After examining the canoes and many of the houses the party made their way back to the gig, and as the tide was now in they had not far to walk. On reaching the yacht, however, it was found that the anchor had got jammed, and as the wind was blowing pretty hard and the tide running in, the captain feared that they would go aground on a very nasty reef unless they got away quickly. All hands were brought to bear on the chain, but to their horror they found that their pulling was of no avail; all the time the yacht was swinging round and getting dangerously near the reef. Suddenly from the shore a dozen canoes were seen coming out {67} full pelt. The natives had guessed what was wrong and were rowing out to help. Soon the water was black with canoes, and the shouts of the natives were almost deafening. At last they were alongside, and one standing in the bow of his boat looked up at our captain. “Me fix him, captain, you get anchor all right,” he shouted, and the next instant he had dived head foremost under the yacht. No sooner was he out of sight than another followed, and so on till the water was in a regular foam with diving and swimming natives, there must have been dozens of them, whilst crowds of others hung round in their canoes anxiously watching for their comrades to come up and report progress. As each woolly pate shot out of the water the watchers called out questions, but without answering they dived again—they had only come up for breath—and neither the party nor the natives were able to find out what was wrong. After nearly ten minutes’ work they all came up, and their disappointed faces told the tale. It was no good, the anchor was completely jammed, and in spite of all their efforts these good fellows could do nothing.
To save the yacht from grounding the chain had to be cut, and shortly after that the yacht rode out {68} of the bay clear of the rocks, amid the cheers of the natives.
Jamming of anchors in these parts is not an uncommon experience, and to avoid losing them many skippers carry a charge of dynamite about with them, which they slide down the anchor chain at the end of a piece of slack rope. If the charge is timed properly and all goes well, the coral, between which the anchor is fixed, is blown to smithereens. Some skippers, however, have had any but pleasant results from this experiment, and have not only lost their anchor but considerably damaged their boats.
PART II THE SOLOMON ISLANDS
CHAPTER VII
South Sea traders good and bad; their ups and downs—Nicolas the Greek—The Mambare river massacre—Some queer creatures with queerer ways—A fitting end to a wasted life.
There is a grim uncertainty about the life of a South Sea trader. To-day he is alive and the centre of a crowd of cringing natives who bow down before him, offering their goods in exchange for others, obeying his every word, for he is their lord and they are his slaves. But to-morrow may alter everything, and find that all that is left of the once boastful trader is a mangled corpse.
He may curse the Papuan, he may cheat him and rob him of his wives up to a certain point, then the worm turns, and one dark night, when the trader is lying unsuspectingly in his lonely hut, murder steals through the jungle in the shape of a naked savage whose eyes gleam with revenge. Yes, there are no half-measures with these savages, {72} no gentle stabbing, no single shot, but absolute mangling in a ghastly form.
Sooner or later death has come to nine-tenths of the traders; sometimes it has been unjust, but more often richly deserved. The remaining one in ten lives free from all trouble and in harmony with his men, and he prospers and enjoys his life.
The majority of the men who trade out there are rough, uncouth beggars, but they have a jovial, devil-may-care way with them, taking both life and death as they come; they rise in the morning, not knowing if they will ever see their beds again in this world, but they don’t mind that. Some of them are as plucky as they are coarse, and as jolly as they are muscular; but it is deplorable to think that they are the men who are civilising and forming the future of the natives, and with such guides it is not surprising that they steal and murder, and that in some parts no trader dare leave his store for a night lest it be sacked by daybreak. A trader’s existence is no life for a peaceful white man; it means, as Louis Beck so aptly puts it, “a pistol in one hand and your life in the other.” Yet there is room for the honest man and plenty of money to be made, for these islands abound in untouched wealth, as the success of Messrs. Burns Philp {73} shows. They have made money, and their advancement shows that with honesty and enterprise there is plenty of room for good men. A few more such firms and the place would soon change and become a prosperous colony, where decent folks could live with some certainty of dying a natural death.