In the Track of the Trades / The Account of a Fourteen Thousand Mile Yachting Cruise to the Hawaiis, Marquesas, Societies, Samoas and Fijis

by Lewis R. Freeman

"'God bless you, my brother; ask the rest of our brothers to come aboard for prayer and refreshment,' ejaculated the Reverend Horatio fervently, and no sooner was the invitation issued than fifteen more red pareos and shark tooth necklaces flashed over the rail, their wearers promptly ranging themselves in an orderly row behind their leader. An instant later, like puppets controlled by a single string, every man of them plumped down on his knees, crossed his arms on his breast and, with eyes devoutly raised at an angle that directed their gaze somewhere in the vicinity of the third row of reef points on the idly flapping mainsail, remained motionless.

"'Rehearsed, by Gawd!' muttered the mate, whose quick eye had caught Boraki's backhand signal. 'Oh, for a Maxim on the deckhouse!'

"'Oh for words to express my thanks for all that has happened and is going to happen this day!' prayed the Reverend Horatio, heeding naught but the fact that he was on the eve of the apparent fulfilment of a lifelong ambition. His prayer was brief but full of feeling, and when it was over he asked all hands to come below and have something to eat.

"Boraki brought his men to their feet with a wave of his hand, picked two of his chiefs to accompany him to the cabin with the missionary, and sent the others forward to feed and fraternize with the crew. Carried away by Loveworth's enthusiasm and confidence—the man was, and is, a born leader—the mate and I followed him and the guest of honour below.

"Who this Boraki was, beyond being the greatest rascal that ever terrorized the south-eastern Pacific, nobody knew. What he was, everybody could tell you, but those who asked usually tried to save time by telling you what he wasn't. By process of elimination you might then learn that he was a pirate, cut-throat, murderer, cannibal, robber and other things too numerous to mention; also, that each of his four hundred men in Makatea was all of these things to a greater or lesser degree, and that few of them had ever been apprehended or punished. Boraki himself was supposed to have a good deal of European blood in his veins, but of what nationality no one was sure. The traders said that his father was a missionary, and pointed to traits in his character to prove it; the missionaries said that his father was a trader, and pointed to traits in his character to prove it; Boraki was silent on the subject, but indirectly gave both parties the lie by robbing and killing—and some said eating—traders and missionaries alike.

"All that Boraki had said in his little speech when he boarded the Southern Cross was quite true, but not quite the whole truth. He did not state, for example, that the preparations for entertainment he referred to were to be in the form of endurance tests of walking on red-hot stones—the walking to be done by the visitors—and that possibly the red-hot stones might serve for another purpose by the time the supper hour came around. Nor did he state that the end of his volunteer piloting was to run the nose of the schooner into a soft sand bank in the middle of the passage, where canoe-loads of his men, coming from the lagoon ostensibly as life-savers, could take advantage of the confusion that was bound to follow the accident to enter into possession with a minimum of difficulty and risk. The schooner was to be left till the shifting of the sands at the turn of the tide would release her without injury. All of which, of course, we did not learn until later.

"This plan, good enough to have succeeded against a gunboat, had been evolved by the resourceful pirate in the expectation that the Southern Cross was coming with nothing less than a battery of rapid-fire guns and a detachment of French marines to see her through. When Boraki saw no quick-firers on the deck, no rifles or cutlasses in the cabin, and not even a revolver or knife in the belts of the officers and crew, he perceived at once that there was no use risking the loss of the schooner by running her aground. His action was characteristic.

"The swift happenings of the next hour or so, as I was witness of them only 'in spots,' I shall describe as the subsequent testimony of the participants—principally Boraki himself—showed them to have transpired.

"The distinctly mixed assemblage—Boraki, his two fellow cut-throats, Loveworth, the Australian first mate, the half-caste second mate and myself—were seated round the cabin table. The steward had finished setting out a substantial little lunch and the Reverend Horatio, having put one of his favourite records into the gramophone, was just winding it up, when Boraki, without a word even to his companions, sprang lightly to the top of the cabin stairs and shouted to his men in Marquesan—a language that was understood by every one on the boat but myself—to tie up the sailors. Regaining the cabin floor at a single bound, he swung quickly with a mineral water bottle on the heads of the first and second mates before either of those unfortunates was clear of his chair. My own head struck the cabin lamp a sharp blow as I lurched up out of my swivel seat, and I was already half dazed when Boraki's hard-swung bludgeon landed on my temple and dropped me like a log across the second mate. My last recollection was of one of the chiefs, muffled in Loveworth's long black coat-tails, trying to pinion the missionary's powerful legs, while the other brown rascal tore at the clerical stock in an effort to find an effective place to choke. I am indebted to Boraki for most of what followed.