There had been two years in sail, and two in steam, roaming the far places of the world. A year in the Cameroons, another in India, two in the United States, and one along the South American coast. At thirty-five he had finally come to the islands.
It was his fate. He knew as soon as he sighted Tahiti through a glass, knew it when he went ashore in Rarotonga, in Ahu Ahu. But it was in Arutua where he stopped. That was, for him, the island where the South Seas really became the place of dreams.
The old schooner had skimmed along, only to lose the breeze as they were coming down upon the island. Green clumps of palm against the blue of the sky, and great masses of cumulus towering thousands of feet above. Then a ruffle of white surf around the reef, and he heard that sound, the sea roaring against the coral.
Up would come a slow swell of water, long and unbroken. A great, glistening wall with an emerald cave forming beneath, each swept down upon the reef only to break into splinters of spray and vanish. He watched it as the schooner drew slowly nearer, and tried to find the beginning of each new swell, but there was no beginning. They rolled in as though the turning of the world was behind them.
And then Arutua. White beach and thatched huts, arching palms, and beyond that, the island and more sea. He went ashore in a boat and walked up the shelving beach to shake hands with the native men. He talked with them, smiling down at the wide-eyed children who had gathered about, then he looked to the ship, departing beyond the spray of the barrier reef. When he turned back, he saw her.
She had come out of a hut and walked down the beach toward them, a tall, graceful, golden-skinned girl with flowers in her hair. Their eyes met, held, and she smiled.
Mahuru! The girl was a castaway. The chief told him that as they sat together near his hut. Almost two years before a canoe had drifted ashore, an outrigger. The Polynesian girl had been lying on the bottom, half-dead from thirst.
Two weeks later the schooner that delivered him had come back down from Apataki, sliding through those long green swells to pick him up. “Nein,” he had told the captain in his broken English. “I shall not go back. I vill stay here. T’ere is var unt death, t’ere is struggle to livf. Here is peace.”
So he had stayed. For three years he lived on Arutua. In those three years he had learned from his wife, learned to handle an outrigger, to fish, to live like a Polynesian. His body became sun-browned and hardened. He would swim, sometimes over a mile a day, and would dive and trade for oysters, selling pearl shell for a few extra coins when trading ships called. They had a child by then, a boy. One day, Fritz decided to leave Arutua and move to Raiatea. It had been Mahuru’s home before her canoe had drifted away across the sea.
The schooner Alden had called at the island. Old Fritz stirred on the bunk-edge and frowned behind his glasses. He remembered how Captain Wallace Benson had come ashore, a sturdy half-caste with him and a bulky blackfella from Australia.
“To Raiatea?” Benson turned brusquely. “Yeah mate, I’m goin’ that way, but there’s no room. No room for no damned beachcomber and his woman.”
A few minutes later Benson had looked up to see Mahuru walking across the sand toward the thatched hut. Motherhood had brought even more beauty to Mahuru. Slim and amber-limbed, she moved as though to unheard music, and Wally Benson’s eyes narrowed.
“Who’s that?” he demanded of a native.
“That Mahuru, Matayo’s woman. Matayo, big white man.”
Benson suddenly realized he had heard of Schumann…at least he had heard the name Matayo from other island traders. A man with pearl shell to sell, and rumored to have collected the rare and valuable pearl as well.
After he had spent the morning conducting his business, Benson walked down on the beach and found Fritz Schumann. Benson smiled, the thin line of his mustache stretching upward.
“Hey, mate, I reckon I spoke too hard a while ago,” he said. “You’re not the usual type of beachcomber. I’ll carry you to Raiatea.”
“There’ll be two more,” Schumann had said. “My vife and child.”
“Child?” Wally Benson hesitated. “Well, all right. I’m sailing in an hour, so get aboard!”
Fritz Schumann had walked over to the little hut to speak to his wife. He explained briefly, and saw her begin to gather up their belongings. As for himself, he had stood silently by the door staring out over the reef with thoughtful eyes.
* * *
—
Benson walked forward to where Schumann sat in the bow with Mahuru and his son. He smiled at the girl. Then he turned to Schumann.
“You play cards? Two of my men do. Come on down an’ let’s have a game. You said you have some cash.”
Fritz got up. When he stood he was several inches taller than Benson. He turned and spoke swiftly and coolly to his wife in her native tongue; then he followed Benson to the cabin.
Custer, one of the half-castes, was there. So was a thin, hard-faced white man named Martin. In the corner the blackfella sat hunched against the wall. When Schumann took a seat at the table he was careful to see that his back was to the wall, and not too far from the door. Casually, his eyes turned toward the Aborigine.
“He is plenty strong, t’at man! Plenty strong!”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Wally Benson remarked, “an’ the dumb brute knows how to use it too!”
Schumann played coldly, calculatingly. There was no question in his mind as to where he stood. This man wanted his wife. He also wanted the pearls Schumann had gathered in his years of diving at Arutua. How many he actually had, no one knew. How could they? But he was aware that, as with all rumors, imagination played its part.
However, there had been the years before Fritz Schumann had come to Arutua, years before he had become Matayo. Those years had taught him much of men and their ways. The same cool skill, the same careful manner that had won the six duels had won other battles.
He had come aboard that day fully aware of the risk he took. The journey to Raiatea was not long, and somewhere on that journey he had known there would be trouble. Sitting on his bunk in the Lichenfield, lost in his dreams of yesterday, he remembered words that Denny McGuire had said: “It’s the direct method that wins. If there’s trouble, don’t wait for it—go right to it!” Denny McGuire, he decided, was a smart boy. Though Fritz Schumann, even the Fritz Schumann of those long-ago days, didn’t consider stepping into the path of violence much of a “method,” he was no advocate of avoidance once an issue presented itself…and he had been afraid there might not be another schooner at Arutua for a year or two.
He had played cards carefully, and he had won steadily…even though Wally Benson, Martin, and Custer were cheating. Fritz Schumann was not a stranger to cards, and despite their efforts he had swept most of the money from the table.
Finally, Benson drew back. “You got me, Dutchie! Cleaned me out!” But there had been an ugly light in his eye.
“You got a schooner,” Schumann had said. “I vill stake my pearls!” Pearls they had never seen—but that mattered little, for they intended to take whatever he had regardless.
And Schumann played three of a kind to beat two pair. Custer leaned back in his chair, his eyes turning from one to the other. Martin sat very still, watching the cards. Finally Wally Benson pushed his cards away and laughed.
“Well this is a showdown all the way around, innit? You play a flash hand of poker. Better than I do, an’ that’s sayin’ something. You won the hand, but I’m takin’ the game. You think you’ll ever get to Raiatea?”
Benson lit a cigarette, and flipped the match toward the porthole. “What do ya think, Dutchie? Who’s got the best hand now?”
“I t’ink I got it, Captain Benson. I know you take me to get my vife, my money. You t’ink one dumb beachcomber is easy. Vell, now you guess again. I got the best handt. It is under the table, Vally Benson. Under the table, unt pointed
right at your belly. Now t’at I get your ship I change the rules….I vill pay shares, fair shares of every voyage.” Schumann looked directly at the blackfella, “Unt I vill need a mate…Vhat you t’ink, huh?”
* * *
—
The Alden raised Raiatea shortly before daybreak, and as the sun threw crimson into the sky, it moved down on the island, one of the most lovely on earth. High mountains lifted their crowns above the sea, over the pale green lagoon and the gold of the land beneath. The way into the channel was dotted with tiny islands.
Schumann was at the wheel, and beside him Mahuru held little Jerry. Forward, just abaft the form’st, Martin’s body rolled in the scuppers. There was a bullet hole between his eyes. The four men of the native crew stood silent, watching the channel. Wally Benson loitered amidships, and near him the half-caste Custer sat. Watching the two of them was Button, the Aborigine. Schumann held a steady hand on the helm as the yellow fangs of the reef gnawed the blue water, and let the Alden slide easily through the channel and into the little cove.
“Let go for’rd!”
He heard the splash of the anchor, and saw the bow swing. The natives worked swiftly, their fingers made surer by the threat of the gun. Watching them work, eyes straying at times to the beach, Schumann never forgot to observe the pair amidships. The crew were Malays, and he could depend on them to go with the winner. His only allies were the two pistols in his waistband and the Aborigine whose loyalty he had bought.
Several natives had come down to the shore. Mahuru was watching them eagerly. Her father and brothers were here, somewhere. The two men in the waist of the ship got to their feet. Schumann made his decision.
“Vally Benson! You unt you man jump over the side, unt svim!”
Benson’s mouth opened and closed. “You crazy? We wouldn’t get halfway before the sharks got us.”
“Vhat you plan to do mit me unt my child?” Schumann lifted a pistol. “Vhat is it but vun shark to another? Ofver you go!”
Even as he spoke, he saw Custer’s arm flash up and the silver gleam of the knife as it left its sheath at the back of his neck. But the blackfella moved, and the knife thudded to the deck.
Custer struggled, but he was held in a grip of iron.
“Vhich is it? T’e gun or t’e shark?”
Wally Benson hesitated, then with a curse he turned to the rail.
“Take t’e knife. Natives t’ey kill shark mit knifes!”
Benson hesitated again, and then picked up the knife. He went over the side, and as he struck the water the Abo tossed Custer, his wrist broken, after him. A moment later Schumann saw a dark, muddy-colored shape lance past the stern, and heard Mahuru’s whisper.
“Ma’o.”
There was a fierce tumult in the water, and Schumann turned away from the rail to find three natives coming aboard. One of them was Mahuru’s brother.
* * *
—
The journey from Arutua to Raiatea had been an interval he rarely remembered now. It was a bit of nightmare in the midst of enchantment. In the days that followed they built a palm-thatched hut on the edge of a little cove where he could look down the miles of reef reaching out to the sea beyond the island. In the spray-misted distance the gigantic shoulder of Bora Bora loomed up, while towering masses of cumulus clouds blessed the islands with afternoon rains.
Old Fritz Schumann walked out on the deck and stopped by the rail, staring off toward the horizon. Out there to the south and west was Raiatea, Bora Bora, and his wife and sons. Why had he left? Why had he ever let himself be led away from that paradise for even an instant? A man needed but little on the islands below the line; why dream of more than that?
He hadn’t wanted more—for himself. But Jerry was growing older, and young Fritz was nearly two. Fritz Schumann thought of that, and began to remember the world he left behind, began to recall the books, the schools, and the music. There would come a time when these islands would no longer be so free, so primitive, and he wanted his children to be ready. He wanted them to have a future, to understand and to be able to join the world beyond the horizon.
He had started with a larger and better house. He was a seafaring man, and as such had a knack with tools. Then he brought plants down from the hills, laid out a neat orchard, planted cotton and tobacco. Some early explorers had left lemon and orange trees, and pineapples were plentiful, so it hadn’t meant much work. Then, after several voyages in trade, he sailed the schooner to Papeete and sold it.
A war of which he knew nothing was on, but they knew him in Papeete, and did not think of him as German. He took passage for San Francisco, and had scarcely landed before he was interned. It had been a year before he was freed, and by then his money was gone, spent in a futile struggle to win his freedom. The worst of it was, Mahuru could neither read nor write, and no one else on Raiatea could either. In spite of that, he had mailed letters and all the children’s textbooks he could afford; he hoped that someday his sons would read them. The last book he sent was a boy’s book on Morse code, and he dreamed that someday Jerry or Fritz would reach out to him across the deep waters, communicating in a way that was bringing all the people of the world together. But he had no idea if the letters or the books ever reached their destination.
Even after the war there was still feeling against Germans, and he could find no work. Finally, a ship took him aboard as fireman, and he made a trip to Cape Town and then one to South America. But time passed, and somehow he never earned enough money, never got back to Raiatea, to his wife and sons.
* * *
—
Tex Worden stopped behind Schumann, waiting for Denny, who had been hanging some clothes to dry in the heat of the huge fiddly over the boilers. He felt gingerly of his still-peeling nose and touched Fritz on the shoulder.
“Let’s shake it up, Hitler,” he said. “They’re puttin’ grub on the table. With this crowd, a guy’s got to be on his toes to get himself enough to eat.”
When Denny walked into the mess room, he was rattling a pair of dice.
“Come on, you guys, I’ll roll anybody for an extra piece of pie!”
“Nuts t’ you, sailor!” Shorty said. “Not with those dice of yours. You ate my dessert five times running before I found you had a loaded set of tops!”
“It’s the price of education, m’ boy! It never pays to trust people. Now take Fritz here—he’s a man of experience. Would you trust your future on a bet, Pop?”
“Not anymore, especially Irishmans mit crookedt dice!”
“So, how d’ you like them onions, McGuire? Pass over that dish of hamburgers an’ shut up!”
“Could I interest you in a nice pitcher of milk? One cup of tinned milk, to forty cups of water! It makes young men old and old men older, puts kinks in your back and wrinkles in your voice. Makes you feel like dancing a haeva.”
“What’s that? I thought I’d heard of it all, but the haeva is a new one on me!”
“Ask Pop here, he knows. Didn’t you say you’d been down in the islands, Pop?”
“Ya, it is vun of t’em native dances, mit lots of viggles.”
“Down in the Society and Cook Group,” Denny said. “Tell them about the time the chief made you his tyo, Pop. That’s a good yarn.”
“It vas nothing. Vun time the chief he vant to make his tyo, his friend, of me. I vas new to the islands t’en, unt did not know my duties. Soon the chief—he seemed mad at me. Finally, vun man who speaking English tell me vhen I become the chief’s tyo I am supposed to sleep mit his vife. I cound see vas very serious.”
“What happened?” Sam Harrell leaned back against the bulkhead. “Sounds like a situation that could go wrong no matter what you did!”
“Nein. I vas t’en vorking for England, unt it vas necessary ve keep a very good feeling among the natives. I had not yet met my vife, I vas a young man
mit lots of ent’usiam for my duty. His Majesty’s vork must be done, unt so the chief unt I vere soon again friends.”
“Now that,” Sam said admiringly, “is what I would call a noble spirit of self-sacrifice. His Majesty’s Service, eh? My, my!”
THE PRIVATE LOG OF JOHN HARLAN, SECOND MATE
March 24th: It is one of those enchanted mornings when the air seems effervescent and the sounds of voices and movement forward on the fo’c’stlehead seem almost like music. The mate has several of the men working up there, and the bright clarity of the morning seems to have touched them. They are painting the anchor winch, I believe, and doing other work forward. They laugh and joke. Listening to these sounds from a distance, they almost sound like my children playing in the yard, though if one could truly hear them, I’m sure the men’s humor would be sprinkled with the roughest of stories and told in language that would curl an old maid’s hair.
Sometimes I wonder if their crass behavior isn’t more of an act than anything else. I have seen sailors and longshoremen doing dockside work call out to passing women in the most uncouth manner, yet they seem, if one watches closely, to be vastly more interested in proving something to one another. The same men, if alone, are more likely to be polite, if not actually chivalrous. And, of course, I have seen the hardest, most seemingly evil of men perform the most heroic of feats without pausing for a second thought. In fact, it is often these men who are actually more likely to drag a fellow crewman from a deluged deck or wade into live steam to turn a valve.
One never knows what potentialities are contained in a ship’s crew. I doubt if the autocratic Mr. Bligh quite realized the stuff of which Fletcher Christian was made, and certainly none of them could have guessed what a chapter in history they were to make. A mutiny on a small ship on a lonely sea, then the astounding voyage of William Bligh, navigating a twenty-foot boat over four thousand miles to safety. Almost every move of both groups has been closely studied and chronicled. The mutineers supposed they were losing themselves to the world, but they were also creating a story for the ages. And not alone the men of the Bounty, for what of the Birkenhead, slowly sinking while the troops stood in solid ranks as women and children took to the boats? What of the battered old Kingsway, surely the most unassuming of four-mast schooners—who could have guessed her voyage would be a nightmare of strife, hatred, and blood? Could any one of the small crew of the Mary Celeste have guessed that unassuming brig was to become an eternal mystery? We know these stories, and others, but how many ships just disappear?
No Traveller Returns (Lost Treasures) Page 9