surreptitious chocolates.
“Eatum jus’ little-fellow bit,” he allowed, with a bad-child chuckle.
The other men took up the laugh, and the village resounded with a roar
like the bellowing of a herd of bulls.
Vaiti, seeing her advantage, stepped out into the square and began to
talk, marching to and fro in Tannese fashion as she spoke. The sun cast
dancing spangles on her many-coloured beads as she moved, and threw back
darts of fire from her heavy bandolier. One arm emphasised her remarks
with sweeping gesture; in the other the tall rifle pounded the earth
with its stock, marking the points of her discourse. The fat, stolid
mission native watched her with staring eyes and open mouth, and the
chiefs gloomed at her under sullen savage brows, evidently impressed,
but restive.
The sum of her discourse was that they and their women would do well to
come down with her to the schooner, recruit at once, and fly to a land
of safety where men-of-war never came, where Tanna people reclined all
day under the shade of banyan and banana, picked a little cane for their
employers occasionally, lived upon tinned meat and sugared tea, and
eventually returned loaded with riches in the shape of rifles,
cartridges, cotton, and knives. There was a good deal more of the same
highly-coloured stuff. This was old business to the people of the
_Sybil_.
The talking-man, also strutting backwards and forwards, Tanna fashion,
in a kind of continual country dance with the glittering vision from the
ship, answered now and then. It was very well to talk about recruiting,
and perhaps some of them might go if they got lots of tinned salmon and
“bisketti” to eat before they went on board, and promise of rifles to be
paid the tribe when the bargain was complete. But they did not believe
that the new ship was not a little man-of war, and until she was gone
they would not go down to the coast—no, not even to bathe, although they
had all decided to have a bath soon, for the weather was hot and their
skins were like the bark of trees, and it was now about ten moons since
they had had their last bath.
At this Vaiti’s eyes lit up, for she suddenly saw a plan, a plan which
might give her a score of recruits, drive the objectionable yacht out of
Sulphur Bay, and pay off every rankling insult inflicted by the
_Alcyone_ and her people. But the savages were watching her, so she
veiled her eyes with her long lashes, and replied carelessly:
“All that very good. To-morrow, small-fellow man-of-war he go ’way;
then you coming longa schooner. To-day, what name [why?] you no go wash
big water ’long place one-fellow-fire stop? Very good place that.
Suppose you going, I come up from schooner, bring plenty-plenty tucker.
Plenty-plenty bulimacow [beef], bisketti, tucker belong white man, cost
ten rifle. All the Tannaman he eat; by’n-by he stop lie down, he break,
so much he eat.”
This tempting picture had its effect, backed up by a few presents of
beads and cartridges. The Tannamen agreed that the plain below the
burning mountain, where a wide, stagnant lake spread out its dull
expanse, would do for a bathing place, short of the impossible shore,
and they chuckled with joyous anticipation of the feast. They also
agreed, rather doubtfully, to embark as soon as the “man-of-war” was
gone; and it seemed evident that a fair number would at least come down
and negotiate on board the schooner after which—well, the _Sybil’s_
smart heels would do the rest.
*CHAPTER XVIII*
*A CANNIBAL PARTY*
Vaiti went off to get ready the feast, telling the natives that they
might follow her before long, as everything would be ready soon; and
they might trust her, the great Kapitani, that it would be a feast such
as no Tannaman, not even of those who had served in Queensland, had ever
witnessed in his wildest dreams.
The mission native being a rather weak-kneed convert, and anxious to
enjoy a good heathen gossip with his old companions, wanted very much to
stay on in the village. But that was just what Vaiti did not want, so
she drove him out in front of her like a fat and nervous sheep,
hastening his movements all the way down with occasional reminders from
the butt of her rifle. He had given her certain information about a
picnic at the foot of the volcano, arranged by the people of the yacht
for that afternoon, and she did not want him to share his news with the
men of the village and cause them, perhaps, to put two and two together
where he himself had failed to do so. She despatched him therefore to
his own town on the coast, and saw that he went, before herself turning
off in the direction of the track that led to the volcano.
Near to the lake there lies a curious little valley with a soft, clean
flooring of black volcanic sand and sheltering walls of green pandanus.
Here, shaded from the burning heat, yet close to the volcano plain, was
the only possible place for the picnickers to enjoy their meal. Beyond
lay only a lurid plateau of red and yellow lava beds, curdled and coiled
as they had flowed down from the crater lip long ago; a desert of black
ash and sand, and a dark, wicked, smoking, rumbling cone in the centre
of all. Not a native would have climbed the cone for all the goods in
the _Sybil’s_ hold; it was the mouth of hell, they said, and full of
devils of every kind. But they were not afraid of the valley below,
within safe limits, and even if they had been, the feast and the bathe
after it were attractive enough to conquer a little nervousness.
As Vaiti had anticipated, there were several picnic baskets stowed under
a tree in the valley, and a big wine hamper as well. Four mission
natives, who had acted as guides and carried up the provisions, were
lying on their stomachs in the shade, smoking and talking.
It was essential to get them out of the way, and time was short. Vaiti
did not waste any unnecessary words. She simply pointed her rifle at the
men and told them to clear. They cleared, howling, and she was left
alone.
With quick, neat hands she unpacked the hampers, spread the cloth, and
laid out the food. It was a goodly display—hams and tongues and fowls,
cold meats, pies, cakes, tarts, fruits, and tinned dainties of every
kind. There was plenty of champagne, also a supply of whisky and soda.
She set all the bottles in a row, and looked with satisfaction upon the
glittering array. Then she went up to the edge of the plain and looked
at the crater. No one was yet in sight. The exploring party at that
moment were on the other side of the cone, standing on the black lip of
an appalling gulf eight hundred feet deep and half a mile across;
looking down, awe-struck and amazed, upon colossal fire fountains that
uplifted their gory spray three hundred feet in the air, and listening
to the heart-shaking thunders of the volcano’s awful voice, as from time
to time that terrifying note of illimitable force and fury made the
whole plain tremble and echoed far out to sea.... It was indeed no
wonder that the ignorant Tannamen feared to ascend the cone.
Vaiti sat down at the edge of the plain, and watched till she saw a
number of many-coloured dots creeping down the black pyramid in its
centre. Then she suddenly lay down upon the ashy ground, and writhed
with silent laughter. People were in the habit of saying that Vaiti had
no more sense of humour than the jibboom of her father’s ship. They
might have modified that judgment, could they have seen her now.
* * * * *
Lady Victoria Jenkins had enjoyed her morning very much indeed. She had
dressed for the ascent in a mountaineering costume that combined equal
suggestions of “Carmen” and the Alpine Club, and gave great
opportunities to her ankles. She had been helped up the cone by four
devoted admirers, all at once, and had come down it at a wild running
slide, ably braked by two strong hands of two or three others who wanted
to have their turn. The other women had trodden on their skirts, and
torn them, burned and cut their foolish boots, and also got unbecomingly
hot and out of breath, because there was not nearly one man apiece to
help them up, after Lady Victoria had annexed all the best. It must be
allowed that the men were the weak point of the _Alcyone’s_ travelling
party. Mr. de Coverley and his set were “dear boys” and charming
companions, no doubt, but they were not quite as manly as some of the
ladies. Lady Vic and her companions did not attract the best sort of
men, as a rule.
They were all very hungry when they reached the plain, and thirsty with
a thirst unknown outside the tropics. All the way across the baking
black sand and the tinkling lava beds, “one fair vision ever fled”
before the eyes of the party—vision of gold-necked champagne bottles
lying coolly embedded in icebaskets; of topaz-coloured jellies,
trembling on silver dishes; of flaky, savoury pies, and delicate cold
meats, and crisp green salads concocted as only the hand of the
_Alcyone’s_ _chef_ could concoct them.
It seemed as if that plain would never end, but it did end at last, and
a green fringe of pandanus announced the beginning of the bush. The
elderly young lady and most of the others were making excellent time
ahead, and they reached the verge of the plain some little while before
Lady Victoria and Mr. de Coverley came to it. The latter pair, as it
happened, were really not thinking very much about their lunch, because
a still more interesting matter absorbed their attention.
“Not understood!” Mr. de Coverley was saying bitterly. “And so we die
and go down to the grave—not understood! The pathos of it!”
“We are never understood,” sighed Lady Victoria, patting the side waves
of her “transformation” to see that it was on straight. “We women,
especially. And those who should understand us best of all are so
often——”
“Exactly—so they are. But, Lady Victoria—Victoria!—there are some who
are different; there are men, rare souls, who——”
“What in Heaven’s name is the matter?” interrupted the misunderstood
one, stopping dead in her tracks (literally, for the sand was deep) and
staring at the edge of the bush.
From the valley below the plain had just risen a long, loud shriek,
followed by another and another, and then by a burst of laughter that
sounded scarcely human. The other members of the party had disappeared,
but it was clear that something had happened.
“Good God, the savages!” exclaimed Lady Victoria; and she began to run.
Let it be stated, for the credit of her race and name, that she ran
towards the sound. As for Mr. de Coverley....
But this story is not about Mr. de Coverley. If it were, it would be
interesting to tell why the Sydney steamer that called at Sulphur Bay
two days later found an unexpected passenger waiting at the trader’s,
and why Lady Victoria and Mr. Abel Jenkins, of Jenkins’s Perfect Pills,
became eventually reconciled and lived the life of a model couple. As
things are, it must be enough to state that Mr. Jack de Coverley turned
and ran away at the sound of the shouts—ran right across the plain into
the bush at the other side—ran as far as he could get, and did not come
back at all—and thereby ran once and for ever out of the life of the
lady whom he “understood.”
Lady Victoria, speeding in the opposite direction, reached the edge of
the little valley in a very few minutes, and, looking over, beheld what
was certainly the strangest sight she had encountered in all her varied
life.
Round about the elaborately-laid luncheon were squatting a dozen or so
of naked brown savages, painted, feathered, and slashed with ornamental
scars. A few women, clad only in a six-inch fringe of grass, stood
behind them, eyeing the eatables eagerly, but not daring to touch them
while their masters fed. The talking-man, a big, hulking savage with a
huge bush of hair, and a match-box stuck in each ear-lobe, had buried
his face in the savoury interior of a boned turkey, and was gnawing out
the stuffing. The principal chief, one hand in a dish of Spanish cream
and the other in a chicken curry, was casting double supplies into his
mouth with the regularity of a patent feed-machine. A fat young fighting
man, with nose and forehead painted scarlet, and white ashes in his
hair, had tucked a ham under one arm, and was sitting on a peach pie,
with intent to secure as many good things as possible, while he hastily
worried large mouthfuls off the forequarter of lamb he was holding in
both hands. Another man was drinking mint sauce out of the silver
sauceboat with horrible grimaces; his neighbour, having captured a
handful of maraschino jelly, fast melting in the sun, was industriously
rubbing it on his hair; and a grizzly old fellow, with a monkey-like
face, was half-choking himself over a soufflé, which he was trying to
swallow case and all. The necks of the champagne bottles were all
knocked off, and from engraved wine-cases, empty entrée-dishes, and
dredged-out tins the savages were drinking Lady Victoria’s excellent
wines with every appearance of satisfaction. Between mouthfuls they
stopped to look at the party from the yacht, and to roar with laughter
at their evident fright. Too terrified even to run away, the voyagers,
in their dainty frocks and smart white suits, stood huddling together
for protection, the women crying, the men looking rather white and
foolish, for every Tannaman had a loaded rifle slung to his side, and
there was not so much as a saloon pistol among the whites. A few yards
off Vaiti stood, regarding the whole scene with an expressionless
countenance that covered a good deal of quiet enjoyment. She knew, if
the visitors did not, that the cannibal bushmen were really not at all a
bad lot of fellows when you knew them, and that the yacht party, against
whom they had no grudge, were perfectly safe. In fact, the Tannamen
merely thought these oddly-behaved whites were a new party of
missionaries, and were quite ready to be civil to them, since they
thought all the mission people harmless, if eccentric.
But the true inwardness of the situation not being apparent, the
_Alcyone’s_ guests were very frightened indeed.
“P-perhaps if we go away very quietly, they won’t f-follow us,” said a
wealthy young stockbroker, who had retained a little presence of mind,
though his teeth were chattering in his head.
“Oh, let us! Victoria, save me! Oh, what shall we do?” wailed the
elderly young lady, rushing up the bank and flinging her arms round the
mistress of the violated feast. Lady Victoria, though white as her own
Belfast linen collar, kept her head fairly well. She saw that Vaiti was
not one of the invaders, and called to her. “Do you speak English?
What are we to do? Will they kill us?” she asked.
Vaiti walked over to her with the bearing of a stage duchess, and
favoured her with a fashionable high handshake that was the one thing
wanting to complete the insanity of the whole impossible scene. A new
idea had suddenly struck her—a fresh spark of mischief was lit. With an
immovable countenance she replied:
“No kill you, I think. Suppose you want go ’way all right by’n-by, very
good I think you sit down, eatum dinner alonga those fellow—then they
think you all right, let you go home, no kill.”
“Oh, Victoria, anything to please them!” sobbed the elderly young lady.
“Yes—a—I think we’d better do anything we can to get into their good
graces, since we’re not armed,” submitted the stockbroker.
Vaiti exchanged a few words with the Tannese. She explained that these
white people had come a long way, and were very hungry. The Melanesian
has not many virtues, but hospitality is certainly one of them; and a
man who may be planning to dine off you himself to-morrow will certainly
not refuse you half of his own leaf of yams to-day. The Tannese were
delighted at the chance of sharing their good fortune with the white
chiefs, even in spite of the latter’s extremely silly manners, and they
beckoned to them at once to come and sit down.
Thereafter took place a scene incapable of description by mortal pen.
The chief took his head out of the turkey, chewed off a leg, and
grinningly handed it to Lady Victoria. The young warrior got off the
pie, disembowelled it with one scoop of the hand that had not known
water “for ten moons,” and laid its interior in the elderly young lady’s
lap. Another knowingly poured out a champagne glass of Worcester sauce
and handed it to the stockbroker, while the much-bitten lump of mutton
that was at that moment circling from mouth to mouth, native-fashion,
was hospitably passed on to all the whites. Driven by fear, they tried
to swallow something; choked in the effort, made futile remarks to each
other, laughed nervous laughs, and all the time watched with eyes of
utmost apprehension the dusky hosts who were thus entertaining them with
their own audaciously ravished goods. And above the crazy party the
burning Tanna sun beat down, and the great volcano-cone far across the
plain smoked and thundered.
It had been Vaiti’s design to dismiss them in peace by and by, assured
that their compliance had saved their lives, and anxious to make steam
out of Sulphur Bay as soon as was reasonably possible. Fate, however,
reserved a more dramatic ending to the entertainment, And it was “all
along of” that talking-man.
The cannibal native is invariably shy of displaying his tastes before
whites, since people who do not share the “point of view” are so
frequently prejudiced. Therefore the talking-man did not open a certain
small green parcel tied up with sinnet string, which he had brought down
with him from the mountain village. A feast in the hand is worth two in
the pandanus-bush, thought the talking-man, so he brought his _bonne
bouche_ with him for dessert and said nothing about it. And thereby
came the end.
For Lady Victoria, unable to swallow the clawed and chewed morsels
pressed upon her by dirt-encrusted hands, began to hunt despairingly
about for something that she could really eat, so that she should not
offend the dangerous monsters who surrounded her.
“Isn’t there anything clean to be had?” she asked the stockbroker
anxiously. “I can’t eat—and yet we must! What are we to do?”
The stockbroker, who had once been to Honolulu, and thought he knew
something about native foods, spied the packet of green banana-leaf, and
reached out for it.
“This’ll be some of their own boiled yam,” he said. “Natives always do
it up like this. You can eat it all right if you scrape it with a
knife. Allow me.”
Before the talking-man could stretch out his filthy claw to stop him,
the Englishman had cut the sinnet string, the parcel had burst open, and
right into the middle of a half-demolished chicken pie fell a large
white foot, cut off at the ankle, nicely browned across the instep and
all crackled on the toes.
There was a wild shriek from the women, a splutter of horrified
exclamations from the men, a boiling up of white petticoats like to the
breaking of a wave on a pebbly shore, and then nothing but a diminishing
string of rapidly trotting figures, each woman hand in hand with a man
who was dragging her along far away, farther and farther, down the long,
black, sandy path into the bush. Then ... they were gone.
Vaiti stood on the bank to look after them, and laughed quietly.
“Now I think we keep Sulphur Bay all our own self,” she said.
As for the Tannamen, they rolled on the ground with laughter, and then
picked the dainty morsel out of the chicken pie and ate it up.
*CHAPTER XIX*
*THE RIVAL PRINCESSES*
It was full mid-day when the schooner _Sybil_ dropped anchor off Liali
Island. The hot season was at its height. The long, white coral strand
blazed in the sun, the moated lagoon was raw emerald, the waveless outer
sea blue fire. Beyond the beach stretched a green, grassy lawn, dotted
with quaintly-shaped Norfolk pines, tall palms, and feather-tressed
ironwood trees; and against its enamelled background rose a palace like
a picture in a fairy-tale—white, long-windowed, lofty-towered, and
crowned with a crimson flag set below a gilded vane.
Vaiti, standing on the break of the poop, with the inevitable cigar
between her fingers, looked critically at the island, and liked it well.
A mere little matter of kidnapping somebody’s indentured labourers—the
sort of thing that any gentleman with an extensive island practice might
easily find himself obliged to do—had brought about her father’s
expulsion from the New Hebrides labour trade, and obliged him to seek
new fields for the activities of the notorious and naughty _Sybil_.
Saxon himself was virtuously indignant, Vaiti not particularly sorry.
She was getting tired of the gloomy feverish New Hebrides and their ugly
savages. The Eastern Pacific was her heart’s home after all,
semi-Polynesian as she was; and even the wild excitement of the cruel
western isles could not hold her away very long. So when Saxon was
wavering between the advantages of strictly illegal gun-running in the
Solomons and honest trading about the Liali group (which had just
wrecked its native schooner, and was open to employ a successor),
Vaiti’s influence went for once on the side of peace and virtue, and the
course was set for Liali. The group was new to both father and
daughter, but was none the less attractive on that account, since all
over the wide island world the _Sybil_ and her owners were best loved
and most warmly welcomed where they were least known.
The Liali group, as many people in the Southern hemisphere agree, offers
the nearest possible approach to comic opera known off the actual stage.
Liali itself, the chief island, is as pretty as a toy-box, and quite
extraordinarily theatrical in appearance. Its handsome, merry, brown
people wear the most picturesque costume in the Pacific—a knee-length
kilt of fine cashmere, girded by a deep sash of pure silk, and worn with
a silken or cashmere shirt or a graceful sleeveless tunic, according to
sex—all in the most vivid of sea- and flower-colour. Liali is civilised
after a fashion. It goes barefoot and barelegged, sits on mats, lives
in reed-woven houses devoid of furniture, worships a sacred lizard on
the sly, and sometimes breaks out openly into club-fights and
devil-dances. But it has a king, and a palace and a Parliament, a brass
band, and quite a number of very active Nonconformist churches, run by
white missionaries, who find that “labouring” among the well-off and
amiable Lialians is a task in which the meritorious martyrdom of
missionary life can be combined with quite a number of pleasant
alleviations.
Nothing in Liali is entirely what it seems. The palace, when one comes
close to it, is perceived to be built of painted wood, like a
“practicable” scene in a theatre. The Parliament never passes any laws,
because the Lords, who are chiefs, always on principle throw out every
bill introduced by the vulgar Commons, just to “teach” them. The Prime
Minister is oftener in prison for _lése majestè_ than out of it, and
several Chancellors of the Exchequer have been transported to the
Colonies for theft. But there is a real throne in the palace, all
crimson velvet and gilt wood, and a wonderful gold crown (the verdigris
is cleaned off it with a wad of cocoanut husks by the Chief Equerry
every Saturday afternoon), and when the King goes out in state he wears
a purple velvet train, held up by two pages in tights and plumes, and a
marvellous ermined robe, all exactly like the Savoy Theatre in the
consulship of Gilbert and Sullivan. On occasions not of state he sits
cross-legged upon the palace parquet, clad in a shirt and a kilt, and
plays _écarté_ with his native guards.
There are a few colonial traders in Liali, and a dozen or so of the
English “legion that never was listed”—just such as one finds in all the
odd corners of the Pacific—talkative, plausible, thin and nervous, given
to avoid home topics and discourse with awful fluency upon small local
politics; hospitable, restless and lazy, and usually married more or
less to some dark beauty of the islands, who has grown as fat as a
feather bed and spends a fortune on store muslins.