CHAPTER XII

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Imaginary Millionaires—Pearls and Diamonds—The Fate of the Sacrilegious—Waylao’s Song—The Great Forest Festival—Grimes and I fall—So does the Idol—A Free Fight—Waylao’s Discovery

GRIMES and I returned once more to the grog shanty, penniless. We had been away on a short cruise with a South Sea crank. This particular crank—the South Seas abound with them—was after pearls. He swore that he knew for a positive fact that pearls lay in heaps at the bottom of the shore lagoons, and we believed him.

Our fortunes were made. We almost went balmy with delight as we nudged each other in the ribs and speculated with our riches in the wildest way, and, it may be guessed, we were feeling pretty down in the mouth at the failure of our hopes.

In imagination Grimes had pensioned off several old uncles, and had commemorated the goodness of his grandmother by placing a marble monument over her grave in Kensal Green. I, too, had been pretty generous, and made the eyes shine of old folks at home, also of friends who really did not deserve such good luck, for they had done little for me when I had arrived back in the old country from the great Australian gold-fields, arrayed in a ragged, brass-bound midshipman’s suit. Well, there we sat, worse off than any of them, for not only had our friends afar lost the gifts of generosity, but we had spent our savings, the hard-earned savings from our last voyage before the mast to San Francisco via Honolulu.

I had persuaded Grimes to come with me on that pearling trip. It was all my fault. “Grimes,” I said, “I feel awfully sorry that I persuaded you to believe in old beery-whiskers” (as we called him), “but I’ll make it all right as soon as I get a good job on one of the boats. I’ll pay you back all you’ve lost. You did say he was a lunatic. I wish I’d believed you.”

“That’s all roight, mate,” said Grimes. He pressed my hand. Mrs Ranjo looked a bit fierce and then ticked off the next drink that Grimes ordered for himself. We were both penniless.

It did seem a shame, for Grimes had suffered much through my sanguine temperament. Nine months before we had shipped on a schooner for the Malay Archipelago, calling in at Guadalcanar, Solomon Isles.

It was at the latter place that I had sworn that the idols’ eyes of those parts were real diamonds, for so I had been told, and he believed me. When we crept away through the forest, thinking we had safely got the idols’ eyes, for we had sneaked into the heathen temple, under the very noses of the sleeping savages, Grimes fell crash down a hole! In a second the whole tribe of Kai-kai savages were after us! I shall never forget the yells and Grimes’s unconventional exclamations as he puffed along at my side. When we reached the shore we jumped into the canoe, crash! and pushed off, just in time. But the leading savage chief, racing like some monstrous, burly ghost in the moonlight, gripped Grimes by the tail of his reefer jacket as the canoe swung round. The jacket was old and flimsy and, thank God! it gave way. The impetus of the sudden jerk shot our canoe right out into the bay. We were saved!

We almost cried when we got back to our old windjammer that lay out in the stream, by the promontory. The idols’ eyes turned out to be bits of broken glass, glass which had evidently been chipped by stealth from ships’ port-holes.

No wonder on this present occasion Grimes and I were feeling wretched, when Waylao suddenly entered the grog shanty. I don’t know how it came about, but Ranjo, with the aid of some of the shellbacks, got her to sing.

Grimes and I sat staring, as it were, at some beautiful apparition in that cloud of bluish tobacco smoke, swaying to and fro as she sang. Grimes gave it up, and laid his banjo down: he could not follow that wild, beautiful melody. But I seemed to become inspired as I lifted the violin to my chin and extemporised an obligato. The old beachcombers swore they never heard so sweet a melody, and the girl looked like some beautiful goddess, with a far-away look in her star-like eyes. I half wondered at my talent; it was as though I played on my own heart-strings. Perhaps the memory of Waylao’s pilgrimage to Rimbo, that forest cathedral in Nature’s stronghold, had awakened some barbaric strain of musical genius in my soul.

Grimes said he believed implicitly in God, the Holy Ghost, the hereafter, and all kinds of peculiar, uncockneyfied things that night. As for me, I confess I also felt inspired. We reddened to our ears when Waylao stepped forward and thanked me for the way I had played. She thanked Grimes too. I felt his hand trembling as he handed me my lemonade. I could not stand strong liquor like Grimes and those seasoned shellbacks. Though I have often been praised for this solitary virtue of mine, those who praised me little dreamed how my heart mourned within me at the thought that I could not take strong liquor. They knew not how often I cursed the Fates, how I gazed with envy on those fearless men who drank at the bar and clutched heaven in one hand while I am denied through a weak stomach! So do I jog along through life, not only a member of the vast army of sad teetotallers, but one who grieves in sympathy with them.

After that song Waylao hurried away. She was off to the native festival. There was something special on that night. As we sat in the grog shanty we could hear the drums beating the stars in with unusual vigour. A great heathen carnival was in progress, some mystical rite that commemorated the wonders of the heathen deity Pulutu.

I believe that dance was the last great primeval orgy indulged in by the Marquesan race, for gradually the officials condemned the old rites, till hardly one was left on the Government programme of the great “Permissible.”

Forest Scene, Marquesas Group

Pious whites said it was disgraceful that people should be heard laughing and dancing in the moonlight, and so the Marquesan race died out, sat silent round their camp-fires, and one by one crept into the grave—out of deep gloom into deeper silence.

Some of those heathen dances were a bit grotesque, I must admit. They reminded one vividly of a London or Paris music hall performance, with vast mirrors on the roof and stage walls, the ballet girls, terra-cotta coloured, whirling against a background of moonlit coco-palms and distant starlit mountains.

But to return to the dance in question. Grimes and I determined to attend that festival, in fact had been invited by the old high chief from Anahao. As we left the grog shanty, Grimes was still ruminating over Waylao’s beauty, and the charm of her voice. We did not know it then, but she too must have been tramping on through the forest, ahead of us, making her way to the festival. I suppose she was really off to meet her Indian lover, Abduh, whose wretched skull, well polished, with the brains scooped out, would have made a fitting spittoon for the grog shanty by Tai-o-hae.

As we passed over the westward slopes, Father O’Leary was tugging at his bell-rope, calling his children to prayer.

The night sky was crowded with stars. The very winds were scented with the odours of romance as whiffs crept from the orange groves and the over-ripe fies (bananas). It was a beautiful spot we had to cross ere we reached the native festival. As we passed along the mossy tracks we heard the island nightingales singing. High over the giant bread-fruit trees we could hear the whir of migrating, long-necked cranes, looking like whitened skeletons of dead men rushing beneath the moon. We heard the rattlings of the bones, then came their leader’s wild, crazy cry as they faded seaward. Sometimes, like a flock of frightened gnomes or dusky fairies, a group of surprised native children bobbed their shaggy heads out of the ferns of the forest floor, and vanished in the shadows, for we were approaching the natural stockade of a half-pagan, tiny city. Shadows in a hurry seemed dodging about. We heard the faint booming of drums and the weird wails of barbarian flutes and screaming bamboo fifes.

Emerging from the forest bread-fruits, we sighted the native village. All was a-bustle in that now dead Babylon of the South Seas. By the little groups of small bird-cage huts, made in picturesque style of yellow bamboo and twining sinnet, sat the wild denizens of the forest. It seemed as if we had suddenly passed through some little forest door that led from reality into faeryland. The coco-nut-oil lamps burning with a pale light by the hut doors gave a magical effect to the scene as they flickered in the brilliant moonlight. By some of the bee-hive-shaped dens sat handsome, savage, semi-nude old men and women, the genuine tattooed chiefs and their wives—the faded, dusky, harem beauties of a past which teemed with awful cannibalistic orgies. As those grim old warriors, dressed in the picturesque, barbaric Marquesan garb, sat there, they looked like idols or images, or tree trunks carved to resemble man. Only the blinking of the bright, dark eyes and drifts of tobacco smoke coming from their lips revealed the fact that they breathed. Some had their hair well oiled, done up mopwise, bunched high on top of the head; it almost looked as if some humorist had stuck huge coco-nuts on broad, living, headless shoulders, and painted hideous faces on them. Those grotesque physiognomies considerably enhanced the fine appearance of the really handsome Marquesan chiefs, who, squatting opposite their less fortunate companions, smoked vigorously and repeatedly expectorated on the naked feet of the chiefs who sat before them. (I believe this odious anointment was a sacrificial act of extreme politeness, a survival of some old rite that expressed brotherhood.)

Just on the outskirts of those picturesque village huts was a cleared forest patch, where was erected a kind of pae-pae, fashioned something after the style of the old heathen altars. Decorated with gorgeous hibiscus blossoms and forest festoons, which glimmered amongst the hanging lanterns, it inspired one with a vivid idea of what the old primeval fÊtes must have been. The chief attraction of this pae-pae was the monstrous wooden idol that adorned it. The carven face was the acme of ugliness, and had been painted up for the occasion. The goggling glass eyes seemed to express the glorious humour of the situation. The big, slit mouth revealed one huge tooth, and its fixed grin expressed wonder, as though it showed its delight at being brought out of its hiding-place once more to be reinstated as supreme deity of heathen-land. Just below the pae-pae, directly opposite the huge wooden feet of the tiki (idol), squatted a bevy of pretty Marquesan girls. They looked like a group of dusky nymphs as they swayed their nut-brown arms and the moonlit wind uplifted their masses of dark hair. Some had golden tresses (dyed with coral lime).

“Did you ever!” said Grimes, as we both watched, fascinated.

“No, I never,” was all I could utter in reply.

I seemed to be gazing on some magical reproduction of primeval life in a world that had long since passed away. They were clapping their hands, swaying their flower-swathed bodies and singing some Marquesan madrigal, a tender, far-off-sounding melody, that might have been the death-song of their fast-vanishing race.

Snug among the leafy pillars of that primitive lyceum of the forest squatted the royal orchestra. One tremendous drum sought to outrival the various melodious but weird effects of the chief soloists. Those players had been hired from far and near, and were the finest performers extant. The ease with which they produced their effects on such simple instruments was astounding. Some blew, by means of the nostrils, through tiny flutes, others puffed with their lips at screaming bamboo fifes, and some twanged on stringed gourds. One tawny old chief, who had both his ears missing, scraped violently on an old German fiddle. It only possessed two strings, but he played it fairly well. Probably he had got it from some sailor who had given him a few lessons with the bargain. He screwed his face up as he played, and when he repeatedly put his tongue out and rolled his eyes, the little children shrieked with delight.

Notwithstanding the pandemonium of sound, the fierce rivalry between each performer as they puffed their lips, crashed drum-sticks, howled and twanged, it seemed as though the soul of some barbarian Wagner had burst, had exploded from a wonderful bomb of pent-up inspiration, and the maestro, in that forest, was chasing the flying echoes in anguish, ere they were lost for ever! I do not exaggerate in this description, and Grimes tugging away at the banjo and I playing the violin felt like two happy barbarians as that forest carnival reached the zenith in a marvellous cataract of sound. Just by my conducting desk—an old egg-box—sat the dethroned king from the Paumotus Group. He had been favourably received in Marquesan society, and seemed to swell with renewed majesty, his very nostrils dilating with the excitement as the maids commenced to dance—and what dances!

Grimes and I forgot to play our parts as the dancers became inspired on that primeval stage before the footlights of the stars! Their feet seemed literally to point and hover skywards, as they performed the equivalent of a Marquesan can-can.

We stood up, gazing breathlessly with astonishment, our hands raised. We must have looked like two gasping idiots—Grimes with scrubby face and mouth wide open, and I attired in my old, tattered, brass-bound midshipman’s suit, and on my head a dilapidated white helmet-hat. Sometimes the moon, in the domed vault of that palladium, became dimmed, as small woolly clouds drifted across the sky. Directly the travelling mist had passed beneath the eye of night, up went the shadowy curtain from that forest drama. And once more the dancing legs, the flying, gauzy veils of figures flitting in rhythmical swerves, and the rows of delighted, excited eyes came into full view. The scenic effect was that of some enchanted forest, where magical waterfalls of moonlight poured down through dark-branched palms from the sky, while dusky, faery-like creatures danced through those magical waterfalls, their eyes bright with wondering delight as one by one their soft feet landed on the forest pae-pae.

Suddenly the leading drum went bang!—the echo travelling like a jumping football of ghostly sound across the hills. That drum-head was made from the tightened, tawny skin of some dead chief! The rim was ornamented with the scalp and beard! As that echo faded seaward, an uncanny thought struck my emotional senses. It seemed that the dead chief’s spirit had haunted that drum, had been imprisoned inside, and now, at that tremendous crash had escaped—in frightened tumult across the hills! That smash was the sign for the orchestra to cease, but still the dancers danced on. A puff of scented, cool sea wind crept through the forest bread-fruits, and touched those performing, dusky figures, sweeping the gauzy robes all one way.

The scenic effect changed, and that moonlit stage looked like some wonderful scene of happy faery creatures dancing in silence, faintly perceived in a vast mirror that reflected the skies, a mirror that some grim humorist in heaven had suddenly turned upside down—so grotesque yet faery-like were the rhythmical contortions of those flower-bedecked, dancing maids.

The high chief from Anaho swayed his war-club with delight. Tattooed warriors, wearing the royal insignia of knighthood (exquisitely tattooed armorial bearings on the shoulders and breast), stood by, drinking toddy from the festival calabash.

Suddenly the prime donna stepped forth to entertain, and to reveal the beauty of her race. The handsome youths and men arose en masse as she emerged from the bamboos that towered just behind the huge wooden idol’s back.

“Aloha! Aloha! Awai! Awai!” they cried in musical speech, as she made obeisance to the audience in bewitching Marquesan style. She commenced to dance, flitting across the stage in the radiance of the moonlight, which appeared the more magical as the small, blue-burning flames of the little coco-nut-oil lamps flickered in the breeze. The audience stared, breathless with anticipation.

She seemed to be some embodiment of Marquesan grace and poetic mythology. Her figure swayed to the tender adagio strain, as I caught the spirit of the weird chant and her movements and played on my violin. In some mysterious way she seemed tied to the tempo, to the throbbing wails of those waves of sound, so perfect, so exquisite was her every movement to each suggestion of the melody. Her tappa robe, of the most delicate material, lifted to the forest winds, the diaphanous folds clinging to her figure ere they loosened, and flying out from her heels as she flitted across the bamboo stage of that arena. At this sight the enamoured youths, standing in rows by the palms and mangoes, yelled with delight: “Aloha! Yoranna, Atua! Mon dieu!” The last two words being a French Marquesan’s most fervent expression.

But it was the intense expression of vanity gratified on her face that spoilt the imaginary effect and destroyed the illusion that some wraith of the forest, some heathen goddess, danced and sang before me.

Nor was her flush of pride to be blamed, for those Marquesan youths were indeed handsome. There they stood, knee-deep in the ferns, their dark faces aglow with impassioned thought, their eyes shining like glowing, sinful stars. About their perfectly shaped loins they had swathed the latest fashion festival sash, its scanty width adorned with tassels, and tied, bow-wise, coquettishly at the left knee. I will not dwell on that prime donna’s solo, for it would be impossible to give the faintest impression in words of the magical sounds of such weird, extempore melody.

As all the maids who were squatting beneath the palms and bread-fruit trees joined in the refrain the effect was most fascinating. Nor was the fascination spoilt by those dusky youths who made strange sounds, in perfect tempo, as the song proceeded, by clicking their tongues! Though I am unable adequately to describe a Marquesan dance of the old days, I can give an idea of the music, or at least of the impression that is left on my memory, in the following specimen of a Marquesan dance:—

Listen:
Music XML:

Reproduced by kind permission of Messrs. Boosey & Co., London, W.

It was in the finale, the mighty tutti, that the swelling crescendo and the passion of the barbarian, orchestral music rose and fell and faded into silence after the drums had ceased their primeval grandeur.

“Ter fink Oi’ve lived to see this ’ere day,” said Grimes hoarsely.

“To think I’ve lived to hear it,” I responded, as we dodged our heads in the nick of time, as thirteen happy savages whirled past, swaying war-clubs!

Aged, tattooed chiefs, chiefesses and plebeian, savage old women joined in that dance. Off they went, their stiff limbs scorning old age, as memories of youth and pagan days returned. The little children gazed from the hut doors with awestruck eyes, screamed with delight, clapped their tawny hands with childish ecstasy to see the antics, the high kicks of their erstwhile sedate old grandparents. I can still see those astonished little brown beggars as they stand there; even the glass eyes of their old rag dolls, that they held in their arms, looked surprised. Those contortions seemed impossible. Grimes and I held our hands up, breathless, spellbound with expectancy—but not a leg quivered, not a hip, not a limb or muscle was dislocated.

I felt like some happy barbarian. My nationality faded. The cares of the world fell from me, and I felt a strange affection for that old, stalwart humorist, the idol, standing before me, and I could have worshipped that grotesque wooden god of the pae-pae!

I looked at Grimes; the wonder of it all shone in his merry eyes. I thought of far-off old England, of grim conventionality. What a shock for my country to hear a wooden drum bang and up go rows of dusky legs! I thought of the funny old men who yearned to reconstruct modern civilisation—Members of Parliament; men who would reverse things, put the roof on the floor and the floor on the roof, reconstruct our entrails, our hopes, fears and feelings. What would they think, I wondered, if suddenly confronted with such a sight—a sunburnt British youth playing a violin to that heathen festival dance? But I am incorrigible, and as I sat there, imagining the horror on those British physiognomies to see me taking part in that terrible pandemonium, I snatched my red handkerchief from my pocket and tried to smother the laughter that convulsed my being.

The festival dancers whirled; crash! went that awful drum and still I reflected. I knew that those happy barbarians were the descendants of ferocious cannibals; indeed some of them had practised heathen rites but a few years ago. I wondered which was the most terrible: to eat your dead pal on toast, or to be a Christian, build cathedrals with spires pointing to the skies in the name of immortal salvation, while tender little kiddies, sad old men and women starve in the streets.

I laughed again. Grimes thought I had gone mad. I was as bad then as I am now, only I laughed more and was imaginative.

The dethroned king from the Paumotus Isles gazed frowningly upon my merriment. He was suspicious; thought I was making light of that royal display, little dreaming the truth!

Grimes and I ducked our heads as the covey of handsome native girls, arms akimbo, swept in whirling circles by us. We heard the swish of the gauzy, flower-bedecked robes. We ducked our heads just in the nick of time as they swung their perfect limbs skyward. The prima donna’s pearly toe-nails caught in Grimes’s curly hair. He yelled. Oh, the glorious memory of it all! The drums were beating a hundred strong, the weird barbarian fifes screamed. Something happened, my senses swam in some delicious indecision. I tried to look shocked—a beautiful, savage girl had embraced me!

“Aloah!” she murmured deliciously in my ear. I gazed interrogatively at my comrade. “Shall it be?”

“Whose ter know?” whispered Grimes enviously.

Then——! How can I boldly confess the truth?

What will you think of me, O my civilised brothers, sweet-scented, hair-combed men? Just think of it—I fell! I laid my violin down in the forest ferns; I gazed about stealthily. Once more she whispered: “Aloah! O beautiful papalagi!” Then I and Grimes whirled away into the wild dance, joined that barbarian mÊlÉe!

It’s a sad confession, I know. But why should America rejoice in the proud memory of a Washington, and England lag behind?

Think of the many men of distinction who have roamed and written of those Southern hemispheres. Captain Cook, the first pioneer, the cruise of the Casco with R.L.S., the Snark, Becks and Melvilles, and no such confession right up to date! I hope posterity, when I am gone, will remember with pride that it was I, a Britisher, who first told the truth about Southern Seas.


However, I must return to my description of the spectacle.

Evidently this was a special gathering of various types of dusky men and women of all the islands, tiers on tiers of handsome and ugly faces. Some were splendid savage old men, some representing the types of races that lived on isles a thousand leagues away, gathered together beneath the terraced arches of that amphitheatre of pillared bread-fruits and Nature’s colonnades of exquisitely twisted vine-work. Over this branched roof shone the stars, inextinguishably beautiful lamps of heaven. There were jovial faces; lean, avaricious faces, brooding, sardonic physiognomies; poetic faces seared with wrinkles; philosophical expressions; Voltaires, Spinozas, Darwins; sad old dethroned kings and faded queens—all squatting in the shadows as the oil lamps twinkled on the tasselled boughs above us. There were short, swarthy men, long men, fat men, wide men, square men, sensuous-looking women, voluptuous figures tattooed in conspicuous parts, scraggy women with faces like wrinkled toads, whose savage tattoo of hieroglyphic beauty showed off to advantage the handsome Marquesan physique. Honest old chiefs sat alone in their poverty, attired in primitive loin-cloths of Poverty’s scanty width. Budding poets gazed with thoughtful eyes on flippant old men and pompous chiefesses. Vainglorious girls strutted before their less fortunate sisters, wearing yellow stockings and little else. The inevitable poor relations gazed with weary, envious eyes on the huge calabash of sparkling toddy, moistening their parched lips as high chiefs and chiefesses quaffed at its rim deliciously.

Grimes and I respected those clean-bodied, handsome savages—flealess, immaculate in mind and attire, as they danced around us. And yet, alas! the hand of civilisation had touched them, for as with a crash the exiled king from the Solomon Isles fell from his bamboo erection, he still clutched at the keg of the best rum from across the seas—exchanged for copra to make scented oils to plaster down the hair of commercial savages in civilised lands!

What with the wild laughter and beating drums, it seemed more like a ghostly fÊte day than night, and so brilliant was the moon that one could distinguish the various shades of the uplifted hair of the Marquesan girls.

Grimes and I were not the only fascinated spectators of that barbarian burlesque. Several white settlers, French gendarmes and officials, Indians, Malay, Chinese, and one or two giant niggers stood in the shade of the bread-fruits watching that scene. The Marquesan Élite sat in the royal box—a kind of platform erected in the arbour of thick bamboo clumps. These spectators belonged to the missions, and attended the stone churches near Tai-o-hae. They were attired in European garb. Some even gazed through spectacles on the scene, making critical comments on the dress of their primitive brethren or the quality of the music of that South Sea orchestra.

As the first cataclysm of sound faded away, and the chief drummer rested his arm for the new con furioso overture, Grimes and I, taking the opportunity to look round, caught sight of Waylao standing amongst the spectators by the bamboos.

Grimes was full of enthusiasm, and wanted to cross the space to speak to her. But at that moment someone leaned against the great wooden idol, it overbalanced, and fell with a crash.

This accident was a terrible omen, for the old wooden deity was tapu, which meant that anyone who touched it was liable to be clubbed on the quiet. The Æsthetic-looking old chiefs and the superstitious chiefesses positively groaned in their anguish as the fallen deity was slowly lifted up from its degraded position. I don’t know what happened after that. I believe there was a general fight, the Christianised, Catholic natives of the French churches taking one side and the Protestants the other.

For the time being I will leave Marquesan affairs and follow the deluded Waylao, who was off that night to meet the Indian ex-convict—her beautiful romance.

Near the spot where Waylao stood watching the native festival was the small pagan village. As she stared across the space the children peeping from the hut doors shouted, “Aloah! Mai le tupa!” for they knew Waylao well.

The half-caste girl took no heed of the cheerful salutations, for she had suddenly spotted the turbaned cranium of her lover, Abduh Allah, beneath the buttressed banyans some distance away. I believe he held the Koran in his hand, anyway he looked a holy beggar. Beside him stood a veiled figure. Waylao stared. What did it all mean—her noble cut-throat looking down into the eyes of some feminine being? It was terrible. Her brain seemed as though it would burst with the flood of jealousy that swamped her senses. The noise of the distant festival chanting was unheard. One question only interested her—who was that who stood by the side of her noble, Islamic hubby? Suddenly the slim form by Abduh’s side flung aside her Oriental silk hooded wrap. Was it a ghost by his side—some phantom girl of the forest staring up into her lover’s face with pleading eyes? No. Notwithstanding all the mythological goddesses, all the shadows of Pulutu and legendary wonders that haunted that enchanted heathen-land, the Indian settler’s companion was none other than the faery being from the little grey hamlet by the mountains—the white girl Pauline.

Waylao rubbed her eyes. Was she dreaming? What hint of her unwanted presence had reached Abduh’s soul, making that wraith of the forest vanish so hurriedly?

In the flood of passionate pain that overwhelmed the senses of the half-caste girl was a terrible feeling as of something lost, leaving her a degraded creature, dominated by one passion—jealousy. This she told me long after and under the strangest of circumstances.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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