Mâni was a half-caste--father a Martinique nigger, mother a
Samoan--twenty-two years of age, and lived at Moatâ, a little village
two miles from Apia in Samoa.
Mâni's husband was a Frenchman named François Renault, who, when he was
sober, worked as a boat-builder and carpenter, for the German “factory”
at Mataféle. And when he was away form home I would hear Mâni laughing,
and see her playing with her two dark-skinned little girls, and talking
to them in a curious mixture of Samoan-French. They were merry mites
with big rolling eyes, and unmistakably “kinky” hair--like their mother.
It was a fortnight after the great gale of 15th March, 1889, when the
six German and American warships were wrecked, that Mâni came to my
house with a basket of fresh-water fish she had netted far up in a deep
mountain pool. She looked very happy. “Frank,” she said, had not beaten
her for two whole weeks, and had promised not to beat her any more. And
he was working very steadily now.
“That is good to hear, Mâni.”
She smiled as she nodded her frizzy head, tossed her _tiputa_ (open
blouse) over one shoulder, and sat down on the verandah steps to clean
the fish.
“Yes, he will beat me no more--at least not whilst the shipwrecked
sailors remain in Samoa. When they go I shall run away with the
children--to some town in Savai'i where he cannot find me.”
“It happened in this way,” she went on confidentially: “a week ago two
American sailors came to the house and asked for water, for they
were thirsty and the sun was hot I told them that the Moatâ water was
brackish, and I husked and gave them two young coco-nuts each. And then
Frank, who had been drinking, ran out of the house and cursed and struck
me. Then one of the sailors felled him to the earth, and the other
dragged him up by his collar, and both kicked him so much that he wept.
“'Doth he often beat thee?' said one of the sailors to me. And I said
'Yes'.
“Then they beat him again, saying it was for my sake. And then one of
them shook him and said: 'O thou dog, to so misuse thine own wife! Now
listen. In three days' time we two of the _Trenton_ will have a day's
liberty, and we shall come here and see if thou hast again beaten thy
wife. And if thou hast but so much as _mata pio'd_ her we shall each
kick thee one hundred times.'”
(_Mata pio_, I must explain, is Samoan for looking “cross-eyed” or
unpleasantly at a person.)
“And Frank was very much afraid, and promised he would no longer harm
me, and held out his hand to them weepingly, but they would not take
it, and swore at him. And then they each gave my babies a quarter of
a dollar, and I, because my heart was glad, gave them each a ring of
tortoiseshell.”
“Did they come back, Mâni?”
Mâni, at heart, was a flirt. She raised her big black eyes with their
long curling lashes to me, and then closed them for a moment demurely.
“Yes,” she replied, “they came back. And when I told them that my
husband was now kind to me, and was at work, they laughed, and left for
him a long piece of strong tobacco tied round with tarred rope. And they
said, 'Tell him we will come again by-and-by, and see how he behaveth to
thee'.”
“Mâni,” said in English, as she finished the last of the fish, “why
do you speak Samoan to me when you know English so well? Where did you
learn it? Your husband always speaks French to you.”
Mâni told me her story. In her short life of two-and-twenty years she
had had some strange experiences.
“My father was Jean Galoup. He was a negro of St. Pierre, in Martinique,
and came to Samoa in a French barque, which was wrecked on Tutuila.
He was one of the sailors. When the captain and the other sailors made
ready to go away in the boats he refused to go, and being a strong,
powerful man they dared not force him. So he remained on Tutuila and
married my mother, and became a Samoan, and made much money by selling
food to the whaleships. Then, when I was twelve years old, my mother
died, and my father took me to his own country--to Martinique. It took
us two years to get there, for we went through many countries--to Sydney
first, then to China, and to India, and then to Marseilles in France.
But always in English ships. That is how I have learned to speak
English.
“We lived for three years in Martinique, and then one day, as my father
was clearing some land at the foot of Mont Pelée, he was bitten by
_fer-de-lance_ and died, and I was left alone.
“There was a young carpenter at St. Pierre, named François Renault, who
had one day met me in the market-place, and after that often came to see
my father and me. He said he loved me, and so when my father was dead,
we went to the priest and we were married.
“My husband had heard much of Samoa from my father, and said to me: 'Let
us go there and live'.
“So we came here, and then Frank fell into evil ways, for he was cross
with me because he saw that the pure-blooded Samoan girls were prettier
than me, and had long straight hair and lighter skins. And because he
could not put me away he began to treat me cruelly. And I love him no
more. But yet will I stay by him if he doeth right.”
The fates were kind to Mâni a few months later. Her husband went to sea
and never returned, and Mâni, after waiting a year, was duly married
by the consul to a respectable old trader on Savai'i, who wanted a wife
with a “character”--the which is not always obtainable with a bride in
the South Seas.