and surroundings of my early life. I could hear a voice ever low and sweet, as in the days of my childhood, which said, "Oh! my boy! my boy! come back – let me see my darling's face before I die."

I was conquered – the temptations of the strange life, with its sorceries and phantasms, which had so long enveloped me, were swept away like a ghost-procession at dawn. And in their place came the steadfast resolve to return to the home of my youth, thenceforward to pursue such modes of life as might be marked out for me. In a new land like my birth-place, with a continent for an arena, I had no fear but that a career would open itself for me. In no country under heaven are there so many chances of success, so many roads to fortune, as in the lone wastes upon which the Southern Cross looks down. On land or sea – the tracks are limitless – the avenues to fortune innumerable. Gold was to be had for the seeking; silver and gems lay as yet in their desert solitudes, only awaiting the adventurer who, strong in the daring of manhood, should compel the waste to disclose its secrets – only awaited the hour and the man.

For such enterprises was I peculiarly fitted. So much could then be said without boast or falsehood on my part. My frame, inured to withstand every change of temperature which sea or land could furnish, was of unusual strength. By hard experience I had learned to bear myself masterfully among men of widely various dispositions and characters. I took my stand henceforth as a citizen of the world – as a rover on sea and land – as more than a suppliant to fortune, a "Conquistador."

The homeward voyage being now fairly commenced, I began to speculate on the probabilities of my future career. During the years which I had passed among the islands I had acquired experience – more or less valuable – but very little cash. This was chiefly in consequence of our crowning disaster, the wreck of the Leonora. But for that untoward gale, my share of the proceeds of the venture would have exceeded the profits of all my other trading enterprises. As it was, I was left, if not altogether penniless, still in a position which would debar me from making more than a brief stay with my friends in Sydney, unless I consented to be beholden to them for support. That I held to be impossible. For a few weeks I felt that my finances would hold out. And after that, was there not a whole world of adventures – risks, hardships, dangers, if you will – all that makes life worth living – open before me; the curtain had fallen upon one act of the life drama of Hilary Telfer. What of that? Were there not four more, at least, to come?

Even the princess had not arrived. There had been a "first robber" on the boards, perhaps – even more of that persuasion. But the principal stage business was only commencing – the dénouement was obviously far off. Thereupon my hopes rose as if freshly illumined. My sanguine nature – boundless in faith, fertile in expedient – reasserted itself. Temporarily depressed, more in sympathy with Hayston than with my own ill-luck, it seemed more vigorous and elastic in rebound than ever. The memory of my island life became faint and dreamily indistinct. The forms of Hayston, the king and queen, of Lālia, with sad, reproachful gaze – of Hope Island Nellie, lifting a rifle with the mien of an angered goddess – of Kitty of Ebon, incarnate daughter of the dusky Venus – of the bronzed and wrinkled trader, with blood and to spare on his sinewy hand – of young Harry and the negro Johnny. All these forms and faces, once so familiar, seemed to recede into the misty distance until they faded away from my mental vision.

With them passed into shadow-land the joyous life of my youth – of the untrammelled, care-free existence – such as no man may find again in this world of slow, tracking care and hasty disenchantment. "Was I wise?" I asked myself again and again, in quitting it for the hard and anxious pursuits of the Continent? Were there not a dozen places besides Strong's Island where I should be welcomed, fêted, caressed, almost worshipped as a restored divinity? Was it well to abandon the rank which I had acquired among these simple people? Was it – But no. For ever had I made the decision. Once resolved, I disliked changing my plans. Burdened with a regret which for days I could neither subdue nor remove, I adhered unflinchingly to my resolution, and addressed myself to the steady contemplation of the future.

Now had commenced for me a new life – a new world socially speaking. The quiet reserve and unemotional bearing of the British officer was substituted for the frank accost and reckless speech of the island trader or wandering mariner. I was prompt, however, to assimilate the modish bearing of my companions, and assisted by some natural alertness, or perhaps inherited tendencies, soon became undistinguishable from the honourables and lordlings of the gun-room. Upon my repose of manner, indeed, I was often complimented. "By Jove, old fellow," one of the offshoots of the British aristocracy would say, "one would think you had been at Rugby or Eton. And I suppose you have never seen England. Certainly you have the pull of us in make and shape. I can't think how they grow such fellows, – more English than the English, – with your blue eyes and fair hair, too, in these God-forsaken regions."

"Because," I said, "I am of as pure English blood as yourself; have been reared, and moulded, and surrounded by English people, and have all the traditions of the old country at my fingers' end. For the rest, I hold that this end of the world is more favourable to the growth of Anglo-Saxons, as you call yourselves, than the other."

"Well! it looks like it, I must say," said my new friend. "I only hope that when the time comes for fighting, by sea and land – and, mark my words, come it will – that you will be found as stanch as I think you are."

"Be sure we shall be," said I. "We have inherited the true English 'grit,' as Americans say. You all said they couldn't fight when their war began; when it finished, the world gave a different verdict. We are our fathers' sons, neither more nor less. The bull-dog and the game-cock still fight to the death in our country. Many a time have I seen it. And so will we when our time comes, and when we think it worth our while."

We carried an order from the New South Wales Government to call in at Norfolk Island – once the ocean prison of the more desperate felons of the old convict régime, who had been replaced by the descendants of the Pitcairn islanders. They, in their turn the descendants of mutinous sailors and Tahitian women – now the most moral, God-fearing, and ideally perfect race on the face of the earth.

What a miracle had been wrought! Who could have imagined that the last days of a rough old sailor, spent among the survivors of a group of savage women who had butchered their mates, could have so firmly fixed the morale of a whole community that virtue should have indelibly impressed itself upon a hundred families. Sydney lies about S.S.W. from Kusaie, but to avoid passing through the dangers of the New Hebrides, and the reef-studded vicinity of New Caledonia, a direct south course with a little easting was decided upon.

We made Norfolk Island, the distance being about two thousand miles, in ten days' easy steaming from Strong's Island. This lovely island was discovered by Cook in 1774.

A military man writing of it in 1798, draws a comparison between it and Sydney much to the disadvantage of the latter. "The air is soft (he says) and the soil inexpressibly productive. It is a perfect section of paradise. Our officers and their wives were sensibly affected at their departure, and what they regarded as banishment to Sydney."

Another officer writing of it in 1847, says: "It is by nature a paradise adorned with all the choicest gifts of nature – climate, scenery, and vegetable productions; by art and man's policy turned into an earthly hell, disfigured by crime, misery, and despair."

The island had been brought into a high state of cultivation by convict labour. Its roads, buildings, and gardens were in admirable order. But with the establishment of the new régime – a different race with different tasks – much was neglected, a part became decayed and ruinous. The island is now partitioned into blocks of fifty acres, of which each adult male is allowed one, drawn for and decided by lot.

Whale fishing is the favourite and most profitable occupation. From this and the sale of farm produce, which finds a market in Sydney, the inhabitants are furnished with all their needs require. Their wants are few, simple, and easily supplied.

The old convict town with its huge, dilapidated barracks, gaol-officers' quarters, and servants' houses, is situated on the south-east edge of the island, where the little Nepean islet gives sufficient shelter to form a precarious roadstead available in certain winds. The old town is occupied by the Pitcairn islanders – in number about three hundred.

Five miles across the island, on its north-eastern shore, and communicating with it by a fair road, lies the Melanesian Mission estate of a thousand acres. Sloping gently down to a low cliff and a rocky shore, the land is an undulating meadow, broken by ravines, and covered with a thick sward of conch grass or "doubh," said to have been imported from India, whence we drew our chief food supplies so many a year ago. Nothing more beautiful in a state of nature had ever been seen, I thought, when I first cast my admiring eyes on it. Here and there gigantic, graceful pines (Araucaria excelsa) stood in stately groves. Higher up on the flanks of Mount Pitt (a thousand feet above) grow the lemon and guava, cotton and wild tobacco. The island is nine hundred miles from Sydney and thirteen hundred and fifty from Cape Pillar, Tasmania. The Nepean and Phillip Islands lie to the south of the main island.

We were in such a hurry to see the famous island and still more famous islanders, that we omitted a precaution which had been earnestly impressed upon us the day before. This was not to attempt to land unless we had a Pitcairner to steer. When the long swell of the Pacific rolls in upon the shallow beaches of Sydney Bay there is no more dangerous place in the world – the roadstead of Madras hardly excepted – than the boat harbour at Norfolk Island.

Like most sailors, and man-of-war's men in particular, the crew was reckless and confident. For myself, I was a fair hand in a boat, and had mixed in so many cases of touch-and-go, where all hands would have fed the sharks in a few more minutes, that I had lost any sense of caution that I might have originally possessed. As we neared the shore, rising and falling upon the tremendous billows, which told of a scarce passed gale, I felt a sense of exhilaration to which I had been long a stranger. A party of the islanders, seeing a boat leave the ship, had come down to watch our landing, apparently with interest. As we came closer I noticed them talking rapidly to one another, and occasionally waving their arms to one side or the other as if to direct our steering. There were several women in the group, but as we neared the landing my attention was rivetted upon a girl who stood out some distance from the others at the end of a rocky point, which jutted beyond the narrow beach.

I had seen strikingly beautiful faces and faultless forms among the island girls, as all unconscious, they threw themselves into attitudes so graceful and unstudied that a sculptor would have coveted them for models. Among these children of nature, roaming at will through their paradisal isles, the perfection of the human form had doubtless been developed. But there was a subtle charm about this girl, as she stood with bare feet beside the plashing wave, – a statuesque presentment of nobility, courage, and refinement which I had never before recognised in living woman. Tall and slender of frame, she yet possessed the rounded outlines which, in all island women, promise a fuller development in the matured stage of womanhood. Her features were delicately regular; in her large dark eyes there was an expression of strong interest, deepening almost into fear, as she gazed at our incoming boat. She had bent slightly forward, and stood poised on her rock as if waiting for a signal to plunge into the boiling surf. Her complexion was so fair that, but for her attitude, which spoke her a daughter of the sea, one which no mortal born away from the music of the surges could have assumed, I might have taken her for an Englishwoman.

"In the name of all the divine maidens since Nausicaa" (I had not quite forgotten my Odyssey, rusty though was my Greek) "who can she be?" thought I.

At this point my reflections and conjectures came to an abrupt end, as, indeed, nearly did also "the fever called living" in my particular case. I felt the boat rise heavenwards on the back of a tremendous roller. The islanders shouted as though to warn us of danger, the steersman gave the tiller a wrong turn, or omitted to give it the right one, and the next moment the boat was buried beneath an avalanche of foam, with crew and passengers struggling for their lives. I could swim well, that is, of course, comparatively, for the difference between the best performance of a white man – well practised from youth though he be – and of an islander is as that of a dog and a fish. Still, having risen to the surface, I made no doubt but that I could easily gain a landing. In this I was deceived. As in other spots, the constant surf concealed a treacherous undertow against which the ordinary swimmer is powerless. Again and again did I gain foothold, to be swept back by the resistless power of the backward current. Each time I became weaker, and at length, after a long fruitless struggle, I closed my eyes and resigned myself to my fate. Borne backward and half fainting, I saw the whole party of natives in the water mingling with the crew, who, like myself, had been making desperate efforts to reach the landing.