By Reef and Palm | Page 2

In a year's time he had money enough to take passage in a schooner bound on a shark-catching cruise to the equatorial islands of the North Pacific. The life was a very rough one, and full of incident and adventure--which I hope he will relate some day. Returning to Honolulu, he fell in with an old captain who had bought a schooner for a trading venture amongst the Western Carolines. Becke put in $1000, and sailed with him as supercargo, he and the skipper being the only white men on board. He soon discovered that, though a good seaman, the old man knew nothing of navigation. In a few weeks they were among the Marshall Islands, and the captain went mad from DELIRIUM TREMENS. Becke and the three native sailors ran the vessel into a little uninhabited atoll, and for a week had to keep the captain tied up to prevent his killing himself. They got him right at last, and stood to the westward. On their voyage they were witnesses of a tragedy (in this instance fortunately not complete), on which the pitiless sun of the Pacific has looked down very often. They fell in with a big Marshall Island sailing canoe that had been blown out of sight of land, and had drifted six hundred miles to the westward. Out of her complement of fifty people, thirty were dead. They gave them provisions and water, and left them to make Strong's Island (Kusaie), which was in sight. Becke and the chief swore Marshall Island BRUDERSCHAFT with each other. Years afterwards, when he came to live in the Marshall Group, the chief proved his friendship in a signal manner.
The cruise proved a profitable one, and from that time Mr Becke determined to become a trader, and to learn to know the people of the north-west Pacific; and returning to California, he made for Samoa, and from thence to Sydney. But at this time the Palmer River gold rush had just broken out in North Queensland, and a brother, who was a bank manager on the celebrated Charters Towers goldfields, invited him to come up, as every one seemed to be making his fortune. He wandered between the rushes for two years, not making a fortune, but acquiring much useful experience, learning, amongst other things, the art of a blacksmith, and becoming a crack shot with a rifle. Returning to Sydney, he sailed for the Friendly Islands (Tonga) in company with the king of Tonga's yacht--the TAUFAAHAU. The Friendly Islanders disappointed him (at which no one that knows them will wonder), and he went on to Samoa, and set up as a trader on his own account for the first time. He and a Manhiki half-caste--the "Allan" who so frequently figures in his stories--bought a cutter, and went trading throughout the group. This was the time of Colonel Steinberger's brief tenure of power. The natives were fighting, and the cutter was seized on two occasions. When the war was over he made a voyage to the north-west, and became a great favourite with the natives, as indeed seems to have been the case in most of the places he went to in Polynesia and Micronesia. Later on he was sent away from Samoa in charge of a vessel under sealed orders to the Marshall Islands. These orders were to hand the vessel over to the notorious Captain "Bully" Hayes. (Some day he promises that he will give us the details of this very curious adventure). He found Hayes awaiting him in his famous brig LEONORA in Milli Lagoon. He handed over his charge and took service with him as supercargo. After some months' cruising in the Carolines they were wrecked on Strong's Island (Kusaie). Hayes made himself the ruler of the island, and Mr Becke and he had a bitter quarrel. The natives treated the latter with great kindness, and gave him land on the lee side of the island, where he lived happily enough for five months. Hayes was captured by an English man-of-war, but escaped and went to Guam. Mr Becke went back in the cruiser to the Colonies, and then again sailed for Eastern Polynesia, trading in the Gambiers, Paumotus, and Easter and Pitcairn Islands. In this part of the ocean he picked up an abandoned French barque on a reef, floated her, and loaded her with coconuts, intending to sail her to New Zealand with a native crew, but they went ashore in a hurricane and lost everything. Meeting with Mr Tom de Wolf, the managing partner of a Liverpool firm, he took service with him as a trader in the Ellice and Tokelau Groups, finally settling down as a residential trader. Then he took passage once more for the Carolines, and was wrecked on Peru,