and refrain from attempting to instil our ideas of progress into a
people on whom they have precisely the opposite effect? The answer is,
"Never--so long as there is money in it."
But an additional rung must be added to our social ladder of Tahiti, and
a sturdy rung at that. The half-caste--especially the French-Tahitian
half-caste--is deservedly becoming a power in the land.
The accepted idea of him is that he retains in his composition all the
failings of the white man and none of his virtues, but like so many
accepted ideas it is entirely erroneous. He is a human being with the
failings and virtues of any other, and there is not a doubt that he
possesses a physical and mental virility that carries him further than
most toward success in the tropics. He is usually extremely handsome,
quietly mannered, and industrious, and the women of his species are
among the most beautiful in the world.
Lastly there is the Chinaman; and the more one sees of this bland,
uninterfering race, the more one is driven to the conclusion that he has
come nearer to solving the riddle of existence than any other.
When Tahiti suffered one of its periodical awakenings to the fact that
it must have plantation and road labour, it imported some thousands of
Chinese. But what it failed to do was to specify on its indent the kind
of Chinaman required, with the result that the majority turned out to be
of the store-keeping class, and about as much use for road-making or
copra-getting as a sick jelly-fish. Some stayed by the work for which
they were intended, but many more, in their own insidious fashion, set
up shop, and to-day wield a financial influence in Papeete second to
none. "I'd sooner work for the Chinks," a white super-cargo told me.
"You know where you are with them. They give you a square deal, expect
a square deal from you, and if they don't get it, give you the boot
without back-chat. They're not in an ever-lasting, all-fired hurry,
either."
So here are one or two secrets of the Chinaman's success. Is it another
that he will buy a pearl for no other purpose than to drink it
pulverized in tea? Who can say? It is certain that _he_ won't.
It was here in Papeete that I became a _garcon d'honneur_; at least,
that is what I was told I was, though at the time I felt, and I am sure
looked, like nothing on earth.
If it had not been for Liza I should never have suffered the indignity
of transition from the semblance of a man to that of a stuffed and
hustled dummy. But who can listen to the pleadings of a particularly
attractive half-caste Tahitian by moonlight on the deck of a dream ship
without surrender? I cannot.
It was explained to Peter, as intermediary, that she (Liza) needed an
escort to her sister's wedding, and thought that I should lend an air of
distinction to the proceedings. She had fallen in love with my
particular brand of sola topi, and she thought me _tres gentil_. I
expect this settled the matter. In any case, at nine o'clock that
night, arrayed as ordered, and securely wedged between Liza and one of
her innumerable and attractive female relatives, I was conveyed, swift
as Ford could fly, to the offices of the _Maire_, where I was dragged
forth and pushed into position to form one of a long procession of
youths and maidens, the former in white gloves and evening dress ties,
the latter in frills.
From, then onward I have no clear recollection of how I came to be in
the various places that I found myself. Liza managed it. Liza was the
most efficient tug I had ever made fast to. Up a lane of giggling
onlookers we trickled and, after the civil ceremony, down it again, to
be whirled away to the church, where the same performance, with certain
variations, was enacted. Then to the home of the bride, and
incidentally of Liza, a palace of light and heat, music and movement,
where I found solace in a life-saver before the tug again made fast and
towed me in to "breakfast."
I had fancied the marriage complete, the knot irrevocably tied. Not so.
We stood about a long table, our hands itching to descend on a glass of
inviting champagne, while the native department of the ceremony, and to
my mind the most impressive, was conducted by a venerable Tahitian, a
relation of the bride's mother.
He spoke, and continued to speak, untroubled by the growing restlessness
of his audience. Liza pouted, and whispered in my ear, from which I
gathered that the speaker had not been invited, that his mere presence
constituted an insult. I failed to see why a representative of one side
of Liza's family should receive such scurvy treatment, but lacked the
courage to say so, which is perhaps as well. Instead, I asked what he
was saying, and elicited the following:
"It is old Tahitian custom--he should not be here! It is old Tahitian
custom when you marry you have new name. He is telling new name which
must be 'WIND'; and when they have children, they are to be more 'WIND'.
He should not be here! There, it is finish; drink your champagne."
Which, ever obedient, I proceeded to do.
Followed dancing, a strange mixture of hula and fox-trot, until four
o'clock of the morning, a farewell to Liza under the stars, and a
somewhat clumsy boarding of the dream ship.
Such is present-day Papeete, a place of pleasure, interest, or profit,
according to taste.
[Illustration: _Fish-spearing on the Reef_]
The main trouble in the Societies, as elsewhere in the Pacific islands,
is scarcity of labour. Each group in this mighty ocean is struggling
with the problem at the present time, and has not yet succeeded in
reaching a solution. The native will not work. He does not believe in
toiling for others when he is a self-supporting landlord himself, and,
when you come to think of it, why should he? The Pacific Islands,
ambitious for development, are consequently forced to turn for help to
the more congested quarters of the globe, such as India and China, and
herein lies the danger. The influx has already begun, and there is not
a doubt that in time it will swell from a beneficial stream into an
overwhelming flood unless ultimately returned to its source by a conduit
of stringent legislation.
[Illustration: _Moorea, the Land of the Lizard Men;
Moorea Greets the Dream Ship_]
We of the dream ship left the pleasures and problems of Papeete with
regret, but succeeded in leaving with our ship's company intact, to the
lasting wonder of our very good friend the British Consul--to whom
salaams from a less salubrious clime.
*THE ISLAND OF MOOREA*
_The land of the lizard men--Facts and fancies,
including a few horrors_
[Illustration: Chapter XII headpiece]
*CHAPTER XII*
_The land of the lizard men--Facts and fancies,
including a few horrors_
Many an hour of quiet content had we of the dream ship spent while
moored off Papeete, in watching the ever-changing beauties of Moorea, a
bare fifteen miles distant.
Whether viewed in fair or foul weather, at sunrise or sunset, this
island with its fantastic volcanic peaks and deep, mysterious valleys of
purple haze attracts the eye of the dreamer like a magnet. What secrets
lay hidden in those valleys? What might not be seen from the summit of
those peaks? We determined to find out.
But first it was necessary to attend to things practical in the shape of
our alleged auxiliary engine. It was perfectly possible, here in
Papeete, to hire an expert to diagnose the trouble, but I had had my
fill of "experts" the world over. They have an engaging habit of
setting the contraption in motion by some happy accident, and declaring
that "it is all right now," but never by any chance explaining to the
harassed owner what was the matter with it. It is my belief that they do
not know themselves. The only point on which they are all agreed is that
the "expert" who preceded them "made an unholy mess of the job," and
that if it had not been for themselves, it is doubtful if the engine
would have ever run again. Moreover, their bill is usually in keeping
with their modesty.
After a three-hour heart-to-heart consultation with the patient, I
discovered, quite by accident and with Peter's hat pin, that the tiny
air-vent in the screw-top of one of the carburetors was clogged.
Consequently, when the top was screwed down, the air had no outlet and
forced down the float. Hence a persistent flooding.
It sounds absurd. It was absurd, but that was the entire trouble, and
the accidental insertion of the hat pin converted lifeless scrap-iron
into the power that the dream ship had so often and so sorely needed
during the past months.
I hear the "experts" laugh, but I solace myself with the remembrance of
one of their number leaping on his hat in an effort to locate an equally
trivial trouble in marine motor engines, and draw the moral that it is
as well to carry sisters who use hat pins.
A few hours' sail brought us to Moorea, and one of the finest natural
harbours in the South Pacific, where we were met by a plantation owner
of our acquaintance in an outrigger canoe, and piloted through a
tortuous reef channel to an anchorage of firm coral sand.
The entrance to this harbour is fully half a mile wide, so how the
captain of a French gunboat contrived to pile his vessel securely on the
reef is something of a mystery. It is said that he had dined "not
wisely but too well" in Papeete, and was filled with _elan_ to
demonstrate how close a shave he could accomplish without cutting
himself. And again, that he had been sent to bring back cattle, a
mission that, as a naval officer, he so abhorred that he had done the
deed deliberately.
In any case, there lies his craft, a fine old hulk, with the rollers
rumbling and seething through her vitals; fit warning to the mariner who
would toy with coral.
Such grim monuments to mischance, negligence, or deviltry litter the
reefs of the Pacific; and what tales they could tell! I know of one on
Middleton Reef, now used as a store ship for other possible victims,
that was piled there on a lee shore during a south-west gale, and the
bottom ripped clean out of her. For a week she lay half-submerged, her
crew wading the decks knee-deep in water, and gazing over her sides or
down through her hatches at the provisions scattered on the coral.
There was water down there--fresh water in breakers and tanks, and food
in tins that only needed block and tackle to hoist them up to the poop.
But who would dive down and make the tackle fast? It meant almost
certain death of an even more hideous kind than faced them as it was,
and, unlike the orthodox romance, there were no heroic volunteers. The
skipper was ready and willing, but he had his wife aboard who restrained
him by swearing that if he did any such thing she would throw herself
and their three-year-old daughter after him.
In all, they waited a week without food or water before the threatening
attitude of the crew forced the skipper to make the attempt in spite of
his wife's entreaties and threats. He dived; he made fast the tackle,
but all of him that came to the surface was a severed leg, and the wife
followed him with her child in her arms.
It is strange that a region of such beauty as the South Pacific Islands
should be the favoured home of tragedy, but so it is. My very good
friend the late Louis Becke, who probably knew these parts better than
any man of his time, often bemoaned the fact that when choosing a theme
for one of his incomparable tales of the South Seas, he could not paint
true to life without finding tragedy peering at him from every corner.
He claimed the cause of it to be that this sunny realm of bronze gods
was never intended to be invaded by the white man, and there are few
who, in all fairness, can differ with him.
Even on Moorea, the incomparable, we of the dream ship had not been
ashore an hour before encountering a thing too ghastly to ponder on. It
was a man with legs so immense that only the toes of the feet protruded
beyond them. His neck was thicker than his head, and part of his
anatomy he wheeled before him, covered with a _parieu_.
It was a case of elephantiasis, a common disease of the islands, but
against a background of such loveliness seeming the more terrible.
Here was a shady, grass-grown beach road overhung with flamboyants, and
bordered with crotons and flaming hibiscus; there a cocoanut plantation
with its serried ranks of graceful palm trunks fading away into cool
green distances like the pillars of a dimly lit temple; a brook,
bustling through thickets, its banks carpeted with wondrous ferns and
velvety moss--and here a tumble-down, deserted native house--rearing its
battered head above a tangle of tropical vegetation. It had once been a
home, and the land about it a prosperous banana patch. The first family
that had occupied it had developed elephantiasis. A second and a third
had met with the same fate, and now no one can be induced to live
anywhere near the accursed spot. It is taboo.
Scientists claim they have discovered the germ of this dread disease in
the mosquito, but many believe it to be in the earth, like that of
tetanus.
But to revert to more pleasant subjects: legends still live on Moorea.
It is the land of the lizard men, an agile race of dwarfs who lived on
the inaccessible ledges of the mountain range, and descended
periodically on the coast-dwellers, bearing off their wives and other
valuables. They carried a short staff in either hand, giving them the
appearance of lizards as they scrambled back to their fastnesses where
none could follow.
To prove his words, the Moorean native of to-day will point out uniform
rows of banana plants growing in clefts of rock amongst the clouds--the
crops of the lizard men! How, otherwise, came they to be there? And he
would be a wise man who could find the answer.
It is in these deep valleys, too, that ancient rites were performed,
rites that were rigorously suppressed by the Government, but have
survived until quite recent years. Indeed, white settlers assert that
they are not entirely eradicated to this day. Tradition, religion,
superstition, call it what you will, dies hard.
[Illustration: Men looking at mountain]
In this connection it was my good fortune to meet a retired police
officer who probably had more to do with the suppression of "witchery"
in the Islands than any man living.
"It mostly began with long-pig," he told me. "Long-pig? Well, you know
the Kanaka fashion of rolling bush pig in banana leaves and cooking it
in the ground. Long-pig doesn't happen to be _pig_, that's all.
"And long-pig was enough for us. We broke up the party by marching the
diners off in irons. But there were other things that had us beat.
I've lain on my belly of a night, looking through a rat-hole in a native
grass house, and seen some queer things: a war club stand on end, and
dance on its own over the mats the length of the house. I'm no fool,
but I'm darned if I could see how it was done. There was no harm in it,
any more than there is in these new-fangled seances where spooks blow
trumpets and rattle tambourines; but with Kanakas it may lead to
long-pig, and that's what we were after.
"Then again, we watched one place for close on a month, and at the end
of it found nothing we could lay hands on, but something _I_ sha'n't
forget.
"There must have been close on a hundred Kanakas squatting round the
walls of the house in stony silence, when a wind sprang up that nearly
blew the roof off and yet never so much as stirred the leaves on the
palms twenty yards away. It was still blowing when something dropped
through the roof, and squatted on the mats in the middle of the house.
"There wasn't much light--there never is at these chivarees, but there
was enough for me to see that whatever it was it was a leper. It wasn't
all there. It wasn't the right shape, or colour, but it boomed out
answers to questions that the others put to it, and, knowing the lingo,
I listened. It was the usual business: So-and-so's father was all
right, but hoped that his son would join him before long as he was a
trifle lonely. And somebody else's brother was having the time of his
life with a brand-new sailing canoe that was the fastest thing yet. And
somebody else was going to die soon....
"Now, you can arrest a leper on suspicion, and I did my best, but I
never got that one. He just went, and so did the others, though they
made more of a fuss about it; and all the time that wind was blowing the
hair of my head this way and that.
"Fake? Of course it was a fake, but clever at that. I never got the
leper, and that 'somebody else' died all right, because I saw him. But
then Kanakas are like that: they die to order...."
True, the foregoing is hearsay, but it is first-hand hearsay, and on the
best possible authority.
The only other Island witchcraft that I have encountered and can vouch
for personally is fire-walking, a well known Kanaka pastime. That
natives can make a pit of stones white hot with burning brush-wood, and
then walk bare-footed upon them for upward of two minutes, is not so
wonderful to the skeptic who knows that they paint the soles of their
feet with a secret preparation that is a non-conductor of heat. But the
fact that they can lead a white man, whose feet are not so treated, over
the same stones, is a "trick" that needs some explaining.
Then, there is the herb for the unfailing and harmless production of
abortion; a preparation of such preservative powers that it will keep
the human body for centuries; and an innumerable array of magic potions
undreamed of in our philosophy. Undoubtedly the Islands have their
secrets, as quaint and wonderful as any in darkest Africa, and some
day--which I trust is not far off--I hope to "inquire more closely."
Our planter friends of Moorea appeared to lead a pleasant life. Theirs
was a bachelor bungalow run by efficient house-boys, and set on the
fringe of a palm grove overlooking a vista of sea and reef and mountain
as beautiful as any in the Island--which means in the world.
They were growing vanilla, and, although Britishers, had chosen Moorea
as the scene of their labours because they preferred French rule.
"The French don't mess you about like our own people," one of them
informed us. "They're not anti-this and anti-that. They leave you
alone, and I can tell you we appreciate it after visiting a few of our
colony-governed colonies." He referred, of course, to the mandates
given to Australia and New Zealand over certain groups of the South
Pacific. "It's like giving a kid something to play with. He's bound to
break it."
The other of our two hosts was engaged in a passage-at-arms with Peter,
and I pitied him. Trust a woman for either kindling or dousing a flame
of enthusiasm in the male breast. But as she still holds to her
viewpoint, and the question at issue involves every white woman who
contemplates living in the South Sea Islands, it is of interest, and I
take the liberty--and the risk--of quoting from her diary:
"One of them (our hosts) was engaged to an English girl of eighteen, and
was going to send for her in a month or two, but expected opposition
from her parents, who thought the Society Islands too uncivilized and
out of the world for a young girl to be happy in. I must say I agreed
with them.
"Perhaps for the first few months the novelty would keep her amused; but
after that! I cannot imagine an intelligent, energetic girl being
content to live her life on an island, however beautiful, where she
would be the only white woman.
"I said something of the sort to her fiance, since he asked my opinion.
He said he had promised her a horse, as she was intensely keen on
riding. Even then it meant that she would have to keep to the track
which ran round the island, and one soon wearies of the same ride day
after day, when there is no object in view but exercise.
"I suggested that she might help on the plantation, and that perhaps
making things for her new home would keep her occupied, but was told it
would be impossible for her to do a hand's tap of manual work as she
would lose prestige with the natives (awful thought!) and that she was
not the sort to like needlework or housekeeping as she was too much of a
sport; besides, the 'boys' would do the latter.
"Then what would be left for the poor girl to do? I asked.
"'Oh, she could potter about; and then _I_ should always be on hand,'
was the reply.
"What could be said to a man who thought along those lines?"
The answer is an echo--"What?"
But I must confess to a sneaking sympathy for him, all the same. The
position of the white man living alone amongst natives is difficult
enough in all conscience, and any one who has done it will testify to
the absolute necessity of retaining prestige. To lose it _is_ an "awful
thought!" for without it the white man sinks lower than his neighbours,
and is soon regarded by them with unveiled contempt.
No; call it "bluff," what you will, but the white man cannot afford to
part with his prestige. And how much more is it necessary when he has
his womenfolk to protect?
In any case, the Islands are not a suitable home for white women, say
what they will. There are isolated instances of them thriving there,
but in the vast majority of cases they fall victims to a pernicious type
of anaemia which, even if it does not kill, remains with them for the
rest of their lives. And as for children, they thrive for about five
years from birth, and then fade to mere weeds unless sent to more
temperate climes.
Perhaps--who knows?--these things are but another proof that we
harbingers of progress were not intended to invade the sanctuary of the
South Seas.
*PALMERSTON ISLAND*
_A hint of hurricane--The atoll of perfection,
introducing "Mister Masters himself"_
[Illustration: Chapter XIII headpiece]
*CHAPTER XIII*
_A hint of hurricane.--The atoll of perfection,
introducing "Mister Masters himself"_
Between the Societies and Australia there is a regular line of
steamships calling at Raratonga, Samoa, and New Zealand, and it was to
avoid this cut-and-dried route that we of the dream ship headed for
Palmerston Island, a mere speck on the chart six hundred miles distant.
But we sailed just that trifle too soon that makes all the difference
between a fair-weather passage and the reverse. December to April,
inclusive, is the hurricane season in this part of the Pacific, when the
schooner skippers from Raratonga and other places in the direct path of
the cyclonic disturbance see fit to lie up in the comparative safety of
Papeete harbour, and we sailed early in the latter month.
I am not claiming that we encountered a hurricane; far from it, for it
is doubtful if even the dream ship would have survived a full-fledged
demon of the species. In these same latitudes I have seen turf torn
from the face of the earth and rolled up like a carpet by sheer force of
wind, and mile-wide swaths cut as cleanly as with a sickle through
settlement, plantation, and jungle. But these exhibitions of ferocity
were witnessed from terra firma. It is a totally different thing from
the deck of a small boat at sea.
Surely, if man does not recognize his own insignificance when faced with
overwhelming turmoil of wind and wave, he never will. He shrivels on
the instant from a being of considerable importance in his own
estimation to the semblance of a microbe; and his craft follows suit by
dwindling from a sturdy home to a cockleshell. That is why it is best
for the mariner, if he can manage it, not to think too deeply during
time of stress.
The demon was about, as evidenced by the barometer which fell to
twenty-nine, but his main body, writhing in a circle as is his wont,
must have missed us, for all we of the dream ship encountered was a
lashing of his tail.
It was enough. It blew, and it rained. Lord, how it blew and rained!
first from dead ahead, which caused us to heave to; then, as the vicious
circle was completed, from dead aft, so that we "ran" like a wind-driven
rag under double reef and storm jib.