“Many years ago now a terrible hurricane was blowing off the Solomon Isle of Bourka, when the islanders suddenly sighted a full-rigged sailing ship in distress. Sunset blazed behind her, and they could see the torn sails and the decks taking the seas over, as she helplessly drifted before the gale that was bringing her shoreward. That night, when the stars were flashing through rifts in the clouds, which had broken up and left pools of blue in the sky, they saw the great ship within a mile of the shore, with walls of living waters breaking over her. One or two sailors were just discernible, clinging to the spars aloft; and then suddenly a mountain of water rose and the masts disappeared.
“In the early morning the natives gathered the bodies of the dead sailors together, put them in old salt-beef ship’s barrels and hid them on the sands just under the water near the shore. For the bloodthirsty tribe who found them were cannibals. Four of the crew were still alive—the boatswain, the chief mate, the cook and the ship’s doctor; and a girl, who was the skipper’s daughter.” The boatswain dropped his pipe on the floor, the sailors all looked round and left their cards, and one or two went phew! then listened, and the half-savage native continued to this effect:
“They took the four living men up the shore and put them in a cave, and hid them so that a rival tribe they had lately been fighting with should not get hold of them before they could eat them. The chief of the tribe claimed the pretty white girl; she was not more than seventeen years old. They took her up to the stronghold, made a big festival fire and had a feast from one of the dead sailors who had been washed ashore.
“While the whole tribe sat squatting in a circle, watching and waiting while the flames of the fire flickered and hissed, the white girl, tied to a coco-palm by the hands, looked round at them all with staring, frightened eyes. Then the hideous cannibal chief caught hold of her and told her that if she would be his wife he would save the four white men who were alive in the cave. For a while they could not stop her screaming, and then she looked up at the chief and said: ‘Bring me the white men first’; and he shook his head and said, ‘No.’ Later, when they were eating, and dancing wildly round the terrible fire, another chief, of a tribe inland, came suddenly out of the forest close by and joined in the feast. When he saw the white girl staring, tied to a palm just behind them, he looked at her longingly, and offered to buy her from the first chief.
“I was a young man then, about twenty years old, and I had been a servant off and on to the white missionaries who lived twenty miles away round the coast. I made up my mind to steal away at daybreak and tell them about the white girl and the four sailors in the cave. For that old chief who had come and tried to buy the white girl was a bloodthirsty cannibal, and he only wanted to buy the girl so that he could eat her. It was well known by all the tribe that he loved the flesh of women, and would risk his life to eat a white girl’s breasts.
“In the shadows by the trees she still sat, with her wildly staring eyes, appealing to the glittering eyes of the chief and to dumb heaven. Most of the tribe squatted or lay at full length round the dying fire, their hideous appetites satisfied and their bellies distended. I saw the two powerful chiefs stand arguing; and then the chief who longed for the white girl turned away from the other and looked with fierce, hungry eyes at the shivering girl a moment, ere his dark, naked limbs strode away into the forest. My heart leapt with joy as I saw his big form go. I felt that I could now easily save the white girl; for I knew that white men were brave and would come directly I arrived before them and told them all that had happened. Walking as near as I dared to the white girl, I spoke to her in English. I said four words only: ‘I see white men.’ I could not see her glance, as I dared not look her way; for the chief sat close by, rubbing his chin and grunting sleepily. I sat myself down by a tree and slept, thinking to go off and get help before the day broke. Suddenly I was awakened by a great noise of shouting and running. I jumped to my feet. The tribal chief was lifting his war-club and dashing it to the ground to ease his terrible rage; and then crash! he smashed the sentinel’s skull; it cracked like an egg-shell. The man had slept instead of watching; the white girl had gone! At first I was delighted, for I thought she had escaped; but instead of that she had been carried off by the great girl-eating chief!”
Directly he said that all the forecastle swallowed their tobacco smoke and said, “Well, I’m——”; the boatswain muttered, “Holy heaven!”; and then one of the sailors said, “How did you know the stinking swine of a chief had her?”
We all somehow listened hopefully; for the overseer looked so earnest, and we did not want to think we were hearing the truth. A yarn was all right, but this made the hands restive and the eyes blaze. However, he continued:
“Some of the tribe, who were camping by a lagoon not far inland, were suddenly awakened by an agonised scream. Looking through the jungle, they saw several canoes being rapidly paddled across the moonlit waters, and in the foremost canoe they recognised the feared, bloodthirsty cannibal chief, Torao. He was a giant of a fellow, nearly seven feet in height and of tremendous girth, and so there was no mistaking him. He was paddling with one arm, and held the white girl under the other as you would hold a strangled rabbit.”
“Lummy!” said one sailor; as one or two others wiped their perspiring faces with their red handkerchiefs, listening as they held on to the stanchion in the middle of the forecastle, while the tramp steamer rolled and pitched along across the Pacific, heaving at intervals to the heavy cross-swell.