Concerning "Bully" Hayes: From "The Strange Adventure of James Shervinton, and Other Stories" - 1902Becke, Louis
History
Concerning "Bully" Hayes: From "The Strange Adventure of James Shervinton, and Other Stories" - 1902
Becke, Louis
Adventure stories, Australian; Pacific Area -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Sea stories
During a trading cruise in the Gambier Islands, the captain of our ship
saw some young girls whom Hayes had bought from the King of Aana (one
of the Chain Islands). They were very young, very scantily dressed,
and without doubt very beautiful. They were always chaperoned, day and
night, by two old women. One of these ancient dames named Tuna (the Eel)
told our captain that, by and by, the "big captain" would come and take
them. Tuna had quite a fund of anecdotes about Bully, whom she regarded
as immeasurably superior to any white man she had ever seen. When she
was a young and giddy girl of sixteen, she had been much admired, so
she said, by Lord John--and the officers of His Majesty's ship --------.
Bully Hayes, she believed, was Lord John's spirit returned in another
and much stronger body and better shape; and just as she had fallen in
love with the man-of-war captain, so had all the Aana girls with his
latter-day double.
* * * * *
At this time, the only white man on the island was a young American
lad of about nineteen, and Tuna, and her long-haired, dark-eyed
"boarding-school" came to his house, where they sat on an upturned
canoe and drank stone-gin (Tuna took hers neat) while teaching him to
pronounce properly the Paumotu language. Heavens! what eyes those girls
possessed! Like stars they glowed with slumbering liquid fire--the fire
of a quick-blooded and passionate race. Any one of these five island
girls, our chief mate used to say, would have utterly demoralised even
a Trappist monastery, had the holy brothers seen her face peeping
in during their devotions. This island, Nukutavake, had but few
inhabitants, most of whom had been brought there by Hayes, who, they
said, would come again in a year or so, and take them back to Aana and
Maga-Beva. They were all political offenders, and to escape death they
besought Bully to take them to Nukutavake until "the wrath of the chiefs
was dead." Bully, who had an idea that there was a lot of pearl-shell on
Nukutavake, gave them all a passage, and also the two old women and
the girls before mentioned. One of the latter, Talalua, told the young
trader that Kapeni Hesi (Hayes) would have taken her with him but the
ship was too small, and he had no more room, and there were two girls
from Huaheine--"dogs with much gold in their ears "--with him, who
threatened to give her to the sharks if she came aboard. During our stay
at this island a schooner from Tahiti came to an anchor, and we learnt
from the young American that he was to be removed to another island
called Vairaatea. He sailed the following morning, and his departure was
marked by the tearful farewells of Bully's beauties and old Tuna, who
embraced him and rubbed noses, and wept gin-odorous tears of unalloyed
gratitude when he gave her three bottles of liquor. To each of Hayes's
nymphs he also presented a piece of book muslin (twelve yards each) and
a bottle of musk valued at 2 dollars a bottle. Talalua and Marami
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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