The Lonely Island: The Refuge of the Mutineers, R. M. Ballantyne [books successful people read TXT] 📗

was no tobacco in the pipe. That weed,—which many people deem so needful and so precious that one sometimes wonders how the world managed to exist before Sir Walter Raleigh put it to its unnatural use—had at last been exhausted on Pitcairn Island, and the mutineers had to learn to do without it. Some of them said they didn’t care, and submitted with a good grace to the inevitable. Others growled and swore and fretted, saying that they knew they couldn’t live without it. To their astonishment, and no doubt to their disgust, they did manage to live quite as healthily as before, and with obvious advantage to health and teeth. Two there were, however, namely, Quintal and McCoy, who would not give in, but vowed with their usual violence of language that they would smoke seaweed rather than want their pipes. Like most men of powerful tongue and weak will, they did not fulfil their vows. Seaweed was left to the gulls, but they tried almost every leaf and flower on the island without success. Then they scraped and dried various kinds of bark, and smoked that. Then they tried the fibrous husk of the cocoa-nut, and then the dried and pounded kernel, but all in vain. Smoke, indeed, they produced in huge volumes, but of satisfaction they had none. It was a sad case.

“If we could only taste the flavour o’ baccy ever so mild,” they were wont to say to their comrades, “the craving would be satisfied.”

To which Isaac Martin, who had no mercy on them, would reply, “If ye hadn’t created the cravin’ boys, ye wouldn’t have bin growlin’ and hankerin’ after satisfaction.”

As we have said, McCoy was smoking, perhaps we should say agonising, over his evening pipe. His man, or slave, Timoa, was seated on the opposite side of the hut, playing an accompaniment on the flute to McCoy’s wife and two other native women, who were singing. The flute was one of those rough-and-ready yellow things, like the leg of a chair, which might serve equally well as a policeman’s baton or a musical instrument. It had been given by one of the sailors to Timoa, who developed a wonderful capacity for drawing unmusical sounds out of it. The singing was now low and plaintive, anon loud and harsh—always wild, like the song of the savages. The two combined assisted the pipe in soothing William McCoy—at least so we may assume, because he had commanded the music, and lay in his bunk in the attitude of one enjoying it. He sometimes even added to the harmony by uttering a bass growl at the pipe.

During a brief pause in the accompaniment Timoa became aware of a low hiss outside, as if of a serpent. With glistening eyes and head turned to one side he listened intently. The hiss was repeated, and Timoa became aware that one of his kinsmen wished to speak with him in secret. He did not dare, however, to move.

McCoy was so much taken up with his pipe that he failed to notice the hiss, but he observed the stoppage of the flute’s wail.

“Why don’t you go on, you brute!” he cried, angrily, at the same time throwing one of his shoes at the musician, which hit him on the shin and caused him a moment’s sharp pain.

Timoa would not suffer his countenance to betray his feelings. He merely raised the flute to his lips, exchanged a glance with the women, and continued his dismal strain. His mind, however, was so engrossed with his comrade outside that the harmony became worse than ever. Even McCoy, who professed himself to be no judge of music, could not stand it, and he was contemplating the application of the other shoe, when a step was heard outside. Next moment his friend Quintal strode in and sat down on a stool beside the door.

“Oh, I say, Matt,” cried McCoy, “who put that cocoa-nut on the bridge of your nose?”

“Who?” grow led Quintal, with an oath. “Who on the island would dare to do it but that domineerin’ upstart, Christian?”

“Humph!” answered McCoy, with a slight sneer. He followed this up with a curse on domineerers in general, and on Fletcher Christian in particular.

It is right to observe here that though we have spoken of these two men as friends, it must not be understood that they were friendly. They had no personal regard for each other, and no tastes in common, save the taste for tobacco and drink; but finding that they disliked each other less than they disliked their comrades, they were thus drawn into a hollow friendship, as it were, under protest.

“How did it happen?” asked McCoy.

“Give us a whiff an’ I’ll tell ’ee. What sort o’ stuff are you tryin’ now?”

“Cocoa-nut chips ground small. The best o’ baccy, Matt, for lunatics, which we was when we cast anchor on this island. Here, fill your pipe an’ fire away. You won’t notice the difference if you don’t think about it. My! what a cropper you must have come down when you got that dab on your proboscis!”

“Stop your howlin’,” shouted Quintal to the musicians, in order to vent some of the spleen which his friend’s remark had stirred up.

Timoa, not feeling sure whether the command was meant for the women or himself, or, perhaps, regarding McCoy as the proper authority from whom such an order should come, continued his dismal blowing.

Quintal could not stand this in his roused condition. Leaping up, he sprang towards Timoa, snatched the flute from his hand, broke it over his head, and kicked him out of the hut.

Excepting the blow and the kick, this was just what the Otaheitan wanted. He ran straight into the bush, which was by that time growing dark under the shades of evening, and found Nehow leaning against a tree and groaning heavily, though in a suppressed tone.

“Quick, come with me to the spring and wash my back,” he cried, starting up.

They did not converse in broken English now, of course, but in their native tongue.

“What has happened?” asked Timoa, anxiously.

While Nehow explained the nature of the cruel treatment he had just received, they ran together to the nearest water-course. It chanced to be pretty full at the time, heavy rain having fallen the day before.

“There; oh! ha–a! not so hard,” groaned the unfortunate man, as his friend laved the water on his lacerated back.

In a few minutes the salt was washed out of the wounds, and Nehow began to feel easier.

“Where is Menalee?” he asked, abruptly, as he sat down under the deep shadow of a banyan-tree.

“In his master’s hut, I suppose,” answered Timoa. “Go find him and Tetaheite; fetch them both here,” he said, with an expression of ferocity on his dark face.

Timoa looked at him with an intelligent grin.

“The white men must die,” he said.

“Yes,” Nehow replied, “the white men shall die.”

Timoa pointed to the lump which had been raised on his shin, grinned again, and turning quickly round, glided into the underwood like an evil spirit of the night.

At that time Menalee was engaged in some menial work in the hut of John Mills. Managing to attract his attention, Timoa sent him into the woods to join Nehow.

When Timoa crept forward, Tetaheite was standing near to a large bush, watching with intense interest the ongoings of Christian, Adams, and Young. These three, in pursuance of the philanthropic principle which had begun to operate, were playing an uproarious game with the children round a huge bonfire; but there was no “method in their madness;” the children, excepting Thursday October Christian and Sally, were still too young for concerted play. They were still staggerers, and the game was simply one of romps.

Tetaheite’s good-humoured visage was glistening in the firelight, the mouth expanded from ear to ear, and the eyes almost closed.

Suddenly he became aware of a low hissing sound. The mouth closed, and the eyes opened so abruptly, that there seemed some necessary connection between the two acts. Moving quietly round the bush until he got into its shadow, his dark form melted from the scene without any one observing his disappearance.

Soon the four conspirators were seated in a dark group under shade of the trees.

“The time has come when the black man must be revenged,” said Nehow. “Look my back. Salt was rubbed into these wounds. It is not the first time. It shall be the last! Some of you have suffered in the same way.”

It scarcely needed this remark to call forth looks of deadly hate on the Otaheitan faces around him.

“The white men must die,” he continued. “They have no mercy. We will show none.”

Even in the darkness of that secluded spot the glistening of the eyes of these ill-treated men might have been seen as they gave ready assent to this proposal in low guttural tones.

“How is it to be done?” asked Menalee, after a short pause.

“That is what we have met to talk about,” returned Nehow. “I would hear what my brothers have to say. When they have spoken I will open my mouth.”

The group now drew closer together, and speaking in still lower tones, as if they feared that the very bushes might overhear and betray them, they secretly plotted the murder of the mutineers.