Charles Beresford - The Memoirs of Admiral Lord Beresford

It occurred to me that Punch would serve me for a groom, and I said so to his master.

" Tiens! " said that gentleman pleasantly. "You shall have him for five shilling."

"Done!" said I, and paid him the money. He did not think I was serious; but he made no bones about ridding himself of his garden-boy.

Punch was the most hideous savage I have ever viewed. He was black as a boot; even his lips were black; his face was seamed with the cicatrices which were the totem marks of his tribe, whatever that may have been; and his countenance was exactly like the countenance of a bull-dog. The scars wrinkled his cheeks, like a bull-dog's jowl. He was densely stupid, and wild of temper. He attacked one of the men on board with his teeth. But he was utterly fearless, and although he knew nothing about horses, he was never afraid of them. He was apparently constructed of india-rubber. Nothing hurt him. When I drove a tandem, it was his duty as tiger to spring up behind as we started. But as my horses started at speed, Punch had not always time to run from their heads to the back of the vehicle. I have known him catch a spoke of the wheel and be whirled into the air, and the wheel to pass over him, without harming him in the least.

At a race meeting in Australia, Punch begged for a mount, and I borrowed a horse, which galloped away down the course, Punch clinging to him with arms and legs exactly like a monkey. He took two big fences like a bird; but at the third, the horse breasted it, fell backwards and rolled over upon his rider. I thought he was killed, but he wasn't. He was not even damaged.

When I went on half-pay, I placed Punch in the stables. The women servants took a fancy to him; but Punch, whatever he may have thought of the women, had no love for the head groom, in whose arm he made his teeth meet. So I found him a billet in a hairdresser's shop, which bore the legend, "Hairbrushing by machinery." Punch was the machinery. I saw him at it, turning a wheel in the window. I never saw him again, and know not what became of him.

We arrived at Tahiti in June, 1869. Here is the most lovely climate in the world. The inhabitants never seemed to do any work, with the single exception of carrying bananas. In this exercise they were extraordinarily expert, bearing enormous weights upon the shoulders, the skin of which becomes hard like leather. I considered myself to be fairly strong; but when I tried to carry one of the masses of bananas under which the natives march swiftly all day long, up hill and down, I found that I was able to carry it only for a short distance, and with difficulty, on level ground. The people were perfectly delightful. We went ashore and lived among them; and it was then that I understood how it was that the men of the Bounty mutinied. The fact was that those discontented mariners could not bear to leave islands so delectable. I do not of course, desire to justify their very reprehensible conduct. All I say is that I can understand the strength of its motive. It was simply the desire to remain in an earthly paradise which inspired the men of the Bounty when they left Otaheite in April, 1789, to set Captain Bligh adrift in an open boat, with the nineteen men who stayed by him, and a small stock of provisions. The captain and his men made an astonishing voyage of nearly 4000 miles, and fetched up at the island of Timor, south of the Malaccas, in the following June. Some of the mutineers were subsequently brought to justice in the year 1792. Six of them were condemned and three were executed. In 1814 it was discovered that ten among the mutineers had colonised Pitcairn Island.

We in the Galatea stayed at Tahiti as long as we possibly could, and enjoyed every moment of the time. One of our amusements was to float down a narrow and swift stream and shoot the waterfall. At a point some little distance from the coast, the stream ran deep and rapid between banks which were about three feet apart. The natives, boys and girls, used to drop into the stream and let themselves be carried down feet foremost to a waterfall, which descended some 40 or 50 feet in a wide pool; and it occurred to me that what they could do, I could accomplish. I watched these intrepid children very carefully, and I observed that they always came to the surface some distance away from the fall. In spite of some dissuasion, I determined to attempt the enterprise. I floated down the stream feet foremost, shot the fall, and the moment I reached the foot of it I struck out under water. I was amazed to find that the water was just like air, or an enormous cauldron of soda water, buoying one up, and I came to the surface without the slightest difficulty. Afterwards I went down head first. The only thing to remember was not to come up under the fall itself. Shooting the waterfall became a popular amusement.

Another of our diversions was surf-playing. This enchanting exercise is performed with the aid of a long board shaped like a wedge. The swimmer takes his board, pushes it before him over the breakers, while he dives through them, then turns, and, leaning on the board, rides back on the crest of the surf. The speed, whatever it may be, feels like sixty miles an hour. It is one of the most exhilarating pastimes in the world.

I remember that we all went to church on Sunday. During the service, the Queen of Tahiti suddenly clapped her hands, whereupon the clergyman desisted from his ministrations, while her Majesty distributed tobacco among the congregation. When it was well alight the Queen again clapped her hands, and the clergyman went on with the service.

We left Tahiti with profound regret, receiving and giving many presents on parting. From Tahiti we proceeded to the Sandwich Islands, where I met many old friends, made during my sojourn four years previously. The American population had quite forgiven and forgotten my boyish freak, which had so agitated them at the time. Our old friend Queen Emma, whom we had taken to Panama on her way to England to see the Queen, had returned. I went to call upon her, driving tandem, as already related. Turning in at the gate, I took the corner too sharply, the wheels locked, and the buggy capsized. In the meantime the Queen, having heard the jingling of the Canadian sleigh bells attached to the harness, came out to find her visitor sitting on the grass at her feet. The horses galloped on and wrecked the vehicle and also themselves. Altogether it was a very expensive drive.

When Lord Charles Beresford visited Nippon (from the Chinese Jih Pun, the place or rising of the sun, changed by English pronunciation to Japan), it was the old Japan that he saw; the Japan of centuries of isolation, inviolate save for the intrusion of the Jesuit missionaries in the sixteenth century, and the little wedge of Dutch traders. It had been the Japan of the Mikado, who was as a god; of the Tycoon, his temporal representative, who, like a man walking the tight-rope above a wood of transfixing swords, maintained a delicate equipoise of power among the feudal seigneuralty, the great Daimios, each lord of his domain and master of life and death over thousands of retainers. It was the Japan of the Samurai, the two-sworded rufflers; of the Ronins, the masterless men, the outlaws, who roved the country in bands, patriotic, ferocious and pitiless. It was still the Japan in which the common people, men and women and maidens, walked naked and unashamed; in which the warriors went to battle clad in armour wrought of tortoise-shell and silk, girt with swords and carrying bows and arrows; in which the life of a barbarian foreigner was never safe from hour to hour, so that he must be guarded by the two-sworded Yaconins, the Government officers, who, knowing the hatred of the Government towards their charges, seldom drew sword in their defence until it was just one blood-stained second too late; in which a fault in honour was instantly expiated by hara-kiri, the fatal cross-cut upon the belly, performed in the public eye, which was justly offended if the incision were so clumsily executed that the entrails protruded. Such, at least, is the ceremonial theory. In practice, the dagger is driven in below the ribs, drawn horizontally across the belly, and up the other side; an operation requiring inconceivable courage.