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Updated: May 9, 2025
BECHE-DE-MER fishers have in times past been marooned on the Reef by mutinous blacks, and left to die by slow degrees, or to be drowned by the implacable yet merciful tide. A makeshift rudder well worn bespoke strenuous efforts to steer a troubled boat to shelter, but this crude signal staff, deftly arranged, told of present agony and stress.
"He does me," she laughed, half-hysterically. "Because he knows me. . . . Harley!" She broke off as the great idea dawned on her. "I have a test. Listen! Remember, Jerry was a nigger-chaser before we got him. And Michael was a nigger-chaser. You talk in beche-de-mer. Appear angry with some black boy, and see how it will affect him."
The old chief said that the people would be ready to receive money as payment for any of their produce, that they had cotton, and palm-oil, and Beche-de-Mer, cocoanuts, native cloth, and various other articles, and that they could supply us with an abundance of hogs and goats, and vegetables of all sorts at a cheap rate.
Kellerman, who was a man of powerful physique, had succeeded in reaching a beche-de-mer station on the coast, where for six or eight months he worked steadily and made a little money. From there he went to a newly-discovered alluvial goldfield north of Cooktown with a prospecting party, who all spoke well of him as "a plucky, energetic fellow, and a good mate."
We then retraced our steps in the direction of the bay. In various places we observed fragments of coral reef, and bêche-de-mer was so abundant that our schooner might have taken a full cargo of it. Hunt walked on in silence with downcast eyes, until as we were close upon the beach to the east, he, being about ten paces ahead, stopped abruptly, and summoned us to him by a hurried gesture.
The close acquaintanceship shown by the Malay beche-de-mer fishers with the nooks and inlets that are so thickly strewn along the coast, west of Cape Wessell, appears to be the result of much old-world seafaring lore, handed down from father to son. Whether the Chinese ever ventured so far south as Australia cannot be affirmed with certainty.
The articles mentioned were, on examination, found to consist of: "Thirty big deer; five thousand musk deer; fifty roebuck deer; twenty Siamese pigs; twenty boiled pigs; twenty 'dragon' pigs; twenty wild pigs; twenty home-salted pigs; twenty wild sheep; twenty grey sheep; twenty home-boiled sheep; twenty home-dried sheep; two hundred sturgeon; two hundred catties of mixed fish; live chickens, ducks and geese, two hundred of each; two hundred dried chickens, ducks and geese; two hundred pair of pheasants and hares; two hundred pair of bears' paws; twenty catties of deer tendons; fifty catties of beche-de-mer; fifty deer tongues; fifty ox tongues; twenty catties of dried clams; filberts, fir-cones, peaches, apricots and squash, two hundred bags of each; fifty pair of salt prawns; two hundred catties of dried shrimps; a thousand catties of superfine, picked charcoal; two thousand catties of medium charcoal; twenty thousand catties of common charcoal; two piculs of red rice, grown in the imperial grounds; fifty bushels of greenish, glutinous rice; fifty bushels of white glutinous rice; fifty bushels of pounded non-glutinous rice; fifty bushels of various kinds of corn and millet; a thousand piculs of ordinary common rice.
"Are we the only people saved?" "I fear so." "Is this a desert island?" "I think not, madam. It may, by chance, be temporarily uninhabited, but fishermen from China come to all these places to collect tortoise-shell and bêche-de-mer. I have seen no other living beings except ourselves; nevertheless, the islanders may live on the south side." Another pause.
Kai-kai was the beche-de-mer for "eat." Even Jerry knew that. "Eat" did not obtain in his vocabulary; but kai-kai did, and it meant all and more than "eat," for it served for both noun and verb. But the girl never replied to the jeering of the blacks. For that matter, she never spoke at all, not even to Captain Van Horn, who did not so much as know her name.
Indeed, it is entitled to notice, for it seems to be most prominent among the few which afford examples of unconscious mimicry and sympathetic coloration to insure themselves from molestation. Beche-de-mer does not generally give the idea of capability of even the simplest form of deception.
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