As the reader knows, O’Hara was an old pal of mine, and, being an Irishman, was impulsive and entertaining. When I was down in the mouth he proved a medicine-man of the spirits, for he made me laugh insanely when I was sane, and dosed me with romantic Irish songs and rum when credit was scarce. As I have stated, it was after leaving New Guinea that I had the good fortune to come across my old comrade again in Honolulu. Though I had a good musical engagement, and was getting on in the world, so far as the world’s opinion goes, I let everything go to the winds through not keeping a square chin when O’Hara asked me to go a-roving with him. As usual, he nearly succeeded in getting us both hanged when we arrived at Apamama and I became Court violinist to King Tembinok. It is one thing to be loyal to a chum in adversity, but to be expected to do the things that O’Hara wished me to do when Tembinok’s tawny wife fell in love with him was quite another matter. I remembered the Fae Fae excursion and our flight from Tahiti.
“No, thank you!” I said, when he had the cheek to come and ask me——
But, there, it’s not my wish to deal with that business here. I am out to tell of quite a different adventure that befell us after we arrived in Fiji. Financially speaking, I had done very well in Honolulu. I had secured a good engagement as violinist to King Laukauhammer, as well as my salary as conductor of the royal bodyguard band. In all I managed to save a thousand dollars. Though I am not a man who can see anything in this world to get a swelled head about, my vanity was considerable when the King presented me with the Court shield of the Kalakaua dynasty—an equivalent to the Cross of the Chevalier of Honour—thus making my seventh South Sea knighthood in less than twelve months, not counting, mind you, the proffered kingship at Temelako, New Guinea, where, on playing my violin under a palm tree, outside a heathen seraglio, I was embraced by a widowed queen and compelled to enter the tribal palace palavana by royal command. Also I had, to the King’s delight, composed special marches, and scored them for the strange, primitive instrumentation of the King’s private military band. For a while I had lived sumptuously at the best hotel in Beratania Street. Then I had decided to start off in search of any adventure that was opposed to the orthodox route as mapped out in the twelve commandments of civilized life.
I recall that O’Hara and I sailed as first-class passengers on the S.S. “Alameda,” which was bound for N.S.W., via Suva, Fiji. The voyage was momentous for its monotony, not one storm or passionate incident. O’Hara and I cursed everything, wished the sea yellow, the sun blue, and that the crew might mutiny and pitch the skipper overboard or cast us adrift on endless waters. Night after night we unbuttoned our clothes and thankfully “turned in” to rehearse a death-like existence in our small, coffin-shaped bunks. After arriving in Fiji and those things happening already narrated, we put up at the best hotel in Suva, scorning Smith’s bar and the old fan-tan shanty at Buta. For a while we enjoyed the company of the élite—well-to-do traders, ships’ mates and derelict skippers, stranded runaway apprentices, and strange men of better days who appeared to have lost their memory and their reason for being in Fiji at all.
It was while we were stopping at this hotel that O’Hara and I discovered that our improvidence necessitated our looking for cheaper diggings. An old shellback, seeing how things were with us, took us into his confidence, recommended us to a good lodging-house, a sort of Sailors’ Home, on the Rewa river. First, one must know that this Sailors’ Home was primarily the “Charity Organization of the Southern Seas!” For, beneath its kind roof, sheltered by giant breadfruit trees, men hid from the Suva police—men who were mostly fugitives from across the world, and who had flown from the cities in haste to save their necks or their liberty. But this fact did not deter O’Hara and myself from wishing to go there. Personally, I have always thought that one has a perfect right to save one’s neck. Man has only one neck, one life, and not always one chance whilst alive of doing better for himself.
The idea that there was really a lonely wooden establishment hidden in the deep seclusion of a certain forest, where hunted men found refuge from the law, was most fascinating to me, and this fascination was the main incentive that took O’Hara and me there.
When that old shellback stood on the Suva parade, put his finger secretively up to the side of his corrugated nasal organ, and gave us a significant wink of magnificent import as to all that he could tell about that Charity Organization, O’Hara’s heart seemed to fairly burst with glorious anticipation. His curly hair seemed to bristle forth the possibilities before us; his face flushed till his bright blue eyes seemed to breathe forth the poetry of romance. Nor was I myself far behind in my eagerness to get to that mysterious residence of secretive men of past crime. Besides, I was out in the world to take notes, and was determined to take them.
We lost no time. We packed up our goods and trekked. By noon of the next day we had been paddled in canoes across wide lagoons and up a mighty river by friendly natives. Then we plunged into the bush-land.
The very silence of that South Sea forest and the gleam of the sea horizon—just visible through the woods of mighty breadfruits—gave one’s imagination the atmosphere of heathenland mystery. We could hear the mountain drums beating the sunset down somewhere up in the native villages. To the N.N.W. were the wild, tribal, haunted mountains of Vuni-cunu, running in a westerly direction, finally meeting the ranges of Muanivatu. Around us stood huge tropical trees—banyans, breadfruits, big bamboos, limes, and the ndrala laden with scarlet blossoms. The airs of the deep glooms, heavy with the wild perfumes of dying hibiscus and many strange, exotic forest flowers, sent pungent odours to our nostrils. Not so far away tumbled the cool, swirling waters of the river, hurrying on their homeward journey from the mountains that formed a grand, wildly picturesque background to the district where the large, shed-like building of the Charity Organization of the South Seas was situated.
Sheltered by feathery palms and one or two mighty buttressed banyans, that dark, vine-overgrown building looked like some peaceful hermitage, some primitive monastery that sheltered aged missionaries. True enough, missionaries dwelt therein; but what missionaries they were!—men who relieved unhappy men who had shaved their beards off and arrived in haste overburdened with cash! Yes, they rested there in security till the hot scent had blown over, and once again they could continue on their way across the wine-dark seas, outbound for the enchanted realms of No-Extradition Ports, where dwell the Great Missing!