There were only a score or so of houses in Leassé village--curious
saddle-backed structures, with steeply pitched roofs of gray and yellow
thatch, rising to a sharp point fore and aft; and in all the twenty not
more than one hundred natives--men, women, and children--dwelt. At the
back of the village the dense mountain forest began, and all day long
one might hear the booming notes of the gray wood-pigeons and the shrill
cries of the green and golden parrakeets as they fed upon the rich
purple berries of the _masa'oi_ and the inflorescence of the coco-palms.
In front, and between two jutting headlands of coral rock, with sides
a-green with climbing masses of _tupa_ vine, lay a curving beach of
creamy sand; westward the sea, pale green a mile from the shore, and
deeply blue beyond the clamouring reef, whose misty spume for ever rose
and fell the livelong day, and showed ghostly white at night.
It was at night time that young Denison, ex-supercargo of the wrecked
brig _Leonora_ first saw the place and took a huge liking to it. And
the memories of the seven happy months he spent there remains with him
still, though he has grown grizzled and respectable now and goes trading
no more.
A white moon stood high in a cloudless sky when he bade farewell to the
good-natured ruffian with whom, until two months previously, he had had
the distinction of serving as supercargo. The village wherein Captain
Bully Hayes and his motley rum-drinking crew had established themselves
was six miles from Leassé, on the shores of the Utwé Harbour, at
the bottom of which lay the once shapely _Leonora_, with her broken
fore-topmast just showing above the water. For reasons that need not
here be mentioned, Denison and the captain had quarrelled, and so the
former was deeply touched and said goodbye with a husky throat when the
burly skipper placed one of his two remaining bottles of gin in his hand
and said he was a “damned young fool to take things up so hotly.” So,
without a further word, he swallowed the lump in his throat and stepped
out quickly, fearing that some of the crew (none of whom knew of
his going) might meet him ere he gained the beach and mingle their
tears--for they all loved him well--with the precious bottle of gin.
For nearly an hour he walked along the sandy shore of a narrow and
winding strip of low-lying land, separated from the high and wooded
mainland by a slumbering lagoon, deep in parts but shallow at the south
end where it joined the barrier reef. Here Denison crossed, for the tide
had ebbed, and, gaining the shelving beach on the other side, he saw
before him Mout Leassé village, standing out clearly in the blazing
moonlight against the black edge of the mountain forest, which, higher
up, was wrapped in fleecy mist. It was near to dawn, but, being tired
and sleepy, the ex-supercargo lay down on the soft warm sand, away from
the falling dew of the pendulous palm leaves, and slept till it came.
An hour after daylight he was in the village and being hugged and
embraced by the inhabitants in general and Kusis, the headman, and his
wife and daughter in particular. I have already mentioned that Denison
was very young then; he would not permit such a thing now.
Still, although three-and-twenty years have passed since then, Denison
often wishes he could live those seven months in Leassé over again, and
let this, his latter-day respectability, go hang; because to men like
him respectability means tradesmen's bills, and a deranged liver, and a
feeling that he will die on a bed with his boots off, and be pawed about
by shabby ghouls smelling of gin. There, it is true, he had no boots to
die in had his time come suddenly, but he did not feel the loss of them
except when he went hunting wild pigs with Kusis in the mountains. And
though he had no boots, he was well off in more important things--to
wit, ten pounds of negro-head tobacco, lots of fishing-tackle, a
Winchester rifle and plenty of ammunition, a shirt and trousers of
dungaree, heaps to eat and drink, and the light heart of a boy. What
more could a young fool wish for--in the North-west Pacific. But I want
to tell something of how Denison lived in a place where every prospect
pleased, and where (from a theological point of view) only man was vile.
*****
At daylight he would awaken, and, lying on his bed of mats upon the
cane-work floor, listen to the song of the surf on the barrier reef a
mile away. If it sounded quick and clear it meant no fishing in the blue
water beyond, for the surf would be heavy and the current strong; if it
but gently murmured, he and Kusis and a dozen other brown-skinned men
(Denison was as brown as any of them) would eat a hurried meal of fish
and baked taro, and then carry their red-painted canoes down to the
water, and, paddling out through the passage in the reef, fish for
bonito with thick rods of _pua_ wood and baitless hooks of irridescent
pearl shell.
Then, as the sun came out hot and strong and the trade wind flecked the
ocean swell with white, they would head back for shining Leassé beach,
on which the women and girls awaited their return, some with baskets in
their hands to carry home the fish, and some with gourds of water which,
as the fishermen bent their bodies low, they poured upon them to wash
away the stains of salty spray.
An hour of rest has passed, and then a fat-faced, smiling girl (Denison
dreams of her sometimes, even now) comes to the house to make a bowl of
kava for the white man and Kusis before they go hunting the wild pig in
the mountain forest. There is no ceremony about this kava-drinking as
there is in conventional Samoa; fat-faced Sipi simply sits cross-legged
upon the matted floor and pounds the green root with a rounded piece of
jade upon a hollowed stone.
The kava is drunk, and then Kusis takes off his cumbrous girdle of grass
and replaces it by a narrow band of closely-woven banana fibre, stained
black and yellow (there be fashions in these parts of the world) and
reaches down his pig-spear from the cross-beams overhead, while Tulpé,
his wife, ties cinnet sandals upon the white man's feet. Then, good man
and true, Kusis takes his pipe from his mouth and gives his wife a draw
ere he goes, and the two men step outside upon the hot, gravelly path,
Denison carrying his Winchester and Kusis leading two sad-faced mongrel
dogs. As they pass along the village street other men join them, some
carrying spears and some heavy muskets, and also leading more sad-faced
dogs. Black-haired, oval-faced women and girls come to the doors of the
houses and look indolently at the hunters, but they neither speak nor
smile, for it is not the nature of the Strong's Islanders to speak when
there is no necessity for words. Once, fifty years ago, when they were
numbered by thousands, and their villages but a mile apart along the
coast, it was different; now they are a broken and fast-vanishing race.
As the hunters, walking in single file, disappear into the deep jungle
shades, the women and girls resume their daily tasks. Some, who squat
upon the floor, with thighs and knees together and feet turned outward
and backward, face curious little looms and weave girdles from the
shining fibre of the banana stalk; others, who sit cross-legged, plait
mats or hats of pandanus leaf for their men folk; while outside, in the
cook-sheds, the younger children make ready the earthen ovens of red-hot
stones to cook the sunset meal. Scarcely a word is spoken, though
sometimes the women sing softly together as they weave and stitch.
And so another hour has gone, and the coco-palms along the shore begin
to throw long lines of shadows across the sloping beach. Then far off
a musket-shot sounds, and the women cease their work and listen for
the yelping of the hunters' dogs as they rush at their wounded prey,
battling fiercely for his life upon the thick carpet of forest leaves.
By and by the huntsmen come back, their brown skins dripping with sweat
and their naked legs stained with the bright red clay of the sodden
mountain-paths. Two of them carry slung on a pole a gaunt, razorbacked
boar, with hideous yellow tusks curving backward from his long and
blood-stained snout.
Again the patient women come forth with gourds of water; they pour it
over the heads and bodies of the men, who dry their skins with shreds of
white beaten bark; two sturdy boys light wisps of dry coconut leaves and
pass the flames over the body of the boar in lieu of scalding, and the
melancholy dogs sit around in a circle on their haunches and indulge
in false hopes. Presently, one by one, the men follow Denison and Kusis
into the latter's house and sit down to smoke and talk, while Sipi the
Fat pounds more kava for them to drink. Then mats are unrolled and every
one lies down; and as they sleep the sun touches the sea-rim, swarms of
snowy gulls and sooty terns fly shoreward with lazily flapping wing
to roost, a gleam of torchlight shows here and there along the village
paths, and the island night has come.