South Sea Helen of Troy—A Barbarian Queen’s Lovers—Grimes and I pay Obeisance to the Reformed Queen—The Old Heathen Amphitheatre and the end of Impassioned Hearts—Descendants of Blue Blood—The Calaboose—“Time, Gentleman, please!”—A Race that is Dead—Marquesan Mythology—Holy Birds of the Gods—Thakombau, the Bluebeard of the South Seas—I practise the Cornet in the Mountains to the Delight of the Natives—Waylao believes in Fortune-telling

AT that time Queen Vaekehu was living not far from Tai-o-hae. She was known to the French officials as “La Grande Chiefesse,” and I think she received a grant from the French Government. She lived in a quiet style, but still retained some of the distinctive elements of past majesty. It was no easy matter to get into her presence. I suppose she had been haunted by a good many curious tourists, and so felt shy of the white men. When one did gain access to her presence, it was hard to believe that she had once been the Helen of Troy and Cleopatra of the South Seas rolled into one.

But there she was, no myth; nor did rumour lie overmuch.

In the days of her amorous prime and splendid queen-ship fleets of canoes had arrived off Tai-o-hae, coming from isles a thousand leagues distant, crammed with tattooed warriors, headed by some redoubtable Ulysses or Paris, whose soul, fired by rumour of the queen’s beauty, was filled with one intense desire, one wild ambition—to win her sparkling glance and impassioned embrace.

Majestic old chiefs for miles round vied with each other in their reminiscences of the time when they successfully mounted her throne and were each in turn the envied object of the queen’s “one” grande passion.

One knew not how much truth existed in the eloquent flow of all that they narrated. No sense of shame possessed those tawny warriors as they stood erect, and, with their bronze throats and shoulders thrown back—like some Roman orator of the Forum—completely lost their heads as they waxed impassionately eloquent: reclasped in memory that queenly form, fell gracefully on one knee, impulsively kissed the imaginary queenly hand and vividly described, in unguarded detail, those things that made the grog shanty re-echo with roars of hysterical laughter—and Mrs Ranjo hasten into the saloon bar to blush.

I have seen the wife of an old chief press her beloved’s hand with the pride and admiration she felt as he told of his amorous youth, of that day when he, too, had mounted that throne in the glorious pride of conquest; telling her of incidents which one would have thought would have made her want to shoot him at sight, instead of listening with pride.

An unforgettable privilege was mine. I performed violin solos before Queen Vaekehu on the celebration of her birthday, and was greatly impressed by the demure demeanour of the great ex-savage queen, after all that I had heard. I quite expected to see some eagle-eyed, bronzed, Elizabethan-like queen, something that at least hinted of those mighty, amorous times, those terrific cannibalistic and heathen orgies at the Marea Temples and arenas of death. Those surrounding hills had echoed and re-echoed the booming calls of the death-drums as they beat the sunset down and the stars in—and the last hour of what anguish-stricken maid or youth, the prison-bound victims who were doomed to that last dubious honour of being clubbed on the altar of the sacrificial rites! Much of the first-hand terrors of those heathen times I have given in full detail in my reminiscences of the old-time beachcomber, Mendos, the most wonderful character, surely, who ever roamed those Southern Seas.

To see that majestic relic of royalty pirouette daintily, on tripping feet, to the Parisian waltz made it hard to believe that she had been such an exciting character in her golden days. “Queen Bess of the South,” she was called by the French. There was a brooding expression on her oval-shaped face. Her eyes were piercing, yet at times softened, and looked earnest and reflective. Even in age the lips retained their somewhat sensual curves. The beautiful tattoo revealed on her wrists, below the sleeves of her modern attire, and just peeping up beneath the tawny-hued throat’s fulness, was all that remained visible to the sight of men of her past abandonment, of her renowned tattooed beauty, and of the impassioned moonlit nights of long ago.

Bill Grimes accompanied me on that royal visit. It was he who played the banjo that called forth such praise from those long since deserted lips. As Grimes played, her eyes lit up—with what memories!—as the pink-er-te-ponk!—ponk!—tromrrrrrrrrp! er te—trrrrr rrrrrrrrrrrrph! of the Western world’s festival sounds reminded her of what dim echoes coming across the years, the death-drums, beating, beating below the ranges of heathen-land! When Grimes called her “Your Majesty” (only English term of great deference that she seemed to know) her eyes revealed a glimmer of the old pride of praise that she had once revelled in. But, somehow, the first faint smile that flitted across her wrinkled, bronzed face gave her a child-like expression. One seemed to see the savage baby peeping through her brown eyes.

Her pride was intensified by my own courtly act in kissing her hand in the Sir Walter Raleigh style. I believe Grimes would have thrown his remnant of the coat he always slept in down in the dust for her to tread upon, so awestruck was he in her presence, and by the servile munificence of her decayed retinue. Poor Grimes! I felt a strange tenderness for him, so clumsily did he imitate my courtly act, as he, too, bent his knee, wiped the tobacco juice from his scrubby lips, and saluted the royal hand with a kiss.

He blushed like a kiddie when Vaekehu fastened an acacia blossom on the breast of his ragged coat, and said, in pidgin-English:

“Arise, thou art great chief, Monseigneur Grimes, as one can so easily observe.” She bowed in picturesque Marquesan style to Grimes. He tried to mimic that inimitable grace; his knees seemed to stagger and crack, and a world of woe weigh down his shoulders.

“Good-bye, Mitia! Papalagi! Anglisman! Kaoha!” she murmured.

“Alower!” said Grimes huskily, breathing forth his one Marquesan word in Cockneyesque style—“Alower!”

Not far from that residence were the ruins of the old heathen amphitheatre, the once dreadful tapu arena. It was on that spot that Vaekehu’s cast-off lovers paid their last enforced obsequies to their royal mistress, and were served up, spiced and hot-blooded, from the ovens as tempting joints for the great cannibal festival.

Many a trustful, impassioned heart that had once beat violently at her beauty and her musical Marquesan vows had steamed on the dreadful cannibal dish, a morsel for her eyes, and a tempting sight for the jealous, hungry, new paramour.

Such was her past: and there she sat, a demure, nice old lady, looking through her pince-nez, her wrinkled face a veritable manuscript, an outlined map of the purest thought, the sweetest of lives, as she licked her tattooed thumb and turned the leaves of her Bible.

Vaekehu was not the only royal relic of a glorious past. For there were many royal-blooded chiefs staying at the Government institution, called the calaboose (jail).

Thither they retired when decrepitude brought their passions to a smouldering state. The French officials had considerable trouble with those native princes, chiefesses, dethroned tribal kings and sad, forgotten queens, who looked upon that prison, with its regular meals, as a godsend to old age. Indeed it required the sternest vigilance of the gendarmes to keep those who had been released from escaping back to the prison precincts! Cast forth upon their ravaged dominions once more, they would yell forth pleading from sunset till dawn, swearing that some mistake had been made in the date of their release: the day, the month, or the year had been grossly miscalculated!

It was pathetic to listen to those royal personages as they rushed from the gates of the jail stockade, when one passed, and started eloquently to shout forth their line of pedigree: how they were each in turn the true decendants of South Sea blue blood, true children of those who had once reigned, and who in their turn were descendants of barbarian kings from time immemorial. Nor were they to be blamed or laughed at, since, having no Who’s Who or Peerage to tell their greatness, no literature of note to hint of their glorious past, it was absolutely enforced upon those sad old convicts to perpetuate their line by word of mouth from decade to decade. So did men distinguish their origin in the South Seas, preserve the glory of the past and gain respect from those around them.

Once more out on the world’s mercy, released, in tears, those old relics of a resplendent barbaric age roamed from grog shanty to grog shanty. In those walls of the white man they could lay their weary heads from dawn to dawn. The dreadful Fate-like call of, “Time, Gentleman, please!” was never heard in those hospitable parts; in fact it was the reverse, for did a man pass a grog shanty door without having a friendly drink after midnight he was in danger of being “chucked in” rather than out.

It is curious how in various parts of the world the conditions of life are turned upside down. My remembrance of Nuka Hiva is as of some glorious reversion of mundane existence tinged with the poetic.

Once again in a dream I stand by those palm-clad, romantic mountains, like sentinels guarding an enchanted land against the perilous faery seas. The wonderful shores of Nuka Hiva are sharply outlined in my memory, lulled by the echoing monotone of the ocean. The winds are all asleep. Even my old schooner the Molyhawk, whose every board and bunk I know, looks unreal, like some painted ship on a painted moonlit tropical lagoon. The half-reefed, hanging canvas sails seem the tired wings of Silence itself; they look unreal, as though fixed—a mirage hanging between the crystalline, moonlit sky and sea.

Only the creeping shadows, belated natives by the shore banyans, give a touch of reality that is somehow stranger than the dream.

Like the last of the Mohicans abroad again, a canoe steals across the still lagoon of long ago, crammed with handsome, dusky, tattooed chiefs. They wail a plaintive paddle song, a “himee.” They are the last of their race.

Again I wander like a ghost that cannot sleep. So linked with romantic sounds of song and mythology is the primeval scenery that the very air seems to smell of scented myrrh, sandalwood and ancient life of deep, mysterious, poetic import. I half fancy I hear the hubbub of some ancient Assyrian city’s life floating across the silent, sleeping hills between me and the dark ages. Then I hear the faint boom of drums and realise that the soft-footed natives are speeding along the track that leads to the bustling village below the mountains.

I stare seaward. Was that really a tiny, curling wave breaking on some hidden reef afar, or the skeleton of some dead, home-sick sailor tossing his white arms for a second as the home-bound sailing-ship goes away, out with the tide, ere he sinks once again into the depths. It is only a wave tossing its brief hand to the hidden corals, thank God! I will not think rest is denied the dead; but at times the brain has strange fancies. Perhaps I have listened too much to the legendary song and lore of those Marquesans, who seem ever haunted by death; those stalwart, tattooed men who see some symbol of the supernatural in all around them. No cloud flies beneath the stars without bringing some fearful portent. Its ragged shadows jumping across the moonlit sea are the vast hordes of evil gods after the soul of some late departed. The breath of the mighty god Oro blows through the mountain bread-fruits, ever calling the last of his heathen children to shadow-land. They are frightened of his big, blowing voice in the ranges; for have they not deserted him and bent on their sinful knees to the white man’s God?

No night-bird cries in the forest but it has come from shadow-land to warn the sick chief, or guilty one, that the hour is near, and the gods have observed. The pretty Marquesan maid Talasenga trembles with fright as she sits in the leafy glooms of the forest and hears that twittering while she dreams those things that a maid should never dream. She looks up with fright. She cries, “Awaie! Awaie!” as there they sit, four goddesses with their fingers at their lips, their small eyes bright with discovery. They have been watching from the boughs overhead, those four little O le manu-ao birds, winged messengers from that master-of-all-gods, Tangaloa of Polotu (Elysium). They still wear their blue and crimson feathered tapu robes as they write down, on the hastily plucked bread-fruit leaf, the terrible truth, all that they have read, by magic, in the girl’s soul as she sat below that treacherous tree thinking that she was unobserved. Away they fly to shadow-land to tell the gods! Away! to the great Tangaloi with that indictment safely fastened beneath their wings. Poor Talasenga, it is indeed terrible!

It was a magical world, crammed with wonder and goodness. A little bird inspiring a girl’s soul with faith; and lo! she has strangled her wicked thoughts with the flight of those disguised, swift-winged goddesses, those goddesses of a creed which had a more salutary effect on those wild Marquesan people than all the denominations of the civilised world put together.

The missionaries had a hard task to wrench their deep faith in that glorious, poetic superstition from the native heart. The wonderful heathen atmosphere would cling like distilled moonlight to their mystery-loving brains. That tiny, grey, Catholic, wooden abbey, with its little steeple and the Virgin’s figure peeping from the South Sea chestnuts, often peeped in vain. It could not dispel the wonders of the great tikis (wooden gods) which stood in the depths of their forest colonnades—supreme, upright, ever watching, ever smiling with that Fate-like grin on the wooden slit-mouth, as their bulging pearl-white eyes stared on through the ages.

Waylao was reared up in such an atmosphere; her brain was a veritable mythological bible of heathen magic and its wonderful goddesses and gods. She told me many things about mythology, for from her earliest childhood she had listened to her mother’s tales. Indeed I heard a good many strange tales from old Lydia herself. Sometimes when I had little to do I would go up to her cottage and, smoking my pipe, listen to the native woman’s yarns. Though the old woman looked a full-blooded Marquesan, she declared that she was a descendant of that South Sea Bluebeard, Thakombau, the last of the Fijian kings.

No one who faced Lydia ever left her presence without hearing such exclamations as: “Me! the descendants of great kinks [kings] stand ’ere before yous!”

Here she would strike her bosom and, assuming a majestic pose, roll the whites of her eyes and shout: “Me! tink of it, ’aves to feed chickens and work wiles that lazy hussies Wayee sleeps in bed, wears flowers in hair, and tink she beautiful white womans.”

Here she would purse her big mouth out with rage, roll her eyes and roar: “Wayee! Wayee! you tink you white womans. You tink you great lady, better than your old mother. Go you at once and get white mans one dozen eggs from chicken-’ouse.”

Waylao had so often listened to the old woman’s garrulous descriptions of the palatial splendour of Fiji, those ancestral halls wherein her rumoured relatives lolled in royal comfort by the Rewa river, that she often looked with longing for the day when she might go to Fiji. She did go some months after, but it was on a quest that she had not anticipated in her wildest imaginings.

I will now revert to my immediate doings at that time. I had been away with Grimes to Hivaoa. I had secured several musical engagements among the French residents who lived on the coast. When we returned to Tai-o-hae we were both once more warmly welcomed by the rough men of the shanty. I was always welcomed there because of my violin. Indeed I had formed a scratch orchestra from the members of that wild crew. This musical gathering was composed of two banjos, two mouth-organs, piccolo, flute and clappers, with now and then a jews’ harp thrown in. One can imagine that it was not suitable for rendering artistic selections from the works of the great masters. Still, the combination answered our purpose, for it made the shellbacks happy.

About this period a French official presented me with a cornet, and I at once started to practise it in the shanty. For a while the brave shellbacks tolerated my thrilling endeavours on that cracked instrument. Then they rose en masse and threatened to take my life. After that I went into the mountains to practise. The echoes would fly across the ranges, and scare the parrots and the natives in the villages just below. I became an imparadised being in the eyes of some of the old-time Marquesan chiefs through that cornet. They would creep up the slopes as I blasted forth the shrill notes, then go on their knees before me and beg for one blow. I do not exaggerate, but I achieved more fame as a musician through that old cornet and my endeavours to master it than ever I did from my violin performances. Some of the natives fairly worshipped me. I only had to go up into the hills and peal forth the scales to cause a general hubbub amongst the natives on the plantations. Indeed the white overseer came up to my secluded mountain studio and said: “Look you here, young feller, if you blow that b—— thing off in this ’ere group, I’ll have you shot, or ejected from the isles altogether.”

“Surely I can play the cornet out here in the South Seas,” said I.

“God damn it!” he responded, as his red beard shook with emotion. “The natives on my plantation stop work, dance, go mad and become b—— heathens for four hours every morning while you practise that darned thing.”

At hearing the result of my aspirations to become a great cornet player, I apologised, and had to relinquish my practice for a time. My advice to aspirants for fame on the cornet is to keep in the cities, for there is not privacy enough in the solitudes of the South Seas for cornet practising. But to return to my scratch orchestra.

One night we were all playing in full swing in the shanty, making a terrible row, when Waylao came in, as she often did. When the overture to the fourteenth mug of rum was finished, Grimes and I too stopped for refreshments.

“My word, don’t she look bewtiful!” whispered Grimes as he spotted Waylao.

The girl was talking to Mrs Ranjo, who was telling her fortune.

Grimes blushed to his big ears when Waylao turned and gazed steadily at him for a moment. He started to tune his old banjo up, so as to hide that boyish flush. For a while we sat there in silence, as the girl listened eagerly to Mrs Ranjo’s prophecies. That half-Spanish woman was an adept at palmistry. She had already told Grimes’s fortune and mine, and though I was extremely incredulous, even I had a great deal of pleasure out of the experience.

I watched Waylao as the woman held her hand and scanned the lines. It was easy enough to see that the girl believed implicitly all that the woman said. Nor was there anything wonderful in her doing so, when one thinks of the thousands of well-educated women in the civilised cities who visit the crystal-gazers.

I tell of this little incident in the shanty because it led up to something that was extremely weird and impressive, a scene that Grimes and I witnessed quite by accident in the forest next day.

First, I must say that as we listened to Mrs Ranjo’s prophecies we overheard the woman tell Waylao of one named Rimbo. Now Rimbo was a great, well-known Marquesan prophet. It appeared that he lived in a hut at a solitary spot just round the coast. For a long while Mrs Ranjo expatiated on the virtues of Rimbo’s prophecies—how they always came true. It was easy enough to see that Waylao was deeply impressed. At the time I wondered myself why one fortune-teller should so applaud the virtues of another. It turned out that there was reason enough for this kindliness to a rival, as the reader will see in the next chapter.