Horror in Paradise Page 17

  “But I wasn’t quick enough to catch up with the trouble. When I got near the prison yard, something else had started. The whole crowd inside the men’s lockup had gone mad . . . raving mad . . . yelling their heads off . . . and the noise of them flinging themselves against the door was like thunder. I knew the padlock wouldn’t last if that went on; I heard it crack like a pistol as I came up to the yard entrance; and, begum, before you could say knife, I was down under the feet of a maniac mob stampeding out into the bush.

  “I picked myself up and made a beeline for the lockup; ran halfway down the gangway between the beds, swinging my lamp around; found not a soul there; charged out again to Anterea’s house in the comer of the yard—why, what’s the matter now?”

  I had sat bolt upright and exclaimed, “Anterea?” When I repeated it, he said, “Yes, the head warder. Retired before your time, but he’s still going strong in Utiroa. One of the few who never gave a damn for old One Leg. Would you believe it? He was sleeping like a baby when I got to him. Hadn’t heard a sound and said he couldn’t smell a thing, though the place was still humming fit to knock you down. But he got going quick enough when I told him the news. He and I hunted the bush for those poor idiots till the crack of dawn. They came in willingly enough at sunup—all but Arikitaua, that’s to say—and we had a fine powwow together round Anterea’s shack, waiting for him to turn up. That’s when I got all the dope about One Leg.

  “They’d all seen him hopping up the gangway between the beds, so they claimed. There wasn’t a light, but they’d seen him. ‘Fiddle!’ I said to that, and Anterea backed me. So, just for the hell of it, I turned on him then, and asked him what of the smell I’d smelt and he hadn’t; and immediately about half of them butted in to say they hadn’t smelt it, either; and, by the same token, the other half had. It was all very puzzling until somebody explained that One Leg only brought his saintly odor along for the particular friends of the deceased, and then, of course, it was as clear as mud. ‘Which deceased?’ I wanted to know. ‘Oh, anyone who dies within the limits of his beat,’ says my clever friend. ‘He turns it on as soon as the soul has left the body.’

  “You could have knocked me down with a feather if there had been a corpse in sight. But there wasn’t. So I said a few words and left them to think up another story. I had a mind to go and inquire in the village after our missing number,

  Arikitaua . . . an Utiroa man I liked him a lot. But I hadn’t gone fifty steps, when a new hullabaloo from the lockup stopped me in my tracks. I thought they were starting another One Leg stunt. But it was only poor Arikitaua this time. Yes . . . there he was—rolled off his bed on the floor up against the far end wall—where my lamp hadn’t reached him—quite dead. I reckon it was just heart disease.”

  We sat silent a long time; then George said reflectively, “What with this and that, I’m surprised you didn’t hear of a friend’s death in Utiroa after the old stinker put it across you.”

  I told him then of Anterea.

  “Well . . . well . . . think of that now,” said George, “. . . and Anterea an unbeliever. Kind of friendly, I call it. There never was any real harm in old One Leg.”

  He was furious when I had a new resthouse built on the other side of the island—as furious as a man might be who has led you up the garden path to his own confusion. But he never would admit he’d been pulling my leg. And then again, what was it that scared my dog so?

  Florence Coombe

  Savagery Among

  the Black Islands

  A woman who was brought up on the South Pacific island of Norfolk and became a worker with the Melanesian Mission produced a volume from which vignettes may be drawn of early days in such Melanesian lands as the Banks Group, the Torres Group, Tikopia, San Cristoval in the New Hebrides, and Ulawa and Bugotu in the Solomons.

  “Savagery Among the Black Islands” is taken from various chapters in Islands of Enchantment (1912). Florence Coombe is also author of School-Days in Norfolk Island (1904).

  Motalava, Banks Islands

  THE wizard must be persuaded with money to prepare a ghost-shooter. With preparatory fasting, and the accompaniment of the inevitable magic song, the bamboo is packed with its fatal ingredients, such as dead man’s bone and leaves hot with mana. The weapon is then ready to be delivered to the man who has set his heart upon killing his enemy. It is such a little bamboo that it can be carried in the hand without attracting notice, and the open end is covered with the thumb until the unsuspecting foe is near at hand. Then with malicious triumph the hand is outstretched towards him—not in friendship! The thumb is lifted and the magic influence released in his direction. If the unlucky mortal sees the ghost-shooter he loses all power of resistance and falls to the ground. He might not die at once, but he will crawl home a doomed man whose hours are numbered. Yet nothing external has so much as touched him. Such was the power of the ghost-shooter.

  A story comes from Ra of a rich man with a grudge against somebody, unknowing and unknown. All that was known was that the great man had made ready a ghost-shooter and a feast at the same time. So strong is Melanesian curiosity that all the Ra world came to the feast, while perfectly aware that among them must be the individual whose life was forfeit. The feast would be crowned by a “kill,” but who would be the victim?

  The host, to make his magic stronger, fasted unwashed for so many days beforehand that the feast found him too weak to walk forth to it. The excited guests assembled in the tinesara for the dance which, according to custom, must precede the feast, and presently a grisly object appeared, carried between two supporters—a blackened, shrunken skeleton of a man. There they set him down, at the edge of the dancing-ground, and all saw the thin trembling arm straightened ready, holding the ghost-shooter.

  The drum began to tap and the dancers to circle round, while two burning eyes from out a wasted face watched each as he passed and waited still for his opportunity. The time went on, the dancers passed ,and repassed, and the watcher’s gaze from intensity gradually gave way to bewilderment. Which was his victim? This? He raised his arm and uncovered the bamboo. Even in the midst of the dance’s whirl all saw, all felt what had happened. The wretched man who stood in the line of the magic shot fell stiff and prostrate, and the dancing stopped. The same moment the shooter became aware that he had felled the wrong man, and loudly proclaimed his distress. Friends gathered round the poor fallen one, and urged him to put out his strength to resist the magic, since there was no harm wished to him in the act. And when the fainting man understood, he revived, and presently recovered. Of what afterwards befell the unknown who had so fortunately escaped I can find no record.

  Toga, Torres Islands

  THE eye is caught at once by a white cross of coral cement, which evidently marks a Christian grave. The wife of a former teacher was buried here. A year or two ago the priest-in-charge saw a crowd clustered round this grave, the center of their interest being a woman who was handling a land-crab of a species whose bite the natives fear. She, however, seemed quite unafraid, allowing the creature to crawl about her at will. Presently she put it down on the ground, and at once it sidled off into a hole under the cross.

  The scene was interpreted afterwards in the confidence that evening brings. The woman was one reputed to be in touch with the spirit-world, and able to communicate with ghosts and see beings invisible to ordinary eyes. When she was thus engaged it was said that her face changed and her eyes protruded crabwise. The crab itself was the soul of the teacher’s dead wife, whose remains were buried there. The hole was the passage by which it came up from Panoi, always taking the same visible shape.

  Remembering the legend, I questioned one of the women who was standing by me, and she corroborated it, adding that the Toga belief is that all dead folks’ souls go down into Panoi by crab holes, and reappear on occasion in crab form. “But some there are among us now who do not believe it,” she added.

  Tikopia

  WHILE writing of customs I must mention
that which concerns betrothal. An offer of marriage in Tikopia is made by the handing of a nut to a girl by her admirer, and if she accepts him she accepts the nut. Nor will she refuse him lightly, for if that significant nut be rejected, the girl by her action signs her own death-warrant. She is actually compelled by social custom to commit suicide, and it is said that every year several girls drown themselves rather than marry the man who handed the nut.

  San Cristoval

  OLD Taki, the chief of Waño, evolved a grudge against a certain man, and resolved to punish him for it. He killed a large pig, and sent it as a gift to the offender, accompanied with a huge quantity of yams.

  San Cristoval etiquette does not admit of the refusal of a chiefly gift: such would be an open and flagrant insult, bringing speedy chastisement. It is obligatory on the recipient to accept both pig and yams, and to make therewith a banquet. This does not sound like a very dire punishment. But the sting lies in the tail.

  By the inexorable law of native custom the poor fellow knew himself compelled to send in return a present equal to, if not exceeding in value, what he had received. Taki was rich; his victim, poor already, was by the chief’s lavish generosity reduced to beggary. His small garden was insufficient to supply the yams required, and all his money was exhausted in buying food for the man of abundance!

  Taki still lives and flourishes—an interesting character, whose portrait I am able to reproduce. Until about 1890 he was notorious as a leading headhunter and cannibal.

  Perhaps thirty years ago some influence induced him to give his son to the white men to be trained in our Norfolk Island Industrial College. But on the lad’s return Taki would have none of his newfangled ways. He dragged the lad down again into shameless savagery, and gloried in it. But the youth had hardly attained maturity when he was killed by a bite from a shark, and about the same time Taki lost both wife and brother. We have in our possession the stock which Taki caused to be carved to memorialize his son. It represents a shark’s head, with the miniature figure of a man in its jaws. Thenceforth Taki declared war upon all sharks; the whole ocean tribe suffer for the act of the one. But he wanted something more valuable than the life of many sharks in revenge for the loss of his nearest. He wanted heads! And they were not so easy to obtain in 1885 as they had been in, say, 1880.

  In vain he urged and gibed at the young men of his village for their cowardice; in vain he lamented and bewailed their desertion and his desolation. They were learning the new way, and could not be prevailed upon to organize one of the night-raids so dear to them of old time. Taki bound around him the girdle that signifies married-womanhood in San Cristoval. It was a sign to the world that he was in the position of an old woman, having lost his nearest and dearest, and yet being unable to obtain human heads with which to honor their tombs.

  But in 1887 the girdle was put off. His desire was fulfilled. Two laborers returning from the Queensland sugar plantations, afraid to set foot in their native land, the wild island of Mala, pleaded for shelter in Taki’s village, hoping for safety, no doubt, where a Mission school was planted. Taki was more than willing to receive them; he was delighted. Forthwith he sent money and instructions to some heathen down the coast, and the heads of the two Mala men were added to Taki’s trophies.

  The murder accomplished, Taki explained that a vow he had made necessitated his action, but that now all was over he would like to make a fresh start, follow his people in forsaking savagery, and learn the Peace Teaching! . . .

  Touching David Bo, it may be mentioned that one of our head boys at Norfolk Island, a native of Heuru, remarked one morning a few months ago that he believed his chief had died. On inquiry he said that he had dreamed of him, and that although the chief seemed perfectly happy and full of life, he himself had wept greatly. A few weeks later the Southern Cross, returning from the islands, brought news of David Bo’s death on the very night of the lad’s dream.

  Ulawa, Solomon Islands

  AS San Cristoval is the heart of snake-worship, so Ulawa seems to have been in former days of shark worship. Throughout the Solomons these creatures are looked upon with much dread, and regarded as the abode of ghosts. A man on his deathbed will predict his future appearance in the form of a shark, and when one distinguished in any way by its size or color is observed to frequent a certain rock or strip of beach, it is regarded as representing the deceased or his ghost, and his name is bestowed upon it. I believe off Ulawa there still ranges a fierce maneating shark, called after one Sautahimatawa, to whom propitiatory money is offered in the much-prized porpoise teeth.

  In the two or three heathen villages yet remaining in Ulawa, the sharks are worshiped by all the people, who not merely expect to inhabit them hereafter, but in a vague, quasi-totemic way consider themselves the descendants of sharks. It is not every one who can communicate with them; only certain men are possessed of the requisite mana. The test is from a canoe, by means of a very heavy red stone or a very large, light fruit. The man who wishes to prove his power throws out either one or the other, and should the fruit sink or the stone miraculously float, it is clear evidence that he has the desired mana.

  The sharks seem to have a very proper feeling, for it is said that where they are worshiped they harm no one. They strictly confine themselves to killing to order; there is no freelance work. Their worshipers supply them with occupation, dispatching them on killing expeditions as far as San Cristoval and Ugi.

  One of the villages boasts a famous school of sacred sharks. A certain man has mana to summon them when wanted, and a second knows how to send them about their business. According to the native account, which is very precise on the subject, they come when called in a regular order—two in front, and ten couples behind, nose level with nose, swimming straight into the small enclosed harbor where they are to receive their instructions.

  Every shark is named. The leader is addressed, and to him is confided the name of his victim-designate. If possible, something connected with the man is supplied to the shark to assist the scent, even if it be only a handful of sand scraped by his foe from his footprints on the beach. Having heard their instructions, the sharks turn again and swim orderly off to work.

  The shark especially named selects a large skate for its companion, whose duty it is to lash with its tail the doomed man’s canoe until it is upset. Then it is the part of the shark to swallow the man headfirst, but without killing him. Off he goes, a pair of legs sticking out of his mouth, to the spot where his worshiper awaits him, and at his feet the prey is disgorged. The man will not be dead: he must not be! No sacred shark will eat a man unless he has been formally strangled to death. But he is extremely weak, “trembling and sobbing,” they say. He knows he can hope for no mercy from the ruthless enemy at whose feet he lies. He is strangled and flung back to the shark for a meal.

  Cases are told of a shark sent to destroy a man taking instead a capricious fancy to him—holding him under water once or twice for fun, playing with him, and then releasing him.

  There was a famous shark-leader named Huaaha, particularly proficient in his profession. One day when the shark clan was summoned, Huaaha was not amongst them. At the same time came the news of the killing of a great shark in another village where they were no longer held in honor. Thither hurried the shark worshippers, to find that the body of the shark had been already consumed, and only the head remained on the shore.

  The question was solemnly addressed to it, “Are you Huaaha?” and forthwith it stood up on end! Upon such conclusive evidence the infuriated people went straight up into the village, where the terrified inhabitants made no show of resistance, and ransacked the houses, burning and destroying everywhere. Down they surged to the beach, and broke up every canoe; up to the gardens in the bush, and ravaged them utterly; and then, glutted with vengeance, returned home.

  In the same place there is said to be a hybrid sea monster, with the head of a shark and the legs of a man, who harms no one, but swims sadly about, off the village where sh
arks are worshipped, with which he is friendly.

  The bodies of great chiefs only are buried in the heathen parts of Ulawa. All other corpses are the recognized food of the sharks, offered, as it were, in sacrifice to please them. Many were the battles waged in the Mission’s early days between Christian and heathen relatives touching the disposal of the bodies of the baptized.’Great and real was the terror of the sharks’ indignation at being deprived of their accustomed privilege. But now, of course, burial is the rule, and shark propitiation the exception.

  Bugotu, Solomon Islands

  AMONG the first of the chiefs of Bugotu with whom the Mission came in contact was one Bera, a very savage ruffian, whose worst barbarities were the offspring of his mother’s brain, she being a terrible old hag, who might have served as model for the character of “Gagool” herself!

  It pleased Bera (and his mother) to appoint as his successor his grandson, Kikolo, a quiet, well-dispositioned young fellow, who had already joined the Mission school as a hearer. But shortly afterwards signs of wasting and decline were visible in the youth, and Bera was almost beside himself with anxiety. Curiously enough, he seems to have attached no blame to the New Teaching with which Kikolo had connected himself; but, making up his mind that his grandson had offended the local tindato, he bore him hither and thither, from islet to islet, in a vain endeavor to escape out of his jurisdiction. Kikolo’s weakness increased, and at last in despair he was brought back to Bera’s own house, that there he might die and be buried in chiefly fashion. But one last resource remained, and that should be tried. The tindalo might perchance yet be appeased by a human sacrifice.

  A mother was working in her garden with her little child beside her, three or four years of age. She never noticed the stealthy approach of one of Bera’s men, who, from a short distance away, attracted the infant’s attention, and lured it towards him. As soon as it could safely be done, the child was seized and carried off in a canoe to where Bera impatiently awaited the fulfilment of his command.