CHAPTER XV
Benbow’s Return—The Old Blackbirder at Home—The Broaching of the Rum Barrel—A Musical Evening—Benbow and his Daughter—Fatherly Discretion
FOR several days Grimes and I sweated away unloading a schooner that arrived from Papeete with stores and lay in Hatiaeu Bay. Being cashless, we were obliged to work at times. The heat was terrific. I wore white duck pants, a dirty shirt and a native hat made out of a banana leaf, and we both looked like sunburnt niggers. One night as we crept home along the Broom Road, dying for a drink—for we’d been working in the schooner’s coal hold—we heard sounds of wild revelry issuing from the grog shanty. Waylao’s father, Benbow, was back in Tai-o-hae!
The fun had commenced, and the shellbacks had welcomed him home like a lot of expectant, ragged schoolboys.
Benbow was something of a Captain Kidd. I have kept his correct name back, but it will not hurt his posthumous reputation to say that he had been one of the old-time blackbirders, and he was indeed a wonder, if half of his yarns about himself were true. He was a burly, typical Britisher, with a big beard of reddish hue, fiery, like his temper, and very expressive-looking eyes.
Though the shellbacks and derelicts of those days congregated eagerly in that little parlour of his snug homestead, they trembled in their sea-boots when he roared at one hint of contradiction. Yet a kind word at the critical moment made those blue, steely eyes of his soften. He was the biggest bluffer I’ve ever met.
Benbow gave me twenty dollars to go to his place and play the fiddle, so I know all about his idiosyncrasies. I think I would have accepted the job if only for the fun of the entertainment. That old cottage fairly shook on those spree nights. Should one rash member of that convivial, unshaved troop express doubt of his host’s word, the great Tai-o-hae gathering became plunged into the deepest gloom.
It is recorded in the Tai-o-hae annals of beachcomberism how the great meeting of shellbacks at a certain date of the year had been suddenly dispersed in the very midst of a glorious beano. Like the voice of Doom, Benbow had yelled forth his fierce invectives. Men still live in those parts who can recall how the echoes of the night hills recorded, like some mighty gramophone, the voice of their exasperated host.
“Shiver me timbers! You doubt me? By God! Eh? You doubt me? You dare, you son of a b—— nigger!” Then would come the final crash, as, lifting old Lydia’s family heirloom—a war-club—he would strike the rim of the mighty keg of rum, the bung of the barrel of fiery liquor that had been specially broached to celebrate his return home. One more crash and the bung was driven into the head. Ere the awestruck, broken-hearted shellbacks rose and filed out into the homeless night, they would gaze pathetically in silent appeals. Benbow was relentless. Out into the night they would go, muttering deadly imprecations on the one who had doubted Benbow and so brought unutterable sorrow on their heads.