This produced the desired effect. The strange vessel backed her topsails and hove-to, while we ranged up and lay-to, about a hundred yards off.
“Lower the boat,” cried the captain.
In a second the boat was lowered and manned by a part of the crew, who were all armed with cutlasses and pistols. As the captain passed me to get into it, he said, “jump into the stern sheets, Ralph, I may want you.” I obeyed, and in ten minutes more we were standing on the stranger’s deck. We were all much surprised at the sight that met our eyes. Instead of a crew of such sailors as we were accustomed to see, there were only fifteen blacks standing on the quarterdeck and regarding us with looks of undisguised alarm. They were totally unarmed and most of them unclothed; one or two, however, wore portions of European attire. One had on a pair of duck trousers which were much too large for him and stuck out in a most ungainly manner. Another wore nothing but the common scanty native garment round the loins, and a black beaver hat. But the most ludicrous personage of all, and one who seemed to be chief, was a tall middle-aged man, of a mild, simple expression of countenance, who wore a white cotton shirt, a swallowtailed coat, and a straw hat, while his black brawny legs were totally uncovered below the knees.
“Where’s the commander of this ship?” inquired our captain, stepping up to this individual.
“I is capin,” he answered, taking off his straw hat and making a low bow.
“You!” said our captain, in surprise. “Where do you come from, and where are you bound? What cargo have you aboard?”
“We is come,” answered the man with the swallowtail, “from Aitutaki; we was go for Rarotonga. We is native miss’nary ship; our name is de Olive Branch; an’ our cargo is two tons coconuts, seventy pigs, twenty cats, and de Gosp’l.”
This announcement was received by the crew of our vessel with a shout of laughter, which, however, was peremptorily checked by the captain, whose expression instantly changed from one of severity to that of frank urbanity as he advanced towards the missionary and shook him warmly by the hand.
“I am very glad to have fallen in with you,” said he, “and I wish you much success in your missionary labours. Pray take me to your cabin, as I wish to converse with you privately.”
The missionary immediately took him by the hand, and as he led him away I heard him saying, “Me most glad to find you trader; we t’ought you be pirate. You very like one ’bout the masts.”
What conversation the captain had with this man I never heard, but he came on deck again in a quarter of an hour, and, shaking hands cordially with the missionary, ordered us into our boat and returned to the schooner, which was immediately put before the wind. In a few minutes the Olive Branch was left far behind us.
That afternoon, as I was down below at dinner, I heard the men talking about this curious ship.
“I wonder,” said one, “why our captain looked so sweet on yon swallowtailed supercargo o’ pigs and Gospels. If it had been an ordinary trader, now, he would have taken as many o’ the pigs as he required and sent the ship with all on board to the bottom.”
“Why, Dick, you must be new to these seas if you don’t know that,” cried another. “The captain cares as much for the gospel as you do (an’ that’s precious little), but he knows, and everybody knows, that the only place among the southern islands where a ship can put in and get what she wants in comfort, is where the gospel has been sent to. There are hundreds o’ islands, at this blessed moment, where you might as well jump straight into a shark’s maw as land without a band o’ thirty comrades armed to the teeth to back you.”
“Ay,” said a man with a deep scar over his right eye, “Dick’s new to the work. But if the captain takes us for a cargo o’ sandalwood to the Fijis he’ll get a taste o’ these black gentry in their native condition. For my part I don’t know, an’ I don’t care, what the gospel does to them; but I know that when any o’ the islands chance to get it, trade goes all smooth an’ easy; but where they ha’nt got it, Beelzebub himself could hardly desire better company.”
“Well, you ought to be a good judge,” cried another, laughing, “for you’ve never kept any company but the worst all your life!”
“Ralph Rover!” shouted a voice down the hatchway. “Captain wants you, aft.”
Springing up the ladder I hastened to the cabin, pondering as I went the strange testimony borne by these men to the effect of the gospel on savage natures;—testimony which, as it was perfectly disinterested, I had no doubt whatever was strictly true.
On coming again on deck I found Bloody Bill at the helm, and as we were alone together I tried to draw him into conversation. After repeating to him the conversation in the forecastle about the missionaries, I said—
“Tell me, Bill, is this schooner really a trader in sandalwood?”
“Yes, Ralph, she is; but she’s just as really a pirate. The black flag you saw flying at the peak was no deception.”
“Then how can you say she’s a trader?” asked I.
“Why, as to that, she trades when she can’t take by force, but she takes by force, when she can, in preference. Ralph,” he added, lowering his voice, “if you had seen the bloody deeds that I have witnessed done on these decks
