Two days later Oates arrived and, coming into the Court House, told me he had a complaint to make about a strange ship. “Two nights ago,” said he, “I was hove-to off Awaiama: the night was dark and the weather so rough that I did not care to move either towards Samarai or back into the harbour. My lights were burning well, when suddenly there came a flash of lightning, and by it I saw a black schooner; I could see thirty feet of her keel out of water, your worship, and she was then setting a topsail! It’s the mercy of God I was not run down; she had no lights, and I want her found and her captain fined.” I sympathized greatly with Oates, and sent to the Subcollector of Customs for a list of vessels which had entered the harbour during the past two days; naturally the officer never dreamt of including the Government vessel in the list, for, in the first instance, her movements did not concern him, and, in the second, he knew that as she carried me, I must know as much or more about her than he did. Oates scanned the list of luggers, cutters, and Mission boats, but there was no black schooner of the description he gave. “Captain Oates,” I said, “are you certain it was not a nightmare you had?” Oates choked with indignation. “She was four times the size of any vessel on this coast; my whole crew saw her and got the fright of their lives. Devil, even a binnacle light she carried.” “Very good, Captain Oates,” I said; “you see we can get no information about her from the Customs, but I will undertake that we will bring your mysterious craft to book the first time the Siai finds her; it is a very serious offence for a merchant ship to sail without lights.”
From Awaiama we sailed for the Conflict Group, a circle of small islands surrounding a lagoon of a few miles in circumference. These islands were afterwards purchased from the Crown by a man named Wickham, who intended to use the lagoon for the propagation of sponges, and the island for cocoanut growing. I don’t know what sort of success he made of the cocoanut growing, but I doubt if the sponges could have proved profitable, as Arbouine told me that the sponge trade was entirely in the hands of a small corporation of Jews, by whom they were bought at their own price and sold again wholesale at whatever amount they liked to fix. The high prices paid by the users of large sponges of fine quality are not due to the cost of fishing for them, nor to the expense entailed in their preparation, but are created simply by the ring. I believe, however, that the curing of the finer quality of sponges is a trade secret possessed only by the corporation, but I can see no reason why an expert chemist should not discover a process equally good, as it really only consists of bleaching the fibrous tissue of the half-animal, half-vegetable sponge.
My boats did not linger long at the Conflict Group, as there was nothing in our line there, so accordingly we went on to Tubi Tubi, where again we found that, though the reefs abounded in an infinite variety of wondrously beautiful shells and bêche-de-mer, shells of the sort we were seeking were conspicuous by their absence, with the exception of a few of the black-lip variety.
Bêche-de-mer is a sort of sea slug, ranging in size from six inches to two feet in length, and from one to six inches in diameter. It is highly prized by the Chinese, who use it for soup making: considerable quantities, however, are now used in London, Paris, and Queensland for the same purpose. The fish lies like a Bologna sausage on the bottom, and is easily brought to the surface by naked divers; it varies in value from £200 per ton downwards according to the size, variety, and skill displayed in curing. The curing is really a very simple matter: should the operation be done on board, the fish or slugs are simply thrown into a four-hundred-gallon tank set in brickwork upon the deck and boiled vigorously in their own juice for a couple of hours; they are then smoked like a ham in a smoke-house for a night. They come on board flabby gelatinous objects, unsightly to the eye and loathly to the touch; they go away packed in sacks, hard little objects like lumps of perished india-rubber. The liquor exuded by boiling bêche-de-mer has peculiar properties: it will burnish copper until it becomes like gold, and should clothes be dipped in it before being washed, it will remove every particle of grease or dirt, leaving them, after washing, like the finished work of a good French laundress. The most valuable variety of bêche-de-mer, at the time I write of, was the “teat” fish, so called from having two peculiar rows of teat-like excrescences along the belly; it should not have been the most valuable, as the red fish had at one time been more appreciated by the Chinamen; but they were now regarded with suspicion, as several of their people had been poisoned from partaking of that particular delicacy. Slander said, that Nicholas the Greek had caused the deaths and spoilt the market for red fish by boiling a quantity of them in a copper boiler.
From Tubi Tubi we ran close by the islands of Basilaki and Sariba to Samarai, having little luck on the way. The Basilaki natives had a somewhat unpleasant experience prior to the Proclamation of a Protectorate by the British Government over the southern portion of New Guinea. They had cut out a trading vessel and murdered the crew, with the result that a man-of-war, the name of which I have now forgotten, was sent to punish them. Upon the appearance of the warship they fled into the bush, where the sailors were unable to follow them. In order to inflict some punishment, the ship shelled the principal village, doing, however, no real harm to the thatched huts; several of the shells also failed to explode as they pitched upon the soft coral sand. As time went on, a great feast was held in that village, and the old shells, picked up by the natives, were used instead of stones to support the extra cooking pots. Gaily the natives danced, well were the fires stoked, until suddenly the explosion of three or four twelve-pounder (or heavier) shells spread devastation amongst the packed natives. The manes of the murdered crew may have waited long for revenge, but when it did come, it certainly arrived in a wholesale way.
On arrival in Samarai I paid off my luggers and Billy, which left me with a bare fiver to pay off the Mizpah’s crew, each individual member of which was entitled to that amount; and the Mizpah, after my unsuccessful cruise, was so mortgaged that I could not hope to obtain any money on her. I called my New Guinea boys together and explained the difficulty. “All right,” said my coxswain, “you pay me off before the Government officer and I’ll give you the money back, then you can pay off the next man and he will do the same, and so on until we are clear of the Government and can sail in search of money somewhere.” This I did, and, at the end, still possessed the odd five pounds I had paid them off with; then they all signed on again with me for another voyage. There was at that time no fee to be paid for either signing a crew on or off.
About this time an awful hurricane struck the islands, wrecking and sinking many ships, amongst others the Nabua, a new vessel chartered by Burns, Philp and Co., laden with copra and bound for Samarai. This vessel was somewhere north of East Cape when struck by the hurricane; the crew, terrified by the fury of the storm, let go the anchors when off the coast, and finally abandoned her. They then came into Samarai, reporting that she had been swamped and had sunk at anchor—a story which was accepted by all. I, however, had my doubts about this; and when Burns, Philp and Co., as agents for Lloyds’ underwriters, put her up for sale at auction, I made the one and only bid of five pounds—my last five pounds—for the hull and cargo, and she was knocked down to me for that amount.
After buying the Nabua, I left in the Mizpah for the locality where she was supposed to have foundered, and then got into communication with the coastal natives. “You remember the big wind of a few days ago?” I asked. “Yes,” was the reply. “You saw a vessel at anchor off the shore, a vessel that sank during the gale?” “Yes,” again was the answer. “Is there any rock near where she anchored?” “Certainly,” came the reply; “we will show it you for payment.” For a pound of tobacco they piloted the Mizpah until we were over a rock shaped like a pinnacle or sugar loaf, which was submerged about two fathoms, but which would in rough weather and a heavy sea have only about two feet upon it. “I thought so,” I said to myself; “a strong new vessel such as the Nabua, with her hatches battened down and laden with a light bulky cargo like copra, never would have been swamped at anchor; she must have cracked a plank and have been sunk by a leak.” My boys dived near the rock and reported that there was an anchor with a chain attached, leading into water too deep for them to descend into.
Hastily I sailed back into Samarai, stirred up a drunken ship’s carpenter named Niccols—who was also a good diver—and induced two friends of his, who owned trading luggers, to accompany me back to raise the Nabua. As I had no money, I made the bargain that they should get fifty pounds apiece if we raised the vessel, and nothing if we failed. Back accordingly we went. Harry Niccols descended, and coming up announced he had found the Nabua lying on a shelf on the bottom leading into deep water, and held there by her anchor. The tide apparently, after the gale had subsided, had drifted her away from the rock, upon which she had struck, in a seaward direction. With the exception of one plank smashed under her counter, Harry reported she was uninjured, and he also said that she was palpably light from the nature of her cargo and consequently easy to lift. After getting the luggers over her, Harry descended again and made fast our anchor chains to her chain plates, and then with small difficulty we lifted her with our winches, until she was awash between the two luggers. Just then the Merrie England hove in sight round the point, and seeing us, she dropped her launch, which came puffing alongside with a letter from Judge Winter asking me to go on board at once. I guessed that the Judge wanted to take me off somewhere, and I accordingly impressed upon Harry Niccols and the lugger owners the immediate necessity of beaching our recovered vessel and mending her plank before taking her to Samarai; this they promised to do.
The work for which the Judge wanted me kept me away for six weeks; I was, however, congratulating myself meanwhile upon the fact that, when I went again to Samarai, I should have the proceeds of the sale of a valuable vessel and cargo to collect from Burns, Philp and Co. My hopes were doomed to be dashed to the ground, for, when I eventually reached Samarai, Mr. Arbouine knew nothing about my salvaged ship. On finding Harry Niccols, that worthy told me that they had got the Nabua up safely, and had nailed some canvas over the hole in her stern and pumped her out; then, as they were on the point of beaching her to repair her plank, a trading cutter came in sight, from which—in the joy of their hearts at having so easily made fifty pounds a man—they had bought a keg of rum, upon which all hands had got drunk. Whilst still under the influence of liquor they had decided to sail for Samarai with the unmended Nabua fastened between the two luggers. In China Straits they had got into a tide rip and had been compelled to release the Nabua in order to save the luggers from foundering, whereupon she had of course filled and sunk in deep water. I accordingly lost my ship, and they, their fifty pounds; the damned fools had never even landed her cargo, which was worth twelve pounds per ton, and would have paid us handsomely for our work and trouble.