The Land of the Hibiscus Blossom
James Hume Nisbet (1888)
Country of origin: Australia
Available texts by the same author here
Chapter V. Bêche-De-Mer Working.
IT is impossible to lie in bed after the sun rises in the tropics (no matter how late one goes to sleep), but pleasure ineffable to get up as the light appears and before the stars are quite quenched by the approaching flood of light.Next morning the scene on the beach was a busy one, natives thronging in their canoes, laden with water-casks and fruit for the vessels about to sail, little boys and girls tumbling about the waves, or trying to fish with their pronged fish-spears, women with their infants sitting on the sands, and a constant passing to and fro of dark semi-nude figures, or sunburnt seamen.
Behind the slueing cluster of smacks lay the more massive, if less picturesque, outline of the little steamer Thunder, with her black sides and heavy Dutch-built stern, and her painted funnels emitting their gaseous vapours, which became discoloured as they were wafted towards that opal space overhead, and spread in filmy melting clouds upon the otherwise cloudless sky.
The natives had been awake and working even while the stars were still lustrous, under the direction of King Primrose, and his stern-browed daughter, Queen Ine; but the master lay grunting and tossing on his bamboo couch in that uneasy after-slumber which ever precedes the awakening from the dreamless lethargy of the drunkard.
Joe was right about the mother of his children; whether she loved or hated him was a matter of little consequence, so that she kept the islanders in good order. This she did with a devotion and energy which might well be the zealous outcome of love; the natives obeyed her orders with alacrity and without a murmur; even her father, as he took up his position of august dignity on the sands, was fain to skip nimbly out of her way, as with club in hand, and gown tucked up, she swiftly passed from group to group of the workers.
A constant chattering went on as they laboured, but Queen Ine only muttered a word now and again, or lifted her club threateningly over some skulker, yet none appeared to wait upon its descent, for when she drew near they bent down instantly, with the obsequity of slaves to pick up the bag or cask they had been inclined to pass before, and energetically rushed to the spring or boat waiting to receive it.
Her six children were on the sands under the charge of an old black woman, and at times when they came near her, or clung to her skirts, she caught them impatiently by the arm, and flung them from her as if they were puppies or kittens, and when she did so they ran back to the old nurse, but never cried, as English children would have done, over their rebuff and fall.
Six children, all naked, and of assorted sizes, four boys and two girls; three of the boys were of a rich deep brown, while the other boy and the two girls were copper tinted, a shade or two lighter than the sun-tanned skin of their father.
Pretty children, who rolled over one another in the bright cool dawn, half-buried at times in the grey sand, like young leopard pups--three pairs of twins, with the month old ones lying alone mutely on their backs, and seeming to look at the wonderful pearly-toned immensity above; the aged nurse with close grizzled hair sat heedless of all around, preparing some yams which she held upon a flat canoe-shaped wooden basin and put, when peeled, into an earthenware pot.
Not far from the aged one, a fire was burning on the beach, and one or two girls sitting round it, also cutting up yams, taro, and hard bananas, with their platters and pots beside them. On one side a woman crouched with her hands over her face and her head bent, rocking backwards and forwards and moaning piteously, at which no one appeared to pay any attention, although the eyes of the others looked bleary as if with weeping.
There had been a death in the village the day before, and the others had done their lamenting; this one, however, having been at the other side of the island, had only just arrived to hear the sad news, and now alone sat weeping.
It was the custom for every one to do a stated amount of lamenting, so she was only performing her duty, while the others went on calmly with their daily work and chattered amongst themselves as the glorious light grew more intense and rosy behind the dark thicket of crotons, and inside some shady hut in the village over within that dark thicket, some heart lay moaning, yet not according to custom.
The bêche-de-mer prepared weeks before against the coming of this little trading-steamer Thunder, had been mostly transferred on board, with the water casks filled from the spring and emptied into the ship's iron tanks, before the sun lifted its dazzling disc above the crotons; it was all subdued and silvery, a coral island done in soft grey tones, with the exception of the rose-madder gleam eastward over by the rocks, crotons, and palm-tops, and the different dingies had landed their human freights of blacks and whites, who now mingled together on the sands as the canoes and dingies hobnobbed on the waters.
Five minutes more the sun would be in possession, and that comparative hush banished for the day. Joe came down from his bungalow, unwashed and dry-mouthed, cursing the light and d----g all the eyes which that light was bathing, and the world in general as he staggered towards his guests of the night previous, attired as he lay down in his ragged bepatched pants and buttonless dingy red flannel shirt, while Queen Ine stood waiting silently with her subjects for his further orders, and, as she waited, suckling one of the twins which she had snatched up from the ground at the sight of her husband; it was the black baby she had taken up, the other lay still looking up at the sky, his mouth stuffed with one end of a cowrie shell.
"----my eyes," observed Joe in husky tones as he came up, "have ye got all the cargo aboard?"
"All aboard, Joe, but what about that other lot you said you had?" answered and inquired Bowman, who stood attired in a gay suit of pijamas rolled up to the thighs and armpits, while young Danby, with his pale, thin, aristocratic face, calmly sucked at his briar-wood pipe, attired in a waistband of Turkey red alone, his slender limbs and body gleaming whitely amongst the sunburnt and black surroundings.
"You'll have to come for it over to the other island; it ain't much out of your way, and I'll go with you arter we've got summut to drink and eat. What have ye got aboard?"
"Fresh mutton, a keg of brandy, and a good king-fish caught this morning," replied Bowman.
"That'll do, it's a long time since I tasted anything fresh," grunted Joe; "but have ye no whisky?"
"Not a drop; but you can bring one of your own bottles; we left you half a case last night, besides the gin."
"I'm keeping that as a medicine against accidents; Queen Ine might be bad, or the kids, so we'll just do with your brandy."
"As you will," responded Bowman, who knew his man. "Fetch your own dingey and go aboard; I want to see what Collins and Hector have got before we start, so go aboard and we'll follow you."
"All right," said Joe. Then turning to where his wife stood with her black baby, he said, "Look ye here, Queen Ine, I'm going away for a couple of days, so you'll see to the island while I'm away."
Queen Ine nodded silently.
"An' don't have any humbug or laziness. The cargo in the smoke-house will be ready when the sun goes down. Get that other lot over yere" (he pointed to a black mound lying a little distance from them on the sands, at which she again nodded) "put in to-night, it'll be about ready by the time I get back."
Joe did not waste time kissing, as he turned his back on his spouse and prepared to step into the dingey, which he shoved off.
"An' look ye here, wench," he shouted, resting on his oars with one foot on the gunwale, "send Sam over to the island with Fairy to bring me home again; he'd better start at once as the wind is fair."
Queen Ine once more acknowledged with a bend of her sombre head that she understood, and walked straightway towards the croton thicket, as Joe, now having shoved his boat into deep water, sat down, with both oars dipping into the blue-grey waters and his back against the steamer towards which he was bound; while Bowman and Danby turned into their own boat, which their Malay boys were now pushing along by the shallow sands.
A second more and the sea will be gleaming quick-silver; the palm--fronds still heavy with the dews, which lie like hoar-frost upon the broad, umbrella-like leaves of the undergrowth and grasses, hang limply down underneath the refreshing weight; the spiders' webs which swing, hammock-fashion, from branch to branch, are like filagree work in dull white metal. All the shadows are purple with the vapours of the earth that steal upwards and blanch the local tints of green, the flowers scarlet and blue upon the shrubs and creepers, are drooping like half-closed lids. There is an air of slumber over all; on the cool grey sands, where the tinted and spiked shells are lying unheeded, are lovely shapes and prismatic splashes of pure and broken colours, like the fresh setting of a palette in a shady studio; the sea, without glitter enough to make a shadow, lies a subtle gradation of blue-grey to bleached fawn, the rocks and exposed brown edges of the reefs are inane grey, with hardly a break; the natives round their fires, some distance off, seem to pose silent and motionless, as natives do, waiting for that intense second to elapse, and then the Lord of Day has risen.
First a gleam of scarlet upon the bare upper branches of the bone-like croton-trees, and a dash of glittering bronze running down the core and quivering ribbons of the top palm branches as they seem to shake off their sleep and stretch upwards, like arms thrown out while wakers yawn; then over the thicket, towards which Queen Ine slowly paces, the golden rim appears, burning the outer edges and seeming to shrivel them downwards, as he flings mellow fire upon the edges of ringed trunks and dew-drenched leaves.
Now the paroquettes and cockatoos begin to wake up and flutter in that light-bath, and the sands blush till they glow like the petals of delicate roses. Then, with the gaiety of the gathering sunbeams, Rest seems to fly and all becomes laughter and motion; the ocean is swarming with ripples and golden threads, and the boulders and shells become filled with detail.
Joe, a dark spot upon the even sea, seems to be sucked into that universal lustre, and is soon absorbed from sight. The Thunder still holds her own, as a shadow, but her propeller, idly thrashing the water, appears as if it were turning up silver, and the smacks, as they dance about, to become nautilus shells; deep purple streaks border those rosy flushes, growing to gold, and the head of the mourner beside the yam-peelers is lifted up to greet the penetrating ray, for she has finished her task of lamentation and now laughs, with the tears still hanging like diamonds to her dark cheeks.
Queen Ine pauses in her walk as she reaches the inky mound of half dry bêche-de-mer, and fumbles amongst it for a moment with the hand that does not hold the baby, turning over the under layer of damp slugs so that the sun may also finish his work, and as she stoops, a sun-shaft strikes within her eyelids and turns the dark eyes to a blood-red glare; then she raises up her square, strong shoulders and looks at it for a moment while it beats softly against her heaving breasts, and with a full breath of satisfaction, her stern features somewhat relax, while she clutches the child a little tighter, and passes on.
Half way to the thicket a figure stands in the shallow water gazing fixedly upon the distant sea; Queen Ine, as she sees him, deviates from her course and walks towards him, but he pays no attention to the splashes that she sends up on either side of her as she impatiently beats the water down with her hasty feet; he stands motionless with his face sea-ward and his back upon her.
A weird figure, clad only in a tattered and faded blue cotton shirt, with the arms torn from it and the extremities fluttering like banana leaves when wind-tossed and tattered.
"Hafid," she says sternly, laying her hand upon his shoulder, and then he turns round and faces her, and the two look at one another without speaking.
His hair is falling loosely and wildly about his neck, straight black hair, streaked with white, and all in a tangle, that makes it almost appear wavy, his fine mournful features, the features of a very young man; but his large brown eyes are filmy, and look vacantly at her, while his hands hang meaninglessly down his sides. He has beautiful features and delicately rounded limbs, yet they are scratched all over, as if he had rushed through a prickly jungle; an eastern face, such as we may see in Ceylon or India, with the pathetic languor of a love-sick woman.
As she regards him, her stern, gloomy features become wonderfully soft and tender, while his express nothing in return, except melancholy, as he slowly lifts up one arm and points to sea, muttering some words which she does not understand; then she holds her black baby out to him, which he takes mechanically, and as she turns he follows, like a dog, still carrying the baby, upon which he looks with gaze as vacant as the milk--satisfied infant regards the sky above.