A Modern Buccaneer

by Rolf Boldrewood

The weather had changed, and been cloudy and dull for several days. We were all rather in the doldrums too. We had been bearing eastward on the line. Suddenly Hayston said, "Suppose we put in at Santa Cruz. We want the water casks filled. I'm not very fond of the island, for all its name. Sacred names and bloodshed often go together with Spaniards. However, I know the harbour well, and the yams are first-rate." So at daylight we bore up, at eight bells we entered the heads with both anchors bent to the chains, and at noon were beating up the harbour. By two o'clock we cast anchor in thirty fathoms. Out came the canoes, and we soon began trading with the natives.

We kept pretty strict watch, however. The men, to my fancy, had a sullen expression, and the women, though not bad-looking, seemed as if it cost them an effort to look pleasant.

Our girls wouldn't have anything to say to them. Hope Island Nellie, in particular, said she'd like to shoot half of them; that they'd killed a cousin of hers, who was only scratched with a poisoned arrow, and that it was one of the Captain's mad tricks to go there at all.

However, Hayston, as usual, was spurred on by opposition to have his own way, and to do even more than he originally intended. He told me afterwards that he only wanted to get some yams in the harbour, and that the water would have held out longer—until we got to a known safe island.

So on Sunday we sent two boats on shore, and got the casks filled with water immediately. Our provisions were taken out and examined. Trading with the natives went on merrily.

On Monday the weather was fine. We got a couple of rafts out with water, and laid in yams enough to last for the rest of our cruise. Hayston laughed, and said there was nothing like showing natives that you were not afraid of them. "Eh, Nellie? What you think now?"

"Think Captain big fool," said Nellie, who was in a bad temper that morning. "Ha! you see boat crew; by God! man wounded—I see them carry him along."

Sure enough, we could see the two boats' crews coming down to the beach. They were carrying one man, while two supported another, who seemed hardly able to walk. "Get out the boats!" roared Hayston. "I'll teach the scoundrels to touch a crew of mine."

All was now bustle and commotion. Every man on the ship that could be spared, and Hope Island Nellie to boot, who had begged to be allowed to go with the attacking party, and whose ruffled temper was restored to equanimity by the chance of having a shot at her foes, and avenging her cousin's death. We left a boat's crew watch, and made for the shore, Nellie sitting in the bow of the Captain's boat with a Winchester rifle across her knees, and her eyes sparkling with a light I had never seen in a woman's face before. It was the light of battle come down through the veins of chiefs and warriors of her people for centuries uncounted.

We left a couple of men in each boat, telling them to keep on and off until we returned; the wounded men were carefully laid on mats in one of their own boats; and forth we went—a light-hearted storming party, and attacked the town of the treacherous devils. Hayston was in a frightful rage, cursing himself one moment for relaxing his usual caution, and devoting the Santa Cruz natives in the next to all the fiends of hell for their infernal causeless treachery. He raged up again and again to the cluster of huts, thickly built together with palisades here and there, which made excellent cover for shooting from, backed up by the green wall of the primeval forest. I could not but admire him as he stood there—grand, colossal, fearless, as though he bore a charmed life, while the deadly quivering arrows flew thick, and more than one man was hit severely. Only that our fire was quick and deadly with the terrible Winchester repeaters, and that the savages—bold at first—were mowed down so quickly that they had to retreat to a distance which rendered their arrows powerless, we should have had a muster roll with gaps in it of some seriousness. Hayston was a splendid rifle shot, and for quick loading and firing had few equals. Every native that showed himself within range went down ere he could fit an arrow to his bowstring. And there was Hope Island Nellie by his side, firing nearly as fast, and laughing like a child at play whenever one of her shots told.