crablike fashion. Chiefs, who announced themselves Christians and
were welcomed into the body of the chapel, had a distressing habit of
backsliding in order to partake of the flesh of some favorite enemy. Eat
or be eaten had been the law of the land; and eat or be eaten promised
to remain the law of the land for a long time to come. There were
chiefs, such as Tanoa, Tuiveikoso, and Tuikilakila, who had literally
eaten hundreds of their fellow men. But among these gluttons Ra
Undreundre ranked highest. Ra Undreundre lived at Takiraki. He kept a
register of his gustatory exploits. A row of stones outside his house
marked the bodies he had eaten. This row was two hundred and thirty
paces long, and the stones in it numbered eight hundred and seventy-two.
Each stone represented a body. The row of stones might have been longer,
had not Ra Undreundre unfortunately received a spear in the small of his
back in a bush skirmish on Somo Somo and been served up on the table of
Naungavuli, whose mediocre string of stones numbered only forty-eight.
The hard-worked, fever-stricken missionaries stuck doggedly to their
task, at times despairing, and looking forward for some special
manifestation, some outburst of Pentecostal fire that would bring a
glorious harvest of souls. But cannibal Fiji had remained obdurate. The
frizzle-headed man-eaters were loath to leave their fleshpots so long as
the harvest of human carcases was plentiful. Sometimes, when the harvest
was too plentiful, they imposed on the missionaries by letting the word
slip out that on such a day there would be a killing and a barbecue.
Promptly the missionaries would buy the lives of the victims with stick
tobacco, fathoms of calico, and quarts of trade beads. Natheless the
chiefs drove a handsome trade in thus disposing of their surplus live
meat. Also, they could always go out and catch more.
It was at this juncture that John Starhurst proclaimed that he would
carry the Gospel from coast to coast of the Great Land, and that he
would begin by penetrating the mountain fastnesses of the headwaters of
the Rewa River. His words were received with consternation.
The native teachers wept softly. His two fellow missionaries strove to
dissuade him. The King of Rewa warned him that the mountain dwellers
would surely kai-kai him--kai-kai meaning “to eat”--and that he, the
King of Rewa, having become Lotu, would be put to the necessity of going
to war with the mountain dwellers. That he could not conquer them he
was perfectly aware. That they might come down the river and sack Rewa
Village he was likewise perfectly aware. But what was he to do? If John
Starhurst persisted in going out and being eaten, there would be a war
that would cost hundreds of lives.
Later in the day a deputation of Rewa chiefs waited upon John Starhurst.
He heard them patiently, and argued patiently with them, though he
abated not a whit from his purpose. To his fellow missionaries he
explained that he was not bent upon martyrdom; that the call had come
for him to carry the Gospel into Viti Levu, and that he was merely
obeying the Lord's wish.
To the traders who came and objected most strenuously of all, he said:
“Your objections are valueless. They consist merely of the damage that
may be done your businesses. You are interested in making money, but
I am interested in saving souls. The heathen of this dark land must be
saved.”
John Starhurst was not a fanatic. He would have been the first man to
deny the imputation. He was eminently sane and practical.
He was sure that his mission would result in good, and he had
private visions of igniting the Pentecostal spark in the souls of the
mountaineers and of inaugurating a revival that would sweep down out of
the mountains and across the length and breadth of the Great Land from
sea to sea and to the isles in the midst of the sea. There were no
wild lights in his mild gray eyes, but only calm resolution and an
unfaltering trust in the Higher Power that was guiding him.
One man only he found who approved of his project, and that was Ra Vatu,
who secretly encouraged him and offered to lend him guides to the first
foothills. John Starhurst, in turn, was greatly pleased by Ra Vatu's
conduct. From an incorrigible heathen, with a heart as black as his
practices, Ra Vatu was beginning to emanate light. He even spoke of
becoming Lotu. True, three years before he had expressed a similar
intention, and would have entered the church had not John Starhurst
entered objection to his bringing his four wives along with him. Ra
Vatu had had economic and ethical objections to monogamy. Besides, the
missionary's hair-splitting objection had offended him; and, to prove
that he was a free agent and a man of honor, he had swung his huge war
club over Starhurst's head. Starhurst had escaped by rushing in under
the club and holding on to him until help arrived. But all that was now
forgiven and forgotten. Ra Vatu was coming into the church, not merely
as a converted heathen, but as a converted polygamist as well. He was
only waiting, he assured Starhurst, until his oldest wife, who was very
sick, should die.
John Starhurst journeyed up the sluggish Rewa in one of Ra Vatu's
canoes. This canoe was to carry him for two days, when, the head of
navigation reached, it would return. Far in the distance, lifted
into the sky, could be seen the great smoky mountains that marked the
backbone of the Great Land. All day John Starhurst gazed at them with
eager yearning.
Sometimes he prayed silently. At other times he was joined in prayer by
Narau, a native teacher, who for seven years had been Lotu, ever since
the day he had been saved from the hot oven by Dr. James Ellery Brown
at the trifling expense of one hundred sticks of tobacco, two cotton
blankets, and a large bottle of painkiller. At the last moment, after
twenty hours of solitary supplication and prayer, Narau's ears had
heard the call to go forth with John Starhurst on the mission to the
mountains.
“Master, I will surely go with thee,” he had announced.
John Starhurst had hailed him with sober delight. Truly, the Lord was
with him thus to spur on so broken-spirited a creature as Narau.
“I am indeed without spirit, the weakest of the Lord's vessels,” Narau
explained, the first day in the canoe.
“You should have faith, stronger faith,” the missionary chided him.
Another canoe journeyed up the Rewa that day. But it journeyed an
hour astern, and it took care not to be seen. This canoe was also the
property of Ra Vatu. In it was Erirola, Ra Vatu's first cousin and
trusted henchman; and in the small basket that never left his hand was
a whale tooth. It was a magnificent tooth, fully six inches long,
beautifully proportioned, the ivory turned yellow and purple with age.
This tooth was likewise the property of Ra Vatu; and in Fiji, when such
a tooth goes forth, things usually happen. For this is the virtue of
the whale tooth: Whoever accepts it cannot refuse the request that may
accompany it or follow it. The request may be anything from a human life
to a tribal alliance, and no Fijian is so dead to honor as to deny the
request when once the tooth has been accepted. Sometimes the request
hangs fire, or the fulfilment is delayed, with untoward consequences.
High up the Rewa, at the village of a chief, Mongondro by name, John
Starhurst rested at the end of the second day of the journey. In the
morning, attended by Narau, he expected to start on foot for the smoky
mountains that were now green and velvety with nearness. Mongondro was
a sweet-tempered, mild-mannered little old chief, short-sighted
and afflicted with elephantiasis, and no longer inclined toward the
turbulence of war. He received the missionary with warm hospitality,
gave him food from his own table, and even discussed religious matters
with him. Mongondro was of an inquiring bent of mind, and pleased
John Starhurst greatly by asking him to account for the existence and
beginning of things. When the missionary had finished his summary of
the Creation according to Genesis, he saw that Mongondro was deeply
affected. The little old chief smoked silently for some time. Then he
took the pipe from his mouth and shook his head sadly.
“It cannot be,” he said. “I, Mongondro, in my youth, was a good workman
with the adze. Yet three months did it take me to make a canoe--a small
canoe, a very small canoe. And you say that all this land and water was
made by one man--”
“Nay, was made by one God, the only true God,” the missionary
interrupted.
“It is the same thing,” Mongondro went on, “that all the land and all
the water, the trees, the fish, and bush and mountains, the sun, the
moon, and the stars, were made in six days! No, no. I tell you that in
my youth I was an able man, yet did it require me three months for one
small canoe. It is a story to frighten children with; but no man can
believe it.”
“I am a man,” the missionary said.
“True, you are a man. But it is not given to my dark understanding to
know what you believe.”
“I tell you, I do believe that everything was made in six days.”
“So you say, so you say,” the old cannibal murmured soothingly.
It was not until after John Starhurst and Narau had gone off to bed
that Erirola crept into the chief's house, and, after diplomatic speech,
handed the whale tooth to Mongondro.
The old chief held the tooth in his hands for a long time. It was a
beautiful tooth, and he yearned for it. Also, he divined the request
that must accompany it. “No, no; whale teeth were beautiful,” and
his mouth watered for it, but he passed it back to Erirola with many
apologies.
*****
In the early dawn John Starhurst was afoot, striding along the bush
trail in his big leather boots, at his heels the faithful Narau, himself
at the heels of a naked guide lent him by Mongondro to show the way to
the next village, which was reached by midday. Here a new guide showed
the way. A mile in the rear plodded Erirola, the whale tooth in the
basket slung on his shoulder. For two days more he brought up the
missionary's rear, offering the tooth to the village chiefs. But village
after village refused the tooth. It followed so quickly the missionary's
advent that they divined the request that would be made, and would have
none of it.
They were getting deep into the mountains, and Erirola took a secret
trail, cut in ahead of the missionary, and reached the stronghold of the
Buli of Gatoka. Now the Buli was unaware of John Starhurst's imminent
arrival. Also, the tooth was beautiful--an extraordinary specimen, while
the coloring of it was of the rarest order. The tooth was presented
publicly. The Buli of Gatoka, seated on his best mat, surrounded by his
chief men, three busy fly-brushers at his back, deigned to receive from
the hand of his herald the whale tooth presented by Ra Vatu and carried
into the mountains by his cousin, Erirola. A clapping of hands went up
at the acceptance of the present, the assembled headman, heralds, and
fly-brushers crying aloud in chorus:
“A! woi! woi! woi! A! woi! woi! woi! A tabua levu! woi! woi! A mudua,
mudua, mudua!'
“Soon will come a man, a white man,” Erirola began, after the proper
pause. “He is a missionary man, and he will come today. Ra Vatu is
pleased to desire his boots. He wishes to present them to his good
friend, Mongondro, and it is in his mind to send them with the feet
along in them, for Mongondro is an old man and his teeth are not good.
Be sure, O Buli, that the feet go along in the boots. As for the rest of
him, it may stop here.”
The delight in the whale tooth faded out of the Buli's eyes, and he
glanced about him dubiously. Yet had he already accepted the tooth.
“A little thing like a missionary does not matter,” Erirola prompted.
“No, a little thing like a missionary does not matter,” the Buli
answered, himself again. “Mongondro shall have the boots. Go, you young
men, some three or four of you, and meet the missionary on the trail. Be
sure you bring back the boots as well.”
“It is too late,” said Erirola. “Listen! He comes now.”
Breaking through the thicket of brush, John Starhurst, with Narau close
on his heels, strode upon the scene. The famous boots, having filled in
wading the stream, squirted fine jets of water at every step. Starhurst
looked about him with flashing eyes. Upborne by an unwavering trust,
untouched by doubt or fear, he exulted in all he saw. He knew that
since the beginning of time he was the first white man ever to tread the
mountain stronghold of Gatoka.
The grass houses clung to the steep mountain side or overhung the
rushing Rewa. On either side towered a mighty precipice. At the best,
three hours of sunlight penetrated that narrow gorge. No cocoanuts
nor bananas were to be seen, though dense, tropic vegetation overran
everything, dripping in airy festoons from the sheer lips of the
precipices and running riot in all the crannied ledges. At the far end
of the gorge the Rewa leaped eight hundred feet in a single span, while
the atmosphere of the rock fortress pulsed to the rhythmic thunder of
the fall.
From the Buli's house, John Starhurst saw emerging the Buli and his
followers.
“I bring you good tidings,” was the missionary's greeting.
“Who has sent you?” the Buli rejoined quietly.
“God.”
“It is a new name in Viti Levu,” the Buli grinned. “Of what islands,
villages, or passes may he be chief?”
“He is the chief over all islands, all villages, all passes,” John
Starhurst answered solemnly. “He is the Lord over heaven and earth, and
I am come to bring His word to you.”
“Has he sent whale teeth?” was the insolent query.
“No, but more precious than whale teeth is the--”
“It is the custom, between chiefs, to send whale teeth,” the Buli
interrupted.
“Your chief is either a niggard, or you are a fool, to come empty-handed
into the mountains. Behold, a more generous than you is before you.”
So saying, he showed the whale tooth he had received from Erirola.
Narau groaned.
“It is the whale tooth of Ra Vatu,” he whispered to Starhurst. “I know
it well. Now are we undone.”
“A gracious thing,” the missionary answered, passing his hand through
his long beard and adjusting his glasses. “Ra Vatu has arranged that we
should be well received.”
But Narau groaned again, and backed away from the heels he had dogged so
faithfully.
“Ra Vatu is soon to become Lotu,” Starhurst explained, “and I have come
bringing the Lotu to you.”
“I want none of your Lotu,” said the Buli, proudly. “And it is in my
mind that you will be clubbed this day.”
The Buli nodded to one of his big mountaineers, who stepped forward,
swinging a club. Narau bolted into the nearest house, seeking to hide
among the woman and mats; but John Starhurst sprang in under the club
and threw his arms around his executioner's neck. From this point of
vantage he proceeded to argue. He was arguing for his life, and he knew
it; but he was neither excited nor afraid.
“It would be an evil thing for you to kill me,” he told the man. “I have
done you no wrong, nor have I done the Buli wrong.”
So well did he cling to the neck of the one man that they dared not
strike with their clubs. And he continued to cling and to dispute for
his life with those who clamored for his death.
“I am John Starhurst,” he went on calmly. “I have labored in Fiji for
three years, and I have done it for no profit. I am here among you for
good. Why should any man kill me? To kill me will not profit any man.”
The Buli stole a look at the whale tooth. He was well paid for the deed.
The missionary was surrounded by a mass of naked savages, all struggling
to get at him. The death song, which is the song of the oven, was
raised, and his expostulations could no longer be heard. But so
cunningly did he twine and wreathe his body about his captor's that the
death blow could not be struck. Erirola smiled, and the Buli grew angry.
“Away with you!” he cried. “A nice story to go back to the coast--a
dozen of you and one missionary, without weapons, weak as a woman,
overcoming all of you.”
“Wait, O Buli,” John Starhurst called out from the thick of the scuffle,
“and I will overcome even you. For my weapons are Truth and Right, and
no man can withstand them.”
“Come to me, then,” the Buli answered, “for my weapon is only a poor
miserable club, and, as you say, it cannot withstand you.”
The group separated from him, and John Starhurst stood alone, facing the
Buli, who was leaning on an enormous, knotted warclub.
“Come to me, missionary man, and overcome me,” the Buli challenged.
“Even so will I come to you and overcome you,” John Starhurst made
answer, first wiping his spectacles and settling them properly, then
beginning his advance.
The Buli raised the club and waited.
“In the first place, my death will profit you nothing,” began the
argument.
“I leave the answer to my club,” was the Buli's reply.
And to every point he made the same reply, at the same time watching the
missionary closely in order to forestall that cunning run-in under the
lifted club. Then, and for the first time, John Starhurst knew that his
death was at hand. He made no attempt to run in. Bareheaded, he stood in
the sun and prayed aloud--the mysterious figure of the inevitable white
man, who, with Bible, bullet, or rum bottle, has confronted the amazed
savage in his every stronghold. Even so stood John Starhurst in the rock
fortress of the Buli of Gatoka.
“Forgive them, for they know not what they do,” he prayed. “O Lord! Have
mercy upon Fiji. Have compassion for Fiji. O Jehovah, hear us for His
sake, Thy Son, whom Thou didst give that through Him all men might also
become Thy children. From Thee we came, and our mind is that to Thee
we may return. The land is dark, O Lord, the land is dark. But Thou art
mighty to save. Reach out Thy hand, O Lord, and save Fiji, poor cannibal
Fiji.”
The Buli grew impatient.
“Now will I answer thee,” he muttered, at the same time swinging his
club with both hands.
Narau, hiding among the women and the mats, heard the impact of the
blow and shuddered. Then the death song arose, and he knew his beloved
missionary's body was being dragged to the oven as he heard the words:
“Drag me gently. Drag me gently.”
“For I am the champion of my land.”
“Give thanks! Give thanks! Give thanks!”
Next, a single voice arose out of the din, asking:
“Where is the brave man?”
A hundred voices bellowed the answer:
“Gone to be dragged into the oven and cooked.”
“Where is the coward?” the single voice demanded.
“Gone to report!” the hundred voices bellowed back. “Gone to report!
Gone to report!”
Narau groaned in anguish of spirit. The words of the old song were true.
He was the coward, and nothing remained to him but to go and report.
MAUKI
He weighed one hundred and ten pounds. His hair was kinky and negroid,
and he was black. He was peculiarly black. He was neither blue-black nor
purple-black, but plum-black. His name was Mauki, and he was the son
of a chief. He had three tambos. Tambo is Melanesian for taboo, and
is first cousin to that Polynesian word. Mauki's three tambos were
as follows: First, he must never shake hands with a woman, nor have a
woman's hand touch him or any of his personal belongings; secondly, he
must never eat clams nor any food from a fire in which clams had been
cooked; thirdly, he must never touch a crocodile, nor travel in a canoe
that carried any part of a crocodile even if as large as a tooth.
Of a different black were his teeth, which were deep black, or, perhaps
better, LAMP-black. They had been made so in a single night, by his
mother, who had compressed about them a powdered mineral which was
dug from the landslide back of Port Adams. Port Adams is a salt-water
village on Malaita, and Malaita is the most savage island in the
Solomons--so savage that no traders or planters have yet gained a
foothold on it; while, from the time of the earliest bêche-de-mer
fishers and sandalwood traders down to the latest labor recruiters
equipped with automatic rifles and gasolene engines, scores of white
adventurers have been passed out by tomahawks and soft-nosed Snider
bullets. So Malaita remains today, in the twentieth century, the
stamping ground of the labor recruiters, who farm its coasts for
laborers who engage and contract themselves to toil on the plantations
of the neighboring and more civilized islands for a wage of thirty
dollars a year. The natives of those neighboring and more civilized
islands have themselves become too civilized to work on plantations.
Mauki's ears were pierced, not in one place, nor two places, but in a
couple of dozen places. In one of the smaller holes he carried a clay
pipe. The larger holes were too large for such use. The bowl of the pipe
would have fallen through. In fact, in the largest hole in each ear
he habitually wore round wooden plugs that were an even four inches in
diameter. Roughly speaking, the circumference of said holes was twelve
and one-half inches. Mauki was catholic in his tastes. In the various
smaller holes he carried such things as empty rifle cartridges,
horseshoe nails, copper screws, pieces of string, braids of sennit,
strips of green leaf, and, in the cool of the day, scarlet hibiscus
flowers. From which it will be seen that pockets were not necessary to
his well-being. Besides, pockets were impossible, for his only wearing
apparel consisted of a piece of calico several inches wide. A pocket
knife he wore in his hair, the blade snapped down on a kinky lock. His
most prized possession was the handle of a china cup, which he suspended
from a ring of turtle-shell, which, in turn, was passed through the
partition-cartilage of his nose.
But in spite of embellishments, Mauki had a nice face. It was really
a pretty face, viewed by any standard, and for a Melanesian it was a
remarkably good-looking face. Its one fault was its lack of strength. It
was softly effeminate, almost girlish. The features were small, regular,
and delicate. The chin was weak, and the mouth was weak. There was no
strength nor character in the jaws, forehead, and nose. In the eyes only
could be caught any hint of the unknown quantities that were so large a
part of his make-up and that other persons could not understand. These
unknown quantities were pluck, pertinacity, fearlessness, imagination,
and cunning; and when they found expression in some consistent and
striking action, those about him were astounded.
Mauki's father was chief over the village at Port Adams, and thus, by
birth a salt-water man, Mauki was half amphibian. He knew the way of the
fishes and oysters, and the reef was an open book to him. Canoes, also,
he knew. He learned to swim when he was a year old. At seven years he
could hold his breath a full minute and swim straight down to bottom
through thirty feet of water. And at seven years he was stolen by
the bushmen, who cannot even swim and who are afraid of salt water.
Thereafter Mauki saw the sea only from a distance, through rifts in the
jungle and from open spaces on the high mountain sides. He became the
slave of old Fanfoa, head chief over a score of scattered bush-villages
on the range-lips of Malaita, the smoke of which, on calm mornings,
is about the only evidence the seafaring white men have of the teeming
interior population. For the whites do not penetrate Malaita. They tried
it once, in the days when the search was on for gold, but they always
left their heads behind to grin from the smoky rafters of the bushmen's
huts.
When Mauki was a young man of seventeen, Fanfoa got out of tobacco. He
got dreadfully out of tobacco. It was hard times in all his villages.
He had been guilty of a mistake. Suo was a harbor so small that a large
schooner could not swing at anchor in it. It was surrounded by mangroves
that overhung the deep water. It was a trap, and into the trap sailed
two white men in a small ketch. They were after recruits, and they
possessed much tobacco and trade goods, to say nothing of three rifles
and plenty of ammunition. Now there were no salt-water men living at
Suo, and it was there that the bushmen could come down to the sea. The
ketch did a splendid traffic. It signed on twenty recruits the first
day. Even old Fanfoa signed on. And that same day the score of new
recruits chopped off the two white men's head, killed the boat's crew,
and burned the ketch. Thereafter, and for three months, there was
tobacco and trade goods in plenty and to spare in all the bush villages.
Then came the man-of-war that threw shells for miles into the hills,
frightening the people out of their villages and into the deeper bush.
Next the man-of-war sent landing parties ashore. The villages were all
burned, along with the tobacco and trade stuff.
The cocoanuts and bananas were chopped down, the taro gardens uprooted,
and the pigs and chickens killed.