A Modern Buccaneer Part 10

The Captain called me below, and shook my hand.

"I'm glad," he said, "that poor girl has left the s.h.i.+p; but I must repay you the money you gave George for her."

This I refused to take. I felt well repaid by the unmistakable grat.i.tude Terau had evinced towards me from the moment the Ocean islander and I had carried her pain-racked form below.

CHAPTER VIII

POISONED ARROWS

The weather had changed, and been cloudy and dull for several days. We were all rather in the doldrums too. We had been bearing eastward on the line. Suddenly Hayston said, "Suppose we put in at Santa Cruz. We want the water casks filled. I'm not very fond of the island, for all its name. Sacred names and bloodshed often go together with Spaniards.

However, I know the harbour well, and the yams are first-rate." So at daylight we bore up, at eight bells we entered the heads with both anchors bent to the chains, and at noon were beating up the harbour. By two o'clock we cast anchor in thirty fathoms. Out came the canoes, and we soon began trading with the natives.

We kept pretty strict watch, however. The men, to my fancy, had a sullen expression, and the women, though not bad-looking, seemed as if it cost them an effort to look pleasant.

Our girls wouldn't have anything to say to them. Hope Island Nellie, in particular, said she'd like to shoot half of them; that they'd killed a cousin of hers, who was only scratched with a poisoned arrow, and that it was one of the Captain's mad tricks to go there at all.

However, Hayston, as usual, was spurred on by opposition to have his own way, and to do even more than he originally intended. He told me afterwards that he only wanted to get some yams in the harbour, and that the water would have held out longer--until we got to a known safe island.

So on Sunday we sent two boats on sh.o.r.e, and got the casks filled with water immediately. Our provisions were taken out and examined. Trading with the natives went on merrily.

On Monday the weather was fine. We got a couple of rafts out with water, and laid in yams enough to last for the rest of our cruise. Hayston laughed, and said there was nothing like showing natives that you were not afraid of them. "Eh, Nellie? What you think now?"

"Think Captain big fool," said Nellie, who was in a bad temper that morning. "Ha! you see boat crew; by G.o.d! man wounded--I see them carry him along."

Sure enough, we could see the two boats' crews coming down to the beach.

They were carrying one man, while two supported another, who seemed hardly able to walk. "Get out the boats!" roared Hayston. "I'll teach the scoundrels to touch a crew of mine."

All was now bustle and commotion. Every man on the s.h.i.+p that could be spared, and Hope Island Nellie to boot, who had begged to be allowed to go with the attacking party, and whose ruffled temper was restored to equanimity by the chance of having a shot at her foes, and avenging her cousin's death. We left a boat's crew watch, and made for the sh.o.r.e, Nellie sitting in the bow of the Captain's boat with a Winchester rifle across her knees, and her eyes sparkling with a light I had never seen in a woman's face before. It was the light of battle come down through the veins of chiefs and warriors of her people for centuries uncounted.

We left a couple of men in each boat, telling them to keep on and off until we returned; the wounded men were carefully laid on mats in one of their own boats; and forth we went--a light-hearted storming party, and attacked the town of the treacherous devils. Hayston was in a frightful rage, cursing himself one moment for relaxing his usual caution, and devoting the Santa Cruz natives in the next to all the fiends of h.e.l.l for their infernal causeless treachery. He raged up again and again to the cl.u.s.ter of huts, thickly built together with palisades here and there, which made excellent cover for shooting from, backed up by the green wall of the primeval forest. I could not but admire him as he stood there--grand, colossal, fearless, as though he bore a charmed life, while the deadly quivering arrows flew thick, and more than one man was. .h.i.t severely. Only that our fire was quick and deadly with the terrible Winchester repeaters, and that the savages--bold at first--were mowed down so quickly that they had to retreat to a distance which rendered their arrows powerless, we should have had a muster roll with gaps in it of some seriousness. Hayston was a splendid rifle shot, and for quick loading and firing had few equals. Every native that showed himself within range went down ere he could fit an arrow to his bowstring. And there was Hope Island Nellie by his side, firing nearly as fast, and laughing like a child at play whenever one of her shots told.

Then the arrows grew fewer. Just before they ceased I had fired at a tall native who had been conspicuous through the fight. He fell on his face. Nellie gave a shout, and loaded her own rifle on the chance of another shot, straining her bright and eager eyes to see if another lurking form was near enough for danger. Well for me was it that she did so! Staggering to his feet, a wounded native fitted an arrow to his bow, and sent it straight for my breast before I could raise my gun to my shoulder. Nellie made a snap shot at him, and, either from exhaustion or the effect of her bullet, he fell p.r.o.ne and motionless.

I felt a scratch on my arm--bare to the shoulder--as if a forest twig had raised the skin. "Look!" said Nellie, and her face changed. As she spoke, she pa.s.sed her finger over the place, and showed it bloodstained.

"The crawling brute's arrow hit you there. Let me suck the poison. If you don't"--as I made a gesture of dissent--"you die, twel' days."

"Don't be a fool!" said Hayston. "You're a dead man if you don't. As it is, you must run your chance. Some of these fellows will lose the number of their mess, I'm sorry to say."

So the girl, who had been but the moment before thirsting for blood, and firing into the mob of half-frightened, yet ferocious savages, pressed her soft lips on my arm, like a young mother soothing a babe, and with all womanly tenderness bound up the injured place, which had now begun to smart, and, to my excited imagination, commenced to throb from wrist to shoulder.

"Strange child, isn't she?" laughed Hayston. "If she'd only been born white, and been to boarding-school down east, what a sensation she'd have created in a ball-room!"

"Better as she is, perhaps," said I. "She has lived her life with few limitations, and enjoyed most of it."

The excited crew rushed in and finished every wounded man in a position to show fight. Nellie did not join in this, but stood leaning on her rifle--_la belle sauvage_, if ever there was one--brave, beautiful, with a new expression like that of a roused lioness on her parted lips and blazing eyes.

As for Hayston, he was a fatalist by const.i.tution and theory. "A man must die when his time comes," he had often said to me. "Until the hour of fate he cannot die. Why, then, should he waste his emotions by giving way to the meanest of all attributes--personal fear?"

He had none, at any rate. He would have walked up to the block without haste or reluctance, had beheading been the fas.h.i.+onable mode of execution in his day, chaffed his executioner, and with a bow and a smile for the handsomest woman among the spectators, quitted with easy grace a world which had afforded him a fair share of its rarest possessions.

By his order the town was fired and quickly reduced to ashes, thus destroying a number of articles--mats, utensils, wearing apparel, weapons, etc.--which, requiring, as they do, considerable skill and expenditure of time, are regarded as valuable effects by all savages.

The attack had been early in the day. We cut down as many cocoa-nut trees as we could, and finally departed for the s.h.i.+p, towing out with us a small fleet of canoes, to be broken up when we got to the brig. The sick men were sent below, and such remedies as we knew of were applied.

They were--all but one--silent and downhearted. They knew by experience the sure and deadly effect of the poison manufactured among the Line Islands. Subtle and penetrating! But little hope of recovery remains.

About four o'clock next morning we began to heave at the windla.s.s, and got under weigh at eight. The wind was light and variable, and our progress slow. As we got abreast of the hostile village we gave them a broadside. But the sullen devils of Santa Cruz were not cowed yet. A second fleet of canoes swarmed around the s.h.i.+p. They made signals of submission and a desire to trade, but when they got near enough sent a cloud of arrows at the s.h.i.+p, many of which stuck quivering in the masts, though luckily no one was. .h.i.t. Their yells and screams of wrath were like the tumult of a hive of demons. We were luckily well prepared, and we let them have the carronades over and over again, sinking a dozen of their canoes, and doing good execution among the crews when their black heads popped up like corks as they swam for the nearest canoes. While this took place we unbent the starboard chain, stowed it and the anchor, and clearing the heads, bade adieu to the inhospitable isle.

On the next day all hands were engaged in cleaning our armoury, which it certainly appeared necessary to keep in good order. Hope Island Nellie polished her Winchester rifle till it shone again, besides showing an acquaintance with the machinery of the lock and repeating gear was nothing new to her.

"You ought to make a notch in the stock for every man you kill, Nellie,"

said Hayston, as we were lying on the deck in the afternoon, while the _Leonora_ was gliding on her course like the fair ocean bird that she was.

Nellie frowned. "No like that talk," she answered. "Might have to put 'nother notch yet for Nellie--who knows?"

"Who knows, indeed, Nellie?" answered the Captain. "None of us can foresee our fate," he added with a tinge of sadness, which so often mingled with his apparently most careless moments. "We don't even know who's going to die from those arrow scratches yet."

Here the girl looked over at me. "How you feel, Hil'ree?" she said, as her voice softened and lost its jesting tone.

"Feel good," I said, "think getting better."

"You no know," she answered gravely. "You wait." And she began to count.

She went over the fingers of her small, delicately-formed left hand,--wonderful in shape are the hands and feet of some of these Island girls,--and after counting from little finger to thumb _twice_, touched the two first fingers, and looked up. "How many?" she asked.

"Twelve," I said; I had followed the counts with care, you may be sure.

"Twel' day, you see," she said; "perhaps you all right--perhaps"--and here she gave a faint but accurate limitation of the dreadful shudder which precedes the unspeakable agonies of teta.n.u.s.

"Nellie's right," said Hayston; "keep up your spirits, for you won't know till then whether you're to go to sleep in your hammock in blue water or not."

This was a cheerful prospect, but I had come through many perils, and missed the grim veteran by so many close shaves, that I had grown to be something of a fatalist like Hayston.

"Well! if I go under it won't be your fault, Nellie! So, Captain, remember I make over to her all the stuff in my trade chest. Send any letters and papers to the address you know in Sydney, and a bank draft for what you will find in the dollar bag. Nellie will have some good dresses anyhow."

"Dress be hanged!" quoth Nellie, who was emphatic in her language sometimes. "You go home to mother yet;" and she arose and left hurriedly. Poor Nellie!

In that day when we and others who have sinned, after fullest knowledge of good and evil "know the right and yet the wrong pursue," shall be arraigned for deeds done in the flesh, will the same doom be meted out to this frank, untaught child of Nature and her sisters? I trow not. I must say that for a day or two before the fated twelfth which Nellie so stoutly insisted upon, I felt slightly anxious. What an end to all one's hopes, longings, and glorious imaginings, to be racked with tortures indescribable before dying like a poisoned hound, all because of the instinctive, senseless act of a stupid savage!

To die young, too, with the world but opening before me! Life with its thousand possibilities just unrolled! One's friends, too,--the weeping mother and sisters, whose grief would never wholly abate this side of time; the old man's fixed expression of sorrow. These thoughts pa.s.sed through my brain, with others arising from and mingled with them, as I left my hammock early on the twelfth day. I dressed quickly, and going on deck, that daily miracle occurred--"the glorious sun uprist."

The dawnlight now began to infuse the pearly rim, which, imperceptibly separating from the azure grey horizon, deepened as it touched the edge of the vast ocean plain. Faintly glimmering, how magically it transformed from a dim, neutral-tinted waste to an opaline clarity of hue--a fuller crimson. Then the wondrous golden globe heaved itself over the edge of our water-world all silently, and the day, the 19th of October, began its course.

Should I live to see its close?

How strange if all this time the subtle poison should have lurked in one's veins until the exact moment, when, like a modern engine of devilry--an infernal machine with a clock and apparatus--set to strike and detonate at a given and calculated hour, the death-stroke should sound!