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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Âmona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others, by Louis Becke
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Âmona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others
+From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other Stories" - 1902
+
+Author: Louis Becke
+
+Release Date: March 29, 2008 [eBook #24952]
+[Most recently updated: February 6, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ÂMONA ***
+
+
+
+
+Âmona; The Child; And The Beast
+
+From “The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other
+Stories”
+
+By Louis Becke
+
+T. FISHER UNWIN, 1902 
+  LONDON
+
+ ÂMONA; THE CHILD; AND THE BEAST
+ THE SNAKE AND THE BELL
+ SOUTH SEA NOTES
+ I
+ II
+
+
+
+
+ÂMONA; THE CHILD; AND THE BEAST
+
+
+Âmona was, as his master so frequently told him—accentuating the remark
+with a blow or a kick—only “a miserable kanaka.” Of his miserableness
+there was no doubt, for Denison, who lived in the same house as he did,
+was a daily witness of it—and his happiness. Also, he was a kanaka—a
+native of Niué, in the South Pacific; Savage Island it is called by the
+traders and is named on the charts, though its five thousand sturdy,
+brown-skinned inhabitants have been civilised, Christianised, and have
+lived fairly cleanly for the past thirty years.
+
+Âmona and Denison had the distinction of being employed by Armitage,
+one of the most unmitigated blackguards in the Pacific. He was a
+shipowner, planter, merchant, and speculator; was looked upon by a good
+many people as “not a bad sort of a fellow, you know—and the soul of
+hospitality.” In addition, he was an incorrigible drunken bully, and
+broke his wife’s heart within four years after she married him. Âmona
+was his cook. Denison was one of his supercargoes, and (when a long
+boat of drunkenness made him see weird visions of impossible creatures)
+manager of the business on shore, overseer, accountant, and
+Jack-of-all-trades. How he managed to stay on with such a brute I don’t
+know. He certainly paid him well enough, but he (Denison) could have
+got another berth from other people in Samoa, Fiji, or Tonga had he
+wanted it. And, although Armitage was always painfully civil to
+Denison—who tried to keep his business from going to the dogs—the man
+hated him as much as he despised Âmona, and would have liked to have
+kicked him, as he would have liked to have kicked or strangled any one
+who knew the secret of his wife’s death and his child’s lameness. And
+three people in Samoa did know it—Âmona, the Niué cook, Dr. Eckhardt,
+and Denison. Armitage has been dead now these five-and-twenty
+years—died, as he deserved to die, alone and friendless in an
+Australian bush hospital out in the God-forsaken Never-Never country,
+and when Denison heard of his death, he looked at the gentle wife’s
+dim, faded photograph, and wondered if the Beast saw her sweet, sad
+face in his dying moments. He trusted not; for in her eyes would have
+shown only the holy light of love and forgiveness—things which a man
+like Armitage could not have understood—even then.
+
+She had been married three years when she came with him to Samoa to
+live on Solo-Solo Plantation, in a great white-painted bungalow,
+standing amid a grove of breadfruit and coco-palms, and overlooking the
+sea to the north, east, and west; to the south was the dark green of
+the mountain-forest.
+
+“Oh! I think it is the fairest, sweetest picture in the world,” she
+said to Denison the first time he met her. She was sitting on the
+verandah with her son in her lap, and as she spoke she pressed her lips
+to his soft little cheek and caressed the tiny hands. “So different
+from where I was born and lived all my life—on the doll, sun-baked
+plains of the Riverina—isn’t it, my pet?”
+
+“I am glad that you like the place, Mrs. Armitage,” the supercargo said
+as he looked at the young, girlish face and thought that she, too, with
+her baby, made a fair, sweet picture. How she loved the child! And how
+the soft, grey-blue eyes would lose their sadness when the little one
+turned its face up to hers and smiled! How came it, he wondered, that
+such a tender, flower-like woman was mated to such a man as Armitage!
+
+Long after she was dead, Denison heard the story—one common enough. Her
+father, whose station adjoined that of Armitage, got into financial
+difficulties, went to Armitage for help, and practically sold his
+daughter to the Beast for a couple of thousand pounds. Very likely such
+a man would have sold his daughter’s mother as well if he wanted money.
+
+
+As they sat talking, Armitage rode up, half-drunk as usual. He was a
+big man, good-looking.
+
+“Hallo, Nell! Pawing the damned kid as usual! Why the hell don’t you
+let one of the girls take the little animal and let him tumble about on
+the grass? You’re spoiling the child—by God, you are.”
+
+“Ah, he’s so happy, Fred, here with me, and——”
+
+“Happy be damned—you’re always letting him maul you about. I want a
+whisky-and-soda, and so does Denison—don’t you?” And then the Beast, as
+soon as his wife with the child in her arms had left the room, began to
+tell his subordinate of a “new” girl he had met that morning in Joe
+D’Acosta’s saloon.
+
+“Oh, shut up, man. Your wife is in the next room.”
+
+“Let her hear—and be damned to her! She knows what I do. I don’t
+disguise anything from her. I’m not a sneak in that way. By God, I’m
+not the man to lose any fun from sentimental reasons. Have you seen
+this new girl at Joe’s? She’s a Manhiki half-caste. God, man! She’s
+glorious, simply glorious!”
+
+“You mean Laea, I suppose. She’s a common beacher—sailor man’s trull.
+Surely you wouldn’t be seen ever speaking to _her?_”
+
+“Wouldn’t I! You don’t know me yet! I like the girl, and I’ve fixed
+things up with her. She’s coming here as my nursemaid—twenty dollars a
+month! What do you think of that?”
+
+“You would not insult your wife so horribly!”
+
+He looked at Denison sullenly, but made no answer, as the supercargo
+went on:
+
+“You’ll get the dead cut from every white man in Samoa. Not a soul will
+put foot inside your store door, and Joe D’Acosta himself would refuse
+to sell you a drink! Might as well shoot yourself at once.”
+
+“Oh, well, damn it all, don’t keep on preaching. I—I was more in fun
+than anything else. Ha! Here’s Âmona with the drinks. Why don’t you be
+a bit smarter, you damned frizzy-haired man-eater?”
+
+Amona’s sallow face flushed deeply, but he made no reply to the insult
+as he handed a glass to his master.
+
+“Put the tray down there, confound you! Don’t stand there like a
+blarsted mummy; clear out till we want you again.”
+
+The native made no answer, bent his head in silence, and stepped
+quietly away. Then Armitage began to grumble at him as a “useless
+swine.”
+
+“Why,” said Denison, “Mrs. Armitage was only just telling me that he’s
+worth all the rest of the servants put together. And, by Jove, he _is_
+fond of your youngster—simply worships the little chap.”
+
+Armitage snorted, and turned his lips down. Ten minutes later, he was
+asleep in his chair.
+
+
+Nearly six months had passed—six months of wretchedness to the young
+wife, whose heart was slowly breaking under the strain of living with
+the Beast. Such happiness as was hers lay in the companionship of her
+little son, and every evening Tom Denison would see her watching the
+child and the patient, faithful Âmona, as the two played together on
+the smooth lawn in front of the sitting-room, or ran races in and out
+among the mango-trees. She was becoming paler and thinner every day—the
+Beast was getting fatter and coarser, and more brutalised. Sometimes he
+would remain in Apia for a week, returning home either boisterously
+drunk or sullen and scowling-faced. In the latter case, he would come
+into the office where Denison worked (he had left the schooner of which
+he was supercargo, and was now “overseering” Solo-Solo) and try to
+grasp the muddled condition of his financial affairs. Then, with much
+variegated language, he would stride away, cursing the servants and the
+place and everything in general, mount his horse, and ride off again to
+the society of the loafers, gamblers, and flaunting unfortunates who
+haunted the drinking saloons of Apia and Matafele.
+
+One day came a crisis. Denison was rigging a tackle to haul a
+tree-trunk into position in the plantation saw-pit, when Armitage rode
+up to the house. He dismounted and went inside. Five minutes later
+Amona came staggering down the path to him. His left cheek was cut to
+the bone by a blow from Armitage’s fist. Denison brought him into his
+own room, stitched up the wound, and gave him a glass of grog, and told
+him to light his pipe and rest.
+
+“Àmona, you’re a _valea_ (fool). Why don’t you leave this place? This
+man will kill you some day. How many beatings has he given you?” He
+spoke in English.
+
+“I know not how many. But it is God’s will. And if the master some day
+killeth me, it is well. And yet, but for some things, I would use my
+knife on him.”
+
+“What things?”
+
+He came over to the supercargo, and, seating himself cross-legged on
+the floor, placed his firm, brown, right hand on the white man’s knee.
+
+“For two things, good friend. The little fingers of the child are
+clasped tightly around my heart, and when his father striketh me and
+calls me a filthy man-eater, a dog, and a pig, I know no pain. That is
+one thing. And the other thing is this—the child’s mother hath come to
+me when my body hath ached from the father’s blows, and the blood hath
+covered my face; and she hath bound up my wounds and wept silent tears,
+and together have we knelt and called upon God to turn his heart from
+the grog and the foul women, and to take away from her and the child
+the bitterness of these things.”
+
+“You’re a good fellow, Âmona,” said Denison, as he saw that the man’s
+cheeks were wet with tears.
+
+“Nay, for sometimes my heart is bitter with anger. But God is good to
+me. For the child loveth me. And the mother is of God... aye, and she
+will be with Him soon.” Then he rose to his knees suddenly, and looked
+wistfully at the supercargo, as he put his hand on his. “She will be
+dead before the next moon is _ai aiga_ (in the first quarter), for at
+night I lie outside her door, and but three nights ago she cried out to
+me: ‘Come, Amona, Come!’ And I went in, and she was sitting up on her
+bed and blood was running from her mouth. But she bade me tell no
+one—not even thee. And it was then she told me that death was near to
+her, for she hath a disease whose roots lie in her chest, and which
+eateth away her strength. Dear friend, let me tell thee of some
+things... This man is a devil.... I know he but desires to see her die.
+He hath cursed her before me, and twice have I seen him take the child
+from her arms, and, setting him on the floor to weep in terror, take
+his wife by the hand——”
+
+“Stop, man; stop! That’ll do. Say no more! The beast!”
+
+“_E tonu, e tonu_ (true, true),” said the man, quietly, and still
+speaking in Samoan. “He is as a beast of the mountains, as a tiger of
+the country India, which devoureth the lamb and the kid.... And so now
+I have opened my heart to thee of these things——”
+
+A native woman rushed into the room: “Come, Âmona, come. _Misi Fafine_
+(the mistress) bleeds from her mouth again.”
+
+The white man and the brown ran into the front sitting-room together,
+just as they heard a piercing shriek of terror from the child; then
+came the sound of a heavy fall.
+
+As they entered, Armitage strode out, jolting against them as he
+passed. His face was swollen and ugly with passion—bad to look at.
+
+“Go and pick up the child, you frizzy-haired pig!” he muttered hoarsely
+to Amona as he passed. “He fell off his mother’s lap.”
+
+Mrs. Armitage was leaning back in her chair, as white as death, and
+trying to speak, as with one hand she tried to stanch the rush of blood
+from her mouth, and with the other pointed to her child, who was lying
+on his face under a table, motionless and unconscious.
+
+In less than ten minutes, a native was galloping through the bush to
+Apia for Dr. Eckhardt. Denison had picked up the child, who, as he came
+to, began to cry. Assuring his mother that he was not much hurt, he
+brought him to her, and sat beside the lounge on which she lay, holding
+him in his arms. He was a good little man, and did not try to talk to
+her when the supercargo whispered to him to keep silent, but lay
+stroking the poor mother’s thin white hand. Yet every now and then, as
+he moved or Denison changed his position, he would utter a cry of pain
+and say his leg pained him.
+
+Four hours later the German doctor arrived. Mrs. Armitage was asleep;
+so Eckhardt would not awaken her at the time. The boy, however, had
+slept but fitfully, and every now and then awakened with a sob of pain.
+The nurse stripped him, and Eckhardt soon found out what was wrong—a
+serious injury to the left hip.
+
+Late in the evening, as the big yellow-bearded German doctor and
+Denison sat in the dining room smoking and talking, Taloi, the child’s
+nurse entered, and was followed by Amona, and the woman told them the
+whole story.
+
+“_Misi Fafine_ was sitting in a chair with the boy on her lap when the
+master came in. His eyes were black and fierce with anger, and,
+stepping up, he seized the child by the arm, and bade him get down.
+Then the little one screamed in terror, and _Misi Fafine_ screamed too,
+and the master became as mad, for he tore the boy from his mother’s
+arms, and tossed him across the room against the wall. That is all I
+know of this thing.”
+
+Denison saw nothing of Armitage till six o’clock on the following
+morning, just as Eckhardt was going away. He put out his hand, Eckhardt
+put his own behind his back, and, in a few blunt words, told the Beast
+what he thought of him.
+
+“And if this was a civilised country,” he added crisply, “you would be
+now in gaol. Yes, in prison. You have as good as killed your wife by
+your brutality—she will not live another two months. You have so
+injured your child’s hip that he may be a cripple for life. You are a
+damned scoundrel, no better than the lowest ruffian of a city slum, and
+if you show yourself in Joe D’Acosta’s smoking-room again, you’ll find
+more than half a dozen men—Englishmen, Americans and Germans—ready to
+kick you out into the _au ala_” (road).
+
+Armitage was no coward. He sprang forward with an oath, but Denison,
+who was a third less of his employer’s weight, deftly put out his right
+foot and the master of Solo Solo plantation went down. Then the
+supercargo sat on him and, having a fine command of seafaring
+expletives, threatened to gouge his eyes out if he did not keep quiet.
+
+“You go on, doctor,” he said cheerfully. “I’ll let you know in the
+course of an hour or two how Mrs. Armitage and the boy are progressing.
+The seat which I am now occupying, though not a very honourable one,
+considering the material of which it is composed, is very comfortable
+for the time being; and”—he turned and glared savagely at Armitage’s
+purpled face—“You sweep! I have a great inclination to let Eckhardt
+come and boot the life out of you whilst I hold you down, you brute!”
+
+“I’ll kill you for this,” said Armitage hoarsely.
+
+“Won’t give you the chance, my boy. And if you don’t promise to go to
+your room quietly, I’ll call in the native servants, sling you up like
+the pig you are to a pole, and have you carried into Apia, where you
+stand a good show of being lynched. I’ve had enough of you. Every
+one—except your blackguardly acquaintances in Matafele—would be glad to
+hear that you were dead, and your wife and child freed from you.”
+
+Eckhardt stepped forward. “Let him up, Mr. Denison.”
+
+The supercargo obeyed the request.
+
+“Just as you please, doctor. But I think that he ought to be put in
+irons, or a strait-jacket, or knocked on the head as a useless beast.
+If it were not for Mrs. Armitage and her little son, I would like to
+kill the sweep. His treatment of that poor fellow Amona, who is so
+devoted to the child, has been most atrocious.”
+
+Eckhardt grasped the supercargo’s hand as Armitage shambled off “He’s a
+brute, as you say, Mr. Denison. But she has some affection for him. For
+myself, I would like to put a bullet through him.”
+
+Within three months Mrs. Armitage was dead, and a fresh martrydom began
+for poor Amona. But he and the child had plenty of good friends; and
+then, one day, when Armitage awakened to sanity after a long drinking
+bout, he found that both Amona and the child had gone.
+
+Nearly a score of years later Denison met them in an Australian city.
+The “baby” had grown to be a well-set-up young fellow, and Amona the
+faithful was still with him—Amona with a smiling, happy face. They came
+down on board Denison’s vessel with him, and “the baby” gave him, ere
+they parted, that faded photograph of his dead mother.
+
+
+
+
+THE SNAKE AND THE BELL
+
+
+When I was a child of eight years of age, a curious incident occurred
+in the house in which our family lived. The locality was Mosman’s Bay,
+one of the many picturesque indentations of the beautiful harbour of
+Sydney. In those days the houses were few and far apart, and our own
+dwelling was surrounded on all sides by the usual monotonous-hued
+Australian forest of iron barks and spotted gums, traversed here and
+there by tracks seldom used, as the house was far back from the main
+road, leading from the suburb of St. Leonards to Middle Harbour. The
+building itself was in the form of a quadrangle enclosing a courtyard,
+on to which nearly all the rooms opened; each room having a bell over
+the door, the wires running all round the square, while the front-door
+bell, which was an extra large affair, hung in the hall, the “pull”
+being one of the old-fashioned kind, an iron sliding-rod suspended from
+the outer wall plate, where it connected with the wire.
+
+One cold and windy evening about eight o’clock, my mother, my sisters,
+and myself were sitting in the dining-room awaiting the arrival of my
+brothers from Sydney—they attended school there, and rowed or sailed
+the six miles to and fro every day, generally returning home by dusk.
+On this particular evening, however, they were late, on account of the
+wind blowing rather freshly from the north-east; but presently we heard
+the front-door bell ring gently.
+
+“Here they are at last,” said my mother; “but how silly of them to go
+to the front door on such a windy night, tormenting boys!”
+
+Julia, the servant, candle in hand, went along the lengthy passage, and
+opened the door. No one was there! She came back to the dining-room
+smiling—“Masther Edward is afther playin’ wan av his thricks, ma’am——”
+she began, when the bell again rang—this time vigorously. My eldest
+sister threw down the book she was reading, and with an impatient
+exclamation herself went to the door, opened it quickly, and said
+sharply as she pulled it inwards—
+
+“Come in at once, you stupid things!” There was no answer, and she
+stepped outside on the verandah. No one was visible, and again the big
+bell in the hall rang!
+
+She shut the door angrily and returned to her seat, just as the bell
+gave a curious, faint tinkle as if the tongue had been moved ever so
+gently.
+
+“Don’t take any notice of them,” said my mother, “they will soon get
+tired of playing such silly pranks, and be eager for their supper.”
+
+Presently the bell gave out three clear strokes. We looked at each
+other and smiled. Five minutes passed, and then came eight or ten
+gentle strokes in quick succession.
+
+“Let us catch them,” said my mother, rising, and holding her finger up
+to us to preserve silence, as she stepped softly along the hall, we
+following on tiptoe.
+
+Softly turning the handle, she suddenly threw the door wide open, just
+as the bell gave another jangle. Not a soul was visible!
+
+My mother—one of the most placid-tempered women who ever breathed, now
+became annoyed, and stepping out on the verandah, addressed herself to
+the darkness—
+
+“Come inside at once, boys, or I shall be very angry. I know perfectly
+well what you have done; you have tied a string to the bell wires, and
+are pulling it. If you don’t desist you shall have no supper.”
+
+No answer—except from the hall bell, which gave another half-hearted
+tinkle.
+
+“Bring a candle and the step-ladder, Julia,” said our now thoroughly
+exasperated parent, “and we shall see what these foolish boys have done
+to the bell-wire.”
+
+Julia brought the ladder; my eldest sister mounted it, and began to
+examine the bell. She could see nothing unusual, no string or wire, and
+as she descended, the bell swayed and gave one faint stroke!
+
+We all returned to the sitting room, and had scarcely been there five
+minutes when we heard my three brothers coming in, in their usual way,
+by the back door. They tramped into the sitting room, noisy, dirty, wet
+with spray, and hungry, and demanded supper in a loud and collected
+voice. My mother looked at them with a severe aspect, and said they
+deserved none.
+
+“Why, mum, what’s the matter?” said Ted; “what _have_ we been doing
+now, or what have we not done, that we don’t deserve any supper, after
+pulling for two hours from Circular Quay, against a howling, black
+north-easter?”
+
+“You know perfectly well what I mean. It is most inconsiderate of you
+to play such silly tricks upon us.”
+
+Ted gazed at her in genuine astonishment. “Silly tricks, mother! What
+silly tricks?” (Julia crossed herself, and trembled visibly as the bell
+again rang.)
+
+My mother, at once satisfied that Ted and my other brothers really knew
+nothing of the mysterious bell-ringing, quickly explained the cause of
+her anger.
+
+“Let us go and see if we can find out,” said Ted. “You two boys, and
+you, Julia, get all the stable lanterns, light them, and we’ll start
+out together—two on one side of the house and two on the other. Some
+one must be up to a trick!”
+
+Julia, who was a huge, raw-boned Irish girl, as strong as a working
+bullock, but not so graceful, again crossed herself, and began to weep.
+
+“What’s the matter with you?” said Ted angrily.
+
+“Shure, an’ there was tirrible murders committed here in the ould
+convict days,” she whimpered. “The polace sargint’s wife at Sint
+Leonards tould me all about it. There was three souldiers murdered down
+beyant on the beach, by some convicts, whin they was atin’ their
+supper, an’ there’s people near about now that saw all the blood and——”
+
+“Stop it, you great lumbering idiot!” shouted Ted, as my eldest sister
+began to laugh hysterically, and the youngest, made a terrified dart to
+mother’s skirts.
+
+Ted’s angry voice and threatening visage silenced Julia for the moment,
+and she tremblingly went towards the door to obey his orders when the
+bell gave out such a vigorous and sustained peal that she sank down in
+a colossal heap on the floor, and then went into violent hysterics. (I
+assure my readers that I am not exaggerating matters in the slightest.)
+
+My mother, who was a thoroughly sensible woman, pushed the whole brood
+of us out of the room, came after us, shut the door and locked it.
+_She_ knew the proper treatment for hysterics.
+
+“Let her stay there, boys,” she said quietly, “she will hurt the
+furniture more than herself, the ridiculous creature. Now, Ted, you and
+your brothers get the lanterns, and the little ones and myself will go
+into the kitchen.”
+
+We ran out into the stables, lit three lanterns, and my next eldest
+brother and myself, feeling horribly frightened, but impelled to show
+some courage by Ted’s awful threats of what he would do to us if we
+“funked,” told us to go round the house, beginning from the left, and
+meet him at the hall door, he going round from the right.
+
+With shaking limbs and gasping breath we made our portion of the
+circuit, sticking close to each other, and carefully avoiding looking
+at anything as we hurried over the lawn, our only anxiety being to meet
+Ted as quickly as possible and then get inside again. We arrived on the
+verandah, and in front of the hall-door, quite five minutes before Ted
+appeared.
+
+“Well, did you see anything?” he asked, as he walked up the steps,
+lantern in hand.
+
+“Nothing,” we answered, edging up towards the door.
+
+Ted looked at us contemptuously. “You miserable little curs! What are
+you so frightened of? You’re no better than a pack of women and kids.
+It’s the wind that has made the bell ring, or, if it’s not the wind, it
+is something else which I don’t know anything about; but I want my
+supper. Pull the bell, one of you.”
+
+Elated at so soon escaping from the horrors of the night, we seized the
+handle of the bell-pull, and gave it a vigorous tug.
+
+“It’s stuck, Ted. It won’t pull down,” we said.
+
+“Granny!” said the big brother, “you’re too funky to give it a proper
+pull,” and pushing us aside, he grasped the pendant handle and gave a
+sharp pull. There was no answering sound.
+
+“It certainly is stuck,” admitted Ted, raising his lantern so as to get
+a look upwards, then he gave a yell.
+
+“Oh! look there!”
+
+We looked up, and saw the writhing twisting, coils of a huge carpet
+snake, which had wound its body round and round the bell-wire on top of
+the wall plate. Its head was downwards, and it did not seem at all
+alarmed at our presence, but went on wriggling and twisting and
+squirming with much apparent cheerfulness.
+
+Ted ran back to the stables, and returned in a few seconds with a
+clothes-prop, with which he dealt the disturber of our peace a few
+rapid, but vigorous, blows, breaking its spine in several places. Then
+the step-ladder was brought out, and Ted, seizing the reptile by the
+tail, uncoiled it with some difficulty from the wire, and threw it down
+upon the verandah.
+
+It was over nine feet in length, and very fat, and had caused all the
+disturbance by endeavouring to denude itself of its old skin by
+dragging its body between the bell-wire and the top of the wall. When
+Ted killed it the poor harmless creature had almost accomplished its
+object.
+
+
+
+
+SOUTH SEA NOTES
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+That many animals, particularly cattle and deer, are very fond of salt
+we all know, but it is not often that birds show any taste for it, or,
+if so, the circumstance has not generally been noted. In 1881, however,
+the present writer was residing on Gazelle Peninsula, the northern
+portion of the magnificent island of New Britain in the South Pacific,
+and had many opportunities of witnessing both cockatoos and wild
+pigeons drinking salt water. I was stationed at a place called Kabaira,
+the then “furthest-out” trading station on the whole island, and as I
+had but little to do in the way of work, I found plenty of time to
+study the bird-life in the vicinity. Parrots of several varieties, and
+all of beautiful plumage, were very plentiful, and immense flocks of
+white cockatoos frequented the rolling, grassy downs which lay between
+my home and the German head-station in Blanche Bay, twenty miles
+distant, while the heavy forest of the littoral was the haunt of
+thousands of pigeons. These latter, though not so large as the Samoan,
+or Eastern Polynesian bird, formed a very agreeable change of diet for
+us white traders, and by walking about fifty yards from one’s door,
+half a dozen or more could be shot in as many minutes.
+
+My nearest neighbour was a German, and one day when we were walking
+along the beach towards his station, we noticed some hundreds of
+pigeons fly down from the forest, settle on the margin of the water,
+and drink with apparent enjoyment. The harbour at this spot was almost
+land-locked, the water as smooth as glass without the faintest ripple,
+and the birds were consequently enabled to drink without wetting their
+plumage. My companion, who had lived many years in New Britain, told me
+that this drinking of sea-water was common alike to both cockatoos and
+pigeons, and that on some occasions the beaches would be lined with
+them, the former birds not only drinking, but bathing as well, and
+apparently enjoying themselves greatly.
+
+During the following six months, especially when the weather was calm
+and rainy, I frequently noticed pigeons and cockatoos come to the salt
+water to drink. At first I thought that as fresh water in many places
+bubbled up through the sand at low tide, the birds were really not
+drinking the sea-water, but by watching closely, I frequently saw them
+walk across these tiny runnels, and make no attempt to drink. Then
+again, the whole of the Gazette Peninsula is out up by countless
+streams of water; rain falls throughout the year as a rule, and as I
+have said, there is always water percolating or bubbling up through the
+sand on the beaches at low tide. What causes this unusual habit of
+drinking sea-water?
+
+Another peculiarity of the New Britain and New Ireland pigeon is its
+fondness for the Chili pepper-berry. During three months of the year,
+when these berries are ripe, the birds’ crops are full of them, and
+very often their flesh is so pungent, and smells so strongly of the
+Chili, as to be quite uneatable.
+
+
+On all of the low-lying islands of the Ellice, Kings-mill and Gilbert
+Groups, a species of snipe are very plentiful. On the islands which
+enclose the noble lagoon of Funafuti in the Ellice Group, they are to
+be met with in great numbers, and in dull, rainy weather, an ordinarily
+good shot may get thirty or forty in a few hours. One day, accompanied
+by a native lad, I set out to collect hermit crabs, to be used as fish
+bait. These curious creatures are to be found almost anywhere in the
+equatorial islands of the Pacific; their shell houses ranging in size
+from a pea to an orange, and if a piece of coco-nut or fish or any
+other edible matter is left out overnight, hundreds of hermits will be
+found gathered around it in the morning. To extract the crabs from
+their shells, which are of all shapes and kinds, is a very simple
+matter—the hard casing is broken by placing them upon a large stone and
+striking them a sharp blow with one of lesser size. My companion and
+myself soon collected a heap of “hermits,” when presently he took one
+up in his hand, and holding it close to his mouth, whistled softly. In
+a few moments the crab protruded one nipper, then another, then its red
+antennae, and allowed the boy to take its head between his finger and
+thumb and draw its entire body from its shell casing.
+
+“That is the way the _kili_ (snipe) gets the _uga_ (crab) from its
+shell,” he said. “The _kili_ stands over the _uga_ and whistles softly,
+and the _uga_ puts out his head to listen. Then the bird seizes it in
+his bill, gives it a backward jerk and off flies the shell.”
+
+Now I had often noticed that wherever hermit crabs were plentiful along
+the outer beaches of the lagoon, I was sure to find snipe, and
+sometimes wondered on what the birds fed. Taking up two or three
+“hermits” one by one, I whistled gently, and in each case the creature
+protruded the nippers, head and shoulders, and moved its antennæ to and
+fro as if pleasurably excited.
+
+On the following day I shot three snipe, and in the stomachs of each I
+found some quite fresh and some partly digested hermit crabs. The
+thick, hard nippers are broken off by the bird before he swallows the
+soft, tender body.
+
+
+In a recent number of _Chambers’s Journal_ the present writer was much
+interested in a short paragraph dealing with the commercial value of
+the skin of the shark, and, having had many years’ experience as a
+trader and supercargo in the South Seas, desires to add some further
+information on a somewhat interesting subject.
+
+In all the equatorial islands of the North and South Pacific, shark
+fishing is a very profitable industry to the natives, and every trading
+steamer or sailing vessel coming into the ports of Sydney or Auckland
+from the islands of the mid-Pacific, always brings some tons of shark
+fins and tails and shark skins. The principal market for the former is
+Hong Kong, but the Chinese merchants of the Australasian Colonies will
+always buy sharks’ fins and tails at from 6d. to 11d. per lb., the fins
+bringing the best price on account of the extra amount of glutinous
+matter they contain, and the which are highly relished by the richer
+classes of Chinese as a delicacy. The tails are also valued as an
+article of food in China; and, apart from their edible qualities, have
+a further value as a base for clear varnishes, &c.; and I was informed
+by a Chinese tea-merchant that the glaze upon the paper coverings of
+tea-chests was due to a preparation composed principally of the refuse
+of sharks’ fins, tails, and skins.
+
+All the natives of the Gilbert, Kingsmill, and other Pacific equatorial
+islands are expert shark fishermen; but the wild people of Ocean Island
+(Paanopa) and Pleasant Island (Naura), two isolated spots just under
+the equator, surpass them all in the art of catching jackshark. It was
+the fortunate experience of the writer to live among these people for
+many years, and to be inducted into the native method of
+shark-catching. In frail canoes, made of short pieces of wood, sewn
+together with coco-nut fibre, the Ocean Islanders will venture out with
+rude but ingeniously contrived _wooden_ hooks, and capture sharks of a
+girth (_not_ length) that no untrained European would dare to attempt
+to kill from a well-appointed boat, with a good crew.
+
+Shark-catching is one of _the_ industries of the Pacific, and a very
+paying industry too. Five-and-twenty years ago there were quite a dozen
+or more schooners sailing out of Honolulu, in the Hawaiian Islands, to
+the isolated atolls of the North Pacific—notably Palmyra and Christmas
+Islands—where sharks could be caught by the thousand, and the crews,
+who were engaged on a “lay,” like whalemen, made “big money”; many of
+them after a six months’ cruise drawing 500 dollars—a large sum for a
+native sailor.
+
+The work is certainly hard, but it is exciting, and the writer will
+always remember with pleasure a seven months’ shark-fishing cruise he
+once had in the North Pacific, the genial comrades—white men and
+brown—and the bag of dollars handed over to him by the owners when the
+ship was paid off in Honolulu.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+It is not generally known, except to scientists and those who are
+acquainted with the subject, that a large percentage of the various
+species and varieties of sea snakes are highly venomous. These snakes
+must not be confounded with the very numerous species of sea eels,
+which, though exceedingly savage and armed with strong needle-pointed
+teeth, are all non-venomous, though their bite produces high
+inflammation if not at once properly attended to and cleansed by an
+antiseptic. The sea snake is a true snake in many respects, having
+either laminated scales or a thick corduroyed skin resembling
+rudimentary scales. The head is flat, and the general structure of the
+body similar to that of the land snake. Whether any of them possess the
+true poison glands and fangs I do not know, for although I have killed
+many hundreds of them I never took sufficient interest to make a
+careful examination; and I was told by a Dutch medical gentleman, long
+resident on the coast of Dutch New Guinea, and who had made some
+investigation on the subject, that he had failed to discover any poison
+sacs or glands in any one of the several snakes he had captured. Yet in
+some instances he found what at first appeared to be the two long front
+teeth common to venomous land snakes, but on detailed examination these
+always proved to be perfectly solid; nevertheless a bite from one of
+these sea serpents was generally regarded by the natives as fatal; in
+my own experience I know of two such cases, one at the island of Fotuna
+in the South Pacific, and the other in Torres Straits.
+
+In Sigavi Harbour, on Fotuna, there is a rock to which vessels
+occasionally make fast their stern moorings. In the boat which I sent
+away with a line to this rock were several boys, natives of the island,
+who went with the crew for amusement. One of them, aged about ten,
+jumped out of the boat, and in his hurry fell on his hands and knees,
+right on top of a large black and white banded sea snake, which at once
+bit him savagely on the wrist, causing the blood to flow from a score
+of tiny punctures. The boy at once swam on shore to be treated by a
+native; in the evening I heard he was suffering great agony, in the
+morning the poor little fellow was dead.
+
+The second instance was near Raine Island, in Torres Straits. A
+stalwart young Kanaka, one of the crew of a pearling lugger, was diving
+for clam shells on the reef, when a snake about three feet in length
+suddenly shot up from below within a foot of his face. In his anger and
+disgust he unthinkingly struck it with his hand, and was quickly bitten
+on the forefinger. A few hours later he was in a high fever,
+accompanied with twitchings of the extremities; then tetanus ensued,
+followed by death in forty-eight hours.
+
+Although these sea snakes are common to all tropical seas, they are
+most frequent about the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. On any smooth
+day they may be seen disporting themselves on the surface, or rising
+suddenly from the depths, erect their heads and some inches of their
+bodies clear from the water, gaze at the passing vessel, and then
+swiftly disappear. In nearly all the Pacific Islands the natives hold
+them in detestation and horror, and when one is seen lying coiled up on
+a rock sunning itself or crawling over the surface of the reef in
+search of food, a stone, accompanied by a curse, is always hurled at
+it. In the Ellice Oroup, when catching flying-fish at night, one (or
+more) of these horrid serpents is sometimes swept up in the scoop-net
+before it can be avoided. They range from six inches to nearly four
+feet in length, and all have one feature—a blunted tail-end.
+
+Quite recently much further light has been thrown on the subject by Sir
+James Hector, of the Philosophical Society of Wellington, New Zealand.
+At one of the Society’s meetings, held in April last, Sir James showed
+several specimens of _hydrida_, some from Australasian Seas, others
+from the Atlantic. The usual habitat of sea snakes, he said, were the
+tropical seas generally, but some had been captured in the
+comparatively cold waters of the New Zealand coast, at the Catlins
+River. These latter were all yellow-banded; those from the islands of
+the Fijian Oroup were black-banded, and those taken from the Australian
+coast grey-banded. There were, he said, no fewer than seventy species,
+which, without exception, were fanged and provided with glands
+secreting a virulent poison. In some of the mountainous islands of the
+South Pacific, such as Samoa, Fiji, &c, there were several species of
+land snakes, all of which were perfectly harmless, and were familiar to
+many people in Australia and New Zealand, through being brought there
+in bunches of island bananas—it was singular, he thought, that the sea
+snakes alone should be so highly venomous. “They were all characterised
+by the flattened or blunted tail, which they used as a steer oar, and
+were often found asleep on the surface of the water, lying on their
+backs. In this state they were easily and safely captured, being
+powerless to strike.” The present writer, who has seen hundreds of
+these marine snakes daily for many years, during a long residence in
+the Pacific Islands, cannot remember a single instance where he has
+seen one of these dangerous creatures asleep _on the water_, though
+they may frequently be found lying asleep on the coral reefs, exposing
+themselves to the rays of a torrid sun. They usually select some knob
+or rounded boulder, from the top of which, when awake, they can survey
+the small pools beneath and discern any fish which may be imprisoned
+therein. In such case they will glide down into the water with
+astonishing rapidity, seize their prey, and after swallowing it, return
+to their sun bath. The natives of the Paumotu Archipelago informed me,
+however, that they are most active in seeking their prey at night-time,
+and are especially fond of flying-fish, which, as is well known, is one
+of the swiftest of all ocean fishes. The sea snakes, however, seize
+them with the greatest ease, by rising cautiously beneath and fastening
+their keen teeth in the fish’s throat or belly. A snake, not two feet
+six inches in length, I was assured, can easily swallow a flying-fish
+eight inches or ten inches long.
+
+With regard to their habit of lying asleep on their backs on the
+surface of the water, it may be that Sir James Hector is alluding to
+some particular species, but whether that is so or not Sir James’s
+statement must of course be considered authoritative, for there is, I
+believe, no higher authority on the subject in the world. Apropos of
+these venomous marine serpents I may mention that the Rev. W. W. Gill
+in one of his works states that he was informed by the natives of the
+Cook’s Group that during the prevalence of very bad weather, when fish
+were scarce, the large sea eels would actually crawl ashore, and ascend
+the _fala_ (pandanus or screw-pine) trees in search of the small green
+lizards which live among the upper part of the foliage. At first I
+regarded this merely as a bit of native extravagance of statement, but
+in 1882, when I was shipwrecked on Peru (or Francis Island), one of the
+Gilbert Group, the local trader, one Frank Voliero, and myself saw one
+of these eels engaged in an equally extraordinary pursuit. We were one
+evening, after a heavy gale from the westward had been blowing for
+three days, examining a rookery of whale birds in search of eggs; the
+rookery was situated in a dense thicket scrub on the north end of the
+island, and was quite two hundred yards from the sea-shore, though not
+more than half that distance from the inside lagoon beach. The storm
+had destroyed quite a number of young, half-fledged birds, whose bodies
+were lying on the ground, and busily engaged in devouring one of them
+was a very large sea eel, as thick as the calf of a man’s leg. Before I
+could manage to secure a stick with which to kill the repulsive-looking
+creature, it made off through the undergrowth at a rapid pace in the
+direction of the lagoon, and when we emerged out into the open in
+pursuit, ten minutes later, we were just in time to see it wriggling
+down the hard, sloping beach into the water. Instinct evidently made it
+seek the nearest water, for none of these large sea eels are ever found
+in Peru Lagoon.
+
+Many of the rivers and lakes of the islands of the Western Pacific are
+tenanted by eels of great size, which are never, or very seldom, as far
+as I could learn, interfered with by the natives, and I have never seen
+the people of either the Admiralty Islands, New Ireland, or New Britain
+touch an eel as food. The Maories, however, as is well known, are
+inordinately fond of eels, which, with putrid shark, constitute one of
+their staple articles of diet.
+
+In the few mountainous islands of the vast Caroline Archipelago, in the
+North-western Pacific, eels are very plentiful, not only in the
+numberless small streams which debouch into the shallow waters enclosed
+by the barrier reefs, but also far up on the mountainsides, occupying
+little rocky pools of perhaps no larger dimensions than an
+ordinary-sized toilet basin, or swimming up and down rivulets hardly
+more than two feet across. The natives of Ponapé, the largest island of
+the Caroline Group, and of Kusaie (Strong’s Island), its eastern
+outlier, regard the fresh-water eel with shuddering aversion, and
+should a man accidentally touch one with his foot when crossing a
+stream he will utter an exclamation of horror and fear. In the heathen
+days—down to 1845-50—the eel (tôan) was an object of worship, and
+constantly propitiated by sacrifices of food, on account of its
+malevolent powers; personal contact was rigidly avoided; to touch one,
+even by the merest accident, was to bring down the most dreadful
+calamities on the offender and his family—bodily deformities,
+starvation and poverty, and death; and although the natives of Strong’s
+Island are now both civilised and Christianised, and a training college
+of the Boston Board of Missions has long been established at Port Lelé,
+they still manifest the same superstitious dread of the eel as in their
+days of heathendom. I well remember witnessing an instance of this
+terror during my sojourn on the island when I was shipwrecked there in
+1874. I had taken up my residence in the picturesque little village of
+Leassé, on the western or “lee” side, when I was one evening visited by
+several of the ship’s company—a Fijian half-caste, a white man, and two
+natives of Pleasant Island. At the moment they arrived I was in the
+house of the native pastor—a man who had received an excellent
+education in a missionary college at Honolulu, in the Hawaiian
+Islands—instructing him and his family in the art of making _taka_, or
+cinnet sandals, as practised by the natives of the Tokelau Group. Just
+then the four seamen entered, each man triumphantly holding up a large
+eel: in an instant there was a united howl of horror from the parson
+and his family, as they made a rash for the door, overturning the lamp
+and nearly setting the house on fire. In vain I followed and urged them
+to return, and told them that the men had gone away and taken the
+_tôan_ with them—nothing would induce them to enter the house that
+night, and the whole family slept elsewhere.
+
+One singular thing about the eels on Strong’s Island is that they
+hibernate, in a fashion, on the sides or even summits of the high
+mountains, at an altitude of nearly two thousand feet. Selecting, or
+perhaps making, a depression in the soft, moss-covered soil, the ugly
+creatures fit themselves into it compactly and remain there for weeks
+or even months at a time. I have counted as many as thirty of these
+holes, all tenanted, within a few square yards. Some were quite
+concealed by vegetable _débris_ or moss, others were exposed to view,
+with the broad, flat head of the slippery occupant resting on the
+margin or doubled back upon its body. They showed no alarm, but if
+poked with a stick would extricate themselves and crawl slowly away.
+
+In the streams they were very voracious, and I had a special antipathy
+to them, on account of their preying so on the crayfish—a crustacean of
+which I was particularly fond, and which the natives also liked very
+much, but were afraid to capture for fear their hands might come in
+contact with the dreaded _tôan_.
+
+One afternoon I was plucking a pigeon I had just shot by the margin of
+a mountain stream. After removing the viscera, I put the bird in the
+water to clean it properly, and was shaking it gently to and fro, when
+it was suddenly torn out of my hand by a disgustingly bloated,
+reddish-coloured eel about four feet in length, and quickly swallowed.
+That one pigeon had cost me two hours’ tramping through the
+rain-soddened mountain forest, so loading my gun I followed the thief
+down stream to where the water was but a few inches deep, and then blew
+his head off.
+
+
+
+
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+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold;'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Âmona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others, by Louis Becke</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
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+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Âmona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others<br />
+From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other Stories" - 1902</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Louis Becke</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Release Date: March 29, 2008 [eBook #24952]<br />
+[Most recently updated: February 6, 2021]</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: David Widger</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ÂMONA ***</div>
+
+<h1>Âmona; The Child; And The Beast</h1>
+
+<h4>From &ldquo;The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other
+Stories&rdquo;</h4>
+
+<h2 class="no-break">By Louis Becke</h2>
+
+<h5>T. FISHER UNWIN, 1902 <br /> <br /> LONDON</h5>
+
+<hr />
+
+<table summary="" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01">ÂMONA; THE CHILD; AND THE BEAST</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap02">THE SNAKE AND THE BELL</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap03">SOUTH SEA NOTES</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap04">I</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap05">II</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap01"></a>ÂMONA; THE CHILD; AND THE BEAST</h2>
+
+<p>
+Âmona was, as his master so frequently told him&mdash;accentuating the remark
+with a blow or a kick&mdash;only &ldquo;a miserable kanaka.&rdquo; Of his
+miserableness there was no doubt, for Denison, who lived in the same house as
+he did, was a daily witness of it&mdash;and his happiness. Also, he was a
+kanaka&mdash;a native of Niué, in the South Pacific; Savage Island it is called
+by the traders and is named on the charts, though its five thousand sturdy,
+brown-skinned inhabitants have been civilised, Christianised, and have lived
+fairly cleanly for the past thirty years.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Âmona and Denison had the distinction of being employed by Armitage, one of the
+most unmitigated blackguards in the Pacific. He was a shipowner, planter,
+merchant, and speculator; was looked upon by a good many people as &ldquo;not a
+bad sort of a fellow, you know&mdash;and the soul of hospitality.&rdquo; In
+addition, he was an incorrigible drunken bully, and broke his wife&rsquo;s
+heart within four years after she married him. Âmona was his cook. Denison was
+one of his supercargoes, and (when a long boat of drunkenness made him see
+weird visions of impossible creatures) manager of the business on shore,
+overseer, accountant, and Jack-of-all-trades. How he managed to stay on with
+such a brute I don&rsquo;t know. He certainly paid him well enough, but he
+(Denison) could have got another berth from other people in Samoa, Fiji, or
+Tonga had he wanted it. And, although Armitage was always painfully civil to
+Denison&mdash;who tried to keep his business from going to the dogs&mdash;the
+man hated him as much as he despised Âmona, and would have liked to have kicked
+him, as he would have liked to have kicked or strangled any one who knew the
+secret of his wife&rsquo;s death and his child&rsquo;s lameness. And three
+people in Samoa did know it&mdash;Âmona, the Niué cook, Dr. Eckhardt, and
+Denison. Armitage has been dead now these five-and-twenty years&mdash;died, as
+he deserved to die, alone and friendless in an Australian bush hospital out in
+the God-forsaken Never-Never country, and when Denison heard of his death, he
+looked at the gentle wife&rsquo;s dim, faded photograph, and wondered if the
+Beast saw her sweet, sad face in his dying moments. He trusted not; for in her
+eyes would have shown only the holy light of love and forgiveness&mdash;things
+which a man like Armitage could not have understood&mdash;even then.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had been married three years when she came with him to Samoa to live on
+Solo-Solo Plantation, in a great white-painted bungalow, standing amid a grove
+of breadfruit and coco-palms, and overlooking the sea to the north, east, and
+west; to the south was the dark green of the mountain-forest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! I think it is the fairest, sweetest picture in the world,&rdquo; she
+said to Denison the first time he met her. She was sitting on the verandah with
+her son in her lap, and as she spoke she pressed her lips to his soft little
+cheek and caressed the tiny hands. &ldquo;So different from where I was born
+and lived all my life&mdash;on the doll, sun-baked plains of the
+Riverina&mdash;isn&rsquo;t it, my pet?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am glad that you like the place, Mrs. Armitage,&rdquo; the supercargo
+said as he looked at the young, girlish face and thought that she, too, with
+her baby, made a fair, sweet picture. How she loved the child! And how the
+soft, grey-blue eyes would lose their sadness when the little one turned its
+face up to hers and smiled! How came it, he wondered, that such a tender,
+flower-like woman was mated to such a man as Armitage!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Long after she was dead, Denison heard the story&mdash;one common enough. Her
+father, whose station adjoined that of Armitage, got into financial
+difficulties, went to Armitage for help, and practically sold his daughter to
+the Beast for a couple of thousand pounds. Very likely such a man would have
+sold his daughter&rsquo;s mother as well if he wanted money.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+As they sat talking, Armitage rode up, half-drunk as usual. He was a big man,
+good-looking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hallo, Nell! Pawing the damned kid as usual! Why the hell don&rsquo;t
+you let one of the girls take the little animal and let him tumble about on the
+grass? You&rsquo;re spoiling the child&mdash;by God, you are.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, he&rsquo;s so happy, Fred, here with me, and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Happy be damned&mdash;you&rsquo;re always letting him maul you about. I
+want a whisky-and-soda, and so does Denison&mdash;don&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; And
+then the Beast, as soon as his wife with the child in her arms had left the
+room, began to tell his subordinate of a &ldquo;new&rdquo; girl he had met that
+morning in Joe D&rsquo;Acosta&rsquo;s saloon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, shut up, man. Your wife is in the next room.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let her hear&mdash;and be damned to her! She knows what I do. I
+don&rsquo;t disguise anything from her. I&rsquo;m not a sneak in that way. By
+God, I&rsquo;m not the man to lose any fun from sentimental reasons. Have you
+seen this new girl at Joe&rsquo;s? She&rsquo;s a Manhiki half-caste. God, man!
+She&rsquo;s glorious, simply glorious!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean Laea, I suppose. She&rsquo;s a common beacher&mdash;sailor
+man&rsquo;s trull. Surely you wouldn&rsquo;t be seen ever speaking to
+<i>her?</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t I! You don&rsquo;t know me yet! I like the girl, and
+I&rsquo;ve fixed things up with her. She&rsquo;s coming here as my
+nursemaid&mdash;twenty dollars a month! What do you think of that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You would not insult your wife so horribly!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at Denison sullenly, but made no answer, as the supercargo went on:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll get the dead cut from every white man in Samoa. Not a soul
+will put foot inside your store door, and Joe D&rsquo;Acosta himself would
+refuse to sell you a drink! Might as well shoot yourself at once.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, well, damn it all, don&rsquo;t keep on preaching. I&mdash;I was more
+in fun than anything else. Ha! Here&rsquo;s Âmona with the drinks. Why
+don&rsquo;t you be a bit smarter, you damned frizzy-haired man-eater?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Amona&rsquo;s sallow face flushed deeply, but he made no reply to the insult as
+he handed a glass to his master.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Put the tray down there, confound you! Don&rsquo;t stand there like a
+blarsted mummy; clear out till we want you again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The native made no answer, bent his head in silence, and stepped quietly away.
+Then Armitage began to grumble at him as a &ldquo;useless swine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why,&rdquo; said Denison, &ldquo;Mrs. Armitage was only just telling me
+that he&rsquo;s worth all the rest of the servants put together. And, by Jove,
+he <i>is</i> fond of your youngster&mdash;simply worships the little
+chap.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Armitage snorted, and turned his lips down. Ten minutes later, he was asleep in
+his chair.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+Nearly six months had passed&mdash;six months of wretchedness to the young
+wife, whose heart was slowly breaking under the strain of living with the
+Beast. Such happiness as was hers lay in the companionship of her little son,
+and every evening Tom Denison would see her watching the child and the patient,
+faithful Âmona, as the two played together on the smooth lawn in front of the
+sitting-room, or ran races in and out among the mango-trees. She was becoming
+paler and thinner every day&mdash;the Beast was getting fatter and coarser, and
+more brutalised. Sometimes he would remain in Apia for a week, returning home
+either boisterously drunk or sullen and scowling-faced. In the latter case, he
+would come into the office where Denison worked (he had left the schooner of
+which he was supercargo, and was now &ldquo;overseering&rdquo; Solo-Solo) and
+try to grasp the muddled condition of his financial affairs. Then, with much
+variegated language, he would stride away, cursing the servants and the place
+and everything in general, mount his horse, and ride off again to the society
+of the loafers, gamblers, and flaunting unfortunates who haunted the drinking
+saloons of Apia and Matafele.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One day came a crisis. Denison was rigging a tackle to haul a tree-trunk into
+position in the plantation saw-pit, when Armitage rode up to the house. He
+dismounted and went inside. Five minutes later Amona came staggering down the
+path to him. His left cheek was cut to the bone by a blow from Armitage&rsquo;s
+fist. Denison brought him into his own room, stitched up the wound, and gave
+him a glass of grog, and told him to light his pipe and rest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Àmona, you&rsquo;re a <i>valea</i> (fool). Why don&rsquo;t you leave
+this place? This man will kill you some day. How many beatings has he given
+you?&rdquo; He spoke in English.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know not how many. But it is God&rsquo;s will. And if the master some
+day killeth me, it is well. And yet, but for some things, I would use my knife
+on him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What things?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He came over to the supercargo, and, seating himself cross-legged on the floor,
+placed his firm, brown, right hand on the white man&rsquo;s knee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For two things, good friend. The little fingers of the child are clasped
+tightly around my heart, and when his father striketh me and calls me a filthy
+man-eater, a dog, and a pig, I know no pain. That is one thing. And the other
+thing is this&mdash;the child&rsquo;s mother hath come to me when my body hath
+ached from the father&rsquo;s blows, and the blood hath covered my face; and
+she hath bound up my wounds and wept silent tears, and together have we knelt
+and called upon God to turn his heart from the grog and the foul women, and to
+take away from her and the child the bitterness of these things.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re a good fellow, Âmona,&rdquo; said Denison, as he saw that
+the man&rsquo;s cheeks were wet with tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nay, for sometimes my heart is bitter with anger. But God is good to me.
+For the child loveth me. And the mother is of God... aye, and she will be with
+Him soon.&rdquo; Then he rose to his knees suddenly, and looked wistfully at
+the supercargo, as he put his hand on his. &ldquo;She will be dead before the
+next moon is <i>ai aiga</i> (in the first quarter), for at night I lie outside
+her door, and but three nights ago she cried out to me: &lsquo;Come, Amona,
+Come!&rsquo; And I went in, and she was sitting up on her bed and blood was
+running from her mouth. But she bade me tell no one&mdash;not even thee. And it
+was then she told me that death was near to her, for she hath a disease whose
+roots lie in her chest, and which eateth away her strength. Dear friend, let me
+tell thee of some things... This man is a devil.... I know he but desires to
+see her die. He hath cursed her before me, and twice have I seen him take the
+child from her arms, and, setting him on the floor to weep in terror, take his
+wife by the hand&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stop, man; stop! That&rsquo;ll do. Say no more! The beast!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>E tonu, e tonu</i> (true, true),&rdquo; said the man, quietly, and
+still speaking in Samoan. &ldquo;He is as a beast of the mountains, as a tiger
+of the country India, which devoureth the lamb and the kid.... And so now I
+have opened my heart to thee of these things&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A native woman rushed into the room: &ldquo;Come, Âmona, come. <i>Misi
+Fafine</i> (the mistress) bleeds from her mouth again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The white man and the brown ran into the front sitting-room together, just as
+they heard a piercing shriek of terror from the child; then came the sound of a
+heavy fall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As they entered, Armitage strode out, jolting against them as he passed. His
+face was swollen and ugly with passion&mdash;bad to look at.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go and pick up the child, you frizzy-haired pig!&rdquo; he muttered
+hoarsely to Amona as he passed. &ldquo;He fell off his mother&rsquo;s
+lap.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Armitage was leaning back in her chair, as white as death, and trying to
+speak, as with one hand she tried to stanch the rush of blood from her mouth,
+and with the other pointed to her child, who was lying on his face under a
+table, motionless and unconscious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In less than ten minutes, a native was galloping through the bush to Apia for
+Dr. Eckhardt. Denison had picked up the child, who, as he came to, began to
+cry. Assuring his mother that he was not much hurt, he brought him to her, and
+sat beside the lounge on which she lay, holding him in his arms. He was a good
+little man, and did not try to talk to her when the supercargo whispered to him
+to keep silent, but lay stroking the poor mother&rsquo;s thin white hand. Yet
+every now and then, as he moved or Denison changed his position, he would utter
+a cry of pain and say his leg pained him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Four hours later the German doctor arrived. Mrs. Armitage was asleep; so
+Eckhardt would not awaken her at the time. The boy, however, had slept but
+fitfully, and every now and then awakened with a sob of pain. The nurse
+stripped him, and Eckhardt soon found out what was wrong&mdash;a serious injury
+to the left hip.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Late in the evening, as the big yellow-bearded German doctor and Denison sat in
+the dining room smoking and talking, Taloi, the child&rsquo;s nurse entered,
+and was followed by Amona, and the woman told them the whole story.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Misi Fafine</i> was sitting in a chair with the boy on her lap when
+the master came in. His eyes were black and fierce with anger, and, stepping
+up, he seized the child by the arm, and bade him get down. Then the little one
+screamed in terror, and <i>Misi Fafine</i> screamed too, and the master became
+as mad, for he tore the boy from his mother&rsquo;s arms, and tossed him across
+the room against the wall. That is all I know of this thing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Denison saw nothing of Armitage till six o&rsquo;clock on the following
+morning, just as Eckhardt was going away. He put out his hand, Eckhardt put his
+own behind his back, and, in a few blunt words, told the Beast what he thought
+of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And if this was a civilised country,&rdquo; he added crisply, &ldquo;you
+would be now in gaol. Yes, in prison. You have as good as killed your wife by
+your brutality&mdash;she will not live another two months. You have so injured
+your child&rsquo;s hip that he may be a cripple for life. You are a damned
+scoundrel, no better than the lowest ruffian of a city slum, and if you show
+yourself in Joe D&rsquo;Acosta&rsquo;s smoking-room again, you&rsquo;ll find
+more than half a dozen men&mdash;Englishmen, Americans and Germans&mdash;ready
+to kick you out into the <i>au ala</i>&rdquo; (road).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Armitage was no coward. He sprang forward with an oath, but Denison, who was a
+third less of his employer&rsquo;s weight, deftly put out his right foot and
+the master of Solo Solo plantation went down. Then the supercargo sat on him
+and, having a fine command of seafaring expletives, threatened to gouge his
+eyes out if he did not keep quiet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You go on, doctor,&rdquo; he said cheerfully. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll let you
+know in the course of an hour or two how Mrs. Armitage and the boy are
+progressing. The seat which I am now occupying, though not a very honourable
+one, considering the material of which it is composed, is very comfortable for
+the time being; and&rdquo;&mdash;he turned and glared savagely at
+Armitage&rsquo;s purpled face&mdash;&ldquo;You sweep! I have a great
+inclination to let Eckhardt come and boot the life out of you whilst I hold you
+down, you brute!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll kill you for this,&rdquo; said Armitage hoarsely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Won&rsquo;t give you the chance, my boy. And if you don&rsquo;t promise
+to go to your room quietly, I&rsquo;ll call in the native servants, sling you
+up like the pig you are to a pole, and have you carried into Apia, where you
+stand a good show of being lynched. I&rsquo;ve had enough of you. Every
+one&mdash;except your blackguardly acquaintances in Matafele&mdash;would be
+glad to hear that you were dead, and your wife and child freed from you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Eckhardt stepped forward. &ldquo;Let him up, Mr. Denison.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The supercargo obeyed the request.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Just as you please, doctor. But I think that he ought to be put in
+irons, or a strait-jacket, or knocked on the head as a useless beast. If it
+were not for Mrs. Armitage and her little son, I would like to kill the sweep.
+His treatment of that poor fellow Amona, who is so devoted to the child, has
+been most atrocious.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Eckhardt grasped the supercargo&rsquo;s hand as Armitage shambled off
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s a brute, as you say, Mr. Denison. But she has some affection
+for him. For myself, I would like to put a bullet through him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Within three months Mrs. Armitage was dead, and a fresh martrydom began for
+poor Amona. But he and the child had plenty of good friends; and then, one day,
+when Armitage awakened to sanity after a long drinking bout, he found that both
+Amona and the child had gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nearly a score of years later Denison met them in an Australian city. The
+&ldquo;baby&rdquo; had grown to be a well-set-up young fellow, and Amona the
+faithful was still with him&mdash;Amona with a smiling, happy face. They came
+down on board Denison&rsquo;s vessel with him, and &ldquo;the baby&rdquo; gave
+him, ere they parted, that faded photograph of his dead mother.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap02"></a>THE SNAKE AND THE BELL</h2>
+
+<p>
+When I was a child of eight years of age, a curious incident occurred in the
+house in which our family lived. The locality was Mosman&rsquo;s Bay, one of
+the many picturesque indentations of the beautiful harbour of Sydney. In those
+days the houses were few and far apart, and our own dwelling was surrounded on
+all sides by the usual monotonous-hued Australian forest of iron barks and
+spotted gums, traversed here and there by tracks seldom used, as the house was
+far back from the main road, leading from the suburb of St. Leonards to Middle
+Harbour. The building itself was in the form of a quadrangle enclosing a
+courtyard, on to which nearly all the rooms opened; each room having a bell
+over the door, the wires running all round the square, while the front-door
+bell, which was an extra large affair, hung in the hall, the &ldquo;pull&rdquo;
+being one of the old-fashioned kind, an iron sliding-rod suspended from the
+outer wall plate, where it connected with the wire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One cold and windy evening about eight o&rsquo;clock, my mother, my sisters,
+and myself were sitting in the dining-room awaiting the arrival of my brothers
+from Sydney&mdash;they attended school there, and rowed or sailed the six miles
+to and fro every day, generally returning home by dusk. On this particular
+evening, however, they were late, on account of the wind blowing rather freshly
+from the north-east; but presently we heard the front-door bell ring gently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here they are at last,&rdquo; said my mother; &ldquo;but how silly of
+them to go to the front door on such a windy night, tormenting boys!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Julia, the servant, candle in hand, went along the lengthy passage, and opened
+the door. No one was there! She came back to the dining-room
+smiling&mdash;&ldquo;Masther Edward is afther playin&rsquo; wan av his thricks,
+ma&rsquo;am&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; she began, when the bell again rang&mdash;this
+time vigorously. My eldest sister threw down the book she was reading, and with
+an impatient exclamation herself went to the door, opened it quickly, and said
+sharply as she pulled it inwards&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come in at once, you stupid things!&rdquo; There was no answer, and she
+stepped outside on the verandah. No one was visible, and again the big bell in
+the hall rang!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She shut the door angrily and returned to her seat, just as the bell gave a
+curious, faint tinkle as if the tongue had been moved ever so gently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t take any notice of them,&rdquo; said my mother, &ldquo;they
+will soon get tired of playing such silly pranks, and be eager for their
+supper.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently the bell gave out three clear strokes. We looked at each other and
+smiled. Five minutes passed, and then came eight or ten gentle strokes in quick
+succession.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let us catch them,&rdquo; said my mother, rising, and holding her finger
+up to us to preserve silence, as she stepped softly along the hall, we
+following on tiptoe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Softly turning the handle, she suddenly threw the door wide open, just as the
+bell gave another jangle. Not a soul was visible!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My mother&mdash;one of the most placid-tempered women who ever breathed, now
+became annoyed, and stepping out on the verandah, addressed herself to the
+darkness&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come inside at once, boys, or I shall be very angry. I know perfectly
+well what you have done; you have tied a string to the bell wires, and are
+pulling it. If you don&rsquo;t desist you shall have no supper.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No answer&mdash;except from the hall bell, which gave another half-hearted
+tinkle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bring a candle and the step-ladder, Julia,&rdquo; said our now
+thoroughly exasperated parent, &ldquo;and we shall see what these foolish boys
+have done to the bell-wire.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Julia brought the ladder; my eldest sister mounted it, and began to examine the
+bell. She could see nothing unusual, no string or wire, and as she descended,
+the bell swayed and gave one faint stroke!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We all returned to the sitting room, and had scarcely been there five minutes
+when we heard my three brothers coming in, in their usual way, by the back
+door. They tramped into the sitting room, noisy, dirty, wet with spray, and
+hungry, and demanded supper in a loud and collected voice. My mother looked at
+them with a severe aspect, and said they deserved none.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, mum, what&rsquo;s the matter?&rdquo; said Ted; &ldquo;what
+<i>have</i> we been doing now, or what have we not done, that we don&rsquo;t
+deserve any supper, after pulling for two hours from Circular Quay, against a
+howling, black north-easter?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know perfectly well what I mean. It is most inconsiderate of you to
+play such silly tricks upon us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ted gazed at her in genuine astonishment. &ldquo;Silly tricks, mother! What
+silly tricks?&rdquo; (Julia crossed herself, and trembled visibly as the bell
+again rang.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My mother, at once satisfied that Ted and my other brothers really knew nothing
+of the mysterious bell-ringing, quickly explained the cause of her anger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let us go and see if we can find out,&rdquo; said Ted. &ldquo;You two
+boys, and you, Julia, get all the stable lanterns, light them, and we&rsquo;ll
+start out together&mdash;two on one side of the house and two on the other.
+Some one must be up to a trick!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Julia, who was a huge, raw-boned Irish girl, as strong as a working bullock,
+but not so graceful, again crossed herself, and began to weep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter with you?&rdquo; said Ted angrily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Shure, an&rsquo; there was tirrible murders committed here in the ould
+convict days,&rdquo; she whimpered. &ldquo;The polace sargint&rsquo;s wife at
+Sint Leonards tould me all about it. There was three souldiers murdered down
+beyant on the beach, by some convicts, whin they was atin&rsquo; their supper,
+an&rsquo; there&rsquo;s people near about now that saw all the blood
+and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stop it, you great lumbering idiot!&rdquo; shouted Ted, as my eldest
+sister began to laugh hysterically, and the youngest, made a terrified dart to
+mother&rsquo;s skirts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ted&rsquo;s angry voice and threatening visage silenced Julia for the moment,
+and she tremblingly went towards the door to obey his orders when the bell gave
+out such a vigorous and sustained peal that she sank down in a colossal heap on
+the floor, and then went into violent hysterics. (I assure my readers that I am
+not exaggerating matters in the slightest.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My mother, who was a thoroughly sensible woman, pushed the whole brood of us
+out of the room, came after us, shut the door and locked it. <i>She</i> knew
+the proper treatment for hysterics.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let her stay there, boys,&rdquo; she said quietly, &ldquo;she will hurt
+the furniture more than herself, the ridiculous creature. Now, Ted, you and
+your brothers get the lanterns, and the little ones and myself will go into the
+kitchen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We ran out into the stables, lit three lanterns, and my next eldest brother and
+myself, feeling horribly frightened, but impelled to show some courage by
+Ted&rsquo;s awful threats of what he would do to us if we &ldquo;funked,&rdquo;
+told us to go round the house, beginning from the left, and meet him at the
+hall door, he going round from the right.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With shaking limbs and gasping breath we made our portion of the circuit,
+sticking close to each other, and carefully avoiding looking at anything as we
+hurried over the lawn, our only anxiety being to meet Ted as quickly as
+possible and then get inside again. We arrived on the verandah, and in front of
+the hall-door, quite five minutes before Ted appeared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, did you see anything?&rdquo; he asked, as he walked up the steps,
+lantern in hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; we answered, edging up towards the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ted looked at us contemptuously. &ldquo;You miserable little curs! What are you
+so frightened of? You&rsquo;re no better than a pack of women and kids.
+It&rsquo;s the wind that has made the bell ring, or, if it&rsquo;s not the
+wind, it is something else which I don&rsquo;t know anything about; but I want
+my supper. Pull the bell, one of you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Elated at so soon escaping from the horrors of the night, we seized the handle
+of the bell-pull, and gave it a vigorous tug.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s stuck, Ted. It won&rsquo;t pull down,&rdquo; we said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Granny!&rdquo; said the big brother, &ldquo;you&rsquo;re too funky to
+give it a proper pull,&rdquo; and pushing us aside, he grasped the pendant
+handle and gave a sharp pull. There was no answering sound.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It certainly is stuck,&rdquo; admitted Ted, raising his lantern so as to
+get a look upwards, then he gave a yell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! look there!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We looked up, and saw the writhing twisting, coils of a huge carpet snake,
+which had wound its body round and round the bell-wire on top of the wall
+plate. Its head was downwards, and it did not seem at all alarmed at our
+presence, but went on wriggling and twisting and squirming with much apparent
+cheerfulness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ted ran back to the stables, and returned in a few seconds with a clothes-prop,
+with which he dealt the disturber of our peace a few rapid, but vigorous,
+blows, breaking its spine in several places. Then the step-ladder was brought
+out, and Ted, seizing the reptile by the tail, uncoiled it with some difficulty
+from the wire, and threw it down upon the verandah.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was over nine feet in length, and very fat, and had caused all the
+disturbance by endeavouring to denude itself of its old skin by dragging its
+body between the bell-wire and the top of the wall. When Ted killed it the poor
+harmless creature had almost accomplished its object.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap03"></a>SOUTH SEA NOTES</h2>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap04"></a>I</h2>
+
+<p>
+That many animals, particularly cattle and deer, are very fond of salt we all
+know, but it is not often that birds show any taste for it, or, if so, the
+circumstance has not generally been noted. In 1881, however, the present writer
+was residing on Gazelle Peninsula, the northern portion of the magnificent
+island of New Britain in the South Pacific, and had many opportunities of
+witnessing both cockatoos and wild pigeons drinking salt water. I was stationed
+at a place called Kabaira, the then &ldquo;furthest-out&rdquo; trading station
+on the whole island, and as I had but little to do in the way of work, I found
+plenty of time to study the bird-life in the vicinity. Parrots of several
+varieties, and all of beautiful plumage, were very plentiful, and immense
+flocks of white cockatoos frequented the rolling, grassy downs which lay
+between my home and the German head-station in Blanche Bay, twenty miles
+distant, while the heavy forest of the littoral was the haunt of thousands of
+pigeons. These latter, though not so large as the Samoan, or Eastern Polynesian
+bird, formed a very agreeable change of diet for us white traders, and by
+walking about fifty yards from one&rsquo;s door, half a dozen or more could be
+shot in as many minutes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My nearest neighbour was a German, and one day when we were walking along the
+beach towards his station, we noticed some hundreds of pigeons fly down from
+the forest, settle on the margin of the water, and drink with apparent
+enjoyment. The harbour at this spot was almost land-locked, the water as smooth
+as glass without the faintest ripple, and the birds were consequently enabled
+to drink without wetting their plumage. My companion, who had lived many years
+in New Britain, told me that this drinking of sea-water was common alike to
+both cockatoos and pigeons, and that on some occasions the beaches would be
+lined with them, the former birds not only drinking, but bathing as well, and
+apparently enjoying themselves greatly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the following six months, especially when the weather was calm and
+rainy, I frequently noticed pigeons and cockatoos come to the salt water to
+drink. At first I thought that as fresh water in many places bubbled up through
+the sand at low tide, the birds were really not drinking the sea-water, but by
+watching closely, I frequently saw them walk across these tiny runnels, and
+make no attempt to drink. Then again, the whole of the Gazette Peninsula is out
+up by countless streams of water; rain falls throughout the year as a rule, and
+as I have said, there is always water percolating or bubbling up through the
+sand on the beaches at low tide. What causes this unusual habit of drinking
+sea-water?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another peculiarity of the New Britain and New Ireland pigeon is its fondness
+for the Chili pepper-berry. During three months of the year, when these berries
+are ripe, the birds&rsquo; crops are full of them, and very often their flesh
+is so pungent, and smells so strongly of the Chili, as to be quite uneatable.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+On all of the low-lying islands of the Ellice, Kings-mill and Gilbert Groups, a
+species of snipe are very plentiful. On the islands which enclose the noble
+lagoon of Funafuti in the Ellice Group, they are to be met with in great
+numbers, and in dull, rainy weather, an ordinarily good shot may get thirty or
+forty in a few hours. One day, accompanied by a native lad, I set out to
+collect hermit crabs, to be used as fish bait. These curious creatures are to
+be found almost anywhere in the equatorial islands of the Pacific; their shell
+houses ranging in size from a pea to an orange, and if a piece of coco-nut or
+fish or any other edible matter is left out overnight, hundreds of hermits will
+be found gathered around it in the morning. To extract the crabs from their
+shells, which are of all shapes and kinds, is a very simple matter&mdash;the
+hard casing is broken by placing them upon a large stone and striking them a
+sharp blow with one of lesser size. My companion and myself soon collected a
+heap of &ldquo;hermits,&rdquo; when presently he took one up in his hand, and
+holding it close to his mouth, whistled softly. In a few moments the crab
+protruded one nipper, then another, then its red antennae, and allowed the boy
+to take its head between his finger and thumb and draw its entire body from its
+shell casing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is the way the <i>kili</i> (snipe) gets the <i>uga</i> (crab) from
+its shell,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The <i>kili</i> stands over the <i>uga</i>
+and whistles softly, and the <i>uga</i> puts out his head to listen. Then the
+bird seizes it in his bill, gives it a backward jerk and off flies the
+shell.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now I had often noticed that wherever hermit crabs were plentiful along the
+outer beaches of the lagoon, I was sure to find snipe, and sometimes wondered
+on what the birds fed. Taking up two or three &ldquo;hermits&rdquo; one by one,
+I whistled gently, and in each case the creature protruded the nippers, head
+and shoulders, and moved its antennæ to and fro as if pleasurably excited.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the following day I shot three snipe, and in the stomachs of each I found
+some quite fresh and some partly digested hermit crabs. The thick, hard nippers
+are broken off by the bird before he swallows the soft, tender body.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+In a recent number of <i>Chambers&rsquo;s Journal</i> the present writer was
+much interested in a short paragraph dealing with the commercial value of the
+skin of the shark, and, having had many years&rsquo; experience as a trader and
+supercargo in the South Seas, desires to add some further information on a
+somewhat interesting subject.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In all the equatorial islands of the North and South Pacific, shark fishing is
+a very profitable industry to the natives, and every trading steamer or sailing
+vessel coming into the ports of Sydney or Auckland from the islands of the
+mid-Pacific, always brings some tons of shark fins and tails and shark skins.
+The principal market for the former is Hong Kong, but the Chinese merchants of
+the Australasian Colonies will always buy sharks&rsquo; fins and tails at from
+6d. to 11d. per lb., the fins bringing the best price on account of the extra
+amount of glutinous matter they contain, and the which are highly relished by
+the richer classes of Chinese as a delicacy. The tails are also valued as an
+article of food in China; and, apart from their edible qualities, have a
+further value as a base for clear varnishes, &amp;c.; and I was informed by a
+Chinese tea-merchant that the glaze upon the paper coverings of tea-chests was
+due to a preparation composed principally of the refuse of sharks&rsquo; fins,
+tails, and skins.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the natives of the Gilbert, Kingsmill, and other Pacific equatorial islands
+are expert shark fishermen; but the wild people of Ocean Island (Paanopa) and
+Pleasant Island (Naura), two isolated spots just under the equator, surpass
+them all in the art of catching jackshark. It was the fortunate experience of
+the writer to live among these people for many years, and to be inducted into
+the native method of shark-catching. In frail canoes, made of short pieces of
+wood, sewn together with coco-nut fibre, the Ocean Islanders will venture out
+with rude but ingeniously contrived <i>wooden</i> hooks, and capture sharks of
+a girth (<i>not</i> length) that no untrained European would dare to attempt to
+kill from a well-appointed boat, with a good crew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Shark-catching is one of <i>the</i> industries of the Pacific, and a very
+paying industry too. Five-and-twenty years ago there were quite a dozen or more
+schooners sailing out of Honolulu, in the Hawaiian Islands, to the isolated
+atolls of the North Pacific&mdash;notably Palmyra and Christmas
+Islands&mdash;where sharks could be caught by the thousand, and the crews, who
+were engaged on a &ldquo;lay,&rdquo; like whalemen, made &ldquo;big
+money&rdquo;; many of them after a six months&rsquo; cruise drawing 500
+dollars&mdash;a large sum for a native sailor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The work is certainly hard, but it is exciting, and the writer will always
+remember with pleasure a seven months&rsquo; shark-fishing cruise he once had
+in the North Pacific, the genial comrades&mdash;white men and brown&mdash;and
+the bag of dollars handed over to him by the owners when the ship was paid off
+in Honolulu.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap05"></a>II</h2>
+
+<p>
+It is not generally known, except to scientists and those who are acquainted
+with the subject, that a large percentage of the various species and varieties
+of sea snakes are highly venomous. These snakes must not be confounded with the
+very numerous species of sea eels, which, though exceedingly savage and armed
+with strong needle-pointed teeth, are all non-venomous, though their bite
+produces high inflammation if not at once properly attended to and cleansed by
+an antiseptic. The sea snake is a true snake in many respects, having either
+laminated scales or a thick corduroyed skin resembling rudimentary scales. The
+head is flat, and the general structure of the body similar to that of the land
+snake. Whether any of them possess the true poison glands and fangs I do not
+know, for although I have killed many hundreds of them I never took sufficient
+interest to make a careful examination; and I was told by a Dutch medical
+gentleman, long resident on the coast of Dutch New Guinea, and who had made
+some investigation on the subject, that he had failed to discover any poison
+sacs or glands in any one of the several snakes he had captured. Yet in some
+instances he found what at first appeared to be the two long front teeth common
+to venomous land snakes, but on detailed examination these always proved to be
+perfectly solid; nevertheless a bite from one of these sea serpents was
+generally regarded by the natives as fatal; in my own experience I know of two
+such cases, one at the island of Fotuna in the South Pacific, and the other in
+Torres Straits.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In Sigavi Harbour, on Fotuna, there is a rock to which vessels occasionally
+make fast their stern moorings. In the boat which I sent away with a line to
+this rock were several boys, natives of the island, who went with the crew for
+amusement. One of them, aged about ten, jumped out of the boat, and in his
+hurry fell on his hands and knees, right on top of a large black and white
+banded sea snake, which at once bit him savagely on the wrist, causing the
+blood to flow from a score of tiny punctures. The boy at once swam on shore to
+be treated by a native; in the evening I heard he was suffering great agony, in
+the morning the poor little fellow was dead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The second instance was near Raine Island, in Torres Straits. A stalwart young
+Kanaka, one of the crew of a pearling lugger, was diving for clam shells on the
+reef, when a snake about three feet in length suddenly shot up from below
+within a foot of his face. In his anger and disgust he unthinkingly struck it
+with his hand, and was quickly bitten on the forefinger. A few hours later he
+was in a high fever, accompanied with twitchings of the extremities; then
+tetanus ensued, followed by death in forty-eight hours.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Although these sea snakes are common to all tropical seas, they are most
+frequent about the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. On any smooth day they may
+be seen disporting themselves on the surface, or rising suddenly from the
+depths, erect their heads and some inches of their bodies clear from the water,
+gaze at the passing vessel, and then swiftly disappear. In nearly all the
+Pacific Islands the natives hold them in detestation and horror, and when one
+is seen lying coiled up on a rock sunning itself or crawling over the surface
+of the reef in search of food, a stone, accompanied by a curse, is always
+hurled at it. In the Ellice Oroup, when catching flying-fish at night, one (or
+more) of these horrid serpents is sometimes swept up in the scoop-net before it
+can be avoided. They range from six inches to nearly four feet in length, and
+all have one feature&mdash;a blunted tail-end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Quite recently much further light has been thrown on the subject by Sir James
+Hector, of the Philosophical Society of Wellington, New Zealand. At one of the
+Society&rsquo;s meetings, held in April last, Sir James showed several
+specimens of <i>hydrida</i>, some from Australasian Seas, others from the
+Atlantic. The usual habitat of sea snakes, he said, were the tropical seas
+generally, but some had been captured in the comparatively cold waters of the
+New Zealand coast, at the Catlins River. These latter were all yellow-banded;
+those from the islands of the Fijian Oroup were black-banded, and those taken
+from the Australian coast grey-banded. There were, he said, no fewer than
+seventy species, which, without exception, were fanged and provided with glands
+secreting a virulent poison. In some of the mountainous islands of the South
+Pacific, such as Samoa, Fiji, &amp;c, there were several species of land
+snakes, all of which were perfectly harmless, and were familiar to many people
+in Australia and New Zealand, through being brought there in bunches of island
+bananas&mdash;it was singular, he thought, that the sea snakes alone should be
+so highly venomous. &ldquo;They were all characterised by the flattened or
+blunted tail, which they used as a steer oar, and were often found asleep on
+the surface of the water, lying on their backs. In this state they were easily
+and safely captured, being powerless to strike.&rdquo; The present writer, who
+has seen hundreds of these marine snakes daily for many years, during a long
+residence in the Pacific Islands, cannot remember a single instance where he
+has seen one of these dangerous creatures asleep <i>on the water</i>, though
+they may frequently be found lying asleep on the coral reefs, exposing
+themselves to the rays of a torrid sun. They usually select some knob or
+rounded boulder, from the top of which, when awake, they can survey the small
+pools beneath and discern any fish which may be imprisoned therein. In such
+case they will glide down into the water with astonishing rapidity, seize their
+prey, and after swallowing it, return to their sun bath. The natives of the
+Paumotu Archipelago informed me, however, that they are most active in seeking
+their prey at night-time, and are especially fond of flying-fish, which, as is
+well known, is one of the swiftest of all ocean fishes. The sea snakes,
+however, seize them with the greatest ease, by rising cautiously beneath and
+fastening their keen teeth in the fish&rsquo;s throat or belly. A snake, not
+two feet six inches in length, I was assured, can easily swallow a flying-fish
+eight inches or ten inches long.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With regard to their habit of lying asleep on their backs on the surface of the
+water, it may be that Sir James Hector is alluding to some particular species,
+but whether that is so or not Sir James&rsquo;s statement must of course be
+considered authoritative, for there is, I believe, no higher authority on the
+subject in the world. Apropos of these venomous marine serpents I may mention
+that the Rev. W. W. Gill in one of his works states that he was informed by the
+natives of the Cook&rsquo;s Group that during the prevalence of very bad
+weather, when fish were scarce, the large sea eels would actually crawl ashore,
+and ascend the <i>fala</i> (pandanus or screw-pine) trees in search of the
+small green lizards which live among the upper part of the foliage. At first I
+regarded this merely as a bit of native extravagance of statement, but in 1882,
+when I was shipwrecked on Peru (or Francis Island), one of the Gilbert Group,
+the local trader, one Frank Voliero, and myself saw one of these eels engaged
+in an equally extraordinary pursuit. We were one evening, after a heavy gale
+from the westward had been blowing for three days, examining a rookery of whale
+birds in search of eggs; the rookery was situated in a dense thicket scrub on
+the north end of the island, and was quite two hundred yards from the
+sea-shore, though not more than half that distance from the inside lagoon
+beach. The storm had destroyed quite a number of young, half-fledged birds,
+whose bodies were lying on the ground, and busily engaged in devouring one of
+them was a very large sea eel, as thick as the calf of a man&rsquo;s leg.
+Before I could manage to secure a stick with which to kill the
+repulsive-looking creature, it made off through the undergrowth at a rapid pace
+in the direction of the lagoon, and when we emerged out into the open in
+pursuit, ten minutes later, we were just in time to see it wriggling down the
+hard, sloping beach into the water. Instinct evidently made it seek the nearest
+water, for none of these large sea eels are ever found in Peru Lagoon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Many of the rivers and lakes of the islands of the Western Pacific are tenanted
+by eels of great size, which are never, or very seldom, as far as I could
+learn, interfered with by the natives, and I have never seen the people of
+either the Admiralty Islands, New Ireland, or New Britain touch an eel as food.
+The Maories, however, as is well known, are inordinately fond of eels, which,
+with putrid shark, constitute one of their staple articles of diet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the few mountainous islands of the vast Caroline Archipelago, in the
+North-western Pacific, eels are very plentiful, not only in the numberless
+small streams which debouch into the shallow waters enclosed by the barrier
+reefs, but also far up on the mountainsides, occupying little rocky pools of
+perhaps no larger dimensions than an ordinary-sized toilet basin, or swimming
+up and down rivulets hardly more than two feet across. The natives of Ponapé,
+the largest island of the Caroline Group, and of Kusaie (Strong&rsquo;s
+Island), its eastern outlier, regard the fresh-water eel with shuddering
+aversion, and should a man accidentally touch one with his foot when crossing a
+stream he will utter an exclamation of horror and fear. In the heathen
+days&mdash;down to 1845-50&mdash;the eel (tôan) was an object of worship, and
+constantly propitiated by sacrifices of food, on account of its malevolent
+powers; personal contact was rigidly avoided; to touch one, even by the merest
+accident, was to bring down the most dreadful calamities on the offender and
+his family&mdash;bodily deformities, starvation and poverty, and death; and
+although the natives of Strong&rsquo;s Island are now both civilised and
+Christianised, and a training college of the Boston Board of Missions has long
+been established at Port Lelé, they still manifest the same superstitious dread
+of the eel as in their days of heathendom. I well remember witnessing an
+instance of this terror during my sojourn on the island when I was shipwrecked
+there in 1874. I had taken up my residence in the picturesque little village of
+Leassé, on the western or &ldquo;lee&rdquo; side, when I was one evening
+visited by several of the ship&rsquo;s company&mdash;a Fijian half-caste, a
+white man, and two natives of Pleasant Island. At the moment they arrived I was
+in the house of the native pastor&mdash;a man who had received an excellent
+education in a missionary college at Honolulu, in the Hawaiian
+Islands&mdash;instructing him and his family in the art of making <i>taka</i>,
+or cinnet sandals, as practised by the natives of the Tokelau Group. Just then
+the four seamen entered, each man triumphantly holding up a large eel: in an
+instant there was a united howl of horror from the parson and his family, as
+they made a rash for the door, overturning the lamp and nearly setting the
+house on fire. In vain I followed and urged them to return, and told them that
+the men had gone away and taken the <i>tôan</i> with them&mdash;nothing would
+induce them to enter the house that night, and the whole family slept
+elsewhere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One singular thing about the eels on Strong&rsquo;s Island is that they
+hibernate, in a fashion, on the sides or even summits of the high mountains, at
+an altitude of nearly two thousand feet. Selecting, or perhaps making, a
+depression in the soft, moss-covered soil, the ugly creatures fit themselves
+into it compactly and remain there for weeks or even months at a time. I have
+counted as many as thirty of these holes, all tenanted, within a few square
+yards. Some were quite concealed by vegetable <i>débris</i> or moss, others
+were exposed to view, with the broad, flat head of the slippery occupant
+resting on the margin or doubled back upon its body. They showed no alarm, but
+if poked with a stick would extricate themselves and crawl slowly away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the streams they were very voracious, and I had a special antipathy to them,
+on account of their preying so on the crayfish&mdash;a crustacean of which I
+was particularly fond, and which the natives also liked very much, but were
+afraid to capture for fear their hands might come in contact with the dreaded
+<i>tôan</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One afternoon I was plucking a pigeon I had just shot by the margin of a
+mountain stream. After removing the viscera, I put the bird in the water to
+clean it properly, and was shaking it gently to and fro, when it was suddenly
+torn out of my hand by a disgustingly bloated, reddish-coloured eel about four
+feet in length, and quickly swallowed. That one pigeon had cost me two
+hours&rsquo; tramping through the rain-soddened mountain forest, so loading my
+gun I followed the thief down stream to where the water was but a few inches
+deep, and then blew his head off.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+
+
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #24952 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24952)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of �mona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others, by 
+Louis Becke
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: �mona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others
+       From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other
+       Stories" - 1902
+
+Author: Louis Becke
+
+Release Date: March 29, 2008 [EBook #24952]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMONA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+�MONA; THE CHILD; AND THE BEAST
+
+Plus THE SNAKE AND THE BELL and SOUTH SEA NOTES
+
+From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other Stories"
+
+By Louis Becke
+
+T. FISHER UNWIN, 1902
+
+LONDON
+
+
+
+
+�MONA; THE CHILD; AND THE BEAST'
+
+
+�mona was, as his master so frequently told him--accentuating the remark
+with a blow or a kick--only "a miserable kanaka." Of his miserableness
+there was no doubt, for Denison, who lived in the same house as he did,
+was a daily witness of it--and his happiness. Also, he was a kanaka--a
+native of Niu�, in the South Pacific; Savage Island it is called by the
+traders and is named on the charts, though its five thousand sturdy,
+brown-skinned inhabitants have been civilised, Christianised, and have
+lived fairly cleanly for the past thirty years.
+
+�mona and Denison had the distinction of being employed by Armitage, one
+of the most unmitigated blackguards in the Pacific. He was a shipowner,
+planter, merchant, and speculator; was looked upon by a good many people
+as "not a bad sort of a fellow, you know--and the soul of hospitality."
+In addition, he was an incorrigible drunken bully, and broke his wife's
+heart within four years after she married him. �mona was his cook.
+Denison was one of his supercargoes, and (when a long boat of
+drunkenness made him see weird visions of impossible creatures) manager
+of the business on shore, overseer, accountant, and Jack-of-all-trades.
+How he managed to stay on with such a brute I don't know. He certainly
+paid him well enough, but he (Denison) could have got another berth from
+other people in Samoa, Fiji, or Tonga had he wanted it. And, although
+Armitage was always painfully civil to Denison--who tried to keep
+his business from going to the dogs--the man hated him as much as he
+despised �mona, and would have liked to have kicked him, as he would
+have liked to have kicked or strangled any one who knew the secret of
+his wife's death and his child's lameness. And three people in Samoa did
+know it--�mona, the Niu� cook, Dr. Eckhardt, and Denison. Armitage has
+been dead now these five-and-twenty years--died, as he deserved to
+die, alone and friendless in an Australian bush hospital out in the
+God-forsaken Never-Never country, and when Denison heard of his death,
+he looked at the gentle wife's dim, faded photograph, and wondered if
+the Beast saw her sweet, sad face in his dying moments. He trusted
+not; for in her eyes would have shown only the holy light of love
+and forgiveness--things which a man like Armitage could not have
+understood--even then.
+
+She had been married three years when she came with him to Samoa to live
+on Solo-Solo Plantation, in a great white-painted bungalow, standing
+amid a grove of breadfruit and coco-palms, and overlooking the sea
+to the north, east, and west; to the south was the dark green of the
+mountain-forest.
+
+"Oh! I think it is the fairest, sweetest picture in the world," she said
+to Denison the first time he met her. She was sitting on the verandah
+with her son in her lap, and as she spoke she pressed her lips to his
+soft little cheek and caressed the tiny hands. "So different from where
+I was born and lived all my life--on the doll, sun-baked plains of the
+Riverina--isn't it, my pet?"
+
+"I am glad that you like the place, Mrs. Armitage," the supercargo said
+as he looked at the young, girlish face and thought that she, too, with
+her baby, made a fair, sweet picture. How she loved the child! And how
+the soft, grey-blue eyes would lose their sadness when the little one
+turned its face up to hers and smiled! How came it, he wondered, that
+such a tender, flower-like woman was mated to such a man as Armitage!
+
+Long after she was dead, Denison heard the story--one common enough.
+Her father, whose station adjoined that of Armitage, got into financial
+difficulties, went to Armitage for help, and practically sold his
+daughter to the Beast for a couple of thousand pounds. Very likely such
+a man would have sold his daughter's mother as well if he wanted money.
+
+* * * * *
+
+As they sat talking, Armitage rode up, half-drunk as usual. He was a big
+man, good-looking.
+
+"Hallo, Nell! Pawing the damned kid as usual! Why the hell don't you let
+one of the girls take the little animal and let him tumble about on the
+grass? You're spoiling the child--by God, you are."
+
+"Ah, he's so happy, Fred, here with me, and----"
+
+"Happy be damned--you're always letting him maul you about. I want a
+whisky-and-soda, and so does Denison--don't you?" And then the Beast, as
+soon as his wife with the child in her arms had left the room, began
+to tell his subordinate of a "new" girl he had met that morning in Joe
+D'Acosta's saloon.
+
+"Oh, shut up, man. Your wife is in the next room."
+
+"Let her hear--and be damned to her! She knows what I do. I don't
+disguise anything from her. I'm not a sneak in that way. By God, I'm not
+the man to lose any fun from sentimental reasons. Have you seen this
+new girl at Joe's? She's a Manhiki half-caste. God, man! She's glorious,
+simply glorious!"
+
+"You mean Laea, I suppose. She's a common beacher--sailor man's trull.
+Surely you wouldn't be seen ever speaking to _her?_"
+
+"Wouldn't I! You don't know me yet! I like the girl, and I've fixed
+things up with her. She's coming here as my nursemaid--twenty dollars a
+month! What do you think of that?"
+
+"You would not insult your wife so horribly!"
+
+He looked at Denison sullenly, but made no answer, as the supercargo
+went on:
+
+"You'll get the dead cut from every white man in Samoa. Not a soul will
+put foot inside your store door, and Joe D'Acosta himself would refuse
+to sell you a drink! Might as well shoot yourself at once."
+
+"Oh, well, damn it all, don't keep on preaching. I--I was more in fun
+than anything else. Ha! Here's �mona with the drinks. Why don't you be a
+bit smarter, you damned frizzy-haired man-eater?"
+
+Amona's sallow face flushed deeply, but he made no reply to the insult
+as he handed a glass to his master.
+
+"Put the tray down there, confound you! Don't stand there like a
+blarsted mummy; clear out till we want you again."
+
+The native made no answer, bent his head in silence, and stepped quietly
+away. Then Armitage began to grumble at him as a "useless swine."
+
+"Why," said Denison, "Mrs. Armitage was only just telling me that he's
+worth all the rest of the servants put together. And, by Jove, he _is_
+fond of your youngster--simply worships the little chap."
+
+Armitage snorted, and turned his lips down. Ten minutes later, he was
+asleep in his chair.
+
+*****
+
+Nearly six months had passed--six months of wretchedness to the young
+wife, whose heart was slowly breaking under the strain of living with
+the Beast. Such happiness as was hers lay in the companionship of her
+little son, and every evening Tom Denison would see her watching the
+child and the patient, faithful �mona, as the two played together on the
+smooth lawn in front of the sitting-room, or ran races in and out among
+the mango-trees. She was becoming paler and thinner every day--the Beast
+was getting fatter and coarser, and more brutalised. Sometimes he would
+remain in Apia for a week, returning home either boisterously drunk or
+sullen and scowling-faced. In the latter case, he would come into the
+office where Denison worked (he had left the schooner of which he was
+supercargo, and was now "overseering" Solo-Solo) and try to grasp the
+muddled condition of his financial affairs. Then, with much variegated
+language, he would stride away, cursing the servants and the place
+and everything in general, mount his horse, and ride off again to the
+society of the loafers, gamblers, and flaunting unfortunates who haunted
+the drinking saloons of Apia and Matafele.
+
+One day came a crisis. Denison was rigging a tackle to haul a tree-trunk
+into position in the plantation saw-pit, when Armitage rode up to the
+house. He dismounted and went inside. Five minutes later Amona came
+staggering down the path to him. His left cheek was cut to the bone by
+a blow from Armitage's fist. Denison brought him into his own room,
+stitched up the wound, and gave him a glass of grog, and told him to
+light his pipe and rest.
+
+"�mona, you're a _valea_ (fool). Why don't you leave this place? This
+man will kill you some day. How many beatings has he given you?" He
+spoke in English.
+
+"I know not how many. But it is God's will. And if the master some day
+killeth me, it is well. And yet, but for some things, I would use my
+knife on him."
+
+"What things?"
+
+He came over to the supercargo, and, seating himself cross-legged on the
+floor, placed his firm, brown, right hand on the white man's knee.
+
+"For two things, good friend. The little fingers of the child are
+clasped tightly around my heart, and when his father striketh me and
+calls me a filthy man-eater, a dog, and a pig, I know no pain. That is
+one thing. And the other thing is this--the child's mother hath come to
+me when my body hath ached from the father's blows, and the blood hath
+covered my face; and she hath bound up my wounds and wept silent tears,
+and together have we knelt and called upon God to turn his heart from
+the grog and the foul women, and to take away from her and the child the
+bitterness of these things."
+
+"You're a good fellow, �mona," said Denison, as he saw that the man's
+cheeks were wet with tears.
+
+"Nay, for sometimes my heart is bitter with anger. But God is good to
+me. For the child loveth me. And the mother is of God... aye, and she
+will be with Him soon." Then he rose to his knees suddenly, and looked
+wistfully at the supercargo, as he put his hand on his. "She will be
+dead before the next moon is _ai aiga_ (in the first quarter), for at
+night I lie outside her door, and but three nights ago she cried out to
+me: 'Come, Amona, Come!' And I went in, and she was sitting up on
+her bed and blood was running from her mouth. But she bade me tell no
+one--not even thee. And it was then she told me that death was near
+to her, for she hath a disease whose roots lie in her chest, and
+which eateth away her strength. Dear friend, let me tell thee of some
+things... This man is a devil.... I know he but desires to see her die.
+He hath cursed her before me, and twice have I seen him take the child
+from her arms, and, setting him on the floor to weep in terror, take his
+wife by the hand----"
+
+"Stop, man; stop! That'll do. Say no more! The beast!"
+
+"_E tonu, e tonu_ (true, true)," said the man, quietly, and still
+speaking in Samoan. "He is as a beast of the mountains, as a tiger of
+the country India, which devoureth the lamb and the kid.... And so now I
+have opened my heart to thee of these things----"
+
+A native woman rushed into the room: "Come, �mona, come. _Misi Fafine_
+(the mistress) bleeds from her mouth again."
+
+The white man and the brown ran into the front sitting-room together,
+just as they heard a piercing shriek of terror from the child; then came
+the sound of a heavy fall.
+
+As they entered, Armitage strode out, jolting against them as he passed.
+His face was swollen and ugly with passion--bad to look at.
+
+"Go and pick up the child, you frizzy-haired pig!" he muttered hoarsely
+to Amona as he passed. "He fell off his mother's lap."
+
+Mrs. Armitage was leaning back in her chair, as white as death, and
+trying to speak, as with one hand she tried to stanch the rush of blood
+from her mouth, and with the other pointed to her child, who was lying
+on his face under a table, motionless and unconscious.
+
+In less than ten minutes, a native was galloping through the bush to
+Apia for Dr. Eckhardt. Denison had picked up the child, who, as he came
+to, began to cry. Assuring his mother that he was not much hurt, he
+brought him to her, and sat beside the lounge on which she lay, holding
+him in his arms. He was a good little man, and did not try to talk
+to her when the supercargo whispered to him to keep silent, but lay
+stroking the poor mother's thin white hand. Yet every now and then, as
+he moved or Denison changed his position, he would utter a cry of pain
+and say his leg pained him.
+
+Four hours later the German doctor arrived. Mrs. Armitage was asleep; so
+Eckhardt would not awaken her at the time. The boy, however, had slept
+but fitfully, and every now and then awakened with a sob of pain.
+The nurse stripped him, and Eckhardt soon found out what was wrong--a
+serious injury to the left hip.
+
+Late in the evening, as the big yellow-bearded German doctor and Denison
+sat in the dining room smoking and talking, Taloi, the child's nurse
+entered, and was followed by Amona, and the woman told them the whole
+story.
+
+"_Misi Fafine_ was sitting in a chair with the boy on her lap when the
+master came in. His eyes were black and fierce with anger, and, stepping
+up, he seized the child by the arm, and bade him get down. Then the
+little one screamed in terror, and _Misi Fafine_ screamed too, and the
+master became as mad, for he tore the boy from his mother's arms, and
+tossed him across the room against the wall. That is all I know of this
+thing."
+
+Denison saw nothing of Armitage till six o'clock on the following
+morning, just as Eckhardt was going away. He put out his hand, Eckhardt
+put his own behind his back, and, in a few blunt words, told the Beast
+what he thought of him.
+
+"And if this was a civilised country," he added crisply, "you would be
+now in gaol. Yes, in prison. You have as good as killed your wife
+by your brutality--she will not live another two months. You have so
+injured your child's hip that he may be a cripple for life. You are a
+damned scoundrel, no better than the lowest ruffian of a city slum, and
+if you show yourself in Joe D'Acosta's smoking-room again, you'll find
+more than half a dozen men--Englishmen, Americans and Germans--ready to
+kick you out into the _au ala_" (road).
+
+Armitage was no coward. He sprang forward with an oath, but Denison, who
+was a third less of his employer's weight, deftly put out his right foot
+and the master of Solo Solo plantation went down. Then the supercargo
+sat on him and, having a fine command of seafaring expletives,
+threatened to gouge his eyes out if he did not keep quiet.
+
+"You go on, doctor," he said cheerfully. "I'll let you know in the
+course of an hour or two how Mrs. Armitage and the boy are progressing.
+The seat which I am now occupying, though not a very honourable one,
+considering the material of which it is composed, is very comfortable
+for the time being; and"--he turned and glared savagely at Armitage's
+purpled face--"You sweep! I have a great inclination to let Eckhardt
+come and boot the life out of you whilst I hold you down, you brute!"
+
+"I'll kill you for this," said Armitage hoarsely.
+
+"Won't give you the chance, my boy. And if you don't promise to go to
+your room quietly, I'll call in the native servants, sling you up like
+the pig you are to a pole, and have you carried into Apia, where you
+stand a good show of being lynched. I've had enough of you. Every
+one--except your blackguardly acquaintances in Matafele--would be glad
+to hear that you were dead, and your wife and child freed from you."
+
+Eckhardt stepped forward. "Let him up, Mr. Denison."
+
+The supercargo obeyed the request.
+
+"Just as you please, doctor. But I think that he ought to be put in
+irons, or a strait-jacket, or knocked on the head as a useless beast. If
+it were not for Mrs. Armitage and her little son, I would like to kill
+the sweep. His treatment of that poor fellow Amona, who is so devoted to
+the child, has been most atrocious."
+
+Eckhardt grasped the supercargo's hand as Armitage shambled off "He's a
+brute, as you say, Mr. Denison. But she has some affection for him. For
+myself, I would like to put a bullet through him."
+
+Within three months Mrs. Armitage was dead, and a fresh martrydom began
+for poor Amona. But he and the child had plenty of good friends; and
+then, one day, when Armitage awakened to sanity after a long drinking
+bout, he found that both Amona and the child had gone.
+
+Nearly a score of years later Denison met them in an Australian city.
+The "baby" had grown to be a well-set-up young fellow, and Amona the
+faithful was still with him--Amona with a smiling, happy face. They came
+down on board Denison's vessel with him, and "the baby" gave him, ere
+they parted, that faded photograph of his dead mother.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SNAKE AND THE BELL
+
+When I was a child of eight years of age, a curious incident occurred in
+the house in which our family lived. The locality was Mosman's Bay, one
+of the many picturesque indentations of the beautiful harbour of Sydney.
+In those days the houses were few and far apart, and our own dwelling
+was surrounded on all sides by the usual monotonous-hued Australian
+forest of iron barks and spotted gums, traversed here and there by
+tracks seldom used, as the house was far back from the main road,
+leading from the suburb of St. Leonards to Middle Harbour. The building
+itself was in the form of a quadrangle enclosing a courtyard, on to
+which nearly all the rooms opened; each room having a bell over the
+door, the wires running all round the square, while the front-door bell,
+which was an extra large affair, hung in the hall, the "pull" being one
+of the old-fashioned kind, an iron sliding-rod suspended from the outer
+wall plate, where it connected with the wire.
+
+One cold and windy evening about eight o'clock, my mother, my sisters,
+and myself were sitting in the dining-room awaiting the arrival of my
+brothers from Sydney--they attended school there, and rowed or sailed
+the six miles to and fro every day, generally returning home by dusk. On
+this particular evening, however, they were late, on account of the wind
+blowing rather freshly from the north-east; but presently we heard the
+front-door bell ring gently.
+
+"Here they are at last," said my mother; "but how silly of them to go to
+the front door on such a windy night, tormenting boys!"
+
+Julia, the servant, candle in hand, went along the lengthy passage,
+and opened the door. No one was there! She came back to the dining-room
+smiling--"Masther Edward is afther playin' wan av his thricks,
+ma'am----" she began, when the bell again rang--this time vigorously. My
+eldest sister threw down the book she was reading, and with an impatient
+exclamation herself went to the door, opened it quickly, and said
+sharply as she pulled it inwards--
+
+"Come in at once, you stupid things!" There was no answer, and she
+stepped outside on the verandah. No one was visible, and again the big
+bell in the hall rang!
+
+She shut the door angrily and returned to her seat, just as the bell
+gave a curious, faint tinkle as if the tongue had been moved ever so
+gently.
+
+"Don't take any notice of them," said my mother, "they will soon get
+tired of playing such silly pranks, and be eager for their supper."
+
+Presently the bell gave out three clear strokes. We looked at each
+other and smiled. Five minutes passed, and then came eight or ten gentle
+strokes in quick succession.
+
+"Let us catch them," said my mother, rising, and holding her finger
+up to us to preserve silence, as she stepped softly along the hall, we
+following on tiptoe.
+
+Softly turning the handle, she suddenly threw the door wide open, just
+as the bell gave another jangle. Not a soul was visible!
+
+My mother--one of the most placid-tempered women who ever breathed, now
+became annoyed, and stepping out on the verandah, addressed herself to
+the darkness--
+
+"Come inside at once, boys, or I shall be very angry. I know perfectly
+well what you have done; you have tied a string to the bell wires, and
+are pulling it. If you don't desist you shall have no supper."
+
+No answer--except from the hall bell, which gave another half-hearted
+tinkle.
+
+"Bring a candle and the step-ladder, Julia," said our now thoroughly
+exasperated parent, "and we shall see what these foolish boys have done
+to the bell-wire."
+
+Julia brought the ladder; my eldest sister mounted it, and began to
+examine the bell. She could see nothing unusual, no string or wire, and
+as she descended, the bell swayed and gave one faint stroke!
+
+We all returned to the sitting room, and had scarcely been there five
+minutes when we heard my three brothers coming in, in their usual way,
+by the back door. They tramped into the sitting room, noisy, dirty,
+wet with spray, and hungry, and demanded supper in a loud and collected
+voice. My mother looked at them with a severe aspect, and said they
+deserved none.
+
+"Why, mum, what's the matter?" said Ted; "what _have_ we been doing
+now, or what have we not done, that we don't deserve any supper, after
+pulling for two hours from Circular Quay, against a howling, black
+north-easter?"
+
+"You know perfectly well what I mean. It is most inconsiderate of you to
+play such silly tricks upon us."
+
+Ted gazed at her in genuine astonishment. "Silly tricks, mother! What
+silly tricks?" (Julia crossed herself, and trembled visibly as the bell
+again rang.)
+
+My mother, at once satisfied that Ted and my other brothers really knew
+nothing of the mysterious bell-ringing, quickly explained the cause of
+her anger.
+
+"Let us go and see if we can find out," said Ted. "You two boys, and
+you, Julia, get all the stable lanterns, light them, and we'll start out
+together--two on one side of the house and two on the other. Some one
+must be up to a trick!"
+
+Julia, who was a huge, raw-boned Irish girl, as strong as a working
+bullock, but not so graceful, again crossed herself, and began to weep.
+
+"What's the matter with you?" said Ted angrily.
+
+"Shure, an' there was tirrible murders committed here in the ould
+convict days," she whimpered. "The polace sargint's wife at Sint
+Leonards tould me all about it. There was three souldiers murdered down
+beyant on the beach, by some convicts, whin they was atin' their supper,
+an' there's people near about now that saw all the blood and----"
+
+"Stop it, you great lumbering idiot!" shouted Ted, as my eldest sister
+began to laugh hysterically, and the youngest, made a terrified dart to
+mother's skirts.
+
+Ted's angry voice and threatening visage silenced Julia for the moment,
+and she tremblingly went towards the door to obey his orders when the
+bell gave out such a vigorous and sustained peal that she sank down in
+a colossal heap on the floor, and then went into violent hysterics. (I
+assure my readers that I am not exaggerating matters in the slightest.)
+
+My mother, who was a thoroughly sensible woman, pushed the whole brood
+of us out of the room, came after us, shut the door and locked it. _She_
+knew the proper treatment for hysterics.
+
+"Let her stay there, boys," she said quietly, "she will hurt the
+furniture more than herself, the ridiculous creature. Now, Ted, you and
+your brothers get the lanterns, and the little ones and myself will go
+into the kitchen."
+
+We ran out into the stables, lit three lanterns, and my next eldest
+brother and myself, feeling horribly frightened, but impelled to show
+some courage by Ted's awful threats of what he would do to us if we
+"funked," told us to go round the house, beginning from the left, and
+meet him at the hall door, he going round from the right.
+
+With shaking limbs and gasping breath we made our portion of the
+circuit, sticking close to each other, and carefully avoiding looking at
+anything as we hurried over the lawn, our only anxiety being to meet
+Ted as quickly as possible and then get inside again. We arrived on the
+verandah, and in front of the hall-door, quite five minutes before Ted
+appeared.
+
+"Well, did you see anything?" he asked, as he walked up the steps,
+lantern in hand.
+
+"Nothing," we answered, edging up towards the door.
+
+Ted looked at us contemptuously. "You miserable little curs! What are
+you so frightened of? You're no better than a pack of women and kids.
+It's the wind that has made the bell ring, or, if it's not the wind,
+it is something else which I don't know anything about; but I want my
+supper. Pull the bell, one of you."
+
+Elated at so soon escaping from the horrors of the night, we seized the
+handle of the bell-pull, and gave it a vigorous tug.
+
+"It's stuck, Ted. It won't pull down," we said.
+
+"Granny!" said the big brother, "you're too funky to give it a proper
+pull," and pushing us aside, he grasped the pendant handle and gave a
+sharp pull. There was no answering sound.
+
+"It certainly is stuck," admitted Ted, raising his lantern so as to get
+a look upwards, then he gave a yell.
+
+"Oh! look there!"
+
+We looked up, and saw the writhing twisting, coils of a huge carpet
+snake, which had wound its body round and round the bell-wire on top
+of the wall plate. Its head was downwards, and it did not seem at
+all alarmed at our presence, but went on wriggling and twisting and
+squirming with much apparent cheerfulness.
+
+Ted ran back to the stables, and returned in a few seconds with a
+clothes-prop, with which he dealt the disturber of our peace a few
+rapid, but vigorous, blows, breaking its spine in several places. Then
+the step-ladder was brought out, and Ted, seizing the reptile by the
+tail, uncoiled it with some difficulty from the wire, and threw it down
+upon the verandah.
+
+It was over nine feet in length, and very fat, and had caused all the
+disturbance by endeavouring to denude itself of its old skin by dragging
+its body between the bell-wire and the top of the wall. When Ted killed
+it the poor harmless creature had almost accomplished its object.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SOUTH SEA NOTES
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+That many animals, particularly cattle and deer, are very fond of salt
+we all know, but it is not often that birds show any taste for it, or,
+if so, the circumstance has not generally been noted. In 1881, however,
+the present writer was residing on Gazelle Peninsula, the northern
+portion of the magnificent island of New Britain in the South Pacific,
+and had many opportunities of witnessing both cockatoos and wild pigeons
+drinking salt water. I was stationed at a place called Kabaira, the then
+"furthest-out" trading station on the whole island, and as I had but
+little to do in the way of work, I found plenty of time to study the
+bird-life in the vicinity. Parrots of several varieties, and all of
+beautiful plumage, were very plentiful, and immense flocks of white
+cockatoos frequented the rolling, grassy downs which lay between my home
+and the German head-station in Blanche Bay, twenty miles distant, while
+the heavy forest of the littoral was the haunt of thousands of pigeons.
+These latter, though not so large as the Samoan, or Eastern Polynesian
+bird, formed a very agreeable change of diet for us white traders, and
+by walking about fifty yards from one's door, half a dozen or more could
+be shot in as many minutes.
+
+My nearest neighbour was a German, and one day when we were walking
+along the beach towards his station, we noticed some hundreds of pigeons
+fly down from the forest, settle on the margin of the water, and
+drink with apparent enjoyment. The harbour at this spot was almost
+land-locked, the water as smooth as glass without the faintest ripple,
+and the birds were consequently enabled to drink without wetting their
+plumage. My companion, who had lived many years in New Britain, told me
+that this drinking of sea-water was common alike to both cockatoos and
+pigeons, and that on some occasions the beaches would be lined with
+them, the former birds not only drinking, but bathing as well, and
+apparently enjoying themselves greatly.
+
+During the following six months, especially when the weather was calm
+and rainy, I frequently noticed pigeons and cockatoos come to the salt
+water to drink. At first I thought that as fresh water in many places
+bubbled up through the sand at low tide, the birds were really not
+drinking the sea-water, but by watching closely, I frequently saw them
+walk across these tiny runnels, and make no attempt to drink. Then
+again, the whole of the Gazette Peninsula is out up by countless streams
+of water; rain falls throughout the year as a rule, and as I have said,
+there is always water percolating or bubbling up through the sand on
+the beaches at low tide. What causes this unusual habit of drinking
+sea-water?
+
+Another peculiarity of the New Britain and New Ireland pigeon is its
+fondness for the Chili pepper-berry. During three months of the year,
+when these berries are ripe, the birds' crops are full of them, and very
+often their flesh is so pungent, and smells so strongly of the Chili, as
+to be quite uneatable.
+
+* * * * *
+
+On all of the low-lying islands of the Ellice, Kings-mill and Gilbert
+Groups, a species of snipe are very plentiful. On the islands which
+enclose the noble lagoon of Funafuti in the Ellice Group, they are to
+be met with in great numbers, and in dull, rainy weather, an ordinarily
+good shot may get thirty or forty in a few hours. One day, accompanied
+by a native lad, I set out to collect hermit crabs, to be used as fish
+bait. These curious creatures are to be found almost anywhere in the
+equatorial islands of the Pacific; their shell houses ranging in size
+from a pea to an orange, and if a piece of coco-nut or fish or any other
+edible matter is left out overnight, hundreds of hermits will be found
+gathered around it in the morning. To extract the crabs from their
+shells, which are of all shapes and kinds, is a very simple matter--the
+hard casing is broken by placing them upon a large stone and striking
+them a sharp blow with one of lesser size. My companion and myself soon
+collected a heap of "hermits," when presently he took one up in his
+hand, and holding it close to his mouth, whistled softly. In a few
+moments the crab protruded one nipper, then another, then its red
+antennae, and allowed the boy to take its head between his finger and
+thumb and draw its entire body from its shell casing.
+
+"That is the way the _kili_ (snipe) gets the _uga_ (crab) from its
+shell," he said. "The _kili_ stands over the _uga_ and whistles softly,
+and the _uga_ puts out his head to listen. Then the bird seizes it in
+his bill, gives it a backward jerk and off flies the shell."
+
+Now I had often noticed that wherever hermit crabs were plentiful along
+the outer beaches of the lagoon, I was sure to find snipe, and sometimes
+wondered on what the birds fed. Taking up two or three "hermits" one
+by one, I whistled gently, and in each case the creature protruded the
+nippers, head and shoulders, and moved its antenn� to and fro as if
+pleasurably excited.
+
+On the following day I shot three snipe, and in the stomachs of each I
+found some quite fresh and some partly digested hermit crabs. The thick,
+hard nippers are broken off by the bird before he swallows the soft,
+tender body.
+
+*****
+
+In a recent number of _Chambers's Journal_ the present writer was much
+interested in a short paragraph dealing with the commercial value of the
+skin of the shark, and, having had many years' experience as a
+trader and supercargo in the South Seas, desires to add some further
+information on a somewhat interesting subject.
+
+In all the equatorial islands of the North and South Pacific, shark
+fishing is a very profitable industry to the natives, and every trading
+steamer or sailing vessel coming into the ports of Sydney or Auckland
+from the islands of the mid-Pacific, always brings some tons of shark
+fins and tails and shark skins. The principal market for the former is
+Hong Kong, but the Chinese merchants of the Australasian Colonies will
+always buy sharks' fins and tails at from 6d. to 11d. per lb., the fins
+bringing the best price on account of the extra amount of glutinous
+matter they contain, and the which are highly relished by the richer
+classes of Chinese as a delicacy. The tails are also valued as an
+article of food in China; and, apart from their edible qualities, have a
+further value as a base for clear varnishes, &c.; and I was informed
+by a Chinese tea-merchant that the glaze upon the paper coverings of
+tea-chests was due to a preparation composed principally of the refuse
+of sharks' fins, tails, and skins.
+
+All the natives of the Gilbert, Kingsmill, and other Pacific equatorial
+islands are expert shark fishermen; but the wild people of Ocean Island
+(Paanopa) and Pleasant Island (Naura), two isolated spots just under the
+equator, surpass them all in the art of catching jackshark. It was the
+fortunate experience of the writer to live among these people for many
+years, and to be inducted into the native method of shark-catching. In
+frail canoes, made of short pieces of wood, sewn together with coco-nut
+fibre, the Ocean Islanders will venture out with rude but ingeniously
+contrived _wooden_ hooks, and capture sharks of a girth (_not_ length)
+that no untrained European would dare to attempt to kill from a
+well-appointed boat, with a good crew.
+
+Shark-catching is one of _the_ industries of the Pacific, and a very
+paying industry too. Five-and-twenty years ago there were quite a dozen
+or more schooners sailing out of Honolulu, in the Hawaiian Islands, to
+the isolated atolls of the North Pacific--notably Palmyra and Christmas
+Islands--where sharks could be caught by the thousand, and the crews,
+who were engaged on a "lay," like whalemen, made "big money"; many of
+them after a six months' cruise drawing 500 dollars--a large sum for a
+native sailor.
+
+The work is certainly hard, but it is exciting, and the writer will
+always remember with pleasure a seven months' shark-fishing cruise
+he once had in the North Pacific, the genial comrades--white men and
+brown--and the bag of dollars handed over to him by the owners when the
+ship was paid off in Honolulu.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+It is not generally known, except to scientists and those who are
+acquainted with the subject, that a large percentage of the various
+species and varieties of sea snakes are highly venomous. These snakes
+must not be confounded with the very numerous species of sea eels,
+which, though exceedingly savage and armed with strong needle-pointed
+teeth, are all non-venomous, though their bite produces high
+inflammation if not at once properly attended to and cleansed by an
+antiseptic. The sea snake is a true snake in many respects, having
+either laminated scales or a thick corduroyed skin resembling
+rudimentary scales. The head is flat, and the general structure of the
+body similar to that of the land snake. Whether any of them possess the
+true poison glands and fangs I do not know, for although I have killed
+many hundreds of them I never took sufficient interest to make a careful
+examination; and I was told by a Dutch medical gentleman, long resident
+on the coast of Dutch New Guinea, and who had made some investigation on
+the subject, that he had failed to discover any poison sacs or glands in
+any one of the several snakes he had captured. Yet in some instances he
+found what at first appeared to be the two long front teeth common to
+venomous land snakes, but on detailed examination these always proved to
+be perfectly solid; nevertheless a bite from one of these sea serpents
+was generally regarded by the natives as fatal; in my own experience
+I know of two such cases, one at the island of Fotuna in the South
+Pacific, and the other in Torres Straits.
+
+In Sigavi Harbour, on Fotuna, there is a rock to which vessels
+occasionally make fast their stern moorings. In the boat which I sent
+away with a line to this rock were several boys, natives of the island,
+who went with the crew for amusement. One of them, aged about ten,
+jumped out of the boat, and in his hurry fell on his hands and knees,
+right on top of a large black and white banded sea snake, which at once
+bit him savagely on the wrist, causing the blood to flow from a score of
+tiny punctures. The boy at once swam on shore to be treated by a native;
+in the evening I heard he was suffering great agony, in the morning the
+poor little fellow was dead.
+
+The second instance was near Raine Island, in Torres Straits. A stalwart
+young Kanaka, one of the crew of a pearling lugger, was diving for clam
+shells on the reef, when a snake about three feet in length suddenly
+shot up from below within a foot of his face. In his anger and disgust
+he unthinkingly struck it with his hand, and was quickly bitten on the
+forefinger. A few hours later he was in a high fever, accompanied with
+twitchings of the extremities; then tetanus ensued, followed by death in
+forty-eight hours.
+
+Although these sea snakes are common to all tropical seas, they are most
+frequent about the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. On any smooth
+day they may be seen disporting themselves on the surface, or rising
+suddenly from the depths, erect their heads and some inches of their
+bodies clear from the water, gaze at the passing vessel, and then
+swiftly disappear. In nearly all the Pacific Islands the natives hold
+them in detestation and horror, and when one is seen lying coiled up on
+a rock sunning itself or crawling over the surface of the reef in search
+of food, a stone, accompanied by a curse, is always hurled at it. In the
+Ellice Oroup, when catching flying-fish at night, one (or more) of these
+horrid serpents is sometimes swept up in the scoop-net before it can be
+avoided. They range from six inches to nearly four feet in length, and
+all have one feature--a blunted tail-end.
+
+Quite recently much further light has been thrown on the subject by Sir
+James Hector, of the Philosophical Society of Wellington, New Zealand.
+At one of the Society's meetings, held in April last, Sir James showed
+several specimens of _hydrida_, some from Australasian Seas, others
+from the Atlantic. The usual habitat of sea snakes, he said, were the
+tropical seas generally, but some had been captured in the comparatively
+cold waters of the New Zealand coast, at the Catlins River. These latter
+were all yellow-banded; those from the islands of the Fijian Oroup were
+black-banded, and those taken from the Australian coast grey-banded.
+There were, he said, no fewer than seventy species, which, without
+exception, were fanged and provided with glands secreting a virulent
+poison. In some of the mountainous islands of the South Pacific, such as
+Samoa, Fiji, &c, there were several species of land snakes, all of which
+were perfectly harmless, and were familiar to many people in Australia
+and New Zealand, through being brought there in bunches of island
+bananas--it was singular, he thought, that the sea snakes alone should
+be so highly venomous. "They were all characterised by the flattened
+or blunted tail, which they used as a steer oar, and were often found
+asleep on the surface of the water, lying on their backs. In this state
+they were easily and safely captured, being powerless to strike." The
+present writer, who has seen hundreds of these marine snakes daily
+for many years, during a long residence in the Pacific Islands, cannot
+remember a single instance where he has seen one of these dangerous
+creatures asleep _on the water_, though they may frequently be found
+lying asleep on the coral reefs, exposing themselves to the rays of a
+torrid sun. They usually select some knob or rounded boulder, from the
+top of which, when awake, they can survey the small pools beneath and
+discern any fish which may be imprisoned therein. In such case they will
+glide down into the water with astonishing rapidity, seize their prey,
+and after swallowing it, return to their sun bath. The natives of the
+Paumotu Archipelago informed me, however, that they are most active
+in seeking their prey at night-time, and are especially fond of
+flying-fish, which, as is well known, is one of the swiftest of all
+ocean fishes. The sea snakes, however, seize them with the greatest
+ease, by rising cautiously beneath and fastening their keen teeth in the
+fish's throat or belly. A snake, not two feet six inches in length, I
+was assured, can easily swallow a flying-fish eight inches or ten inches
+long.
+
+With regard to their habit of lying asleep on their backs on the surface
+of the water, it may be that Sir James Hector is alluding to some
+particular species, but whether that is so or not Sir James's statement
+must of course be considered authoritative, for there is, I believe, no
+higher authority on the subject in the world. Apropos of these venomous
+marine serpents I may mention that the Rev. W. W. Gill in one of his
+works states that he was informed by the natives of the Cook's Group
+that during the prevalence of very bad weather, when fish were scarce,
+the large sea eels would actually crawl ashore, and ascend the _fala_
+(pandanus or screw-pine) trees in search of the small green lizards
+which live among the upper part of the foliage. At first I regarded this
+merely as a bit of native extravagance of statement, but in 1882, when
+I was shipwrecked on Peru (or Francis Island), one of the Gilbert Group,
+the local trader, one Frank Voliero, and myself saw one of these eels
+engaged in an equally extraordinary pursuit. We were one evening,
+after a heavy gale from the westward had been blowing for three days,
+examining a rookery of whale birds in search of eggs; the rookery was
+situated in a dense thicket scrub on the north end of the island, and
+was quite two hundred yards from the sea-shore, though not more than
+half that distance from the inside lagoon beach. The storm had destroyed
+quite a number of young, half-fledged birds, whose bodies were lying on
+the ground, and busily engaged in devouring one of them was a very large
+sea eel, as thick as the calf of a man's leg. Before I could manage to
+secure a stick with which to kill the repulsive-looking creature, it
+made off through the undergrowth at a rapid pace in the direction of the
+lagoon, and when we emerged out into the open in pursuit, ten minutes
+later, we were just in time to see it wriggling down the hard, sloping
+beach into the water. Instinct evidently made it seek the nearest water,
+for none of these large sea eels are ever found in Peru Lagoon.
+
+Many of the rivers and lakes of the islands of the Western Pacific are
+tenanted by eels of great size, which are never, or very seldom, as far
+as I could learn, interfered with by the natives, and I have never seen
+the people of either the Admiralty Islands, New Ireland, or New Britain
+touch an eel as food. The Maories, however, as is well known, are
+inordinately fond of eels, which, with putrid shark, constitute one of
+their staple articles of diet.
+
+In the few mountainous islands of the vast Caroline Archipelago, in
+the North-western Pacific, eels are very plentiful, not only in the
+numberless small streams which debouch into the shallow waters enclosed
+by the barrier reefs, but also far up on the mountainsides,
+occupying little rocky pools of perhaps no larger dimensions than an
+ordinary-sized toilet basin, or swimming up and down rivulets hardly
+more than two feet across. The natives of Ponap�, the largest island
+of the Caroline Group, and of Kusaie (Strong's Island), its eastern
+outlier, regard the fresh-water eel with shuddering aversion, and should
+a man accidentally touch one with his foot when crossing a stream he
+will utter an exclamation of horror and fear. In the heathen days--down
+to 1845-50--the eel (t�an) was an object of worship, and constantly
+propitiated by sacrifices of food, on account of its malevolent powers;
+personal contact was rigidly avoided; to touch one, even by the merest
+accident, was to bring down the most dreadful calamities on the offender
+and his family--bodily deformities, starvation and poverty, and death;
+and although the natives of Strong's Island are now both civilised and
+Christianised, and a training college of the Boston Board of Missions
+has long been established at Port Lel�, they still manifest the same
+superstitious dread of the eel as in their days of heathendom. I well
+remember witnessing an instance of this terror during my sojourn on the
+island when I was shipwrecked there in 1874. I had taken up my residence
+in the picturesque little village of Leass�, on the western or "lee"
+side, when I was one evening visited by several of the ship's company--a
+Fijian half-caste, a white man, and two natives of Pleasant Island. At
+the moment they arrived I was in the house of the native pastor--a
+man who had received an excellent education in a missionary college at
+Honolulu, in the Hawaiian Islands--instructing him and his family in the
+art of making _taka_, or cinnet sandals, as practised by the natives
+of the Tokelau Group. Just then the four seamen entered, each man
+triumphantly holding up a large eel: in an instant there was a united
+howl of horror from the parson and his family, as they made a rash for
+the door, overturning the lamp and nearly setting the house on fire. In
+vain I followed and urged them to return, and told them that the men had
+gone away and taken the _t�an_ with them--nothing would induce them to
+enter the house that night, and the whole family slept elsewhere.
+
+One singular thing about the eels on Strong's Island is that they
+hibernate, in a fashion, on the sides or even summits of the high
+mountains, at an altitude of nearly two thousand feet. Selecting, or
+perhaps making, a depression in the soft, moss-covered soil, the ugly
+creatures fit themselves into it compactly and remain there for weeks or
+even months at a time. I have counted as many as thirty of these holes,
+all tenanted, within a few square yards. Some were quite concealed by
+vegetable _d�bris_ or moss, others were exposed to view, with the broad,
+flat head of the slippery occupant resting on the margin or doubled back
+upon its body. They showed no alarm, but if poked with a stick would
+extricate themselves and crawl slowly away.
+
+In the streams they were very voracious, and I had a special antipathy
+to them, on account of their preying so on the crayfish--a crustacean
+of which I was particularly fond, and which the natives also liked very
+much, but were afraid to capture for fear their hands might come in
+contact with the dreaded _t�an_.
+
+One afternoon I was plucking a pigeon I had just shot by the margin of a
+mountain stream. After removing the viscera, I put the bird in the water
+to clean it properly, and was shaking it gently to and fro, when it was
+suddenly torn out of my hand by a disgustingly bloated, reddish-coloured
+eel about four feet in length, and quickly swallowed. That one pigeon
+had cost me two hours' tramping through the rain-soddened mountain
+forest, so loading my gun I followed the thief down stream to where the
+water was but a few inches deep, and then blew his head off.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of �mona; The Child; And The Beast; And
+Others, by Louis Becke
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others, by
+Louis Becke
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others
+       From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other
+       Stories" - 1902
+
+Author: Louis Becke
+
+Release Date: March 29, 2008 [EBook #24952]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMONA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+AMONA; THE CHILD; AND THE BEAST
+
+Plus THE SNAKE AND THE BELL and SOUTH SEA NOTES
+
+From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other Stories"
+
+By Louis Becke
+
+T. FISHER UNWIN, 1902
+
+LONDON
+
+
+
+
+AMONA; THE CHILD; AND THE BEAST'
+
+
+Amona was, as his master so frequently told him--accentuating the remark
+with a blow or a kick--only "a miserable kanaka." Of his miserableness
+there was no doubt, for Denison, who lived in the same house as he did,
+was a daily witness of it--and his happiness. Also, he was a kanaka--a
+native of Niue, in the South Pacific; Savage Island it is called by the
+traders and is named on the charts, though its five thousand sturdy,
+brown-skinned inhabitants have been civilised, Christianised, and have
+lived fairly cleanly for the past thirty years.
+
+Amona and Denison had the distinction of being employed by Armitage, one
+of the most unmitigated blackguards in the Pacific. He was a shipowner,
+planter, merchant, and speculator; was looked upon by a good many people
+as "not a bad sort of a fellow, you know--and the soul of hospitality."
+In addition, he was an incorrigible drunken bully, and broke his wife's
+heart within four years after she married him. Amona was his cook.
+Denison was one of his supercargoes, and (when a long boat of
+drunkenness made him see weird visions of impossible creatures) manager
+of the business on shore, overseer, accountant, and Jack-of-all-trades.
+How he managed to stay on with such a brute I don't know. He certainly
+paid him well enough, but he (Denison) could have got another berth from
+other people in Samoa, Fiji, or Tonga had he wanted it. And, although
+Armitage was always painfully civil to Denison--who tried to keep
+his business from going to the dogs--the man hated him as much as he
+despised Amona, and would have liked to have kicked him, as he would
+have liked to have kicked or strangled any one who knew the secret of
+his wife's death and his child's lameness. And three people in Samoa did
+know it--Amona, the Niue cook, Dr. Eckhardt, and Denison. Armitage has
+been dead now these five-and-twenty years--died, as he deserved to
+die, alone and friendless in an Australian bush hospital out in the
+God-forsaken Never-Never country, and when Denison heard of his death,
+he looked at the gentle wife's dim, faded photograph, and wondered if
+the Beast saw her sweet, sad face in his dying moments. He trusted
+not; for in her eyes would have shown only the holy light of love
+and forgiveness--things which a man like Armitage could not have
+understood--even then.
+
+She had been married three years when she came with him to Samoa to live
+on Solo-Solo Plantation, in a great white-painted bungalow, standing
+amid a grove of breadfruit and coco-palms, and overlooking the sea
+to the north, east, and west; to the south was the dark green of the
+mountain-forest.
+
+"Oh! I think it is the fairest, sweetest picture in the world," she said
+to Denison the first time he met her. She was sitting on the verandah
+with her son in her lap, and as she spoke she pressed her lips to his
+soft little cheek and caressed the tiny hands. "So different from where
+I was born and lived all my life--on the doll, sun-baked plains of the
+Riverina--isn't it, my pet?"
+
+"I am glad that you like the place, Mrs. Armitage," the supercargo said
+as he looked at the young, girlish face and thought that she, too, with
+her baby, made a fair, sweet picture. How she loved the child! And how
+the soft, grey-blue eyes would lose their sadness when the little one
+turned its face up to hers and smiled! How came it, he wondered, that
+such a tender, flower-like woman was mated to such a man as Armitage!
+
+Long after she was dead, Denison heard the story--one common enough.
+Her father, whose station adjoined that of Armitage, got into financial
+difficulties, went to Armitage for help, and practically sold his
+daughter to the Beast for a couple of thousand pounds. Very likely such
+a man would have sold his daughter's mother as well if he wanted money.
+
+* * * * *
+
+As they sat talking, Armitage rode up, half-drunk as usual. He was a big
+man, good-looking.
+
+"Hallo, Nell! Pawing the damned kid as usual! Why the hell don't you let
+one of the girls take the little animal and let him tumble about on the
+grass? You're spoiling the child--by God, you are."
+
+"Ah, he's so happy, Fred, here with me, and----"
+
+"Happy be damned--you're always letting him maul you about. I want a
+whisky-and-soda, and so does Denison--don't you?" And then the Beast, as
+soon as his wife with the child in her arms had left the room, began
+to tell his subordinate of a "new" girl he had met that morning in Joe
+D'Acosta's saloon.
+
+"Oh, shut up, man. Your wife is in the next room."
+
+"Let her hear--and be damned to her! She knows what I do. I don't
+disguise anything from her. I'm not a sneak in that way. By God, I'm not
+the man to lose any fun from sentimental reasons. Have you seen this
+new girl at Joe's? She's a Manhiki half-caste. God, man! She's glorious,
+simply glorious!"
+
+"You mean Laea, I suppose. She's a common beacher--sailor man's trull.
+Surely you wouldn't be seen ever speaking to _her?_"
+
+"Wouldn't I! You don't know me yet! I like the girl, and I've fixed
+things up with her. She's coming here as my nursemaid--twenty dollars a
+month! What do you think of that?"
+
+"You would not insult your wife so horribly!"
+
+He looked at Denison sullenly, but made no answer, as the supercargo
+went on:
+
+"You'll get the dead cut from every white man in Samoa. Not a soul will
+put foot inside your store door, and Joe D'Acosta himself would refuse
+to sell you a drink! Might as well shoot yourself at once."
+
+"Oh, well, damn it all, don't keep on preaching. I--I was more in fun
+than anything else. Ha! Here's Amona with the drinks. Why don't you be a
+bit smarter, you damned frizzy-haired man-eater?"
+
+Amona's sallow face flushed deeply, but he made no reply to the insult
+as he handed a glass to his master.
+
+"Put the tray down there, confound you! Don't stand there like a
+blarsted mummy; clear out till we want you again."
+
+The native made no answer, bent his head in silence, and stepped quietly
+away. Then Armitage began to grumble at him as a "useless swine."
+
+"Why," said Denison, "Mrs. Armitage was only just telling me that he's
+worth all the rest of the servants put together. And, by Jove, he _is_
+fond of your youngster--simply worships the little chap."
+
+Armitage snorted, and turned his lips down. Ten minutes later, he was
+asleep in his chair.
+
+*****
+
+Nearly six months had passed--six months of wretchedness to the young
+wife, whose heart was slowly breaking under the strain of living with
+the Beast. Such happiness as was hers lay in the companionship of her
+little son, and every evening Tom Denison would see her watching the
+child and the patient, faithful Amona, as the two played together on the
+smooth lawn in front of the sitting-room, or ran races in and out among
+the mango-trees. She was becoming paler and thinner every day--the Beast
+was getting fatter and coarser, and more brutalised. Sometimes he would
+remain in Apia for a week, returning home either boisterously drunk or
+sullen and scowling-faced. In the latter case, he would come into the
+office where Denison worked (he had left the schooner of which he was
+supercargo, and was now "overseering" Solo-Solo) and try to grasp the
+muddled condition of his financial affairs. Then, with much variegated
+language, he would stride away, cursing the servants and the place
+and everything in general, mount his horse, and ride off again to the
+society of the loafers, gamblers, and flaunting unfortunates who haunted
+the drinking saloons of Apia and Matafele.
+
+One day came a crisis. Denison was rigging a tackle to haul a tree-trunk
+into position in the plantation saw-pit, when Armitage rode up to the
+house. He dismounted and went inside. Five minutes later Amona came
+staggering down the path to him. His left cheek was cut to the bone by
+a blow from Armitage's fist. Denison brought him into his own room,
+stitched up the wound, and gave him a glass of grog, and told him to
+light his pipe and rest.
+
+"Amona, you're a _valea_ (fool). Why don't you leave this place? This
+man will kill you some day. How many beatings has he given you?" He
+spoke in English.
+
+"I know not how many. But it is God's will. And if the master some day
+killeth me, it is well. And yet, but for some things, I would use my
+knife on him."
+
+"What things?"
+
+He came over to the supercargo, and, seating himself cross-legged on the
+floor, placed his firm, brown, right hand on the white man's knee.
+
+"For two things, good friend. The little fingers of the child are
+clasped tightly around my heart, and when his father striketh me and
+calls me a filthy man-eater, a dog, and a pig, I know no pain. That is
+one thing. And the other thing is this--the child's mother hath come to
+me when my body hath ached from the father's blows, and the blood hath
+covered my face; and she hath bound up my wounds and wept silent tears,
+and together have we knelt and called upon God to turn his heart from
+the grog and the foul women, and to take away from her and the child the
+bitterness of these things."
+
+"You're a good fellow, Amona," said Denison, as he saw that the man's
+cheeks were wet with tears.
+
+"Nay, for sometimes my heart is bitter with anger. But God is good to
+me. For the child loveth me. And the mother is of God... aye, and she
+will be with Him soon." Then he rose to his knees suddenly, and looked
+wistfully at the supercargo, as he put his hand on his. "She will be
+dead before the next moon is _ai aiga_ (in the first quarter), for at
+night I lie outside her door, and but three nights ago she cried out to
+me: 'Come, Amona, Come!' And I went in, and she was sitting up on
+her bed and blood was running from her mouth. But she bade me tell no
+one--not even thee. And it was then she told me that death was near
+to her, for she hath a disease whose roots lie in her chest, and
+which eateth away her strength. Dear friend, let me tell thee of some
+things... This man is a devil.... I know he but desires to see her die.
+He hath cursed her before me, and twice have I seen him take the child
+from her arms, and, setting him on the floor to weep in terror, take his
+wife by the hand----"
+
+"Stop, man; stop! That'll do. Say no more! The beast!"
+
+"_E tonu, e tonu_ (true, true)," said the man, quietly, and still
+speaking in Samoan. "He is as a beast of the mountains, as a tiger of
+the country India, which devoureth the lamb and the kid.... And so now I
+have opened my heart to thee of these things----"
+
+A native woman rushed into the room: "Come, Amona, come. _Misi Fafine_
+(the mistress) bleeds from her mouth again."
+
+The white man and the brown ran into the front sitting-room together,
+just as they heard a piercing shriek of terror from the child; then came
+the sound of a heavy fall.
+
+As they entered, Armitage strode out, jolting against them as he passed.
+His face was swollen and ugly with passion--bad to look at.
+
+"Go and pick up the child, you frizzy-haired pig!" he muttered hoarsely
+to Amona as he passed. "He fell off his mother's lap."
+
+Mrs. Armitage was leaning back in her chair, as white as death, and
+trying to speak, as with one hand she tried to stanch the rush of blood
+from her mouth, and with the other pointed to her child, who was lying
+on his face under a table, motionless and unconscious.
+
+In less than ten minutes, a native was galloping through the bush to
+Apia for Dr. Eckhardt. Denison had picked up the child, who, as he came
+to, began to cry. Assuring his mother that he was not much hurt, he
+brought him to her, and sat beside the lounge on which she lay, holding
+him in his arms. He was a good little man, and did not try to talk
+to her when the supercargo whispered to him to keep silent, but lay
+stroking the poor mother's thin white hand. Yet every now and then, as
+he moved or Denison changed his position, he would utter a cry of pain
+and say his leg pained him.
+
+Four hours later the German doctor arrived. Mrs. Armitage was asleep; so
+Eckhardt would not awaken her at the time. The boy, however, had slept
+but fitfully, and every now and then awakened with a sob of pain.
+The nurse stripped him, and Eckhardt soon found out what was wrong--a
+serious injury to the left hip.
+
+Late in the evening, as the big yellow-bearded German doctor and Denison
+sat in the dining room smoking and talking, Taloi, the child's nurse
+entered, and was followed by Amona, and the woman told them the whole
+story.
+
+"_Misi Fafine_ was sitting in a chair with the boy on her lap when the
+master came in. His eyes were black and fierce with anger, and, stepping
+up, he seized the child by the arm, and bade him get down. Then the
+little one screamed in terror, and _Misi Fafine_ screamed too, and the
+master became as mad, for he tore the boy from his mother's arms, and
+tossed him across the room against the wall. That is all I know of this
+thing."
+
+Denison saw nothing of Armitage till six o'clock on the following
+morning, just as Eckhardt was going away. He put out his hand, Eckhardt
+put his own behind his back, and, in a few blunt words, told the Beast
+what he thought of him.
+
+"And if this was a civilised country," he added crisply, "you would be
+now in gaol. Yes, in prison. You have as good as killed your wife
+by your brutality--she will not live another two months. You have so
+injured your child's hip that he may be a cripple for life. You are a
+damned scoundrel, no better than the lowest ruffian of a city slum, and
+if you show yourself in Joe D'Acosta's smoking-room again, you'll find
+more than half a dozen men--Englishmen, Americans and Germans--ready to
+kick you out into the _au ala_" (road).
+
+Armitage was no coward. He sprang forward with an oath, but Denison, who
+was a third less of his employer's weight, deftly put out his right foot
+and the master of Solo Solo plantation went down. Then the supercargo
+sat on him and, having a fine command of seafaring expletives,
+threatened to gouge his eyes out if he did not keep quiet.
+
+"You go on, doctor," he said cheerfully. "I'll let you know in the
+course of an hour or two how Mrs. Armitage and the boy are progressing.
+The seat which I am now occupying, though not a very honourable one,
+considering the material of which it is composed, is very comfortable
+for the time being; and"--he turned and glared savagely at Armitage's
+purpled face--"You sweep! I have a great inclination to let Eckhardt
+come and boot the life out of you whilst I hold you down, you brute!"
+
+"I'll kill you for this," said Armitage hoarsely.
+
+"Won't give you the chance, my boy. And if you don't promise to go to
+your room quietly, I'll call in the native servants, sling you up like
+the pig you are to a pole, and have you carried into Apia, where you
+stand a good show of being lynched. I've had enough of you. Every
+one--except your blackguardly acquaintances in Matafele--would be glad
+to hear that you were dead, and your wife and child freed from you."
+
+Eckhardt stepped forward. "Let him up, Mr. Denison."
+
+The supercargo obeyed the request.
+
+"Just as you please, doctor. But I think that he ought to be put in
+irons, or a strait-jacket, or knocked on the head as a useless beast. If
+it were not for Mrs. Armitage and her little son, I would like to kill
+the sweep. His treatment of that poor fellow Amona, who is so devoted to
+the child, has been most atrocious."
+
+Eckhardt grasped the supercargo's hand as Armitage shambled off "He's a
+brute, as you say, Mr. Denison. But she has some affection for him. For
+myself, I would like to put a bullet through him."
+
+Within three months Mrs. Armitage was dead, and a fresh martrydom began
+for poor Amona. But he and the child had plenty of good friends; and
+then, one day, when Armitage awakened to sanity after a long drinking
+bout, he found that both Amona and the child had gone.
+
+Nearly a score of years later Denison met them in an Australian city.
+The "baby" had grown to be a well-set-up young fellow, and Amona the
+faithful was still with him--Amona with a smiling, happy face. They came
+down on board Denison's vessel with him, and "the baby" gave him, ere
+they parted, that faded photograph of his dead mother.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SNAKE AND THE BELL
+
+When I was a child of eight years of age, a curious incident occurred in
+the house in which our family lived. The locality was Mosman's Bay, one
+of the many picturesque indentations of the beautiful harbour of Sydney.
+In those days the houses were few and far apart, and our own dwelling
+was surrounded on all sides by the usual monotonous-hued Australian
+forest of iron barks and spotted gums, traversed here and there by
+tracks seldom used, as the house was far back from the main road,
+leading from the suburb of St. Leonards to Middle Harbour. The building
+itself was in the form of a quadrangle enclosing a courtyard, on to
+which nearly all the rooms opened; each room having a bell over the
+door, the wires running all round the square, while the front-door bell,
+which was an extra large affair, hung in the hall, the "pull" being one
+of the old-fashioned kind, an iron sliding-rod suspended from the outer
+wall plate, where it connected with the wire.
+
+One cold and windy evening about eight o'clock, my mother, my sisters,
+and myself were sitting in the dining-room awaiting the arrival of my
+brothers from Sydney--they attended school there, and rowed or sailed
+the six miles to and fro every day, generally returning home by dusk. On
+this particular evening, however, they were late, on account of the wind
+blowing rather freshly from the north-east; but presently we heard the
+front-door bell ring gently.
+
+"Here they are at last," said my mother; "but how silly of them to go to
+the front door on such a windy night, tormenting boys!"
+
+Julia, the servant, candle in hand, went along the lengthy passage,
+and opened the door. No one was there! She came back to the dining-room
+smiling--"Masther Edward is afther playin' wan av his thricks,
+ma'am----" she began, when the bell again rang--this time vigorously. My
+eldest sister threw down the book she was reading, and with an impatient
+exclamation herself went to the door, opened it quickly, and said
+sharply as she pulled it inwards--
+
+"Come in at once, you stupid things!" There was no answer, and she
+stepped outside on the verandah. No one was visible, and again the big
+bell in the hall rang!
+
+She shut the door angrily and returned to her seat, just as the bell
+gave a curious, faint tinkle as if the tongue had been moved ever so
+gently.
+
+"Don't take any notice of them," said my mother, "they will soon get
+tired of playing such silly pranks, and be eager for their supper."
+
+Presently the bell gave out three clear strokes. We looked at each
+other and smiled. Five minutes passed, and then came eight or ten gentle
+strokes in quick succession.
+
+"Let us catch them," said my mother, rising, and holding her finger
+up to us to preserve silence, as she stepped softly along the hall, we
+following on tiptoe.
+
+Softly turning the handle, she suddenly threw the door wide open, just
+as the bell gave another jangle. Not a soul was visible!
+
+My mother--one of the most placid-tempered women who ever breathed, now
+became annoyed, and stepping out on the verandah, addressed herself to
+the darkness--
+
+"Come inside at once, boys, or I shall be very angry. I know perfectly
+well what you have done; you have tied a string to the bell wires, and
+are pulling it. If you don't desist you shall have no supper."
+
+No answer--except from the hall bell, which gave another half-hearted
+tinkle.
+
+"Bring a candle and the step-ladder, Julia," said our now thoroughly
+exasperated parent, "and we shall see what these foolish boys have done
+to the bell-wire."
+
+Julia brought the ladder; my eldest sister mounted it, and began to
+examine the bell. She could see nothing unusual, no string or wire, and
+as she descended, the bell swayed and gave one faint stroke!
+
+We all returned to the sitting room, and had scarcely been there five
+minutes when we heard my three brothers coming in, in their usual way,
+by the back door. They tramped into the sitting room, noisy, dirty,
+wet with spray, and hungry, and demanded supper in a loud and collected
+voice. My mother looked at them with a severe aspect, and said they
+deserved none.
+
+"Why, mum, what's the matter?" said Ted; "what _have_ we been doing
+now, or what have we not done, that we don't deserve any supper, after
+pulling for two hours from Circular Quay, against a howling, black
+north-easter?"
+
+"You know perfectly well what I mean. It is most inconsiderate of you to
+play such silly tricks upon us."
+
+Ted gazed at her in genuine astonishment. "Silly tricks, mother! What
+silly tricks?" (Julia crossed herself, and trembled visibly as the bell
+again rang.)
+
+My mother, at once satisfied that Ted and my other brothers really knew
+nothing of the mysterious bell-ringing, quickly explained the cause of
+her anger.
+
+"Let us go and see if we can find out," said Ted. "You two boys, and
+you, Julia, get all the stable lanterns, light them, and we'll start out
+together--two on one side of the house and two on the other. Some one
+must be up to a trick!"
+
+Julia, who was a huge, raw-boned Irish girl, as strong as a working
+bullock, but not so graceful, again crossed herself, and began to weep.
+
+"What's the matter with you?" said Ted angrily.
+
+"Shure, an' there was tirrible murders committed here in the ould
+convict days," she whimpered. "The polace sargint's wife at Sint
+Leonards tould me all about it. There was three souldiers murdered down
+beyant on the beach, by some convicts, whin they was atin' their supper,
+an' there's people near about now that saw all the blood and----"
+
+"Stop it, you great lumbering idiot!" shouted Ted, as my eldest sister
+began to laugh hysterically, and the youngest, made a terrified dart to
+mother's skirts.
+
+Ted's angry voice and threatening visage silenced Julia for the moment,
+and she tremblingly went towards the door to obey his orders when the
+bell gave out such a vigorous and sustained peal that she sank down in
+a colossal heap on the floor, and then went into violent hysterics. (I
+assure my readers that I am not exaggerating matters in the slightest.)
+
+My mother, who was a thoroughly sensible woman, pushed the whole brood
+of us out of the room, came after us, shut the door and locked it. _She_
+knew the proper treatment for hysterics.
+
+"Let her stay there, boys," she said quietly, "she will hurt the
+furniture more than herself, the ridiculous creature. Now, Ted, you and
+your brothers get the lanterns, and the little ones and myself will go
+into the kitchen."
+
+We ran out into the stables, lit three lanterns, and my next eldest
+brother and myself, feeling horribly frightened, but impelled to show
+some courage by Ted's awful threats of what he would do to us if we
+"funked," told us to go round the house, beginning from the left, and
+meet him at the hall door, he going round from the right.
+
+With shaking limbs and gasping breath we made our portion of the
+circuit, sticking close to each other, and carefully avoiding looking at
+anything as we hurried over the lawn, our only anxiety being to meet
+Ted as quickly as possible and then get inside again. We arrived on the
+verandah, and in front of the hall-door, quite five minutes before Ted
+appeared.
+
+"Well, did you see anything?" he asked, as he walked up the steps,
+lantern in hand.
+
+"Nothing," we answered, edging up towards the door.
+
+Ted looked at us contemptuously. "You miserable little curs! What are
+you so frightened of? You're no better than a pack of women and kids.
+It's the wind that has made the bell ring, or, if it's not the wind,
+it is something else which I don't know anything about; but I want my
+supper. Pull the bell, one of you."
+
+Elated at so soon escaping from the horrors of the night, we seized the
+handle of the bell-pull, and gave it a vigorous tug.
+
+"It's stuck, Ted. It won't pull down," we said.
+
+"Granny!" said the big brother, "you're too funky to give it a proper
+pull," and pushing us aside, he grasped the pendant handle and gave a
+sharp pull. There was no answering sound.
+
+"It certainly is stuck," admitted Ted, raising his lantern so as to get
+a look upwards, then he gave a yell.
+
+"Oh! look there!"
+
+We looked up, and saw the writhing twisting, coils of a huge carpet
+snake, which had wound its body round and round the bell-wire on top
+of the wall plate. Its head was downwards, and it did not seem at
+all alarmed at our presence, but went on wriggling and twisting and
+squirming with much apparent cheerfulness.
+
+Ted ran back to the stables, and returned in a few seconds with a
+clothes-prop, with which he dealt the disturber of our peace a few
+rapid, but vigorous, blows, breaking its spine in several places. Then
+the step-ladder was brought out, and Ted, seizing the reptile by the
+tail, uncoiled it with some difficulty from the wire, and threw it down
+upon the verandah.
+
+It was over nine feet in length, and very fat, and had caused all the
+disturbance by endeavouring to denude itself of its old skin by dragging
+its body between the bell-wire and the top of the wall. When Ted killed
+it the poor harmless creature had almost accomplished its object.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SOUTH SEA NOTES
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+That many animals, particularly cattle and deer, are very fond of salt
+we all know, but it is not often that birds show any taste for it, or,
+if so, the circumstance has not generally been noted. In 1881, however,
+the present writer was residing on Gazelle Peninsula, the northern
+portion of the magnificent island of New Britain in the South Pacific,
+and had many opportunities of witnessing both cockatoos and wild pigeons
+drinking salt water. I was stationed at a place called Kabaira, the then
+"furthest-out" trading station on the whole island, and as I had but
+little to do in the way of work, I found plenty of time to study the
+bird-life in the vicinity. Parrots of several varieties, and all of
+beautiful plumage, were very plentiful, and immense flocks of white
+cockatoos frequented the rolling, grassy downs which lay between my home
+and the German head-station in Blanche Bay, twenty miles distant, while
+the heavy forest of the littoral was the haunt of thousands of pigeons.
+These latter, though not so large as the Samoan, or Eastern Polynesian
+bird, formed a very agreeable change of diet for us white traders, and
+by walking about fifty yards from one's door, half a dozen or more could
+be shot in as many minutes.
+
+My nearest neighbour was a German, and one day when we were walking
+along the beach towards his station, we noticed some hundreds of pigeons
+fly down from the forest, settle on the margin of the water, and
+drink with apparent enjoyment. The harbour at this spot was almost
+land-locked, the water as smooth as glass without the faintest ripple,
+and the birds were consequently enabled to drink without wetting their
+plumage. My companion, who had lived many years in New Britain, told me
+that this drinking of sea-water was common alike to both cockatoos and
+pigeons, and that on some occasions the beaches would be lined with
+them, the former birds not only drinking, but bathing as well, and
+apparently enjoying themselves greatly.
+
+During the following six months, especially when the weather was calm
+and rainy, I frequently noticed pigeons and cockatoos come to the salt
+water to drink. At first I thought that as fresh water in many places
+bubbled up through the sand at low tide, the birds were really not
+drinking the sea-water, but by watching closely, I frequently saw them
+walk across these tiny runnels, and make no attempt to drink. Then
+again, the whole of the Gazette Peninsula is out up by countless streams
+of water; rain falls throughout the year as a rule, and as I have said,
+there is always water percolating or bubbling up through the sand on
+the beaches at low tide. What causes this unusual habit of drinking
+sea-water?
+
+Another peculiarity of the New Britain and New Ireland pigeon is its
+fondness for the Chili pepper-berry. During three months of the year,
+when these berries are ripe, the birds' crops are full of them, and very
+often their flesh is so pungent, and smells so strongly of the Chili, as
+to be quite uneatable.
+
+* * * * *
+
+On all of the low-lying islands of the Ellice, Kings-mill and Gilbert
+Groups, a species of snipe are very plentiful. On the islands which
+enclose the noble lagoon of Funafuti in the Ellice Group, they are to
+be met with in great numbers, and in dull, rainy weather, an ordinarily
+good shot may get thirty or forty in a few hours. One day, accompanied
+by a native lad, I set out to collect hermit crabs, to be used as fish
+bait. These curious creatures are to be found almost anywhere in the
+equatorial islands of the Pacific; their shell houses ranging in size
+from a pea to an orange, and if a piece of coco-nut or fish or any other
+edible matter is left out overnight, hundreds of hermits will be found
+gathered around it in the morning. To extract the crabs from their
+shells, which are of all shapes and kinds, is a very simple matter--the
+hard casing is broken by placing them upon a large stone and striking
+them a sharp blow with one of lesser size. My companion and myself soon
+collected a heap of "hermits," when presently he took one up in his
+hand, and holding it close to his mouth, whistled softly. In a few
+moments the crab protruded one nipper, then another, then its red
+antennae, and allowed the boy to take its head between his finger and
+thumb and draw its entire body from its shell casing.
+
+"That is the way the _kili_ (snipe) gets the _uga_ (crab) from its
+shell," he said. "The _kili_ stands over the _uga_ and whistles softly,
+and the _uga_ puts out his head to listen. Then the bird seizes it in
+his bill, gives it a backward jerk and off flies the shell."
+
+Now I had often noticed that wherever hermit crabs were plentiful along
+the outer beaches of the lagoon, I was sure to find snipe, and sometimes
+wondered on what the birds fed. Taking up two or three "hermits" one
+by one, I whistled gently, and in each case the creature protruded the
+nippers, head and shoulders, and moved its antennae to and fro as if
+pleasurably excited.
+
+On the following day I shot three snipe, and in the stomachs of each I
+found some quite fresh and some partly digested hermit crabs. The thick,
+hard nippers are broken off by the bird before he swallows the soft,
+tender body.
+
+*****
+
+In a recent number of _Chambers's Journal_ the present writer was much
+interested in a short paragraph dealing with the commercial value of the
+skin of the shark, and, having had many years' experience as a
+trader and supercargo in the South Seas, desires to add some further
+information on a somewhat interesting subject.
+
+In all the equatorial islands of the North and South Pacific, shark
+fishing is a very profitable industry to the natives, and every trading
+steamer or sailing vessel coming into the ports of Sydney or Auckland
+from the islands of the mid-Pacific, always brings some tons of shark
+fins and tails and shark skins. The principal market for the former is
+Hong Kong, but the Chinese merchants of the Australasian Colonies will
+always buy sharks' fins and tails at from 6d. to 11d. per lb., the fins
+bringing the best price on account of the extra amount of glutinous
+matter they contain, and the which are highly relished by the richer
+classes of Chinese as a delicacy. The tails are also valued as an
+article of food in China; and, apart from their edible qualities, have a
+further value as a base for clear varnishes, &c.; and I was informed
+by a Chinese tea-merchant that the glaze upon the paper coverings of
+tea-chests was due to a preparation composed principally of the refuse
+of sharks' fins, tails, and skins.
+
+All the natives of the Gilbert, Kingsmill, and other Pacific equatorial
+islands are expert shark fishermen; but the wild people of Ocean Island
+(Paanopa) and Pleasant Island (Naura), two isolated spots just under the
+equator, surpass them all in the art of catching jackshark. It was the
+fortunate experience of the writer to live among these people for many
+years, and to be inducted into the native method of shark-catching. In
+frail canoes, made of short pieces of wood, sewn together with coco-nut
+fibre, the Ocean Islanders will venture out with rude but ingeniously
+contrived _wooden_ hooks, and capture sharks of a girth (_not_ length)
+that no untrained European would dare to attempt to kill from a
+well-appointed boat, with a good crew.
+
+Shark-catching is one of _the_ industries of the Pacific, and a very
+paying industry too. Five-and-twenty years ago there were quite a dozen
+or more schooners sailing out of Honolulu, in the Hawaiian Islands, to
+the isolated atolls of the North Pacific--notably Palmyra and Christmas
+Islands--where sharks could be caught by the thousand, and the crews,
+who were engaged on a "lay," like whalemen, made "big money"; many of
+them after a six months' cruise drawing 500 dollars--a large sum for a
+native sailor.
+
+The work is certainly hard, but it is exciting, and the writer will
+always remember with pleasure a seven months' shark-fishing cruise
+he once had in the North Pacific, the genial comrades--white men and
+brown--and the bag of dollars handed over to him by the owners when the
+ship was paid off in Honolulu.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+It is not generally known, except to scientists and those who are
+acquainted with the subject, that a large percentage of the various
+species and varieties of sea snakes are highly venomous. These snakes
+must not be confounded with the very numerous species of sea eels,
+which, though exceedingly savage and armed with strong needle-pointed
+teeth, are all non-venomous, though their bite produces high
+inflammation if not at once properly attended to and cleansed by an
+antiseptic. The sea snake is a true snake in many respects, having
+either laminated scales or a thick corduroyed skin resembling
+rudimentary scales. The head is flat, and the general structure of the
+body similar to that of the land snake. Whether any of them possess the
+true poison glands and fangs I do not know, for although I have killed
+many hundreds of them I never took sufficient interest to make a careful
+examination; and I was told by a Dutch medical gentleman, long resident
+on the coast of Dutch New Guinea, and who had made some investigation on
+the subject, that he had failed to discover any poison sacs or glands in
+any one of the several snakes he had captured. Yet in some instances he
+found what at first appeared to be the two long front teeth common to
+venomous land snakes, but on detailed examination these always proved to
+be perfectly solid; nevertheless a bite from one of these sea serpents
+was generally regarded by the natives as fatal; in my own experience
+I know of two such cases, one at the island of Fotuna in the South
+Pacific, and the other in Torres Straits.
+
+In Sigavi Harbour, on Fotuna, there is a rock to which vessels
+occasionally make fast their stern moorings. In the boat which I sent
+away with a line to this rock were several boys, natives of the island,
+who went with the crew for amusement. One of them, aged about ten,
+jumped out of the boat, and in his hurry fell on his hands and knees,
+right on top of a large black and white banded sea snake, which at once
+bit him savagely on the wrist, causing the blood to flow from a score of
+tiny punctures. The boy at once swam on shore to be treated by a native;
+in the evening I heard he was suffering great agony, in the morning the
+poor little fellow was dead.
+
+The second instance was near Raine Island, in Torres Straits. A stalwart
+young Kanaka, one of the crew of a pearling lugger, was diving for clam
+shells on the reef, when a snake about three feet in length suddenly
+shot up from below within a foot of his face. In his anger and disgust
+he unthinkingly struck it with his hand, and was quickly bitten on the
+forefinger. A few hours later he was in a high fever, accompanied with
+twitchings of the extremities; then tetanus ensued, followed by death in
+forty-eight hours.
+
+Although these sea snakes are common to all tropical seas, they are most
+frequent about the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. On any smooth
+day they may be seen disporting themselves on the surface, or rising
+suddenly from the depths, erect their heads and some inches of their
+bodies clear from the water, gaze at the passing vessel, and then
+swiftly disappear. In nearly all the Pacific Islands the natives hold
+them in detestation and horror, and when one is seen lying coiled up on
+a rock sunning itself or crawling over the surface of the reef in search
+of food, a stone, accompanied by a curse, is always hurled at it. In the
+Ellice Oroup, when catching flying-fish at night, one (or more) of these
+horrid serpents is sometimes swept up in the scoop-net before it can be
+avoided. They range from six inches to nearly four feet in length, and
+all have one feature--a blunted tail-end.
+
+Quite recently much further light has been thrown on the subject by Sir
+James Hector, of the Philosophical Society of Wellington, New Zealand.
+At one of the Society's meetings, held in April last, Sir James showed
+several specimens of _hydrida_, some from Australasian Seas, others
+from the Atlantic. The usual habitat of sea snakes, he said, were the
+tropical seas generally, but some had been captured in the comparatively
+cold waters of the New Zealand coast, at the Catlins River. These latter
+were all yellow-banded; those from the islands of the Fijian Oroup were
+black-banded, and those taken from the Australian coast grey-banded.
+There were, he said, no fewer than seventy species, which, without
+exception, were fanged and provided with glands secreting a virulent
+poison. In some of the mountainous islands of the South Pacific, such as
+Samoa, Fiji, &c, there were several species of land snakes, all of which
+were perfectly harmless, and were familiar to many people in Australia
+and New Zealand, through being brought there in bunches of island
+bananas--it was singular, he thought, that the sea snakes alone should
+be so highly venomous. "They were all characterised by the flattened
+or blunted tail, which they used as a steer oar, and were often found
+asleep on the surface of the water, lying on their backs. In this state
+they were easily and safely captured, being powerless to strike." The
+present writer, who has seen hundreds of these marine snakes daily
+for many years, during a long residence in the Pacific Islands, cannot
+remember a single instance where he has seen one of these dangerous
+creatures asleep _on the water_, though they may frequently be found
+lying asleep on the coral reefs, exposing themselves to the rays of a
+torrid sun. They usually select some knob or rounded boulder, from the
+top of which, when awake, they can survey the small pools beneath and
+discern any fish which may be imprisoned therein. In such case they will
+glide down into the water with astonishing rapidity, seize their prey,
+and after swallowing it, return to their sun bath. The natives of the
+Paumotu Archipelago informed me, however, that they are most active
+in seeking their prey at night-time, and are especially fond of
+flying-fish, which, as is well known, is one of the swiftest of all
+ocean fishes. The sea snakes, however, seize them with the greatest
+ease, by rising cautiously beneath and fastening their keen teeth in the
+fish's throat or belly. A snake, not two feet six inches in length, I
+was assured, can easily swallow a flying-fish eight inches or ten inches
+long.
+
+With regard to their habit of lying asleep on their backs on the surface
+of the water, it may be that Sir James Hector is alluding to some
+particular species, but whether that is so or not Sir James's statement
+must of course be considered authoritative, for there is, I believe, no
+higher authority on the subject in the world. Apropos of these venomous
+marine serpents I may mention that the Rev. W. W. Gill in one of his
+works states that he was informed by the natives of the Cook's Group
+that during the prevalence of very bad weather, when fish were scarce,
+the large sea eels would actually crawl ashore, and ascend the _fala_
+(pandanus or screw-pine) trees in search of the small green lizards
+which live among the upper part of the foliage. At first I regarded this
+merely as a bit of native extravagance of statement, but in 1882, when
+I was shipwrecked on Peru (or Francis Island), one of the Gilbert Group,
+the local trader, one Frank Voliero, and myself saw one of these eels
+engaged in an equally extraordinary pursuit. We were one evening,
+after a heavy gale from the westward had been blowing for three days,
+examining a rookery of whale birds in search of eggs; the rookery was
+situated in a dense thicket scrub on the north end of the island, and
+was quite two hundred yards from the sea-shore, though not more than
+half that distance from the inside lagoon beach. The storm had destroyed
+quite a number of young, half-fledged birds, whose bodies were lying on
+the ground, and busily engaged in devouring one of them was a very large
+sea eel, as thick as the calf of a man's leg. Before I could manage to
+secure a stick with which to kill the repulsive-looking creature, it
+made off through the undergrowth at a rapid pace in the direction of the
+lagoon, and when we emerged out into the open in pursuit, ten minutes
+later, we were just in time to see it wriggling down the hard, sloping
+beach into the water. Instinct evidently made it seek the nearest water,
+for none of these large sea eels are ever found in Peru Lagoon.
+
+Many of the rivers and lakes of the islands of the Western Pacific are
+tenanted by eels of great size, which are never, or very seldom, as far
+as I could learn, interfered with by the natives, and I have never seen
+the people of either the Admiralty Islands, New Ireland, or New Britain
+touch an eel as food. The Maories, however, as is well known, are
+inordinately fond of eels, which, with putrid shark, constitute one of
+their staple articles of diet.
+
+In the few mountainous islands of the vast Caroline Archipelago, in
+the North-western Pacific, eels are very plentiful, not only in the
+numberless small streams which debouch into the shallow waters enclosed
+by the barrier reefs, but also far up on the mountainsides,
+occupying little rocky pools of perhaps no larger dimensions than an
+ordinary-sized toilet basin, or swimming up and down rivulets hardly
+more than two feet across. The natives of Ponape, the largest island
+of the Caroline Group, and of Kusaie (Strong's Island), its eastern
+outlier, regard the fresh-water eel with shuddering aversion, and should
+a man accidentally touch one with his foot when crossing a stream he
+will utter an exclamation of horror and fear. In the heathen days--down
+to 1845-50--the eel (toan) was an object of worship, and constantly
+propitiated by sacrifices of food, on account of its malevolent powers;
+personal contact was rigidly avoided; to touch one, even by the merest
+accident, was to bring down the most dreadful calamities on the offender
+and his family--bodily deformities, starvation and poverty, and death;
+and although the natives of Strong's Island are now both civilised and
+Christianised, and a training college of the Boston Board of Missions
+has long been established at Port Lele, they still manifest the same
+superstitious dread of the eel as in their days of heathendom. I well
+remember witnessing an instance of this terror during my sojourn on the
+island when I was shipwrecked there in 1874. I had taken up my residence
+in the picturesque little village of Leasse, on the western or "lee"
+side, when I was one evening visited by several of the ship's company--a
+Fijian half-caste, a white man, and two natives of Pleasant Island. At
+the moment they arrived I was in the house of the native pastor--a
+man who had received an excellent education in a missionary college at
+Honolulu, in the Hawaiian Islands--instructing him and his family in the
+art of making _taka_, or cinnet sandals, as practised by the natives
+of the Tokelau Group. Just then the four seamen entered, each man
+triumphantly holding up a large eel: in an instant there was a united
+howl of horror from the parson and his family, as they made a rash for
+the door, overturning the lamp and nearly setting the house on fire. In
+vain I followed and urged them to return, and told them that the men had
+gone away and taken the _toan_ with them--nothing would induce them to
+enter the house that night, and the whole family slept elsewhere.
+
+One singular thing about the eels on Strong's Island is that they
+hibernate, in a fashion, on the sides or even summits of the high
+mountains, at an altitude of nearly two thousand feet. Selecting, or
+perhaps making, a depression in the soft, moss-covered soil, the ugly
+creatures fit themselves into it compactly and remain there for weeks or
+even months at a time. I have counted as many as thirty of these holes,
+all tenanted, within a few square yards. Some were quite concealed by
+vegetable _debris_ or moss, others were exposed to view, with the broad,
+flat head of the slippery occupant resting on the margin or doubled back
+upon its body. They showed no alarm, but if poked with a stick would
+extricate themselves and crawl slowly away.
+
+In the streams they were very voracious, and I had a special antipathy
+to them, on account of their preying so on the crayfish--a crustacean
+of which I was particularly fond, and which the natives also liked very
+much, but were afraid to capture for fear their hands might come in
+contact with the dreaded _toan_.
+
+One afternoon I was plucking a pigeon I had just shot by the margin of a
+mountain stream. After removing the viscera, I put the bird in the water
+to clean it properly, and was shaking it gently to and fro, when it was
+suddenly torn out of my hand by a disgustingly bloated, reddish-coloured
+eel about four feet in length, and quickly swallowed. That one pigeon
+had cost me two hours' tramping through the rain-soddened mountain
+forest, so loading my gun I followed the thief down stream to where the
+water was but a few inches deep, and then blew his head off.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And
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