Gold-mining in British New Guinea is carried out under the most trying conditions of toil and hardships, The fitting out of a prospecting-party of four costs quite L500 to L1,000. And only very experienced diggers tackle mining in the Possession. And his Honour the Administrator will not let improperly equipped parties into the Possession.

"It is the simplest thing in the world" to become a pearl sheller. "You charter a schooner—or even a cutter—if you are a smart seaman and know the Pacific, use her for general trading... and every now and then go and look up some one of the innumerable reefs and low atolla... Some are beds of treasure, full of pearl-shell, that sells at L100 to L200 the ton," etc.

All very pretty! Here is the "simplicity" of it—taking it at so much per month: Charter of small schooner of one hundred tons, L200 to L300; wages of captain and crew, L40; cost of provisions and wear and tear of canvas, running gear, etc., L60 (diving suits and gear for two divers, and boat would have to be bought at a cost of some hundreds of pounds); wages per month of each diver from L50 to L75, with often a commission on the shell they raise. Then you can go a-sailing, and cherchez around for your treasure beds. If you dive in Dutch waters, the gunboats collar you and your ship; if you go into British waters you will find that the business is under strict inspection by Commonwealth officials who keep a properly sharp eye on your doings. If you wish to go into the French Paumotus you have first to visit Tahiti, and apply for and pay 2,500 francs for a half-yearly licence to dive. (Most likely you won't get it) If you try without this licence to buy even a single pearl from the natives, you will get into trouble—as my ship did in the "seventies," when the gunboat Vaudreuil swooped down on us, sent a prize crew aboard, put some of us in irons, and towed us to Tahiti, where we lay in Papeite harbour for three months, until legal proceedings were finished and the ship was liberated.

"About L150 would be the lowest sum with which such a work" (scooping up the treasure) "could be carried out. This would provide a small schooner or a cutter from Auckland for a few months with all necessary stores. She would require two men, competent to navigate, two A.B.'s, and a diver, in order to be run safely and comfortably; and the wages of these would be an extra cost A couple of experienced yachtsmen could, of course, manage the affair more cheaply."

Some of these recent nine letters which I received contained some very interesting facts. One man, an old trader in Polynesia, wrote me as follows: "Some of these poor beggars actually land in Polynesian ports with a trunk or two of glass beads, penny looking-glasses, twopenny knives and other weird rubbish, and are aghast to see large stores stocked with thousands of pounds' worth of goods of all kinds, goods which are sold to the natives at a very low margin of profit, for competition is very keen. In the Society Islands the Chinese storekeepers undersell us whites—they live cheaper." And "in Levuka and Suva, in Fiji, in Rarotonga and other islands there are scores of broken-down white men. They cannot be called 'beachcombers,' for there is nothing on the beach for them to comb. They live on the charity of the traders and natives. If they were sailor-men they could perhaps get fifteen dollars a month on the schooners. Why they come here is a mystery.... Most of them seem to be clerks or school-teachers. One is a violin teacher. Another young fellow brought out a typewriting machine; he is now yardman at a Suva hotel. A third is a married man with two young children. He is a French polisher, wife a milliner. They came from Belfast, and landed with eleven pounds! Hotel expenses swallowed all that in three weeks. Money is being collected to send them to Auckland," and so on. There is always so much mischief being done by globe-trotting tourists and ill-informed and irresponsible novelists who scurry through the Southern Seas on a liner, and then publish their hasty impressions. According to them, any one with a modicum of common sense can shake the South Sea Pagoda Tree and become bloatedly wealthy in a year or so.

Did the "Special Commissioner" know that these articles would lead to much misery and suffering? No, of course not. They were written in good faith, but without knowledge. For instance, the wild statement about looking up "some one of the innumerable reefs and low atolls... beds of treasure, full of pearl-shell that sells at L100 to L200 the ton," etc.—there is not one single reef or atoll either in the North or South Pacific that has not been carefully prospected for pearl-shell during the past thirty-five years.

Then as to gold-mining in British New Guinea, "where you can dig gold in handfuls out of the mangrove swamps".

Diggers who go to New Guinea have to go through the formality of first paying their passages to that country from Australia. Then, on arrival, they have to arrange the important matter of engaging native carriers to take their outfit to the Mambare River gold-fields—a tedious and expensive item. And only experienced men of sterling physique can stand the awful labour and hardships of gold-mining in the Possession. Deadly malarial fever adds to the diggers' hard lot in New Guinea, and the natives, when not savage and treacherous, are as unreliable and as lazy as a Spanish priest.

In conclusion, I can assure my readers that there is no prospect for any man of limited means to make money in the South Seas as a trader. Any assertions to the contrary have no basis of fact in them. In cotton and coco-nut planting there are good openings for men of the right stamp; in the second industry, however, one has to wait six years before his trees are in full bearing.



CHAPTER XV ~ THE STORY OF TOKOLME

Early one morning some native hunters came on board our vessel and asked me to come with them to the mountain forest of the island of Ponape in quest of wild boar. Glad to escape from the ship, which lay in a small land-locked harbour on the south-eastern side of the island, I quickly put together my gear, stepped into one of the long red-painted canoes alongside, and pushed off with my companions—men whom I had known for some years and who always looked to me to join them in at least one of their hunting trips whenever our brig visited their district on a trading cruise. Half an hour's paddling across the still waters of the harbour brought us to a narrow creek, lined on each side with dense mangroves. Following its upward course for the third of a mile, we came to and landed at a point of high land, where the-dull and monotonous mangroves gave place to giant cedar trees and lofty palms. Here were two or three small native huts, used by the hunters as a rendezvous. Early as it was, some of their women-folk had arrived from the village, and cooked and made ready a meal of baked fish and chickens. Then after the inevitable smoke and discussion as to the route to be taken, and telling the women to expect us back at nightfall, we shouldered our rifles and hunting spears, and started off in single file along a winding track that followed the turnings of the now clear and brawling little stream. At first we experienced considerable trouble in ridding ourselves of over a dozen mongrel curs; they had followed the men from the village (two miles distant) and the women had fastened all of them in, in one of the huts, but the brutes had torn a hole through the cane-work side of the hut and came after us in full cry. Kicking and pelting them with sticks had no effect—they merely yelped and snarled and darted off into the undergrowth, only to reappear somewhere ahead of us. Finally my companions became so exasperated that, forgetting they were newly-made converts to Christianity, they burst out into torrents of abuse, invoking all the old heathen gods to smite the dogs individually and collectively, and not let them spoil our sport. This proving of no effect, an exasperated and stalwart young native named Na, who was the owner of one of the most ugly and persistent of the animals, asked me to lend him my Winchester, and, waiting for a favourable chance, shot the brute dead. In an instant the rest of the pack vanished without a sound, and we saw no more of them till we returned to the huts in the evening.

These natives (seven in all) were, with the exception of a man of fifty years of age, all young men, and fine types of the Micronesian. Although much slighter in build than the average Polynesian of the south-eastern islands of the Pacific, they were extremely muscular and sinewy, and as active and fleet of foot as wild goats. Their skins, where not tanned a darker hue by the sun, were of a light reddish-brown, and the blue tatooing on their bodies showed out very clearly; most of them had a very Semitic and regular cast of features, and their straight black hair and fine white teeth imparted a very pleasing appearance. Unlike some of the natives of the Micronesian Archipelago on the islands farther to the westward they dislike the disgusting practice of chewing the betel-nut, and in general may be regarded as a very cleanly and highly intelligent race of people. Somewhat suspicious, if not sullen, with the European stranger on first acquaintance, they do not display that spirit of hospitality and courtesy that seems to be inherent with the Samoans, Tahitians and the Marquesans. From the time when their existence was first made known to the world by the discoveries of the early Spanish voyagers to the South Seas they have been addicted to warfare, and the inhabitants of Ponape in particular had an evil reputation for the horrible cruelties the victors inflicted upon the vanquished in battle, even though the victims were frequently their own kith and kin. When, less than twenty years ago, Spain reasserted her claims to the Caroline Islands (of which Ponape is the largest and most fertile) and placed garrisons on several of the islands, the natives of Ponape made a savage and determined resistance, and in one instance wiped out two companies of troops and their officers. A few years ago, however, the entire archipelago passed into the hands of Germany—Spain accepting a monetary compensation for parting with territory that never belonged to her—and at the present time these once valorous and warlike savages are learning the ways of civilisation and—as might be expected—rapidly diminishing in numbers.

*****

After ridding ourselves of the dogs we pressed steadily onward and upward, till we no longer heard the hum of the surf beating upon the barrier reef, and then when the sun was almost overhead we emerged from the deep, darkened aisles of the silent forest into a small cleared space on the summit of a spur and saw displayed before us one of the loveliest panoramas in the universe. For of all the many beautiful island gems which lie upon the blue bosom of the North Pacific, there is none that exceeds in beauty and fertility the Isle of Ascension, as Ponape is sometimes called—that being the name used by the Spaniards.

Three thousand feet below we could see for many miles the trend of the coast north and south. Within the wavering line of roaring white surf, which marked the barrier reef, lay the quiet green waters of the narrow lagoon encompassing the whole of this part of Ponape, studded with many small islands—some rocky and precipitous, some so low-lying and so thickly palm-clad that they, seemed, with their girdles of shining beach, to be but floating gardens of verdure, so soft and ephemeral that even the gentle breath of the rising trade wind at early morn would cause them to vanish like some desert mirage.

To the southward was the small, land-locked harbour of Roan Kiti, whose gleaming waters were as yet undisturbed by the faintest ripple, and the two American whaleships and my own vessel which floated on its placid bosom, lay so still and quiet, that one could have thought them to be abandoned by their crews were it not that one of the whalers began to loose and dry sails, for it had rained heavily during the night. These two ships were from New Bedford, and they had put into the little harbour to wood and water, and give their sea-worn crews a fortnight's rest ere they sailed northward away from the bright isles of the Pacific to the cold, wintry seas of the Siberian coast and the Kurile Islands, where they would cruise for "bowhead" whales, before returning home to America.

Here, because the White Man both felt and looked tired after the long climb, and because the Brown Men wanted to make a drink of green kava, we decided to rest for an hour or two—some of the men suggesting that we should not return till the following day. Food we had brought with us, and everywhere on the tops of the mountains water was to be found in small rocky pools. So whilst one of the men cut up a rugged root of green kava and began to pound it with a smooth stone, the White Man, well content, laid down his gun, sat upon a boulder of stone and looked around him. I was pleased at the view of sea and verdant shore far below, and pleased too at the prospect of some good sport; for everywhere, on our way up to the mountains, we had seen the tracks of many a wild pig, and here, on the summit of this spur, could rest awhile, before descending into a deep valley on the eastern side of the island, where we knew we would find the wild pigs feeding along the banks of a mountain stream which debouched into Roan Kiti harbour, four miles away.

"How is this place named, and how came it to be clear of the forest trees?" I asked one of my native friends, a handsome young man, about thirty years of age, whose naked, smooth, and red-brown skin, from neck to waist, showed by its tatooing that he was of chiefly lineage.

"Tokolme it is called," he replied. "It was once a place of great strength; a fortress was made here in the mountains, in the olden time—in the old days, long before white men came to Ponape. See, all around us, half-buried in the ground, are some of the blocks of stone which were carried up from the face of the mountain which overlooks Metalanien "—he pointed to several huge basaltic prisms lying near—"these stones were the lower course of the fort; the upper part was of wood, great forest trees, cut down and squared into lengths of two fathoms. And it is because of the cutting down of these trees, which were very old and took many hundred years to grow, that the place where we now sit, and all around us, is so clear. For the blood of many hundreds of men have sunk into it, and because it was the blood of innocent people, there be now nothing that will grow upon it."

The place was certainly quite bare of trees, though encompassed by the forest on all sides lower down. One reason for this may have been that in addition to the large basaltic prisms, the ground was thickly covered with a layer of smaller and broken stones to which time and the action of the weather had given a comparatively smooth surface.

"Tell me of it, Rai," I said.

"Presently, friend, after we have had the drink of kava and eaten some food. Ah, this green kava of ours is good to drink, not like the weak, dried root that the women of Samoa chew and mix with much water in a wooden bowl. What goodness can there be in that? Here, we take the root fresh from the soil when it is full of juice, beat it to a pulp and add but little water."

"It is good, Rai," I admitted, "but give me only a little. It is too strong for me and a full bowl would cause me to stagger and fall."

He laughed good-naturedly as he handed me a half coco-nut shell containing a little of the thick greenish-yellow liquid. And then, after all had drunk in turn, the baskets of cold baked food were opened and we ate; and then as we lit our pipes and smoked Rai told us the story of Tokolme.

"In those days, before the white men came here to this country, though they had been to islands not many days' sail from here by canoe, there were but two great chiefs of Ponape—now there are seven—one was Lirou, who ruled all this part of the land, and who dwelt at Roan Kiti with two thousand people, and the other was Roka, king of all the northern coast and ruler of many villages. Roka was a great voyager and had sailed as far to the east as Kusaie, which is two hundred leagues from here, and his people were proud of him and his great daring and of the slaves that he brought back with him from Kusaie.{*}

* Strongs Island.

"Here in Tokolme lived three hundred and two-score people, who owed allegiance neither to Lirou nor Roka, for their ancestors had come to Ponape from Yap, an island far to the westward. After many years of fighting on the coast they made peace with Lirou's father, who gave them all this piece of country as a free gift, and without tribute, and many of their young men and women intermarried with ours, for the language and customs of Yap are akin to those of Ponape.

"Soon after peace was made and Tolan, chief of the strangers, had built the village and made plantations, he died, and as he left no son, his daughter Lea became chieftainess, although she was but fourteen years of age.

"Lirou, who was a haughty, overbearing young man, sent presents, and asked her in marriage, and great was his anger when she refused, saying that she had no desire to leave her people now that her father was dead.

"'See,' he said to his father, 'see the insult put upon thee by these proud ones of Yap—these dog-eating strangers who drifted to our land as a log drifts upon the ocean. Thou hast given them fair lands with running water, and great forest trees, and this girl refuses to marry me. Am I as nothing that I should be so treated? Shall I, Lirou, be laughed at? Am I a boy or a grown man?'

"The old chief, who desired peace, sought in vain to soothe him. 'Wait for another year,' he said, 'and it may be that she will be of a different mind. And already thou hast two wives—why seek another?'

"'Because it is my will,' replied Lirou fiercely, and he went away, nursing his wrath.

"One day a party of Roka's young men and women went in several canoes to the group of small islands near the mainland called Pakin to catch turtle; whilst the men were away out on the reef at night with their turtle nets a number of Lirou's men came to the huts where the women were and watched them cooking food to give to their husbands on their return. Rain was falling heavily, and Lirou's men came into the houses, unasked, and sat down and then began to jest with the women somewhat rudely. This made them somewhat afraid, for they were all married, and to jest with the wife of another man is looked upon as an evil thing. But their husbands being a league away the women could do nothing and went on with their cooking in silence. Presently, Lirou's men who had brought with them some gourds of the grog called rarait, which is made from sugar-cane, began to drink it and pressed the women to do so also. When they refused to do so, the men became still more rude and bade the women serve them with some of the food they had prepared. This was a great insult, but being in fear, they obeyed. Then, as the grog made them bolder, some of the men laid hands on the women and there was a great outcry and struggle, and a young woman named Sipi-nah fell or was thrown against a great burning log, and her face so badly burned that she cried out in agony and ran outside, followed by all the other women. They ran along the beach in the pouring rain till they were abreast of the place where their husbands were fishing and called to them to return. When the fishermen saw what had befallen Sipi-nah they were filled with rage, for she was a blood-relation of Roka's, and hastening back to the houses they rushed in upon Lirou's people, slew three of them, put their heads in baskets and brought them to Roka.

"From this thing came a long war which was called 'the war of the face of Sipi-nah,' and a great battle was fought in canoes on the lagoon. Lirou's father with many hundreds of his people were slain, and the rest fled to Roan Kiti pursued by King Roka, who burnt the town. Then Lirou (who, now that his father was killed, was chief) sued for peace, and promised Roka a yearly tribute of three thousand plates of turtle shell, and five new canoes. So Roka, being satisfied, sailed away, and there was peace. Had he so desired it he could have utterly swept away all Lirou's people and burned their villages and destroyed every one of their plantations, but although he was a great fighting man he was not cruel. Yet he said to Sipi-nah, after peace was made: 'I pray thee, come near me no more; for although I have revenged myself upon those who have ill-used and insulted thee and me, my hand will again incline to the spear if I look upon thy scarred face again. And I want no more wars.'

"The son of Lirou (who now took his father's name) and his people began, with heavy hearts, to rebuild the town. After the council house was finished, Lirou told them to cease work and called together his head men and spoke.

"'Why should we labour to build more houses here?' he said. 'See, this is my mind. Only for one year shall I pay this heavy tribute to Roka Then shall I defy him.'

"The head men were silent.

"Lirou laughed. 'Have no fear. I am no boaster. But we cannot fight him here in Roan Kiti, which is open to the sea, and never can we make it a strong fort, for here we have no falat,{*} nor yet any great forest trees. But at Tokolme are many thousands of the great stones and mighty trees in plenty. Ah, my father was a foolish man to give such a place to people who fought against us. Are we fools, to build here another weak town, and let Roka bear the more heavily upon us? Answer me!'

* "Falat" is the natives' name for the huge prisms of basalt with which the mysterious and Cyclopean walls, canals, vaults, and forts are constructed on the island of Ponape.

"'What wouldst thou have, O chief,' asked one of the head men.

"'I would have Tokolme. It is mine inheritance. There can we make a strong fort, and from there shall we have entrance to the sea by the river. Are we to let these dogs from Yap deny us?'

"'Let us ask them to give us, as an act of friendship, all the trees, and all the felat we desire,' said one of the head men.

"Lirou laughed scornfully. 'And we to toil for years in carrying the trees and stones from Tokolme, a league away. Bah! Let us fall upon them as they sleep—and spare no one.'

"'Nay, nay,' said a sub-chief, named Kol, who had taken one of the Yap girls to wife, 'that is an evil thought, and foul treachery. We be at peace with them. I, for one, will have no part in such wickedness.' And others said the same, but some were with Lirou.

"Then, after many angry words had been spoken—some for fair dealing, and some for murder—Lirou said to the chief Kol and two others: 'Go to the girl Lea and her head men with presents, and say this: We of Roan Kiti are like to be hard pressed by Roka when the time comes for the payment of our tribute. If we yield it not, then are we all dead men. So give back to us Tokolme, and take from us Roan Kiti, where ye may for ever dwell in peace, for Roka hath no ill-will against ye.'

"So Kol and two other chiefs, with many slaves bearing presents, went to Tokolme. But before they set out, Kol sent secretly a messenger to Lea, with these words: 'Though I shall presently come to thee with fair words from Lirou, I bid thee and all thy people take heed, and beware of what thou doest; and keep good watch by night, for Lirou hath an evil mind.'

"This message was given to Lea, and her head men rewarded the messenger, and then held council together, and told Lea what answer she should give.

"This was the answer that she gave to Kol, speaking smilingly, and yet with dignity:—

"'Say to the chief Lirou that I thank him for the rich presents he hath sent me, and that I would that I could yield to his wish, and give unto him this tract of country that his father gave to mine—so that he might build a strong place of refuge against the King Roka But it cannot be, for we, too, fear Roka. And we are but a few, and some day it might happen that he would fall upon us, and sweep us away as a dead leaf is swept from the branch of a young tree by the strong breath of the storm.'

"So Kol returned to Lirou, and gave him the answer of Lea, and then Lirou and those of his head men who meant ill to Lea and her people, met together in secret, and plotted their destruction.

"And again Kol, who loved the Yap girl he had married, sent a message to Lea, warning her to beware of treachery. And then it was that the Yap people began to build a strong fort, and at night kept a good watch.

"Then Lirou again sent messengers asking that Lea would let him cut down a score of great trees, and Lea sent answer to him: 'Thou art welcome. Cut down one score—or ten score. I give them freely.' This did she for the sake of peace and good-will, though she and her people knew that Lirou meant harm. But whilst a hundred of Lirou's men were cutting the trees the Yap people worked at their fort from dawn till dark, and Lirou's heart was black with rage, for these men of Yap were cunning fort builders, and he saw that, when it was finished, it could never be taken by assault. But he and his chiefs continued to speak fair words, and send presents to Lea and her people, and she sent back presents in return. Then again Lirou besought her to become his wife, saying that such an alliance would strengthen the friendship between his people and hers; but Lea again refused him, though with pleasant words, and Lirou said with a smooth face: 'Forgive me. I shall pester thee no more, for I see that thou dost not care for me.'

"When two months had passed two score of great trees had been felled and cut into lengths of five fathoms each, and then squared. These were to be the main timbers of the outer wall of Lirou's fort—so he said. But he did not mean to have them carried away, for now he and his chiefs had completed their plans to destroy the people of Yap, and this cutting of the trees was but a subterfuge, designed to throw Lea and her advisers off their guard.

"One day Lirou and his chiefs, dressed in very gay attire, came into Tokolme, each carrying in his hand a tame ring-dove which is a token of peace and amity, and desired speech of Lea. She came forth, and ordered fine mats, trimmed with scarlet parrots' feathers, to be spread for them upon the ground and received them as honoured guests.

"'We come,' said Lirou, lifting her hand to his forehead, 'to beg thee and all thy people to come to a great feast that will be ready to-morrow, to celebrate the carrying away of the wood thou hast so generously given unto me.'

"'It is well,' said Lea; 'I thank thee. We shall come.'

"Little did Lea and her people know that during the night, as it rained heavily, some of Lirou's warriors had hidden clubs and spears and axes of stone near where the logs lay and where the feast was to be given. They were hidden under a great heap of chips and shavings that came from the fallen trees.

"At dawn on the day of the feast, three hundred of Lirou's men, all dressed very gaily, marched past Tokolme, carrying no arms, but bearing baskets of food. They were going, they said, with presents to King Roka to tell him that Lirou would hold faithfully to his promise of tribute.

"'But why,' asked the men of Yap, 'do ye go to-day—which is the day of the feast?'

"'Because the heart of Lirou is glad, and he desires peace with all men—even Roka. And whilst he and those of our people who remain feast with ye men of Yap, and make merriment, we, the tribute messengers, go unto Roka with words of goodwill.'

"Now these words were lies, for when the three hundred men had marched a quarter of a league past Tokolme, they halted at a place in the forest where they had arms concealed. Then they waited for a certain signal from Lirou, who had said:—

"'When thou hearest the sound of a conch shell at the beginning of the feast, march quickly back and form a circle around us and the people of Yap, but let not one of ye be seen. Then when there comes a second blast rush in, and see that no one escapes. Spare no one but the girl Lea.'

"When the sun was a little high Lirou and all his people—men, women and children—came and made ready the feast On each of the squared logs was spread out baked hogs, fowls, pigeons, turtle and fish, and all manner of fruits in abundance, and then also there were placed in the centre of the clearing twenty stone mortars for making kava.

"When all was ready, Lea and her people were bidden to come, and they all came out of the fort, dressed very gaily and singing as is customary for guests to do. And Lirou stepped out from among his people and took Lea by the hand and seated her on a fine mat in the place of honour, and as she sat with Lirou beside her, a man blew a loud, long blast upon a conch shell and the feast began."

Rai's story had interested me keenly, but I was now guilty of a breach of native etiquette—I had to interrupt him to ask how it was that the man Kol and others who were friendly to the Yap people did not give them a final warning of the intended massacre.

"Ah, I forgot to tell thee that Lirou was as cunning as he was cruel, and ten days before the giving of the feast he had sent away Kol and some others whom he knew to be well disposed to the people of Yap. He sent them to the islands of Pakin—ten leagues from Ponape, and desired them to catch turtle for him. But with them he sent a trusty man, whom he took into his confidence, and said, 'Tell Rairik, Chief of Pakin, to make some pretext, and prevent Kol from returning to Ponape for a full moon. And say also that if he yields not to my wish I shall destroy him and his people.'"

"Ah," I said, "Lirou was a Napoleon."

"Who was he?"

"Oh, a great Franki chief, who was as lying and as treacherous and cruel and merciless as Lirou. Some day I will tell thee of him. Now, about the feast."

"Ah, the feast After a little while, Lirou, whilst the people ate, said softly to Lea, 'Wilt thou not honour me and be my wife? I promise thee that I shall send away my other wives, and thou alone shalt rule my house and me.'

"Lea was displeased, and her eyes flashed with anger as she drew away from him, and then Lirou seized her by her wrist, and threw up his left hand.

"A long, loud blast sounded from the conch, and then Lirou's men, who were feasting, sprang to the great heap of chips, and seized their weapons. And then began a cruel slaughter—for what could three hundred unarmed people do against so many! But yet some of the men of Yap fought most bravely, and tearing clubs or short stabbing spears from their treacherous enemies, they killed over two score of Lirou's people.

"As Lea beheld the murdering of her kith and kin, she cried piteously to Lirou to at least spare the women and children, but he laughed and bade her be silent Some of the women and children tried to escape to the fort, but they were met by the men who had been in ambush, and slain ruthlessly.

"When all was over, the bodies were taken to a high cliff, and cast down into the valley below. Then Lirou and his men entered the fort, and made great rejoicing over their victory.

"Lea sat on a mat with her face in her hands, dumb with grief, and Lirou bade her go to her sleeping-place, telling her to rest, and that he would have speech with her later on when he was in the mood. She obeyed, and when she was unobserved she picked up a short, broad-bladed dagger of talit (obsidian) and hid it in her girdle, and then lay down and pretended to sleep. But through the cane lattice-work of her sleeping-place she watched Lirou.

"After Lirou had viewed the fort outside and inside, he sent a man to Lea, bidding her come to him.

"She rose and came slowly to him, with her head bent, and stood before him. Then suddenly she sprang at him, and thrust the dagger into his heart. He fell and died quickly.

"Then Lea leapt over a part of the stone wall where it was low, and ran towards the river, pursued by some of Lirou's mea But she was fleet of foot, crossed the river, and escaped into the jungle and rested awhile. Then she passed out of the jungle into the rough mountain country, and that night she reached King Roka's town.

"Roka made her very welcome, and was filled with anger when she told her story.

"'I will quickly punish these cruel murderers,' he said; 'as for thee, Lea, make this thy home and dwell with us.'

"Roka gathered together his fighting men. Half he sent to Roan Kiti by water, and half he himself led across the mountains. They fell upon Lirou's people at night, and slew nearly half of the men, and drove all the rest into the mountains, where they remained for many months, broken and hunted men.

"That is the story of Tokolme."



CHAPTER XVI ~ "LANO-TO"

A white rain squall came crashing through the mountain forest, and then went humming northward across the quiet lake, down over the wooded littoral and far out to sea Silence once more, and then a mountain cock, who had scorned the sweeping rain, uttered his shrill, cackling, and defiant crow, as he shook the water from his black and golden back and long snaky neck, and savage, fierce-eyed head.

Between two wide-flanking buttresses of a mighty tamana tree I had taken shelter, and was comfortably seated on the thick carpet of soft dry leaves, when I heard my name called, and looking up, I saw, a few yards away, the grave face of an elderly Samoan, named Marisi (Maurice). We were old acquaintances.

"Talofa, Marisi. What doest thou up here at Lano-to?" I said, as I shook hands and offered him my pipe for a draw.

"I and my nephew Mana-ese and his wife have come here to trap pigeons. For three days we have been here. Our little hut is close by. Wilt come and rest, and eat?"

"Aye, indeed, for I am tired. And this Lake of Lano-to is a fine place whereat to rest."

Marisi nodded. "That is true. Nowhere in all Samoa, except from the top of the dead fire mountain in Savai'i, can one see so far and so much that is good to look upon. Come, friend."

I had shot some pigeons, which Marisi took from me, and began to pluck as he led the way along a narrow path that wound round the edge of the crater, which held the lake in its rugged but verdure-clad bosom. In a few minutes we came to an open-sided hut, with a thatched roof. It stood on the verge of a little tree-clad bluff, overlooking the lake, two hundred feet below. Seated upon some of the coarse mats of coco-nut leaf called tapa'au was a fine, stalwart young Samoan engaged in feeding some wild pigeons in a large wicker-work cage. He greeted me in the usual hospitable native manner, and taking some fine mats from one of the house beams, his uncle and I seated ourselves, whilst he went to seek his wife, to bid her make ready an umu (earth oven). Whilst he was away, my host and I plucked the pigeons, and also a fat wild duck which Marisi had shot in the lake that morning. In half an hour the young couple returned, the woman carrying a basket of taro, and the man a bunch of cooking bananas. Very quickly the oven of hot stones was ready, and the game, taro and bananas covered up with leaves.

I had crossed to Lano-to from the village of Safata on the south side of Upolu and was on my way to Apia The previous night I had slept in the bush on the summit of the range. Marisi gravely told me that I had been foolish—the mountain forest was full of ghosts, etc.

Marisi himself lived in Apia, and he gave me two weeks' local gossip. He and his nephew and niece had come to remain at the lake for a few days, for they had a commission to catch and tame ten pigeons for some district chief, whose daughter was about to be married.

We had a delightful meal, followed by a bowl of kava (mixed with water from the lake), and as I was not pressed for time I accepted my host's invitation to remain for the night, and part of the following day.

This was my fourth or fifth visit to this beautiful mountain lake of Lano-to (i.e., the Deep Lake), and the oftener I came the more its beauty grew upon me. Alas! its sweet solitude is now disturbed by the cheap Cockney and Yankee tourist globe-trotter who come there in the American excursion steamers. In the olden days only natives frequented the spot—very rarely was a white man seen. To reach it from Apia takes about five hours on foot, but there is now a regular road on which one can travel two-thirds of the way on horseback.

The surface of the water, which is a little over two hundred feet from the rugged rim of the crater, is according to Captain Zemsch, two thousand three hundred feet above the sea, the distance across the crater is nearly one thousand two hundred yards. The water is always cold, but not too cold to bathe in, and during the rainy season—November to March—is frequented by hundreds of wild duck. All the forest about teems with pigeons, which love the vicinity of Lano-to, on account of the numbers of masa'oi trees there, on the rich fruit of which they feed, and all day long, from dawn to dark, their deep croo! may be heard mingling with the plaintive cry of the ringdove.

The view from the crater is of matchless beauty—I know of nothing to equal it, except it be Pago Pago harbour in Tutuila, looking southwards from the mountain tops. Here at Lano-to you can see the coast line east and west for twenty miles. Westwards looms the purple dome of Savai'i, thirty miles away. Directly beneath you is Apia, though you can see nothing of it except perhaps some small black spots floating on the smooth water inside the reef. They are ships at anchor. Six leagues to the westward the white line of reef trends away from the shore, makes a sharp turn, and then runs southward. Within this bend the water is a brilliant green, and resting upon it are two small islands. One is Manono, a veritable garden, lined with strips of shining beaches and fringed with cocos. It is the home of the noble families of Samoa, and most of the past great chiefs are buried there. Beyond is the small but lofty crater island of Apolima—a place ever impregnable to assault by natives. Its red, southern face starts steep-to from the sea, the top is crowned with palms, and on the northern side what was once the crater is now a romantic bay, with an opening through the reef, and a tiny, happy little village nestling under the swaying palms. 'Tis one of the sweetest spots in all the wide Pacific. And, thank Heaven, it has but seldom been defiled by the globe-trotter. The passage is difficult even for a canoe. One English lady, however (the Countess of Jersey), I believe once visited it.

Under the myriad stars, set in a sky of deepest blue, Marisi and I lie outside the huts upon our sleeping mats, and talk of the old Samoan days, till it is far into the quiet, voiceless night.

At dawn we are called inside by the woman, who chides us for sleeping in the dew.

"Listen," says Marisi, raising his hand.

It is the faint, musical gabble of the wild ducks, as they swim across the lake.

"What now?" asks the woman, as her husband looks to his gun. "Hast no patience to sit and smoke till I make an oven and get thee food? The pato (ducks) can wait And first feed the pigeons—thou lazy fellow."



CHAPTER XVII ~ "OMBRE CHEVALIER"

Once, after many years' wanderings in the North and South Pacific as shore trader, supercargo and "recruiter" in the Kanaka labour trade, I became home-sick and returned to my native Australia, with a vague idea of settling down. I began the "settling down" by going to some newly opened gold-fields in North Queensland, wandering about from the Charters Towers "rush" to the Palmer River and Hodgkinson River rushes. The party of diggers I joined were good sterling fellows, and although we did not load ourselves with nuggets and gold dust, we did fairly well at times, especially in the far north of the colony where most of the alluvial gold-fields were rich, and new-comers especially had no trouble in getting on to a good show. I was the youngest of the party, and consequently the most inexperienced, but my mates good-naturedly overlooked my shortcomings as a prospector and digger, especially as I had constituted myself the "tucker" provider when our usual rations of salt beef ran out. I had brought with me a Winchester rifle, a shot gun and plenty of ammunition for both, and plenty of fishing tackle. So, at such times, instead of working at the claim, I would take my rifle or gun or fishing lines and sally forth at early dawn, and would generally succeed in bringing back something to the camp to serve instead of beef. In the summer months game, such as it was, was fairly plentiful, and nearly all the rivers of North Queensland abound in fish.

In the open country we sometimes shot more plain turkeys than we could eat. When on horseback one could approach within a few yards of a bird before it would take to flight, but on foot it was difficult to get within range of one, unless a rifle was used. In the rainy season all the water holes and lagoons literally teemed with black duck, wood-duck, the black and white Burdekin duck, teal, spur-winged plover, herons and other birds, and a single shot would account for a dozen. My mates, however, like all diggers, believed in and wanted beef—mutton we scarcely ever tasted, except when near a township where there was a butcher, for sheep do not thrive in that part of the colony and are generally brought over in mobs from the Peak Downs District or Southern Queensland.

Our party at first numbered four, but at Townsville (Cleveland Bay) one of our number left us to return to New Zealand on account of the death of his father. And we were a very happy party, and although at times I wearied of the bush and longed for a sight of the sea again, the gold-fever had taken possession of me entirely and I was content.

Once a party of three of us were prospecting in the vicinity of Scarr's (or Carr's) Creek, a tributary of the Upper Burdekin River. It was in June, and the nights were very cold, and so we were pleased to come across a well-sheltered little pocket, a few hundred yards from the creek, which at this part of its course ran very swiftly between high, broken walls of granite. Timber was abundant, and as we intended to thoroughly prospect the creek up to its head, we decided to camp at the pocket for two or three weeks, and put up a bark hut, instead of shivering at night under a tent without a fire. The first day we spent in stripping bark, piled it up, and then weighted it down heavily with logs. During the next few days, whilst my mates were building the hut, I had to scour the country in search of game, for our supply of meat had run out, and although there were plenty of cattle running in the vicinity, we did not care to shoot a beast, although we were pretty sure that C———, the owner of the nearest cattle station, would cheerfully have given us permission to do so had we been able to have communicated with him. But as his station was forty miles away, and all our horses were in poor condition from overwork, we had to content ourselves with a chance kangaroo, rock wallaby, and such birds as we could shoot, which latter were few and far between. The country was very rough, and although the granite ranges and boulder-covered spurs held plenty of fat rock wallabies, it was heart-breaking work to get within shot. Still, we managed to turn in at nights feeling satisfied with our supper, for we always managed to shoot something, and fortunately had plenty of flour, tea, sugar, and tobacco, and were very hopeful that we should get on to "something good" by careful prospecting.

On the day that we arrived at the pocket, I went down the steep bank of the creek to get water, and was highly pleased to see that it contained fish. At the foot of a waterfall there was a deep pool, and in it I saw numbers of fish, very like grayling, in fact some Queenslanders call them grayling. Hurrying back to the camp with the water, I got out my fishing tackle (last used in the Burdekin River for bream), and then arose the question of bait. Taking my gun I was starting off to look for a bird of some sort, when one of my mates told me that a bit of wallaby was as good as anything, and cut me off a piece from the ham of one I had shot the previous day. The flesh was of a very dark red hue, and looked right enough, and as I had often caught fish in both the Upper and Lower Burdekin with raw beef, I was very hopeful of getting a nice change of diet for our supper.

I was not disappointed, for the fish literally jumped at the bait, and I had a delightful half-hour, catching enough in that time to provide us with breakfast as well as supper. None of my catch were over half a pound, many not half that weight, but hungry men are not particular about the size of fish. My mates were pleased enough, and whilst we were enjoying our supper before a blazing fire—for night was coming on—we heard a loud coo-e-e from down the creek, and presently C———, the owner of the cattle station, and two of his stockmen with a black boy, rode up and joined us. They had come to muster cattle in the ranges at the head of the creek, and had come to our "pocket" to camp for the night. C——— told us that we need never have hesitated about killing a beast. "It is to my interest to give prospecting parties all the beef they want," he said; "a payable gold-field about here would suit me very well—the more diggers that come, the more cattle I can sell, instead of sending them to Charters Towers and Townsville. So, when you run short of meat, knock over a beast. I won't grumble. I'll round up the first mob we come across to-morrow, and get you one and bring it here for you to kill, as your horses are knocked up."

The night turned out very cold, and although we were in a sheltered place, the wind was blowing half a gale, and so keen that we felt it through our blankets. However it soon died away, and we were just going comfortably to sleep, when a dingo began to howl near us, and was quickly answered by another somewhere down the creek. Although there were but two of them, they howled enough for a whole pack, and the detestable creatures kept us awake for the greater part of the night. As there was a cattle camp quite near, in a sandalwood scrub, and the cattle were very wild, we did not like to alarm them by firing a shot or two, which would have scared them as well as the dingoes. The latter, C——— told us, were a great nuisance in this part of the run, would not take a poisoned bait, and had an unpleasant trick of biting off the tails of very young calves, especially if the mother was separated with her calf from a mob of cattle.

At daylight I rose to boil a billy of tea. My feet were icy cold, and I saw that there had been a black frost in the night I also discovered that my string of fish for breakfast was gone. I had hung them up to a low branch not thirty yards from where I had slept. C———'s black boy told me with a grin that the dogs had taken them, and showed me the tracks of three or four through the frosty grass. He had slept like a pig all night, and all the dingoes in Australia would not awaken a black fellow with a full stomach of beef, damper and tea. C——— laughed at my chagrin, and told me that native dogs, when game is scarce, will catch fish if they are hungry, and can get nothing else. He had once seen, he told me, two native dogs acting in a very curious manner in a waterhole on the Etheridge River. There had been a rather long drought, and for miles the bed of the river was dry, except for intermittent waterholes. These were all full of fish, many of which had died, owing to the water in the shallower pools becoming too hot for them to exist Dismounting, he laid himself down on the bank, and soon saw that the dogs were catching fish, which they chased to the edge of the pool, seized them and carried them up on the sand to devour. They made a full meal; then the pair trotted across the river bed, and lay down under a Leichhardt tree to sleep it off. The Etheridge and Gilbert Rivers aboriginals also assured C——— that their own dogs—bred from dingoes—were very keen on catching fish, and sometimes were badly wounded in their mouths by the serrated spur or back fin of catfish. C——— and his party went off after breakfast, and returned in the afternoon with a small mob of cattle, and my mates, picking out an eighteen months' old heifer, shot her, and set to work, and we soon had the animal skinned, cleaned and hung up, ready for cutting up and salting early on the following morning. We carefully burnt the offal, hide and head, on account of the dingoes, and finished up a good day's work by a necessary bathe in the clear, but too cold water of the creek. We turned in early, tired out, and scarcely had we rolled ourselves in our blankets when a dismal howl made us "say things," and in half an hour all the dingoes in North Queensland seemed to have gathered around the camp to distract us. The noise they made was something diabolical, coming from both sides of the creek, and from the ranges. In reality there were not more than five or six at the outside, but any one would imagine that there were droves of them. Not liking to discharge our guns on account of C———'s mustering, we could only curse our tormentors throughout the night. On the following evening, however, knowing that C——— had finished mustering in our vicinity, we hung a leg bone of the heifer from the branch of a tree on the opposite side of the creek, where we could see it plainly by daylight from our bank—about sixty yards distant Again we had a harrowing night, but stood it without firing a shot, though one brute came within a few yards of our camp fire, attracted by the smell of the salted meat, but he was off before any one of us could cover him. However, in the morning we were rewarded.

Creeping to the bank of the creek at daylight we looked across, and saw three dogs sitting under the leg bone, which was purposely slung out of reach. We fired together, and the biggest of the three dropped—the other two vanished like a streak of lightning. The one we killed was a male and had a good coat—a rather unusual thing for a dingo, as the skin is often covered with sores. From that time, till we broke up camp, we were not often troubled by their howling near us—a gun shot would quickly silence their dismally infernal howls.

During July we got a little gold fifteen miles from the head of the creek, but not enough to pay us for our time and labour. However, it was a fine healthy occupation, and our little bark hut in the lonely ranges was a very comfortable home, especially during wet weather, and on cold nights. A good many birds came about towards the end of the month, and we twice rode to the Burdekin and had a couple of days with the bream, filling our pack bags with fish, which cured well with salt in the dry air. Although Scarr's creek was full of "grayling" they were too small for salting; but were delicious eating when fried. During our stay we got enough opossum skins to make a fine eight-feet square rug. Then early one morning we said good-bye to the pocket, and mounting our horses set our faces towards Cleveland Bay, where, with many regrets, I had to part with my mates who were going to try the Gulf country with other parties of diggers. They tried hard to induce me to go with them, but letters had come to me from old comrades in Samoa and the Caroline Islands, tempting me to return. And, of course, they did not tempt in vain; for to us old hands who have toiled by reef and palm the isles of the southern seas are for ever calling as the East called to Kipling's soldier man. But another six months passed before I left North Queensland and once more found myself sailing out of Sydney Heads on board one of my old ships and in my old berth as supercargo, though, alas! with a strange skipper who knew not Joseph, and with whom I and every one else on board was in constant friction. However, that is another story.

After bidding my mates farewell I returned to the Charters Towers district and picked up a new mate—an old and experienced digger who had found some patches of alluvial gold on the head waters of a tributary of the Burdekin River and was returning there. My new mate was named Gilfillan. He was a hardworking, blue-eyed Scotsman and had had many and strange experiences in all parts of the world—had been one of the civilian fighters in the Indian Mutiny, fur-seal hunting on the Pribiloff Islands in an American schooner, and shooting buffaloes for their hides in the Northern Territory of South Australia, where he had twice been speared by the blacks.

On reaching the head waters of the creek on which Gilfillan had washed out nearly a hundred ounces of gold some months previously, we found to our disgust over fifty diggers in possession of the ground, which they had practically worked out—some one had discovered Gilfillan's old workings and the place was at once "rushed". My mate took matters very philosophically—did not even swear—and we decided to make for the Don River in the Port Denison district, where, it was rumoured, some rich patches of alluvial gold had just been discovered.

We both had good horses and a pack horse, and as C———'s station lay on our route and I had a standing invitation to pay him a visit (given to me when he had met our party at Scares Creek), I suggested that we should go there and spell for a few days. So there we went and C——— made us heartily welcome; and he also told us that the new rush on the Don River had turned out a "rank duffer," and that we would only be wearing ourselves and our horse-flesh out by going there. He pressed us to stay for a week at least, and as we now had no fixed plans for the future we were glad to do so. He was expecting a party of visitors from Charters Towers, and as he wanted to give them something additional to the usual fare of beef and mutton, in the way of fish and game, he asked us to join him for a day's fishing in the Burdekin River.

The station was right on the bank of the river, but at a spot where neither game nor fish were at all plentiful; so long before sunrise on the following morning, under a bright moon and clear sky, we started, accompanied by a black boy, leading a pack horse, for the junction of the Kirk River with the Burdekin, where there was excellent fishing, and where also we were sure of getting teal and wood-duck.

A two hours' easy ride along the grassy, open timbered high banks of the great river brought us to the junction. The Kirk, when running along its course, is a wide, sandy-bottomed stream, with here and there deep rocky pools, and its whole course is fringed with the everlasting and ever-green sheoaks. We unsaddled in a delightfully picturesque spot, near the meeting of the waters, and in a few minutes, whilst the billy was boiling for tea, C———and I were looking to our short bamboo rods and lines, and our guns. Then, after hobbling out the horses, and eating a breakfast of cold beef and damper, we started to walk through the high, dew-soaked grass to a deep, boulder-margined pool in which the waters of both rivers mingled.

The black boy who was leading when we emerged on the water side of the fringe of sheoaks, suddenly halted and silently pointed ahead—a magnificent specimen of the "gigantic" crane was stalking sedately through a shallow pool—his brilliant black and orange plumage and scarlet legs glistening in the rays of the early sun as he scanned the sandy bottom for fish. We had no desire to shoot such a noble creature; and let him take flight in his slow, laboured manner. And, for our reward, the next moment "Peter," the black boy, brought down two out of three black duck, which came flying right for his gun from across the river.

Both rivers had long been low, and although the streams were running in the centre of the beds of each, there were countless isolated pools covered with blue-flowered water-lilies, in which teal and other water-birds were feeding. But for the time we gave them no heed.

From one of the pools we took our bait—small fish the size of white-bait, with big, staring eyes, and bodies of a transparent pink with silvery scales. They were easily caught by running one's hand through the weedy edges, and in ten minutes we had secured a quart-pot full.

"Peter," who regarded our rods with contempt, was the first to reach the boulders at the edge of the big pool, which in the centre had a fair current; at the sides, the water, although deep, was quiet. Squatting down on a rock, he cast in his baited hand-line, and in ten seconds he was nonchalantly pulling in a fine two pound bream. He leisurely unhooked it, dropped it into a small hole in the rocks, and then began to cut up a pipeful of tobacco, before rebaiting!

The water was literally alive with fish, feeding on the bottom. There were two kinds of bream—one a rather slow-moving fish, with large, dark brown scales, a perch-like mouth, and wide tail, and with the sides and belly a dull white; the other a very active game fellow, of a more graceful shape, with a small mouth, and very hard, bony gill plates. These latter fought splendidly, and their mouths being so strong they would often break the hooks and get away—as our rods were very primitive, without reels, and only had about twenty feet of line. Then there were the very handsome and beautifully marked fish, like an English grayling (some of which I had caught at Scan's Creek); they took the hook freely. The largest I have ever seen would not weigh more than three-quarters of a pound, but their lack of size is compensated for by their extra delicate flavour. (In some of the North Queensland inland rivers I have seen the aborigines net these fish in hundreds in shallow pools.) Some bushmen persisted, so Gilfillan told me, in calling these fish "fresh water mullet," or "speckled mullet".

The first species of bream inhabit both clear and muddy water; but the second I have never seen caught anywhere but in clear or running water, when the river was low.

But undoubtedly the best eating fresh-water fish in the Burdekin and other Australian rivers is the cat-fish, or as some people call it, the Jew-fish. It is scaleless, and almost finless, with a dangerously barbed dorsal spine, which, if it inflicts a wound on the hand, causes days of intense suffering. Its flesh is delicate and firm, and with the exception of the vertebrae, has no long bones. Rarely caught (except when small) in clear water, it abounds when the water is muddy, and disturbed through floods, and when a river becomes a "banker," cat-fish can always be caught where the water has reached its highest. They then come to feed literally upon the land—that is grass land, then under flood water. A fish bait they will not take—as a rule—but are fond of earthworms, frogs, crickets, or locusts, etc.

Another very beautiful but almost useless fish met with in the Upper Burdekin and its tributaries is the silvery bream, or as it is more generally called, the "bony" bream. They swim about in companies of some hundreds, and frequent the still water of deep pools, will not take a bait, and are only seen when the water is clear. Then it is a delightful sight for any one to lie upon the bank of some ti-tree-fringed creek or pool, when the sun illumines the water and reveals the bottom, and watch a school of these fish swimming closely and very slowly together, passing over submerged logs, roots of trees or rocks, their scales of pure silver gleaming in the sunlight as they make a simultaneous side movement. I tried every possible bait for these fish, but never succeeded in getting a bite, but have netted them frequently. Their flesh, though delicate, can hardly be eaten, owing to the thousands of tiny bones which run through it, interlacing in the most extraordinary manner. The blacks, however "make no bones" about devouring them.

By 11 A.M. we had caught all the fish our pack-bags could hold—bream, alleged grayling, and half a dozen "gars"—the latter a beautifully shaped fish like the sea-water garfish, but with a much flatter-sided body of shining silver with a green back, the tail and fins tipped with yellow.

We shot but few duck, but on our way home in the afternoon "Peter" and Gilfillan each got a fine plain turkey—shooting from the saddle—and almost as we reached the station slip-rails "Peter," who had a wonderful eye, got a third just as it rose out of the long dry grass in the paddock.

And on the following day, when C———'s guests arrived (and after we had congratulated ourselves upon having plenty for them to eat), they produced from their buggies eleven turkeys, seven wood-duck, and a string of "squatter" pigeons!

"Thought we'd better bring you some fresh tucker, old man," said one of them to C——-. "And we have brought you a case of Tennant's ale." "The world is very beautiful," said C———, stroking his grey beard, and speaking in solemn tones, "and this is a thirsty day. Come in, boys. We'll put the Tennant's in the water-barrels to cool."

*****

The first occasion on which I ever saw and caught one of the beautiful fish herein described as grayling was on a day many months previous to our former party camping on Scarr's Creek. We had camped on a creek running into the Herbert River, near the foot of a range of wild, jagged and distorted peaks and crags of granite. Then there were several other parties of prospectors camped near us, and, it being a Sunday, we were amusing ourselves in various ways. Some had gone shooting, others were washing clothes or bathing in the creek, and one of my mates (a Scotsman named Alick Longmuir) came fishing with me. Like Gilfillan, he was a quiet, somewhat taciturn man. He had been twenty-two years in Australia, sometimes mining, at others following his profession of surveyor. He had received his education in France and Germany, and not only spoke the languages of those countries fluently, but was well-read in their literature. Consequently we all stood in a certain awe of him as a man of parts; for besides being a scholar he was a splendid bushman and rider and had a great reputation as the best wrestler in Queensland. Even-tempered, good-natured and possessed of a fund of caustic humour, he was a great favourite with the diggers, and when he sometimes "broke loose" and went on a terrific "spree" (his only fault) he made matters remarkably lively, poured out his hard-earned money like water for a week or so—then stopped suddenly, pulled himself together in an extraordinary manner, and went about his work again as usual, with a face as solemn as that of an owl.

A little distance from the camp we made our way down through rugged, creeper-covered boulders to the creek, to a fairly open stretch of water which ran over its rocky bed into a series of small but deep pools. We baited our lines with small grey grasshoppers, and cast together.

"I wonder what we shall get here, Alick," I began, and then came a tug and then the sweet, delightful thrill of a game fish making a run. There is nothing like it in all the world—the joy of it transcends the first kiss of young lovers.

I landed my fish—a gleaming shaft of mottled grey and silver with specks of iridescent blue on its head, back and sides, and as I grasped its quivering form and held it up to view my heart beat fast with delight.

"Ombre chevalier!" I murmured to myself.

Vanished the monotony of the Bush and the long, weary rides over the sun-baked plains and the sound of the pick and shovel on the gravel in the deep gullies amid the stark, desolate ranges, and I am standing in the doorway of a peaceful Mission House on a fair island in the far South Seas—standing with a string of fish in my hand, and before me dear old Pere Grandseigne with his flowing beard of snowy white and his kindly blue eyes smiling into mine as he extends his brown sun-burnt hand.

"Ah, my dear young friend! and so thou hast brought me these fish—ombres chevaliers, we call them in France. Are they not beautiful! What do you call them in England?"

"I have never been in England, Father; so I cannot tell you. And never before have I seen fish like these. They are new to me."

"Ah, indeed, my son," and the old Marist smiles as he motions me to a seat, "new to you. So?... Here, on this island, my sainted colleague Channel, who gave up his life for Christ forty years ago under the clubs of the savages, fished, as thou hast fished in that same mountain stream; and his blood has sanctified its waters. For upon its bank, as he cast his line one eve he was slain by the poor savages to whom he had come bearing the love of Christ and salvation. After we have supped to-night, I shall tell thee the story."

And after the Angelus bells had called, and as the cocos swayed and rustled to the night breeze and the surf beat upon the reef in Singavi Bay, we sat together on the verandah of the quiet Mission House on the hill above, which the martyred Channel had named "Calvary," and I listened to the old man's story of his beloved comrade's death.

As Longmuir and I lay on our blankets under the starlit sky of the far north of Queensland that night, and the horse-bells tinkled and our mates slept, we talked.

"Aye, lad," he said, sleepily, "the auld padre gave them the Breton name—ombre chevalier. In Scotland and England—if ever ye hae the good luck to go there—ye will hear talk of graylin'. Aye, the bonny graylin'... an' the purple heather... an' the cry o' the whaups.... Lad, ye hae much to see an' hear yet, for all the cruising ye hae done.... Aye, the graylin', an' the white mantle o' the mountain mist... an' the voices o' the night... Lad, it's just gran'."

Sleep, and then again the tinkle of the horse-bells at dawn.



CHAPTER XVIII ~ A RECLUSE OF THE BUSH

The bank of the tidal river was very, very quiet as I walked down to it through the tall spear grass and sat down upon the smooth, weather-worn bole of a great blackbutt tree, cast up by the river when in flood long years agone. Before me the water swirled and eddied and bubbled past on its way to mingle with the ocean waves, as they were sweeping in across the wide and shallow bar, two miles away.

The sun had dropped behind the rugged line of purple mountains to the west, and, as I watched by its after glow five black swans floating towards me upon the swiftly-flowing water, a footstep sounded near me, and a man with a gun and a bundle on his shoulder bade me "good-evening," and then asked me if I had come from Port ——— (a little township five miles away).

Yes, I replied, I had.

"Is the steamer in from Sydney?"

"No. I heard that she is not expected in for a couple of days yet. There has been bad weather on the coast."

The man uttered an exclamation of annoyance, and laying down his gun, sat beside me, pulled out and lit his pipe, and gazed meditatively across the darkening river. He was a tall, bearded fellow, and dressed in the usual style affected by the timber-getters and other bushmen of the district Presently he began to talk.

"Are you going back to Port ——— to-night, mister?" he asked, civilly.

"No," and I pointed to my gun, bag, and billy can, "I have just come from there. I am waiting here till the tide is low enough for me to cross to the other side. I am going to the Warra Swamp for a couple of days' shooting and fishing, and to-night I'll camp over there in the wild apple scrub," pointing to a dark line of timber on the opposite side.

"Do you mind my coming with you?"

"Certainly not—glad of your company. Where are you going?"

"Well, I was going to Port ———, to sell these platypus skins to the skipper of the steamer; but I don't want to loaf about the town for a couple o' days for the sake of getting two pounds five shillings for fifteen skins. So I'll get back to my humphy. It's four miles the other side o' Warra."

"Then by all means come and camp with me tonight," I said "I've plenty of tea and sugar and tucker, and after we get to the apple scrub over there we'll have supper. Then in the morning we'll make an early start It is only ten miles from there to Warra Swamp, and I'm in no hurry to get there."

The stranger nodded, and then, seeking out a suitable tree, tied his bundle of skins to a high branch, so that it should be out of the reach of dingoes, and said they would be safe enough until his return on his way to the Port Half an hour later, the tide being low enough, we crossed the river, and under the bright light of myriad stars made our way along the spit of sand to the scrub. Here we lit our camp fire under the trees, boiled our billy of tea, and ate our cold beef and bread. Then we lay down upon the soft, sweet-smelling carpet of dead leaves, and yarned for a couple of hours before sleeping.

By the light of the fire I saw that my companion was a man of about forty years of age, although he looked much older, his long untrimmed brown beard and un-kept hair being thickly streaked with grey. He was quiet in manner and speech, and the latter was entirely free from the Great Australian Adjective. His story, as far as he told it to me, was a simple one, yet with an element of tragedy in it.

Fifteen years before, he and his brother had taken up a selection on the Brunswick River, near the Queensland border, and were doing fairly well. One day they felled a big gum tree to split for fencing rails. As it crashed towards the ground, it struck a dead limb of another great tree, which was sent flying towards where the brothers stood; it struck the elder one on the head, and killed him instantly. There were no neighbours nearer than thirty miles, so alone the survivor buried his brother. Then came two months of utter loneliness, and Joyce abandoned his selection to the bush, selling his few head of cattle and horses to his nearest neighbour for a small sum, keeping only one horse for himself. Then for two or three years he worked as a "hatter" (i.e., single-handed) in various tin-mining districts of the New England district.

One day during his many solitary prospecting trips, he came across a long-abandoned selection and house, near the Warra Swamp (I knew the spot well). He took a fancy to the place, and settled down there, and for many years had lived there all alone, quite content.

Sometimes he would obtain a few weeks' work on the cattle stations in the district, when mustering and branding was going on, by which he would earn a few pounds, but he was always glad to get back to his lonely home again. He had made a little money also, he said, by trapping platypus, which were plentiful, and sometimes, too, he would prospect the head waters of the creeks, and get a little fine gold.

"I'm comfortable enough, you see," he added; "lots to eat and drink, and putting by a little cash as well. Then I haven't to depend upon the storekeepers at Port ——— for anything, except powder and shot, flour, salt, tea and sugar. There's lots of game and fish all about me, and when I want a bit of fresh beef and some more to salt down, I can get it without breaking the law, or paying for it."

"How is that?" I inquired.

"There are any amount of wild cattle running in the ranges—all clean-skins" (unbranded), "and no one claims them. One squatter once tried to get some of them down into his run in the open country—he might as well have tried to yard a mob of dingoes."

"Then how do you manage to get a beast?"

"Easy enough. I have an old police rifle, and every three months or so, when my stock of beef is low, I saddle my old pack moke, and start off to the ranges. I know all the cattle tracks leading to the camping and drinking places, and generally manage to kill my beast at or near a waterhole. Then I cut off the best parts only, and leave the rest for the hawks and dingoes. I camp there for the night, and get back with my load of fresh beef the next day. Some I dry-salt, some I put in brine."

Early in the morning we started on our ten miles' tramp through the coastal scrub, or rather forest Our course led us away from the sea, and nearly parallel to the river, and I thoroughly enjoyed the walk, and my companion's interesting talk. He had a wonderful knowledge of the bush, and of the habits of wild animals and birds, much of which he had acquired from the aborigines of the Brunswick River district As we were walking along, I inquired how he managed to get platypus without shooting them. He hesitated, and half smiled, and I at once apologised, and said I didn't intend to be inquisitive. He nodded, and said no more; but he afterwards told me he caught them by netting sections of the river at night.

After we had made about five miles we came to the first crossing above the bar. This my acquaintance always used when he visited Port ——— (taking the track along the bank on the other side), for the bar was only crossable at especially low tides. Here, although the water was brackish, we saw swarms of "block-headed" mullet and grey bream swimming close in to the sandy bank, and, had we cared to do so, could have caught a bagful in a few minutes But we pushed on for another two miles, and on our way shot three "bronze wing" pigeons.

We reached the Warra Swamp at noon, and camped for dinner in a shady "bangalow" grove, so as not to disturb the ducks, whose delightful gabble and piping was plainly audible. We grilled our birds, and made our tea. Whilst we were having a smoke, a truly magnificent white-headed fish eagle lit on the top of a dead tree, three hundred yards away—a splendid shot for a rifle. It remained for some minutes, then rose and went off seaward. Joyce told me that the bird and its mate were very familiar to him for a year past, but that he "hadn't the heart to take a shot at them"—for which he deserved to be commended.

Presently, seeing me cutting some young supplejack vines, my new acquaintance asked me their purpose. I told him that I meant to make a light raft out of dead timber to save me from swimming after any ducks that I might shoot, and that the supplejack was for lashing. Then, to my surprise and pleasure, he proposed that I should go on to his "humphy," and camp there for the night, and he would return to the swamp with me in the morning, join me in a day's shooting and fishing, and then come on with me to the township on the following day.

Gladly accepting his offer, two hours' easy walking brought us to his home—a roughly-built slab shanty with a bark roof, enclosed in a good-sized paddock, in which his old pack horse, several goats and a cow and calf were feeding. At the side of the house was a small but well-tended vegetable garden, in which were also some huge water-melons—quite ripe, and just the very thing after our fourteen miles' walk. One-half of the house and roof was covered with scarlet runner bean plants, all in full bearing, and altogether the exterior of the place was very pleasing. Before we reached the door two dogs, which were inside, began a terrific din—they knew their master's step. The interior of the house—which was of two rooms—was clean and orderly, the walls of slabs being papered from top to bottom with pictures from illustrated papers, and the floor was of hardened clay. Two or three rough chairs, a bench and a table comprised the furniture, and yet the place had a home-like look.

My host asked me if I could "do" with a drink of bottled-beer; I suggested a slice of water-melon.

"Ah, you're right But those outside are too hot. Here's a cool one," and going into the other room he produced a monster. It was delicious!

After a bathe in the creek near by, we had a hearty supper, and then sat outside yarning and smoking till turn-in time.

Soon after a sunrise breakfast, we started for the swamp, taking the old packhorse with us, my host leaving food and water for the dogs, who howled disconsolately as we went off.

At the swamp we had a glorious day's sport, although there were altogether too many black snakes about for my taste. We camped there that night, and returned to the port next day with a heavy load of black duck, some "whistlers," and a few brace of pigeons.

I bade farewell to my good-natured host with a feeling of regret Some years later, on my next visit to Australia, I heard that he had returned to his boyhood's home—Gippsland in Victoria—and had married and settled down. He was one of the most contented men I ever met, and a good sportsman.



CHAPTER XIX ~ TE-BARI, THE OUTLAW

The Island of Upolu, in the Samoan group, averages less than fifteen miles in width, and it is a delightful experience to cross from Apia, or any other town on the north, to the south side. The view to be obtained from the summit of the range that traverses the island from east to west is incomparably beautiful—I have never seen anything to equal it anywhere in the Pacific Isles.

A few years after the Germans had begun cotton planting in Samoa, I brought to Apia ninety native labourers from the Solomon Islands to work on the big plantation at Mulifanua. I also brought with me something I would gladly have left behind—the effects of a very severe attack of malarial fever.

A week or so after I had reached Apia I gave myself a few days' leave, intending to walk across the island to the town of Siumu, where I had many native friends, and try and work some of the fever poison out of my system.

Starting long before sunrise, I was well past Vailima Mountain—the destined future home of Stevenson—by six o'clock. After resting for an hour at each of the bush villages of Magiagi and Tanumamanono—soon to be the scene of a cruel massacre in the civil war then raging—I began the long, gradual ascent from the littoral to the main range, inhaling deeply of the cool morning air, and listening to the melodious croo! croo! of the great blue pigeons, and the plaintive cry of the ringdoves, so well termed manu-tagi (the weeping bird) by the imaginative Samoans.

Walking but slowly, for I was not strong enough for rapid exercise, I reached the summit of the first spur, and again spelled, resting upon a thick carpet of cool, dead leaves. With me was a boy from Tanumamanono named Suisuega-le-moni (The Seeker after Truth), who carried a basket containing some cooked food, and fifty cartridges for my gun. "Sui," as he was called for brevity, was an old acquaintance of mine and one of the most unmitigated young imps that ever ate taro as handsome "as a picture," and a most notorious scandalmonger and spy. He was only thirteen years of age, and was of rebel blood, and, child as he was, he knew that his head stood very insecurely upon his shoulders, and that it would be promptly removed therefrom if any of King Malietoa's troops could catch him spying in flagrante delicto. Two years before, he had attached himself to me, and had made a voyage with me to the Caroline Islands, during which he had acquired an enormous vocabulary of sailors' bad language. This gave him great local kudos.

Sui was to accompany me to the top of the range, and then return, as otherwise he would be in hostile territory.

By four o'clock in the afternoon we had gained a clear spot on the crest of the range, from where we had a most glorious view of the south coast imaginable. Three thousand feet below us were the russet-hued thatched roofs of the houses of Siumu Village; beyond, the pale green water that lay between the barrier reef and the mainland, then the long curving line of the reef itself with its seething surf, and, beyond that again, the deep, deep blue of the Pacific, sparkling brightly in the westering sun.

Leaning my gun against one of the many buttresses of a mighty masa'oi tree, I was drinking in the beauty of the scene, when we heard the shrill, cackling scream of a mountain cock, evidently quite near. Giving the boy my gun, I told him to go and shoot it; then sitting down on the carpet of leaves, I awaited his return with the bird, half-resolved to spend the night where I was, for I was very tired and began to feel the premonitory chills of an attack of ague.

In ten minutes the sound of a gun-shot reverberated through the forest aisles, and presently I heard Sui returning. He was running, and holding by its neck one of the biggest mountain cocks I ever saw. As he ran, he kept glancing back over his shoulder, and when he reached me and threw down gun and bird, I saw that he was trembling from head to foot.

"What is the matter?" I asked; "hast seen an aitu vao (evil spirit of the forest)?"

"Aye, truly," he said shudderingly, "I have seen a devil indeed, and the marrow in my bones has gone—I have seen Te-bari, the Tafito."{*}

* The Samoans term all the natives of the Equatorial Islands "Tafito".

I sprang to my feet and seized him by the wrist.

"Where was he?" I asked.

"Quite near me. I had just shot the wild moa vao (mountain cock) and had picked it up when I heard a voice say in Samoan—but thickly as foreigners speak: 'It was a brave shot, boy'. Then I looked up and saw Te-bari. He was standing against the bole of a masa'oi tree, leaning on his rifle. Round his earless head was bound a strip of ie mumu (red Turkey twill), and as I stood and trembled he laughed, and his great white teeth gleamed, and my heart died within me, and——"

I do not want to disgust my readers, but truth compels me to say that the boy there and then became violently sick; then he began to sob with terror, stopping every now and then to glance around at the now darkening forest aisles of grey-barked, ghostly and moss-covered trees.

"Sui," I said, "go back to your home. I have no fear of Te-bari."

In two seconds the boy, who had faced rifle fire time and time again, fled homewards. Te-bari the outlaw was too much for him.

Personally I had no reason to fear meeting the man. In the first place I was an Englishman, and Te-bari was known to profess a liking for Englishmen, though he would eagerly cut the throat of a German or a Samoan if he could get his brawny hands upon it; in the second place, although I had never seen the man, I was sure that he would have heard of me from some of his fellow islanders on the plantations, for during my three years' "recruiting" in the Kingsmill and Gilbert Groups, I have brought many hundreds of them to Samoa, Fiji and Tahiti.

Something of his story was known to me. He was a native of the great square-shaped atoll of Maiana, and went to sea in a whaler when he was quite a lad, and soon rose to be boat-steerer. One day a Portuguese harpooner struck him in the face and drew blood—a deadly insult to a Line Islander. Te-bari plunged his knife into the man's heart. He was ironed, and put in the sail-locker; during the night three of the Portuguese sprang in upon him and cut off his ears. A few days later when the ship was at anchor at the Bonin Islands, Te-bari freed himself of his handcuffs and swam on shore Early on the following morning one of the boats was getting fresh water. She was in charge of the fourth mate—a Portuguese black. Suddenly a nude figure leapt among the men, and clove the officer's head in twain with a tomahawk.

One day Te-bari reappeared among his people at Maiana and took service with a white trader, who always spoke of him as a quiet, hardworking young man, but with a dangerous temper when roused by a fancied wrong. In due time Te-bari took a wife—took her in a very literal sense, by killing her husband and escaping with her to the neighbouring island of Taputeauea (Drummond's Island). She was a pretty, graceful creature of sixteen years of age. Then one day there came along the German labour brig Adolphe seeking "blackbirds" for Samoa, and Te-bari and his pretty wife with fifty other "Tafitos" were landed at one of the plantations in Upolu.

Young Madame Te-bari was not as good as she ought to have been, and one day the watchful husband saw one of the German overseers give her a thick necklace of fine red beads. Te-bari tore them from her neck, and threw them into the German's face. For this he received a flogging and was mercilessly kicked into insensibility as well When he recovered he was transferred to another plantation—minus the naughty Nireeungo, who became "Mrs." Peter Clausen. A month passed, and it was rumoured "on the beach" that "No-Ears," as Te-bari was called, had escaped and taken to the bush with a brand-new Snider carbine, and as many cartridges as he could carry, and Mr. Peter Clausen was advised to look out for himself. He snorted contemptuously.

Two young Samoan "bucks" were sent out to capture Te-bari, and bring him back, dead or alive, and receive therefor one hundred bright new Chile dollars. They never returned, and when their bodies were found in a deep mountain gully, it was known that the earless one was the richer by a sixteen-shot Winchester with fifty cartridges, and a Swiss Vetterli rifle, together with some twist tobacco, and the two long nifa oti or "death knives," with which these valorous, but misguided young men intended to remove the earless head of the "Tafito pig" from his brawny, muscular shoulders.

Te-bari made his way, encumbered as he was with his armoury, along the crest of the mountain range, till he was within striking distance of his enemy, Clausen, and the alleged Frau Clausen—nee Nireeungo. He hid on the outskirts of the plantation, and soon got in touch with some of his former comrades. They gave him food, and much useful information.

One night, during heavy rain, when every one was asleep on the plantation, Te-bari entered the overseer's house by the window. A lamp was burning, and by its light he saw his faithless spouse sleeping alone. Clausen—lucky Clausen—had been sent into Apia an hour before to get some medicine for one of the manager's children. Te-bari was keenly disappointed. He would only have half of his revenge. He crept up to the sleeper, and made one swift blow with the heavy nifa oti Then he became very busy for a few minutes, and a few hours later was back in the mountains, smoking Clausen's tobacco, and drinking some of Clausen's corn schnapps.

When Clausen rode up to his house at three o'clock in the morning, he found the lamp was burning brightly. Nireeungo was lying on the bed, covered over with a quilt of navy blue. He called to her, but she made no answer, and Clausen called her a sleepy little pig. Then he turned to the side table to take a drink of schnapps—on the edge of it was Nireeungo's head with its two long plaits of jet-black hair hanging down, and dripping an ensanguined stream upon the matted floor.

Clausen cleared out of Samoa the very next day. Te-bari had got upon his nerves.

*****

The forest was dark by the time I had lit a fire between two of the wide buttresses of the great tree, and I was shaking from head to foot with ague. The attack, however, only lasted an hour, and then came the usual delicious after-glow of warmth as the blood began to course riotously through one's veins and give that temporary and fictitious strength accompanied by hunger, that is one of the features of malarial fever.

Sitting up, I began to pluck the mountain cock, intending to grill the chest part as soon as the fire was fit. Then I heard a footstep on the leaves, and looking up I saw Te-bari standing before me.

"Ti-a ka po" (good evening), I said quietly, in his own language, "will you eat with me?"

He came over to me, still grasping his rifle, and peered into my face. Then he put out his hand, and sat down quietly in front of me. Except for a girdle of dracaena leaves around his waist he was naked, but he seemed well-nourished, and, in fact, fat.

"Will you smoke?" I said presently, passing him a plug of tobacco and my sheath knife, for I saw that a wooden pipe was stuck in his girdle of leaves. He accepted it eagerly.

"Do you know me, white man?" he asked abruptly, speaking in the Line Islands tongue.

I nodded. "You are Te-bari of Maiana. The boy was frightened of you and ran away."

He showed his gleaming white teeth in a semi-mirthful, semi-tigerish grin. "Yes, he was afraid. I would have shot him; but I did not because he was with you. What is your name, white man?"