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Title: South Sea Yarns

Author: Basil Thomson

Release date: September 1, 2021 [eBook #66195]

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: William Blackwood and Sons, 1894

Credits: Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOUTH SEA YARNS ***


SOUTH SEA YARNS


[Illustration: “_While the men were digging the oven and lining it._”]




SOUTH SEA YARNS

BY
BASIL THOMSON

_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCXCIV

_All Rights reserved_




TO
MY WIFE




INTRODUCTION.


In the great _bure_ of Raiyawa there was a story-telling. The
lying-places filled three sides of the house--mats spread upon grass
four feet wide,--and between each lying-place was a narrow strip of
bare earth sprinkled with wood-ashes, on which three logs, nose to
nose, were smouldering. A thin curl of blue smoke wreathed upwards
from each to the conical roof, where they met and filtered through
the blackened thatch; so that from outside the _bure_ looked like a
disembowelled haystack smouldering, ready to burst into flame. On
the fourth side was a low doorway, stopped with a thick fringe of
dried rushes, through which ever and anon a grey-headed elder burst
head-foremost, after coughing and spitting outside to announce his
arrival. Beside the doorway was a solitary couch, the seat of honour,
to which the foreigner, footsore and weary with his tramp across the
mountains, was directed, having in his turn dived trustingly through
the rushes like the rest. The couches were filling, and the elders were
settling down in twos to rest, slinging their legs over the fender-bar
that lay conveniently on its forked supports, and turning to the
grateful glow that part of his anatomy that man delights to roast--for
the night was falling, and a chilly mist was rising from the river.
Then one of them rose and made with his hand a tiny aperture in the
rush-screen, through which the dull twilight showed white. “Beat!” he
cried; and the rest beat the reed walls with their open palms, and
the house was filled with the angry hum of a myriad mosquitoes, that
flew into the smoke and out towards the king-post, and then, seeing
the twilight and the fresh air, sailed in a compact string through
the opening, so that in three minutes there was not one of them left.
Thereafter one might sleep in peace without slapping the back and the
bare thighs, for the rushes brushed them from the body of each incomer,
and their furious hum outside was impotent to hurt.

At length every place was filled, and from the darkness Bongi began
and told of the mountain-paths--how the foreigner would rest before the
hill was climbed, gasping like a fish, and asked many foolish questions
of the old time and the present; and of the courts, how Bitukau had
had his hair cropped, having been taken in sin and judged; and of how
the foreigner had given him strange meats to eat that were enclosed in
iron, having first broken the iron and cooked the meats on a fire.

“Yes,” said Bosoka, “such were the meats that a foreigner gave to the
men of Kualendraya, bidding them heat the meats on a fire and eat;
but when they did so, the meats blew up like a gun, and scalded them
grievously. Foreigners must be strong indeed to eat such meats.”

“And the foreigner told me tales,” continued Bongi--“wonderful tales,
hard to believe: of stone houses larger than this whole village; of
strings going under the sea to other lands by which men talk, sending
no ship to bear the tale; of steamers that go on land faster than a
horse can run.”

“Foreigners are great liars,” said old Natuyalewa, sententiously. “But
the land steamers may be true, for at Nansori it is said the sugar-cane
is carried by steamers on the land. Tomase, who worked there, told me
of this; and it may be true that they talk with strings, for a man may
make many signs by jerking a sinnet cord which another holds, pulling
harder at times and then softly. But the stone house--such tales as
these they tell to increase their honour in our eyes, but they are
lies, for there is no land so great as Great Viti.”

Now the foreigner feigned sleep and listened.

“Well,” cried Ngutu from the corner, “the teacher says that our fathers
lied about Rokola’s canoe--that the mast fell at Malake and dented the
mountains of Kauvandra. He says that a canoe cannot sail so far in a
day, even with the wind on the outrigger.”

“The teachers are the foreigners’ mouths, and bark at all our ancient
customs, seeking to dishonour them,” growled Natuyalewa. “I am growing
old, and the land is changed. When I was young we listened to the words
of our elders, but now the young men----”

“Ië! Tell us tales of the old time,” interrupted Bongi: “we will each
bring _nambu_: mine shall be the _sevu_ of my yams.”

The elders grunted approval from the darkness.

“My _nambu_ shall be fish.” “A bunch of white plantains.” “Mine shall
be prawns from the stream,” cried several.

“I want no _nambu_,” replied Natuyalewa, with dignity; “the _nambu_
should be given to those who tell tales for gain, seeking to entertain
the chiefs, that mats, and fine _masi_, and other property, may be
given to them. These will tell of gods and giants, and canoes greater
than these mountains, and of women fairer than the women of these days,
and of doings so strange that the jaws of the listener fall apart.
Such a one gains great honour, and the chiefs will promise him _nambu_
before they even hear his tale, remembering the wonders of the last.
And he, being known for a teller of strange tales, must ever lie more
and more, lest, if he turn back to the truth, the chiefs hearing him
may say, ‘This fellow’s tales were once like running water, but now
they are like the village pool: why give him _nambu_?’ But I will ask
no _nambu_, for I can only tell of that I have seen with my own eyes or
heard with my ears; and though I tell you tales of the old time or of
distant lands, yet can I tell only of the doings of men and women like
to yourselves, who did deeds such as you yourselves do; and when all
is told, you will call the tale emptier than the shell of the Wa-Timo
fruit.”

Then Natuyalewa began to tell of Rusa, the fisherman of Malomalo, and
the foreigner, himself a story-teller in Natuyalewa’s line of business,
thought ruefully of the wonder-mongers of his own land, and the _nambu_
they won, and so pondering, fell asleep.




CONTENTS.

                                  PAGE
A COURT-DAY IN FIJI,                 1

THE LAST OF THE CANNIBAL CHIEFS,    17

TAUYASA OF NASELAI, REFORMER,       37

A COOLIE PRINCESS,                  47

LEONE OF NOTHO,                     61

RALUVE,                             68

THE RAIN-MAKERS,                   111

MAKERETA,                          125

ROMEO AND JULIET,                  130

THE WOMAN FINAU,                   142

IN THE OLD WHALING DAYS,           173

THE FIERY FURNACE,                 195

FRIENDSHIP,                        208

THE HERMIT OF BOOT ISLAND,         254

THE WARS OF THE FISHING-ROD,       261

THE FIRST COLONIST,                288




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

                                                    PAGE
“WHILE THE MEN WERE DIGGING THE OVEN AND LINING
IT,”                                      _Frontispiece_

“ON THE NIGHT OF EACH RETURN FROM THE CAPITAL,”       38

“AND THEN RALUVE CAME IN, SHYLY FOLLOWED BY TWO
ATTENDANTS OF DISCREET AGE AND MATURE CHARMS,”        76

“THE CANOE WAS AFLOAT, AND LADEN WITH SUCH OF THE
LOW-BORNS’ HOUSEHOLD GODS AS THEIR ARISTOCRATIC
VISITORS THOUGHT WORTH TAKING AWAY,”                  84

MAKERETA,                                            126

FRIAR LAURENCE’S HOUSE,                              134

“NOTHING NOW REMAINS OF KOROLAMALAMA BUT THE NAME
AND A FEW MOUNDS,”                                   178

“WHEN THE WOOD WAS ALL OUT THERE REMAINED A CONICAL
PILE OF GLOWING STONES,”                             202

LEVUKA,                                              248

“RASOLO, BEING SWIFTEST OF FOOT, REACHED THEM FIRST,
AND SLEW THEM WITH HIS THROWING-CLUB,”               268




SOUTH SEA YARNS.




A COURT-DAY IN FIJI.


A bright sky vying with the sea for blueness, a sun whose rays are not
too hot to be cooled by the sea-breeze, the distant roar of the great
Pacific rollers as they break in foam on the coral-reef, the whisper
of the feathery palms as they wave their giant leaves above yonder
cluster of brown native huts,--all these form a picture whose poetry
is not easily reconciled with the stern prose of an English court of
law. It is perhaps as well that the legal forms we are accustomed to
have been modified to meet the wants of this remote province of the
Queen’s dominions, for the spot we are describing is accounted remote
even in remote Fiji, and the people are proportionately primitive. The
natives of Fiji are amenable to a criminal code known as the Native
Regulations. These are administered by two courts--the District Court,
which sits monthly and is presided over by a native magistrate; and
the Provincial Court, which assembles every three months before the
English and native magistrates sitting together. From the latter there
is no appeal except by petition to the governor, and it has now become
the resort of all Fijians who are in trouble or consider themselves
aggrieved.

For several days witnesses and accused have been coming in from the
neighbouring islands, and last night the village-crier proclaimed the
share of the feast which each family was called upon to provide. The
women have been busy since daylight bringing in yams, plantains, and
taro from the plantations, while the men were digging the oven and
lining it with the stones that, when heated, will cook the pigs to a
turn.

But already the height of the sun shows it to be past ten, and
the District Court has to inquire into several charges before the
Provincial Court can sit. The order is given to the native police
sergeant to beat the _lali_, and straightway two huge wooden drums boom
out their summons to whomsoever it may concern. As the drum-beats
become more agitated and pressing, a long file of aged natives, clad in
shirt and _sulu_ of more or less irreproachable white, is seen emerging
from the grove of cocoa-nut palms which conceal the village. We have
but just time to shake hands with our dusky colleague, a shrewd-looking
old man with grizzled hair and beard carefully trimmed for the
occasion, when the crowd begins to pour into the court-house.

The gala dresses are not a little startling. Here is a dignified old
gentleman arrayed in a second-hand tunic of a marine, in much the same
plight as to buttons as its owner as to teeth; near him stands a fine
young village policeman, whose official gravity is not enhanced by the
swallow-tailed coat of a nigger minstrel; while the background is taken
up by a bevy of village maidens clad in gorgeous velvet pinafores,
who are giggling after the manner of their white sisters until they
are fixed by the stern grey eye of the chief policeman, which turns
their expression into one of that preternatural solemnity they wear
in church. The court-house, a native building carpeted with mats, is
now packed with natives, sitting cross-legged, only a small place
being reserved in front of the table for the accused and witnesses.
The magistrate takes his seat, and his scribe, sitting on the floor
at his side, prepares his writing materials to record the sentences.
The dignity with which the old gentleman adjusts his shirt-collar and
clears his throat is a little marred when he produces from his bosom
what should have been a pair of _pince-nez_, seeing that it was secured
by a string round his neck, but is in fact a Jew’s-harp. With the soft
notes of this instrument the man of law is wont to beguile the tedium
of a dull case. But although the spectacle of Lord Coleridge gravely
performing on the Jew’s-harp in court would at least excite surprise
in England, it provokes no smile here. The first case is called on.
Reiterated calls for Samuela and Timothe produce two meek-faced youths
of eighteen and nineteen, who, sitting tailor-fashion before the table,
are charged with fowl-stealing. They plead “Not guilty,” and the owner
of the fowls being sworn, deposes that, having been awakened at night
by the voice of a favourite hen in angry remonstrance, he ran out of
his house, and after a hot chase captured the accused red-handed in two
senses, for they were plucking his hen while still alive. Quite unmoved
by this tragic tale, Vatureba seems to listen only to the melancholy
notes of his Jew’s-harp; but the witness is a chief and a man of
influence withal, and a period of awed silence follows his accusation,
broken only by a subdued twanging from the bench. But Vatureba’s eyes
are bright and piercing, and they have been fixed for some minutes on
the wretched prisoners. He has not yet opened his lips during the case,
and as the Jew’s-harp is not capable of much expression, it is with
some interest we await the sentence. Suddenly the music ceases, the
instrument is withdrawn from the mouth, the oracle is about to speak.
Alas! he utters but two words, “_Vula tolu_” (three months), and there
peals out a malignantly triumphant strain from the Jew’s-harp. But the
prosecutor starts up with a protest. One of the accused is his nephew,
he explains, and he only wished a light sentence to be imposed. Three
months for one fowl is so severe; besides, if he has three months, he
must go to the central jail and not work out his sentence in his own
district. Again there is silence, and the Jew’s-harp has changed from
triumph into thoughtful melancholy. At length it is withdrawn, and the
oracle speaks again, “_Bogi tolu_” (three days).

The prisoners are pounced upon and dragged out by the hungry police,
and after a few more cases the District Court is adjourned to make
way for the Provincial. The rural police--a fine body of men dressed
in uniform--take up positions at the court-house doors, and we take
our seats beside our sable colleague at the table. A number of men
of lighter colour and different appearance are brought in and placed
in a row before the table. These are the leading men of the island
of Nathula, who are charged with slandering their Buli (chief of
district). They have, in fact, been ruined by a defective knowledge
of arithmetic, as we learn from the story of the poor old Buli, whose
pathetic and careworn face shows that he at least has not seen the
humorous side of the situation. It appears that a sum of £70, due to
the natives as a refund on overpaid taxes, was given to the Buli for
distribution among the various heads of families. For this purpose he
summoned a meeting, and the amount in small silver was turned out on
the floor to be counted. Now as not a few Fijians are hazy as to how
many shillings go to the pound, it is not surprising that the fourteen
or fifteen people who counted the money made totals varying from £50 to
£100. They at once jumped to the conclusion that the Buli, who was by
this time so bored with the whole thing that he was quite willing to
forego his own share, had embezzled the money; but to make suspicion
certainty they started off in a canoe to the mainland to consult a
wizard. This oracle, being presented with a whale’s tooth, intimated
that if he heard the name of the defaulter who had embezzled the
money, his little finger, and perhaps other portions of his anatomy,
would tingle (_kida_). They accordingly went through the names of all
their fellow-villagers, naming the Buli last. On hearing this name the
oracle, whose little finger had hitherto remained normal, “regardless
of grammar, cried out, ‘That’s him!’”

On their return to Nathula, they triumphantly quoted the oracle as
their authority for accusing their Buli of embezzlement. The poor old
gentleman, wounded in his tenderest feelings, had but one resort. He
knew _he_ hadn’t stolen the money, because the money hadn’t been stolen
at all, but then who would believe his word against that of a wizard?
and was not arithmetic itself a supernatural science? There was but
one way to re-establish his shattered reputation, and this he took.
His canoe was made ready, and he repaired to the mainland to consult
a rival oracle named _Na ivi_ (the ivi-tree). The little finger of
this seer was positive of the Buli’s innocence, so that, fortified by
the support of so weighty an authority, he no longer feared to meet
his enemies face to face, and even to prosecute them for slander. As
the Buli was undoubtedly innocent, and had certainly been slandered,
the delinquents are reminded that ever since the days of Delphi seers
and oracles have met with a very limited success, and are sentenced
to three months’ imprisonment. And now follows a real tragedy. The
consideration enjoyed by the young Fijian is in proportion to the
length and cut of his hair. Now these are evidently dandies to the
verge of foppishness. Two of them have hair frizzed out so as to make a
halo four inches deep round the face, and bleached by lime until it is
gradated from deep auburn to a golden yellow at the points. Pounced on
and dragged out of court by ruthless policemen, they are handed over to
the tender mercies of a pitiless barber, and in a few moments they are
as crestfallen and ridiculous as that cockatoo who was plucked by the
monkey. The self-assurance of a Fijian is as dependent on the length of
his hair as was the strength of Samson.

But now there is a shrill call for Natombe, and a middle-aged man of
rather remarkable appearance is brought before the table. He is a
mountaineer, and is dressed in a rather dirty _sulu_ of blue calico,
secured round the waist by a few turns of native bark-cloth. He is
naked from the waist upward. The charge is practising witchcraft (_drau
ni kau_), a crime which is punishable with twelve months’ imprisonment
and forty lashes; for the Fijians are so persuaded that a bewitched
person will die, that it is only necessary to tell a person he is
bewitched to ensure his death within a few days from pure fright.
The son of the late Buli of Bemana comes forward to prosecute. The
substance of his evidence is as follows: Buli Bemana, who was quite
well on a certain Saturday, was taken ill on the Sunday, and expired
in great agony on the Monday morning. The portion of his people to
whom the accused belongs had complained more than once of the Buli’s
oppression, and desired his removal. It is the custom for a wizard
who has compassed the death of a man to appear at the funeral with
blackened face as a sign to his employers that he has earned his
reward and expects it. The accused attended Buli Bemana’s funeral
with blackened face. Moreover, an old woman of Bemana had dreamed
that she had seen Natombe bewitching the Buli, and the little fingers
of several Bemanas had itched unaccountably. These last the witness
considered were convincing proofs. The accused, in reply, stated that
he was excessively grieved at the Buli’s death, and that his face at
the funeral was no blacker than usual. Several witnesses followed, who
deposed that the accused is celebrated throughout the district for his
skill in witchcraft, and that he had boasted openly in days gone by
that he had caused the death of a man who died suddenly.

Now, as stated above, the belief in witchcraft among Fijians is
so thorough, and the effects of a spell upon the imagination of a
bewitched person so fatal, that the English Government has found it
necessary to recognise the existence of the practice by law. It is,
however, none the less wise for the Government officials, without
pooh-poohing the existence of witchcraft, to attempt to discourage
the belief in its efficacy. Accordingly we call for evidence as to
the particular manner in which the alleged spell was cast. There was
no caldron nor blasted heath in this case; indeed the whole ceremony
was a decidedly tame affair. It was only necessary to procure some of
the Buli’s hair or the portions of his food left untasted, and bury
them with certain herbs enclosed in a bamboo, and death would ensue
in a few days. To our question whether the Buli himself thought he
was bewitched we receive a decided negative; indeed, we happen to know
that the poor old man died of acute dysentery, brought on by cold, and
that in this case, if witchcraft had been really practised, the death
was a most unfortunate coincidence. As no evidence more incriminating
than dreams and the finger-tingling is forthcoming, the accused is
acquitted, to be condemned by the other tribunal of public opinion,
which evidently runs high. When he has left the court we address the
chiefs of Bemana upon the subject of witchcraft generally, as if
seeking information. Upon this a number of white-haired old gentlemen,
whose boredom has been for some time exchanged for somnolence, wake
up and hold forth upon the relative value of hair and nail-parings as
instruments for casting spells. While the discussion becomes animated
and the consensus of opinion appears to be gathering in favour of
toe-nails, we electrify the assembly by suggesting an experiment.
They are to select two of their wisest wizards, we are to supply the
necessary means, and they are to forthwith cast their most potent spell
over us. On the result is to rest their future belief in witchcraft.
If we have not succumbed in a month’s time there is no truth in the
practice. If we do die, they may not only believe in it, but they will,
of course, be held guiltless of our death. A dead silence ensues. Then,
after much whispered conversation, an old man addresses the court,
pointing out that white men eat different food from Fijians, for do
they not live upon flour, tinned meat, rice, and other abominations?
And do they not despise the succulent yam, and turn up their noses at
pork, dried lizard, and tender snake? Therefore is it not obvious that
the powers of witchcraft will be lost upon such beings? Now we have
with us a Tongan servant, by name Lijiate (being the nearest Tongans
can get to Richard). This man, being half-educated, and above all a
Tongan, is full of contempt for Fijians and their barbarous customs. He
has long talked contemptuously of witchcraft, which he considers fit
only for the credence of heathens, not of good Christians like himself.
Here is a chance for Richard to distinguish himself and us. We make the
offer. Richard is to be bewitched on the same terms as ourselves. He at
least does eat yams and pork, and though he has not yet taken kindly
to snake, the difference is trifling. But we have counted without our
host. “_Fakamolemole_” (pardon), says Richard, “I almost believe in it
myself. I pray you have me excused.” This spikes our gun, for though,
doubtless, some of our Fijian servants would consent to be experimented
on, they would probably pine away and die from pure fright, and
re-establish the belief in witchcraft for ever.

Our discomfiture is best covered by attention to business. Two more
cases of larceny are heard and disposed of, and now two ancient
dames, clad in borrowed plumes, consisting of calico petticoat and
pinafore, are led before the table. Grey-headed and toothless, dim
as to sight and shapeless as to features, they look singularly out
of place in a court of law. Time was (and not so very long ago) when
women so decrepit as these would have had to make way for a more
vigorous generation by the simple and expeditious means of being
buried alive, but now they no longer fear the consequences of their
eccentricities. One of these old women is the prosecutrix, and the
charge is assault. We ask which is the prosecutrix, and immediately
one holds out and brandishes a hand from which one of the fingers has
been almost severed by a bite. She has altogether the most lugubrious
expression that features such as hers can assume, but with the bitten
finger now permanently hung out like a signboard, words of complaint
are superfluous. The other has a truculent and forbidding expression.
She snaps out her answers as if she had bitten off the ends like the
prosecutrix’ finger, and shuts her mouth like a steel trap. The quarrel
which led to their appearance in court might have taken place in
Seven Dials. Defendant said something disparaging about prosecutrix’
daughter. Prosecutrix retaliated by damaging references to defendant’s
son, and left the house hurriedly to enjoy the luxury of having had
last word. Defendant followed and searched the village for her, with
the avowed intention of skinning her alive. They met at last, and
having each called the other “a-roasted-corpse-fit-for-the-oven,” they
fell to with the result to the prosecutrix’ finger already described.
The mountain dialect used in evidence is almost unintelligible to us,
so that our admonition, couched in the Bauan, has to be translated
(with additions) by our native colleague. But our eloquence was all
wasted. Defendant utterly declines to express contrition. Our last
resource must be employed, and we inform her that if she does not
complete the task imposed on her as a fine she will be sent to Suva
jail, there to be confined with the Indian women. This awful threat
has its effect; and the dread powers of our court having thus been
vindicated, the crier proclaims its adjournment for three months. The
spectators troop out to spend the rest of the day in gossiping about
the delinquents and their cases. The men who have been sentenced
are already at work weeding round the court-house, subjects for the
breathless interest and pity of the bevy of girls who have just emerged
from court and are exchanging whispered comments upon the alteration
in a good-looking man when his hair is cut off. None are left in the
court-house but ourselves, the chiefs, and the older men. The table is
removed, and the room cleared of the paraphernalia of civilisation.
Enter two men bearing a large carved wooden bowl, a bucket of water,
and a root of _yangona_, which is presented to us ceremoniously, and
handed back to some young men at the bottom of the room to chew.
Meanwhile conversation becomes general, witchcraft is discussed in all
its branches, and compassion is expressed for the poor sceptical white
man; _sulukas_ (cigarettes rolled in banana leaves) are lighted; the
chewed masses of _yangona_ root are thrown into the bowl, mixed with
water, kneaded, strained, and handed to each person according to his
rank to drink; tongues are loosened, and it is time to draw the meeting
to a close. The sun is fast dipping into the western sea when the
last of our guests leave us, and we have a long moonlight ride before
us. There is but just time to pack up our traps and have a hasty meal
before we are left in darkness, but the moon will rise in an hour, so
we may start in safety in pursuit of the train of police and convicts
who are carrying the baggage.




THE LAST OF THE CANNIBAL CHIEFS.


When Swift wrote his “Modest Proposal,” and argued with logical
seriousness that the want and over-population in Ireland should be
remedied by the simple expedient of eating babies, the satire was
not likely to be lost upon a people who regarded cannibalism with
such horror and loathing as do the European nations. The horror must
of course be instinctive, because we find it existing in the lowest
grades of society; but the instinct is confined to civilised man.
The word cannibal is associated in our minds with scenes of the most
debased savagery that the imagination can picture; of men in habits
and appearance a little lower than the brute; of orgies the result of
the most degrading religious superstition. It is not until one has
lived on terms of friendship with cannibals that one realises that the
practice is not incompatible with an intelligence and moral qualities
which command respect. And after all, if one can for a moment lay aside
the instinctive horror which the idea calls up, and dispassionately
consider the nature of cannibalism, our repugnance to it seems less
logically grounded. It is true that it must generally entail murder,
but that is certainly not the reason for our loathing of it. It is
something deeper than this; and the distinction we draw between the
flesh of men and of animals is at first sight a little curious.
One can imagine the inhabitants of another planet, whose physical
necessities did not force them to eat flesh,--to take life in order to
live,--regarding us with much the same kind of abhorrence with which we
look on cannibals. Most of our natural instincts are based upon natural
laws, which, when broken, are sure to visit the breaker with their
penalties. The eating of unripe fruit, of putrid meat, or poisonous
matter, are some of these. But no penalty in the shape of disease seems
to be attached to cannibalism.

What, then, are the motives that lead men, apart from the pressure
of famine, to practise cannibalism? Among certain African tribes,
and lately in Hayti, it has been the outcome of a debased religious
superstition, or that extraordinary instinct common to all races
which leads men to connect the highest religious enthusiasm with the
most horrible orgies that their diseased imagination can conceive. The
feeling that leads members of sects to bind themselves together by the
celebration of some unspeakable rite perhaps led to the accusations
laid against the Christians of the second century and the Hungarian
Jews of the nineteenth. But in the South Seas, although the motive has
been falsely attributed to a craving for animal food, it was generally
the last act of triumph over a fallen enemy. Thus Homer makes Achilles,
triumphing over the dying Hector, wish he could make mince-meat of his
body and devour it. Triumph could go no further than to slay and then
to assimilate the body of your foe; and the belief that, by thus making
him a part of you, you acquired his courage in battle, is said to have
led a chief of old Fiji to actually consume himself the entire body of
the man he had killed, by daily roasting what remained of it to prevent
decomposition.

This is not a very promising introduction to a paper intended to
show that some cannibals at least may be very respectable members of
society. But it must be clearly understood that the eccentricity which
seems so revolting to us is not incompatible with a strong sense of
duty, great kindness of heart, and warm domestic affection.

Out of the many cannibals and ex-cannibals I have known, I will choose
the most striking figure as the subject of this sketch. I first met
the Buli of Nandrau in the autumn of 1886, when I took over the
Resident Commissionership of part of the mountain district of Fiji.
His history had been an eventful one, and while he had displayed those
qualities that would most win the admiration of Fijians, to us he
could not be otherwise than a remarkable character. Far away, in the
wild and rugged country in which the great rivers Rewa and Singatoka
take their rise, he was born to be chief of a fierce and aggressive
tribe of mountaineers. Constantly engaged in petty intertribal wars,
while still a young man he had led them from victory to victory, until
they had fought their way into perhaps the most picturesque valley in
all picturesque Fiji. Here, perched above the rushing Singatoka, and
overshadowed by two tremendous precipices which allowed the sun to
shine upon them for barely three hours a-day, they built their village,
and here they became a name and a terror to all the surrounding
tribes. A few miles lower down the river stood the almost impregnable
rock-fortress of the Vatusila tribe, and these became the stanch allies
of Nandrau. Together they broke up the powerful Noikoro, exacted
tribute from them, and made the river theirs as far as Korolevu;
together they blotted out the Naloto, who held the passes to the
northern coast, killing in one day more than four hundred of them, and
driving the remnant as outcasts into the plain. Long after the white
men had made their influence felt throughout Fiji,--long after the
chief of Bau was courted as King of Fiji,--these two tribes, secure
in their mountain fastnesses, lived their own life, and none, whether
Fijian or white man, dared pass over their borders.

But their time was come. The despised white man, whom they had first
known in the humble guise of a shipwrecked sailor or an escaped
convict, was soon to overrun the whole Pacific, and before him the
most dreaded of the Fijian gods and chiefs, the most honoured of their
traditions, were to pass away and be forgotten.

In the year 1867 a Wesleyan missionary named Baker, against the advice
of all the most experienced of the European settlers and the native
chiefs, announced his intention of exploring the mountain districts
alone. He said that he would take the Bible through Vitilevu. What
good to the missionary cause he hoped for from his hazardous journey
it is difficult to imagine. The harm that would certainly result to
his fellow-missionaries if he were killed, and the loss of life that
must ensue, must have been apparent to him and to every one else. But
in spite of every warning, he persisted in his foolhardy enterprise,
and he paid for it with his life and with the lives of several hundred
others. He ascended the river Rewa with a small party of native
teachers, but when he passed into the mountain district a whale’s tooth
followed him: for the power of the whale’s tooth is this--that he who
accepts it cannot refuse the request it carries with it, whether it
be for a mere gift, or for an alliance, or for a human life. So he
went on, while tribe after tribe refused to accept the fatal piece of
ivory; but none the less surely did it follow him. At length one night,
while he slept in a village of the Vatusila, the whale’s tooth passed
on before him to the rock fortress of Nambutautau, and their chief,
Nawawambalavu, took it. When, next morning, Baker resumed his march,
this chief met him in the road, and together they crossed the Singatoka
river. As they climbed the steep cliff which leads to Nambutautau, it
is recorded in a popular song of that time that the chief warned him
ironically of his impending fate. “We want none of your Christianity,
Mr Baker. I think that to-day you and I shall be clubbed.” Suddenly,
at a spot where the path lies between high reeds, on the edge of a
precipice, an attack was made upon them, and they were all struck down
except two native teachers who crawled into the thickest of the reeds
and made their way, the one to Rewa and the other to Bau, hiding during
the day-time and travelling under cover of the darkness. Baker’s body
was flung over the precipice, and the great wooden drum boomed out
its death-beat to the villages far down the valley. That night the
stone-ovens were heated for their work, and the feast was portioned out
to the various allies. But the most honourable portion--the head--was
sent to Nandrau, the subject of my sketch. At first he refused it,
disapproving of the murder, which his foresight warned him would bring
trouble upon them. But as his refusal threatened to sever the alliance,
he afterwards accepted it. It is recorded that the feet, from which the
long boots had not been removed, were sent to Mongondro, whose chief, a
melancholy, gentle-mannered old man, was much disappointed at finding
the skin of white men so tough.

After terrible hardship and danger, the wounded teacher made his way to
the coast, and carried the news to Bau. A strong alliance was at once
formed among the coast tribes to avenge the murder, and to crush the
power of the mountaineers. There is in this part of Fiji no gradation
between the plains that fringe the coast and the mountains. A sheer
barrier of rock, looking like the ruins of a gigantic fortification,
rises boldly from the plain, broken only by the valleys which form the
river-beds. Behind this wall lay a land of mystery, whose inhabitants
were invested with superstitious terrors, to which their ferocity and
the extraordinary appearance of their huge mops of hair had doubtless
contributed.

The attacking party was divided into three forces. One of them was to
advance up the Singatoka from the south, a second to enter the “Devil”
country by way of the Rewa from the east, and the third, commanded
by the King of Fiji in person, was to surprise the valley of Nandrau
from the northern coast. With the two first we have nothing to do,
because they were defeated by the intervening tribes and turned back
long before they reached their destination. The third, hoping to form
a junction with their allies, advanced boldly through the mountain
passes. The country seemed deserted. They burned two or three abandoned
villages, and emboldened by their success, they pressed on, more
like an eager rabble than a military force, each man hoping to be
the first to secure plunder. As they straggled over the grassy hills
that surround Nandrau, suddenly from every clump of reeds big-headed
warriors sprang up; they found themselves hemmed in, and Nandrau,
headed by their chief, spent the day in slaughtering the flower of
the Bau army. A remnant fled to the coast, hotly pursued by the
mountaineers; and so crushing was the defeat that the king, Thakombau,
narrowly escaped death at the hands of his vassals of Tavua.

Not long after this victory, which had so firmly established his
prestige in the mountains, Buli Nandrau seems to have become favourably
inclined towards the Europeans; and when a joint expedition of whites
and natives was despatched to reduce Nambutautau, he seems to have
been permitted to remain neutral. Nambutautau was burnt, and the
Vatusila and Noikoro tribes compelled to sue for peace. In 1874 Buli
Nandrau met Consul Layard, and promised his allegiance to the British
Government. Teachers were allowed to enter the principal mountain
villages, and until the year 1875 the mountaineers became nominal
Christians. In that year an event occurred which severely tried the
firmness and good sense of Buli Nandrau. The islands had been annexed
to Great Britain, and the mountain chiefs were invited to meet the
first Governor, Sir Arthur Gordon, at Navola on the southern coast.
Some of them accepted the invitation, among whom was Buli Nandrau, who
was anxious to judge for himself what the new order of things really
was. He frankly gave his allegiance to the Government, and in spite
of the strongest temptation he never wavered afterwards. For in the
same year a terrible epidemic of measles, introduced accidentally from
Sydney, carried off 40,000--nearly one-third of the whole population
of the islands. It was natural that the mountaineers, perishing under
this relentless and unknown disease, should have regarded it as the
vengeance of the gods they had so lately deserted. If Christianity were
a good thing, they said, why could it not save their children from
death?

And so, early in 1875, most of the mountain tribes threw off the _sulu_
(the Christian dress), and returned to the worship of their heathen
gods. Only Buli Nandrau, seeing what the end must be, remained stanch,
and by forming a barrier between the revolted tribes and those still
wavering in their loyalty, prevented the disaffection from spreading.
An expedition was despatched under Captain, now Major, Knollys, and,
with the assistance of the native allies, soon reduced the rebels to
submission. They all nominally again embraced Christianity, and an
entrenched camp, garrisoned by an armed native force, and commanded by
a Resident Commissioner, was established to ensure the future peace of
the district.

Protected by their isolation from the vices of civilisation, and
enjoying a large share of self-government, these reformed cannibals are
to-day the most contented and prosperous of all the Queen’s subjects
in Fiji; and if ever it has been necessary to adopt measures for their
good which they could not understand at the time, the Commissioner has
been always sure of the support and influence of Buli Nandrau.

I first saw him at the Provincial Council at Navola in 1886. He had
no sooner arrived with his retinue than he sent his _mata_ (herald) to
announce him, and in a few minutes entered my house alone. He was a
very tall, erect old man of about sixty-five or seventy--grey-haired,
keen-eyed, and intelligent-looking. After the usual ceremonies
inseparable from Fijian etiquette, he sat down and spoke of the
politics of the district. It appeared to me remarkable that a man who
had only left his native mountains two or three times, to take part
in the great Council of Chiefs, should be so well acquainted with the
history and political situation of the coast tribes of Fiji. He spoke
with great affection of Sir Arthur Gordon and of the ex-Commissioner,
and bewailed the death of the great mountain chiefs whose places were
now inadequately filled by their sons.

He was never absent from his place for a moment during the three days
the council lasted, and his interest in the trivial affairs of other
districts never flagged. It was curious to observe the great deference
paid to his opinion by the other chiefs. When one of them, Buli Naloto,
was found to have failed in his duties, Nandrau was appointed to
reprove and caution him. His speech, which was short and to the point,
was a model of that kind of eloquence. “Art thou,” he said, “a chief
in thine own right, to make war and to make peace as it pleases thee?
Where was thy tribe before the Government came? A scattered remnant,
seeking refuge on the plains from the vengeance of Nandrau! But the
Government has taken pity on thee, and the land is at peace. Why art
thou then disobedient to the Government, who has made thee a chief,
and re-established thee in the lands of thy fathers?” This reproof was
received by Buli Naloto with the most abject humility.

Not long after this, Buli Nandrau consulted me about the projected
marriage of his daughter with the provincial scribe, who lived with me.
He wished, he said, to cement by this marriage the ancient ties between
Nandrau and Noikoro, but the day had passed for marrying girls against
their will. His elder daughter had been a great grief to him. She had
been so married, and had not long ago put an end to her life. Did I,
he asked, from what I knew of Durutalo, think that Janeti would be
happy with him?[1] This was not the only example I had of his strong
domestic affection.

In the spring of the following year he wrote to me, asking for medicine
to relieve a pain in his jaw, and from this time he was unable to
leave his village. At length, one day early in July 1887, I received a
pathetic letter from him, asking me to lose no time in coming to him.
“I am very ill,” he wrote, “and I would have you see my face before I
die.”

As the messenger, when questioned, made light of his illness, and I was
myself not well enough to undertake so tiring a journey, I determined
to wait until I was sure that his urgency was not merely the result of
low spirits. But late on the following Sunday night I was awakened by
the challenge of the sentry, and immediately afterwards the deep cry
of respect, known as the _tama_, sounded outside my sleeping-house.
Lights were brought, and on the doorstep crouched a man, muddy,
travel-stained, and exhausted by a long journey. I recognised him as
a native of Nandrau, who was selected for his fleetness as district
messenger, and when I saw that his hair and beard were cut short, I
knew the nature of his errand.

“The chief is dead,” he said; “and he told Tione not to bury him till
you, sir, had seen his face. Tione sends you this message.”

There was another reason that required my presence at Nandrau: Tione
was not the only claimant to the succession, and I must be there to
prevent a disturbance. The messenger would not even wait for food, but
returned at once to announce my coming.

In a moment the camp was all awake, and the men turned out to prepare
for the journey. The horses were brought in and saddled, and the
baggage rolled up in parcels to be carried over the mountain roads.
Before daybreak we were fording the river with an escort of some
thirty armed constabulary and baggage-carriers. The road lay for some
miles along the crest of a forest-clad ridge more than three thousand
feet above the sea-level, and when it emerged near the old site of
Nambutautau into open country, nothing could exceed the grandeur of the
scenery. Two thousand feet below us on the right rushed the Singatoka,
foaming among great boulders of rock, and still towering above us was
the great wooded range that formed the watershed of the island; while
far away before us rose the mountain-wall which separated Tholo from
the plains, seeming with its bare masses of castellated rock like a
great ruined fortification. And now the road began to descend, and
following a precipitous path, which momentarily endangered the legs
of our horses, we plunged into the cool shadow of the precipices
that overhung Nandrau. At a turn in the road we saw below us the now
historical village, jutting out over the river upon a broad ledge of
rock. The _rara_, or village square, was crowded with people, and I
noticed a train of women descending the sheer face of the opposite
cliff, with loaded baskets on their backs, holding on to stout vines
to steady themselves. Here we halted to give time to a messenger to
announce our arrival, according to native custom. We watched him
enter the village, and saw the people vanish as if by magic into the
houses, or sit in groups at the foot of the cocoa-nut palms, and then,
in perfect silence, we passed through the village. At the fence that
separated the dead chief’s enclosure from the square we dismounted, and
were conducted by his eldest son, Tione, to the clean matted house in
which we were to lodge.

All through the night there was an incongruous mixture of the sounds
of merriment and sorrow. On the river-bank behind our house the five
widows of the dead chief, with their women, howled and wailed till
morning, like animals in pain. Sometimes the wails would die away into
faint moans, and then a wild shriek from one of them would set them all
going again. But on the other side stood the great _bure_, where all
the funeral guests were feasting and drinking _yangona_ in honour of
the departed spirit.

Early next morning a messenger came to the door of our hut to ask if
we would see the Buli’s face. Followed by several of my men carrying
the funeral gifts, I climbed to a small house built upon a high stone
foundation. The inside was crowded with the neighbouring chiefs,
and I took my seat in silence. At the far end, wrapped in folds of
native cloth and the finest mats, lay the body. The whale’s tooth
and funeral gifts were now brought in and formally presented by the
_Mata-ni-vanua_, and accepted by an old man in the ancient Nandrau
dialect, of which I could scarcely understand one word. And then, when
a costly _Rotuma_ mat had been given for the body to lie upon in the
grave, I made a short speech in the Bau dialect, and was conducted to
see the face uncovered.

At mid-day the great wooden drum was tolled, and the armed
constabulary, looking very neat in their white _sulus_ and blue tunics,
were drawn up as a guard of honour near the cairn which was to form the
grave. At length the body, wrapped in mats, and followed by the wives
and relations of the dead chief, passed slowly to the grave. Among all
the mourners, I only noticed one case of genuine grief--the chief’s
daughter, Janeti; all the others, as is usual in Fijian funerals,
appeared to wail in a prescribed form. Indeed one of the widows, having
probably seldom seen a white man before, stopped wailing for a moment
to point me out eagerly to the other mourners. Then the body was
carried into the little hut that surmounted the cairn, and we stood in
the broiling sun until a native teacher had delivered a sort of funeral
sermon.

When all was finished, every one acted according to the old proverb,
“Le roi est mort!--Vive le roi!” and the question of whom I would
appoint as his successor became the subject of discussion. When I
returned to my house, I saw the widows at the water’s edge breaking up
a number of carved wooden utensils with stones. These were the cups
and dishes of their dead husband, which no man must henceforth touch
lest their teeth drop out or they be bewitched. For if a man should
drink from the cup of one who has eaten his relation, such evil will
certainly befall him. But as I was exempt from this danger, the cup and
the platter and fork, used by the Buli in old days for human flesh,
were presented to me.

At three o’clock I summoned a great meeting of all the natives, at
which speeches in honour of the late chief were made, and I there
provisionally appointed Tione--a rather unintelligent man of about
thirty-five--to succeed his father, having first ascertained that this
appointment would be acceptable to the majority. In the evening the
people of Nandrau made a great feast to their visitors, and gave them
return presents--a polite intimation that they were expected to leave
on the following morning. These having been divided among the various
tribes who were represented, feasting was continued until a late hour.
But about nine o’clock, before the moon rose, an old man went out into
the bush to call the dead Buli’s spirit. We heard his voice calling
in the distance for several minutes, and then, amid the breathless
silence of the assembled people, we heard the footsteps of some one
running. “He has the spirit on his shoulders,” said a man near me, as
the old man rushed past me to the tomb. Apparently he must have thrown
the spirit into it, for after crying out, “It is all well,” every one
retired quietly to their huts for the night.

Before daybreak the next morning, Buli Nandrau was forgotten in the
bustle of speeding parting guests, and as the sun rose our bugle
sounded the “fall-in.” Passing out of the sombre shadow of the great
cliff, we rode into bright sunlight, and we felt that just so had the
shadows of the past given place to the light of a clearer knowledge,
and that with this old warrior the old order had passed away, and a new
had come.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] This marriage afterwards took place, and, less than a year later,
Janeti, too, attempted her own life. This was after her father’s death.




TAUYASA OF NASELAI, REFORMER.


Tauyasa, commoner, of Naselai village, of the tribe Kai Nuku, lived
years before his time. It was his misfortune that he was born a savage
with a brown skin: it should not be his fault if he did not enjoy the
sweets of civilisation. White men owned land on the banks of the great
river: so did he. White men wore trousers and ate with a knife and
fork: so would he. White men owned cutters and paid his countrymen
to work for them: and so he bought a cutter of his own and paid his
fellow-villagers to plant his bananas. White men had chairs and tables,
glass windows and wooden floors, horses and saddles, and an account
at the bank: Tauyasa persevered until at last he possessed all these.
And so Tauyasa came to be well thought of and patronised by his white
neighbours, and the more he rose in their estimation the deadlier grew
the envy of his own people. For Tauyasa was no chief, and among his
people to attempt to rise above the station to which one is born, and
to refuse to give to him who asks, are social crimes beside which all
other sins are mere errors of judgment. But Tauyasa cared for nothing
but that his bananas should have fifteen “hands” to the bunch, and that
his cutter should not be too late for the steamer. When the commission
agent showed him his account sales, he took the cheque straight to the
bank, and received from the teller a slip on which his total balance
was written, which he would compare with some cabalistic signs he
had in a soiled copy-book at home. For Tauyasa applied his knowledge
of human nature wherever his financial reasoning failed him. “The
foreigner,” he argued, “who owns this bank does not guard my money and
make it multiply because he loves me, but because he hopes some day to
steal some of it. Therefore will I ask him every two weeks to confess
how much he has. Then, although I am black, he will not rob me unless
he robs the other foreigners whose money he keeps, and this he will not
dare to do.”

[Illustration: “_On the night of each return from the capital._”]

But on the night of each return from the capital he could not escape
from the ties of kindred. First, there came his uncle, a plaintive
old man, who carefully bolted the door before unburdening himself of
his troubles. He had no lamp, for the kerosene was dry, and there was
no sugar to drink with his tea, so he drank no tea, and his stomach
felt so bad that he thought some foreign drink was the only medicine
that would cure him. Then a peremptory voice from without summoned him
to open the door, and Alivate, the chief’s henchman, was admitted. He
had all the self-confidence that distinguishes those who bask in the
smiles of royalty. “Greeting!” he said. “The chief has sent me to you
to borrow your horse for to-morrow. I will take it now with the saddle.
Also he wants a root of _yangona_.”

“Will the chief send the horse back? The last time he left the horse at
Namata, and the saddle was lost.”

“Perhaps he will send it back. Give me the saddle.”

He gave place to a man in a white shirt, with a book and pencil, all
deprecating piety and smiles, who called Tauyasa “sir,” and seemed
in his way of speaking to be perpetrating a cruel caricature of the
neighbouring Wesleyan missionary.

“I have come, sir,” he said at last, with a little chuckle, “about the
_vaka-misonari_. Paula has promised to give one pound, the same as you
gave last year. It is written in the book that Paula will give this.
You, sir, will doubtless give two pounds this year. Your name will then
be printed so that all will know. I will write down two pounds, sir. Is
it not so?”

After him came Savuke, Tauyasa’s second cousin, with a pitiful tale
about her husband, sentenced that day by the courts to pay five pounds
for beating an Indian with a stick. “If he does not pay to-morrow,” she
said tearfully, “they will crop his hair, and he will work, and then
who will feed me and the child? The Indian was a bad Indian, as they
all are, nor did he beat him hard, but only twice--on the head. And I,
knowing your pitiful nature, have come to you, Tauyasa, because you are
my relation and have much money, and afterwards Joseva will pay you
back.”

“Joseva owes me seven pounds already.”

“Yes, he knows that, and the remembrance is heavy with him. He is still
seeking money with which to pay you.”

“Well, then, I will release him from the debt that his mind may be at
rest, but this money that you ask I cannot give.”

Then Tauyasa’s wife, who had been visiting a neighbour, came to greet
her lord. Their child was lately dead, though Tauyasa had bought two
cows and fed it upon milk, and otherwise followed all the directions
for rearing infants that were printed in ‘Na Mata.’ She, too, was the
bearer of bad news. Some one--presumably an enemy--had stolen the cows’
tether-ropes, and one of them, the spotted one, had been found in the
Company’s cane-field, having damaged many stools of cane, and the white
one could not be found at all. “I think it is the Indians,” she said;
but Tauyasa thought otherwise, and said nothing.

The man with the book had accomplished his devastating raid, and had
set down the names of half the village to give “to the Lord” more than
they possessed. Therefore, rather than break faith so pledged, they
must beg, borrow, or steal enough to meet their obligations. First, of
course, they tried Tauyasa, but he had heard a friend of his, a white
storekeeper, assailed in the same way, and he knew the logical answer.
“If you must owe money at all, it is better to owe it ‘to the Lord,’
who can afford it, than to me who cannot. Besides, you would be giving
my money and calling it yours, which is a lie, for which you would
certainly be punished in hell.” But that night several of Tauyasa’s
imported hens were missing.

At last they all went and left him alone to take the cure for all
the cares of civilised life; and, a little less than half drunk, he
went off to the store to associate with his equals. There his voice
might have been heard haranguing the knot of grinning colonists who
frequented the store, and his peroration ran thus: “God made a mistake
when He made me black. Um [tapping his chest], black man! Um [tapping
his forehead], white man!”

But though Tauyasa increased in wealth and substance, his life was
not happy. It is true that his people had given up _kerekere_, and
no longer begged his money from him; but they took no pains to hide
their hatred and contempt. It was in vain for him to show them that
so long as they held their goods in common they must remain savages.
They preferred to live from day to day, as their fathers did, leaving
the morrow to take care of itself. It was well enough for a foreigner,
who knew no better, to work all day, and to hoard money, and to give
nothing for nothing; but here was one of themselves aping the ways
of foreigners as an excuse to cover his natural churlishness and
inhospitality. “To do like Tauyasa” became a by-word in the village.
Truly, he was born before his time: he was of the stuff of which
reformers are made, and he met the reformer’s fate. He had quarrelled
with his wife because she gave away his things in his absence; his own
people would have nothing to do with him, and the foreigners whom he
imitated despised him.

So Tauyasa began to worry, and the native who does that is doomed,
because he was born to a life free from care, and has had no training
in the curse of Adam. He grew thin and irritable, and no longer joined
the nightly meetings at the store. But the more he worried the bitterer
were the taunts of his people, and a kind friend, of course, repeated
them to him. Then a day came when the cutter’s sails were stripped, and
the bananas hung uncut, although a steamer had come in these two days;
for Tauyasa would ship no more bananas, having taken to his mat, and
given out that he would die that day week. It was in vain for those of
his white friends that had heard of his illness to send him soup, and
medicines, and milk-puddings cunningly devised, for Tauyasa would eat
none of them, knowing that he must die, and caring not to live--for
there was bitterness in his heart against the world and all men in it.
And upon the day appointed Tauyasa died as he had said, and his body
was wrapped in rolls of white _masi_ and mats, and buried, and his
spirit went to its own place.

Then it was found how many brothers Tauyasa had, and how many brothers
his father and mother had. They all came to his house after the funeral
to transact some little matters of business. There was a want of
brotherly love at this meeting, for Tauyasa had owned a cutter worth
£200, and a cutter cannot be satisfactorily divided among several
eldest brothers. There was a horse, too, and a table, and cupboards,
and many camphor-wood boxes made in China, and in one of the boxes
there were many bottles that would each have cost the vendor fifty
pounds in fines had the police known. There was not much said about
Tauyasa. It was a sad thing, no doubt, that he was dead, but did not
his possessions remain? At evening it was all settled. The eldest uncle
had the house with the glass windows, and the brothers had all the
rest: only Tauyasa’s wife got nothing because she was a bad woman, and
did not love Tauyasa; and besides, she belonged to a different tribe.

And on the Sabbath the _lali_ beat for service, and the same teacher
took the pulpit that had come to Tauyasa about his contribution to
the _vaka-misonari_. It was a powerful sermon--all about the wicked
and hell, and such things, and it was none the less powerful that
the preacher was mimicking the ravings and the whispers, and the
cushion-thumping denunciations, of the district missionary who had
taught him. They were all sinners, he summed up--they broke the
Commandments every day: but there was forgiveness for all there
present. Yet, he added in a hoarse whisper, there were some who could
never be forgiven. Then with the roar of an angry bull he shouted,
“Who shipped China bananas on the Sabbath?” “On the Sabbath,” repeated
the echo from the other side of the river. “Who shipped China bananas
on the Sabbath?” Then in the hushed pause that followed he whispered
hoarsely, “Tauyasa! Tauyasa!”

Again he roared, banging the table with his fist, “Where is Tauyasa
now? Where is Tauyasa now?”--“yasa now” cried the echo. He glared at
the village policeman as if expecting him to answer, and lifted his
clenched fist before him, twisting it slowly from side to side, and
hissing from behind his teeth, “_Sa mongimongi tiko e na mbuka wanga_.
He is squirming in the everlasting fire.”

Thus ended Tauyasa, Reformer,--condemned in this world and the next,
like his prototypes.




A COOLIE PRINCESS.


“We’re to have about nine hundred of the Jumna lot on this plantation.
They seem to be an average lot of coolies, seeing that Mauritius
and Demarara get first pick--sweepings of the Calcutta jails, with
a sprinkling of hillmen from Nepaul. They cost a trifle over twenty
pounds a-head to introduce; but I ought not to grumble, as they’ve
thrown the Princess into my batch. Not heard of the Princess? She’s
a howling swell from Nepaul--nose-rings and bangles from head to
foot--husband pretender to the throne of those parts--beheaded,
drawn, and quartered for high treason--Princess saved by faithful
retainer--just time to clap the contents of the family jewel-case on
her body before the lord high executioner called--weeks in the saddle
disguised as a man--flung herself upon the mercy of the recruiting
agent, and breathlessly pledged herself to work for ninepence a-day
for five years trashing cane beyond the black water. That’s _her_
story, and she can show you the jewels and the faithful retainer to
prove it.”

“And do you think she’ll work?”

“Can’t say, not knowing much of the ways of princesses; but if she
don’t, you’ll see her in your court under section thirty-four of the
Principal Ordinance, which has no proviso for princesses, and then it
will be your pleasing duty to make her work.”

Then Onslow, the manager, rode off, leaving me to sign warrants for the
batch of refractory coolies just sentenced.

In due course the “Jumna” batch were towed up the river in a
sugar-punt, and turned loose into the new coolie lines. We could hear
them at night settling down--a babel of strident voices, dominated at
moments by a howling chant, with tom-tom accompaniment. A week later
they had built in the verandah of the long building with partitions
of empty kerosene and biscuit tins beaten flat. Filthy rags obscured
every doorway; naked children were rolling in the sun-baked dust,
and besmearing themselves with the fetid mud from the puddles of
waste-water thrown outside the doors. There a wild-looking mother
squatted in the shade, performing the last offices to the head of her
youngest, while two older children leaned against her back playing with
her lank greasy hair. A girl of five, with tiny silver bangles on arms
and ankles, was gravely marching the length of the building, supporting
on her head with one hand a brass bowl of smoking rice, while with
the other she held up her long petticoat; and over all there were
flies, and noise, and stench, and happiness enough for a twelvemonth’s
occupation. The new coolies were settling down. Somewhere in the
building the Princess must have held her court, or perhaps she was in
solitude learning “the sorrow’s crown of sorrow.”

Then the first tasks were set, and the trouble began. Friday’s
informations for absence from work rose from twenty-three to
sixty-seven, and on Tuesday at ten o’clock a vast crowd of the
accused and their sympathisers, curious and bewildered, disfigured
the grass-plot at the court-house door. A burly Fijian constable was
surveying them with a disgusted curl of the nostril, such as may be
seen any Friday afternoon at the reptile-house of the Zoological
Gardens. The luckless overseer had but one story to tell--of tasks
set but not attempted--light tasks, suitable for the new and
inexperienced--five chains trashing Honolulu cane--no more. The pleas
for the defence would have melted the heart of a wheel-barrow. “You
are my father and my mother, but I am a stone-mason. The white sahib
told me that I should work at my trade. I can build houses, but I
cannot cut cane.”--“I am a goldsmith. I never said I would work in the
fields.”--“What can I say? You are my judge. My belly is empty, and I
cannot work,”--and so forth. They were discharged with a caution.

“That is all the men,” said the overseer; “the rest are women.”

“Arjuna!” cried the clerk.

“Arjuna!” repeated the Indian constable outside.

There was a pause.

“Is the woman here?” asked the interpreter impatiently.

“She is here,” returned the officer from without.

There followed sounds of persuasion, amounting almost to entreaty,
such as are unusual from the mouths of minions of the law. Then when
expectation had been wrought to the highest dramatic pitch, the
sunlight from the door was darkened, and there burst upon our dazzled
gaze a vision of gold ornaments and gauzy draperies.

“The Princess,” whispered the overseer, with a deprecating smile.

She was tall and willowy, and her slender limbs seemed to be weighed
down with the burden of the bangles that almost hid them. Heavy gold
circlets seemed to crush the tiny ankle-bones, and every slender toe
was be-ringed. Besides earrings and the gold stud that emphasises the
curve of the nostril, she wore no head ornaments, but the shawl that
fell from her hair was of the finest striped gauze. She must have
been fully twenty, but the brightness of her eyes was still undimmed
by time. She surveyed the thatched court-house with a glance of cool
contempt, and walked proudly to the reed fence that did duty for a dock.

“You are charged with absence from work.”

The Princess glanced sideways at the interpreter, and then stared
straight at the beam over my head.

“She told the sirdar she didn’t mean to do any work.”

The evidence is interpreted to the accused.

“Has she anything to say?”

The interpreter might have put the question to the wall with as much
result.

“Then tell her that she has come from India to work for five years, and
work she must; if she does not, she will be punished, and eventually
sent to jail, where she will be made to work.”

The accused slightly raises her royal eyebrows.

“She is fined three shillings, or seven days’ imprisonment.”

At these words she turned round and beckoned to the bank of heads
that had gradually filled the doorway. Four men broke from the
group--Nepaulese by their looks--and came in. One of them, evidently
the Keeper of the Privy Purse, making deep salaam, advanced to the
clerk’s table and dropped twelve threepenny bits upon it. The feelings
of the interpreter at the coolness of the whole proceeding were too
deep for words, and before he could translate his explosive English
into the vernacular, the Princess had left the court with her suite.
Then followed comments in Hindustani from without that filled Ramdas,
the wizened Indian constable, with righteous indignation. Translated
they were, “Call this a court-house? Why, it is made of grass! They
should see the court-houses in India!”

For the next two weeks the Princess was known to the outer world
by rumour only, which had it that she was scarcely behaving as a
widowed Princess should behave. The Keeper of the Privy Purse had, it
was said, been encouraged to aspire to the consort’s chair, and the
other Ministers were becoming jealous. Nor was this all. There were
aspirants for royal favour outside the Ministry, who threatened to
disorganise the household. Within the month her name reappeared in
the charge-sheet. It was a second offence, and the fine was therefore
heavier; but again her almoner satisfied the demands of the law.
After that there was quiet for a space, because the suite took it in
rotation to perform their mistress’s task besides their own. There
were even rumours of subscriptions among her sympathisers to buy out
her indentures from the manager. But there came a change. Competition
for royal favour must have become so keen, or the Princess herself
must have behaved in so unroyal a manner, that a day came when the
smouldering feuds in the household burst into flame, and there was
something very like a riot. In the actions and counter-actions for
assault brought by the men of Nepaul against one another, the royal
name was bandied about very freely, and it became evident that a part
at least of her vassals had thrown off the yoke. Money, moreover, had
been lent, and the borrower denied the debt, and brought four witnesses
at a shilling a-head to counterbalance the plaintiff’s four engaged
at the same rate. Between the eight witnesses swearing irreconcilable
opposites, the court had to decide whether money had passed or not.
Then the wily old Ramdas, constable and priest, came softly to the
bench and whispered into its ear, “S’pose me fetchum Kurân, dis feller
no tellum lie; he too much ’fraid.” Armed with authority, he left the
court, going delicately, and presently returned on tiptoe, carrying on
his extended hands a massive volume as if it was an overheated dish.
Pausing before the table he said with due solemnity, “By an’ by he
kissum, dis feller he plenty ’fraid. Dis Kurân belonger me. Abdul Khan
he sabe readim, me no sabe, on’y little bit, other feller he no sabe!
On’y Abdul Khan sabe!” Then bending forward with bated breath he said,
“He cost three pound twelve shillin’ along Calcutta.” His own reverence
seemed doubled as he recalled the stupendous cost of the volume. Then
with great ceremony he gave Joynauth the book and made him swear,
laying it upon his head.

“Joynauth, did Benain give you this money?”

“Sahib, he did; with my eyes I saw him!”

Ramdas’s excitement was great. He was going about the court-house on
tiptoe, holding his sides with both hands, and blowing softly from his
mouth.

“Dis feller no lie. He makim swear along Kurân, he too much ’fraid;”
and he glared at the defendant triumphantly as who should say, “You are
convicted, and mine is the hand that did it!”

The defendant was recalled. “Swear him too, Ramdas.”

He paused in holy horror at carrying the awful test further.

“What for dis feller makim swear, sahib? Joynauth, he no lie, he
_plenty_ too much ’fraid.”

“Swear him, Ramdas.”

Threateningly he gave Benain the book, and the dread oath was
administered.

“Benain, did you give Joynauth this money?”

“Sahib, he lies; I did not.”

The shock to poor Ramdas’s feelings was too great for words. He could
only gasp, and dance from one foot to the other. “Oh,” he cried at
last, “one man he die very soon, one week, I think!” For it was
evident that to one at least of the parties a Kurân that had cost
three pound twelve in Calcutta was no more sacred than the book the
Kafirs kissed. It mattered nothing to him what decision the court
came to. He had simply to watch the stroke of doom fall, as fall it
must, upon the perjurer. But two years have passed since that day,
and both the witnesses survive, while a stroke of doom, if dismissal
from the police force can be so called, has fallen upon Ramdas himself
in connection with an adventure in which a bottle of spirits took a
leading part. But Ramdas now touts for cases for a solicitor in coolie
practice, and is a light and an expounder of the Scriptures to the
faithful; and since both these occupations pay better than the police,
perhaps he discerns the hand of Allah in his dismissal, and still
awaits his vengeance upon the perjurer.

Since open feuds had weakened the ties of loyalty, the poor Princess
found that she must either wound her slender hands with the sharp-edged
leaves of the Honolulu cane for a slender pittance of ninepence a-day,
or again figure in the charge-sheet. She chose the latter as being
more in consonance with her dignity. In due course the blue paper
that she refused to take was flung at her feet by a policeman, and
for the third time she underwent the ordeal of prosecution with a
self-possession born of practice. This time--her third offence--no
almoner would avail, for she was sentenced to fourteen days’ hard
labour without the option of a fine.

Ramdas would have pounced upon her and haled her forth as soon as the
sentence was pronounced if he had not been restrained. The indignity of
being herded with the other dirty and dishevelled female prisoners was
enough without that. At daybreak the wooden station drums sounded for
work, and the Princess’s troubles began. It was Meli’s daily triumph to
muster the Indian prisoners in a row, and bring up the stragglers into
their places with a jerk that audibly clashed their teeth together.
These spindle-shanked, stinking coolies called him a bushman!--him,
Meli, versed in all chiefly ceremonial, a bushman! Therefore should
they know the strength of his arm. The women had sulkily taken their
places in obedience to the peremptory command of their tormentor; but
the Princess, herself accustomed to command, stood afar off under a
clump of feathery bamboos, indifferently watching the scene.

“_Lako sara mai koiko._ You there! What are you doing? You female
roasted corpse! Come here. _Kotemiu!_ (G--d d--n.) Come here, _vulari
vulu_” (---- fool).

The Princess regarded him with lazy curiosity. Then there was the sound
of swift running, and as a falcon stoops to the trembling rabbit, so
did Meli swoop down upon the now frightened Princess. There was the
hurtling of a body through the air, a misty vision of flying draperies
and shining gold, a chinking together of many metals, and the Princess
was in her place in the line, dishevelled and bewildered, but in the
finest rage that it had ever been Meli’s fate to call down upon his
woolly head. The storm burst, and all discipline was at an end. He
succumbed without a murmur, knowing instinctively that to attempt to
check such a torrent would bring down upon him the angry flood of
thirteen other female tongues. His colleague left his gang in the
bananas to look on, and the male prisoners threw down their hoes and
peered, grinning, from among the broad shining leaves, to see his
discomfiture. It is not necessary to repeat all the Princess said. Her
past history, her present wrongs, her opinion of bushmen in general
and Meli in particular, the glories of the Government of India, and
the infamy of the Government of the colony, were all exhaustively
discussed in language more forcible than elegant. Long after Meli had
hustled her companions off to their work, she was still declaiming in
a voice that cut the ear like a knife. But when she became conscious
that her audience had dwindled to five grinning native prisoners who
did not understand her, the outbursts of eloquence became spasmodic,
and at last she fell back upon the jail to brood over her wrongs. Then
Meli’s courage returned to him, and, armed with a murderous-looking
weeding-knife, he followed her to her lair. In two minutes, loudly
protesting, she found herself sitting on the grass path with her
fingers forcibly closed upon the handle of the knife, which, resist
as she would, cut the grass before her with the superior force of
Meli’s arm. When left to herself she furiously flung the knife into the
bananas, and wept tears of impotent rage. But the native warder, who
sat perched on the fork of a dead tree watching the male prisoners as
they weeded the bananas, took no notice of her, and so she dried her
tears and fell to watching him as he threw stone after stone from the
pile in his lap with unerring aim at the prisoners guilty of shirking
their work.

But later in the day two Nepaulese, aspirants for court favour,
appeared on the scene and energetically cut the grass set for
their liege-lady’s task, while she sat listless and indifferent,
condescending now and again to pluck with her slender fingers a
single blade of grass, with an insolent affectation of satisfying the
requirements of the law, whenever the official eye fell upon her. She
may have plucked thirty blades of grass in the working day, perhaps not
quite so many; but it was much to have vindicated the discipline of the
jail, and more to have made the Princess do any work at all. Her spirit
was so far broken, and the romance of her story may be said to have
ended here.

Coolies may buy out their indentures for a round sum, and by some means
this sum was raised among her admirers. There were burglaries in the
neighbourhood about that time; and one indeed of the suite was arrested
on suspicion by the European sergeant of police, who said as usual,
when called upon to produce evidence, “It’s a well-known fact that he’s
a noted scoundrel, and I submit to your worship that that’s evidence.”




LEONE OF NOTHO.


“Ië, Setariki, how long did the foreigner say that I must stay bound?
Until the month January? That is, after the day of the New Year, and
there are four moons to set till then. It is always the way of the
Government--wait, wait--till the bones of those who wait crumble away.
If I _must_ die, let me die now, Setariki. I told the foreigner in the
court that I slew the woman, and the payment is death; therefore, where
is the use of waiting? You are a policeman and know the law?”

“The law is this--that you be judged in the Great Court that is held
but four times every year. Na-vosa-vakadua [He-who-speaks-once] will
judge you, and the foreigners in turbans of sheepskin will dispute and
quarrel about you in their own tongue, so that you cannot understand,
and the witnesses will swear to speak the truth, and will make all
things plain; but one of the foreigners with sheepskin on their heads
will ask them many questions to entrap them, and speak angrily to them,
seeking to hide the truth, so that their senses will fly from them for
fear, and they will lie, and the truth be darkened. Thus did Manoa
escape, and that other woman who drowned the white man, although they
themselves bore witness that they had done the thing of which they were
accused. But they were women, and you, being a man, I greatly fear that
you will not escape. The ways of the foreigners are strange, and you
cannot understand them; but I, being a policeman in the service of the
Government, understand them all; and this I know, Leone, that it is
better to be judged in the Great Court, where the judge knows nothing
of our tongue, than in the court of the province; for in the Great
Court there is much disputing and much darkening of the truth, so that
many of the guilty escape.”

“Nay, Setariki; even though they darken the truth until none shall know
it from the false, yet cannot I escape, for I have told the bald-headed
magistrate that I slew Lusiana.”

“The foreigners I have told you of, whose business it is to twist the
truth--_loya_ they are called--will come to you in the prison, and
teach you how to lie before the court, and will even lie themselves
on your behalf if you will first give them money. The Indians do this
every day, feeding these _loya_ with money, and they in return save the
Indians from the law. Therefore send to your relations to gather money
together for the _loya_. Send to Vita, who has the rent of your land
where the store is; tell him not to spend that money, but to sell copra
to add to it. Now tell me the manner of the accusation.”

“What is there to tell? I am Leone of Notho, of the fishermen clan. I
did in truth slay the woman Lusiana my wife. It fell thus. I gave the
marriage gifts, and my house was built as the law requires; then I took
her and we were married. This was ten Sabbaths ago. She was of good
report, and none knew aught to her dishonour, so that I feared no other
man when I took her to be my wife. She was a woman of a mild spirit and
obedient, and I rejoiced greatly in her. Then, one night as we lay upon
the one mat under the screen, I, being nearly asleep, heard a tapping
upon the bread-fruit tree that grew near the door--such as a _sese_
makes with its beak upon a branch when it eats grasshoppers, only
louder; and as I lay wondering what it might be, the sound came again,
and from the mat where Lusiana lay there was the sound of tapping as if
in answer, but very softly; and I, feigning sleep, breathed heavily,
but turned my eyes towards her. Now a lamp was burning in the house,
but it was turned low, for the kerosene was nearly dry, and I had no
shillings. She seemed to be asleep, but when the tapping sounded again
I saw the screen shake, for she had her left arm extended beneath it,
and was tapping on the mat with the ends of her fingers. Then I lay
very still to see what would happen, and presently she rose softly and
crawled out of the screen to the fireplace as if to light her _suluka_
from the embers. After a little she went softly to the door and out;
and I, fearing some evil, rose and went swiftly out by another door,
taking my clearing-knife from the leaves as I passed. The moon shone
brightly. And as I looked from the corner of the house I saw Lusiana,
my wife, standing in the shadow of the bread-fruit with a man, who
spoke earnestly to her as if to draw her away. Then my blood flowed
down in my body, and I came upon them suddenly, and the man fled, but
I knew him in the moonlight for Airsai the village constable. But the
woman stood and looked at the ground. And I said, ‘Who is that man?
Is this your habit when I am lying asleep?’ But she looked always at
the ground, and would not answer. Then my anger increased, and I said,
‘Answer me, answer, you light woman!’ But she still was silent. Then I
took her by the hand to lead her to the house--I swear to you that I
only meant to lead her to the house,--but she resisted me, and tried
to draw away her hand from mine. Then I let her go, and great rage
entered into me. ‘Will you neither speak nor come with me?’ I shouted.
But the woman stood with her back to me, still looking at the ground.
And a great strength came upon me, and the knife in my hand became
lighter than a reed, and I swung it once in the air, making it hiss,
and crying, ‘Speak, woman!’ Then I struck--and her head being bowed,
I struck the neck at the back where it looked red in the moonlight
that shone between the bread-fruit leaves. The knife paused not, but
shore through all, for it was a mighty blow; and the head rolled to
the foot of the tree, turning the sand black, and the body sank down
where it stood, and struck my knees, spurting blood. Thus my _sulu_
and my legs and feet were all wet. Then I cried for the others to come
and see what I had done, and they all came running: first the women,
chattering like parrots at sunset, then the men and children, and last
of all the village policeman, Airsai. And they took the knife from me,
and one brought a clean sulu and put it on me, taking mine to show to
the courts; and they went with me to the river to wash the blood from
my legs. But when they would ask me questions, I said, ‘Peace! I slew
Lusiana. Bind me.’ So they bound my hands with sinnet, and brought me
hither, not resisting, for the woman deserved to die.”

“Is that all, Leone?”

“That is all. But one thing is clear, that I cannot escape the law.”

“Nay! Take rest for your mind, Leone. I know a foreigner in the town--a
_loya_--who is skilled in the law, being wont to dispute in the
courts. Of late few have paid him money to dispute, and he is hungry
for money--for foreigners eat money as we eat yams. For him, skilled
as I have said, it will be easy to darken the truth of this thing so
that the judge cannot find it, and will doubt whether it was Airsai
who slew the woman, or you, or whether she slew herself, or whether,
indeed, she was slain at all. Such things has he done for others, and
this he will do for you too, if you but pay him sufficient money before
the trial.”




RALUVE.


Vere did not tell me the story himself. He does not talk about his
past; but squalid as his life is, he cannot help looking like a man
with a history, albeit unkempt and half-starved in the struggle to
keep his half-caste brats from want. Hoskins, the father of district
magistrates, is my authority. He saw no pathos in it, only thought it
“an awful pity”; but years of tinned provisions are apt to dull the
sense of poetry in any man.

Vere was the usual kind of younger son who leaves a public school with
more knowledge of field-sports than Latin, and having passed the limit
of age for the army, straightway joins the hosts of unemployed whose
ultimate refuge is the States or the Colonies. Unlike most of the young
gentlemen who graduate at an army crammer’s, Vere had no vices, and
when his turn came to tackle station-life in Australia, he found no
temptation to take the usual downward plunge, but hated the life with
all his heart. His letters home brought him unexpected relief. The
Colonial Office was asked to find a few young men to recruit the Civil
Service of a South Sea colony, and Vere, in common with half-a-dozen
others, was appointed, through the medium of a friendly chief clerk.

He was kept at headquarters just long enough to wear off the novelty,
and to wonder why English-speaking mankind, especially when they
hail from Australia, succeed so wonderfully in stamping out all that
is picturesque from their surroundings; and then he was sent to
Commissioner Austin to be instructed in the mysteries of the native
language and customs, until such time as he should be fit for the
responsibilities of a Commissioner himself. Now Mr Commissioner Austin
was not a gentleman to be entrusted with the care of youth, and to
do him justice, he was the last person in the world to desire such
a responsibility. The Government had taken him over with the other
fixtures of a former _régime_, and if he had any belongings for whom
he ever cared, he had long ago forgotten them. In his own province the
Commissioner was a very great man indeed--that is to say, the natives
grunted at him when he passed, clapped their hands after touching
his, and generally left his presence smacking that part of the human
frame that is held in least esteem. But the law of the honour paid to
prophets is reversed in the islands, and the Commissioner found that
his importance in the social scheme sensibly diminished with every mile
from the boundaries of his district, and had therefore allowed his
visits to the capital to become very rare. Vere found the great man
affable and not inhospitable. “You will stay with me until you can make
your own arrangements,” he said; and Vere, not caring to prolong his
visit upon such terms, though he had nothing with him but his clothes,
lost no time in invoking the good offices of a friendly storekeeper.
With his help he found himself in a few days established in a small
native house, belonging to a petty chief, without a stick of furniture
but the mats that belonged to his landlord, and a mosquito-screen. He
wanted nothing more. The mats, with dried grass under them, were soft
enough to sleep on, and the floor was cooler and more comfortable than
any chair. For the first few days he attended the office regularly in
the hope of finding work to do, but his chief never seemed to want
him. “No, thanks, Mr Vere, not to-day. This work would be a little
beyond you. Perhaps you could not do better than work at the language.”
Vere realised later on that the Commissioner had the best of reasons
for not finding work for him. He had not enough for himself. There were
no coolies in his district, and the native magistrates disposed of
the court work. So Vere worked at the language in the only effective
way--that is, he spent day after day with his landlord’s family fishing
from a canoe, diving for _figota_, and drinking _yangona_. He bathed in
a stream a few yards from his hut, and had his meals with his native
landlord or with a neighbouring storekeeper. The life was too new to be
monotonous.

One night as he was dropping off to sleep on his mats, tired out with
doing nothing all day, he heard the distant note of a conch-shell
mingled with the eternal murmur of the reef. “Turtle-fishers returning
with a big bag,” he thought, trying to remember what natives blow
conch-shells for, and turned over on the other side. But presently
distant voices, as of people aroused and hurrying, awoke the lazy
curiosity of one bound to study native customs. A light breeze from
the sea was rustling the great palm-leaves like heavy curtains, and
though the moon had set, the stars gave light enough to show the dim
outline of the rocky island near the anchorage. A light was creeping
in towards the beach, and he could just make out the huge triangular
sail of a double canoe. Then a hoarse voice from the canoe shouted to
the people who were assembling on the beach. Immediately, with a deep
exclamation, the babble of voices ceased, and every figure squatted as
if by word of command. Two or three men ran off into the village, and
Vere drew near the group in the hope of finding some one to explain the
situation. He soon found his landlord, who, in pidgin English, told
him that the dusky potentate who had despoiled the district for many
years had gone to his own place, and that his son reigned in his stead,
and had come to receive their homage. The men who had run to the town
came back with whale’s teeth, and as the canoe grated on the coral sand
the grey-headed village chief squatted with his feet in the sea, and
gave the deep grunt of respect, and delivered in low voice a rapid and
unintelligible harangue. The crew sprang into the water, and standing
waist-deep, dragged the canoe through the yielding sand until her prow
rested above the dry beach, and the old man, still squatting, gave
the whale’s teeth, hanging in a bunch, to the new-comers. A fire of
dead palm-leaves threw a red glare upon the brown faces and glistening
bodies of the strangers as they disembarked. A tall young man,
evidently the new chief, was the first. He was followed by a number
of men and women, who stood aside to wait for another woman who now
rose from the little thatched house on the deck. From her bearing, and
the respect paid to her, Vere saw she was to be classed far above any
he had yet seen. The chief seemed to ask in a whisper who the strange
white man was, and learning probably that he was a Government officer,
stopped to shake hands with him. The girl stopped too, and looked at
Vere as if expecting to be spoken to; but before he could take her
hand, she hurried off after the others. They were followed by the whole
village into the deep shadow of the palms, and Vere was left alone with
the dying fire to watch the crew of the canoe making her snug for the
night.

Vere heard all about the new arrivals next day. Of Nambuto he had heard
before, a good deal that was discreditable, as is natural and proper
to a young leader of the people. The girl was all that an epidemic of
measles had left of a line of chiefs beside whom the present rulers of
the district were _parvenus_. Weakened by the ravages of the disease
that had thinned out his fighting men, her father had succumbed to the
chief who was just dead, and both conquerors and conquered had agreed
that _Andi_ Raluve should heal the hereditary quarrel by marrying
Nambuto, the eldest son of the victor. It was a tribal matter, and in
tribal matters women have no voice, least of all when they are of rank.

The villagers seemed to take their loss with much philosophy. They
cut their hair and beards, it is true, and there was a run on black
cashmere in the nearest store, but they wasted no time in vain regrets
for one whose lightest word a week ago they would have tremblingly
obeyed. They devoted all their energies instead to the entertainment of
the living. Long-nosed slab-sided pigs were dragged by the hind-legs
to the ovens, protesting indignantly, until a few dull thuds clearly
explained the situation to them; and Vere’s friends chopped wood,
butchered, and cooked under a dense cloud of flies as if their lives
depended on their activity. Vere, driven to walk by himself, was
idling about near the sea, thinking how a native canoe, improved on,
would be an ideal sailing craft, when he came suddenly upon a figure
sitting under a great _dilo_-tree, bent almost double, and shaking
with convulsive sobs. Now the natives of these islands are not given
to displaying whatever emotions they have, and seeing that the figure
was a woman’s, all his English chivalry was startled into life; so,
forgetting that she could not understand him, he stooped down, saying,
“What is the matter? Can’t I do anything for you?” In the tear-stained
face that looked up he recognised Raluve, the lady of the previous
night, her big black eyes round with surprise. Reassured by his evident
concern, she gave him rapidly and in a low voice what might have been
an explanation of her distress, but as it was in her own dialect, he
understood not one word of it. With a desperate effort he plunged into
Fijian. “If you are in trouble I will help you,” is not a difficult nor
complicated sentence in any language. He attempted it, and the result
exceeded his expectations, for the girl struggled a moment, and then
burst into ringing peals of laughter. Evidently he had used the wrong
word, and this girl’s manners were no better than any other savage’s.
But she got up as he began to move off, and before they reached the
village she had promised to teach him her language.

Next morning he received a visit of ceremony. His door was darkened,
there was a whispering and a rustling outside, and then Raluve came in,
shyly followed by two attendants of discreet age and mature charms.
She sank gracefully on the mats, doubling her feet under her, and the
matrons giggled. There was a constrained pause. Clearly this girl could
not be amused by the exhibition of a cunningly devised knife or an
alarum-clock. Desperately he fell back on photographs. Raluve took each
one, looked at it indifferently, and handed it to the nearest duenna,
who, being skittish, gazed at it upside down, and poked her companion
in the ribs, chuckling immoderately. But the photographs required
explanations, and then the lesson began in earnest; for every remark
Vere hazarded was first severely corrected, and then criticised by the
two frolicsome dames, with vast amusement to themselves. The system of
education was primitive, but it satisfied both pupil and mistresses.

[Illustration: “_And then Raluve came in, shyly followed by two
attendants of discreet age and mature charms._”]

If her chaperones were flighty, Raluve showed by contrast a deportment
austerely correct. She was by nature and training an aristocrat--well
versed in the traditions of her race, which included the belief in
a natural gulf fixed between her own and the lower orders, and a
vast contempt for the vulgarity of gush. She had been educated on a
mission station, where she learned to take an intelligent interest in
something beyond getting up linen, and the latest scandal. Now reserve,
intelligence, and the manners of a lady are so rare a combination in
a native, that the callow Vere began to fill up the blanks in her
character in his own way, and to miss the lessons on the days she
failed to come, more than he cared to confess to himself. Not many
men can use the eyes God gave them without enlarging or belittling,
unless they have the loan of others’ eyes to correct their vision by.
Some do indeed succeed in viewing life through the wrong end of the
telescope, and in enjoying it hugely; but the majority unscrew the lens
and gaze on a new world--rocky mountains made of dust-specks, trodden
by ants as elephants. Vere, the solitary, was beginning to idealise the
natives, and it is all up with the man who does that, since, for some
occult reason, it is in the feminine side of the race that the finer
qualities are discovered. He was startled to find out for himself
that this brown-skinned girl thought and spoke much in the same way as
did girls with white skins, with the only difference that she was more
natural and _naïve_. He found himself confiding his worries past and
present to her, and asking her advice. He liked her ready sympathy, and
her healthy good sense, and her sense of humour amused him; and when,
after three weeks of almost daily companionship, he heard it hinted
that she would soon leave the island, he knew that she had become a
companion whom he would miss very much indeed.

During these three weeks Nambuto, after the manner of his kind, had
been eating up the land, and he was in no hurry to go away. But a time
comes when the slaughter of pigs and fowls has an end, and at the
village meeting the _mata-ni-vanua_, whose duty it was to apportion
each man’s contribution to the daily feast, pointed out that that time
had arrived. Besides a couple of elderly sows, on whom their hopes of
a future herd were centred, nothing remained to kill. An intimation
must be conveyed to their haughty guest. Now it is a fine thing to be a
chief in these happy isles. Rank and riches in civilised communities
entail responsibilities. We are even told on high authority that the
rich are as unlikely to enjoy happiness in this life, as they are
certain to lose it in the next, which, to say the least of it, would be
rather hard upon the well-to-do if they had not the remedy in their own
hands. But a chief in these islands enjoys not only his own wealth, but
his subjects’ besides, and has neither responsibility nor that product
of civilisation called a conscience to trouble him. He does not sleep
less soundly for fear the crushed worm may turn. The crushing was done
too effectually for that some generations ago.

Nambuto wore his new responsibilities lightly. They seemed to consist
chiefly in consuming the food brought to him by his uncomplaining and
despised hosts, who, if they ever came as visitors to his island,
would be kept from starvation by his vassals. But comfortable though
he was, his visit had to be curtailed owing to the natural difficulty
in reanimating pigs and fowls that have been cooked and eaten. The
morning’s presentation of food had been meagre, and the excuse that the
land was in famine was conveyed to Nambuto’s household. There was no
help for it. The great canoe was unburied from the pile of leaves that
had sheltered it from the burning sun, and hauled down to the water’s
edge; the great mat sail was spread upon the sand, while deft fingers
replaced the broken threads with new sinnet; and the word went forth
that she would put to sea when next the wind was fair.

Raluve came earlier than usual that morning, and, to Vere’s surprise,
alone. She walked straight up to the chair where he was sitting, and
said, “I have come to take leave.”

“Why, where are you going to?” he asked.

“To our land. And I must take leave quickly, lest they be angry with me
for coming.”

She spoke hurriedly--almost roughly--and held out her hand with averted
face. Vere sprang to his feet, and slammed the door of his hut.

“You can’t go like this, Raluve, until I know all about it. Why didn’t
you tell me yesterday?”

“It is Nambuto’s decision. I have only just been told. But the canoe is
all prepared, and they will sail to-day, for the wind is fair.”

Vere felt bitterly disappointed. He had almost forgotten that her
mind, like the colour of her skin, must be different from his. He had
taken her seriously, and made a chum of her, and here she was going
back to her own people without a word of regret. He now remembered how
one-sided their intimacy had been. She had listened patiently to all
his confidences, but had told him nothing about herself in return.
Well, it had been a pleasant dream, and of course it was common-sense
that the awakening must come. What could he, an educated Englishman,
have to do with her, the future wife of a savage? This was not even to
be his adopted country. Of course he must say good-bye to her, and let
his dream fade into the squalid reality of his life. But he felt angry
with himself and her.

“Why should they be angry with you?” he asked indifferently, as he put
out his hand.

“Because my people are like beasts,” she answered indignantly, “and
there have been many words about us, and Nambuto is angry, and has
spoken evil to me. Look! I will hide nothing from you.” And then
she told him her whole story, lapsing into her own dialect in her
excitement, so that he could not follow her: how she had been betrothed
to Nambuto against her will; how Vere was the only friend she had ever
had, for the men of her nation knew not what friendship with a woman
could be; how she would now have to go with them, and be insulted by
them all, with none to protect her, or be her friend.

“_Isa_,” she cried, “you are a white man, and know everything, and I am
a black woman and ignorant: tell me of some medicine, that I may drink
and die! I cannot bear my life.”

Then all Vere’s better qualities rose to drag him down. All the
chivalry in him was stirred. He was not going to see this girl bullied,
and on his account. Whatever the consequences might be, he must protect
her. A worse man would have wisely reflected that native customs are
best left alone, and that, after all, the prospect painted by Raluve
was not so very terrible--for a native woman. But prudence does not
wed with youth, and to Vere, who had already begun to lose the sense
of proportion, her fate seemed horrible. The average man needs one
month in the great world for every five in the islands to correct his
perspective, and to realise the utter insignificance of himself and
his surroundings, otherwise he will infallibly come to believe that it
matters whether or not the coral foundations of the islands crumble
away, and the whole colony, executive machinery and all, go to the
bottom of the Pacific in the next hurricane.

Vere’s fluency astonished himself. He found the words without looking
for them. The figure at his feet on the mats was so limp and helpless,
so hard to reassure by comforting words, that he threw aside all
caution in his promises. So they sat on till the pattern of the
sunlight through the reed walls crept across the floor-mats, and began
to climb the opposite wall, dyeing Raluve’s bowed head with red gold
streaks. Suddenly they heard a woman’s voice in the road calling her
name, and in another moment one of her women looked in at the door
breathless, saying, “I am dead of looking for you. The chief sent me.
We sail to-morrow, and it is his word that you come at once.”

Raluve looked at Vere appealingly. “There will be much anger shown to
me,” she said; “how shall it be? Am I to go?”

We never know the turning-points in our lives at the time; and so Vere,
following that which supplies healthy-minded men with a substitute for
a conscience, his own inclination--said, “Do not go. If they are angry
come to me.”

When she had gone and the light had faded, he began to feel very
uncomfortable. He had encouraged her in resisting her own people, and
he was, after all, quite powerless to prevent them from ill-treating
her. Ugly stories crossed his mind of the doings of the old heathen
days, of the outrage and torture inflicted even on women when they
resisted the chiefs. Perhaps even at that very moment the storm was
breaking on her. The suspense was becoming unbearable when he heard a
smothered cough at the door. In the dim light a woman pushed a crumpled
note into his hand and vanished into the darkness. It was Raluve’s
first letter to him. The writing was in pencil, childish but clear, for
Raluve had been taught by the missionary’s wife.

“I am most pitiable,” she wrote. “Nambuto has spoken evil of me before
our people and the people of this place, and I am despised. But this is
nothing, for they sail to-morrow. Only I fear lest they do something to
me by force, and I go to hide in the forest. I will come back when they
return. And another thing, Nambuto spoke evil of you also. I send my
love to you.--R.”

[Illustration: “_The canoe was afloat, and laden with such of the
low-borns’ household gods as their aristocratic visitors thought worth
taking away._”]

Next morning there was a hue and cry. The canoe was afloat, and laden
with such of the low-borns’ household gods as their aristocratic
visitors thought worth taking away. The mat-sail was bent, and ready
to be hoisted, but Raluve was nowhere to be found. The palm-groves
around the village resounded with her name, and four of the crew of
the canoe even went so far as to stand shouting her name in front of
Vere’s house. This was hard to bear. Then one of them struck up in
a sing-song tone an extempore verse, which the rest received with a
burst of coarse laughter. This too was very hard to bear. Then another
cried, “Lady Raluve, are there not white men in our own land?” And this
being too hard to be borne, the wit saw the flash of white clothes, and
found himself dazed upon his back in the grass, with the sensation of
having had his face crushed in, while his three companions were in full
flight up the read. And Vere returned to his hut relieved in feelings,
but with a curious sense of having been degraded to a lower rank of
humanity where he stood upon the same level with half-naked savages
who wrangle and fight over their women. Two hours later, his fat
good-natured landlord, passing his door, volunteered the information
that the canoe had sailed. Being a wise man, he said nothing about the
missing girl, the great topic of village scandal, and thereby earned
Vere’s confidence.

Now it is not to be supposed that Raluve could escape from annoyance
with the departure of her people. These happy isles are no more free
from the love of scandal than is civilised Europe. A people endowed
with the love of social converse, and without any legitimate object
for discussion, naturally falls back upon the topics most dear to the
frequenters of small European watering-places. Such a prize as the
reputation of a chief woman, hitherto unsmutched, to tear to pieces,
would not glut the carrion-crows of this small district for many weeks.
And with the knowledge that Raluve had earned her chief’s displeasure,
all respect for her rank vanished; for they shared with a certain class
of society journal the gloating triumph that only rank and character
tottering from its pedestal can properly awaken. So when Raluve quietly
returned to the village to take up her abode with the chief’s wife, she
found that it would need all her strength to live the scandal down.
Deeply wounded as she was to find that by her own act she had earned
the scorn of a people she had been trained to despise, her courage soon
returned to her, and she gave back scorn for scorn. But she lived
on with her one friend, the village chief’s wife, a woman of her own
island and her own clan; and as the days passed, and the scandal became
stale, she began to take her proper place among them.

Vere was not allowed to escape scathless. The village scandal had
of course leaked out among the few Europeans of the place, and as
they were precluded from comparing notes with one another, not being
on speaking terms for the most part, each one supplied the details
according to the richness of his individual fancy. The principal
storekeeper’s wife told her daughter that he was an unprincipled young
man; and the damsel, having heard all the details from her native
_confidante_, who did the family washing, examined Vere as he passed
with redoubled interest. The missionary bowed coldly, and his wife
cut him dead. But, worst of all, Commissioner Austin felt it his duty
to have his say in a stammering speech, which began, “I don’t pretend
to be a particularly moral man myself, but----” and got no further,
because Vere, who knew very well what was coming, was short in the
temper, and replied with heat, “Mr Austin, I am a _very_ moral man, and
I always mind my own business,” which, as a rejoinder, was coarse and
unwarrantable, and offended his well-meaning chief past redemption. He
felt very sore and angry with the world that chose to regard what he
felt to be the fruit of his nobler self as a mere boyish escapade, and
he hardened his heart into a defiant resolve to keep his promise to
Raluve, and let the world say what it pleased. Probably if the world
had left them alone, or if either of them had been a coward, Vere would
not have become--well, what he now is.

The next six weeks taught Vere some new things. He learned, for
instance, that a brown-skinned girl has much the same kind of heart
inside her as her white sisters; that, when in love, she will say
and do all that has been said or done by a highly civilised woman,
save only that she is more simple, and less tamed by conventionality;
that love counts no cost, and asks only to be free from artificial
restraint, and utterly careless of the future. His life for the past
six weeks had been like some perfect dream that fears no awakening.
Memories of home, the throb of the great world, the ambitions of his
boyhood, touched him like the murmur in the ears of one who, standing
in some silent wood, seems to hear the roar of the city he has just
left. How often in a lifetime can any of us pause and say, “This
is perfect; I ask for nothing more”? We can no doubt remember many
perfect moments in our lives, because we have forgotten the little
vexations,--that we had the toothache, and our account was overdrawn;
for it is the petty worries and the cares of civilised life that
prevent our happy moments from being quite perfect. The _tempo felice_
was never quite so happy as we think, nor the _miseria_ quite so
wretched. But Vere’s life was happy enough to be worth paying for.
He had met Raluve every day, and had come to look on life as quite
impossible without her. Sometimes they had met at a trysting-place of
Raluve’s choosing in the forest, where a great _tavola_-tree barred
the entrance into a narrow gorge in the hills. Sometimes they had
wandered on moonlight nights along the sandy beach; and once Raluve had
plunged, laughing, into the warm sea, daring him to follow her, and had
swam to the little islet that lay a few hundred yards from the shore.
But once, as they sat talking beneath the _tavola_-tree, Raluve had
clutched his arm, listening to some distant sound, and a few moments
later a man had crashed through the underwood and stopped a few yards
from the tree, hidden from them by the great trunk. Then Vere prepared
himself for battle, but the intruder crashed off again in another
direction. Thereafter Raluve declared their trysting-tree unsafe, and
the island became their regular place of meeting. There had once been
a house on the point, but nothing was left to mark the spot but a
number of oleander-trees, and a patch of couch-grass which the sheep
had trimmed down. Here at least they were safe from intrusion, for they
could see any boat upon the starlit strait that divided them from the
shore long before it could land. And to make their safety surer, they
swam off independently after night had fallen. Vere told the girl the
story of Hero and Leander, and she thereafter would laughingly wave a
smouldering branch among the oleanders as a signal to Vere to bind his
clothes on his head and swim across to her.

But the awakening came at last. One morning a cutter anchored bringing
the mails from headquarters. Besides his usual home letters, there was
an oblong official envelope addressed to him. The letter was short.
Somebody had the honour to request that he would report himself at
headquarters at his earliest convenience, with the view of taking
up an appointment as magistrate of another district. So here was
his promotion before he expected it. Three months ago it would have
delighted him, now it seemed the worst misfortune that could befall
him. To leave this place meant giving up Raluve, for it was out of the
question that she could go with him, unless he caused a scandal that
would cost him his appointment. And yet what prevented him from shaping
his life as he chose? He had only desired promotion to shorten the time
of his exile, and life with Raluve was no longer like exile, for he had
eaten of the lotus, and the smell of the reef had entered into his soul.

Never did the sea seem so cold, nor the island so distant, as on that
night. A light rain was falling, and the smell of the oleander-flowers
was carried to Vere by the light wind as he swam; and while he waded
ashore shivering, Raluve came out from the shadows to meet him.

“E Kalokalo, I am dead with waiting. I waved my brand, but you did not
see it, and now it has gone out. And I began to fear, thinking of the
woman you told me of, who saw her lover’s dead body washed up at her
feet.”

“Am I late? I was reading letters that the cutter brought--letters from
_papalangi_.”

“From your own people? E Kalokalo, you have never told me of them. Some
day they will make you throw me aside, and you will take a _marama_ of
your own land to wife.”

“What is this foolishness, Raluve? Who has put foolish words into your
mouth?”

“I thought they were foolish words, but now I know they are true.
Alika----”

“Alika is a foolish old woman. What did she tell you?”

“She said, ‘Raluve, this white man loves you. You are fortunate, for
the white men love better than our men; but for all that he will leave
you, and return to his own people, taking one of them in marriage.’ And
when I grew angry she said, ‘Did Kaiatia keep Lui, the German, though
she bore him two children? And why does Alisi go about Lakeba like a
hen with half her feathers plucked out?’ Then I knew that her words
were true; for Lui has a white woman for wife now, and Alisi was beaten
by her people because of Tomu, the trader, and he left her, saying he
would return, and did not. And one day you will leave _me_, Kalokalo.”

Vere said nothing, feeling her eyes upon him in the dim light.

“But I will know whether it shall be so,” she went on. “Sit down: no,
not there on the grass, but on the sand. Now see,” she said, taking up
an empty cocoa-nut shell, “when I spin this cup it shall fall toward
one of us. If it falls toward you, then you will leave me, and marry
one of your people; and if it fall toward me---- See, it spins. _Mana
dina!_ Ah, faithless one, it topples like Kata, the kava-drinker!”

The shell reeled, lurched, and fell toward the girl, rolling away on
its side from between them. Raluve’s hands fell to her side.

“Nay; but the shell spoke the truth,” said Vere, laughing.

But the girl had become serious.

“It is a heathen game, and we ought not to have done it, therefore it
lied. And if you doubt that it lied, I will take a Bible to-morrow, and
swear that I will never leave you. Then if I swear falsely, I shall die
as Ana did, when she swore she did not burn down Finau’s house. But you
will leave me, and it is right; for you are my chief, and I am a black
woman, and I could not bear that you should be despised by your people
because of me. What is she like, Kalokalo?”

“Who?”

“The woman you will marry. She must be a great lady like the Governor’s
wife, not like the _maramas_ of Levuka, who are angry, and have harsh
voices. I hate them: but you would never take one of them?”

“And what would you do if I married, Raluve?”

“I would be your wife’s servant if she would let me; but if you left me
for one of my own people----” She caught her breath, and half-started
up. He thought she was excited by her own speech, but her face was
set, and her body tense. She was listening. “Somebody is coming,” she
whispered. Vere strained his ears, but could hear nothing but the faint
hiss of the sand as the tiny waves sucked it back.

“I hear nothing,” he said.

She put her hand on his mouth, and rose upon her knees, looking
seawards. After some seconds she stooped.

“There are no other double canoes but Nambuto’s. I can hear the _sua_,
four of them, therefore it is a double canoe. They are sculling against
the wind, and may land here. Come, let us swim across.”

But while Vere still hesitated, scarcely believing her, the quiet air
was pierced by the deep note of a conch-shell from the sea.

“It is Nambuto,” she said, excitedly. “_Vonu?_ No, they do not blow
like that for _vonu_” (turtle).

It was too late to think of swimming ashore. In another moment the
beach would be alive with men. Raluve drew Vere back into the shadow
of the oleanders, and made him lie down lest his white face should be
seen. He could see her crouching at the edge of the sand. Gradually
he began to distinguish a dull rhythmical beat, and the girl drew
back into the shadow. The sound grew louder, and then he saw a dark
mass emerging from the night, which took the shape of a great canoe,
creeping inshore against the light land-breeze which had just sprung
up. It glided on noiselessly, save for the rhythmical blow of the _sua_
as they rocked from side to side in the sockets, while the figures of
the four scullers stood out in sharp _silhouette_ against the sky-line.
It passed so close to the point of the island that Vere could have
thrown a biscuit on to the deck, and could hear every word spoken by
those on board. When it had passed on to the beach, Vere realised how
great had been the strain to Raluve.

“Nambuto is there; I heard his voice. What shall I do?”

It seemed a small matter to Vere whether Nambuto came back or not. He
could not realise that this girl by his side, who thought and spoke so
rationally, was still one of her own people, bound to fear what they
feared, and to respect the customs that had become stronger than law to
them. That she, an affianced chief woman, should prefer a white man to
a man of her own race, was as great a social crime as it would be were
a countrywoman of ours to tolerate an Indian rajah.

Meanwhile the party had landed from the canoe, and the voices on the
beach were silent. Raluve thought she had heard her name called in
the direction of Vere’s house; but they waited until the cocks had
crowed in the village, and a few sleepy birds had begun twittering in
the trees on the island. It was the safest hour for their return: the
natives, roused in the night, would sleep late that morning. Still
Raluve feared to take a direct course to the shore, and, calling to
Vere to follow her, waded through the shallow water and struck out,
steering a diagonal course towards the shore opposite Vere’s house.
The water was brilliantly phosphorescent, and her body seemed to be
clothed in polished silver as she swam. Every stroke of her arms and
feet scattered a shower of diamonds that flashed a moment and vanished
in the black water; and from before her hundreds of fish, taking her
for an enemy, shot away, leaving a dull train of fire behind them like
shooting-stars in a dark sky. It was a long swim, for it was high tide;
but as they waded ashore, tired and out of breath, the beach seemed
deserted. There was only the dark shelter of the trees to be gained,
and they were safe. They stopped a moment on the sand to put on the
clothes they had tied round their heads, and then hurried up towards
the trees. But before they reached them there was a shout from the bush
just in front of them, answered by two voices further off in different
directions.

“They have seen us,” said Raluve, hurriedly. “Run away, Kalokalo. I
will wait for them here.”

But Vere had no idea of running away, and stood his ground by her side.
There was the sound of a man crashing through the bushes, and a native
ran into the open and stood before them. It was Nambuto.

There was silence for some moments. Raluve stood facing him with
heaving breast, while Vere clenched his fists, and drew nearer to
her. The chief broke the silence with the most insulting word in his
language. Vere did not understand the word, but the man’s tone and
Raluve’s passionate indignation were enough for him.

“You scoundrel!” he cried in English from between his set teeth; “how
dare you speak to her like that?”

Nambuto, expecting a blow, put up both hands to defend his face, and
Vere, mistaking the gesture in the dim light, thought he was about to
strike him. In a moment Nambuto was reeling backwards, stunned with a
heavy blow between the eyes, and as he fell he shouted a few words at
the top of his voice.

“Run, Raluve, and hide yourself,” cried Vere.

“Come with me,” she answered; “he has called his men, and they will
kill you.”

She tried to drag him into the trees, for they could hear voices and
the crashing of the undergrowth, as Nambuto’s men ran in the direction
of their chief’s voice.

“Run and hide yourself,” cried Vere again, excitedly pushing her into
the shadow of the trees. He had just time to reach the trunk of a great
_dilo_-tree, and put his back against it, when five men ran out on to
the beach where Nambuto sat rubbing his eyes as if stupefied.

“Seize the white man!--he has struck me,” he cried.

They came upon Vere cautiously, for he was a formidable object for
unarmed natives to tackle. “Quick, a stick,” cried one, and ran to pick
up a rough worm-eaten piece of drift-wood. He dodged the first blow
and knocked down one of them, who tried to run in under his guard, but
the second blow struck his shoulder, and he fell. Before he could rise
they were upon him, trampling and stamping the breath out of his body.
But help was near. Raluve had run to the nearest house, and it was that
of Vere’s landlord and particular friend. But she outstripped him, and
was among Vere’s assailants, raging like a tigress, long before he came
up. It is no easy matter to quiet savages when their blood is once up;
but her prestige among them was still great, and one after another
they slunk off before her indignant flow of invective. She was almost
terrible in her anger, as a woman can only be when she is defending
some one she loves.

I once saw a woman, meek, cowed, and dispirited with the years of
slavery called marriage among these people, divorced from her husband,
who beat her. She did not seem to have a soul above her yam-patch, nor
could she be stirred to a show of interest by the announcement of her
freedom. Her child, an ill-favoured brat, eruptive with sores, sat by
her side, and when she heard that it was to be taken from her, even
that woman became terrible in her indignation.

Raluve’s anger all changed to the most perfect tenderness as she
helped her companion to lift Vere, all bruised and stunned, and carry
him to his own house. Once there she would not leave him, but sat
fanning him far into the day, without thinking of hunger or thirst,
until a friendly storekeeper, who had heard of the disturbance, came
to see him. No bones were broken. There were some bad bruises, and an
unsightly black eye. But as any movement gave him intense pain, he
wisely lay still, and slept away the greater part of the day, while
Raluve sat fanning him. Late in the afternoon a burly form filled the
doorway. Mr Commissioner Austin was, sorely against his will, come
to do his duty. He began by suggesting that Raluve should withdraw,
but she would not go farther than the end of the house. Was Vere much
hurt? No. Well, he was glad to hear it. He was awfully sorry about the
whole business. These wretched connections always ended alike, because
they brought Europeans down to the level of natives. But it would be
a lesson to Vere, who would take what he had to say in good part. But
Vere did not take it in good part at all, and told him so. He had some
news, however. The vessel in which Vere was to leave for headquarters
was to sail in a day or two, and Nambuto had been ordered to go before
the end of the week.

Left to himself, Vere had ample time to consider his position. This
girl loved him,--there was no doubt in his mind about that. What did
he feel for her in return--gratitude, the vanity kindled by unsought
love, or something stronger than either? And if he could drop back into
the life she lived, the life man was intended to live, free from all
the vulgar struggle and squalor of civilisation, in some island to the
eastward, far from his own kind, where the smell of the reef and the
warm wind would possess his senses, he would surely ask for nothing
more. But there was a reverse to the picture. If it were to mean the
life that some white men, who had abjured civilisation, lived, despised
alike by their fellows and the people they consorted with, he could
see nothing but misery before them both. He tried to remember a single
case where the marriage of a white man to a native woman had turned
out happily. There was Bonson, an educated man like himself. One could
read the man’s history in his face. All self-respect was crushed out of
him now, but how he must have suffered for his mistake when it was too
late! No; a curse seemed to follow the union of opposite races: they
must put this folly out of their hearts, and each follow the destiny to
which they were born. But as he turned to speak to Raluve he met her
eyes fixed upon his face. She had crept up to his bed as he lay with
his face to the wall.

“What is in your mind, Kalokalo, my star? I cannot bear your face to be
hidden from me, for then evil thoughts enter your mind, and your face
is changed towards me. Are you in pain?” she asked, laying her hand
gently on his forehead.

“Raluve,” he said, taking her hand, “I was wondering how I shall fare
without you.”

“But you are not going to leave me?” she said, catching her breath. “If
you go, I must go with you to take care of you.”

“We do not plan our lives,” he answered; “it is ordered that I go from
here in three days.”

Her hand dropped from his, and she sat quite still. He could hear her
breathing, but cowardice kept him from looking at her. The light waned
and the house became dark, but still she made no sign. At last he could
bear the silence no longer.

“Speak, Raluve,” he said; “is it not better for us both that I should
go?”

“For you it is better,” she answered in a low voice, “and therefore it
must be. But for me the darkness has fallen, and is eating me up.”

What could he say more? The pain had to be borne, and he would only
make it worse by speaking. Then as he made no reply, she got up and
left the house without another word.

Vere’s bruises did not trouble him long. In two days he was busied
about his packing, and on the morning the steamer was expected he was
ready for the voyage. He had not seen Raluve since he had told her
of his determination, and he had felt his courage too weak to risk
another interview like the last. But he could not leave her without
saying good-bye, and he had just made up his mind to find her when she
herself came in. She had brought a beautiful mat as a parting gift.
Disregarding all native ceremonial, she laid it down at his feet,
saying, “This is to be your sleeping-mat, and it will be my shadow
with you, so that you may not forget me.” When he had thanked her, she
put out her hand abruptly, saying, “You are going: let us take leave of
one another here.”

Vere had only to take the hand and let her go, but he had pictured to
himself quite another sort of leave-taking, and his vanity was wounded.

“Are we to part as if we were at enmity, Raluve? Every one shakes
hands, therefore we must kiss each other: besides, I want to know what
you will do when I am gone.”

The girl looked at him angrily. “It is nothing to you where I go when
you are gone. You are a white man, and I am a black woman. I amused
you, my chief, while you were here, and you will find another to amuse
you in the place to which you go.”

“Raluve, are you angry with me?”

“No. You are a white man, and white men always treat my people so.”

“But think----”

“Give me no more reasons. It is enough that I myself would not make you
despised of your own people. It is best that you should go.”

“But what will you do?”

“I also will go away. The steamer will carry you far, but my canoe
shall bear me farther still,” and she laughed a hard little laugh. Then
she got up to go, and Vere dared not detain her. She did not respond
to his parting kiss, but left the house with averted face. What could
she have meant by her last words? He remembered with sickening dread
that he had heard of natives killing themselves for the most trivial
reasons. Men and women had climbed cocoa-nut-trees and flung themselves
down because their townsfolk ridiculed them, and Raluve, refined as
she was, had a native’s feelings underneath the surface. If she meant
this, the rest of his life would not be pleasant to him. And as he sat
pondering a sound caught his ear, and he ran to the door. There sat
Raluve trying in vain to stifle her passionate sobs. He tried to raise
her, and draw her back into the house, but she resisted, crying, “O
Kalokalo, I cannot leave you in anger, therefore kiss me, and let me
go; my love for you is hurting me.”

She returned his kiss this time, and in a moment she had passed behind
the palm-stems.

Two hours later Vere was shaking hands with his native friends on the
beach, hardly daring to look along the line of faces for fear that
Raluve might be among them. But she was not. He strained his eyes
from the steamer as she moved slowly out to distinguish the tall lithe
figure he knew so well. On the hill above the village was a great
boulder of black limestone, hurled from the topmost pinnacle of the
island in some old earthquake. As they steamed away he saw a movement
on the top of the rock. With his glasses he made out the figure of a
woman dressed in white, as Raluve had been that morning. She took off
her upper garment, waved it once above her head, and then flung it far
out towards the steamer. The wind caught and bore it sideways, but
before it had fluttered down among the tops of the palms the figure was
gone. It was Raluve’s farewell.

Vere had plenty of leisure during the two days’ voyage to think
over the past. Till now he had been buoyed up by the sense of doing
that which was difficult and disagreeable, and therefore probably
right,--for his early training had imbued him with the idea that the
pleasant ways of life lead into the “broad road”; but now he began
to feel unaccountably ashamed of himself. If he had been to blame
for accepting the girl’s love, still, he thought complacently, the
wrench had been as great for him as for her. But argue as he would,
he felt that he was running away from a situation he did not dare to
face,--that he was betraying and deserting a woman. What was it that
she had said? “The steamer will carry you far, but my canoe shall
bear me farther still.” Why, if she had that sort of temptation in
her present state of nervous excitement, she would yield, of course.
What might she not be doing at this very moment while the engines
trampled on and put mile after mile between them? And he might save
her if he were there. Pulses began to beat in his brain, and he got up
and raced along the empty deck. Only a blue wavy line on the eastern
horizon remained of the island. As he looked at it, trying to picture
the village that lay beneath it, the memories of the last three weeks
rushed over him, with Raluve as the centre of each picture,--her
tenderness, her soft words, even the proud little pose of the head that
he had so often teased her about. It was a very perfect life while it
lasted. Then he began to remember words that he had said but forgotten
till now,--words that she must have taken as promises. Nay, but they
were promises, and he, an English gentleman, bound by promises, was
coolly breaking them. With every throb of the propeller this feeling
became stronger, until he had persuaded himself that he was already
bound by the past, and was no longer master of his own actions. There
was a feeling of rest in having come to a determination, and his mind
recoiled from the idea of again reviewing the arguments that had led to
it step by step.

The first action on landing was to write the best and most foolish
letter he had ever written, resigning his appointment, without offering
any explanation. Then he made terms with the skipper of a cutter that
sailed the same afternoon to carry him back. He went on board at once,
not daring to meet any one he knew lest awkward questions might be
asked.

They had a head-wind all the way back, and Vere became ill with anxiety
and excitement during the four days’ voyage. At last the palm-groves
he had left a week ago were in sight, and he was straining his eyes in
trying to recognise Raluve’s figure among the crowd on the beach. She
was not there. He landed with a sense of sickening fear. Two or three
natives shook hands with him, but he dared not ask them the question he
longed to have answered. A couple of storekeepers’ assistants were the
only white men on the beach. They stared at him in open astonishment,
and then explained his return in their own way with many grins and
nudges of the elbow. He hurried to his landlord’s house, knowing that
he would tell him the unvarnished truth without gloating over the
scandal. The daughter of the house was alone in the house mending a
net. Without waiting to account for his sudden appearance, he said,
“Where is Raluve?” The girl knew the story, and hesitated. “Tell me,”
he cried, angrily, “Am I a sick man that you fear to say the truth?
Where is she?”

“She has gone,” answered the girl.

“Gone whither?”

“With Nambuto,” she said, falteringly.

“Say on.”

The story was short. On the day he had left there had been a great
meeting, and Raluve had been admonished before all the chiefs. Nambuto
had spoken kindly to her, and day after day they had waited till she
should make up her mind. Then gradually the old feeling of her race
must have gained upon her, and the memory of the dream that had passed
waxed fainter. Her people would take her back, and her lover had
deserted her, and as for death by her own hand--it was most terrible.

“But why do you say she has gone with Nambuto?” asked Vere, fiercely.
“They are not married? Speak plainly all that you know.”

“They are not yet married, but this I know, that they sailed in
Nambuto’s canoe this morning, and before they sailed Raluve’s
_tombe_[2] was cut off.”

FOOTNOTE:

[2] The _tombe_ is a long lock of hair worn by Fijian girls until they
marry, as a sign of maidenhood, the rest of the hair being short.




THE RAIN-MAKERS.


In Ambrym there is foolishness upon the coast, and wisdom among the
hills. For two whole months there had been peace: the clubs lay idle
in the eaves; the digging-stick replaced the spear; bold warriors
ingloriously tilled the soil; and yet there was scarcity. Peace, and
yet famine! December had come, but the yam-vines, already twining on
the sticks, had sickened and withered; the taro swamp was hard and
fissured, like old Turo’s face, and a stalk or two, blackened as by
fire, was all that was left of the taro; the plantain-leaves were
yellow and wrinkled; and still the earth was as iron and the heaven was
as brass. Not even Turo remembered such a season.

It was useless to wait longer for rain: a few weeks longer and there
would be no one left to wait. Something must be done, and done at once.
But what? The ancient arts were forgotten. What is the use of being
able to creep unheard upon an unsuspecting foe, if one has forgotten
how to control the unseen powers? What profits it that one can strike
one’s foe with the club, if one no longer knows how to slay him with
magic leaves as the hillmen do? For there is foolishness upon the
coast, and wisdom dwells only among the hills.

But to go to the hills for wisdom can only be resorted to under the
direst necessity. It is true that brains have often been brought from
the hills, but that was in a material form, for purposes of decoration,
as the grinning row of skulls under the eaves, that form Turo’s patent
of nobility, bear witness; and as the end one, added only eight weeks
ago, has not yet been paid for in the usual way, there is a natural
delicacy in applying for the loan of the wisdom seated in the crania of
the survivors. If only the hillmen’s heads, when sundered from their
wretched carcases, were not useless for purposes of consultation, the
difficulty would be solved.

But any death is better than starvation. An ambassador must be sent. If
he does not come back, he will be no worse off than if he starved at
home, save that his body will play an important _rôle_ at a mountain
feast, and his head will grin derisively at the mountain children
playing before the chief’s house. But even so the hillmen will be one
head to the bad, and what is the use of a big score if there be no one
left to glory in it? In a week the warriors will be so famine-weakened
that the hillmen could hold them by the hair while the boys beat them
to death, as Turo used to do when he was younger. Yes, some one must
go, and who better than Erirala the orator?

The matter is put before Erirala at the evening conclave. Erirala
approves of the principle, but thinks that Malata would make a better
envoy, seeing that his brother married a hillman’s third cousin. Malata
is diffident about his powers of persuasion, and the point is submitted
to old Turo as he squats in his doorway, still trying with palsied
hands to carve the club he began two years ago.

“Let Erirala go,” he pipes, and there is nothing more to be said.

That night the limestone ring, the handiwork of the gods, is unburied
from its hiding-place. It is beyond all price but that of rain. Ten
barbed spears--not the shin-bone ones, because to present _them_
to the relations of the shin-bones would be indelicate, but good
spears, inlaid with mother-of-pearl--and eight strings of shell money,
are the price with which the precious rain is to be bought. Erirala
leaves at daybreak, after being wept over by his three wives and the
sister-in-law who digs his plantation. There is nothing to do but to
wait till he either comes back or--till bad news comes. The pitiless
sun rides through the burning sky, and sinks at last behind the western
hills, leaving the air hazy and tremulous. The tide goes out, and the
mud hardens and cracks behind it as it goes. The very crickets are
silent--dead, probably, of thirst--and the people still sit, spear in
hand, beneath the palm-trees waiting. It grows dark, and still he fails
to come. Surely the worst has happened.

A cry at last from the forest. A hundred voices answer, a hundred
wasted bodies spring up to welcome Erirala returned from the dead.
The silent village has found its voice at last, and every inhabitant,
down to the dingo dogs, has something to say, and says it at the top
of his voice. Brands are snatched from the fire, and then Erirala is
seen standing on the bush-path imploring silence in dumb show. At
last he gets it, and tells his news. The wise have taken pity and come
to the foolish; but unless the foolish keep silence, the wise will
be frightened and take to their heels, if they have not already done
so. The wise know that better men than they have been enticed by fair
words and gifts, and fallen into an ambush from which not even their
gods could save them, and never came back to tell their friends how it
happened.

There is silence, and Erirala retires into the bush and calls. No
answer. He shouts again with long-drawn mountain vowels. From far up
the hillside comes a faint answer. The wise have run fast and far,
and must be reassured, and Erirala bawls comforting words into the
darkness. In twenty minutes the two wary old birds emerge into the
village square, and stand blinking in the circle of flickering light
cast by the fire. The children crowd wonderingly round them, and their
elders scan them from the dense shadow of the huts. Will the wise stay
the night? No; the wise have a particular engagement at home before
morning. Won’t they at least wait till a meal can be cooked? No; the
wise have come on business, and that done, they must needs return.
Well, then, since they won’t, let Erirala go with them to fetch rain.

The chief magician leads the way to the river, now nearly dry. He is
elderly and wizened, with no clothes but a shell and a stick thrust
through the cartilage of his nose. His familiar is a trifle younger,
attired in the same cool garb, but dignified with an ear-lobe pierced
and distended enough to carry an empty _caviare_ tin whole. The left
lobe, following a natural law, had broken under the strain, and after
dangling for months on the shoulder, has lately been excoriated and
tastefully spliced with grass bandages. The familiar carries a roll
of bark-cloth under his arm. Equipped with this only and wisdom, the
magicians would force the heavens to give rain. How wonderful is human
intellect, and how high above the beasts is man!

Arrived on the river-bank, Erirala is commanded to advance no farther,
for it is not permitted the common mortal to witness the mysteries of
the intercourse between the gods and their chosen ones. Together they
pick their way among the round boulders that form the dry river-bed,
till they come to the inch-deep stream that is all that is left of
the river. Together they grope to a certain boulder, with a flat top,
whose base is washed by the trickling stream. “This is the place,”
says the magician. The familiar grasps it, strains at it, and raises
one end a few inches from the water. The wise one snatches the cloth
from under the familiar’s arm and thrusts it under the stone, which
falls on it with a heavy thud. Then in the pitchy darkness, with no
sound but the faint gurgle of the shallow stream, he chants magic words
in a quavering treble--words whose meaning is hidden from degenerate
man, but which were handed down by the wise men of old, in the days
when gods came up from the sea with white faces, strange head-gear, and
turtles’ shells on their backs, and slew their forefathers, and sailed
away in a magic canoe to the heavens whence they came. Whatever the
words meant, the gods always obeyed them, provided that the right kind
of cloth had been put under the right kind of stone. Would they disobey
now?

When they came back Erirala was sitting on the bank, slapping his bare
limbs to kill the mosquitoes and keep his spirits up. “Erirala, there
will be rain,” said the sage; and without another word he plunged with
his companion into the bush, and was gone. The envoy returned to the
village. In answer to his anxious questioners, he could only say that
he had seen nothing and knew nothing, except that the rain was coming.

Next morning the brazen sun climbed into a copper sky. Not a breath
of air rippled the oily sea; even the distant reef was silent. It was
just such a morning as the rest, and the rain-god laughed at spells.
Nevertheless, the women were sent to cut firewood to store in the huts,
and to gather a store of bush-nuts against the time when the bush would
be impassable. The canoes at the river-mouth were hauled up lest the
flood should carry them away, and old Turo sat on the beach looking
eastwards, and chuckling to himself.

But at noon the day is not like other days. The cockatoos are
screaming, which they never do at noon on other days. Insect life is
awake. The whole bush is singing, and only dull-witted man awaits a
clearer sign. And now even that is given. A purple haze has gathered in
the south-west. It resolves into a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand;
there is a muttering in the heavens, the clouds rush up the sky, though
not a breath as yet cools the simmering air or stirs the palm-leaves.
The muttering grows to a murmur, the murmur to a distant roar. The air
becomes dark; the roar gathers volume. There! there! to the south a
great grey pillar rolls towards us, lashing the forest beneath it: the
air grows cold. To your huts! it is upon us! and with a savage roar the
rain-storm bursts. It does not break up into paltry drops, but gushes
down upon the thirsty earth in one broad torrent, and the parched soil
drinks it greedily, and sends up a sweet fresh smell in gratitude.
Did the windows of heaven open so wide as this when Noah launched his
clumsy craft upon the waters? Surely the ocean will overflow and engulf
Ambrym.

Rain, rain, rain! The sodden thatch has long since ceased to turn the
flood. The water beats down the tree-tops, bowing beneath its weight. A
raging torrent has been formed through the village square. The soil is
crumbling away to the house-foundations, and fast pouring out seawards.
There are six inches of water in every house. The crazy rafters of
Turo’s house have given way, and the last trophy has fallen and been
whirled out to sea, grinning at its enemies’ new misfortunes. Voices
are drowned in the never-ceasing roar of rushing water. It grows dark
and light again, and again dark, and the people, hearing, seeing, and
breathing nothing but water, cling helpless and dismayed to their
house-posts, and wish for the day. The third morning dawns, and the
men gather round the wreck of Turo’s house. Their voices are drowned
by the rain and the river, whose trickling stream has long burst its
banks and become a furious torrent. They shout to one another that the
rain must be stopped. But who can stop it but the rain-makers? Erirala
must again go to the wise with greater presents than those that brought
the rain. The treasures of the village are collected, and Erirala,
half drowned, is laden for his second embassy. Knee-deep in the swift
muddy stream that has torn its way through the village, he toils step
by step up what was once the path, and disappears. It is night when he
reaches the rocky spur on which are perched the dwellings of the wise.
He gropes his way to a hut, and shouts greetings through the blinding
rain. A voice from within replies. The leaf door slides to one side,
and a skinny arm is thrust out for the presents, yet is the envoy not
invited in. He proffers his request. The foolish have had the rain. It
was good. But there was a little too much of it. Will the wise be of a
good mind and turn it off? The wise will do their best: and with this
slender comfort Erirala is left to find his way back in the dark, half
swimming and half sliding down the slippery path.

But with the dawn the rain has not ceased--nay, it has gathered double
volume. What do these crafty hillmen mean? Will they kill us with water
since they failed with drought? Or are they too lazy to raise a finger
to save us?

Another night passes, and with the morning comes stern resolve. There
is no doubt now what are the hillmen’s motives, and if we needs must
die of water, let us at least redden it with our enemies’ blood. There
shall be one last embassy to them, and they shall understand that
the coast warriors will be trifled with no more. An ultimatum shall
be sent to these crafty foes, and the rain shall either cease or be
dyed with the blood of the rain-makers. Angry and defiant words are
spoken at the meeting on the spur overlooking the village whither the
foolish have removed from their inundated dwellings. Hungry and cold,
they cower in the driving rain, without any shelter but the dripping
trees,--men, women, and crying children huddled together, the victims
of a cruel conspiracy between the malignant spirits and their mountain
foes. Wearily Erirala leaves them, bound upon his last embassy, without
presents this time, but with a stern message instead.

Hour after hour passes, and it is near nightfall when they hear his
cry from the forest above them on the hillside. The men seize their
weapons, and spring forward to meet him. “I told them that there would
be evil unless the rain stopped to-night,” he answers; “and they said,
‘Draw out the cloth from under the stone and the rain will cease: it is
a flat-topped stone.’”

What stone? Why, the river-bed, of course. Not a man is left to guard
the women and children, for the whole of the warriors follow Erirala
towards the river-bank. The roar gets louder as they rush on. It is the
river--a broad foaming cataract by this time. What hope of finding the
stone in such a hell of waters as this? But Erirala knows the place.
A party is told off to cut stout vines from the forest, and in ten
minutes a rope, to which a ship might swing, is made and fastened to a
tree in the bend of the river, round which the flood-water swirls and
eddies. Clinging to the other end, Erirala and the boy Narau are paid
out into the stream, and as the current strikes their bodies they are
whirled from side to side like a pendulum girt with a belt of foam,
and followed by a foamy wake, like the track of a fast steamer. Near
the middle of the stream there is a deep eddy. As Erirala reaches
this he stretches up his arm, and perhaps shouts, though no sound is
heard by those on shore. Both he and his companion disappear for a
moment, come up for breath, dive again, and then emerge, waving their
arms. The people on shore strain at the vine-rope. It does not yield
an inch. Now, all together--pull! The rope stretches, yields an inch,
another, and suddenly gives some six feet with a jerk. Narau disappears
for a moment, and is then seen whirling downstream on the swift
current, waving a dripping, sodden, greyish-looking rag. Poor Erirala
is forgotten as the whole party rush for the point for which Narau is
swimming. A dozen hands are stretched out to pull him ashore. Erirala,
leaving the rope tied to the flat-topped stone, strikes out, and in a
moment lands at the same place. Yes. Narau has the cloth, sodden though
it be to a pulp of bark-fibre, scarce adhering together.

Surely already the rain is abating! Yes; there is no doubt of it! Why,
there to the north-west, it is lighter! There is a break in the clouds.
One can almost see where the sun is setting. It is little more than a
drizzle now--not even that, for we are under the dripping trees. Two
hours later one can see the stars, and the clouds are sweeping away in
heavy masses to the southward.

But just think what would have happened if Erirala had not found the
cloth under the flat-topped stone!




MAKERETA.


Makereta was not beautiful. Her mouth was wide, even for a Fijian girl;
and although she was on the shady side of nineteen, she had not yet
adopted the staid demeanour suited to her decaying youth. She was a
born coquette, and being quick-witted, and with a character hitherto
irreproachable, she had captivated the hearts of all the middle-aged
widowers in her neighbourhood. Why, had it not even been reported that
she had refused the honourable offer of Jenkins, the white trader, and
sent away the haughty Buli Yasawa, broken in heart and purse, after
gracefully accepting from him five pounds’ worth of printed calico
and cheap scent! Yes; Makereta had a certain charm about her quite
apart from her skill in ironing and the use of the sewing-machine, or
her being the niece of Roko Tui Ba. She was amusing to chaff; her
repartees were witty, if not refined; and she had an inexhaustible fund
of gossip about all the ladies of her acquaintance. But what a voice
she had! Its gentlest tones struck the drum of the ear like a tap with
the teeth of a saw; and when she laughed, which was generally after
some remark of her own, the old women in the next village would grumble
to each other about “that woman’s” deficiency in chief-like behaviour.
It was Makereta’s laugh that brought her into trouble.

Her sister had been for some years married to a steady old native
preacher, who was chaplain to the small native force stationed in the
mountains. This good lady was the very antipodes of the dusky Makereta.
She had never been known to flirt, but then that may have been due to
other causes than disposition, and she led her good-natured husband a
life of it by making him ferret out real or fancied scandals, very much
against his will.

[Illustration: MAKERETA.]

In an evil hour Makereta and three other maidens, having caught a
miraculous haul of crabs in Nandi Bay, shouldered their baskets with
the double intention of presenting them to her sister and flirting with
the gay and licentious soldiery. They climbed the mountain-barrier,
and in due time reached the camp. For the next few days I heard nothing
of Makereta except her laugh, which triumphed over the half-mile of
bush that lay between us. She was staying with her sister, and on some
excuse or other the men found it necessary to consult their spiritual
adviser several times daily. It was at these times that the higher
tones of the laugh floated on the breeze like the cry of some animal in
pain.

At length, as the novelist of the marvellous would say, “a strange
thing happened.” An excited and dishevelled minister of religion came
panting into my house, and this is what he said:--

“Sir, a terrible thing! Litiana and Makereta have been angry, and
Litiana is much hurt. This was the way of it. Makereta was in the
cook-house with some of the soldiers; they were joking, and Makereta
laughed very loud. Then Litiana called to her, saying, ‘We are ashamed
before the chiefs to-day;’ and Makereta replied with a very bad word,
and Litiana went in to chastise her, and they fought, and Makereta bit
Litiana, and her ear is gone, and----”

“And what?” I asked, as he hesitated.

“And, sir,” he said, solemnly, “_we cannot find the ear_.”

I went with him. It was too true. Litiana was sobbing in a corner,
trying to stanch the blood from the site of her ear, and Makereta was
panting between two restraining soldiers. Two others were carefully
turning over the mats on what had been the battlefield. We searched
everywhere but without success, and then I turned to Makereta.

“Where is your sister’s ear?” I asked.

She half smiled, and said she did not know.

“Do you remember biting her?”

“Yes.”

“Did you bite her ear off?”

“I think it came off.”

“Did you _swallow_ it?”

“_Iss?_” (who knows?)

A further ineffectual search left no doubt as to what had become of the
ear. Litiana, smarting under her injuries, haled her sister before the
native court, presided over by that magistrate who, in happier days,
used to beguile the tedium of the bench with music on the Jew’s-harp.
The damages were assessed at five shillings, and the little rift made
the music between the sisters dumb.

“Was my ear only worth five shillings?” complained the elder.

“Is it sisterly to drag one’s sister to court like an Indian
coolie-woman?” asked Makereta.

I don’t know whether they have ever met since. Makereta soon after this
fell in love with a mild-mannered policeman, married him in defiance
of her relations, and now rules him with an iron rod somewhere down
Nadroga way. They both asked me to help them to bring it about, I
being their father, which meant that I was to supply the pigs for the
wedding-breakfast.




ROMEO AND JULIET.


Romeo loved Juliet, there was not the slightest doubt about that; for
although Juliet had been tattooed round the mouth, and had already
married Tybalt, and had dug Tybalt’s yams and cut Tybalt’s firewood for
the last two years, yet was Romeo ready to die for her. Verona slept
peacefully in the bosom of a tiny green valley, shut in by great jagged
mountains, and soothed by the lazy music of a tiny river whose water
must travel many days before it mixed with the great salt ocean. The
hot air quivered in the burning sun, which no breeze ever came to cool,
and at night not even a mosquito broke the utter silence. No street
brawls here in this Verona of Southern seas, for the humpbacked pig
and half-clothed chicken were past getting up a brawl, and they were
the only occupants of Verona’s single street. Old Capulet could tell
you of brawls enough, in which club took the place of rapier, and the
bodies of the slain were disposed of in a peculiar way; but that was
before the white man and the measles arrived, when Mongondro still made
the earth tremble, and before these white lunatics came and made him
wrap calico round his loins, and practise incantations with a hymn-book
(which were a waste of time, because nobody died of them as they do
of the real incantations), and taught him, in outlandish Bauan, that
when he was dead he would be made alive again to be burnt, and asked
him to give a shilling every now and again to the Great Spirit not to
burn him, and then took the shilling away with them. But old Capulet
doesn’t talk about these things any more, because last year the teacher
overheard him telling stories to the young men, and threatened to burn
him up with a flash of lightning if he ever did it again.

Decidedly Verona was not an exciting place to live in; and so long as
the yam-crop was good, and the missionary left them alone, and that
other white man who came sometimes on a horse, and told them to hoe
their roads, life was easy and monotonous.

Old Capulet had never heard of a romance. There wasn’t a word for it in
his vocabulary, and so he, at any rate, may be excused for what he did
when Tybalt came and told him what had happened. Why, in Capulet’s day,
women were not worth more than a whale’s tooth, however well they could
dig! and as for a girl refusing to marry the man who had paid for her,
or being untrue to the man she married--why, the thing was unheard of;
or at least, if it ever had happened, the case had always been dealt
with in the same way--the club, with sometimes the oven to follow.

So when Tybalt came that evening with the story about Romeo and
Juliet his wife--Romeo, a man of the hated Noikoro clan,--it was not
surprising that old Capulet repaired to Tybalt’s house with his long
walking-staff, and, with Tybalt’s active co-operation, gave Juliet a
rather severe thrashing. Nor did the old women see any more romance in
the affair than did Capulet; and from the day when Tybalt’s suspicions
became certainties, the course of true love ran very roughly indeed.
Did poor Juliet don her newest _liku_, with a fringe nearly ten inches
long, to go wood-cutting in the hope of a stolen meeting with her
adorer, she was sure to find some old village hag dogging her steps.
Did she put on Koroisau’s old pinafore to impress Romeo on Sunday with
her superior sense of the decencies, her most sacred feelings were
sure to be harrowed in the evening by injurious remarks about her
figure, and the folly of old women trying to pass for young girls.

Romeo, poor fellow, fared no better. He was no longer welcome in the
village of his adoption. When the yams were boiled he was not even
asked to partake of them. Some one trampled his yam-vines in the night,
and, last insult of all, Capulet’s nephew threw a stone at his pig. He
loved Juliet with a great and overwhelming passion. He did not know
why. She was not beautiful, though her mouth, it is true, was a triumph
of the tattooer’s skill; but time had over-ripened her charms, and the
lines of her youthful figure were a trifle blurred and indistinct. Yet
Romeo was quite sure in his own mind that nobody had ever loved as he
did in the world before, and Juliet returned his passion--at least she
said she did.

Life was becoming unbearable for both of them. They could not fly
together, for whither could they fly? Romeo had once seen the sea from
the mountain-pass at Naloto, and he had heard that the water closed
in his land all round. He knew well enough that if he fled with her
to any village he had heard of, in two weeks they would be brought
back; and as for the bush, the idea of living there alone was not to be
thought of for a moment. There was one refuge. He did not know where
it was, but he knew the path that led to it, which many another had
trod before him. The white men said it was a very pleasant place if
you were a missionary, but a very hot and uncomfortable place if you
were only a mountaineer. But Romeo didn’t believe that. The spirits of
the coast natives jumped from the north-west cliffs into the sea, and
the wraiths of the old mountain chiefs lived in the thick forest--at
least so the old men said; but as no one had ever been there and come
back, how could any one know? True, the teacher said that a white man
had been there and come back, but then white men eat biscuits and
things out of tins, and have other gods, and so they probably go to a
different place. For the place Romeo was thinking of, with bitterness
gnawing at his savage heart, was Death, and the path that led to it was
_Langaingai_.

Romeo knew all about _Langaingai_, for had not Gavindi drunk of it last
year and died, and those two Naloto girls, who smoked after drinking
it to make it doubly sure, and Janeti, Buli Nandrau’s daughter,--only
her relations poured cocoa-nut milk down her throat when she had only
traversed the path half-way? He knew not who had discovered it, for the
old men did not know it. In their day the path was always open to him
who would travel it--by an enemy’s club. Perhaps some wise woman taught
Gavindi, and showed him how to mix orange-bark with it, and smoke away
his life when he had drunk.

[Illustration: FRIAR LAURENCE’S HOUSE.]

Now Friar Laurence, though unconnected with the cloth, had in his
time performed the last offices to a larger number of people than any
other practitioner in the mountains. In his own person he had not
unfrequently united the offices of both sexton and grave. But that
side of his business was recreation rather than solid work. His real
calling might rank as one of the fine arts. Like the painter and the
author, his stock-in-trade was small, and easily obtained. The art lay
in employing his properties with skill. They consisted in a bamboo, a
banana-leaf, a bit of bark, a leaf or two, and a little human hair.
Furnished with these simple tools, Friar Laurence would, for the
trifling sum of a whale’s tooth, or a bolt of bark-cloth, lay low
the head on which the hair had grown. So widespread was the Friar’s
reputation that, when the mad white men had come and forbidden the
noble art of war, he had found it convenient to reside for some months
in an inaccessible mountain-cave, and had returned to Verona with his
occupation gone, and a head crammed with the wisdom born of solitary
meditation.

To Friar Laurence then did Romeo repair one dark still night. The
wise man sat on a log at his threshold airing his shrunken legs. He
eyed Romeo’s whale’s tooth with bleared and watery eyes, and asked
enigmatically what tree he wanted felled. When he understood the
situation he seemed disappointed, and only told Romeo to return the
following night with a white man’s bottle full of the stuff they call
kerosene. This entailed a journey of thirty miles the following day to
fetch the precious liquid from the nearest store; but Romeo was ready
to do more than this, and at sunset the Friar received the bottle, a
square black one. He emptied into a cocoa-nut shell all the oil except
a wine-glassful, and filled up the bottle with an opaque muddy-looking
fluid.

That night beneath the _tavola_-tree, where they had their tryst, did
Romeo tell Juliet that the moment for carrying out their sorrowful plan
had come. She had just been telling him that her misery was so great
that she could not bear to live longer. But when Romeo showed her in
the dim light the ominous gin-bottle, two huge cigarettes, and a box of
matches, and further whispered the dread name _Langaingai_, life seemed
suddenly to have become less unbearable than before. But Romeo was
terribly in earnest, and she, half consenting, followed him. Silently
they trod the narrow path that led to Romeo’s yam-patch. A babbling
stream bordered it, and on the bank beneath a huge banyan-tree they sat
down side by side. Juliet was weeping, but Romeo, with set face, stared
at the bottle tight clenched in his hand. Sadly he lighted one of the
cigarettes, and, handing it to Juliet, said, “You shall drink first,
and when you are dead I will drink too, and follow you. You must smoke
this as soon as you have drunk down to there,” and he indicated the
place half-way down the bottle with his thumb-nail.

Juliet’s blood ran cold. With a little shiver she pushed the bottle
away, saying, “Be of a good mind, Aisala, and drink first, for you are
the stronger; and when you are dead it will be easy for me to die after
you.”

But Romeo saw that she was dissembling, and that black fear filled her
heart. He gloomily drew the cork, and put the neck of the bottle to his
nose. It smelt horrible, for the kerosene was floating on the top. He
turned fiercely upon Juliet.

“Are you going to fool me?” he cried. “Know now that you shall drink
first, that we may die together.”

He seized her roughly by the wrist and tried to force the foul-smelling
bottle between her lips. Life had never seemed so sweet to Juliet as
at that moment. If Romeo chose to die--well, that was his affair; but
as for her--she preferred life. She struggled and screamed, and with a
bitter cry Romeo released her, and putting the bottle to his own lips
drank greedily. Seeing this, and beside herself with fear, Juliet fled
shrieking down the path to Verona, and roused the whole village with
her cries.

“In his yam-patch,” she cried--“he is dead! He has drunk _Langaingai_.”

All Verona was soon beneath the banyan-tree--all Verona except
Friar Laurence, who was accustomed to this kind of thing. There lay
Romeo unconscious, his head pillowed on an empty gin-bottle, with a
half-smoked _suluka_ between his nerveless fingers. Gently they lifted
him, and bore him to Capulet’s house, and lit torches, and drove out
the women, and brought young cocoa-nuts, and prised open Romeo’s jaws
with a digging-stick, and forced the milk down his throat; and all the
while the teacher sat by in a clean white shirt, bursting to question
the reviving Romeo about the details of his love affair, to draw a
moral therefrom for his next Sunday’s sermon.

At last Romeo, half drowned in cocoa-nut milk, spluttered, coughed,
and opened his eyes. He thought perhaps for a moment that he was in
another world; but this was no time for vain regrets, for the teacher
had them in his grip, and was cross-examining the frightened Juliet as
to how many months their _liaison_ had continued. Meanwhile the village
officer arrived with a rusty pair of handcuffs, and before daylight
Romeo, but half recovered from his journey to “that bourne,” found
himself embarked on that rougher journey over the rocky path that leads
to the Tuatuacoko court-house.

Why could not the story have ended here, with the romance all unspoilt,
with the old story of love till death, and faithless timorous beauty?
But I must tell the story to the end as it really happened, and not as
I would fain tell it.

The Commissioner’s court sat, the assessors were sworn, the charge was
attempted suicide, the chief witness for the prosecution was Juliet,
and poor Romeo was in the dock. He was quite the ugliest man I have
ever seen--deeply pitted with smallpox, and with a mouth which, seen
full face, might have extended completely round his head for all one
could see to the contrary. The defence was ingenious. Romeo pleaded
that the people of Verona had treated him so badly that they deserved a
fright and a warning, and the alleged poison was nothing more noxious
than a decoction of orange-bark mixed in an old kerosene-bottle;
that he had drunk this off and shammed being dead until he saw the
joke had gone far enough, and that then he came to life again. The
empty gin-bottle was brought, the dregs poured into a saucer, and a
policeman was sent into the bush to bring some real _Langaingai_. It
was a slender, small-leafed plant, about eighteen inches in height,
with a fibrous woody bark. The bark was scraped in court, and kneaded
up with a little water, and strained. The result was a muddy-looking
yellow fluid. The alleged poison smelt abominably of kerosene; but the
liquids had to be compared somehow, and the assessors, one English and
one native, volunteered to furnish the vile body. The court also tried
half a teaspoonful of each. After imbibing the kerosene, one became
conscious of an acrid biting flavour, unlike any known taste. There was
no doubt that the liquids were identical. Of the after effects, I need
only say that the court adjourned, and no more evidence was taken that
day, both court and assessors spending their time in drinking cocoa-nut
milk, and trying to resume control over their interior mechanism. When
they did recover, Romeo was convicted.




THE WOMAN FINAU.


“The woman knows no shame, she defies the law, she despises your
orders, and she says she will never leave the white man.”

“Then let them marry.”

“I told her that, and she said it was not the foreigner’s wish to marry
her. But you are the Governor. It is for you to punish evil-doers. All
Vavau is ashamed because of this woman.”

“Arrest her, then, and bring her here.”

At sunset the chiefs had met at the ruinous wooden villa that is
the Government House. In the central hall, once gay with paint and
gilding, they sat cross-legged before the _kava_-bowl, young Laifone
the Governor in the seat of honour. And into this august assembly Ana
Finau, the abandoned contemner of public opinion and the law of the
land, was led trembling, the only woman in the room. The men stopped
talking and looked at her with hard unsympathetic faces. What pity
should they have for a countrywoman of theirs who could stoop to one
of these vile foreigners, and leave her own kind for the society of a
trader--a white man?

The policeman who brought her told her roughly to sit down before the
Governor, who glanced at her and bade his companion continue the story
the girl’s entrance had interrupted. The chiefs who had come from a
distance asked their neighbours who the girl was, and why she had been
brought. She meanwhile sat on the floor, her feet doubled under her,
as the manner is, her eyes cast down, but with a certain dogged air of
resistance about her, as if she was prepared for the worst.

The story was finished. From Laifone’s hearty laugh it might be guessed
that it was not over-refined, and the policeman called his attention
to Ana Finau. It was no time for business, for the _kava_ was nearly
pounded, the two kerosene-lamps were lighted, and Laifone was bored
with the cares of office. He held up his hand, and the ringing thud of
the pounding _kava_-stones ceased.

“Ana,” he said, “they say you are living with the white man. You were
punished and told to leave him, and you have gone back.”

The girl reached for a straw on the dirty floor, and began to dissect
it with her fingers, examining it intently.

“Why don’t you answer?” asked the policeman, roughly. She glanced up
for a moment, and resumed her dissection of the straw.

“It is true,” she said.

“Why do you not marry him?”

“That is Falani’s affair. I suppose he is not willing that we should
marry.”

“Then you must leave him at once,” said Laifone, with the air of having
dismissed the subject, and turned to the story-teller with a question.

The girl did not move. She had pulled her straw to pieces, and now
deliberately reached for another. She looked comely in the lamplight
which touched the clear red skin, threw deep shadows into the eyes, and
glinted through her glistening auburn curls. The _kava_-stones rang
out again, and conversation became general. The policeman touched her
arm. She shook him off impatiently, threw her head back, and looking
Laifone full in the face, said, “I shall not leave Falani.”

There was a dead silence. The _kava_-pounder paused with stone
uplifted. Laifone stared at her, half amused and half angry.

“You must leave him, or be punished,” he said, and muttered something
about a beautiful girl wasted.

But the policeman was scandalised and indignant. “You impudent woman,”
he cried, “you have insulted the Governor and the chiefs. You have
no shame, and you are impudent.” Then turning to Laifone he cried,
“Is Vavau to become heathen because of this evil-minded woman? It has
become a by-word. Religion is despised because of her. We look to you,
Laifone. I pray you leave her to us, the police, to deal with her. We
will bring her to obedience.”

“Take her away then.”

He sprang up, seized her roughly by the arm, lifted her to her feet,
dragged her to the door, and, with a sudden jerk, pulled her whimpering
out into the darkness. A man at the back of the room followed them out.

“A strong-minded woman,” said Laifone. “Pound the _kava_.”

The root is pounded, kneaded in the bowl, and strained. “_Fakatau_,”
cries the presiding Matabule. Then as the cocoa-nut is filled, the man
at the bowl gives the piercing long-drawn cry, “_Kava kuo heka_,” and
as he ceases, the cry is taken up from the darkness outside--a wail of
agony.

“Hark! what is that?” says Laifone. It comes again and ceases in
choking sobs--a woman’s voice.

A man runs out, and in a moment returns. “It is Ana Finau,” he says;
“the police are doing something to her.”

The wail of agony comes again, mixed with the accents of a man’s voice
in anger, and a dull sound like a blow.

“Go and tell them to be quieter,” says the presiding Matabule; “or
stay,” he adds, “tell them to take her farther off. Don’t they know we
are drinking _kava_?”

Franz Kraft is entertaining to-night. It is a fact to be remembered
in Vavau when one _copra_-trader spends the evening with another,
for competition is strong and the milk of human kindness watery.
There, in the mean little room at the back of the store, they sit
at the only table, which is furnished with glasses, a cracked jug,
and the inevitable square black bottle. Round the room are ranged a
number of half-emptied cases of cheap German prints and cutlery,
whose contents are piled about, to be within reach if any of the
shelves in the store should need replenishing. Franz Kraft, in a dirty
flannel shirt and trousers, unkempt, perspiring, and bibulous, is not
a fascinating-looking person, but he is prosperous and refined as
compared with his companion. They have reached the quarrelsome stage of
the evening,--anon they will be vowing eternal friendship,--and Franz
is accusing his boon companion of the heinous crime of underselling
him, and emphasising his forcible remarks with heavy blows with his
fist upon the table. It is hard to realise that this squalid ruffian,
who is content to live on fare that the forecastle of a whaler would
reject, is worth ten or twelve thousand pounds, made by his own thrift
and hard work.

“You haf for dwenty bounds of kreen _cobra_ one shilling given, I say.
Finau, she tell me,” he cries, with emphasis born of gin.

The door behind him opens, and a gust of wind extinguishes the
kerosene-lamp. Franz swears as he gropes for the matches. But when they
are found the lamp-funnel is too hot to hold, and the match goes out.
The boon companion slams the door to with his foot, and in doing so
stumbles against a soft body on the floor.

“Who the h--ll is it?” he cries; “some d--d nigger. A woman, by G--d!”
he adds, as the body groans in answer to his kick.

Franz having succeeded in lighting the lamp, turns to look at the
intruder. A woman lies face downwards on the floor sobbing. The
Englishman takes her roughly by the arm, and turns her over.

“By G--d! Kraft, it’s Finau, and badly knocked about too! Here, you’d
better see to her. I’m off home.”

Kraft stooped, lamp in hand, saw the torn _vala_ and the poor bruised
face, and knew who had done this, and why. But as he raised her, he
asked all the same.

“The police,” she answered, “because I would not leave you.”

Long after she has sobbed herself to sleep Kraft was muttering his
opinions of the police and the authorities generally in forcible
German. To-morrow he will beard the Governor Laifone, and tell him what
he thinks of him. He will take Finau away to Samoa or Fiji, where the
moral code is less strict, and she will be left in peace; for the girl
is a good girl, can cook well, can even be trusted to mind the store,
will spy on the doings of the neighbouring traders--is, in short,
necessary to him. And she is better than Hinz’s and Schulze’s women,
who have children to squall and get in the way. Besides, she will stay
with him till he takes his long-projected trip to Hamburg. When that
time comes she can go back to her relations, and the police will leave
her alone.

But when the morrow came Kraft heard that the Government oranges were
to be sold to the highest bidder--a whole season’s crop. There is money
in it, and it will never do to quarrel with the Governor; and as for
going to Fiji or Samoa in the middle of the _copra_ season--of course
that is out of the question. Finau had told him the details of her
trial overnight, and the outrage, and she dared to hint that marriage
would shield her for the future; but Kraft was too old a bird to be
caught in such a trap as young Elliston was, for the chief object of
the coming trip to Hamburg was the carrying out of a long-cherished
scheme. He would figure in his native town as a wealthy planter, with
vast estates in the Pacific, and dazzle the eyes of some young girl
with a _dot_, then settle down as an altogether respectable character.
Of this part of the scheme Finau knew nothing.

Christmas, with its feasting and church-going, with its stifling heat
and drowning showers, has come and gone. The oranges have turned
to gold on the trees as they were in Hesperus’s garden of old, and
are falling in thousands among the long grass, because there are
not thirsty mouths enough to suck them. The traders have bickered
and wrangled all the long season through, till they are scarcely on
drinking terms. The monthly steamer is here for her last cargo of
oranges. From dawn till sunset carts laden with the golden fruit
plough the miry roads, and the tap of the hammer nailing down the
fruit-cases is never silent. Once a-month this “sleepy hollow” of
the Pacific assumes an air of energy and bustle, and then sinks into
coma, exhausted by the effort, as the steamer glides round the point.
The fit is upon it now. The whole population is either at work or
encouraging the workers,--the girls and children pelting the men with
oranges as they sweat under the heavy cases on the wharf. All save
one. Up there in Kraft’s store, where the laughter and shouts from the
wharf are faintly echoed, a woman, half blinded by her tears, is on
her knees before an iron trunk. It is Finau learning the lesson that
men teach women,--sometimes when the skin of both is white, generally
when one is brown. She only heard last night that Falani was called
away to _papalagi_, and that one of those strange necessities that
govern the lives of white men forced him to leave her. But who knows?
All her friends prophesied that this would happen when she first came
to Falani. And there was Maata, who went to William, the white man,
because he said he would marry her; and he kept putting it off, and
then, when she had had her first child, he went to _papalagi_, saying
he would return in a month. That was six years ago. And now Falani was
going.

If she had had a white skin, and the man did this to her, she would
perhaps have been strengthened by the sense of bitter wrong that he
could take her all, let her slave for him, and suffer for him, and
then lightly cast her aside without even the grace to take her into
his confidence till the last morning; or she would have been cast into
the black depths of despair by her utter desolation: but being only a
native woman with a brown skin, she felt neither of these, and helped
him to pack his trunk.

Kraft himself, returning from the steamer, breaks in upon her reverie,
bustling and eager. She sees the half-concealed delight in his face,
and even that does not repel her, being, as I have said, a native with
none of the finer feelings.

“Falani,” she says solemnly, “tell me truly why you are going. Is it
because you are weary of me, or because I have borne you no children?”

“Ah, Finau, do not worry, or say foolish things. You know it is because
I cannot help myself, and in six months I shall be back with you, and I
shall write to you often. Do not be foolish.”

“Falani, you will forget me,” she persists, “and marry some white
woman, as Mr Leason did. And you swore so often you would never leave
me. Only a week ago you swore it.”

This being true is too much for his patience.

“You will make me tire of you, Finau, if you talk foolishly, and get
angry. I have told you the truth. In six months I shall be back, and
then we will be married by the missionary--that is, if you are good,
and do not talk foolishly.”

This has the desired effect of making Finau cry; and as even a German
_copra_-trader has a soft spot in his composition, a sudden impulse of
tenderness and remorse makes the man take her in his arms and try to
soothe away her trouble. For the moment he almost realises that this
woman has loved him as he never deserved to be loved,--that she has not
even shrunk from death itself for his sake, and that in return she only
asks him to let her go on serving him; and for all this he is about to
stab her in the back, to lie to her, to desert her. Is it too late?

So they sit in the steamy air, laden with the hot smell of rotting
fruit, while the laughter and shouts float up to them from the wharf,
and he, half wavering, caresses her, and whispers comforting promises
into her ear.

But the shrill whistle of the steamer pierces the air, drowning all
other sounds in its own vulgar yell. The spell is broken. Kraft has
paid his passage, and the steamer is going. All the rest is folly, born
of an over-tender heart.

“Finau, I must go!” he cries; “give me the box, and say good-bye, or I
shall be late.”

“_Oua leva_” (wait), she says, and running to the box under pretence
of rearranging its contents, she strips off her scented neckerchief,
and buries it among the clothes. “He shall take my shadow with him,”
she murmurs; and then turning to him, she asks him to throw his
handkerchief into the sea when the steamer sails, “to be your shadow
with me.” She is so earnest about this little superstition that, half
laughing, he promises.

The whistle blows again, a hurried kiss, and he goes off, box on
shoulder, while she, stifling her sobs, walks wearily to the hill above
the harbour and sits down, covering her head with her _vala_.

She sees the mate drive the crowd of natives over the gangway on to the
wharf, the hawser cast off, and she sees Falani distinctly leaning over
the rail and laughing with the other white men with whom he has just
parted. She watches him as the steamer glides down the harbour. Now he
will throw his handkerchief, and be bound irrevocably to come back to
her. Now, surely, he will throw it. What, not yet? Ah! he is waiting
till the vessel nears the point. She stands up in her eagerness. “He
must throw it,--he promised!” she cries aloud in her agony. But the
vessel is half behind the point now--a moment more and she is out of
sight--and he never threw it: so he is gone for ever, and will never
return to Finau as long as they both shall live.

Kraft had forgotten his promise until, looking up, he saw and
recognised a lonely figure, with arms outstretched, upon the hill;
but feeling in his pocket, he found he had only one handkerchief, and
it was not worth sacrificing a good handkerchief for a silly native
superstition.

Under the first sense of utter loneliness the sneers of her own people
were easy enough to bear. _They_ did not understand. And then, when
she had returned to the old life at Latu’s house with her own people,
living their life, sharing their interests, the sorrow faded (as sorrow
always does fade, thank heaven!), and the past became a little hazy and
unreal. It is good to be a child, or to have a brown skin, which is the
same thing, for with them time will heal in days wounds that cripple
us for years, and leave scars behind them: and so the sun shines again
as brightly as before, and the growth is not stunted. Only sometimes
at the _gatu_-board Finau’s mallet would stop beating, and her eyes
would wander away there to the point in the harbour that shuts out
the channel, with a wistful far-off look, until the woman next her,
indignant at being left to beat for both, would cry out, “The _gatu_
[bark-cloth] is hardening while Finau is looking for Falani;” and
during the coarse laugh that followed Finau would beat the yielding
bark with ringing blows, changing her mallet from hand to hand as each
tired.

So six months passed away. Finau had long given up asking at the
post-office for a letter when the steamer came in; and when young Beni,
the post-office clerk, threw her one at the _kava_-drinking in Latu’s
house two days after the steamer had left, she thought for a moment
there had been some mistake. Beni, with the privilege appertaining
to his office, had as usual opened it and circulated it among his
acquaintances for the two days that had intervened since the arrival
of the mail; but being in some white man’s language, his curiosity was
still ungratified. Finau thrust it into the bosom of her _kofu_, and
contained her soul in patience until the morning. She was at Müller’s
door before he was up next morning. After he had promised inviolable
secrecy the German letter was produced, read, and translated into
dog-Tongan, while Finau sat on the floor with glistening eyes. The joke
was altogether too good for Müller to keep to himself, promise or no
promise, and before evening all in Vavau who cared to know, whether
white or brown, were duly made aware that Franz Kraft could not live
without Finau,--that though his body was in Germany his heart was in
Vavau,--and that though the German ladies of high degree all made love
to him, yet none was so beautiful as Finau, and he was adamant to them.
The whole effusion did great credit to Kraft’s wit; and the best of the
joke was that Finau swallowed it all, including the paragraph about
his tearing himself away from Hamburg because he could not bear the
separation any longer, only the chiefs in Hamburg would not let him
go for some inscrutable reason of their own. Truly Franz Kraft was a
most humorous fellow. The one sentence Müller did not translate was a
heading, in execrable Tongan, that she was to get the drunken Wilhelm
Kraft, Franz’s brother, to read the letter, and on no account to take
it to Müller or any one else.

But what cared Finau that the contents of her letter were public? They
might laugh as they would--her husband had not forgotten her: he was
coming back to marry her, and she would toil for him all her days, and
be happy. Next month would come another letter to say he was starting,
and in three months more he would be here. Ah, those months would be so
easy to live through now! She gravely dictated to the delighted Müller
an answering love-letter. She never ceased to think of him; and she
had had no rest since he went; and would the good God guard him, and
bring him safely back to her,--a very tame composition beside Kraft’s
love-letter, but as Müller never sent it, the lack of style was of no
consequence.

But the letter that should have come by the next steamer must doubtless
have been lost in the post; or perhaps Kraft was starting, and did not
think it worth while to write. Another mail, and still no letter. Ah!
it is now clear. Poor Falani must be ill. The old letter was getting
quite worn out now, from being carried in the bosom and slept on at
night, but the writing was still visible through the oil-stains. It
certainly did look shaky,--yes, decidedly Falani must be ill.

And then the third steamer came, and Beni said there was no letter.
That evening brother Wilhelm paid Latu a visit, three sheets in the
wind, as was usual with him at that time of night. He wanted Finau;
he was labouring with a message for Finau. She is fetched from the
cook-house. The difficulty is to find words for the message to Finau,
for the message requires “breaking gently,” and it is difficult to
break news gently under the influence of gin.

“Finau,” hiccoughs brother Wilhelm, “Falani has written. He told me
to tell you--he is married.” The instructions were to break the news
gently, and having carried them out to the satisfaction of his own
conscience, brother Wilhelm takes himself to where the bottles are
square and black, and the night may be profitably spent.

Far from the haunts of men there is a place where none dare to come
alone. The land sloping up from Neiafu is broken here in a great
precipice, against whose feet the mighty ocean-rollers, unchecked by
any reef, break ceaselessly with a dull roar, making the overhanging
rocks tremble a thousand feet above them. Landwards Haafulu Hao, with
its myriad islets, is spread out like a map; seawards is nothing but
the sleepless ocean meeting the blue sky. Thither the dead are brought
to sleep in their white graves, untroubled by the living; thither go
the poets of the _lakalaka_ for inspiration; thither go the girls of
Halaufuli for flower-garlands, but not alone, for the spirits of the
dead roam among the rocks of Liku, and must be scared away by numbers.
Jutting out from the precipice is a single shaft of rock round which,
even in calm weather, a furious wind eddies. With a good head one may
climb out to this pinnacle, and, holding on firmly, see nothing between
his feet and the foaming surf a thousand feet below.

There was a faint light in the western horizon where the moon had set.
The stars were veiled by fleecy clouds--only where Venus hung low in
the sky, casting a silver trail over the sea, was the night clear.
The strong south-east trade-wind was turning cold, as it does before
dawn, and Finau, breathless from her unconscious journey, instinctively
wrapped her _vala_ round her shoulders. As she ran from the shelter
of the roaring palms on to the cliff’s edge, the thunder of the surf
made the rock on which she stood tremble, and the south wind, wet
with spray, drenched her with tiny particles of water. The path ended
here: it was only used for the last journey of the dead, who slept
all around her in their shrouds of white sand glistening in the dim
starlight. The sight of the precipice before her brought reflection to
her maddened brain. She was on the Liku where the spirits are, and at
night, when the spirits oftenest are abroad. But she felt no fear now,
for a sudden thought had taken possession of her. She remembered how,
not many months since, Laubasi, the beauty of Neiafu, had disappeared;
how they had searched for her, following the girlish footprints in
the muddy path; how Palu the fisherman had crept down the cliff-face
at Anamatangi, and seen far below him a body lying on a rocky ledge;
how at first it was thought that she had been swept down by the furious
wind that roars across the cave’s mouth in all weathers, boisterous or
calm, until the body was brought back, and then the women gave another
reason--for Laubasi was a Wesleyan class-leader, much regarded for her
character, and in a month or two that would have been gone had she
lived. The Anamatangi was scarce half a mile from where Finau stood.
With set purpose in her dark face she walked quickly along the narrow
path, hedged in by overhanging trees that led along the edge of the
cliff. In half a mile she emerged upon a grassy plain sloping down
towards Neiafu, whence in the daytime the thousand isles of Haafulu
Hao could be seen as in a map. Here she turned seawards, and passed
down a stony narrow path among the trees. The path became narrower and
steeper, then rose a little, and suddenly Finau found herself standing
upon a razor edge of rock, the apex of a buttress jutting many feet
beyond the main cliff, whose base had been worn away by the surf of
ages.

It was too dark to see below, but as every long roller crashed into
the caves at the cliff’s base the pinnacle trembled, and she knelt,
grasping the rugged moss with her fingers. Only not to think--not
to think of what she had come here to do,--not to think of what lay
below her in the darkness,--not to think of what was beyond if she
passed the gate! She remembered Paula’s sermon when Laubasi’s fate
was known,--how he described her burning in the flames, as if he had
been there to see; but he had said that of so many people, and Falani
said it was all an invention of the missionaries to make the people
give them money. How white, how still and restful, those graves had
seemed, in one of which Laubasi lay; but how the sharp-pointed rocks
must have torn her flesh when she fell! It must have been a worse agony
than the police inflicted, and that was too much to bear! So she lay
face downward on the rocky pinnacle, her courage waning, filled with
despair, and with a terror that was worse than despair. The east turned
grey, and the morning star was quenched by the growing light which
flecked the sea with foaming wave-tops, unseen till now. And with the
dawn the wind grew stronger, till it would have been unsafe for Finau
to stand up, even if she would. The face of the cliff, too, behind her
became visible, and she saw with terror the dangers of the path she had
traversed by the dim light of the stars. One false step and her body
would have fallen down there, where ledge upon ledge and pinnacle upon
pinnacle of grey limestone-rock are half hidden by ferns and creepers,
as the thorns of the _matolu_ are hidden by its velvet leaves, and
beneath all a white hell of roaring waters.

As the light grew, she saw in the face of the precipice behind her a
black hole large enough to admit the body of a man. To reach it one
must creep along a ledge, slanting from the place where she lay. This
was the cave of the winds, into which only Tubou the fleet-footed had
penetrated, and Lolohea, who, tradition said, had fled when Feletoa
was taken, and who, after peace was made, still dwelt in the wild
Liku, communing with the spirits, and accumulating wisdom. It was on
this very spot he stood when King Finau’s men brought him to bay till
their chief should speak with him; and it was here that he was offered
lands, slaves, and the choice of the fairest maidens of Vavau, only
to refuse them for the solitude of this awful place. The wind was
increasing in force, and it boomed across the mouth of the cave like
a great organ-pipe. In the lulls a hollow roar seemed to come from the
very bowels of the island. Somewhere far below the great ocean-rollers
poured in, driving the imprisoned air through the mouth with terrific
force. Surely no living man could dare the feats of those old heroes of
tradition?

No! Death in such a place, and in such a way, were too horrible, and
Finau, trembling and weak, looked round for a way of escape. The ridge
she had crossed was now vibrating like a tense wire. She tried to rise,
clinging to the rotten fern with her hands, and nearly lost her balance
in a sharp gust of wind. It was hopeless. So she must die after all!
And she lay there, dazed and bewildered, with all other desire gone but
that of living.

       *       *       *       *       *       *       *

“Here is the woman Finau. Her mind is foolish, but I have brought her
back alive. Take better care of her, lest we of the Liku be again
obliged to save her and carry her these four miles. Next time she goes
to the cave of the winds she will fall perhaps where Laubasi did, and
then we shall have to bury your dead.”

Finau’s uncle is awakened by a pinch on the leg, and goes out sulkily
into the darkness with the man to where his cart stands. The jolting
over the stony roads from Halaufuli has wakened Finau from her stupor,
and she talks wildly and incoherently as her helpless body is lifted
from the cart and laid on the mats near the lamp.

“The police will come to ask questions, for they stopped me as I was
coming. I don’t want to get into trouble, so I shall go.” The cart
rumbles away into the night.

It is weary work tending Finau week after week, for there are limits
even to the claims of kinship. A relation may be ill and helpless for
a week, or even two, and who would complain? But when it passes into
months, and the relation has fits of blind anger, and talks foolishly,
and is ungrateful, who can be blamed for wishing to get rid of her?
Thus reasoned Ana, Finau’s aunt by marriage, after the manner of her
kind, and not being ashamed of her opinions, she gave them to all
Neiafu, including John Mason, the drunken carpenter, a grass-widower
three times deep. And when Ana understood that there was a vacancy in
the Mason household, and that the householder himself had had great
difficulty in supplying the vacancy, she enlarged upon the charms and
attractions of Finau,--her washing and ironing, her cooking, and her
undoubted experience in providing for the comfort of a husband overcome
with nocturnal convivialities. To Finau, in Mason’s absence, she made
returning life a burden. It is better to die than to lie weak and
helpless, eating food grudgingly given, and sheltered by an unfriendly
roof. And after each of Mason’s friendly visits Ana would say, “Why
does he come here? Why? because he desires you, of course! I heard him
say that your face was beautiful, and that he wanted you to live with
him. Drunken? Not more than Falani or the other white men, and when he
is drunk he would not ill-treat you. Used to beat Mele, did he? Ah,
that was another of Mele’s lies! She was always seeking an excuse to
leave him, because she liked Lavuso better. No. Jone Mesoni was not the
man to beat his wife unless she deserved it, and even then not hard
with a stick, but with his hand!”

And so at last, when one evening Mason came with a bigger _kava_-root
than usual, and took his bowl from Finau’s hands, and stayed after the
others had gone, she, feeling bitter anger in her heart towards the
man, but a greater bitterness towards the relations who drove her from
their door, would resist no more. Mason wasted no time over courtship.
He crawled over to where she sat, and roughly threw his arm round her
in the presence of them all. She pushed him away with a gesture of
disgust.

“Finau,” he said, in a voice broken with vinous emotion, “it is well
that we should live together. You will come to my _abi_ to-morrow?”

Finau sat with her face hidden in her hands, but Ana, the matchmaker,
answered for her.

“Yes. I will bring her before mid-day, so that she may prepare dinner.”

       *       *       *       *       *       *       *

The steamer is in again from New Zealand. After the miscellaneous crowd
of natives from the southern islands have disembarked, and sniffed and
wept over their friends of Vavau, there is a flutter of excitement
among the onlookers.

“_Dies kann doch nicht Franz Kraft sein, Pots Tausend! was für
ein eleganter Herr!_” cries Karl Müller; for lo! Franz Kraft, the
dishevelled, the disreputable, shaved, transfigured, and glorified in
a black coat and billycock hat, silver-mounted walking-stick in hand,
is there. And more than this, Franz Kraft is leading a lady over the
gangway, for all the world as if he were handing her out of a tram-car
at the Thiergarten-gate His old boon companions whisper together in
derisive curiosity as Franz, affecting not to see them, paces the
wharf with dignity, his companion on his arm. She, poor thing, makes a
curious figure against the palm-trees and white sand--for black satin,
white cotton stockings, and German hats do not go well with palm-trees.

She was looking timidly and wonderingly at the mean iron-roofed houses
that line the beach, for the cunning Franz had crammed her flaxen head
with pictures of South Sea splendour, in which Neiafu appeared as a
city, and Franz himself as a benevolent planter of great possessions.
Of her future home Franz had been reticent, but she had formed a
mental picture of a mansion she had seen in a printseller’s window in
the _Unter den Linden_, all colonnades, and cool palms, and haunted
by numbers of dusky servants. The city must be farther inland, she
thought, as they passed up the beach. They were opposite a tumble-down
wooden house, larger than the rest. It might be, she thought, a small
_wirthhaus_, where they drank beer in the back garden. She timidly
asked Franz. “It’s the king’s house,” he answered roughly. Surely he
must be joking, for he had told her so much about the king’s palace,
and the soldiers, and the rest of it. Yes; certainly Franz must be
joking, for her great strong Franz could make jokes sometimes.

A few steps more, and Franz stopped--stopped at the meanest hovel of
them all,--a rickety wooden cottage, with iron roof, perched above the
sea, without even a tree to give shade or a fence to hide its ugly
squalor from the road. Telling her to wait, he went to the next cottage
and returned with a key. She was speechless with astonishment and a
vague fear. The door swung back, and he beckoned her to follow. Within
was a damp, ill-smelling, little shop, with dirty stained counter,
and shelves tenanted only by a few rusty tins of meat. Beyond this a
small unceiled room, furnished with a bare deal-table, and dirty like
the shop; and beyond this again a room containing a canvas stretcher,
overhung by a rotting mosquito-screen. That was all, and the all was
pervaded by the sickening rancid smell of _copra_, and unspeakably
dirty. The windows showed a large iron shed in which _copra_, the
currency of the country, was stored. This was the home he had brought
her to! And away there in Berlin her father, the stationer, was still
boasting of the brilliant marriage she had made.

It took two days for Franz to appear in his usual oily shirt-sleeves at
the counter, and he did not respond to the inquiries about his wife.
Thenceforth she became a person of mystery, for she was not seen at
all for two months; and when she did leave the house, there were lines
about the meaningless mouth, and the blue eyes were dull and red. Franz
now ventured on his first social entertainment. The guests were bidden,
and Franz, in a clean shirt, received them in the sitting-room,--nine
in all, including the two ladies of the place. There was an awkward
pause, for Frau Kraft had not appeared. Then Franz went into the
bedroom to bring their hostess. There was a whispered altercation, then
silence, then a burst of sobbing--and before he returned his guests had
all fled. Not even the faithful Müller stayed to break the square black
bottle that was to have been the gist of the entertainment. Scandal was
now satisfied, for it was evident that Franz did not get on with his
wife, and was not above striking her.

But the _copra_ season had begun, and Kraft, if he would live, must
buy _copra_ like the rest. Early one morning he started with his
wife for Halaufuli, where Fisher, a friendly rival, had a station.
Fisher’s house adjoined John Mason’s modest establishment. The Krafts
were given the only bedroom in the house--a long low room, in which
a platform filling up the end and covered with a pile of mats and a
mosquito-screen formed the bed.

When Mason, the man who could not beat his wife, steered an oblique
course towards his door, stumbled in, and, being a little less drunk
than usual, succeeded in finding his walking-stick, he was at that
stage of inebriation when the punishment of somebody for something
seems to a man a solemn and sacred duty. Unluckily poor Finau had
heard him coming, and ran to his rescue. He fell upon her savagely.
Her shrieks broke through the wooden walls, and interwove themselves
with Kraft’s dreams. Suddenly he hears his own name, and starts from
his sleep to listen to a voice he knows crying in an agony of need. It
is Finau calling to him, and without thinking where he is, he springs
up to go to her rescue. A blow or two directed by the dim light of the
kerosene lamp disposes effectually of Mason, and Franz, furious with
anger, yet not knowing what to do, creeps back to his room. His wife
is still asleep, as he can hear by her regular breathing; but Finau
has followed him, and whimpering she creeps into the room, and leans
sobbing against the wall. What could he do--this man who has so injured
her? She had loved him and suffered for him. Was he to cast her out
when she came to him in her need? And what harm was there in protecting
her? He whispers to her not to be afraid and to stop crying, but she
only sinks to the ground and sobs the louder. When he speaks again she
creeps towards him, as if in bodily fear of the man who has been left
outside the door. Franz looks at the screen: his wife still sleeps. And
so he speaks to her in a low voice, and strokes her bowed head, and
she, in the abandonment of her wretchedness, puts her arm round him.
And as he murmurs comforting words to her in her own tongue, he chances
to look towards the bed where the dim light is burning, and as he looks
there is a movement, a hand from within lifts up the screen, and eyes
with a life’s tragedy written in them look out at him.




IN THE OLD WHALING DAYS.


I.

In those days, sir, there were no white men, living on Kandavu, but
many whaling-ships used to come and lie at anchor for months at a time.
Run away? Why, the crews always ran away. We used to persuade them
to run away by means of our women, and then we caught them, and tied
their hands, and hid them in the forest until a reward was paid by
the captain--a musket sometimes, and many knives and axes. They were
not white men like you, sir, but they had dark skins like the Indian
interpreter, and came from a land called “Portugee.” These men were
very wicked; but there were others with them with blacker skins who
were less wicked: their place was only to serve the rest and prepare
food. Yes, some of us used to sail away with them--some from curiosity
because they wished to see other lands, and others because the chiefs
sent them, being persuaded with great rewards.

It was with Captain Aneli that I first sailed. We went hence to
Vatulele, my mother’s island, and lay there several weeks, helping the
Vunisalevu against Korolamalama, by lending him muskets and powder,
and by sailing round to the rocky point, where we shot many as they
fled from their enemies on the land. Ah, the captain was a good man,
and the Vunisalevu loved him well! No; he asked for no reward, but
did this out of his great love for the Vunisalevu, whose brother the
people of Korolamalama had killed. You may see the site of the town
away here among the caves at the western point; but do not go there,
sir, at night or alone, for the spirits that dwell there hate white men
as they hate us. The people are all gone, except the women, of whom my
mother was one, for they were more numerous than we; and when Captain
Aneli would go, the Vunisalevu strove to detain him, lest, when he was
gone, they should take their revenge. But the white man was wise, and
imparted to us his Wisdom, saying, “Invite them to a feast and slay
them;” and the Vunisalevu, knowing that conquerors do not make feasts
for the conquered, sent a messenger bidding them plant bananas for
him. But they were afraid, and answered that they would send all their
bananas and yams rather than come themselves, and with their answer was
brought a whale’s-tooth to turn the chief’s heart. But he refused the
tooth, and sent again, saying that it was not meet to suspect plots in
time of peace, and that he would pledge their safety, for they might
come armed while he and his people would be without weapons, but would
peacefully bring up the feast as hosts should do to guests.

And when the appointed day came, the captain pitied him, and landed
thirty men, who hid among the bushes where you see those _ivi_-trees,
and the Korolamalama men came, two hundred strong, each with his
bundle of young banana-shoots, his spear in his left hand, and his
throwing-club in his girdle. None were left behind, for they feared
lest, if they were divided, we might attack them. As for us, we were
hidden in the undergrowth along the path, our arms hidden near us where
we could find them; and for the feast we had brought a rotten _taro_
each in derision of our enemies, who were to die that day. We would
have set on them at once, but the white men said, “Not so, let them
first plant your bananas, so that they be wearied, and you will have
made use of them as long as they can be useful.” This wise counsel
pleased us; so we waited, and even came unarmed to look at the men
as they sweated beneath the sun, digging the holes and stamping the
earth round the shoots, each man with his spear stuck in the ground
behind him: and as we watched we saw that, when a man moved on to dig a
fresh hole, he first moved his weapon to the new place. And as the sun
dipped towards the west, slanting the black shadows of the _ivi_-trees
across the clearing, we went for our _taro_ and heaped it ceremoniously
beneath the shade of the trees, and sat down to present it to them. And
they, seeing us unarmed, were ashamed to bring their spears with them,
for it is forbidden by our customs to receive the feast with arms. So
they left their spears, each man where he had been digging, and came
and sat before us. And while they sat with their backs to the clearing,
the boys crept among the newly planted bananas as if playing, and took
their spears, heaping dead grass upon them so that they could not be
seen. Then Mavua the herald took a decayed root of _yangona_, and going
forward, presented it and the feast in the customary words, and their
herald came forward to touch the feast. But when he took the root and
saw that it was rotten, and touched the _taro_ and knew that it was
decayed, he was speechless a moment in fear and anger, for the insult
was very gross. Then he leapt to his feet, crying, “A plot! a plot! we
are undone to-day.” And they sprang up to go for their spears. But we
had snatched up ours already, and were upon them, stabbing and spearing
them as they dodged among the bananas looking for their spears.

But when they saw that they were gone, the herald uttered a great and
bitter cry, cursing us and bidding them follow him, and he ran for the
forest towards the west where Korolamalama lies; but there he met the
white men, and from the tree came the thunder of the muskets and the
bark of the little guns, and cries, and evil words, and a thick smoke,
while we lay on our faces in the clearing hearing the bullets scream
over our heads. And when some of them ran back to escape the guns, we
stabbed at them, smiting some, and driving some back again to the white
men, so that when all was done, only one was left alive of them all,
and he, being found hiding in a water-hole, was dragged out and led to
the beach among the boys, and Uluisau held his arms while the boys beat
him to death with their toy clubs.

Then the bodies were dragged to the town. To be eaten? How should I
know, when I was sent with the others to Korolamalama to fetch the
women and children? And when we neared the place they thought that we
were their own men returning from the banana-planting, and they came
out to meet us. But the two who saw us first ran shrieking to the
others, and Butho, he who held the basin at the missionary collection
last Sunday, followed close after them, making signs to us to keep
unseen. And he deceived the women, saying that their chief had sent
him to bid them bring crabs and yams to him in the plantation (for
they had just come from fishing on the reef). But they, still doubting
him, half followed and half held back, until they reached the thicket
where we lay. Then Amori, whose husband we had slain, raised a great
uproar, crying to the others to flee, for there was treachery; and
they scattered into the bush, screaming like a flock of paroquets.
But Butho, who feared nothing, flung his _ula_ at the woman Amori and
struck her on the back so that she fell on her face, and he slew her
with his club where she lay, and we others pursued the women, striking
down the elderly, who made the greatest uproar, and saving the young
girls alive. These we led with the children to the Vunisalevu.

Did they weep? No; they dared not weep, for Butho, the fearless,
who led us, told them that she who first wept aloud should die; and
thereafter, when Ina, the daughter of Naikele, lifted up her voice, he
struck her on the mouth with his short throwing-club. Ah! she was never
called “Ina the beautiful” more, for her teeth were all broken, and
her nose crushed, so that no man desired her as before, and she became
a kitchen-woman, and carried firewood for the chief’s kitchen all her
days. So the women feared to weep aloud lest Ina’s fate should befall
them.

[Illustration: “_Nothing now remains of Korolamalama but the name and a
few mounds._”]

Ah, it was a great victory! Nothing now remains of Korolamalama but
the name and a few mounds. Therefore the Vunisalevu was very glad,
knowing that the right was triumphant, and that vengeance could
never come again from Korolamalama. The white man? Oh, he was very
grateful to them of course, for they had helped him out of their great
love for him, and they asked for no reward, nor would they take one
when it was offered to them--neither oil, nor mats, nor timber, nor
anything of value. The captain was a good man, not like the white men
of this day, who will cheat their own fathers for the sake of gain,
but a generous man and a right-doer. His crew, perhaps, were wicked
men, for they swore much and fought among themselves, so that we all
feared them. What? How many times must I tell you that the captain
wanted no reward? Nay, more, for as the women of Korolamalama were
many, and food was scarce at the time, he offered to take some away;
and the chief bade him come and choose from among them, and he came
at night with four of his sailors. And all the women were brought to
the chief’s house trembling, for they thought that evil was to befall
them as the others. And the captain took a lantern and held it in the
face of each in turn, taking hold of any that shrank back. And when he
had seen all, he pointed to Sili and to Manana and to Latia, as the
three whom he had chosen. And we were all surprised, for we thought
that he would have chosen strong women who would work; but those he
had pointed to were young maidens, children, and useless for work. The
first two were the daughters of the woman Kurulawa, who stood by, and
of low rank, but Latia was a chief’s daughter, and beautiful. But when
the Vunisalevu told them they were to go with the white man, and the
sailors came to take them, they cried aloud to the men to save them,
and the other women caught them in their arms and wept, so that there
was a very great uproar. But the sailors shook them all off except the
woman Kurulawa, and her they struck, so that she fell upon the mats.
Then they bound the hands of the three girls with ropes, and put pieces
of wood in their mouths, and so stopped their cries--for one could not
hear the other speak for the noise they made when they knew that the
white men would take them.

       *       *       *       *       *       *       *

I wonder where those women are now, if they be still alive! They were
not on board when Captain Aneli came back the next year, and I forgot
to ask him about them.


II.

Ah, the white men of that day were braver than the white men who live
among us now--be not angry, sir, if I say this--and Captain Aneli was
the bravest of them all! Many great deeds he did in these seas besides
the burning of Korolamalama and the slaughter of its people. I sailed
eighteen months with him, and saw much fighting, not only upon the land
but upon the sea also--among ourselves who sailed together. But Captain
Aneli was fearless, and we all dreaded him after he slew the big white
man and the Portugee who rebelled against him, and had flogged the
Indian who prepared the food until he died. He loved me well, and gave
me great gifts, teaching me to shoot with the little gun, and bidding
me be always near him lest the evil-minded among the crew should again
rebel against him. But when we reached New Zealand, and had been at
anchor but two days, a man came from the shore and seized my captain,
binding his wrists with iron fastenings that snapped to like the lock
of a musket; and he was led away, shouting many evil words, and I saw
him no more. I know not why this was done, but the man must have been
one of the captain’s enemies and evil-minded, for he was a just man
and brave.

And yet not all the captains of those days were like him, for there
were some who were faint-hearted, like the white men of to-day, who
think more of the love of women than of war, and whose hearts are
weakened like a missionary’s. With such a one did I sail as I will
relate.

After the captain was taken away we left the ship and dispersed, each
going his own way; and I, with Tom the Manila man and others, drank
white men’s _yangona_ in a house by the shore till we were intoxicated,
and there was fighting and much anger. I do not know what we did until
I awoke in the prison-house. Then I was taken before a chief, who
judged me and awarded my punishment. But a man who stood by asked me
whether I would sail with him if he released me from punishment, and
I, not knowing what would be my punishment by the laws of these white
men, and fearing to be flogged, besought him to set me free. So he
paid money to the judge, who thereupon looked with favour on him and
ordered me to be set at liberty. He was the captain of a two-masted
ship, about to sail to the lands of these seas to exchange cloth and
knives and axes for oil and the weapons of the place. And on the day
we hove the anchor a white woman came on board, who was his wife, and
sailed with him. He was a good man, this captain, but his mind was
like a missionary’s, and he was not skilled in the ways of the sea. He
had a large Bible which he was always reading in the cabin, while the
woman lay sick in her bunk; and he often said to me--for by this time I
had begun to understand his talk--“This is my compass and my anchor.”
And once when he said this the mate was near, who, being a godless man
but a good sailor, said, so that the captain might hear, “It would be
better for the ship if he steered by the compass on board.”

Now the crew were like other white sailors, evil-minded, and lovers
of forbidden words and strong drink. And even when there was no drink
they would fight among themselves, but they all feared the mate, who,
when giving orders, spoke but once, and instead of a second word
smote, sometimes with a belaying-pin but oftenest with his naked fist,
and that was the worst, for his arm was thick and knotted as yon
_dilo_-tree, and with his fist he could have split this rock. But me he
did not smite, because I honoured him and did his bidding cheerfully;
nay, he even loved me, both for this and because my skin was black and
I was a stranger, helpless, and without friends. He was a good sailor
this mate, and often in the night when I was in his watch he would
tell me stories of his cruises in the whale-ships, and I would tell
him tales of blood from my own land. But he never spoke of the sea
without contemptuous words towards the captain, whom he held to be no
sailor but a missionary, accursed among sailors, and less than a man.
He despised him, too, that he sailed with a woman, not being like the
mate and other good sailors, who held women as fit only for the shore,
and had a wife at every port to which they sailed. And I, too, hearing
this, despised the captain in my heart, most of all when I saw how he
subjected himself to the woman, as no man should do, and tended her as
only slaves and low-born do, and they unwillingly. But for all this he
was kind to me and did me many services, giving me from the cabin food
in tin boxes, such as none other in the ship might taste but he and the
woman.

All this time we were sailing northwards, the wind being south-east but
light. And the air grew warm, and the spirit-light flashed in our wake
at night, and the flying-fish, the birds of Nukuloa, took wing under
our bows, and my heart grew light in the warm air, for I knew we were
approaching my own land where only it is fit for man to live. We had
left behind us the bitter winds that chill the marrow, and the sterile
palmless shores, where men hurry ceaselessly to and fro, never resting
but toiling ever, and the heart is filled with darkness and disgust of
life and a great longing for rest. But though my heart was glad because
I should soon be in that sweet land and see the green yam-vines,
graceful as fair women in the dance, the captain became sorrowful, for
the woman whom he tended was now sick, and for many days we had not
seen her face, though we knew by his looks day by day that she grew
worse.

And on the day when the sea-birds first circled the ship, the wind
being still fair but falling light, the mate ordered the sailor they
called Bill--him with the red beard--to go aloft and shake out the
topsail, which was furled; but he not moving quickly, but with murmurs
and unwillingly, the mate spoke angrily to him, saying, “Goddam!”
many times, and other evil words. Then the sailor turned back and
struck the mate, calling upon the others to come and help him; for he
was a sort of leader among them, through his quarrelsome nature and
unwillingness to render due obedience to his chiefs. But the others
stood as if uncertain, wishing to slay the mate, and yet afraid. And
as he continued calling upon them, two of the crew joined him, and
drove the mate against the cook-house, where he stood striking at them,
for he was very strong. Then Bill took the cook’s axe that stood near
and lifted it to strike, and I ran to help the mate, whom I loved.
But before I could reach him another passed me very swiftly and flung
himself upon Bill, as a falcon seizes a _sese_, and strove with him
a moment till both fell heavily upon the deck and rolled, so that
Bill was underneath straining for breath, as the other had him by the
throat. Then I wondered greatly, for I saw that he who had done this
was the captain, whose body was thin and light like the body of a cat,
and Bill was like a _bulumokau_ for bulk. And when the two others saw
what had befallen Bill they retreated towards the forecastle; but the
mate followed them, striking them with his fists so that they went
down the hatchway as a man who dives for turtle, their feet following
them. But when we turned back the captain was gone to his cabin, and
Bill was still lying on the deck gasping for breath. And that night
when it was my watch the mate came and sat with me near the wheel, for
the night was clear and calm, and I was steering. He did not speak
contemptuously of the captain, but wonderingly, as if he had suddenly
become another whom he did not know. And while we still talked a sound
came through the cabin skylight near us as of a woman’s voice, and of a
man weeping. And then the weeping of the man drowned the voice of the
woman, which was weak, and we both knew it for the captain’s voice,
and the mate got up and went forward saying no word. But my heart was
filled with a great contempt for the captain, since I hold it great
shame for a man to weep. And a little later the wind died away, and the
sails struck the mast with a noise like musketry, and then filled and
struck again with the breath of the dying wind, and then hung loose
from the yards as dead vines hang from the limbs of the _damanu_-tree;
for even the swell was calm, so that both the air and the restless sea
were dead, and the ship lay under the stars as still as a canoe left
on the sands by the ebbing tide. And when the bell had struck one, and
the dawn was near, I lay upon the hatchway wishing for sleep. And
suddenly there was a terrible cry, so that we all started up asking
ourselves whence it came and what it meant, for it was not the voice
of a man but of some fierce animal. Then it came again, and we knew
that it came from the cabin, and was the captain’s voice, but changed
as the voice of a man whose senses have left him. And when it came a
third time the mate said that the woman must be dead, for the captain’s
voice was changed by grief, and he was calling the name of the woman,
who would never answer him more. But after the third time the cry did
not come again, but only a low moaning, continuously, as I have heard a
man make after the battle when he has been clubbed, but his senses have
returned to him, and he knows that they who are taking him are heating
the oven for his body. And when the sun rose no wind came to fill the
sails and cool the air. And beside the ship lay her image, complete to
the last rope, as clear as in those glasses the traders sell to the
women. And as the sun rose higher the sky turned to iron, and the sea
threw back the brightness so that it burned the eyes; and the pitch
grew wet in the seams and scorched the bare feet, gluing them to the
deck. And we lay under the shadow of the masts and sails panting for
breath. Only the sailmaker worked, making a hammock for the body of the
woman. And all the while the moaning in the cabin never ceased, even
for a moment. And when the sun was overhead, all things being prepared,
the mate went to the cabin with the sailmaker. And we heard blows upon
the cabin-door, and the captain was loudly called; but however loudly
they knocked or called, when they ceased they still heard the moaning,
mingled with broken words. So the mate came to us again, saying that he
would wait until eight bells, and then force the door, for the weather
was hot and the matter could not be delayed. But when eight bells were
struck, the moaning still continuing, the mate called me, and I took
the hammock and followed him down the companion. And the mate called
loudly and struck upon the door. Then we listened and heard the voice
as of one who sleeps and dreams evil dreams. Then stepping back, the
mate ran upon the door, striking it heavily with his shoulder, and the
door burst in, and the mate fell forward with the door into the cabin.
And I, looking in, saw a foolish sight, for the captain was sitting
on the floor of the cabin and had the body of the woman clasped in
his arms as a mother holds her suckling child. And the woman was an
ill sight, for she was axe-faced, like all the white women, and the
flesh had left her face in her sickness, and being dead the eyes stared
upward and the jaw had fallen. Yet for all this the captain, not seeing
us, kissed the dead face as is the white man’s fashion with the lips,
and moaned unceasingly. Then the mate touched him and spoke, but he
seemed not to know him, and his eyes became fierce, and he cried to
us to leave him. Seeing that we could do nothing without using force,
we left him for that night. But when the morning came and there was
still no wind, the mate again bade me follow him, and called to him
also the carpenter and the boatswain, and we four entered the cabin and
found him sitting as before, only quieter, but the woman’s face was
much changed. And the mate spoke brave words to the captain, bidding
him have courage and allow the woman’s body to be buried. And when he
understood why we had come, and saw the hammock, he became like a wild
sow who is wounded with a spear and turns to protect her young ones.
Even so he turned to defend the body of the woman. But the mate seized
him, and, with the help of the carpenter, held him fast, while we
dragged the body from him. But so changed was it that it would not go
into the hammock. So we carried it on deck out of his sight, while he
struggled with the others, and the sailmaker ripped the hammock and
sewed it up in haste, enclosing a shot at the feet. And when all was
ready we carried it amidships and laid it on a grating, with a flag
over it, and the mate nailed up the captain’s door lest he should do
some fearful thing. Then the mate said some sacred words,--not many,
for he could remember only a few,--and the men, being impatient lest
ill-luck should befall the ship, threw up the grating and the body
splashed into the sea, breaking the image of the ship into a thousand
pieces. But scarcely had it sunk when it sprang up again as if alive,
and most of the sailors fled in fear thinking it to be alive. But the
mate, knowing the cause, cried that the shot was not heavy enough
seeing that the body was much swollen. He shouted to us to pierce the
hammock quickly to make the body sink. So a boat was lowered, and as
no other would do it, I was sent with a sharp boat-hook to pierce the
hammock. Now the body had drifted a few fathoms from the ship, and
still danced up and down upright and immersed from the waist downwards.
And as the boat drew near, and I stood up in the bows, I thought I saw
the axe-face grinning at me through the canvas, and drawing away from
me, so that I almost feared to strike lest it still lived. Then one of
the sailors in the boat cried, “It is alive and will drown us!” and
I held my hand in terror lest I should strike a live woman. But the
mate cried from the ship, “Strike!” and I turned and saw that the ship
was turning so that we were nearly opposite the cabin window, and the
mate and all the sailors were beckoning to me to strike quickly. Then
courage came to me, and standing up in the boat I struck at the woman
with the boat-hook as a man strikes at his enemy with a spear, but as
I struck, the woman only danced up and down the more, rocking to and
fro, so that I could not strike hard to pierce the canvas. Then one of
the men in the boat laughed to see the woman dance up and down so, and
I laughed too, so that my arm became weak. But the mate cried to me
again, and I balanced myself as a harpooner does before he strikes the
whale, and as I balanced the boat-hook I turned and saw that the ship
had swung so that we were opposite the cabin windows. Then with all my
force I threw the boat-hook into the soft body and drew it out again....

But as I struck there came a great and terrible cry from the ship,
and I turned and saw the captain’s face at the window waving bleeding
hands to me; for with his hands he had beaten out the thick glass, and
he strove to force his body through but could not. Then he cried aloud
again, such a cry as once I heard a man utter at Serua whom we had
trapped in a cave whence there was no escape, and then his head fell
forward and he was still. And the woman’s body which I had pierced sank
slowly beneath the sea. But when they lifted the captain they found
that he was dead, though his body had sustained no hurt.

Now I think that this white man was the most foolish of all the white
men in the world, for though white men commit great foolishness for the
sake of women, because of their beauty, yet none are so foolish as to
desire their dead bodies, and this woman was not beautiful even when
she lived, for she was axe-faced.




THE FIERY FURNACE.


Of the ancient Fijian ceremonies few now survive. The early
missionaries are unjustly charged with bigotry and Philistinism, in
having waged war on all native ceremonial connected, however remotely,
with their heathen creeds. But the Wesleyan missionaries were before
all things practical, and knew that if Christianity was to take root at
all it must have bare soil, from which every weed had been carefully
torn up; for savage converts have an easy-going tendency towards
engrafting Christianity upon their old beliefs,--in discovering that
Jehovah is only another name for Krishna or Ndengei, and that the
ritual that pleased the one cannot be unacceptable to the other.

But in one corner of Fiji, the island of Mbengga, a curious observance
of mythological origin has escaped the general destruction, probably
because the worthy iconoclasts had never heard of it. Once every year
the _masáwe_, a dracæna that grows in profusion on the grassy hillsides
of the island, becomes fit to yield the sugar of which its fibrous root
is full. To render it fit to eat, the roots must be baked among hot
stones for four days. A great pit is dug, and filled with large stones
and blazing logs, and when these have burned down, and the stones are
at white heat, the oven is ready for the _masáwe_. It is at this stage
that the clan Na Ivilankata, favoured of the gods, is called on to
“leap into the oven” (_rikata na lovo_), and walk unharmed upon the hot
stones that would scorch and wither the feet of any but the descendants
of the dauntless Tui Nkualita. Twice only had Europeans been fortunate
enough to see the _masáwe_ cooked, and so marvellous had been the tales
they told, and so cynical the scepticism with which they had been
received, that nothing short of another performance before witnesses
and the photographic camera would have satisfied the average “old hand.”

As we steamed up to the chief’s village of Waisoma, a cloud of blue
smoke rolling up among the palms told us that the fire was newly
lighted. We found a shallow pit, nineteen feet wide, dug in the sandy
soil, a stone’s throw from high-water mark, in a small clearing among
the cocoa-nuts between the beach and the dense forest. The pit was
piled high with great blazing logs and round stones the size of a
man’s head. Mingled with the crackling roar of the fire were loud
reports as splinters flew off from the stones, warning us to guard
our eyes. A number of men were dragging up more logs and rolling them
into the blaze, while, above all, on the very brink of the fiery pit,
stood Jonathan Dambea, directing the proceedings with an air of noble
calm. As the stones would not be hot enough for four hours, there was
ample time to hear the tradition that warrants the observance of the
strange ceremony we were to see; and so seated on the spotless mats
in Jonathan’s house, I listened while a grey-headed elder told me the
story, pausing only to ask his fellows to corroborate, or to supply
some incident that had slipped his memory.

“On an evening,” he said, “very long ago, the men of Navakaisese had
collected in their sleeping-house for the night. Now the name of that
house was Nakauyema. And they were telling stories, each trying to
surpass the other in the story that he told. And one of them, whose
name I have forgotten, called upon each to name the reward (_nambu_)
he would give him for the story he was about to tell; for it is our
custom thus to encourage a good story-teller, each one bringing to
him on the morrow the _nambu_ he has promised. And some promised one
thing and some another. But Tui Nkualita, a chief and warrior of the Na
Ivilankata clan, cried ‘My _nambu_ shall be an eel!’ Then the story was
told, and the night passed. And on the morrow Tui Nkualita remembered
the spring called Namoliwai, that he had seen a large eel in it. And
when he came to it, and, kneeling on the brink, plunged his hand into
it, he could not feel the bottom though the water reached his shoulder,
for the pool was deeper than formerly; and he reached yet farther down,
following the rocky hole with his hand, and he touched something. He
drew it out, and saw that it was a child’s cradle-mat. Then, wondering
greatly, he plunged his arm into the pool, and reached yet farther
down, and touched something. And as he felt it, he knew it for the
fingers of a man. ‘Whoever this may be,’ he said within himself, ‘he
shall be my _nambu_.’ And he plunged half his body into the water,
feeling with his hand until he touched a man’s head. Then grasping the
hair he dragged it upwards, and planting his feet firmly, he drew forth
the body of a man, and held it fast on the brink of the spring.

“‘Whoever you are,’ he cried, ‘you shall be my _nambu_.’

“‘You must save me,’ answered the man, ‘for I am a chief, and have a
village of my own, and many others who pay tribute to me.’

“‘What is your name?’

“‘Tui na Moliwai (chief of Moliwai).’

“‘I know all the chiefs of Mbengga, and many also on the mainland, but
I never heard of Tui na Moliwai. I only know that you must come with me
and be my _nambu_.’

“‘Have pity on me, and let me live.’

“‘Let you live? Why, of what use will you be to me alive?’

“‘I will be your guardian spirit in war.’

“‘No. Mbengga is small, and I am mightier than all others in war.’

“‘Then I will be your god of safe voyages.’

“‘I am no sailor. My home is the land, and I hate the sea.’

“‘Then let me help you on the _tinka_-ground.’

“‘When the game is played my lance flies truer and stronger than them
all.’

“‘Then I will make you beloved of women.’

“‘I have a wife who loves me, and I want no other. What else?’

“‘Then I will do more than all these. You shall pass unharmed through
fire.’

“‘If you can do that I may spare you; but if you fail you shall be my
_nambu_.’

“Then the god gathered brushwood together, and piled it with stones in
a little hollow, and made fire, and lighted it, and they sat down to
wait until the stones grew hot. And when the wood had burned to ashes,
and the stones were red with heat, the god rose and took Tui Nkualita
by the hand, saying, ‘Come, let us go into the oven.’

“‘What! And be roasted while living?’

“‘Nay,’ returned the god, ‘I would not return evil for good. It shall
not burn you.’

“Then Tui Nkualita took his hand, and lay on the hot stones, finding
them cool and pleasant to his body.

“And Tui na Moliwai said, ‘You shall stay four days in the oven, and be
unhurt.’

“‘Four days! And who shall find food for my wife and children while I
am there? No! Let me only pass through the fire as I have done, and
come out unharmed. I ask no more than this.’

“‘It is well. This gift shall be yours and your descendants’ for ever.
Whether you stay here or go to other countries, this power shall remain
with you.’

“So Tui Nkualita let Tui na Moliwai go alive, and returned to his home
at Navakaisese, telling no one what had befallen him. But on the day
when masáwe was cooked at Wakanisalato, and the oven was heated, Tui
Nkualita rose and sprang into the great pit, trampling the burning
stones unharmed, and treading down the green leaves as they were thrown
to line the oven, so that he was hidden in the steam. And the people
raised a great shout, wondering much when they saw him come out alive
and unharmed. Thus it came about that whenever _masáwe_ is cooked in
Mbengga, the people of Rukua and Sawau must first leap into the oven
to make the baking good; and if yams or other food were put into the
oven with the _masáwe_, they would be taken out at the end of four days
still raw.

“Last year we went to a great feast at Rewa, and one of the Rewa chiefs
jested with us as we stood by the ovens, saying, ‘Come, leap into our
ovens, as you do into your own.’ And we told them that it is _tabu_ to
say this of any oven but the _masáwe_ oven, and that the food in the
smoking-pits would not be cooked. And our words came true, for when the
ovens were dug they found the pig and the yams raw as they were put in.”

[Illustration: “_When the wood was all out there remained a conical
pile of glowing stones._”]

When we were at last summoned, the fire had been burning for more than
four hours. The pit was filled with a white-hot mass shooting out
little tongues of white flame, and throwing out a heat beside which the
scorching sun was a pleasant relief. A number of men were engaged with
long poles, to which a loop of thick vine had been attached, in noosing
the pieces of unburnt wood by twisting the pole, like a horse’s twitch,
until the loop was tight, and dragging the log out by main force. When
the wood was all out there remained a conical pile of glowing stones in
the middle of the pit. Ten men now drove the butts of green saplings
into the base of the pile, and held the upper end while a stout vine
was passed behind the row of saplings. A dozen men grasped each end
of the vine, and with loud shouts hauled with all their might. The
saplings, like the teeth of an enormous rake, tore through the pile of
stones, flattening them out towards the opposite edge of the pit. The
saplings were then driven in on the other side, and the stones raked
in the opposite direction, then sideways, until the bottom of the pit
was covered with an even layer of hot stones. This process had taken
fully half an hour, but any doubt as to the heat of the stones at the
end was set at rest by the tongues of flame that played continually
among them. The cameras were hard at work, and a large crowd of people
pressed inwards towards the pit as the moment drew near. A Zanzibar
negro and his wife, drifted from heaven knows where, half-castes with
Samoan mothers, with Fijian mothers and unknown fathers, mingled with
the crowd of natives from the neighbouring mainland. They were all
excited except Jonathan, who preserved, even in the supreme moment,
the air of holy calm that never leaves his face. All eyes are fixed
expectant on the dense bush behind the clearing, whence the Shadrachs,
Meshachs, and Abednegos of the Pacific are to emerge. There is a cry
of “_Vutu! Vutu!_” and forth from the bush, two and two, march fifteen
men, dressed in garlands and fringes. They tramp straight to the brink
of the pit. The leading pair show something like fear in their faces,
but do not pause, perhaps because the rest would force them to move
forward. They step down upon the stones and continue their march round
the pit, planting their feet squarely and firmly on each stone. The
cameras snap, the crowd surges forward, the bystanders fling in great
bundles of green leaves. But the bundles strike the last man of the
procession and cut him off from his fellows; so he stays where he is,
trampling down the leaves as they are thrown to line the pit, in a
dense cloud of steam from the boiling sap. The rest leap back to his
assistance, shouting and trampling, and the pit turns into the mouth of
an Inferno, filled with dusky frenzied fiends, half seen through the
dense volume that rolls up to heaven and darkens the sunlight. After
the leaves, palm-leaf baskets of the dracæna root are flung to them,
more leaves, and then bystanders and every one joins in shovelling
earth over all till the pit is gone, and a smoking mound of fresh
earth takes its place. This will keep hot for four days, and then the
_masáwe_ will be cooked.

As the procession had filed up to the pit, by a preconcerted
arrangement with the noble Jonathan, a large stone had been hooked
out of the pit to the feet of one of the party, who poised a
pocket-handkerchief over it, and dropped it lightly upon the stone when
the first man leaped into the oven, and snatched what remained of it
up as the last left the stones. During the fifteen or twenty seconds
it lay there every fold that touched the stone was charred, and the
rest of it scorched yellow. So the stones were not cool. We caught four
or five of the performers as they came out, and closely examined their
feet. They were cool, and showed no trace of scorching, nor were their
anklets of dried tree-fern leaf burnt. This, Jonathan explained, is
part of the miracle; for dried tree-fern is as combustible as tinder,
and there were flames shooting out among the stones. Sceptics had
affirmed that the skin of a Fijian’s foot being a quarter of an inch
thick, he would not feel a burn. Whether this be true or not of the
ball and heel, the instep is covered with skin no thicker than our own,
and we saw the men plant their insteps fairly on the stone. Clearly
eternity can have no terrors for these simple natives.

I think that most of the sceptics were impressed. Even the skipper
of the steamer, who was once a conjurer, and ate fire at a variety
entertainment, said it was “very fair for niggers,” but darkly hinted
that he could improve upon it.

Seated by a bowl of _kava_ and a candle stuck in a bottle-neck,
Jonathan underwent my cross-examination with calm good-humour. Why were
the young men afraid? Because only five of the fifteen had ever passed
through the fire before. The regular performers were elderly men, and
they had reflected upon our distinguished rank, and the rumour that
picture-machines would be brought, and selected good-looking youths
rather than ugly old men. The handkerchief was burned? Well, if it had
been thrown into the middle of the pit, instead of upon an isolated
stone, it would not have been even singed, for the linen being of
human manufacture would share the god’s gift to men. Would a strange
man share the gift? Certainly, if he went with one of the tribe. If I
had told him my wishes sooner he would have taken me in barefooted,
and I should have found the stones cool and pleasant. Yes, it was true
that one of the men had nearly fallen, but the others ran to hold him
up. Would he have been burnt if he had fallen? He thought not. Then
why were the people so anxious to save him from falling? Well--they
remembered a man who fell many years ago, and yes--he certainly was
burnt on the shoulders and side, but a wise man patted the burns,
and they dried up and ceased paining him. Any trick? Here Jonathan’s
ample face shrunk smaller, and a shadow passed over his candid eye.
“If there had been any trick it would have come to light long ago. The
whole world would know. Perhaps I do not believe the story of Tui na
Moliwai, but I do believe that my tribe has been given to pass unharmed
through the fire.” Oh, wily Jonathan!

Perhaps the Na Ivilankata clan have no secret, and there is nothing
wonderful in their performance, but, miracle or not, I am very glad I
saw it.




FRIENDSHIP.


I.

“Allen, come out! Hang it, man, it’s not before your time! Why, it’s
five o’clock.”

“But the boss----”

“Blow the boss! He didn’t buy your body and soul for eight-six-eight
a-month?”

“But suppose I lose my billet----”

“That’s what I want you for. Look here! Life’s not worth living at this
rate. If it wasn’t for my wife I’d have chucked it long ago, for I’m
sick to death of stocks and shares: there’s no excitement when you make
a hit, because you don’t win enough, and it’s no fun losing, because
you always lose too much.”

“Yes. It’s all very well for you, Benion,--you can afford it; but if I
had half your money, I’d steer clear of specs. altogether.”

“No, you wouldn’t, my boy! The only fun of having money left one is to
try to make it grow. I expect you chuck some of your wretched screw
away betting on these beggarly races where every horse is run crooked.”

“Why, how much do you suppose I have over after paying for my living?”
asked the younger man, indignantly.

“I know, old chap. Can’t think how you manage to live on it as it is.
Now, look here! Can you keep your mouth shut?”

“No.”

“Don’t play the fool. I think you can,” said Benion, examining him
doubtfully. “I always liked your looks, or I shouldn’t want now to make
your fortune. I suppose you’d stick to me if I made your fortune?”

“Better try!” laughed Allen.

Benion, with a great air of mystery, drew him out of Macquarie Street
among the trees that grew in that part of Sydney which is now called
Hyde Park. When they were a hundred yards from any possible listener
he unburdened his soul in a hoarse whisper. “There will never be a
chance like this again. A schooner came in last night from Honolulu in
ballast, and the two chaps that own her talk of fitting her out for
a trading voyage in the islands--in a devil of a hurry too. There was
a lot of talk about it, and all sorts of yarns flying about, because
people going to the islands aren’t, as a rule, in a hurry, and don’t
mind being asked questions.”

“What sort of looking chaps are they?”

“Oh, Yankees, I expect; but they are burnt as dark as niggers, and wear
red sashes round their waists with belts over them,--the rig they wear
in the islands, they say. Anyhow, when men want a shipload of goods
in a hurry, and do the mystery-man about where they’re going to, it’s
pretty clear that there’s money in it, and that they don’t want any one
else to get before them. But I mean to be before them.”

“What----”

“You’ve come here to listen and not to ask questions. If I let you into
this thing, which will be worked, mind, with my capital, what will you
give in return?”

“Can’t give anything but my work.”

“Exactly. Well, then, it’s this way. I’ll make you my partner on a
quarter share of all that’s made out of it; you on your side promise
to work all you know until we break partnership by mutual consent. A
quarter share ought to make your fortune if we have luck; but when I
want a man to work I don’t believe in starving him. Now _will_ you
work, and _will_ you keep your mouth shut, and _will_ you stick to me?
I don’t want any paper--your word will do.”

“Of course I will, Benion. I’ll swear if you like.”

“No. A man’s word is as good as his oath. If he breaks the one he’s
bound to break the other.”

The two had come to a stand-still facing each other, but now Benion
took his companion’s arm, and began to walk rapidly away from the
houses.

“This morning,” he went on, “I made friends with one of the schooner’s
crew. He was just going aboard, but when I talked of drinks he turned
back with me. The poor devil had been kept pretty short on board. He
wouldn’t talk at first, but put the liquor away until at last he got to
think I was his oldest friend. He’d deserted from a whaler in Honolulu,
and the owners of this schooner got him to sail on double wages at two
hours’ notice. ‘And all to trade in the islands?’ I said. ‘Islands,
be blowed!’ he said; ‘it’s something better than that!’ ‘Ah, well, I
wish you luck,’ I said, getting up as if to go; but he didn’t want to
move, and said, ‘And suppose it _was_ trading--what then?’ ‘Nothing,’
I said. ‘Wal, do yer call _gold_ nothing?’ he said, winking with one
of his wicked eyes. ‘Don’t come one of your sailor’s yarns over me,’ I
said. ‘It’s true, so help me,’ he answered; and then he looked round to
see that no one was listening, and leaned forward till I could scarcely
bear the smell of gin and tobacco-quid, and whispered, ‘They’ve found
gold in Californy, and they’re stuck up for all kinds of trade. The
ship that brought the news was leaking like a sieve, and my owners, as
keeps a store in Honolulu, bought this schooner and got a crew together
in less than a day, and we’re to fill up and get away to-day so as to
be the first in the field. If they gets a week’s start _they_ won’t
have to keep store any more, ’cos bloomin’ nuggets of gold is the only
money they use over in Californy, and they can stick it on ’cos the
diggers is starving.’ ‘They’ll be getting stuff round from New York,’ I
said. ‘That’s what they’re scared of,’ he said, ‘only they think that
ships from New York are likelier to bring more diggers than stores.’

“So then I made my friend as drunk as he could carry, and saw him down
to the quay, and I went off to find out what the owners had been up
to. I found out that they’d been to some of the wholesale houses,
buying up tools and clothing and provisions, and I heard from Jakes
that they’d been inquiring for a timber-yard. Well, you know Hathaway’s
a friend of mine, and when I got to him I found sure enough that my
friends had been ordering timber, for a frame-house in the islands,
they said, but old Hathaway said there were doors and locks enough
for a prison. So I gave the old man the tip not to deliver the order
before the end of the week. Didn’t give any reasons, and he didn’t ask
any,--said it would be the devil’s own job anyway to get the stuff off
to-morrow as the island chaps wanted.”

“Then are we going with them?” asked Allen.

“Not much, my boy; we’re going without ’em.”

“What! Take their vessel, d’you mean?” said the younger man, with open
mouth.

“No. There are better vessels than theirs: just listen, and don’t
ask questions. After I’d seen Hathaway I went to Thorne. I’ve done a
goodish bit of business with him lately. Got him to give me a list
of vessels he has lying idle,--seven of them, a bark, two brigs, and
the rest schooners: told him a friend of mine wanted a fast boat for
the island trade, but the old chap ’d got wind o’ something and asked
me whether my friend was Mr Wilson of Honolulu. When he saw that I
wouldn’t be pumped he doubled the charter. But we came to terms. He
will let me have the Amaranth, the smartest thing in port, bark-rigged,
seven hundred tons register. She’s just discharged, and will be ready
for sea as soon as her cargo’s aboard. After that I went the round of
the wholesale houses. I know some one in each of them, and by a little
manœuvring I squared it to have my stuff delivered before Wilson’s.
Then I saw Hathaway again, and doubled Wilson’s order,--mine, of
course, to have preference. And, last of all, I engaged the Amaranth’s
skipper, and got him to pick up a crew to sign indentures this
afternoon,--not a bad day’s work!”

Allen’s bewilderment had been growing at each sentence of his
companion’s story. “But what will it all cost?” he asked.

“Never you mind about that, my boy. You haven’t got to pay for it. If
we’re quick enough and keep our mouths shut your share ought to be more
than all this racket will cost me. Our only danger is a slow passage.
The whole town’s talking about the business, and even if we get away
before the Reindeer--Wilson’s schooner--the chances are that the thing
will leak out and the whole town be after us. Now you go home and give
your boss notice, and come and breakfast with me to-morrow. We’ll go
on board in the morning and out with the afternoon ebb-tide, cleared
at the Customs for a trading voyage in the islands. Once outside the
Heads we can laugh at the Customs and everybody else, for nothing but a
steamer could catch us.”

Allen found the Benion establishment in a state of disruption. A cart
was at the door, and his friend in his shirt-sleeves, none too clean,
was sitting on the lid of a box in the hall trying to snap the hasp.

“Just in time, my boy,” he shouted; “just sit down here and save me
from breaking the Third Commandment again.”

Mrs Benion, harassed and red-eyed, was bustling about breakfast. When
she had left them her husband whispered, “Talk as if we were coming
back in a couple of months. She don’t half like my going. Says she
dreamt she saw me in the water swimming for my life, and thinks she
won’t see me again, so we must let her down easy.”

It was a miserable breakfast. The poor wife pretended that she had
a cold to disguise her tears, and Benion poured forth a flood of
artificial and forced gaiety that deceived no one. But it was over at
last, and Allen went out to the street-door to leave the man and wife
together. At last Benion pushed past him with his head down, saying,
“She wants to say good-bye to you, Allen; go in, like a good fellow,
and then follow me down.”

He found the dining-room door open. She was standing near the table
repressing her sobs with evident effort. She looked him full in the
eyes. “You _will_ take care of him,” she said passionately, “and not
let him run into danger,--he is so rash. I can trust you, for he has
been so good to you, hasn’t he?”

“Of course I will, Mrs Benion; don’t be afraid. We’ll be back safe
enough with our fortunes made before you’ve had time to miss us.” And
he left her, hearing her first sob as he reached the door. Inwardly he
thanked the fates that he was not married, for he felt vaguely that
Benion was doing wrong in going. But of course he would come back
safely, or, if anything were to happen, he himself would never return
to Sydney to face the sorrow in that woman’s eyes.

The Amaranth was taking in the last of her cargo when they boarded
her. She was full to the hatches, but a small deck-load of timber had
to be stowed before they weighed anchor. About three o’clock she ran
down to the Heads with the ebb-tide, and dropped her pilot before dark.
Once clear of the land, Benion was in the wildest spirits; for they
had at least a day’s start of the Reindeer, and they were a faster
vessel and a bigger one. After dinner the captain was taken into their
confidence; but the vision of gold-fields failed to tempt him, and
he became restive. He not unnaturally wanted to know why he had not
been told before. It was ten to one, he said, that his crew would
desert, and where was he to get another? But Benion was prepared for
this argument. If the gold-fields were good enough to make the crew
desert, they were probably better than captain’s wages. Besides, _he_
would be answerable to the owners. The crew had been got together
in a hurry, and as there had been no selection, there was more than
the usual proportion of grumblers. The wages were high, for it would
have taken more than a day to get a complement for a cruise among the
islands at the ordinary wages; but the islands were unpopular, and
the men were half-hearted. When Benion had argued the captain into
tacit acquiescence, he suggested that the crew should be let into the
secret. “They’ve got to know it some time,” he said, “and why not now?
When they know about the gold they’ll be as keen about the voyage as we
are.”

He was right. From the time the announcement was made the work of the
ship went like clockwork, and the voyage ended happily, and without any
more grumbling: for since the days of the Argonauts, gold, whether in
fleece or nugget, has ever had a powerful hold upon the imagination of
sailors.

They made the land at sunrise. It was a perfect morning, fresh, but not
cold. Before them were two mountain-ranges separated by a valley which,
together with all the low-lying land, was filled with woolly vapour,
absolutely motionless, and so level that it looked like the waters of
a lake from which the mountain-tops emerged distinct in the clear air
like islands. Then the rising sun struck them and crept down their
sides in a flood of light till it touched the surface of the lake of
vapour, tinging it with gold; and, as if by magic, the whole lake was
set in motion, and rolled up the valley, where it was caught by the
sea-breeze and whirled in great convolutions into the higher air, where
it vanished.

They steered for two low promontories, upon one of which stood a
ruinous fort bearing the Mexican flag. As they neared it the swell
increased, for they were approaching the bar. The sea, so calm outside,
broke angrily upon a sunken reef on their left, but the flood-tide
helped them, and in a moment they were floating in calm water beyond
the fort, with a magnificent view before them,--a broad sheet of
water indented with coves and backed with pasture and woodland of the
brightest green. The foreshore was less beautiful, for the tide was
still low, and the beach was a waste of mud, from which a fetid steam
had begun to rise that set the landscape a-dance. They dropped anchor
between two barks that had every appearance of being deserted. Their
running-gear was hanging loose, their yards were braced all ways as for
a funeral, and their decks were littered with stores and rubbish as if
the crew had left them in haste. Stranded on the mud was the hull of a
schooner, her top-hamper touching the ground as she lay careened over.
On shore the only dwellings to be seen were some ruined walls, round
which a number of rough shanties of packing-cases, wreckage, and ships’
copper were clustered, and beyond these some hundreds of tents gleamed
white in the morning sunlight from the fringe of forest trees. Such
was the city of San Francisco in 1849.

Benion and Allen lost no time in going on shore. They stepped from
the boat into a crowd of the hangers-on of the gold-field,--surely
the strangest seething of humanity that the modern world can show!
There were men of every nation and shade of colour, of every grade
of society, of every creed and occupation, all flung together with
the burning fever of gold-hunting hot upon them. And there were
besides the ministers to their pleasures, their necessities, and
their vices: storekeepers, without stores to sell; faro-bank keepers;
saloon-keepers, cleared of their stock-in-trade; and the ministers to
yet lower vices. Hundreds of new arrivals, unprovided with the few
stores necessary to support life, and unable to buy at the famine
prices of the place, were still awaiting the arrival of a ship.

As soon as it became known that Benion had brought stores he was set
upon by the storekeepers and liquor-sellers, but he had made a stern
resolve to retail everything himself and let no middleman profit from
him. But the Reindeer might be in at any moment to compete with him, so
that, after fixing upon a site for his tent, he sent part of his cargo
ashore that very afternoon, and ensconced Allen as storeman.

So Allen bartered goods for gold-dust; and as their hoard increased,
the friendship that is born of hardships endured in common grew between
them.


II.

The wind that had been blowing fresh all day from the south-east had by
evening freshened into a gale, and the schooner was running before it
with reefed mainsail. As the sun sank red among the storm-clouds, and
lit the western horizon with a lurid glare, something more solid than a
cloud interrupted the unbroken line. The man at the wheel saw it, and
called the attention of the mate whose watch it was.

“Land ahead, sir!”

“That be hanged for a yarn! There’s no land within two hundred miles of
us, and what there is ain’t in that quarter.”

“What is the nearest land?” asked Benion.

“The Fijis. The old man took sights this morning and reckoned we’d pass
to the nor’rard of the Fijis some time to-morrow if the wind held.
They’re marked in the charts as high land, and we ought to see them
thirty miles off or more.” Then shading his eyes with his hand, he
gazed at the spot on the fast darkening horizon that looked now more
than ever like a cloud.

“Why, you must have the jimmies if you call that land!” he said
over his shoulder. “Keep her up half a point.” He glanced at the
compass-card, spat over the lee-rail, and went forward.

In a few moments the white foam-flakes turned to grey, faded and
vanished, and night fell like a great black cloth flung over the
troubled sea. With the darkness the wind seemed to get stronger, the
seas bigger, and the vessel more frail and helpless. She was advancing
by a series of bounds as each great roller overtook and lifted her
stern, poised and flung her forward, and then surged roaring past her,
leaving her as it were stranded in the gulf between it and the next,
whose swelling base the stern began again to climb.

At eight o’clock the captain came on deck, glanced aloft and to
windward, and ordered the look-out to be doubled. Benion was sitting on
the main-hatch smoking, and emitting a shower of sparks from his pipe
with each gust of wind.

“Anywhere near land, cap?” he shouted.

“No; but we ought to sight it to-morrow, and in these coral waters one
likes to keep a good look-out. You never know when you may hit upon a
new reef.”

The ship tore through the seas for half-an-hour, when there was a shout
from the look-out, “Breakers ahead!”

The captain dashed to the wheel and put the helm down, and the schooner
came up into the wind, shivering with the shock of the great seas as
they struck her and washed the decks from stem to stern. The wind was
howling through the rigging, cracking the sails like whip-lashes, now
that the ship was no longer running before it, but a practised ear
could hear a distant roar, distinct from that of the wind and seas,
that broke on the ship. Both watches were hauling in the sheets and
reefing, and then the schooner’s head was payed off a little so as
to clear the shore, if shore it was. Benion and Allen were straining
their eyes to leeward in the hope of seeing the danger, but they could
distinguish nothing from the dark waste of grey water.

“This sort of thing makes me wish that we hadn’t put all our eggs in
one basket,” said Benion. “If we had fetched up on that reef and got
off it alive, we shouldn’t have a penny in the world.”

“We ought to have insured the box and shipped it to New York in one of
the steamers,” replied Allen.

“It seemed such sheer folly to pay the insurance rates that Carter
asked, I thought it was better to take the risk of shipwreck. If the
gold is lost we shall probably go to the bottom with it. If we get home
with it safe we can take it easy all our days. It’s a fair risk.”

The mate meanwhile had climbed into the top and presently reported
that he could see breakers, but that they had cleared the corner of
the reef, and might now stand away a little. The ship’s head fell off
until the wind was again on the quarter, and she was running free. The
two men were soaked to the skin with the spray when the vessel was
close-hauled, but Benion would not go below to change, feeling that if
this were land the captain was at least two hundred miles out of his
reckoning, and they might go ashore at any moment. But several hours
passed without more alarms, and he at last fell asleep on the hatch in
his wet clothes. It was a troubled half sleep, in which every sound
entered into his dreams mingled with the monotonous roar of the seas.
Suddenly some one in his dream shouted “Land ahead!” There was a rush
of booted feet past him; he started up, and saw a dark mass looming
above the ship.

As she came up into the wind a sea struck her forward and stopped her
dead, the next seemed to hurl her sideways, and before she could get
way on she fell with a reeling shock upon the reef, rolled sideways
amid the boiling surf, and each successive wave fell upon her with a
hungry yell and swept her from stem to stern, hammering and grinding
the wounded hull upon the sharp coral.

At the first shock Benion fell against the starboard bulwarks, and
before he could grasp the slippery rail a great sea swept the deck and
washed him to leeward into the darkness. Dazed and without power of
reasoning, he allowed himself to drift, instinctively keeping his body
upright in the water.

Allen meanwhile was still on the doomed ship. He was asleep when
she struck, and the shock flung him out of his bunk against the
opposite bulk-head. Bruised and stunned as he was, he realised what
had happened. The floor of the cabin was at a sharp angle, and the
bilge timbers groaned and cracked as each pitiless sea lifted the ship
and dashed her on the reef with a grinding crash. To steady himself
against the shocks he planted his foot against a box over which the
water was washing. It was Benion’s strong box, that had slid from its
lashings under the bunk. What were life worth, he thought, to either
of them if this were lost? It were better to die trying to save their
fortune than to battle for life, leaving this to certain destruction
in the wreck. He grasped it by the iron handle and dragged it up the
companion, using all his strength, for it was heavy, and the ladder
slanted at a sharp angle. Holding on by the brass rail, he looked out
upon the slippery decks. The top-mast, with all its ruin of yards,
ropes, and blocks, swung heavily by the wire-rigging and thrashed the
deck at every heave of the hull, and several of the crew were hacking
at the foremast with an axe. Nearer to him, in the waist of the ship,
three men seemed to be making a raft by lashing some spare planks and
spars together. Suddenly, with a splitting noise, the foremast with all
its wreckage went overboard, and the schooner partly righted herself.
As each sea lifted her she gradually came up head to wind, for both
anchors had been let go; and she lay there for a space without lifting
to the seas, for she was now waterlogged. The crest of every sea swept
the decks; but Allen, though blinded and suffocated by the spray,
still held firmly to the cabin-trunk, which protected him from the
waves. But a huge sea, gathering volume in the shallow water, swept
roaring down upon them, and trembling over the bows, carried everything
before it. The whole cabin-trunk gave way with the wrench, and Allen
suddenly found himself up to his neck in the water, away from the ship,
but still clinging to the brass rail of the cabin-trunk, and still
holding the iron handle of Benion’s box in his right hand. The water
splashing in his face impeded both breath and vision, but he thought
he could see the dim outline of the ship to windward. The water was
almost calm around him, for he was floating inside the reef, but there
was sufficient “send” in the waves to set him steadily inshore. At last
the cabin-trunk grounded, rose again for the next wave, struck more
heavily, and remained immovable, while the waves surged powerlessly
round it. The water was only waist-deep, and Allen, still grasping the
precious box, stumbled over the rough coral until he found himself on
dry sand, dripping and chilled to the bone by the wind, warm though it
was. A dark wall of bush close to him recalled grim stories of cannibal
natives. If he was in danger, the first thing to be done was to hide
the box. Full of this one thought, he dragged it by the handle through
the soft sand into the shadow of the trees. The ground was carpeted
with the leaves of some trailing vine, that caught his feet and would
have thrown him had he not recovered himself against the trunk of a
tree. He felt it with his hands. It was gnarled and knotted, and of so
great a girth that his extended arms would not reach the half of its
circumference. This would be a landmark, he thought, for it must be
larger than its fellows. He knelt down and plunged his hands into the
sand at the root, tearing up the vines, and scooping out a hole large
enough to hold the box; but when he began to lower it into the hole the
corners caught the loose sand and half-filled the hole. A third of the
box remained above ground, but he dared not delay, for a nervous terror
of interruption had seized him. Through the roar of the wind he fancied
that he heard other sounds. He shovelled the loose sand against the
sides of the box, and, tearing up the vines within his reach, he piled
them above it. Then he stood up with a strange feeling of safety and
self-reliance. Come what might, if he and Benion escaped, their money
was safe. But where was Benion? He remembered for the first time that
he had not seen him since the evening. What if he was the only man
left alive? It was a new thought, terrible at first until he remembered
the box buried at his feet. If Benion were dead, then all would be his
lawfully and without blame. What possibilities would life then have?
He had often dreamed on the diggings of what it would be to be rich,
but the possibility of riches for him had never seemed near until this
moment. He knew the disloyalty of the thought, for close upon its heels
came a half-formed wish that Benion might be dead. Gratitude had not
died out before this great temptation, for he could be grateful to his
benefactor’s memory if he could no longer show gratitude to him in the
flesh.

While he stood irresolute he heard a distant shout. Not doubting that
it came from one of his comrades, he started along the shore in the
direction of the sound. In two hundred yards he came to a rocky bluff
from which great boulders had fallen upon the sand, forming a barrier
right down to the sea at low tide. Through these the sea was dashing
furiously, and it was so dark that he dared go no farther. He sat down
in a recess hollowed out of the cliff-foot by the sea at high tide, and
sheltered from the wind: his exhaustion conquered, and he fell asleep
in his wet clothes as he was.

When he awoke the eastern sky was grey, and broad golden streaks shot
up from the horizon. The wind had moderated, but great masses of flying
scud told what the night had been. He was stiff and chilled from his
wet clothes, but he crawled out from his shelter, and found himself
face to face with a man, dripping, cold, and miserable as himself. It
was Jansen, one of the sailors, a Norwegian, one of those Allen had
seen trying to make a raft. He too had spent the night lying on the
shore, and he believed that besides themselves none were left alive.
While they were talking the sun rose, and straightway their prospects
assumed a less gloomy hue. The wreck was hidden from them by a curve
of the shore heavily timbered. They ran to this and saw the schooner
dismasted, lying helpless on her side. Every sea washed over her, and
she seemed to be breaking up. Landwards the forest was a mere fringe,
clothing the foot of great basaltic cliffs that rose sheer to a plateau
which they could not see. Every crevice of the limestone had been
seized upon by enterprising tree-ferns and banian-trees, and only where
the face was so smooth as to afford no clinging-place was the rock
naked.

The two men wandered aimlessly along the narrow strip of sand left
between the high tide and the trees, and upon rounding a projecting
tree, came suddenly upon a thin column of smoke rising from the outer
edge of the bush. Their first instinct was to take cover behind a tree,
for they had the fear of cannibals ever before their eyes, but Allen
caught sight of a figure crouching among the undergrowth. Cannibal
savages do not wear blouses and trousers, nor even red beards, and to
whom could such a beard belong but Macevoy, A.B.? They found a group
of their shipmates crouching half-naked round a fire of drift-wood,
destined, when the smoke should subside, to dry their clothes.

“Jansen and Allen! That makes fourteen. There are only five missing
now. Could Castles swim, do any of you know?” asked the boatswain.

“Castles went to the bottom, if he had any swimming to do,” growled
Macevoy.

The men had got ashore at different times during the night,--some
clinging to spars and oars, and others, washed off before they could
seize anything, had swum until they drifted into shallow water. Five
only were missing--Benion, the cook, and three seamen; but they might
have landed on a different part of the beach. The captain now proposed
that two parties should follow the beach in opposite directions, to
look for the missing men and to find fresh water, while the rest
collected wood for a raft on which to bring off provisions from the
wreck before she broke up, for they were desperately hungry. Allen
chose to stay with the main body, who soon collected enough fallen
timber for a raft, and lashed the logs together with the thick creepers
that hung in festoons from every tree. When it was finished the tide
had ebbed too far for launching it, and they could therefore do nothing
more until the afternoon. They were about to disperse in search of food
when one of the search-parties returned carrying a body between them.

“Who is it?” shouted the captain.

“Benion,” answered the leading man.

Allen felt a thrill of guilty anticipation. Then he was dead after all,
and the gold would be his! The party came up and laid their burden
gently down. He was still alive. They had found him lying, helpless and
half-stunned, on the beach with a sprained ankle, and only strength
enough to crawl out of reach of the high tide.

By mid-day they knew all there was to know about their island. It was
pear-shaped, and barely a mile in diameter,--a mere lump of limestone
pushed up from the ocean-bed, with a fringe of coral at its base. The
cliffs were unbroken save in one place, where some old earthquake had
split a jagged fissure in the rock almost down to the sea-level. This
little gorge, choked with vegetation, would have contained water had
the island been larger; but as it was, they could only find a little
moisture oozing from the cliff-face. Some of them climbed the gorge to
the plateau above, and saw the narrow light-green circle of the reef
edged with foam: saw an island near them, and two or three others so
far away that they blended with the clouds, but saw no sign of man, nor
any hope of rescue but by their own efforts.

As soon as Benion was brought in, Allen was possessed with a fear
of being left alone with him. When the raft was launched, he joined
the two men told off to go to the wreck. It was evening before they
returned, with scarcely any stores, towing the largest of the ship’s
boats, staved and broken, but not beyond repair. At night over the
fire they took counsel. To stay for more than a week at this place
would mean starvation. The island must be one of the Fiji group, which
the captain had supposed to be two hundred miles to the southward. Some
of them had heard that there were white men there; and the party that
had climbed the cliff had seen the outline of a large island down the
wind. There was only one course open to them--to repair the broken boat
and set sail. Benion beckoned to Allen from the ivi-tree under which he
was lying. The men were some feet away, and they could talk undisturbed.

“Did you bring off the box on the raft?” he asked, eagerly.

“No,” replied Allen; “the cabin was full of water.” Benion started
up, forgetting his injury until the pain reminded him. “Good God!” he
cried, “it must be there--under my bunk. No one in the ship knew of it
but you, and it couldn’t float away. I’ll find it myself to-morrow,
even if I smash my ankle looking for it. You seem to take it very
calmly,” he added, fiercely; “have you forgotten that your share is in
it as well as mine?”

“Forgotten! No; but I am too pleased at having saved my skin to think
about it yet.”

“Your skin!” retorted Benion, contemptuously. “What good will your
_skin_ be to you if you have nothing to put on or into it? If that box
is lost, I would to God I might lie where it lies!”

His distress was so great that Allen felt an almost invincible desire
to tell him the truth. But why should he tell him now, in his present
state of excitement? How could he explain away the lie that had come
so readily to his lips? In his excitement Benion would suspect that
he meant to steal the money, and then good-bye to any future hope of
assistance. Why, Benion might repudiate all his verbal promises of
partnership, and he had no writing to show. And had he not worked
harder than Benion at the diggings?--been a hewer of wood and a drawer
of water while his partner sat at ease? How was he to be recompensed
for all this? And his share was to be so little, while with both shares
he might live a new life in some country where they would never meet.

“Was the box fixed under your bunk?” he asked quickly, seeing the
other’s eyes fixed inquiringly upon him.

“Lashed, do you mean? No. I had it out yesterday, and forgot to lash it
again.”

“Then it must have slid out,” replied Allen. “The schooner is lying on
her side, and your bunk is now where the ceiling used to be. Don’t be
afraid. I’ll go off to-morrow and have another hunt for it.”

But during the night the wind rose again, and at high tide a heavy sea
was thundering on the reef where the poor schooner lay in the darkness.
The dawn showed a flying scud from the south-east, and a grey ocean
streaked with foam. Spray was driving over the wreck, blurring her
outline, but it could be seen that she lay lower in the water. The
men busied themselves in repairing the boat, and collecting firewood.
Some of them scoured the reef at low water, catching small fish and
sea-slugs from the pools. Benion dragged himself to a spot whence he
could see the wreck, and lay there gazing at her with fierce anxiety,
and shuddering as each great sea struck and enveloped her in white
foam, as if he felt the blows on his own body. He would not touch food,
nor answer any one that spoke to him, and the men left him alone at
last, significantly touching their foreheads. “Left ’is wits aboard by
the looks of ’im, and wants to hail them to come ashore,” was their
diagnosis of the case. Allen came in late from fishing on the lee side
of the island, and busied himself at the fire that was farthest from
his partner.

The gale lasted all the next day, and brought up drenching
rain-squalls; but at midnight it suddenly died away, the stars came
out, and from every branch above the sleeping men the crickets burst
into song, to the tenor of the little wavelets sucking back the
shingle, and the bass of the great ocean-rollers breaking on the outer
reef.

The men were astir before daylight to get the raft afloat at high
tide. But when the sun rose, and they looked for the dark outline
of the stranded schooner, they saw nothing to interrupt the broad
golden pathway but a strong eddy in the breaking swell, as if a rock
lay beneath the surface. The schooner was gone. Torn, battered, and
smashed into match-wood--only her bones lay jammed on the reef; the
rest of her was strewn broadcast along the beach where the tide had
left it,--broken planks, spars, blocks, casks, chests, and rope half
buried in the sand. Benion had one last hope--his box might be among
the wreckage in spite of its weight. In his despair he forgot the pain
of his sprained ankle, and half hobbled, half crawled after the men who
had gone out to collect the stores worth saving. Kneeling on the sand
at high-water mark, he eagerly scanned each man’s burden as he passed,
asking them whether they had seen an iron-bound box.

“You’ll have to go to the reef for that,” said one; “iron don’t float.”

With the few tools they had saved from the wreck the repairs of the
boat made rapid progress. Three days passed, and though they had
been on half rations, their little stock of bread unspoilt by the
salt water was running short. At the most it would last them five
days, and they must allow three for the voyage to the westward. On
the third day, therefore, the last plank was roughly nailed into its
place, and caulked with strips torn from their clothing, a rough sail
was contrived from the schooner’s jib, and provisions and water were
prepared for their start upon the morrow.

Benion had had alternate fits of deep dejection and impotent fury since
the destruction of the schooner. He spoke to no one, and would not eat
his ration of biscuit though he drank his water greedily. At times he
would start up, kneeling on the sand and shaking his fist at the sky
and sea, shouting blasphemies learned at the diggings but forgotten
till now; at others he lay for hours, face downwards, on the sand,
pillowing his head upon his arm. The men thought him mad and avoided
him, and Allen was glad of any excuse for keeping away from him. But on
the day before the projected start he had shown no violence, but had
lain motionless on the ground hour after hour. They discussed him over
the fire at night.

“A chap as won’t eat, and has the jimmies, ain’t long for this world,”
said the boatswain, summing up.

“Wish he’d look sharp about it,” growled another; “we don’t want chaps
seein’ snakes aboard _that_ craft.” And he pointed to the boat. Allen
had been the first to notice Benion’s change of manner, and it filled
him with something like remorse. But it was too late to turn back now.
After all, if the box had been really lost, as it well might have been,
Benion would have had to bear his loss, and he must learn to bear it
now. Besides, perhaps he would tell him if they got safe out of the
island. Yes; he would tell him, but not now while he was in this state.
But however he tried to comfort himself, he was too uneasy to lie down
with the other men, who were laying in a stock of sleep for their
journey on the morrow. In the dim light of the stars he could see, just
beyond the shadow of the trees, a figure sitting on the sand looking
seaward, and could hear a few broken words brought to him by the night
breeze. He could feel, though he could not see, the fierce eyes with
a life’s longing written in them. He got up once intending to go and
speak to Benion, but abandoned the idea before he reached him, so
terrible did he seem in his despair; so he lay down watching him, and
trying to drive back his better feelings. About midnight he was almost
dozing when he sprang into wakefulness at the sound of his own name
coupled with a horrible blasphemy. Benion was kneeling erect, his right
arm extended seawards and clutching the back of his neck with his left,
declaiming passionately. Suddenly he turned, and falling on his hands
and knees, began to crawl towards the tree under which the captain
and officers of the ship were asleep. He passed into the shadow of
the trees, and for a moment was lost to sight. A horrible fear seized
Allen that he was mad and intended to kill some one, but uncertainty
prevented him from moving. A ray of light from one of the fires faintly
illumined the tree-trunk, and into this the crawling figure emerged
from the darkness. Yes; it must be murder that he intended, for now
he saw him grasp the captain’s gun that was leaning against the tree,
but before he could start forward he was crawling away as swiftly and
noiselessly as he had come, dragging the gun after him. Then it was not
murder of another but of himself. Now he was out again on the sand, and
scuffling along the beach upon his left foot and his right knee, nearly
as fast as a man could walk. Allen was too horrified to act--he could
only watch the receding figure with terror and bewilderment; and with
that strange perversity of humour it crossed his mind how funny Benion
looked scuffling along with his gun over his shoulder. But when the
figure disappeared behind a protruding tree, he yielded to the impulse
to follow and watch him. Perhaps he did not mean to kill himself after
all. He came out upon the sands, keeping in the shadow of the trees,
and near enough to Benion to distinguish his figure in the dim light.
After going a couple of hundred yards the hobbling figure became more
distinct, and Allen saw that he had stopped. There was not more than
twenty yards between them, and he sought for a deeper shadow in which
to stand. Just before him was a tree with low widespreading branches,
that threw the trunk into profound darkness. He crept towards it,
lifting his feet high and planting them softly on the sand. Something
struck him as familiar in the trunk as he neared it. Yes. Surely it
was the tree under which the box was buried! Had Benion halted there
by chance, or because he knew the spot? He turned to look for him, and
saw that he was creeping towards the tree on the other side of the
trunk. Then he must know the spot, and he had brought the gun to defend
him from interference. Allen would have run away but for the fear of
being overheard. Benion was on his knees now not five yards from him.
He could hear his labouring breath, and the rustle of the sand as he
dragged his wounded leg over it. As he came up Allen moved so as to
keep the tree between them. He stopped at the very edge of the pile
of sand and vines that hid the box, and sat down. How did he know so
well that it was there without feeling for it? He was going to dig it
up with his hands! He must get his breath first, though. Was this the
time to rest when any of the men might interrupt him? But no, he was
not resting, he was doing something. He was measuring the distance
with his gun, pushing the butt forward in the sand, so; or was he
going to dig with it that he leaned forward and put his foot against
the trigger-guard as a fulcrum? Good God! No; his head is against the
muzzle! “Benion!”

Before the blinding flash had left his eyes, or the report ceased
echoing along the cliff, Allen was kneeling beside his partner, whose
head--as much as was left of it--was pillowed on the box for which he
had died. But only for a moment. The awful shock, while it numbed his
senses, brought him realisation of his own danger. The report must have
aroused the men by the fire, and if they found him there they might
suspect foul play. What mattered the treasure beside such a danger?
Leaving the body as it was, he tore through the undergrowth straight
inland to the base of the cliff, and groped his way along the rocks
so as to pass to the rear of the camp. His naked feet were torn and
bleeding from his headlong rush through the bush, but his mind was
too intent upon the sounds from the beach to heed the pain. He heard
the voices of men in motion, and a loud shout from the direction of
the _ivi_-tree. Then they had found the body! They would bring it
back to the camp, and he would be missed; perhaps they had even seen
his footsteps! If he would escape suspicion he must mix with the men
before they had time to notice his absence. He began to run again and
burst out of the bush, heated and breathless, at a spot beyond the
camp. He slackened his pace when he saw the fire, but a glance told him
that it was deserted. There was a confused murmur from the direction of
the _dilo_-tree, and he pressed on in the hope of joining the others
unnoticed in the darkness. A few of the men were waving smouldering
brands snatched from the fire to fan them into flame, the rest were
stooping and craning over each other’s shoulders to look at something
in the middle of the circle. Allen, striving to suppress his panting
breath, pressed forward like the others, but his labouring lungs would
not obey him.

“Why, mate, who the ---- been chasing you? You’re blowing like a
black-fish.”

“What is it?” asked Allen between his gasps.

“Your mate, Benion, with a hole in his head that you can put your foot
into. Why, where have you been?”

Some of the men turned round to look at him, and in the faint light he
was not a prepossessing object. His face and hair were dripping with
sweat, though the skin was ghastly white, and his distended nostril
and heaving chest showed how fear and physical effort had told upon him.

“Looks as if he could tell us something about it,” muttered one of them.

But Allen roughly forced his way through them, and fell on his knees
beside the captain, who was giving directions for lifting the body.

“Benion!” he cried. “Good God! Why could he have done it?”

His distress was so evident that his words turned their thoughts in a
new direction.

“After all, the pore devil had the jimmies,” said the boatswain, “and
like as not he kicked the trigger off with his foot: must have got a
clip on the head as we went ashore.”

The gun was still lying where it fell--the muzzle resting on the dead
man’s shoulder, and the butt on the sand beside his right knee. The
position was so consistent with the idea of suicide, that they at once
adopted it.

“Well, it’s no good moving him till daylight,” said the captain. “Some
of you get a bit of sailcloth to cover him with, and let’s leave him
as he is until the morning. Now, my lads, turn in and get what sleep
you can, for we must be away at sun-up;” and he led the way back to the
camp, followed by most of the men. Allen went with them and lay down,
pretending to sleep rather than undergo the questions he thought might
follow.

They were all astir before daybreak. The captain called Allen, as being
Benion’s fellow-passenger, and asked him whether he knew of anything
that would account for the suicide.

“He had a box,” replied Allen, “in which he kept all our money. It was
lost in the schooner, and when he found that it was gone he lost his
head, as you saw.”

“Where were you when the thing happened?”

“I had left the camp on the other side. When I heard the gun go off I
ran in and found you round the body. When I left, Benion was sitting
here on the beach as he had been all day.”

“H’m! You must have been a long time away,” said the captain, turning
to give orders about stowing the stores in the boat. Then taking with
him the mate and such of the sailors as were not employed, he walked to
the _dilo_-tree followed by Allen. At its foot a sailcloth was spread,
which had roughly taken the shape of the body it covered. In the grey
light Allen could see that one end of it was stained red and caked
hard. The captain saw it too, and said, “Don’t uncover the poor devil;
dig the hole here, and we’ll lift him into it just as he is.”

Four sailors armed with bits of broken plank began to scrape up the
sand so as to form a hollow trench, and as the mound at the back grew
higher, the sand slipped down and met the pile Allen had made round
the buried chest. In a few moments a shallow trench had been dug, and
they lifted the stiff body still covered and lowered it gently into the
rough grave.

“Hats off!” said the captain, gruffly, as he stepped to the side of the
grave. “Earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes. We commit his
body to the earth, in sure and certain hope that at the last day he
will rise again.”

It was all that he could remember of the Burial Service, and he said it
defiantly as a man who does his duty regardless of the ridicule he may
provoke, and dropped a handful of the coral sand upon the canvas.

“Now shovel in the sand,” he said, roughly; “we’ve done all we can for
the poor chap.”

Allen was staring on the box. The creepers and sand he had thrown
upon it had taken the square form of the lid, and he could scarcely
believe that they had not seen it. But there were blood-stains on it.
He ran forward and shovelled the loose sand over them with his hands
so quickly that the work was done before another could come to his
assistance.

Two hours later the crowded boat was running free, and the island, with
its fellow to the northward, had taken definite shape.

“We must give it a name,” said the mate. “What’s it to be?”

“It looks mighty like a boot from this side,” said the boatswain; “and
the island to the nor’ward’s like a shoe. Let’s call it Boot Island.”

So Boot Island it was called.


III.

How they reached Levuka at last, and parted company in that budding
centre of idleness and cheap liquor--some to work their passages to
Sydney, and others to scatter over the group--need not be related
here. To get away from something that lay on the beach at Boot Island
was Allen’s one desire. Drink is said to drown memories, so he tried
drinking; but it would not wash away certain dull red stains on a
background of white sand. And on the morning after the debauch the body
and mind are too weak to resist an angry past: besides, what might not
a man say when he was drunk? To move anyhow, anywhere, were better
than this. So he became a wanderer. But the human mind is fashioned
mercifully, and blunts with use. If the body be healthy, there is no
impression, however strong, that will not wear away with time. He
shipped in a whaler, but almost before the high land had melted into
the clouds he wished himself back again. He found so many excuses for
himself, and as poor Benion had killed himself, what good could the
box do him lying on the beach in Boot Island? The first man who landed
would find it and take it away, whereas, if he had it, he would keep
only his own share, and send the rest to Benion’s widow. He left the
ship at the first island they touched. It chanced to be Apemama in the
Line Islands, whose king, having vanquished most of the neighbouring
atolls, and sighing for other worlds to conquer, eagerly welcomed a
white man who could mend his three “Tower” muskets.

[Illustration: LEVUKA.]

He would stay there, he thought, until a vessel bound for Levuka put
in; but month followed month and no such ship came. He rose rapidly
from the post of chief armourer to be the king’s first minister, and
took to himself a woman of the place to be his wife. Ships put in
for provisions or to recruit labourers for the South American guano
islands; and as the king’s adviser, his services to the captains were
paid for, and the money hoarded. So three years slipped over his head,
and a ship put in at last wanting provisions, and bound to Levuka to
fill up with oil. Allen helped the captain to get his provisions, and
sold him his stock of pearl-shell, taking in part payment a passage for
himself, his native wife, and her niece. The ship got under weigh, and
stood on and off the island till nightfall, and Allen, guided by the
riding light, paddled off under cover of the darkness, and cast his
canoe adrift; for his royal patron had found him useful, and was prone
to secure his own comfort without due regard to the inclination of his
dependents. At Levuka he found that his countrymen were busy developing
the country with muskets and gunpowder. If a tribe would live it must
have as many firearms as its neighbours, and to obtain them it would
sell as much land as the foreigner wanted. And so, for ten muskets and
a keg of powder, Allen became the possessor of Boot Island, and the
vendor, pitying his simplicity, was ready to sell him two other rocky
islands on the same terms.

He stood at last, as he had often dreamed, upon the beach where his
treasure was buried, and watched the little dinghy labouring out
towards the cutter, which presently swooped down upon it and bore it
away, running free towards the west. Then he turned to the two women,
who sat patiently by the pile of cases on the beach, and pointed to
the spot where they had made their camp-fires more than three years
ago. They left him to gather sticks, and he passed quickly round the
point that hid the _dilo_-tree under which he had buried the box. It
was just as he remembered it, save that the ground bore no sign of
ever having been disturbed. The creeping vine that lives between soil
and sand covered the place with a thick carpet of shiny leaves, and no
mound could now be traced. He tried to picture the spot as he had last
seen it--the flickering torchlight, the scared faces of the shipwrecked
sailors, and the blood-stained sand--but the bright sun threw a
checker-work of shade through the branches, and a fresh trade-wind bore
the smell of the sea to his nostrils, so that the picture would not fit
the frame, and the memory seemed less real to him than a nightmare.
Surely he had dreamed that Benion’s shattered body was buried here! If
it was true, where was the grave? and how could the whole place look
so bright and peaceful? But the box--that could have been no dream! It
was for that that he had come, and he must find it. He went resolutely
and stood against the gnarled trunk. Standing thus, as he had stood on
the night of the wreck, the box must be buried at his feet, but there
was nothing to show that the treasure and its silent guardian lay there
together. He stooped and tore away the matted vine, and the coral sand,
dulled with vegetable mould, lay bare. Yes, there was a slight swelling
of the sand here, but so slight that he could scarcely believe that
anything lay beneath it. Some one must have found and stolen it! With a
terrible sinking of the heart, that drove out all power of reasoning,
he fell on his knees and tore away the yielding sand with his fingers.
At the fourth plunge his heart stopped, for his hand struck against
something hard. He plunged it lower, hoping to feel the square corner,
but the thing was round and unfamiliar to the touch. A little lower,
and his fingers were beneath it, and with a fierce curiosity he tore it
upwards from its sandy bed. It threw the coarse sand from its slippery
sides, and lay inert--a shattered skull, with a patch of hair still
adhering to it! Allen sat staring with wide eyes at the grinning face
as it perched knowingly on a hillock of sand, and then, as it slid
over and rolled down towards him, he shrieked yell after yell of mad
laughter, and the women, running in the direction of the sound, found
him so.




THE HERMIT OF BOOT ISLAND.


It was past three o’clock when we cast off the buoy at Mango, and let
the schooner go free before the “trade.” It was blowing fresh, but she
was travelling faster than the seas themselves, and was as steady as a
rock. At dusk we were abreast of a precipitous island, steep, too, on
all sides but one, which ran off to a sloping point like the toe of a
boot. The skipper was gazing earnestly at the dark line of shore.

“That’s Boot Island,” he said, in answer to my question; “and the other
you can just make out to the nor’ward they call Shoe Island. If there
was a light on that point I’d have to go in. The old devil that lives
there’s as crank as a March hatter, and I promised I’d go in if he
made a fire on the beach as I was passing. You see he might be sick or
something, and no one’d ever know. Nothing but a bird could land on
this side in weather like this. You’ve got to lie on and off on the
lee side and send a boat ashore. There’s no anchorage. He’s getting
very crank. Bickaway, the storekeeper, sent a boat last week for his
_copra_, but he wouldn’t let him land because it was Saturday. Said he
was getting ready for Sunday. The old beggar knew well enough that the
boat was chokeful of trade, and he and his women hadn’t enough clothes
to cover themselves decently. Bickaway yelled to him that his _copra_
would be rotten before another boat came, but he stood on the beach
and waved him off. Said that he couldn’t land before Tuesday, because
on Monday he’d be meditating. No, he can’t starve. The women take good
care of that. Bickaway saw a fine patch of pumpkins and _kumalas_,
besides cocoa-nuts. He won’t catch fish, because he says it’s wicked
to take life. There’s only the two women on the place besides him--his
woman and her niece; and he must be pretty rough on them at times, or
the girl wouldn’t have swum all the way to Shoe Island, and got picked
up by the niggers. They brought her back, too, in their boat, and the
old chap let them land, and gave them half his _kumala_ crop--he, that
don’t like niggers, least of all the Yathata niggers! They say he’s a
Yankee, but no one knows for certain. I suppose I’m the only white
man as ever got into his house, and that was five years ago. Oh! it’s
a long yarn, and not worth telling. I was ‘_beech-de-mar-ing_’ at the
back of Taveuni. Hadn’t had any luck, and one of the niggers belonging
to Yathata--that’s Shoe Island yonder--says, ‘Why don’t you try
Yathata, and the white man’s island?’ So I went over there in a boat I
had, and worked her over the reef at spring-tide in very calm weather.
I’d heard a lot about old Simpson, that he wouldn’t let any one fish
his reefs, because the island was his; but I meant to fish whether or
no, as the nigger told me that the reef swarmed with teat-fish, and
the Chinamen in Levuka were giving fifty-five pounds a ton. As soon as
we let go the anchor, the old devil came out of a lean-to he’d knocked
together of packing-cases and rusty iron. He was the damnedest old
scarecrow you ever see, with a white beard down to his belt, a filthy
old shirt, and blue dungaree pants. I made the boys haul the anchor
short and keep lifting it, so as she dragged in, and I stood up in the
stern pretending to read a book I had.”

The crest of a big sea surging past us lopped on deck, drenching us to
the knees.

“_Uli!_” shouted the skipper to the native steersman. “Here! _Soro na
sila_, some of you!” and as they slacked off the sheet he drew me aft
out of the waist, and continued.

“Well, as soon as we touched, I jumped out and waited for him.

“‘What have you come for?’ says he.

“‘Stress of weather and short provisions,’ I says. Then he stood
looking at me for about a minute, while I opened my book again. After
a bit he turned round, and went into his lean-to. When he’d gone in I
come up to the door. There was a mat or two on the bed-place, but the
floor was bare gravel, and the table an old packing-case nailed on two
sticks stuck in the ground.

“‘What d’yer want?’ he says, when I looked in.

“‘Nothing,’ says I, and sat down in the doorway. After a bit he says,
‘To-day’s the third of June, and a Thursday, else you couldn’t have
landed. Who’s Governor now?’

“‘Des Vœux,’ I says.

“‘Never heard of him,’ says he; ‘thought Gordon was. What’s _copra_?’

“‘Ten pound five in Levuka.’

“‘Then I’ll get eight pound here,’ says he. ‘I see boats and steamers
go past most weeks, but I don’t hear much news. When are you going?’

“I wasn’t going to let on about the _beech-de-mar_ racket, so I opens
my book and sings ‘Rock of Ages cleft for me.’ Soon as I begun he comes
out and stands looking at me. I only knew one verse, but I kep’ on
and sung it three times over, keeping as near as I could to the tune,
and he kep’ looking at me all the time as solemn as a cockroach. When
I done it three times I sang Amen, and he went back into the shanty.
Then I took off my hat and knelt up with my hands clasped as if I
was praying to myself. Soon as I got up he says, ‘Come in, will yer,
and sit down a bit?’ and then he calls his woman and begins talking
Tokelau to her, and she fetched in a dish of hot _kumalas_ the old
devil had been keeping back till he thought I’d go. Then she got some
eggs and took ’em off to the cook-house, and the old beggar sat on the
bed all the time and said he’d wait till I’d done. But just as I’d
got hold of a _kumala_ he says, ‘Aren’t you going to say grace?’ a
bit suspicious-like, and I says, ‘Of course I am, but I always takes
hold of the food first;’ so I holds up the _kumalas_ over my head, and
says, ‘For what we’re going to receive, Amen.’ But when we’d done
dinner we were good friends, and he’d told me all about his soul, and
asked after mine; and he sends the girls off with _kumalas_ for my
boys. Then I says that idleness is a bad thing, and I’d like ’em to
do a little fishing on the reef at low tide, and he says, ‘But you
wouldn’t have them take life?’

“‘Certainly not,’ I says. ‘I wouldn’t kill a fish, not if it jumped
into my pocket and I was starving, but with _beech-de-mar_ it’s
different, for being a slug he ain’t got feelings, and even Darwin
ain’t sure that he ain’t a vegetable.’

“‘That’s so,’ says the old beggar. ‘Well, as long as they don’t fish on
Saturday or Sunday or Monday I don’t mind.’

“Well, by Friday night we’d got all the fish worth picking up on the
lee side, and I got away on the Saturday, and promised I’d call in if I
was passing, and there was a fire on the beach,--‘You might be wanting
something, or be sick,’ I says.

“‘If I’m sick,’ he says, ‘I shan’t light a fire, for the Lord ’ll
provide.’

“Barring religion, the old devil wasn’t so very cranky, except about a
sort of fence he’d got under a _dilo_-tree. I thought it was a grave,
and went to look at it, but he come running after me with his eyes half
out of his head, and pulled me away by the arm. I suppose his woman had
had a kid that had died, and he’d got it buried there. Perhaps it’s
that that made him cranky. Well, there’s no fire on the beach, so if
he’s alive he don’t want anything.”




THE WARS OF THE FISHING-ROD.


Far up the great river there once dwelt three clans in brotherly love,
planting on the same lands, and giving their women to one another in
marriage. Brothers in arms they were, and staunch allies whenever the
hordes of Tholo made a descent upon them; nor could the elders remember
any interruption in their friendship except once, when the pigs of
Valekau destroyed the yam-gardens of Rara, and their owners would make
no reparation. But this was long ago, and the tradition had become
misty.

Rara stood upon a high bluff on a bend of the river, precipitous
on three sides, and protected on the fourth by two ditches and an
earthwork. Valekau, sprung from the same ancestors and worshipping
the same gods, was built upon a lower hill a mile away, and set back
from the river-bank. It needed no protection but a war-fence on the
crest of the hill, and the gate was an arch formed by the roots of a
great banian-tree, so narrow that one warrior only could pass it at a
time. Tovutovu lay in the plain on the other side of the river. Five
ditches encircled it, having war-fences between each, and the gates
were cunningly devised, so that he who would enter must encompass the
town three times between the palisades before he could pass all the
gates, for none was opposite to the other. Tovutovu had not the same
gods as Rara, having descended later from the mountains to the plain.
But in peace-time they planted together, and the women fished _kais_ in
the common fishing-ground; and when the _lali_ beat for war, the young
men painted their faces and lay in ambush together, and the women and
children hid together in the forest behind Rara.

Now strange things began to be brought up the river. First there
were rumours of foreigners who came up from the ocean in canoes like
islands for bigness. This, they thought, was but another lie of their
enemies, the coast-people. Next Seru of Rara brought a thing more solid
than rumour--an adze made of a hard substance that cut deep into the
toughest wood which the stone adze only chipped. The man who gave it
in Kasava told him that it was the least of the strange things the
foreigners had brought, and that the foreigners had white skins like
lepers, and covered them up with bark-cloth, being ashamed to show
aught but their faces because of the colour. Also their noses were as
long as bananas, and they spoke with women’s voices.

Thenceforward the young men made many journeys down the river as far as
they dared, and brought back with them other strange things--cloth not
made from bark, but of a substance that could be washed without injury,
and iron of many shapes that could be beaten out between two stones
into adze-blades; and one of them brought back a tale of a devil the
foreigners had which thundered, and every time it thundered a man fell
dead, pierced through the body with an unseen spear. There was much
striving between the clans to possess these strange things, and they
were begged of the young men, and begged again of him to whom they were
given, so that they passed from one to another until each of the elders
had called them his. But they all yearned to possess the devil of the
foreigners that thundered, and the young men made many journeys hoping
to possess one, and returned with many things, but always without this
devil that they wanted. And one day when the youths of Rara returned
from down the river, the young man Bativundi came running to the elders
of Valekau as they sat at sunset in the great _bure_.

“The youths of Rara have returned from below, and it is said that they
have brought with them a wonderful thing with which the foreigners take
fish. It is a stick that grows long at will, as a bamboo shoots up from
the ground; and from the top there comes a string, having at the end a
fly with a hook hidden in its belly. This is the way of it. A man holds
the stick in his hand and waves it, and the stick, being pliable, makes
the fly dance upon the water; and whether it be magic, or whether the
fish be befooled, I know not, yet they bite the fly and are pierced
with the hook, and so drawn to land. No such thing has been seen in our
land, for one man between sunrise and mid-day can take more fish than
all Valekau can eat.”

“_Kombo!_” cried the elders. “Let us send an embassy to Rara to beg
this stick that we may eat fish and live.”

So on the morrow Nkio took a root of _yangona_ in his hand and went to
Rara, saying, “I am come to beg the stick with which fish are taken.
It is the word of the chiefs of Valekau, your relations, that I beg
this stick.”

Now the men of Rara had touched the _yangona_-root, and clapped their
hands, and they sat silent as if not knowing what answer to make.
But at last one of them said, “Be not angry, Nkio, but return to
Valekau, saying, ‘We are a poor land, and it is difficult to grant your
request.’” So Nkio returned and spoke as he had been bidden.

Valekau sat in council, and their hearts were grieved. Did Rara weigh
their friendship so lightly that they wantonly refused a gift begged
with the proper ceremonies? It was a gross insult. Rara esteemed them
as slaves, things of no account, to be flouted at will; but they should
know that a long peace does not blunt the spears nor paralyse the arms
of Valekau. The bodies of their youths were not gross with slothful
ease, nor the limbs of their elders stiff with wallowing on the mats.
This insult must be paid for! But how? Then spoke Bonawai, the Odysseus
of the tribe, versed in all the wiles and craft that bring a people to
greatness--_Bonawai na dau vere_, Bonawai the schemer.

“Hearken!” he said, contracting his brows until his wicked eyes gleamed
like fire-sticks. “Rara is a stronghold set upon a hill, and the young
men within it are as the _kai_-shells about the cooking-places for
multitude, and they have Wanganivanua and Tumbanasolo, both terrible in
war. If a man would climb the hill on this side, surely his body would
be like a _balawa_-tree at the cross-roads, at which the boys throw
their reeds, so thick would it be stuck with spears; and if we lie in
ambush for their women when they dig the yams, and bring the bodies
home to be baked, we should not triumph long, for they would come upon
us at first cock-crow, and if they feared to scale the war-fence, they
would bind balls of lighted _masi_ to their spear-heads and throw
them into the thatch to windward, and while we were scurrying about
foolishly, like ants whose nest the digging-stick has probed, striving
to extinguish the fire, they would leap the fence and club us in the
darkness from behind. For I know the men of Rara how crafty and subtle
they are in wiles of war; yet there is none among them so crafty as
I. Now listen! Across the river are the men of Tovutovu. Let us send
to them, saying, ‘Come! You are our brothers. In Rara there is much
plunder, and women fair to look upon, and the men are puffed up with
pride,--living as they do in so strong a fortress,--and call you and us
their slaves. They have, besides, a certain stick--a magic contrivance
of the foreigners--that takes fish until a man wearies of holding it.
This we begged of them that we might give it to you, but they, knowing
our intention, refused. Therefore, come! Let us wipe them out, and
we will divide the spoil and the dead bodies and the slave-women as
becomes chiefs.’ And if it happen that Rara be too strong for us, and
we be repulsed, then we will send whales’ teeth to them, saying, ‘The
men of Tovutovu seduced us, but if ye will, we will join you and cross
the river and club these strangers of Tovutovu, dividing the spoil and
the dead bodies as becomes chiefs.’ These are my words to you!”

And the elders cried, “_Vinaka, Vinaka!_” and clapped their hands.

Then an embassy was chosen,--Mawi, the left-handed, and Waleka, the
orator,--and they took a whale’s tooth and crossed over to Tovutovu in
the night, and spoke the words of Bonawai as they had been bidden. And
the elders of Tovutovu took the whale’s tooth in token that they would
do the behest of which it was an emblem; and the young men prepared
black paint for their faces, and streamers of smoked _masi_ for their
elbows, and turbans, and dyed rushes for leg-ornaments, and arrayed
themselves for war. And they came out into the square in the evening
before the elders and the women, and boasted, looking very terrible
with their weapons. And one ran forward and smote the earth thrice
with his club, so that it trembled, and he cried, “Fear not, aged men,
this club is your shield!” And another took his place, and gnashed his
teeth, crying, “My name is ‘Man-eater.’ The corpses of Rara are my
food!” And another cried, “My arms rest only when I am clubbing!” And
another, “Lead me on, for I bark for human flesh!”

So they became exceeding bold with their boasting, each vying with
the other, and the maidens saw their valour and admired them, and the
elders laughed, crying, “Well done!” And towards evening the words of
Bonawai came to them, bidding them cross over under cover of the night
and attack Rara from the front at first cock-crow, for Valekau would
yield them the place of honour, and themselves attack from the forest.
So when evening was come they crossed the river at the bend where the
bananas are, and came out into the yam-gardens. Here two old women
of Rara were carrying home loads of firewood on their backs, fearing
nothing, for it was peace-time; but when they saw the blackened faces
of the warriors and the weapons they shrieked loudly, and threw down
their burdens to run towards Rara. But the army of Tovutovu set upon
them, and Rasolo, being swiftest of foot, reached them first, and
slew them with his throwing-club as they lay upon the ground crying
for mercy, and shielding their heads with their hands. Then they went
to Valekau to wait until the moon set. And about midnight the men of
Valekau left them and climbed into the forest, so as to descend upon
Rara from behind, and intercept the fugitives, saying, “Let us attack
just before the birds awake, for then is sleep heaviest upon men.”

[Illustration: “_Rasolo, being swiftest of foot, reached them first,
and slew them with his throwing-club._”]

So before the first cock crowed the men of Tovutovu crept up the hill
from all sides, and the army of Valekau crawled down the ridge in the
forest to attack the war-fence at the back of the fortress; but ere
they reached it a green parrot heard them, and flew shrieking to its
mates, “Awake, awake!” and a man of Rara, who chanced to be without,
said within himself, “A green parrot never cries save when alarmed by
men, and men are not abroad at this hour save for some evil,” so he
cried to his fellows in the great _bure_, “There is war! Make ready!”
And they, suddenly awakened, snatched every man a weapon, and ran
hither and thither in the darkness, not knowing what they did. And the
women shrieked, and the children wailed, and there was a great uproar.
And when the men of Valekau heard it they leapt into the ditch, caring
nothing for the sharp stakes, and tore down the war-fence, and thrust
fire-sticks into the thatch of the houses, and the wind from the forest
fanned the glow into a flame, and the thatch was ignited so that it
became as light as day. The men of Rara stopped not to strike at them,
but fled down the hill towards the river like a mountain torrent after
rain; and as the torrent sweeps away the dead wood that has choked its
bed, so they bore down the army of Tovutovu before them, who, thinking
themselves attacked, struck at them and fled, leaving the way clear.
And so eager were the men of Valekau for plunder, that not one pursued,
and all escaped but some women and children who knew not whither to
flee. So Rara was burned, and their yam-gardens destroyed, and the
army of Valekau carried away the plunder and the dead bodies, and
shared them with Tovutovu as became chiefs. But though they searched
diligently, yet they did not find the cause of the war--the stick
with which fish are taken; and they sent to Tovotovu, saying, “If we
had found it, it should have been your portion; but the Kai Rara are
crafty, and must have buried it. Yet we send you bodies for the oven.”
Thus was Rara wiped out, and Valekau and Tovutovu divided the spoil.

Now the people of Rara fled into the forest and dwelt there many
days, eating wild yams, and seeking a place to flee to. And they
sent messengers down the river to the chiefs of Korokula asking for
protection, and leave to settle on their lands. And when the messengers
returned they removed thither and built houses at Lawai, a little below
Korokula, and their young men worked for Korokula, planting yams and
bananas, and taking food in return until their own should be ripe. But
the chiefs of Korokula oppressed them, saying, “These are fugitives.
Are they not our slaves to do as we will with?” And they killed their
pigs, and took their women as it pleased them. And the men of Rara
murmured, but endured, not knowing whither to flee. But at last, on a
certain day, a chief of Korokula was thirsty, and had no _yangona_,
and he said to his young men, “I have seen a great root growing on
the house foundation of Dongai of Rara. Go and tear it up, and chew
it here before me that we may drink.” And the men of Rara said among
themselves, “They have killed our pigs, and taken our women, and we
bore it. Now they tear up our _yangona_. How can this be endured? Yet
we are not strong enough to set upon them, for they are more numerous
than we. Let us now send an atonement to Valekau, and ask for peace to
rebuild our houses upon our own earth and upon the foundations of our
ancestors.” So they took whales’ teeth, and sent them by the hand of
a herald to Valekau. And when the elders of Valekau doubted whether
they should take them, the crafty Bonawai counselled them, saying,
“There is now peace, but we are few in number. What if the tribes above
descend upon us? How shall we alone resist them? Let Rara return, for
in war they will help us against our enemies, and in peace they will
fear us and do our bidding. Of this the whales’ teeth are a token.” So
they accepted the atonement, and the fugitives returned, and rebuilt
their houses upon their own earth and upon the foundations of their
ancestors. And Valekau made a great feast for them, and presented it
with all the proper ceremonies in token that the past was forgotten.

Now, after many months, when the yams were ripe again, the men of Rara
began to speak among themselves of how they might best repay the debt
they owed to Valekau; and the elder, Dongai, counselled them, saying,
“This Valekau is puffed up with pride, and all men hate them. It was
but yesterday that I heard Tabuanisoro of Tovutovu say that his people
were weary of their doings. Of ourselves we are too few to repay them,
but if Tovutovu were our allies---- Let us therefore make a feast for
them, and try them.” So they made a feast, and challenged Tovutovu to
play at _tinka_ with them. And the young men of Tovutovu brought their
_ulutoa_[3] to the _tinka_-ground and were victorious. And in the
evening, when the elders were drinking _yangona_ in the great _bure_,
Dongai spoke a parable to them. “The blue heron saw the rat eating fish
that the tide had left, and he asked for it; but the rat said, ‘The
gods sent this fish for me and mine, and they have given thee a long
beak wherewith to catch fish in the pools where I cannot go.’ Then the
blue heron was angry and spoke to the crab, saying, ‘This fellow is
become a fish-eater and takes our food. Come, let us drive him out, and
thy portion shall be the hole that he has made.’ So they came upon the
rat in the night-time, and the crab nipped his tail and he fled. But
the crab did not have his hole, for the blue heron took it. And he was
puffed up with pride, and flapped his wings, and said to the crab, ‘My
legs are longer than thine, therefore am I set a chief over thee. Bring
me thy fish.’ Is this a true story, chiefs of Tovutovu?”

And they said, “Yes, it is true.”

And he said, “Now hear what the crab did. The rat came back and spoke
to the crab, saying, ‘Why didst thou bite my tail? Did I refuse thee
fish? If thou hadst asked me I would have given thee all my fish. My
quarrel was with the blue heron, yet thou camest in the night and
nipped my tail; and now the blue heron oppresses us both. But he sleeps
at night. Now thou shalt go and seize him by the foot, and I will climb
upon his back, and bite his neck, and he shall not fly away because
thou shalt hold his foot between thy pincers. When he is dead we will
share the fish of all the coast between us, but thou shalt have the
greater share.’”

And for a space all looked upon the ground and picked at the mats with
their fingers. Then Tambuanisoro said, “It is a good story, and also
true!”

And on the morrow Rara and Tovutovu took the first-fruits of the yams
to Valekau as men take the first-fruits to a great chief. And they
said, “You are now our fortress and our head. These are the wretched
first-fruits of our barren gardens, for you know that we are a poor
people not meet to offer food to chiefs.” And then they piled the great
yams high in the square, and bound live pigs beside the pile, and the
men of Valekau accepted them, and their senses were dulled by the
flattery. And they made a feast for their guests, and the ovens were
opened about sunset, so they feasted until late in the night.

Then Dongai said, “It is yet day. Have you no dance? The dance is
fitting when the men are filled with pig.”

And the elders of Valekau called to their young men to make ready, and
Dongai said, “I will send our young men to the forest to get torches.”
And he sent them, saying, “Go and make torches of reeds, and bring in
secretly whatever the women have brought you from Rara.” And they went
out into the road and called softly, and the women came out of the
reeds and gave them clubs hidden in bunches of dry reeds like torches;
and the men cut reeds and made torches there and returned to the town,
having in the right hands a lighted torch, and in the left the torch
that hid their clubs. Then the men of Valekau danced before the chiefs
a war-dance with spears and clubs, the elders beating the ground with
the bamboo drums, and the chiefs of Rara and Tovutovu applauded, crying
“_Vinaka!_” many times; but Dongai said, “This is well done, but my men
know a stranger dance than this--a war-dance taught by the gods of the
old time, but now forgotten.” And Bonawai laughed and said, “_Veka._
Do your young men know things that are forgotten, and can they surpass
ours in the dance?” And Dongai said, “Who knows? Let them be tried.
Only they have left their dresses and their weapons in Rara.”

So Bonawai called to the youths of Valekau, who stood panting and
sweating behind the torches: “Take ye the torches, and give your clubs
to these gods of Rara who can dance better than ye.” And the men of
Rara took the clubs, and squatted four deep with the weapons poised,
while the elders beat the drums and chanted. And the men of Valekau
derided them, for their faces were not blacked for dancing.

Now the men of Ram had given their spare torches to the men of
Tovutovu, and as they stood in the shadows behind the torches they
stripped the reeds from the clubs and held them behind their backs. And
suddenly the dancers rose with a great shout, and rushed forward with
brandished clubs, making the earth tremble. Then they retreated, and
again rushed forward, spreading in a line facing the elders of Valekau
as they sat under the cocoa-nut palms, and as they whirled their clubs
in the dance the leader cried “_Ravu!_” (strike), and they struck, but
not in the air, for every man struck the head of the man before him.
And the men of Tovutovu struck at the torchbearers from behind, and the
rest fled, crying, “Treachery!” But when they reached the upper gate
the men of Rara stood there, and cried, “Payment!” and when they would
escape by the lower gate they found the men of Tovutovu there also,
and in their madness they tore down the war-fence and leaped into the
ditch, where many were impaled on the sharp stakes they themselves had
set up. And the victors fired the houses, and ran hither and thither
clubbing all they met; and had it not been for the darkness surely
none would have escaped, for the men of Rara pitied none save a few
women they took alive for slaves, but ran about crying “Bring torches!”
and slaying. So that night was called _Mai-na-cina_ (bring torches),
because of the cry of Rara as they were slaying. Thus was Valekau wiped
out, and Rara and Tovutovu divided the spoil.

Now the men of Valekau fled to the forest, and they counted those who
were missing, and mourned over them. And Bonawai said, “This has been a
grievous night, and there must be payment for it, but not now, for many
brave warriors are fallen, and many of our _katikati_,[4] therefore are
we become as helpless as the straws whirled onward by a swift current.
Let us flee to the caves, and dwell there until our way be plain.” So
they dwelt many months in the caves, eating wild yams and bush-pigs.

And after many months the chiefs of Rara, whose mothers were Valekau
women, said, “Let our vasu return, for it is a shame to us that our
mothers’ folk should be rooting in the forest like wild boars. Also
they are few, and cannot harm us.” And the chiefs of Tovutovu agreed.
So messengers were sent to the caves, saying, “Your _vasu_ bid you
return and fear not.”

So they returned and built houses upon their own earth and upon
the foundations of their ancestors, only they did not repair their
war-fences. And they planted yams, and dug them, and planted them
again, and still there was peace; but Bonawai pondered deeply in those
days how the payment might be accomplished.

Now they took their first-fruits to Rara in token of submission, and
Bonawai presented them and said, “We are poor. All our chiefs are gone,
and only we, the low-born, remain to bring this poor offering to you,
our elder brothers. Payment has been made as is right; for between
brothers ill-will is buried when payment has been made, and alliances
are renewed for war against the stranger. But my words are too long
already--_Mana-e-dina!_”

And the men of Rara answered, “_Va-arewa-ia-ē_,” and clapped their
hands.

And that night Vasualevu of Rara, whose mother was a Valekau woman,
spoke to his _vasu_, and asked whether Bonawai’s words were double.
And they said, “Yes. We had a quarrel with you about a certain stick
with which fish are taken--a magic contrivance of the foreigners--and
we burned your fortress, and you in turn burned ours. Thus there was
payment as is fitting between brothers. But with these low-born of
Tovutovu we had no quarrel, neither had ye, yet they burned both your
town and ours, and baked the bodies of your relations, and even now
they feed the pigs they took from Rara and Valekau. All this they did
though they are not our brothers, but strangers. Shall not payment be
taken for all these things?”

And Vasualevu told the elders of Rara that night as they lay in the
great _bure_, and Dongai said, “Are the words true or false? Surely
they are true! What root of quarrel had we with this Tovutovu that
they clubbed our women and burned our fortress? But for them we should
not have been fugitives, oppressed of Korokula, for Valekau dared not
to fight us alone. Even now, perhaps, they laugh at us in Tovutovu,
and grow fat upon our pigs. Shall not payment be taken for all these
things?”

And the elders said, “It is true. Let us send to Bonawai, the crafty,
to devise a plan.”

So they sent a messenger to Valekau, and he said, “Go, tell the chiefs
of Rara that I have seen their great _bure_. It is ruinous, for the
king-post is rotten. Let Tovutovu cut them a new post.” Now this was
true, for when the _bure_ was burned the king-post was not consumed,
and they rebuilt the house, using the old post.

So the chiefs of Rara sent to Tovutovu, saying, “Help us to rebuild our
great _bure_, for the post is rotten. We have seen a _vesi_-tree seven
fathoms long, and of great girth, which two men with outstretched arms
cannot encompass. Let this be your work, for you are more numerous than
we.”

And they said, “It is well.”

And every day the young men cut reeds and bamboos for the house in the
plain across the river by Tovutovu, and cried to the people weeding
their yams, “Our task is near finished; only the king-post is wanting.”

So the Tovutovu chiefs took the young men up the river to the great
_vesi_-tree, and lit a fire about it to burn up the sap, and cut it
down with their adzes. Then they lopped off the branches, and cut a
hole in the butt of the tree, and took vines as thick as a man’s thigh
and passed them through the hole, and dragged the tree inch by inch
on rollers till they got it into the river. And they made rafts of
bamboo, and bound them to the sides of the tree to make it lighter.
And when night came on they camped on the river-bank, where they could
hear the water swishing past the tree. And they sent a messenger to
Rara, saying, “The tree is fallen!” This was for a sign to them to make
ready for the feast, according to custom. And the messenger returned
and said, “Drag the post to Vatuloaloa, where the river widens, and no
farther; there we will make a feast, and bring the post to Rara on the
morrow.”

So they toiled all the next day, dragging the post down the river, for
there had been no rain, and the water was very shallow. And when they
drew near Vatuloaloa they put on leaf girdles and blue conch-shells and
chanted--


     “E-mbia wanga é-mbi,
     E-dua thombo, ié!”


and each time they cried _ié!_ they hauled on the vine-rope with all
their strength, and the great tree moved on a step. And now they had
come to a place where the river was hemmed in with high cliffs, and
the bed was obstructed by great boulders that had fallen from above.
They could see the black rocks of Vatuloaloa below them. And there was
a shout from the cliffs above, and when they looked up they saw the
men of Rara standing on the edge, but instead of food-baskets they
had spears and war-fans in their hands, and their faces were painted.
And there came a shout from the cliff toward Tovutovu, and they looked
and saw the men of Valekau standing prepared for battle. And one said,
“What does Valekau here prepared for battle? Surely this is treachery!”
So they threw down the Vine-rope and shouted, “How is it?” And the
men of Valekau answered, “You shall be repaid to-day!” And they threw
great stones down on them as they stood waist-deep in the angry water,
and the men of Tovutovu fled, some up-stream and some down, splashing
the water high above them; but when they reached the low bank there
were armed men guarding them. Thus were they like a wild boar at bay
encircled by barking dogs. And in their madness they took stones from
the river-bed, and ran at the men of Valekau; but many were slain, and
those who escaped lay all day in the thick rushes, and saw a great
smoke rising from the plain where Tovutovu was, and knew that the doom
of their wives and children was accomplished. And when night was come
they crept from their hiding-places, and fled into the forest until the
remnant of them was gathered together there. Thus was Tovutovu wiped
out, and Rara and Valekau divided the spoil.

And the remnant of them went up the river to Uthadamu, and dwelt there
many months. But their hearts yearned after their own land. So when
the yams were ripe they sent an embassy to Rara saying, “We are few
in number and in pitiable plight. We pray you, let us return again
to our own earth and the foundations of our ancestors, that we may
breathe again.” And the messenger returned, and said, “They accepted
the whales’ teeth and said, ‘It is well. Return.’” So they went back,
and built houses on their old foundations, and sent to Rara saying,
“Appoint a day when we shall bring you offerings of atonement.”

And the elders of Rara spoke to the chiefs of Valekau, “Are we not
weary of war? Our young men thirst only for battle, and neglect the
food-plantations, so there is scarcity. It was not so when we were
young. Now therefore let us lay war aside, and make peace.”

So they appointed a day when they should all meet together and take
counsel. And on the appointed day the men of Tovutovu brought whales’
teeth and rolls of bark-cloth, and presented them to the chiefs of
Rara and Valekau as an offering of atonement. And Dongai said, “We
are met to-day to make peace, for we are all weary of war. Many brave
warriors are dead, and the land is empty. As for us of Rara, the war
did not come from us. We only repaid that which was done to us. To what
end has it been, this fighting between brothers?”

Then Bonawai of Valekau spoke. “It is true, O chiefs of Rara, that the
war has been an evil one, for all our fortresses have been burned, and
the land is empty. But neither did the war begin with us. True it is
that the tree grows from the root, but there would be no root unless a
seed had first been sown. Chiefly do I blame you, chiefs of Rara, for
you were the cause of these wars. Have you forgotten that stick with
which fish are taken--a magic contrivance of the foreigners--by which
a man could stand and take fish until his arms fell to his sides from
weariness? This we sent to beg of you, and you churlishly refused.”

The men of Rara bowed their heads, and picked at the ground. Then
Dongai spoke: “O chiefs of Valekau, it is true that ye sent to beg this
stick, but we hungered for fish, and--how could we give it, not having
yet seen its magic?--and--and----”

“And ye knew not how to use it,” said Vasualevu.

“Then,” said Nkio, the herald, “if it be peace show us now this magic
stick, for we know that ye have it hidden.”

“We cannot show it to you.”

“Why?”

“We dare not, lest the gods of the foreigners be angry.”

“This is foolishness,” muttered the elders of Valekau. “What peace is
this when we ask and are refused? We pray you, show us the stick.”

“Be not angry, O chiefs of Valekau, but in truth we know not where it
is.”

Then the anger of Valekau was roused, and they said, “Ye are befooling
us! Have ye forgotten how ye refused us before?” And they began to go
out from the house.

Then Koronumbu of Rara spoke. “Why do ye hide the truth in doubtful
sayings? Know then, chiefs of Valekau, that we never had this stick ye
speak of, but when ye sent to beg it of us shame came upon us that we
had it not, and we could not tell you, fearing that ye would despise
us.”

There was silence for a space, and the elders of Rara sat with bowed
heads. Then Bonawai, the crafty, spoke, “See that ye tell no one, for
if the coast people hear this tale how shall we endure their ridicule
when they ask us, ‘Why went ye up against Rara? Did ye hunger for
fish?’ Therefore hide this thing, and let no one know it.”

FOOTNOTES:

[3] A reed-lance tipped with ironwood (_toa_) with which the game of
_tinka_ is played.

[4] Women and children--non-combatants.




THE FIRST COLONIST.


This is a true story, or at least it is as true as any other that
depends for its details upon tradition. It is the story of a man who
had an opportunity and used it; who, being but a shipwrecked sailor,
knew how to make himself feared and respected by the arrogant chiefs
who had him at their mercy; who tasted the sweets of conquest and
political power; and who brought about, albeit indirectly, the cession
of Fiji to England. Many have the dry bones of the story--how the
Swede, Charles Savage, a shipwrecked sailor or runaway convict, armed
with the only musket in the islands, raised Bau from the position of
a second-rate native tribe to be mistress of the greater part of the
group; and how after a few years of violence and bloodshed he was
killed and eaten by the people of Wailea who thus avenged hundreds
of their countrymen whom Savage had helped to bring to the ovens of
Bau. To clothe these dry bones with living flesh we must turn to
native tradition,--those curious records, often silent as to great
events, while preserving the most trivial details--often indifferent to
sequence, always disdainful of chronology.

Fiji is linked to the rest of the Pacific by that romantic history,
stranger and more absorbing than any fiction, which ended in the
tragedy and the pastoral comedy of Pitcairn Island; for Lieutenant
Hayward, who was despatched from Tonga in a native canoe by Captain
Edwardes of the Pandora to search for the missing mutineers of the
Bounty, was the first white man of whose landing in Fiji we have any
authentic record. His visit was forgotten by the natives in the horror
of the great pestilence, the _Lila balavu_, or wasting sickness, the
first-fruits of their intercourse with the superior race. “From that
time,” says an epic of the day, “our villages began to be empty of
men, but in the time before the coming of the sickness every village
was so crowded that there was no space to see the ground between the
men, so crowded were they.” From this pestilence dated the custom
of strangling those sick of a lingering illness lest they should, in
the malignity of misery, spit upon the food and lie upon the mats of
the healthy, and thus make them companions in their suffering. No
wasting sickness was like the great _Lila_, for men and women lay till
the bark-clothes rotted from their bodies, and their heads seemed in
comparison to be larger than food-baskets; and they were so feeble that
they lacked the strength to pull down a sugar-cane to moisten their
parched throats unless four crawled out to lend their strength to the
task.

Twelve years passed. The places of the dead were filled. The crops and
animals wasted in the funeral feasts were again abundant, when the men
of the eastern isles saw white men for the second time. On a night
in the year 1803 there was a great storm from the east. When morning
broke and the men of Oneata looked towards the dawn, they saw a strange
sight. On the islet Loa, that marks the great reef Bukatatanoa, red
streamers were waving in the wind. Strange beings, too, were moving on
the islet--spirits without doubt. There were visitors in Oneata, men of
Levuka in the island of Lakeba, offshoots in past time from distant
Bau, holding special privileges as ambassadors who linked the eastern
with the western islands. Two of these, bolder and more sophisticated
than the natives of the place, launched a light canoe and paddled
cautiously towards Loa. They gazed from afar, resting on their paddles,
and returned with this report: “Though they resemble men, yet they
are spirits, for their ears are bound up with scarlet, and they bite
burning wood.” Then the elders of Oneata took much counsel together,
wishing yet fearing to approach the spirits that were on Loa; but at
last they bade the young men launch the twin canoe Taiwalata, and
sailed for Loa. And as they drew near, the strange spirits beckoned
to them, until at last they drifted to the shore and took them into
the canoe to carry them to Oneata. But one of them they proved to be
mortal as themselves, for he was buried on Loa, being dead, whether of
violence or disease will never now be known. Here the traditions become
confused. There were muskets and ammunition in the wrecked ship, but
the men of Oneata knew nothing of their uses, else had the history of
Fiji perhaps been different. They hid the casks of powder to be used as
pigment for the face, and the ramrods to be ornaments for the hair.
And one of them, says the tradition, smeared the wet pigment over
hair and all, and when it would not dry as charcoal did, but lay cold
and heavy in the hair, he made a great fire in the house and stooped
his head to the blaze to dry the matted locks! None knew what befell.
There was a sudden flash, very bright and hot, and a tongue of flame
leaped from the head and licked the wall, and the chief sprang into the
rara with a great cry, for his hair was gone, and the skull was more
naked than on the day when he was born. It was, they said, the work of
spirits; and they used the black powder no more.

The strangers had scarce landed when a second great pestilence broke
out. There is pathos in the fragmentary saga of the time which has been
handed down to us--


     “The great sickness sits aloft,
     Their voices sound hoarsely,
     They fall and lie helpless and pitiable,
     Our god Dengei is put to shame,
     Our own sicknesses have been thrust aside,
     The strangling-cord is a noble thing,
     They fall prone; they fall with the sap still in them.

       *       *       *       *       *       *       *

     A lethargy has seized upon the chiefs,
     How terrible is the sickness!
     We do not live; we do not die,
     Our bodies ache; our heads ache,
     Many die, a few live on,
     The strangling-cord brings death to many,
     The _malo_ round their bellies rots away,
     Our women groan in their despair,
     The _liku_ knotted round them they do not loose,
     Hark to the creak of the strangling-cords,
     The spirits flow away like running water, _ra tau e_.”


Many of the foreigners never left Oneata alive. A doubtful tradition
ascribes their death to the pestilence; a more detailed says that they
were slain by the men of Levuka. As the natives believed them to be the
cause of the sickness, we may accept the more tragic of the two.

It was a year of terror. Here is a fragment of another poem of the same
time:--


     “Sleeping in the night I suddenly awake,
     The voice of the pestilence is borne to me, _uetau_,
     I go out and wander abroad, _uetau_,
     It is near the breaking of the dawn, _uetau_,
     Behold a forked star, _uetau_,
     We whistle with astonishment as we gaze at it, _uetau_,
     What can it portend? _uetau_,
     Does it presage the doom of the chiefs? _e e_.”


From contemporary traditions we gather that the comet had three tails,
the centre tail being coloured and the two outer white; that it rose
just before daybreak, and that it was visible for thirty-seven nights
in succession. Was this the comet of 1803, or Donati’s? Here, as in
all ages and countries, the comet was believed to be an omen of coming
evil--not the ravages of the unknown plague, but the death of some
great chief. In like manner the comet of 1843 presaged the fall of
Suva, and that of 1881 the death of King Cakobau.

Bau was now rising into fame. Her people, like their neighbours of the
Rewa delta, had swept down from the sources of the Rewa, the cradle
of the race, had for a time held a precarious footing among the older
tribes by dint of constant fighting, and had at last fought and schemed
their way to independence. Opposite to their stronghold Kubuna lay
the tiny island of Bau, protected from a land attack by two miles of
shallow sea.

Bau, or Butoni as it was then called, was occupied by the chiefs’
fishermen, who bartered their fish for the produce of the plantations
on the mainland. But the security of their island made them insolent,
and, to punish them, the chiefs resolved to attack and occupy their
village. The incursion was made about the year 1760, and the fishermen
were banished from the place for a time. With the help of their
dependants the chiefs scarped away the side of the hills and reclaimed
land from the shallow sea, facing it with slabs of stone. Thenceforth
Butoni was known as Bau, the place of chiefs.

Secure in their island stronghold, the chiefs of Bau soon forgot
their common origin with the poor relations they had left behind on
the mainland to cultivate the plantations. The pursuit of arms has in
every age conferred aristocracy, while the cultivation of the food on
which warriors and cultivators alike exist has ever tended to sink men
to serfdom. Under Banuve, the son of Durucoko, Bau had begun to make
her power felt. Banuve had a definite policy; he tolerated no rivals.
When the chief of Cautata presumed on his relationship to Bau by his
mother, no warning was given him. He was attacked in the night, and his
stronghold of Oloi burned. Yet this harsh discipline failed to satisfy
his jealous kinsman. Intrenchments could be rebuilt, and half-beaten
tribes are doubly dangerous. Eight times was Cautata rebuilt, and
eight times was it reduced to ashes; nor was there peace until earth
had been brought as a _soro_, and Cautata had acknowledged herself to
be a hewer of wood and a drawer of water for Bau. But Banuve did not
often risk open battle when there were so many who would fight for
fighting’s sake. In his day Bau was first known as the nest in which
plots were hatched, because Bau knew that the whale’s tooth proffered
to an ally in secret was a surer weapon than the club. When the comet
threw its glare over Bau, presaging evil, there were two States against
whom Banuve’s plots could not prevail. Seven miles north of the little
island was Verata, an intrenched fort in a deep bay that faces the
island of Viwa. Till Bau was colonised, Verata drew tribute from the
coast as far as Buretu, and the struggle for the mastery was ever
impending. To the southward was Dravo allied with Nakelo, too strong to
be yet attempted.

Such was the position of Bau when the pestilence reached it, by means,
it is said, of a canoe from Ovalau. Cholera, dysentery, or whatever it
may have been, it struck chief and commoner alike. “Their limbs became
light, and when they would walk they reeled and fell, and where they
fell they lay; nor was there any to tend them, for all were stricken
alike. Then did war cease, for the strong warriors were stricken and
withered like the _daiga_ that droops in the evening. They were as
men bereft of sense, for those who had strength launched the canoes
and sailed away, and the sick died more swiftly when there was none
left to bring them food: their bodies rotted in the houses, or were
devoured by the hogs. Yet the living could not escape by flight, for
the pestilence, borne on the wind that filled their sails, overtook
them even in the place whither they fled.... None can tell the terror
and the pity of that time.”

From Bau, however, they did not attempt to escape, for the sickness
was raging on the mainland opposite to them, and beyond the mountains
there were none but enemies. They stayed and sickened and died, and
the last to die was Banuve, surnamed Sevuniqele (“the first-fruits”),
their Vunivalu. And his spirit went and stood on the bank of the
swift stream at Lelele, and Cema answered his cry, and brought to him
the vesi canoe on which chiefs only may embark. And he crossed the
eel-bridge and made ready his stone to throw at the great pandanus
by which the love of wives is proved. And his stone went true to the
mark. So he rested, knowing that his wives must soon follow him to
bear him company in the world of spirits. Nor did he wait in vain, for
on that very day four of his wives were strangled and buried with him
in the same tomb. Henceforth he was not Banuve, but Bale-i-vavalagi
(“He-who-fell-by-the-foreign-pestilence”). The doom of the forked star
had fallen.

Banuve’s eldest son, Ra Matenikutu (“The lice-killer”), succeeded
naturally to the office of Vunivalu; but the rites of confirmation
could not be performed until the arrival of the men of Levuka, whose
peculiar province it is to conduct the ceremony. The traditions of
Oneata say that they took with them to Bau on this occasion one of the
white men; but the historians of Bau affirm that they came bringing
with them no strangers, but a canvas house and the first foreign
possessions seen by the Bauans.

We shall never know now what became of the red-capped sailors cast upon
the reef at the ends of the earth in that stormy night of 1803. Perhaps
they perished of the disease they brought with them; perhaps, like
Gordon in the New Hebrides, they were sacrificed to the Manes of those
whose death they had unwittingly brought about. Their fate is not even
one of the thousand mysteries of the sea which men would fain solve.

On the day fixed for the rite there was another portent. The sky was
cloudless at high noon, when the sun suddenly paled and turned to the
colour of blood. The air grew dark, the birds settled on the trees
to roost, and the stars came out. There was silence among the people
sitting before the spirit _bure_, Vatanitawake--the silence of a great
fear. Then the god entered into one of the priests, and he screamed
prophecies in the red darkness, foretelling war and the greatness of
Matenikutu, the son of Bale-i-vavalagi, and crying that the face of the
sun was red with the blood that he should shed.

This dramatic scene was no invention of the elders of Bau, for the
tradition of the eclipse is to be found in Rewa, in Nakelo, and
in Dawasamu, and in every case the day is fixed as the day of the
confirmation of Ra Matenikutu. He saw many strange sights during his
stormy reign, but assuredly none more weird and terrible than this
scene in the lurid twilight, when he was declared Vunivalu.

In that year there were other strange omens, foretelling the change of
the old order. The heavens rained lumps of ice, that broke down the
yam-vines and the stalks of the taro; and the people, touching them,
said that burning stars had fallen from heaven. There followed a great
storm. For many days the rain fell without ceasing, and the waters
rose. The basin of the Rewa river, draining half the island, was swept
with a torrent greater than any that have been seen before or since,
and the waters rose over the housetops, sweeping seawards in a roaring
muddy flood. The strong fled to the hills and saved their lives; the
sick and the aged were swept out to sea. When the waters subsided, the
face of the country was changed, for the flood had covered the land and
the reefs with a great layer of black earth. Thus were the flats of
Burebasaga raised above the reach of the water, and thus was the land
purged of the pestilence.

And now the new order was at hand. In 1808 the American brig Eliza,
with 40,000 dollars from the River Plate, was wrecked on the reef of
Nairai Island. The crew were allowed to live. Some of them made their
way in the ship’s boats to another American vessel that chanced to
be lying at Bua Bay, ninety miles distant; five others, two of them
Chinamen, were carried by the natives to Verata; one, named Charles
Savage, made his way to Bau in a canoe that chanced to be sailing
thither. The hull was looted by the natives, who used the silver
dollars--_lavo_ they call them still, from their resemblance to the
bean of that name--as playthings to be skimmed along the shallow water,
or buried with the posts of a new house. Eighty years have passed,
and though many sailors have deserted their ships with the purpose of
enriching themselves from this lost treasure, and the natives have long
ago learned the value of money, these records of the wreck are still
occasionally found.

As soon as Savage reached Bau he besought Ra Matenikutu to send him to
Nairai to search for a thing he wanted from the wreck, and when this
was not granted he promised that if the thing were brought to him he
would make Bau pre-eminent above all her enemies, even over Rewa and
Verata. The thing they were to look for was like a _ngata_ club, but
heavier, and they must also find a black powder such as men use to
paint their faces for war. The messengers searched diligently. They
found the black powder, but none knew this thing of which the White man
spoke. But at the last, when they were wearied with the search, one
remembered that a _ngata_ club of a strange pattern had been built
into a yam-house set up to hold the crop that was but just dug. There
they found it, as the ridge-pole of the yam-shed, the weapon that
should enable Bau to crush her rivals, and should bring even her at
last under the dominion of a stronger than she.

When they returned to Bau, Savage took the thing to his house, and shut
the doorway that no one might see. “And presently he bade Naulivou
summon all the elders of Bau to the _rara_ before the _bure_ of the
war-god Cagawalu--the same that was the untimely birth of the woman of
Batiki--and there on the seaward side he set on end the deck-plank of a
canoe; and he went with his weapon and stood before the foundation of
the _bure_. Then he cried to the elders to watch the deck-plank, and he
aimed and fired. And the people, knowing nothing of what would happen,
dashed their heads upon the ground so that the blood flowed, and they
were angry that the white man had not told them what he would do. He
did not listen to them, but only pointed to the plank that the lead
had pierced, saying that so would he slay the enemies of Bau. Then the
young men took their spears and clamoured to be led against Verata; but
Savage bade them be silent, saying that they could not prevail against
the place while there were white men like himself within the town. And
he took a piece of white _masi_, and mixed water with the powder so
as to make a black pigment, and with a reed split into many points he
painted words upon the _masi_, and put it in a gourd and fastened the
gourd to a stick.

“Then a canoe was made ready to carry him to Verata, where the other
white men were. But they could go no farther than the point of the bay
where the beach is open, for this was the frontier of Verata, and they
were enemies. Here they set up the stick with the gourd hanging to it;
and afterwards they sailed near to the town, but out of bow-shot, and
shouted to the people to go and take the gourd. Now within the gourd
were words from Savage to the white men bidding them leave Verata and
come to Bau, which, he said, was the stronger, and a land of chiefs,
where they would live unharmed.”

“On the next day these men fled to Bau in a canoe which they had taken,
and the forces were made ready to go against Verata. In the first canoe
went Savage with his musket. When they were near the town he made
them lower the sail and pole the canoe into the shallow water close
to the moat. And the warriors in the town ran up and down behind the
moat and taunted them, but their arrows fell short of the canoe. Then
Savage stood up and shot at a man standing on the bank of earth beating
the air with his club, and he fell forward into the moat. And all the
others ran to him to see his hurt, and there was silence for a moment
while they wondered, and fear gathered in their hearts. Then Savage
loaded his piece again and fired at the men as they stooped over him
that was wounded, and another fell; and panic seized the rest, and they
fled behind the war-fence. Then Savage fired many times at the fence,
and the lead passed through the banana-stumps that arrows could not
pierce, and wounded the men that stood behind; for it was not until
the bow gave place to the musket that the war-fence was made of earth.
Then the men of Verata began to flee, and Savage leaped from the canoe
and ran to tear down the fence. But as he broke through it a warrior of
Verata, who stood just within, stabbed him in the side with his spear.
The men of Bau who followed close upon him seized the man before he
could escape, and bound him, and took him to the canoes, and he was
afterwards slain at Bau and baked in the ovens. Meanwhile the warriors
from the other canoes were burning the houses and taking the spoil to
the canoes, and clubbing all who had not escaped except a few of the
women, who might serve as slaves for Bau. They took also a few of the
men as prisoners to be slain at the _bure_ of the war-god and cooked in
the ovens. Thus was the power of Verata broken.

“They carried Savage to his own house. Here he had hung a hammock of
sail-cloth between the posts, and in this he was laid, for he had lost
much blood. But when the old men came with their _losi_-sticks and
other implements to perform _cokalosi_ on his body, they found him
swinging in his hammock and swearing strange oaths with the pain of his
wound. Nor would he let them touch him, but rather cursed them when he
understood what they would do, and called for water to pour upon his
wound.

“Bau fought no more till Savage was recovered of his wound. None dared
touch his musket, for he had told them that there was magic in it that
would kill any that touched it except himself; nor did the other white
men dare to take it, for he had threatened them that if any disobeyed
him he would require his death at the hands of the chief, who would
refuse him nothing.”

When his wound was healed and he could move about the town, they
prepared to make him _koroi_ for the number of the enemy that he had
killed. In Fiji, when a man had slain another in battle, he was led to
the _bure_ with great honour and dedicated to the god; his old name was
taken from him, and a new name, with the prefix of “Koroi” (signifying
“dwelling of”), was given to him in its place. A stone’s-throw from
Bau lies the little islet of Nailusi, on which Ra Matenikutu had
built a house for his wives after it had been enlarged with stones
carried from the reef. To this islet was Savage taken by several of
the elders. There they stripped off his shirt and painted his face and
breast with black paint and turmeric, though he mocked the while at
their mummeries, protesting that he was cold. When all was ready they
embarked again in the canoe with their spears, and landed opposite
to the war-god’s _bure_, where the priests and the old men were
sitting. Here the warriors that were to be made “koroi,” taught by the
elders, poised their spears and crept slowly on the temple, dancing
the _cibi_, the death-dance. And Savage, painted and festooned like
the rest, but wearing his trousers, went with them; but he would not
dance to the chant of the old men. They planted their spears hung with
streamers against the wall of the temple, and took new spears from the
attendants. At night the feast was apportioned, and there was a great
dance that lasted till the sun was high on the next morning. And when
the dance was ended the chosen warriors brought offerings and piled
them in the _rara_, and as each approached the priests called his new
title. And after them all came Savage, bringing nothing but his musket,
and the priest cried “Koroi-na-Vunivalu,” a more honourable title
than them all. But when they were taken into the _bure_ and forbidden
to bathe or eat with their hands for the space of four days, Savage
scoffed fiercely at the priests who besought him to comply with their
customs, and broke the _tabu_, leaving the _bure_, and going to his own
home.

From this time they made Savage greater than any save the Vunivalu;
some say, indeed, that greater honours were paid to him than to Ra
Matenikutu himself. He was a chief of the tribe by adoption, not a
foreigner as the others were. Two ladies were given him to wife, the
daughters of the spiritual chief and of the Vunivalu himself, and
a great house was built for him at Muaidele, on the borders of the
fishermen’s town of Soso. We hear little of the other white men who
were living at Bau. They took wives, and ate and drank and slept, while
Savage sat in the councils of the tribe. Children were born to them,
but they were all destroyed except Maraia, the daughter of Savage by
a woman of Lomaloma--she who was afterwards married by force to the
master of the Manila ship before he was murdered by his crew. She died
in 1875.

Verata had given her submission with the basket of earth, and her
enmity was no longer to be feared. The rival of Bau now lay to the
southward. Through the system of navigable creeks in the delta of the
Rewa river there was a water highway to Rewa, interrupted only by a
narrow isthmus, over which the canoes had to be dragged. Commanding
this isthmus stood Nakelo, whose strength no enemy had broken. Nakelo
had refused to the Bau canoes the right of passing their town, and had
compelled the messengers between Bau and Rewa to make the long and
tedious journey by sea. The conquest of Nakelo would therefore be the
first step towards the sovereignty of the fertile delta. Savage took
entire command of this expedition. He ordered them to plait a litter
of sinnet large enough to hold him, and dense enough to turn arrows.
On one side a slit was left as an embrasure for the musket, but the
rest of it was arrow-proof. Then poles were fixed to it as handles,
and Savage was carried round the town of Bau to test its strength. The
force went against Nakelo by water, taking the litter in the canoes.
When they were near to the place and could see the embankment crowned
with the war-fence, Savage chose from among his followers two of the
strongest and most fearless, and ordered them to set the litter down
within bow-shot of the walls, and then to run back to their comrades,
for he would engage the enemy alone. No sooner was the litter set
down than it was stuck as full of arrows as the spines of an echinus.
But when the garrison saw that there was but one man against them and
no ambush, they were bolder, and made as if they would leave their
defences and rush down upon him. For this Savage was waiting. As they
mounted on the fence to take the better aim with their bows he fired
through the embrasure of his litter, and a chief among them fell. The
rest stood, helpless with terror, until he had loaded and fired again.
Then, as at Verata, a panic seized them, and one among them took a mat
and held it up to ward off the lead from the wounded chief as if he
would ward off arrows; but the bullets pierced this also and wounded
him who held it. Then they fled. And the warriors of Bau, who had been
waiting out of bow-shot, leaped over the fence into the town, clubbing
all they met and shouting their death-cry. So Nakelo the invincible
was burned, and many prisoners were taken to Bau, to be dashed against
the temple-stone and baked in the ovens. Savage was given of the
captive women as many as he would take, and he gave them to the other
foreigners that were in Bau. And the chief of Nakelo fled to Rewa, and
sent from thence his submission by the hand of Matainakelo, craving
leave to rebuild his village. So Ra Matenikutu took the whale’s teeth,
but ordered the men of Nakelo to dig a canal through the isthmus that
obstructed the water-way, and henceforward to suffer canoes from Bau to
pass to Rewa without hindrance, for the Queen of Rewa was a Bauan lady.
And Nakelo dug a ditch into which the water could wash at high tide,
and the swift current did the rest, making the wide channel through
which we pass to-day.

And now the power of Bau was swelled by the fame of these victories.
Broken tribes, fleeing from their enemies in Vugalei, came to Ra
Matenikutu, asking leave to settle on his waste lands in return for
the tribute they would pay him for protection. Thus did Namara become
_bati_ to Bau; for when they chanced to meet the chief at Kubuna where
they had come for salt, and he gave them a shark and a sting-ray
to eat, there was a friendly contest between two of them that were
brothers, as to which of them should be clubbed by the other as an
offering to the great chief in return for the fish; and their cousin
hearing the dispute cried, “You speak as if a man were as precious as a
banana. What is a man’s life? Let the elder be clubbed.” So the younger
clubbed him and presented his body to the chief. And when he knew what
they had done he was grieved, and bade them bury the body there and not
cook it; and he said, “I wanted no return for the fish, but ye have
shown that ye are true men. Return to your place, and bring your wives
and children, and come and settle on this land, and cultivate it, and
be my borderers, for I have need of true men.”

There is no need to tell of how Buretu and Kiuva were subdued, and
Tokatoka was driven out, until there remained only Rewa that was not
subject to Bau. Against all these Bau prevailed through Savage, who
ever led her forces with his musket. Other ships called in the group
for sandal-wood, and left deserters and discharged seamen, attracted by
the news of the dollars stored at Nairai, to swell the foreign colony
at Bau--Graham from Sydney, Mike Maccabe and Atkins discharged from the
“City of Edinburgh.” These men, and three others whose names are lost,
lived together in a house between Soso and the chief’s town, practising
every native custom except cannibalism, and far surpassing them in one
form of licence. When a ship called for a cargo of sandal-wood, they
would hire themselves out to pull the boats at a wage of £4 a-month,
to be paid in knives, tools, and beads, which clothed them with a
brief importance among the natives of Bau when they returned; but,
for the rest, the natives looked on them with scorn and fear, as men
with the manners of beasts and as breakers of the _tabu_. There came a
day when one of the tributary tribes of Bau brought a great offering
of food to the chief, Savage being absent with the army. The yams and
turtle were piled in the _rara_ opposite the dwelling of the white
men. Here it was apportioned by the chief’s _mata_; but when he called
out the names of those who were to come and take a share, he did not
cry the names of the white men. These then became very angry, and
two of them, less prudent than the others, ran into the _rara_ with
their knives and slashed at the heap of yams, trampling the food under
foot. Now the Fijians will endure any insult before this, and when
the tidings reached the town every man caught up his weapon and ran
towards Soso. But the white men were armed and ready, and as they came
on three muskets flashed out from the dark doorways and three fell. And
when they rushed on again it was the same. Many fell that day by the
muskets; but the Bauans knew them to be but three, and their thirst for
the blood of the white men only grew the stronger. Then one of them ran
and took a firestick, and bound dry _masi_ round it, and flung it into
the thatch on the windward side, and the wind fanned it into flame.
Still, though the white men knew that the house was burning, they would
not leave it, for they saw the clubs brandished without, and knew that
there was no escape. At last, when they could bear the heat no longer,
they ran out, hoping to reach the water, and two of them leapt into
the sea and dived, swimming out to sea; but three were clubbed and
slain as they ran. And while the men were preparing to follow those
who were escaping by swimming, the words came from the chief to spare
them. Thus were Graham and Buschart spared--the first to perish more
miserably at Wailea, and the other to be the means of discovering the
fate of De la Pérouse.

Savage had now the government of the group in his own hands. He had
raised Bau to the mastery of the surrounding tribes; he could determine
the future policy of the Bau chiefs; he had food, and man-servants,
and women as many as his soul could desire. Yet there was one thing
the lack of which poisoned all his existence. He had neither liquor
nor tobacco; and what earthly paradise could be complete to a sailor
of those days unless he had the power of getting drunk? It was this
want, together with the necessity of maintaining his influence by the
possession of the tools and muskets so eagerly coveted by the natives,
that led him to take his last journey from Bau. In May 1813 news
reached Bau that a large ship was anchored on the Bua coast, ninety
miles distant, to load sandal-wood. From the description of the vessel
the whites knew her to be the East Indian ship Hunter, for which some
of them had worked during the preceding year. It was arranged with
the chiefs that in three months an expedition should be despatched
to Bua to bring them back, so that they might not be left among the
treacherous natives of that coast. Taking their wives with them, they
reached the ship without accident, and were employed to pull the boats
at the usual wage.

Maraia, Savage’s daughter, remembered his last night in Bau, though she
was then but four years old. She was alone in the house when her father
came in and opened the sea-chest, which he always kept locked. From
this he took a string of bright objects that glittered and flashed in
the light from the door. Her exclamation startled him, for he thought
that he was alone. He told her that he was going away for a long time,
and that he must therefore hide his property in a place of safety. Then
he kissed her and went out, taking a canoe to the mainland. She was
asleep when he returned, and the canoe sailed for Bua before she awoke.
She never saw him again. Perhaps his treasure was a string of silver
dollars that still lies buried somewhere on the land opposite Bau.

The second mate of this ship was Peter Dillon, the lively Irishman
who was afterwards made a Chevalier of the Legion d’Honneur for his
services in finding the remains of De la Pérouse’s expedition. His
story of the death of Savage and of his own escape has become, as it
deserves, a classic in Polynesian literature. The sandal-wood had been
coming in too slowly to suit the captain of the Hunter, and a bargain
was at last struck between Captain Robson and the chief of Wailea, that
if he would help them against their enemies they for their part would
fill the ship within two months. On April 4 the crew, in three armed
boats, accompanied by about 4000 of the natives, laid siege to the town
of Nabakavu and took it, killing eleven of the enemy and destroying
several villages. The bodies were there and then jointed, cleaned,
baked in stone ovens, and eaten by the victorious natives, after which
the boats returned to the ship. Four months passed away and two-thirds
of the cargo were still wanting, when the chiefs sent a message to say
that they could get no more sandal-wood. Nor would they come near the
ship for fear of being taken as hostages. The captain now resolved to
punish his old allies. Accordingly he attacked a fleet of their canoes
and captured fourteen of them with a loss to the natives of one man.
At this juncture two canoes arrived from Bau with a force of about 220
men under the command of Tabakaucoro and Matavutuvutua, the brothers
of the Vunivalu, and Namosimalua, the chief of Viwa, afterwards one of
the first Christian converts. Their ostensible object was to escort
the white men and their wives back to Bau, but they did not intend to
return with empty hands. The captain now determined to capture and
destroy the canoes that were left to the people of Wailea, lest they
might annoy him during the repairing of his tender. On September 6,
1813, the crew of the ship and about a hundred of the Bau warriors
landed armed near the village, and proceeded towards it without any
attempt to maintain order. They did not know that the few natives
who were retiring before them, using the most taunting and insulting
gestures, were “the bait for the net,” and a certain indication that
they were walking into an ambush. They reached a small village and set
it on fire, and as the flames shot up they heard a horrible uproar
from the path they had just traversed. The Bau chiefs knew the cries
for the _vakacaucau_ or death-cry of the Wailea, signifying that they
had killed an enemy. The ambush had fallen upon the straggling party
in the rear. Dillon and his companions now tried to fight their way
back to the boats; but after emptying their muskets into the crowd of
infuriated savages, they were driven to take refuge on the crest of
a little hill. Only six of them reached it: the Bau chiefs and two
of the white men from Bau were clubbed in the plain below. The party
on the hill were Dillon, Savage, Buschart, Luis, a Chinaman who was
wrecked with Savage in the Eliza, and two sailors from the Hunter. It
was not yet mid-day; their ammunition was nearly exhausted, and they
were hemmed in by many hundreds of infuriated natives, all sworn not
to let them escape. From the top of the little hill they could see
their boats at anchor, and the ship in the offing. Beneath them in
the plain they saw the enemy carrying the bodies of their comrades,
slung across poles, to the shade of some trees, where they were cut up
and wrapped in green banana-leaves, to be roasted with the taro. But
first they were set in a sitting posture, and insulted with unnameable
indignities, while musket-balls were fired into them. The natives made
several rushes at the hill, and were driven back by the steady fire
of the little party. But the position was so appalling that Savage
proposed an escape into the mangrove at the back of the hill, and was
only prevented from doing so by Dillon’s threat to shoot the first man
that left the hill. Most fortunately for Dillon’s party, there were
eight prisoners on board the Hunter who had been captured by Captain
Robson in his attack upon the canoes a few days before. As soon as the
natives became calm enough to listen to Savage, they were reminded that
these men were still alive, that one of them was the brother of the
priest of Wailea, and that as soon as the news of their death reached
the ship the prisoners would assuredly be sacrificed. The natives had
hitherto supposed these men to have met the usual fate of prisoners of
war. The priest now pressed forward, asking eagerly whether they were
speaking the truth, and Savage (the unblushing Dillon says that it was
he himself, but he also says that he could speak the language perfectly
in four months, and gives some curious specimens of his proficiency)
promised that if one of their number were taken to the ship the
prisoners would be released, and a large ransom be paid for the lives
of himself and his companions. These terms being agreed upon, Dafny,
the wounded sailor, was induced to trust himself to the protection of
the priest, and was seen to embark in a canoe and reach the ship in
safety. Soon after his departure a number of the chiefs came within a
few paces of the crest of the hill and spoke in the most friendly way
to Savage, promising him safe-conduct if he would go down among them.
So convinced was he of their sincerity that he urged Dillon to let him
go down, assuring him that by so doing he could obtain safe-conduct
for all. Having at last won his consent, he left his musket and went
down to a spot about two hundred yards from the base of the hill,
where the chief Vonasa was sitting. For a time they seemed to be on
friendly terms, and the natives tried their utmost to persuade Dillon
to follow Savage’s example, saying, “Come down, Peter, we will not hurt
you; you see we do not hurt Charlie.” At this moment the Chinaman,
Savage’s former shipmate, stole away from behind Dillon to claim the
protection of a chief to whom he had rendered former service in war. He
had scarcely reached the foot of the hill when the natives, seeing that
it was hopeless to persuade Dillon to come down, yelled their war-cry
and rushed up the hill to the attack. Savage was seized suddenly by
the legs and thrown down, and was then held by six men with his head
in a pool of water near to which he had been standing, until he was
suffocated, while at the same moment a powerful native came behind
the Chinaman and smashed his skull with his club. The two bodies were
immediately disembowelled, cut up, and wrapped in leaves to be baked in
the ovens.

Meanwhile the chiefs furiously incited their men to capture the hill
with a rush. There were four muskets between the three defenders.
Wilson, being a bad shot, was kept loading while the other two fired.
Buschart, an old rifleman, shot twenty-seven men with twenty-eight
shots: Dillon seldom missed. In the face of these heavy losses the men
would not respond to their chiefs, but kept off, shouting defiance.
The ovens containing the bodies of the men killed in the morning were
now opened, and the roast joints of human flesh distributed among the
different chiefs, assembled from all parts of the coast, with the same
order and ceremony as is used in the apportionment of feasts on public
occasions. From time to time the chiefs shouted to Peter to come down
before it grew too dark to cook his body properly, and boasted of the
number of white men they each had killed. To his reply, that if they
killed him their countrymen on board the ship would suffer, they cried
that the captain might kill and eat his prisoners if he chose, but that
they meant to kill and eat him (Peter) as soon as it grew dark enough
to approach him without being shot. Dillon’s greatest fear was that
they would be tortured. He had heard from Savage stories of the flaying
and branding of prisoners, of eyelid-cutting and nail-drawing, and he
resolved to use the last cartridges upon himself and his companions.

Late in the afternoon the little party were horrified to see the boat
returning from the ship with all the eight hostages. They believed that
the captain would take the precaution of releasing four only until
they were safe on board, but now they had no longer any lien upon the
mercy of their assailants. As soon as they landed, the hostages were
led unarmed up the hill by the priest, who delivered an imaginary
message from the captain, bidding them hand over the muskets to him
and return to the ship. While he was haranguing Buschart, the idea of
seizing him flashed across Dillon’s mind. It was a desperate expedient,
but they were in a desperate plight. He suddenly presented his musket
at the man’s head, swearing that he would shoot him dead unless he led
him safely to the boat. The priest was the only man among the natives
who possessed sufficient influence to keep the infuriated warriors
in check. He was taken by surprise, and did not attempt to escape.
Shouting to his people to sit down, he led the strange procession down
the hill, through the angry multitude, now silent under protest, and
on to the beach, walking slowly with a musket-muzzle at each ear, and
another between his shoulders. Arrived at the beach, he said that he
would rather be shot than move another step towards the boats. The
whites backed into the water, still covering him with their muskets,
until they reached the boats. Then, as they pushed off, the natives
rushed down and sent a shower of harmless arrows and stones after them.
Six of the crew and eight of the white men from Bau had perished.

On the following morning Dillon made an unsuccessful attempt to
recover the bones of the Europeans. A native flourished the thigh bones
of the first mate, but refused to part with them, saying that they were
to be made into sail-needles.

The canoes had set sail for Bau with some fifty of their company
wounded. They had not communicated with the ship, and had therefore
left behind two Europeans and a number of their women. The ship
sailed the same day, and being unable to land her native passengers
at Bau, carried them on to New South Wales. Buschart and a Lascar
were, however, landed at Tucopia, where they were found thirteen years
afterwards, and were instrumental in the discovery of the remains of De
la Pérouse’s ill-fated expedition.

So gross an insult as the slaughter of two of the Vunivalu’s brothers
could not go unpunished. On the return of the canoes the indignation
in Bau was intense. A strong expedition was at once fitted out, and
before the end of the year Wailea was in ashes, and Vonasa and half his
tribe had followed their victims to Naicobocobo. Many were slain in the
sack of the town, but a few were carried captive to Bau to glut the
vengeance of Vunivalu himself. There, at the mercy of their captors,
they died such a death as amply avenged the chiefs who fell at Wailea.

Thus did Charles Savage, the Swede, meet a death in harmony with his
stormy life, and with the fate that he had brought upon so many others.
His works followed him. Epic poems, now half-forgotten, were composed
in his honour. With the descendants of the people among whom he lived
he has almost attained the dignity of a legendary hero, and but for
their conversion to Christianity he would undoubtedly have been given
a place in their Pantheon. He is remembered while all that is left of
the gigantic and heroic Dillon is the name of the little hill that
saved his life in Wailea Bay. Though the tragedy itself is almost
forgotten, the knoll is still called Koroi-Pita (Peter’s Hill). Through
Savage, Bau rose to a rank among her sister tribes that she never
forfeited. When the growing intercourse with foreigners demanded the
recognition of Fiji as a people obeying acknowledged leaders, Bau fell
naturally into the place of sovereign over all her rival States, and as
possessing power to cede to England the territory of all for the common
good. Therefore in time to come, when some historian, weary of seeking
an untried field for his pen, turns to Fiji, he will, in valuing the
political forces that have led to this end, give a leading place to the
deeds of Charles Savage, the first colonist.


THE END.


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