Page:Rolf Boldrewood - A Modern Buccaneer.djvu/19

 scornful, imperturbable, the young Maori chief, nursing in his breast the deep revenge for a hasty blow, which on the return voyage to New Zealand and the home of his tribe was to take the form of a massacre of the whole ship's company?

Yes, captain and officers, passengers and crew, every man on that ship paid the death penalty for the mate's hard word and blow. The insult to a Rangatira must be wiped out in blood.

The trader of the South Sea Islands was a marine marvel which I was never weary of studying.

I generally managed to make friends with one or other of the crew, who permitted me to explore the lower deck and feed my fancy upon the treasures from that paradise with which the voyager from an enchanted ocean had surely freighted his vessel. Strange bows and arrows—the latter poison-tipped, as I was always assured, perhaps as a precautionary measure—piles of shaddocks, tons of bananas, idols, skulls, spears, clubs, woven cloth of curious fabric, an endless store of unfamiliar foreign commodities.

Among the crew were always a few half-castes mingled with the grizzled, weather-beaten British sea-dogs. Perhaps a boat's crew of the islanders themselves, born sailors, and as much at home in water as on land.

Seldom did I leave, however unwillingly, the deck of one of these fairy barques, without registering a vow that the year in which I left school should see me a gay sailor-boy, bound on my first voyage in search of dangerous adventures and that splendidly untrammelled career which was so surely to result in fortune and distinction.

Then the whaleships! In that old time, Sydney harbour was rarely without a score or more of them. In their way they were portents and wonders of the deep. Fortune failed them at times. The second year might find them far from full of the high-priced whale-oil. The capricious