Part 7

During dinner we weighed anchor and shoved off. The captain had expected to meet the schooner at this island; there were no signs of her until late at night, when she was sighted, apparently on a wrong tack. The captain fears they may be out longer than they expected and the provisions run out; however, there are always the twenty-five tons of copra at hand in case of an emergency, and the passengers can eat their currency, which is more than we would be able to do. The _Janet_ has taken to her old trick of rolling, which makes things very uncomfortable. When I went to bed the cackling of hens, the crowing of cocks, and the grunting of pigs gave quite the effect of a farmyard. Our three cats seem to be getting the "rattage" well under; at least there are no more rats on deck and the old, businesslike Tom now takes his ease and sleeps all night.

_31st._--The Island of Nanui. A very violent surf and very broad. Louis goes on shore and returns with a mat. Tin Jack is in great feather as the Nanui people speak the Gilbert Island tongue which he knows. Louis is instantly accepted as a kaupoi (rich man), though he cannot imagine why, as he was clothed only in an old, ragged undershirt and a _lava-lava_.

_June 1st, Sunday._--Still at Nanui. Mr. Henderson asked his black boys, as he was afraid of a change of weather, to work to-day. He said it was a case of necessity, so they consented and fell to like good fellows. After work was done they all gathered together, as is their custom on Sunday, and held a service. It was strange to hear them singing a Scotch hymn tune with words in their own tongue--or tongues, I should say.

_2d._--Still taking on copra. Johnny, one of our men, the cleverest one, brought his wife, a native of Nanui, to see me--a strapping fat wench of sixteen, though she looks twenty-five. I gave her some cotton print and a silk handkerchief. A little after Johnny came, with a most serious countenance, to ask Louis to go on deck, where he found a large, mouse-coloured pig and a great pile of cocoanuts awaiting him. Among the people on deck I saw a man the facsimile of the leper at the last island; involuntarily, I looked at his feet, and, sure enough, the poor fellow had elephantiasis also.

The captain offers to make me a plan of a surfriding canoe. There was a light rain last night which the captain thinks must have fallen on my eyes, as they are inflamed and swollen to-day. When rain in these latitudes touches the captain's eyes, which happens often on the bridge, he is affected in the same way.

_4th._--At the Island of Nanomea. Two traders come on board, the company's trader known through the groups as "Lord ----" and an "independent" trader, a pathetic figure of an old man with both legs bound up; he said he suffered from boils. Soon after, the missionary and his wife came on board, both Samoans, the woman a fine, kindly looking creature with a very sad expression. I said as much to Louis and she wished my remark translated. With the aid of a dictionary Louis told her what I had said. "I am sad," was the reply. She brought me a present of a mat, and I gave her a print gown. I bought, also, a few mats from the people. One man, followed me about, insisting that he and I should be brothers. He had a mercenary countenance, wherefore I refused steadily the proffered relationship. In spite of me, however, he managed to thrust a bunch of cocoanuts into my cabin door to ratify the tie.

The surf is very high. When the boats went off, the one containing the traders and the missionaries turned over, end for end, and the poor, old "independent" was nearly drowned. The missionary woman dived for him again and again, and we could see people carrying him along the beach after she rescued him. Several canoes smashed during the day and some bags of copra were lost. In the evening we had a long discussion as to whether Lord ---- is a gentleman, I taking the affirmative with no more to go upon than the way he raised his hat.

_7th._--Have been lying at Nanomea, the last of the Ellices we shall visit, for three days, unable to get the cargo on board till to-day owing to the fearful surf. A good many canoes are broken to pieces, and our own boats have had many escapes. While I was looking through the glasses a great wave swamped one of our boats and pressed her down out of sight. In a moment black heads popped up everywhere and the boat was hauled on shore. Another boat was just on the point of crossing when the steersman was snapped off his perch and flung into the sea; he was almost instantly back and crossed in triumph. Every success was cheered from the ship by the watching men.

It is always a great pleasure to the natives to help raise the ship's boats to the davits for the night. They know that white sailors make a sort of cry or "chanty" when hauling on a rope, so they, too, try to do the correct thing. The result is a noise very like a mob of schoolgirls let loose, a confusion of soprano screams. No one would suspect the sounds to come from the throats of men. Our own black sailors are the same; we hear them screaming and laughing in the forecastle exactly like girls. We are so used to island life that it has but just struck us as odd and picturesque that our almost naked sailors (they wear only a short _lava-lava_ round their loins) should be working in wreaths like queens of the May.

It is only to-day that any women have been able to get on board. Not knowing there were any on deck, I started toward the trade room. There was an instant loud cry of "_Fafine! Beretani fafine!_" and I was in the midst of them. The two who seemed of higher rank than the others took possession of me, and it was explained to me by our Johnny that they had come prepared to make a trade. Each had an elaborate _ridi_ for which she wanted two patterns of cotton print. The bargain seemed so unfair that I added a necklace apiece of yellow and white beads. They were enchanted with the necklaces, calling everybody to look at them. Then they began pulling off their rings to put on my hands; I did not like taking their rings, but I need have had no scruples, for one of them with prompt energy removed a gold ring from my finger to her own. These exchanges made, they fell to examining my clothes, which filled them with admiration. The next thing, they were trying to take my clothes off; finding this stoutly resisted, they turned up my sleeves to the shoulders. Their taste differed from mine, for, while I was thinking what a cold, ugly colour a white arm looked beside their warm, brown ones, they were crying out in admiration. One woman kissed my feet (the island kiss) and sniffed softly up and down my arms. She was plainly saying to the others, "She's just like a pickaninny; I would like to have her for a pet," holding out her arms as she spoke and going through the motions of tossing and caressing a baby. My hands and feet were measured by theirs and found to be much smaller (they were large women made on a more generous scale than I). "Pickaninny hands and feet," they said. The discovery of vaccination marks caused great excitement, especially as one of them could proudly show similar "_Beritani_" marks. Whether they were real vaccination scars or only accidental, I could not be sure. She, however, declared that they were true _Beritani_. Suddenly they all began calling out names; there were now five or six women sitting in a circle round me on the floor of the corridor at the head of the companion stairs. In a moment all their husbands' heads appeared at the doors and windows. My sleeves, in spite of my struggles, were dragged to my shoulders and, to my dismay, my petticoats were whipped up to my knees. At that I began to cry, when the men instantly disappeared, and except for an occasional sniffing the women behaved with more decorum. One woman was most anxious that I should stop on the island with her. I really think she had some hope that she might keep me as a sort of pet monkey. At last they were warned that the ship would be off soon, so they fled to their canoes.

For some time eight or ten canoes, loaded with people, hung to the ship's sides, rocking to and fro with her as she rolled. It was a beautiful sight, and Louis and I leaned over admiring them. Suddenly a lovely young girl (we were told she is to be married next week) climbed up to me like a cat, pulled off a ring, and pushed it on my finger. I ran back and got a blue-bead necklace for her and she climbed down in a state of great delight. The beads will doubtless serve as wedding jewels, for she did not put them on but tied them up carefully in a bit of cotton stuff. We watched the canoes go over the surf; one, filled with women, upset, but nobody appeared to mind so small a mishap.

Mr. Hird tells us a story it is well to remember. There was some sort of disturbance at Penrhyn, where his vessel was trading, and all on the ship were afraid for their lives to go ashore except himself. The moment his boat touched ground he dashed up to a little maid of seven, the chief's daughter, and, taking her by the hand, calmly walked to where he wished to go.

Last night, as we were sitting round the lamp, some one looked up and perceived that all three port-holes had as many faces looking through them as could find an eyehole. Mr. Henderson went into his room and arranged a few conjuring tricks. When he returned he made money disappear in a box, bits of cork change places, etc. While speaking to one of us he carelessly tore off a piece of newspaper and handed it to a man at the port-hole, but as the man's fingers closed on it the paper disappeared. "_Tiaporo!_" (the devil!) he cried, his eyes almost starting from his head. This was followed by the throwing up of money which apparently fell back through the crown of a hat and jingled inside. The last and most thrilling feat was after Mr. Henderson had been pulling money from all our heads, noses, and ears. He seemed to be retiring quietly to his room when he gave a start, looked up in the air over his head, and with a leap caught a silver dollar that seemed to be falling from the ceiling.

I forgot to say that in the afternoon Louis was dictating to Lloyd, who used his typewriter. All the air and most of the light was cut off from them by heads at the port-holes. I watched the faces and saw one intelligent old man explaining to the others that Lloyd was playing an accompaniment to Louis's singing; the old man several times tried to follow the tune but found it impossible. He did not appear to think it a good song, and once, with difficulty, restrained his laughter.

_9th._--We should have picked up Arorai yesterday at four o'clock, but somehow missed it and did not arrive until this morning. An atoll about six miles long, the first of the Kingsmills (or Gilberts). Natives swarmed round the ship in canoes built somewhat after the pattern of the American Indian birch-bark canoe. The pieces are tied together with cocoanut sennit and the boats leak like sieves. Louis, Lloyd, and I went on shore in the afternoon; Louis, to my distress, for it was very hot, with a hammer to break off bits of the reef for examination and Lloyd with the camera. Louis found the rock he wished to break but was a little afraid to use the force necessary. Seeing a powerful young man standing near, he offered a stick of tobacco for the job. The fellow smiled with delight, took the hammer, and struck one blow. "Too much work," said he, dropping the hammer.

Lloyd and I were taken in tow by an old man and led to the house of the missionary, who was himself on board the ship; but his wife and family, a handsome young Samoan woman with a pair of sickly twins, were at the door to give us welcome. We drank cocoanuts with her and took a photograph of the group.

There is very little soil on the island, which is subject to severe droughts; yet there are a number of breadfruit and jack-fruit trees growing luxuriantly, not many, however, old enough to bear. The village looked clean and prosperous. Children and women were pulling weeds and carrying them away in baskets. Lloyd and I strolled along a wide avenue that ran through the town for about a quarter of a mile, stopping once to photograph an old woman who had evidently dressed up for the ship. She was standing in the doorway of a neat house built of stockades tied together--the first I've seen in these islands. The house belonged to a trader who was abroad at the time. Returning, we saw two women, tall and superior in carriage and looks to the common people, marching abreast toward us; they were dressed in gala-day _ridis_ of smoked and oiled pandanus strips and swung the heavy fringe from side to side, as they walked, in the most approved and latest style. As they came nearer to us their four eyes were fixed on the horizon behind us, and they swaggered past as though unaware of our existence, though we were attended by a following of the greater part of the village. I stopped and looked after them, but neither turned a head.[13]

[13] At this island I remember that the women wore what looked like doll's hats as ornaments on their heads. They were about the size of the top of a tumbler.

At the veranda of the mission house we found Louis entertained by the old man and indignant at receiving no attention from the missionary people; we suggested that his chopping at the reef in the hot sun had convinced them that he was a lunatic.

We had heard of a sick trader, so we all three went to his house with an immense tail of followers, who seated themselves outside in a circle eight or ten deep while we talked to the sick man. A forlorn being he looked, lying on a mat, his head thrust out into the open through the thatched sides of the hut to catch what air there was. He had been ill a month and a half, he said; the whole population had been ill, also, his wife and children with the rest. With them it came first as a rash, then a fever, followed by convalescence. He had no rash, but after feeling very badly for a week or two, fell down in a fit, foaming at the mouth and black in the face. Since then he had been suffering from an intolerable pain in the head and could not stand for weakness. I asked if he had proper food, which Louis followed by asking if his appetite was good. When he could get anything to eat, he replied, he liked it well enough; but he could not get anything. A bit of fish or a chicken he could relish, but the people seldom fished and a chicken was impossible. His food consisted almost entirely of pounded pandanus seeds, in which there was about as much nourishment as in chopped straw. His hands and feet were pallid and bloodless and he looked very near the end. He was born, he said, in Colton Terrace, Edinburgh. "I'm frae Edinburgh mysel'," said Louis. "We are far frae hame," returned the poor fellow with a sigh. We went at once to the beach to get a boat, intending to consult "Hartshorn," our medical authority, as to his case, which I believed to be suppressed measles. Louis spoke to Mr. Henderson about sending the man a case of soups to begin with, anything heavier being dangerous in his weak state and semistarved condition. Mr. Henderson, who is generosity itself, seemed rather hurt that we had not taken it for granted that anything the man needed would be supplied him at once. Mr. Henderson's only fear was that the man would, in the usual native custom, give all the food away. He first divides with his family, and then they divide with the outside relations, so that provisions sufficient for a month may only last a day. It is an amiable weakness, certainly, but one could wish that the recipients of his bounty showed a little more gratitude. Fishing would be no more than play for them; but I fear neither fish, flesh, nor fowl can save him now.

The missionary who came aboard showed Louis his eye, in which he was blind, the effect of measles, and begged for a cure. Of course there was none, but Louis advised him to live as generously as possible and, instead of a continual diet of pandanus seeds, to try and get some fish. As soon as it was dark the sea was crowded with fishing-boats, lighted up with flaring torches, made by wrapping sennit round a dry cocoanut leaf; so we hope our poor trader may receive some benefit, also. We could see that they were scooping up in their nets many flying-fish. The light from the torch attracts the fish, which come to the surface of the water round the boats and are then dipped up in little nets on the ends of long poles.

While I was resting after my excursion to the island I heard a great commotion; a native had been discovered trying to stow away in the hold among the coal. Two large men could not overpower him, and for a long time he refused to come out. One of the white firemen finally leaned over the open hatch and held out a stick of tobacco. "Won't you come out for that?" he asked with an insinuating smile. "He is making signs that he will," he continued, looking at me quite proud of his cleverness. Sure enough, up came the native, a beautiful youth with a sullen face and blazing eyes. He strode haughtily past the fireman, looking neither at him nor his proffered tobacco, sprang upon the side of the ship, where he balanced himself a moment, and then jumped into the sea and swam ashore. I sympathised with the boy and was sorry he was caught, the more especially that another man had chosen a better hiding-place and was not discovered until we were well at sea.

When we left the island we should have signalled a boat, but a canoe lying at hand, we took that instead. We waded out toward the canoe, but, as the water began rising above my knees, I stopped in alarm when a native caught me up in his arms, unawares, before I had time to arrange my skirts, and I was carried out, willy-nilly, my legs waving frantically in the air. I tried to shield them from the view of the ship with my umbrella, which I was unable to open, but I fear my means were inadequate. The canoe was a fourth filled with water; its owner sternly commanded Louis and me to bail and Lloyd to paddle.

From the last island we took on some passengers--two cats in an onion crate--and at this island exchanged them for a woman and a sickly baby. I was much amazed at seeing the mother spread a thick, dry mat on the wet deck for her own comfort, her baby being planted on the cold boards. I made her take it up and lay it beside her on the mat, which seemed to amuse her a great deal. As the baby still shivered, I got an old _lava-lava_ of Tin Jack's and wrapped it up in that, charging the mother not to dare remove the _lava-lava_.

This is the island where, in 1871, three slave-ships, the _Moroa_ (bark), _Eugenie_ (schooner), and a barkentine, name unknown, came for "recruits." The King, in his fright, offered them all his people except the very young, the very old, and a few young girls reserved for his harem. It is needless to say that his offer was accepted. I have since met and conversed with a man who was on board one of these ships.

_12th._--Arrived early this morning at Onoatoa. The missionary's child is named Painkiller.

_13th._--Noukanau in the morning. Met the German "labour" brig _Cito_, after recruits, doubtless for Samoa; then ran over to Piru and back again to Noukanau at night. At Piru we met the American schooner _Lizzie_ with two passengers.

At Piru came on board a man named Cameron, another named Briggs, and a person with an Italian name I forget. Briggs said he made much more money by "doctoring" than by trading. A strange disease, he told us, had broken out in the island; the Samoan wife of a trader had died the night before and many others were down with it. It is contagious, and the natives take no care to avoid infection. I said it was measles, which Briggs denied, declaring it was typhus. I asked him where he got his knowledge of "doctoring." "Straight from my father," said he; "my father was the celebrated Doctor Briggs, and if you buy a bottle of his patent medicine you can read an account of his life on the wrapper."

Cameron is a Scotsman with a twinkling, hard blue eye, the daft Scotch eye. He followed every word we said with sly caution (partly, no doubt, in consequence of drink) as though he feared being trapped into some dangerous admission. He was one of the men of the _Wandering Minstrel_ that was so mysteriously wrecked on Midway Island, and was afterward charged by the captain with not reporting the fact of there being other starving castaways left on Midway when he was rescued. To us he denied this vehemently, and said he at once delivered a letter written by the captain. Louis tried to get a hint of how and why the vessel was wrecked, but failed. "Mosey," the Chinaman who was in the boat with Cameron, was afterward wrecked again on the _Tiernan_, the schooner we so nearly took passage in ourselves.[14] Louis got this much from Cameron--but I am sure very little, if any, of it is true--that he had written an account of the wreck which, with the log he kept on the boat, had been left on one of the islands we are about to visit, for safe-keeping. Before Cameron left he had given Louis a signed order for the apocryphal manuscript. Of the two men we brought one back with us, Captain Smith, who, having lost his schooner on this island, remained as a trader. He seemed a modest, intelligent young man, rather above the South Sea average. Tom Day, however, is--must be--the "flower of the Pacific." Tom is fifty years of age, with a strong, alert figure and the mobile face of an actor; his eyes are blue-grey in deep orbits, blazing with energy and drink and high spirits. "Tom Day" is not his real name, he says, and Tom Drunk would do quite as well; he had found it necessary to go to the expense of a shilling to have it changed, as he had three times deserted from men-of-war. "I've been in prison for it," he said cheerfully, "and I got the cat for it, and if you like you can see the stars and stripes on my back yet." He took pleasure in representing himself as the most desperate of ruffians. Tin Jack asked him to go back to Sydney with him. "I couldn't leave my old woman behind," said he; "and besides, you see, I got into trouble there. The fact is, I've got another wife there, and I think I'd do better to keep away." He then began to tell of a quarrel he'd had with his "old woman" when he took her to Auckland. How she chased him along the street with a knife in one hand and a bag of sovereigns--his entire fortune--in the other; he begged for the bag of sovereigns, trying to lay hold of it and at the same time avoid the knife wielded by the "old woman" (a young native girl, no doubt), who alternately lunged at him with the knife and cracked him over the head with the bag of sovereigns. The bursting of the bag, which scattered the sovereigns in every direction, fortunately ended the quarrel. He mentioned Maraki, on which Louis called to mind a story he had been told many times over.

[14] When we were accidentally marooned at Apemama during a former cruise.