Water-Nymphs—Ranjo’s Bath and Problem—The Old Hulk—Its Tenants—My Birthday—Shellback Accommodation—Washing Day

A DAY or so after the events of the preceding chapter I became chummy with the inhabitants of the beach. I had seen them before, but had kept slightly aloof. Finding me a musical vagabond at heart, they at once took me to their bosom. Before my reader becomes also intimately acquainted with them I will describe their quaint dwelling-place and its poetical surroundings.

God’s bluest sky lit the world as I roamed beneath the coco-palms. I had just left the kind host’s shanty wherein I had stayed for two or three days. It seemed like a dream to me as I reflected over all that had happened since I left the old country. The birds with brilliant wings in the bread-fruits, the beating of the native drums in the villages, and the tawny coco-nuts hanging over my head made me strangely happy. As I roamed beneath the palms I came to a hollow: it was near the Catholic mission-room. I heard a noise. It was Father O’Leary’s tired feet treading the musical treadmill, which is commonly known as the harmonium. I did not linger near that sacred spot; it reminded me too much of my childhood’s Sunday school afternoons in the British Isles.

I strode down and out of the forest shadows. Before me lay miles of winding coast. The odours of the forests breathed enchantment. As I stood beneath the flamboyant trees, and the migrating cockatoos screeched weirdly, I gazed at the ocean. Round the bend of that magic shore, just to the right of me, were droves of sea-nymphs. Their curly, wind-tossed hair streamed down their backs as they dived and splashed in the blue lagoons.

As I dream on once more, the scene vividly presents itself before my eyes, as I seem to stand again beneath the bread-fruit tree and watch those dusky, sportive angels. There they splash in the blue waters by the promontory. Soft-fingered paddles propel their delicate, shining bodies along. I see their eyes sparkling as they look shoreward and see me. I hear a wild shriek of fright as they mark my white face, then—splash! they have all dived into the deep blue sea—no sportive faeries, but native girls having their morning bath!

As I walk along the shore a more wonderful sight greets my gaze.

By the shore grog shanty, that lies just by the hollows, is something in the ocean that looks like the weather-beaten figurehead of a sunken Chinese junk. Suddenly it moves; at last two hands rise from the depths and start to rub with cleansing vigour the matted hair and crooked-nosed face. It is the gnarled, wrinkled physiognomy of Ranjo, the store-keeper of the grog shanty. He, too, is having his morning bath. As he stands there reflecting, immersed to the shoulders, he is deep in thoughts that are as vital to him as the problem of the visible universe. He does not yearn to probe Space and fathom the distance of the stars and the marvels of far-off worlds; he is simply wondering how he can manage to get those unprincipled beachcombers to pay their bills!

Not far away from Ranjo’s spacious bath is the promontory, on which grows three-plumed coco-palms. It looks like a tiny track from the sea that leads up, up into the vastnesses of the distant mountains. On the shallows of the sands, just below the promontory, lies the huge, wrecked hulk of the old windjammer, the South Sea Rover. Washed ashore during a terrific hurricane some years before, she lies almost high and dry, rotting and bleaching in the tropical suns. As I stare at that old hulk, the carved figurehead’s outstretched hands seem, to me, symbolical of that indefinable appeal to the heart which one feels in the atmosphere of great poetry. The praying hands point seaward, yes, to the far-off, dim, blue sky-line, as though, in her derelict old age, she longs to catch the tide, to go a-roving again with her merry crew.

Bobbing about by her stern is another shoal of native girls. As they turn somersaults in the warm liquid depths, only their small brown feet appear on the surface—such pretty feet they are.

Notwithstanding the picturesque sight, my attention is riveted elsewhere. Lo! something magically wonderful occurs. Suddenly, in the full flood of sunlight, that silent derelict hulk seems to mysteriously reveal the ghosts of her old crew. Lo! there they are: a dozen typical, weather-beaten sundowners of the ocean highways. Up they come, creeping through the rotting deck hatchway, clothed in bright-buttoned rags and dilapidated peaked caps, climbing one by one out of the hulk’s deep hold. My word! such weird, unshaved beings they look, but withal, ghosts in one sense only; they positively hate anything of a solid nature that resists muscular power—for they belong to the highest order of The Sons of Rest; in short, they are genuine beachcombers. Yes, reader, they were my beloved shellbacks and vagabonds of Tai-o-hae.

That old hulk was their home. I also have slept beneath those gloomy hatchways, many, many a time. But it was the first time that I had spied them coming out of doors, so to speak.

I see by my diary that I kept at that period that that day was my fifteenth birthday. I suppose that I enlightened some of those old shellbacks as to the fact, for it says here:

“Monday, September 3rd.—My birthday, am fifteen years old. How time flies! I feel quite ancient. Treated right royally by the big, sunburnt men from the seas. The red-bearded man who swears most terribly made me drink my own health in whisky. Phew! it tasted like lime-juice and paraffin oil. Felt sick—was sick. Had fine time. Two native girls danced round me in the shanty’s card saloon. They kissed me—it’s the fashion here. I turned quite red. Pretty girls. What would they think of it all in England? Slept on the old hulk last night, my birthday night, with a lot of jovial, fierce shellbacks. Played the violin to them in the bowels of the ship—it’s a wreck—they had a barrel of rum or strong beer down there with them—what a night! The very waves roared with laughter as the wild choruses echoed in that ship’s wooden inwards. I do like low men. Slept well.”

There is a good deal more here in my diary about those times, but I think it wiser not to publish it as it stands, so I will proceed from memory.

I recall those wild choruses as though it were yesterday; yes, as they blessed my name, and one by one fell asleep.

It was surprising how comfortable they had made their derelict home. Old ropes, empty barrels and rotting sails had been piled up so as to divide their sleeping apartments from the deck space. Rough bunks had been fitted up, filled with dead seaweed for mattresses, and were all that one could desire in the way of comfort. A little stove had been fixed by the mast stem that ran to the ship’s bottom. Its smoke stack had been placed so as to run out of the port-hole on the starboard side. Once a week they did their washing. It was a sight worth seeing as they stooped over the big empty beef casks, rubbed and rubbed away as they punctuated their labours with choice oaths—and what yarns!