After about a week the Mizpah had filled the Siai with yams, plantains, and fresh vegetables for the disease-stricken prisoners at Samarai; and Moreton and Judge Winter, having completed their court work, sailed away for that port. The Judge’s parting words to me were: “Keep within touch of the mail schooner, Monckton; the Mambare is going to claim a pound of corpse for every ounce of gold, and there will be vacancies enough for you before long.” “Very good, sir,” I said; “pay me enough and feed me fairly, and I’ll willingly furnish 150 lbs. of prospective corpse, when you need it.” Then came Winter’s slow smile: “You will be neither adequately paid nor decently fed in the Service, but, like the rest, you will come when called. Good-bye.” Very sadly I watched the disappearing sails of the Siai; and then turned rather disgustedly to my work and the society of my New Guinea boys and Billy, for another long period.

We then tried sending the divers down in the deep channels surrounding the mud banks from which the natives collected their small pearl shell, in the hope of finding larger shell containing pearls. But we found the water was too muddy and disturbed for the ordinary diver to see the oysters; the native skin-divers in the shallower water were able to feel them with their feet, and then scoop them into baskets. The heavy leaden-cased boots of the divers in dress, however, prevented this being done, and the few shells they obtained, by groping on the bottom with their hands, would not pay expenses. I then tried a new plan. Sending the three luggers to trade for native curios at Kavitari, with the idea that I might again sell them in Samarai, I commenced operations with the dredging apparatus with which I have mentioned the Mizpah was fitted. This scheme would have worked well but for two reasons: the first, that the Mizpah was old and rotten; the second, that the mud or sandy bottom, on which the pearl oysters lay, was studded with coral mushrooms and boulders.

Our modus operandi was this. Working up to windward of the oyster-bearing bank, we used to cast the dredge overboard, and then, clapping on all sail, scud before the wind, dragging the dredge in the mud behind us. At intervals we would heave-to, haul up the dredge with its load of oysters, and repeat the process. Unfortunately, we would haul up about two or three dredge loads, and then, suddenly the dredge would land against a coral lump and bring the vessel to all standing. If the Mizpah had been new and strong she might have stood it, but as it was the straining opened her seams and made her leak like a sieve. The result of which was to convince me that unless I abandoned my dredging, I should have no Mizpah left under me. Some years afterwards my plan was attempted by a trader with several stoutly-built vessels; but an Ordinance was passed by the New Guinea Legislative Council forbidding the fishing for the Trobriand species of pearl shell by means of dredging, for fear of clearing out the breeding ground of the oyster and thus destroying one of the staple foods of the natives.

Upon this last failure, I summoned Billy and the luggers and we stood away for the Straits between Ferguson and Normanby Islands. Here, however, though we obtained a small quantity of shell of first-class quality, unusually large and clean, the water was so deep—twenty-three to twenty-five fathoms—that I did not care to continue working there. Here I made the acquaintance of a great friend of Moreton’s, the Rev. William Bromilow of the Wesleyan Methodist Mission; a splendid type of man and missionary, whose friendship I was to enjoy for many years. The Mission Station is built on the island of Dobu, an extinct volcano; the only evidence of volcanic action at this time being a hot spring bubbling up in the sea, over which small vessels used to anchor, to allow the hot water to boil the barnacles and weeds off their bottoms. The native yam gardens run right up and into the old crater of the volcano. Here the natives have a curious way of fishing, using kites which they fly from their canoes. The kites have long strings descending from them, ending in a bunch of tough cobweb. The cobweb dancing over the surface of the water attracts the fish, which, snapping at it, get their teeth entangled in its tough texture and are thereupon secured by a man or small boy swimming from the canoe.

I found at Dobu my old Chasseurs d’Afrique friend, Louis, settled down on a small island as a copra maker and trader. He told me that he was utterly tired of knocking about and had settled there to end his days; he was making about £5 per week at his business, and had got together a fine collection of pigs and poultry. Louis’ days were to end, poor devil, sooner than he expected; but that is later. He had a small fleet of canoes, which he sent out daily to buy cocoanuts, paying for them with trade tobacco; he then manufactured the kernels into copra. When the natives’ fishing failed, he dynamited fish and traded them instead of tobacco for cocoanuts; when their fishing was good, and he had no demand for the catch, he salted and dried it and then disposed of it at native feast times. Louis begged me to join him, and settle down to a lotus-eating and untroubled life with enough for our wants, and no danger and worry. He said, “We will order a good cutter for our trading, have plenty of papers, books, tobacco, and wine of the best, and when I die, you can take the business.” “That’s all very fine, Louis,” I said; “but how old are you?” “Fifty-seven,” replied Louis. “Well and good,” I remarked, “but you are over thirty years ahead of me; your life has been lived, while mine has just begun! What would you have said thirty odd years ago, when you were a young soldier, if a similar proposition had been made to you?” “I should have said, God damn! not I!” said Louis. “Well, Louis,” I replied, “I am afraid that must be my answer to you now.” The time came when I weighed anchor and left Dobu, taking, as a parting present from Louis, a large native pot full of eggs, a dozen clucking fowls, a squealing porker for my crew, and a most ornate French tie-pin, which some one in Samarai afterwards stole. Poor Louis! the next time I met him was in the hospital at Thursday Island, he having blown off his fore-arm in dynamiting fish. He had been taken to Samarai in the Mission vessel, and from there sent on to Thursday Island in the Merrie England.

From Dobu we sailed south and rounded Normanby Island finding everywhere, in likely pearl-shell localities, shell of a size and quality better than any other in the world, but water too deep for us to work it successfully. The shell always lay at a depth varying from twenty-eight to thirty fathoms; a depth that, however tempting the outlook, simply spelt suicide on the part of the diver volunteering to work it, and manslaughter on the part of the owner sending him below. From the south end of Normanby Island we stood north to Cape Vogel on the mainland, sounding and prospecting the bottom all the way, but with no payable results. At Cape Vogel, or Iasa Iasi as the natives call it, an epidemic of influenza attacked the Malays and Billy, leaving my New Guinea boys and myself the only effective members of our little fleet. Finding, therefore, that for a short time my working vessels—the three luggers—were useless, I left them at anchor at Iasa Iasi and stood north again with the Mizpah, intending to explore the little-known regions of the north-east coast for signs of pearl shell. This coast of New Guinea was then regarded by traders—and in fact by all Europeans—as a wild region inhabited by savage cannibals and unsafe to touch upon, much less trade with. The navigation of its waters was also regarded, and rightly so, as highly dangerous. Odd ships, heavily armed, such as men-of-war and the Merrie England, had touched at certain points but had really made no permanent impression; and the natives of the coast were therefore practically in the same state as they had been prior to the advent of the European.

Some twelve miles north of Cape Vogel we discovered a large island-studded harbour with a deep water entrance, called by the natives Pusa Pusa; this harbour is about twelve square miles in extent, it is marked on no chart, but is probably the best natural harbour on this coast of New Guinea. The Mizpah was the first European vessel to enter it, and in fact its existence had not been suspected before. Some years later, when I was Resident Magistrate of the North-Eastern Division, I piloted the Merrie England into it through the deep-water channel. The Commander and the ship’s officers spoke in high praise of it as an anchorage and harbour, but the then Governor, Sir George Le Hunte, summed it up in these words: “An admirable place for exploration by steam launch, slowly, however, filling up by deposit of mud from rivers.” With all due respect for vice-regal sapience, I beg now to remark that—Firstly, there are no rivers flowing into Pusa Pusa Harbour; secondly, the bottom consists of coral sand and is subject to great scour; and thirdly, the value of a harbour lies in its safety for shipping and not in its suitability for a scenic or picnic resort. Pusa Pusa is the only harbour existing between China Straits and Cape Nelson where ships of large tonnage can lie in safety. Its entrance is masked by islands, hence ships by the dozen may sail past without having any idea of what lies behind them; only a prowling pearl-hunting vessel such as mine was likely to nose her way into the entrance.

As we sailed in we came suddenly upon a few natives camped upon the beach of a small island, with whom—after a little difficulty—we established trading relations, and from whom I purchased several fine specimens of gold-lip shell, which they told me they had found washed up on the beach. In this place every indication pointed to shell: namely, strong tidal scours in narrow passages, sandy coral-studded bottom and quantities of the submarine plant, which divers maintain grows only where pearl shell is to be found.

From Pusa Pusa we fled back as fast as sail could drive us to Iasa Iasi to fetch the luggers, only to find that they were still incapable of moving—much less working. During the absence of the Mizpah, a wandering pearl-fishing lugger, owned by a man called Silva, had joined them, he having come to discover what we were doing. Finding my own boats hors de combat, I told Silva of my discovery of Pusa Pusa and asked him to come and prospect the harbour, suggesting that, if we found anything worth having, we should work it together and keep its discovery secret. Silva protested for some time, saying that he did not like the north-east coast at all, and had only come to the point at which we were then lying in the hope of discovering what my boats were doing; he finally, however, consented to venture into Pusa Pusa providing the Mizpah went with him. Accordingly the Mizpah and Silva’s lugger sailed for that harbour, while the Ada, Hornet, and Curlew remained at Iasa Iasi awaiting the convalescence of their crews or further orders from me.

On arrival at Pusa Pusa, Silva donned the diving dress and descended, only to ascend in about ten minutes, holding a large shell in his hand and gesticulating to have his helmet removed. He said that it was a good shell bottom, promising very well indeed, but that immediately on descending he had met a groper larger than any he had ever seen, and he would prefer to remain on deck until the fish had had time to remove itself. Half an hour elapsed, Silva descended again, and almost immediately signalled, “Pull me up.” Pulled up accordingly he was; he then complained that he had met a shark, and that—though as a general rule he did not mind sharks—this particular one was longer than the Mizpah, and he thought he preferred to be on deck! Again we waited perhaps an hour, and again Silva descended, and again came the urgent signal, “Pull me up.” Upon his helmet being removed, he at once demanded, with many oaths, that his whole dress should be taken off; and then, seizing a tomahawk, he declaimed: “The first time I went down in this blank place I met a groper, the next time I met a shark as big as a ship, the last time there was a —— alligator, and if any man likes to say there is shell here I’ll knock his —— brains out with this tomahawk!” A hero of romance would now have donned the dress and descended, but I freely confess that I—as an amateur—was not game to take on a work that a professional diver threw up as too dangerous.

Doubtless Silva’s rage was increased by the extraordinary effect air pressure has upon a man’s temper when diving. A diver may be in a perfectly amiable mood with all the world while the dress is being fitted on, but the moment the face glass is screwed home—the signal for starting the air pump—he begins to feel a little grievance or irritation; as he descends, this feeling increases until he is in a perfect fury of rage against every one in general and usually one individual in particular. After that, he spends his time in wondering how soon the dress can be taken off in order that he may half-kill that particular person, usually the tender, for some wholly imaginary offence. Another peculiar fact is, that the moment the face glass is removed and he breathes the ordinary air—even though he may have come up boiling with rage against some special individual—the bad temper evaporates like magic and he wonders what on earth caused his anger. This has invariably been my experience, and other divers have told me they have felt the same sensations. There is usually a perpetual feud between the diver on the bottom and the men on deck working the air pump. The diver always wants sufficient air to keep his dress distended and also to keep himself bobbing about on the bottom; if he gets too much he can let it pass away, by releasing the valve of his helmet; if he gets too little, he can signal for more, but there is no tug signal on the life-line for less air.

A diver’s helmet is really not a helmet in the ordinary acceptation of the term, but is a small air chamber firmly bolted to the corselet and incapable of movement from any volition on his part. He simply turns his head inside it and looks through either side or front glasses, exactly as a man looks through a window. A diver’s most real danger is probably the risk he runs of being drowned when on his way to the surface, and it occurs in this way. After a time the best of diving dresses becomes leaky to a more or less extent, and the water that finds its way through, settles about the feet and legs. Divers become quite accustomed to having their dresses filled with water up to the knees and even to the thigh; the water is no inconvenience to them whilst upright on the bottom, and they are very rarely conscious of it. Well, suppose a diver has his dress full of water to the knees or thighs; as he ascends, he may involuntarily or by accident allow his body to assume a horizontal position, in which case the water at once rushes into the helmet, overbalances him, i.e. really stands him on his head, and drowns him inside his dress.

In a diving dress every beat of the air pump is perfectly audible to the diver, and any irregularity or alteration of the pace, at which the air-pump wheels are turned, is to him irritating in the extreme—an irritation he invariably works off by signalling for more air and thus increasing the manual labour at the pumps. It takes four men, straining hard, to keep a diver properly supplied with air at any depth over twenty fathoms. One of the greatest discomforts a diver has in the tropics is the smell of warm oil, more or less rancid, with which the pumps charge his air; I have had to struggle hard to prevent being sick, and I leave to the imagination the beastly situation of a man, with his head confined in a small helmet, overcome by nausea! Another exasperating thing is the scroop made by a grain of sand or grit getting into the plunger of the air pump, which is only comparable to the feeling caused by a drop of water falling upon one’s head at regular intervals.

Apart from the noise of the pump beats, communicated through the air pipe—which, by the way, is rather comforting, as it shows one is not completely cut off from the upper world—the under seas seem absorbed in extreme silence and gloom, and unless one is in a current or tide, in a sort of unholy calm. One of the things which appear as most remarkable is the lessening of the weight of objects in the water; for instance, a fully accoutred diver can hardly waddle on the deck of his ship, but as he descends, his weight seems to become less and less until he can bob about in a fairy-like manner on the bottom. The same lessening of weight applies equally to inanimate objects; and it is a common trick, when competing vessels are working upon a small patch of shell, for the diver of one of them to pull his rival’s anchor out of the ground and tangle its anchor round the fluke, with the result, that the vessel drifts off with the tide or the wind, towing her diver after her. A lot of time is thus wasted in pulling him up and working back against tide or wind to her old station.

I have spoken of pulling up a diver; this is not literally true, as a diver really ascends of his own volition, by closing his helmet’s air valve and thus blowing out his dress with air. The “pulling in,” when the water is calm, merely consists of taking up the slack of the air pipe and line and, when there is a tide or current, of hauling him along the surface to his vessel. Great care has to be exercised by him in coming to the surface, as, should his ascent be too fast, he may smash his helmet on the bottom of his boat or lugger. The usual way is in a half-lying position on the back and with one hand on the air valve, watching carefully for the light near the surface, and for the shadow of the vessel’s hull. Occasionally, though it very rarely happens, a diver’s air valve sticks; in which case, he at first rises slowly from the bottom, but as the pressure of the water decreases, the pace of his ascent increases, until at last he is rising at such a pace that he shoots violently above the surface. The first thing that shows those on board the lugger what is happening is a splash, and the sight of the diver floundering about on the surface nearly suffocated by pressure of air.

From Pusa Pusa, the Mizpah and Silva’s boat returned to Iasa Iasi; and when I had rejoined my luggers, Silva sailed away for Sudest, being by this time quite convinced that nothing was to be gained by shadowing my boats. I found that my crews were at last recovering, and departed with them for the islands of Tubi Tubi and Basilaki. On the way we called in at Awaiama Bay on the coast of the mainland, in order to replenish our fresh-water supply, the water obtainable at Cape Vogel being brackish and disagreeable to the taste. Here I found Moreton with the Siai; he was engaged in buying land from the natives for a man named Oates. New Guinea law did not permit the sale of land by natives to any other than the Crown; the Crown could then transfer to the European applicant. Oates had come up from Sydney in a cutter of some twenty tons burthen, accompanied by his wife and family, which consisted of a son and daughter, aged respectively about fourteen and seventeen, their intention being to start a cocoanut plantation. He had formerly been the master of the Albert McLaren, the Anglican Mission vessel; but this latest speculation of his was not fated to turn out well. The first thing that happened was that his daughter became disgusted with the prospect, and, on the family visiting Samarai, she took the first opportunity of departing for Sydney, where I believe she married a draper and, I trust, found life happier than she had in New Guinea. Then his wife died and was buried by the son, as Oates himself was delirious at the time with malarial fever and all the native servants had fled. Finally Oates died also, and the unhappy boy had to bury him as well. This boy, Ernest Oates, afterwards entered the service of Whitten Brothers and eventually became manager of their branch at Buna Bay, and he was still in that position when I finally left New Guinea. After a most strenuous ten years, he was endeavouring to scrape together enough money to start a small business of his own in Sydney—something quiet and contemplative, like growing mushrooms.

I remember, some years after the death of his parents, an extraordinary performance on the part of this lad. He was then stationed by Whitten Brothers at the mouth of the Kumusi River as their agent, and had charge of a receiving store for goods landed at that port, which had to be sent up the river to Bogi, a mining camp. With the exception of a few Samarai boys, Ernest Oates was absolutely alone, living surrounded by some thousands of particularly dangerous natives. He possessed two fire-arms, one, a Winchester repeating rifle, for which he had a large store of cartridges; the other, an old Snider with only some half-dozen charges. By some means or other, he broke the lock of his Winchester, and therefore was left with the weapon for which he had practically no ammunition. At this time a large alligator collared several pigs from near the store and narrowly missed securing odd boys of his. Whilst Oates was sitting on his verandah one evening, he noticed the alligator crawl out on a mud bank and, with its mouth wide open, proceed to go to sleep. As he did not wish to use one of his sparse supply of cartridges, the idea occurred to him of creeping over the mud and throwing a dynamite cartridge down the reptile’s throat. No sooner did the thought come than it was acted upon; crawling over the mud he got, unperceived, to within a few feet of the saurian and, standing up, hurled his cartridge. Unfortunately, as he threw the explosive, his feet burst through the hard, sun-baked crust of mud, and he sank to the waist with a plop and a yell; his boys, who were keenly interested spectators, dashed to his assistance, but with little hope of reaching him before the alligator. Luckily, however, he had attached a very short fuse to his charge, and the dynamite exploded, wounding the reptile’s tail and causing it to turn round and snap at an imaginary new enemy. This allowed Oates’ boys to come up, drag him from his hole, and drive off the alligator with their spears.

Oates’ father, “Captain” Oates as he was usually called, once gave me the peculiar pleasure—as a magistrate—of receiving a complaint about myself. I was relieving Moreton at the time as Resident Magistrate at Samarai, and had been engaged, to the common knowledge of all traders and labour recruiters, in a punitive expedition to Goodenough Island. Having finished my work there, I took the Siai across to Cape Vogel with the intention of searching for unsigned or kidnapped boys, by running unseen down the coast in the night and boarding any labour vessels I might find bound for the Mambare gold-fields, either rounding or anchored off East Cape. Labour vessels had a trick of starting their little games when the cat in the shape of the Siai—or Black Maria as their owners called her—was safely out of the way.

It was a rough boisterous night, dark as the inside of a black cow, and blowing nearly a full gale; the Siai was showing no lights as I did not want her seen, nor did I want her movements reported by the natives; and as she was crowded with men, I could afford to carry on sail until the last minute, which I accordingly did. Passing Awaiama we sighted the lights of a vessel hove-to outside the harbour, and, as we ran close down to her, there came a brilliant flash of lightning from behind us, which for a moment illuminated her like day, and allowed us to identify her as Oates’ cutter, the Rock Lily; whereupon we sheered off and passed her at about sixty feet distance. At East Cape I found no vessels, and accordingly went on into Samarai.

Two days later Oates arrived and, coming into the Court House, told me he had a complaint to make about a strange ship. “Two nights ago,” said he, “I was hove-to off Awaiama: the night was dark and the weather so rough that I did not care to move either towards Samarai or back into the harbour. My lights were burning well, when suddenly there came a flash of lightning, and by it I saw a black schooner; I could see thirty feet of her keel out of water, your worship, and she was then setting a topsail! It’s the mercy of God I was not run down; she had no lights, and I want her found and her captain fined.” I sympathized greatly with Oates, and sent to the Subcollector of Customs for a list of vessels which had entered the harbour during the past two days; naturally the officer never dreamt of including the Government vessel in the list, for, in the first instance, her movements did not concern him, and, in the second, he knew that as she carried me, I must know as much or more about her than he did. Oates scanned the list of luggers, cutters, and Mission boats, but there was no black schooner of the description he gave. “Captain Oates,” I said, “are you certain it was not a nightmare you had?” Oates choked with indignation. “She was four times the size of any vessel on this coast; my whole crew saw her and got the fright of their lives. Devil, even a binnacle light she carried.” “Very good, Captain Oates,” I said; “you see we can get no information about her from the Customs, but I will undertake that we will bring your mysterious craft to book the first time the Siai finds her; it is a very serious offence for a merchant ship to sail without lights.”

From Awaiama we sailed for the Conflict Group, a circle of small islands surrounding a lagoon of a few miles in circumference. These islands were afterwards purchased from the Crown by a man named Wickham, who intended to use the lagoon for the propagation of sponges, and the island for cocoanut growing. I don’t know what sort of success he made of the cocoanut growing, but I doubt if the sponges could have proved profitable, as Arbouine told me that the sponge trade was entirely in the hands of a small corporation of Jews, by whom they were bought at their own price and sold again wholesale at whatever amount they liked to fix. The high prices paid by the users of large sponges of fine quality are not due to the cost of fishing for them, nor to the expense entailed in their preparation, but are created simply by the ring. I believe, however, that the curing of the finer quality of sponges is a trade secret possessed only by the corporation, but I can see no reason why an expert chemist should not discover a process equally good, as it really only consists of bleaching the fibrous tissue of the half-animal, half-vegetable sponge.

My boats did not linger long at the Conflict Group, as there was nothing in our line there, so accordingly we went on to Tubi Tubi, where again we found that, though the reefs abounded in an infinite variety of wondrously beautiful shells and bÊche-de-mer, shells of the sort we were seeking were conspicuous by their absence, with the exception of a few of the black-lip variety.

BÊche-de-mer is a sort of sea slug, ranging in size from six inches to two feet in length, and from one to six inches in diameter. It is highly prized by the Chinese, who use it for soup making: considerable quantities, however, are now used in London, Paris, and Queensland for the same purpose. The fish lies like a Bologna sausage on the bottom, and is easily brought to the surface by naked divers; it varies in value from £200 per ton downwards according to the size, variety, and skill displayed in curing. The curing is really a very simple matter: should the operation be done on board, the fish or slugs are simply thrown into a four-hundred-gallon tank set in brickwork upon the deck and boiled vigorously in their own juice for a couple of hours; they are then smoked like a ham in a smoke-house for a night. They come on board flabby gelatinous objects, unsightly to the eye and loathly to the touch; they go away packed in sacks, hard little objects like lumps of perished india-rubber. The liquor exuded by boiling bÊche-de-mer has peculiar properties: it will burnish copper until it becomes like gold, and should clothes be dipped in it before being washed, it will remove every particle of grease or dirt, leaving them, after washing, like the finished work of a good French laundress. The most valuable variety of bÊche-de-mer, at the time I write of, was the “teat” fish, so called from having two peculiar rows of teat-like excrescences along the belly; it should not have been the most valuable, as the red fish had at one time been more appreciated by the Chinamen; but they were now regarded with suspicion, as several of their people had been poisoned from partaking of that particular delicacy. Slander said, that Nicholas the Greek had caused the deaths and spoilt the market for red fish by boiling a quantity of them in a copper boiler.

From Tubi Tubi we ran close by the islands of Basilaki and Sariba to Samarai, having little luck on the way. The Basilaki natives had a somewhat unpleasant experience prior to the Proclamation of a Protectorate by the British Government over the southern portion of New Guinea. They had cut out a trading vessel and murdered the crew, with the result that a man-of-war, the name of which I have now forgotten, was sent to punish them. Upon the appearance of the warship they fled into the bush, where the sailors were unable to follow them. In order to inflict some punishment, the ship shelled the principal village, doing, however, no real harm to the thatched huts; several of the shells also failed to explode as they pitched upon the soft coral sand. As time went on, a great feast was held in that village, and the old shells, picked up by the natives, were used instead of stones to support the extra cooking pots. Gaily the natives danced, well were the fires stoked, until suddenly the explosion of three or four twelve-pounder (or heavier) shells spread devastation amongst the packed natives. The manes of the murdered crew may have waited long for revenge, but when it did come, it certainly arrived in a wholesale way.

On arrival in Samarai I paid off my luggers and Billy, which left me with a bare fiver to pay off the Mizpah’s crew, each individual member of which was entitled to that amount; and the Mizpah, after my unsuccessful cruise, was so mortgaged that I could not hope to obtain any money on her. I called my New Guinea boys together and explained the difficulty. “All right,” said my coxswain, “you pay me off before the Government officer and I’ll give you the money back, then you can pay off the next man and he will do the same, and so on until we are clear of the Government and can sail in search of money somewhere.” This I did, and, at the end, still possessed the odd five pounds I had paid them off with; then they all signed on again with me for another voyage. There was at that time no fee to be paid for either signing a crew on or off.

About this time an awful hurricane struck the islands, wrecking and sinking many ships, amongst others the Nabua, a new vessel chartered by Burns, Philp and Co., laden with copra and bound for Samarai. This vessel was somewhere north of East Cape when struck by the hurricane; the crew, terrified by the fury of the storm, let go the anchors when off the coast, and finally abandoned her. They then came into Samarai, reporting that she had been swamped and had sunk at anchor—a story which was accepted by all. I, however, had my doubts about this; and when Burns, Philp and Co., as agents for Lloyds’ underwriters, put her up for sale at auction, I made the one and only bid of five pounds—my last five pounds—for the hull and cargo, and she was knocked down to me for that amount.

After buying the Nabua, I left in the Mizpah for the locality where she was supposed to have foundered, and then got into communication with the coastal natives. “You remember the big wind of a few days ago?” I asked. “Yes,” was the reply. “You saw a vessel at anchor off the shore, a vessel that sank during the gale?” “Yes,” again was the answer. “Is there any rock near where she anchored?” “Certainly,” came the reply; “we will show it you for payment.” For a pound of tobacco they piloted the Mizpah until we were over a rock shaped like a pinnacle or sugar loaf, which was submerged about two fathoms, but which would in rough weather and a heavy sea have only about two feet upon it. “I thought so,” I said to myself; “a strong new vessel such as the Nabua, with her hatches battened down and laden with a light bulky cargo like copra, never would have been swamped at anchor; she must have cracked a plank and have been sunk by a leak.” My boys dived near the rock and reported that there was an anchor with a chain attached, leading into water too deep for them to descend into.

Hastily I sailed back into Samarai, stirred up a drunken ship’s carpenter named Niccols—who was also a good diver—and induced two friends of his, who owned trading luggers, to accompany me back to raise the Nabua. As I had no money, I made the bargain that they should get fifty pounds apiece if we raised the vessel, and nothing if we failed. Back accordingly we went. Harry Niccols descended, and coming up announced he had found the Nabua lying on a shelf on the bottom leading into deep water, and held there by her anchor. The tide apparently, after the gale had subsided, had drifted her away from the rock, upon which she had struck, in a seaward direction. With the exception of one plank smashed under her counter, Harry reported she was uninjured, and he also said that she was palpably light from the nature of her cargo and consequently easy to lift. After getting the luggers over her, Harry descended again and made fast our anchor chains to her chain plates, and then with small difficulty we lifted her with our winches, until she was awash between the two luggers. Just then the Merrie England hove in sight round the point, and seeing us, she dropped her launch, which came puffing alongside with a letter from Judge Winter asking me to go on board at once. I guessed that the Judge wanted to take me off somewhere, and I accordingly impressed upon Harry Niccols and the lugger owners the immediate necessity of beaching our recovered vessel and mending her plank before taking her to Samarai; this they promised to do.

The work for which the Judge wanted me kept me away for six weeks; I was, however, congratulating myself meanwhile upon the fact that, when I went again to Samarai, I should have the proceeds of the sale of a valuable vessel and cargo to collect from Burns, Philp and Co. My hopes were doomed to be dashed to the ground, for, when I eventually reached Samarai, Mr. Arbouine knew nothing about my salvaged ship. On finding Harry Niccols, that worthy told me that they had got the Nabua up safely, and had nailed some canvas over the hole in her stern and pumped her out; then, as they were on the point of beaching her to repair her plank, a trading cutter came in sight, from which—in the joy of their hearts at having so easily made fifty pounds a man—they had bought a keg of rum, upon which all hands had got drunk. Whilst still under the influence of liquor they had decided to sail for Samarai with the unmended Nabua fastened between the two luggers. In China Straits they had got into a tide rip and had been compelled to release the Nabua in order to save the luggers from foundering, whereupon she had of course filled and sunk in deep water. I accordingly lost my ship, and they, their fifty pounds; the damned fools had never even landed her cargo, which was worth twelve pounds per ton, and would have paid us handsomely for our work and trouble.

At Samarai I found some money remitted to me from New Zealand, sufficient to pay off my New Guinea boys and allow me a holiday to that country; so to New Zealand I accordingly went vi Port Moresby, Yule and Thursday Islands.