CHAPTER XI.

THE FIJIAN NIGHTS’ ENTERTAINMENTS. FIRST NIGHT—THE WONDER OF CANNIBAL-LAND.

You may talk till doomsday to a genuine old cannibal about the greatness of your country and the littleness of his, before he will show the slightest sign of yielding any credence to your story. However truthful and astonishing may be your tales, he soon recovers from the effects they have produced on his imagination, and turns to say something of his own land, of which he is truly proud, and in which he thinks there will be no difficulty in finding things as great and surprising as you have found in yours. Tell him all you know, show him everything you have brought with you, do something which in his eyes shall appear to be, what he will not hesitate to call it, the work of a God; but having done all this, you will find him obstinately clinging to the one simple, yet natural enough idea, that his land is not to be despised after all, nor, indeed, is it to be thought second to that of any curious foreigners who may find pleasure in interviewing him. Tell him of one of the many wonders of civilisation, and, if it strike his fancy, or if he has some hidden object in view for doing so, he will become quite demonstrative as you proceed; he will clap his hands, snap and bite his fingers, shake them as if he had just burnt them in the fire, make clicking noises with the tongue and roof of the mouth, pour forth a shower of interjections, in which his language is rich, and finally declare himself dumb in your presence, and be careful to remain so, as if your tale had suddenly benumbed his brains, and paralyzed his tongue. This is the impression he gives you, but it is not the correct one, for presently awakening as from a dream or reverie, in which his memory had been at work, recalling something learnt in younger days, and coming to the conclusion that you have no more “lions” to show, he will begin to conjure up one, at whose proportions, as they slowly emerge from the mist of his wordy speech, your own quickly subsides.

Assembled one evening with a large company in Big-Wind’s house, the conversation had flagged. The dull light from a wick in a pan of cocoanut oil shed a faint sickly glare on the prostrate forms of the King’s courtiers, many of whom were already asleep, when Lolóma begged me to tell them the story of Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, with which I had greatly interested her on a former occasion. I recited the Arabian legend to the best of my ability, drawing on my imagination for some details of the original which I had forgotten, and when I had finished there were loud approving calls of “Vinaka! Vinaka!”[8] The King was so pleased that he directed three pigs to be presented to me.

Footnote 8:

Good! Good!

This put on his mettle Trumpet Shell, the tribal minstrel, who considered that he was entitled to a monopoly of this line of business, and he proposed to relate the story of Prince Hightide and his Leviathan Canoe, an ever-welcome legend in verse, which the company were never tired of hearing.

The tribal minstrel in Fiji is a remarkable character. He is at once the historian and poet of his people. Every clan can boast a bard of some sort, and the office is held in high honour. On subsequently comparing three versions of Prince Hightide in their different dialects, I regarded their remarkable agreement as matter for surprise, especially when it is remembered that they were never reduced to writing by the natives, but were preserved only in the memories of a few old poets or teachers of poetry. Such old men are very scarce in the present day. Here and there one may yet be found, but not many days hence the “Lay of the last Minstrel” will be sung for the last time. Already it has become a rare thing to hear a really old song. That simple race who in Fiji wasted “their toil”

“For the vain tribute of a smile—”

though not, perhaps, so often or with as much intellectual enjoyment as Scotia’s bards—in a few more years will have passed away for ever.

The poets of Fiji were not necessarily either chiefs or common men. The really popular poets were doubtless “poets born.” Such men were greatly appreciated by all ranks of society, but were patronised mostly by great chieftains, who were able to pay for the luxury of poetry and the honour of encouraging it. There were poetesses too, but they were never a numerous class.

The poet was not a man to be neglected or treated with contempt. He was a being possessed of far higher abilities than those of ordinary men. The poet of the day in any tribe required at least a house which was always to be considered as sacredly set apart for his own particular use. This abode was regarded in a very special sense as the “poet’s corner.” His turbans and ornaments were hung here; and in no other place in the land did he ever expect to get such gracious visitations from the muses. When required to compose a poem and teach it—for his duty not infrequently included both—those demanding of him a song never came to his temple empty-handed, but laden with gifts of various sorts, and wearing sweet-smelling garlands. The interview with his patronising visitors over, he would fix a time for beginning the arduous task. As soon as the appointed season arrived, he would enter his sacred room to sleep and dream, and dream and sleep, until the song, or principal parts of it, had dawned on his internal consciousness. At this stage he would rise and go forth to some solitary spot where, all alone, he would train his “imagination to body forth,” more clearly, “the forms of things unknown,” then

“Turn them to shapes, and give to airy nothing A local habitation and a name.”

Having accomplished this, he had yet to compose a tune for the words that were soon to move his countrymen to tears or laughter.

It was held by some sagacious cannibals that while the poet slept, his spirit, freeing itself from the flesh, wandered abroad to find and court the muses. Others believed that the gods sometimes suggested pictures, and dictated to the poet’s mind the words to paint them with, the poet himself making hardly any effort at composition. If any part of a poem thus divinely whispered, proved too difficult for the comprehension of poet or people, the bard was sure to lay the blame on his god who was the real author, and therefore the only party responsible. If we accept the poet’s decision, the gods of Cannibal-land have an enormous weight of such responsibility to bear, inasmuch as great numbers of the old compositions are, of all the mysteries of cannibal poetic art, the most mysterious. Not a few of Fiji’s verse-makers did their work by dint of, for them, long-sustained and arduous mental effort. The author of the song of Prince Hightide and his Monster Canoe, must be ranked with this number of laborious workers. Others depended very much on fasting for the more easy production of what they were pledged to supply. Perhaps, however, the notion having the strongest hold on the popular mind, was that the spirits of great poets were permitted to visit that State of the spirit-world known to the people as the “State of Music and Song,” and to bring to earth some of the choicest things sung in that delightful place. To the poet it mattered little where or by what means the song was obtained, so long as it gained the public favour, and its supposed author the public pay. In the best days of the cannibal poets there were songs which so won their way, and gained for themselves such a wide popularity, that voyages were made from the most distant places to obtain them. Trumpet Shell was a very good specimen of his class, and he delivered his lay,—the theme of which was this wonderful canoe and her still more wonderful captain,—with excellent effect.

It being impossible to give the reader anything like an intelligible translation in verse, of the song referred to, it must take the form of a tale in prose. Without doubt it is Cannibal-land’s greatest story, if not its best poetic composition.

I gathered from the poet’s few first words, that the Ebbtide was a monster canoe, in fact, the greatest ever known; and that her captain, Prince Hightide, was a mighty giant and hero-god. The poet, unfortunately I think, tells us not one word about the building of this enormous vessel, but begins her history at the moment when her builders declare her to be ready for launching. This is a great point with the poet, who forthwith proceeds to show that those wise and wonderful builders have, for certain, either woefully over-calculated the needful degree of human muscle and bone power, or undercalculated the size and weight of their big ship. It is quite possible, and even probable that they did both, for such calculations are entirely outside of the range of Fiji’s mathematical science.

This much, however, is clear, that when the day arrived for launching the Ebbtide, she could not be moved from the stocks or rollers, notwithstanding the application to every part of her at once, of

“A blood-power stronger than steam.”

In this fix a whole tribe of soldiers was brought up to add its strength to that of the people now weary with trying. These united forces all tugged and pushed and shouted, and pushed and tugged again and again, but to no purpose. After these repeated failures, another tribe was added to the human engine, and more rollers were placed under the vessel; but in spite of everything, she remained like a rock, planted where she was. This was quite beyond endurance; and the humiliating and piteous cry arose that, for once, men had built a canoe they could not launch,—doomed not to be wrecked at sea, or laid up to decay on land after long and honourable service, but to rot on the very spot where her builders laid her down, and whence they had no power to make her budge an inch.

In this dilemma it was proposed to report progress, or non-progress rather, to the god-descended hero, Prince Hightide, for whom this monster of the deep was built. With this suggestion, ends the first act.

While the reporters are gone to picture this unpleasant state of things to the Prince, a word or two may be said about this great personage.

Prince Hightide was a son of Dengeh, king of gods and men. He has, therefore, always stood very near the top of the line of aristocratic deities. His courage was thought to be many degrees above that of earth’s bravest sons; nothing could daunt it; while the resources of his massive mind, being vastly superior both in number and power to those of all his rivals, placed him well nigh beyond the possibility of being defeated by any difficulty. At the mere waving of his right hand all puny tribes would stand aghast! If he could not accomplish his designs in one way, he would in another. Now, he would assume the form of a goddess, anon, that of some animal, or even fruit or vegetable, sooner than give up what he had set his mind on doing. In the legends he is spoken of as the great patron of song, and is sometimes called The Singer. But his monster canoes, more especially the one now to be launched, and his own gigantic strength, have placed his fame high up out of the reach of every other aspirant after greatness in Cannibal-land.

At the time of the departure of the builders’ messengers to report the failure of all their attempts to launch this latest wonder, the Prince was living in easy style a little distance inland, but there was no keeping him there now that he knew the true position of things. Up he rose, and went down calmly, but determinedly, to the scene of action, where he surveyed with a sneer the ponderous thing that had balked the world. Then he stepped forward, and, after giving the canoe a few smart raps with his broad hand, as the manner is when getting canoes into the water, causing her to sound like a drum, or Chinese gong of unheard-of size—he put his own “shoulder to the wheel,” and shouting the usual shout, “ee!—oh!—yah!—eh!” as if expecting all to help on hearing the last syllable, he, of his own strength, sent the Ebbtide at full speed over the rollers, dashing and splashing into the sea,

“While all the world wondered!”

Here the poet drops the curtain on the second act in the history of the Ebbtide.

The largest canoes of modern Cannibal-land, _i.e._, Cannibal-land as known by the white man, had but one mast, which consisted of two parts spliced, or bound together with sinnet. But the Ebbtide, as the poet goes on to say, had three masts, namely, a “main,” a “main-top,” and a “main-top-gallant.” The first was made of a wood commonly known in Fiji as the “Fiji pine;”[9] the second of a harder and darker wood;[10] and the third of the most highly valued wood in the country.[11] Now the mainmast was so high that from its top the land near which the canoe lay at anchor looked somewhat hazy. From the “main-top,” a spectator could look right over the mountains of Viti Levu (Great Fiji), and see, eighty miles away, the island of Kandávu looming darkly up in the south. While, stranger yet, from the “main-top-gallant-mast,” all the flats and lowlands, that before lay hid immediately behind the above-named mountains, came into full view.

Footnote 9:

Dammava Vitiensis, Seem; Vulgo ‘Dakua.’

Footnote 10:

C. Burmanni Whight; Vulgo ‘Damanu.’

Footnote 11:

Afzelia bijuga, A. Gray; Vulgo ‘Vesi.’

Before a canoe-sail can be hoisted to its proper place, a sailor must climb the mast, carrying with him the halliard, which he passes through or over the mast-head. To do this on the Ebbtide would be a thing utterly beyond the power of the weakling climbers of modern times. And even in those days, when giants and god-strengthened men were by no means few, Prince Hightide, believing that for such a task one free man was worth two pressed men, thought it prudent to appeal for a volunteer. “Who will climb to the main-top-mast-top?” shouted the noble prince, and paused for a reply.

“Not I,”—said one of the small-canoe men, aside,—“I know only work on deck, my lads, and there I can serve ten bows.” Meaning by this last statement that he could keep ten of the enemy armed with bows and arrows, pretty fully employed.

The climbing had to be done, however; thus much was settled in the Prince’s brain beyond a doubt; as was this also, that as difficulties arise the men to battle with, and overcome them, will always be forthcoming. The numerous crowds of powerful sailors that now were gathered on the deck of the Ebbtide could not be without a man equal to the emergency of the hour. The poet here introduces us to that man. He was but a stripling, when compared with his great captain; but, in comparison with ordinary men, he was a man of might, being a “chip of the old block,” and brother of the Prince. He was known on board as the “Bat-o’-the-top-mast-head,” on account of his wonderful climbing powers, and his prehensile ability, which placed him side by side with the flying-fox, with whose habits and flesh the natives are perfectly familiar.

When this god-possessed giant sailor sprang from the crowd and clasped the mast with his hands, at the same time pressing the soles of his feet firmly against it, and curving his back outwards from it, in the true Fijian climbing attitude, quite a scene took place. The climber’s mother rushed forward to stop him from his foolhardy attempt, which she looked upon as the act of a madman. When her maternal fury was at its sublimest height she discharged at him volley after volley of the hardest epithets to be found in cannibal vocabularies. Such epithets are neither few nor weak. Then, as, a blighting climax, she told him that he was but a “baby,” in proof whereof she called all present to witness that the eruptive disease, which almost without exception afflicts young Fiji from 1 to 3 years old, was not yet dry on him!

Few minds could have stood this without recoiling. But the woman’s eloquence and impassioned manner failed utterly. She could not convince him that youth was incompatible with climbing ability. Indeed, he did not stay to ask whether it were or no; “for,” says the bard, “while his mother was yet speaking, he was gone; not climbing, but literally running up the mast!” And there was every reason why he should run, for the journey was not to be done in a day, as we shall presently see. The poet would have us not forget that this brother of Prince Hightide was distinguished by the possession of many powers besides that of climbing, one of which was a marvellous keenness of sight. His eyes could discover small objects hundreds of miles away! But let us follow the climber up the mast; or, better still, remain while he climbs, with the sailors on deck, who, in the meantime will continue sculling the vessel out to sea.

At the close of his first day’s work, the “Bat-o’-the-top-mast-head,” says, “I climbed, and climbed, and climbed all day. When at last I halted to rest and look about me, I saw that, far down on the tops of the screw-pine hills, and lower yet, it was blowing furiously. The iron-wood trees were bowing and falling before the wind, which, to our canoe, was only as a calm.”

At sea, and in a storm, there is nothing like cheerfulness, except calmness. These two should always go together at such times. Who does not like to hear the cheery song of our own jolly English tars, mingling with the noise of many waters and the roar of the hurtling gale? The cannibal sailor had his sea songs too, numbers of them.

Our model climber, now a day’s journey up, hidden in the thick darkness, with the storm howling beneath him, would not allow himself to feel lonely, but sang out into the night one of the cannibal-seaman’s songs, the chorus of which, delivered of course as a solo, was clearly heard on deck; as, indeed, it was intended to be, for the purpose of encouraging the hard-worked men who were kept propelling this floating island of a canoe, with their heavy sculls. He sang this chorus over and over again, without weariness, as Fijians only can sing a couplet, for half a night and longer, at a sitting, enjoying it more the last time than when they began. Why, a foreigner can hardly guess, for often the words seem to him to contain no meaning. But hark to the “Bat-o’-the-top-mast-head:”

“Scull away with a mighty hand; Great is the calm on all the land!”

Whereas, it was blowing half a hurricane at the time. But what was that to a big ship and brave hearts? “Only a calm!” The “land is calm,” is the true Fijian nautical way of saying the “sea is calm” and “there is no wind.”

The second day our young hero continued his journey upward. Likewise the third day, and thus on for ten days! At intervals he would stay his climbing, and directing his telescopic eye toward some remote part of the Archipelago, report what he saw. Once he appeared to lose some of his calmness. It was on discovering far away an assembly of chieftains feasting delightfully on the fat of the land! “Oh,” said he, “how much I longed to be there! At other such rests, he would declare himself able to see places which we now know to have been at least 250 miles off; out where, as other two lines of his express it,

“The ocean breaks in frightful form, And none can stand before the storm.”

It was all but as bad where the Ebbtide was, but what matter? What sea could make her roll or pitch? So his unfaltering voice would come down again from the clouds, refreshing the weary hearts on deck, with a

“Scull away with a mighty hand, Great is the calm on all the land!”

At length, on the tenth day, he reached the “top-mast-head,” where, as the poet puts him before our imagination, he is somewhat nearer the moon and stars than he had ever been before. Now he passed the halliard over the mast-head, and at once announced his intention of dining with those heavenly bodies before beginning his downward trip to join his captain and comrades on deck. Here the poet once more drops the curtain, and leaves us to picture for ourselves this banquet in the celestial sphere.

As the curtain lifts, we see that the climbing and sculling have ceased. The poet now proceeds to show that, when the order to hoist sail was given, all hands on board, giants though they were, failed in every attempt. And so again when men’s hearts began to lose all hope, Prince Hightide came to the rescue; and with one Samsonian pull of his prodigious arm, sheeted home that sail of measureless expanse; thus giving to the world another proof of his god-like strength, and making more than ever clear his claim to a high position in the first rank of the aristocratic gods of Cannibal-land.

No sooner was the sail up than into the water went a hundred steering oars at one splash. This is the only steering apparatus the Fijian was practically acquainted with. The number of steering oars, or long, heavy blades, which they resemble, necessary for canoes of these later and puny days, varies from one to six, but seldom more than two are needed.

But the Ebbtide would not answer her helm with a hundred at work. So down went another hundred; but with no better result. Then a third hundred, but the vessel was still in the wind. Now was the order given for hundred after hundred to be added to the number, which soon rose to one thousand; and still the awful sail was shaking and flapping against the mast! At this juncture it was no small comfort to know that the Prince had always some power in reserve, equal to any and every emergency that might arise. And it is interesting to note how our unknown poet displays his skill, both in the creation of emergencies for the exercise of the Prince’s wisdom and power, and in making him ‘bide his time,’ till the moment when he is most wanted at the front. A thousand rudders in the water, and the unwieldy craft is as disobedient and unanswering as ever! Here his Royal Highness rose—his countenance all aglow with unwavering confidence in the omnipotence of mechanical power—“Bring aft the rudder with a thousand oars;” shouted the god. The order was no sooner given than executed. The instant this most mysterious piece of machinery splashed into the sea, the sail filled; and away swept the glorious Ebbtide on her first voyage to the Friendly Islands, where we must follow her. Now the curtain falls, until we discover her in the land of the red man.

Where the poet got his idea from, of a “rudder with a thousand oars,” branches, tongues, divisions, or whatever they may be called, no native mind has been able to tell us. No steering machine like it has ever been heard of by Fijian sailors of modern days anywhere but in this great song.

We are driven therefore to the conclusion, that it must have had its origin in the imagination of the poet, who, thinking of the divisions in fishes’ tails, invented a rudder with a thousand such divisions.

Arrived off Tongatabu, in the Friendly Islands, all the islanders gathered on the shore to see this wonder from Fiji. “But,”—says our historical bard, in order to give us a notion of the canoe’s carrying capacity,—“the whole population of Tonga was small in comparison with the number of passengers and crew on the Ebbtide.”

The noble prince remained on board till the great Tongan chieftains came off to pay their respects, which they soon did, and gave him a hearty invite to become their guest. Some difficulties now occurred on the question of accommodation on shore for the giant captain, and his countless company of giant attendants. The Tongan Chiefs were asked what number of “strangers’ houses,” or as we should term them, “hotels,” were ready. On being told that twelve commodious places were waiting for occupants, the visitors were bold enough to advise that these should be pulled down, and that with the materials, and others in addition, an immense palace should be erected for the sole use of Prince Hightide, the giant-god and wonder worker from the Kingdoms of Fiji. The suggestion was at once acted upon, but to the infinite amazement and awe of the Friendly Islanders, the palace was far too small for its intended tenant. Now the poet rises to his highest efforts in exaggerated description. It is this very exaggeration which leads to the discovery that the poet’s hero is, in all probability, some great natural phenomenon.

In further sketching the terrible captain, the bard says that he was in the habit of going down on his hands and knees, and placing his head only in the palace for shelter.

With no better hotel accommodation than this, the rest of his body was, of course, exposed to sun and storm. While in this position during wet weather, the rains that fell collecting in the hollow of his back and between his shoulders, formed an extensive lagoon, where the people went to catch fish and turtle, and double canoes went sailing up and down.

As the day drew near for the departure of these awful visitors, the Friendly Islanders made such a farewell festival as had never before been known throughout the length and breadth of their land. Among many things too numerous to be named, not fewer than 2000 pigs were served up, but only to be laughed at aside by the guests, who knew too well that the eating capabilities of their captain were in proportion to everything else done by him, which was always on a scale so large as to utterly dwarf the greatest achievements of lesser mortals. The parting came at last, however, and by no means too soon for the generous Friendly Islanders, who, as the last act of courtesy, and to save the credit of their nation, filed out by hundreds, headed by their chief, and presented their parting offerings, which, in Cannibal-land, are called “The-sending-away.” These presents consisted of two monster bales of native cloth, each containing 20,000 yards. This cloth was for the princely captain, who, on being dressed therein, in Fijian fashion, took the whole 40,000 yards round him, and, even then, was declared to be but poorly dressed, for as yet he had no train. More, however, was not to be had of the good people of the Eastern Isles; so the god and his people and monster canoe returned to Cannibal-land, the canoe to fall into other hands for a brief season, and her captain to learn, from his temporary loss, the useful lesson that there were other heroes in the world besides himself.

Many points in this tale will have been observed by the reader, which seem pretty conclusively to show that the author intended his composition to be understood as an allegory, wherein he has represented two great natural powers, or, to speak more correctly, one such power in its two regular fluctuations, namely the tide—as the names imply—the prince being the high tide, and the monster canoe the ebb-tide. When man’s power failed to launch the big canoe, in came the tide and lifted her off the land with the greatest ease. The out-going tide carried her to sea. Fijians hardly ever think of putting their large canoes in the water except at the time of the high tide. The reason is obvious. Then, when at Tonga the water filled the hollow places on the prince’s back, we have a picture of the inflow of the tide over the reefs into the smooth lagoons formed by those coral walls—lagoons, where daily may be seen the large canoes “sailing up and down, and the people catching fish and turtle.”

But in the execution of his work, the poet does more than this, for he brings repeatedly before us many of the manners and customs, with some of the more prominent characteristics, of his country and countrymen. That he should tell us of a chief devouring 2000 pigs, and wrapping about his body 40,000 yards of native fabrics, yet complaining still of scarce provisions and a want of clothes, can only be accounted for by the fact that the cannibal is a hungry and covetous personage, according to his own estimate of himself.

The poet, though often hiding his meaning by overdrawing, as is always the case with savage poets, had evidently no intention that students of his song should interpret literally its numerous pictures, which, so interpreted, would be nothing less than frightful exaggerations.

If everything else in the performance could be interpreted as readily as that portion which exhibits the power and usefulness of the “full tide” in lifting weights, such as canoes, and the force of the out-going tide in floating them to sea, the whole would become clothed with truth. There is little doubt that the poet himself, and the more intelligent men of the heroic days of Fiji, were well able to find the exact counterpart of every figure and exaggerated picture in the song, the entire drift and meaning of which they well understood.

In those parts which paint the eating propensities and capabilities, together with the characteristic greed and generosity of the race, there is little more—making every allowance for the savage brain that produced it—than a well-charged caricature; just as another cannibal poet, wishing to represent the almost unlimited extent to which polygamy was carried in his time, asks, respecting a chief of great renown, and after whom many chiefs have since been named—

Who is like the great Ritóva, The chief with a million wives? I’m weary with asking—“Who?”