An Honour To The Service

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Title:     An Honour To The Service
Author: Louis Becke [More Titles by Becke]

The Honourable Captain Stanley W------ believed in flogging, and during the three years' cruise of the frigate in the South Pacific he had taken several opportunities of expressing this belief upon the bluejackets of his ship by practical illustrations of his hobby. He was, however--in his own opinion--a most humane man, and was always ready to give a dozen less if Dr. Cartwright suggested, for instance, that Jenkins or Jones hadn't quite got over his last tricing up, and could hardly stand another dozen so soon. And the chaplain of the frigate, when dining with the Honourable Stanley, would often sigh and shake his head and agree with the captain that the proposed abolition of flogging in the British Navy would do much to destroy its discipline and loosen the feelings of personal attachment between officers and men, and then murmur something complimentary about his Majesty's ship _Pleiades_ being one of the very few ships in the Service whose captain still maintained so ancient and honoured a custom, the discontinuance of which could only be advocated by common, illiterate persons--such as the blue-jackets themselves.

*****

The frigate was on her way from Valparaiso to Sydney--it was in the days of Governor Bligh--and for nearly three weeks had been passing amongst the low-lying coral islands of the Paumotu or Low Archipelago, when one afternoon in May, 182- she lay becalmed off the little island of Vairaatea. The sea was as smooth as glass, and only the gentlest ocean swell rose and fell over the flat surface of the coral reef. In those days almost nothing was known of the people of the Paumotu Group except that they were a fierce and warlike race and excessively shy of white strangers. Standing on his quarter-deck Captain W------ could with his glass see that there were but a few houses on the island--perhaps ten--and as the frigate had been nearly six weeks out from Valparaiso, and officers in the navy did not live as luxuriously then as now, he decided to send a boat ashore and buy some turtle from the natives.

"If you can buy a few thousand cocoanuts as well, do so, Mr. T.," said the captain, "and I'll send another boat later on."

*****

The boat's crew was well armed, and in command of the second lieutenant. Among them was a man named Hallam, a boatswain's mate, a dark-faced, surly brute of about fifty. He was hated by nearly every one on board, but as he was a splendid seaman and rigidly exact in the performance of his duties, he was an especial favourite of the captain's, who was never tired of extolling his abilities and sobriety, and holding him up as an example of a British seaman: and Hallam, like his captain, was a firm believer in the cat.

On pulling in to the beach about a dozen light-skinned natives met them. They were all armed with clubs and spears, but at a sign from one who seemed to be their chief they laid them down All--the chief as well--were naked, save for a girdle of long grass round their loins.

Their leader advanced to Lieutenant T------ as he stepped out of the boat, and holding out his hand said, "Good mornin' What you want?"

Pleased at finding a man who spoke English, the lieutenant told him he had come to buy some turtle and get a boatload of young cocoanuts, and showed him the tobacco and knives intended for payment.

The chiefs eyes glistened at the tobacco; the others, who did not know its use, turned away in indifference, but eagerly handled the knives.

*****

All this time the chiefs eyes kept wandering to the face of Hallam, the boatswain's mate, whose every movement he followed with a curious, wistful expression. Suddenly he turned to the lieutenant and said, in curious broken English, that cocoanuts were easily to be obtained, but turtle were more difficult; yet if the ship would wait he would promise to get them as many as were wanted by daylight next morning.

"All right," said Lieutenant T------, "bear a hand with the cocoanuts now, and I'll tell the captain what you say;" and then to Hallam, "If this calm keeps up, Hallam, I'm afraid the ship will either have to anchor or tow off the land--she's drifting in fast."

In an hour the boat was filled with cocoanuts, and Lieutenant T------ sent her off to the ship with a note to the captain, remaining himself with Hallam, another leading seaman named Lacy, and five bluejackets. Presently the chief, in his strange, halting English, asked the officer to come to his house and sit down and rest while his wife prepared food for him. And as they walked the native's eyes still sought the face of Hallam the boatswain.

His wife was a slender, graceful girl, and her modest, gentle demeanour as she waited upon her husband himself impressed the lieutenant considerably.

"Where did you learn to speak English?" the officer asked his host after they had finished.

He answered slowly, "I been sailor man American whaleship two year;" and then, pointing to a roll of soft mats, said, "You like sleep, you sleep. Me like go talk your sailor man."

*****

Hallam, morose and gloomy, had left the others, and was sitting under the shade of a _toa_-tree, when he heard the sound of a footstep, and looking up saw the dark-brown, muscular figure of the native chief beside him.

"Well," he said, surlily, "what the h---- do you want?"

The man made him no answer--only looked at him with a strange, eager light of expectancy in his eyes, and his lips twitched nervously, but no sound issued from them. For a moment the rude, scowling face of the old seaman seemed to daunt him. Then, with a curious choking sound in his throat, he sprang forward and touched the other man on the arm.

"_Father!_ Don't you know me?"

With trembling hands and blanched face the old man rose to his feet, and in a hoarse whisper there escaped from his lips a name that he had long years ago cursed and forgotten. His hands opened and shut again convulsively, and then his savage, vindictive nature asserted itself again as he found his voice, and with the rasping accents of passion poured out curses upon the brown, half-naked man that stood before him. Then he turned to go. But the other man put out a detaining hand.

*****

"It is as you say. I am a disgraced man. But you haven't heard why I deserted from the _Tagus_. Listen while I tell you. I was flogged. I was only a boy, and it broke my heart."

"Curse you, you chicken-hearted sweep! I've laid the cat on the back of many a better man than myself, and none of 'em ever disgraced themselves by runnin' away and turnin' into a nigger, like you!"

The man heard the sneer with unmoved face, then resumed--

"It broke my heart. And when I was hiding in Dover, and my mother used to come and dress my wounds, do you remember what happened?"

"Aye, you naked swab, I do: your father kicked you out!"

"And I got caught again, and put in irons, and got more cat. Two years afterwards I cleared again in Sydney, from the _Sirius_.... And I came here to live and die among savages. That's nigh on eight years ago."

There was a brief silence. The old man, with fierce, scornful eyes, looked sneeringly at the wild figure of the broken wanderer, and then said--

"What's to stop me from telling our lieutenant you're a deserter? I would, too, by God, only I don't want my shipmates to know I've got a nigger for a son."

The gibe passed unheeded, save for a sudden light that leapt into the eyes of the younger man, then quickly died away.

"Let us part in peace," he said. "We will never meet again. Only tell me one thing--is my mother dead?"

"Yes."

"Thank God for that," he murmured. Then without another word the outcast turned away and disappeared among the cocoa-palms.

*****

The second boat from the _Pleiades_ brought the captain, and as he and the lieutenant stood and talked they watched the natives carrying down the cocoa-nuts.

"Hurry them up, Hallam," said Lieutenant T------; "the tide is falling fast. By the by, where is that fellow Lacy; I don't see him about?"

As he spoke a woman's shriek came from the chiefs house, which stood some distance apart from the other houses, and a tall brown man sprang out from among the other natives about the boats and dashed up the pathway to the village.

"Quick, Hallam, and some of you fellows," said Captain W------, "run and see what's the matter. That scoundrel, Lacy, I suppose, among the women," he added, with a laugh, to the lieutenant.

The two officers followed the men. In a few minutes they came upon a curious scene. Held in the strong arms of two stout seamen was the native chief, whose heaving chest and working features showed him to be under some violent emotion. On the ground, with his head supported by a shipmate, lay Lacy, with blackened and distorted face, and breathing stertorously. Shaking with fear and weeping passionately as she pressed her child to her bosom, the young native wife looked beseechingly into the faces of the men who held her husband.

"What is the meaning of this?" said Captain W------'s clear, sharp voice, addressing the men who held the chief.

"That hound there"--the men who held their prisoner nearly let him go in their astonishment--"came in here. She was alone. Do you want to know more? I tried to kill him."

"Let him loose, men," and Captain W------ stepped up to the prisoner and looked closely into his dark face. "Ah! I thought so--a white man. What is your name?"

The wanderer bent his head, then raised it, and looked for an instant at the sullen face of Hallam.

*****

"I have no name," he said.

"Humph," muttered Captain W------ to his lieutenant, "a runaway convict, most likely. He can't be blamed, though, for this affair. He's a perfect brute, that fellow Lacy." Then to the strange white man he turned contemptuously:

"I'm sorry this man assaulted your wife. He shall suffer for it to-morrow. At the same time I'm sorry I can't tie _you_ up and flog you, as a disgrace to your colour and country, you naked savage."

The outcast took two strides, a red gleam shone in his eyes, and his voice shook with mad passion.

"'A naked savage'; and you would like to flog me. It was a brute such as you made me what I am," and he struck the captain of the _Pleiades_ in the face with his clenched hand.

*****

"We'll have to punish the fellow, T------," said Captain W------, as with his handkerchief to his lips he staunched the flow of blood. "If I let a thing like this pass his native friends would imagine all sorts of things and probably murder any unfortunate merchant captain that may touch here in the future. But, as Heaven is my witness, I do so on that ground only--deserter as he admits himself to be. Hurry up that fellow, T------."

*****

"That fellow" was Hallam, who had been sent to the boat for a bit of line suitable for the purpose in view. His florid face paled somewhat when the coxswain jeeringly asked him if he didn't miss his green bag, and flung him an old pair of yoke-lines.

*****

The business of flogging was not, on the whole, unduly hurried. Although "All Hands to Witness Punishment" was not piped, every native on the island, some seventy or so all told, gathered round the cocoanut-tree to which the man was lashed, and at every stroke of the heavy yoke-lines they shuddered. One, a woman with a child sitting beside her, lay face to the ground, and as each cruel swish and thud fell on her ear the savage creature wept.

*****

"That's enough, Hallam," said Captain W------, somewhat moved by the tears and bursting sobs of the pitying natives, who, when they saw the great blue weals on the brown back swell and black drops burst out, sought to break in through the cordon of blue jackets.

***** Clustering around him, the brown people sought to lift him in their arms and carry him to his house; but his strength was not all gone, and he thrust them aside. Then he spoke, and even the cold, passionless Captain W------ felt his face flush at the burning words:

"For seven years, lads, I've lived here, a naked savage, as your captain called me. I had a heavy disgrace once, an' it just broke my heart like--I was flogged--and I wanted to hide myself out of the world. Seven years it is since I saw a white man, an' I've almost forgotten I _was_ a white man once; an' now because I tried to choke a hound that wanted to injure the only being in the world I have to love, I'm tied up and lashed like a dog--_by my own father!_"

*****

The island was just sinking below the horizon when the burly figure of boatswain's mate Hallam was seen to disappear suddenly over the bows, where he had been standing.

*****

"A very regrettable occurrence," said Captain W------, pompously, to the chaplain when the boats returned from the search. "No doubt the horror of seeing his only son a disgraced fugitive and severed from all decent associations preyed upon his mind and led him to commit suicide. Such men as Hallam, humble as was his position, are an Honour to the Service. I shall always remember him as a very zealous seaman."

"Particularly with the cat," murmured Lieutenant T------.

[The end]
Louis Becke's short story: An Honour To The Service

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