In the Eastern Seas

by William Henry Giles Kingston

“And now, my good boys,” said Mr Hooker, “you may as well rig yourselves decently. You have been living so long among savages, that you are scarcely aware of the uncivilised figure you cut.”

I had nearly forgotten my scanty garments in the excitement of what was taking place. Mr Hookers shirts were certainly rather large for Oliver or me; but he insisted on our taking one apiece, as also a pair of duck-trowsers. “I have no doubt that Roger Trew, and one of the other men, will cut a pair for you into proper dimensions by to-morrow,” he said, laughing, as he handed us the garments. Some spare jackets, which more nearly fitted us, were found among the men’s things; and we were thus able to appear in the cabin in rather more civilised costume than we had come off in, and be presented to the Frau. She was a somewhat portly dame, with a most good-humoured countenance, her little round blue eyes appearing to be always laughing, while her mouth was constantly wreathed in what Mr Hooker used to call full-blown smiles. She had kind, sympathising feelings, and wept heartily when she heard of the fate of the Princess Serena, which we described to her. Emily and Grace, too, were much moved by it, and very sorry to hear that the faithful Macco had also too probably lost his life in his anxiety to save ours.

“I am so glad to see you, Massa Walter,” said Potto Jumbo, as he shook my hand when I went forward to the caboose, in which, in spite of its small size, he appeared quite as happy as in the large one on board the Bussorah Merchant; “only bery sorry to lose cook-mate. Poor Macco! He bery good cook-mate!”

“Yes, indeed; he was a very excellent and sensible fellow,” I observed. “I trust he may have escaped, and that we may get him on board again.”

I could not bear the idea of thinking that poor Macco had been murdered. Potto Jumbo, however, said he had very little hopes on the subject, as evidently, from the conduct of the savages, they were fierce, revengeful fellows, and were certain to have wreaked their vengeance on those who were still in their power.

Next day, we again stood in towards the coast, with a white flag flying, hoping that the savages might understand it. No canoes, however, came off. In my eagerness to try and recover Macco, I volunteered to go off in a boat; but to this Mr Thudicumb would not consent. He said he was sure that the savages would pursue us; and that the only two boats we had in the brig were too heavy to give us any chance of escape. I scanned the coast with a telescope all day long, on the chance of seeing some signal from the shore, but none appeared; and at length, with much sorrow, I gave up all expectation of recovering poor Macco.

The brig then made sail to the southward, to visit the Aru Islands, which Mr Hooker was desirous of exploring. Some time passed before I had an opportunity of asking Dick Tarbox how he and his companions had escaped.

“Why, you see, Master Walter,” he said, “after supper that day, some of us old hands thought of putting some biscuits and ham in our pockets, though we did not remember them till we were beginning to get very peckish. When the mast fell, we still clung to it, except two poor fellows, who were washed off much at the time that you were; and as they have not turned up, I am afraid they must have perished. The rest of us clung on for dear life. As you remember, soon afterwards the sea went down, and we were able to stand up on the mast and look about us. It was now we recollected the food we had stuffed into our pockets, and lucky it was that we had done so, or we should have been starved: as it was, we nearly died of thirst. Still, though we had a hard matter to get the food down, with our throats so dry, yet we did manage it, and held on to dear life. We were, howsomedever, almost giving up, when we caught sight of a sail coming over the water to us. She was a native craft; but whether or not the people on board her might knock us on the head, we could not tell. Still, anything was better than staying where we were. We had not our choice, though, for the people aboard the prow caught sight of us, and came up to the mast. They were pretty peaceable-looking fellows, though their skins were brown enough. We managed to make them understand that our ship had been cast away: indeed, our mast showed them that; and we were not long in tumbling on board, and making our salaams to an old chap, who seemed to be their captain. He was rather vexed when he could not understand what we said, or we understand what he said to us. However, he observed that we might rig ourselves in mats while our clothes were drying, and had some dishes of rice and smoked fish put before us. When the sea went down, they got out their sweeps, and pulled round where they supposed the ship had struck, in the hopes of getting something up from her; and there were some fellows on board who seemed to be well up to diving. However, they were not successful; and suddenly they got out their sweeps, and pulled away to the northward. A strange sail which appeared some little way off was, we supposed, the cause of their doing this. Probably they took her for a pirate.”

“Very likely that was the craft we were on board,” I observed. “It would have been curious if we had come up with you.”

“Well, for your sakes, I am rather glad you did not,” said the boatswain. “In a little time, our friends, who seemed bound to a distance, began to think that our room would be pleasanter than our company. They had a strange cargo on board,—bales of that nasty-looking stuff, the sea-slug, and birds’ nests, and mother-of-pearl shell, and I do not know how many other odd things. Two or three days afterwards, coming in sight of an island, they quietly made signs to us to get into a boat; and though we at first talked of showing fight, and declaring we would do no such thing, yet at last we agreed, seeing we had no arms to fight with except our fists, that it would be better to obey. To make a long story short, we were shoved on shore on a desolate island; we supposing that we were to find some houses, and people to look after us, but not a human being or a hut could we discover. There was water and there were cocoa-nuts; and as we had our knives, we had a chance of getting some shell-fish, if we could not find anything else. Now, as it happened, not one of us had been on a desolate island before; and there we were, six stout fellows, very little better off than babes in the wood. We had short commons, I can tell you, Master Walter. There were birds enough, and some of them with gay feathers, but we could not catch them; and there were animals, but they got away from us. At first we thought we were not going to find any water; but we did come up to a spring, which bubbled up out of the earth—the only one that we could discover on the island. That kept our throats moist. We had a hard job to get a light. We hunted about for tinder out of the rotten trees; but, then, there was the flint to be found: and no flint could we fall in with. You may be sure we hunted in our pockets, and looked about with our noses on the ground wherever we went. At last, what should we see but a bit of a broken tea-cup. At first I thought it was a bit of shell. How it could have come there I do not know, except it was thrown overboard from some Chinese craft and washed up there. Well, that bit of china was of more use to us than its weight in gold. Taking it in my hand, and beginning to strike it against the back of my knife, what was my joy to see a spark fly from it. It was but one; but one little spark was, I knew, enough to kindle a great fire. Well, we dried our tinder in the sun, and then began to strike away with the flint and china. Roger Trew took it in hand first, and struck and struck away; but though the sparks came, not one could he make go down to the tinder. At last I took it; and didn’t I feel pleased when I saw there was a spark resting on the tinder. We blew, not too hard, you may depend on it, and blew and blew, and the spark began to grow larger and larger, and the whole of the tinder was on fire. Did not we bring dried leaves in a hurry!—and, blowing them, up there sprung a flame in no time. We soon collected a whole load of sticks, and in a few minutes there we had a fire blazing away. We felt inclined to join hands and dance round it. We did not, though. We quickly got our shell-fish, and began roasting them. We thought them very good, though they were not much for keeping body and soul together. Well, we did prize that piece of old china, and I kept it carefully in one pocket, with my knife in the other; and we made up a big fire, almost enough to roast an ox, though we had nothing but a few cockles to cook by it. However, the food, such as it was, put a little more spirit into us, and we set out to see what sort of a country we had been left on. It was not very large; but we saw a number of parrots and parroquets up in the trees, and many other birds, but we had not much chance of getting them. Still, we all agreed we would do our best.