NELWANG'S ELOPEMENT.
SOME most absurd and preposterous experiences were forced upon us by the
habits and notions of the people. Amongst these I recall very vividly
the story of Nelwang's elopement with his bride. I had begun, in spare
hours, to lay the foundation of two additional rooms for our house, and
felt rather uneasy to see a well-known savage hanging around every day
with his tomahawk, and eagerly watching me at work. He had killed a man,
before our arrival on Aniwa; and had also startled my wife by suddenly
appearing from amongst the boxes, and causing her to run for life. On
seeing him hovering so alarmingly near, tomahawk in hand, I saluted him,
"Nelwang, do you want to speak to me?"
"Yes, Missi," he replied; "if you will help me now, I will be your
friend forever."
I answered, "I am your friend. That brought me here and keeps me here."
"Yes," said he very earnestly, "but I want you to be strong as my
friend, and I will be strong for you!"
I replied, "Well, how can I help you?"
He quickly answered, "I want to get married, and I need your help."
I protested,--"Nelwang, you know that marriages here are all made in
infancy, by children being bought and betrothed to their future
husbands. How can I interfere? You don't want to bring evil on me and my
wife and child? It might cost us our lives."
"No! no! Missi," earnestly retorted Nelwang. "No one hears of this, or
can hear. Only help me now. You tell me, if you were my circumstances,
how would you act?"
"That's surely very simple," I answered. "Every man knows how to go
about that business, if he wants to be honest! Look out for your
intended, find out if she loves you and the rest will follow
naturally,--you will marry her."
"Yes," argued Nelwang, "but just there my trouble comes in!"
"Do you know the woman you would like to get?" I asked, wishing to bring
him to some closer issue.
"Yes," replied he very frankly, "I want to marry Yakin, the Chiefs'
widow up at the inland village, and that will break no infant
betrothals."
"But," I persevered, "do you know if she loves you or would take you?"
"Yes," replied Nelwang; "one day I met her on the path and told her I
would like to have her for my wife. She took out her ear-rings and gave
them to me, and I know thereby that she loves me. I was one of her late
husband's men; and if she had loved any of them more than she loved me,
she would have given them to another. With the ear-rings she gave me her
heart."
"Then why," I insisted, "don't you go and marry her?"
"There," said Nelwang gravely, "begins my difficulty. In her village
there are thirty young men for whom there are no wives. Each of them
wants her, but no one has the courage to take her, for the other
nine-and-twenty will shoot him!"
"And if you take her," I suggested, "the disappointed thirty will shoot
you!"
"That's exactly what I see, Missi," continued Nelwang; "but I want you
just to think you are in my place, and tell me how you would carry her
off. You white men can always succeed. Missi, hear my plans, and advise
me."
With as serious a face as I could command, I had to listen to Nelwang,
to enter into his love affair, and to make suggestions, with a view to
avoiding bloodshed and other miseries. The result of the deliberations
was that Nelwang was to secure the confidence of two friends, his
brother and the orator Taia, to place one at each end of the coral rocks
above the village as watchmen, to cut down with his American tomahawk a
passage through the fence at the back, and to carry off his bride at
dead of night into the seclusion and safety of the bush! Nelwang's eyes
flashed as he flourished his tomahawk about and cried, "I see it now,
Missi! I shall win her from them all. Yakin and I will be strong for you
all our days."
Next morning Yakin's house was found deserted. They sent to all the
villages around, but no one had seen her. The hole in the fence behind
was then discovered, and the thirty whispered to each other that Yakin
had been wooed and won by some daring lover. Messengers were despatched
to all the villages, and Nelwang was found to have disappeared on the
same night as the widow, and neither could anywhere be found.
The usual revenge was taken. The houses of the offenders burned, their
fences broken down, and all their property either destroyed or
distributed. Work was suspended, and the disappointed thirty solaced
themselves by feasting at Yakin's expense.
Three weeks passed. The runaways were nowhere to be found. It was
generally believed that they had gone in a canoe to Tanna or Erromanga.
But one morning, as I began my work at my house alone, the brave Nelwang
appeared at my side!
"Hillo!" I said, "where have you come from? and where is Yakin?"
"I must not," he replied, "tell you yet. We are hid. We have lived on
cocoanuts gathered at night. Yakin is well and happy. I come now to
fulfil my promise: I will help you, and Yakin will help Missi Paton the
woman, and we shall be your friends. I have ground to be built upon and
fenced, whenever we dare; but we will come and live with you, till peace
is secured. Will you let us come to-morrow morning?"
"All right!" I said. "Come to-morrow!" And, trembling with delight, he
disappeared into the bush.
Thus strangely God provided us with wonderful assistance. Yakin soon
learnt to wash and dress and clean everything, and Nelwang served me
like a faithful disciple. They clung by us like our very shadow, partly
through fear of attack, partly from affection; but as each of them could
handle freely both musket and tomahawk, which, though laid aside, were
never far away, it was not every enemy that cared to try issues with
Nelwang and his bride. After a few weeks had thus passed by, and as both
of them were really showing an interest in things pertaining to Jesus
and His Gospel, I urged them strongly to appear publicly at the Church
on Sabbath, to show that they were determined to stand their ground
together as true husband and wife, and that the others must accept the
position and become reconciled. Delay now could gain no purpose, and I
wished the strife and uncertainty to be put to an end.
Nelwang knew our customs. Every worshiper has to be seated, when our
Church bell ceases ringing. Aniwans would be ashamed to enter after the
Service had actually begun. As the bell ceased, Nelwang, knowing that he
would have a clear course, marched in, dressed in shirt and kilt, but
grasping very determinedly his tomahawk! He sat down as near to me as he
could conveniently get, trying hard to conceal his manifest agitation.
Silently smiling towards me, he then turned and looked eagerly at the
other door through which the women entered and left the Church, as if to
say, "Yakin is coming!" But his tomahawk was poised ominously on his
shoulder, and his courage gave him a defiant and almost impudent air. He
was evidently quite ready to sell his life at a high price, if any one
was prepared to risk the consequences.
In a few seconds Yakin entered; and if Nelwang's bearing and appearance
were rather inconsistent with the feeling of worship,--what on earth was
I to do when the figure and costume of Yakin began to reveal itself
marching in? The first visible difference betwixt a Heathen and a
Christian is,--that the Christian wears some clothing, the Heathen wears
none. Yakin had determined to show the extent of her Christianity by the
amount of clothing she could carry upon her person. Being a Chief's
widow before she became Nelwang's bride, she had some idea of state
occasions, and appeared dressed in every article of European apparel,
mostly portions of male attire, that she could beg or borrow from about
the premises! Her bridal gown was a man's drab-colored great-coat, put
on above her Native grass skirts, and sweeping down to her heels,
buttoned tight. Over this she had hung on a vest, and above that again,
most amazing of all, she had superinduced a pair of men's trousers,
planting the body of them on her neck and shoulders, and leaving her
head and face looking out from between the legs--a leg from either side
streaming over her bosom arid dangling down absurdly in front! Fastened
to the one shoulder also there was a red shirt, and to the other a
striped shirt, waving about her like wings as she sailed along. Around
her head a red shirt had been twisted like a turban, and her notions of
art demanded that a sleeve thereof should hang aloft over each of her
ears! She seemed to be a moving monster loaded with a mass of rags. The
day was excessively hot, and the perspiration poured over her face in
streams. She, too, sat as near to me as she could get on the women's
side of the Church. Nelwang looked at me and then at her, smiling
quietly, as if to say, "You never saw, in all your white world, a bride
so grandly dressed!"
I little thought what I was bringing on myself when I urged them to come
to Church. The sight of that poor creature sweltering before me
constrained me for once to make the service very short--perhaps the
shortest I ever conducted in all my life! The day ended in peace. The
two souls were extremely happy; and I praised God that what might have
been a scene of bloodshed had closed thus, even though it were in a kind
of wild grotesquerie!