ANOTHER BROWN FACE
The girls were much surprised that Fangati seemed perfectly content to
remain with them, and showed no disposition to return to her friends.
At first they put this down to lack of strength, thinking that the
child had the prudence not to attempt to cross the island until there
was no risk of breaking down. But in a few days, when Fangati was as
vigorous and lively as a healthy young animal, this explanation was no
longer tenable.
They were almost equally surprised that, so far as they could tell, no
search had been made for her. For some days they kept pretty close to
the neighbourhood of the hut, in some fear that their possession of
Fangati might turn to their disadvantage if the natives discovered her.
To be suspected of kidnapping her might bring down upon them the wrath
of her friends. But when everything went on as before, they lost their
timidity, and made longer and longer excursions from the hut.
Fangati accompanied them everywhere. They had taught her a few words,
and could make her understand by signs or otherwise what they wanted
her to do. Their life was so simple that there were few ways in which
she could help them. She laughed when she saw their manner of fishing,
but did not offer to show them the native method. She was content with
things as they were.
One day when she had gone with them into the woodland to fetch food,
she gathered a number of large yellowish-green fruits which they girls
had often looked at longingly but which they had never ventured to eat
for fear of poison. She handed the fruit to them, and made signs to
them to eat. Seeing their hesitation, she dug her strong teeth into
the hard rind, quickly pulled it off, and showing the juicy pulp,
bright yellow in colour, began to suck it with enjoyment. At this the
girls followed her example.
"It is delicious," cried Tommy, the juice dripping from her lips.
"What donkeys we were not to try it before! The bother is, there isn't
enough of it; there's a monstrous big stone in the middle. I wonder
what it is?"
The fruit was the mango, which they had known hitherto only in the
bottles of chutney which their uncle had brought from India. Their
pleasure at the discovery of a new fruit impelled Fangati to make
further additions to their menu. As they passed through the woodland
on their way home, she stopped among some creepers trailing along the
ground, seized a stick, and began to dig with it. The girls watched
her curiously. After a little she turned up some tubers that looked
something like potatoes, and lifted them, chattering incomprehensibly,
and pointing to her mouth.
"I believe they are yams," said Mary; "they are very good to eat."
"Then we'll boil some for dinner," said Elizabeth. "What a useful
little thing Fangati is turning out!"
They took home a few of the roots, and came back in the afternoon with
the boat-hook, with which, however, they dug up the roots no faster
than Fangati with the stick.
Another day, when they went for cocoanuts and failed to find any on the
ground, Fangati pointed to some nuts clustering among the foliage fifty
feet above the ground, and made signs to them to climb up for them.
They shook their heads, whereupon she laughed, ran to one of the trees,
clasped her hands about the slender stem, and began, as it seemed to
the girls, to walk up it. They held their breath as she nimbly
mounted, and were not easy in mind until, after throwing down several
nuts, she slid to the ground again, laughing with glee.
"Her backbone must be made of india-rubber," declared Tommy. "I must
try that way."
"No, I won't allow it," said Elizabeth firmly. "It's not worth while
to risk a broken back. Fangati can get us all we want."
Fangati introduced them to several other edible plants, of which they
never learnt the English names. The greater variety of food was very
acceptable, and though their health had been good, except for Mary's
touch of fever, they all declared that they felt better than ever since
Fangati came. No doubt they owed as much to their new interest in life
as to their change of food.
They had not of late walked to the ridge. But one day when the oranges
near them had given out, they decided to make an excursion to the
orange grove where Tommy had first seen Fangati. When they came near
the crest a sudden change in Fangati's demeanour astonished them.
Hitherto she had been as merry as possible, finding cause for laughter
in everything. But all at once she stopped dead, gave a cry, uttered
the word "tapu," and fled away with every sign of terror.
The girls were amazed at her alarm, and looked about for some
explanation of it, half expecting to see some hideous savage
approaching with uplifted club. But all that was in sight were the
unvarying features of the landscape, and the row of posts with their
rags of pennants.
They hurried after Fangati, and tried with the little stock of native
words she had taught them, and the few English words she had learnt, to
elicit the explanation of her terror. She explained fluently enough,
but the only word they caught, because of its constant repetition, was
"tapu."
"That's the same as taboo, I think," said Mary. "It means something
sacred, but I can't make out what could be sacred there. It's so
strange, too, because we were quite near the orange grove, and she was
not frightened then--unless she was frightened of you, Tommy."
"I dare say she was," said Tommy; "we were both frightened, but we are
good friends now, aren't we, Fangati?"
"Me Tommee plend," said the girl.
"Are we going back without any oranges?" asked Elizabeth.
"Why should we?" exclaimed Tommy. "Come along, Fangati."
She led the way towards the ridge again, but Fangati stood and waved
her arms, crying "tapu" again and again.
"Evidently she won't cross the ridge," said Elizabeth; "but we can get
to the orange grove by going round. Perhaps she will come with us
then."
Striking off at an angle with the ridge, they found that Fangati
accompanied them willingly. She soon recovered her wonted high
spirits. They made their way through the undergrowth, and presently
came to an open glade, beyond which lay the orange grove.
Here they were again surprised to see signs of great excitement in
Fangati's face. The girl stood still for a few moments, looking about
her eagerly; then, uttering a little cry, she darted away, and in a
second or two was lost to view.
"Now what's that mean?" cried Mary.
"There's only one explanation," said Elizabeth. "She recognizes the
place as being near her home, and she has run away to her friends."
"Oh! what idiots we are!" cried Tommy. "This was the last place we
should have brought her to. Now we've lost her!"
"Well, dear," said Elizabeth, "I have often wondered whether we were
right in keeping her. She belongs to her own people, you know, and not
to us."
"But she didn't want to leave us. And they don't care a dump about
her, or they'd have come for her long before this. I'm sure she was
much happier with us than with nasty savages."
"Yet she has left us now," remarked Mary. "They can't be dreadfully
horrid to her."
"Couldn't you fetch her back, Bess?" asked Tommy.
"I shouldn't much care about it," replied Elizabeth. "After all, we
don't know what trouble we might be running into. Perhaps she will
come back to us herself."
After taking some oranges they returned to their own side of the island
by way of the ridge. Tommy was disconsolate. All the sisters had
become fond of Fangati, but there was a special tie between her and
Tommy, and she was more often with Tommy than with the others.
For the next two days they talked about little else than Fangati's
defection. They walked up to the orange grove, in the hope that she
would reappear, but returned without a sight of the little brown face
they had learned to love. Her departure had left a strange blank; they
felt that something had gone out of their life. Until then they had
not realized how much she had added to their happiness.
On the third morning after breakfast they were "washing-up" outside the
hut--so they called the clearing away of banana skins, fish bones, and
pieces of shell--when they suddenly caught sight of two figures moving
among the trees some little distance away. They sprang to their feet
in alarm. A second glance told them that the figures were those of
natives; and, struck with the idea, that the savages were stealthily
approaching to attack them, they began to run up-stream toward a patch
of thick undergrowth where they could hide.
But they had only taken a few paces when there was a shrill cry of "Me
Tommee!" They halted hesitatingly, to see Fangati flying towards them,
and her companion standing still at the edge of the woodland.
When Fangati was within a few yards, Tommy, able to restrain herself no
longer, rushed forward and clasped the brown girl in her arms, kissing
her again and again. Fangati laughed; she laughed at everything; then,
hand in hand with Tommy, ran to the other girls, chattering excitedly.
She pointed to the solitary native, who had not moved, smiled, patted
her own head, threw herself down and clasped Elizabeth's feet, ran a
little way, and then came back looking behind her.
"I think she wants to know if she may bring this other one," said Mary.
"And she wants to make us understand that we shan't be harmed," said
Tommy. "Let her go, Bess."
"We gain nothing by refusing, so she may as well," said Elizabeth.
She waved her hands toward the second native, and Fangati, who had been
watching her wistfully, bounded off with a gay laugh.
The girls awaited her return with mixed feelings. They were glad to
see Fangati again, but they did not much desire the acquaintance of a
strange native. They did not yet know whether it was a man or woman.
This doubt, however, was resolved in a few minutes. Scanning the
approaching couple anxiously, they saw that Fangati's companion was a
grey, shrunken old man, apparently feeble, for he moved slowly and
leant on the girl for support.
"I believe it's the man we saw at the native hut," said Mary.
"Not much to be afraid of, after all," said Tommy. "He looks hardly
strong enough to kill a fly."
"How shall we speak to him?" said Elizabeth.
"It will be rather a pantomime," rejoined Tommy. "Be very grave and
dignified, Bess. Impress him with your importance, Queen Bess, monarch
of all she surveys."
"Don't be ridiculous, Tommy," said Elizabeth, feeling it was no time
for jesting. The old man certainly looked harmless enough, but she was
by no means easy in mind.
After what seemed a long time, Fangati led the man up to the girls.
"Bess, Mailee, Me Tommee," she said, pointing to each in turn.
The old man made a salutation, and the girls looked at him with
interest. His face and every visible part of his body was hideously
tattooed, his thin bare legs looking as if they were covered with
indigo-blue stockings. A stick was thrust cross-wise through his mop
of grizzled hair. Certainly he was not a prepossessing object.
The girls were wondering what they ought to do, when they were
surprised to hear the man address them.
"I speak Inglis," he said; "I Maku. Good-day all-same velly much."
Tommy turned aside so that her smile should not irritate or offend.
Elizabeth, with admirable composure, said--
"How do you do, Mr. Maku! Fangati is your granddaughter, I suppose?"
It was at once clear that Maku's English was not very abundant. The
word grand-daughter puzzled him. He looked at Fangati dully; then his
eyes suddenly brightened.
"Fangati, he my son chile," he said. "He velly good chile. He get
plenty piecee me eat. To-mollow he go; I velly solly, eh! eh! I cly."
Elizabeth in her turn was puzzled, and it was Mary who first saw the
old man's meaning.
"He says that Fangati got him plenty to eat, but disappeared one day,
and he was very sorry, and cried."
"No wonder, poor old man!" cried Tommy. "He looks half-starved.
There's no one else living in their hut, then?"
"Have you wife, children, friends?" asked Elizabeth.
The old man shook his head.
"Wife he dead long-timey. Chil'en big long way." He waved his arm to
indicate distance. "Plen: ah! mikinaly he plen; he all-same gone away;
eh! eh! all-same dead."
From this Mary made out that he had a missionary friend who had gone
away and might now be dead.
A few more questions satisfied the girls that, as far as he knew, there
were no more natives on the island except himself and his
granddaughter. Intensely relieved on this score, they were ready to be
hospitable, and to Fangati's delight, invited the man to come towards
their hut and talk to them.
Seated on the ground in front of the hut with the girls in the
entrance, the old man related a story of which they understood little
at the time. It was some few days before Mary, thinking over what he
had said, and puzzling about it, arrived at something like a coherent
narrative. Even then she was only partially successful. What he had
tried to explain in his scanty English was as follows.
He had been chief of a small island a day's paddling to the eastward.
It was remote from the usual trade-tracks, and for this reason had
remained longer in heathendom and cannibalism than most of the Pacific
Islands. But a white missionary had at last come and taken up his
abode on the island, by whose skill in medicine, earnest teaching, and
noble character, Maku and some of his sons had been won over.
There were certain soothsayers among the people, who hated the new
teacher when they found their influence with the chief gone. Working
on the superstitions of the islanders, they secretly stirred up a
revolt. But for the quickness of Fangati he would have been attacked
and killed. She discovered what was going on, informed her
grandfather, and persuaded him to put to sea by night in a canoe, with
the intention of paddling to an island to the southward, where Maku
would find friends. Forced out of their course by wind and current,
they were nearly exhausted when by good fortune they found themselves
on the shore of this island. They landed, erected a hut, and had since
lived there, not caring to risk another voyage, and finding abundance
of food.
Maku could not say how long he had been on the island, nor were the
girls able to discover whether his arrival had preceded or succeeded
theirs. He told them that one day Fangati, who had been to gather
fruit, reported that she had seen white people. Though he thought she
must be mistaken, he bade her run away at once if she saw any one
again, white or brown. He did not like white people. Since they came
to the Pacific the brown people had not been happy. They had been
forced to work; some had been taken from their own islands and carried
away to toil on distant plantations; new diseases had been brought
among them. He had one friend among the white people--the "mikinaly";
he was a good man and did good things. He had taught Maku English.
True, Fangati had said that the strangers she had seen were women; but
Maku could not believe that white women could have come to this island
without white men. And he was desperately afraid of being betrayed to
the ill-disposed mystery men among his own people; for before he had
been long on the island he discovered that it was the scene of certain
ceremonies conducted by these mystery men. At long intervals, before
he became a Christian, he had himself accompanied his people in solemn
expeditions to the island. The accession of a new chief was celebrated
with special rites; years and years before, in his heathen days, his
own accession had been marked by a great cannibal feast. He was much
afraid that white people might sell him to his revolted tribesmen, who
would make him a victim.
When Fangati disappeared he was convinced that she had been captured by
the white people, and he would never see her again. He missed her very
much, for, being old and infirm, he depended almost entirely on her for
his food. But when she suddenly returned and told him how she had been
carried out to sea while fishing, and how the white women had rescued
her and treated her kindly, he felt that he must make his presence
known to them, and especially warn them of their danger.
At this Elizabeth asked anxiously what danger was likely to assail
them. The man hesitated. Now that it had come to the point he seemed
to be unwilling to say more. But at length he explained that the spot
at which they had landed was the usual landing-place of his people when
they came to visit the island, and all the ground between it and the
ridge was tapu. He struggled with his imperfect English in trying to
make clear to the girls what that meant. They understood at last that
their side of the island was sacred; its grounds were only to be
trodden when the people came to hold their ceremonies, and anybody
trespassing upon it would incur the wrath of the mystery men, and bring
down upon themselves a terrible punishment. The forbidden ground was
marked off from the rest of the island by a line of poles set upon the
ridge. Maku confessed that he himself felt very uneasy at having
violated the tapu; and Elizabeth, questioning him, found that beneath
his recently assumed Christianity there lay a deep stratum of
superstition. When the "mikinaly" was with him tapu had no horrors for
him; but the missionary had left his island some time before the rising
took place, and with the removal of his influence the chief had
relapsed to some extent into the superstitions of his early manhood.
The girls were not at first much alarmed at what he told them. But
when he added that his people would certainly choose another chief in
his place, and come to the island for the usual inaugural ceremonies,
the thought of being discovered by the savages at such a time filled
them with dread. Their hut lay in the direct path of the procession to
the ridge; it could not escape detection, and they trembled at the idea
of falling into the hands of people who might be worked up to religious
frenzy by their mystery men. To violate the tapu would be bad enough
for a brown man; it would be worse for white people.
Maku made a suggestion. Let them dismantle the hut, he said, destroy
all traces of their occupation, and remove to the other side of the
island, where at least they would not have to reckon with the anger of
the mystery men at finding them on forbidden ground. The girls
discussed the suggestion earnestly, and decided to follow his advice.
It gave them a pang to pull down the little home to which they had
become accustomed: but they lost no time in setting about it, carrying
the material down to the boat. Meanwhile, the old man and Fangati
scattered the stones of their oven, and tried to obliterate the signs
of habitation. Maku shook his head when he saw the bleached grass on
what had been the floor of the hut. Even in this land of quick growth
it must take some time before so tell-tale an evidence was done away.
It was decided that Elizabeth and Mary should row the boat round to
Maku's landing-place with the canoe in tow, while Tommy walked with the
old man across the island. The chief did not follow the long route up
the stream by which the girls had reached the ridge, but took a more
slanting course through a wild and rugged region which they had never
explored. As they were crossing the ridge he pointed out to Tommy in
the distance the entrance to the great cave in which the ceremonies of
his tribe were conducted. Tommy shivered; the thought of wild men
engaged in mysterious rites terrified her imagination. Choosing a
steep path that wound down the eastern side of the ridge, Maku led the
two young girls to the open space near the waterfall, and in a few
minutes reached his hut. He and Fangati at once began to rig up near
by a temporary shelter for the English girls, and it was almost
finished by the time Elizabeth and Mary arrived.
The girls were provided by their new friends with an excellent meal of
fish, breadfruit and other fruits, some of which were strange to them.
Immediately afterwards, Maku and his granddaughter set to work to build
them a hut in the native fashion. Elizabeth doubted whether they would
like a house which must be inevitably close and stuffy with a doorway
only high enough to crawl through. Their own hut had been fresh and
breezy. But it seemed better to let the natives have their way. They
would build much faster than the English girls; and if strange natives
should make their appearance in this part of the island, they would not
be rendered suspicious as they might be if they saw a hut so different
from what they were accustomed to.
The girls slept in their temporary shelter that night. They had lost
their fear of savage neighbours, but this had been replaced by a new
fear of possible visitors from beyond. Tommy had asked Maku during
their walk whether there was any chance of a ship coming to the island.
"No ship," he answered. "No come this side. Melican ship come one
time, my place; mikinaly come in Melican ship; all-same, no mo'e."