Chapter I: THINK that you might like to hear something of the suburban life in (1)

the South Sea Islands, of the native villages inland, and so I will now tell you of my strolls and visits to Marano’s hut and his wife “Taloffora.” One morning quite alone I set out to go inland to the village of Safata. It was a lovely morning; I walked along under the tamanu-trees that skirted the borders of the forest where thousands of screaming parakeets passed over by the seashore, disturbing the tropical silence as they wheeled away.

Before starting on the main track I made my way down to the beach to have a swim in the cool waters and refresh myself. I was then several miles from Upolu, and as I crept from the forest and gazed shoreward, where by the palms shone a lagoon, I suddenly surprised a covey of native girls who were all having their morning bath. Some were still in the water and others on the shore; all of them, of course, perfectly nude. I shall never forget how some of them ran up the shore to get their “ridis” while others modestly bent themselves in the shallow waters, their heads and chins just poking out, watching their opportunity to bolt up the shore. This they did one after the other, their brown legs splashing out as they raced to the palm-trees, each plucking a big leaf to hold in front of her for modesty’s sake. There they stood in a huddled group just as God’s first thought had moulded them, the jungle grass brushing to their knees, in their hair the lovely wild red flowers plucked from the plants around them, their rows of pearly teeth gleaming as they smiled.

I tramped enviously onward. I was very happy that day. Somehow the scent of the sea-winds stirring the forest flowers intoxicated my brain as I trudged along and I felt as though I and those forest trees had been friends for ages. There is nothing under the heavens like a South Sea forest to make the atmosphere of true poetry, to lift you out of and above your fleshy self, and as I tramped along I sang to myself through sheer delirium of happiness.

Before the sun had climbed over the western hills I arrived at “Safata” and old Marmona’s wife came from her hut door with her big mouth open so wide with welcome and astonishment that I saw the brown roof and her three back teeth. “Marmona!” she shouted with delight as she called for her husband, “White man’s,” “Siva,” and across the track from behind the scattered shed-like huts of the village that stood beneath the palms and South Sea bamboo-trees came running Marmona, my old friend, whom I had got acquainted with in Apia. He was delighted to see that I had my fiddle with me and though he was getting old he clapped his hands and started chanting and did a double shuffle round me as the native girls came running across the clearings to see the white man. Round me they stood gazing into my face in regiments, their thick dark hair smothered in grass; some wore hibiscus flowers stuck behind their pretty brown ears, others a palm leaf twisted hat-shape to fit their curly heads, others were perfectly naked excepting for a tiny strip of tappa-cloth tied round the thighs into a bow at the back and in front a large blushing hibiscus blossom.

It was a sweltering hot afternoon and by their huts sat the Samoan parents watching their “Fainetoa” (little children) play. Some of them were very old, dark, hairless-headed grandfathers and grandmothers, and they all sat cross-legged, each on a little mat. Marmona led me up to a group of them and introduced me with pride, very much the same as an English draper would introduce an earl who suddenly claimed his friendship, to his tradesmen acquaintances, for I was a white man, and moreover my violin-playing made me something of a god in his eyes. I fully appreciated his great impression of me, saluted the village folk in lordly style and smacked Marmona familiarly on the back afterwards, and he nearly fainted with sheer pride and delight as the awestruck village _élite_ followed us across the cleared patch towards his hut, where his wife Taloffora was busily laying the cloth on the ground for dinner. Her back stuck high up as she stooped and stirred the hot baked fish food and plantains, all got ready especially for me, and I sat there cross-legged on the special visiting mat and thoroughly enjoyed that meal. As I was sitting munching away, thinking how peaceful everything was in that native village, I suddenly heard a loud jabbering in a hut close by. It was a jealous neighbour of Mr and Mrs Marmona’s; they had long since been at loggerheads with my friend and his family, and now to see me there dining with them had riled them till their jealousy knew no bounds, and to make things worse old Madam Taloffora kept talking loudly to me in her own language as she walked round me filling my platter up with more hot fish. I could not understand all that she was saying, but I guessed she was having “one off” her jealous neighbour. Crash! came a coco-nut from the enemy’s hut and caught my hostess a terrible whack on that back part which the South Sea Islanders often reveal when they stoop. With a yell she placed her skinny fingers on the insulted part, and then the outraged husband came rushing under the palms towards her and gazed up into her face. She jabbered hysterically and the old fellow’s brown-skinned face shrunk into a map of scheming wrinkles that denoted intense concentration on the way for the best and speediest revenge! For the brown man is much the same as the white man—he believes all his wife tells him, never dreaming that she is possibly the cause of the whole trouble. Often the tribes of those wild lands meet in bloodthirsty warfare, kings are dethroned, queens murdered and unmentionable cruelties occur through no greater cause than that a woman was spitefully jealous of another woman’s tappa waist sash!

I knew old Marmona’s wife well, and in truth I could have sworn that she had scandalised the irate owner of the hand that had shied the coco-nut; anyway the deed was done, and I was at my wit’s end to know what to do to avert disaster. As quickly as possible I appealed to the old chap and by many signs and deftly used Samoan words I let him see that the best way to have revenge was not to imitate the injury, but to let me smile on and treat him and his wife with lordly respect. He was a clever old fellow and quickly fathomed the depths of my meaning, and I was so delighted to see how things were going that when he fetched the hut oil pot out in his hand, which the South Sea Islanders always keep ready for bruises, I myself held it as that wretched old scandalous wife stooped and he applied the lotion with his tender hand, and across the track, under the palms through a small hut door, gleamed the envious jealous eyes of the woman who had thrown the coco-nut. Had I not appeased the murderous wrath of my host and hostess they would have attacked that hut and the friends of each would have taken sides and a pitched battle commenced, which would in all probability have ended in the taking of my life. Evidently the jealous neighbour thought she had been sufficiently revenged, for with the cessation of Mrs Marmona’s groans the feud ceased.

Samoans are not given to vendetta vindictiveness, and mortal enemies by day are often great friends by night; and so it was in this case, for that night, as I played the fiddle, the enemy crept from her camp, sneaked through the circles of native girls and boys who sat all around delighted as they watched me, and fell into the arms of my hostess, each wailing loudly as I played away. Two grim-looking aged chiefs of many past battles chanted some old idol song as their friends sat round with frizzly heads and merry eyes listening to the awful noise. They sang in any key but the one I was trying to accompany them in, but it did not matter—they were all happy enough and so were the audience as they listened and smoked at their ease, tired after working on the yam plantations or on the buildings that were being erected for German Government officials far away by the beach.

In the huts hard by I heard the poor brown kiddies being spanked as they were put to bed screaming with disappointment that they must sleep while the chiefs sang and the funny white man scraped the spirit wood with the magic long thin finger, for that was the way those natives described my violin and bow.

I shall never forget the strangeness of those times in those primeval forests and native villages. As the moon sailed overhead that night after the concert had ceased I carefully hid my violin in my hostess’s hut and took a stroll around under the shadow of the palms. Among the yellow bamboos I saw the native girls in the arms of the Samoan youths, their eyes shining in the moonlight, while the innocent old mothers and fathers squatting cross-legged by their huts smoked peacefully away, thinking those very lovers were fast asleep in the next hut bedroom.

As I strolled by with Marmona by my side they each saluted us with the exclamation of “Talafa!” and “Good white mans.” In the branched moonlit forest by the narrow pathways that lead from house to house, I saw dark figures pass; they were the natives passing and repassing along the silent forest tracks as they hurried each to his home in the woods or other distant villages. Many of them had stayed late in the village where I was staying, and suddenly remembering the domestic establishment, their lonely hut in the forest afar and the waiting wife, they one by one went off running at full speed, and often in those lonely South Sea hills you could hear yells and excited jabberings as the wretched wife screamed and the semi-savage husband endeavoured to explain the why and wherefore of his lateness. Indeed the traveller in the South Seas invariably is astonished by the sameness of the native and the European character. As men say, “civilisation is only skin deep,” and very often so is the difference between the white and brown man. I particularly noticed the manners of those who had better clothes on than their neighbours. They would walk along with a trader’s cast-off long-tailed shirt flapping behind them and gaze with a scorn-like glance upon their brown brothers who wore only a native “ridi,” and the native girls nearly burst with pride and vanity as they creep from their hut attired in a red sash only, a banana-leaf hat and white flower behind their ear, and others with a yellow pair of high-heeled shoes on and a white woman’s cast-off night-shirt. The traders call in at the villages and bring all kinds of cast-off European clothing, which they exchange with the natives for copra, yarns and many other things, and so you often are surprised by suddenly meeting a native creeping from the forest wearing some lady’s under-garments, or a pretty Samoan girl attired in a sailor’s cast-off pants, cut off close to the thighs and buttoning under her pretty curved chin!

The women struck me as being very industrious. They sit for hours and hours singing and making cloth stuff out of leaves and bark which they keep hammering and weaving. By their side lies the stupendous bamboo stick which every now and again they swiftly lift up and strike their children over the heads with—as they keep pestering them with questions and mischief the whole time that they are working, the bamboo rod gives forth a hollow sound on the tiny native skull, and seems to have no effect beyond checking the infantile activity for a few minutes, after which the mothers, without ceasing the song which is always flowing from their lips, lift the bamboo and strike once again. Out of the forest into the village often come the quick-footed youths and maidens with small baskets full of jumping fish which they have been catching down on the shore side in the lagoons and in the sea, and as they go along the tiny baby urchins run from under their mothers’ legs, steal the fish through cracks in the basket and eat them “all alive O.”

Round some of the hut dens sit the old stagers of other days, stalwart old men, brown as mahogany, their naked limbs striped with tattoo marks and scarred with spear wounds. Squatting under the shade of the palms they tell the younger men of ancient battles and of the old idols and the wonderful things those idols foretold and how it all came to pass. Those old warriors still believed in the old heathen gods, and when they were dubious about anything crept away into the forest depths and consulted some monstrous armless wooden image, rotting away in secrecy, staring with a big boss eye as it had stared for years through the shadows of the forest, till the superstitious chief crept behind the ancient tree trunks up to it and fell on his knees, lifted his hands and chanted the prayers of his heart to its wooden outstretched ears.

There was one aged chief in that village who looked as though he were a thousand years old; he had arched eye sockets and so deep were his eyes set that you seldom saw them, excepting now and again when a tiny gleam of the sunlight struck across his face through the palms as he spoke and lifted his head and finger skyward, telling of cannibalistic feasts of long ago. One of his ears was missing; he had once been hideous, but age had softened the wicked features and expressions down, and his wrinkled brown parchment-like face expressed only a death-like awfulness, and made you feel as though you saw life, distorted and wretched, gazing through a human skull which death had long since claimed but which would not die. That wretched old chief told me that he could remember quite well the first white man who had visited his Island, and as he gazed upon me I saw a gleam sparkle out from his hidden eyes and I instinctively wondered what might have happened to that white brother of mine who had fallen into the clutches of that fearful cannibal when he was lusty, strong, glowing with hunger and lust of blood. I do not think he was a Samoan. Many of the older inhabitants of those days were chiefs from other Isles who had fallen through some great tribal battle or had committed some crime and so sought the refuge of another Island where they could dwell in safety, away from the hot vengeance of their own people.

I stayed for two nights with Marmona and his wife; they made me up a soft bed in one of their spare huts, but I did not sleep very well for my brain had an annoying knack of starting to think whenever I was left alone. As it happened it was a good thing that I was sleepless on those two nights. As I lay the second night turning over and over on my matting bed, I got so sick of it that I arose and lit a cigarette, and without standing up I pulled myself towards the hole that served as a door, and pushing the sacking back I gazed out on to the moonlit village. The winds were all asleep and the shadows of the tropic trees and palms thrown by the moonlight on the wattle huts and roofs of the sleeping village lay perfectly still, and it all seemed as though it were some tremendous painted picture of a tropic South Sea village done in glimmering silver oils. As I gazed I felt that I was the only living creature in that ghost-like sleeping village, and then to my surprise a shadow moved across the moonlit patch, almost just opposite my hut door. Turning my head quickly I saw the frizzly head of a Samoan poke up out of the jungle ferns to the right of me. In a moment I dodged back and watched with one of my eyes fixed to a crack in my bedroom wall; my heart began to beat rapidly, for on all-fours he slowly moved along, stirring the grass aside silently with snake-like stealth as he came straight towards my hut! Every now and again he stopped and looked around to see if all was silent and unperceived. I began to feel in a terrible state of mind, and looking round I swiftly caught hold of an old club to protect myself with, for I saw that it was my sleeping place that his eye was on! He looked a great strong fellow and for a moment I wondered if I should wait and see what it all meant or go to the door and let him see that I had seen him, but extreme funk sent curiosity to the devil and I put my head out of the hut door and shouted Hallo! For a part of a second his eyes stared astonished, and then like a startled kangaroo he arose on his feet with one hop and ran off with the swiftness of a race-horse.

Marmona and I talked it over next day and we both agreed that my midnight visitor was an envious thief, who was after my violin and thought to steal it from my hut whilst I slept. As I have told you before, the whole of the Pacific Islanders are born thieves, and I noticed that as Marmona told me his suspicions and waxed indignant over that midnight thief his own dark eyes gave one avaricious gleam as he caught sight of my violin, which he would have stolen in five seconds if he had thought I should never suspect him. For the brown men are no better than the whites, and will, in due course, all be virtuous and honest, valuing their neighbour’s opinion more than the article which their hearts long to steal. When I look back and think of the native villages and the peace, with no police patrolling the village road with truncheons and bull’s-eye lanterns to quell the courage of the evil-doer, I really believe the South Sea Island heart is not half so evil as it has been painted, and though I have travelled the South Sea villages, mixed with the native men and women, drank and laughed with them, separated them in their childish squabbles, I have never seen their women creeping about with smashed noses or swollen lips and blackened eyes, as I have seen the women of the white men on the cold streets of London Town.

The morning after my night fright I intimated to Marmona that I must leave the village, and he arranged to go with me with the idea of showing me the way through the forest to the village of Maffo, as far as I can remember that was the name, but so many of the village names were similar and extraordinary that I cannot be certain of my exactness in pronouncing them now. It was situated near to the sea. Mrs Marmona almost embraced me as I bade her farewell, and I held up her hand, bowed and gently kissed it in courtly fashion. I then did likewise to her late enemy who stood beside her; for I knew that had I not done so trouble would crop up as soon as Marmona and I were out of sight. Old Marmona’s daughter, whom I have not mentioned before, but who nevertheless was a great deal by my side during that visit, came forward and gave me a beautiful native-made comb from her hair, and by the way she gave it I should think that it was the greatest compliment that a native girl can pay a youth. I kissed her hand twice and with sorrow in my heart waved my hands as I passed away into the forest. Poor old Marmona crept along in front carrying my portmanteau, which was a large silk handkerchief that held my violin and bow, a small tooth-comb, brush, and a clean shirt.

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XIII

I tramp through the South Sea Forest alone—Play my Violin to the
Natives—The Trader’s Vision—The Rivals

MARMONA was a faithful friend, and led me through the forest, down the mountainous steep with the certain instinct of a blood-hound. Once on the track we called at a tiny South Sea home wherein lived some friends of Marmona’s and to please him I took the violin out and played to them all. There were two daughters and several sons, and as they stood listening they jabbered and eyed me with wonder, for I made the violin wail and scream hideously as I found that, notwithstanding their love of natural song, the shrill notes pleased them the best. They gave us a good feed of baked plantains and other mixed food, and we could easily have lodged there for a week had I wished to do so. I cannot describe to you the beauty of the landscape that we tramped across. The bright winged birds whirred overhead, and often perched on the tropic trees around us and preened their blossom-like feathers, making strange noises, as though their beaks touched tinkling bells.

At sunset through the trees we saw the Pacific heaving far away and the white rising breakers for ever charging the shoreward reefs. It was a lovely spot, and nestled below in the hollow, between the shore and the forest, was a small native village and the homes of a few traders. A little distance from the shore, by the promontory, a schooner lay anchored, and hovering around it the natives paddled in their out-rigged canoes. Arriving in the village, Marmona introduced me to some friends of his and I was glad of a rest; I had tramped a long way and my feet were a bit blistered, for my boots were getting rather thin. That night Marmona bade me farewell, and I gave him several shillings and he was very delighted indeed. Though I have read that the natives are very proud, and scorn to take money in return for a kindness, I never had the pleasure of running across those refined temperaments; indeed they all seemed to be true brothers to the white man in that respect, and the only little disagreements I ever had with my brown friends were in my “hard-up times,” but I generally got into their good graces when the wherewithal was once more in my possession.

I stayed in that shore village for three days and four nights. There were several white traders living there, and I also got into conversation with the crew of the schooner that lay outside. It was an isolated little village and I got to know almost every one of the inhabitants during my short stay there, and I especially remember that little village because of the old white trader I met there. He lived alone in a small den hut by the sea; he had earnest thoughtful eyes, and as I sat and talked to him in the shadow of his one room I could see by his face that he had been a very handsome man in his time. There was something in his voice that was musical and emotional, and as I played to him on the violin he made remarks about the operatic selections that told me he had seen better days and in a sense was originally a refined and educated man. Whether he was mad or not I cannot say, but when the village was all asleep that night he gazed in a frightened way all about him and told me to play certain old tunes, and as the moonlight crept over the sleeping village and perfect stillness lay over everything, excepting for the noise of the breakers beating down on the shore reefs at intervals, he would put his finger up to his grey-bearded mouth and say “Play softly, mate, they are coming!” Then with staring eyes he would gaze towards the forest and down shorewards, begging me not to stop playing as he stood by his hut door with eager eyes watching something going on that I could not see. After it was all over, and the terrible look had gone from his face, to my relief he bent his head on to his knee and cried like a child. So intense was his sorrow as I stood there by him that I almost felt the tears rise in my own eyes. I could not make it all out, for though his manner seemed insane yet there was something so earnest and manly in his eyes and in his actions that I felt safe with him by that lonely hut as the village slept. Then he told me the history of his life; and till I die I will remember that old white trader of the South Seas, and from the poem that I have written, inspired by that strange sight and the tale he told me, you, reader, may gather all that I heard, which he swore before his Maker was absolute truth.

In my wattle hut by Maffalo I lie nor can I sleep, Deep waters beat against my heart, thro’ my head the night winds sweep, For the brown one sleeps by the forest track with the banyans overhead, And the white girl sleeps by the channel cliffs where the white men bury their dead. And the tin roofs shine, as the traders rest by the beach and still canoes, Where the shore-line huts in silence stand by the waveless straight bamboos, And when the moonlight whitely falls slantwise across the hill, And the palms and shore lagoons for miles, with the sleeping winds, are still, The brown one from the forest runs, the white girl from the sea— With shining eyes by my hut door in silence gaze on me. And I cannot sleep as the dead eyes meet, fierce eyes of ebon-flame! The grey eyes gleam thro’ shadowy hair, as of old she moans my name. In moonlight struggling silently they glimmer in the gloom, As wails the native dead child far in the forest deep of doom; And the wistful unborn children rise down by the shoreward palms, Peep from the sea with anxious eyes, and toss their small white arms! But deep in my heart the dead one screams—from its grave across the steep, And I know it will with frightened eyes soon out of the forest creep! As I watch the figures, ebon and gold, oft brighten by moonlight, Till the white one wins and the brown one runs back to the forest night; And, in vain, I leap to shadowy arms, as she crying flees from me, Down shoreward runs, in a flash of flame dives back to the moonlit sea. So, I drink and drink as the nights go by and the schooners day by day Taking my heart with the white sails home where the sunsets fade away. Till the sea-winds cease and the trees all sleep, and the hushed waves are all still, And the moonlight slantwise falls across the forest track and hill As I listening wait for the rustling sound with my dreaming eyes—unshut! Till out in the night by the pale moonlight their shadows seek my hut— Out of the forest depth one runs, and the white girl up the shore Till the dead child screams and the unborn watch the shadows by my door.

I stayed in that village all the next day, and at sunset I bade Marmona’s friends good-bye. Also I bade that sad trader farewell, and he held my hand for a long time before he said good-bye.

It seemed like some enchanted village of fairyland as I looked back over the slopes and saw the sun like a large ball of blood sink into the sea and the moon rise over the mountainous country inland, peeping through the heavens of shadow and stars that brightened out in the east. I passed away from the place with a strange feeling in my heart for that lonely man and all that would happen when the sea-shore village lay once more asleep in the moonlight. I have heard many strange tales of spirits and “ju-jus” from men in my travels, but never one so strangely sad and impressive as his, and I have often wondered if all that that old man told me was the outcome of a delirious brain or really some haunting truth that can be seen by the eyes of those hearts that sorrow.

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XIV

South Sea Domestic Life—I attend another South Sea Wedding—Meet Men
flying from Justice—Bound for Tahiti

AT that time I was about eight miles from Apia, and though I was alone, and a bit depressed, I soon regained my spirits and tramped along whistling. To my right moved the deep blue Pacific waters, as the cooling wind gently stirred them and crept up the shore and fanned my perspiring face. No artist could paint in words or colour the beauty of the romantic scenery that lay all around me. The ocean’s tremendous voice murmured wavy songs as it kissed the shore reef in snatches of whitened wave; the slope trees expressed the silent green utterance of mother earth, beautiful with sunset-coloured flowers in the piled carpet of jungle grass and blossoms of crimson and white wherein settled gorgeous butterflies. A native girl, standing in her brown velvety skin, waist deep in the grass, laughed and revealed her pearly teeth as I tramped by, expressing in her sparkling eyes the joy of the conscious universe. I waved my hand and smiled as her lynx-eyed bush mother watched her from a hut door just under three large coco-trees a little higher up where were several more huts. I saw a white man by one of them, leaning against a tamnu-tree smoking, so I altered my course and went up the rocky slope and introduced myself. He turned out to be a deck-hand on one of the trading schooners that traded from Isle to Isle, and I saw by his face and complexion that he was a half-caste, his wife was a full-blooded Samoan. His name was Adams, he seemed mighty proud of it, as he told me that he was a descendant of one of the old _Bounty_ mutineers and a high chief who had previously reigned in the Solomon Group.

“Come you, Papeteo,” he shouted, and up came his daughter. I do not think I ever saw a more beautiful native girl than she was as she stood in front of me with raised shining eyes and a wealth of waving dark chestnut hair.

“Pappy, go in and get him some grub,” he said, and off she bounded, and his wife, who spoke broken English, welcomed me, saying, “White mans, plenty eat sooner,” and so saying folded her brown hands over her stomach to hide the tear in her tappa-cloth robe which ended at her knees.

Inside their home I sat, talked and ate a splendid meal of grilled chops, cooked over their camp fire, as Papeteo’s tiny brothers and sisters romped around my stool, looked up at me with tiny demon eyes, and tried to feel in my pockets. When I had finished we both sat outside under the tall tropic trees, where high up droves of doves moaned and cooed as the sea-winds swayed the tops.

That half-caste trader was the bravest man and the most fortunate man on earth, for as soon as he had lit his big pipe and crossed his legs comfortably he started off telling me of his narrow escapes in storms and in fights with the natives of the various Isles. I very soon saw that he was a swanker (they mostly are, the half-castes of the South Seas), but to be quite friendly I encouraged him and often looked up with assumed surprise and admiration to hear how he had saved my countrymen from being murdered by the Solomon Islanders, Fijians and other tribes by his own wonderful courage and herculean strength, and just as he was gazing into my face as much as to say “What do you think of a deed like that?” the red-hot ash from his pipe fell on to his wife’s bare knee. Up she jumped with a howl and caught him a terrible crash on the head with a bamboo club, as she started to beat her thin dress with her hands, for it was all on fire. I leapt forward and tore the dress from her, otherwise I am sure she would have been seriously burned. All the husband did was to look horror-struck, and his half-caste skin went greyish-white. She had given him a terrible whack with the club, and I suppose he felt spiteful, for I noticed that his half-caste eyes looked at her with hidden pleasure as she wailed.

Papeteo came running up from the shore sparkling with sea-water, for she had been bathing in a tiny lagoon a few yards inland, and she quickly ran into the homestead den and got a large piece of cloth and wrapped it round her skinny-bosomed parent, and all was soon peace again. I learnt from that half-caste trader that he was in the employ of the missionary society and often went off on lecturing tours to the many Islands, as he could, of course, speak the native language perfectly, as well as being able to talk English and a smattering of German.

My foot was so blistered and sore on the heel that I altered my mind about getting back to Apia and stayed there the night, and old Mother Adams was delighted when she heard I would do so and kept saying “A loo, O swa,” or something that sounded like it, as her eyes gazed amorously at me. When her husband had gone across the slope to one of the other huts, to see some natives who were having a great feast over a wedding, she made violent love to me, jabbering something to Papeteo. She told her to get off, and as soon as she had gone she started stroking my hand and face softly and did many more embarrassing things of Samoan custom, till I was beside myself with worry, and I can tell you that when suddenly the half-caste husband returned, and she sat down quickly, I was extremely pleased.

That night I went with them all over the slope to see the wedding party. A pretty young Samoan girl had just been married to a stalwart fierce-looking native, and when we arrived the “Siva dance” was in full swing. By the rows of huts of the small seaside village the inhabitants stood and squatted, all singing in unison as the chief dancers, dressed in flowers and native muslin, and parakeet wings in their hair, whirled about and around like ghosts in the brilliant moonshine that came glimpsing through the palm leaves. It revealed the faces and shining eyes of native maidens as they lifted their long arms and contorted their bodies, sometimes till their noses touched the forest floor. From time to time the squatting men, enjoying the scene as they stared in a circle around those night-dancers, shouted out the equivalent to an English “Encore!” as one fat native woman succeeded in doing things which seemed impossible, bending slightly forward, giving a sudden bound and for a second standing on her head with one leg pointing one way and the other in the opposite direction. And then she stood on her head in the moonlight till with another bound she regained her feet and started hopping and whirling away once more in full swing with nothing on, as, laughing merrily, revealing pearly teeth and clapping their hands, the chorus girls of that midnight stage kept strict time with their feet and bodies on the forest floor.

It was one of the most weirdly impressive scenes that I have ever seen, more fascinating than any I had seen before with Hornecastle. As I stood there with old Mrs Adams and her daughter Papeteo by my side, just behind the husband smoking, I turned and saw two more white men gazing on the scene. I was astonished to see them, as I had not seen any of my race about during the day, and thought I was there quite alone. They were terribly scrubby-looking and had a hunted look in their eyes, and as they noticed me they quickly said something to the half-caste, and he in turn quickly reassured them. They were two fugitives from justice, who had committed some crime and were wanted by the Commissioners. Probably they had killed someone, and it appeared that my half-caste friend was doing his best to hide them till they could get away from the coast on some outbound schooner. One of them was a very decent fellow to speak to, and I gave him some plug tobacco and hinted to him that he had nothing to fear from me, and neither had he, for I was sorry for them; whatever they had done they had already done, and they were my countrymen. They had at first thought I was a young missionary, and when they found out that I was a wanderer only they were deeply relieved, and when the dance was over I went back with them, and found that they were staying in a hut just by my hosts. They laughed and told me that they had peeped through a crack and seen the whole of the episode when old Mother Adams had caught on fire, and chaffed me about her too. They were both thickly bearded and looked rather haggard and worried, and evidently had done something serious, but as the night wore on, and they drank from the large stone jar which stood in the corner of the hut, they became exceedingly cheerful, and seeing that I had a violin got me to play, and when I struck up a familiar strain actually started to sing loudly. Adams the half-caste came rushing in to us in a fearful rage and called them damned madmen, and everything he could lay his tongue to. I am sure he would have been expelled from the missionary society had they heard the way he swore and used God’s name. He managed to sober the two fugitives and would not leave the hut till they were both lying down. Of course had they been caught while being harboured by Adams he himself would have got into serious trouble.

At daybreak they were both awake and tremulously sober. “Good-bye, matey,” they said to me as I too got quickly to my feet; “Good-bye,” I said, “and God bless you,” and then the taller one turned and put out his hairy sunburnt hand. I quickly clasped it and, saying “Good luck to you youngster,” they both walked quickly down the slope shoreward; evidently there was an outbound schooner lying in the bay and they were taking their best chance.

It was a beautiful morning. Round the bend, sunrise was bathing the sea with crimson and gold, and the parakeets in flocks, screaming off seaward, passed over my head, and the damp scent of the bread-fruit trees and orange groves gave the place the atmosphere of fairyland. I caught sight of those two hunted men hurrying across the white beach far away, and that was the last I ever saw of them. I hope they got safely off and were better men afterwards.

That same day I bade Adams and his wife farewell, and pretty Papeteo gave me a tortoise-shell with a native engraving on it as a memento, and once more I started on my wanderings.

I eventually arrived at Apia, and going on to a trading cutter with a sailor, whom I had got to know in the town, I saw an opportunity of sailing as a deck hand, and so on the _Polly Smith_ I sailed away bound for Tahiti. We had on board several native passengers, two young girls, and several Samoan men with their wives and children who were going off to the other Islands to secure work on plantations. We had a fine time on those moonlight nights, as we crept along the equatorial Pacific Seas with all sails set, and on the decks the sailors danced with the native women while I fiddled away, delighted to be at sea again. The little Samoan children were the life of that boat; one tiny girl would stand on the deck by the galley and go through all the fantastic Samoan dances, throw her little legs about, stand on her head, wave her legs and hands about while upside down with as much ease as though she were on her feet. There was an English passenger with us, I think his name was Wallace. We became very friendly with each other; he was going to Tahiti on some Government business and came from Sydney. For many days we lay becalmed, and then a fine breeze sprang up and we raced away with full sail set for some days. As a rule the wind slackened by day and strengthened by night, and they _were_ nights too, the fine tropic stars shining away overhead, the clear crystal skies imaged in the waters all around us as the small cutter drifted along, far away out on the lonely Pacific track. There were no islands in that part of the ocean, but we were all happy enough. The native passengers would loaf all day long looking over the vessel’s side singing to themselves, and at night we all congregated and had a sing-song. I would play the violin and do my best to keep time to the natives as they danced and rolled about as the boat heeled over. Mr Wallace sang songs and the half-caste cook got drunk on sly grog, did jigs and afforded us great amusement.

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XV

Tahitian Morals and Duplicity—I play the Violin at Government
Concert—Death of M’Neil—The Black Slave Traffic

ARRIVING at Tahiti our passengers went off to the plantations and I went off also as I wanted to see what kind of a place it was. The capital, Papeite, was a much larger and livelier place than Apia. The population consisted of all kinds of half-castes, Chinese, French, and Tahitian brigands. I went inland and tramped around the sugar plantations whereon worked the natives and Chinese. A good deal of the country was under cultivation. I shall never forget the awful-looking people that I came in contact with or forget the debauchery that I witnessed. The sole occupation of a good many of the natives was to drink as much as they could get down them and the women sold their bodies to the first-comer for the price of a drink. The missionaries were there by hundreds, it seemed; they were a mixture of French and English and had exciting times reforming those native women and men. I went into several of the native homes and found them very hospitable people. Some of the women had Chinese husbands and their half-caste children had tiny almond eyes, jet-black and sparkling. The Chinese of Society Islands impressed me as being much more wholesome in their way of living than the Australian Chinamen, and they did not smell half so disagreeable. A Chinaman got jealous of his native wife whilst I was there and struck her with a knife. The Tahitians went for him and when I saw him you could hardly tell which was his head and which his feet; anyway his brother Chinamen came into the village, rolled him up and gave him a decent burial, and his wife screamed and wailed away till I was glad to clear out, for it was a most painful sight to see her grief. She was a pretty woman, in fact all the young women were handsome, and the men too, but as soon as the women get over twenty they start to fade. A South Sea Island girl of ten years of age is as matured as a European girl of sixteen.

I found human nature was just the same there as everywhere else—everyone wanted as much as they could get out of you, and those who were better clothed than their sisters and brothers were vain-glorious and looked down on the others. Girls and boys made love to each other and eloped into the forest with the missionaries after them at full speed, and the brave old chiefs strolled about and spoke of the old times and smacked their lips and spoke on the sly of the missionaries, saying “they were the children of the devil” but addressing them to their faces with some such jargon as, “Me Christian man now. One God. Good God, who no eat other God,” whereupon they would gravely walk away to sell their soul for a drink. They loved their old customs deep down in their heart and rubbed noses with each other and cherished hopes that some day the gods would help them to drive the white men into the sea. But the older ones were even then fast disappearing, and drink and prostitution were raising the death rate of the native children, and so there, as elsewhere all over the South Seas, the race was fast dying out.

There were many traders there, and they all seemed to make plenty of money. You could always recognise a trader by his big hat smashed on his head and his slouching walk and his very often warty nose, that had started to blossom after drinking some oceans of beer. They were generally married men and often got into awful trouble when they were quite unsober by mistaking their Tahitian wife for their Marquesan wife, and mentioning the wrong name to their bride during the night brought down her wrath on to their wicked heads. I have often seen them with a black eye or a terribly scratched, clawed face, for women in Tahiti are as jealous as the European ladies, and will brook no rival; but of course when their husband is away with his other bride on some far-off Isle they do not let the grass grow under their feet, and often a white trader leaves his home in disgust when his native wife presents him with a half-caste baby with slit-almond eyes and a face showing strong Mongolian origin, or a little fair-skinned mite with pretty violet dark eyes that looks suspiciously like the village missionary.

In Papeite I made the acquaintance of René, a Frenchman, who was a clever violin-player. He was at that time working as a clerk in the Tahitian Commissioner’s offices and played at the Papeite opera house which was something on the lines of a bush town music hall in Australia. He was very kind to me and gave me several good lessons on playing the violin, for he had studied under some of the best French masters. He had some splendid duets for two violins and one night, when they had a ball on at the Papeite Government House, he recommended me and I got the engagement to go with him, and we played the duets together. He was a much better performer than I was, but he gave me the solo part and did all he could to get me the credit of the concert. All went off very well indeed till, when René and I were having supper with all the high folk of Papeite and I was feeling in very high spirits at the turn my luck had taken, for I was nearly on my beam ends when René got me that job, I bent over from my chair and looked out of the door and saw that my violin which I had left by the hat-rack had disappeared! I got up and rushed off like a shot, and as I did so I saw one of the Tahitian servants bolting through the door with the violin. Shouting at the top of my voice I ran after him, cleared the steps with one jump, and there up the moonlit street ran the thief holding my violin in one hand. I had no revolver with me, otherwise I would have fired, for I was desperate. My violin was my all, and the fear of losing it put renewed vigour in my feet and I was gaining on the cursed thief. “Stop or I fire!” I shouted, and as he was leaving the straight track he turned, and I held my hand up, as he thought, to shoot. In the moonlight he saw my white hand upheld, and thinking it held a gun he threw the fiddle down and rushed off into the scrub. My fiddle was none the worse for the adventure, but I was, for the night was close and sweltering hot, and I arrived back to the supper-table bathed in sweat and half dead.

I was at that time lodging in the north of the town with a storekeeper. In the same room where I was also slept a trader; his name was M’Neil, and he had been very ill and was at that time convalescent. He admitted to me that he had been drinking too heavily and had made up his mind to be a teetotaller, and, as he told me what a curse drink was, he kept lifting a bottle of whisky from under his bed and taking a pull at it, saying, “Man, jist a wee snack for the gude time’s sake.” He was really trying to break himself of the habit, and instead of drinking half-a-bottle at a time was just taking it in sips. By midnight he was quite drunk, and started weeping over his past sins, and kept me awake nearly all night saying over and over again—“Ma lad, keep off th’ drink, ’twill be your ruin.” He was not a bad man at all, and when he was sober during the day, and I played him old Scotch songs, for he would not for one moment let me play anything but Scotch melodies, the tears would rise in his eyes. He died two days after and I felt very much cut up, for I saw him die and he gave me an old purse, saying, “Take it, guid lad, and think of me.” His old comrade, a Scotchman, came in from up the street, held his hand and completely broke down, crying like a little child as M’Neil closed his eyes for ever. I still remember how that Scotch friend rose up, looked under poor M’Neil’s bed, and gently pulled the half-full whisky bottle out, put it under his coat and left the room, still sobbing, for M’Neil and he had had many good times together and many a long talk and deep drink in that room as they lived over their old days in Bonny Scotland.

I was naturally very depressed after the death of M’Neil; I had only known him a few days, but in those few days I seemed to know more of his true character than you could see through in another man in ten years. I remember after a day or so I got in with a Dutch fellow named “Van Blank.” He was also a lodger in my dwelling-place and he had held the Scotchman’s arm as he stood by M’Neil’s grave; otherwise I think poor old Mac (I cannot remember his name) would have fallen in. He had imbibed considerably, and it took Van Blank and I the whole afternoon to get him back to his room and put him to bed.