Part 3

Early next morning a messenger came to the door of our hut to ask if we would see the Buli’s face. Followed by several of my men carrying the funeral gifts, I climbed to a small house built upon a high stone foundation. The inside was crowded with the neighbouring chiefs, and I took my seat in silence. At the far end, wrapped in folds of native cloth and the finest mats, lay the body. The whale’s tooth and funeral gifts were now brought in and formally presented by the _Mata-ni-vanua_, and accepted by an old man in the ancient Nandrau dialect, of which I could scarcely understand one word. And then, when a costly _Rotuma_ mat had been given for the body to lie upon in the grave, I made a short speech in the Bau dialect, and was conducted to see the face uncovered.

At mid-day the great wooden drum was tolled, and the armed constabulary, looking very neat in their white _sulus_ and blue tunics, were drawn up as a guard of honour near the cairn which was to form the grave. At length the body, wrapped in mats, and followed by the wives and relations of the dead chief, passed slowly to the grave. Among all the mourners, I only noticed one case of genuine grief--the chief’s daughter, Janeti; all the others, as is usual in Fijian funerals, appeared to wail in a prescribed form. Indeed one of the widows, having probably seldom seen a white man before, stopped wailing for a moment to point me out eagerly to the other mourners. Then the body was carried into the little hut that surmounted the cairn, and we stood in the broiling sun until a native teacher had delivered a sort of funeral sermon.

When all was finished, every one acted according to the old proverb, “Le roi est mort!--Vive le roi!” and the question of whom I would appoint as his successor became the subject of discussion. When I returned to my house, I saw the widows at the water’s edge breaking up a number of carved wooden utensils with stones. These were the cups and dishes of their dead husband, which no man must henceforth touch lest their teeth drop out or they be bewitched. For if a man should drink from the cup of one who has eaten his relation, such evil will certainly befall him. But as I was exempt from this danger, the cup and the platter and fork, used by the Buli in old days for human flesh, were presented to me.

At three o’clock I summoned a great meeting of all the natives, at which speeches in honour of the late chief were made, and I there provisionally appointed Tione--a rather unintelligent man of about thirty-five--to succeed his father, having first ascertained that this appointment would be acceptable to the majority. In the evening the people of Nandrau made a great feast to their visitors, and gave them return presents--a polite intimation that they were expected to leave on the following morning. These having been divided among the various tribes who were represented, feasting was continued until a late hour. But about nine o’clock, before the moon rose, an old man went out into the bush to call the dead Buli’s spirit. We heard his voice calling in the distance for several minutes, and then, amid the breathless silence of the assembled people, we heard the footsteps of some one running. “He has the spirit on his shoulders,” said a man near me, as the old man rushed past me to the tomb. Apparently he must have thrown the spirit into it, for after crying out, “It is all well,” every one retired quietly to their huts for the night.

Before daybreak the next morning, Buli Nandrau was forgotten in the bustle of speeding parting guests, and as the sun rose our bugle sounded the “fall-in.” Passing out of the sombre shadow of the great cliff, we rode into bright sunlight, and we felt that just so had the shadows of the past given place to the light of a clearer knowledge, and that with this old warrior the old order had passed away, and a new had come.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] This marriage afterwards took place, and, less than a year later, Janeti, too, attempted her own life. This was after her father’s death.

TAUYASA OF NASELAI, REFORMER.

Tauyasa, commoner, of Naselai village, of the tribe Kai Nuku, lived years before his time. It was his misfortune that he was born a savage with a brown skin: it should not be his fault if he did not enjoy the sweets of civilisation. White men owned land on the banks of the great river: so did he. White men wore trousers and ate with a knife and fork: so would he. White men owned cutters and paid his countrymen to work for them: and so he bought a cutter of his own and paid his fellow-villagers to plant his bananas. White men had chairs and tables, glass windows and wooden floors, horses and saddles, and an account at the bank: Tauyasa persevered until at last he possessed all these. And so Tauyasa came to be well thought of and patronised by his white neighbours, and the more he rose in their estimation the deadlier grew the envy of his own people. For Tauyasa was no chief, and among his people to attempt to rise above the station to which one is born, and to refuse to give to him who asks, are social crimes beside which all other sins are mere errors of judgment. But Tauyasa cared for nothing but that his bananas should have fifteen “hands” to the bunch, and that his cutter should not be too late for the steamer. When the commission agent showed him his account sales, he took the cheque straight to the bank, and received from the teller a slip on which his total balance was written, which he would compare with some cabalistic signs he had in a soiled copy-book at home. For Tauyasa applied his knowledge of human nature wherever his financial reasoning failed him. “The foreigner,” he argued, “who owns this bank does not guard my money and make it multiply because he loves me, but because he hopes some day to steal some of it. Therefore will I ask him every two weeks to confess how much he has. Then, although I am black, he will not rob me unless he robs the other foreigners whose money he keeps, and this he will not dare to do.”

But on the night of each return from the capital he could not escape from the ties of kindred. First, there came his uncle, a plaintive old man, who carefully bolted the door before unburdening himself of his troubles. He had no lamp, for the kerosene was dry, and there was no sugar to drink with his tea, so he drank no tea, and his stomach felt so bad that he thought some foreign drink was the only medicine that would cure him. Then a peremptory voice from without summoned him to open the door, and Alivate, the chief’s henchman, was admitted. He had all the self-confidence that distinguishes those who bask in the smiles of royalty. “Greeting!” he said. “The chief has sent me to you to borrow your horse for to-morrow. I will take it now with the saddle. Also he wants a root of _yangona_.”

“Will the chief send the horse back? The last time he left the horse at Namata, and the saddle was lost.”

“Perhaps he will send it back. Give me the saddle.”

He gave place to a man in a white shirt, with a book and pencil, all deprecating piety and smiles, who called Tauyasa “sir,” and seemed in his way of speaking to be perpetrating a cruel caricature of the neighbouring Wesleyan missionary.

“I have come, sir,” he said at last, with a little chuckle, “about the _vaka-misonari_. Paula has promised to give one pound, the same as you gave last year. It is written in the book that Paula will give this. You, sir, will doubtless give two pounds this year. Your name will then be printed so that all will know. I will write down two pounds, sir. Is it not so?”

After him came Savuke, Tauyasa’s second cousin, with a pitiful tale about her husband, sentenced that day by the courts to pay five pounds for beating an Indian with a stick. “If he does not pay to-morrow,” she said tearfully, “they will crop his hair, and he will work, and then who will feed me and the child? The Indian was a bad Indian, as they all are, nor did he beat him hard, but only twice--on the head. And I, knowing your pitiful nature, have come to you, Tauyasa, because you are my relation and have much money, and afterwards Joseva will pay you back.”

“Joseva owes me seven pounds already.”

“Yes, he knows that, and the remembrance is heavy with him. He is still seeking money with which to pay you.”

“Well, then, I will release him from the debt that his mind may be at rest, but this money that you ask I cannot give.”

Then Tauyasa’s wife, who had been visiting a neighbour, came to greet her lord. Their child was lately dead, though Tauyasa had bought two cows and fed it upon milk, and otherwise followed all the directions for rearing infants that were printed in ‘Na Mata.’ She, too, was the bearer of bad news. Some one--presumably an enemy--had stolen the cows’ tether-ropes, and one of them, the spotted one, had been found in the Company’s cane-field, having damaged many stools of cane, and the white one could not be found at all. “I think it is the Indians,” she said; but Tauyasa thought otherwise, and said nothing.

The man with the book had accomplished his devastating raid, and had set down the names of half the village to give “to the Lord” more than they possessed. Therefore, rather than break faith so pledged, they must beg, borrow, or steal enough to meet their obligations. First, of course, they tried Tauyasa, but he had heard a friend of his, a white storekeeper, assailed in the same way, and he knew the logical answer. “If you must owe money at all, it is better to owe it ‘to the Lord,’ who can afford it, than to me who cannot. Besides, you would be giving my money and calling it yours, which is a lie, for which you would certainly be punished in hell.” But that night several of Tauyasa’s imported hens were missing.

At last they all went and left him alone to take the cure for all the cares of civilised life; and, a little less than half drunk, he went off to the store to associate with his equals. There his voice might have been heard haranguing the knot of grinning colonists who frequented the store, and his peroration ran thus: “God made a mistake when He made me black. Um [tapping his chest], black man! Um [tapping his forehead], white man!”

But though Tauyasa increased in wealth and substance, his life was not happy. It is true that his people had given up _kerekere_, and no longer begged his money from him; but they took no pains to hide their hatred and contempt. It was in vain for him to show them that so long as they held their goods in common they must remain savages. They preferred to live from day to day, as their fathers did, leaving the morrow to take care of itself. It was well enough for a foreigner, who knew no better, to work all day, and to hoard money, and to give nothing for nothing; but here was one of themselves aping the ways of foreigners as an excuse to cover his natural churlishness and inhospitality. “To do like Tauyasa” became a by-word in the village. Truly, he was born before his time: he was of the stuff of which reformers are made, and he met the reformer’s fate. He had quarrelled with his wife because she gave away his things in his absence; his own people would have nothing to do with him, and the foreigners whom he imitated despised him.

So Tauyasa began to worry, and the native who does that is doomed, because he was born to a life free from care, and has had no training in the curse of Adam. He grew thin and irritable, and no longer joined the nightly meetings at the store. But the more he worried the bitterer were the taunts of his people, and a kind friend, of course, repeated them to him. Then a day came when the cutter’s sails were stripped, and the bananas hung uncut, although a steamer had come in these two days; for Tauyasa would ship no more bananas, having taken to his mat, and given out that he would die that day week. It was in vain for those of his white friends that had heard of his illness to send him soup, and medicines, and milk-puddings cunningly devised, for Tauyasa would eat none of them, knowing that he must die, and caring not to live--for there was bitterness in his heart against the world and all men in it. And upon the day appointed Tauyasa died as he had said, and his body was wrapped in rolls of white _masi_ and mats, and buried, and his spirit went to its own place.

Then it was found how many brothers Tauyasa had, and how many brothers his father and mother had. They all came to his house after the funeral to transact some little matters of business. There was a want of brotherly love at this meeting, for Tauyasa had owned a cutter worth £200, and a cutter cannot be satisfactorily divided among several eldest brothers. There was a horse, too, and a table, and cupboards, and many camphor-wood boxes made in China, and in one of the boxes there were many bottles that would each have cost the vendor fifty pounds in fines had the police known. There was not much said about Tauyasa. It was a sad thing, no doubt, that he was dead, but did not his possessions remain? At evening it was all settled. The eldest uncle had the house with the glass windows, and the brothers had all the rest: only Tauyasa’s wife got nothing because she was a bad woman, and did not love Tauyasa; and besides, she belonged to a different tribe.

And on the Sabbath the _lali_ beat for service, and the same teacher took the pulpit that had come to Tauyasa about his contribution to the _vaka-misonari_. It was a powerful sermon--all about the wicked and hell, and such things, and it was none the less powerful that the preacher was mimicking the ravings and the whispers, and the cushion-thumping denunciations, of the district missionary who had taught him. They were all sinners, he summed up--they broke the Commandments every day: but there was forgiveness for all there present. Yet, he added in a hoarse whisper, there were some who could never be forgiven. Then with the roar of an angry bull he shouted, “Who shipped China bananas on the Sabbath?” “On the Sabbath,” repeated the echo from the other side of the river. “Who shipped China bananas on the Sabbath?” Then in the hushed pause that followed he whispered hoarsely, “Tauyasa! Tauyasa!”

Again he roared, banging the table with his fist, “Where is Tauyasa now? Where is Tauyasa now?”--“yasa now” cried the echo. He glared at the village policeman as if expecting him to answer, and lifted his clenched fist before him, twisting it slowly from side to side, and hissing from behind his teeth, “_Sa mongimongi tiko e na mbuka wanga_. He is squirming in the everlasting fire.”

Thus ended Tauyasa, Reformer,--condemned in this world and the next, like his prototypes.

A COOLIE PRINCESS.

“We’re to have about nine hundred of the Jumna lot on this plantation. They seem to be an average lot of coolies, seeing that Mauritius and Demarara get first pick--sweepings of the Calcutta jails, with a sprinkling of hillmen from Nepaul. They cost a trifle over twenty pounds a-head to introduce; but I ought not to grumble, as they’ve thrown the Princess into my batch. Not heard of the Princess? She’s a howling swell from Nepaul--nose-rings and bangles from head to foot--husband pretender to the throne of those parts--beheaded, drawn, and quartered for high treason--Princess saved by faithful retainer--just time to clap the contents of the family jewel-case on her body before the lord high executioner called--weeks in the saddle disguised as a man--flung herself upon the mercy of the recruiting agent, and breathlessly pledged herself to work for ninepence a-day for five years trashing cane beyond the black water. That’s _her_ story, and she can show you the jewels and the faithful retainer to prove it.”

“And do you think she’ll work?”

“Can’t say, not knowing much of the ways of princesses; but if she don’t, you’ll see her in your court under section thirty-four of the Principal Ordinance, which has no proviso for princesses, and then it will be your pleasing duty to make her work.”

Then Onslow, the manager, rode off, leaving me to sign warrants for the batch of refractory coolies just sentenced.

In due course the “Jumna” batch were towed up the river in a sugar-punt, and turned loose into the new coolie lines. We could hear them at night settling down--a babel of strident voices, dominated at moments by a howling chant, with tom-tom accompaniment. A week later they had built in the verandah of the long building with partitions of empty kerosene and biscuit tins beaten flat. Filthy rags obscured every doorway; naked children were rolling in the sun-baked dust, and besmearing themselves with the fetid mud from the puddles of waste-water thrown outside the doors. There a wild-looking mother squatted in the shade, performing the last offices to the head of her youngest, while two older children leaned against her back playing with her lank greasy hair. A girl of five, with tiny silver bangles on arms and ankles, was gravely marching the length of the building, supporting on her head with one hand a brass bowl of smoking rice, while with the other she held up her long petticoat; and over all there were flies, and noise, and stench, and happiness enough for a twelvemonth’s occupation. The new coolies were settling down. Somewhere in the building the Princess must have held her court, or perhaps she was in solitude learning “the sorrow’s crown of sorrow.”

Then the first tasks were set, and the trouble began. Friday’s informations for absence from work rose from twenty-three to sixty-seven, and on Tuesday at ten o’clock a vast crowd of the accused and their sympathisers, curious and bewildered, disfigured the grass-plot at the court-house door. A burly Fijian constable was surveying them with a disgusted curl of the nostril, such as may be seen any Friday afternoon at the reptile-house of the Zoological Gardens. The luckless overseer had but one story to tell--of tasks set but not attempted--light tasks, suitable for the new and inexperienced--five chains trashing Honolulu cane--no more. The pleas for the defence would have melted the heart of a wheel-barrow. “You are my father and my mother, but I am a stone-mason. The white sahib told me that I should work at my trade. I can build houses, but I cannot cut cane.”--“I am a goldsmith. I never said I would work in the fields.”--“What can I say? You are my judge. My belly is empty, and I cannot work,”--and so forth. They were discharged with a caution.

“That is all the men,” said the overseer; “the rest are women.”

“Arjuna!” cried the clerk.

“Arjuna!” repeated the Indian constable outside.

There was a pause.

“Is the woman here?” asked the interpreter impatiently.

“She is here,” returned the officer from without.

There followed sounds of persuasion, amounting almost to entreaty, such as are unusual from the mouths of minions of the law. Then when expectation had been wrought to the highest dramatic pitch, the sunlight from the door was darkened, and there burst upon our dazzled gaze a vision of gold ornaments and gauzy draperies.

“The Princess,” whispered the overseer, with a deprecating smile.

She was tall and willowy, and her slender limbs seemed to be weighed down with the burden of the bangles that almost hid them. Heavy gold circlets seemed to crush the tiny ankle-bones, and every slender toe was be-ringed. Besides earrings and the gold stud that emphasises the curve of the nostril, she wore no head ornaments, but the shawl that fell from her hair was of the finest striped gauze. She must have been fully twenty, but the brightness of her eyes was still undimmed by time. She surveyed the thatched court-house with a glance of cool contempt, and walked proudly to the reed fence that did duty for a dock.

“You are charged with absence from work.”

The Princess glanced sideways at the interpreter, and then stared straight at the beam over my head.

“She told the sirdar she didn’t mean to do any work.”

The evidence is interpreted to the accused.

“Has she anything to say?”

The interpreter might have put the question to the wall with as much result.

“Then tell her that she has come from India to work for five years, and work she must; if she does not, she will be punished, and eventually sent to jail, where she will be made to work.”

The accused slightly raises her royal eyebrows.

“She is fined three shillings, or seven days’ imprisonment.”

At these words she turned round and beckoned to the bank of heads that had gradually filled the doorway. Four men broke from the group--Nepaulese by their looks--and came in. One of them, evidently the Keeper of the Privy Purse, making deep salaam, advanced to the clerk’s table and dropped twelve threepenny bits upon it. The feelings of the interpreter at the coolness of the whole proceeding were too deep for words, and before he could translate his explosive English into the vernacular, the Princess had left the court with her suite. Then followed comments in Hindustani from without that filled Ramdas, the wizened Indian constable, with righteous indignation. Translated they were, “Call this a court-house? Why, it is made of grass! They should see the court-houses in India!”

For the next two weeks the Princess was known to the outer world by rumour only, which had it that she was scarcely behaving as a widowed Princess should behave. The Keeper of the Privy Purse had, it was said, been encouraged to aspire to the consort’s chair, and the other Ministers were becoming jealous. Nor was this all. There were aspirants for royal favour outside the Ministry, who threatened to disorganise the household. Within the month her name reappeared in the charge-sheet. It was a second offence, and the fine was therefore heavier; but again her almoner satisfied the demands of the law. After that there was quiet for a space, because the suite took it in rotation to perform their mistress’s task besides their own. There were even rumours of subscriptions among her sympathisers to buy out her indentures from the manager. But there came a change. Competition for royal favour must have become so keen, or the Princess herself must have behaved in so unroyal a manner, that a day came when the smouldering feuds in the household burst into flame, and there was something very like a riot. In the actions and counter-actions for assault brought by the men of Nepaul against one another, the royal name was bandied about very freely, and it became evident that a part at least of her vassals had thrown off the yoke. Money, moreover, had been lent, and the borrower denied the debt, and brought four witnesses at a shilling a-head to counterbalance the plaintiff’s four engaged at the same rate. Between the eight witnesses swearing irreconcilable opposites, the court had to decide whether money had passed or not. Then the wily old Ramdas, constable and priest, came softly to the bench and whispered into its ear, “S’pose me fetchum Kurân, dis feller no tellum lie; he too much ’fraid.” Armed with authority, he left the court, going delicately, and presently returned on tiptoe, carrying on his extended hands a massive volume as if it was an overheated dish. Pausing before the table he said with due solemnity, “By an’ by he kissum, dis feller he plenty ’fraid. Dis Kurân belonger me. Abdul Khan he sabe readim, me no sabe, on’y little bit, other feller he no sabe! On’y Abdul Khan sabe!” Then bending forward with bated breath he said, “He cost three pound twelve shillin’ along Calcutta.” His own reverence seemed doubled as he recalled the stupendous cost of the volume. Then with great ceremony he gave Joynauth the book and made him swear, laying it upon his head.

“Joynauth, did Benain give you this money?”

“Sahib, he did; with my eyes I saw him!”