Mr Joyce and Mythologies—Numea and the Convicts—I play Violin to Native King and get a Knighthood!!—I lead a Native Orchestra of Barbarian Instruments

Joyce took a great fancy to me and I to him, and I was eventually engaged as his travelling secretary. He was very fond of music and would get me to play his favourite melodies, and as I entertained him he would sit by his bungalow with his hands on his knees, and often would give me a gracious smile as he gazed through his big-rimmed spectacles. He took a passage on the schooner Barcoo, bound for Rarotonga, and I went with him. We had some terrible weather on the voyage and poor old Joyce was sea-sick the whole time, and as we skimmed along with all sails set heaving to a broadside swell he looked the picture of woe as he spewed in the schooner’s scuppers. In his sorrow he forgot his hat, and his whiskers pulled up and tied in a knot on top of his head doing duty as hair gave him a woeful look and I felt very tenderly for him; for he could not help being old and bald—could he?

Rarotonga was a lovely Island. As they loosed the anchor ready to drop I gazed shoreward and saw the grand mountainous country brilliant under the tropical sun and covered with vegetation. Close to the shore stood the coco-palms, and by the sheds on the beach under the shelter of the palms stood the natives, fine-looking men and women they were, some half-dressed and some only in their lava-lavas. As soon as we dropped the anchor they swarmed round the schooner in their catamarans, bringing us corals and other curios of the South Seas. That night we enjoyed ourselves ashore, and were specially entertained by the King and Queen. They were both dressed in old dressing-gowns, and as they sat on the throne I played them a selection on the violin and the King knighted me on the spot.

Joyce was delighted with all that he saw and kept saying that his health was improving rapidly, and to tell the truth he got badly smitten with love over a Rarotongan girl, and under very suspicious circumstances disappeared for twenty-four hours. Next day he took me inland and up in the hills he visited the natives in their primeval homes. There were a lot of missionaries about and they all looked happy and prosperous. Joyce was deeply interested in the mythologies and genealogies of the Island races, and would go inland for miles so as to investigate native manners and characteristics. I remember well how he would see a fine specimen of the Polynesian fair sex walk out from her forest home, and rush up to her, take his rule from his waistcoat pocket, start to measure her from head to foot, open her mouth wide and examine her teeth, all the time taking notes down in his pocket-book, while the astounded native stood like a machine, obedient as a statue, knowing that a good tip would end the examination. “Of decided Maori origin,” he would mutter to himself as he lifted the limbs up and examined the soles of the patient’s feet.

I must say I enjoyed Joyce’s society, for he was immensely amusing and so serious in all that he did. Sometimes he would run across a native with a face that suggested the palÆolithic period, or a terrible Mongolian-nigger mixture, and then out came his camera and he would snapshot them with delight. He would measure their limbs and turning to me point at the hideous nose, or extraordinary pot-belly, and say, “My boy, this is a fine specimen of the neolithic age.” Then he would start to give me a lecture as to the reasons of certain abnormal conditions, while the grinning native showed his big teeth and did the right about turn and stooped to show to Joyce the different parts of his anatomy.

The next day Joyce made me tramp right up to the forest that lay at the ridge of the inland mountains and that night we slept in a native bungalow with two old Rarotongan men who had promised to take Joyce into the hills and show him an Island South Sea god. It was a beautiful moonlight night. Joyce lay on the bed of leaves beside me asleep, his beard tied in a knot over his head so as to keep it well trained, and as I lay sleepless, watching and thinking, a shadow fell across the tiny room. “Look out, Mr Joyce,” I shouted and not a moment too soon either, for there stood one of the Rarotongan old men with a war-club upraised. I sprang to my feet and gave him a tremendous shove. He was a strong fellow, and as I fell he got hold of me with a firm grip, but I was desperate and strong too, and I made a great effort and got him under me, and then he fixed his teeth in a fleshy part of my shoulder as I gripped him by the throat with all my might. In the meantime Joyce had rubbed his eyes and was hastily searching around for something to strike the native with and then down came his camera, crash on the old man’s head! His teeth at once relaxed their grip from my flesh and up he jumped and ran off out into the moonlit night, running fast with Joyce’s camera in his hand, for that no doubt was what he was after.

We never saw him again, and poor old Joyce was so nervous, and so was I, over the night’s experience that we gave up searching for old idols and left the inland solitudes and went back to the bay and, knocking about for a week or so, finally sailed for Numea, where Joyce spent days among the “libres” (time-expired convicts). He also took me into the prisons, where we saw the most wretched men and women in existence, suffering transportation for life, the map of despair seared on their faces as they gazed through the bars of their small whitewashed cells as Joyce and I were taken down the hushed corridors of the gaol wherein men were incarcerated and brooded till they died. We also saw the guillotine whereon the refractory convicts often met their end and man’s inhumanity to man finished in sudden deep sleep.

I do not know what Numea is like now, but it was a kind of mortal hell in those days, and I was sorry that Joyce had taken me there as I lost a good deal of respect for human beings and all my faith in a fatherly overwatching Providence. Joyce for a while gloated over all that he saw and heard, but in a week he too sickened of Numea and ended the trip by taking a passage and paying mine also to Suva. There was a schooner just about to leave, so off we went, and after staying at Suva for a fortnight proceeded by another boat to Tonga and finally went across to Apia, where Joyce intended shipping for Sydney.

Once more I fell in with traders, and stayed at and around Samoa for another three months, during which time I went off roving and stumbled across the village where lived King Mataafa. I was introduced to him by one of the chiefs, a fine-looking Samoan of six feet, who turned out a good friend to me. Mataafa honoured me with his friendship, and I gave him great pleasure by my violin playing as I sat on a mat in the royal native house, and he sat in front of me drinking “kava,” while his retinue, following the laws of Samoan etiquette, imitated the royal gestures. I stayed in the village for several days and I saw the chiefs and other Samoan royalty go through many weird court dances, dressed up in picturesque fashion, robed in stitched palm leaves, flowers and tappu-cloth lava-lavas. At all those functions I played the violin, and indeed I was the court musician and conductor of the primitive orchestra of South Sea bone-clappers, with instruments of jingling shells and weird bamboo flutes and barbarian war-drums. All these were played, screamed and banged at full speed as I too fired away on my violin, doing my best to keep the tempo going, as the dancers did high-step kicks and flings that would have sent any European to the hospital with dislocated joints, but which did not even make those strange dancers perspire, with such ease and elegance did they perform the original dances of those climes. One old native woman with a big red blossom in her dark shaggy hair kept bowing to the ground and with pride revealed the tattooed descriptions of fighting warriors brandishing war-clubs, and other strange inscriptions which were deeply engraved from her shoulders to the lower part of her broad bare back!

I became acquainted at that feast with a young Island princess, the daughter of one of the Samoan or Tonga kings, I really forget which. She was very beautiful, and was one of the dance leaders, and as I watched her dance, attired in a robe of flowers, and broad tasselled ridi, she gave me many interesting glances and I must admit that I was extremely flattered and swiftly returned the compliment. When all was over I got Pomby, my friendly chief, to lead me to her and we gazed into each other’s eyes with interest and embarrassment as we met, and that night by moonlight I had the pleasure of escorting her across the mangrove swamps which lay across the track. I often saw her during my stay. She was the most English-looking South Sea Island girl I ever saw and had a voice like a musical bird and eyes that breathed the tender light of poetry, and I have often wondered what became of that beautiful princess of the Samoan Isles.