Читать книгу The Gifts of Frank Cobbold - Arthur W. Upfield - Страница 9

1.

When he returned to Levuka from the Ra Coast of Viti Levu, Francis Cobbold took up an appointment as bookkeeper to Messrs Unwin & Nieman, the proprietors of the Albion Hotel.

This was before any kind of government had been established in the Fiji Archipelago. While Levuka was the chief port of the islands, and at this time was a conglomeration of native and European houses, it was not imagined that Suva would eventually become the chief port and the Seat of Administration.

The houses in occupation by the whites at Levuka were constructed in the rather crude Fijian fashion, with bamboo walls and thatched roofs. The whites had contributed two general stores, four hotels, and a dozen or so private residences to the township. There was little money in circulation, drafts on Australian business houses forming the major portion of currency. There were no civil servants, no costly transport facilities, no national debt, and consequently no taxation. Always off shore would be several schooners at anchor, while their crews would be found in the hotels, along with settlers from the Ra Coast and from neighbouring islands.

13. Levuka Town, 1890s

Life was red-raw and red-toothed. Fights were frequent among the whites, and many suffered from delirium tremens. A complex society was quite unknown other than by dividing the population of Levuka into three classes: the natives, the seafarers, and the more sober-minded and respectable of the settlers. A narrow, curved, white beach lapped by the gentle waves of a reef-protected shore, while back from the beach the few houses, the stores and the hotels were hemmed to the west by hills covered with dark-green profuse vegetation - this was Levuka as seen through the eyes of Francis Cobbold.

He worked at his books in the leisurely fashion of the time and place. He came to know well the people living there - the people who came there to trade and to drink, and the seamen who came chiefly to drink and to pick up any trade going, whether in goods or in black ivory. If a man became obstreperous in the Albion Hotel, there was the immensely stout Mr Unwin - semi-clothed in duck and perpetually perspiring - ever ready to invite the quarrelsome one outside to take a fall or two in a wrestling match. There was Mr Unwin's charming daughter to supervise the native domestic staff, and there was Mr Nieman who had married Miss Unwin and who was content to be always overshadowed by his enormous father-in-law.

The wildest, hardest-drinking, blasphemous, good-for- nothing and yet good-natured ruffians ever beheld in the South Sea staggered and lurched from pub to pub; men afraid of nothing, capable of anything, reliant and resourceful; Irishmen, Englishmen, Scotchmen and Australians, Bluenoses and Yankees and Dutchmen and Germans; ex-naval men, or whalers, ex- clerks and ex- everything else. The impact of an iron fist against a stubby chin was more often heard than a 'beg pardon!'

Francis Cobbold had stepped on to this colourful stage in his sixteenth year, and after him came a young man just a few years his senior in the person of J G Pilbrow. Pilbrow had recently left New Zealand where he had been a sheep shepherd for a while - an employment appearing at odds with one who certainly was a cut above minding sheep. A stickler for the dress proprieties of the decade, he demanded equal fastidiousness from others, taking pride in confessing that never once had he started a day's shepherding without wearing a clean starched collar.

About this time, Cobbold met another lad, the son of the captain of a topsail schooner, the Margaret Chessel. Young Wetherall was a year or so older than Francis Cobbold, and these three youths, living in a community of matured, hard bitten men, naturally drifted together. Pilbrow, by virtue of seniority, became their leader.

While Francis Cobbold had come to the Fiji Islands with the main objective of growing cotton, he was less impetuous than Pilbrow to make an immediate start. Pilbrow appears to have been one of those men ever impatient of delay, over- impulsive, none too cautious and in possession of a great faith in himself. It was his opinion that land in the Fiji Archipelago was much too dear, and he offered the proposal that the three young men should sail to the New Hebrides without loss of time, and there select land and proceed to get rich with remarkable facility.

Having become used to working in the presence of men much older than himself, Cobbold at once agreed with Pilbrow's suggestion, while young Wetherall also showed no hesitation about going. In port was a Captain Pollard who hailed from Wivenhoe, Essex, where Cobbold had spent many a golden day with the fishermen. Knowing that the Captain was about to sail for the New Hebrides in his 60-ton schooner, they arranged for their passages with him.

Elated by the prospect of action, the three youths pooled their resources and talked to Mr Doig who owned one of the two stores. They found Doig to be a typical Australian backcountry storekeeper, shrewd in business and an able judge of character. Middle-aged, and with a fair beard, Doig provided them with the necessary goods to the amount of their capital, and then was good enough to grant them credit for a further amount. It does seem that in those days businessmen were good gamblers, always willing to accept a chance even when a chance was a grave risk.

So three very young men set sail on the Colleen Bawn, their purpose being to land among savages on some islands of the New Hebrides group, and create a plantation there. Looking back from the assured safety and the humdrum conditions of life today, this venture appears to be one of the most sublime as well as the most harebrained ever undertaken by courageous youth.

2.

Levuka is situated on the east side of the small island of Ovalau, which lies some miles east of Viti Levu - the largest of the Fiji islands. From this port, protected by the usual reefs of coral from the wild sea sometimes raised by the trade winds, the Colleen Bawn sailed south round the main island before steering a course south of west. Holding to this course for some ten days she finally dropped anchor in Port Resolution in the island of Tanna, one of the southernmost of the islands in the New Hebrides.

Port Resolution is dominated by an active volcano, and after less than twenty-four hours the deck of the Colleen Bawn was covered with an inch of grey dust. Here in 1870, Francis Cobbold saw part of a ringbolt embedded in a rock, which had been used by Captain Cook's ship Resolution when he put into the place to re-caulk her sides in 1774.

The appearance and behaviour of the natives did not encourage settlement of Tanna. They had an evil reputation, which still clung to them for many years after Cobbold's visit. They murdered, one after another, the white men who settled among them. The most determined was a Scot named McLean, who maintained a bodyguard of local boys. His turn came, however, and like his fellows, he suffered indirectly through the sins which the early voyagers and sea ruffians had committed against a wild and primitive people.

14. Vanuatu (formerly the New Hebrides)

From Port Resolution, the Colleen Bawn sailed to Efate, or Sandwich, and there she anchored in Sou'-West Bay early in October. The bay forms a deep indentation in the south-east coast, and from its base juts a low, bush-covered, headland forming a lesser bay on its other side. Off the beach, in each of these lesser bays, lies a small island - that to the north-west being called Mali and the other Vila. The headland masks each from the other.

Cobbold and his two companions were landed on the main beach opposite the island of Vila, together with their stores and baggage. The day was brilliant. The sunlight was reflected by the dancing water of the bay, the gleaming white beach edging the land, and the dark-green vegetation of the jungle which in places was impassable. It was a little world of peace and beauty - on the surface of things.

Immediately after the Colleen Bawn had sailed through the heads of the Bay outward bound, Vila canoes put out which brought a crowd of excited natives to the new settlers led by a particularly truculent ruffian who announced himself to be 'Jimmy' and who boasted of having sailed in a whaling ship. Of his whaling ship experience there was no possible doubt, for his knowledge of English was confined principally to the lurid adjectives to be heard on such a ship.

Here then were three white lads, their boxes and goods near, and round them a horde of naked savages armed with bows and arrows and clubs, gesticulating and excited, and led by a coloured gentleman having a whaling ship's education. It may have been due to this education that the settlers were not slaughtered immediately.

Jimmy, however, was a crafty blackguard who retained a modicum of respect for the white man and the white man's firearms - in this instance a sporting gun and eight ancient and obsolete 'Tower' muskets that were more dangerous to their users than to any object fired at. He sat himself down and proceeded to establish himself as a good lawyer in attempts to extract from the new settlers a portion of their goods.

Lucidly, and in a manner still further emphasising his one-time association with the crew of the whaler, Jimmy pointed out that the land on which the party had landed was really private property belonging to the members of his illustrious tribe. It was unfortunate, but property rights existed on the island of Sandwich, rights which had to be respected.

When it was argued that he was referring to land on the main island of Sandwich and that obviously he and his fellows lived on the small island of Vila, he replied that their settlement there was dictated by fear of the bushmen who lived inland and who sometimes raided them and their neighbours on the island of Mali. Here, his adjectives were employed even more extravagantly.

By mutual consent, the subject of land purchases was dropped for the time being, and some of the natives were paid to erect a bamboo shelter, plaited with the leaves of coconut palms. The cased goods were turned into walls, providing a shelter should the weather break, and slight protection should the savages decide to make a night attack. Jimmy was given a present, and he retired to think out further points for continuing his argument on property rights.

Accordingly, he presented himself again on the following day. He said he had called on a little matter concerning a transfer of land, and he desired to know what was going to be done about it. It would be a sad culmination of local hospitality if the people were forced to maintain their property rights with arrows and clubs. As far as he was concerned, the white men were welcome to all the land they wanted, but the common people on the island of Vila were most ungenerous. He urged the wisdom of a settlement of some kind.

After conferring among themselves, the lads parted with a considerable portion of their goods in payment for an area of land sufficient for a plantation and, the land question then being settled, Jimmy was asked to supply labour. In this matter he was as emphatic as in the matter of land purchase, pointing out that no Vila man could possibly work in his own country for others - no Hebridean gentleman could do that.

Here, as on the islands of Fiji and elsewhere in the South Pacific, the natives held it to be beneath their dignity to labour for strangers in their own territory; Jimmy, however, was obliging enough to offer to bring a party of bushmen to work for the white men.

This suited the lads, and that evening ten or a dozen men from the hills presented themselves and expressed willingness to assist in developing the plantation. They were allotted a space on which to build a shelter for themselves, and were given the first instalment of their rations. Then, at the usual hour, Cobbold and his two companions turned in, thankful that they had been farsighted enough to bring mosquito nets. That night they slept well, confident of the integrity of Jimmy and his followers.

On rising the next morning no bushmen were to be seen. The lads crossed the thirty odd yards separating the two camps and, instead of finding the sluggard natives peacefully sleeping, all they did find was broken spears and clubs and a few arrows, and many significant splashes of blood.

It is difficult to understand how the white settlers could have slept through the certain uproar when a number of natives were butchered within thirty yards of them, but it was so, and the evidence was strong that the bushmen had fought hard for their lives.

Jimmy then arrived and expressed both astonishment and indignation. That his people could have committed such an act was, of course, impossible. Those Mali men were quite capable of doing it - in fact, they would murder their mothers when life became boring, or when they felt too tired to hunt their fellow men for meat. Having castigated his neighbours with the adjectival fluency of the whaling ship he retired, overwhelmed with horror.

Then came men from the island of Mali to disclaim with equal fervour their guilt of the atrocious crime. Pilbrow conducted a kind of Court of Inquiry, and the verdict favoured the Mali men. He then suggested - and his suggestion was accepted - that they move camp out of the Vila men's territory some two miles into the territory of the Mali men. With the assistance of the Mali men, they transported their goods and persuaded the natives to assist them further in erecting a substantial house of wooden uprights, walled with bamboo and roofed with coconut grass. That done, they erected a paling fence and enclosed the house in an acre of land.

A further portion of their remaining goods were paid out for the land owned by the Mali men, the payment in goods for the land purchased from the men of Vila being written off as a dead loss. They now, however possessed their own 'castle' and they were far more firmly established.

The house was built none too soon, however, for the monsoon rains set in with terrific thunderstorms. Fever vapours rose from the drenched earth and the humid heat made life almost unbearable. Repeated earth shocks rattled their crockery so badly that many pieces were broken.

One after another the boys went down with malaria or ague fever, despite the large and repeated doses of quinine. The fever, plus the lack of fresh meat, quickly began to have inevitable effects on their constitution, while their strength was further sapped by enforced inactivity caused through the incessant rain. To attempt to labour in those weather conditions would have been fruitless. The lack of fresh meat was more keenly felt than anything else. Even if they had brought with them a small boat from which to fish in the Bay, they would have been unable to distinguish between poisonous and non- poisonous fish.

They bought a pig from a native on the condition that he slaughtered it for them. He gladly undertook to do this, taking the wretched animal into the sea and drowning it. The killing, while being both simple and effective, prevented efficient curing, however. For the purpose of a communal feast it would have been an excellent method and one giving a minimum of trouble, but since the pig was not bled properly, the curing was a dismal failure, and for one meal of fresh pork the deal with the native pig breeder was costly.

3.

The health of the youthful settlers was not good when the rains ceased and the weather improved. Naturally, men suffering ill health put off until later those things normally healthy men would have done on the day. Pilbrow appears not to have been a strong leader, and already the fire of enthusiasm for cotton growing was dying within him. As neither he nor Wetherall had ever handled a gun, it devolved to Francis Cobbold to take the single barrelled shot-gun into the dripping jungle, and there try to bag a pigeon or other edible bird. Even here discouragement was experienced, for it was difficult even to see a bird in the dense foliage, and seldom did he bring back any tangible result for his efforts.

Days would pass without the lads seeing any savages. No schooner sailed into the bay, and week by week their health and strength waned. It speaks well of Francis Cobbold's courage in that he often ventured into the jungle in search of pigeons, when memory of the fate of the bushmen must have still been keen. It was probably sharpened by such incidents as that of a native wanting to barter fresh meat offered on a plantain leaf. It was not like the flesh of any animal, bird or fish he ever had seen ... Pilbrow suffered most from malaria, and Wetherall's condition did not make him a dependable branch on which to lean.

One day, a white man visited the settlers, a runaway sailor who had gone native. He arrived with his retinue of savages from the other side of the island, having heard of the 'white invasion' at Sou'-West Bay. Naked, save for a breech clout, wearing a necklet from which was suspended a boar's curved tusk, and marked and tattooed with tribal insignia, he had taken a native wife, had become a local power and had gained a satisfying life. A year earlier he had been a member of a boat's crew sent ashore for water, and while the barrels were being filled he had run off into the jungle. There he had met and been well received by the natives of the tribe from which had come the ill-fated bushmen who had volunteered to join the young settlers' labour field.

Further to wearing a native dress, he carried the New Hebridean bow and arrows and club. Although on many counts blameworthy for his racial fall, the man cannot be judged without examination of all the facts controlling it. He was an ordinary sailor and likely enough one who would not pass high in a modern intelligence test. On any ship he would be a cipher to be ordered about by the captain and the mates, and be fed with food worse than merely coarse. A quick dash into the jungle, a throw of the dice with fate in a gamble in which to lose meant death, resulted in his bruised vanity being satiated by the respect of black men and women and the wielding of a little power, both of which had been denied him all his life and would be denied him while he lived among his kind.

Towards the end of the year affairs had not progressed with the youthful settlers on Sandwich Island. There is no evidence that they did very much developmental work, and what they had done and had been done for them had been costly. A large proportion of their trade goods had been expended on land purchase, on services, and on native fruits and other things. Pilbrow still suffered more from malaria than did either of the other two, and when by chance a small steamship put in for water he decided to return on her to New Zealand. Intending to return with further supplies of trade goods when he had recruited his health, Pilbrow left Sandwich Island on the Wainui, taking with him the title deeds of the land bought from the natives. He did not return, however, and many years passed before Cobbold saw him again in Australia.

4.

So Pilbrow left in the Wainui; Cobbold and Wetherall remained at Sou'-West Bay on Sandwich Island. On the threshold of his eighteenth year, Francis Cobbold elected to carry on in the face of great difficulty, ill health, and the unfriendly savages who coveted their goods and probably their bodies.

Relations with the natives became steadily worse. Constant bickering between the Mali men and the men of Vila frequently ended in armed demonstration in support of some trumped-up grievance. Arguments would be carried on between pacifiers on the one side and excited savages on the other, when a thoughtless act or an undiplomatic word would provoke violence with only one result.

Further weeks passed. With the passage of time, the hopelessness of making good became even clearer. It was impossible to hire the natives, who would not work for others in their own territory. It was impossible to obtain labour from another island because Cobbold had no way of recruiting and transporting them to his plantation.

The time arrived when he was compelled to face the fact that to grow cotton successfully was impossible. Every day he looked for a ship to call and take them back to Levuka. Bouts of malarial fever continued to take a toll of his strength.

One day, when wandering along a native path through the jungle hoping to acquire a pigeon, he suddenly came to a clearing in which were set up many carved figures and images - objects which proved that this was a native ceremonial ground. Impelled by curiosity, he examined the place with thoroughness, and in a cavity beneath one of the carved figures he found a nest of fresh eggs. Into his mind leapt a picture of poor Wetherall's wasted face, and he marked the place in order to find the eggs on his return.

Continuing out of the clearing, he followed another native path until he happened to disturb a wild sow and a litter of well- grown pigs. He had a mental image of his earlier years in Suffolk - and the gun practice on the river Deben now proved of worth.

This was a red-letter day for Cobbold, and he set off back to the house with the carcase of the pig over one shoulder. Securing the nest of eggs inside his hat, he went on homeward slowly and with repeated halts on account of his weakened state of body, at last reaching the house where Wetherall's smile of delight at the good things he had brought was reward enough for the effort.

Fortunately for them, Cobbold had to make a trip to the nearby creek for fresh water, so the eggs were not cooked immediately. He had returned with the water and was in the process of lighting a cooking fire when a mob of excited, clamorous savages, gesticulating and waving their weapons, appeared from beyond the house enclosure. It was clear that they wanted, metaphorically, only the lifting of an eyelid for the excuse to rush the house and commit murder.

Not understanding the reason behind the demonstration, the two lads crossed the enclosure to meet the natives and to find out calmly the cause of this unneighbourly show of force. It took some time before they could pacify the visitors sufficiently to learn that, by taking the eggs from the ceremonial ground, Cobbold had committed an act of sacrilege; only by returning the eggs and making many presents from their dwindling supplies was reparation made.

Even so, relations remained very strained. Incident followed incident, making life both unpleasant and filled with anxiety. Cobbold began to realise that a determined attack on their goods and on their lives would not be delayed much longer. It would only take the rash discharge of a gun for the savages to surround the house enclosure and cause bloodshed. The prospect of open warfare became ever more certain, and even if Wetherall and he did not run the risk of being murdered separately, if it should come to a siege of the house he was the only one out of a garrison of two who could properly handle a firearm.

The 1871 New Year came in. Francis Cobbold did not dare to leave the enclosure to hunt along the jungle paths, where he would be an easy target for any bowman. Months passed after the departure of Pilbrow before another ship called at Sou'-West Bay for water and, observing her to be a topsail schooner, Cobbold hurried to Wetherall to say that he thought by the cut of her she was Captain Wetherall's ship, the Margaret Chessel.

The visit to Sandwich Island by the Margaret Chessel was indeed opportune, for the two lads were in poor physical condition through the ravages of fever and an unbalanced diet. Despite frequent doses of quinine, their legs were swollen to twice their normal size and if a pit were made in the flesh with a finger tip it would remain for several minutes.

Together, they watched the ship sail up the Bay, the crowding terrors of the jungle at last beaten back by the prospect of relief from what really had become a siege. They saw the splash of water at the ship's bow when her anchor was let go, and they watched a small boat being lowered and in it three men make for the shore.

When the boat grounded on the beach, the steerman sprang out to meet them and to announce himself as Mr O'Neill, one time a Lieutenant in the Navy, and now super cargo of the Margaret Chessel.

5.

Within a few minutes the two lads were transported to the ship on which father and son were happily reunited. Beside the cook and two Fijian natives, there was Lance O'Neill, and his brother, who kept his eyes focussed on the house ashore. Old Captain Wetherall's mahogany-tinted face revealed concern for his son's physical condition. About sixty years of age, he was stocky and fat and satisfied with a life which offered him command of a ship at a low salary. For the command of such a ship he was ideally suited, not being very intelligent and content to obey his owners' orders without question. O'Neill, the super cargo, was entirely different from the Captain, however. Tall and slim, he was a well-born Irishman without nerves and with plenty of grey matter. These men comprised the entire crew of the ship.

The two lads had had a hard time since they were landed at Sandwich Island, but the crew of the Margaret Chessel had experienced a harder time. In the matter-of-fact manner of a man long accustomed to lurid experience, Captain Wetherall recited his adventures since leaving Levuka, O'Neill standing by, sometimes stern of expression, sometimes revealing a twinkle in his merry eyes.

The Margaret Chessel had made the island of Ambrym, in the New Hebrides, her first port of call on a voyage to recruit black labour for the Fijian plantations. On going ashore at Ambrym, the mate and two oarsmen had been immediately set upon and killed by natives. The remainder of the crew under O'Neill had at once set off in another small boat, taking what miserable firearms the ship possessed. The natives, however, instead of offering battle, fled into the jungle, and O'Neill and his companions buried the three dead men before returning to the ship with the first boat.

The Margaret Chessel next called at the island of Api where, just before her arrival, the Colleen Bawn had met with disaster and all her crew killed. At this island, O'Neill and two of the crew went ashore in a boat to recruit labour. They induced a number of natives to volunteer, and when the wages and conditions of employment had been settled, they brought off one full boatload and returned for the second load.

On deck were the cook, the two Fijians and the Captain, Lance O'Neill being down below with a bout of malaria. He had been an officer in the Army, and he was amusing himself by sharpening his old regimental sword when, from above, came sound of a scuffle. Not thinking it was anything very serious, he was very surprised to see the ponderous Captain Wetherall come crashing through the cabin skylight and thud upon the floor. Believing the Captain to be dead, Lance O'Neill rushed up on the deck and expertly pitted several of the natives with his sword, thereby relieving the pressure from the two Fijians. The cook had been knocked overboard and was not in view.

Lance O'Neill may not have come out of the fight safely if Captain Wetherall had not appeared carrying a loaded rifle. The apparition of a man, supposed to have been effectively killed with a club before making such an undignified entry to the cabin, so unnerved the savages that they broke away and dived overboard.

Yells and cries from the shore drew the attention of the visitors, and through their glasses Wetherall and Lance O'Neill observed the other O'Neill and his two companions fighting desperately with a crowd of savages. Even while they looked, before they could rush to a boat to go ashore and render assistance, the three shore men were knocked down to the beach where they lay quite still, and the victorious natives hauled their boat high up the beach.

Concluding that the super cargo and his companions were dead, Wetherall decided to clear out. The cook clambered aboard, and the five men set to raise the anchor. The anchor, however, had probably become stuck in a coral crevice; they could not break its hold and were in the end obliged to slip it by unshackling it. Having hoisted the headsails, the ship slowly came round, enabling a course to be set and more canvas put on. Lance O'Neill then thought he heard a faint cry and, mounting the rigging, he saw through his glasses a man swimming desperately after the ship. Every possible measure then was taken to slow down the Margaret Chessel, and a boat was lowered to return and pick up the swimmer, who proved to be O'Neill's brother and not much worse for a severe crack on the head. He had come to in time to see the savages standing watching the ship getting away, and he had taken the opportunity presented by the distraction to run past them and into the sea.

6.

Efforts to recruit labour in the circumstances described above tend to draw aside the curtain on what, even in its most favourable aspects, was a brutal labour system and in its worst aspects was nothing more than slavery. The methods employed by Wetherall in this uncontrolled labour trade were gentle in comparison with those adopted by many others of his sort; indeed America had recently staged a civil war on this question.

The Captain urged his son and Francis Cobbold to abandon their ambition of growing cotton and to return with him to Levuka. Fully realising the futility of further effort, Cobbold agreed with young Wetherall to accept the offer of transportation and consequently the remainder of their goods were brought on board. From them one case of brandy and two of port wine were given to Wetherall in payment.

The two lads now found themselves on a ship short of food and short of men to handle her, and Wetherall decided to put in to Black Beach, on the island of Tanna. It was a place notorious for the murderous instinct of the natives but O'Neill, despite his recent experience at Api, volunteered to take a boat ashore to trade with the natives for enough food to take them part of the way to the home port. The Fijians rowed the boat, and Cobbold went along with a rifle in order to protect the super cargo while engaged in barter.

"If they rush me," O'Neill explained grimly, though still with an eager twinkle in his eyes, "you drop the first man coming at me and leave me to get to the boat the best way I can. In no circumstances come right ashore for me. Make no mistake about dropping the first one who rushes."

Once he was landed with the trade chest, the Fijians pulled the boat a little way off the beach. Cobbold set in the stern, the rifle pointed at the gathering of savages halted a short distance from the super cargo. They were well armed and by no means friendly and, in view of what he had gone through, it speaks well of O'Neill's courage and coolness in that he calmly opened negotiations for trade with the backing only of a boy of seventeen armed with a single-shot rifle. In the event of a rush to kill him and capture his trade chest, Cobbold could only hope to stop one, since the affair would be all over before he could re- load, and O'Neill would be either dead or swimming out to the boat and doing his best to dodge a flight of arrows.

Without haste, and certainly with no sign of perturbation, he traded for several pigs, coconuts and yams, and eventually the boat was backed to the shore and the provisions transferred to it, Cobbold continuing to cover O'Neill's retreat.

Thus was a most ticklish piece of business successfully concluded, and thus did Francis Cobbold take his departure from Sandwich Island in the New Hebrides.