South Sea Helen of Troy—A Barbarian Queen’s Lovers—Grimes and I pay
Obeisance to the Reformed Queen—The Old Heathen Amphitheatre and
the end of Impassioned Hearts—Descendants of Blue Blood—The
Calaboose—“Time, Gentleman, please!”—A Race that is Dead—Marquesan
Mythology—Holy Birds of the Gods—Thakombau, the Bluebeard of the
South Seas—I practise the Cornet in the Mountains to the Delight
of the Natives—Waylao believes in Fortune-telling
AT that time Queen Vaekehu was living not far from Tai-o-hae. She was
known to the French officials as “La Grande Chiefesse,” and I think she
received a grant from the French Government. She lived in a quiet style,
but still retained some of the distinctive elements of past majesty. It
was no easy matter to get into her presence. I suppose she had been
haunted by a good many curious tourists, and so felt shy of the white
men. When one _did_ gain access to her presence, it was hard to believe
that she had once been the Helen of Troy and Cleopatra of the South Seas
rolled into one.
But there she was, no myth; nor did rumour lie overmuch.
In the days of her amorous prime and splendid queen-ship fleets of
canoes had arrived off Tai-o-hae, coming from isles a thousand leagues
distant, crammed with tattooed warriors, headed by some redoubtable
Ulysses or Paris, whose soul, fired by rumour of the queen’s beauty, was
filled with one intense desire, one wild ambition—to win her sparkling
glance and impassioned embrace.
Majestic old chiefs for miles round vied with each other in their
reminiscences of the time when they successfully mounted her throne and
were each in turn the envied object of the queen’s “one” _grande
passion_.
One knew not how much truth existed in the eloquent flow of all that
they narrated. No sense of shame possessed those tawny warriors as they
stood erect, and, with their bronze throats and shoulders thrown
back—like some Roman orator of the Forum—completely lost their heads as
they waxed impassionately eloquent: reclasped in memory that queenly
form, fell gracefully on one knee, impulsively kissed the imaginary
queenly hand and vividly described, in unguarded detail, those things
that made the grog shanty re-echo with roars of hysterical laughter—and
Mrs Ranjo hasten into the saloon bar to blush.
I have seen the wife of an old chief press her beloved’s hand with the
pride and admiration she felt as he told of his amorous youth, of that
day when _he_, too, had mounted that throne in the glorious pride of
conquest; telling her of incidents which one would have thought would
have made her want to shoot him at sight, instead of listening with
pride.
An unforgettable privilege was mine. I performed violin solos before
Queen Vaekehu on the celebration of her birthday, and was greatly
impressed by the demure demeanour of the great ex-savage queen, after
all that I had heard. I quite expected to see some eagle-eyed, bronzed,
Elizabethan-like queen, something that at least hinted of those mighty,
amorous times, those terrific cannibalistic and heathen orgies at the
Marea Temples and arenas of death. Those surrounding hills had echoed
and re-echoed the booming calls of the death-drums as they beat the
sunset down and the stars in—and the last hour of what anguish-stricken
maid or youth, the prison-bound victims who were doomed to that last
dubious honour of being clubbed on the altar of the sacrificial rites!
Much of the first-hand terrors of those heathen times I have given in
full detail in my reminiscences of the old-time beachcomber, Mendos, the
most wonderful character, surely, who ever roamed those Southern Seas.
To see that majestic relic of royalty pirouette daintily, on tripping
feet, to the Parisian waltz made it hard to believe that she had been
such an exciting character in her golden days. “Queen Bess of the
South,” she was called by the French. There was a brooding expression on
her oval-shaped face. Her eyes were piercing, yet at times softened, and
looked earnest and reflective. Even in age the lips retained their
somewhat sensual curves. The beautiful tattoo revealed on her wrists,
below the sleeves of her modern attire, and just peeping up beneath the
tawny-hued throat’s fulness, was all that remained visible to the sight
of men of her past abandonment, of her renowned tattooed beauty, and of
the impassioned moonlit nights of long ago.
Bill Grimes accompanied me on that royal visit. It was he who played the
banjo that called forth such praise from those long since deserted lips.
As Grimes played, her eyes lit up—with what memories!—as the
pink-er-te-ponk!—ponk!—tromrrrrrrrrp! er te—trrrrr rrrrrrrrrrrrph! of
the Western world’s festival sounds reminded her of what dim echoes
coming across the years, the death-drums, beating, beating below the
ranges of heathen-land! When Grimes called her “Your Majesty” (only
English term of great deference that she seemed to know) her eyes
revealed a glimmer of the old pride of praise that she had once revelled
in. But, somehow, the first faint smile that flitted across her
wrinkled, bronzed face gave her a child-like expression. One seemed to
see the savage baby peeping through her brown eyes.
Her pride was intensified by my own courtly act in kissing her hand in
the Sir Walter Raleigh style. I believe Grimes would have thrown his
remnant of the coat he always slept in down in the dust for her to tread
upon, so awestruck was he in her presence, and by the servile
munificence of her decayed retinue. Poor Grimes! I felt a strange
tenderness for him, so clumsily did he imitate my courtly act, as he,
too, bent his knee, wiped the tobacco juice from his scrubby lips, and
saluted the royal hand with a kiss.
He blushed like a kiddie when Vaekehu fastened an acacia blossom on the
breast of his ragged coat, and said, in pidgin-English:
“Arise, thou art great chief, Monseigneur Grimes, as one can so easily
observe.” She bowed in picturesque Marquesan style to Grimes. He tried
to mimic that inimitable grace; his knees seemed to stagger and crack,
and a world of woe weigh down his shoulders.
“Good-bye, Mitia! Papalagi! Anglisman! Kaoha!” she murmured.
“Alower!” said Grimes huskily, breathing forth his one Marquesan word in
Cockneyesque style—“Alower!”
Not far from that residence were the ruins of the old heathen
amphitheatre, the once dreadful tapu arena. It was on that spot that
Vaekehu’s cast-off lovers paid their last enforced obsequies to their
royal mistress, and were served up, spiced and hot-blooded, from the
ovens as tempting joints for the great cannibal festival.
Many a trustful, impassioned heart that had once beat violently at her
beauty and her musical Marquesan vows had steamed on the dreadful
cannibal dish, a morsel for her eyes, and a tempting sight for the
jealous, hungry, new paramour.
Such was her past: and there she sat, a demure, nice old lady, looking
through her pince-nez, her wrinkled face a veritable manuscript, an
outlined map of the purest thought, the sweetest of lives, as she licked
her tattooed thumb and turned the leaves of her Bible.
Vaekehu was not the only royal relic of a glorious past. For there were
many royal-blooded chiefs staying at the Government institution, called
the _calaboose_ (jail).
Thither they retired when decrepitude brought their passions to a
smouldering state. The French officials had considerable trouble with
those native princes, chiefesses, dethroned tribal kings and sad,
forgotten queens, who looked upon that prison, with its regular meals,
as a godsend to old age. Indeed it required the sternest vigilance of
the gendarmes to keep those who had been released from escaping back to
the prison precincts! Cast forth upon their ravaged dominions once more,
they would yell forth pleading from sunset till dawn, swearing that some
mistake had been made in the date of their release: the day, the month,
or the year had been grossly miscalculated!
It was pathetic to listen to those royal personages as they rushed from
the gates of the jail stockade, when one passed, and started eloquently
to shout forth their line of pedigree: how they were each in turn the
true decendants of South Sea blue blood, true children of those who had
once reigned, and who in their turn were descendants of barbarian kings
from time immemorial. Nor were they to be blamed or laughed at, since,
having no _Who’s Who_ or _Peerage_ to tell their greatness, no
literature of note to hint of their glorious past, it was absolutely
enforced upon those sad old convicts to perpetuate their line by word of
mouth from decade to decade. So did men distinguish their origin in the
South Seas, preserve the glory of the past and gain respect from those
around them.
Once more out on the world’s mercy, released, in tears, those old relics
of a resplendent barbaric age roamed from grog shanty to grog shanty. In
those walls of the white man they could lay their weary heads from dawn
to dawn. The dreadful Fate-like call of, “Time, Gentleman, please!” was
never heard in those hospitable parts; in fact it was the reverse, for
did a man pass a grog shanty door without having a friendly drink after
midnight he was in danger of being “chucked in” rather than out.
It is curious how in various parts of the world the conditions of life
are turned upside down. My remembrance of Nuka Hiva is as of some
glorious reversion of mundane existence tinged with the poetic.
Once again in a dream I stand by those palm-clad, romantic mountains,
like sentinels guarding an enchanted land against the perilous faery
seas. The wonderful shores of Nuka Hiva are sharply outlined in my
memory, lulled by the echoing monotone of the ocean. The winds are all
asleep. Even my old schooner the _Molyhawk_, whose every board and bunk
I know, looks unreal, like some painted ship on a painted moonlit
tropical lagoon. The half-reefed, hanging canvas sails seem the tired
wings of Silence itself; they look unreal, as though fixed—a mirage
hanging between the crystalline, moonlit sky and sea.
Only the creeping shadows, belated natives by the shore banyans, give a
touch of reality that is somehow stranger than the dream.
Like the last of the Mohicans abroad again, a canoe steals across the
still lagoon of long ago, crammed with handsome, dusky, tattooed chiefs.
They wail a plaintive paddle song, a “himee.” They are the last of their
race.
Again I wander like a ghost that cannot sleep. So linked with romantic
sounds of song and mythology is the primeval scenery that the very air
seems to smell of scented myrrh, sandalwood and ancient life of deep,
mysterious, poetic import. I half fancy I hear the hubbub of some
ancient Assyrian city’s life floating across the silent, sleeping hills
between me and the dark ages. Then I hear the faint boom of drums and
realise that the soft-footed natives are speeding along the track that
leads to the bustling village below the mountains.
I stare seaward. Was that really a tiny, curling wave breaking on some
hidden reef afar, or the skeleton of some dead, home-sick sailor tossing
his white arms for a second as the home-bound sailing-ship goes away,
out with the tide, ere he sinks once again into the depths. It is only a
wave tossing its brief hand to the hidden corals, thank God! I will not
think rest is denied the dead; but at times the brain has strange
fancies. Perhaps I have listened too much to the legendary song and lore
of those Marquesans, who seem ever haunted by death; those stalwart,
tattooed men who see some symbol of the supernatural in all around them.
No cloud flies beneath the stars without bringing some fearful portent.
Its ragged shadows jumping across the moonlit sea are the vast hordes of
evil gods after the soul of some late departed. The breath of the mighty
god Oro blows through the mountain bread-fruits, ever calling the last
of his heathen children to shadow-land. They are frightened of his big,
blowing voice in the ranges; for have they not deserted him and bent on
their sinful knees to the white man’s God?
No night-bird cries in the forest but it has come from shadow-land to
warn the sick chief, or guilty one, that the hour is near, and the
gods have observed. The pretty Marquesan maid Talasenga trembles with
fright as she sits in the leafy glooms of the forest and hears that
twittering while she dreams those things that a maid should never
dream. She looks up with fright. She cries, “Awaie! Awaie!” as there
they sit, four goddesses with their fingers at their lips, their small
eyes bright with discovery. They have been watching from the boughs
overhead, those four little O le manu-ao birds, winged messengers from
that master-of-all-gods, Tangaloa of Polotu (Elysium). They still wear
their blue and crimson feathered tapu robes as they write down, on the
hastily plucked bread-fruit leaf, the terrible truth, all that they
have read, by magic, in the girl’s soul as she sat below that
treacherous tree thinking that she was unobserved. Away they fly to
shadow-land to tell the gods! Away! to the great Tangaloi with that
indictment safely fastened beneath their wings. Poor Talasenga, it is
indeed terrible!
It was a magical world, crammed with wonder and goodness. A little bird
inspiring a girl’s soul with faith; and lo! she has strangled her wicked
thoughts with the flight of those disguised, swift-winged goddesses,
those goddesses of a creed which had a more salutary effect on those
wild Marquesan people than all the denominations of the civilised world
put together.
The missionaries had a hard task to wrench their deep faith in that
glorious, poetic superstition from the native heart. The wonderful
heathen atmosphere _would_ cling like distilled moonlight to their
mystery-loving brains. That tiny, grey, Catholic, wooden abbey, with its
little steeple and the Virgin’s figure peeping from the South Sea
chestnuts, often peeped in vain. It could not dispel the wonders of the
great _tikis_ (wooden gods) which stood in the depths of their forest
colonnades—supreme, upright, ever watching, ever smiling with that
Fate-like grin on the wooden slit-mouth, as their bulging pearl-white
eyes stared on through the ages.
Waylao was reared up in such an atmosphere; her brain was a veritable
mythological bible of heathen magic and its wonderful goddesses and
gods. She told me many things about mythology, for from her earliest
childhood she had listened to her mother’s tales. Indeed I heard a good
many strange tales from old Lydia herself. Sometimes when I had little
to do I would go up to her cottage and, smoking my pipe, listen to the
native woman’s yarns. Though the old woman looked a full-blooded
Marquesan, she declared that she was a descendant of that South Sea
Bluebeard, Thakombau, the last of the Fijian kings.
No one who faced Lydia ever left her presence without hearing such
exclamations as: “Me! the descendants of great kinks [kings] stand ’ere
before yous!”
Here she would strike her bosom and, assuming a majestic pose, roll the
whites of her eyes and shout: “Me! tink of it, ’aves to feed chickens
and work wiles that lazy hussies Wayee sleeps in bed, wears flowers in
hair, and tink she beautiful white womans.”
Here she would purse her big mouth out with rage, roll her eyes and
roar: “Wayee! Wayee! you tink you white womans. You tink you great lady,
better than your old mother. Go you at once and get white mans one dozen
eggs from chicken-’ouse.”
Waylao had so often listened to the old woman’s garrulous descriptions
of the palatial splendour of Fiji, those ancestral halls wherein her
rumoured relatives lolled in royal comfort by the Rewa river, that she
often looked with longing for the day when she might go to Fiji. She
_did_ go some months after, but it was on a quest that she had not
anticipated in her wildest imaginings.
I will now revert to my immediate doings at that time. I had been away
with Grimes to Hivaoa. I had secured several musical engagements among
the French residents who lived on the coast. When we returned to
Tai-o-hae we were both once more warmly welcomed by the rough men of the
shanty. I was always welcomed there because of my violin. Indeed I had
formed a scratch orchestra from the members of that wild crew. This
musical gathering was composed of two banjos, two mouth-organs, piccolo,
flute and clappers, with now and then a jews’ harp thrown in. One can
imagine that it was not suitable for rendering artistic selections from
the works of the great masters. Still, the combination answered our
purpose, for it made the shellbacks happy.
About this period a French official presented me with a cornet, and I at
once started to practise it in the shanty. For a while the brave
shellbacks tolerated my thrilling endeavours on that cracked instrument.
Then they rose _en masse_ and threatened to take my life. After that I
went into the mountains to practise. The echoes would fly across the
ranges, and scare the parrots and the natives in the villages just
below. I became an imparadised being in the eyes of some of the old-time
Marquesan chiefs through that cornet. They would creep up the slopes as
I blasted forth the shrill notes, then go on their knees before me and
beg for one blow. I do not exaggerate, but I achieved more fame as a
musician through that old cornet and my endeavours to master it than
ever I did from my violin performances. Some of the natives fairly
worshipped me. I only had to go up into the hills and peal forth the
scales to cause a general hubbub amongst the natives on the plantations.
Indeed the white overseer came up to my secluded mountain studio and
said: “Look you here, young feller, if you blow that b—— thing off in
this ’ere group, I’ll have you shot, or ejected from the isles
altogether.”
“Surely I can play the cornet out here in the South Seas,” said I.
“God damn it!” he responded, as his red beard shook with emotion. “The
natives on my plantation stop work, dance, go mad and become b——
heathens for four hours every morning while you practise that darned
thing.”
At hearing the result of my aspirations to become a great cornet player,
I apologised, and had to relinquish my practice for a time. My advice to
aspirants for fame on the cornet is to keep in the cities, for there is
not privacy enough in the solitudes of the South Seas for cornet
practising. But to return to my scratch orchestra.
One night we were all playing in full swing in the shanty, making a
terrible row, when Waylao came in, as she often did. When the overture
to the fourteenth mug of rum was finished, Grimes and I too stopped for
refreshments.
“My word, don’t she look bewtiful!” whispered Grimes as he spotted
Waylao.
The girl was talking to Mrs Ranjo, who was telling her fortune.
Grimes blushed to his big ears when Waylao turned and gazed steadily at
him for a moment. He started to tune his old banjo up, so as to hide
that boyish flush. For a while we sat there in silence, as the girl
listened eagerly to Mrs Ranjo’s prophecies. That half-Spanish woman was
an adept at palmistry. She had already told Grimes’s fortune and mine,
and though I was extremely incredulous, even I had a great deal of
pleasure out of the experience.
I watched Waylao as the woman held her hand and scanned the lines. It
was easy enough to see that the girl believed implicitly all that the
woman said. Nor was there anything wonderful in her doing so, when one
thinks of the thousands of well-educated women in the civilised cities
who visit the crystal-gazers.
I tell of this little incident in the shanty because it led up to
something that was extremely weird and impressive, a scene that Grimes
and I witnessed quite by accident in the forest next day.
First, I must say that as we listened to Mrs Ranjo’s prophecies we
overheard the woman tell Waylao of one named Rimbo. Now Rimbo was a
great, well-known Marquesan prophet. It appeared that he lived in a hut
at a solitary spot just round the coast. For a long while Mrs Ranjo
expatiated on the virtues of Rimbo’s prophecies—how they always came
true. It was easy enough to see that Waylao was deeply impressed. At the
time I wondered myself why one fortune-teller should so applaud the
virtues of another. It turned out that there was reason enough for this
kindliness to a rival, as the reader will see in the next chapter.
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