CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Christian Blue turned the Mendocino Trader over to Jackson the mate. His instructions were to avoid the Port of Brisbane, slog his way down the New South Wales coast to Port Jackson, then look for a cargo in Sydney while awaiting the arrival of the Faithful.

Meanwhile the Faithful, manned by a skeleton crew of volunteers, charged to the northeast under clear sunny skies. She was in her element, laying a boiling white wake over the turquoise water of the Coral Sea, with the roaring south-east tradewind blowing hard over her starboard beam.

Ten days out from Great Sandy Cape, the look-out sent aloft to keep a keen eye out for Royal Navy patrol boats, sighted the first of the Trobriand Islands from his perch high in the yards. Late the next day the Faithful once again dropped anchor in the still water off the settlement on Kiriwina.

Ben and Christian Blue stood at the rail and looked toward the beach. It was deserted. `I will go onto the island alone.' Ben said as a ship's boat was lowered into the water. `Kiri has told me how the sight of a landing party from a labor-ship terrifies the islanders, and is provocation enough for the young men to attack without warning.'
`Be careful, Ben.' Christian Blue cautioned. `And get back to the ship just as soon as you can. The British have already caught me once at this very spot.' The captain glanced nervously up to the look-out, who was still at his post high in the rigging. `I don't figure they'd ever let me go if they found me here a second time.'
Ben climbed down into the boat and its two oarsmen pushed off. The small craft soon reached the beach.Ben jumped out and waved the sailors back to the ship, then quickly stripped to the waist, anxious to show any unseen eyes ashore that he was unarmed. He took his first steps slowly until his sea-legs became accustomed to the unyielding firmness of the land, then he strode purposefully toward the coconut grove at the edge of the beach.
As soon as Ben entered the palms, and passed out of sight of Christian Blue's anxious eyes aboard the Faithful he heard a parrot screech. A moment later he shrieked in pain, as the finely honed tip of a thin, wooden spear, slammed into the soft flesh of his shoulder and burst out the other side.
Suddenly he found himself surrounded by a dozen or more yelling islanders. They were armed with short, thick clubs, which they used to pummel him to the ground, in a barrage of blows to his head and body. He was barely conscious when the pounding finally ended. He was pulled roughly back onto his feet, and he swayed unsteadily as ropes fashioned from crudely woven vines were tied tightly around his throat, and his hands were bound together behind his back.
Ben almost passed out from the pain when one of the islanders broke off the long end of the spear, and another pulled the broken shaft out through the back of his shoulder. Then he felt the vines around his neck tighten, and he was dragged stumbling and crawling, down a narrow trail which led to the village.
A runner, sent ahead of the others, alerted the village headman that only one man had landed on the island from the labor-ship, and that he had been taken captive. Soon a large crowd had assembled in the clearing between the grass huts in the village, noisily awaiting the arrival of the warriors and their prisoner.
The headman glanced around and saw the anger on the faces in the crowd. He knew it would be difficult to prevent the intruder from being killed instantly when the warriors reached the village. He was afraid the villagers would ignore the instructions of the headmen on the ships with the big guns, sent by the far-off Queen to protect them—that any kidnappers should be captured, but not killed.
The day before, when canoes had arrived from the outer islands warning of the sighting of the labor-ship, the headman had dispatched canoes to other islands. They in turn, would send more canoes to more islands and spread the word that a labor-ship was in the waters of the Trobriands.
The headman knew it wouldn't be long before the message reached one of the ships, and that the white men would soon come and punish the labor-traders.
As the warriors neared the village, a young woman carrying a new born baby in her arms emerged from one of the grass huts. It was Kiri. She crossed the clearing and stood beside her father, the headman. She beckoned to a small boy who stood among a group of excited children nearby, and Sky reluctantly came and stood beside her.
Soon the warriors entered the clearing, still yelling, with their dazed and bleeding captive lurching along behind them. Kiri's eyes widened.Beneath the wounds, the blood and grime, the hapless prisoner looked somehow familiar.She watched as the ropes around his neck slackened and he dropped face down to the ground. Her heart pounded in her chest when she saw the pigtail in the prisoner's hair.
Ben tasted the salt from Kiri's tears as she held his head in her lap and smothered his face with kisses.He looked up at her through the two slits which remained open in his badly swollen eyes. He tried to smile.
`I have come for you and Sky...' he gasped, fighting desperately to remain conscious, `to take you home to Jarrah.'
`We always knew you would Ben Luk.' Kiri was crying and laughing at the same time. She reached for her baby and held the infant close to his face. `And so did our baby daughter.'
Just as Ben raised a finger to touch the baby's cheek, he passed out.
He was still unconscious when Christian Blue came ashore with two boats just before dark, when a party of islanders appeared on the beach carrying Ben on a makeshift litter.
`Ben Luk will be all right,' Kiri said when Christian Blue stepped ashore. `But we must leave without delay. My people thought a labor-ship had run the blockade to kidnap islanders. My father has already sent for naval gunboats. If they catch us they will confiscate the Faithful, and they will not allow me or my children to leave Kiriwina.'
Christian Blue grimaced. `I don't know the reef strewn waters around these islands well enough to risk sailing through them at night Miss Kiri. We'll have to wait for first light before we make sail.'
Kiri sat beside Ben's bunk in the master's cabin all through the long night.In the early hours she got up from her chair and peered through a porthole, looking for the first streaks of dawn. But it was still some time before daybreak. Outside a huge full moon illuminated the anchorage. Just as she turned away from the porthole, she was startled to see the silhouette of a large ship glide silently into view.
Kiri raced out of the cabin. `Captain Blue, Captain Blue'.
When the captain bounded up to the deck he found the look-out asleep. He looked out over the rail. A hundred yards away a British warship lay bathed in moonlight, broadside on, gunflaps down, with her long row of sixty eight pound muzzle-loaders trained directly on the Faithful.
Christian Blue watched as the warship lowered a boat into the water. Minutes later, a young officer clambered from the boat onto the deck of the Faithful. He was followed by a dozen or so armed Royal Marines. The last man to climb aboard also wore the uniform of an officer. He remained standing in the shadows by the rail while the lieutenant crossed the deck with two marines and began to question Christian Blue.
`I take it you are the captain of this brig.'
`I am, sir.'
The lieutenant's eyes shifted to Kiri. `And I see you have taken islanders aboard your vessel.'
`Yes, sir.'
`And I am aboard this ship of my own free will Lieutenant,' Kiri said quickly in Christian Blue's
defense.
The Lieutenant looked astonished to hear Kiri speak English, and in such a refined tone. He was not the only one taken by surprise. The second officer walked over from the rail. He wore the insignia of a captain.
`Excuse me, miss,' the captain said. `But have we not met before?'
Kiri looked up into the captain's face. It was becoming light now. She could see his features clearly. Her face lit up. `Why yes, we certainly have, Lord Waverley, at my home at Jarrah on the banks of the Brisbane River.'
*
The Faithful returned to Queensland at a cracking pace on the opposite tack to her outward journey, her sails filled again by the boisterous southeast tradewind.
In Kiri's constant care, Ben began to recover quickly. They spent the days of the passage lost in the love which they feared had been taken from them forever. Their joy was shared by Sky, who was eagerly looking forward to returning to Jarrah. And with Christian Blue's approval, Ben and Kiri named their two-month-old baby daughter Christine, as a mark of their gratitude to him.
Just after dark on the thirteenth day out from Kiriwina, the look-out sighted the Cape Moreton light at the entrance of Moreton Bay. Ben insisted the Faithful not venture far into the bay.Christian Blue put the family ashore, under the cover of darkness, at the pilot station at Bulwer on Moreton Island, nearly twenty miles from the mouth of the Brisbane River.
`Thank you for all you have done Captain Blue,' Ben said. `Now go quickly, out to the safety of the open sea. There is danger here.'
Christian Blue shook Ben's hand firmly. `And what of you Ben Luk?' Will you take Silas Moser and the Stonehouse family to task for all they have done to you?'
`I told the bishop I would not seek retribution.' Ben said. `I shall not break my word. Now I have Kiri and the children, I want only that we should live our lives in peace at Jarrah.' *
The skipper of a small steam barge returning from Bulwer to Brisbane the next morning, couldn't believe his luck when a family paid him the equivalent of three weeks wages to take them back with him to Brisbane, and then upstream to the jetty at Jarrah.