cry from the forest above them on the hillside. The men seize their
weapons, and spring forward to meet him. “I told them that there would
be evil unless the rain stopped to-night,” he answers; “and they said,
‘Draw out the cloth from under the stone and the rain will cease: it is
a flat-topped stone.’”
What stone? Why, the river-bed, of course. Not a man is left to guard
the women and children, for the whole of the warriors follow Erirala
towards the river-bank. The roar gets louder as they rush on. It is the
river--a broad foaming cataract by this time. What hope of finding the
stone in such a hell of waters as this? But Erirala knows the place.
A party is told off to cut stout vines from the forest, and in ten
minutes a rope, to which a ship might swing, is made and fastened to a
tree in the bend of the river, round which the flood-water swirls and
eddies. Clinging to the other end, Erirala and the boy Narau are paid
out into the stream, and as the current strikes their bodies they are
whirled from side to side like a pendulum girt with a belt of foam,
and followed by a foamy wake, like the track of a fast steamer. Near
the middle of the stream there is a deep eddy. As Erirala reaches
this he stretches up his arm, and perhaps shouts, though no sound is
heard by those on shore. Both he and his companion disappear for a
moment, come up for breath, dive again, and then emerge, waving their
arms. The people on shore strain at the vine-rope. It does not yield
an inch. Now, all together--pull! The rope stretches, yields an inch,
another, and suddenly gives some six feet with a jerk. Narau disappears
for a moment, and is then seen whirling downstream on the swift
current, waving a dripping, sodden, greyish-looking rag. Poor Erirala
is forgotten as the whole party rush for the point for which Narau is
swimming. A dozen hands are stretched out to pull him ashore. Erirala,
leaving the rope tied to the flat-topped stone, strikes out, and in a
moment lands at the same place. Yes. Narau has the cloth, sodden though
it be to a pulp of bark-fibre, scarce adhering together.
Surely already the rain is abating! Yes; there is no doubt of it! Why,
there to the north-west, it is lighter! There is a break in the clouds.
One can almost see where the sun is setting. It is little more than a
drizzle now--not even that, for we are under the dripping trees. Two
hours later one can see the stars, and the clouds are sweeping away in
heavy masses to the southward.
But just think what would have happened if Erirala had not found the
cloth under the flat-topped stone!
MAKERETA.
Makereta was not beautiful. Her mouth was wide, even for a Fijian girl;
and although she was on the shady side of nineteen, she had not yet
adopted the staid demeanour suited to her decaying youth. She was a
born coquette, and being quick-witted, and with a character hitherto
irreproachable, she had captivated the hearts of all the middle-aged
widowers in her neighbourhood. Why, had it not even been reported that
she had refused the honourable offer of Jenkins, the white trader, and
sent away the haughty Buli Yasawa, broken in heart and purse, after
gracefully accepting from him five pounds’ worth of printed calico
and cheap scent! Yes; Makereta had a certain charm about her quite
apart from her skill in ironing and the use of the sewing-machine, or
her being the niece of Roko Tui Ba. She was amusing to chaff; her
repartees were witty, if not refined; and she had an inexhaustible fund
of gossip about all the ladies of her acquaintance. But what a voice
she had! Its gentlest tones struck the drum of the ear like a tap with
the teeth of a saw; and when she laughed, which was generally after
some remark of her own, the old women in the next village would grumble
to each other about “that woman’s” deficiency in chief-like behaviour.
It was Makereta’s laugh that brought her into trouble.
Her sister had been for some years married to a steady old native
preacher, who was chaplain to the small native force stationed in the
mountains. This good lady was the very antipodes of the dusky Makereta.
She had never been known to flirt, but then that may have been due to
other causes than disposition, and she led her good-natured husband a
life of it by making him ferret out real or fancied scandals, very much
against his will.
[Illustration: MAKERETA.]
In an evil hour Makereta and three other maidens, having caught a
miraculous haul of crabs in Nandi Bay, shouldered their baskets with
the double intention of presenting them to her sister and flirting with
the gay and licentious soldiery. They climbed the mountain-barrier,
and in due time reached the camp. For the next few days I heard nothing
of Makereta except her laugh, which triumphed over the half-mile of
bush that lay between us. She was staying with her sister, and on some
excuse or other the men found it necessary to consult their spiritual
adviser several times daily. It was at these times that the higher
tones of the laugh floated on the breeze like the cry of some animal in
pain.
At length, as the novelist of the marvellous would say, “a strange
thing happened.” An excited and dishevelled minister of religion came
panting into my house, and this is what he said:--
“Sir, a terrible thing! Litiana and Makereta have been angry, and
Litiana is much hurt. This was the way of it. Makereta was in the
cook-house with some of the soldiers; they were joking, and Makereta
laughed very loud. Then Litiana called to her, saying, ‘We are ashamed
before the chiefs to-day;’ and Makereta replied with a very bad word,
and Litiana went in to chastise her, and they fought, and Makereta bit
Litiana, and her ear is gone, and----”
“And what?” I asked, as he hesitated.
“And, sir,” he said, solemnly, “_we cannot find the ear_.”
I went with him. It was too true. Litiana was sobbing in a corner,
trying to stanch the blood from the site of her ear, and Makereta was
panting between two restraining soldiers. Two others were carefully
turning over the mats on what had been the battlefield. We searched
everywhere but without success, and then I turned to Makereta.
“Where is your sister’s ear?” I asked.
She half smiled, and said she did not know.
“Do you remember biting her?”
“Yes.”
“Did you bite her ear off?”
“I think it came off.”
“Did you _swallow_ it?”
“_Iss?_” (who knows?)
A further ineffectual search left no doubt as to what had become of the
ear. Litiana, smarting under her injuries, haled her sister before the
native court, presided over by that magistrate who, in happier days,
used to beguile the tedium of the bench with music on the Jew’s-harp.
The damages were assessed at five shillings, and the little rift made
the music between the sisters dumb.
“Was my ear only worth five shillings?” complained the elder.
“Is it sisterly to drag one’s sister to court like an Indian
coolie-woman?” asked Makereta.
I don’t know whether they have ever met since. Makereta soon after this
fell in love with a mild-mannered policeman, married him in defiance
of her relations, and now rules him with an iron rod somewhere down
Nadroga way. They both asked me to help them to bring it about, I
being their father, which meant that I was to supply the pigs for the
wedding-breakfast.
ROMEO AND JULIET.
Romeo loved Juliet, there was not the slightest doubt about that; for
although Juliet had been tattooed round the mouth, and had already
married Tybalt, and had dug Tybalt’s yams and cut Tybalt’s firewood for
the last two years, yet was Romeo ready to die for her. Verona slept
peacefully in the bosom of a tiny green valley, shut in by great jagged
mountains, and soothed by the lazy music of a tiny river whose water
must travel many days before it mixed with the great salt ocean. The
hot air quivered in the burning sun, which no breeze ever came to cool,
and at night not even a mosquito broke the utter silence. No street
brawls here in this Verona of Southern seas, for the humpbacked pig
and half-clothed chicken were past getting up a brawl, and they were
the only occupants of Verona’s single street. Old Capulet could tell
you of brawls enough, in which club took the place of rapier, and the
bodies of the slain were disposed of in a peculiar way; but that was
before the white man and the measles arrived, when Mongondro still made
the earth tremble, and before these white lunatics came and made him
wrap calico round his loins, and practise incantations with a hymn-book
(which were a waste of time, because nobody died of them as they do
of the real incantations), and taught him, in outlandish Bauan, that
when he was dead he would be made alive again to be burnt, and asked
him to give a shilling every now and again to the Great Spirit not to
burn him, and then took the shilling away with them. But old Capulet
doesn’t talk about these things any more, because last year the teacher
overheard him telling stories to the young men, and threatened to burn
him up with a flash of lightning if he ever did it again.
Decidedly Verona was not an exciting place to live in; and so long as
the yam-crop was good, and the missionary left them alone, and that
other white man who came sometimes on a horse, and told them to hoe
their roads, life was easy and monotonous.
Old Capulet had never heard of a romance. There wasn’t a word for it in
his vocabulary, and so he, at any rate, may be excused for what he did
when Tybalt came and told him what had happened. Why, in Capulet’s day,
women were not worth more than a whale’s tooth, however well they could
dig! and as for a girl refusing to marry the man who had paid for her,
or being untrue to the man she married--why, the thing was unheard of;
or at least, if it ever had happened, the case had always been dealt
with in the same way--the club, with sometimes the oven to follow.
So when Tybalt came that evening with the story about Romeo and
Juliet his wife--Romeo, a man of the hated Noikoro clan,--it was not
surprising that old Capulet repaired to Tybalt’s house with his long
walking-staff, and, with Tybalt’s active co-operation, gave Juliet a
rather severe thrashing. Nor did the old women see any more romance in
the affair than did Capulet; and from the day when Tybalt’s suspicions
became certainties, the course of true love ran very roughly indeed.
Did poor Juliet don her newest _liku_, with a fringe nearly ten inches
long, to go wood-cutting in the hope of a stolen meeting with her
adorer, she was sure to find some old village hag dogging her steps.
Did she put on Koroisau’s old pinafore to impress Romeo on Sunday with
her superior sense of the decencies, her most sacred feelings were
sure to be harrowed in the evening by injurious remarks about her
figure, and the folly of old women trying to pass for young girls.
Romeo, poor fellow, fared no better. He was no longer welcome in the
village of his adoption. When the yams were boiled he was not even
asked to partake of them. Some one trampled his yam-vines in the night,
and, last insult of all, Capulet’s nephew threw a stone at his pig. He
loved Juliet with a great and overwhelming passion. He did not know
why. She was not beautiful, though her mouth, it is true, was a triumph
of the tattooer’s skill; but time had over-ripened her charms, and the
lines of her youthful figure were a trifle blurred and indistinct. Yet
Romeo was quite sure in his own mind that nobody had ever loved as he
did in the world before, and Juliet returned his passion--at least she
said she did.
Life was becoming unbearable for both of them. They could not fly
together, for whither could they fly? Romeo had once seen the sea from
the mountain-pass at Naloto, and he had heard that the water closed
in his land all round. He knew well enough that if he fled with her
to any village he had heard of, in two weeks they would be brought
back; and as for the bush, the idea of living there alone was not to be
thought of for a moment. There was one refuge. He did not know where
it was, but he knew the path that led to it, which many another had
trod before him. The white men said it was a very pleasant place if
you were a missionary, but a very hot and uncomfortable place if you
were only a mountaineer. But Romeo didn’t believe that. The spirits of
the coast natives jumped from the north-west cliffs into the sea, and
the wraiths of the old mountain chiefs lived in the thick forest--at
least so the old men said; but as no one had ever been there and come
back, how could any one know? True, the teacher said that a white man
had been there and come back, but then white men eat biscuits and
things out of tins, and have other gods, and so they probably go to a
different place. For the place Romeo was thinking of, with bitterness
gnawing at his savage heart, was Death, and the path that led to it was
_Langaingai_.
Romeo knew all about _Langaingai_, for had not Gavindi drunk of it last
year and died, and those two Naloto girls, who smoked after drinking
it to make it doubly sure, and Janeti, Buli Nandrau’s daughter,--only
her relations poured cocoa-nut milk down her throat when she had only
traversed the path half-way? He knew not who had discovered it, for the
old men did not know it. In their day the path was always open to him
who would travel it--by an enemy’s club. Perhaps some wise woman taught
Gavindi, and showed him how to mix orange-bark with it, and smoke away
his life when he had drunk.
[Illustration: FRIAR LAURENCE’S HOUSE.]
Now Friar Laurence, though unconnected with the cloth, had in his
time performed the last offices to a larger number of people than any
other practitioner in the mountains. In his own person he had not
unfrequently united the offices of both sexton and grave. But that
side of his business was recreation rather than solid work. His real
calling might rank as one of the fine arts. Like the painter and the
author, his stock-in-trade was small, and easily obtained. The art lay
in employing his properties with skill. They consisted in a bamboo, a
banana-leaf, a bit of bark, a leaf or two, and a little human hair.
Furnished with these simple tools, Friar Laurence would, for the
trifling sum of a whale’s tooth, or a bolt of bark-cloth, lay low
the head on which the hair had grown. So widespread was the Friar’s
reputation that, when the mad white men had come and forbidden the
noble art of war, he had found it convenient to reside for some months
in an inaccessible mountain-cave, and had returned to Verona with his
occupation gone, and a head crammed with the wisdom born of solitary
meditation.
To Friar Laurence then did Romeo repair one dark still night. The
wise man sat on a log at his threshold airing his shrunken legs. He
eyed Romeo’s whale’s tooth with bleared and watery eyes, and asked
enigmatically what tree he wanted felled. When he understood the
situation he seemed disappointed, and only told Romeo to return the
following night with a white man’s bottle full of the stuff they call
kerosene. This entailed a journey of thirty miles the following day to
fetch the precious liquid from the nearest store; but Romeo was ready
to do more than this, and at sunset the Friar received the bottle, a
square black one. He emptied into a cocoa-nut shell all the oil except
a wine-glassful, and filled up the bottle with an opaque muddy-looking
fluid.
That night beneath the _tavola_-tree, where they had their tryst, did
Romeo tell Juliet that the moment for carrying out their sorrowful plan
had come. She had just been telling him that her misery was so great
that she could not bear to live longer. But when Romeo showed her in
the dim light the ominous gin-bottle, two huge cigarettes, and a box of
matches, and further whispered the dread name _Langaingai_, life seemed
suddenly to have become less unbearable than before. But Romeo was
terribly in earnest, and she, half consenting, followed him. Silently
they trod the narrow path that led to Romeo’s yam-patch. A babbling
stream bordered it, and on the bank beneath a huge banyan-tree they sat
down side by side. Juliet was weeping, but Romeo, with set face, stared
at the bottle tight clenched in his hand. Sadly he lighted one of the
cigarettes, and, handing it to Juliet, said, “You shall drink first,
and when you are dead I will drink too, and follow you. You must smoke
this as soon as you have drunk down to there,” and he indicated the
place half-way down the bottle with his thumb-nail.
Juliet’s blood ran cold. With a little shiver she pushed the bottle
away, saying, “Be of a good mind, Aisala, and drink first, for you are
the stronger; and when you are dead it will be easy for me to die after
you.”
But Romeo saw that she was dissembling, and that black fear filled her
heart. He gloomily drew the cork, and put the neck of the bottle to his
nose. It smelt horrible, for the kerosene was floating on the top. He
turned fiercely upon Juliet.
“Are you going to fool me?” he cried. “Know now that you shall drink
first, that we may die together.”
He seized her roughly by the wrist and tried to force the foul-smelling
bottle between her lips. Life had never seemed so sweet to Juliet as
at that moment. If Romeo chose to die--well, that was his affair; but
as for her--she preferred life. She struggled and screamed, and with a
bitter cry Romeo released her, and putting the bottle to his own lips
drank greedily. Seeing this, and beside herself with fear, Juliet fled
shrieking down the path to Verona, and roused the whole village with
her cries.
“In his yam-patch,” she cried--“he is dead! He has drunk _Langaingai_.”
All Verona was soon beneath the banyan-tree--all Verona except
Friar Laurence, who was accustomed to this kind of thing. There lay
Romeo unconscious, his head pillowed on an empty gin-bottle, with a
half-smoked _suluka_ between his nerveless fingers. Gently they lifted
him, and bore him to Capulet’s house, and lit torches, and drove out
the women, and brought young cocoa-nuts, and prised open Romeo’s jaws
with a digging-stick, and forced the milk down his throat; and all the
while the teacher sat by in a clean white shirt, bursting to question
the reviving Romeo about the details of his love affair, to draw a
moral therefrom for his next Sunday’s sermon.
At last Romeo, half drowned in cocoa-nut milk, spluttered, coughed,
and opened his eyes. He thought perhaps for a moment that he was in
another world; but this was no time for vain regrets, for the teacher
had them in his grip, and was cross-examining the frightened Juliet as
to how many months their _liaison_ had continued. Meanwhile the village
officer arrived with a rusty pair of handcuffs, and before daylight
Romeo, but half recovered from his journey to “that bourne,” found
himself embarked on that rougher journey over the rocky path that leads
to the Tuatuacoko court-house.
Why could not the story have ended here, with the romance all unspoilt,
with the old story of love till death, and faithless timorous beauty?
But I must tell the story to the end as it really happened, and not as
I would fain tell it.
The Commissioner’s court sat, the assessors were sworn, the charge was
attempted suicide, the chief witness for the prosecution was Juliet,
and poor Romeo was in the dock. He was quite the ugliest man I have
ever seen--deeply pitted with smallpox, and with a mouth which, seen
full face, might have extended completely round his head for all one
could see to the contrary. The defence was ingenious. Romeo pleaded
that the people of Verona had treated him so badly that they deserved a
fright and a warning, and the alleged poison was nothing more noxious
than a decoction of orange-bark mixed in an old kerosene-bottle;
that he had drunk this off and shammed being dead until he saw the
joke had gone far enough, and that then he came to life again. The
empty gin-bottle was brought, the dregs poured into a saucer, and a
policeman was sent into the bush to bring some real _Langaingai_. It
was a slender, small-leafed plant, about eighteen inches in height,
with a fibrous woody bark. The bark was scraped in court, and kneaded
up with a little water, and strained. The result was a muddy-looking
yellow fluid. The alleged poison smelt abominably of kerosene; but the
liquids had to be compared somehow, and the assessors, one English and
one native, volunteered to furnish the vile body. The court also tried
half a teaspoonful of each. After imbibing the kerosene, one became
conscious of an acrid biting flavour, unlike any known taste. There was
no doubt that the liquids were identical. Of the after effects, I need
only say that the court adjourned, and no more evidence was taken that
day, both court and assessors spending their time in drinking cocoa-nut
milk, and trying to resume control over their interior mechanism. When
they did recover, Romeo was convicted.
THE WOMAN FINAU.
“The woman knows no shame, she defies the law, she despises your
orders, and she says she will never leave the white man.”
“Then let them marry.”
“I told her that, and she said it was not the foreigner’s wish to marry
her. But you are the Governor. It is for you to punish evil-doers. All
Vavau is ashamed because of this woman.”
“Arrest her, then, and bring her here.”
At sunset the chiefs had met at the ruinous wooden villa that is
the Government House. In the central hall, once gay with paint and
gilding, they sat cross-legged before the _kava_-bowl, young Laifone
the Governor in the seat of honour. And into this august assembly Ana
Finau, the abandoned contemner of public opinion and the law of the
land, was led trembling, the only woman in the room. The men stopped
talking and looked at her with hard unsympathetic faces. What pity
should they have for a countrywoman of theirs who could stoop to one
of these vile foreigners, and leave her own kind for the society of a
trader--a white man?
The policeman who brought her told her roughly to sit down before the
Governor, who glanced at her and bade his companion continue the story
the girl’s entrance had interrupted. The chiefs who had come from a
distance asked their neighbours who the girl was, and why she had been
brought. She meanwhile sat on the floor, her feet doubled under her,
as the manner is, her eyes cast down, but with a certain dogged air of
resistance about her, as if she was prepared for the worst.
The story was finished. From Laifone’s hearty laugh it might be guessed
that it was not over-refined, and the policeman called his attention
to Ana Finau. It was no time for business, for the _kava_ was nearly
pounded, the two kerosene-lamps were lighted, and Laifone was bored
with the cares of office. He held up his hand, and the ringing thud of
the pounding _kava_-stones ceased.
“Ana,” he said, “they say you are living with the white man. You were
punished and told to leave him, and you have gone back.”
The girl reached for a straw on the dirty floor, and began to dissect
it with her fingers, examining it intently.
“Why don’t you answer?” asked the policeman, roughly. She glanced up
for a moment, and resumed her dissection of the straw.
“It is true,” she said.
“Why do you not marry him?”
“That is Falani’s affair. I suppose he is not willing that we should
marry.”
“Then you must leave him at once,” said Laifone, with the air of having
dismissed the subject, and turned to the story-teller with a question.
The girl did not move. She had pulled her straw to pieces, and now
deliberately reached for another. She looked comely in the lamplight
which touched the clear red skin, threw deep shadows into the eyes, and
glinted through her glistening auburn curls. The _kava_-stones rang
out again, and conversation became general. The policeman touched her
arm. She shook him off impatiently, threw her head back, and looking
Laifone full in the face, said, “I shall not leave Falani.”
There was a dead silence. The _kava_-pounder paused with stone
uplifted. Laifone stared at her, half amused and half angry.
“You must leave him, or be punished,” he said, and muttered something
about a beautiful girl wasted.
But the policeman was scandalised and indignant. “You impudent woman,”
he cried, “you have insulted the Governor and the chiefs. You have
no shame, and you are impudent.” Then turning to Laifone he cried,
“Is Vavau to become heathen because of this evil-minded woman? It has
become a by-word. Religion is despised because of her. We look to you,
Laifone. I pray you leave her to us, the police, to deal with her. We
will bring her to obedience.”
“Take her away then.”