.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 54533
   :PG.Title: The Cruise of the Dream Ship
   :PG.Released: 2017-04-10
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Ralph Stock
   :MARCREL.ill: Ralph Stock
   :MARCREL.ill: Lynn Bogue Hunt
   :DC.Title: The Cruise of the Dream Ship
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1921
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

============================
THE CRUISE OF THE DREAM SHIP
============================

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   .. _`The Dream Ship`:

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      :alt: *The Dream Ship*

      *The Dream Ship*

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      Title page

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      THE CRUISE OF THE
      DREAM SHIP

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      BY

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      RALPH STOCK

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      ILLUSTRATIONS FROM
      PHOTOGRAPHS

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      LINE DRAWINGS
      BY
      LYNN BOGUE HUNT

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      GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
      DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
      1922

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      COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
      DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

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      ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
      INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

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      COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY, WASHINGTON, D. C.

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      PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
      AT
      THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

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      TO
      PETER AND STEVE

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   CONTENTS

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   CHAPTER

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\I. `THE DREAM`_

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On dreams, and the means to realize them.


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\II. `THE PREPARATION`_

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Concerning preparations in general,
and personnel in particular.


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\III. `AT VIGO, OFF THE COAST OF SPAIN`_

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Some confessions and a few morals


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\IV. `THE CANARY ISLANDS`_

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Dropping the pilot—and the result


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\V. `THE START ACROSS THE ATLANTIC`_

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Visitations—pleasant, and the reverse


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\VI. `THE ARRIVAL AT BRITISH WEST INDIES`_

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Deep-sea thoughts—Concerning
Calms—Visitors in mid-Atlantic—Barbados and beyond


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\VII. `THROUGH THE PANAMA CANAL`_

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From Atlantic to Pacific, and the
strange happenings that intervened


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\VIII. `THE GALAPAGOS ISLANDS`_

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The ash heap


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\IX. `THE MARQUESAS ISLANDS`_

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The Real South Seas—Big-game
shooting extraordinary—A case of
thwarted ambition


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\X. `THE PAUMOTU ISLANDS`_

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The people of the atolls—including Mr. Mumpus


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\XI. `PAPEETE, TAHITI`_

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Tahiti: its pleasures and problems


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\XII. `THE ISLAND OF MOOREA`_

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The land of the lizard men—Facts
and fancies, including a few horrors


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\XIII. `PALMERSTON ISLAND`_

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A hint of hurricane—The atoll of
perfection, introducing "Mister
Masters himself"


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\XIV. `SAVAGE ISLAND`_

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The Island called "Savage," including
the ordeal by hospitality


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\XV. `THE FRIENDLY ISLANDS AND THE END OF THE DREAM`_

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The island that *was* savage—Dream's
end, and a few realities


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\XVI. `THURSDAY ISLAND`_

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Concerning a wild-goose chase, and where it led


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\XVII. `ADVICE TO DREAMERS OF DREAM SHIPS`_

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For the prospective dream-ship
owner the world over


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`APPENDIX`_

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   LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

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`The Dream Ship`_ . . . . . . *Frontispiece*

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`The Route of the Dream Ship`_

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`Ready for Sea`_

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`The Reciprocal Morning Douche, Mid-Ocean`_

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`Steve at the Sextant and Peter at the Helm`_

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`Peter's Cooking Week`_

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`Peter Entertains`_

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`The Dream Ship Passes from Atlantic to Pacific`_

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`At St. Lucia, West Indies`_

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`Launching Outrigger Canoe in the Marquesas`_

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`Pascal, the Pearl-Diving Non-starter`_

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`A Man of the Atolls`_

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`Off Nukuhiva, Marquesas Islands`_

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`Pearl-Diver About to Descend`_

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`Pearl-Divers in a Paumotan Lagoon`_

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`Mr. Mumpus's Blisters`_

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`Fish-Spearing on the Reef`_

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`Moorea, the Land of the Lizard Men`_

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`Moorea Greets the Dream Ship`_

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`The Leaning Palms`_

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`Landing on Palmerston Island`_

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`The National Sport at Palmerston Island`_

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`Dragging a Boat Through the Reef Pass`_

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`The Taro Patch`_

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`Mr. Masters Himself`_

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`The Dream Ship Bargain Sale`_

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`Thursday Island Pearling Luggers`_

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`In the Old Days of the "Floating Station" Schooner`_

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`High Holiday on a "T.I." Beach`_

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`Festival Headdress of Torres Straits Islanders`_

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`The Japanese Club`_

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`Out of the Deep`_

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`The Main Products of Torres Straits`_

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`An Islander's Home on T.I.`_

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`The Tennis Handicap`_

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`Lines of the Dream Ship, Designed by Colin Archer and
Built at Porsgrund, Norway, in 1908`_

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`Sail and Rigging Plan of the Dream Ship`_





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.. _`THE DREAM`:

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   THE CRUISE OF THE DREAM SHIP

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   *On dreams, and the means to realize them*

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   :alt: Chapter I headpiece

   Chapter I headpiece

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   CHAPTER I

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   *On dreams, and the means to realize them*

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We all have our dreams.  Without them we should
be clods.  It is in our dreams that we accomplish the
impossible; the rich man dumps his load of responsibility
and lives in a log shack on a mountain top, the
poor man becomes rich, the stay-at-home travels,
the wanderer finds an abiding place.

For more years than I like to recall my dream
has been to cruise through the South Sea Islands in
my own ship, and if you had ever been to the South
Sea Islands, it would be yours also.  They are the
sole remaining spot on this earth that is not infested
with big-game-shooting expeditions, globe-trotters,
or profiteers, where the inhabitants know how to live,
and where the unfortunate from distant and turbulent
lands can still find interest, enjoyment, and
peace.

My dream was as impracticable as most.  There
was a war to be attended to and lived through if
Providence so willed.  There was a ship to be
bought, fitted out, and provisioned on a bank
balance that would fill the modern cat's-meat-man with
contempt.  There were the little matters of cramming
into a chronically unmathematical head sufficient
knowledge of navigation to steer such a ship across
the world when she *was* bought, and of finding a crew
that would work her without hope of monetary reward.

The thing looked and sounded sufficiently like
comic opera to deter me from mentioning it to any
but a select few, and *they* laughed.  Yet such is the
driving power of a dream if its fulfilment is
sufficiently desired that I write in retrospect with my
vision a secure and accomplished fact.

Exactly how it all came about I find it difficult to
recall.  I have vague recollections of crouching in
dug-outs in France, and while others had recourse
during their leisure to letter-cases replete with
photographs of fluffy girls, I pored with equal interest over
plans and designs of my dream ship.

In hospital it was the same, and when a medical
board politely ushered me into the street a free man,
it took me rather less than four hours to reach the
nearest seaport and commence a search that covered
the best part of six months.

It is no easy matter to find the counterpart of a
dream ship, but in the end I found her patiently
awaiting me in a backwater of glorious Devon:—a
Norwegian-built auxiliary cutter of twenty-three
tons register, designed as a lifeboat for the North
Sea fishing fleet, forty-seven feet over all, fifteen feet
beam, eight feet draught, built to stand up to
anything, and be handled by a crew of three or less.
Such was my dream ship in cold print.  In reality,
and seen through her owner's eyes, she was,
naturally, the most wonderful thing that ever happened.
A mother on the subject of her child is almost
derogatory compared with an owner concerning
his ship, so the reader shall be spared further
details.

Having found her, there was the little matter of
paying for her.  I had no money.  I have never had
any money, but that is a detail that should never be
allowed to stand in the way of a really desirable
dream.  It was necessary to make some.  How?
By conducting a stubborn offensive on the Army
Authorities for my war gratuity.  By sitting up to
all hours in a moth-eaten dressing-gown and a
microscopic flat writing short stories.  By assiduously
cultivating maiden aunts.  By coercion.  By——  But
I refuse to say more.

The dream ship became mine, but what of a crew?
Well, I have a sister, and a sister is an uncommonly
handy thing to have, provided she is of the right
variety.  Mine happens to be, for she agreed to
forego all the delicacies of the season and float with
me on a piece of wood to the South Sea Islands.  So
also did a recently demobilized officer who, on
hearing that these same islands were not less than three
thousand miles from the nearest early-morning
parade, offered his services with almost unbecoming
alacrity.

With ship and crew accounted for, those unacquainted
with the intricacies of ocean cruising may
imagine there was nothing more to be done than to
sail.  Others, who have perhaps trodden the thorny
path leading to the fulfilment of a dream such as
ours, will realize that our troubles had little more
than begun.  The hull of a ship—even a dream ship—is
a thing vastly different from a vessel fully equipped
for a voyage.  The difference between a house
"furnished" and "unfurnished" is nothing to it.
We needed an auxiliary motor engine for entering
and leaving port if we would escape extortionate
towage charges.  We needed copper sheathing to
protect our future home against the dreaded cobra
worm of tropical waters that has been known to
reduce sound wood to the semblance of a honeycomb
within six months.  We needed water tanks to
contain three hundred gallons, oil tanks to hold
two hundred, nautical instruments and gear of every
possible description, not to mention provisions for
an indefinite period.

Exactly how we were to acquire these things without
the proverbial penny to do it with was a problem
that gave us pause until at an extraordinary, general
meeting of the firm of Peter, Steve, and Myself,
dream merchants, it was proposed, seconded, and
carried unanimously that we suffered from lack
of capital, and that, in the words of the chairman,
we should have to scatter and scratch for it.

So, each to his method!

Peter became what is called in the advertisements
"useful maid" to an exacting invalid of religious and
parsimonious tendencies at a South Coast resort.
Steve faded into the smoke of a great city on a
mission the details of which he has never divulged to
this day, though judging by its success I am divided
in my surmise as to its nature between "bridge" and
robbery with violence.

As for me, I saw nothing for it but a return to the
moth-eaten dressing-gown—until I happened to
visit the local fish market and asked the price of
sole.  The answer caused me furiously to think.
There were a hundred and fifty sailing vessels in this
old-fashioned Devonshire fishing fleet, each earning
a handsome income, and not one of them a better
craft than mine.  Why not go trawling with the
dream ship?

This I did, and propose to give a brief account of
my experiences for the benefit of those desirous of
knowing one way of making a ship pay for herself.

From frequent recourse to the bar-parlour of "The
Hole in the Wall," a far-famed hostelry replete with
smoke-grimed rafters and sawdust floor, I learnt that
the universal custom amongst fishing craft
thereabouts was to have a crew of three: two "hands"
and a skipper.  The money that the catch of fish
realized on sale by auction was divided at the week
end into five, a share each for the crew, and the
remainder going "to the ship" or, in other words, to
the owner, who is responsible for all gear.

.. _`The Route of the Dream Ship`:

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   :alt: *The Route of the Dream Ship*

   *The Route of the Dream Ship*

As regards nets: there are two kinds of trawl net,
the "beam" and the otter.  Imagine a huge, meshed
jelly-bag being towed along the bottom of the sea,
and you have the net.  But how is the mouth of it,
which is often twenty feet long, kept open?  In the
case of the beam trawl, by a wooden spar terminating
each end in iron "heads"; and this is the usual type
of net for the sailing smacks comprising the main
fleet.  But for smaller craft, such as motor boats, a
beam trawl is too heavy and unwieldy; consequently
the otter trawl was invented.

.. _`Ready for Sea`:

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   :alt: *Ready for Sea*

   *Ready for Sea*

This consists of two boards about three feet by
four, weighted at the bottom, and attached to each
corner of the mouth of the net.  They are "slung"
at such an angle that the force of the water as the
boat tows them along the bottom of the sea forces
them outward, like kites, and thus keeps the mouth of
the net stretched.  In addition to this, the top of the
net's mouth is kept up by cork, and the bottom
down, by leads disposed along the foot-rope.  It is a
simple contrivance, like most things ingenious.

Ninety fathoms of warp, and two wire "bridles,"
one leading to each board, and thirty fathoms in
length, complete the fishing gear, which is paid out
and hauled in by means of a hand capstan.

All these articles I somehow acquired, including
a "hand" of forbidding aspect, and a boy.  The
dream ship was converted into a smack with as much
expediency as an elderly shipwright with a taste for
beer, and his accomplice, a lad of fifteen, allowed;
and finally she stood, a thing of such beauty in
smacks that I wrote a sonnet to her, which shows
the appalling effects of freedom, sea air, and a fish
diet.

My opinion of her, however, was not shared by the
fishing fraternity.  Almost everything that could be
wrong with a smack was the matter with the dream
ship according to these chronically pessimistic gentry.
She had too much freeboard.  She had too much
beam for her length.  Her bulwarks were not high
enough.  She would never "tow" (trawl).

Yet upon a never-to-be-forgotten morning we
sailed—dearly beloved word of infinite possibilities!—we
sailed at a seven-knot clip for precisely ten
miles.  We could beat the ketch-rigged smacks of
the fleet to wind'ard without topsail or staysail.
I grinned, the boy grinned, even the "hand" grinned
as he looked aloft; and it was at that precise moment
that I saw his grin fade into an open-mouthed,
wide-eyed stare.

"She's gone at the eyes of the rigging," was all
he said, with complete composure, and in rich Devonian.

We put about.  The mast-head was leaning at an
angle of forty degrees, and wabbling on its splintered
base like a drunken man.  The "hand," in white
chin whiskers, enormous boots, and a bowler hat
dented on one side, continued to grin.  In that hour
I hated the man.  To him it was a gigantic joke,
an amusing problem as to whether we could reach
harbour before the mast fell about our ears.  To me,
the owner of a dream ship, it was tragedy.  There
are moments when even a sense of humour can be
out of place.

One hundred yards from our moorings the mast
"went" at the deck as well as the hounds, and fell
with a crash the full length of the ship—without
touching a soul.  It was little short of a miracle,
and for a few moments we stood in our several places
pondering it.

The mast had scarce met the deck, with the sails
and rigging hanging over the side in a tangled mass,
when a smack's crew was alongside.  Did we want
help?  We did, but hardly expected such a stiff bill
for salvage as was rendered the next day.

It took three weeks to step the dream ship's new
mast; three miserable weeks of waiting that only
those who have "fitted out" can appreciate.  But
in time we sailed afresh.  We even launched the
trawl with much shouting and flurry, and at the end
of two hours' speculation hauled it up again by sheer
brawn and the capstan, got the net aboard, and found
mud, nothing but mud, in the cod-end.

Various explanations were forthcoming from the
"hand" for this calamity.  There was too much
lead on the foot-rope.  There was too much cork
on the head-line.  The otter boards were not slung
true.  We had been towing too fast.  We had been
towing too slow.  Why, bless your heart, there were
men (successful fishermen now) who had spent
months in adjusting an otter trawl.  An
inch this way or that made all the difference.
An otter trawl was like a watch.
Out of all this the hard fact emerged
that we had caught no fish.

.. figure:: images/img-010.jpg
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   :alt: Fisherman

   Fisherman

For two weeks we were out
early and late experimenting,
and for two weeks I
scraped together (Heaven
knows how!) sufficient for
the "hand's" retainer and my own board and
lodging.  And then—success came
to us as by a miracle.  Instead of mud, or shells,
or weed, we found fish in the cod-end: fat plaice,
luxurious sole, skate, and whiting.

What we had done to our otter trawl I don't think
anyone knew, least of all the "hand," and I am
none the wiser to this day, but it caught fish.  We
treasured that trawl as something exceedingly
precious, and nothing, nothing whatsoever, would cause
us to alter its ropes or leads a hair's breadth.  We
lived in constant dread that we should meet a "hitch"
(an obstacle on the bottom of the sea) that would
make it necessary to cut the warp and lose this
wonderful trawl.  It would have taken two weeks,
perhaps two months, to discover another like it, and
we were averaging fifty pounds a week.

Success breeds ambition, and I installed a motor
auxiliary engine.  Further, there is only one way of
catching more fish than by trawling all day, and that
is trawling all night.  The fish, especially whiting,
do not see the net coming in the dark.  So we
acquired the habits of night-hawks, sailing at four
o'clock in the afternoon, and returning at six the next
morning.  It paid.  It paid handsomely.  What
should I not be able to report at the next general
meeting of dream merchants?

It was a fine sight on a pitch-black night to see
our wake streaming away like smoke from the
propeller, so bright with phosphorescence that it seemed
a powerful light must be hung over the stern.  And
to watch the net, lit with a myriad tiny lamps, creeping
in yard by yard.  Then, what a splashing as the
big skate and plaice came alongside!

It must be remembered that the dream ship's
career as a fishing smack was during the last phases
of the great war.  She saw three German submarines,
two steamers sunk, and had her stalwart ribs severely
shaken by depth-charges on several occasions.  In
fact, as one concussion caused her to leak, I had
serious thoughts of decorating her with a wound-stripe
on the starboard quarter.  What the effect of one
of those fearful implements of destruction must be at
close quarters, and while submerged, I can hardly
imagine.  I only know that one was dropped about
half a mile from the dream ship, and from the cabin
it sounded as though someone had hit the oil-tanks
with a sledge-hammer, and felt as though she had
run bow on, and at a nine-knot clip, into an iceberg.

Over twenty good, sound fishing smacks belonging
to the fleet with which we sailed were sent to the
bottom by German submarines.  In one case the crew
were stripped of their jerseys—the only article
aboard the smack that seemed to appeal to the
Hun—and left on deck while the submarine submerged
under their feet.  The one survivor's chief complaint
appeared to be the loss of his jersey.

On more than one occasion a German submarine
appeared in the midst of the fishing fleet, which they
favoured as an unsuspected lurking-place.  Warps
were cut on the instant, and, under full sail, a
hundred smacks might have been seen racing
harbourward minus their gear.  This became such a
common occurrence that patrol boats were sent out with
the fleet, and "forbidden areas" created.

These last were unpopular with fishermen.  The
authorities seemed to pitch inevitably on the most
prolific grounds to place under the ban.  Poaching
became general.  In one instance the skipper of a
smack, who had had a bad "week's work," decided
to make amends or perish in the effort.  He altered
the registered number of his boat, which is carried
in large white figures on the mainsail and bow, with
whitewash, burnt-corked the faces of himself and his
crew, and sailed for the banned area.

For hours he trawled backward and forward
across the holy ground, with dread and hope alternating
in his heart, and with the first hint of dawn
hauled in his net, to discover that in the general
excitement he had "shot" his trawl with the cod-end untied!

Nothing daunted, he returned to the attack the
following night, and as Fate the Jester so often
decrees, on this occasion, when the cod-end was
securely tied and all going well, the hated voice of
the fisheries inspector, better known as the
"bogey-man," came out of the night, close alongside: "You
are reported for trawling in the proscribed area."

Simultaneously a shaft of light from an electric
torch bit into the darkness, exposing the smack's
number and her black-faced crew.

"Stand by.  I'm coming aboard," were the next
instructions, but the men were suddenly electrified
into life.  In stony silence, so that their voices should
not be recognized, the skipper successfully threatened
the boarding "bogey-man" with a cutlass, while the
crew set the steam capstan to work and soon had the
trawl aboard with its valuable freight.

With the "bogey-man" still threatening dire
vengeance, the smack stood out to sea, and catching
the morning breeze, outstripped the inspector's
launch.  The authorities never knew who perpetrated
this outrage, as, when they came to look up the
smack's number in the register, they found it to be
that of an antiquated hulk that had never left harbour.

It is to be feared that the dream ship poached.
On one occasion a thick fog descended upon her
while trawling.  She continued the motion blindly
for three hours, when the fog lifted and we
discovered—naturally with deep regrets—that we had
covered a forbidden area from end to end, and had
caught sole, plaice, and turbot to the value of
forty pounds.

The dream ship had many experiences while "paying
for herself," and was destined to have many more.
For her size, it is doubtful if any craft has enjoyed a
more varied life, and the more I think of her lying
there in foreign waters, ... But of this anon.





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.. _`THE PREPARATION`:

.. class:: center large bold

   THE PREPARATION

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   *Concerning preparations in general, and personnel in
   particular*

.. vspace:: 2

.. figure:: images/img-019.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Chapter II headpiece

   Chapter II headpiece

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER II

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   *Concerning preparations in general, and personnel in
   particular*

.. vspace:: 2

Our separate excursions into the field of commerce
resulted in a healthier financial outlook at the next
general meeting of dream merchants.  Plans developed
apace.  Lists were made, schedules drawn up.
An actual sailing date began to emerge out of a welter
of conjecture.

On paper, the dream ship was converted from a
work-worn fishing-smack into a cruiser yacht of
comfort and elegance within a month, and a trifle
under the estimated cost.

On paper, the art of navigation was acquired in our
spare time, after the airy fashion of a
Correspondence-School advertisement.

And again on paper—a map of the world outspread
on the cabin table, to be exact—we actually decided
on our route.  At the point of an indomitable lead
pencil we traversed vast tracts of ocean in the
winking of an eye, and explored the furthermost
corners of the earth; and if there is a more fascinating
evening's entertainment, I should like to hear
of it.

Spain should be touched at, for the sake of her wine,
if nothing else; perhaps Madeira, and most certainly
the Canary Islands.  After that, there was the little
matter of the Atlantic Ocean, ending in the West
Indies.  Then came the Caribbean Sea, the Panama
Canal, and so down into the milky way of the
Pacific.  It looked a long way; it *was* a long way, but
we had a ship, and we had a crew, and what was the
sea if not the highway of the earth?  The enthusiasm
of ignorance?  Perhaps; yet I am convinced that
without the enthusiasm, and most certainly without
the ignorance, we should never have set sail, much
less won through to our goal.

The transition from fancy to fact was effected the
following morning, when Steve and I commenced
the soul-racking task of transferring twelve tons
of rusty pig-iron from the dream ship's bilge to the
quay alongside which we lay.  This mass of
obstinate metal had to be chipped and painted, and
ultimately replaced so that we might disport
ourselves on our beam ends, if the elements so willed,
without shifting it.  It was one of the dream ship's
strong points, that her ballast was all "inside."
There was no "fin" of lead hanging from her keel,
that might come adrift from a multitude of causes,
and leave us a tottering hulk.  I told Steve this,
as we wrestled with two hundredweight pigs, that
had a knack of slipping their moorings in mid-air,
and crashing through the cabin floor boards, or on
to our anatomies with striking impartiality.  I told
it to him again, as we sat in the rain on the quay,
chipping rust into each other's eyes, but received no
satisfactory reply on either occasion.

"By the way," was all he said that evening, when,
weary and bruised and rusty, we flung ourselves on
our bunks, "according to schedule, this is where we
study navigation, isn't it?"  And for three mortal
hours he gave his undivided attention to a nautical
epitome.  That is the kind of man Steve is.

There is no undertaking that requires a more
careful selection of personnel than a cruise such as
we contemplated, and no better opportunity of taking
a man's measure than when fitting out!  By the
time it is done, one has either come to the conclusion
that the other fellow has his points, or that to remain
in his company another hour is beyond endurance.
Naturally, his feelings are similar, and that we of
the dream ship stood the mutual test seemed to me
to augur well for the future.

It was during this trying period that we encountered
a peculiarly pernicious type of the genus yachtsman
on his native heath.  He was owner of a pretty
little six-tonner across the creek, and was "fitting
out" also—had been for two months, as far as we
could gather.  The thing was evidently a hobby with
him that he infinitely preferred to getting to sea.
With a paint pot in one hand, and a camel's hair
brush in the other, he advanced on his craft in the
manner of an artist attacking a master canvas,
applied the pigment, and stood back with his head
at an angle to view the effect.  In itself there was
nothing against this form of amusement, provided
that it interfered with no one else; but, evidently
tiring of his own company, at which I am not
surprised, our yachtsman strolled in the direction of the
dream ship to offer unsolicited criticism.

.. _`The Reciprocal Morning Douche, Mid-ocean`:

.. _`Steve at the Sextant and Peter at the Helm`:

.. figure:: images/img-022.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: *The Reciprocal Morning Douche, Mid-ocean*; *Steve at the Sextant and Peter at the Helm*

   *The Reciprocal Morning Douche, Mid-ocean*; 
   *Steve at the Sextant and Peter at the Helm*

"Fine craft you have there," was his introductory
remark, and my heart warmed to him.  Here, at all
events, was a judge.  "But too much beam for her
length, and too much *flaire*.  She'll break your heart
going to wind'ard," he added, judicially, and I confess
to loathing him on the instant.  Imagine a stranger
approaching you in the street and saying: "Fine wife
you have there, but I don't like her face—or her
action."  Well, that is how I felt.  For you must be
told, unless you are an "owner" and know already,
that the simile of the ship and the wife is not so
far-fetched as may appear.  Yet, with superhuman
restraint, I continued to chip iron while it was
pointed out to me that lead was better, that to paint
spars instead of varnishing them was a crime, and to
paint decks was worse; in short, that most things
about the dream ship met with this yachtsman's
hearty disapproval.  To which I was constrained to
make answer that with all her defects the dream
ship happened to satisfy *me* because I was an ex-fisherman
and not a yachtsman; that for one thing I could
not afford to be a yachtsman, and for another I had
no wish to be a yachtsman, being rather too fond
of the sea.  So we parted the best of enemies, and
had not done with each other, as will transpire
later.

.. _`Peter's Cooking Week`:

.. _`Peter Entertains`:

.. figure:: images/img-023.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: *Peter's Cooking Week*; *Peter Entertains*

   *Peter's Cooking Week*; 
   *Peter Entertains*

The moral of this somewhat hectic interlude is:
when fitting out for a cruise, get the advice of a
deep-water man, and find a place where there are no
yachtsmen.  This last is difficult, but it is worth while.

Much the same thing applies to the study of navigation.
If the beginner lends an ear to the horde of
amateur cranks who dabble in the subject, and who
seem obsessed with a desire to impart their half-baked
theories to others, he will know as much about
the practical business of finding a ship's position at
sea as he does about the origin of life.  There is the
long lean man, usually with a drooping moustache,
who demonstrates on an instrument of his own
invention that can do anything but talk—this last
deficiency being amply atoned for by the inventor
himself.  There is the man with "short cuts" and
"clean cuts."  There is even the man who still
persists in the belief that the world is "flat with
rounded edges," and produces reams of his own
screed, printed at enormous expense, in support of
his theories; but he is easily disposed of.  After
admitting that the shape of the world is not a burning
question with you anyway, because after all it is not
a bad old world and certainly the best we can expect
in this life, you confess to a sneaking suspicion that it
is a rhomboid.

No, there is only one way of learning to find a
ship's position at sea if you are unable to spend three
months or more at a school of navigation, and that is
to find a retired master mariner who, for a stipulated
sum, will teach you exactly what he did himself
probably three hundred and sixty-five times in the
year for thirty years.  Hearken unto him, in spite of
all lures to the contrary, and in three weeks or less
the miracle will cease to be a miracle.

We of the dream ship were fortunate in running
such a mentor to earth in his charming cottage on
the hillside, overlooking the harbour.  The Skipper,
as he shall henceforth be called, was of the old school,
and so, if it is permissible to say such things of a lady,
was his wife!  This remarkable woman followed
the sea with her husband on every ocean-going
schooner he commanded, and once, when the entire
crew was down with beri-beri, and a voracious tug
hovered alongside like a bird of prey, she brought
the ship to port single-handed, thus saving the
owners a stupendous sum for
salvage.  They rewarded her with
a presentation piano, and she
wept.  She could not play.  So
a cheque for a hundred guineas
was substituted, and her
husband alleges that she bought
three new hats and a galley
range in which she cooks the
acme in figgy dough to this day.

.. figure:: images/img-025.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: right
   :alt: Using a sextant

   Using a sextant

The Skipper, a man of monumental and very
necessary patience, received us each day in a torture
chamber of his own, replete with thumb screw and
rack in the form of nautical epitomes, and model
craft at variance on the placid surface of a deal table.
That small room was the scene of strange and tragic
happenings.  Gales, fogs, collisions, lee shores, and
shipwreck followed one another in rapid succession,
and invariably terminated in the short, sharp query:
"What do you do now?"

But these things constituted seamanship, which
is essentially a matter of experience, not of rote.
It was after our first, second, and even third day of
attempting to find longitude that we reeled from the
classroom, our heads a whirling chaos of logarithms,
traverse tables, and despair.  At no time that I can
recall did our dream come so near to dissolution.

"Have you," muttered Steve, as we paused during
our descent to the town, and the strongest cup of tea
procurable, "have you the foggiest idea of what we
are driving at?"

I admitted that I had not, and the funereal procession
proceeded on its way.

There are two methods of attacking the problem
of navigation: one is by intelligent understanding,
and the other by rule of thumb.  If yours is the type
of mind that revels in mathematics, then the first is
obviously your course, and a pleasant one at that.
If, upon the other hand, you are cursed, as I am, with
a mind that reels at the mere sight of a timetable,
then the second has its points, for you get there just
the same, and in spite of experts' warnings to the
contrary.  Without knowing the why or wherefore
of your figurative acrobatics, provided you follow
the rule of thumb implicitly, and can add, subtract,
multiply, and divide correctly, there is nothing
to prevent you from finding a ship's position at sea
day in and day out, identically with the greatest
experts on earth.  I have done it, and I have a
shrewd suspicion, backed by the opinion of the
Skipper, that more than one master mariner does it in
precisely the same way.  All hail to logarithms, and
the obscure but miraculous gentleman who invented
them!

At long last there came a day when the shipwright's
hammer ceased to resound aboard the dream ship,
and save for provisions and water, and a snowdrift of
unpaid bills, we were ready to take leave of the yards.

With an ebb tide and the faithful Skipper aboard,
we dropped down the river, and as cleanly as may be
on to a mud bank!  I am not going to say how it
happened, because I do not know.  All we were
acutely conscious of at the time was that our yachtsman,
in his pretty little six-tonner, had chosen the
same date of departure as ourselves, and was rapidly
approaching down the channel that we should have
followed, and had not, and that somehow the secret
of our dream must have reached his protruding ears,
for as he came abreast of us he reared his hideous form
out of the cockpit.

"Hullo," he cried.  "Have you made your South
Sea Islands already?"

We did not answer, there was nothing to be said;
but when a tug hauled us free on the next tide, and
rounding a bend in the river, we came upon our
adversary in precisely the same predicament, we
passed him in silence, the most satisfying silence I
have ever indulged in.

Without a dissentient voice, the task of choosing
and stowing the provisions was relegated to Peter——
"A woman is so much better at that sort of
thing."  Steve and I admitted as much, with touching
magnanimity.

In due course a cart backed up to the quayside,
and an active little grocer proceeded to heap the
dream ship's deck with comestibles—tinned, boxed,
and jarred.  These we passed through the skylights,
before an admiring audience of fisher-folk, and Peter,
being ambidextrous, contrived to stow them in the
lockers with one hand and make a list of them with
the other.

I have my own notions about provisioning a dream
ship in the future—if for me there is a future in dream
ships.  During the following year we proved, to our
own dissatisfaction, that although tinned food is
mighty handy, it is not a healthy continuous diet...
No, I see myself laying in salt junk of the
windjammer variety, plenty of waterglassed eggs and
condensed milk, good ship's biscuits, a "crock" of
hand-salted butter, dried fruits, jam or marmalade
to taste, pickled beetroot for the blood, flour, raisins,
and baking powder, Scotch oatmeal, sugar, tea, coffee,
cocoa, and lard, and nothing else whatsoever.  It
may be asked: "What else could there possibly be?"—to
which I make answer: "A hundred and one canned
atrocities, such as Somebody's curried giblets, or
Somebody Else's evaporated tripe, that it were
better if one consigned to the deep than ate."  It is
extraordinary the number of useless things one can
be lured into acquiring while "fitting out," and we
of the dream ship bought most of them.

"Barter" was Peter's idea.  In her mind the word
was inalienably associated with the South Sea Islands,
and were we not bound thither?  It was only another
example of her boundless optimism.  Steve and I
might furtively discuss the number of miles between
ourselves and our goal, the probable discomfitures
by the way, even the possibility of not getting there
at all.  Not so Peter.  We were going to the South
Sea Islands, and to go to the South Sea Islands
without "barter" was a thing undreamed of in her
philosophy.  Hence a hurried pilgrimage to London,
and the purchase, out of our rapidly diminishing
capital, of variegated prints, looking-glasses,
imitation tortoise-shell hair combs, Jew's harps, and
brown paper belts.

On our return, the Skipper, who had remained
aboard as watchman during our absence, displayed
a certain uneasiness, the cause of which was hard
to determine.  He expressed his keen admiration for
the dream ship, as he had often done before, and then
paused, until goaded into the confession that he
wished he thought as much of her crew.  That is
not how he put it, but that was what he meant, and
we were inclined to agree with him.  In other words,
it was on the dear old man's conscience that he was
letting us go to sea with insufficient knowledge, a
scruple as rare as it is refreshing these days.  We
immediately and unanimously pointed out that there
was only one way out of the dilemma, and that was
for him to accompany us.  He shook his grizzled
head, and smiled wistfully; said it was twenty years
since he had been to sea, that he was too old, that his
"missus" would never let him go, and finally, with a
twinkle in his keen blue eye, that he would come as
far as Spain "just to get us into the hang of longitude,"
whereat we fell upon him in a pæan of gratitude.

Behold, then, the crew of the dream ship ready
to sail, with a combined capital of one hundred
pounds sterling, and a clearance for Brisbane,
Australia.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`AT VIGO, OFF THE COAST OF SPAIN`:

.. class:: center large bold

   AT VIGO, OFF THE COAST OF SPAIN

.. class:: center

   *Some confessions and a few morals*

.. vspace:: 2

.. figure:: images/img-035.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Chapter III headpiece

   Chapter III headpiece

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III

.. class:: center

   *Some confessions and a few morals*

.. vspace:: 2

At six o'clock the next morning a small, depressed-looking
procession wended its way to the quay, followed
by the sidelong glances and whispered comments
of the fish-market fraternity.

It was the noble army of dream merchants setting
forth on its quest.  And why depressed?  I do not
know, except that, personally, on the eve of any
problematical undertaking I feel that way, and so,
apparently, do others.  Perhaps it was that the
enthusiasm of ignorance had momentarily deserted us,
and we were awed by a rational glimpse of the task
that lay ahead.  Such moods vanish the instant one
gets down to work, the great panacea, but until then
they crouch on the shoulders, a dour company.

In silence we rowed out to the dream ship, and
hoisted sail.  I was going to say that in silence we
lowered the dinghy on to its chocks, but, as a fact,
the keel descended on the Skipper's toe, extracting
a shout of anguish from that usually restrained
mariner.

Almost simultaneously, and for no apparent reason,
Steve took an involuntary seat on the open skylight,
which shut with a crash on one of his fingers.

The moorings were cast off prematurely, and,
getting under way on the wrong tack, we sailed, with
the utmost precision, into a neighbouring
fishing-smack, nearly breaking our bowsprit.

I could imagine the grinning heads of the fisher
folk lining the breakwater wall.

"They be goin' ter the South Sea Islands, they
be!" I could almost hear them saying, and dived
below to show them what a motor auxiliary could do.
There were one hundred and fifty vessels moored
in that harbour, and I should not like to say how
many we fouled during the next half hour.  Indeed
I could not, for throughout the process I was wrestling
with the engine, which refused to budge—until
we had rounded the breakwater, and there was no
further use for it.  Such is the way of these necessary
evils aboard a sailing ship.

Coming on deck, I was confronted with a sorry
spectacle.  Our port light-board was in splinters.
Relics of vessels we had caressed in parting littered
the deck.  The Skipper was in the steering well, with
the tiller in one hand and his toe in the other; and
Peter was administering iodine and lint to Steve's
crushed finger.

"She goes!" I triumphed, tactlessly referring to
my Herculean labours with the engine.

"D'you think it's broken?" demanded the Skipper,
extending an enormous, bootless foot.

"Flat as a pancake," muttered Steve.

Which gives a fair idea of the trend of individual
thought on occasions.

But at long last we were off!  Off before a
seven-knot nor'-wester, and with only twelve
thousand miles to go!  What else mattered?

.. figure:: images/img-037.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: right
   :alt: Sailboat, flying fish]

   Sailboat, flying fish

By the time we had
picked up an intermittent pallor on the
horizon that was
Ushant light at a
distance of thirty miles, the wind
had strengthened to half a gale, and
there was nothing the dream ship
loved more dearly than half a gale on the quarter.
In a series of exhilarating swoops, it flung her down
into the Bay of Biscay; but what she did not like
was being left there to roll helplessly in a windless
swell.  I have to call it a "swell," just as I have to
say we "rolled," though neither word conveys our
subsequent acrobatics in the least.

"The Bay" has an unsavoury reputation anyway,
but for sheer unpleasantness commend me to the
mood in which the dream ship made its acquaintance.

Literally from beam end to beam end we lurched.
The engine was useless.  Our propeller was out of
the quarter, and under present circumstances as
much out of the water as in it.

Any one aboard capable of sea-sickness, promptly
*was*.  The Skipper who, it must be confessed, had
not been able to eat since setting sail, though he clung
to his duties like a Stoic, was as near plaintive as I
have ever seen him.  Curiously enough, his malady
took the form of conjuring visions of his good wife's
cooking.  I honestly believe that if we had been able
to produce the roast beef, cabbage, and "figgy
dough" of his own home table, he would have eaten.
But all we could offer him was bovril, tongue, and
tinned asparagus.  We did not know how to live,
he assured us.  On the schooner in the old days he
had a *stove*, not one of these newfangled tin
contraptions.  And his wife cooked.  And when she cooked,
she *cooked*!  Figgy dough that melted in the mouth.

At this juncture his audience was well advised to
move to a safe distance.

In response to our eternal lurchings, ominous
sounds began to filter up from below.  A metallic
click-clock, click-clock, a methodical thudding, a
resounding crash.  The first of these proved to be a
kerosene tank that had come adrift from its rack
fastenings, and threatened to fall on the engine.  A
galvanized iron receptacle containing seventy gallons
of liquid is not the easiest of things to handle in a
seaway, let alone with a crushed finger.  My heart
went out to Steve, but it was characteristic of the
man that never a whimper escaped him.  All that
we could do was to wedge the tank into place with
stout battens clean across the ship, which we did,
and turned our attention to the next calamity.  The
piano had followed the example of the tank, and the
wash-hand stand had emulated the piano; and rather
than appear peculiar, a two-hundred-pound drum of
treasured Scotch oatmeal was rolling on the floor,
mingling its contents with the brine that oozed
from a crate of salt pork wedged under the cabin
table.

The crash was merely the dethronement of a lighted
stove in the fo'c's'le, on which Peter had been
persisting for the last hour, and in spite of her own
condition, in an attempt to produce something that the
Skipper *would* eat.

On the whole, a healthy lesson in making all secure
before sailing.

In the midst of our agonies below, a stentorian
voice hailed us from the cockpit:

"All hands on deck!  Lower mainsail!"  Which
was followed almost immediately by a "crack" like
a pistol shot.

Our boom had snapped clean off about five feet
from the end.

Such is "the Bay" in lightsome mood.  Apparently
the only article aboard unaffected by it was the
chronometer, ticking placidly in its gimbals and
bed of plush.  There was something enviable about
that chronometer.

The dawn brought with it a faint but steady
breath, and discovering that there was sufficient
boom left to set a double-reefed mainsail, we
continued on our way, and a blessedly even keel, until
toward evening we raised the coast of Spain.

The welcome and unmistakable smell of land came
to us over the water, and presently the mouth of the
Vigo River opened out, revealing a maze of leading
lights.

The engine behaved itself, and by midnight the
dream ship had anchored off the town, to an
accompaniment of star shells and crackers.

It pleased us to imagine that these were our welcome,
but as a fact the inevitable Spanish fiesta was
in progress.  We had made our first foreign port.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE CANARY ISLANDS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   THE CANARY ISLANDS

.. class:: center

   *Dropping the pilot—and the result*

.. vspace:: 2

.. figure:: images/img-045.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Chapter IV headpiece

   Chapter IV headpiece

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IV

.. class:: center

   *Dropping the pilot—and the result*

.. vspace:: 2

Our first and imperative need was sleep.  There comes
a time when enforced wakefulness causes the eyes to
feel as though they were sinking into the head.  We
of the dream ship had reached this pitch, and turned
in "all standing," to remain log-like until disturbed
by port officials at five o'clock the next morning.

In a state of pyjamas and semi-torpor I handed
them the ship's papers, which proved to be
satisfactory; Steve treated them to a few chosen words
in near-Spanish picked up during a doubtful past in
Mexico, and we tumbled in again.  But not to sleep.
Thereafter, an endless procession of boats, manned
by picturesque and voluble brigands who offered for
sale every conceivable commodity from anchor chain
to picture postcards, succeeded in dragging us from
our bunks, and propelling us on deck.

A pleasant little town is Vigo.  One of a goodly
number scattered over the world that I should like
to make my home.  Each to his taste, and perhaps
I am impressionable as to the desirable spots of this
earth, but to my way of thinking almost any race
knows how to enjoy life better than the Anglo-Saxon
of to-day, and fashions its surroundings to that end.

From the river front, with its handsome promenade,
hotels, and green, open spaces, Vigo climbs the
sunny hillside in cheerful fashion.  No one seems
overburdened with business cares, but when such
things have to be attended to, the palm-fringed
*Alamada* takes the place of an office, and the "deal"
is discussed over *vino tinto* and cigarettes, to the
accompaniment of an excellent band.

We of the dream ship went ashore with the Skipper
wearing a fancy-worked carpet-slipper on one foot
and a boot on the other, but no one appeared to
notice the peculiarity, and it is quite certain the
Skipper would not have minded if they had.  His is
a type of hardihood that I envy as much as I admire.

At lunch, too, he found cause for complaint in the
food, and small wonder.  After a week's enforced
abstention, he found that in these benighted parts
figgy dough was as unprocurable as elsewhere.
Frankly, he was disappointed in Vigo and, after
limping over the cobblestones in clothes more adapted
to the Arctic than to Spanish sunshine, he returned
aboard "to do a few jobs."  We knew what this
meant.  He would systematically and efficiently set
right everything that was wrong aboard the dream
ship—a long-splice here, a bit of carpentry
there—which was precisely what we ought to have been
doing instead of gallivanting about Vigo.  Most
excellent of skippers!  He had been a tower of
strength to us in time of stress, and a qualm seized
me when I secured his passage to Southampton, and
realized that in another week he would be gone.

From the quaint cobbled and terraced streets of
the old town we went down to the *Alamada*, and sat
for a while watching the children dance to the music
of the band.  No organized, mechanical spectacle
this, but a joyous affair of rhythmic abandon, twinkling
legs, and laughter.  Most of us like to think that
the children of our own particular country are the
most desirable, and they would be poor folk who did
not; but for unconscious grace of movement and
dainty appearance, the Spanish kiddy is hard to beat.

And this happy absence of self-consciousness is not
confined to the children.  Picture, if you can, and
as we of the dream ship saw him a little later, a
well-dressed Spanish gentleman standing in the middle
of one of Vigo's main thoroughfares and gazing
toward the housetops, apparently engaged in
practising the deaf-and-dumb alphabet.  No one of the
stream of pedestrians passing along the sidewalks
took the slightest notice of him.  Neither did the
wheeled traffic, except to swerve obligingly out of
his path.  It was *his* affair, and a love affair at that.
He was conversing with his *enamorata* at the third-floor
balcony window in the only way possible to a
suitor in Spain, where parents firmly believe in "love
at a distance" until the actual engagement.  And it
needed three vulgar sightseers such as the crew of the
dream ship to find anything unusual in the proceeding.
I am ashamed to say that the lady caught sight of us,
and pointed in alarm, whereat the gentleman turned
with an excusable frown of annoyance, and we
hurried on our way.

There are only two things the Spaniard takes
really seriously: his love and his bull-fights.  Leave
him to them, as you value a whole skin.

Our next introduction was to the local cable office.
Personally, I have always regarded such places as
drab receptacles for grudging messages, but with the
Eastern Telegraph Company it is a different matter.
Certainly this admirable concern takes your message,
but then proceeds to take you to its heart, and
thereafter, wherever its myriad wires extend, you may be
sure of a welcome from the kindliest of hosts.  It
conducts you to its palatial bachelor quarters
situated on the hillside behind the town, and proceeds to
spoil you with every device known to a pampered
age.  Tennis, golf, dances, and dinners are yours to
repletion, followed by moonlight car rides into the
country, and feasts at distant *fondas* under the
trellised vines.

At any rate, that is what it did with us, and we
tried to reciprocate.  The Eastern Telegraph
Company, or as much of it as could get aboard at one
time, made the dream ship its headquarters during
our stay; dived from her bowsprit or under her keel
with equal delight, mealed off strange messes in her
seething saloon, and sang songs on deck to Peter's
piano accompaniment below.

With such distractions afoot, it is small wonder
that nearly a week slipped by before the subject of
a sailing date received the attention it deserved.  The
Skipper grunted his disapproval of our dilatory
methods, and pointed out in a satirical fashion
peculiarly his own that there were "things" to be done.
Amongst them, he mentioned the necessity of
making out a new deviation card by the Polar Star,
whereat Steve and I collapsed.  Had we not done
with this pest of deviation?  Had we not already
discovered and tabulated, at the cost of terrific mental
effort, the error of the dream ship's compass owing
to local attraction?

The Skipper admitted as much with a wistful
smile, but pointed out that deviation has an aggravating
habit of changing with latitude.  It was the first
we had heard of it, and
that night we sat again
under our long-suffering
professor, and swung
the dream ship to a
mocking North Star.

.. figure:: images/img-050.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Island

   Island

Then there was the matter of our
broken boom.  The Skipper and
I towed it over, neatly scarfed (dovetailed and
bound) from a neighbouring shipyard the next
morning.  And the instability of things below as
demonstrated in the Bay of Biscay?  This was remedied
by having iron bands placed round everything
movable, and screwed to bulkhead or floor.  We were
ready.  The Skipper stepped ashore with his modest
little suitcase, and limped away without so much as
a backward glance.  Why?  His "missus" has told me
since that he never expected to see us again.

So we three and the dream ship dropped down
Vigo River bound for Las Palmas, Canary Islands,
with the biggest mixed cargo of hope and ignorance
that ever put to sea.

Four hours on and eight off was how we apportioned
our watches and, thanks to fair winds and
the easy handling of the dream ship, it was seldom
necessary for more than one of us to be on deck at a
time.  In fact, there were hours on end when the
helmsman could peg the tiller and take a constitutional.

Cooking we took week and week about, a dreaded
ordeal.  It is one thing to concoct food in a porcelain-fitted
kitchen on *terra firma*, and quite another to do
it over a primus stove in a leaping, gyrating fo'c's'le.
Porridge was found adhering to the ceiling after
Steve's "week," but hush! perhaps he may have
something to say on the subject of Peter and myself.
There is always plenty to say about the other fellow,
but in nine cases out of ten it is best left unsaid.
Forbearance is as much the keynote of good-fellowship
on a dream ship as elsewhere—perhaps more—and
we are rather proud of the fact that we have covered
half the world without battle, murder, or sudden
death.

With only three of a crew some of our troubles
may be imagined, but undoubtedly the worst of
these, after a couple of weeks at sea, was being
awakened from a trance-like sleep to take a trick at
the tiller.  One does not feel human under such
circumstances, but more in the nature of a bear
disturbed during hibernation.

And the awakener's task is not much better.  He is
forced to peg the tiller, even with a following wind,
nip below to resuscitate somehow his log-like relief,
and get back before the ship jibes.  If there is time
he may employ the proper and humane method of
applying gradually increased pressure to the sleeper's
arm until he awakes.  If there is not, he must resort
to any merciless method that proves effective.  In
either case, he is as unpopular as an alarm clock,
which, by the way, we tried, but discarded on account
of its waking everyone aboard.

The manner of our several wakings formed an
interesting, if somewhat intimate, subject of
discussion at breakfast one morning.  Peter's was
voted uninteresting because whatever means were
employed to arouse her she merely opened her eyes,
and meekly murmured: "All right."  Steve, upon
the other hand, was uncertain.  If he happened to
be dreaming at the time, which was usually the case,
he either hit out the instant he was touched, or
muttered something unintelligible, and tenderly covered
the disturbing hand with his own.

As for me, I yawned cavernously, invariably said:
"How's she going?" and almost as invariably fell
asleep again.  Or so runs the report, and one is not
permitted to argue with reports.  Verily, if man
would discover himself—and others—let him have
recourse to a dream ship and a crew of three!

It was during the passage from Vigo to Las Palmas
that we first experienced that most aggravating of
winds, the light, varying, following.  I have heard
schooner skippers declare that they prefer the "head"
variety, and I can well believe it.  At night, when
it is exceedingly difficult to tell where such a wind is
coming from, it is no more pleasant to jibe inadvertently
than to have to do so sometimes thrice within
the hour to keep the ship on her course.  It wears
out a short-handed, light-weight crew (Peter turned
the scale at ninety-eight pounds, Steve at one
hundred and forty-five, and myself at one hundred and
forty), and conservation of energy, which makes for
good health, is of prime importance on a voyage such
as ours.

Finally, we lowered the mainsail, with its jolting,
crashing boom, and carried on in blessed tranquillity
under a squaresail, which proved to be the most
useful sail we had aboard.

At the end of seven days' routine, and fair but
light winds, we experienced the acute joy of finding
land precisely where our frenzied calculations had
placed it.  As Madeira loomed on the starboard bow,
Steve was seen to pace the deck with a quiet but
new-born dignity—until hailed below to help wash dishes.
But even this failed to quell the navigator's
exuberance, and the dish-washer exchanged views on the
subject with the helmsman through the skylight.
This, then, was the navigation that master mariners
made such a song and dance about!  Well, we must
be master mariners, that was all we had to say!
We had summoned Madeira, and Madeira had appeared!
We were not at all sure that we had not
discovered Madeira!

Peter seemed strangely unimpressed.  Perhaps she
sensed what is indeed a fact, that luck in navigation,
as in most things, favours the beginner.  For
instance, a mistake somewhere in our calculations
brought us as near disaster in the next twenty-four
hours as one cares to be.  Taking Madeira as our
point of departure, we shaped a course for Las
Palmas, giving the intervening Salvage Islands a berth
of ten miles to the westward.  We reckoned this a
safe distance, considering that according to "sailing
directions" there was still more to the westward a
strong current inclining toward the African coast.
Well, that current failed to register in the particular
case of the dream ship, and on top of it the "mistake
somewhere" caused a cold shiver to traverse the
spine of the helmsman when, at one o'clock of a
pitch-black night, while doing a comfortable seven
knots, a mass of rock reared itself out of the sea
seemingly not more than a few hundred yards, though
probably more nearly a mile, to starboard.

It was the westernmost island of the Salvages,
uninhabited, unlighted, and this same helmsman
who, as it happens, was myself, would like to know
what prevented the "mistake somewhere" from
being just that trifle bigger necessary to land us in
splinters on the rocks, the fate of more than one good
ship provided with a lookout and master mariner.
Surely the luck of the beginner!

The incident gave us violently to think, and we
thought again when, a few days later, on summoning
the island of Grand Canary with the magic wand
of sextant and logarithm, it failed to materialize.
Had we overrun the entire Canary Group, and were
we gaily heading for the African coast with its
picturesque Riff pirates who specialize in becalmed
ships, or were we even now heading for the
iron-bound coast of Grand Canary?  In the dense mist
that so often shrouds this group we could not tell.
Moreover, our dead reckoning said one thing and our
observations another.  They usually do.

"When in doubt, heave to," was a maxim of the
Skipper's that we happened to remember, so we
hove to and waited, though for what I am not quite
clear.  If it were for the mist to disperse, I am
inclined to think we should be there still.  Steve and
I passed the time in heated discussions as to our
whereabouts, which under the circumstances was as
futile an occupation as any we could have indulged in,
but what would you?  After golf it is doubtful if
there is anything more debatable than incipient
navigation.  We continued to talk, and the dream
ship continued to rock idly on a heavy swell, until
Peter broke the spell by emitting a well-known squeak
of excitement and pointing heavenward.

"*That* isn't a cloud," she announced with apparent
irrelevance.

It was not.  It was the peak of Teneriffe towering
out of the mist, to port, like the great pyramid from
the sands of Egypt.

"There you are," quoth Steve.

"Exactly," said I, though what either of us meant
I have no notion.

"In the meantime," suggested Peter the practical,
"don't you think we might be getting on with it?"

On this point the master and the mate of the
dream ship were agreed, and the voyage continued.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE START ACROSS THE ATLANTIC`:

.. class:: center large bold

   THE START ACROSS THE ATLANTIC

.. class:: center

   *Visitations—pleasant, and the reverse*

.. vspace:: 2

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   :alt: Chapter V headpiece

   Chapter V headpiece

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   CHAPTER V

.. class:: center

   *Visitations—pleasant, and the reverse*

.. vspace:: 2

Our entry into Las Palmas savoured of a circus come
to town.  We were the "act" where the music stops
for effect.  No one seemed to know who we were or
why we were, which after all is not surprising, and
the curious, consisting of gaping crowds on the
breakwater and a heterogeneous fleet of anything from
powerful launches to frowsy bumboats, seemed intent
on finding out.

There is an immense and almost constant swell off
Las Palmas, and the performance started when, in
answer to our signal, a pilot stepped aboard, and
came as near to measuring his dignified and bedizened
length on the deck as was possible without actually
doing it.  He was evidently unused to dream ships
in a swell.  Regaining a certain amount of
equilibrium, he tottered to the mast and clung there
affectionately, until informed that we were from
England, when he risked changing his grip to shake
us all warmly by the hand, and point dramatically
harbourward.

This last I took as a signal for the engine which, to
my relief, "went," and we rounded the breakwater with
the entire fleet of bumboats and their yelling occupants
in our wake.  Peter was at the tiller, in pyjamas
she had not had time to change, frenziedly following
the course indicated by the pilot's outstretched arm.
Steve was attempting in halting Spanish to communicate
the fact that our engine had no "reverse," and
failing utterly.  And I had made the distressing
discovery that there was something amiss with our water
circulation.  Above all rose the clamour of the
bum-boatmen:—"Hi, washing, Señor!" "Hi, hi,
bananas!" "Hi, hi, hi...."

So the dream ship threaded the intricacies of Las
Palmas's inner harbour, missing coal hulks by a bare
foot, shaving schooners and, by means of the anchor
dropped in sheer desperation, barely saving herself
from ramming the Club Náutico.

Even then our troubles were by no means at an
end.  A boarding party of eternal bumboatmen
broke through our defenses, and thronged the deck.
In vain we pointed out that all we needed at the
moment was sleep, and that if they had any for sale
we would buy large quantities, otherwise they must
go, or be pushed.  They chose to be pushed, and
there was something in the nature of a *mêlée* afoot
when a sleek launch came alongside and a short,
corpulent gentleman, literally glittering with gold lace,
and using a sword as a walking stick, stepped aboard.
He was the chief of the harbour police, and the
effect of his august presence was magical.  The
enemy retired in disorder, and our saviour, who
honoured us with his company over a glass of rum,
gave us the key to peace and quiet in a Spanish port.
It consisted in presenting the law (embodied in
himself) with a trifling donation, and running the
international code flag "P" up to the mast head, after which
one is at liberty to shoot any one who comes aboard
without permission.  It is worth knowing, for we of
the dream ship did both these things, and from that
hour suffered no further molestation.

Unless you are a coal magnate, a ship's chandler,
a banana agent, or a consumptive, it is hard to find
a reason for living at Las Palmas.  It is a dreary sort
of place built on, and occasionally smothered by,
sand blown across the ocean from the Sahara,
hundreds of miles distant, and the only diversion
appears to be dances and roulette at the Club Náutico.

We of the dream ship promptly "fell" for the
roulette, in company with most of the inhabitants,
until it was borne in upon us that if we "fell" much
further we should plumb the depths of our slender
resources.  It is a pathetic sight to see workers, not
the leisured "profitocracy" one encounters at a place
like Monte Carlo, handing over their hard-earned
week's wage to a stony-faced *croupier*, and borrowing
from any one who will lend for "just one more spin."  No,
we remained for the most part well out amongst
the cooler breezes of the harbour, under the
thrice-blessed squaresail which now did service as an
awning—sleeping, swimming, fishing, and again sleeping,
for we had some arrears to make up in this last respect.

Our splendid isolation, however, did not prevent
us from meeting interesting people, foremost amongst
whom was the skipper of the four-masted schooner
*Dorothy* of New York, a hard-bitten Yank if ever
there was one.  He caught us clinging to his anchor
chain for a breather during the morning swim, and
was treating us to an entirely new vocabulary of
invective when suddenly, and with no apparent cause,
he changed his mind and invited us aboard.

In his remarkably comfortable quarters, and standing
in pools of our own making, we discussed things
in general and a bottle of Madeira in particular.

"Waal," he observed, on learning that we were off
"that funny bit of wood yonder," and had every
intention of remaining on it across the Atlantic, "if
you ain't got a gall!"

.. figure:: images/img-065.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
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   :alt: Swimmers at Dorothy

   Swimmers at Dorothy

From that moment the *Dorothy* and the dream ship
became "matey craft," though a greater contrast
than between a four-masted schooner and a
twenty-three-ton cutter can scarcely be imagined.  Our
friend had several grievances, and
aired them, though with
such cheerful profanity as to
cause us endless amusement.
He had left the sea for good when
he was lured out of retirement
by a stupendous sum to
command the *Dorothy*.  The fact
was they had no sailing masters
in the States these days, and now that
they had found wind to be cheaper than coal, and
were building schooners so fast that half of them
were green timber and opened up like sieves, they
could get no one to take charge—no one, that is,
but hairless boys who learnt navigation on a three-weeks'
course, and knew as much about seamanship
or handling the hoboes one ships these days as a
dead-ripe lemon....

At this juncture Steve and I might have been seen
to exchange guilty glances, but I don't think we were,
and the diatribe continued.

... Another thing: here was he at a port like
Las Palmas, with his entire crew, bar the mate, in a
Spanish gaol through a few shore indiscretions of the
previous evening, and no one to *do* anything about it.
There was no United States consul in Las Palmas, no,
sir; what did we think of that?  There was nothing
against a bit of shore joy once in a while.  It was to
be expected.  But when they took a man's *cook*....
He would have to see his very good friend the British
Consul about it, that was all, though the idea was
abhorrent to his independent spirit.

Amongst other things he treated us to a vivid and
somewhat terrifying picture of present-day New
York, and expressed the whole-souled wish never to
return.  It appeared that in this barbarous spot a
mere man is at a discount.  He can get nothing to
drink.  His pipe, cigar, or cigarette is in imminent peril
of being snatched from his mouth, and if he chances
to look sideways at a lady she arrests him on the spot.
We shivered in unison, and refilled our glasses.

Our friend dined aboard the dream ship that
evening, and showed himself to be the good fellow
that he was by demonstrating short cuts in navigation,
telling us of winds and weather we should be
likely to encounter, giving us introductions to friends
at distant ports, and—listening without flinching to
a clarionet solo.  It is such members of the vast
fraternity of the sea that one hopes to meet again,
and so rarely does.

Another of our guests was of a very different calibre,
though none the less interesting in his way.  We
awoke one morning to find a sleek white yacht of
about the dream ship's tonnage anchored hard by,
and flying a silken flag of gorgeous but unknown
design, which on book reference proved to be the
now-extinct emblem of the Portuguese Royalist.

By noon her owner had paid us a formal call, and
at four o'clock this amazing youth, in a natty naval
uniform garnished with decorations for various
heroic deeds, was laying bare his heart in excellent
English over a cup of afternoon tea.  It was good,
he informed us, to see the Blue Ensign again after what
he had been through.  There was something stable
about the Blue Ensign that was vastly refreshing
to a homeless exile.  During the present welter
of world upheaval the Portuguese rebellions had
been overlooked, but what he, a Royalist, had been
through—*what* he had been through!

His was the only yacht in Portuguese waters during
the late rebellion.  She lay in the bay of Funchal,
Madeira, and in Madeira's gaol reposed, or at any
rate contrived to live, two full-blown counts, a
general, and various smaller fry, incarcerated for
their political views.  Could a fellow Royalist and
a yacht owner stand by and do nothing under such
circumstances?  A thousand times, no!  On a dark
night, and in face of sentries armed to the teeth, he
had rescued them, taken them aboard his ship, and
set sail for Las Palmas without stores, water, or
navigation instruments, fearing that any such
preparations would arouse suspicion.  Well, he had
arrived.  After incredible hardships, he had arrived,
only to have his yacht and cargo of hungry counts
interned by the rascally Spaniard!  Another cup of
tea?  Ah, thanks ... to the CAUSE!

The Portuguese says: "A Spaniard is always a
Spaniard."  The Spaniard says: "A Portuguese is
always a Portuguese."  Or they do at Las Palmas,
and the mere outsider can only take their respective
words for it, and draw his own conclusions.

After two weeks of idling—and cooking—we became
so heartily tired of the latter that we determined
to indulge in the wild extravagance of a cook.
The process of engagement was simplicity itself.
We merely selected one of the almost constant stream
of applicants for work that visited the dream ship,
duly installed him in the fo'c's'le, and left him to it.

Our selection, or rather Peter's, as we left such
things to a woman's alleged intuition, was a venerable
Maltese with a sheaf of credentials the size of a pack
of cards, and a winning if somewhat weak smile.
Thereafter, for a week, real food, though doused in
olive oil, emerged from the fo'c's'le, and we
experienced the keen satisfaction after meals of being
able to hold a cigarette in one hand without a dish
cloth in the other.

This happy state of affairs continued until,
following one of his "evenings off," our cook was
stricken with an illness that he ascribed to bad meat,
though the symptoms corresponded more to the
effects of bad drink.  In any case, he lay writhing in
his bunk, clasping various portions of his anatomy,
and declaring that he was about to die.  Now, the
dream ship had a medicine chest of which she was as
proud as the eminent physician who had selected it.
This personage believed in injection rather than
internal application; and no doubt he was right,
provided there was someone aboard who understood a
hypodermic syringe.  But there was not.  I stood
beside the bunk, looking up the unhappy man's
symptoms in a ship's medical guide as they occurred,
while Steve and Peter lifted from its bed of cotton
wool a glass-and-steel instrument more like an
overgrown mosquito than anything I can call to mind.
The look of it appalled me, but not so Steve.  He
pumped our wretched cook so full of laudanum that
he never moved an eyelid for fifteen hours.  We
called his state one of merciful oblivion, and rather
prided ourselves on the achievement until it occurred
to someone that we might have killed him.  Followed
frantic tests with a looking-glass, and much
listening for heart-beats, until our victim was
resuscitated—and left the next day.

No, in future, and in spite of expert advice to the
contrary, which perhaps does not take the limitations
of dream ships into account, I shall in future only
take the trusted remedies endeared by experience:
iodine, a good aperient and astringent, asperin,
plenty of boracic lint and bandages, and a lancet.

As though in judgment, there descended upon us
in turn a plague of these islands called Canary fever.
It was our first and last illness throughout the cruise,
but it pulled us down to such an extent that Peter
and I decided to try the hills of Grand Canary as a
recuperative.

A quiet little *fonda* amongst the vines and purer
airs of the highlands was the vision that lured us into
a lurching motor, and up through the sand and cactus
landscape to Fergus, where our vision was shattered
as promptly and effectually as visions usually are.
There was a *fonda*, and there were cacti, these last
covered for the most part with the cochineal beetle,
the raising of which as a food dyestuff is still an
industry on Grand Canary, though chemical substitutes
have almost run the genuine article off the market.
But the *fonda* was more crowded with guests than the
cacti with cochineal, and there was no doubt as to
which were the more disturbing.

Peter and I shared a room nine by twelve, with an
apology for privacy in the form of a riddled screen
between us, and mosquitoes took full advantage of our
netless beds.  The *salon* at our very door seethed
with dancing and shrill-voiced señoritas until two
o'clock in the morning, and——  But why prolong the
agony?  We caught the next lurching motor back to
Las Palmas, and sank gasping but grateful into deck
chairs under the awning of the dream ship.

Such a home as ours spoils one for roughing it.
The infinite peace and quiet and privacy of it make
one detest all the more the bustle and turmoil of
ordinary travel.  People have said to me: "But how
can you live in such restricted quarters?"  My
answer is: "Very easily, thank you."

For six mortal weeks we waited at Las Palmas, that
it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the
weather-prophets concerning the West Indian hurricane
season:

   |  June, too soon.
   |  July, stand by.
   |  August, if you must.
   |  September, remember.
   |  October, all over.
   |

And on the third of this last, reassuring month
we set sail across the Atlantic.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE ARRIVAL AT BRITISH WEST INDIES`:

.. class:: center large bold

   THE ARRIVAL AT BRITISH WEST INDIES

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   *Deep-sea thoughts—Concerning Calms—Visitors in
   mid-Atlantic—Barbados and beyond*

.. vspace:: 2

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   :alt: Chapter VI headpiece

   Chapter VI headpiece

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VI

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   *Deep-sea thoughts—Concerning Calms—Visitors in
   mid-Atlantic—Barbados and beyond*

.. vspace:: 2

The great adventure had now begun in earnest.
Three thousand miles of Atlantic Ocean lay ahead of
us, holding we knew not what of new experience,
and for the third time since setting sail our
undertaking imbued us with a certain amount of awe.

At night, alone in the cockpit, one began to think.
Would the drinking water hold out?  What if the
chronometer broke down?  Supposing——  It is as
well not to think too deeply on occasion, and the
crossing of the Atlantic in a small boat is one.

Someone has said that it is the routine of life that
keeps us sane, and I am inclined to agree.  On shore,
one is apt to inveigh against "the little things that
must be done"—the countless, almost mechanical
actions of a day's civilized existence—but at sea life
is composed of such details, and one is thankful for
them.  Making a long-splice or an "eye," filling and
trimming the lamps, washing down deck, or even
washing up dishes, all serve to keep the mind from
unhealthy conjecture.

Sleep was again our worst enemy at the tiller.
Staring into the lighted binnacle with its swaying
compass card, or down at the phosphorescent water
swirling and hissing past the ship's stern, the
helmsman became as one hypnotized.  It seemed that he
was not of this world, but an atom hurtling through
space.  The temptation was to surrender himself to
the sensuous joy of it, a temptation resisted only by
an almost painful effort, and the knowledge that the
lives of all aboard depend on his keeping his leaden
eyelids from closing down.

A four-hour watch as helmsman is too long.  They
do not allow it in the mercantile marine; but what
were we to do?  Steve confessed to recalling all the
poetry that he knew, consisting of most of Kipling,
the whole of Omar Khayyam, and sundry doubtful
limericks; then attempting to say them backward.
Peter hummed over her repertoire of songs, or
thought out new dishes for her week's cookment.
As for me, I kept a marlinspike handy, and when
oblivion threatened used it.

It will be seen that a dream ship is not all dream.
If it were, such is the perversity of human nature,
the dreamer would probably be tired of it within a
month.

"I can promise you the northeast 'trades' the whole
way across," said our friend of the five-masted
schooner at Las Palmas, turning the pages of his log.
Also, the wind chart sported a reassuring number of
long-shafted arrows pointing from that quarter for
the month of October.  These things may account
for the fact that not one day's northeast wind did
we encounter on the Atlantic passage.  It seems that
the elements have a rooted objection to being
anticipated.  We could have crossed in an open boat for
all of the weather, and three becalmed days in
mid-ocean we occupied in swimming round the ship, or
diving to scrape the barnacles off her copper.

But stark calms are a wearisome business.  Every
function of a ship has ceased.  It is as though she
lay dead in a stagnant pool, and any movement of
spars or canvas were the rattling of her bones.  Also,
it is an aggravation to the restless insect called man,
adrift in a breathless waste of waters, to know that
leagues lie ahead of which he is incapable of covering
a yard.

An auxiliary engine is useless under such
circumstances.  To use it is like hurrying on to catch a
tram that is bound to overtake one in the long run.
What is a steaming radius of four hundred miles in a
stretch of three thousand?  No, all one can do after
satisfying himself that his vessel is "as idle as a
painted ship upon a painted sea," is to pass the time
as pleasantly as may be.  We of the dream ship
turned in and slept, or broke the uncanny silence
with fearsome noises on clarionet and piano.  Also,
we fished, though with a lack of success that leads me
to believe that fish do not bite in mid-ocean.  At
night flying fish struck the mainsail, and fell to the
deck with a resounding thwack and a flutter of
"wings," but for the most part on occasions when
we had failed to hang a lantern in the rigging to
attract them, which, as far as I am concerned,
explodes another fallacy.

As day succeeded day, and there was no sign of a
change in our inert condition, our thoughts turned
again in the direction of the drinking water.  True,
we had two hundred gallons aboard, but what was
to prevent us from being becalmed for a month, or
being carried hundreds of miles out of our course by
a gale, according to the mood of the capricious
elements?  We cut our daily allowance from a gallon to
half a gallon per head for all purposes and, as though
in response to our frugality, a breath came out of the
southeast.

At the moment of its arrival Steve and I happened
to be testing our sense of direction by diving
overboard, and trying to come up through a lifebelt
floating about ten yards distant.  Steve had just
conceived the brilliant idea of moving the belt
after the diver had taken the plunge, and
I had emerged from a lung-racking
effort to locate it, when we realized
that the dream ship had moved,
in fact was still moving, with a noticeable
wake in the direction of the horizon.  The
tiller was pegged amidships, and there was nothing
to stop her continuing the motion indefinitely—except
Peter, who was below.  We prayed in that hour
that she was not asleep.

.. figure:: images/img-079.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Swimming near boat

   Swimming near boat

I have often left home—perhaps too often—but
this was the first occasion on which home looked as
if it were leaving *me*, and in mid-Atlantic at that.
Alternately we yelled and swam, but without gaining
a foot until to our infinite relief a small, pyjamaed
figure appeared on deck, threw up its arms in horror,
and brought the dream ship into the wind.

An hour later we were bowling along at seven
knots, revelling in the blessed motion of air, and
planning what we should do when we reached
Barbados, a mere fifteen hundred miles distant.

It was in mid-Atlantic, too, that we received
visitors.  The first were Mr. and Mrs. Smith, a
devoted couple of fish about the size of a sprat, each
decorated similarly with vivid green bands on an
electric blue background.  For four days they
remained with us, swimming closely side by side under
our idle propeller, presumably for shade.  To lie on
deck looking down into the limitless blue depths and
watching our companions became the king of
pastimes aboard the dream ship.  We even tried to
catch them with a minute hook and the tastiest of
baits, but they would suffer no nearer acquaintance.
They were too busy getting somewhere for some
reason to swerve an iota from their course.
During a squall we lost them, or they lost us; in any
case, we never saw them again, and I have often
wondered since what Mr. and Mrs. Smith are doing now.

The next guest was a black bird about the size of
a crow, with webbed feet, a wicked-looking beak,
and white circles round the eyes.  He was a sick and
sorry bird when he fluttered on to the rudder top
during a rain squall, edged slowly along the tiller, and
over Peter's hand into her lap, where she covered him
with her oilskin and he lay content.  But his was a
flying visit in more than one sense of the word, for
he refused to eat.  Bread crumbs, morsels of flying
fish, and meat were offered him, but he spurned them
all, and grew so weak that when carried into the
scuppers by the ship's lurching two days later, he
rose in the air and was carried off into the turmoil of
wind and wave.  The last we saw of him was a bunch
of black feathers on the face of a comber, still
struggling to rise.

What with weather ranging all the way from stark
calms to vicious squalls, and a correspondingly varied
progress of anything from ten to two hundred miles
in the twenty-four hours, it took us thirty days to
cross the Atlantic, and when it was done we spent
the best part of a day trying to find the proof of our
accomplishment in the island of Barbados.  Faulty
navigation again?  Yes, but it is not the easiest
thing in life to make a "bow on" landfall of a clod
of earth twenty-one miles by twelve after a
three-thousand-mile jaunt to reach it.  Also, we suspected
our chronometer.

When Barbados, after the fashion of Grand
Canary, failed to materialize, we of the dream ship
held one of our now familiar board meetings.  There
were two courses open: to emulate the mariner of old
who knew nothing of longitude, and cruise along our
latitude until Barbados appeared; or to head for
Trinidad instead, and so have the coastline of South
America as a buffer if we failed to make it.

We had decided on the latter course, and were
actually standing away for Trinidad, when Barbados,
a mere wraith of land that we scarce dared to believe
in, beckoned us from the southern horizon.  We
accepted the invitation.

The first human face other than our own that we
had seen for a solid month was that of the "outside
man" of Messrs. —— & Co., and as a change we
welcomed it.  He came to us in a natty whaleboat
propelled by a crew of hefty Negro oarsmen, showed
us the best anchorage, and saw us safely berthed
before allowing the fact to emerge that he was an
"outside man," that his particular firm could do
anything for a ship cheaper, quicker, and better than
any in Bridgetown, and that our patronage was the
one thing he had been craving ever since our approach
had been made known from the signal station.  I
shall be surprised on my next visit to Barbados,
which I hope will not be long delayed, if that
"outside man" is not a director of Messrs. —— & Co.

I may add that our first care was to take our erring
chronometer to be readjusted, and the mainspring
broke the next day.  That is how near we had been
to disaster in the Atlantic.

While a new mainspring was being fitted and rated,
we gladly surrendered ourselves to the tender mercies
of the most charming, hospitable people one could
wish to meet.  My recollections of our two-weeks'
sojourn are a trifle vague owing to the rapidity with
which one pleasure succeeded another.  I remember
lying at anchor with awnings up in the most beautiful
bay it is possible to imagine, and sleeping twenty-four
hours on end.  From then onward life consisted
of "swizzles," car rides over a fairy-island, and
more swizzles, pony races to the accompaniment
of swizzles, surf bathing followed by swizzles, and
evenings at the Savannah Club, where conversation
was punctuated and sometimes drowned by the
concoction of yet more swizzles by a hard-worked army
of coloured folk behind a gleaming mahogany bar.

There is no escaping the "swizzle" in Barbados—even
if one wished to, which personally I did not.
It is a delightful, healthful drink composed of the
very best rum, angostura bitters, syrup, fresh lime,
nutmeg, and ice—the whole "swizzled" to the creamy
consistency of——  But I forget that I may be
addressing a country in the grip of total abstinence, and
whatever my faults I have never been accused of
making a man's mouth water without supplying the deficiency.

Before the war the Barbados estate owner was on
the verge of bankruptcy.  Now he is probably the
most prosperous landed proprietor in the world.  It
matters not whether he be white or black, or any one
of the intermediary shades, he is keeping up a luxurious
establishment, driving his car in a cloud of dust
and dignity from one end of the island to the other,
or installing a manager (usually some hopeless wight
who was absent on duty during the war) and taking
up residence in Park Lane or Fifth Avenue according
to taste.  And "sugar" is the answer.  Sugar is
king of Barbados, and it were easier for the proverbial
camel to pass through the needle's eye than for the
outsider to buy, beg, borrow, or steal a square foot
of his domain.

It is difficult to see just what will happen to
Barbados in the future unless some outlet is found for the
Negro population.  Already this minute island is the
second most densely populated spot in the world—the
first being a certain district of China—and there
seems no other alternative than for it to populate
itself into the sea.  The United States is imposing
drastic restrictions on Negro immigration, as
evidenced by the surging and expectant, though mostly
disappointed, crowds that assemble outside the
American Consulate in Bridgetown daily.  The
self-governing British Dominions will have none of them.
Where are they to go?  Meantime, they grow—Lord,
how they grow!—in numbers and insolence.

Hot foot from a ball at one of the hotels, we literally
fled aboard ship and sailed by stealth; otherwise
I am convinced that we should be at Barbados tennising,
surfing, dancing, pony racing, and "swizzling"
to this day.

Even then we weighed anchor one evening only to
drop it the next off Soutrier, a town on the fairy
island of St. Lucia where we had been invited to stay
on a plantation.  Our host, as kindly a soul as ever
lived, insisted that it would do us all a power of good
to leave the dream ship in charge of one of his boys—or
a dozen of them if we preferred—and have a real
rest and change at his house.  And a rest and change
it undoubtedly was.  From doing everything for
ourselves, our régime changed abruptly to one of
being prevented by an army of well-trained house-boys
from so much as turning a hand.

The West Indian planter is a man to be envied.
He lives in one of the beauty spots of the world, and
neither the servant problem nor "high cost of living"
affects him to anything like the same extent as others.
This home that we of the dream ship had invaded
was a miracle of cool, well-ordered comfort, set high
on the wooded hillside, commanding by day an
endless vista of palm-clad mountain and sparkling
Caribbean, and by night encompassed with perfumed
darkness, the glint of fireflies, and the vocal
efforts of the whistling frog—a nimble little fellow,
green as an emerald and no larger than a pea.

The plantation, which only five years previously
had been virgin jungle, was devoted to limes and
cocoa, both of which grow to perfection in the West
Indies, and as a commercial enterprise threaten in
time to dethrone King Sugar.  Here on St. Lucia,
as elsewhere in the West Indies, there is unlimited
scope for the smaller man who stands no chance on
Barbados and the more thickly settled islands.
Indeed, after having spent most of my life roaming
about the world, I can never understand why a man
with strictly limited capital will buy or lease land,
however cheap, in the furthermost corners of the
earth, thousands of costly miles from his market,
and where he will most certainly have to pay anything
from a dollar to five dollars a day for indifferent
labour, while in the West Indies there is still
land to be had as rich as any in the world, plantation
labour—and good labour at that—is a shilling per
day per head, and New York is five, and London
ten days distant.  I can only attribute it to the lure
of "green fields that are ever far off."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THROUGH THE PANAMA CANAL`:

.. class:: center large bold

   THROUGH THE PANAMA CANAL

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   *From Atlantic to Pacific, and the strange happenings
   that intervened*

.. vspace:: 2

.. figure:: images/img-091.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Chapter VII headpiece

   Chapter VII headpiece

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VII

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   *From Atlantic to Pacific, and the strange happenings
   that intervened*

.. vspace:: 2

"Look out for the Caribbean Sea toward December,"
was another axiom of our five-masted-schooner
friend at Las Palmas, but he proved no less fallible
over the passage from Barbados to Colon than he had
concerning the Atlantic.  In fact, I am thinking of in
future asking advice of weather prophets in order to
anticipate the reverse.

A spanking wind on the quarter, with mainsail
and squaresail set, and a mighty following sea that
flung the dream ship before it in a series of exhilarating
swoops, brought us within sight of land in seven
days, a distance of twelve hundred miles.  But what
land?  For a time we were at a loss.  Comparing it
with the chart and descriptions in "sailing directions"
revealed nothing.  It was a low-lying, mist-enshrouded,
sinister-looking land, and we sailed along
its coast for a day and a night before we could tell
whether we had passed Colon or hit the coast to the
eastward.

Ultimately, a lighthouse gave us the clue, and we
found that owing to a current that has the unpleasant
knack of running at anything from a half to three
knots we were still fifty miles from our objective,
so we headed for sea and hove to until daylight.

All night as we lay rolling in a heavy swell steamers
passed us by, floating palaces of light, and with the
dawn we joined the procession of giants making for
the Panama Canal.

We wished to go through the canal?  Very well;
a measurer would be sent off to decide our tonnage,
and we must be ready to take the pilot aboard at five
o'clock the next morning.

That, in effect, is what the canal authorities said,
and I answered it with a smile that I trust was
sufficiently engaging to hide the fact that I was not at all
sure we had enough money between us to pay the
tolls.  It must be an expensive business, this passing
from Atlantic to Pacific.  I had never thought of
that.  There was quite a lot I had not thought
about.  What if the charges were altogether beyond
us?  It would mean Cape Horn!  Cape Horn or the
abandonment of the dream!  Which was worse for
one who, after sixty below zero on the Canadian
prairie, four below zero in France and Belgium, and
something far worse in coalless London, had taken a
solemn oath never again to leave the forties of
latitude!

These terrifying reflections were cut short by a
voice.

"I can't make it more than twelve tons."

"Twelve tons?"

The canal official deigned to exhibit surprise by
a slight elevation of the eyebrows, then smiled.

"The measurer has been aboard," he told me,
"and you are twelve tons net.  The tolls will be
fifteen dollars.  Will you pay now, or at the other
end?"

Such was my relief that I paid on the spot,
thereby reducing our united capital to £20—or, at the
then-prevailing rate of exchange, seventy-eight dollars.

This brief interview with officialdom is typical of
Panama Canal methods.  Speed, silence, efficiency;
nothing else "goes" in "the Zone."  Things are
done in a few seconds and utter silence here that
would take hours and pandemonium elsewhere.  The
entire miracle of passing a ten-thousand-ton liner
from Atlantic to Pacific through seven locks and
forty miles of tortuous, ever-threatening channels
has been performed in six and a half hours, and with
a lack of fuss that is almost uncanny.

But the dream ship was twelve tons, and not ten
thousand, and for that reason it is probable that she
gave more trouble than any craft since the canal
was opened.  Yet on every hand we received the
utmost courtesy and kindness.  Such treatment
made us feel like pestiferous mosquitoes being
politely conducted to the door instead of squashed
flat on the spot as we deserved.  But you shall see.

Punctually at five A.M., the pilot came aboard in
his immaculate white drill uniform and, without a
smile at his surroundings, including ourselves in
variegated costume, took up his position in the bows.
I went below, and after a ten-minutes' wrestle with
the auxiliary, contrived to make three out of the four
cylinders "go" sufficiently to propel us at the dignified
speed of three knots in the direction of the canal.

"Is that the best she can do?" enquired the pilot.

I lifted an apologetic, perspiring, and begrimed
face to him and admitted that it was.  Moreover,
that we were very lucky to be doing that.

"Ah, well, the day is young," he commented,
cheerfully.  "What about an awning?  We shall
be baked alive before we've done."

Did I tell him that the reason we had not rigged an
awning was that I was more than half expecting the
engine to break down, and that we should have to
hoist sail?  I did not.  Whoever heard of sailing
through the Panama Canal?  An awning was rigged,
and we entered Gatun Lock in style, followed by
two more liners.

The giant gates closed.  There was an eruption of
water seemingly under our stern that caused the
tiller to fly over and extract a groan of anguish from
Steve as it crushed him against the cock-pit wall;
the aft warp snapped, and the dream ship commenced
to rise, more like an elevator than a ship in
a lock, until the blank, greasy wall ended, and above
it appeared a row of grinning faces.

"That's that," said the pilot; and it was.

By some miracle the engine carried us to the next
lock, where the same performance was gone through,
with such slight variations as the loss of a hat, three
fenders, and the remainder of the port covering-board.

We passed out into Gatun Lake, a fairy place of
verdure-clad islets and mist-enshrouded reaches,
where cranes flew low over the water, and strange,
wild cries came out of the bush.

It was also the place where our engine refused its
office peremptorily, irrevocably.  I was engineer
of the dream ship, probably the worst on earth, but
still, the engineer, and for an agonized hour I wrestled
with lifeless scrap-iron.  How the profession of
marine motor engineering ever attracts adherents
it is beyond me to imagine.  I know one man it
has sent to an asylum, and many others
who to this day bear the marks of
having trifled with it—finger-nails that
nothing short of cutting
to the quick and gouging
with a shovel will render clean;
hands, clothes, and for
some unknown reason face ingrained
with ineradicable
grime; a permanently furrowed
brow; and a wistful expression that goes to
the heart of the beholder.

.. figure:: images/img-096.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: left
   :alt: Egret, crocodile

   Egret, crocodile

In order to avoid such a fate I have made it a
practice to try hard for one solid hour and, failing to
gain a response from the atrocity, leave the matter
in other, and perhaps more capable, hands.  I
communicated this information to the pilot, and
there and then the man's more human side came to
the surface.  It was raining as it knows how to rain
on the Isthmus, he was soaked to the hide, his natty
uniform resembled nothing more closely than a dish
rag, yet he smiled, and proceeded to remove his
jacket.

"Guess we'd better sail," he said.

Behold once more the dream ship sailing through
the Panama Canal; alternately scudding before rain
squalls, lying becalmed, and making tacks of fifty
yards and less, a passage surely unique in the annals
of "the Zone."  The pilot said he enjoyed it, and
by the way he swigged on halyards and gave us an
old-time chanty to work by, I am inclined to believe
him.  We were lucky in our pilot.

Toward evening, and during a stark calm, Steve
dived overboard and made us fast to a light-buoy,
his jaw dropping perhaps half an inch, and a thoughtful
expression coming into his eyes, when a little later
a log on the muddy shore was suddenly imbued with
life, and slipped into the water with a whisk of a
horny tail.

So it was that we had afternoon tea in comfort,
some alleged music on piano and clarionet, and a
pleasant chat with the pilot concerning the older and
better days of the wind-jammer, while dainty egrettes
watched us from a tree fern, ungainly pelicans
swooped and dived, and somewhere ten-thousand-ton
liners were being hustled through the Panama
Canal.

We had no wireless, that was why it was impossible
to summon a tug to take us on our way, but finally
a monstrous steamer passed so close that it was
possible to hail her, and a few hours later we were
taken in tow by an apparition of noiseless engines,
shining varnish, and gleaming brass.

It would cost us six dollars an hour, the pilot
told us, and I sat back to figure out just how long
seventy-eight dollars would last under such an
onslaught.  The result was alarming.  We held a
board meeting about it in the bows, and decided
there was nothing for it but to go on, and keep going
on, until we stopped.  We had hoped to reach lands
where money was of secondary importance, but we
were not there yet, that was evident.

So we continued to race through the canal at the
rate of six dollars an hour until we reached the
approaches to Pedro Miguel lock, where the apparition
tied us up and steamed off, still at six dollars an hour.

Something happened to us that night at Pedro
Miguel.  Looking back on it all I can hardly
persuade myself that it was not a dream.  We met
some canal officials, tall, sun-burned youths with
the mark of efficiency upon them yet with a merry
twinkle in the eye.  We asked them aboard, and
they came and marvelled at what they saw.  Their
verdict was, as far as I remember: "Some novelty!"  Then
they asked us ashore, and it was our turn to
marvel.  One of our hosts was the chief operator of
a lock, and we saw the miracle of the Isthmus of
Panama from behind.  Futility overwhelms me at the
thought of trying to describe what we saw that night,
over the lock, under the lock, at the sides of the lock;
besides, you will find it all reduced to cold figures in
technical journals if you are that way inclined.  It
was the spirit of the thing that took hold of me: a
pigmy man sitting at a lever!  What was not
possible after this?

We returned to the ship almost stupefied.  One
feels much the same when he attempts to think in
Westminster Abbey.  We were in the process of
turning in when a cheerful head appeared through
the skylight.

"We await your pleasure," quoth a voice.

I explained that the owner of the head was no
doubt unconsciously violating, but still violating, the
sanctity of my sister's bedroom.  It made no
difference.  I protested that at that moment my
sister's costume consisted of a pair of ill-fitting
pyjamas and a kimono; that Steve and I had
nothing to our backs but what we had worn all day—an
undershirt and a pair of football shorts; that we
were all tired to death and literally ached for our
pillows; that his kindness was overwhelming but
that——  Nothing made any difference.

Somehow we found ourselves in a car, the chief
operator's first car that he had learnt to drive during
the dinner hour the previous day.  Out into the
moonlight we sped, or rather zigzagged, at the rate
of forty, while between Peter and myself a youth
named Bill—I shall never forget Bill—kept up a
running flow of informative rhetoric: "*On* the left
we have the famous Isthmus of Panama, intersected
by the still more famous canal, a miracle of modern
engineering, as it has been aptly termed.  Fear
not, lady!" [this in an aside to Peter] "the man at
the wheel values his life as much as yours, perhaps
more.  *And now* we approach the historic city of
Panama, passing on our left the Union Club, otherwise
known as the Onion Club, frequented solely by
the nobility and gentry of the neighbourhood, hence
our exclusion.  *And on the right*——"

On the right was the blazing portico of a cabaret,
and the car had come to a jarring full stop.

In vain we pleaded our costume, the hour of night
the utter degradation of exposing ourselves to the
public gaze in such a condition.  We literally found
ourselves at a table drinking imitation lager beer and
grape juice, and listening to raucous-voiced
imported ladies rendering washy ballads to the
accompaniment of tinkling ice and tobacco smoke.

It all sounds sordid enough, but it was vastly
amusing to sea-weary wanderers, and will remain
with us a memory of kindness and good-fellowship.

So, at last, we lay at anchor off Balboa on the
Pacific Ocean.  We had come far adown the vista
of our dream, and hoped to go a great deal farther.
To do so, we came to the conclusion that it would
be necessary to make some money.  How?  Well,
we had a dream ship, a group of pearling islands lay
thirty miles to the eastward, and——

A strange life, my masters, but one that I would
not exchange with any man on earth.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE GALAPAGOS ISLANDS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   THE GALAPAGOS ISLANDS

.. class:: center

   *The ash heap*

.. vspace:: 2

.. figure:: images/img-105.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Chapter VIII headpiece

   Chapter VIII headpiece

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VIII

.. class:: center

   *The ash heap*

.. vspace:: 2

When Balboa came to Balboa, it is safe to say that
no ice cream awaited him there.  Indeed, according
to history the place was little more than a
mosquito-infested swamp, and that is where we of the dream
ship had the pull over Señor Balboa.

The town is in the Canal Zone, which is United
States territory, though cutting clean through the
Republic of Panama, and in this particular sample
of United States territory, though founded upon a
swamp, you will encounter—among other such amazing
things as an entire absence of mosquitoes, charming
residences set in park-like surroundings, and a
well-conducted club free to all—an assortment of
ice-cream creations warranted to hypnotize the uninitiated.

I have to mention this seemingly trivial detail
because our lives at Balboa appeared to consist in
rowing ashore to transact important business in
Panama, and being waylaid en route and held captive
by insidious messes.

Besides, it was over a Something Sundae that I
met the man who came very near to shaping our
destiny.  True, there were pearling islands to the
eastward, he informed me; he had fished there himself
in the past with varying success, and would like
nothing better than to try again aboard the dream
ship.  He would make enquiries.

The fruits of these were imparted the next day over
a Peach Something Else.  The group had been done
to death, and was "closed" for a term of three years,
but—this over an Orange Orangoutang—if we cared
to go a little farther afield, and divert our attention
from pearl shell to gold, he knew of a spot not far
south where the natives were in the habit of washing
the stuff out of clods of earth from their backyards,
held under the eaves of the houses during a rain
storm.  What about it?  The answer at the moment,
and as far as I can remember, was a Strawberry
Slush.

But we had decided to go.  Preparations for
making the wherewithal we so sorely needed were
already afoot when a miracle intervened.  On
succeeding one afternoon in getting clean past
temptation and into the city of Panama, I found a
letter awaiting me from a certain magician who
dwells in a place called New York.  To hide the
truth no longer, he had sold a story of mine to the
"movies" at a figure that to our starved gaze looked
like the war indemnity, and inside of a week the
amount, in beautiful, round, twenty-dollar gold
pieces, littered the cabin table of the dream ship.

I am aware that in most accounts of travel such
sordid details as the financial difficulties encountered
are invariably omitted, either because there were
none, or because the writer considers it in the light of
bad form to mention them.  In our particular case
they certainly existed, and personally I am not very
strong on form.  After all, money is a means to an
end—even to the realization of a dream, and I can
only say that ours would have evaporated into thin
air at Balboa but for the miracle performed by the
magician in New York.

On the strength of our sudden affluence, the dream
ship received a sleek and well-deserved coat of paint,
a new main sheet of good manila, a hundred gallons
of kerosene, a fresh supply of provisions, and
incidentally a new lease of life.

She sailed in charge of a genial pilot who seemed
as pleased as his confrère of the canal at being under
sail again, and sighed wistfully on taking his leave
at the last fairway buoy.  There are many such men
engaged in the routine of life, who long to break
away and answer the call of the sea and adventure,
but who rarely do, either because they cannot or
have not the courage of their dream.

We had been advised that Panama Bay was a
promising trolling ground, and for once report spoke
true, for we caught a fine bonito within an hour of
our departure.  We were doing about five knots at
the time, and it was a fine sight to see a fifteen-pound
fish leaping and splashing astern; and a still
finer to see sections of him sizzling in the frying pan.

A very different class of fish visited us a day
or two later but, spurning our spoon bait, gave his
attention to the log.  A large shark, looking like
a sinister shadow in the turmoil of our wake,
investigated the twinkling fan with interest.  Five
times he approached it and withdrew, before risking
indigestion and swallowing it whole.

As about a week later precisely the same thing
occurred to our last remaining fan, from then
onward we were bereft of log and "dead reckoning" at
one fell swoop.  However, as the sun is an almost
constant companion in these latitudes, and the
chronometer, after a thorough overhauling at Panama,
appeared to be behaving itself, the loss was not as
serious as might be expected.

Each day now brought us appreciably nearer the
Equator, and its presence began to make itself felt
in gasping moments at the tiller, a glare from the
water that caused blood-shot eyes until Peter the
practical produced a pair of smoked glasses, and deck
seams running and bubbling marine glue.

.. figure:: images/img-109.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: right
   :alt: Sailboat, shark

   Sailboat, shark

Peter's watch was a spectacle not to
be missed, consisting as it did of pyjamas,
smoked glasses, and a parasol!  I have
often wondered
what sort of
entertainment
we should
have provided for
a passing steamer on
occasion, but as we never
sighted one from the
beginning to the end of our cruise,
I fear I shall never know.

"To-morrow," said Steve, after
twelve days of fair though light winds, "we
ought to raise Tower Island."

We were approaching the ash heap of the world.
At the time we had no notion that it was an ash heap,
but you shall judge.  Throughout that night we took
our appointed four-hour single-handed watch, slept
our four hours as we had come mechanically so to
do during the past four months, and went on deck at
dawn to see Tower Island.

It was not there.

Steve, who was at the tiller, looked vaguely
troubled, but offered no comment.  Neither did
we, by this time being used to such things.  Besides,
"Leave a man to his job," had become our watch-word
through many vicissitudes.  But when night
followed day with customary inexorableness, and
without producing anything more tangible than the
same empty expanse of ocean, Steve was constrained
to mutter, a sure preliminary to coherent speech.

"One of three things has happened," he announced:
"the chronometer's got the jim-jams, the
chart's wrong, or the blinking island has foundered."

As skipper of the dream ship, it devolved upon
myself to verify these surprising statements, which,
after a superhuman struggle, I did.  By our
respective observations and subsequent calculations the
ship's position proved identical.  According to
instruments we were at that moment plumb in the
middle of Tower Island.  It was thoughtless of it
to have evaporated at the very moment when we so
sorely needed it as a landmark.  We said so in
strong terms.  We were still saying something of
the sort when a small, high-pitched voice came from
aloft:

"Land O!"

Peter, in striped white-and-green pyjamas, was
astride the jaws of the gaff.  Steve and I exchanged
relieved glances, and, with a lashed tiller, we all went
below for a "swizzle," the now inevitable accompaniment
to a landfall.  We had reached the Galapagos
Islands.

The southeast "trade" was blowing as steadily as
a "trade" knows how, and there was nothing between
us and Cristobal, the only inhabited island of
the group; consequently, I slept the sleep of a mind
at peace until awakened by a well-known pressure on
the arm.

"Come and take a look at this," whispered Steve so
as not to wake Peter in the opposite bunk.

"This" proved to be a solid wall of mist towering
over the ship like a precipice.  The trade wind had
fallen to a stark calm, and the dream ship lay wallowing
on an oily swell.  A young moon rode clear overhead,
and myriads of monstrous stars glared down at
us; yet still this ominous gray wall lay fair in our
path.

"It ought not to be land," said Steve, "but I don't
like the look of it."

Neither did I.  We stood side by side, straining
our eyes into the murk.  A soft barking, for all the
world like that of a very old dog, sounded somewhere
to port.  Splashes, as of giant bodies striking the
water, accompanied by flashes of phosphorescent
light, came at intervals from all sides, and presently
the faint lap of water reached our ears.

"Mother of Mike!" breathed Steve.  "We're
*alongside* something."

At that moment, and as though impelled by some
silent mechanism, the pall of mist lifted, revealing
an inky black wall of rock not fifty yards distant.

My frenzied efforts at the flywheel of the motor
auxiliary were futile, as I had more than half
expected.  Who has ever heard of these atrocities
answering in an emergency?  We had no sweeps.
To anchor was a physical impossibility; the lead-line
vanished as probably twenty other lead-lines
would have vanished after it in those fathomless
waters.  So we stood, watching the dream ship
drift to her doom.

What happened during the next hour is as hard to
describe as I have no doubt it will be to believe.  The
Galapagos Islands are threaded with uncertain
currents, and one was setting us now on to the rocky
face of an islet cut as clean and sheer to the sea as a
slice of cheese.  We should have touched but for our
fending off.  There is no other way of describing our
antics than to say that we clawed our way along that
rocky wall until at the end of it a faint air caught the
jib, the foresail, the mainsail, and we stood away
without so much as a scratch.

Sunrise that morning was the weirdest I have ever
seen.  There are over two thousand volcano cones
in the Galapagos Islands, and apparently we were
in the midst of them.  On all hands and at all
distances were rugged peaks one hundred to two
thousand feet high, rising sheer from a rose-pink
sea into a crimson sky.  Sleek-headed seals broke
water alongside, peered at us for a space with their
fawnlike eyes, barked softly, and were gone.  Pelicans
soared above our truck, and fell like a stone on
their prey.  Tiny birds, yellow and red, flitted about
the deck or flew through the skylights, and settled
on the cabin fittings with the utmost unconcern.
And down under, in the crystal-clear depths, vague
shapes hovered constantly: sharks, dolphin, turtle,
and ghastly devil fish.

All life seemed confined to water and air; never
was dry land so desolate and sinister as those myriads
of volcanic cones.  Yet one of them was peopled
with human beings.  Which?  We were lost, if
ever a ship was lost, in the labyrinths of an ash heap.

All we knew was that Cristobal was the eastern-most
of the group.  We sailed east, only to be becalmed
inside of an hour and to lose by current what
we had gained by wind.  Close to this same group a
sailing vessel has been known to have her insurance
paid before she reached port.  The calms run in
belts of varying widths, and unless a ship can be
towed or kedged to one side or the other there is
nothing to prevent her remaining in the same spot for
six months.  Our water would not last that time, and
there is none on any of the islands except Cristobal.
We began to think.  We continued to think for four
mortal days until the fitful southeast "trade" revived
as by a miracle, and we were bowling along at a
seven-knot clip.  What a relief was the blessed motion of
air!  We hardly dared breathe lest it should drop.

It held, and we made what we took to be Cristobal.
The dinghy was lowered, the ship cleaned up
for port, and we began to discuss the possibilities of
fresh milk, eggs, and bread.  But it was not Cristobal
Island.  Neither were three others that we visited,
all as alike as peas—a chain of ash heaps, an
iron-bound coast of volcanic rock broken here and there
by a dazzling coral beach.

I admit that to professional seafarers our inability
to find Cristobal must appear ridiculous.  For
their benefit I would point out that we were not
professional seafarers but a party of inconsequent
and no doubt over-optimistic landlubbers engaged
in the materialization of a dream—to cruise through
the South Sea Islands in our own ship; that what
navigation we knew had been learnt in three weeks;
and that I would invite any one who fancies his
bump of locality to test it in the Galapagos Islands.

We had more than half decided to cut out Cristobal
and its five hundred inhabitants, and shape a
course for the Society Islands, three thousand miles
to the southwest'ard, when Steve gave a yell like a
wounded pup.

"I see Dalrymple Rock," he chanted as one in a
trance, with the binocular to his eyes.  "I see Wreck
Point, and a bay between 'em with houses on the
beach.  What more do you want?"

How supremely simple it was to recognize each
feature by the chart—when there was an
unmistakable landmark to go by.  What fools we had
been to——  But we left further recriminations till a
later date.  At the present moment it was necessary
to enter Wreck Bay through a channel three hundred
yards wide without a mark on either side in the teeth
of a snorting "trade," and with a lee tide.

At one time during the series of short tacks that
were necessary to get a "slant" for the anchorage
we were not more than fifty yards from the giant
emerald-green rollers breaking on Lido Point to port
with the roar of thunder.  To starboard one could see
the fangs of the coral reef waiting for us to miss stays
to rip the bottom out of us.  But the dream ship
did not miss stays, and finally we shot through the
channel into Wreck Bay, and anchored in three
fathoms off a rickety landing-stage.

While the agony of removing a three-weeks' beard
was in progress a crowd had assembled on the beach,
and presently a boatload of three put off to us.
Steve, with his smattering of Spanish, received them
at the companion with a new-born elegance that
matched their own.  They proved to be the owner
of the island, a good-looking youth of about twenty-five;
the chief of police (presumably "chief" because
there is only one representative of the law in the
Galapagos), a swarthy Ecuadorean in a becoming
poncho; and a little, wrinkled old man with a finely
chiselled face and delicate hands.

The owner of Cristobal informed us in excellent
French (he had been four years in Paris previous to
marooning himself on his equatorial possession) that
the island was ours, and the fulness thereof; that he
also was ours to command, and would we dine with
him that evening at the *hacienda*, it being New Year's
eve?

The "chief" of police demanded our ship's papers,
which, when placed in his hands, he gracefully
returned without attempting to read, and gave his
undivided attention to a rum "swizzle" and a cigar.

The little old man, whom we soon learnt to call
"Dad," sat mum, with a dazed expression on his
face and his head at an angle after the fashion of the
deaf.  When he spoke, which he presently did with
an unexpectedness that was startling, it was in a low,
cultured voice, and in English!  "What about this
Dutch war he had heard rumours of during the last
year or two?  With Germany, was it?  Well, now,
and who was winning?  Over, eh?—and with the
Allies on top?  That was good, that was good!"  He
rubbed his wrinkled hands and glared round on
the assembled company with an air of triumph, but
without making any appreciable impression on the
owner of Cristobal or the "chief" of police.

Dad was a type, if ever there was one, of the
educated ne'er-do-well hidden away in the farthest
corner of the earth to avoid those things which most
of us deem so desirable.  He had a split-bamboo
house on the beach, a wife who could cook, freedom,
and God's sunlight.  What more did man desire?
He had run away to sea at the age of seventeen, run
away from sea two years later at the Galapagos
Islands, and remained there ever since.  This was
the second time he had spoken English in fifty years,
so we must excuse his halting diction, but the tales he
could tell—the tales!

He was here when the pirates of the South American
coast murdered for money, even as they have a
knack of doing to this day, and hid the loot at their
headquarters in the Galapagos Islands, silver and gold,
boatloads of it.  He had built a cutter with his own
hands, and sailed in search of this same loot, only to
encounter the sole owner, still guarding his ill-gotten
gains though reduced to nakedness and hair.  At a
distance Dad had seen him first, and, mistaking him
for a mountain goat, had shot him through the heart.
It was the first man he had killed, and he could not
stay on the island after that—especially at night.

Afterward, I asked the owner of Cristobal if one
might believe half the old man said, and he nodded
gravely.

"There is much, also, that he does not say," he
added with a smile.

There is undoubtedly treasure still lying hidden
in the Galapagos Islands.  Two caches have been
unearthed, silver ingots and pieces of eight
respectively.  The finder of one built himself a handsome
hotel in Ecuador, and the other drank himself to
death in short order.  But there is definite proof
that there is more.

As a field for the treasure hunter it is doubtful if
any place in the world offers better chances of success
to-day than the Galapagos Islands, but—and there
is always a "but"—the uncertainty of wind and
current amongst the islands makes it impossible for
a sailing ship to undertake the search, a motor
auxiliary is too unreliable, and a small steamer is too
large for the creeks and reef channels it would be
necessary to negotiate.  With a full-powered launch
and diving apparatus, and a parent ship in attendance,
and unlimited time, and patience, and money—but
these be dreams beyond the reach of the
penniless world-wanderer: dreams, nevertheless, that
will assuredly one day be realized.

No one thinks of the Galapagos Islands.  Situated
a bare six hundred miles from the American coastline
in the direct trade route between the South
Pacific Islands and the United States of America, this
group is seldom visited more than twice a year, and
then for the most part by Ecuadorean schooners.  The
veriest atoll in the South Pacific receives more
attention, and with not a tithe of the cause.  The cause?
Well, come with us to the *hacienda* of the owner of
Cristobal and you shall see.

For this purpose it is necessary to transfer one's
activities from the heaving deck of the dream ship
to the equally heaving back of a mountain pony, and
lope for an hour up a winding, boulder-strewn track
through a wilderness of low scrub and volcanic rock.
"Still an ash heap," you think, "nothing but an ash
heap."

Then you surmount a ridge, the last of half a dozen,
and rein in to breathe your pony and incidentally to
marvel.  You remind yourself that you are precisely
on the Equator; yet it is positively chilly up here.  A
green, gently undulating country, dotted with
grazing cattle and horses, patches of sugar-cane, coffee
bushes, and lime trees, stretches away to a
cloud-capped range of mountains.

The soil is a rich red loam, almost stoneless, and
scarcely touched with the plough.  There are three
thousand five hundred head of cattle at present on
Cristobal Island, and it could support fifty thousand
with ease.  There is no disease and no adverse
climatic condition with which to contend, and at three
years old a steer brings one hundred dollars (gold),
live weight, at Guayaquil—when a steamer can be
induced to call and take it there.

There are a few hundred acres under cultivation
when there ought to be thousands, and two hundred
bone-lazy peons do the work of fifty ordinary farm
hands.

Looking down on this fertile valley it is hard to
realize that one is standing on the lip of a long-extinct
crater, that in reality Cristobal is a series of
these, dour and uninviting to a degree, viewed from
outside, but veritable gardens within.  And there
are four other islands in the Galapagos Group—some
smaller, some larger, than Cristobal—uninhabited
and exactly similar in character.  Nominally,
they belong to Ecuador, which accounts for their
tardy development; but here, surely, is a new field
for enterprise.

In the midst of the valley, situated on a hillock
and surrounded by the peons' grass houses, is the
owner's *hacienda*.  Here we met, at a dinner of
strange but appetizing dishes, the accountant and the
*comisario*, the former a rotund little gentleman
with very long thumb nails (the insignia of the brain
worker), which he clicked together with gusto when
excited or amused; the latter a tall, handsome youth
and something of an exquisite, if one may judge by
biscuit-coloured silk socks and an esthetic tie.

It was a cheerful occasion, followed by the best
coffee I have ever tasted and songs to a guitar
accompaniment.

Out in the compound, under the stars, the peons
also indulged in a New Year's *fiesta*; so that by
midnight the place was a blur of tobacco smoke, oil
flares, thrumming guitars; gyrating, brightly hued
ponchos, with their owners somewhere inside them;
dogs, chickens, and children.

Everyone seemed thoroughly happy and contented.
And after all, what else matters?  That is
the Ecuadorean point of view, and who shall say it is
a bad one?

A starlit ride to the beach, a few strokes of the
oars that carve deep caverns of phosphorescent light
in the inky waters, and we are again aboard.  And
herein lies one of the manifold joys of one's own ship.
One may travel at will over the highway of the earth,
carrying his home and his banal but treasured
belongings with him.  Like the hermit-crab, he may
emerge where and when he will, take a glimpse at life
thereabouts, and return to the comfort of accustomed
surroundings—a pipe-rack ready to hand, a favourite
book or picture placed just so.

Sheltered by a coral reef that broke the force of
the Pacific rollers, and with holding-ground of firm
white sand, we made up arrears of sleep that night,
and scattered after breakfast to explore the beach.

There was a lagoon swarming with duck, not half
a mile inland, that attracted Steve and his new
twelve-bore gun like a magnet.  Peter interviewed the
lighthouse-keeper's wife anent cooking for us
during our stay, and I—I lazed; it gives one time to
notice things that escape the attention of the industrious.

A steam-engine was chugging somewhere behind the
belt of stunted trees that fringed the beach, and I
found it to be a coffee-grinder fuelled, if you please,
with sawed lengths of lignum-vitæ—a furnace of
wood at something like five dollars a stick in most
countries!  I should have liked to see the face of a
block-maker of my acquaintance at such vandalism.
But here it is nothing of the sort.  Little else in the
way of indigenous scrub grows on Cristobal.

Mechanically gravitating toward Dad's split-bamboo
abode, I came upon him seated on a log, staring
meditatively at the crumbling skeleton of what had
been, or was at one time going to be, a ship.

"Why didn't you finish her?" I shouted into
his "best" ear.

He stared at me in a daze, then burst forth in
Spanish, until I succeeded in convincing him that he
might as well talk double Dutch.

"Of course, of course," he muttered.  "I forgot;
Lord, how I forget!  It's queer to me that I can
speak English at all after all these years; but I can;
that's something, isn't it?"

"Sure thing," I yelled; "keep it up.  Tell me why
you didn't finish your ship."

He pondered the matter; then spoke slowly:

"I told you of the other I built—and why.  Well,
I ran her on a reef—splinters in five minutes.  Took
the heart out of me for a bit, that did.

"Then I began to think of that loot again.  I do
still, for that matter; can't help it.  You see, I think
I know where it is.  So I started on this one."  He
nodded toward the hulk, silhouetted against the
crimsoning sky.

"I'd got to the planking when it occurred to me
I'd want a partner for the job, at my age; and who
could I trust?  They'd slit your throat for ten
dollars in those days.  They murdered the present
owner's father in cold blood.  I wouldn't put it
beyond 'em to do the same to this one if it wasn't
that he's a smart lad and carries the only firearms
on the island.

"No one's come here since, no one that I'd trust....
Then, too, what if I found the stuff?  What
good would it do me—now?"  He spread out his
delicately shaped hands in a deprecating gesture.  "I
should die in a month if I left here.  Finest climate
on earth, this is...."  Suddenly he laughed—a
low, reminiscent cackle of mirth.

"But that wasn't all that decided me.  I'd got to
the planking, Guayaquil oak it was, and I was
steaming it on when a nail drew, and the plank caught
me in the chest, knocked me six yards, and broke a
rib.  It's broken yet, I guess; there was no one to
mend it.  Well, that finished it.  I wasn't meant to
build that ship."

He stopped abruptly and stared down at his
battered rawhide shoes.

The inference was obvious.

"Well, what about it?" I suggested.

He looked up at that.

"I've been thinking about it ever since you came
here," he confessed.  "I'll go with you; but mind
this, you mustn't curse me if nothing comes of it.
I don't promise anything.  All I say is I think I
know where the stuff is, if someone hasn't got it."

"I'll let you know to-morrow," said I, and left him
sitting there.

Was the man senile?  There was nothing to make
one think so.  Was he a liar?  There was equally
nothing to prove it.  At least half his story was a
matter of island history.

We of the dream ship held a board meeting on the
subject of loot that evening.  We discussed it from
every angle, and came to the conclusion that with
the present atrocity called a motor auxiliary and the
weather conditions of the group, we might take
three days over the business and we might take three
months; that the chances of finding something were
outweighed by the risk of losing the ship, and that
we were in pursuit of something visionary, anyway,
so we had better get on with it.

The voting went two to one against, and I leave
you to decide whose was the deciding voice.

I give this interview with Dad for what it is worth,
and simply because I see no prospect of undertaking
the search as it should be undertaken.  I am aware that
it reads like the purest romance, but it is true in every
particular, as any one will soon discover on visiting
Wreck Bay, Cristobal Island, in the Galapagos Group.

The old man still waits there on the beach for a
ship and someone he can trust; but judging by his
frail appearance (he is seventy-seven), he will not
wait much longer.

Often during the days that followed I found myself
standing at the dream ship's rail, looking seaward
to a dim outline of mountains against the blue,
and wondering....  But only the ash heap knows.





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.. _`THE MARQUESAS ISLANDS`:

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   THE MARQUESAS ISLANDS

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   *The real South Seas—Big-game shooting
   extraordinary—A case of thwarted ambition*

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   :alt: Chapter IX headpiece

   Chapter IX headpiece

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   CHAPTER IX

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   *The real South Seas—Big-game shooting
   extraordinary—A case of thwarted ambition*

.. vspace:: 2

We of the dream ship were "watering," or rather
transferring, three hundred gallons of a doubtful-looking
fluid from the beach reservoir of Cristobal to
the ship's tanks by means of kerosene tins, a rickety
landing-stage swarming with sand flies, and an
equally rickety dinghy.

We were, in fact, enjoying a spell, to the accompaniment
of vast quantities of cocoanut milk, before
setting sail for the Marquesas, three thousand miles
distant, and were in no mood for an interruption,
which is probably why it came.  A pigmy figure on
the landing was apparently dancing a hornpipe and
emitting strange cries.

"Who is it, and what the —— does he want?"
I queried with customary amiability.

"It's the *comisario*," said Steve, with binocular
upheld in one hand and a brimming cocoanut shell in
the other, "and he's probably found that we need a
bill of health or clearance or something."

I believe I sighed.  I have a notion that Steve
swore, and I am quite sure that we rowed ashore and
interviewed the *comisario*, the handsome youth whose
silk socks and passionate tie contrasted strangely
with his surroundings.  He still danced.

"He says that it is necessary that he should
accompany us," Steve translated.

"To the Marquesas?"

"To anywhere."

"Really?  And where does the necessity come in?"

After still further variations of the hornpipe and
a prodigious outflow of Ecuadorean Spanish, the
following was evolved: They were after him—a
trifling indiscretion in the matter of issuing grog
licenses to the peons.  The Ecuadorean Government
was to blame.  They expected an official to live on
twenty dollars a month and nothing else!  How was
it possible?  Moreover, the President himself, elected
on a wage basis of
forty-dollars-a-month-and-bring-your-own-blankets,
would be getting the boot in a
short three months, and with him went
everyone—everyone!

What was then to happen to the officials he had
placed in power?  More important still, what was
to happen to this particular official?  He must
accompany us.  It was the only possible solution.  He
would work.  *Carramba*, how he would work! and for
nothing but his passage to anywhere—anywhere!

Steve and I exchanged glances.  The entire crew
of the dream ship was, as I think I have before
mentioned, exceedingly tired of cooking.  The
*comisario* seized on our silence.

Maybe we thought he could not work?

With a dramatic gesture he tore from his neck
the passionate tie, from his feet the silk socks, from
his back a virulently striped shirt, and stood revealed
in a natty line of undervests.

"Poor devil!" said I, thinking of the dream ship's
fo'c's'le in a seaway.

"Poor nothing!" said Steve.  "He wants work;
let him have it."

And that was how Señor ——, hereafter known
as Bill, came to join the dream ship.

We sailed, and continued to sail before a steady
southeast "trade" for twenty-two days, during which
the *comisario* suffered alternately from seasickness,
homesickness, and sheer inability to do anything but
smoke cigarettes and sleep; our water tanks, under
the magic wand of the Galapagos beach reservoir,
transformed themselves into aquariums of energetic
animalcules; and our entire biscuit supply crumbled
to dust under the onslaughts of a particularly virulent
red ant.

But these be incidentals to life aboard dream ships,
and, at the first sight of Nukuhiva they faded to little
more than amusing memories.

We had reached our goal!  The South Sea Islands
were ours!  It was hard to realize.  At the sight
of gorgeous Nukuhiva gliding toward us over the
sparkling blue water I remember looking round at
the good old ship that had slowly but steadfastly
carried us all these thousands of miles, and wondering
what she thought of it all.  I am aware that the idea
of a ship having thoughts savours of senile decay,
but that is what passed through my mind at the time,
and has passed through it a hundred times since.

More nonsense has probably been written about
the South Sea Islands than about any other part of
the world.  The library novelist, the globe-trotting
journalist, and a reading public athirst for exotic
romance have all contributed to this end: so that
here, at the outset of attempting to describe what
we of the dream ship saw there, I find myself at a
loss.  In short, "these few remarks" may be taken
as an apology and a warning.

I have nothing to offer on a par with the standard
article, such as struggles with sharks, conflicts with
cannibals, or philandering with princesses.  My line,
I fear, is facts as I find them.

A fine island is Nukuhiva—as fine an example of
volcanic formation as one will find anywhere.  Sheer
walls of cloud-capped rock six thousand feet high,
some literally overhanging the crystal-clear water,
and all embossed and engraved with strangely patterned
basalt.  There are pillars, battlements, turrets,
so that with half-closed eyes it seems one is
approaching a temple, a mediæval castle, a mosque
of the East.  And the valleys—deep, river-threaded,
verdure-choked valleys fading away into mysterious
purple mists.  But it is little better than an
impertinence to attempt a description of Nukuhiva
after Melville's "Typee."\*


\*See Appendix.


For once the monstrosity in our engine-room was
induced to exert three of its four cylinders, and we
entered the harbour of Tai o Hae in style.  It was
as well, for a trim trading schooner flying the French
flag was at anchor close inshore, and her entire crew
lined the rail to see what manner of insect had
invaded her privacy.

"Where are you from?" hailed a surprisingly
English voice as soon as our anchor-chain had ceased
its clamour.

"London," we chorused.

"Well, I'm damned!" came a response, evidently
not intended for our ears, but audible nevertheless.

In rather less than three minutes a whaleboat-load
of visitors was aboard the dream ship, and the
silent bay echoed to a fusillade of question and
counter-question.

Followed a dinner at the trading station on a wide,
cool veranda, where, under the influence of oysters,
California asparagus, fowl, bush pig, taro root, and
French champagne, we became better acquainted
with our hosts—two as amiable Frenchmen as ever
I met.  They represented a trading company of
Papeete and Paris, and lived as only Frenchmen
appear to know how to live.

The Marquesans, we gathered over coffee and
cigars, were dying rapidly.  Consumption.
Introduced in the form of Panama fever by labourers
returning from canal construction.  The fever
afterward developed into the white plague by reason
of the natives' unresisting, if not acquiescent, nature.
And when all were gone, what then?  Chinese.

The Chinese appear to be the answer to most
questions in the South Pacific to-day.  They come; it
costs them but fifty dollars to land; and after that
they grow—*mon Dieu*, how they grow!

And can nothing be done?  A shrug of the shoulders
and the offer of a refilled glass are the answers
of the Frenchman.  But a short time now and he
personally will be in a position to return to his
beloved Paris, or Marseilles, or Brittany.

But we had lately returned from dealing with the
Boche; so had our hosts.  We drank respectively
to the Royal Field Artillery, the Mitrailleurs, the
Machine-gun Corps, and the incomparable French
Infantry.  What of it, if we continue the sport on
the morrow, among the wild cattle and goats of
Nukuhiva?  To-morrow, then, at five o'clock.

The schooner, scheduled at daylight to load copra
worth five hundred dollars a ton, was cheerfully
detained for the trip, and loaded to capacity with
bottled beer, coughing Marquesans, and a varied
armoury of firearms.

We sailed down a coast that it is a sore temptation to
describe and landed by whaleboat on a surf-pounded
beach.  Thereafter we plodded, crawled, and stumbled
over as vicious a country as it is possible to
imagine—crumbling shale, razor-edged ledges, and deceptive
tableland of knee-high grass that only served to hide
the carpet of keen-edged volcanic rocks beneath.

And the heat!  But a representative of the
incomparable infantry led the way; and who would not
follow to the death, out of very shame?  At each
halting place the *élan* of this same representative
seemed to increase.  Sitting crosslegged on a rock
in the meagre shade of a scrub tree, he would
discourse on any subject under the sun, while his
audience gasped, emptied the perspiration out of their
boots, and cursed the *cantine* (a gigantic native
bearing an almost as gigantic sack of bottled beer) for
lagging.

I was under the impression that the game was to
have been wild; hence my surprise when a herd of
something like a hundred and fifty goats of all ages,
from the bearded and maned veteran, or "stinker,"
down to the daintiest kid, cavorted up to our resting-place
and sniffed at us inquisitively.  It was necessary
to fling stones to keep some of the more daring
at bay.

So much for goat-hunting in the Marquesas.  It is
evident that these beasts are so "wild" that they
know nothing of man; who shall say they have missed
much in consequence?

.. _`The Dream Ship Passes from Atlantic to Pacific`:

.. _`At St. Lucia, West Indies`:

.. figure:: images/img-138.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: *The Dream Ship Passes from Atlantic to Pacific; At St. Lucia, West Indies*

   *The Dream Ship Passes from Atlantic to Pacific; 
   At St. Lucia, West Indies*

The cattle are a different matter.  Shy as deer,
they must be warily stalked and shot mostly on the
run, at anything from a hundred to a hundred and
fifty yards; also, they have an engaging habit of
turning when wounded and giving the huntsman the
worst possible time in their power, which in the case
of a hefty bull or cow with calf is not inconsiderable.

.. _`Launching Outrigger Canoe in the Marquesas`:

.. _`Pascal, the Pearl-diving Non-starter`:

.. figure:: images/img-139.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: *Launching Outrigger Canoe in the Marquesas; Pascal, the Pearl-diving Non-starter*

   *Launching Outrigger Canoe in the Marquesas; 
   Pascal, the Pearl-diving Non-starter*

There must have been a herd of something like
fifty grazing on the precipitous hillside, and the first
shot, fired by an over-anxious Marquesan, against
strict orders, sent them scuttling like antelope out of
the valley and over the ridge.  One fine bull received
his medicine from my trusty little Winchester on the
very brink, collapsed, and rolled like an avalanche
of meat to the bottom.

We bagged four of this herd, and the Marquesans
fell on them, quartering and selecting with
extraordinary skill, and finally carrying one hundred
pounds each of solid meat to the beach five miles
below.  How this last feat was accomplished by a
band of ramping consumptives I have no notion,
though I saw it done.  I only know that after
carrying two rifles and a gun over the same country I
literally tumbled on to the beach, bruised and
bleeding and trembling from sheer fatigue.  Even the
representative of incomparable infantry admitted
to being tired, and, thank heaven, he looked it!

It had been a successful day, I was given to
understand, and there followed in consequence song and
dance aboard the dream ship until dawn touched the
peaks of Tai o Hae.

A native dance is a dreary and monotonous affair
to the average white man, because he does not take
the trouble to understand.  He sees before him an
assembly of posturing, howling natives, and seldom
realizes that he is witnessing a pageant of history
that has never been written or read.

The performance opened with a pantomimic
representation of the cruise of the dream ship.
According to the actors' ideas, all aboard suffered
acutely from seasickness, were utterly unable to
stand upright, and continually looked for land under
the shade of an upraised hand.  Our vigour in
battling with storms was extraordinary; we stumbled
over rope-ends, clung to the rigging, nearly capsized,
and one of us fell overboard, to be rescued, amid
shrieks of laughter, by means of a boat-hook and the
seat of his pants.

We were a joke, there was no doubt about that,
and any one who takes a ten-thousand-mile journey
in a twenty-three-ton yacht to the Marquesas and
wants to be taken seriously had better go elsewhere.

From such trivialities the performers passed on to
what was evidently their stock repertoire—the
history of the Marquesas as handed down from father
to son.  It was all there in gesture and chant—mighty
battles with their neighbours the Paumotans, cannibalism,
peace, the advent of the white man with his
rum, the plague that still consumes them, and all
enacted without resentment.

That is the most astounding thing, that these
people who were living their own lives, and surely as
happy lives as ours, bear no ill will for the incredible
sufferings our civilization has brought among them.
Perhaps they do not think, and if so it is as well.

Conceive yourself, if you can, oh, denizen of Park
Lane, Fifth Avenue, or Champs Elysées, a healthy,
upstanding, unclad savage of-the South Seas, and
living your own life.

You may be a cannibal; and are there no cannibals,
and worse, west of Suez?  You will be a warrior
and fight for your country and your womenfolk.
Is there anything wrong about that?

You will have a stricter moral code than most
white folk, but that cannot be helped.  You will
hunt and fish and gather fruit for your family—in
fact, you will live in the only way you know how to
live, in contentment.

One day an extraordinary-looking object called a
white man presents himself and informs you that you
are not living in the right way at all.  A much better
way, according to this gentleman, is to exchange a
ton of your cocoanuts for a bottle of rum or a
death-dealing instrument made of rusty iron.

You are a tolerant sort of person, and you listen
and drink his rum.  The next day you have an
insufferable headache, and, logically concluding that
he has poisoned you, you kill him.

But that is not the end.  Replicas of him keep
arriving, and you find you need his rum and his
rusty iron, the one for its elevating properties, the
other for its dispatch in dealing with enemies.  Still
more replicas arrive, but of a different order.  Many
of them are kindly, well-meaning men, and great
talkers.  They tell you that they have found a
God—the only God—and you must worship him in their
way.  The trouble is that each has a different way,
but they are all right, and they all prove it by the
same book.

Preserve me from the futilities of theological
argument; but I met at Tai o Hae a Seventh Day
Adventist missionary, an earnest, clean-living, kindly
man, without a spark of humour in his composition.
He was consumed by a genuine and mighty fervour
to demonstrate to the native Marquesan that he
was keeping the Sabbath on the wrong day.

"Does that matter so very much?" I asked him,
and that was all I had a chance to ask.  Apparently
it did matter.  And he was getting converts.  Why?
Because the native is not slow to discover that by
embracing Seventh Day Adventism he gets two
days of rest in the week.

Elsewhere I have met Roman Catholic, Mormon,
Latter-Day Saint, Presbyterian, and Anglican Church
missionaries, all at work in the same field, all earnest,
well-meaning men, and each convinced that he is
right.

Is it any wonder, then, that after listening to them
all the dazed South Sea Island native asks himself
what all the pother is about, and, finding no
satisfactory answer to the conundrum, turns to his
tangible rum bottle?

To revert to safer topics, there is pearl shell in the
Marquesas.  The representative of incomparable
infantry told us so while we sat on his incomparable
veranda one morning, consuming large quantities
of *papia*, rolls, honey, and coffee, each in his particular
brand of pyjamas.

The information brought upon our serene lives at
Tai o Hae the white man's blight of avariciousness.
Was this thing possible, with shell at one thousand
dollars a ton delivered at Philadelphia?  Yes; he, the
incomparable, had seen it through a water-glass, in
anything from five to fifteen fathoms, between the
islands of Hivaoa and Tahuata.

Why had it not been prospected?  It was doubtful
if any but he and the natives knew of its existence.
Undoubtedly it was worth looking into.  He made
us a present of the information to do with as we
willed.  His cook was an old Paumotan diver, who
would no doubt accompany us—Pascal!—accompany
us to the island, a bare ninety miles distant.
We could take samples of shell to the company in
Papeete, and no doubt make
arrangements—Pascal!—arrangements with them to advance working
capital in return for a lien on the shell—Pascal!!!

"Monsieur."  An enormous Paumotan native
stood in the doorway smiling benignly.

He would accompany us.  He would cook, and he
would dive.

We sailed that evening, the deck being littered
with green bananas, live chickens tied by the leg to
bulwark stanchions, a rabbit, firewood, a stove
composed of a kerosene tin half filled with earth,
and—Pascal.

There was apparently nothing this extraordinary
man could not do.  He knew every island of the
Marquesas like the palm of his hand.  He could
produce savoury messes from a kerosene tin, remain
under water three minutes, discourse entertainingly
in pidgin-English, French, German, Marquesan,
and Paumotan, and secure a ship's provisions without
the annoying triviality of paying for them.

"But whom do we owe for all this?" I asked him,
eyeing the menagerie that surrounded us.

Pascal smiled and waved a hand.

"Rabbit no money," he informed us; "chickens,
bananas, all no money.  Me get um."

Here surely is a solution of the high-cost-of-living
problem.  Take Pascal to the profiteering areas and
the thing is done.

Dawn revealed to us Tahuata close abeam.  Each
island of this group seems more lovely than the last:
waterfalls pouring three thousand feet to the sea,
blow-holes at the base of rocky cliffs that spray the
air with spindrift and miniature rainbows, deep bays
with coral beaches at their head.

But the beauties of nature were not for us on this
occasion; we were prospecting.  It was a serious
business.  There might be money in it.  After this
I can scarce believe that in Paradise itself the white
man will not be dogged by the curse of opportunism.

Leaving the dream ship at anchor a cable's length
from shore, we took to the dinghy and explored the
floor of the ocean thereabouts through water-glasses,
consisting of wooden boxes with glass bottoms.  This
was the place, Pascal informed us, and, sure enough,
there was shell, old barnacle-encrusted shell, but
widely scattered.

What of a few samples?  Pascal grinned and
shook his head.  "Shark," he muttered,
apologetically; which, being interpreted,
meant that he refused to dive.

.. figure:: images/img-146.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: left
   :alt: Men with water-glasses in boat

   Men with water-glasses in boat

He pointed out that in the Paumotus
it was different.  In the
Paumotus there was always
a reef-surrounded lagoon
where few sharks
found entrance.  In
the Paumotus men
dived in couples as a safeguard.  In
the Paumotus——

In vain we pointed out that we happened to be in
the Marquesas and not the Paumotus; that he had
been hired to dive in the Marquesas; that we were
really very angry—in the Marquesas.  He grinned.

.. _`A Man of the Atolls`:

.. figure:: images/img-146b.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: *A Man of the Atolls*

   *A Man of the Atolls*

In rather less than half an hour, and to Pascal's
utter amazement, we had put him and his belongings
ashore, paid him his wages, and were under way for
Tahiti.

Ah, Monsieur of the incomparable infantry, I
rather suspect you of pulling our legs.  Or was it
that your innate enthusiasm ran away with you?
Or that we should have been less hasty?  I do not
know.  All I know is that you spoke truth; there is
shell in the Marquesas—and it is likely to remain
there.

.. _`Off Nukuhiva, Marquesas Islands`:

.. figure:: images/img-147.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: *Off Nukuhiva, Marquesas Islands*

   *Off Nukuhiva, Marquesas Islands*

As the South Pacific Islands become more widely
known, which they are rapidly doing, the Marquesas
are bound to attract the attention they deserve.
Apart from their scenic grandeur and healthful climate,
they are as fertile a group as any in the Pacific,
and more so than most.  It has been proved that
cotton of the best quality flourishes there, as well as
sugar cane and every other tropical product, and
there are thousands of acres of knee-high,
well-watered pastures for the stockman.

Since this visit to the Marquesas I have been living
in France, to which country the group belongs, and
I have not yet met a Frenchman who knows of their
existence.  In fact, the average Frenchman's ignorance
of his own possessions is nothing short of amazing.

Some day the congested areas of this queer old
world will overflow, and the Marquesas will be
discovered afresh.  When that time comes, France will
have people knocking at her door and demanding
to know why she debars all other nationalities from
acquiring land that she does not attempt to develop
herself.

Already there is a movement afoot in England to
establish a colony in the Marquesas.  Permission
has somehow been obtained from the French
Government—a process comparable with the extraction
of a particularly obstinate winkle from its shell—to
purchase blocks of land, and distribute them amongst
intending settlers who already number over a thousand.

"Lucky thousand!" say I, "and good luck to them!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE PAUMOTU ISLANDS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   THE PAUMOTU ISLANDS

.. class:: center

   *The people of the atolls—including Mr. Mumpus*

.. vspace:: 2

.. figure:: images/img-151.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Chapter X headpiece

   Chapter X headpiece

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER X

.. class:: center

   *The people of the atolls—including Mr. Mumpus*

.. vspace:: 2

From the moment I first set eyes on an atoll it
fascinated me, and its lure has not departed with the
years.

Think of any place in the world that you have
seen, and an atoll is different.  It is the fairy ring of
the sea.  Out of the depths it comes, rearing a vegetation
and people of its own, and often into the depths
it goes, leaving no trace.  How?  Why?  Scientists
murmur something about the coral polyp; but, not
being a scientist, I prefer my theory of the fairy ring.
That was how it looked to me many years ago, and
that was how it looked again from the masthead of
the dream ship.

We had left the Marquesas seven days previously,
and were now becalmed in that maze of atolls known
as the Paumotu or Low Archipelago.

Imagine a circular beach of glistening coral sand
and green vegetation from five to fifty yards wide,
thrust up through the sea for all the world like a
hedge, and enclosing a garden of coral fronds
submerged under water so still and clear as to be hardly
visible, and you have an atoll as I saw it from the
masthead.

And there were myriads of them—big atolls, little
atolls, fat and thin atolls—fading away into the
shimmering heat haze of the horizon.  The fairies
must have been mighty busy down this way.

I descended to the deck and things mundane.
What to do when becalmed in a network of coral
reefs and seven-knot currents was the problem that
confronted us.  I had no text book on the subject,
but by some miracle the monstrosity was persuaded
to fire on two cylinders.

Imagine yourself, then, passing through the narrow
gateway in the hedge—I should say, passage in
the reef—and coming to anchor in the garden—I
mean lagoon.

It is sunrise, and already the pearling canoes are
putting out from the village and scurrying to the
fishing grounds over the glassy surface of the lagoon.

A fine people, these of the atolls—upstanding,
deep of chest, a race of mermen if ever there was one.
From birth up, if they are not in the water they
are on it or as close to it as they can get.  Take them
inland and they die.  So they squat on their canoe
outriggers, smoking, chatting, laughing, until the
spirit moves them (nothing else will), and one of their
number drops from sight, feet first, with hardly a
ripple.

You look down and you see him, as though through
green-tinted glass, crouched on the sloping floor of the
lagoon.  He is plucking oysters as one would gather
flowers in a garden.  There is no haste in his
movements, nothing to indicate that there is any time
limit to his remaining down there, under anything
from five to fifteen fathoms of water.

A minute passes, two minutes; still he pursues his
leisurely way, plucking to right and left and thrusting
the shells into a network bag about his neck.

The man of the atolls is in a world of his own where
none but his kind can follow, and they still squat on
their outriggers, chatting and laughing like a crowd
of boys at a swimming pool.

One alone seems interested in the diver's movements:
his mate, a fair-skinned woman, with streaming
blue-black hair, leans over the gunwale of the
canoe, looking down through a kerosene tin water-glass.

The diver's dark figure against the pale-green
coral becomes more blurred; a stream of silver air
bubbles floats upward.  Three minutes by the
watch have come and gone.  To the landsman it
seems incredible; and even then there is no haste,
no shooting to the surface and gasps for breath.

The dark body becomes clearer in outline as it
emerges from the depths, and slowly, quite slowly,
floats upward until a jet-black head breaks water
and the diver clings to the gunwale of the canoe,
inhaling deep but unhurried breaths and exhaling
with a long-drawn whistle peculiarly his own.

In what way this whistle helps matters it is
impossible to say, but whether a habit, a pose, or an
aid in the regaining of breath, it is universal throughout
the Paumotus; so much so that a busy afternoon
with the pearlers sounds more like a tin-whistle band
than anything else.

With the people of the atolls the ability to remain
under water for long periods is more than an art; it is
second nature.  Instinctively, they do just those
things that make one breath suffice for three minutes
and sometimes four.

Preparatory to a descent they do not take a deep
breath and hold it until the surface is reached again.
They fill their lungs with a normal amount of air,
which lasts them about a minute and a half; the
other minute and a half is occupied in its exhalation.
Then, too, every movement below water is made
with the utmost conservation of energy; yet a good
diver can bring up a hundred and fifty kilos of shell
in a day, which means in the neighbourhood of six
hundred francs.

And it is just these same nimble francs that tempt
the Paumotan to abase his talents, even as others are
tempted the world over.  For the sake of a few more
shells, another cluster a little farther down, he
remains below just that trifle longer than is good for
him, and in time it tells.  The eyes become bloodshot
and start from the head, he goes deaf, or paralysis
seizes him.

"But the women are the worst," a sun-baked
trader informed me; "the worst or the best, as you
like to put it," he added, grinning.  "They'll go on
till they burst, or pretty near it.  Bargain-counter
instinct, I guess.  We call it the 'bends.'"

'"The bends?'"

"Yes, one of 'em goes down, and down; sees some
more shell a bit lower, and some more a bit lower than
that.  Then she's reaching out for one last flutter at
something like twenty fathoms when they get her
the 'bends,' I mean.  You can see her fighting against
them, but it's no good; they bring her knees to her
chin, and she can't straighten up, and she drops the
last lot of shell she's gathered, and hates that worse
than the 'bends'."

"What does she do?"

"Nothing, except lie there crumpled up until her
mate fetches her up and massages her back to life.
Then she's no sooner conscious than she's down again.

"Water never kills this crowd; it takes dry land to
do that.  Why, there's a diver close on fifty years old
here, paralyzed clean down one side.  He can't walk,
but he can swim.  He gets them to carry him down
to the reef and heave him in; says it's the only place
he can get any comfort."

"How about sharks?"

"Oh, there are sharks all right, but the diver's mate
looks after that; gives the signal, and they're all in
after him double quick."

"Finish him off with knives, eh?"

The sun-baked trader smiled reminiscently.

"Well, hardly," he said.  "A dead shark makes
a square meal for the others, and that's all.  What
they need is an example, and they get it.  They're
cruising about sometime when they come on one of
their number with no tail, one fin, and sundry other
decorations that wouldn't exactly please the S.P.C.A.
He is not nice to look at, and they clear out of a place
where such things are possible.

"When an island's thrown open for pearlings, we
spend weeks mutilating sharks before the divers'll go
down, and small blame to them, I say.  Sharks
are—well, sharks."

The casual reader picks up a good deal of information
about "gold rushes" and such-like romantic
undertakings from the plethora of novels on the
subject; but who has ever heard of a pearl-rush?  Yet
they occur every year in the Paumotus.

The group belongs to the French, and is administered
from the local seat of government at Papeete,
Tahiti.  Here a heterogeneous collection of humanity
awaits the opening of the pearling season like a
hovering cloud of mosquitoes.

There are pearl buyers from Paris and London,
representatives of shell-buying
concerns from Europe and
America; British, Chinese,
and Indian traders,
speculative schooner skippers
and supercargoes, not to
mention the riff-raff of the
beaches, all intent on pickings
from the most prolific pearling
islands in the South Pacific.

.. figure:: images/img-157.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: right
   :alt: Shark, pearl diver

   Shark, pearl diver

And this is the law of the
group—infringed, circumvented, broken, but still the
law—that although under French Government, the
Paumotus and all they produce belong to the Paumotans.

Still further to protect the native, diving apparatus
is banned throughout the group.  The oyster, as he
brings it from the water, is the diver's property.  He
must open the shell aboard his canoe before touching
land, remove the flesh, and, after testing it for pearls
(usually by kneading it so thoroughly between finger
and thumb as to crush the life out of it), throw it back
into the lagoon to propagate its species.  Should he
find a pearl, it is his also.

It is then up to the cloud of "mosquitoes" before
mentioned to get both shell and pearl out of him as
best it can.  One can imagine the buzzing and biting
that ensue.

From the buyer's point of view, the sooner and the
deeper he gets a good diver into his debt the better.
He then has some hold.  Consequently, he spoon-feeds
his selected divers like the infants that they are.
Tinned delicacies of all sorts, Prince Albert suits of
unbelievable thickness and cut, silk socks, and
stockings are a good diver's for the asking during the
closed season.

With shell at one thousand dollars a ton in
Philadelphia (the largest consumer at the present time),
and pearls soaring to apparently limitless heights, all
will be well when work starts.

And the diver?  From long experience of "mosquitoes,"
he is by no means slow.  Shortly before the
season opens he is presented with a bill that would
cause most of us to register apoplexy.  He looks at
it, grins, and proceeds to dive.  He also proceeds to
make caches of shell on the floor of the lagoon, only
bringing up half of what he collects in payment of his
debts.  At night he retrieves his cache and sells for
cash to the smaller "mosquitoes" who infest the beach.
As for pearls, from the moment the diver's finger
and thumb encounter foreign matter in the flesh of the
oyster, he becomes about as communicative on the
subject as his catch.  Should the truth leak out, his
find will promptly be confiscated in payment of his
everlasting debts, or the wily pearl-buyer will use
threats of exposure to reduce the price.

No, the diver, if he is up to snuff, will work his
passage to Papeete on a schooner, sell to a Chinaman, who
neither asks questions nor tells tales, and proceed to
enjoy himself according to his lights.

Blossoming into a Prince Albert suit, a red tie,
and silk socks, he will hire a car, load it up with lady
friends and execrable rum, and vanish into thin air
for a fortnight, at the end of which time he has
somehow contrived to get rid of all he possessed and is
perfectly prepared to return to his atolls and his debts.
He has lived like a white man and cheated the
"mosquitoes"; what more can Paumotan heart desire?

The thing we call progress has slain the picturesque
in most industries of this world, but not so with
pearling in the Paumotus.  During the season, the beach
of one of these atolls resembles an Old-World fair
more than anything I can call to mind.

A crazy merry-go-round brays and rocks in the
shade of the palms, luring the adventurous to invest
three pearl shells in a ride on a broken-necked camel.
The ubiquitous movie "palace" has reared its
unlovely head, and for more shell or five cocoanuts one
may witness on the shores of a South Sea lagoon the
battered remnants of a love affair enacted not far
from Los Angeles.  I have often wondered what
happens to all the worn-out films in the world.  Now
I know.

This season, and for the first time, the people of the
atolls are to be initiated into the mysteries of
ice-cream.  Truly, the "mosquito" stops at nothing.

It was down in this part of the world that I met
Mr. Mumpus, though that is not his name.  To
reach him you must pick your way with the motor
auxiliary through a maze of reefs, lie off and on,
because there is no pass into his lagoon, and plod
through blazing sand in a temperature of ninety in the
shade, which there is not.  But it is worth it.

You will probably find him in the pearl orchard,
a green-lined umbrella in one hand and a dripping
oyster shell in the other.  He will stare fixedly at you
for upward of half a minute and then say: "How the
devil did you get here?" with a brusqueness that is
alarming until you get used to it.

In my own case I indicated the dream ship, looking
particularly smart in her recent coat of white paint.

"What!  In that thing?" remarked Mr. Mumpus.

I was smitten to silence for a space.

"I heard you were making pearls," I told him on
regaining something of my equanimity, "and thought
you might be so good as to tell me about it."

"Come up to the house," he barked, and led the
way to a rambling erection of corrugated iron and
palm leaves containing, as far as I could make out,
a gaping "boy" of uncertain origin, some empty soap
boxes, and a microscope.

"There's nothing new in what I'm doing here,"
he told me over two brimming shells of cocoanut
milk, "nothing that the Chinese have not been doing
for centuries.  The pearl is a disease of the oyster;
introduce the disease and you will get a pearl."

"Quite," said I.

"No one has succeeded up to the present,"
continued Mr. Mumpus, "but there is no reason why
it should not be done in time, no reason at all.  I am
appreciably nearer than I was a year ago, for instance.
In the meantime, I am producing the ordinary blisters,
or half pearls, with various foundations.  You see,
the cestoid——"

But I cannot hope to set down here all that this
amazing man told me in scientific jargon, as he strode
back and forth across his mat-strewn floor.

He was a doctor by profession, had tired of it, and
come to the islands to pursue his hobby of pearl
culture.  He takes an oyster from the lagoon, opens
it very carefully by the slow insertion of a wooden
wedge, and places a pilule of beeswax against the
main muscle.  The mantle of the oyster then covers
it with mother-of-pearl, and in the course of a few
months our friend cuts from the shell a very fair
imitation of a half pearl.

But, as most people are aware, the real pearl comes
from the flesh of the oyster, and it is on the
production of the genuine article that Mr. Mumpus
centres his efforts.  He breeds oysters in the lagoon
and dissects them under the microscope for signs of
the parasite that undoubtedly causes the pearl.  He
injects into the flesh of others all manner of foreign
matter.

Down there on his speck of an atoll he treats the
oyster as a surgeon treats an interesting case
and—who knows?—some day there may burst upon an
astonished world the name of a man who can make
pearls, and that name will not be Mr. Mumpus.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`PAPEETE, TAHITI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   PAPEETE, TAHITI

.. class:: center

   *Tahiti: its pleasures and problems*

.. vspace:: 2

.. figure:: images/img-167.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Chapter XI headpiece

   Chapter XI headpiece

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XI

.. class:: center

   *Tahiti: its pleasures and problems*

.. vspace:: 2

Although the Paumotus fully deserve their subtitle
of "Low Archipelago," they have a marked effect
on the southeast winds that are so prevalent in these
latitudes, and so much relied upon by sailing craft.

The law of the "trades" is simplicity itself, and as
a matter of general interest is perhaps worthy of
mention here.

"Fickle as the winds" is a synonym that does not
apply at certain seasons and in certain areas, and these
areas, through mariners' reports, have been definitely
located and recorded in the British Admiralty and
United States Hierographic Office wind charts.  A
schooner skipper may now lay a course from, say,
San Francisco to Sydney, and know to within a
couple of points from which direction the wind will come
for the entire voyage.  He will be careful to "hug
the trades"—the northeast down to the Equator, and
the southeast beyond—and the reason of these
steadfast and accommodating winds is that the hot
air of the Equator naturally rises, leaving a vacuum
that the cooler airs of north and south rush in to
fill.

The Paumotus, however, with the intense heat
generated in their mighty lagoons, form a miniature
Equator of their own, and completely disorganize
the "trades" thereabouts, with the result that weather
conditions between this group and the Societies are
notoriously unreliable.

A greater contrast between two islands a bare
forty-eight hours apart can hardly be imagined than
between the last of the Paumotus with its coral reef
invisible at ten miles, and the cloud-capped volcanic
peaks of Tahiti.  It is like approaching another
world.  It *is* another world.

At the pass in the barrier reef off Papeete, a genial
French pilot took charge, and secured us the best
berth in the harbour.  Here the coral wall that
forms the beach is so sheer that it is possible to make
fast to the trunk of a flamboyant, as though to a
bollard on a quay, and walk ashore on a gangplank—which
we of the dream ship promptly did and dined
in splendour at the best hotel.

With unaccustomed collars chafing our leathern
necks, and perspiring freely under the burden of
clothes after a régime of towel and sola topi, we
consumed iced *vin rouge, poulet rôti* with salad, and
omelette *à la maître d'hotel*.  Papeete was a pleasant
place in that hour.  Indeed, Papeete is a pleasant
place at any hour.  It is the metropolis of the
south-eastern Pacific islands, just as Honolulu is of the
northeastern, attracting as varied an assortment of
humanity as any in the world.

Here we have the planter of vanilla and cocoanuts,
the trader in anything from copra to silk stockings,
the pearl buyer, the schooner skipper, and the
ubiquitous adventurer on their native heath—and under
conditions to make it possible for each to live and
prosper.

The French may be wrong from our iron-bound,
Anglo-Saxon point of view, but they certainly have
the knack of making life a more enjoyable affair
under their administration than under any other
at the present time.

It was at Papeete that we of the dream ship lost
our cook.  It may be remembered that in the
Galapagos Islands, five thousand miles back on our tracks,
we rescued an exquisite Ecuadorean Government
official from a delicate position by christening him
"Bill" and installing him in our culinary
department, where he was expected to work his passage to
Australia.

He proved to be an expert cigarette smoker and
little more, so that when he approached us after the
first night in Papeete and intimated that he found it
"necessary" to leave, we were neither surprised nor
pained.

.. _`Pearl-diver About to Descend`:

.. figure:: images/img-170.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: *Pearl-diver About to Descend*

   *Pearl-diver About to Descend*

And so you may see to this day Bill, of the biscuit-coloured
socks and passionate tie, leaning gracefully
over the soft-goods counter of a French store,
extolling the virtues of a new line in underwear or
gallantly escorting a bevy of Tahitian beauty to the
movies of an evening.

Bill has found his niche in the scheme of things,
and who can say more?

.. vspace:: 2

"If you manage to get past here without trouble
aboard, you'll be the first yachting party to do it."

So spake that kindliest of men, the acting British
Consul of Papeete, and although we of the dream
ship were fortunate enough to succeed where others
had failed, I recognize the truth of his words.  Right
down from Bligh of *Bounty* mutiny fame to the
most recent of pleasure cruises there is a succession
of enterprises that have found their quietus at
Papeete.  There is something peculiarly demoralizing
about the place.  It invites to a laxity of mind and
muscle unequalled in the Pacific, which perhaps
accounts for its fatal fascination.

.. _`Pearl-divers in a Paumotan Lagoon`:

.. _`Mr. Mumpus's Blisters`:

.. figure:: images/img-171.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: *Pearl-divers in a Paumotan Lagoon; Mr. Mumpus's Blisters*

   *Pearl-divers in a Paumotan Lagoon; 
   Mr. Mumpus's Blisters*

How everyone lives, including a goodly sprinkling
of whites, is a mystery that intrigues.  I know a man
hereabouts living in a twelve-by-fourteen corrugated
iron shed furnished with empty crates and kerosene
tins.  At any odd hour that he chances to awaken
from a more or less permanent state of torpor, he
lounges into town and pays the smaller stores a
visit.  He pays nothing else.  Starting at one end of
a counter, with its sample edibles outspread, he
systematically talks and eats his way to the other,
and by the time the process is complete he leaves
with a parting *bon mot*, and a full stomach.

He is a type of the present-day beach-comber,
hardly such a romantic figure as his prototype of
the "good old days," but in his way interesting.
His is the art of getting something for nothing, and
who amongst us shall say he has never essayed the
feat?

I cannot let this gentleman pass without enlarging
upon him, if only to illustrate the mental processes
by which a cultured man may descend to the status
of a beach-comber.

He had never worked, and declared that he never
would, both of which statements I could readily
believe.  Why should he work?  To make a living?
He has one without it.  To make money for the
mere sake of making money?  Such a pastime did
not attract him.  To save himself from boredom?
He was never bored.  Were not sunsets and cloud
effects, and all the strange living things of the
beach (including store-keepers) provided for his
entertainment?  To retain his self-respect?  Not
at all.  If others found it necessary to plan and strive
in order to retain their self-respect, let them proceed!
Personally, he did not find it necessary, that was
all; and he fell to gouging his foul nails with a
jackknife.

"Of course," I ventured to murmur, "there is
self-respect *and* self-respect."

"Quite," he agreed, cheerfully.

But the man's real secret, the canker at the back
of his diseased mind, was revealed to me—as I have
no doubt it has been to many others—in the most
startling fashion.  Suddenly, and apropos of nothing
either of us had said, he sprang to his feet and struck
an attitude in front of the rusty hurricane lantern
standing on an empty fruit crate.

"Do you notice anything?" he asked me.

All I noticed was an elderly gentleman, inclining
to corpulence and baldness, with rather a fine profile
terminating in a Vandyke beard, standing rigidly
with folded arms and an air of imperiousness that
struck me as out of place.

"You see no resemblance?" he suggested, incredulously.

I saw none in particular, and said so.  He took his
seat with an air of disappointment.

"Then perhaps I may help you," he said.  "My
mother was lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria when
King Edward was Prince of Wales.  Does that
convey anything to you?"

Naturally, it did, and I was forced to admit a
resemblance that had escaped me.

Touched?  Perhaps.

Taking this unworthy as the lowest rung of the
white Tahitian social ladder, one comes next to the
clerks of the larger stores, who, after a year or two
with their firm, are marooned in charge of a trading
station on some distant island at a wage that makes
honesty and prosperity incompatible.

Then comes the store manager in crackling white
drills and a luxuriant office, who welcomes you with
a winning smile, and speeds you with a staggering
bill; the schooner skipper, a genial soul possessed of
an enviable independence that empowers him to tell
his "owners" to go to the devil for three months of
a hurricane season each year, the while his ship lies
in port, and he disports himself and his latest yarn
over variegated drinks on the
balcony of the Bougainville Club; the
French Government official, as
awe-inspiring in business
hours as he is charming out of them.

.. figure:: images/img-174.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: left
   :alt: Island inhabitants

   Island inhabitants

As for the natives, they are
to-day a relic—rather a sad relic when
one comes to think of it—of
a once-superb race.  White man's
blight has descended upon them and they have
withered like so many of their brothers throughout
the milky-way of the Pacific.

When shall we learn that what may be one man's
meat is another's poison, and refrain from attempting
to instil our ideas of progress into a people
on whom they have precisely the opposite effect?
The answer is, "Never—so long as there is money in it."

But an additional rung must be added to our social
ladder of Tahiti, and a sturdy rung at that.  The
half-caste—especially the French-Tahitian half-caste—is
deservedly becoming a power in the land.

The accepted idea of him is that he retains in his
composition all the failings of the white man and none
of his virtues, but like so many accepted ideas it is
entirely erroneous.  He is a human being with the
failings and virtues of any other, and there is not a
doubt that he possesses a physical and mental
virility that carries him further than most toward
success in the tropics.  He is usually extremely
handsome, quietly mannered, and industrious, and the
women of his species are among the most beautiful
in the world.

Lastly there is the Chinaman; and the more one
sees of this bland, uninterfering race, the more one
is driven to the conclusion that he has come nearer
to solving the riddle of existence than any other.

When Tahiti suffered one of its periodical awakenings
to the fact that it must have plantation and road
labour, it imported some thousands of Chinese.  But
what it failed to do was to specify on its indent the
kind of Chinaman required, with the result that the
majority turned out to be of the store-keeping class,
and about as much use for road-making or copra-getting
as a sick jelly-fish.  Some stayed by the
work for which they were intended, but many more,
in their own insidious fashion, set up shop, and to-day
wield a financial influence in Papeete second to none.
"I'd sooner work for the Chinks," a white super-cargo
told me.  "You know where you are with
them.  They give you a square deal, expect a square
deal from you, and if they don't get it, give you the
boot without back-chat.  They're not in an
ever-lasting, all-fired hurry, either."

So here are one or two secrets of the Chinaman's
success.  Is it another that he will buy a pearl for
no other purpose than to drink it pulverized in tea?
Who can say?  It is certain that *he* won't.

It was here in Papeete that I became a *garçon
d'honneur*; at least, that is what I was told I was,
though at the time I felt, and I am sure looked,
like nothing on earth.

If it had not been for Liza I should never have
suffered the indignity of transition from the semblance
of a man to that of a stuffed and hustled dummy.
But who can listen to the pleadings of a particularly
attractive half-caste Tahitian by moonlight on the
deck of a dream ship without surrender?  I cannot.

It was explained to Peter, as intermediary, that
she (Liza) needed an escort to her sister's wedding,
and thought that I should lend an air of distinction
to the proceedings.  She had fallen in love with my
particular brand of sola topi, and she thought me
*très gentil*.  I expect this settled the matter.  In any
case, at nine o'clock that night, arrayed as ordered,
and securely wedged between Liza and one of her
innumerable and attractive female relatives, I was
conveyed, swift as Ford could fly, to the offices of
the *Maire*, where I was dragged forth and pushed
into position to form one of a long procession of
youths and maidens, the former in white gloves
and evening dress ties, the latter in frills.

From, then onward I have no clear recollection of
how I came to be in the various places that I found
myself.  Liza managed it.  Liza was the most
efficient tug I had ever made fast to.  Up a lane of
giggling onlookers we trickled and, after the civil
ceremony, down it again, to be whirled away to the
church, where the same performance, with certain
variations, was enacted.  Then to the home of the
bride, and incidentally of Liza, a palace of light and
heat, music and movement, where I found solace in
a life-saver before the tug again made fast and towed
me in to "breakfast."

I had fancied the marriage complete, the knot
irrevocably tied.  Not so.  We stood about a long
table, our hands itching to descend on a glass of
inviting champagne, while the native department of
the ceremony, and to my mind the most impressive,
was conducted by a venerable Tahitian, a relation
of the bride's mother.

He spoke, and continued to speak, untroubled by
the growing restlessness of his audience.  Liza
pouted, and whispered in my ear, from which I
gathered that the speaker had not been invited, that
his mere presence constituted an insult.  I failed
to see why a representative of one side of Liza's
family should receive such scurvy treatment, but
lacked the courage to say so, which is perhaps as
well.  Instead, I asked what he was saying, and
elicited the following:

"It is old Tahitian custom—he should not be
here!  It is old Tahitian custom when you marry
you have new name.  He is telling new name which
must be 'WIND'; and when they have children, they
are to be more 'WIND'.  He should not be here!
There, it is finish; drink your champagne."

Which, ever obedient, I proceeded to do.

Followed dancing, a strange mixture of hula and
fox-trot, until four o'clock of the morning, a farewell
to Liza under the stars, and a somewhat clumsy
boarding of the dream ship.

Such is present-day Papeete, a place of pleasure,
interest, or profit, according to taste.

.. _`Fish-spearing on the Reef`:

.. figure:: images/img-178.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: *Fish-spearing on the Reef*

   *Fish-spearing on the Reef*

The main trouble in the Societies, as elsewhere in
the Pacific islands, is scarcity of labour.  Each group
in this mighty ocean is struggling with the problem
at the present time, and has not yet succeeded in
reaching a solution.  The native will not work.  He
does not believe in toiling for others when he is a
self-supporting landlord himself, and, when you come
to think of it, why should he?  The Pacific Islands,
ambitious for development, are consequently forced to
turn for help to the more congested quarters of the
globe, such as India and China, and herein lies the
danger.  The influx has already begun, and there
is not a doubt that in time it will swell from a
beneficial stream into an overwhelming flood unless
ultimately returned to its source by a conduit of
stringent legislation.

.. _`Moorea, the Land of the Lizard Men`:

.. _`Moorea Greets the Dream Ship`:

.. figure:: images/img-179.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: *Moorea, the Land of the Lizard Men; Moorea Greets the Dream Ship*

   *Moorea, the Land of the Lizard Men; 
   Moorea Greets the Dream Ship*

We of the dream ship left the pleasures and problems
of Papeete with regret, but succeeded in leaving
with our ship's company intact, to the lasting wonder
of our very good friend the British Consul—to whom
salaams from a less salubrious clime.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE ISLAND OF MOOREA`:

.. class:: center large bold

   THE ISLAND OF MOOREA

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   *The land of the lizard men—Facts and fancies,
   including a few horrors*

.. vspace:: 2

.. figure:: images/img-183.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Chapter XII headpiece

   Chapter XII headpiece

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XII

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   *The land of the lizard men—Facts and fancies,
   including a few horrors*

.. vspace:: 2

Many an hour of quiet content had we of the dream
ship spent while moored off Papeete, in watching the
ever-changing beauties of Moorea, a bare fifteen miles
distant.

Whether viewed in fair or foul weather, at sunrise
or sunset, this island with its fantastic volcanic peaks
and deep, mysterious valleys of purple haze attracts
the eye of the dreamer like a magnet.  What secrets
lay hidden in those valleys?  What might not be seen
from the summit of those peaks?  We determined
to find out.

But first it was necessary to attend to things
practical in the shape of our alleged auxiliary engine.
It was perfectly possible, here in Papeete, to hire an
expert to diagnose the trouble, but I had had my fill
of "experts" the world over.  They have an engaging
habit of setting the contraption in motion by
some happy accident, and declaring that "it is all
right now," but never by any chance explaining to
the harassed owner what was the matter with it.
It is my belief that they do not know themselves.
The only point on which they are all agreed is that
the "expert" who preceded them "made an unholy
mess of the job," and that if it had not been for
themselves, it is doubtful if the engine would have ever
run again.  Moreover, their bill is usually in keeping
with their modesty.

After a three-hour heart-to-heart consultation
with the patient, I discovered, quite by accident and
with Peter's hat pin, that the tiny air-vent in the
screw-top of one of the carburetors was clogged.
Consequently, when the top was screwed down, the
air had no outlet and forced down the float.  Hence
a persistent flooding.

It sounds absurd.  It was absurd, but that was the
entire trouble, and the accidental insertion of the
hat pin converted lifeless scrap-iron into the power
that the dream ship had so often and so sorely needed
during the past months.

I hear the "experts" laugh, but I solace myself
with the remembrance of one of their number leaping
on his hat in an effort to locate an equally trivial
trouble in marine motor engines, and draw the
moral that it is as well to carry sisters who use hat
pins.

A few hours' sail brought us to Moorea, and one of
the finest natural harbours in the South Pacific, where
we were met by a plantation owner of our acquaintance
in an outrigger canoe, and piloted through a
tortuous reef channel to an anchorage of firm coral
sand.

The entrance to this harbour is fully half a mile
wide, so how the captain of a French gunboat
contrived to pile his vessel securely on the reef is
something of a mystery.  It is said that he had dined
"not wisely but too well" in Papeete, and was filled
with *élan* to demonstrate how close a shave he could
accomplish without cutting himself.  And again,
that he had been sent to bring back cattle, a mission
that, as a naval officer, he so abhorred that he had
done the deed deliberately.

In any case, there lies his craft, a fine old hulk,
with the rollers rumbling and seething through her
vitals; fit warning to the mariner who would toy
with coral.

Such grim monuments to mischance, negligence, or
deviltry litter the reefs of the Pacific; and what tales
they could tell!  I know of one on Middleton Reef,
now used as a store ship for other possible victims,
that was piled there on a lee shore during a
south-west gale, and the bottom ripped clean out of her.
For a week she lay half-submerged, her crew wading
the decks knee-deep in water, and gazing over her
sides or down through her hatches at the provisions
scattered on the coral.  There was water down
there—fresh water in breakers and tanks, and food
in tins that only needed block and tackle to hoist
them up to the poop.  But who would dive down and
make the tackle fast?  It meant almost certain death
of an even more hideous kind than faced them as it
was, and, unlike the orthodox romance, there were no
heroic volunteers.  The skipper was ready and
willing, but he had his wife aboard who restrained him
by swearing that if he did any such thing she would
throw herself and their three-year-old daughter after him.

In all, they waited a week without food or water
before the threatening attitude of the crew forced
the skipper to make the attempt in spite of his wife's
entreaties and threats.  He dived; he made fast the
tackle, but all of him that came to the surface was a
severed leg, and the wife followed him with her child
in her arms.

It is strange that a region of such beauty as the
South Pacific Islands should be the favoured home of
tragedy, but so it is.  My very good friend the late
Louis Becke, who probably knew these parts better
than any man of his time, often bemoaned the fact
that when choosing a theme for one of his incomparable
tales of the South Seas, he could not paint true
to life without finding tragedy peering at him from
every corner.  He claimed the cause of it to be that
this sunny realm of bronze gods was never intended
to be invaded by the white man, and there are few
who, in all fairness, can differ with him.

Even on Moorea, the incomparable, we of the
dream ship had not been ashore an hour before
encountering a thing too ghastly to ponder on.  It was
a man with legs so immense that only the toes of
the feet protruded beyond them.  His neck was
thicker than his head, and part of his anatomy he
wheeled before him, covered with a *parieu*.

It was a case of elephantiasis, a common disease
of the islands, but against a background of such
loveliness seeming the more terrible.

Here was a shady, grass-grown beach road overhung
with flamboyants, and bordered with crotons
and flaming hibiscus; there a cocoanut plantation
with its serried ranks of graceful palm trunks fading
away into cool green distances like the pillars of
a dimly lit temple; a brook, bustling through
thickets, its banks carpeted with wondrous ferns and
velvety moss—and here a tumble-down, deserted
native house—rearing its battered head above a
tangle of tropical vegetation.  It had once been a
home, and the land about it a prosperous banana
patch.  The first family that had occupied it had
developed elephantiasis.  A second and a third had
met with the same fate, and now no one can be
induced to live anywhere near the accursed spot.  It
is taboo.

Scientists claim they have discovered the germ of
this dread disease in the mosquito, but many believe
it to be in the earth, like that of tetanus.

But to revert to more pleasant subjects: legends
still live on Moorea.  It is the land of the lizard men,
an agile race of dwarfs who lived on the inaccessible
ledges of the mountain range, and descended periodically
on the coast-dwellers, bearing off their wives
and other valuables.  They carried a short staff
in either hand, giving them the appearance of lizards
as they scrambled back to their fastnesses where
none could follow.

To prove his words, the Moorean native of to-day
will point out uniform rows of banana plants growing
in clefts of rock amongst the clouds—the crops of the
lizard men!  How, otherwise, came they to be there?
And he would be a wise man who could find
the answer.

It is in these deep valleys, too,
that ancient rites were performed,
rites that were rigorously suppressed
by the Government, but have survived
until quite recent years.  Indeed, white
settlers assert that they are not entirely
eradicated to this day.  Tradition, religion,
superstition, call it what you will, dies
hard.

.. figure:: images/img-189.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Men looking at mountain

   Men looking at mountain

In this connection it was my
good fortune to meet a retired
police officer who probably had
more to do with the suppression
of "witchery" in the Islands
than any man living.

"It mostly began with
long-pig," he told me.
"Long-pig?  Well,
you know the Kanaka
fashion of rolling bush
pig in banana leaves
and cooking it in the ground.
Long-pig doesn't happen to be *pig*, that's all.

"And long-pig was enough for us.  We broke up
the party by marching the diners off in irons.  But
there were other things that had us beat.  I've
lain on my belly of a night, looking through a
rat-hole in a native grass house, and seen some queer
things: a war club stand on end, and dance on its own
over the mats the length of the house.  I'm no fool,
but I'm darned if I could see how it was done.  There
was no harm in it, any more than there is in these
new-fangled séances where spooks blow trumpets
and rattle tambourines; but with Kanakas it may
lead to long-pig, and that's what we were after.

"Then again, we watched one place for close on a
month, and at the end of it found nothing we could
lay hands on, but something *I* sha'n't forget.

"There must have been close on a hundred Kanakas
squatting round the walls of the house in stony
silence, when a wind sprang up that nearly blew the
roof off and yet never so much as stirred the leaves
on the palms twenty yards away.  It was still blowing
when something dropped through the roof, and
squatted on the mats in the middle of the house.

"There wasn't much light—there never is at these
chivarees, but there was enough for me to see that
whatever it was it was a leper.  It wasn't all there.
It wasn't the right shape, or colour, but it boomed out
answers to questions that the others put to it, and,
knowing the lingo, I listened.  It was the usual
business: So-and-so's father was all right, but
hoped that his son would join him before long as he
was a trifle lonely.  And somebody else's brother
was having the time of his life with a brand-new
sailing canoe that was the fastest thing yet.  And
somebody else was going to die soon....

"Now, you can arrest a leper on suspicion, and I
did my best, but I never got that one.  He just went,
and so did the others, though they made more of a
fuss about it; and all the time that wind was blowing
the hair of my head this way and that.

"Fake?  Of course it was a fake, but clever at
that.  I never got the leper, and that 'somebody
else' died all right, because I saw him.  But then
Kanakas are like that: they die to order...."

True, the foregoing is hearsay, but it is first-hand
hearsay, and on the best possible authority.

The only other Island witchcraft that I have
encountered and can vouch for personally is fire-walking,
a well known Kanaka pastime.  That natives can
make a pit of stones white hot with burning brush-wood,
and then walk bare-footed upon them for
upward of two minutes, is not so wonderful to the
skeptic who knows that they paint the soles of their
feet with a secret preparation that is a non-conductor
of heat.  But the fact that they can lead a white
man, whose feet are not so treated, over the same
stones, is a "trick" that needs some explaining.

Then, there is the herb for the unfailing and
harmless production of abortion; a preparation of such
preservative powers that it will keep the human body
for centuries; and an innumerable array of magic
potions undreamed of in our philosophy.  Undoubtedly
the Islands have their secrets, as quaint and wonderful
as any in darkest Africa, and some day—which I
trust is not far off—I hope to "inquire more closely."

Our planter friends of Moorea appeared to lead a
pleasant life.  Theirs was a bachelor bungalow run by
efficient house-boys, and set on the fringe of a palm
grove overlooking a vista of sea and reef and mountain
as beautiful as any in the Island—which means in
the world.

They were growing vanilla, and, although Britishers,
had chosen Moorea as the scene of their labours
because they preferred French rule.

"The French don't mess you about like our own
people," one of them informed us.  "They're not
anti-this and anti-that.  They leave you alone, and
I can tell you we appreciate it after visiting a few of
our colony-governed colonies."  He referred, of
course, to the mandates given to Australia and New
Zealand over certain groups of the South Pacific.
"It's like giving a kid something to play with.  He's
bound to break it."

The other of our two hosts was engaged in a
passage-at-arms with Peter, and I pitied him.  Trust
a woman for either kindling or dousing a flame of
enthusiasm in the male breast.  But as she still holds
to her viewpoint, and the question at issue involves
every white woman who contemplates living in the
South Sea Islands, it is of interest, and I take the
liberty—and the risk—of quoting from her diary:

.. vspace:: 2

"One of them (our hosts) was engaged to an English
girl of eighteen, and was going to send for her
in a month or two, but expected opposition from her
parents, who thought the Society Islands too
uncivilized and out of the world for a young girl to be
happy in.  I must say I agreed with them.

"Perhaps for the first few months the novelty
would keep her amused; but after that!  I cannot
imagine an intelligent, energetic girl being content
to live her life on an island, however beautiful, where
she would be the only white woman.

"I said something of the sort to her fiancé, since
he asked my opinion.  He said he had promised her
a horse, as she was intensely keen on riding.  Even
then it meant that she would have to keep to the
track which ran round the island, and one soon wearies
of the same ride day after day, when there is no
object in view but exercise.

"I suggested that she might help on the plantation,
and that perhaps making things for her new
home would keep her occupied, but was told it
would be impossible for her to do a hand's tap of
manual work as she would lose prestige with the
natives (awful thought!) and that she was not the
sort to like needlework or housekeeping as she was
too much of a sport; besides, the 'boys' would do the
latter.

"Then what would be left for the poor girl to
do?  I asked.

"'Oh, she could potter about; and then *I* should
always be on hand,' was the reply.

"What could be said to a man who thought along
those lines?"

.. vspace:: 2

The answer is an echo—"What?"

But I must confess to a sneaking sympathy for him,
all the same.  The position of the white man living
alone amongst natives is difficult enough in all
conscience, and any one who has done it will testify
to the absolute necessity of retaining prestige.  To
lose it *is* an "awful thought!" for without it the
white man sinks lower than his neighbours, and is
soon regarded by them with unveiled contempt.

No; call it "bluff," what you will, but the white
man cannot afford to part with his prestige.  And
how much more is it necessary when he has his
womenfolk to protect?

In any case, the Islands are not a suitable home
for white women, say what they will.  There are
isolated instances of them thriving there, but in the vast
majority of cases they fall victims to a pernicious
type of anæmia which, even if it does not kill,
remains with them for the rest of their lives.  And as
for children, they thrive for about five years from
birth, and then fade to mere weeds unless sent to
more temperate climes.

Perhaps—who knows?—these things are but another
proof that we harbingers of progress were not
intended to invade the sanctuary of the South Seas.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`PALMERSTON ISLAND`:

.. class:: center large bold

   PALMERSTON ISLAND

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   *A hint of hurricane—The atoll of perfection,
   introducing "Mister Masters himself"*

.. vspace:: 2

.. figure:: images/img-199.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Chapter XIII headpiece

   Chapter XIII headpiece

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIII

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   *A hint of hurricane.—The atoll of perfection,
   introducing "Mister Masters himself"*

.. vspace:: 2

Between the Societies and Australia there is a
regular line of steamships calling at Raratonga, Samoa,
and New Zealand, and it was to avoid this cut-and-dried
route that we of the dream ship headed for
Palmerston Island, a mere speck on the chart six
hundred miles distant.

But we sailed just that trifle too soon that makes
all the difference between a fair-weather passage and
the reverse.  December to April, inclusive, is the
hurricane season in this part of the Pacific, when the
schooner skippers from Raratonga and other places
in the direct path of the cyclonic disturbance see fit
to lie up in the comparative safety of Papeete
harbour, and we sailed early in the latter month.

I am not claiming that we encountered a hurricane;
far from it, for it is doubtful if even the dream
ship would have survived a full-fledged demon of the
species.  In these same latitudes I have seen turf
torn from the face of the earth and rolled up like a
carpet by sheer force of wind, and mile-wide swaths
cut as cleanly as with a sickle through settlement,
plantation, and jungle.  But these exhibitions of
ferocity were witnessed from terra firma.  It is a
totally different thing from the deck of a small
boat at sea.

Surely, if man does not recognize his own
insignificance when faced with overwhelming turmoil of
wind and wave, he never will.  He shrivels on the
instant from a being of considerable importance in his
own estimation to the semblance of a microbe; and
his craft follows suit by dwindling from a sturdy home
to a cockleshell.  That is why it is best for the
mariner, if he can manage it, not to think too deeply
during time of stress.

The demon was about, as evidenced by the barometer
which fell to twenty-nine, but his main body,
writhing in a circle as is his wont, must have missed
us, for all we of the dream ship encountered was a
lashing of his tail.

It was enough.  It blew, and it rained.  Lord,
how it blew and rained! first from dead ahead, which
caused us to heave to; then, as the vicious circle was
completed, from dead aft, so that we "ran" like a
wind-driven rag under double reef and storm jib.

It is an easy thing to "run"; the difficulty is to
know when to stop.  There is always the possibility
of being "pooped," which simply means being
overtaken by a mountain of water and crushed into the
depths out of harm's way for good and all.  To the
uninitiated it would appear that the faster a ship
travels the better chance she has of escaping a
following sea.  But this is not so.  No one has yet
succeeded in explaining the phenomenon satisfactorily,
but it seems that the wake caused by even a small
boat passing down the face of a comber induces it to
break prematurely, and if the boat and the comber
chance to be travelling at the same speed, the latter
breaks aboard, that is all.

It is a chance that all who go down to the sea in
ships must take when they "run," and the only way
of obviating the disaster is to restrain a very natural
desire to "get on with it" while the weather is fair,
and heave to in time.

In the case of the dream ship there was no need to
do this, as we had reduced canvas to such an extent
that she was not doing more than ten knots, and rose
to the summit of each breaking comber like a cork.
I have yet to see the weather that she could not face
without flinching, and I treasure her design beyond
price.

After such a bucketing Palmerston was a welcome
sight, as welcome as it was unique.  It is doubtful if
such another gem adorns the earth.  Neither atoll nor
island, it is a perfect combination of both; a natural
necklace of surf-pounded coral strung with six
equidistant, verdant islets, the whole
enclosing a shallow lagoon slashed
with unbelievable colour.

.. figure:: images/img-202.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Men in boats

   Men in boats

Such was Palmerston as we
approached it before a stiff
southeast "trade," to be
welcomed by a fleet of
amazingly fast luggers and their astonished crews.

Who were we?

Where had we sprung from?

Had we any matches?

To our own astonishment the questions were fired
at us in English, and, what was more, English of a
strangely familiar pattern.  It is a quaint thing to
hear one's own tongue fluently bandied amongst a
brown-skinned people on an isolated speck of earth
in mid-Pacific.  But there was no opportunity of
solving the riddle just then.

.. _`The Leaning Palms`:

.. figure:: images/img-202b.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: *The Leaning Palms*

   *The Leaning Palms*

"Let go!"

"She's set!"

"Lower the peak!"

"Lower the main!"

The dream ship had come to anchor on the north-west
side of the reef, well sheltered from the almost
eternal southeast trades of these latitudes, and the
pilot, a six-foot figure of bronze sketchily attired in a
converted flour sack, was addressing us with a courtesy
as unusual as it was refreshing.

.. _`Landing on Palmerston Island`:

.. figure:: images/img-203.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: *Landing on Palmerston Island*

   *Landing on Palmerston Island*

With our permission, he would take us ashore at
once.  Mister Masters himself had given instructions.

The "Mister Masters himself" settled it.  We
tumbled into one of the luggers, tumbled out again
at the reef, and stood knee-deep in swirling waters
while the pilot and his crew towed the craft against
a ten-knot current through the boat passage; then
aboard once more and away at an eight-knot clip
through a maze of coral mushrooms, bumping, grazing,
ricocheting, until finally sliding to rest on a
glistening coral beach.

"Mister Masters himself," a dignified old gentleman
with a flowing white beard, a tight alpaca
jacket, and the general air of a patriarch, met us at
the veranda steps of his spacious home, and inside of
ten minutes we were sitting down to a meal of meals.

Our host informed us that the schooner was
overdue and we must excuse the viands, but I saw no
need for apology.  In fact, how a few acres of
powdered coral could have produced the variety of
edibles we consumed at that meal passes my
understanding.  "Sailing Directions" in its own terse way,
says of these atolls: "Inhabitants live entirely on
cocoanuts and fish," and it sounds stringent enough,
but I beg to state that our menu on one of them,
namely Palmerston, read as follows:

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   SOUP:
   TURTLE

.. class:: noindent

(Made of the genuine article, taken but a few hours ago
from its playground in a zinc bath at the door.)

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center

   FISH

.. class:: noindent

(I know not of what species, but tastier than most of the
tropical varieties.)


.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center

   BOILED FOWL

.. class:: noindent

(And not the wretched victim of malnutrition emanating
from most tropical barnyards; nor served undecapitated as
appears usual in the Islands.)


.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center

   ROAST PORK

.. class:: noindent

(Which must have subsisted during its lifetime on something
more nourishing than coral.)


.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   VEGETABLES:
   SWEET POTATOES
   TARO ROOT

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   SWEETS:
   COCOANUT PUDDING

.. class:: noindent

(The core of cocoanuts stewed in milk squeezed from the
meat of the nut, a dainty warranted to send the restaurant
connoisseur into ecstasies if it ever reaches him, which is
unlikely.)

.. vspace:: 2

Over rum, emanating from the dream ship, as the
local supply of liqueur was retained for strictly
medicinal purposes, the history of Palmerston Island was
unfolded.

What any student of Island history knows is that
it was discovered by Captain Cook in 1774 on his
second voyage, though some authorities claim it to
be the "San Pablo" of Magellan, the first island
discovered in the South Seas; that on his third and last
voyage Cook landed again to get fodder for his starving
cattle; and that later on it came under the critical
notice of the *Bounty* mutineers, who, after a
thorough spoiling in luxurious Tahiti, decided against
Palmerston as their future home.

But what everyone does not know is the history
of the Masters family who now occupy the island.

One William Masters, as fine an old English sea-dog
as ever came off a whaler, took a fancy to the
place in 1862, leased it from the British Government,
and, not believing in half measures, took unto
himself three native wives.  By each he had a large and
healthy family that he reared in strict accordance
with his own standards of social usage.

That they were sound standards is evidenced in
the people of Palmerston to-day.  They read, write,
and speak English, this last with an accent vaguely
reminiscent of the southwest of England.  They are
courteous, hospitable, and honest to a degree little
short of startling these days, and although naturally
inbred, they do not show it mentally or physically.

The islets scattered round the reef have been
equally distributed amongst the descendants of
William Masters's three wives, who now number
ninety-eight, and under the authority of the island
council, presided over by "Mister Masters himself,"
are worked to such purpose that they produce a
thousand pounds' worth of copra per year.

I have Palmerston securely pigeon-holed in my
own mind as the spot of all others in which, when the
time comes, to sit down and wait for the end.  The
outside world, in the shape of a schooner from the
Cook Group, intrudes itself but once a year.  The
ordinary infirmities to which flesh is heir are
non-existent.  The lagoon and the neighbouring islets
are a mine of interest to the naturalist or sportsman,
and the people have a charm that is all their own.

One thing alone troubles the Masters of to-day.
To whom do they and their island belong?  The war
has changed all things.  The Cook Group, two
hundred and seventy-three miles to the southeast,
of which Palmerston has now been declared a
far-flung unit, is administered by New Zealand.  Is
"Mister Masters himself" to be taxed, governed,
and generally harried by a people who hardly
existed when his father took over the island?  It looks
like it.  Here is as fine an example of the communal
system worked out on a practical and prosperous
basis as will be found in the world to-day.  Why,
and again why, cannot incipient administrators be
induced to leave well alone?

A tour of the tiny settlement is worth while.  Not
long ago a French brigantine rammed the reef on a
clear night of stars, while the crew, including the
lookout, was below playing cards, with the result that
Palmerston settlement to-day is for the most part
built of ship's timbers and planking, companions,
portholes, bunks, and miscellaneous brass fittings.

The little church, which is in course of construction
and meantime serves as a school house, boasts
walls and pulpit composed entirely of panelled doors
from the hulk; and fine old seasoned timber it is.

The recognized playground is outside the church
door under the palms, where a cricket pitch entices
all and sundry.  But the real playground of Palmerston
is the boat passage in the reef, through which
a mill race rushes at each turn of the tide.  Here
the multitudinous offspring of William Masters
disport themselves on every contrivance that floats,
from a full-fledged sailing-boat to a weather-board,
and at the rate of knots sweep yelling round tortuous
curves to or from the sea.

The dream ship, riding at anchor outside the reef,
became the centre of attraction, and finally added to
her many accomplishments by becoming a bargain
store.

It may be remembered that on setting out from
England we had laid in certain commodities known
as "barter."  Well, they were still aboard—slightly
mildewed, but aboard—for the good and sufficient
reason that we had not been able to get rid of them.
It appeared that our ideas on the subject of "barter"
were archaic.  Nothing short of silk stockings,
real gold watch chains, gramaphones, and gin is
acceptable in the Islands these days.  How could we
offer such a discriminating public rusty jew's-harps?

But here was an opportunity not to be missed.
"Sale!  Sale!!  Sale!!!  Heart-rending reductions!" was
the notice I suggested nailing to the mast, but there
was no need.  The entire population of Palmerston
tumbled aboard like an avalanche, and gigglingly
surveyed our effects outspread on the engine-room
hatch.

To any one requiring the services of a thoroughly
efficient window-dresser and salesman, I can heartily
recommend Steve.  Until the occasion of the dream
ship's jumble sale I had, it appears, misjudged the
man.  Prose poems to a piece of voile (double width,
slightly soiled and cunningly displayed on an arm)
fell from his lips like rain.  Imitation leather belts,
looking glasses conveying a somewhat distorted
reflection, near tortoise-shell haircombs, rusty knives,
even jew's-harps, each and all possessed some
sterling virtue of which I had been ignorant until
enlightened by Steve.  And they "went."  It was my
humble duty to make a note of the sales, and there
was no keeping tally of them.  In twenty minutes
our "counters" were bare, and our customers
clamouring for more.

And this was not all.  From below, where Peter
was supposed to be conducting a kind of ice-cream
social without the ice-cream, came the unmistakable
sounds of "barter," and when we mere males had
succeeded in fighting our way through a solid mass
of femininity, it was to behold her surrounded with
a drift of every domestic commodity from raspberry
jam to a safety-pin.

"They wanted them so badly, poor things," she
confessed to me after the fracas, but did not succeed
in hiding from me the embers of battle in her eye.
Brothers are awkward things.

.. _`The National Sport at Palmerston Island`:

.. _`Dragging a Boat through the Reef Pass`:

.. figure:: images/img-210.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: *The National Sport at Palmerston Island—Shooting the Pass; Dragging a Boat through the Reef Pass*

   *The National Sport at Palmerston Island—Shooting the Pass; 
   Dragging a Boat through the Reef Pass*

It was only when the last boatload of cheerful
humanity had taken its departure, and we of the
dream ship were dividing the spoils, that it was
discovered by a closer reference to the invoices we had
sold everything at *cost*!

Four more days we spent at Palmerston for the
simple reason that we could not tear ourselves away.

It was a pleasant thing of an evening to wander
over the firm wet sand of the beaches hand in hand
with singing children, while a tribe of dogs leapt
after mocking sea birds, or splashed into rock-pools
snapping at the fish.

.. _`The Taro Patch`:

.. figure:: images/img-211.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: *The Taro Patch*

   *The Taro Patch*

Perhaps the tide had turned, and one by one the
coral mushrooms reared fantastic shapes out of the
still waters of the lagoon—a gambolling elf, a ship
under full sail, a mammoth bird or beast.  It was
difficult to realize one was not in fairyland—and an
unworthy task at that.  But again, even here, there
entered the tragic touch of the South Seas.  A thin
spiral of blue smoke rose from the smallest of the
islets across the lagoon, and I asked who lived there.
A brother and sister, I was told, lepers.

.. vspace:: 2

"We're going to have shell in the lagoon as soon
as we can get some by the schooner," "Mister
Masters himself" told me on the veranda one evening.
"Ought to do well enough.  And we could run a
few cattle here, too.  But a schooner a year isn't
much good to a man, is it?"

I admitted that it could hardly be called a "service."

"I'd have a proper passage dynamited in the
reef," he went on, presently, "and you could do a bit
of trading between here and the Cooks and Tahiti.
And you could have a house here, and Matha to look
after you—if you'd care to stay."

I looked at him, at Palmerston, at the dream ship,
and regretfully shook my head.

"Not yet," said I.

Au revoir, little island.  Some day in the not very
distant future a decrepit, irritable old man will return
to your hospitable shores in search of peace; and if
you are then as you are now—which Heaven send!—he
will assuredly find it.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`SAVAGE ISLAND`:

.. class:: center large bold

   SAVAGE ISLAND

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   *The Island called "Savage" including the ordeal by
   Hospitality*

.. vspace:: 2

.. figure:: images/img-215.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Chapter XIV headpiece

   Chapter XIV headpiece

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIV

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   *The Island called "Savage," including the ordeal by
   Hospitality*

.. vspace:: 2

When Captain Cook discovered Niué in 1774, he
christened it "Savage Island," and went on his
adventurous way without landing because of the
ferocious appearance and demeanour of the natives.

They, poor fellows, protest to this day that the great
navigator's title is a misnomer, that they have ever
been as peaceful a folk as any in the South Seas,
and that the true cause of their ancestors' objection
to a landing-party was their fear of white men's
diseases, of which they had heard painful accounts.

We of the dream ship could sympathize with both
parties.  On the one hand, the track of infection is
scored deep across the fair face of the Pacific, and on
the other we had never beheld such a villainous-looking
horde of natives as came to greet us at Niué.
There were hundreds of them, each in a remarkably
seaworthy type of dugout canoe painted black, so
that the whole resembled a mammoth shoal of
porpoises as they leapt from wave to wave.

This, however, is where the resemblance ended,
for the porpoise is a sleek and silent gentleman, and
the Niuéan is anything but that.  He catches sight
of a dream ship gliding slowly along his coasts under
power, hurls himself into his canoe and paddles,
yelling like a maniac, in her wake.  He then rears himself
on end, waves his paddle, and yells some more.  By
Herculean efforts he gains on her, comes alongside,
grins malevolently, and yells into one's very face.

No wonder Captain Cook thought better of his
shore-leave.

Yet when one comes to know these people better,
as we of the dream ship did during the ensuing week,
they are the most inoffensive, good-natured,
open-hearted creatures imaginable.  This naval reception
was their idea of a really touching welcome.  They
were glad to see us—they are glad to see any one on
Niué.  Appearances are against them, that is all.

No sooner had we dropped hook at Alofi, the deepest
bay around this iron-bound coast, than we were
boarded by three gentlemen of a magnificence, in
their crisp white drills, that put us to shame.  But
we of the dream ship had suffered this type of
indignity so often that we were used to it.  Besides,
the magnificence of our visitors was happily only
external, though they proved to be the Resident
Commissioner, the Judge of the High Court, the
Judge of the Native Land Court, the Collector of
Customs, and the Postmaster; the Registrar of
Courts and the Registrar of Births,
Deaths, and Marriages; and the Chief
Medical Officer.

.. figure:: images/img-217.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Boat at island

   Boat at island

Although, as I have said, there were
only three of them, that is what they
were, and you must separate
them by the semicolons.  Clearly they do not
believe in overstaffing on Niué.

The first glad news to reach our ears was that we
had missed a hurricane by three days.  Oh, yes,
Niué had them occasionally, and before now had
been swept bare, but this particular one had passed
like a ravening beast a few miles to the eastward.
Had we seen or heard nothing of it?

We shook our heads in infinitely grateful negation,
and the Postmaster—I beg his pardon, the
Commissioner—exchanged a thoughtful glance with the
Chief Medical Officer whom, it is to be feared, we
had already christened "Doc."  They had asked
because the Cook-Group schooner that visited Niué
with the unprecedented frequency of five times a
year was considerably overdue.  But we must come
and live ashore; there was Government House, and
the Law Courts, and the Gaol to spread ourselves
over at a pinch.

And that was how we of the dream ship came to
be so royally treated on Savage Island.

Legend has it that a great god of the past, with one
foot firmly planted in the Tonga Group and the other
on Raratonga, took it into his head to lift Niué out
of the sea, and one can almost believe it.  It is of
weird formation, known scientifically as "upheave
coral," and consists of two terraces, the lower ninety
feet above sea level, and the other, two hundred and
twenty feet, the intervening space being slashed with
deep chasms.  In short, Niué is nothing more than
an atoll hurled bodily out of the sea by some mighty
convulsion of the earth's past.  One can clearly see
that what was once the reef is now a mighty cliff
and that the lagoon inside it is now a coral basin,
pitched high and dry.

And this hybrid of an island is wonderfully fertile.
On the terrace, that I cannot help looking upon as the
reef, cocoanuts, bananas, and most other tropical
products grow to perfection, while the lagoon—I
should say valley—is thickly timbered with ebony
and other hard woods.  How came they to be there,
considering they were never planted by human hand?
Perhaps the Island Hercules who dragged the atoll
from the sea saw fit also to cover its nakedness.
No other solution of the problem presents itself.

"It's a queer spot," I was told during a motor tour
of the Island by what is called "road," though it
more closely resembles a coral switchback—"as
queer as its people until you come to know them.
But try and remember yourself at the age of
thirteen, and you have the average adult Kanaka.
Several of them joined up voluntarily with the Maori
contingent during the war, and wear service ribbons
in their hair if they can find no other place for them.

"Disease is our great trouble.  The Niuéan has
always been a born wanderer, and he brings things
back with him; but we're getting it under by keeping
them at home, and making failure to report a penal
offence.  They've always been hard workers, too.  We
planted fifteen thousand nuts on Armistice Day, and
away back this was a favourite hunting ground for
'black-birders' on account of the Niuéan's appetite
for toil.  Bully Hayes, the well-known South Sea
buccaneer, used to come here often, and, when he
couldn't get men, took women—cargoes of them—to
sell down in the leisure-loving Societies.

"Those?  Graves.  They've always buried their
dead alongside the tracks, and we saw no reason to
interfere.  Good grave, coral, like a sponge—everything
into the sea in no time.  On top?  Oh, that
may be anything from a canoe to a pair of old boots.
They have the same idea of 'laying the table' with
the deceased's personal belongings as so many
others.  I nearly stole one of them once.  It was a
perfectly good sewing-machine, and my wife had
nothing to run up curtains and things with when
we came here.  But I thought better of it.  You
have to go warily with these gentry."

At this juncture the long-suffering car plunged
axle-deep into a quagmire of disintegrated coral, and
refused to emerge until an army of Niuéans—advancing
on us like a devastating host—attached
themselves to its various parts and, by sheer
manpower accompanied with indispensable yelling,
dragged it forth.

.. _`Mr. Masters himself`:

.. figure:: images/img-220.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: *Mr. Masters himself (with beard) boards the Dream Ship*

   *Mr. Masters himself (with beard) boards the Dream Ship*

We were close to a village, and the *piea* makers
were at work.  As a sidelight on the painstaking
industry of these people, their preparation of
arrowroot for food is illuminating.  In an age when
machinery does everything but—I was going to say
"talk," but correct myself advisedly—it is a lesson
in certain virtues that we of to-day seem to have
mislaid.

.. _`The Dream Ship Bargain Sale`:

.. figure:: images/img-221.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: *The Dream Ship Bargain Sale*

   *The Dream Ship Bargain Sale*

Only one family works at a time, and brings its
own implements.  A stretch of coral sand is
selected, and staffed with men, women, and children.
The old women scrape off the discoloured rind of
the roots with splintered cocoanut shell and throw
them into a palm-leaf basket which the children
rinse in salt water and carry to the men.  They in
turn grate the root into a coarse powder with
instruments made of cylindrical-shaped pieces of wood
bound at intervals with sinnet, the powder falling
on to finely woven mats which are carried away by
girls and tipped into a cradle of bamboo and
cocoanut-fibre.  This acts as a filter, through which salt
water is poured while a man kneads the powder
into a dough with such energy that he has to be
relieved at frequent intervals.

The white spectators, if any, are then politely
requested to retire while the final process of kneading
and washing in fresh water is in progress, as it has
been satisfactorily established that their mere glance
turns *piea* sour.

Not wishing to dispute the fact, we complied—with
the exception of Mrs. Commissioner's little girl, who
had long cherished a desire to see the forbidden rite.
Peering from behind a coral boulder, she was caught
in the act and chased headlong and crying with fright
before a shower of stones, to be comforted by her
mother but severely reprimanded by the Commissioner,
who is very rightly a stickler for etiquette
where "his people" are concerned.

In these matters of form, convention, tradition—call
it what you will—we of the outside world are
inclined to imagine that we hold a monopoly, but such
is far from being the case.  The average South Sea
Islander's codes are as numerous as, and far stricter
than, ours, and when we deign to visit him with our
particular brand of etiquette, and leave with the
notion that we have in any way impressed him with
our superiority, we make a vast mistake.

Inwardly (it is to be hoped), it causes us considerable
amusement to note the "quaint customs of a
picturesque people," but how often does it occur to
us that our own antics are equally ludicrous to them,
and that we are at a disadvantage in that our hosts
are invariably too polite to show by word or look
that we have infringed their code of ethics?

In this respect I have always remembered a visitor
to China who was consumed with uncontrollable mirth
at the spectacle of chop-sticks in action, the while
he proceeded to fill himself with his knife.

Peter informed me that the chief trial she endured
while moving in savage circles where it is impossible
to converse was the necessity of wearing a more or
less permanent smile; and I sympathized.  We were
in good company, for I believe Royalty is afflicted
in the same way.  But when you come to think of
it, what else can you do with your face when
confronted with a stonily staring multitude that you
wish to impress with the fact that you are having a
good time?  It is a problem, the only solution of
which to my mind is to carry a cheerfully
expressioned mask, and don it as occasion demands.

Mrs. "Doc" had given up going with her husband
on his rounds for this very reason.  She said
she found herself after a tour of inspection carrying
a stationary smirk into private life, and it
frightened her.

An occasion for the mask of appreciation, if we
had chanced to carry one aboard the dream ship,
presented itself the following evening.  The paramount
Chief of Niué very kindly invited us to a feast,
and after consuming inordinate quantities of filling
food, we sat, and continued to sit, while our host
delivered an oration very ably translated by a pupil
teacher from the mission school:

The paramount Chief of Niué, misnamed Savage
Island, was overwhelmed by the honour we had done
him in choosing his little island to visit—we who were
used to the beauties and luxuries of the great outside.
We must be brave warriors to cross so many miles of
tempestuous ocean in order to see him and his people
[the mask of modesty, please!].  Our ship, too,
though small, must have been built by great artisans
to have carried us so far and so safely....  When
we returned, would we describe to the great King all
that we had seen on Niué, and convey to him the
loyalty of his subjects?

It was a neat speech, calling for a neat answer
which, unfortunately, I have ever been incapable of
supplying.  But there was always Steve.  After his
unrivalled exhibition at the dream ship's jumble sale
he was "called upon" by frenzied nudges in the ribs,
and the confidence was not misplaced.  Exactly
what the dream ship would have done without Steve,
I tremble to think.

.. _`Thursday Island Pearling Luggers`:

.. figure:: images/img-224.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: *Thursday Island Pearling Luggers*

   *Thursday Island Pearling Luggers*

The after-dinner speeches disposed of, Peter, in a
confessedly comatose condition owing to a
super-abundance of heat and food, yet with her own
particular brand of smile securely in place, came in for
special attention.  The ladies of Niué do not speak;
they act.  The paramount Chieftainess advanced
upon her with a beautifully woven hat in one hand,
and with the other attempted to rid her of her
existing headgear.  Unfortunately, and amidst general
consternation, it failed to come adrift on account of
the pins, but this was soon remedied, and the gift
securely wedged into place amidst loud applause.

Time was when the Niuéans were the best hat-makers
in the South Seas, but with the introduction
of the Panama their product has fallen into disrepute.
It is hoped by acclimatizing the Panama plant to
revive the industry.

.. _`In the Old Days of the "Floating Station" Schooner`:

.. figure:: images/img-225.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: *In the Old Days of the "Floating Station" Schooner*

   *In the Old Days of the "Floating Station" Schooner*

But Peter's adventures that day were not over.
To quote from her invaluable diary:

.. vspace:: 2

"On our way back to Government House we met
an aged and bent woman who stood still in the middle
of the road and literally gibbered at us.  When I
tried to pass, she caught hold of my hand and shook
it with astonishing vigour for one of her decrepit
appearance.

"I asked 'Doc' what it was all about, and he told
me the poor old thing had walked fifteen miles to see
the woman in man's clothing!  But she thought she
had been deceived because I was wearing
unmistakable skirts, and looked too weak to do all the
wonderful things she had heard about me.

"The 'Doc' told me further that she must have
started before daylight in order to walk that
distance, for she was very feeble.  I felt terribly
embarrassed, as I had neither money nor any trinket with
me that I could give her.  But, feeling in my pocket,
I discovered a little comb I always carry, and also a
tube of lip-salve, as my lips dry and crack in a hot
climate, and these I handed to her, the latter because
it was bright and shiny.

"She evidently realized what the comb was for, but
twisted the cosmetic in her poor old fingers and looked
puzzled until the top fell off and the creamy-white
substance protruded.  This she instantly bit off and chewed
with evident relish.  I do so *hope* I gave satisfaction."

.. vspace:: 2

So, aboard the dream ship and away, carrying with
us grateful memories of many kindnesses from Niué
and its government.  May they both prosper as
they deserve!

The last farewell we received from this Island called
Savage was a fearsome-looking inhabitant on the
top-most peak of the reef—I should say terrace—waving
a scarlet *si-si*, and yelling blue murder.  But we
of the dream ship knew better.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE FRIENDLY ISLANDS AND THE END OF THE DREAM`:

.. class:: center large bold white-space-pre-line

   THE FRIENDLY ISLANDS AND THE END
   OF THE DREAM

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   *The island that* was *savage—Dream's end, and a few
   realities*

.. vspace:: 2

.. figure:: images/img-229.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Chapter XV headpiece

   Chapter XV headpiece

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold white-space-pre-line

   CHAPTER XV

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   *The island that* was *savage—Dream's end, and a few
   realities*

.. vspace:: 2

South, and still south, the dream ship sailed, until
the neighbourhood of the "southerly-buster" began
to make itself felt in a league-long swell.

We were heading for Tonga Tabu, the southern-most
island of the Friendly group where we might
turn and sail almost due west for Australia in open
sea, instead of picking a precarious and anxious way
through the close-meshed network of islets, rocks, and
submerged reefs that littered the more direct route.

Even so, we came nearer to disaster amongst
these alleged Friendly Islands than we had throughout
the entire voyage.  Cook so christened them on
account of the contrast of his reception here
compared with Niué, but we of the dream ship suffered
a reversed order of things, and consequently beg to
differ with the great navigator.

On the fourth day out from Niué we sighted the
group, but decided not to proceed as there are no
lights on these outlying reefs, and we had been
warned by every island skipper of consequence that a
vessel "sights" and "hits" one of them as near
simultaneously as no matter.  So we hove-to on the
tail-end, the very mildly wagging tail-end, of a
"southerly-buster," and turned in.

Throughout the night we took it in turns to go on
deck at intervals and see that we were not drifting on
to anything, and, save for the eternal dirge of the sea
that fills the night in the vicinity of any group of
South Pacific Islands, all was well.  Yet with the
sudden sunlight of dawn in these latitudes, we stood
aghast at the scene confronting us: on all sides waves,
an apparently complete circle of breaking combers,
their emerald-green bodies and white-capped heads
flashing in the sun.  To all appearances we were as
effectually trapped as a rat in a cage.  Yet how was
the thing possible?  If there were an inlet into
this inferno of reefs there must assuredly be an outlet.

The engine was called upon, and responded nobly.
During that day we systematically searched for a
loophole of escape, and found none, until toward
evening we glided through a passage no more than
fifty yards wide, and to our intense relief found that
it led to the open sea.

While hove-to the previous night the dream ship
must have executed a miracle by drifting into a
narrow-necked horseshoe of coral; that was all.  And to
some it may appear that we were an unconscionable
time in finding a way out, but for the benefit of such
I would point out that the inside of the horseshoe,
as is often the case, was littered with broken reefs,
each forming an apparent outlet which on closer
inspection proved to be nothing of the sort.  In short,
I would commend those with a taste for maze-solving
to visit the Friendly Islands.

I was not surprised to learn later that local trading
craft, equipped with a band of lynx-eyed Kanakas,
never sail at night in these waters.  Apart from the
constant danger of known reefs, others have a knack
of appearing and receding in the most uncanny way,
so that no chart issued can keep track of them.

In this connection a most enthralling theory
engages the attention of the South Sea student.  It is
his firm belief that what is now the "milky way" of
the Pacific was at one time a vast coral and volcanic
continent; that it has subsided here, and been
upheaved or erupted there, until broken into a myriad
fragments, and that the day may still come when
Nature will elect to raise them from the deep, welded
once more into a mighty whole.

As has been said before (if it were not sufficiently
evident without saying at all), I am not a scientist,
but the existing indications in support of this theory
meet even the casual observer at every turn in the
Pacific Ocean to-day.  There is a wall on Easter
Island, not unlike the great wall of China, but which
runs for a short distance and then plunges aimlessly
into the sea.  Where did it begin?  Where did it
end?  What mighty city did it embrace?  On
Pitcairn there are the remains of a former and highly
advanced civilization.  On Lord Howe Island, a
mere rock sprouting three thousand feet out of the
sea four hundred and eighty miles from the Australian
coast, there are sixty different species of land shell,
50 per cent. of which are not to be found anywhere
else in the world.  How do they come to be on Lord
Howe?  Land shell cannot swim.  In the Carolines,
you may look down into the water of lagoons and see
the remains—mosaic floors and broken walls—of a
submerged city.

So, from east to west, and from north to south,
this mighty ocean of the Pacific holds its secrets of
forgotten lands and peoples.

As for the dream ship, not content with escape
from a coral death-trap, we sailed out, and still out
to the open sea, until nothing short of a gale could
carry us into danger, and there hove-to again for the
night.  There was nothing else to be done.
What was more, and owing to an oversight
attributable to no one but myself, we
had no large-scale chart of Tonga Tabu,
so that it took us three days of
searching and three nights of
heaving to before we found the
eastern pass through the reef and
waited with international code
flag flying for the pilot.

.. figure:: images/img-233.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: right
   :alt: Natives in canoe

   Natives in canoe

We could see his station and flagstaff on a sandspit, but
no flag in answer to our own.  We
waited, and continued to wait, while
a three-knot current carried us up the
ever-narrowing channel to within fifty feet of the coral
bar at its end.  And then it was that the motor
auxiliary that I have so consistently reviled throughout
these pages vindicated itself by saving us from certain
destruction.  It went!  Literally inch by inch it
fought the current for the hour or more we were
obliged to wait on that pilot's pleasure.

I can hear the "expert's" wail of enquiry: "Why
not have anchored?"  My answer is that I should
like to see him try.  Is he aware that coral alters all
one's preconceived ideas of seamanship?  Does he
know that although the passage walls were not more
than fifty feet from either side of us, the water
between was unfathomable; that to put out a kedge was
equally hopeless because exposed coral is nothing
more than a brittle honeycomb that breaks like
pie-crust; that——  But I refuse further enlightenment.
Let my imagined critic learn from experience as I was
forced to do.

At long last the pilot came, in an outrigger canoe
that was swept from under his feet by the current as
he clambered aboard.  He did not know...
He thought our code flag was a burgee, that we were a
local trading cutter, that we were almost anything
but what we were.  There are moments too full for
words, and this was one.

The Friendly Islands have a real queen and a
consort, and I reported that pilot to both of them,
though my plaint merely elicited a charming smile
from the one and the suggestion of a whisky-and-soda
from the other.  It's a way they have in the Islands.

I fear this account of Tonga Tabu will be
unsympathetic, and for that reason I would suggest the
perusal of several excellent books on the subject.
For me it was a place of tragedy, and as such remains
with me to this day.  My views are jaundiced; let
them lie!  All I know is that in the island capital of
Nukualofa there is a club, and from that club emerged
a genial gentleman who, had I known what I know
now, would never have set foot aboard the dream
ship.  He came, he saw, and we repaired to the club.

"Do you want to sell that boat of yours?" he asked me.

"No," said I.

"*Will* you sell her?" he corrected himself.

"Not for what any sane man would care to pay,"
I told him.

"And what is that, may I ask?"

I named a figure sufficiently preposterous to raise
a laugh from most people.  But the genial gentleman
did not laugh.

"You would take no less?" he suggested bravely.

"Not a cent," said I.  "As a matter of fact——"

"I suppose a draft on —— will satisfy you?"

"What's that?" I stammered.

"I'll take her," said the genial gentleman.  "I
was saying that...."

But I heard no more.  I had sold the dream ship!

Confession is said to be good for the soul, but I
have not noticed much improvement in the state of
my own since making the above statement.  Imagine
parting for pelf with a home that has conveyed you
across twelve thousand miles of ocean.  Or, better,
try to imagine selling your best friend, and you have
some idea of my feelings since the transaction.  And
there was no going back on it.  I have not the moral
courage of such deeds.  The draft lay on the table
before me, I had a pocket full of money, and no ship.
I have never been so miserable in my life.

It took me the best part of an hour's aimless
wandering over the powdered coral roads of Nukualofa
to summon the necessary courage to break the news
to the crew of the dream ship, but by the end of that
time I had some sort of scheme evolved.  Between
the Friendlies and Australia there were no islands of
particular interest, anyway.  We would continue our
journey by steamer—it would be a pleasant change—and
in New Zealand or Australia I would invest my
ill-gotten gains in a far more magnificent vessel than
the dream ship.

On this "more magnificent" craft, we would carry
out our original programme of cruising up the Queensland
coast to the islands of the northwest Pacific,
and so home via Java, Colombo, and the Suez Canal,
thereby avoiding the monotonous passage between the
Friendlies and Australia.  Rather clever, I thought.
Nevertheless, I prefer to draw a veil over the
communication of this brilliant scheme to the rest of the
crew.  Peter did not speak to me for the rest of the
day.  I verily believe she hates me, but not a tithe
more than I hate myself.  It is enough that we took
our departure by steamer according to schedule, and
without daring to look back on the good ship we had
left behind.  The heart had gone out of things; the
dream was ended.

Or rather it had merged into a nightmare.  We
proceeded to rub shoulders with a horde of
fellow-passengers who no doubt regarded us as unattractive
as we regarded them; to consume beef-tea or ice-cream
at eleven o'clock, and push lumps of wood
about the deck with a stick for want of something
better to do.

Is there anything more wearisome than a steamer
voyage—after sailing your own ship?  You sleep
throughout the night instead of breaking the twenty-four
hours into the sensible segments of four "on"
and eight "off."  You are called by a smug-faced
steward instead of being gently squeezed or roughly
shaken into life by the previous "watch"; and instead
of commanding your own destinies at the tiller under
the stars, you watch others doing it in brass buttons
and electric light from a bridge.  You begin to
wonder if your tie is straight, if it would be permissible
to rid your chafing neck of the unholy contrivance
encircling it.

As for your fellow-passengers, they are—to a man,
and to a woman—gross from over-indulgence of one
form or another—mostly food and drink, and their
interests are as far removed from yours as the stars.
You begin to see how the average sailor-man feels in
"polite society," and your heart goes out to him.

"How's the wind?"  Ah, of course, it makes no
difference to this smoke-belching machine that bears
you at thirteen knots, and according to schedule,
toward civilization.  See that wave?  The big fellow
with the curling top!  Isn't he twin brother to the
one you met in the Caribbean when...

No, no.  Give us the "sleepy" twelve-to-four
watch, and even a "cooking week" aboard the dream
ship that we may be content once more.

Already, we were changed to each other's eye.
Oftentimes I stood with Steve on the promenade deck,
and his well-known figure, camouflaged at the moment
under a natty blue suit and collar and tie complete,
would fade and merge like a dissolving view into a
brown-skinned, happy savage in towel and sola
topi.  And as for Peter—she was no longer the
Peter we had known for a happy ten-month, but a
female slave to every twist and quiff of convention.
And it was my doing ... all my doing.  Or
can I thrust the blame on other shoulders after the
fashion of brother Adam?  Is it not our women-folk
who make convention necessary at all to men who,
if they followed natural instincts, would revert to
the enviable savage?

At Apia, Samoa, Steve was so heartily tired of his
environment that he left the ship.  He said he could
scent civilization afar, and would have none of it.
He had met a military official ashore who had offered
him a post in the Government on the strength of his
war services, and he had accepted.  He would stay
there in Samoa until I had found another dream ship,
when he would join her on receipt of a cable, and
continue with us over the remaining half of the world.

He made this promise with an ironical twinkle of
the eye that puzzled me at the time, but which has
since been abundantly and painfully accounted for.

He left in a native outrigger canoe, hugging his
knees on a pyramid of bananas, while the remainder
of "the crew" waved him farewell from the steamer's
rail, and turned sadly away.  A better mate for any
venture calling on the best qualities of a man never
breathed.  Here's to him, "down under," and may
that cable not be long delayed!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THURSDAY ISLAND`:

.. class:: center large bold

   THURSDAY ISLAND

.. class:: center

   *Concerning a wild-goose chase, and where it led*

.. vspace:: 2

.. figure:: images/img-243.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Chapter XVI headpiece

   Chapter XVI headpiece

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVI

.. class:: center

   *Concerning a wild-goose chase, and where it led*

.. vspace:: 2

Life for the sad remnants of the dream ship's crew
resolved itself into the pursuit of a will-o'-the-wisp.

It was a strange craft that we were after: sufficiently
staunch to stand any weather, yet small enough
to be handled by a crew of three.  The New Zealand
seaboard had neither heard of nor seen such a thing.
At Auckland and Wellington we were hustled off in
launch or car with high hope in our hearts, and shown
every manner of contrivance that floats, but there was
no choice between hundred-ton schooners and harbour
racing machines.  New Zealand is a beautiful,
over-legislated, intensely earnest little country, but
for us it held no dream ship, and we passed on.

Australia was little better.  Adelaide, Melbourne,
Sydney were visited in turn, and scoured from end to
end without producing anything within coo-ee of
what we sought.  With an "I-told-you-so" glint in
her eye, Peter departed on a jaunt to New Guinea,
and I continued the search alone, after the fashion of
the "last little nigger boy."

Hearing that the Torres Straits pearling luggers
were likely craft, I set my teeth and journeyed on a
Chinese liner—incidentally one of the most
comfortable and well-managed ships it has been my
good fortune to encounter—up through the myriad
islets of the Queensland barrier reef to Thursday Island.

It is a strange thing on a ten-thousand-ton liner
to awake at night to a silence unbroken even by the
familiar throbbing of the engines, and to feel the
great ship rising and falling on the swell like any
cockleshell; to go on deck and find her lying at anchor
under a panoply of stars, and apparently in
mid-ocean, for there is no sign of land.  Yet this is a
frequent experience of any passenger traversing the
barrier reef.  Whether liner or dream ship, it makes
no difference to the infinite care necessary in
navigating these reef-infested seas.

A young navy of pilots performs the miracle—for
miracle it is.  After long apprenticeship they learn
the exact dimensions of every open stretch of water,
and if they leave one side at nightfall, they can tell
by the vessel's speed, and to a yard, when they have
reached the other, when they anchor until dawn.
The farther we progressed up the magnificently
rugged coast of Queensland, the more varied became
the nature of our passenger list.  There were
sun-baked pastoralists from the cattle and sheep stations
"out back" who owned herds and acreages that
would cause the largest Western American rancher
to open his eyes.  One of them at a recent cattle
"muster" had tallied up to half a million head, and
he had not finished yet.  The possibilities of the
"Northern Territory," as it is called, are infinite—if
it were not for the bugbear of labour troubles that
stalks Australia with a heavier tread than any other
country of the world.

Then, there were commercial travellers—not the
sleek variety that boards a "flyer" and is on its
battle-ground in a matter of hours, but lean,
hard-bitten men who take a launch or trading cutter and
traverse vast stretches of ocean to the farthermost
corners of the Gulf of Carpentaria, sleeping, eating,
and having their being for weeks together in a
stifling, evil-smelling deck house with native "boys"
and their own sample cases for sole company.

Wireless operators, engineers, pearlers, teachers
of aboriginal schools, Chinamen, Japanese, all were
on their way to this mysterious equatorial land of
vast, unexplored spaces.

A great deal has been written about Thursday
Island, otherwise known as "T.I.", but, without
exception, accounts refer to a more picturesque past
when this sun-baked tile on the roof of Australia
was the busy headquarters of a pearling fleet manned
by "whites" and native "boys"; when hefty schooners
were employed as floating stations, where shell
was opened and treated at sea under the lynx-eyed
supervision of a skipper or mate who claimed the
hidden treasure it might contain.  To-day, the
pearling fleet is manned entirely by Japanese, who
work on a prosaic fifty-per-cent. basis, and are entitled
to every pearl they find.

But of this, later.  There were luggers in the bay,
likely-looking craft, the most likely I had seen in all
my weary pilgrimage.  Was it possible that I was
on the verge of being able to look Peter in the eye
once more—and send a cable to Samoa?

.. _`High Holiday on a "T.I." Beach`:

.. figure:: images/img-246.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: *High Holiday on a "T.I." Beach*

   *High Holiday on a "T.I." Beach*

Not five minutes after landing in the corrugated-iron
and goat-infested landscape of Thursday Island I was
in the shipyards watching an army of Japanese
workmen putting the finishing touches to a pearling lugger.
Yes, I was told by the manager of the Pearling
Company that had commissioned her, I could have
a similar craft built for —— (a sum nearly double
the seemingly preposterous figure I had received for
the dream ship)—and she could be delivered in about
a year!  Labour, you know, prices of material—everything!
Things were not as they used to be on
'T.I.'.  Or yes; there were second-hand craft to be
picked up, but it stood to reason they would have
passed their day, or they would not be sold.

.. _`Festival Headdress of Torres Straits Islanders`:

.. _`The Japanese Club`:

.. figure:: images/img-247.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: *Festival Headdress of Torres Straits Islanders; The Japanese Club*

   *Festival Headdress of Torres Straits Islanders; 
   The Japanese Club*

I boarded twelve in all, and examined them from
truck to keelson.  In some cases one could scoop
the dry-rot out of their timbers in handfuls; in
others——  But why continue?  In all of them the head-room
was practically nil because of their light draught for
negotiating reefs and sand-bars, and because the
Japanese have no manner of use for head-room.
When below, they live, move, and have their being
on their heel-supported haunches.  It would be
necessary for the average Anglo-Saxon to crawl on
all fours to escape a permanent crick in the neck and
stooped shoulders aboard a pearling lugger.

It was in that hour that I realized my final defeat.
Peter and Steve were right—there never would be
another dream ship.  I resigned myself to the
inevitable, and settled down on Thursday Island to
await the next southern-bound steamer in two weeks'
time.  I wandered amidst sweltering corrugated
iron and herds of cavorting goats, thinking my own
sad and secret thoughts, until taken under the wing
of two as bright lads as one could wish to meet.  We
"batched it," if you please, and I am consequently
in a position to state precisely how one may live on
T.I. in this year of grace.

Taking it in turns to leave your sagging camp bed
a trifle before dawn, you steal forth into the
iron-bound forest of the settlement, and stalk your prey.
It is a simple process.  You offer the most appetizing-looking
kid in sight a lump of sugar with one hand,
and, seizing its hind leg with the other, smother its
cries with a towel.  Half an hour later it has been
converted over a Primus into something that looks
like shoe-leather and tastes like kerosene.

In the alleged "cool" of the evening, you may play
lawn tennis.  We did, in shorts and a vest, and with
diver's-suit rubber an inch thick glued to the soles of
our shoes by way of protection against the heat and
hardness of the court.  In five minutes you are a
dripping rag of perspiration, but no matter, it is
tennis, and the bright lads could play, though
argument across the net seemed their strongest point.
One of these resolved itself into a bet as to who would
win a game played in diver's helmet and boots
respectively.  It was put to the test with the utmost
gravity, and resulted in a dead heat, the man in the
helmet being unable to see through his three glass
windows quickly enough to take the ball, and the
booted competitor being unable to move.

Such were some of the social amenities of T.I.,
interspersed with delightful evenings spent with the
*haute monde*, consisting of military authorities and
owners of pearling fleets, in their charming
bungalows situated behind and above the settlement.
But for the most part we kept to the beach.  It was
more interesting—and kids were more plentiful.

As for the industries of this queer little island with
a white population of five hundred and a black-and-tan
one of unknown dimensions, pearling predominates,
as different a form of pearling from that of the
Paumotus as can well be imagined.  Here machinery
is permissible, and with the up-to-date motor
compressor keeping up a mechanically uniform and
unfailing air supply, great depths are attained, and shell
of a prodigious size and lustre obtained.

"I don't know," mused a pearling-lugger owner of
my acquaintance; "I'm beginning to think it's
the survival of the fittest, after all.  The Japs are the
best machine divers in the world.  They don't seem
to put the same value on life that we do, and maybe
they're right; I don't know.

"But I can tell you this: they work as no white
man would ever work—day and night for two weeks
without shutting an eye; then they bring the stuff in,
sleep two days and nights on end, and are ready for
another two weeks.

"I used to go out with a crew now and then, and
I've seen them go down fifty-two fathoms, and be
hauled up dead, and another man climb into his suit
and be 'down' inside of ten minutes.

"Another little trick they've got is to sail—almost
into the wind, mind you, but still sail—towing a diver
along the bottom.  It saves him having to walk and he
covers more ground; but would you like to be in that
suit?  What happens if it catches on a bit of coral? ...

"I tell you what it is: they come over here on a
three-years' indenture—it's the only way we allow
them into Australian territory—and during that time
they set out to make enough to keep 'em for the rest
of their lives.  And they do it—because they don't
live long anyway after much fifty-two-fathom diving.

"Skin divers?  We've got as good here in Torres
Straits as any in the world!  Twenty fathoms, and
three minutes under water in the Paumotus?  Well,
that's not so bad, but we can beat it with a good abo
(aboriginal).  Come and see."

I did, and am forced to give the palm to Torres
Straits.  Our crew was a hotch-potch of mainland
aboriginals—Islanders, Malays, and Filipinos—but
it was the aboriginal who did the diving, and his
performance was every whit as good as, and in some cases
better than, that of the Paumotan.  But with what
different results!  Instead of the cleanly pearl-shell,
bèche-de-mer or trepang was brought to light,
immense brown or black sea slugs that are gutted,
impaled on a stick, and cured in a smoke-box amidships.
When cooked they make a soup as nutritious and
appetizing as turtle, and although China
is by far the largest consumer of
bèche-de-mer at the present time, it
is rapidly gaining favour in Europe.

.. figure:: images/img-251.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: right
   :alt: Pearl diver

   Pearl diver

The remaining important
products of the Coral Sea and its
coasts are trochas shell and
sandal wood.  The first of these
is second only to mother-of-pearl
for buttons, knife-handles,
and what-not; and as for
sandalwood, its uses are too
familiar to call for mention here.  But I am grateful
to this externally unlovely but fragrant tree for taking
me to the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria where it
grows in profusion, for a stranger, more deserted
land—saving always the Galapagos Islands—it would
be difficult to find.

You may stand on these shores and look inland
over thousands of miles of gently undulating and
lightly timbered country, containing not a living
soul with the exception of a few bands of
ever-wandering and rapidly decreasing aboriginals.  Cotton
grows here to perfection.  What would not grow?
There are rivers that Western-American irrigators
would smack their lips over, a light but assured rainfall,
a rich loam soil, and millions of acres of pasture
untouched save by wallaby and kangaroo.  Yet we
still cry out that the world is over-full.

Some day the entirely admirable bluff of "white
Australia" will be called, and these territories of vast
possibilities will be inundated by a people able and
eager to develop them.  It will be unpleasant, but
then so are most penalties of degeneration and sloth
in this cannibalistic old world of ours.

.. vspace:: 2

Back from "the Gulf," we celebrated a successful
trip in the approved fashion at one of Thursday
Island's numerous and well-known circular bars, presided
over by a high priestess who, after three years in
New Guinea, favoured the native style of coiffure.

Discussion turned on a race meeting of the morrow.
A race meeting on T.I.!  Why not?  I had forgotten
that wherever you find an assembly of more than two
Australians, there you will find a race-course of some
sort.  It appeared that someone had stolen the
favourite; nothing less!  The horse had been
pastured on Friday Island, a few miles distant, and now,
a day before the race, it had vanished.  The owner,
who happened to be present, was telling us just what
he was going to do to the culprit when he caught him,
but I fear my attention wandered.  An aboriginal
was standing at my elbow with the most ghastly
healed wound encircling his neck that could have
been inflicted without decapitation.  How the man
could have suffered it and remained alive, was
beyond my comprehension.

"That," I was told, "is Treacle, the only man
who's had his head in a shark's mouth and got it
out again.  Care for an introduction?"

I did care, and after sundry amenities elicited the
following: "Me push; 'im leave go."  That was all,
delivered with every appearance of delight and pride
in the accomplishment.  Some of the shark's teeth
were still embedded in the fellow's skull.  With a
vast grin, he will guide your finger to the spot—for
sixpence; and for a like amount one is permitted to
photograph Treacle the miraculous.

The Australian "abo's" recuperative qualities
are equalled only by his inventiveness.  Was he
not the originator of the boomerang, that most
ingenious of weapons?  And had he not, before the
advent of the white man, instituted certain surgical
operations which might, with advantage, be introduced
into other lands?  For example, the rendering
incapable of a degenerate male parent to propagate
his species, whereby his race was kept up to the
highest standards of physique.

But let these things pass, as relics of barbarism
if you will, and there is still a quaint originality in his
make-up that shows itself in his speech.  Bèche-de-mer,
or Pidgin-English, is his tongue for dealing
with white folk, and here is some of his vocabulary:

"Trousers belong letter" = Envelope.

"Bokkus belong noise" = Gramaphone, piano, or
almost any musical instrument.

"Pull um come; push um go, brother belong
tomahawk" = Saw.

"Belly belong me fnuast" = I am hungry.

"What time papa belong you plant um you?" = How
old are you?

Some day there will be a dictionary of Pidgin-English.
It would make a diverting document.

For a tiny community like that of Thursday Island,
the racing on the following day was too commendable
to be treated otherwise than seriously.  The course
was complete with grandstand and "bleacher"
seats, totalisator, judge's box, and bar, and was soon
thronged with the entire white population of T.I.,
and most of the coloured.  Jockeys wore anything
from orthodox "silk" to an undervest, and rode
anything on four legs with immense earnestness, and
amidst thunderous acclamation.  We lost money or
won money, as the case might be, but there is no
doubt that we enjoyed ourselves.

At the end of a pleasant and instructive fortnight
a south-bound steamer, direct from New Guinea,
touched at T.I., and as she came alongside, my gaze
became fixed on a slight, inconspicuous but vaguely
familiar figure standing at the rail.

It was Peter.

There, on T.I.'s rickety jetty, seated on a stack
of sandalwood, we talked of many things; but behind
all lurked the eternal question, and I was obliged to
answer it:

"I'm beat.  You're right, both of you.  There
never will be another dream ship."

But there I was wrong.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`ADVICE TO DREAMERS OF DREAM SHIPS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   ADVICE TO DREAMERS OF DREAM SHIPS

.. class:: center

   *For the prospective dream-ship owner the world over*

.. vspace:: 2

.. figure:: images/img-259.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Chapter XVII headpiece

   Chapter XVII headpiece

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVII

.. class:: center

   *For the prospective dream-ship owner the world over*

.. vspace:: 2

There are more dreamers in the world than I had
reckoned on.  So much is evident from the snowdrift
of letters received from every corner of the world,
asking this, that, and the other in connection with
the dream ship, until it became a physical impossibility
for me to answer them individually.

Here I hope to answer them all, out of sympathy
more than anything else, for I know how the dreamer
feels; but let me tell him or her this at the outset:
unless you are willing to take a chance, your dream
will never be realized.  To sail away on a dream
cruise is an easier thing than to climb out of the rut
you are probably in.  There may be the most
excellent reasons for your remaining in that
rut—marriage and family ties, or ill health—but those
are the only insurmountable obstacles in the path of
any dream merchant worth his salt.

You will notice, no doubt, that penury is not included
in this catalogue of obstacles, and the reason
of its absence is that penury ought to be an incentive
rather than an obstacle.  One must work for dream
fulfilment as one is obliged to work for anything worth
while.

"It's all very well for you to talk," people have
said to me more than once, "but you have no ties;
and you always have your writing."

If they only knew, neither of these statements is
true.  To hear them talk one would think I had
neither friend nor relation in the world, and that the
average writer makes as much money as a plumber.
My reply to such folk is: "All right, let's be personal.
You have no ties but what you could fling aside for a
while without hurting yourself or any one else, for
it is a fifty-to-one chance that they are nothing but
money-grubbing at best.  It has become a habit
with you, that is all.  You have enough money to
buy a car, why not a tight little cruiser, and sail
where you will?  And if you have not, you could
soon make it, for your trade is less precarious than
mine.

"No, my friend, you may sit in that chair, and
simulate the adventurous spirit beating its wings
at the prison bars of Duty, or some such stuff, but
what really ails you is that you are in a rut, and
afraid to get out; or else your dream has not taken
firm enough hold to hoist you out.  The latter is
a matter of personal temperament, and cannot be
helped, but the former is something quite different.
It simply means that you lack initiative, dread
possible discomfort, and fear the world."

Please do not imagine because I am pointing out
the disabilities of the average dreamer that I claim
to be exempt myself.  I possess them in an
all-too-marked degree, but my dream was strong enough to
lift me above them, and it was worth it.

I know a man who, at the age of thirty, and while
I was working the soul out of myself on cattle and
horse ranch, in lumber-camp and salmon-cannery
for an average of two dollars a day, bought a decked-in,
dug-out canoe for twenty dollars, and with a
capital of a like amount went clean up the British
Columbia coast.  During the summer he sailed,
fished, and shot deer, trading his bag with farmers
and store-keepers for other commodities that he
needed.  In the winter, he laid up the canoe, but
lived aboard and trapped fur.  He was his own man,
and he lived.  That was his dream, and he accomplished
it.  And I might have been doing precisely
the same thing all those weary years, and come out
a good deal better off at the end of them if I had only
had the courage of my dream.

For the benefit of the apparent multitude whose
dream lies along much the same lines as my own, I
must attack the more technical side of the dream
cruise, and, before doing so, I want it to be clearly
understood that everything I may say in these pages
is simply the outcome of my own personal experience.
Others have had different and, perhaps, much
wider experience, and will no doubt differ with me
at every point.  But then, after a woman, and a
horse, there never was a subject more provocative
of dissension than the proper conduct of a ship.
So here's to it!

.. _`Out of the Deep`:

.. _`The Main Products of Torres Straits`:

.. figure:: images/img-262.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: *Out of the Deep; The Main Products of Torres Straits.  From left to right:—Green Snail (used for buttons). Pearl-Shell (with natural blister in form of an elephant). Trochas (used for buttons, etc.).  At back: Beche-de-mer.*

   *Out of the Deep; 
   The Main Products of Torres Straits.  From left to 
   right:—Green Snail (used for buttons). Pearl-Shell 
   (with natural blister in form of an elephant). 
   Trochas (used for buttons, etc.).  At back: Beche-de-mer.*

*The Dream Ship*.—The dream ship is my idea of
the ideal ocean cruiser to be handled by a crew of
three.  That is why I bought her, and she cost
(second hand) £300 or about $1,500.  She was designed
as a North Sea pilot cutter by the late Colin Archer,
who also designed the *Fram* for Nansen, and was the
originator of this type of vessel.  She was built at
Porsgrund, Norway, in 1908, and I reduced her
canvas to make for easy handling by a small and
light-weight crew.  For this reason she was slow going
to windward, but I would not have had her otherwise
for one cannot have *everything*—there is bound
to be a compromise somewhere—and one does not
expect to go round the world "on a wind."

.. _`An Islander's Home on T.I.`:

.. _`The Tennis Handicap`:

.. figure:: images/img-263.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: *An Islander's Home on T.I.; The Tennis Handicap*

   *An Islander's Home on T.I.; 
   The Tennis Handicap*

.. vspace:: 3

.. _`Lines of the Dream Ship, Designed by Colin Archer and Built at Porsgrund, Norway, in 1908`:

.. figure:: images/img-263b.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Lines of the Dream Ship, Designed by Colin Archer and Built at Porsgrund, Norway, in 1908

   Lines of the Dream Ship, 
   Designed by Colin Archer and Built 
   at Porsgrund, Norway, in 1908

*Construction*.—Her timbers were of pine and her
planking of Italian oak, which is admittedly a
reversal of the usual order of things, but is easily
accounted for by the fact that Norway has plenty of
pine (grown on hilltops so that the wind will make
it "natural bent" for elbows and knees), but little or
no oak; while Italy is oppositely placed, and the two
countries trade their woods.

The dream ship was copper-fastened, which made
it possible to have her copper-sheathed against the
inroads of the tropical cobra worm, and this was an
immense saving of labour.  With ordinary iron
fastenings it is impossible to copper-sheathe because
the two metals, when immersed in salt water, set up
a galvanic action destructive to both.  It must not
be imagined, however, that because a boat is
iron-fastened she is useless for tropical waters.  There is
no stronger and better fastening for a boat than
galvanized iron, but it entails her under-water body
being kept in the best condition by putting her on
"the hard" wherever and whenever possible, and
paying her up with anti-fouling paint.  Most of the
Island schooners are iron-fastened, and they last
for forty years and longer, if well looked after.  If
not, they are a honeycomb from worm inside of a year.

The dream ship was of life-boat or "double-ender"
build, which means that she was "all ship," and had
no counter.  Various stems and sterns are recommended
by various people, but I have found nothing
better than the life-boat.

*Rig*.—She was cutter rigged, and, always provided
that the boom does not extend too far beyond the
counter to be easily accessible, it is as handy an
arrangement of sail as any other, and admittedly the
best for sailing.

I can almost hear the noble army of schooner-,
ketch-, and yawl-owners howling their execration at
these remarks, but I cannot help it.  I have tried
most rigs, and come back to the cutter.  The howlers
will at least admit that she sails as close to the wind
as any, and closer than most; and as for facility in
handling by the smallest possible crew, we of the
dream ship had no trouble on this score, for she
would heave-to in a gale under single reef like a duck,
and with the wind abeam would go for hours on end
with the tiller pegged.

Our main difficulty was that the dream ship was too
heavily sparred.  The boom was the size of an
average mast for a vessel of her tonnage, and the gaff
little smaller in proportion.

Next time, we shall have smaller spars, and a
top-mast instead of a pole mast.  Aboard the dream ship
our topsail yard was twenty-three feet long, and many
were the anxious moments in lowering it when taking
in the topsail during a squall.  The topmast does
away with any necessity for a yard, and can be lowered
to the deck in foul weather, thus also eliminating
considerable top-hamper.

.. _`Sail and Rigging Plan of the Dream Ship`:

.. figure:: images/img-266.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Sail and Rigging Plan of the Dream Ship

   Sail and Rigging Plan of the Dream Ship

A hollow topmast and a hollow squaresail yard
sound alluring, and have proved themselves
efficient in temperate climes, but would they stand the
intense heat of, say, the Paumotus?  I know they
are put to a boiling test for several hours, but what
about months?  It would be a disconcerting episode,
to say the least, if one's spars commenced to open
out like a flower in mid-ocean.  I am sufficiently
generous to allow someone else to make the experiment.

*Gear*.—The importance of good ground tackle
cannot be over-emphasized.  Never carry less than
one hundred fathoms of sound, galvanized-iron cable,
preferably amidships, and see that the anchors have
long shanks.  We carried three: a skeleton, for
dropping for short periods; a medium, for ordinary use;
and a large, for holding her in an emergency.  We
never used any but the medium, and we never dragged
anchor, mainly on account of the length of shank.

A winch is better than a capstan for heaving
anchor, and if placed abaft the mast, serves also for
"swigging" on halyards, or hoisting sail.

As for sails, the dream ship's were all "barked"
or tanned after the fisherman style, and there is no
doubt that this process prevents rot, especially in the
humid tropics.  We carried one medium-weight
mainsail, a working and a balloon foresail, storm and
balloon jibs, and a squaresail, and of these the last
was the most generally useful.  Again I hear the
howlers howling: "Why not a spinnaker?" and my
reply is that a squaresail can be used whenever a
spinnaker can be used; it is a larger sail, yet infinitely
easier to handle.

Our main halyards were of "combination" rope,
that is, hemp to all outward appearances, but internally
carrying several strands of flexible steel wire.
There is nothing stronger, and nothing that will stand
the perpetual chafe of a long passage better.  Its
slight awkwardness in handling compared with ordinary
manila is amply atoned for by its durability.  I
was afraid to use it for peak halyards on account of its
inelasticity, but next time it shall be rove throughout,
with the exception of the main sheet, which must
perforce be of manila.

Wheel- or tiller-steering gear is a matter of taste.
Personally, I like to feel the "life" of a ship, and this
is better accomplished with a tiller.

*Fittings*.—A deep-sea cruiser should always be
flush-decked, and have an entirely detached,
self-emptying cockpit.  Coach roofs and immense
skylights make for additional headroom below, but
during bad weather are an abomination.

We did not carry davits.  They look "yachty,"
but we were not anxious to look that way, and found
it far less trouble to haul the thirteen-foot dinghy
over the bulwarks with the fore halyards.  If one
went in for every "fitting" advertised in a yachting
catalogue, the deck—which must be kept as clear as
possible—would be a scrap-heap of "gadgets."

Brass, too, is a good thing to do without.  Again,
it looks well, but think of the work it entails, and
have painted galvanized-iron instead.  There is no
reason why a vessel should not look as "ship-shape"
with these latter fittings as with all the glinting—and
dulling—brasswork in the world.

Good paint is the best wood-preserver there is;
for that reason, and several others not unconnected
with labour, the dream ship was painted throughout
instead of varnished.  The decks were painted
(pinewood colour), and remained as sound and unscathed
at the end of the voyage as they had been at the
beginning.  Boom and gaff were painted the same
colour, hatches and skylights were white, as also were
her top sides.

And that is another thing: never have black paint
if going to the tropics.  The dream ship's cockpit was
black, and the helmsman could scarcely bear to touch
any part of it with his naked hand, though the white
ship's rail was comparatively cool.  The mere
thought of black top sides in the neighbourhood of
the Paumotus causes me to break into a profuse
perspiration to this day.

Down below, the two prime factors are ventilation
and light.  In order to secure the first of these, the
dream ship's internal arrangements were of the
simplest.  There were no separate staterooms, which
confine space and are difficult to air.  She was open from
end to end, save for the bulkheads, each containing
a comprehensive doorway, so that the for'ard hatch
could be opened and a current of air pass clean
through the ship.

As for light, the interior decoration was white
enamel, which reflects every gleam from the skylights.

The engine-room was a problem, until we decided—very
rightly, as we discovered later—to sacrifice
some living space in order to have a roomy "chamber
of horrors."  It is far more satisfactory to be
tortured in a palace than in a pill-box.  It leaves
adequate space for the expression of feeling.

Because his ship is essentially a sailing vessel, the
present-day owner too often tucks his engine away
anywhere.  It does not do.  Some time or other,
when the necessary atrocity is engaged in saving life,
as ours did on more than one occasion, a vital part
of the machinery is found to be out of reach, or so
difficult to get at that invaluable time is lost.

As regards cooking and artificial lighting, we had
three Primus stoves and an oven on gimbals, over
which we contrived to render food eatable, and
ordinary swinging lamps.  There are those, I know,
who prefer electric light on account of its comparative
coolness, and to such I would say: "Enterprising
fellow!  You like dynamos and fiddling with 'gadgets'
generally.  Very well."  Personally, I am a coward
in this department.

*Ballast*.—There is something peculiarly
unattractive about ballast.  One sees nothing for many
laborious hours spent upon it, and it takes up
valuable space.  But it must not be forgotten that
on its correct distribution the whole stability of a
vessel depends.  Whether lead, pig-iron, or stone,
according to purse, for a cruise anywhere in the
neighbourhood of coral, it must be *inside*, and
immovable.  The reasons for these stipulations are
obvious, but too often cruising yachts do not return,
and it is not always a matter of a lee shore, broaching
to, or being pooped; but ballast.

An excellent plan is to have it cemented in, for
this also ensures a clean bilge, but if this is done, the
owner would be well advised to have the vessel's
timbers surveyed first and a certificate of soundness
given, because before now cement has been used for
nothing less than hiding rotten timbers.

.. figure:: images/img-272.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Palm trees

   Palm trees

*Auxiliary Engines*.—There is
no doubt that an auxiliary
engine for a deep-sea cruiser is
well-nigh indispensable.  It
may be used but twice in a
passage of four
thousand miles,
as ours was—once for getting
out of harbour and
once for getting in.  But
what of the countless
contingencies that may
arise, such as lee shores,
narrow waters, contrary
currents and calms, when without power a vessel is
helpless?

The heavy-duty, comparatively slow-revolutioned,
kerosene-burning type is the best.  It may be more
cumbersome, and make more noise than the natty
little launch engine, but it is infinitely more reliable.
A thirteen-horsepower drove the dream ship at four
knots through calm water, so one's own particular
fancy may be selected on that basis.  Each has his
own idea as to motor marine engines, and all I can do
here is to extend to the engineer my good wishes—and
sincerest sympathies.

*Deep-Sea Cruising*.—The inevitable remark that
greets the deep-sea cruiser in small craft on
completing a passage is: "Fancy coming all this way
in that little thing!"  And if the speaker only knew it,
his remark is an insult to the owner.  There is no
reason in the world why a staunch, seaworthy craft
of not less than forty-one feet on the waterline
should not continue to circumnavigate the globe
indefinitely, and with every whit as much safety as
a ten-thousand-ton liner.  The forty-one-footer goes
to the top of every wave; the ten-thousand-tonner
rests upon two or more; that is the sole difference.

Before leaving England, "know-alls" were good
enough to point out to me that it was a silly game at
best; that I was risking my precious life for no
particular purpose, and that I should never get where I
wanted to, anyway.  As for taking one's sister, it
was nothing short of murder.

When I returned, the self-same people, chatting
over a club "port" between races, agreed that there
was, after all, nothing in it.  Was not deep-sea
cruising in fair-weather latitudes safer than coastal
navigation in our pestiferous home waters?

With this latter argument I entirely agree, and
would point out that I never held any other view.
Moreover, we made the cruise because we wanted to,
and not because it was a safe or daring thing to do.

*Where to find a Dream Ship*.—This, as I think has
been sufficiently demonstrated in the foregoing pages,
is the most difficult question of all to answer at the
present time.

I have given here the design and sail plan of my
dream ship, and if it meets with your approval
sufficiently to impel you to have a replica, and if you
are willing and able to spend in the neighbourhood
of £2,500 or about $12,500, I can only suggest going
to Porsgrund, Norway, or better still Randers,
Denmark (where her timbers could be of Danish oak),
and have her built.  For this particular type of boat,
Scandinavia cannot be equalled, let alone beaten.
But in these days, building boats is a pastime for
millionaires only.

From this giddy pinnacle of affluence we fall to
the next best thing, which is a second-hand boat as
like the dream ship in seaworthiness and handiness
as it is possible to procure, and that is what I have
been searching for ever since the dream cruise ended.
There are no more pilot boats of the dream-ship type
being built in Norway.  Steam has dethroned them,
and those still in use are either too old to buy or too
invaluable to sell.  So, we are reduced to the
inevitable compromise, and personally, I think I have
found it in an English, Bristol Channel Pilot cutter,
for which I paid £450 or, at par, about $2,250.

Yes, I have another dream ship.  I have notified
Peter.  I have cabled to Samoa.  Next time....

But that is another dream.

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   THE END

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   Chapter XVII tailpiece

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.. _`APPENDIX`:

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   APPENDIX\*

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State of Affairs Aboard the Ship—Contents of her Larder—Length of
South Seamen's Voyages—Account of a Flying Whale-man—Determination
to Leave the Vessel—The Bay of Nukuheva—The Typees—Invasion
of their Valley by Porter—Reflections—Glen of
Tior—Interview Between the Old King and the French Admiral.

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\*From "Typee" by Herman Melville, copyright 1892
by Elizabeth S. Melville.  Reprinted
by permission of The Page Company, publishers
of the works of Herman Melville, as follows:
Typee, Omoo, Moby Dick, White Jacket

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Our ship had not been many days in the harbour of
Nukuheva before I came to the determination of leaving
her.  That my reasons for resolving to take this step
were numerous and weighty, may be inferred from the fact
that I chose rather to risk my fortunes among the savages
of the island, than to endure another voyage on board the
*Dolly*.  To use the concise, point-blank phrase of the sailors,
I had made up my mind to "run away."  Now, as a meaning
is generally attached to these two words no way flattering
to the individual to whom they are applied, it behooves me,
for the sake of my own character, to offer some explanation
of my conduct.

When I entered on board the *Dolly*, I signed, as a matter of
course, the ship's articles, thereby voluntarily engaging, and
legally binding myself to serve in a certain capacity for the
period of the voyage; and, special considerations apart, I
was of course bound to fulfil the agreement.  But in all
contracts, if one party fail to perform his share of the compact,
is not the other virtually absolved from his liability?  Who is
there who will not answer in the affirmative?

Having settled the principle, then, let me apply it to the
particular case in question.  In numberless instances had
not only, the implied but the specified conditions of the
articles been violated on the part of the ship in which I
served.  The usage on board of her was tyrannical; the sick
had been inhumanly neglected; the provisions had been
doled out in scanty allowance; and her cruises were
unreasonably protracted.  The captain was the author of these
abuses; it was in vain to think that he would either remedy
them, or alter his conduct, which was arbitrary and violent
in the extreme.  His prompt reply to all complaints and
remonstrances was—the butt-end of a hand-spike, so
convincingly administered as effectually to silence the
aggrieved party.

To whom could we apply for redress?  We had left
both law and equity on the other side of the Cape; and
unfortunately, with a very few exceptions, our crew was
composed of a parcel of dastardly and mean-spirited
wretches, divided among themselves, and only united
in enduring without resistance the unmitigated tyranny
of the captain.  It would have been mere madness for
any two or three of the number, unassisted by the rest,
to attempt making a stand against his ill-usage.  They
would only have called down upon themselves the particular
vengeance of this "Lord of the Plank," and subjected
their shipmates to additional hardships.

But, after all, these things could have been endured awhile,
had we entertained the hope of being speedily delivered from
them by the due completion of the term of our servitude.
But what a dismal prospect awaited us in this quarter!  The
longevity of Cape Horn whaling voyages is proverbial,
frequently extending over a period of four or five years.

Some long-haired, bare-necked youths, who, forced by
the united influences of Captain Marryat and hard times,
embark at Nantucket for a pleasure excursion to the Pacific,
and whose anxious mothers provide them with bottled milk
for the occasion, oftentimes return very respectable
middle-aged gentlemen.

The very preparations made for one of these expeditions
are enough to frighten one.  As the vessel carries
out no cargo, her hold is filled with provisions for her own
consumption.  The owners, who officiate as caterers for the
voyage, supply the larder with an abundance of dainties.
Delicate morsels of beef and pork, cut on scientific principles
from every part of the animal, and of all conceivable shapes
and sizes, are carefully packed in salt, and stored away in
barrels; affording a never-ending variety in their different
degrees of toughness, and in the peculiarities of their saline
properties.  Choice old water, too, decanted into stout
six-barrel casks, and two pints of which are allowed every day to
each soul on board; together with ample store of sea-bread,
previously reduced to a state of petrifaction, with a view to
preserve it either from decay or consumption in the ordinary
mode, are likewise provided for the nourishment and
gastronomic enjoyment of the crew.

But not to speak of the quality of these articles of sailors'
fare, the abundance in which they are put on board a whaling
vessel is almost incredible.  Oftentimes, when we had
occasion to break out in the hold, and I beheld the successive
tiers of casks and barrels, whose contents were all destined
to be consumed in due course by the ship's company, my
heart sank within me.

Although, as a general case, a ship unlucky in falling
in with whales continues to cruise after them until she
has barely sufficient provisions remaining to take her home,
turning round then quietly and making the best of her way
to her friends, yet there are instances when even this natural
obstacle to the further prosecution of the voyage is overcome
by headstrong captains, who, bartering the fruits of their
hard-earned toils for a new supply of provisions in some of
the ports of Chili or Peru, begin the voyage afresh, with
unabated zeal and perseverance.  It is in vain that the owners
write urgent letters to him to sail for home, and for their
sake to bring back the ship, since it appears he can put nothing
in her.  Not he.  He has registered a vow; he will fill his
vessel with good sperm oil, or failing to do so, never again
strike Yankee soundings.

I heard of one whaler, which after many years' absence
was given up for lost.  The last that had been heard of her
was a shadowy report of her having touched at some of those
unstable islands in the far Pacific, whose eccentric wanderings
are carefully noted in each new edition of the South Sea
charts.  After a long interval, however, the *Perseverance*—for
that was her name—was spoken somewhere in the vicinity
of the ends of the earth, cruising along as leisurely
as ever, her sails all bepatched and bequilted with rope-yarns,
her spars fished with old pipe stores, and her rigging knotted
and spliced in every possible direction.  Her crew was
composed of some twenty venerable Greenwich-pensioner-looking
old salts, who just managed to hobble about deck.  The
ends of all the running ropes, with the exception of the signal
halyards and poop-down-haul, were rove through snatch-blocks,
and led to the capstan or windlass, so that not a yard
was braced or a sail set without the assistance of machinery.

Her hull was incrusted with barnacles, which completely
encased her.  Three pet sharks followed in her wake, and
every day came alongside to regale themselves from the
contents of the cook's bucket, which were pitched over to
them.  A vast shoal of bonetas and albicores always kept
her company.

Such was the account I heard of this vessel, and the
remembrance of it always haunted me; what eventually
became of her I never learned; at any rate, she never reached
home, and I suppose she is still regularly tacking twice in the
twenty-four hours somewhere off Desolate Island, or the
Devil's-Tail Peak.

Having said thus much touching the usual length of these
voyages, when I inform the reader that ours had as it were
just commenced, we being only fifteen months out, and even
at that time hailed as a late arrival and boarded for news,
he will readily perceive that there was little to encourage
one in looking forward to the future, especially as I had
always had a presentiment that we should make an unfortunate
voyage, and our experience so far had justified the
expectation.

I may here state, and on my faith as an honest man, that
though more than three years have elapsed since I left this
same identical vessel, she still continues in the Pacific; and
but a few days since I saw her reported in the papers as
having touched at the Sandwich Islands, previous to going on
the coast of Japan.

But to return to my narrative.  Placed in these
circumstances then, with no prospect of matters mending if I
remained aboard the *Dolly*, I at once made up my mind to
leave her: to be sure it was rather an inglorious thing to steal
away privily from those at whose hands I had received
wrongs and outrages that I could not resent; but how was
such a course to be avoided when it was the only alternative
left me?  Having made up my mind, I proceeded to acquire
all the information I could obtain relating to the island and
its inhabitants, with a view of shaping my plans of escape
accordingly.  The result of these inquiries I will now state,
in order that the ensuing narrative may be the better
understood.

The bay of Nukuheva, in which we were then lying, is
an expanse of water not unlike in figure the space included
within the limits of a horse-shoe.  It is, perhaps, nine miles
in circumference.  You approach it from the sea by a narrow
entrance, flanked on either side by two small twin islets
which soar conically to the height of some five hundred feet.
From these the shore recedes on both hands, and describes
a deep semicircle.

From the verge of the water the land rises uniformly
on all sides, with green and sloping acclivities, until from
gently rolling hillsides and moderate elevations it insensibly
swells into lofty and majestic heights, whose blue outlines
ranged all around, close in the view.  The beautiful
aspect of the shore is heightened by deep and romantic glens,
which come down to it at almost equal distances, all
apparently radiating from a common centre, and the upper
extremities of which are lost to the eye beneath the shadow of
the mountains.  Down each of these little valleys flows a
clear stream, here and there assuming the form of a slender
cascade, then stealing invisibly along until it bursts upon the
sight again in larger and more noisy waterfalls, and at last
demurely wanders along to the sea.

The houses of the natives, constructed of the yellow
bamboo, tastefully twisted together in a kind of wickerwork,
and thatched with the long tapering leaves of the palmetto,
are scattered irregularly along these valleys beneath the
shady branches of the cocoanut trees.

Nothing can exceed the imposing scenery of this bay.
Viewed from our ship as she lay at anchor in the middle
of the harbour, it presented the appearance of a vast natural
amphitheatre in decay, and overgrown with vines, the deep
glens that furrowed its sides appearing like enormous fissures
caused by the ravages of time.  Very often when lost in
admiration at its beauty I have experienced a pang of regret
that a scene so enchanting should be hidden from the world
in these remote seas, and seldom meet the eyes of devoted
lovers of nature.

Besides this bay the shores of the island are indented by
several other extensive inlets, into which descend broad
and verdant valleys.  These are inhabited by as many
distinct tribes of savages, who, although speaking kindred
dialects of a common language, and having the same religion
and laws, have from time immemorial waged hereditary
warfare against each other.  The intervening mountains,
generally two or three thousand feet above the level of the sea,
geographically define the territories of each of these hostile
tribes, who never cross them, save on some expedition of
war or plunder.  Immediately adjacent to Nukuheva, and
only separated from it by the mountains seen from the
harbour, lies the lovely valley of Happar, whose inmates
cherish the most friendly relations with the inhabitants
of Nukuheva.  On the other side of Happar, and closely
adjoining it, is the magnificent valley of the dreaded Typees,
the unappeasable enemies of both these tribes.

These celebrated warriors appear to inspire the other
islanders with unspeakable terrors.  Their very name is
a frightful one; for the word "Typee" in the Marquesan
dialect signifies a lover of human flesh.  It is rather
singular that the title should have been bestowed upon
them exclusively, inasmuch as the natives of all this group
are irreclaimable cannibals.  The name may, perhaps,
have been given to denote the peculiar ferocity of this clan,
and to convey a special stigma along with it.

These same Typees enjoy a prodigious notoriety all over
the islands.  The natives of Nukuheva would frequently
recount in pantomime to our ship's company their terrible
feats, and would show the marks of wounds they had received
in desperate encounters with them.  When ashore they
would try to frighten us by pointing to one of their own
number, and calling him a Typee, manifesting no little surprise
that we did not take to our heels at so terrible an announcement.
It was quite amusing, too, to see with what earnestness
they disclaimed all cannibal propensities on their own
part, while they denounced their enemies—the Typees—as
inveterate gormandizers of human flesh; but this is a
peculiarity to which I shall hereafter have occasion to allude.

Although I was convinced that the inhabitants of our
bay were as arrant cannibals as any of the other tribes
on the island, still I could not but feel a particular and
most unqualified repugnance to the aforesaid Typees.  Even
before visiting the Marquesas, I had heard from men who
had touched at the group on former voyages some revolting
stories in connection with these savages; and fresh in my
remembrance was the adventure of the master of the *Katherine*,
who only a few months previous, imprudently venturing
into this bay in an armed boat for the purpose of barter,
was seized by the natives, carried back a little distance into
this valley, and was saved from a cruel death only by the
intervention of a young girl, who facilitated his escape by
night along the beach to Nukuheva.

I had heard, too, of an English vessel that many years
ago, after a weary cruise, sought to enter the bay of
Nukuheva, and arriving within two or three miles of the land,
was met by a large canoe filled with natives, who offered
to lead the way to the place of their destination.  The
captain, unacquainted with the localities of the island, joyfully
acceded to the proposition—the canoe paddled on, and the
ship followed.  She was soon conducted to a beautiful inlet,
and dropped her anchor in its waters beneath the shadows of
the lofty shore.  That same night the perfidious Typees, who
had thus inveigled her into their fatal bay, flocked aboard
the doomed vessel by hundreds, and at a given signal
murdered every soul on board.

I shall never forget the observation of one of our crew
as we were passing slowly by the entrance of this bay on
our way to Nukuheva.  As we stood gazing over the side
at the verdant headlands, Ned, pointing with his hand in
the direction of the treacherous valley, exclaimed,
"There—there's Typee.  Oh, the bloody cannibals, what a meal
they'd make of us if we were to take it into our heads to
land! but they say they don't like sailor's flesh, it's too salt.
I say, maty, how should you like to be shoved ashore there,
eh?"  I little thought, as I shuddered at the question,
that in the space of a few weeks I should actually be a
captive in that self-same valley.

The French, although they had gone through the ceremony
of hoisting their colours for a few hours at all the principal
places of the group, had not as yet visited the bay of Typee,
anticipating a fierce resistance on the part of the savages
there, which for the present at least they wished to avoid.
Perhaps they were not a little influenced in the adoption
of this unusual policy from a recollection of the warlike
reception given by the Typees to the forces of Captain Porter,
about the year 1814, when that brave and accomplished
officer endeavoured to subjugate the clan merely to gratify the
mortal hatred of his allies the Nukuhevas and Happars.

On that occasion I have been told that a considerable
detachment of sailors and marines from the frigate *Essex*,
accompanied by at least two thousand warriors of Happar
and Nukuheva, landed in boats and canoes at the head of
the bay, and after penetrating a little distance into the
valley, met with the stoutest resistance from its inmates.
Valiantly, although with much loss, the Typees disputed every
inch of ground, and after some hard fighting obliged the
assailants to retreat and abandon their design of conquest.

The invaders, on their march back to the sea, consoled
themselves for their repulse by setting fire to every house
and temple on their route; and a long line of smoking ruins
defaced the once-smiling bosom of the valley, and proclaimed
to its pagan inhabitants the spirit that reigned in
the breasts of Christian soldiers.  Who can wonder at the
deadly hatred of the Typees to all foreigners after such
unprovoked atrocities?

Thus it is that they whom we denominate "savages"
are made to deserve the title.  When the inhabitants of
some sequestered island first descry the "big canoe" of
the European rolling through the blue waters toward their
shores, they rush down to the beach in crowds, and with open
arms stand ready to embrace the strangers.  Fatal embrace!
They fold to their bosoms the vipers whose sting
is destined to poison all their joys; and the instinctive feeling
of love within their breasts is soon converted into the
bitterest hate.

The enormities perpetrated in the South Seas upon some
of the inoffensive islanders well-nigh pass belief.  These
things are seldom proclaimed at home; they happen at the
very ends of the earth; they are done in a corner, and there
are none to reveal them.  But there is, nevertheless, many
a petty trader that has navigated the Pacific, whose course
from island to island might be traced by a series of
cold-blooded robberies, kidnappings, and murders, the iniquity
of which might be considered almost sufficient to sink her
guilty timbers to the bottom of the sea.

Sometimes vague accounts of such things reach our
firesides, and we coolly censure them as wrong, impolitic,
needlessly severe, and dangerous to the crews of other vessels.
How different is our tone when we read the highly wrought
description of the massacre of the crew of the *Hobomak* by
the Feejees! how we sympathize for the unhappy victims,
and with what horror do we regard the diabolical heathens,
who, after all, have but avenged the unprovoked injuries
which they have received!  We breathe nothing but
vengeance, and equip armed vessels to traverse thousands of
miles of ocean in order to execute summary punishment upon
the offenders.  On arriving at their destination, they burn,
slaughter, and destroy, according to the tenor of written
instructions, and sailing away from the scene of devastation,
call upon all Christendom to applaud their courage and their
justice.

How often is the term "savages" incorrectly applied!
None really deserving of it were ever yet discovered by
voyagers or by travellers.  They have discovered heathens
and barbarians, whom by horrible cruelties they have exasperated
into savages.  It may be asserted, without fear of
contradiction, that in all the cases of outrages committed by
Polynesians, Europeans have at some time or other been the
aggressors, and that the cruel and bloodthirsty disposition
of some of the islanders is mainly to be ascribed to the
influence of such examples.

But to return.  Owing to the mutual hostilities of the
different tribes I have mentioned, the mountainous tracts
which separate their respective territories remain altogether
uninhabited; the natives invariably dwelling in the depths
of the valleys, with a view of securing themselves from the
predatory incursions of their enemies, who often lurk along
their borders, ready to cut off any imprudent straggler, or
make a descent upon the inmates of some sequestered
habitation.  I several times met with very aged men, who from
this cause had never passed the confines of their native vale,
some of them having never even ascended midway up the
mountains in the whole course of their lives, and who,
accordingly, had little idea of the appearance of any other part
of the island, the whole of which is not perhaps more than
sixty miles in circuit.  The little space in which some of
these clans pass away their days would seem almost incredible.

The glen of Tior will furnish a curious illustration of
this.  The inhabited part is not more than four miles in
length, and varies in breadth from half a mile to less than a
quarter.  The rocky vine-clad cliffs on one side tower almost
perpendicularly from their base to the height of at least
fifteen hundred feet; while across the vale—in striking
contrast to the scenery opposite—grass-grown elevations rise
one above another in blooming terraces.  Hemmed in by
these stupendous barriers, the valley would be altogether
shut out from the rest of the world, were it not that it is
accessible from the sea at one end and by a narrow defile at
the other.

The impression produced upon my mind, when I first
visited this beautiful glen, will never be obliterated.

I had come from Nukuheva by water in the ship's boat,
and when we entered the bay of Tior it was high noon.  The
heat had been intense, as we had been floating upon the long
smooth swell of the ocean, for there was but little wind.  The
sun's rays had expended all their fury upon us; and to add
to our discomfort, we had omitted to supply ourselves with
water previous to starting.  What with heat and thirst
together, I became so impatient to get ashore, that when at
last we glided toward it, I stood up in the bow of the boat
ready for a spring.  As she shot two-thirds of her length high
upon the beach, propelled by three or four strong strokes of
the oars, I leaped among a parcel of juvenile savages, who
stood prepared to give us a kind reception; and with them at
my heels, yelling like so many imps, I rushed forward across
the open ground in the vicinity of the sea, and plunged, diver
fashion, into the recesses of the first grove that offered.

What a delightful sensation did I experience!  I felt
as if floating in some new element, while all sorts of gurgling,
trickling, liquid sounds fell upon my ear.  People may say
what they will about the refreshing influences of a cold-water
bath, but commend me, when in a perspiration, to the shade
baths of Tior, beneath the cocoanut trees, and amidst the
cool delightful atmosphere which surrounds them.

How shall I describe the scenery that met my eye, as I
looked out from this verdant recess!  The narrow valley,
with its steep and close adjoining sides draperied with vines,
and arched overhead with a fretwork of interlacing boughs,
nearly hidden from view by masses of leafy verdure, seemed
from where I stood like an immense arbour disclosing its
vista to the eye, whilst as I advanced it insensibly widened
into the loveliest vale eye ever beheld.

It so happened that the very day I was in Tior the French
admiral, attended by all the boats of his squadron, came
down in state from Nukuheva to take formal possession of
the place.  He remained in the valley about two hours,
during which time he had a ceremonious interview with the
king.  The patriarch-sovereign of Tior was a man very far
advanced in years; but though age had bowed his form and
rendered him almost decrepit, his gigantic frame retained
all its original magnitude and grandeur of appearance.  He
advanced slowly and with evident pain, assisting his tottering
steps with the heavy war-spear he held in his hand, and
attended by a group of gray-bearded chiefs, on one of whom
he occasionally leaned for support.  The admiral came
forward with head uncovered and extended hand, while the old
king saluted him by a stately flourish of his weapon.  The
next moment they stood side by side, these two extremes in
the social scale—the polished, splendid Frenchman, and the
poor tattooed savage.  They were both tall and noble-looking
men; but in other respects how strikingly contrasted!
Du Petit Thouars exhibited upon his person all the
paraphernalia of his naval rank.  He wore a richly decorated
admiral's frock-coat, a laced *chapeau bras*, and upon his
breast were a variety of ribbons and orders; while the
simple islander, with the exception of a slight cincture about
his loins, appeared in all the nakedness of nature.

At what immeasurable distance, thought I, are these two
beings removed from each other.  In the one is shown the
result of long centuries of progressive civilization and
refinement, which have gradually converted the mere creature
into the semblance of all that is elevated and grand; while
the other, after the lapse of the same period, has not advanced
one step in the career of improvement.  "Yet, after all,"
quoth I to myself, "insensible as he is to a thousand wants,
and removed from harassing cares, may not the savage be
the happier man of the two?"  Such were the thoughts that
arose in my mind as I gazed upon the novel spectacle before
me.  In truth, it was an impressive one, and little likely to
be effaced.  I can recall even now with vivid distinctness
every feature of the scene.  The umbrageous shades where
the interview took place, the glorious tropical vegetation
around, the picturesque grouping of the mingled throng of
soldiery and natives, and even the golden-hued bunch of
bananas that I held in my hand at the time, and of which I
occasionally partook while making the aforesaid philosophical
reflections.

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