which speeches in honour of the late chief were made, and I there
provisionally appointed Tione--a rather unintelligent man of about
thirty-five--to succeed his father, having first ascertained that this
appointment would be acceptable to the majority. In the evening the
people of Nandrau made a great feast to their visitors, and gave them
return presents--a polite intimation that they were expected to leave
on the following morning. These having been divided among the various
tribes who were represented, feasting was continued until a late hour.
But about nine o’clock, before the moon rose, an old man went out into
the bush to call the dead Buli’s spirit. We heard his voice calling
in the distance for several minutes, and then, amid the breathless
silence of the assembled people, we heard the footsteps of some one
running. “He has the spirit on his shoulders,” said a man near me, as
the old man rushed past me to the tomb. Apparently he must have thrown
the spirit into it, for after crying out, “It is all well,” every one
retired quietly to their huts for the night.
Before daybreak the next morning, Buli Nandrau was forgotten in the
bustle of speeding parting guests, and as the sun rose our bugle
sounded the “fall-in.” Passing out of the sombre shadow of the great
cliff, we rode into bright sunlight, and we felt that just so had the
shadows of the past given place to the light of a clearer knowledge,
and that with this old warrior the old order had passed away, and a new
had come.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] This marriage afterwards took place, and, less than a year later,
Janeti, too, attempted her own life. This was after her father’s death.
TAUYASA OF NASELAI, REFORMER.
Tauyasa, commoner, of Naselai village, of the tribe Kai Nuku, lived
years before his time. It was his misfortune that he was born a savage
with a brown skin: it should not be his fault if he did not enjoy the
sweets of civilisation. White men owned land on the banks of the great
river: so did he. White men wore trousers and ate with a knife and
fork: so would he. White men owned cutters and paid his countrymen
to work for them: and so he bought a cutter of his own and paid his
fellow-villagers to plant his bananas. White men had chairs and tables,
glass windows and wooden floors, horses and saddles, and an account
at the bank: Tauyasa persevered until at last he possessed all these.
And so Tauyasa came to be well thought of and patronised by his white
neighbours, and the more he rose in their estimation the deadlier grew
the envy of his own people. For Tauyasa was no chief, and among his
people to attempt to rise above the station to which one is born, and
to refuse to give to him who asks, are social crimes beside which all
other sins are mere errors of judgment. But Tauyasa cared for nothing
but that his bananas should have fifteen “hands” to the bunch, and that
his cutter should not be too late for the steamer. When the commission
agent showed him his account sales, he took the cheque straight to the
bank, and received from the teller a slip on which his total balance
was written, which he would compare with some cabalistic signs he
had in a soiled copy-book at home. For Tauyasa applied his knowledge
of human nature wherever his financial reasoning failed him. “The
foreigner,” he argued, “who owns this bank does not guard my money and
make it multiply because he loves me, but because he hopes some day to
steal some of it. Therefore will I ask him every two weeks to confess
how much he has. Then, although I am black, he will not rob me unless
he robs the other foreigners whose money he keeps, and this he will not
dare to do.”
[Illustration: “_On the night of each return from the capital._”]
But on the night of each return from the capital he could not escape
from the ties of kindred. First, there came his uncle, a plaintive
old man, who carefully bolted the door before unburdening himself of
his troubles. He had no lamp, for the kerosene was dry, and there was
no sugar to drink with his tea, so he drank no tea, and his stomach
felt so bad that he thought some foreign drink was the only medicine
that would cure him. Then a peremptory voice from without summoned him
to open the door, and Alivate, the chief’s henchman, was admitted. He
had all the self-confidence that distinguishes those who bask in the
smiles of royalty. “Greeting!” he said. “The chief has sent me to you
to borrow your horse for to-morrow. I will take it now with the saddle.
Also he wants a root of _yangona_.”
“Will the chief send the horse back? The last time he left the horse at
Namata, and the saddle was lost.”
“Perhaps he will send it back. Give me the saddle.”
He gave place to a man in a white shirt, with a book and pencil, all
deprecating piety and smiles, who called Tauyasa “sir,” and seemed
in his way of speaking to be perpetrating a cruel caricature of the
neighbouring Wesleyan missionary.
“I have come, sir,” he said at last, with a little chuckle, “about the
_vaka-misonari_. Paula has promised to give one pound, the same as you
gave last year. It is written in the book that Paula will give this.
You, sir, will doubtless give two pounds this year. Your name will then
be printed so that all will know. I will write down two pounds, sir. Is
it not so?”
After him came Savuke, Tauyasa’s second cousin, with a pitiful tale
about her husband, sentenced that day by the courts to pay five pounds
for beating an Indian with a stick. “If he does not pay to-morrow,” she
said tearfully, “they will crop his hair, and he will work, and then
who will feed me and the child? The Indian was a bad Indian, as they
all are, nor did he beat him hard, but only twice--on the head. And I,
knowing your pitiful nature, have come to you, Tauyasa, because you are
my relation and have much money, and afterwards Joseva will pay you
back.”
“Joseva owes me seven pounds already.”
“Yes, he knows that, and the remembrance is heavy with him. He is still
seeking money with which to pay you.”
“Well, then, I will release him from the debt that his mind may be at
rest, but this money that you ask I cannot give.”
Then Tauyasa’s wife, who had been visiting a neighbour, came to greet
her lord. Their child was lately dead, though Tauyasa had bought two
cows and fed it upon milk, and otherwise followed all the directions
for rearing infants that were printed in ‘Na Mata.’ She, too, was the
bearer of bad news. Some one--presumably an enemy--had stolen the cows’
tether-ropes, and one of them, the spotted one, had been found in the
Company’s cane-field, having damaged many stools of cane, and the white
one could not be found at all. “I think it is the Indians,” she said;
but Tauyasa thought otherwise, and said nothing.
The man with the book had accomplished his devastating raid, and had
set down the names of half the village to give “to the Lord” more than
they possessed. Therefore, rather than break faith so pledged, they
must beg, borrow, or steal enough to meet their obligations. First, of
course, they tried Tauyasa, but he had heard a friend of his, a white
storekeeper, assailed in the same way, and he knew the logical answer.
“If you must owe money at all, it is better to owe it ‘to the Lord,’
who can afford it, than to me who cannot. Besides, you would be giving
my money and calling it yours, which is a lie, for which you would
certainly be punished in hell.” But that night several of Tauyasa’s
imported hens were missing.
At last they all went and left him alone to take the cure for all
the cares of civilised life; and, a little less than half drunk, he
went off to the store to associate with his equals. There his voice
might have been heard haranguing the knot of grinning colonists who
frequented the store, and his peroration ran thus: “God made a mistake
when He made me black. Um [tapping his chest], black man! Um [tapping
his forehead], white man!”
But though Tauyasa increased in wealth and substance, his life was
not happy. It is true that his people had given up _kerekere_, and
no longer begged his money from him; but they took no pains to hide
their hatred and contempt. It was in vain for him to show them that
so long as they held their goods in common they must remain savages.
They preferred to live from day to day, as their fathers did, leaving
the morrow to take care of itself. It was well enough for a foreigner,
who knew no better, to work all day, and to hoard money, and to give
nothing for nothing; but here was one of themselves aping the ways
of foreigners as an excuse to cover his natural churlishness and
inhospitality. “To do like Tauyasa” became a by-word in the village.
Truly, he was born before his time: he was of the stuff of which
reformers are made, and he met the reformer’s fate. He had quarrelled
with his wife because she gave away his things in his absence; his own
people would have nothing to do with him, and the foreigners whom he
imitated despised him.
So Tauyasa began to worry, and the native who does that is doomed,
because he was born to a life free from care, and has had no training
in the curse of Adam. He grew thin and irritable, and no longer joined
the nightly meetings at the store. But the more he worried the bitterer
were the taunts of his people, and a kind friend, of course, repeated
them to him. Then a day came when the cutter’s sails were stripped, and
the bananas hung uncut, although a steamer had come in these two days;
for Tauyasa would ship no more bananas, having taken to his mat, and
given out that he would die that day week. It was in vain for those of
his white friends that had heard of his illness to send him soup, and
medicines, and milk-puddings cunningly devised, for Tauyasa would eat
none of them, knowing that he must die, and caring not to live--for
there was bitterness in his heart against the world and all men in it.
And upon the day appointed Tauyasa died as he had said, and his body
was wrapped in rolls of white _masi_ and mats, and buried, and his
spirit went to its own place.
Then it was found how many brothers Tauyasa had, and how many brothers
his father and mother had. They all came to his house after the funeral
to transact some little matters of business. There was a want of
brotherly love at this meeting, for Tauyasa had owned a cutter worth
£200, and a cutter cannot be satisfactorily divided among several
eldest brothers. There was a horse, too, and a table, and cupboards,
and many camphor-wood boxes made in China, and in one of the boxes
there were many bottles that would each have cost the vendor fifty
pounds in fines had the police known. There was not much said about
Tauyasa. It was a sad thing, no doubt, that he was dead, but did not
his possessions remain? At evening it was all settled. The eldest uncle
had the house with the glass windows, and the brothers had all the
rest: only Tauyasa’s wife got nothing because she was a bad woman, and
did not love Tauyasa; and besides, she belonged to a different tribe.
And on the Sabbath the _lali_ beat for service, and the same teacher
took the pulpit that had come to Tauyasa about his contribution to
the _vaka-misonari_. It was a powerful sermon--all about the wicked
and hell, and such things, and it was none the less powerful that
the preacher was mimicking the ravings and the whispers, and the
cushion-thumping denunciations, of the district missionary who had
taught him. They were all sinners, he summed up--they broke the
Commandments every day: but there was forgiveness for all there
present. Yet, he added in a hoarse whisper, there were some who could
never be forgiven. Then with the roar of an angry bull he shouted,
“Who shipped China bananas on the Sabbath?” “On the Sabbath,” repeated
the echo from the other side of the river. “Who shipped China bananas
on the Sabbath?” Then in the hushed pause that followed he whispered
hoarsely, “Tauyasa! Tauyasa!”
Again he roared, banging the table with his fist, “Where is Tauyasa
now? Where is Tauyasa now?”--“yasa now” cried the echo. He glared at
the village policeman as if expecting him to answer, and lifted his
clenched fist before him, twisting it slowly from side to side, and
hissing from behind his teeth, “_Sa mongimongi tiko e na mbuka wanga_.
He is squirming in the everlasting fire.”
Thus ended Tauyasa, Reformer,--condemned in this world and the next,
like his prototypes.
A COOLIE PRINCESS.
“We’re to have about nine hundred of the Jumna lot on this plantation.
They seem to be an average lot of coolies, seeing that Mauritius
and Demarara get first pick--sweepings of the Calcutta jails, with
a sprinkling of hillmen from Nepaul. They cost a trifle over twenty
pounds a-head to introduce; but I ought not to grumble, as they’ve
thrown the Princess into my batch. Not heard of the Princess? She’s
a howling swell from Nepaul--nose-rings and bangles from head to
foot--husband pretender to the throne of those parts--beheaded,
drawn, and quartered for high treason--Princess saved by faithful
retainer--just time to clap the contents of the family jewel-case on
her body before the lord high executioner called--weeks in the saddle
disguised as a man--flung herself upon the mercy of the recruiting
agent, and breathlessly pledged herself to work for ninepence a-day
for five years trashing cane beyond the black water. That’s _her_
story, and she can show you the jewels and the faithful retainer to
prove it.”
“And do you think she’ll work?”
“Can’t say, not knowing much of the ways of princesses; but if she
don’t, you’ll see her in your court under section thirty-four of the
Principal Ordinance, which has no proviso for princesses, and then it
will be your pleasing duty to make her work.”
Then Onslow, the manager, rode off, leaving me to sign warrants for the
batch of refractory coolies just sentenced.
In due course the “Jumna” batch were towed up the river in a
sugar-punt, and turned loose into the new coolie lines. We could hear
them at night settling down--a babel of strident voices, dominated at
moments by a howling chant, with tom-tom accompaniment. A week later
they had built in the verandah of the long building with partitions
of empty kerosene and biscuit tins beaten flat. Filthy rags obscured
every doorway; naked children were rolling in the sun-baked dust,
and besmearing themselves with the fetid mud from the puddles of
waste-water thrown outside the doors. There a wild-looking mother
squatted in the shade, performing the last offices to the head of her
youngest, while two older children leaned against her back playing with
her lank greasy hair. A girl of five, with tiny silver bangles on arms
and ankles, was gravely marching the length of the building, supporting
on her head with one hand a brass bowl of smoking rice, while with
the other she held up her long petticoat; and over all there were
flies, and noise, and stench, and happiness enough for a twelvemonth’s
occupation. The new coolies were settling down. Somewhere in the
building the Princess must have held her court, or perhaps she was in
solitude learning “the sorrow’s crown of sorrow.”
Then the first tasks were set, and the trouble began. Friday’s
informations for absence from work rose from twenty-three to
sixty-seven, and on Tuesday at ten o’clock a vast crowd of the
accused and their sympathisers, curious and bewildered, disfigured
the grass-plot at the court-house door. A burly Fijian constable was
surveying them with a disgusted curl of the nostril, such as may be
seen any Friday afternoon at the reptile-house of the Zoological
Gardens. The luckless overseer had but one story to tell--of tasks
set but not attempted--light tasks, suitable for the new and
inexperienced--five chains trashing Honolulu cane--no more. The pleas
for the defence would have melted the heart of a wheel-barrow. “You
are my father and my mother, but I am a stone-mason. The white sahib
told me that I should work at my trade. I can build houses, but I
cannot cut cane.”--“I am a goldsmith. I never said I would work in the
fields.”--“What can I say? You are my judge. My belly is empty, and I
cannot work,”--and so forth. They were discharged with a caution.
“That is all the men,” said the overseer; “the rest are women.”
“Arjuna!” cried the clerk.
“Arjuna!” repeated the Indian constable outside.
There was a pause.
“Is the woman here?” asked the interpreter impatiently.
“She is here,” returned the officer from without.
There followed sounds of persuasion, amounting almost to entreaty,
such as are unusual from the mouths of minions of the law. Then when
expectation had been wrought to the highest dramatic pitch, the
sunlight from the door was darkened, and there burst upon our dazzled
gaze a vision of gold ornaments and gauzy draperies.
“The Princess,” whispered the overseer, with a deprecating smile.
She was tall and willowy, and her slender limbs seemed to be weighed
down with the burden of the bangles that almost hid them. Heavy gold
circlets seemed to crush the tiny ankle-bones, and every slender toe
was be-ringed. Besides earrings and the gold stud that emphasises the
curve of the nostril, she wore no head ornaments, but the shawl that
fell from her hair was of the finest striped gauze. She must have
been fully twenty, but the brightness of her eyes was still undimmed
by time. She surveyed the thatched court-house with a glance of cool
contempt, and walked proudly to the reed fence that did duty for a dock.
“You are charged with absence from work.”
The Princess glanced sideways at the interpreter, and then stared
straight at the beam over my head.
“She told the sirdar she didn’t mean to do any work.”
The evidence is interpreted to the accused.
“Has she anything to say?”
The interpreter might have put the question to the wall with as much
result.
“Then tell her that she has come from India to work for five years, and
work she must; if she does not, she will be punished, and eventually
sent to jail, where she will be made to work.”
The accused slightly raises her royal eyebrows.
“She is fined three shillings, or seven days’ imprisonment.”
At these words she turned round and beckoned to the bank of heads
that had gradually filled the doorway. Four men broke from the
group--Nepaulese by their looks--and came in. One of them, evidently
the Keeper of the Privy Purse, making deep salaam, advanced to the
clerk’s table and dropped twelve threepenny bits upon it. The feelings
of the interpreter at the coolness of the whole proceeding were too
deep for words, and before he could translate his explosive English
into the vernacular, the Princess had left the court with her suite.
Then followed comments in Hindustani from without that filled Ramdas,
the wizened Indian constable, with righteous indignation. Translated
they were, “Call this a court-house? Why, it is made of grass! They
should see the court-houses in India!”
For the next two weeks the Princess was known to the outer world
by rumour only, which had it that she was scarcely behaving as a
widowed Princess should behave. The Keeper of the Privy Purse had, it
was said, been encouraged to aspire to the consort’s chair, and the
other Ministers were becoming jealous. Nor was this all. There were
aspirants for royal favour outside the Ministry, who threatened to
disorganise the household. Within the month her name reappeared in
the charge-sheet. It was a second offence, and the fine was therefore
heavier; but again her almoner satisfied the demands of the law.
After that there was quiet for a space, because the suite took it in
rotation to perform their mistress’s task besides their own. There
were even rumours of subscriptions among her sympathisers to buy out
her indentures from the manager. But there came a change. Competition
for royal favour must have become so keen, or the Princess herself
must have behaved in so unroyal a manner, that a day came when the
smouldering feuds in the household burst into flame, and there was
something very like a riot. In the actions and counter-actions for
assault brought by the men of Nepaul against one another, the royal
name was bandied about very freely, and it became evident that a part
at least of her vassals had thrown off the yoke. Money, moreover, had
been lent, and the borrower denied the debt, and brought four witnesses
at a shilling a-head to counterbalance the plaintiff’s four engaged
at the same rate. Between the eight witnesses swearing irreconcilable
opposites, the court had to decide whether money had passed or not.
Then the wily old Ramdas, constable and priest, came softly to the
bench and whispered into its ear, “S’pose me fetchum Kurân, dis feller
no tellum lie; he too much ’fraid.” Armed with authority, he left the
court, going delicately, and presently returned on tiptoe, carrying on
his extended hands a massive volume as if it was an overheated dish.
Pausing before the table he said with due solemnity, “By an’ by he
kissum, dis feller he plenty ’fraid. Dis Kurân belonger me. Abdul Khan
he sabe readim, me no sabe, on’y little bit, other feller he no sabe!
On’y Abdul Khan sabe!” Then bending forward with bated breath he said,
“He cost three pound twelve shillin’ along Calcutta.” His own reverence
seemed doubled as he recalled the stupendous cost of the volume. Then
with great ceremony he gave Joynauth the book and made him swear,
laying it upon his head.
“Joynauth, did Benain give you this money?”
“Sahib, he did; with my eyes I saw him!”
Ramdas’s excitement was great. He was going about the court-house on
tiptoe, holding his sides with both hands, and blowing softly from his
mouth.
“Dis feller no lie. He makim swear along Kurân, he too much ’fraid;”
and he glared at the defendant triumphantly as who should say, “You are
convicted, and mine is the hand that did it!”
The defendant was recalled. “Swear him too, Ramdas.”
He paused in holy horror at carrying the awful test further.
“What for dis feller makim swear, sahib? Joynauth, he no lie, he
_plenty_ too much ’fraid.”
“Swear him, Ramdas.”
Threateningly he gave Benain the book, and the dread oath was
administered.
“Benain, did you give Joynauth this money?”
“Sahib, he lies; I did not.”
The shock to poor Ramdas’s feelings was too great for words. He could
only gasp, and dance from one foot to the other. “Oh,” he cried at
last, “one man he die very soon, one week, I think!” For it was
evident that to one at least of the parties a Kurân that had cost
three pound twelve in Calcutta was no more sacred than the book the
Kafirs kissed. It mattered nothing to him what decision the court
came to. He had simply to watch the stroke of doom fall, as fall it
must, upon the perjurer. But two years have passed since that day,
and both the witnesses survive, while a stroke of doom, if dismissal
from the police force can be so called, has fallen upon Ramdas himself
in connection with an adventure in which a bottle of spirits took a
leading part. But Ramdas now touts for cases for a solicitor in coolie
practice, and is a light and an expounder of the Scriptures to the
faithful; and since both these occupations pay better than the police,
perhaps he discerns the hand of Allah in his dismissal, and still
awaits his vengeance upon the perjurer.
Since open feuds had weakened the ties of loyalty, the poor Princess
found that she must either wound her slender hands with the sharp-edged
leaves of the Honolulu cane for a slender pittance of ninepence a-day,
or again figure in the charge-sheet. She chose the latter as being
more in consonance with her dignity. In due course the blue paper
that she refused to take was flung at her feet by a policeman, and
for the third time she underwent the ordeal of prosecution with a
self-possession born of practice. This time--her third offence--no
almoner would avail, for she was sentenced to fourteen days’ hard
labour without the option of a fine.
Ramdas would have pounced upon her and haled her forth as soon as the
sentence was pronounced if he had not been restrained. The indignity of
being herded with the other dirty and dishevelled female prisoners was
enough without that. At daybreak the wooden station drums sounded for
work, and the Princess’s troubles began. It was Meli’s daily triumph to
muster the Indian prisoners in a row, and bring up the stragglers into
their places with a jerk that audibly clashed their teeth together.
These spindle-shanked, stinking coolies called him a bushman!--him,
Meli, versed in all chiefly ceremonial, a bushman! Therefore should
they know the strength of his arm. The women had sulkily taken their
places in obedience to the peremptory command of their tormentor; but
the Princess, herself accustomed to command, stood afar off under a
clump of feathery bamboos, indifferently watching the scene.
“_Lako sara mai koiko._ You there! What are you doing? You female
roasted corpse! Come here. _Kotemiu!_ (G--d d--n.) Come here, _vulari
vulu_” (---- fool).