The Emily arrived that evening, and we fed royally on good fresh Australian beef, fried fish, and potatoes, and comp?te of fruit, followed by fresh cream cheese, with bread and tinned butter—as usual, from Australia. In fact, if it wasn’t for Australia I believe that New Caledonia would either live on tinned everything or starve, which is of course a good thing for Sydney and Newcastle. The Doctor produced a couple of bottles of excellent Burgundy from his private cellar, and altogether we did ourselves exceeding well. The next morning the Emily sailed, of course, at five o’clock; but I turned out of bed in the moonlight well contented, for my last journey but one was over. The Commandant invited me on to his verandah for a farewell consommation. After which I went with the Doctor and the Dynamiter for another[263] one or two at the canteen. Then we parted in as friendly a fashion as English and French ever did.
I was glad to get away, yet I left some regrets behind me. Though I had come under unpromising circumstances, every one had made me welcome, and although my stay had lengthened into something like a little exile, my visit to the Land of Wood and Iron had been both pleasant and profitable.
The Doctor I parted from with real regret. He was one of the best types of the travelled French officer and gentleman that I have ever met. At first his ideas about the Boers were hopelessly wrong, and that was all there was the matter with him; but I was the first man he had ever met who had actually lived among them, and when I left his views were considerably altered.
Just before I left, the Director of Posts and Telegraphs—every official seems to be a director of something in Caledonia—brought me the first letters that I had received in Prisonland. They had been carried by a Kanaka over the mountains from Noumea, through fifty miles of jungle-paths.[264] These bush-postmen have never yet been known to lose a letter. When I asked how much extra they were paid for work like this I was told that they were made to do it as a punishment—which struck me as being entirely French.
The Emily—may her name be blessed!—was only a steam launch multiplied by two, but she was clean and sweet, and her nose was pointed towards home. She towed two lighters loaded with dressed timber, and she took something like fifteen hours to do forty-five miles. But that mattered little. It was a delicious day, and the scenery along the coast was lovely. Moreover, you could lie down on her decks without having to change afterwards and throw your clothes overboard, and so the long hours passed pleasantly under the awning.
When at length she had puffed and panted her way into Noumea, I looked about the harbour and saw that Yellow Jack was flying more numerously than ever. The first news I learnt when I landed was that the plague was a great deal worse than the papers were allowed to say. It had begun to jump about all over the town, just as it did later on in Sydney. The Chief[265] of the Sanitary Commission had just been struck down by it.
The first thing I noticed as I drove from the wharf to my old quarters was the number of people in mourning. My landlady, who—I dare say under compulsion—had had her premises cleaned and disinfected, greeted me with even more than French effusion. I owed her a long bill, and she thought I was dead of the plague in some out-of-the-way spot. She nearly cried for joy when she saw me. Poor old lady, she was to be one of the next of the microbe’s victims!
At dinner that night I learnt, to my intense disgust, that the Messagerie Company and the Government had established a twelve-days’ quarantine on a mosquito-haunted islet in the bay for any one who wanted to travel by the monthly mail to Sydney. The principal reason for this was that the Governor was going home and wanted to be quite certain that no microbes got on board concealed about the persons of his fellow-passengers.
From my point of view it amounted to this: Twelve days on Ile Freycinet, four days’ passage, and from eight to ten days’ quarantine in Sydney—total[266] at least twenty-six days for a trip of a little over a thousand miles.
It had to be avoided somehow, and at the same time Noumea was getting every day a better place to get out of. Even Lord Dunmore, who had stuck to his offices down near the wharves while his neighbours were running away, and while the rats, driven out of destroyed buildings, were coming under his floors to die, at last admitted that things were serious, and advised me to “get” as soon as I could.
Fortunately one of the larger coast-boats had been disinfected and was put on the line again, and in her I took passage to Pam, at the north-eastern extremity of the island.
Pam is the port and headquarters of an immensely rich mining district, the property of the International Copper Company, of which his lordship is Administrator. It has been said that when Nature made New Caledonia she set herself to dump down as many ores and minerals in as small a space as possible.
She has certainly succeeded, for there is scarcely a mineral known to science that is not represented in greater or less quantities in this wonderful island.
 
The Mines of the International Copper Co., Pilou, New Caledonia. There is a greater variety of Metallic Ores within the area shown here than in any other region in the world.
 
[267]
A very clever and experienced mining expert once went over from Australia to make a survey for the International, and after an exhaustive examination he was shipped to London to make a personal report to the Board. He knew as much about mining as any one in the Southern Hemisphere, but his language and deportment were those of the bush and the mining camp. A noble lord asked him if he could give any estimate of the amount of copper, nickel, cobalt, iron, silver, gold, etc., that might be found in the Central Chain, and this was his answer:
“My lord, if you were to take all the —— minerals there are out of those —— mountains the —— island would —— well fall to pieces.”
The report was taken as satisfactory.
I brought some specimens away with me which certainly seem to bear out his estimate. They were the wonder and envy of several mining experts in Australia. One of the specimens weighs about three pounds, and I am told that it contains about a dozen distinct kinds of minerals. It didn’t come out of the mine. It was just chopped off the surface for me with a pickaxe.
The mines are not at Pam. They are at Pilou,[268] about seven miles up the river. Here, connecting the principal mining station with the wharf, is the only other railway in Caledonia, which is run by steam. It is a narrow gauge and about five miles long.
That five miles is a journey through purgatory. The attendant demons are little black and devilishly businesslike mosquitos. Now, I thought I knew something about mosquitos. They had lived off me in many parts of the world from Delagoa Bay to Panama, and Honolulu to Guayaquil, but when I got to Pilou I found I hadn’t begun to learn about them.
The air above the swamp over which the railway ran was black with them, and their song made the whole atmosphere vocal. They were all over us in a moment. They even settled on the boiler of the engine, and bit it until it whistled in its agony. We were black with them from head to foot. Clothing was no protection; and, of course, ours was pretty thin. They just stood on their heads and rammed their probosces down into our flesh, usually along the line of a vein, and sucked in our life-blood until they were too gorged to get their blood-pumps out again.
[269]
By constant sweeping with green branches we managed to keep our faces fairly clear, and do our breathing without swallowing more than a dozen at a time. Even the Kanakas, who are not as a rule a favourite article of food with mosquitos, had to go on swishing themselves with boughs to keep the little black demons out of their eyes and nose and mouth and ears.
As for me, I visited the camps and the mines, and then I fled. I was a sight which my worst enemy, if I have one, might well have looked upon with eyes of ............