Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 December 1892 — THE CRUISE OF THE CASCO. [ARTICLE]

THE CRUISE OF THE CASCO.

Stories Not told by Stevenson in His South Sea. Letters. 3an Francisco Cor. to the Chicago Inter-Ocean Walter Cook lives in Oakland now. Pacific Islands. He’s a capital yam spinner, and full to the brim of South Sea reminiscences. “Have you been reading Robert Louis Stevenson's story about the ‘Beach at Falesa’?” he asked me one day last week. And then without waiting for a reply he sailed in and began telling the yarns that I am now telling yOu. Cook lived in the South Seas a good many years, and is well known by all the traders and masters that sail from this port. “I was a trader down there myself," he began: “used to swap plug tobacco and gaudy calico for copra and shells. Had a big station at Tahito, on the island of Tahiti. Knew tbe-Canakas like a. bre. and stoorfra with the big chiefs, and all that sort of'thing, . - : _ “ Some time in- 1889 Stevenson •ame dow there in the Casco. You remember the schooner he left San Francisco in? The same one. “What should 1 see one fine day but the Casco sailing into the harbor. I had the run of things there and I kept a Whitehall on the beach and could pick out a crew of Kanakas at a moments notice. I used to turn in almost any way. “So I out in the Whitehall after her; and caught her, too, in good season. ‘Twenty-five dollars,’ I.savs to the tall, good looking white man dressed like; a Kanaka who leaned over the bowrail and bargained with me. He thought that was too muph, and he said he guessed he’d let the Kanakas steer him in. “ ‘All right,’ says I, buttheydon’t know the rocks Jiere.’ Then I called out to the Kanakas in their language

that there was $10 in it for them if they’d reef him. They had three natives aboard,and those three knew their bfliiness, I can-tell you. Inside of twenty rninutes the tall white man sung out for me to come aboard. The Kanakas had failed him badly. Well, I went on board and steered him in. ‘ls there a Scotchman on the island?’ was the first question he put to me when we cast anchor. “ ‘That there is,’ said I ‘an old fel,o.w who lives over the hills back of the station. He has a brogue on him as thick as your arm.’ “‘All the better,’ says he. And he wanted to see the Scotchman first thing. He Daid a good $lO, to, for :he horse and rig to drive him over there. But that’s getting ahead of my story. “ ‘l’m the man that writes books,’ he said. ‘Mv name’s Stevenson. I want to go over the island to take :ome pictures.’ “Well, in transferring his camera rom the schooner into the Whitehall it tumbled overboard. You could look down into the thirty fathoms of water and see her lying there by the rocks as plain like as if she was floating on the vvater.

“Stevenson was sore, put out over his loss, and he showed it, too, and that's where he made the big mistake. If he’d treated the thing as a joke and offered the Kanakas a plug of tobacco to fish it up. he could have carried it ashore with him. “But what does he do? He ups and offers the Kanakas $10 a head for diving for it. and when two or three made believe to try for it. and came up without it,Stevenson got excited. “‘l’ll give $50 for that machine!’ he says, and then all hope of getting it fled, for the Kanakas figured it out that Stevenson would offer that much for the recovery of his own property it must be a very valuable thing, and would be worth much more to them. Stevenson had but one camera with him, and as the island contained some of the finest tropical scenery .thereabouts, he hated to leave it without getting some photographs. But he went on over the hill to see his Scotchman, leaving his camera, like, McGinty, at the bottom of the sea. “No sooner was his back fairly turued than the Kanakas began a grand scramble for that machine, as though it was so much gold dust. You couldn’t have twisted a lamb’s tail twice before they had it high and dry on the beach. “They carried it off in triumph, fully expecting to sell it to some white man for a fortune. “Three days latter I bought it from them for a plug of nigger head, and when Steveusojn came that'Way again I gave him hrs camera, none the worse for its soaking. “That night we all had ourrftllofchampagne on board the Casco. The next day Stevenson made a tour of the island with his .photographing apparatus. “Yes, there’s many a good story to be told of life in the South Sea Islands. For all it’s so balmy and quiet down there a man lives more and sees more of the world in four years on the island than many men do in forty years who stay at home in a big city,” continued Cook. It were worth your while to know Walter Cook, if only to listen to his South Sea stories. Were he an accomplished litterateur, lie might write syndicate letters that would win him more fame than those of Robert Louis Stevenson have won for their author. “And talking of Stevenson again,” said Cook, “the’ e never was a bigger ween horn struck the islands than ttleauthorof The Wrecker.' “Wli/u as hrst came to Tahiti he huuted'all around for a dry dockland

was badly put out when Informed that there was no Such thing short of Australia. “The Casco wants scraping badly. I suppose I’ll have to beach her to have it done.” “Not a bit of it," we told him. ~ dozen TCnrvrkng o oliilt of to. baecp and set them to work with the promise of another plug a piece when the scraping is done. “But how are they going to get at her while she is in the water?” asked the perplexed author. “Leave that to me,” I told him, and he did so. He was a good deal surprised to see those Kanakas dive under the Casco’s bottom and scrape her clean in less time than it would have taken to dry-dock the schooner, had there been such a convenience at hand. Stevenson watched them all day long. He seemed fairly enchanted with their spryness in the water,and when the sharks began to gather about them he cried out to bring -thcm-aK-oa-bpard in a boat. But the natives never headed him. They feared the man-eating sharks no more in the water than on deck. An able bodied Kanaka, you know, can out-swim a shark any day. When the big fish get toj near one of the native scrapers he would get a kick or a punch behind the fins, and that would settle the skark so far as the native was concerned. If one of the sharks got too persistent in his attentions on the scraping Kanaka, then the native would stop his work long enough to jab his scrapiug tool into the shark’s* belly a few times. But this the natives were loath to do, for it iuterferred with their work, the blood from the wounded shark discoloring the water and making it opaque, so they could not see the hull of the schooner.~

Stevenson was simply amazed at all this, and instead of giving each Kanaka another plug of tobacco he paid them $5 apiece for their day’s work. There were a dozen drunken Kanaka in town that night. The best joke on Stevenson that I can remember now occurred in the Marquesas Archipelago. At that time the author had a crew of six Kanakas. One night in the schooner Poe, which means pearl, I spoke the Oasco, thirteen miles off the reefs. She was in distress, so I went aboard to see yflfat was the matter. There I found Stevenson and his Captain alone —not another soul on board. “What’s the matter,” says I. “Where’s your crew? You can’t get in alone." “Of course we can’t,” said Stevenson, “and that’s just the trouble. The crew has deserted us, every man Jack of them. An hour ago they all scampered off over the deck rail and are now swimming home or are drowned.” “Never you fear* that they’ll drown,” I said. “A thirteen mile swim for a Kanaka is only a pleasure trip. There’s only one way to drownj a native, and that’s to hold his head under water. “Then Stevenson told us how the crew came to desert him. One of them had been sent aloft and told to lower the gaff topsail and make fast the block. The Kanaka obeyed orders and all went well till a squall struck the Casco a little later--one of those tropical storms that do a heap of damage while they last, but quHdy. blow over. “When the scuall struck the Casco tlio gaff topsail blew off. showing that the Kanaka had fastened it carelessly. In the excitement the CapjEam lost tits temper and gave thrgfci fending native a cuff. “Instantly those six natives went below and packed up their scant belongings. They came on deck naked, with their clothes tied on their heads, In another instant the Casco's crew •was in the water, swimming for shore, thirteen miles away. “Just at that place, too, the sea is infested with sharks, some of them fifteen feet long, but not one of the six men met with a mishap, and three days later, when I came back that way, I carried, them back to Tahiti “Well, the end of it was that I had to lend the Casco three of my natives. This made me awfully shorthanded, and you bet Stevenson had to pay for it. But without this help Stevenson would have been wrecked sure. No two men could have taken a schooner over those reefs.”