“I got away on the same morning, and made a fine run right across St. George’s Channel, and along the New Britain coast till I made Cape Roebuck. Once the cutter did a steady nine knots for thirty hours. After running on that reef, I did not drop anchor again till I brought up off a rocky beach a few miles from here; and there the niggers made another try to get me, but the broken glass again proved effectual.”
“It’s a mighty smart dodge, Captain Yorke,” said Guest, as we rose and shook hands with him, for he was going to sleep on board his own vessel.
Chapter III
We lay under the lee of the South Cape or New Britain for nearly a fortnight, during which time we effected all the necessary repairs to our own vessel, and fitted Yorke’s cutter with a new rudder. So far he had not told us anything further of his intentions as regarded either the further prosecution of his trading voyage, or its abandonment. At breakfast one morning, Guest told him that he (Yorke) could have a couple of our native hands to help him work the cutter to Manila, or any other port in the China Seas, if he so desired.
He stroked his big, square jaw meditatively.
“That is very kind of you, Captain Guest,” he said; “but to tell you the exact truth, I don’t know my own mind at this moment. I’ve a hazy sort of an idea that I’d like to keep the Fray Bentos company for a bit longer. I can outsail you in light winds—and I really don’t care what I do now. And if you can spare me a couple of hands, I could jog along in company with you indefinitely. But, please understand me—I don’t want to thrust myself and the Francesco into your company if you don’t want me. As a matter of fact, I don’t care a straw where I go—but I certainly would like to keep in company with you, if you don’t object. Perhaps you would not mind telling me where you are bound?”
Guest looked at me interrogatively.
“Well, Captain Yorke,” I said, “one confidence begets another; your confidence in us is worth a heap of money to Guest and myself, and, to be perfectly frank and straightforward with you, the captain and myself intended to lay a proposition before you whereby we three might possibly go into this New Hanover venture on our own hook. But Guest and myself are bound to our present employers for another seven months.”
Yorke nodded. “That will be all right. I’m ready to go in with you, either at the end of seven months or at any other time which may suit you. You can count on me. I’m not a rich man, nor yet am I a poor man; in fact, there’s a thousand pounds’ worth of stuff under the Francesco’s hatches now.”
“Well then, Captain Yorke,” I said, “as Guest here leaves me to do all the talking, I’ll tell you why we are so far up to the northward, out of our usual beat. We heard in Samoa that a big ship, named the Sarawak had run ashore and been abandoned at Rook Island, in Dampier Straits, between the west end of New Britain and the east coast of New Guinea, and both Guest and myself know her to be one of the largest ships out of Liverpool; she left Sydney for Hongkong about six months ago with a general cargo. And ‘there be pickings,’ for she is almost a new vessel, and her gear and fittings alone, independent of her cargo, ought to be worth a thousand pounds. All we could learn at Samoa was that she had run up on a ledge of reef on Rook Island, and that the skipper, with three boats’ crews, had started off for Thursday Island, in Torres Straits. Now, it is quite likely that, if she has not broken up, there may be a lot of money hanging to it.”
“For your owners!” said Yorke, with his slow, amused smile.
“Just so, Captain Yorke. ‘For our owners,’ as you say. But even our owners, who are rather ‘sharp’ people, are not a bad lot—they’ll give Guest and myself a bonus of some sort if we do them good over this wrecked ship.”
“And if you don’t ‘do them good’?” he asked, with the same half-humorous, half-sarcastic smile.
“If we don’t, the senior partner in our highly-esteemed, sailor-sweating firm, will tell Guest and myself that we ‘made a most reprehensible mistake,’ and have put the firm to a considerable loss by doing too much on our own responsibility.”
He nodded as I went on—“We heard of this wreck from the officers of a French cruiser which called at Samoa while we were there. They sighted her lying high and dry on the reef, sent a boat ashore, and found her abandoned. She was bilged, but not badly, as far as they could see. On the cabin table was nailed a letter, written by the captain, saying that being unable to float the ship again, and fearing that he and his unarmed crew would be attacked by the savages, he was starting off in his boats for Thursday Island, the nearest port. Now, that is a big undertaking, and the chances are that the poor fellows never reached there. However, Guest and I thought so much of the matter that we hustled through our business in Samoa, and sailed the next day direct for Rook Island, instead of doing our usual cruise to the eastward. But we met with fearful weather coming up through the Solomon Group, lost our foretopmast, and strained badly. And here we are now, tied up by the nose off the South Cape of New Britain instead of being at Rook Island at work on that wreck.”
Yorke thought a moment. “Well, gentlemen, let me come in with you—just for the fun of the thing. I don’t want to get any money out of it, I assure you, and I’ll lend you a hand with the wrecking work.”
“Agreed,” said Guest, extending his hand, “but only on this condition—whatever our owners give Drake and myself, we three divide equally.”
“As you please, as you please,” he said. “Now come aboard my little hooker, and have a look at what is in the hold.”
We went on board the Francesco with him, and made an examination of her small but valuable cargo, and Guest and I agreed that he had underestimated its worth by quite four hundred or five hundred pounds—in fact, the whole cargo would sell in Sydney or San Francisco for about sixteen hundred pounds.
We sailed together that afternoon, the cutter getting under weigh first. We had given Yorke three of our men—Napoleon the Tongan, and two other natives—and before ten minutes had passed, Guest and everyone else on board the Fray Bentos could see that the Francesco could sail rings round our old brigantine, even in a stiff breeze, for the cutter drew as much water as we did, and had a big spread of canvas. By nightfall we were running before a lusty south-east breeze, the cutter keeping about half a mile to windward of us, and taking in her gaff topsail, when it became dark, otherwise she would have run ahead of, and lost us before morning. At daylight, when I went on deck, she was within a cable’s length, Yorke was steering—smoking as usual—and no one else was visible on deck.
I hailed him: “Good morning, Captain; where are your men?” “Taking it out in ‘bunk, oh,’” he answered with a laugh. “I came on deck about two hours ago, and told them to turn in until four bells.”
“You’ll ruin them for the Fray Bentos, sir,” cried our mate with grumbling good-humour. “Why don’t you start one of ‘em at the galley fire for your coffee!”
“Because I’m coming aboard you for it,” was the reply. He hauled in the main-sheet, lashed the tiller, went quietly forward without awakening his native seamen, and put the staysail to windward. Then he came amidships again to the main hatch, picked up the little dingy which was lying there, and, despite his bad hand, slid her over the cutter’s rail into the water as if she were a toy, got in, and sculled over to the brigantine, leaving the cutter to take care of herself!
Charley King, the mate of the Fray Bentos turned to me in astonishment. He was himself one of the finest built and most powerful men I had ever met, not thirty years of age, and had achieved a great reputation as a long-distance swimmer and good all-round athlete.
“Why, Mr. Drake, that dingy must weigh three hundred pounds, if she weighs an ounce, for she’s heavy oak built! And yet with one gammy hand he can put her over the side as if she was made of brown paper.”
Yorke sculled alongside, made fast to the main chains, clambered over the bulwarks, and stepped aboard in his usual quiet way, as if nothing out of the common had occurred, and asked the mate what he thought of the Francesca as a sailer. King looked at him admiringly for a moment.
“She’s a daisy, Captain Yorke.... but you oughtn’t to have put your boat over the side by yourself, sir, with that bad hand of yours.”
The big man laughed so genuinely, and with such an infectious ring in his voice, that even our Kanaka steward, who was bringing us our coffee, laughed too. The dingy, he said, was very light, and there was no need for him to call one of the men to help him. As we drank our coffee he chatted very freely with us, and drew our attention to the lovely effect caused by the rising sun upon a cluster of three or four small thickly-wooded islets, which lay between the two vessels and the mainland of New Britain, whereupon King, who had no romance in his composition, remarked that for his part he could not see much difference between one sunrise or sunset and another. “One means a lot of wind, and another none at all; one means decent weather and another means rotten weather, or middlin’ weather.”
“Ah, Mr. King, you look at everything from a sailor’s point of view,” he said good-naturedly. “Now, there’s nothing gives me more pleasure than to watch a sunset and sunrise anywhere in the tropics—particularly if there’s land in the foreground or background—I never miss a sunrise in the South Seas if I can help it.”
Presently we began to talk of the voyage, and I asked him a question—which only at that moment occurred to me—concerning himself before we met.
“I wonder, Captain Yorke, when your crew were cut off, that it did not occur to you to run down the west coast of New Ireland, between it and New Britain, to Blanche Bay, where there is a German station, and where you could have obtained assistance. It would have been much easier for you instead of that long buffeting about on the east coast.”
He made no answer at first, and I saw that his face had changed colour. Then he answered slowly:
“Just so. I knew all about the Germans at Blanche Bay, but I did not want to go there—for very good reasons. Will you come aboard and have some breakfast with me? I’ll send you back again any time you like; the sea is so smooth, as far as that goes, that I could run the cutter alongside, and let you step off on to your own deck.”
Just as we were pushing off from the brigantine, Guest came on deck, glass in hand, to have a look at the cluster of islands, at the same time calling out to Yorke and myself to wait a little. After scanning the islands from the deck, he went aloft for a better view, then descended and came aft again to the rail.
“Good morning, Captain Yorke. I’ve just been taking a look at those islands over there, and an idea has just come to me. But, first of all, are they marked on your chart? They are on mine, but not even named—just dots.”
“Neither are they on my big sheet chart—and I have no other of this part of the Western Pacific.”
“Well then, here’s my idea. I see from aloft that there is a good-sized blue water lagoon there, and as likely as not there may be pearl-shell in it. Anyway, it’s worth seeing into, and so if Drake and yourself like to take our boat and half a dozen men, you might have a look in there. I can’t see any houses, but at the same time, be careful. You can run in with the cutter pretty close, and then go ashore in the boat. You are bound to find a passage into the lagoon somewhere or other. I’ll send Tim Rotumah and George” (two of our native crew who were good divers) “with you in the boat; they’ll soon let you know if there is any shell in the lagoon. If there is, light a fire, and make a smoke, and I’ll anchor the brigantine and come after you.”
I was delighted with this, and at once returned on board, while Yorke went off to the cutter to give his crew their instructions. In ten or fifteen minutes the whaleboat was over the side awaiting me, manned by six of our native crew, all of whom were armed with Snider carbines and revolvers. Pushing off from the Fray Bentos, we went alongside the Francesco to pick up Yorke, who was waiting for the boat. As the wind had now fallen very light, he suggested to me to make a start at once, leaving the cutter in charge of Napoleon, with orders to anchor if it fell calm, and he was on easy soundings.
The morning was deliciously bright, clear, and, for those latitudes at that season of the year, very cool. As the boat skimmed over the placid surface of the ocean, “schools” of bright silvery gar-fish and countless thousands of small flying squid sprang into the air and fell with a simultaneous splash into the water on each side and ahead of us. Then “George,” a merry-faced, broad-chested native of Anaa, in the Paumotu Islands, after an inquiring glance at me, broke out into a bastard Samoan-Tokelauan canoe song, with a swinging chorus, altering and improvising as he sang, showing his white teeth, as every now and then he smiled at Yorke and myself when making some humorous play upon the words of the original song, praising the former for his skill and bravery, and his killing of the man-eating savages of New Hanover, his great strength and stature, and his kindly heart—“a heart which groweth from his loins upwards to his throat.”
Long, long years have passed since that day, but I shall always remember how Yorke turned to me with a smile when at something George had sung, the rest of our crew burst into approving laughter.
“What is he saying about me?—of course I can recognise that ‘Ioka’ means ‘Yorke,’” he said.
“It’s extremely personal, but highly complimentary to you. Now, wait a bit, till they come to the chorus, and I’ll try and translate it. There, he’s starting:”
“Miti Ioka, malie toa, toa malohi
Kapeni Iota, arii vaka!
Tule Ioka, fana tonu!
Mate puaka uri, kai tino.
Maumau lava, nofo noa!
Maumau lava, nofo noa t
Halo! Tama, Halo Foe!!!
“E aue l le tiga ina
Ma kalâga, ma kalâga
O fafine lalolagi
E kau iloay i nofa noa
Kapeni Ioka
Halo! Tama, Halo Foe!!!”
“which goes,” I said, “as far as I can understand, something like this—‘Mr. Yorke, warrior brave and fighter strong, Captain Yorke, the sailor captain, leader Yorke who fired so truly, slew the black, man-eating pigs of savages! Oh, the pity he is single, oh, the pity he is single! Pull, men, pull! The next verse says that did the world of women know that such a fine man as yourself was a bachelor, they would consume themselves with grief.”
“I wonder why they should take it for granted that I am a single man,” he laughed, as he began to fill his pipe; then he added quietly—“I may be a widower for all I know. I was married in Copenhagen thirty years ago, and have never seen my wife since, and trust I never may.” Then in a moment he changed the subject, and I took good care not to mention the matter again.
An hour after leaving the brigantine, we found a passage—narrow but safe—leading into the lagoon, which was a mile or mile and a half in width, and but for the one opening in the reef, completely land locked by four small islands, all low and densely wooded with banyan and other trees, and connected with each other at low tide. Here and there, at intervals, were groves of coco-palms, and a few vi trees—the wild mango of the Western Pacific, growing close down to the beach, which on the inner side of the lagoon was of bright yellow sand, and presented a very pleasing appearance.