Nothing but an untrimmed
bamboo staff nearly 30 feet long, carrying an oblong strip of soiled
white calico between two such strips of red turkey twill. Tattered and
frayed, the flags seemed to tell of the desperate appeal for help of some
forlorn castaway; of a human being, marooned on a lonely sandbank on the
Barrier, without shelter, food or water, but not altogether bereft of
hope. 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. It might
have been the emblem of a tragic event that the Beachcomber single-handed
was not able to investigate. As a matter of fact, it was only a temporary
datum of one of His Majesty's surveying ships engaged in attempting to
set the bounds of the Barrier.
Rarely do we sail about without enjoying the zest of the chance of
getting something for nothing. Not yet has the seaman's chest,
brass-bound, with its secret compartments full of "fair rose-nobles and
bright moidores," been lighted upon; but who can say? Perhaps it has
come ashore but now, after leagues of aimless wanderings, and awaits in
some cosy cove the next Beachcombing expedition.
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