CHAPTER XIII

My first business now, was to try and find out the nature of the rapid and deadly disease from which the people were suffering, and with this object in view I consulted the priests of the Sacred Heart. The only London Missionary Society man in the district had just left for England. The priests were looking after his Samoan and Fijian teachers, who were all blue with funk, and were also supplying them with medicines. I believe four of the teachers died during the epidemic, as well as a number of the European members of the Sacred Heart. I soon came to the conclusion that the source of the infection was in the water supply of the villages, and ordered that all water for the domestic use of the villagers should be drawn from the San Joseph river, or other big streams, where pollution was practically impossible, instead of from pools near the river. Threats, punishment, persuasion, nothing was of any avail; still the people would persist in drawing and drinking the water from the pools to which they had been in the habit of going.

I rushed through the district with a flying patrol, and made the lives of the village constables and chiefs a burden to them; but still the natives died like flies, and still they drank from the pools. In each village I made the village constable give me a list of houses in which bodies had been buried, and then set the police to prod with their bayonets through the earthen floor until the corpses were discovered; whereupon, we made the householder disinter them and plant them in the cemetery; if there were no cemetery, I laid one out for them. I sent every householder off to gaol in whose house I found a corpse, until Basilio sent to say there would soon be a famine in the Station; then, to prevent this, I levied toll of food upon the villagers, and plundered their gardens if they did not pay. But still the people drank from the pools, and sickened and died.

I called a meeting of chiefs and village constables, and threatened and prayed them to stop the burial in the houses and the drinking of polluted water. “We can’t stop it,” they said; “you are strong and wise, tell us what to do.” I racked my brains, and at last I thought I saw a way out. “Take this message to your people,” I said: “I am going myself to poison every hole from which they draw water, except running streams, and they can come and see me do it; after that, I shall burn down every house in which a man is buried, and if I find five corpses in one village, I shall burn the whole village. In the meantime they are all to leave the villages, and camp in shelters half a mile away.” Then I wondered how I could make the people believe that their wells and pools were really poisoned; hunting amongst my supply of drugs, I found about half a pound of Permanganate of Potash, a few grains of which, placed in a bucketful of water, is sufficient to produce a red colour. “Ah,” I thought to myself, “now for a little sorcery.” I carefully filled up two wine glasses, one with Ipecacuanha wine, an emetic; the other with water, coloured by Permanganate to a passable imitation of it. Then I returned to my meeting of chiefs and village constables, carrying the glasses in my hands.

I addressed the meeting in this way. “You see these glasses? They contain a virulent poison, the poison I am going to put in the wells and pools. I am going to drink one glassful and Maina, v.c., the other; but the strength of my magic will save us from dying, though you will be able to see what a bad poison it is.” Maina was not at all keen on drinking his brew, but as his brother v.c.’s all told him to rely upon me, and I told him he would get the sack as a v.c., and gaol for disobedience of orders, if he did not, he plucked up courage and swallowed the nauseous draught with many grimaces. I then swallowed mine, passed round cigarettes, and awaited developments. In twenty minutes Maina asked whether I was certain of the efficacy of my protection against the poison I had given him, as he was feeling very