CHAPTER XII

THE WHITE MAN IN THE SOUTH SEAS

We chugged away from Tomman and for a week we cruised along the southern end of Malekula. In this region, the mountains come down to the sea. Beyond them lies dangerous territory. It was not safe for us to cross them with the force we had; so we had to be content with inspecting the coast. There we found only deserted villages and a few scattered huts inhabited by old men left to die alone.

Finally we rounded the end of the island and steamed up the eastern coast. One evening we came to anchor in Port Sandwich—a lovely, land-locked bay. Since it was very late, we deferred explorations until the following morning and turned in almost as soon as we had anchored, so as to be ready for work betimes.

At about three o’clock, Osa and I, who slept on deck, were rudely awakened by being thrown into the scuppers. We pulled ourselves to our feet and held tight to the rail. The ship rolled and trembled violently. Though there seemed to be no wind, the water boiled around us and the trees on shore swayed and groaned in the still air.

Captain Moran and his brother came rushing from their cabins. The black crew tumbled out of the hold, yelling with terror. There was a sound of breaking crockery. A big wave washed over the deck and carried overboard everything that was loose. The water bubbled up from below as if from a giant caldron and fishes leaped high into the air. After what seemed to be half an hour, but was in reality a few minutes, the disturbance subsided. We had been through an earthquake.

The volcanic forces that brought the New Hebrides into being are still actively at work. Small shocks are almost a daily occurrence in the islands. But this had been no ordinary earthquake. The next morning, when we went ashore, we found that half the native huts of the little settlement near the mouth of the bay had collapsed like card houses. The devil-devils and boo-boos stood at drunken angles—some of them had fallen to the ground—and, in the village clearings and other level places, the ground looked like a piece of wet paper that had been stretched until it was full of wrinkles and jagged tears. Streaks of red clay marked the courses of landslides down the sides of the mountains. The old men of the settlement said that the earthquake was the worst they had ever experienced. And when we returned to Vao, we found that two sides of our own bungalow had caved in as a result of the shock.

A visit to the volcano Lopevi gave us further proof of the uncertain foundation on which the islands rest.

On the morning after the earthquake, Mr. King, the British Commissioner, appeared in the Euphrosyne, on his way to Vao to fetch us for a visit at Vila. We told him regretfully that we had no time for visiting, and then he proposed a jaunt to Lopevi, a great volcano about thirty miles from Malekula. We were glad of the opportunity to see the volcano, which was reputed to be one of the most beautiful in the world. So we said good-bye to Captain Moran, who departed at once to continue his interrupted trading, and we transferred our belongings to the Euphrosyne, where we reveled in the unaccustomed luxury of good beds and good service by attentive servants.

We left Port Sandwich at daybreak, and in a few hours we saw Lopevi, a perfect cone, rising abruptly out of the water to a height of nearly six thousand feet. When we came within range, I got my camera ready. A fine fringe of thunder-clouds encircled the island about halfway down, but the top was free. The light was perfect. I was grinding happily away, when a miracle happened. Lopevi sent up a cloud of smoke. Then she growled ominously, and shot out great tongues of lapping flame. More smoke, and she subsided into calm again. I had secured a fine picture and congratulated myself on having arrived just in the nick of time. Suddenly, as we discussed the event, Lopevi became active again. And after that there was an eruption every twenty minutes from ten in the morning until four in the afternoon. We steamed all around the island, stopping at favorable points to wait for a good “shot.” At four o’clock, we sailed for Api, where we were to harbor for the night. And from the time we turned our backs on Lopevi, there was not another eruption. Her cone was in sight for an hour that night, and next morning, from Ringdove Bay where we were anchored, she was plainly visible. But she did not emit a single whiff of smoke. Osa called her our trained volcano.

We remained on Api for four days. Since Mr. King was due back at Vila, he had to leave on the morning after our arrival; so we took up our quarters with Mr. Mitchell, the English manager of one of the largest coconut plantations on the island.

In more civilized regions one might hesitate before descending, bag and baggage, upon an unknown host, to wait for a very uncertain steamer; but in the islands of the South Seas one is almost always sure of a welcome. The traders and planters lead lonely lives. They have just three things to look forward to—the monthly visit of the Pacifique, a trip once a year to Sydney or New Caledonia, and dinner. For the Englishman in exile, dinner is the greatest event of the day. He rises at daybreak and, after a hasty cup of coffee, goes out on the plantation to see that work is duly under way. He breakfasts at eleven and then sleeps for a couple of hours, through the heat of the day. His day’s work is over at six; then he has a bath and a whiskey-and-soda—and dinner. Another drink, a little quiet reading, then off with the dinner clothes and to bed.

Yes, I said dinner clothes. For dinner clothes are as much _de rigueur_ in Ringdove Bay as they are on Piccadilly. I, who have a rowdy fondness for free-and-easy dress and am only too glad when I can escape from the world of dinner coats and white ties, suggested, on the second evening of our stay at Api, that, since Mrs. Johnson was used to informal attire, we could dispense, if Mr. Mitchell desired, with the ceremony of dressing.

“But, my dear Johnson,” said Mitchell, “I dress for dinner when I am here alone.”

That ended the matter. I knew that I was up against an article of the British creed and might as well conform.

When I first went out to the South Seas, I was disposed to regard the punctiliousness in dress of the isolated Britisher as more or less of an affectation. But now I realize that a dinner coat is a symbol. It is a man’s declaration to himself and the world that he has a firm grasp on his self-respect. A Frenchman in the islands can go barefooted and half-clothed, can live a life ungoverned by routine, rising at will, going to bed at will, working at will, can throw off every convention, and still maintain his dignity. With the Anglo-Saxon it is different. The Englishman must hold fast to an ordered existence or, in nine cases out of ten, the islands will “get” him.

It is customary to waste a lot of pity on the trader and the planter in remote places—lonely outposts of civilization, but, from my observation, they do not need pity. The man who stays in the islands is fitted for the life there; if he isn’t, he doesn’t stay, and, if he does stay, he can retire, after fifteen or twenty years, with a tidy fortune.

Of course the road to fortune is a long and hard one. The average planter starts out with a little capital—say five hundred dollars. He purchases a plot of land. The price he pays depends upon the locality in which he buys. In regions where the natives are still fairly unsophisticated, he may get his land for almost nothing. Even where the natives are most astute, he can buy a square mile for what he would pay for an acre back home. His next step is to get his land cleared. To that end, he buys a whaleboat and goes out to recruit natives to act as laborers. He needs five or six blacks. They will build his house and clear his land and plant his coconuts. Since it takes seven years for the coconuts to mature, sweet potatoes and cotton must be planted between the rows of trees. The sweet potatoes, with a little rice, will furnish all the food required by the blacks. The cotton, if the planter is diligent and lucky, will pay current expenses until the coconuts begin bearing.

Though his small capital of five hundred dollars may be eaten up early in the game, the settler need not despair. The big trading companies that do business in the islands will see him through if he shows any signs of being made of the right stuff. They will give him credit for food and supplies and they will provide him with knives, calico, and tobacco, which he can barter with the blacks for the sandalwood and copra that will help balance his account with the companies. And after the first trying seven years, his troubles are about over—if he can get labor enough to keep his plantation going.

Even in the remote islands of the New Hebrides, the labor problem has reared its head. The employer, in civilized regions, has a slight advantage resulting from the fact that men must work to live. In the New Hebrides, indeed all throughout Melanesia, the black man can live very comfortably, according to his own standards, on what nature provides. Only a minimum of effort is required to secure food and clothing and shelter, and most of that effort is put forth by the female slaves he calls his wives. Even the experienced recruiter finds it hard to get the Melanesian to exchange his life of ease for a life of toil. And the inexperienced recruiter finds it very hard. The days when natives could be picked up on any beach are past. The blacks in the more accessible regions know what recruiting means—two years of hard labor, from which there is no escape and from which a man may or may not return home. So the recruiter must look for hands in the interior, where knowledge of the white man and his ways has not penetrated. Even here, the inexperienced recruiter is at a disadvantage. For the experienced recruiter has invariably preceded him.

Each year, the number of available recruits is growing fewer, for the native population is dwindling rapidly. As a result, the cost of labor is high. In the Solomons, one may secure a native for a three years’ term at five or six pounds a year in the case of inexperienced workmen, or at nine pounds a year in the case of natives who have already served for three years. In the New Hebrides, planter bids against planter, and the native benefits, receiving from twelve to fifteen pounds a year for his work. The planters complain of the high cost of labor. But the big planters, the capitalists of the South Seas, who have their chains of copra groves, with a white superintendent in charge of each one, certainly do not suffer. I remember being on one big Melanesian plantation on the day when natives were paid for two years’ work all in a lump. About four thousand dollars was distributed among the workers. I watched them spend it in the company store. A great simple black, clad in a nose-stick and a yard of calico, would come in and after an hour of happy shopping would go off blissfully with little or no money and a collection of cheap mirrors and beads and other worthless gew-gaws all in a shiny new “bokkus b’long bell.” By night, about three thousand dollars had been taken in by the company store-keeper. I was reminded of a rather grimly humorous story of a day’s receipts that totaled only $1800 after a $2000 pay-day. When the report reached the main office in Sydney, a curt note was sent to the plantation store-keeper asking what had become of the other $200!

There are certainly two sides to the labor question in the New Hebrides. Yet the whole development of the islands hangs upon cheap and efficient labor. Where it is to come from is a question. The recruiting of Orientals for service in British possessions in the South Seas is forbidden. Even if it were permitted, it would not solve the problem, for the coolie of China or Japan or India is not adapted to the grilling labor of clearing bush.

Mr. Mitchell discussed the labor problem as long and as bitterly as any employer back home. The natives of Api, while friendly and mild, were entirely averse to toil. He had to import hands from other islands. Only occasionally could he persuade the Api people to do a few days’ work in order to secure some object “belong white man.”

Often they coveted curious things. One morning, during our stay, a delegation of natives appeared and said they had come for “big-fellow-bokkus (box).” A servant, summoned by Mitchell, brought out a wooden coffin, one of the men counted out some money, and the natives shouldered their “bokkus” and went away.

Mitchell laughed as he watched them depart. That coffin had a history. About six weeks previously, a delegation of natives had appeared, with a black who had seen service on a New Zealand plantation acting as spokesman. He informed Mitchell that their old chief was dying and that they had decided to pay him the honor of burying him in “bokkus belong white man.” They asked Mitchell if he would provide such a “bokkus” and for how much. Mitchell had a Chinese carpenter and a little supply of timber; so he very gladly consented to have a coffin made. He figured the cost at ten pounds. That appeared to the delegation to be excessive, and they went off to the hills. The next day, however, they reappeared and requested that he make a coffin half the size for half the money. Mitchell protested that a coffin half the size originally figured upon would not be long enough to hold the chief. And they replied that they would cut his arms and legs off to make him fit in. At that, Mitchell, with an eye to labor supply, said that, if they must have a coffin, they must have a proper coffin. He would order the carpenter to make one large enough to hold the chief without mutilation, and he would charge them only five pounds for it, though that meant a loss to him. The carpenter went to work. Most of the village came down to supervise the job, and every few hours, until the coffin was finished, a messenger reported on the chief’s condition. When the “bokkus” was at last done, they carried it up the trail with great rejoicing. But the next day they brought it back. The old chief was up and about, and they had no use for it. They laid it down at Mitchell’s feet and demanded their money back. Mitchell protested that he had no use for the coffin, either, but they were firm. And he, remembering how difficult it is to get hands in the copra-cutting season, meekly returned the five pounds, and put the coffin in his storehouse. Now, a month later, the old chief had died, and the natives had come for the coffin. We could hear them chanting as they went up the trail.

The next day we set sail on the Pacifique, which had arrived during the night with letters and papers a month old, and we were dropped at Port Sandwich, which was sparsely populated with sullen and subdued savages, to await whatever trader might happen along to take us back to Vao. We had used all our films and were thoroughly tired of Port Sandwich when a trader finally put in an appearance. His boat was a twenty-four-foot launch, barely large enough to contain us and our equipment. When we hoisted our dinghy aboard, its bow and stern protruded several feet beyond the sides of the launch. Next morning, with some misgivings, we set out on the fifty-five-mile journey that would complete our round of Malekula and bring us back to Vao.

We got “home” about four in the afternoon, tired and half-cooked from the broiling sun that had beat down upon us all day. We received a royal welcome. A great crowd of natives met us at the beach, and each seized a box or package and carried it at top speed up to the bungalow. In half an hour everything was in the house. It had been a long time since our Vao neighbors had had any of our tobacco!