An especially pleasing coincidence of our visit to Apia was the arrival there, on the day following our own, of the auxiliary schooner yacht, La Carabine, of Melbourne, with her owner, Sir Rupert Clark, and his brother, Lieutenant Ralph Clark, R.N., aboard. Sir Rupert is the eldest son of the famous philanthropist, the late Sir William Clark, and in addition to being the richest man in the Commonwealth and its most prominent racing figure, is also distinguished as being one of the only two Australian baronets. His brother, Lieutenant Clark, for some years the Navigating Officer of the flagship of the British Australian Squadron, resigned his commission to sail La Carabine on the cruise on which she was then embarked.
La Carabine we found to be a stoutly built schooner of fifty tons' register constructed in Auckland especially for sailing in Polynesia and Micronesia. Her heavy channels and running bowsprit marked her at once as British, while her stubby foremasts and huge lifeboats suggested the trader rather than the yacht. She was equipped with gasoline engines capable of driving her five knots an hour in a smooth sea. The yacht took her name from Sir Rupert's famous racer, La Carabine, winner of the classic Melbourne Cup of a year or two previously.
The Clarks had already visited several ports in the Tongan group, and from Samoa were planning to cruise for some months among the wild and little-known islands of the New Hebrides, Solomons and New Britain archipelagos. In many of these islands money has no value whatever, a contingency which had been provided against by stocking a barter room on La Carabine similar to those of the regular traders. Here were carried prints, knives, guns, jewelry, tinned meats and tobacco, which were to be exchanged for pigs, fish, fowls and curios. Nor was the matter of defence neglected. Just forward of the house a swivel had been set in the deck and the installation completed to greet the first "cutting-out" party with a hail of bullets from a vicious-looking little Maxim set thereon. The gun was served by an old man-of-war's man shipped with the crew for that purpose. We never heard whether or not occasion ever arose for its serious use. At any rate, as Clark put it, the fact that so many labour schooners had been attacked recently made its presence "a comfort if not a necessity."
A number of very pleasant affairs were arranged for the joint pleasure of the two yachting parties, especially enjoyable proving picnics at Vailima and Papa-seea, the Sliding Rock, teas on several of the large plantations and at the Consulates, a dinner at Government House, and a couple of siva-sivas at Chief Seamanu-Tafu's. The latter were directed by the chief's daughter, Vau, the taupo of Apia, a young woman of fine face and figure and of considerable quickness of wit as well, if the manner in which she put our good friend Clark to the blush one afternoon may be taken as a criterion.
Vau and her handmaidens were off to tea on La Carabine, preliminary to a swimming party at Papa-seea. Governor Solf, Dr. Clarence Fahnstock, of the New York Yacht Club, on his way home from the Tongas, and a couple of us from the Lurline were also present. The talk turned to the reforms, political, economic and industrial, lately instituted in New Zealand. Clark, in expatiating on the stringent prohibition laws in force in that colony, made the statement that a man once convicted of drunkenness in a New Zealand hotel forfeited his right to register at any other hostelry in the country. Upon hearing which Vau looked up from the fashion supplement of a Sydney illustrated weekly in which she had been engrossed and, with just enough twinkle in her dark eyes to belie the innocence of expression that sat upon the rest of her face, cooed sweetly, "So you have now to stay with frens, Sir Ruper', when you go Nu-zelan?"
And Clark, the suave, the debonair, the cool-headed; Clark, for years the endlessly-angled-for catch of two hemispheres; Clark, who took the coveted Melbourne Cup without the flicker of an eyelash, blushed and stammered like a débutante in an effort to explain. Finally, judging the temper of the company unpropitious, he gave up his ill-advised effort to save his reputation and took his revenge an hour later by pushing Vau, with all her finery, over the brink of Papa-seea.
Maid of honour to the Taupo of Apia
A Samoan Sunset