Call of the Caribbean/Chapter 11

HE smoke from Stuart’s shot was still eddying around us when the man stepped out of the thicket. We stared at him and he at us. I saw a very tall individual, lean and browned, with a white beard tangled with burs and thorns stretching over his bare chest. He was clothed literally in tatters, rags of garments, sacking and fibers that hung to his knees. He carried a bamboo staff.

“Ye are sinful men,” he cried, in a voice resonant in spite of his age, “to shoot one who has done ye no harm.”

Although his voice was strong, the words were blurred, almost mumbled. His keen eyes swept us as he leaned on his staff angrily. Stuart stepped toward him.

“I meant no harm,” he said quickly. “We thought—we did not know you were there.”

“Oh, aye,” grunted the patriarch. “It is the way of sinful men to be quick to slay.”

With that he approached us, glancing somewhat curiously at our rifles and the remnants of our packs. Stuart caught my eye and lifted his brows suggestively. But I did not think then, nor do I now, that Matthew Burnie—he told us his name presently—was insane. Stuart had not lived within the borders of Polynesia so long as I.

“You are an Englishman?” I asked, feeling for words.

“A Scot,” he responded, slurring his words as before. Later, I knew it was because he had had no speech with white men for many years. “A humble servant of the Lord. Who might ye be?”

We told him our names. He seemed indifferent. Matthew Burnie was very old, and the old are not easily stirred.

“You’ll take lunch with us, sir?” Stuart offered, feeling ill at ease in the presence of the man he had tried to shoot. Matthew Burnie considered his words, and the hair about his mouth moved in what might have been a smile.

“I have not partaken of such things for so long that it would not be well,” he said simply.

His speech was straightforward and precise and the phrases he used were such as my father might have employed. He seemed to have little desire to speak. Yet when we questioned him he responded readily.

“How long have you been on Santo, Mr. Burnie?” I asked. I saw Stuart look at him attentively and knew that the lad hoped to learn something of the Quiros city.

“I have no means of knowing, sir,” the patriarch informed me. “I was a man in the prime of life when I landed on the island.”

“Why did you stay?” Stuart inquired.

“I had a reason.”

“But you’ve been cut off from your fellows for years.”

“Aye—but not from the hand of the Lord. His hand is in the far corners of the earth, even in the waters under the earth.”

“There were some here before you, Mr. Burnie. Have you seen anything of the Quiros city?”

The old man meditated.

“Aye and no. I heard men speak of the Spaniard on the Astrolabe. I have seen no trace of the settlement in the hills of Santo, and there is little I have not seen.”

I caught his arm.

“The Astrolabe! Then you were with D’Urville?”

“I sailed on his vessel to Vanikoro. When he left that island I felt the call of the Lord to bring the word of the Gospels to the heathen and I landed at Santo.”

I thought of the words of Johnny Gorai. Here, then, was the white man who had landed from the ship “long time” before. Matthew Burnie was the missionary who had sailed on the Astrolabe and had not returned to Australia. But Johnny Gorai had spoken of a white woman.

“Your—your wife was with you, Mr. Burnie, at that time?”

“Aye,” he said.

“She is here now?”

“The Lord has taken her to Him.”

We were silent, Stuart and I. The calmness of the man belittled us. Yet we felt that much of his tale was still untold. The lad showed him the moldering covers of the book we had found. Matthew Burnie glanced at it inquiringly. When we explained what it was, he nodded slowly.

“They were men of another faith, aye, but Christians. No doubt they found comfort on the island. But they could not have lived long. Life is brief, sir, on Santo.”

The statement of Matthew Burnie ended for us the idea of finding traces of the lost city. It was as I supposed—the men died off or were slain by the islanders, the settlement overgrown by underbrush. Matthew Burnie had not seen it. And he knew every spot in the hills of Santo. Our visit to Santo made this clear. The remains of the Bible we found are now at the Brisbane Museum. They are, I think, the last link of the Quiros legend.