Some yarns of an exceedingly tough and Munchausen-like character have been spun and printed by men of their adventures in Australian waters or the South Seas, but an examination of such stories by any one with personal knowledge of the Pacific and Australasia has soon, and very deservedly so, knocked the bottom out of a considerable number of them. Yet there are stories of South Sea adventure well authenticated, which I are not a whit less wonderful than the most marvellous falsehoods that any man has yet told, and the story of what befell John Renton is one of these. A file of the Queenslander (the leading Queensland weekly newspaper) for 1875 will corroborate his story; for that paper gave the best account of his adventures in one of their November (1875) numbers, and the story was copied into nearly every paper in Australasia.
Like Harry Bluff, John Renton "when a boy left his friends and his home, o'er the wild ocean waves all his life for to roam." Renton's home was in Stromness, in the Orkneys, and he shipped on board a vessel bound to Sydney, in 1867, as an ordinary seaman, he then being a lad of eighteen. When in Sydney he got about among the boarding-houses, in sailor-town, and one morning woke up on the forecastle of the Reynard of Boston, bound on a cruise for guano among the South Pacific Islands.
Renton had been crimped, and finding himself where he was, bothered no more about it, but went cheerfully to work, not altogether displeased at the prospect of new adventures, which would enable him to by and by go back to the old folks with plenty of dollars, and a stock of startling yarns to reel off. He was a steady, straightforward lad, though somewhat thoughtless at times, and resolved to be a steady, straightforward man. The vessel first called into the Sandwich Islands, and there shipped a gang of Hawaiian natives to help load the guano, then she sailed away to the southward for McKean's Island, one of the Phoenix Group, situated about lat. 3? 35' S. and long. 174? 20' W.
On board the Reynard was an old salt known to all hands as "Boston Ned." He had been a whaler in his time, had deserted, and spent some years beachcombing among the islands of the South Seas, and very soon, through his specious tongue, he had all hands wishing themselves clear of the "old hooker" and enjoying life in the islands instead of cruising about, hazed here and there and everywhere by the mates of the Reynard, whose main purpose in life was to knock a man down in order to make him "sit up." Presently three or four of the hands became infatuated with the idea of settling on an island, and old Ned, nothing loth, undertook to take charge of the party if they would make an attempt to clear from the ship. The old man had taken a fancy to young Renton, and the youngster, when the idea was imparted to him, fell in with it enthusiastically; for he was exasperated with the treatment he had received on board the guanoman—the afterguard of an American guano ship are usually a rough lot The ship was lying on and off the land, there being no anchorage, and before the plan had been discussed more than a few hours, the men, five in all, determined to put it into execution.
A small whaleboat was towing astern of the vessel in case the wind should fall light and the ship drift in too close to the shore. It was a fine night, with a light breeze, and there was, they thought, a good chance of getting to the southward, to one of the Samoan group, where they could settle, or by shipping on board a trading schooner they might later on strike some other island to their fancy.
By stealth they managed to stow in the boat a couple of small breakers of water, holding together sixteen gallons, and the forecastle bread barge with biscuits enough for three meals a day per man for ten days. They managed also to steal four hams, and each man brought pipes, tobacco, and matches. A harpoon with some line, an old galley frying-pan, mast, sail and oars, and some blankets completed the equipment For they took no compass, though they made several attempts to get at one slung in the cabin, and tried at first to take one out of the poop binnacle; but the officer of the watch on deck was too wide awake for them to risk that, and the cabin compass was screwed to the roof close to the skipper's berth; and so the old man who was their leader, old sailor and whaler as he was, actually gave up the idea of taking a compass, and these people without more ado, one night slipped over the side into the whaleboat, cut the painter, and by daylight the boat was out of sight of land and of the ship. They were afloat upon the Pacific, running six or seven miles before a north-east breeze and expecting to sight land in less than a week, and were already anticipating the freedom and luxury of island life in store for them.
Three days later it fell calm, and they had to take to the oars. The sun was intensely hot, the water a sheet of glass reflecting back upon them the ball of fire overhead. Now and again a cats-paw would ripple across the plain of water, but there were no clouds, there was no sight of land. They kept on pulling. For three, for four days—a week—for ten days—they tugged at the oars, except when a favouring breeze came. The water was reduced to a few pints, the food to a few days' half-rations. Their limbs were cramped so that they could not move from their places in the boat, their bodies were becoming covered with sores; and the wind had now died away entirely, the sea was without a ripple, and for ever shone above them the fierce, relentless sun.
Gradually it had dawned upon them that they were lost—that perhaps they had run past Samoa. The first eagerness of their adventure gave place to despair, and by degrees their despair grew to madness of a more awful kind.
On the fifteenth day there appeared to the south and east a low, dark-grey cloud. "Land at last!" was the unspoken thought in each man's heart as he looked at his comrade, but feared to voice his hope. And presently the cloud grew darker and more clearly defined, and one of the men—the next oldest to the author of all their miseries—fell upon his weak and trembling knees, and raised his hands in thankfulness and prayer to the Almighty. Alas! it was not land, but the ominous forerunner of the fierce and sweeping mid-equatorial gale which lay veiled behind. In less than half an hour it came upon and smote them with savage fury, and the little boat was running before a howling gale and a maddened, foam-whipped sea.
And then it happened that, ill and suffering as he was from the agonies of hunger and thirst, the heroic nature of old "Boston Ned" came out, and his bold sailor's heart cheered and encouraged his wretched, despairing companions. All that night, and for the greater part of the following day, he stood in the stern-sheets, grasping the bending steer-oar as the boat swayed and surged along before the gale, and constantly watching lest she should broach to and smother in the roaring seas; the others lay in the bottom, feebly baling out the water, encouraged, urged, and driven to that exertion by the gallant old American seaman.
Towards noon the wind moderated, in the afternoon it died away altogether, and again the boat lay rising and falling to the long Pacific swell, and "Boston Ned" flung his exhausted frame down in the stern-sheets and slept.
Again the blood-red sun leapt from a sea of glassy smoothness—for the swell had subsided during the night—and again the wretched men locked into each other's dreadful faces and mutely asked what was to be done. How should they head the boat? Without a compass they might as well steer one way as another, for none of them knew even approximately the course for the nearest land; search the cloudless vault of blue above, or scan the shimmering sea-rim till their aching eyes dropped from out their hollowing sockets, there was no clue.
Twenty days out the last particle of food and water had been consumed, and though the boat was now steering as near westward as old Ned could judge, before a gentle south-east trade, madness and despair were coming quickly upon them, and on the twenty-third day two of the five miserable creatures began to drink copiously of salt water—the drink of Death.
Renton, though he had suffered to the bitter full from the agonies of body and mind endured by his shipmates, did not yield to this temptation; and by a merciful providence remained sane enough to turn his face away from the water. But as he lay crouched in a heap in the bottom of the boat, with a silent prayer in his heart to his Creator to quickly end his sufferings, he heard "Boston Ned" and the only remaining sane man except himself muttering hoarsely together and looking sometimes at him and sometimes at the two almost dying men who lay moaning beside him. Presently the man who was talking to Ned pulled out of his blanket—which lay in the stern-sheets—a razor, and turning his back to Renton began stropping it upon the sole of his boot, and even "Boston Ned" himself looked with awful eyes and blood-baked twitching lips upon the youngster.
The lad saw what was coming, and as quickly as possible made his way forward and sat there, with his eyes fixed upon the two men aft, waiting for the struggle which he thought must soon begin. All that day and the night he sat and watched, determined to make a fight for the little life which remained in him, and Ned and the other man at times still muttered and eyed him wolfishly.
And so, on and on, these seeming outcasts of God's mercy sailed before the warm breath of the south-east trade wind, above them the blazing tropic sun, around them the wide, sailless expanse of the blue Pacific unbroken in its dreadful loneliness except for a wandering grey-winged booby or flocks of whale-birds floating upon its gentle swell, and within their all but deadened hearts naught but grim despair and a dulled sense of coming dissolution.
As he sat thus, supporting his swollen head upon his skeleton hands, Renton saw something astern, moving slowly after the boat—something that he knew was waiting and following for the awful deed to be done, so that it too might share in the dreadful feast.
Raising his bony arm, he pointed towards the moving fin. To him a shark meant no added horror or danger to their position, but possibly deliverance. "Boston Ned" and the other man first looked at the coming shark, and then with sunken eyes again turned to Renton. Voices none of them had, and the lad's parched tongue could not articulate, but with signs and lip movements he tried to make the other two men understand.
No shark hook had they; nor, if they had had one, had they anything with which to bait it. But Renton, crawling aft, picked up the harpoon, placed it in "Boston Ned's" hands, and motioned to him to stand by. Then with eager, trembling hands he stripped from his legs the shreds of trousers which remained on them, and, sitting upon the gunwale of the boat, hung one limb over and let it trail in the water.
Three times the shark came up, and thrice Ned prepared to strike, but each time the grim ranger of the seas turned aside as it caught sight of the waiting figure with weapon poised above. But at last hunger prevailed, and, swimming slowly up till within a few yards of the boat, it made a sudden rush for the human bait, missed it, and the harpoon, deftly darted by the old ex-whaler, clove through its tough skin and buried itself deep into its body between the shoulders.
It took the worn-out, exhausted men a long time to haul alongside and despatch the struggling monster, which, says Renton, was ten feet in length.
Then followed shark's flesh and shark's blood, some of the former, after the first raw meal, being cooked on a fire made of the biscuit barge upon a wet blanket spread in the bottom of the boat. The hot weather, however, soon turned the remaining portion putrid, but two or three days later came God's blessed rain, and gave them hope and life again. They managed to save a considerable quantity of water, and, though the shark's flesh was in a horrible condition, they continued to feed upon it until the thirty-fifth day.
On this day they saw land, high and well wooded; but now the trade-wind failed them, and for the following two days the unfortunate men contended with baffling light airs, calms, and strong currents. At last they got within a short distance of the shore, and sought for a landing-place through the surrounding surf.
Suddenly four or five canoes darted out from the shore. They were filled with armed savages, whose aspect and demeanour warned old Ned that he and his comrades were among cannibals. Sweeping alongside the boat, the savages seized the white men, who were all too feeble to resist, or even move, put them into their canoes, and conveyed them on shore, fed them, and treated them with much apparent kindness. Crowds of natives from that part of the island—which was Malayta, one of the Solomon Group—came to look at them, and one man, a chief, took a fancy to Renton, and claimed him as his own especial property.
Renton never saw the rest of his companions again, for they were removed to the interior of the Island—probably sold to some of the bush tribes, the "man-a-bush," as the coastal natives called them. Their fate is not difficult to guess, for the people of Malayta were then, as they are now, cannibals.
On August 7, 1875, the Queensland labour recruiting schooner Bobtail Nag was cruising off the island, trading for yams, and her captain heard from some natives who came alongside that there was a white man living ashore in a village about ten miles distant. The skipper of the Bobtail Nag at once offered to pay a handsome price if the man was brought on board, and at the cost of several dozen Birmingham steel axes and some tobacco poor Renton's release was effected. He told his rescuers that the people among whom he had lived had taken a great fancy to him, and had treated him with great kindness.
If the reader will look at a chart of the South Pacific, he will see, among the Phoenix Group, the position of McKean's Island; two thousand miles distant, westward and southward, is the island of Malayta, upon which Renton and his companions in misery drifted.