CHAPTER TWO.
THE HAVEN IN THE CORAL RING.
It seemed as if the storm-fiend were satisfied with the mischief he hadaccomplished, for immediately after the disaster just described, thegale began to moderate, and when the sun rose it had been reduced to astiff but steady breeze.
From the moment of the accident onward, the whole crew had been exertingthemselves to the utmost with axe and knife to cut and clear away thewreck of the masts, and repair damages.
Not the least energetic among them was our amateur first mate, NigelRoy. When all had been made comparatively snug, he went aft to wherehis father stood beside the steersman, with his legs nautically wideapart, his sou'-wester pulled well down over his frowning brows, and hishands in their native pockets.
"This is a bad ending to a prosperous voyage," said the youth, sadly;"but you don't seem to take it much to heart, father!"
"How much or little I take it to heart you know nothin' whatever about,my boy, seein' that I don't wear my heart on my coat-sleeve, nor yet onthe point of my nose, for the inspection of all and sundry. Besides,you can't tell whether it's a bad or a good endin', for it has not endedyet one way or another. Moreover, what appears bad is often found to begood, an' what seems good is pretty often uncommon bad."
"You are a walking dictionary of truisms, father! I suppose you mean totake a philosophical view of the misfortune and make the best of it,"said Nigel, with what we may style one of his twinkling smiles, for onnearly all occasions that young man's dark, brown eyes twinkled, inspite of him, as vigorously as any "little star" that was ever told inprose or song to do so--and much more expressively, too, because of theeyebrows of which little stars appear to be destitute.
"No, lad," retorted the captain; "I take a common-sense view--not aphilosophical one; an' when you've bin as long at sea as I have, you'llcall nothin' a misfortune until it's proved to be such. The onlymisfortune I have at present is a son who cannot see things in the samelight as his father sees 'em."
"Well, then, according to your own principle that is the reverse of amisfortune, for if I saw everything in the same light that you do, you'dhave no pleasure in talking to me, you'd have no occasion to reason meout of error, or convince me of truth. Take the subject of poetry,now--"
"Luff;" said Captain Roy, sternly, to the man at the wheel.
When the man at the wheel had gone through the nautical evolutioninvolved in "luff," the captain turned to his son and saidabruptly--"We'll run for the Cocos-Keelin' Islands, Nigel, an' refit."
"Are the Keeling Islands far off?"
"Lift up your head and look straight along the bridge of your nose, lad,and you'll see them. They're an interesting group, are the Keelin'Islands. Volcanic, they are, with a coral top-dressin', so to speak.Sit down here an' I'll tell 'ee about 'em."
Nigel shut up the telescope through which he had been examining thethin, blue line on the horizon that indicated the islands in question,and sat down on the cabin skylight beside his father.
"They've got a romantic history too, though a short one, an' are setlike a gem on the bosom of the deep blue sea."
"Come, father, you're drifting out of your true course--that'spoetical!"
"I know it, lad, but I'm only quotin' your mother. Well, you must knowthat the Keelin' Islands--we call them Keelin' for short--wereuninhabited between fifty and sixty years ago, when a Scotsman namedRoss, thinking them well situated as a port of call for the repair andprovisioning of vessels on their way to Australia and China, set hisheart on them and quietly took possession in the name of England. Thenhe went home to fetch his wife and family of six children, intendin' tosettle on the islands for good. Returning in 1827 with the family andfourteen adventurers, twelve of whom were English, one a Portugee andone a Javanee, he found to his disgust that an Englishman named Hare hadstepped in before him and taken possession. This Hare was a very badfellow; a rich man who wanted to live like a Rajah, with lots o' nativewives and retainers, an' be a sort of independent prince. Of course hewas on bad terms at once with Ross, who, finding that things were goingbadly, felt that it would be unfair to hold his people to the agreementwhich was made when he thought the whole group was his own, so heoffered to release them. They all, except two men and one woman,accepted the release and went off in a gun-boat that chanced to touchthere at the time. For a good while Hare and his rival lived there--theone tryin' to get the Dutch, the other to induce the English Governmentto claim possession. Neither Dutch nor English would do so at first,but the English did it at long last--in 1878--and annexed the islands tothe Government of Ceylon.
"Long before that date, however--before 1836--Hare left and went toSingapore, where he died, leaving Ross in possession--the `King of theCocos Islands' as he came to be called. In a few years--chiefly throughthe energy of Ross's eldest son, to whom he soon gave up the managementof affairs--the Group became a prosperous settlement. Its ships tradedin cocoa-nuts, (the chief produce of the islands), throughout all theStraits Settlements, and boatbuildin' became one of their most importantindustries. But there was one thing that prevented it from bein' a veryhappy though prosperous place, an' that was the coolies who had beenhired in Java, for the only men that could be got there at first werecriminals who had served their time in the chain-gangs of Batavia. Asthese men were fit for anything--from pitch-and-toss to murder--and soonoutnumbered the colonists, the place was kept in constant alarm andwatchfulness. For, as I dare say you know, the Malays are sometimesliable to have the spirit of _amok_ on them, which leads them to carefor and fear nothin', and to go in for a fight-to-death, from which weget our sayin'--_run amuck_. An' when a strong fellow is goin' aboutloose in this state o' mind, it's about as bad as havin' a tigerprowlin' in one's garden.
"Well, sometimes two or three o' these coolies would mutiny and bide inthe woods o' one o' the smaller uninhabited islands. An' the colonistswould have no rest till they hunted them down. So, to keep mattersright, they had to be uncommon strict. It was made law that no oneshould spend the night on any but what was called the Home Islandwithout permission. Every man was bound to report himself at theguard-house at a fixed hour; every fire to be out at sunset, and everyboat was numbered and had to be in its place before that time. So theywent on till the year 1862, when a disaster befell them that made aconsiderable change--at first for the worse, but for the better in thelong-run. Provin' the truth, my lad, of what I was--well, no--I wasgoin' to draw a moral here, but I won't!
"It was a cyclone that did the business. Cyclones have got afree-an'-easy way of makin' a clean sweep of the work of years in a fewhours. This cyclone completely wrecked the homes of the Keelin'Islanders, and Ross--that's the second Ross, the son of the first one--sent home for _his_ son, who was then a student of engineering inGlasgow, to come out and help him to put things to rights. Ross thethird obeyed the call, like a good son,--observe that, Nigel."
"All right, father, fire away!"
"Like a good son," repeated the captain, "an' he turned out to be afirst-rate man, which was lucky, for his poor father died soon after,leavin' him to do the work alone. An' well able was the young engineerto do it. He got rid o' the chain-gang men altogether, and hired nonebut men o' the best character in their place. He cleared off theforests and planted the ground with cocoa-nut palms. Got out steammills, circular saws, lathes, etcetera, and established a system ofgeneral education with a younger brother as head-master--an' tail-mastertoo, for I believe there was only one. He also taught the men to workin brass, iron, and wood, and his wife--a Cocos girl that he marriedafter comin' out--taught all the women and girls to sew, cook, andmanage the house. In short, everything went on in full swing ofprosperity, till the year 1876, when the island-born inhabitants wereabout 500, as contented and happy as could be.
"In January of that year another cyclone paid them a visit. Thebarometer gave them warning, and, remembering the visit of fourteenyears before, they made ready to receive the new visitor. All the boatswere
hauled up to places of safety, and every other preparation wasmade. Down it came, on the afternoon o' the 28th--worse than they hadexpected. Many of the storehouses and mills had been lately renewed orbuilt. They were all gutted and demolished. Everything movable wasswept away like bits of paper. Lanes, hundreds of yards in length, werecleared among the palm-trees by the whirling wind, which seemed toperform a demon-dance of revelry among them. In some cases it snappedtrees off close to the ground. In others it seemed to swoop down fromabove, lick up a patch of trees bodily and carry them clean away,leaving the surrounding trees untouched. Sometimes it would select atree of thirty years growth, seize it, spin it round, and leave it apermanent spiral screw. I was in these regions about the time, and hadthe account from a native who had gone through it all and couldn't speakof it except with glaring eyeballs and gasping breath.
"About midnight of the 28th the gale was at its worst. Darkness thatcould be felt between the flashes of lightning. Thunder that was nearlydrowned by the roaring of the wind an' the crashing of everything allround. To save their lives the people had to fling themselves intoditches and hollows of the ground. Mr Ross and some of his people werelying in the shelter of a wall near his house. There had been aschooner lying not far off. When Mr Ross raised his head cautiouslyabove the wall to have a look to wind'ard he saw the schooner comin'straight for him on the top of a big wave. `Hold on!' he shouted, fellflat down, and laid hold o' the nearest bush. Next moment the waveburst right over the wall, roared on up to the garden, 150 yards abovehigh-water mark, and swept his house clean away! By good fortune thewall stood the shock, and the schooner stuck fast just before reachin'it, but so near that the end of the jib-boom passed right over the placewhere the household lay holdin' on for dear life and half drowned. Itwas a tremendous night," concluded the captain, "an' nearly everythingon the islands was wrecked, but they've survived it, as you'll see.Though it's seven years since that cyclone swep' over them, they're allright and goin' ahead again, full swing, as if nothin' had happened."
"And is Ross the Third still king?" asked Nigel with much interest.
"Ay--at least he was king a few years ago when I passed this way and hadoccasion to land to replace a tops'l yard that had been carried away."
"Then you won't arrive as a stranger?"
"I should think not," returned the captain, getting up and gazingsteadily at the _atoll_ or group of islets enclosed within a coral ringwhich they were gradually approaching.
Night had descended, however, and the gale had decreased almost to acalm, ere they steered through the narrow channel--or what we may call abroken part of the ring--which led to the calm lagoon inside. Nigel Royleaned over the bow, watching with profound attention the numerousphosphorescent fish and eel-like creatures which darted hither andthither like streaks of silver from beneath their advancing keel. Hehad enough of the naturalist in him to arouse in his mind keen interestin the habits and action of the animal life around him, and thesedenizens of the coral-groves were as new to him as their appearance wasunexpected.
"You'll find 'em very kind and hospitable, lad," said the captain to hisson.
"What, the fish?"
"No, the inhabitants. Port--port--steady!"
"Steady it is!" responded the man at the wheel.
"Let go!" shouted the captain.
A heavy plunge, followed by the rattling of chains and swinging round ofthe brig, told that they had come to an anchor in the lagoon of theCocos-Keeling Islands.