it might readily be supposed that in such leisurely ships as the southern-going whalers, calling, as they did, at so many out-of-the-way islands in the south pacific, there would have been more inducement than usual to cultivate the bucolics, if only from sheer desire for something to break the long monotony of the voyage. and so, indeed, there was, but not to anything like the extent that i should have expected. on board the cachalot we were handicapped considerably in this direction by reason of several of the officers having an unconquerable dislike to fresh pork, which was the more remarkable because they never manifested the same aversion to the rancid, foul-smelling article supplied to us every other day out of the ship’s salt-meat stores. whence, by the by, is ship salt pork obtained? under what conditions do they rear the animals that produce those massy blocks of “scrunchy” fat, just tinged at one side with a pale pink substance that was once undoubtedly flesh, but when it reaches the sailor bears no resemblance to anything eatable? and how does it acquire that peculiarly vile flavour all its own, which is unlike the taste of any other provision known to caterers? i give it up; i have long ago done so, in fact. men do eat it, although i never could, except by chopping it[149] up fine with broken biscuit and mixing it with pea-soup, so that i could swallow it without tasting it. but the only other creatures able to do so are pigs and sharks. sailors have all kinds of theories respecting its origin, of which i am restricted to saying that they are nearly all unprintable. but i do wish most fervently that those who supply it for human food, both dealers and ship-owners, were, as their victims are, compelled to eat it three times a week or starve. just for a month or two. methinks it would do them much good. but this is a digression.
most of us had our suspicions that our officers’ dislike was not so much to fresh pork as to live pigs, and truly, with our limited deck space, the objection was most reasonable. moreover, the south sea island pig is a questionable-looking beast at the best, not by any means tempting to look at, and of uncertain dietary. they affect startling colours, such as tortoise-shell and tabby, are woolly of coat, lengthy of snout, and almost as speedy as dogs. when fed, which is seldom, ripe cocoa-nut is given them, as it is to all live stock in the islands. but they make many a hearty meal of fish as they wander around the beaches and reef-borders, and this gives a flavour to their produce which is, to say the least of it, unexpected. but as if to make up for our lack of pigs we had the most elaborate fowlery fitted up that i ever was shipmates with. its dimensions were about 8 ft. long, 6 ft. wide, and 5 ft. high. it was built of wood entirely, and exactly on the principle of an oblong canary-cage that is unenclosed on any side. plenty of roosts and nests, plenty of pounded coral and cocoa-nut, and—as the result—plenty of eggs.[150] but such queer eggs. the yolk was hardly distinguishable from the white, and they had scarcely any taste at all. occasionally we got a brood hatched, but for some reason i don’t pretend to understand our fowls didn’t “go much on feathers,” as the skipper said. not to put too fine a point on it, they never missed an opportunity of plucking one another’s feathers out and eating them with much relish. so that they all stalked about in native majesty unclad, doubtless rejoicing in the coolth, and occasionally scanning their own bodies solicitously for any sign of a sprouting feather, of which they themselves might have the first taste. this operated queerly among the young broods, who never got any chance of being fledged, and whose mothers were always fighting about them; but i believe as much that they (the mothers) might eat all the feathers themselves as to protect them from any fancied danger. these naked birds certainly looked funny; but the cook, who was an ingenious south carolina negro, used to gaze at them earnestly and say, “foh de good lawd, sah; ef i aint agwine ter bring hout er plan ter raise chicken ’thout fedders altogedder. w’y, jess look at it. all de strenf dat goes ter fedders ’ll go ter meat—an’ aigs—kase dem chickens ez fatter den ever i see ’bord ship befo’; an den only tink ob de weary trubble save in pluckin’ ob ’em. golly, sah, et’s a great skeem, ’n i’se right on de top ob it.” and, really, there did seem to be something in it.
fowls were plentiful in vau-vau—fairly good ones, too; but it was entirely a mystery to me how any individual property in them was at all possible. for[151] no native had any enclosure for them, or seemed to take any care of them. they just ran wild in the jungly vegetation around the villages and roosted on the trees; but as a result, i suppose, of the persistence through their many generations of their original fellowship with mankind, they never strayed far away from the houses. our friends brought them on board at our first arrival in such numbers that no man was without a pair of fowls, and in sore straits where to keep them. the difficulty was soon solved by the skipper, who said that in his opinion it would soon be inconvenient for the fore-mast hands to see any difference between their fowls and his. yes, and it was even possible that having eaten their own fowls they might forget that trifling fact, and absent-mindedly mistake some of the skipper’s poultry for their own. in order to prevent such mistakes he issued an edict that no more fowls were to be entertained by the crew or cooked for them by the “doctor.” and although this was undoubtedly the wisest solution of our puzzle, there was thereat great discontent for a time, until the ingenious kanakas took to cooking the fowls for us ashore, and bringing them on board ready for eating. being plentiful, as i said, poultry was cheap, the standard price being a fathom of calico of the value of 6d. for two, for ship’s stock, while our private friends furnished them to us for nothing. and there are also in the south pacific many small islands unpeopled upon which that most sensible and practical of navigators, james cook, had left both fowls and pigs to breed at their own sweet will. these islets[152] have always many cocoa-nut trees, the fruit from which affords plentiful food for the pigs, who show great ingenuity in getting at the contents of the fallen nuts, while the fowls apparently find no difficulty in picking up a comfortable livelihood. by tacit agreement these lonely ocean store-houses of good food are allowed to remain undisturbed by both the natives of adjacent islands and passing ships, except in cases of necessity. we once broke this unwritten law, for although we had not long left fiji, we landed upon one of these oases in the blue waste, and had a day’s frolic there. it was a veritable paradise, although not more than three acres in area. its only need seemed to be fresh water, for as it had grown to be an island by the deposit of sand upon the summit of a coral reef, there were of course no springs. and yet it was completely clothed with vegetation, the cocoa-palms especially growing right down to the edge of the sea, so that at high water the wavelets washed one side of their spreading roots quite bare. being no botanist, i cannot describe the various kinds of plants that luxuriated there, having, i suppose, become accustomed to the privation of fresh water, as the fowls and pigs had also done. but i did notice that the undergrowth seemed to consist principally of spreading bushes, rising to a height of about 5 feet, and bearing, in the greatest abundance, those tiny crimson and green cones known to most people as bird’s-eye chillies. we all had cause to remember this, for thrusting our way through these bushes under the burning rays of the sun, we got in some mysterious way some of their pungent juices upon our faces and arms. and the effect was much the same as the application of a strong mustard plaster would have been.
we did not commit any great depredations. the second mate shot (with a bomb-gun) a couple of pigs, and we managed to catch half-a-dozen fowls, but they were so wild and cunning here, that except at night it was by no means easy to lay hands upon them. as so often happened to us, we found our best catch upon the beach, where just after sunset we waylaid two splendid turtle that had just crawled ashore to deposit their eggs. the advantage of such a catch as this was in the fact that turtle may be kept alive on board ship for several weeks, if necessary, by putting them in a cask of sea-water, and though unfed, they do not seem to be perceptibly impoverished. we also collected a goodly store of fresh unripe cocoa-nuts, which are one of the most delicious and refreshing of all tropical fruits. i do not suppose it would be possible to bring them to england without their essential freshness being entirely dissipated, for in order to enjoy them thoroughly they should be eaten new from the tree. they would be a revelation to people whose acquaintance with cocoa-nut is limited to the fully ripe and desperately indigestible article beloved of the bank holiday caterer, and disposed of at the favourite game of “three shies a penny.” in that form no native of cocoa-nut-producing countries ever dreams of eating them. for they are really only fit for “copra,” the universal term applied throughout the tropics to cocoa-nut prepared for conversion into oil. when the nuts are fully ripe, a native will seat[154] himself by a heap of them, a small block of wood before him with a hollow in its centre, and an old axe in his hand. placing a nut on the block, unhusked, of course, he splits it open by one blow of the axe and lays the two halves in the sun. by the time he has split open the last of the heap, he may begin at the first opened nuts and shake their contents into bags, for they will be dried sufficiently for the meat to fall readily from the shells. that is “copra.” but before the husk has hardened into fibre, even before the shells have become brittle, when it is possible to slice off the top of the nut as easily as you would that of a turnip, the contents almost wholly consist of a bland liquor, not cloyingly sweet, cool even under the most fervent blaze of the sun, and refreshing to the last degree. around the sides of the immature shell there is, varying in thickness according to the age of the nut, a jelly-like deposit, almost tasteless, but wonderfully sustaining. i have heard it vaunted as a cure for all diseases of malnutrition, and i should really be inclined to believe that there was some basis for the claim. the juice or milk, if allowed to ferment, makes excellent vinegar.
a long spell of cruising without touching at any land having exhausted all our stock of fowls, to say nothing of fruit and vegetables, of which we had almost forgotten the taste, it was with no ordinary delight that we sighted the kermadec group of islands right ahead one morning, and guessed, by the course remaining unaltered, that our skipper was inclined to have a close look at them, if not to land. as[155] we drew nearer and nearer our hopes rose, until, at the welcome order to “back the mainyard,” we were like a school full of youngsters about to break up. few preparations were needed, for a whaler’s crew are always ready to leave the ship at any hour of the day or night for an indefinite period. and in ten minutes from the time of giving the first orders, two boats were pulling in for the small semi-circular bay with general instructions to forage for anything eatable. a less promising place at first sight for a successful raid could hardly be imagined, for the whole island seemed composed of one stupendous mountain whose precipitous sides rose sheer from the sea excepting just before us. and even there the level land only appeared like a ledge jutting out from the mountain-side, and of very small extent. as we drew nearer, however, we saw that even to our well-accustomed vision the distance had proved deceitful, and that the threshold of the mountain was of far greater area than we had supposed, being, indeed, of sufficient extent to have afforded shelter and sustenance to quite a respectable village of colonists had any chosen to set up their homes in such a lonely spot. but to the instructed eye the steep beach, wholly composed of lava fragments, gave a sufficient reason why such a sheltered nook might be a far from secure abiding-place, even had not a steadfast stain of dusty cloud poised above the island in the midst of the clear blue sky added its witness to the volcanic conditions still ready to burst forth. but these considerations did not trouble us. with boisterous mirth we dodged the incoming[156] rollers, and, leaping out of the boats as their keels grated on the shore, we ran them rapidly up out of the reach of the eager surf, delighted with the drenching because of its coolness. dividing into parties of three, we plunged gaily into the jungly undergrowth, chasing, as boys do butterflies, the brown birds, like overgrown partridges, that darted away before us in all directions. we succeeded in catching a few, finding them to be what we afterwards knew in new zealand as “maori hens,” something between a domestic fowl and a partridge, but a dismal failure in the eatable way, being tough and flavourless as any fowl that had died of old age. of swine, the great object of our quest, we saw not a hoof-print; in fact, we assured ourselves that whatever number of these useful animals the family that once resided in this desolate spot had reared, they had left no descendants. it was a grievous disappointment, for it threw us back upon the goats, and goat as food is anathema to all sailors. but it was a fine day; we had come out to kill something, and, as no other game appeared available, we started after the goats. it was a big contract. we were all barefooted, and, although on board the ship we had grown accustomed to regard the soles of our feet as quite impervious to feeling as any leather, we soon found that shore travelling over lava and through the many tormenting plants of a tropical scrub was quite another pair of shoes. we did capture a couple of goats, one a patriarch of unguessable longevity with a beard as long as my arm, and the other a nanny heavy with kid. these we safely conveyed[157] on board with us at the close of the day. but the result of our day’s foraging, overshadowing even the boat-load of magnificent fish we caught out in the little bay, was the discovery of a plant known in new zealand as “maori cabbage.” it looks something like a lettuce run to seed, and has a flavour like turnip-tops. i do not suppose any one on shore can realise what those vegetables meant to us, that is, the white portion of the crew. for it was well-nigh two years since we had tasted a bit of anything resembling cabbage, and our craving for green vegetables and potatoes was really terrible. it is one of the most serious hardships the sailor has to endure, the more serious because quite avoidable. potatoes and swede turnips are not dear food, and, if taken up with plenty of mould adhering to them and left so, will keep for six months in all climates. they make all the difference between a good and a bad ship. i am sure no banquet that i have ever sat down to since could possibly have given me a tithe of the epicurean delight i felt over a plentiful plate of this nameless vegetable and a bit of hard salt beef that evening.
although the addition to our stock of provisions, excepting the fish, was but small, we had an ideal day’s enjoyment, and the fun we got out of ancient william, the patriarch, was great. we had him tame in two days, and trying butting matches with the kanakas; in spite of his age i don’t know what we didn’t teach him that a goat could learn. nanny presented us with a charming little pet in the shape of a kid two days after her arrival on board, but to the grief of all hands her milk dried up almost immediately afterwards, so that to save the little creature from starvation, as there was not even a drop of condensed milk on board, we were compelled to kill it. the kanakas ate it, and pronounced it very good. then william the ripe, in charging a kanaka, who dodged him by leaping over the fo’c’s’le scuttle, hurled himself headlong below, breaking both his fore legs. we could have mended him up all right, but he seemed to resent getting better, refused tobacco and all such little luxuries that we tried to tempt him with, and died. i think he was broken-hearted at the idea that a mountaineer like himself, who for goodness knows how many generations had scaled in safety the precipitous cliffs of sunday island, should fall down a stuffy hole on board ship, only about eight feet deep, and break himself all up.
