The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, February 16, 1902, Page 14

TH SUNDAY CALL Queer Roventlres of an QI Sz1Tor Whe Qamnot Gzt Heome. ma- from Pitcairn Island San Francisco! of it, and the pity of ony his is the cruel trick a freak- Philip Coffin, an for more than e been the most inacces- siax the Pacific as served ose home fip Coffin has Francisco. he made some rry a penni- back to his years tried and On the m Silherhorn Philip sailmaker, with 2 t could be done the ship ain ar ago. willing hands ilberhorn er his home minutes, that family. As he nd that would harbor of is some They that But wind awned m home The Iberhorn must » leeward of E might r days before All day straining of the he stood eyes tiny his though for f his fair-haired es grouped around joy h in the hold clung to tears, his tried to night he stayed at the rail, the Silber> to Ireland, where d, then on to Liv- duty on wait till the ey to pa Imly found himself once aving passed and as he traveled half and back again to the 1a of the Silberhorn Philip t part of the cargo so worthless to any ck room of a sailors’ er front his goods are fter day Philip Cof- docks, hoping some him passage to Could he but some passing ke him the rest of the ive hit{ = sure u may ask, came this old home? the little back room is the amswer, ago Philip Coffin learned the United States Government was e those who served in loon he the Civil War. He had rved for two years and knew he could claim a share of the bounty. There was & time when money would have been no in ment for any mem- colony of Piteairn folk from the island. They e Do money among themselves and un- recent years were content with such modest stores as could be found ships that chance brought to their ber frequent contact with people from tside world has lessened in some gree their old-time simplicity; and when Coffin, who in his youth had known c power of money, heard that for the sking he could have what to & Pitcairn an is riches be thought to come and . he might return and boast of e his neighbors, but that he those he loved and for his th they neither knew " sorrow it would es the meager portion uld have tempted him ure was the thought of v.dearly earned, could buy 1l luxuries that Philip e pleading of his wife have him leave the island. s confident; woman's pro- Perhaps in the wife's heart was a vague ar that once away from Piteairn other claim and wean him from her. stories have come to the ears of b 2 women; stories of men who visit cighboring islands, marry native women tiring of them, sall away to homes have left in other lands. Women are women the world over, and no rt is proof against invasion f the green-eved serpent While bis wife begged and” he almost yielded, his friends piqued his pride by their good-natured jibes. they woman's h (Narooned in San Francisco Philip Coffin, Who Considers Himself Shipwrecked, Though He Lives in the Heart of Civilization “You won’t go, Phil,” they laughed. “We couldn’t drive you from the island with a club.” Men are men the world over, too, and Philip Coffin ¢éame. He put in his claims, but Government wheels are heavy and slow. Month fol- lowed month, and Phillp Cofin worked on a tugboat in San Francisco harbor, fretting at the delay but loth to retura empty-handed. After more than a year the first pay- ment came, and the promise of a second. ‘With the money he bought—why name the things? You would smile at them— the cheap little waists and shoes and caps, dolis and ribbons and garden tools. To him they are sacred, for in each sim- ple plece he sees the light that will beam in the eyes of the homefolks if the God in’ whom they all “belleve so devoutly is good and brings him home again. “But will God keep me waiting much longer?” sighs the old man. *I wake in the night .and wonder if I'll ever see my home again.” And there is a wistful look in his tear-dimmed eyes. “I want to go back and prove to my wife that I am not false to the vows I made twenty-one years ago. And if I ever get home again I'll stay there till I dfe. This one visit to the world I have left is enough for me.” Some may wonder why the man spent all his money formuslin and dolls and hoes and saved none for passage. The only an- swer is that#a score of years spent in a land where money has no value is enough to dull the spirit of practical economy. He came without money; he thought to return as he came. It may seem foolish to the worldly wise; but stop for a mo- ment and think of the place this man calls home. Pltcairn Island is but a faint dot on the map—e speck among the other islands of the dangerous archipelago in the Eastern Pacific. Not too small a speck to claim English sovereignty, but too insignificant to warrant more attention from the Brit- ish Government than a single yearly visit of one of his Majesty’s men-of-war, just to ses that the island is still on the map and its people in need of nothing. As for the matter of rule, this handful of simple souls is not worth while, and they are left to their own devices. Except for this annual visit of an Eng- Hish mean-of-war Pitcairn folk cannot count with certainty upon any other con- nection with the outside world. The isl- and has no anchorage. Its steep, dark cliffs stand guard with an unfriendly frown. About its shores the waves beat in fury; a violent surf and resistless un- dertow warn sea captains to beware the growling, hungry monster of the sea, who seems tq claim the island for his own. The best of the island’s three poor har- bors can be made only when the wind an- swers, and this is"why few ships call at Pitcairn Island. Yet to the hundred and eighty souls on this lonely, wave-guarded isle, all native- born save Philip Coffin, Pitcairn is Uto- pia. They would not barter its Altrurian peace and soul-plenty for all the wealth and worrying wisdom ‘of all the worlds Few now living on Pitcairn Island have ever been tempted to see for themselves what the outside world 1= like, and these were glad to return to the land that lures Philip Coffin to its restful ease, that haunts his dreams and fills his days with longing, by turns hspeful and hopeless. The story of Pitcairn is old, but its fla- vor is more of romance than reality. It is the story of the mutineers of the Bounty, which made its last fateful voy- ago in the spring of 1789. It is a story of treachery, drunkenness, murder and mad- ness, of virtus, soberness, plety and hap- piness. The story tells how a score or more of lawless men of the Bounty set adrift in an open boat the commander and part of his crew, returning themselves to Tahitl, ‘whence the ship had sailed, with & cargo of young breadfruit trees consigned to the West Indles; how six of the mutineers were condemned to death, and how the leader of the mutiny, Fletcher Christian, and eight other Englishmen, six Polyne- sian men and twelve Polynesian women took possession of Pitcairn and burned the Bounty. . There s a sickening chapter that tells how the beautiful island, in itself a para- dise, was soon made a hell by the orgles of this riotous band, and how within ten years all the men were dead but one, named Alexander Smith, afterward known as John Adams, who set about giving the children of crime and crim- inals some thought of right living and thinking. For nearly ten years more this strange colony remained undiscovered, and after = visit In 1808 by an American vessel they saw no other strangers for nine years more. For forty years none from the outside world came to share their lot, but the colony grew till it numbered cighty-seven, when through fear ot drought the entire population of islanders removed to Tahitl. They liked neither the climate nor the morals of their new home, and within a year returned to their lonely island. Once since then there has been an exo- dus of the islanders, and for two years Pitcairn was left to the sheep and goats which then, as now, with the exeeption of a few cats, dogs and fowl, wers the only animals on the island. But there is a charm about the place and after two years of exile two of the men and their families returned to their old homes, an example soon followed by some of their neighbors. If the sins of others can be atoned by those who come after them, surely the black crimes of the mutineers who sought refuge on Pitcairn Island have been blot- ted out. Among their descendants who people the island to-day vice is unknown. Men and women alike are virtuous, plous, industrious. On the simple law book of the Pitcalrn folk there is provision for no greater crime than gossiping among women and swearing among men, and within the memory of the oldest islander the penalty for either of these (work on the public roads) fas fiever been inflicted, for no one has ever been found guilty. Whisky and tobacco are not allowed in Pitcairn. There are mo stores, no money. “We do not trade,” says Philip Coffir. “We give, believing and living up to the truth that it is more blessed to give than to receive. If any one needs what an- other has it is his for the asking. “We have no public building but the church; no public officials but the Gover- nor or President, as we call him now, and three ministers, who take turns preaching at the church. One long street runs through the place.” “And is this Adamstown?”’ The old man raiged his eyes and repeat- ed the word as though It were new to him. “Adamstown—I belleve they call it so. To me it's home; that's all I call it.” For Lwenty-two years Pitcairn has been home to Phillp Coffin. Before that his home was on the sea. He was born to a sallor’s heritage. He was a Nantucket man, though chance gave him Boston birth; and in Nantucket the prayer of every mother and the wish of every father is that their sons may go to sea and become captain of a ship. At the age of 12 Phillp made his first voyage with his father, who was mate on a merchantman bound for New Orleans. “My ‘mother thought it. would give me a chance to sow my wild oats,” says old man Coffin, “and that I'd go back and stay at school. But it only gave me a taste for roving. At 14 I went to sea in earnest on a whaler, and for thirty years 1 followed the sea, now on whaling ships, now on merchantmen, sometimes as sailor and again as mate.” ~ o the Indian Ocean whaling and back again; around the Horn on a merchant vessel to far-off San Francisco and back once, twice and again; tired of life on a merchantman and off on a whaling cruise to the Arctic Ocean; two years of service in the navy when the Civil War broke out, and back to whaling when the war was over. This Is as close as one can follow the course of a sallor's life. - ; Mest ‘ Peclliar Predicament That 2 - Mzringr n plenty of the hat stands whaling th the [ndian Ocean out were said ne day ld in the small losing for a in the boat,” moment an present whale and were ¢ him- the water w boat was hi splash- ing about in the went the whale out of s ca ing the béat amidships in his jaws. T he sank from We Scrambled on top of what was left of the boat and clung there until by another ed up beat late in the nigh Rightly enocugh, it w changed the current of life. a shipwreck that Philip Coffin’s later His romance had begun a half dozen years before at Pitcairn. Philip Coffin had sailed the world around, had seen women of many lands— no doubt had loved them, too, in sailor fashion—here for a day and away. But he forgot them all when he landed one day on Pitcairn Island and saw the grand- daughter of the Governor. This is the picture he still carries in his heart: A barefoot girl, with” fair hair braided and coiled close, cheeks tinted by sun and wind in health’s own colors and big gray eyes with innocent laughter in them. She was a child of 9, he a man of 20, but he loved her, and, though he asked no promise of her, he made up his mind that some Bay he would come back and claim her for his bride And he did not forget. No letters pass- ed between them, for Pitcairn Was even more cut off from the world then than now; but in his sallor dreams there was ever a figure with golden braids and big gray eyes and In his heart thers was ever a purpose to go back some day and win her. ; After that voyage and others that fol- lowed Philip Coffin stopped for a while Iin San Francisco. He worked in the quar- ries on Angel Island when the rock was taken out for the City Hall. But not for long could he withstand the lure of the sea. One day an English trader, the Arcadia lay in port, and when she shipped her crew Philip Coffin’s name was on the list She was bound—no matter where. Miss- ing her course, she went ashore on a coral reef. With a hole in her side the crew abandoned her, taking to the sm boats. By means of sails they made and good strong hands at the oar, a week in open boats landed them safe and sou on Pitcafrn Island. Chance had favored Philip Coffin, an in six months he was married to the girl of his dreams Together they built a rude hut of rough boards, roofed with palm leaves; together they planted the little plat of ground al- lotted them. In Pitcairn men and women work side by side. Thus Philip Coffin, the world-rover, be- came a quiet, stay-at-home farmer in the most out-of-the-way spot on the map. And in the simple life he found happiness. Time has been gentle with the old man, and his sixty-five years have not taken the light from his eyes nor robbed his cheeks of color; and his step has not lost its spring. Time deals thus with all in Pitcairn, they say, and few die young. But the worry and disappointment of the past year have left their mark upon him. Not only has there been the long- ing for home and loved ones, but also the cruel thought that they may ‘think him untrue to them. That the wife he has never ceased to love should havg cause to doubt him 1s elmost too much to endure. He has writ- ten many letters, but for more than a year ne word has come to him, and he can- not know that his letters have been re- cetved. Once, long ago, Mr. Coffin had ‘s letter from his youngest daughter. “Dear papa,” it read, “if we do not see you again in this world we will surely meet in heaven.” “It was ambition and pride that made me come,” says this unhappy exile. “I wanted to get the money and buy some nice things for my family and friends. I thought, too, I'd go back and see my mother's grave. “Sorry? Before I was out of sight of the island I regretted it. All I ask is to get home again, and I'll leave the island no more. I'll drop both my anchors, pay out all my chain and stay there like & Government lightship.” THE GERMAN POLICE AB’X‘RANGEB fn Germany seon makes the acquaintance of the po- lice, little as he may desire it. A \ German socialist once sald, “It takes half of all the Germans to contvol the other half,” and one who sees Ger- many's immense army. her cloud of of- ficials, great and small, and her omni- scient policemen s inclined to belleve that the soclalist was right, says the Independ- ent. You have been in Germany a week, more or less, when the policeman calls. At first you cannot belleve that he ts really after you, and then your mind runs back guiltily over the past. He takes out his little book—one of a small library of books which he carries in his blouse—and inquires your age, your nationality and how long you intend to stay. You learn subsequently that a recerd of every per- son in the empire is carefully kept, with 'full detafls as to his occupation, material wealth and social standing. If you move into a new house you must notify the po- lice; If you move out you must notify the police; if you hire a servant girl you must purchase a vellow blank and report the fact, the girl also making a report. When she leaves you must send in a green blank stating why she is dismissed, where she is going and so on. If you fail in any one of these multitudinous requirements—and I bave mentioned only a few of them—tirere is a fine to pay, each fine graduated to the enormity of the offense. There are of- fenses graded as low as 2 cents, nd