by Louis Becke
Produced by David Widger
"MARTIN OF NITENDI"; and THE RIVER OF DREAMS
By Louis Becke
T. Fisher Unwin, 1901
"MARTIN OF NITENDI"
Half-way up the side of the mountain which overlooked the waters ofthe little land-locked harbour there was a space clear of timber. Huge,jagged rocks, whose surfaces were covered with creepers and grey moss,protruded from the soil, and on the highest of these a man was lying atfull length, looking at the gunboat anchored half a mile away. He wasclothed in a girdle of _ti_ leaves only; his feet were bare, cut, andbleeding; round his waist was strapped a leather belt with an emptycartridge pouch; his brawny right hand grasped a Snider rifle; hishead-covering was a roughly made cap of coconut-nut leaf, with aprojecting peak, designed to shield his blood-shot, savage eyes fromthe sun. Yet he had been a White Man. For nearly an hour he had beenwatching, ever since the dawn had broken. Far below him, thin, waveringcurls of pale blue smoke were arising from the site of the nativevillage, fired by the bluejackets on the previous evening. The ruins ofhis own house he could discern by the low stone wall surrounding it;as for the native huts which, the day before, had clustered so thicklyaround his own dwelling, there was now no trace save heaps of greyashes.
A boat put off from the ship, and as the yellow-bladed oars flashed inthe sunlight the man drew his rifle close up to his side and his eyesgleamed with a deadly hatred.
"Officers' shootin' party," he muttered, as he watched the boat groundon the beach and three men, carrying guns, step out and walk up thebeach--"officer's shootin' party. Christ A'mighty! I'd like to pot everyone o' the swine. An' I could do it, too, I could do it. But wot's theuse o' bein' a blarsted fool for nothin'?"
The boat's crew got out and walked about the smouldering remains of thevillage, seeking for curios which had escaped the fire, pausing awhileto look at a large mound of sand, under which lay seven of the nativeskilled by the landing-party on the preceding day. Then, satisfied thatthere was nothing to be had, the coxswain grumblingly ordered the menback to the boat, which pushed off and returned to the ship.
The wild, naked creature lying upon the boulder saw the boat pull offwith a sigh of satisfaction. There was, under the ashes of his house,and buried still further under the soil, a 50-lb. beef barrel filledwith Chilian and Mexican dollars. And he had feared that the bluejacketsmight rake about the ashes and find it.
He rose and stepped down the jagged boulder to where, at the base,the thick carpet of dead leaves, fallen from the giant trees whichencompassed it, silenced even the tread of his naked feet. Seatedagainst the bole of a many-buttressed _vi_-tree was a native woman,whose right arm, shattered by a bullet and bound up in the spathe of acoconut-palm, was suspended from her neck by a strip of soft bark. Shelooked at him inquiringly.
"A boat has come ashore," he said in the native tongue, "but none of thewhite men are seeking for my money."
"Thy money!" The woman's eyes blazed with a deadly fury. "What is thymoney to me? Is thy money more to us than the blood of our child? O,thou coward heart!"
Grasping his Snider by the tip of the barrel the man looked at his wifewith sullen, dulled ferocity.
"I am no coward, Nuta. Thou dost not understand. I wish to save themoney, but I wish for revenge as well. Yet what can I do? I am but oneman, and have but one cartridge left."
* * * * *
This naked, sun-tanned being was one of the most desperate andblood-stained beachcombers that had ever cursed the fair isles of theSouth Pacific, and in those days there were many, notably on PleasantIsland and in the Gilbert Group. Put ashore at Nitendi from a HobartTown whaler for mutinous conduct, he had disassociated himself for everfrom civilisation. Perhaps the convict strain in his blood had somethingto do with his vicious nature, for both his father and mother had "lefttheir country for their country's good," and his early training had beengiven him under the shadow of the gallows and within the swishing soundof the "cat" as it lacerated the backs of the wretched beings doomed tosuffer under the awful convict system.
From the simple, loafing beachcomber stage of life to that of a leaderof the natives in their tribal wars was a simple but natural transition,and Jim Martin, son of a convict father and mother whose forbears wereof the scum of Liverpool, and knew the precincts of a prison better thanthe open air, followed the path ordained for him by Fate.
The man's reckless courage won him undoubted respect from hisassociates; the head chief of the village alone possessed a greaterinfluence. A house was built for him, and a wife and land given him; andwithin a year of his arrival on the island he signalised himself by adesperate attempt to cut-off a barque bound from Hobart to China asshe lay becalmed off the island. The attempt failed, and many of hisfollowers lost their lives. A few months later, however, he was moresuccessful with a Fijian trading cutter, which, anchoring off thevillage, was carried during the night, plundered of her cargo of tradegoods (much of which was firearms), and then burnt. This established hisreputation.
Five years passed. But few vessels touched at the island now, for it hada bad name, and those which did call were well armed and able to beatoff an attack. Then one day, two years before the opening of this story,a trading schooner called off the village, and Martin, now more a savagenative than a white man, was tempted by her defenceless condition, andby the money which the captain carried for trading purposes, to captureher, with the aid of the wild, savage people among whom he had casthis lot. Of what use the money would be to him he knew not. He was anoutcast from civilisation, he was quickly forgetting his mother tongue;but his criminal instincts, and his desire to be a "big man" with thesavages among whom he had lived for so long, led him to perpetrate thisone particular crime. In the dead of night he led a party of nativeson board the schooner, and massacred every one of her crew, save oneFijian, who, jumping overboard, swam to the shore, and was spared. A fewmonths later this man escaped to a passing whaler, and the story of themassacre of the captain and crew of the _Fedora_ was made known tothe commodore of the Australian station, who despatched a gunboat "toapprehend the murderers and bring them to Sydney for trial." Failing theapprehension of the murderers, the commander was instructed "to burnthe village, and inflict such other punitive methods upon the peoplegenerally" as he deemed fit.
So Commander Lempriere, of H.M. gunboat _Terrier_, went to work witha will. He meant to catch the murderers of the crew of the _Fedora_ ifthey possibly could be caught, and set to work in a manner that wouldhave shocked the commodore. Instead of steaming into the bay on whichthe village was situated--and so giving the natives ample time to clearout into the mountains--he brought-to at dusk, when the ship was twentymiles from the land, and sent away the landing party in three boats. TheFijian--he who had escaped from the massacre of the _Fedora_--was theguide.
"You know what to do, Chester," said Commander Lempriere to his firstlieutenant as the boatswain's whistles piped the landing party away;"land on the north point, about two miles from the village, and surroundit, and then wait till daylight. You can do it easily enough with thirtymen, as it lies at the foot of the mountain, and there is no escapefor the beggars unless they break through you and get into the bush. Beguided by the Fiji boy; and, as the Yankees say, 'no one wants a brassband with him when he's going duck-hunting,' so try and surround thevillage as quietly as possible. I'll see that none of them get away intheir canoes. I'll work up abreast of the harbour by daylight."
Guided by the boy, Lieutenant Chester and the landing party succeeded ingetting ashore without being seen, and then made a long detour along theside of the mountain, so as to approach the village from behind. Thenthey waited till daylight, an
d all would have gone well had not hissecond in command, just as the order was given to advance, accidentallydischarged his revolver. In an instant the village was alarmed, and somehundreds of natives, many of them armed with rifles, and led by Martin,sprang from their huts and made a short but determined resistance. Then,followed by their women and children, they broke through the bluejacketsand escaped into the dense mountain jungle, where they were safe frompursuit. But the fire of the seamen had been deadly, for sevenbodies were found; among them was a boy of about ten, whom the Fijianrecognised as the renegade's son--a stray bullet had pierced his bodyas he sat crouching in terror in his father's house, and anotherhad wounded his mother as she fled up the mountainside, for in theexcitement and in the dim morning light it was impossible for theattacking party to tell women from men.
Then by the commander's orders the village and fleet of canoes wasfired, and a dozen or so of rockets went screaming and spittingamong the thick mountain jungle, doing no damage to the natives, butterrifying them more than a heavy shell fire. *****
"Let us away from here, Nuta," said Martin, "'tis not safe. In the hutby the side of the big pool we can rest till the ship has gone and ourpeople return. And I shall bind thy arm up anew."
The woman obeyed him silently, and in a few minutes they were skirtingthe side of the mountain by a narrow leaf-strewn path, taking theopposite direction to that followed by the two officers and bluejackets.Half an hour's walk brought them to the river bank, which was clothedwith tall spear-grass. Still following the path, they presently emergedout into the open before a deep, spacious pool, at the further end ofwhich was a dilapidated and deserted hut. Here the woman, faint with thepain of her wound, sank down, and Martin brought her water to drink, andthen proceeded to re-examine and properly set her broken arm.
*****
The two officers--the second lieutenant and a ruddy-faced, fair-hairedmidshipman named Walters--had hardly proceeded a hundred yards along thebeach, when the boy stopped.
"Oh, Mr. Grayling, let us turn back and go the other way. There's a bigriver runs into the next bay, with a sort of a lake about a mile up; Isaw it in the plan of the island, this morning. We might get a duck ortwo there, sir."
"Any way you like," replied the officer, turning about, "and walkingalong the beach will be better than climbing up the mountain in thebeastly heat for the sake of a few tough pigeons."
Followed by the three bluejackets, who were armed with rifles, they setoff along the hard white sand. In a few minutes they had rounded theheadland on the north side and were out of sight of the ship. For quitea mile they tramped over the sand, till they came to the mouth of theriver, which flowed swiftly and noisily over a shallow bar. A shortsearch revealed a narrow path leading up along the bank, first throughlow thicket scrub, and then through high spear-grass. Further back, amidthe dense forest, they could hear the deep notes of the wild pigeons,but as young Walters was intent on getting a duck they took no heed, butpressed steadily on.
"By jove! what a jolly fine sheet of water!" whispered the midshipman asthey emerged out from the long grass and saw the deep, placid pool lyingbefore them; then he added disappointedly, "but not a sign of a duck."
"Never mind," said Grayling consolingly, as he sat down on the bank andwiped his heated face, "we'll get plenty of pigeons, anyway. But firstof all I'm going to have something to eat and drink. Open that bag,Williams, and you, Morris and Jones, keep your ears cocked and youreyes skinned. It's lovely and quiet here, but I wouldn't like to get apoisoned arrow into my back whilst drinking bottled beer."
"I'm going to have a swim before I eat anything," said Walters, with alaugh. "Won't you, sir?" he asked, as he began undressing.
"Looks very tempting," replied the officer, "but I'm too hot. Take myadvice and wait a bit till you're cooler."
The youngster only laughed, and, having stripped, took a header fromthe bank, and then swam out into the centre of the pool where it wasdeepest.
"Oh, do come in, sir," he cried; "it's just splendid. There's a bit of acurrent here and the water is delightfully cool."
*****
Martin was aroused from his sleep by the sound or voices. He seized hisrifle, bent over his wife, and whispered to her to awake; then crawlingon his hands and knees from the hut he reached the bank and looked out,just as young Walters dived into the water.
Hardened murderer as he was, he felt a thrill of horror, for he knewthat the pool was a noted haunt of alligators, and to attempt to swimacross it meant certain death.
His wife touched his arm, and crouching beside him, her black eyesfilled with a deadly hatred, she showed her white teeth and gave a low,hissing laugh.
"Before one can count ten he will be in the jaws," she said, with savagejoy.
"Nuta," whispered Martin hoarsely, "'tis but a boy," and the veins stoodout on his bronzed forehead as his hand closed tighter around his rifle.
"What wouldst thou do, fool?" said the woman fiercely as she seized theweapon by the barrel; "think of thy son who died but yesterday... ah!ah! look! look!"
Tearing the rifle from her grasp he followed the direction of her eyes;a swiftly-moving black snout showed less than thirty yards from theunconscious bather, who was now swimming leisurely to the bank.
"He must not die," he muttered; "'tis but a boy!" Then turning to thewoman he spoke aloud. "Quick! run to the forest; I shall follow."
Again she sought to stay his hand; he dashed her aside, raised the rifleto his shoulder and took a quick but steady aim; a second later the loudreport rang out, and the monster, struck on his bony head by the heavybullet, sank in alarm; and then, ere Martin turned to run, two othershots disturbed the silence and he pitched forward on his face into thelong grass.
* * * * *
"We just saw the beggar in time, sir," cried Jones. "I happened to lookacross and caught sight of him just as he fired at Mr. Walters. Me andMorris fired together."
Grayling had sprung to his feet. "Are you hit, Walters?" he shouted.
"No," replied the boy as he clambered up the bank; "what the deuce isthe matter?"
"A nigger took a pot-shot at you! Get under cover as quick as you can.Never mind your clothes!"
Ten minutes passed. No sound broke the deathly stillness of the place;and then, cautiously creeping through the grass, the officer and Morriscrawled round to where the latter had seen the man fall. They came uponhim suddenly. He was lying partly on his face, with his eyes lookinginto theirs. Morris sprang up and covered him with his rifle.
"I'm done for," Martin said quietly "my back is broken. Did thecrocodile get the boy?"
"Crocodile!" said Grayling in astonishment. "Did you fire at acrocodile? Who are you? Are you a white man?"
"Never mind who I am," he gasped; "let me lie here. Look," and hepointed to a bullet-hole in his stomach; "it's gone clean through me andsmashed my backbone. Let me stay as I am."
He never spoke again, and died whilst a litter was being made to carryhim down to the beach.
THE RIVER OF DREAMS