nor afraid.
“It would be an evil thing for you to kill me,” he told the man. “I have done
you no wrong, nor have I done the Buli wrong.”
So well did he cling to the neck of the one man that they dared not strike
with their clubs. And he continued to cling and to dispute for his life with
those who clamored for his death.
“I am John Starhurst,” he went on calmly. “I have labored in Fiji for three
years, and I have done it for no profit. I am here among you for good. Why
should any man kill me? To kill me will not profit any man.”
The Buli stole a look at the whale tooth. He was well paid for the deed.
The missionary was surrounded by a mass of naked savages, all struggling to
get at him. The death song, which is the song of the oven, was raised, and his
expostulations could no longer be heard. But so cunningly did he twine and
wreathe his body about his captor’s that the death blow could not be struck.
Erirola smiled, and the Buli grew angry.
“Away with you!” he cried. “A nice story to go back to the coast–a dozen of
SOUTH SEA TALES
25
you and one missionary, without weapons, weak as a woman, overcoming all of
you.”
“Wait, O Buli,” John Starhurst called out from the thick of the scuffle, “and
I will overcome even you. For my weapons are Truth and Right, and no man can
withstand them.”
“Come to me, then,” the Buli answered, “for my weapon is only a poor miserable
club, and, as you say, it cannot withstand you.”
The group separated from him, and John Starhurst stood alone, facing the Buli,
who was leaning on an enormous, knotted warclub.
“Come to me, missionary man, and overcome me,” the Buli challenged.
“Even so will I come to you and overcome you,” John Starhurst made answer,
first wiping his spectacles and settling them properly, then beginning his
advance.
The Buli raised the club and waited.
“In the first place, my death will profit you nothing,” began the argument.
“I leave the answer to my club,” was the Buli’s reply.
And to every point he made the same reply, at the same time watching the
missionary closely in order to forestall that cunning run-in under the lifted
club. Then, and for the first time, John Starhurst knew that his death was at
hand. He made no attempt to run in. Bareheaded, he stood in the sun and prayed
aloud–the mysterious figure of the inevitable white man, who, with Bible,
bullet, or rum bottle, has confronted the amazed savage in his every
stronghold. Even so stood John Starhurst in the rock fortress of the Buli of
Gatoka.
“Forgive them, for they know not what they do,” he prayed. “O Lord! Have mercy
upon Fiji. Have compasssion for Fiji. O Jehovah, hear us for His sake, Thy
Son, whom Thou didst give that through Him all men might also become Thy
children. From Thee we came, and our mind is that to Thee we may return. The
land is dark, O Lord, the land is dark. But Thou art mighty to save. Reach
out Thy hand, O Lord, and save Fiji, poor cannibal Fiji.”
The Buli grew impatient.
“Now will I answer thee,” he muttered, at the same time swinging his club with
both hands.
Narau, hiding among the women and the mats, heard the impact of the blow and
shuddered. Then the death song arose, and he knew his beloved missionary’s
body was being dragged to the oven as he heard the words:
“Drag me gently. Drag me gently.”
“For I am the champion of my land.”
SOUTH SEA TALES
26
“Give thanks! Give thanks! Give thanks!”
Next, a single voice arose out of the din, asking:
“Where is the brave man?”
A hundred voices bellowed the answer:
“Gone to be dragged into the oven and cooked.”
“Where is the coward?” the single voice demanded.
“Gone to report!” the hundred voices bellowed back. “Gone to report! Gone to
report!”
Narau groaned in anguish of spirit. The words of the old song were true. He
was the coward, and nothing remained to him but to go and report.
MAUKI
He weighed one hundred and ten pounds. His hair was kinky and negroid, and he
was black. He was peculiarly black. He was neither blue-black nor
purple-black, but plum-black. His name was Mauki, and he was the son of a
chief. He had three tambos. Tambo is Melanesian for taboo, and is first
cousin to that Polynesian word. Mauki’s three tambos were as follows: First,
he must never shake hands with a woman, nor have a woman’s hand touch him or
any of his personal belongings; secondly, he must never eat clams nor any food
from a fire in which clams had been cooked; thirdly, he must never touch a
crocodile, nor travel in a canoe that carried any part of a crocodile even if
as large as a tooth.
Of a different black were his teeeth, which were deep black, or, perhaps
better, LAMP-black. They had been made so in a single night, by his mother,
who had compressed about them a powdered mineral which was dug from the
landslide back of Port Adams. Port Adams is a salt-water village on Malaita,
and Malaita is the most savage island in the Solomons–so savage that no
traders or planters have yet gained a foothold on it; while, from the time of
the earliest bˆche-de-mer fishers and sandalwood traders down to the latest
labor recruiters equipped with automatic rifles and gasolene engines, scores
of white adventurers have been passed out by tomahawks and soft-nosed Snider
bullets. So Malaita remains today, in the twentieth century, the stamping
ground of the labor recruiters, who farm its coasts for laborers who engage
and contract themselves to toil on the plantations of the neighboring and more
civilized islands for a wage of thirty dollars a year. The natives of those
neighboring and more civilized islands have themselves become too civilized to
work on plantations.
Mauki’s ears were pierced, not in one place, nor two places, but in a couple
of dozen places. In one of the smaller holes he carried a clay pipe. The
larger holes were too large for such use. The bowl of the pipe would have
SOUTH SEA TALES
27
fallen through. In fact, in the largest hole in each ear he habitually wore
round wooden plugs that were an even four inches in diameter. Roughly
speaking, the circumference of said holes was twelve and one-half inches.
Mauki was catholic in his tastes. In the various smaller holes he carried such
things as empty rifle cartridges, horseshoe nails, copper screws, pieces of
string, braids of sennit, strips of green leaf, and, in the cool of the day,
scarlet hibiscus flowers. From which it will be seen that pockets were not
necessary to his well-being. Besides, pockets were impossible, for his only
wearing apparel consisted of a piece of calico several inches wide. A pocket
knife he wore in his hair, the blade snapped down on a kinky lock. His most
prized possession was the handle of a china cup, which he suspended from a
ring of turtle-shell, which, in turn, was passed through the
partition-cartilage of his nose.
But in spite of embellishments, Mauki had a nice face. It was really a pretty
face, viewed by any standard, and for a Melanesian it was a remarkably
good-looking face. Its one fault was its lack of strength. It was softly
effeminate, almost girlish. The features were small, regular, and delicate.
The chin was weak, and the mouth was weak. There was no strength nor character
in the jaws, forehead, and nose. In the eyes only could be caught any hint of
the unknown quantities that were so large a part of his make-up and that other
persons could not understand. These unknown quantities were pluck,
pertinacity, fearlessness, imagination, and cunning; and when they found
expression in some consistent and striking action, those about him were
astounded.
Mauki’s father was chief over the village at Port Adams, and thus, by birth a
salt-water man, Mauki was half amphibian. He knew the way of the fishes and
oysters, and the reef was an open book to him. Canoes, also, he knew. He
learned to swim when he was a year old. At seven years he could hold his
breath a full minute and swim straight down to bottom through thirty feet of
water. And at seven years he was stolen by the bushmen, who cannot even swim
and who are afraid of salt water. Thereafter Mauki saw the sea only from a
distance, through rifts in the jungle and from open spaces on the high
mountain sides. He became the slave of old Fanfoa, head chief over a score of
scattered bush-villages on the range-lips of Malaita, the smoke of which, on