I stated that there was revelry on board the brig that night. The fact was that the Captain, in the presence of the king, queen, and myself, had made agreement with the refugee traders to take them to whatever island they preferred. The king was strongly averse to their retinue of excitable natives being domiciled among the peaceful Kusaie people. Inspired with courage by the presence of Hayston, he had told the traders that he wished them to vacate Lêlé. If they did arrange to leave in the Leonora, he told them that they could establish themselves at Utwé (South harbour), and there remain until they got away in a passing whaler or China-bound ship.
After conferring with Hayston, most of the traders decided to take his offer of conveying them and their following to Ujilong (Providence Island), which was his own property, and there enter into engagement with him to make oil for five years. Two others agreed to proceed to the sparsely populated but beautiful Eniwetok (or Brown's group), where were vast quantities of cocoa-nuts, and only thirty natives. These two men had a following of thirty Ocean islanders, and were in high delight at the prospect of having an island to themselves and securing a fortune after a few years of oil-making.
As the merry clink of the windlass pauls echoed amidst the verdurous glens and crags of the mountains that surround Lêlé, the traders, with their wives, families, and followers, pulled off in their whaleboats and came aboard.
What a picture did the brig make as she spread her snowy canvas to the land-breeze! Laden with the perfume of a thousand flowers, cooled by its passage through the primeval forest, it swept us along towards the passage, upon the right steering through which so much depended. The traders had half a dozen whaleboats; these, with two belonging to the Leonora, were towing astern, with a native in each.
The passage, as I have said before, was deep but narrow. As the traders gazed on either side and watched the immense green rollers dashing with resistless force past the brig's side, they looked apprehensively at the Captain and then at their boats astern.
Right in the centre an enormous billow came careering along at the speed of an express train. Though it had no "breaking curl" on its towering crest, I instinctively placed my hands in the starboard boat davits, expecting to see the vast volume of water sweep our decks. Some of the traders sprang into the main rigging just as the brig lifted to the sea, to plunge downward with a swift and graceful motion, never losing her way for a moment. No man of our crew took the least notice. They knew what the brig could do, they knew the Captain, and no more anticipated a disaster than a mutiny.
We made open water safely. Then the Captain descended from the fore-yard, whence he had been conning the ship. "Well, gentlemen," he said, "here we are, all on board the Leonora! I hope you think well of her."
The traders emphatically asserted that she was a wonder. Then, as we did not intend to enter Utwé harbour till the morning, we shortened sail. The brig was placed under her topsails only, and we glided slowly and smoothly down the coast. Still the reef surge was thundering on the starboard hand.
The light of the native villages—for the sudden night of the tropics was upon us—glimmered through the groves of cocoa-nuts and bread-fruit trees that fringed the snowy beaches. A shadowy, dreamy landscape, blurred and indistinct at times, while ever and anon the back-borne spume of the breakers fell in rain-mist over all, as they reared and raved, only to dash themselves in mad turmoil on the javelins of jagged coral.
It was a strange scene. Yet stranger still were the dramatis personæ—the wild band of traders that clustered around the giant form of the Captain, as he lay smoking his cigar on the skylight, in friendly converse with all.