CHAPTER XXIII
Nuka Hiva once more—The Deserted Grog Shanty—Benbow’s Second Home-coming—He hears the Truth—A Mournful Carouse—Knight-errants in the Bell Bird—A Letter from Grimes—Another Fruitless Serenade
ONE can imagine that I did not weep when at last we sighted the wild shores of Nuka Hiva and entered the beautiful rugged bay of Tai-o-hae. Though I had signed on for the trip to San Francisco, no sooner had the anchor dropped than I proceeded to make myself scarce. At first I had thought of doing a bolt, but on reflection I made up my mind to be straightforward with the skipper, so I went to him and revealed the fact that I wanted to leave ship at once. He turned out a good sort, and even gave me a month’s money, though according to sea agreements he need not have given me a cent.
To pack up and leave the ship was nothing to me. I was leading the life of primeval man, so I was always at home, wherever I happened to be, and I was always in the best possible place that I could possibly be in at that precise moment. My luggage consisted of my violin, a steel-toothed hair-comb, two flannel shirts and the blue Chinese-cloth midshipman’s suit that I lived in.
I see by my diary notes that I stopped on the s.s. Rockhampton for the first night in port and arrived at the grog shanty at Tai-o-hae on the 9th December.
I will make no attempt to describe my disappointment when I arrived at the old place and missed the friendly faces of most of the rough men I had known. The tale that Mrs Ranjo told me sounded more like some wild romance than anything else.
My first inquiry was about Waylao. Had she turned up? I awaited Mrs Ranjo’s reply with intense interest. She only shook her head and stared at me seriously. Indeed she looked a bit spiteful, for Waylao had been the cause of taking away her most generous and oldest customers from Tai-o-hae, under circumstances which I will describe later.
It was a glorious starlit night when I strolled out of the grog shanty with my head fairly humming with all the strange things that I had heard from the Ranjos.
I would have given anything at that moment to have had old Grimes beside me, but alas! it could not be.