CHAPTER IX

NORFOLK ISLAND AND THE NEW HEBRIDES

Norfolk Island - Its fascination - Beautiful scenery - Its terrible past - Wholesale osculation - Honi soit qui mal y pense - Embarrassing situation for Sir William Denison - His Staff help him out - Contrast in manners of Norfolk Island men and women - Pitcairn Islanders - Mutiny of the Bounty - Missionary effort - Soap, tobacco, and religious books - Fight between whale, thrasher and sword-fish - Spreading the Gospel - Massacre, as usual - A cannibal delicacy.

WE made a long stay in Sydney on that occasion, and were not sorry when we heard that we were once more bound for sea, none more pleased than the Skipper, for a very large number of our men had deserted, actuated quite as much by a wish to get away from the cat as by the attraction of the gold-fields. Our destination was Norfolk Island, the object of the expedition being to convey Sir William Denison, who, having jurisdiction over the British Pacific Islands, was going there to inaugurate laws. For the year before the Pitcairn Islanders, the descendants of the mutineers of the Bounty, who had grown too numerous for their original home, had been transferred from that island to Norfolk Island, a veritable Paradise, for the earth contains no more chosen spot for the habitation of man. Heneage and I were fortunate enough to be selected by Sir William Denison to accompany him ashore, and we

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AN EARTHLY PARADISE

remained with him during his stay on the island, a visit which, on me, has left an undying impression.

The island is about thirteen miles long by six broad, rising steep out of the Pacific Ocean, and is about eight hundred miles to the northward and eastward of Sydney. It is totally unlike any other island in the Pacific, either geologically or in its fauna, and, when discovered, there was no animal of any kind on it. It was then one vast park, with broad, undulating sweeps of grass and magnificent timber, pines between two and three hundred feet in height and thirty to thirty-five feet in circumference, and a species of palm, called a cabbage palm, with very little reason, for there is nothing it resembles less. In the north lies the double-headed Mount Pitt, about one thousand feet high, but the average of the island is not more than three hundred and fifty feet above sea, with a depression in the centre considerably less than that. The soil is a marvel of fertility, and now, under cultivation, produces every kind of crop, whilst guavas, bananas, pineapples, peaches, oranges, lemons, and many other fruit trees grow wild. But this lovely spot had been made into the nearest approach to hell that the imagination can conceive, for the most dangerous convicts of Botany Bay had been transported there, so that the worst crimes known to human nature were of constant occurrence. More than two-thirds of these desperate characters lived permanently in chains ; floggings were as frequent as on board the Iris, whilst hangings, at the unfettered discretion of the Prison Governor, were part of the daily routine. But things at last became impossible, the Home authorities interfered, and the convicts were transported elsewhere, whilst in their place the harmless, ingenuous Pitcairn Islanders, to the number of some two hundred, were plumped down on the island.

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Disembarkation here was at all times difficult, but in bad weather became impossible, and, as it was coming on to blow when we got there, Sir William Denison and his suite, myself and Heneage included, had considerable difficulty in getting ashore. But backing the ship's cutter in and carefully watching for an opportunity, we managed to jump on to the rocks and were whisked up out of the swirl of the sea by the islanders. Then a scramble up a rough stair in the cliff, and we stood looking down on the fairest scene, surrounded by nearly the whole population of the island, the women in the unconventional dress of persons who have turned straight out of bed, and the men in trousers and shirt sleeves.

It is difficult to describe the delight with which these simple-hearted folk received us; the women, old and young, incontinently throwing their arms round the necks of all of us, without distinction of rank or age, kissing us more vehemently than had we been long-lost brothers. The good old Governor seemed extremely embarrassed, for it was certainly an undignified position for a kind of Moses coming to give new laws, and somewhat calculated to lessen awe for the Lawgiver. For a moment he looked angry and, no doubt, had his Edicts been on stone, he would there and then have broken them to pieces in the presence of such levity, but as they were on paper, and, still more, in a bag which I was carrying, they escaped destruction. However, he quickly recovered his temper, and being light of heart, set to work - but with some discrimination - to return the salutes. In fact, he seemed to think that there was no other method to get to the people's hearts, the bounden duty of all rulers, and as we all agreed with him, we acted on this principle all the rest of the time we were in the island ; giving ourselves up to our duty with such ardour that the Governor declared he had never been more ably assisted by his

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PITCAIRN ISLANDERS

Staff - in any part of the world - in establishing friendly relations.

The type of these people is very much what may be seen in many islands in the Pacific, where whites have crossed with the Kanakas; the men loosely knit, shambling creatures, sallow of skin, and sometimes handsome ; the women, with more colour, more vivacity, an intense appreciation of life, remarkable eyes, thick, sensuous lips born with a smile. Their figures, like Kanakas generally, are good though rather short ; their voices soft, and their manners set to please.

This, generally speaking, may be taken as the Pitcairn or Norfolk Island type, entirely in harmony with its environments of strong-smelling flowers : fruits which grow without trouble : waters that invite bathing : forests and shady glades that suggest repose by day and impel rambling in the warm and silent night.

Surrounded by these amiable people, still hanging round our necks, we now began our short walk to the Settlement, which we soon reached, lying in a park-like country. It seemed impossible to realise that so short a time before, this heavenly spot had been the scene of such unspeakable brutality and crime in its convict-haunted days. Still the convict buildings - consisting of a gloomy-looking prison and several detached houses, with a very fair residence for the Prison Governor - told their tale ; whilst, close by, rough piles of stones marked the graves of poor wretches who had escaped from captivity, by the hand of the hangman or their own. The remains of the gibbet and the stone platform on which it had stood were still there, but already grass was growing on it and goats were cropping round its base. Close by stood the building reserved for the most dangerous criminals, where they had sat chained, year in year out, only to be brought out to be tied to

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NORFOLK ISLAND

the triangle to be flogged, or hurried off to die on the dread platform. On the other side of the buildings stood a chapel, erected in grim irony for prayers to the All-Merciful, whilst beyond it was another burial-ground, for the warders of this hell, amongst them some who had been slain by the despairing prisoners, solely to earn escape, albeit with the rope.

Arrived in the Settlement the Governor and his A.D.C. took up their abode in the Residence, as it was called, but Heneage and I were lodged in the house of one of the leading families. To me the few days spent in this house were perfect bliss. How piously I wished that all the gales of the Pacific would now fall on the Iris, would blow every stick out of her and compel her to return to Sydney, jerry-masted, before attempting to re-embark us. The genuine kindness and simple affection of these islanders is difficult to describe, whilst their artless, unsophisticated manners, if portrayed in detail, would certainly convey a false impression of their morality. Married or single it was all the same : its very openness robbing it of suspicion. Of course I have heard other visitors to the island scoff at the innocence of such demonstrative love-making, but I can only give my own impressions ; and looking back with wider knowledge, it is delightful to me to think that I was as likely to be right as those who thought badly of them. The men of the island did not strike us as so interesting as their sisters and cousins. There was nothing distinctive about them, whereas the women had a clear claim to originality, to which the extreme simplicity of their dress greatly contributed, consisting of a single square-cut garment made of their own home-spun cotton, occasionally adorned with stripes of coloured linen, sewn longitudinally on to them : the dress not always confined to the body, though some few wore a fillet high up under the breast, leaving the

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A SCRAMBLE AND A TUMBLE

lower part to lie in its natural folds, in Spartan simplicity, on their free-moving limbs. Their hair - generally decked with flowers, tied in a knot low down on the neck, or altogether loose on their shoulders - varied in colour from raven black to reddish brown, and seemed always luxuriant. But the Norfolk Island man was boorish, suspicious, and idle ; his one idea seemed to be that the Government - by which he meant England - had had some sinister design in transplanting him to an island, where at least some manual labour would be necessary to keep him alive, instead of leaving him in Pitcairn, where the natural products of the soil, and chiefly the breadfruit, grew in sufficient quantities to keep him alive, lying on his back. We were all sick of the men in twenty-four hours. But this, again, may only have been a male point of view, for, some time after, I met two girls in Auckland, who had accompanied their father on missionary work to Norfolk Island, and they differed with me entirely, and declared the men were "quite nice," and their ways charming.

Accompanied by the daughter of our host I explored part of the island, and wonderfully beautiful it was, with forests of one of the most stately of all trees, the Norfolk Island pine. Sheep were mostly to be seen in the lower land, near the Settlement ; but many of the cattle had taken to the bush and roamed at large. On the occasion of one of these rambles a rather untoward incident took place. A girl and I had gone up the slopes of Mount Pitt, a fatiguing scramble through thick undergrowth, and, as the views were lovely in the extreme, had dawdled about longer than was wise, for evening had begun to fall and darkness to come on rapidly. So we made a hurried descent of the hill, and, coming to a rocky place, quite strange to my companion, we had to make the best of getting down anyhow and anywhere, being confronted, at last, by a considerable drop,

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the depth of which it was impossible to gauge in the dark. We tried to go back, but we had already dropped down several places it would have been difficult or impossible to re-climb, so I decided to prospect, and began crawling down holding on to brushwood and roots. I soon found a footing, some fifteen feet lower, and I called to my friend to follow, which she did ; but it was not easy, and in the attempt many bits of her dress were left behind on the bushes. But she reached me safely, and we stood on a narrow ledge wondering how we were to get down further. Below us was now as dark as night, with only tree-tops showing, but there was no help for it, and once more we began the descent. I had just planted my foot firmly, and was placing her foot on a projecting rock, when the bush she was holding on to gave way, and before I knew what had happened I found myself falling headlong down into the dark with the girl after me. But we did not roll far, probably not twenty feet, before we landed on a grass slope and came to a standstill. I jumped up and tried to pull her up, hoping she was unhurt ; but she had sprained or twisted her ankle, and could not move without great pain. Beyond having torn my jacket I was none the worse ; but she, in addition to her sprained ankle, had cut her arm, and it was bleeding freely. I pulled off my jacket and tore the sleeve out of my shirt, tore it again into strips and bound up her arm, and then took off one of my braces and wound it tight round her ankle, after having rubbed it as much as she could stand - for it gave her great pain - she all the time moaning and crying like a child. But after a while she said the pain was less, and managed to stumble along with my help. We were soon in comparatively open country, and after an hour's trudge saw some twinkling lights below us which we knew to be the Settlement, whilst out at sea, and looking as though close in shore,

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MUTINY OF THE BOUNTY

was the long line of lights on the main-deck of the Iris. It was past midnight before we finally reached home.

Perhaps I may be permitted here briefly to explain who were these Pitcairn Islanders, for the story of the mutiny of the Bounty has already receded into the almost forgotten, strange and fascinating as it is. It is a wild romance of the sea, with an episode of horror in it, which has only once in the world had its parallel, namely, the slaughter of their husbands by the women of the Island of Lemnos.

In the year 1789 H.M.S. Bounty sailed from Otahiete, an island in the Pacific, carrying bread-fruit trees destined for the West Indies, when a mutiny broke out, chiefly caused through the disinclination of the crew to separate from their morganatic wives, whose society they had enjoyed for six months in that charming island. The mutineers, having captured the ship, placed their Captain (Bligh) in an open boat, with nineteen men who had remained loyal, and these twenty men, after a most marvellous boat journey of over four thousand miles, finally reached Timor, one of the Moluccas. The Bounty was taken to Taheite by the mutineers, where, unluckily for them, some few elected to remain. For being afterwards discovered there by another man-of-war, these men were tried, and, most of them, promptly hanged. But the Bounty had long before left Taheite, for those who remained in her, having laid in a sea-stock of wives and provisions, had sailed away, and had accidentally come across the rarely-visited island of Pitcairn. Here, finding that existence was possible without working, they burnt the Bounty and began life anew. But violence and crime soon broke out amongst them until their leader, one Adams, finding them incorrigible, conceived the simple expedient of getting their wives to murder them all. This he had no difficulty in persuading them to carry out, for they were

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NORFOLK ISLAND

glad to be rid of such rascals, and, on a given night, all the men were killed. Adams then took charge of the women and children, instituted severe laws, and brought them all up well, for he was a religious man : or said he was. He died in 1829, and then an Englishman, called Nobbs, who had come amongst them some few years before and had married Adams's daughter, became the leader. He followed in the paths of Adams, and the islanders increased and multiplied and remained lost to the world. Then Admiral Moresby visited the island, in 1852, when Nobbs was sent home and ordained, returning to the island next year. But meanwhile the people had become too numerous for this small island, only two or three miles long by one or two wide, so that, in 1856, the British Government transplanted them to Norfolk Island, supplying them with two or three thousand sheep and many heads of cattle, together with five hundred horses and a large store of provisions. But now, having come within the pale of civilisation, it became necessary to organise their laws on a more regular basis. Hence Sir William Denison's mission.

This same Nobbs was about fifty-eight when I saw him on Norfolk Island. He struck me as an amiable, patriarchal old humbug, and, in some respects, no less puzzling than the community in general. There must have been about two hundred of these people about this time, though subsequently the island became quite populous ; for Bishop Patteson founded a Mission Settlement there, and, in its wake, many beach-combers found their opportunity to squat, when demoralisation quickly spread in this delightful spot. But long before this the Denisonian laws and regulations had grown irksome, so that many returned to their dear old home, Pitcairn, with their families.

* * * * *

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A GENUINE ROBINSON CRUSOE

After an all-too-brief stay Sir William and the rest of us once more embarked on board our ship and sailed for Auckland, New Zealand. For the islanders were short of some necessary provisions, which, having procured, we returned to Norfolk Island, but alas ! only for a few hours. That our partings from our friends there were sad need hardly be said ; and I can remember how sentimental I felt as, leaning over the taffrail, I saw the last peak of Mount Pitt vanish below the horizon. I thought that I had left something behind I should never know again, and I was right - for it exists nowhere else on the face of the globe.

More than two years after I had an ingenuously affectionate letter from the companion of my rambles. I have it still, scrawled on a rough sheet of foolscap, in writing that would not pass a School Board standard. But it breathes truth and sincerity, and, when I look at it, it conjures up a delightful memory.

* * * * *

On our passage to Sydney we visited Lord Howe's Island, a curious and lonely spot. It had one solitary inhabitant, a white man, a veritable Robinson Crusoe, with goats and fowls, his food, fish and potatoes. He wanted nothing except to be left alone, and his wish was gratified.

We were not long in Sydney Harbour on this occasion, our next cruise of any interest taking us to the New Hebrides, a group of beautiful islands of volcanic origin, and for the most part inhabited by the fiercest and most warlike race of cannibals in the Pacific. Murders of missionaries had been of frequent occurrence in all the northern islands, especially in Tanna and Erromango ; but a more peaceful race inhabited the southernmost island, Aneiteum, which had in consequence become the

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home of numbers of missionaries on the look-out for soft jobs. This they had evidently found, for when we visited the place it was already practically settled up, nearly all the natives professing some form of Christianity, and even sufficiently far advanced in the science of that faith to believe that those who differed from them a hair's breadth in its tenets must infallibly be damned. This, of course, to the missionaries, severally and individually, was very gratifying, as indicating the sincerity of native conviction.

There were very good paths all through the island, and the natives lived in perfect peace - not in villages, but in scattered huts - which alone indicated a high degree of mutual trust. Most of the missionaries had pleasant houses, and any number of willing converts - chiefly female - to attend to their wants. Trading schooners called frequently, and the missionaries - many of them - did a roaring trade in cocoanuts, copra, and other island products. Generally, there was a good whale-boat near at hand to ship these goods ; whilst flocks of ducks waddled about on the rocks, and hens scratched in the sand. Behind one house was a pile of thousands of cocoanuts, all collected by the willing hands of converts.

The owner was, I believe, a missionary more by conviction than profession - some of the other missionaries said, by necessity. He did not belong to any particular Missionary Society, but was there on his own hook. And a very good hook, too, I thought, for he was a practical evangeliser ; could teach the natives to do carpentering, even to the building of whale-boats, he himself in some former state - in his graceless days - having been carpenter in a whale-ship, so that in addition to building boats he could knock up barrels, the trading schooners bringing him what we call at sea " Shakes " - that is, the staves of barrels

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A HIGHLAND MISSIONARY

and the iron hoops separate. His converts seemed a particularly prosperous community, kept pigs, building their own styes, and when a whale came ashore - not an infrequent occurrence, as the neighbouring seas of Aneiteum swarm with these mammals - they, assisted by the old sea-missionary, boiled down the blubber, getting rum and tobacco, knives and cotton, in exchange. He was a very sensible old man, and if he is alive now must be, I should think, about ninety years old - which is quite likely - for he was himself a sober, tough, old Hieland man from some remote part of the far North. He had a fair knowledge of the language, which, however, he could learn, even then, in books, for translations of the Bible had already been made, and also, I think, a rough dictionary. But even in this small island there were different dialects. One great pull he had over other missionaries was that it was not incumbent on him to send home long reports to any religious body in Scotland or anywhere else, to bring spiritual consolation to poor widows and starving crofters for contributing their sorely-needed shillings to support some labourer in the field. Besides that, if this old missionary did succeed in spreading the Gospel off his own bat, albeit by trading in rum and tobacco, where was the harm in it ? Surely, the quality of the Gospel could not be affected thereby any more than its truth can be impugned by the preaching of a Borgia. Strange to say - though one would hardly have expected it of him - he rigidly enforced personal cleanliness amongst his converts, though, apparently, not insanely addicted to it himself. Of this I had ocular demonstration. Not far from his house was a stream of water forming a deep pool. Disporting themselves in entire abandon, their clothes drying on the bank, I came across several of his disciples, all women and children, scrubbing

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themselves with soap. It appeared to be the Saturday wash.

The natives of Aneiteum are of the Negroid type, ugly in our eyes, but with beauty, too - of a kind - the beauty of graceful movement and well set-on heads. In pre-missionary days they were treacherous and murderous; but now, under the Christianising influence of petticoats for the women and trousers for the men, are merely all idle, and mostly thieves and drunkards. As regards their marriages, too; whereas in the old days, the best women fell captive to the club and arrows of the bravest men, now they go for so many pigs or so much copra.

Whilst in the Bay of Aneiteum, we witnessed a curious sight. A large whale had got enclosed inside the coral reefs, and had been followed in by two smaller fish, but both of large proportion; one commonly known as a thrasher; the other a sword-fish, with a lance six to eight feet long. They were attacking the whale with terrific ferocity : the thrasher lifting up its ponderous tail and bringing it down on the whale's head whenever he attempted to rise for air : the sword-fish operating underneath him with his terrible lance. Finally, after rushing round the bay in search of an outlet, the whale flung himself on the beach, blinded with rage, his blood dyeing the waters round him, where he remained immovable, rapidly bleeding to death. His enemies, however, did not follow him into shallow water, for we saw them swimming away out through the reef in company, doubtless well pleased with their two hours' fight, and at having rid the seas of one more of their dangerous foes. For the whales in these seas are not the harmless creatures of Northern waters, but are armed with jaws of immense size and prodigious teeth, and live on other fish. Visiting this

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A SEA FIGHT

bay again, weeks after, the remains of the huge fish were still to be seen, and smelt too : for our enterprising evangelist, aided by his friends, was boiling down the blubber. But, unfortunately, not having enough casks to store it in, a great quantity was lost.

We visited most of the New Hebrides group, thirty or forty islands in all, some with large, active volcanoes, from two to five thousand feet high. The scenery in these islands is magnificent, especially in Tanna, where the great Kauri pine reaches an extraordinary size. The inhabitants vary a good deal, both in habits and colour, and it is observable that the lighter they get, the more advanced they are in civilisation, as regards dress and ornaments. But as to what, for a better definition, must be called their morals, these seem to be in the inverse ratio of their colour, for there is far more conjugal fidelity amongst the Negroid than amongst the Kanaka, or light-skinned races. It would not be difficult to construct a moral thermometer in the Pacific, taking the Negroid temperament at, say, 60 Fahrenheit, and ranging up to boiling point for the Samoans and Kanakas generally.

* * * * *

It was in the Island of Tanna that I first saw real fighting. My ship had gone up to investigate the killing of a missionary, the point being not so much whether he had deserved martyrdom from the natives - for there were certainly two sides to the story - as to enforce the sanctity of a white life on these savage minds. So, with this moral object in view, we landed a strong force, set fire to their villages, shot as many savages as remained to be shot, and carried off a chief, who, by strategy, had fallen into our hands. Our method was simple. Having ascertained from the missionaries of Aneiteum that there was deadly enmity between two

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tribes, situated at different ends of the Island of Tanna, we made friends with the tribes who we elected to assume were innocent, for the time being, of killing and eating missionaries, and, with the aid of a native convert, who spoke about ten words of English, induced some of these savages to embark on board our ship, and serve as allies with us in the coming struggle. They seemed only too pleased at the alluring prospect of securing man's flesh - loving it as a City Father does turtle - and, with a band of white calico bound above their elbows in order that we might distinguish friend from foe, were disembarked, on the enemy's shore with their weapons, leaping into the water even before the boat's bows had touched the rocky beach, when, yelling in a diabolical manner, they rushed into the jungle, which grew close down to the sea. A terrific din ensued, but before our men could land, the enemy appeared to have given way and fled, so that when the bluejackets got up to the village - not a hundred yards from the beach - there was not a soul to be seen. But fiendish screeches and yells were to be heard far up the mountain side, as if hell had broken loose : as indeed it had for them.

The villages being set on fire, the party returned, but meanwhile some of the enemy had got round a point to intercept the retreat. But a volley or two scattered these poor wretches ; whilst two or three of them, cut off from their own party, rushed out on to a reef a few yards off the shore. They were immediately followed by the friendlies, and as it was impossible for our men to fire at them without risk to these, a hand-to-hand fight began, fought out with astonishing valour, the huge clubs whirling over the heads of the combatants. But the friendlies were greatly at a disadvantage by having to climb out of waist-deep water to get up on to the reef, and the

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A LAND FIGHT

consequence was that two out of three were killed there and then. But one, a magnificent specimen of a man, with considerable strategic intelligence, had climbed up on to the reef nearly fifty yards away from the front attack, and now, single-handed, came rushing down on the enemy. It was impossible to distinguish one from the other in this fighting mass, but, however it happened, our warrior suddenly disappeared into deep water on the outer side of the reef and we saw him no more. And now two of the enemy lay apparently dead on the rocks ; one survivor standing alone. To shoot him would have been as easy as hitting a haystack, but fair play and admiration of his pluck withheld a single barrel from being raised against him. He remained fearlessly looking at our men for a moment, his bronze-black body glistening with perspiration, his club resting on his shoulder, and no doubt he thought his last moment had come, with more than fifty rifles not a hundred yards off. Then he suddenly whisked round, plunged into the sea outside the reef, swam for a short distance, climbed it again, no doubt thinking he was out of range, and finally made a dash for the beach and the safety of the jungle. Some bluejackets went off to the reef and picked up the clubs and bows fallen from the natives, and rolled their dead bodies into the sea.

The muster-roll was then called to go on board, but three were missing : a mate, Tupper, nephew of the melancholy poet of that name, and two blue-jackets. So a search was made, and there, by the side of the path leading through the dense jungle to the still blazing village, Tupper's body was found, stripped naked, with the head battered out of all recognition. It was clear that he had been slain

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hardly ten minutes before, and that the natives must have been dragging him off as our men returned, for he was quite warm, and a track was left showing where they had been drawing the body. As to the other two men, no trace of them was ever found, but we learnt afterwards that there had been great rejoicing amongst the savages, with an almost unequalled feast of white men's flesh.

Our friendlies had made one prisoner, the chief of the tribe. How such a renowned fighter could have fallen into their hands alive, we never knew, but suffice it to say he found himself, a few hours after, chained by the ankles to an iron bar between two guns on the main-deck of the Iris. I do not know if it was in our Skipper's mind to hang him at the yard-arm, but the belief that this would be the man's fate was very general on board, and I can scarcely doubt the savage himself contemplated no other fate. But there was : for we landed him a few days after on another of the Hebridean group, where the people were not friendly to his tribe ; so probably death overtook him shortly in another form.

Meanwhile, on board our ship, we had in him an instance of how extraordinarily susceptible are some men to the influence of music, even amongst the most savage. Our band was playing one night, and as the strains of music rose and fell, this grizzly, grey-headed old chief gradually drew his gaunt body from the deck on which he lay, wriggling his feet in the irons until he could lean over the gun which separated him from the musicians, where he remained apparently transfixed with wonder, his head rolling about, his eyes half-closed, whilst every now and then he would give a low grunt of approval. Then when the first tune was finished, he stretched his arms over the gun and tried

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CHARMS OF MUSIC

to touch a fiddle that lay within his reach. This was handed to him and he examined it most carefully, inside and out, playing with the strings and rapping the wood, with a smile of childish delight on his face. All that evening he listened with the same rapt attention, as though a passionate love of harmony had suddenly dawned on his savage soul, seeming oblivious of the fate which a day or two might bring him.

But the charms of music had really done little to soothe his savage breast, for only an hour or two later he made a senseless and reckless attack on his sentry. Suddenly seizing a cutlass, which had foolishly been left within his reach, he aimed a desperate blow at this marine, who fortunately saw it in time and skipped back. I happened to be close by, and I can see the great savage now, lean, wiry, a man of fifty or sixty, with a small bullet head, grey hair, large rings in his ears and rows of shark's teeth round his neck ; an expression of the utmost ferocity on his face, his teeth showing like a wild beast's, his eyes flashing, his chest heaving the cutlass in his hand. No one could go near him, and for a moment it was proposed to shoot him then and there ; but our gunner - the afore-mentioned Barter - seized a rammer from overhead, and with a sudden thrust threw the chief on his back, when, in a moment, the sentry and some others flung themselves on him, wrenched away the cutlass, and left him lying with his forehead streaming with blood where the rammer had struck him. This was bandaged up, and he lay quiet until washing decks roused him out in the morning.

We conveyed our friendlies back to their part of the island, and though we did not trust them sufficiently to land and visit their village - as they wished us to do - still they endeavoured to do the honours of their country and brought off a large roll of something done up in fresh

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TANNA

banana leaves. This, on being opened, turned out to be a roasted blackman's thigh, and they were quite as much astonished as hurt when we declined to accept the gift.

I may mention a curious spectral illusion which occurred to me in connection with the death of Tupper. The night before the affair in which he lost his life he and I nearly came to a serious quarrel - and I am glad to say that he was absolutely to blame. After his body came on board I thought it strange that now he could never make me the amende, which I had hoped all day he would. We buried him that night at sea. It was my middle watch, and, walking up and down the lee side, suddenly, standing stiff and rigid, and yet apparently perfectly alive, I saw his form alongside of the main-mast, his left hand hanging on to the fore-brace, precisely as he would have done in life, to steady himself from the roll of the ship. The vision was as plain as life, and I stopped spellbound and gazed at him and he at me with a curious look on his face, half scowl, and as if he were anxious to speak. Then he vanished. But every turn I took up and down the quarter-deck and came near the main-bits I felt a strange kind of shudder, as if he were still there, and was glad when it struck eight bells and I went below.

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