The Half-caste Girl visits Rimbo the Priest—Idols of the Forest—Waylao’s Flight—Grimes and I catch Rimbo—Rimbo’s Hut and Stores—Rimbo’s Hoarded Bribes—Legendary Belief—Remarks

IT so happened that the following day Grimes and I went off fishing in the lagoons round the coast. I knew it not at the time, but as we fished we were in close proximity to Rimbo’s hut. In this hut the heathen priest lived all alone, dreaming and cursing the memory of the white men who had blasted his lucrative profession and smashed up his best tikis (idols).

As I was sitting on the reefs, smoking and fishing, my comrade suddenly looked up and said: “Why, pal, there’s Wayler!”

In a moment we were all attention, for the girl was coming down into the hollows that intervened between the shore and the vast forest of bread-fruits. She was on her way to visit the fortune-teller Rimbo’s hut.

As we watched, she stealthily glanced around ere she went along the track that led to the hidden den where so many native girls entered to know if their Don Juans were faithful to them.

For a while I will take the reader along with Waylao.

In a few moments she had passed into the thick glooms of the tropical forest. It was a strangely impressive sight to see the half-caste girl creeping through those wooded depths. She seemed some faery creature as she dodged between the big tree trunks, her blue kimono robe and sash fluttering as warm winds swept in from the sea. Nor was the enchantment of the scene lessened when she arrived outside the half-hidden hut home of the heathen wizard. She peered about her as though with fright, then gave a “Tap! Tap!” on the closed door.

A windy voice broke the silence: “Tarona Awaie?” (“Well, little one?”)

It was the voice of Rimbo. Then the door opened a little wider and the old heathen’s head protruded. It were impossible to imagine such a weird physiognomy as he possessed. I recall nothing in the world’s museums, anthropological collections of mummified priests, saints, devils or dead kings to be compared with my vivid memory of that heathen man. He really looked that which he professed to be—the personification of mythology, its bigotry, mystery and sins. He had been handsome once, in the cannibalistic days—so much could be seen at a glance—but it was a faint, far-off tale.

As he opened that little door and peered forth, his tawny, wrinkled face looked like some tattered map of thwarted human schemes.

Waylao trembled before him. From far came the muffled sounds of tribal drums beating the sunset down. Overhead the twilight nightingale (O le manu-ao) commenced to pour forth his silvery evening song. To Waylao’s superstitious soul it was no melodious bird welcoming her to Rimbo’s enchanted abode, but a good omen, that bird’s song, as it sat somewhere up in the banyans. It sang of old memories, of its long-ago dead girl-lover and cherished vows, ere some vengeful god or goddess had touched the brave chief’s brow and turned him into a sad, twilight-singing nightingale. Why, the forest itself was a world of mythological wonder: the giant bread-fruit trees were the mighty brooding bodies of long dead, bronzed warriors, their shaggy heads bursting forth into gnarled boughs whereon, as the summers passed, hung their dead aspirations—in golden fruits.

On wild nights when the typhoons blew the great gods and goddesses, Tano, Pulutu, Oro, Tangaloa, would wail through that forest from the halls of Polotu.

The enchanted seas rolled by that forest—seas where the golden sunsets sank, to be caught by the hands of the sea-gods and fashioned into mighty nets to catch the heathen souls of the day’s dead. For under those dark waters of the Pacific slept the old-time chiefs and chiefesses curled up in the old, broken moons—their coffins—or entangled in the long dead sunsets as they awaited the heathen god’s trump of doom. It was a wondrous creed of poetic lore, writ on a bible whose pages held the faded sunsets and a million moons and stars; pages wherefrom old Rimbo drank the very breath of his existence.

“What you wants?” said that old heathen as he stared at Waylao, who stood before him holding in one hand the bag of goods she had purchased for her mother at Ranjo’s stores.

He looked with astonishment on the pale-faced girl. He pulled his shoulders up majestically. The old wretch was evidently flattered at receiving so fair a client. His wrinkled brow smoothed out. “You Cliston girls?” he wailed, as the map of wrinkles suddenly returned and extended right up towards the northern territory of his domed head.

“No, great chief Rimbo,” responded Waylao, realising the full meaning of the old chief’s suspicions. Once more the old priest peered over the girl’s shoulders into the deep shadows of the forest. Satisfied that the visit was no trick, no attempt to find out, spy and betray the whereabouts of his wooden idols, he looked steadily at the girl and said: “You wanter fortune tole?”

Waylao nodded her head.

“Tome! follows you me,” said that witchman, as he stalked on in front and beckoned the trembling maid to follow.

“Yous quite sures the grog lady, kinds papalagi, sends yous to great chief Rimbo?” he murmured once again, as he suddenly stood still and looked about suspiciously.

Being once more assured that Waylao had been sent by the artful old Mrs Ranjo, off he tottered again.

Suddenly he paused and said: “You never tells white peoples that Rimbo got great tiki [idol] if I take you to it?”

“Oh, priest, I promise to never say one word to a living soul,” said Waylao earnestly, with a look in her eyes that convinced the old tattooed witchman that she had no thought of betraying him to the missionaries.

In a moment he stooped and divided the thickets of dwarf bamboos and squeezed through a kind of stockade. Waylao followed, her heart thumping with the mystery and wonder of it all.

As they both emerged into the cleared space of that arena of idol worship, the girl looked about with awestruck eyes. There it stood, six feet ten inches in height, broad-shouldered, and hideous enough to express the hopes of dead and living men, its gigantic, one-toothed wooden mouth agape with laughter. It was a wonderful sight. The mystery of life and death seemed to hang about that mighty cathedral of the ages, a cathedral supported by colonnades of giant bread-fruit trees towering majestically to the great crystal dome of eternity. As Rimbo prostrated himself before that graven deity, Waylao stood in the hush that pervaded the dim light. She looked as though she was petrified with fright. She might have been the emblematical figure of some frightened angel in mortal realms. But her eyes were alive with terror, and no insensate figure ever had such a glorious crown of hair falling over the brow of so fair a face.

Night was fast approaching. A little wind crept down those mighty heathen halls, stirring, uplifting the wide carpet pattern of exotic flowers. The vaulted dome of eternity was faintly darkened, ready to receive the first etherealised impression of the stars.

It was wonderful how much of the wild mystery of those hushed temple halls was visible in the dim, magical light of the dying day. From the roof tropical festoons of Nature’s wonderful handiwork hung in the perfect stillness of brooding silence. The bent, gnarled columns of that solemn edifice looked like massive, twisted lava-stone and broken marble, as though some cataclysm of volcanic passion had passed that way, leaving mighty architectural ruins that had mysteriously burst into leaf. A few small images were half hidden in the green bowers of those elevated branches. In the dim light it seemed as though small goddesses, emblematical figures, holding in their unseen hands twining red and blue vine-flowers, had hastily climbed those gnarled columns and clung there, midway up, staring down in sculptured silence.

Far away through the shoreward columns of those primeval halls glimmered God’s old mythological stained-glass window—the dying day—the emblazoned hopes, the legendary beauty and faith of paganistic dreams, past and future, ebbing like a tide. Nothing in Nature’s transcendent art could outvie the beauty of those glimmering, ineffable, faint, greenish and vermilion dyes, that like unto Scriptural daubs blushed between miles of leaden stained lines of that remote window—sunset on the Western Seas.

Only a faint tinge of the day’s death-blood struck the dim light of that heathen temple. With staring, awestruck eyes, Waylao crept up those mossy aisles and knelt before that altar with her hands lifted in appeal to that hideous effigy. Its enormous, bulging glass eyes seemed to stare sidelong at the western glory, ever watching, ever listening with alert, unwearied, deaf wooden ears. Waylao looked like some cursed, pleading fallen angel at the feet of Hate, as she knelt there, the faded flowers in her bronzed hair, the Islamic carpet bag’s pink and blue ribbon fluttering at her throat, as the incense from decaying tropical flowers came creeping through the moistened glooms. Not the faintest semblance of her dark lineage was visible in that hushed, dim light as she lifted her face. She appeared some beautiful white girl, it might have been Pauline herself, kneeling there in heathen prayer at those monstrous wooden feet. While the half-demented girl repeated the heathenish phrases that Rimbo uttered as he stood by the idol in the shadows, it suddenly seemed that those awful glass eyes moved! It seemed that they stared half in wonder on this new, beautiful white worshipper. Suddenly out of the huge, grinning, one-black-toothed mouth flew a disturbed little bird! It gave a tiny wail: “Wailo, tu-loo! Wailo, to-loo!” as it fluttered away, low down, into the forest shadows.

Full of faith, the superstitious girl was chanting some song of Rimbo’s wretched belief when, lo! that monstrous, wooden-lipped, tongueless mouth spoke! A hollow, windy voice said:

“O beautiful white womans, Mitia Kaloah! You belief in good old heathen tiki-priest Rimbo? He good chiefs, able to bless yous with love, allee samee, though he no Clistian priest. If you no belief in great Rimbo and tells papalagi [white men] where I, the great god Pulutu, am standing, hid in forest, yous life be cursed for evers and evers!”

After a pause, in which the girl-child looked up at the hideous idol like one staring in a trance, the hollow-sounding voice continued:

“O answers me! Do you believes? Will you tell misslennaries [missionaries] that Pulutu stand by the sea at Temarorio? Will you get poor old priest Rimbo, who am great tapu mans, shut up in calaboose?”

“O great Pulutu of the forest, god of the great chief Rimbo, I promise you that none shall know that you are here by the sea at Temarorio,” said Waylao. Then she quickly continued: “But will you tell me all that I must know? Is it best that I should desert those who have loved me from childhood?”

Spake the idol: “O beautiful Marama, let the great Rimbo kiss you lips three times, and do tings he wish to do; then you become tapu. So will you prayers be answered. But first you must go to Misser Ranjo’s store and get for great god Pulutu two large bottles of the zottest te-rom [rum], one bottle of perandi [brandy], twos tins of ’densed milk, one poun tabak [tobacco], and two green eyes and nice paint.”^[2]

Waylao was dumbstruck with astonishment, notwithstanding her superstitious belief, to hear an idol should want rum and unrecorded things.

Something in her manner must have been observed by that heathen deity, something showing that his demands were unwisely put.

“O maids that kneels in prayer to me, turn thy head, lookes behind you so that you may be still blessed with great faith in great Rimbo.”

Waylao at this turned her head and looked over her shoulder, but, turning back too quickly, observed old priest Rimbo sneaking out of that decayed, ant-infested hollow inside of the huge idol wherein he had hidden!

In a flash Waylao saw through the deception. Rimbo in turn perceived that the girl had discovered his duplicity. The trick was quite obvious for, as he jumped, the tassels of his lava-lava caught in a splinter that existed on that wooden deity’s anatomy. His tawny brow creased into a mass of wrinkles that went right up to the dome of his bald head.

Perceiving the look of fright and intense realisation on the girl’s face, his deified majesty fell from him. The shock he received was evident. He had lost all hope of receiving his bribe of rum. Mrs Ranjo would heap curses on his sinful head; call him an ass; she would think he had betrayed her. He would lose the commission that he always received from his multitudes of confessional clients, bribes secured from the superstitious children of the forest, old-time chiefs, aged women, love-sick girls and aspiring youths who crept with hopes and aspirations to that heathen confessional box, that had been doomed as illegal by the French officials. The evil fate that eventually befell Rimbo was undeserved.^[3] Indeed his guilt in nowise could be compared to that of the heathen crystal-gazers and mercenary quacks of the civilised cities. A sense of shame came to Waylao. In a moment she had realised the madness of her superstition.

With a cry of despair she rose to her feet, looked for a second into Rimbo’s fierce eyes, then, clutching her mother’s soap, fled away into the forest!

“Gawd blimy! if that don’t beat the band!—a bewtiful gal like that ’ere too.” Simultaneously with this ejaculation a coco-nut caught the old heathen priest crash on the hindpart!

He had started after Waylao in full pursuit. No doubt he was terror-stricken at the thought that the girl might seek the missionaries and the local white men and tell them of his idols and his duplicity.

As the coco-nut struck the old chap, his long legs seemed to suddenly leap skyward. Down he came, smash into the deep, ferny-flowered carpet of the forest floor. It was then that Grimes and I stole out of the shadows behind the buttressed banyans. We had been unseen witnesses of the whole business.

For a moment the old priest stared at us as though his last hour had come. I felt sorry. We swiftly reassured him that no further harm would come to him from us. Indeed we were both intensely curious to speak to the old fellow. It was something new to our experience. With the swift instinct of his race he saw that our attitude was not hostile, and his manner became child-like as he endeavoured to please us. I pretended that we had only that moment come on the scene, and he seemed much relieved at this information. For a while he tried to explain to us that the old wooden effigy we were staring at had been mysteriously placed there by some enemy who wished to get him into trouble with the French officials.

Grimes and I assured him that whoever had done so dastardly a trick deserved condign punishment.

The Marquesans are like children and, strange as it may seem, the old prophet felt that he had convinced us of his innocence. Had he seen the Cockney wink that Grimes gave me, I am sure that he would not have given us his confidence as he did. He took us into his hut, quite a spacious dwelling, crammed with piles of tinned meat, bottles of oil, old knives, razors, springless clocks and cases of bottles of spirit, etc. This hoard was no doubt part of the spoil, the fee that he demanded from his credulous clients—superstitious native girls, youths, and even white men at times!

The weather was extremely hot, so we accepted the bribe that he offered when he once more became suspicious, a bottle of something that tasted like the best champagne. Grimes nudged him in the ribs, winked and said something like this: “Don’t you worry, old cock; I ain’t a-going to give yer away.” Then he did a double shuffle, which delighted the Marquesan.

Whenever Grimes, after that, was hard up for a drink, he sneaked away into the forest to see old Rimbo, where he renewed his protestations of secrecy as to the heathen’s misdeeds and drank away to his heart’s content.

Beneath Rimbo’s sly commercial propensities he nourished a deep belief in the virtues of the heathen gods, as I discovered in the few conversations which I had with him after the aforesaid experience. He swore to me that he saw the old gods stalking through the forest on moonlit nights. “You no believe me?” he responded to my remarks and sceptical glance. “Allee samee, I see them go across forest, climb down the stars, down into the big moana ali” (ocean).

“Rimbo, I believe you,” said I, as Grimes nudged him in the ribs, saying:

“This ain’t ’alf good stuff,” then took another drink from Rimbo’s hoarded store.

It was a pleasure to encourage Rimbo to tell the wonders of his weird belief. And why shouldn’t one encourage him? Think of the thousands of people in civilised lands who believe implicitly in spiritualism and crystal-gazing. The poetic legends and creeds of the natives had their virtuous side. It is true enough that many of their songs were based on cannibalism and idol-worship, but more often they sang the praise of warrior deeds that had brought some cruel enemy to the dust. The old heathen bible had much inherent beauty in its primitive psalms, far more than has ever been intimated by early travellers. The sacrificial altar and cannibalistic horrors were much the same, and nearly as wicked, as the deeds of the stake-burning era of Christianity in civilised lands. Also, the savages were sincere in their beliefs, a fact that is proved conclusively by the noble stoicism of their now historical martyrs, who died mercifully by one blow of the war-club, whereas British chapel-goers of our dark ages hired orchestral stalls and cheered whilst the martyr died a lingering death. Their creed was a primitive Buddhism, preaching reincarnation and a divine reverence for all living things. The birds, the trees, the fish of the sea, the winds and clouds were transformed beings, the shadows and poetic voices of dead warriors beyond the grave. Indeed their apparently blood-thirsty religion possessed an inherent gospel of tenderness: all creeping and living things forming a sympathetic part of a mythology that was based on a mystic reverence for nature and the beautiful, a reverence that has never had a dominating sway in the religions of the Western world. A dash of Marquesan heathenism, as it once was, thrown into the stock-pot of modern Christianity would, I am sure, vastly improve the bigoted, outrageous godless moan that attempts to dominate human wishes and joys to-day.

As for Rimbo, I’d as soon enter heaven arm in arm with him as with any saintly bishop or pope ever born.

I see by my diary notes that even in those days I was unconventional in my religious views. One entry, 21st October, goes:

“Had great argument with thick-necked, low man about religion. He called me b—— fool and crimson and purple idiot, etc., etc. He’s a coal-trimmer from the Alandine, a Yankee tramp steamer that called yesterday from Hivaoa. I told him he was an arrant coward, and swashbuckler to boot, to strike a Marquesan youth on the head for stealing a clay pipe from his pocket. He said same youth was only an animal. I told him brown men were as good as white, especially his kind of white. Had great stand-up fight by the settlers’ copra shed near Vaekehu’s wooden palace. Got nasty knock in fourth round, but in fifth round gave him one in the starboard eye that flummoxed him! Beachcombers waved their big hats and wildly cheered as he made final plunge, and I got one in on the port side of his jib and was declared the winner on the spot.

“Sounds low to fight after travelling so far, but obliged to fight so as to gain respect. My fist has been my gold medal diploma, my finest letter of introduction, in all countries and in the toughest communities. Father O’Leary saw the fight as he left Vaekehu’s palace. Says he was surprised to see one as presumably respectable as I fighting such a man. The priest seemed very pleased that I’d only lost one tooth. It’s not lost, but is decidedly loose!”

So runs the entry. I feel it’s worth reproducing if only to show the material, sanguine side of youth. Besides, it’s honest to let one see both sides. I’ve always been lucky. When I first ran away to sea I got pally with an ordinary seaman who gave me lessons in boxing. One may imagine how often I blessed him afterwards. I never dreamed how invaluable a commodity a trained fist was for one who loved peace and who trusted and felt kindly towards men.