IN NAGAPATE’S KINGDOM
Next morning, before daybreak, we were on the beach. The embers of the
camp-fire remained, but our escort had vanished. I was filled with
misgivings. Did Nagapate plan treachery? We were thirty-one—twenty-six
trustworthy native boys, four white men, and Osa. We were all well
equipped with repeating rifles and automatic pistols. In open fight, we
could have stood off a thousand savages. But I knew that the men of
Malekula, though they are notoriously bad shots, could pick us off one
by one, if they wished, as we went through the jungle.
I suppose that we all felt a little doubtful about taking the plunge
into the jungle, but we all—with the exception of our native boys, who
were plainly in a blue funk—kept our doubts to ourselves. The boys were
so frightened that they rebelled against carrying anything except their
guns. To inspire them with confidence, each of us took a piece of
luggage, and then we divided among them what was left and persuaded them
to take the trail.
It was dawn on the beach, but it was still night in the jungle. The
trail was a dark tunnel with walls and roof of underbrush and trees and
tangled vines. We stumbled along blindly at first. Presently our eyes
became used to the dark and we walked with more ease. Stems and thorns
caught at our clothes as we passed. We slipped on wet, slimy roots and
stumbled over them in the dim light. Only where the jungle was
intersected by one of the numerous streams—swift but shallow and never
too wide for leaping—that water the island, did the light succeed in
struggling weakly through the tangle.
The New Hebridean jungle is different from that of India or Africa. The
severe hurricanes that sweep over the islands each year have stunted
growth. There are no forest giants. Trees send their branches out rather
than up, forming a dense mass of vegetation that is further bound
together by vines, so that it is almost impossible to penetrate the
jungle save by beaten trails or along the courses of streams.
The sun was well up when we came out on the first of a series of
plateaus that formed a giant stairway up the mountain. They were
separated from one another by five hundred to a thousand yards of scrub
trees and tangled bush. It was not easy going. The ascents were steep,
and the trail was wet and slippery.
We kept watch for treacherous natives. Once we were startled by
blood-curdling cries that came from the direction in which we were
going. Our boys said the men of Malekula were hunting wild pigs. We went
on in silence. Our hearts jumped every time a twig cracked. There was a
set expression on Osa’s face. I knew she was frightened, but I knew,
too, that no amount of money would have persuaded her to turn back.
By noon we had reached what seemed to be the highest point of northern
Malekula, and looked back over valley after valley of dense jungle, and
plateau after plateau covered with cane-grass. Here and there a coconut
tree stood out alone. Smoke, curling out of the hillsides, indicated the
sites of native villages. Perhaps, at that very moment, gruesome feasts
of human flesh were being prepared. In the bay, very small and very far
off, were three black dots—our boats.
We heard a sound behind us and quickly turned. There were some twenty
men, sent by the “big fellow master belong Big Numbers.” They took our
apparatus and indicated that we were to follow them. We were dead tired;
still there seemed nothing to do but to push on.
We were not sorry, after about a mile, to approach a village. First we
came upon scattered groves of coconut and banana trees. Our trail became
wider and harder and we passed weed-grown patches of yams and taro,
protected against the wild pigs by rude walls of bamboo. Finally we came
out upon a clearing around which clustered a few wretched shelters
thatched roughly with leaves. In the center of the clearing stood
upright hollow logs—the drums used to send messages from village to
village and to furnish music for the native dances. The natives called
them boo-boos—the name given to conch-shells and all other sound-making
instruments. On the hard ground of the clearing sat some thirty savages,
all well armed. They had apparently been watching for us, but they did
not greet us. We spoke to them, but, beyond a few grunts, they made no
reply. There were no women and children in sight. That was a bad sign;
for the women and children are sent away only when there is trouble in
the air. Perrole, Stephens, and Mazouyer drew nearer to Osa and me.
Their faces were grave. Our boys edged close to us. None of us spoke.
[Illustration: LOOKING OVER NAGAPATE’S KINGDOM FROM THE HIGHEST PEAK IN
NORTHERN MALEKULA]
After a short rest, our guides indicated that we were to take the trail
again. We pushed on over a muddy path, bordered by coconut and banana
trees, and in about fifteen minutes we came out upon another clearing,
much larger than the first, with many more huts surrounding it and with
more and bigger boo-boos in the center. Here again were savages awaiting
us—about two hundred of them, each with a gun. We were led to a big
boo-boo that had been overturned by the wind and were told to sit down.
We obeyed like obedient school-children.
One of the natives beat out on a boo-boo an irregular boom-boom-boom
that roared through the clearing and was echoed back from the hills. It
sounded like a code. We felt that it might be a summons to the
executioner. Osa huddled close to me. A stillness fell over the
assembly.
Suddenly, at the far side of the clearing, a huge savage appeared. It
was Nagapate. He stood for a moment, looking over the audience; then he
walked slowly and majestically into the center of the clearing. He
roared a few words to his men. Then he turned to us. A native came
running up—the laziest black stepped lively when Nagapate commanded—with
a block of wood for a throne. The chief sat down near us, and we stepped
forward and shook hands with him. He had grown used to this form of
greeting and responded with graciousness.
It had been a wonderful entrance. But then Nagapate had an instinct for
the dramatic. Throughout our stay in his village, I noticed, he never
made a move that was not staged. He let it be known by his every act
that he was no common chief, who had won his position through skill in
killing pigs or men. Nagapate was a king and a descendant of kings. His
was the only tribe I had come across during my travels among the blacks
of the South Pacific that had an hereditary ruler.
After he had greeted us, he uttered a sharp command and a native stepped
up with a big bamboo water-bottle. Nagapate drank from it, and then the
native offered it, tilted at the proper angle, to each of us in turn. It
was not pleasant to drink from the mouthpiece at which Nagapate’s great
lips had sucked. But we gathered that the bottle was the South Sea
equivalent of a pipe of peace; so we drank gladly. I then presented to
Nagapate a royal gift of knives, calico, and tobacco, and I told one of
the boys to give two sticks of tobacco to each native.
The natives smoked their tobacco (those that did not eat it) at once and
greedily. It seemed to break the ice a bit; so I got out my cameras. For
three hours, I made pictures. But I did not get any “action.” I wanted a
picture of a man coming out of his house; for the doors of the huts are
so low that the people have to come out on all fours. I persuaded a
native to go into his hut and come out again. He did so. But his
companions laughed and jeered at him, and after that every one had stage
fright.
As the afternoon wore on, scores of women and children appeared. I have
never seen human beings more wretched than those women. At first sight
they looked like walking haystacks. They wore dresses of purple dyed
grasses, consisting of a bushy skirt that hung from the waist to the
knees, a sort of widow’s veil that was thrown over the head and face so
as to leave a tiny peep-hole for the wearer to look through, and a long
train that hung down the back nearly to the ground. A more cumbersome
and insanitary dress was never devised. It was heavy. It was hot. Worst
of all, it was dirty. Every one of the dresses was matted with filth. I
did not see a single pig—and there were dozens of them rooting about
inside and outside the houses—that was so dirty as the women of that
village. I afterward found that for women to wash was strictly taboo.
From birth to death water never touched their skins!
I got my cameras ready, but the women hid in the houses and would not
come out to be photographed. Not until Nagapate commanded them to come
into the clearing did they creep whimpering in terror from the low
doors.
We had heard from the natives at our headquarters on the island of Vao
that Nagapate had a hundred wives, but there were only ten of them, and
they were as wretched as any of the other women. Osa presented them each
with a string of beads and a small glass jar of cheap candy. They did
not even look at their gifts. They wanted only to get the ordeal over
and to escape. During all our stay in the village the poor, browbeaten
wretches never got up enough courage to look at us. Their lords and
masters felt our skins and our hair and our clothes, examining us with
embarrassing freedom. But whenever we came upon a woman, she squatted
down and hid her face behind her grass veil.
Since the women and children had appeared, we gained confidence and
walked about the village, inspecting the houses. As we approached, the
children, scrawny little wretches, big-bellied from malnutrition and
many of them covered with sores, scurried off into the bush like
frightened rabbits. The houses were wretched huts made of poles with a
covering of leaves and grass, or, occasionally, of woven bamboo. Inside
were the embers of fires—nothing more. A hard, worn place on the ground
in one corner showed where the owner slept. Nagapate’s house stood off
by itself. It was larger than the rest and more compactly made. But it
was as bare as any of the others.
Toward sunset we built a fire and cooked our supper. The natives
gathered around and watched us in astonishment. They themselves made no
such elaborate preparation for eating. Once in a while a man would
kindle a fire and throw a few yams among the coals. When the yams were
burned black on one side, he would turn them with a stick and burn them
on the other. Then they were ready for eating—the outside burned crisp
and the inside raw. One evening some of the men brought in some little
pigs, broke their legs, so that they could not escape, and threw them,
squealing, into a corner of a hut. The next day there was meat to eat.
Like the yams, it was only half-cooked. The natives tore it with their
teeth as if they had been animals, and they seemed especially to relish
the crisp, burned portions. Each man was his own cook. Even Nagapate
made his own fire and cooked his own food, for it was taboo for him to
eat anything prepared by an inferior or cooked over a fire made by an
inferior. He conveniently considered us his superiors and ate greedily
everything we gave him. He never shared the salmon and rice he got from
us either with his cronies or with his wives. In fact, we never saw a
woman eating, and the children seemed to live on sugar-cane and on clay
that they dug up with their skinny little fingers.
Our first day as Nagapate’s guests drew to an end. Just before dark a
native came and motioned to us to follow him. He led us to a new house
and indicated that we were to make ourselves at home there. We were
tired out after our long march; so we turned in without delay. We spread
our blankets on the ground and lay, fully dressed, on top of them. The
camp soon became quiet, but we could not sleep. So far, everything had
gone well, but still we did not feel quite safe. Our boys seemed to
share our apprehension. They crowded around the hut, as close to us as
they could get. Some of them slipped under the grass walls and lay half
inside the hut.
[Illustration: WOMEN OF THE BIG NUMBERS]
We slept little and were up before dawn, stiff from lying on the hard
ground. We asked for water, and a native brought it in a bamboo bottle.
There was about a pint of water for each of the five of us. The savage
that brought it looked on astonished as we washed our hands and faces.
It is not taboo for the Big Numbers men to bathe—but they rarely use
their privilege, and they could not understand our reckless waste of
water, which was carried by the women from a spring half a mile away.
After a breakfast of tinned beef, we set to work. But if it had been
hard to get good pictures the day before, it was now almost impossible.
The women had all left the village to get the day’s supply of water,
fruits, and firewood. The men squatted in the center of the clearing,
guns in hand. They were apparently waiting for something—for what?
We were uneasy. It may seem to the reader, in view of the fact that we
escaped with whole skins, that we were absurdly uneasy. But I should
like to see the man who could remain calm when surrounded as we were by
savages, ugly and powerful, whose only pleasure was murder, and who, we
were convinced, were eaters of human flesh. All day long our hosts
squatted about the giant boo-boos, staring at us or at the ground or at
the jungle or, sometimes, it seemed, at nothing at all. Now and then a
single savage would come out of the jungle and join the group, and
immediately one of the squatters would get up and go into the bush,
taking the trail by which the newcomer had arrived. Even Paul was
troubled, and confided to me, when the others were not about, “Me no
like.”
The coming and going and interminable squatting and staring got on the
nerves of all of us. Toward evening, we received an explanation of it
from Atree, Nagapate’s “private secretary.” Atree had been “blackbirded”
away from the island about twelve years previous to our arrival, in the
days when natives were still carried off by force for servitude on the
plantations of Queensland; and, by some miracle, when the all-white
Australia law had gone into effect and the blacks had been
“repatriated,” he had made his way back to his own island. He had
managed, during his sojourn abroad, to pick up a little _bêche-de-mer_;
so he acted as go-between and interpreter in all our dealings with
Nagapate. He told us that a fight with a neighboring village was
brewing. There had been a dispute over some pigs, in which somebody had
got hurt. The relatives of the victim were preparing to attack our
hosts. The men who had come and gone from the clearing were the lookouts
who guarded the village against surprise.
A fight! My first thought was, “What a picture I’ll get!” But Osa, at my
elbow, said miserably, “I wish we were back in the boat,” and my
conscience began to hurt. To reassure her I told her that our force was
a match for half a dozen native villages.
Before sunset there was great activity in the clearing. Men kept coming
and going, and there was much grunted consultation in the shadow of the
boo-boos. All that night an armed guard stood watch.
At sunrise, Nagapate came and asked if we would shoot off our guns to
frighten the enemy. I did not like the idea. I thought it might be a
ruse to get us to empty our guns and to give the natives a chance to
rush on us before we could reload. However, since we did not wish to
seem suspicious, we granted the request. But we fired in rotation,
instead of in a volley, so that there would always be some among us with
ready rifles. And I found that I was not the only one who had thought of
the danger of empty cartridge-chambers: I have never seen such snappy
reloading as that of our black boys!
After the volley, I gave Nagapate my rifle to shoot. He unloaded her as
fast as he could pull the trigger, and begged for more, like an eager
small boy. I was sorry to refuse him, but I did not care to waste many
cartridges, so I explained through Atree that the gun had to cool off,
and Nagapate, to my relief, seemed satisfied with the explanation.
After the shooting was over, everybody seemed to take courage. The
natives moved about more freely. Only about a third remained armed and
ready for summons. They were apparently satisfied that their enemies,
convinced that they were well supplied with ammunition, would be afraid
to start hostilities. We ourselves were more at ease, and I went up to
some of the soldiers and examined their fighting equipment. Their guns
were, as usual, old and rusty, but they all had cartridges, which they
carried in leather cartridge cases slung over their shoulders. I was
surprised to find that none had clubs. Instead, they had big knives,
some of them three feet long, for hand-to-hand fighting. Paul told me
that such knives had become the most sought-for articles of trade. There
was no Government ban on them as on rifles and cartridges.
[Illustration: RAMBI]
On the afternoon of our fourth day in the village, Nagapate brought up a
man we had not seen before. He was nearly as large as Nagapate himself,
and had, like Nagapate, an air of commanding dignity.
“Rambi! Rambi!” growled Nagapate, pointing to his companion. Then the
chief went through a rapid pantomime, in which he seemed to kill off a
whole army of enemies. We gathered that Rambi was minister of war, as
indeed he was; but Osa dubbed him chief of police. We learned from Paul
that the tribe was ruled by a sort of triumvirate, with Nagapate in
supreme command and Rambi and a third chief named Velle-Velle, who acted
as a primitive prime minister, next in authority.
Rambi was a Godsend. He enjoyed being photographed, although he did not
have the slightest idea of what the operation meant. He forgot his
dignity and capered like a monkey in front of my camera and actually
succeeded in injecting a little enthusiasm into the rest of the natives,
who still suffered from stage fright.
I gave presents of tobacco for every picture I made. I must have paid
out several dollars’ worth of tobacco each day. Ten years earlier, when
I was on the Snark with Jack London, trade tobacco made from the stalks
and refuse from the Virginia tobacco factories had cost less than a cent
a stick. The supply I had with me in Malekula had cost almost four cents
a stick. Thus the high cost of living makes itself felt even in the
South Seas. Tinned foods, cartridges, gasoline, mirrors, knives, and
calico also have increased in price enormously since the war. An
explorer must expect his expenses to be just about four hundred per cent
higher than they were ten years ago. And the trader is in a bad way. For
the natives learned how to value trade-stuffs years ago and they insist
on buying at the old rate. Increased costs and greater difficulty of
transportation mean nothing to them.
On the next day, we went, with an escort of several of Nagapate’s men,
to another Big Numbers village about four miles away. That trip was
typical of the many downs that are mingled with the ups in a
motion-picture man’s existence. The four miles were the hardest four
miles I ever walked. The trail lay along the side of a hill, following a
deep valley. It was seldom used, and it slanted toward the valley in an
alarming way. It was slimy with mud and decayed vegetation, and in many
places a slip would have meant a slide of several hundred feet down a
steep hill. Both Osa and I had on spiked boots, but they soon became
clogged with mud and offered less grip than ordinary shoes. We crept
along at a snail’s pace, testing every foothold. Though we left
Nagapate’s village at dawn, we did not reach our destination until after
ten o’clock. It was a poor and uninteresting village of about thirty
houses. Most of the men were off on a pig hunt, and all the women were
out collecting firewood and fruits and vegetables. About noon, it began
to drizzle. By three o’clock, it had settled down to a good downpour.
The women straggled in one by one and retreated into their houses. The
men returned in a sullen humor, with a few skinny pigs. According to
custom, they broke one hind leg and one front leg of each animal to
prevent its escape and threw the wretched little creatures in a
squalling, moaning heap. Those on the bottom probably suffocated before
morning.
We could not think of retracing our steps over the treacherous trail in
that downpour; so we persuaded a native and his wife and two sore-faced
children to give up their hut to us. Since we had no blankets, we lay on
the hard ground and made the best of a bad bargain.
Next morning, the rain had ceased. But the cane-grass was as wet as a
sponge. We had not gone a hundred yards toward Nagapate’s village before
we were soaked through. The trail was more slippery than ever. About
every quarter of a mile we had to stop and rest. The sun came out
boiling hot and sucked up the moisture, which rose like steam all about
us. We were five hours in this natural Turkish bath. When we reached our
destination, we threw ourselves down and fell asleep in sheer
exhaustion. We had not secured a single foot of film, and we felt
miserably that we stood a very good chance of contracting fever, which
so far we had luckily escaped.
Late that afternoon, I missed Osa. I had something of a hunt for her,
but I finally found her in the shade at the edge of the clearing,
playing with a little naked piccaninny. Atree and Nagapate squatted near
by, watching her with grave, intent faces.
[Illustration: ATREE AND NAGAPATE]
Nagapate was Osa’s constant companion. The great chief had taken a fancy
to the white “Mary.” Every day he sent her gifts, and his yams and
fruits and coconuts pleased her more than if they had been expensive
presents of civilization. They seemed to her an assurance of his
good-will. But the rest of us were a bit uneasy. We had what I now
believe to be the absurd suspicion that all these gifts were tokens of
savage wooing—that perhaps Nagapate was planning to massacre us, if the
occasion offered, and keep Osa to share his wretched hut. The strain of
constant watching, constant suspicion, was telling on our nerves. We
fancied that the novelty of our presence was wearing off. Like children,
the savages soon weary of a diversion. We were becoming
familiar—dangerously familiar—to them, and our gifts and even the magic
taught me by the great Houdini, had begun to pall. We began to feel that
it was time for us to go.
Osa and I talked it over as we walked about the village the following
afternoon. We strayed farther than usual and suddenly found ourselves
near what seemed to be a deserted hut. We walked around it and found, on
the far side, a well-beaten path that led to a tiny door. Without
thinking, I crawled through the doorway, and Osa followed me. It was
several seconds before our eyes became accustomed to the dim light.
Suddenly Osa gasped and clutched my arm.
All about us, piled in baskets, were dried human heads. A ghastly frieze
of them grinned about the eaves. Skulls hung from the rafters, heaps of
picked human bones lay in the corners. One glance was enough for us. We
crawled out of the hut and lost no time in getting back to the center of
the village. Luckily none of the savages had seen us.
We gathered Paul Mazouyer and Perrole and Stephens about us and told
them of our adventure, and it did not take the conference long to decide
to return to the beach on the following day. The other white men told us
that if we had been seen in or near the head-house, the chances were
that we should all have been murdered, for such houses were sacred and
taboo to all, save the men of the village.
That evening a great fire was started in the clearing. Until late in the
night the ordinarily lazy savages piled on great logs that four men were
required to carry. Nothing was cooked over the fire. It was not needed
for warmth, for the night was stifling hot. We asked Arree the reason
for the illumination. He replied that he did not know. We decided that
there must be some sinister purpose in it and lay sleepless, on guard
the night through.
At dawn we were up. We did our packing in a hurry, and then we sent one
of the natives for Nagapate. The chief came across the clearing, slowly
and deliberately, as always. With him was a tottering old man, the
oldest native I ever saw in the New Hebrides.
As Osa and I went up to greet Nagapate, the old man began to jabber
excitedly. He came over to me and felt my arms and legs with both his
skinny hands. He pinched me and poked me in the ribs and stomach. All
the time he kept up a running fire of excited comment, addressed to
Nagapate. To our relief, he finally stopped talking for want of breath.
Nagapate spoke a few sharp words and the old man backed away.
Osa’s face went white. And indeed, there could be no doubt about the
meaning of the old native’s pantomime. I almost doubted the advisability
of telling Nagapate of our departure. If he liked, he could prevent us
from ever reaching the sea, from which we were separated by so many
miles of jungle. But I decided to take a chance. I had, by this time,
rather more than a smattering of the language of Nagapate’s tribe. I
always make it a practice, when among new tribes, to learn four
words—“Yes,” “no,” “good,” and “bad.” The language spoken by Nagapate
and his followers was so primitive and contained so many repetitions
that I had been able to progress beyond these four fundamental words and
so, with the aid of gestures, I succeeded in telling Nagapate that our
provisions had run out and that we had to return to our boats. To my
surprise Nagapate not only assented to our departure, but volunteered to
accompany us to the beach.
I invited the entire village to come to the beach for motion-pictures
and tobacco, after sunset, on the following evening. Motion-pictures
meant nothing to them; but tobacco they understood. So they agreed to
come. We left like honored guests, with an escort of twenty-five
savages. Nagapate himself walked (as a result of my maneuvering) safe
between Osa and myself.
It had taken twelve hours to climb up to Nagapate’s village. The return
journey required only three. It was a pleasant morning’s walk. The sun
was shining bright and beautiful, many-colored birds fluttered about us.
When we arrived at the beach, we invited Nagapate and his boon
companions, Atree and Rambi, to come on board the schooner. There we
feasted them on hard-tack and white salmon. When bedtime came, the great
chief indicated that it was his pleasure to sleep on board. I was
heartily astonished and a little ashamed. After all our suspicions,
Nagapate was again voluntarily putting himself into our hands, with the
touching confidence of a little child.
Our royal guest and his men bunked in the engine-room. I happened to
wake about midnight and took a peep at them. There they were, flat on
their backs on the hard, greasy floor, sleeping like logs.