I go cruising amongst the Islands—Arrive in Sydney—Wharfers looking for Work—I go off hunting for Gold—Meet R. L. Stevenson at Sea

Once more the wandering fever came over me, and wishing old Hornecastle good-bye and my few other friends, I shipped in a schooner bound for the Fijis. For two or three months I roamed with her from isle to isle, saw the various tribes of original mankind of all the South Seas, heard their songs and squatted with them in their little huts as the children of past bloodthirsty cannibals said grace over their meals to the great pride of the onlooking missionaries, who have done a deal of good notwithstanding their own sins.

After a week’s stay at Vanua-Levu we proceeded for the Australian coast, and I arrived once more in Sydney Harbour and there once again I fell in with sailors. There they were, a ragged chain of shoulders on the wharf, mostly men of forty to fifty years of age, stalwart and sunburnt relics of better, or worse, days. Still they stood, watching with weary eyes for work, tugging grizzly beards and moustaches, smoking plug tobacco or fiercely chewing in the hot sunshine, arguing the point over the latest trade union grievance, spitting over their shoulders with the same wonderful precision and fate-like persistence. And still they stand there, at least the younger ones; the older ones are now dead, asleep in the “Necropolis” out at “Rookwood,” with all their grievances at rest and their dried-up chewing gums silent for ever, the cry for higher wages for ever entombed!—while their pals stand down by Sydney Bay and now and again in the long silent watch of many years wipe their noses with their outstretched thumb and forefinger and break the silence by some brief remark, such as “Poor pal Bill, whenever I sees the old windjammers being tugged out across the Bay I thinks of ’im and the good old days before the mast, before we joined the trade union, and now he’s dead, I wonder where he is.” Then, by way of punctuation, the reminiscent loafer spits out a thin swift stream of black tobacco juice.

I soon tired of the wharf monotony, and finally, hearing of the gold discoveries of those times, the fever got hold of me and I resolved with a friend, whose spirit seemed very much like my own, to go up country and see if we could find gold ourselves. The gold discoveries were far away in Western Australia, but I got an idea in my head that gold was to be found in New South Wales. I bought a blanket, a billy can and other necessaries for bush exploitation, and we started off by taking tickets on the Newcastle night boat. It took one night to get round, and next morning we started off. I remember we passed some old coal-mine shafts and then tramped along a main track with tall gums each side of us. We were happy together. My comrade was a Scotch fellow, stolid and full of dry humour, and I believe he would have marched on for years without complaining so long as he could smoke. At midday, both tired and hungry, we hailed the driver of a cart that came across some paddocks to the right of us. He was an Australian farmer and a kind fellow we found him. I shall never forget his jolly laughter and the twinkle of his eyes when I told him we were “travelling up country in search of gold,” as we sat up there beside him and the Australian buck-jumper galloped along at about four miles an hour. He put us down about four miles outside of Maitland. It was an old-fashioned, sleepy-looking place, and as we tramped through the main street, with our cheese-cutter caps on and swags on our backs, the Australian youths opened their big mouths and grinned from ear to ear, as they stood in groups by the roadside.

That night we left Maitland behind and slept on the scrub by the Hunter River and then tramped across country. The heat was terrific and reminded me of my Queensland experience. We got work at homesteads and pulled pumpkins, examined creeks carefully, dug holes, gazed for sparkling running water that might reveal the precious metal as it ran over the pockets in the hills; but we found no gold, only hard work and toil. We soon sickened of the life, only suitable to the Chinamen who toiled about us on the stations. Grim, rum-looking things these men were. They looked so stolid and emotionless as they tramped in Indian file across the slopes at sunset back to their sweltering huts that it would require very little imagination to dream that they were stuffed mummies of the Pyramids walking in some long sleep, exiled to the dried-up Australian Bush, and they smelt so strong that when the wind blew from their direction my comrade and I at once lit our pipes!

We soon made tracks for Sydney, where once more I tried to get a berth on an English ship. I had received several letters from home and longed to see them all again; but it was not to be, all the home boats were full up that week and money was getting scarce. My comrade and I determined to get a job somewhere, and going on board the Lubeck, a German ship, I was taken on as mess-room steward, and my mate secured a job in the saloon. We were delighted at such a companionable bit of luck. Next morning she sailed, and as I was walking along the deck next day I saw the Pacific Ocean all around us, and gazing over the bulwark side by the saloon leaned Robert Louis Stevenson. He did not notice me as I stood there by the engine-room door, and I stared on and had a good opportunity of examining the man who had just begun to be interesting to me, as I had a faint idea that he stood apart from ordinary mortals and wrote books of poetry, and so I examined him with interest. He was a good deal like the photographs which I have since seen of him in books and elsewhere, though he looked somewhat older. His face seemed very much sunburnt, and its outline struck me as though it expressed Jewish origin.

The voyage to Samoa, as far as I can now remember, only took about a week or ten days. We called at Tonga and stayed, I think, only a few hours. I slept among the sailors in the fo’c’sle. They were all Germans and they spoke very little English. I discovered that one of them had a violin and, mine being in pawn in Sydney, I borrowed it from him and started to entertain the crew by playing old English songs, and some sea chanteys, one of which was the good stirring old Capstan song “Blow the Man Down.” As I sat on the hatchway at night and two German sea-salts shouted songs in German as I played, Robert Louis Stevenson came and spoke to me, and seemed very much interested in my playing. He remembered seeing me in the Islands and asked me if I was an Australian. I told him I came from England. He became interested in me and just as I was losing my first embarrassment, and had played him once again a Scottish melody which seemed to please him very much, I heard the wretched German chief steward shouting for me, and I had to make a bolt. I did not see him again till we arrived near the Islands, then one night as I was sitting on the hatchway picking the fiddle strings, sweating a good deal, for it was a sweltering hot night, Stevenson came through the alley-way by the engine-room, and sat beside me and another sailor who was humming as I strummed away. I saw his face outlined distinctly; it was a calm night, the moon right overhead flooded the sea with a silver sheen as the screw whirled steadily round and the vessel sped along leaving a long silver wake which could easily be seen for miles behind as the sparkling foam drifted with the glassy swell.

Stevenson was one of those men with a keen face that made you feel a bit reticent until he spoke, and then you discovered a human note in the voice that put you thoroughly at your ease, and as he spoke to a German sailor he picked my violin up and started to try and play some old folk melody. I told him how to hold the bow correctly and hold the head of the violin level with his chin, which he at once attempted to do and made several efforts to perform, upon which I smiled approvingly at my illustrious pupil! He had long delicate fingers and looked well as he stood in the Maestro fashion and did all I told him to do in an obedient way as though I were Stevenson and he the humble sailor-lad. He asked me many questions about music and seemed to know more about the history of celebrated violinists and the history of musical notation than I did, but he spoke modestly and did not take the least advantage of my inferior knowledge as he walked to and fro restlessly and then sat down again. He seemed fond of looking over the ship’s side, gazing out to sea, and up at the stars. He was very friendly with all the sailors, went into the fo’c’sle, talked to the crew and was greatly interested in ship life. I did not see him again till I arrived on the Islands. I did not care about travelling with Germans whom I could not speak to, my knowledge of German being no more than “nein,” and “jah,” and so I left the Lubeck and once more came in contact with old Hornecastle. My chum, though I did all I could to persuade him to leave the boat, would not do so, and so we parted, and the last I heard of him was that he had shipped before the mast of a sailing ship bound for San Francisco and during terrible weather got lost overboard. Poor Ned, I often think of him and even regret leaving the Lubeck, otherwise he might not have gone off on the ill-fated ship, for she too got lost later on with “All Hands.”

Hornecastle^[1] had also been away from the Islands somewhere or other, I forget now where, but I remember his pleasure at seeing me again as he smacked me on the back, and shouted “Hello, my hearty.”

It was about that time that I spent a good deal of my time in practising the fiddle and studying music, and Hornecastle and another old shell-back would sit on a chest and say, “Shut it, youngster, give us a toon!” I had got hold of Kreutzer’s violin studies, and some of the double-stopping strains, I must admit, got very monotonous even to me as I played them over and over again hundreds of times, and when I think of the old chap’s temper at my persistence, and the way he got out of his bed one night, as I was practising, and said, “By Christ, if yer don’t stop that hell of a row, I’ll smash yer fiddle,” I can hardly blame him.

One night a schooner arrived from Honolulu and the crew came ashore and had a fine spree. She brought as passengers two missionaries. I do not remember their names, only that we all called them the “reverends”; the elder one of the two, who looked like a German, was a real “knock-out”; he had succumbed to more women, and had made more devoted mothers on that Isle than Hornecastle had in all his populating career! But he was a good fellow withal, and after he had been to the missionary school and done his duties he would come to us and talk about our evil ways, and try to reform old Hornecastle, who was dead against the Church. Hornecastle would listen to him, blinking his grey eyes all the time. He would tug his beard, put his finger to his beak-like nose and say, “Look ye here, Missy” (which was an abbreviation for missionary). “It’s no good yer trying to come your old swank over me, you’d best start to reform yerself, old cock.” But that missionary was oblivious, and used to the sarcasm and genial observations of his own kind, and took it all in good part. Half comic and half in earnest, he would raise his pious hands above his head, as old Hornecastle would let go and curse missionaries and all creation in general. This missionary meanwhile would sit quietly gazing around, taking notes down, asking questions, the names of trees, flowers, and Isle afar and near, busily engaged in compiling his memoirs, to be published when he returned to his native land in a grand volume chock-full of extreme virtue and self-sacrifice, and the sad ways of the children of the South Seas, and the little bit of good white men had circulated in the children who would grow up pious. I have read a good many books written by men who have presumably travelled and lived in the parts they have written about, but I can most earnestly assure my readers of this autobiography that black men of India and on the Gold Coast of West Africa and in the South Seas do not speak as I have read that they do speak.

The copper-coloured man of Ceylon and Bombay, as soon as you step ashore, speeds towards you and says, “Me show you where live, me good man, carry parcel and nebber steal,” points viciously to his rival—who is clamouring in pigeon English for your patronage—and swears that “He’s bad man, steal all, and been pison” (meaning prison), as the aristocratic dark-turbaned gentleman, with long black naked legs, white shoes and no socks, grins, shows his white teeth, pulls his black hand from under his shirt tail, and tries to entice you to scan his splendid selection of photographs—photographs that, not to put too fine a point upon it, even a Turk, on looking at them, would blow his nose and blush! The South Sea Islanders accost you in a more innocent way; naturally a virtuous race, and living in isolation from civilised Europe, they have watched the White askance, and gradually discovered that the godliness he clothes himself with sometimes covers a deal of vice! So they strive to sell you corals and fruit, as they patter over the ship’s deck with naked feet, and when they see the white man’s eyes wandering over their lithe figures, the women, who have been schooled in Western ways, glide up to you with speaking eyes, stroke your hand with their soft brown fingers, stand with their curved nude brown bodies, clothed only in a string of beads, and like a big greedy child say, “You like me? give me money, eh?”

This, of course, sounds very different to the books I have read, but whoever you are, go to the South Seas, and keep your weather-eye open and you will not contradict me when I say that the money spent by Christian Societies in England and America to polish up the South Sea Island daughters and men, who were far more innocent than Europe ever remembers being, could be spent in our own countries with far greater advantage. The South Sea Islanders would be happier and the English poor and starving children better looked after.