Thirty blankets and two trade-guns—equal to about 50£. sterling—were the terms at last agreed on. We then adjourned to the shed where the slave was a prisoner. I was in a great state of expectation, picturing to myself an Indian Hebe, limbs exquisitely moulded, native grace and elegance in every movement, gorgeous in ‘wampum,’ paint, and waving feathers, such as I had read of as ‘Laughing Water,’ or ‘Prairie Flower.’
Being carried, so to speak, into the shed—a waif in the stream of savages rushing like a human torrent to get in—with all the breath squeezed out of me, I was deposited somewhere but as my head was enveloped in a dense cloud of pungent smoke, it was some time ere I discovered I was close to the captain. ‘Sit down,’ he roared; ‘you will die of suffocation if you keep your head in the smoke.’ At once I seated myself on the floor, and now quite understand what being suffocated in a chimney is like.
Once more enabled to see, it was easy to discover the secret: there being no place for the smoke to escape, it accumulates at the top of the shed, and one literally, not figuratively, ‘lives under a cloud.’ There was a hum and a burr, as in a nest of angry hornets; a din increased by the dogs, that fought and rolled in where I sat; and being by no means particular whether they bit my legs or any other man’s, it required unwonted agility to keep clear.
During an interval of peace, it was easy to make out that the slave was coming. Alas! how fleeting are imaginary pictures—poetic dreams—castles in the air! Half crouching, and waddling rather than walking, came my ideal; her only covering, a ragged, filthy old blanket, her face begrimed with the dirt and paint of a lifetime; short, fat, repulsive, the incarnation of ugliness, a very Hecate! All my romance vanished like a dissolving-view. For this had I been squeezed nearly to death, suffocated, poisoned with a noxious stench, my legs imperilled by infuriated curs, my ears deafened, half devoured by insatiable blood-suckers?—to aid in paying 50£. for the ugliest old savage eyes ever beheld!
All the chiefs assembled at the fort in the evening to receive payment, and hand over the slave. Squatting on their heels, nose and knees together, their backs against the wall, they formed a circle. The pipe produced (nothing can be done without it); I say pipe, for one only is used; filled and lighted, it passes from mouth to mouth; each, taking a good pull, puffs the smoke slowly from his nostrils. The thirty blankets and two guns being piled in the centre of this strange assemblage, the slave was led in. Each blanket underwent a most careful inspection; the guns, snapped and pointed, were finally approved of. A husky grunt, from each of the council, denoting general approval, the guns and blankets were carried off in triumph, and we became the fortunate possessors of this strange purchase.
Whilst in the fort I was tolerably exempt from the insatiable and most annoying curiosity, that induces Indians to watch everything a stranger does. One oily old chief, however, always contrived to get into my room in time to see me dress. He used to stalk in, squat down rolled in a dirty blanket, and testify his pleasure by a series of grunts slightly varied in tone. He was certainly the most blubbery-looking man I ever beheld. Everything about him was suggestive of oil, from his head to his heels, blanket included; like a compound of salmon and seal’s flesh, he smelt quite as oily as he looked. Outside, however, there was no help for it: go where I would, a bodyguard of savages (real untamed savages too, not semi-civilised articles) was always in attendance.
Once I managed to escape through the pickets at the back of the fort, and stealthily reaching the beach, under cover of the trees, imagined myself safe. A light misty rain fell thickly, and a flock of sanderlings, running along in the ripple, completely absorbed my attention. I was suddenly startled by hearing the ‘crunch, crunch’ of a foot in the shingle behind me. I had looked right and left on reaching the beach, but not a trace of Indian was visible. Turning suddenly round, you can picture my surprise at finding myself face to face with a savage, unclad from head to heel, carrying—what should you imagine?—not a scalping-knife, or a war-club, or bow or spear or gory scalp: it was an immense green gingham umbrella, a thoroughbred ‘Gamp,’ with horn crook, battered brass ferule, furled with a ring such as curtains are hung on. He politely offered me a part, and scarcely deeming it safe to refuse, I paraded the beach, linked arm-in-arm with the ugliest specimen of humanity eyes ever beheld. I wonder if, before or since, a naked savage and civilised man ever walked together on the sea-beach, listening to ‘what the wild waves were saying,’ sheltered from the rain by a green gingham umbrella! I trow not. I should have been no more astonished at seeing a seal, or old Neptune himself, with an umbrella, than I was at a naked Indian so protected on the beach at Fort Rupert.
This was not my only adventure whilst staying at the fort. The beach runs out very flat for a long distance seaward; the rocks appear a slaty kind of shingle, with seams of coal cropping out in every direction. The pines (Abies Douglassii) grow down to highwater-mark, attaining a height of 250 feet and over, straight as a flagstaff. On the branches are placed quaint-looking affairs, that you discover, on inquiry, to be coffins; but how the friends of the departed get the boxes up into the trees, or how they keep them there when they are up, is more than I can tell. The coffin is usually an old canoe, lashed round and round, like an Egyptian mummy-case, with the inner bark of the cedar-tree; but of this, and other singular customs, I shall have to speak more at length in a future chapter.
Near one of these arboreal cemeteries, I observed a high pole, and dangling from it a head, fresh, bloody, and ghastly; the scalp had been removed, and a rope, passing through the under-jaw, served to suspend it. Horribly revolting as the face appeared, still I could not help going close to it. Never had I seen so singular a head; it looked in shape like a sugarloaf, the apex of the skull terminating in a sharp point. On returning to the fort, I inquired if they could tell me anything about this mysterious head. It appeared that, a day or so before our arrival, a war-party of the Qua-kars had returned from a raid on the mainland coast, and brought with them a number of slaves. (Prisoners taken in war, or in any other manner, are invariably used as slaves, bought and sold, whipped or killed, as best befits the whim or caprice of their owner.) Amongst the wretched captives, was a chief. Soon after landing, he was made fast to a temporary cross erected on the beach, shot, scalped, and beheaded, and it was his head I had seen in my rambles. On hearing further that the tribe to which he belonged was one that elongate instead of flatten the head, I determined at any risk to have the skull. Extreme caution was needed, or a like fate would probably be mine; a white chief’s hairless head might possibly adorn the same pole as that of the painted savage. I made several attempts, but each time signally failed to accomplish my purpose.
The night preceding our departure, all hopes of obtaining the coveted head were nearly abandoned. Fortune at last smiled upon me; unobserved, I upset the pole, and bagged the head; and pushing it into my game-bag, got safely into the fort. Still in terror of being seen, I hid it in the bastion, and eventually headed it into a pork barrel, with stones and sand; then had it rolled boldly out, and put on board the steamer.