white men shoot like hell. We no fright. We come alongside, we go up side,
plenty fella, maybe I think fifty-ten (five hundred). One fella white Mary
(woman) belong that fella ship. Never before I see ‘m white Mary. Bime by
plenty white man finish. One fella skipper he no die. Five fella, six fella
white man no die. Skipper he sing out. Some fella white man he fight. Some
fella white man he lower away boat. After that, all together over the side
they go. Skipper he sling white Mary down. After that they washee (row) strong
fella plenty too much. Father belong me, that time he strong fella. He throw
‘m one fella spear. That fella spear he go in one side that white Mary. He no
stop. My word, he go out other side that fella Mary. She finish. Me no
fright. Plenty kanaka too much no fright.”
Old Oti’s pride had been touched, for he suddenly stripped down his lava-lava
and showed me the unmistakable scar of a bullet. Before I could speak, his
line ran out suddenly. He checked it and attempted to haul in, but found that
the fish had run around a coral branch. Casting a look of reproach at me for
having beguiled him from his watchfulness, he went over the side, feet first,
turning over after he got under and following his line down to bottom. The
water was ten fathoms. I leaned over and watched the play of his feet, growing
dim and dimmer, as they stirred the wan phosphorescence into ghostly fires.
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Ten fathoms–sixty feet–it was nothing to him, an old man, compared with the
value of a hook and line. After what seemed five minutes, though it could not
have been more than a minute, I saw him flaming whitely upward. He broke
surface and dropped a ten pound rock cod into the canoe, the line and hook
intact, the latter still fast in the fish’s mouth.
“It may be,” I said remorselessly. “You no fright long ago. You plenty fright
now along that fella trader.”
“Yes, plenty fright,” he confessed, with an air of dismissing the subject. For
half an hour we pulled up our lines and flung them out in silence. Then small
fish-sharks began to bite, and after losing a hook apiece, we hauled in and
waited for the sharks to go their way.
“I speak you true,” Oti broke into speech, “then you savve we fright now.”
I lighted up my pipe and waited, and the story that Oti told me in atrocious
bech-de-mer I here turn into proper English. Otherwise, in spirit and order of
narrative, the tale is as it fell from Oti’s lips.
“It was after that that we were very proud. We had fought many times with the
strange white men who live upon the sea, and always we had beaten them. A few
of us were killed, but what was that compared with the stores of wealth of a
thousand thousand kinds that we found on the ships? And then one day, maybe
twenty years ago, or twenty-five, there came a schooner right through the
passage and into the lagoon. It was a large schooner with three masts. She had
five white men and maybe forty boat’s crew, black fellows from New Guinea and
New Britain; and she had come to fish beche-de-mer. She lay at anchor across
the lagoon from here, at Pauloo, and her boats scattered out everywhere,
making camps on the beaches where they cured the beche-de-mer. This made them
weak by dividing them, for those who fished here and those on the schooner at
Pauloo were fifty miles apart, and there were others farther away still.
“Our king and headmen held council, and I was one in the canoe that paddled
all afternoon and all night across the lagoon, bringing word to the people of
Pauloo that in the morning we would attack the fishing camps at the one time
and that it was for them to take the schooner. We who brought the word were
tired with the paddling, but we took part in the attack. On the schooner were
two white men, the skipper and the second mate, with half a dozen black boys.
The skipper with three boys we caught on shore and killed, but first eight of
us the skipper killed with his two revolvers. We fought close together, you
see, at hand grapples.
“The noise of our fighting told the mate what was happening, and he put food
and water and a sail in the small dingy, which was so small that it was no
more than twelve feet long. We came down upon the schooner, a thousand men,
covering the lagoon with our canoes. Also, we were blowing conch shells,
singing war songs, and striking the sides of the canoes with our paddles. What
chance had one white man and three black boys against us? No chance at all,
and the mate knew it.
“White men are hell. I have watched them much, and I am an old man now, and I
understand at last why the white men have taken to themselves all the islands
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142
in the sea. It is because they are hell. Here are you in the canoe with me.
You are hardly more than a boy. You are not wise, for each day I tell you many
things you do not know. When I was a little pickaninny, I knew more about fish
and the ways of fish than you know now. I am an old man, but I swim down to
the bottom of the lagoon, and you cannot follow me. What are you good for,
anyway? I do not know, except to fight. I have never seen you fight, yet I
know that you are like your brothers and that you will fight like hell. Also,
you are a fool, like your brothers. You do not know when you are beaten. You
will fight until you die, and then it will be too late to know that you are
beaten.
“Now behold what this mate did. As we came down upon him, covering the sea and
blowing our conches, he put off from the schooner in the small boat, along
with the three black boys, and rowed for the passage. There again he was a
fool, for no wise man would put out to sea in so small a boat. The sides of it
were not four inches above the water. Twenty canoes went after him, filled
with two hundred young men. We paddled five fathoms while his black boys were
rowing one fathom. He had no chance, but he was a fool. He stood up in the
boat with a rifle, and he shot many times. He was not a good shot, but as we
drew close many of us were wounded and killed. But still he had no chance.
“I remember that all the time he was smoking a cigar. When we were forty feet
away and coming fast, he dropped the rifle, lighted a stick of dynamite with
the cigar, and threw it at us. He lighted another and another, and threw them
at us very rapidly, many of them. I know now that he must have split the ends
of the fuses and stuck in match heads, because they lighted so quickly. Also,
the fuses were very short. Sometimes the dynamite sticks went off in the air,
but most of them went off in the canoes. And each time they went off in a
canoe, that canoe was finished. Of the twenty canoes, the half were smashed to
pieces. The canoe I was in was so smashed, and likewise the two men who sat
next to me. The dynamite fell between them. The other canoes turned and ran
away. Then that mate yelled, Yah! Yah! Yah!’ at us. Also he went at us again
with his rifle, so that many were killed through the back as they fled away.
And all the time the black boys in the boat went on rowing. You see, I told
you true, that mate was hell.
“Nor was that all. Before he left the schooner, he set her on fire, and fixed
up all the powder and dynamite so that it would go off at one time. There were
hundreds of us on board, trying to put out the fire, heaving up water from
overside, when the schooner blew up. So that all we had fought for was lost to
us, besides many more of us being killed. Sometimes, even now, in my old age,
I have bad dreams in which I hear that mate yell, Yah! Yah! Yah!’ In a voice
of thunder he yells, Yah! Yah! Yah!’ But all those in the fishing camps were
killed.
“The mate went out of the passage in his little boat, and that was the end of
him we made sure, for how could so small a boat, with four men in it, live on