Edward Barry, George Lewis Becke [lightweight ebook reader txt] 📗

the windlass again, Mr. Barradas," and Barry with a happy smile sprang on the poop, and himself took the wheel.

"Aye, aye, Captain Barry."

Up came the anchor from the coral bed in which it had lain for so many months, and ten minutes later the Mahina was slipping through the smooth water of the lagoon towards the passage. Another hour, with every stitch of her white cotton canvas shining bright in the glorious noonday sun, she was dashing over the long mountain swell of the North Pacific, and heading south before the brave north-east trade wind.

At noon the watches were picked, and then the captain ordered the Solomon Islanders to be brought on deck. They came up one by one with the expectation of being at once shot. Togaro, the leader, who understood and spoke a little English, glared resentfully at Barry when the latter ordered him to step out from the rest and listen to what he had to say.

"Togaro," said the captain, "I don't want to keep all your fellows down there in the hold, and no harm will be done to any of you if you obey orders. If you do as I tell you, then I will put you all ashore at Bouka in about two or three weeks from now. Now this is what you must do: eight of you can stay on deck at a time to help the sailors; the other eight must stay below. If any one of them tries to come on deck without permission he will be shot. Do you understand?"

The savage nodded.

"And as you are the boss, you will be shot too. Do you understand that?"

"Me savee, cap'en," replied Togaro, turning to his companions and translating Barry's speech. They grinned approval, and each one promised to faithfully obey the captain's orders, and as a proof of their honesty one of them descended into the hold and reappeared with three or four tomahawks and some knives which they had concealed among the cases of shell.

"That's all right, Togaro," said Barry as the weapons were passed over to Joe; "if you and your people are good fellows, you shall have these tomahawks and knives back again when we get to Bouka. And if you work well you'll get plenty of kai kai; if you don't, you'll feel hungry all the time. Steward, serve them out pipes and tobacco and tell the cook to give them a good square feed right away--the poor devils must be pretty hungry by this time."

* * * * * *


"Captain Barry," said Mrs. Tracey to him as he rejoined her on the after-deck, "you ought to be an admiral. How easily you did it all! Look now! There are those dreadful savages sitting down as quietly as if there had never been any trouble with them. I won't have the slightest fear of them in the future."

"I don't think there will be any danger to be apprehended from them now. Togaro, the leader, and myself had a little difference once----"

"I know. Velo has told me all about it----"

"And he'll be careful in the future. He's a thundering savage though, and I've no doubt but that he murdered poor Harry. However, bygones must be bygones now. We want no more bloodshed."

"No indeed," she said with a shudder, "but what has occurred was no fault of yours. You are, I am sure," she added impulsively, placing her hand on his arm, "a merciful man, as well as a brave one. Your wife that is to be will be a happy woman, Mr. Barry."

* * * * * *


For thirteen days the little Mahina ran southward under cloudless skies and over softly swelling seas till Bouka was sighted, and Togaro and his men prepared to be landed in a little bay fringed with coco-palms growing around a half-circle of snowy beach. They had all behaved well, and each man, ere he got into the boat which was to take them ashore, insisted on shaking hands with Barry and every one else on board. They were landed at sundown, and by dark the Mahina was again slipping over the long Pacific swell with the light of myriad stars illumining her snowy canvas and shining upon her spotless deck.


CHAPTER XVI.


EXIT RAWLINGS AND THE GREEK.

At daylight one morning, a week after leaving Bouka Island, the Mahina was lying becalmed off Nitendi, one of the islands of the Santa Cruz group, and just as Barry came on deck for his coffee the look-out called to Barradas--

"Sail ho, sir, right astern!"

Barry ran aloft, and there six or seven miles astern was a schooner-rigged steamer. Barradas, who had followed him, knew her at once.

"That's the Reynard, sir--one of the Sydney squadron patrolling the New Hebrides. I've seen her pretty often, and know her well."

"Ah, we're in luck, Manuel. There's a chance now of getting rid of our prisoners--for a time at least. She's steaming this way, and will be up to us in another hour. Get the whaleboat ready and hoist our colours."

There was no need for the Mahina to signal that she desired to communicate with the warship, for the latter steamed steadily along till she was abreast of the brig, and then stopped her engines and waited for Barry to come aboard.

In a few minutes the master of the Mahina was on the quarter-deck of the Reynard talking to her commander, a clean-shaven, youthful-looking officer.

"Come below, Mr. Barry, and tell me your story in detail," he said politely. "I will do all I can to assist you, if it was only for the pleasure of hearing that that scoundrel, Billy Chase, is no longer in the land of the living. And I must compliment you upon your good-nature and sound judgment in carrying back his natives to Bouka. I wish there were more trading captains like you in the distressful South Seas."

Lieutenant-Commander Martyn listened with intense interest to Barry's strange story, from the time he came on board the Mahina in Sydney Harbour till the Reynard was sighted.

"It is a perfect romance," he declared, "and you'll be quite a famous man in the history of the South Seas. Now as to your prisoners. As you have made the request I'll take them from you. My orders from the Admiral are to follow out the High Commissioner's instructions 'to maintain order and arrest all suspicious persons within the jurisdiction of the High Commissioner for the Western Pacific,' and these two fellows you have on board your vessel certainly come within the category of 'suspicious persons'--to put it mildly. I am bound to Noumea, New Caledonia, and from there I can send them on to Sydney or Fiji for the trial--wish I could dispose of them both in the good old-fashioned style, by dangling them from the end of the yard-arm. Now as to this other man, Barradas. He seems to have made all the amends possible in his power, but nevertheless he certainly was their accomplice in the piracy of the vessel. This may mean from two to five years' imprisonment for him--unless," he added carelessly, "he runs away before you get to Sydney."

Barry rose, when the commander bade him be seated again. "Don't go just yet, Mr. Barry. Take another whiskey-and-soda with me, and then I'll go aboard your ship, take over the custody of those two anointed scoundrels, and"--here he smiled--"ask to be introduced to the heroine of your strange tale."

He touched the bell on the table and gave the necessary orders to the sentry, and in a few seconds the boatswain's whistle called away one of the boats which, with the commander and a junior lieutenant, left the Reynard, together with Barry, who was in his own boat, but went alongside the Mahina first so as to receive the naval officer with all due ceremony.

Stepping on the deck, Commander Martyn returned Barry's salute in the usual naval manner--as if he had never before seen him in his life--and asked to see the ship's papers. He was conducted to the cabin, and the ship's papers and all other necessary documents bearing upon John Tracey's rights of possession of Arrecifos laid before him for examination.

"Everything is quite right, Mr. Barry," he said formally. "Now please hand over your prisoners to Lieutenant Jenkins, who will take them away immediately."

Then the coxswain of the man-of-war's boat and two bluejackets entered the sail-room, and Rawlings and the Greek were brought out, handcuffed, and helped down over the side into the boat. Neither of them looked at Barry, nor he at them, until their backs were turned to him. Not once during the voyage had he spoken to them, and now, though he did not know it, he saw them for the last time.

"Now, Mr. Barry----" and the naval officer turned to him with a smile.

The captain of the Mahina tapped at Mrs. Tracey's cabin door.

"Captain Martyn, of the Reynard, would like to be introduced to you, Mrs. Tracey," he said.

The door opened at once and Alice Tracey met the officer with outstretched hand. "And I am very pleased indeed," she said with a bright smile as Martyn bent low over her hand. He had no idea that he would see so beautiful a woman in the cabin of a South Sea trading vessel.

"Yours is indeed a strange, sad story, Mrs. Tracey," he said as he sat down beside her, "and the master of this vessel" (Barry had discreetly gone on deck) "seems to have acted in an exceedingly brave manner throughout. He looks--and of course he is--a very plucky fellow and a perfect type of the British seaman."

"He is indeed! He is like my poor husband"--her voice trembled--"who was also a perfect type of an English sailor."

The commander of the Reynard and Mrs. Tracey remained chatting together for nearly a quarter of an hour; he, delighted to meet an educated and refined white woman under such strange circumstances, and she listening with a secret pleasure to his praises of "Mr." Barry--for, like all naval officers, Commander Martyn could not address or speak of a merchant skipper as "captain."

Then "Mr." Barry came down and he and the naval officer and Mrs. Tracey drank a glass of champagne together, and exchanged various promises to meet again when the Reynard came to Sydney at the end of her cruise.

"This meeting with you, Mrs. Tracey, is the only pleasurable incident of a detestable cruise, I can assure you," said Martyn as he bade her farewell; "the Reynard is a beast of a ship and we are employed on beastly work; in fact I'm nothing better than a London sergeant of police detailed off for duty to watch 'the criminal classes' in Southwark or the Borough Road. Wish to goodness, however, that I was there now instead of stewing in these wretched islands--chasing slavers