dragged her to the door, and, with a sudden jerk, pulled her whimpering
out into the darkness. A man at the back of the room followed them out.
“A strong-minded woman,” said Laifone. “Pound the _kava_.”
The root is pounded, kneaded in the bowl, and strained. “_Fakatau_,”
cries the presiding Matabule. Then as the cocoa-nut is filled, the man
at the bowl gives the piercing long-drawn cry, “_Kava kuo heka_,” and
as he ceases, the cry is taken up from the darkness outside--a wail of
agony.
“Hark! what is that?” says Laifone. It comes again and ceases in
choking sobs--a woman’s voice.
A man runs out, and in a moment returns. “It is Ana Finau,” he says;
“the police are doing something to her.”
The wail of agony comes again, mixed with the accents of a man’s voice
in anger, and a dull sound like a blow.
“Go and tell them to be quieter,” says the presiding Matabule; “or
stay,” he adds, “tell them to take her farther off. Don’t they know we
are drinking _kava_?”
Franz Kraft is entertaining to-night. It is a fact to be remembered
in Vavau when one _copra_-trader spends the evening with another,
for competition is strong and the milk of human kindness watery.
There, in the mean little room at the back of the store, they sit
at the only table, which is furnished with glasses, a cracked jug,
and the inevitable square black bottle. Round the room are ranged a
number of half-emptied cases of cheap German prints and cutlery,
whose contents are piled about, to be within reach if any of the
shelves in the store should need replenishing. Franz Kraft, in a dirty
flannel shirt and trousers, unkempt, perspiring, and bibulous, is not
a fascinating-looking person, but he is prosperous and refined as
compared with his companion. They have reached the quarrelsome stage of
the evening,--anon they will be vowing eternal friendship,--and Franz
is accusing his boon companion of the heinous crime of underselling
him, and emphasising his forcible remarks with heavy blows with his
fist upon the table. It is hard to realise that this squalid ruffian,
who is content to live on fare that the forecastle of a whaler would
reject, is worth ten or twelve thousand pounds, made by his own thrift
and hard work.
“You haf for dwenty bounds of kreen _cobra_ one shilling given, I say.
Finau, she tell me,” he cries, with emphasis born of gin.
The door behind him opens, and a gust of wind extinguishes the
kerosene-lamp. Franz swears as he gropes for the matches. But when they
are found the lamp-funnel is too hot to hold, and the match goes out.
The boon companion slams the door to with his foot, and in doing so
stumbles against a soft body on the floor.
“Who the h--ll is it?” he cries; “some d--d nigger. A woman, by G--d!”
he adds, as the body groans in answer to his kick.
Franz having succeeded in lighting the lamp, turns to look at the
intruder. A woman lies face downwards on the floor sobbing. The
Englishman takes her roughly by the arm, and turns her over.
“By G--d! Kraft, it’s Finau, and badly knocked about too! Here, you’d
better see to her. I’m off home.”
Kraft stooped, lamp in hand, saw the torn _vala_ and the poor bruised
face, and knew who had done this, and why. But as he raised her, he
asked all the same.
“The police,” she answered, “because I would not leave you.”
Long after she has sobbed herself to sleep Kraft was muttering his
opinions of the police and the authorities generally in forcible
German. To-morrow he will beard the Governor Laifone, and tell him what
he thinks of him. He will take Finau away to Samoa or Fiji, where the
moral code is less strict, and she will be left in peace; for the girl
is a good girl, can cook well, can even be trusted to mind the store,
will spy on the doings of the neighbouring traders--is, in short,
necessary to him. And she is better than Hinz’s and Schulze’s women,
who have children to squall and get in the way. Besides, she will stay
with him till he takes his long-projected trip to Hamburg. When that
time comes she can go back to her relations, and the police will leave
her alone.
But when the morrow came Kraft heard that the Government oranges were
to be sold to the highest bidder--a whole season’s crop. There is money
in it, and it will never do to quarrel with the Governor; and as for
going to Fiji or Samoa in the middle of the _copra_ season--of course
that is out of the question. Finau had told him the details of her
trial overnight, and the outrage, and she dared to hint that marriage
would shield her for the future; but Kraft was too old a bird to be
caught in such a trap as young Elliston was, for the chief object of
the coming trip to Hamburg was the carrying out of a long-cherished
scheme. He would figure in his native town as a wealthy planter, with
vast estates in the Pacific, and dazzle the eyes of some young girl
with a _dot_, then settle down as an altogether respectable character.
Of this part of the scheme Finau knew nothing.
Christmas, with its feasting and church-going, with its stifling heat
and drowning showers, has come and gone. The oranges have turned
to gold on the trees as they were in Hesperus’s garden of old, and
are falling in thousands among the long grass, because there are
not thirsty mouths enough to suck them. The traders have bickered
and wrangled all the long season through, till they are scarcely on
drinking terms. The monthly steamer is here for her last cargo of
oranges. From dawn till sunset carts laden with the golden fruit
plough the miry roads, and the tap of the hammer nailing down the
fruit-cases is never silent. Once a-month this “sleepy hollow” of
the Pacific assumes an air of energy and bustle, and then sinks into
coma, exhausted by the effort, as the steamer glides round the point.
The fit is upon it now. The whole population is either at work or
encouraging the workers,--the girls and children pelting the men with
oranges as they sweat under the heavy cases on the wharf. All save
one. Up there in Kraft’s store, where the laughter and shouts from the
wharf are faintly echoed, a woman, half blinded by her tears, is on
her knees before an iron trunk. It is Finau learning the lesson that
men teach women,--sometimes when the skin of both is white, generally
when one is brown. She only heard last night that Falani was called
away to _papalagi_, and that one of those strange necessities that
govern the lives of white men forced him to leave her. But who knows?
All her friends prophesied that this would happen when she first came
to Falani. And there was Maata, who went to William, the white man,
because he said he would marry her; and he kept putting it off, and
then, when she had had her first child, he went to _papalagi_, saying
he would return in a month. That was six years ago. And now Falani was
going.
If she had had a white skin, and the man did this to her, she would
perhaps have been strengthened by the sense of bitter wrong that he
could take her all, let her slave for him, and suffer for him, and
then lightly cast her aside without even the grace to take her into
his confidence till the last morning; or she would have been cast into
the black depths of despair by her utter desolation: but being only a
native woman with a brown skin, she felt neither of these, and helped
him to pack his trunk.
Kraft himself, returning from the steamer, breaks in upon her reverie,
bustling and eager. She sees the half-concealed delight in his face,
and even that does not repel her, being, as I have said, a native with
none of the finer feelings.
“Falani,” she says solemnly, “tell me truly why you are going. Is it
because you are weary of me, or because I have borne you no children?”
“Ah, Finau, do not worry, or say foolish things. You know it is because
I cannot help myself, and in six months I shall be back with you, and I
shall write to you often. Do not be foolish.”
“Falani, you will forget me,” she persists, “and marry some white
woman, as Mr Leason did. And you swore so often you would never leave
me. Only a week ago you swore it.”
This being true is too much for his patience.
“You will make me tire of you, Finau, if you talk foolishly, and get
angry. I have told you the truth. In six months I shall be back, and
then we will be married by the missionary--that is, if you are good,
and do not talk foolishly.”
This has the desired effect of making Finau cry; and as even a German
_copra_-trader has a soft spot in his composition, a sudden impulse of
tenderness and remorse makes the man take her in his arms and try to
soothe away her trouble. For the moment he almost realises that this
woman has loved him as he never deserved to be loved,--that she has not
even shrunk from death itself for his sake, and that in return she only
asks him to let her go on serving him; and for all this he is about to
stab her in the back, to lie to her, to desert her. Is it too late?
So they sit in the steamy air, laden with the hot smell of rotting
fruit, while the laughter and shouts float up to them from the wharf,
and he, half wavering, caresses her, and whispers comforting promises
into her ear.
But the shrill whistle of the steamer pierces the air, drowning all
other sounds in its own vulgar yell. The spell is broken. Kraft has
paid his passage, and the steamer is going. All the rest is folly, born
of an over-tender heart.
“Finau, I must go!” he cries; “give me the box, and say good-bye, or I
shall be late.”
“_Oua leva_” (wait), she says, and running to the box under pretence
of rearranging its contents, she strips off her scented neckerchief,
and buries it among the clothes. “He shall take my shadow with him,”
she murmurs; and then turning to him, she asks him to throw his
handkerchief into the sea when the steamer sails, “to be your shadow
with me.” She is so earnest about this little superstition that, half
laughing, he promises.
The whistle blows again, a hurried kiss, and he goes off, box on
shoulder, while she, stifling her sobs, walks wearily to the hill above
the harbour and sits down, covering her head with her _vala_.
She sees the mate drive the crowd of natives over the gangway on to the
wharf, the hawser cast off, and she sees Falani distinctly leaning over
the rail and laughing with the other white men with whom he has just
parted. She watches him as the steamer glides down the harbour. Now he
will throw his handkerchief, and be bound irrevocably to come back to
her. Now, surely, he will throw it. What, not yet? Ah! he is waiting
till the vessel nears the point. She stands up in her eagerness. “He
must throw it,--he promised!” she cries aloud in her agony. But the
vessel is half behind the point now--a moment more and she is out of
sight--and he never threw it: so he is gone for ever, and will never
return to Finau as long as they both shall live.
Kraft had forgotten his promise until, looking up, he saw and
recognised a lonely figure, with arms outstretched, upon the hill;
but feeling in his pocket, he found he had only one handkerchief, and
it was not worth sacrificing a good handkerchief for a silly native
superstition.
Under the first sense of utter loneliness the sneers of her own people
were easy enough to bear. _They_ did not understand. And then, when
she had returned to the old life at Latu’s house with her own people,
living their life, sharing their interests, the sorrow faded (as sorrow
always does fade, thank heaven!), and the past became a little hazy and
unreal. It is good to be a child, or to have a brown skin, which is the
same thing, for with them time will heal in days wounds that cripple
us for years, and leave scars behind them: and so the sun shines again
as brightly as before, and the growth is not stunted. Only sometimes
at the _gatu_-board Finau’s mallet would stop beating, and her eyes
would wander away there to the point in the harbour that shuts out
the channel, with a wistful far-off look, until the woman next her,
indignant at being left to beat for both, would cry out, “The _gatu_
[bark-cloth] is hardening while Finau is looking for Falani;” and
during the coarse laugh that followed Finau would beat the yielding
bark with ringing blows, changing her mallet from hand to hand as each
tired.
So six months passed away. Finau had long given up asking at the
post-office for a letter when the steamer came in; and when young Beni,
the post-office clerk, threw her one at the _kava_-drinking in Latu’s
house two days after the steamer had left, she thought for a moment
there had been some mistake. Beni, with the privilege appertaining
to his office, had as usual opened it and circulated it among his
acquaintances for the two days that had intervened since the arrival
of the mail; but being in some white man’s language, his curiosity was
still ungratified. Finau thrust it into the bosom of her _kofu_, and
contained her soul in patience until the morning. She was at Müller’s
door before he was up next morning. After he had promised inviolable
secrecy the German letter was produced, read, and translated into
dog-Tongan, while Finau sat on the floor with glistening eyes. The joke
was altogether too good for Müller to keep to himself, promise or no
promise, and before evening all in Vavau who cared to know, whether
white or brown, were duly made aware that Franz Kraft could not live
without Finau,--that though his body was in Germany his heart was in
Vavau,--and that though the German ladies of high degree all made love
to him, yet none was so beautiful as Finau, and he was adamant to them.
The whole effusion did great credit to Kraft’s wit; and the best of the
joke was that Finau swallowed it all, including the paragraph about
his tearing himself away from Hamburg because he could not bear the
separation any longer, only the chiefs in Hamburg would not let him
go for some inscrutable reason of their own. Truly Franz Kraft was a
most humorous fellow. The one sentence Müller did not translate was a
heading, in execrable Tongan, that she was to get the drunken Wilhelm
Kraft, Franz’s brother, to read the letter, and on no account to take
it to Müller or any one else.
But what cared Finau that the contents of her letter were public? They
might laugh as they would--her husband had not forgotten her: he was
coming back to marry her, and she would toil for him all her days, and
be happy. Next month would come another letter to say he was starting,
and in three months more he would be here. Ah, those months would be so
easy to live through now! She gravely dictated to the delighted Müller
an answering love-letter. She never ceased to think of him; and she
had had no rest since he went; and would the good God guard him, and
bring him safely back to her,--a very tame composition beside Kraft’s
love-letter, but as Müller never sent it, the lack of style was of no
consequence.
But the letter that should have come by the next steamer must doubtless
have been lost in the post; or perhaps Kraft was starting, and did not
think it worth while to write. Another mail, and still no letter. Ah!
it is now clear. Poor Falani must be ill. The old letter was getting
quite worn out now, from being carried in the bosom and slept on at
night, but the writing was still visible through the oil-stains. It
certainly did look shaky,--yes, decidedly Falani must be ill.
And then the third steamer came, and Beni said there was no letter.
That evening brother Wilhelm paid Latu a visit, three sheets in the
wind, as was usual with him at that time of night. He wanted Finau;
he was labouring with a message for Finau. She is fetched from the
cook-house. The difficulty is to find words for the message to Finau,
for the message requires “breaking gently,” and it is difficult to
break news gently under the influence of gin.
“Finau,” hiccoughs brother Wilhelm, “Falani has written. He told me
to tell you--he is married.” The instructions were to break the news
gently, and having carried them out to the satisfaction of his own
conscience, brother Wilhelm takes himself to where the bottles are
square and black, and the night may be profitably spent.
Far from the haunts of men there is a place where none dare to come
alone. The land sloping up from Neiafu is broken here in a great
precipice, against whose feet the mighty ocean-rollers, unchecked by
any reef, break ceaselessly with a dull roar, making the overhanging
rocks tremble a thousand feet above them. Landwards Haafulu Hao, with
its myriad islets, is spread out like a map; seawards is nothing but
the sleepless ocean meeting the blue sky. Thither the dead are brought
to sleep in their white graves, untroubled by the living; thither go
the poets of the _lakalaka_ for inspiration; thither go the girls of
Halaufuli for flower-garlands, but not alone, for the spirits of the
dead roam among the rocks of Liku, and must be scared away by numbers.
Jutting out from the precipice is a single shaft of rock round which,
even in calm weather, a furious wind eddies. With a good head one may
climb out to this pinnacle, and, holding on firmly, see nothing between
his feet and the foaming surf a thousand feet below.
There was a faint light in the western horizon where the moon had set.
The stars were veiled by fleecy clouds--only where Venus hung low in
the sky, casting a silver trail over the sea, was the night clear.
The strong south-east trade-wind was turning cold, as it does before
dawn, and Finau, breathless from her unconscious journey, instinctively
wrapped her _vala_ round her shoulders. As she ran from the shelter
of the roaring palms on to the cliff’s edge, the thunder of the surf
made the rock on which she stood tremble, and the south wind, wet
with spray, drenched her with tiny particles of water. The path ended
here: it was only used for the last journey of the dead, who slept
all around her in their shrouds of white sand glistening in the dim
starlight. The sight of the precipice before her brought reflection to
her maddened brain. She was on the Liku where the spirits are, and at
night, when the spirits oftenest are abroad. But she felt no fear now,
for a sudden thought had taken possession of her. She remembered how,
not many months since, Laubasi, the beauty of Neiafu, had disappeared;
how they had searched for her, following the girlish footprints in
the muddy path; how Palu the fisherman had crept down the cliff-face
at Anamatangi, and seen far below him a body lying on a rocky ledge;
how at first it was thought that she had been swept down by the furious
wind that roars across the cave’s mouth in all weathers, boisterous or
calm, until the body was brought back, and then the women gave another
reason--for Laubasi was a Wesleyan class-leader, much regarded for her
character, and in a month or two that would have been gone had she
lived. The Anamatangi was scarce half a mile from where Finau stood.
With set purpose in her dark face she walked quickly along the narrow
path, hedged in by overhanging trees that led along the edge of the
cliff. In half a mile she emerged upon a grassy plain sloping down
towards Neiafu, whence in the daytime the thousand isles of Haafulu
Hao could be seen as in a map. Here she turned seawards, and passed
down a stony narrow path among the trees. The path became narrower and
steeper, then rose a little, and suddenly Finau found herself standing
upon a razor edge of rock, the apex of a buttress jutting many feet
beyond the main cliff, whose base had been worn away by the surf of
ages.
It was too dark to see below, but as every long roller crashed into
the caves at the cliff’s base the pinnacle trembled, and she knelt,
grasping the rugged moss with her fingers. Only not to think--not
to think of what she had come here to do,--not to think of what lay
below her in the darkness,--not to think of what was beyond if she
passed the gate! She remembered Paula’s sermon when Laubasi’s fate
was known,--how he described her burning in the flames, as if he had
been there to see; but he had said that of so many people, and Falani
said it was all an invention of the missionaries to make the people
give them money. How white, how still and restful, those graves had
seemed, in one of which Laubasi lay; but how the sharp-pointed rocks
must have torn her flesh when she fell! It must have been a worse agony
than the police inflicted, and that was too much to bear! So she lay
face downward on the rocky pinnacle, her courage waning, filled with
despair, and with a terror that was worse than despair. The east turned
grey, and the morning star was quenched by the growing light which
flecked the sea with foaming wave-tops, unseen till now. And with the
dawn the wind grew stronger, till it would have been unsafe for Finau
to stand up, even if she would. The face of the cliff, too, behind her
became visible, and she saw with terror the dangers of the path she had
traversed by the dim light of the stars. One false step and her body
would have fallen down there, where ledge upon ledge and pinnacle upon
pinnacle of grey limestone-rock are half hidden by ferns and creepers,
as the thorns of the _matolu_ are hidden by its velvet leaves, and
beneath all a white hell of roaring waters.
As the light grew, she saw in the face of the precipice behind her a
black hole large enough to admit the body of a man. To reach it one
must creep along a ledge, slanting from the place where she lay. This
was the cave of the winds, into which only Tubou the fleet-footed had
penetrated, and Lolohea, who, tradition said, had fled when Feletoa
was taken, and who, after peace was made, still dwelt in the wild
Liku, communing with the spirits, and accumulating wisdom. It was on
this very spot he stood when King Finau’s men brought him to bay till
their chief should speak with him; and it was here that he was offered
lands, slaves, and the choice of the fairest maidens of Vavau, only
to refuse them for the solitude of this awful place. The wind was
increasing in force, and it boomed across the mouth of the cave like
a great organ-pipe. In the lulls a hollow roar seemed to come from the
very bowels of the island. Somewhere far below the great ocean-rollers
poured in, driving the imprisoned air through the mouth with terrific
force. Surely no living man could dare the feats of those old heroes of
tradition?
No! Death in such a place, and in such a way, were too horrible, and
Finau, trembling and weak, looked round for a way of escape. The ridge
she had crossed was now vibrating like a tense wire. She tried to rise,
clinging to the rotten fern with her hands, and nearly lost her balance
in a sharp gust of wind. It was hopeless. So she must die after all!
And she lay there, dazed and bewildered, with all other desire gone but
that of living.
* * * * * * *
“Here is the woman Finau. Her mind is foolish, but I have brought her
back alive. Take better care of her, lest we of the Liku be again
obliged to save her and carry her these four miles. Next time she goes
to the cave of the winds she will fall perhaps where Laubasi did, and
then we shall have to bury your dead.”
Finau’s uncle is awakened by a pinch on the leg, and goes out sulkily
into the darkness with the man to where his cart stands. The jolting
over the stony roads from Halaufuli has wakened Finau from her stupor,
and she talks wildly and incoherently as her helpless body is lifted
from the cart and laid on the mats near the lamp.
“The police will come to ask questions, for they stopped me as I was
coming. I don’t want to get into trouble, so I shall go.” The cart
rumbles away into the night.