CHAPTER V

IN NAGAPATE’S KINGDOM

Next morning, before daybreak, we were on the beach. The embers of the camp-fire remained, but our escort had vanished. I was filled with misgivings. Did Nagapate plan treachery? We were thirty-one—twenty-six trustworthy native boys, four white men, and Osa. We were all well equipped with repeating rifles and automatic pistols. In open fight, we could have stood off a thousand savages. But I knew that the men of Malekula, though they are notoriously bad shots, could pick us off one by one, if they wished, as we went through the jungle.

I suppose that we all felt a little doubtful about taking the plunge into the jungle, but we all—with the exception of our native boys, who were plainly in a blue funk—kept our doubts to ourselves. The boys were so frightened that they rebelled against carrying anything except their guns. To inspire them with confidence, each of us took a piece of luggage, and then we divided among them what was left and persuaded them to take the trail.

It was dawn on the beach, but it was still night in the jungle. The trail was a dark tunnel with walls and roof of underbrush and trees and tangled vines. We stumbled along blindly at first. Presently our eyes became used to the dark and we walked with more ease. Stems and thorns caught at our clothes as we passed. We slipped on wet, slimy roots and stumbled over them in the dim light. Only where the jungle was intersected by one of the numerous streams—swift but shallow and never too wide for leaping—that water the island, did the light succeed in struggling weakly through the tangle.

The New Hebridean jungle is different from that of India or Africa. The severe hurricanes that sweep over the islands each year have stunted growth. There are no forest giants. Trees send their branches out rather than up, forming a dense mass of vegetation that is further bound together by vines, so that it is almost impossible to penetrate the jungle save by beaten trails or along the courses of streams.

The sun was well up when we came out on the first of a series of plateaus that formed a giant stairway up the mountain. They were separated from one another by five hundred to a thousand yards of scrub trees and tangled bush. It was not easy going. The ascents were steep, and the trail was wet and slippery.

We kept watch for treacherous natives. Once we were startled by blood-curdling cries that came from the direction in which we were going. Our boys said the men of Malekula were hunting wild pigs. We went on in silence. Our hearts jumped every time a twig cracked. There was a set expression on Osa’s face. I knew she was frightened, but I knew, too, that no amount of money would have persuaded her to turn back.

By noon we had reached what seemed to be the highest point of northern Malekula, and looked back over valley after valley of dense jungle, and plateau after plateau covered with cane-grass. Here and there a coconut tree stood out alone. Smoke, curling out of the hillsides, indicated the sites of native villages. Perhaps, at that very moment, gruesome feasts of human flesh were being prepared. In the bay, very small and very far off, were three black dots—our boats.

We heard a sound behind us and quickly turned. There were some twenty men, sent by the “big fellow master belong Big Numbers.” They took our apparatus and indicated that we were to follow them. We were dead tired; still there seemed nothing to do but to push on.

We were not sorry, after about a mile, to approach a village. First we came upon scattered groves of coconut and banana trees. Our trail became wider and harder and we passed weed-grown patches of yams and taro, protected against the wild pigs by rude walls of bamboo. Finally we came out upon a clearing around which clustered a few wretched shelters thatched roughly with leaves. In the center of the clearing stood upright hollow logs—the drums used to send messages from village to village and to furnish music for the native dances. The natives called them boo-boos—the name given to conch-shells and all other sound-making instruments. On the hard ground of the clearing sat some thirty savages, all well armed. They had apparently been watching for us, but they did not greet us. We spoke to them, but, beyond a few grunts, they made no reply. There were no women and children in sight. That was a bad sign; for the women and children are sent away only when there is trouble in the air. Perrole, Stephens, and Mazouyer drew nearer to Osa and me. Their faces were grave. Our boys edged close to us. None of us spoke.

After a short rest, our guides indicated that we were to take the trail again. We pushed on over a muddy path, bordered by coconut and banana trees, and in about fifteen minutes we came out upon another clearing, much larger than the first, with many more huts surrounding it and with more and bigger boo-boos in the center. Here again were savages awaiting us—about two hundred of them, each with a gun. We were led to a big boo-boo that had been overturned by the wind and were told to sit down. We obeyed like obedient school-children.

One of the natives beat out on a boo-boo an irregular boom-boom-boom that roared through the clearing and was echoed back from the hills. It sounded like a code. We felt that it might be a summons to the executioner. Osa huddled close to me. A stillness fell over the assembly.

Suddenly, at the far side of the clearing, a huge savage appeared. It was Nagapate. He stood for a moment, looking over the audience; then he walked slowly and majestically into the center of the clearing. He roared a few words to his men. Then he turned to us. A native came running up—the laziest black stepped lively when Nagapate commanded—with a block of wood for a throne. The chief sat down near us, and we stepped forward and shook hands with him. He had grown used to this form of greeting and responded with graciousness.

It had been a wonderful entrance. But then Nagapate had an instinct for the dramatic. Throughout our stay in his village, I noticed, he never made a move that was not staged. He let it be known by his every act that he was no common chief, who had won his position through skill in killing pigs or men. Nagapate was a king and a descendant of kings. His was the only tribe I had come across during my travels among the blacks of the South Pacific that had an hereditary ruler.

After he had greeted us, he uttered a sharp command and a native stepped up with a big bamboo water-bottle. Nagapate drank from it, and then the native offered it, tilted at the proper angle, to each of us in turn. It was not pleasant to drink from the mouthpiece at which Nagapate’s great lips had sucked. But we gathered that the bottle was the South Sea equivalent of a pipe of peace; so we drank gladly. I then presented to Nagapate a royal gift of knives, calico, and tobacco, and I told one of the boys to give two sticks of tobacco to each native.

The natives smoked their tobacco (those that did not eat it) at once and greedily. It seemed to break the ice a bit; so I got out my cameras. For three hours, I made pictures. But I did not get any “action.” I wanted a picture of a man coming out of his house; for the doors of the huts are so low that the people have to come out on all fours. I persuaded a native to go into his hut and come out again. He did so. But his companions laughed and jeered at him, and after that every one had stage fright.

As the afternoon wore on, scores of women and children appeared. I have never seen human beings more wretched than those women. At first sight they looked like walking haystacks. They wore dresses of purple dyed grasses, consisting of a bushy skirt that hung from the waist to the knees, a sort of widow’s veil that was thrown over the head and face so as to leave a tiny peep-hole for the wearer to look through, and a long train that hung down the back nearly to the ground. A more cumbersome and insanitary dress was never devised. It was heavy. It was hot. Worst of all, it was dirty. Every one of the dresses was matted with filth. I did not see a single pig—and there were dozens of them rooting about inside and outside the houses—that was so dirty as the women of that village. I afterward found that for women to wash was strictly taboo. From birth to death water never touched their skins!

I got my cameras ready, but the women hid in the houses and would not come out to be photographed. Not until Nagapate commanded them to come into the clearing did they creep whimpering in terror from the low doors.

We had heard from the natives at our headquarters on the island of Vao that Nagapate had a hundred wives, but there were only ten of them, and they were as wretched as any of the other women. Osa presented them each with a string of beads and a small glass jar of cheap candy. They did not even look at their gifts. They wanted only to get the ordeal over and to escape. During all our stay in the village the poor, browbeaten wretches never got up enough courage to look at us. Their lords and masters felt our skins and our hair and our clothes, examining us with embarrassing freedom. But whenever we came upon a woman, she squatted down and hid her face behind her grass veil.

Since the women and children had appeared, we gained confidence and walked about the village, inspecting the houses. As we approached, the children, scrawny little wretches, big-bellied from malnutrition and many of them covered with sores, scurried off into the bush like frightened rabbits. The houses were wretched huts made of poles with a covering of leaves and grass, or, occasionally, of woven bamboo. Inside were the embers of fires—nothing more. A hard, worn place on the ground in one corner showed where the owner slept. Nagapate’s house stood off by itself. It was larger than the rest and more compactly made. But it was as bare as any of the others.

Toward sunset we built a fire and cooked our supper. The natives gathered around and watched us in astonishment. They themselves made no such elaborate preparation for eating. Once in a while a man would kindle a fire and throw a few yams among the coals. When the yams were burned black on one side, he would turn them with a stick and burn them on the other. Then they were ready for eating—the outside burned crisp and the inside raw. One evening some of the men brought in some little pigs, broke their legs, so that they could not escape, and threw them, squealing, into a corner of a hut. The next day there was meat to eat. Like the yams, it was only half-cooked. The natives tore it with their teeth as if they had been animals, and they seemed especially to relish the crisp, burned portions. Each man was his own cook. Even Nagapate made his own fire and cooked his own food, for it was taboo for him to eat anything prepared by an inferior or cooked over a fire made by an inferior. He conveniently considered us his superiors and ate greedily everything we gave him. He never shared the salmon and rice he got from us either with his cronies or with his wives. In fact, we never saw a woman eating, and the children seemed to live on sugar-cane and on clay that they dug up with their skinny little fingers.

Our first day as Nagapate’s guests drew to an end. Just before dark a native came and motioned to us to follow him. He led us to a new house and indicated that we were to make ourselves at home there. We were tired out after our long march; so we turned in without delay. We spread our blankets on the ground and lay, fully dressed, on top of them. The camp soon became quiet, but we could not sleep. So far, everything had gone well, but still we did not feel quite safe. Our boys seemed to share our apprehension. They crowded around the hut, as close to us as they could get. Some of them slipped under the grass walls and lay half inside the hut.

We slept little and were up before dawn, stiff from lying on the hard ground. We asked for water, and a native brought it in a bamboo bottle. There was about a pint of water for each of the five of us. The savage that brought it looked on astonished as we washed our hands and faces. It is not taboo for the Big Numbers men to bathe—but they rarely use their privilege, and they could not understand our reckless waste of water, which was carried by the women from a spring half a mile away.

After a breakfast of tinned beef, we set to work. But if it had been hard to get good pictures the day before, it was now almost impossible. The women had all left the village to get the day’s supply of water, fruits, and firewood. The men squatted in the center of the clearing, guns in hand. They were apparently waiting for something—for what?

We were uneasy. It may seem to the reader, in view of the fact that we escaped with whole skins, that we were absurdly uneasy. But I should like to see the man who could remain calm when surrounded as we were by savages, ugly and powerful, whose only pleasure was murder, and who, we were convinced, were eaters of human flesh. All day long our hosts squatted about the giant boo-boos, staring at us or at the ground or at the jungle or, sometimes, it seemed, at nothing at all. Now and then a single savage would come out of the jungle and join the group, and immediately one of the squatters would get up and go into the bush, taking the trail by which the newcomer had arrived. Even Paul was troubled, and confided to me, when the others were not about, “Me no like.”

The coming and going and interminable squatting and staring got on the nerves of all of us. Toward evening, we received an explanation of it from Atree, Nagapate’s “private secretary.” Atree had been “blackbirded” away from the island about twelve years previous to our arrival, in the days when natives were still carried off by force for servitude on the plantations of Queensland; and, by some miracle, when the all-white Australia law had gone into effect and the blacks had been “repatriated,” he had made his way back to his own island. He had managed, during his sojourn abroad, to pick up a little _bêche-de-mer_; so he acted as go-between and interpreter in all our dealings with Nagapate. He told us that a fight with a neighboring village was brewing. There had been a dispute over some pigs, in which somebody had got hurt. The relatives of the victim were preparing to attack our hosts. The men who had come and gone from the clearing were the lookouts who guarded the village against surprise.

A fight! My first thought was, “What a picture I’ll get!” But Osa, at my elbow, said miserably, “I wish we were back in the boat,” and my conscience began to hurt. To reassure her I told her that our force was a match for half a dozen native villages.

Before sunset there was great activity in the clearing. Men kept coming and going, and there was much grunted consultation in the shadow of the boo-boos. All that night an armed guard stood watch.

At sunrise, Nagapate came and asked if we would shoot off our guns to frighten the enemy. I did not like the idea. I thought it might be a ruse to get us to empty our guns and to give the natives a chance to rush on us before we could reload. However, since we did not wish to seem suspicious, we granted the request. But we fired in rotation, instead of in a volley, so that there would always be some among us with ready rifles. And I found that I was not the only one who had thought of the danger of empty cartridge-chambers: I have never seen such snappy reloading as that of our black boys!

After the volley, I gave Nagapate my rifle to shoot. He unloaded her as fast as he could pull the trigger, and begged for more, like an eager small boy. I was sorry to refuse him, but I did not care to waste many cartridges, so I explained through Atree that the gun had to cool off, and Nagapate, to my relief, seemed satisfied with the explanation.

After the shooting was over, everybody seemed to take courage. The natives moved about more freely. Only about a third remained armed and ready for summons. They were apparently satisfied that their enemies, convinced that they were well supplied with ammunition, would be afraid to start hostilities. We ourselves were more at ease, and I went up to some of the soldiers and examined their fighting equipment. Their guns were, as usual, old and rusty, but they all had cartridges, which they carried in leather cartridge cases slung over their shoulders. I was surprised to find that none had clubs. Instead, they had big knives, some of them three feet long, for hand-to-hand fighting. Paul told me that such knives had become the most sought-for articles of trade. There was no Government ban on them as on rifles and cartridges.

On the afternoon of our fourth day in the village, Nagapate brought up a man we had not seen before. He was nearly as large as Nagapate himself, and had, like Nagapate, an air of commanding dignity.

“Rambi! Rambi!” growled Nagapate, pointing to his companion. Then the chief went through a rapid pantomime, in which he seemed to kill off a whole army of enemies. We gathered that Rambi was minister of war, as indeed he was; but Osa dubbed him chief of police. We learned from Paul that the tribe was ruled by a sort of triumvirate, with Nagapate in supreme command and Rambi and a third chief named Velle-Velle, who acted as a primitive prime minister, next in authority.

Rambi was a Godsend. He enjoyed being photographed, although he did not have the slightest idea of what the operation meant. He forgot his dignity and capered like a monkey in front of my camera and actually succeeded in injecting a little enthusiasm into the rest of the natives, who still suffered from stage fright.

I gave presents of tobacco for every picture I made. I must have paid out several dollars’ worth of tobacco each day. Ten years earlier, when I was on the Snark with Jack London, trade tobacco made from the stalks and refuse from the Virginia tobacco factories had cost less than a cent a stick. The supply I had with me in Malekula had cost almost four cents a stick. Thus the high cost of living makes itself felt even in the South Seas. Tinned foods, cartridges, gasoline, mirrors, knives, and calico also have increased in price enormously since the war. An explorer must expect his expenses to be just about four hundred per cent higher than they were ten years ago. And the trader is in a bad way. For the natives learned how to value trade-stuffs years ago and they insist on buying at the old rate. Increased costs and greater difficulty of transportation mean nothing to them.

On the next day, we went, with an escort of several of Nagapate’s men, to another Big Numbers village about four miles away. That trip was typical of the many downs that are mingled with the ups in a motion-picture man’s existence. The four miles were the hardest four miles I ever walked. The trail lay along the side of a hill, following a deep valley. It was seldom used, and it slanted toward the valley in an alarming way. It was slimy with mud and decayed vegetation, and in many places a slip would have meant a slide of several hundred feet down a steep hill. Both Osa and I had on spiked boots, but they soon became clogged with mud and offered less grip than ordinary shoes. We crept along at a snail’s pace, testing every foothold. Though we left Nagapate’s village at dawn, we did not reach our destination until after ten o’clock. It was a poor and uninteresting village of about thirty houses. Most of the men were off on a pig hunt, and all the women were out collecting firewood and fruits and vegetables. About noon, it began to drizzle. By three o’clock, it had settled down to a good downpour. The women straggled in one by one and retreated into their houses. The men returned in a sullen humor, with a few skinny pigs. According to custom, they broke one hind leg and one front leg of each animal to prevent its escape and threw the wretched little creatures in a squalling, moaning heap. Those on the bottom probably suffocated before morning.

We could not think of retracing our steps over the treacherous trail in that downpour; so we persuaded a native and his wife and two sore-faced children to give up their hut to us. Since we had no blankets, we lay on the hard ground and made the best of a bad bargain.

Next morning, the rain had ceased. But the cane-grass was as wet as a sponge. We had not gone a hundred yards toward Nagapate’s village before we were soaked through. The trail was more slippery than ever. About every quarter of a mile we had to stop and rest. The sun came out boiling hot and sucked up the moisture, which rose like steam all about us. We were five hours in this natural Turkish bath. When we reached our destination, we threw ourselves down and fell asleep in sheer exhaustion. We had not secured a single foot of film, and we felt miserably that we stood a very good chance of contracting fever, which so far we had luckily escaped.

Late that afternoon, I missed Osa. I had something of a hunt for her, but I finally found her in the shade at the edge of the clearing, playing with a little naked piccaninny. Atree and Nagapate squatted near by, watching her with grave, intent faces.

Nagapate was Osa’s constant companion. The great chief had taken a fancy to the white “Mary.” Every day he sent her gifts, and his yams and fruits and coconuts pleased her more than if they had been expensive presents of civilization. They seemed to her an assurance of his good-will. But the rest of us were a bit uneasy. We had what I now believe to be the absurd suspicion that all these gifts were tokens of savage wooing—that perhaps Nagapate was planning to massacre us, if the occasion offered, and keep Osa to share his wretched hut. The strain of constant watching, constant suspicion, was telling on our nerves. We fancied that the novelty of our presence was wearing off. Like children, the savages soon weary of a diversion. We were becoming familiar—dangerously familiar—to them, and our gifts and even the magic taught me by the great Houdini, had begun to pall. We began to feel that it was time for us to go.

Osa and I talked it over as we walked about the village the following afternoon. We strayed farther than usual and suddenly found ourselves near what seemed to be a deserted hut. We walked around it and found, on the far side, a well-beaten path that led to a tiny door. Without thinking, I crawled through the doorway, and Osa followed me. It was several seconds before our eyes became accustomed to the dim light. Suddenly Osa gasped and clutched my arm.

All about us, piled in baskets, were dried human heads. A ghastly frieze of them grinned about the eaves. Skulls hung from the rafters, heaps of picked human bones lay in the corners. One glance was enough for us. We crawled out of the hut and lost no time in getting back to the center of the village. Luckily none of the savages had seen us.

We gathered Paul Mazouyer and Perrole and Stephens about us and told them of our adventure, and it did not take the conference long to decide to return to the beach on the following day. The other white men told us that if we had been seen in or near the head-house, the chances were that we should all have been murdered, for such houses were sacred and taboo to all, save the men of the village.

That evening a great fire was started in the clearing. Until late in the night the ordinarily lazy savages piled on great logs that four men were required to carry. Nothing was cooked over the fire. It was not needed for warmth, for the night was stifling hot. We asked Arree the reason for the illumination. He replied that he did not know. We decided that there must be some sinister purpose in it and lay sleepless, on guard the night through.

At dawn we were up. We did our packing in a hurry, and then we sent one of the natives for Nagapate. The chief came across the clearing, slowly and deliberately, as always. With him was a tottering old man, the oldest native I ever saw in the New Hebrides.

As Osa and I went up to greet Nagapate, the old man began to jabber excitedly. He came over to me and felt my arms and legs with both his skinny hands. He pinched me and poked me in the ribs and stomach. All the time he kept up a running fire of excited comment, addressed to Nagapate. To our relief, he finally stopped talking for want of breath. Nagapate spoke a few sharp words and the old man backed away.

Osa’s face went white. And indeed, there could be no doubt about the meaning of the old native’s pantomime. I almost doubted the advisability of telling Nagapate of our departure. If he liked, he could prevent us from ever reaching the sea, from which we were separated by so many miles of jungle. But I decided to take a chance. I had, by this time, rather more than a smattering of the language of Nagapate’s tribe. I always make it a practice, when among new tribes, to learn four words—“Yes,” “no,” “good,” and “bad.” The language spoken by Nagapate and his followers was so primitive and contained so many repetitions that I had been able to progress beyond these four fundamental words and so, with the aid of gestures, I succeeded in telling Nagapate that our provisions had run out and that we had to return to our boats. To my surprise Nagapate not only assented to our departure, but volunteered to accompany us to the beach.

I invited the entire village to come to the beach for motion-pictures and tobacco, after sunset, on the following evening. Motion-pictures meant nothing to them; but tobacco they understood. So they agreed to come. We left like honored guests, with an escort of twenty-five savages. Nagapate himself walked (as a result of my maneuvering) safe between Osa and myself.

It had taken twelve hours to climb up to Nagapate’s village. The return journey required only three. It was a pleasant morning’s walk. The sun was shining bright and beautiful, many-colored birds fluttered about us.

When we arrived at the beach, we invited Nagapate and his boon companions, Atree and Rambi, to come on board the schooner. There we feasted them on hard-tack and white salmon. When bedtime came, the great chief indicated that it was his pleasure to sleep on board. I was heartily astonished and a little ashamed. After all our suspicions, Nagapate was again voluntarily putting himself into our hands, with the touching confidence of a little child.

Our royal guest and his men bunked in the engine-room. I happened to wake about midnight and took a peep at them. There they were, flat on their backs on the hard, greasy floor, sleeping like logs.