With three dying men, and three wounded, he got the sinking boat under sail and brought her alongside the schooner.
Of course it was very good of the Alaska Commercial Company to preserve the wild game of the islands, but even gamekeepers may show excess of zeal when it comes to wholesale murder. To all of us who were in that trade it is a matter of keen regret that the officers ashore took such good cover. Their guards, and the Cossacks, were kindly souls enough, ready and willing—in the absence of the officers to sell skins to the raiders or even, after some refreshments, to help in clubbing a few hundred seals. It was rather awkward, though, for one of the schooners at Cape Patience when in the midst of these festivities a gunboat came round the corner.
The American and the Japanese schooners were not always quite good friends, and there is a queer story of a triangular duel between three vessels, fought in a fog. Mr. Kipling had the Rhyme of the Three Sealers, he told me, from Captain Lake in Yokohama. I had it from the mate of one of the three schooners, The Stella. She changed her name to Adele, and the mate became master, a little, round, fox-faced Norseman, Hans Hansen, of Christiania. In 1884 the Adele was captured by an American gunboat and taken to San Francisco. Hansen said that he and his men were marched through the streets shackled, and great was the howl about pirates, but when the case came up for trial the court had no jurisdiction, and the ship was released. From that event dates the name “Yokohama Pirates,” and Hansen’s nickname as the Flying Dutchman. Because at the time of capture he had for once been a perfectly innocent deep sea sealer, he swore everlasting war against the United States, transferred his ship to the port of Victoria, British Columbia, and would hoist by turns the British, Japanese, German, Norwegian or even American flag, as suited his convenience.
Once when I asked him why not the Black Flag, he grinned, remarking that them old-fashioned pirates had no business sense. Year after year he raided the forbidden islands to subvert the garrisons, rob warehouses, or plunder the rookeries, while gunboats of four nations failed to effect his capture. In port he was a pattern of innocent virtue, at sea his superb seamanship made him as hard to catch as a ghost, and his adventures beat the Arabian Nights. I was with him as an ordinary seaman in the voyage of 1889, a winter raid upon the Pribilof Islands. At the first attempt we clawed off a lee shore in a hurricane, the second resulted in a mutiny, and the third landing was not very successful, because the boats were swamped, and the garrison a little too prevalent ashore. On the voyage of 1890 the Adele took four hundred skins, but in 1891 was cast away on the North Island of the Queen Charlotte group, without any loss of life. The Flying Dutchman took to mining on the outer coast of Vancouver, where he rescued a shipwrecked crew, but afterward perished in the attempt to save a drowning Indian.
Quite apart from the so-called Yokohama pirates, a large fleet of law-abiding Canadian schooners hunted the fur seal at sea, a matter which led to some slight unpleasantness between the American and the British governments. There was hunting also in the seas about Cape Horn; but the Yokohama schooners have left behind them by far the finest memories. Captain Snow says that from first to last some fifty white men’s schooners sailed out of Yokohama. Of five there is no record, two took to sealing when the sea otter no longer paid, and four were sold out of the business. The Russians sank one, captured and lost two, captured and condemned three, all six being a dead loss to their owners. For the rest, twenty-two were cast away, and twelve foundered with all hands at sea, so that the total loss was forty ships out of fifty. For daring seamanship and gallant adventure sea hunting made a school of manhood hard to match in this tame modern world, and war is a very tame affair to those who shared the fun.
XXII
A. D. 1879 THE BUSHRANGERS
It is a merit to love dumb animals, but to steal them is an excess of virtue that is sure to cause trouble with the police. All Australians have a passion for horses, but thirty years ago, the Australian bushmen developed such a mania for horse-stealing, that the mounted police were fairly run off their legs. The feeling between bushmen and police became so exceedingly bitter that in 1878 a constable, attempting to make arrests, was beset and wounded. The fight took place in the house of a Mrs. Kelly, who got penal servitude, whereas her sons, Ned and Dan, who did the actual shooting, escaped to the hills. A hundred pounds were offered for their arrest.
Both of Mrs. Kelly’s sons were tainted, born and raised thieves. At the age of sixteen Ned had served an apprenticeship in robbery under arms with Power the bushranger, who described him as a cowardly young brute. Now, in his twenty-fifth year he was far from brave. Dan, aged seventeen, was a ferocious young wolf, but manly. As the brothers lurked in hiding they were joined by Joe Byrne, aged twenty-one, a gallant and sweet-tempered lad gone wrong, and by Steve Hart, a despicable little cur. All four were superb as riders, scouts and bushmen, fairly good shots, intimate with every inch of the country, supported by hundreds of kinsmen and the sympathy of the people generally in the war they had declared against the police.
In October, Sergeant Kennedy and three constables patroling in search of the gang, were surprised by the outlaws in camp, and, as they showed fight, Ned and Dan Kelly attacked them. Only one trooper escaped. At this outrage, Byrne was horrified, Hart scared, but the Kellys forced them to fire into Sergeant Kennedy’s corpse that they might share the guilt. Then Ned Kelly, touched by the gallantry with which the sergeant had fought, brought a cloak and reverently covered his body.
In December, the outlaws stuck up a sheep station, and robbed the bank at Euroa.