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MUSICAL COMPOSITIONS

By A. SAFRONI-MIDDLETON

March—

“Our Fleet” War March of the Allied Sailors and Soldiers. Dedicated by special permission of Lady Jellicoe to Admiral Sir John Jellicoe and the British Fleet, 1915. Pianoforte and Military Band.

Entr’acte—

“The Monk’s Dream” (Full Military)

Romanza—

“Song of the Night” (Full Military)

Waltz—

“Firenze” (Military)

Regimental Marches—

Etc.

Songs—

“Samoan Love Song and Waltz”

“A Soldier’s Dream”

“By the Delawar”

“South Sea Melodies”

“Alabama Way”

Etc., etc.

Published by BOOSEY & Co., London, Aldershot and New York

Played by Military Regimental Bands throughout the World

Lieutenant J. Ord Hume, L. F., the distinguished Composer, Bandmaster and Contest Adjudicator of the British Empire, says: “I consider Safroni-Middleton’s rousing Military Marches the finest of recent years, and unique productions, coming as they do from the pen of a sailor.”

SAILOR AND BEACHCOMBER

Tree Climbing

SAILOR AND BEACHCOMBER

CONFESSIONS OF A LIFE AT SEA, IN AUSTRALIA

AND AMID THE ISLANDS OF THE PACIFIC

BY

A. SAFRONI-MIDDLETON

❦

WITH TWENTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON

GRANT RICHARDS LTD.

ST MARTIN’S STREET

LEICESTER SQUARE

MDCCCCXV

PRINTED BY THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED

EDINBURGH

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK

TO THE MEMORY OF

MY BROTHER

MORTIMER HUGH MIDDLETON

AGED SIXTEEN YEARS

Lost overboard in mid-ocean while serving

before the mast of a sailing

ship outbound for

Australia

ALSO TO THE MEMORY OF

CAPTAIN POPPY

Of the sailing ship Aristides, lost

with all hands

AND TO THE MEMORY OF

MY COMRADES

Of the Australian Bush and

the South Sea Islands

Old comrades, by my fire in dreams

Your hands I clasp to-night;

Heaven starlit o’er the forest gleams

As ’neath the blood-wood’s height

You lie with folded hands asleep

By shores of tumbling waves,

As I creep up each silent steep

To kiss forgotten graves.

The soul of all the songs I sing,

Whatever sounds most true,

I dedicate each wild true ring,

Inspired, old chums, by you.

The world grieves not that you are dead—

Brave, reckless men who died,

Crept from their camp-fires back to bed

Along the wild hill-side.

But, comrades, ’neath the hills or waves,

Could one sad song of mine

Reveal dead souls of far-off graves,

’Twould be a song divine.

As pure and sweet as flowers that grow

Where once with wild delight

You sang, where bush-flowers, bursting, blow

Thro’ dead fire-ash to-night.

And so in dreams I take your hands,

In long-dead eyes I gaze,

And half in tears from other lands

Bring back the dear old days.

In other lands ’neath greyer skies

Wild rides again recall,

Your songs, your laughing, manly eyes—

The boy who loved you all.

Lies in my sea-chest ’neath my bed

The fiddle, stringless, still;

Old chums, since all of you are dead,

’Neath forest steep and hill,

I cannot play the songs you loved;

But with tired eyes and pen

I strive to tell the truth, who roved,

And found you—God’s best men.

PREFACE

In the following chapters, wherein I have endeavoured to write down my experiences at sea, in Australia and on the South Sea Islands, I have not gone beyond the first four or five years of my life abroad, but later on I hope to do so, if I get the chance. I have made no attempt to moralise in my book, and if I appear to have been guilty of doing so, be assured it was a spasm of the intellect and quite forgotten all about a few minutes after I had written it down.

All I have attempted in this book is to endeavour to tell exactly my experiences as they occurred in my travels in many lands; also I have wished to reveal a little of the usual experiences, the ups and downs, that youths pass through when they go to sea and are left completely on their own in other lands, seeking to see the world, often ambitious to find a fortune, but generally succeeding in only gathering heaps of grim experiences. Unfortunately no one can buy his experience first, and so the general rule of green fortune-seekers overseas is to end in failure, and to be honest, I was no exception to the rule. Nevertheless my loss of all that might have been was amply compensated by the rough brave men whom I met, seafarers and otherwise, who revealed to me the best side of humanity and the value of good comradeship: devil-may-care fellows with hearts that were blazing hearth-fires of welcome in the coldest days of adversity of long ago, ere I, crammed up with experience and nothing much else, down in the stokehold of a tramp steamer, returned across the ocean to my native land, eventually to get the roving fever and again go seaward.

Pom-pe-te, pom-pe-te, pom, pom,

All thro’ the burning night

Shovelling coal for the engine’s heart

Down in the blinding light.

Working my passage, penniless,

Over the western main,—

And I know they’ll all be sorry

To see me home again.

Pom-pe-te, pom-pe-te, pom, pom,

Shiver and shake and bang;

Thundering seas lifting us up,

Making the screw-shaft clang.

Unshaven faces thrust to the flame,

Washed by the furnace bright,

And England thousands of miles away

In the middle watch to-night.

Oh! what would they say could they see me

Mask’d thick with oil and dirt,

Shovelling deep down under the sea?

This sweater for a shirt,

With the funnel’s red flame blowing

Out in the windy sky,

And the family pride perspiring

To keep the steam-gauge high!

I can hear the wild green chargers

Pounding the boat’s iron side—

Old Death, impatient, knocking away

All night to get inside!

Where haggard men like shadows move,

Toil in the flame-lit gloom.

Oh, it’s just the whole world over

Sailing the wave of Doom.

For the aristocrats are sleeping

Snug in their bunks, I know,

All on the upper deck, while we,

Are sweating away below!

Hard-feeding the white heat’s fury,

Piling the wake with foam,

Unravelling all the knots that wind

The way that takes them home.

I’ve clung on an old wind-jammer,

I’ve done things—best untold;

Hump’d the swag on many a rush,

Found everything—but gold!

But oh! for the flashlight homeward!

The anchor’s running chain,

And the sight of their dear old faces—

To see me home again!

Be assured that I have given no artificial colouring in my book, neither have I seriously set out to describe what I have seen, though I am confident that I must have succeeded in giving some local atmosphere, since all that I have written is drawn from true experience, but I cannot be certain that all the events followed exactly in the order that I have written them, for with the flight of time the dates of days, months and years fade away. I have left to silence almost one year of my South Sea Island life, especially of that period when I, with a kindred spirit of my own age, lived for several months in a hut of our own fashioning on the shore side near Pangopango harbour off the Isle of Tutuela; also I have passed over several months of my Australian bush experiences, and I have done this for reasons of my own. Later on I hope to record the experiences of my sea life that followed my twentieth birthday.

All I say of the South Sea missionaries is said in good-fellowship. Some of the best men are missionaries and sacrifice years of their life in a hopeless quest. So bear with the honesty of one who has fought side by side with the best and worst, and face to face with the grim realities of existence. For the present I hope someone will like what I have written in this, my book—one more ambitious plunge of a failure.

A. S.-M.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The author is indebted to the Agent-General for Queensland for the photographs reproduced as plates 1, 2 and 3; to the High Commissioner for Australia for plates 21, 22, 23 and 24; to the Director of the Imperial Institute for plates 4, 7, 8, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20; and to Messrs W. A. Mansell & Co. for plates 5, 10, 12 and 13.

I

I run away to Sea—Outbound for Australia—Appointed Solo Violinist in the Saloon—I watch Sailors asleep

I will write you that which no man has written before. I will tell you the truth as I found it. I will tell you of the aspirations of rough but brave men in distant lands and on the ships of distant tropic seas. I will tell you the truth of many thrills that buoyed me up with hope in my wanderings, and also of the chills that crushed in the last forlorn stand on the field of adversity. Aye, you shall hear of those things that men dream of in silence. I will pour them out of my soul for the calm eyes of stern reality.

My pages of romance have long since been shrivelled up in tropic seas, under blinding suns, on the plains and in the primeval bush lands, but still I am the living book of all that has been in the dear old dead romance of passionate boyhood. The glorious poems, the dreams of what should be, the flinchless fight for right, have all faded away and left in the secret pages of life the withered flowers of old friendship, tied up with magic threads of women’s kisses, the memories of dead, brave comrades, some under the seas and others under the bush flowers of Australian steeps or beneath the tropic jungle of the South Sea Islands. There they sleep with the memories of savage native men singing by their tiny huts which have long ago vanished before the tramp of the white men. All these things are in this book, with the poetry of life which is mine, mingled with the memories of haunting dreams of that world of Romance which so many of us sail away to but never, never find.

I cannot promise that in the chapters to follow I can tell all that befell me in the exact order in which the events happened, for it must be that after the flight of years I should stumble a bit in the days and months of a life that was lived in the midst of wild adventure and incessant travel from land to land; but it will be enough to assure you that the characters that I tell you of really lived and for all I know many are still living. When I tell you that an old cockatoo dropped down from the tropic sky on to a blue gum twig overhead and surveyed me with a sideways melancholy eye as I sat alone by my camp fire, be quite sure that that cockatoo lived and breathed, took stock of me and flew away into the sunset, and has doubtlessly dropped into the scrub, a small bunch of dead feather and bone, years ago.

At school I read more from the pages of romance than from school-books. At fourteen years of age the opportunity arrived, and secretly, with the help of an older friend, I succeeded in securing a berth on a full-rigged sailing ship, and, within four hours of my trembling carcass creeping up the gangway and down on to the great decks, I was before the masts going down Channel bound for Australia.

My recollections of the first few days are dim. The skies bobbed about, I swayed on deck, the brave old heroes of ages past flew out of my brain into the stormy moonlight and shrieked in the sails overhead, as my head swelled to the size of the dome of St Paul’s and I vomited. I longed to be home again. Alas! deep-sea sailing ships do not turn round and speed with haste for their native port in response to the feeble schoolboy’s tearful voice. I was done for! Hopes, glories, vast ambitions, all vanished! My thin legs trembled along on the decks till I staggered through a little cabin door and fell into my bunk. By some great oversight in the sea discipline I was allowed to sleep for five hours; I cannot remember to a certainty now, but I think I was drowned and died about a thousand times in that first off-watch sleep.

I soon recovered, and discovered that sea captains do not stand on the poop cracking jokes and shying oranges and coco-nuts up at the crew, as they laughingly toil among the sails. I also found that the Bo’sun wore very stout boots, and I have never met a man in my life who could kick so true and aim with such precision. Five years after, whilst I was in ’Frisco, I called on a phrenologist and speculated one dollar, and discovered that the contusion and everlasting bump formed at the back of my head by a Bo’sun’s belaying-pin was an inherited taint derived from the over-burdened brains of my passionate ancestors!

Well, I recovered my equilibrium, secured good sea-legs, went aloft, crawled along the yards, and helped to reef the sails. Often in the wild nights the sailors cursed and swore as I clung with might and main, my hands and teeth clinging to the rolling rigging up in the foremast top-gallants. My comrades shouted orders to me, their voices blown away on the thundering night gales, but I only heard the instinctive cry of self-preservation within me as the moon and the great beast-like clouds swayed like mighty pendulums across the night skies, swept from skyline to skyline, while the masts shivered to the roll and thunder of the broadside swell as the ship flew along at eighteen knots before the gale. Often I would gaze down deckwards, watching the praying figurehead’s lifted hands heaving skywards when the tropic moonlight made wonderfully brilliant the hills of bubbling foam over the bows as she dived and plunged along. I loved that figurehead, for often as I gazed from aloft on moon-bright nights it seemed to wear a strong resemblance to my dear mother, and with my legs curled round the yards aloft in the lonely sea-nights I would often look down and fancy in my dreams that her shadow ever moved along over the waters below the swaying jib-boom with extended hands, praying for me, as no one ever prayed for me before or since!

I slept amidships with the cook and three other apprentices. I was a favourite with them all, being of a cheerful temperament and a good fiddle player. Often in the off watches I would play old familiar strains while they joined in the rollicking chorus, awaking the silence of the lonely calm tropic nights in moving waters that belted the whole world, when the sails swayed silently along beneath strange stars, filled out at intervals like drums, then flopped, as the lazy tropic breeze once more sighed and fell asleep.

The old Scotch Captain heard me playing one night; he was a religious man and taught me some beautiful sea-hymns, and in due course I played in the cabin aft during Sunday service, when all the crew mustered, and John the cook, who swore and cursed most fearfully all day long in his galley, opened his big-bearded mouth and sung most expressively those old pious hymns, knocking even the Skipper out in melodious reverential pathos!

The dear old Skipper had brought his daughter with him. She was a pretty Scotch girl—a crew of thirty-six men, and one pretty girl and me! Well, I combed my hair, cleaned my teeth, gazed in my little bit of cracked mirror-glass fifty times an hour, for alas! the family failing asserted itself; I had fallen in love! I have never been what you would call really lucky in love, like some happy men; trouble always arose after the first embarrassment had worn off and I felt truly happy, and blessed the universe. And it was so in this my first love affair. One dark night as she stood in shelter by the bulwarks near the saloon door I was admiring her eyes and swearing eternal love, calling all the bright stars to be witnesses to my unchangeable fidelity, and just as I kissed her sweet white ear and, in my madness of love, breathed secretly through her beautiful dishevelled, scented hair, as it waved in the moonlight over her lovely curved shoulders, I received a tremendous clump from the old Skipper! That night I also received stern orders from the Chief Mate never to be seen near the saloon again after dark!

I crept into my bunk heartsick and wretched. The affair got about the ship. I was chaffed a good deal by the whole crew. Real old sea-salts they were. I can see them now as I dream, walking across the decks by moonlight, muffled up to the teeth in oilskins, some with big crooked noses, all with weary sea-beaten faces. Up aloft they go. Again I see their big figures move up the ratlings as they reach the moonlit sails, and climbing, vanish in the sky. All around is sky and water and stars, fenced in by eternal skylines, as the ship travels silently onward, a tiny grey-winged world under blue days, starry and stormy skies, towards a skyline that for ever fades, following sunset after sunset across boundless seas. They were a motley crew those sailors. Some read books, some believed in spirits, and some in beer, and one would tell us over and over again of his experiences in distant lands and his brave deeds and his wonderful self-sacrifices and many other virtues, not one of which he really possessed.

There was one old sailor who on arriving home on his last voyage found that his wife was dead. He would sit on a little empty salt-beef tub and tell me about his courting days and his “old girl who was one of the best,” the tears rolling down his coarse-looking face all the time. He was an extraordinary mixture; in one breath he would almost curse his wife’s memory, and in the next ask me if I thought there was really another world. He could not read or write, and seeing me play the violin and read music as well as books made me almost omnipotent to his sad old eyes. I remember well enough how my heart was touched by his manner and questions as I put on a wise air and convinced him of the soul’s immortality. I even went so far as to tell him that my dead relations had returned to my family as shadows from the other world, and the poor old fellow perched on his tub listened eagerly, believing all I said, and then went off and found his comrades, who sat playing cards by the fo’c’sle door, and laughed the loudest, till they all snored in the fo’c’sle bunks, half stupefied by the smoke and smell of ship’s plug tobacco. I have often seen them by the dingy fo’c’sle oil-lamp fast asleep, seared unshaved faces, all their worldly passions asleep, looking like big children, so innocent, as they snored away, and some of them who had fallen asleep whilst they were chewing tobacco dribbled black juice from the corners of their mouths, their big chests upheaving at each slumbering breath. Outside, just overhead, the night winds wailed and whistled weirdly in the rigging as the jib-boom swayed along, and at regular intervals came the thunder of the diving bows as the ship dipped and heaved and plunged along over the primeval waters.

Five months passed away on that ship. Storms blew from all directions and sometimes dead ahead and then we never slept. Hauling the mainsail up and tacking is more nuisance than flying before a thousand gales. To stand by the top-gallant halyards as comes the wind; to clew the main sky-sails up, singing chanteys, as you cling to the yards with a thundering gale smashing the highways of the water world into a myriad travelling hills as the wild poetry of the sea singing to the ears of the sailor, and I was never so happy as when the green chargers ramped across the world.

I shall never forget my delight as we were towed down Brisbane River, with the everlasting hills all around. I will not weary you with any more details beyond telling you that when we lay alongside the next night I hired a wharf loafer and got my sea-chest secretly ashore and bolted!

River Scene, Queensland

II

Stranded in Brisbane—I look for a Shop—Meet typical House Agent—The Vanity of Youth—I stock my Shop—Alone in the Bush—House Agent calls for Agreement Money and the Rent—I do a Moonlight Flit

As I have previously told you, all I am writing is the truth, so I must tell you that I never saw the Captain’s daughter again, but in my chest of old letters and unaccepted manuscripts I still keep her little notes, dropped near me on the deck of the ship that took me to Australia.

The atmosphere of a new world sparkled in my head as I stood in the old colonial town of Brisbane. It was a sweltering hot night, and as I stood by the river and gazed up the gas-lamp-lit streets, watching the passing Australian girls in many-coloured attires and the colonial “corn-stalks” in big hats slouching about, I felt a tremendous loneliness come over me, a strange homesick longing crept and crept, and from my heart to my eyes a mist arose. I have had many homesick breakdowns in my time, but never one as deep and sincere as I experienced standing there alone in that strange country. I was not yet fifteen years of age, and the thought of my being absolutely dependent on my own exertions was naturally a big oppression to a boy of my inexperience. I was tall for my age and looked two or three years older than I was. A good comrade by my side at that moment would have been untold wealth to me. Under a lamp-post I counted my money. I had just three pounds ten shillings! That night I slept in a little low lodging-house by North Quay. With daylight and a good breakfast my courage returned and I sat up in bed and played several old operatic airs on my violin. A week after I pawned it for three pounds.

I had made no friends. My money was going. I knew that I must get a job or meet disaster. The idea of starting work was most distasteful to me, and yet what was I to do? Walking along Queen Street one night I stood by a tea shop. I gazed at the window. My old school-chum’s father was a tea merchant and I had helped them to blend the teas in England, and as I stood there thinking, the thought suddenly occurred to me that I would start a shop and be a tea merchant.

The next day I tramped my legs off looking for a likely shop. I found the rents too high and moreover I had no references and the agents gazed suspiciously at my cheese-cutter hat. I at once bought a large big-rimmed straw hat in a second-hand shop, and on the advice of a more sympathetic agent than the rest I made for the outskirts of Brisbane. Here and there on the scrub-covered slopes were scattered wooden houses raised on posts. Upon a post board just off the main track I saw written “Jonathan Bayly, House Agent.” Taking my handkerchief out I carefully dusted my boots, wiped the sweat from my sunburnt face, walked into the little office room, and there came face to face with the gentleman whose name appeared on the board outside. I did not like the look of him at all. He had a long goat-like face and grew pointed whiskers on the chin only.

“Are you the House and Shop Agent?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said as he eyed me attentively.

“Oh,” I said, “I am looking out for a small shop which would be suitable for a tea shop.”

I had observed business men in London put on important voices and cough in an affluent way, and as he once more eyed me I made a bold effort, placed my hand in an affected way to my mouth and coughed in two little important jerks, swayed slightly on one leg and gazed round his office.

In a moment his manner changed. I had impressed him with the sense of my own assumed importance, and to clinch the coming deal, I dropped my remaining three sovereigns on the floor, picking them up carelessly as though they were buttons.

I have travelled the world over since, made deals with moneyed men, bought gold claims worth thousands of pounds, which I sold for a dollar—and glad to get it!—and done many more strange and unfortunate things in my time, but never since did I so completely gull a human being as I did that old colonial house agent—but nevertheless he did me also.

Taking down his big white helmet hat from a solitary peg, he placed it carefully over the three remaining hairs of his cranium, and bowed me out of the door to view the proposed shop. Walking off the main track he led me across the bush, and after walking for about one hour, he apologised for the distance and the solitary bush surroundings, telling me that the shop I was about to view was in an excellent position, inasmuch as it was in the centre of a proposed Township, and indeed when at last I stood by its little shanty-like front door I inwardly realised that it needed a good deal of apology on its behalf. A small broken-down shanty was the only other habitation in view for miles! The description of this shop’s position would sound like a silly attempt to be humorous. I only wish it were, for I took that shop! I listened to that old Agent’s palaver; I was only a boy and I had some dim idea in my head that gold-miners and bushrangers passed by it at regular intervals, and when he waved his arms about and pointed out the proposed spot for the Church, the Bank and the main streets, I choked down my misgivings and clinched the bargain. I took the place on a “seven years’ agreement with the option of a renewal of fourteen more years at the expiration of the aforesaid term.” Of course, all this long lease was proposed by the old Agent. I knew no more about agreements and expirations of leases than a baby, but as I signed the long important-looking document in his office that same afternoon, I carefully read it through and through as though I were taking my ninety-fifth shop, and did not intend to be taken in as I had been taken in before! Well, I signed it.

Next day I obtained the key and went into Brisbane, bought a pair of scales, some paper bags, a bottle of ink, a pen and one chest of cheap tea—I think it was fourpence a pound by the thirty-six-pound chest. I also got the manager of the wholesale department to send me ninety-five empty chests for show purposes. I was full of business. I kept thinking of my old father’s advice to my elder brothers when he said, “My sons, do not go in for professions, nothing succeeds like business; sell and trade in something that the world must have. Who wants poets, musicians and authors?—with their men and women made of moonrise!” And well was he able to speak on the subject, since he had reared a large family up by his pen, which is in no wise mightier than the sword in many cases, excepting when you sit concocting letters to your immediate creditors for kind consideration and more time before you pay up!

Well, I will proceed and tell you all about that shop, and you must remember that it is only a very minor detail in the story of my experiences to follow, as I slowly but deliberately unfold my travels and troubles, my love affairs and losses in Australia and the South Sea Islands.

Oh, the vanity and pride of youth! As I turned the key of my shop door and entered beyond the portals, placing carefully on the floor my parcel, which contained a cup and saucer, a small oil lamp and the few absolutely necessary things to sustain a decent domestic life, a thrill of extreme pride went through me. I gazed around the spacious room, my hands were itching to get hold of the ninety-five empty tea-chests and place them in commercial rows in the two large shop windows that gazed at the sunset like two mammoth glass eyes of melancholy and fate-like loneliness across the silent Australian Bush. Behind lay my back garden which also extended to the skyline!

I took a stroll around, and you can imagine my delight as I stumbled across some foundations already half dug out, which no doubt were for the future homesteads of the coming Township! They looked pretty old and I noticed that a young gum-tree had grown to a considerable height in one of them, but I did not stop to criticise; time, growth of gums and Townships were outside my experiences of life. I simply lent my imagination to the future scenery and saw myself a prosperous tea merchant; around me rose in the dreamy rays of the dying sunset the grey terraces of splendid villas; I heard the hum of human voices, the laughter of the bush children romping on the streets-to-be of that Unbuilt Township. Like a grey old pioneer of the desert, uncharted on the map of civilisation, stood my shop, and I the proud landlord, stroking the first sprout of down on my upper lip, gazed innocently around, and wondered what my kind old father would think of my first business move up the steps into the portals of the grim commercial world. I felt considerably bucked up at the splendid outlook, I even felt a tenderness springing up in my heart for that old Agent. He had patted me on the shoulder too, and told me that I was a plucky young chap with real business ability in my head!

Next morning, standing under my piazza, I spied a large carrier van rapidly moving across the thin track that divided the immense grey slopes of the outstretching country. It was my ninety-five empty tea-chests and one full one approaching me! The old colonial carrier grinned from ear to ear as he dumped the lot in my shop, smelt my sixpence twice, and placing it in his pocket, drove away leaving me once more alone in the vast solitudes.

Profiting by my memories of a tea shop in the Old Kent Road, I at once set to work and wrote on white cards, “Genuine Pekoe Ceylon Tea, 2/ per pound,” and underneath, in very bold letters, “The cup that cheers but does not inebriate.” Of course, in those days I knew nothing whatever of the Australian Bushman’s temperament; had I done so I should, of course, have written, “The cup that inebriates and cheers!”

Ah, how I remember my pride as I stood on the slope and gazed at my solitary shop window. Sunset was once more sinking into its saffron sea out westward, and sent over the hills a dying beam that touched as though with tenderness those words, written in big chalk letters over the doorway of my shop, “Middleton & Co., Tea Merchants.” As I gazed up at it I climbed once more on the old tub and added this after-thought, “late of London,” and the sunbeam died away as my eyes instinctively turned westward. I knew that that same sun was stealing round the world and those beams would steal likewise over the lattice windows of my sleeping parents, my brothers and my sisters, all dreaming and snoring in velvet comfort, and I wondered if they dreamed of me, and whether their wildest dreams could picture my shop and my heroic ignorance as the shadow of the Australian night crept over me and the parrots stirred in the leafy gums, and the innumerable frogs and locusts in the swamps hard by chanted a fit accompaniment to my retrospective dreams.

I tell you, I felt pretty lonely in that old place. I would stand at the shop door and watch the fleets of parrots and magpies sail away into the sunset, day after day. And oh, the lonely nights! I often would climb up to the extreme tip of a hill near by and stare across the scrub to catch the last gleam of the old Agent’s house; its slim brows far off would twinkle with good comradeship and cheered me up wonderfully.

Well, I think it was just about three weeks after my first opening of the shop that I was standing one evening at the door feeling pretty downcast; the sun was setting over the blue hills and the thickening shadows made the landscape look for all the world like a dried-up primeval ocean bed, and the weird scattered gums like the masts of old sunken wrecks, that through some strange freak of nature had burst into leaf. Suddenly on the distant range I saw a moving speck; my astonished eyes gazed steadily and then brightened with enthusiasm; it was a lonely horseman! Surely he would not pass by my shop without buying a pound of tea, thought I. What on earth could I do to attract him? A happy thought struck me. I rushed to my old sea-chest, out came my old bugle-horn, and placing it to my lips, I stood at that lonely shop door and gave three tremendous blasts, then watched. To my huge delight, as the echoes reverberating faded away over the silent steppes, the horseman altered his course; he was coming towards me!

He was a burly, brick-coloured, dusty-looking fellow, and as he sat astride by my shop door gazing first at me, then at my shop, and then again on the surrounding country, he coughed twice and spat over his shoulder. I felt extremely riled by his manner. Then he said, “How’s biz?” With good business forethought I replied, “Pretty good the last two days!” Then suddenly making a bold effort I asked, “Would you like to try a pound of my Pekoe?”

With a kindly look in his grey eyes he said, “Good tea I ’spose?” “Nothing to beat it,” I answered quickly.

Looking quietly across the country he remarked, “No complaints about its quality round these parts I bet.” Without another word he gave me two shillings, took the tea and galloped away.

I think it was about four days after selling that pound of tea that I spotted the Agent coming down the hill-side track right opposite my shop. The month was up, and the rent due!

“Well,” he said as I stood at the door and boldly faced him, “I’ve called for the rent.”

For a moment I fumbled in my pocket. I knew, to be an honourable citizen, I should pay my way and let all earthly considerations of sustaining existence and thoughts of the future go to the winds, but I had only fifteen shillings in the world, and the month’s rent was four pounds, and the cost of the agreement two pounds ten shillings. Pulling myself together I said, “Can you give me another month?”

“Not a day,” he answered hotly, and then looking up quickly asked, “Where’s the agreement money?”

Then I saw that my first boyish instincts were to be relied upon—the man was a hard-hearted scoundrel. I answered quickly, “Where’s the Township you spoke of?” At this he almost spat with rage, and thrusting his pointed whiskered chin in my face said, “Do you expect me to supply you with a Town as well as with a shop?”

I pretended to see some fine logic in that remark, quieted myself down, and then said, “Parrots, magpies, ’possums and mosquitoes do not buy tea, so how can I pay the rent?”

His temper now got the upper hand of him. “You’ve taken the shop,” he snarled; “where the hell’s your capital?”

On hearing him say this, the sudden inspiration that has stood me in such good stead in the sorrows and joys which I am going to tell you of, flashed in my brain, and I quickly answered, “You cannot supply a Town, and yet you expect me to supply capital. Put your Township here and I’ll soon show you the capital.” And then I trembled and forced a smile to my lips. He looked so dangerous that I did not know what might occur to me in those lonely parts. But he was only a bully after all. For a moment he looked me up and down with interest, and then said, “Can you pay me to-morrow?”

Pointing my trembling hand to my rows of empty tea-chests, I said, “Look here, I’ll go to Brisbane to-morrow, sell that tea at cost price, and you shall have your rent and the agreement money.” At this he turned and went away. That night I hastened off to Brisbane, hired a van, got my sea-chest out of that wretched shop and was never seen in any shop in those parts or anywhere else on earth again.

III

No Money—Sleeping Out—Bushed!—The Stockman’s Shanty

Stranded in Brisbane without a cent I slept down on the wharfs and sometimes curled my half-starved body up by the warm funnel of the deep-sea tramp boats. I will not weary you with the details of those days and nights, excepting to tell you that hundreds of English boys, and the pluckiest boys of your country too, go through all that I went through in the land of the Golden Fleece. I was soon in rags, sunburnt and miserable. I mixed with English and Colonial tramps, some good men and some no good; most of them wore shaggy beards and others tried to keep shaved and had forgotten their names in the attempt to lose their identity—sad “ne’er-do-wells” of the civilised world, who had hurried across the world to save their necks or preserve their liberty!

It is wonderfully easy to sink into the depths of Failure’s Hell. The human relics that make up the sad side of existence are fascinating folk, full of sarcastic wit and most of them of a sentimental turn of mind, and strange as it may seem, deep in their hearts better men than those who climb the heights of ambition on one leg—instead of crawling up on all-fours and dying of old age half-way up.

I remember one night while we were all sitting huddled in our rags round the funnel of the English Mail Boat, one old chap (at least he seemed old to me as I was only fifteen years of age) would sit by moonlight reading and writing poetry. He had fine eyes, and he and I got interested in each other, and I found out gradually that he was a University man, who in a moment of mental aberration had signed a cheque and passed it. He had travelled the South Seas, lived in Fiji, Samoa and Tonga, could quote all the poets and as far as I was able to judge wrote beautiful poems. When he read one of them to me, inspired by memories of his boyhood, I was quite touched and he noticed it by my eyes, and I with my impulsive temperament could have kissed that sad old mouth as the beautiful words trembled out of it and his face lit up to find that at last in the cold old world he had found an appreciative listener. Out of the big tail pocket of his ragged coat he pulled a dirty old bundle which was all of his poetic work. He read all the poems to me; the longer ones I could not understand, as they were on Greek subjects, but nevertheless I listened attentively, and now that I am older I thank God that I did. We slept for nights and nights in a wharf dust-bin together, and one night I waited and waited and he never came. I know he would have come if he were able to. I never saw him again; he and his poetry left me for ever—God bless him wherever he is.

After that I spent days and days trying to get a berth on one of the homebound ships, but there were so many looking for the same post that I gave it up as hopeless and eventually got a job in a tanning yard where they cured sheep and cow skins. Even after all these years I can still smell that yard under the tropic sun and the terrible odours of advanced putrefaction. My wages were thirty-five shillings a week. I stayed just three weeks, got my violin out of pawn and started fiddling on the public streets. After the second day I chummed in with an Italian harp-player. He taught me a lot of fine Italian melodies, and in a week we were the talk of Queensland capital. I used to stand by his side at night when all the streets were lighted up and put my whole soul into my playing as I thought of my proud old father and my sisters, and then with my big-rimmed Australian hat in my hand bowed to the street audience as they shied in the silver pieces. In two weeks I had eight pounds in my pocket, and as it always does happen, and will happen till the world ends, when I went to the post office there was a letter from home with four five-pound notes in it! How I would have jumped to get that a week before; but my heart was touched nevertheless by those kindly hands and tender thoughts across the world, heedful of my welfare.

Bidding my wizened dark-eyed old Italian harpist “Good-bye,” I made for the bush, and travelled north. I had a comrade with me. He was not a bad fellow—hailed from the East End of London, was utterly devoid of romance, and swore fearfully. As we slept out in the bush at night I cheered him up by playing the fiddle, till we both lay down side by side, our feet towards the camp fire, and slept.

I shall never forget that bush tramp. For three weeks we toiled along, our swags on our backs, from steep to steep, and from plain to plain, nothing but vast solitude and sweltering silence broken at intervals by the fleets of large parrots migrating across the tropic skies; as they passed overhead we would hear their dismal mutterings, till their curling wings faded away over the gum clumps on the everlasting skylines of the oceans of hills and plains around us.

Brisbane was about one hundred miles away. Day after day we continued our voyage across those everlasting seas of grey scrub and rock. The tropic sun belching down with full vigour raised blisters as big as soap bubbles on our bare necks; they would often burst and bring us great relief. Our supplies were running short, and we had got off the track and were completely bushed! The stiff bush grass tore the ends of our trouser legs completely away, and we looked terrible scarecrows, and got thin too. Often we would climb the highest steeps and gaze around in the hope of seeing some sign of human habitation. We were indeed two sad castaways on seas of desolation, moving slowly onward on sore feet under the tropic sun. As we sat by our camp fire at night my comrade would curse me for bringing him to such a God-forsaken country, indeed all my own valour vanished as we lay curled together in the darkness of that endless bush and heard the dingo’s wail as its creeping feet explored the waste far away.

One night, over the hills far off on the skyline, regiments of ragged gum-trees suddenly burst into view, as up crept the white Australian moonrise. We sat up and stared into each other’s eyes for company. I shall never forget the terror that made our teeth chatter. I gripped my revolver (I had bought it and a tin of one hundred cartridges before starting off from Brisbane). There far away on the steeps, like a monstrous human shadow, moved something, leaping from steep to steep like some ghastly spring-heeled Jack. The perspiration rolled down our faces. We were both speechless as we stood up and gazed at that terrible sight. Instinctively we clutched each other, as that terrible Aboriginal came towards us; up went our trembling hands in the moonlight. We shook visibly as we leaned against each other for support, and fired the six chambers of our revolvers in rapid succession. The hills echoed and re-echoed that cannonade; the enemy fell and we fainted! I poured some water down my comrade’s throat and half raised him up.

At daybreak, crestfallen and miserable that we had killed it, my chum and I buried the fallen enemy, a poor old man kangaroo!

Forest Track, “out-back”

Two days after that incident we were both hard at work pulling pumpkins and stacking straw on the cleared bush ground of a shanty. The stockman was a good fellow, he treated us kindly and rigged us both out in decent trousers. I had fine times at that lonely bush homestead. The stockman’s wife took a great fancy to me, and they would sit together by their shanty door, after the day’s work, and listen to my playing on the violin as though an angel had fallen from the clouds specially to entertain them. They had three little girls, plump little sunburnt girls too. They all loved me. How they romped with me, and how they cried when I went away! The stockman’s wife shed tears, and the old fellow’s voice sounded husky as he wished me “Good luck,” and those three little girls, with their bright eyes, wet with tears, are still looking up into my boyish sunburnt face, and their dear little hands still wave on the ridge of the steep as I ride away for ever, fading from their sight.

My companion got work on another station and found another comrade more suitable to his temperament than I. He swore that I was mad.

IV

My first Whiskies and Sodas—And after!—Secure Position as a Violinist in Orchestra—We stow away—Sight the South Sea Islands—Samoa

Once again I arrived in Brisbane, and walking up the main street, feeling rather down in the mouth, I was suddenly thrilled by meeting an old school chum out from England. We almost fell into each other’s arms. As soon as we had both recovered from our mutual astonishment, I inquired and learnt that he was working as a clerk in one of the Brisbane wholesale establishments. I had seven pounds in my pocket when we met that night. I went with him into my first public-house, and started on whisky and soda! I have made up my mind to tell the whole truth, in this the book of my life, and so I must tell you to my utter shame that I got fearfully drunk.

How it really occurred I do not know. My comrade was evidently used to intoxicating refreshments and showed huge delight as I got more and more excited. I did not know what had come over me. After the third whisky I felt an intense tenderness creep over me for everyone in the bar. The whole street got to know I was in that wretched place. I smacked my old school chum on the back over and over again, and as the old sailors and cunning old Colonial loafers poured into the bar and called me a fine and splendid young fellow, I shouted hurriedly for “deep seas,” “schooners,” “whiskies,” and all the thousand orders which they poured into my ears. I was not too far gone not to notice the “old salts” wink at each other as they lifted their tremendous glasses and clinked them one against the other, drinking my health and long life, as with pride I paid. That night, when I eventually got on to my bed, the room whirled round and round, and slowly sank into vast depths of infinity, and I became insensible. I will not describe my feelings the next morning, as it would make woeful reading, but I will tell you this, I have never drunk whiskies and sodas since, and so the “ill wind” blew into me a deal of good.

In the next room to me lodged a violinist, and he could play too. I introduced myself to him and he gave me several good lessons and recommended me to some good studies. I told him my tale, and to my delight he got me a job as violin player in the Brisbane Theatre. It was an easy matter for him to do this, as he was the leader of the orchestra. I shall never forget the novelty of those first nights, and the sights as the stage beauties whirled round and round, cocked their legs skyward, and bowed with blushing modesty as the audience loudly cheered. I have never seen anything like those sights, not even in the Fiji and Samoan Islands, where I met women attired in half of a coco-nut shell, and stalwart brown men standing under beautiful blue skies as nude as Grecian statues, and yet not half so nude as white women wearing only about a quarter of their clothes.

Sickening of orchestral life, I bade my few friends farewell, and sailed for Sydney. The harbour struck me as very beautiful, also the city itself, with its long streets—Pit Street, George Street and the parallel streets—along which thundered, in those days, the big engines of the steam trams.

Alas! ill luck befell me, my money was soon all spent. I strove to get into the theatre again; but the whole of Italy was standing at the door offering their services for a macaroni-living wage, and I was done for, as they were mostly good players and old in experience. I hastily wrote home to England, begging them to send me some cash. In those days however it took quite three months to get a reply, and long before the letter-due period was near I was once more stranded and sleeping on North Shore Ferry boats and on the Domain, chummy with the old unfortunates again, as like mammoth rats we crept through cracks and slept the sleep of the downcast and weary.

One day I made the acquaintance of two more lads who were about my own age. They had been sleeping out in sheds for weeks, and were both half-starved, and that afternoon we went down on the wharf of Circular Quay together, and watched a ship unloading fruit and bananas. Taking our opportunity, we stole a fine bunch of the latter. I shall never forget how we enjoyed that gorgeous feed, as we sat in the Domain hard by and shared out our stolen meal. My comrades were both English fellows. That same afternoon we decided to stow away on a large tramp steamer—I believe it was a “Blue Anchor Boat.” At dusk that very night, as she lay alongside, getting up steam so as to sail next morning, we three crept up the gangway, and after asking the chief steward and the chief officer if there was a chance of “working our passages home” we waited our opportunity and stole down the stokehold ladder at dark, as quiet as three mice, right down into the big ship’s depth, and lay by the coal bunkers all curled up together on some old sacks. For a long time we whispered together, full of glee at the thought of such easy success in getting away from Sydney, all Homeward Bound!

About midnight, we fell asleep. Suddenly I was awakened by footsteps, and coming down the iron ladder right over our heads I saw the big boots of a man. Quickly pulling the peak of my cheese-cutter cap over my eyes I pretended to sleep. My chums were both snoring beside me, and, as I once again peeped under the rim of my cap, I saw by the figure’s uniform that it was the Chief Engineer. He struck a match and looked at a steam-gauge, and just as I thought that he was going up again on deck, and that we were undiscovered and safe, he turned and spotted us three boys curled there upon the old sacks, all asleep as he thought. For a moment he gazed down upon us, and then without a word crept away. I quickly awakened my two comrades, and told them. They would not believe me at first, but eventually I convinced them, and we all quietly climbed up the ladder and bolted. He had seen us there, three pale-faced starved boys curled together, and it had touched him, and now that I am older I know that he would never have split, wishing to give us a chance to get away back to our native land. And though we did not profit by his kindness, I often think of the tenderness that made that rough sea-engineer creep up to the decks and keep a still tongue for the sake of the three little stowaways.

Next morning we saw the ship sail away half steam ahead across the Bay; round the Point her stern passed out of sight as we three stood gazing wistfully close together on the wharf. Away she went, with the white hands of the passengers waving farewells, and in my dreams I saw her pass through Sydney Heads, and heard her thundering screw start as she passed out into the ocean and rolled away full speed ahead on the long, long track Homeward Bound for England—and I cried myself to sleep that night.

I soon sickened of that life, I can tell you, and one day out at “Miller’s Point” I saw alongside the wharf a schooner which I had been told was bound for the South Sea Islands. I was lucky and secured a berth before the mast, and next morning as dawn crept over Sydney I was aboard her, flying through the “Heads” into the Pacific Ocean before a stiff breeze, with all sails set, bound for the Islands.

That night it blew like hell, and the ship almost turned upside down. I was not used to the tumbling of small craft, which is very different to the roll and heave of big ships, and so became terribly sea-sick. While I was aloft that night I brought up my dinner and tea, the whole of which was caught by the terrific wind and slashed on to the deck into the face of the skipper and the man at the wheel. By Jove! they did swear! But sailors are rough and forgiving, especially when you play the fiddle to them, as I did in the calms that followed that cursed gale and my illness.

In three weeks we sighted the first Island. At first it looked like a huge coco-nut sticking out of the calm shining sea afar, and as we got nearer we saw that it was quite a decent little world about 300 yards across and 100 wide. A big crag, its population consisted of one hut, an old man and two daughters. They were quite nude, and running out to the extreme end of a small promontory they waved their thin long brown arms, and showed their white teeth, as we flew by with full sails set, 300 yards off.

It was a most novel sight to me to see those lonely people on that old rock out there in the wide Pacific. How they lived, and what they lived there for, heaven only knows—I don’t.

As sunset faded into saffron and crimson lines along the skyline that tiny isle faded away into the infinity of travelling darkness for ever following the sunsets around the globe, and I and the crew of eight, all told, lit our pipes and sat on deck as the schooner, urged by the increasing wind which always sprang up after nightfall, crept over the primeval waters, the sails filling out and flopping at longer intervals. The crew were rough sailormen, two were Englishmen and four came from “Frisco,” the cook was a mixture of Chinese and nigger blood,—a most extraordinary-looking being he was too, with his frizzly dark hair, slit-almond eyes, and thin yellow teeth dividing the lips which incessantly gripped a long pipe. He and I had no love for each other. I caught him spitting in a tin pannikin, and wiping it clean with his claw-like hand as he put my dinner on and handed it to me. I took it, and turning on my heel gave my arm a full-length swing and over the side it went into the Pacific! By Jove! he did glare viciously at me. After that I always carried my own plate to the galley and placed my food carefully upon it myself.

Daybreak was stealing over the seas as the steep mountainous shores of Samoa burst through the skyline ahead.

At midday the anchor dropped into the calm waters of the Bay. Out from the beach, where the thundering surf leaped over the barrier reefs in the sunlight like showers of broken rainbows, came the out-rigged catamarans, swarming with savage faces. I shall never forget that strange sight of wild men dressed in their own skins, and rough-haired women too, bare as eggs. Along they came paddling and singing weird tunes that sounded like the dark ages in dismal song to my trained ears. Behind the strings of those canoes swam the mothers. On their wave-washed backs clung their tiny brown babies. The bright maternal eyes gleamed, and the wistful tiny bright frightened eyes of the infants shone, as they rode securely on the brown soft backs of those original old mothers of the sea-nursed South!

Behind them stretched the shores of their island home, thickly clad with big tropical trees, big fan-like leaves shimmering in the distance. In a few moments their naked feet were pattering on the deck of our ship. We all made a rush to save our belongings from their thieving hands, as they rushed under our very noses, like big children, to collar all that attracted their bright alert eyes.

That night off I went in one of the catamarans with the rest of the crew. On the beach we met half-castes and white traders loafing and spitting by the sweltering grog shanties and Samoan women were also loafing around. I eyed them with great curiosity. They were nearly naked; some were dressed in cloth loin-strips only; others, leaning against posts smoking and chewing, were dressed in some sailor’s old discarded shirt.

Never in my life have I seen such handsome women and men as some of those Samoans were—fine eyes, splendid physiques, the men standing nearly six feet in their skins. Beautiful heads of hair they had too, both the men and the women, and they were full of song; and when I thought of the white men of my own country, with pimply, dough-coloured skins, bald heads and stumbling gait, with pens behind shrivelled-up ears and eyes gleaming worlds of woe, as they were pulled up to London Town in the train every morning and every night pulled back again, my heart was touched over the sadness of the lot of the working people of the British Isles.

V

I extemporise Stirring Music on my Violin at Native Weddings—Dethroned Queens and Kings—Meet Papoo

I am now going to tell you about Samoa and Samoan folk just as my eyes saw them. My ship sailed away, but I was not on board of it. The Samoan climate suited my health, and I found decent fellows living there who made jolly companions. One of them was a reformed German missionary who had mended his ways, left off the drink and toiled honestly on a coco-nut plantation which helped him to eke out a living for his accepted wife and family. They were pretty little children too—I knew them all well, thirteen altogether, some with blue-black eyes and some grey-black eyes. All had a tiny splash of white on their tiny plump bodies; their mothers were as brown as pheasants’ eggs and mostly fine-looking women.

For a week I lodged with a dark old Samoan who had a kind of bungalow on the beach. The walls were lined with the most beautiful South Sea shells. He traded with them, and I believe did a good business with sailors and traders. He certainly made more headway than I ever did in my tea shop. Well, I found my violin was a real fortune to me. I got in with all the wealthy Samoan chiefs and attended Samoan weddings; far away in the depths of the forest it was I who played and composed on the violin at those South Sea forest festivals. Stirring music! The hotly blushing bride, dressed in her bridal robe—her hair only!—which ruffled as the breeze of the cool forest kissed her innocent nakedness, was given away to the modest Samoan happy youth, and you must forgive me, dear reader, whoever you are, and remember I was only a romantic boy, when I tell you that my whole soul envied that youth! I was young and inexperienced in the ways of Western and Southern life, and I at first thought that the Samoan ladies were rather loose in their morals. I am older now, and I tell you this—the morals of the South Sea men and women place the morals of our Western life completely in the shade.

Certain phases of life in London could never occur in the South Seas, and even were the women inclined to traffic with their comeliness, the South Sea Samoan chief’s war-club never misses!

Coconut Palm in full fruit

At night I would steal up the steep shore hills under the mangroves and coco-palms and creep into the tiny dome-shaped dens, which were the homesteads of the native men and women of those South Sea isles. They all got to know me and trust me, and I often would share their meals as they sat squatting around their big earthen steaming pots wherein they cooked fish and peculiar-smelling vegetables. The heat of those dens was terribly stifling to me with my clothes on, and I would very soon make tracks and get outside, and from those steeps I would gaze out seaward at the vast calm Pacific trembling into silver under the South Sea moon, as the phosphorus-sparkling waters at intervals curled and broke to silvery waves up the shore, by the mirroring palm-sheltered lagoons. On the beach through patches of moonlight passed the loafing half-caste traders and huddled groups of Samoan women with their tiny black children running round and round them like big black rats.

Laoleo, a Marquesan, was my special comrade on those nights out. He was the son of one of the South Sea queens who had seen her day—far away on one of the lonely Atolls, her beauty faded and mouth mumbling and toothless, she sat dreaming of her glorious past, and found life still sweet in living over the memories of all that had been. Laoleo’s father was in my time a dethroned king. I saw him once as he sat by his den. He was fat and squatty, only had one big yellow tooth, a large head, cute twinkling eyes and fearfully wrinkled brows, and when he wrinkled them up, as he thought of his past, he looked like some grim personification of the dark ages cast into human frame.

I shall never forget the great prayer-chanting night. Laoleo took me into the inland scrub one night, and there, in the forest by their dens, chanting to their ancient gods, sat the old naked chief and his big brown wives and daughters, some with their ridis on, but most of them attired only in their hair and modest smiles.

It was a beautifully calm night. Overhead from seaward crept cooling winds, drifting damp odours from wild flowers and orange-tree scents from the shore lagoons and palm-forest glooms. Round and round whirled the nude maidens of that strange world, swaying their bodies in lyrical beauty and over their heads in rhythmic movement their long curved brown arms. The men squatting around slowly moved their big brown bodies to and fro, chanting weirdly all the time. By his big domed den sat the dethroned king, Laoleo’s father. There he sat rehearsing his grand past, his large thin feet on a little mat, his chin pointing towards heaven, his face once more alive with revived majesty as his warrior chiefs around him swayed their clubs, calling down the spirits of the mighty dead to bless that old king and their own brave selves. Young Laoleo and I stood in the shadows watching them all. As for me, I felt a bit nervous—they all looked so different sitting round there with inspired eyes bright with memories of their glorious past, wondrous battles and beautiful cannibalistic feasts, memories of the bygone days when they nibbled their choice old friends, found them of sweet dispositions and wept over tender memories.

Through the spread tree-tops gleamed pale stars, and peeping through the hut doors hard by, among the coco-palms, through big leaves gazed the wistful eyes of their small brown naked babies—like tiny shadows of unborn children peeping from infinity into the dim regions of moonlit reality.

How the memories return to me as I write on. It was on that very night which I have just described that I, the son of a proud English gentleman of ancient family, fell in love with a South Sea Island woman, ten years older than myself. You shall hear something of my downfall. I loved and lost, and cried in my heart as I lay alone in my hut on a lone Pacific isle over the grief, the breakdown that has stricken men since the days of our first grief-stricken parents, old Adam and sad Eve. I have not told you before, but several days preceding the events which I have just spoken of, Laoleo and I were down in one of the shore grog shanties, talking and yarning to the batches of beachcombers, as they loafed in the sultry glooms by the coco-palms, smoking and spitting and playing cards—some of them the black sheep of the civilised world, who were never known to be really sober—when an exceedingly beautiful Samoan girl of twenty-six years of age came in and sat just by my seat as I played the fiddle. She was accompanied by her father, an old chief. She had an attractive, insinuating face, and as she sat there, half-leaning against a post, her brown naked soft velvet figure looked like some beautiful sculptural work of art. Silently she sat as I played on, her shining eyes gazing astonished at my white sunburnt face, and not till I had finished the fiddling, and the drunken old half-caste trader had finished his jig and swaggered up to the bar for another dose of stuff called brandy, did her eyes blink and her lips part in a smile of pleasure that revealed her white teeth. She gave me such a look as she sat there, dressed only in a narrow tappa loin-strip, that I quickly riveted all my attention on an attempt to tune up my violin, so as to hide the hot blush that flamed to my ear tips.

VI

Contrasts—A South Sea Bar-room—I meet Robert Louis Stevenson—An Old Time Trader’s Morals—Shell-backs

Alas, a good many of those brown men and women of the old days have passed away for ever, and in their place, over the islands of the South Seas, roam the varied offspring of men from many lands, the half-caste children of white traders, Chinese mongrels, Polynesian niggers, descendants of wandering, adventurous viciousness, mixed up with the outcasts of civilisation, and more often than quite enough the puny offspring of touring American and German missionaries, and English too. I don’t know which has won in the race to populate the lonely and beautifully secret-keeping isles of those far-away seas, but I think the good old flag is still to the front, flying to the breeze, represented in the sparkling, dancing eyes of the romping children on the wooded South Sea slopes—pretty violet eyes they have too, some grey and some grey-brown, little laughing angels of innocence, as they gaze up at you and go tumbling head over heels, revealing their tiny plump white-splashed backs, and the good old missionary sprees hidden in the dark of the unrecorded! For true it is that sometimes the virtuous and the good have their weak moments, those sad lapses which are not on any account recorded in the delightfully innocent autobiography of the returned, weary but still earnest traveller, beautifully written, and sold for ten shillings and sixpence net, circulated among the numerous British, German, and American Christian Societies, and read by the benevolent old gentlemen and ladies of their native land, which is so overrun with poverty and misery.

I knew one old Samoan chief, who was a cute, intellectual fellow, and could speak “pigeon English” well enough to ply me with numerous questions concerning my native English land. I often remember how his bright eyes lit up with astonishment when I told him of the far-away sorrows of London Town, so different to the warm moonlit forest of his own Island. I told him how men slept on door-steps, shivering, clothed in verminous rags which fluttered in the cold night winds as they half covered starved skin and bone of dead men who still breathed—men who had dropped out of the fighting ranks of life, lost the forlorn hope, and did not believe in God, for they had sorrowed in life and found hell in the death of breathing-despair. I told him of tiny wistful eyes of children starving as they gazed into shop windows watching the mist rise from the steaming foods, and yet nothing in their little pinched bellies. I told him of vast cathedrals pointing their steeples up to the grey English skies, costing millions of money to build, while far below their stone walls, stealing along the wet cold streets, those tiny trembling prayers, God’s helpless children, crept without food and clothing. I told him of women, dishevelled and weary, sleeping out on the Embankment and huddled in dark corners and ditches, some fallen through drink, and some through loving too well the man who had betrayed their trust; and I told him of their more fortunate sisters who had loved and been unbetrayed by the object of their lucky trust, and how terribly bitter those very women were towards their fallen, lost sisters. I was young then, otherwise how much more could I have told the astonished old chap as he raised his eyes and hands to heaven and wiped the perspiration from his heathen brow!

Yes, to hear how we lived under the banner of the sign of the Cross, wherefrom only the shadow falls over the pale-faced multitudes as they tramp to the clank of the chains of conventionality, chains gold-plated with eighteen-carat hypocrisy.

“And then Englis come to here,” he said, as he opened his South Sea mouth in astonishment. He was an unmarried man, and having no fine-looking daughters had not suffered as some of the Samoans had, the why and the wherefore I leave the reader to guess. I also leave the reader of my autobiography to remember that the South Sea Islands’ so-called savages are men just like ourselves, with inclinations and dreams and religions based on mythology and the gods of their ancient histories, and were they a powerful and mighty race, owning three parts of the world, with all the advantages of climatic conditions and education that the Western world has had, they would most assuredly emigrate from their Isles and seek to reform men to their ways of thinking, and doubtless they would find a good harvest in our modern cities for their pious endeavours. I am sure we should all, under their influence, make a grand stride towards that far-off goal of perfect good. I know that there are many men stealing across the earth who do not think as I think, but this is the autobiography of my life, and not of another life.

I was a lad in the days that I am telling you of, and had the opportunities that other men who were older and more respected did not get. I have often rushed in where the angel feared to tread, and the devil also. R.L.S. and others only saw the traders, the Samoans and other tribes, as they stood before him in one light, and the missionaries with the halo of feverish goodness to reform shining around their brows. I was a boy, my opinion unrespected, a young beachcomber who knew more than they thought he did, so they let go, and out came the true man, glorious and joyous in the wild sprees of those long-ago Samoan nights! Mind you, there were good men in the South Seas of those days, but over most of their heads, in the cemetery where the whites were buried, the flowers grew. I have stood gazing on those forgotten graves at sunset and wondered what dead desires lay beneath those crosses and stones, what sad crimes and what memories of their native lands, for the Islands, as well as Australia, were the happy hiding places of men who were flying from justice, and were I to tell you the yarns, the terrible tales of escaped innocence being hunted and cursed through miscarriages of justice, I should have to fill a book with nothing else but those tales.

I will now return to where I left the South Sea Island girl Papoo, for that I discovered was her name. As the drunken trader swayed to his tub and her frizzly-headed brown father rolled a tobacco leaf into a cigarette with two fingers and stood by the one-roomed Samoan Hotel I spoke to the girl who had so attracted my attention.

“You like music,” I said.

“Nein spoke,” she answered, but her eyes spoke for her, and I shifted my seat and got closer and read that poem of curves and shoulders, bright eyes and hair, yes, all the mystery of a woman’s eyes, lit by the magic light of sincerity.

I will not tell you all the many details of my romantic love affair; but I can often hear in my dreams the cry of the night bird and the hushed intervals, as the sea-surf rose and thundered over the shore barrier by the forest track near Vaea Mountain’s thickly wooded slopes as I sat by Papoo and made love to her, just the very same as English boys do to the girls in the London suburbs to-day. Papoo was just the same in her manner, modest to a fault, betraying her modesty by adding another garment over her ridi, which looked to me very much like the half of a discarded red nightshirt of some cranky old skipper. I played the violin to Papoo by the thatched hut where she lived and she sang weird Samoan songs, which stealing into my ears from her lips trembled with lyrical beauty, the soul of which was in my own head. Nights followed nights and I would creep behind her thatched hut on all-fours and meet her secretly. I got so deeply in love with her that I asked her to clear from the Island and go with me to Australia; and then the end came, in the sense that we could not meet so often. Her father found us out! I thought he would kill me at first, but the anger in his dark eyes sank down and he jabbered in South Sea lingo tremendously for a time. I hung my head and pretended to be heartily ashamed of myself, and so he forgave me, but kept his weather eye on me just the same; and my dear Papoo crept in the hut door, gazed over her shoulder at me as she disappeared, and pointed to the shore, and I knew that she would meet me and bolt at the first opportunity.

It was the day after that episode that I was sitting by a dead banyan-tree, when a white man, whom I thought was a rather respectable trader, emerged from the forest just by. It was Robert Louis Stevenson. He had intellectual keen eyes and a sad emotional-looking face, and looked a bit of a dreamer. Of course I did not know him then, nor can I remember much what he said at that moment. I know that I had climbed a tree and was looking at a bird’s egg when he came up to me and asked me what bird’s egg it was; I could not tell him, but I did as he requested, climbed up the tree and placed it back into the nest. Had I known he was a great author and poet I should have taken more stock of him. I remember that we strolled across the slope together and I gave him some tobacco and climbed several more trees as he stood below calling up to me to show him the eggs. It was not till nearly a week after, when I was on the beach talking to a trader friend who said to me “That’s Stevenson, the writer,” that I asked about him, but even then I did not gather that he was as famous as he was. I remember the very next day as I and Papoo lay hidden by some coco-palms we saw him lying full length, leaning half on his elbow gazing seaward, writing now and again on a slip of paper that he held in his hand. He had his boots off, for they stood beside him. I think he must have been bathing in one of the creeks by the Bay and afterwards crept up to the seclusion of the banyan-trees to dream and write down his thoughts. Papoo and I watched him for a moment, and then arose and stole away, as she had the household duties to attend to and I did not want her father to catch her again.

Almost every night I would go down by the beach and mix with sailors and traders—men from all countries they were, a good many Germans among them, especially when the Lubeck arrived from Sydney, bringing passengers and a varied cargo. The crew would come ashore and have a regular spree, some of them drinking the vile concoction sold at a shanty bar by the beach. There was one old chap who hailed from “Nuka Hiva.” He would sit drinking and smoking and yarning away for hours, telling us his experiences; he knew all the Islands, had been married over and over again, and as he was growing old and infirm through drink and temper (for he had a terribly fiery head) he would sit and curse the memory of his numerous family, not one of whom would help him. He had grown-up sons and daughters on most of the Isles of the South Seas round about; some of his children were as blackish as their mothers, and some half white and half brown. He would sit for hours while I played and strummed on the violin, telling me of the strange habits of the different tribes and their marriage customs. We would sit together and roar with laughter as he (half drunk) crawled on the shanty floor illustrating the way he solemnised the marriage of his eighth wife in Fiji, describing how he kissed her feet, and how he went through ceremonies of a most extraordinary kind in the many weddings that he had attended as bridegroom. I could not very well write here the tales he told, and moreover I do not believe all that he said was true, though he would pull his billy-goat whiskers, lift his hat from his extraordinary high bald head, and seal every detail with a blasphemous oath of “God’s truth.” He was interesting at first, but I soon wearied of his adventures, for he told the same yarn night after night, and as I slept in the same room with him my life became a burden to me. Just as I was going off to sleep he would suddenly sit up, half drunk, and say: “Did I ever tell you of my marriage with Betsy Brownlegs, the Fiji chief’s daughter?” And then, notwithstanding that I quickly answered “Yes, you have told me and everyone else in Samoa,” he would sit up and start off, pouring out the old tales.

Native Girl, Samoa

One night I got him in a decent mood, played him some old English songs, and then he revealed the best side of his character, that all men have, and with tears in his eyes looked up at me and said, “Matey, that ’ere old song makes me remember—she sang that, and I killed her!” And then out came the sorrow of his life, why he was a drunken exile in the South Seas. As a young man when in England, for he was an Englishman, he had fallen madly in love with a pretty girl in a Kent village. All went well for a time; then a rival came on the scene who was more polished than poor Hornecastle, and the object of his affections cooled down towards him and gave every encouragement to the suitor who wore a top hat and white cuffs. I can still see the gleaming of Hornecastle’s eyes as he told me of that rival of his, how he caught his village sweetheart one night sitting on a stile with the top hat hanging on a post beside her and the cuffs round her neck. “I did for her,” he said; “I meant the shot for him.” And then, though many years had passed since that tragedy which had made him fly from his native land, the tears of remorse crept up to his eyes, but they quickly brightened as he told me that he had read in an old newspaper that the second shot had succeeded, and his rival had died in the hospital. So ended my strange comrade’s courtship—the girl and the rival in the grave, and Hornecastle an exile in the South Seas, and on the slopes his many wives and children romping with glee, brought into existence by the top hat and white cuffs episode. How strange and inscrutable are the ways of Fate.

I made the acquaintance of another old chap who had a mania for eating hard-boiled eggs. He had been a sailor, travelled the world over, done many misdeeds and many good ones. He spoke with a Yankee twang and I believe was an American. He would sit in the grog shanty telling all the traders and sailors in the bar, when his turn came round, of other lands, and invariably finished up by condemning the country in question or praising it according to the quality of the hard-boiled eggs that he had eaten while residing there. They were real old “Shell-backs,” the men of those days, had sailed the seas, lived on “hard tack,” slept “all standing” in wind and rain, and as the various yarns were told they would listen and quietly sip their beer, spitting over their shoulders out of the grog shanty windows without missing, in a way that struck me as wonderful. They were wild times, those that I am writing of, not so long ago either, as I am still a young man. You see I started young and saw more of life before I reached man’s estate (which is the only estate I ever possessed) than a good many men see in their threescore and ten years. As I write and dream on I can see those Isles glittering under the tropic sun, with the shoreward surfs rising and breaking into rainbow-flushed colours, thundering over the reefs. They are still breaking and curling to spray out there, as on the beach through the tracks of moonlight pass and repass the semi-savage-looking figures of Samoan men and women, and still I can hear the songs of those who fish in the Bay as they glide along from shore to shore in the strange outrigged canoes, while the half-caste and white traders loaf, lean, smoke and spit by the shore shanties, tugging at their short beards.

Time went on till Papoo and I drifted apart, and since I must tell the truth, this being no romance, one of her own tribe courted her. She still had her eye on me, but the novelty was wearing off, and I went off to Tonga in a small trading schooner. When I returned to Samoa after about six months, I found that Papoo and her family had left the Island. I never saw her again, and so ended my second love affair.

VII

I go cruising amongst the Islands—Arrive in Sydney—Wharfers looking for Work—I go off hunting for Gold—Meet R. L. Stevenson at Sea

Once more the wandering fever came over me, and wishing old Hornecastle good-bye and my few other friends, I shipped in a schooner bound for the Fijis. For two or three months I roamed with her from isle to isle, saw the various tribes of original mankind of all the South Seas, heard their songs and squatted with them in their little huts as the children of past bloodthirsty cannibals said grace over their meals to the great pride of the onlooking missionaries, who have done a deal of good notwithstanding their own sins.

After a week’s stay at Vanua-Levu we proceeded for the Australian coast, and I arrived once more in Sydney Harbour and there once again I fell in with sailors. There they were, a ragged chain of shoulders on the wharf, mostly men of forty to fifty years of age, stalwart and sunburnt relics of better, or worse, days. Still they stood, watching with weary eyes for work, tugging grizzly beards and moustaches, smoking plug tobacco or fiercely chewing in the hot sunshine, arguing the point over the latest trade union grievance, spitting over their shoulders with the same wonderful precision and fate-like persistence. And still they stand there, at least the younger ones; the older ones are now dead, asleep in the “Necropolis” out at “Rookwood,” with all their grievances at rest and their dried-up chewing gums silent for ever, the cry for higher wages for ever entombed!—while their pals stand down by Sydney Bay and now and again in the long silent watch of many years wipe their noses with their outstretched thumb and forefinger and break the silence by some brief remark, such as “Poor pal Bill, whenever I sees the old windjammers being tugged out across the Bay I thinks of ’im and the good old days before the mast, before we joined the trade union, and now he’s dead, I wonder where he is.” Then, by way of punctuation, the reminiscent loafer spits out a thin swift stream of black tobacco juice.

I soon tired of the wharf monotony, and finally, hearing of the gold discoveries of those times, the fever got hold of me and I resolved with a friend, whose spirit seemed very much like my own, to go up country and see if we could find gold ourselves. The gold discoveries were far away in Western Australia, but I got an idea in my head that gold was to be found in New South Wales. I bought a blanket, a billy can and other necessaries for bush exploitation, and we started off by taking tickets on the Newcastle night boat. It took one night to get round, and next morning we started off. I remember we passed some old coal-mine shafts and then tramped along a main track with tall gums each side of us. We were happy together. My comrade was a Scotch fellow, stolid and full of dry humour, and I believe he would have marched on for years without complaining so long as he could smoke. At midday, both tired and hungry, we hailed the driver of a cart that came across some paddocks to the right of us. He was an Australian farmer and a kind fellow we found him. I shall never forget his jolly laughter and the twinkle of his eyes when I told him we were “travelling up country in search of gold,” as we sat up there beside him and the Australian buck-jumper galloped along at about four miles an hour. He put us down about four miles outside of Maitland. It was an old-fashioned, sleepy-looking place, and as we tramped through the main street, with our cheese-cutter caps on and swags on our backs, the Australian youths opened their big mouths and grinned from ear to ear, as they stood in groups by the roadside.

That night we left Maitland behind and slept on the scrub by the Hunter River and then tramped across country. The heat was terrific and reminded me of my Queensland experience. We got work at homesteads and pulled pumpkins, examined creeks carefully, dug holes, gazed for sparkling running water that might reveal the precious metal as it ran over the pockets in the hills; but we found no gold, only hard work and toil. We soon sickened of the life, only suitable to the Chinamen who toiled about us on the stations. Grim, rum-looking things these men were. They looked so stolid and emotionless as they tramped in Indian file across the slopes at sunset back to their sweltering huts that it would require very little imagination to dream that they were stuffed mummies of the Pyramids walking in some long sleep, exiled to the dried-up Australian Bush, and they smelt so strong that when the wind blew from their direction my comrade and I at once lit our pipes!