_Where are the Six Thousand?--Calling on the Queen--A Victoria of the
Pacific--The Prince sleeps softly--The Mystical Power of the Mana--How
Islanders can die--A Depressing Palace--Round the Wonderful Roadway--The
Home of Queen Tinomana--A Princess’s Love Story--Once on Board the
Schooner!--The Incredible Crabs--Depravity of a Mor Kiri-kiri._
A HUNDRED years ago, Raratonga had six thousand native inhabitants, and
was a very flourishing heathen country, where cannibalism was all the
fashion, murder of shipwrecked sailors a common custom, and raids upon
neighbouring islands the chief diversion. There is no doubt that the
Raratongan of those days compared none too well with the Tahitian,
who at the worst never was an habitual cannibal, and was almost always
friendly to strangers. Williams was the first missionary to arrive in
the earlier part of the last century, and the complete conversion of the
island was rapid; the Raratongan in a few years was no longer cannibal,
no longer warlike, had become hospitable and friendly to travellers, had
learned to wear clothes (a good deal more than he wanted or should have
had, but the missionary of the early days really did not know what a
fatal thing he was doing, when he enforced the wearing of white man’s
raiment on the unclothed native, and thereby taught him to catch cold,
and die of chest diseases). The island had (and has) a large school for
the training of mission teachers, and a church and mission house not to
be matched in the Pacific for magnificence, and was on the whole a model
of most of the virtues, compared with what it once had been. There were,
and are, drawbacks to the missionary rule, but these have been discussed
so freely in almost every book of Pacific travel ever written, that I
do not feel it necessary to say over again what has so often been said
before. The missionaries certainly civilised the islands, and made them
safe to live in. Concurrently with this desirable result, others not
so desirable took place, the fruit, in some cases, of irresponsible
authority exercised by semi-educated men; in others, of the inevitable
fate that follows the introduction of civilisation to primitive races.
The Raratongan, like all the other brown folk of the islands, was asked
to leap, almost at once, the gulf between utter savagery and comparative
civilisation, that had taken his instructors all the time between
the Roman Conquest and the end of the Dark Ages to overpass. With the
docility of the true Polynesian, he did his best to comply. It was not
his fault--and not, one must fairly say, the fault of the missionary
either, save in a minor degree--that the effort meant death to him.
There are not nineteen hundred Raratongans living now in the fertile
little country that used to support six thousand of their ancestors.
There are not enough babies in the island to carry on the population at
half its present level, in the future. Not one of the “chief” families,
of whom there are a dozen or so, has any living children at all.
Consumption is common, and on the increase; more serious diseases are
commoner still. A Raratongan seldom lives to be very old, and he almost
always dies without resistance or regret. The islanders are happy and
sunny in their own quiet way, but the backbone of life has been broken
for them, and in the promise of the future, grey or golden, they have no
share. To-day is theirs, but they have no to-morrow.
The Arikis, or chiefs, to whom the principal power once belonged, and
who still retain much importance, regret this state of affairs in an
amiable, fatalistic way, but do not trouble themselves very much over
it. They are for the most part of the opinion of Sir Boyle Roche about
the claims of posterity; and anyhow, they have their fruit trading to
think about, and the next public dancing and singing party, and the last
illegal beer-brewing up in the hills--so the decadence of their country
sits lightly on their minds.
These Arikis are one and all inferior to the ruling sovereign, Queen
Makea, who still contrives to retain a great deal of quiet power in her
shapely old hands, in spite of the fact that she is nominally deposed,
and her country owned by New Zealand. I had not been in Raratonga
more than a day or two, when my hosts took me to call upon the queen,
intimating that she would feel hurt if the newcomer was not presented to
her.
[Illustration: 0111]
We walked through the blazing sun of the tropic afternoon, down the
palm-shaded main street of Avarua town, to the great grassy enclosure
that surrounds the palace of the queen. One enters through a neat
white gate; inside are one or two small houses, a number of palms and
flowering bushes, and at the far end, a stately two-storeyed building
constructed of whitewashed concrete, with big railed-in verandahs, and
handsome arched windows. This is Makea’s palace, but her visitors do not
go there to look for her. In true South Sea Islander fashion, she keeps
a house for show and one for use. The islander, though he aspires when
“civilised,” to own a big concrete house, “all same papalangi” (white
man), does not really like living in a building that shuts out the air.
He discovered the fresh-air system long before it was thought of by the
folk who discovered him, and his own houses are always made of small
poles or saplings, set without any filling, so that the whole building
is as airy as a birdcage, and almost as transparent. In this he lives,
while the big concrete house, with its Auckland made tables, chairs, and
beds, and the red and blue table-cloths, and horrible gilt lamps fringed
with cut glass lustres, and shrieking oleograph of King Edward in
his coronation robes, is kept strictly for show, and perhaps for an
occasional festival, such as a wedding party. It is an odd custom, but
sensible, on the whole.
[Illustration: 0117]
Makea’s favourite house is a pretty little reed and thatch villa several
miles out in the country. When she is in town, she makes some concession
to state by living in a small one-storeyed cottage, with a thatch and a
verandah, and not much else, close beside her big palace. We found her
at the cottage when we called, sitting on the verandah upon an ironwood
couch, and petting a little turtle of which she is very fond. It seems
a curious sort of creature to adore, but an elderly lady must have her
little pet of some kind. In other climes, it is a pug, a parrot, or a
cat. Here, the little turtle is considered chic, so the queen has one,
the turtle having been always considered a perquisite of royalty in the
old days, when the chiefs had the best of everything, even down to the
choicest tit-bits of the roasted enemy, while the commonalty had to put
up with what they could get.
[Illustration: 0125]
I was introduced to the queen, who shook hands politely, and sent one
of her handmaids for chairs. These being brought, my hostess and I sat
down, and the latter conversed with Makea in Raratongan, translating a
few conventional politenesses from myself, and conveying others to me in
return. The queen wanted to know how I liked the island, if I had really
come all the way from England, as she had heard, whether I was not
afraid to travel so far alone, how long I hoped to stay, and so forth.
All the time, as we talked, her keen black eyes were scanning me
silently, rapidly, comprehensively, and making their own judgment, quite
independently of the conversation and its inevitable formalities. And
I, on my side, was gazing, I fear with some rudeness, at the very
remarkable figure before me.
Makea, since the death of her husband, Prince Ngamaru, a few years ago,
has laid aside all vanities of dress, and wears only the simplest of
black robes, made loose and flowing from the neck in island fashion. She
is supposed to be at least seventy years of age, and she is extremely
stout, even for her height, which is well over six feet. Yet a more
impressive figure than this aged, deposed, uncrowned sovereign, in her
robe of shabby black, I have never seen. Wisdom, kindliness, and dignity
are written large on her fine old face, which has more than a touch
of resemblance to the late Queen Victoria. And oh, the shrewdness, the
ability, the keen judgment of men and things, that look out from those
brown, deep-set eyes, handsome enough, even in old age, to hint at the
queen-like beauty that once belonged to this island queen!
Makea was always known as a wise, just, and very powerful sovereign. She
ruled over the whole Cook group, and her word was law everywhere,
even to the Prince Consort, the warlike Ngamaru, who to the very last
retained some traces of his heathen upbringing, and used to be seen,
in the island councils of only a few years ago, making the horrible
cannibal gesture which signifies in unmistakable pantomime, “I will tear
the meat from your bones with my teeth!” at any other council member who
presumed to disagree with him. Their married life was a happy one, in
spite of the prince’s violent character, and when he died, the widowed
queen took all her splendid robes of velvet, silk, and satin, gorgeously
trimmed with gold, tore them in fragments, and cast them into his grave,
so that he might he soft, as befitted the prince who had been loved so
well by such a queen.
Makea holds much of the real power in her hands to-day, for all that
the islands are the property of the British Crown, and administered by a
Commissioner. The Raratongan is submissive to chiefs by nature, and the
queen, though uncrowned, is still reverenced and feared almost, as much
as of old. It is firmly believed that she possesses the mystic power
known as “mana” among the Maori races, and this, as it gives the
owner power to slay at will, is greatly feared. The word is almost
untranslatable, meaning, perhaps, something like “prestige,” “kudos,” or
the old English “glamour.” It includes, among other gifts, second sight
to a certain extent, the power to bring good or evil luck, and the
ability already mentioned to deal death at will.
[Illustration: 0139]
This last may sound like fiction. It is nothing of the sort, it is
plain, bald fact, as any one who has ever lived in the islands can
testify. There is nothing more commonly known in the South Seas than
the weird power possessed by kings and heroes to slay with a word, and
instances of its exercise could be found in every group.
Makea does not use it now, so they say. She is old: like aged folks
in other places, she wants to “make her soul,” and it can readily be
imagined that the mission authorities do not approve of such heathen
proceedings. Still, there is not a native in Raratonga who does not
believe that she could strike him dead with a wish, any day in the week,
if she chose: and there are not a few who can tell you that in the days
long ago, she exercised the power.
“Makea, she never rude, because she great chief,” said a relation of the
royal family to me one day. “She never say to any one, ‘You go die!’ I
think. She only saying, some time, ‘I wish I never seeing you again!’
and then the people he go away, very sorry, and by-n’-by he die--some
day, some week, I don’ know--but he dyin’ all right, very quick, you
bet!”
The power to die at will seems to be a heritage of the island races,
though the power to live, when a chief bids them set sail on the dark
seas of the unknown, is not theirs. Suicide, carried out without the
aid of weapons or poisons of any kind, is not at all uncommon. A man
or woman who is tired of life, or bitterly offended with any one, will
often lie down on the mats, turn his face, like David of old; to the
wall, and simply flicker out like a torch extinguished by the wind.
There was once a white schooner captain, who had quarrelled with his
native crew; and the crew, to pay him out, lay down and declared they
would die to spite him.... But this is about Makea the Queen, not about
the godless brutal captain, and the measures he took to prevent his men
from taking passage in a body across the Styx. They didn’t go after all,
and they were sore and sorry men when they made the island port, and the
captain, who was a very ill-educated person, boasted far and wide
for many a day after that, that he would exceedingly well learn any
exceedingly objectionable nigger who offered to go and die on him
again--and that is all that I must say about it, for more reasons than
one.
The queen, after a little conversation, punctuated by intervals of
fanning and smiling (and a more charming smile than Makea’s, you
might search the whole South Seas to find), sent a girl up a tree for
cocoanuts, and offered us the inevitable cocoanut water and bananas,
without which no island call is complete. Afterwards, when we rose to
go, she sent a handmaid with us to take us over the palace, of which she
is, naturally, very proud, though she never enters it except on the rare
occasion of some great festival.
The palace proved to be as uninteresting as the queen herself was
interesting and attractive. It had a stuffy, shut-up smell, and it was
furnished in the worst of European taste, with crude ugly sofas and
chairs, tables covered with cheap-jack Manchester trinkets, and staring
mirrors and pictures--partly sacred art, of a kind remarkably well
calculated to promote the cause of heathenism, and partly portraits,
nearly as bad as those one sees in the spring exhibitions at home. There
were two or three saloons or drawing-rooms, all much alike, on the lower
storey. Upstairs (it is only a very palatial island house that owns
an upstairs) there were several bedrooms, furnished with large costly
bedsteads of mahogany and other handsome woods, and big massive
wardrobes and tables--all unused, and likely to remain so. The place
was depressing on the whole, and I was glad to get out of it into the
cheerful sun, although the heat at this hour of the afternoon was really
outrageous.
[[Illustration: 0165]
Another afternoon, I drove out to see Queen Tinomana, a potentate only
second to Makea in influence. Tinomana, like Makea, is a dynastic name,
and is always borne by the high chief, man or woman, who is hereditary
sovereign of a certain district. The present holder of the title is a
woman, and therefore queen.
What a drive it was! The roadway round the island is celebrated all
over the Pacific, and with justice, for nothing more lovely than this
twenty-mile ribbon of tropic splendour is to be found beneath the
Southern Cross. One drives in a buggy of colonial pattern, light,
easy-running, and fast, and the rough little island horse makes short
work of the miles of dazzling white sandy road that circle the shores
of the bright lagoon. On one side rises the forest, green and rich and
gorgeous beyond all that the dwellers of the dark North could possibly
imagine, and opening now and then to display picture after picture, in
a long gallery of magnificent mountain views--mountains blue as the sea,
mountains purple as amethyst, mountains sharp like spear-heads, towered
and buttressed like grand cathedrals, scarped into grey precipices where
a bat could scarcely cling, and cloven into green gorges bright with
falling streams. On the other, the palms and thick undergrowth
hardly veil the vivid gleam of the emerald lagoon lying within the
white-toothed barrier reef, where all day long the surf of the great
Pacific creams and froths and pours. By the verge of the coral beach
that burns like white fire in the merciless sun, the exquisite ironwood
tree trails its delicate tresses above the sand, so that, if you leave
the carriage to follow on the road, and walk down by the beach, you
shall catch the green glow of the water, and the pearly sparkle of
the reef, through a drooping veil of leafage fine as a mermaid’s hair.
Sometimes the buggy runs for a mile or two through thick woods of this
lovely tree, where the road is carpeted thickly with the fallen needles
of foliage, so that the wheels run without sound, and you may catch the
Eolian harp-song of the leaves, sighing ceaselessly and sadly
Of old, unhappy, far-off things,
when the evening wind gets up and the sun drops low on the lagoon.
The myths of the Pacific are marvellous in their way, but they pass
over unnoticed much that could not have escaped the net of folk-lore and
poetry in Northern lands. That the lovely ironwood, a tree with
leaves like mermaid’s locks, and the voice of a mermaid’s song in its
whispering boughs, should stand bare of legend or romance on the shores
of a sea that is itself the very home of wonder, strikes the Northern
mind with a sense of strange incongruity. But the soul of the islands is
not the soul of the continents, and the poet of the Pacific is still to
be born.
[Illustration: 0173]
Sometimes, again, the little buggy rattles over white coral sand and
gravel, on a stretch of road that is fairly buried in the forest. The
sun is cut off overhead, and only a soft green glow sifts through. The
palm-tree stems sweep upward, tall and white, the gigantic “maupei”
rears aloft its hollow buttressed stems, carved out into caverns that
would delight the soul of a modern Crusoe, and drops big chestnuts,
floury and sweet, upon the road as we pass. The “utu,” or Barringtonia
Speciosa, one of the most beautiful of island trees, towers a hundred
feet into the warm glow above, its brilliant varnished leaves, nearly
a foot long, and its strange rose and white flowers, shaped like
feather-dusters, marking it out unmistakably from the general tangle of
interlacing boughs, and crowding trunks and long liana ropes, green and
brown, that run from tree to tree. If you were lost in the bush, and
thirsty, one of those lianas would provide you with waters, were you
learned enough in wood lore to slash it with your knife, and let the
pure refreshing juice trickle forth. You might gather wild fruit of many
kinds, too, and wild roots, mealy and nourishing, or dainty and sweet.
And at night, you might creep into your hollow tree, or lie down on the
warm sand of the shore, with nothing worse to fear than a mosquito or
two.
There are no wild beasts in any of the Pacific Islands, save an
occasional boar, which always lives remote from men in the hills, and is
much readier to run away than to annoy. There are no poisonous snakes,
either, tarantulas, or deadly centipedes and scorpions. I cannot
honestly say that the two latter creatures do not exist, but they very
seldom bite or sting any one who does not go barefooted, and their venom
is not deadly, though painful.
On almost every tree, as we rattle along through the forest, my hostess
and I can see the beautiful bird’s-nest fern, looking like a hanging
basket of greenery. We have not time to stop to-day, but we shall have
to go out some other afternoon and cut down a few of the smaller ones
for table decoration, for there is a dinner party coming off, and we
are short of pot plants for the rooms. Young palms, most graceful of all
green things, shoot up like little fountains in the clearings, some of
the smaller ones still’ root-bound by the large brown nut from which
they have sprung. One would never think these dainty ball-room palms
were related in any way to the stately white columns-spiring high above
them, for the full-grown palm is all stem and scarcely any top, in
comparison, while the young palm, a mass of magnificent spreading
fronds, rises from a short bulb-like trunk that suggests nothing less
than further growth.
The drive is six good miles, but it seems only too short. In a very
little while, we have reached Queen Tinomana’s village--a picturesque
little grassy town, with brown thatched huts, and white concrete
cottages washed with coral lime, and gay red and yellow leaved ti
trees standing before almost every door--and the queen’s own palace,
a handsome two-storeyed house, quite as fine as Makea’s, stands up in
front of us.
Passing by this piece of European splendour, we go to draw a more likely
covert, and ere long flush our quarry in a little creeper-wreathed
cottage, hidden behind bushes of deliciously scented frangipani and
blazing red hibiscus. The queen is on the verandah, seated, like Makea,
on an ironwood sofa of state. She sits here most of the day, having
very little in the way of government to do, and no desire to trouble her
amiable head with the white woman’s laborious methods of killing time.
Sometimes she plaits a hat to amuse herself, being accomplished in this
favourite Raratongan art--a sailor hat with a hard crown and stiff
brim, and a good deal of neat but lacy fancy work in the twisting of the
plait. Sometimes she receives friends, and hears gossip. Sometimes, she
sleeps on the sofa, and wakes up to suck oranges and fall asleep again.
The strenuous life is not the life beloved of Tinomana, nor (one may
hint in the smallest of whispers) would her much more strenuous sister
queen encourage any developments in that direction.
It is well, under the circumstances, that both are suited by their
respective rôles, otherwise the somewhat difficult lot of the Resident
Commissioner might be rendered even more trying than it is.
Tinomana is not young, and she is not lovely now, though one can see
that she has been beautiful, as so many of the soft-eyed island women
are, long ago. She has had her romance, however, and as we sit on her
verandah, drinking and eating the cocoanut and banana of ceremony, the
grey-haired white man who is husband of the queen tells the story to me
of her love and his, just as it happened, once upon a time.
In 1874 the Cook Islands were an independent group, governed by their
own chiefs, or Arikis. The Arikis had much more power in those days than
they are now allowed to exercise. They could order the execution of any
subject for any cause; they could make war and end it: and no ship dared
to call at the islands without their permission. They owned, as they
still own, all the land, and their wealth of various kinds made them, in
the eyes of the natives, millionaires as well as sovereigns.
“Women’s rights” were a novelty to England thirty years ago, but in the
Cook Islands they were fully recognised, even at that early period.
The most powerful of the Arikis was Makea--then a girl, now an elderly
woman, but always every inch a queen, and always keeping a firm hand on
the sceptre of Raratonga. Any Cook Islands postage-stamp will show Makea
as she was some ten years ago. In 1874 Makea and her consort, Ngamaru,
were making plans for the marrying of Tinomana, a young Raratongan
princess closely related to Makea. Tinomana would shortly become
an Ariki, or queen, herself, and her matrimonial affairs were, in
consequence, of considerable importance.
What the plans of Raratonga’s rulers for Tinomana may have been matters
little. Tinomana was pretty, with splendid long black hair, large soft
brown eyes, an excellent profile, and a complexion little darker than a
Spaniard’s. She was also self-willed, and could keep a secret as close
as wax when she so desired. She had a secret at that time, and it
concerned no South Sea Islander, but a certain good-looking young
Anglo-American named John Salmon (grandson of a Ramsgate sea-captain,
Thomas Dunnett), who had lately landed at Raratonga from the trading
schooner _Venus_, and had been enjoying a good deal of the pretty
princess’s society, unknown to the gossips of the island. It was a case
of love at first sight; for the two had not been more than a few days
acquainted when they came privately to James Chalmers, the famous
missionary, then resident in Raratonga, and begged for a secret
marriage.
James Chalmers refused promptly to have anything to do with the matter,
and furthermore told Tinomana that he would never marry her to any white
man, no matter who it might be. In his opinion such a marriage would be
certain to cause endless trouble with the other Arikis--apart from
the fact that Queen Makea was against it. So the lovers went away
disconsolate. Raratonga was keeping holiday at the time, because a great
war-canoe was to be launched immediately, and a dance and feast were
in preparation. But Tinomana and her lover were out of tune with the
festivities, and no woman in the island prepared her stephanotis and
hibiscus garlands for the feast, or plaited baskets of green palm leaves
to carry contributions of baked sucking-pig and pineapples, with as
heavy a heart as the little princess.
On the day of the feast an idea came to Salmon. There were two schooners
lying in Avarua harbour. One, the _Coronet_, had for a captain a man
named Rose, who was as much opposed to Salmon’s marriage as Chalmers
himself. The _Humboldt_ schooner, on the other hand, had a friend
of Salmon’s in command. From him some help might be expected. Salmon
visited him secretly, found that he was willing to assist, and
arranged for an elopement that very night. Tinomana was willing; nobody
suspected; and the feast would furnish a capital opportunity.
There was no moon that evening, happily for the lovers, for the smallest
sign would have awaked the suspicions of the watching _Coronet_. When
the feast had begun, and all Raratonga was making merry with pig and
baked banana, raw fish and pineapple beer, Tinomana contrived to slip
away and get back to her house. Womanlike, she would not go without her
“things”; and she took so long collecting and packing her treasures--her
silk and muslin dresses, her feather crowns, her fans and bits of
cherished European finery from far-away Auckland--that the suspicions of
a prying girl were aroused. Out she came, accompanied by two others--all
handmaidens to Tinomana--and charged the princess with an intention to
elope. Tinomana acknowledged the truth, and ordered the girls to hold
their tongues, offering them liberal rewards. This was not enough,
however; the three girls demanded that Tinomana, in addition to buying
their silence, should shield them from the possible wrath of the great
Makea by taking them with her. She was forced to consent; and so, when
the impatient lover, lurking in the darkness near the harbour, saw his
lady coming at last, she came with three attendants, and almost enough
luggage to rival Marie Antoinette’s encumbered flight to Varennes.
Eventually, however, the party put off in a canoe, the girls lying flat
in the bottom, with Tinomana crouching beside them and Salmon holding
a lighted torch, which he waved in the air as they went. For the boat
had to pass close by the Coronet, and Captain Rose, somehow or other,
had become suspicious, and young Salmon knew he would think nothing of
stopping any boat that could not give an account of itself. So Salmon
took the torch, to look like a fishing-boat going out with spears and
torches to the reef, and, paddling with one hand while he held the light
aloft with the other, he passed the _Coronet_ safely, knowing well that
his face would be unrecognisable at a distance of fifty yards or so in
the wavering shadow of the flame.
Beyond the reef lay the _Humboldt_ waiting. Tinomana and her maids and
her luggage were swung up the side with small ceremony; Salmon hurried
after, and a small but welcome breeze enabled the schooner to slip out
to sea unnoticed in the dark. She made for Mangaia, another of the Cook
Islands, some hundred and fifty miles away, and reached it in a couple
of days. But the _Humboldt_ had hardly made the land when the dreaded
_Coronet_ appeared on the horizon, carrying every stitch of sail, and
with her decks, her “Jacob’s-ladder,” and her very yardarms crowded by
furious Raratongans. The fugitives were caught!
At first they had not been missed. The islanders were feasting and
drinking, the Arikis were unsuspicious, and the _Coronet_ had seen only
a fishing-canoe with a solitary man on board gliding out to the reef.
But with the morning light came the knowledge that Tinomana was absent
from her palace, that Salmon had not come home, and that the _Humboldt_
was gone. Raratonga was enraged, and all the more so because pursuit
appeared for the moment to be impossible. They knew that the _Humboldt_
had probably made for Mangaia; but the breeze had died away, and
the _Coronet_, her sails flapping idly against her rakish masts, lay
helpless in harbour. Some brilliant spirit, however, proposed that the
schooner should be towed out, in the hope of catching a breeze beyond
the reef; and half a dozen great whaleboats, manned by powerful arms,
were harnessed to the _Coronet’s_ bows. Out she came through the opening
in the foaming coral reef, with screaming and splashing and tugging
at oars, into the blue, open sea, and beyond the shelter of the peaky,
purple hills. The breeze was met at last, the boats cast off and dropped
astern, and the _Coronet_, carrying half Raratonga on board, set sail
for Mangaia.
Once within the range of the _Humboldt_ the _Coronet_ lowered a boatful
of armed men, and the latter made for the schooner lying-to under
the shelter of the Mangaian hills. Captain Harris, of the _Humboldt_,
however, ordered his crew to shoot down the first man who attempted to
board, and the attacking boat thought better of it. Beaten by force they
tried diplomacy, in which they were more successful. They told Captain
Harris that all his cargo of valuable cotton, lying on the wharf at
Raratonga ready for shipment, would be destroyed unless he gave the
princess back. This meant absolute ruin, and the captain had to submit.
Salmon told Tinomana that it was best to give in for the present, as
they were caught; but that the parting would be only for a time. And
back to Raratonga went the disconsolate princess, bereft of her lover
and her stolen wedding, and with the anticipation of a good scolding to
come from the indignant Arikis.
For some months after this disaster Salmon wandered about from island to
island, living now in Raiatea, now in Flint Island, now in Mauke--always
restless and always impatient. At last he judged the time had come to
make a second attempt, and tried to obtain a passage to Raratonga.
Schooner after schooner refused to take him, but finally a little vessel
called the _Atalanta_ braved the wrath of the Arikis and brought
him back. During his absence time had worked in his favour, and the
opposition to the marriage was now much weaker. The Arikis received
him coolly and fined him twenty pounds’ worth of needles, thread, and
tobacco for his late excursion, but they no longer refused to let him
see Tinomana. The missionary, however, still objected to the marriage,
and as he was the only clergyman available for the ceremony it seemed as
if things, on the whole, were “getting no forrader.”
At this juncture the great Makea stepped in, and with the charming
variability common to her sex, took the part of the lovers against all
Raratonga as strongly as she had before opposed their union. She was not
then in Raratonga, but in another of the Cook Islands, Atiu. From thence
she sent the schooner _Venus_ to Raratonga, ordering the captain to
fetch Tinomana and Salmon to Atiu, where the local missionary would
marry them, or Makea would know the reason why.
Raratonga--obstinate Raratonga!--still refused to give its princess to
a foreign adventurer, though it trembled at the thought of defying the
Elizabethan Makea. A band of warriors came down to the harbour to see
that Salmon did not get on board the ship. As for Tinomana, they did not
dare to oppose her departure, when the head of the house had actually
summoned her. But the princess had no notion whatever of going alone.
Salmon was smuggled on board in the dusk and hidden under a bunk. A pile
of mats and native “pareos,” or kilts, was placed over him, and there,
in the heat of the tropic night, he lay and sweltered, while the _Venus_
swung to her cable and the warriors hunted the ship and found nothing.
When they went off, baffled, the schooner put to sea. A Raratongan
vessel, still suspicious, chased her to Atiu, but Makea informed the
pursuing crew that it would be bad for their health to land on her
property unasked; and, as this great Pacific Queen had, and has, the
reputation of keeping her word when it is passed, the Raratongans did
not dare to set foot on shore. This time it was they who went home
disconsolate.
And so the young couple were married “and lived happily ever after.”
Tinomana and her consort now reside at Arorangi, Raratonga, in their
long, low house, set among frangipani trees and oranges, and covered
with flowering tropical creepers, and seldom or never occupy their
palace. Tinomana’s five children are dead; she herself is growing old,
but the memory of those long-past years of adventure and romance is
still with her. Her life glides quietly and dreamily by, within
the sound of the humming ocean surf, under the shadow of the purple
Raratongan hills. She has had her day, and there remain the quiet sunset
and the softened twilight, before the time of dark.
The queen had little to say to us, for she does not speak English,
nor is she shrewdly curious about men and things outside of sleepy
Raratonga, like her sister sovereign, Makea. She smiled a good deal, and
said some polite things about my dress, which illustrated a new fashion,
and seemed to interest her more than anything else connected with the
call. I had brought a gift with me for Tinomana, a silk scarf of a
peculiarly screaming blue, and I presented it before I took my leave
with some politenesses that the royal consort rapidly translated for me.
The queen was much pleased with the gift, and began trying its effect on
several different hats at once. Then we had some more cocoanut water and
said good-bye, and drove home again in the yellow sunset.
The crabs were getting noisy as we passed along a soft bit of sandy road
close by the shore. They are fairly active all day, and at night seem to
wake up a little more completely than before. One can hear them rattling
and scratching loudly all over the stones and rubbish about the shore;
the ground is riddled with their holes--as we pass, they dart in at
their front doors as swiftly as spiders, and stand looking cautiously
round a comer till the threatening apparition is gone. They are not nice
things, these crabs--they are tall and spindly and insectlike in build,
with a scrawny body set on eight spider-like legs, and ugly, sharp, thin
claws. They live on the land, but haunt the beach a good deal, because
of the débris to be found there, and they are such nasty feeders that
not even the natives will eat them, which is saying a good deal.
They have an uncanny fancy for coming into houses. If your residence is
not raised up on a good Verandah, which they cannot surmount, you may be
alarmed some night by a ghostly tapping and ticking on the floor, like
nothing you have ever heard or dreamed of before, and while you are
wondering fearfully what the sound may be, you will suddenly become
aware of something clumsy and noisy scrambling among the mosquito
curtains of your bed. At this, if you are of common human mould, you
will arise hastily, tangling yourself up in the curtains as you do
so, and call loudly for a light. And when one is brought, behold the
offender scuttling hastily away on eight long thin legs into the outer
dark, without stopping to make an explanation or an apology. You are
so annoyed that you put on a dressing-gown and follow him out on the
verandah, a stick in your hand and murder in your heart; but just as you
reach the steps, there is a loud “flump” on the floor, and a centipede
as big as a sausage, with a writhing black body and horrible red legs
and antennae, flashes past the edge of your sweeping draperies. At this
you give it up, and get back to your mosquito curtains.
You are just falling asleep, when------ Good Heavens! what is it?
Surely nothing but a burglar could have made that fearful noise in the
outer kitchen!--a burglar, or a madman, or both in one. It sounds as if
some one were beating somebody else with an iron bucket. Perhaps it
may be only a native dog chasing a cat. Up go the curtains once more,
letting half the mosquitoes in the island in, and off the wretched
traveller sets for the kitchen, accompanied by a brave but pallid
hostess, who says she is extremely sorry her husband _would_ choose this
week for going away from home.
There he is! there is the author of the noise--a black, bristly,
incredibly hideous hermit crab as big as a biscuit--out of his shell,
and fighting like grim death in an empty kerosene tin, with another crab
nearly as big, and quite as vicious. Number one has got too big for the
secondhand univalve shell he lived in, and is touring the country trying
to replace it. Number two, also out-growing his clothes, has got half a
broken sardine box in the kerosene tin (which acts as ash-bucket to the
house), and he thinks it is the loveliest new shell he has ever seen.
So, unluckily, does the other crab, and they are in the act of putting
it to ordeal by combat, when we invade the scene of the battle, and
rudely shake the crabs and the shells and the sardine tin all off the
end of the verandah together.
“What on earth brings crabs into people’s houses?” you ask amazedly,
as you go back to bed again. It seems an insane action for any sensible
crab, considering that we are half a mile from the sea.
“Pure cussedness,” says my friend wrathfully. “They even climb up the
verandah posts, and sit among the flowers. ‘What for? Spite, I think;
there isn’t anything more ill-natured in the world than a hermit crab.”
If it is not a moonlight night, now, we get to sleep at last, but if it
is, and the oranges are ripe------
Well, that is the time the “mor kiri-kiris” choose to perform their
orisons; and when they are playing the devil with the holy peace and
calm of midnight on the roof, not even a fourth mate newly come off his
watch, could sleep below.
“Here, you blank, blank, blank, unspeakable, etcetera, let go that
orange!”
“I shan’t, blank your double-blank limbs and wings! I got it first!”
“Then just look out, you mangy, fox-faced, clumsy-winged beast, for I’ll
rip the inside out of your rotten carcase with my claws.”
“Like to see you!” (somewhat muffled with stolen orange).
“You will!”
Shriek, shriek, yell, howl, scream.
“You’ve bitten my toe off, you trebly-blanked vermin!”
“Meant to!”
“Clear off!”
“Won’t!”
“Come on again, then!”
“Pax! pax! here’s the great pig with fur on its head that lives in the
house, coming out with a gun. I’m off.”
“So am I, but we’ll go back again the moment it goes in.” That is the
way one sleeps in the orange season, in a place that happens to be
popular with the “mor kiri-kiri,” or flying-fox--a bat with a furry body
as big as a cat’s, long sharp white teeth, a head exactly like a fox,
and the crustiest disposition of anything living on the island.