Chapter XXI Tragedy on an Island — A Cannibal Witch
The Breezy would have reached the shores of that marvel island, New Guinea, far sooner, had she not to go south, to lonely Kerguelin, on her voyage, to take some soundings there, and also chart some rocky bottom on the coast of New Zealand, as well.
Kep was permitted to go down to the sea bottom sometimes by day. He wanted to get thoroughly up to the workings of the bell. The invention was altogether so perfect, and at the same time so simple, that he soon mastered it.
It sunk sometimes as low as 350 feet. Strong though the plate-glass windows were, had it sunk much lower the pressure of the water would have smashed them, then you may judge yourself, reader, what a horrible death those inside would have met.
It was at night, when off the New Guinea rocks, that Kep loved best to go down. What a terrible sight it was, the illimitable marine aquarium he saw around him. There was a silent solemnity about it that is indescribable. And not in Dante’s Inferno itself could more horrible monsters exist than those which occasionally flitted to and fro in the glare of that submarine flash-light. Here also was beauty mingled with the fearful, for the foliage and flowers of the deep-sea gardens waved and moved in a thousand tints and colour, on the white sands. Sea ferns grow here, ocean cactuses, trees and flowers and shrubs.
But there was a spice of danger down here, for great sharks, three fathoms long, with terrifying open mouths, made for the windows, and grabbed at Kep. They knew not what glass was, and thought that to swallow the boy was the easiest thing in the world. When they found that they had not succeeded, they would swish their tails about, and dash off angry and disappointed.
Fishes with large glaring eyes and heads clad in shields of bone at times dashed against the plate-glass. They looked like miniature iron-clads, as they sailed towards Kep, and the marvel was that they did not break the diving bell to pieces.
If you look at a good map of the world, gentle reader—by the way, are you gentle, I wonder?—you will be able to discover at a single peep where New Guinea is. But the map is not made yet that can show you all the outs and ins, the gulfs and bays and locks of the island’s entrancing fore-shores.
You will look up north from Australia for New Guinea, and be surprised at its strange, ungainly shape, its points and promontories, its immense size, and the multitude of small islands around it on every side. Nor’ard and west, if you wandered along its beautiful shores, north and west and far away, you would find yourself—if you had not previously been killed and eaten by cannibals—at McLuer inlet, or Triton Bay, or at Cape Spencer on the shores of Dampier Strait, looking out across a fiery blue ocean at clusters of green cocoa-nut crowned islands, on almost any one of which you could have but little difficulty indeed in becoming something of a real Crusoe. But after a time, I guess, it would not be one marked footprint on the wet sand you might find, but fifty.
You would naturally imagine then, that you were come for, and that you were soon to figure as a cold sirloin or side-dish at a feast and wild dance given by some Papuan chief. N.B.—The inhabitants of New Guinea are called Papuans.
Oh dear, what a region of beauty and romance is embodied in these simple words, “the South Sea Islands.”
But if up there, you got a dhow, and went cruising west, and had the good luck not to be eaten, and thus enjoy yourself instead of being devoured for the enjoyment of some else, a blue shark for example, the trip would be delightful, though dangerous. You would have plenty of food, and the seas are studded with green islands, that appear from a distance to be floating, like great emeralds, twixt sea and sky, so that, when thirsty, you could go on shore, and get little black boys to climb the tasseled trees and pitch down cocoa-nuts for you. It would be a charming holiday, and you would not want much to wear. But in time you would reach Celebes itself, another great spreading insect of an island, on which many and many a terrible murder has been committed, and many a missionary massacred.
Resuming your journey, you would in time reach Borneo. Well, by its shores you would find that civilization and trade, and all that has made the marvellous progress of our world, was there to greet you. You would meet English-speaking friends there, but you would have to run up a pretty heavy tailors’ bill before you could, with any show of modesty, visit their houses.
You’ve heard of the “Wild Man of Borneo”? Well, he is still up there, among the midland mountains, and though he might still lick his lips after eating some roast long-pig, he is now a much more respectable member of society than when I first knew him. At that time he was a real and terrible head-hunter. He wanted me to part with mine. I told him I could not see where the fun came in. Then he tried to convince me, by waving a terrible iron-spiked club. But not being used to carry on a conversation through such a medium, I shot him through the shoulder, and he bolted home to thrash one of his fifteen wives.
But when I last met him, he was wearing a long, somewhat shabby top-hat, and a frock-coat without any sleeves to it. Nothing else earthly, except his long black bare legs and his black bare arms.
He was quite chatty, too, and asked kindly after “de Breetish King ob Englan’.”
“I quite civilise now, all same,” he said, and had I any rum?
Well, so far so good, and a map is a handy contrivance, but, alas! a map tells you nothing of the magnificence of New Guinean forests, woods, and wilds, of the heights of its ranges of mountains that are everywhere, nor the solitary grandeur of its scenery, whether in inland glens or mirrored in the deep bosom of its lonely lochs and bays.
The home these latter are of the strangest-looking fishes in the sea, and millions of birds of the ocean, whose nesting places are on the rocks, above the rocks, or in the woods themselves. Some of these sea-gulfs, I feel sure, are haunted. I’ve taken a little boat and rowed me all alone for miles up darksome inlets, o’erhung with wild woods thickening green, but so drearily silent in the sunshine, that when I have lain on my oars, as sailors say, not a sound could I hear except the drip, drip, from the blades.
Yet sometimes a wild, unearthly scream would come out of the forest, so wailing, so agonizing, that I have felt sure some terrible tragedy had just been enacted within its darkest shades.
It was among such scenery as this that the gallant broadswords of the Breezy lived and laboured, surveying, charting, and learning the tricks and manners of the vast varieties of natives we find in these islands, but all the while keeping a good look out for British interests.
The old days of kidnapping were then about over. If there was now any such thing, it was on a smaller scale, just as smuggling is still carried on around our little island at home here.
But Captain Breezy and his officers, did not forget that nearly every-man-Jack in the ship was supposed to be studying to become a pilot of these maritime regions.
Our men-o’-war’s men are the best and most daring seamen in the world, and so carefully are they trained, no matter should they come in the first place from the lowest slums of Edinburgh or London, that they become wise and thinking men. And I believe that seven month’s cruising and surveying among the South Sea Islands, and around New Guinea generally, would enable even an ordinary seamen to pilot a ship through the channels or along the shores.
Moreover, of so much consequence did the Admiralty consider good sea-charts, that copies of those made were sent to the lower decks, and the men were advised to study them, and copy them as often as they chose. Of course, a deal of chart-making was done in the ward-room.
Kep was marvellously clever at this kind of thing, though the navigating officer was better. On the other hand, the marine officer, or Sodjer, was a capital sketcher in water-colours, as well as an excellent photographer.
Many of the men made small collections of “curios,” but McTavish himself studied the geology of the coast; its flora and fauna, and its peoples. Even their folk-lore was not neglected by him.
The language was different on almost every island; but Kep, with his wondrous gifts, was not long in finding out, that through all there ran a thread which, when found out, made a good clue for the study of all.
Independently of this, there were many men and women who had been recruited here—bought and sold in fact—and who, after spending years in Queensland, had been sent back, and getting clear for ever of the white man’s clothes and the white man’s religion, returned again to the life of a happy-go-lucky naked, or nearly naked, savage. And these understood English.
But the cruise of the Breezy had a political side as well; for the eastern side of New Guinea belonged to Germany, the west to Britain, with, in some places, only in the far interior, a kind of no-man’s-land, usually mountainous, between the two countries. In these inland recesses still existed, which no white traveller had ever entered, or if he had, was only too glad to get away again with a whole skin.
The Germans could do what they liked with their territory, they are bad colonizers at best, but we Britons have long necks; we look into futurity, and we see and know that, in years to come, this same island will be a gem in the crowns of our coming kings. Even at the date of this part of my story, 1909, the real riches of the great land was only being discovered, its splendid agricultural districts, and above all, its mineral wealth.
“Our surplus population,” as Lieutenant Wynn well said one evening, “needs some great outlet. We cannot be content even with Africa, and in this far off New Guinea it yet will live and thrive.”
You will note then that the Breezy was not only a happy ship, but a very busy one.
There were few places now where they could receive letters from home. But letters were sent to England, and despatches also, by every opportunity, and such opportunities come to ships long at sea far oftener than landsmen would or could imagine.
It was only by overhauling mercantile vessels that any news of the country at all could be obtained. But some of these had somewhat recent newspapers, and what a grand gift to the Breezy was a bundle of them!
They were read and re-read by the officers. Their pages were kept as clean as the leaves of a Bible. When the ward-room officers had them about all by heart, the warrant officers had them, and finally, the best of the crew, who read them to their respective messmates.
The adventures of the men of the Breezy were mostly those of all men who go down to the sea in ships. But, dangers and difficulties more numerous. They saw, during those busy nine months, every conceivable phase of sea life. They had to battle with winds and currents, encountered terrible storms, the life of the ship and the lives of the crew oftentimes hanging literally on the thread of a screw, or on a bolt.
It was the shoal water and the reefs, however, that formed the principal danger, and these they were nearly almost among.
The savages they seldom feared, but the savages feared them, never having seen such a strange naval monstrosity as the Breezy in their lives before. Some of the islanders, both men and women, were meek and mild, as well as fearless, and though armed to the teeth, the men at least, with bows and poisoned arrows, and clubs, axes and spears, it was safe enough to mingle with them.
They would part with anything for calico, tobacco, or tinned provisions. They surrounded the Breezy in canoes laden to the gunwale with all manner of delicious fruit and vegetables, to say nothing of edible birds, lizards, etc., some even brought flowers.
On the other hand, they expressed themselves ready and willing to barter their wives or daughters away, or even fine fat little baby boys, for anything.
I never have found why savage islanders sometimes press sailors to purchase a fat little baby boy. I suppose they fancy our fellows make meat of such little chaps, because I’ve heard of one being offered in barter along with a bunch of forest fowls, or edible lizards.
Some rather wild adventures our Breezy men had among the wilder and more treacherous of these islanders, many of them loaded with Brummagem rifles, which, though they could carry farther than arrows, were seldom well aimed.
But boats going in search of young cocoa-nuts, yams, and fruit, and “yum-yums” generally, were more than once led into an ambuscade. The Breezy men had learned by experience to be suspicious of beaches on which only children played or the belles disported their charms.
They were black sirens, and their braves were hidden in the bush not far off, only they didn’t get over Jack. Captain Breezy was ever on the alert to avert anything that was likely to lead to bloodshed, and even if fired upon by tribes who in all probability had good reason to hate and fear white men, he did not retaliate, unless sailors were wounded. But then, he taught the savages to respect man-o’-war’s men in the future.
They dread our firearms, but it is better to go on shore apparently unarmed. Some savages are untameable, and the sight of a rifle, or even a fowling piece, causes them to think they are to be attacked, and their wives and little ones carried off. Yet it is best always to carry a tiny revolver in your hip-pocket, presuming that you know how to hit a haystack. The Breezy’s men were mostly all crack shots.
It is not so well known as it should be, that to some portions of the territory that fringes the sea come, at times, wandering tribes from the very far interior.
In Kanaka days, when among the Sandwich Islands kidnapping and massacre too was common enough, the recruiters being most to blame, ships of this sort often visited the Papuan coasts, and found great trouble from these wandering tribes. The more peaceful ‘longshore natives had nothing to do with it. And yet, if a white man were killed, boats’ crews would land, and the real culprits having fled back into their fastnesses, take terrible revenge.
Captain Breezy was a very patient man, but of course patience has a limit. That limit was reached one day. An old chief begged to come on board, to see the ship. He talked pidgin English, and had seen the world. With him was a very handsome young lady, though, like the heroine in “Tam o’ Shanter,” she wore but scanty clothing, consisting for the most part of bangles, anklets, and beads.
He introduced her as his last new wife, and was high in her praises.
He received some presents, and so did the lady, and then he wandered forward among the crew, and had a little gentle talkee-talkee, and the men laughed a good deal, especially a reckless fellow, called Tom Haslar. Tom was about the only bad hat in the ship.
He drank too, when he could find liquor, and he would and did manage to buy their allowance from those men who did not care much for it.
Tom felt in form, as he called it, that forenoon, and full of fun.
He chaffed the chief a bit, and even dug him in the fat stomach, but this savage seemed splendidly good-natured.
“Ah!” he returned, “you are one goodee boy. You been dlinkee—dlinkee. You too muchee laugh now. Bymebye you muchee thlisty and sad. Savez?”
“You’ve been there yourself,” said Tom, “my gay and reverend seignor.”
“You come alonga me, Jack.”
“Tom, please, Tom Haslar, at your royal highness’s service!”
“Den Tom, you come along ashore? I get you plentee dlinkee. Plenty dam goodee gin.”
The boatswain’s mate intimated now to the chief that his absence would be a deal better than his company, and after a little further palaver, he got into his dug-out and landed.
It was a cocoa-nut wooded beach, with a rather better class of plantain-covered cottages, well back in the shade, and the natives were supposed to be harmless.
It was very dark that night, and Tom was in the middle watch. Next morning he was missing. He had evidently swam on shore, to complete his orgie, enticed by the affable chief’s promise.
That same chief was off in his dug-out early next morning.
“I hab Tom Haseelar,” he cried, “I keep ’im fah away in de bush. Keepee all same one hostage. What you pay me foh Tom?”
“Nothing, you scoundrel, and if he isn’t returned in half an hour I will fire your village.” Thus spoke Guilford, whose watch it was.
There was plenty of bobbery and noise in the village now, and armed savages were seen rushing about, waving their spears aloft.
It was a beautiful, but a wild scene. How white the sands, how green the forests that climbed up the romantic glen and to the top of the highest hills. There was the bright blue of a calm sea, a cloudless azure sky, and every tree stem had a shadow black as night.
Another hour was spent, waiting in vain for Tom. Then the order was given by the Captain:—
“Man and arm boats.”
“May I go, sir?” said Kep.
“Most certainly.”
And away the boats sped with all the way on them that lusty arms could lend.
There was now silence in the village, a stillness indeed, that was ominous. But fearing an ambush, Guilford advanced his men with great caution.
Every cottage was empty. The savages had fled to the forest, nor in its dark recesses could any trail be found visible to white men’s eyes.
So the men, in some sort of skirmishing order, but almost within touch of each other, went on and on up the wooded defile, expecting to be attacked at any moment.
Nearly at the top of the glen, suddenly out from the black darkness of a small cave sprang the most hideous-looking old hag of a naked savage anyone had ever looked upon.
She stood upon a ledge of a rock, and stretched a skinny arm towards Guilford.
“What seek you, white man?”
“Who are you, and where are the rest of the tribe?” shouted the officer.
“I one witch. I been Queensland. You not come kidnap poh Gwalee once moh? Ha, ha, ha. I too ole now, and ugly. My tribe gone ober de sea in big, big war canoe. You seek you white sailor? He down in de ribber pool.”
Near by, under the cliff, was a still, brown pool in the stream, and from this was fished out poor Tom’s body, the neck half severed with a battle axe.
Poor Tom, it was his last adventure on this shore.
The island, which was not large, was searched from end to end, but no other human body was found.
To have fired the forest could have done no good, only birds and beasts and the old witch would have suffered. So before the sudden darkness of a tropical night fell, the men entered the boats and shoved off.
One boat contained the remains of their unfortunate shipmate, and next morning steam was got up, and Tom sleeps in the green depths of the coral sea.
How quickly such things are forgotten in the Service. Tom’s clothes were sold by auction, but his ditty box and its trinkets of value, including a letter from the lass who had loved Tom, were kept, and sent home to England, to his old mother. These trinkets and the letter were sacred things, they were holy, no man on board would have bought them. Then everything went on us usual on board the Breezy.