Читать книгу Men Against the Sea – Book Set - James Norman Hall - Страница 33

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I joined Captain Montague’s ship in January, 1793, and hostilities broke out in the following month, the beginning of our wars with the allied nations of Europe—the stormiest and most critical period of British naval history, which was to culminate, after twelve years of almost constant actions, in the great sea fight off the coast of Spain. I had the honour of fighting the Dutch at Camperdown, the Danes at Copenhagen, and the Spanish and French at Trafalgar, and it was after that most glorious of victories that I was promoted to the rank of captain.

Throughout the period of the wars I had many a dream of being stationed in the Pacific upon the establishment of peace, but a sea officer in time of war has little leisure for reflection, and as the years passed my longing to return to the South Sea grew less painful, and the sufferings I had endured less bitter in memory. It was not until the summer of 1809, when in command of the Curieuse, a smart frigate of thirty-two guns, captured from the French, that my dream came true. I received orders to set sail for Port Jackson, in New South Wales, and thence to Valparaiso, touching at Tahiti on the way.

I had on board a half-company of the Seventy-third Regiment, sent out to relieve the New South Wales Corps; the remainder of the regiment had gone ahead, on board the ships Dromedary and Hindostan. Four years before, through the influence of Sir Joseph Banks, Lord Camden had appointed Captain Bligh governor of New South Wales; now the notorious Rum Rebellion had run its course, and a new governor, Colonel Lachlan Macquarie, had been sent to take charge of the troubled colony. Accusing Bligh of harsh and tyrannical misuse of his powers, Major Johnston, the senior officer of the New South Wales Corps, and a Mr. MacArthur, the most influential of the settlers, had seized the reins of government and kept Bligh a prisoner in Government House for more than a year.

During the long voyage out, by the Cape of Good Hope and through Bass Straits, Bligh was often in my thoughts. For his belief that I was one of the mutineers, and my sufferings as a prisoner, I had never blamed him at heart. But the letter to my mother, which had certainly been the cause of her death, was another matter. I had no desire to affront him in public, yet I knew I could never take his hand. He had played the part of a brave captain in the wars; at Copenhagen, Nelson had congratulated him on the quarter-deck of the Elephant. But now, as his career was drawing to a close, the history of the Bounty was repeating itself, and Bligh was once more the central figure in a mutiny. I had no means of determining the justice of the case, but the fact was strange, to say the least.

We left Spithead in August, and it was not until February, 1810, that the Curieuse entered the magnificent harbour of Port Jackson, and cast anchor in Farm Cove, exchanging salutes with the three British ships of war moored close by—the Porpoise, the Dromedary, and the Hindostan. While we were making all snug, a boat put off from the latter ship, bringing her captain, John Pascoe, on board. Pascoe had had the honour of serving as Nelson’s flag-lieutenant at Trafalgar, and was an old friend of mine. It was a hot day of the antipodean summer, and a blistering sun shone down from a cloudless sky. I ushered my guest into the cabin, where it was cooler than on deck, and ordered the steward to make a pitcher of claret punch. Pascoe sank down on a settee, mopping his face with a large silk handkerchief.

“Whew! I wager hell is no hotter than Sydney just now!” he exclaimed. “And, by God, their climate is no hotter than their politics! What have you heard of all this in England?”

“Only rumours; we know nothing of the truth.”

“The truth is hard to get at, even here. No doubt there is justice on both sides. The rum traffic has been the ruin of the colony, and it was in the hands of the military officers. Bligh perceived the evil and attempted to stop it, using the same famous tact and consideration which brought on the Bounty mutiny. As governor, he was invested with far more power than the King enjoys at home, but his only means of enforcing it was the Rum Puncheon Corps, as they are called. You know at least the result: Bligh a prisoner in Government House, and the administration in the hands of Major Johnston, a puppet for Mr. MacArthur, the richest settler in the colony. A pretty mess!”

“What will happen now?”

“The Seventy-third stays here and the Corps returns to England. Johnston, MacArthur, and Bligh will have it out at home. Colonel Macquarie, whom I brought out, remains as governor.”

Pascoe was eager for news from home, and we gossiped for a time. Presently he rose. “I must be pushing off, Byam,” he said: “Bligh has ordered us to sail this afternoon.”

When I had taken leave of him at the gangway, I ordered a boat and went ashore to arrange for the debarkation of the troops, and wait upon the governor. It was indeed a fiery day, and as I trudged up the path that led to Government House I sank ankle-deep in dust. The anteroom in which I was asked to take a chair was dark and cool.

“His Excellency is occupied for the moment, Captain Byam,” said the A.D.C. who received me. He bowed and sat down to continue his writing, and next moment, from beyond the closed door, I heard a strident voice raised angrily. In an instant I felt myself twenty years younger, transported as if by magic to the deck of the Bounty on the afternoon before the mutiny. The same harsh voice, unchanged by a score of years, rang out in memory, as if repeating the words which had goaded Christian to madness: “Yes, you bloody hound! I do think so. You must have stolen some of mine or you would be able to give a better account of your own. You’re damned rascals and thieves, the lot of you!”

The voice in the cabinet ceased and I heard the deep, conciliatory murmur of the governor. Then Bligh broke out again. His grievances had lost nothing in the two years he had brooded over them.

“Major Johnston, sir? By God! The man should be taken out and shot! As for MacArthur, I took his measure the first time I laid eyes on him. ‘What, sir?’ I said, ‘are you to have such flocks of sheep and cattle as no man ever heard of before? No, sir! I have heard of you and your concerns, sir! You have got five thousand acres of the finest land, but, by God, you shan’t keep it!’ ‘I have received the land by order of the Secretary of State,’ replied MacArthur, coolly, ‘and on the recommendation of the Privy Council.’ ‘Damn the Privy Council!’ said I, ‘and the Secretary of State, too! What have they to do with me?’ ”

Again I heard the deep conciliatory murmur of the Governor’s voice, interrupted by Bligh’s strident tones: “Sydney, sir? A sink of iniquity! A more depraved, licentious lot of rascals don’t exist! The settlers? God save the mark! They’re worse than the convicts—the very scum of the earth! You must know how open I am to mercy and compassion, but, by God, sir, such qualities are wasted here! Rule them with a hand of iron! Rule them by fear!”

There was a scraping of chairs and the door was flung open. A stout burly man in captain’s uniform stood in the doorway, his face purple with emotion and heat. Without a glance at me, he strode truculently across the room, while the A.D.C. sprang up and hastened to open the outer door. Captain Bligh gave him neither word nor glance as he brushed past. Next moment he was gone. The tired young A.D.C. closed the door, and turned to me with a faint smile. “Thank God!” he murmured devoutly, under his breath.

We came in sight of Tahiti on a morning in early April, passing to the north of Eimeo with a fine breeze at west by north. But the wind chopped around to the east as we approached the land, and we were all day long working up to Matavai Bay. My lieutenant, Mr. Cobden, must have had some inkling of what was passing in my mind, for he and the master saw to it that I was disturbed by no detail of the working of the ship.

Communication with Tahiti was all but impossible in those days, and not once, during the twenty years that had passed since I had embraced Tehani in the Pandora’s sick-bay, had I had word of her, or of our child. In 1796, having learned that the ship Duff was to sail for Tahiti with a cargo of missionaries,—the first in the South Sea,—I had been at some pains to make the acquaintance of one of those worthy men, and received his promise to search out my Indian wife and child, and send me word of them when the ship returned to England. But no letter came back to me. In Port Jackson, I had met and talked with some of these same missionaries, and told them of my orders to visit Tahiti and report on the condition of the people. Their accounts of the island were of a most melancholy nature. Considering their lives and those of their wives and children in danger, the missionaries had embarked for Port Jackson on a vessel providentially lying at anchor in Matavai Bay. They had spent twelve years on Tahiti, learned the language (they were kind enough to say that my dictionary had been of the greatest aid to them), and worked unremittingly at their task of preaching the Gospel. Yet not a single convert had been made. War, and the diseases introduced by the visits of European ships, had destroyed four fifths of the people, I was told, and the future of the island appeared dark indeed. As for Tehani, not one of the worthy missionaries had ever heard of her, nor set foot on Taiarapu, where I supposed her still to reside.

As my ship approached the land on that April afternoon, Tahiti wore the green and smiling aspect I remembered so well, and it was hard to believe that an island so fair to the eye could be the scene of war and pestilence. A flood of memories overwhelmed me as Point Venus came in sight, and One Tree Hill, and the pale green of the shoal called Dolphin Bank. Yonder was the islet, Motu Au, opposite Hitihiti’s house; close at hand I saw Stewart’s shady glen, and the mouth of the small valley where Morrison and Millward had resided with Poino. And closer still was the mouth of the river in which I had first met Tehani, so long ago. I was only forty years old,—robust and in the prime of life,—yet as I conned the frigate through the narrow passage I knew so well, I had the feeling which comes to very old men, of having lived too long. Centuries seemed to have elapsed since I had looked last on the scene now before me. I dreaded setting foot on shore.

It was strange as we dropped anchor to see that no canoes put out. A few people were discernible along the beach, watching us apathetically, but they were pitifully few beside the throngs of former days, and where once the thatched roofs of their dwellings had been clustered thick under the trees, there was scarcely a house to be seen. Even the trees themselves had a withered, yellow look, for, as I was to learn, the victorious party had hacked and girdled nearly every breadfruit tree in Matavai.

At last a small patched canoe put out to us with two men on board. They were dressed in cast-off scraps of European clothing and were no more than beggars, for they had nothing to exchange for what we gave them. They addressed us in broken English. I was pleased, when they spoke together in their own tongue, to find that I understood pretty well what they said. I inquired for Tipau, Poino, and Hitihiti, but received only shrugs and blank stares in reply.

It lacked an hour of sunset when my boat’s crew landed me on Hitihiti’s point. I ordered them to await my coming on the Matavai beach, and turned inland alone, at the very spot where the surgeon had stumped through the sand twenty years before. Not a human being was to be seen, nor could I find a trace of my taio’s house. The point, formerly covered with a well-kept lawn, was now grown over with rank weeds, and the path leading to the temple of Fareroi, once trodden by countless feet, was scarcely discernible. On my way to the still reach of river where I had met Tehani, I halted at sight of an old woman, squatting motionless on the sand as she gazed out to sea. She looked up at me dully, but brightened when she found that I addressed her in her own tongue, though haltingly. Hitihiti? She had heard of him, but he was dead long since. Hina? She shook her head. She had never heard of Tipau, but remembered Poino well. He was dead. She shrugged her shoulders. “Once Tahiti was a land of men,” she said; “now only shadows fill the land.”

The river was unchanged, and though the bank was overgrown with vegetation, I found my way to my seat among the roots of the ancient mapé tree. The noble tree stood firmly rooted and flourishing, and the river ran on with the same faint murmuring sound. But my youth was gone, and all my old friends dead. For a moment anguish gripped me; I would have renounced my career and all I possessed in the world to have been twenty years younger, sporting in the river with Tehani.

I dared not think of her, nor of our child. I had resolved to sail to Tautira on the morrow and dreaded what I might discover there. Presently I rose, crossed the river at a shallow place, and walked toward One Tree Hill. The groves of breadfruit trees which had once provided food for innumerable people were now hacked, yellow, and drooping; in place of scores of neat Indian cottages, only a few filthy hovels were to be seen; and where a thousand people had lived only twenty years before I met scarce a dozen on my walk.

Proceeding down the eastern slope of One Tree Hill I soon reached Stewart’s glen where I had passed so many happy hours. There I sat me down on a flat stone, close to the spot where his house had once stood. Not a trace of the house remained, nor of the garden he had tended with such care, though I found what I took to be the remains of one of his rockeries for ferns. Stewart’s bones, overgrown with coral, lay mingled with the Pandora’s rotting timbers on a reef off the Australian coast. Where was Peggy? Where was their child? The sun had set, and the shadows were deepening in the glen. Sadly I rose and made my way over the steep rocky trail that led to Matavai.

Next morning I took the pinnace and a dozen men and sailed around the east side of Tahiti Nui to Taiarapu. The eastern coast seemed in a more flourishing state than Matavai, and I was agreeably surprised to find that Vehiatua’s former realm had not been desolated by war. But pestilence had done its work, and scarce one man was to be found where five had lived in my time. As we approached Tautira, I strained my eyes for the sight of Vehiatua’s tall house on the point. It was gone, but presently I perceived with emotion that my own house, or one like it, stood on the spot where I had lived. The boat grounded on the sand, while a score of people, with brighter faces than those of Matavai, stood on the beach to welcome us. I scanned their countenances while my heart beat painfully, but there was no man or woman I knew. I dared not ask for Tehani, and the missionaries in Port Jackson had informed me that Vehiatua was dead, so, telling my people to bargain for a supply of coconuts, I set off in search of someone known to me. The little crowd of Indians stopped by the boat. I was glad to be left alone.

I took the well-remembered path, and before I had walked halfway to the house I met a middle-aged man of commanding presence, who halted at sight of me. Our eyes met, and for an instant neither spoke.

“Tuahu?” I said.

“Byam!” He stepped forward to clasp me in the Indian embrace. There were tears in his eyes as he looked at me. Presently he said, “Come to the house.”

“I was on my way there,” I replied, “but let us stop a moment where we can be alone.”

He understood perfectly what was in my mind, and waited with downcast eyes while I mustered up courage to ask a question his silence answered only too eloquently.

“Where is Tehani?”

“Ua mate—dead,” he replied quietly. “She died in the moon of Paroro, when you were three moons gone.”

“And our child?” I asked after a long silence.

“She lives,” said Tuahu. “A woman now, with a child of her own. Her husband is the son of Atuanui. He will be high chief of Taiarapu one day. You shall see your daughter presently.”

Tuahu waited in considerate silence for me to speak. “Old friend and kinsman,” I said at last, “you know how dearly I loved her. All these years, while my country has been engaged in constant wars, I have dreamed of coming back. This place is a graveyard of memories, and I have been stirred enough. I wish to see my daughter; not to make myself known to her. To tell her that I am her father, to embrace her, to speak with her of her mother, would be more than I could endure. You understand?”

Tuahu smiled sorrowfully. “I understand,” he said.

At that moment I heard a sound of voices on the path, and he touched my arm. “She is coming, Byam,” he said in a low voice. A tall girl was approaching us, followed by a servant, and leading a tiny child by the hand. Her eyes were dark blue as the sea; her robe of snow-white cloth fell from her shoulders in graceful folds, and on her bosom I saw a necklace of gold, curiously wrought like the sinnet seamen plait.

“Tehani,” called the man beside me, and I caught my breath as she turned, for she had all her dead mother’s beauty, and something of my own mother, as well. “The English captain from Matavai,” Tuahu was saying, and she gave me her hand graciously. My granddaughter was staring up at me in wonder, and I turned away blindly.

“We must go on,” said Tehani to her uncle. “I promised the child she should see the English boat.”

“Aye, go,” replied Tuahu.

The moon was bright overhead when I reëmbarked in the pinnace to return to my ship. A chill night breeze came whispering down from the depths of the valley, and suddenly the place was full of ghosts,—shadows of men alive and dead,—my own among them.