THERE are many sceptics who may disbelieve my account of the crew of the “Zangwahee,” but away with such people!
About a week after losing sight of Pango-Pango I went across to Savaii Isle. I had heard that there was an old sailing-ship anchored off Matautu, and that she was bound on a long voyage across the Pacific. I shall never forget the wonder I felt on first sighting the “Zangwahee” as she lay out in the bay. “Looks like an old Spanish galleon,” I thought, as I stared at the yellowish canvas sails and the antiquated rigging imaged in the dark-toned waters of the bay. For a moment I eyed the outlines of that craft with intense curiosity. The beautifully carven emblematical figure-head (a goddess with outstretched praying hands) kept my eyes spellbound. The poetry of the artist’s brain, the magic that had inspired the human hands to carve such outlines, seemed to enter my soul, as the light of the setting sun touched the saffron-hued sails and glimmered across the silent, blue lagoons. The movements of a man’s form on her deck made me realize the truth; for in some credulous fancy I had half thought that she was some long-lost treasure-trove ship that had lain there for centuries!
“Where you bound for?” I cried, hailing a weird-looking seadog who had suddenly stared over the bulwark side.
Placing his hand to his lips, he yelled back, “Bound for Tarhoyti!”
“Where the h——’s Tarhoyti?” I yelled back. But no response came; the old sailor simply pulled his dilapidated cap over his eyes and spat melancholy-wise into the ocean. In a few moments I had taken one of the beach canoes and paddled out to the “Zangwahee.” Clambering up the rope gangway, I went on board. As I stood on deck, I stared in astonishment. The crew, who were busy coiling up the ropes on deck, all stood up, and looked like rows of mummies clad in rags. They were wrinkled and sun-tanned to a yellowish hue! They might have been the crew of the “Flying Dutchman,” so weird did they look, those old-time sailormen. And talk about blasphemous oaths, when I meekly asked if they thought there was any chance of a job!
“Captain Vanderdecken aboard?” I said, hoping to break the ice by such an evident bit of humour on my part. One old sailorman, who had a Rip Van Winkle look about him, stared at my blue serge suit of the nineteenth century, and then, touching his cap respectfullike, said, “Thar’s the Ole Man aft; cawn’t ye see ’im?”