Sam Millar Tells A Story

By H. E. L. Priday

rE albatross, the frigate-bird, the mutton-bird in thousands haunt the shoals and reefs that run out hun dreds of miles into the Coral Sea in the direction of New Guinea. With one or two Melanesians for crew on his cutter.

Sam Miller, mariner and beche-de-mer fisherman, used to sail among them from the Chesterfields to Walpole Island—that is, when he was not mining in the New Caledonian mainland.

All his life a famous rescuer of ship wrecked seamen, Sam was one of those pioneers who. as Jospeh Furphy puts it, “never spared himself, but being a fool, built houses for wise men to live in, and omitted to gather moss.” Money flowed through his hands like water, and Sam’s most successful store was the store-house of his memories. Like many who have lived much alone, he was a great raconteur.

Through Sam’s pioneering of un known shoals, guano from the Coral Sea was, for some years, shipped to Melbourne, Australia, but to-day most of the old workings, save those on Wal pole, have disappeared. On one of his lone voyages, when quite a youngster, Sam found a bottle hanging on a tree on tiny desolate Pabre Islet, in the Surprise Group. (Fabre being named, like neigh bouring Leleizour, after a Noumea port pilot. A “fils” Leleizour is still living in Noumea.) Inside this bottle was the log of the “Maitland.” a 1,200 ton ship lost on the from Sydney to China. The crew had remained on Fabre five months, liv ing on sea birds, and, incredible though it may seem, had not attempted the com paratively short voyage to northern New Caledonia. Instead, part of the crew had left for Australia in a patched-up boat, .and were never heard of again.

Only five days before Sam got there, the captain and the 13 remaining mem bers of the crew, had left in a second boat. They had built it themselves using, in the absence of nails, steel wire taken from the rigging of the wreck.

Prom the description found in the bottle, this boat was* identified later when picked up at Cape York Peninsula. But no trace of the men was ever found.

On another occasion when Sam was out with Lind, the Danish skipper of the “Laura Lind,” sailing by the Hamp ton Reefs, they came on three white men completely naked and in a deplorable physical condition after havfng existed for six months on seabirds, shellfish, and what rainwater they could occasionally catch.

Back in Noumea, these men told the British Consul that their names were James Sly. William Steward Ladbrooke and William Belcher, and that they were survivors of the crew of the “Isabella,” of Plymouth, which had left Newcastle, NSW, for Hong Kong. Their captain, second mate and portion of the crew had left in a boat for* Queensland.

Also rescued from a neighbouring reef were four out of the 17 Chinese passen gers whom the crew had left on board when the ship struck. Theirs was a terrible story of exhaustion and despair.

Ten of their number had been drowned when they threw themselves in the water after they found that the white crew had deserted them.

Sails had passed in the distance; but no notice had been taken of their signals.

IN his later years, prior to World War I, Sam was mostly ashore, and known to every settler, French or Austra

lian, along the coasts of Caledonia.

Ouegoa, in the north, was the usual place of residence/ and a busy place it was then, when the copper and silver-lead mines were being exploited by an English company. To-day it is deserted.

It was near here that a friend of mine who recently died in Noumea had his one and only meeting with Sam. He was out with the local tribe of Nenemas spearing fish in the big nools which the outgoing tide had left, when “Tariki” Henry called him shorewards to introduce him to his old nal.

“Tariki” (“Ariki” to a Maori) too, was another interesting character. His name was Andrew and he was a Scotsman.

When 15 years old, hordes of cannibals had attacked the homestead at Oubatche where the elder Henry employed 80 Hebrideans cutting sandalwood. Of these, four were killed and six wounded.

Mother Henry hid her other and smaller children in the family clothes press, and then looking out of the window saw her eldest son fall wounded by a spear at the palisade. She ran out to him, and dragged him inside. He recovered arid eventually died in the Hebrides, where the natives, who worshipped him, gave him a grand funeral.

“Tariki” had brought Sam along in his cutter, the “Iris,” having found him in a spot of bother with a gendarme. In fact, he had discovered him in the lock up at Amoa charged with what the French call “tapage nocturne” which means he had been making an unholy row after midnight after a “trop forte cuite” or a “barbe a I’oeil”—we’d call it a binge.

“I shall always laugh,” says my friend, “at the memory of Sam’s first words, spoken in execrable French with a pure

Australian accent. ‘Je suis faim,’ he said, ‘how about a bite?’

“He drew from his pocket a long loaf of French bread and a slice of meat; also a bottle of whisky which ‘Tariki’ had given him. These he shared with me, then throwing the empty bottle away, cut up some fig tobacco in his horny palm and settled down to a smoke. I didn’t interrupt him, thinking he might pre sently open up on his old seafaring days.

To my surprise, and at first a little to my disappointment, he began talking horses, perhaps thinking that as a new chum from Australia, the subject would interest me. He had a good yarn to tell for all that.”

“T s’pose yoir_ never heard the story of JL that stallion 'of old Pere King?” 1 Sam had asked. “You know, the King who became the Mueo cattle king and opened up his own meat factory to sell ‘singe’ to the Frog Army and the Cayenne penitentiary?

“Well, I’d just come down from one of my trips for the Guano Company, when Gus Morin, the Hercules of the north, came up from Noumea to Ouegoa

with a big grey stallion named Guarini.

Pere King was farily dving of envy, and eyery time he saw Morin he would ask him to sell; and every time Morin would refuse, jumping his price above the Kingly offer. Eventually King was offer ing him 1,000 francs, which was a lot of money for a horse in Caledonia in those days.

“Some days after the horse sickened and died through eating some poisonous plant. Morin realised he would have to do something desperate if he didn’t want to lose his horse and his money, so he went along to King’s homestead and said he had been thinking things over and had decided to accept his 1,000 francs.

King gave him a cheque on the spot, and Morin told him he could pick up the horse as soon as he liked in the big paddock.

“Instead of going back home, Morin rode on to catch the ‘Ocean Queen,’ just leaving Pam for Noumea. He didn’t return on another of Higginson’s boats till a month later, when he had spent his 1,000 francs.

“For a while, you can bet your life, he did his best to keep out of Pere King’s way. But Ouegoa, though certainly big ger in those days with the mines work ing and barges on the Diahot carting ore down stream, was still a small place.

Sometime they were bound to meet.

“Gus, as I’ve indicated, was a thick skinned giant, but his conscience was still giving him a bit of trouble when Bastille Day came round. That day of festivity, curiosity overcame all his scruples; he .had to see Pere King again, or bust. So he went into the Hotel de France, run in those days by old Lou Perrin, put on an air as bold as brass and bowled up to Pere King in the bar-room.

“ ‘Eh bien, Tom,’ he said, ‘how did you get on with that stallion of mine?’

“ ‘All right, Gus, all right,’ said Pere King, not batting an eyelid.

“ ‘But,’ stammered the Frenchman, ‘the horse was stone dead!’

“ ‘lndeed and he was,’ said Pere King, ‘and well you knew it, you Frog rascal.

But as soon as I found that out, I put him up as a prize for a raffle, 100 num bered tickets at 20 francs a ticket. Sold out quick, too.’

“ ‘C’est vrai? You did that?’ said Gus, eyes popping out of his head. ‘But weren’t there any complaints?’

“ ‘Not as much as you’d think, Gus.

There was certainly some small fuss from one ticket holder, but as he held the winning ticket I gave him his money back when he found the horse was no longer in a fit state to ride. Being a real sport, he couldn’t verv well grumble at that.’” * * ♦ “IT this point,” my friend records, “Sam, J\ with a hoarse laugh, got up and moved towards the village. I left Noumea next morning and never saw him again—he made his final voyage from the Isle of Pott. But I remember him as a sort of Trader Horn of the South Pacific, a great rescuer of shipwrecked seamen, and in his old age a formidable raconteur.”