The Call Of The South by George Lewis Becke (i read book .TXT) 📕

possible, but as I don't want to be interrupted I'll ask Ali not to let any chance visitor come aboard to-night."

He went on deck, and on returning first filled and lit his pipe in his cool, leisurely manner, and resumed his story.

"My father, as I one day told you, was a whaling skipper, and was lost at sea about thirteen years ago--that is all I ever did say about him, I think. He was a hard old man, and there was no love between us, so that is why I have not spoken of him. He used me very roughly, and when my mother died I left him after a stormy scene. That was eighteen or nineteen years ago, and I never saw him again.

"When my poor mother died, he sold his ship and went to the Marquesas Islands, and opened a business there as a trader. He had made a lot of money at sperm whaling; and, I suppose, thought that as I had left him, swearing I never wished to see him again, that he would spend the rest of his days in the South Seas--money grubbing to the last.

"Sometimes I heard of him as being very prosperous. Once, when I was told that he had been badly hurt by a gun accident, I wrote to him and asked if he would care for me to come and stay with him. This I did for the sake of my dead mother. Nearly a year and a half passed before I got an answer--an answer that cut me to the quick:--

"'I want no undutiful son near me. I do well by myself'.

"Several years went by, and then when I was mate of a trading schooner in the Fijis I was handed a letter by the American Consul. It was two years old, and was from my father--a long, long letter, written in such a kindly manner, and with such affectionate expressions that I forgave the old man all the savage and unmerited thrashings he had given me when I sailed with him as a lad.

"In this letter he told me that he wanted to see me again--that made me feel good--and that he had built a schooner which he had named _Juliette_ after my mother, who was a French _Canadienne_. He described the labour and trouble he had taken over her, the knees and stringers of _ngiia_ wood, and the carvings of sperm whales he had had cut on the windlass butts and stanchions. Then he went on to say that he had been having a lot of trouble with the French naval authorities, who wanted to drive all Englishmen and Americans out of the group, and had made up his mind to leave the Marquesas and settle down again either in Samoa or Tonga, where he hoped I would join him and forget how hardly he had used me in the past.

"The gun accident, he wrote, had rendered him all but blind, and he had engaged a man named Krause, a German, as mate, and to navigate the _Juliette_ to Tonga or Samoa. Krause, he said, was a man he did not like, nor trust; but as he was a good sailor-man and could navigate, he had engaged him, as he could get no one else at Nukahiva.

"With my father were a party of Marquesan natives--a chief and his wife and her infant, and two young men. The schooner's crew were four Dagoes--deserters from some ship. He did not care about taking them, but had no choice.

"Some ten days before the German and the crew came on board, my father secretly took all his money--$8,000 in gold--and, aided by the Marquesan chief, made a secure hiding-place for it by removing the skin in the transoms, and then packing it in oakum and wedging each package in between the timbers. Then he carefully relaid the skin, and repainted the whole. He said, 'If anything happens to me through treachery, no one will ever discover that money, although they will get a couple of thousand of Mexican silver dollars in my chest'.

"Well, the _Juliette_ sailed, and was never again heard of.

"That brings my story to an end, and if this is the _Juliette_, and the money has not been taken, it is within six feet of us--there," and he pointed calmly to the transoms.

Marsh was greatly excited.

"We shall soon see, Meredith. But first let me say that I am sure that this is your father's missing schooner, and that she is the vessel that thirteen years ago called at Motumoe, and those who sailed her sent Pautoe on shore when she was an infant."

Then he hurriedly related the story as told to him by Mr. Copley.

Meredith nodded. "No doubt the missionary was right and my father's fears were well-founded. I suppose the German and the Dagoes murdered him and the four Marquesans. Krause, of course, would know that my poor father had money on board. And I daresay that the Dagoes spared the child out of piety--their Holy Roman consciences wouldn't let 'em cut the throat of a probably unbaptised child. Now, Marsh, if you'll clear away the cushions and all the other gear from the transoms, I'll get an auger and an axe, and we'll investigate."

Rising from his seat in his usual leisurely manner, he went on deck, and returned in a few minutes with a couple of augers, an axe, two wedges, and a heavy hammer.

Marsh had cleared away the cushions and some boxes of provisions, and was eagerly awaiting him.

Meredith, first of all, took the axe, and, with the back of the head, struck the casing of the transoms.

"It's all right, Marsh. Either the money, or something else is there right enough, I believe. Bore away on your side."

The two augers were quickly biting away through the hard wood of the casing, and in less than two minutes Marsh felt the point of his break through the inner skin, and then enter something soft; then it clogged, and finally stuck. Reversing the auger, he withdrew it, and saw that on the end were some threads of oakum and canvas, which he excitedly showed to his partner, who nodded, and went on boring in an unmoved manner, until the point of his auger penetrated the planking, stuck, and then came a sound of it striking loose metal. The wedges were then driven in between the planking, and one strip prised off, and there before them was the money in small canvas bags, each bag parcelled round with oakum, which was also packed tightly between the skin and timbers, forming a compact mass.

Removing one bag only, Marsh placed it aside, then they replaced the plank, plugged the auger holes, and hid the marks from view by stacking the provision cases along the transoms.

Ali was called below, and told of the discovery. He, of course, was highly delighted, and his eyes gleamed when Meredith unfastened the bag, and poured out a stream of gold coin upon the cabin table.

That night the partners did not sleep. They talked over their plans for the future, and decided to take the schooner to San Francisco, sell her, and buy a larger vessel and a cargo of trade goods. Meredith was to command, and Tahiti in the Society Group was to be their headquarters. Here Marsh (with the faithful Ali and Leota, and, of course, Pautoe) was to buy land and form a trading station, whilst the vessel was to cruise throughout the South Seas, trading for oil, pearl-shell and other island produce.

Soon after daylight the anchor of the _Juliette_ was lifted and she sailed out of Apia harbour, and by noon, Leota and Pautoe were astonished to see the little craft bring-to abreast of Laulii village, and Marsh and Meredith come on shore.

Later on in the day, when the house was free of the kindly, but somewhat intrusive native visitors, the partners told the strange story of the _Juliette_ to Leota and Pautoe, and of their plans for the future.

"Pautoe," said Meredith, "in three years' time will you marry me, and sail with me in the new ship?"

"Aye, that will I, Lesta. Did I not say so before?"



CHAPTER XXVIII ~ THE MAN WHO KNEW EVERYTHING

The Man Who Knew Everything came to Samoa in November, when dark days were on the land, and the nearing Christmas time seemed likely to be as that of the preceding one, when burning villages and the crackle of musketry, and the battle cries of opposing factions, engaged in slaughtering one another, turned the once restful and beautiful Samoa into a hell of evil passions, misery and suffering. For the poor King Malietoa was making a game fight with his scanty and ill-armed troops against the better-armed rebel forces, who were supplied, _sub rosa_, with all the arms and ammunition they desired by the German commercial agents of Bismarck, who had impressed upon that statesman the necessity of making Samoa the base of German trading enterprise in the South Seas by stirring up rebellion throughout the group to such an extent that Germany, under the plea of humanity, would intervene--buy out the British and American interests, and force the natives to accept a German protectorate.

At this time the white population of Apia numbered about two hundred, of whom one half were Germans--the rest were principally English and Americans. For two years past a very bitter feeling had existed between the staff of the great German trading firm, and the British and American community. The latter had their places of business in Apia, and the suburb of Matautu, the Germans occupied the suburb of Matafele, and although there was a business intercourse between the people of the three nationalities, there was absolutely none of a social character. The British and American traders and residents were supporters of King Malietoa, the Germans backed up the rebel party, and the natives themselves were equally divided into pro-British, and pro-Germans.

At this time--when the Man Who Knew Everything arrived in Samoa from New Zealand--I was living on shore. The vessel in which I was employed as "recruiter" in the Kanaka labour trade was laid up in Apia harbour. Two months previously we had brought a cargo of native labourers from the Gilbert Islands to be indentured to the cotton planters in Samoa, and finding the country in such a disturbed state, with business paralysed, and no further demand for a fresh cargo of Kanaka "recruits," we decided to pay off most of the ship's company, and let the brigantine lie up till the end of the rainy and bad weather season--from the end of November till March, The skipper and a few of the native crew remained on board, but I took up my quarters on shore, at a little Samoan village named Lelepa--two miles from Apia. Here I was the "paying guest" of our boatswain--a stalwart native of the island of Rarotonga. He had sailed with me on several vessels during a period of some years; and on one of our visits to Apia had married a Samoan girl of a good family.

Having much spare time on my hands I occupied it in deep-sea fishing and shooting, and in making boat voyages along the coast, visiting a number of native villages, where I was well-known to the people, who always made me and my boat's crew very welcome--for the Samoans are naturally a most hospitable race, and love visiting and social intercourse. On these excursions Marama (the native boatswain) and some other of the ship's crew sometimes came with me; on other occasions my