Green Dolphin Street

by Elizabeth Goudge

  “I mean, did he meet with an accident?” asked Marianne, pursuing the subject of Nat.

  Captain O’Hara gave up the struggle, took out his teeth and pocketed them. “Several, me dear,” he said, with decreased effectiveness of articulation. “Men do, who take to the sea. He smashed that leg o’ his fallin’ out o’ the riggin’ in a gale off Cape Horn. Smashed his jaw, too, an’ I set it meself, and made none too good a job of it either, though you can make out what the old fellow’s a-jawin’ of if you give your mind to it. As for the ruination of old Nat’s beauty—well—I avenged that good an’ proper.” And Captain O’Hara jerked his thumb toward the three coconut things hanging on the bulkhead to his right.

  The children gazed at him.

  “Heads,” said Captain O’Hara. “Tattooed cannibals’ heads. The natives in New Zealand do a brisk export trade with ’em, an’ they fetch a pretty price all over Europe. Catch your enemy, ye know, tattoo his head, cut it off, eat the rest, sell the head to the white traders. A nice brisk little trade, bedad. But ye must be careful to tattoo the head while still livin’ or the lines don’t last, an’ ye must be careful as the fellow don’t make off into the woods with his own head while ye’re lookin’ about ye for the knife to cut it off with, or there’ll be all your time and trouble an’ artistry wasted. I’ve bought a number of cannibals’ heads an’ got a good price for ’em. It’s twenty pounds apiece, ye know, for a good head. But I ain’t sellin’ those three. No, begod. I had ’em in revenge for poor old Nat’s eye an’ ear, an’ it warms the cockles of his heart to see ’em there, God bless him.”

  The children continued to stare in fascinated horror. They had all three finished their breakfast now, and Captain O’Hara inserted his teeth again, pulled out a great black pipe with a curved stem, filled it, lit it, puffed out clouds of blue smoke, and settled back in his chair to continue the story,

  “It was six years back,” he said, “an’ I sailed for North Island from Australia for a cargo of timber that a fellow called Timothy Haslam an’ his lumbermen were after fellin’ in the forests. A great fellow, Timothy. There was nothin’ he didn’t know about a piece of wood. He could run his thumb over a bit of an old chair leg picked up in the gutter, tell you what wood it was, how old it was, just by the feel of the thing. An’ there was nothin’ he couldn’t make out of a piece of wood. He made this chair I’m settin’ on, carved it himself, begorra. An’ he’d smell out good wood a thousand miles away an’ sail straight for it. He’d smelled the New Zealand pines, the kauri trees, in a pub in Sydney, so he told me, an’ I believed it, an’ he sailed straight for ’em with his gang of lumbermen, ex-convicts, deserters, an’ the like, leavin’ me to come after at a date fixed an’ fetch away the wood to Tilbury. A good price ye can get for New Zealand pine. There’s no wood like it. Beautiful those forests are, with a grand scent to ’em under a hot sun an’ a grand shade under ’em too, with the tops o’ the trees a-swayin’ in the wind a hundred and forty feet above your head, an’ the ferns below ’em reachin’ above your shoulders. Ah, they stretch for miles, those forests, over the plains an’ over the hills, on an’ on till they meet the great mountains with the snow on their crests, an’ then a few o’ them pine trees will go climbin’ up into the snows an’ stand with their heads in the clouds as pretty as you please. Ah, ’tis a grand land, surely. Believe it or not, but there are birds there bigger than an ostrich, hoppin’ hither an’ thither but not able to fly at all by reason o’ the heavy stomach they have on ’em. Ah, it’s a grand country entirely, an’ no one livin’ there but the cannibals an’ a few dirty whalers callin’ here an’ there along the coast, an’ traders after the timber an’ flax an’ sealskins an’ then off again, an’ a few daft missionary fellows tryin’ to convert the bloody heathen from their evil ways an’ makin’ no headway with it, which it isn’t to be expected that they should with livin’ dirt cheap when ye can make a meal off them as you don’t feel a fancy for. . . . Begorra, but it’s a grand land, with always a wind blowin’, the mountains that clear an’ fresh lookin’ you’d think almighty God had carved ’em out o’ jade an’ amber only yesterday. A man can breathe there. A man can breathe.”

  He paused, smoking ruminatively, and looked out of the scuttle at the bright but restricted waters of the harbor, lost in a dream.

  “You were going to tell us about poor Nat,” said Marianne.

  Captain O’Hara recalled himself to his story. “So I was, me dear. Well, I was captain o’ the Bluebell in those days, a tidy little craft but not the equal o’ this beauty, and Nat, he was bosun. Well, we anchored in the Bay o’ Plenty at the time appointed to wait for Timothy an’ his men, an’ they not bein’ to time, we went ashore, an’ Nat an’ the crew hobnobbed with the dirty whalers an’ I hobnobbed with the missionary fellows. Not that I’m one for religion, me dear, but I took off me hat to those fellows. Brave chaps, they were, riskin’ their lives night an’ day to bring the heathen to see the error o’ their ways. Old Sam Marsden, the first of ’em, was a broth of a boy. When he landed on North Island sixteen years ago, he marched straight off to find the cannibal tribe that had eaten the crew o’ the Boyd—forty men all told, me dear, an’ tough, too—an’ lay down among ’em that night wrapped in his old greatcoat, with never a weapon to his hand, an’ slept well, an’ took no harm. Christmastime, it was, an’ that was his gesture of peace, an’ good will. Mad as a hatter! Grand old fellow! Well, he’d got one convert when I landed, after ten years o’ sweatin’ away preachin’ the Gospel, one convert that they kept under a glass case, but that was all. Brave chaps, I thought ’em, brave, perseverin’ chaps, an’ I took off me hat to ’em, though I’ve never been one for religion owin’ to the priest droppin’ me in the font at me christenin’. . . . It was over in Old Ireland, ye see, an’ he’d a drop taken, an’ I was a lusty brat an’ he didn’t catch a firm hold. . . . Well, as I was sayin’, we waited for that timber, an’ we waited, an’ still we waited, till, begod, I got that sick an’ tired of waitin’ that I took Nat an’ the first mate an’ a store o’ provisions an’ I went off into the forest to see what they were after. Ah, but that was a grand journey. The pohutakawa trees were in bloom, ye see, all over crimson flowers they were, an’ the birds were singin’ like a chime o’ bells, an’ the stars at night so big an’ silver bright they might every one of ’em have been a moon.”

  Again he paused, his eyes on the bright sea beyond the scuttle, the tobacco smoke curling in wreaths about his head. It was perhaps the tone of his voice, even more than what he said, that painted for William and Marianne that faraway land of giant pine trees and snow-capped mountains, birds who sang like chimes of bells and shining silver stars as big as moons. Something very odd was happening to William. His cheeks were on fire and his eyes were like lamps. He was breathing the air of the spiritual country where he belonged, a free and rollicking country where green dolphins sported in the clear water and the great winds moved at will through the deep woods. He had breathed that air when he first came to happy Green Dolphin Street, though he had hardly known then what he did, but now, as he listened to tales of that country where a man could breathe, he knew he was at home. That country of his was not in one part of the world more than another, it was wherever there were freedom and laughter and good comradeship, wherever the doors were flung wide in welcome to whoever cared to enter, and men lay down alone, among their enemies with no weapon in their hands, and slept well.

  Marianne was in an odd mood too. Her hands were clenched on her lap, and her hungry eyes never left Captain O’Hara’s face. The world was so vast and beautiful and terrible, full of marvels and adventures. If you were a man, you could see and experience only a little of it before you died, but you could hope to see and feel a little; but if you were a woman, you would have little chance of ever leaving the tiny island where you had been born. . . . Unless with cunning and contriving you spun the web of your own life to your own wish, playing the part of good fairy
to yourself. . . . Why not? It was no good waiting on fortune. Her favor was inscrutable and uncertain. What one wanted, one must get for one’s self.

  “Go on, please,” she said to Captain O’Hara. In the future she would adventure for herself; for the present she could taste of it only in a tale.

  “Well, we stopped one night at a clearin’ beside a stream,” said Captain O’Hara. “A pretty place it was, with poroporo berries growin’ about it as pretty as a picture, an’ the stream so clear you could see every pebble at the bottom of it, red an’ blue an’ green like jewels. An’ there were wooden huts in the clearin’, with a palisade built round ’em, so we guessed we’d come to the lumbermen’s camp. But there weren’t no sign o’ Timothy, nor o’ his men, nor o’ the horses an’ wagons he’d taken out to load the timber on, an’ there was nothin’ in the huts but an old tin mug an’ a lot o’ bloodstains spattered on the walls, so we guessed the heathen had taken exception to the fellin’ o’ the trees an’ that Timothy an’ all his men were in the pot.”

  “What did you do?” asked the spellbound William.

  “Do? We slept there that night—leastways we lay down an’ rested a bit, an’ thought about them bloodstains an’ poor Timothy—an’ next day we followed the trail on into the forest, an’ we found the timber stacked, masses of it, beautiful wood, but we didn’t see the heathen, nor the wagons, nor nothin’, not so much as a bone, nor a bit o’ shoe leather that might have been tough eatin’—nothin’ at all. So we lay down that night an’ we slept beside the timber. An’ we did sleep, too, for there were no bloodstains on that timber an’ we felt more aisy in our minds.”

  “Yes?” asked Marianne breathlessly.

  “Begod, me dear, I woke up sudden, all of a tremble, an’ I lay listenin’, but there was no sound at all, not a leaf stirrin’, not a bird squawkin’, nothin’ but the great huge silence that ye get in them savage countries, where no man knows what’s over the hill or round the bend of the stream. Yet somethin’ must have wakened me surely, I thought, an’ I lay listenin’, and then I heard it, just a tiny sharp sound, a twig snappin’. But still I lay an’ listened, for I thought maybe it was just a wild beast stirrin’. Ignorant, I was. I didn’t know that ye must never lay an’ listen when a twig snaps in the forest—ye should be up an’ doin’ with your musket ready. Well, it seemed to happen all in a moment. One minute there’d been silence in the forest, an’ the next there was yells an’ curses an’ scores o’ dark men leapin’ over the stacked timber, swingin’ clubs over their heads, an’ one with a knife it’s my belief he’d pinched off Timothy. Well, I didn’t have no time to think before the fellow with the knife was all but on me. All but, I say, for Nat got there first. But he lost his footin’ somehow an’ fell on top o’ me, an’ it was Nat got the knife, not me. Poor old Nat! He bled like a pig. There was his ear gone, an’ his eye that injured it had to be took out later. He’d never been no beauty, Nat hadn’t, but after that, begorra, he was enough to terrify the crows with, poor old fellow.”

  “How did you get away, sir?” asked William.

  “Well, the first mate he was more slippy than what I had been. He upped with his musket an’ fired, an’ yelled like as he’d been twenty men an’ not one, an’ the heathen made off into the forest again. In those days they were terrified of firearms; I always say it takes a Christian to understand murderin’ with a rifle. But three of ’em were left behind, kickin’ on the ground, an’ when we’d finished ’em off we cut off their heads an’ carried ’em back to the Bay of Plenty an’ had ’em properly seen to, so’s they shouldn’t rot, an’ tattooed by the convert in the glass case, who’d been one of the experts of the head trade before he took religion. An’ there they are. As I said, the tattoo lines don’t last so well if they’re done on a corpse, but you can still see ’em, for that convert took a lot o’ trouble. Real artist, he was. Natty with his fingers. Took out Nat’s eye as neatly as you please.”

  “Oh, poor, poor Nat!” cried Marianne.

  “Begod, he didn’t make no trouble over it, an’ he never let out so much as a whine all the way back to the Bay o’ Plenty, though it was damn hot, an’ ye couldn’t so much as see his bandages for the flies settin’ on ’em. Walked most of the way, too. It was only now and again we had to carry him.”

  “And the timber, sir?” asked William eagerly. Manlike, he was less concerned with what had happened to Nat than what had happened to the timber that had been the purpose of it all.

  “Oh, we fetched it,” said Captain O’Hara. “We left Nat with the missionary fellows an’ started off again with more wagons an’ a gang o’ whalers an’ ex-convicts who’d escaped from Australia. We thought maybe the convicts would murder us this time, but they thought better of it, an’ we took the timber to Sydney an’ delivered it to the timber merchant on the very day Timothy had promised it to him. An’ then we sailed to China with a cargo o’ sealskins, an’ I bought that curtain there with the dragons on it, an’ then we sailed to the Old Country again with a cargo o’ tea.”

  “And what’s your cargo now, please, sir?” asked William.

  “I’ve a mixed cargo this time, son. Ginger in jars with blue flowers on ’em, an’ bales of silk, an’ spices of all sorts. I’m from the China seas again.”

  “An’ you’ve never been back to New Zealand?” asked Marianne.

  “No, me dear. But, begod, I’ll be back one day. There’s a country for you! A grand country, surely. A regular gold mine, with the timber an’ the flax, an’ the whalin’, an’ the seal fishin’, an’ grand pasture land between the forests. An’ all undiscovered country, all virgin soil. An’ it don’t belong to no one. It’s just a happy huntin’ ground for runaway convicts, an’ cannibals an’ sealers an’ missionaries an’ suchlike flotsam an’ jetsam.”

  “It ought to belong to Us,” said William, and his cheeks were still on fire.

  “Give us time, son,” said the old man. “Give us time an’ we’ll get the world, what God Almighty made for the Irish an’ the English an’ the Channel Islanders, an’ not for dirty niggers that you couldn’t get white however much you washed ’em. We’re getting’ on. We’re gulpin’ away at India an’ Australia now, an’ throwin’ up North America what we never digested proper from bein’ in too much of a hurry to get it down.” He twinkled at William. “In another ten years, son, when you’re a man, it’ll be time enough to take a good bite at New Zealand. We’re nibblin’ at it now, ye know, nibblin’ away at the edges.”

  “Sir, may I sail with you to New Zealand in ten years’ time?” asked William eagerly.

  Captain O’Hara laughed. “We’ll see, son. We’ll see. But ye need to be tough for a seafarin’ life, above all for the Merchant Service. Ay, ye need to be tough, damn tough, as tough as me an’ Nat.”

  His keen, twinkling little eyes rested upon the beautiful boy on the other side of the table. There was tender, regretful affection in them, for he had never had a son, but there was also, perhaps, a shadow of doubt, and Marianne’s spirit leaped up like a tigress in defense of her young.

  “William’s tough!” she cried. “All that you’ve done William will do, and more, when he’s a man!”

  Captain O’Hara flung back his head and laughed again. Then he knocked out his pipe, shut his mouth and got up. He had some difficulty in shutting his mouth over those two immense rows of white china teeth, but when once shut, it was shut in good earnest and looked as hard and tight as a teak trapdoor. Marianne found herself comparing it with Dr. Ozanne’s mouth, that always looked a little loose and flabby, and resolve flared up in her. William should succeed in life. He should be a strong, successful man like Captain O’Hara. At whatever cost, she would make a good job of William or her name was not Marianne Le Patourel. It was not only for herself that she would be an enchantress spinning a web. Her face was suddenly soft and rosy, like that of a mother who is feeding her child. She thought she had discovered w
hat she had been made for, and she was happy.

  “An’ now ye’d best be getting’ home,” said Captain O’Hara. “Ye’ve respectable homes, I can see by the look of you, an’ there’ll be the divil an’ all to pay if ye’re not in ’em in an hour or so.”

  He walked to the curtain of golden dragons, pulled it back and disclosed his curtained bunk and an old battered sea chest. He lifted the lid of the chest, rummaged in it and took out two packages. Then he cleared the breakfast things onto the floor, laid the packages on top of the teak table and opened them. One was an exquisite little carved box containing a pair of beautifully shaped earrings of green stone, and the other was a knife with a carved handle and a carved wooden case to protect it. The carving on both box and knife was simple but lovely, with curves and arabesques beautifully interlaced.

  “From New Zealand,” said Captain O’Hara. “You wouldn’t think murderin’ heathen could do work like that, would you? But ye don’t need virtue to be an artist, seemingly.” He handed the box with the earrings to Marianne. “Take a look at ’em, me dear. They’re made of a stone called tangiwai. Green’s your color, I see. The Maoris use a knife like that, son, for cutting up fish and human flesh. You feel that edge. Men find a knife like that comes in handy.”

  They held the treasures in their hands, and for a moment they were speechless. William felt the keen edge of the knife with a cautious forefinger while he held the handle in his other hand. The rough, carved surface of it fitted well into the palm and helped one to get a good grip. Right on the other side of the world, thousands of miles away, the brown hand of a cannibal had held this knife. A thrill went through him, half pleasant, half horrible, as though the brown hand were holding his across the world, dragging at him, pulling, compelling.