The Blue Raider: A Tale of Adventure in the Southern Seas
9781465674821
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
''Tis a matter of twenty-five years since I was in a fix like this 'ere,' said the boatswain, ruminatively, turning a quid in his cheek. 'Ephraim, me lad, you can bear me out?' 'I can't rightly say as I can, Mr. Grinson,' said Ephraim, in his husky voice, 'but I 'll try.' The boatswain threw a leg over the stern-post of the much-battered ship's boat that lay listed over just beyond the breakers of a rough sea, and cast a glance at the two young men who stood, with hands in pockets, gazing up at the cliffs. Their backs were towards him; they had either not heard, or were disinclined to notice what he had said. 'Ay, 'twas twenty-six year ago,' he resumed, in a voice like the note of an organ pipe. 'We was working between Brisbane and the Solomons, blackbirding and what not; 'twas before your time, young gents, but----' 'What's that you 're saying?' demanded one of the two whose backs he had addressed. 'I was saying, sir, as how I was in a fix like this 'ere twenty-seven year ago, or it may be twenty-eight: Ephraim's got the head for figures. We was working between Brisbane and the Carolines--a tight little schooner she was, light on her heels. You can bear me out, Ephraim?' 'If so be 'twas the same craft, light and tight she was,' Ephraim agreed. 'Well, a tidal wave come along and pitched her clean on to a beach like as this might be--not a beach as you could respect, with bathing-boxes and a promenade, but a narrow strip of a beach, a reg'lar fraud of a beach, under cliffs as high as a church...' 'Say, Grinson, get a move on,' drawled the second of the two younger men. 'What about your beach? How does it help us, anyway?' 'Well, look at the difference, sir. There we was: schooner gone to pieces, a score of us cast ashore, three of us white men, the rest Kanakas. 'Tis thirty years since, but the recollection of them awful days gives me the 'orrors. My two white mates--the Kanakas ate 'em, being 'ungry. I drops a veil over that 'orrible tragedy. Being about a yard less in the waist than I am to-day, I was nimble as a monkey, and went up those cliffs like greased lightning, broke off chunks of rock weighing anything up to half a ton, and pitched 'em down on the Kanakas scrambling up after me, panting for my gore. For three days and nights I kept 'em at bay, and my arms got so used to flinging down rocks that when I was rescued by a boat's crew from a Dutch schooner they kept on a-working regular as a pendulum, and they had to put me in a strait jacket till I was run down. You can bear me out, Ephraim, me lad?' 'I can't exactly remember all them particlers, Mr. Grinson, but truth 's truth, and 'tis true ye 've led a wonderful life, and stranger things have happened to ye--that I will say on my oath.' 'You were one of the two that were eaten, I suppose?' said the young man who had first spoken, eyeing Ephraim with a quizzical smile. 'Gee! That's the part Grinson dropped a veil over,' said the other. 'What's the moral of your pretty fairy story, Grinson?' 'Moral, sir? 'Tis plain.' He opened his brass tobacco-box, and deliberately twisted up another quid. Then he said impressively: 'Dog don't eat dog; otherways we 're all white men, and there 's no Kanakas.'
