_The Schooner at last--White Wings versus Black Funnels--Not according
to Clark Russell--The Marvellous White Woman--The Song of the Surf--Why
not?--Delightful Aitutaki--Into an Atoll--A Night in the House of
a Chieftainess--The Scarlet Devil--Nothing to wear--How to tickle a
Shark--The Fairy Islets--A Chance for Robinson Crusoe._
THE schooner _Duchess_ was in at last.
Of their bones are coral made.
We were almost growing anxious about her in Raratonga--almost, not
quite; for after all, she was only a fortnight overdue, and that is not
much for an island schooner, even when she is run by white officers.
When the easy-going native runs her, no one ever knows when she will
leave any port, and no one would venture to predict that she will ever
arrive at all. There are generally a good many native-owned schooners
about the South Eastern Pacific, but, though all the numbers keep up,
the identity varies, and if you return after a few years and ask for the
ships you used to know, the answer will be, I have not space to tell you
here of the native schooner that started from one of the Cook Islands,
not so very long ago, to visit another island less than two hundred
miles away, but, because of the wild and weird navigation of her owners,
went instead to somewhere over a thousand miles off; toured half the
Pacific; stayed away six months; and finally came back to her own little
island by a happy chance, without ever having reached the place she set
out for after all. But it has a good deal of local colour in it.
The _Duchess_, however, was not a native schooner, being owned by
whites, and run by a British captain, mate, and boatswain, assisted
by eight island seamen. There was, therefore, a reasonable prospect
of getting somewhere, sometime, if I travelled in her; so I took my
passage, and, for the first time, literally “sailed away”--to see the
outer islands of the Cook Group, and later on, solitary Savage Island,
Penrhyn, Malden, Rakahanga, and Manahiki.
For more than four months afterwards, with a single break, the little
_Duchess_ of 175 tons was my home. Little she seemed at first, but
before long she assumed the proportions of quite a majestic vessel.
There was no schooner in those waters that could touch her, either
for speed, size, or (alas!) for pitching and rolling, in any and every
weather. Her ninety-five foot masts made a brave show, when clothed with
shining canvas; her white hull, with its scarlet encircling band,
and the sun-coloured copper glimmering at the water-line, stood out
splendidly on the blazing blue of the great Pacific. “A three-masted
topsail schooner” was her official designation. The unofficial names she
was called in a calm, when the great Pacific swell brought out her full
rolling powers, are best left unreported.
I cannot honestly advise the elderly round-the-world-tourist, doing
the Pacific in orthodox style, to desert steam for sail, and try the
experience of voyaging “off the track” among the islands never visited
by liners. But the true traveller, who wanders for the joy of wandering,
and is not afraid or unwilling to “rough it” a good deal, will find a
sailing trip in the Pacific among the most fascinating of experiences.
Beyond the radius of the belching funnel a great peace reigns; an
absence of time, a pleasant carelessness about all the weighty and
tiresome things that may be happening outside the magic circle of still
blue ocean. There is no “let-her-slide” spirit in the whole world to
compare with that which blossoms spontaneously on the sun-white decks of
a Pacific schooner.
Looking back upon all the island boats that I have known, I may say
that there was not so much discipline among the lot as would have run a
single cross-channel boat at home, that every one was satisfied if
the officers refrained from “jamborees” between ports; if some one was
sometimes at the wheel, and if the native crew knew enough of the ropes
to work the ship reasonably well, in the intervals of line-fishing and
chorus-singing. And in one and all, whatever might happen to passengers,
cargo, ship, or crew, “take things as they come,” was the grand general
rule.
* * * * *
“This is your cabin,” said the cheerful little pirate of a captain. He
was celebrated as the “hardest case” in the South Pacific, and looked
not quite unworthy of his reputation, though he was dressed as if for
Bond Street in the afternoon, and mannered (on that occasion) as if for
an evening party.
What I wanted to say, was “Good God!” What I did say was: “Oh, really!
very nice indeed.” For I saw at once that I must lie, and it seemed as
well to obtain the fullest possible advantage from the sin. There was no
use mincing words, or morals, in such a case.
The cabin had a floor exactly the size of my smallest flat box, which
filled it so neatly that I had to stand on the lid all the time I was in
my room. It had a bunk about as large as a tight fit in coffins, and a
small parrot-perch at one side, which was not meant for parrots, but for
me, to perch on, if I wanted to lace my boots without committing suicide
when the ship was rolling. On the perch stood a tin basin, to do duty as
a washstand. There was a biscuit-tin full of water underneath.
This was all that the cabin contained, except smells. The latter,
however, crowded it to its fullest capacity. It had some mysterious
communication with the hold, which perfumed it strongly with the
oppressive, oily stench of ancient copra, and it had also a small door
leading into the companion that went down to the engine-hole (one
could not call it a room), in which lived the tiny oil engine that was
supposed to start instantaneously, and work us out of danger, in case of
any sudden need. (I say supposed, because---- But that comes after.)
This engine-hole had a smell of its own, a good deal stronger than the
engine (but that is not saying much)--compounded of dirt, bilge-water,
and benzolene. The smell joined in a sort of chorus with the copra odour
of the hold, and both were picked out and accentuated by a sharp note of
cockroach. It was the most symphonic odour that I had ever encountered.
As for the port, that, I saw, would be screwed down most of the time
owing to the position of the cabin, low down on the main deck.
“Very nice,” I repeated, smiling a smile of which I am proud to this
day. “Such a dear little cabin!”
“I’m glad you like it,” said the captain, evidently relieved. “You see,
there’s four Government officials coming round this trip, and that takes
our only other cabin. I chucked the bo’sun out of this; he’s sleeping
anywhere. Anything else you’d like?” he continued, looking at the
biscuit-tin and the shiny basin with so much satisfaction that I guessed
at once they were a startling novelty--the bo’sun having probably
performed his toilet on deck. “We don’t have lady passengers on these
trips as we aren’t a Union liner exactly, but we’re always ready to do
what we can to please every one.”
“I want first of all a new mattress, and sheets that haven’t been washed
in salt water, and then I want some air and light, and thirty or forty
cubic feet more space, and I think, a new cabin, and I’m almost sure,
another ship,” I said to myself. Aloud I added: “Nothing whatever, thank
you; it is charming,” and then I went in and shut the door, and sat
down on my bunk, and said things, that would not have passed muster in a
Sunday-School, for quite ten minutes.
What I had expected I don’t know. Something in the Clark Russell line,
I fear--a sparkling little sea-parlour, smelling of rope and brine,
looking out on a deck “as white as a peeled almond,” and fitted with
stern windows that overhung half the horizon. It was borne in upon me,
as I sat there among the smells and ants and beetles, that I was in for
something as un-Clark-Russelly as possible. “Well,” I thought, “it will
at least be all the newer. And there is certainly no getting out of it.”
So we spread our white wings, and fluttered away like a great
sea-butterfly, from underneath the green and purple peaks of Raratonga,
far out on the wide Pacific. And thereupon, because the rollers rolled,
and the ship was small, I went into my cabin, and for two days, like
the heroine of an Early Victorian romance, “closed my eyes, and knew no
more.”
On the third day I was better, and in the afternoon Mitiaro, one of the
outer Cook Islands, rose on the horizon. By three o’clock our boat had
landed us--the official party, the captain, and myself--on a beach
of foam-white coral sand, crowded with laughing, excited natives,
all intensely eager to see the “wahiné papa,” or foreign woman. White
men--traders, missionaries, the Resident Commissioner of the group--had
visited the island now and again, but never a white woman before; and
though many had been away and seen such wonders, more had not.
The officials went away to hold a court of justice; the captain and
myself, before we had walked half across the beach, being captured by
an excited band of jolly brown men and women, all in their Sunday
best shirts and pareos, and long trailing gowns. They seized us by our
elbows, and literally ran us up to the house of the principal chief,
singing triumphantly. Along the neatest of coral sand paths we went,
among groves of palm and banana, up to a real native house, built with
a high “rau” roof, and airy birdcage walls. About half the island was
collected here, drinking cocoanuts, eating bananas, staring, talking,
laughing. In spite of their excitement, however, they were exceedingly
courteous, offering me the best seat in the house--a real European
chair, used as a sort of throne by the chief himself--fanning myself
and my guide industriously as we sat, pressing everything eatable in
the house on us, and doing their best, bare-footed brown savages as they
were, to make us enjoy our visit.
All islanders are not courteous and considerate, but the huge majority
certainly are. You shall look many a day and many a week among the
sea-countries of the Pacific, before you meet with as much rudeness,
selfishness, or unkindness, as you may meet any day without looking at
all, on any railway platform of any town of civilised white England. And
not from one end of the South Seas to the other, shall you hear anything
like the harsh, loud, unmusical voice of the dominant race, in a
native mouth. Soft and gentle always is the island speech, musical and
kind--the speech of a race that knows neither hurry nor greed, and for
whom the days are long and sweet, and “always afternoon.”
When we went out to see the island, it was at the head of a gay
procession of men, women, and children, singing ceaselessly, in loud
metallic chants and choruses. Shy of the strange white apparition at
first, the women grew bolder by degrees, and hung long necklaces of
flowers and leaves and scented berries round my neck. They took my hat
away, and returned it covered with feathery reva-reva plumes, made from
the inner crown of the palm-tree. They produced a native dancing kilt,
like a little crinoline, made of arrowroot fibre, dyed pink, and tied it
round my waist, over my tailor skirt, explaining the while (through the
captain, who interpreted), that the knot of the girdle was fastened in
such a way as to cast a spell on me, and that I should inevitably be
obliged to return to the island. (It is perhaps worthy of note that I
did, though at the time of my first visit there seemed no chance of the
ship calling again.) Decked out after this fashion, I had a _suces_; on
my return to the schooner, and was greeted with howls of delight on the
part of my fellow-passengers, who had managed to escape adornment, being
less of a novelty. It was of course impossible to remove the ornaments
without offending the givers.
More houses, and more hosts, standing like Lewis Carroll’s crocodile
on their thresholds, to welcome me in “with gently smiling jaws.” We
visited till we were tired of visiting, and then strolled about the
town. Cool, fresh, and clean are the houses of little Mitiaro, dotted
about its three miles’ length. Their high deep-gabled roofs of plaited
pandanus leaf keep out the heat of the staring sun; through their walls
of smoothed and fitted canes the sea-wind blows and the green lagoon
gleams dimly: the snowy coral pebbles that carpet all the floor reflect
a softly pleasant light into the dusk, unwindowed dwelling. Outside, the
palm-trees rustle endlessly, and the surf sings on the reef the long,
low, perilous sweet song of the dreamy South Sea world--the song that
has lured so many away into these lonely coral lands, to remember
their Northern loves and homes no more--the song that, once heard, will
whisper through the inmost chambers of the heart, across the years, and
across the world till death.
Yet--why not?
Why not? The thought followed me as ceaselessly as the trampling of the
surf (now, in the open, loud and triumphant, like the galloping of a
victorious army) while I wandered over the little island, up and down
the coral sand paths that led through groves of feathery ironwood,
through quaintly regular, low, rich green shrubberies, starred with pale
pink blossoms among wild grey pinnacles of fantastic rock, clothed in
trailing vines--always towards the open sky and the limitless blue sea.
Why not? In England, even yet,
We are not cotton-spinners all,
nor are we all old, blood-chilled by the frost of conventionality, dyed
ingrain with the conviction that there is nothing but vagabondage and
ne’er-do-well-ism away from the ring of the professions, or an office
desk in the E.C. district. For the young and adventurous, the South Seas
hold as fair prospects as any other semi-civilised portion of the globe.
For those who have seen and have lived, and are wearied to death of the
life and cities and competition, the island world offers remoteness,
beauty, rest, and peace, unmatched in the round of the swinging
earth. And to all alike it offers that most savoury morsel of life’s
banquet--freedom. Freedom and a biscuit taste better to many a
young Anglo-Saxon than stalled ox seasoned with the bitter herbs of
dependence; but the one is always at hand, and the other very far away.
Well, the gulf can be spanned; but he who cannot do the spanning, and
must long and dream unsatisfied all his life, had best take comfort:
it had not been for his good. The Islands are for the man of resource;
again, of resource; and once more, of resource. Look among the lowest
huts of the lowest quarters that cling to towns in the big islands, and
there, gone native, and lost to his race, you shall find the man who was
an excellent fellow--once--but who in emergency or difficulty, “didn’t
know what to do.”
If there is a lesson in the above, he who needs it will find it.
*****
Mitiaro is the island, already referred to, where dried bananas are
prepared. The natives make up their fruit in this way for market,
because steamers never call, and sailing vessels only come at long and
irregular intervals. A very small quantity goes down in this way to
Auckland, and I heard, in a general way, that there were supposed to
be one or two other islands here and there about the Pacific, where the
same trade was carried on. One cannot, however, buy preserved bananas in
the colonies, unless by a special chance, so the purchasing public knows
nothing of them, and is unaware what it misses. In the opinion of most
who have tried them, the fruit, dried and compressed in the Mitiaro
way, is superior to dried figs. It is not only a substitute for fresh
bananas, but a dainty in itself. The whaling ships pick up an occasional
consignment in out-of-the-way places, and are therefore familiar with
them, but one never sees them on a steamer. There may be useful hints,
for intending settlers, in these stray facts.
We lay over-night at Mitiaro, and got off in the morning. Aitutaki was
our next place of call, and we reached it in about a day. It is, next
to Raratonga, the most important island of the group, possessing a large
mission station, a Government agent, and a post-office. It enjoys a
call once a month from the Union steamer, and is therefore a much more
sophisticated place than Mitiaro. In size, it is inferior to Raratonga
and Atiu, being only seven square miles in extent. Its population is
officially returned as 1,170. These are almost all natives, the white
population including only the Government agent, two or three
missionaries, and a couple of traders.
[Illustration: 0185]
It is bright morning when we make Aitutaki, and the sea is so vividly
blue, as we push off in the boat, that I wonder my fingers do not come
out sapphire-coloured when I dip them in. And I think, as the eight
brown arms pull us vigorously shoreward, that no one in the temperate
climes knows, or ever can know, what these sea-colours of the tropics
are like, because the North has no words that express them. How, indeed,
should it have?
We are rowing, as fast as we can go, towards a great white ruffle of
foam ruled like a line across the blue, blue sea. Inside this line
there lies, to all appearance, an immense raised plain of green jade or
aquamarine, with a palmy, plumy island, cinctured by a pearly beach, far
away in the middle. Other islands, smaller and farther away, stand
out upon the surface of this strange green circle here and there, all
enclosed within the magic ring of tumbling foam, more than five miles
across, that sets them apart from the wide blue sea. It is only a lagoon
of atoll formation, but it looks like a piece of enamelled jewel-work,
done by the hand of some ocean giant, so great that the huge sea-serpent
itself should be only a bracelet for his arm. The raised appearance of
the lagoon is one of the strangest things I have yet seen, though it is
merely an optical delusion, created by contrast in colour.
We are fortunate, too, in seeing what every one does not see--a distinct
green shade in the few white clouds that overhang the surface of the
lagoon. Here in Aitutaki a great part of the sky is sometimes coloured
green by the reflections from the water, and it is a sight worth
witnessing.
Through an opening in the reef we enter--the boatmen pulling hard
against the outward rush of the tide, which runs here like a cataract at
times--and glide easily across the mile or so of shallow water that
lies between us and the shore. One or two splendid whale-boats pass
us, manned by native crews, and the other passengers tell me that these
boats are all made by the Aitutakians themselves, who are excellent
builders.
There is a very decent little wharf to land on, and of course, the
usual excited, decorated crowd to receive us, and follow us about. I
am getting quite used now to going round at the head of a continual
procession, to being hung over with chains of flowers and berries,
and ceaselessly fed with bananas and cocoanuts, so the crowd does not
interfere with my enjoyment of the new island. We are going to stop a
day or two here, and there will be time to see everything.
When you sleep as a rule in a bunk possessing every attribute of a
coffin (except the restfulness which one is led to expect in a bed of
that nature), you do not require much pressing to accept an invitation
to “dine and sleep” on shore. Tau Ariki (which means Chieftainess, or
Countess, or Duchess, Tau) lives in Aitutaki, and she had met me in
Raratonga, so she sent me a hearty invitation to spend the night at her
house, and I accepted it.
Tau is not by any means as great a personage as Makea, or even as great
as Tinomana, the lesser queen. She is an Ariki all the same, however,
and owns a good deal of land in Aitutaki. Also, she is gloriously
married to a white ex-schooner mate, who can teach even the Aitutakians
something about boat-building, and she is travelled and finished, having
been a trip to Auckland--the ambition of every Cook Islander. So Tau
Ariki is a person of importance in her own small circle, and was
allowed by the natives of the town to have the undoubted first right to
entertain the white woman.
Tau’s house, in the middle of the rambling, jungly, green street of the
little town, proved to be a wooden bungalow with a verandah and a tin
roof, very ugly, but very fine to native eyes. There were tables and
chairs in the “parlour”; and the inevitable boiled fowl that takes the
place of the fatted calf, in Pacific cookery, was served up on a china
plate. A rich woman, Tau, and one who knew how the “tangata papa” (white
folk) should be entertained!
She gave me a bedroom all to myself, with a smile that showed complete
understanding of the foolish fads of the “wahiné papa.” It had a large
“imported” glass window, giving on the main street of the town, and
offering, through its lack of blinds, such a fine, free show for the
interested populace, that I was obliged to go to bed in the dark. There
was a real bed in the room, covered with a patchwork quilt of a unique
and striking design, representing a very realistic scarlet devil some
four feet long. It seemed to me the kind of quilt that would need a good
conscience and a blameless record, on the part of the sleeper reposing
under it. To wake in the middle of the night unexpectedly, with the
moonlight streaming in, forget for the moment where you were, and,
looking round to find a landmark, drop your startled eyes upon that
scarlet fiend, sprawling all over your chest---- Well, I had a good
conscience, or none--I do not know which--so I felt the red devil would
not disturb my slumbers, and he did not.
[Illustration: 0191]
There was nothing else in the room, except a new, gold-laced, steamship
officer’s cap, whereto there seemed neither history nor owner, reposing
on the pillow. If there was any mystery about the cap, I never knew it.
I put it out on the windowsill, and a hen laid an egg in it next
morning, and no doubt the hen lived happily ever after, and I hope the
officer did, and that is all. It seems pathetic, but I do not know why.
There was nothing to wash in, but Tau knew her manners, and was quite
aware that I might have a prejudice against sitting in a washing-tub
on either the front or the back verandah, to have buckets emptied on my
head in the morning. So she made haste to leave a kerosene tin full of
water, before going to her camphorwood chest, and extracting a pink silk
dress trimmed with yellow lace, for me to sleep in.
“I’m afraid that won’t do; it’s too--too good to sleep in,” I remarked.
“Nothing too good for you, you too much good self!” was the amiable
reply.
“But I could not sleep in it, Tau. There’s--there’s too much of it,” I
objected, not knowing how to word my refusal without impoliteness.
“All right,” commented my hostess, throwing a glance at the purple gloom
of the torrid hot-season night outside. “He plenty hot. I get you pareo,
all same mine.” And she disinterred a brief cotton kilt of red and
yellow, considerably smaller than a Highlander’s.
“That’s too little,” objected the exacting guest, rather to poor Tau’s
perplexity. How was one to please such a visitor? At last, however,
after refusing a figured muslin robe that was as transparent as a
dancing-robe of classic Ionia (there are other analogies between those
robes, if one might go into the subject; but I fear the British public
must not be told about them), and a pink shirt belonging to the white
husband, a neat cotton day gown was discovered, offered, and accepted,
and peace reigned once more in the exceedingly public guest-chamber of
Tau Ariki’s house.
Concerning quilts, by the way, one may here add a short note. Patchwork
is the delight of the Cook Island women, and has been so, ever since
that absorbing pastime was first introduced to them by the missionaries’
wives. They are extremely clever at it, and often invent their own
patterns. Sometimes, however, they copy any startling device that
they may chance to see--the more original, the better. A really good
patchwork quilt is considered a possession of great value, and (one is
sorry to say) often preferred to the fine, beautifully hand-woven mats
in which the islanders used to excel. They still make mats in large
numbers, but the patchwork quilt has spoilt their taste for the finer
mats, and these latter are getting scarce.
In the morning, shark-catching was the order of the day. Aitutaki is
celebrated for this sport all over Australasia, and I was very glad to
get a chance of joining in it. One does not catch sharks, in Aitutaki,
after the usual island fashion, which is much like the way familiar to
all sea-faring folk--hook and line, and a lump of bad pork, and tow the
monster to the shore when you have got him. No, there is something more
exciting in store for the visitor-who goes a-fishing in Aitutaki lagoon.
The water is very shallow for the most part, and heats up quickly with
the sun, especially when the day is dead calm, and there is not a ripple
to break the force of the rays. By noon, the lagoon is unbearably warm
in all the shallow parts, and the sharks which inhabit it in large
numbers, begin to feel uncomfortable. Some of them make for the opening
in the reef, and get out into the cooler sea beyond. Others, one will
suppose, are lazy, and do not want to be troubled to swim so far. So
they head for the coral patches here and there, and lie on the sand in
the shelter of the rocks, their bodies thrust as far into the clefts
and crannies of the coral as they can manage to get. This is the
Aitutakian’s opportunity. He is perfectly fearless in the water, and he
knows that the shark is, after all, a stupid brute. So he arms himself
with a knife, takes a strong rope, noosed in a slip-knot at one end,
in his hand, and dives from his whale-boat into the warm green water,
where he has marked the latter end of a shark sticking out from a patch
of coral, some three or four fathoms underneath the surface.
The shark, being head in, does not see anything, but by-and-by he
becomes aware of a delicate tickling all along his massive ribs, and
as he rather likes this, he stays-quite still, and enjoys it. It is the
Aitutakian, tickling him as boys tickle a trout in a stream at home, and
for exactly the same reason. He has got the noose in his left hand,
and his aim is to slip it over the shark’s tail, while he distracts the
brute’s attention by pleasantly tickling with the other hand. Perhaps he
manages this at the first attempt--perhaps he is obliged to rise to the
surface, and take a breath of air, going down again to have a second
try. But, in any case, he is pretty sure to get the noose on before
the shark suspects anything. Once that is accomplished, he rises to the
surface like a shooting air-bubble, swings himself into the boat, and
gives the order to “haul in!”
The men in the boat lay hold of the rope, tighten with a sharp jerk, and
tail on. Now the shark begins to realise that something has happened;
and realises it still more fully in another minute or two, when he finds
himself fighting for his life on the gunwale of a rocking boat, against
half a dozen islanders armed with knives and axes. The battle is short
the great brute is soon disabled by a smashing blow on the tail, and in
another hour or two the village is feeding fat on his meat, and his fins
are drying in the sun, to be sold to the trader by-and-by, for export to
China. No dinner-party in China is complete without a dish of daintily
dressed shark’s fins, and a good proportion of the supply comes from the
Pacific.
This is shark-fishing, as practised in Aitutaki. But I was not destined
to see it at its best, for the day turned out breezy, and there was such
a ripple, upon the water that the natives declared the sharks would be
extremely difficult to see or capture. Nevertheless, the captain and
I decided to go, as there was a chance, though a faint one. We hired a
boat, and took with us, as well as the rowers, Oki, a diver of renown.
If Oki could not raise a shark for us, it was certain that no one could.
The captain of the missionary steamer _John Williams_ had told me about
the fishing some weeks before, and added that he had seen a shark caught
himself, and tried to photograph it, but the photo was not a success,
because, as he put it, “the shark moved!”
This story wandered about in my mind as we shot across the lagoon to the
fishing grounds, and the boat began to look uncomfortably small. “What
does the shark do when you get it in the boat?” I inquired rather
anxiously.
“Makes the devil of a row, and the devil of a mess,” said our own
captain cheerfully. “But don’t you mind him. Let sharks alone, and
they’ll let you alone; that’s always been my experience.”
Conscious that I was never unkind to animals, not even tigers or sharks,
I tried to feel at ease. But I did not quite succeed, until we got to
the coral beds, and Oki put everything else out of my head by going head
first overboard, and starting out among the rocks below (it was calmer
here, and we could see him pretty plainly) to look for a shark.
His thin brown body showed up shadowy and wavering, upon the sands
at the bottom, as he glided like a fish all along the patch of reef,
inspecting every cave or crack where a shark might hide. He did not
seem to be incommoded in the least by the three or four fathoms of
water above him, but moved about as quietly and easily as if he had been
swimming on the surface. I felt sure he must be at the point of death,
as the seconds flew by, and he still glided in and out of the rocks
with nothing but the gleam of his white pareo to show his whereabouts,
whenever he slipped into the shadow of one of the many clefts in which a
shark might lie hidden. But Oki knew very well what he was about, and he
did not seem at all exhausted when he shot to the surface again, after
rather more than two minutes’ absence, and told us gloomily that “No
shark stop!”
We tried again, and again. Oki took the slip knot down with him every
time and every time he brought it up in his hand, unused. Melancholy,
deep and silent, settled upon the boat. But at last the luck changed;
our diver came up, and announced with a smile, that there was a shark
down there, very far into the coral, and if he could only reach the
animal’s tail, it would be all right.
One of the boatmen at this went to help him, and together they swam down
to the bottom, and began fumbling interminably in the shadow. It was
clear that they were making every effort to tempt the shark out, for
one could see Oki straining wildly with his arm in the cleft, “tickling”
industriously, while the other hovered head downwards outside, trailing
the noose like a loop of seaweed in his hand. But all proved vain.
Exhausted, the men rose at last, and gave it up. The shark was too far
in, they said, and the noose could not be got on. If we remembered, they
had told us it was not a good day, and they hoped we thought enough had
been done. As for themselves, they were very tired doing our pleasure,
and their lungs were sore, but they thought some plug tobacco--the
black, sticky kind, and a good deal of it--would set them all right
again.
This was outside the letter of the agreement, which had included a good
price for the boat and nothing else; but we promised some tobacco, when
the stores should be reached, and asked for some more particulars about
the fishing.
“Do you ever find the shark head out, instead of tail out?” I queried.
“Yes, sometime he come head out,” said Oki, reversing a green cocoanut
on his nose, and swallowing in great gulps.
I waited till he had finished before I asked: “What happens then?”
“Shark he fight, and we fight too,” said Oki simply.
“And which wins?”
“All the time the Aitutaki boy he win, but sometime the shark he win
too,” was the cryptic reply.
*****
Shark fins, I was told, sell for about six shillings a pound. Some of
the traders in the islands further north, where sharks are abundant,
make a good deal of money taking the fish on a hook and line, and drying
the fins for sale. It should be a fairly profitable industry, as the
fins of a medium shark appear to weigh a good deal--not less than three
or four pounds, at a guess.
It was on my second visit to Aitutaki that I went out to the lesser
islands of the lagoon; but the tale of that expedition may well come
here.
These islets are of various sizes, from a mere rock with a couple of
palms on it, to a fertile piece of land over a mile long, richly grown
and wooded. They all lie within the great lagoon, and are therefore
sheltered by a natural breakwater of the reef from the violence of the
storms that occur in the rainy season. The nearest is about three miles
from the mainland. All are quite uninhabited, and no particular value is
set on them by anybody. They belong to the various chief families of the
big island, but any one who wished to rent one in perpetuity (the New
Zealand Government laws, which rule here, do not permit outright sale)
could probably secure it for a few pounds a year.
I was anxious to see them, for it seemed to me that islands suited to
the realisation of Robinson Crusoe dreams could hardly be found the wide
Pacific over. A desolate isle five hundred miles from anywhere, sounds
well in a story, but the romance of such a spot is apt to wear very thin
indeed after a few months, if one may believe the experiences of those
who have tried it. Practical details are seldom considered by would-be
Crusoes; they have, however, a knack of thrusting themselves into the
foreground just when retreat is impossible. If you elect to live on a
remote island, how are you going to keep up communication with the outer
world? You will want at least a few commodities of civilisation from
time to time, and they cannot swim across half the great South Seas,
from Auckland or ’Frisco, up to your front verandah unaided. You will
want mails, newspapers, and letters, unless haply you are a criminal
flying from the near neighbourhood of the black cap and the drop--and
how are these to come? Trading schooners will not call at your island
unless you have plenty of cargo for them, and even then, you may not see
them twice a year. Steamers, of course, you must not expect. If you keep
a small vessel of your own, you must be thoroughly sea-trained to run
and navigate her, and you will need to bring a few island men to your
kingdom as crew, and they will want to go home again, and make trouble,
and finally run off with your ship some dark night, and maroon you there
for good. No, the “desert” island idea is best left to the shelves of
the school library.
But at Aitutaki, and in some similar collections of atoll islands
Robinson Crusoe’s way is made easy and pleasant--or so it seemed to me,
crossing the lagoon that afternoon on my way to the islets that were
lying waste and uninhabited out on its broad expanse. From three to five
miles away from the mainland, these islets are sufficiently isolated
for any one who has not quarrelled with the whole human race. There is a
steamer once a month, at the little pier near the settlement. There are
one or two stores on the main island, where common provisions, cotton
stuffs, spades, and knives, and such simple things, can be purchased.
The lagoon is usually so calm that a native canoe would serve all
ordinary needs of communication, for any one living on an islet. A house
could be built in a few days, of the native type: and a good concrete
bungalow could be put up with native help, in a very few weeks. Why
should any one want to live in such a spot? Well, it is not necessary to
argue out that question, because I have found by experience that quite
a remarkable number of people do. It was for those people that I crossed
the lagoon that day, and I know I shall have their thanks.
A whale-boat and a crew were necessary for the trip. I engaged both in
the village, and went down to the wharf followed by a “tail” of
seven stalwart islanders, dressed in white and crimson pareos, berry
necklaces, and a curiously representative collection of steamship caps
and jerseys. The Aitutakian is an inveterate traveller, and all these
men had been away in a steamer somewhere as deck hands--or else their
friends had, and they had begged a steamer cap and jersey or two here
and there: it was all the same to them. The P. & O.--the Union S.S.
Co. of New Zealand--the Shaw, Savill, and Albion--the Orient--Burns
Philp--were all represented (so far as caps and jerseys went) by my
boat’s crew, and very well pleased with themselves and their poached
attire they evidently were.
Provisions had to be purchased, they declared, as we should not be back
before afternoon. So into the big store the whole party went to see me
victual the ship. I bought biscuits and meat, exactly half what they
asked, and they were so uplifted with joy at the amount of the supplies
that they sang all the way down to the boat; and, once in it, treated
me to an exhibition of rowing, the like of which I never expect to see
again. The Aitutaki man is the smartest boatman, and the best hand with
an oar, in the Southern Pacific. Never a man-of-war comes round the Cook
group that her men do not try conclusions with the Aitutakians, and
if report speaks truth, the result is not always flattering to British
pride. Nor is this astonishing, to any one who has seen these islanders
row. We had six miles of a pull, and every inch was against a strong
head wind, and through a decidedly choppy sea. Yet, in spite of these
handicaps, the men rowed the whole way at racing pace, oars springing,
spray flying, the great whale-boat tearing through the water as though
a mortal enemy were in pursuit. The coxswain, in the stern, kept slyly
urging the rowers on to let the foreign woman see what they could do,
and they pulled “all out”--or what looked extremely like it--from start
to finish. I do not think any white crew that ever held an oar could
have lived with that splendid six-mile rush. And when we neared the
first island and gradually slacked speed, there was not one among those
seven mighty chests that heaved faster than at the start. Truly, I
thought, they had earned their picnic.
But the islets! If Raratonga was the realisation of a childish dream,
this was the embodiment of a vision of fairyland. There can surely be
nothing on earth more lovely than the islet constellation enclosed by
Aitutaki reef. The water, shallow, sun-jewelled, and spread out over
a bed of spotless coral sand, is coloured with a brilliance that is
simply incredible. Emerald and jade and sapphire--yes, one expects
these, in the hues of tropic seas. But when it comes to whole tracts of
glancing heliotrope and hyacinth, shot with unnamable shades of melted
turquoise and silver, and all a-quiver with pulsations of flashing
greens, for which there is no name in any language under the pallid
northern or burning southern sun--then, the thing becomes indescribable,
and one can only say:
“There is something in that little corner of earth beyond the touch
of words, so you will never know anything about it, unless you too go
there, and see it for yourself. And when you have seen, you will come
away burning to describe, as I was--but you will not be able.”
In the midst of this magical sea, rise the islets themselves--fairyland
every one. Their little beaches are sparkling white, as only a coral
beach can be; palm-trees, heavyheaded with their loads of huge green
nuts, cluster thick along the shores; coral-trees drop their blood-red
flowers into the glass-like water of the lagoon; ripe oranges swing
their glowing lamps among the darker green of the woods that rise
behind. Big white clams with goffered shells, each holding meat enough
for one man’s dinner, gleam along the edges of the shore; large,
long-legged crabs wander rustling and rattling among the stones. The
murmur of the barrier reef is very far away; its thin white line of foam
gleams out a long way off, under a low horizon, sky shot strangely with
lilac blue--a lonely, lovely, exquisite place, the like of which one
might seek the world all over, and never find again.
We landed on the sand, and I set about exploring, while the men knocked
down cocoanuts, and squatted in the shade to drink them, and suck fresh
oranges. The island on which we had landed was one of the smaller ones,
not more than an acre or two in extent. It rose to a high point in the
centre, and was so thickly wooded all over, that I could hardly make my
way through. There was no sign of life or habitation, and the ripe fruit
was everywhere rotting on the ground.
I pictured the little islet with a high brown roof peeping out among its
palms, a neatly kept pathway cut through the bush, and a snug boathouse
on the shore, covering a fine whaleboat, while a graceful native canoe
lay on the sand, ready for any one to lift down into the water at any
minute. I wonder, will the picture ever body itself out in real, for
some tired-out soul, weary of cities and competition, or some pair of
lovers, who find the world well lost in each other, here among the far
islands of the sweet Southern Seas? I shall never know, for the
“sea-bird’s feather” was in the pillow on which I slept my first baby
sleep, and I wander always on. But it may be that these words will be
read by some to whom they are, or shall be, a part of fife’s own
history.
We did not get to the other islands that day, partly because I wasted so
much time looking for shells, and partly because the largest were still
some miles away, and the wind was stronger than ever. One, I heard,
had ground enough for a paying plantation, and was already fairly well
supplied with cocoanuts. All are perfectly healthy and free from fevers
of any kind, and though mosquitoes are present in rather large numbers,
careful clearing of their breeding grounds would in time drive them
away.
*****
In case author, or publishers, should be inundated with inquiries about
South Sea Islands, it may be as well to say that all over the Pacific,
the Governors, Commissioners, and Resident Agents of the various groups
are always ready to furnish information to honest inquirers.