262 
FORESi; A.ND STREAM. 
[APRtt, 8, 1899,. 
Wreck of the Schooner Lupe. 
"Madam," said Captain Wilson most politely, "mad- 
am, I have come dripping wet from the sea to protest 
the schooner Lupe as she lies on the Matafangatele reef 
and her tackle and appurtenances. Likewise four Sav- 
ages which Cap'n Harry Smith said you could depeni 
upoHj and which you can't. Likewise and also, I pro- 
test Cap'n Harry Smith who said you could depend on 
them Savages, and you can't do it, or else I wouldn't be 
here protesting them three things, the schooner and the 
Savages and Cap'n Harry Smith." 
Now all this sort of thing was manifestly consular 
business, and as such belonged to the masculine and 
official member of the household. It is not for a woman 
sitting on the verandah of the unofficial side 'of the con- 
su'ate at Apia to deal with protests of mariners, even 
though they do come dripping wet from the sea. All 
- this was explained to Captain Wilson, who was leaving 
a pool of salt water on the verandah where he stood in 
•a respectful attitude. He was told that he would have 
to await the return of the proper official, who just then 
wa-s off in the boat in pursuit of som^e one of those wild 
nightmares of war which are the sum and substance of 
Samoan politics. But none of these considerations had 
any weight with the drenched mariner, he had come 
right out cj the sea to protest and nothing short of n 
protest would satisfy 
liim. The only way to 
content him was to 
rummage through tlie 
rack of official blank 
forms to find a duazy 
and mildewed copy oi 
Form No. 58 which is 
provided for mariners 
Ho protest on. Then by 
laying down a string 
of mats on the floor 
from the pool in which 
he stood on the veran- 
dah, a way was m.ade 
hy which lie cjottkl 
come inside the office 
and sign his name, a 
laborious operation but 
as satisfactory to him- 
self as though the thing 
■had been done in proper 
lorm. One may have 
cherished ideas of keep- 
ing floors neat and 
tidyj but it is impos- 
sible to prepare in ad- 
vance for official calls 
ot shipAvrecked mari- 
ners just out of the 
sea in which they ha"e 
been shipwrecked. That 
is one of the unusual 
states of afl'airs which 
■would worry almost any 
housekeeper. Still it 
Tvas in a sense flattering 
10 see that the ship- 
wrecked mariner was 
content to have his 
protest taken down hy 
a woman not authorized 
to ■ the performance oi r ■ > c 
such duties of the consular service of the United States. 
"When Captain Wilson had dissolved himself out ot 
the office, and the chain of mats had been thrown out 
on the grass to dry, he insisted on recounting his taie 
of marine disaster and the shattering of confidence rec?:- 
lessly placed in Cap'n Harry Smith. 
-'•Yes'm," continued Captain Wilson, "if you 11 get 
your umbrella to keep the sun ott and just seep down 
on the beach here you can see the Lupe where she lies 
and where I protest her and her tacKle and her ap- 
pui-tenances. You better fetch along that spyglass diat 
was bought at Strut's auction for three dollars, thcie 
may be three dollars worth of seeing in it." 
Sure enough, when one stood just at the very verge 
of the sands it was possible to see a two-masted schooner 
high and dry on the reef a mile or so up the coast, and 
with the spyglass it was possible to make out more de- 
tails of her shipwrecked condition. The glass was all 
right if only one had learned the knack of keeping it 
from coming apart at the joint; so long as the big tube 
did not drop off from the little tube you could see sev- 
eral dollars worth, even though the captain was doubt- 
ful about it. With a comprehensive sweep of his arm in 
that direction he repeated "There's the schooner Lupe 
and I protest her and her tackle and her appurtenances." 
Captain Wilson is not the only one who has found a sort 
of satisfaction in some comphcated official formula. 
Then turning to a group of iotu- jiatives who were 
lifting wet and impassive on the broken mast of the 
Trenton at the foot of the flagstaff, he repeated his 
statement that he protested "them Savages." That was 
one unfortunate feature of treasuring that broken piece 
of timber which is all that is left of the flag ship wrecked 
in the great Apia hurricane. It was very nice to have a 
memento of the historic event, but the mast was a nui- 
sance in that it provided a perch for all the idle Samoans 
to " come and roost on, and a fair half the time was spent 
shooing them off. When Captain Wilson had protested 
Savage's it created the impression that some dreadful 
deed had been done 'by the islanders. But the four on 
,,the mast were unmistakably boys from Niue, or Savage 
Is^'anders, In the varied mixture of islanders about 
Apia it is alwavs possible to identify the Savage Islanders 
throua-h their 'fondness for clothes; others may be con- 
tent with a lavalava, but the Niue boys rig themselves 
,ottt shirts and overalls with the very first wages they 
earn. -Therefore, when the shipwrecked mariner pro- 
tested four Savages he meant only his crew of Sav.^ge 
I'slanderp, whcfh he had set down there gn tlip ttiapt 
where he could keep them under his eye until he finished 
his business. 
Captain Wilson, who had just been wrecked, was some 
sort of a Finn, but at some time he had been naturalized 
in some American port and on that score felt himself 
authorized to do all his nautical business with the Ameri- 
can consulate. It turned out on further investigation that 
this assumption was inaccurate, for his wrecked schooner 
was not entitled to sail under the American flag. But 
the mysteries of the navigation laws of the United Stares 
are not included in any curriculum of feminine educa- 
tion and mistakes are therefore pardonable. When Cap- 
tain Wilson was not sailing he was the general mender 
of clocks for all Apia, a community habitually careless - 
of time and inclined to be content if they find their 
clocks are keeping the same day when Captain O'Ryail 
fires a cannon at the pilot station at noon on Saturday 
so that the beach may know onqe a week what time it is. 
Despite the filling out of Form No. 58 there was 
nothing to show how the schooner was wrecked and where 
the responsibility of Cap'n Harry Smith entered into the 
disaster. That was a part of the narrative which the 
shipwrecked captain was only too anxious to disclose, 
for by it he expected to show that the responsibilitity for 
the loss did not lie on his shoulders. 
He began bj^ telling how he had been chartered by 
the German firm to go to windward for a cargo of copra 
which was ready to bring down to Apia._ If any ke«n 
intelligence discerns any slip in the nautical terms the 
blame is not to be laid on Captain Wilson vvho was 
probably as accurate in the use of his marine dialect a,s 
SIGNS OF SPRING. 
From a painting by Claude Raguet Hirst. Copyright, 1894, by Claude Raguet Hirst, 
a sailor is expected to be, it is rather due to the nar- 
rator's inabihty to keep a clear idea of directions at sea 
which chase around after the wind. In this case the iin- 
pression was clear that the schooner was to go to the 
eastward islands of the archipelago, to Tutuila or to 
Manu'a, for in Samoa' windward always has that mean- 
ing. He went on to explan that because the wind blew 
against the course all day long it was necessary to make 
a start at night when sometimes there was a wind out- 
side that would help him along several miles to the east 
before the tradewind began in the morning. There were 
other details about the need of making a quick trip of it 
and the bother he had in getting the Savages to sail 
the schooner for him. 
After all these details had been set out in full, for wet 
as he was, he would not omit a single item which had 
even the most remote bearing on his cruise which came 
so promptly to disaster, he then got to the point which 
introduced Cap'n Harry Smith and the cause of his 
difficulty hand in hand. 
"Along in the early part of the evening, madam," he 
continued the narrative of wreck, "me and Cap'n Harry 
Smith was discussing some points of sailing in these 
here waters and he was telling me about som.e of them 
harbors up to windward. Now I know a great deal more 
about them harbors than Cap'n Harry Smith does, but 
I didn't tell him so, wanting to be sociable, and it being 
my last night ashore with him. From time to time he 
would get up and have a look at the harbor and come 
back and say it was dead calm. Then that being so, him 
and me would have another one, and go on talking about 
points of sailing, for you've got to be mighty knowing 
when you're sailing up to windward in these islands. 
Along after ten o'clock I began to look for the wind to 
get out of the harbor on, but there wasn't any wind and 
Cap'n Harry he says there never is any wind before 
midnight, but I know better than that, and I know that 
ten o'clock is the time to begin looking for the land 
breeze. Well the land breeze hadn't begun to blow ju.it 
then, so me and Cap'n Harry took &ome more just tu 
keep from dry waiting and then we began to argue 
about it, me knowing all the time that he. Was wrong attd 
him trying to make out that I never sailed about these 
islands as long as he had. and on that account wasn't 
entitled to know anything about the land breeze at 
night. We was perfectly sociable in our talk, for Cap'n 
Harry is a good fellow for all that there's lots of things 
he don't know about safloring. - When it got to be eleven 
o'clock, or maybe the . least bit, short of it. I weM out 
looking for the land breeze, and Cap'n Harry Smith he 
sat back in his chair and told me it was a w-aste of time 
looking for it to set in until midnight. But I felt it a 
little fresh, not exactly a breeze, but a good sign it was 
going to come. So I told him to wet his finger and hold 
it up and then he'd see whether the land breeze alwc^ys 
waited till midnight. That fixed him and ke said that 
maybe it was a little bit earlier for just that once, and 
that any way a cool feeling on a finger wasn't enough 10 
sail out of harbor on. So I sat down with -him just to 
finish it up, for I was for going off to the schooner and 
beginning to get the anchor up. 
"Yes'm. Where was me and Cap'n Harry Smith all 
-this- time? Oh, part of the time at one place and part of 
the time at another along the beach. But when it caiue 
eleven o'clock they shut up for the night and so we 
finished off at my house where I had to go for some of 
my things. As I was saving, for when there's bf-en a 
wreck you've got to tell everything iust as it was, I was 
for going off to the schooner. But Cap'n Harrji- kept on_ 
saying the wind was too li^ht yet, and really it didn't 
amount to much, only to prove that land breezes do 
come before midnight. So we sat down with what I 
happened to have in the house and Cap'n Harry he 
told me some m^ore about the harbors to windward. By 
and by I was getting a little bit uneasy about getting off 
at all, for there was precious little wind, but Cap'n 
Harry he said that it was all right to leave it all to the 
Savages, they'd know best «f all and they knew where to 
find me when it was time to go. He said Savages was the 
sort you could depend on, for they make the best sailors 
of all these natives. 
Samoans are no good 
at all, they're too lazy, 
and they go to sleeo on 
watch and you can't get 
them to do more than 
just so much. But he 
' said he always took 
Savages for his crew 
and glad to get them, 
because you could de- 
pend on them always. 
"But how did the 
Lupe come to be 
wrecked on the Mata- 
fangatele reef? Why, 
that's what I'm telling 
you. ma'am.. I've got 
to explain why I pro- 
test Cap'n Harry Smith 
and them Savages, for 
he said you could de- 
pend on them and I've 
•proved that you can't. 
So when he was tellin,g 
me how the Savages 
was the most reliable 
natives and you could 
always depend on them 
—which you can't — the 
head one of them came 
along to the house. 
That's him, the biggest 
of the lot, him that's 
leaning up against the 
flagpole fast asleep, He 
said that the wnd 
would come pretty soon 
and he had come forme. 
"Then Cap'n Harry 
Smith, what does he 
say? He says 'theiB 
Savages is the best na- 
tives in the South Sea, you can always depend on them.' 
Well, it did look that way. So I owned uo like a man, 
for I don't mind saying so when another man happens to 
know more than me, though as a general thing I know 
as much about these islands as Cap'n Harry Smith, for 
all he's been here so long. So we had another just tu 
say good-bye on, and I got into the boat and the Sav- 
age rowed me out to the schooner. 
"That land breeze was light, just enough to get the 
schooner out of the passage and out far enough avyay 
from the reef so's she would be safe. I was going to 
make an all-night job of it, and keep the helm while it 
was dark, but the breeze was so very light and I was 
sleepy. Then I thought of what Cap'n Harry Smith was 
saying about them Savages that you could always depend 
on them. And I began to think that perhaos he was 
right for he had been cruising about the islands so much 
longer than I had that perhaps he knew best, for I'm 
not one of those men who stick to their own opinion 
just because it's theirs; no, ma'am, I stick to my own 
way of thinking because I know I'm right. Anyway, I 
had been hard at work all day and that made me sleepy, 
and then I got some more sleepy discussing them points 
of sailing with Cap'n Harry Smith, so I made up my 
mind I'd depend on them four Savages for just the one 
night so as to try them. So I called the head man of the 
Savages and I told him we was bound to windward and I 
was going to turn in and I depended on him to see that 
the schooner went to windward all night Ion?. I did 
not say a word to him about Cao'n Harry Smith's sa}'- 
ing that thej' could be depended on, for it might haA'e 
made them too set up to do any work if they knew that 
Cap'n Harry gave them the best name in the South 
Seas after he'd been cruising about the islands so manv 
years. But I just told him I depended on all four , of 
them and then I went to sleep. 
"The next thing I_ knew was this morning when a raft 
of Samoans came piling down the companion and into 
the cabin. I was some surprised, for I thought they was 
Savages when I shipped them, but I see I must have been 
mistaken alon^^ of all the other things I had to do so 
that I could get off as soon as the firm wanted me to go. 
While I was puzzling out how I could come to make a 
mistake, like that, signing Samoans on articles for Sav 
ages, then it came over me that Cap'n Harry Smith 
thought they was Savages too, and I knew I had a good 
joke on. him and , his telling me that Savages was' the 
only natives you can ^depend upon. Pretty soon , I no- 
ticed that thf! -schooner was lying pretty still, -TIsen 1 
