For the next two days we went steaming ahead as hard as we could go in a bee-line to the northeastward, in the direction of the Duke of Cumberland\'s Islands; and it was two days clear before those unfortunate boys, Jack and Martin—for that was what they called one another for short, in spite of their severely theological second names—were in a condition to tell us exactly what had happened, without danger to their shattered nerves and impaired digestions.
When they did manage to speak—both at once, for choice, in their eagerness to get their story out—here\'s about what their history came to, as we pieced it together, bit by bit, from the [pg 57] things they told us at different times. If I were one of those writing chaps, now, that know how to tell a whole ten years\' history, end on end, exactly as it happened, without missing a detail, I\'d get it all out for you just as Martin told us; or better still, I\'d give it to you in a single connected piece, between inverted commas, as his own words, beginning, "I was born," said he, "in the city of Edinburgh," and so forth, after the regular high-and-dry literary fashion. But how on earth those clever book-making fellows can ever remember a whole long speech, word for word, from beginning to end, I never could make out and never shall, neither. What memories they must have to do it, to be sure! It\'s my own belief they make it up more than half out of their own heads as they go along, and are perfectly happy if it only just sounds plausible. But anyhow, Martin Luther Macglashin didn\'t tell us all his story at a single time, or in a connected way; he gave us a bit now and a bit again, with additions from Jack, [pg 58] according as he was able. So being, as I say, no more than a free-and-easy master mariner myself, without skill in literature, I\'m not going to try to repeat it all, word for word, to you precisely as it came, but shall just take the liberty of spinning my yarn my own way and letting you have in short the gist and substance of what we gradually got out of our two fugitives.
Well, it seems that Jack and Martin\'s father was, just as I suspected, a Scotch missionary on the Island of Tanaki. He lived there with another family of missionaries of the same sect, in peace and quiet, as well as with an English merchant of the name of Williams, who traded with the natives for calico, knives, glass beads and tobacco. For a long time things had gone on pretty comfortably in the little settlement; though to be sure the natives did sometimes steal Mr. Macglashin\'s fowls or threaten to tie Mr. Williams to a cocoa-nut palm and take cock-shots at him with a Snider, out of pure lightness of heart, unless he gave them rum, square gin [pg 59] or brandy. Still, in spite of these playful little eccentricities of the good-humored Kanakas, who will have their joke, murder or no murder, all went as merrily as a wedding bell (as they say in novels) till suddenly one morning a French labor-vessel—I suspect the very one we had intercepted in the act of trying to carry off Nassaline—put into the harbor in search of "apprentices."
She was a very bad lot, from what the boys told us; a genuine slaver of the worst type; and she stirred up a deal of mischief at Makilolo.
NATIVES OF THE ISLAND OF TANAKI. Page 58
On the shore the Chief of Tanaki was drawn up to receive them with all his warriors, tastefully but inexpensively rigged out in a string of blue beads round the neck, an anklet of shells and a head-dress of a single large yellow feather.
"Who are you?" shouts the chief at the top of his voice. "You man a oui-oui?"
"Yes," the Frenchman shouts back in his pigeon-English. "Me de commander of dis [pg 60] French ship. Want to buy boys. Must sell them to us. Tanaki French island. Discovered by Bougainville."
"No, no," says the Chief in pigeon-English again. "Tanaki no belong a man a oui-oui. Tanaki belong a Queenie England. Capitaney Cook find him long time back. My father little fellow then; him see Capitaney, him tell me often. Capitaney Cook no man a oui-oui; him fellow English."
The other natives joined in at once with their loud cry, "Chief speak true. Tanaki belong a Queenie England. Tanaki no belong a man a oui-oui. If man a oui-oui want to take Tanaki, man a Tanaki come out and fight him." And they threw themselves at once into a threatening attitude.
"Have you got any Englishmen here?" the French skipper called out, to make sure of his ground.
"Yes," says the missionary—our boys\' father—standing out from the crowd. "Three [pg 61] English families here. Settled on the island. And we deny that this group belongs to the French Republic."
At that the Frenchman pulled back a bit. When he saw there was likely to be opposition, and that his proceedings were watched by three English families, he drew in his horns a little. He knew if he interfered too openly with the missionaries\' proceedings, an English gunboat might come along, sooner or later, and overhaul him for fomenting discord on an island known to be under the British protectorate. So he only answered in French, "Well, we\'re peaceable traders, Monsieur. We don\'t want to interfere with the British Government. Consider us friends. All we desire is to hire laborers." And he landed his boat\'s crew before the very face of Macglashin and the Tanaki warriors.
At first, as often happens in these islands, the natives were very little disposed to trade with the strangers in boys or women, for they were afraid of the Frenchmen; and Macglashin [pg 62] and the other missionary did all they knew to prevent the new comers from carrying off any of the islanders into practical slavery. But after awhile the Frenchmen produced their regulation bottles of square gin (that\'s what they call Hollands in the South Pacific), and began to treat the Chief and the other savages to drinks all round, as much as you liked, with nothing to pay for it. In a very short time the Chief had got so much liquor aboard that his legs wouldn\'t answer the rudder any longer, and he began to reel about like a perfect madman. Most of the other full-grown men natives followed suit before long, and lay down on the beach half dead with drunkenness. Perhaps the liquor was drugged; perhaps it wasn\'t; but anyhow, in spite of all the missionaries could do, the shore before nightfall was in a condition of the wildest and most bestial orgies. The men, in what the newspapers call "a high state of vinous exhilaration," were ready to sell their boys and girls, or anything else on earth for a little more gin; and as the missionaries [pg 63] were naturally helpless to prevent it, the Frenchman was soon driving a roaring trade in flesh and blood against the drunken savages.
The business-like way they went to work, Jack and Martin told us, was horribly disgusting. The women, indeed, they tried to wheedle and cajole—"You like go along a New Caledonia along a me? Only three yam times; then ship bring you back again. Very good feed; plenty nyam-nyam. Pay very good. Pay money. Lots of shop. You buy what you like: you buy red dress, red handkerchief, beads like-a-chiefie. No fight; no beat; no swear at you. You good girl; I good fellow master." But if they couldn\'t induce them, by fair words and promises and little presents of cheap French finery, to put their mark to their sham indentures, then they just knocked them down with a blow on the head, dragged them by their hair to the boats hard by, and got their fathers or husbands to put their marks, and receive a few dollars and some red cloth in payment.
[pg 64] As for the boys, they handled t............