(Here I paused and looked at the empty coffeepot. “Guess I’d better

make some more,” I said to Templeton Crocker. When I got back with the

coffee I asked, “Are you tired of listening?” “Lord, no!” said Crocker.

“And I hope you’re not tired of talking.” “I’m never tired of talking,”

I said, and went on.)

* * * * *

I was rather glad to be away from the _France_ for a while. The

sociability on board was getting on my nerves. I had already learned

that their dialect was akin to Polynesian and that the word _tabu_ was

feared and respected. But it wasn’t at all like the German _verboten_.

We didn’t use _tabu_ properly or understand it properly. A thing could

be tabu one minute, I discovered, and not tabu the next. When I found

standing room only in my cabin, everything in it being pulled up or

pulled down by curious island fingers, I would smile mildly and say,

“Tabu, tabu!” It wouldn’t do to lose patience and push them out. They

would be tabu-ed out of the main cabin, but we only had to wait a

little before a head, then an arm, then a leg would appear slyly in the

companionway. Then they would all ooze in again. We had talked it over

among ourselves and had decided that they were Polynesians, kind and

courteous to friends; but an uncouth word might rouse their tempers to

a fury.

We started on our little stroll to the Lake. At Hamlin’s suggestion

I put on a pair of heavy army shoes with stout brass screws in soles

and heels--seemed rather a silly precaution. Buia was guiding us and

we had a few carriers for our light packs. A tin of sardines and two

ship’s biscuits would be enough for each of us, in case of famine. My

pack included a light change of clothes and toilet necessities. Also

we had a bundle of tribute-gifts for Tahua and Taupangi. Hamlin had

been foresighted enough to include tea, butter, sugar, salt, pepper and

a benzine tin to make tea in. Otherwise we expected to live off the

country.

Our march began with a climb up 400 feet of cliff, up a sort of ladder

trail which generations had scooped out with shells. The coral stone

seemed to be so many little daggers, slicing at me until my hands and

knees began to bleed. Once on the summit, there were slopes of coral;

everything on the island was coral, except thin patches of earth that

had caught on the surface. I think that the people got what they ate by

moving from patch to patch and picking whatever grew there. We found a

grove of pawpaws. The carriers were eating the fruit green, so I tried

a paw. They were not bad. Green pawpaws are full of papain, with an

action similar to that of pepsin.... Walking along, nibbling, I began

to feel that the difficulties of the trip had been overrated. Then

beyond the grove I looked across the bleakness of the land from which a

healthy people had hacked their bare living through ages of struggle.

Over the trail in front of us was a mass of briary vines. Must we go

through that? Buia led the way.

I wore a helmet and was sorry, for the rest of the way we had to walk

at a crouch through a tunnel of close-woven twigs. Vines pulled off my

helmet, tripped me up, flung me about. Two good men with machetes could

have cleared this trail; but there were no machetes in this land of

little iron. There was always coral underfoot, cutting with thousands

of minute edges. Beyond the vines trees were growing out of solid

coral; the forest was so dense that we were in twilight, all the way

to the Lake. Perspiration oozed out of us, rain oozed in, wetting us

through. Yet we were so thirsty that we must stop every half-mile or so

to swig from our water-bottles. A cigarette would have helped, but they

were saturated by misty rain the instant they came out of the box.

The barefoot carriers didn’t seem to mind the jagged stuff; they would

step daintily around a bristling lump which could have opened an

artery. Now I knew why Rennellese legs were always scarred up to the

knee. The gods of Rennell Island had thrown up another barrier against

strangers. When we approached an especially bad lump Buia would point

it out in time for me to balance myself on my cane to avoid a fall that

might have scraped me to death.

Maybe you have scared your children to sleep by telling of obstacles,

natural and supernatural, which the hero must overcome in his climb to

the ogre’s castle. On that walk to the Lake fissures would appear in

the rock, spanned by rain-slippery, mossy logs. Buia would stand on the

slimy thing, agile as a monkey, and pleasantly help us across the void.

I wore two pairs of woolen stockings when I started out; now they hung

in shreds against my bleeding calves. At the first step on a log I saw

that the thick leather of my shoes was torn as if it had been scraped

across yards of barbed wire. Now I knew why Hamlin had thought that

I couldn’t finish this little tour. By the time we reached the muddy

shores of the Lake my dreadnaught shoes had about gone back on me, and

the brass-studded soles were flopping about like broken wings.

On a knoll some fifty yards from the Lake we came upon another of those

queer Rennell houses, practically all roof with eaves a couple of feet

from the ground. There were no doors or windows, so you got in by

crawling under the eaves. There was nothing inside but a great pile of

coconuts. We were told not to touch them because they were extra tabu.

Coconuts were very scarce. Hog-dirty, dog-tired, White and Hamlin and

I tumbled down and panted, quite willing to die among the coconuts, if

only they let us alone.

Somebody was crawling in after us. It was Buia with a couple of

handsome natives. Buia said that we had better hurry up, as the Big

Masters, Tahua and Taupangi, were waiting to receive us. So we were

up again, mucking our way through a mile of lakeside and up to a

so-called village. There were shackly palm-leaf canopies on crooked

poles--where people slept, perhaps. There were caverns in the coral

over yonder, which might serve as apartments. We came to another

Rennell house, slightly larger than the one we had been in. In a palace

like this there is no question of Majesty having obeisance paid it or

of a court officer instructing one how to bow and kneel. You crawl

in on all fours, and on all fours you greet the reigning sovereign.

Taupangi, Lord of the Lake, sat in state on a pile of native mats, and

was properly dressed for the religious ceremonies. Around his waist

he wore a wide tapa and a fancifully woven mat. His hair was in a

knot at the back of his head and he was smeared all over with sacred

yellow turmeric. He was still young, and about the biggest man I saw

on Rennell Island, with shoulders like an ox’s yoke and a wonderfully

proportioned body. All of the Big Masters that I saw were handsome men,

none of them running to fat as Polynesians do in middle age.

At the other end of the house sat a younger, still handsomer man,

enthroned on mats. He had the perfect classic profile and his tattooed

torso was magnificent. This was Tekita, who had acted as the Big

Master’s substitute during the ceremonies of the week; during the

ritual God had passed from Taupangi’s head and into Tekita’s. He was

being king for a day, as it were, for the great spirit (Tainatua)

owned every stick and stone on Rennell Island, and the man whose head

possessed him spoke with the voice of God. Taupangi, for the nonce, was

only human. Soon, when Divinity resumed its seat in his brain, he would

again be all powerful over the division of labor, crops and everything

else in his little realm.

Tekita, the substitute, had been chewing betel-nuts, and seemed

excited, as well he might be considering his lofty rise. Superficially

he behaved like quite a conceited young fellow. He spoke pidgin English

fairly well--he might have been one of those whom Lever Brothers’ yacht

had taken away on an unsuccessful attempt at recruiting. With all the

gestures of royalty Tekita seated himself next to the Big Master and

graciously did some interpreting. As he talked he rolled his eyes

and every few moments he would go into a silent semi-trance. He was

going on much like any charlatan trying to impress an audience. In

a prophetic voice he admitted that he was glad to see Hamlin again.

“Hamlin fadder belong me,” he said. And promptly wanted to know what

present “fadder belong him” had brought. This honorary fatherhood,

although it cemented our friendship with Taupangi’s people, was

becoming a bit of a nuisance.

I found more pidgin than I had expected, at first. It was gradually

filtering in. (I can’t forget Tekita’s lordly farewell, spoken between

trances: “Me too sorry belong you fellow you come along here.” Meaning,

of course, that he was glad; but he had somehow mixed his adjectives.)

I wanted to see Tahua, Lord of the White Sands, but when I asked this

favor of Taupangi, the Lord of the Lake, he was jealously evasive. Our

tribute of an adze and axe changed his mind (which was Tekita, speaking

with the voice of God). Guides led us over to a miserable little hut

of sticks and vines. Apparently Taupangi wasn’t being too lavish with

his rival. But there was enough room inside for the bearded, muscular

Tahua to sit in state opposite his divinely inspired substitute. Tahua

relaxed to a somewhat cupidinous smile when we presented him with an

adze. This meeting wasn’t much, but it was what a bond salesman would

call a “contact.” I knew that I would have to gain Tahua’s good will

before I could even attempt hookworm examinations on his side of the

island.

Tomorrow would end the festival, with the ceremony of putting God

back into the heads of the Big Masters. I was too tired to care. I

had sloshed through mud until I found fresh water, made a pretense

of washing my face and hands and came back dirtier than before. Now

I could see why the inland Rennellese went unbathed, except when it

happened to rain on them. I crawled into the guest house--not daring to

touch the pile of sacred coconuts--and eased my feet with clean socks

and tennis shoes. Then I spread out my blanket and got on it.

“Oh, sleep! it is a gentle thing,” said the Ancient Mariner. In

Taupangi’s domain it was a mixed blessing. When I started to drowse,

our courteous hosts came in with a rough wooden bowl filled with

_pana_, a glorified sweet potato. Although they had peeled the

vegetables with their dirty fingers, the smell of food woke me

pleasantly. Since leaving the _France_ we had had nothing but a few

sardines and one sea-biscuit apiece. I had watched the natives cooking;

Rennellese fire-sticks were pieces of rotten wood which they rubbed

until the spark came. They lined a hole with coral stones, started a

fire on them and kept it going until the stones were white hot. Then

they wrapped food in leaves, laid it on the stones, covered it with

earth and let nature take its course.

Except for a small clamshell, which they used mostly to scrape the

meat from coconuts, the wooden bowl was their only eating utensil. At

festival dances they used the bowls as drums. These, and big wooden

drums, were the only musical instruments they had. I was sorry that we

had forgotten to bring them jew’s harps, which would have charmed them

into ecstasies.

To say that I slept that night would be a gross exaggeration. Every

man, woman and child who could crowd in became our bedmate. Communism

and comfort seem to be strangers. We lay all coiled together, Gordon

White and I sharing the common lot. The rest of our crowd had had sense

enough to find some sort of shelter outside. Before we slept--if it

could be called sleeping--a burly, blustery fellow named Panio came

in and showed all the specious heartiness of the typical politician.

Instinctively I felt that we might have trouble with Panio. If I had

known, as I learned later, that he belonged on the beach, a henchman of

Tahua, and was one of the three that had killed Deck’s missionaries, I

might have slept even more lightly than I did.

Lying on the floor, cuddled very close to me, was Tamata, son of

Taupangi, and on the other side, equally intimate, was Tahua’s adopted

son. I could see why the house was so popular, for the night was quite

cool; outside in the ridiculous leaf-and-stick shelters only a mat

protected the sleeper. I had seen women lying in the open, babes in

arms, snoring serenely with cold rain sifting all over them.

The house inside reminded me of Mark Twain’s description of Brigham

Young’s bed; if anybody turned they all had to turn. Far into the

night, pidgin English questions were pegged at me from this side

and that. They all wanted to learn a little more while they had the

opportunity. Indoors or out, it was the crudest existence imaginable,

not far removed from the animal. Yet they thrived on it, to all

appearances....

Next morning, after we had implored our hosts to break their

one-meal-a-day custom and cook us a fish, we went over to the harvest

festival, which was drawing to a dramatic close.

* * * * *

(I paused to light a cigarette, and Crocker prompted me with “What

happened then?”)

* * * * *

Well (I said) the show was held near Taupangi’s house. He and his

rival, Tahua, with several other Big Masters, were the features. They

had laid aside their bunchy loin coverings and wore nothing but strips

of tapa between their buttocks and around their waists. From head to

foot they were yellow with royal turmeric. Tahua’s first gesture, when

he saw me, was to point at my bare legs. I didn’t understand, until I

learned that Resident Commissioner Dick Kane, the first white man known

to have penetrated as far as the Lake, had worn woolen stockings. When

the natives were curious, he told them that in civilization only big

chiefs were allowed to wear stockings. Next time I visited Taupangi I

restored my status by covering my calves.

There was a rough dirt court, about fifty yards by ten. They had

fenced it with sticks and leaves, higher than a man’s head. This was

to keep women out. If any female looked in on the ceremony she would

surely die, they said. There was some trouble about letting us into

the enclosure. We were told that the gods, angered at our presence,

might do us harm. Finally, as a measure of protection, Taupangi sat

between us and danger. Before he rose to take part in the ceremonies he

insisted that another Master, a very old one, should sit in his place,

so that at all times we were well insulated against the supernatural.

The precious coconuts which we had been sleeping with were now piled in

the center of the court; beside them was a rude platform where sat the

two young men who had substituted as godheads for the two Big Masters.

Then the Masters--there were about twenty of the minor ones in

all--began filing slowly around the coconut pile, their faces turned

heavenward as they chanted. First Taupangi would take up the theme,

then the others would join in a sort of obbligato. The walk sped up

gradually to a curious leaping, first on one foot then the other; they

hopped by rule, two on the right leg, two on the left. The pounding of

drums and food-bowls, the howling song and general yelling increased

to a hubbub. Abruptly the dancers would sit down, and the racket would

cease. Finally Tekita (still monarch pro tem) rose from his platform

and distributed coconuts from the pile.

The big moment came. The celebrants began working God out of the two

substitutes and back into the heads of Taupangi and Tahua. The faces

of both Big Masters were set in earnest religious devotion. The lesser

Masters formed a line, four abreast, and hopped some distance toward

the house where Tekita had been sitting. Singing at the top of their

lungs, their hands outstretched toward Heaven, they hopped back. Their

slow retreat and progress brought them nearer the house each time; they

came at last within six feet of the eaves. At last with a bloodcurdling

howl they rushed up and struck the roof with the flat of their hands.

Then, apparently, God flew from his temporary dwelling back into the

heads of Tahua and Taupangi.

The minute this transfer was made Taupangi’s substitute seemed to come

back to normal. He had lost the superiority complex altogether, and was

a relaxed, courteous and jolly fellow.

That night our bird hunters brought in some ducks, which we ate half

raw, because the natives only knew how to scorch them. Themselves, they

never ate ducks; ducks were unclean feeders, the people said. Thinking

that we might protect ourselves from the sociability of the house, we

set up a tent. In fifteen minutes our tent was jammed with self-invited

guests. The frail canvas came down two or three times during the night

from the pressure of those inside getting out and those outside getting

in. In the weary, dreary morning, plagued with thirst, I tried drinking

water from the Lake, where the natives seemed to get theirs. On the

coral-jagged march back to the beach, I found to my embarrassment that

the Lake was quite unfriendly to a white man’s digestion.

When we reached the White Sands some interesting gossip was going the

rounds. It was about Tekita, who had been substituting for Taupangi. By

all the rules a substitute was supposed to be very tabu during that

period, especially for women. But when God got back into Taupangi’s

head he told on Tekita, who had broken his tabu with a certain village

maiden. So God visited his punishment on Taupangi, not Tekita, and told

him that he could not go down to the _France_ while she was in the bay.

Somehow the Almighty must have reversed himself, for Taupangi visited

us a few days later.

* * * * *

While I was at the Lake I never for a moment overlooked the problem

of hookworm examinations, nor did I fail to put in a great deal of

time making a census of the people for apparent diseases. Since Buia

had warned me not to mention hookworms to the Big Master, I was still

searching for a way to go ahead. Then Buia fixed it. My guess was that

he spoke to Mua, son of Taupangi; for both the Lord of the Lake and his

son had first class minds. Tahua, Lord of the White Sands, was reputed

to have less “power” than Taupangi; that is to say, he was unable to

go into a “sweating trance” as the chief of Lake Tenggano could, they

said. Mua told me that Taupangi could kill by wishing, through his

closer connection with the Grandson God.

At any rate, when we were back on the beach Buia told me that if I

could give him and Mua the specimen tins, and would make examinations

before the two Big Masters came, maybe it would be all right. I had

offered a large fishhook and a small fishhook for every specimen,

which may have been why we got a few. We found a light infection, but

under such adverse conditions we were unable to determine whether the

hookworms were ancient, modern or what. It was interesting to observe

the watchful care with which our tin containers were returned. Each man

would squat in front of our worktable and never take his eyes off the

specimen until we had finished and thrown it into a hole in the sand.

They were taking no chances on our being witch doctors, come to make

black magic.

If I had been given the ghost of an opportunity I might have reached

some conclusion; I might have washed out their specimens according to

the regulation field technique and studied the parasites under the

microscope. This might have added important clues in the search for

Rennell Island’s history, for the hookworm contents of a race may tell

a great deal about the origins and migrations of a people. Dr. S. T.

Darling, eminent in tropical medicine, had developed theories on this

parasite, which he collected all over the globe. He demonstrated that

the original habitat of the _Ankylostoma duodenale_ was north of twenty

degrees north latitude, while the _Necator americanus_ stemmed from a

region south of that line. This is a point which has not been given

due weight by anthropologists. All my work over the Pacific added

validity to Darling’s theory. Certainly I found that both Melanesians

and Polynesians living south of twenty degrees north latitude--provided

that they had not been contaminated by Asiatics--carried only the

_Necator americanus_--an evidence that their origin and migration must

have been from south of this latitude.

You can imagine my disappointment in learning so little from the

tabu-haunted Rennellese, to whom the intimate details of a worm-count

would have been a capital offense. On all the island there was nothing

like a latrine; like the followers of Moses, these primitives dug holes

in the sand and carefully covered “that which they had done”--this as

a precaution against some witch’s charm. Sand, however, is far too

porous to hold down the enterprising larvae, especially when the hole

is only a surface scratch. We devoted much time to examining blood

for filariasis, which was conspicuous for its absence. Our spleen

examinations revealed no malaria, either on Rennell or its little

neighboring sister, Bellona, although both were definitely in the

malaria belt. Neither did we find an anopheline mosquito.

The complete absence of dysentery was interesting, because it had once

been brought there by an apparently clean ship, and had decimated

the population. It had died out, probably because the Rennell flies,

although they flew in swarms, did not seem to light on human beings;

also there was no water supply to be contaminated--the beach natives

drew water from holes at the bottom of the cliffs, the interior natives

drank out of the Lake. Food was no carrier, for it was cooked in the

skins.

There was little sign of past devastations, although there was evidence

that the few visiting ships had brought them influenza and an infection

of gonorrhea, from which they had recovered.

Wandering about, I finally came upon a few miserable beings, hidden

away from intruders. They were suffering from yaws. The people had

not talked about yaws. They seemed to be ashamed of it. It was quite

evident that they had kept the disease from spreading by an age-old,

self-taught practice of segregation.

The Rennellese wore their one garment until it was threadbare; by day

it was trousers, by night pajamas. Since the water in the Lake was hard

to get at and the water below the cliffs came in driblets, only expert

swimmers knew the pleasures of bathing. They rather disliked the touch

of salt water, but this prejudice was not responsible for a certain

skin condition.

Scabies was present, but not serious. The prevalent disease on Rennell,

I think, was something they called _onga-onga_, a sort of itch. The

inhabitants claimed that it had been brought there by Dr. Deck’s

unpopular missionaries. Apparently it only appeared as a dermatitis,

the result of scratching. Constant scratching was a native gesture.

When the disease first came, they told me, everyone went mad, ran to

the bush, threw away their clothes and dug their nails into every part

of their bodies.

Within a month after we left the island all of us came down with it.

To me it was a most unpleasant visitor. It began at my thighs and

covered me from knees to waist, like a pair of shorts. I could see

no discoloration, save where my nails had torn my skin. Hot baths

irritated it. Successive days of treating myself with saturated

solution of salicylic acid in strong tincture of iodine, then with

Deek’s ointment, brought relief. My skin peeled completely away from

the infected area, and I haven’t heard from _onga-onga_ since....

* * * * *

Shortly after we had re-established headquarters on the _France_

natives from the interior came flocking to trade mats and baskets for

beads and knives and fishhooks. Obviously the situation was growing

touchy, with jealousy between inland-dweller and beach-dweller. There

were one or two wrestling matches, not too good-natured--strange

combats, in which two strong men pulled each other’s hair until the

weaker fell. These were dogfights, and we were the bone of contention.

The situation tightened when Panio, Tahua’s strong-arm who had helped

do away with Deck’s missioners, came aboard and proceeded to make

himself obnoxious. Panio was unlike the other islanders. He dramatized

himself as a murderer. With much diplomacy we had reached a point where

we could keep the people out of our cabins for short intervals--but not

Panio. In blustering ward-heeler style he would walk in, throw out his

chest and take possession. He was angry with Buia for getting more than

his share of good things; also he had a social bee in his bonnet; his

daughter wasn’t being recognized by the local _haut monde_.

Yes, it was getting ticklish. Like all bullies, Panio was putting up a

dangerous front because, probably, his gang was behind him. For all I

knew we were a dozen against fifteen hundred. All the rights were on

their side; we had come unasked, and they had entertained us with the

best they had; on the _France_ they were merely returning our visit,

and it was impossible for them to understand why we shouldn’t give them

the run of the ship and whatever they fancied in the way of food. When

we asked for privacy they no doubt thought of us as stingy, grasping

strangers. Remember, these people were all born communists.

Our nerves were wearing thin. Something must be done about Panio. One

night when we cleared the cabin he refused to budge. This time I made

my voice firmer than Rennell diplomacy required; he stood his ground,

looking not at all pretty. I told Hamlin and White what I was going

to do, and when they nodded I used my clearest pidgin on Panio. Would

he get out or be thrown out? Rather a ridiculous question, for he was

years younger than I, immensely powerful and in the pink. Facing him, I

thought, “I’m in for it now. I’ll _have_ to put him out....”

* * * * *

(Here I paused to drip cold coffee into my cup. Templeton Crocker

asked, “And did you?”)

* * * * *

What happened next (I said) was a sort of psychic curiosity. Panio

stood firm and looked for a long time straight through my glasses into

my furious eyes. My glance didn’t swerve. Suddenly his nerve seemed to

ooze away. He dropped his eyes, shuffled, turned and marched out of the

cabin and up the stairs. When I got on deck he was gone.

I don’t mind confessing that after the thing was over I had the “wind

up,” as the British say; so much so that I went to my grip and found

my pistol. Next morning the relations between us and our guests seemed

a bit strained, and I was dreading the consequences--when back came

Panio, carrying a broad grin and a tribute of baked _panas_ for me. To

this day I don’t know how I subdued him, with only a look. Possibly he

was afraid that my glasses would slay him with the spell of the evil

eye. Possibly I had quelled him the way, I am told, you can quell wild

beasts, by a fixed and powerful stare.... I should hate to try it on a

Bengal tiger.

* * * * *

The native name for Rennell Island is Mungava (Big Rennell) and for

Bellona Island it is Mungiki (Little Rennell). The _France_ hadn’t

visited Bellona on its other trip; very few Europeans had ever dared

to go ashore there. After Buia told us that one of the kings of

Bellona was his cousin and might make things easy for us, Hamlin was

particularly anxious to touch there. Then all the population of Rennell

Island clamored to be taken along. Mua, son of Taupangi, was the most

clamorous of all. I promised to take these two young men, provided and

agreed that they would smooth the way for me to get plenty of hookworm

specimens. If we hadn’t taken Mua, his father would have been furious

because his son had been left behind and Tahua’s representative had

gone with us.

After talking things over with their two Big Masters, Buia and Mua

made a quaint suggestion. The people of Bellona might be “cross too

much.” As we were approaching the shore Mua and Buia had decided that

it would be a good idea to dress up in European clothes, put shotguns

over their shoulders and look like hunting naturalists. This disguise

would impress the natives, for some undisclosed reason, and after that

everything would be smooth going.

We reached the little bay in the little island, which was a

stone-walled Rennell in miniature--about four miles long and three

wide. It had much more soil on it and looked much more fertile. When

we found anchorage we shouted and fired guns to attract attention, but

nothing stirred. Jagged masses of coral endangered our anchorage; on

a windy day we would have been beaten to pieces. As it was, our keel

got a terrific bump on a hidden snag, the anchor chain parted and we

were set adrift. The four-mile engine got us around at last; we worked

all night and finally dropped an improvised anchor. Our survival was a

compliment to the stout teakwood hull of the _France_.

In the early morning canoes appeared, coming out to us. Buia and Mua

hastily arrayed themselves in white men’s raincoats and hats, and when

the natives drew alongside our amateur detectives began shouting at

them in the vilest and most profane pidgin English--evidently their

conception of trading skippers approaching an island. Buia and Mua

looked their parts so little that you wouldn’t have thought they could

fool a baby. But the Bellona folk stared anxiously up at them, and

when our impersonators began to address them in their native language

the listeners were bewildered. Who were these foreigners who spoke so

fluently in the speech of Bellona?

Suddenly Buia and Mua threw off their disguise. A sigh of wonder went

over the reception committee, then a shout of welcome swelled to an

ovation. It was a breath-taking occasion: native boys had actually

come as guides to a European vessel! The people of Mungiki, very like

their relatives of Mungava, swarmed aboard and rubbed noses with their

heroes. Every visitor bristled with bows and arrows, spears and clubs;

they looked fiercer and wilder than the Rennell folk. Surrounding us,

more curious than hostile, their every gesture seemed a threat. The

few who could speak pidgin went anxiously among us, asking, “Captain,

Captain?” They wanted to know which of our party was top dog.

Finally Buia led us ashore, and we were surprised at the neat little

houses among the heavy palms. Everything we saw was clean and well

kept, including the villagers. For some lost reason they seemed to have

learned the art of taking care of themselves. When we returned to the

boat Buia’s cousin, one of the three kings, sent word that he was ready

to receive us. We returned the compliment by asking him aboard, only to

be told that it was tabu for a king to come on a stranger’s ship. There

had been war between the three kings; and how in the world there was

room for three wars between three kings is another South Sea mystery.

As the soil looked richer, so the people looked healthier than those of

Rennell, where epidemics had killed many elderly folk. On Bellona there

were many of the old and wizened. They were fine-looking, very light in

color, their features well cut. When I sent again to the three kings,

telling Buia to say that they wouldn’t get an ax or an adze or any

other dainty unless they came, their Triple Majesties showed up. They

were polite enough, and after I bribed them with an ax apiece I told

Buia to tell them the object of my visit: hookworms. Whereupon they

informed me that they did not want doctors, they did not want missions,

they did not want government, and they would give me no census. Quite

courteously, they preferred our room to our company.

Even an overnight inspection showed the good results of quarantine

against foreign-borne disease and custom. Although pathologically I

was unable to look into the case, they seemed to have nothing to fear,

except petty wars. Their teeth were poor in comparison to the handsome

mouths of the Rennellese. This was due, perhaps, to a different method

of betel-nut chewing.

Then we sailed back to the White Sands, where by the demonstration they

made we might have been to Peru and back. Big Master Taupangi grabbed

my shoulders and tenderly rubbed noses with me. Marking my surprise,

he shook with laughter and extended me an invitation to attach myself

to his court and stay there the rest of my life. For one with God

in his head, he was feeling very jovial and stood back to back with

me to prove that he was an inch taller. When I went over his chest,

thighs and belly with a tape-line he was proud as a peacock to know

that he was larger all around than the largest European on the vessel.

Each day before we left he came back, as God’s vicar in Tenggano, and

presented me with a basket of yams and a basket of _pana_ in trade for

a tin of bully beef, a tin of salmon and a few ship’s biscuits. This

human reservoir of divinity was extremely fond of tinned fish. So were

they all. Every few minutes a Rennellese brave would show up and say,

“Master, belly belonga me he hongry too much.” Our Solomon Island crew

looked down on these people. Once Hamlin said to me, “Doctor, these

Rennellese live almost like dogs.” Whereupon little Ga’a chipped in,

“Master, dis fellow he no dog. Dog he know somet’ing.”

Our departure was the end of a field day. Tahua, always a businessman,

had been selling us the finer mats and baskets which the Lake people

had made. Mats were coming in faster than we could handle them, but

we still gave in exchange the best we had to these kindly, likable

islanders. Everybody wanted a lock-box, because I had promised one to

Buia. I had only one left, and that I gave to Tahua, out of respect

for his superior station. Tekita and Mua were clamoring for ones just

like it. Then down came my old college chum, Taupangi. If Tahua had

a lock-box, where was his? Imagine my embarrassment. Finally I found

an old wooden box in the engineroom, got Bella to hinge a cover on it

and to nail on the brass locks of my own tucker-box. The Lake people

cheered _en masse_ at the presentation, but Buia and Tahua looked very

glum. The small pressed-paper boxes I had given them were nothing

compared to the grand prize which the Lord of the Lake carried away.

The people saw that we were actually going, and the prices of mats and

baskets fell to almost nothing. Rennell’s little stock exchange was

having a slump. Before we started for Tulagi I doled out fishhooks

to the two rival kings. I served out the hooks with Spartan justice,

first two to Tahua, then two to Taupangi. I started in with a box of

large-sized ones, and when that was finished Tahua hastily picked up

the box of smaller ones and thrust it in my hand. He was afraid I might

forget about it, or change my mind. Appreciative laughter from the

crowd, who probably realized that Tahua was a chronic go-getter.

Lock-boxes, however, were the treasures of treasures. It wasn’t until

we were out at sea that I realized why. To them these things, with lids

that you could fasten with your own key, represented privacy. Here was

something where you could store away small objects that were your very

own. From birth to death in Rennell’s primitive society there was no

such thing as a door to close or a curtain to draw when you wished to

be alone and mind your own business. Instinctively the untaught savage

longed for a sanctuary, away from prying eyes. I had to have lived

on communistic Rennell Island to understand and value civilization’s

greatest boon--privacy.

When we got back to the comparative civilization of Tulagi we found

that Resident Commissioner Ashley had worried because we were overdue

and had started out on an expedition to find us. He had taken thirty

armed policemen aboard the _Renadi_, for the luck of former visitors

to Rennell Island had given the place such an evil reputation that the

Protectorate had ordered that nobody should approach it without an

armed guard. Captain Ashley had put a machine gun on the _Renadi_, and

Dr. Steenson had gone along with a hospital unit.

I wish Ashley had seen me rubbing noses with the chiefs when we bade

farewell to Rennell....

* * * * *

(Templeton Crocker looked around the porch and said, “Good heavens,

it’s daylight!” Sure enough, it was. “I’d better be getting back to the

_Zaca_,” he said. “We sail at noon. But tell me one thing, Doctor. Will

these queer Rennellese go on, pretty healthy and contented, just as

they’ve always been? Or what?”)

* * * * *

“Something will have to be done about them,” I said, “and the thing

to do is to let them alone. What worried me most was the business

enterprise that the Lord of the White Sands was showing. Anything

for iron. Trade the women’s services for a knife or a busted chisel.

Rennell is leaping from the Shell Age into the Iron Age. They’ve

never touched the Stone Age, because they hardly know what stone is.

Before somebody brought in the white man’s ax they did surprisingly

well with a clamshell on the end of a stick. They don’t seem to like

missionaries, but they’re mad to learn European ways because that

knowledge will bring more trade. Their ‘virtue’ as we call it? Well,

virtue is about the same the world over. In some countries women are

tabu. They don’t happen to be in Rennell, where the women are the only

thing that appeals to the white man as trade. From a doctor’s angle,

virtue’s great virtue is this: It’s prophylactic.

“Imported disease; that’s what threatens Rennell, sure as God made

little apples. Now they’re healthier than the average in San Francisco,

say. From what I could find out, their only ills have come from the few

visits white men or Japanese have made there--except hookworm. I wish I

knew more about that parasite on Rennell.

“They’re so susceptible to imported germs that I’ll tell you what

happened. Before the _France_ came to the White Sands, remember,

I examined everybody on board for the slightest trace of anything

‘catching.’ Except for the sore-eyed cook, whom we tried to keep out

of the way, we were all apparently clean as a whistle. Yet we hadn’t

been on the island ten days before an epidemic of head colds swept the

people. They didn’t know what was the matter with them; they didn’t

even know how to blow their noses.”

“Where did they pick up those colds?” Crocker asked.

“They caught them from us. Our noses and throats were full of latent

germs to which we had an immunity, whereas the Rennellese had none.

They wore few clothes, they slept out in the rain, they were exposed to

winds and drafts, yet the common cold was an absolute stranger to them.

They had had an influenza epidemic, once; the white man brought it.

They had had gonorrhea, once; the white man brought that too. Once they

caught dysentery, from a ship that was supposedly clean of it. Bring in

more ships and Rennell will go down and out, as so many other islands

have. And I don’t want Rennell to go down and out.”

“Because they’re a unique people?” Crocker asked.

“Because they’re the only living relic, that I know, of a prehistoric

race, changed so little that they will make an invaluable study for

scientific research. But not for casual sailors and traders. There’s

nothing on Rennell Island worth trading for.... What I should like

to see done is this: Have the Government put ‘NO ADMITTANCE’ on both

Rennell and Bellona--except for an honest scientific expedition, coming

there for no other reason than legitimate research. For those islands

are nothing more or less than studies in the history of mankind.”

So Templeton Crocker went back to his ship.

* * * * *

And all this led up to my brandy-and-eggs conversation with Raymond

Fosdick. In fact, it also led up to one of my most interesting

adventures.

For when morning broke, after my Arabian night with Crocker, Eloisa

reminded me again that he was in need of fresh eggs and that we had

plenty in the hen-house. “I’ve gathered three dozen,” she said, “and

you might put them on the _Zaca_ when you go down to the office.”

I took the eggs over to the _Zaca_, which was busily preening herself

for a long haul. I left them with my compliments and best wishes. The

_Zaca_ sailed at noon.

A few days later a messenger came over from the Fiji Club with

something wrapped in the _Times and Herald_. Unwrapping, I found four

bottles of 1835 brandy. There was no address on the package, and I

thought there was some mistake. I asked Amos, secretary of the Club,

and he said: “Well, if you don’t want the stuff, I do. But Mr. Crocker

seemed to say that it was for you.”

I wrote my thanks to Templeton Crocker, and this opened up a lively

correspondence. He was about the way I had been when I first heard

about Rennell Island. He couldn’t drop the subject, and as months went

by his keenness seemed to grow. Early in 1933, he wrote that he had

made some changes in the _Zaca_ so that it would be more handy for

collecting scientific specimens. He finished by asking me to go along

and show him the strange country I had told him about. Of course I

wanted to see Rennell Island again, but I secured an invitation from

the High Commission first, then wrote Mr. Crocker, “I’ll go willingly,

if you’ll spot me around where I can inspect our work in the Solomons

and make a tuberculin survey.” I also suggested that he bring an

anthropologist along. He found the man and added a plant collector and

an entomologist to the _Zaca_ party.

* * * * *

That was the way Eloisa’s eggs came to roost, if I may scramble a

metaphor. In a roundabout way they gave me a chance to revisit a spot

which interested me more, perhaps, than anything I had seen in the

Pacific.

CHAPTER III

THROUGH THE SOLOMONS TO RENNELL

Let me begin with a scrap from my diary of May 4, 1933. We had been on

the water three days, moving toward Vanikoro.

... We are a little crowded, but not too much. _Zaca_ is beautiful;

118 feet long, 23 feet beam, 125 tons, 22 tons lead on keel, draws

just under 15 feet of water. I have had my share of fortune in

vessels on survey trips and plenty of hard times ... now I blink,

looking around me, and wonder if I’m awake. I should like to keep

the daily menus, they are so varied and excellent. First night we

had grilled steak, perfect; next night Long Island duckling, and I

gorged--Christmas dinner every night. Always fresh vegetables, just

like home (U. S., not Fiji). All Frosted Foods....

Roomy cabin, electric fan over bunk, reading light over bed. Two

bunks, one of which I use for scientific gear, a chiffonier and two

drawers, under the bunk, which Malakai and I share, as well as a roomy

clothes closet with hangers etc. I share Mr. Crocker’s elaborate

bathroom with Maury. We eat on deck at two bridge tables under an

awning, as the mainsail is not raised.

... Was somewhat worried, coming on this trip, for fear we might have

to conform to millionaire standards of dress. This would have been

cruelty to me and would have hindered, as it always does, the success

of the work. On some small boats I have been on trips with Resident

Commissioners who felt that they must uphold good old British prestige

by putting on black coats and choker collars every night; I remember

one who ran out of boiled shirts and had to eat in his stateroom to

conceal his shame. But Crocker out-Herods Herod. _Lavalavas_ are the

order of the day, and in the evening a singlet if it is too cool.

Day and evening, Crocker wears a _lavalava_ or a very short pair of

shorts--nothing else but a bandanna handkerchief around his neck....

We did not lack scientific equipment or scientific brains. Mr. Crocker

and his secretary Maurice (Maury) Willowes collected specimens of

anthropological and marine-life interest. Norton Stuart was a botanist,

and Toschio Aseida a Japanese photographer of submarine and surface

phenomena. Gordon Macgregor was an anthropologist from the Bishop

Museum, and our ship’s surgeon, Dr. John B. Hynes, did blood groupings

on the various islands we visited. This may sound like a hero list out

of the “Iliad,” and I may add Homerically, “with me always were Gordon

White and my long-tried henchman, Malakai Veisamasama.” Malakai found

the stateroom so comfortable that it rather surprised him. Between

island visits he sprawled on his bunk, always reading. It was usually

_The Martyrdom of Man_, which I gave him once for a birthday present.

He carried it with him as you’d carry a Bible.

The _Zaca’s_ white crew had been mostly enlisted in California. The

stewards were soft-footed and dextrous. When we sat under the awning

of long, starlit evenings I had the impression of being on a crack

ocean liner. We had everything but an orchestra, but there was a

phonograph wired throughout the _Zaca_, and a very powerful Morse

station of R.C.A.... No, this wasn’t real. I wasn’t the Lambert who had

slapped mosquitoes in a Papuan whaleboat and been stranded on a New

Hebrides island, waiting for anything with steam-power or gas-power or

paddle-power to take him off.

* * * * *

I wanted to see the Solomon Islands again, for my inspection in 1921

had been a hurry-up affair, at the whim of Lever Brothers’ busy island

inspector. My visit to Tulagi in 1930 had been mostly directed toward

Rennell Island. In 1921 ill luck had kept me from seeing Malaita, the

most savage spot in the savage Solomons. On the Crocker trip Gordon

White and I were equipped to make tuberculin tests, for little was

known of its prevalence in the group. Above all things, I was anxious

to compare my new notes with my old ones. What had happened to the

health of the islands I had seen twelve years ago? And what had

happened to Rennell Island in three years?

In the _Zaca’s_ comfortable lounge my only worry was that I might get

too fat to waddle ashore, what with Mexican beer and a snack at 11

A.M., cocktails and a snack before dinner, highballs and a snack in

the evening. Being by nature a sensualist, I had to pray to my Puritan

forefathers to save me from myself until our ship touched the White

Sands.

Visiting Tucopia, a dot on the southeast tip of the Solomons, I met

a problem almost unique in the Pacific--overpopulation. This island,

too small to warrant a stop-over, was another Rennell in miniature,

with the same lake in the center. And the people who came paddling

out in canoes were strikingly like Rennellese, perhaps more like the

tribes of Bellona--more Melanesian than either. They had the same

style of tapa breechclout, the same palm-fan sticking in the back,

the same way of knotting their hair. The Fijians have another island,

Thikombia (Tucopia in Fijian), which lies just north of Vanua Levu. It

is undoubtedly one of the old steppingstones to this second Tucopia and

Rennell. The Tucopians whom we found here spoke a language with so much

Fijian in it that Malakai could speak a few words with them; he said

that they looked like the light-skinned tribe on Thikombia, who were

supposed to have come from Futuna.

A native missionary informed us that “people were growing like weeds.”

District Officer Garvey had been there shortly before and wondered what

to do with a race that was increasing faster than their food grew. For

this fertility the missions were responsible, indirectly; when they

came they said that every man should have a wife. Formerly only one

son in the family was allowed to marry, the restriction being aimed

at keeping the population within the bounds of subsistence. After

their Christian teachers changed the rules Tukopia’s birth crop became

embarrassing.... Well, that was something I couldn’t settle for them,

except to suggest more recruiting for work on faraway plantations. That

wouldn’t have been so practical, either, for the Tucopian had the same

savage home-love as his Rennellese cousin. I went away chuckling. Here

was a native race whom missionizing had increased. The men who came to

our ship had a well-fed look. They seemed to be on the upgrade, though

overcrowding might endanger their future.

* * * * *

We sailed toward Vanikoro, and saw Tinakula flaming across the sea, a

volcano that seemed to be in constant eruption. Black smoke obscured

it, then winds would clear it so that we could look to its sharp

summit; at night it was a pillar of fire. Vanikoro, which lay beyond,

had a total population of ninety-five. It was a noteworthy illustration

of the decay of native races. When the early voyager La Pérouse was

wrecked there, the island teemed with people.

We saw the Duffs, where the dark people looked Melanesian and spoke

Polynesian; Macgregor told me that they chewed their words so that he

couldn’t understand them. They scorned our tobacco because it was a

grade too good; it seemed that the Burns-Phillip store had sold Crocker

some of the better sort of rope-tobacco made by East Indians in Fiji.

The minute the natives smelled it they turned in disgust. They wanted

the rank trade tobacco made in America, and you couldn’t fool them with

a substitute. A disappointment to our anthropologists, when they tried

to collect museum specimens on the Duffs, and got nothing....

* * * * *

We swung around to the little land I learned to love on my visit there

twelve years before. Sikiana with its three charming atolls, three

links in a chain. I remembered its unspoiled, laughing Polynesians,

its modest, pretty girls who had draped us with wreaths of flowers. I

remembered its jolly, handsome men, who had been inoffensively drunk

with toddy the day we got there. I remembered the bearded patriarch

we had called Old Number One; I had thought of him as one who ruled

only by example in a pagan democracy which had no laws, no worries, no

debts, no crimes, no serious diseases. I was full of forebodings as our

ship neared a palm-fringed lagoon. What had happened to little Sikiana

since last I saw it?

Two canoes came out across the reef, and I recognized an old friend,

Lautaua, who had done me many favors on my last visit. We were glad to

see each other, and his pidgin was garrulous, describing his trips over

many waters during that dozen years. Most of the Sikiana men who had

been our sailors on the Lever Brothers’ cruise had died or strayed away.

And did I know what had happened? Well, the Melanesian Mission had come

to their little Polynesia. Over the ten miles of soft lagoon Lautaua

told the story. How they had sent in preachers and teachers to improve

them. As Missioner-in-Chief a very black boy had come from Guadalcanar.

His name was Daniel Sande. At first the people would not join the

Church, and many were still holding out; but the Polynesian will yield

to persuasion, if only for a show of politeness. Lautaua had offended

Black Daniel by moving to another island; then he got so homesick that

he came back, a shorn lamb, and found four black Melanesian teachers

ruling the roost for Lautaua’s proud, light-skinned neighbors and

relatives. I asked Lautaua his confidential view on the new religion.

He bowed his handsome head. “Master, some fellow he talk man die he

come back; me tink man he die he go along ground finish. He no come

back. Me no go along school [catechism]. Me no go along water behind

[baptism]. Me tink Story [Birth of Christ and miracles] he altogether

gammon. Mission he spoil him altogether people.”

Sikiana, where once they had danced by the light of the moon, had a

look of dull propriety. Good heavens, there was a church! A conch

shell sounded--and the Sikiana girls were filing in, dressed in

white pinafores. Beside them marched sad-looking Sikiana men. It was

edifying, it was shocking. Salvation had entered Paradise. Government

had entered, too, for here was the official shack where we were to bunk

and try to eat the awful messes a native cook had thrown together.

Malakai took one sniff at the mound of indigestibles, then he did what

Malakai would. He shouldered out the cook and took over the saucepans.

For the rest of our stay there we ate wholesomely and well.

There was an undercurrent of discontent in Sikiana because a hurried

Government Secretary had swooped down on them when Old Number One died

and had asked in haste, “Who’s chief now?” An enterprising impostor

named Tuana had presented himself and made a glib selling talk which

got him appointed in twenty minutes, more or less. The Honorable

Secretary went back to his boat, too full of business to wait and

find out that he had broken Sikiana’s traditional line of chiefly

succession. Such a miscarriage of justice is not characteristically

British; but there are always puffy officials, meaning well and doing

badly.

I learned about Black Daniel, who seemed to be a hard-bitten slaver

in the name of the Lord. This was his day’s routine: Sound the conch

at 6 A.M. for church; sound it a little later for the children’s

school; sound it again at ten for the bigger boys and girls; school

for grown-ups at 4 P.M., where the study was catechism; church again

at 6 P.M., with much singing and a long, strong sermon. This was the

week-day program. Sunday, of course, furnished a constant grist for the

mill that never ceased turning. When religious duties didn’t interfere

the inhabitants could work; but they weren’t working very hard. Sikiana

was getting lazy.

When I had audience with Black Daniel I found him a big, smiling fellow

with a boil on his nose. Several Sikiana girls were fanning away the

flies; these light-skinned damsels had the look of trained nurses who

didn’t much care for their assignment. Daniel had something of a Father

Divine technique, a way of bursting into ecstatic patter, then coming

down to practical affairs. Quite an able man, I thought. He had a

record of births and deaths by age and sex, which he had kept since he

came there three years ago. Also he had kept a census, very useful to

me when I started to work.

Arcady had vanished under the heel of religio-totalitarianism. I

wondered if the dark-browed missioners were “taking advantage” of the

pretty girls around them. But I found that this was not so. The girls

were looking out for that. They were too Polynesian not to shrink in

disdain from black-skinned lovers. Not that their hearts were as pure

as the Bishop of Melanesia might have wished. They cast yearning eyes

toward our good-looking sailors; those were white men, and quite a

different matter. I heard one sailor speak softly to a pretty girl

named Ana, who looked nervously toward the mission. “Master,” she said,

“me fright too much come along you. Big Master Stop along Top he look

along night too.”

Our sailor learned, however, that these affairs could be arranged

through special dispensation from Black Daniel. If he liked you, and

the girl was a heathen, the church would bless the temporary mating.

Daniel liked the sailor, so that was a granted privilege. However,

the romance fell unripened. When the couple decided that their love

was sanctified they were discouraged by a crowd which followed them

constantly. It was all very funny, and tragic. I wondered how long

these people would remain purely Polynesian. Their Melanesian teachers

had the Supernatural on their side, and the time would come, I thought,

when the breed would become very mixed.

Poor Old Number One, how his bearded ghost must have worried! A year

before our visit a fanatical trader named Buchanan had run amuck and

burned down all the heathen temples. Not only that, but a crew of

Japanese pearl fishers had insisted on coming ashore. When the people

told them that they were not welcome, they turned a machine gun on a

village and forced a landing. Machine-gunning islands seemed to be a

Japanese habit. They stayed long enough to fish all the shell out of

the lagoon and quartered themselves in Lautaua’s house. When they left

they became generous, gave Lautaua 1,500 cigarettes, a toothbrush and

an old pair of swimming goggles. He was clever enough to imitate the

glasses with wood and scraps of windowpanes.

Pukena, the cook whom Malakai had discharged forthwith, but who

remained as humble helper, told about Tuana, the misappointed chief.

Tuana was a grafter, and like many grafters, lazy. The Administration

had entrusted him with medicine for the people. When the sick applied

for help, Tuana would reply that his stock had all run out. In short,

he was keeping the good stuff for himself and his henchmen. Lautaua,

being obviously the superior man on Sikiana, should have been entrusted

with these things.

We were there four days, all of us very busy except Crocker, who had a

badly infected foot.

I had been carrying on wholesale injections of tuberculin, and had

found that the prevalence of tuberculosis was alarmingly high. On my

first visit I had had only time to make sketchy tests, but certainly

the disease had gained great headway. Gordon White and I went over the

whole population. Lautaua, the religious rebel, blamed the missionaries

for the disease. Yet the population had made a satisfactory increase

in the past twenty years; and that was hard to understand. There was

plenty of malaria, and we were finding acute, unguarded pulmonary

tuberculosis. Possibly the change in custom, brought in by the

missions, possibly added infections which may have resulted from

contact with them, or with the Japanese, might have resulted in the

many acute chests we saw. Or possibly it was due to the small amount of

additional clothing which had come in with the new way of living.

There had been almost no traders, and few foreign vessels came that

way. But the very isolation of these atolls, plus Black Daniel’s

scientific inadequacy, added to the weight of native ills. Among the

plentiful mosquitoes we found the malaria carriers. One afternoon

Malakai held out his bare arm and showed me a probing little insect.

“She stands on her head when she feeds,” he said, “and she has spotted

wings.” _Anopheles punctulatus_, sure little poisoner, conveying

disease from the sick to the well. It was impossible to get anything

like an adequate supply of quinine from Tulagi.

Lautaua in his own way described the symptoms and testified that

malaria was an old inhabitant. Did the sickness begin with a chill?

“Oh, master, plenty too much.” Realistically he acted out a malaria

chill. Had it been here long? “Yes, master, fader belong me, fader

belong him, all same.” Did the children have it too? “Small fellow, my

wort! Him shake too much all same dis.” More synthetic chills. “Behind

(after) him he hot too much; now water he come out all same rain.”

Their light contact with trading ships and their habit of using the

tidewater for toilet purposes had saved them from hookworm. There were

only two cases of yaws, secondary and in children. The people called it

_matona_ instead of _tona_, the usual Polynesian name. They said that

_tona_ was an old-timer, but had died down. I saw no evidences of it

among the adults.

In lighter vein let me tell you about Black Daniel’s other boil, for

he had developed a lusty carbuncle on his hip. I opened it with the

cleverest instrument at hand, a razor blade; and with no anesthetic, of

course. Daniel had no ambition to be a Christian martyr. It took four

of his disciples to hold him down while I drained out the pus, and he

called on his Saviour in the voice of a wounded lion.

His Sikiana flock was a contrast in stoicism. Their beautiful teeth

were going--ill-balanced diet, probably--and in one afternoon Malakai

and I extracted thirty teeth. We had only straight forceps, and it

was a pretty mangling job; but we didn’t hear a moan during the whole

ordeal.

Like all primitives, the people of Sikiana confused the diagnosis with

the cure; remember how the Cook Islanders had thought I could make them

well by putting a stethoscope on their chests? Tuberculin injections

are merely given for negative or positive reactions. But to them the

needle was a sovereign remedy, and they always went away smiling. Only

the very young children objected when the point was jabbed under their

skin. As to the others their faith was rather heartrending. It was the

same all over the Solomons.

After the boil operation Black Daniel so far relented as to let

his congregation dance for us, with the beautiful old-fashioned

abandon--but with plenty of clothes on. It was the first time in three

years that they had been allowed to revert to this pretty, jolly

paganism. Before our otter boat pulled us back to the _Zaca_, Daniel

and his three dusky assistants occupied four chairs and consented to

be photographed. Gathered around them a group of Sikiana girls in

white pinafores and white capes looked for all the world like tropical

Girl Scouts. Templeton Crocker, suffering from a lame foot and feeling

satirical, watched the photographic group, a drift of snow with a

bucket of coal in the middle. “The Four Black Crows,” he said, thinking

of a popular vaudeville team. But the holy dictator and his followers

were speeding us on our way with “God be with you till we meet again.”

God be with Sikiana, I thought glumly. For twelve years that little

place had been one of the pets of my memory. I decided that it would

need a hustling Native Medical Practitioner, if anything was to be

accomplished.

* * * * *

We interrupted our work and turned back to Tulagi. Dr. Hynes had

reported that Toschio, our Japanese photographer, was so ill that he

needed hospital attention. Crocker’s sore foot had caused a friendly

disagreement between Hynes and me. Before he reached Suva, the _Zaca’s_

owner had scratched his foot on some submerged coral. He had pluckily

said nothing about it until the infection had begun heating up. As a

young graduate of New York’s Presbyterian Hospital, Dr. Hynes might

have been a bit more interested in major operations than in minor

bruises. But I had seen many coral scratches and knew that they could,

if neglected, prove as stubbornly hard to cure as a gastric ulcer.

At Tulagi--in the humble little capital, very neat and British--we ran

into a mess of colonial politics. My very good friend J. C. Barley,

who had won the general approval of the High Commission and had

aided the natives in so many kindly ways that they thought of him as

“Government,” had been sidetracked again. Captain Ashley had come back

as Resident Commissioner, and that had left Barley, the obvious choice,

out in his small post on Auki; Barley, who knew more about the customs,

language and social traditions of the people than any white man who had

ever lived on the Solomons; Barley, whose affection for the natives was

fatherly, and who had devoted his splendid life to them.

At last I got around to see Captain Ashley, who had been so kind

about helping me on my first Rennell trip and had sent out a relief

boat to find me. What I wanted to talk about more than anything else

was Solomon Island candidates for our Central Medical School. We had

two native practitioners working on the group. Dr. Hetherington,

the C.M.O., had only one white physician whom he could put in the

field. There were a few medical missionaries, some of them very

good--especially those of the Melanesian Mission, which had a leper

asylum of sorts on Malaita.

How about getting some more Solomon Island students into our school at

Suva? Well, the Protectorate was about broke--stony truth--and even our

small tuition would be burdensome. Norman Wheatley of New Georgia had

sent his two sons, Trader Kuper of Santa Ana was educating his older

boy, Geoffrey, in a New Zealand school. Geoffrey seemed especially

bright, and ought to make a fine N.M.P.

I reminded Captain Ashley of how I had first looked those boys over,

back in 1921. Norman Wheatley, retired blackbirder, had settled

sedately on Roviana Lagoon, where he had married a native woman.

His early adventures should have made him rich, but a ruling vice

had reduced his surplus to near the vanishing point. His vice was

collecting prize-winning small craft in Sydney. All around the lagoon

were his ancient yachts, racing schooners and launches, rotting away

for lack of use and attention. Wheatley’s sons were pretty small then,

but he had listened to me when I said that he ought to make doctors out

of them.

Trader Kuper was then living on Santa Ana with his native wife, a

fine woman who had posed for my camera in her tribal costume. Her two

boys, the older not more than four, were running wild on the beach,

absolutely naked. The mother was bare from the top of her head to the

waistband of her _lavalava_; around her neck were shark’s teeth, and

a long pencil of polished shell ran through the septum of her nose.

Tenderly she picked the children up and told me that they were nice

boys, but not strong. I had found that they had hookworm, and I delayed

my departure to dose them with chenopodium. When I left I had given

Mrs. Kuper instructions as to further treatment. I saw Mr. Kuper a few

years later and he told me that they had grown to be fine husky kids,

and he was grateful because we had saved their lives. I had reminded

him, as I had Norman Wheatley, that his sons ought to go to Suva and

study medicine.

Well, so young Geoffrey Kuper was studying in New Zealand. Certainly he

would be an ideal candidate for the Medical School, Ashley said.

Again I heard the old story of benevolent Dr. Fox of the Melanesian

Mission. Earnestly wishing to help the natives and to understand them,

Fox specialized in ethnology. In order to put himself in closer touch

with native family ways, he offered to change lives with Joni, one of

his dark parishioners. Joni agreed to change his name to Dr. Fox; Dr.

Fox to become Joni. The real Dr. Fox handed the real Joni his bankbook

and so on, while the metamorphosed clergyman moved into the native

house and took over all the family with all the duties, except the

intimate matrimonial ones. He didn’t learn much, because the natives

remained secretive. The French farce situation became intolerable when

the simon-pure Fox discovered that his counterfeit had been strutting

all over the island using Dr. Fox’s name and prestige so successfully

that there were many newborn infants being called “Dr. Fox.” So

_lavalava_ was immediately exchanged for clerical garb, and all bets

were off. That was a classic yarn around Tulagi, but still good for a

wicked smile.

* * * * *

We coasted down the shore of Malaita, a great hulk of mountainous

woods 110 miles long, beautiful and forbidding. When I had covered

the Solomons in 1921 a convenient hurricane had beaten us away from

the shore. This island held a horrid fascination. Twelve years ago no

white man had dared the interior jungles, and there was still little

knowledge of its wild hill tribes. The splendid black Malaitamen were

good workers, when you could get them. Recruiters, there to pick up

field hands for the plantations, always worked in pairs; wise laws of

the Protectorate compelled them to do so, for bloody experience had

proved the necessity of armed caution.

The luxurious _Zaca_ skirted the savagery of Malaita, which the

Spaniards called “Mala” for short; and it was “Bad” to them, as ghastly

stories reveal. Over there lay Sinarango where Tax Collector Bell with

Cadet Lilies and fourteen native police had been butchered in 1927.

There were some missionaries, planters and traders scattered along the

coastline. The spread of disease was diminishing the Malaitamen, and my

object in visiting them would be to learn, if possible, the role played

by tuberculosis. Also I was keen to look over the Melanesian Mission’s

leper establishment, for I had been told that about one per cent of

Malaita’s population was afflicted.

Around Malaita are many artificial islands, time-old and mysterious as

the people who inhabit them. A long native canoe, with no outrigger,

landed us on one of them, about three acres built of huge coral-chunks

that had been planted on the reef and filled in with soil and rubble.

Dr. Macgregor pointed out children with bright yellow hair; no, it

hadn’t been sunburned to that color, or bleached with lime to destroy

lice. This was natural hair. When we examined a grown girl’s hair down

at the roots, where the sun could never reach it, the color was almost

as yellow as straw. There were gray eyes, too, flashing out of dark

brown faces. Gray eyes are often found among Polynesians who have had

no intimate contact with Europeans. But these were no Polynesians. They

were almost as dark as the other Solomon Islanders.

White and Malakai and I had all day ashore at Tai Harbor, lining up

hundreds for tuberculin tests. I was aboard ship again when I learned

that my much-admired friend J. C. Barley was at Tai on inspection. When

I told Crocker about Barley my host suggested that I go ashore and ask

him to dinner on the _Zaca_. That was a pleasant assignment, for I must

have a talk with the man who knew his natives inside and out.

He came around the side of a leaf-house, cool, clean and physically

fit. Shaking hands, I knew that he was glad to see me again, as I was

to see him. Yes, the Solomons were in a bit of a jam and all that, he

said, and a jolly good thing, Lambert, that you’re looking over our

tuberculosis. He spoke with gratitude, as though I had been treating

him personally. That was Barley all over, responsible for every man,

woman and child under his care. He had been District Commissioner for

Malaita--splendid job. There were over 50,000 natives on Malaita, and

we must have treated nearly 40,000 of them for prevalent diseases. Not

that they wouldn’t stand a lot more of it. Naturally those wild fellows

up in the hills weren’t so tubercular as the coast dwellers, he said,

but they’d bear looking over. The news had spread to them that the

white doctors jabbed them with a needle. They were all crazy for the

treatment.

Barley was going to be married; nice Australian girl--he hoped she

wouldn’t be lonely out here. (As if anybody could be lonely with him.)

He had just gotten back from Rennell Island, he said, and had brought

Buia with him. Buia! Sure enough, there was Buia, somewhat disguised

in a pair of shorts, but the same muscular hunky figure. We didn’t rub

noses this time, but shook hands, European style. Buia was becoming a

man of the world.

And how was Rennell? Well, said Barley, what had happened there might

have sounded funny, only it was rather terrible. Too many visiting

ships, of course, with Tahua’s charming girls to lure them into the

White Sands. But there was something much worse. The Seventh Day

Adventist outfit had gotten at them, rather. Pastor Borgas landed

on the White Sands and informed the Big Masters that they had come

to “teach” them. “You know,” said Barley, “how crazy the Rennellese

are to learn English. They thought teaching meant just that. When

the Adventists taught them to say ‘Me want skula’--meaning ‘We want

a school’--they didn’t know that school was the Adventist word for

batches of New Testament and vegetarian diet. Old Testament for a

people living in an age that’s older than Isaac and Rebecca; vegetarian

diet for a race that’s starving for meaty proteins! Well, before Mr.

Borgas went home he gave strips of white cloth for Tahua and Taupangi

to wear; white arm bands with ‘M.V.’ marked on them in big black

letters.”

“What’s ‘M.V.’?” I asked.

“Mission Volunteer,” said Barley with a wry smile.

I let out a whoop. Imagine those archaic and bearded kings strutting

around with Mission Volunteer on their arms!

But Barley couldn’t see the comic side. Neither could I after he told

me the rest. “When Taupangi and Tahua found out what those cranks had

been up to, they flew into a rage and vowed that no missionary should

ever again come within bow-shot of their island. I say, this thing is

breeding trouble. Next thing you know they’ll be killing off another

parcel of Christian teachers. Then there’ll be hell to pay. I don’t

want to see a punitive expedition go into Rennell Island and hang a lot

of them.”

Barley seemed to be reading my thoughts when he said: “If I had my

way I’d put a reliable N.M.P. or two on that island, with plenty of

medicine. And I’d keep everybody else out, except scientists, maybe.

You won’t find the people in as good condition as they were when you

saw them last. Sea-changes are very sudden in the Pacific.”

So Barley went back with me to the _Zaca_. It was one of Crocker’s

company dinners--grilled steak which had come frosted from Montana, and

1922 Perrier-Jouët. Barley was answering a shower of questions. The

Malaita warriors, he said, were Proper Men, and took no nonsense from

anybody. They didn’t know how to lie. When you asked them how many they

had killed they either told you that it was none of your business, or

candidly counted over the murders to their credit....

Under softly shaded table lamps our stewards were delicately pouring

vintage wine. Right over there, blacker than the darkness, lay

Malaita....

* * * * *

With Gordon White and Malakai I went to the leper colony at Quaibaita.

I knew that leprosy, of comparatively recent importation, ran about

one per cent on Malaita. Whenever colonists mentioned the Melanesian

Mission doctors, they usually said, “Wonderful work!” I was not

disappointed when I saw the mission colony, order in the midst of

green chaos: a hospital and church built of concrete, and the leper

institution set a little too near for safety. The Empire Leper

Association subsidized them for drugs, the Protectorate furnished

some medical supplies and a tiny dole for food. I was astonished at

first when I found that two of their orderlies were arrested cases

of leprosy; then I realized the stringent economy under which these

devoted men and women must work in order to keep their mission

enterprise on its feet. Educated and gently reared, they slaved out

their lives in genuine Christian cheerfulness. Some of them, I fancied,

had not had a square meal for years.

I had lunch with them. If they had been French priests they would have

gathered a delicious meal somewhere out of the jungle, for that’s

French genius. Here the missioners chatted gaily over the poor things

that came on the table. I knew it was the very best they had, for we

were their guests.

The doctors and the nursing sisters told me that it was hard to suit

Malaitamen, when they got a notion in their heads--which was most

of the time. The mission here was treating 73 lepers, but they had

had as high as 147. Many of them were out-patients; that is to say

they preferred to live in their own village, about a mile away. They

dropped in for treatment about when they felt like it; or else just

wandered away. The Melanesian Mission was trying to get a law passed

that would compel lepers to stay put. Natives loved everything that was

treated with the “needle,” but they couldn’t be cured with two or three

injections, as they could for yaws. The leprosy treatment took a great

deal of time, and after a couple of injections the Malaitaman would say

to his brothers, “What the hell? This fellow’s magic isn’t working.”

All this was uphill for the brave medical missionaries. My only

suggestion was that the leper establishment was too near the “clean”

hospital, where they were treating a little of everything else. And it

looked tricky to me, having a leper acting as head warder. The obvious

thing to say was: Round them up and send them to Mokogai. But that

would have been out of the question for a government whose finances

were already strained. Without going into figures, it would have cost

the Protectorate a large share of its revenue, if they had gone to

the expense of shipping away an estimated 950 lepers. Add to that the

physical impossibility of taking the sick away from regions so wild

that the Government itself did not dare to penetrate; regions where

fierce savages were warring, tribe against tribe, and the white man an

hereditary enemy. It was just another tragedy of European rule over a

native race.

Around the Quaibaita Mission Station I wish to put a bright red mark of

approval. Striving against heavy odds, it has done the Lord’s work in

a practical way, and every year it has shown improvement. Its workers,

keeping body and soul together on forty pounds a year, reveal the

missionary at his classic best: a civilizer, a healer and a defender of

the helpless.

* * * * *

We had been injecting around Tai Harbor, and our technique was so

popular that it drew wild men from the hills many miles away. Our

needles wore out and our fingers grew stiff from puncturing the skin

of hundreds who applied, clamoring for “neela” (needle). A tuberculin

test, to prove anything, required two applications and two inspections,

five days in all. The difficulty was to get the people back for the

second injection and the last inspection, and I was fascinated by

Gordon White’s orations in lively pidgin. “This big fellow doctor along

Fiji, him he come dis time for giving nother kind neela. Now dis nother

kind neela, him for stop dis sick along coughie where some fellow he

spit blut....” And in the elaborate roundabouts he was telling them

that they’d had their two injections, but must be back at the “house

takis” (tax house) for the third inspection on Tuesday. The heavy rate

of tuberculosis, shown in fierce reactions, made it quite obvious

that Malaita needed a tuberculosis sanitarium. That, considering the

Protectorate’s finances, would have been no more available than a

general roundup of lepers.

Our investigations, I hope, threw some light on the prevalence of

tuberculosis. Those we examined on Tai Lagoon ran over 77 per cent

infection. Those we were able to get from the bush village showed 60

per cent. The very unpopular officials who had gone out to collect

the head tax reported that taxpayers on Malaita had fallen from

14,000 to 10,000 in a decade. Since the Solomon Islands plantations

relied on Malaita for nearly three quarters of their plantation

labor, this falling off was disastrous. Run the gamut of diseases,

from tuberculosis to ringworm, and you have the medical problem that

faced the land-poor Protectorate. The only salvation--I must repeat

myself--would be to send the largest possible number of native students

to study medicine in Suva. That time was coming, I felt sure, for my

School was beginning to draw a deep breath.

While we worked ashore Templeton Crocker remained a true sportsman,

enjoying himself as best a temporary cripple could. For weeks he sat

on deck, his sore foot propped up on a chair, and had the vicarious

pleasure of hearing what the doctors and anthropologists and other

-ologists had been doing on their expeditions. For an active and

adventurous man it must have been torment. The foot was improving, very

slowly as a neglected infection must in a damp, hot climate. Now and

then, when British residents invited us for tea or cocktails, Crocker

would get himself into the sedan chair Dr. Hetherington had given him,

and be carried ashore. Sitting aloft with four black men lifting the

poles, Crocker looked for all the world like a Roman proconsul on his

way to a banquet or a temple, or wherever proconsuls went.

For hours he would sit on deck, listening to Buia’s descriptions of

Rennell Island and his reasons for not liking Adventist missionaries.

“Fish he tabu; meat he tabu; walk about he tabu; tobacco he tabu;

altogether along dis fellow he tabu.” Crocker, a confirmed hater of

tabus, was sympathetic, and liked to hear Buia declare that Mr. Borgas,

who had tacked “M.V.” on the arms of Tahua and Taupangi, might have

fooled those old men, but he hadn’t fooled Buia for a second. He well

remembered what Mr. Hamlin and Dr. Lambert had said about them: “That

mission he altogether no good along Mungava.”

* * * * *

Templeton Crocker had gone to the greatest pains and expense to

organize this expedition. All along the way he had been annoyed by a

quaint turn in customs regulations, which suddenly whimmed to charge

duties on a little of everything. Never before had the _Zaca_ been

bothered that way by a British Colony. We were out serving the High

Commission by invitation and deserved the freedom of the port.

However, you never can tell which way island politics are going to turn.

Those of us working ashore had our basket of troubles also, and trouble

on Malaita means that you’d better run for your life.

As I have said, tuberculin tests take five days. We inject one day,

then skip a day, and on the third inject the cases found negative with

a stronger solution; then we skip another day and on the fifth get our

final negative cases--those thought not to have an infection and never

to have had one. A positive reaction, showing that a person has, or

has had, tuberculosis, is revealed by a small and slightly raised pink

circle around the site of injection. The confused natives thought that

the pink circle was the desirable thing, and they would strut proudly

away to show their friends. It was very difficult to make the final

negatives understand that they had had the full works--for where was

the pink spot they were after?

Well, we had been at it four days, and the course was almost over. Then

who should show up but several native teachers with a note from the

Seventh Day Adventist white missionary, asking us to inject his people.

We knew that we wouldn’t have time to finish the five-day job, but a

single injection to the new lot might prove something. Also one always

wants to sustain a white man’s authority before the natives, and it

wouldn’t do to refuse this request. Remember, the Malaitamen thought

that our tests were a cure, for God knows what--tuberculosis or leprosy

or yaws, it was all about the same, so long as they got the magic

“neela.” No, one jab wouldn’t do them any harm; it might buck them up

spiritually. So on that sophistry, we decided to inject the Adventist’s

choice.

To complicate matters, we had been obliged to refuse injections to the

multitude of natives who had come after the first day, and they were

pretty sullen about it. Who could blame them, considering their long

trudge over mountaintops, probably without food? They gathered around

us with black scowls, inwardly wondering why if five days did a lot

of good, four or three wouldn’t do _some_ good, anyhow. Then the word

got around that we were making an exception in favor of the Adventist

crowd--and things started to boil.

Newcomers had been flocking in daily, and in front of our “house takis”

there was a jam almost as far as one could see: black, ugly faces,

determined to have their share of injections, if we started another

lot. We had already tested about 1,500, and eight native policemen had

guarded us every minute of the time. They changed guard every hour,

with impressive swinging of rifles, always with fixed bayonets. I was

soon to realize good old Barley’s common sense in sending them along

under John White’s direction, for John knew his job.

But here we were on a tough spot. I had promised to inject the

Adventist’s natives. Looking around at the angry black men, crowding in

on us, I changed my mind. Not only did we have to save our own skins,

but if the mob set on us the Adventist converts would be the first to

go. I had thought that the native police were a joke, until I saw them

spring into line. I yelled to an interpreter, “Tell the Adventists that

we haven’t got time!”

He told them. Arms flourished and waved and there was a deafening

racket from a thousand husky throats. “Neela! Neela! Me want im neela!”

The noise was so great that John White had to shout in my ear, “Better

give it to them. Just jab them any way, never mind if it doesn’t

mean anything. If you don’t treat them all, and the mission natives

especially, they’ll certainly kill the lot of us.” I stood my ground

with nothing more defensive than a hypodermic syringe. Maybe it was

long medical discipline that made me shake my head; I wasn’t going to

waste a batch of expensive tuberculin on any wholesale fake. “What have

we got an armed guard for?” I asked.

Much to my surprise the native police began doing their duty. With

bayonets leveled they formed a rough cordon between us and the mass of

howling hill-fellows. Then we stood not upon the manner of our beating,

but beat it at once, an undignified scramble into the otter boat and

a frantic paddling back to the ship. A bedlam of threatening yells

followed us out to sea.

When I found Crocker resting his foot on deck he asked me what sort of

mob scene we had been pulling over there. I told him that it was the

kind of melodrama most explorers were looking for, but I didn’t care

for it. I was sweating freely, very cold sweat for so warm a day. It

reminded me, I said, of what Winston Churchill once told a certain

Commissioner from a certain Pacific island group, who came back to

London to explain a lot of things. Churchill was Colonial Secretary

then and the Commissioner was an old friend. “Winston,” said the

Commissioner, “they accuse me of keeping women.” “But Charles, my dear

boy,” said Winston, “why shouldn’t you?”

I was in trouble with Malaita, but why I shouldn’t be was an open

question.

* * * * *

Too often on that voyage I was forced to say “I told you so,” comparing

what I saw with what I had seen twelve years before. Stevenson’s

“Drink and the devil had done for the rest” might have been transposed

into “Disease and the traders.” Casual islands, where casual ships

dropped in and the people had no moral barriers against strangers, were

obviously on the downgrade. In 1921, when we had made an overnight

survey around Star Harbour, my medical mind had worried over the

carefree sex-generosity of the women there. It was none of my business

that, according to native custom, young men hired their fiancées out

long enough to earn a marriage dowry. That was the fashion, and there

seemed to be no ill results--so long as they confined their promiscuity

to their own tribesmen. Their freedom with visiting sailors, black,

white or yellow, caused me to foresee what I found there in 1933. That

horrid visitor, venereal granuloma, had come to play and stayed to

kill. A Chinaman, they said, had brought it there. Life was shortening,

the birth rate was almost nil. The abundant missionaries were doing

what they could to curb immorality. What they could do wasn’t much.

Star Harbour was too good a trading station to keep away from.

* * * * *

When the _Zaca_ lay at anchor in the colored waters of Mohawk Bay

I came upon the end of a short story which had taken twelve years

to tell. It was here, you remember, that back in 1921 I had given a

midnight hookworm lecture, in what I thought was a mission village;

after the lecture I was resting in a whaleboat near the beach when a

naked man, darker than the darkness, had waded out to me and told me

that he was Sam, a mission teacher; and his lively pidgin had informed

me of my mistake--that I had gone to a heathen village; his was the

Christian community, where I should have lectured in the name of the

Lord. So I had given him a number of tins, told him what to say in his

lecture, and asked him to bring me the specimens in the morning, and he

had obeyed. Poor devil, like so many others, he had thought his people

would be cured merely by filling the tins. He was foolish, but a true

Christian.

Well, as Templeton Crocker’s luxury yacht now idled in this bay a

missionary came aboard with a number of natives. One of them kept

crouching close to my chair, and I recognized him. He was Sam the

Christian. “So you’re still the mission teacher here,” I said. “No,

master,”--softly,--“you talk along me that night in whaleboat, but me

no mission.” I liked the old rascal, and spent a day with him, looking

over his village and getting at the truth of his story, which was just

this: When he had waded out to my boat with the Christian yarn, he had

been a pagan, living among pagans; he had come to me with his pious

line of talk because, he explained, the heathens never got any plums

from the whites; plums all went to the missionized ones. His people had

hookworm, and he didn’t care what he said so long as he got the cure.

Sam was goodfellow too much, so I gave him some more lessons in

hookworm treatment and some drugs to help out. He was still a heathen,

he told me, although the native teacher had marked him for an extremely

hot Eternity....

* * * * *

So much for scenes revisited, and all not happy ones. We had weighed

anchor and were churning out to sea, heading now once more toward

Rennell Island. I had seen the mischief done in gentle Sikiana and in

other unprotected places. What had happened to Rennell? Buia, coming

home with us, said some disturbing things.

CHAPTER IV

THE FATE OF A RACE

Again the great coral wall with its skimpy crown of trees; again the

mysterious crack in the cliffs that marked Kungava Bay. Buia, who had

acquired malaria on his trip, had been running a temperature all night.

He was quite normal now, but excited. His eyes glistened, his white

teeth shone as he pointed out familiar landmarks. Over there was Ungu

Ungu (Head Head) point. He had a place there, but no house; the piece

of land he had inherited from his father’s line. On Kanava he had

three pieces of land and a fine, big house. Yes, Buia had improved a

lot since last night, when he had mourned, “Belly belong me he no good

kaikai belong white man. Now me no look him Kanava again.” Part of that

depression was malaria, the rest sea-sickness, for the ship had rolled

heavily.

Canoes began pulling out toward us. Friends were coming aboard, and the

foremost among them was Buia the Bastard, full of news, because the

Big Master of Mengehenua was dead. God, who was “Master along Sky,”

had cursed the chief for neglecting to send him gifts of food. Another

Big Master had also forgotten his God, and was pretty sick. “Sick

belong wind, him he too cold.” Whether he was describing influenza or

tuberculosis it was hard to say.

After we had anchored inside the reef and come ashore we were permitted

to approach Tahua, whom we found seated in state on a soapbox. On

behalf of Mr. Crocker I made a presentation speech and laid an adze, a

string of red beads, two razor blades and a butcher knife before the

Presence. Tahua said simply, “Thank you.” The men of Rennell have no

taste for the echo-ringing oratory of Samoa and Tonga.

Because it was raining, Tahua took us to his “house,” merely a tiny

shelter, open at one end. “House him all bugger up,” he apologized,

and showed a pile of beams cleverly hewn with the axes we had left on

our former trip; all ready for the grand new architectural effect he

was planning, to be Rennell’s show place, and to Tahua the largest

building in the world. There was a ridgepole thirty-five feet long and

several curved ribs to support the sloping pandanus-leaf roof. Tahua

was getting to be a very rich man.

He was nobody’s fool. When I told him about the needles we wanted to

use for the good of the people he understood and said that he would

summon many for the stick-medicine. Shrewdly he added that when so

many came around he could put them to work building his new house. He

obliged Macgregor, there to inquire into racial origins, by reciting

twenty-four generations of his ancestors and scraps of mouth-to-mouth

history which, I think, had been garbled by European recorders. He

told us that all the people of his district were blood kin, related to

him. A common ancestor had come from Uvea (Wallis Island, directly to

the west) and had crossed Rotumah and the Solomons. Tahua’s history,

liberally salted with myth and demonology, might have been partly

authentic. Undoubtedly all the Rennellese were first or second cousins;

a picture of an inbred people who were far from physically degenerate.

Their tabu against incestuous unions was so strict that brother and

sister were not allowed to take medicine out of the same glass.

Macgregor, who talked with Tahua whenever he could, told me that the

Big Master had named a great many of the islands where his ancestor had

touched on his long voyage to Rennell. This was interesting, but threw

no light on the racial origin. Their language was so nearly Polynesian

that Macgregor could piece out whole sentences; his Polynesian was so

like their own tongue that the people thought that he must have come

from Rotumah, and took it for granted that he knew much more than he

did of their customs and theogony. For this reason they showed him many

sacred places hidden in the bush, forbidden to all but the initiate.

Tahua was grimly silent about Mr. Borgas, the missionary who had tagged

him “M.V.,” but when the inhabitants came crowding into our ship we

soon found that the missionary scandal was the biggest news that had

broken on Rennell since the day of the famous murder. Superficially

these natives had not changed much, except that they spoke more pidgin

and had somehow lost their light-fingered habit of carrying away every

little thing they happened to fancy. Already the girls were approaching

the personable members of our crew, and by their clamorous “Me want

knifie” and “Me want akis (axe)” it was plain to see that the price of

love had gone up. Razor blades were coming in, so empty beer bottles

had lost their market value.

In all his wide travel Crocker had never seen anything like the

Rennellese. Aside from their racial oddity, he said, they were the

friendliest people he had yet encountered. I mentioned a doctor

I once knew who was so darned sociable--always poking me with a

toothbrush--that I learned to dislike him. Crocker didn’t understand my

simile--then. Later on he did.

One big man, kneeling beside my table, talked volubly about missionary

Borgas. He called him “Bawgus” as in the tone in which you’d mention

some unmentionable disease. Bawgus had baited the hook by asking them

aboard ship--“You like lookim along shippie?” So they looked along

shippie. “Then he go ashore he putim tabu along shippie.” Mr. Borgas

hadn’t offered any tribute to Tahua, either in the way of food or

tobacco. The only thing he had to offer gratis was Salvation--and

“M.V.” armbands.... My faith in Rennell was somewhat renewed when the

kneeling man beside me said, “Mission he come, Master he finish. Big

Master along Sky he finish too.” Meaning, in plain English, that if

Rennell became missionized its past would vanish; and they were on the

alert.

I hope I haven’t satirized the friendliness of these people. Their

generosity surpassed anything I have seen anywhere, the Cook Islands

not excepted. They may have seemed overeager in grasping for the things

they wanted--mostly things of steel; but in their trades they gave

away the best they had, and with the faith of little children. I was

fairly sickened by the sight of their carefree swapping with some of

our crew--precious heirlooms for a few cigarettes or a tin rattle. I

saw one beautifully carved and polished ebony “Big Master’s stick”--a

royal scepter to them--go to a sailor for a penny stick of rank twist.

The sailor wanted the stick, and the owner just couldn’t refuse. There

were many fine museum pieces frittered away like that. Why argue about

the price, when visitors were so pleasant?

From a doctor’s point of view, the traffic in women was still more

discouraging. Tahua, as a mark of extreme favor, offered me his

daughter, although, he explained, she was promised to Buia the Bastard.

When I informed him that I was married and had a “mary” of my own, he

listened respectfully; I’m sure he didn’t know what that had to do with

it.

For several nights the parties in the forecastle went on at a furious

pace; they kept it up until Crocker showed the sailors that he was boss

of the _Zaca_ and would allow no visitors aboard after six o’clock.

In the riotous period that led up to the ultimatum I found one deck

hand solemnly scrubbing a native beauty with a piece of brown soap and

rinsing her at the end of a hose. It was probably the first real bath

she ever had; I was surprised at the lightness of her skin, which would

match that of the purest Polynesian.

When I had come there on the _France_, we jaunty explorers were all

so dirty that we had somewhat deadened our sense of smell. But fresh

from the luxurious cleanliness of the _Zaca_, I was conscious of the

prevalent B.O. of Rennell. It took some tact for me to remind Buia that

what he needed was a bath. He received the news amiably, dived into the

bay and swam like a fish. Even without soap he lightened at least two

shades, and was vain about it when I held up a mirror.

Panio, the political strong-arm, was especially aromatic; I was quite

overcome by his meekness when I suggested that he follow Buia’s

example. When he came out of the water, a paler and a better man, he

told me that he had had some experience with talk-marks, the kind I

made on the typewriter. But his words hadn’t been any good. He handed

me a piece of paper which a visiting skipper had given him by way of

introduction to passing ships. But when Panio had shown it to other

skippers they had been cross too much. I read his paper and quite

understood. It said, “To whom it may concern. Don’t have anything to

do with this bloody bastard. He is a proper wrong un.” The skipper who

wrote that reference was a student of human nature.

I had thought that Templeton Crocker’s firm stand against midnight

visitors might have dangerous repercussions. Or at least the effect

wouldn’t be very lasting. It was good for about twenty-four hours, I

found; the people were kind but insinuating, and they all came back.

The only way to shorten visiting hours, we learned, was to see the Big

Masters; and when we managed that, the scene grew quieter--Or did it?

One evening after dinner, a number of native beauties were draping

their pretty figures over about everything on the ship, animate or

inanimate. “Maury” Willowes, who was serving as a human coat-hanger

for about six of the clinging ladies, did not attempt to brush them off

as he made his _bon mot_: “Just another quiet evening at home.” And our

host, who had at first declared the Rennellese among the most beautiful

works of nature, sniffed a little at the prevalent native bouquet.

Next day I wrote in my diary:--

Mr. Crocker is working on the deck astern, or trying to; Panio is

summoning some friends at a half-mile distance, in a voice that might

blow a hole in the ship; a girl and two boys are playing mouth organs

steadily in my right ear; Maury, heaven help us, is trading out baby

rattles, the kind with bells on them; a man is bouncing a rubber ball,

and is so awkward about catching it that my little Sara Celia could

show him how. Older men are clamoring for knives and hatchets, but

the ones of military age have gone crazy about musical tops.... Where

was I, anyhow? Oh, yes, this morning on the beach I gave a cigarette

to Teina, and he said, “You pickaninny belong me.” I suppose he was

trying to say that I was his father....

Rennell Island was advancing, but in her march of progress she had

taken the wrong fork in the road. A great many of the men had discarded

native costume and were taking a fancy to _lavalavas_. To impress us,

perhaps, they would pull _lavalavas_ over the time-honored breachclouts

they called _kongoa_. Or they’d take off the _kongoa_ altogether and

substitute “calicoes” for them. On Barley’s recent trip his crew

had brought in several thousand cigarettes, salvaged from a wrecked

Japanese vessel, and the Rennellese had taken to them like so many

ducks to water. New tastes, new ways.... The growing craze for European

costume was illustrated in the behavior of Mua, son of Taupangi, who

followed me around the ship, archly suggesting that I give him a pair

of trousers and a shirt. I tried to tell him that it would curse

Rennell, if he started such nonsense.

* * * * *

What had happened to the fierce tabu on feces examinations, which

had embarrassed us on our former trip? Old Tahua, in whose presence

we had not dared to whisper the forbidden thing, was now strangely

approachable. Perhaps an extra box of fishhooks tickled his

overdeveloped acquisitiveness. At any rate, he permitted Malakai,

aided by Buia, to give him our stock hookworm lecture with chart and

all the fixings. Immediately he commanded that a number of young boys

should report to the tent we had set up on the beach, and be properly

examined. Later on he ordered out a number of women for the same

inspection.

This concession was obliging to us and convenient to our work. But

underneath the courtesy I felt a certain loosening of the old religious

ties which had held Rennell’s proud racial identity. World without

end, they had worshiped with a single-mindedness which was like that

of Medieval Europe when the Church was all in all and the Pope its

interpreter. Religion had come first with the Rennell folk, and had

entered into every duty of their practical lives.

Outwardly they were still religious. But what undercurrents of doubt

were entering the new desires and ambitions? They still seemed

unquestioningly obedient to the Big Masters, who spoke with the voice

of God. Did the Divine One and his lesser divinities still listen to

their inner thoughts, as they had three short years ago? Their code of

sins and virtues had been different from ours, but just as strict. What

would happen to them when all their traditions went to the junk-pile?

As I worked in my tent on the beach, many things that I had not known

before came filtering in. Dr. Macgregor told me more, for he was there

to study the past and present of a strange people. Through Buia, loyal

to the White Sands, I learned why I had better not go to the Lake this

time. Tahua and Taupangi were in a jealous quarrel again over property

rights. In the past year or so Taupangi had had an inspiration: If

Tahua got iron through his possession of the White Sands, then Taupangi

would have an anchorage of his own. Therefore he had made a three-mile

shortcut to a place in the cliffs where it was just possible to get up

and down. Here he could launch canoes and invite the crews of passing

ships to come to the Lake by the shortest way; something like our

road-signs, “Shortest Route to Atlantic City.” Roughhewn as the idea

was, it fetched some trade to Taupangi’s district. Tahua was in a

boiling rage, and the people of the White Sands well knew that the two

lesser Masters who had aided in Taupangi’s forbidden trail had been

afflicted with a fatal sickness which only Tahua’s God could inflict.

An embassy from the Lake visited my tent with Taupangi’s cordial

invitation to come to his district with my treatments. Buia gave me

a warning look, so I was obliged to decline. We were indebted to the

White Sands for our anchorage and headquarters. No telling what Tahua

might do if the white witch doctor should desert him for a hated

rival. So I let Gordon White go to the Lake with some of the _Zaca’s_

scientists. Tahua granted them that favor, after I had offered a

practical idea for his benefit. Why not join forces with the Lake

people and cut a good trail across that awful eight miles of vines and

coral? Make communications easy, and Taupangi would forget about his

rival anchorage.... It was like asking a blue Republican to junk a

tariff barrier for the benefit of mutual trade. But Tahua thought it

over....

They were pouring in from every district to be lined up in our tent.

While we worked at our trade Macgregor, at the other end, worked at

his, and Dr. Hynes, our surgeon, studied the blood groupings of 100

people in hopes of throwing some light on their racial origin. They

were almost equally divided between Group O and Group B, with almost no

A’s or AB’s, a quite different finding than European grouping, which

furnishes data for specialist study in anthropology; and they did not

seem to check up with other Polynesian typing.

Dr. Macgregor, who was a Harvard Ph.D. in anthropology and had had

the superlative advantages offered by the Bishop Museum, was a young

scientist with the proper equipment of learning and enthusiasm. As

the line of natives passed through our tent he took head measurements

and found a cephalic index of 74-75, about the same as that of the

so-called Nordics. He reached the conclusion that they were not usual

Polynesians in the sense that Hawaiians, Samoans, Cook Islanders, and

others are Polynesians. They had many elements of Melanesian culture,

such as certain points in their god-worship, and their habit of

betel-chewing. They knew nothing of that Polynesian favorite, kava;

and many of their words were not Polynesian at all. But physically

they were not Melanesian, nor were they of the Micronesian race that I

myself had seen in the Gilberts and the western Bismarcks. It was no

wild conjecture to call them pre-Polynesian, of which there is still a

small element in Tonga.

Somewhere in their first long voyage from Nowhere to Nowhere they had

picked up certain Polynesian arts and habits: like the making of tapa

cloth and the smearing of their bodies with sacred turmeric. History

records that the Tongafiti, conquering fathers of Polynesia, had fallen

upon Rennell Island some 400 years before; but not to conquer. The

Rennellese warriors had slain all but one man. That man finally built

a canoe and started for his home. The Rennellese had some knowledge of

invaders very like the Tongafiti. As we saw them there were no mixed

bloods--with the exception of two half-castes, probably the issue of

visiting sailors.

Malakai and I, representing the medical end of the enterprise,

were busy with a count of native diseases. We were saving hookworm

examinations for the last and were winning popular confidence through

less objectionable tests. If I had been pessimistic when I came back

to Rennell, I was glad to find many of my fears groundless. There was

no filariasis, nor was any evidence to be found of the anopheline

mosquito; and there were no diagnostic signs of malaria. Buia actually

had malaria; I knew, because I treated him for it. But he had been

with Barley on Malaita, where he undoubtedly picked it up. As to

tuberculosis, I found less on Rennell than anywhere else I had visited.

Yaws was no menace; the local habit of isolating sufferers until the

sores were healed had reduced the disease to a few tertiary cases--Buia

told me that I would find much yaws on Bellona, where they did not

practise the ancient quarantine custom. There was still plenty of itch

on Rennell, but that too seemed to be wearing itself out.

I have described the technique of getting hookworm, but because the

question was most important to me on Rennell, I hope to be forgiven for

describing it again.

Little tins are given out for feces specimens, and their contents

examined. If you want worms you choose the people who have been

found positive through examination; positive because hookworm eggs

have been found in their specimens. You dose them with the drug,

say tetrachloride, then you give them a “jerry,” which is usually a

five-gallon benzine tin, and tell them that all their bowel motions

for die day must be deposited in the big container. A purge has been

given after the tetrachloride, to hurry things up. At the end of

twenty-four hours the whole stool is washed through several thicknesses

of surgical gauze until only a sediment remains. This sediment is taken

by tablespoonful and floated with a little water in a photograph tray,

where the worms can be seen with difficulty, especially if die patient

has been eating fibrous vegetables. Then he is given another saline

purge and he deposits his bowel motion for another twenty-four hours.

Then the same procedure is repeated. To do a good job another day’s

collection should be made. This is difficult in a hospital, and much

more difficult among savages. In New Guinea we had to put them behind

barbed wire, in Fiji we often locked them up.

On Rennell we were not given permission to do this work until the last

few days, and we only got Tahua’s consent by paying him liberally

in fishhooks. The examinations were on the beach, and the subjects

all girls; they had been forced to submit by the Big Master, who

cannily believed that if some magic curse should fall on a few girls

it wouldn’t matter. Malakai and Gordon were supposed to keep guard

over these patients; but with new ones coming all the time, they were

probably not very well watched. The infection was very light, and

probably many of the stools missed. Later on, when we examined the

material, we found no worms. The trouble was that the Big Master’s

permission had come so late that a technique suited to such bizarre

circumstances was impossible. The delay resulted in our frustration.

They had no conception of disease. When it came to tuberculin tests

we had immense difficulty in getting them to report for more than one

injection, for the Big Parade was always going on and they didn’t want

to miss any of it. Time, of course, was nothing to them. That mental

quirk, as well as those above noted, worked dead against us. Remember,

it was a land of savages, a stark beach, no houses to speak of and an

almost constant rain. Add to this the native’s superstitious shyness.

Once, when I caught Buia in a very personal occupation, he almost died

of fear.

I had done my best to inquire into the prevalence of gonorrhea, the

old enemy of racial fertility. Examinations were, of course, out of

the question--you could examine a Rennellese man only by felling him

with an ax. I suspected that this venereal germ had revisited Rennell,

and when I looked over our crew after departure my suspicions were

justified. I could learn little from a people who in no way associated

the infection with promiscuity; they regarded all disease as merely a

curse following the violation of a tabu, even an unconscious violation.

But what I found that our sailors had picked up from Rennell alarmed me

as to the island’s future. The barriers were down, the White Sands were

offering the most generous hospitality to visiting sailors. I had seen

other island populations sink for similar reasons.

A nightly chore was counting the sick aboard ship. Templeton Crocker’s

foot was about well; however we had persuaded him not to bruise it

again in that awful overland walk to the Lake. Stuart, our botanical

collector, was in bed with a severe leg ulcer. He had tramped all over

Java and Borneo in the Chancellor-Stuart expedition, and now he chafed

because his legs were not taking him along. Toschio seemed to have

recovered from the sickness that took us to Tulagi, and otherwise we

seemed fit to carry on. Except that I was suffering from a boil on my

leg.

One night Buia came aboard and asked Malakai to intervene with Mr.

Crocker for more food for the people who had come down to be treated.

Malakai, always a sympathetic observer of the natives, said that he had

watched them and they had gone all day without a thing to eat. These

people were nomads, really--nomads on an island fifty miles long. When

they traveled they never thought of carrying provisions. I went to

Crocker, and found him generous again. In free feeds for Rennell he had

already dipped pretty deep into our stock of eatables, but he managed

to dig up another banquet and send it ashore. I asked Buia why the

people went hungry when they could fish in the bay, and he said it was

tabu to eat fish from the bay while our sewage was emptying there.

I caught Buia off his guard and told him that I had learned the names

of the two Gods who ruled his island: they were the old Tetanosanga,

whose girth measured ten fathoms, and his grandson Teaitutabu.

Listening to the sacred words, Buia stood aghast and begged me never,

never to say those names again. Only the Big Masters could speak them,

and that only in a whisper. I liked Buia for his reverence, when he

prayed away my rash impiety. While he prayed I felt that faith had not

departed from his people, and might strengthen them to stand against

the white invader, as they had stood against the Tongafiti.

Prayer was a part of their daily lives. Gordon Macgregor on his visit

to the Lake saw a sacred and secret ceremony never before shown to

a white man. He had asked a question, and old Taupangi went into a

“sweating trance,” seeking divine guidance. His two companions held

the chiefs heavily perspiring body while his eyes rolled and his head

fell. They were afraid he would die. At last his assistant took a

strip of tapa and bound it tightly around his waist to squeeze out the

possessing spirit. Then he recovered from his trance and delivered a

somewhat confused message: Possibly it would be all right, he said, for

his son to go on a trip with Macgregor.

Taupangi was the only one of the five Big Masters who could speak

directly to God. The others had to communicate through an intermediary.

Tahua lacked the mystic power. With receptive soul he had waited all

his life for God to enter him and show favor, but he died with his wish

unanswered.

Religion was an everyday, every hour affair with these simple,

devout people, and the way to Heaven was marked out for them. When

a soul entered Paradise it was a very small soul, but it grew as

a child grows, and attained magnificent size among the immortals.

It was a man’s Heaven, for earth-women were hardly worth sending

there, especially since Eternity was supplied with many beautiful

creatures, superior in every way to the merely human female. When a Big

Master died a heavy club was buried with him to protect him against

devil-devils on the way to his Valhalla. The “Big Master’s stick,” his

wand of office, was stuck on the top of his grave, and this marked his

term of office as a spiritual interpreter; for as long as the stick

lasted his earthly successor might use it as a mouthpiece to Heaven

and consult with the late Big Master, and with the supreme Ngenggo,

the Grandson God. When the stick rotted in the ground the deceased was

no longer the heavenly interpreter, and the next in line assumed the

office.

Macgregor was at last keen enough to see that my pidgin was a valuable

means of communication. He found that the sacred name for their god

was Ngenggo, the same as Rengo in Rotumah.[6] Rengo was another name

for turmeric, sacred to the bodies of high personages. Between us we

found that the Big Masters spoke indirectly to the gods, through their

ancestors. As if to throw up a defense across the sacred names, they

had two names at least for the two principal gods. On my first trip

a Master told me that the principal god was called Tainatua, as I

understood it--really Taiinggatua. Then Barley, a little later, learned

that the two were Tetanosanga and Teaitutabu (the Sacred God). At the

Lake, Macgregor found that Teaitutabu and Ngenggo were one and the

same. He collected some wonderful material there, especially concerning

religion and ceremonies, and was able to improve on it through his wide

experience in Rotumah and the Tokelaus. Incidentally Macgregor saw a

two-headed stick used as an object of worship.

As we worked out the puzzling pantheon, Tetanosanga (another name for

Taiinggatua) was grandfather to the god Teaitutabu (otherwise Ngenggo).

They presided over the world, as Rennell knew it, and Ngenggo never

left his home in the skies. His grandfather, however, roamed the earth

and reported happenings to Ngenggo. The Grandson God was the most

powerful of the Sky Masters, and Buia said, “Suppose him he talk-talk

he sabe make you die quick.” While Ngenggo stayed at home the Old One

went everywhere, saw and heard everything, and if there were those who

ignored divine laws, Ngenggo punished them. Not only could he kill men,

but he could demolish trees, islands, anything. There were prayers

to the gods before every simple meal. There were ceremonies of food

presentation to the gods, too involved to describe in anything but a

book on anthropology. But if the regular tribute of food to a god was

neglected, the offender would surely sicken and die.

Buia told me of Charley Cowan’s ship which had anchored at Taupangi’s

Lake anchorage. Charley, Buia said, gave the ship to Taupangi, and

Taupangi in turn gave it to the Big Master along Skies. Then the

divinity replied that Cowan might go on using his vessel, provided

that he came back at intervals to Taupangi’s anchorage. The Big Master

warned him not to take it to Tahua’s beach, but Cowan on his next trip

went to the White Sands. As a result of this disobedience, Buia said,

Taupangi “talked along” the watchful Grandson God, and as a result both

Cowan and his partner died. (As a matter of fact, these men did die,

to my knowledge.) It was _post hoc_ rather than _propter hoc_; but try

to make a Rennellese believe that Taupangi didn’t pray them to death!

Buia was afraid for the _Zaca_ if it called at Taupangi’s anchorage for

Macgregor and White....

Nothing was attempted and few thoughts conceived without first seeking

the advice of the gods. The people even consulted their ancestors

through a bamboo stick dug into a grave. I once caught the tough Panio

using this sort of spirit-telephone.

Gordon White, coming back from Tenggano with the usual tatters and

coral scratches, reported that the Lake People had not depreciated

much in health. He said that my old chum Taupangi grieved that I had

not come up to live with him for the balance of my life. The _Zaca’s_

party at the Lake had dined with the Big Master every day, and were

interested to find that somebody had taught him to eat with a fork and

drink tea out of a china cup. He liked plenty of sugar in his tea and

stirred it for five minutes, with his fork. They took movies of the

harvest festival, and Gordon noticed what a change had come over the

scene since last we saw it. There was no high fence around the grounds,

and women were allowed to look on. Another old tabu was fading out.

Not to be outdone by his hated rival, Taupangi had loosened up on the

hookworm tabu; but his people were still so queer about being examined

that our party got no good specimens. There was an epidemic of head

colds, so frequent that our outfit was now catching the germ from

Rennell--a reversal of our first experience there.

When Macgregor came back to the White Sands the majority of the Lake

population followed him, crazy to see the _Zaca_. Gordon White tried

to bribe them to stay home, offering toy balloons and tin trumpets,

but these things bored them. They were out for iron, and intended to

get it. Taupangi overcame his grouch against Tahua (who would allow

him nothing better than a leaky leaf-shelter when he was on the beach)

and joined the exodus. So did Tekita and Tamata. Only Mua remained as

intermediary; although he was the Big Master’s son and heir he hadn’t

had enough of God’s authority to coax the people up to Gordon’s tent,

so it had become a matter of visiting every leaf-shelter in the place

and giving tests. Tuberculosis didn’t seem alarming. Wanderlust was

the prevailing ailment. Mua, Tekita, Tamata, everybody who could get a

word in edgewise, had tried to wheedle Gordon into taking them away on

the boat. If Buia had traveled and learned about the great world, why

shouldn’t they? These simple folk, to whom Rennell had been all in all,

were growing restless, discontented with this frugal island which had

once satisfied their every want--because they had never learned to want

the unnecessary. A self-containing social structure, an unquestioning

faith in divinities who could give and who could take away, scanty food

which they gained by wholesome labor and gratefully thanked God for....

That was their plenty. But to human nature, plenty is too often not

enough. Perhaps that is the real Martyrdom of Man.

* * * * *

Little Bellona Island (Mungiki) lay twenty-five miles over there, and I

was anxious to survey it again, and to show it to Crocker’s expedition.

The Big Masters of Rennell had explained carefully why Mungiki had a

richer soil than theirs. In days of old, the semi-mythical Ko Fiti

had been driven out of Rennell, but before they left they had done

a spiteful thing; they had scraped the good topsoil off Rennell and

dumped it on Mungiki.

Our _Zaca_ moved across the short stretch of sea. In sight of

Bellona’s forbidding cliffs I sent a short radio message to Eloisa; a

demonstration of science in the midst of savagery.

A man came out in a canoe and gave his name as Samoana, which was

pure Samoan for Guardian of the Sea. He guided us to a beach which

had changed so in three years that I hardly knew it. Great storms had

washed it clean of sand; now it was a forest of sharp coral points.

When I sat down on the softest lump I could find, I was immediately

surrounded by a half-hundred fierce faces; threatening fists were full

of bows, arrows and spears. A man who came out of a cave seemed to own

the beach, and I asked him if we might pitch our tent there. No, he

said archly, if we set up a tent (“big calico”) we might take a notion

to stay. A poor start, but with the help of Buia I managed to persuade

him that we were moving on in four days. When I asked for the chiefs

to come to me--a policy I adopted on Bellona--Samoana went away, then

came back to report that Ponge, the Big Master, sat with three lesser

Masters, presiding at a great festival. He couldn’t possibly come, as

he was very tabu; his face was blackened, which was the deepest of all

tabus.

Buia brought in the three lesser Masters, who surprised me with their

willingness to have the people inspected. And of course it would be all

right to have the big calico on the shore--if we didn’t stay too long.

When I told them that I had left much of my equipment in a big calico

on the White Sands, with the assurance that nothing would be stolen,

the three Masters promised me that my goods would be respected. And

they kept their word. Even on Rennell I had found that the people were

learning the difference between _meum_ and _teum_. Sleeping on that

beach would be about as comfortable as a Hindu fakir’s bed of nails,

and Bellona’s geological freaks made water available only by catching

it in coconut shells or the funny wooden bowls they used for that

purpose. The Bellonese, who were the gentlest people in the world in

spite of their savage look, seemed to subsist almost without water. A

little coconut juice satisfied bodies that had adjusted themselves to

conditions.

I loaded the three Masters on the small boat and we presented them

with candy and tinned meat. Crocker turned on the phonograph, with

startling effect. They all began to shake and shiver; Buia’s cousin

Takeika rose nervously and tried to take the machine down to his canoe.

We had to tell him that it was very tabu for anybody but Crocker, who

was Captain to them--the highest title they could understand. We didn’t

turn the record on again. They were very curious about the two little

fishes which Buia had tattooed on my left ankle. They didn’t know that

my ankle was still sore where a needle (made from a sliver of human

bone) had gone in, or that my leg was sensitive from a couple of buried

boils, which I had carried with me from Suva and hadn’t given a chance

to cure. They smacked their lips and rolled their eyes, marveling at

the tattooed fishes, symbols of Rennell.

They seemed to think that the Rennell people put on airs. Macgregor

found that Bellona gave a soft sound to _ng_, as in “sing,” where

Rennell hardened it to _ngg_, as in “finger.” Probably considered an

affectation, like the English broad _a_....

Malakai and I, setting up a tent on the beach, found that the petting

habit on Bellona was slightly worse than that of Rennell. People

surrounded us like sticky flies. Two or three would run their hands

down my shirt collar, to see if my worshipful belly was real or just

padding; two or three more would be lifting up my trousers to marvel

at my white ankles, and the tattooed fishes. That massage, with

inquisitive and dirty hands, went on for four days. It went hardest

with Crocker, who had more respect for his personal dignity than some

of us. He was getting used to being called Captain--on Rennell he had

tried to insist that his name was Owner, but that hadn’t made sense to

the native. Captain meant Boss, and you couldn’t go any higher than

that.

At last we went to Big Master Ponge, since he was too sacred to move

from his seat of dignity. Every time my sore leg came down I suppressed

a moan, and wondered why I had ever left Suva in such condition.

Whenever the choking scrub along the way opened up a little I had

pleasant views of the neat, thatched houses. They looked very pretty at

a distance, but when I went into some of them I found only dirt floors,

with hardly a mat to squat on--and all the time dirty natives were

patting my hands, pawing my shoes, stockings, every inch of me.

Big Master Ponge had invited us to a dance, and that was the reason for

those weary three miles. As we had done in Rennell, we crawled on our

stomachs under the low eaves and faced the Presence on all fours. And

there was the great Ponge, seated on his dais and looking for all the

world, as Maury said, like a Chinese mandarin. But a mandarin doing a

black-face act, for his cheeks, nose and forehead were thick with tabu

soot. He shook hands all round and listened carefully when I told him

why we had come, and how Crocker had invited him to visit the _Zaca_.

Macgregor talked, and presented him with a cane-knife--and I hoped

he’d use it to clear a path through that awful scrub. In behalf of his

Master Tahua, Buia gave him an American ax. By way of ecclesiastical

blessing Ponge pronounced us “good fellow too much.” I didn’t wait for

the dance, but limped back over the terrible trail. I had business

awaiting me on the beach.

I looked over the people that filed through my tent and was surprised

to see how much clearer skinned and robust they were than the

inhabitants of the White Sands. They appeared cleaner, but they smelled

a little worse than the Rennellese. I saw some hideous cases of yaws,

and remembered what Buia had said: The Bellona folk did not quarantine

it. In fact the Rennellese quarantine was the only one I ever saw among

primitive people.

Bellona called it _caho_, and when I asked in the presence of the

crowd where _caho_ came from, they answered to a man that Dr. Deck’s

missionaries had brought it. Dr. Deck had botched his expeditions

sufficiently, without this. Even though Deck’s excursions might have

brought some of it, it was just a case of yaws meet yaws, I thought.

If the people of Bellona were Polynesian, this was the only Polynesian

spot on the Pacific where the disease was not called _tona_ or some

name much like it. Their ignorance of the word suggested that they

had been pushed out of some Western Polynesian group before they had

had a chance to come in contact with the Tongans; for yaws is a curse

that does not die out of itself, and if they had come to Bellona after

meeting Tongans, they would have carried the Tongan name _tona_.

Macgregor, taking anthropological measurements, found them physically

identical with the Rennellese--probably the relics of a pre-Polynesian

race. I found that they needed a doctor for yaws, and not much more;

otherwise they would be a thousand times better off if no white man’s

foot ever again touched their coral-scragged beach. Isolation had made

them happier than the Rennellese, I thought. Five ships had touched at

Rennell Island in three years, and more were coming. Bellona had only

seen two in that time, and those two had been given a cool reception.

An object lesson in self-preservation.