Rolf Boldrewood - A Modern Buccaneer

All South Sea islanders are easily influenced. In a few hours after the teachers landed the whole village declared for Christianity, burned their idols, and renounced the devil and all his works, i. e. Captain Hayston and the brig Leonora .

The Captain's face darkened as he listened; then he asked the trader what he had done in the matter. The man, blinking his watery eyes, said he had done nothing; that he was afraid the natives would kill him, and asked to be taken away.

Jumping up from the table, Hayston grasped him by the collar, and asked me to look at him and say what he should do with such a white-livered hound, who would let one of the finest islands in the Pacific be handed over to the sanctimonious pack on board the Morning Star , and let the best trading station he, Hayston, owned be ruined?

I suggested that he should be detained on board till we met the Morning Star , and then be given to Mr. Morland to keep.

"By – ! just the thing! but just let me tell you, you drunken hound, that when I picked you up a starving beach-comber in Ponapé, I thought you had at least enough sense to know that I am not a man to be trifled with. I was the first man to place a trader on Pingelap. I overcame the natives' hostility, and made this one of the safest islands in the group for whaleships to call at. Now I have lost a thousand dollars by your cowardice. So take this to remember it by."

Then, holding him by one hand, he shook him like a rag, finally slinging him up the companion way, and telling the men to tie him up.

"Lower away the longboat," he roared, "I'll teach the Pingelap gentry how to dance." I went with him, as I wanted to get some bananas and young cocoa-nuts. In five minutes we drew up on the beach.

The head-men of the island now came forward to meet the Captain, and to express their pleasure at seeing him. But he was not to be mollified, and sternly bade them follow him to the largest house in the town where he would talk to them.

The boy Sunday, who was a native of Pingelap, came with us to act as interpreter. Behind the crowd of natives were the two Hawaiian teachers, dressed in white linen shirts and drill trousers. They had their wives with them, dressed in mixed European and native costume.

None of us had arms, nor did we think them necessary. Hitherto these people had been slavish admirers of Hayston, and he assured me that he would reassert his former influence over them in ten minutes. The crowd swarmed into the council-house and sat down on their mats. The Captain remained standing.

His grand, imposing form, as he stood in the centre of the house and held up his hands for silence, seemed to awe them as would a demi-god, and murmurs of applause broke from them involuntarily.

"Tell them, Sunday," he said, fixing his piercing blue eyes on the cowering forms of the two missionary teachers, "that I have come to talk peace, not to fight. Ask them who it was years ago, when the hurricane came and destroyed their houses and plantations – when their little ones were crying with hunger – that brought them to his ship and fed them? Have they forgotten who it was that carried them to Ponapé, and there let them live on his land and fed them on his food till they grew tired of the strange land, and then brought them back to their homes again?"

Sunday translated, and the silence was unbroken till the Captain resumed, "Did not the men of Pingelap say then that no man should be more to them than me – that no one else should place a white man here? And now a strange ship comes, and the men of Pingelap have turned their faces from me?"

A scene of wild excitement followed, the greater number crowding round the Captain, while with outstretched hands and bent heads they signified respect.

The two teachers were walking quickly away with their wives, when the Captain called them back, and in a pleasant voice invited them to come on board and see if there was anything there that they would like their wives to have for a present.

Before returning on board Sunday told the Captain that the chiefs and people desired to express their sorrow at receiving the missionaries, and that they would be glad if he took them away. Since the visit of the Morning Star an epidemic had broken out resembling measles, which had already carried off fifty or sixty of them. Already their superstitious fears led them to regard the sickness as a punishment for having broken their treaty with Hayston. So they offered us six young women as a present; also ten large turtles, and humbly begged him to allow his trader to remain.

The Captain made answer that he did not want six young women – there were plenty on board already; but he would take two, with the ten turtles, and ten thousand cocoa-nuts. The said presents were then cheerfully handed over; the two girls and the turtles going off in the Captain's boat, while the cocoa-nuts were formed into a raft and floated alongside the ship.

While these weighty matters were being arranged I walked round to the weather side of the island with Sunday, who wanted to show me a pool in which the natives kept some captive turtle. On our way we came across some young boys and girls catching fish with a seine. They brought us some and lit a fire. We stayed about an hour with them, having great fun bathing in the surf.

Happening to look out to sea, I saw a big ship coming round the point under easy sail; from her rig and the number of boats she carried I knew her at once to be a whaler. We ran ashore and dressed, and as two of the children offered to show us a short cut through the forest to the village, we ran all the way and got opposite the brig just in time to see the Captain leaving her side to board the whaler. I hailed the brig, and they sent me the dingey, in which I followed Hayston. She proved to be the Josephine , just out from Honolulu – a clean ship, not having taken a fish. The captain was a queer-looking old fellow dressed like a fisherman. He received us with civility, yet looked at the Captain curiously. His crew were all under arms. Each man had a musket, a lance, or a whaling spade – these two last very formidable weapons – in his hand.

Captain Long was candid, and admitted that as soon as he sighted our brig he had armed his men, for the wind was so light that he would have no chance of getting away. Hayston laughingly asked him if he thought the brig was a pirate.

The whaler replied, "Why, certainly. Old Morland and Captain Melton told me two years ago that you sailed a brig with a crew of darned cut-throat niggers, and would take a ship if you wanted her, so I made up my mind to have a bit of shootin' if you boarded us."

"Well, Captain Long," said Hayston, in his easy, pleasant way, "come over to my little vessel and see the pirate at home."

The invitation was accepted, and as we pulled over amicably, the skipper cast an admiring glance at the graceful Leonora as she floated o'er the still, untroubled deep. As we stepped over the ship's side we were met by Bill Hicks, the second mate, whose savage countenance was illumined by a broad smile as he silently pointed to the queer entertainment before us.

"Great ancestral ghosts! d'ye carry a troupe of ackeribats aboard this hyar brig?" quoth the skipper, pointing to four undraped figures capering about in the mad abandonment of a Hawaiian national dance.

The mate explained briefly that he had given the native teachers grog, after which nothing would satisfy them but to show the crew how they used to dance in Lakaina in the good old days. Their wives were also exhilarated, and having thrown off their European clothes, were dancing with more vigour than decorum to the music of an accordion and a violin. The Hope Island girl, Nellie, was seated in a boat we carried on deck playing the accordion, and with her were the rest of the girls laughing and clapping their hands at the antics of the dancers. The stalwart Portuguese, Antonio, was perched on the water-tank with his fiddle, and the rest of the crew who were not at work getting the cocoa-nuts on board were standing around encouraging the quartette by shouts and admiring remarks.