I know it nearly broke the drums of my ears the first time Grimes and I responded to the invitation. They sang _Blow the Man Down_ that night, and the ancient sea-song reminded me of my first voyage on a sailing ship. It is a melody that seems to mysteriously express in a few bars the true atmosphere of ocean life. As those old shellbacks sang it, in their inimitable style, I fancied I saw the old wooden ships going down the English Channel when the world was young. I saw the old sailors singing that capstan song as they toiled. I saw their bearded, crooked-nosed faces shine in the moonlight as they climbed aloft, disappeared among the wide grey canvas sails, and vanished in the sky a hundred years ago.
It was only when the night grew old, when Benbow’s fist struck the table with indisputable conviction, and all the assemblage enthusiastically believed his yarn that their songs resembled chaos.
Some banged mugs on the table, others thumped the floor with their sea-boots, as their bearded throats roared out the choruses. No barbarian cataclysm of joyous sound could outrival that pandemonium of jangled melody. It resembled the steam-organ of a circus roundabout with the pipes at full blast and out of tune. It seemed that the stops, the bassoons, clarionets, double basses, horns, sopranos, cymbals, bagpipes, drums, faint tinkles of the banjo and weird piston-rods of sound still crashed forth, toiling on in some terrible ensemble as the great musical engine broke down.
Ye gods! it was a pandemonium! Grimes and I stood at the door seeking fresh air that night. We couldn’t stand it.
The natives came creeping across the hills. They heard that singing from afar. Those awestruck Marquesans looked like happy ghosts as they crept beneath the moonlit bread-fruit trees and listened. What did they think of it, the great white man’s barbarian festival?
“Go it, allee samee nicee!” said one great tattooed warrior from Anahao when Grimes gave him a bit of _tabak_ (tobacco).
Once more the roof of Benbow’s cottage vibrated as the chorus of _I owe Ten Shillings to O’Grady_ struck the silence of those South Sea hills. In the middle of the songs came the hubbub of various calls for rum, terrible oaths and enthusiastic encores. It sounded like some mighty gramophonic record coming on telegraph wires through the earth’s centre, rumbling and humming from far-off civilisation, from the other side of the globe, ay, from London town itself, as the thousand echoes struck the silent hills of heathendom. The native children also flocked across the slopes. Standing on their curly heads, they clapped their tiny hands, and fairly screamed with ecstatic delight as they shouted “Joranna!” One little dusky beggar, who was stone blind, but had ears, wrung his tiny hands, and ran round and round under the moonlit coco-palms. I saw his little tawny face gleam with joy in the moonlight as once again came the thunder of that jovial chorus: