Uncle Sam, Grimes, I and several others chased him up and down the hold, trying to catch him as he struck the vessel’s side with his fists. His eyes rolled fearfully. He’d gone stark mad. We tried to appease him, told him it was all right, that we would not guillotine him. It was no use; he fastened his teeth in Uncle’s Sam’s arm, thinking he was some Noumea surveillant who would lead him to that monstrous blade.
He bolted up on deck as we all gripped him. Jove! his clothing was left in our hands as he broke away in his wild delirium. He climbed aloft and up there he stuck.
We had a terrible night of it. He yelled forth, in his native tongue, heart-rending appeals for mercy, awakening the native villages for miles around.
He died next day. The weather was hot, so they buried him quickly in the quiet cemetery near the calaboose.
So that I didn’t fancy sleeping on the hulk for some time; that night’s adventure got on my nerves.
But to return to the grog shanty. While Grimes slept on under the coco-palms I would creep into that bar, sit among those rough men and listen to the sounds of O! O! for Rio Grande, Blow the Man Down, etc., bellowed forth, as they spent the best part of the night recounting their manifold adventures. I was fascinated by the sight before me, for that motley crew resembled some strange postage-like stamp collection of men who had once been recognised as genuine currency by governments, but had long since gone through the post and had become valuable and rare—some of them.
Mr and Mrs Ranjo, the grog shanty keepers, were delightful as they dodged from bar to bar, for they had one bar for derelicts and another for those mysterious, hurried individuals who arrived with cash. In the saloon bar old Ranjo would put on his holiest and most obsequious smile, as he praised his whisky, remarking: “Ho yes, Hi see, sir, Hi halways thinks as ’ow honesty is the best policy.” Saying this, he would swish his bar towel and hand another mixture of paraffin and methylated spirit to his customers, who were erstwhile bank managers, disillusioned ecclesiastics and men who had hurried from far countries and shaved their beards off.
Mrs Ranjo would blush in the saloon bar over the very story that she herself would have told the beachcombers in the next bar. It seems absurd, but that blush and old Ranjo’s “Ho” and “Hi see” increased the price of the drinks in the saloon bar by one hundred per cent.
So one will see that culture existed also in the South Seas. A tweed suit or a massive watch-chain secured immense respect and unlimited trust from the Ranjos; and that was everything, for one must remember that they owned the grog shanty. And this fact at Tai-o-hae or anywhere else in the South Seas gave them a social distinction of the highest rank; indeed they were as king and queen of beachcomberland, and appreciation from them was equal to conferring a knighthood.
No wonder these men were fascinated by the smiles of the Ranjos. To them, in their derelict times, a grog shanty was like that bit of blue ribbon with its many hidden potentialities—the ribbon that flutters at some pretty girl’s throat, or in her crown of hair, that insensate adornment that is the first magnetic glimpse that awakens the romantic dreams of some impassioned boy, yes, and even the staid man of the world. But I must leave blue ribbons alone, also my reasons for mentioning them, till later, and tell of one memorable night.