CHAPTER XI

LAUPEPA AND MATAAFA

1889-1892

With the hurricane, the broken war-ships, and the stranded sailors, I am

at an end of violence, and my tale flows henceforth among carpet

incidents. The blue-jackets on Apia beach were still jealously held

apart by sentries, when the powers at home were already seeking a

peaceable solution. It was agreed, so far as might be, to obliterate two

years of blundering; and to resume in 1889, and at Berlin, those

negotiations which had been so unhappily broken off at Washington in

1887. The example thus offered by Germany is rare in history; in the

career of Prince Bismarck, so far as I am instructed, it should stand

unique. On a review of these two years of blundering, bullying, and

failure in a little isle of the Pacific, he seems magnanimously to have

owned his policy was in the wrong. He left Fangalii unexpiated; suffered

that house of cards, the Tamasese government, to fall by its own frailty

and without remark or lamentation; left the Samoan question openly and

fairly to the conference: and in the meanwhile, to allay the local heats

engendered by Becker and Knappe, he sent to Apia that invaluable public

servant, Dr. Stuebel. I should be a dishonest man if I did not bear

testimony to the loyalty since shown by Germans in Samoa. Their position

was painful; they had talked big in the old days, now they had to sing

small. Even Stuebel returned to the islands under the prejudice of an

unfortunate record. To the minds of the Samoans his name represented

the beginning of their sorrows; and in his first term of office he had

unquestionably driven hard. The greater his merit in the surprising

success of the second. So long as he stayed, the current of affairs

moved smoothly; he left behind him on his departure all men at peace;

and whether by fortune, or for the want of that wise hand of guidance,

he was scarce gone before the clouds began to gather once more on our

horizon.

Before the first convention, Germany and the States hauled down their

flags. It was so done again before the second; and Germany, by a still

more emphatic step of retrogression, returned the exile Laupepa to his

native shores. For two years the unfortunate man had trembled and

suffered in the Cameroons, in Germany, in the rainy Marshalls. When he

left (September 1887) Tamasese was king, served by five iron war-ships;

his right to rule (like a dogma of the Church) was placed outside

dispute; the Germans were still, as they were called at that last

tearful interview in the house by the river, "the invincible strangers";

the thought of resistance, far less the hope of success, had not yet

dawned on the Samoan mind. He returned (November 1889) to a changed

world. The Tupua party was reduced to sue for peace, Brandeis was

withdrawn, Tamasese was dying obscurely of a broken heart; the German

flag no longer waved over the capital; and over all the islands one

figure stood supreme. During Laupepa's absence this man had succeeded

him in all his honours and titles, in tenfold more than all his power

and popularity. He was the idol of the whole nation but the rump of the

Tamaseses, and of these he was already the secret admiration. In his

position there was but one weak point,--that he had even been tacitly

excluded by the Germans. Becker, indeed, once coquetted with the thought

of patronising him; but the project had no sequel, and it stands alone.

In every other juncture of history the German attitude has been the

same. Choose whom you will to be king; when he has failed, choose whom

you please to succeed him; when the second fails also, replace the

first: upon the one condition, that Mataafa be excluded. "_Pourvu qu'il

sache signer_!"--an official is said to have thus summed up the

qualifications necessary in a Samoan king. And it was perhaps feared

that Mataafa could do no more and might not always do so much. But this

original diffidence was heightened by late events to something verging

upon animosity. Fangalii was unavenged: the arms of Mataafa were

_Nondum inexpiatis uncta cruoribus_,

Still soiled with the unexpiated blood

of German sailors; and though the chief was not present in the field,

nor could have heard of the affair till it was over, he had reaped from

it credit with his countrymen and dislike from the Germans.

I may not say that trouble was hoped. I must say--if it were not feared,

the practice of diplomacy must teach a very hopeful view of human

nature. Mataafa and Laupepa, by the sudden repatriation of the last,

found themselves face to face in conditions of exasperating rivalry. The

one returned from the dead of exile to find himself replaced and

excelled. The other, at the end of a long, anxious, and successful

struggle, beheld his only possible competitor resuscitated from the

grave. The qualities of both, in this difficult moment, shone out nobly.

I feel I seem always less than partial to the lovable Laupepa; his

virtues are perhaps not those which chiefly please me, and are certainly

not royal; but he found on his return an opportunity to display the

admirable sweetness of his nature. The two entered into a competition of

generosity, for which I can recall no parallel in history, each waiving

the throne for himself, each pressing it upon his rival; and they

embraced at last a compromise the terms of which seem to have been

always obscure and are now disputed. Laupepa at least resumed his style

of King of Samoa; Mataafa retained much of the conduct of affairs, and

continued to receive much of the attendance and respect befitting

royalty; and the two Malietoas, with so many causes of disunion, dwelt

and met together in the same town like kinsmen. It was so, that I first

saw them; so, in a house set about with sentries--for there was still a

haunting fear of Germany,--that I heard them relate their various

experience in the past; heard Laupepa tell with touching candour of the

sorrows of his exile, and Mataafa with mirthful simplicity of his

resources and anxieties in the war. The relation was perhaps too

beautiful to last; it was perhaps impossible but the titular king should

grow at last uneasily conscious of the _maire de palais_ at his side, or

the king-maker be at last offended by some shadow of distrust or

assumption in his creature. I repeat the words king-maker and creature;

it is so that Mataafa himself conceives of their relation: surely not

without justice; for, had he not contended and prevailed, and been

helped by the folly of consuls and the fury of the storm, Laupepa must

have died in exile.

Foreigners in these islands know little of the course of native

intrigue. Partly the Samoans cannot explain, partly they will not tell.

Ask how much a master can follow of the puerile politics in any school;

so much and no more we may understand of the events which surround and

menace us with their results. The missions may perhaps have been to

blame. Missionaries are perhaps apt to meddle overmuch outside their

discipline; it is a fault which should be judged with mercy; the problem

is sometimes so insidiously presented that even a moderate and able man

is betrayed beyond his own intention; and the missionary in such a land

as Samoa is something else besides a minister of mere religion; he

represents civilisation, he is condemned to be an organ of reform, he

could scarce evade (even if he desired) a certain influence in political

affairs. And it is believed, besides, by those who fancy they know, that

the effective force of division between Mataafa and Laupepa came from

the natives rather than from whites. Before the end of 1890, at least,

it began to be rumoured that there was dispeace between the two

Malietoas; and doubtless this had an unsettling influence throughout the

islands. But there was another ingredient of anxiety. The Berlin

convention had long closed its sittings; the text of the Act had been

long in our hands; commissioners were announced to right the wrongs of

the land question, and two high officials, a chief justice and a

president, to guide policy and administer law in Samoa. Their coming was

expected with an impatience, with a childishness of trust, that can

hardly be exaggerated. Months passed, these angel-deliverers still

delayed to arrive, and the impatience of the natives became changed to

an ominous irritation. They have had much experience of being deceived,

and they began to think they were deceived again. A sudden crop of

superstitious stories buzzed about the islands. Rivers had come down

red; unknown fishes had been taken on the reef and found to be marked

with menacing runes; a headless lizard crawled among chiefs in council;

the gods of Upolu and Savaii made war by night, they swam the straits to

battle, and, defaced by dreadful wounds, they had besieged the house of

a medical missionary. Readers will remember the portents in mediaeval

chronicles, or those in _Julius Caesar_ when

"Fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds

In ranks and squadrons."

And doubtless such fabrications are, in simple societies, a natural

expression of discontent; and those who forge, and even those who spread

them, work towards a conscious purpose.

Early in January 1891 this period of expectancy was brought to an end by

the arrival of Conrad Cedarcrantz, chief justice of Samoa. The event was

hailed with acclamation, and there was much about the new official to

increase the hopes already entertained. He was seen to be a man of

culture and ability; in public, of an excellent presence--in private, of

a most engaging cordiality. But there was one point, I scarce know

whether to say of his character or policy, which immediately and

disastrously affected public feeling in the islands. He had an aversion,

part judicial, part perhaps constitutional, to haste; and he announced

that, until he should have well satisfied his own mind, he should do

nothing; that he would rather delay all than do aught amiss. It was

impossible to hear this without academical approval; impossible to hear

it without practical alarm. The natives desired to see activity; they

desired to see many fair speeches taken on a body of deeds and works of

benefit. Fired by the event of the war, filled with impossible hopes,

they might have welcomed in that hour a ruler of the stamp of Brandeis,

breathing hurry, perhaps dealing blows. And the chief justice,

unconscious of the fleeting opportunity, ripened his opinions

deliberately in Mulinuu; and had been already the better part of half a

year in the islands before he went through the form of opening his

court. The curtain had risen; there was no play. A reaction, a chill

sense of disappointment, passed about the island; and intrigue, one

moment suspended, was resumed.

In the Berlin Act, the three Powers recognise, on the threshold, "the

independence of the Samoan government, and the free right of the natives

to elect their chief or king and choose their form of government." True,

the text continues that, "in view of the difficulties that surround an

election in the present disordered condition of the government,"

Malietoa Laupepa shall be recognised as king, "unless the three Powers

shall by common accord otherwise declare." But perhaps few natives have

followed it so far, and even those who have, were possibly all cast

abroad again by the next clause: "and his successor shall be duly

elected according to the laws and customs of Samoa." The right to elect,

freely given in one sentence, was suspended in the next, and a line or

so further on appeared to be reconveyed by a side-wind. The reason

offered for suspension was ludicrously false; in May 1889, when Sir

Edward Malet moved the matter in the conference, the election of Mataafa

was not only certain to have been peaceful, it could not have been

opposed; and behind the English puppet it was easy to suspect the hand

of Germany. No one is more swift to smell trickery than a Samoan; and

the thought, that, under the long, bland, benevolent sentences of the

Berlin Act, some trickery lay lurking, filled him with the breath of

opposition. Laupepa seems never to have been a popular king. Mataafa, on

the other hand, holds an unrivalled position in the eyes of his

fellow-countrymen; he was the hero of the war, he had lain with them in

the bush, he had borne the heat and burthen of the day; they began to

claim that he should enjoy more largely the fruits of victory; his

exclusion was believed to be a stroke of German vengeance, his elevation

to the kingship was looked for as the fitting crown and copestone of the

Samoan triumph; and but a little after the coming of the chief justice,

an ominous cry for Mataafa began to arise in the islands. It is

difficult to see what that official could have done but what he did. He

was loyal, as in duty bound, to the treaty and to Laupepa; and when the

orators of the important and unruly islet of Manono demanded to his face

a change of kings, he had no choice but to refuse them, and (his reproof

being unheeded) to suspend the meeting. Whether by any neglect of his

own or the mere force of circumstance, he failed, however, to secure the

sympathy, failed even to gain the confidence, of Mataafa. The latter is

not without a sense of his own abilities or of the great service he has

rendered to his native land. He felt himself neglected; at the very

moment when the cry for his elevation rang throughout the group, he

thought himself made little of on Mulinuu; and he began to weary of his

part. In this humour, he was exposed to a temptation which I must try to

explain, as best I may be able, to Europeans.

The bestowal of the great name, Malietoa, is in the power of the

district of Malie, some seven miles to the westward of Apia. The most

noisy and conspicuous supporters of that party are the inhabitants of

Manono. Hence in the elaborate, allusive oratory of Samoa, Malie is

always referred to by the name of _Pule_ (authority) as having the power

of the name, and Manono by that of _Ainga_ (clan, sept, or household) as

forming the immediate family of the chief. But these, though so

important, are only small communities; and perhaps the chief numerical

force of the Malietoas inhabits the island of Savaii. Savaii has no

royal name to bestow, all the five being in the gift of different

districts of Upolu; but she has the weight of numbers, and in these

latter days has acquired a certain force by the preponderance in her

councils of a single man, the orator Lauati. The reader will now

understand the peculiar significance of a deputation which should

embrace Lauati and the orators of both Malie and Manono, how it would

represent all that is most effective on the Malietoa side, and all that

is most considerable in Samoan politics, except the opposite feudal

party of the Tupua. And in the temptation brought to bear on Mataafa,

even the Tupua was conjoined. Tamasese was dead. His followers had

conceived a not unnatural aversion to all Germans, from which only the

loyal Brandeis is excepted; and a not unnatural admiration for their

late successful adversary. Men of his own blood and clan, men whom he

had fought in the field, whom he had driven from Matautu, who had

smitten him back time and again from before the rustic bulwarks of

Lotoanuu, they approached him hand in hand with their ancestral enemies

and concurred in the same prayer. The treaty (they argued) was not

carried out. The right to elect their king had been granted them; or if

that were denied or suspended, then the right to elect "his successor."

They were dissatisfied with Laupepa, and claimed, "according to the laws

and customs of Samoa," duly to appoint another. The orators of Malie

declared with irritation that their second appointment was alone valid

and Mataafa the sole Malietoa; the whole body of malcontents named him

as their choice for king; and they requested him in consequence to leave

Apia and take up his dwelling in Malie, the name-place of Malietoa; a

step which may be described, to European ears, as placing before the

country his candidacy for the crown.

I do not know when the proposal was first made. Doubtless the

disaffection grew slowly, every trifle adding to its force; doubtless

there lingered for long a willingness to give the new government a

trial. The chief justice at least had been nearly five months in the

country, and the president, Baron Senfft von Pilsach, rather more than a

month, before the mine was sprung. On May 31, 1891, the house of Mataafa

was found empty, he and his chiefs had vanished from Apia, and, what was

worse, three prisoners, liberated from the gaol, had accompanied them in

their secession; two being political offenders, and the third (accused

of murder) having been perhaps set free by accident. Although the step

had been discussed in certain quarters, it took all men by surprise. The

inhabitants at large expected instant war. The officials awakened from a

dream to recognise the value of that which they had lost. Mataafa at

Vaiala, where he was the pledge of peace, had perhaps not always been

deemed worthy of particular attention; Mataafa at Malie was seen, twelve

hours too late, to be an altogether different quantity. With excess of

zeal on the other side, the officials trooped to their boats and

proceeded almost in a body to Malie, where they seem to have employed

every artifice of flattery and every resource of eloquence upon the

fugitive high chief. These courtesies, perhaps excessive in themselves,

had the unpardonable fault of being offered when too late. Mataafa

showed himself facile on small issues, inflexible on the main; he

restored the prisoners, he returned with the consuls to Apia on a flying

visit; he gave his word that peace should be preserved--a pledge in

which perhaps no one believed at the moment, but which he has since

nobly redeemed. On the rest he was immovable; he had cast the die, he

had declared his candidacy, he had gone to Malie. Thither, after his

visit to Apia, he returned again; there he has practically since

resided.

Thus was created in the islands a situation, strange in the beginning,

and which, as its inner significance is developed, becomes daily

stranger to observe. On the one hand, Mataafa sits in Malie, assumes a

regal state, receives deputations, heads his letters "Government of

Samoa," tacitly treats the king as a co-ordinate; and yet declares

himself, and in many ways conducts himself, as a law-abiding citizen. On

the other, the white officials in Mulinuu stand contemplating the

phenomenon with eyes of growing stupefaction; now with symptoms of

collapse, now with accesses of violence. For long, even those well

versed in island manners and the island character daily expected war,

and heard imaginary drums beat in the forest. But for now close upon a

year, and against every stress of persuasion and temptation, Mataafa has

been the bulwark of our peace. Apia lay open to be seized, he had the

power in his hand, his followers cried to be led on, his enemies

marshalled him the same way by impotent examples; and he has never

faltered. Early in the day, a white man was sent from the government of

Mulinuu to examine and report upon his actions: I saw the spy on his

return; "It was only our rebel that saved us," he said, with a laugh.

There is now no honest man in the islands but is well aware of it; none

but knows that, if we have enjoyed during the past eleven months the

conveniences of peace, it is due to the forbearance of "our rebel." Nor

does this part of his conduct stand alone. He calls his party at Malie

the government,--"our government,"--but he pays his taxes to the

government at Mulinuu. He takes ground like a king; he has steadily and

blandly refused to obey all orders as to his own movements or behaviour;

but upon requisition he sends offenders to be tried under the chief

justice.

We have here a problem of conduct, and what seems an image of

inconsistency, very hard at the first sight to be solved by any

European. Plainly Mataafa does not act at random. Plainly, in the depths

of his Samoan mind, he regards his attitude as regular and

constitutional. It may be unexpected, it may be inauspicious, it may be

undesirable; but he thinks it--and perhaps it is--in full accordance

with those "laws and customs of Samoa" ignorantly invoked by the

draughtsmen of the Berlin Act. The point is worth an effort of

comprehension; a man's life may yet depend upon it. Let us conceive, in

the first place, that there are five separate kingships in Samoa, though

not always five different kings; and that though one man, by holding the

five royal names, might become king _in all parts_ of Samoa, there is

perhaps no such matter as a kingship of all Samoa. He who holds one

royal name would be, upon this view, as much a sovereign person as he

who should chance to hold the other four; he would have less territory

and fewer subjects, but the like independence and an equal royalty. Now

Mataafa, even if all debatable points were decided against him, is still

Tuiatua, and as such, on this hypothesis, a sovereign prince. In the

second place, the draughtsmen of the Act, waxing exceeding bold,

employed the word "election," and implicitly justified all precedented

steps towards the kingship according with the "customs of Samoa." I am

not asking what was intended by the gentlemen who sat and debated very

benignly and, on the whole, wisely in Berlin; I am asking what will be

understood by a Samoan studying their literary work, the Berlin Act; I

am asking what is the result of taking a word out of one state of

society, and applying it to another, of which the writers know less than

nothing, and no European knows much. Several interpreters and several

days were employed last September in the fruitless attempt to convey to

the mind of Laupepa the sense of the word "resignation." What can a

Samoan gather from the words, _election? election of a king? election of

a king according to the laws and customs of Samoa_? What are the

electoral measures, what is the method of canvassing, likely to be

employed by two, three, four, or five, more or less absolute

princelings, eager to evince each other? And who is to distinguish such

a process from the state of war? In such international--or, I should

say, interparochial--differences, the nearest we can come towards

understanding is to appreciate the cloud of ambiguity in which all

parties grope--

"Treading the crude consistence, half on foot,

Half flying."

Now, in one part of Mataafa's behaviour his purpose is beyond mistake.

Towards the provisions of the Berlin Act, his desire to be formally

obedient is manifest. The Act imposed the tax. He has paid his taxes,

although he thus contributes to the ways and means of his immediate

rival. The Act decreed the supreme court, and he sends his partisans to

be tried at Mulinuu, although he thus places them (as I shall have

occasion to show) in a position far from wholly safe. From this literal

conformity, in matters regulated, to the terms of the Berlin

plenipotentiaries, we may plausibly infer, in regard to the rest, a no

less exact observance of the famous and obscure "laws and customs of

Samoa."

But though it may be possible to attain, in the study, to some such

adumbration of an understanding, it were plainly unfair to expect it of

officials in the hurry of events. Our two white officers have

accordingly been no more perspicacious than was to be looked for, and I

think they have sometimes been less wise. It was not wise in the

president to proclaim Mataafa and his followers rebels and their estates

confiscated. Such words are not respectable till they repose on force;

on the lips of an angry white man, standing alone on a small promontory,

they were both dangerous and absurd; they might have provoked ruin;

thanks to the character of Mataafa, they only raised a smile and damaged

the authority of government. And again it is not wise in the government

of Mulinuu to have twice attempted to precipitate hostilities, once in

Savaii, once here in the Tuamasanga. The late of the Savaii attempt I

never heard; it seems to have been stillborn. The other passed under my

eyes. A war-party was armed in Apia, and despatched across the island

against Mataafa villages, where it was to seize the women and children.

It was absent for some days, engaged in feasting with those whom it went

out to fight; and returned at last, innocuous and replete. In this

fortunate though undignified ending we may read the fact that the

natives on Laupepa's side are sometimes more wise than their advisers.

Indeed, for our last twelve months of miraculous peace under what seem

to be two rival kings, the credit is due first of all to Mataafa, and

second to the half-heartedness, or the forbearance, or both, of the

natives in the other camp. The voice of the two whites has ever been for

war. They have published at least one incendiary proclamation; they have

armed and sent into the field at least one Samoan war-party; they have

continually besieged captains of war-ships to attack Malie, and the

captains of the war-ships have religiously refused. Thus in the last

twelve months our European rulers have drawn a picture of themselves, as

bearded like the pard, full of strange oaths, and gesticulating like

semaphores; while over against them Mataafa reposes smilingly obstinate,

and their own retainers surround them, frowningly inert. Into the

question of motive I refuse to enter; but if we come to war in these

islands, and with no fresh occasion, it will be a manufactured war, and

one that has been manufactured, against the grain of opinion, by two

foreigners.

For the last and worst of the mistakes on the Laupepa side it would be

unfair to blame any but the king himself. Capable both of virtuous

resolutions and of fits of apathetic obstinacy, His Majesty is usually

the whip-top of competitive advisers; and his conduct is so unstable as

to wear at times an appearance of treachery which would surprise himself

if he could see it. Take, for example, the experience of Lieutenant

Ulfsparre, late chief of police, and (so to speak) commander of the

forces. His men were under orders for a certain hour; he found himself

almost alone at the place of muster, and learned the king had sent the

soldiery on errands. He sought an audience, explained that he was here

to implant discipline, that (with this purpose in view) his men could

only receive orders through himself, and if that condition were not

agreed to and faithfully observed, he must send in his papers. The king

was as usual easily persuaded, the interview passed and ended to the

satisfaction of all parties engaged--and the bargain was kept for one

day. On the day after, the troops were again dispersed as post-runners,

and their commander resigned. With such a sovereign, I repeat, it would

be unfair to blame any individual minister for any specific fault. And

yet the policy of our two whites against Mataafa has appeared uniformly

so excessive and implacable, that the blame of the last scandal is laid

generally at their doors. It is yet fresh. Lauati, towards the end of

last year, became deeply concerned about the situation; and by great

personal exertions and the charms of oratory brought Savaii and Manono

into agreement upon certain terms of compromise: Laupepa still to be

king, Mataafa to accept a high executive office comparable to that of

our own prime minister, and the two governments to coalesce. Intractable

Manono was a party. Malie was said to view the proposal with

resignation, if not relief. Peace was thought secure. The night before

the king was to receive Lauati, I met one of his company,--the family

chief, Iina,--and we shook hands over the unexpected issue of our

troubles. What no one dreamed was that Laupepa would refuse. And he did.

He refused undisputed royalty for himself and peace for these unhappy

islands; and the two whites on Mulinuu rightly or wrongly got the blame

of it.

But their policy has another and a more awkward side. About the time of

the secession to Malie, many ugly things were said; I will not repeat

that which I hope and believe the speakers did not wholly mean; let it

suffice that, if rumour carried to Mataafa the language I have heard

used in my own house and before my own native servants, he would be

highly justified in keeping clear of Apia and the whites. One gentleman

whose opinion I respect, and am so bold as to hope I may in some points

modify, will understand the allusion and appreciate my reserve. About

the same time there occurred an incident, upon which I must be more

particular. _A_ was a gentleman who had long been an intimate of

Mataafa's, and had recently (upon account, indeed, of the secession to

Malie) more or less wholly broken off relations. To him came one whom I

shall call _B_ with a dastardly proposition. It may have been _B's_ own,

in which case he were the more unpardonable but from the closeness of

his intercourse with the chief justice, as well as from the terms used

in the interview, men judged otherwise. It was proposed that _A_ should

simulate a renewal of the friendship, decoy Mataafa to a suitable place,

and have him there arrested. What should follow in those days of violent

speech was at the least disputable; and the proposal was of course

refused. "You do not understand," was the base rejoinder. "_You_ will

have no discredit. The Germans are to take the blame of the arrest." Of

course, upon the testimony of a gentleman so depraved, it were unfair to

hang a dog; and both the Germans and the chief justice must be held

innocent. But the chief justice has shown that he can himself be led, by

his animosity against Mataafa, into questionable acts. Certain natives

of Malie were accused of stealing pigs; the chief justice summoned them

through Mataafa; several were sent, and along with them a written

promise that, if others were required, these also should be forthcoming

upon requisition. Such as came were duly tried and acquitted; and

Mataafa's offer was communicated to the chief justice, who made a formal

answer, and the same day (in pursuance of his constant design to have

Malie attacked by war-ships) reported to one of the consuls that his

warrant would not run in the country and that certain of the accused had

been withheld. At least, this is not fair dealing; and the next instance

I have to give is possibly worse. For one blunder the chief justice is

only so far responsible, in that he was not present where it seems he

should have been, when it was made. He had nothing to do with the silly

proscription of the Mataafas; he has always disliked the measure; and it

occurred to him at last that he might get rid of this dangerous

absurdity and at the same time reap a further advantage. Let Mataafa

leave Malie for any other district in Samoa; it should be construed as

an act of submission and the confiscation and proscription instantly

recalled. This was certainly well devised; the government escaped from

their own false position, and by the same stroke lowered the prestige of

their adversaries. But unhappily the chief justice did not put all his

eggs in one basket. Concurrently with these negotiations he began again

to move the captain of one of the war-ships to shell the rebel village;

the captain, conceiving the extremity wholly unjustified, not only

refused these instances, but more or less publicly complained of their

being made; the matter came to the knowledge of the white resident who

was at that time playing the part of intermediary with Malie; and he, in

natural anger and disgust, withdrew from the negotiation. These

duplicities, always deplorable when discovered, are never more fatal

than with men imperfectly civilised. Almost incapable of truth

themselves, they cherish a particular score of the same fault in whites.

And Mataafa is besides an exceptional native. I would scarce dare say of

any Samoan that he is truthful, though I seem to have encountered the

phenomenon; but I must say of Mataafa that he seems distinctly and

consistently averse to lying.

For the affair of the Manono prisoners, the chief justice is only again

in so far answerable as he was at the moment absent from the seat of his

duties; and the blame falls on Baron Senfft von Pilsach, president of

the municipal council. There were in Manono certain dissidents, loyal to

Laupepa. Being Manono people, I daresay they were very annoying to their

neighbours; the majority, as they belonged to the same island, were the

more impatient; and one fine day fell upon and destroyed the houses and

harvests of the dissidents "according to the laws and customs of Samoa."

The president went down to the unruly island in a war-ship and was

landed alone upon the beach. To one so much a stranger to the mansuetude

of Polynesians, this must have seemed an act of desperation; and the

baron's gallantry met with a deserved success. The six ring-leaders,

acting in Mataafa's interest, had been guilty of a delict; with

Mataafa's approval, they delivered themselves over to be tried. On

Friday, September 4, 1891, they were convicted before a native

magistrate and sentenced to six months' imprisonment; or, I should

rather say, detention; for it was expressly directed that they were to

be used as gentlemen and not as prisoners, that the door was to stand

open, and that all their wishes should be gratified. This extraordinary

sentence fell upon the accused like a thunderbolt. There is no need to

suppose perfidy, where a careless interpreter suffices to explain all;

but the six chiefs claim to have understood their coming to Apia as an

act of submission merely formal, that they came in fact under an implied

indemnity, and that the president stood pledged to see them scatheless.

Already, on their way from the court-house, they were tumultuously

surrounded by friends and clansmen, who pressed and cried upon them to

escape; Lieutenant Ulfsparre must order his men to load; and with that

the momentary effervescence died away. Next day, Saturday, 5th, the

chief justice took his departure from the islands--a step never yet

explained and (in view of the doings of the day before and the

remonstrances of other officials) hard to justify. The president, an

amiable and brave young man of singular inexperience, was thus left to

face the growing difficulty by himself. The clansmen of the prisoners,

to the number of near upon a hundred, lay in Vaiusu, a village half way

between Apia and Malie; there they talked big, thence sent menacing

messages; the gaol should be broken in the night, they said, and the six

martyrs rescued. Allowance is to be made for the character of the people

of Manono, turbulent fellows, boastful of tongue, but of late days not

thought to be answerably bold in person. Yet the moment was anxious. The

government of Mulinuu had gained an important moral victory by the

surrender and condemnation of the chiefs; and it was needful the victory

should be maintained. The guard upon the gaol was accordingly

strengthened; a war-party was sent to watch the Vaiusu road under Asi;

and the chiefs of the Vaimaunga were notified to arm and assemble their

men. It must be supposed the president was doubtful of the loyalty of

these assistants. He turned at least to the war-ships, where it seems he

was rebuffed; thence he fled into the arms of the wrecker gang, where he

was unhappily more successful. The government of Washington had

presented to the Samoan king the wrecks of the _Trenton_ and the

_Vandalia_; an American syndicate had been formed to break them up; an

experienced gang was in consequence settled in Apia; and the report of

submarine explosions had long grown familiar in the ears of residents.

From these artificers the president obtained a supply of dynamite, the

needful mechanism, and the loan of a mechanic; the gaol was mined, and

the Manono people in Vaiusu were advertised of the fact in a letter

signed by Laupepa. Partly by the indiscretion of the mechanic, who had

sought to embolden himself (like Lady Macbeth) with liquor for his

somewhat dreadful task, the story leaked immediately out and raised a

very general, or I might say almost universal, reprobation. Some blamed

the proposed deed because it was barbarous and a foul example to set

before a race half barbarous itself; others because it was illegal;

others again because, in the face of so weak an enemy, it appeared

pitifully pusillanimous; almost all because it tended to precipitate

and embitter war. In the midst of the turmoil he had raised, and under

the immediate pressure of certain indignant white residents, the baron

fell back upon a new expedient, certainly less barbarous, perhaps no

more legal; and on Monday afternoon, September 7th, packed his six

prisoners on board the cutter _Lancashire Lass_, and deported them to

the neighbouring low-island group of the Tokelaus. We watched her put to

sea with mingled feelings. Anything were better than dynamite, but this

was not good. The men had been summoned in the name of law; they had

surrendered; the law had uttered its voice; they were under one sentence

duly delivered; and now the president, by no right with which we were

acquainted, had exchanged it for another. It was perhaps no less

fortunate, though it was more pardonable in a stranger, that he had

increased the punishment to that which, in the eyes of Samoans, ranks

next to death,--exile from their native land and friends. And the

_Lancashire Lass_ appeared to carry away with her into the uttermost

parts of the sea the honour of the administration and the prestige of

the supreme court.

The policy of the government towards Mataafa has thus been of a piece

throughout; always would-be violent, it has been almost always defaced

with some appearance of perfidy or unfairness. The policy of Mataafa

(though extremely bewildering to any white) appears everywhere

consistent with itself, and the man's bearing has always been calm. But

to represent the fulness of the contrast, it is necessary that I should

give some description of the two capitals, or the two camps, and the

ways and means of the regular and irregular government.

_Mulinuu_. Mulinuu, the reader may remember, is a narrow finger of land

planted in cocoa-palms, which runs forth into the lagoon perhaps three

quarters of a mile. To the east is the bay of Apia. To the west, there

is, first of all, a mangrove swamp, the mangroves excellently green, the

mud ink-black, and its face crawled upon by countless insects and black

and scarlet crabs. Beyond the swamp is a wide and shallow bay of the

lagoon, bounded to the west by Faleula Point. Faleula is the next

village to Malie; so that from the top of some tall palm in Malie it

should be possible to descry against the eastern heavens the palms of

Mulinuu. The trade wind sweeps over the low peninsula and cleanses it

from the contagion of the swamp. Samoans have a quaint phrase in their

language; when out of health, they seek exposed places on the shore "to

eat the wind," say they; and there can be few better places for such a

diet than the point of Mulinuu.

Two European houses stand conspicuous on the harbour side; in Europe they

would seem poor enough, but they are fine houses for Samoa. One is new;

it was built the other day under the apologetic title of a Government

House, to be the residence of Baron Senfft. The other is historical; it

was built by Brandeis on a mortgage, and is now occupied by the chief

justice on conditions never understood, the rumour going uncontradicted

that he sits rent free. I do not say it is true, I say it goes

uncontradicted; and there is one peculiarity of our officials in a

nutshell,--their remarkable indifference to their own character. From the

one house to the other extends a scattering village for the Faipule or

native parliament men. In the days of Tamasese this was a brave place,

both his own house and those of the Faipule good, and the whole

excellently ordered and approached by a sanded way. It is now like a

neglected bush-town, and speaks of apathy in all concerned. But the chief

scandal of Mulinuu is elsewhere. The house of the president stands just

to seaward of the isthmus, where the watch is set nightly, and armed men

guard the uneasy slumbers of the government. On the landward side there

stands a monument to the poor German lads who fell at Fangalii, just

beyond which the passer-by may chance to observe a little house standing

backward from the road. It is such a house as a commoner might use in a

bush village; none could dream that it gave shelter even to a family

chief; yet this is the palace of Malietoa-Natoaitele-Tamasoalii Laupepa,

king of Samoa. As you sit in his company under this humble shelter, you

shall see, between the posts, the new house of the president. His Majesty

himself beholds it daily, and the tenor of his thoughts may be divined.

The fine house of a Samoan chief is his appropriate attribute; yet, after

seventeen months, the government (well housed themselves) have not yet

found--have not yet sought--a roof-tree for their sovereign. And the

lodging is typical. I take up the president's financial statement of

September 8, 1891. I find the king's allowance to figure at seventy-five

dollars a month; and I find that he is further (though somewhat

obscurely) debited with the salaries of either two or three clerks. Take

the outside figure, and the sum expended on or for His Majesty amounts to

ninety-five dollars in the month. Lieutenant Ulfsparre and Dr. Hagberg

(the chief justice's Swedish friends) drew in the same period one hundred

and forty and one hundred dollars respectively on account of salary

alone. And it should be observed that Dr. Hagberg was employed, or at

least paid, from government funds, in the face of His Majesty's express

and reiterated protest. In another column of the statement, one hundred

and seventy-five dollars and seventy-five cents are debited for the chief

justice's travelling expenses. I am of the opinion that if His Majesty

desired (or dared) to take an outing, he would be asked to bear the

charge from his allowance. But although I think the chief justice had

done more nobly to pay for himself, I am far from denying that his

excursions were well meant; he should indeed be praised for having made

them; and I leave the charge out of consideration in the following

statement.

ON THE ONE HAND

Salary of Chief Justice Cedarkrantz $500

Salary of President Baron Senfft von Pilsach (about) 415

Salary of Lieutenant Ulfsparre, Chief of Police 140

Salary of Dr. Hagberg, Private Secretary to the Chief Justice 100

-----

Total monthly salary to four whites, one of them paid against

His Majesty's protest $1155

ON THE OTHER HAND

Total monthly payments to and for His Majesty the King,

including allowance and hire of three clerks, one of these

placed under the rubric of extraordinary expenses $95

This looks strange enough and mean enough already. But we have ground of

comparison in the practice of Brandeis.

Brandeis, white prime minister $200

Tamasese (about) 160

White Chief of Police 100

Under Brandeis, in other words, the king received the second highest

allowance on the sheet; and it was a good second, and the third was a

bad third. And it must be borne in mind that Tamasese himself was

pointed and laughed at among natives. Judge, then, what is muttered of

Laupepa, housed in his shanty before the president's doors like Lazarus

before the doors of Dives; receiving not so much of his own taxes as the

private secretary of the law officer; and (in actual salary) little more

than half as much as his own chief of police. It is known besides that

he has protested in vain against the charge for Dr. Hagberg; it is known

that he has himself applied for an advance and been refused. Money is

certainly a grave subject on Mulinuu; but respect costs nothing, and

thrifty officials might have judged it wise to make up in extra

politeness for what they curtailed of pomp or comfort. One instance may

suffice. Laupepa appeared last summer on a public occasion; the

president was there--and not even the president rose to greet the

entrance of the sovereign. Since about the same period, besides, the

monarch must be described as in a state of sequestration. A white man,

an Irishman, the true type of all that is most gallant, humorous, and

reckless in his country, chose to visit His Majesty and give him some

excellent advice (to make up his difference with Mataafa) couched

unhappily in vivid and figurative language. The adviser now sleeps in

the Pacific, but the evil that he chanced to do lives after him. His

Majesty was greatly (and I must say justly) offended by the freedom of

the expressions used; he appealed to his white advisers; and these,

whether from want of thought or by design, issued an ignominious

proclamation. Intending visitors to the palace must appear before their

consuls and justify their business. The majesty of buried Samoa was

henceforth only to be viewed (like a private collection) under special

permit; and was thus at once cut off from the company and opinions of

the self-respecting. To retain any dignity in such an abject state would

require a man of very different virtues from those claimed by the not

unvirtuous Laupepa. He is not designed to ride the whirlwind or direct

the storm, rather to be the ornament of private life. He is kind,

gentle, patient as Job, conspicuously well-intentioned, of charming

manners; and when he pleases, he has one accomplishment in which he now

begins to be alone--I mean that he can pronounce correctly his own

beautiful language.

The government of Brandeis accomplished a good deal and was continually

and heroically attempting more. The government of our two whites has

confined itself almost wholly to paying and receiving salaries. They

have built, indeed, a house for the president; they are believed (if

that be a merit) to have bought the local newspaper with government

funds; and their rule has been enlivened by a number of scandals, into

which I feel with relief that it is unnecessary I should enter. Even if

the three Powers do not remove these gentlemen, their absurd and

disastrous government must perish by itself of inanition. Native taxes

(except perhaps from Mataafa, true to his own private policy) have long

been beyond hope. And only the other day (May 6th, 1892), on the

expressed ground that there was no guarantee as to how the funds would

be expended, and that the president consistently refused to allow the

verification of his cash balances, the municipal council has negatived

the proposal to call up further taxes from the whites. All is well that

ends even ill, so that it end; and we believe that with the last dollar

we shall see the last of the last functionary. Now when it is so nearly

over, we can afford to smile at this extraordinary passage, though we

must still sigh over the occasion lost.

* * * * *

_Malie._ The way to Malie lies round the shores of Faleula bay and

through a succession of pleasant groves and villages. The road, one of

the works of Brandeis, is now cut up by pig fences. Eight times you must

leap a barrier of cocoa posts; the take-off and the landing both in a

patch of mire planted with big stones, and the stones sometimes reddened

with the blood of horses that have gone before. To make these obstacles

more annoying, you have sometimes to wait while a black boar clambers

sedately over the so-called pig fence. Nothing can more thoroughly

depict the worst side of the Samoan character than these useless

barriers which deface their only road. It was one of the first orders

issued by the government of Mulinuu after the coming of the chief

justice, to have the passage cleared. It is the disgrace of Mataafa that

the thing is not yet done.

The village of Malie is the scene of prosperity and peace. In a very

good account of a visit there, published in the _Australasian_, the

writer describes it to be fortified; she must have been deceived by the

appearance of some pig walls on the shore. There is no fortification, no

parade of war. I understand that from one to five hundred fighting men

are always within reach; but I have never seen more than five together

under arms, and these were the king's guard of honour. A Sabbath quiet

broods over the well-weeded green, the picketed horses, the troops of

pigs, the round or oval native dwellings. Of these there are a

surprising number, very fine of their sort: yet more are in the

building; and in the midst a tall house of assembly, by far the greatest

Samoan structure now in these islands, stands about half finished and

already makes a figure in the landscape. No bustle is to be observed,

but the work accomplished testifies to a still activity.

The centre-piece of all is the high chief himself,

Malietoa-Tuiatua-Tuiaana Mataafa, king--or not king--or

king-claimant--of Samoa. All goes to him, all comes from him. Native

deputations bring him gifts and are feasted in return. White travellers,

to their indescribable irritation, are (on his approach) waved from his

path by his armed guards. He summons his dancers by the note of a bugle.

He sits nightly at home before a semicircle of talking-men from many

quarters of the islands, delivering and hearing those ornate and elegant

orations in which the Samoan heart delights. About himself and all his

surroundings there breathes a striking sense of order, tranquillity, and

native plenty. He is of a tall and powerful person, sixty years of age,

white-haired and with a white moustache; his eyes bright and quiet; his

jaw perceptibly underhung, which gives him something of the expression

of a benevolent mastiff; his manners dignified and a thought

insinuating, with an air of a Catholic prelate. He was never married,

and a natural daughter attends upon his guests. Long since he made a vow

of chastity,--"to live as our Lord lived on this earth," and Polynesians

report with bated breath that he has kept it. On all such points, true

to his Catholic training, he is inclined to be even rigid. Lauati, the

pivot of Savaii, has recently repudiated his wife and taken a fairer;

and when I was last in Malie, Mataafa (with a strange superiority to his

own interests) had but just despatched a reprimand. In his immediate

circle, in spite of the smoothness of his ways, he is said to be more

respected than beloved; and his influence is the child rather of

authority than popularity. No Samoan grandee now living need have

attempted that which he has accomplished during the last twelve months

with unimpaired prestige, not only to withhold his followers from war,

but to send them to be judged in the camp of their enemies on Mulinuu.

And it is a matter of debate whether such a triumph of authority were

ever possible before. Speaking for myself, I have visited and dwelt in

almost every seat of the Polynesian race, and have met but one man who

gave me a stronger impression of character and parts.

About the situation, Mataafa expresses himself with unshaken peace. To

the chief justice he refers with some bitterness; to Laupepa, with a

smile, as "my poor brother." For himself, he stands upon the treaty, and

expects sooner or later an election in which he shall be raised to the

chief power. In the meanwhile, or for an alternative, he would willingly

embrace a compromise with Laupepa; to which he would probably add one

condition, that the joint government should remain seated at Malie, a

sensible but not inconvenient distance from white intrigues and white

officials. One circumstance in my last interview particularly pleased

me. The king's chief scribe, Esela, is an old employe under Tamasese,

and the talk ran some while upon the character of Brandeis. Loyalty in

this world is after all not thrown away; Brandeis was guilty, in Samoan

eyes, of many irritating errors, but he stood true to Tamasese; in the

course of time a sense of this virtue and of his general uprightness has

obliterated the memory of his mistakes; and it would have done his heart

good if he could have heard his old scribe and his old adversary join in

praising him. "Yes," concluded Mataafa, "I wish we had Planteisa back

again." _A quelque chose malheur est bon._ So strong is the impression

produced by the defects of Cedarcrantz and Baron Senfft, that I believe

Mataafa far from singular in this opinion, and that the return of the

upright Brandeis might be even welcome to many.

I must add a last touch to the picture of Malie and the pretender's

life. About four in the morning, the visitor in his house will be

awakened by the note of a pipe, blown without, very softly and to a

soothing melody. This is Mataafa's private luxury to lead on pleasant

dreams. We have a bird here in Samoa that about the same hour of

darkness sings in the bush. The father of Mataafa, while he lived, was

a great friend and protector to all living creatures, and passed under

the by-name of _the King of Birds_. It may be it was among the woodland

clients of the sire that the son acquired his fancy for this morning

music.

* * * * *

I have now sought to render without extenuation the impressions

received: of dignity, plenty, and peace at Malie, of bankruptcy and

distraction at Mulinuu. And I wish I might here bring to an end

ungrateful labours. But I am sensible that there remain two points on

which it would be improper to be silent. I should be blamed if I did not

indicate a practical conclusion; and I should blame myself if I did not

do a little justice to that tried company of the Land Commissioners.

The Land Commission has been in many senses unfortunate. The original

German member, a gentleman of the name of Eggert, fell early into

precarious health; his work was from the first interrupted, he was at

last (to the regret of all that knew him) invalided home; and his

successor had but just arrived. In like manner, the first American

commissioner, Henry C. Ide, a man of character and intelligence, was

recalled (I believe by private affairs) when he was but just settling

into the spirit of the work; and though his place was promptly filled by

ex-Governor Ormsbee, a worthy successor, distinguished by strong and

vivacious common sense, the break was again sensible. The English

commissioner, my friend Bazett Michael Haggard, is thus the only one who

has continued at his post since the beginning. And yet, in spite of

these unusual changes, the Commission has a record perhaps unrivalled

among international commissions. It has been unanimous practically from

the first until the last; and out of some four hundred cases disposed

of, there is but one on which the members were divided. It was the more

unfortunate they should have early fallen in a difficulty with the

chief justice. The original ground of this is supposed to be a

difference of opinion as to the import of the Berlin Act, on which, as a

layman, it would be unbecoming if I were to offer an opinion. But it

must always seem as if the chief justice had suffered himself to be

irritated beyond the bounds of discretion. It must always seem as if his

original attempt to deprive the commissioners of the services of a

secretary and the use of a safe were even senseless; and his step in

printing and posting a proclamation denying their jurisdiction were

equally impolitic and undignified. The dispute had a secondary result

worse than itself. The gentleman appointed to be Natives' Advocate

shared the chief justice's opinion, was his close intimate, advised with

him almost daily, and drifted at last into an attitude of opposition to

his colleagues. He suffered himself besides (being a layman in law) to

embrace the interest of his clients with something of the warmth of a

partisan. Disagreeable scenes occurred in court; the advocate was more

than once reproved, he was warned that his consultations with the judge

of appeal tended to damage his own character and to lower the credit of

the appellate court. Having lost some cases on which he set importance,

it should seem that he spoke unwisely among natives. A sudden cry of

colour prejudice went up; and Samoans were heard to assure each other

that it was useless to appear before the Land Commission, which was

sworn to support the whites.

This deplorable state of affairs was brought to an end by the departure

from Samoa of the Natives' Advocate. He was succeeded _pro tempore_ by a

young New Zealander, E. W. Gurr, not much more versed in law than

himself, and very much less so in Samoan. Whether by more skill or

better fortune, Gurr has been able in the course of a few weeks to

recover for the natives several important tracts of land; and the

prejudice against the Commission seems to be abating as fast as it

arose. I should not omit to say that, in the eagerness of the original

advocate, there was much that was amiable; nor must I fail to point out

how much there was of blindness. Fired by the ardour of pursuit, he

seems to have regarded his immediate clients as the only natives extant

and the epitome and emblem of the Samoan race. Thus, in the case that

was the most exclaimed against as "an injustice to natives," his client,

Puaauli, was certainly nonsuited. But in that intricate affair who lost

the money? The German firm. And who got the land? Other natives. To

twist such a decision into evidence, either of a prejudice against

Samoans or a partiality to whites, is to keep one eye shut and have the

other bandaged.

And lastly, one word as to the future. Laupepa and Mataafa stand over

against each other, rivals with no third competitor. They may be said to

hold the great name of Malietoa in commission; each has borne the style,

each exercised the authority, of a Samoan king; one is secure of the

small but compact and fervent following of the Catholics, the other has

the sympathies of a large part of the Protestant majority, and upon any

sign of Catholic aggression would have more. With men so nearly

balanced, it may be asked whether a prolonged successful exercise of

power be possible for either. In the case of the feeble Laupepa, it is

certainly not; we have the proof before us. Nor do I think we should

judge, from what we see to-day, that it would be possible, or would

continue to be possible, even for the kingly Mataafa. It is always the

easier game to be in opposition. The tale of David and Saul would

infallibly be re-enacted; once more we shall have two kings in the

land,--the latent and the patent; and the house of the first will become

once more the resort of "every one that is in distress, and every one

that is in debt, and every one that is discontented." Against such odds

it is my fear that Mataafa might contend in vain; it is beyond the

bounds of my imagination that Laupepa should contend at all. Foreign

ships and bayonets is the cure proposed in Mulinuu. And certainly, if

people at home desire that money should be thrown away and blood shed

in Samoa, an effect of a kind, and for the time, may be produced. Its

nature and prospective durability I will ask readers of this volume to

forecast for themselves. There is one way to peace and unity: that

Laupepa and Mataafa should be again conjoined on the best terms

procurable. There may be other ways, although I cannot see them; but not

even malevolence, not even stupidity, can deny that this is one. It

seems, indeed, so obvious, and sure, and easy, that men look about with

amazement and suspicion, seeking some hidden motive why it should not be

adopted.

To Laupepa's opposition, as shown in the case of the Lauati scheme, no

dweller in Samoa will give weight, for they know him to be as putty in

the hands of his advisers. It may be right, it may be wrong, but we are

many of us driven to the conclusion that the stumbling-block is

Fangalii, and that the memorial of that affair shadows appropriately the

house of a king who reigns in right of it. If this be all, it should not

trouble us long. Germany has shown she can be generous; it now remains

for her only to forget a natural but certainly ill-grounded prejudice,

and allow to him, who was sole king before the plenipotentiaries

assembled, and who would be sole king to-morrow if the Berlin Act could

be rescinded, a fitting share of rule. The future of Samoa should lie

thus in the hands of a single man, on whom the eyes of Europe are

already fixed. Great concerns press on his attention; the Samoan group,

in his view, is but as a grain of dust; and the country where he reigns

has bled on too many august scenes of victory to remember for ever a

blundering skirmish in the plantation of Vailele. It is to him--to the

sovereign of the wise Stuebel and the loyal Brandeis,--that I make my

appeal.

_May_ 25, 1892.

ISLAND NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENTS

TO

THREE OLD SHIPMATES AMONG THE ISLANDS

HARRY HENDERSON

BEN HIRD

JACK BUCKLAND

THEIR FRIEND

R. L. S.

THE BEACH OF FALESA

(BEING THE NARRATIVE OF A SOUTH SEA TRADER)

THE BEACH OF FALESA

CHAPTER I

A SOUTH SEA BRIDAL

I saw that island first when it was neither night nor morning. The moon

was to the west, setting, but still broad and bright. To the east, and

right amidships of the dawn, which was all pink, the day-star sparkled

like a diamond. The land breeze blew in our faces, and smelt strong of

wild lime and vanilla: other things besides, but these were the most

plain; and the chill of it set me sneezing. I should say I had been for

years on a low island near the line, living for the most part solitary

among natives. Here was a fresh experience: even the tongue would be

quite strange to me; and the look of these woods and mountains, and the

rare smell of them, renewed my blood.

The captain blew out the binnacle lamp.

"There!" said he, "there goes a bit of smoke, Mr. Wiltshire, behind the

break of the reef. That's Falesa, where your station is, the last

village to the east; nobody lives to windward--I don't know why. Take my

glass, and you can make the houses out."

I took the glass; and the shores leaped nearer, and I saw the tangle of

the woods and the breach of the surf, and the brown roofs and the black

insides of houses peeped among the trees.

"Do you catch a bit of white there to the east'ard?" the captain

continued. "That's your house. Coral built, stands high, verandah you

could walk on three abreast; best station in the South Pacific. When old

Adams saw it, he took and shook me by the hand. 'I've dropped into a

soft thing here,' says he. 'So you have,' says I, 'and time too!' Poor

Johnny! I never saw him again but the once, and then he had changed his

tune--couldn't get on with the natives, or the whites, or something; and

the next time we came round there he was dead and buried. I took and put

up a bit of stick to him: 'John Adams, _obiit_ eighteen and sixty-eight.

Go thou and do likewise.' I missed that man. I never could see much harm

in Johnny."

"What did he die of?" I inquired.

"Some kind of sickness," says the captain. "It appears it took him

sudden. Seems he got up in the night, and filled up on Pain-Killer and

Kennedy's Discovery. No go: he was booked beyond Kennedy. Then he had

tried to open a case of gin. No go again: not strong enough. Then he

must have turned to and run out on the verandah, and capsized over the

rail. When they found him, the next day, he was clean crazy--carried on

all the time about somebody watering his copra. Poor John!"

"Was it thought to be the island?" I asked.

"Well, it was thought to be the island, or the trouble, or something,"

he replied. "I never could hear but what it was a healthy place. Our

last man, Vigours, never turned a hair. He left because of the

beach--said he was afraid of Black Jack and Case and Whistling Jimmie,

who was still alive at the time, but got drowned soon afterward when

drunk. As for old Captain Randall, he's been here any time since

eighteen-forty, forty-five. I never could see much harm in Billy, nor

much change. Seems as if he might live to be Old Kafoozleum. No, I guess

it's healthy."

"There's a boat coming now," said I. "She's right in the pass; looks to

be a sixteen-foot whale; two white men in the stern-sheets."

"That's the boat that drowned Whistling Jimmie!" cried the captain;

"let's see the glass. Yes, that's Case, sure enough, and the darkie.

They've got a gallows bad reputation, but you know what a place the

beach is for talking. My belief, that Whistling Jimmie was the worst of

the trouble; and he's gone to glory, you see. What'll you bet they ain't

after gin? Lay you five to two they take six cases."

When these two traders came aboard I was pleased with the looks of them

at once, or, rather, with the looks of both, and the speech of one. I

was sick for white neighbours after my four years at the line, which I

always counted years of prison; getting tabooed, and going down to the

Speak House to see and get it taken off; buying gin and going on a

break, and then repenting; sitting in the house at night with the lamp

for company; or walking on the beach and wondering what kind of a fool

to call myself for being where I was. There were no other whites upon my

island, and when I sailed to the next, rough customers made the most of

the society. Now to see these two when they came aboard was a pleasure.

One was a negro, to be sure; but they were both rigged out smart in

striped pyjamas and straw hats, and Case would have passed muster in a

city. He was yellow and smallish, had a hawk's nose to his face, pale

eyes, and his beard trimmed with scissors. No man knew his country,

beyond he was of English speech; and it was clear he came of a good

family and was splendidly educated. He was accomplished too; played the

accordion first-rate; and give him a piece of string or a cork or a pack

of cards, and he could show you tricks equal to any professional. He

could speak, when he chose, fit for a drawing-room; and when he chose he

could blaspheme worse than a Yankee boatswain, and talk smart to sicken

a Kanaka. The way he thought would pay best at the moment, that was

Case's way, and it always seemed to come natural, and like as if he was

born to it. He had the courage of a lion and the cunning of a rat; and

if he's not in hell to-day, there's no such place. I know but one good

point to the man: that he was fond of his wife, and kind to her. She was

a Samoa woman, and dyed her hair red, Samoa style; and when he came to

die (as I have to tell of) they found one strange thing--that he had

made a will, like a Christian, and the widow got the lot: all his, they

said, and all Black Jack's, and the most of Billy Randall's in the

bargain, for it was Case that kept the books. So she went off home in

the schooner _Manu'a_, and does the lady to this day in her own place.

But of all this on that first morning I knew no more than a fly. Case

used me like a gentleman and like a friend, made me welcome to Falesa,

and put his services at my disposal, which was the more helpful from my

ignorance of the native. All the better part of the day we sat drinking

better acquaintance in the cabin, and I never heard a man talk more to

the point. There was no smarter trader, and none dodgier, in the

islands. I thought Falesa seemed to be the right kind of a place; and

the more I drank the lighter my heart. Our last trader had fled the

place at half an hour's notice, taking a chance passage in a labour ship

from up west. The captain, when he came, had found the station closed,

the keys left with the native pastor, and a letter from the runaway,

confessing he was fairly frightened of his life. Since then the firm had

not been represented, and of course there was no cargo. The wind,

besides, was fair, the captain hoped he could make his next island by

dawn, with a good tide, and the business of landing my trade was gone

about lively. There was no call for me to fool with it, Case said;

nobody would touch my things, every one was honest in Falesa, only about

chickens or an odd knife or an odd stick of tobacco; and the best I

could do was to sit quiet till the vessel left, then come straight to

his house, see old Captain Randall, the father of the beach, take

pot-luck, and go home to sleep when it got dark. So it was high noon,

and the schooner was under way, before I set my foot on shore at

Falesa.

I had a glass or two on board; I was just off a long cruise, and the

ground heaved under me like a ship's deck. The world was like all new

painted; my foot went along to music; Falesa might have been Fiddler's

Green, if there is such a place, and more's the pity if there isn't! It

was good to foot the grass, to look aloft at the green mountains, to see

the men with their green wreaths and the women in their bright dresses,

red and blue. On we went, in the strong sun and the cool shadow, liking

both; and all the children in the town came trotting after with their

shaven heads and their brown bodies, and raising a thin kind of a cheer

in our wake, like crowing poultry.

"By the by," says Case, "we must get you a wife."

"That's so," said I; "I had forgotten."

There was a crowd of girls about us, and I pulled myself up and looked

among them like a Bashaw. They were all dressed out for the sake of the

ship being in; and the women of Falesa are a handsome lot to see. If

they have a fault, they are a trifle broad in the beam; and I was just

thinking so when Case touched me.

"That's pretty," says he.

I saw one coming on the other side alone. She had been fishing; all she

wore was a chemise, and it was wetted through. She was young and very

slender for an island maid, with a long face, a high forehead, and a

shy, strange, blindish look, between a cat's and a baby's.

"Who's she?" said I. "She'll do."

"That's Uma," said Case, and he called her up and spoke to her in the

native. I didn't know what he said; but when he was in the midst she

looked up at me quick and timid, like a child dodging a blow, then down

again, and presently smiled. She had a wide mouth, the lips and the chin

cut like any statue's; and the smile came out for a moment and was gone.

Then she stood with her head bent, and heard Case to an end, spoke back

in the pretty Polynesian voice, looking him full in the face, heard him

again in answer, and then with an obeisance started off. I had just a

share of the bow, but never another shot of her eye, and there was no

more word of smiling.

"I guess it's all right," said Case. "I guess you can have her. I'll

make it square with the old lady. You can have your pick of the lot for

a plug of tobacco," he added, sneering.

I suppose it was the smile stuck in my memory, for I spoke back sharp.

"She doesn't look that sort," I cried.

"I don't know that she is," said Case. "I believe she's as right as the

mail. Keeps to herself, don't go round with the gang, and that. O no,

don't you misunderstand me--Uma's on the square." He spoke eager, I

thought, and that surprised and pleased me. "Indeed," he went on, "I

shouldn't make so sure of getting her, only she cottoned to the cut of

your jib. All you have to do is to keep dark and let me work the mother

my own way; and I'll bring the girl round to the captain's for the

marriage."

I didn't care for the word marriage, and I said so.

"O, there's nothing to hurt in the marriage," says he. "Black Jack's the

chaplain."

By this time we had come in view of the house of these three white men;

for a negro is counted a white man, and so is a Chinese! a strange idea,

but common in the islands. It was a board house with a strip of rickety

verandah. The store was to the front, with a counter, scales, and the

poorest possible display of trade: a case or two of tinned meats, a

barrel of hard bread, a few bolts of cotton stuff, not to be compared

with mine; the only thing well represented being the contraband,

firearms and liquor. "If these are my only rivals," thinks I, "I should

do well in Falesa." Indeed, there was only the one way they could touch

me, and that was with the guns and drink.

In the back room was old Captain Randall, squatting on the floor native

fashion, fat and pale, naked to the waist, grey as a badger, and his

eyes set with drink. His body was covered with grey hair and crawled

over by flies; one was in the corner of his eye--he never heeded; and

the mosquitoes hummed about the man like bees. Any clean-minded man

would have had the creature out at once and buried him; and to see him,

and think he was seventy, and remember he had once commanded a ship, and

come ashore in his smart togs, and talked big in bars and consulates,

and sat in club verandahs, turned me sick and sober.

He tried to get up when I came in, but that was hopeless; so he reached

me a hand instead, and stumbled out some salutation.

"Papa's[2] pretty full this morning," observed Case. "We've had an

epidemic here; and Captain Randall takes gin for a prophylactic--don't

you, Papa?"

"Never took such a thing in my life!" cried the captain indignantly.

"Take gin for my health's sake, Mr. Wha's-ever-your-name--'s a

precautionary measure."

"That's all right, Papa," said Case. "But you'll have to brace up.

There's going to be a marriage--Mr. Wiltshire here is going to get

spliced."

The old man asked to whom.

"To Uma," said Case.

"Uma!" cried the captain. "Wha's he want Uma for? 's he come here for

his health, anyway? Wha' 'n hell 's he want Uma for?"

"Dry up, Papa," said Case. "'Tain't you that's to marry her. I guess

you're not her godfather and godmother. I guess Mr. Wiltshire's going to

please himself."

With that he made an excuse to me that he must move about the marriage,

and left me alone with the poor wretch that was his partner and (to

speak truth) his gull. Trade and station belonged both to Randall; Case

and the negro were parasites; they crawled and fed upon him like the

flies, he none the wiser. Indeed, I have no harm to say of Billy

Randall beyond the fact that my gorge rose at him, and the time I now

passed in his company was like a nightmare.

The room was stifling hot and full of flies; for the house was dirty and

low and small, and stood in a bad place, behind the village, in the

borders of the bush, and sheltered from the trade. The three men's beds

were on the floor, and a litter of pans and dishes. There was no

standing furniture; Randall, when he was violent, tearing it to laths.

There I sat and had a meal which was served us by Case's wife; and there

I was entertained all day by that remains of man, his tongue stumbling

among low old jokes and long old stories, and his own wheezy laughter

always ready, so that he had no sense of my depression. He was nipping

gin all the while. Sometimes he fell asleep, and awoke again, whimpering

and shivering, and every now and again he would ask me why I wanted to

marry Uma. "My friend," I was telling myself all day, "you must not come

to be an old gentleman like this."

It might be four in the afternoon, perhaps, when the back door was

thrust slowly open, and a strange old native woman crawled into the

house almost on her belly. She was swathed in black stuff to her heels;

her hair was grey in swatches; her face was tattooed, which was not the

practice in that island; her eyes big and bright and crazy. These she

fixed upon me with a rapt expression that I saw to be part acting. She

said no plain words, but smacked and mumbled with her lips, and hummed

aloud, like a child over its Christmas pudding. She came straight across

the house, heading for me, and, as soon as she was alongside, caught up

my hand and purred and crooned over it like a great cat. From this she

slipped into a kind of song.

"Who the devil's this?" cried I, for the thing startled me.

"It's Fa'avao," says Randall; and I saw he had hitched along the floor

into the farthest corner.

"You ain't afraid of her?" I cried.

"Me 'fraid!" cried the captain. "My dear friend, I defy her! I don't let

her put her foot in here, only I suppose 's different to-day, for the

marriage. 's Uma's mother."

"Well, suppose it is; what's she carrying on about?" I asked, more

irritated, perhaps more frightened, than I cared to show; and the

captain told me she was making up a quantity of poetry in my praise

because I was to marry Uma. "All right, old lady," says I, with rather a

failure of a laugh, "anything to oblige. But when you're done with my

hand, you might let me know."

She did as though she understood; the song rose into a cry, and stopped;

the woman crouched out of the house the same way that she came in, and

must have plunged straight into the bush, for when I followed her to the

door she had already vanished.

"These are rum manners," said I.

"'s a rum crowd," said the captain, and, to my surprise, he made the

sign of the cross on his bare bosom.

"Hillo!" says I, "are you a Papist?"

He repudiated the idea with contempt. "Hard-shell Baptis'," said he.

"But, my dear friend, the Papists got some good ideas too; and tha' 's

one of 'em. You take my advice, and whenever you come across Uma or

Fa'avao or Vigours, or any of that crowd, you take a leaf out o' the

priests, and do what I do. Savvy," says he, repeated the sign, and

winked his dim eye at me. "No, _sir!_" he broke out again, "no Papists

here!" and for a long time entertained me with his religious opinions.

I must have been taken with Uma from the first, or I should certainly

have fled from that house, and got into the clean air, and the clean

sea, or some convenient river--though, it's true, I was committed to

Case; and, besides, I could never have held my head up in that island if

I had run from a girl upon my wedding-night.

The sun was down, the sky all on fire, and the lamp had been some time

lighted, when Case came back with Uma and the negro. She was dressed

and scented; her kilt was of fine tapa, looking richer in the folds than

any silk; her bust, which was of the colour of dark honey, she wore bare

only for some half a dozen necklaces of seeds and flowers; and behind

her ears and in her hair she had the scarlet flowers of the hibiscus.

She showed the best bearing for a bride conceivable, serious and still;

and I thought shame to stand up with her in that mean house and before

that grinning negro. I thought shame, I say; for the mountebank was

dressed with a big paper collar, the book he made believe to read from

was an odd volume of a novel, and the words of his service not fit to be

set down. My conscience smote me when we joined hands; and when she got

her certificate I was tempted to throw up the bargain and confess. Here

is the document. It was Case that wrote it, signatures and all, in a

leaf out of the ledger:--

This is to certify that Uma, daughter of Fa'avao of Falesa, Island of

----, is illegally married to Mr. John Wiltshire for one week, and

Mr. John Wiltshire is at liberty to send her to hell when he pleases.

JOHN BLACKAMOAR,

Chaplain to the Hulks.

Extracted from the Register

by William T. Randall,

Master Mariner.

A nice paper to put in a girl's hand and see her hide away like gold. A

man might easily feel cheap for less. But it was the practice in these

parts, and (as I told myself) not the least the fault of us white men,

but of the missionaries. If they had let the natives be, I had never

needed this deception, but taken all the wives I wished, and left them

when I pleased, with a clear conscience.

The more ashamed I was, the more hurry I was in to be gone; and our

desires thus jumping together, I made the less remark of a change in the

traders. Case had been all eagerness to keep me; now, as though he had

attained a purpose, he seemed all eagerness to have me go. Uma, he

said, could show me to my house, and the three bade us farewell indoors.

The night was nearly come; the village smelt of trees and flowers and

the sea and breadfruit-cooking; there came a fine roll of sea from the

reef, and from a distance, among the woods and houses, many pretty

sounds of men and children. It did me good to breathe free air; it did

me good to be done with the captain and see, instead, the creature at my

side. I felt for all the world as though she were some girl at home in

the Old Country, and, forgetting myself for the minute, took her hand to

walk with. Her fingers nestled into mine, I heard her breathe deep and

quick, and all at once she caught my hand to her face and pressed it

there. "You good!" she cried, and ran ahead of me, and stopped and

looked back and smiled, and ran ahead of me again, thus guiding me

through the edge of the bush, and by a quiet way to my own house.

The truth is, Case had done the courting for me in style--told her I was

mad to have her, and cared nothing for the consequence; and the poor

soul, knowing that which I was still ignorant of, believed it, every

word, and had her head nigh turned with vanity and gratitude. Now, of

all this I had no guess; I was one of those most opposed to any nonsense

about native women, having seen so many whites eaten up by their wives'

relatives, and made fools of in the bargain; and I told myself I must

make a stand at once, and bring her to her bearings. But she looked so

quaint and pretty as she ran away and then awaited me, and the thing was

done so like a child or a kind dog, that the best I could do was just to

follow her whenever she went on, to listen for the fall of her bare

feet, and to watch in the dusk for the shining of her body. And there

was another thought came in my head. She played kitten with me now when

we were alone; but in the house she had carried it the way a countess

might, so proud and humble. And what with her dress--for all there was

so little of it, and that native enough--what with her fine tapa and

fine scents, and her red flowers and seeds, that were quite as bright

as jewels, only larger--it came over me she was a kind of countess

really, dressed to hear great singers at a concert, and no even mate for

a poor trader like myself.

She was the first in the house; and while I was still without I saw a

match flash and the lamplight kindle in the windows. The station was a

wonderful fine place, coral built, with quite a wide verandah, and the

main room high and wide. My chests and cases had been piled in, and made

rather of a mess; and there, in the thick of the confusion, stood Uma by

the table, awaiting me. Her shadow went all the way up behind her into

the hollow of the iron roof; she stood against it bright, the lamplight

shining on her skin. I stopped in the door, and she looked at me, not

speaking, with eyes that were eager and yet daunted; then she touched

herself on the bosom.

"Me--your wifie," she said. It had never taken me like that before; but

the want of her took and shook all through me, like the wind in the luff

of a sail.

I could not speak if I had wanted; and if I could, I would not. I was

ashamed to be so much moved about a native, ashamed of the marriage too,

and the certificate she had treasured in her kilt; and I turned aside

and made believe to rummage among my cases. The first thing I lighted on

was a case of gin, the only one that I had brought; and, partly for the

girl's sake, and partly for horror of the recollections of old Randall,

took a sudden resolve. I prised the lid off. One by one I drew the

bottles with a pocket corkscrew, and sent Uma out to pour the stuff from

the verandah.

She came back after the last, and looked at me puzzled like.

"No good," said I, for I was now a little better master of my tongue.

"Man he drink, he no good."

She agreed with this, but kept considering. "Why you bring him?" she

asked presently. "Suppose you no want drink, you no bring him, I think."

"That's all right," said I. "One time I want drink too much; now no

want. You see, I no savvy I get one little wifie. Suppose I drink gin,

my little wifie he 'fraid."

To speak to her kindly was about more than I was fit for; I had made my

vow I would never let on to weakness with a native, and I had nothing

for it but to stop.

She stood looking gravely down at me where I sat by the open case. "I

think you good man," she said. And suddenly she had fallen before me on

the floor. "I belong you all-e-same pig!" she cried.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] Please pronounce _pappa_ throughout.

CHAPTER II

THE BAN

I came on the verandah just before the sun rose on the morrow. My house

was the last on the east; there was a cape of woods and cliffs behind

that hid the sunrise. To the west, a swift cold river ran down, and

beyond was the green of the village, dotted with cocoa-palms and

breadfruits and houses. The shutters were some of them down and some

open; I saw the mosquito bars still stretched, with shadows of people

new-awakened sitting up inside; and all over the green others were

stalking silent, wrapped in their many-coloured sleeping clothes like

Bedouins in Bible pictures. It was mortal still and solemn and chilly,

and the light of the dawn on the lagoon was like the shining of a fire.

But the thing that troubled me was nearer hand. Some dozen young men and

children made a piece of a half-circle, flanking my house: the river

divided them, some were on the near side, some on the far, and one on a

boulder in the midst; and they all sat silent, wrapped in their sheets,

and stared at me and my house as straight as pointer dogs. I thought it

strange as I went out. When I had bathed and come back again, and found

them all there, and two or three more along with them, I thought it

stranger still. What could they see to gaze at in my house, I wondered,

and went in.

But the thought of these starers stuck in my mind, and presently I came

out again. The sun was now up, but it was still behind the cape of

woods. Say a quarter of an hour had come and gone. The crowd was

greatly increased, the far bank of the river was lined for quite a

way--perhaps thirty grown folk, and of children twice as many, some

standing, some squatted on the ground, and all staring at my house. I

have seen a house in the South Sea village thus surrounded, but then a

trader was thrashing his wife inside, and she singing out. Here was

nothing: the stove was alight, the smoke going up in a Christian manner;

all was shipshape and Bristol fashion. To be sure, there was a stranger

come, but they had a chance to see that stranger yesterday, and took it

quiet enough. What ailed them now? I leaned my arms on the rail and

stared back. Devil a wink they had in them! Now and then I could see the

children chatter, but they spoke so low not even the hum of their

speaking came my length. The rest were like graven images: they stared

at me, dumb and sorrowful, with their bright eyes; and it came upon me

things would look not much different if I were on the platform of the

gallows, and these good folk had come to see me hanged.

I felt I was getting daunted, and began to be afraid I looked it, which

would never do. Up I stood, made believe to stretch myself, came down

the verandah stair, and strolled towards the river. There went a short

buzz from one to the other, like what you hear in theatres when the

curtain goes up; and some of the nearest gave back the matter of a pace.

I saw a girl lay one hand on a young man and make a gesture upward with

the other; at the same time she said something in the native with a

gasping voice. Three little boys sat beside my path, where I must pass

within three feet of them. Wrapped in their sheets, with their shaved

heads and bits of top-knots, and queer faces, they looked like figures

on a chimney-piece. A while they sat their ground, solemn as judges. I

came up hand over fist, doing my five knots, like a man that meant

business; and I thought I saw a sort of a wink and gulp in the three

faces. Then one jumped up (he was the farthest off) and ran for his

mammy. The other two, trying to follow suit, got foul, came to ground

together bawling, wriggled right out of their sheets mother-naked, and

in a moment there were all three of them scampering for their lives and

singing out like pigs. The natives, who would never let a joke slip,

even at a burial, laughed and let up, as short as a dog's bark.

They say it scares a man to be alone. No such thing. What scares him in

the dark or the high bush is that he can't make sure, and there might be

an army at his elbow. What scares him worst is to be right in the midst

of a crowd, and have no guess of what they're driving at. When that

laugh stopped, I stopped too. The boys had not yet made their offing,

they were still on the full stretch going the one way, when I had

already gone about ship and was sheering off the other. Like a fool I

had come out, doing my five knots; like a fool I went back again. It

must have been the funniest thing to see, and, what knocked me silly,

this time no one laughed; only one old woman gave a kind of pious moan,

the way you have heard Dissenters in their chapels at the sermon.

"I never saw such fools of Kanakas as your people here," I said once to

Uma, glancing out of the window at the starers.

"Savvy nothing," says Uma, with a kind of disgusted air that she was

good at.

And that was all the talk we had upon the matter, for I was put out, and

Uma took the thing so much as a matter of course that I was fairly

ashamed.

All day, off and on, now fewer and now more, the fools sat about the

west end of my house and across the river, waiting for the show,

whatever that was--fire to come down from heaven, I suppose, and consume

me, bones and baggage. But by evening, like real islanders, they had

wearied of the business, and got away, and had a dance instead in the

big house of the village, where I heard them singing and clapping hands

till, maybe, ten at night, and the next day it seemed they had

forgotten I existed. If fire had come down from heaven or the earth

opened and swallowed me, there would have been nobody to see the sport

or take the lesson, or whatever you like to call it. But I was to find

that they hadn't forgot either, and kept an eye lifting for phenomena

over my way.

I was hard at it both these days getting my trade in order and taking

stock of what Vigours had left. This was a job that made me pretty sick,

and kept me from thinking on much else. Ben had taken stock the trip

before--I knew I could trust Ben--but it was plain somebody had been

making free in the meantime. I found I was out by what might easily

cover six months' salary and profit, and I could have kicked myself all

round the village to have been such a blamed ass, sitting boozing with

that Case instead of attending to my own affairs and taking stock.

However, there's no use crying over spilt milk. It was done now, and

couldn't be undone. All I could do was to get what was left of it, and

my new stuff (my own choice) in order, to go round and get after the

rats and cockroaches, and to fix up that store regular Sydney style. A

fine show I made of it; and the third morning when I had lit my pipe and

stood in the doorway and looked in, and turned and looked far up the

mountain and saw the cocoa-nuts waving and posted up the tons of copra,

and over the village green and saw the island dandies and reckoned up

the yards of print they wanted for their kilts and dresses, I felt as if

I was in the right place to make a fortune, and go home again and start

a public-house. There was I, sitting in that verandah, in as handsome a

piece of scenery as you could find, a splendid sun, and a fine, fresh,

healthy trade that stirred up a man's blood like sea-bathing; and the

whole thing was clean gone from me, and I was dreaming England, which

is, after all, a nasty, cold, muddy hole, with not enough light to see

to read by; and dreaming the looks of my public, by a cant of a broad

high-road like an avenue, and with the sign on a green tree.

So much for the morning; but the day passed and the devil any one looked

near me, and from all I knew of natives in other islands I thought this

strange. People laughed a little at our firm and their fine stations,

and at this station of Falesa in particular; all the copra in the

district wouldn't pay for it (I had heard them say) in fifty years,

which I supposed was an exaggeration. But when the day went, and no

business came at all, I began to get downhearted; and, about three in

the afternoon, I went out for a stroll to cheer me up. On the green I

saw a white man coming with a cassock on, by which and by the face of

him I knew he was a priest. He was a good-natured old soul to look at,

gone a little grizzled, and so dirty you could have written with him on

a piece of paper.

"Good day, sir," said I.

He answered me eagerly in native.

"Don't you speak any English?" said I.

"French," says he.

"Well," said I, "I'm sorry, but I can't do anything there."

He tried me a while in the French, and then again in native, which he

seemed to think was the best chance. I made out he was after more than

passing the time of day with me, but had something to communicate, and I

listened the harder. I heard the names of Adams and Case and of

Randall--Randall the oftenest--and the word "poison," or something like

it, and a native word that he said very often. I went home, repeating it

to myself.

"What does fussy-ocky mean?" I asked of Uma, for that was as near as I

could come to it.

"Make dead," said she.

"The devil it does!" says I. "Did you ever hear that Case had poisoned

Johnny Adams?"

"Every man he savvy that," says Uma, scornful-like. "Give him white

sand--bad sand. He got the bottle still. Suppose he give you gin, you no

take him."

Now I had heard much the same sort of story in other islands, and the

same white powder always to the front, which made me think the less of

it. For all that, I went over to Randall's place to see what I could

pick up, and found Case on the doorstep, cleaning a gun.

"Good shooting here?" says I.

"A1," says he. "The bush is full of all kinds of birds. I wish copra was

as plenty," says he--I thought, slyly--"but there don't seem anything

doing."

I could see Black Jack in the store, serving a customer.

"That looks like business, though," said I.

"That's the first sale we've made in three weeks," said he.

"You don't tell me?" says I. "Three weeks? Well, well."

"If you don't believe me," he cries, a little hot, "you can go and look

at the copra-house. It's half empty to this blessed hour."

"I shouldn't be much the better for that, you see," says I. "For all I

can tell, it might have been whole empty yesterday."

"That's so," says he, with a bit of a laugh.

"By the by," I said, "what sort of a party is that priest? Seems rather

a friendly sort."

At this Case laughed right out loud. "Ah!" says he, "I see what ails you

now. Galuchet's been at you." _Father Galoshes_ was the name he went by

most, but Case always gave it the French quirk, which was another reason

we had for thinking him above the common.

"Yes, I have seen him," I says. "I made out he didn't think much of your

Captain Randall."

"That he don't!" says Case. "It was the trouble about poor Adams. The

last day, when he lay dying, there was young Buncombe round. Ever met

Buncombe?"

I told him no.

"He's a cure, is Buncombe!" laughs Case. "Well, Buncombe took it in his

head that, as there was no other clergyman about, bar Kanaka pastors,

we ought to call in Father Galuchet, and have the old man administered

and take the sacrament. It was all the same to me, you may suppose; but

I said I thought Adams was the fellow to consult. He was jawing away

about watered copra and a sight of foolery. 'Look here,' I said, 'you're

pretty sick. Would you like to see Galoshes?' He sat right up on his

elbow. 'Get the priest,' says he, 'get the priest; don't let me die here

like a dog!' He spoke kind of fierce and eager, but sensible enough.

There was nothing to say against that, so we sent and asked Galuchet if

he would come. You bet he would. He jumped in his dirty linen at the

thought of it. But we had reckoned without Papa. He's a hard-shell

Baptist, is Papa; no Papists need apply. And he took and locked the

door. Buncombe told him he was bigoted, and I thought he would have had

a fit. 'Bigoted!' he says. 'Me bigoted? Have I lived to hear it from a

jackanapes like you?' And he made for Buncombe, and I had to hold them

apart; and there was Adams in the middle, gone luny again, and carrying

on about copra like a born fool. It was good as the play, and I was

about knocked out of time with laughing, when all of a sudden Adams sat

up, clapped his hands to his chest, and went into horrors. He died hard,

did John Adams," says Case, with a kind of a sudden sternness.

"And what became of the priest?" I asked.

"The priest?" says Case. "O! he was hammering on the door outside, and

crying on the natives to come and beat it in, and singing out it was a

soul he wished to save, and that. He was in a rare taking, was the

priest. But what would you have? Johnny had slipped his cable: no more

Johnny in the market; and the administration racket clean played out.

Next thing, word came to Randall the priest was praying upon Johnny's

grave. Papa was pretty full, and got a club, and lit out straight for

the place, and there was Galoshes on his knees, and a lot of natives

looking on. You wouldn't think Papa cared that much about anything,

unless it was liquor; but he and the priest stuck to it two hours,

slanging each other in native, and every time Galoshes tried to kneel

down Papa went for him with the club. There never were such larks in

Falesa. The end of it was that Captain Randall was knocked over with

some kind of a fit or stroke, and the priest got in his goods after all.

But he was the angriest priest you ever heard of, and complained to the

chiefs about the outrage, as he called it. That was no account, for our

chiefs are Protestant here; and, anyway, he had been making trouble

about the drum for morning school, and they were glad to give him a

wipe. Now he swears old Randall gave Adams poison or something, and when

the two meet they grin at each other like baboons."

He told the story as natural as could be, and like a man that enjoyed

the fun; though, now I come to think of it after so long, it seems

rather a sickening yarn. However, Case never set up to be soft, only to

be square and hearty, and a man all round; and, to tell the truth, he

puzzled me entirely.

I went home and asked Uma if she were a Popey, which I had made out to

be the native word for Catholics.

"_E le ai!_" says she. She always used the native when she meant "no"

more than usually strong, and, indeed, there's more of it. "No good

Popey," she added.

Then I asked her about Adams and the priest, and she told me much the

same yarn in her own way. So that I was left not much further on, but

inclined, upon the whole, to think the bottom of the matter was the row

about the sacrament, and the poisoning only talk.

The next day was a Sunday, when there was no business to be looked for.

Uma asked me in the morning if I was going to "pray"; I told her she bet

not, and she stopped home herself with no more words. I thought this

seemed unlike a native, and a native woman, and a woman that had new

clothes to show off; however, it suited me to the ground, and I made the

less of it. The queer thing was that I came next door to going to

church after all, a thing I'm little likely to forget. I had turned out

for a stroll, and heard the hymn tune up. You know how it is. If you

hear folk singing, it seems to draw you: and pretty soon I found myself

alongside the church. It was a little, long, low place, coral built,

rounded off at both ends like a whale-boat, a big native roof on the top

of it, windows without sashes and doorways without doors. I stuck my

head into one of the windows, and the sight was so new to me--for things

went quite different in the islands I was acquainted with--that I stayed

and looked on. The congregation sat on the floor on mats, the women on

one side, the men on the other, all rigged out to kill--the women with

dresses and trade hats, the men in white jackets and shirts. The hymn

was over; the pastor, a big buck Kanaka, was in the pulpit, preaching

for his life; and by the way he wagged his hand, and worked his voice,

and made his points, and seemed to argue with the folk, I made out he

was a gun at the business. Well, he looked up suddenly and caught my

eye, and I give you my word he staggered in the pulpit; his eyes bulged

out of his head, his hand rose and pointed at me like as if against his

will, and the sermon stopped right there.

It isn't a fine thing to say for yourself, but I ran away; and if the

same kind of a shock was given me, I should run away again to-morrow. To

see that palavering Kanaka struck all of a heap at the mere sight of me

gave me a feeling as if the bottom had dropped out of the world. I went

right home, and stayed there, and said nothing. You might think I would

tell Uma, but that was against my system. You might have thought I would

have gone over and consulted Case; but the truth was I was ashamed to

speak of such a thing, I thought every one would blurt out laughing in

my face. So I held my tongue, and thought all the more; and the more I

thought, the less I liked the business.

By Monday night I got it clearly in my head I must be tabooed. A new

store to stand open two days in a village and not a man or woman come to

see the trade was past believing.

"Uma," said I, "I think I am tabooed."

"I think so," said she.

I thought a while whether I should ask her more, but it's a bad idea to

set natives up with any notion of consulting them, so I went to Case. It

was dark, and he was sitting alone, as he did mostly, smoking on the

stairs.

"Case," said I, "here's a queer thing. I'm tabooed."

"O, fudge!" says he "'tain't the practice in these islands."

"That may be, or it mayn't," said I. "It's the practice where I was

before. You can bet I know what it's like; and I tell it you for a fact,

I'm tabooed."

"Well," said he, "what have you been doing?"

"That's what I want to find out," said I.

"O, you can't be," said he; "it ain't possible. However, I'll tell you

what I'll do. Just to put your mind at rest, I'll go round and find out

for sure. Just you waltz in and talk to Papa."

"Thank you," I said, "I'd rather stay right out here on the verandah.

Your house is so close."

"I'll call Papa out here, then," says he.

"My dear fellow," I says, "I wish you wouldn't. The fact is, I don't

take to Mr. Randall."

Case laughed, took a lantern from the store, and set out into the

village. He was gone perhaps a quarter of an hour, and he looked mighty

serious when he came back.

"Well," said he, clapping down the lantern on the verandah steps. "I

would never have believed it. I don't know where the impudence of these

Kanakas'll go next; they seem to have lost all idea of respect for

whites. What we want is a man-of-war--a German, if we could--they know

how to manage Kanakas."

"I _am_ tabooed, then?" I cried.

"Something of the sort," said he. "It's the worst thing of the kind I've

heard of yet. But I'll stand by you, Wiltshire, man to man. You come

round here to-morrow about nine, and we'll have it out with the chiefs.

They're afraid of me, or they used to be; but their heads are so big by

now, I don't know what to think. Understand me, Wiltshire; I don't count

this your quarrel," he went on, with a great deal of resolution, "I

count it all of our quarrel, I count it the White Man's Quarrel, and

I'll stand to it through thick and thin, and there's my hand on it."

"Have you found out what's the reason?" I asked.

"Not yet," said Case. "But we'll fix them down to-morrow."

Altogether I was pretty well pleased with his attitude, and almost more

the next day, when we met to go before the chiefs, to see him so stern

and resolved. The chiefs awaited us in one of their big oval houses,

which was marked out to us from a long way off by the crowd about the

eaves, a hundred strong if there was one--men, women, and children. Many

of the men were on their way to work and wore green wreaths, and it put

me in thoughts of the 1st of May at home. This crowd opened and buzzed

about the pair of us as we went in, with a sudden angry animation. Five

chiefs were there; four mighty stately men, the fifth old and puckered.

They sat on mats in their white kilts and jackets; they had fans in

their hands, like fine ladies; and two of the younger ones wore Catholic

medals, which gave me matter of reflection. Our place was set, and the

mats laid for us over against these grandees, on the near side of the

house; the midst was empty; the crowd, close at our backs, murmured, and

craned, and jostled to look on, and the shadows of them tossed in front

of us on the clean pebbles of the floor. I was just a hair put out by

the excitement of the commons, but the quiet, civil appearance of the

chiefs reassured me, all the more when their spokesman began and made a

long speech in a low tone of voice, sometimes waving his hand towards

Case, sometimes towards me, and sometimes knocking with his knuckles on

the mat. One thing was clear: there was no sign of anger in the chiefs.

"What's he been saying?" I asked, when he had done.

"O, just that they're glad to see you, and they understand by me you

wish to make some kind of complaint, and you're to fire away, and

they'll do the square thing."

"It took a precious long time to say that," said I.

"O, the rest was sawder and _bonjour_ and that," said Case. "You know

what Kanakas are."

"Well, they don't get much _bonjour_ out of me," said I. "You tell them

who I am. I'm a white man, and a British subject, and no end of a big

chief at home; and I've come here to do them good, and bring them

civilisation; and no sooner have I got my trade sorted out than they go

and taboo me, and no one dare come near my place! Tell them I don't mean

to fly in the face of anything legal; and if what they want's a present,

I'll do what's fair. I don't blame any man looking out for himself, tell

them, for that's human nature; but if they think they're going to come

any of their native ideas over me, they'll find themselves mistaken. And

tell them plain that I demand the reason of this treatment as a white

man and a British subject."

That was my speech. I know how to deal with Kanakas: give them plain

sense and fair dealing, and--I'll do them that much justice--they

knuckle under every time. They haven't any real government or any real

law, that's what you've got to knock into their heads; and even if they

had, it would be a good joke if it was to apply to a white man. It would

be a strange thing if we came all this way and couldn't do what we

pleased. The mere idea has always put my monkey up, and I rapped my

speech out pretty big. Then Case translated it--or made believe to,

rather--and the first chief replied, and then a second, and a third, all

in the same style, easy and genteel, but solemn underneath. Once a

question was put to Case, and he answered it, and all hands (both

chiefs and commons) laughed out aloud, and looked at me. Last of all,

the puckered old fellow and the big young chief that spoke first started

in to put Case through a kind of catechism. Sometimes I made out that

Case was trying to fence and they stuck to him like hounds, and the

sweat ran down his face, which was no very pleasant sight to me, and at

some of his answers the crowd moaned and murmured, which was a worse

hearing. It's a cruel shame I knew no native, for (as I now believe)

they were asking Case about my marriage, and he must have had a tough

job of it to clear his feet. But leave Case alone; he had the brains to

run a parliament.

"Well, is that all?" I asked, when a pause came.

"Come along," says he, mopping his face; "I'll tell you outside."

"Do you mean they won't take the taboo off?" I cried.

"It's something queer," said he. "I'll tell you outside. Better come

away."

"I won't take it at their hands," cried I. "I ain't that kind of a man.

You don't find me turn my back on a parcel of Kanakas."

"You'd better," said Case.

He looked at me with a signal in his eye; and the five chiefs looked at

me civilly enough, but kind of pointed; and the people looked at me, and

craned and jostled. I remembered the folks that watched my house, and

how the pastor had jumped in his pulpit at the bare sight of me; and the

whole business seemed so out of the way that I rose and followed Case.

The crowd opened again to let us through, but wider than before, the

children on the skirts running and singing out, and as we two white men

walked away they all stood and watched us.

"And now," said I, "what is all this about?"

"The truth is, I can't rightly make it out myself. They have a down on

you," says Case.

"Taboo a man because they have a down on him!" I cried. "I never heard

the like."

"It's worse than that, you see," said Case. "You ain't tabooed--I told

you that couldn't be. The people won't go near you, Wiltshire, and

there's where it is."

"They won't go near me? What do you mean by that? Why won't they go near

me?" I cried.

Case hesitated. "Seems they're frightened," says he in a low voice.

I stopped dead short. "Frightened?" I repeated. "Are you gone crazy,

Case? What are they frightened of?"

"I wish I could make out," Case answered, shaking his head. "Appears

like one of their tomfool superstitions. That's what I don't cotton to,"

he said. "It's like the business about Vigours."

"I'd like to know what you mean by that, and I'll trouble you to tell

me," says I.

"Well, you know, Vigours lit out and left all standing," said he. "It

was some superstition business--I never got the hang of it; but it began

to look bad before the end."

"I've heard a different story about that," said I, "and I had better

tell you so. I heard he ran away because of you."

"O! well, I suppose he was ashamed to tell the truth," says Case; "I

guess he thought it silly. And it's a fact that I packed him off. 'What

would you do, old man?' says he.--'Get,' says I, 'and not think twice

about it.' I was the gladdest kind of man to see him clear away. It

ain't my notion to turn my back on a mate when he's in a tight place,

but there was that much trouble in the village that I couldn't see where

it might likely end. I was a fool to be so much about with Vigours. They

cast it up to me to-day. Didn't you hear Maea--that's the young chief,

the big one--ripping out about 'Vika'? That was him they were after.

They don't seem to forget it, somehow."

"This is all very well," said I, "but it don't tell me what's wrong; it

don't tell me what they're afraid of--what their idea is."

"Well, I wish I knew," said Case. "I can't say fairer than that."

"You might have asked, I think," says I.

"And so I did," says he. "But you must have seen for yourself, unless

you're blind, that the asking got the other way. I'll go as far as I

dare for another white man; but when I find I'm in the scrape myself, I

think first of my own bacon. The loss of me is I'm too good-natured. And

I'll take the freedom of telling you you show a queer kind of gratitude

to a man who's got into all this mess along of your affairs."

"There's a thing I am thinking of," said I. "You were a fool to be so

much about with Vigours. One comfort, you haven't been much about with

me. I notice you've never been inside my house. Own up now; you had word

of this before?"

"It's a fact I haven't been," said he. "It was an oversight, and I am

sorry for it, Wiltshire. But about coming now, I'll be quite plain."

"You mean you won't?" I asked.