Jarwin and Cuffy by R. M. Ballantyne (digital ebook reader txt) 📕

his wearing, and the huge South-Sea club which he carried habitually for protection, he was still a fair specimen of a British tar.

Paroquets were chattering happily; rills were trickling down the hillsides; fruit and flower trees perfumed the air, and everything looked bright and beautiful—in pleasant accordance with the state of Jarwin’s feelings—while the two friends wandered away through the woods in dreamy enjoyment of the past and present, and with hopeful anticipations in regard to the future. Jarwin said something to this effect to Cuffy, and put it to him seriously to admit the truth of what he said, which that wise dog did at once—if there be any truth in the old saying that “silence is consent.”

After wandering for several hours, they came out of the wood at a part of the coast which lay several miles distant from Big Chief’s village. Here, to his surprise and alarm, he discovered two war-canoes in the act of running on the beach. He drew back at once, and endeavoured to conceal himself, for he knew too well that this was a party from a distant island, the principal chief of which had threatened more than once to make an attack on Big Chief and his tribe. But Jarwin had been observed, and was immediately pursued and his retreat cut off by hundreds of yelling savages. Seeing this, he ran down to the beach, and, taking up a position on a narrow spit of sand, flourished his ponderous club and stood at bay. Cuffy placed himself close behind his master, and, glaring between his legs at the approaching savages, displayed all his teeth and snarled fiercely. One, who appeared to be a chief, ran straight at our hero, brandishing a club similar to his own. Jarwin had become by that time well practised in the use of his weapon; he evaded the blow dealt at him, and fetched the savage such a whack on the small of his back as he passed him, that he fell flat on the sand and lay there. Cuffy rushed at him and seized him by the throat, an act which induced another savage to launch a javelin at the dog. It grazed his back, cut it partly open, and sent him yelling into the woods. Meanwhile, Jarwin was surrounded, and, although he felled three or four of his assailants, was quickly overpowered by numbers, gagged, lashed tight to a pole, so that he could not move, and laid in the bottom of one of the war-canoes.

Even when in this sad plight the sturdy seaman did not lose heart, for he knew well that Cuffy being wounded and driven from his master’s side, would run straight home to his master’s hut, and that Big Chief would at once suspect, from the nature of the wound and the circumstance of the dog being alone, that it was necessary for him and his men-of-war to take the field; Jarwin, therefore, felt very hopeful that he should be speedily rescued. But such hopes were quickly dispelled when, after a noisy dispute on the beach, the savages, who owned the canoe in which he lay, suddenly re-embarked and pushed off to sea, leaving the other canoe and its crew on the beach.

Hour after hour passed, but the canoe-men did did not relax their efforts. Straight out to sea they went, and when the sun set, Big Chief’s island had already sunk beneath the horizon.

Now, indeed, a species of wild despair filled the breast of the poor captive. To be thus seized, and doomed in all probability to perpetual bondage, when the cup of regained liberty had only just touched his lips, was very hard to bear. When he first fully realised his situation, he struggled fiercely to burst his bonds, but the men who had tied him knew how to do their work. He struggled vainly until he was exhausted. Then, looking up into the starry sky, his mind became gradually composed, and he had recourse to prayer. Slumber ere long sealed his eyes, setting him free in imagination, and he did not again waken until daylight was beginning to appear.

All that day he lay in the same position, without water or food, cramped by the cords that bound him, and almost driven mad by the heat of an unclouded sun. Still, onward went the canoe—propelled by men who appeared to require no rest. Night came again, and Jarwin—by that time nearly exhausted—fell into a troubled slumber. From this he was suddenly aroused by loud wild cries and shouts, as of men engaged in deadly conflict, and he became aware of the fact that the canoe in which he lay was attacked, for the warriors had thrown down their paddles and seized their clubs, and their feet trod now on his chest, now on his face, as they staggered to and fro. In a few minutes several dead and wounded men fell on him; then he became unconscious.

When John Jarwin’s powers of observation returned, he found himself lying on his back in a neat little bed, with white cotton curtains, in a small, comfortably-furnished room, that reminded him powerfully of home! Cuffy lay on the counterpane, sound asleep, with his chin on his master’s breast. At the bedside, with her back to him, sat a female, dressed in European clothes, and busy sewing.

“Surely it ain’t bin all a long dream!” whispered Jarwin to himself.

Cuffy cocked his ears and head, and turned a furtive glance on his master’s face, while his “spanker boom” rose with the evident intention to wag, if circumstances rendered it advisable; but circumstances had of late been rather perplexing to Cuffy. At the same time the female turned quickly round and revealed a brown, though pleasant, face. Simultaneously, a gigantic figure arose at his side and bent over him.

“You’s bedder?” said the gigantic figure.

“Hallo! Big Chief! Wot’s up, old feller?” exclaimed Jarwin.

“Hold you’s tongue!” said Big Chief, sternly. “Go way,” he added, to the female, who, with an acquiescent smile, left the room.

“Well, this is queer; an’ I feels queer. Queery—wots the meanin’ of it?” asked Jarwin.

“You’s bin bad, Jowin,” answered Big Chief, gravely, “wery bad. Dead a-most. Now, you’s goin’ to be bedder. Doctor say that—”

“Doctor!” exclaimed Jarwin in surprise, “what doctor?”

“Doctor of ship. Hims come ebbery day for to see you.”

“Ship!” cried Jarwin, springing up in his bed and glaring at Big Chief in wonder.

“Lie down, you Christian Breetish tar,” said the Chief, sternly, at the same time laying his large hand on the sailor’s chest with a degree of force that rendered resistance useless. “Hold you’s tongue an’ listen. Doctor say you not for speak. Me tell you all about it.

“Fust place,” continued Big Chief, “you’s bin bad, konsikince of de blackguard’s havin’ jump on you’s face an’ stummick. But we give ’em awful lickin’, Jowin—oh! smash um down right and left; got you out de canoe—dead, I think, but no, not jus’ so. Bring you here—Raratonga. De Cookee missionary an’ his wife not here; away in ship you sees im make. Native teecher here. Dat teecher’s wife bin nurse you an’ go away jus’ now. Ship comes here for trade, bound for England. Ams got doctor. Doctor come see you, shake ums head; looks long time; say he put you ‘all right.’ Four week since dat. Now, you’s hall right?”

The last words he uttered with much anxiety depicted on his countenance, for he had been so often deceived of late by Jarwin having occasional lucid intervals in the midst of his delirium, that his faith in him had been shaken.

“All right!” exclaimed Jarwin, “aye, right as a trivet. Bound for England, did ’ee say—the ship?”

Big Chief nodded and looked very sad. “You go home?” he asked, softly.

Jarwin was deeply touched, he seized the big man’s hand, and, not being strong, failed to restrain a tear or two. Big Chief, being very strong—in feelings as well as in frame—burst into tears. Cuffy, being utterly incapable of making head or tail of it, gave vent to a prolonged, dismal howl, which changed to a bark and whine of satisfaction when his master laughed, patted him, and advised him not to be so free in the use of his “spanker boom!”

Four weeks later, and Jarwin, with Cuffy by his side, stood, “himself again,” on the quarterdeck of the Nancy of Hull, while the “Yo, heave ho!” of the sailors rang an accompaniment to the clatter of the windlass as they weighed anchor, Big Chief held his hand and wept, and rubbed noses with him—to such an extent that the cabin boy said it was a perfect miracle that they had a scrap of nose left on their faces—and would not be consoled by the assurance that he, Jarwin, would certainly make another voyage to the South Seas, if he should be spared to do so, and occasion offered, for the express purpose of paying him a visit. At last he tore himself away, got into his canoe, and remained gazing in speechless sorrow after the homeward-bound vessel as she shook out her topsails to the breeze.

Despite his efforts, poor Jarwin was so visibly affected at parting from his kind old master, that the steward of the ship, a sympathetic man, was induced to offer him a glass of grog and a pipe. He accepted both, mechanically, still gazing with earnest looks at the fast-receding canoe.

Presently he raised the glass to his lips, and his nose became aware of the long-forgotten odour! The current of his thoughts was violently changed. He looked intently at the glass and then at the pipe.

“Drink,” said the sympathetic steward, “and take a whiff. It’ll do you good.”

“Drink! whiff!” exclaimed Jarwin, while a dark frown gathered on his brow. “There, old Father Neptune,” he cried, tossing the glass and pipe overboard, “you drink and whiff, if you choose; John Jarwin has done wi’ drinkin’ an’ whiffin’ for ever! Thanks to you, all the same, an’ no offence meant,” he added in a gentler tone, turning to the astonished steward, and patting him on the shoulder, “but if you had suffered all that I have suffered through bein’ a slave to the glass and the pipe—when I thought I was no slave, mark you, an’ would have larfed any one to scorn who’d said I wos—if you’d see’d me groanin’, an yearnin’, an’ dreamin’ of baccy an’ grog, as I have done w’en I couldn’t get neither of ’em for love or money—you wouldn’t wonder that I ain’t goin’ to be such a born fool as to go an’ sell myself over again!”

Turning quickly towards the shore, as if regretting that he should, for a moment, have appeared to forget his old friend, he pulled out his handkerchief and waved it over the side. Big Chief replied energetically with a scrap of native cloth—not having got the length of handkerchiefs at that time.

“Look at ’im, Cuff” exclaimed Jarwin, placing his dog on the bulwarks of the ship, “look at him, Cuff, and wag your ‘spanker boom’ to him, too—ay, that’s right—for he’s as kind-hearted a nigger as ever owned a Breetish tar for a slave.”

He said no more, but continued to wave his handkerchief at intervals until the canoe seemed a mere speck on the horizon, and, after it was gone, he and his little dog continued to gaze sadly at the island, as it grew fainter and fainter, until it sank at last into the great bosom of the Pacific Ocean.

The next land seen by Jarwin and Cuffy was—the white cliffs of Old England!