was alive, and wesaw him striking out towards the distant shore; but he soon sank, foreither a shark got hold of him or his wound prevented him swimmingfurther.
"After this we hove up the anchor, and making sail shaped a course forBrisbane. We had to keep a sharp look out after our passengers, andmake them fast whenever they came on deck, for fear they should leapoverboard and drown themselves. When in sight of land we had a hard jobto keep them quiet, and generally found it more convenient to make themstay below.
"Had the passage been long we should probably have lost a good many ofthem; but as it was, only three or four died, and we landed the rest intolerable condition. The captain said that they had all come on boardof their own free will; that if they had changed their minds since, thatwas no fault of his. They were soon engaged by the colonists, whowanted labour at any price. He had no difficulty, in consequence of thefavourable report he made, of again getting a licence, and without lossof time we sailed on another cruise.
"We had kept more to the eastward than usual, when it came on to blowvery hard, and we had to run before the gale out of our course aconsiderable distance, the captain being very much vexed at this loss oftime. The gale had somewhat moderated, but it was still blowing hardwhen we caught sight of a sail which, as we neared her, proved to be alarge double canoe, with twenty or more hands on board. The captainthought she would prove a good prize, as we might sink her and carry offthe people, and no one be the wiser. She consisted of two large canoes,so to speak, some way apart, but united by a strong deck placed uponthem. Through the deck were cut hatches, to enable the people to gobelow into the canoes, and above the deck was a square house with aplatform on the top of it. As we drew near, intending to run her downold Sneezer advised us to let her pass, as she belonged to Fiji, and ashe said the people would give us more trouble than they were worth, asthey were savage fellows, and would neither work in their own islandsnor in Australia, and would very likely murder their masters. Weaccordingly let them go, and away she flew close hauled on a wind,though the supercargo sighed, as he thought of letting so manyfine-looking fellows escape us. The gale ceasing, we hauled up, andstood back for Erromanga.
"Old Sneezer was as useful to us as before. On his first visit to theshore he persuaded a dozen natives to come off, by telling them that hehad plenty of pigs on board for a feast they were about to hold. Veryfat pigs they were, according to his account, and plenty of tobacco, sothat they might smoke from morning till night to their hearts' content.We took them off in our own boat not to alarm the rest, by having tosink their canoe. When they got on deck they asked for the pigs andtobacco. The only answer they got was finding themselves shoved downbelow. They shrieked and cried out till the mate went among them with athick stick and made them quiet.
"We were not quite so successful at the next haul. Sneezer got off sixfellows as he had the former ones; but they heard the others cry outbefore we had them secured, and tried to escape. Three were knockeddown in time, but the other three leaped overboard and swam to theshore. The captain sang out for a couple of muskets; one however wasnot loaded, and the other would not go off, and the men escaped.Knowing that we should get no more labourers there, we had to make sailand run to another place. After this we got several quite quietly, andthey were induced to put their marks to the paper shown to them, and tobelieve all that Sneezer said.
"One day we pulled in to the shore a few miles south of Dillon's Bay,where the surf ran too heavily to allow us to land, but Sneezer caughtsight of four men on the shore, and hailing them, said he was theirfriend, and had plenty of tobacco to give them if they would come offfor it. They all swam out to us, when in our eagerness we caught holdof two of them somewhat roughly, perhaps, and hauled them into the boat;the others, taking the alarm, swam back and escaped.
"You see in this trade, as in every other, we have our disappointments.
"We had heard of the skipper of a trading schooner, who somehow or othergot on very well with the Erromangians by treating them kindly, Isuppose, and paying them what he promised. So says Sneezer, `I willtell them Captain Tom has got a new vessel, and this is her, and that hewishes to see them.'
"On this Sneezer went on shore, and nearly two dozen natives came off tosee their friend Captain Tom. They were then told that he was in hiscabin, when they were easily persuaded to step quietly down below. Asmay be supposed, we didn't let them come on deck again. What theythought about the matter, or what their friends on shore thought aboutit, I don't know; perhaps the next time Captain Tom touched at that portthey might not have been inclined to be so friendly with him as before;it's just possible, indeed, that they might have knocked him on the headwithout inquiring whether or not he had paid them a visit a short timeback, and carried off some of their people.
"The natives we had last got began moaning and groaning, and cursingtheir folly, because their chief, who was a Christian, had warned thembeforehand, and told them that he feared some trick might be played, notliking the looks of the vessel.
"In this way, we managed, as before, to complete our cargo, and to landthem all, with the exception of a few who died, at Brisbane.
"We after this made several successful trips, and I should think thecolonists must have felt very grateful to us for the free labourers withwhom we supplied them.
"There were a dozen vessels or more engaged in the same trade, thesupercargoes of which mostly managed matters in the same way we did; ifthey did not they must have had great difficulty in collectinglabourers.
"The `Pickle' had, however, run her course. After we had got most ofour cargo on board we were caught in a heavy gale, and had to battendown the hatches to escape going to the bottom. Our passengers musthave found it tremendously hot, for the gale lasted several days, andall that time we had to keep the hatches on. When it moderated alittle, and we went below to inspect our cargo, we found some had brokentheir arms and others their legs, tumbling about in the hold, while adozen more were dead or dying.
"Things were bad enough, but they were to become worse. The gale cameon again, and while we thought we were clear of the land the vesselstruck on a coral reef. The sea beat over it, and we held on to therigging, but scarcely was she on the other side, where it was tolerablysmooth, than we found the water rushing in through a hole which had beenknocked in her bottom. We had just time to get out the boat and jumpinto her, when down the vessel went, with all those under hatches.
"It is said that a good many of the labourers who leave their nativeislands never get back again; this accident will account for a hundredor more, and of course the authorities in Queensland were not answerablefor it.
"We managed to save our lives, and were picked up by a Sydney vessel.
"Having found the business profitable, I shipped on board another craftengaged to take natives to the Fiji Islands, where labourers were muchwanted.
"Having touched at several places, we called at the Kingsmill Islands.Here we got a good many natives in one way or another.
"We were about making sail, when in the evening a black fellow camealongside in his canoe to sell mats and fowls. We persuaded him, as itwas late, to sleep on board. As the wind was pretty fresh, he willinglyagreed. Next morning he was somewhat surprised to find that theschooner had got under way during the night, and he found himself one ofa gang of seventy men and fifteen women, whom we had secured, bound forFiji. The supercargo, to quiet him, told him that we were only goingacross to another island close by, and would land him there. The otherswe kept pretty peaceable by similar tricks, though they kept askingsomewhat anxiously, when they were to be put on shore.
"At last we reached one of the many islands of the Fiji group. I hadnever been there before; but I had heard that the people were terriblecannibals. So they were till the missionaries persuaded the king andhis chiefs, and most of his subjects, to give up the practice. Aconsiderable number of white men have of late years settled on severalof the islands, and have bought land to grow coffee and other things
.They find a difficulty in getting the natives of Fiji to work for them,so they have to obtain labourers from other islands, and this was thework our schooner was engaged in. Our cargo was quickly distributedamong the planters, some taking ten, some twenty, or as many as theycould get.
"The natives of Fiji are black and fine big fellows. They wear theirhair frizzled out, and big turbans on the top of all; some of them,indeed, wear great wigs over their own hair, for the larger a man's headis, the more important he thinks himself. This makes them look verytall; indeed, many of the chiefs are very fine men. They also wearornaments of all sorts, necklaces, and rings, and beads round their legsand arms, and they stick into their ears huge ornaments, while largebrooches hang down over their breasts. The common people, however, wearvery little clothing at all, and many of the chiefs who have turnedChristians, dress something after the English
Kidnapping in the Pacific; Or, The Adventures of Boas Ringdon Page 15
