ADDIE RANSOM: A MEMORY OF THE TOKELAUS
A hot, steamy mist rose from the gleaming, oily sea, and the little island lay sweltering and gasping under a sky of brass and a savagely blazing sun. Along the edges of the curving lines of yellow beach the drought-smitten plumes of the fast-withering coco-palms drooped straight, brown and motionless; and Wallis, the trader at Avamua village, as he paced to and fro upon the heated boards of his verandah, cursed the island and the people, and the deadly calm, and the brassy sky, and the firm of Tom de Wolf & Sons (whom he blamed for the weather), and the drought, and the sickness, and the overdue ship, and himself, and everything else; and he wished that Lita would go away for a month—her patience and calmness worried and irritated him. Then he might perhaps try getting drunk on Sundays like Ransom; to-day was Sunday, and another Sunday meant another hell of twelve hours’ heat, and misery, and hope deferred.
‘Curse that damned bell! There it goes again, though half of the people are dead, and the other half are dying like rotten sheep! Oh, for a ship, or rain, or a howling gale—anything but this!’
He dashed his pipe furiously upon the verandah, and then flung himself into a cane lounge, pressed his hands to his ears, and swore silently at the jarring clamour of the hated church bell.
Lita’s brown hand touched him on the shoulder.
‘Wassa th’ matter, Tom, wis you?’
‘Oh, go away, for God’s sake, Lita, there’s a good girl. Leave me alone. Go to church, and tell Ioane I’ll give him a couple of dollars not to ring that damned, infernal bell again to-day. I’m going mad! I’ll get drunk, I think, like Ransom. My God! just think of it, girl! Twelve months without a ship, and this hateful, God-forsaken island turning into a pest-house.’
‘Wasa is pesta-house, Tom?’
‘Place where they put people in to die—lazzaretto, charnel-house, morgue, living grave! Oh, go away, girl, go to the blarsted church if you want to, and leave me alone.’
Her slender fingers touched his hand timidly.
‘I don’ wan’ go to church, Tom. I don’ wan’ leave you here to get mad an’ lon’ly by yourse’f.’
‘Very well, old woman, stay here with me. Perhaps a breeze may come by-and-by and then we can breathe. How many people died yesterday, Lita?’
‘’Bout nine, Tom—four men, tree woman, an’ some child.’
‘Poor devils! I wish I had some medicine for them. But I’m hanged if I know what it is—some sort of cholera brought here by that infernal American missionary brig, I believe. Hallo! there’s Ioane beginning.’
The white-walled native church was not a stone’s throw away, and through the wide, paneless windows and open doors the deep voice of Ioane, the Samoan native teacher, sounded clearly and solemnly in the still, heated morn. Wallis, with his wide straw hat covering his bronzed face, lay back in the lounge, and, at first, took no heed. Lita, sitting at his feet, rested her chin on one hand and listened intently.
‘Turn ye all, men and women of this afflicted land of Nukutavau, to the Word of God, which is written in the Book of Isaiah, in the fortieth chapter and the sixth verse. It was to my mind that we should first sing to the praise of Jehovah; but, alas! we cannot sing to-day; for my cheeks are wetted with many tears, and my belly is bursting with sorrow when I see how few there are of us who are left. But yet can we pray together; and the whisper of affliction shall as surely reach the ear of God as the loud, glad song of praise. But first hear ye these words:—
‘“The Voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? And the Voice answered. All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: the grass withereth, the flower fadeth; because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: Surely the people is grass.”’
Wallis sat up and listened; for as the preacher ceased he heard the sound of many sobs; and presently a woman, old, gaunt and feeble, staggered out from the church and flung herself face downwards upon the burning sand.
‘A mate, a mate tatou,’ she moaned, ‘e agi mai le manava Ieova.’ (‘We perish, we perish with the breath of Jehovah.’)
She lay there unheeded; for now the preacher, with broken voice, was passionately imploring his congregation to cast themselves upon the mercy of God, and beseech Him to stay the deadly pestilence which had so sorely smitten the land.
‘And spare Thou, O God Most High, Most Merciful, and Most Just, these many little children who yet live, for they are but very small, and have not yet sinned before Thee. Three of mine own hast thou touched with Thy hand, and taken to Thee, and my belly and the belly of my wife are empty, and yearn in the night for the voices we shall hear no more. And for those three whom Thou hast taken, spare Thou three of those who yet live. And shield, O God, with Thy care, the papalagi16 Ranisome and his child, the girl Ati’ (Addie), ‘for she loveth Thy word; and turn Thou the heart of her father from the drinking of grog, so that he shall be no more as a hog that is loia.‘17 ‘And shield, too, the papalagi Walesi and the woman Lita—she who liveth with him in sin—for their hearts are ever good and their hands ever open to us of Nukutavau; and send, O most merciful and compassionate One, a ship, so that the two white men and the woman Lita, and the girl Ati, and we, Thy people, may not die of hunger and thirst and sickness, but live to praise Thy holy name.’
A burst of weeping, and Amene! Amene! came from his hearers, then silence; and Wallis, taking his hat from his face, bent his head.
Presently the scanty congregation came slowly forth. Some, as they passed the white man and Lita, tried to smile a greeting to them, though every brown face was wet with tears. Last of all came Ioane, the Samoan teacher, short, square-built, with deep sunken earnest eyes bent to the ground, his right arm supporting his wife, whose slender frame was shaken with the violence of her grief for those three of her heart whom ‘He had taken.’ Wallis, followed by Lita, stepped down from his verandah, and held out his hand. The teacher pressed it in silence, and, unable now to speak, walked slowly on. Lita, her dark, oval face still hot with anger, drew back and made no sign, though Eliné, the teacher’s wife, murmured as she passed,—‘Nay, be not angry, Lita; for death is near to us all.’
As they returned to the house, Ransom, the old trader from Avatulalo, the next village to that in which Wallis lived, met them at the gate. He was a man of sixty or thereabout—grey, dirty, dishevelled and half drunk.
‘I want you and Lita to come back with me,’ he said slowly, holding to the palings of the fence, and moving his head from side to side; ‘you must come… ‘you must come, or’—with sudden frenzy—‘by God, I’ll put a firestick into your house; I will, by blazes, I will! Curse you, Tom Wallis, and your damned, Sydney-white-duck-suit-respectability, and your damned proud quarter-caste Portugee woman, who you ain’t married to, as I was to mine—bad as she was. Put up your hands you—’
Wallis gripped him firmly but kindly by the wrists, and forced him into a seat.
‘What’s the matter with you, Ransom? Only drunk and fightable as usual? or are you being chased by pink snakes with tiger’s heads again, eh? There, sit quiet, old man. Where is Addie?’
For a few moments the old man made no answer; then he rose, and placing his trembling hands on Wallis’s chest said brokenly,—
‘God help me, Tom! She’s a-dyin’… an’ I’m near drunk. She was took bad this mornin’, an’ has been callin’ for the teacher an’ Lita— an’ I’d as lief go to hell as to ask a damned Kanaka mission’ry to come an’ talk Gospel an’ Heaven to a child o’ mine—not in my own house, anyway. It ain’t right or proper. But she kep’ on a-pesterin’ me, an’ at last I said I would come an’ arst him… an’ while I was waitin’ outside the church I hears the damned feller a-prayin’ and sayin’ “All flesh is grass, and the grass withereth”’—his voice quivered and broke again—‘an’ onct I heard my old mother say them very words when she was a-dyin’, more’n forty year ago, in the old country. An’ Addie’s dyin’ fast, Tom; dyin’, an’ I can’t say a prayer with her; I don’t know none. I’m only a drunken old shellback, an’ I ought to be struck dead for my bloody sins. She’s all I has in the world to love; an’ now, an’ now—’ He turned away and, covering his face with his coarse, sunburnt hands, sobbed like a child.
Half an hour later Wallis and Lita were in the room with the dying girl. Ransom, shambling behind them, crept in and knelt at the foot of the bed. Two native women, who were squatted on the matted floor went out softly, and Wallis bent over the girl and looked into her pallid, twitching face, over which the dread grey shadow was creeping fast. She put out her hand to the trader and Lita, and a faint smile moved her lips.
‘You is good to come, Tom Wallis,’ she said, in her childish voice, ‘an’ so is you, Lita. Wher’ is my fath’? I don’ see him. I was ask him to bring Ioane here to pray fo’ me. I can’t pray myself.... I have been try.... Wher’ is you, fath’?’
Ransom crept round to her side, and laid his face upon her open hand.
‘Ah, fath’, you is come… poor fath’. I say, fath’, don you drink no more. You been promise me that, fath’, so many time. Don’’ you break yo’ promise now, will you?’
The grizzled old sinner put his trembling lips to hers. ‘Never no more, Addie—may God strike me dead if I lie!’
‘Come away, old man,’ said Wallis, softly, ‘let Lita be with her. Neither you nor I should disturb her just now. See, she wants Lita. But her time is near, and you must keep close to her.’
They drew apart, and Lita knelt beside the bed.
‘An’ did he pray for fath’, an’ me, an’ you, an’ Tom, an’ my mother who runned away? Tell me all ‘bout it, Lita. I did wan’ him to come and tell me some things I wan’ to know before I is dead. Tell me what he say.’
‘He say dat vers’, “De grass with’, de flow’ fade, but de word of de Lor’ God endure fo’ ev.’”’
‘Was do it mean, Lita, dear?’
‘I don’ ‘xactly know, Ati, dear. But Tom say he mean dat by-an’-by, if we is good an’ don’ lie an’ steal, an’ don’ kill nobody, dat we all go to heav’ when we is die.’
‘Lita, dear, Ioane say one day dat de Bible say my fath’ go to hell because he get drunk all de time.’
‘Don’ you b’lieve him, Ati; Ioane is only dam Kanaka mission’ry. Wassa the hell do he know ‘bout such thing? You go to heav’ sure ‘nuff, and you’ fath’ come to you there by-an’-by. He never been steal or lie; he on’y get drunk. Don’ you be ‘fraid ‘bout dat, Ati, dear. An’ you will see yo’ mother, too. Oh, yes, yo’ will see yo’ mother; an’ yo’ fath’ will come there too, all nice, an’ clean, an’ sober, in new pyjamas all shinin’ white; an’ he will kiss yo’ mother on her mouf, an’ say, “I forgive you, Nellie Ransom, jes’ as Jesu Christ has forgive me.”’
The girl sighed heavily, and then lay with closed eyes, breathing softly. Suddenly she turned quickly on her side, and extended her arms, and her voice sounded strangely clear and distinct.
‘Where is you, fath’? Quick, quick, come an’ hol’ me. It is dark.... Hol’ me tight… clos’ up, clos’ up, fath’, my fath’… it is so dark—so dark.’
The natives told Wallis next morning that ‘Ranisome’ had gone quite mad.
‘How know ye he is mad?’
‘Tah! He hath taken every bottle of grog from two boxes and smashed them on the ground. And then we saw him kneel upon the sand, raise his hands, and weep. He is mad.’
IN A NATIVE VILLAGE
When I first settled down on this particular island as a trader, I had, in my boundless ignorance of the fierce jealousy that prevailed between the various villages thereon, been foolish enough to engage two or three servants from outlying districts—much against the wishes of the local kaupule (town councillors), each of whom brought me two or three candidates (relatives, connections or spongers of their own) and urged that I should engage them and no others. This I refused to do, point blank, and after much angry discussion and argument, I succeeded in having my own way, and was allowed to choose my servants from villages widely apart. In the course of a few weeks some terrific encounters had taken place between my women servants and other of the local females, who regarded them as vile usurpers of their right to rob and plunder the new white man. However, in time matters settled down in a measure; and beyond vituperative language and sanguinary threats against the successful applicants, the rejected candidates, male and female, behaved very nicely. But I was slumbering on a latent volcano of fresh troubles, and the premonitory upheaval came about a month after our head nurse, Hakala, had been fined five dollars for using English Seafaring’ language to another woman who had called her a pig. As Hakala could not pay the fine—being already in debt to me for two months’ wages paid in advance—I settled it; for she was a widow, and had endeared herself to me by the vigorous manner in which she had pitched a large, fat girl named ‘Heké out of the house for stealing some sugar from my store-room. The members of the kaupule (the village parliament) were pleased to accept the money, but wrote me a formal letter on the following morning, and remarked that it was wrong of me to encourage brutal conduct in any of my servants—wrong and un-Christian-like as well. ‘But,’ the letter went on to say, ‘it is honest of you to pay this woman’s fine; and Talamaheke’ (the sugar-thief) ‘has been sentenced to do three days’ road-making for stealing the sugar. Yet you must not think evil of Talamaheke, for she is a little vale (mad), and has a class in the Sunday-school. Now it is in our minds that, as you are an honest man, you will pay the fines owing on the horse.’ I had a vague recollection of my predecessor telling me something indefinite about a horse belonging to the station, but could not remember whether he said that the animal was in the vicinity of the station or was rambling elsewhere on the island, or had died. So I called my Samoan cook, Harry, to learn what he knew about the matter. Harry was the Adonis of the village, and already the under-nurse, E’eu, a sweet little hazel-eyed creature of fifteen, and incorrigibly wicked, had succumbed to his charms, and spent much of her time in the kitchen. At that moment Harry was seated outside the cook-house, dressed in a suit of spotless white duck, playing an accordeon; also he wore round his brown neck a thick wreath of white and scarlet flowers. Harry, I may remark, was a dandy and a notorious profligate, but against these natural faults was the fact that he could make very good bread.
‘Harry,’ I said, ‘do you know anything about this horse?’ and I tapped the official letter.
He smiled. ‘Oh, yes, sir. I know all ‘bout him. He been fined altogether ‘bout two hundred and fifty dollar, an’ never pay.’
‘What do you mean? How can anyone fine a horse?’
Then Harry explained and gave me the horse’s history.
The animal had been brought from New Zealand for some occult reason, and had behaved himself very badly ever since he landed. Young banana trees were his especial fancy, cotton plants he devoured wholesale, and it was generally asserted that he was also addicted to kicking chickens. My three predecessors on the station had each repudiated the creature, and each man when he left the island had said that his successor would pay for all damage done.
‘Where is the brute now?’ I asked.
Looking cautiously around to see that no one was within earshot, Harry informed me that until a week previously the nuâ had been running quietly in the interior of the island for many months, but since my arrival had been brought back by two of the deacons and was now feeding about the immediate vicinity.
‘Why did the deacons bring him back, if he destroys banana trees and kill chickens?’
Harry looked very uncomfortable and seemed disinclined to speak, but at last let the cat out of the bag and revealed a diabolical conspiracy—the horse had been brought back for my undoing, or rather for the undoing of the strings of my bag of dollars.
‘You see, sir,’ said he, confidentially, ‘these people on this island very clever—all dam rogue’ (his mother was a native of the island), ‘an’ ‘bout a month ago, when you give two dollar to help build new church, the fakafili and kaupule{*} (judge and councillors) ‘say you is a very good man and that you might pay that horse’s fines. An’ if you pay that horse’s fines then the people will have enough money to send to Sydney to buy glass windows and nice, fine doors for the new church. An’ so that is why the deacons have bring that horse back.’
‘But what good will bringing the horse here do? That won’t make me pay his fines.’
‘Oh, you see, sir, since the horse been come back the people take him out every day into some banana plantation and let him eat some trees. Then, by-and-by—to-morrer, perhaps—they will come an’ ask you to go and look. Then you will look an’ say, “Alright, I will pay five dollar.” An’ then when you pay that five dollar the kaupule and the judge will say, “Now you mus’ pay for all the bad things that that horse do before you come here.” An’ s’pose you won’ pay, then I b’lieve the judge an’ headmen goin’ to tapu18 your store. You see they wan’ that money for church very bad, because they very jealous of Halamua church.’
‘Jealous of Halamua church! Why?’
‘Oh, because Halamua people been buy a foolpit for their church—a very fine foolpit from California; an’ now this town here very jealous, and the people say that when you pay that horse’s fine they will buy pine windows, pine doors, and pine floor, and give Halamua church hell?
The novel (but in some cases exceedingly correct) pronunciation of pulpit pleased me, yet my wrath was aroused at this scandalous revelation of the plans of the villagers to beautify their church at my expense. It was as bad as any church bazaar in Christendom.
As Harry surmised, I received a visit from a deputation the next morning. They wanted me to come and see the destruction done to their plantations by my horse.
‘But it’s not my horse,’ I said. ‘I decline to hear anything about a horse. There is no horse down in my stock list, nor an elephant.’
A dirty old ruffian with one eye and a tattooed face regarded me gravely for a moment, and then asked me in a wheezy, husky voice if I knew that Ananias and Sapphira were struck dead for telling lies.
‘Of course,’ I replied promptly, ‘I saw them struck. My uncle in England had them buried in his garden to improve the soil. And why do you come here and tell me these things about a horse? If there is a horse, and it eats your bananas and sugar-cane, why don’t you shoot it?’
This suggestion staggered the deputation, half of which scratched its head meditatively. Then a tall, thin man, with an attenuated face like a starved fowl, said sneeringly in English,—
‘What for you want to make gammon you no savee about horse?’
His companions smiled approvingly; not that they understood a word of English, but they evidently regarded the fowl-like creature as a learned person who would give me a dressing down in my own language.
I looked at him with a puzzled expression, and then said to Harry,—
‘What does this man say, Harry? I can’t talk German. Can you?’
Harry grinned and shook his head; the rest of the deputation looked angrily at the hatchet-faced man, and the member seated next to him told him he ought to be ashamed of himself to pretend to be able to vogahau faka Beretania (talk English).
For some minutes no one spoke. Then the youngest member of the deputation, a jolly, fat-faced young deacon, dressed in a suit of white flannel, laughed merrily, and asked me for some tobacco. I gave them a plug each all round, and the deputation withdrew. So having successfully repudiated the horse and all his works, I felt satisfied.
Pigs were the next trouble—my own pigs and the pigs of the general public. When I landed on the island I had brought with me from Sydney a lady and gentleman pig of exceedingly high lineage. They were now the proud and happy parents of seven beautiful little black-and-white piglets, and at any hour of the day one might see numbers of natives looking over my wall at the graceful little creatures as they chased one another over the grass, charged at nothing, and came to a dead stop with astonishing rapidity and a look of intense amazement. One fatal day I let them out, thinking they would come to no harm, as their parents were with them. As they did not return at dusk I sent E’eu, the under-nurse, to search for them. She came back and told me in a whisper that the father and mother pig were rooting up a sweet-potato patch belonging to the local chief. The piglets she had failed to discover. Enjoining secrecy, I sent E’eu and Harry to chase the parents home. This was effected after considerable trouble, but the owner of the potato patch claimed two dollars damages. I paid it, feeling his claim was just. Next morning the seven piglets were returned one by one by various native children. Each piglet had, according to their accounts, been in a separate garden, and done considerable damage; and ‘because they’ (the piglets) ‘were the property of a good and just man, the owners of the gardens would not hurt nor even chase them,’ etc. Glad to recover the squealing little wanderers at any cost, I gave each lying child a quarter-dollar. Next day I had a piece of ground walled in with lumps of coral and placed the porcine family inside. Then I wrote to the councillors, asking them to notify the people that if any of the village pigs came inside my fence and rooted abyssmal holes in my ground, as had been their habit hitherto, I should demand compensation. His Honour the Chief Justice stated in court that this was only fair and right; the white man had paid for the damage done by his pigs, and therefore he was entitled to claim damages if the village pigs caused him trouble. (I had previously squared his Honour with the promise of a male sucker.) One day the seven young pigs escaped from their mother and went out for a run on the village green. They were at once assailed as detestable foreign devils by about two hundred and forty-three gaunt, razorbacked village sows, and were only rescued from a cruel death after every one had lost its tail. Why is it that pigs of different breeds always bite off each other’s tails? I claimed fifty cents per tail, and was awarded $3.50 damages, to be paid by the community generally. The community refused to pay. His Honour then notified by the town crier that I was at liberty to shoot any pig that broke into the station grounds. I put a cartridge into a Snider rifle and told my servants to call me if they heard a grunt in the night.
Three days after this, as I was discussing theology and baked fowl one night with the local teacher in his own house, a boy burst in and said that there was a strange pig in my garden devouring my crop of French beans. In two minutes I was back in my house, snatched up the Snider, and ran to the garden wall. There was the brute, a great black-and white beast, the biggest native pig I ever saw. His back was turned, but hearing my steps he ‘went about’ and faced me. ‘Twas a bright moonlight night, and the bullet plugged him fair between the eyes. Over he rolled without a kick. Then I heard a shriek or laughter, and saw half a dozen girls scuttling away among the coco-palms. A horrible suspicion nearly made me faint. Jumping over the wall I examined the defunct, and could scarce forbear to shed a tear.
‘Twas mine own prized black Australian boar, daubed over with splashes of coral lime whitewash. And the whitewash came from a tub full of it, with which the natives had that morning been whitening the walls of the newly-built village church. The one-eyed old scoundrel of a deacon told me next day it was a judgment on me.