[10]. A tappu-cloth chemise that reached to the knees.
As we went on after resting we heard the confusion of noises in the native huts. In some the occupants were singing happily and in others shouting with hot rage in family squabbles. Often a youth or a girl suddenly rushed forth from the den door, flying for dear life, as the old chief’s gnarled, tattooed face peered forth, ablaze with anger that his own children should dare argue with him and say the heathen gods were only wood and stone! Sometimes babies disappeared in a mysterious way, and the native mothers wandered about the villages beating their hands together and wailing most mournfully. Terrible rumours floated about in those days, for some of the old chiefs had a taste for “sucking long pig”: no man who had any respect for his soul would swear by it that the grizzly old chiefs, and old concubines, did not sit by the festive fires far away inland and gnaw the bones of those very missing children!
Slick and I bathed in a lagoon and felt greatly refreshed. I rubbed the bruise that my club had given him with palm-oil, and though he moaned a bit the lump soon went down. Next day we went to our schooner and slept on board. The skipper was away for a week, so we once more went off wandering, and when we returned to go aboard, to our surprise the Golden Horn had gone! She had been originally chartered to take a cargo of tinned meats and foodstuffs to Papeete and many of the isles and groups scattered about, and had suddenly received orders to sail. The skipper had sent off to try and find us, and then left word that he would probably be back in three weeks. Three days later, being stranded, we went aboard a trading steamer and asked for a job. She was bound for the Carolines, and then across to Samoa and Tonga. They did not want any hands, so at dusk, just before she sailed, Slick and I went down in the hold and stowed away. They put the hatch on about ten minutes after we had got below and we were then imprisoned in darkness. We lay side by side against some barrels and bunches of green bananas and unripe oranges, which are always plucked green for cargo purposes. We had a terrible time together. The days and nights became a blank. We lived on the bananas and green orange juice. At last in our desperation we climbed up over the barrels and thumped the decks, but no one heard us. As we lay down, trying to sleep, large hairy ship rats jumped at us and squeaked. I struck at them with my violin-case and smashed it, and as I lay half asleep I felt their soft snouts poke and sniff in my ears. Slick swore that they were flying rats, because they seemed everywhere and flapped about. We found out after that large island cockroaches were flying about us and the rats were leaping at them!
Slick became as downhearted as I did, though he was a good fellow and brave too. “I’d sooner have stopped in Hiva-oa for years than go through this, mate,” he said. One night, when the steamer was rolling and pitching, I sat on the barrel by Slick’s side and played the violin furiously. “Perhaps they will hear that,” I said. “Go on, scrape the d——d thing,” said my comrade, and I tore away at full speed. “It’s no good, Slick. It’s blowing hard. Can’t you feel her rolling? We must wait till it’s calm.”
Next day, or night, it was silent, and we only heard the screw-shaft revolving, so I got the violin out and started scraping again. I must have torn away for two hours. Suddenly a stream of light flooded over us! The man-hatch had been lifted off! And the crew of astonished sailors, and the skipper, mate and chief engineer, were looking down!
“God d—n it! I wonder what next is going to happen on this old packet!” shouted the astonished skipper. “Come up, you men.” Slick went up the iron ladder first and I followed after, while the chief mate looked grimly down at the bare banana stems and at heaps of green orange peel. They had heard the violin through the storm, during the first night’s orchestral appeal for help, and had come to the conclusion that a ghost was aboard. For, as the mate told me afterwards, it was only a wail that sounded faint and far off above the storm. The skipper forgave us and we were treated well—considering our sins. I was placed in the stokehold and Slick was put to coal-trimming. When we arrived at Upolu (Samoa) Slick made up his mind to stay and go off with her to Honolulu. I left. Nina, Pompo and all my old native friends were delighted to see me again, and took me straight off on a fishing excursion round the coast.
I never saw Slick again; but if ever he chances to gaze upon these reminiscences he will see I have remembered him, and still feel that I could not have found a better comrade the world over for the escapades that we went through together.
CHAPTER XI
At Sea—A Fo’c’sle Argument—A Native’s Confession—Sydney Harbour