There is always the possibility of being "pooped," which simply means
being overtaken by a mountain of water and crushed into the depths out
of harm's way for good and all. To the uninitiated it would appear that
the faster a ship travels the better chance she has of escaping a
following sea. But this is not so. No one has yet succeeded in
explaining the phenomenon satisfactorily, but it seems that the wake
caused by even a small boat passing down the face of a comber induces it
to break prematurely, and if the boat and the comber chance to be
travelling at the same speed, the latter breaks aboard, that is all.
It is a chance that all who go down to the sea in ships must take when
they "run," and the only way of obviating the disaster is to restrain a
very natural desire to "get on with it" while the weather is fair, and
heave to in time.
In the case of the dream ship there was no need to do this, as we had
reduced canvas to such an extent that she was not doing more than ten
knots, and rose to the summit of each breaking comber like a cork. I
have yet to see the weather that she could not face without flinching,
and I treasure her design beyond price.
After such a bucketing Palmerston was a welcome sight, as welcome as it
was unique. It is doubtful if such another gem adorns the earth.
Neither atoll nor island, it is a perfect combination of both; a natural
necklace of surf-pounded coral strung with six equidistant, verdant
islets, the whole enclosing a shallow lagoon slashed with unbelievable
colour.
[Illustration: Men in boats]
Such was Palmerston as we approached it before a stiff southeast
"trade," to be welcomed by a fleet of amazingly fast luggers and their
astonished crews.
Who were we?
Where had we sprung from?
Had we any matches?
To our own astonishment the questions were fired at us in English, and,
what was more, English of a strangely familiar pattern. It is a quaint
thing to hear one's own tongue fluently bandied amongst a brown-skinned
people on an isolated speck of earth in mid-Pacific. But there was no
opportunity of solving the riddle just then.
[Illustration: _The Leaning Palms_]
"Let go!"
"She's set!"
"Lower the peak!"
"Lower the main!"
The dream ship had come to anchor on the north-west side of the reef,
well sheltered from the almost eternal southeast trades of these
latitudes, and the pilot, a six-foot figure of bronze sketchily attired
in a converted flour sack, was addressing us with a courtesy as unusual
as it was refreshing.
[Illustration: _Landing on Palmerston Island_]
With our permission, he would take us ashore at once. Mister Masters
himself had given instructions.
The "Mister Masters himself" settled it. We tumbled into one of the
luggers, tumbled out again at the reef, and stood knee-deep in swirling
waters while the pilot and his crew towed the craft against a ten-knot
current through the boat passage; then aboard once more and away at an
eight-knot clip through a maze of coral mushrooms, bumping, grazing,
ricocheting, until finally sliding to rest on a glistening coral beach.
"Mister Masters himself," a dignified old gentleman with a flowing white
beard, a tight alpaca jacket, and the general air of a patriarch, met us
at the veranda steps of his spacious home, and inside of ten minutes we
were sitting down to a meal of meals.
Our host informed us that the schooner was overdue and we must excuse
the viands, but I saw no need for apology. In fact, how a few acres of
powdered coral could have produced the variety of edibles we consumed at
that meal passes my understanding. "Sailing Directions" in its own
terse way, says of these atolls: "Inhabitants live entirely on cocoanuts
and fish," and it sounds stringent enough, but I beg to state that our
menu on one of them, namely Palmerston, read as follows:
SOUP:
TURTLE
(Made of the genuine article, taken but a few hours ago from its
playground in a zinc bath at the door.)
FISH
(I know not of what species, but tastier than most of the tropical
varieties.)
BOILED FOWL
(And not the wretched victim of malnutrition emanating from most
tropical barnyards; nor served undecapitated as appears usual in the
Islands.)
ROAST PORK
(Which must have subsisted during its lifetime on something more
nourishing than coral.)
VEGETABLES:
SWEET POTATOES
TARO ROOT
SWEETS:
COCOANUT PUDDING
(The core of cocoanuts stewed in milk squeezed from the meat of the nut,
a dainty warranted to send the restaurant connoisseur into ecstasies if
it ever reaches him, which is unlikely.)
Over rum, emanating from the dream ship, as the local supply of liqueur
was retained for strictly medicinal purposes, the history of Palmerston
Island was unfolded.
What any student of Island history knows is that it was discovered by
Captain Cook in 1774 on his second voyage, though some authorities claim
it to be the "San Pablo" of Magellan, the first island discovered in the
South Seas; that on his third and last voyage Cook landed again to get
fodder for his starving cattle; and that later on it came under the
critical notice of the _Bounty_ mutineers, who, after a thorough
spoiling in luxurious Tahiti, decided against Palmerston as their future
home.
But what everyone does not know is the history of the Masters family who
now occupy the island.
One William Masters, as fine an old English sea-dog as ever came off a
whaler, took a fancy to the place in 1862, leased it from the British
Government, and, not believing in half measures, took unto himself three
native wives. By each he had a large and healthy family that he reared
in strict accordance with his own standards of social usage.
That they were sound standards is evidenced in the people of Palmerston
to-day. They read, write, and speak English, this last with an accent
vaguely reminiscent of the southwest of England. They are courteous,
hospitable, and honest to a degree little short of startling these days,
and although naturally inbred, they do not show it mentally or
physically.
The islets scattered round the reef have been equally distributed
amongst the descendants of William Masters's three wives, who now number
ninety-eight, and under the authority of the island council, presided
over by "Mister Masters himself," are worked to such purpose that they
produce a thousand pounds' worth of copra per year.
I have Palmerston securely pigeon-holed in my own mind as the spot of
all others in which, when the time comes, to sit down and wait for the
end. The outside world, in the shape of a schooner from the Cook Group,
intrudes itself but once a year. The ordinary infirmities to which
flesh is heir are non-existent. The lagoon and the neighbouring islets
are a mine of interest to the naturalist or sportsman, and the people
have a charm that is all their own.
One thing alone troubles the Masters of to-day. To whom do they and
their island belong? The war has changed all things. The Cook Group,
two hundred and seventy-three miles to the southeast, of which
Palmerston has now been declared a far-flung unit, is administered by
New Zealand. Is "Mister Masters himself" to be taxed, governed, and
generally harried by a people who hardly existed when his father took
over the island? It looks like it. Here is as fine an example of the
communal system worked out on a practical and prosperous basis as will
be found in the world to-day. Why, and again why, cannot incipient
administrators be induced to leave well alone?
A tour of the tiny settlement is worth while. Not long ago a French
brigantine rammed the reef on a clear night of stars, while the crew,
including the lookout, was below playing cards, with the result that
Palmerston settlement to-day is for the most part built of ship's
timbers and planking, companions, portholes, bunks, and miscellaneous
brass fittings.
The little church, which is in course of construction and meantime
serves as a school house, boasts walls and pulpit composed entirely of
panelled doors from the hulk; and fine old seasoned timber it is.
The recognized playground is outside the church door under the palms,
where a cricket pitch entices all and sundry. But the real playground
of Palmerston is the boat passage in the reef, through which a mill race
rushes at each turn of the tide. Here the multitudinous offspring of
William Masters disport themselves on every contrivance that floats,
from a full-fledged sailing-boat to a weather-board, and at the rate of
knots sweep yelling round tortuous curves to or from the sea.
The dream ship, riding at anchor outside the reef, became the centre of
attraction, and finally added to her many accomplishments by becoming a
bargain store.
It may be remembered that on setting out from England we had laid in
certain commodities known as "barter." Well, they were still
aboard--slightly mildewed, but aboard--for the good and sufficient
reason that we had not been able to get rid of them. It appeared that
our ideas on the subject of "barter" were archaic. Nothing short of
silk stockings, real gold watch chains, gramaphones, and gin is
acceptable in the Islands these days. How could we offer such a
discriminating public rusty jew's-harps?
But here was an opportunity not to be missed. "Sale! Sale!! Sale!!!
Heart-rending reductions!" was the notice I suggested nailing to the
mast, but there was no need. The entire population of Palmerston
tumbled aboard like an avalanche, and gigglingly surveyed our effects
outspread on the engine-room hatch.
To any one requiring the services of a thoroughly efficient
window-dresser and salesman, I can heartily recommend Steve. Until the
occasion of the dream ship's jumble sale I had, it appears, misjudged
the man. Prose poems to a piece of voile (double width, slightly soiled
and cunningly displayed on an arm) fell from his lips like rain.
Imitation leather belts, looking glasses conveying a somewhat distorted
reflection, near tortoise-shell haircombs, rusty knives, even
jew's-harps, each and all possessed some sterling virtue of which I had
been ignorant until enlightened by Steve. And they "went." It was my
humble duty to make a note of the sales, and there was no keeping tally
of them. In twenty minutes our "counters" were bare, and our customers
clamouring for more.
And this was not all. From below, where Peter was supposed to be
conducting a kind of ice-cream social without the ice-cream, came the
unmistakable sounds of "barter," and when we mere males had succeeded in
fighting our way through a solid mass of femininity, it was to behold
her surrounded with a drift of every domestic commodity from raspberry
jam to a safety-pin.
"They wanted them so badly, poor things," she confessed to me after the
fracas, but did not succeed in hiding from me the embers of battle in
her eye. Brothers are awkward things.
[Illustration: _The National Sport at Palmerston Island--Shooting the
Pass;
Dragging a Boat through the Reef Pass_]
It was only when the last boatload of cheerful humanity had taken its
departure, and we of the dream ship were dividing the spoils, that it
was discovered by a closer reference to the invoices we had sold
everything at _cost_!
Four more days we spent at Palmerston for the simple reason that we
could not tear ourselves away.
It was a pleasant thing of an evening to wander over the firm wet sand
of the beaches hand in hand with singing children, while a tribe of dogs
leapt after mocking sea birds, or splashed into rock-pools snapping at
the fish.
[Illustration: _The Taro Patch_]
Perhaps the tide had turned, and one by one the coral mushrooms reared
fantastic shapes out of the still waters of the lagoon--a gambolling
elf, a ship under full sail, a mammoth bird or beast. It was difficult
to realize one was not in fairyland--and an unworthy task at that. But
again, even here, there entered the tragic touch of the South Seas. A
thin spiral of blue smoke rose from the smallest of the islets across
the lagoon, and I asked who lived there. A brother and sister, I was
told, lepers.
"We're going to have shell in the lagoon as soon as we can get some by
the schooner," "Mister Masters himself" told me on the veranda one
evening. "Ought to do well enough. And we could run a few cattle here,
too. But a schooner a year isn't much good to a man, is it?"
I admitted that it could hardly be called a "service."
"I'd have a proper passage dynamited in the reef," he went on,
presently, "and you could do a bit of trading between here and the Cooks
and Tahiti. And you could have a house here, and Matha to look after
you--if you'd care to stay."
I looked at him, at Palmerston, at the dream ship, and regretfully shook
my head.
"Not yet," said I.
Au revoir, little island. Some day in the not very distant future a
decrepit, irritable old man will return to your hospitable shores in
search of peace; and if you are then as you are now--which Heaven
send!--he will assuredly find it.
*SAVAGE ISLAND*
_The Island called "Savage" including the ordeal by
Hospitality_
[Illustration: Chapter XIV headpiece]
*CHAPTER XIV*
_The Island called "Savage," including the ordeal by
Hospitality_
When Captain Cook discovered Niue in 1774, he christened it "Savage
Island," and went on his adventurous way without landing because of the
ferocious appearance and demeanour of the natives.
They, poor fellows, protest to this day that the great navigator's title
is a misnomer, that they have ever been as peaceful a folk as any in the
South Seas, and that the true cause of their ancestors' objection to a
landing-party was their fear of white men's diseases, of which they had
heard painful accounts.
We of the dream ship could sympathize with both parties. On the one
hand, the track of infection is scored deep across the fair face of the
Pacific, and on the other we had never beheld such a villainous-looking
horde of natives as came to greet us at Niue. There were hundreds of
them, each in a remarkably seaworthy type of dugout canoe painted black,
so that the whole resembled a mammoth shoal of porpoises as they leapt
from wave to wave.
This, however, is where the resemblance ended, for the porpoise is a
sleek and silent gentleman, and the Niuean is anything but that. He
catches sight of a dream ship gliding slowly along his coasts under
power, hurls himself into his canoe and paddles, yelling like a maniac,
in her wake. He then rears himself on end, waves his paddle, and yells
some more. By Herculean efforts he gains on her, comes alongside, grins
malevolently, and yells into one's very face.
No wonder Captain Cook thought better of his shore-leave.
Yet when one comes to know these people better, as we of the dream ship
did during the ensuing week, they are the most inoffensive,
good-natured, open-hearted creatures imaginable. This naval reception
was their idea of a really touching welcome. They were glad to see
us--they are glad to see any one on Niue. Appearances are against them,
that is all.
No sooner had we dropped hook at Alofi, the deepest bay around this
iron-bound coast, than we were boarded by three gentlemen of a
magnificence, in their crisp white drills, that put us to shame. But we
of the dream ship had suffered this type of indignity so often that we
were used to it. Besides, the magnificence of our visitors was happily
only external, though they proved to be the Resident Commissioner, the
Judge of the High Court, the Judge of the Native Land Court, the
Collector of Customs, and the Postmaster; the Registrar of Courts and
the Registrar of Births, Deaths, and Marriages; and the Chief Medical
Officer.
[Illustration: Boat at island]
Although, as I have said, there were only three of them, that is what
they were, and you must separate them by the semicolons. Clearly they
do not believe in overstaffing on Niue.
The first glad news to reach our ears was that we had missed a hurricane
by three days. Oh, yes, Niue had them occasionally, and before now had
been swept bare, but this particular one had passed like a ravening
beast a few miles to the eastward. Had we seen or heard nothing of it?
We shook our heads in infinitely grateful negation, and the
Postmaster--I beg his pardon, the Commissioner--exchanged a thoughtful
glance with the Chief Medical Officer whom, it is to be feared, we had
already christened "Doc." They had asked because the Cook-Group
schooner that visited Niue with the unprecedented frequency of five
times a year was considerably overdue. But we must come and live
ashore; there was Government House, and the Law Courts, and the Gaol to
spread ourselves over at a pinch.
And that was how we of the dream ship came to be so royally treated on
Savage Island.
Legend has it that a great god of the past, with one foot firmly planted
in the Tonga Group and the other on Raratonga, took it into his head to
lift Niue out of the sea, and one can almost believe it. It is of weird
formation, known scientifically as "upheave coral," and consists of two
terraces, the lower ninety feet above sea level, and the other, two
hundred and twenty feet, the intervening space being slashed with deep
chasms. In short, Niue is nothing more than an atoll hurled bodily out
of the sea by some mighty convulsion of the earth's past. One can
clearly see that what was once the reef is now a mighty cliff and that
the lagoon inside it is now a coral basin, pitched high and dry.
And this hybrid of an island is wonderfully fertile. On the terrace,
that I cannot help looking upon as the reef, cocoanuts, bananas, and
most other tropical products grow to perfection, while the lagoon--I
should say valley--is thickly timbered with ebony and other hard woods.
How came they to be there, considering they were never planted by human
hand? Perhaps the Island Hercules who dragged the atoll from the sea saw
fit also to cover its nakedness. No other solution of the problem
presents itself.
"It's a queer spot," I was told during a motor tour of the Island by
what is called "road," though it more closely resembles a coral
switchback--"as queer as its people until you come to know them. But try
and remember yourself at the age of thirteen, and you have the average
adult Kanaka. Several of them joined up voluntarily with the Maori
contingent during the war, and wear service ribbons in their hair if
they can find no other place for them.
"Disease is our great trouble. The Niuean has always been a born
wanderer, and he brings things back with him; but we're getting it under
by keeping them at home, and making failure to report a penal offence.
They've always been hard workers, too. We planted fifteen thousand nuts
on Armistice Day, and away back this was a favourite hunting ground for
'black-birders' on account of the Niuean's appetite for toil. Bully
Hayes, the well-known South Sea buccaneer, used to come here often, and,
when he couldn't get men, took women--cargoes of them--to sell down in
the leisure-loving Societies.
"Those? Graves. They've always buried their dead alongside the tracks,
and we saw no reason to interfere. Good grave, coral, like a
sponge--everything into the sea in no time. On top? Oh, that may be
anything from a canoe to a pair of old boots. They have the same idea of
'laying the table' with the deceased's personal belongings as so many
others. I nearly stole one of them once. It was a perfectly good
sewing-machine, and my wife had nothing to run up curtains and things
with when we came here. But I thought better of it. You have to go
warily with these gentry."
At this juncture the long-suffering car plunged axle-deep into a
quagmire of disintegrated coral, and refused to emerge until an army of
Niueans--advancing on us like a devastating host--attached themselves to
its various parts and, by sheer manpower accompanied with indispensable
yelling, dragged it forth.
[Illustration: _Mr. Masters himself (with beard) boards the Dream Ship_]
We were close to a village, and the _piea_ makers were at work. As a
sidelight on the painstaking industry of these people, their preparation
of arrowroot for food is illuminating. In an age when machinery does
everything but--I was going to say "talk," but correct myself
advisedly--it is a lesson in certain virtues that we of to-day seem to
have mislaid.
[Illustration: _The Dream Ship Bargain Sale_]
Only one family works at a time, and brings its own implements. A
stretch of coral sand is selected, and staffed with men, women, and
children. The old women scrape off the discoloured rind of the roots
with splintered cocoanut shell and throw them into a palm-leaf basket
which the children rinse in salt water and carry to the men. They in
turn grate the root into a coarse powder with instruments made of
cylindrical-shaped pieces of wood bound at intervals with sinnet, the
powder falling on to finely woven mats which are carried away by girls
and tipped into a cradle of bamboo and cocoanut-fibre. This acts as a
filter, through which salt water is poured while a man kneads the powder
into a dough with such energy that he has to be relieved at frequent
intervals.
The white spectators, if any, are then politely requested to retire
while the final process of kneading and washing in fresh water is in
progress, as it has been satisfactorily established that their mere
glance turns _piea_ sour.
Not wishing to dispute the fact, we complied--with the exception of Mrs.
Commissioner's little girl, who had long cherished a desire to see the
forbidden rite. Peering from behind a coral boulder, she was caught in
the act and chased headlong and crying with fright before a shower of
stones, to be comforted by her mother but severely reprimanded by the
Commissioner, who is very rightly a stickler for etiquette where "his
people" are concerned.
In these matters of form, convention, tradition--call it what you
will--we of the outside world are inclined to imagine that we hold a
monopoly, but such is far from being the case. The average South Sea
Islander's codes are as numerous as, and far stricter than, ours, and
when we deign to visit him with our particular brand of etiquette, and
leave with the notion that we have in any way impressed him with our
superiority, we make a vast mistake.
Inwardly (it is to be hoped), it causes us considerable amusement to
note the "quaint customs of a picturesque people," but how often does it
occur to us that our own antics are equally ludicrous to them, and that
we are at a disadvantage in that our hosts are invariably too polite to
show by word or look that we have infringed their code of ethics?
In this respect I have always remembered a visitor to China who was
consumed with uncontrollable mirth at the spectacle of chop-sticks in
action, the while he proceeded to fill himself with his knife.
Peter informed me that the chief trial she endured while moving in
savage circles where it is impossible to converse was the necessity of
wearing a more or less permanent smile; and I sympathized. We were in
good company, for I believe Royalty is afflicted in the same way. But
when you come to think of it, what else can you do with your face when
confronted with a stonily staring multitude that you wish to impress
with the fact that you are having a good time? It is a problem, the
only solution of which to my mind is to carry a cheerfully expressioned
mask, and don it as occasion demands.
Mrs. "Doc" had given up going with her husband on his rounds for this
very reason. She said she found herself after a tour of inspection
carrying a stationary smirk into private life, and it frightened her.
An occasion for the mask of appreciation, if we had chanced to carry one
aboard the dream ship, presented itself the following evening. The
paramount Chief of Niue very kindly invited us to a feast, and after
consuming inordinate quantities of filling food, we sat, and continued
to sit, while our host delivered an oration very ably translated by a
pupil teacher from the mission school:
The paramount Chief of Niue, misnamed Savage Island, was overwhelmed by
the honour we had done him in choosing his little island to visit--we
who were used to the beauties and luxuries of the great outside. We must
be brave warriors to cross so many miles of tempestuous ocean in order
to see him and his people [the mask of modesty, please!]. Our ship,
too, though small, must have been built by great artisans to have
carried us so far and so safely.... When we returned, would we describe
to the great King all that we had seen on Niue, and convey to him the
loyalty of his subjects?
It was a neat speech, calling for a neat answer which, unfortunately, I
have ever been incapable of supplying. But there was always Steve.
After his unrivalled exhibition at the dream ship's jumble sale he was
"called upon" by frenzied nudges in the ribs, and the confidence was not
misplaced. Exactly what the dream ship would have done without Steve, I
tremble to think.