The Ebbing Of The Tide

MRS. LIARDET: A SOUTH SEA TRADING EPISODE

Captain Dave Liardet, of the trading schooner Motutakea, of Sydney, was sitting propped up in his bunk smoking his last pipe. His very last. He knew that, for the Belgian doctor-naturalist, his passenger, had just said so; and besides, one look at the gaping hole in his right side, that he had got two days before at La Vandola, in the Admiralties, from the broad-bladed obsidian native knife, had told him he had made his last voyage. The knife-blade lay on the cabin table before him, and his eye rested on it for a moment with a transient gleam of satisfaction as he remembered how well Tommy, the Tonga boy, who pulled the bow oar, had sent a Snider bullet through the body of the yellow-skinned buck from whom the knife-thrust had come. From the blade of obsidian on the table his eye turned to the portrait of a woman in porcelain that hung just over the clock. It was a face fair enough to look at, and Liardet, with a muttered curse of physical agony, leant his body forward to get a closer view of it, and said, “Poor little woman; it’ll be darned rough on her.” Then Russell, the mate, came down.

“Joe,” said Liardet, in his practical way, which even the words of the doctor and the face of the clock before him could not change, “cock your ears and listen, for I haven’t got much time, and you have the ship to look to. I want you to tell the owners that this affair at La Vandola wasn’t my fault. We was doing fair and square trading when a buck drives his knife into me for no apparent reason beyond the simple damned fun of the thing. Well, he’s done for me, and Tommy Tonga for him, and that’s all you’ve got to say about that. Next thing is to ask ‘em to sling Tommy a fiver over and above his wages—for saving of the boat and trade, mind, Joe. Don’t say for potting the nigger, Joe; boat and trade, boat and trade, that’s the tack to go on with owners, Joe. Well, let’s see now.... My old woman. See she gets fair play, wages up to date of death, eh, Joe? By God, old man, she won’t get much of a cheque—only four months out now from Sydney. Look here, Joe, the Belgian’s all right. He won’t go telling tales. So don’t you log me dead for another month, and make as bad a passage as you can. There’s only us three white men aboard, and the native boys will take their Bible oath I didn’t die until the ship was off Lord Howe Island if you give ‘em a box of tobacco. You see, Joe? That’s the dodge. More days, more dollars, and the longer you keep the ship at sea the more money comes to all hands. And I know I can trust you, Joe, to lend a hand in making the old woman’s cheque a little bigger. Right.... We’ve been two years together now, Joe, and this is the only thing I’ve ever asked you to do or done myself that wasn’t square and aboveboard. But look here”—here, for some half-minute, Captain Dave Liardet launched into profanity—“I tell you that the owners of this ship wouldn’t care a single curse if you and I and every living soul aboard had had our livers cut out at La Vandola as long as they didn’t lose money over it, and haven’t to pay our wages to our wives and children.”

Liardet gasped and choked, and the little Belgian naturalist tripped down and wiped away the dark stream that began to trickle down the grizzled beard, and then he and Russell, the mate, laid him down again.

“Don’t go,” whispered the Belgian to the other, “he sink ver’ fast now.” The closed eyelids opened a little and looked up through the skylight at the brown face of Tommy the Tongan, and then Russell gave the dying skipper brandy and water. Then, with fast-fading eyes on the picture in porcelain, he asked Russell what course he was keeping.

“As near south as can be,” said the mate, “but with this breeze we could soon make the Great Barrier, and there’s always hope, cap’n. Let me keep her away to the westward a bit, and who knows but you may–”

For answer the grizzled Liardet held out his hand, shook his head faintly, and muttering, “I hope to God it’ll come on a Hell of a Calm for a Month of Sundays,” he turned his face to the port and went over his Great Barrier.

was so young to be a widow, “and having no children, my dear, the poor creature must have felt the shock the more keenly.” Thus the local gabble of the acquaintances and friends of the pretty widow. And she laughed softly to herself that she couldn’t feel overwhelmed with grief at her widowhood. “He hadn’t a thought above making money,” she said to herself—oh, Nell Liardet, for whom did he desire to make it!—“and yet never could make it.” And then she thought of Russell, and smiled again. His hand had trembled when it held hers. Surely he did not come so often to see her merely to talk of rough, old Dave Liardet. A man whom she had only tolerated—never loved. And then, Russell was a big, handsome man; and she liked big, handsome men. Also, he was captain now. And, of course, when he had told her of that rich patch of pearl-shell, that he alone knew of at Caille Harbour, in which was a small fortune, and had looked so intently into her blue eyes, he had meant that it was for her. “Yes,” and she smiled again, “I’m sure he loves me. But he’s terribly slow; and although I do believe that blonde young widows look ‘fetching’ in black, I’m getting sick of it, and wish he’d marry me to-morrow.”

Russell had stood to his compact with the dead skipper. The owners had given her £150, and Russell, making up a plausible story to his dead captain’s wife of Liardet having in bygone days lent him “fifty pounds,” had added that sum to the other. And he meant, for the sake of old Dave, never to let his pretty little widow run short as long as he had a shot in the locker. The patch of shell at Caille he meant to work, and if Dave had lived they would have “gone whacks.” But as he was dead, he wouldn’t do any mean thing. She should have half of whatever he got—“go whacks” just the same. But as for love, it never entered his honest brain, and had any one told him that Nell Liardet was fond of him, he would have called him a liar and “plugged” him for insulting a lady.

“Going away! Mr. Russell—Joe! Surely you won’t go and leave me without a friend in the world? I thought you cared for me more than that?”

The big man reddened up to his temples.

“Don’t say that, Mrs. Liardet. If you’ll allow me, I’ll always be a friend. And, as I thought it would be hard for you to have to spend the little that Liardet left you, I have made arrangements for you to draw a few pounds whenever you need it from the agents. And as long as ever I have a pound in the world, Dave Liardet’s wife–”

“Wife!” and the blue eyes flashed angrily. “He is dead and I am free. Why do you always talk of him? I hate the name. I hated him—a coarse, money-loving–”

“Stop!”

Russell stepped forward. “Good-bye, Mrs. Liardet. I hold to what I have said. But the man that you call coarse and money-loving died in trying to make it for you. And he was a good, honest man, and I can’t stay here and hear his memory abused by the woman he loved better than life.” And then he turned to go, but stopped, and, with a scarlet face, said, “Of course you’re a lady and wouldn’t do anything not right and straight, so I know that if you intend to marry again you’ll send me word; but if you don’t, why, of course, I’ll be proud and glad to stand by you in money matters. I’m sure poor Dave would have done the same for my wife if I had got that knife into me instead of him.”

Nell Liardet, sitting with clenched hands and set teeth, said, in a hoarse voice, “Your wife! Are you married?”

“Well—er—yes, oh, yes. I have a—er—native wife at the Anchorites. Poor old Dave stood godfather to one of my little girls. God knows how anxious I am to get back to her.”

“Good bye, Mr. Russell!”

KENNEDY THE BOATSTEERER

Steering north-west from Samoa for six or seven hundred miles you will sight the Ellice Group—low-lying, palm-clad coral atolls fringed on the lee with shimmering sandy beaches. On the weather-side, exposed to the long sweep of the ocean-rollers, there are but short, black-looking reefs backed by irregular piles of loose, flat, sea-worn coral, thrown up and accumulating till its surface is brushed by the pendant leaves of the cocoanuts, only to be washed and swirled back seawards when the wind comes from the westward and sends a fierce sweeping current along the white beaches and black coral rocks alike.

Twenty-three years ago these islands were almost unknown to any one save a few wandering traders and the ubiquitous New Bedford whaler. But now, long ere you can see from the ship’s deck the snowy tumble of the surf on the reef, a huge white mass, grim, square, and ugly, will meet your eye—whitewashed walls of a distressful ghastliness accentuated by doors and windows of the deadliest black. This cheerful excrescence on the face of suffering nature is a native church.

The people have mostly assimilated themselves, in their manners and mode of life generally, to the new order of things represented by the fearful-looking structure aforementioned. That is to say, even as the Tongan and Fijian, they have degenerated from a fierce, hardy, warlike race into white-shirted, black-coated saints, whose ideal of a lovely existence is to have public prayer twice a day on week-days and all day on Sundays. To them it is a good thing to get half a dollar from the white trader for a sick fowl—which, when bought, will be claimed by another native, who will have the white man fined two dollars for buying stolen property. Had the white man paid a dollar he had done wisely—that coin sometimes goes far in the Tokelaus. For instance, the truly unctuous native Christian may ask a dollar for two fowls, but he will also lease out his wife for a similar amount. Time was, in the Ellices, when the undue complaisance of a married woman meant a sudden and inartistic compression of the jugular, or a swift blow from the heavy, ebony-wood club of the wronged man. Nowadays, since the smug-faced native teacher hath shown them the Right Way, such domestic troubles are condoned by—a dollar. That is, if it be a genuine American dollar or two British florins; for outraged honour would not accept the cast-iron Bolivian money or the poor silver of Chili and Peru. And for a dollar the native “Christian” can all but pay for a nicely-bound Bible, printed in the Samoan tongue, and thus, no doubt, out of evil would come good; for he could, by means of his newly-acquired purchase, picture to his dusky mate the terrors that await those who look upon strange men and tupe fa’apupula (bright and shining money).

But I want to tell about Kennedy. Kennedy the Boatsteerer he was called; although twenty years had passed and gone since that day at Wallis Island when he, a bright-eyed, bronze-faced lad—with the fighting-blood of the old Puritan Endicotts running like fire through his veins despite his New England bringing-up—ran his knife into a shipmate’s heart and fled for ever from all white associations. Over a woman it was, and only a copper-coloured one at that; but then she was young and beautiful, with dreamy, glistening eyes, and black, wavy hair, ornamented with a wreath of orange-flowers and coil upon coil of bright-hued seã seã berries strung together, hanging from her neck and resting upon her dainty bosom.

Standing at the doorway of his house, looking over the placid waters at the rising sun, Kennedy folds his brawny arms across his bare, sun-tanned chest and mutters to himself, in his almost forgotten mother-tongue: “Twenty years, twenty years ago! Who would know me there now? Even if I placarded my name on my back and what I did, ‘taint likely I’d have to face a grand jury for running a knife into a mongrel Portuguee, way out in the South Seas a score of years ago.... Poor little Talamãlu! I paid a big price for her—twenty years of wandering from Wallis Island to the Bonins; and wherever I go that infernal story follows me up. Well, I’ll risk it anyhow, and the first chance that comes along I’ll cut Kanaka life and drinking ship’s rum and go see old dad and mum to home. Here, Tikena, you Tokelau devil, bring me my toddy.”

A native, clad in his grass titi, takes from a wooden peg in the house wall two shells of toddy, and the white wanderer takes one and drinks. He is about to return the other to the man when two girls come up from the beach with their arms around each other’s waists, Tahiti fashion, and one calls out with a laugh to “leave some in the shell.” This is Laumanu, and if there is one thing in the world that Jake Kennedy cares for above himself it is this tall girl with the soft eyes and lithe figure. And he dreams of her pretty often, and curses fluently to think that she is beyond his reach and is never likely to fill the place of Talamãlu and her many successors. For Laumanu is tabu to a Nuitao chief—that is, she has been betrothed, but the Nuitao man is sixty miles away at his own island, and no one knows when he will claim his avaga. Then the girl gives him back the empty toddy-shell, and, slyly pinching his hand, sails away with her mate, whereupon the susceptible Kennedy, furious with long disappointment, flings himself down on his bed of mats, curses his luck and his unsuspecting rival at Nuitao, and finally decides not to spring a surprise on “dad and mum” by going “hum” for a considerable number of years to come.

Mr. Jake Kennedy at this time was again a widower—in the widest sense of the word. The last native girl who had occupied the proud position of Te avaga te papalagi (the white man’s wife) was a native of the island of Maraki—a dark-skinned, passionately jealous creature, who had followed his fortunes for three years to his present location, and then developed mal-du-pays to such an extent that the local priest and devil-catcher, one Pare-vaka, was sent for by her female attendants. Pare-vaka was not long in making his diagnosis. A little devil in the shape of an octopus was in Tene-napa’s brain. And he gave instructions how to get the fiend out, and also further instructions to one of the girl attendants to fix, point-upwards, in the sick woman’s mat the foto, or barb of the sting-ray. So when Kennedy, who, in his rough, careless way, had some feint fondness for the woman who three years ago he went mad over, heard a loud cry in the night and was told that Tenenapa was dead, he did not know that as the sick woman lay on her side the watchers had quietly turned her with her face to the roof, and with the needle pointed foto pierced her to the heart. And old Pare-vaka rejoiced, for he had a daughter who, in his opinion, should be avaga to the wealthy and clever white man, who could tori nui and sisi atu (pull cocoanuts and catch bonito) like any native; and this Tenenapa—who was she but a dog-eating stranger from Maraki only fit for shark’s meat? So the people came and brought Kennedy the “gifts of affliction” to show their sympathy, and asked him to take a wife from their own people. And he asked for Laumanu.

There was a dead silence awhile, and then a wild-looking creature with long white hair falling around his shoulders like a cloak, dreading to shame the papalagi before so many, rose to his feet and motioned them away. Then he spoke: “Forget the words you have said, and take for a wife the girl from the house of Pare-vaka. Laumanu is tabu and death walks behind her.” But Kennedy sulked and wanted Laumanu or none.

And this is why he feels so bad to-day, and the rum-keg gives him no consolation. For the sweet-voiced Laumanu always runs away from him when he steps out from his dark little trade-room into the light, with unsteady steps and a peculiar gleam in his black eye, that means mischief—rude love to a woman and challenge to fight to a man.

Lying there on his mat, plotting how to get possession of the girl, there comes to him a faint cry, gradually swelling in volume until every voice in the village, from the full, sonorous tones of the men to the shrill treble of the children, blend together: “Te vaka motul! Te vaka motu!” (a ship! a ship!). Springing up, he strides out, and there, slowly lumbering round the south-west end of the little island, under cruising canvas only, he sees her. One quick glance shows her to be a whaler.

In ten minutes Kennedy is in a canoe, flying over the reef, and in as many more alongside and on deck. The captain is an old acquaintance, and while the boats are sent ashore to buy pigs and poultry, Kennedy and he have a long talk in the cabin. Then the skipper says, as he rises, “Well, it’s risky, but it’s a smart way of earning five hundred dollars, and I’ll land you and the creature somewhere in the Carolines.”

The whaler was to lie off and on all night, or until such time as Kennedy and the girl came aboard in a canoe. To avert suspicion, the captain was to remain ashore with his boat’s crew to witness a dance, and, if all went well, the white man was to be aboard before him with Laumanu and stow her away, in case any canoes came off with the boat.

The dance was in full swing when Kennedy, stripped to the waist, with a heavy bag of money in his left hand and a knife in his right, took a long farewell of his house and stepped out into the silent groves of coco-palms. A short walk brought him to a salt lagoon. On the brink he stood and waited, until a trembling, voiceless figure joined him from out the depths of the thick mangroves. Hand-in-hand they fled along the narrow, sandy path till they reached the beach, just where a few untenanted thatched huts stood on the shingle. Between these, covered over with cocoanut branches, lay a canoe. Deftly the two raised the light craft and carried it down to the water that broke in tender, rippling murmurs on the white sand. And with Laumanu seated for’ard, gazing out beyond into the blackness before them, he urged the canoe seawards with quick, nervous strokes. Far away to the westward he could see the dull glimmer of the whaleship’s lights.

The mate of the Essex was leaning over the rail, drowsily watching the phosphorescence in the water as the ship rolled gently to the ocean swell, when a cry came from for’ard: “A heavy squall coming down, sir, from the land!” And it did come, with a swift, fierce rush, and so strong that it nearly threw the old whaler over on her beam-ends. In the midst of the hum and roar of the squall some one in the waist of the ship called out something about a canoe being alongside. The mate’s comment was brief but vigorous, and the matter was speedily forgotten. Then the rain fell in torrents, and as the ship was made snug the watch got under shelter and the mate went below to get a drink of rum, and curse his captain for loafing ashore, watching naked women dancing.

with outrigger carried away. Now and then, as a big sea lifted her, the stern would rise high out of the water and the sharp-nosed whaleback for’ard go down as if weighted heavily. And it was—with a bag of dollars lashed underneath. When in the early morning the whaleship sighted the drifting speck, floating on the bosom of a now placid sea, the thoughtful Down-East skipper—observant of the canoe’s bows being under water—lowered a boat and pulled over to it. He took the bag of dollars and muttering something about “rather thinking he was kinder acquainted with the poor man’s people,” went back to the ship and stood away on his course in pursuit of his greasy vocation.

And Kennedy and the girl! Go some night and watch the dark-skinned people catching flying-fish by the light of au lama torches. Look over the side of the canoe and see those swarms of grim, grey devils of the tropic seas that ever and anon dart to the surface as the paddlers’ hands come perilously near the water, and wonder no longer as to the fete of Kennedy the Boatsteerer and his Laumanu.

A DEAD LOSS

Denison, the supercargo of the Indiana, was sent by his “owners” to an island in the S.W. Pacific where they had a trading business, the man in charge or which had, it was believed, got into trouble by shooting a native. His instructions were to investigate the rumour, and, if the business was suffering in any way, to take away the trader and put another man in his place. The incident here related is well within the memory of some very worthy men who still dwell under the roofs of thatch in the Western Pacific.