Tom Day—a trader of Noukanau Island
Cameron is a Scotsman with a twinkling, hard blue eye, the daft Scotch eye. He followed every word we said with sly caution (partly, no doubt, in consequence of drink) as though he feared being trapped into some dangerous admission. He was one of the men of the Wandering Minstrel that was so mysteriously wrecked on Midway Island, and was afterward charged by the captain with not reporting the fact of there being other starving castaways left on Midway when he was rescued. To us he denied this vehemently, and said he at once delivered a letter written by the captain. Louis tried to get a hint of how and why the vessel was wrecked, but failed. "Mosey," the Chinaman who was in the boat with Cameron, was afterward wrecked again on the Tiernan, the schooner we so nearly took passage in ourselves.[14] Louis got this much from Cameron—but I am sure very little, if any, of it is true—that he had written an account of the wreck which, with the log he kept on the boat, had been left on one of the islands we are about to visit, for safe-keeping. Before Cameron left he had given Louis a signed order for the apocryphal manuscript. Of the two men we brought one back with us, Captain Smith, who, having lost his schooner on this island, remained as a trader. He seemed a modest, intelligent young man, rather above the South Sea average. Tom Day, however, is—must be—the "flower of the Pacific." Tom is fifty years of age, with a strong, alert figure and the mobile face of an actor; his eyes are blue-grey in deep orbits, blazing with energy and drink and high spirits. "Tom Day" is not his real name, he says, and Tom Drunk would do quite as well; he had found it necessary to go to the expense of a shilling to have it changed, as he had three times deserted from men-of-war. "I've been in prison for it," he said cheerfully, "and I got the cat for it, and if you like you can see the stars and stripes on my back yet." He took pleasure in representing himself as the most desperate of ruffians. Tin Jack asked him to go back to Sydney with him. "I couldn't leave my old woman behind," said he; "and besides, you see, I got into trouble there. The fact is, I've got another wife there, and I think I'd do better to keep away." He then began to tell of a quarrel he'd had with his "old woman" when he took her to Auckland. How she chased him along the street with a knife in one hand and a bag of sovereigns—his entire fortune—in the other; he begged for the bag of sovereigns, trying to lay hold of it and at the same time avoid the knife wielded by the "old woman" (a young native girl, no doubt), who alternately lunged at him with the knife and cracked him over the head with the bag of sovereigns. The bursting of the bag, which scattered the sovereigns in every direction, fortunately ended the quarrel. He mentioned Maraki, on which Louis called to mind a story he had been told many times over.
"You are the Tom Day who had a native's head cut off," said he; "now tell me the story," which Tom presently did. A native had shot at him without provocation. Some one said: "Don't shoot; it's a white man." "A white man can cut a bullet as well as another," was the native's reply as he fired. Tom put his hand to his ear, found that the shot had grazed it and his head, and the blood was running from the wound. Infuriated, he rushed into the house for his rifle, but when he got back, the man frightened at what he had done, had disappeared. Tom tried to persuade the people standing about to go after the man, pinion him, and fetch him back to be tried. To this they objected; they could not get him, they said, as he was a chief and had people to protect him. One of the men came close to Tom. "Better we kill him," he said in a low voice, which Tom imitated. "If you do," was Tom's answer, "fetch me the head." Then turning to us with an apologetic air he explained that "If I had not asked to see the head they'd just have gone and killed some poor, inoffensive fellow and I'd never have known the difference." That night he was called up by the men who had the head, sure enough. "I made 'em stick it up on the wall," said Tom, "and then I got a light and looked at it. I jerked it down and slung it as far as I could; and, by golly, the old woman was in the way, half scared to death, and it took her on the side of the head and knocked her down, and I had to pour three or four pails of water over her, for she had fainted dead away."
"And after that," he continued with an air of virtuous indignation, "they wanted to make trouble about it in Sydney—they said I had killed a man. What did they mean by it, I'd like to know? I never killed no man; I only told them to fetch his head so I could be sure it was him."
It was very cold last night and my bed and tent and things nearly blew away; I could not leave them and go below where it was warmer, but had to stay and hold on to my belongings lest I should lose them entirely; so to-day I lashed everything securely. No one stayed on the hatch but Lloyd and me. The onions alongside Lloyd's and my beds are decaying, and smell horrid, as do a great lot of sharks' fins drying over our heads.
15th.—Waked to find that we were lying off Tapituea, Tin Jack's station. He had packed the day before and was all ready to land, his pig tied up and lying on deck. Tapituea looks a large and dreary island, the whole lee side submerged, making it very dangerous. We could not venture inside the lagoon, and even if we did we should have to anchor far away from the landing-place. It was a long time before any one came on board, but finally a Hawaiian who spoke a little English came out in his canoe. As Tin Jack appeared to be rather depressed with the news from his place, and it was almost impossible to land his stuff, we left Tapituea and ran on to Nanouti, where he thought he might prefer to stop. He has a sort of partner at Nanouti, known as "Billy Jones's cousin." The partner was soon on board, a man with a big head and one hand blown off by dynamite. A new arrangement was made with Tin Jack, who said he preferred staying in the ship as long as possible. We are now to carry him on with us, and land him at Nanouti as we return. A pleasant-looking young native came on board with the trader. He wore a rosary round his neck, which reminded me that there were Catholic missionaries on the island; I therefore made a little parcel of four Catholic pictures for them, and Louis put in his card; Tin Jack added a bag of garlic.
We left Nanouti before dinner, had a beautiful golden sunset, and are now steaming on to somewhere else, Apemama,[15] I trust. To-night the evening star is extraordinarily brilliant, with the blue fire of a diamond. Last night Mr. Hird came to the hatch and called out in a most excited voice: "Osbourne, we are just passing the equator!" Lloyd jumped out of a sound sleep and ran aft, crying: "Where is she? I don't see her!" It was a sorry joke; we were crossing the line, and it was not Captain Reid's schooner, on which we had passed so many delightful months.
