The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton, George Lewis Becke [good books to read for teens txt] 📗

moon sinking low down on our lee, as the glow of the coming sun tipped a bank of cloud to windward, with a narrow wavering ribbon of shining gold. I had nothing at which to grumble. My fifteen years of wandering had done me good, although I had not saved money--money, that in my father's eyes brought, before eternal salvation in the next world, primarily the beatitudes of some county eminence in Ireland and British respectability generally in this. Unless my father was still alive, and I could know he wanted to see me before he died, I should never go home--not after fifteen years of South Sea life.

Why should I not accept what Fate meant for me, and my own inclinations told me that I was destined for? I was intended to be "Jim Sherry, the trader,"--and I should ask "Niabon, of Danger Island," to be "Jim Sherry's" wife. Why not. I had never cared for any woman before except in a fleeting, and yet degrading manner--in a way which had left no memories with me that I could look back upon with tender regrets. She and I together might do great things in the South Seas, and found a colony of our own. She had white blood in her veins--of that I felt certain--and where Ben Boyd, of the old colonial days, failed to achieve, I, with a woman like Niabon for my wife, could succeed. Ben Boyd was a dreamer, a man of wealth and of flocks and herds, in the newly-founded convict settlement of New South Wales, and his dream was the founding of a new state in the Solomon Islands, where he, an autocratic, but beneficent ruler, would reign supreme, and the English Government recognise him as a Clive, a Warren Hastings of the Southern Seas. But the clubs of the murderous Solomon Islanders--the country of the people in which he had already planned out vast achievements on paper--battered out his brains almost under the guns of his beautiful armed yacht, the _Wanderer_; and the name of Ben Boyd was now alone remembered by a decayed village and a ruined lighthouse on the south headland of Twofold Bay, in New South Wales, where, in the days of his prosperity, he had erected it, as a guide to the numerous American and English whaleships, which in those times traversed the Pacific from one end to the other, and would, he imagined, eagerly avail themselves of the quiet, landlocked harbour to repair and recruit, and sell their cargoes of sperm oil. But they never came, and his dream was ended ere his life was gone.

Yes, I would ask her, as soon as I had an opportunity of speaking to her alone. It was true that she had once told me that she would never part from Lucia--and Lucia had often spoken to me of their plans for the future.

But, my vanity whispered, she would listen to me She cared for me, I was sure, and would not long hesitate. We were certain to meet with at least one missionary going through the Carolines, and he would many us. If we did not, it would not matter--there were half a dozen Spanish priests in Guam. Then after our marriage I would go on in the boat to Amboyna, where I had a business friend, a rich trader--a man who liked and trusted me, and who would give me a thousand, ay, two thousand pounds' worth of trade goods for my pencilled I.O.U. in his notebook. Then I would buy a little schooner, and sail with Niabon to the islands of the south-eastern Pacific, and begin trading. I would make Rapa, in the Austral Group, my head station, or else Manga Reva in the southern Paumotus--Niabon should decide.

The low cloud to windward lifted, the red sun leapt from the sea-rim, and then I felt a soft hand on my arm.

"What are you thinking of, Jim? I called you twice, but you did not hear. I believe you were talking to yourself, for I twice saw you throw out your arm as if you were speaking to some one."

"I believe I was, Lucia," I replied with a laugh. "I was day-dreaming."

"Tell me, Jim," she said softly, so softly that her voice sank to a whisper.

"Not now, Lucia. Wait till we get to the next land." And then in all innocence I added, as I looked at her, "How bright and happy you look, Lucia! I think you grow more beautiful every day."

She lifted her eyes to mine for one instant, and I saw in them a light I had never seen before.


CHAPTER XIV


"_Te fanua, te fanua! te fanua umi, umi lava!_" ("Land, land! a long, long land!")

As we, the "watch below"--Niabon, Tepi, and myself--heard Tematau's loud cry, we sat up, and saw a long, dark line pencilled on the horizon right ahead, which we knew was the great lonely atoll named Providence Island on the charts, and called Ujilon by the natives of the North-Western Pacific.

It was daylight of the sixth day out from Kusaie, and as I stood up to get a better view of the land I was well satisfied.

"We have done well," I said exultantly to Lucia, who was steering: "three hundred and forty miles in five days--with a two-knot current against us all the way!"

I did not know my way into Ujilon Lagoon, for I had never been there before, so I now had some trouble in picking up one of the two passages on the south side of the great atoll. At seven o'clock, just as we were entering it, we saw a barque lying on the reef about half a mile away to the northward. She was a good lump of a vessel--apparently of about seven or eight hundred tons, and the remnants of some of her upper canvas still fluttered to the breeze. We could discern no sign of life about her, nor were any boats visible; but we had no time to examine her just then, so sailed on across the lagoon, and, instead of dropping anchor, ran gently on to the beach of a densely wooded island, for the water was not only as smooth as glass, but very deep, the "fall" from the edge of the beach being very steep.

In an hour we had lightened the boat sufficiently to float her along a narrow waterway, which wound a sinuous course through the solid coral rock into a little basin or natural dock, where we could board her at either low or high water, without wetting our feet, though she had a clear fathom of water under her keel.

The lagoon seemed alive with large and small fish--none of which, Niabon said, were poisonous, like two thirds of those of the Marshall Island atolls, and the beaches and sand-flats were covered with small golden-winged plover, who displayed not the slightest fear of our presence, letting us approach them within a few yards, then rising and settling down again. From where we were we could see but seven of the chain of fifteen islands which comprised the atoll; all of these were thickly covered with coco palms, bearing an enormous crop of nuts, and here and there groves of jack-fruit and pandanus broke the monotonous beauty of the palms by their diversity of foliage.

No traces of natives were visible, though I knew that there were a few--about thirty all told--for the redoubtable Captain Bully Hayes, who claimed Ujilon as his own, and whose brig was the first ship to enter the lagoon, had I knew established friendly intercourse with them. Two years before, I had met the famous captain at Anchorite's Islands--to the north of the Admiralty Group--when he had given me a description of Ujilon and its marvellous fertility, and had tried to induce me to go there with him with a gang of natives, and make oil for him. But although he made me a most liberal offer--he was a most delightful man to talk to, was the "South Sea pirate"--I did not trust him well enough, despite his merry, laughing blue eyes, jovial voice and handsome face, for he was a man who could be all things to all men; and the blue eyes sometimes went black, and the smooth, shapely hand that was for ever stroking the long flowing beard, liked too well to feel a trigger in the crook of its forefinger. So I laughingly declined his offer--even when, as an extra inducement, he pointed out to me a very handsome young Marshall Island girl, who would do the station honours for me at Ujilon.

"All right, Mr. Sherry," he said, "please yourself;" and then over another bottle of wine, he gave me some further particulars about the great atoll, and told me of how it had taken him two months to get into communication with the few inhabitants; and of the particular island on which their village was concealed amid a dense grove of pandanus palms. But that was two years ago, and I had forgotten much that he had told me. However, as I intended to remain at Ujilon for two or three days, it was likely that we might come across them--they were very quiet and inoffensive people, so there was no danger to be apprehended from a meeting.

By noon we had our temporary camp made comfortable, and were having dinner when five natives made their appearance--three men and two women--coming towards us in a canoe. They landed without the slightest hesitation, and sat down with us; but we found that they spoke the Marshall Island dialect, which none of us but Niabon could speak, and she but slightly. However, we managed to worry along, and to our surprise learned that Hayes had been at the island in his famous brig, the _Leonora_, only a month before, and that for a year and six months previously, seventy Line Island natives had been working on the islands under the supervision of a white man, making oil for the captain, but most of them, and the white man as well, had left the atoll in the brig, for Hayes had been so well pleased with the result of their work that he invited forty of the seventy to come on board and go with him to Ponape, in the Carolines, for a month's recreation and "feasting" on that beautiful island.

So with forty of his sturdy Line Islanders, and seven hundred barrels of coco-nut oil, he had sailed; and now, said our five friends, he would soon be back--perhaps in two days--perhaps in ten, or twenty, or more, for how could one tell what the winds would be? He was a good man, was the captain, but hot and sudden in his anger, over-fond of women who were good to look at, and cruel to those who sought to cross his desire; but generous--always generous--and kind to those who were weak and ill, giving them good medicine and rich food; tins of the red rich fish called _samani_ which came from his own country, and biscuit and bread such as white men eat. Ah, he was a good man was "Puli Ese" (Bully Hayes).

"Ask them about the wretched ship on the reef," I said to Niabon, repeating the first question I had tried to put to them, but which they did not answer, so eager were they to tell us about Captain Hayes and themselves; "ask them all about her--when did she run ashore, and where are the crew?"

Ah, the ship, the great ship! they replied. She had run up on the reef one night four moons ago, when the sky was bright and clear, and the wind blew strongly; and