At noon, on the 15th of April, the Nukahiva, a French schooner of about seventy tons—the "greyhound" of the Marquesan trading fleet—hove up anchor and got under weigh for the entrance with the courteously avowed intention of showing us the way to Tahiti.
"Venez nous voir en arrivant a Papeete!" her captain shouted as she came up past us and went about; and "Merci—avec plasir!" we faltered back as we waved him a vigorous au revoir with our napkins from the companionway.
At one o'clock we were under weigh ourselves, beating out against such baffling puffs of the trade-wind as found their way to the inner bay. Sailing within four points of the wind in the smooth water of the narrow passage, by two o'clock Lurline had overcome the hour's lead of the Nukahiva, and a few minutes later passed ahead and well to the windward of her through the "Sentinels."
A number of our newly-made friends had come down to the beach to wave us bon voyage, but the one to whom our glasses turned the oftenest was a white clad figure that had stood immovable under the shade of a coco palm while the yacht was in sight and which, as the southerly "Sentinel" began to blot our tower of sail, had sunk down into a dejected heap upon the coral clinkers. The memories and the thoughts of the "Outside World" which our coming had conjured up for McGrath, the man who was trying to forget the "Outside World," had proved almost too much for him.
That pathetic little white heap on the beach of Taio-haie was the last we ever saw of the young trader who had done so much to make our visit to Nukahiva a memorable one, and whom we had all come to like so well. Some weeks later, in Tahiti, I received a letter from Cramer telling how McGrath, accompanied by a single native boy and with a pitifully small stock of provisions, had been blown off to sea during a storm in the little cutter he was building when we were at Hatiheu, and had been given up for lost. And it was as lost that we mourned our good friend during all the rest of the cruise and for many months afterward until, one day, came the following letter, written from Tahiti: (I give the essential parts of it verbatim for the especial benefit of those yachtsmen who are prone to feel themselves the victims of hard luck at having to spend a summer night out of port in a snug, decked-over forty-footer.)
"I have had a rather exciting time of it for the last six months, having been blown away from the Marquesas group in the little boat which I was building when you called at the islands. It was owing to the unshipping of the rudder, and as the boat had an overhanging stern it was impossible for us to re-ship it for four days, owing to the heavy sea. We had no oars with which to guide the boat, otherwise I might have fetched the lee of Nukahiva. We were more than two hundred miles west of the group when we finally succeeded in getting the rudder repaired, and had but a gallon of water left. As it then fell calm I decided to run for Caroline, with the breeze and strong current in our favour, and made the island O.K. within an hour of the time I calculated. To say that I had a hell of a time is putting it mildly. After trying twice to make Tahiti, and running into a southeast gale each time, I ran for Samoa, and the last five days of the run had the full force of the hurricane which swept the whole of the South Pacific from June 12th to 18th. It was so fierce that the Sierra—a 6,300-ton steamer of the American-Australian Line—was blown away from the Samoas and could not effect an entrance. Several vessels were piled up in the neighbourhood of Samoa, and many dismasted; yet my boy and I lived it out in a perfectly open boat.
"We were blown away on the 7th of May, and made Tutuila on the 18th of June, after having sailed more than 3,000 miles. The boat filled once, twelve miles from Pago Pago, and almost sank, but we threw everything overboard to lighten her, baled her out, and then slashed her through it with reefed foresail. She was the finest sea boat that ever split a wave, and at Samoa beat a twenty-tone schooner seventeen hours in a gale of wind from Savaii to Apia—a dead beat of sixty miles."
McGrath's letter went on to tell of how he had sold his little cutter in Samoa, journeyed to Sydney by steamer, travelled for some months in Australasia, and was finally in Tahiti en voyage to his old post in the Marquesas. Subsequent letters received by the Commodore from Tahiti were calculated to cast considerable doubt on McGrath's story of having been blown away from Nukahiva in a storm, and hinted at shortages of accounts and other things. It is quite possible these charges are true—it will make no difference with our memory of the man if they are—but if they are, the question that suggests itself is, "Why did McGrath, after successfully reaching Australia, come back again to the Marquesas?" At last accounts he was back under the shadow of the great cliffs of Hatiheu where, I sincerely hope, his high-strung spirit has ceased to be troubled by the conflicting impulses to which he was a prey during the final days of our visit to Nukahiva. The story of McGrath cannot be told yet, for the reason that one of the strangest of its drama is still unplayed; when it is written, if ever, I have gleaned just enough of what has gone before to know that the record will be one of the most remarkable that has ever been given to the world.