Sailor and beachcomber. A. Safroni-Middleton
all curled up together on some old sacks. For a long time we whispered together, full of glee at the thought of such easy success in getting away from Sydney, all Homeward Bound!
About midnight, we fell asleep. Suddenly I was awakened by footsteps, and coming down the iron ladder right over our heads I saw the big boots of a man. Quickly pulling the peak of my cheese-cutter cap over my eyes I pretended to sleep. My chums were both snoring beside me, and, as I once again peeped under the rim of my cap, I saw by the figure’s uniform that it was the Chief Engineer. He struck a match and looked at a steam-gauge, and just as I thought that he was going up again on deck, and that we were undiscovered and safe, he turned and spotted us three boys curled there upon the old sacks, all asleep as he thought. For a moment he gazed down upon us, and then without a word crept away. I quickly awakened my two comrades, and told them. They would not believe me at first, but eventually I convinced them, and we all quietly climbed up the ladder and bolted. He had seen us there, three pale-faced starved boys curled together, and it had touched him, and now that I am older I know that he would never have split, wishing to give us a chance to get away back to our native land. And though we did not profit by his kindness, I often think of the tenderness that made that rough sea-engineer creep up to the decks and keep a still tongue for the sake of the three little stowaways.
Next morning we saw the ship sail away half steam ahead across the Bay; round the Point her stern passed out of sight as we three stood gazing wistfully close together on the wharf. Away she went, with the white hands of the passengers waving farewells, and in my dreams I saw her pass through Sydney Heads, and heard her thundering screw start as she passed out into the ocean and rolled away full speed ahead on the long, long track Homeward Bound for England—and I cried myself to sleep that night.
I soon sickened of that life, I can tell you, and one day out at “Miller’s Point” I saw alongside the wharf a schooner which I had been told was bound for the South Sea Islands. I was lucky and secured a berth before the mast, and next morning as dawn crept over Sydney I was aboard her, flying through the “Heads” into the Pacific Ocean before a stiff breeze, with all sails set, bound for the Islands.
That night it blew like hell, and the ship almost turned upside down. I was not used to the tumbling of small craft, which is very different to the roll and heave of big ships, and so became terribly sea-sick. While I was aloft that night I brought up my dinner and tea, the whole of which was caught by the terrific wind and slashed on to the deck into the face of the skipper and the man at the wheel. By Jove! they did swear! But sailors are rough and forgiving, especially when you play the fiddle to them, as I did in the calms that followed that cursed gale and my illness.
In three weeks we sighted the first Island. At first it looked like a huge coco-nut sticking out of the calm shining sea afar, and as we got nearer we saw that it was quite a decent little world about 300 yards across and 100 wide. A big crag, its population consisted of one hut, an old man and two daughters. They were quite nude, and running out to the extreme end of a small promontory they waved their thin long brown arms, and showed their white teeth, as we flew by with full sails set, 300 yards off.
It was a most novel sight to me to see those lonely people on that old rock out there in the wide Pacific. How they lived, and what they lived there for, heaven only knows—I don’t.
As sunset faded into saffron and crimson lines along the skyline that tiny isle faded away into the infinity of travelling darkness for ever following the sunsets around the globe, and I and the crew of eight, all told, lit our pipes and sat on deck as the schooner, urged by the increasing wind which always sprang up after nightfall, crept over the primeval waters, the sails filling out and flopping at longer intervals. The crew were rough sailormen, two were Englishmen and four came from “Frisco,” the cook was a mixture of Chinese and nigger blood—a most extraordinary-looking being he was too, with his frizzly dark hair, slit-almond eyes, and thin yellow teeth dividing the lips which incessantly gripped a long pipe. He and I had no love for each other. I caught him spitting in a tin pannikin, and wiping it clean with his claw-like hand as he put my dinner on and handed it to me. I took it, and turning on my heel gave my arm a full-length swing and over the side it went into the Pacific! By Jove! he did glare viciously at me. After that I always carried my own plate to the galley and placed my food carefully upon it myself.
Daybreak was stealing over the seas as the steep mountainous shores of Samoa burst through the skyline ahead.
At midday the anchor dropped into the calm waters of the Bay. Out from the beach, where the thundering surf leaped over the barrier reefs in the sunlight like showers of broken rainbows, came the out-rigged catamarans, swarming with savage faces. I shall never forget that strange sight of wild men dressed in their own skins, and rough-haired women too, bare as eggs. Along they came paddling and singing weird tunes that sounded like the dark ages in dismal song to my trained ears. Behind the strings of those canoes swam the mothers. On their wave-washed backs clung their tiny brown babies. The bright maternal eyes gleamed, and the wistful tiny bright frightened eyes of the infants shone, as they rode securely on the brown soft backs of those original old mothers of the sea-nursed South!
Behind them stretched the shores of their island home, thickly clad with big tropical trees, big fan-like leaves shimmering in the distance. In a few moments their naked feet were pattering on the deck of our ship. We all made a rush to save our belongings from their thieving hands, as they rushed under our very noses, like big children, to collar all that attracted their bright alert eyes.
That night off I went in one of the catamarans with the rest of the crew. On the beach we met half-castes and white traders loafing and spitting by the sweltering grog shanties and Samoan women were also loafing around. I eyed them with great curiosity. They were nearly naked; some were dressed in cloth loin-strips only; others, leaning against posts smoking and chewing, were dressed in some sailor’s old discarded shirt.
Never in my life have I seen such handsome women and men as some of those Samoans were—fine eyes, splendid physiques, the men standing nearly six feet in their skins. Beautiful heads of hair they had too, both the men and the women, and they were full of song; and when I thought of the white men of my own country, with pimply, dough-coloured skins, bald heads and stumbling gait, with pens behind shrivelled-up ears and eyes gleaming worlds of woe, as they were pulled up to London Town in the train every morning and every night pulled back again, my heart was touched over the sadness of the lot of the working people of the British Isles.
V
I extemporise Stirring Music on my Violin at Native Weddings—Dethroned Queens and Kings—Meet Papoo
I am now going to tell you about Samoa and Samoan folk just as my eyes saw them. My ship sailed away, but I was not on board of it. The Samoan climate suited my health, and I found decent fellows living there who made jolly companions. One of them was a reformed German missionary who had mended his ways, left off the drink and toiled honestly on a coco-nut plantation which helped him to eke out a living for his accepted wife and family. They were pretty little children too—I knew them all well, thirteen altogether, some with blue-black eyes and some grey-black eyes. All had a tiny splash of white on their tiny plump bodies; their mothers were as brown as pheasants’ eggs and mostly fine-looking women.
For a week I lodged with a dark old Samoan who had a kind of bungalow on the beach. The walls were lined with the most beautiful South Sea shells. He traded with them, and I believe did a good business with sailors and traders. He certainly made more headway than I ever did in my tea shop. Well, I found my violin was a real fortune to me. I got in with all the wealthy Samoan chiefs and attended Samoan weddings; far away in the depths of the forest it was I who played and composed on the violin at those South Sea forest festivals. Stirring music! The hotly blushing bride, dressed in her bridal robe—her hair only!—which ruffled as the breeze of the cool forest kissed her innocent nakedness, was given away to the modest Samoan happy youth, and you must forgive me, dear reader, whoever you are, and remember I was only a romantic boy, when I tell you that my whole soul envied that youth! I was young and inexperienced in the ways of Western and Southern life,