Chapter III: Part 3

In the old times, most of us whites and natives would have said: 'Serve him right,' and the matter would have ended. But now there was law in the land; our warden was just appointed, and, new-broomish-like, ordered the arrest of Ravuso. After some trouble, he was coaxed to surrender, and was confined at Somo-Somo, awaiting trial. Nothing so puzzles a Fijian as the slow procedure of our English law; and poor Ravuso pined in prison. So one day he asked his _Ban_ (jailers) to be allowed a walk: they accompanied him; and all sat down under a large ivi tree. After a time the chief proposed to get some ivis, and climbed the tree for the purpose. When he got to the top, he called out to his astonished guards that he was going to throw himself down headlong. 'Tell your white judge,' said he, 'that I am a chief and the son of a chief; that I can't survive the disgrace of being imprisoned like a felon; that the punishment given to the man of mine was just--he was a bad man; that I am a chief, and had a right to punish him vaka-viti' (after the manner of Fiji). So saying, he threw himself down, broke his back, and died shortly afterwards.

In a day or two the news of the chief's death reached Waia, and a wail went up from each little village embowered in its cocoa-nut grove, for the death of their 'Turaga,' as they call their chiefs. His wife, Lau Wai (to strike water as in fishing), and young daughter (fifteen years only) made up their minds that their chief should not go unaccompanied to Hades, but have some one to cook and look after him there. So one night they tied a rope between two trees, twisted it round their necks, and so strangled themselves after the old Fijian fashion. These people had been Christians ten years, but evidently believed in their old traditions still. Our warden was not a bad fellow, and I believe the unfortunate result of his first attempt at enforcing English law among the natives caused him many a pang.

And now the sad tale of the death of this unfortunate Waia chief and his family is told in many a Fijian hamlet, in the cool evenings, as the sun goes down under the shade of the lofty ivis and cocoa-nut trees; and the women and children hear with a thrill of the power of that mysterious mata-ni-tu whose action hurled a Fijian chief from his high estate, and sent him and his devoted wife and daughter prematurely before the face of their Maker.

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