have a national council or a revolution. You, Ieremia, start messengers
around the island to the fishers and farmers, everywhere, even to the
mountain goat-hunters. Tell them to assemble at the palace three days
from now.”
“But the soldiers,” Ieremia objected.
“I’ll take care of them. They haven’t been paid for two months. Besides,
Uiliami is the queen’s brother. Don’t have too much on your shelves at a
time. As soon as the soldiers show up with paper, stop selling.”
“Then will they burn the stores,” said Ieremia.
“Let them. King Tulifau will pay for it if they do.”
“Will he pay for my shirt?” Willie Smee demanded.
“That is purely a personal and private matter between you and Tui
Tulifau,” Grief answered.
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“It’s beginning to split up the back,” the supercargo lamented. “I noticed
that much this morning when he hadn’t had it on ten minutes. It cost me
thirty shillings and I only wore it once.”
“Where shall I get a dead pig?” Ieremia asked.
“Kill one, of course,” said Grief. “Kill a small one.”
“A small one is worth ten shillings.”
“Then enter it in your ledger under operating expenses.” Grief paused a
moment. “If you want it particularly dead, it would be well to kill it at
once.”
VI
“You have spoken well, Davida,” said Queen Sepeli. “This Fulualea has
brought a madness with him, and Tui Tulifau is drowned in gin. If he does
not grant the big council, I shall give him a beating. He is easy to beat
when he is in drink.”
She doubled up her fist, and such were her Amazonian proportions and the
determination in her face that Grief knew the council would be called. So
akin was the Fitu-Ivan tongue to the Samoan that he spoke it like a native.
“And you, Uiliami,” he said, “have pointed out that the soldiers have
demanded coin and refused the paper Fulualea has offered them. Tell them
to take the paper and see that they be paid to-morrow.”
“Why trouble?” Uiliami objected. “The king remains happily drunk. There
is much money in the treasury. And I am content. In my house are two
cases of gin and much goods from Hawkins’s store.”
“Excellent pig, O my brother!” Sepeli erupted. “Has not Davida spoken?
Have you no ears? When the gin and the goods in your house are gone,
and no more traders come with gin and goods, and Feathers of the Sun has
run away to Levuka with all the cash money of Fitu-Iva, what then will
you do? Cash money is silver and gold, but paper is only paper. I tell you
the people are grumbling. There is no fish in the palace. Yams and sweet
potatoes seem to have fled from the soil, for they come not. The mountain
dwellers have sent no wild goat in a week. Though Feathers of the Sun
compels the traders to buy copra at the old price, the people sell not, for
they will have none of the paper money. Only to-day have I sent
messengers to twenty houses. There are no eggs. Has Feathers of the Sun
put a blight upon the hens? I do not know. All I know is that there are no
eggs. Well it is that those who drink much eat little, else would there be a
A SON OF THE SUN
118
palace famine. Tell your soldiers to receive their pay. Let it be in his paper
money.”
“And remember,” Grief warned, “though there be selling in the stores,
when the soldiers come with their paper it will be refused. And in three
days will be the council, and Feathers of the Sun will be as dead as a dead
pig.”
VII
The day of the council found the population of the island crowded into the
capital. By canoe and whaleboat, on foot and donkey-back, the five
thousand inhabitants of Fitu-Iva had trooped in. The three intervening
days had had their share of excitement. At first there had been much
selling from the sparse shelves of the traders. But when the soldiers
appeared, their patronage was declined and they were told to go to
Fulualea for coin. “Says it not so on the face of the paper,” the traders
demanded, “that for the asking the coin will be given in exchange?”
Only the strong authority of Uiliami had prevented the burning of the
traders’ houses. As it was, one of Grief’s copra-sheds went up in smoke
and was duly charged by Ieremia to the king’s account. Ieremia himself
had been abused and mocked, and his spectacles broken. The skin was off
Willie Smee’s knuckles. This had been caused by three boisterous soldiers
who violently struck their jaws thereon in quick succession. Captain Boig
was similarly injured. Peter Gee had come off undamaged, because it
chanced that it was bread-baskets and not jaws that struck him on the fists.
Tui Tulifau, with Sepeli at his side and surrounded by his convivial chiefs,
sat at the head of the council in the big compound. His right eye and jaw
were swollen as if he too had engaged in assaulting somebody’s fist. It was
palace gossip that morning that Sepeli had administered a conjugal
beating. At any rate, her spouse was sober, and his fat bulged spiritlessly
through the rips in Willie Smee’s silk shirt. His thirst was prodigious, and
he was continually served with young drinking nuts. Outside the
compound, held back by the army, was the mass of the common people.
Only the lesser chiefs, village maids, village beaux, and talking men with
their staffs of office were permitted inside. Cornelius Deasy, as befitted a
high and favoured official, sat near to the right hand of the king. On the
left of the queen, opposite Cornelius and surrounded by the white traders
he was to represent, sat Ieremia. Bereft of his spectacles, he peered shortsightedly
across at the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
In turn, the talking man of the windward coast, the talking man of the
leeward coast, and the talking man of the mountain villages, each backed
by his group of lesser talking men and chiefs, arose and made oration.
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119
What they said was much the same. They grumbled about the paper
money. Affairs were not prosperous. No more copra was being smoked.
The people were suspicious. To such a pass had things come that all
people wanted to pay their debts and no one wanted to be paid. Creditors
made a practice of running away from debtors. The money was cheap.
Prices were going up and commodities were getting scarce. It cost three
times the ordinary price to buy a fowl, and then it was tough and like to
die of old age if not immediately sold. The outlook was gloomy. There
were signs and omens. There was a plague of rats in some districts. The
crops were bad. The custard apples were small. The best-bearing avocado
on the windward coast had mysteriously shed all its leaves. The taste had
gone from the mangoes. The plantains were eaten by a worm. The fish had
forsaken the ocean and vast numbers of tiger-sharks appeared. The wild
goats had fled to inaccessible summits. The poi in the poi-pits had turned
bitter. There were rumblings in the mountains, night-walking of spirits; a
woman of Punta-Puna had been struck speechless, and a five- legged shegoat
had been born in the village of Eiho. And that all was due to the
strange money of Fulualea was the firm conviction of the elders in the
village councils assembled.
Uiliami spoke for the army. His men were discontented and mutinous.
Though by royal decree the traders were bidden accept the money, yet did
they refuse it. He would not say, but it looked as if the strange money of
Fulualea had something to do with it.
Ieremia, as talking man of the traders, next spoke. When he arose, it was
noticeable that he stood with legs spraddled over a large grass basket. He
dwelt upon the cloth of the traders, its variety and beauty and durability,
which so exceeded the Fitu-Ivan wet-pounded tapa, fragile and coarse. No
one wore tapa any more. Yet all had worn tapa, and nothing but tapa,
before the traders came. There was the mosquito-netting, sold for a song,
that the cleverest Fitu-Ivan net-weaver could not duplicate in a thousand
years. He enlarged on the incomparable virtues of rifles, axes, and steel
fish-hooks, down through needles, thread and cotton fish-lines to white
flour and kerosene oil.
He expounded at length, with firstlies and secondlies and all minor
subdivisions of argument, on organization, and order, and civilization. He
contended that the trader was the bearer of civilization, and that the trader
must be protected in his trade else he would not come. Over to the
westward were islands which would not protect the traders. What was the
result? The traders would not come, and the people were like wild