THE FIJIAN NIGHTS’ ENTERTAINMENTS.—SECOND NIGHT.—CAPTURE OF THE EBBTIDE.
On the next occasion on which the company assembled in Big-Wind’s house
disposed themselves to story-telling, I gave them “Ali Baba, or the
Forty Thieves,” which was quite to the taste of my audience.
Trumpet Shell responded with a continuation of “Prince Hightide,” in
which is recorded the wonderful capture of the leviathan canoe.
The people of Cannibal-land are a selfish and jealous race, as,
likewise, are all their gods. Each tribe likes to be thought first in
everything. If a tribe in the North has a great and wonderful god, who,
by many miraculous deeds has clearly established his reputation, and
made his name a household word, a tribe in the South must place itself
in a position to be able to boast such another, or it will never rest.
If the former can talk of its monster canoe, with her god-like captain
and giant crew, sweeping gloriously over the waters of the Pacific, the
latter will fume and fret till it also can tell to future generations,
that its god was one of no second-rate powers, inasmuch as he captured
that very canoe, in a way that put into the shade every other capture
ever made on the high seas, and, by many other deeds of might, utterly
astonished both the world of men and the world of gods.
The Prince Hightide was indeed a powerful god—a worthy son of him who
shakes the world! As for his canoe, the Ebbtide, who can measure her
proportions? But Tanóva, a god of Kandávu, claimed to be as high and
mighty as the Prince. A poet says that this Tanóva used often to ask:
“What will the world say of me, if, to prove my equality with Prince
Hightide, I capture his beautiful craft? Let the world decide the
question—‘which is the greater god, he that builds a monster canoe, or
he that captures her when she is built?’” The capture of the Ebbtide now
became the object of Tanóva’s ambition, and he determined to take
advantage of every opportunity for completing and carrying out his
plans. The scheme was in his brain, and there he kept it for a time to
ripen. One day Ratúva, another god of Kandávu, sailed away on a visit to
the great northern deity, Prince Hightide, whom he found on board his
canoe of world-wide renown. The Prince having been informed of the
distinguished visitor’s arrival alongside, looked down from the deck and
very graciously invited him to climb the vessel’s side. The invitation
was, of course, accepted; and Ratúva set about climbing; but the
distance was so great that it took him a whole day to reach the deck,
and what astonished him still more, another day to reach the Prince’s
quarters amidships. In the course of conversation between these two
important personages, Ratúva took occasion to inform the Prince that he
should shortly be in need of all the canoes he had left at home, but the
worst of it was that most of them were out of repair, and must be
re-lashed before they could be sent again to sea. He being therefore
greatly in want of sinnet for this work, had come over the ocean to beg
some of that most necessary article of His Highness. The Prince replied,
“It is well! It is good! There is sinnet enough and to spare; far more
than you can take in your canoe; so in a few days I will send my sons in
the Ebbtide with a good cargo of the ‘pith of your petition.’” This is
quite a Fijian phrase, and a very pretty one it is. With this princely
promise, Ratúva returned to his own land more than satisfied with the
result of his mission. On his way he called on the Hero-god Tanóva, to
pay his respects and to give him the good news. “I have been,” he began,
“to the gates of the Spirit-land, even to the home of the noble Prince
Hightide.” “Oh, you have, have you?” said Tanóva, “and what is the
news?” “Why, that I begged sinnet of him, and he not only gave a large
quantity, but promised to send his sons in the Ebbtide with more.” “And
what else?” asked Tanóva. “Well, all about the Prince himself, to be
sure, and his miracle of a canoe!” “Pshaw! What canoe?” asked the
envious Tanóva, with a sneer. “Well all I know is,” replied the
successful sinnet-beggar, “we may live for ten generations and never set
our eyes on such another wonder! Why just think, I climbed, and climbed,
and was a whole day in getting on board, then I walked, and walked, and
walked, and was another day in making my way to the Prince’s cabin.”
These cabins, or canoe-houses, are always placed in the middle of the
canoe, and on deck, there being no accommodation whatever between-decks
on these rough ocean coaches.
Here the conversation stopped; but it had gone far enough to fan into a
flame Tanóva’s desire to capture this unique canoe. “Now,” said he to
himself, “is my time! How shall I take her when she comes this way with
the promised sinnet?” Now, just about the time for expecting the
Ebbtide, Tanóva took down, from the place where it usually hung in the
house, a cocoanut water-bottle, with which he went out to fetch, as he
said, a bottleful of sea-water to season his vegetable soup with. This
is often done by Fijian cooks, who, for all in-door cookery, are women.
It is not usual for men to fetch water; but this was a special case,
with a special object in view. The ordinary cocoanut water-bottle holds
from half a pint to a pint; extraordinary ones would hold a quart. This
kind of bottle is in very common use for holding drinking-water, and
sea-water for cooking purposes. But the water-bottle of the poet’s
imagination was, of course, one that in every way became a hero-giant
and god. Tanóva first let down his capacious bottle in seas near home,
but found them much too shallow. He could not get water enough, for his
object, to flow into its enormous mouth. Wherefore, after trying in two
or three other places, which were all too shallow, he proceeded in an
Easterly course from his own island, and, with a little leaning to the
North, was able presently to plant his right foot on the beautiful
island of Moála, at the same time raising his left, and putting it
firmly down on Ono, in the West. Here he again let down his cocoanut
shell in deep water, taking care to turn its mouth towards the North,
from which point the Ebbtide would steer her course. Let every voyager
to Fiji imagine the figure of this god standing as described in that
part of the group pointed out by the poet! The island of Moála is
situated in 179° 50′ E., and 18° 35′ S. Ono is in 178° 30′ E., and 180
50′ S. The two islands are, therefore, about 80 miles apart, which
distance of ocean is spanned by Tanóva’s legs of wondrous length, while
his enormous body, topped by a head of prodigious size, towers upward
towards the sky! In his hands he grasps a cord, to the other end of
which is attached the water-bottle in the position already described,
and now holding within it quite a sea of water. That portion of the
ocean thus arched over by the great god, is the highway for steamers and
sailing vessels bound for central Fiji. It is, in truth, the great and
grand gate of entrance for all foreign vessels making for the now
well-known port of Levuka.
Tanóva had not been long in his elevated position,
“Bestriding the narrow world like a Colossus,”
when, to his unbounded delight, the Ebbtide hove in sight. Coming
swiftly up, she pressed, full sail, right through the mouth of the
partly sunken bottle, and on inside, where she continued sailing to and
fro, tacking about whenever she came near the bottle’s side. Having thus
clearly and fairly entrapped the greatest canoe of that or any age, the
god drew up his bottle, and hastening home, quietly hung it up in its
place,—the glorious prize being all safe inside.
Many days had passed away since this miraculous capture; when one
morning a fine large canoe, the admiration of all who saw her, sailed
into Tanóva’s bay. The stranger proved to be no other than the second
great canoe of Prince Hightide, with the anxious prince himself on
board,—come in search of his renowned ship, and missing sons. On
entering Tanóva’s palace he reported himself, as the manner of all
visitors is, and as the etiquette of Cannibal-land requires. “Having
waited a long time at home,” said he, “looking and hoping for the return
of my sons and my big canoe, but receiving no tidings of either it or
them, I am here to-day in search of both.” Ratúva the successful
sinnet-beggar, being present, was the first to reply.—“We know nothing
of either your canoe or your sons. I have been wondering why they did
not come with the sinnet!” The words were hardly out of his mouth when
the whole household, together with the Prince and his company, were
startled by a great noise, as of sailors putting their canoe
about—“ee!—oh!—yah!—eh!”—There was a pause in the house for an instant,
and only for an instant,—such a pause as might be caused by the sudden
rushing into the hearts of the assemblage of unexpected fear or
joy,—which, passed, Prince Hightide shouted in a fit of irrepressible
gladness,—“That’s my Ebbtide! There she is!! Here she comes!!!” There
was an immediate rush to the doors, and even to the beach, to look at
her coming into harbour;—but not a speck could be seen on the blue
waters. This surely must have been one of Tanóva’s moments of highest
enjoyment, when he saw the chagrin of the great and loudly talked of
Prince of Northern Fiji.
After remaining some little time longer, the prince said he must be
going; but Tanóva pressed him to stay, saying, “Don’t go yet, some
vegetable soup is getting ready; wait and take some.” So he waited; for
neither man, nor hero-god could have been so unpolite as to decline such
hospitality. Tanóva presently rose, and taking down the water-bottle,
made as if he were going to pour its contents into the soup, when,
behold! while he was in the very act of doing this, out fell the monster
canoe and her hardy crew! As might be supposed, the astonishment of all
the assembled gods was great beyond the power of tongue to tell.
Dumbness was the only proper expression of it. But on none were the
signs of mingled wonder and joy more visible than on the noble prince
himself.
As soon as the panic occasioned by these mysterious doings had in part
subsided, Ratúva, who could not forget his promised sinnet, addressing
the prince, said, “Of course you will now go on with me with the
sinnet?” but the wary old aristocrat replied, “Don’t you wish you may
get it! You won’t catch me sailing into any more of your Kandávu
water-bottles.” Thereupon he and his sons returned home, intensely
disgusted with all the gods and vegetable soups and cocoanut bottles of
that island.
Now this is how the cannibal poet has shown in his song that Prince
Hightide was taught a lesson of humility; and how, too, the Northern
tribes of that age came to understand that there were gods in the South,
as mighty as their own.