Part 7
Arrived on the river-bank, Erirala is commanded to advance no farther, for it is not permitted the common mortal to witness the mysteries of the intercourse between the gods and their chosen ones. Together they pick their way among the round boulders that form the dry river-bed, till they come to the inch-deep stream that is all that is left of the river. Together they grope to a certain boulder, with a flat top, whose base is washed by the trickling stream. “This is the place,” says the magician. The familiar grasps it, strains at it, and raises one end a few inches from the water. The wise one snatches the cloth from under the familiar’s arm and thrusts it under the stone, which falls on it with a heavy thud. Then in the pitchy darkness, with no sound but the faint gurgle of the shallow stream, he chants magic words in a quavering treble--words whose meaning is hidden from degenerate man, but which were handed down by the wise men of old, in the days when gods came up from the sea with white faces, strange head-gear, and turtles’ shells on their backs, and slew their forefathers, and sailed away in a magic canoe to the heavens whence they came. Whatever the words meant, the gods always obeyed them, provided that the right kind of cloth had been put under the right kind of stone. Would they disobey now?
When they came back Erirala was sitting on the bank, slapping his bare limbs to kill the mosquitoes and keep his spirits up. “Erirala, there will be rain,” said the sage; and without another word he plunged with his companion into the bush, and was gone. The envoy returned to the village. In answer to his anxious questioners, he could only say that he had seen nothing and knew nothing, except that the rain was coming.
Next morning the brazen sun climbed into a copper sky. Not a breath of air rippled the oily sea; even the distant reef was silent. It was just such a morning as the rest, and the rain-god laughed at spells. Nevertheless, the women were sent to cut firewood to store in the huts, and to gather a store of bush-nuts against the time when the bush would be impassable. The canoes at the river-mouth were hauled up lest the flood should carry them away, and old Turo sat on the beach looking eastwards, and chuckling to himself.
But at noon the day is not like other days. The cockatoos are screaming, which they never do at noon on other days. Insect life is awake. The whole bush is singing, and only dull-witted man awaits a clearer sign. And now even that is given. A purple haze has gathered in the south-west. It resolves into a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand; there is a muttering in the heavens, the clouds rush up the sky, though not a breath as yet cools the simmering air or stirs the palm-leaves. The muttering grows to a murmur, the murmur to a distant roar. The air becomes dark; the roar gathers volume. There! there! to the south a great grey pillar rolls towards us, lashing the forest beneath it: the air grows cold. To your huts! it is upon us! and with a savage roar the rain-storm bursts. It does not break up into paltry drops, but gushes down upon the thirsty earth in one broad torrent, and the parched soil drinks it greedily, and sends up a sweet fresh smell in gratitude. Did the windows of heaven open so wide as this when Noah launched his clumsy craft upon the waters? Surely the ocean will overflow and engulf Ambrym.
Rain, rain, rain! The sodden thatch has long since ceased to turn the flood. The water beats down the tree-tops, bowing beneath its weight. A raging torrent has been formed through the village square. The soil is crumbling away to the house-foundations, and fast pouring out seawards. There are six inches of water in every house. The crazy rafters of Turo’s house have given way, and the last trophy has fallen and been whirled out to sea, grinning at its enemies’ new misfortunes. Voices are drowned in the never-ceasing roar of rushing water. It grows dark and light again, and again dark, and the people, hearing, seeing, and breathing nothing but water, cling helpless and dismayed to their house-posts, and wish for the day. The third morning dawns, and the men gather round the wreck of Turo’s house. Their voices are drowned by the rain and the river, whose trickling stream has long burst its banks and become a furious torrent. They shout to one another that the rain must be stopped. But who can stop it but the rain-makers? Erirala must again go to the wise with greater presents than those that brought the rain. The treasures of the village are collected, and Erirala, half drowned, is laden for his second embassy. Knee-deep in the swift muddy stream that has torn its way through the village, he toils step by step up what was once the path, and disappears. It is night when he reaches the rocky spur on which are perched the dwellings of the wise. He gropes his way to a hut, and shouts greetings through the blinding rain. A voice from within replies. The leaf door slides to one side, and a skinny arm is thrust out for the presents, yet is the envoy not invited in. He proffers his request. The foolish have had the rain. It was good. But there was a little too much of it. Will the wise be of a good mind and turn it off? The wise will do their best: and with this slender comfort Erirala is left to find his way back in the dark, half swimming and half sliding down the slippery path.
But with the dawn the rain has not ceased--nay, it has gathered double volume. What do these crafty hillmen mean? Will they kill us with water since they failed with drought? Or are they too lazy to raise a finger to save us?
Another night passes, and with the morning comes stern resolve. There is no doubt now what are the hillmen’s motives, and if we needs must die of water, let us at least redden it with our enemies’ blood. There shall be one last embassy to them, and they shall understand that the coast warriors will be trifled with no more. An ultimatum shall be sent to these crafty foes, and the rain shall either cease or be dyed with the blood of the rain-makers. Angry and defiant words are spoken at the meeting on the spur overlooking the village whither the foolish have removed from their inundated dwellings. Hungry and cold, they cower in the driving rain, without any shelter but the dripping trees,--men, women, and crying children huddled together, the victims of a cruel conspiracy between the malignant spirits and their mountain foes. Wearily Erirala leaves them, bound upon his last embassy, without presents this time, but with a stern message instead.
Hour after hour passes, and it is near nightfall when they hear his cry from the forest above them on the hillside. The men seize their weapons, and spring forward to meet him. “I told them that there would be evil unless the rain stopped to-night,” he answers; “and they said, ‘Draw out the cloth from under the stone and the rain will cease: it is a flat-topped stone.’”
What stone? Why, the river-bed, of course. Not a man is left to guard the women and children, for the whole of the warriors follow Erirala towards the river-bank. The roar gets louder as they rush on. It is the river--a broad foaming cataract by this time. What hope of finding the stone in such a hell of waters as this? But Erirala knows the place. A party is told off to cut stout vines from the forest, and in ten minutes a rope, to which a ship might swing, is made and fastened to a tree in the bend of the river, round which the flood-water swirls and eddies. Clinging to the other end, Erirala and the boy Narau are paid out into the stream, and as the current strikes their bodies they are whirled from side to side like a pendulum girt with a belt of foam, and followed by a foamy wake, like the track of a fast steamer. Near the middle of the stream there is a deep eddy. As Erirala reaches this he stretches up his arm, and perhaps shouts, though no sound is heard by those on shore. Both he and his companion disappear for a moment, come up for breath, dive again, and then emerge, waving their arms. The people on shore strain at the vine-rope. It does not yield an inch. Now, all together--pull! The rope stretches, yields an inch, another, and suddenly gives some six feet with a jerk. Narau disappears for a moment, and is then seen whirling downstream on the swift current, waving a dripping, sodden, greyish-looking rag. Poor Erirala is forgotten as the whole party rush for the point for which Narau is swimming. A dozen hands are stretched out to pull him ashore. Erirala, leaving the rope tied to the flat-topped stone, strikes out, and in a moment lands at the same place. Yes. Narau has the cloth, sodden though it be to a pulp of bark-fibre, scarce adhering together.
Surely already the rain is abating! Yes; there is no doubt of it! Why, there to the north-west, it is lighter! There is a break in the clouds. One can almost see where the sun is setting. It is little more than a drizzle now--not even that, for we are under the dripping trees. Two hours later one can see the stars, and the clouds are sweeping away in heavy masses to the southward.
But just think what would have happened if Erirala had not found the cloth under the flat-topped stone!
MAKERETA.
Makereta was not beautiful. Her mouth was wide, even for a Fijian girl; and although she was on the shady side of nineteen, she had not yet adopted the staid demeanour suited to her decaying youth. She was a born coquette, and being quick-witted, and with a character hitherto irreproachable, she had captivated the hearts of all the middle-aged widowers in her neighbourhood. Why, had it not even been reported that she had refused the honourable offer of Jenkins, the white trader, and sent away the haughty Buli Yasawa, broken in heart and purse, after gracefully accepting from him five pounds’ worth of printed calico and cheap scent! Yes; Makereta had a certain charm about her quite apart from her skill in ironing and the use of the sewing-machine, or her being the niece of Roko Tui Ba. She was amusing to chaff; her repartees were witty, if not refined; and she had an inexhaustible fund of gossip about all the ladies of her acquaintance. But what a voice she had! Its gentlest tones struck the drum of the ear like a tap with the teeth of a saw; and when she laughed, which was generally after some remark of her own, the old women in the next village would grumble to each other about “that woman’s” deficiency in chief-like behaviour. It was Makereta’s laugh that brought her into trouble.
Her sister had been for some years married to a steady old native preacher, who was chaplain to the small native force stationed in the mountains. This good lady was the very antipodes of the dusky Makereta. She had never been known to flirt, but then that may have been due to other causes than disposition, and she led her good-natured husband a life of it by making him ferret out real or fancied scandals, very much against his will.
In an evil hour Makereta and three other maidens, having caught a miraculous haul of crabs in Nandi Bay, shouldered their baskets with the double intention of presenting them to her sister and flirting with the gay and licentious soldiery. They climbed the mountain-barrier, and in due time reached the camp. For the next few days I heard nothing of Makereta except her laugh, which triumphed over the half-mile of bush that lay between us. She was staying with her sister, and on some excuse or other the men found it necessary to consult their spiritual adviser several times daily. It was at these times that the higher tones of the laugh floated on the breeze like the cry of some animal in pain.
At length, as the novelist of the marvellous would say, “a strange thing happened.” An excited and dishevelled minister of religion came panting into my house, and this is what he said:--
“Sir, a terrible thing! Litiana and Makereta have been angry, and Litiana is much hurt. This was the way of it. Makereta was in the cook-house with some of the soldiers; they were joking, and Makereta laughed very loud. Then Litiana called to her, saying, ‘We are ashamed before the chiefs to-day;’ and Makereta replied with a very bad word, and Litiana went in to chastise her, and they fought, and Makereta bit Litiana, and her ear is gone, and----”
“And what?” I asked, as he hesitated.
“And, sir,” he said, solemnly, “_we cannot find the ear_.”
I went with him. It was too true. Litiana was sobbing in a corner, trying to stanch the blood from the site of her ear, and Makereta was panting between two restraining soldiers. Two others were carefully turning over the mats on what had been the battlefield. We searched everywhere but without success, and then I turned to Makereta.
“Where is your sister’s ear?” I asked.
She half smiled, and said she did not know.
“Do you remember biting her?”
“Yes.”
“Did you bite her ear off?”
“I think it came off.”
“Did you _swallow_ it?”
“_Iss?_” (who knows?)
A further ineffectual search left no doubt as to what had become of the ear. Litiana, smarting under her injuries, haled her sister before the native court, presided over by that magistrate who, in happier days, used to beguile the tedium of the bench with music on the Jew’s-harp. The damages were assessed at five shillings, and the little rift made the music between the sisters dumb.
“Was my ear only worth five shillings?” complained the elder.
“Is it sisterly to drag one’s sister to court like an Indian coolie-woman?” asked Makereta.
I don’t know whether they have ever met since. Makereta soon after this fell in love with a mild-mannered policeman, married him in defiance of her relations, and now rules him with an iron rod somewhere down Nadroga way. They both asked me to help them to bring it about, I being their father, which meant that I was to supply the pigs for the wedding-breakfast.
ROMEO AND JULIET.
Romeo loved Juliet, there was not the slightest doubt about that; for although Juliet had been tattooed round the mouth, and had already married Tybalt, and had dug Tybalt’s yams and cut Tybalt’s firewood for the last two years, yet was Romeo ready to die for her. Verona slept peacefully in the bosom of a tiny green valley, shut in by great jagged mountains, and soothed by the lazy music of a tiny river whose water must travel many days before it mixed with the great salt ocean. The hot air quivered in the burning sun, which no breeze ever came to cool, and at night not even a mosquito broke the utter silence. No street brawls here in this Verona of Southern seas, for the humpbacked pig and half-clothed chicken were past getting up a brawl, and they were the only occupants of Verona’s single street. Old Capulet could tell you of brawls enough, in which club took the place of rapier, and the bodies of the slain were disposed of in a peculiar way; but that was before the white man and the measles arrived, when Mongondro still made the earth tremble, and before these white lunatics came and made him wrap calico round his loins, and practise incantations with a hymn-book (which were a waste of time, because nobody died of them as they do of the real incantations), and taught him, in outlandish Bauan, that when he was dead he would be made alive again to be burnt, and asked him to give a shilling every now and again to the Great Spirit not to burn him, and then took the shilling away with them. But old Capulet doesn’t talk about these things any more, because last year the teacher overheard him telling stories to the young men, and threatened to burn him up with a flash of lightning if he ever did it again.
Decidedly Verona was not an exciting place to live in; and so long as the yam-crop was good, and the missionary left them alone, and that other white man who came sometimes on a horse, and told them to hoe their roads, life was easy and monotonous.
Old Capulet had never heard of a romance. There wasn’t a word for it in his vocabulary, and so he, at any rate, may be excused for what he did when Tybalt came and told him what had happened. Why, in Capulet’s day, women were not worth more than a whale’s tooth, however well they could dig! and as for a girl refusing to marry the man who had paid for her, or being untrue to the man she married--why, the thing was unheard of; or at least, if it ever had happened, the case had always been dealt with in the same way--the club, with sometimes the oven to follow.
So when Tybalt came that evening with the story about Romeo and Juliet his wife--Romeo, a man of the hated Noikoro clan,--it was not surprising that old Capulet repaired to Tybalt’s house with his long walking-staff, and, with Tybalt’s active co-operation, gave Juliet a rather severe thrashing. Nor did the old women see any more romance in the affair than did Capulet; and from the day when Tybalt’s suspicions became certainties, the course of true love ran very roughly indeed. Did poor Juliet don her newest _liku_, with a fringe nearly ten inches long, to go wood-cutting in the hope of a stolen meeting with her adorer, she was sure to find some old village hag dogging her steps. Did she put on Koroisau’s old pinafore to impress Romeo on Sunday with her superior sense of the decencies, her most sacred feelings were sure to be harrowed in the evening by injurious remarks about her figure, and the folly of old women trying to pass for young girls.
Romeo, poor fellow, fared no better. He was no longer welcome in the village of his adoption. When the yams were boiled he was not even asked to partake of them. Some one trampled his yam-vines in the night, and, last insult of all, Capulet’s nephew threw a stone at his pig. He loved Juliet with a great and overwhelming passion. He did not know why. She was not beautiful, though her mouth, it is true, was a triumph of the tattooer’s skill; but time had over-ripened her charms, and the lines of her youthful figure were a trifle blurred and indistinct. Yet Romeo was quite sure in his own mind that nobody had ever loved as he did in the world before, and Juliet returned his passion--at least she said she did.
Life was becoming unbearable for both of them. They could not fly together, for whither could they fly? Romeo had once seen the sea from the mountain-pass at Naloto, and he had heard that the water closed in his land all round. He knew well enough that if he fled with her to any village he had heard of, in two weeks they would be brought back; and as for the bush, the idea of living there alone was not to be thought of for a moment. There was one refuge. He did not know where it was, but he knew the path that led to it, which many another had trod before him. The white men said it was a very pleasant place if you were a missionary, but a very hot and uncomfortable place if you were only a mountaineer. But Romeo didn’t believe that. The spirits of the coast natives jumped from the north-west cliffs into the sea, and the wraiths of the old mountain chiefs lived in the thick forest--at least so the old men said; but as no one had ever been there and come back, how could any one know? True, the teacher said that a white man had been there and come back, but then white men eat biscuits and things out of tins, and have other gods, and so they probably go to a different place. For the place Romeo was thinking of, with bitterness gnawing at his savage heart, was Death, and the path that led to it was _Langaingai_.
Romeo knew all about _Langaingai_, for had not Gavindi drunk of it last year and died, and those two Naloto girls, who smoked after drinking it to make it doubly sure, and Janeti, Buli Nandrau’s daughter,--only her relations poured cocoa-nut milk down her throat when she had only traversed the path half-way? He knew not who had discovered it, for the old men did not know it. In their day the path was always open to him who would travel it--by an enemy’s club. Perhaps some wise woman taught Gavindi, and showed him how to mix orange-bark with it, and smoke away his life when he had drunk.
Now Friar Laurence, though unconnected with the cloth, had in his time performed the last offices to a larger number of people than any other practitioner in the mountains. In his own person he had not unfrequently united the offices of both sexton and grave. But that side of his business was recreation rather than solid work. His real calling might rank as one of the fine arts. Like the painter and the author, his stock-in-trade was small, and easily obtained. The art lay in employing his properties with skill. They consisted in a bamboo, a banana-leaf, a bit of bark, a leaf or two, and a little human hair. Furnished with these simple tools, Friar Laurence would, for the trifling sum of a whale’s tooth, or a bolt of bark-cloth, lay low the head on which the hair had grown. So widespread was the Friar’s reputation that, when the mad white men had come and forbidden the noble art of war, he had found it convenient to reside for some months in an inaccessible mountain-cave, and had returned to Verona with his occupation gone, and a head crammed with the wisdom born of solitary meditation.
To Friar Laurence then did Romeo repair one dark still night. The wise man sat on a log at his threshold airing his shrunken legs. He eyed Romeo’s whale’s tooth with bleared and watery eyes, and asked enigmatically what tree he wanted felled. When he understood the situation he seemed disappointed, and only told Romeo to return the following night with a white man’s bottle full of the stuff they call kerosene. This entailed a journey of thirty miles the following day to fetch the precious liquid from the nearest store; but Romeo was ready to do more than this, and at sunset the Friar received the bottle, a square black one. He emptied into a cocoa-nut shell all the oil except a wine-glassful, and filled up the bottle with an opaque muddy-looking fluid.
That night beneath the _tavola_-tree, where they had their tryst, did Romeo tell Juliet that the moment for carrying out their sorrowful plan had come. She had just been telling him that her misery was so great that she could not bear to live longer. But when Romeo showed her in the dim light the ominous gin-bottle, two huge cigarettes, and a box of matches, and further whispered the dread name _Langaingai_, life seemed suddenly to have become less unbearable than before. But Romeo was terribly in earnest, and she, half consenting, followed him. Silently they trod the narrow path that led to Romeo’s yam-patch. A babbling stream bordered it, and on the bank beneath a huge banyan-tree they sat down side by side. Juliet was weeping, but Romeo, with set face, stared at the bottle tight clenched in his hand. Sadly he lighted one of the cigarettes, and, handing it to Juliet, said, “You shall drink first, and when you are dead I will drink too, and follow you. You must smoke this as soon as you have drunk down to there,” and he indicated the place half-way down the bottle with his thumb-nail.
Juliet’s blood ran cold. With a little shiver she pushed the bottle away, saying, “Be of a good mind, Aisala, and drink first, for you are the stronger; and when you are dead it will be easy for me to die after you.”
But Romeo saw that she was dissembling, and that black fear filled her heart. He gloomily drew the cork, and put the neck of the bottle to his nose. It smelt horrible, for the kerosene was floating on the top. He turned fiercely upon Juliet.
“Are you going to fool me?” he cried. “Know now that you shall drink first, that we may die together.”