The Project Gutenberg EBook of Concerning "Bully" Hayes, by Louis Becke

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Title: Concerning "Bully" Hayes
From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other
Stories" - 1902

Author: Louis Becke

Release Date: April 5, 2008 [EBook #24998]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONCERNING "BULLY" HAYES ***

Produced by David Widger

CONCERNING "BULLY" HAYES

From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other Stories"

By Louis Becke

T. FISHER UNWIN, 1902

LONDON

I

"BULLY" HAYES! Oh, halcyon days of the sixties and seventies, when the
Pacific was not, as now, patrolled by men-of-war from lonely Pylstaart,
in the Friendlies, to the low-lying far-away Marshalls and the coral
lagoons of the north-west; when the Queensland schooners ran full
"nigger" cargoes to Bundaberg, Maryborough, and Port Mackay; when the
Government agents, drunk nine days out of ten, did as much recruiting
as the recruiters themselves, and drew--even as they may draw
to-day--thumping bonuses from the planters _sub rosa!_ In those days the
nigger-catching fleet from the Hawaiian Islands cruised right away south
to palm-clad Arorai, in the Line Islands, and ran the Queensland ships
close in the business. They came down from Honolulu in ballast-trim,
save for the liquor and firearms, and went back full of a sweating mass
of black-haired, copper-coloured Line Islanders, driven below at dark to
take their chance of being smothered if it came on to blow. Better for
them had it so happened, as befel the _Tahiti_ a few years ago when four
hundred of these poor people went to the bottom on their way to slavery
in San Jose de Guatemala.

Merry times, indeed, had those who ran the labour vessels then in the
trade, when Queensland rivalled the Hawaiian Islands in the exciting
business of "black-birding," and when Captain William Henry Hayes, of
Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A.--vulgarly called "Bully" Hayes--came twice a
year to fair Samoa with full cargoes of oil, copra, and brown-skinned
kanakas, all obtained on the stalwart captain's peculiar time-payment
system.

* * * * *

One hardly ever hears