Rascals in Paradise

by James A. Michener

  This time he crammed his unseaworthy vessel, the India, mainly with people from Italy, where news of his cruel frauds had not yet penetrated outlying villages. He mulcted these Italian peasants of their last lire, jammed them into horrible quarters and with no compunction pocketed the profits. More than a hundred would die even before the India reached Nouvelle France. They were the fortunate ones.

  When at last they reached that haven they saw only Captain Rabardy’s ship. Torrential downpours had made even the narrow strip of sandy soil a morass, and with gasps of despair the Italians pleaded to be taken somewhere else.

  But now they were to encounter the iron will of Captain Rabardy. “This is the site,” he said coldly. “Disembark.”

  “But there is no land!”

  “Disembark.”

  “We’ll try farther up the coast.”

  “This is Nouvelle France.”

  So the Italians were forced ashore, and like their predecessors, many died. One brave man volunteered to scout for better land, and he was eaten by cannibals. Another tried to work at building a house, and he collapsed with malaria. Others, between sobbing laments which their French officers affected not to understand, tried to plant food, and they died of dengue, of chills, of scorpion bites and of starvation.

  One of the survivors achieved the distinction of being the first white man to visit the interior of the island of Bougainville in the Solomons. He was an Italian who, after enduring the hardships of Port Breton, decided that any alternative would be preferable. Accordingly, he stole a boat and with several companions made for the Solomons, where on arrival they were all killed and eaten except this one man, whose tears softened the heart of the savage chief. The man was sold to a bush tribe, and became as big a cannibal as any of the savages. After living a year among them, he made his escape to the coast, where he was bought for two tomahawks by the crew of a blackbirding ship. They had thought he was a native, worth £25 in Queensland; but when they found he was an Italian and could not be sold into servitude, they abandoned him at New Britain. The English commissioner there was unable to get much information from the man, however, because he had become a hopeless imbecile and never opened his lips except to ask for food.

  The Baron de Villeblanche, safe in Sydney and spending lavish sums intended for the comforts of the settlers, kept cabling to Europe that all was well. In Spain, the Marquis de Rays, who now had three mistresses and untold fortunes gathered from faithful followers throughout Europe, quoted the cables in a new prospectus and collected fresh sums of money from new dreamers whom he was planning to send out to his lethal paradise.

  Meanwhile, through a most fortunate stratagem, the doomed Italians finally escaped from Nouvelle France—that is, those who had not died. It had become apparent that since the rains prevented the growing of any food, the entire colony must perish. Captain Rabardy said that was all right with him—let it perish; but the colonists played upon his vanity and he was finally persuaded to sail his ship to Australia for additional food. In his absence, the Italians made such complaint that their own captain agreed to evacuate the entire colony. He would take them to New Caledonia, the French penal settlement. But when the cautious French officials there saw the horrible condition of the India, they refused to accept responsibility. Accordingly she limped on toward Australia with her cargo of dying Italians.

  On Saturday, April 9, 1881, a Sydney reporter related the condition of the colonists nine months after their gay departure from Spain. “I have just returned from a third visit to the India, and the more one sees on board, the more one is struck with the horrors of the whole insane attempt that had been the cause of such misery. An extended inspection between decks revealed more suffering than witnessed on the previous visits. Several poor women—two of them young girls of eighteen and twenty—were stretched helpless, the victims of fever. One was a mother beside a child, lifted up to show me that it was a living, or rather a dying skeleton.…

  “A few lemons, onions and such trifles distributed by a visitor were eagerly and thankfully received, causing the wish for power to make them rain for a time. Two poor souls less to endure this misery, a woman, weakened by fever and suffering, having passed away last night an hour or two after her confinement—mother and child dead. The deaths in this lot of colonists up to the present, exclusive of the last named, total forty-two.…

  “Those too ill to work in New Ireland were deprived entirely of their wine. They were expected to work like slaves, when the mean range of the thermometer in the shade was 90°. In malarious country, and on an insufficient regimen, the ration of meat per man was reduced to 82 grams (not quite three ounces) per day. Little wonder that in a very short time eighty were on the sick list with fever, thirty of them helpless, the half of the colony in ill health. Yet the doctor is told to ‘mind his own business’ when pointing out the daily increasing danger and probable mortality.”

  Now began the final tragedy, and it is difficult, in view of all that had so far transpired, to believe that the governments of Europe would have permitted this additional disaster. But at Barcelona the Marquis de Rays assembled a fourth shipload of colonizers, jammed down the hatches and sent the vessel out to the Pacific with little food, less medicine and no possible hope of survival in Nouvelle France.

  It would be needlessly harrowing to recount the familiar and deadly events that overtook this pathetic group. Many died en route, and when the survivors reached Nouvelle France they found a sullen and near-mad Captain Rabardy who, embittered over the escape of the Italians during his absence, was determined that not a single passenger of this fourth ship would ever leave Port Breton.

  “Unfortunate beings!” he cried as he stalked aboard their ship. “What brings you here?”

  He ordered them ashore, onto the very spot where the other volunteers had died trying to exist with no food, no land, no homes. He then set up a watch to prevent any escape or any communication with the missionaries down the coast, who had saved some of the preceding groups.

  After a few days ashore, the utter hopelessness of Port Breton was apparent to all, and a delegation attempted to persuade Captain Rabardy to allow them to try some other spot, but he answered with loaded revolvers and told them unmistakably that this was their permanent home and that here they must either live with what they had or perish. He then produced his secret orders, signed by the Marquis, which stated that any critics of the regime in Nouvelle France should be expelled and left to the tender mercies of the cannibals, concluding: “You may condemn to death anyone who questions your authority or mine. Not only may you sentence him to death, it is your absolute duty to do so, should there be the slightest insubordination. By divine right I command you to do so in my name.”

  Rabardy then roared into his cabin, where he amused himself with his fifteen-year-old black girl, Tani, who was now his only friend. He insisted that all officers loyal to King Charles I remain on the ship with him, and in time they too began merely to wait for the colonists ashore to die.

  Students of this amazing chapter of Pacific history—it occurred when President Rutherford B. Hayes was in the White House and when cables already connected the main ports of the world—have suspected that Captain Rabardy may have had in his possession further orders from the Marquis outlining and approving the course of action he was pursuing. Others hold that Rabardy was fearful of punishment if any of the victims escaped and brought him to judgment in a court of law; and that the intolerable situation at Port Breton appalled him as much as it did the settlers and unbalanced his brain. Although we do not know what motivated this unhappy man, we do know that he solemnly announced that he was absolutely committed to holding the settlers ashore, despite the consequences.

  Trading ships arrived and were refused permission to land. A British warship stood by to see if her crew could help, but they were ordered to leave the colony alone. The settlers endeavored to sneak canoes out into the dangerous surrounding waters, but they were stopped and their occupan
ts threatened with death. Holding his small ship off the mouth of the bay, Captain Rabardy ate the choice food aboard, laughed at the settlers and advised them to grow crops or starve.

  He did make one trip. He went across the straits to the ultrasavage island of Buka, off the northern tip of Bougainville, where he captured a cargo of slaves. These he brought back, under the Liberian flag, and offered at $100 each to the desperate colonists, who had not enough food to keep themselves alive.

  One bright hope in these dreadful final days sustained the colonists. The captain of the fourth ship was an honorable man, and at great risk to himself had evaded Rabardy’s blockade and fled with his ship to Manila, where he cabled the Marquis for funds to save the settlers. None were forthcoming, but promises were made, and on the strength of these, Captain Henry loaded his ship with rescue supplies. Then, as the days passed and no cabled funds arrived, it became apparent to both the captain and his Spanish creditors that the Marquis had finally and completely abandoned the subjects of his kingdom.

  In despair, Captain Henry dispatched a most urgent cable, only to get this heartless reply: “We have no funds in hand from the Marquis. Sell or return all you have bought and, if necessary, dispose of the ship itself. Under no circumstances whatever will we be responsible for outlay.”

  When word of this cable got around Manila, the government made the captain give his word of honor that he would not run away before the merchandise could be unloaded Captain Henry was now faced with a terrible moral decision. He could surrender his ship and doom the remaining colonists to certain death, or he could break his word of honor, steal the provisions already aboard, and slip out of Manila. He chose the latter—the only time in this sorry affair when anyone in authority, except the missionaries, helped the dying colonists. Captain Henry thus turned pirate to bring back food to Port Breton.

  He had scarcely distributed the goods, however, when a Spanish warship hove into the harbor and arrested both him and his ship. But he made such a heartfelt plea to the Spanish commander that, in spite of Rabardy’s savage objections, the Spanish warship carried away the most seriously ill, allowing those who survived when the ship reached Manila to find whatever life they could in that capital. After months of questioning, a compassionate judge exonerated Captain Henry of the charges against him.

  It is recorded by impeccable authorities that when the Marquis’ ship was sold at auction at Manila to cover the bad debts, out of the hold was dragged case after case of the goods that he himself had ordered put there for the sustenance of his Pacific kingdom: a cargo of Punch and Judy shows; hundreds of pink and white satin slippers to be worn by native beauties who wished to attend the court of King Charles I; twenty-two cases of official-size paper stamped with the royal coat of arms. But even that cargo was less preposterous than part of what the earlier ship, India, had carried—three thousand dog collars; while one rescue ship dispatched from Australia by the Baron de Villeblanche contained a few pounds of food and a complete cargo of bricks.

  When the Spanish warship sailed from Nouvelle France for Manila, there were forty resolute settlers left on the beach, the last tragic tide of King Charles I’s empire. They might have had a chance had they been able to move away from that impossible ledge of land between the sea and the mountain to another part of the island, but offshore stood Captain Rabardy’s ship, deserted by its entire crew but still commanded by its mad captain.

  Rabardy remained alone with his native girl, Tani, and he now proceeded to make life ashore an added hell. He would issue no food, talk with no one, permit no movement from the beach. Thirty of the forty settlers were prostrated by the fever at one time, and it seemed as if all must perish unless they got away, but Captain Rabardy, alone in his ship, kept his guns trained on the colony and announced that Nouvelle France would be maintained. It was a sacred obligation. To the last, he refused to believe that the Marquis de Rays had abandoned him. To the final day he trusted that a new ship, with new colonists headed for a new death, would arrive. In savage grandeur he remained steadfast to the Marquis who had showered him with honors, position and a promise of great wealth.

  At this point, as the last colony is perishing, it is appropriate to speculate on what might have happened to these ventures had the Marquis de Rays, in his Quimerc’h study, selected some spot other than fatal Port Breton.

  Suppose he had decided upon nearby Blanche Bay on New Britain Island. Here a ring of volcanoes makes the soil extraordinarily productive. One of the finest beaches in the Pacific invites repose, and palm trees yield abundant coconuts. Large ships can be accommodated in the spacious roads, and the hinterlands provide trading stuff with which to fill those ships. In the years immediately after the Marquis’ disastrous colonizing, settlers from England and Germany were to invade lovely Blanche Bay in droves, and all were to prosper. Here, in the city called Rabaul, notable fortunes were made and every promise made by the Marquis came to fruition. The magnificent site of this prosperous settlement is only sixty miles from Port Breton, and had even one ship stumbled upon Blanche Bay, everything the settlers dreamed of and more would have been theirs. Instead, mad Captain Rabardy held the colonists to their doomed strip of inhospitable shore.

  Ironically, a monument stands in one of the main streets of Rabaul today to commemorate what might have been. It is a gigantic millstone, shipped out by the Marquis de Rays to enable his colonists to grind their nonexistent grain. In the late 1930’s the harbormaster of Rabaul found it on an exploring expedition to Port Breton and hauled it across the channel on a raft. It was erected with an appropriate brass plate, and although the rest of Rabaul was completely leveled by the Allied bombings in World War II, the old stone remained upright as a memento of the folly of King Charles I.

  Even closer to Port Breton lay the less spectacular, but equally rewarding, strand of Kokopo, also on New Britain but safe from Rabaul’s volcanoes. Here some of Oceania’s finest plantations have brought wealth to many, for the climate is good, and down the bay there is an acceptable harbor. Because of the clean winds and moderate rain, tropical diseases were easily mastered. One of the authors has spent many pleasant days in Kokopo. He relished the blazing midday heat and slept refreshed in the breeze-cooled nights. Today Kokopo houses just about the number of families sent out by the Marquis to his hopeless domain a few leagues to the southeast.

  As if wishing to demonstrate what might have been accomplished had the Marquis chosen Rabaul, a cabin boy from one of the ships escaped from Port Breton and by chance wandered to Rabaul, got a job with a plantation owner, and later took up land of his own near Kokopo which in the 1930’s was sold for a goodly sum. Any of the Marquis’ dupes could probably have accomplished as much, had they been permitted to settle at a more promising spot.

  Rabaul and Kokopo were on New Britain Island. Were there any promising locations on New Ireland? At the northern end of this island, German colonists later built a splendid capital at Kavieng, with sporting clubs, a harbor for big ships, and stores with goods from Europe. When, during World War I, the British took over, an air base was added. Particularly along the western coast of New Ireland, a hundred profitable plantations proved that men no more gifted than those who fumbled their way ashore at Port Breton could, with proper planning, cut themselves a home from the rich jungle and prosper. Moreover, New Ireland traders made fortunes collecting turtles, shark fins, bêche-de-mer, bird of paradise feathers and other products of the Bismarck Archipelago.

  The tragedy of Nouvelle France can best be comprehended with the aid of a map. Mark in red pencil each of the New Ireland establishments where Germans and Englishmen have lived prosperously along the shores of this wild cannibal island. An interesting pattern develops. The red dots are scattered fairly evenly along the entire coast. This means that a gambler could have pointed to almost any spot along the shore, saying, “That’s where we’ll settle.” And his chances of striking a likely site—move up or down the coast ten miles in either direction—would have been
almost one hundred per cent certain.

  There was, of course, one unlucky spot to be avoided. There nothing could prosper. Even today, as one studies the map of New Ireland, there remains one spot that has never been settled. Not gasoline, nor penicillin, nor air service, nor government subsidy for copra, nor radio, nor the help of mission schools—not all of these aids together have made this one God-forsaken spot even remotely habitable. During World War II, even the Japanese defenders of New Ireland refused to bother about that unlucky, miasmal, hopeless beach, for they knew that no army could land there and maintain itself.

  It was, of course, this spot that the Marquis de Rays chose for his kingdom. But unlucky as this choice was, all would nevertheless have been saved if he had directed his ships to coast even a few miles in any direction. Had they found Blanche Bay, we know that great riches would have come to all. Had they reached Kavieng, all would have been well. A week’s exploration—no, two days—and France would have had a powerful colony with a rather fat and ridiculous King Charles I lording it over his black subjects. If the Marquis de Rays and his henchmen had demonstrated one degree of resilience or accommodation to local conditions, no tragedy need have occurred.