Grant Allen

“ I won't attempt to explain to you all the petty mishaps and unfortunate failures that attended our efforts. It seemed as if iron, wood, and coal—all inanimate matter itself—was banded together to make our further approach to Tanaki impossible. By nine o'clock I knew the worst myself. The breakdown to the engine was far more serious than we had at first imagined. I felt sure that before noon at earliest, with all our skill and toil, we couldn't possibly repair it.
But I shrank from telling those two poor trembling lads that there was no hope now left of saving their parents. ”

“ The savages fell back and listened with eagerness to what was coming. Then the Chief shouted out again in Kanaka—"I have a thought. The gods have sent it to me. This is my thought. We have killed enough for tonight. Let us catch them alive and bind them. Next moon is the great feast of my father Taranaka. I have an idea—a divine idea. Let us keep them till that day, and then, in honor of the gods, let us roast them and eat them." ”

“ We went single file, of course, along the narrow trail, which every here and there divided to right or left in the midst of the brake with most puzzling complexity. At every such division or fork in the track, Jack halted for a moment and cast his eye dubiously to one side and the other, at last selecting the trail that seemed best to him. Nassaline, too, helped us not a little by his savage instinct for finding his way through trackless jungle. For my own part, I could never have believed any road on earth could possibly be so tortuous ”

“ As I did so, I saw the savages seize Macglashin in their arms, and range the four poor fugitives in a line together. My blood curdled. The Chief and the ten savages with the Sniders stood in a row, half fronting us where we lay. Macglashin and his wife were fortunately out of line of fire for our rifles. [pg 123] "Now, we can delay no longer," I cried. "He means murder. The moment the black fellow gives the word of command, fire at once upon him and his men, boys. Take steady aim. No matter what comes. Let the poor souls have a run for their lives, any way." ”

“ Man a Tanaki kill pig all night; kill Scotchman in morning. Kill baby first; then boy; then mother. Last of all, kill you yourself, Macglashin. Taranaka very much love white man's blood. Great day to-day for feast for Taranaka. ”

“ White people don't sell or eat their children, stupid! It's my belief, Nassaline, we'll never make a civilized Christian creature of you, in a tall hat, and with a glass in your eye. You ain't cut out for it, somehow. How many times have I explained to you, boy, that Christians never cook and eat their enemies?... They only love them, and blow them up with Gatlings or Armstrongs—a purely fraternal method of expressing slight differences of international opinion.... Now, come along down and let's see these lads. ”

“ I waved the chart round my head in triumph. "Jim, Jim!" I shouted out, rushing up the companion-ladder in my night-shirt as I stood; "here's a hope indeed! Here's splendid news. Put on all steam at once and we may save them yet. Tanaki's the other side of 180!" ”

“ The Albatross was lumbering along as best she might with her broken engine, and we were nearing the line of 180°. We weren't making much way, however, for the speed was low; and we hadn't so much reason for hurrying now, for we felt almost hopeless of being in time to prevent the threatened massacre. Our people, we feared, had long since fallen victims to the superstition and bloodthirstiness of the ungrateful savages. ”

“ That very afternoon, the Chief, beginning to get sober again, but quarrelsome from headache and the other after-effects of a long debauch, came round to the mission-house in a towering rage, and asked the unsuspecting missionary, "Say, white man, are you a Scotchman?"
"Yes," says Macglashin, not knowing what was coming. "I'm a Scotchman, Chief, certainly. I was born in Scotland."
[pg 67] The Chief laughed loud. "Ha, ha," he said, "then Queenie England no take care a you. No send gunboat to shoot us all dead, if man a Tanaki come up and kill you." ”

“ Waiting for the tide is always slow business.
At about half-past one, however, the water began to deepen under the ship, and we could feel her rise and fall—bump, bump, bump—with each onslaught of the breakers. Now bumping on a reef isn't exactly wholesome for a ship's bottom, so I gave the word to Jenkins for the engines to go to work again; and presently, after two or three unsuccessful attempts, we got her safe off, by energetic reversing, and found to our great delight that the Albatross, like a tight little craft that she was, had sprung no leak, and was making no water. ”

“ Before this hour I had hoped to be anchored off the harbor of Tanaki.
Seven o'clock on Wednesday morning; and [pg 83] by twelve at noon, so the boys assured us, the ovens would be made hot at Taranaka's tomb for those unfortunate prisoners on the remote island!
Oh, how frantically we worked for the next two hours! and how remorselessly everything seemed to turn against us! How is it that whenever one's in the greatest hurry all nature seems to conspire to defeat one's purpose? ”

“ Another serious difficulty beset us in our work. We were beating about in the angry sea off the Caycos Reef, with the breakers dashing in, and the surf running high. If we tried to mend the broken engine where we stood, we should infallibly be dashed to pieces on the dangerous shallows. You can't go to work like that on a lee shore, with no engine to fall back upon, and the wind blowing half a gale. The only thing possible for us was to hoist sail and make for the open sea to southward under all canvas. That was taking us further away from Tanaki, of course ”

“ Perhaps they might spare his Miriam's life, and make her over to the mission-ship when it next arrived on its rounds at the island.
All that night long the savages, for their part, [pg 94] were holding a sing-sing, as they call it, close by, and the hideous noise of their heathenish revels could be distinctly heard by the watchers in the temple. They danced to the music of their hollow drums, while the shells upon their ankles resounded in unison. At times the echo of horrible laughter fell harsh upon the ear. ”

“ But after awhile the Frenchmen produced their regulation bottles of square gin (that's what they call Hollands in the South Pacific) , and began to treat the Chief and the other savages to drinks all round, as much as you liked, with nothing to pay for it. In a very short time the Chief had got so much liquor aboard that his legs wouldn't answer the rudder any longer, and he began to reel about like a perfect madman. Most of the other full-grown men natives followed suit before long, and lay down on the beach half dead with drunkenness. ”

“ Interfere too much with man who sell him boy or him woman. Me don't going to kill you with axe, like Taranaka kill first missionary that come a Tanaki. Man a oui-oui sell me plenty Snider. Man a Tanaki want to try him shooting-irons. Set you up to run, and then go fire at you."
At the word he nodded, and four stalwart savages caught Macglashin in their arms and held him to a line drawn lightly in the dust by the Chief's stick. ”

“ Now there's nothing to put a man's temper up like getting shot in the arm. I lost mine, I confess, and I shouted aloud, "Fire, boys, and row on at them!" Our fellows fired, and the very same moment the natives closed in and went at them with their canoes, all alive with Sniders, lances and hatchets. It was a lively time, I can tell you, for the next five minutes, with those lithe, long black fellows swarming over them like ants; and poor Tom Blake got a bullet from a French rifle in his thigh, that lodges there still in very comfortable quarters. ”

“ They had all been drinking the greater part of the night at the sing-sing, for the Frenchmen had left plenty of square gin behind; and they rollicked in the cruel good-humor of the born savage.
"How do, Macglashin?" the Chief inquired with a hateful leer. "How do, white woman? Taranaka day come at last. How you like him this morning? What for you no tell man a Tanaki sooner you don't know Englishman? Ha! ha! dat true; so him see. Queenie England no care for Scotchman." ”

“ There's very little European shipping there of any sort, I can tell you; a man may sometimes sail for days together across that trackless sea without so much as speaking a single vessel, and the few he does come across are mostly engaged in what they euphoniously call "the labor-trade"—in plain English, kidnaping blacks or browns, who are induced to sign indentures for so many years' service (generally "three yams," that is to say, for three yam crops) , and are then carried off by force or fraud to some other island, to be used as laborers in the cane-fields or cocoa-nut groves. ”

“ Why, it was that very evening that Martin had told us the rest of his strange tale—how his father and mother, with his younger [pg 73] brother Calvin and his sister Miriam, had been confined by the savages in the grass-hut temple, while he and Jack were put to lie in an open out-house hard by, guarded only by a single half-intoxicated Kanaka. Well, in the middle of the night, those two brave boys had silently gnawed their ropes asunder, and creeping past their guard had stolen away to the beach in the desperate effort to escape in search of assistance. ”

“ Wednesday the tenth was the anniversary of Taranaka's death (he had been killed in a fight with some neighboring islanders, who fell out with him over the wreck of an American whaling vessel) , and it was on that festival day that the chief proposed offering up the blood of our fellow-countrymen as an expiation to the shades of his departed relative.
Macglashin and his wife never even knew that the boys had escaped. If they had, those long days of suspense might have been even worse for them. ”

“ Well, we took out the four boys, when the mill was over, and transferred them to our gig; and then we escorted the Frenchmen, ironed in their own handcuffs, to the deck of their sloop, with the natives on either side in their canoes rowing along abreast of us like a guard of honor. The crew of the sloop didn't attempt to interfere with us as we brought their comrades handcuffed aboard; if they had, why, then, with the help of the savages, we should have been more than a match for them. ”

“ Fortunately, we had a sailor aboard the Albatross who had been a beach-comber (or degraded white man who lives like a native) for three years on the island of Ambrymon, and had a Kanaka girl for a sweetheart; so he could talk their palaver almost as easy as you can English, and he acted as interpreter for us with the poor people in the hold. ”

“ Perhaps the mission ship, that went her rounds twice a year, might happen to put in, out of due season, with some special message or under stress of weather; or perhaps some whaling vessel or some English gunboat might arrive in the nick of time in the little harbor of Tanaki. But when Tuesday evening came, and no help had arrived, the unhappy man's heart sank within him. He gave up that last wild hope of a rescue at the eleventh hour, and addressed himself to die with what courage he could muster.
Ah yes, to die one's self is all easy enough; nobody worth his salt minds that ”

“ But anyhow, Martin Luther Macglashin didn't tell us all his story at a single time, or in a connected way; he gave us a bit now and a bit again, with additions from Jack, [pg 58] according as he was able. So being, as I say, no more than a free-and-easy master mariner myself, without skill in literature, I'm not going to try to repeat it all, word for word, to you precisely as it came, but shall just take the liberty of spinning my yarn my own way and letting you have in short the gist and substance of what we gradually got out of our two fugitives. ”

“ But man a oui-oui tell me you no true Englishman. You speakee English, but you Scotchman born. All samee American. Queenie England no care for American, no care for Scotch; no send her gunboat for look after Scotchman. Man a Tanaki go for eat you to-day, for do honor to ghost a Taranaka."
Macglashin saw that words would produce no effect upon the tipsy and excited wretch; he must make up his mind for the worst. ”

“ And what are the natives making such a noise [pg 19] over this little transaction in indentured labor for? If it's all as you say, what's this fuss and row about? Keep your rifles steady, lads."
"They want to back out of their bargain, I suppose, now they've drunk our rum and smoked our tobacco," the Frenchman said.
"No true, no true," one of the natives shouted out from beyond in his broken English. "Man a oui-oui!"—that's what they call the French, you know, all through the South Pacific—"man a oui-oui, bad—no believe man, a oui-oui—him make us drunk, so try to cheat us." ”

“ On the Atlantic itself your chance of being picked up from open boats by a passing vessel is slight enough, [pg 31] heaven knows! but on the Pacific, where ships are few and routes are far apart, your only alternative to starvation or foundering is to find yourself cast on the tender mercies of the cannibal Kanaka. No wonder I looked at Jim, and Jim looked at me, and each of us saw unaccustomed tears standing half ashamed in the eyes of the other.
"Stop her!" I cried. "Lower the gig, Tom Blake! Jim, we must go ourselves and fetch these poor fellows." ”

“ On the eighteenth day out from Sydney, we were cruising under the lee of Erromanga—of course you know Erromanga, an isolated island between the New Hebrides and the Loyalty group—when suddenly our dusky Polynesian boy, Nassaline, who was at the masthead on the lookout, gave a surprised cry of "Boat ahoy!" and pointed with his skinny black finger to a dark dot away southward on the horizon, in the direction of Fiji.
I strained my eyes and saw—well, a barrel or something. For myself, I should never have [pg 10] made out it was a boat at all, being somewhat slow of vision at great distances ”

“ Kill every one! They're taboo to our gods. Don't fear their gunboats. Queenie England won't trouble to protect a Scotchman!"
Then began a hideous orgy of wild lust and slaughter. The savages rushed on, drunk with blood and rum, and dragged out the wife and children of the other missionary, whom they brained upon the spot, before the terrified eyes of the trembling Macglashins. The trader Williams ran up just then, with his revolver in [pg 70] his hand, followed by two faithful black servants from a neighboring island; but the French skipper had been cunning enough there too. ”

“ Jack whispered under his breath, but in a deep tone of relief. "The Tanaki men are guarding them exactly as they did when Martin and I left the island. I almost think I can see Miriam's head through the open door. We shall be in time still to deliver them from these bloodthirsty wretches."
"In what direction must we look for the Albatross?" I whispered back. "Will she come in from the south there?"
"O, no!" Jack answered in a very low voice. "That's an island to the right—a little rocky island that guards the harbor. There's deep water close in by the shore that side. ”