The Call Of The South, George Lewis Becke [best management books of all time txt] 📗

any ducks that I might shoot, and that the supplejack was for lashing. Then, to my surprise and pleasure, he proposed that I should go on to his "humphy," and camp there for the night, and he would return to the swamp with me in the morning, join me in a day's shooting and fishing, and then come on with me to the township on the following day.

Gladly accepting his offer, two hours' easy walking brought us to his home--a roughly-built slab shanty with a bark roof, enclosed in a good-sized paddock, in which his old pack horse, several goats and a cow and calf were feeding. At the side of the house was a small but well-tended vegetable garden, in which were also some huge water-melons--quite ripe, and just the very thing after our fourteen miles' walk. One-half of the house and roof was covered with scarlet runner bean plants, all in full bearing, and altogether the exterior of the place was very pleasing. Before we reached the door two dogs, which were inside, began a terrific din--they knew their master's step. The interior of the house--which was of two rooms--was clean and orderly, the walls of slabs being papered from top to bottom with pictures from illustrated papers, and the floor was of hardened clay. Two or three rough chairs, a bench and a table comprised the furniture, and yet the place had a home-like look.

My host asked me if I could "do" with a drink of bottled-beer; I suggested a slice of water-melon.

"Ah, you're right But those outside are too hot. Here's a cool one," and going into the other room he produced a monster. It was delicious!

After a bathe in the creek near by, we had a hearty supper, and then sat outside yarning and smoking till turn-in time.

Soon after a sunrise breakfast, we started for the swamp, taking the old packhorse with us, my host leaving food and water for the dogs, who howled disconsolately as we went off.

At the swamp we had a glorious day's sport, although there were altogether too many black snakes about for my taste. We camped there that night, and returned to the port next day with a heavy load of black duck, some "whistlers," and a few brace of pigeons.

I bade farewell to my good-natured host with a feeling of regret Some years later, on my next visit to Australia, I heard that he had returned to his boyhood's home--Gippsland in Victoria--and had married and settled down. He was one of the most contented men I ever met, and a good sportsman.



CHAPTER XIX ~ TE-BARI, THE OUTLAW

The Island of Upolu, in the Samoan group, averages less than fifteen miles in width, and it is a delightful experience to cross from Apia, or any other town on the north, to the south side. The view to be obtained from the summit of the range that traverses the island from east to west is incomparably beautiful--I have never seen anything to equal it anywhere in the Pacific Isles.

A few years after the Germans had begun cotton planting in Samoa, I brought to Apia ninety native labourers from the Solomon Islands to work on the big plantation at Mulifanua. I also brought with me something I would gladly have left behind--the effects of a very severe attack of malarial fever.

A week or so after I had reached Apia I gave myself a few days' leave, intending to walk across the island to the town of Siumu, where I had many native friends, and try and work some of the fever poison out of my system.

Starting long before sunrise, I was well past Vailima Mountain--the destined future home of Stevenson--by six o'clock. After resting for an hour at each of the bush villages of Magiagi and Tanumamanono--soon to be the scene of a cruel massacre in the civil war then raging--I began the long, gradual ascent from the littoral to the main range, inhaling deeply of the cool morning air, and listening to the melodious _croo! croo!_ of the great blue pigeons, and the plaintive cry of the ringdoves, so well termed manu-tagi (the weeping bird) by the imaginative Samoans.

Walking but slowly, for I was not strong enough for rapid exercise, I reached the summit of the first spur, and again spelled, resting upon a thick carpet of cool, dead leaves. With me was a boy from Tanumamanono named Suisuega-le-moni (The Seeker after Truth), who carried a basket containing some cooked food, and fifty cartridges for my gun. "Sui," as he was called for brevity, was an old acquaintance of mine and one of the most unmitigated young imps that ever ate _taro_ as handsome "as a picture," and a most notorious scandalmonger and spy. He was only thirteen years of age, and was of rebel blood, and, child as he was, he knew that his head stood very insecurely upon his shoulders, and that it would be promptly removed therefrom if any of King Malietoa's troops could catch him spying in _flagrante delicto_. Two years before, he had attached himself to me, and had made a voyage with me to the Caroline Islands, during which he had acquired an enormous vocabulary of sailors' bad language. This gave him great local kudos.

Sui was to accompany me to the top of the range, and then return, as otherwise he would be in hostile territory.

By four o'clock in the afternoon we had gained a clear spot on the crest of the range, from where we had a most glorious view of the south coast imaginable. Three thousand feet below us were the russet-hued thatched roofs of the houses of Siumu Village; beyond, the pale green water that lay between the barrier reef and the mainland, then the long curving line of the reef itself with its seething surf, and, beyond that again, the deep, deep blue of the Pacific, sparkling brightly in the westering sun.

Leaning my gun against one of the many buttresses of a mighty _masa'oi_ tree, I was drinking in the beauty of the scene, when we heard the shrill, cackling scream of a mountain cock, evidently quite near. Giving the boy my gun, I told him to go and shoot it; then sitting down on the carpet of leaves, I awaited his return with the bird, half-resolved to spend the night where I was, for I was very tired and began to feel the premonitory chills of an attack of ague.

In ten minutes the sound of a gun-shot reverberated through the forest aisles, and presently I heard Sui returning. He was running, and holding by its neck one of the biggest mountain cocks I ever saw. As he ran, he kept glancing back over his shoulder, and when he reached me and threw down gun and bird, I saw that he was trembling from head to foot.

"What is the matter?" I asked; "hast seen an _aitu vao_ (evil spirit of the forest)?"

"Aye, truly," he said shudderingly, "I have seen a devil indeed, and the marrow in my bones has gone--I have seen Te-bari, the Tafito."{*}

* The Samoans term all the natives of the Equatorial Islands
"Tafito".

I sprang to my feet and seized him by the wrist.

"Where was he?" I asked.

"Quite near me. I had just shot the wild _moa vao_ (mountain cock) and had picked it up when I heard a voice say in Samoan--but thickly as foreigners speak: 'It was a brave shot, boy'. Then I looked up and saw Te-bari. He was standing against the bole of a _masa'oi_ tree, leaning on his rifle. Round his earless head was bound a strip of _ie mumu_ (red Turkey twill), and as I stood and trembled he laughed, and his great white teeth gleamed, and my heart died within me, and----"

I do not want to disgust my readers, but truth compels me to say that the boy there and then became violently sick; then he began to sob with terror, stopping every now and then to glance around at the now darkening forest aisles of grey-barked, ghostly and moss-covered trees.

"Sui," I said, "go back to your home. I have no fear of Te-bari."

In two seconds the boy, who had faced rifle fire time and time again, fled homewards. Te-bari the outlaw was too much for him.

Personally I had no reason to fear meeting the man. In the first place I was an Englishman, and Te-bari was known to profess a liking for Englishmen, though he would eagerly cut the throat of a German or a Samoan if he could get his brawny hands upon it; in the second place, although I had never seen the man, I was sure that he would have heard of me from some of his fellow islanders on the plantations, for during my three years' "recruiting" in the Kingsmill and Gilbert Groups, I have brought many hundreds of them to Samoa, Fiji and Tahiti.

Something of his story was known to me. He was a native of the great square-shaped atoll of Maiana, and went to sea in a whaler when he was quite a lad, and soon rose to be boat-steerer. One day a Portuguese harpooner struck him in the face and drew blood--a deadly insult to a Line Islander. Te-bari plunged his knife into the man's heart. He was ironed, and put in the sail-locker; during the night three of the Portuguese sprang in upon him and cut off his ears. A few days later when the ship was at anchor at the Bonin Islands, Te-bari freed himself of his handcuffs and swam on shore Early on the following morning one of the boats was getting fresh water. She was in charge of the fourth mate--a Portuguese black. Suddenly a nude figure leapt among the men, and clove the officer's head in twain with a tomahawk.

One day Te-bari reappeared among his people at Maiana and took service with a white trader, who always spoke of him as a quiet, hardworking young man, but with a dangerous temper when roused by a fancied wrong. In due time Te-bari took a wife--took her in a very literal sense, by killing her husband and escaping with her to the neighbouring island of Taputeauea (Drummond's Island). She was a pretty, graceful creature of sixteen years of age. Then one day there came along the German labour brig _Adolphe_ seeking "blackbirds" for Samoa, and Te-bari and his pretty wife with fifty other "Tafitos" were landed at one of the plantations in Upolu.

Young Madame Te-bari was not as good as she ought to have been, and one day the watchful husband saw one of the German overseers give her a thick necklace of fine red beads. Te-bari tore them from her neck, and threw them into the German's face. For this he received a flogging and was mercilessly kicked into insensibility as well When he recovered he was transferred to another plantation--minus the naughty Nireeungo, who became "Mrs." Peter Clausen. A month passed, and it was rumoured "on the beach" that "No-Ears," as Te-bari was called, had escaped and taken to the bush with a brand-new Snider carbine, and as many cartridges as he could carry, and Mr. Peter Clausen was advised to look out for himself. He snorted contemptuously.

Two young Samoan "bucks" were sent out to capture Te-bari, and bring him back, dead or alive, and receive therefor one hundred bright new Chile dollars. They never returned, and when their bodies were found in a deep mountain gully, it was known that the earless one was the richer by