SOUTH SEA YARNS

“While the men were digging the oven and lining it.”

SOUTH SEA YARNS

BY

BASIL THOMSON

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCXCIV

All Rights reserved

TO
MY WIFE

INTRODUCTION.

In the great bure of Raiyawa there was a story-telling. The lying-places filled three sides of the house—mats spread upon grass four feet wide,—and between each lying-place was a narrow strip of bare earth sprinkled with wood-ashes, on which three logs, nose to nose, were smouldering. A thin curl of blue smoke wreathed upwards from each to the conical roof, where they met and filtered through the blackened thatch; so that from outside the bure looked like a disembowelled haystack smouldering, ready to burst into flame. On the fourth side was a low doorway, stopped with a thick fringe of dried rushes, through which ever and anon a grey-headed elder burst head-foremost, after coughing and spitting outside to announce his arrival. Beside the doorway was a solitary couch, the seat of honour, to which the foreigner, footsore and weary with his tramp across the mountains, was directed, having in his turn dived trustingly through the rushes like the rest. The couches were filling, and the elders were settling down in twos to rest, slinging their legs over the fender-bar that lay conveniently on its forked supports, and turning to the grateful glow that part of his anatomy that man delights to roast—for the night was falling, and a chilly mist was rising from the river. Then one of them rose and made with his hand a tiny aperture in the rush-screen, through which the dull twilight showed white. “Beat!” he cried; and the rest beat the reed walls with their open palms, and the house was filled with the angry hum of a myriad mosquitoes, that flew into the smoke and out towards the king-post, and then, seeing the twilight and the fresh air, sailed in a compact string through the opening, so that in three minutes there was not one of them left. Thereafter one might sleep in peace without slapping the back and the bare thighs, for the rushes brushed them from the body of each incomer, and their furious hum outside was impotent to hurt.

At length every place was filled, and from the darkness Bongi began and told of the mountain-paths—how the foreigner would rest before the hill was climbed, gasping like a fish, and asked many foolish questions of the old time and the present; and of the courts, how Bitukau had had his hair cropped, having been taken in sin and judged; and of how the foreigner had given him strange meats to eat that were enclosed in iron, having first broken the iron and cooked the meats on a fire.

“Yes,” said Bosoka, “such were the meats that a foreigner gave to the men of Kualendraya, bidding them heat the meats on a fire and eat; but when they did so, the meats blew up like a gun, and scalded them grievously. Foreigners must be strong indeed to eat such meats.”

“And the foreigner told me tales,” continued Bongi—“wonderful tales, hard to believe: of stone houses larger than this whole village; of strings going under the sea to other lands by which men talk, sending no ship to bear the tale; of steamers that go on land faster than a horse can run.”

“Foreigners are great liars,” said old Natuyalewa, sententiously. “But the land steamers may be true, for at Nansori it is said the sugar-cane is carried by steamers on the land. Tomase, who worked there, told me of this; and it may be true that they talk with strings, for a man may make many signs by jerking a sinnet cord which another holds, pulling harder at times and then softly. But the stone house—such tales as these they tell to increase their honour in our eyes, but they are lies, for there is no land so great as Great Viti.”

Now the foreigner feigned sleep and listened.

“Well,” cried Ngutu from the corner, “the teacher says that our fathers lied about Rokola’s canoe—that the mast fell at Malake and dented the mountains of Kauvandra. He says that a canoe cannot sail so far in a day, even with the wind on the outrigger.”

“The teachers are the foreigners’ mouths, and bark at all our ancient customs, seeking to dishonour them,” growled Natuyalewa. “I am growing old, and the land is changed. When I was young we listened to the words of our elders, but now the young men——”

“Ië! Tell us tales of the old time,” interrupted Bongi: “we will each bring nambu: mine shall be the sevu of my yams.”

The elders grunted approval from the darkness.

“My nambu shall be fish.” “A bunch of white plantains.” “Mine shall be prawns from the stream,” cried several.

“I want no nambu,” replied Natuyalewa, with dignity; “the nambu should be given to those who tell tales for gain, seeking to entertain the chiefs, that mats, and fine masi, and other property, may be given to them. These will tell of gods and giants, and canoes greater than these mountains, and of women fairer than the women of these days, and of doings so strange that the jaws of the listener fall apart. Such a one gains great honour, and the chiefs will promise him nambu before they even hear his tale, remembering the wonders of the last. And he, being known for a teller of strange tales, must ever lie more and more, lest, if he turn back to the truth, the chiefs hearing him may say, ‘This fellow’s tales were once like running water, but now they are like the village pool: why give him nambu?’ But I will ask no nambu, for I can only tell of that I have seen with my own eyes or heard with my ears; and though I tell you tales of the old time or of distant lands, yet can I tell only of the doings of men and women like to yourselves, who did deeds such as you yourselves do; and when all is told, you will call the tale emptier than the shell of the Wa-Timo fruit.”

Then Natuyalewa began to tell of Rusa, the fisherman of Malomalo, and the foreigner, himself a story-teller in Natuyalewa’s line of business, thought ruefully of the wonder-mongers of his own land, and the nambu they won, and so pondering, fell asleep.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

SOUTH SEA YARNS.

A COURT-DAY IN FIJI.

A bright sky vying with the sea for blueness, a sun whose rays are not too hot to be cooled by the sea-breeze, the distant roar of the great Pacific rollers as they break in foam on the coral-reef, the whisper of the feathery palms as they wave their giant leaves above yonder cluster of brown native huts,—all these form a picture whose poetry is not easily reconciled with the stern prose of an English court of law. It is perhaps as well that the legal forms we are accustomed to have been modified to meet the wants of this remote province of the Queen’s dominions, for the spot we are describing is accounted remote even in remote Fiji, and the people are proportionately primitive. The natives of Fiji are amenable to a criminal code known as the Native Regulations. These are administered by two courts—the District Court, which sits monthly and is presided over by a native magistrate; and the Provincial Court, which assembles every three months before the English and native magistrates sitting together. From the latter there is no appeal except by petition to the governor, and it has now become the resort of all Fijians who are in trouble or consider themselves aggrieved.

For several days witnesses and accused have been coming in from the neighbouring islands, and last night the village-crier proclaimed the share of the feast which each family was called upon to provide. The women have been busy since daylight bringing in yams, plantains, and taro from the plantations, while the men were digging the oven and lining it with the stones that, when heated, will cook the pigs to a turn.

But already the height of the sun shows it to be past ten, and the District Court has to inquire into several charges before the Provincial Court can sit. The order is given to the native police sergeant to beat the lali, and straightway two huge wooden drums boom out their summons to whomsoever it may concern. As the drum-beats become more agitated and pressing, a long file of aged natives, clad in shirt and sulu of more or less irreproachable white, is seen emerging from the grove of cocoa-nut palms which conceal the village. We have but just time to shake hands with our dusky colleague, a shrewd-looking old man with grizzled hair and beard carefully trimmed for the occasion, when the crowd begins to pour into the court-house.

The gala dresses are not a little startling. Here is a dignified old gentleman arrayed in a second-hand tunic of a marine, in much the same plight as to buttons as its owner as to teeth; near him stands a fine young village policeman, whose official gravity is not enhanced by the swallow-tailed coat of a nigger minstrel; while the background is taken up by a bevy of village maidens clad in gorgeous velvet pinafores, who are giggling after the manner of their white sisters until they are fixed by the stern grey eye of the chief policeman, which turns their expression into one of that preternatural solemnity they wear in church. The court-house, a native building carpeted with mats, is now packed with natives, sitting cross-legged, only a small place being reserved in front of the table for the accused and witnesses. The magistrate takes his seat, and his scribe, sitting on the floor at his side, prepares his writing materials to record the sentences. The dignity with which the old gentleman adjusts his shirt-collar and clears his throat is a little marred when he produces from his bosom what should have been a pair of pince-nez, seeing that it was secured by a string round his neck, but is in fact a Jew’s-harp. With the soft notes of this instrument the man of law is wont to beguile the tedium of a dull case. But although the spectacle of Lord Coleridge gravely performing on the Jew’s-harp in court would at least excite surprise in England, it provokes no smile here. The first case is called on. Reiterated calls for Samuela and Timothe produce two meek-faced youths of eighteen and nineteen, who, sitting tailor-fashion before the table, are charged with fowl-stealing. They plead “Not guilty,” and the owner of the fowls being sworn, deposes that, having been awakened at night by the voice of a favourite hen in angry remonstrance, he ran out of his house, and after a hot chase captured the accused red-handed in two senses, for they were plucking his hen while still alive. Quite unmoved by this tragic tale, Vatureba seems to listen only to the melancholy notes of his Jew’s-harp; but the witness is a chief and a man of influence withal, and a period of awed silence follows his accusation, broken only by a subdued twanging from the bench. But Vatureba’s eyes are bright and piercing, and they have been fixed for some minutes on the wretched prisoners. He has not yet opened his lips during the case, and as the Jew’s-harp is not capable of much expression, it is with some interest we await the sentence. Suddenly the music ceases, the instrument is withdrawn from the mouth, the oracle is about to speak. Alas! he utters but two words, “Vula tolu” (three months), and there peals out a malignantly triumphant strain from the Jew’s-harp. But the prosecutor starts up with a protest. One of the accused is his nephew, he explains, and he only wished a light sentence to be imposed. Three months for one fowl is so severe; besides, if he has three months, he must go to the central jail and not work out his sentence in his own district. Again there is silence, and the Jew’s-harp has changed from triumph into thoughtful melancholy. At length it is withdrawn, and the oracle speaks again, “Bogi tolu” (three days).

The prisoners are pounced upon and dragged out by the hungry police, and after a few more cases the District Court is adjourned to make way for the Provincial. The rural police—a fine body of men dressed in uniform—take up positions at the court-house doors, and we take our seats beside our sable colleague at the table. A number of men of lighter colour and different appearance are brought in and placed in a row before the table. These are the leading men of the island of Nathula, who are charged with slandering their Buli (chief of district). They have, in fact, been ruined by a defective knowledge of arithmetic, as we learn from the story of the poor old Buli, whose pathetic and careworn face shows that he at least has not seen the humorous side of the situation. It appears that a sum of £70, due to the natives as a refund on overpaid taxes, was given to the Buli for distribution among the various heads of families. For this purpose he summoned a meeting, and the amount in small silver was turned out on the floor to be counted. Now as not a few Fijians are hazy as to how many shillings go to the pound, it is not surprising that the fourteen or fifteen people who counted the money made totals varying from £50 to £100. They at once jumped to the conclusion that the Buli, who was by this time so bored with the whole thing that he was quite willing to forego his own share, had embezzled the money; but to make suspicion certainty they started off in a canoe to the mainland to consult a wizard. This oracle, being presented with a whale’s tooth, intimated that if he heard the name of the defaulter who had embezzled the money, his little finger, and perhaps other portions of his anatomy, would tingle (kida). They accordingly went through the names of all their fellow-villagers, naming the Buli last. On hearing this name the oracle, whose little finger had hitherto remained normal, “regardless of grammar, cried out, ‘That’s him!’”

On their return to Nathula, they triumphantly quoted the oracle as their authority for accusing their Buli of embezzlement. The poor old gentleman, wounded in his tenderest feelings, had but one resort. He knew he hadn’t stolen the money, because the money hadn’t been stolen at all, but then who would believe his word against that of a wizard? and was not arithmetic itself a supernatural science? There was but one way to re-establish his shattered reputation, and this he took. His canoe was made ready, and he repaired to the mainland to consult a rival oracle named Na ivi (the ivi-tree). The little finger of this seer was positive of the Buli’s innocence, so that, fortified by the support of so weighty an authority, he no longer feared to meet his enemies face to face, and even to prosecute them for slander. As the Buli was undoubtedly innocent, and had certainly been slandered, the delinquents are reminded that ever since the days of Delphi seers and oracles have met with a very limited success, and are sentenced to three months’ imprisonment. And now follows a real tragedy. The consideration enjoyed by the young Fijian is in proportion to the length and cut of his hair. Now these are evidently dandies to the verge of foppishness. Two of them have hair frizzed out so as to make a halo four inches deep round the face, and bleached by lime until it is gradated from deep auburn to a golden yellow at the points. Pounced on and dragged out of court by ruthless policemen, they are handed over to the tender mercies of a pitiless barber, and in a few moments they are as crestfallen and ridiculous as that cockatoo who was plucked by the monkey. The self-assurance of a Fijian is as dependent on the length of his hair as was the strength of Samson.

But now there is a shrill call for Natombe, and a middle-aged man of rather remarkable appearance is brought before the table. He is a mountaineer, and is dressed in a rather dirty sulu of blue calico, secured round the waist by a few turns of native bark-cloth. He is naked from the waist upward. The charge is practising witchcraft (drau ni kau), a crime which is punishable with twelve months’ imprisonment and forty lashes; for the Fijians are so persuaded that a bewitched person will die, that it is only necessary to tell a person he is bewitched to ensure his death within a few days from pure fright. The son of the late Buli of Bemana comes forward to prosecute. The substance of his evidence is as follows: Buli Bemana, who was quite well on a certain Saturday, was taken ill on the Sunday, and expired in great agony on the Monday morning. The portion of his people to whom the accused belongs had complained more than once of the Buli’s oppression, and desired his removal. It is the custom for a wizard who has compassed the death of a man to appear at the funeral with blackened face as a sign to his employers that he has earned his reward and expects it. The accused attended Buli Bemana’s funeral with blackened face. Moreover, an old woman of Bemana had dreamed that she had seen Natombe bewitching the Buli, and the little fingers of several Bemanas had itched unaccountably. These last the witness considered were convincing proofs. The accused, in reply, stated that he was excessively grieved at the Buli’s death, and that his face at the funeral was no blacker than usual. Several witnesses followed, who deposed that the accused is celebrated throughout the district for his skill in witchcraft, and that he had boasted openly in days gone by that he had caused the death of a man who died suddenly.

Now, as stated above, the belief in witchcraft among Fijians is so thorough, and the effects of a spell upon the imagination of a bewitched person so fatal, that the English Government has found it necessary to recognise the existence of the practice by law. It is, however, none the less wise for the Government officials, without pooh-poohing the existence of witchcraft, to attempt to discourage the belief in its efficacy. Accordingly we call for evidence as to the particular manner in which the alleged spell was cast. There was no caldron nor blasted heath in this case; indeed the whole ceremony was a decidedly tame affair. It was only necessary to procure some of the Buli’s hair or the portions of his food left untasted, and bury them with certain herbs enclosed in a bamboo, and death would ensue in a few days. To our question whether the Buli himself thought he was bewitched we receive a decided negative; indeed, we happen to know that the poor old man died of acute dysentery, brought on by cold, and that in this case, if witchcraft had been really practised, the death was a most unfortunate coincidence. As no evidence more incriminating than dreams and the finger-tingling is forthcoming, the accused is acquitted, to be condemned by the other tribunal of public opinion, which evidently runs high. When he has left the court we address the chiefs of Bemana upon the subject of witchcraft generally, as if seeking information. Upon this a number of white-haired old gentlemen, whose boredom has been for some time exchanged for somnolence, wake up and hold forth upon the relative value of hair and nail-parings as instruments for casting spells. While the discussion becomes animated and the consensus of opinion appears to be gathering in favour of toe-nails, we electrify the assembly by suggesting an experiment. They are to select two of their wisest wizards, we are to supply the necessary means, and they are to forthwith cast their most potent spell over us. On the result is to rest their future belief in witchcraft. If we have not succumbed in a month’s time there is no truth in the practice. If we do die, they may not only believe in it, but they will, of course, be held guiltless of our death. A dead silence ensues. Then, after much whispered conversation, an old man addresses the court, pointing out that white men eat different food from Fijians, for do they not live upon flour, tinned meat, rice, and other abominations? And do they not despise the succulent yam, and turn up their noses at pork, dried lizard, and tender snake? Therefore is it not obvious that the powers of witchcraft will be lost upon such beings? Now we have with us a Tongan servant, by name Lijiate (being the nearest Tongans can get to Richard). This man, being half-educated, and above all a Tongan, is full of contempt for Fijians and their barbarous customs. He has long talked contemptuously of witchcraft, which he considers fit only for the credence of heathens, not of good Christians like himself. Here is a chance for Richard to distinguish himself and us. We make the offer. Richard is to be bewitched on the same terms as ourselves. He at least does eat yams and pork, and though he has not yet taken kindly to snake, the difference is trifling. But we have counted without our host. “Fakamolemole” (pardon), says Richard, “I almost believe in it myself. I pray you have me excused.” This spikes our gun, for though, doubtless, some of our Fijian servants would consent to be experimented on, they would probably pine away and die from pure fright, and re-establish the belief in witchcraft for ever.

Our discomfiture is best covered by attention to business. Two more cases of larceny are heard and disposed of, and now two ancient dames, clad in borrowed plumes, consisting of calico petticoat and pinafore, are led before the table. Grey-headed and toothless, dim as to sight and shapeless as to features, they look singularly out of place in a court of law. Time was (and not so very long ago) when women so decrepit as these would have had to make way for a more vigorous generation by the simple and expeditious means of being buried alive, but now they no longer fear the consequences of their eccentricities. One of these old women is the prosecutrix, and the charge is assault. We ask which is the prosecutrix, and immediately one holds out and brandishes a hand from which one of the fingers has been almost severed by a bite. She has altogether the most lugubrious expression that features such as hers can assume, but with the bitten finger now permanently hung out like a signboard, words of complaint are superfluous. The other has a truculent and forbidding expression. She snaps out her answers as if she had bitten off the ends like the prosecutrix’ finger, and shuts her mouth like a steel trap. The quarrel which led to their appearance in court might have taken place in Seven Dials. Defendant said something disparaging about prosecutrix’ daughter. Prosecutrix retaliated by damaging references to defendant’s son, and left the house hurriedly to enjoy the luxury of having had last word. Defendant followed and searched the village for her, with the avowed intention of skinning her alive. They met at last, and having each called the other “a-roasted-corpse-fit-for-the-oven,” they fell to with the result to the prosecutrix’ finger already described. The mountain dialect used in evidence is almost unintelligible to us, so that our admonition, couched in the Bauan, has to be translated (with additions) by our native colleague. But our eloquence was all wasted. Defendant utterly declines to express contrition. Our last resource must be employed, and we inform her that if she does not complete the task imposed on her as a fine she will be sent to Suva jail, there to be confined with the Indian women. This awful threat has its effect; and the dread powers of our court having thus been vindicated, the crier proclaims its adjournment for three months. The spectators troop out to spend the rest of the day in gossiping about the delinquents and their cases. The men who have been sentenced are already at work weeding round the court-house, subjects for the breathless interest and pity of the bevy of girls who have just emerged from court and are exchanging whispered comments upon the alteration in a good-looking man when his hair is cut off. None are left in the court-house but ourselves, the chiefs, and the older men. The table is removed, and the room cleared of the paraphernalia of civilisation. Enter two men bearing a large carved wooden bowl, a bucket of water, and a root of yangona, which is presented to us ceremoniously, and handed back to some young men at the bottom of the room to chew. Meanwhile conversation becomes general, witchcraft is discussed in all its branches, and compassion is expressed for the poor sceptical white man; sulukas (cigarettes rolled in banana leaves) are lighted; the chewed masses of yangona root are thrown into the bowl, mixed with water, kneaded, strained, and handed to each person according to his rank to drink; tongues are loosened, and it is time to draw the meeting to a close. The sun is fast dipping into the western sea when the last of our guests leave us, and we have a long moonlight ride before us. There is but just time to pack up our traps and have a hasty meal before we are left in darkness, but the moon will rise in an hour, so we may start in safety in pursuit of the train of police and convicts who are carrying the baggage.

THE LAST OF THE CANNIBAL CHIEFS.

When Swift wrote his “Modest Proposal,” and argued with logical seriousness that the want and over-population in Ireland should be remedied by the simple expedient of eating babies, the satire was not likely to be lost upon a people who regarded cannibalism with such horror and loathing as do the European nations. The horror must of course be instinctive, because we find it existing in the lowest grades of society; but the instinct is confined to civilised man. The word cannibal is associated in our minds with scenes of the most debased savagery that the imagination can picture; of men in habits and appearance a little lower than the brute; of orgies the result of the most degrading religious superstition. It is not until one has lived on terms of friendship with cannibals that one realises that the practice is not incompatible with an intelligence and moral qualities which command respect. And after all, if one can for a moment lay aside the instinctive horror which the idea calls up, and dispassionately consider the nature of cannibalism, our repugnance to it seems less logically grounded. It is true that it must generally entail murder, but that is certainly not the reason for our loathing of it. It is something deeper than this; and the distinction we draw between the flesh of men and of animals is at first sight a little curious. One can imagine the inhabitants of another planet, whose physical necessities did not force them to eat flesh,—to take life in order to live,—regarding us with much the same kind of abhorrence with which we look on cannibals. Most of our natural instincts are based upon natural laws, which, when broken, are sure to visit the breaker with their penalties. The eating of unripe fruit, of putrid meat, or poisonous matter, are some of these. But no penalty in the shape of disease seems to be attached to cannibalism.

What, then, are the motives that lead men, apart from the pressure of famine, to practise cannibalism? Among certain African tribes, and lately in Hayti, it has been the outcome of a debased religious superstition, or that extraordinary instinct common to all races which leads men to connect the highest religious enthusiasm with the most horrible orgies that their diseased imagination can conceive. The feeling that leads members of sects to bind themselves together by the celebration of some unspeakable rite perhaps led to the accusations laid against the Christians of the second century and the Hungarian Jews of the nineteenth. But in the South Seas, although the motive has been falsely attributed to a craving for animal food, it was generally the last act of triumph over a fallen enemy. Thus Homer makes Achilles, triumphing over the dying Hector, wish he could make mince-meat of his body and devour it. Triumph could go no further than to slay and then to assimilate the body of your foe; and the belief that, by thus making him a part of you, you acquired his courage in battle, is said to have led a chief of old Fiji to actually consume himself the entire body of the man he had killed, by daily roasting what remained of it to prevent decomposition.

This is not a very promising introduction to a paper intended to show that some cannibals at least may be very respectable members of society. But it must be clearly understood that the eccentricity which seems so revolting to us is not incompatible with a strong sense of duty, great kindness of heart, and warm domestic affection.

Out of the many cannibals and ex-cannibals I have known, I will choose the most striking figure as the subject of this sketch. I first met the Buli of Nandrau in the autumn of 1886, when I took over the Resident Commissionership of part of the mountain district of Fiji. His history had been an eventful one, and while he had displayed those qualities that would most win the admiration of Fijians, to us he could not be otherwise than a remarkable character. Far away, in the wild and rugged country in which the great rivers Rewa and Singatoka take their rise, he was born to be chief of a fierce and aggressive tribe of mountaineers. Constantly engaged in petty intertribal wars, while still a young man he had led them from victory to victory, until they had fought their way into perhaps the most picturesque valley in all picturesque Fiji. Here, perched above the rushing Singatoka, and overshadowed by two tremendous precipices which allowed the sun to shine upon them for barely three hours a-day, they built their village, and here they became a name and a terror to all the surrounding tribes. A few miles lower down the river stood the almost impregnable rock-fortress of the Vatusila tribe, and these became the stanch allies of Nandrau. Together they broke up the powerful Noikoro, exacted tribute from them, and made the river theirs as far as Korolevu; together they blotted out the Naloto, who held the passes to the northern coast, killing in one day more than four hundred of them, and driving the remnant as outcasts into the plain. Long after the white men had made their influence felt throughout Fiji,—long after the chief of Bau was courted as King of Fiji,—these two tribes, secure in their mountain fastnesses, lived their own life, and none, whether Fijian or white man, dared pass over their borders.

But their time was come. The despised white man, whom they had first known in the humble guise of a shipwrecked sailor or an escaped convict, was soon to overrun the whole Pacific, and before him the most dreaded of the Fijian gods and chiefs, the most honoured of their traditions, were to pass away and be forgotten.

In the year 1867 a Wesleyan missionary named Baker, against the advice of all the most experienced of the European settlers and the native chiefs, announced his intention of exploring the mountain districts alone. He said that he would take the Bible through Vitilevu. What good to the missionary cause he hoped for from his hazardous journey it is difficult to imagine. The harm that would certainly result to his fellow-missionaries if he were killed, and the loss of life that must ensue, must have been apparent to him and to every one else. But in spite of every warning, he persisted in his foolhardy enterprise, and he paid for it with his life and with the lives of several hundred others. He ascended the river Rewa with a small party of native teachers, but when he passed into the mountain district a whale’s tooth followed him: for the power of the whale’s tooth is this—that he who accepts it cannot refuse the request it carries with it, whether it be for a mere gift, or for an alliance, or for a human life. So he went on, while tribe after tribe refused to accept the fatal piece of ivory; but none the less surely did it follow him. At length one night, while he slept in a village of the Vatusila, the whale’s tooth passed on before him to the rock fortress of Nambutautau, and their chief, Nawawambalavu, took it. When, next morning, Baker resumed his march, this chief met him in the road, and together they crossed the Singatoka river. As they climbed the steep cliff which leads to Nambutautau, it is recorded in a popular song of that time that the chief warned him ironically of his impending fate. “We want none of your Christianity, Mr Baker. I think that to-day you and I shall be clubbed.” Suddenly, at a spot where the path lies between high reeds, on the edge of a precipice, an attack was made upon them, and they were all struck down except two native teachers who crawled into the thickest of the reeds and made their way, the one to Rewa and the other to Bau, hiding during the day-time and travelling under cover of the darkness. Baker’s body was flung over the precipice, and the great wooden drum boomed out its death-beat to the villages far down the valley. That night the stone-ovens were heated for their work, and the feast was portioned out to the various allies. But the most honourable portion—the head—was sent to Nandrau, the subject of my sketch. At first he refused it, disapproving of the murder, which his foresight warned him would bring trouble upon them. But as his refusal threatened to sever the alliance, he afterwards accepted it. It is recorded that the feet, from which the long boots had not been removed, were sent to Mongondro, whose chief, a melancholy, gentle-mannered old man, was much disappointed at finding the skin of white men so tough.

After terrible hardship and danger, the wounded teacher made his way to the coast, and carried the news to Bau. A strong alliance was at once formed among the coast tribes to avenge the murder, and to crush the power of the mountaineers. There is in this part of Fiji no gradation between the plains that fringe the coast and the mountains. A sheer barrier of rock, looking like the ruins of a gigantic fortification, rises boldly from the plain, broken only by the valleys which form the river-beds. Behind this wall lay a land of mystery, whose inhabitants were invested with superstitious terrors, to which their ferocity and the extraordinary appearance of their huge mops of hair had doubtless contributed.

The attacking party was divided into three forces. One of them was to advance up the Singatoka from the south, a second to enter the “Devil” country by way of the Rewa from the east, and the third, commanded by the King of Fiji in person, was to surprise the valley of Nandrau from the northern coast. With the two first we have nothing to do, because they were defeated by the intervening tribes and turned back long before they reached their destination. The third, hoping to form a junction with their allies, advanced boldly through the mountain passes. The country seemed deserted. They burned two or three abandoned villages, and emboldened by their success, they pressed on, more like an eager rabble than a military force, each man hoping to be the first to secure plunder. As they straggled over the grassy hills that surround Nandrau, suddenly from every clump of reeds big-headed warriors sprang up; they found themselves hemmed in, and Nandrau, headed by their chief, spent the day in slaughtering the flower of the Bau army. A remnant fled to the coast, hotly pursued by the mountaineers; and so crushing was the defeat that the king, Thakombau, narrowly escaped death at the hands of his vassals of Tavua.

Not long after this victory, which had so firmly established his prestige in the mountains, Buli Nandrau seems to have become favourably inclined towards the Europeans; and when a joint expedition of whites and natives was despatched to reduce Nambutautau, he seems to have been permitted to remain neutral. Nambutautau was burnt, and the Vatusila and Noikoro tribes compelled to sue for peace. In 1874 Buli Nandrau met Consul Layard, and promised his allegiance to the British Government. Teachers were allowed to enter the principal mountain villages, and until the year 1875 the mountaineers became nominal Christians. In that year an event occurred which severely tried the firmness and good sense of Buli Nandrau. The islands had been annexed to Great Britain, and the mountain chiefs were invited to meet the first Governor, Sir Arthur Gordon, at Navola on the southern coast. Some of them accepted the invitation, among whom was Buli Nandrau, who was anxious to judge for himself what the new order of things really was. He frankly gave his allegiance to the Government, and in spite of the strongest temptation he never wavered afterwards. For in the same year a terrible epidemic of measles, introduced accidentally from Sydney, carried off 40,000—nearly one-third of the whole population of the islands. It was natural that the mountaineers, perishing under this relentless and unknown disease, should have regarded it as the vengeance of the gods they had so lately deserted. If Christianity were a good thing, they said, why could it not save their children from death?

And so, early in 1875, most of the mountain tribes threw off the sulu (the Christian dress), and returned to the worship of their heathen gods. Only Buli Nandrau, seeing what the end must be, remained stanch, and by forming a barrier between the revolted tribes and those still wavering in their loyalty, prevented the disaffection from spreading. An expedition was despatched under Captain, now Major, Knollys, and, with the assistance of the native allies, soon reduced the rebels to submission. They all nominally again embraced Christianity, and an entrenched camp, garrisoned by an armed native force, and commanded by a Resident Commissioner, was established to ensure the future peace of the district.

Protected by their isolation from the vices of civilisation, and enjoying a large share of self-government, these reformed cannibals are to-day the most contented and prosperous of all the Queen’s subjects in Fiji; and if ever it has been necessary to adopt measures for their good which they could not understand at the time, the Commissioner has been always sure of the support and influence of Buli Nandrau.

I first saw him at the Provincial Council at Navola in 1886. He had no sooner arrived with his retinue than he sent his mata (herald) to announce him, and in a few minutes entered my house alone. He was a very tall, erect old man of about sixty-five or seventy—grey-haired, keen-eyed, and intelligent-looking. After the usual ceremonies inseparable from Fijian etiquette, he sat down and spoke of the politics of the district. It appeared to me remarkable that a man who had only left his native mountains two or three times, to take part in the great Council of Chiefs, should be so well acquainted with the history and political situation of the coast tribes of Fiji. He spoke with great affection of Sir Arthur Gordon and of the ex-Commissioner, and bewailed the death of the great mountain chiefs whose places were now inadequately filled by their sons.

He was never absent from his place for a moment during the three days the council lasted, and his interest in the trivial affairs of other districts never flagged. It was curious to observe the great deference paid to his opinion by the other chiefs. When one of them, Buli Naloto, was found to have failed in his duties, Nandrau was appointed to reprove and caution him. His speech, which was short and to the point, was a model of that kind of eloquence. “Art thou,” he said, “a chief in thine own right, to make war and to make peace as it pleases thee? Where was thy tribe before the Government came? A scattered remnant, seeking refuge on the plains from the vengeance of Nandrau! But the Government has taken pity on thee, and the land is at peace. Why art thou then disobedient to the Government, who has made thee a chief, and re-established thee in the lands of thy fathers?” This reproof was received by Buli Naloto with the most abject humility.

Not long after this, Buli Nandrau consulted me about the projected marriage of his daughter with the provincial scribe, who lived with me. He wished, he said, to cement by this marriage the ancient ties between Nandrau and Noikoro, but the day had passed for marrying girls against their will. His elder daughter had been a great grief to him. She had been so married, and had not long ago put an end to her life. Did I, he asked, from what I knew of Durutalo, think that Janeti would be happy with him?[1] This was not the only example I had of his strong domestic affection.

In the spring of the following year he wrote to me, asking for medicine to relieve a pain in his jaw, and from this time he was unable to leave his village. At length, one day early in July 1887, I received a pathetic letter from him, asking me to lose no time in coming to him. “I am very ill,” he wrote, “and I would have you see my face before I die.”

As the messenger, when questioned, made light of his illness, and I was myself not well enough to undertake so tiring a journey, I determined to wait until I was sure that his urgency was not merely the result of low spirits. But late on the following Sunday night I was awakened by the challenge of the sentry, and immediately afterwards the deep cry of respect, known as the tama, sounded outside my sleeping-house. Lights were brought, and on the doorstep crouched a man, muddy, travel-stained, and exhausted by a long journey. I recognised him as a native of Nandrau, who was selected for his fleetness as district messenger, and when I saw that his hair and beard were cut short, I knew the nature of his errand.

“The chief is dead,” he said; “and he told Tione not to bury him till you, sir, had seen his face. Tione sends you this message.”

There was another reason that required my presence at Nandrau: Tione was not the only claimant to the succession, and I must be there to prevent a disturbance. The messenger would not even wait for food, but returned at once to announce my coming.

In a moment the camp was all awake, and the men turned out to prepare for the journey. The horses were brought in and saddled, and the baggage rolled up in parcels to be carried over the mountain roads. Before daybreak we were fording the river with an escort of some thirty armed constabulary and baggage-carriers. The road lay for some miles along the crest of a forest-clad ridge more than three thousand feet above the sea-level, and when it emerged near the old site of Nambutautau into open country, nothing could exceed the grandeur of the scenery. Two thousand feet below us on the right rushed the Singatoka, foaming among great boulders of rock, and still towering above us was the great wooded range that formed the watershed of the island; while far away before us rose the mountain-wall which separated Tholo from the plains, seeming with its bare masses of castellated rock like a great ruined fortification. And now the road began to descend, and following a precipitous path, which momentarily endangered the legs of our horses, we plunged into the cool shadow of the precipices that overhung Nandrau. At a turn in the road we saw below us the now historical village, jutting out over the river upon a broad ledge of rock. The rara, or village square, was crowded with people, and I noticed a train of women descending the sheer face of the opposite cliff, with loaded baskets on their backs, holding on to stout vines to steady themselves. Here we halted to give time to a messenger to announce our arrival, according to native custom. We watched him enter the village, and saw the people vanish as if by magic into the houses, or sit in groups at the foot of the cocoa-nut palms, and then, in perfect silence, we passed through the village. At the fence that separated the dead chief’s enclosure from the square we dismounted, and were conducted by his eldest son, Tione, to the clean matted house in which we were to lodge.

All through the night there was an incongruous mixture of the sounds of merriment and sorrow. On the river-bank behind our house the five widows of the dead chief, with their women, howled and wailed till morning, like animals in pain. Sometimes the wails would die away into faint moans, and then a wild shriek from one of them would set them all going again. But on the other side stood the great bure, where all the funeral guests were feasting and drinking yangona in honour of the departed spirit.

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

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

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

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

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

FOOTNOTE:

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

TAUYASA OF NASELAI, REFORMER.

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

“On the night of each return from the capital.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Joseva owes me seven pounds already.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A COOLIE PRINCESS.

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

“And do you think she’ll work?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Arjuna!” cried the clerk.

“Arjuna!” repeated the Indian constable outside.

There was a pause.

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

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

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

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

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

“You are charged with absence from work.”

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

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

The evidence is interpreted to the accused.

“Has she anything to say?”

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

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

The accused slightly raises her royal eyebrows.

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

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

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

“Joynauth, did Benain give you this money?”

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

Ramdas’s excitement was great. He was going about the court-house on tiptoe, holding his sides with both hands, and blowing softly from his mouth.

“Dis feller no lie. He makim swear along Kurân, he too much ’fraid;” and he glared at the defendant triumphantly as who should say, “You are convicted, and mine is the hand that did it!”

The defendant was recalled. “Swear him too, Ramdas.”

He paused in holy horror at carrying the awful test further.

“What for dis feller makim swear, sahib? Joynauth, he no lie, he plenty too much ’fraid.”

“Swear him, Ramdas.”

Threateningly he gave Benain the book, and the dread oath was administered.

“Benain, did you give Joynauth this money?”

“Sahib, he lies; I did not.”

The shock to poor Ramdas’s feelings was too great for words. He could only gasp, and dance from one foot to the other. “Oh,” he cried at last, “one man he die very soon, one week, I think!” For it was evident that to one at least of the parties a Kurân that had cost three pound twelve in Calcutta was no more sacred than the book the Kafirs kissed. It mattered nothing to him what decision the court came to. He had simply to watch the stroke of doom fall, as fall it must, upon the perjurer. But two years have passed since that day, and both the witnesses survive, while a stroke of doom, if dismissal from the police force can be so called, has fallen upon Ramdas himself in connection with an adventure in which a bottle of spirits took a leading part. But Ramdas now touts for cases for a solicitor in coolie practice, and is a light and an expounder of the Scriptures to the faithful; and since both these occupations pay better than the police, perhaps he discerns the hand of Allah in his dismissal, and still awaits his vengeance upon the perjurer.

Since open feuds had weakened the ties of loyalty, the poor Princess found that she must either wound her slender hands with the sharp-edged leaves of the Honolulu cane for a slender pittance of ninepence a-day, or again figure in the charge-sheet. She chose the latter as being more in consonance with her dignity. In due course the blue paper that she refused to take was flung at her feet by a policeman, and for the third time she underwent the ordeal of prosecution with a self-possession born of practice. This time—her third offence—no almoner would avail, for she was sentenced to fourteen days’ hard labour without the option of a fine.

Ramdas would have pounced upon her and haled her forth as soon as the sentence was pronounced if he had not been restrained. The indignity of being herded with the other dirty and dishevelled female prisoners was enough without that. At daybreak the wooden station drums sounded for work, and the Princess’s troubles began. It was Meli’s daily triumph to muster the Indian prisoners in a row, and bring up the stragglers into their places with a jerk that audibly clashed their teeth together. These spindle-shanked, stinking coolies called him a bushman!—him, Meli, versed in all chiefly ceremonial, a bushman! Therefore should they know the strength of his arm. The women had sulkily taken their places in obedience to the peremptory command of their tormentor; but the Princess, herself accustomed to command, stood afar off under a clump of feathery bamboos, indifferently watching the scene.

“Lako sara mai koiko. You there! What are you doing? You female roasted corpse! Come here. Kotemiu! (G—d d—n.) Come here, vulari vulu” (—— fool).

The Princess regarded him with lazy curiosity. Then there was the sound of swift running, and as a falcon stoops to the trembling rabbit, so did Meli swoop down upon the now frightened Princess. There was the hurtling of a body through the air, a misty vision of flying draperies and shining gold, a chinking together of many metals, and the Princess was in her place in the line, dishevelled and bewildered, but in the finest rage that it had ever been Meli’s fate to call down upon his woolly head. The storm burst, and all discipline was at an end. He succumbed without a murmur, knowing instinctively that to attempt to check such a torrent would bring down upon him the angry flood of thirteen other female tongues. His colleague left his gang in the bananas to look on, and the male prisoners threw down their hoes and peered, grinning, from among the broad shining leaves, to see his discomfiture. It is not necessary to repeat all the Princess said. Her past history, her present wrongs, her opinion of bushmen in general and Meli in particular, the glories of the Government of India, and the infamy of the Government of the colony, were all exhaustively discussed in language more forcible than elegant. Long after Meli had hustled her companions off to their work, she was still declaiming in a voice that cut the ear like a knife. But when she became conscious that her audience had dwindled to five grinning native prisoners who did not understand her, the outbursts of eloquence became spasmodic, and at last she fell back upon the jail to brood over her wrongs. Then Meli’s courage returned to him, and, armed with a murderous-looking weeding-knife, he followed her to her lair. In two minutes, loudly protesting, she found herself sitting on the grass path with her fingers forcibly closed upon the handle of the knife, which, resist as she would, cut the grass before her with the superior force of Meli’s arm. When left to herself she furiously flung the knife into the bananas, and wept tears of impotent rage. But the native warder, who sat perched on the fork of a dead tree watching the male prisoners as they weeded the bananas, took no notice of her, and so she dried her tears and fell to watching him as he threw stone after stone from the pile in his lap with unerring aim at the prisoners guilty of shirking their work.

But later in the day two Nepaulese, aspirants for court favour, appeared on the scene and energetically cut the grass set for their liege-lady’s task, while she sat listless and indifferent, condescending now and again to pluck with her slender fingers a single blade of grass, with an insolent affectation of satisfying the requirements of the law, whenever the official eye fell upon her. She may have plucked thirty blades of grass in the working day, perhaps not quite so many; but it was much to have vindicated the discipline of the jail, and more to have made the Princess do any work at all. Her spirit was so far broken, and the romance of her story may be said to have ended here.

Coolies may buy out their indentures for a round sum, and by some means this sum was raised among her admirers. There were burglaries in the neighbourhood about that time; and one indeed of the suite was arrested on suspicion by the European sergeant of police, who said as usual, when called upon to produce evidence, “It’s a well-known fact that he’s a noted scoundrel, and I submit to your worship that that’s evidence.”

LEONE OF NOTHO.

“Ië, Setariki, how long did the foreigner say that I must stay bound? Until the month January? That is, after the day of the New Year, and there are four moons to set till then. It is always the way of the Government—wait, wait—till the bones of those who wait crumble away. If I must die, let me die now, Setariki. I told the foreigner in the court that I slew the woman, and the payment is death; therefore, where is the use of waiting? You are a policeman and know the law?”

“The law is this—that you be judged in the Great Court that is held but four times every year. Na-vosa-vakadua [He-who-speaks-once] will judge you, and the foreigners in turbans of sheepskin will dispute and quarrel about you in their own tongue, so that you cannot understand, and the witnesses will swear to speak the truth, and will make all things plain; but one of the foreigners with sheepskin on their heads will ask them many questions to entrap them, and speak angrily to them, seeking to hide the truth, so that their senses will fly from them for fear, and they will lie, and the truth be darkened. Thus did Manoa escape, and that other woman who drowned the white man, although they themselves bore witness that they had done the thing of which they were accused. But they were women, and you, being a man, I greatly fear that you will not escape. The ways of the foreigners are strange, and you cannot understand them; but I, being a policeman in the service of the Government, understand them all; and this I know, Leone, that it is better to be judged in the Great Court, where the judge knows nothing of our tongue, than in the court of the province; for in the Great Court there is much disputing and much darkening of the truth, so that many of the guilty escape.”

“Nay, Setariki; even though they darken the truth until none shall know it from the false, yet cannot I escape, for I have told the bald-headed magistrate that I slew Lusiana.”

“The foreigners I have told you of, whose business it is to twist the truth—loya they are called—will come to you in the prison, and teach you how to lie before the court, and will even lie themselves on your behalf if you will first give them money. The Indians do this every day, feeding these loya with money, and they in return save the Indians from the law. Therefore send to your relations to gather money together for the loya. Send to Vita, who has the rent of your land where the store is; tell him not to spend that money, but to sell copra to add to it. Now tell me the manner of the accusation.”

“What is there to tell? I am Leone of Notho, of the fishermen clan. I did in truth slay the woman Lusiana my wife. It fell thus. I gave the marriage gifts, and my house was built as the law requires; then I took her and we were married. This was ten Sabbaths ago. She was of good report, and none knew aught to her dishonour, so that I feared no other man when I took her to be my wife. She was a woman of a mild spirit and obedient, and I rejoiced greatly in her. Then, one night as we lay upon the one mat under the screen, I, being nearly asleep, heard a tapping upon the bread-fruit tree that grew near the door—such as a sese makes with its beak upon a branch when it eats grasshoppers, only louder; and as I lay wondering what it might be, the sound came again, and from the mat where Lusiana lay there was the sound of tapping as if in answer, but very softly; and I, feigning sleep, breathed heavily, but turned my eyes towards her. Now a lamp was burning in the house, but it was turned low, for the kerosene was nearly dry, and I had no shillings. She seemed to be asleep, but when the tapping sounded again I saw the screen shake, for she had her left arm extended beneath it, and was tapping on the mat with the ends of her fingers. Then I lay very still to see what would happen, and presently she rose softly and crawled out of the screen to the fireplace as if to light her suluka from the embers. After a little she went softly to the door and out; and I, fearing some evil, rose and went swiftly out by another door, taking my clearing-knife from the leaves as I passed. The moon shone brightly. And as I looked from the corner of the house I saw Lusiana, my wife, standing in the shadow of the bread-fruit with a man, who spoke earnestly to her as if to draw her away. Then my blood flowed down in my body, and I came upon them suddenly, and the man fled, but I knew him in the moonlight for Airsai the village constable. But the woman stood and looked at the ground. And I said, ‘Who is that man? Is this your habit when I am lying asleep?’ But she looked always at the ground, and would not answer. Then my anger increased, and I said, ‘Answer me, answer, you light woman!’ But she still was silent. Then I took her by the hand to lead her to the house—I swear to you that I only meant to lead her to the house,—but she resisted me, and tried to draw away her hand from mine. Then I let her go, and great rage entered into me. ‘Will you neither speak nor come with me?’ I shouted. But the woman stood with her back to me, still looking at the ground. And a great strength came upon me, and the knife in my hand became lighter than a reed, and I swung it once in the air, making it hiss, and crying, ‘Speak, woman!’ Then I struck—and her head being bowed, I struck the neck at the back where it looked red in the moonlight that shone between the bread-fruit leaves. The knife paused not, but shore through all, for it was a mighty blow; and the head rolled to the foot of the tree, turning the sand black, and the body sank down where it stood, and struck my knees, spurting blood. Thus my sulu and my legs and feet were all wet. Then I cried for the others to come and see what I had done, and they all came running: first the women, chattering like parrots at sunset, then the men and children, and last of all the village policeman, Airsai. And they took the knife from me, and one brought a clean sulu and put it on me, taking mine to show to the courts; and they went with me to the river to wash the blood from my legs. But when they would ask me questions, I said, ‘Peace! I slew Lusiana. Bind me.’ So they bound my hands with sinnet, and brought me hither, not resisting, for the woman deserved to die.”

“Is that all, Leone?”

“That is all. But one thing is clear, that I cannot escape the law.”

“Nay! Take rest for your mind, Leone. I know a foreigner in the town—a loya—who is skilled in the law, being wont to dispute in the courts. Of late few have paid him money to dispute, and he is hungry for money—for foreigners eat money as we eat yams. For him, skilled as I have said, it will be easy to darken the truth of this thing so that the judge cannot find it, and will doubt whether it was Airsai who slew the woman, or you, or whether she slew herself, or whether, indeed, she was slain at all. Such things has he done for others, and this he will do for you too, if you but pay him sufficient money before the trial.”

RALUVE.

Vere did not tell me the story himself. He does not talk about his past; but squalid as his life is, he cannot help looking like a man with a history, albeit unkempt and half-starved in the struggle to keep his half-caste brats from want. Hoskins, the father of district magistrates, is my authority. He saw no pathos in it, only thought it “an awful pity”; but years of tinned provisions are apt to dull the sense of poetry in any man.

Vere was the usual kind of younger son who leaves a public school with more knowledge of field-sports than Latin, and having passed the limit of age for the army, straightway joins the hosts of unemployed whose ultimate refuge is the States or the Colonies. Unlike most of the young gentlemen who graduate at an army crammer’s, Vere had no vices, and when his turn came to tackle station-life in Australia, he found no temptation to take the usual downward plunge, but hated the life with all his heart. His letters home brought him unexpected relief. The Colonial Office was asked to find a few young men to recruit the Civil Service of a South Sea colony, and Vere, in common with half-a-dozen others, was appointed, through the medium of a friendly chief clerk.

He was kept at headquarters just long enough to wear off the novelty, and to wonder why English-speaking mankind, especially when they hail from Australia, succeed so wonderfully in stamping out all that is picturesque from their surroundings; and then he was sent to Commissioner Austin to be instructed in the mysteries of the native language and customs, until such time as he should be fit for the responsibilities of a Commissioner himself. Now Mr Commissioner Austin was not a gentleman to be entrusted with the care of youth, and to do him justice, he was the last person in the world to desire such a responsibility. The Government had taken him over with the other fixtures of a former régime, and if he had any belongings for whom he ever cared, he had long ago forgotten them. In his own province the Commissioner was a very great man indeed—that is to say, the natives grunted at him when he passed, clapped their hands after touching his, and generally left his presence smacking that part of the human frame that is held in least esteem. But the law of the honour paid to prophets is reversed in the islands, and the Commissioner found that his importance in the social scheme sensibly diminished with every mile from the boundaries of his district, and had therefore allowed his visits to the capital to become very rare. Vere found the great man affable and not inhospitable. “You will stay with me until you can make your own arrangements,” he said; and Vere, not caring to prolong his visit upon such terms, though he had nothing with him but his clothes, lost no time in invoking the good offices of a friendly storekeeper. With his help he found himself in a few days established in a small native house, belonging to a petty chief, without a stick of furniture but the mats that belonged to his landlord, and a mosquito-screen. He wanted nothing more. The mats, with dried grass under them, were soft enough to sleep on, and the floor was cooler and more comfortable than any chair. For the first few days he attended the office regularly in the hope of finding work to do, but his chief never seemed to want him. “No, thanks, Mr Vere, not to-day. This work would be a little beyond you. Perhaps you could not do better than work at the language.” Vere realised later on that the Commissioner had the best of reasons for not finding work for him. He had not enough for himself. There were no coolies in his district, and the native magistrates disposed of the court work. So Vere worked at the language in the only effective way—that is, he spent day after day with his landlord’s family fishing from a canoe, diving for figota, and drinking yangona. He bathed in a stream a few yards from his hut, and had his meals with his native landlord or with a neighbouring storekeeper. The life was too new to be monotonous.

One night as he was dropping off to sleep on his mats, tired out with doing nothing all day, he heard the distant note of a conch-shell mingled with the eternal murmur of the reef. “Turtle-fishers returning with a big bag,” he thought, trying to remember what natives blow conch-shells for, and turned over on the other side. But presently distant voices, as of people aroused and hurrying, awoke the lazy curiosity of one bound to study native customs. A light breeze from the sea was rustling the great palm-leaves like heavy curtains, and though the moon had set, the stars gave light enough to show the dim outline of the rocky island near the anchorage. A light was creeping in towards the beach, and he could just make out the huge triangular sail of a double canoe. Then a hoarse voice from the canoe shouted to the people who were assembling on the beach. Immediately, with a deep exclamation, the babble of voices ceased, and every figure squatted as if by word of command. Two or three men ran off into the village, and Vere drew near the group in the hope of finding some one to explain the situation. He soon found his landlord, who, in pidgin English, told him that the dusky potentate who had despoiled the district for many years had gone to his own place, and that his son reigned in his stead, and had come to receive their homage. The men who had run to the town came back with whale’s teeth, and as the canoe grated on the coral sand the grey-headed village chief squatted with his feet in the sea, and gave the deep grunt of respect, and delivered in low voice a rapid and unintelligible harangue. The crew sprang into the water, and standing waist-deep, dragged the canoe through the yielding sand until her prow rested above the dry beach, and the old man, still squatting, gave the whale’s teeth, hanging in a bunch, to the new-comers. A fire of dead palm-leaves threw a red glare upon the brown faces and glistening bodies of the strangers as they disembarked. A tall young man, evidently the new chief, was the first. He was followed by a number of men and women, who stood aside to wait for another woman who now rose from the little thatched house on the deck. From her bearing, and the respect paid to her, Vere saw she was to be classed far above any he had yet seen. The chief seemed to ask in a whisper who the strange white man was, and learning probably that he was a Government officer, stopped to shake hands with him. The girl stopped too, and looked at Vere as if expecting to be spoken to; but before he could take her hand, she hurried off after the others. They were followed by the whole village into the deep shadow of the palms, and Vere was left alone with the dying fire to watch the crew of the canoe making her snug for the night.

Vere heard all about the new arrivals next day. Of Nambuto he had heard before, a good deal that was discreditable, as is natural and proper to a young leader of the people. The girl was all that an epidemic of measles had left of a line of chiefs beside whom the present rulers of the district were parvenus. Weakened by the ravages of the disease that had thinned out his fighting men, her father had succumbed to the chief who was just dead, and both conquerors and conquered had agreed that Andi Raluve should heal the hereditary quarrel by marrying Nambuto, the eldest son of the victor. It was a tribal matter, and in tribal matters women have no voice, least of all when they are of rank.

The villagers seemed to take their loss with much philosophy. They cut their hair and beards, it is true, and there was a run on black cashmere in the nearest store, but they wasted no time in vain regrets for one whose lightest word a week ago they would have tremblingly obeyed. They devoted all their energies instead to the entertainment of the living. Long-nosed slab-sided pigs were dragged by the hind-legs to the ovens, protesting indignantly, until a few dull thuds clearly explained the situation to them; and Vere’s friends chopped wood, butchered, and cooked under a dense cloud of flies as if their lives depended on their activity. Vere, driven to walk by himself, was idling about near the sea, thinking how a native canoe, improved on, would be an ideal sailing craft, when he came suddenly upon a figure sitting under a great dilo-tree, bent almost double, and shaking with convulsive sobs. Now the natives of these islands are not given to displaying whatever emotions they have, and seeing that the figure was a woman’s, all his English chivalry was startled into life; so, forgetting that she could not understand him, he stooped down, saying, “What is the matter? Can’t I do anything for you?” In the tear-stained face that looked up he recognised Raluve, the lady of the previous night, her big black eyes round with surprise. Reassured by his evident concern, she gave him rapidly and in a low voice what might have been an explanation of her distress, but as it was in her own dialect, he understood not one word of it. With a desperate effort he plunged into Fijian. “If you are in trouble I will help you,” is not a difficult nor complicated sentence in any language. He attempted it, and the result exceeded his expectations, for the girl struggled a moment, and then burst into ringing peals of laughter. Evidently he had used the wrong word, and this girl’s manners were no better than any other savage’s. But she got up as he began to move off, and before they reached the village she had promised to teach him her language.

Next morning he received a visit of ceremony. His door was darkened, there was a whispering and a rustling outside, and then Raluve came in, shyly followed by two attendants of discreet age and mature charms. She sank gracefully on the mats, doubling her feet under her, and the matrons giggled. There was a constrained pause. Clearly this girl could not be amused by the exhibition of a cunningly devised knife or an alarum-clock. Desperately he fell back on photographs. Raluve took each one, looked at it indifferently, and handed it to the nearest duenna, who, being skittish, gazed at it upside down, and poked her companion in the ribs, chuckling immoderately. But the photographs required explanations, and then the lesson began in earnest; for every remark Vere hazarded was first severely corrected, and then criticised by the two frolicsome dames, with vast amusement to themselves. The system of education was primitive, but it satisfied both pupil and mistresses.

“And then Raluve came in, shyly followed by two attendants of discreet age and mature charms.”

If her chaperones were flighty, Raluve showed by contrast a deportment austerely correct. She was by nature and training an aristocrat—well versed in the traditions of her race, which included the belief in a natural gulf fixed between her own and the lower orders, and a vast contempt for the vulgarity of gush. She had been educated on a mission station, where she learned to take an intelligent interest in something beyond getting up linen, and the latest scandal. Now reserve, intelligence, and the manners of a lady are so rare a combination in a native, that the callow Vere began to fill up the blanks in her character in his own way, and to miss the lessons on the days she failed to come, more than he cared to confess to himself. Not many men can use the eyes God gave them without enlarging or belittling, unless they have the loan of others’ eyes to correct their vision by. Some do indeed succeed in viewing life through the wrong end of the telescope, and in enjoying it hugely; but the majority unscrew the lens and gaze on a new world—rocky mountains made of dust-specks, trodden by ants as elephants. Vere, the solitary, was beginning to idealise the natives, and it is all up with the man who does that, since, for some occult reason, it is in the feminine side of the race that the finer qualities are discovered. He was startled to find out for himself that this brown-skinned girl thought and spoke much in the same way as did girls with white skins, with the only difference that she was more natural and naïve. He found himself confiding his worries past and present to her, and asking her advice. He liked her ready sympathy, and her healthy good sense, and her sense of humour amused him; and when, after three weeks of almost daily companionship, he heard it hinted that she would soon leave the island, he knew that she had become a companion whom he would miss very much indeed.

During these three weeks Nambuto, after the manner of his kind, had been eating up the land, and he was in no hurry to go away. But a time comes when the slaughter of pigs and fowls has an end, and at the village meeting the mata-ni-vanua, whose duty it was to apportion each man’s contribution to the daily feast, pointed out that that time had arrived. Besides a couple of elderly sows, on whom their hopes of a future herd were centred, nothing remained to kill. An intimation must be conveyed to their haughty guest. Now it is a fine thing to be a chief in these happy isles. Rank and riches in civilised communities entail responsibilities. We are even told on high authority that the rich are as unlikely to enjoy happiness in this life, as they are certain to lose it in the next, which, to say the least of it, would be rather hard upon the well-to-do if they had not the remedy in their own hands. But a chief in these islands enjoys not only his own wealth, but his subjects’ besides, and has neither responsibility nor that product of civilisation called a conscience to trouble him. He does not sleep less soundly for fear the crushed worm may turn. The crushing was done too effectually for that some generations ago.

Nambuto wore his new responsibilities lightly. They seemed to consist chiefly in consuming the food brought to him by his uncomplaining and despised hosts, who, if they ever came as visitors to his island, would be kept from starvation by his vassals. But comfortable though he was, his visit had to be curtailed owing to the natural difficulty in reanimating pigs and fowls that have been cooked and eaten. The morning’s presentation of food had been meagre, and the excuse that the land was in famine was conveyed to Nambuto’s household. There was no help for it. The great canoe was unburied from the pile of leaves that had sheltered it from the burning sun, and hauled down to the water’s edge; the great mat sail was spread upon the sand, while deft fingers replaced the broken threads with new sinnet; and the word went forth that she would put to sea when next the wind was fair.

Raluve came earlier than usual that morning, and, to Vere’s surprise, alone. She walked straight up to the chair where he was sitting, and said, “I have come to take leave.”

“Why, where are you going to?” he asked.

“To our land. And I must take leave quickly, lest they be angry with me for coming.”

She spoke hurriedly—almost roughly—and held out her hand with averted face. Vere sprang to his feet, and slammed the door of his hut.

“You can’t go like this, Raluve, until I know all about it. Why didn’t you tell me yesterday?”

“It is Nambuto’s decision. I have only just been told. But the canoe is all prepared, and they will sail to-day, for the wind is fair.”

Vere felt bitterly disappointed. He had almost forgotten that her mind, like the colour of her skin, must be different from his. He had taken her seriously, and made a chum of her, and here she was going back to her own people without a word of regret. He now remembered how one-sided their intimacy had been. She had listened patiently to all his confidences, but had told him nothing about herself in return. Well, it had been a pleasant dream, and of course it was common-sense that the awakening must come. What could he, an educated Englishman, have to do with her, the future wife of a savage? This was not even to be his adopted country. Of course he must say good-bye to her, and let his dream fade into the squalid reality of his life. But he felt angry with himself and her.

“Why should they be angry with you?” he asked indifferently, as he put out his hand.

“Because my people are like beasts,” she answered indignantly, “and there have been many words about us, and Nambuto is angry, and has spoken evil to me. Look! I will hide nothing from you.” And then she told him her whole story, lapsing into her own dialect in her excitement, so that he could not follow her: how she had been betrothed to Nambuto against her will; how Vere was the only friend she had ever had, for the men of her nation knew not what friendship with a woman could be; how she would now have to go with them, and be insulted by them all, with none to protect her, or be her friend.

“Isa,” she cried, “you are a white man, and know everything, and I am a black woman and ignorant: tell me of some medicine, that I may drink and die! I cannot bear my life.”

Then all Vere’s better qualities rose to drag him down. All the chivalry in him was stirred. He was not going to see this girl bullied, and on his account. Whatever the consequences might be, he must protect her. A worse man would have wisely reflected that native customs are best left alone, and that, after all, the prospect painted by Raluve was not so very terrible—for a native woman. But prudence does not wed with youth, and to Vere, who had already begun to lose the sense of proportion, her fate seemed horrible. The average man needs one month in the great world for every five in the islands to correct his perspective, and to realise the utter insignificance of himself and his surroundings, otherwise he will infallibly come to believe that it matters whether or not the coral foundations of the islands crumble away, and the whole colony, executive machinery and all, go to the bottom of the Pacific in the next hurricane.

Vere’s fluency astonished himself. He found the words without looking for them. The figure at his feet on the mats was so limp and helpless, so hard to reassure by comforting words, that he threw aside all caution in his promises. So they sat on till the pattern of the sunlight through the reed walls crept across the floor-mats, and began to climb the opposite wall, dyeing Raluve’s bowed head with red gold streaks. Suddenly they heard a woman’s voice in the road calling her name, and in another moment one of her women looked in at the door breathless, saying, “I am dead of looking for you. The chief sent me. We sail to-morrow, and it is his word that you come at once.”

Raluve looked at Vere appealingly. “There will be much anger shown to me,” she said; “how shall it be? Am I to go?”

We never know the turning-points in our lives at the time; and so Vere, following that which supplies healthy-minded men with a substitute for a conscience, his own inclination—said, “Do not go. If they are angry come to me.”

When she had gone and the light had faded, he began to feel very uncomfortable. He had encouraged her in resisting her own people, and he was, after all, quite powerless to prevent them from ill-treating her. Ugly stories crossed his mind of the doings of the old heathen days, of the outrage and torture inflicted even on women when they resisted the chiefs. Perhaps even at that very moment the storm was breaking on her. The suspense was becoming unbearable when he heard a smothered cough at the door. In the dim light a woman pushed a crumpled note into his hand and vanished into the darkness. It was Raluve’s first letter to him. The writing was in pencil, childish but clear, for Raluve had been taught by the missionary’s wife.

“I am most pitiable,” she wrote. “Nambuto has spoken evil of me before our people and the people of this place, and I am despised. But this is nothing, for they sail to-morrow. Only I fear lest they do something to me by force, and I go to hide in the forest. I will come back when they return. And another thing, Nambuto spoke evil of you also. I send my love to you.—R.”

“The canoe was afloat, and laden with such of the low-borns’ household gods as their aristocratic visitors thought worth taking away.”

Next morning there was a hue and cry. The canoe was afloat, and laden with such of the low-borns’ household gods as their aristocratic visitors thought worth taking away. The mat-sail was bent, and ready to be hoisted, but Raluve was nowhere to be found. The palm-groves around the village resounded with her name, and four of the crew of the canoe even went so far as to stand shouting her name in front of Vere’s house. This was hard to bear. Then one of them struck up in a sing-song tone an extempore verse, which the rest received with a burst of coarse laughter. This too was very hard to bear. Then another cried, “Lady Raluve, are there not white men in our own land?” And this being too hard to be borne, the wit saw the flash of white clothes, and found himself dazed upon his back in the grass, with the sensation of having had his face crushed in, while his three companions were in full flight up the read. And Vere returned to his hut relieved in feelings, but with a curious sense of having been degraded to a lower rank of humanity where he stood upon the same level with half-naked savages who wrangle and fight over their women. Two hours later, his fat good-natured landlord, passing his door, volunteered the information that the canoe had sailed. Being a wise man, he said nothing about the missing girl, the great topic of village scandal, and thereby earned Vere’s confidence.

Now it is not to be supposed that Raluve could escape from annoyance with the departure of her people. These happy isles are no more free from the love of scandal than is civilised Europe. A people endowed with the love of social converse, and without any legitimate object for discussion, naturally falls back upon the topics most dear to the frequenters of small European watering-places. Such a prize as the reputation of a chief woman, hitherto unsmutched, to tear to pieces, would not glut the carrion-crows of this small district for many weeks. And with the knowledge that Raluve had earned her chief’s displeasure, all respect for her rank vanished; for they shared with a certain class of society journal the gloating triumph that only rank and character tottering from its pedestal can properly awaken. So when Raluve quietly returned to the village to take up her abode with the chief’s wife, she found that it would need all her strength to live the scandal down. Deeply wounded as she was to find that by her own act she had earned the scorn of a people she had been trained to despise, her courage soon returned to her, and she gave back scorn for scorn. But she lived on with her one friend, the village chief’s wife, a woman of her own island and her own clan; and as the days passed, and the scandal became stale, she began to take her proper place among them.

Vere was not allowed to escape scathless. The village scandal had of course leaked out among the few Europeans of the place, and as they were precluded from comparing notes with one another, not being on speaking terms for the most part, each one supplied the details according to the richness of his individual fancy. The principal storekeeper’s wife told her daughter that he was an unprincipled young man; and the damsel, having heard all the details from her native confidante, who did the family washing, examined Vere as he passed with redoubled interest. The missionary bowed coldly, and his wife cut him dead. But, worst of all, Commissioner Austin felt it his duty to have his say in a stammering speech, which began, “I don’t pretend to be a particularly moral man myself, but——” and got no further, because Vere, who knew very well what was coming, was short in the temper, and replied with heat, “Mr Austin, I am a very moral man, and I always mind my own business,” which, as a rejoinder, was coarse and unwarrantable, and offended his well-meaning chief past redemption. He felt very sore and angry with the world that chose to regard what he felt to be the fruit of his nobler self as a mere boyish escapade, and he hardened his heart into a defiant resolve to keep his promise to Raluve, and let the world say what it pleased. Probably if the world had left them alone, or if either of them had been a coward, Vere would not have become—well, what he now is.

The next six weeks taught Vere some new things. He learned, for instance, that a brown-skinned girl has much the same kind of heart inside her as her white sisters; that, when in love, she will say and do all that has been said or done by a highly civilised woman, save only that she is more simple, and less tamed by conventionality; that love counts no cost, and asks only to be free from artificial restraint, and utterly careless of the future. His life for the past six weeks had been like some perfect dream that fears no awakening. Memories of home, the throb of the great world, the ambitions of his boyhood, touched him like the murmur in the ears of one who, standing in some silent wood, seems to hear the roar of the city he has just left. How often in a lifetime can any of us pause and say, “This is perfect; I ask for nothing more”? We can no doubt remember many perfect moments in our lives, because we have forgotten the little vexations,—that we had the toothache, and our account was overdrawn; for it is the petty worries and the cares of civilised life that prevent our happy moments from being quite perfect. The tempo felice was never quite so happy as we think, nor the miseria quite so wretched. But Vere’s life was happy enough to be worth paying for. He had met Raluve every day, and had come to look on life as quite impossible without her. Sometimes they had met at a trysting-place of Raluve’s choosing in the forest, where a great tavola-tree barred the entrance into a narrow gorge in the hills. Sometimes they had wandered on moonlight nights along the sandy beach; and once Raluve had plunged, laughing, into the warm sea, daring him to follow her, and had swam to the little islet that lay a few hundred yards from the shore. But once, as they sat talking beneath the tavola-tree, Raluve had clutched his arm, listening to some distant sound, and a few moments later a man had crashed through the underwood and stopped a few yards from the tree, hidden from them by the great trunk. Then Vere prepared himself for battle, but the intruder crashed off again in another direction. Thereafter Raluve declared their trysting-tree unsafe, and the island became their regular place of meeting. There had once been a house on the point, but nothing was left to mark the spot but a number of oleander-trees, and a patch of couch-grass which the sheep had trimmed down. Here at least they were safe from intrusion, for they could see any boat upon the starlit strait that divided them from the shore long before it could land. And to make their safety surer, they swam off independently after night had fallen. Vere told the girl the story of Hero and Leander, and she thereafter would laughingly wave a smouldering branch among the oleanders as a signal to Vere to bind his clothes on his head and swim across to her.

But the awakening came at last. One morning a cutter anchored bringing the mails from headquarters. Besides his usual home letters, there was an oblong official envelope addressed to him. The letter was short. Somebody had the honour to request that he would report himself at headquarters at his earliest convenience, with the view of taking up an appointment as magistrate of another district. So here was his promotion before he expected it. Three months ago it would have delighted him, now it seemed the worst misfortune that could befall him. To leave this place meant giving up Raluve, for it was out of the question that she could go with him, unless he caused a scandal that would cost him his appointment. And yet what prevented him from shaping his life as he chose? He had only desired promotion to shorten the time of his exile, and life with Raluve was no longer like exile, for he had eaten of the lotus, and the smell of the reef had entered into his soul.

Never did the sea seem so cold, nor the island so distant, as on that night. A light rain was falling, and the smell of the oleander-flowers was carried to Vere by the light wind as he swam; and while he waded ashore shivering, Raluve came out from the shadows to meet him.

“E Kalokalo, I am dead with waiting. I waved my brand, but you did not see it, and now it has gone out. And I began to fear, thinking of the woman you told me of, who saw her lover’s dead body washed up at her feet.”

“Am I late? I was reading letters that the cutter brought—letters from papalangi.”

“From your own people? E Kalokalo, you have never told me of them. Some day they will make you throw me aside, and you will take a marama of your own land to wife.”

“What is this foolishness, Raluve? Who has put foolish words into your mouth?”

“I thought they were foolish words, but now I know they are true. Alika——”

“Alika is a foolish old woman. What did she tell you?”

“She said, ‘Raluve, this white man loves you. You are fortunate, for the white men love better than our men; but for all that he will leave you, and return to his own people, taking one of them in marriage.’ And when I grew angry she said, ‘Did Kaiatia keep Lui, the German, though she bore him two children? And why does Alisi go about Lakeba like a hen with half her feathers plucked out?’ Then I knew that her words were true; for Lui has a white woman for wife now, and Alisi was beaten by her people because of Tomu, the trader, and he left her, saying he would return, and did not. And one day you will leave me, Kalokalo.”

Vere said nothing, feeling her eyes upon him in the dim light.

“But I will know whether it shall be so,” she went on. “Sit down: no, not there on the grass, but on the sand. Now see,” she said, taking up an empty cocoa-nut shell, “when I spin this cup it shall fall toward one of us. If it falls toward you, then you will leave me, and marry one of your people; and if it fall toward me—— See, it spins. Mana dina! Ah, faithless one, it topples like Kata, the kava-drinker!”

The shell reeled, lurched, and fell toward the girl, rolling away on its side from between them. Raluve’s hands fell to her side.

“Nay; but the shell spoke the truth,” said Vere, laughing.

But the girl had become serious.

“It is a heathen game, and we ought not to have done it, therefore it lied. And if you doubt that it lied, I will take a Bible to-morrow, and swear that I will never leave you. Then if I swear falsely, I shall die as Ana did, when she swore she did not burn down Finau’s house. But you will leave me, and it is right; for you are my chief, and I am a black woman, and I could not bear that you should be despised by your people because of me. What is she like, Kalokalo?”

“Who?”

“The woman you will marry. She must be a great lady like the Governor’s wife, not like the maramas of Levuka, who are angry, and have harsh voices. I hate them: but you would never take one of them?”

“And what would you do if I married, Raluve?”

“I would be your wife’s servant if she would let me; but if you left me for one of my own people——” She caught her breath, and half-started up. He thought she was excited by her own speech, but her face was set, and her body tense. She was listening. “Somebody is coming,” she whispered. Vere strained his ears, but could hear nothing but the faint hiss of the sand as the tiny waves sucked it back.

“I hear nothing,” he said.

She put her hand on his mouth, and rose upon her knees, looking seawards. After some seconds she stooped.

“There are no other double canoes but Nambuto’s. I can hear the sua, four of them, therefore it is a double canoe. They are sculling against the wind, and may land here. Come, let us swim across.”

But while Vere still hesitated, scarcely believing her, the quiet air was pierced by the deep note of a conch-shell from the sea.

“It is Nambuto,” she said, excitedly. “Vonu? No, they do not blow like that for vonu” (turtle).

It was too late to think of swimming ashore. In another moment the beach would be alive with men. Raluve drew Vere back into the shadow of the oleanders, and made him lie down lest his white face should be seen. He could see her crouching at the edge of the sand. Gradually he began to distinguish a dull rhythmical beat, and the girl drew back into the shadow. The sound grew louder, and then he saw a dark mass emerging from the night, which took the shape of a great canoe, creeping inshore against the light land-breeze which had just sprung up. It glided on noiselessly, save for the rhythmical blow of the sua as they rocked from side to side in the sockets, while the figures of the four scullers stood out in sharp silhouette against the sky-line. It passed so close to the point of the island that Vere could have thrown a biscuit on to the deck, and could hear every word spoken by those on board. When it had passed on to the beach, Vere realised how great had been the strain to Raluve.

“Nambuto is there; I heard his voice. What shall I do?”

It seemed a small matter to Vere whether Nambuto came back or not. He could not realise that this girl by his side, who thought and spoke so rationally, was still one of her own people, bound to fear what they feared, and to respect the customs that had become stronger than law to them. That she, an affianced chief woman, should prefer a white man to a man of her own race, was as great a social crime as it would be were a countrywoman of ours to tolerate an Indian rajah.

Meanwhile the party had landed from the canoe, and the voices on the beach were silent. Raluve thought she had heard her name called in the direction of Vere’s house; but they waited until the cocks had crowed in the village, and a few sleepy birds had begun twittering in the trees on the island. It was the safest hour for their return: the natives, roused in the night, would sleep late that morning. Still Raluve feared to take a direct course to the shore, and, calling to Vere to follow her, waded through the shallow water and struck out, steering a diagonal course towards the shore opposite Vere’s house. The water was brilliantly phosphorescent, and her body seemed to be clothed in polished silver as she swam. Every stroke of her arms and feet scattered a shower of diamonds that flashed a moment and vanished in the black water; and from before her hundreds of fish, taking her for an enemy, shot away, leaving a dull train of fire behind them like shooting-stars in a dark sky. It was a long swim, for it was high tide; but as they waded ashore, tired and out of breath, the beach seemed deserted. There was only the dark shelter of the trees to be gained, and they were safe. They stopped a moment on the sand to put on the clothes they had tied round their heads, and then hurried up towards the trees. But before they reached them there was a shout from the bush just in front of them, answered by two voices further off in different directions.

“They have seen us,” said Raluve, hurriedly. “Run away, Kalokalo. I will wait for them here.”

But Vere had no idea of running away, and stood his ground by her side. There was the sound of a man crashing through the bushes, and a native ran into the open and stood before them. It was Nambuto.

There was silence for some moments. Raluve stood facing him with heaving breast, while Vere clenched his fists, and drew nearer to her. The chief broke the silence with the most insulting word in his language. Vere did not understand the word, but the man’s tone and Raluve’s passionate indignation were enough for him.

“You scoundrel!” he cried in English from between his set teeth; “how dare you speak to her like that?”

Nambuto, expecting a blow, put up both hands to defend his face, and Vere, mistaking the gesture in the dim light, thought he was about to strike him. In a moment Nambuto was reeling backwards, stunned with a heavy blow between the eyes, and as he fell he shouted a few words at the top of his voice.

“Run, Raluve, and hide yourself,” cried Vere.

“Come with me,” she answered; “he has called his men, and they will kill you.”

She tried to drag him into the trees, for they could hear voices and the crashing of the undergrowth, as Nambuto’s men ran in the direction of their chief’s voice.

“Run and hide yourself,” cried Vere again, excitedly pushing her into the shadow of the trees. He had just time to reach the trunk of a great dilo-tree, and put his back against it, when five men ran out on to the beach where Nambuto sat rubbing his eyes as if stupefied.

“Seize the white man!—he has struck me,” he cried.

They came upon Vere cautiously, for he was a formidable object for unarmed natives to tackle. “Quick, a stick,” cried one, and ran to pick up a rough worm-eaten piece of drift-wood. He dodged the first blow and knocked down one of them, who tried to run in under his guard, but the second blow struck his shoulder, and he fell. Before he could rise they were upon him, trampling and stamping the breath out of his body. But help was near. Raluve had run to the nearest house, and it was that of Vere’s landlord and particular friend. But she outstripped him, and was among Vere’s assailants, raging like a tigress, long before he came up. It is no easy matter to quiet savages when their blood is once up; but her prestige among them was still great, and one after another they slunk off before her indignant flow of invective. She was almost terrible in her anger, as a woman can only be when she is defending some one she loves.

I once saw a woman, meek, cowed, and dispirited with the years of slavery called marriage among these people, divorced from her husband, who beat her. She did not seem to have a soul above her yam-patch, nor could she be stirred to a show of interest by the announcement of her freedom. Her child, an ill-favoured brat, eruptive with sores, sat by her side, and when she heard that it was to be taken from her, even that woman became terrible in her indignation.

Raluve’s anger all changed to the most perfect tenderness as she helped her companion to lift Vere, all bruised and stunned, and carry him to his own house. Once there she would not leave him, but sat fanning him far into the day, without thinking of hunger or thirst, until a friendly storekeeper, who had heard of the disturbance, came to see him. No bones were broken. There were some bad bruises, and an unsightly black eye. But as any movement gave him intense pain, he wisely lay still, and slept away the greater part of the day, while Raluve sat fanning him. Late in the afternoon a burly form filled the doorway. Mr Commissioner Austin was, sorely against his will, come to do his duty. He began by suggesting that Raluve should withdraw, but she would not go farther than the end of the house. Was Vere much hurt? No. Well, he was glad to hear it. He was awfully sorry about the whole business. These wretched connections always ended alike, because they brought Europeans down to the level of natives. But it would be a lesson to Vere, who would take what he had to say in good part. But Vere did not take it in good part at all, and told him so. He had some news, however. The vessel in which Vere was to leave for headquarters was to sail in a day or two, and Nambuto had been ordered to go before the end of the week.

Left to himself, Vere had ample time to consider his position. This girl loved him,—there was no doubt in his mind about that. What did he feel for her in return—gratitude, the vanity kindled by unsought love, or something stronger than either? And if he could drop back into the life she lived, the life man was intended to live, free from all the vulgar struggle and squalor of civilisation, in some island to the eastward, far from his own kind, where the smell of the reef and the warm wind would possess his senses, he would surely ask for nothing more. But there was a reverse to the picture. If it were to mean the life that some white men, who had abjured civilisation, lived, despised alike by their fellows and the people they consorted with, he could see nothing but misery before them both. He tried to remember a single case where the marriage of a white man to a native woman had turned out happily. There was Bonson, an educated man like himself. One could read the man’s history in his face. All self-respect was crushed out of him now, but how he must have suffered for his mistake when it was too late! No; a curse seemed to follow the union of opposite races: they must put this folly out of their hearts, and each follow the destiny to which they were born. But as he turned to speak to Raluve he met her eyes fixed upon his face. She had crept up to his bed as he lay with his face to the wall.

“What is in your mind, Kalokalo, my star? I cannot bear your face to be hidden from me, for then evil thoughts enter your mind, and your face is changed towards me. Are you in pain?” she asked, laying her hand gently on his forehead.

“Raluve,” he said, taking her hand, “I was wondering how I shall fare without you.”

“But you are not going to leave me?” she said, catching her breath. “If you go, I must go with you to take care of you.”

“We do not plan our lives,” he answered; “it is ordered that I go from here in three days.”

Her hand dropped from his, and she sat quite still. He could hear her breathing, but cowardice kept him from looking at her. The light waned and the house became dark, but still she made no sign. At last he could bear the silence no longer.

“Speak, Raluve,” he said; “is it not better for us both that I should go?”

“For you it is better,” she answered in a low voice, “and therefore it must be. But for me the darkness has fallen, and is eating me up.”

What could he say more? The pain had to be borne, and he would only make it worse by speaking. Then as he made no reply, she got up and left the house without another word.

Vere’s bruises did not trouble him long. In two days he was busied about his packing, and on the morning the steamer was expected he was ready for the voyage. He had not seen Raluve since he had told her of his determination, and he had felt his courage too weak to risk another interview like the last. But he could not leave her without saying good-bye, and he had just made up his mind to find her when she herself came in. She had brought a beautiful mat as a parting gift. Disregarding all native ceremonial, she laid it down at his feet, saying, “This is to be your sleeping-mat, and it will be my shadow with you, so that you may not forget me.” When he had thanked her, she put out her hand abruptly, saying, “You are going: let us take leave of one another here.”

Vere had only to take the hand and let her go, but he had pictured to himself quite another sort of leave-taking, and his vanity was wounded.

“Are we to part as if we were at enmity, Raluve? Every one shakes hands, therefore we must kiss each other: besides, I want to know what you will do when I am gone.”

The girl looked at him angrily. “It is nothing to you where I go when you are gone. You are a white man, and I am a black woman. I amused you, my chief, while you were here, and you will find another to amuse you in the place to which you go.”

“Raluve, are you angry with me?”

“No. You are a white man, and white men always treat my people so.”

“But think——”

“Give me no more reasons. It is enough that I myself would not make you despised of your own people. It is best that you should go.”

“But what will you do?”

“I also will go away. The steamer will carry you far, but my canoe shall bear me farther still,” and she laughed a hard little laugh. Then she got up to go, and Vere dared not detain her. She did not respond to his parting kiss, but left the house with averted face. What could she have meant by her last words? He remembered with sickening dread that he had heard of natives killing themselves for the most trivial reasons. Men and women had climbed cocoa-nut-trees and flung themselves down because their townsfolk ridiculed them, and Raluve, refined as she was, had a native’s feelings underneath the surface. If she meant this, the rest of his life would not be pleasant to him. And as he sat pondering a sound caught his ear, and he ran to the door. There sat Raluve trying in vain to stifle her passionate sobs. He tried to raise her, and draw her back into the house, but she resisted, crying, “O Kalokalo, I cannot leave you in anger, therefore kiss me, and let me go; my love for you is hurting me.”

She returned his kiss this time, and in a moment she had passed behind the palm-stems.

Two hours later Vere was shaking hands with his native friends on the beach, hardly daring to look along the line of faces for fear that Raluve might be among them. But she was not. He strained his eyes from the steamer as she moved slowly out to distinguish the tall lithe figure he knew so well. On the hill above the village was a great boulder of black limestone, hurled from the topmost pinnacle of the island in some old earthquake. As they steamed away he saw a movement on the top of the rock. With his glasses he made out the figure of a woman dressed in white, as Raluve had been that morning. She took off her upper garment, waved it once above her head, and then flung it far out towards the steamer. The wind caught and bore it sideways, but before it had fluttered down among the tops of the palms the figure was gone. It was Raluve’s farewell.

Vere had plenty of leisure during the two days’ voyage to think over the past. Till now he had been buoyed up by the sense of doing that which was difficult and disagreeable, and therefore probably right,—for his early training had imbued him with the idea that the pleasant ways of life lead into the “broad road”; but now he began to feel unaccountably ashamed of himself. If he had been to blame for accepting the girl’s love, still, he thought complacently, the wrench had been as great for him as for her. But argue as he would, he felt that he was running away from a situation he did not dare to face,—that he was betraying and deserting a woman. What was it that she had said? “The steamer will carry you far, but my canoe shall bear me farther still.” Why, if she had that sort of temptation in her present state of nervous excitement, she would yield, of course. What might she not be doing at this very moment while the engines trampled on and put mile after mile between them? And he might save her if he were there. Pulses began to beat in his brain, and he got up and raced along the empty deck. Only a blue wavy line on the eastern horizon remained of the island. As he looked at it, trying to picture the village that lay beneath it, the memories of the last three weeks rushed over him, with Raluve as the centre of each picture,—her tenderness, her soft words, even the proud little pose of the head that he had so often teased her about. It was a very perfect life while it lasted. Then he began to remember words that he had said but forgotten till now,—words that she must have taken as promises. Nay, but they were promises, and he, an English gentleman, bound by promises, was coolly breaking them. With every throb of the propeller this feeling became stronger, until he had persuaded himself that he was already bound by the past, and was no longer master of his own actions. There was a feeling of rest in having come to a determination, and his mind recoiled from the idea of again reviewing the arguments that had led to it step by step.

The first action on landing was to write the best and most foolish letter he had ever written, resigning his appointment, without offering any explanation. Then he made terms with the skipper of a cutter that sailed the same afternoon to carry him back. He went on board at once, not daring to meet any one he knew lest awkward questions might be asked.

They had a head-wind all the way back, and Vere became ill with anxiety and excitement during the four days’ voyage. At last the palm-groves he had left a week ago were in sight, and he was straining his eyes in trying to recognise Raluve’s figure among the crowd on the beach. She was not there. He landed with a sense of sickening fear. Two or three natives shook hands with him, but he dared not ask them the question he longed to have answered. A couple of storekeepers’ assistants were the only white men on the beach. They stared at him in open astonishment, and then explained his return in their own way with many grins and nudges of the elbow. He hurried to his landlord’s house, knowing that he would tell him the unvarnished truth without gloating over the scandal. The daughter of the house was alone in the house mending a net. Without waiting to account for his sudden appearance, he said, “Where is Raluve?” The girl knew the story, and hesitated. “Tell me,” he cried, angrily, “Am I a sick man that you fear to say the truth? Where is she?”

“She has gone,” answered the girl.

“Gone whither?”

“With Nambuto,” she said, falteringly.

“Say on.”

The story was short. On the day he had left there had been a great meeting, and Raluve had been admonished before all the chiefs. Nambuto had spoken kindly to her, and day after day they had waited till she should make up her mind. Then gradually the old feeling of her race must have gained upon her, and the memory of the dream that had passed waxed fainter. Her people would take her back, and her lover had deserted her, and as for death by her own hand—it was most terrible.

“But why do you say she has gone with Nambuto?” asked Vere, fiercely. “They are not married? Speak plainly all that you know.”

“They are not yet married, but this I know, that they sailed in Nambuto’s canoe this morning, and before they sailed Raluve’s tombe[2] was cut off.”

FOOTNOTE:

[2] The tombe is a long lock of hair worn by Fijian girls until they marry, as a sign of maidenhood, the rest of the hair being short.

THE RAIN-MAKERS.