Captain Jansen, Mr.Jacobsen (the mate), Charmian, and I had just sat down on deck to breakfast.Three unusually large seas caught us.The boy at the wheel lost his head.Three times the Minota was swept.The breakfast was rushed over the lee-rail.The knives and forks went through the scuppers; a boy aft went clean overboard and was dragged back; and our doughty skipper lay half inboard and half out, jammed in the barbed wire.After that, for the rest of the cruise, our joint use of the several remaining eating utensils was a splendid example of primitive communism.On the Eugenie, however, it was even worse, for we had but one teaspoon among four of us--but the Eugenie is another story.
Our first port was Su'u on the west coast of Malaita.The Solomon Islands are on the fringe of things.It is difficult enough sailing on dark nights through reef-spiked channels and across erratic currents where there are no lights to guide (from northwest to southeast the Solomons extend across a thousand miles of sea, and on all the thousands of miles of coasts there is not one lighthouse);but the difficulty is seriously enhanced by the fact that the land itself is not correctly charted.Su'u is an example.On the Admiralty chart of Malaita the coast at this point runs a straight, unbroken line.Yet across this straight, unbroken line the Minota sailed in twenty fathoms of water.Where the land was alleged to be, was a deep indentation.Into this we sailed, the mangroves closing about us, till we dropped anchor in a mirrored pond.
Captain Jansen did not like the anchorage.It was the first time he had been there, and Su'u had a bad reputation.There was no wind with which to get away in case of attack, while the crew could be bushwhacked to a man if they attempted to tow out in the whale-boat.
It was a pretty trap, if trouble blew up.
"Suppose the Minota went ashore--what would you do?" I asked.
"She's not going ashore," was Captain Jansen's answer.
"But just in case she did?" I insisted.He considered for a moment and shifted his glance from the mate buckling on a revolver to the boat's crew climbing into the whale-boat each man with a rifle.
"We'd get into the whale-boat, and get out of here as fast as God'd let us," came the skipper's delayed reply.
He explained at length that no white man was sure of his Malaita crew in a tight place; that the bushmen looked upon all wrecks as their personal property; that the bushmen possessed plenty of Snider rifles; and that he had on board a dozen "return" boys for Su'u who were certain to join in with their friends and relatives ashore when it came to looting the Minota.
The first work of the whale-boat was to take the "return" boys and their trade-boxes ashore.Thus one danger was removed.While this was being done, a canoe came alongside manned by three naked savages.And when I say naked, I mean naked.Not one vestige of clothing did they have on, unless nose-rings, ear-plugs, and shell armlets be accounted clothing.The head man in the canoe was an old chief, one-eyed, reputed to be friendly, and so dirty that a boat-scraper would have lost its edge on him.His mission was to warn the skipper against allowing any of his people to go ashore.The old fellow repeated the warning again that night.
In vain did the whale-boat ply about the shores of the bay in quest of recruits.The bush was full of armed natives; all willing enough to talk with the recruiter, but not one would engage to sign on for three years' plantation labour at six pounds per year.Yet they were anxious enough to get our people ashore.On the second day they raised a smoke on the beach at the head of the bay.This being the customary signal of men desiring to recruit, the boat was sent.
But nothing resulted.No one recruited, nor were any of our men lured ashore.A little later we caught glimpses of a number of armed natives moving about on the beach.
Outside of these rare glimpses, there was no telling how many might be lurking in the bush.There was no penetrating that primeval jungle with the eye.In the afternoon, Captain Jansen, Charmian, and I went dynamiting fish.Each one of the boat's crew carried a Lee-Enfield."Johnny," the native recruiter, had a Winchester beside him at the steering sweep.We rowed in close to a portion of the shore that looked deserted.Here the boat was turned around and backed in; in case of attack, the boat would be ready to dash away.
In all the time I was on Malaita I never saw a boat land bow on.In fact, the recruiting vessels use two boats--one to go in on the beach, armed, of course, and the other to lie off several hundred feet and "cover" the first boat.The Minota, however, being a small vessel, did not carry a covering boat.
We were close in to the shore and working in closer, stern-first, when a school of fish was sighted.The fuse was ignited and the stick of dynamite thrown.With the explosion, the surface of the water was broken by the flash of leaping fish.At the same instant the woods broke into life.A score of naked savages, armed with bows and arrows, spears, and Sniders, burst out upon the shore.At the same moment our boat's crew, lifted their rifles.And thus the opposing parties faced each other, while our extra boys dived over after the stunned fish.
Three fruitless days were spent at Su'u.The Minota got no recruits from the bush, and the bushmen got no heads from the Minota.In fact, the only one who got anything was Wade, and his was a nice dose of fever.We towed out with the whale-boat, and ran along the coast to Langa Langa, a large village of salt-water people, built with prodigious labour on a lagoon sand-bank--literally BUILT up, an artificial island reared as a refuge from the blood-thirsty bushmen.