Turned Adrift

by Harry Collingwood

The canoe had been gone about three-quarters of an hour when, watching the shore through the ship’s telescope, I perceived a slight stir upon the beach, and presently became aware that a small party of natives had gathered about the jollyboat, which they pushed off from the beach, making fast her painter to the stern of the canoe. Then other natives appeared, bearing in grass hammocks the three missing seamen, who were laid in the sternsheets of the jollyboat; and finally the canoe was manned, apparently by the same four natives who had previously come off in her, and headed for the schooner, whereupon I gave orders for the windlass to be manned and the cable to be hove short, all ready for tripping the anchor at a moment’s notice. This was done; and by the time the canoe was once more within hailing distance the cable was so taut up and down that a single additional revolution of the windlass barrel would break out the anchor and free us from the ground.

And now came the really difficult part of my negotiation with the savages; for, being themselves superlatively unscrupulous and deceitful, they naturally suspected us of being the same, and would not come alongside, or render up possession of the jollyboat and the three wounded seamen whom she carried, until we on our part had released Oahika. And this I flatly refused to do, feeling that, as likely as not, they would play us some scurvy trick as soon as they had recovered possession of the man who, I now very strongly suspected, was the paramount chief of the island, or, if not that, at least a chief of very considerable importance. We argued, stipulated, and made counter stipulations, all to no purpose, and finally once more arrived at a deadlock. Of course I might very easily have settled the matter by shooting the four natives in the canoe; but that would have been an act of the very blackest treachery, and I was strongly of opinion that it was just such treacherous conduct on the part of certain unscrupulous white men that had made the natives of some of the Polynesian islands the cruel, treacherous wretches that they had become.

I therefore once more resorted to “bluff”, by hailing them and saying that unless they came alongside at once and surrendered possession of the boat and those in her, I would get the schooner under way and proceed to sea, taking Oahika and the rest of our prisoners with me; and to make my threat the more effective I turned away and gave the order to man the windlass. This was enough; with the first clank of the windlass pawls, Oahika, who had thus far taken no part in our second palaver, let out a yell at the men in the canoe which caused them to surrender instantly at discretion and rush their craft up alongside the schooner.

And now I determined upon a bold thing. These Roua Poua savages had caused us a vast amount of trouble and loss; through them we were short-handed to the extent of no less than six men; and I felt that for the sake of my own satisfaction and self-respect I must get something, though it were ever so little, back out of them. Therefore, since we white men were all armed, and therefore in a position to take good care of ourselves, as soon as the tackles were hooked into the jollyboat’s ringbolts I ordered the four savages in the canoe to leave her and come on deck to help to hoist in the boat; and this they did in a state of the most abject fear and trembling. Then I sent them for’ard to the windlass to assist in breaking out the anchor; and it was not until the schooner was actually adrift that I permitted them to begin the transfer of their wounded from the Martha’s deck to the canoe. They displayed remarkably little consideration for the comfort and wellbeing of their comrades in the performance of this duty; and indeed I have always been of opinion that had I been foolish enough to liberate Oahika before the others had been transhipped, he and his canoemen would have incontinently made off at top speed for the shore, leaving the others, sound and wounded alike, upon our hands and at our mercy. But I was careful to keep Oahika until the last, and it was not until the schooner was fairly under way and heading out to sea that I cast him adrift and permitted him to go over the side, which he did in a splutter of mingled wrath and fear, pouring out a long string of what were probably native curses as he seized the steering paddle and violently thrust the canoe off the schooner’s side.

By midday we were bowling merrily away to the westward under every rag that we could set, and Roua Poua had sunk out of sight beneath the eastern horizon. Long before this, however—in fact, the moment that they were safely aboard and comfortably bestowed in their bunks—Cunningham had taken the three wounded seamen in hand; and when he had done all that he could for them he came up on deck and reported to me.

“I am afraid,” he said, “that there is not much hope for those three,” with a jerk of his thumb in the direction of the forecastle. “Sullivan and Halpin have had their skulls cracked by blows inflicted with a war club, and their cases are very similar to that of the skipper, but worse; while poor Glenn has no less than eleven spear wounds in his body, and though none of them is very serious in itself this heat makes me terribly afraid of gangrene. However, I have done all that I can for them at present, and we must just hope for the best. Glenn tells me that after the skipper and I had left them the natives came swarming round them, exciting their curiosity by exhibiting curios of various kinds for sale, or barter, rather, at ridiculously cheap prices, and so enticing them away from the beach toward the village, where, they were informed, some really valuable articles might be seen. And then, when they arrived at the village, they were suddenly set upon before they had time to draw their weapons, overpowered, and confined in a hut, where they were left all day yesterday and all last night without food or water, and with their injuries untended. I am afraid there is not much hope for them, poor fellows!”

This was bad news—so very bad, indeed, that I felt it my duty to go forthwith to the skipper, report the matter to him, and ask for instructions; my own idea being that we ought to head for the Samoa or Tonga group, and procure properly qualified medical assistance with as little delay as possible.

But when I got down below and began to talk to the Old Man I soon found that he was, for some inscrutable reason, utterly opposed to any such idea. He would not give his reasons, but he positively forbade me to do as I had suggested, instructing me instead to work out a Great Circle track to Canton, and to get the ship upon her proper course at once. And as he seemed to be in full possession of all his faculties, and to know quite well what he was talking about, I had no alternative but to obey. And indeed, so far as saving the three men in the forecastle was concerned, we might as well have been heading for Canton as anywhere else; for Halpin and Glenn died within a couple of hours of each other that same night, while Sullivan lingered only some twenty-six hours longer.

I looked forward to a speedy and pleasant run to Canton, for I reckoned upon carrying the Trades with us practically all the way. But we were unfortunate; for after a fine run of nine days to the northward and westward we ran into the belt of equatorial calms in latitude 4 degrees South, and for fully three weeks thereafter encountered such extraordinary weather that we dared not ship our fins, from fear of having them carried away, or of badly straining the schooner. For instead of the long spell of calms which one usually expects in those latitudes the quiet weather generally lasted but an hour or two, and then was succeeded by such furious squalls that, for the most part, we could do nothing but run before them under bare poles; and perhaps the most exasperating part of it all was that these squalls blew mostly from the westward, or nearly dead in our teeth, so that it was only toward the tail end of them, just when they were dying out, that we were able to bring the little hooker to the wind for half an hour or so, and make a few miles of northing. And when it was not blowing with hurricane strength it was usually just the opposite: a flat calm, with a black, lowering, overcast sky, moist, steamy, overpowering heat, heavy storms of thunder and lightning, torrential downpours of tepid rain—which, by the way, enabled us to re-fill all our water tanks and casks—and waterspouts ad libitum constantly threatening us with destruction.

It was a month, to a day, from the date of our departure from Roua Poua when we at length cleared the calm belt and got the first breath of the north-east Trades in latitude 3 degrees 47 minutes North, and longitude 158 degrees 55 minutes West, having been driven back almost as far east as Christmas Island by the baffling winds and furious squalls with which we had been obliged to contend; and this brought the dangerous Marshall group right athwart our track. Therefore, the poor old skipper being still unwell, and quite unfit for duty, I decided to make a good stretch to the northward—say as far as latitude 10 degrees North—before bearing up for Canton; by doing which I should have a clear sea before me for the remainder of the trip.