But often the winds of Fate blew fair, and the cottage in the hills trembled with ribald song, as, with his red, bushy beard shaking, Benbow sat enthroned in his old arm-chair. Behind him the old grandfather clock merrily ticked, as he yelled forth some chantey:
“Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest,
Yo! ho! ho! for a bottle of rum!”
Then would come the chorus from a choir of wrinkled, pulsing, groggy throats as those ragged, sunburnt shellbacks clinked their rum mugs. Those derelicts would roar forth glorious toasts to the glory of the most highest—Benbow—as eyes looked into “eyes that spake again, and all went merry” in Tai-o-hae. Old Lydia steamed from head to feet as she shot to and fro replenishing the rum mugs. Father O’Leary would hear “the sounds of revelry by night” in the distance, lift his arms to the sky and say: “Oh, those white men!”
I know it nearly broke the drums of my ears the first time Grimes and I responded to the invitation. They sang Blow the Man Down that night, and the ancient sea-song reminded me of my first voyage on a sailing ship. It is a melody that seems to mysteriously express in a few bars the true atmosphere of ocean life. As those old shellbacks sang it, in their inimitable style, I fancied I saw the old wooden ships going down the English Channel when the world was young. I saw the old sailors singing that capstan song as they toiled. I saw their bearded, crooked-nosed faces shine in the moonlight as they climbed aloft, disappeared among the wide grey canvas sails, and vanished in the sky a hundred years ago.
It was only when the night grew old, when Benbow’s fist struck the table with indisputable conviction, and all the assemblage enthusiastically believed his yarn that their songs resembled chaos.
Some banged mugs on the table, others thumped the floor with their sea-boots, as their bearded throats roared out the choruses. No barbarian cataclysm of joyous sound could outrival that pandemonium of jangled melody. It resembled the steam-organ of a circus roundabout with the pipes at full blast and out of tune. It seemed that the stops, the bassoons, clarionets, double basses, horns, sopranos, cymbals, bagpipes, drums, faint tinkles of the banjo and weird piston-rods of sound still crashed forth, toiling on in some terrible ensemble as the great musical engine broke down.
Ye gods! it was a pandemonium! Grimes and I stood at the door seeking fresh air that night. We couldn’t stand it.
The natives came creeping across the hills. They heard that singing from afar. Those awestruck Marquesans looked like happy ghosts as they crept beneath the moonlit bread-fruit trees and listened. What did they think of it, the great white man’s barbarian festival?
“Go it, allee samee nicee!” said one great tattooed warrior from Anahao when Grimes gave him a bit of tabak (tobacco).