Call of the Caribbean/Chapter 1

was at Maryborough, in the year 1894, that we picked up John Stuart. I was on the after deck of the schooner supervising the stowage of some stores, and he came up to me.

“This is the Madeleine, isn’t it?” he asked in a pleasant voice, “and you’re the government agent.”

John Stuart was a slender chap, under medium height and weight, and aged somewhere in the late twenties. His steady dark eyes looked me over with curiosity, friendly curiosity. His lean face with its broad brow was tanned. He spoke quietly, almost idly. As I got to know him better, I marked this side of his nature. It wasn’t laziness, nor sloth.

“I’m John Stuart,” he held out his hand frankly. “Your new. I’m afraid you’ll be rather bored to know this. My father has arranged the matter with your skipper—McShea is his name, isn’t it?”

“Tom McShea,” I answered, taking his hand. I had known nothing of his coming until then. But the mention of his father enlightened me somewhat. John Stuart, senior, was the owner of several large schooners in the island trade. I remembered hearing that his son was studying in England—Oxford—and later had been at Cape Town. I must have looked my curiosity, for Stuart laughed.

“My father wanted to establish me in trade in Cape Town. I wanted to visit Queensland and see a little of the labor trade. In the Old Country we heard it was something of an adventure, you know.”

“It’s not that,” I told him, for I wanted him to know the truth of the matter. “On the other hand, it’s a God-forsaken traffic—recruiting natives among the islands to work in the Queensland plantations—and there is an ugly risk in it. McShea can tell you that. He has a rib showing through his skin where a Santa Cruz spear slashed him.”

“I’d like to see the islands,” he said quietly. “You see, I was born on the east coast and the islands are a kind of home to me. I was brought up on the plantations. My father finally agreed to find a berth for me. He said the Madeleine was the best schooner in the trade. And he wanted me to be with you, he said, because you are a university man. He has heard of you.”

“Still,” I assured him, “I would not go, if I were you. It’s a thankless job and you may see a lot of things you will not want particularly to remember.”

I said that sincerely enough. At that time the government had only taken over the supervision of the trade a short while before, and it was still infested with evils. The honest skippers fared badly enough, having to contend with the enmity of islanders injured by the lawless crow'1 that was thick in the South Seas. It was a case of watchfulness with a rifle if you hoped to come out with a whole skin, and struggling with the hurricanes that cast many a tidy schooner on the reefs.

Of course the pay was good. And there was excitement, of a kind. But it wasn’t the money that brought John Stuart to the Madeleine, and I don’t think it was the excitement. The boy spoke the truth when he said he was eager to visit the islands again. They had laid their spell on him, the spell of Polynesia. In those days the tourist crowd had not begun to infest the islands, and white men, except for missionaries and traders, were not as numerous as now. Still, those that entered the borders of the South Pacific seldom went away. Those that did generally came back sooner or later. I can’t explain why. Many books have been written about the charm of the islands. Perhaps they explain it.

I told Stuart a lot about the cruises, hoping to warn him off. It had no effect. Mind you, at that time, although I knew the Madeleine was scheduled to run down to the New Hebrides, I knew nothing about the River Jordan, or the strange story of Don Quiros. Nor, for that matter, about the garden in the hills.

I remember now that Stuart looked at me queerly when I mentioned the fact that we would land some returns at Santo. He had heard the tale of Don Quiros, and the missionaries who tried to found a new Jerusalem at Santo—a kind of earthly paradise—in the year 1606. The lad had run across many narratives of the islands during his travels, and he was acquainted with the stories of the early voyages. He had even heard of D’Urville.

This, in a way, prepared him for what be was to find. That is what I have come to think, considering his experiences on Santo, his and mine. Believing as I do in Providence, I often wonder if John Stuart was not led half across the world to Santo by the thing we call Fate, for want of a better name. To Santo and the garden in the hills.