The Strange White Woman of Majuro

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The Strange White Woman of Majuro
Louis Becke

A group of four men were seated upon a trader's veranda at Majuro, one of the Marshall Islands. They were smoking and talking about old times. The night was brilliantly moonlight, and the hulland spars of a little white-painted brig that lay anchored in the lagoon about a mile distant from the trader's house stood out as clearly and distinct as if she were but fifty yards away from where they sat. Three of the men present were visitors-Bob Packenham the captain, Harvey the mate, and' Denison the supercargo of the Indiana; the fourth was the trader himself-a grizzled old wanderer of past sixty, with a skin like unto dark leather, and a frame that, old as he was, showed he was still as active and vigorous as when he had first landed on Majuro atoll thirty years before.
It was long past midnight, and the old trader's numerous halfcaste family had turned in to sleep some hours before. The strange, wondrous beauty of the night, and the pleasure of listening to old Charlie Waller's talk of the early days in the Marshalls when every white man lived like a prince, and died in his boots from a bullet ora spear, had tempted the visitors to send their boat back to the ship and accept Charlie's invitation to remain till breakfast next morning. It so happened that the old man had just been talking about a stalwart son of his who had died a few months previously, and Packenham and Denison, to whom the lad had been well known, asked his father where the boy had been buried.
'In there, ' replied the old man, pointing to a small white-walled enclosure about a stone's throw from where they were sitting. 'There's a good many graves there now. Let me see. There is Dawnay, the skipper of the Maid of Samoa, and three of his crew; Petersen, the Dutchman, that got a bullet into him for fooling around too much with a pistol in his hand and challenging natives to fight when he was drunk; two or three of my wife's relatives, who wanted to be buried in my boneyard, because they thought to make me some return for keeping their families after they were dead; my boy Tom; and the white woman.
'White woman!' said the mate of the brig. 'Was there a white woman died here?'
'Yes, ' answered the trader; 'but it's so long ago that I've almost forgotten the matter myself. Why, let me see-I came here in '40 or '41. Well, I think it was some time about '48 or '49.' 'Who was she?'
Old Waller shrugged his shoulders. 'That I can't tell. I only know that she died here, and that I buried her.'
'Where did she come from?' asked Denison.
'That I can't tell you either, gentlemen. But I'll tell you all Ido know, and a mighty queer yarn it is, too. In those days I was the only white man here. I had come here about six years before from Ebon, about four hundred miles from here, and, as I had learnt the language, I got on very well with the natives, and was doing a big business. There were not many whale ships here then, but every ten months or so a vessel came here from Sydney, and, as I had the sole run of the whole of this lagoon, I generally filled her up with coconut oil, and was making money hand over fist.
'The house in which I then lived was, like this one, built of coral lime, but stood further away towards the point, in rather a clearer spot than this, for the coconut trees were not growing thickly together around it. You can see the place from here, and also see that a house standing in such a position would be visible, not only from all parts of the inside beaches of the lagoon, but from the sea as well. It used to be a regular landing mark for all the canoes sailing over here from Arno'-a low-lying coral atoll, densely populated, twenty miles distant-'for, being white-washed it stood out very clearly, even at night time.
'Well, it was a pretty lonely life in those days, only seeing a ship once a year; but I was making money, as I said, hand over fist, and didn't worry much. My wife--not the present one, you
know--was a Bonin Island half-bred Portugee woman, and as she generally talked to me in English, and had no native ways to speak of, we used to sit outside in the evenings pretty often and watch our kids and the village people dancing and otherwise amusing themselves on the beach. Rotau, the head chief of this lagoon, was very chummy with me, and sometimes he and his wives