Horror in Paradise (31 page)

A quick stroke of his knife cut the sennit that lashed the sides together. He felt inside. “Only two, after all, but big ones, and no mistake. Wrapped in cloth, too! I wonder—Hell and furies, what’s this?”—as his fingers came in contact with something that felt like a human eye. Drawing his hand quickly back, he fumbled in his pockets for a match, and struck it.

Breadfruit? No. Two heads with closed eyes, and livid lips blue with the pallor of death, showing their white teeth. And Salome covered her face and slid down in the bottom of the boat again, and wept afresh for her cousin and brother, and the boat came up in the wind, but no one awoke.

The trader was angry. But after he had tied up the basket again, he put the boat on her course once more and called to the girl. She crept close to him and nestled under his overcoat, for the morning air came across the sea from the dewladen forests and she was chilled. Then she told the story of how her grandma had begged the heads from those of Malietoa’s troops who had taken them at Matautu, and then gone to the camp at Mulinu’u in the hope of getting a passage in some boat to Manono, her country, where she would fain bury them. And that night he had come, and old Lupetea had rejoiced and sworn her to secrecy about the heads in the basket. And that also was why Lupetea was afraid for the boat to go down inside the passage, for there were many enemies to be met with, and they would have shot old Lupetea because she was of Manono. That was all. Then she ate the sardines, and, leaning her head against the trader’s bosom, fell asleep.

As the first note of the great grey pigeon sounded the dawn, the trader’s boat sailed softly up to the Salua beach, and old Lupetea rose, and, bidding the crew goodbye, and calling down blessings on the head of the good and clever white man as she rubbed his and the girl’s noses against her own, she grasped her basket of breadfruit and went ashore. Then the trader, with Salome by his side, sailed out again into the ocean.

Samuel L. Clemens [Mark Twain]

Samuel L. Clemens (1835-1910), whose arrival in Honolulu on March 18, 1866, was noted on the passenger list under his recently adopted pseudonym of “Mark Twain,” spent four months in the “Sandwich Islands” as a newspaper correspondent. Traveling around the group, he described life as he saw it more than a century ago in the future fiftieth state.

While on a horseback tour of the Kona Coast of Hawaii, the reporter came upon a large temple platform “which was built,” he wrote, “in a single night, in the midst of storm and thunder and rain, by the ghastly hands of dead men! Tradition says that by the weird glare of the lightning a noiseless multitude of phantoms were seen at their strange labor far up the mountainside at dead of night—flitting hither and thither and bearing great lava blocks clasped in their nerveless fingers—appearing and disappearing as the pallid luster fell upon their forms and faded away again. Even to this day, it is said, the natives hold this dread structure in awe and reverence, and will not pass it in the night.”

While he was in Honolulu, some survivors of one of the most amazing episodes in Pacific annals arrived in the hospital in that port. The clipper ship
Hornet
had accidentally been set on fire near the equator, and Captain Josiah Mitchell and fourteen men had made their way in the ship’s longboat to Laupahoehoe on the island of Hawaii, a disastrous voyage of four thousand miles.

Clemens spent the night interviewing the seamen and writing the story of their adventures for the Sacramento, California,
Weekly Union.
Next morning the manuscript was tossed aboard a schooner which had already cast off for San Francisco. This “grand scoop” was widely reprinted, and on his return to California “Mark” boldly billed the newspaper for $300, a sum fifteen times his usual rate for an article. This exciting piece of early reporting made its writer for the first time a “literary personage,” and, in his own words, “about the best-known honest man on the Pacific Coast.”

Honolulu, June 25, 1866.

IN THE postscript to a letter which I wrote two or three days ago and sent by the ship
Live Yankee,
I gave you the substance of a letter received here from Hilo by Walker, Allen & Co., informing them that a boat containing fifteen men, in a helpless and starving condition, had drifted ashore at Laupahoehoe, Island of Hawaii, and that they had belonged to the clipper ship
Hornet,
Mitchell master, and had been afloat on the ocean since the burning of that vessel, about one hundred miles north of the equator, on the 3d of May—forty-three days.

The third mate and ten of the seamen have arrived here and are now in the hospital. Captain Mitchell, one seaman named Antonio Passene, and two passengers (Samuel and Henry Ferguson, of New York City, young gentlemen aged respectively eighteen and twenty-eight) are still at Hilo, but are expected here within the week.

In the captain’s modest epitome of this terrible romance, which you have probably published, you detect the fine old hero through it. It reads like Grant.

I have talked with the seamen and with John S. Thomas, third mate, but their accounts are so nearly alike in all substantial points that I will merely give the officer’s statement and weave into it such matters as the men mentioned in the way of incidents, experiences, emotions, etc. Thomas is a very intelligent and a very cool and self-possessed young man and seems to have kept a pretty accurate log of his remarkable voyage in his head. He told his story, of three hours’ length, in a plain, straight-forward way, and with no attempt at display and no straining after effect. Wherever any incident may be noted in this paper where any individual has betrayed any emotion, or enthusiasm, or has departed from strict, stoical self-possession, or had a solitary thought that was not an utterly unpoetical and essentially practical one, remember that Thomas, the third mate, was not that person. He has been eleven days on shore, and already looks sufficiently sound and healthy to pass almost anywhere without being taken for an invalid. He has the marks of a hard experience about him, though, when one looks closely. He is very much sunburned and weatherbeaten, and looks thirty-two years old. He is only twenty-four, however, and has been a sailor fifteen years. He was born in Richmond, Maine, and still considers that place his home. The following is the substance of what Thomas said:

The
Hornet
left New York on the 15th of January last, unusually well manned, fitted, and provisioned—as fast and as handsome a clipper ship as ever sailed out of that port. She had a general cargo—a little of everything: a large quantity of kerosene oil in barrels; several hundred cases of candles; also four hundred tons Pacific Railroad iron, and three engines. The third mate thinks they were dock engines, and one of the seamen thought they were locomotives. Had no gales and no bad weather; nothing but fine sailing weather, and she went along steadily and well—fast, very fast, in fact. Had uncommonly good weather off Cape Horn; he had been around that Cape seven times—each way—and had never seen such fine weather there before. On the 12th of April, in latitude, say, 35° S. and longitude 95° W., signaled a Prussian bark; she set Prussian ensign, and the
Hornet
responded with her name, expressed by means of Merritt’s system of signals. She was sailing west—probably bound for Australia. This was the last vessel ever seen by the
Hornet’s
people until they floated ashore in Hawaii in the longboat—a space of sixty-four days.

At seven o’clock on the morning of the 3d of May, the chief mate and two men started down into the hold to draw some “bright varnish” from a cask. The captain told him to bring the cask on deck—that it was dangerous to have it where it was, in the hold. The mate, instead of obeying the order, proceeded to draw a canful of the varnish first. He had an open light in his hand, and the liquid took fire; the can was dropped, the officer in his consternation neglected to close the bung, and in a few seconds the fiery torrent had run in every direction, under bales of rope, cases of candles, barrels of kerosene, and all sorts of freight, and tongues of flame were shooting upward through every aperture and crevice toward the deck.

The ship was moving along under easy sail, the watch on duty were idling here and there in such shade as they could find, and the listlessness and repose of morning in the tropics was upon the vessel and her belongings. But as six bells chimed, the cry of “Fire!” rang through the ship and woke every man to life and action. And following the fearful warning, and almost as fleetly, came the fire itself. It sprang through hatchways, seized upon chairs, table, cordage, anything, everything—and almost before the bewildered men could realize what the trouble was and what was to be done the cabin was a hell of angry flames. The mainmast was on fire—its rigging was burned asunder! One man said all this had happened within eighteen or twenty minutes after the first alarm—two others say in ten minutes. All say that one hour after the alarm, the main and mizzenmasts were burned in two and fell overboard.

Captain Mitchell ordered the three boats to be launched instantly, which was done—and so hurriedly that the longboat (the one he left the vessel in himself) had a hole as large as a man’s head stove in her bottom. A blanket was stuffed into the opening and fastened to its place. Not a single thing was saved, except such food and other articles as lay about the cabin and could be quickly seized and thrown on deck. Thomas was sent into the longboat to receive its proportion of these things, and, being barefooted at the time, and bareheaded, and having no clothing on save an undershirt and pantaloons, of course he never got a chance afterward to add to his dress. He lost everything he had, including his logbook, which he had faithfully kept from the first. Forty minutes after the fire alarm the provisions and passengers were on board the three boats, and they rowed away from the ship—and to some distance, too, for the heat was very great. Twenty minutes afterward the two masts I have mentioned, with their rigging and their broad sheets of canvas wreathed in flames, crashed into the sea.

All night long the thirty-one unfortunates sat in their frail boats and watched the gallant ship burn; and felt as men feel when they see a tried friend perishing and are powerless to help him. The sea was illuminated for miles around, and the clouds above were tinged with a ruddy hue; the faces of the men glowed in the strong light as they shaded their eyes with their hands and peered out anxiously upon the wild picture, and the gunwales of the boats and the idle oars shone like polished gold.

At five o’clock on the morning after the disaster, in latitude 2° 20’ N., longitude 112° 8’ W., the ship went down, and the crew of the
Hornet
were alone on the great deep, or, as one of the seamen expressed it, “We felt as if somebody or something had gone away—as if we hadn’t any home any more.”

Captain Mitchell divided his boat’s crew into two watches and gave the third mate charge of one and took the other himself. He had saved a studding sail from the ship, and out of this the men fashioned a rude sail with their knives; they hoisted it, and taking the first and second mates’ boats in tow, they bore away upon the ship’s course (northwest) and kept in the track of vessels bound to or from San Francisco, in the hope of being picked up.

I have said that in the few minutes’ time allowed him, Captain Mitchell was only able to seize upon the few articles of food and other necessaries that happened to lie about the cabin. Here is the list: Four hams; seven pieces of salt pork (each piece weighed about four pounds); one box of raisins; one hundred pounds of bread (about one barrel); twelve two-pound cans of oysters, clams, and assorted meats; six buckets of raw potatoes (which rotted so fast they got but little benefit from them); a keg with four pounds of butter in it; twelve gallons of water in a forty-gallon tierce or scuttle butt; four one-gallon demijohns full of water; three bottles of brandy, the property of passengers; some pipes, matches, and a hundred pounds of tobacco; they had no medicines. That was all these poor fellows had to live on for forty-three days—the whole thirty-one of them!

Each boat had a compass, a quadrant, a copy of Bowditch’s
Navigator,
and a nautical almanac, and the captain’s and chief mate’s boats had chronometers.

Of course, all hands were put on short allowance at once. The day they set sail from the ship each man was allowed a small morsel of salt pork—or a little piece of potato, if he preferred it—and half a sea biscuit three times a day. To understand how very light this ration of bread was, it is only necessary to know that it takes seven of these sea biscuits to weigh a pound. The first two days they only allowed one gill of water a day to each man; but for nearly a fortnight after that the weather was lowering and stormy, and frequent rain squalls occurred. The rain was caught in canvas, and whenever there was a shower the forty-gallon cask and. every other vessel that would hold water was filled—even all the boots that were watertight were pressed into this service, except such as the matches and tobacco were deposited in to keep dry. So for fourteen days. There were luxurious occasions when there was plenty of water to drink. But after that how they suffered the agonies of thirst for four long weeks!

For seven days the boats sailed on, and the starving men ate their fragment of biscuit and their morsel of raw pork in the morning, and hungrily counted the tedious hours until noon and night should bring their repetitions of it. And in the long intervals they looked mutely into each other’s faces, or turned their wistful eyes across the wild sea in search of the succoring sail that was never to come.

“Didn’t you talk?” I asked one of the men.

“No; we were too downhearted—that is, the first week or more. We didn’t talk—we only looked at each other and over the ocean.”