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Updated: May 6, 2025
Fear also restricted his wanderings in the bush, which kept him within sound of the dreaded waves. He was an unaffected beach-comber. Neither the food-bestowing sea nor the safe dry land was for him. By instinct he seemed to be guided to the best trees for bark, generally selecting "gulgong," though others were equally pliant in his hands.
In these regions the white man takes his life and whatever native property he can annex in his hand, caring no more for the Aborigines' Protection Society than for the Kyrle Company for diffusing stamped-leather hangings and Moorish lustre plates among the poor of the East-End. The common beach-comber is usually an outcast from that civilization of which, in the islands, he is the only pioneer.
Old schooner captains they were, old South Sea traders, cooks, and mates: fine creatures, softened by residence among a softer race: full men besides, though not by reading, but by strange experience; and for days together I could hear their yarns with an unfading pleasure. All had indeed some touch of the poetic; for the beach-comber, when not a mere ruffian, is the poor relation of the artist.
It soon became evident, however, that in reality Hoang wanted nothing of them, though with great earnestness he asserted his willingness to charter the "Bertha Millner" back to San Francisco. "That's not his game at all," said Moran to Wilbur, in a low tone, her eyes never leaving those of the beach-comber. "He's pretty sure he could seize the 'Bertha' and never pay us a stiver.
In the meantime on a small island in the Upper Inlet a strange conference was taking place. Three youths whom our readers will recognize as Jack Curtiss, Bill Bender and Sam Redding; were in earnest consultation with the unkempt and unsavory individual whom we know as Hank Handcraft, the beach-comber.
Perceiving which, the beach comber relaxed the pressure, to let his conquered enemy slide, broken, to the ground. This, to his blank amaze, Gavin Brice neglected to do. The old ruse of apparent collapse had served its turn, for perhaps the millionth time. The beach-comber was aware of a lightning-quick tensing of the slumped muscles.
"Not for a damned beach-comber," said the officer, turning on his heel. Jack did not attempt to follow or to pester him. He knew when he was beat. He sat down on the nearest log, and making room for Fetuao beside him, drew out his pipe, filled it and began to smoke. The girl tried to speak to him, but he would not answer.
In the early part of May I was called upon to take up my quarters for a few months at our hide-house at San Diego. In the twinkling of an eye I was transformed into a beach-comber and hide-curer, but the novelty and the comparative independence of the life were not unpleasant.
If that bark's abandoned, an' I says she is, she's ours. I'm out for anything that there's stuff in. I guess I'm more of a beach-comber by nature than anything else. If she's abandoned she belongs to us. To 'll with this coolie game. We'll go beach-combin', you and I. We'll board that bark and work her into the nearest port San Diego, I guess and get the salvage on her if we have to swim in her.
"The pah, the beggars about me call it," said the beach-comber; "perhaps some niggers you've been reading about call it the Mark. I don't know. But to be done with this pig. The fire was ready, and they were just going to cut the poor beast's throat with a green-stone knife, when the interpreter up and told them 'hands off. 'That's a taboo pig, says he.
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