Lost ships and lonely seas

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

A drawn battle was fought, with about two hundred men in each army, and a good many were killed or wounded. After that the war dragged along and seemed to be getting nowhere, and the chief mate lost all patience with it; so he bearded the rajah and flatly told him that his men would fight no longer unless some assurance was given that they would be conveyed to Macassar.

The rajah was stubborn and evasive and bruskly commanded the high-tempered Yankees to return to their posts on the firing-line. Woodard argued no longer, but marched back to his watch-tower, sent for his seamen, and told them to turn in their muskets. Before the astonished rajah had decided how to deal with this mutiny, the five mariners broke out of the town under cover of darkness and stole a canoe, carrying with them as much food as they could hastily lay hands on. They were delayed in a search for paddles, and a sentry gave the alarm.

Twenty soldiers surrounded them and dragged them back to the rajah, who locked them up, while he chewed betel-nut and meditated on the case of these madmen who refused to be tamed. Just then the priest Tuan Hadjee was sailing for another port, and he vainly petitioned the royal assent to taking the American sailors along with him. The rajah’s wrathful refusal so annoyed the impetuous chief mate that he organized another dash for freedom. Captivity, privation, and disappointment seemed to daunt him not at all.

This time the five mariners surprised the sentries at the gates, deftly tied them up, and lugged them to the beach. There a large canoe was discovered, and the fugitives piled aboard and hoisted the sail of cocoanut matting. Unmolested, they moved out of the starlit bay and flitted along the coast until sunrise. Then they hauled in to hide at an island until night. While making sail again, one of the men carelessly stepped upon the gunwale of the cranky craft, and it instantly capsized almost a mile from shore.

They climbed upon the bottom, managed to save the paddles, and navigated the canoe back to the island by swimming with it. There they rekindled their fire, dried and warmed themselves, and were ready to try it again. They had lost the sail and mast, but they paddled all night and began to hope that they had gone clear of their troublesome rajah.

In the morning, however, a proa swooped down like a hawk, and again the unlucky seamen were taken captive. They told the Malay captain that they were bound to the port for which Tuan Hadjee had sailed, as he was a friend and protector of theirs, and requested that they be landed there. Apparently the amiable priest had some power and influence even among the cutthroats who manned these proas, for the captain agreed to do as he was asked, and he proved to be as good as his word.

In this manner the chief mate and his men were carried to the port, which they called Sawyeh. Tuan Hadjee was there, and he gave them a house and was a genial host while they looked the situation over and endeavored to unravel the strands of their tangled destiny. The priest entertained them with tales of his own career, which had been lurid in spots. He was now sixty years of age, with a girl wife of sixteen, and a man of great piety and much respected, but in his younger days he had been a famous pirate of the island of Mindanao.

Among his exploits was the capture of a Dutch settlement in the Strait of Malacca, when he had commanded a proa of ten guns and two hundred men. He had been in a fair way of becoming one of the most successful pirates of those seas, but while chasing a merchant vessel his proa had turned turtle in a gale of wind, and he thereby lost all his property and riches. After this misfortune he had forsaken piracy and turned to leading an honorable life.

He was an excellent companion to these exiled sailormen from faraway New England and even gave them the use of an island where there was fruit and wild game and a pleasant house to live in, but they were no more contented. After several weeks, Tuan Hadjee announced that he had some business to attend to on another part of the coast, but would return in twenty days and then attempt to send the chief mate and his men to their own people at Batavia. While he was gone, a merchant proa came into port, and Woodard found that she was bound to Sulu, in the Philippine Islands, whence he felt certain he could get passage in some ship trading with Manila. In high hopes he arranged matters with the master of the proa, and the five castaways sailed away from Celebes.

Alas! this Malay skipper was an honest man, according to his lights, and the gossip of the town had led him to draw his own conclusions. His inference was that these white men belonged to Tuan Hadjee and were bent on running away during his absence. No hint was dropped to Woodard and his companions, and they happily beguiled themselves with visions of deliverance. But the captain of the proa had taken pains to inform himself of the destination of the absent Tuan Hadjee; wherefore he shifted his helm and bore away, to turn his passengers over to their proper owner. To their amazed disgust, they sailed into a little jungle-fringed port called Tomboa, and there, sure enough, was the no less surprised Tuan Hadjee.