Читать книгу Lolóma, or two years in cannibal-land - Henry Britton - Страница 6

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On a hot summer morning the Molly Asthore, a topsail schooner of 120 tons, tripped her anchor in Watson’s Bay, where she had been snugly moored during the previous night. Her square sails hung from the yards in graceful festoons, waiting to be sheeted home by her not very active crew, and under a light wind she slowly glided through Port Jackson Heads, where the swell of the lonely Southern Ocean was making itself heard in measured cadence.

The rich perfume of the wattle trees was slowly wafted to us by the lagging breeze. The shrill sounds of the garrulous cicadæ animated the thick bush which sheltered them on the shore. The wild flowers drooped under the heat. A lizard ventured forth upon the trunk of a dead tree for a moment, but quickly retired before the universal glare; and an occasional bright-winged parrot or lemon-crested cockatoo flashed through the palpitating atmosphere in search of a more leafy neighbourhood. A glimmering haze overspread the distant little straggling town of Sydney, and we left port under the gaze of but one man—a swarthy aboriginal, who brandished a spear at us from a neighbouring cluster of mia-mias lying in the shadow of a rock.

As we cleared the South Head the wind freshened, the gaff-topsails were run up, and soon the long line of Australian coast faded into dim perspective.

The Molly Asthore was a roughly-built vessel. She had not the sharp, yacht-like bows of the island traders of to-day. Her decks where neither white nor well-kept; rope ends usually trailed about instead of being Flemish-coiled, and she was innocent of brass work or ornamentation of any kind. The cuddy, to which access was obtained by a short perpendicular ladder, was furnished with two rude bunks for the master and mate, and a little square table, round which there was barely room to walk. The schooner had carried cocoanut oil, a commodity whose penetrating scent is never eradicated from ships in which it has once been stored, and the offensive odour of rancid oil and bilge-water was almost overpowering in this little room. The men who slept forward were not so well off, but they counted on a fine weather voyage, which would admit of lying on deck through the nights. The provisions consisted chiefly of weevily biscuits and bad salt meat, and the cockroaches which abounded in all parts of the schooner showed a shocking tameness.

But a sailor bound for the South Seas in those days was not over particular about his personal comfort. He had the romance of adventure before him. Little was known of these seas, and all vessels which sailed on them were more or less ships of discovery. The fate of La Perouse, whose visit to Port Jackson, where he last saw the home of the white man, I had often heard my father speak of, was still shrouded in mystery, and we might even come upon the survivors of his unfortunate expedition, who were believed to be imprisoned in some of the island groups we purposed visiting. With all the interest of a new world opening before me I was disposed to think lightly of the hardships in store.

The ship’s company consisted of the master, Jacob Turner, an old weatherbeaten tar, of mahogany complexion, with short, thick whiskers like tufts of cocoanut fibre, who had many strange experiences of lawless regions to tell; the mate, Silas Cobb, a Yankee who had served in an American whaler and knew much of the adventurous life of the whale fisheries; two English sailors who had run away from their last ship in Hobart Town; an escaped New South Wales convict, a cabin boy, and myself. We were short-handed, but that was no unusual occurrence.

We gave the dreary convict-home of Norfolk Ireland a wide berth for obvious reasons, and entered the tropics when ten days out from Sydney without having sighted land since leaving port.

For a whole fortnight an almost vertical sun blazed upon our crawling ship. Idle days dawned in soft rose colour, swooned through languid airs, and melted away in golden sunsets. Sapphire seas shimmered beneath the sun across limitless fields of azure. One day a gentle regular breeze came down upon us. It was the refreshing trade wind, which rippled the ocean with tiny wavelets, and carried us along without the sense of motion. We were in the Elysian Fields of Neptune’s empire.

The silver sheen of the flying-fish now added to the dreamlike splendour of the view as they skipped through the pearly atmosphere to fall with a faint rippling splash in the cool waters. I watched them through the lazy hours from the ship’s side, and saw that the shower of brilliants which entertained us was due to the keen pursuit of the dolphins and bonitos. When the silvern cloud arose and took its arrow-like series of flights and dips, like an imitation on a small scale of the ricochet of a cannon-ball in the water, the relentless pursuers would describe the chord of an arc, judging accurately where the spoil would fall when the last drop of water on their wings had dried, and the poor little things that escaped the gulls and frigate-birds in the air were often devoured on touching the other element, though the smallest sprinkling of water seemed to be sufficient to give the fish strength for another aerial rebound.

The dolphins were not free from the vicissitudes of life. The sailors amused themselves by spearing them from the forechains, and a fish was often transfixed with jaws extended in the moment of an expected banquet. Then the death of the dolphin was a picture—a beautiful dissolving view. He always made a good end. “Nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it.” The fleeting shades of green, yellow, and gold which shot through him as he lay quivering on the deck, arrayed in all the enchantments of colour, made a fascinating transformation scene. He died emitting a flood of exquisite hues, as the swan is said to sing his sweetest note at the moment of death. Rainbows served for his apotheosis as his spirit ascended to the happy hunting grounds of all good fishes, where there are no wicked sailors to annoy.

All that is bright must fade. Fair weather does not last for ever, even in the Pacific. For a time we had heavy tropical showers, repulsive mists, and short, fierce squalls which blew with hurricane force for a few minutes.

The weather cleared again. We knew that we were very near the Fijian archipelago, and we were expecting to sight land every moment, when a great peace fell upon the ocean. It was an ominous calm. The barometer indicated some startling change. As yet there was not a ripple on the water, but heavy clouds hung motionless in the sultry air, and gradually grew more lowering. The face of nature turned livid. The oppressive silence communicated itself to all on board. We waited for the coming storm, wondering from which direction we should feel it first. The atmosphere was hot, lurid, obscure.

In a moment there was a perceptible chill. Turning round I noticed a movement in a pillar of cloud on the far horizon astern of us, which had become as black as ink. The whole mass seemed to be bearing down upon us, and gathering volume as it progressed, till what was originally a black spot filled half the heavens. Then we caught the sound of an angry wind rapidly increasing in force. The water was lashed into fury, and was being driven towards us in a compact body, which rose several feet above the level of the smooth sea that lay between us and the blast. We could hear the coming whirlwind screeching along the surface of the water. Then it was upon us with a prolonged relentless shriek, and we knew that we should soon be in the vortex of a South Sea hurricane.

The wind caught the schooner astern. She had been luckily brought under easy sail, or she would have been dismasted. The canvas she carried lifted her forward with one tremendous bound, and then every inch of it was furiously torn from her and hurried away on the wings of the gale. The vessel was now fairly enveloped in the tempest, running with it under bare poles—a skeleton ship engaged in a terrible race with Death. Her shrouds and stays rang responsive to the wind, like the strings of a harp, furnishing a weird musical accompaniment to the howling of the storm.

The noise was terrific. The sound was that of air travelling with the highest attainable velocity, and carrying with it the ocean spray. It was as if we were actually enclosed by a great body of water rapidly in motion, forming part of a concrete moving mass, and as though every particle of the element was endowed with the power of shrieking demoniacally. No man’s voice could by any possibility be heard, nor could anyone stand on deck without holding on to something. It was appalling. We felt that the Angel of Death had encompassed us with his wings.

In the course of the night the wind changed its direction several times. Towards morning the fury of the storm had abated a little, but hoisting sail was still out of the question. The two sailors who manfully stood lashed to the wheel in an exposed position during the night had had their jackets and shirts blown off their backs. With great difficulty a bit of tarpaulin was made fast to the bowsprit to do duty as a storm-jib, but the vessel was practically beyond control.

To add to the dismal terror of the time, a fearful thunderstorm broke upon us. The vivid lightning flashes which lit up the whole of the inky vault above brought the sweltering desert of water into view with a weird effect which dazed us. The air was charged with electricity, and our vessel became the subject of the phenomenon known as St. Elmo’s light. Each mast was crowned with a baleful fire which shed a ghastly bluish light upon the men on deck, imparting a corpse-like hue to their faces. It was many hours since I had eaten or slept, and this gruesome sight so held my fancy that I could not divest myself of the idea that I was with the terrible crew of the spectral ship of old Vanderdecken, to look upon whose fleshless heads was death to all respectable seafarers. We sped along under those fearful candles, while the thunder with its claps and peals and long-reverberating roll seemed to form the mad music of a wild funeral march.

Day broke upon a woeful scene of desolation. The struggling dawn showed through the gray mirk a canopy of clouds torn and mangled by the wind into every conceivable shape, and a seething sea which boiled away to a dismal horizon, where the broken surface was tinged with a wan light, which added to the feeling of isolation and mystery that gathered round the scene. On our lee was a great misty dome, which we were rapidly approaching. It might be a cloud-form, or it might be an island, for all that we could see in the neutral-tinted gloom.

It seemed to me that our captain, who had lashed himself to the mizzen shrouds, was listening most intently to the thunder peals, which were now rapidly dying away. Suddenly he started and shrieked in my ear. “Did you not hear it?”

“I hear nothing but the distant roll of the thunder,” said I. “Let us hope we are now through the worst of it.”

“I am not mistaken,” he continued. “No one who has once heard the sullen roar of the South Sea reef with a lee shore before him ever forgets the sound. And see you not the big island rising right before us through the haze? Say all the prayers you know, boys, for to-night we sup with Davy Jones.”

I gazed through the chilly light which was gradually spreading itself around, and there was the clear outline of what seemed precipitous high land coming out of the sea to meet us. I could not distinguish the break upon the reef amid the circumambient foam driven in clouds before the wind; but I could hear a low rumbling sound, gradually gaining in force and then dying away again, which had a cadence of its own.

The sun rose like a molten globe shorn of his beams and powerless to outstare a man, but giving a pale effulgence like that of the moon. As the spectral light crept up towards the zenith it disclosed a sight which has often appalled stout hearts, though forming in itself a magnificent spectacle—a storm-tossed sea breaking in mad fury upon the South Sea reef—one of those mighty fabrics of coral which myriads of tiny architects, the conquerors of the ocean surge, have raised as natural breakwaters for all the islands of the Fijian archipelago.

The gale was hurrying us with uncontrollable power upon Viti Levu, the largest island of the group, and its girdle of coral, on which the furious sea was breaking in magnificent desolation. The sound came to us now like a roar of fierce anger, now with a measured dirge-like tone, and now in melancholy strains mellowed by distance, tristfully surgent like those of an Æolian harp. These reefs usually encircle the islands at a distance of from half a mile to two miles. Within the barrier the water is as smooth as a lake, but the trade winds, which blow for nine months in the year upon the shore, send the long rollers of the Pacific against the reef, which varies from 5ft. to 30ft. in width. Dashing upon this impregnable barrier, they rise in columns of rosy foam often to a height of from 20ft. to 50ft., and, glittering in the rays of the tropical sun, fall like obelisks of diamonds. A long line of silent ripples is often at first the only indication of the presence of one of these spines of coral and volcanic rock; then the rollers come against them with a sound like a thunder-clap, and the waters, broken into milk-white foam, hurry along the side with wonderful impetuosity, like an immense jet of vapour, until, meeting with a greater obstruction, a column is thrown high into the air, and forming an aqueous arch, bursts suddenly into spray.

As we neared what we felt to be our doom—for it was impossible to alter the course of the schooner, which continued to be driven before the wind under a storm-jib—the captain told us we had two chances, though very small ones. One was to be driven in at the reef-opening, which is usually found opposite a river or creek, and where the water is generally of sufficient depth to admit of the largest vessel entering. The other was to jump the barrier. If the vessel took the reef in a narrow place it was possible for her, by great good fortune, to ride clear over it on the back of a wave into smooth water, but the chances were ten thousand to one that she would be caught on the obstruction, or perhaps be dropped by a receding billow on a pointed coral patch and be shivered to fragments.

The members of the ship’s company prepared themselves for the crisis of their fate in the manner which seemed best to them. The skipper descended to the cuddy, and occupied himself in gazing fondly upon a miniature painting of a young woman which he took from his sea-chest. The mate found some relief in turning up at hazard passages of Scripture in an old Bible, opening the page by inserting a pin at random in the closed leaves. The sailors discovered some rum in the hold, and my mind was busy with a hundred plans, rejected as soon as conceived, for buoying myself up until I could float into the smooth water on the landward side of the reef; for that the schooner would go to pieces and leave me like a bit of driftwood in the spray I had not the slightest doubt.

As the wind slackened the sea rose. The hurricane no longer flattened its surface. We were thrown up to dizzy heights and slid down fearful green valleys with the sickening sense of a fall from a pinnacle in some horrid nightmare. While buried in these terrible ravines we saw nothing but the mountainous sides of imprisoning watery hills. As we shot to the summit of one of these ranges I looked out wearily into the world of throbbing ocean, and saw with a thrill which I can recall at this moment that we were within a few hundred yards of a white wrath—the broad belt of gleaming surge, the stupendous rampart of water, seething and boiling in a vast chaos of foam—which marked the break on the reef.

In a moment we are thrown between two gigantic pillars in this leaping and thundering aqueous gallery. It is the narrow opening in the reef, where the flux and reflux of the sea form a miniature maelström of sufficient power to engulf the largest ship afloat. We are wrapped in mist and spray. We are being drawn into the boiling cauldron. The schooner has a gyratory motion for some seconds as she is sucked by the vortices, and it is doubtful which way she will be carried. Suddenly, with a roar and a bellow which made me shake in every limb, we are upborne on a mighty wave, which ascends like a waterspout, tapering to a pyramidal point. Clinging desperately to a belaying cleat, I was blinded and deafened by the drenching spray, and strangled by the wind.

For a moment we are poised on the watery apex in mid air. At that instant I suffered a syncope of all my faculties. I did not lose consciousness, but was spell-bound with the fascination of the rabbit under the gaze of the rattlesnake. I even noticed without shuddering in that terrible sixtieth part of a minute, during which our vessel trembled at this dizzy height, that the sides of the column of malachite-green had a ghastly radiance caught from the sickly sun, that the interior rolled with the gleam of a sapphire, and that there were faint rainbow tints on the outermost edge of spray, while below the sea was churned into a thundering abyss in which it was impossible to distinguish the coral bank from deep water.

I involuntarily shut my eyes. I gasp for breath as the closing waters ring in my ears, crashing, and roaring, and booming with the voice of a thousand cannon. Now we are falling with incredible velocity. Falling! Falling! Oh God! Will the end never come?

My next recollection was that of being awakened by a hot sun playing on my face. To my amazement I found that I was lying with my head on a crown of cocoanut leaves, and that the deck of the schooner, which was quite uninjured, was half-buried in the thick green foliage of a tropical island. During the prolonged horror of the descent from the starry-pointing sea I had swooned. It was not all descent, for the vessel had been carried right through the avalanche of falling waters before she reached the natural level of the sea, and she had been driven on a tidal wave clear over the reef, high and dry on shore, and into a grove of bread-fruits and cocoanuts.^[1] All hands—with the exception of the master, the mate, and myself—had been swept away in the tumult of waters, and we never saw a trace of them again. Turner had been lashed to the rigging, and Cobb having got jammed between the rudder and the displaced binnacle, they outlived the adventure, though all but drowned in the hail of salt sea which had fallen on them.

1. In the year 1871 this also happened to an iron ship, the Ellesmere, on the island of Kandávu. She was purchased by a Levuka storekeeper for a small sum and successfully launched.