About seven o’clock in the morning, as I was bathing in the little river that runs into Apia Harbour, a native servant girl of the local resident medical missionary came to the bank and called to me, and told me a startling story. My obstinate friend had been picked up at sea, four miles from Apia Harbour, by a taumualua (native-built whaleboat). He was in a state of exhaustion and collapse, and when brought into Apia was more dead than alive, and the doctor was quickly summoned I at once went to see him, but was not admitted to his room, and for three days he had to lie up, suffering from shock—and, I trust, a feeling of humility for being such an obstinate blockhead.
His story was simple enough: During the heavy rain squall his bait was taken by some large and powerful fish (he maintained that it was a La’heu, though most probably it was a shark), and thirty or forty yards of line flew out before he could get the pull of it. When he did, he foolishly made the loose part fast to the canoe seat amidships, and the canoe promptly capsized, and the fore end of the outrigger unshipped. Clinging to the side of the frail craft, he shouted to the gunboat for help, but no one heard in the noise of the wind and heavy rain, and in ten minutes he found himself in the passage between the reefs, and rapidly being towed out to sea. He tried to sever the line by biting it through (he had lost his knife), but only succeeded in losing a tooth. Then, as the canoe was being dragged through the water broadside on, a heavy sea submerged her and the line parted, the shark or whatever it was going off. Never losing his pluck, he tried in the darkness to secure the loose end of the outrigger, but failed, owing to the heavy, lumpy seas. Then for two anxious, miserable hours he clung to the canoe, expecting every moment to find himself minus his legs by the jaws of a shark, and when sighted and picked up by the native boat he was barely conscious.
He learnt a lesson that did him good. He never again went out alone in a canoe at night, and for many days after his recovery he never uttered the word “Bosh!”
CHAPTER XXIX ~ THE PATTERING OF THE MULLET
It is a night of myriad stars, shining from a dome of deepest blue. The lofty, white-barked swamp gums stand silent and ghost-like on the river’s bank, and the river itself is almost as silent as it flows to meet the roaring surf on the bar of the rock-bound coast fifteen miles away, where when the south-east wind blows lustily by day and dies away at night the long billows of the blue Pacific roll on unceasingly.
Overhead, far up in the topmost boughs of one of the giant gums some opossums squeal angrily at an intruding native bear, which, like themselves, has climbed to feed upon the young and tender eucalyptus leaves. Below, a prowling dingo steals slowly over the thick carpet of leaves, then sitting on his haunches gazes at the prone figures of two men stretched out upon their blankets at the foot of the great tree. His green, hungry eyes have discerned a pair of saddle-bags and his keen nostrils tell him that therein are salt beef and damper. He sinks gently down upon the yielding leaves and for a minute watches the motionless forms; then he rises and creeps, creeps along. A horse bell tinkles from beyond the scrub and in an instant the wild dog lies flat again. Did he not see one of the men move? No, all is quiet, and once more he creeps forward. Then from beneath the tree there comes a flash and a report and a bullet flies and the night prowler leaps in the air with a snarling yelp and falls writhing in his death agony, as from the sand flats in the river arises the clamour of startled wild fowl and the rush and whirr of a thousand wings. Then silence again, save for the long-drawn wail of a curlew.
One of the men rises, kicks together the dying camp fire and throws on a handful of sticks and leaves. It blazes up and a long spear of light shoots waveringly across the smooth current of the river.
“Get him, Harry?” sleepily asks his companion as he sits up and feels for his pipe.
“Yes—couldn’t miss him. He’s lying there. Great Scott! Didn’t he jump.”
“Poor beggar—smelt the tucker, I suppose. Well, better a dead dog than a torn saddle-bag. Hear the horses?”
“Yes, they’re all right—feeding outside the timber belt How’s the time, Ted?”
“Three o’clock. What a deuce of a row those duck and plover kicked up when you fired! We ought to get a shot or two at them when daylight comes.”
“Harry,” a big, bearded fellow of six feet, nodded as he lit his pipe.
“Yes, we ought to get all we want up along the blind creeks, and we’ll have to shift camp soon. It’s going to rain before daybreak, and we might as well stay here over to-morrow and give the horses a spell.”
“It’s clouding over a bit, but I don’t think it means rain.”
“I do. Listen,” and he held up his hand towards the river.
His companion listened, and a low and curious sound—like rain and yet not like rain—a gentle and incessant pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, then a break for a few seconds, then again, sometimes sounding loud and near, at others faintly and far away.
“Sounds like a thousand people knockin’ their finger nails on tables. Why, it must be rainin’ somewhere close to on the river.”
“No, it’s the pattering of mullet, heading up the river—thousands, tens of thousands, aye hundreds of thousands. It is a sure sign of heavy rain. We’ll see them presently when they come abreast of us. That queer lip, lap, lip, lap you hear is made by their tails. They sail along with heads well up out of the water—the blacks tell me that they smell the coming rain—then swim on an even keel for perhaps twenty yards or so, and the upper lobe of their tails keeps a constant flapping on the water. You know how clearly you can hear the flip of a single fish’s tail in a pond on a quiet night? Well, to-night you’ll hear the sound of fifty thousand. Once, when I was prospecting in the Shoalhaven River district I camped with some net fishermen near the Heads. It was a calm, quiet night like this, and something awakened me It sounded like heavy rain falling on big leaves. ‘Is it raining, mate?’ I said to one of the fishermen. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘but there’s a heavy thunderstorm gathering; and that noise you hear is mullet coming up from the Heads, three miles away.’ That was the first time I ever saw fish packed so closely together—it was a wonderful sight, and when they began to pass us they stretched in a solid line almost across the river and the noise they made was deafening. But we must hurry up, lad, shift our traps a bit back into the scrub and up with the tent. Then we’ll come back and have a look at the fish, and get some for breakfast.”
The two hardy prospectors (for such they were) were old and experienced bushmen, and soon had their tent up, and their saddles, blankets and guns and provisions under its shelter, just as the first low muttering of thunder hushed the squealing opossums overhead into silence. But, as it died away, the noise of the myriad mullet sounded nearer and nearer as they swam steadily onward up the river.
Ten minutes passed, and then a heavy thunder-clap shook the mighty trees and echoed and re-echoed among the spurs and gullies of the coastal range twenty miles away; another and another, and from the now leaden sky the rain fell in torrents and continued to pour unceasingly for an hour. Inside the tent the men sat and smoked and waited Then the downfall ceased with a “snap,” the sky cleared as if by magic, revealing the stars now paling before the coming dawn, and the cries of birds resounded through the dripping bush.
Picking up a prospecting dish the elder man told his “mate” that it was time to start. Louder than ever now sounded the noise made by the densely packed masses of fish, and as the rays of the rising sun, aided by a gentle air, dispelled the river mist, the younger man gave a gasp of astonishment when they reached the bank and he looked down—from shore to shore the water was agitated and churned into foam showing a broad sheet of flapping fins and tails and silvery scales. So close were the fish to the bank and so overcrowded that hundreds stranded upon the sand.
The big man stepped down, picked up a dozen and put them into the dish; then he and his companion sat on the bank and watched the passage of the thousands till the last of them had rounded a bend of the river and the waters flowed silently once more.