Transcribed from the 1905 Chatto and Windus Edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org





Island Nights’ Entertainments


Contents:

The Beach of Falesá
   A south sea bridal
   The Ban
   The Missionary
   Devil-work
   Night in the bush
The Bottle Imp
The Isle of voices




THE BEACH OF FALESÁ.


CHAPTER I.  A SOUTH SEA BRIDAL.


I saw that island first when it was neither night nor morning.  The moon
was to the west, setting, but still broad and bright.  To the east, and
right amidships of the dawn, which was all pink, the daystar sparkled
like a diamond.  The land breeze blew in our faces, and smelt strong of
wild lime and vanilla: other things besides, but these were the most
plain; and the chill of it set me sneezing.  I should say I had been for
years on a low island near the line, living for the most part solitary
among natives.  Here was a fresh experience: even the tongue would be
quite strange to me; and the look of these woods and mountains, and the
rare smell of them, renewed my blood.

The captain blew out the binnacle lamp.

“There!” said he, “there goes a bit of smoke, Mr. Wiltshire, behind the
break of the reef.  That’s Falesá, where your station is, the last
village to the east; nobody lives to windward—I don’t know why.  Take my
glass, and you can make the houses out.”

I took the glass; and the shores leaped nearer, and I saw the tangle of
the woods and the breach of the surf, and the brown roofs and the black
insides of houses peeped among the trees.

“Do you catch a bit of white there to the east’ard?” the captain
continued.  “That’s your house.  Coral built, stands high, verandah you
could walk on three abreast; best station in the South Pacific.  When old
Adams saw it, he took and shook me by the hand.  ‘I’ve dropped into a
soft thing here,’ says he.—‘So you have,’ says I, ‘and time too!’  Poor
Johnny!  I never saw him again but the once, and then he had changed his
tune—couldn’t get on with the natives, or the whites, or something; and
the next time we came round there he was dead and buried.  I took and put
up a bit of a stick to him: ‘John Adams, _obit_ eighteen and sixty-eight.
Go thou and do likewise.’  I missed that man.  I never could see much
harm in Johnny.”

“What did he die of?” I inquired.

“Some kind of sickness,” says the captain.  “It appears it took him
sudden.  Seems he got up in the night, and filled up on Pain-Killer and
Kennedy’s Discovery.  No go: he was booked beyond Kennedy.  Then he had
tried to open a case of gin.  No go again: not strong enough.  Then he
must have turned to and run out on the verandah, and capsized over the
rail.  When they found him, the next day, he was clean crazy—carried on
all the time about somebody watering his copra.  Poor John!”

“Was it thought to be the island?” I asked.

“Well, it was thought to be the island, or the trouble, or something,” he
replied.  “I never could hear but what it was a healthy place.  Our last
man, Vigours, never turned a hair.  He left because of the beach—said he
was afraid of Black Jack and Case and Whistling Jimmie, who was still
alive at the time, but got drowned soon afterward when drunk.  As for old
Captain Randall, he’s been here any time since eighteen-forty,
forty-five.  I never could see much harm in Billy, nor much change.
Seems as if he might live to be Old Kafoozleum.  No, I guess it’s
healthy.”

“There’s a boat coming now,” said I.  “She’s right in the pass; looks to
be a sixteen-foot whale; two white men in the stern sheets.”

“That’s the boat that drowned Whistling Jimmie!” cried the Captain;
“let’s see the glass.  Yes, that’s Case, sure enough, and the darkie.
They’ve got a gallows bad reputation, but you know what a place the beach
is for talking.  My belief, that Whistling Jimmie was the worst of the
trouble; and he’s gone to glory, you see.  What’ll you bet they ain’t
after gin?  Lay you five to two they take six cases.”

When these two traders came aboard I was pleased with the looks of them
at once, or, rather, with the looks of both, and the speech of one.  I
was sick for white neighbours after my four years at the line, which I
always counted years of prison; getting tabooed, and going down to the
Speak House to see and get it taken off; buying gin and going on a break,
and then repenting; sitting in the house at night with the lamp for
company; or walking on the beach and wondering what kind of a fool to
call myself for being where I was.  There were no other whites upon my
island, and when I sailed to the next, rough customers made the most of
the society.  Now to see these two when they came aboard was a pleasure.
One was a negro, to be sure; but they were both rigged out smart in
striped pyjamas and straw hats, and Case would have passed muster in a
city.  He was yellow and smallish, had a hawk’s nose to his face, pale
eyes, and his beard trimmed with scissors.  No man knew his country,
beyond he was of English speech; and it was clear he came of a good
family and was splendidly educated.  He was accomplished too; played the
accordion first-rate; and give him a piece of string or a cork or a pack
of cards, and he could show you tricks equal to any professional.  He
could speak, when he chose, fit for a drawing-room; and when he chose he
could blaspheme worse than a Yankee boatswain, and talk smart to sicken a
Kanaka.  The way he thought would pay best at the moment, that was Case’s
way, and it always seemed to come natural, and like as if he was born to
it.  He had the courage of a lion and the cunning of a rat; and if he’s
not in hell to-day, there’s no such place.  I know but one good point to
the man: that he was fond of his wife, and kind to her.  She was a Samoa
woman, and dyed her hair red, Samoa style; and when he came to die (as I
have to tell of) they found one strange thing—that he had made a will,
like a Christian, and the widow got the lot: all his, they said, and all
Black Jack’s, and the most of Billy Randall’s in the bargain, for it was
Case that kept the books.  So she went off home in the schooner _Manu’a_,
and does the lady to this day in her own place.

But of all this on that first morning I knew no more than a fly.  Case
used me like a gentleman and like a friend, made me welcome to Falesá,
and put his services at my disposal, which was the more helpful from my
ignorance of the native.  All the better part of the day we sat drinking
better acquaintance in the cabin, and I never heard a man talk more to
the point.  There was no smarter trader, and none dodgier, in the
islands.  I thought Falesá seemed to be the right kind of a place; and
the more I drank the lighter my heart.  Our last trader had fled the
place at half an hour’s notice, taking a chance passage in a labour ship
from up west.  The captain, when he came, had found the station closed,
the keys left with the native pastor, and a letter from the runaway,
confessing he was fairly frightened of his life.  Since then the firm had
not been represented, and of course there was no cargo.  The wind,
besides, was fair, the captain hoped he could make his next island by
dawn, with a good tide, and the business of landing my trade was gone
about lively.  There was no call for me to fool with it, Case said;
nobody would touch my things, everyone was honest in Falesá, only about
chickens or an odd knife or an odd stick of tobacco; and the best I could
do was to sit quiet till the vessel left, then come straight to his
house, see old Captain Randall, the father of the beach, take pot-luck,
and go home to sleep when it got dark.  So it was high noon, and the
schooner was under way before I set my foot on shore at Falesá.

I had a glass or two on board; I was just off a long cruise, and the
ground heaved under me like a ship’s deck.  The world was like all new
painted; my foot went along to music; Falesá might have been Fiddler’s
Green, if there is such a place, and more’s the pity if there isn’t!  It
was good to foot the grass, to look aloft at the green mountains, to see
the men with their green wreaths and the women in their bright dresses,
red and blue.  On we went, in the strong sun and the cool shadow, liking
both; and all the children in the town came trotting after with their
shaven heads and their brown bodies, and raising a thin kind of a cheer
in our wake, like crowing poultry.

“By-the-bye,” says Case, “we must get you a wife.”

“That’s so,” said I; “I had forgotten.”

There was a crowd of girls about us, and I pulled myself up and looked
among them like a Bashaw.  They were all dressed out for the sake of the
ship being in; and the women of Falesá are a handsome lot to see.  If
they have a fault, they are a trifle broad in the beam; and I was just
thinking so when Case touched me.

“That’s pretty,” says he.

I saw one coming on the other side alone.  She had been fishing; all she
wore was a chemise, and it was wetted through.  She was young and very
slender for an island maid, with a long face, a high forehead, and a shy,
strange, blindish look, between a cat’s and a baby’s.

“Who’s she?” said I.  “She’ll do.”

“That’s Uma,” said Case, and he called her up and spoke to her in the
native.  I didn’t know what he said; but when he was in the midst she
looked up at me quick and timid, like a child dodging a blow, then down
again, and presently smiled.  She had a wide mouth, the lips and the chin
cut like any statue’s; and the smile came out for a moment and was gone.
Then she stood with her head bent, and heard Case to an end, spoke back
in the pretty Polynesian voice, looking him full in the face, heard him
again in answer, and then with an obeisance started off.  I had just a
share of the bow, but never another shot of her eye, and there was no
more word of smiling.

“I guess it’s all right,” said Case.  “I guess you can have her.  I’ll
make it square with the old lady.  You can have your pick of the lot for
a plug of tobacco,” he added, sneering.

I suppose it was the smile stuck in my memory, for I spoke back sharp.
“She doesn’t look that sort,” I cried.

“I don’t know that she is,” said Case.  “I believe she’s as right as the
mail.  Keeps to herself, don’t go round with the gang, and that.  O no,
don’t you misunderstand me—Uma’s on the square.”  He spoke eager, I
thought, and that surprised and pleased me.  “Indeed,” he went on, “I
shouldn’t make so sure of getting her, only she cottoned to the cut of
your jib.  All you have to do is to keep dark and let me work the mother
my own way; and I’ll bring the girl round to the captain’s for the
marriage.”

I didn’t care for the word marriage, and I said so.

“Oh, there’s nothing to hurt in the marriage,” says he.  “Black Jack’s
the chaplain.”

By this time we had come in view of the house of these three white men;
for a negro is counted a white man, and so is a Chinese! a strange idea,
but common in the islands.  It was a board house with a strip of rickety
verandah.  The store was to the front, with a counter, scales, and the
poorest possible display of trade: a case or two of tinned meats; a
barrel of hard bread; a few bolts of cotton stuff, not to be compared
with mine; the only thing well represented being the contraband, firearms
and liquor.  “If these are my only rivals,” thinks I, “I should do well
in Falesá.”  Indeed, there was only the one way they could touch me, and
that was with the guns and drink.

In the back room was old Captain Randall, squatting on the floor native
fashion, fat and pale, naked to the waist, grey as a badger, and his eyes
set with drink.  His body was covered with grey hair and crawled over by
flies; one was in the corner of his eye—he never heeded; and the
mosquitoes hummed about the man like bees.  Any clean-minded man would
have had the creature out at once and buried him; and to see him, and
think he was seventy, and remember he had once commanded a ship, and come
ashore in his smart togs, and talked big in bars and consulates, and sat
in club verandahs, turned me sick and sober.

He tried to get up when I came in, but that was hopeless; so he reached
me a hand instead, and stumbled out some salutation.

“Papa’s {1} pretty full this morning,” observed Case.  “We’ve had an
epidemic here; and Captain Randall takes gin for a prophylactic—don’t
you, Papa?”

“Never took such a thing in my life!” cried the captain indignantly.
“Take gin for my health’s sake, Mr. Wha’s-ever-your-name—’s a
precautionary measure.”

“That’s all right, Papa,” said Case.  “But you’ll have to brace up.
There’s going to be a marriage—Mr. Wiltshire here is going to get
spliced.”

The old man asked to whom.

“To Uma,” said Case.

“Uma!” cried the captain.  “Wha’s he want Uma for?  ’s he come here for
his health, anyway?  Wha’ ’n hell’s he want Uma for?”

“Dry up, Papa,” said Case.  “’Tain’t you that’s to marry her.  I guess
you’re not her godfather and godmother.  I guess Mr. Wiltshire’s going to
please himself.”

With that he made an excuse to me that he must move about the marriage,
and left me alone with the poor wretch that was his partner and (to speak
truth) his gull.  Trade and station belonged both to Randall; Case and
the negro were parasites; they crawled and fed upon him like the flies,
he none the wiser.  Indeed, I have no harm to say of Billy Randall beyond
the fact that my gorge rose at him, and the time I now passed in his
company was like a nightmare.

The room was stifling hot and full of flies; for the house was dirty and
low and small, and stood in a bad place, behind the village, in the
borders of the bush, and sheltered from the trade.  The three men’s beds
were on the floor, and a litter of pans and dishes.  There was no
standing furniture; Randall, when he was violent, tearing it to laths.
There I sat and had a meal which was served us by Case’s wife; and there
I was entertained all day by that remains of man, his tongue stumbling
among low old jokes and long old stories, and his own wheezy laughter
always ready, so that he had no sense of my depression.  He was nipping
gin all the while.  Sometimes he fell asleep, and awoke again, whimpering
and shivering, and every now and again he would ask me why I wanted to
marry Uma.  “My friend,” I was telling myself all day, “you must not come
to be an old gentleman like this.”

It might be four in the afternoon, perhaps, when the back door was thrust
slowly open, and a strange old native woman crawled into the house almost
on her belly.  She was swathed in black stuff to her heels; her hair was
grey in swatches; her face was tattooed, which was not the practice in
that island; her eyes big and bright and crazy.  These she fixed upon me
with a rapt expression that I saw to be part acting.  She said no plain
word, but smacked and mumbled with her lips, and hummed aloud, like a
child over its Christmas pudding.  She came straight across the house,
heading for me, and, as soon as she was alongside, caught up my hand and
purred and crooned over it like a great cat.  From this she slipped into
a kind of song.

“Who the devil’s this?” cried I, for the thing startled me.

“It’s Fa’avao,” says Randall; and I saw he had hitched along the floor
into the farthest corner.

“You ain’t afraid of her?” I cried.

“Me ’fraid!” cried the captain.  “My dear friend, I defy her!  I don’t
let her put her foot in here, only I suppose ’s different to-day, for the
marriage.  ’s Uma’s mother.”

“Well, suppose it is; what’s she carrying on about?”  I asked, more
irritated, perhaps more frightened, than I cared to show; and the captain
told me she was making up a quantity of poetry in my praise because I was
to marry Uma.  “All right, old lady,” says I, with rather a failure of a
laugh, “anything to oblige.  But when you’re done with my hand, you might
let me know.”

She did as though she understood; the song rose into a cry, and stopped;
the woman crouched out of the house the same way that she came in, and
must have plunged straight into the bush, for when I followed her to the
door she had already vanished.

“These are rum manners,” said I.

“’s a rum crowd,” said the captain, and, to my surprise, he made the sign
of the cross on his bare bosom.

“Hillo!” says I, “are you a Papist?”

He repudiated the idea with contempt.  “Hard-shell Baptis’,” said he.
“But, my dear friend, the Papists got some good ideas too; and tha’ ’s
one of ’em.  You take my advice, and whenever you come across Uma or
Fa’avao or Vigours, or any of that crowd, you take a leaf out o’ the
priests, and do what I do.  Savvy?” says he, repeated the sign, and
winked his dim eye at me.  “No, _sir_!” he broke out again, “no Papists
here!” and for a long time entertained me with his religious opinions.

I must have been taken with Uma from the first, or I should certainly
have fled from that house, and got into the clean air, and the clean sea,
or some convenient river—though, it’s true, I was committed to Case; and,
besides, I could never have held my head up in that island if I had run
from a girl upon my wedding-night.

The sun was down, the sky all on fire, and the lamp had been some time
lighted, when Case came back with Uma and the negro.  She was dressed and
scented; her kilt was of fine tapa, looking richer in the folds than any
silk; her bust, which was of the colour of dark honey, she wore bare only
for some half a dozen necklaces of seeds and flowers; and behind her ears
and in her hair she had the scarlet flowers of the hibiscus.  She showed
the best bearing for a bride conceivable, serious and still; and I
thought shame to stand up with her in that mean house and before that
grinning negro.  I thought shame, I say; for the mountebank was dressed
with a big paper collar, the book he made believe to read from was an odd
volume of a novel, and the words of his service not fit to be set down.
My conscience smote me when we joined hands; and when she got her
certificate I was tempted to throw up the bargain and confess.  Here is
the document.  It was Case that wrote it, signatures and all, in a leaf
out of the ledger:—

    This is to certify that Uma, daughter of Fa’avao of Falesá, Island of
    ---, is illegally married to Mr. John Wiltshire for one week, and Mr.
    John Wiltshire is at liberty to send her to hell when he pleases.

                                                          JOHN BLACKAMOAR.
                                                    Chaplain to the hulks.

    Extracted from the Register
    by William T. Randall,
    Master Mariner.

A nice paper to put in a girl’s hand and see her hide away like gold.  A
man might easily feel cheap for less.  But it was the practice in these
parts, and (as I told myself) not the least the fault of us white men,
but of the missionaries.  If they had let the natives be, I had never
needed this deception, but taken all the wives I wished, and left them
when I pleased, with a clear conscience.

The more ashamed I was, the more hurry I was in to be gone; and our
desires thus jumping together, I made the less remark of a change in the
traders.  Case had been all eagerness to keep me; now, as though he had
attained a purpose, he seemed all eagerness to have me go.  Uma, he said,
could show me to my house, and the three bade us farewell indoors.

The night was nearly come; the village smelt of trees and flowers and the
sea and bread-fruit-cooking; there came a fine roll of sea from the reef,
and from a distance, among the woods and houses, many pretty sounds of
men and children.  It did me good to breathe free air; it did me good to
be done with the captain and see, instead, the creature at my side.  I
felt for all the world as though she were some girl at home in the Old
Country, and, forgetting myself for the minute, took her hand to walk
with.  Her fingers nestled into mine, I heard her breathe deep and quick,
and all at once she caught my hand to her face and pressed it there.
“You good!” she cried, and ran ahead of me, and stopped and looked back
and smiled, and ran ahead of me again, thus guiding me through the edge
of the bush, and by a quiet way to my own house.

The truth is, Case had done the courting for me in style—told her I was
mad to have her, and cared nothing for the consequence; and the poor
soul, knowing that which I was still ignorant of, believed it, every
word, and had her head nigh turned with vanity and gratitude.  Now, of
all this I had no guess; I was one of those most opposed to any nonsense
about native women, having seen so many whites eaten up by their wives’
relatives, and made fools of in the bargain; and I told myself I must
make a stand at once, and bring her to her bearings.  But she looked so
quaint and pretty as she ran away and then awaited me, and the thing was
done so like a child or a kind dog, that the best I could do was just to
follow her whenever she went on, to listen for the fall of her bare feet,
and to watch in the dusk for the shining of her body.  And there was
another thought came in my head.  She played kitten with me now when we
were alone; but in the house she had carried it the way a countess might,
so proud and humble.  And what with her dress—for all there was so little
of it, and that native enough—what with her fine tapa and fine scents,
and her red flowers and seeds, that were quite as bright as jewels, only
larger—it came over me she was a kind of countess really, dressed to hear
great singers at a concert, and no even mate for a poor trader like
myself.

She was the first in the house; and while I was still without I saw a
match flash and the lamplight kindle in the windows.  The station was a
wonderful fine place, coral built, with quite a wide verandah, and the
main room high and wide.  My chests and cases had been piled in, and made
rather of a mess; and there, in the thick of the confusion, stood Uma by
the table, awaiting me.  Her shadow went all the way up behind her into
the hollow of the iron roof; she stood against it bright, the lamplight
shining on her skin.  I stopped in the door, and she looked at me, not
speaking, with eyes that were eager and yet daunted; then she touched
herself on the bosom.

“Me—your wifie,” she said.  It had never taken me like that before; but
the want of her took and shook all through me, like the wind in the luff
of a sail.

I could not speak if I had wanted; and if I could, I would not.  I was
ashamed to be so much moved about a native, ashamed of the marriage too,
and the certificate she had treasured in her kilt; and I turned aside and
made believe to rummage among my cases.  The first thing I lighted on was
a case of gin, the only one that I had brought; and, partly for the
girl’s sake, and partly for horror of the recollections of old Randall,
took a sudden resolve.  I prized the lid off.  One by one I drew the
bottles with a pocket corkscrew, and sent Uma out to pour the stuff from
the verandah.

She came back after the last, and looked at me puzzled like.

“No good,” said I, for I was now a little better master of my tongue.
“Man he drink, he no good.”

She agreed with this, but kept considering.  “Why you bring him?” she
asked presently.  “Suppose you no want drink, you no bring him, I think.”

“That’s all right,” said I.  “One time I want drink too much; now no
want.  You see, I no savvy I get one little wifie.  Suppose I drink gin,
my little wifie he ’fraid.”

To speak to her kindly was about more than I was fit for; I had made my
vow I would never let on to weakness with a native, and I had nothing for
it but to stop.

She stood looking gravely down at me where I sat by the open case.  “I
think you good man,” she said.  And suddenly she had fallen before me on
the floor.  “I belong you all-e-same pig!” she cried.



CHAPTER II.  THE BAN.


I came on the verandah just before the sun rose on the morrow.  My house
was the last on the east; there was a cape of woods and cliffs behind
that hid the sunrise.  To the west, a swift cold river ran down, and
beyond was the green of the village, dotted with cocoa-palms and
breadfruits and houses.  The shutters were some of them down and some
open; I saw the mosquito bars still stretched, with shadows of people
new-awakened sitting up inside; and all over the green others were
stalking silent, wrapped in their many-coloured sleeping clothes like
Bedouins in Bible pictures.  It was mortal still and solemn and chilly,
and the light of the dawn on the lagoon was like the shining of a fire.

But the thing that troubled me was nearer hand.  Some dozen young men and
children made a piece of a half-circle, flanking my house: the river
divided them, some were on the near side, some on the far, and one on a
boulder in the midst; and they all sat silent, wrapped in their sheets,
and stared at me and my house as straight as pointer dogs.  I thought it
strange as I went out.  When I had bathed and come back again, and found
them all there, and two or three more along with them, I thought it
stranger still.  What could they see to gaze at in my house, I wondered,
and went in.

But the thought of these starers stuck in my mind, and presently I came
out again.  The sun was now up, but it was still behind the cape of
woods.  Say a quarter of an hour had come and gone.  The crowd was
greatly increased, the far bank of the river was lined for quite a
way—perhaps thirty grown folk, and of children twice as many, some
standing, some squatted on the ground, and all staring at my house.  I
have seen a house in a South Sea village thus surrounded, but then a
trader was thrashing his wife inside, and she singing out.  Here was
nothing: the stove was alight, the smoke going up in a Christian manner;
all was shipshape and Bristol fashion.  To be sure, there was a stranger
come, but they had a chance to see that stranger yesterday, and took it
quiet enough.  What ailed them now?  I leaned my arms on the rail and
stared back.  Devil a wink they had in them!  Now and then I could see
the children chatter, but they spoke so low not even the hum of their
speaking came my length.  The rest were like graven images: they stared
at me, dumb and sorrowful, with their bright eyes; and it came upon me
things would look not much different if I were on the platform of the
gallows, and these good folk had come to see me hanged.

I felt I was getting daunted, and began to be afraid I looked it, which
would never do.  Up I stood, made believe to stretch myself, came down
the verandah stair, and strolled towards the river.  There went a short
buzz from one to the other, like what you hear in theatres when the
curtain goes up; and some of the nearest gave back the matter of a pace.
I saw a girl lay one hand on a young man and make a gesture upward with
the other; at the same time she said something in the native with a
gasping voice.  Three little boys sat beside my path, where, I must pass
within three feet of them.  Wrapped in their sheets, with their shaved
heads and bits of top-knots, and queer faces, they looked like figures on
a chimney-piece.  Awhile they sat their ground, solemn as judges.  I came
up hand over fist, doing my five knots, like a man that meant business;
and I thought I saw a sort of a wink and gulp in the three faces.  Then
one jumped up (he was the farthest off) and ran for his mammy.  The other
two, trying to follow suit, got foul, came to ground together bawling,
wriggled right out of their sheets mother-naked, and in a moment there
were all three of them scampering for their lives and singing out like
pigs.  The natives, who would never let a joke slip, even at a burial,
laughed and let up, as short as a dog’s bark.

They say it scares a man to be alone.  No such thing.  What scares him in
the dark or the high bush is that he can’t make sure, and there might be
an army at his elbow.  What scares him worst is to be right in the midst
of a crowd, and have no guess of what they’re driving at.  When that
laugh stopped, I stopped too.  The boys had not yet made their offing,
they were still on the full stretch going the one way, when I had already
gone about ship and was sheering off the other.  Like a fool I had come
out, doing my five knots; like a fool I went back again.  It must have
been the funniest thing to see, and what knocked me silly, this time no
one laughed; only one old woman gave a kind of pious moan, the way you
have heard Dissenters in their chapels at the sermon.

“I never saw such fools of Kanakas as your people here,” I said once to
Uma, glancing out of the window at the starers.

“Savvy nothing,” says Uma, with a kind of disgusted air that she was good
at.

And that was all the talk we had upon the matter, for I was put out, and
Uma took the thing so much as a matter of course that I was fairly
ashamed.

All day, off and on, now fewer and now more, the fools sat about the west
end of my house and across the river, waiting for the show, whatever that
was—fire to come down from heaven, I suppose, and consume me, bones and
baggage.  But by evening, like real islanders, they had wearied of the
business, and got away, and had a dance instead in the big house of the
village, where I heard them singing and clapping hands till, maybe, ten
at night, and the next day it seemed they had forgotten I existed.  If
fire had come down from heaven or the earth opened and swallowed me,
there would have been nobody to see the sport or take the lesson, or
whatever you like to call it.  But I was to find they hadn’t forgot
either, and kept an eye lifting for phenomena over my way.

I was hard at it both these days getting my trade in order and taking
stock of what Vigours had left.  This was a job that made me pretty sick,
and kept me from thinking on much else.  Ben had taken stock the trip
before—I knew I could trust Ben—but it was plain somebody had been making
free in the meantime.  I found I was out by what might easily cover six
months’ salary and profit, and I could have kicked myself all round the
village to have been such a blamed ass, sitting boozing with that Case
instead of attending to my own affairs and taking stock.

However, there’s no use crying over spilt milk.  It was done now, and
couldn’t be undone.  All I could do was to get what was left of it, and
my new stuff (my own choice) in order, to go round and get after the rats
and cockroaches, and to fix up that store regular Sydney style.  A fine
show I made of it; and the third morning when I had lit my pipe and stood
in the door-way and looked in, and turned and looked far up the mountain
and saw the cocoanuts waving and posted up the tons of copra, and over
the village green and saw the island dandies and reckoned up the yards of
print they wanted for their kilts and dresses, I felt as if I was in the
right place to make a fortune, and go home again and start a
public-house.  There was I, sitting in that verandah, in as handsome a
piece of scenery as you could find, a splendid sun, and a fine fresh
healthy trade that stirred up a man’s blood like sea-bathing; and the
whole thing was clean gone from me, and I was dreaming England, which is,
after all, a nasty, cold, muddy hole, with not enough light to see to
read by; and dreaming the looks of my public, by a cant of a broad
high-road like an avenue, and with the sign on a green tree.

So much for the morning, but the day passed and the devil anyone looked
near me, and from all I knew of natives in other islands I thought this
strange.  People laughed a little at our firm and their fine stations,
and at this station of Falesá in particular; all the copra in the
district wouldn’t pay for it (I had heard them say) in fifty years, which
I supposed was an exaggeration.  But when the day went, and no business
came at all, I began to get downhearted; and, about three in the
afternoon, I went out for a stroll to cheer me up.  On the green I saw a
white man coming with a cassock on, by which and by the face of him I
knew he was a priest.  He was a good-natured old soul to look at, gone a
little grizzled, and so dirty you could have written with him on a piece
of paper.

“Good day, sir,” said I.

He answered me eagerly in native.

“Don’t you speak any English?” said I.

“French,” says he.

“Well,” said I, “I’m sorry, but I can’t do anything there.”

He tried me awhile in the French, and then again in native, which he
seemed to think was the best chance.  I made out he was after more than
passing the time of day with me, but had something to communicate, and I
listened the harder.  I heard the names of Adams and Case and of
Randall—Randall the oftenest—and the word “poison,” or something like it,
and a native word that he said very often.  I went home, repeating it to
myself.

“What does fussy-ocky mean?” I asked of Uma, for that was as near as I
could come to it.

“Make dead,” said she.

“The devil it does!” says I.  “Did ever you hear that Case had poisoned
Johnnie Adams?”

“Every man he savvy that,” says Uma, scornful-like.  “Give him white
sand—bad sand.  He got the bottle still.  Suppose he give you gin, you no
take him.”

Now I had heard much the same sort of story in other islands, and the
same white powder always to the front, which made me think the less of
it.  For all that, I went over to Randall’s place to see what I could
pick up, and found Case on the doorstep, cleaning a gun.

“Good shooting here?” says I.

“A 1,” says he.  “The bush is full of all kinds of birds.  I wish copra
was as plenty,” says he—I thought, slyly—“but there don’t seem anything
doing.”

I could see Black Jack in the store, serving a customer.

“That looks like business, though,” said I.

“That’s the first sale we’ve made in three weeks,” said he.

“You don’t tell me?” says I.  “Three weeks?  Well, well.”

“If you don’t believe me,” he cries, a little hot, “you can go and look
at the copra-house.  It’s half empty to this blessed hour.”

“I shouldn’t be much the better for that, you see,” says I.  “For all I
can tell, it might have been whole empty yesterday.”

“That’s so,” says he, with a bit of a laugh.

“By-the-bye,” I said, “what sort of a party is that priest?  Seems rather
a friendly sort.”

At this Case laughed right out loud.  “Ah!” says he, “I see what ails you
now.  Galuchet’s been at you.”—_Father Galoshes_ was the name he went by
most, but Case always gave it the French quirk, which was another reason
we had for thinking him above the common.

“Yes, I have seen him,” I says.  “I made out he didn’t think much of your
Captain Randall.”

“That he don’t!” says Case.  “It was the trouble about poor Adams.  The
last day, when he lay dying, there was young Buncombe round.  Ever met
Buncombe?”

I told him no.

“He’s a cure, is Buncombe!” laughs Case.  “Well, Buncombe took it in his
head that, as there was no other clergyman about, bar Kanaka pastors, we
ought to call in Father Galuchet, and have the old man administered and
take the sacrament.  It was all the same to me, you may suppose; but I
said I thought Adams was the fellow to consult.  He was jawing away about
watered copra and a sight of foolery.  ‘Look here,’ I said, ‘you’re
pretty sick.  Would you like to see Galoshes?’  He sat right up on his
elbow.  ‘Get the priest,’ says he, ‘get the priest; don’t let me die here
like a dog!’  He spoke kind of fierce and eager, but sensible enough.
There was nothing to say against that, so we sent and asked Galuchet if
he would come.  You bet he would.  He jumped in his dirty linen at the
thought of it.  But we had reckoned without Papa.  He’s a hard-shell
Baptist, is Papa; no Papists need apply.  And he took and locked the
door.  Buncombe told him he was bigoted, and I thought he would have had
a fit.  ‘Bigoted!’ he says.  ‘Me bigoted?  Have I lived to hear it from a
jackanapes like you?’  And he made for Buncombe, and I had to hold them
apart; and there was Adams in the middle, gone luny again, and carrying
on about copra like a born fool.  It was good as the play, and I was
about knocked out of time with laughing, when all of a sudden Adams sat
up, clapped his hands to his chest, and went into the horrors.  He died
hard, did John Adams,” says Case, with a kind of a sudden sternness.

“And what became of the priest?” I asked.

“The priest?” says Case.  “O! he was hammering on the door outside, and
crying on the natives to come and beat it in, and singing out it was a
soul he wished to save, and that.  He was in a rare taking, was the
priest.  But what would you have?  Johnny had slipped his cable; no more
Johnny in the market; and the administration racket clean played out.
Next thing, word came to Randall the priest was praying upon Johnny’s
grave.  Papa was pretty full, and got a club, and lit out straight for
the place, and there was Galoshes on his knees, and a lot of natives
looking on.  You wouldn’t think Papa cared—that much about anything,
unless it was liquor; but he and the priest stuck to it two hours,
slanging each other in native, and every time Galoshes tried to kneel
down Papa went for him with the club.  There never were such larks in
Falesá.  The end of it was that Captain Randall knocked over with some
kind of a fit or stroke, and the priest got in his goods after all.  But
he was the angriest priest you ever heard of, and complained to the
chiefs about the outrage, as he called it.  That was no account, for our
chiefs are Protestant here; and, anyway, he had been making trouble about
the drum for morning school, and they were glad to give him a wipe.  Now
he swears old Randall gave Adams poison or something, and when the two
meet they grin at each other like baboons.”

He told this story as natural as could be, and like a man that enjoyed
the fun; though, now I come to think of it after so long, it seems rather
a sickening yarn.  However, Case never set up to be soft, only to be
square and hearty, and a man all round; and, to tell the truth, he
puzzled me entirely.

I went home and asked Uma if she were a Popey, which I had made out to be
the native word for Catholics.

“_E le ai_!” says she.  She always used the native when she meant “no”
more than usually strong, and, indeed, there’s more of it.  “No good
Popey,” she added.

Then I asked her about Adams and the priest, and she told me much the
same yarn in her own way.  So that I was left not much farther on, but
inclined, upon the whole, to think the bottom of the matter was the row
about the sacrament, and the poisoning only talk.

The next day was a Sunday, when there was no business to be looked for.
Uma asked me in the morning if I was going to “pray”; I told her she bet
not, and she stopped home herself with no more words.  I thought this
seemed unlike a native, and a native woman, and a woman that had new
clothes to show off; however, it suited me to the ground, and I made the
less of it.  The queer thing was that I came next door to going to church
after all, a thing I’m little likely to forget.  I had turned out for a
stroll, and heard the hymn tune up.  You know how it is.  If you hear
folk singing, it seems to draw you; and pretty soon I found myself
alongside the church.  It was a little long low place, coral built,
rounded off at both ends like a whale-boat, a big native roof on the top
of it, windows without sashes and doorways without doors.  I stuck my
head into one of the windows, and the sight was so new to me—for things
went quite different in the islands I was acquainted with—that I stayed
and looked on.  The congregation sat on the floor on mats, the women on
one side, the men on the other, all rigged out to kill—the women with
dresses and trade hats, the men in white jackets and shirts.  The hymn
was over; the pastor, a big buck Kanaka, was in the pulpit, preaching for
his life; and by the way he wagged his hand, and worked his voice, and
made his points, and seemed to argue with the folk, I made out he was a
gun at the business.  Well, he looked up suddenly and caught my eye, and
I give you my word he staggered in the pulpit; his eyes bulged out of his
head, his hand rose and pointed at me like as if against his will, and
the sermon stopped right there.

It isn’t a fine thing to say for yourself, but I ran away; and if the
same kind of a shock was given me, I should run away again to-morrow.  To
see that palavering Kanaka struck all of a heap at the mere sight of me
gave me a feeling as if the bottom had dropped out of the world.  I went
right home, and stayed there, and said nothing.  You might think I would
tell Uma, but that was against my system.  You might have thought I would
have gone over and consulted Case; but the truth was I was ashamed to
speak of such a thing, I thought everyone would blurt out laughing in my
face.  So I held my tongue, and thought all the more; and the more I
thought, the less I liked the business.

By Monday night I got it clearly in my head I must be tabooed.  A new
store to stand open two days in a village and not a man or woman come to
see the trade was past believing.

“Uma,” said I, “I think I’m tabooed.”

“I think so,” said she.

I thought awhile whether I should ask her more, but it’s a bad idea to
set natives up with any notion of consulting them, so I went to Case.  It
was dark, and he was sitting alone, as he did mostly, smoking on the
stairs.

“Case,” said I, “here’s a queer thing.  I’m tabooed.”

“O, fudge!” says he; “’tain’t the practice in these islands.”

“That may be, or it mayn’t,” said I.  “It’s the practice where I was
before.  You can bet I know what it’s like; and I tell it you for a fact,
I’m tabooed.”

“Well,” said he, “what have you been doing?”

“That’s what I want to find out,” said I.

“O, you can’t be,” said he; “it ain’t possible.  However, I’ll tell you
what I’ll do.  Just to put your mind at rest, I’ll go round and find out
for sure.  Just you waltz in and talk to Papa.”

“Thank you,” I said, “I’d rather stay right out here on the verandah.
Your house is so close.”

“I’ll call Papa out here, then,” says he.

“My dear fellow,” I says, “I wish you wouldn’t.  The fact is, I don’t
take to Mr. Randall.”

Case laughed, took a lantern from the store, and set out into the
village.  He was gone perhaps a quarter of an hour, and he looked mighty
serious when he came back.

“Well,” said he, clapping down the lantern on the verandah steps, “I
would never have believed it.  I don’t know where the impudence of these
Kanakas ’ll go next; they seem to have lost all idea of respect for
whites.  What we want is a man-of-war—a German, if we could—they know how
to manage Kanakas.”

“I _am_ tabooed, then?” I cried.

“Something of the sort,” said he.  “It’s the worst thing of the kind I’ve
heard of yet.  But I’ll stand by you, Wiltshire, man to man.  You come
round here to-morrow about nine, and we’ll have it out with the chiefs.
They’re afraid of me, or they used to be; but their heads are so big by
now, I don’t know what to think.  Understand me, Wiltshire; I don’t count
this your quarrel,” he went on, with a great deal of resolution, “I count
it all of our quarrel, I count it the White Man’s Quarrel, and I’ll stand
to it through thick and thin, and there’s my hand on it.”

“Have you found out what’s the reason?” I asked.

“Not yet,” said Case.  “But we’ll fix them down to-morrow.”

Altogether I was pretty well pleased with his attitude, and almost more
the next day, when we met to go before the chiefs, to see him so stern
and resolved.  The chiefs awaited us in one of their big oval houses,
which was marked out to us from a long way off by the crowd about the
eaves, a hundred strong if there was one—men, women, and children.  Many
of the men were on their way to work and wore green wreaths, and it put
me in thoughts of the 1st of May at home.  This crowd opened and buzzed
about the pair of us as we went in, with a sudden angry animation.  Five
chiefs were there; four mighty stately men, the fifth old and puckered.
They sat on mats in their white kilts and jackets; they had fans in their
hands, like fine ladies; and two of the younger ones wore Catholic
medals, which gave me matter of reflection.  Our place was set, and the
mats laid for us over against these grandees, on the near side of the
house; the midst was empty; the crowd, close at our backs, murmured and
craned and jostled to look on, and the shadows of them tossed in front of
us on the clean pebbles of the floor.  I was just a hair put out by the
excitement of the commons, but the quiet civil appearance of the chiefs
reassured me, all the more when their spokesman began and made a long
speech in a low tone of voice, sometimes waving his hand towards Case,
sometimes toward me, and sometimes knocking with his knuckles on the mat.
One thing was clear: there was no sign of anger in the chiefs.

“What’s he been saying?” I asked, when he had done.

“O, just that they’re glad to see you, and they understand by me you wish
to make some kind of complaint, and you’re to fire away, and they’ll do
the square thing.”

“It took a precious long time to say that,” said I.

“O, the rest was sawder and _bonjour_ and that,” said Case.  “You know
what Kanakas are.”

“Well, they don’t get much _bonjour_ out of me,” said I.  “You tell them
who I am.  I’m a white man, and a British subject, and no end of a big
chief at home; and I’ve come here to do them good, and bring them
civilisation; and no sooner have I got my trade sorted out than they go
and taboo me, and no one dare come near my place!  Tell them I don’t mean
to fly in the face of anything legal; and if what they want’s a present,
I’ll do what’s fair.  I don’t blame any man looking out for himself, tell
them, for that’s human nature; but if they think they’re going to come
any of their native ideas over me, they’ll find themselves mistaken.  And
tell them plain that I demand the reason of this treatment as a white man
and a British subject.”

That was my speech.  I know how to deal with Kanakas: give them plain
sense and fair dealing, and—I’ll do them that much justice—they knuckle
under every time.  They haven’t any real government or any real law,
that’s what you’ve got to knock into their heads; and even if they had,
it would be a good joke if it was to apply to a white man.  It would be a
strange thing if we came all this way and couldn’t do what we pleased.
The mere idea has always put my monkey up, and I rapped my speech out
pretty big.  Then Case translated it—or made believe to, rather—and the
first chief replied, and then a second, and a third, all in the same
style, easy and genteel, but solemn underneath.  Once a question was put
to Case, and he answered it, and all hands (both chiefs and commons)
laughed out aloud, and looked at me.  Last of all, the puckered old
fellow and the big young chief that spoke first started in to put Case
through a kind of catechism.  Sometimes I made out that Case was trying
to fence, and they stuck to him like hounds, and the sweat ran down his
face, which was no very pleasant sight to me, and at some of his answers
the crowd moaned and murmured, which was a worse hearing.  It’s a cruel
shame I knew no native, for (as I now believe) they were asking Case
about my marriage, and he must have had a tough job of it to clear his
feet.  But leave Case alone; he had the brains to run a parliament.

“Well, is that all?” I asked, when a pause came.

“Come along,” says he, mopping his face; “I’ll tell you outside.”

“Do you mean they won’t take the taboo off?”  I cried.

“It’s something queer,” said he.  “I’ll tell you outside.  Better come
away.”

“I won’t take it at their hands,” cried I.  “I ain’t that kind of a man.
You don’t find me turn my back on a parcel of Kanakas.”

“You’d better,” said Case.

He looked at me with a signal in his eye; and the five chiefs looked at
me civilly enough, but kind of pointed; and the people looked at me and
craned and jostled.  I remembered the folks that watched my house, and
how the pastor had jumped in his pulpit at the bare sight of me; and the
whole business seemed so out of the way that I rose and followed Case.
The crowd opened again to let us through, but wider than before, the
children on the skirts running and singing out, and as we two white men
walked away they all stood and watched us.

“And now,” said I, “what is all this about?”

“The truth is I can’t rightly make it out myself.  They have a down on
you,” says Case.

“Taboo a man because they have a down on him!” I cried.  “I never heard
the like.”

“It’s worse than that, you see,” said Case.  “You ain’t tabooed—I told
you that couldn’t be.  The people won’t go near you, Wiltshire, and
there’s where it is.”

“They won’t go near me?  What do you mean by that?  Why won’t they go
near me?” I cried.

Case hesitated.  “Seems they’re frightened,” says he, in a low, voice.

I stopped dead short.  “Frightened?” I repeated.  “Are you gone crazy,
Case?  What are they frightened of?”