The ship's company of the Hound had been long without seeing any but savage faces, and it was with much satisfaction that on entering a bay on the coast of Papua or New Guinea, they perceived a brig riding at anchor. She hoisted the stars and stripes, and presently her captain paid a visit to the Hound. A Scotch Highlander by birth, his name Stewart, he was a daring and unscrupulous dog as ever fired a round of grape into a mob of South Sea savages. He had the reputation of a tolerably fair dealer, but some of his articles of traffic were extraordinary and disgusting. He was once at Cook's Straits, New Zealand, when there was a great fight amongst the tribes. A feast was to follow, and to save land-carriage, the cannibals freighted Stewart's ship with the provisions for their horrible banquet. "He took on board upwards of two hundred dead bodies, cut up and well packed, with eighteen or twenty chiefs, sailed round, delivered his cargo, and received in payment a large quantity of dressed flax, which he afterwards brought to Sydney and sold at a satisfactory price." After this, people looked askance at him, and held their noses when he passed; but Stewart jingled his dollars, and said it was no one's business but his own, admitting, however, that it was "a stinking cargo." Like the Roman emperor, he denied that good coin could carry an evil smell. "Another trifling affair," Dr Coulter writes, "blemished his character." Cargoes of ebony, neither more nor less; slaves bought in Australasia, and sold to the Dutch and Chinese. Human flesh, quick or dead, was a favourite article of commerce with this respectable Highlandman. In those remote regions, however, men cannot always pick their society, and Coulter and Trainer were glad enough to meet this dealer in dead and live stock, who was an old acquaintance of both of them. They went on board his vessel and dined with him, and it was agreed that the brigand schooner should keep together as long as circumstances permitted. After several days' profitable trading, chiefly in ambergris, tortoiseshell, pearls, and birds of Paradise, and which ended, wonderful to say, without a skirmish with the natives, they coasted along the north shore of the island, and came to an anchor in Gilvink's Bay, at its westernmost extremity, alongside the "Eternal Safety," a Chinese trading junk. According to the custom of his countrymen in those seas, the Chinese skipper had told the Papuans all manner of lies about the Europeans, and had warned them against trading with them. Stewart discovered this by means of an old acquaintance, a Sandwich islander and expert cook, who gladly left the junk, where he received a larger allowance of rattan than he liked, to officiate in the caboose of the American brig. Once safe upon the Yankee's deck, Mr Sing vented his indignation against his late master in a volley of abuse, interspersed with comical and contemptuous gestures. The Chinaman actually danced with rage, and at last levelled a matchlock at the object of his fury; but on Stewart's opening a port, and disclosing the grim muzzle of a carronade, he suspended, his warlike demonstrations. A supply of articles for barter with the natives was obtained from his junk, and the same afternoon a fresh breeze swept the European ships out of the bay.
The last place to which we shall accompany Dr Coulter is a district on the south coast of New Guinea, inhabited by the warlike and ferocious tribe of the Horraforas, who, at the period of his visit, lived happily under the paternal rule of King Connel the First. Terence Connel was a County Kerry boy, who had gone through many strange adventures in his own country and elsewhere. A deserter from a regiment of the line, he had served for some time under Captain Starlight's banner, and had distinguished himself by his intrepidity and zeal in house-burning, cattle-houghing, and other nocturnal amusements peculiar to the "first flower of the sea." After a couple of years of this praiseworthy career, he had been captured, tried, and transported to Australia. He escaped, with ten fellow-convicts, and, after various adventures, reached Papua. Nine of their number were slain by the Horraforas, who spared the two others and made them serve against a hostile tribe. Connel's companion was killed in a fight, but Connel greatly distinguished himself, and became head-chief, or king. Under his guidance and protection, we find Captain Trainer, four of his crew, and the indefatigable Coulter, wandering in the Horrafora territory, through magnificent tropical scenery, where snakes abounded, rats were as big as ordinary cats, the mosquitos flew about in dense clouds, huge bats flapped their mirky wings beneath the branches of gigantic trees, and immense saucer-eyed owls glared from out the gloom. Hog-hunting was the principal sport here; but the Horraforas were at war, as usual, and Dr Coulter's services were again put in requisition. Fighting is the business of life with these savages, and with an Irish king at their head, their combative propensity was not likely to be weakened. They have scouts out continually, and but for this precaution, as Connel explained, "one tribe would break in on top of t'other, be murdherin' man, woman, and child, and carrying off the rest to sell to the Chinese for slaves, all through divilment, or fair divarsion." To guard against surprise, the natives live in trees, amongst whose branches they construct commodious sleeping apartments. They ascend and descend by a notched pole, drawn up at night, and take their meals on the ground below.
The party from the schooner soon found they had got themselves into trouble, being cut off from their vessel by the Whitepaints, a race of savages thus named by Dr Coulter from their habit of disguising their dusky complexion with a ghastly coating of white. A battle was inevitable, and Connel disposed his forces with all the tact of an experienced general. About a thousand of the enemy were opposed to eight hundred and fifty Horraforas, but the latter had the Englishmen to help them, and especially Dr Coulter, who, with his terrible rifle, was a host in himself. The Whitepaints came on to within about four hundred yards of their foe, and halted, their chief still advancing and yelling defiance, in hopes of drawing the Horraforas from their cover on the verge of a forest. His appearance was any thing but prepossessing. He was "a giant of a man, hair and beard powdered with chalk, face painted black, and body white all over!" Connel implored his allies to render him a great service by picking off this ugly heathen, and inquired who was the best shot. Trainer named the doctor, who "had really no wish to pull a trigger, except in actual self-defence." But Trainer and Connel pressed him to fire, and at last overcame his scruples. With charming modesty, he avoids naming himself as the man who made the huge Papuan magpie bite the dust. "Thus urged by Connel," he says, "one of our party rested his gun on the lower branch of a tree, took deliberate aim, and fired!" This "one of our party" was of course the doctor, the sailors being armed with short muskets, incapable of carrying so far. The shot took effect. Whitepaint ceased his capering, "stood fixed and upright like a daubed statue," and "was about receiving another shot (from the doctor's second barrel, we presume) when he fell heavily forward and lay motionless." Whereupon the Whitepaints advanced, and the six Englishmen "set to work in real earnest popping" off the cannibals. And soon becoming "madly excited by the scene, we continued to load and fire as fast as we could, accompanying almost every shot or volley with a Hurra! nearly as wild as the savage yell." Dr Coulter had got rid of his scruples, and Trainer and the seamen appear never to have had any. The latter "were eager to run down the mound for the purpose of enjoying a bayoneting match; but Trainer would not permit such folly, and told them to amuse themselves firing at them from where we were, which they did with great perseverance." The unfortunate Whitepaints were totally defeated, their tribe cut up root and branch, their women taken to wife by the victors, and themselves slung upon poles like rabbits and carried off to be buried, as Connel expressed it, in "the infernal stomachs" of their cannibal conquerors. The doctor and his companions being by no means anxious to witness the abominable feast, moved on with Connel, and, after a visit to the Whitepaint town, or rather rookery, the houses being built in trees, like those of the Horraforas, paddled down a river, through beautiful scenery, which Dr Coulter indicates, rather than describes. He is a poor hand at description, the worthy doctor, although evidently not devoid of a certain feeling for the glories of a tropical landscape. But he lacks words, and his attempts at a pen-and-ink picture are painfully meagre and unsatisfactory. After shooting a rapid, where the river falls about fourteen feet, and down which the natives conducted their canoes with singular dexterity, the country became more open, and the mast-heads of the brig and schooner appeared in the distance. "Sail ho!" bellowed Trainer, rejoiced at the sight of his floating home. And in his exhilaration, he resolved to "take a rise" out of Stewart. Concealing himself and men in the bottom of the canoe, he gave the hint to Connel, whose savage subjects forthwith set up a hideous war-whoop, which very nearly procured the incorrigible joker a volley of grape from his own ship. This final and unnecessary danger over, Dr Coulter, to his considerable satisfaction, once more found himself safely housed in the cabin of the Hound, relieved from all apprehension of becoming a corner dish at a cannibal dinner. In which snug quarters and comfortable security he will be found by those curious farther to pursue the thread of his adventures.
THREE MONTHS AT GAZA.
After quitting the Arab chiefs,[15] Sidney rode slowly and silently towards the little town of Gaza. He was seized with a strange fit of melancholy, and this sudden revulsion of feeling proceeded from no perceptible cause. He cared very little about parting either with Aali or Sheikh Salem. Lascelles Hamilton was a much more amusing companion than either of the Moslems. But from some inexplicable train of thought, Sidney's mind was filled with fancies, which followed one another like the phantasms of a fever, and produced a depression of spirits alarming to himself. He was naturally so little addicted to low spirits, or melancholy, that he felt convinced the present fit must be the forerunner of some serious malady, and that the mysterious warning given him by Sheikh Salem, not to delay long at Gaza, arose from the sagacious Arab perceiving the traces of incipient fever marked on his forehead. At last he succeeded, by reproaching himself with his own pusillanimity, in rousing his mind, and directing his attention to the scenery around, and to the view of the town before him.
That view was well calculated to dispel blue devils. It was picturesque, gay, and luxuriantly green; and the contrast it offered to the parched desert behind, and the memory of the sandy fog of the Khamsin, made its contemplation a physical enjoyment. On each side of the lane along which the travellers proceeded, a tall fence of cactus separated them from verdant plantations of mulberry trees, orchards, and gardens. The creaking of water wheels, and the splashing of the water from the revolving buckets, were sounds which, if not musical to the ear, were delightful to the sense of hearing, from the ideas of coolness and cleanliness they suggested. Those only who have wandered in the desert under a burning sun, or sailed for days and nights in a crowded Levantine caick, can conceive the exquisite sensation that the sight of an old black bucket of fresh water conveys to the human soul. The sense of coolness indicated by the dark stain of constant immersion, and the liberality of wealth testified by the leaky stream flowing from the ill connected staves, have given many a traveller in the "gorgeous east" greater pleasure than he could have derived from an invitation to a banquet with Lucullus.
Beyond the wave of the corn fields the verdure of the gardens, and the shade of the trees, rose the little city of Gaza,—a small and picturesque spot, with a few minarets and towers, and ruined walls rising above the houses. It crowns a moderate elevation, once occupied by a strong citadel, so well fortified by nature and art as to have merited emphatically the appellation of "the strong." It stands a monument of the glory of the Israelite warrior Sampson, and a proof of the ease with which heroic valour, in a petty fortress commanded by a Persian eunuch, could arrest the progress of the Macedonian hero, Alexander the Great. At the entrance of the town our travellers stumbled over some ruins, which they were gravely informed marked the remains of the gateway from which Sampson had carried away the gates. Beside it, a small building with a low dome has been constructed by the Mohammedans, and is shown as the tomb of Sampson.
Before this tomb, a considerable number of people, and a guard of Albanian soldiers, was now stationed. They soon brought our travellers to a halt, and compelled them to dismount in order to undergo an examination as long and inquisitorial as that to which poor foreigners are subjected at the police office of Vienna. Their motives for visiting Gaza, were inquired into, and particularly their connexion with the party they had just quitted. The result of the examination did not appear to be perfectly satisfactory, though Sidney told very frankly that Sheikh Salem and his son were of the party, truly declaring at the same time, that as they had crossed the desert disguised in female apparel, and surrounded by their own attendants, he had no knowledge of their presence until the party was joined by the Sheikh of Hebron that day. An Osmanlee secretary of the governor of Gaza, one of those Mamaluke custom-house officers, or revenue collectors of Mohammed Ali, to whom the statesmen of France looked for the foundation of an Arabic empire in Egypt and Syria, now made his appearance, to decide on the fate of the English spies, for such they were evidently considered.
After a second examination, it was decided that the party must undergo a quarantine of observation until their companions should arrive. It was in vain to oppose this decision; so Sidney, Lascelles Hamilton, and Achmet were marched through the middle of the town of Gaza, and lodged in a tower near the centre of the barracks, in order to preserve the place from the danger of contagion. Two Albanian soldiers were appointed to act as guardians or sentinels to the prisoners, who were also allowed to hire a cook. The guards kept up, a constant communication with their friends, and the cook walked himself to the market to make his purchases, so that the quarantine was very evidently rather a police than a sanatory measure.