But when the light-hearted blue-jackets manned the capstan and merrily footed it round to lively music, and the great steamer's head was pointed to the passage, my thoughts were far away, where in fancy I discerned a tiny boat breasting the vast ocean swell, while sitting aft with his face turned to the westward, his strong brown hand on the tiller, was the once dreaded Captain of the Leonora; the lawless rover of the South Seas; the man whose name was known and feared from the South Pole to Japan, and yet through all, my true friend and most indulgent commander. With all his faults, our constant association had enabled me to appreciate his many noble qualities and fine natural impulses. And as the black hull of the Rosario rose and fell to the sea, her funnel the while pouring forth volumes of sable smoke, the island gradually sunk astern, but the memories connected with it and Captain Hayston will abide with me for ever.
Harry Skillings I never saw again, but heard that he went to Truk in the North-west Carolines. Black Johnny was murdered in New Britain. The other Harry with his native wife fell victims to the treacherous savages of the Solomon Islands. Jansen died a few years since on Providence Island. Some of the other traders and members of the crew I have heard of from time to time, scattered far and wide over the Isles of the Pacific. Lālia died in Honolulu about five years since, constant in her attempts to reach her distant home on Easter Island.
CHAPTER XIV
NORFOLK ISLAND—ARCADIA
And now, my innocence and lack of complicity in Hayston's irregularities having been established, a revulsion of feeling took place in the minds of the captain and officers of the Rosario with regard to me.
After the fullest explanations furnished by the traders and others, backed up by the manifest sympathy and good-will of the inhabitants of Strong Island, it became apparent that some sort of reparation was due to me. This took the form of a courteous invitation to accept a passage to Sydney in H.M.S. Rosario, and to join the officers' mess on the voyage. "I'm afraid that we acted hastily in your case, Mr. Telfer!" said Captain Dupont. "You have been thoroughly cleared of all accusations made against you. I am bound to say they were very few. And you seem chiefly to have acted as a peacemaker and a power for good. I have gathered that you are anxious to rejoin your friends in Sydney. I shall be glad to have your company on the return voyage. What do you say? I trust you will not refuse; I shall otherwise think you have not forgiven my apparent harshness."
Thus pressed to return to family and friends—from whom, at times, in spite of my inborn roving propensities, the separation had cost me dear—what could I do but thank the manly and courteous potentate, and comply with an invitation so rarely granted to a South Sea adventurer. I was the more loth to lose the opportunity as there had come upon me of late a violent fit of homesickness which I in vain strove to combat.
I had in truth now no particular reason for remaining at Kusaie, or indeed anywhere in the South Seas. Hayston was gone; his magnetic influence no longer controlled my will, as in our first acquaintance. The Leonora—our pride and boast, our peerless floating home—no longer "walked the waters like a thing of life," but lay dead, dismantled, dishonoured on the ruthless coral rocks which had crushed the life out of her on that fatal night.