Chapter 18

But Peter wasn't gunning for any missionary, which even in Raka-hanga might have had a nasty comeback--the natives being mild but not cowards, and beginning to buzz like hornets and reach for their shark-tooth spears. No, what Peter was inflamed against was the coral jail, which he set at most ferocious with crowbar and ax until it was nothing but a heap of rubbish. Then he shot holes through the galvanized roofing, and burned it in a blazing fire along of the iron-studded door and window framing. By this time the missionary was trying to raise the multitude against Peter, but they were none too fond of the coral jail themselves and did nothing but hoot and shout like a pack of boys at a circus, which indeed it was and enough to make you split your sides laughing. After that Peter was let alone and nobody dared cross him, no matter what he did.

But this is all by the way to give you an idea of what Raka-hanga was like, and make the rest of the yarn the easier to understand. I shall always feel sorry all my life that Stanley and I were off fishing on the windward side of the island and thereby missed Clemm's arrival in the lagoon, which was well over before we got there, with the stern of a ten-oared boat heading for a man-of-war, and Clemm himself standing kind of helpless on the beach in the midst of all his chests and boxes and bedding.

He made a splendid appearance in his white clothes and shirt and pipe-clayed shoes and pith-helmet, being a short, thick-set man with gray hair and a commanding look. When we came running up he spoke to us very grand, though genial, saying: "Gentlemen, I am the new Resident Deputy Commissioner, and I call on you to assist me raise the flag and annex this island in the name of her Royal and Imperial Majesty, Queen Victoria!"

At this he took his hat off, and we did the same, though I am an American, and then went on to tell us that he had just been landed by H.M.S. _Ringarooma_ to take possession of the island, and would we kindly inform the natives and escort him to the king.

On learning we were a republic and that it would take time to assemble the old men, he condescended to accept my hospitality for a spell, and was most pleased and gracious at the little we could do in his honor. Meanwhile messengers were sent to gather in the chiefs and tell them the great news, and how the Commissioner was soon coming to meet them in the "Speak-house," as the natives called the wickerwork. Mr. Clemm said the _Ringarooma_ had been sent under hurry orders to annex right and left in order to forestall the French, who had broken their international agreement and were hoisting their flag all over the place. He also explained that was the reason why the man-of-war could not stop, it being a neck-and-neck race between her and the French which could reach the Tokelaus first. Between drinks he likewise showed us his commission, which was written very big and imposing on crinkly paper, with seals, where he was called "Our well-beloved and right trusty James Howard Fitzroy Clemm, Esquire,"--as well as the flag he had brought with him, which was an eight-by-twelve ensign, with the halyards all ready to run it up.

I can tell you Stanley and I were mighty proud to escort the Deputy Commissioner to the Parliament, which we did slow and stately in our best pajamas, with the natives reverencing him as he passed and eying us two most respectful. The old men were there in rows, and also David, the pastor, who took the interpreting out of my hands and as usual hogged the whole show. Perhaps it was as well he did, for he had a splendid voice and a booming way of speaking that suited the grandeur of the occasion.

Then Mr. Clemm's commission was read aloud, first by him in English and then by David in Kanaka, and afterwards the Commissioner made a rousing speech, all about the loving English and the low, contemptible French, and at the end he asked everybody to hold up his right hand who wished to be a loyal, faithful, obedient subject of the Great Queen.

Up shot every hand most grateful at the narrow escape they had had of being French; and then outside it was again repeated, even the children holding up their little paws, and the flag hoisted temporary to a coconut palm amid shouts of rejoicing led off by Stanley and me and Peter Jones who had followed along after us.

The next question was where to lodge the Commissioner till a proper house could be built for him, and he showed he wasn't a gentleman to be trifled with by cutting short their jabber, and choosing Fono's, which was the finest in the settlement, and ordering him to clear out, bag and baggage--which Fono didn't want to do and objected very crossly till Peter Jones snatched up a rock and ran at him like he meant to pound his head in. This pleased Mr. Clemm so much that he right off appointed Peter marshal of his court at a salary of forty dollars a month, and put him in charge of shifting his things into his new quarters.

I took the liberty of warning Mr. Clemm against the Fijian, but he only threw back his head and told me most cutting to kindly mind my own business. But any rancor I might have felt at this disappeared when he made me clerk of the court, and Stanley tax collector, each at a salary of sixty dollars a month, with David "Native Adviser and Official Interpreter" at the same figure.

This was the beginning of the new government, with everything old done away with, and the first official sign of it was a brand-new, white-painted flagpole with crosstrees and ratlines in front of the fine big house that was next built for the Commissioner to live in. The natives had to do this for nothing, supplying forty men, turn and turn about, though the galvanized iron, hardware, paint, varnish and what not were bought of Stanley and me, and paid for in taxes. It was a very fine place when done, with a broad veranda in front and an inner court behind, where Mr. Clemm used to lie in a striped hammock, waited on hand and foot.

But I fancy the wicked French couldn't have taxed the Kanakas any harder than Mr. Clemm did, which was the best thing in the world for them, considering how slack they were by nature and not given to doing anything they could help. It only needed a little attention to double the copra crop of the island, not to speak of shell--so that the taxes were a blessing in disguise, the natives being better off than they had ever been before. Of course they didn't like it and put up a great deal of opposition till Mr. Clemm raised a Native Constabulary of seven men, commanded by Peter Jones, and all of them armed any way he could, including Stanley's shotgun and my Winchester repeater, old man Fosby's Enfield and several rusty Springfields pounced on here and there as against the law to own them.

They were tricked out very smart in red _lavalavas_ and white drill coats, and being all of them of the obstreperous, no-good class like Peter, they were soon the terror of the island. Not that Mr. Clemm didn't keep them tight in hand, but when it came to an order of court or any backwardness in taxes he never seemed to care much whom they plundered and beat, which was what they reveled in and thirsted for the chance of.

Old David was the first to feel the weight of authority, and I believe his job of Native Adviser was merely a plan to keep him in good humor till Mr. Clemm was ready to squash him, which Mr. Clemm did three months later most emphatic. The Kanakas were forbidden to contribute to the church, and the pastor's private laws were abolished, and there was no more excommunicating nor jail for church members nor any curfew either. The natives went wild with joy--all except a few old soreheads that are always to be found in every community--and the only folks who were now forced to go to church were the Native Constabulary, who lined up regular to keep tab on what the missionary preached, and arrest him for sedition in case he let his tongue run away with him.

In private, however, old David made all the trouble he dared, and tried to hearten up his followers by saying there would be a day of reckoning for Mr. Clemm when the missionary vessel arrived on her annual visit--at which the Commissioner pretended to laugh but couldn't hide he was worried. Leastways he asked a raft of questions about the _Evangel of Hope_, and that with a ruminating look, and about the character of the people in charge which were Captain Bins and the Reverend T. J. Simpkins. The _Evangel of Hope_ never stayed any longer than to land a few stores and hymn books for the pastor and take off what copra and shell he had acquired by way of church subscriptions. At that time she was about due in two months, and we all laughed at the empty larder she was going to find, though, as I said, Mr. Clemm seemed worried, remarking it was hard to be misrepresented and slandered when his only thought was for the good of the island.

He was certainly upsetting things very lively and bossed the island like it belonged to him. If the natives could play all they wanted, now that David was deposed, they had bumped into something they had never known before and that was--work. The Commissioner couldn't abide laziness in a Kanaka, and went at them terrific, building a fine road around the island and another across it, with bridges and culverts, where he used to ride of a sundown in a buggy he had bought off Captain Sachs of the _H. L. Tiernan_, with men tugging him instead of horses, and the Native Constabulary trotting along in the rear like a Royal Progress.

He built a fine-appearing wharf, too, and an improved jail with a cement floor, and heaven help anybody who threw fish-guts on the shore or didn't keep his land as clean as a new pin. There was a public well made in the middle of the settlement, with cement steps and a white-painted fence to keep away the pigs, and the natives, though they hated to work, were proud, too, of what they had done, and I doubt if they had ever been so prosperous or freer of sickness. I know Stanley and I doubled our trade, in spite of having to take out heavy licenses, which meant that not only we, but everybody else were that much better off. Petty thieving disappeared entirely, and likewise all violence, and one of the Commissioner's best reforms was a land court where titles were established and boundaries marked out, that stopping the only thing the Kanakas ever seriously quarreled about. Six months of the Commissioner had revolutionized the island, and few would have cared to go back to the old loose days when your only Supreme Court was the rifle hanging on your wall.

Well, it grew nearer and nearer for the _Evangel of Hope_ to arrive, and Mr. Clemm he began to do a most extraordinary thing, which was nothing else than a large cemetery! Yes, sir, that's what Mr. Clemm did, tearing down five or six houses for the purpose on the lagoon side, nigh the wharf, and planting rows on rows of white headstones, with low mounds at each, representing graves. There must have been a couple of hundred of them, and often it was a whitewashed cross instead of a stone or maybe a pointed stake--the whole giving the impression of a calamity that had suddenly overtaken us.

It was no good asking him what it was for; the Commissioner wasn't a man to be questioned when he didn't want to be; all he said was that Stanley and I were to stick inside our stores when the ship came and not budge an inch till we were told. With us orders were orders, but the Kanakas were panicky with terror, and that cemetery with nobody in it seemed to them like tempting Providence. It took all of Mr. Clemm's authority to keep them quiet, and it got out that the Commissioner was expecting the end of the world, and the graves were for those that wouldn't go to heaven! Kanakas are like that, you know--spreading the silliest rumors and making a lot out of nothing--though in this case they couldn't be blamed for being considerable scared. But Mr. Clemm knew how to turn everything to account, and on the principle that the church was the safest place to be found in on the Day of Judgment, ordered that everybody should go there the moment he fired three pistol shots from his veranda. I noticed, however, that the Native Constabulary seemed to be taking the end of the world mighty calm, which looked like they had been tipped off ahead for something quite different.

But the meaning of the cemetery appeared later when one morning, along of ten or so, my little boy came running in to say the _Evangel_ was sighted in the pass. Of course, I stuck indoors, mindful of instructions, though that didn't prevent me from looking out of my upper window and taking in all that happened. The first was a tremendous yellow flag raised on the Commissioner's staff, and the second were those three pistol shots which were to announce the Day of Judgment. Then you ought to have seen the settlement scoot! There was a rush for the church like the animals at the Ark, though old David, the pastor, wasn't any Noah. Him and the deacons were led down to the jail and locked in, and then Peter Jones and his constables divided into two parties--three of them returning to the church, while the other three with Peter got a boat ready, with another yellow flag in the stern.

By this time the missionary vessel was well up under a spanking spread of canvas, with the water hissing at her bows and parting white and sparkling in a way dandy to watch. You could almost feel her shiver at the sight of Peter's yellow flag rowing towards her, and through the glass I noticed a big commotion aboard, with half a dozen racing up the rigging and making signs at those below. It was plainer than words that they had seen the cemetery and were struck of a heap, which was no wonder considering how new and calamitous it looked, with them rows on rows of neat little headstones and nicely mounded graves.

She never even dropped her anchor nor lowered her gangway, but hove to, short; and when Peter came up he was made to lay on his oars and keep his distance, yelling what he had to say with both hands at his face while the captain he yelled back with a speaking trumpet. Of course I didn't hear a word, but it was easy enough to put two and two together, remembering the sea meaning of a yellow flag which is seldom else than smallpox. Yes, that was why we had all took and died in the new cemetery, and that was why the settlement looked so lifeless and deserted! After no end of a powwow they hoisted out a boat, and when it was loaded to the gunwales with stores and cases, it was cast off for Peter to pick up and take in tow. It held half a ton of medical comforts, and I often had the pleasure of drinking some of them afterwards on Mr. Clemm's veranda, where we all agreed it was prime stuff and exactly suited to our complaints.

What old David thought of it all through the bars of the coral jail can only be left to the imagination. He had been banking on the _Evangel_ to turn the scales against Mr. Clemm, and there she was heading out of the lagoon again, not to return for another year! We celebrated it that night with medical comforts unstinted, while the natives they celebrated, too, thankful to find the world still here and the Day of Judgment postponed. Old David wrote a red-hot protest, countersigned by the deacons, and not knowing what else to do with it, sealed it in a demijohn and threw it into the sea, where like enough it still is, bobbing around undelivered to the missionary society and still waiting for the angels to take charge of it.

Mr. Clemm's next move was to start building a small cutter of twenty tons, which he named the _Felicity_ and charged to the government as an official yacht. Old man Fosby had been a shipwright in years gone by, and under his direction the Kanakas made a mighty fine job of the little vessel, which was fitted up regardless and proved to be remarkably fast and weatherly. She was the apple of the Commissioner's eye, with a crew of four in uniform, and a half-caste Chinaman named Henry for captain, whom he had persuaded to desert from a German schooner where he was mate. Mr. Clemm was so fond of taking short cruises in the _Felicity_ that we never gave his coming and going much thought, till one day he went off and never came back! Yes, sir, clean disappeared over the horizon and was never seen again from that day to this, nor the party with him which included several very fine-looking young women!

The natives took it like the loss of a father, which indeed it was, Mr. Clemm being a grand man and universally beloved--kindly yet strict, and always the soul of justice. After giving him up altogether for lost, we put seals on his private effects, and Peter Jones took charge of the government, advised by Stanley and me. It showed the splendid influence Mr. Clemm had had that Peter had become quite a model, and instead of breaking loose was all on the side of law and order. Our idea was to hold the fort until a new Commissioner might be sent, and the only slight change we made was to double our salaries. The natives had grown so used to civilized government that they made no trouble, and we three might have been governing the island yet if a man-of-war hadn't suddenly popped in.

It was the _Ringarooma_, the self-same ship that had landed Mr. Clemm some eighteen months before, and Stanley and I were the first to board her, meeting the captain at the break of the poop, just when he had come down from the bridge.

"I have the honor to report the disappearance of Deputy Commissioner James Howard Fitzroy Clemm," said I. "He sailed from here on March sixteenth in the government yacht _Felicity_, and has never been seen nor heard from since."

The captain, who was a sharp, curt man, looked puzzled.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said, as abrupt as a thunderbolt.

"Why, sir, you landed him yourself," said Stanley, "and the same day he took possession of the island and hoisted the British flag."

"Annexed us," said I.

The captain frowned very angry, like if we were making sport of him we should fast rue it.

"I never landed anybody here but a fellow named Baker," he said. "I deported him from the Ellice Islands for sedition, bigamy, selling gin to the natives, suspected arson and receiving stolen goods. If he called himself a Deputy Commissioner he was a rank impostor, and had no more authority to annex this island than you have."

* * * * *

Months afterwards we learned that instead of being lost in the _Felicity_ like we all had thought, Clemm had turned pirate in a small way down to the Westward till the natives took and ate him at Guadalcanaar.

CLOUD OF BUTTERFLIES

Behind Apia, on the edge of the Taufusi swamp, was a small collection of huts, jumbled together in squalor and dirt, with pigs dozing in the ooze and slatternly women beating out _siapo_ in the shade. It was a dunghill of out-islanders, Nieues, Uveans, Tongans, Tapatueans, banded together in a common poverty; landless people of other archipelagoes, despised of the Samoans, and paying tribute to the lord of the soil--a few men in war; a grudging hog in times of peace.

Here lived O'olo, a boy of twenty, whose chief-like face, and fine manly bearing marked him as one apart in that nest of outcasts. He was of Tongan blood, though all he knew of his parents was that they had escaped from Nukualofa at the time of the Persecution, and had died in Samoa when he was a child. Old Siosi, who had adopted him, could tell him no more than that; not that O'olo asked many questions, being content to drift on the ocean of life, and careless of anything save what belonged to the day. He weeded taro, occasionally worked for thirty-five cents a day at the unloading of ships; stole bread-fruit and bananas up the mountain, and slept peacefully at night on the stones of Siosi's floor.

If ever he envied the Samoans, the mood was brief, and seldom darkened his spirits for long. To him the Samoans were a race above, with splendid houses, and spacious lands, and a haughty contempt for such an eat-bush at O'olo, the Tongan; and O'olo looked up at them mightily, and respected them as a dog does a man, though sometimes he said: "I wish God had made _me_ a Samoan"; and then the swamp appeared very dismal to O'olo, and the huts mean and noisome, and the mallets seemed to be pounding on his heart instead of the suddy bark.

Now it happened that a new clergyman came to the coral church on the other side of the coconut grove, and what was more important to O'olo brought with him a lovely daughter. O'olo did not know how important it was till he first met Evanitalina in the path, and was so suddenly stricken with her beauty that he had hardly the sense to make way for her to pass. Slim and graceful, with her glossy hair gathered at the nape with a ribbon, and her bright _lavalava_ kilted to the knee, she gave O'olo a glance as sparkling as moonlight on a pool, all her young womanhood alive to his confusion, and quick to divine its cause. Though her eyes had scarcely dwelt on him an instant, she had seen enough for her heart to say: "_Panga!_ What a handsome youth"; and was filled with a strange elation in which there was a dart of pain.

On her return O'olo was still where she had left him, though in his hand was a crimson _aute_ blossom that had not been there before; and when she drew close he held it out, saying: "Oh, lady, here is a little worthless gift!" She took it smiling, and put it behind her ear, and had it been a pig or a fine mat no sweeter could have been her words of gratitude, for Evanitalina had been well brought up, and courtesy was as natural to her as breathing.

"I am named O'olo," said the young man, "and if you like _aute_ blossoms, every day shall I bring you some."

"I am Evanitalina, the daughter of Samuelu, the clergyman," she returned, "and I shall be glad of the blossoms, for as yet thy father has tabooed no lands for our garden."

Then O'olo realized she had mistaken him for the son of Amatuanai, the chief, and while flattered he was also much cast down.

"I am only a Tongan," he said, deprecatorily, shame halting his tongue, "and I live yonder where you see that nameless-animal rooting in the slough--though to God a Tongan is every bit as good as a Samoan, and the only chiefs are those who are strong in faith."

Evanitalina hastened to agree with him, though she was very disappointed just the same, for he was so handsome, and had such pleasant manners, and an air so noble and winning that she had never doubted he was of rank. She herself was of the exalted I'i family, of Safotulafai, and her grandfather was Tu'imaleali'ifano, and her great-grandfather had been Tu-ia'ana. Yet as she went on, the memory of O'olo stayed with her like the scent of frangipani, and for all he was a Tongan and without land or position, she felt a great tenderness for him; and taking the crimson flower she pressed it to her bosom, trembling with joy as she did so, and saying to herself: "I love thee, I love thee, I love thee!"