NAGAPATE COMES TO CALL
Long before our reënforcements were due to arrive, we began to feel
uneasy on Vao. I found our neighbors far too friendly with the
unregenerate Malekula bushmen to be entirely trustworthy. The bush
people had no canoes. But when they wanted to visit Vao, they would sing
out from the shore, and the Vao men would go after them and bring them
over, fifteen or twenty of them at a time. The Malekula men never came
near our clearing, but the knowledge that they were on the island made
us uncomfortable. We were sure that they came to participate in savage
orgies, for often after a group of them arrived, the sound of the
tom-tom and of savage chanting drifted through the jungle from the
native villages, and our little clearing seemed haunted by shadows that
assumed menacing shapes. Finally, there occurred an incident that
changed what had been merely nervous apprehension to vivid fear.
We had been a week on the island. The schooners we were awaiting had not
yet arrived. We could expect them, now, any day, but things do not run
by clockwork in the South Seas, so we knew that another week might pass
before we should see them. It had been hot and rainy and steamy and
disagreeable ever since our arrival, but to-night was clear, with a
refreshing breeze. After our tinned dinner, Osa and I went down to the
beach. The moon was full. The waves lazily washed up on the soft sand,
white in the moonlight, and the fronds of the palm-trees along the shore
whispered and rattled above our heads. Osa, in a romantic mood, was
strumming very softly on the ukulele. All at once, we heard the
whish-whish of canoe paddles coming around a rocky point. We moved back
into the shelter of some bushes and watched.
Presently ten natives landed on the beach and drew their canoe up after
them. From it they took two objects wrapped in leaves, one elongated and
heavy—it took several men to handle it—the other small and round. Soon
the men, with their burdens, disappeared down a dark pathway leading to
the village.
For several minutes we did not dare to move. Then we hurried back to the
house and got our revolvers and sat for a long time feeling very much
alone, afraid to go to bed and afraid to go out in the open. After a
while a weird chanting and the beating of tom-toms began in the village
near by. The noise kept us awake all night.
Next morning, Arree came up with his story of the night’s revels. The
packages, he said, had really contained the body and head of a man. The
head had been impaled on a stick in the village square, and the natives
had danced wildly around it. Then the body was spitted on a long pole
and roasted over a great fire. The savages continued to dance and sing
until the horrible meal was ready. The rest of the night was spent in
feasting. Such orgies as this, Arree said, were fairly frequent. The
natives often purchased slain enemies from the bush savages of Malekula,
to eat as they would eat so many pigs.
Two days after this incident, Paul Mazouyer dropped anchor off Vao. We
were glad to see him, and told him so in emphatic _bêche-de-mer_, the
only common language at our disposal. We promptly put my apparatus
aboard his little schooner, or cutter, as the craft was called in those
waters, and set sail for the country of the Big Numbers. A hundred naked
savages watched us in silence from the beach. The two other schooners
had gone on ahead to meet us in Big Numbers Bay, known locally as
Tanemarou. They were all recruiting schooners with experienced crews,
armed with regulation rifles, as permitted and indeed insisted upon by
the Government.
Recruiting labor for the rubber and sugar plantations of white settlers
is a regular business in the New Hebrides and a dangerous one. A
recruiter chooses his island and anchors in the offing. He then sets
adrift a charge of dynamite, which is detonated as a signal to the
natives. The roar of the explosion rolls through the valleys and echoes
against the hills. On the day following, the savages come down to the
beach to trade. Two boats then put off from the schooner. In the first
is the white man with an unarmed crew, for the savages are not beyond
rushing the boat for the sake of a gun. In the second, hovering a short
distance away, is an armed crew, who cover the savages with their guns
while their master parleys with the chiefs for recruits. At the first
hostile move on the part of the natives, the boys in the covering boat
open fire.
Despite such extreme precautions, tragedies happen. A friend of Paul
Mazouyer’s had been killed at Malua, whither we were now bound. Paul
told us the story. There were only a few savages on the beach at the
time; but one of them promised to go into the bush to recruit if his
people were given half a case of tobacco. The recruiter foolishly sent
his covering boat back to the cutter for the tobacco, and the savages
sat down on the beach to wait. While they were waiting, another savage
came out of the jungle. He walked slowly down the beach with his hands
behind him and waded out into the water until he could get behind the
white man. Then he suddenly placed the muzzle of a gun against the white
man’s back and pulled the trigger.
A French gunboat was sent from Nouméa to avenge the murder, and a month
after the tragedy Paul led an expedition into the bush which razed a
village and killed a number of savages.
In conclusion, Paul told us an incident that he thought was uproariously
funny. The victor had brought the bodies of four of the natives down to
the sea. Among the members of the expedition were a dozen “civilized”
blacks of a tribe hostile to the Big Numbers. These twelve boys looked
thoughtfully at the four dead bodies and then approached the commander
with a spokesman at their head.
“Master,” he said with great earnestness, “me lookum some fellow man he
die finish. He stop along sand. He plenty good kai-kai! Me think more
better you no put him along ground. Altogether boy he speak—He eat him!”
We reached the bay where these events had taken place on the first night
after our departure from Vao. We coasted along so close to the shore
that we could plainly see groups of natives who watched us, talking and
gesticulating among themselves, and sometimes followed us for some
distance along the beach, curious to see where we would land. We rounded
the northern point of the island and bucked into a stiff head wind and a
strong current. We made little progress until the tide turned. Then we
went along at a good rate.
We anchored in Malua Bay, a stone’s throw from shore, on a line with a
great ravine that cleft the mountains and separated the territory of the
Small Numbers tribes, which lies directly across from Vao, from that of
the Big Numbers, which occupies the northwest corner of the island.
That was a night typical of the South Seas. I shall never forget it. The
moon was visible for only a few seconds at a time, when it dodged from
behind thick, drifting clouds and drenched everything with a light
almost as bright as day. Our black crew huddled in the bow of the boat.
We sat with our guns beside us. On the shore we could clearly make out
the forms of savages squatting around their camp-fire. From the distance
we could hear the deep tones of the conch-shell boo-boos. The sea rolled
upon the beach with a heavy, sleepy purring. In the dark blue waters
below us we could see sharks moving about, leaving trails of phosphorus.
By the light of a greasy, smoky lantern that went out every few moments,
struggling against a ground swell that threatened to capsize my
typewriter, I entered the day’s events in my diary. As I wrote, the
savages began a weird dance, their grotesque forms silhouetted against
the sky. The sound of their chanting brought me what Osa calls the
“South Sea feeling.” I don’t know how to describe it. But it is the
thing that makes me always want to go back.
The next morning we went ashore in two boats, Paul, Osa, and myself in
one, with one boy to pull, and four armed boys in another boat to cover
us. There were only half a dozen savages in sight, so we landed on the
beach and even walked up to the small river that emptied into the bay,
but we kept our guns handy and the covering boat was watching closely.
We knew that if it came to a rush, we could beat the savages to the boat
and that they were too poor shots to waste valuable ammunition in
shooting from the edge of the jungle. It is the custom of the men of
Malekula to approach near enough to place the muzzle against their
enemy. Otherwise, they seldom risk a shot.
We had not been ashore long when we saw a couple of natives emerge from
the bush and walk toward us. We hurried to the boat. Other savages
appeared in small groups, so we shoved off. We bobbed along the shore
all afternoon, while Paul tried to get recruits. About fifty armed
savages wandered up and down, coaxing us in closer; but on account of
Osa, I would not risk landing, though Paul, who feared nothing, wanted
to put in to shore. He knew that almost any savage in that region would
kill him, if chance offered, in revenge for the part he had played in
the punitive expedition, but this was his favorite recruiting ground and
he was not to be scared away from it. He had the contempt for natives
that has resulted fatally for many a white man.
At sundown we returned to the cutter. We could hear the savages shouting
as they went back into the hills. The broiling sun had left us hot and
sticky, and when Paul suggested a swim we all agreed to it, sharks or no
sharks. The boys kept a sharp lookout for the flashes of phosphorus that
would mean approaching danger, but we finished our swim without
adventure. Nevertheless, that night we put out hooks and caught two
sharks, one four feet long, the other six—which ended our swimming along
these shores.
Paul’s little boat was close quarters for the three of us. He made his
bed alongside the engines, below, and Osa and I slept in the scuppers,
one on each side of the hatch.
At about eleven o’clock, it began to rain and blow. We dragged our
anchor and had to put down another and then a kedge anchor in addition.
The craft twisted and turned and plunged, until Osa swore we went right
over and up again. I padded Osa with old sail to protect her from
bruises and we held on to the hatch with both hands to keep from being
thrown into the sea. Almost all our supplies were drenched; for we
robbed everything else of tarpaulin or canvas coverings to keep my
apparatus dry. Shivering and wretched, we crouched on deck waiting for
daylight. Morning was never so slow in coming; but with the first light,
the rain ceased, the sea became smooth, and the sun came up broiling
hot, sucking up the moisture until from stern to bow we looked like a
spout of a boiling tea-kettle.
There was fever in the air. We ate quinine as if it had been candy, in
an effort to stave off the sickness that, always inconvenient, would now
prove especially so.
About noon we made out two vessels sailing up to us, and as they came
alongside we found that one was sailed by Perrole and the other by a
young man, half Samoan and half English, whom Mr. Thomas had sent with
ten boys. His name was Stephens. We now had twenty-six armed and
experienced natives, four white men and Osa. With this force I was ready
to undertake almost anything; so after a hasty conference we decided to
go on to Tanemarou, the bay from which we had first entered Nagapate’s
territory. Without the aid of the Government, I saw that it would be
impossible to carry out my original intention of entering the island at
the northern end and traversing it straight through to the southern. So
I proposed the alternative plan of sailing completely around the island,
landing at different points from which I could strike inland to visit
the tribes. In many ways, this latter plan proved to be the better of
the two for my purpose. I doubt, now, if a Government escort would have
been to my advantage; for any Government expedition would have been
regarded as a punitive raid and as such would have encountered the most
determined resistance. Even at the time, I felt that the peaceable
nature of my expedition would put me on good terms with the savages.
Cruel as they were, they were childlike, too, and the fact that we were
coming to them in a friendly spirit with presents for which, apparently,
we were asking nothing in return, would, I felt sure, disarm their
hostility. I had discovered that most of the recent murders of white men
had been committed by the savages in a spirit of revenge. Recruiters who
had carried off their kinsfolk; traders who had cheated them; members of
punitive expeditions, or the occasional Simon Legree who had earned the
hatred of the blacks by cruelty—such were the victims of savage gun or
knife.
It was with a feeling of confidence that I sailed into Tanemarou Bay.
Here, sweeping around us, was the broad beach across which we had run
for our lives almost two years before. In fine yellow sand it spread
away from the water’s edge for about a hundred yards to the dark fringe
of jungle. Against the high black volcanic rocks that guarded the
entrance to the bay, a heavy surf beat and roared, but on the sands the
land-locked waters lapped gently, shimmering with many colors. The dark
hills rose about the jungle in green slopes mottled with brown and
streaked here and there with tiny wisps of smoke.
I suddenly thought that the peaceful aspect of those hills was exactly
what must have struck the men aboard the gunboat Euphrosyne when its
opportune appearance had given Osa and me the chance for our lives. The
memory of that horrible adventure made me momentarily uneasy. Osa
squeezed my arm, and I knew that her thoughts, too, had gone back to the
evening when, in the gathering darkness, we had slipped from the edge of
the jungle, tattered, bleeding, and terrified, and rushed into the water
pursued by the yelling savages.
Paul was not troubled by any forebodings. He at once suggested that we
go ashore. So Osa and I followed him into the boat and we pulled for the
beach, followed by the small boats from the other cutters. As we landed,
about twenty armed savages suddenly appeared and came walking boldly
toward us. Except for belts of rough bark and clouts of pandanus fiber,
they were naked. The flatness of their noses was accentuated by plugs
driven through the cartilage dividing the nostrils. Shaggy, outstanding
manes of hair completely encircled their faces, which were deeply seamed
and wore a perpetual scowl.
I began to doubt once more whether I could fulfill the object of my
expedition after all. There was no man living who had witnessed the
cannibalistic rites of these wild men. Many had made the attempt and had
paid a gruesome penalty. But as the band drew nearer, my feeling
changed. In a sense, they were my people. They had encircled the globe
with me and in the comfortable surroundings of great theaters had stood
naked and terrible before thousands of civilized people. I had made
their faces familiar in all parts of the world. With something like
emotion I watched them as they approached. Suddenly the figure at their
head stood out like a “fade-in.”
It was Nagapate.
Osa and I forgot that this savage had once wanted to eat us. We forgot
what had happened at our first violent meeting. We looked at each other
and smiled and then, both actuated by the same unaccountable impulse, we
rushed forward and grabbed his hand.
Now Nagapate did not know the meaning of a handshake, but he seemed to
understand instantly that we were glad to see him. His heavy face,
gashed so deeply with wrinkles that his scowl seemed unalterable, broke
into a delighted grin. He recovered his dignity in a moment, however,
and stood to one side with his arms folded on his massive chest,
watching closely every move we made. The strong guard we had brought
with us must have impressed him; but he did not seem at all
apprehensive, for he could tell by our conduct that we were friendly. We
were anxious to get some pictures. However, since fresh relays of
savages continued to come down from the jungle, we decided to wait until
we had with us all the boys from the other boats before taking any
further chances.
We decided to return to the cutter, and as we were about to embark an
extraordinary thing happened. Nagapate came up to Osa and made signs to
show that he would like to go aboard with us. Now hundreds of his own
people had been grabbed from his beach in times gone by and
“blackbirded” away to slavery. He was accustomed, and with cause, to
think the white man as merciless as we thought him to be. Yet of his own
free will, without a glimmer of fear, Nagapate put himself completely in
our power.
[Illustration: A CALL FROM NAGAPATE]
An hour later, while we ate our dinner of tinned beef, Nagapate, with
two of his men, squatted on the deck at our feet and ate hard-tack and
white trade-salmon. Afterwards I brought out pictures I had made on my
first visit. The savages gave yells of excitement when they saw
Nagapate’s face caught on paper. When I produced a large colored poster
of the chief and presented it to him, he was speechless. The three
savages, looking at this mysterious likeness, were almost ready to
kow-tow to us, as they did to their devil-devils in the bush.
But the crowning touch of all came when we had grown a little tired of
our guests, and Osa brought out her ukulele and commenced to sing. To
our surprise Nagapate joined in, chanting a weird melody, which his men
took up. After a few bars, they were made shy by the sound of their own
voices. Nagapate stopped his song and vainly tried once more to look
dignified. In fact, that old man-eater showed every manifestation of a
young and awkward boy’s self-consciousness!
We bridged over the awkward situation with more salmon and about ten
o’clock sent him ashore happy, with his bare arms full of knives and
calico and tobacco. We judged by his farewell that we would be welcome
any time we cared to drop in on him for dinner and that we had a fair
prospect of not being served up as the main course. In any case, on the
strength of his visit, I determined to chance a visit to his village on
the following day, though I realized that the visit, in many ways
significant, did not give the least assurance of continued friendliness.
These savages are as willful and as uncertain in their moods as
children. When they are sulky, they are as likely to murder
treacherously whoever arouses their ill-will as a small boy is to throw
a stone. There is no one to control or guide them. They are physically
powerful, they are passionate, and they possess deadly weapons. We could
be no more certain that our lives would be safe with them than a man
with a silk hat can be sure of his headgear among three hundred
schoolboys fighting with snowballs.
We were awakened at daybreak by a shout from the shore. A score of
natives stood on the beach, calling and gesticulating. I went ashore,
accompanied by Paul Mazouyer, and found that they had presents from
their chief, Nagapate—yams and coconuts and wild fruits. But the
presents were not for me. In their almost unintelligible _bêche-de-mer_,
the natives explained that the fruits were for “Mary”—their
_bêche-de-mer_ word for woman. I could scarcely believe my ears. In all
my experience among the blacks of the South Seas, I had never known a
savage to pay any attention to a woman, except to beat her or to growl
at her. The women of the islands are slaves, valued at so many pigs.
They do all the work that is done in the native villages and get
scoldings and kicks for thanks. I went doubtfully back to the schooner
and brought Osa ashore. The natives greeted her with grunts of
satisfaction and laid their offering at her feet.
My respect for Nagapate increased. I saw that he was a diplomat. He had
observed that this little person in overalls, who had approached him so
fearlessly, was treated with the utmost deference by the crews of the
schooners and by the white men. He had come to the conclusion that she
was the real boss of the expedition. And he was very nearly right!
Perrole and Stephens joined us, and we remained on the beach all
morning. Osa and I took pictures of the natives squatting about us and
watched for Nagapate himself to put in an appearance. I was eager to
invite him to his first “movie.” He had been overcome with awe at sight
of a photograph of himself. What would he say to motion-pictures that
showed him talking, with threatening gestures, and scowling as on that
memorable day two years before?
Every now and then a new delegation of natives arrived on the beach. In
spite of the law that prohibits the sale of firearms to the natives,
they all carried rifles. I examined some of the guns. They were old, but
not too old to do damage, and every native had a supply of cartridges. I
found later that spears and bows and arrows are almost out of use among
the Big Numbers. Nine men out of ten own guns. Where do they get them?
No native will tell, for telling would mean no more rifles and no more
cartridges. The white people of the islands know, but they keep their
information to themselves. I know, too, but I am not doing any talking
either, for I want to go back to the New Hebrides some day.
Our own boys remained close by us all the morning and we kept sharp
watch for any sign of treachery. By noon, the savages had lost their
suspicion of us. They stacked their rifles against rocks and trees and
moved about, talking to each other in their strange, grunting speech.
We, too, moved about more freely. And I tried to gain the confidence of
the natives by talking to them. My attempts to learn their language with
_bêche-de-mer_ as a medium brought great guffaws. But in spite of the
friendliness of our visitors, we were never quite at ease. Their
appearance was against them. Their ugly faces—eyes with scarcely any
pupils, flat noses made twice their normal size by the wooden plugs
thrust through the cartilage dividing the nostrils, great mouths with
thick, loose lips—their stealthy way of walking, their coarse, rapid,
guttural speech, which sounded angry even when they spoke to one
another, the quick gestures with which they filled in the gaps in their
limited language—none of these things tended to make us feel at home.
I kept wondering how some of Osa’s sheltered young friends back home
would act, if they were to be set down, as she was, on a sandy beach,
miles from civilization, and surrounded with fierce cannibals—hideous
and worse than naked; for they worship sex, and what clothing they wear
calls attention to their sex rather than conceals it. I watched her
admiringly as she went about taking snapshots as unconcernedly as if the
savages had been Boy Scouts on an outing. And I thought, as I have
thought many many times in the nine years we have gone about together,
how lucky I was. Osa has all the qualities that go to make an ideal
traveling companion for an explorer—pluck, endurance, cheerfulness under
discomfort. In an emergency, I would trust her far sooner than I would
trust most men.
During the afternoon, several fresh groups of natives came out of the
jungle to stare at us, and toward sunset a number of savages descended a
trail that sloped down to the beach about half a mile from where we were
sitting and brought us a message from the great chief. It was couched as
follows: “Nagapate, he big fellow master belong Big Numbers. He, he
wantem you, you two fellow, you come along lookem house belong him, you
lookem piccaninny belong him, you lookem Mary belong him. He makem big
fellow sing-sing. More good you, you two fellow come. He no makem bad,
he makem good altogether.” And it meant that His Highness, Chief
Nagapate, would like to have us visit him in his village, and that he
guaranteed our safety.
[Illustration: THE SAFE BEACH TRAIL, TANEMAROU BAY]
I accepted the invitation with alacrity. The messengers hurried off, and
Osa and I followed, curious to see where the trail left the beach. We
had not gone far, before Paul shouted for us to stop. We halted and saw,
a quarter of a mile down the beach, a group of about a hundred armed
natives. Some Big Numbers people came up to us and warned us, with
gestures, to go no farther, so we sat down on the sand and awaited
developments. The newcomers squatted on the beach and stared in our
direction. In about fifteen minutes, a second group of natives appeared
from a trail still farther down the beach, and the first group sprang to
their feet and melted into the bush with incredible rapidity.
What did it all mean? Paul, well versed in island lore, had the answer.
The beach was used jointly by four tribes, three belonging to the Big
Numbers and one to the Small Numbers people. All of these tribes are
more or less hostile, but they have agreed between them that the beach
is neutral ground, for they realize that if fighting is permitted there,
it will never be safe for any of them to come out into the open to trade
or fish. Sometimes the beach armistice is violated, and for weeks there
is severe fighting along the sand; in the end, however, the matter is
always settled by an exchange of wild pigs and the beach is again safe
for all comers. But the armistice never extends back into the bush. In
the jungle and the tall cane-grass, it is always open season for
man-killing.
We returned to the schooner early that evening, in order to make ready
for our trip into the interior. I packed all my photographic apparatus
carefully in canvas and rubber cases, and I bundled up several
tarpaulins to protect us and our cameras in case of sudden rain. We put
up enough supplies to last seven or eight days, and a good equipment of
trade-stuffs. As we packed, the monotonous chanting of some twenty of
Nagapate’s men, who had remained on the beach to escort us to the
village, drifted across the water. Occasionally we caught a glimpse of
them, grotesque black shapes against the light from their camp-fire.