Chapter II: Troubadouring in Tahiti (1)

I ship with a genuine Old-time Crew—Poetic
Nightmares—Tattooed Manuscripts of the Seas!—I learn the
Art of Forcible Expression—Tar-pots—The Storm—Washed
Overboard—Papeete—Pokara—How the first Coco-nuts
came—Star Myths.

THERE are many sceptics who may disbelieve my account of the crew of the “Zangwahee,” but away with such people!

About a week after losing sight of Pango-Pango I went across to Savaii Isle. I had heard that there was an old sailing-ship anchored off Matautu, and that she was bound on a long voyage across the Pacific. I shall never forget the wonder I felt on first sighting the “Zangwahee” as she lay out in the bay. “Looks like an old Spanish galleon,” I thought, as I stared at the yellowish canvas sails and the antiquated rigging imaged in the dark-toned waters of the bay. For a moment I eyed the outlines of that craft with intense curiosity. The beautifully carven emblematical figure-head (a goddess with outstretched praying hands) kept my eyes spellbound. The poetry of the artist’s brain, the magic that had inspired the human hands to carve such outlines, seemed to enter my soul, as the light of the setting sun touched the saffron-hued sails and glimmered across the silent, blue lagoons. The movements of a man’s form on her deck made me realize the truth; for in some credulous fancy I had half thought that she was some long-lost treasure-trove ship that had lain there for centuries!

“Where you bound for?” I cried, hailing a weird-looking seadog who had suddenly stared over the bulwark side.

Placing his hand to his lips, he yelled back, “Bound for Tarhoyti!”

“Where the h——’s Tarhoyti?” I yelled back. But no response came; the old sailor simply pulled his dilapidated cap over his eyes and spat melancholy-wise into the ocean. In a few moments I had taken one of the beach canoes and paddled out to the “Zangwahee.” Clambering up the rope gangway, I went on board. As I stood on deck, I stared in astonishment. The crew, who were busy coiling up the ropes on deck, all stood up, and looked like rows of mummies clad in rags. They were wrinkled and sun-tanned to a yellowish hue! They might have been the crew of the “Flying Dutchman,” so weird did they look, those old-time sailormen. And talk about blasphemous oaths, when I meekly asked if they thought there was any chance of a job!

“Captain Vanderdecken aboard?” I said, hoping to break the ice by such an evident bit of humour on my part. One old sailorman, who had a Rip Van Winkle look about him, stared at my blue serge suit of the nineteenth century, and then, touching his cap respectfullike, said, “Thar’s the Ole Man aft; cawn’t ye see ’im?”

Looking aft, I got a bit of a shock, I can tell you. The skipper looked as ancient as his ship! He had a monstrous grey beard and O, the expression on his face! I might have made a bolt over the side but for the fact that he had already spotted me. Going straight aft, I looked him in the face and said, “Any chance of a job, sir?”

Metaphorically speaking, he picked me up by the heels, smelt me, looked at my teeth, screwed my neck round twice, examined my spine, thumped me on the ribs, and said, “UM!”

I fancied I saw the dust of ages on his bony neck as a whiff of wind came across the Pacific and divided the tresses of his beard. Then he looked down on the deck and said, “Wha’s thawt?”

“My violin, sir,” I responded, as curiosity toned down much of the funk I was in.

“Ho ho! He he! Haw haw!” he yelled, as he gazed on the deck at my fiddle-case. In obedience to his commands, I at once took my instrument from its case and commenced to play! It was like seeing God smile as his wrinkled face lit up with delight. “Yoom’ll do,” he said. Then, taking hold of me by the scruff of the neck, he pitched me headlong down the alley-way into the dingy cuddy (saloon). Alighting gently on a rather soft-plushed settee of prehistoric pattern, I murmured my thanks. You see, I had sailed on sailing ships and well knew that the treatment I was receiving was of marked courtesy in comparison with that which I had experienced whilst on the Clipper Lines.

So did I become a member of a crew who, I should think, were the last of the genuine old seadogs.

Next day the yards were squared to a stiff, fair breeze, and to the strain of some old Spanish chanty I found myself bound for Tahiti! My description of this voyage and the crew may appear like some gross exaggeration; but I can assure the reader that I could not possibly describe that crew and their ancient craft _without_ appearing to exaggerate. I even remember the thrill that went through me when I saw the ancient-looking yellowish sails belly to the Pacific wind as we passed beyond the barrier reefs and caught the outer foam. But alas! the thrill passed away when I sat down in the forecastle with those marvellous old shellbacks and had my first meal.

I might say that the salt-horse and biscuits of the “Zangwahee” were as ancient as the crew appeared to be. Perhaps it was natural enough that there should be an affinity between the ancient members of that crew (a few members belonged to my own century) and the horses that had apparently roamed the primeval Arabian plains! Only a great poet could describe the antique “Menu” of that forecastle. I have a brilliant imagination, and so it was easy enough for me to imagine that the corn that those biscuits were made of had ripened in Assyrian cornfields! I only had to eat a foc’sle biscuit to enter at once the realms of enchantment. Just as good wine intoxicates the brain, the fumes of those cast-iron mouldy biscuits created a gassy atmosphere in my stomach and inspired my brain with weird poetic fancies. I imagined I saw Ruth standing amid the “alien corn”; and, taking another nibble, I had visions of old rivers flowing by ancient walls, and of the desert towers of the Pharaohs! I saw tired harvest girls, sickle in hand, sleeping by their garnered heaps under Assyrian suns. Yes, reader, such dreams were mine when I had poetic nightmares after partaking of the “Zangwahee’s” forecastle menu of salt-horse and hard-tack.

Though I could fill reams with the wonders of the “Zangwahee’s” menu and all that my brain fancied, I have only space to set down the stern facts that apply to the “Zangwahee’s” crew. As I’ve said, they were hairy-chested men, real seadogs of another age. To see their thick-bearded lips and their crooked noses, as they sang and climbed aloft, made me half fancy that I had been blown across a century into the Nelson period. Notwithstanding the old skipper’s rough exterior, I found him quite human. Surely few young men who have gone to sea have had the experiences I have had, for that old skipper would get blind drunk, and, lying in his bunk, roar mighty encores as I played selections on my violin to him! He loved sea hymns, and, when I played “For those in peril on the sea,” he would mumble deep in his beard, his eyes becoming wet with tears! Though I liked that strange old captain (and I believed he liked me), my chief delight was to come off watch and sit in the forecastle with the crew as they tugged their beards, shook their fists, cursed the mate, the skipper, and the Universe! As they sat on their sea-chests in the dim-lit forecastle, they looked exactly what they were—genuine high priests who worshipped at the altar of monstrous yarns and the best rum!

Some of them had fine, fierce, kind eyes, and bearded lips that never tired of yelling forth the wild mystery of the sea and oaths of inexhaustible beauty! They were able to express, in one neat phrase, the pictorial ruggedness of their adventurous, unholy careers. They were true sea-poets—possessing forcible descriptive genius that enabled one to conjure up weird visions of the wondrous countries they had seen and the “charming” women they had known. And I vow that they made their verse scan, subtle verse devoid of any direct influence from the idyllic school of romanticism. Some hailed from ’Frisco, Japan, Callao, New York, London Town, Norway, etc., so there was a splendid mixture of the world’s maritime literature. Consequently that forecastle’s audience made a terrific school of the “Sturm und Drang” persuasion, a school that fairly hummed with the unrestraint of Rousseau’s _Confessions_, at the same time favouring Mallarmé and Browning for concentrated expression. A forcible accent came on their rhymes too! One epic punch-rhyme would make one’s eyes see stars! What hairy fists they had! But those older hands seldom quarrelled. O Le Tao’s frame was as bare as an egg when compared to the hieroglyphics and tattooed sea-heraldry inscribed on their carcases. I had never seen such living art before, such brazen display as they revealed when they sat by their bunks and undressed in that forecastle. Watching by the mingy oil-lamp that hung from the fo’c’sle roof-beam, I seemed to be witnessing some life-like, wondrous Madame Tussaud’s waxwork of the sea, as one by one they pulled their coats and vests off, revealing their herculean, muscular frames in the nude! What a sight I beheld!—the tattooed storied history of their adventurous careers! On one old sea-weary sailor’s chest was engraved, in curves of red and blue, a goddess-like girl, the one great romantic love of his youth. She was exquisitely designed, and one unloosed tress fell down to her bare shoulders. I was fascinated as, leaning forward, I made out the faint words inscribed beneath the feet—“My Lucille,” then again, over the crown of hair, “Mizpah.” Others were veritable living volumes, depicting all those things that influence sailormen in the seaports of the world: shapely-limbed maids of Shanghai, Tokio, Callao, ’Frisco, New York, and London Town adorned their figures. “My True love Harriet,” Lucille, Unita, Mary Ann, Bill’s Alice, Ducky-Sarah, Angelina, Una, Fan-Tan, all were there, pug-nosed, and some, alas, indelicately underclad. I do not exaggerate when I say that I was initiated into the storied, tragical history of the oceans, of wrecks, the morals and poetic characteristics of strange womenkind in distant lands, and the shattered hopes of faithful sailormen, as I studied those weather-beaten manuscripts of the seas. For many of those tattooesque designs were sentimental symbols telling of fidelity in love, some deep faith in “Alice, dated 1879,” and lo, the recorded disillusionment with the later date—1880—the design of a heart with a dagger through it, revealing something of the bitterness brought to those old sailors’ hearts through the faithlessness of those old loves whose names were tattooed on their massive, hairy chests and muscular arms! It would indeed be a weird chapter of memoirs that told of my brazen explorations, of my astonished exclamations, as I curiously scanned and studied the tattooesque history of those violent old manuscripts. Many of the inscriptions had faded with age. Old Hans, who had sailed the seas fifty years, before I was born, would yarn for hours as I frequently interrupted to stare at his chest, his arms, wrists, and fingers.

“Who was she?” I’d ask.

He would shake his head sadly and tell me how Unita jilted him; how Kum-Kum slept in Tokio, and Leila in Kensal Green, and Singa-Samber in some old cemetery in the South Seas. Once he put forth his tarry thumbnail, and by the mingy gleams of the fo’c’sle’s hanging oil-lamp helped me to trace out a faint figure on his big wrinkled chest, and, lo! I plainly discerned the face, legs, and shoulders of some old pal hanging on a foreign gibbet! I often thought that I must be dreaming it all, as they sat there in the shadows, yarning away, as the Pacific combers banged against the vessel’s side, and we rolled along on our lonely course bound for old Papeete. It took some time before that crew acknowledged me as one of their legitimate members, for they were often cantankerous devils.

Ah, memory of it all—and my first oath! For, though I had been many voyages and roughed it “on the wallaby” with old sundowners in Australia and New Zealand, I had not blossomed into a true sea-poet of the great unromantic school of the oceans. No unfledged _prima donna_, no débutante, ever rehearsed her first part as I did, I know. _I’d_ show them how to swear! After deep meditation, I gathered together the finest swear words extant. Over and over again I repeated those vile phrases until they fell glibly, naturally, from my tongue—full-blooded adjectives that resolved into monstrous illegitimate pronouns that I may not print here! I longed to publish those words, so to speak, to inflict them, sear them on the soul of one of those cantankerous old seadogs, for they played many scurvy tricks upon me, such tricks as must remain unrecorded. Though many opportunities presented themselves before I got the swear-phrases off by heart, I had to wait quite four days before I could get my own back in a legitimate way. At last the desired moment came. It was just at sunset. I was standing on deck gazing on the horizon, admiring the expanse of peace, the ineffable beauty of awakening stars and approaching night. Suddenly the modern sailor, who hailed from a local pub, Houndsditch, London, walked out of the forecastle, looked at me as I stared over the bulwark, then yawned, and dabbed me negligently—smash! in the mouth with a coal-tar brush, and calmly asked me if “Me mother knew I was out?”

I clapped my hand to my tar-smeared face; then I let forth my pent-up volley of oaths, which I well punctuated with a splendid driving blow on that son of Houndsditch’s nasal organ. The applause and calls of encore from the whole crew, who had rushed up to see the fight, were terrific. They cheered and cheered. Then I gave them something more to cheer about—I picked up the nearest tar-pot—there was a row of them by the galley door—and crash! it fitted like a cap over my opponent’s cranium, hiding his brow, eyes, nose, and mouth too! It was splendid. The cheer that followed that unrehearsed act of mine soothed my ruffled nerves considerably. I was declared the winner, and, metaphorically speaking, was awarded on the spot the Nobel prize for swearing! I gained and maintained the highest respect from those seasoned sailormen. They nudged me in the ribs when “Houndsditch” passed me on deck, and reviewed my contributions to ocean-poetry in the most friendly spirit as I swore and swore. So have I slowly and painfully educated myself that I may compete with my fellow-man and fight the world with my sleeves up. I recall that I was quite comfortable on board after that fight. Ah! I often think to myself, that if I were a king or a millionaire, how I should purchase thousands of tar-pots, and fix them—crash!—over the heads of some people I know. But why digress to record one’s personal viciousness? Except for the incidents recorded it was a monotonous voyage; and I was delighted when we caught a good trade wind and, with all sails set, the “Zangwahee” fairly danced and bowed as she did her ten knots toward old Papeete.

I had been to Papeete before, so knew what I was up against. I wasn’t touring the world with a camera and a thousand a year; and, though “South Sea palm-clad isles and wine-dark seas” sounds poetic and comfortable like, you have to rough it a bit if you’ve only got fourpence halfpenny in the exchequer. But these facts didn’t trouble me overmuch, since I could play the fiddle and swear.

The cook of the “Zangwahee” was a most grotesque character. He swore like the much-maligned trooper, banged his pots and pans about, and behaved like a lunatic when we stood by the galley door and held our noses, as we cynically praised the terrible effluvia of the cooking salt-horse. He, too, belonged to another age. He was sun-tanned to a yellowish hue, and had a large, drooping nose with bristly hair on the end. He would purse his lips up and, giving me a contemptuous glance as I smelt the galley odours, would say: “You call yerself a saylorman! yer God-damned galoot, clear art of it!” But in the end he and I became quite chummy. He would sit by his galley doorway and tell about the good old days, curse the modern sailormen and seafaring ways, as I agreed with all he had to say. “You orter been a-living in _our_ time, when men _was_ sailors,” he’d say, as I softly pressed him to take another sip of rum from the flask which I always carried, so that I might with ease bribe those dogmatic seafarers. After that he would cook a small bit of salted horse in fresh water instead of sea-water for my especial benefit. He even gave me fresh-made biscuits at times. So did I manage to exist on the “Zangwahee”; otherwise I should have been buried over the side and gone out of this story years ago. When rum was plentiful, the cook would stop on deck dancing half the night. Through being bow-legged, he looked like some mammoth frog clad in an apron, as he shuffled in a jig in the moonlight, close by his galley door. The songs he sang were quite tuneless, consequently he sang and sang. He would fold his arms on his breast and open his mouth like a puppet, as I played the violin and he danced. I’ve never played an obligato to a frog’s solo; but for tune and _tempo_ give me the frog! (I don’t think it’s usually known, but the Polynesian swamp frog was the original inventor of the syncopated accent of the modern cake-walk.) Its chant goes:

[Music:

_Bis_
Clack, click, click. Clack, click, clack.
]

And to sit in a South Sea forest by moonlight and hear an old marsh-frog conduct an orchestra composed of the weird denizens of the forest—the Samoan nightingale wrapt in its green and bluish velvet robe, singing exquisitely as _prima donna_, the mosquitoes buzzing on their weird flutes, while the grey, swallow-tailed gnat, sitting on the tall fern-spray, sweeps majestic strains from its wondrous violin, as the old forest trees waltz—is a musical treat and sight to be ever remembered.

It is wonderful what we mortals can see and hear when we keep our inward ears and eyes wide open. Of course, such sights were as nothing to me; I had long since realized that the great truths of this world exist outside the realms that men persist in erroneously dubbing “Reality.”

It was an engrossing spectacle to watch those old-time sailors dance on deck by moonlight. The very winds in the sails seemed to sing an eerie accompaniment, as the weird old shellbacks jigged and tossed their arms to the moon. I’d play the fiddle, as the strain of “Oh, oh for Rio Grande!” came ghost-like from the dancers’ bearded lips. It looked as though they were the ragged phantom crew of a ghostly ship, as they shuffled on deck, their sea-boots going “Tip-er-te-tap-tum-per-te-thump-thump!” their eyes bright with merriment, as they opened their big, tuneless mouths and joined in the chorus. Then a cloud would suddenly pass across the moon’s face, and lo, puff! they had all vanished, gone, blown overboard!

I’d stare aghast, and see lumps of ragged clothes and misty stuff, like remnants of old beards, swept off on the night winds, as their parchment-like hands clutched in vain at the clouds in space!

Some unimaginative folk might have sworn that it was nothing more than hovering albatrosses asleep on the wing, floating on the wind. But still, it’s a weird place is the South Sea.

However, in the morning, there they were, all in their bunks, fast asleep, or half awake, dipping their swollen heads in buckets of cool sea-water—as real as real could be!

With all that voyage’s discomforts I found it in no way monotonous. For that forecastle was a wonderful breathing library of stirring adventure. The characters of the books walked about, talked, and took mighty oaths if one dared to doubt their veracity.

I often marvelled how any shipping-office officials came to engage such ancient-looking sailormen. They looked infirm and useless. I sometimes half fancy that I dreamed them, or that I am quite a thousand years old, as they come to me in some memory of the night, and dance till I distinctly hear their sea-boots tapping on my bedroom floor in this old inn. Olaf was clean-shaven, and was so wrinkled and tanned that he looked like some neptuonic mummy clad in modern duck-pants and a belt. Steffan wore a peculiar-shaped bristly beard round his neck only, which looked like an old, frayed, grey woolly scarf, a fixture round his throat. Hans, the boatswain, who always said “Thou canst,” and “thee,” and “shiver-me-timbers,” would look straight into the mate’s eyes and say, “Avast there, you lubber!” He had one enormous tooth that protruded from his compressed lips, which seemed ever grinning, were he awake or asleep. At other times he would remind me of a wonderfully carved heathen idol, a kind of South Sea Laocoön that I had once seen in a tambu-house in New Guinea. For he would stand on deck bathing in a large tub that hardly reached to his knees, his muscles and veins swollen, vividly standing out as though through some mental and physical agony, while he stared on the skyline, then once again scanned his tanned arms and chest, whereon were tattooed the strange names of women he had known! Olwyn Saga, who wore a beard that brushed against his hips and where through the winds whistled eerie melodies when storms blew, had cornflower-blue eyes that had ogled the women of Shanghai and Callao before any modern sailor was born.

Even the skipper would tug his huge beard in a kind of meditative way whenever he met Olwyn on deck. As for the mate, a Scot, he almost apologized before shouting out his orders to those grand old fathers of the sea. Even their songs sounded like echoes from another age, as the old fo’c’sle dog, Moses, sat upright before them, tears coursing down his cheeks as the strains seemingly awakened memories of other days. And when Olwyn jigged in the forecastle by night, the hands would sit huddled on their sea-chests, their chins leaning on their horny hands as they dreamily watched. And I would fiddle a weird obligato, shivery-like, as I stood beneath the fo’c’sle’s oil-lamp, playing, not to Olwyn’s dancing figure, but to his shadow that mimicked him as it bobbed up and down in the gloom of the bunks and wooden bulwark side, first to port and then to starboard, as, folding his arms under his beard, he slewed round and round! Only the shuffling sounds of the big sea-boots, “Tump-er-te-tump-er-thump-er-te-thump,” told of the reality, as I, avoiding Olwyn and staring at his silently moving shadow in the gloom, was enabled to feed my imagination and extemporize an eerie accompaniment to a melody that had been sung on the Spanish Main a century before.

It was in the hush of the hot, calm, tropic night, when the “Zangwahee” wallowed in the swell and plomped till the hanging canvas seemed to be drumming to the destiny of the marching stars, that I blessed those aged sailormen. For, as they yarned and yarned, telling of their far-off experiences, my admiration for them became unbounded. They were either the most glorious old liars that ever existed, or had lived in Olympian times when nothing was impossible and only the marvellous occurred. Treasure-troves, typhoons, scented merchandise from the Indies, faithless lovers, dusky beauties on mysterious uncharted isles, and God knows what else, haunted my dreams, as I, at last, fell asleep, with their voices still mumbling in my ears. Old Hans, who smoked a filthy terra-cotta clay pipe and gassed me into insensibility on nights of sad rememberings, took a fancy to me. I became quite interested in the lonesome dog-watches. I’d sit by his bunk, and he’d point to the faded pictures of the foreign women he’d known and shake his head. “When did she die, Hans?” I’d say, as I pointed to one of the faded outlines of his bunk’s photographs.

“She?—why, shipmate, she died ages ago!” Then I’d hear all about the reality of that shadowy outline on the wooden wall. So did I become familiar with the inner dramas of those old sailors’ lives. Sometimes I’d hear things that made a shiver go down my spine, or, rather, down where the remnants of my spinal column remained, for the mate had surely broken it in three places (I had experienced so much in my travels that it did not seem strange that I should go off to sea in search of romance and lose my spine).

“You must be mighty old, Hans, to have experienced such things,” I ventured to say, as he yarned on one night. Then, so that he might see that I wasn’t as green as he appeared to think I was, I added, “Might you have met Abraham or any of the Pharaohs in your time?”

For a moment he puffed his antique pipe, his fingers toiling away as he stitched the fragments of his ancient clothing together; for quite a while longer his chin pressed his white beard against his chest, as he sat in an attitude of deep thought. Then I distinctly observed an amused twinkle shoot into his pale blue eyes, as, solemnly shaking his head, he replied, “No, I’ve never ’eard of them coves; they muster ’ave been born _after_ my time!”

“Do you mean to tell me that you’re older than Abraham?” I said quietly.

Hans looked steadily at me, then gave me a solemn nudge in the ribs. And then I knew that old Hans had been a bit of a humorist in his youth, ages ago! I didn’t cotton to Steffan as keenly as I did to Hans. The fact is, he would get drunk and shout all through the night, mind you:

Blow! blow! bully boys, blow—O!
We’re bound, bound for Callao—O!
We, the sailormen of long ago—O!
So let the winds roar what they know—O!
Blow! blow! bully boys, blow—O!

Then he’d finish up by expectorating a stream of tobacco juice right through the port-hole on the figure-head’s dishevelled hair! (It is only the callow youth who sees the poetry and romance of carven wood.) But even Steffan became emotional when he opened his sea-chest and took forth his old tattered love-letters. It seemed unbelievable as I listened to the soft, sweet things romantic girls of eastern lands had written in praise of Steffan’s eyes, tender ways, and figure! Then he would fold each tattered yellow fragment up, and moan with the winds outside in the foremast rigging, as tears coursed down his wrinkled cheeks! I think it was when the skipper mustered the crew for prayers, aft in the cuddy, that those old sailormen appeared the most emotional. It was quite evident by their voices that they believed in a Supreme Being’s watchful care over the lot of old sailormen. I would play the fiddle as they stood by the cuddy’s table, prayer-book in hand, lifting their sea-weary eyes mournfully, as their voices rose and fell. What voices! Mellow and sombre with years, the deep bass notes seemed to come from beneath the deck under their feet and echo through their beards. The skipper, divested of all his erstwhile blasphemy, would hit the cuddy’s table with his knuckles as he tried to keep the _tempo_ and the language the same (they sang in various tongues). And one night, when they all stood singing with their huddled backs bent, and the cuddy’s dim lamp swung to and fro sending glimmerings over their wrinkled faces, I seemed to have suddenly passed into a bygone age. “Houndsditch” and the two other modern sailors were mysteriously blown, like cobweb figures, out of the saloon by a puff of wind. Only those eight hairy-chested, tattooed figures stood there, looking like misty things with hollow eyes and eerie grey beards, as they sang a hymn that strangely echoed up in the wailing sails. The tap, tap of the skipper’s knuckles on the cuddy table sounded afar off. I heard only the long, low plunge of the “Zangwahee’s” bows as she roamed onward and the praying hands of the figure-head swerved, dived, or softly lifted towards the tropic skies, while I stared across the little swaying table, fiddling to the voices of those old sailors, as we sailed the dim, starlit seas of romance!

One night, while we were playing cards in the dogwatch, something struck the “Zangwahee” like a tremendous hammer-blow. We were carrying a lot of canvas at the time. The “Zangwahee” heeled over and tumbled us in a heap on the port side of the forecastle. The boatswain’s dog, old Moses, a huge, fluffy fellow with fine brown eyes that were full of wisdom, rushed out on deck and barked at the stars. Moses was always alert, being the first to obey the mate’s orders. In a moment we had followed Moses on deck in a regular stampede. The mate was yelling and swearing like a madman.

“Where the blazing h—— are ye, mon? Take in sail; she’ll have the masts ripped out of her!” (The mate seldom gave direct orders to those old sailormen who had run the Easter down and doubled Cape Horn before he was at his mother’s breast!)

That typhoon had struck us without the slightest warning. The “Zangwahee” was already diving, as I clambered aloft with the rest of the crew. The seas, calm as a sheet of glass when the sun went down, were heaving angrily as the wind howled across the night. It was a marvellous and grand sight, for there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The stars were flickering as though the typhoon’s wild breath reached to the remote outer spaces of infinity. As I crawled along the foot-ropes aloft, I looked down on the “Zangwahee’s” swaying decks and distinctly saw old Moses barking as he stared aloft, his hairy nose sniffing the stars. I looked seaward and saw the ramping seas rolling away to the dim night skylines like travelling mountains. As we fisted the canvas, the old skipper roared his orders from the poop; his beard blew upward and went over his shoulders as the wind struck him. Of course, up there aloft we got the full force of the blast. I clung on like grim death. We had to keep our faces to leeward, otherwise it were impossible to breathe at all, as the wind struck us like a solid mass. I cursed that typhoon. I hadn’t any diplomas for ability in going aloft on dark nights while typhoons blew. Besides, I had a swollen face through toothache. I felt as though I was being tossed about in space, lost in an infinity of wind and darkness, with only the stars around me.

“‘Old ’ard! yer son of a gun!” roared an old salt, as I clutched the canvas with one hand and grabbed his beard with the other when the “Zangwahee” nearly turned turtle. It was Olwyn Saga, and for a moment I had thought that a kind, vast white beard had been thrust out of space, until I heard the mouth give a muffled oath. Only one who has been aloft on a sailing-ship in really bad weather knows the sensation one feels when one hangs on to the taut ropes of a stick that seems to wobble in space, a stick with a dozen singing sailors clinging to it, using frightful oaths as they apparently grab the stars and curse, when they should be thinking of the supreme possibility of suddenly appearing before their Maker.

“Avast there! Shiver-me-timbers! What yer doing, yer young B——!” seemed to groan a sepulchral bearded voice from out the stars!

“Nothing,” I wailed, as the vessel, pooping a tremendous sea, seemed to dive over the rim of the world into an abyss. I had instinctively clutched the nearest solid portion of the visible universe—the seat of the aged boatswain’s pants! And still those old salts sang some strange chanty as we see-sawed to and fro in space. The moon had just risen, blood-red on the horizon, sending a wild glow over the storm-tossed waters. And, as I looked down from my perch in space, I saw the tremendous seas lifting their oily backs, like mammoth monsters, as they chased and charged the staggering ship. The skipper was still on the poop, using his hands as a siren, as he yelled to the winds apparently. Suddenly a tremendous smudge seemed to obliterate the world, a smudge that incarnadined the ocean. The “Zangwahee” rose like a leaping stag, then fell. Even the seasoned salts clinging beside me ceased their eternal chanty at that awful moment. Crash! the “Zangwahee” had apparently collided with the blood-red moon! I distinctly saw the outstretched praying hands of the emblematical figure-head as the jibboom dived and then stabbed the moon, and I went head-over-heels and fell softly into the moon’s ghostly fires! So did it all seem to me, as the “Zangwahee” nearly foundered, and I, in some inexplicable double-somersault, had a swift glimpse of the horizon, as she fell between the mountainous seas and I was jerked into old Olwyn’s arms. I saw the great living walls of foam-lashed waters flying past us. For one moment the foretop-gallant yard seemed exactly level with the foaming pinnacles of the mountains of water that were travelling S.W. But for Olwyn’s providential grip on me, I should surely have fallen from aloft, that I know. I thanked Heaven when everything was snug aloft and we all carefully descended the rattlings. I recall that I had barely got my bare feet on the bulwark side, prior to jumping down on deck, when another sea struck us. Again it seemed that we had foundered and that the waters were thundering over our heads, ramping along, shrieking with delight as we awaited the trump of doom. When the “Zangwahee” once more righted herself, we picked the skipper up as he lay by the galley amidships. He had been washed off the poop. By some miracle the man at the wheel had been able to stick to his post, and so had managed to keep the “Zangwahee” from falling broadside on into the tremendous seas. The chief mate helped to carry the skipper aft and lay him in his bunk. His leg had been broken. Suddenly old Hans wailed out in a horror-stricken voice, “By the soul of Neptune, if my old Moses ain’t gone overboard!”

The huddled crew stood by the cuddy’s alley-way, white-faced as they stared over the wild waters. The swollen moon’s wild red light, sweeping the mountainous seas, made a glow that somehow harmonized with the intense inner drama, the sorrow of that moment. The faithful eyes of that comrade, who had stood sentinel by their bunks, were out there, staring blindly in the engulfing cataclysms of those terrible night waters.

“Shiver-me-timbers!” breathed forth those ancient men, as it came again—a faint, deep, baying sound out of the night, “Wough! Wough!”

That familiar sound touched the very heart-strings of those ancient sailormen. “God ’elp us all, me shipmate’s overboard!” said Hans to the chief mate. The “Zangwahee” rose on a mountainous sea; then once more we shipped heavy water. The torn sails of the mizzen-yard flapped, booming like big drums, as those old seadogs stood there looking into each other’s eyes. As for old Hans, he had never looked so appealingly or spoken in so abject a way to a modern officer before.

For a moment the clear eyes of “Scotty,” for so they called the mate, stared on Hans. He was hesitating. In that supreme moment he was the true monarch of that buffeting little empire of wooden planks on an infinity of water. His humble subjects awaited the order that would prove if his heart glittered with the true stuff that would stamp him as a man in their eyes.

Though the first force of the typhoon had blown itself out, the “Zangwahee” was pitching terrifically, and to lower a boat on such a night was a risky thing.

“’E’s been a good shipmate to us, sor,” said another, as Hans watched the mate’s face and clutched his vast beard that had blown backward right over his shoulder.

“I dinna ken what to do, mon; the skapper wouldnae think on’t, I know,” said the mate, as he lifted his oilskin cap and scratched his red head. Then he looked into Hans’s eyes and said quietly, “All right, mon, lower No. 3 starboard boat.”

Possibly the mate remembered that old Moses had always obeyed him and pulled the blanket off his bunk true to time when the midnight hot coffee was ready. Even at that supreme moment a faint, deep, anguished baying called to him out of the night. It was as though Moses’ wondrous instinct knew that he was something of an outsider in a world of two-legged men, and so might be left to his fate. In a moment the old hands had scampered to No. 3 boat. Their hearts were out on those dark thrashing waters. They cared not one iota about the risk they took that night. The great loneliness of the ocean and the wild poetry of the storm only strengthened the link of fellowship between them and the brown eyes that stared from those seas at the flying, storm-tossed “Zangwahee.” I had more than once seen men lower a boat to save a man overboard, and I swear that there was no less determination and eagerness displayed by those old salts when they struggled with the tackle and risked the tremendous seas in lowering that boat.

“Give a hand there, youngster!” yelled Olwyn, as I clung to the davits and did my best to help them. Then, just before they lowered away, I jumped into the boat to give Hans his clasp-knife to cut some tangled tackle. It was at that moment that one of the men, who was watching for the critical moment to lower away, saw his chance, and loosened the tackle, and I found myself numbered with the old salts in that boat. For a moment I thought we had been swamped, for, as the boat touched the back of the great oily sea that lifted the “Zangwahee” till she heeled over as though she would turn turtle, another sea struck her. But those old sea-poets were not amateurs: they knew how to make the seas scan and the rolling waters rhyme to their requirements. But still for a long time we all had to use our whole strength to keep the boat’s head to the seas. It was then that I discovered, for the first time, that, though the moon was well up on the horizon, a terrible darkness existed in the gulfs of the waves. Once, when our tiny craft rode buoyantly on the top of a tremendous sea, I got a swift kaleidoscopic glimpse of the “Zangwahee’s” swaying masts and rigging, far-off, with the blood-red moon just behind her. The sight of those illimitable miles of tossing waters, our lonely ship and lonelier castaway boat, the frantic, hoarse calls of the boat’s crew, calling “Moses! Moses!” was something unforgettable, to be remembered when old ambitions and natural catastrophes are long forgotten.

No reply came to that frantic call. Not a soul spoke as we all listened, down there in the silence of the hollows, while the wind shrieked overhead and we dropped into the sheer silence, as vast walls of living waters rose around us. So strangely silent was it down there in that gulf of the ocean, that I distinctly heard the deep breathing of the sailors as they strained at the oars. At last we heard it come again, that faint deep baying of our struggling canine shipmate. There was no fancy about it; we heard the wild note of appeal and despair in each faint, deep bark that answered us between the intervals of silence and the crash of the seas.

“Damn the moon!” groaned the boatswain, as he stood by the tiller, stared around him, and almost wept. We all knew that, had the moon been high in the sky, we should have had a thousand better chances of rescuing Moses.

“Yell, boys! Bully boys, yell!” roared Hans. And by faith they did yell. Again they listened and stared out over the wild waters. Back it came—a faint response, very faint. It was evident that, through the heavy seas repeatedly washing over our shipmate’s head, he was fast becoming weak, and so less able to resist the onrush of the travelling seas that would bear him from us for ever. “Shout again, boys!” said Hans. And again we shouted. We well knew that it was the only chance. For Moses would instinctively hear from which direction our voices came and swim towards us. It was then, whilst we all strained at the oars, and listened, that we heard a faint, far-off cry of anguish. It sounded more like the terrified cry of a human being than anything else I could think of. Every face blanched, I know, as we heard that last faint, terrified scream! Old Hans, who stood by the tiller, his eyes looking quite glassy, nearly fell over the side in his eagerness to see what had happened. Indeed, the boat was nearly swamped, for we left off rowing when we realized that something else had come out of the vast night in answer to poor old Moses’, our shipmate’s, despairing appeal to us. We knew that the Pacific was infested by grey-nosed sharks. We had caught three monsters on a hook with fat pork only a day or two before. I know that we all shivered at that moment. We well knew that Moses would give a scream like that only if _one_ thing happened.

* * * * *

Next night, as the “Zangwahee” once again stole steadily on her course, I sat in the fo’c’sle with those strange old sailormen. There they sat, huddled on their sea-chests, smoking their pipes and chewing melancholy-wise, shuffling the cards as though they played a game that was part of their destiny. Even their silhouettes, moving on the wooden walls as the swinging oil-lamp sent its mingy gleams on the low table, looked strangely mournful as the big-bearded mouths drew in tobacco smoke and blew it forth again in clouds. The boatswain, old Hans, had torn his Bible in half and used shocking atheistical expressions. I heard the tramp, tramp of the look-out man just overhead, and the wail of the rigging and heavy foremast canvas as the “Zangwahee” crept along to the pushing hands of the night winds. Then old Hans lifted his bowed head and looked towards the fo’c’sle doorway, where old Moses, night after night, had sat on his mat, on watch, his hairy nose pointing to the stars as we slept in our bunks. I heard the old sailor give a muffled oath as he blew his nose in his dirty bit of sailcloth handkerchief.

Then the cook closed the galley door for the night and, stepping softly into the fo’c’sle, plumped down a large jar of the best Jamaica rum on Hans’ sea-chest. It was a present from the bed-ridden skipper; and, as the old salts slowly opened their mouths and in one melancholy gulp gave a sad toast to the memory of Moses’ soul, I once more seemed to be voyaging across the seas of some far-off age. I heard the melodies of the winds wailing aloft in the grey sails that swayed along under the stars. And, somehow, I felt the touch of the sea’s old sorrow and romance blow across the deck. The moonlight was falling in an eerie way through the spread canvas and wavering ghostly-wise on the deck just by the fo’c’sle doorway. Again I felt that visionary presence, as it rustled like a richly melancholy-scented wind along the deck, a something that my senses could not place. I felt it creep into the fo’c’sle, sending its shifting fingers tenderly over the bowed heads of those old-time sailormen, who mourned the loss of Moses, the one who had instinctively loved them all, through knowing the hidden virtue of their hearts.

* * * * *

When we arrived off Papeete, we seemed to have dropped anchor in some celestial harbour of a world beyond the stars. Dotted about along the shore, under the waveless coco-palms, were tiny, yellow wickerwork, bamboo huts. The sun was setting. It was a sight to please the most unpoetical being, as dusky figures, clad in tappa-cloth and sashes of gorgeous hues, flitted under the banyan groves. The far-away background of that island world looked like some vast canvas daub, some tremendous transcendent silence lit up by a liquid setting sun. The mountain ranges of Orehena, visible for miles, resembled some old chaos of unhewn creation stuffed, piled up, overgrown with forests, and encircled by the distant blue pigment of the ocean skyline. But the savage children of Adam and Eve were there right enough. Fleets of outrigger canoes were being paddled out by the primitive peoples who had sighted the “Zangwahee.” Those canoes were the Tahitians’ tiny argosies, and were crammed with sweet-scented merchandise, coco-nuts, limes, softly-tinted shells, corals, and luscious fruits. Those merchants of the south clambered up the vessel’s side, rushed about the decks gabbling in a musical tongue that was the more fascinating through being strange to our ears. Some were in such haste that they dived from their canoes into the sea, and, leaping on deck, looked like bronzed mermen as they shook themselves. The water glistened from their lime-dyed locks and ran down their handsome figures. “Yarana!” was their oft-reiterated salutation. It was hard to tell which were the most attractive, the pretty maids with hibiscus blossoms in their curly hair, or the handsome terra-cotta-coloured youths. Whilst the hubbub and general pandemonium of those pretty merchants were in full swing, old Hans, Olwyn, Steffan, Olaf, and the rest of the old salts walked solemnly out of the forecastle, hired a twelve-seated outrigger from the natives, and were immediately paddled ashore.

It was at that moment that I sighted for the first time the old Tahitian chief, Pokara. So tall was he that he overtopped the gabbling crowd who stood on the “Zangwahee’s” deck. He was a handsome, wrinkled old fellow, and his looks did not belie him, for he was a mighty heathen poet and philosopher. Though old, he stood there in his resplendent youth of seventy summers, his eyes ashine with the light of some witchery and fond beliefs shared by no one else. Pokara, was one of a type who are born old and grow up youthful. The blue days, and the death-blood of some thousands of sunsets down his seventy years had mellowed his faith in human things, sent the dross to the winds, leaving him a simple-minded, grand old man. But, withal, directly Pokara sighted my face, he made a bee-line for me. His fine bronze figure was almost hidden, so heavily laden was he with his scented merchandise.

“You nicer white boy, me know!—me know!” said he, as he dropped his bundles, crash! at my feet. Then he continued, “Wise old Pokara say to ’imself, as soon as he jumper on ship, ah, there stand ’ansome nicer Englis’ boy; he gotter nicer face and alle-same-ee know that kind old Pokara am here to sell tings bemarkable cheap.”

After finishing that flattering oration, the old Tahitian drew back a few steps so that he might the better renew his scrutinizing glance over my youthful physiognomy. A second look at my face seemed to make the old chief fairly chuckle to himself. I must have appeared a tenderfoot! He behaved as though he would have me know that he had, by a still more careful study of my features, discovered hitherto undreamed-of virtues and beauty in myself, such virtues that had quite escaped his notice during his first hasty glance of admiration!

Majestically waving away the other scrambling native pedlars with his hand, he said, “Ha! Ha! Yorana!” So how could I do otherwise than purchase a few things that I did not want from that artful old man? I tell these things concerning my introduction to Pokara, because he was a typical Tahitian pedlar, a child in his duplicity, and a fine sample of his race. But Pokara was a child in more ways than one. He was a genuine survival of the heathen days, and his mind was a veritable repository of old legends, star-myths, and the storied history of shadowland. He was a mighty actor by nature, and, withal, was level-headed and good-hearted. Consequently I never regretted meeting him that evening on the “Zangwahee” decks, or at any time during my lengthy stay in Papeete.

I recall that, after I left the “Zangwahee,” I secured a good position as first violinist in the French Presidency orchestra, which I took under my leadership and made into a capital string band. Monsieur le President allowed me a good salary from the official exchequer, and this established me firmly on my feet. But, alas for the foolishness of unsatisfied youth! I tired of success and went a-wandering. But I must admit, and on my own behalf, that Pokara was at the bottom of that business, for I suddenly met him again and got under his pleasing influence. First, I must say that I was in a somewhat melancholy mood that day. The night before, and by the merest chance too, I had seen the last of the “Zangwahee’s” crew. I had just emerged from the Presidency midnight ball, my violin in my hand, thinking to go straight home to my lodgings (an old hut at the end of the township), for, as I have said, it was close on midnight. A glorious full moon was shining over the palm-clad mountains as I hurried on; but it so happened that, after all, I did not return to my diggings till daybreak. For, as I stared between the huddled spaces of the thick clumps of bamboos, I caught sight of some eight ragged-looking human beings attired in ancient seamen’s clothes and antique cheesecutter caps. They turned out to be none other than the “Zangwahee’s” crew on their last night ashore. There they were, old Hans with vast beard leading the way, Steffan, Olaf, Olwyn, the cook, and the rest walking one behind the other in solemn Indian file under the palms, as they made for the nearest café that sold the cheapest and best rum and cognac. And as we all sat together in the shanty by the mountains, the hills round Papeete rang with the echoes of the wild sea chanties of an age that I had never known, while they yarned and sang and drank solemnly at my expense. Old Joffre, the night gendarme, and the sleepless natives came and stood by the café’s doorway, and stared in wonder as those old salts smacked me on the back and yelled many lamentations over their farewells. For I had told them that I had decided not to return to the “Zangwahee” any more. I was truly sorry to see the last of them. They had admitted me to their distinctive social circle, had initiated me into the poetic art of looking backward into a seemingly remote past, and, above all, they had flavoured my soul with a dash of the romance and true poetry of the sea that still wandered on the oceans in the shape of peculiar, old, tattooed men, when I was a boy.

But to resume about Pokara. After leaving those old salts, I happened to be strolling beneath the coco-palms by Motoa beach, a lonely spot by the lagoons outside Papeete. I was standing by the wooden-columned portico of a forest shanty listening to the tuneless chuckling of the blue-winged parakeets, when I was startled by seeing a handsome, silent figure standing beneath a palm tree. It was alive, for the full dark eyes blinked as they stared towards the mountains. The magnificently curved shoulders were squared to their full width, a tappa-sash of gorgeous colour swathed the waist and was tied bow-wise at the left hip, the tasselled end flung gracefully over the right shoulder. The figure exactly resembled a bronze statue. The left knee was bent slightly forward, and one hand was on the chin as the eyes stared in deep meditation. The pose was perfect. Had a handsome Greek statue suddenly stepped down from its pedestal and gripped my hand in friendship I could not have been more astonished. That figure was none other than old Pokara, shorn of his cumbersome merchandise and clad in the full festival costume of ancestral chiefdom. His eagle-like eyes had seen me coming down the orange groves!