Blown to Bits | Page 4

when he thought the whole group was his own, so he offered to release them. They all, except two men and one woman, accepted the release and went off in a gun-boat that chanced to touch there at the time. For a good while Hare and his rival lived there--the one tryin' to get the Dutch, the other to induce the English Government to claim possession. Neither Dutch nor English would do so at first, but the English did it at long last--in 1878--and annexed the islands to the Government of Ceylon.
"Long before that date, however--before 1836--Hare left and went to Singapore, where he died, leaving Ross in possession--the `King of the Cocos Islands' as he came to be called. In a few years--chiefly through the energy of Ross's eldest son, to whom he soon gave up the management of affairs--the Group became a prosperous settlement. Its ships traded in cocoa-nuts, (the chief produce of the islands), throughout all the Straits Settlements, and boatbuildin' became one of their most important industries. But there was one thing that prevented it from bein' a very happy though prosperous place, an' that was the coolies who had been hired in Java, for the only men that could be got there at first were criminals who had served their time in the chain-gangs of Batavia. As these men were fit for anything--from pitch-and-toss to murder--and soon outnumbered the colonists, the place was kept in constant alarm and watchfulness. For, as I dare say you know, the Malays are sometimes liable to have the spirit of amok on them, which leads them to care for and fear nothin', and to go in for a fight-to-death, from which we get our sayin'--run amuck. An' when a strong fellow is goin' about loose in this state o' mind, it's about as bad as havin' a tiger prowlin' in one's garden.
"Well, sometimes two or three o' these coolies would mutiny and bide in the woods o' one o' the smaller uninhabited islands. An' the colonists would have no rest till they hunted them down. So, to keep matters right, they had to be uncommon strict. It was made law that no one should spend the night on any but what was called the Home Island without permission. Every man was bound to report himself at the guard-house at a fixed hour; every fire to be out at sunset, and every boat was numbered and had to be in its place before that time. So they went on till the year 1862, when a disaster befell them that made a considerable change--at first for the worse, but for the better in the long-run. Provin' the truth, my lad, of what I was--well, no--I was goin' to draw a moral here, but I won't!
"It was a cyclone that did the business. Cyclones have got a free-an'-easy way of makin' a clean sweep of the work of years in a few hours. This cyclone completely wrecked the homes of the Keelin' Islanders, and Ross--that's the second Ross, the son of the first one-- sent home for his son, who was then a student of engineering in Glasgow, to come out and help him to put things to rights. Ross the third obeyed the call, like a good son,--observe that, Nigel."
"All right, father, fire away!"
"Like a good son," repeated the captain, "an' he turned out to be a first-rate man, which was lucky, for his poor father died soon after, leavin' him to do the work alone. An' well able was the young engineer to do it. He got rid o' the chain-gang men altogether, and hired none but men o' the best character in their place. He cleared off the forests and planted the ground with cocoa-nut palms. Got out steam mills, circular saws, lathes, etcetera, and established a system of general education with a younger brother as head-master--an' tail-master too, for I believe there was only one. He also taught the men to work in brass, iron, and wood, and his wife--a Cocos girl that he married after comin' out--taught all the women and girls to sew, cook, and manage the house. In short, everything went on in full swing of prosperity, till the year 1876, when the island-born inhabitants were about 500, as contented and happy as could be.
"In January of that year another cyclone paid them a visit. The barometer gave them warning, and, remembering the visit of fourteen years before, they made ready to receive the new visitor. All the boats were hauled up to places of safety, and every other preparation was made. Down it came, on the afternoon o' the 28th--worse than they had expected. Many of the storehouses and mills had been lately renewed or built. They were all gutted and demolished. Everything movable