paper that he held in his hand. He had his boots off, for they stood beside him. I think he must have been bathing in one of the creeks by the Bay and afterwards crept up to the seclusion of the banyan-trees to dream and write down his thoughts. Papoo and I watched him for a moment, and then arose and stole away, as she had the household duties to attend to and I did not want her father to catch her again.
Almost every night I would go down by the beach and mix with sailors and traders—men from all countries they were, a good many Germans among them, especially when the Lubeck arrived from Sydney, bringing passengers and a varied cargo. The crew would come ashore and have a regular spree, some of them drinking the vile concoction sold at a shanty bar by the beach. There was one old chap who hailed from “Nuka Hiva.” He would sit drinking and smoking and yarning away for hours, telling us his experiences; he knew all the Islands, had been married over and over again, and as he was growing old and infirm through drink and temper (for he had a terribly fiery head) he would sit and curse the memory of his numerous family, not one of whom would help him. He had grown-up sons and daughters on most of the Isles of the South Seas round about; some of his children were as blackish as their mothers, and some half white and half brown. He would sit for hours while I played and strummed on the violin, telling me of the strange habits of the different tribes and their marriage customs. We would sit together and roar with laughter as he (half drunk) crawled on the shanty floor illustrating the way he solemnised the marriage of his eighth wife in Fiji, describing how he kissed her feet, and how he went through ceremonies of a most extraordinary kind in the many weddings that he had attended as bridegroom. I could not very well write here the tales he told, and moreover I do not believe all that he said was true, though he would pull his billy-goat whiskers, lift his hat from his extraordinary high bald head, and seal every detail with a blasphemous oath of “God’s truth.” He was interesting at first, but I soon wearied of his adventures, for he told the same yarn night after night, and as I slept in the same room with him my life became a burden to me. Just as I was going off to sleep he would suddenly sit up, half drunk, and say: “Did I ever tell you of my marriage with Betsy Brownlegs, the Fiji chief’s daughter?” And then, notwithstanding that I quickly answered “Yes, you have told me and everyone else in Samoa,” he would sit up and start off, pouring out the old tales.
Native Girl, Samoa
One night I got him in a decent mood, played him some old English songs, and then he revealed the best side of his character, that all men have, and with tears in his eyes looked up at me and said, “Matey, that ’ere old song makes me remember—she sang that, and I killed her!” And then out came the sorrow of his life, why he was a drunken exile in the South Seas. As a young man when in England, for he was an Englishman, he had fallen madly in love with a pretty girl in a Kent village. All went well for a time; then a rival came on the scene who was more polished than poor Hornecastle, and the object of his affections cooled down towards him and gave every encouragement to the suitor who wore a top hat and white cuffs. I can still see the gleaming of Hornecastle’s eyes as he told me of that rival of his, how he caught his village sweetheart one night sitting on a stile with the top hat hanging on a post beside her and the cuffs round her neck. “I did for her,” he said; “I meant the shot for him.” And then, though many years had passed since that tragedy which had made him fly from his native land, the tears of remorse crept up to his eyes, but they quickly brightened as he told me that he had read in an old newspaper that the second shot had succeeded, and his rival had died in the hospital. So ended my strange comrade’s courtship—the girl and the rival in the grave, and Hornecastle an exile in the South Seas, and on the slopes his many wives and children romping with glee, brought into existence by the top hat and white cuffs episode. How strange and inscrutable are the ways of Fate.
I made the acquaintance of another old chap who had a mania for eating hard-boiled eggs. He had been a sailor, travelled the world over, done many misdeeds and many good ones. He spoke with a Yankee twang and I believe was an American. He would sit in the grog shanty telling all the traders and sailors in the bar, when his turn came round, of other lands, and invariably finished up by condemning the country in question or praising it according to the quality of the hard-boiled eggs that he had eaten while residing there. They were real old “Shell-backs,” the men of those days, had sailed the seas, lived on “hard tack,” slept “all standing” in wind and rain, and as the various yarns were told they would listen and quietly sip their beer, spitting over their shoulders out of the grog shanty windows without missing, in a way that struck me as wonderful. They were wild times, those that I am writing of, not so long ago either, as I am still a young man. You see I started young and saw more of life before I reached man’s estate (which is the only estate I ever possessed) than a good many men see in their threescore and ten years. As I write and dream on I can see those Isles glittering under the tropic sun, with the shoreward surfs rising and breaking into rainbow-flushed colours, thundering over the reefs. They are still breaking and curling to spray out there, as on the beach through the tracks of moonlight pass and repass the semi-savage-looking figures of Samoan men and women, and still I can hear the songs of those who fish in the Bay as they glide along from shore to shore in the strange outrigged canoes, while the half-caste and white traders loaf, lean, smoke and spit by the shore shanties, tugging at their short beards.
Time went on till Papoo and I drifted apart, and since I must tell the truth, this being no romance, one of her own tribe courted her. She still had her eye on me, but the novelty was wearing off, and I went off to Tonga in a small trading schooner. When I returned to Samoa after about six months, I found that Papoo and her family had left the Island. I never saw her again, and so ended my second love affair.
VII
I go cruising amongst the Islands—Arrive in Sydney—Wharfers looking for Work—I go off hunting for Gold—Meet R. L. Stevenson at Sea
Once more the wandering fever came over me, and wishing old Hornecastle good-bye and my few other friends, I shipped in a schooner bound for the Fijis. For two or three months I roamed with her from isle to isle, saw the various tribes of original mankind of all the South Seas, heard their songs and squatted with them in their little huts as the children of past bloodthirsty cannibals said grace over their meals to the great pride of the onlooking missionaries, who have done a deal of good notwithstanding their own sins.
After a week’s stay at Vanua-Levu we proceeded for the Australian coast, and I arrived once more in Sydney Harbour and there once again I fell in with sailors. There they were, a ragged chain of shoulders on the wharf, mostly men of forty to fifty years of age, stalwart and sunburnt relics of better, or worse, days. Still they stood, watching with weary eyes for work, tugging grizzly beards and moustaches, smoking plug tobacco or fiercely chewing in the hot sunshine, arguing the point over the latest trade union grievance, spitting over their shoulders with the same wonderful precision and fate-like persistence. And still they stand there, at least the younger ones; the older ones are now dead, asleep in the “Necropolis” out at “Rookwood,” with all their grievances at rest and their dried-up chewing gums silent for ever, the cry for higher wages for ever entombed!—while their pals stand down by Sydney Bay and now and again in the long silent watch of many years wipe their noses with their outstretched thumb and forefinger and break the silence by some brief remark, such as “Poor pal Bill, whenever I sees the old windjammers being tugged out across the Bay I thinks of ’im and the good old days before the mast, before we joined the trade union, and now he’s dead, I wonder where he is.” Then, by way of punctuation, the reminiscent loafer spits out a thin swift stream of black tobacco juice.
I soon tired of the wharf monotony, and finally, hearing of the gold discoveries of those times, the fever got hold of me and I resolved with a friend, whose spirit seemed very much like my own, to go up country and see if we could find gold ourselves. The gold discoveries were
