The day of the council found the population of the island crowded into
the capital. By canoe and whaleboat, on foot and donkey-back, the five
thousand inhabitants of Fitu-Iva had trooped in. The three intervening
days had had their share of excitement. At first there had been much
selling from the sparse shelves of the traders. But when the soldiers
appeared, their patronage was declined and they were told to go to
Fulualea for coin. “Says it not so on the face of the paper,” the
traders demanded, “that for the asking the coin will be given in
exchange?”
Only the strong authority of Uiliami had prevented the burning of the
traders' houses. As it was, one of Grief's copra-sheds went up in smoke
and was duly charged by Ieremia to the king's account. Ieremia himself
had been abused and mocked, and his spectacles broken. The skin was
off Willie Smee's knuckles. This had been caused by three boisterous
soldiers who violently struck their jaws thereon in quick succession.
Captain Boig was similarly injured. Peter Gee had come off undamaged,
because it chanced that it was bread-baskets and not jaws that struck
him on the fists.
Tui Tulifau, with Sepeli at his side and surrounded by his convivial
chiefs, sat at the head of the council in the big compound. His
right eye and jaw were swollen as if he too had engaged in assaulting
somebody's fist. It was palace gossip that morning that Sepeli had
administered a conjugal beating. At any rate, her spouse was sober,
and his fat bulged spiritlessly through the rips in Willie Smee's silk
shirt. His thirst was prodigious, and he was continually served with
young drinking nuts. Outside the compound, held back by the army, was
the mass of the common people. Only the lesser chiefs, village maids,
village beaux, and talking men with their staffs of office were
permitted inside. Cornelius Deasy, as befitted a high and favoured
official, sat near to the right hand of the king. On the left of the
queen, opposite Cornelius and surrounded by the white traders he was
to represent, sat Ieremia. Bereft of his spectacles, he peered
short-sightedly across at the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
In turn, the talking man of the windward coast, the talking man of the
leeward coast, and the talking man of the mountain villages, each backed
by his group of lesser talking men and chiefs, arose and made oration.
What they said was much the same. They grumbled about the paper money.
Affairs were not prosperous. No more copra was being smoked. The people
were suspicious. To such a pass had things come that all people wanted
to pay their debts and no one wanted to be paid. Creditors made a
practice of running away from debtors. The money was cheap. Prices were
going up and commodities were getting scarce. It cost three times the
ordinary price to buy a fowl, and then it was tough and like to die
of old age if not immediately sold. The outlook was gloomy. There were
signs and omens. There was a plague of rats in some districts. The crops
were bad. The custard apples were small. The best-bearing avocado on the
windward coast had mysteriously shed all its leaves. The taste had
gone from the mangoes. The plantains were eaten by a worm. The fish had
forsaken the ocean and vast numbers of tiger-sharks appeared. The wild
goats had fled to inaccessible summits. The poi in the poi-pits had
turned bitter. There were rumblings in the mountains, night-walking
of spirits; a woman of Punta-Puna had been struck speechless, and a
five-legged she-goat had been born in the village of Eiho. And that all
was due to the strange money of Fulualea was the firm conviction of the
elders in the village councils assembled.
Uiliami spoke for the army. His men were discontented and mutinous.
Though by royal decree the traders were bidden accept the money, yet did
they refuse it. He would not say, but it looked as if the strange money
of Fulualea had something to do with it.
Ieremia, as talking man of the traders, next spoke. When he arose, it
was noticeable that he stood with legs spraddled over a large grass
basket. He dwelt upon the cloth of the traders, its variety and beauty
and durability, which so exceeded the Fitu-Ivan wet-pounded tapa,
fragile and coarse. No one wore tapa any more. Yet all had worn
tapa, and nothing but tapa, before the traders came. There was the
mosquito-netting, sold for a song, that the cleverest Fitu-Ivan
net-weaver could not duplicate in a thousand years. He enlarged on the
incomparable virtues of rifles, axes, and steel fishhooks, down through
needles, thread and cotton fish-lines to white flour and kerosene oil.
He expounded at length, with firstlies and secondlies and all minor
subdivisions of argument, on organization, and order, and civilization.
He contended that the trader was the bearer of civilization, and that
the trader must be protected in his trade else he would not come. Over
to the westward were islands which would not protect the traders. What
was the result? The traders would not come, and the people were like
wild animals. They wore no clothes, no silk shirts (here he peered and
blinked significantly at the king), and they ate one another.
The queer paper of the Feathers of the Sun was not money. The traders
knew what money was, and they would not receive it. If Fitu-Iva
persisted in trying to make them receive it they would go away and never
come back. And then the Fitu-Ivans, who had forgotten how to make tapa,
would run around naked and eat one another.
Much more he said, talking a solid hour, and always coming back to what
their dire condition would be when the traders came no more. “And in
that day,” he perorated, “how will the Fitu-Ivan be known in the great
world? _Kai-kanak_* will men call him. '_Kiakanak! Kai-kanak!_”
* Man-eater.
Tui Tulifau spoke briefly. The case had been presented, he said, for the
people, the army, and the traders. It was now time for Feathers of the
Sun to present his side. It could not be denied that he had wrought
wonders with his financial system. “Many times has he explained to me
the working of his system,” Tui Tulif au concluded. “It is very simple.
And now he will explain it to you.”
It was a conspiracy of the white traders, Cornelius contended. Ieremia
was right so far as concerned the manifold blessings of white flour
and kerosene oil. Fitu-Iva did not want to become _kai-kanak_. Fitu-Iva
wanted civilization; it wanted more and more civilization. Now that was
the very point, and they must follow him closely. Paper money was an
earmark of higher civilization. That was why he, the Feathers of the
Sun, had introduced it. And that was why the traders opposed it. They
did not want to see Fitu-Iva civilized. Why did they come across the far
ocean stretches with their goods to Fitu-Iva? He, the Feathers of the
Sun, would tell them why, to their faces, in grand council assembled. In
their own countries men were too civilized to let the traders make the
immense profits that they made out of the Fitu-Ivans. If the Fitu-Ivans
became properly civilized, the trade of the traders would be gone. In
that day every Fitu-Ivan could become a trader if he pleased.
That was why the white traders fought the system of paper money, that
he, the Feathers of the Sun, had brought. Why was he called the Feathers
of the Sun? Because he was the Light-Bringer from the World Beyond the
Sky. The paper money was the light. The robbing white traders could not
flourish in the light. Therefore they fought the light.
He would prove it to the good people of Fitu-Iva, and he would prove
it out of the mouths of his enemies. It was a well-known fact that all
highly civilized countries had paper-money systems. He would ask Ieremia
if this was not so.
Ieremia did not answer.
“You see,” Cornelius went on, “he makes no answer. He cannot deny what
is true. England, France, Germany, America, all the great _Papalangi_
countries, have the paper-money system. It works. From century to
century it works. I challenge you, Ieremia, as an honest man, as one
who was once a zealous worker in the Lord's vineyard, I challenge you to
deny that in the great _Papalangi_ countries the system works.”
Ieremia could not deny, and his fingers played nervously with the
fastening of the basket on his knees.
“You see, it is as I have said,” Cornelius continued. “Ieremia agrees
that it is so. Therefore, I ask you, all good people of Fitu-Iva, if
a system is good for the _Papalangi_ countries, why is it not good for
Fitu-Iva?”
“It is not the same!” Ieremia cried. “The paper of the Feathers of the
Sun is different from the paper of the great countries.”
That Cornelius had been prepared for this was evident. He held up a
Fitu-Ivan note that was recognized by all.
“What is that?” he demanded.
“Paper, mere paper,” was Ieremia's reply.
“And that?”
This time Cornelius held up a Bank of England note.
“It is the paper money of the English,” he explained to the Council,
at the same time extending it for Ieremia to examine. “Is it not true,
Ieremia, that it is paper money of the English?”
Ieremia nodded reluctantly.
“You have said that the paper money of Fitu-Iva was paper, now how about
this of the English? What is it?.... You must answer like a true man...
All wait for your answer, Ieremia.”
“It is--it is----” the puzzled Ieremia began, then spluttered
helplessly, the fallacy beyond his penetration.
“Paper, mere paper,” Cornelius concluded for him, imitating his halting
utterance.
Conviction sat on the faces of all. The king clapped his hands
admiringly and murmured, “It is most clear, very clear.”
“You see, he himself acknowledges it.” Assured triumph was in Deasy's
voice and bearing. “He knows of no difference. There is no difference.
'Tis the very image of money. 'Tis money itself.”
In the meantime Grief was whispering in Ieremia's ear, who nodded and
began to speak.
“But it is well known to all the _Papalangi_ that the English Government
will pay coin money for the paper.”
Deasy's victory was now absolute. He held aloft a Fitu-Ivan note.
“Is it not so written on this paper as well?”
Again Grief whispered.
“That Fitu-Iva will pay coin money?” asked Ieremia
“It is so written.”
A third time Grief prompted.
“On demand?” asked Ieremia.
“On demand,” Cornelius assured him.
“Then I demand coin money now,” said Ieremia, drawing a small package of
notes from the pouch at his girdle.
Cornelius scanned the package with a quick, estimating eye.
“Very well,” he agreed. “I shall give you the coin money now. How much?”
“And we will see the system work,” the king proclaimed, partaking in his
Chancellor's triumph.
“You have heard!--He will give coin money now!” Ieremia cried in a loud
voice to the assemblage.
At the same time he plunged both hands in the basket and drew forth many
packages of Fitu-Ivan notes. It was noticed that a peculiar odour was
adrift about the council.
“I have here,” Ieremia announced, “one thousand and twenty-eight pounds
twelve shillings and sixpence. Here is a sack to put the coin money in.”
Cornelius recoiled. He had not expected such a sum, and everywhere about
the council his uneasy eyes showed him chiefs and talking men drawing
out bundles of notes. The army, its two months' pay in its hands,
pressed forward to the edge of the council, while behind it the
populace, with more money, invaded the compound.
“'Tis a run on the bank you've precipitated,” he said reproachfully to
Grief.
“Here is the sack to put the coin money in,” Ieremia urged.
“It must be postponed,” Cornelius said desperately, “'Tis not in banking
hours.”
Ieremia flourished a package of money. “Nothing of banking hours is
written here. It says on demand, and I now demand.”
“Let them come to-morrow, O Tui Tulifau,” Cornelius appealed to the
king. “They shall be paid to-morrow.”
Tui Tulifau hesitated, but his spouse glared at him, her brawny arm
tensing as the fist doubled into a redoubtable knot, Tui Tulifau tried
to look away, but failed. He cleared his throat nervously.
“We will see the system work,” he decreed. “The people have come far.”
“'Tis good money you're asking me to pay out,” Deasy muttered in a low
voice to the king.
Sepeli caught what he said, and grunted so savagely as to startle the
king, who involuntarily shrank away from her.
“Forget not the pig,” Grief whispered to Ieremia, who immediately stood
up.
With a sweeping gesture he stilled the babel of voices that was
beginning to rise.
“It was an ancient and honourable custom of Fitu-Iva,” he said, “that
when a man was proved a notorious evildoer his joints were broken with
a club and he was staked out at low water to be fed upon alive by the
sharks. Unfortunately, that day is past. Nevertheless another ancient
and honourable custom remains with us. You all know what it is. When a
man is a proven thief and liar he shall be struck with a dead pig.”
His right hand went into the basket, and, despite the lack of his
spectacles, the dead pig that came into view landed accurately on
Deasy's neck. With such force was it thrown that the Chancellor, in
his sitting position, toppled over sidewise. Before he could recover,
Sepeli, with an agility unexpected of a woman who weighed two hundred
and sixty pounds, had sprung across to him. One hand clutched his shirt
collar, the other hand brandished the pig, and amid the vast uproar of a
delighted kingdom she royally swatted him.
There remained nothing for Tui Tulifau but to put a good face on his
favourite's disgrace, and his mountainous fat lay back on the mats and
shook in a gale of Gargantuan laughter.
When Sepeli dropped both pig and Chancellor, a talking man from the
windward coast picked up the carcass. Cornelius was on his feet and
running, when the pig caught him on the legs and tripped him. The people
and the army, with shouts and laughter, joined in the sport.
Twist and dodge as he would, everywhere the ex-Chancellor of the
Exchequer was met or overtaken by the flying pig. He scuttled like a
frightened rabbit in and out among the avocados and the palms. No hand
was laid upon him, and his tormentors made way before him, but ever they
pursued, and ever the pig flew as fast as hands could pick it up.
As the chase died away down the Broom Road, Grief led the traders to the
royal treasury, and the day was well over ere the last Fitu-Ivan bank
note had been redeemed with coin.