On the following day we sighted Butaritari Island—one of the largest atolls in the North Pacific, and inhabited by a distinctly unamiable and cantankerous race of Malayo-Polynesians whose principal amusement in their lighter hours is to get drunk on sour toddy and lacerate each other's bodies with sharks' teeth swords. In addition to Ah Sam, the agent for the Chinese trading firm, there were two European traders who had married native women and eked out a lonely existence by buying copra (dried coco-nut) and sharks' fins when they were sober enough to attend to business—which was infrequent. However, Butaritari was a good recruiting ground for ships engaged in the labour traffic, owing to the continuous internecine wars, for the vanquished parties, after their coco-nut trees had been cut down and their canoes destroyed had the choice of remaining and having their throats cut or going away in a labour ship to Tahiti, Samoa or the Sandwich Islands.
Entering the passage through the reef, we sailed slowly across the splendid lagoon, whose waters were as calm as those of a lake, and dropped anchor abreast of the principal village and quite near the ship of the saints. She was a woe-begone, battered-looking old brig of two hundred tons or so. She showed no colours in response to ours, and we could see no one on deck. Presently, however, we saw a man emerge from below, then a woman, and presently a second man, and in a few minutes she showed the Ecuadorian flag. Then all three sat on chairs under the ragged awning and stared listlessly at our ship.
Ah Sam came off from the shore and boarded us. He was a long, melancholy Chinaman, had thirty-five hairs of a beard, and, poor fellow, was dying of consumption. He told us the local news, and then I asked him about the cargo of saints, many more of whom were now visible on the after-deck of their disreputable old crate.
Ah Sam's thin lips parted in a ghastly smile, as he set down his whisky and soda, and lit a cigar. We were seated under the awning, which had just been spread, and so had a good view of the Julia.
The brig, he said, had managed to crawl into the lagoon three months previously, and in working up to an anchorage struck on one of the coral mushrooms with which the atoll is studded. Ah Sam and the two white traders went off with their boats' crews of natives to render assistance, and after some hours' hard work succeeded in getting her off and towing her up to the spot where she was then anchored. Then the saints gathered on the after-deck and held a thanksgiving meeting, at the conclusion of which, the thirsty and impatient traders asked the captain to give them and their boats' crews a few bottles of liquor in return for their services in pulling his brig off the rocks, and when he reproachfully told them that the Julia was a temperance ship and that drink was a curse and that God would reward them for their kindness, they used most awful language and went off, cursing the captain and the saints for a lot of mean blackguards and consigning them to everlasting torments.
On the following day all the Hawaiian crew bolted on shore and took up their quarters with the natives. The captain came on shore and tried to get other natives in their place, but failed—for he had no money to pay wages, but offered instead the privilege of becoming members of what Ah Sam called some “dam fool society”.
There were, said Ah Sam, in addition to the captain and his wife, originally twenty-five passengers, but half of them had left the ship at various ports.
“And now,” he concluded, pointing a long yellow forefinger at the rest of the saints, “the rest of them will be coming to see you presently—the tam teives—to see wha' they can cadge from you.”
“You don't like them, Ah Sam?” observed our skipper, with a twinkle in his eye.
Ah Sam's reply could not be put upon paper. For a Chinaman he could swear in English most fluently. Then he bade us good-bye for the present, said he would do all he could to help me get some “recruits,” and invited us to dinner with him in the evening. He was a good-natured, hospitable fellow, and we accepted the invitation with pleasure.