CHAPTER XVII
FIRST FRUITS
Aunt Jannet Harvey's ideas of missionary work and methods differed essentially from Kenneth Blair's.
She wanted to be up and doing all the time. She was anxious for visible fruit before the seed was fairly into the ground. In spite of the practical common-sense which she brought as a rule to the ordinary affairs of life, she was, in this matter, like a child with its first garden, in danger of retarding by her very anxiety for progress. She was inclined to be for ever hauling up the tiny shoots to see how the roots were getting on. Or, to be more exact still, she was like a child placed suddenly in charge of an overgrown patch with instructions to reduce it to order. And Aunt Jannet's ideas ran to such strenuous loppings and bindings and weedings, that the timid brown women and round-faced, pot-bellied youngsters fled, white-eyed and panting, whenever they caught sight of her.
This greatly distressed the good lady, and served only to confirm her views as to the urgent necessity for prompt and radical measures, just as flight from a school-board officer but serves to accentuate the chase.
She wanted the women and children clothed and taught and transformed into the outward semblance of civilised beings at once. She wanted a church built, and a school. She wanted to teach the women sewing and decency, and the children their letters and manners.
And Blair, with his wider knowledge and experience, had to put his foot down on every suggestion she made, and, gently and good-humouredly as he tried to do it since he knew the warm heart that was at the bottom of it all, found himself in constant collision with her.
"Example first, Aunt Jannet," was his constant text, "then precept. It's not the slightest use thinking of a church or a school yet. They'll come all right when we're ready for them. And, really, you must not try to dress any of those women and children again. You'll kill them."
"But they are so—so terribly naked, Kenneth."
"Of course they are, and so they have been for thousands of years, their forbears at all events, and you might just as well begin giving them poison as insist on clothing them. If you want to kill them, clothe them. If you want them to live, just let them go as they are."
"But the men——"
"Now you just leave the men to us. If you good ladies will just keep on at your own proper work, and let these big brown children watch you and see the pleasant results, you will be doing the very best thing possible for them. Make friends with them, pick up all the words you can lay hold of, and, in fact, get in touch with them all round as quickly as possible. But we must lead them; we can't drive them."
His own example was an inspiration to them all. Evans and Stuart seconded him loyally, and by degrees the ladies, who one and all, Jean included, sympathised considerably with Aunt Jannet in her not unnatural discrimination in favour of clothing, desisted from their well-meant efforts and grew accustomed to the scant attire of their brown friends.
They had no lack of personal cleanliness to combat, for which "Thank goodness!" said Aunt Jannet more than once. "If they let you see plenty of skin, it is at all events clean skin. If they'd stop rubbing themselves all over with that nasty rotten coco-nut oil and wear some decent clothes, I wouldn't have a fault to find with them—except in their eating and a few other things."
The mission-settlement lay on the left bank of the little river which ran through the spear of white sand at the head of the bay. On the other side of the river the mountains where Ra'a lived rolled up, shoulder on shoulder, till the farther ones were lost to sight. Behind the mission the ground lay level for a space, where the valley came down to the sea, and here were masses of coco-palms and a great tangle of undergrowth, and farther up, past the village, were the disputed taro fields, and the yam and banana plantations.
On the mission side of the river, behind the level lands, another great hill flung one rough protecting arm into the sea a quarter of a mile beyond the houses. The great ridge, full of cracks and cavities, as though it had broken in its fall, shot right into the lagoon, and the barrier reef started from its outermost point. On the other side the great waves roared everlastingly up a white shell beach, but landing there was impossible, as no boat built by man could survive the tumult of the surf.
This was the island bathing-place, and here, all day long, men, women, and children were slipping and tumbling like seals in the creaming rollers. They shot deftly through the combers before they broke, and away out to sea, then came skimming back stretched flat on their swimming-boards, sitting on them, standing on them, marvels of grace and beauty, with shouts and laughter and life's tide at its fullest.
It was their most rational enjoyment, and the finest possible outlet for their activities. It kept them healthy and it kept them clean.
It also led to friction between the various factions, just as the taro fields had done. This was the only place available for surf-swimming for many miles on either side. Until the late troubles it had been common to all. Now the nearest dwellers, Ha'o's people and the atoll men, monopolised it, and when the others desired to join the sport they were received with taunts and jibes which came quickly to blows, and Blair had to adopt therôleof peacemaker once more.
Ha'o and his men would have kept the others from the surf, just as they would have kept them from the taro swamps. But Blair would not have it. He reasoned with them, talked to them and at them, in a voluble mixture of Samoan, Kapaa'an, and English, and made them understand what he meant if many of his words were beyond them.
In a pow-wow of this kind, when his feelings ran far in advance of his tongue, he could not wait for Matti's plodding interpretation, but dashed at it himself, and surprised and tickled his hearers with his white-hot vehemence.
They were mighty arguers and had the advantage of the language, but he brought them to his will by sheer force of insistence. He had right on his side, and he would have them to it also. They grumblingly yielded the shore on certain days of the week, and Blair rejoiced in this further sign of growth and progress.
Meanwhile, however, he knew that they were busily at work on the preparation of arguments of a more forceful description, and he had little hope of reaching his ultimate goal without these coming into use. So small a spark might set them all aflame that it was useless attempting to forecast it or to stifle it in advance. All he could do was to endeavour, by every means in his power, to build up among them the new influences which he and his friends represented, so that when the time came they should count as factors in the case.
The houses in the village were all more or less laughable imitations of the mission-house, for they were as imitative as monkeys, so long as imitation imposed no restrictions, and at sight of the white men's houses they pulled down their own and began again with these as models. And when they got to boat-building, the canoes of their fathers were no longer good enough for them. Their new boats must follow the lines of the white men's boats also, to Blair's great satisfaction, since it entailed mighty labours, and while they were busy they were safe from outbreaks on side issues.
At the mission-station all worked alike; the men breaking up the ground for plants and vegetables, and attending to the live stock, the women doing the housework and cooking. All day long the house was surrounded by an inquisitive throng, which watched keenly and commented fully and frankly on everything it saw, and with whom the busy workers carried on disjointed conversations, and picked up native words in exchange for English ones, amid shouts of laughter at the multitudinous mistakes on either side.
Morning and evening the white men held a short service, and the brown men and women caught up the hymn tunes and hummed them lustily, with no slightest idea of what they meant, but with none the less enjoyment.
The small harmonium had been brought ashore and was a huge delight, and for a time a mighty mystery to them. Jean played it, and they could not understand why it should sing when she touched the keys and remain mute when they did the same. Then one cunning fellow, by dint of persistent watching, caught sight of her feet moving beneath her dress, and with an excited "Hi!" laid himself flat on his stomach with his nose at her heels, and the mystery was solved.
The novel tunes ran in their heads, some even of the incomprehensible words, and it was strange indeed to hear a naked brown man chopping away at a slab of timber and singing lustily, "Kown 'im! kown 'im! kown 'im! kown 'im law-daw-faw!" Later on they heard that tune amid still stranger surroundings, for the lilt and swing of it captured their fancy, and they were at it morning, noon, and night—building their boats, working in the taro fields, sweeping along on the tops of the rolling combers, sitting outside their houses when the day's work was done.
There was a hopeful, homely sound in it, and those who sang with understanding hoped fervently that in time the others might do so too.
They were very children, these brown men and women, in their light-heartedness, quarrelsomeness, and lack of restraint. Whatsoever seemed good in their eyes at the moment, that they did, regardless of consequences. Only at times, the innate savagery showed through, and then they were to be feared. Like hot-headed children who had never known restraint, there was no knowing what they would do, except that it would certainly be something unpleasant to the offending one and possibly to the bystanders.
They were very magpies, too, in the snapping up of treasure-trove.
"We won't call it stealing," said Blair soothingly to John MacNeil, the carpenter, who was complaining for the twentieth time of missing tools. "They don't look on it in that light, you see, John."
"Thievin' blayguards!" said John dourly, minus another tool.
"We'll teach them better soon. Meanwhile, leave nothing lying about if you can help it, and give them no opportunities. They are so in the habit of picking up anything they want that it's become part of their nature."
"Juist thievin' blayguards! I'd clour their heads if I could catch 'em at it, but it'd need eyes all round to be upsides with 'em."
And when, now and again, John did catch them at it, and proceeded to clour their heads, they took it quite good-humouredly, and surrendered their prize with a grin, and bore no malice.
It was a strange right-about-face in the lives of the ladies, and many a laugh they had over it.
"Jean, my dear," said Aunt Jannet one day, when all four of them were busily washing and wringing out clothes at the mouth of the river, "this is a change from Hyde Park, isn't it?" At which, and the incongruity of associations which sprang up in them at her words, they all broke into laughter.
Straight in front lay the placid stretch of the lagoon, pulsing softly to the broken influx through the gap in the reef; beyond it, the crisp, white leaping hedge of foam along the reef itself; beyond that, the infinite expanse of sea and sky, and the far-away white line where upper and lower blue met and kissed: on the one side, the bold green shoulders of the mountain, feathered with slow-swinging palms, solemn, mysterious, just a trifle threatening, since Ra'a lived there; on the beach beyond, a mixed company of brown men and white, busy at boat-building, with spasmodic outbreaks of "Kown 'im! kown 'im! kown 'im!" to the tapping of the hammers: on the other side, the tumbled rocks of the ridge and the ceaseless growl of the surf; behind them the white houses of the mission, the bosky valley, peeps of native houses, sounds of women's voices and children's laughter.
"It is certainly a wider outlook," said Jean cheerfully.
Then a slim brown and white figure stole up beside them, and became immediately all brown, as Nai loosed her towel vestments and began to wash them in the same way as the white women were doing.
"And here is first-fruits," said Jean. "Good morning, Nai."
"Mawin," smiled Nai, proud of her accomplishments, and spread her towels to dry in the sun alongside the more complicated garments of civilisation.
TheTorchwas away with Blair and Stuart on a tour of exploration round the island, and possibly to one or two of the neighbouring ones.
Blair had been waiting for the opportunity for some time past. Ha'o had told him of communities on the other side of the island, and he was desirous of getting in touch with them as soon as possible.
The ladies had wished to go too, but he thought them better at home till he had spied out the land himself. He intended to land at the different villages, and the enterprise might not be without its dangers. Of these he made light, however, and it was with tranquil minds that those ashore waved their farewells in the early dawn, as theTorchslipped from her anchorage and wafted lightly down the lagoon.
The times seemed in all ways propitious. Ha'o, indeed, would have preferred that the white men's favours should have been kept all for himself, but Blair was at pains to explain to him that nothing less than the whole island, and if possible all the islands, would satisfy him. In view of what he knew would follow sooner or later, he tried to explain to the brown man that if it were possible to unite the various communities on Kapaa'a under one paramount chief it would be for the great benefit of all.
To which Ha'o replied succinctly—
"Then we must kill Ra'a," and rose to the prospect.
Ra'a had been quiescent for some time now. There was occasional friction between members of the various factions, but nothing more than was to be expected under the circumstances. They were simply squabbles, resulting in no general disquiet, though symptomatic of the underlying feeling that was abroad.
Ha'o, however, never ceased his warnings. Ra'a he said feelingly, was not to be trusted, and the only right and proper thing for the white men to do was to join him in wiping him out, and the sooner the better. And, simply from a political point of view, Blair could not but confess to himself that the weight of evidence was in Ha'o's favour. For Ra'a remained in truculent retirement, and doggedly rejected all efforts at conciliation. Blair had gone up the mountain more than once since that first time, and had done his utmost to win him over. Ra'a accepted all his presents as his rightful due, but gave absolutely nothing in return, not even worthless promises. He was the black cloud on the horizon, and they could only hope that he would remain a cloud and not develop into a storm.
Each week that passed strengthened Ha'o's hands. Not only did it give him time to arm and consolidate his own little community, but his numbers were constantly increased by ones and twos, as the dwellers in the hills took note of the advantages enjoyed by those on the shore through their intercourse with the white men, and desired to share in them. Ha'o permitted the return of these prodigals, since it was better to have them under his hand than beyond his reach. He put little faith in them, but had the wisdom to keep his feelings to himself. Blair welcomed them as straws indicative of the current, but Ha'o, better versed in the ways of his race, pushed on his preparations for the conflict which he foresaw these very secessions would sooner or later precipitate.
When Blair told him of his impending trip of exploration, and tried to induce him to come with them, Ha'o stated bluntly that he preferred to remain at home. It was not impossible that he had it in his mind that if anything happened in Blair's absence, he would have the freer hand to act as he pleased. For the white men were ever on the side of magnanimity, and magnanimity, where Ra'a was concerned, was to Ha'o simple foolishness.
CHAPTER XVIII
SETBACKS
So theTorchslipped down the lagoon like a picture, and Nai and the other ladies completed their laundry operations, and in due course the red sun dropped into the sea, without the explosive hiss which seemed inevitable, and night fell on the little community as peacefully as usual.
Evans conducted their evening service, and the attentive ring of brown men and women round the platform of the house hummed the tunes gaily, echoed the white "Amen" with the gusto of children after a long sermon, and dispersed like big bumble-bees to their homes.
Jean could not sleep that night. It was the first time she and Kenneth had been separated, since their marriage, and she felt as lonely as the circumstances demanded. She got up at last and slipped on a dressing-gown, and went out and sat on the platform.
The soft lip-lap of the water on the beach, and the distant growl of the surf, were soothing, and she sat looking at the great new stars, with which she was becoming friendly by degrees, and thinking of her husband, and wondering how far he had got, and of the vast change her marriage had made in her life.
She had never for one moment regretted it. All her heaven on earth was centred in Kenneth. So long as he remained to her, all the rest was nothing. And before long they would begin to see the fruit of their quiet sowing, the Dark Islands would be dark no longer, and they would be living a quiet, happy life among a new and contented people. It was a grand and glorious work. No, she had no regrets—since she had Kenneth.
On her right across the river, as she sat facing the sea, the mountain loomed sombre and menacing—the hill Difficulty. Her thoughts ran back to that trying morning when she and Kenneth faced the hill, and what it held, all alone, not knowing whether they would ever come back alive. Like many another hill on life's highway, its menace had been chiefly in their own fears, and had disappeared on closer acquaintance. How she wished that uncomfortable man Ra'a would go away, or be reconciled to his brother, or do anything that would allow the community to settle down in peace to its new life's work.
She knew much of Blair's great hopes and large ideas, and how essential he considered it that the islands should as soon as possible attain to some kind of central government, so that they might unite in opposing an inflexible front to any attempt at interference from the outside. The Dark Islands for the Dark Islanders was his aim and object in life at present, and this truculent savage on the hill there was keeping everything back. She almost had it in her heart to wish Ra'a's speedy and sudden death.
Blair had often spoken of the evils that had followed the admission of traders in others of the South Sea Islands—drink, disease, dispossession—and how the communities were ruined before ever they had a chance of better things. Yes, surely, she thought, if Ra'a could meet with some happy accident, which would end him, it would be for the good of the community at large. That was not a thought that would commend itself to Kenneth, she knew, but she could not help thinking it. What a mighty relief it would be if Ha'o walked in some morning, and said, "Ra'a is dead." She felt as if she could almost forgive him if he had done the deed himself.
Then she thought she heard, a sound in the gloom of the hillside. She strained into the darkness and listened intently. She heard nothing, but still felt a sense of discomfort. After all, it might quite likely be one of the natives prowling about, though, as a rule, their fear of ghosts and evil spirits kept them indoors after nightfall, and it needed very strong inducement to take them abroad.
She was still peering towards the hill with puckered brow, when a curdling, short-cut yell ripped the silence behind, in the direction of the village, and in a moment pandemonium seemed loosed, and the night was alive with horrors—screams and yells and all the turmoil of warfare.
That first deadly cry sent Jean flying inside for Aunt Jannet. The good lady met her at the door of her own room with an anxious—
"What in the name of goodness——?" and then Alison Evans and Mary Stuart came tumbling in upon them, and Evans called to them from the ground outside to stop where they were, and they would be all right.
It was not in human nature, however, to stand huddled in the dark, asking one another questions which none of them could answer, when the answer was shrieking outside, and they all crept, trembling, to the verandah, and stood silently facing the danger, whatever it might be.
They heard Evans quietly ordering his men, and felt safer. And beyond, the shouts and yells waxed and waned and wavered to and fro. Once they thought they were coming in their direction, and their hearts thumped painfully. Then the tumult drifted away again, and at last passed furiously towards the taro fields, and died away on the mountain-side.
Then new sounds arose, cries of victory, little less blood-curdling than the shouts of battle, and the ladies crept back into the dark room, assured of their own safety, but with horrible premonitions of what these might portend.
Presently the shadowy darkness over by the river resolved itself into a mob of black figures which came towards the mission-houses, leaping and brandishing its newly-fleshed weapons, and shouting at the top of its voice, in horrible incongruity, and the more horrible in that the tune was perfectly correct, "Kown 'im! kown 'im! kown 'im! kown 'im! Law-daw-faw!"
They circled the fence, leaping and shouting and singing, and the men of the yacht inside grasped their weapons to repel an onslaught. But the brown men had had their fill of fighting for that night, and were only there to advertise their victory.
Evans said a word or two to them, but learned only that Ra'a had come down from the hill and attacked the village, but that they had been ready for him. They were too excited to be able to give any details yet, and presently they drew off and went shouting and singing home.
Jean, with something of a shock, remembered her ill-wishes for Ra'a, and wondered with discomfort, now that the bald possibility faced her so closely, if they had been realised. If they had, she would feel almost as if she had had a hand in his death.
Then a native drum began beating in the village, and the ceaseless monotony of its deep, dolorous boom fretted their ears, and set their hearts jumping, and jangled their nerves to the point of agony. They covered their ears with their hands, they stuffed their fingers into them, but the drum beat in through their temples. They clasped their heads tightly to keep them from splitting, but the drum beat in all the same. When it ceased abruptly at last, and they ventured to lift their heads, they saw one another's pale faces in a faint gleam that stole in through the windows. The darkness over the village was pulsing with the glow of great fires, and as they glanced fearfully at one another they knew that the same horrible thought was in all their minds.
It was dawn before the noises died away, and Evans came in to them with a grim, grey face. He said nothing, but nodded silently—and their horror was confirmed.
Yes, truly, it was a decided change from Kensington and Hyde Park.
No soul from the village came near them that day, nor did any of them venture out except Evans, who went along twice during the day to see what was going on, but returned each time with pinched lips and a despondent shake of the head.
The following day the brown men were about again, but sluggishly, as though the fight had used up all their energies, or something else had clogged them. It was another two days before they settled down to work, and even then they were not quite as they had been.
Ha'o had kept away from them. When Evans came across him at last, he endeavoured to get some particulars of the fight, and gathered that Ra'a had probably watched the departure of theTorch, and thought it an opportunity not to be missed. He had crept down in the dark, hoping to surprise the village, and then make easy prey of the mission-houses and their contents. Ha'o had foreseen the possibility of such an attempt. Evans understood him to say that in Ra'a's place it was just what he would have done himself. So he had men on the watch, and the rest slept armed, and instead of a surprise, the hill-men walked into an ambush—and paid. Ra'a himself had escaped, leaving a dozen or so of his men behind. They had eaten them, said Ha'o, in a matter-of-course way. Ra'a had gone farther into the hills, and to follow him would be dangerous. And so to the boat-building once more, and much singing of "Kown 'im! kown 'im! kown 'im!" which sounded more than ever out of place under the circumstances.
Nai also put in an appearance that day, and to such an extent does the mind prejudice the eye, that it seemed to Jean and the rest that even she was changed from what she had been. In a word, it was difficult to look upon any of these sleek brown men and women without thinking with disgust of the horrible orgies in which they had been indulging. Their humanity seemed but skin deep, and just below it the wild beast lurked and peeped through the glancing black eyes.
Nor was it easy to conceal their feelings entirely, and perhaps Nai's womanly intuition perceived a touch of frost in the atmosphere. She stayed but a short time, and then went quietly away.
"I'm sorry," said Jean, with a sense of discomfort; "but really I could not feel towards her quite as usual."
"Of course you couldn't—nobody could," said Aunt Jannet briskly. "If I knew how to talk to them, I'd tell them what I think of the whole business. I'd make their ears tingle, I warrant you."
"I wish Kenneth was here. He would know just what to do."
"He'll tell you, my dear, that it's no good talking to them. You must just go slow, and break them off it by degrees. All the same, it would be a relief to one's mind to give them a right good scolding."
"They've been used to it all their lives, you see."
"All the worse for them. They ought to be ashamed of themselves."
"But that's just what they don't understand. Suppose a brown man came over to England and remonstrated with us for killing and eating beautiful little lambs and graceful cows——"
"Fudge, child! Lambs and cows aren't human beings," grunted Aunt Jannet. "They haven't souls."
"I don't know that the fact of men having souls makes much difference when it's only a question of their dead bodies being eaten. But I do hope Kenneth can break them off it! It is too horrible! And one can't help thinking of it every time one looks at them. Though I suppose it was just the same before we came."
"What they did before we came was not our fault. What they do now is, and the sooner Kenneth puts a stop to it the better," was Aunt Jannet's final word.
Matters went on quietly—Evans and the men of the yacht clearing and breaking up ground for trial plantings of various seeds, the brown men busy on their boats to the tune of "Kown 'im!" the women, brown and white, busy on their household duties, the children laughing and screaming—till, on the seventh day, a brown runner came, fresh from the surf behind the ridge, to tell them that theTorchwas in sight. And instantly they dropped what they were at, to scramble up the shoulder of the hill and wave their joyful welcome. Not a white man or woman there but felt a new sense of security and hopefulness at sight of her, and it was chiefly because on board of her was the wise head and great heart to which they had all come to look for guidance and inspiration in their work.
It was a very joyful meeting when the anchor rattled down, and Blair and Stuart and Captain Cathie jumped ashore from the whale-boat, and the brown men welcomed them, outwardly at all events, with as much gusto as the whites.
And great stories Blair and the others had to tell of their doings out beyond. The brown men and women crowded round the platform till late into the night, laughing and chattering with appreciation of the white men's volubility, though they could not understand a word of it all.
It had been a most satisfactory trip. They had visited all the six islands of the group, and had landed at various places on each of them. They had found the natives suspicious at first, but amenable to presents and open to their advances when they found nothing ulterior in them. In fact, in several places, when the brown men found them actually going away, without any attempts at kidnapping or otherwise molesting them, they followed in their canoes for long distances begging them to return.
"It's a glorious field," said Blair, stretching out his arms energetically as though to gather it all in at once, "if we can only occupy it and fence it round before the degraders come. And we must, for one of those islands given over to the devil would be like a plague spot infecting all the rest."
Then they told him of the happenings at home. He was startled at Ra'a's outbreak and at thought of the consequences if it had proved successful.
"I hate the thought of coercing him or any one," he said thoughtfully; "but until he either comes in, which I fear is hopeless, or is got rid of in some way, he is going to be a terrible hindrance to our work."
"Deport him to yon outer island, Mr. Blair, with such of his people as stick to him," suggested Cathie; "then the rest will have peace."
"Easily said, captain, and a good idea; but how?"
"It would mean fighting, I suppose," said Cathie briskly, "unless common-sense led him to give in quietly. Sometimes it pays best in the long run to grip your nettle at once and grip it hard."
"He'll never give in till he is forced to," said Blair. "Yet I can't see my way to use our force against him. How can we preach peace to these people if we begin by using the sword ourselves?"
"If you give the rest peace, it may be better than preaching it," said Aunt Jannet. "I agree with Captain Cathie. There'll be no peace till that man is got rid of. And, for goodness' sake, do stop them eating one another, Kenneth. I haven't enjoyed a meal since, and I can't look at one of them without thinking that a day or two ago he was munching one of his fellows."
"We shall break them off it by degrees."
"By degrees!—by degrees!" cried Aunt Jannet. "It is too horrible. You ought to go straight to Ha'o and tell him we won't have any more of it."
"And suppose he said, as would be very natural, that he'd do as he pleased? What would you do then, Aunt Jannet?"
"I'd tell him if he didn't stop it I'd make him, or else we'd all go away and leave him."
"Ay, well, you see, we can't make him and we're not going away, so it's no good telling him that. We must use our common sense. These people have eaten human flesh all their lives. It is the greatest treat they can have. If you argued the point with Ha'o, he would probably say that, as between man and pig, man is the cleaner feeder of the two, and therefore must be the better eating. When we have pigs enough, we'll work them on to pork. Until we can get them on to something they like as much, or, better still, get them to feel that man was not meant to be eaten by man, I fear words won't go for much."
"And do you mean to say that you'll pass the matter over without a word, Kenneth?" asked Aunt Jannet.
"I don't say that, and I don't intend to. But if you imagine, Aunt Jannet, that a cannibal is going to give up his daintiest dish simply for being spoken to, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed."
He made his first attempt against cannibalism the next day, and returned from it with a humorous twinkle in his eye.
"Well?" asked Aunt Jannet.
"Well," said Blair, "Ha'o holds that it can't be wrong for him to eat men when we do the same."
"If he'll wait till he sees us doing it, I'll find no fault with him."
"I assured him that white people never ate human flesh. And what do you think was his proof that we did? He pointed to some of those corned-beef tins with George Washington's head on the label, and said, 'There!' and nothing I could say would convince him that George Washington did not represent the contents. He is under the impression that we can our people at home for convenience, and carry them about with us in that way. I assured him it was cow, but it was no use. He could not believe anyone would kill such a beautiful animal as a cow simply for food. He said he would give ten men for one cow any day. So there we are, you see. It will be a matter of time. Meanwhile, I suggest peeling George Washington off the rest of those meat tins!"
"Well, I never!" said Aunt Jannet. "And Ra'a?"
"He is as anxious as you and Captain Cathie to make an end of him; but he acknowledges that it would be dangerous to follow him into the hills, and would certainly mean considerable loss of life, so for the present I have dissuaded him from it."
CHAPTER XIX
FORWARD
This is not a missionary chronicle, but simply a brief record of some of the doings of Jean and Kenneth Blair. It is impossible, therefore, to enter into anything like a detailed account of their work among their chosen people, interesting as that would be. Only the more salient points can be touched upon, such as stood out from the level of hard, plodding, often dry and dreary work, as God's mountain masterpieces stand out in our travel-memories, and remain with us when the long level plains are forgotten. And just as the mountain's grandeur is the record of Nature's strife and endurance, so these salient points in a man's life as a rule mark battle-grounds and commemorate strife—and sometimes victory.
Kenneth Blair always found a vast and quite unique enjoyment in the first beginnings of things. I myself have heard him express a whimsically-veiled, but none the less profound, regret that it had not been possible for him to be present at the very first beginning of all, when "in the dim grey dawn of things, earth drew from out the void and rounded to its shape."
It was very characteristic of the man, and explains to some extent the whole-hearted delight he found in his work in the Dark Islands.
Here, if not a new-created world, was one sunk in nether gloom, to which no glimmer of the light had yet penetrated. As regards things spiritual, it was virgin soil—worse, it was a veritable swamp of heathenism, a quagmire overlaid with the strangling growths and festering remains of ages of superstition, cruelty, and thick darkness. And this in one of the fairest spots on earth.
You anti-missioners, who sit at home and mumble platitudes on the needless waste of life and time and money, spent in the effort to lift these outer fringes of the night, how very little you know!
They are quite happy as they are, those outer ones, you say. Life comes—and goes—easily with them. They have all they want. Why disturb them? Why introduce upsetting notions? Why open their minds to wants only to fill them at so heavy a cost?
The answer is so simple. Would you see any child of yours condemned, for no fault of its own, to sit in outer darkness, if at any cost to yourself you could open the door to the light and warmth you yourself enjoy? Would you refrain from opening the door to a neighbour's child, to a stranger's child, to any child whatsoever, if your hand was on the handle?
These others are children also. In spite of their blue skies and crystal seas and waving palms, they are buried in a darkness like unto death. It is for us who rejoice in the light to help them towards it. Our own great inheritance carries with it an inevitable and inalienable obligation. Shirk it we may and do, cancel it we cannot.
It was the recognition of this paramount duty, in perhaps somewhat abnormal measure, that made Kenneth Blair what he was. He brought to the work the white fire of a mighty enthusiasm which nothing could damp, and which did one good to look upon. The spur of what he deemed a former lapse urged him at times, perhaps, to extremes in the matter of personal risk; but if any man ever carried the courage of his convictions to their fullest limit, without a thought for himself, that did Kenneth Blair. With it all a simplicity of manner which was never at fault, because it assumed nothing; a natural gaiety and high-heartedness which carried him bravely through many a difficult place, and drew even the brown men to him; and a width of view, with a long forward reach, which might have made a statesman of him, had he not chosen this higher path.
To see him at football on the beach with a shrieking crowd of brown boys, himself as much a boy as the nakedest of the lot, was one thing. And to see him pondering, or hear him unfolding to the others, his plans for the Dark Islands, was quite another.
He had seen the strange, and in some cases awful, developments of civilisation in some of the other islands. He had pondered them for years, and had studied cause and effect from germ to ultimate issue. They were as warning lights to him. The wonderful chance which placed in his hands the financial lever had awakened mighty hopes in him. In his mind's eye he saw the Dark Islands enlightened, self-governing, self-possessing, self-supporting—a prospect worth any man's life's work.
Of the preliminary clearing work, then, we will say little. It was dry and dull and dreary enough at times to provoke Aunt Jannet Harvey to active remonstrance at the apparent inactivity of the propaganda. But the quiet work, confined as it was almost entirely to the presentation of better ways of life by force of example, and the very occasional dropping here and there of a seed of precept, began to show some small signs of fruit at last.
Within a very short time Nai's advanced notions in the matter of dress had caught on, and instead of the precarious ridi fringe, towels, or, in default of them, a strip of striped calico, had become the fashionable female attire. Within six months the brown men were going about fully clothed—in a loin cloth.
"It's better than nothing," said Aunt Jannet. "It keeps them from looking absolutely indecent anyway, and as for the children it doesn't matter," for the children all flatly refused any attempt to clothe them. Time after time she had made furtive experiments on them, but they all proved abortive. They took her gifts of cloth and so on willingly, but turned them to unexpected and unintended uses.
Within six months the children were coming to school—some of them, and irregularly—and were actually, in some cases, beginning to have vague ideas as to why they came. It was not much, but it was in the right direction.
Within six months the white men had learned enough of the language to be able, with their additional slight knowledge of Samoan, to understand and make themselves understood—to some extent. And the brown men, in exchange, had acquired a number of English words and had added considerably to their repertoire of hymns—the tunes they picked up marvellously, and the words they chattered like parrots.
They had also learned to handle white men's tools with facility, and they still stole them when opportunity offered, though not quite so freely as at first. They had also seen marvellous things come up out of the earth from the white men's plantings, and had learned to what uses they could be put. They had seen wonders of the white men's ingenuity, chief among which was the diversion of a rapid little stream, which from time immemorial had flowed to the sea on the other side of the ridge. By a very simple damming operation, to which the cracks and cavities of the ridge readily lent themselves, the torrent now came down the nearer side, and by means of a water-wheel, of John MacNeil's construction operated a circular saw and various other labour-saving appliances, and then flowed in a sparkling stream through the middle of the mission settlement. The water-wheel and the circular saw were endless enjoyments to the brown men, women, and children, and they would sit watching them by the hour when they could have been more profitably employed about their other affairs.
Matters politic had also advanced somewhat. In place of three parties in the close neighbourhood of the station, there were now only two. Ra'a was still at large in the hills, but the leaderless faction had gradually disintegrated, some few joining him, but the larger portion returning by degrees to their allegiance to Ha'o, drawn thereto by the manifest advantages of the white men's friendliness.
And Ha'o himself had behaved well. Constant intercourse, even through the misty medium of scarce understood tongues, with men like Blair and Stuart and Evans, could not but have its effect on any man, and on this clear-headed, sharp-witted savage the effects had been very marked.
He was naturally intelligent, and, according to his lights, of a most gentlemanly disposition. His understanding developed still more through his observation of the white men and their ways. He recognised their superiority in most things and, as headman of his tribe, was emulous of their accomplishment. He lapsed at lengthening intervals into his natural savageries, but, beyond this, never swerved by a hair's breadth from his loyalty to the men who had restored him to his home.
Nai was rejoicing mightily in the possession of a sleek, plump, black-eyed baby, the first son born to Ha'o. His other wives had given him daughters, but since his return to the island, and their tardy return to him, he had declined to have anything to do with any of them beyond seeing that they were fed. Nai's community in his dangers and sufferings had concentrated all his savage affections upon her, and now she had justified him by giving him a son.
Blair reposed great faith in these three, and counted on them as corner-stones in the mighty future.
The valley of the gods had proved a famous breeding-place. Goats and pigs and ducks abounded there. The brown men had been introduced to roast pig and goat flesh, and found it equal almost to man flesh. But nothing would induce them to go there for it.
So, with mighty labours, for the animals were become perfectly wild in their freedom, a number of them were given the run of the island, and the novel excitements of the chase bade fair to afford the brown men full vent for the energies that had hitherto run in the direction of battle and murder and sudden death. Certainly the newcomers played havoc for a time with the taro fields and plantain and banana groves. But this also made for good, since it involved fencing operations on an extensive scale, and steady work tended to keep the devil of idle hands at bay.
"The curse of savagery is the lack of employment," was one of Blair's maxims. "They get to fighting simply from having nothing else to do. Get them to work, and it is a mighty step upwards."
So, but for Ra'a, the recalcitrant, the reunion of the tribe on this side of the island would have been complete. And this was so essential to Blair's far-reaching plans for its safety and redemption that he spared no pains to bring it about.
At risk which could not be estimated, he went up alone into the hills more than once to endeavour to reconcile the insubordinates to the facts of the case. He guaranteed them life, liberty, and equal advantages with the rest if they would return to their allegiance. Failing that, he offered them safe conduct to one of the smaller, thinly-populated islands, with supplies of tools, seeds, and animals, and the assistance of one of his colleagues in turning these to account.
But Ra'a would have none of it, and his dominant will so far was strong enough to keep his turbulent crew from breaking away towards the fleshpots. The loosing of the pigs and goats had provided them also with food and sport, and, since collisions between the various hunting parties were not infrequent, life was eminently tolerable, though it lived on the point of death.
On these embassies Blair had emphatically declined to take Jean with him, on account of the indefiniteness of the journeying. Ra'a was constantly shifting camp, and each time he had to be sought afresh, with the imminent chance of the seeker meeting death in the quest. Jean dreaded these lonely journeys terribly, but she acquiesced sensibly, and each time bade him farewell in the full knowledge that it might be for the last time.