"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.
Here, also, on the shore side of the lagoon, was Binu, the place
where the Minota was captured half a year previously and her captain
killed by the bushmen. As we sailed in through the narrow entrance,
a canoe came alongside with the news that the man-of-war had just
left that morning after having burned three villages, killed some
thirty pigs, and drowned a baby. This was the Cambrian, Captain
Lewes commanding. He and I had first met in Korea during the
Japanese-Russian War, and we had been crossing each ether's trail
ever since without ever a meeting. The day the Snark sailed into
Suva, in the Fijis, we made out the Cambrian going out. At Vila, in
the New Hebrides, we missed each other by one day. We passed each
other in the night-time off the island of Santo. And the day the
Cambrian arrived at Tulagi, we sailed from Penduffryn, a dozen miles
away. And here at Langa Langa we had missed by several hours.
The Cambrian had come to punish the murderers of the Minota's
captain, but what she had succeeded in doing we did not learn until
later in the day, when a Mr. Abbot, a missionary, came alongside in
his whale-boat. The villages had been burned and the pigs killed.
But the natives had escaped personal harm. The murderers had not
been captured, though the Minota's flag and other of her gear had
been recovered. The drowning of the baby had come about through a
misunderstanding. Chief Johnny, of Binu, had declined to guide the
landing party into the bush, nor could any of his men be induced to
perform that office. Whereupon Captain Lewes, righteously
indignant, had told Chief Johnny that he deserved to have his
village burned. Johnny's beche de mer English did not include the
word "deserve." So his understanding of it was that his village was
to be burned anyway. The immediate stampede of the inhabitants was
so hurried that the baby was dropped into the water. In the
meantime Chief Johnny hastened to Mr. Abbot. Into his hand he put
fourteen sovereigns and requested him to go on board the Cambrian
and buy Captain Lewes off. Johnny's village was not burned. Nor
did Captain Lewes get the fourteen sovereigns, for I saw them later
in Johnny's possession when he boarded the Minota. The excuse
Johnny gave me for not guiding the landing party was a big boil
which he proudly revealed. His real reason, however, and a
perfectly valid one, though he did not state it, was fear of revenge
on the part of the bushmen. Had he, or any of his men, guided the
marines, he could have looked for bloody reprisals as soon as the
Cambrian weighed anchor.
As an illustration of conditions in the Solomons, Johnny's business
on board was to turn over, for a tobacco consideration, the sprit,
mainsail, and jib of a whale-boat. Later in the day, a Chief Billy
came on board and turned over, for a tobacco consideration, the mast
and boom. This gear belonged to a whale-boat which Captain Jansen
had recovered the previous trip of the Minota. The whale-boat
belonged to Meringe Plantation on the island of Ysabel. Eleven
contract labourers, Malaita men and bushmen at that, had decided to
run away. Being bushmen, they knew nothing of salt water nor of the
way of a boat in the sea. So they persuaded two natives of San
Cristoval, salt-water men, to run away with them. It served the San
Cristoval men right. They should have known better. When they had
safely navigated the stolen boat to Malaita, they had their heads
hacked off for their pains. It was this boat and gear that Captain
Jansen had recovered.
Not for nothing have I journeyed all the way to the Solomons. At
last I have seen Charmian's proud spirit humbled and her imperious
queendom of femininity dragged in the dust. It happened at Langa
Langa, ashore, on the manufactured island which one cannot see for
the houses. Here, surrounded by hundreds of unblushing naked men,
women, and children, we wandered about and saw the sights. We had
our revolvers strapped on, and the boat's crew, fully armed, lay at
the oars, stern in; but the lesson of the man-of-war was too recent
for us to apprehend trouble.
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