ORDEAL BY SMOKE.
The Fijian cure for leprosy is submission to the ordeal by smoke. It is
like the old English ordeal by water in cases of suspected witchcraft.
If the subject survived the experiment she was no witch; if she were
drowned, as generally happened, she was a witch well got rid of.
Lepers in Fiji are cured or killed by smoke from the wood of the sinu
ganga. This tree attains a height of 60ft., and is generally found in
mangrove swamps. It bears minute green flowers arranged in catkins. When
the tree is pierced, a white milk flows which is burning to the skin.
The suspected leper is taken to a small empty house. Having been
stripped naked, his body is rubbed all over with green leaves, and then
buried in them. A small fire is lighted, and a few pieces of the sinu
ganga are laid on it. Soon a thick black smoke begins to ascend. The
patient is bound hand and foot, and drawn up over the fire by a rope
fastened to his heels, leaving his head some 18in. from the ground, in
the midst of the poisonous exhalations. The door is closed, the victim’s
friends retire to a little distance, while he shouts and screams in the
agony caused by the suffocating heat. The unfortunate wretch sometimes
faints after a few minutes of this treatment. When the man is considered
to be sufficiently smoked, the fire is put out, the slime is scraped
from his body, and deep gashes are cut in his flesh with sharpened
pearl-oyster shells, until the blood flows freely. He is then taken down
and laid on the mats to await the result, which is sometimes death, and
sometimes, strange to say, complete recovery.
I protested vehemently that I was no leper, and Lolóma joined her
weeping remonstrances to mine, but without effect. The suspicion was too
grave.
“I shall be avenged for this,” I cried, as I was hurried away, though I
believed my hours were numbered. “I will come with the front of battle
and the thunder of Britain, and Bent-Axe shall see if a white man can be
tortured with impunity.”
“Every man is a wind in his own bay,” laughed the savage. “You are not
in the land of the white man now, and your words are as idle as the
sea-foam. To-morrow’s sun will see the fair Lolóma at rest in these
arms.”
Smarting with rage, I was borne away to a native house, in which
preparations for the ordeal I was to be subjected to had been made by
the cunning priest and his friend the previous night. I was satisfied
that it would not be their fault if I left the chamber alive. Soon the
whole room was filled with smoke. I was triced up by the heels with my
head dangling over the fire, and my two enemies and their assistants,
being unable to bear the fumes any longer, left me. I knew that if
possible, Lolóma would contrive my escape, but it took her a long time
to divest herself of her gala trappings, in which she could not move,
and the demons who plotted my destruction had laid their plans so well
that I was in a fair way to be suffocated before a friendly hand could
reach me.
The sun had just set when I found myself swinging in the accursed smoke,
a prey to reflections which assumed the form of a horrid phantasmagoria,
owing to the blood rushing to my head, and the stifling heat of the
baleful exhalations. After the lapse of a few seconds I became incapable
of clear thought. My brain thumped and bounded, and I shrieked aloud.
Once, after terrible struggling, I reached the rope with my hands, and
endeavoured to haul myself into an endurable position, but my nerveless
fingers lost their hold, and I fell back in a swoon—an inert mass
swinging to and fro in the smoky glare. I must have fainted when I had
been suspended two or three minutes, though it seemed as many hours, for
I felt as if my head were bursting all the time.
When I recovered consciousness I was lying on the ground in the hut, a
few paces from the fire. Lolóma stood by, emptying a pipkin of water
over me.
On my way to the place of torture I had learned from the conversation of
Shark and Bent-Axe that its locality had been kept secret. Lolóma,
watched by her relatives, had great difficulty in getting away until it
was thought that sufficient time had elapsed for the ordeal by smoke to
be accomplished. Then she tracked my executioners to the house. With her
light step and lithe figure she was able to elude them in the gloom, and
enter the building through a small aperture in the side, used as a
window, and which was only closed by a mat. To cut the rope of sinnet
with a bamboo knife was the work of a moment, and I fell to the ground
in her arms.
“Run for your life,” were her first words to me as soon as she saw that
I had regained consciousness.
I recovered myself quickly. My eyes were blinded and smarting with the
smoke, but I snatched up a club which lay on the floor, and ran, as near
as I could guess, after the retreating form of the girl through the
doorway. Outside the hut a man emerged from the smoke and gloom and
seized me by the left shoulder. It was Bent-Axe. With one blow from the
club I felled him, and darted up a ravine towards the hills. In an
hour’s time I was safe in my old cave, where there was some food, for
Lolóma and I had kept up the habit of making festival excursions there,
and the existence of the bower was still known only to us two.
The trees and shrubs around the entrance to the cave were spangled with
a cloud of dancing fireflies, though I had never seen these insects in
the locality before. Capturing three or four, I contrived an excellent
lantern by placing them in a cocoanut cup, covering the top with a film
of fine masi, through which the light shone. I found that by shaking the
bowl violently I could excite these interesting insects to increase the
light they emit from the luminous discs on each side of their bodies.
Subsequent experience proved to me that with a little sugar-cane for
food they would live in captivity for weeks. Furnished with my new-made
lamp, I explored at leisure the long aisles and fretted vaults of my
picturesque cell, which was beautiful beyond the dreams of architecture.