THE WHITE MAN IN THE SOUTH SEAS
We chugged away from Tomman and for a week we cruised along the southern
end of Malekula. In this region, the mountains come down to the sea.
Beyond them lies dangerous territory. It was not safe for us to cross
them with the force we had; so we had to be content with inspecting the
coast. There we found only deserted villages and a few scattered huts
inhabited by old men left to die alone.
Finally we rounded the end of the island and steamed up the eastern
coast. One evening we came to anchor in Port Sandwich—a lovely,
land-locked bay. Since it was very late, we deferred explorations until
the following morning and turned in almost as soon as we had anchored,
so as to be ready for work betimes.
At about three o’clock, Osa and I, who slept on deck, were rudely
awakened by being thrown into the scuppers. We pulled ourselves to our
feet and held tight to the rail. The ship rolled and trembled violently.
Though there seemed to be no wind, the water boiled around us and the
trees on shore swayed and groaned in the still air.
Captain Moran and his brother came rushing from their cabins. The black
crew tumbled out of the hold, yelling with terror. There was a sound of
breaking crockery. A big wave washed over the deck and carried overboard
everything that was loose. The water bubbled up from below as if from a
giant caldron and fishes leaped high into the air. After what seemed to
be half an hour, but was in reality a few minutes, the disturbance
subsided. We had been through an earthquake.
The volcanic forces that brought the New Hebrides into being are still
actively at work. Small shocks are almost a daily occurrence in the
islands. But this had been no ordinary earthquake. The next morning,
when we went ashore, we found that half the native huts of the little
settlement near the mouth of the bay had collapsed like card houses. The
devil-devils and boo-boos stood at drunken angles—some of them had
fallen to the ground—and, in the village clearings and other level
places, the ground looked like a piece of wet paper that had been
stretched until it was full of wrinkles and jagged tears. Streaks of red
clay marked the courses of landslides down the sides of the mountains.
The old men of the settlement said that the earthquake was the worst
they had ever experienced. And when we returned to Vao, we found that
two sides of our own bungalow had caved in as a result of the shock.
[Illustration: TOMMAN WOMEN, SHOWING GAP IN TEETH]
A visit to the volcano Lopevi gave us further proof of the uncertain
foundation on which the islands rest.
On the morning after the earthquake, Mr. King, the British Commissioner,
appeared in the Euphrosyne, on his way to Vao to fetch us for a visit at
Vila. We told him regretfully that we had no time for visiting, and then
he proposed a jaunt to Lopevi, a great volcano about thirty miles from
Malekula. We were glad of the opportunity to see the volcano, which was
reputed to be one of the most beautiful in the world. So we said
good-bye to Captain Moran, who departed at once to continue his
interrupted trading, and we transferred our belongings to the
Euphrosyne, where we reveled in the unaccustomed luxury of good beds and
good service by attentive servants.
We left Port Sandwich at daybreak, and in a few hours we saw Lopevi, a
perfect cone, rising abruptly out of the water to a height of nearly six
thousand feet. When we came within range, I got my camera ready. A fine
fringe of thunder-clouds encircled the island about halfway down, but
the top was free. The light was perfect. I was grinding happily away,
when a miracle happened. Lopevi sent up a cloud of smoke. Then she
growled ominously, and shot out great tongues of lapping flame. More
smoke, and she subsided into calm again. I had secured a fine picture
and congratulated myself on having arrived just in the nick of time.
Suddenly, as we discussed the event, Lopevi became active again. And
after that there was an eruption every twenty minutes from ten in the
morning until four in the afternoon. We steamed all around the island,
stopping at favorable points to wait for a good “shot.” At four o’clock,
we sailed for Api, where we were to harbor for the night. And from the
time we turned our backs on Lopevi, there was not another eruption. Her
cone was in sight for an hour that night, and next morning, from
Ringdove Bay where we were anchored, she was plainly visible. But she
did not emit a single whiff of smoke. Osa called her our trained
volcano.
We remained on Api for four days. Since Mr. King was due back at Vila,
he had to leave on the morning after our arrival; so we took up our
quarters with Mr. Mitchell, the English manager of one of the largest
coconut plantations on the island.
In more civilized regions one might hesitate before descending, bag and
baggage, upon an unknown host, to wait for a very uncertain steamer; but
in the islands of the South Seas one is almost always sure of a welcome.
The traders and planters lead lonely lives. They have just three things
to look forward to—the monthly visit of the Pacifique, a trip once a
year to Sydney or New Caledonia, and dinner. For the Englishman in
exile, dinner is the greatest event of the day. He rises at daybreak
and, after a hasty cup of coffee, goes out on the plantation to see that
work is duly under way. He breakfasts at eleven and then sleeps for a
couple of hours, through the heat of the day. His day’s work is over at
six; then he has a bath and a whiskey-and-soda—and dinner. Another
drink, a little quiet reading, then off with the dinner clothes and to
bed.
Yes, I said dinner clothes. For dinner clothes are as much _de rigueur_
in Ringdove Bay as they are on Piccadilly. I, who have a rowdy fondness
for free-and-easy dress and am only too glad when I can escape from the
world of dinner coats and white ties, suggested, on the second evening
of our stay at Api, that, since Mrs. Johnson was used to informal
attire, we could dispense, if Mr. Mitchell desired, with the ceremony of
dressing.
“But, my dear Johnson,” said Mitchell, “I dress for dinner when I am
here alone.”
That ended the matter. I knew that I was up against an article of the
British creed and might as well conform.
When I first went out to the South Seas, I was disposed to regard the
punctiliousness in dress of the isolated Britisher as more or less of an
affectation. But now I realize that a dinner coat is a symbol. It is a
man’s declaration to himself and the world that he has a firm grasp on
his self-respect. A Frenchman in the islands can go barefooted and
half-clothed, can live a life ungoverned by routine, rising at will,
going to bed at will, working at will, can throw off every convention,
and still maintain his dignity. With the Anglo-Saxon it is different.
The Englishman must hold fast to an ordered existence or, in nine cases
out of ten, the islands will “get” him.
It is customary to waste a lot of pity on the trader and the planter in
remote places—lonely outposts of civilization, but, from my observation,
they do not need pity. The man who stays in the islands is fitted for
the life there; if he isn’t, he doesn’t stay, and, if he does stay, he
can retire, after fifteen or twenty years, with a tidy fortune.
Of course the road to fortune is a long and hard one. The average
planter starts out with a little capital—say five hundred dollars. He
purchases a plot of land. The price he pays depends upon the locality in
which he buys. In regions where the natives are still fairly
unsophisticated, he may get his land for almost nothing. Even where the
natives are most astute, he can buy a square mile for what he would pay
for an acre back home. His next step is to get his land cleared. To that
end, he buys a whaleboat and goes out to recruit natives to act as
laborers. He needs five or six blacks. They will build his house and
clear his land and plant his coconuts. Since it takes seven years for
the coconuts to mature, sweet potatoes and cotton must be planted
between the rows of trees. The sweet potatoes, with a little rice, will
furnish all the food required by the blacks. The cotton, if the planter
is diligent and lucky, will pay current expenses until the coconuts
begin bearing.
Though his small capital of five hundred dollars may be eaten up early
in the game, the settler need not despair. The big trading companies
that do business in the islands will see him through if he shows any
signs of being made of the right stuff. They will give him credit for
food and supplies and they will provide him with knives, calico, and
tobacco, which he can barter with the blacks for the sandalwood and
copra that will help balance his account with the companies. And after
the first trying seven years, his troubles are about over—if he can get
labor enough to keep his plantation going.
Even in the remote islands of the New Hebrides, the labor problem has
reared its head. The employer, in civilized regions, has a slight
advantage resulting from the fact that men must work to live. In the New
Hebrides, indeed all throughout Melanesia, the black man can live very
comfortably, according to his own standards, on what nature provides.
Only a minimum of effort is required to secure food and clothing and
shelter, and most of that effort is put forth by the female slaves he
calls his wives. Even the experienced recruiter finds it hard to get the
Melanesian to exchange his life of ease for a life of toil. And the
inexperienced recruiter finds it very hard. The days when natives could
be picked up on any beach are past. The blacks in the more accessible
regions know what recruiting means—two years of hard labor, from which
there is no escape and from which a man may or may not return home. So
the recruiter must look for hands in the interior, where knowledge of
the white man and his ways has not penetrated. Even here, the
inexperienced recruiter is at a disadvantage. For the experienced
recruiter has invariably preceded him.
Each year, the number of available recruits is growing fewer, for the
native population is dwindling rapidly. As a result, the cost of labor
is high. In the Solomons, one may secure a native for a three years’
term at five or six pounds a year in the case of inexperienced workmen,
or at nine pounds a year in the case of natives who have already served
for three years. In the New Hebrides, planter bids against planter, and
the native benefits, receiving from twelve to fifteen pounds a year for
his work. The planters complain of the high cost of labor. But the big
planters, the capitalists of the South Seas, who have their chains of
copra groves, with a white superintendent in charge of each one,
certainly do not suffer. I remember being on one big Melanesian
plantation on the day when natives were paid for two years’ work all in
a lump. About four thousand dollars was distributed among the workers. I
watched them spend it in the company store. A great simple black, clad
in a nose-stick and a yard of calico, would come in and after an hour of
happy shopping would go off blissfully with little or no money and a
collection of cheap mirrors and beads and other worthless gew-gaws all
in a shiny new “bokkus b’long bell.” By night, about three thousand
dollars had been taken in by the company store-keeper. I was reminded of
a rather grimly humorous story of a day’s receipts that totaled only
$1800 after a $2000 pay-day. When the report reached the main office in
Sydney, a curt note was sent to the plantation store-keeper asking what
had become of the other $200!
There are certainly two sides to the labor question in the New Hebrides.
Yet the whole development of the islands hangs upon cheap and efficient
labor. Where it is to come from is a question. The recruiting of
Orientals for service in British possessions in the South Seas is
forbidden. Even if it were permitted, it would not solve the problem,
for the coolie of China or Japan or India is not adapted to the grilling
labor of clearing bush.
Mr. Mitchell discussed the labor problem as long and as bitterly as any
employer back home. The natives of Api, while friendly and mild, were
entirely averse to toil. He had to import hands from other islands. Only
occasionally could he persuade the Api people to do a few days’ work in
order to secure some object “belong white man.”
Often they coveted curious things. One morning, during our stay, a
delegation of natives appeared and said they had come for
“big-fellow-bokkus (box).” A servant, summoned by Mitchell, brought out
a wooden coffin, one of the men counted out some money, and the natives
shouldered their “bokkus” and went away.
Mitchell laughed as he watched them depart. That coffin had a history.
About six weeks previously, a delegation of natives had appeared, with a
black who had seen service on a New Zealand plantation acting as
spokesman. He informed Mitchell that their old chief was dying and that
they had decided to pay him the honor of burying him in “bokkus belong
white man.” They asked Mitchell if he would provide such a “bokkus” and
for how much. Mitchell had a Chinese carpenter and a little supply of
timber; so he very gladly consented to have a coffin made. He figured
the cost at ten pounds. That appeared to the delegation to be excessive,
and they went off to the hills. The next day, however, they reappeared
and requested that he make a coffin half the size for half the money.
Mitchell protested that a coffin half the size originally figured upon
would not be long enough to hold the chief. And they replied that they
would cut his arms and legs off to make him fit in. At that, Mitchell,
with an eye to labor supply, said that, if they must have a coffin, they
must have a proper coffin. He would order the carpenter to make one
large enough to hold the chief without mutilation, and he would charge
them only five pounds for it, though that meant a loss to him. The
carpenter went to work. Most of the village came down to supervise the
job, and every few hours, until the coffin was finished, a messenger
reported on the chief’s condition. When the “bokkus” was at last done,
they carried it up the trail with great rejoicing. But the next day they
brought it back. The old chief was up and about, and they had no use for
it. They laid it down at Mitchell’s feet and demanded their money back.
Mitchell protested that he had no use for the coffin, either, but they
were firm. And he, remembering how difficult it is to get hands in the
copra-cutting season, meekly returned the five pounds, and put the
coffin in his storehouse. Now, a month later, the old chief had died,
and the natives had come for the coffin. We could hear them chanting as
they went up the trail.
The next day we set sail on the Pacifique, which had arrived during the
night with letters and papers a month old, and we were dropped at Port
Sandwich, which was sparsely populated with sullen and subdued savages,
to await whatever trader might happen along to take us back to Vao. We
had used all our films and were thoroughly tired of Port Sandwich when a
trader finally put in an appearance. His boat was a twenty-four-foot
launch, barely large enough to contain us and our equipment. When we
hoisted our dinghy aboard, its bow and stern protruded several feet
beyond the sides of the launch. Next morning, with some misgivings, we
set out on the fifty-five-mile journey that would complete our round of
Malekula and bring us back to Vao.
We got “home” about four in the afternoon, tired and half-cooked from
the broiling sun that had beat down upon us all day. We received a royal
welcome. A great crowd of natives met us at the beach, and each seized a
box or package and carried it at top speed up to the bungalow. In half
an hour everything was in the house. It had been a long time since our
Vao neighbors had had any of our tobacco!