Part 4

On the road we passed the schoolhouse compound where a double row of people were singing and dancing. The men were squatted on their haunches on one side of the path, the women on the other; down the centre an oldish, very respectable-looking man, with the appearance of a deacon, directed the dance, a staff in his hand. We were received with shouts of welcome and a bench set out for us. I was envious of the big town drum, made of hollowed cocoanut wood and covered with shark skin, very like one I had already got from the Marquesas, and deputed the trader to buy it for me. With the arrival of Mr. Henderson, who came sauntering down the road, the deacon heartened up to a sort of frenzy, suddenly bounding along the path and throwing his body and legs about with the most grotesque and mirth-provoking contortions. We sat here yet awhile, and at last tore ourselves away from the most charming low island we have yet seen, Fani's father still following with the sponges. I sent back, by the boatman, a piece of print for Fani, sufficient to make a gown for her mother as well as herself. It was the correct thing to do from the island point of etiquette, but all the same a pity, for the less Fani covered her pretty brown body the better she looked.

_7th._--Fani, her papa and her sister, first thing in the morning with a basket of green cocoanuts and three packets of dyed pandanus leaves. Fani at once possessed herself of one of Louis's hands, the sister the other, while the lovely "Johnny Bull," who was on board almost as soon as they were, hovered about smiling, and when he saw a chance slipped an arm round Louis's neck. Johnny Bull was a tall lad of fifteen, and I was told a half-caste, though he did not look it. Louis, having been taken up by Fani, was considered quite one of the family. It is easy to see how the copra eaters came by their "billets," and how decently whites must have behaved here, that this little creature should have come up to Louis in the dark as naturally as a child to its mother. The sisters stayed by him until the whistle sounded. They were thoroughly well-behaved, obedient children, neither shy nor forward. No doubt Louis could have eaten copra from that day forth at the father's expense.

One of the beach-combers was wrecked on Starbuck Island, his ship the _Garston_; he lost all he possessed, and says he is passionately eager to get away and very sick of living on cocoanuts; and yet, when offered a chance to work his way home on the _Janet_, he asked anxiously if it were a "soft job," refusing any other. Louis gave him the better part of a tin of tobacco, but he got very little good from it. The hands of the natives who had adopted him were stretched out on every side, and one cigarette was his sole portion.

Have gone to another station on the same island, a very bad landing, so Lloyd and I concluded to remain on the ship, but Louis, more venturesome, went on shore with Mr. Hird. They were nearly pitched into the water as the boat struck on her side on the reef. The black boys all went, with the seas breaking over them, to shove her off. The town is described as most delightful; very neat, with one straight, sanded thoroughfare bordered by curbstones; the houses with verandas, some of the verandas with carved balustrades. The heat is very great. Louis sat on the sofa in the missionary's house, the boat's crew lying on the floor and being fed with dried clams strung on cocoanut-fibre sennit. At the same time they were interviewed by the missionary himself, a fine, bluff, rugged, grizzled Raratongan, universally respected. Two old men asked for the news, giving theirs in return, their latest being that Tahiti had been taken by the French; they added a rider that the French were "humbug," which was refreshingly British. "One white man he say Queen he dead?" queried one man anxiously. They were assured that it was the Queen of Germany, and not Victoria. "Methought," said Louis, "in petto, it was perhaps Queen Anne." They are all well up in the royal family, and most loyal subjects, the island flying the Union Jack. The only "white man" in the settlement was a Chinaman, dying for curry-powder. It seemed impossible to get away without carrying half the settlement with us, and even after we thought they were all off, two young girls and a boy were discovered trying to stow away. We returned to the first landing yet again, but by that time I was sound asleep.

_8th._--Sighted Penrhyn at five o'clock, but did not attempt to go in as it is an exceedingly dangerous passage, and the night was black, with heavy squalls. Lloyd and I had to leave our sleeping place on the after hatch and take refuge in the trade room where we slept on the floor. In the morning I went to look up my wet pillows and mats. Suddenly I heard a shout: "Mrs. Stevenson, don't move!" I stopped short, hardly moving an eyelash, but curious to know the reason of this command. I soon found out; the captain threw up one corner of a large tarpaulin showing me the open hatch on the brink of which I was standing. On the last voyage a seaman was terribly injured by falling down the fore-hatch. He lay two hours insensible before he was reported missing and a search made.

_9th._--We enter the lagoon very early in the morning; a most perilous passage, the way through the reef seeming but little wider than the ship itself; the captain calls it two ship widths. Our route, until we dropped anchor, was studded with "horses' heads" as thick as raisins in a pudding. There would be a rock just awash on either side of us, a rock in front almost touching our bows, and a rock we had successfully passed just behind us. We were all greatly excited and filled with admiration for the beautiful way Captain Henry managed his ship. She would twist to the right, to the left, dash forward--now fast, now slow--like a performing horse doing its tricks. The native pilot was on the masthead nearly mad with anxiety. It was the first he had had to do with a steamer, and he was convinced that the _Janet_ was on the point of destruction every moment. At last, quite worn out with such breathless excitement, we came safely to anchor in front of the village, a cluster of native houses gathered together on a narrow spit of land, or rather coral. A big wave, a short time ago, washed over the village from sea to sea. Our men are working hard getting out the boxes for the shell we are to take in, and the mates are making new boxes, hurrying as fast as their natures allow. There is quite a fleet of pearling boats hanging about. One has just come in filled with natives; the colours are enchanting: the opaline sea, the reds and blues of the men's clothing, running from the brightest to the darkest shades, the yellow boats wreathed with greenery, the lovely browns of the native skin, with the brilliant sun and the luminous shadows. Boys are already swimming out to the ship, resting on planks (bits of wreckage), their clothes, tied in a bundle and hanging over their heads, dependent from sticks. I can hear the voices of the girls and the clapping of their hands as they sing and dance on the beach. I see a man hurrying along a path, a little child with him and their black pig following like a terrier. Sometimes piggy stops a moment to smell or root at the foot of a palm, but always with a glance over his shoulder; if the distance seems growing too wide between himself and his family, he rushes after them, and for a moment or two trots soberly at his master's side.

After luncheon we went over to the village in one of the boats going for shell, landing at the white trader's house. From the first, I had been puzzled by a strange figure on the trader's veranda. When we were nearer I discovered it to be the figurehead of a wrecked ship, a very haughty lady in a magnificent costume. She held her head proudly in the air and had a fine, hooked nose. All about the trader's house were great piles of timber, and in one of the rooms a piano woefully out of tune, and other signs of the wreck of a big ship. It was a timber vessel, they told us, this last one, that went to pieces just outside the reef. Numbers of houses are being built of the boards by the more thrifty-minded of the islanders. One of the sailors cast ashore still remains here, a gentle, soft-eyed youth from Edinburgh, now fairly on the way to become a beach-comber. Fortunate lad! His future is assured; no more hard work, no more nipping frosts and chilly winds; he will live and die in dreamland, beloved and honoured and tenderly cared for all the summer days of his life. He already speaks the native tongue, not only fluently, but in the genteelest native manner, raising and lowering his eyebrows in the most approved fashion as he whispers to the elderly dames matter that is no doubt better left untranslated.

When the figurehead came ashore people were terribly alarmed by the appearance of the "white lady." The children are still frightened into submission by threats of being handed over to her. The trader's wife is a Manihiki woman, very neat and well-mannered; we drank cocoanuts with her, and were introduced to the native missionary's daughter, an enormously large, fat girl of thirteen, but looking twenty. I believe her parents are from another island. Lloyd photographed the proud lady with a lot of children and girls grouped round her, the soft-eyed Scot familiarly leaning against her shoulder. The girls went through an elaborate affectation of terror and had to be caught and dragged to the place, whence, I believe, nothing could have dislodged them. After this photography was finished we wandered through the village, a large chattering crowd at our heels. This is the least prepossessing population I have seen since Mariki, and I am assured they are no better than they look. As we walked along I happened to pick up a pretty little shell from the beach; the missionary's fat daughter instantly gathered and pressed upon me four other shells, but as I held them in my hand living claws projected from inside and pinched me so that I cried out in alarm and threw them to the ground. Every one laughed, naturally, but an impudent young man picked up and offered me a worn aperculum, saying with a grin: "Buy; one pearl." "I could not," I assured him with mock courtesy, "deprive you of so valuable an ornament; tie it round your neck." This feeble jest seemed to be understood and was greeted with shouts of laughter. The lad was cast down for a moment, and fell behind; pretty soon he came forward again, with a dog's bone. "Buy," he said; "very good; twenty pounds." "I could not," I returned, "take from you a weapon so suitable to your courage." Of course I used pantomime as well as speech. The other young men, with shrieks of laughter, pretended to be terrified by his warlike appearance, and he shrank away to annoy me no further. Several men and women offered us very inferior pearls at the most preposterous prices, at which Tin Jack and I jeered them, when the pearls were hidden shamefacedly. They knew as well as we that their wares were worthless.

Lloyd and Louis planted their camera stand in the centre of the village, and walked about to look for good points of view. While they were away a serious-looking man delivered a lecture upon the apparatus, to the evident edification and wonder of the crowd. During his explanation he mimicked both Louis's and Lloyd's walk, showing how Lloyd carried the camera, while Louis walked about looking round him. I sat down on a log to wait, when immediately all the women and girls seated themselves on the ground, making me the centre of a half circle and gazing at me with hard, round eyes.

After the photography Louis and I went to call on the missionary. He and his wife were at home, evidently expecting us. His wife is enormously stout, with small features and an unpleasant expression; the man rather sensible and superior-looking. A number of women and the pilot who had brought us into the lagoon ranged themselves on the floor in front of us. One of the ladies, a plain body, seeming more intelligent than the rest, possessed a countenance capable of expressing more indignation than one would think possible. She wished to have our relationship explained to her. Louis and I were husband and wife; this statement was received with a cry of anger, but at the announcement that Lloyd was our son, she fairly howled; even Lloyd's name seemed objectionable. About mine there was a good deal of discussion, as they appeared to have heard it before. We drank cocoanuts under the disapproving eye of the intelligent lady, and, after receiving as a present a pearl-shell with a coral growth on its side from the missionary's wife, and another, somewhat battered, from his daughter, I gave, in return, the wreath from my hat and we departed.

Louis and Lloyd went back to the ship, but I remained, with Tin Jack, to see the church. All but three little girls were too lazy to show us the way; so, accompanied by the trio, we started on a broad path of loose, drifting coral sand. The church was a good, substantial structure of white coral, with benches and Bible rests, but there was no attempt at decoration. The room was large enough to hold all the inhabitants of the village twice over. As in most of the other islands, being "missionary"--religious--goes by waves of fashion. In Penrhyn, at any moment, the congregation may turn on the pastor and tell him he must leave instantly, as they are tired of being missionary. They have the "week of jubilee," which means the whole island goes on a gigantic "spree," when Penrhyn is not a pleasant, or hardly a safe, abiding-place. We stopped at the schoolhouse on the way back, a large, ill-smelling room, containing for furniture one table with pearl-shell disks let into the legs, standing on a dais. The only really neat house was the trader's, and he had a Manihikian wife.

The laws of Penrhyn, some of them very comical, are stringently enforced. There is no nonsense about "remain within your houses" here, for, after nine o'clock, remain you must. Last night our cook was shut into a house where he was paying a visit, and was not allowed out until after the breakfast hour. There was also a rumour that Tin Jack, being seen after curfew, had to run, the police after him, to the house of the trader, where he remained until morning. Our sailors, to-day, somehow offended the natives and came running back to the ship pursued by a crowd. The children are much more prepossessing than their parents, some of them, especially the little girls, being quite pretty and well-behaved. It is much easier to restrain them and keep them within bounds than if they were white children in similar case. Every scrap of orange-peel thrown overboard was gathered up by them to be converted into ornaments. A bit of peel cut into the shape of a star, with a hole in the centre for the purpose, would be drawn over the buttons of their shirts and gowns, while long strings were worn hanging over the breast, or twined round the head and neck. The trader's little half-caste boy was clad in the tiniest imaginable pair of blue jeans, with a pink cotton shirt, and had little gold earrings in his ears.

_10th._--None of our party cared to go on shore. I sent a chromo representing a "domestic scene" to the trader's wife in return for her present of a coral-grown shell. The shell I afterward gave to the cook and another to the second steward, who, by this time, was almost insane with excitement and pleasure. We had a very busy day receiving shell and packing it in the wooden cases that are still being made on the forward deck. The black sailors work extraordinarily well and with perfect willingness and good nature. They make play of everything, and in spite of their small stature and slender, elegant figures, handle great weights with the utmost ease and dexterity. The little native boys work as hard as any in helping pack the shell. One little naked fellow of about ten, I was told, was deaf and dumb, but I should never have guessed it.

As soon as there was a movement on the ship the young girls came swimming out to us like a shoal of fish. The sea was dotted with the black heads over which they held their parcel of clothes in one hand to keep them dry, making their toilets on the lower rungs of the ship's ladder. One girl would stand at the foot of the ladder where she received the clothes of the newcomer; as the latter emerged dripping from the sea her garment was dexterously dropped over her head, so that she rose with the utmost decorum fully clad.

Louis soon had his particular following, some three or four little girls eight or ten years of age. They made him sit down and then sang to him. One of these children must have been the daughter of the indignant lady we met at the missionary's house, for her powers of expression were the same. She was, however, pleased to signify approval of Loia (Lloyd). If Louis attempted to leave these small sirens he was peremptorily ordered to resume his seat, and the singing redoubled in vigour. They had shrill voices and sang not badly. Louis bought a tin of "lollies" from the trade room and regaled his little maids on that and plug tobacco. Oranges and biscuits were given to the people quite freely, and the leavings from our table were continually passing about. The cook said the contents of the swill-pail were eaten clean, pumpkin rinds being a favourite morsel. Except for the "lollies," the little girls generously divided with their friends, but the boys were more selfish. One little fellow who had secured a whole pumpkin rind ran about the deck with a wolfish terror, trying to find a hiding-place where he could devour his prize safe from the importunities of his mates.

Tin Jack, without my knowledge (I should have stopped him had I known) donned the wig and beard and false nose; his appearance created a real panic. One girl was with difficulty restrained from jumping overboard from the high deck, and many were screaming and rushing about, their eyes starting with terror; Louis's little girls ran to him and me and clung to us. A fine, tall young woman kept up a bold front until Tin Jack took hold of her, when she slipped through his hands, a limp heap on the deck. I tried in vain to get near him to make him cease with his cruel jest, but he was running among the frightened crowd, and I could not make him hear me through the confusion and noise. The girl who tried to jump overboard collapsed among some bags on top of the shell, where, covering her face, she wept aloud. I climbed over to her and soothed her, and tried to explain that it was not the devil but only Tin Jack with a mask. The children were the first to recover from their terror, soon recognising Tin Jack, either from his voice, or his walk, or something that marked his individuality, for in the afternoon they returned to the ship, fetching other children, and boldly demanded that these, too, should be shown the foreign devil. All evil spirits, and there are many in Penrhyn, are called devils.

Speaking about the superstitions of Penrhyn, Mr. Hird recalls the following grisly incident that occurred when he was stopping on the island. A man who was paralysed on one side had a convulsion which caused spasmodic contractions on the other side. One of the sick man's family began at once to make a coffin. "But the man's not dead," said Mr. Hird. "Oh yes," was the reply; "he's dead enough; it's the third time he has done this, so we are going to bury him." Mr. Hird went to the native missionary, but his remonstrances had no effect; he kept on protesting until the last moment. "Why look," he said, "the man's limbs are quivering." "Oh that's only live flesh," was the reply, and some one fell to pommelling the poor wretch to quiet the "live flesh." The belief was that the man's spirit had departed long before and a devil who wished to use the body for his own convenience had been keeping the flesh alive. Mr. Hird thinks that the man was insensible when buried and must soon have died.

At another time some natives had been "waking" a corpse; tired out, they all fell asleep except a single man who acted as "watcher." By and by he, too, dropped off. The party were awakened by a great noise. The watcher explained that he had been napping and suddenly opened his eyes to behold the dead man sitting up. "A corpse sitting up just like this!" he exclaimed indignantly; "but I was equal to him; I ran at him and knocked him down, and now he's decently quiet again." And so he was, dead as a door-nail from the blow he had received.

Another thing Mr. Hird saw in Penrhyn. A very excellent man, but a strict disciplinarian, died and his family were sore troubled by the appearance of his ghost. They had suffered enough from his severity during his lifetime, and were terrified lest his spirit had returned to keep them up to the standard he had marked out for them. The day after the apparition was seen, the grave was opened, the body taken out, and the hole deepened till they came to water; the corpse was then turned over in the coffin and reburied face down.

At about five o'clock we weighed anchor and went through the exciting ordeal of the passage out of the lagoon, taking with us as passengers to Manihiki a woman and her two children. After we were quite away, outside the lagoon, a boat came after us with a quantity of timber from the wreck; this extra and unexpected work of taking the timber on board and stowing it away, instead of being received with grumbling by our black boys, was taken as gleefully as though it were a pleasant game of their own choosing.

The passengers slept on the after hatch with us. The baby cried in the night, and the mother quieted it by clapping her hands, yawning, meanwhile, with a great noise like the snarling of a wild beast; consequently I did not sleep well. For the first time the wind is aft and the ship very airless and close.

_11th._--The captain's eyes, which have been dreadfully inflamed, are much better, thanks to an eye lotion from Swan, the chemist at Fiji, that we had in our medicine-chest.

In the evening, about nine, we made Manihiki. Mr. Henderson burned a blue light which was answered by bonfires on shore. We did not anchor, but lay off and on, as we were only to stay long enough to land our passengers. Louis wished to go on shore with the boat, but as it did not get off until ten he gave it up and went to bed. I made up a little parcel for him to send to Fani, and Mr. Hird carried it to her, a few sweeties carefully folded up in a Japanese paper napkin and tied with a bright-green ribbon. The child was in bed and asleep, but waked to receive her parcel which she resolutely declined to open until the next day, though earnestly persuaded by the whole family to let them have a peep inside. She appealed to Mr. Hird, who upheld her decision, so she returned to her mat and fell asleep holding her present in her hands.

I am trying to paint a small portrait of Tin Jack, who is a beautiful creature, but during the reluctant moments he poses he sits with his back toward me, his eye fixed on the clock, counting the minutes until his release. We took from the island a man, woman, and boy for Suwarrow, our next stopping-place. Mr. Hird had a singular dream, or rather vision, of the white trader in Suwarrow lying dead and ready for burial. He was so impressed by this that he took note of the time and feels very anxious.