"How Nicholls Eastbourne Became Rich" by Willy Andersson Grebst

“How Nicholls Eastbourne Became Rich”

A novella by Willy Andersson Grebst from Savage Life: South Pacific Tales (Åhlen & Åkerlunds Förlag, Gothenburg, 1908). Translation: Andrew Thelander 2012.

Nicholls Eastbourne was a trader like all the other Englishmen resident in Tahiti. His shop was on the Avenue de la Grande Armée, a street that, despite its distinguished name, was narrow and short. Along the sides were small humble trading houses. Over their roofs were stretched magnificent shades and crowns of vibrant red flowers. But Nicholls Eastbourne did not run his shop like the other white men. His two sons-in-law ran it instead. He himself only came down once or twice a week to check the books or examine the copra piled up in a wooden container behind the shop. And on these occasions, if everything was not found to be in order, Nicholls Eastbourne was not a man easily dealt with. His anger grew like a rumbling storm that culminated in a squall of abuse against which the sons-in-law didn’t dare defend themselves; it happened not so seldom that he lost his temper and boxed the ears of whoever happened to be around. And this always attracted the keen interest of the many kanakas who gathered outside on the street to take part in and enjoy the free spectacle. Despite his unrestrained violence and the fact that he was the only one of the older resident merchants who from time to time went on a steady two or three day drinking binge, Nicholls Eastbourne was one of Papeete’s most respected and envied men. He was a clever and cool buyer and, if the whispers were true, the interest he charged on loans that one and all got from him was exorbitant though he never left anyone in difficult circumstances if they sometimes fell behind in repayments. This was proof that the man didn’t only have his head but also his heart in the right place.

Nicholls Eastbourne had lived on the South Pacific islands for over fifty years and was a man of the times. Originally a sailor, cabin boy on a full rigger, he left his vessel during a loading in the Tonga islands. Then he roved around from group to group during many years. He was a whaler and a pearl fisherman. He sailed with trepang to China and hunted seals up at Sachalin. He was a sole trader on lonely atolls, there where no other ships would turn up apart from his company’s supply schooner and the missionary vessel John Williams – “damn the missionaries” he would always say when talking about this – and so he had gone with Bully Hayes, the pirate. Had been with him for three years and taken part in all his hair-raising exploits till he finally tired of the rover’s life, followed a copra schooner to Tahiti, took himself a kanaka wife and began his own trading business. But Lady Luck was not kind to Nicholls Eastbourne. A cyclone smashed the palms on the shoreline along Papaeno which he had acquired with his wife and he had difficulties with the kanakas. Their gentle nature couldn’t really endure his violence. They gave him the nickname “oleaga” which means “the evil one” or “the angry one” and didn’t want to buy from his shop. In vain, he bought the best groceries – better than any others found on the island. In vain, he thought about and costed special advertising. Week after week went by, month after month and year after year without anyone wanting to buy his tinned salmon and sardines, salted meat and biscuits, his calico and knives, porcelain and glass and everything else that made up a well stocked merchant shop. Now and then some kanaka from another place would offer him a ton or two of copra but he could be certain that it was so over-watered that he was doing a bad trade in place for a good one.

Over time the family grew and he blamed his unlucky marriage for all the bad things that occurred. Nicholls Eastbourne’s wife was a full-blooded kanaka as lazy and listless as all the others of her race. The house began to become more and more dilapidated. The children went around amongst the pigs and chooks without supervision or education. His wife herself lay idle during the day on straw mats on the verandah where she daily became fatter and fatter, lazier and lazier, duller and duller. Nicholls Eastbourne, who was an orderly man, had in the beginning tried to wake her energy with punches. He had taken her by the hair and dragged her through the various chores. Had tried to drum her duties into her with the kicks and slaps that were normal in nearly all the mixed race marriages on the island. He swore his way through his rich supply of four languages and bellowed and screamed until he was so hoarse that his throat refused to work anymore. He showed her endless times what to do. Unfortunately married people grow accustomed to each other as they are. However unlucky and ill-matched a marriage is, it remains so in essence to the end; one feels alien, unfortunate and alone if one separates and goes one’s own way. And this more than anywhere else down in the South Pacific Islands where one is a long way from white neighbours and there are no amusements apart from the companionship of kanakas and the gin bottle. When Nicholls Eastbourne finally saw that his wife would never become anything other than the good-natured, childish, lazy and incorrigible kanaka that she was, he stopped trying to reform her, took over running the household and supervising the children himself and became satisfied with all the energy he could muster to bring order and method to one and all. But from that day, his wife never really existed for him anymore. She lay vegetating on the verandah like a fat clumsy animal without anyone taking any notice of her. Finally the children forgot about her, that she was their biological mother, and learned to see and treat her as a friendly and harmless old dog that did nothing but lie still sleeping in a corner.

When six or seven years had passed like this without Nicholls Eastbourne being able to break the taboo the kanakas had put on him, he came to hear one day of a sailor on one of Papeete’s biggest schooners having passed away and the shipping company seeking a replacement. Without thinking, he set out in his little boat and rowed round to Papeete. He went in to the company and declared himself an applicant. He got the job, went on a right royal drinking binge knowing he didn’t need to worry how he would look to the children and the next morning sailed out with a burning hangover on a four month tour to the Marquess Islands where he would exchange copra and pearls as trade to supply the company’s many isolated stations with the new supplies they needed for business. When the four months were over and Nicholls Eastbourne returned from his journey and cast anchor in Papeete lagoon, he went straight into the company and asked if he could buy the schooner, inventory and all; his bad luck was at an end. At first they thought he was half joking.  But when the conditions and the price were agreed upon, to everyone’s amazement, he produced a linen bag with heavy gold coins, old Spanish dollars dating from the previous century the likes of which no white man in Tahiti now had ever seen. He emptied out the coins onto the company’s table and lined them up in stacks of twenty. When he had finished, 215 shining red gold stacks sat there and a little pile of eight small coins to the side by itself. At that time, the unexpected happened every day in that huge area of far flung islands and reefs that together constitute the South Pacific Islands. Men who one day were as poor as ship rats could the next day astonish their colleagues with riches nobody could count. If one asked and pried about the source, there was seldom an answer given. Just a shrug of the shoulders and some inaudible muttering. Those who had any sense let the matter lie there. That Nicholls Eastbourne could have left as a down-and-out returning with a bag of Spanish gold coins was the most unbelievable thing one had heard of. Had he in his passage through the almost unknown Paumoto Islands perhaps found some old Spanish wreck from the Age of Exploration and did the gold coins come from there? Or was it some buried pirate’s treasure he had chanced upon in the Marquess Islands where, it is said, pirates hid out in days gone by? There was something mysterious about the whole thing, something adventurous and peculiar. A mystery which none of the curious Tahitians could solve and which Nicholls Eastbourne didn’t want to help them solve. When the purchase was concluded and the schooner had taken in new supplies of water and provisions, Nicholls Eastbourne rowed out to his home on Papaeno. There he loaded his wife and children into the best boat they could find on the east coast and paid an enormous price to a number of kanakas to row the whole family to Papeete and set them on board the schooner. Thereupon he set sail and pulled up anchor. The last words he screamed out to the white men that stood in a little huddle on the beach to see him off was “I’ll be home again in a year and a half. And if I don’t make it, me and mine will have gone to Hell.”

Nicholls Eastbourne had been away from Tahiti a little over a year without being heard from when a brig from Australia arrived to load up with copra and started some rumours that spread like wildfire through Papeete. A good friend of the brig’s captain, it was said, had met Nicholls Eastbourne in Sydney’s finest hotel. He had been dressed up like a real dandy and had been throwing money about like it was going out of fashion. The wife and children were living in the hotel’s grandest rooms and there was no end to the parcels, chests and boxes that were sent in to them from all of Sydney’s posh boutiques where they had been out shopping. They appeared to be incredibly rich and the talk was of millions. Not poor Chilean or American dollars like in Tahiti but English pounds sterling, heavy gold pounds sterling with Queen Victoria’s head on one side, more respected and recognized than all the other coins in the whole wide world. Some months after this news which everyone had speculated about and wondered over, there came one morning, bruised and wet in the infinite, a particularly beautiful schooner with slackened sails in lee gliding into Morea and drifting with the tide. It was so shiningly fine and white and had such clean and beautiful sails that it clearly wasn’t one of the usual English or American copra ships that from time to time sailed into Tahiti to take on supplies on their long journey down to Australia or up to California. One could see from the shore the glisten and gleam of well-polished brass mountings and other frills. When it didn’t come any nearer but stayed low drifting for a whole day without the lightest breeze coming to fill its sails, the curious onlookers onshore sensed something amiss and finally decided to man a boat and go out and offer to supply it or escort it into the lagoon. When one of the largest whaleboats was quickly and vigorously manned with tens of kanakas, Martin, one of the wealthiest French traders in Papeete, and several other whites got into the stern. Martin himself took the rudder and soon they were out past Moto Uto, the lovely little island in the middle of the lagoon, and through the opening in the reef on both sides of which the surf rose like a wall before it smashed itself into snow white scum against the coral’s sharp edges. The kanakas rowed with powerful strokes and sang in time with the rudder so that it became like a quest driven by curiosity about the white schooner out there and what it was doing in these waters spiced with high adventure and thrilling excitement. One can probably understand this excitement when one considers that the white men at this time were so isolated on their islands out in the South Seas not receiving messages from the civilized world more than perhaps two or in the absolute best case three times a year. When they got closer to the strange schooner, Martin peered through his binoculars and proclaimed with an astonished shout that Nicholls Eastbourne was on board. He stood on the windward side dressed in snow-white clothes and with a broad rimmed straw hat. He looked to be the spiviest of traders and even seemed ten years younger than before. He was brown-skinned almost like a real kanaka and as strong and broad as a giant. Across his face was a happy, peaceful and contented smile such as never had been seen before on him. The reception they got on board was completely magnificent. Nicholls Eastbourne nearly cried with emotion. He embraced them one after the other as if they were all his dearest friends. He called his wife up on deck; she had become fatter, lazier and clumsier than before; and both his daughters and ordered them to make a great spread of the best they had on board to honour their first friends from Tahiti. A fine celebration followed. No expense was spared. French treats, expensive bon bons and English puddings. Beer, gin and brandy as much as you could drink. Champagne in great quantity, by the dozen. And the whole time Nicholls Eastbourne flitted about, impatient and excited, and talked about how lucky he was to have made it back to Tahiti. Confound the blasted wind, he said. If it didn’t blow up soon, he would hop in and swim or fire off a signal rocket and let it drag them over to land. There had been no difficulty getting to Tahiti but landing was another thing. By evening, The Golden Chip as the schooner was named lay anchored in the same spot that Nicholls Eastbourne had started from a year and a half earlier. Then the whole of Papeete came on board to see if it was really true that it was Nicholls Eastbourne, the unlucky down-and-out who had become rich and owned the most magnificent vessel that had ever harboured in Papeete’s lagoon. Then of course the mystery was how could this be possible? How had it happened? It was a mystery that Nicholls Eastbourne left completely untouched and unanswered. So silent and secretive was he about everything that had happened during the time between his departure and return that no one could entice from him why he had given his vessel such a peculiar name as The Golden Chip, a name which … well, who had ever heard such a name?

Several years had passed since that memorable afternoon when Nicholls Eastbourne had anchored with The Golden Chip at Papeete. He had established his own business since then and had a grand tradeshop on the Avenue de la Grande Armée. Everything had gone well for him. He became one of the richest white men on Tahiti but as he was hardworking by nature he did not give himself any rest and pitched in whenever there was anything that needed doing. Although he continued to be as savage as a wild animal if anyone crossed him and he was never short on such occasions of angry words and sometimes even punches, he yet had nothing but friends on the island. Nobody begrudged him his success and although they couldn’t understand how he had come to be so rich so suddenly, they all accepted that the whole thing was above board. On different occasions, one or the other of them had tried to get him to explain the mysterious source of his wealth but they never succeeded and once or twice Nicholls Eastbourne had become extremely vexed and told them to “go to the devil and mind their own business.” The Golden Chip, whose uncommon name was also a source of persistent speculation, went on many journeys over the years to different island groups. She left Papeete laden with trade and returned with containers bursting with copra and mother of pearl. And in a particularly small bag kept on board was a greater or lesser number of pearls that was nearly always the first thing he took ashore and deposited with his ship owner. Unfortunately, Nicholls Eastbourne had a real passion for pearls. He had a huge collection of them of which he himself had written out a meticulous description. There were pearls of the most varied forms and colours from milk white to blue black. There were pearls that had grown quickly inside the mussels and pearls that had become transformed and almost destroyed by all the strange diseases that can afflict them. It was Nicholls Eastbourne’s life ambition one day when his collection had become so complete that it gave a full and complete picture of the pearl’s evolution and of all the forms and diseases that exist, to travel home to England and deposit it with the British Museum himself to his lasting memory and for all others interested in useful and comprehensible study. And it was no small sum he laid down in his collection. It is said that in order to come into possession of one of his most beautiful treasures, a pear-shaped black pearl that would have been the envy of any crown jewels, one would have to make the journey to the far flung Marquess Islands twice and still have the luck to obtain the object of your desire by bartering a fully laden whaleboat and a whole cargo of trade goods which at that time was an extraordinary price even for the largest and most fault-free pearl.

But it wasn’t just in economic respects that Lady Luck set her gentlest smile upon Nicholls Eastbourne. Even in his family life had a great transformation taken place since the time when the family lived in a ramshackle hovel in Papaeno and he had the need to kick his wife to and from the different domestic duties. He had built himself a grand house on a beautiful farm on the beachfront west of Papeete where the outlook was unhindered over the ocean and in the distance to the blue wild crags of Morea. Here his wife dreamed away the days on a wide verandah that surrounded the house. She lay spread out in an armchair without the need to so much as lift a finger or move a foot. She left the care of the house and her daughters to a skinny little Bible-toting English miss who was distantly related to Eastbourne and who had turned up one beautiful day from no one knew where. Under her strict tutelage, the two daughters had grown up to become the most fine-looking and beautiful to behold of the mixed race girls on the island. They were quick to learn and happy in their nature and when Nicholls Eastbourne came home in the evenings and heard their and their girlfriends’ happy and healthy voices that put life into the house and the large farm, his thoughts often went back to the hard times when they had crawled around with the pigs and chickens in Papaeno and when life had nothing other than misery and worry to offer. Then his breast would heave and he would breathe a sigh of relief and contentment over his past life. There was a huge difference between being poor and rich! Even if one never went as far as starving to death down in the South Pacific Islands because nature, even in the worst case, would provide everything one needed to sustain life! It is still lovely and wonderful to get for oneself in addition everything people find nice and pleasing to make one’s circumstances as agreeable as possible.

When the oldest of the girls was around seventeen, she found herself a suitor. He was an Englishman like Eastbourne and what one calls a “remittance man” or “lotus eater.” That is to say a man who for one reason or another had to leave or was sent away from his homeland and then lived on regular remittances which his consul received from home for his benefit. Many such men live in the South Pacific Islands. For the most part they are Englishmen from good families who through short marriages with natives or mixed race girls finally become so acclimatized that they will only return to their homeland in exceptional circumstances. Molineux, as the young suitor was called, was said to be of very noble descent. It was whispered – and this rumour was traced back to the embassy – that he was the younger son of a renowned lord and politician and that the reason for his dispatch to the South Pacific was the father’s displeasure over his son’s refusal to join the English marines. However that was, Molineux was an uncommonly decent young man. He neither drank nor swore. He lived alone without womenfolk in a little house and – according to what the rumour also said – didn’t behave like the other remittance men who regularly gathered around the English consul for their money. He played the mandolin and had a beautiful baritone voice. He was blond with blue eyes and had a figure like a young Apollo. Because of this and for many other reasons, he was considered the most eligible bachelor in the whole eastern part of the South Pacific. It was with young Molineux’s conduct as a suitor to one of Nicholls Eastbourne’s daughters that the story of how he became rich first came out. It was to Molineux that Nicholls Eastbourne first told the story. Without him, who in his turn told the story to me, the story would never have been written down and no one else would have got to hear how one of the easiest and most successful deceptions that I ever heard of took place.

It wasn’t long after that that young Molineux – the remittance man - the first suitor to appear for one of Nicholls Eastbourne’s daughters, had captured the whole family’s love and good will. Nicholls Eastbourne himself who was a self-made man without any training and without any other skills than pure practicality was highly impressed by the young man’s extensive knowledge of subjects that were so strange to him that he not once recognized the names being spoken of. And the daughters – unlike their mother who took nothing in where she lay lazing in her armchair – were completely captivated. He could have had both of them if he wanted. But Molineux was an honourable man. And polygamy was not officially permitted in Tahiti. Some nights before the wedding was due to take place, the two men – Nicholls Eastbourne and Molineux – had an intimate chat. They sat on the verandah that looked out over the ocean and where the light breeze blew unhindered. Their conversation moved from destiny and adventure to getting to know each other’s life stories. There were many wild tales told one after the other. Stories about bloody deeds and dirty tricks, about hunger, sickness, shipwreck and death. But first and last about love. Even if in primitive form, love still played the greatest role in nearly everything which at that time happened on those emerald green and romantic South Pacific Islands.

It was however mainly Nicholls Eastbourne who spoke during which young Molineux sat enchanted listening. He thought that it was one of his boyhood years’ wild adventure novels he was listening to with the hero now sitting in the flesh right before him and delivering one unbelievable chapter after another. Suddenly, Nicholls Eastbourne began to talk about himself. This was completely out of character for him. But the evening’s intimacy, his sympathy for the young man who would soon become his son-in-law and the grog he had been constantly downing brought him to it. A longing to at least once be open and forthright filled his heart. Right as this was, he lit a new cigar and slowly and with strong emphasis asked the question: “Look here, my boy, would you like to hear the story about how Nicholls Eastbourne became rich?” Then, without even waiting for an answer, he began to speak.

My first six or seven years here in Tahiti were what we white men usually call swine or hellish years. Nearly everyone who comes here without means has got to prove himself. They are unfamiliar with everything. The natives, the climate, the conditions. First and foremost, they are unfamiliar with the loneliness. That is their worst enemy and it drives them either into the arms of the kanaka girls or the gin bottle. Sometimes both. And there it often ends. There is nothing more dissipating, energy sapping and tempting than kanaka girls and gin.

But that was not what my swine years in lonely Papaeno were about and I want to tell you about the strict taboo the natives placed on me and my wretched marriage. All that lies so far behind me now that sometimes I think it was just a bad dream. It was how I became rich that I intended to talk about. Yes, the story is simple enough although romantic. Listen up then.

You maybe know that in my seventh year here through lucky circumstances I became captain of one of Papeete’s biggest schooners and was sent out on a four month trip to the Marquess Islands where I would load up copra and mother of pearl on Hiwaoa, the largest island in the group. Yes, well, there I happened to meet a chief, an old man who had lived a long life and had heard of and witnessed many curious things. He sold his copra to us and himself came on board. I was curious about his strange tattoos the likes of which I had never seen before. So it was that the old cannibal and I became the best of friends. I spoke fluent Polynesian and this strengthened the bonds of mutual respect that grew stronger and stronger between us the longer our acquaintance continued. Finally I went as his guest on a visit to his village on the other side of the island. A great feast was held at which the chief officially adopted me which is the greatest honour, then and now, that can be bestowed upon a stranger in the Marquess Islands. On the day after the feast, the old chief came to me where I lay stretched out in the church hall. He was extremely secretive and had come, he said, to tell me about a great treasure that lay hidden on a neighbouring island called Ruahunga. A treasure of pure gold like the English pound although of a different size and marking. A treasure buried deep within the guava thickets in the island’s centre. Impenetrable thickets deep into which the natives never ventured because spirits and other supernatural forces lived there. He himself had heard the story of the treasure from a shipwrecked sailor he had captured among the natives during a war raid he had led to the island. This sailor had been slaughtered and eaten after they kept him for a few months on Hiwaoa. It wouldn’t be too difficult for me to find the gold, he thought. It would lie forgotten in amongst the air roots of a particularly old banyan tree whose crown one could see towering high over the guava thickets and coconut palms if one steered into and anchored in a certain bay on the island’s eastern side. A bay that was easy to find again marked by two high flat rocks that rose right up out of the lagoon inside the reef and which, when seen from the ocean, looked like great canoes under sail.

This tale about a mysterious golden treasure there for the taking only two day’s journey from where I was I didn’t have to hear twice. I took the old chief and a half a dozen of his best men with me. I sent my own men ashore and then sailed off. Unfortunately, I knew I couldn’t trust my own men. They were Tahiti and Raratonga kanakas. They would just betray me as soon as we got back to Papeete. In which case the company owner would demand a share of the gold and I had not the least wish to give him any. So, as I said, we sailed away from Hiwaoa on our own. After two particularly favourable sailing days, early in the morning, we sighted Ruahanga which showed itself to be an exquisite and most luxuriantly forested island. We sailed slowly down the east coast until we found the aforesaid bay. Two high flat rocks stood there exactly like the old chief had said, right up out of the lagoon and from a distance and looking just with the naked eye, one could easily take them for mighty canoes under sail.

We manouevred carefully in through the reef so that the currents wouldn’t jam us aground and cast anchor only a short distance from the shore. It was the most beautiful little bay you could ever imagine. So peaceful and quiet. You heard nothing apart from the distant surf’s monotonous song and the call of some solitary bird. As for humans, there was no trace of them. Ruahanga’s natives lived on the island’s western side where the rainfall was less but more regular and where the palms grew more and bigger nuts. The forest which contained a tight tangle of guavas with the odd palm here and there spread right down to the narrow white sand beach which was like a fine snow white lining around the lagoon. A few hundred metres into the jungle one could clearly see an unusually tall old banyan that shot up and spread its crown higher than even the tallest palms. We launched the boat and rowed ashore. But none of the kanakas wanted to get out and come with me up into the forest. As I said before, they believed spirits lived there. They were impossibly superstitious on the island and sometimes saw apparitions even in daylight. According to some old tradition that they all still believed in, the ghost of anyone who was slaughtered and eaten on Hiwaoa would haunt Ruahanga’s forests and thickets. Even the old chief who was otherwise a courageous man who didn’t recoil from anything, made an excuse. He said he had a sore foot and couldn’t leave the boat because of it. He was polite and apologetic. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been very pleasant for him to meet in the jungle some old friends and acquaintances he had once killed and eaten back on his own island!

Anyway I decided to go alone. I took a small compass with me so as not to lose direction. The forest and jungle there, like here on Tahiti, was so unbelievably thick that one had to clear a path through inside and then one couldn’t see a foot in any direction. I had an axe with me otherwise I would have needed to snap and bend branches. And a knife without which one couldn’t take a step forward through a tangle such as this that lay before me.

In the beginning it all went well. The ground was soft to walk on covered with the finest greenery that with each step coiled itself up and seemingly withered away under my feet. But then it became worse and worse. Slippery and uneven. And very dark. The guavas were a single confusing tangle. My knife slashed to the left and the right and I was sticky with sweat and all the moisture that was dropping down onto me from every quarter. At the same time it became harder and harder to move forward as I became gripped by an indescribable anxiety the likes of which I had never experienced before. I began to imagine that the whole episode was a dubious misadventure. I found myself alone on a strange island hunting for an old treasure about which nobody knew a thing except my adoptive father, the old chief, and it maybe wasn’t worth the effort. I also began to suspect that he had lured me here so that he had time to disappear with my vessel. What would become of me in that case? How would I ever get back home to Tahiti again?

I stopped for a moment to think. Should I turn back or continue? Was there really a treasure buried under the banyan tree? Or was the whole thing a mystification? If the treasure really was there, how had it come to be there? How big was it and who was the true owner?

But I hesitated no more. The memory of those seven swine years in Tahiti sprang to mind and forced me onwards. I heard whispering: it could be true, it could be true. You must not cast aside the one chance you have to save yourself from more years of hardship. Think about your useless wretch of a wife and your children who wallow with the pigs. Do you want things to continue like that? Go on! It could be true. It could be true.

It was a difficult moment. But the banyan tree couldn’t be far away now on my estimate. If the old chief was wanting to deceive me, he was probably now long gone. Go on! Hurry! Go on! The last few steps through the thicket were the worst. It was wet and incredibly stifling. I thought I could hear a strange noise all around me. It creaked and whispered. It was like footsteps all around and whispering voices. Could it be the ghosts of the men eaten on Hiwaoa haunting the place and wanting to curse anyone disturbing the peace of their dark resting place? Or was it just the rustling of the wind and the beating of some forest birds’ wings that I heard? Whatever it was, it was unworldly and terrified me.

Just then I was standing in front of the banyan tree. It was a massive giant with at least a half a thousand tangled slender air roots and between them were snared countless lianas and other vines. I climbed into the tangle and fumbled about in all directions. But I saw nothing but new roots and lianas going on forever. Forever!

When I had worked my way around half the tree – and that was no small feat, let me assure you – I came across something other than air roots and lianas. It was a large ironwork chest of peculiar shape and completely covered over with tightly matted greenery. I threw myself onto it like a wild animal. It has to be the treasure, I thought. My swine years and life being treated like a dog are over. Now Nicholls Eastbourne is as good as anyone else. My old Hiwaoa father wasn’t deceiving me after all. Here’s the treasure. Here it is!

It was a tough job for one man to tear away the jungle and break open the chest. The ironwork was red and rusted. But it held together still as if it were the arms of a giant. It bowed and creaked but wouldn’t give way, wouldn’t release its grip. I was strong at the time. As strong as a sailor needed to be. And I held back none of my power. Inside lay fortune and the future. Everything a poor devil could wish for. It was worth an aching back and numb arms to crack and bend with all one’s might.

Finally I broke the chest open. On the top were some thick books printed in a language I didn’t understand – probably Spanish. I threw them out the side and did the same to some mouldy old coats and vests of coloured broadcloth that lay under the books. Then I saw two sacks or bags. They were made of tough material. When I opened them with a hasty slash, I was mesmerized. There was the treasure. They were full of heavy glistening round gold coins the likes of which I had never seen before and haven’t seen since. Gold coins which I hastily counted up to at least ten thousand pounds’ worth.

I had to carry the gold down to the bay over four trips. The old chief who hadn’t deserted me but was waiting faithfully, took it on board bit by bit and when there was nothing left in the chest under the banyan, we pulled up anchor and sailed back to Hiwaoa. As he had no use for gold coins, the chief accepted a promise of two fully fitted whaleboats that would be sent to him on the next ship from Papeete. And his people would get biscuits, salted meat and gin for a kai-kai that would reach them in a week.

How I then came back to Papeete and bought the schooner, cargo and all, you have heard before. I myself have never forgotten the day and the faces all around when Nicholls Eastbourne, down-and-out and unlucky cove, emptied out his little sack of gold coins on the table.

But this was only the first chapter in the adventure novel of how I became rich. The next chapter played out in Australia and then finally way up at the Gilbert Islands if you have the appetite to hear more …

Before Nicholls Eastbourne continued his story, he sat quietly for a moment and stared out before him over the beach in the direction where the surf broke across the coral reef and glistened through the darkness like a single long green phosphorescent stripe. His thoughts once more flew back to the swine year days as he called them on Tahiti, wandering about the primeval forests of Ruahunga, the treasure found under the giant banyan tree and to the old chief on Hiwaoa who adopted him. He relived the triumphant moment on his homecoming to Papeete when he had bought his first schooner and enjoyed seeing the bystanders’ amazed expressions as he placed his gold coins on the table.

After that, he recalled that he promised his future son-in-law a continuation of the story of how he became rich. He lit a new cigar, took a deep swig from his whisky glass which the young Molineux had just filled up, leaned back comfortably in his deck chair and began.

I had barely got my wife and children aboard the schooner when we pulled up anchor, hoisted the sails and set course for Sydney. And when wild Tahiti gradually began to blink away in the distance, I thought I had seen it for the last time. I intended never to return. I would buy myself a large ship in Sydney, become a shipowner and finish my days in peace and quiet somewhere on the Australian continent. I had it in mind to become very rich. My Ruahunga gold coins would be the foundation. And I had heard that it wasn’t difficult to become fabulously rich in Australia at that time if one only had something to start off with.

The journey was over all too quickly. On the morning of the fifty-second day from when we lost sight of Tahiti, we sailed through Sydney Heads. In the afternoon, we anchored outside Kirribilli. The first thing I did when I landed was go up to a bank and exchange my gold coins for English tender. I got 7,456 pounds sterling for them. Of that, I took 4,000 cash which I intended to keep on board and always keep watch over and the rest I deposited in an account. Then I went out into the city and did in the evening what all the other sailors did regardless of their nationality or homeport: I had a solid drinking session. I don’t remember exactly who I was with during this bout and I don’t really remember what happened. But I recall today like in a dream a big well-lit room before me and a blond lady at a piano. I think I can hear the clinking of bottles and glasses on a nearby table and the sound of cards. Then I have a muddled sense of two large swarthy men, a quarrel and a hard punch between the eyes. That’s all I can remember of what happened to me that night, my first, in Sydney. About the day after, I am completely certain that I awoke in the morning in a thicket in one of the city’s outer areas and I had a dreadful hangover. I was sore and my whole face and knuckles were swollen as if I had been in a furious fight. My clothes were partly ripped from my body. When I finally got my thoughts together sufficiently and with a terrible groan sat myself up, I found that my watch and my 4,000 pounds were putz weg – gone – completely disappeared without so much as a farthing left to tell where the rest had gone. For the next three weeks, I did nothing else but try and find the blond woman, the two big swarthy men and the room with the piano that I could recall from my drinking bout. I hired a detective, a clever man who knew every little seedy nook and cranny in the whole town. We walked from quarter to quarter. From sailors’ pub to sailors’ pub. From music hall to music hall. We dressed in disguise and visited all the opium dens and all the thief and scoundrel hideouts the police knew of in the city. We acquainted ourselves with all manner of odd types and searched, wheedled and spied day and night. But nobody knew anything about a blond woman, a room with a piano and two men that fit the fuzzy description that my blurred memory could provide. Finally, with an aching heart, I had to give up the hope of ever again seeing any of my 4,000 pounds. That 4,000 pound loss daily became harder and harder to bear.

During these weeks, I didn’t have much time for my family. I had lodged them in a boarding house at Mosman’s Bay for what was only meant to be in colourful language “a flying visit.” When my fruitless investigations were finished, I took my little briefcase from the hotel down near the harbour where I had my lodgings and moved in with my family. When I for the first time went down to lunch with them in the common dining hall, who did I see right opposite me at the table but the woman I recalled from my dream and had been hunting for several weeks. The woman with the blond hair; the woman in the room with the piano; the woman who had to know what happened to my 4,000 pounds. I immediately saw that she had recognised me. Her face went as white as a sheet and she looked like she was about to take off from the table as if she meant to fly. But then she took control of herself and sat down. She kept her eyes down and busied herself with her chicken broth which she took ages to eat with only her hands’ nervous trembling to show that inside she was anxious and afraid. During this time I sat stuck to my chair and stared at her. I was torn between whether to eat or talk. I was not at all certain how to handle the situation. Should I expose her now or wait till later and try to get her amicably to return my money? But one thing was certain. I would not let her out of my sight for a second. Not a second. I was afraid she would on the count of three sink down into the earth or vanish right under my nose where she sat on the other side of the table.

My wife didn’t notice my agitation. Her listlessness was on display. Mealtimes were almost a punishment for her because she had to move herself going to and fro and lifting spoon, knife and fork up to her mouth. In between she took a rest with half-shut eyes and without noticing anything happening or being said around her. When I sat there at the table that day, I saw more than ever before what a poor match a marriage between a white man and a full kanaka woman truly is. I had been riled many times before by my wife’s idleness but this was special. In the South Pacific Islands, the climate is so draining that one doesn’t get to do any deep thinking. But here in Sydney the air was fresher and more healthy. And here, so to say, I snapped out of the lethargy in which I had been existing for the last six or seven years. I thought that the woman, my wife, was an animal. A big, clumsy, repulsive animal whose life didn’t have the least substance or value. Not even our children had any significance to her. She lived only to doze and dream the whole time lying in her lounge chair. Struth! The woman opposite was quite the opposite. She was a criminal, that was perfectly clear. She was in any case an active, thinking person. She lived and worked even if her work was of the most dubious sort. She had a goal – presumably to get rich quickly – and she strove with all her abilities towards it. She developed herself for her area of work. That is my point: the kanaka women don’t do this. They don’t improve themselves. They stand still, tread water. Life without work is best for them. The breadfruit trees hang heavy with fruit, bananas ripen year round, pineapples grow continuously, the mangoes never finish, the lagoons are full of delicious fish and the men supply the pantry and kitchen. Life for them is eating and sleeping, sleeping and eating, and maybe while they’re young getting to enjoy a certain amount of loving. This plus some dancing and singing is all they need to be perfectly content. It is such a pity, such a pity! When mealtime was over, everyone stood up from the table one by one and left. Finally, everyone had left except we two, the blond woman and I. We sat opposite each other without a word and without her risking lifting her eyes and making eye contact. When we had sat like this for five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour, an infinity, it was I who broke the silence with a simple question going right to the heart of the matter. “Do you intend to kindly return my four thousand pounds?”

She stood up without answering. Her lips trembled as if she wanted to say something but couldn’t. So she signalled for me to follow her. Together we went out through the hall and up the stairs to the units. There we stood in front of one of the rooms that looked out over Mosman’s Bay while she took out her key from a small handbag that she had over her arm and opened up. When we went in, I looked around wondering. This wasn’t the room with the piano. It was a bedroom and, at the same time, a museum. Curiosities from all over the South Pacific hung on the walls. War clubs from Fiji and dance masks from New Britain. Shields and arrows from the Palau Islands and red washed gods from the Solomons. Shell garlands from the Carolines and gold glittering straw mats from Samoa and the Gilbert Islands and in the middle of the wall shone a royal cloak from the Sandwich Islands. A wonderful rare cloak made up of thousands of small glittering bird of paradise feathers that are valued by the islanders like gold. The woman saw my awestruck gaze. She understood what I was thinking and hesitated before explaining. “It didn’t happen here,” she said. “It was down in Sydney. Nobody here knows anything. Nobody, understand! That’s why you’ll get your money back unlike so many of them that stray into my quarter. But first you must promise not to dob me in, not to say a word to a living soul. You must swear an oath on this Bible.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. There was the woman who had robbed me standing before me wanting to dictate terms. I should swear not to dob her in. And she maybe had no more than a few hundred pounds left. It was so naïve. It was me who was in the position to be able to dictate terms. Not her.

She seemed to again have guessed my thoughts. “I have 2,650 pounds left of your money,” she said. “The other 1,350 pounds were my accomplices’ cut. They’ve gone away for a long time now. They bought a passage to London and left the day after … after … yes, you know.”

Now I am good-natured by temperament. I believed the woman was telling the truth. Alarm and angst were so obviously stamped on her face that a comedy was impossible. She would give up what money she had to save her own skin. For my part, I would rather have 2,650 pounds than nothing. So I swore an oath as she wanted, got my money which she had stored in an empty spear from Bougainville, went in to Sydney and quickly deposited it in the bank with the 3,456 pounds already there. Over the next few weeks, I ran into the blond woman almost daily. I can’t deny that she interested me. She lived a real double life. The adventuress of Sydney! She lived so unobtrusively and as quiet as a fish when she was over in Mosmans’. She had been married to a Norwegian. A skipper who had sailed back and forth over the entire South Pacific for six years. From this travel she had gathered together her many curiosities and got to know the people. Her stories of what she got up to bordered on the unbelievable. There was no danger – fire, water or steel – that she wasn’t exposed to. But the oddest in my view is the story of how her husband had swindled the natives of Palau with a chest of gold-coloured tokens. He had tricked the god-fearing simple folk into believing they were pounds sterling. With this he got to buy a whole cargo of copra that he sold in China for a mighty profit. I couldn’t hear enough of that story. She got to tell it time and time again. With all the details. Even the most insignificant. When I committed to memory how the skipper could use his navigation skills, I gradually came to a decision to myself buy a big cargo and do the same. It would be a magnificent adventure and bring a greedy profit. And what a “son of a gun Norwegian skipper” could do couldn’t be so hard for such a clever chap as Nicholls Eastbourne.

 Dry and thirsty after his long narration, Nicholls Eastbourne took a few good swigs of whisky soda before continuing his interesting tale. He then nodded encouragingly to Molineux to light a new cigar as protection against mosquitoes and the countless other small winged tormentors that swarmed around the light after which he began to talk.

Although I did not neglect for a single day to go down to the harbour to look at the yachtsmen who constantly came and went there from and to nearly all the harbours in the world, it took around a month for me to finally set eyes upon the vessel I thought would be just right for my purposes. It was around 600 tons and had just landed at Sydney with rice from China. It was an uncommonly beautiful ship to look at, fine and slender like a yacht, and I stood gazing at it for half a day as it set anchor in Sydney Cove before I went on board to speak with the skipper and ask if it was for sale. When I went on board, I was completely astonished. I had never seen a cargo ship that was so polished with quality mahogany and shiny brass. There was a feeling of orderliness on board just like on a warship and everything was new, strong and made of the best material. You could tell with just a short glance about. The skipper, an old weather-beaten and obstinate Swede, had no objections to selling the vessel. He had been at sea for forty years and now wanted to settle down on shore somewhere. We chatted and haggled for a couple of hours emptying more than a few bottles of ale down in the quay, came up with a price and settled the deal. When the cargo was unloaded, the skipper would go ashore and the ship was all mine. The world lit up with all its rich possibilities right in front of me.

In between time, there was a lot I had to do before the cargo was unloaded and I could go on board. I had to get supplies for at least a year. And I needed tokens. Tokens that would become the trump card for my journey. They were difficult to get in Sydney at that time because all the factories imported them from England. But after a great deal of difficulty and searching, I found a handy old German who with a little bit of persuasion agreed to take the matter in hand and manufacture the required tokens.

A glorious day in May, the ship was unloaded and ready. I had christened it “The Golden Chip” and the name aroused no suspicion at all in Sydney as you can imagine. When we gently glided out to sea through Port Jackson, nobody had any idea that I had under the floor in my own cabin a large iron chest full of several thousand gold-coloured tokens that in size and appearance resembled English pounds whereas their true value was at most two pence apiece. With these gold tokens, I would fulfil my plan to do as the Norwegian skipper had done, my blond adventuress’ special man, sail to the most far-flung islands I could find on the map and buy as much trepang and pearls as my ship could carry. At that the time, the South Pacific Islands were not as tightly populated with white men like today. The large merchant companies in Sydney and Auckland hadn’t yet established their many trading stations and it wasn’t so difficult to find hundreds of islands where the white man, his habits and guiles, his coinage and his sea routes were barely even heard of. True, there lived here and there lone white men but they were for the most part outlaws and runaway sailors who often had become nearly kanaka-ised and were susceptible to wicked tricks. It was a savage and romantic life they lived and if any adventurous fellow like me for example happened upon an island where such white men lived, they were nearly always willing to help him in his enterprise for a little compensation no matter how dear or cheap or original or wild it appeared to be. The first of the islands I chanced upon with a visit was Apamama in the Gilberts or as they are also called the Kingsmill Group. If memory serves me correct, the arch-saint John Williams was down there and powdering the natives with his words of wisdom. And now I got to reap what the saint had sowed. We appeared as celestial saints and I was forced to give a sermon – you should have heard it! None of the natives understood a word of what I said. And just as well! Even though what I preached was more likely to please the Devil than Our Lord, the unctuous tone had the desired effect. I got what I wanted. There was a big supply of trepang set aside for a Chinese vessel that usually came by once a year. And one of the chiefs had a whole straw basket full of the most beautiful pearls. I didn’t hesitate before taking ownership of both these for a handful of my gold tokens. When I sailed away from Apamama, I rubbed my hands together with glee. I thought that it had been a glorious event that I had been robbed in Sydney and later on got to be reimbursed by and acquainted with the blond adventuress. Without that adventure, I would never have found this excellent way to make a splendid fortune with the least possible difficulty and no real capital.

I had the same luck I had on Apamama on Aranuka, Maraki, Tarawa and Maivana – all low islands in the Gilbert Group. Overall the missionaries had prepared the ground well for me. The natives had a smattering of understanding about the value of gold and the Chinese usually came annually to trade for what they made and trepang and pearls. These Chinese merchants had been sailing all around the South Pacific Islands for hundreds of years before the white man even knew they existed. They were certainly there long before the famous Venetian traveller Marco Polo. It is said that the first Dutch sailors had Chinese trepang buyers to thank for the information that led to New Holland’s or as it is now called Australia’s discovery.

When my cargo hold was so full it threatened to burst, I set course for China’s moving coast. The journey went quickly and with good luck and once there, there was no skill involved in flogging off the cargo. Chinese gourmets prize trepang or bêche de mer higher than any other food, higher than fried birds’ nests, sweetened shark fin and all their other delicacies. And as the preparation and transporting of trepang are extremely difficult, they quickly pay whatever price is asked for the much in demand item.

Altogether I did four journeys to and from China. At all the islands I visited in the northern section of the Pacific Ocean, it only happened once that the natives refused to take my gold tokens for payment. That was on Rongelap in the Marshall Group where a German sailor had manipulated his way to becoming chief. He immediately understood what was going on and incited the whole tribe against us. We only just managed to get back on board, sail out of the lagoon and to sea as the natives started showering us with their poisoned arrows. Yes, it was an adventure that nearly finished disastrously – confound the Germans!

After the fourth journey to China, I thought I had achieved my goal brilliantly and had amassed capital. I had sold trepang and pearls for nearly 30,000 pounds sterling and still had some pearls left over to make the jet black Australian bushmen go snow white in the face with envy. As for the feelings of the natives when they found out what my tokens were really worth, I didn’t lose any sleep over it. They had everything they needed. Nature was so immensely generous to them and good for them, it would truly be a shame to assist them to become accustomed to things other than what nature donated. The white man’s inventions and ideas are neither useful nor suitable for the natives. If my tokens did nothing else, then perhaps they taught the natives a lesson to beware of other white “civilisation bearers” who come out to their peaceful islands wanting to do likewise.

Yes, my dear Molineux, now you have heard how your soon-to-be father-in-law, Nicholls Eastbourne, former down-and-out and unlucky cove, became rich. You have yourself seen his large collection of different types of pearls and his vessel, The Golden Chip. You sit now on his comfortable verandah and enjoy his fine whisky and cigars. You stand knowing that in a few days time you will marry one of his well brought up and beautiful daughters. You are fortunate and young and your whole life lies easy before you. In a word, you are a lucky man.

Yet still Nicholls Eastbourne would not change things for all the gold in the world. He has lived his rich life and seen it in all its different variations. He has worked like a dog and enjoyed good days. He has duped and paid twice with the same coins. He has experienced friendship with a few and sought to avenge himself as best he could. With all his breath, he has found life down here on the islands to be well worth living. But now, the South Pacific’s great wild romance is coming to an end. Civilisation is beginning to take hold and thread its way around the emerald green islands. If, in a few decades time, the kanakas’ friendly, happy, easy-going character, their beautiful customs and habits, their innocence and hospitality become a mere memory, the trivial and conventional and boring formalities of the white mans’ lands – of London, Paris and Berlin – will take hold in the Polynesian islands. You can therefore understand that someone like me who for the past half decade has tasted freedom and the right to live and do as one wants, would not wish to change anything for members of the generation to come, of which you with your twenty odd years behind you and your calm growth are a representative …

And that was the complete story of how Nicholls Eastbourne became rich.