A Modern Buccaneer Part 1

A Modern Buccaneer.

by Rolf Boldrewood.

CHAPTER I

MY FIRST VOYAGE

Born near Sydney harbour, nursery of the seamen of the South, I could swim almost as soon as I could walk, and sail a boat at an age when most children are forbidden to go near the water. We came of a salt-water stock. My father had been a sea-captain for the greater part of his life, after a youth spent in every kind of craft, from a cutter to a man-of-war. No part of the habitable globe was unfamiliar to him: from India to the Pole, from Russia to the Brazils, from the China Sea to the Bight of Benin--every harbour was a home.

He had nursed one crew frost-bitten in Archangel, when the blankets had to be cut up for mittens; had watched by the beds of another, decimated by yellow fever in Jamaica; had marked up the "death's-head and cross-bones" in the margin of the log-book, to denote the loss by teta.n.u.s of the wounded by poisoned arrows on Bougainville Island; and had fought hand to hand with the stubborn Maories of Taranaki. Wounds and death, privation and pestilence, wrecks and tempests were with him household words, close comrades. What were they but symbols, nature-pictures, the cards dealt by fate? You lost the stake or rose a winner. Men who had played the game of life all round knew this. He accepted fortune, fair or foul, as he did the weather--a favour or a force of nature to be enjoyed or defied. But to be commented upon, much less complained of? Hardly. And as fate had willed it, the worn though unwearied sea-king had seen fit to heave anchor, so to speak, and moor his vessels--for he owned more than one--in this the fairest haven of the southern main. Once before in youth had he seen and never forgotten the frowning headlands, beyond which lay so peerless a harbour, such wealth of anchorage, so mild a clime, so boundless an extent of virgin soil; from which he, "a picked man of countries," even then prophesied wealth, population, and empire in the future.

Here, then, a generation later, he brought his newly-wedded wife. Here was I, Hilary Telfer, destined to see the light.

From the mid-city street of Sydney is but a stone's throw to the wharves and quays, magnificent water-ways in which those ocean palaces of the present day, the liners of the P. and O. and the Orient, lie moored, and but a plank divides the impatient pa.s.senger from the busy mart. Not that such stately s.h.i.+ps were visitors in my school-boy days. Sydney was then a gra.s.s-grown, quiet seaport, boasting some fifty thousand inhabitants, with a fleet of vessels small in size and of humble tonnage.

But, though unpretending of aspect, to the eager-hearted, imaginative school-boy they were rich as Spanish galleons. For were they not laden with uncounted treasure, weighed down with wealth beyond the fabled h.o.a.rds of the pirates of the Spanish Main, upon whose dark deeds and desperate adventures I had so greedily feasted?

Each vessel that swept through the Heads at midnight, or marked the white-walled mansions and pine-crowned promontories rise faintly out of the pearl-hued dawn, was for me a volume filled with romance and mystery. Sat there not on the forecastle of that South Sea whaler, silent, scornful, imperturbable, the young Maori chief, nursing in his breast the deep revenge for a hasty blow, which on the return voyage to New Zealand and the home of his tribe was to take the form of a ma.s.sacre of the whole s.h.i.+p's company?

Yes, captain and officers, pa.s.sengers and crew, every man on that s.h.i.+p paid the death penalty for the mate's hard word and blow. The insult to a Rangatira must be wiped out in blood.

The trader of the South Sea Islands was a marine marvel which I was never weary of studying.

I generally managed to make friends with one or other of the crew, who permitted me to explore the lower deck and feed my fancy upon the treasures from that paradise with which the voyager from an enchanted ocean had surely freighted his vessel. Strange bows and arrows--the latter poison-tipped, as I was always a.s.sured, perhaps as a precautionary measure--piles of shaddocks, tons of bananas, idols, skulls, spears, clubs, woven cloth of curious fabric, an endless store of unfamiliar foreign commodities.

Among the crew were always a few half-castes mingled with the grizzled, weather-beaten British sea-dogs. Perhaps a boat's crew of the islanders themselves, born sailors, and as much at home in water as on land.

Seldom did I leave, however unwillingly, the deck of one of these fairy barques, without registering a vow that the year in which I left school should see me a gay sailor-boy, bound on my first voyage in search of dangerous adventures and that splendidly untrammelled career which was so surely to result in fortune and distinction.

Then the whales.h.i.+ps! In that old time, Sydney harbour was rarely without a score or more of them. In their way they were portents and wonders of the deep. Fortune failed them at times. The second year might find them far from full of the high-priced whale-oil. The capricious cetacean was not to be depended upon in migration from one "whaling ground" to another. Sometimes a "favourite" s.h.i.+p--lucky in spite of everything--would come flaunting in after an absence of merely eleven or twelve months--such were the _Florentia_ and the _Proteus_--full to the hatches, while three long years would have elapsed before her consort, sailing on the same day and fitted up much in the same way, would crawl sadly into Snail's or Neutral Bay, battered and tempest-tossed, but three-quarter full even then, a mark for the rough wit of the port, to pay off an impoverished crew and confront unsmiling or incredulous owners.

Every kind of disaster would have befallen her. When she got fast to a ninety-barrel whale, her boats would be stoven in. When all was well, no cheery shout of "There she spouts!" would be heard for days. Savage islanders would attack her doggedly, and hardly be beaten off. Every kind of evil omen would be justified, until the crew came to believe that they were sailing with an Australian Vanderdecken, and would never see a port again.

The grudging childish years had rolled by, and now I was seventeen years of age--fitted, as I fully believed, to begin the battle of life in earnest, and ardent for the fray. As to my personal qualifications for a life on the ocean wave, and well I knew no other would have contented me, let the reader judge. At the age when tall lads are often found to have out-grown their strength, I had attained the fullest stature of manhood; wide-chested and muscular, constant exercise with oar and sail had developed my frame and toughened my sinews, until I held myself, with some reason, to be a match in strength and activity for most men I was likely to meet.

In the rowing contests to which Australians of the sh.o.r.e have always been devoted, more particularly the privileged citizens of Sydney, I had always taken a leading part. More than once, in a hard-fought finish, had I been lifted out fainting or insensible.

My curling fair hair and blue eyes bore token of our Norse blood and Anglo-Norman descent. The family held a tradition that our surname came from Taillefer, the warrior minstrel who rode in the forefront of Duke William's army at Hastings. Strangely, too, a pa.s.sionate love of song had always clung to the race. "Sir Hilary charged at Agincourt," as saith the ballad. Roving and adventure ran in the blood for generations uncounted.

For all that trouble arose when I announced my resolve. My schoolmates had settled down in the offices of merchants, bankers, and lawyers, why could not I do the same? My mother's tears fell fast as she tried in vain to dissuade me from my resolution. My father was neutral. He knew well the intensity of the feeling. "If born in a boy," he said, "as it was in me, it is his fate--nothing on earth can turn him from it; if you stop him you will make a bad landsman and spoil a good sailor. Let him go! he must take his chance like another man. G.o.d is above the wave as over the earth. If it be his fate, the perils of the deep will be no more than the breezes of the bay."

It was decided at length that I should be allowed to go on my way. To the islands of the South Pacific my heart pointed as truly as ever did compa.s.s needle to the North.

I had read every book that had ever been written about them, from Captain Cook's _Voyages_ to _The Mutiny of the Bounty_. In my dreams how many times had I seen the purple mountains, the green glow of the fairy woodlands, had bathed in the crystal streams, and heard the endless surf music on the encircling reef, cheered the canoes loaded with fruit racing for their market in the crimson flush of the paradisal morn, or lingered amidst the Aidenns of the charmed main, where the flower-crowned children of nature--maidens beauteous as angels--roamed in careless happiness and joyous freedom! It was an entrancing picture.

Why should I stay in this prosaic land, where men wore the hideous costume of their forefathers, and women, false to all canons of art, still clung to their outworn garb?

What did I care for the sheep and cattle, the tending of which enriched my compatriots?

A world of romance, mystery, and adventure lay open and inviting. The die was cast. The spell of the sea was upon me.

My father's acc.u.mulations had amounted to a reasonable capital, as things went in those Arcadian non-speculative days. He was not altogether without a commercial faculty, which had enabled him to make prudent investments in city and suburban lands. These the steadily improving markets were destined to turn into value as yet undreamed of.

It was not thought befitting that I should s.h.i.+p as an apprentice or foremost hand, though I was perfectly willing, even eager, for a start in any way. A more suitable style of equipment was arranged. An agreement was entered into with the owner of a vessel bound for San Francisco vi Honolulu, by which a proportion of the cargo was purchased in my name, and I was, after some discussion, duly installed as supercargo. It may be thought that I was too young for such a responsible post. But I was old for my age. I had a man's courage and ambition. I had studied navigation to some purpose; could "hand reef and steer," and in the management of a boat, or acquaintance with every rope, sail, and spar on board of a vessel, I held myself, if not an A.

B., fully qualified for that rank and position.

Words would fail to describe my joy and exultation when I found myself at length on blue water, in a vessel which I might fairly describe as "our little craft," bound for foreign parts and strange cities. I speedily made the acquaintance of the crew--a strangely a.s.sembled lot, mostly shady as to character and reckless as to speech, but without exception true "sailor men." At that time of day, employment on the high seas was neither so easy to obtain nor so well paid as at present. The jolly tars of the period were therefore less independent and inclined to cavil at minor discomforts. Once s.h.i.+pped, they worked with a will, and but little fault could be found with their courage or seamans.h.i.+p.

Among other joys and delights which I promised myself, had been a closer acquaintance with the life and times of a picturesque and romantic personage, known and feared, if all tales were true, throughout the South Seas. This was the famous, the celebrated Captain Hayston, whose name was indeed a spell to conjure with from New Zealand to the Line Islands.

Much that could excite a boyish imagination had been related to me concerning him. One man professing an intimate knowledge had described him as "a real pirate." Could higher praise be awarded? I put together all the tales I had heard about him--his great stature and vast strength, his reckless courage, his hair-breadth escapes, his wonderful brig,--cousin german, no doubt, to the "long low wicked-looking craft"

in the pages of _Tom Cringle's Log_, and other veracious historiettes, "nouris.h.i.+ng a youth sublime," in the long bright summer days of old; those days when we fished and bathed, ate oysters, and read alternately from early morn till the lighthouse on the South Head flashed out! My heroes had been difficult to find hitherto; they had mostly eluded my grasp. But this one was real and tangible. He would be fully up to description. His splendid scorn of law and order, mercy or moderation, his unquestioned control over mutinous crews and fierce islanders, illumined by occasional homicides and abductions, all these splendours and glories so stirred my blood, that I felt, if I could only once behold my boyhood's idol, I should not have lived in vain. Among the crew, fortunately for me as I then thought, was a sailor who had actually known in the flesh the idol of my daydreams.

"And it's the great Captain Hayston you'd like to hear about," said Dan Daly, as we sat together in the foc'sle head of the old barque _Clarkstone_, before we made Honolulu. Dan had been a South Sea beach-comber and whaler; moreover, had been marooned, according to his own account, escaping only by a miracle; a trader's head-man--once, indeed, more than half-killed by a rush of natives on the station. With every kind of dangerous experience short of death and burial he was familiar. On which account I regarded him with a fine boyish admiration.

What a night was it, superbly beautiful, when I hung upon his words, as we sat together gazing over the moonlit water! We had changed our course owing to some dispute about food between captain and crew, and were now heading for the island of Rurutu, where fresh provisions were attainable. As I listened spellbound and entranced, the barque's bows slowly rose and fell, the wavering moonlight streamed down upon the deck, the sails, the black ma.s.ses of cordage, while ghostly shadows moved rhythmically, in answering measure to every motion of the vessel.

"You must know," said Dan, in grave commencement, "it's nigh upon five years ago, when I woke up one morning in the 'Calaboose' as they call the 'lock-up' in Papiete, with a broken head. It's the port of the island of Tahiti. I was one of the hands of the American brig _Cherokee_, and we'd put in there on our way to San Francisco from Sydney. The skipper had given us liberty, so we went ash.o.r.e and began drinking and having some fun. There was some wahines in it, in coorse--that's whats they call the women in thim parts. Somehow or other I got a knock on the head, and remimbered nothing more until I woke up in the 'Calaboose,' where I was charged with batin' a native till he was nigh dead. To make a long story short, I got six months 'hard,' and the s.h.i.+p sailed away without me.

"When I'd served my time, I walks into the American Consulate and asks for a pa.s.sage to California.

"'Clear out,' says the Consul, 'you red-headed varmint, I have nothing to say to you, after beating an inoffensive native in the manner you did.'

"'By the powers,' says I to myself, 'you're a big blackguard, Dan Daly, when you've had a taste of liquor, but if I remimber batin' any man black, white, or whitey-brown, may I be keel-hauled. Howsomdever, that says nothing, the next thing's a new s.h.i.+p.'

"So I steps down to the wharf and aboord a smart-looking schooner that belonged to Carl Brander, a big merchant in Tahiti, as rich as the Emperor of China, they used to say. The mate was aboord. 'Do you want any hands?' says I.

"'We do,' says he. 'You've a taking colour of hair for this trade, my lad.'

"'How's that?'

"'Why, the girls down at Rimitara and Rurutu will just make love to you in a body. Red hair's the making of a man in thim parts.'

"Upon this I signed articles for six months in the schooner, and next day we sailed for a place called Bora-bora in the north-west. We didn't stay there long, but got under weigh for Rurutu next day. We weren't hardly clear of Bora-bora when we sights a brigantine away to windward and bearing down on us before the wind. As soon as she got close enough, she signalled that she wanted to send a boat aboard, so we hove to and waited.

"Our skipper had a look at the man who was steering the boat, whin he turns as pale as a sheet, and says he to the mate, 'It's that devil Hayston! and that's the brigantine he and Captain Ben Peese ran away with from Panama.'

"However, up alongside came the boat, and as fine a looking man as ever I set eyes on steps aboord amongst us.

"'How do ye do, Captain?' says he. 'Where from and whither bound?'

"The skipper was in a blue funk, I could see, for this Bully Hayston had a terrible bad name, so he answers him quite polite and civil.