Cheer Boys Cheer: The Boys' Journal, No. 62 — page 4: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

; 2 In the act of reaching for the brown jar, Captain Chance paused suddenly, rearing his head to. listen; and as he did so his small, round, watery eyes seemed to bulge with a terrible fright. So far there had been no noises about the ship save the steady squeak of a rusty pump; but all in a moment there had sounded a wild scream of agony, and now the air was filled with a medley of shouts and howls, and the patter of many naked feet. “By thunder,’ roared the skipper, “it’s the Kanakas! They’ve broken out 1’ He dashed for the door, turned pack to snatch a loaded revolver from the table, and then made a stumbling rush for the deck, Hawkins folowing hard upon his heels. In the open both men fetched up with loud gasps, daunted for the mo- ment by the hurly-burly which con- fronted them as they locked forward along the decks. Out of the noisome hold a black macs of humanity was rising in a never-ending stream, so — that the whole ship looked like some mighty ant-heap freshly turned over. The Kanakas—most of them all but stark naked—were swarming the deck aud alleyways to the number of at least a hundred, and in the midst of this sinister mob of stam- peding savages three white men only were striving to gain the upper hand, one of them laying about him furiously with a belaying-pin, whilst the other two banged right and left with their bare fists. The rest of the crew—excepting the Chinese cook, who seemed to have been knocked out of his senses —had huddled right forward into a cringing, panic-stricken group. Unintelligible eries mingled with the slap-slap of bare feet and the fierce yells which sounded as whole batches of the wretched slaves—for such the Kanakas might be called— were sent tumbling back headlong into the dark hold. Here and there on the swarming deck a man went down, and others promptly tumbled over him, and there they would lie, a kicking, struggHng mass, unabie to rise again for the mob that surged around. The barbaric fury of the whole scene was intensified by its peaceful cetting—that dirty, evil- smelling ship, with its hordes of naked human beings, rocking gently on the placid sea, with an island- like fairyland not a cable's length away, and a tropic sun blazing down from the heavens. Captain Chance was a man _ of action when it came to a crisis. Out shot his right arm, and once, twice his revolver cracked in the air. In- stantly the wild fight was checked, scores of Kanakas cowering. down like so many frightened beasts. Then, somewhere well forward, there was a fresh disturbance as one naked figure leapt on to a rail and poised itself for a dive. Bang went the revolver; and it was a dead Kanaka who went over the side into that shark-infested sea. With his weapon emoking at the CHEER BOYS CHEER. barrel, Captain Chance glared out across the mob of cringing natives. “Get amongst them, Hawkins,” he called to his trusted mate, with- out looking round. “ We'll have the hatches on them after this! What’s up with the Chink?” The Chinese cook had picked him- self up, and was shuffling towards the galley with a broken saucepan in one hand, whilst with the loose sleeve of his other arm he seemed to be wiping tears from his almond eyes. Hawkins, with a nerve that justi- fied the captain’s faith in him, went forward weaponless into the very thick of the mob, and a moment later he was hurtling out a string of strange-sounding orders in the native tongue. From a_ passive, slow-moving man he was suddenly transformed into a raving giant, shouting, gesticulating with his long arms, pushing and thrusting vio- lently. The Kanakas let their shoulders droop with an air of sub- mission that was pathetic, and in sullen silence they began to crowd back into the filthy pen, anyone who ventured a backward glance finding himself covered by the captain’s weapon. _ “Myr. Hawkins,” roared the skipper, “‘send Bantry aft to me, with Holroyd.” With that he turned his back and waited, enjoying his own importance and smiling grimly to himself over this opportunity of bestowing a verbal thrashing upon the “scally- wags.’’ When he swung about to face them, his first action was to spit bard at their feet. “Huh!” he said, looking the two up and down. “And what d’you think o’ yourselves, eh? Sink me, soul and all, you’re a choice pair!” They certainly were as strange a pair of white men as one would ever expect to find, even in that island world of the wide Pacific, where foam-embroidered shores are freely scattered with human flotsam. Holroyd, much the taller of the two, had the lean, wiry frame of a hardy Britisher, and in his hand- some face and steady eyes there was a leok of. refinement and quiet courage which could only be ex- pected to gall a man of Captain Chance’s nature. He didn’t look a born waster, this handsome, straight- standing fellow of nineteen, yet there was the half-ashamed air about him of oné who has “gone under.” Bantry was a mere shrimp of a lad beside his companion. Every inch a Ceckney, he stood with his feet turned inwards and his knees slack, and his shoulders were dread- fully narrow. But there was some- thing very likeable about his sharp face, whilst the pert way he held his head seemed to say to everybody, “T’m as good as you!’ And perhaps he was. ‘“Now see here, I'll take you first of all,’ burst out the ekipper, with a pugnacious thrust of the head at Holroyd. ‘‘ We'll go into this little matter of the Kanakas. I don’t reckon to have a rumpus of that sort on my boat. If a man’s left in charge, I expect him to be equal to the job. You’re new to the business perhaps?’’. “I am,” cut in Holroyd tersely. “This is my first experience of the slave trade—blackbirding I suppose you prefer to call it—I assure you it will be my last.” _ ‘Even if you have to starve for it!” jeered the captain. “But you can drop that sort of talk, my fine fellow. There’s no gallery to play to; and that wasn’t the way you talked either when I picked you off the beach, way back on the mainland. Starving you were then—a bag o’ bones ready for the birds to peck at. And now——” He paused, bit off the end of a cheap cigar, and took stock of the young man who faced him with dauntless eyes. “By thunder,” the bully blazed forth agaim, as he struck a match, “ve bin too easy with you! Too much good food and not enough hard werk! You skulking lubber! You ain’t good for anything, not even for keeping a dozen niggers walking round the deck!” ““Let me explain——”’ “T don’t want no excuses!” _ “ But I insist upon telling you one thing,’ cried Holroyd, with a for- ward stride that checked the skipper open-mouthed. “The Kanakas— Heaven help the poor wretches! They are little better than sheep, and I could almost wish they had more fight in them. They were taking their turns quietly enough; there would have been no upset but for that beast of a Chinaman.” “Ay, ay, blame the Chink!” sneered Captain Chance, puffing at his cigar. ‘‘ Well, Tom Jesty,’? he growled, as another of the deck hands came up and saluted, “ what the blazes do you want?” The new-comer was the man who had taken his stand with Holroyd and Bantry in the recent melee—a brawny man, with a golden beard and a body like a barrel. “Tf so be as I might speak, eap’n,”’ he said, “’tis as th’ lad says, sir. The Chinkie begun it. One o’ th’ Kanakas rolled against him, and he ups witha pot o’ scald- ing water and flings it over the nigger. Ay, sir, and if the lad here hadn’t broke the Chinkie’s head, you may lay to it I would ha’ done the job myself!” “Syme ’ere |’ chimed in the Cock- ney cheerfully. Captain Chance glowered upon him for a moment, then turned to re- sume his baiting of Holroyd. “Now, see here,” he said. “ You’ve got to learn a few things afore you're an hour older. One is that my cook’s worth a dozen Kanakas any day in the week. Supposing he did scald the nigger, am I to have my dinner spoilt for that? And another thing, Mr. Holroyd, Esquire. Ye'll please remember I’m skipper aboard this hooker. I was master 6’ my own vessel afore you was boru, and I can smell mutiny, before others see it. I know your sort—just the sort as puts the men I nq | (a = Ccommiclooolks. conn