Cannibal-land - Adventures with a camera in the New Hebrides

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Title: Cannibal-land - Adventures with a camera in the New Hebrides
Author: Johnson, Martin
Language: English
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[Illustration: MEN OF ESPIRITU SANTO]

CANNIBAL-LAND
_Adventures with a Camera in the New Hebrides_

BY
MARTIN JOHNSON

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE AUTHOR’S PHOTOGRAPHS

[Illustration]

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1922

The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE 3

I. INTRODUCING NAGAPATE 6

II. SYDNEY AND NEW CALEDONIA 23

III. THE THRESHOLD OF CANNIBAL-LAND 39

IV. NAGAPATE COMES TO CALL 49

V. IN NAGAPATE’S KINGDOM 71

VI. THE BIG NUMBERS SEE THEMSELVES ON THE SCREEN 94

VII. THE NOBLE SAVAGE 100

VIII. GOOD-BYE TO NAGAPATE 116

IX. THE MONKEY PEOPLE 123

X. THE DANCE OF THE PAINTED SAVAGES 138

XI. TOMMAN AND THE HEAD-CURING ART 152

XII. THE WHITE MAN IN THE SOUTH SEAS 161

XIII. ESPIRITU SANTO AND A CANNIBAL FEAST 175

ILLUSTRATIONS

MEN OF ESPIRITU SANTO _Frontispiece_

THE WATCHER OF TANEMAROU BAY 14

NAGAPATE 18

A BEACH SCENE 24

LOOKING SEAWARD 36

DANCE OF TETHLONG’S MEN 46

A CALL FROM NAGAPATE 62

THE SAFE BEACH TRAIL, TANEMAROU BAY 68

LOOKING OVER NAGAPATE’S KINGDOM FROM THE HIGHEST PEAK IN
NORTHERN MALEKULA 74

WOMEN OF THE BIG NUMBERS 78

RAMBI 84

ATREE AND NAGAPATE 88

HUNTING FOR THE MAGIC 98

A CANNIBAL AND A KODAK 98

NAGAPATE AMONG THE DEVIL-DEVILS 110

ONE OF THE MONKEY MEN 128

WO-BANG-AN-AR 134

SOUTHWEST BAY 138

WOMAN AND CHILD OF THE LONG-HEADS, TOMMAN 142

THE PAINTED DANCERS OF SOUTHWEST BAY 148

THE OLD HEAD-CURER 154

A CLUB-HOUSE IN TOMMAN WITH MUMMIED HEADS AND BODIES 158

TOMMAN WOMEN, SHOWING GAP IN TEETH 162

DWARFS OF ESPIRITU SANTO 182

THE CANNIBAL DANCE 188

CANNIBAL-LAND

PROLOGUE

Twelve years ago, from the deck of the Snark, I had my first glimpse of
the New Hebrides.

I was standing my trick at the wheel. Jack London and his wife,
Charmian, were beside me. It was just dawn. Slowly, out of the morning
mists, an island took shape. The little ship rose and sank on the
Pacific swell. The salt breeze ruffled my hair. I played my trick calmly
and in silence, but my heart beat fast at the sight of that bit of land
coming up like magic out of the gray water.

For I knew that of all the groups in the South Seas, the New Hebrides
were held to be the wildest. They were inhabited by the fiercest of
cannibals. On many of the islands, white men had scarcely trod. Vast,
unknown areas remained to be explored. I thrilled at the thought of
facing danger in the haunts of savage men.

I was young then. But my longing for adventure in primitive lands has
never left me. News of a wild country, of unvisited tribes, still
thrills me and makes me restless to be off in some old South Seas
schooner, seeing life as it was lived in Europe in the Stone Age and is
still lived in out-of-the-way corners of the earth that civilization has
overlooked.

I have been luckier than most men. For my lifework has made my youthful
dreams come true.

On my first voyage, in the Snark, I met with a couple of pioneer
motion-picture men, who were packing up the South Seas in films to take
back to Europe and America. They inspired in me the idea of making a
picture-record of the primitive, fast-dying black and brown peoples that
linger in remote spots. Into my boyish love of adventure there crept a
purpose that has kept me wandering and will keep me wandering until I
die.

Two years ago, I again found myself in the New Hebrides at dawn. London
had taken the last long voyage alone; and the little Snark, so white and
pretty when we had sailed it south, hung sluggishly at anchor in Api,
black and stained, and wet and slimy under the bare feet of a crew of
blacks. My boat now was a twenty-eight-foot open whaleboat, with a jury
rig of jib and mainsail; my crew of five, squatting in the waist,
looking silently at us or casting glances, sometimes down at the water,
sometimes with sudden jerks of the head upward at the little mast, like
monkeys under a coconut tree, were naked savages from Vao; and my
companion, seated on the thwart beside me, was my wife, Osa. We were
nearing the cannibal island of Malekula.

But to start the story of our adventures in Malekula at the beginning, I
must go back and describe the reconnoitering trip we took fourteen
months earlier.

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCING NAGAPATE

Osa and I were nearing the end of a long cruise through the South Seas.
We had come in contact with many wild peoples, but none of them were
quite wild enough. I had made motion-pictures of cannibals in the
Solomons. They were _bona-fide_ cannibals, fierce and naked. But
somehow, I never quite felt that they were the real thing: they so
obviously respected the English Government officers and native police
boys who accompanied and protected us. I wanted to get among savages who
were unspoiled—to make photographs showing them in their own villages,
engaged in their ordinary pursuits. I felt sure, from what I had seen
and heard and read, that the pictures I wanted were waiting to be taken
in the New Hebrides and nowhere else.

Savagery has been pretty well eliminated from the South Seas. The
Solomon Islander is well on the road to becoming a respectable citizen
of the British Empire. Most of the Fiji Islanders have left off
cannibalism and have settled down and turned Methodist. If you except
New Guinea and Borneo, the New Hebrides are probably the only islands in
the Pacific where there are natives who live as they did before the
white man’s coming.

The savages of the New Hebrides probably owe their immunity from
civilization to an accident of government. For many years the ownership
of the islands was disputed. Both British and French laid claim to them.
Neither would relinquish hold; so finally, they arranged to administer
the islands jointly until a settlement should be made. That settlement
has been pending for years. Meanwhile, both governments have been
marking time. Each party is slow to take action for fear of infringing
on the rights—or of working for the benefit—of the other. Each maintains
but a small armed force. The entire protection of the group consists of
about sixty or seventy police boys, backed up by the gunboats which make
occasional tours of the group. It is easy to understand that this is not
an adequate civilizing force for a part of the world where civilizing is
generally done at the point of a rifle, and that the savages of the more
inaccessible parts of the group are as unsubdued as they were in the
days of the early explorers.

I had heard that there were parts of the island of Malekula, the second
largest island of the group, that no white man had ever trod, so I
decided that Malekula was the island I wanted to visit. “The Pacific
Islands Pilot,” which I had among my books, gave a solemn warning
against the people of Malekula that served only to whet my interest:

“Although an appearance of friendly confidence will often tend to allay
their natural feeling of distrust, strangers would do well to maintain a
constant watchfulness and use every precaution against being taken by
surprise.” So said the “Pilot.” “... They are a wild, savage race and
have the reputation of being treacherous.... Cannibalism is still
occasionally practiced. Nearly all are armed with Snyders. The bushmen
live entirely among the hills in small villages and are seldom seen.
Being practically secure from punishment, they have not the same reasons
for good behavior that the salt-water men have, and should, therefore,
be always treated with caution.”

A recruiter who had been for years in the New Hebrides enlisting blacks
for service in the Solomons described Malekula to me in detail. It was a
large island, as my map showed me, shaped roughly like an hour-glass,
about sixty miles long and about ten miles across in the middle and
thirty-five or so at the ends. He said that there were supposed to be
about forty thousand savages on the island, most of them hidden away in
the bush. The northern part of the island was shared between the Big
Numbers and the Small Numbers people, who took their names from the
_nambas_, the garment—if it could be called a garment—worn by the men.
In the case of the Small Numbers, said my informant, it was a twisted
leaf. In the case of the Big Numbers, it was a bunch of dried pandanus
fiber. The recruiter said that the central part of the island was
supposed to be inhabited by a race of nomads, though he himself had
never seen any one who had come in contact with them. In the southern
region lived a long-headed people, with skulls curiously deformed by
binding in infancy.

Of all these peoples the Big Numbers were said to be the fiercest. Both
British and French had undertaken “armed administrations” in their
territory, in an attempt to pacify them, but had succeeded only in
sacrificing a man for every savage, they had killed. No white man had
ever established himself upon the territory of the Big Numbers and none
had ever crossed it. I decided to attempt the crossing myself and to
record the feat with my cameras.

Every one to whom I mentioned this project advised me against it. I was
warned that experienced recruiters of labor for the white man’s sugar
and rubber plantations, who knew the islands and the natives well, never
landed upon the beach unless they had a second, “covering” boat with an
armed crew to protect them against treachery, and that the most daring
trader planned to stop there only for a day—though perforce he often
stayed for all eternity. But I had the courage born of ignorance, and
ventured boldly, taking it for granted that the tales told of the
savages were wildly exaggerated. Traders, missionaries, and Government
officials all joined in solemn warning against the undertaking, but as
none of them had ever seen a cannibal in action, I did not take their
advice seriously. When they found that I was determined in my course,
they gave me all the assistance in their power.

My recruiter friend suggested that I make my headquarters on Vao, a
small island about a mile off the northeastern coast of Malekula, where
a mission station was maintained by the French fathers. He said that
between the mission and the British gunboat, which stopped there
regularly, the natives of Vao had become fairly peaceable, we would be
safe there, and at the same time would be in easy reach of Malekula.

Osa and I lost no time in getting to Vao, where Father Prin, an aged
priest, welcomed us cordially, and set aside for us one of the three
rooms in his little stone house. Father Prin had kind, beautiful eyes
and a venerable beard. He looked like a saint, in his black cassock, and
when we had a chance to look about at the degenerate creatures among
whom he lived, we thought that he must, indeed, be one. He had spent
twenty-nine years in the South Seas. During the greater part of that
time he had worked among the four hundred savages of Vao. The net result
of his activities was a clearing, in which were a stone church and the
stone parsonage and the thatched huts of seventeen converts. The
converts themselves did not count for much, even in Father Prin’s eyes.
He had learned that the task of bringing the New Hebridean native out of
savagery was well-nigh hopeless. He knew that, once he had left his
little flock, it would undoubtedly lapse into heathenism. The faith and
perseverance he showed was a marvel to me. I shall always respect him
and the other missionaries who work among the natives of Vao and
Malekula for the grit they show in a losing fight. I have never seen a
native Christian on either of the islands—and I’ve never met any one who
has seen one!

When he learned that we were bent on visiting Malekula, Father Prin
added his word of warning to the many that I had received. Though he
could speak many native languages, his English was limited to
_bêche-de-mer_, the pidgin English of the South Seas. In this grotesque
tongue, which consorted so strangely with his venerable appearance, he
told us that we would never trust ourselves among the natives if we had
any real understanding of their cruelty. He said he was convinced that
cannibalism was practiced right on Vao, though the natives, for fear of
the British gunboat, were careful not to be discovered. He cited
hair-raising incidents of poisonings and mutilations. He told us to look
around among the savages of Vao. We would discover very few if any old
folk, for the natives had the cruel custom of burying the aged alive. He
had done everything he could to eradicate this custom, but to no end. He
told us of one old woman whom he had exhumed three times, but who had
finally, in spite of his efforts, met a cruel death by suffocation.
Once, he had succeeded in rescuing an old man from death by the simple
expedient of carrying him off and putting him into a hut next to his own
house, where he could feed him and look after him. A few days after the
old man had been installed, a body of natives came to the clearing and
asked permission to examine him. They looked at his teeth to see if he
had grown valuable tusks; they fingered his rough, withered skin; they
felt his skinny limbs; they lifted his frail, helpless carcass in their
arms; and finally they burst into yells of laughter. They said the
missionary had been fooled—there was not a thing about the old man worth
saving! We could not look for mercy or consideration from such men as
these, said Father Prin. But despite his warning, Osa and I sailed away
to visit the grim island.

With the assistance of Father Prin, we secured a twenty-eight-foot
whaleboat that belonged to a trader who made his headquarters on Vao,
but was now absent on a recruiting trip, leaving his “store” in charge
of his native wife. With the aid of five Vao boys, recommended by Father
Prin as being probably trustworthy, we hoisted a small jib and a
mainsail, scarcely larger, and were off.

At the last moment, Father Prin’s grave face awoke misgivings in me and
I tried to dissuade Osa from accompanying me. Father Prin sensed the
drift of our conversation and made his final plea.

“Better you stop along Vao,” he urged. “Bush too bad.” His eyes were
anxious. But Osa was not to be dissuaded. “If you go, I’m going, too,”
she said, turning to me, and that was final.

We landed at a point on the Vao side of Malekula, where there were one
or two salt-water villages, whose inhabitants had learned to respect
gunboats. We picked up three boys to serve as guides and carriers and
then sailed on to Tanemarou Bay, in the Big Numbers territory. The
shores along which we traveled were rocky. Occasionally we saw a group
of natives on the beach, but they disappeared as we approached. These
were no salt-water savages, but fierce bushmen. Their appearance was not
reassuring; but when we reached Tanemarou Bay, we boldly went ashore. We
were greeted by a solitary savage who stepped out of the darkness of the
jungle into the glaring brightness of the beach. He was a frightful
object to behold, black and dirty, with heavy, lumpy muscles, and an
outstanding shock of greasy hair. Except for a clout of dried pandanus
fiber, a gorget of pig’s teeth, and the pigtails that dangled from his
ear-lobes, he was entirely naked. As he approached, we saw that his
dull, shifty eyes were liquid; his hairy, deeply seamed face was
contorted frightfully; and his hands were pressed tight against his
stomach. Osa shrank close to me. But the first words of the native,
uttered in almost unintelligible _bêche-de-mer_, were pacific enough.
“My word! Master! Belly belong me walk about too much!”

[Illustration: THE WATCHER OF TANEMAROU BAY]

The nervous tension that Osa and I had both felt snapped, and we burst
out laughing. I saw a chance to make a friend, so I fished out a handful
of cascara tablets and carefully explained to the native the exact
properties of the medicine. I made it perfectly clear—so I thought—that
part of the tablets were to be taken at dawn and part at sunset. He
listened with painful attention, but the moment I stopped speaking he
lifted the whole handful of pills to his slobbering lips and downed them
at a gulp!

By this time we were surrounded by a group of savages, each as
terrible-looking as our first visitor. As they made no effort to molest
us, however, we gained confidence. I set up a camera and ground out
several hundred feet of film. They had never seen a motion-picture
camera before, but, as is often the way with savages, after a first
casual inspection, they showed a real, or pretended, indifference to
what they could not understand.

Through the talented sufferer who knew _bêche-de-mer_, I learned that
the chief of the tribe, Nagapate, was a short distance away in the bush,
and on the spur of the moment, never thinking of danger, I made up my
mind to see him. Guided by a small boy, Osa and I plunged into the dark
jungle, followed by our three carriers with my photographic apparatus.
We slid and stumbled along a trail made treacherous by miry streams and
slimy creepers and up sharp slopes covered with tough canes. At last we
found ourselves in a clearing about three thousand feet above the sea.

From where we stood we could see, like a little dot upon the blue of the
ocean, our whaleboat hanging offshore. The scene was calm and beautiful.
The brown-green slopes were silent, except for the sharp metallic calls
of birds. But we knew that there were men hidden in the wild, by the
faint, thin wisps of smoke that we could see here and there above the
trees. Each marked a savage camp-fire. “That’s where they’re cooking the
‘long pig,’” I said jocularly, pointing the smoke wisps out to Osa. But
a moment later my remark did not seem so funny. I heard a sound and
turned and saw standing in the trail four armed savages, with their guns
aimed at us.

“Let’s get out of this,” I said to Osa; but when we attempted to go down
the trail, the savages intercepted us with threatening gestures.
Suddenly there burst into view the most frightful, yet finest type of
savage I have ever seen. We knew without being told that this was
Nagapate himself. His every gesture was chiefly.

He was enormously tall, and his powerful muscles rippled under his skin,
glossy in the sunlight. He was very black; his features were large; his
expression showed strong will and the cunning and brutal power of a
predatory animal. A fringe of straight outstanding matted hair
completely encircled his face; his skin, though glossy and
healthy-looking, was creased and thick, and between his brows were two
extraordinarily deep furrows. On his fingers were four gold rings that
could only have come from the hands of his victims.

I thought I might win this savage to friendliness, so I got out some
trade-stuff I had brought with me and presented it to him. He scarcely
glanced at it. He folded his arms on his breast and stared at us
speculatively. I looked around. From among the tall grasses of the
clearing, there peered black and cruel faces, all watching us in
silence. There were easily a hundred savages there. For the present
there was no escape possible. I decided that my only course was to
pretend a cool indifference, so I got out my cameras and worked as
rapidly as possible, talking to the savages and to Osa as if I were
completely at ease.

I soon saw, however, that we must get away if we were not to be caught
by darkness. I made a last show of assurance by shaking hands in
farewell with Nagapate. Osa followed my example; but instead of
releasing her, the savage chief held her firmly with one hand and ran
the other over her body. He felt her cheeks and her hair and pinched and
prodded her speculatively.

She was pale with fright. I would have shot the savage on the spot, but
I knew that such a foolhardy act would mean instant death to both of us.
I clenched my hands, forced to my lips what I hoped would pass for an
amused grin, and stood pat. After a moment that seemed to both Osa and
me an hour long, Nagapate released Osa and grunted an order at the
savages who surrounded us. They disappeared into the bush. This was our
opportunity. I ordered the three carriers to pick up the apparatus, and
we started for the trail.

[Illustration: NAGAPATE]

We had gone only a few steps when we were seized from behind. We had no
chance to struggle.

In the minutes that followed, I suffered the most terrible mental
torture I have ever experienced. I saw only one slim chance for us. Osa
and I each carried two revolvers in our breeches’ pockets; so far, the
savages had not discovered them, and I hoped there might come some
opportunity to use them. Every ghastly tale I had ever heard came
crowding into my memory; and as I looked at the ring of black, merciless
faces, and saw my wife sagging, half-swooning, in the arms of her
cannibal captors, my heart almost stopped its beating.

At this moment a miracle happened.

Into the bay far below us steamed the Euphrosyne, the British
patrol-boat. It came to anchor and a ship’s boat was lowered. The
savages were startled. From lip to lip an English word was passed,
“Man-o’-war—Man-o’-war—Man-o’-war.” With an assumption of satisfaction
and confidence that I did not feel, I tried to make it clear to them
that this ship had come to protect us, though I knew that at any moment
it might up anchor and steam away again. Nagapate grunted an order, my
carriers picked up their loads, and we were permitted to start down the
trail. Once out of sight we began to run. The cane-grass cut our faces,
we slipped on the steep path, but still we ran.

Halfway down, we came to an open place from which we could see the bay.
To our consternation, the patrol-boat was putting out to sea! We knew
that the savages, too, had witnessed its departure; for at once, from
hill to hill, sounded the vibrant roar of the conch-shell boo-boos—a
message to the savages on the beach to intercept us.

The sun was near setting. We hurried forward; soon we found that we had
lost the trail. Darkness came down, and we struggled through the jungle
in a nightmare of fear. Thorns tore our clothing and our flesh. We
slipped and fell a hundred times. Every jungle sound filled us with
terror.

But at last, after what seemed hours, we reached the beach. We stole
toward the water, hopeful of escaping notice, but the savages caught
sight of us. Fortunately our Vao boys, who had been lying off in the
whaleboat, sighted us, too, and poled rapidly in to our assistance. We
splashed into the surf and the boys dragged us into the boat, where we
lay, exhausted and weak with fear.

It took us three days to get back to Vao, but that nightmare story of
storm and terror does not belong here. Suffice it to say that we at last
got back safely and with my film unharmed.

On my return to Vao, one of the native boatmen presented me with a
letter, which had been left for me at Tanemarou Bay, by the commander of
the patrol-boat, who had been assured by our boys that we were in the
immediate vicinity of the beach and were about to return to the boat.

MATANAVOT, _10th November, 1917_

DEAR SIR:

I have been endeavoring to find you with a view to warning you
against carrying out what I understand to be your intentions. I am
told that you have decided to penetrate into the interior of this
island with a view to coming in contact with the people known as the
“Big Numbers.” Such a proceeding cannot but be attended with great
risk to yourself and all those who accompany you. The whole interior
of this island of Malekula is, and has been for a considerable time,
in a very disturbed condition, and it has been necessary in
consequence to make two armed demonstrations in the “Big Numbers”
country during the last three years. For these reasons, on the part
of the Joint Administration of this group, I request that you will
not proceed further with this idea, and hereby formally warn you
against such persistence, for the consequences of which the
Administration cannot hold itself responsible.

Yours faithfully
(Signed) M. KING
_H.B.M. Resident Commissioner for the New Hebrides_

In any case I trust you will not take your wife into the danger zone
with you.

M. K.

CHAPTER II
SYDNEY AND NEW CALEDONIA

Osa and I were sure, after our first adventure in Malekula, that we had
had enough of cannibals to last us for the rest of our natural lives.
But when we reached Sydney, on our way home, and had our films
developed, we began to weaken. Our pictures were so good that we almost
forgot the risk we had taken to get them. The few feet I had managed to
grind out on Malekula were no “staged” pictures of savage life. They
were so real and convincing that Osa declared her knees went wobbly
every time she saw them.

Before many months, Nagapate was scowling out of the screen at audiences
in New York and Paris and London, and villagers who would never go a
hundred miles from home were meeting him face to face in the Malekula
jungle. The public wanted more—and so did we. Early in 1919, about a
year after our first adventure in the Malekula bush, we were again in
Sydney, preparing for a second visit to the land of the Big Numbers—the
trip out of which this book has grown.

As we sailed into Sydney harbor on the S.S. Ventura, we met, sailing
out, the Pacifique, the little steamer of the Messageries Maritimes that
had taken us to the New Hebrides on our former visit. That meant we
should have four weeks to wait before embarking on our journey to
Malekula. We were impatient to be off, but we knew that the four weeks
would pass quickly enough, for many things remained to be done before we
should be ready for a long sojourn in the jungle.

We took up our abode with the Higginses, in their house on Darling Point
Road overlooking the harbor. Ernie Higgins had handled my films for me
on my previous trip, and I had found him to be the best laboratory man I
had ever met with, so I was glad to be again associated with him.

The house was an old-fashioned brick house of about twelve or fourteen
rooms. I fitted up one of the second-story rooms to serve as a workroom.
I had electricity brought in and set up my Pathéscope projector, so that
I could see the pictures I happened to be working on. Having this
projector meant that the work of cutting and assembling films would be
cut in two. I put up my rewinds, and soon had everything in apple-pie
order.

[Illustration: A BEACH SCENE]

From the window of my workroom, I could look over Sydney harbor. Osa and
I never tired of watching the ships going in and out. We would consult
the sailing lists in the newspapers, and try to identify the vessels
that we saw below us. There were steamers from China and Japan and the
Straits Settlements; little vessels from the various South Seas groups;
big, full-rigged ships from America; steamers from Africa and Europe;
little schooners from the islands; coastal boats to and from New Zealand
and Tasmania, and almost every day big ships came in with returned
soldiers. In the course of a week we saw boats of every description
flying the flags of almost every nation on the globe.

Osa put in long days in the harbor, fishing from Mr. Higgins’s little
one-man dinghy, that was nearly swamped a dozen times a day in the wash
from the ferry-boats, while I worked like a slave at my motion-picture
apparatus. The public thinks that a wandering camera-man’s difficulties
begin with putting a roll of film in the camera and end with taking it
out. If I were telling the true story of this trip, I should start with
my grilling weeks of preparation in New York. But my troubles in Sydney
will perhaps give sufficient idea of the unromantic back-of-the-scenes
in the life of a motion-picture explorer. I had troubles by the score.
My cameras acted up. They scratched the film; they buckled. When I had
remedied these and a dozen other ailments, I found that my pictures were
not steady when they were projected. The fault we at last located in Mr.
Higgins’s printer. We repaired the printer. Then we found that the
developer produced a granulated effect on the film. It took us two weeks
to get the proper developer. But our troubles were not over. Great spots
came out on the pictures—grease in the developing tanks. And the racks
were so full of old chemicals that they spoiled the film that hung over
them. I had new racks and new tanks made. They were not made according
to specifications. I had them remade twice and then took them apart and
did the work myself.

After I thought that my troubles were over, I found that my Pathéscope
projector, which had been made for standard film, had several parts
lacking. This was most serious, for it spoiled a plan that I had had in
the back of my head ever since I had first seen my Malekula pictures. I
wanted to show them to Nagapate and his men. It was an event that I had
looked forward to ever since I had decided to revisit the island. It
would be almost comparable to setting up a movie show in the Garden of
Eden. Luckily, I was able to have the missing parts made in Sydney, and
my apparatus was at last in order.

Then I had to collect as much information as I could about the New
Hebrides and their inhabitants, so I trotted around morning after
morning, to interview traders and steamship officials and missionaries.
Another task, in which Osa helped me, was to ransack the second-hand
clothing stores for old hats and coats and vests to serve as presents
for the natives. Other trade-stuffs, such as tobacco, mirrors, knives,
hatchets, and bright-colored calico, I planned to get in Vila, the
principal port and capital of the New Hebrides.

The four weeks had gone by like a flash, but the Pacifique had not yet
put in an appearance. She came limping into harbor at the end of another
week. She had been delayed by engine trouble and by quarantines; for the
influenza was raging through the South Seas. It was announced that she
would sail in five days, but the sailing date was postponed several
times, and it was the 18th of June before we finally lifted anchor.

It seemed good to get out of the flu-infested city, where theaters and
schools and churches were closed, every one was forced to wear a mask,
and the population was in a blue funk. We both loved Sydney and its
hospitable people, but we were not sorry to see the pretty harbor, with
its green slopes dotted with red-tiled roofs, fade into the distance.

Osa and I have often said that we like the Pacifique better than any
ship we have ever traveled on. It is a little steamer—only one thousand
nine hundred tons. We do not have bunks to sleep in, but comfortable
beds. Morning coffee is served from five to eleven o’clock. It is an
informal meal. Every one comes up for it in pajamas. Breakfast is at
half-past eleven. Dinner is ready at half-past six and lasts until
half-past eight. It is a leisurely meal, of course after course, with
red wine flowing plentifully. After dinner, the French officers play on
the piano and sing.

Most of the officers were strangers to us on this voyage, for our old
friends were all down with the flu in Sydney. The doctor and the
wireless operator were both missing, and the captain, Eric de Catalano,
assumed their duties. He was a good wireless operator, for we got news
from New Zealand each night and were in communication with Nouméa long
before we sighted New Caledonia. How efficient he was as a doctor, I
cannot say. But he had a big medicine chest and made his round each day
among the sick, and though many of the passengers came down with
influenza, none of them died. He was a handsome man, quiet and
intelligent, and a fine photographer. He had several cameras and a
well-fitted dark room and an enlarging apparatus aboard, and had made
some of the best island pictures I had ever seen. He seemed to be a man
of many talents, for the chief engineer told me that he had an
electrician’s papers and could run the engines as well as he himself
could.

We were a polyglot crowd aboard. We had fifteen first-class and five
second-class passengers, French, Australian, English, Scotch, and Irish,
and one Dane, with Osa and myself to represent America. In the steerage
were twenty-five Japanese, and up forward there was a Senegalese negro
being taken to the French convict settlement at Nouméa. Our officers
were all French—few could speak English. Our deck crew was composed of
_libérés_—ex-convicts from Nouméa. The cargo-handlers were native New
Caledonians with a sprinkling of Loyalty Islanders. The firemen were
Arabs, the dish-washers in the galley, New Hebrideans. The bath steward
was a Fiji Islander, the cabin steward a Hindu, the second-class cabin
steward hailed from the Molucca Islands, and our table steward was a
native of French Indo-China.

Three days out from Sydney we passed Middleton Reef, a coral atoll,
about five miles long and two across, with the ocean breaking in foam on
its reef and the water of its lagoon as quiet as a millpond. The atoll
is barely above water, and many ships have gone aground there. We sailed
so close that I could have thrown a stone ashore, and saw the hull of a
big schooner on the reef.

As we stood by the rail looking at her, one of our fellow-passengers, a
trader who knew the islands well, came up to us and told us her story.

“She went ashore three years ago, in a big wind,” he said. “All hands
stuck to the ship until she broke in two. Then they managed to reach
land—captain and crew and the captain’s wife and two children. They had
some fresh water and a little food. They rationed the water carefully,
and there was rain. But the food soon gave out. For days they had
nothing. The crew went crazy with hunger, and killed one of the children
and ate it. For two days, the mother held the other child in her arms.
Then she threw it into the sea so that they could not eat it. Then three
of the men took one of the ship’s boats. They could not manage it in the
rough sea, but by a lucky chance they were washed up on the beach. They
were still alive, but the captain’s wife had lost her mind.”

We reached Nouméa on the morning of June 23d. The pilot met us outside
the reef, in accordance with regulations, but he refused to come on
board when he found that we had several passengers down with the
influenza, so we towed him in. We were not allowed to land, but were
placed in quarantine off a small island about two miles from Nouméa,
between the leper settlement and Île Nou, the convict island. We were
avoided as though we had leprosy. Each day a launch came with fresh meat
and fresh vegetables, the French engineer and black crew all masked and
plainly anxious not to linger in our vicinity any longer than necessary,
and each day the doctor came and took our temperatures.

We passed our time in fishing from the deck. We had excellent luck and
our catches made fine eating. Osa, of course, caught more fish than any
one else, principally because she was up at sunrise and did not quit
until it was time to go to bed. I relieved the monotony in the evenings
by showing my pictures. I set up the Pathéscope in the saloon, and each
night I gave a performance. My audience was most critical. Every one on
board knew the New Hebrides and Nouméa well, and many of the passengers
were familiar with the Solomons and other groups in which I had taken
pictures. But my projector worked finely; I had as good a show as could
be seen in any motion-picture house, and every one was satisfied.

We had been surprised, as we steamed into the harbor, to see the
Euphrosyne lying at anchor there. The sight of her had made us realize
that we were indeed nearing the Big Numbers territory. Strangely enough,
the thought aroused no fear in us—only excitement and eagerness to get
to work, and resentment against the delay that kept us inactive in
Nouméa harbor.

Not until four days had passed was our quarantine lifted. On the evening
of June 27th, the launch brought word that peace had been signed, and
that, if no more cases of flu had developed, we would be allowed to land
on the following day and take part in the peace celebration.

New Caledonia does not much resemble the other islands of the South
Pacific. It has a white population of twenty thousand—about two thirds
as great as the native population. Its capital, Nouméa, is an industrial
city of fifteen thousand white inhabitants—the Chicago of the South
Seas. In and around it are nickel-smelters, meat-canneries, sugar-works,
tobacco and coconut-oil and soap factories. New Caledonia is rich in
minerals. It has large deposits of coal and kaolin, chrome and cobalt,
lead and antimony, mercury, cinnabar, silver, gold and copper and gypsum
and marble. In neighboring islands are rich guano beds. Agriculture has
not yet been crowded off the island by industry. The mountain slopes
make good grazing grounds and the fertile valleys are admirably fitted
for the production of coffee, cotton, maize, tobacco, copra, rubber, and
cereals. Yet there is little of South Seas romance about the islands.
And Nouméa is one of the ugliest, most depressing little towns on the
face of the earth.

We docked there early on the morning of Saturday, the 28th of June. The
wharf was packed with people, but none of them would come on board. We
might have been a plague ship. As we went ashore, we looked for signs of
the peace celebration. A few half-hearted firecrackers and some flags
hanging limp in the heat were all. The real celebration, we were told,
would take place on Monday.

In the evening, we were invited to attend one of those terrible
home-talent performances that I had thought were a product only of
Kansas, but, I now learned, were as deadly in the South Seas as in the
Middle West. A round little Frenchman read a paper in rapid French that
we could not understand, but the expression of polite interest on the
faces of the audience told us that it must be like the Fourth-of-July
orations in our home town. Then came a duet, by a man and woman who
could not sing. Another paper. Then an orchestra of three men and four
girls arranged themselves with much scraping of chairs on the funny
little stage and wheezed a few ancient tunes.

On Sunday night we went to the Peace Ball in the town hall. Most of
Nouméa’s fifteen thousand inhabitants were there, so dancing was next to
impossible. It was like a Mack Sennet comedy ball. Ancient finery had
been hauled out for the occasion, and, though most of the men appeared
in full dress, scarcely one had evening clothes that really fitted.
Under the too loose and too tight coats, however, there were warm and
hospitable hearts, and we were treated royally. After the ball, we were
entertained at supper by the governor and his suite.

Governor Joulia was a little, bald-headed man of about fifty years of
age, always smiling, always polite, and always dressed in the most
brilliant of brilliant uniforms, covered with decorations that he had
won during campaigns in Senegal, Algeria and India. His wife was a
pretty, plump woman of about thirty—she and Osa took to each other at
once. They spoke no English, and our French is awful, but we struck out
like drowning persons, and managed to understand each other after a
fashion.

On Monday, the “real celebration” of the peace consisted in closing the
stores and sleeping most of the day. In the afternoon, the governor and
his wife came to the ship for us and took us to their beautiful summer
place, about five miles from the city. A great park, with deer feeding
under the trees, fine gardens, tennis courts, well-tended walks—and the
work all done by numbered convicts.

There are convicts everywhere in and about Nouméa—convicts and
_libérés_. Their presence makes the ugly little town seem even more
unprepossessing than it is. The pleasantest spot anywhere around is Île
Nou, the convict island that I have often heard called a hell on earth.
On this green little island are about five hundred convicts—all old men,
for France has not deported any of her criminals to New Caledonia since
1897. They are all “lifers.” Indeed, I was told of one old man who is in
for two hundred years; he has tried to escape many times, and, according
to a rule of the settlement, ten years are added to a man’s sentence for
each attempt at escape.

We visited Île Nou in company with Governor Joulia and Madame Joulia;
the Mayor of Nouméa; the manager of the big nickel mines; the Governor
of the prison settlement, and a lot of aides-de-something. We saw the
old prisoners, in big straw hats and burlap clothing, each with his
number stamped on his back, all busy doing nothing. We were taken
through the cells where, in former times, convicts slept on bare boards,
with their feet through leg-irons. We were locked in dark dungeons, and,
for the benefit of my camera, the guillotine was brought out and, with a
banana stalk to take the place of a man, the beheading ceremony was gone
through with. We were taken in carriages over the green hills to the
hospitals and to the insane asylum, where we saw poor old crazy men,
with vacant eyes, staring at the ceilings. Here we met the king of the
world, who received us with great pomp from behind the bars of a strong
iron cage, and a pitiful old inventor, who showed us a perpetual-motion
machine which he had just perfected. It was made from stale bread.

[Illustration: LOOKING SEAWARD]

Yet Île Nou is better than Nouméa, with its ugly streets full of broken
old _libérés_. While most of the convicts were sent out for life, some
were sent for five years. At the end of that time, they were freed from
Île Nou and permitted to live in New Caledonia on parole, and if they
had committed no fresh offense, at the end of another five years they
were given their ticket back to France. Any one sentenced to a longer
term than five years, however, never saw France again. He regained his
freedom, but was destined to lifelong exile. Some of the _libérés_ have
found employment and have become responsible citizens of New Caledonia,
but many of them drift through the streets of Nouméa, broken old men who
sleep wherever they can find a corner to crawl into and pick their food
from the gutters.

I was glad, while in Nouméa, to renew my acquaintance with Commissioner
King of the New Hebrides, who had come to New Caledonia to have the
Euphrosyne repaired. I talked over with him my proposed expedition to
Malekula, and received much valuable advice. He could not give me the
armed escort I had hoped to secure from him, for he had no police boys
to spare. He promised, however, to pick us up at Vao, in about a month’s
time, and take us for a cruise through the group in the Euphrosyne. I
wanted him, and the New Caledonian officials as well, to see some of my
work, so I decided to show my films in the Grand Cinéma, the leading
motion-picture house of Nouméa. I gave the proprietor the films free of
charge, under condition that I got fifty seats blocked off in the center
of the house. We invited fifty guests, and the remainder of the house
was packed with French citizens of Nouméa, Chinese and Japanese coolies
and native New Caledonians. I showed the five reels called “Cannibals of
the South Seas.” Then I showed my four reels of Malekula film, and ended
up with a one-reel subject, Nouméa. We were given an ovation, and both
Osa and I had to make speeches—understood by few of those present. The
French have a passion for speeches whether they can understand them or
not. The next morning, we found ourselves celebrities as we walked
through the streets of Nouméa.

CHAPTER III
THE THRESHOLD OF CANNIBAL-LAND

We left New Caledonia at midnight on July 3d, and steamed over a calm
sea to Vila.

Vila is the commercial center as well as the capital of the New Hebrides
and its harbor is one of the finest in the South Seas. On our right, as
we steamed in, was the island of Irriki, a mountain peak rising out of
the sea, on the highest point of which Mr. King has built his house.
Vila is a typical South Seas town—a rambling mixture of tropical and
European architecture and no architecture at all. Its public buildings,
French and British, its churches, and the well-kept British settlement,
with the parade grounds and barracks for the native police, make it more
imposing than the run of the pioneer villages of Melanesia, but it
seemed strange to us that it should be the metropolis for the white
people of thirty islands. We spent a day in Vila looking up old
acquaintances and laying in supplies. Among the acquaintances we found
good old Father Prin who had been retired from active duty on Vao and
had come to Vila to spend his declining days. He was glad to see us, but
shook his head when he heard that we were again going to try our luck
among the Big Numbers.

“Big Numbers plenty bad,” he warned us in _bêche-de-mer_. And Osa and I
replied in the same tongue, “Me no fright.”

I bought nearly a thousand dollars’ worth of food and trade-stuffs from
the four trading stores of Vila, but could not get a schooner or any
native boys to take us on our trip around Malekula. So I decided to go
on to the island of Espiritu Santo, two hundred miles to the north. We
stopped at Api, to leave mail and supplies and to take on copra. In the
harbor there, we again saw the old Snark at anchor. It was a black and
shabby ship, manned by a black crew and used for recruiting labor for
work in the white man’s sugar and copra plantations.

We found Segond Channel, off Southeastern Santo, filled with cutters and
schooners, every one of which had white men aboard, who had been waiting
a couple of weeks for the news and supplies brought by the Pacifique. In
no time at all, I made arrangements for three schooners with big crews
to accompany me on my visit to the tribe of the Big Numbers. Mr. Thomas,
of Hog Harbor, promised he would send his boat to Vao in a week with as
many boys as he could spare. Mr. Perrole, an experienced French
recruiter, also agreed to charter a schooner and bring boys. We obtained
a third schooner from a young Frenchman, Paul Mazouyer, one of the most
picturesque dare-devils I have ever met. A giant in size and strength,
boiling with energy, always singing, sometimes dancing with his boys, he
did not understand the meaning of fear. He was a match for three white
men, and he took chances on the beach that no other recruiter would
dream of taking. I asked him once in _bêche-de-mer_—the only language in
which we could converse—if the savages did not sometimes make him a
little anxious.

“Ah,” he said, shifting his huge frame and stretching his arms, “my
word! Suppose fifty men he come, me no fright!”

I believed him. He was a two-fisted adventurer of the old type, with the
courage of unbeaten youth. He knew, as every white man in the New
Hebrides knows, that he might expect short shrift once the natives got
him in their power, but he trusted to fate and took reckless chances.

The captain of the Pacifique agreed to take us to Vao, although it was
fifty miles off his course. We dropped anchor off the island just at
daylight and were surrounded almost immediately by canoes filled with
naked savages. The Pacifique was a marvel to the natives. She was one of
the smallest steamers I had ever been aboard, but they had never in all
their lives seen so large a vessel. The imposing size of the ship and
the impressive quantity of my baggage—sixty-five trunks, crates and
boxes—gave me a great deal of importance in their eyes. As we stood on
the beach watching the unloading of the ship’s boat, they crowded about,
regarding us with furtive curiosity. From time to time they opened their
huge, slobbering mouths in loud guffaws, though there was apparently no
cause for laughter.

When my things were all unloaded, the captain and officers shook hands
with us and put off for the ship. In twenty minutes the Pacifique was
steaming away. Before she gained speed, a big American flag was hoisted
between the masts, and the engineer tooted encouragement to us. As she
grew small in the distance, the flag at the stern of the vessel was
dipped three times. We sat on the beach among our boxes and watched her
until she was just a cloud of smoke on the horizon. We felt very lonely
and very much shut off from our kind there, surrounded by a crowd of
jabbering, naked savages, who stared at us with all the curiosity shown
by people back home toward the wild man in a sideshow.

With a show of cheerfulness, we set about making ourselves comfortable
for the weeks to come. The huts of the seventeen converts were deserted,
and rapidly going to pieces: the former occupants had forsaken the
lonely clearing for the crowded villages. But the little stone house in
which Father Prin had lived was still standing, though one corner of the
roof had fallen in. A proffer of tobacco secured me many willing black
hands to repair the roof and thatch it with palm leaves. Other natives
brought up our trunks and boxes. They cut big poles and lashed the boxes
to them with vines, and, ten to twenty natives to a box, they carried
the luggage from the beach in no time. By noon we had everything stored
away safe from the weather. We spent the afternoon in unpacking the
things needed for immediate use, and soon Osa and I had our little
three-room dwelling shipshape.

We had learned a lesson from our first trip, with the result that, on
this second expedition, we had brought with us every possible comfort
and even some luxuries—from air-cushions and mattresses to hams, bacons,
and cheeses specially prepared for us in Sydney. With a clear-flamed
Primus stove and Osa to operate it, we were fairly certain of good food.
Having promulgated the law of the New Hebrides and Solomons, that every
native coming upon the clearing must leave his gun behind him and cover
his nakedness with calico, we settled down for a long stay.

Vao is a very small island, no more than two miles in diameter, lying
several miles off the northeast shore of Malekula. It is rimmed on the
Malekula side by a broad, beautiful beach. Three small villages are
hidden in the low, scrub jungle, but the only signs of habitation are
three canoe houses that jut out from the fringe of bushes and hundreds
of canoes drawn up in a careful line upon the beach.

About four hundred savages live in the three villages of Vao. Their
huts—mere shelters, not high enough to permit a man to stand
erect—contain nothing but a few bits of wood to feed the smoldering
fires. Pigs wander freely in and out. Oftentimes these animals seem to
be better favored than the human inmates, who are a poor lot, many of
them afflicted with dreadful sores and weak eyes.

Many of the inhabitants of Vao are refugees from the big island of
Malekula, who were vanquished in battle and literally driven off the
earth by their enemies. Soon after our arrival, a powerful savage named
Tethlong, one of the Small Numbers people, arrived on Vao with twenty of
his men. All the remaining men of his tribe had been killed and the
women and children had been taken captive. The natives of Vao received
the newcomers as a welcome addition to their fighting force, and
Tethlong set about to insure his position among his new neighbors. He
invited the entire population to a feast, and at once sent his men to
neighboring islands to buy up pigs and chickens for the occasion. The
devil-devils—great, hollowed logs, carved roughly to represent human
faces, which are erected everywhere in the New Hebrides to guard against
evil spirits—were consulted to find a propitious time for the feasting,
and on the appointed day the celebration began with much shouting and
singing and dancing and beating of tom-toms. It lasted for several days.
Before it was over, seven hundred and twenty pigs had been slaughtered.
The island had never before seen such a feast. As a result of his
political strategy, Tethlong became the Big Chief of Vao, taking
precedence over the chiefs already there.

I got some fine pictures of Tethlong’s feast, but they were the only
pictures I took for some days. For one thing, I was too busy for camera
work; for the job of checking over our supplies and fortifying our place
against a heavy rain kept us busy. For another, I was anxious to keep
our savage neighbors at a distance, so long as we were alone.

Though they got over their curiosity concerning us and our effects
within a few days, about half a dozen loafers continued to appear every
morning and beg for tobacco. They were too lazy to work, and their
constant presence annoyed us. They were in the way, and, besides, they
grew cheekier day by day. The limit was reached one evening when Osa was
playing her ukulele. Several natives wandered over from the village to
listen. It was pretty music—I liked it a lot—and Osa was flattered when
some of the boys came to talk to us about it. But it soon developed that
they were demanding tobacco as compensation for listening!

[Illustration: DANCE OF TETHLONG’S MEN]

We managed to get hold of a fairly trustworthy boy—Arree by name—to help
with the housework. He claimed to have gone to the Catholic mission
school at Vila, and, strange to say, he did not approve of the ways of
his own people, though he was never absent from one of their festivals.
He always told us the local gossip. It was from him that we learned what
had happened to the mission boy who had worked for us on our former
visit. He had aroused the ill-will of a neighbor and two weeks before
our arrival had died from poison placed in his _lap-lap_, a pudding made
of coconuts and fish.

Osa could write volumes regarding the difficulties of training her
scrubby native recruit to the duties of housework. He spoke good
_bêche-de-mer_, but _bêche-de-mer_ is a language capable of various
interpretations. Osa spoke it better than I, but even she could not make
simple orders clear to our muddle-brained black slavey. One morning, she
told Arree to heat an iron for her. She waited for a long time to get
it, and then went after it. She found Arree crouched before the fire,
gravely watching the iron boiling in a pot.

Arree murdered the King’s English in a way that must have made old
Webster turn over in his grave. He never said “No.” His negative was
always “No more,” and his affirmative was an emphatic “Yes-yes.” When I
called for warm water in the morning, he would reply, blandly, “Hot
water, he cold fellow,” and I would have to wait until, in his leisured
way, Arree built the fire and heated the water. He had a sore leg, which
I healed with a few applications of ointment. A few days later, he came
to me with one eye swollen nearly shut, and my medicine kit in his hand.
“Me gottem sore leg along eye-eye,” he informed me. Sometimes he
achieved triumphs. I asked him once to tell another native to bring me
the saw from Osa. In order to air his knowledge of English, Arree said:
“You go along Mary (woman) belong Master catchem one fellow something he
brother belong ackus (axe), pullem he come, pushem he go.” And then he
translated the command, for his admiring, wide-eyed brother, into the
native dialect.

Osa and I often caught ourselves falling into this queer English even
when there were no natives around. It gets into the blood like
baby-talk.

CHAPTER IV
NAGAPATE COMES TO CALL

Long before our reënforcements were due to arrive, we began to feel
uneasy on Vao. I found our neighbors far too friendly with the
unregenerate Malekula bushmen to be entirely trustworthy. The bush
people had no canoes. But when they wanted to visit Vao, they would sing
out from the shore, and the Vao men would go after them and bring them
over, fifteen or twenty of them at a time. The Malekula men never came
near our clearing, but the knowledge that they were on the island made
us uncomfortable. We were sure that they came to participate in savage
orgies, for often after a group of them arrived, the sound of the
tom-tom and of savage chanting drifted through the jungle from the
native villages, and our little clearing seemed haunted by shadows that
assumed menacing shapes. Finally, there occurred an incident that
changed what had been merely nervous apprehension to vivid fear.

We had been a week on the island. The schooners we were awaiting had not
yet arrived. We could expect them, now, any day, but things do not run
by clockwork in the South Seas, so we knew that another week might pass
before we should see them. It had been hot and rainy and steamy and
disagreeable ever since our arrival, but to-night was clear, with a
refreshing breeze. After our tinned dinner, Osa and I went down to the
beach. The moon was full. The waves lazily washed up on the soft sand,
white in the moonlight, and the fronds of the palm-trees along the shore
whispered and rattled above our heads. Osa, in a romantic mood, was
strumming very softly on the ukulele. All at once, we heard the
whish-whish of canoe paddles coming around a rocky point. We moved back
into the shelter of some bushes and watched.

Presently ten natives landed on the beach and drew their canoe up after
them. From it they took two objects wrapped in leaves, one elongated and
heavy—it took several men to handle it—the other small and round. Soon
the men, with their burdens, disappeared down a dark pathway leading to
the village.

For several minutes we did not dare to move. Then we hurried back to the
house and got our revolvers and sat for a long time feeling very much
alone, afraid to go to bed and afraid to go out in the open. After a
while a weird chanting and the beating of tom-toms began in the village
near by. The noise kept us awake all night.

Next morning, Arree came up with his story of the night’s revels. The
packages, he said, had really contained the body and head of a man. The
head had been impaled on a stick in the village square, and the natives
had danced wildly around it. Then the body was spitted on a long pole
and roasted over a great fire. The savages continued to dance and sing
until the horrible meal was ready. The rest of the night was spent in
feasting. Such orgies as this, Arree said, were fairly frequent. The
natives often purchased slain enemies from the bush savages of Malekula,
to eat as they would eat so many pigs.

Two days after this incident, Paul Mazouyer dropped anchor off Vao. We
were glad to see him, and told him so in emphatic _bêche-de-mer_, the
only common language at our disposal. We promptly put my apparatus
aboard his little schooner, or cutter, as the craft was called in those
waters, and set sail for the country of the Big Numbers. A hundred naked
savages watched us in silence from the beach. The two other schooners
had gone on ahead to meet us in Big Numbers Bay, known locally as
Tanemarou. They were all recruiting schooners with experienced crews,
armed with regulation rifles, as permitted and indeed insisted upon by
the Government.

Recruiting labor for the rubber and sugar plantations of white settlers
is a regular business in the New Hebrides and a dangerous one. A
recruiter chooses his island and anchors in the offing. He then sets
adrift a charge of dynamite, which is detonated as a signal to the
natives. The roar of the explosion rolls through the valleys and echoes
against the hills. On the day following, the savages come down to the
beach to trade. Two boats then put off from the schooner. In the first
is the white man with an unarmed crew, for the savages are not beyond
rushing the boat for the sake of a gun. In the second, hovering a short
distance away, is an armed crew, who cover the savages with their guns
while their master parleys with the chiefs for recruits. At the first
hostile move on the part of the natives, the boys in the covering boat
open fire.

Despite such extreme precautions, tragedies happen. A friend of Paul
Mazouyer’s had been killed at Malua, whither we were now bound. Paul
told us the story. There were only a few savages on the beach at the
time; but one of them promised to go into the bush to recruit if his
people were given half a case of tobacco. The recruiter foolishly sent
his covering boat back to the cutter for the tobacco, and the savages
sat down on the beach to wait. While they were waiting, another savage
came out of the jungle. He walked slowly down the beach with his hands
behind him and waded out into the water until he could get behind the
white man. Then he suddenly placed the muzzle of a gun against the white
man’s back and pulled the trigger.

A French gunboat was sent from Nouméa to avenge the murder, and a month
after the tragedy Paul led an expedition into the bush which razed a
village and killed a number of savages.

In conclusion, Paul told us an incident that he thought was uproariously
funny. The victor had brought the bodies of four of the natives down to
the sea. Among the members of the expedition were a dozen “civilized”
blacks of a tribe hostile to the Big Numbers. These twelve boys looked
thoughtfully at the four dead bodies and then approached the commander
with a spokesman at their head.

“Master,” he said with great earnestness, “me lookum some fellow man he
die finish. He stop along sand. He plenty good kai-kai! Me think more
better you no put him along ground. Altogether boy he speak—He eat him!”

We reached the bay where these events had taken place on the first night
after our departure from Vao. We coasted along so close to the shore
that we could plainly see groups of natives who watched us, talking and
gesticulating among themselves, and sometimes followed us for some
distance along the beach, curious to see where we would land. We rounded
the northern point of the island and bucked into a stiff head wind and a
strong current. We made little progress until the tide turned. Then we
went along at a good rate.

We anchored in Malua Bay, a stone’s throw from shore, on a line with a
great ravine that cleft the mountains and separated the territory of the
Small Numbers tribes, which lies directly across from Vao, from that of
the Big Numbers, which occupies the northwest corner of the island.

That was a night typical of the South Seas. I shall never forget it. The
moon was visible for only a few seconds at a time, when it dodged from
behind thick, drifting clouds and drenched everything with a light
almost as bright as day. Our black crew huddled in the bow of the boat.
We sat with our guns beside us. On the shore we could clearly make out
the forms of savages squatting around their camp-fire. From the distance
we could hear the deep tones of the conch-shell boo-boos. The sea rolled
upon the beach with a heavy, sleepy purring. In the dark blue waters
below us we could see sharks moving about, leaving trails of phosphorus.
By the light of a greasy, smoky lantern that went out every few moments,
struggling against a ground swell that threatened to capsize my
typewriter, I entered the day’s events in my diary. As I wrote, the
savages began a weird dance, their grotesque forms silhouetted against
the sky. The sound of their chanting brought me what Osa calls the
“South Sea feeling.” I don’t know how to describe it. But it is the
thing that makes me always want to go back.

The next morning we went ashore in two boats, Paul, Osa, and myself in
one, with one boy to pull, and four armed boys in another boat to cover
us. There were only half a dozen savages in sight, so we landed on the
beach and even walked up to the small river that emptied into the bay,
but we kept our guns handy and the covering boat was watching closely.
We knew that if it came to a rush, we could beat the savages to the boat
and that they were too poor shots to waste valuable ammunition in
shooting from the edge of the jungle. It is the custom of the men of
Malekula to approach near enough to place the muzzle against their
enemy. Otherwise, they seldom risk a shot.

We had not been ashore long when we saw a couple of natives emerge from
the bush and walk toward us. We hurried to the boat. Other savages
appeared in small groups, so we shoved off. We bobbed along the shore
all afternoon, while Paul tried to get recruits. About fifty armed
savages wandered up and down, coaxing us in closer; but on account of
Osa, I would not risk landing, though Paul, who feared nothing, wanted
to put in to shore. He knew that almost any savage in that region would
kill him, if chance offered, in revenge for the part he had played in
the punitive expedition, but this was his favorite recruiting ground and
he was not to be scared away from it. He had the contempt for natives
that has resulted fatally for many a white man.

At sundown we returned to the cutter. We could hear the savages shouting
as they went back into the hills. The broiling sun had left us hot and
sticky, and when Paul suggested a swim we all agreed to it, sharks or no
sharks. The boys kept a sharp lookout for the flashes of phosphorus that
would mean approaching danger, but we finished our swim without
adventure. Nevertheless, that night we put out hooks and caught two
sharks, one four feet long, the other six—which ended our swimming along
these shores.

Paul’s little boat was close quarters for the three of us. He made his
bed alongside the engines, below, and Osa and I slept in the scuppers,
one on each side of the hatch.

At about eleven o’clock, it began to rain and blow. We dragged our
anchor and had to put down another and then a kedge anchor in addition.
The craft twisted and turned and plunged, until Osa swore we went right
over and up again. I padded Osa with old sail to protect her from
bruises and we held on to the hatch with both hands to keep from being
thrown into the sea. Almost all our supplies were drenched; for we
robbed everything else of tarpaulin or canvas coverings to keep my
apparatus dry. Shivering and wretched, we crouched on deck waiting for
daylight. Morning was never so slow in coming; but with the first light,
the rain ceased, the sea became smooth, and the sun came up broiling
hot, sucking up the moisture until from stern to bow we looked like a
spout of a boiling tea-kettle.

There was fever in the air. We ate quinine as if it had been candy, in
an effort to stave off the sickness that, always inconvenient, would now
prove especially so.

About noon we made out two vessels sailing up to us, and as they came
alongside we found that one was sailed by Perrole and the other by a
young man, half Samoan and half English, whom Mr. Thomas had sent with
ten boys. His name was Stephens. We now had twenty-six armed and
experienced natives, four white men and Osa. With this force I was ready
to undertake almost anything; so after a hasty conference we decided to
go on to Tanemarou, the bay from which we had first entered Nagapate’s
territory. Without the aid of the Government, I saw that it would be
impossible to carry out my original intention of entering the island at
the northern end and traversing it straight through to the southern. So
I proposed the alternative plan of sailing completely around the island,
landing at different points from which I could strike inland to visit
the tribes. In many ways, this latter plan proved to be the better of
the two for my purpose. I doubt, now, if a Government escort would have
been to my advantage; for any Government expedition would have been
regarded as a punitive raid and as such would have encountered the most
determined resistance. Even at the time, I felt that the peaceable
nature of my expedition would put me on good terms with the savages.
Cruel as they were, they were childlike, too, and the fact that we were
coming to them in a friendly spirit with presents for which, apparently,
we were asking nothing in return, would, I felt sure, disarm their
hostility. I had discovered that most of the recent murders of white men
had been committed by the savages in a spirit of revenge. Recruiters who
had carried off their kinsfolk; traders who had cheated them; members of
punitive expeditions, or the occasional Simon Legree who had earned the
hatred of the blacks by cruelty—such were the victims of savage gun or
knife.

It was with a feeling of confidence that I sailed into Tanemarou Bay.
Here, sweeping around us, was the broad beach across which we had run
for our lives almost two years before. In fine yellow sand it spread
away from the water’s edge for about a hundred yards to the dark fringe
of jungle. Against the high black volcanic rocks that guarded the
entrance to the bay, a heavy surf beat and roared, but on the sands the
land-locked waters lapped gently, shimmering with many colors. The dark
hills rose about the jungle in green slopes mottled with brown and
streaked here and there with tiny wisps of smoke.

I suddenly thought that the peaceful aspect of those hills was exactly
what must have struck the men aboard the gunboat Euphrosyne when its
opportune appearance had given Osa and me the chance for our lives. The
memory of that horrible adventure made me momentarily uneasy. Osa
squeezed my arm, and I knew that her thoughts, too, had gone back to the
evening when, in the gathering darkness, we had slipped from the edge of
the jungle, tattered, bleeding, and terrified, and rushed into the water
pursued by the yelling savages.

Paul was not troubled by any forebodings. He at once suggested that we
go ashore. So Osa and I followed him into the boat and we pulled for the
beach, followed by the small boats from the other cutters. As we landed,
about twenty armed savages suddenly appeared and came walking boldly
toward us. Except for belts of rough bark and clouts of pandanus fiber,
they were naked. The flatness of their noses was accentuated by plugs
driven through the cartilage dividing the nostrils. Shaggy, outstanding
manes of hair completely encircled their faces, which were deeply seamed
and wore a perpetual scowl.

I began to doubt once more whether I could fulfill the object of my
expedition after all. There was no man living who had witnessed the
cannibalistic rites of these wild men. Many had made the attempt and had
paid a gruesome penalty. But as the band drew nearer, my feeling
changed. In a sense, they were my people. They had encircled the globe
with me and in the comfortable surroundings of great theaters had stood
naked and terrible before thousands of civilized people. I had made
their faces familiar in all parts of the world. With something like
emotion I watched them as they approached. Suddenly the figure at their
head stood out like a “fade-in.”

It was Nagapate.

Osa and I forgot that this savage had once wanted to eat us. We forgot
what had happened at our first violent meeting. We looked at each other
and smiled and then, both actuated by the same unaccountable impulse, we
rushed forward and grabbed his hand.

Now Nagapate did not know the meaning of a handshake, but he seemed to
understand instantly that we were glad to see him. His heavy face,
gashed so deeply with wrinkles that his scowl seemed unalterable, broke
into a delighted grin. He recovered his dignity in a moment, however,
and stood to one side with his arms folded on his massive chest,
watching closely every move we made. The strong guard we had brought
with us must have impressed him; but he did not seem at all
apprehensive, for he could tell by our conduct that we were friendly. We
were anxious to get some pictures. However, since fresh relays of
savages continued to come down from the jungle, we decided to wait until
we had with us all the boys from the other boats before taking any
further chances.

We decided to return to the cutter, and as we were about to embark an
extraordinary thing happened. Nagapate came up to Osa and made signs to
show that he would like to go aboard with us. Now hundreds of his own
people had been grabbed from his beach in times gone by and
“blackbirded” away to slavery. He was accustomed, and with cause, to
think the white man as merciless as we thought him to be. Yet of his own
free will, without a glimmer of fear, Nagapate put himself completely in
our power.

[Illustration: A CALL FROM NAGAPATE]

An hour later, while we ate our dinner of tinned beef, Nagapate, with
two of his men, squatted on the deck at our feet and ate hard-tack and
white trade-salmon. Afterwards I brought out pictures I had made on my
first visit. The savages gave yells of excitement when they saw
Nagapate’s face caught on paper. When I produced a large colored poster
of the chief and presented it to him, he was speechless. The three
savages, looking at this mysterious likeness, were almost ready to
kow-tow to us, as they did to their devil-devils in the bush.

But the crowning touch of all came when we had grown a little tired of
our guests, and Osa brought out her ukulele and commenced to sing. To
our surprise Nagapate joined in, chanting a weird melody, which his men
took up. After a few bars, they were made shy by the sound of their own
voices. Nagapate stopped his song and vainly tried once more to look
dignified. In fact, that old man-eater showed every manifestation of a
young and awkward boy’s self-consciousness!

We bridged over the awkward situation with more salmon and about ten
o’clock sent him ashore happy, with his bare arms full of knives and
calico and tobacco. We judged by his farewell that we would be welcome
any time we cared to drop in on him for dinner and that we had a fair
prospect of not being served up as the main course. In any case, on the
strength of his visit, I determined to chance a visit to his village on
the following day, though I realized that the visit, in many ways
significant, did not give the least assurance of continued friendliness.
These savages are as willful and as uncertain in their moods as
children. When they are sulky, they are as likely to murder
treacherously whoever arouses their ill-will as a small boy is to throw
a stone. There is no one to control or guide them. They are physically
powerful, they are passionate, and they possess deadly weapons. We could
be no more certain that our lives would be safe with them than a man
with a silk hat can be sure of his headgear among three hundred
schoolboys fighting with snowballs.

We were awakened at daybreak by a shout from the shore. A score of
natives stood on the beach, calling and gesticulating. I went ashore,
accompanied by Paul Mazouyer, and found that they had presents from
their chief, Nagapate—yams and coconuts and wild fruits. But the
presents were not for me. In their almost unintelligible _bêche-de-mer_,
the natives explained that the fruits were for “Mary”—their
_bêche-de-mer_ word for woman. I could scarcely believe my ears. In all
my experience among the blacks of the South Seas, I had never known a
savage to pay any attention to a woman, except to beat her or to growl
at her. The women of the islands are slaves, valued at so many pigs.
They do all the work that is done in the native villages and get
scoldings and kicks for thanks. I went doubtfully back to the schooner
and brought Osa ashore. The natives greeted her with grunts of
satisfaction and laid their offering at her feet.

My respect for Nagapate increased. I saw that he was a diplomat. He had
observed that this little person in overalls, who had approached him so
fearlessly, was treated with the utmost deference by the crews of the
schooners and by the white men. He had come to the conclusion that she
was the real boss of the expedition. And he was very nearly right!

Perrole and Stephens joined us, and we remained on the beach all
morning. Osa and I took pictures of the natives squatting about us and
watched for Nagapate himself to put in an appearance. I was eager to
invite him to his first “movie.” He had been overcome with awe at sight
of a photograph of himself. What would he say to motion-pictures that
showed him talking, with threatening gestures, and scowling as on that
memorable day two years before?

Every now and then a new delegation of natives arrived on the beach. In
spite of the law that prohibits the sale of firearms to the natives,
they all carried rifles. I examined some of the guns. They were old, but
not too old to do damage, and every native had a supply of cartridges. I
found later that spears and bows and arrows are almost out of use among
the Big Numbers. Nine men out of ten own guns. Where do they get them?
No native will tell, for telling would mean no more rifles and no more
cartridges. The white people of the islands know, but they keep their
information to themselves. I know, too, but I am not doing any talking
either, for I want to go back to the New Hebrides some day.

Our own boys remained close by us all the morning and we kept sharp
watch for any sign of treachery. By noon, the savages had lost their
suspicion of us. They stacked their rifles against rocks and trees and
moved about, talking to each other in their strange, grunting speech.
We, too, moved about more freely. And I tried to gain the confidence of
the natives by talking to them. My attempts to learn their language with
_bêche-de-mer_ as a medium brought great guffaws. But in spite of the
friendliness of our visitors, we were never quite at ease. Their
appearance was against them. Their ugly faces—eyes with scarcely any
pupils, flat noses made twice their normal size by the wooden plugs
thrust through the cartilage dividing the nostrils, great mouths with
thick, loose lips—their stealthy way of walking, their coarse, rapid,
guttural speech, which sounded angry even when they spoke to one
another, the quick gestures with which they filled in the gaps in their
limited language—none of these things tended to make us feel at home.

I kept wondering how some of Osa’s sheltered young friends back home
would act, if they were to be set down, as she was, on a sandy beach,
miles from civilization, and surrounded with fierce cannibals—hideous
and worse than naked; for they worship sex, and what clothing they wear
calls attention to their sex rather than conceals it. I watched her
admiringly as she went about taking snapshots as unconcernedly as if the
savages had been Boy Scouts on an outing. And I thought, as I have
thought many many times in the nine years we have gone about together,
how lucky I was. Osa has all the qualities that go to make an ideal
traveling companion for an explorer—pluck, endurance, cheerfulness under
discomfort. In an emergency, I would trust her far sooner than I would
trust most men.

During the afternoon, several fresh groups of natives came out of the
jungle to stare at us, and toward sunset a number of savages descended a
trail that sloped down to the beach about half a mile from where we were
sitting and brought us a message from the great chief. It was couched as
follows: “Nagapate, he big fellow master belong Big Numbers. He, he
wantem you, you two fellow, you come along lookem house belong him, you
lookem piccaninny belong him, you lookem Mary belong him. He makem big
fellow sing-sing. More good you, you two fellow come. He no makem bad,
he makem good altogether.” And it meant that His Highness, Chief
Nagapate, would like to have us visit him in his village, and that he
guaranteed our safety.

[Illustration: THE SAFE BEACH TRAIL, TANEMAROU BAY]

I accepted the invitation with alacrity. The messengers hurried off, and
Osa and I followed, curious to see where the trail left the beach. We
had not gone far, before Paul shouted for us to stop. We halted and saw,
a quarter of a mile down the beach, a group of about a hundred armed
natives. Some Big Numbers people came up to us and warned us, with
gestures, to go no farther, so we sat down on the sand and awaited
developments. The newcomers squatted on the beach and stared in our
direction. In about fifteen minutes, a second group of natives appeared
from a trail still farther down the beach, and the first group sprang to
their feet and melted into the bush with incredible rapidity.

What did it all mean? Paul, well versed in island lore, had the answer.
The beach was used jointly by four tribes, three belonging to the Big
Numbers and one to the Small Numbers people. All of these tribes are
more or less hostile, but they have agreed between them that the beach
is neutral ground, for they realize that if fighting is permitted there,
it will never be safe for any of them to come out into the open to trade
or fish. Sometimes the beach armistice is violated, and for weeks there
is severe fighting along the sand; in the end, however, the matter is
always settled by an exchange of wild pigs and the beach is again safe
for all comers. But the armistice never extends back into the bush. In
the jungle and the tall cane-grass, it is always open season for
man-killing.

We returned to the schooner early that evening, in order to make ready
for our trip into the interior. I packed all my photographic apparatus
carefully in canvas and rubber cases, and I bundled up several
tarpaulins to protect us and our cameras in case of sudden rain. We put
up enough supplies to last seven or eight days, and a good equipment of
trade-stuffs. As we packed, the monotonous chanting of some twenty of
Nagapate’s men, who had remained on the beach to escort us to the
village, drifted across the water. Occasionally we caught a glimpse of
them, grotesque black shapes against the light from their camp-fire.

CHAPTER V
IN NAGAPATE’S KINGDOM

Next morning, before daybreak, we were on the beach. The embers of the
camp-fire remained, but our escort had vanished. I was filled with
misgivings. Did Nagapate plan treachery? We were thirty-one—twenty-six
trustworthy native boys, four white men, and Osa. We were all well
equipped with repeating rifles and automatic pistols. In open fight, we
could have stood off a thousand savages. But I knew that the men of
Malekula, though they are notoriously bad shots, could pick us off one
by one, if they wished, as we went through the jungle.

I suppose that we all felt a little doubtful about taking the plunge
into the jungle, but we all—with the exception of our native boys, who
were plainly in a blue funk—kept our doubts to ourselves. The boys were
so frightened that they rebelled against carrying anything except their
guns. To inspire them with confidence, each of us took a piece of
luggage, and then we divided among them what was left and persuaded them
to take the trail.

It was dawn on the beach, but it was still night in the jungle. The
trail was a dark tunnel with walls and roof of underbrush and trees and
tangled vines. We stumbled along blindly at first. Presently our eyes
became used to the dark and we walked with more ease. Stems and thorns
caught at our clothes as we passed. We slipped on wet, slimy roots and
stumbled over them in the dim light. Only where the jungle was
intersected by one of the numerous streams—swift but shallow and never
too wide for leaping—that water the island, did the light succeed in
struggling weakly through the tangle.

The New Hebridean jungle is different from that of India or Africa. The
severe hurricanes that sweep over the islands each year have stunted
growth. There are no forest giants. Trees send their branches out rather
than up, forming a dense mass of vegetation that is further bound
together by vines, so that it is almost impossible to penetrate the
jungle save by beaten trails or along the courses of streams.

The sun was well up when we came out on the first of a series of
plateaus that formed a giant stairway up the mountain. They were
separated from one another by five hundred to a thousand yards of scrub
trees and tangled bush. It was not easy going. The ascents were steep,
and the trail was wet and slippery.

We kept watch for treacherous natives. Once we were startled by
blood-curdling cries that came from the direction in which we were
going. Our boys said the men of Malekula were hunting wild pigs. We went
on in silence. Our hearts jumped every time a twig cracked. There was a
set expression on Osa’s face. I knew she was frightened, but I knew,
too, that no amount of money would have persuaded her to turn back.

By noon we had reached what seemed to be the highest point of northern
Malekula, and looked back over valley after valley of dense jungle, and
plateau after plateau covered with cane-grass. Here and there a coconut
tree stood out alone. Smoke, curling out of the hillsides, indicated the
sites of native villages. Perhaps, at that very moment, gruesome feasts
of human flesh were being prepared. In the bay, very small and very far
off, were three black dots—our boats.

We heard a sound behind us and quickly turned. There were some twenty
men, sent by the “big fellow master belong Big Numbers.” They took our
apparatus and indicated that we were to follow them. We were dead tired;
still there seemed nothing to do but to push on.

We were not sorry, after about a mile, to approach a village. First we
came upon scattered groves of coconut and banana trees. Our trail became
wider and harder and we passed weed-grown patches of yams and taro,
protected against the wild pigs by rude walls of bamboo. Finally we came
out upon a clearing around which clustered a few wretched shelters
thatched roughly with leaves. In the center of the clearing stood
upright hollow logs—the drums used to send messages from village to
village and to furnish music for the native dances. The natives called
them boo-boos—the name given to conch-shells and all other sound-making
instruments. On the hard ground of the clearing sat some thirty savages,
all well armed. They had apparently been watching for us, but they did
not greet us. We spoke to them, but, beyond a few grunts, they made no
reply. There were no women and children in sight. That was a bad sign;
for the women and children are sent away only when there is trouble in
the air. Perrole, Stephens, and Mazouyer drew nearer to Osa and me.
Their faces were grave. Our boys edged close to us. None of us spoke.

[Illustration: LOOKING OVER NAGAPATE’S KINGDOM FROM THE HIGHEST PEAK IN
NORTHERN MALEKULA]

After a short rest, our guides indicated that we were to take the trail
again. We pushed on over a muddy path, bordered by coconut and banana
trees, and in about fifteen minutes we came out upon another clearing,
much larger than the first, with many more huts surrounding it and with
more and bigger boo-boos in the center. Here again were savages awaiting
us—about two hundred of them, each with a gun. We were led to a big
boo-boo that had been overturned by the wind and were told to sit down.
We obeyed like obedient school-children.

One of the natives beat out on a boo-boo an irregular boom-boom-boom
that roared through the clearing and was echoed back from the hills. It
sounded like a code. We felt that it might be a summons to the
executioner. Osa huddled close to me. A stillness fell over the
assembly.

Suddenly, at the far side of the clearing, a huge savage appeared. It
was Nagapate. He stood for a moment, looking over the audience; then he
walked slowly and majestically into the center of the clearing. He
roared a few words to his men. Then he turned to us. A native came
running up—the laziest black stepped lively when Nagapate commanded—with
a block of wood for a throne. The chief sat down near us, and we stepped
forward and shook hands with him. He had grown used to this form of
greeting and responded with graciousness.

It had been a wonderful entrance. But then Nagapate had an instinct for
the dramatic. Throughout our stay in his village, I noticed, he never
made a move that was not staged. He let it be known by his every act
that he was no common chief, who had won his position through skill in
killing pigs or men. Nagapate was a king and a descendant of kings. His
was the only tribe I had come across during my travels among the blacks
of the South Pacific that had an hereditary ruler.

After he had greeted us, he uttered a sharp command and a native stepped
up with a big bamboo water-bottle. Nagapate drank from it, and then the
native offered it, tilted at the proper angle, to each of us in turn. It
was not pleasant to drink from the mouthpiece at which Nagapate’s great
lips had sucked. But we gathered that the bottle was the South Sea
equivalent of a pipe of peace; so we drank gladly. I then presented to
Nagapate a royal gift of knives, calico, and tobacco, and I told one of
the boys to give two sticks of tobacco to each native.

The natives smoked their tobacco (those that did not eat it) at once and
greedily. It seemed to break the ice a bit; so I got out my cameras. For
three hours, I made pictures. But I did not get any “action.” I wanted a
picture of a man coming out of his house; for the doors of the huts are
so low that the people have to come out on all fours. I persuaded a
native to go into his hut and come out again. He did so. But his
companions laughed and jeered at him, and after that every one had stage
fright.

As the afternoon wore on, scores of women and children appeared. I have
never seen human beings more wretched than those women. At first sight
they looked like walking haystacks. They wore dresses of purple dyed
grasses, consisting of a bushy skirt that hung from the waist to the
knees, a sort of widow’s veil that was thrown over the head and face so
as to leave a tiny peep-hole for the wearer to look through, and a long
train that hung down the back nearly to the ground. A more cumbersome
and insanitary dress was never devised. It was heavy. It was hot. Worst
of all, it was dirty. Every one of the dresses was matted with filth. I
did not see a single pig—and there were dozens of them rooting about
inside and outside the houses—that was so dirty as the women of that
village. I afterward found that for women to wash was strictly taboo.
From birth to death water never touched their skins!

I got my cameras ready, but the women hid in the houses and would not
come out to be photographed. Not until Nagapate commanded them to come
into the clearing did they creep whimpering in terror from the low
doors.

We had heard from the natives at our headquarters on the island of Vao
that Nagapate had a hundred wives, but there were only ten of them, and
they were as wretched as any of the other women. Osa presented them each
with a string of beads and a small glass jar of cheap candy. They did
not even look at their gifts. They wanted only to get the ordeal over
and to escape. During all our stay in the village the poor, browbeaten
wretches never got up enough courage to look at us. Their lords and
masters felt our skins and our hair and our clothes, examining us with
embarrassing freedom. But whenever we came upon a woman, she squatted
down and hid her face behind her grass veil.

Since the women and children had appeared, we gained confidence and
walked about the village, inspecting the houses. As we approached, the
children, scrawny little wretches, big-bellied from malnutrition and
many of them covered with sores, scurried off into the bush like
frightened rabbits. The houses were wretched huts made of poles with a
covering of leaves and grass, or, occasionally, of woven bamboo. Inside
were the embers of fires—nothing more. A hard, worn place on the ground
in one corner showed where the owner slept. Nagapate’s house stood off
by itself. It was larger than the rest and more compactly made. But it
was as bare as any of the others.

Toward sunset we built a fire and cooked our supper. The natives
gathered around and watched us in astonishment. They themselves made no
such elaborate preparation for eating. Once in a while a man would
kindle a fire and throw a few yams among the coals. When the yams were
burned black on one side, he would turn them with a stick and burn them
on the other. Then they were ready for eating—the outside burned crisp
and the inside raw. One evening some of the men brought in some little
pigs, broke their legs, so that they could not escape, and threw them,
squealing, into a corner of a hut. The next day there was meat to eat.
Like the yams, it was only half-cooked. The natives tore it with their
teeth as if they had been animals, and they seemed especially to relish
the crisp, burned portions. Each man was his own cook. Even Nagapate
made his own fire and cooked his own food, for it was taboo for him to
eat anything prepared by an inferior or cooked over a fire made by an
inferior. He conveniently considered us his superiors and ate greedily
everything we gave him. He never shared the salmon and rice he got from
us either with his cronies or with his wives. In fact, we never saw a
woman eating, and the children seemed to live on sugar-cane and on clay
that they dug up with their skinny little fingers.

Our first day as Nagapate’s guests drew to an end. Just before dark a
native came and motioned to us to follow him. He led us to a new house
and indicated that we were to make ourselves at home there. We were
tired out after our long march; so we turned in without delay. We spread
our blankets on the ground and lay, fully dressed, on top of them. The
camp soon became quiet, but we could not sleep. So far, everything had
gone well, but still we did not feel quite safe. Our boys seemed to
share our apprehension. They crowded around the hut, as close to us as
they could get. Some of them slipped under the grass walls and lay half
inside the hut.

[Illustration: WOMEN OF THE BIG NUMBERS]

We slept little and were up before dawn, stiff from lying on the hard
ground. We asked for water, and a native brought it in a bamboo bottle.
There was about a pint of water for each of the five of us. The savage
that brought it looked on astonished as we washed our hands and faces.
It is not taboo for the Big Numbers men to bathe—but they rarely use
their privilege, and they could not understand our reckless waste of
water, which was carried by the women from a spring half a mile away.

After a breakfast of tinned beef, we set to work. But if it had been
hard to get good pictures the day before, it was now almost impossible.
The women had all left the village to get the day’s supply of water,
fruits, and firewood. The men squatted in the center of the clearing,
guns in hand. They were apparently waiting for something—for what?

We were uneasy. It may seem to the reader, in view of the fact that we
escaped with whole skins, that we were absurdly uneasy. But I should
like to see the man who could remain calm when surrounded as we were by
savages, ugly and powerful, whose only pleasure was murder, and who, we
were convinced, were eaters of human flesh. All day long our hosts
squatted about the giant boo-boos, staring at us or at the ground or at
the jungle or, sometimes, it seemed, at nothing at all. Now and then a
single savage would come out of the jungle and join the group, and
immediately one of the squatters would get up and go into the bush,
taking the trail by which the newcomer had arrived. Even Paul was
troubled, and confided to me, when the others were not about, “Me no
like.”

The coming and going and interminable squatting and staring got on the
nerves of all of us. Toward evening, we received an explanation of it
from Atree, Nagapate’s “private secretary.” Atree had been “blackbirded”
away from the island about twelve years previous to our arrival, in the
days when natives were still carried off by force for servitude on the
plantations of Queensland; and, by some miracle, when the all-white
Australia law had gone into effect and the blacks had been
“repatriated,” he had made his way back to his own island. He had
managed, during his sojourn abroad, to pick up a little _bêche-de-mer_;
so he acted as go-between and interpreter in all our dealings with
Nagapate. He told us that a fight with a neighboring village was
brewing. There had been a dispute over some pigs, in which somebody had
got hurt. The relatives of the victim were preparing to attack our
hosts. The men who had come and gone from the clearing were the lookouts
who guarded the village against surprise.

A fight! My first thought was, “What a picture I’ll get!” But Osa, at my
elbow, said miserably, “I wish we were back in the boat,” and my
conscience began to hurt. To reassure her I told her that our force was
a match for half a dozen native villages.

Before sunset there was great activity in the clearing. Men kept coming
and going, and there was much grunted consultation in the shadow of the
boo-boos. All that night an armed guard stood watch.

At sunrise, Nagapate came and asked if we would shoot off our guns to
frighten the enemy. I did not like the idea. I thought it might be a
ruse to get us to empty our guns and to give the natives a chance to
rush on us before we could reload. However, since we did not wish to
seem suspicious, we granted the request. But we fired in rotation,
instead of in a volley, so that there would always be some among us with
ready rifles. And I found that I was not the only one who had thought of
the danger of empty cartridge-chambers: I have never seen such snappy
reloading as that of our black boys!

After the volley, I gave Nagapate my rifle to shoot. He unloaded her as
fast as he could pull the trigger, and begged for more, like an eager
small boy. I was sorry to refuse him, but I did not care to waste many
cartridges, so I explained through Atree that the gun had to cool off,
and Nagapate, to my relief, seemed satisfied with the explanation.

After the shooting was over, everybody seemed to take courage. The
natives moved about more freely. Only about a third remained armed and
ready for summons. They were apparently satisfied that their enemies,
convinced that they were well supplied with ammunition, would be afraid
to start hostilities. We ourselves were more at ease, and I went up to
some of the soldiers and examined their fighting equipment. Their guns
were, as usual, old and rusty, but they all had cartridges, which they
carried in leather cartridge cases slung over their shoulders. I was
surprised to find that none had clubs. Instead, they had big knives,
some of them three feet long, for hand-to-hand fighting. Paul told me
that such knives had become the most sought-for articles of trade. There
was no Government ban on them as on rifles and cartridges.

[Illustration: RAMBI]

On the afternoon of our fourth day in the village, Nagapate brought up a
man we had not seen before. He was nearly as large as Nagapate himself,
and had, like Nagapate, an air of commanding dignity.

“Rambi! Rambi!” growled Nagapate, pointing to his companion. Then the
chief went through a rapid pantomime, in which he seemed to kill off a
whole army of enemies. We gathered that Rambi was minister of war, as
indeed he was; but Osa dubbed him chief of police. We learned from Paul
that the tribe was ruled by a sort of triumvirate, with Nagapate in
supreme command and Rambi and a third chief named Velle-Velle, who acted
as a primitive prime minister, next in authority.

Rambi was a Godsend. He enjoyed being photographed, although he did not
have the slightest idea of what the operation meant. He forgot his
dignity and capered like a monkey in front of my camera and actually
succeeded in injecting a little enthusiasm into the rest of the natives,
who still suffered from stage fright.

I gave presents of tobacco for every picture I made. I must have paid
out several dollars’ worth of tobacco each day. Ten years earlier, when
I was on the Snark with Jack London, trade tobacco made from the stalks
and refuse from the Virginia tobacco factories had cost less than a cent
a stick. The supply I had with me in Malekula had cost almost four cents
a stick. Thus the high cost of living makes itself felt even in the
South Seas. Tinned foods, cartridges, gasoline, mirrors, knives, and
calico also have increased in price enormously since the war. An
explorer must expect his expenses to be just about four hundred per cent
higher than they were ten years ago. And the trader is in a bad way. For
the natives learned how to value trade-stuffs years ago and they insist
on buying at the old rate. Increased costs and greater difficulty of
transportation mean nothing to them.

On the next day, we went, with an escort of several of Nagapate’s men,
to another Big Numbers village about four miles away. That trip was
typical of the many downs that are mingled with the ups in a
motion-picture man’s existence. The four miles were the hardest four
miles I ever walked. The trail lay along the side of a hill, following a
deep valley. It was seldom used, and it slanted toward the valley in an
alarming way. It was slimy with mud and decayed vegetation, and in many
places a slip would have meant a slide of several hundred feet down a
steep hill. Both Osa and I had on spiked boots, but they soon became
clogged with mud and offered less grip than ordinary shoes. We crept
along at a snail’s pace, testing every foothold. Though we left
Nagapate’s village at dawn, we did not reach our destination until after
ten o’clock. It was a poor and uninteresting village of about thirty
houses. Most of the men were off on a pig hunt, and all the women were
out collecting firewood and fruits and vegetables. About noon, it began
to drizzle. By three o’clock, it had settled down to a good downpour.
The women straggled in one by one and retreated into their houses. The
men returned in a sullen humor, with a few skinny pigs. According to
custom, they broke one hind leg and one front leg of each animal to
prevent its escape and threw the wretched little creatures in a
squalling, moaning heap. Those on the bottom probably suffocated before
morning.

We could not think of retracing our steps over the treacherous trail in
that downpour; so we persuaded a native and his wife and two sore-faced
children to give up their hut to us. Since we had no blankets, we lay on
the hard ground and made the best of a bad bargain.

Next morning, the rain had ceased. But the cane-grass was as wet as a
sponge. We had not gone a hundred yards toward Nagapate’s village before
we were soaked through. The trail was more slippery than ever. About
every quarter of a mile we had to stop and rest. The sun came out
boiling hot and sucked up the moisture, which rose like steam all about
us. We were five hours in this natural Turkish bath. When we reached our
destination, we threw ourselves down and fell asleep in sheer
exhaustion. We had not secured a single foot of film, and we felt
miserably that we stood a very good chance of contracting fever, which
so far we had luckily escaped.

Late that afternoon, I missed Osa. I had something of a hunt for her,
but I finally found her in the shade at the edge of the clearing,
playing with a little naked piccaninny. Atree and Nagapate squatted near
by, watching her with grave, intent faces.

[Illustration: ATREE AND NAGAPATE]

Nagapate was Osa’s constant companion. The great chief had taken a fancy
to the white “Mary.” Every day he sent her gifts, and his yams and
fruits and coconuts pleased her more than if they had been expensive
presents of civilization. They seemed to her an assurance of his
good-will. But the rest of us were a bit uneasy. We had what I now
believe to be the absurd suspicion that all these gifts were tokens of
savage wooing—that perhaps Nagapate was planning to massacre us, if the
occasion offered, and keep Osa to share his wretched hut. The strain of
constant watching, constant suspicion, was telling on our nerves. We
fancied that the novelty of our presence was wearing off. Like children,
the savages soon weary of a diversion. We were becoming
familiar—dangerously familiar—to them, and our gifts and even the magic
taught me by the great Houdini, had begun to pall. We began to feel that
it was time for us to go.

Osa and I talked it over as we walked about the village the following
afternoon. We strayed farther than usual and suddenly found ourselves
near what seemed to be a deserted hut. We walked around it and found, on
the far side, a well-beaten path that led to a tiny door. Without
thinking, I crawled through the doorway, and Osa followed me. It was
several seconds before our eyes became accustomed to the dim light.
Suddenly Osa gasped and clutched my arm.

All about us, piled in baskets, were dried human heads. A ghastly frieze
of them grinned about the eaves. Skulls hung from the rafters, heaps of
picked human bones lay in the corners. One glance was enough for us. We
crawled out of the hut and lost no time in getting back to the center of
the village. Luckily none of the savages had seen us.

We gathered Paul Mazouyer and Perrole and Stephens about us and told
them of our adventure, and it did not take the conference long to decide
to return to the beach on the following day. The other white men told us
that if we had been seen in or near the head-house, the chances were
that we should all have been murdered, for such houses were sacred and
taboo to all, save the men of the village.

That evening a great fire was started in the clearing. Until late in the
night the ordinarily lazy savages piled on great logs that four men were
required to carry. Nothing was cooked over the fire. It was not needed
for warmth, for the night was stifling hot. We asked Arree the reason
for the illumination. He replied that he did not know. We decided that
there must be some sinister purpose in it and lay sleepless, on guard
the night through.

At dawn we were up. We did our packing in a hurry, and then we sent one
of the natives for Nagapate. The chief came across the clearing, slowly
and deliberately, as always. With him was a tottering old man, the
oldest native I ever saw in the New Hebrides.

As Osa and I went up to greet Nagapate, the old man began to jabber
excitedly. He came over to me and felt my arms and legs with both his
skinny hands. He pinched me and poked me in the ribs and stomach. All
the time he kept up a running fire of excited comment, addressed to
Nagapate. To our relief, he finally stopped talking for want of breath.
Nagapate spoke a few sharp words and the old man backed away.

Osa’s face went white. And indeed, there could be no doubt about the
meaning of the old native’s pantomime. I almost doubted the advisability
of telling Nagapate of our departure. If he liked, he could prevent us
from ever reaching the sea, from which we were separated by so many
miles of jungle. But I decided to take a chance. I had, by this time,
rather more than a smattering of the language of Nagapate’s tribe. I
always make it a practice, when among new tribes, to learn four
words—“Yes,” “no,” “good,” and “bad.” The language spoken by Nagapate
and his followers was so primitive and contained so many repetitions
that I had been able to progress beyond these four fundamental words and
so, with the aid of gestures, I succeeded in telling Nagapate that our
provisions had run out and that we had to return to our boats. To my
surprise Nagapate not only assented to our departure, but volunteered to
accompany us to the beach.

I invited the entire village to come to the beach for motion-pictures
and tobacco, after sunset, on the following evening. Motion-pictures
meant nothing to them; but tobacco they understood. So they agreed to
come. We left like honored guests, with an escort of twenty-five
savages. Nagapate himself walked (as a result of my maneuvering) safe
between Osa and myself.

It had taken twelve hours to climb up to Nagapate’s village. The return
journey required only three. It was a pleasant morning’s walk. The sun
was shining bright and beautiful, many-colored birds fluttered about us.

When we arrived at the beach, we invited Nagapate and his boon
companions, Atree and Rambi, to come on board the schooner. There we
feasted them on hard-tack and white salmon. When bedtime came, the great
chief indicated that it was his pleasure to sleep on board. I was
heartily astonished and a little ashamed. After all our suspicions,
Nagapate was again voluntarily putting himself into our hands, with the
touching confidence of a little child.

Our royal guest and his men bunked in the engine-room. I happened to
wake about midnight and took a peep at them. There they were, flat on
their backs on the hard, greasy floor, sleeping like logs.

CHAPTER VI
THE BIG NUMBERS SEE THEMSELVES ON THE SCREEN

Early on the morning of the show, we got the whaleboats to work and took
all my projection machinery ashore. Soon I had everything set up, ready
for the show. But when I tried out the projector to see if it was
shipshape, I found that my generator was out of order. Work as I would,
I could not get a light. I was blue and discouraged. I had been looking
forward to this show for two years, and now, apparently, it was not
going to come off. Imagine going back several hundred thousand years and
showing men of the Stone Age motion-pictures of themselves. That is what
I had planned to do. For the men of Malekula are in the stage of
development reached by our own ancestors long before the dawn of written
history. Through my pictures of them, I had carried New York audiences
back into the Stone Age. Now I wanted to transport the savages into
1919—and my generator would not work.

The projector was worked by man-power. Two men on each side turned the
handles attached to the machinery that should produce the magic light;
but though my boys ground patiently all afternoon, not a glimmer showed.
Finally, I gave up and motioned them to stop. They misunderstood me and,
thinking that I wanted them to turn faster, went to work with redoubled
energy. The miracle happened—the light flashed on. In my excitement, I
forgot my supper.

The beach was already crowded with savages. I had thought they might be
curious about my machinery. But they scarcely looked at it. They just
squatted on the sands with their guns clutched tight in their hands. No
women and only three or four children accompanied them. In spite of my
promise of tobacco, they had not quite trusted my invitation and they
were on the lookout for foul play. By dark they were restless. They had
received no tobacco. They did not understand all this preparation that
culminated in nothing. They wanted action.

I saw that the show must begin at once; so I tested everything once
more. Since I had no idea how the pictures would be received, I
stationed armed guards at each side of the screen and around the
projector, at points from which they could cover the audience. Then I
tried to persuade my visitors to sit in front of the projector, where
they would get a good view of the screen. They were now thoroughly
suspicious and would not stay where I put them. They wanted to keep an
eye on me. They were so uneasy that I expected to see them disappear
into the bush at any moment. But Osa saved the situation. She took
Nagapate by the arm and made him sit down beside her. The rest of the
savages gathered about them. Then the show began.

First, a great bright square flashed on the screen. Then came a hundred
feet of titles. The attention of the natives was divided between the
strange letters and the rays of white light that passed above their
heads. They looked forward and up and back toward me, jabbering all the
time. Then slowly, out of nothing, a familiar form took shape on the
screen. It was Osa, standing with bent head. The savages were silent
with amazement. Here was Osa sitting at Nagapate’s side—and there she
was on the screen. The picture-Osa raised her head and winked at them.
Pandemonium broke loose. “Osa—Osa—Osa—Osa,” shouted the savages. They
roared with laughter and screamed like rowdy children.

I had been afraid that my guests would be frightened and bolt at the
first demonstration of my “magic,” but they had been reassured by the
familiar sight of Osa. Now they were ready for anything. I showed them a
picture of Osa and me as we left the Astor Hotel in New York. Then I
showed them the crazy thousands that had crowded New York streets on
Armistice Day. I followed this picture with glimpses of Chicago, San
Francisco, Los Angeles, Honolulu, Tokyo, and Sydney. Nagapate told me
afterward that he had not known there were so many white people in all
the world and asked me if the island I came from was much larger than
Malekula. I showed in quick succession, steamers, racing automobiles,
airplanes, elephants, ostriches, giraffes. The savages were silent; they
could not comprehend these things. So I brought them nearer home, with
pictures taken on Vao, Santo, and other islands of the New Hebrides.

Now it was time for the great scene. I instructed Paul in turning the
crank of the projector and put Stephens and Perrole in charge of the
radium flares. I myself took my stand behind my camera, which was
trained on the audience. A hundred feet of titles—then Nagapate’s face
appeared suddenly on the screen. A great roar of “Nagapate” went up. At
that instant the radium lights flashed on, and I, at my camera, ground
out the picture of the cannibals at the “movies.” True, about two thirds
of the audience, terrified by the flares, made precipitately for the
bush. But Nagapate and the savages around him sat pat and registered
fear and amazement for my camera. In about two minutes the flares burned
out. Then we coaxed back to their places the savages that had fled. I
started the reel all over and ran it to the end amid an uproar that made
it impossible for me to make myself heard when I wanted to speak to Osa.
Practically every savage pictured on the screen was in the audience. In
two years they had not changed at all, except, as Osa said, for
additional layers of dirt. As each man appeared, they called out his
name and laughed and shouted with joy. Among the figures that came and
went on the screen was that of a man who had been dead a year. The
natives were awe-struck. My magic could bring back the dead!

Midway in the performance I turned the projection handle over to
Mazouyer and joined the audience. Osa was crying with excitement. And
there was a lump in my own throat. We had looked forward a long time to
this.

[Illustration: HUNTING FOR THE MAGIC]

[Illustration: A CANNIBAL AND A KODAK]

When the show was over, a great shout went up. The savages gathered into
groups and discussed the performance, for all the world as people do
“back home.” Then they crowded about us, demanding their pay for looking
at my pictures! As I gave them their sticks of tobacco, each grunted out
the same phrase—whether it meant “Fine,” or “Thank you,” or just
“Good-bye,” I do not know.

While we packed our apparatus, the natives cut bamboo and made rude
torches. When all were ready, they lighted their torches at the fire
that burned on the beach, and then they set off in single file up the
trail. We said good-bye to Perrole and Stephens, who were to sail for
Santo that night, and prepared to go aboard Paul’s cutter. He had
difficulty in getting his engine started, and while he worked with it,
Osa and I sat on the beach, watching the torches of the Big Numbers
people as they filed up hill and down dale the long eight miles to their
village. The night was so dark that we could not see anything except the
string of lights that wound through the black like a fiery serpent. The
head disappeared over the top of the hill. Half an hour later, the tail
wriggled out of sight. Then the engine kicked off.

CHAPTER VII
THE NOBLE SAVAGE

The morning after our motion-picture show on the beach at Malekula found
us anchored off Vao. We got our luggage ashore as quickly as possible
and then turned in to make up for lost sleep. We had slept little during
our eight days in the village of Nagapate. We had been in such constant
fear of treachery that the thud of a falling coconut or the sound of a
branch crackling in the jungle would set our nerves atingle and keep us
awake for hours. Now we felt safe. We knew that the four hundred savages
of Vao, though at heart as fierce and as cruel as any of the Malekula
tribes, lived in wholesome fear of the British gunboat; so we slept well
and long.

The next morning we said good-bye to Paul Mazouyer and he chugged away
to Santo in the little schooner that for two weeks had been our home.
Osa and I were alone on Vao. We turned back to our bungalow to make
things comfortable, for we did not know how many days it would be before
Mr. King, who had promised to call for us, would appear.

As we walked slowly up from the beach, we heard a shout. We turned and
saw a savage running toward us. He was a man of about forty; yet he was
little larger than a child and as naked as when he was born. From his
almost unintelligible _bêche-de-mer_, we gathered that he wanted to be
our servant. We could scarcely believe our ears. Here was a man who
wanted to work! We wondered how he came to have a desire so contrary to
Vao nature, until we discovered, after a little further conversation in
_bêche-de-mer_, that he was half-witted! Since we were in need of native
help, we decided not to let his mental deficiencies stand in his way and
we hired him on the spot. Then came the first hitch. We could not find
out his name. Over and over, we asked him, “What name belong you?” but
with no result. He shook his head uncomprehendingly. Finally, Osa
pointed to the tracks he had left in the sand. They led down to the
shore and vanished at the water’s edge. “His name is Friday,” she said
triumphantly. And so we called him.

From that moment, Friday was a member of our household. We gave him a
singlet and a _lava-lava_, or loin-cloth, of red calico, and from
somewhere he dug up an ancient derby hat. Some mornings he presented
himself dressed in nothing but the hat. He was always on hand bright and
early, begging for work, but, unfortunately, there was nothing that he
could do. We tried him at washing clothes, and they appeared on the line
dirtier than they had been before he touched them. We tried him at
carrying water, but he brought us liquid mud, with sticks and leaves
floating on the top. The only thing he was good for was digging bait and
paddling the canoe gently to keep it from drifting while Osa fished.

That was, indeed, a service of some value; for Osa was an indefatigable
fisherwoman. Every day, she went out and brought back from ten to thirty
one- and two-pound fish, and one day she caught two great fish that must
have weighed ten pounds each. It took the combined efforts of Friday and
herself to land them.

I am convinced that, for bright color and strange markings, there are no
fish in the world like those of Vao. Osa called them Impossible Fish.
There were seldom two of the same color or shape in her day’s catch.
They were orange and red and green and silver, and sometimes
varicolored. But the most noticeable were little blue fish about the
size of sardines which went in schools of thousands through the still
sea, coloring it with streaks of the most brilliant shimmering blue you
can imagine. In addition to the Impossible Fish, there were many octopi,
which measured about three feet from tentacle to tentacle, and there
were shellfish by the thousand. On the opposite side of the island from
that on which we lived, oysters grew on the roots of mangrove trees at
the water’s edge, and at low tide we used to walk along and pick them
off as if they had been fruit.

We worked hard for the first week or so after our return to Vao, for we
had about a hundred and fifty plates and nearly two hundred kodak films
to develop. Previous to this trip, I had been forced to develop
motion-picture films, as well as kodak films and plates, as I went
along. Like most photographers, I had depended upon a formalin solution
to harden the gelatin films and keep them from melting in the heat.
Though such a solution aids in the preservation of the film, it
interferes considerably with the quality of the picture, which often is
harsh in outline as a result of the thickening of the film, and it is
not a guarantee against mildew or against the “fogging” of negatives.
Before starting for the New Hebrides, however, I had worked out a method
of treating films that did not affect the quality of the picture, and
yet made it possible to develop films successfully at a temperature much
higher than 65°. Still better, it permitted me to seal my film after
exposure and await a favorable opportunity for developing. Only lately I
have developed in a New York workshop films that were exposed nineteen
months ago in the New Hebrides and that were carried about for several
months under the blaze of a tropical sun. They are among the best
pictures I have ever taken.

Any one who has tried motion-picture photography in the tropics will
realize what it means to be freed from the burden of developing all
films on the spot. To work from three o’clock until sunrise, after a day
of hard work in enervating heat, is usually sheer agony. Many a time I
have gone through with the experience only to see the entire result of
my work ruined by an accident. I have hung up a film to dry (in the
humid atmosphere of the tropics drying often requires forty-eight hours
instead of half as many minutes) and found it covered with tiny insects
or bits of sand or pollen blown against it by the wind and embedded deep
in the gelatin. I have covered it with mosquito-net in an effort to
avoid a repetition of the tragedy and the mosquito-net has shut off the
air and caused the gelatin to melt. I have had films mildew and thicken
and cloud and spot, in spite of every effort to care for them. On this
trip, though even so simple an operation as the changing of
motion-picture film and the sealing of negatives was an arduous task
when it had to be performed in cramped quarters, it was a great relief
to be able to seal up my film and forget it after exposure. The plates
that I used in my small camera had to be promptly attended to, however,
for to have treated them as I treated the motion-picture film would have
meant adding considerably to the bulk and weight of the equipment we
were forced to carry about with us.

We worked at the developing several hours a day, and between times we
explored the island, learning what we could of native life. Arree, the
boy who acted as our maid-of-all-work, supplied me with native words
until I had a fairly respectable vocabulary, but, when I tried to use
it, I made the interesting discovery that the old men and the young men
spoke different tongues. Language changes rapidly among savage tribes.
No one troubles to get the correct pronunciation of a word. The younger
generation adopt abbreviations or new words at will and incorporate into
their speech strange corruptions of English or French words learned from
the whites. Some of the words I learned from Arree were absolutely
unintelligible to many of the older men. I found, too, that the language
varied considerably from village to village, and though many of the Vao
men were refugees from Malekula, it was very different from that of any
of the tribes on the big island. I once estimated the number of
languages spoken in the South Seas at four hundred. I am now convinced
that as many as that are used by the black races alone.

As we poked about Vao, we decided that the island would be a good place
in which to maroon the people who have the romantic illusion that
savages lead a beautiful life. We had long ago lost that illusion, but
even for us Vao had some surprises. One day, I made a picture of an old,
blind man, so feeble that he could scarcely walk. He was one of the few
really old savages about, and I gathered that he must have been a
powerful chief in his day, or otherwise he would not have escaped the
ordinary penalty of age—being buried alive. But on the day after I had
taken his picture, when I went to his hut to speak to him, I was
informed that “he stop along ground” and I was shown a small hut, in
which was a freshly dug grave. My notice of the old man had drawn him
into the limelight. The chiefs had held a conference and decided that he
was a nuisance. A grave was dug for him, he was put into it, a flat
stone was placed over his face so that he could breathe (!), and the
hole was filled with earth. Now a devil-devil man was squatting near the
grave to be on hand in case the old man asked for something. There was
no conscious cruelty in the act, simply a relentless logic. The old man
had outlived his usefulness. He was no good to himself or to the
community. Therefore, he might as well “stop along ground.”

Only a few days later, as we approached a village, we heard, at
intervals, the long-drawn-out wail of a woman in pain. In the clearing
we discovered a group of men laughing and jeering at something that was
lying on the ground. That something was a writhing, screaming young
girl. The cause of her agony was apparent. In the flesh back of her
knee, two great holes had been burned. I could have put both hands in
either of them.

“One fellow man, him name belong Nowdi, he ketchem plenty coconuts, he
ketchem plenty pigs, he ketchem plenty Mary,” said Arree, and he went on
to explain that the “Mary” on the ground was the newest wife of Nowdi,
whom he pointed out to us among the amused spectators. The savage had
paid twenty pigs for her—a good price for a wife in the New Hebrides—but
he had made a bad bargain; for the girl did not like him. Four times she
ran away from him and was caught and brought back. The last time, nearly
six months had elapsed before she was found, hiding in the jungle of the
mainland. The day before we saw the girl, the men of the village had
gathered in judgment. A stone was heated white-hot. Then four men held
the girl while a fifth placed the stone in the hollow of her knee, drew
her leg back until the heel touched the thigh, and bound it there. For
an hour they watched her anguish as the stone slowly burned into her
flesh. Then they turned her loose. Thenceforth she would always have to
hobble, like an old woman, with the aid of a stick. She would never run
away again.

We turned aside, half sick. It was hard for me to keep my hands off the
brutes that stood laughing around the girl. Only the knowledge that to
touch them would be suicide for me and death or worse for Osa held me
back. But as we returned to the bungalow, I gradually cooled down. I
realized that it was not quite fair to judge these savages—still in the
stage of development passed by our own ancestors hundreds of thousands
of years ago—according to the standards of civilized society. And I
remembered how beastly even men of my own kind sometimes are when they
are released from the restraints of civilization.

The next morning, after our morning swim, Osa and I sat on the beach and
watched the commuters set off for Malekula. In some fifty canoes,
“manned” by women, the entire female population went to the big island
every day to gather firewood and fruit and vegetables. For the small
island of Vao could not support its four hundred inhabitants, and the
native women had accordingly made their gardens on the big island. This
morning, as usual, the women were accompanied by an armed guard; for
although the bush natives of Malekula were supposed to be friendly, the
Vao men did not take any chances when it came to a question of losing
their women. Late in the evening the canoes came back again. The women
had worked all day, many of them with children strapped to their backs;
the men had lounged on the beach, doing nothing. But it was the women
who paddled the canoes home. There was a stiff sea and it took nearly
three hours to paddle across the mile-wide channel. But the men never
lifted a finger to help. When the boats were safely beached, the women
shouldered their big bundles of vegetables and firewood and trudged
wearily toward their villages, the men bringing up the rear, with
nothing to carry except their precious guns. Among the poor female
slaves—they were little more—we saw five who hobbled along with the aid
of sticks. They were women who had tried to run away.

A few days later, Arree asked us if we should like to attend a feast
that was being held to celebrate the completion of a devil-devil, one of
the crude, carved logs that are the only visible signs of religion among
the savages. We did not see why that should be an event worth
celebrating, for there were already some hundreds of devil-devils on the
island, but we were glad to have the opportunity of witnessing one of
the feasts of which Arree had so often told us.

[Illustration: NAGAPATE AMONG THE DEVIL-DEVILS]

Feasting was about the only amusement of the natives of Vao. A birth or
a death, the building of a house or a canoe, or the installation of a
chief—any event in the least out of the ordinary furnished an excuse for
an orgy of pig meat—usually “long.” The one we attended was typical.
First the new devil-devil was carried into the clearing and, with scant
ceremony, set up among the others. Then some of the men brought out
about a hundred pigs and tied them to posts. Others piled hundreds of
yams in the center of the clearing, and still others threw chickens,
their legs tied together, in a squawking heap. When all was ready, the
yams were divided among the older men, each of whom then untied a pig
from a post and presented it solemnly to his neighbor, receiving in
return another pig of about the same size. The savages broke one front
and one hind leg of their pigs and threw the squealing little beasts on
the ground beside the yams. Then they exchanged chickens and promptly
broke the legs and wings of their fowls. I shall never forget the
terrible crunching of bones and the screaming of the tortured pigs and
chickens. When the exchange was completed, the men took their pigs to
the center of the clearing, beat them over the head with sticks until
they were nearly dead and threw them down to squeal and jerk their lives
away.

When the exchange of food was completed, the men built little fires all
around the clearing to cook the feast. Most of them were chiefs. It is a
general rule throughout the region that no chief may eat food prepared
by an inferior, or cooked over a fire built by an inferior. The rather
doubtful honor of being his own cook is, indeed, practically the only
mark that distinguishes a chief. As a rule a chief has no real
authority. He cannot command the least important boy in his village.
Only his wives are at his beck and call—and they are forbidden by custom
to cook for him!

Chieftainship is an empty honor on Vao. If the biggest chief on the
island should start off on a hunting trip and forget his knife, he would
know better than to ask the poorest boy in the party to go back for it,
for he would know in advance that the answer would be most emphatic Vao
equivalent for “go chase yourself!” Yet a chieftaincy is sufficiently
flattering to the vanity of the incumbent to be worth many pigs. The pig
is more important in the New Hebrides than anywhere else in the world. A
man’s wealth is reckoned in pigs, and a woman’s beauty is rated
according to the number of pigs she will bring. The greatest chiefs on
Vao are those who have killed the most pigs. Even in that remote region
there is political corruption, for some men are not above buying pigs in
secret to add to their “bag” and their prestige. Tethlong, who, during
our stay on the island, was the most important chief on Vao, bought five
hundred porkers to be slaughtered for the feast that made him chief. All
the natives knew he had bought the pigs; but they hailed him solemnly,
nevertheless, as the great pig-killer.

Tethlong had as fine a collection of pigs’ tusks as I have ever seen.
These fierce-looking bits of ivory did not come off the wild pigs,
however, but were carefully cultivated on the snouts of domesticated
pigs. It is the custom throughout the New Hebrides to take young pigs
and gouge out two upper teeth, so as to make room for the lower canine
teeth to develop into tusks. The most valuable tusks are those that have
grown up and curled around so as to form two complete circles. These,
however, are very rare. The New Hebridean native considers himself well
off if he has a single circlet to wear as a bracelet or nose ring and he
takes pride in a collection of ordinary, crescent-shaped tusks.

Pigs’ tusks are the New Hebridean equivalent of money. For even among
savages, there are rich and poor. The man of wealth is the one who has
the largest number of pigs and wives and coconut trees and canoes,
acquired by judicious swapping or by purchase, with pigs’ tusks, rare,
orange-colored cowries, and stones of strange shape or coloring as
currency. Most natives keep such treasures in “bokkus belong bell”—a
Western-made box with a bell that rings whenever the lid is lifted. But
this burglar-alarm is utterly superfluous, for natives uncontaminated by
civilization never steal.

Osa refused to watch the process of preparing the pigs and fowls for
broiling. It was not a pretty sight. But it was speedily over. While the
cooking was in progress, the dancing began. A group of men in the center
of the clearing went through the motions of killing pigs and birds and
men. Each tried to get across the footlights the idea that he was a
great, strong man. And though the pantomime was crude, it was effective.
The barbaric swing of the dancers, in time to the strange rhythm beaten
out on the boo-boos—the hollowed logs that serve as drums—got into my
blood, and I understood how the dances sometimes ended in an almost
drunken frenzy.

When the first group of dancers were tired, the older men gathered in
the center of the clearing and palavered excitedly. Then they retired to
their fires and waited. So did we. But nothing happened save another
dance. This was different in detail from the first. I never saw a native
do exactly the same dance twice, though in essentials each is
monotonously similar to the last. When the second dance was over, there
was more palavering and then more dancing—and so on interminably. Osa
and I grew sleepy and went back to the bungalow. But the tom-toms
sounded until dawn.

CHAPTER VIII
GOOD-BYE TO NAGAPATE

The Euphrosyne, with the British Commissioner aboard, was about two
weeks overdue and we were growing impatient to be off. It was not the
Euphrosyne, however, but the queerest vessel I have ever seen, that
anchored off Vao, one night at midnight. She was about the size of a
large schooner and nearly as wide in the beam as she was long. She had
auxiliary sails, schooner-rigged. Her engine burned wood. And her
name—as we discovered later—was Amour. Queer as she was, she was a
Godsend to us, marooned on Vao. We went out in a canoe and found, to our
surprise, that the commander and owner was Captain Moran, whom we had
met in the Solomons two years before. We asked him where he was bound
for. He said that he had no particular destination; he was out to get
copra wherever he could get it. I proposed that he turn over his ship to
us at a daily rental, so that we could continue our search for signs of
cannibalism among the tribes of Malekula. He assented readily. Osa and I
were delighted, for we knew that there wasn’t a better skipper than
Captain Moran in the South Seas. Both he and his brother, who acted as
engineer, were born in the islands and had spent their lives in
wandering from one group to another. They knew the treacherous channels
as well as any whites in those waters, and they knew the natives, too,
from long experience as traders.

The next morning, while the crew of the schooner were cutting wood for
fuel, we packed our supplies on board the Amour. When all was ready, we
pulled up anchor, set the sails, and started the engine. After a few
grunts, the propeller began to turn, and we were on our way.

Her ungainly shape served to make the Amour seaworthy, but it did not
conduce to speed. We wheezed along at a rate of three knots an hour.
Though we left Vao at dawn, it was nearly dark when we again reached
Tanemarou Bay, the “seaport” of the Big Numbers territory. There was no
one on the beach, but we discharged a stick of dynamite and rolled
ourselves in our blankets, sure that there would be plenty of natives on
hand to greet us next morning.

We slept soundly, in spite of the pigs that roamed the deck, and were
awakened at daylight by cries. About a hundred savages had gathered on
the beach. We lost no time in landing, but to our disappointment,
Nagapate had not come down to greet us. Only Velle-Velle, the prime
minister, was on hand, I and he was in a difficult mood. He gave me to
understand that I had slighted him, on my previous visit, in my
distribution of presents. I soon averted his displeasure with plenty of
tobacco and the strangest and most wonderful plaything he had ever had—a
football. It was a sight for sore eyes to see that dignified old savage,
who ordinarily was as pompous as any Western prime minister, kicking his
football about the beach.

At about ten o’clock, I took a few boys and went inland to get some
pictures. Osa wanted to accompany me, but I set my foot down on it. I
knew there was no danger for myself, but I felt that Nagapate’s interest
in her made it unsafe for her to venture. I went to the top of a hill a
few miles back, where I made some fine pictures of the surrounding
country, and was lucky enough to get a group of savages coming over the
ridge of another hill about half a mile away. My guides became panicky
when they saw the newcomers, and insisted that we return to the beach at
once, but I held firm until the last savage on the opposite hill had
been lost to sight in the jungle. Then with enough film to justify my
morning’s climb, I returned to the beach.

On the following morning, Nagapate made his appearance, and told me,
through Atree, that he had brought his wives to see Osa. I sent the boat
to the schooner for her, but when she appeared, Nagapate said that his
wives could not come to the beach and that Osa, accordingly, must go
inland as far as the first river to meet them. I did not like the idea,
but decided that no possible harm could come to her if the armed crew of
the Amour and Captain Moran and I accompanied her. It turned out that my
distrust of Nagapate was again unjustified. We found the wives waiting
at the designated spot with sugar-cane and yams and a nice, new Big
Numbers dress for Osa. They had not come to the beach because the newest
wife was not permitted to look at the sea for a certain time after
marriage—which seemed to me to carry the taboo on water a bit too far.

Osa was pleased to add the Big Numbers dress to her collection of
strange things from Melanesia. And indeed it was quite a gift. For in
spite of their apparent simplicity, the making and dyeing of the
pandanus garments is a complicated process. Since the grass will not
take the dye if it is the least green, it has to be dried and washed and
dried again. When it is thoroughly bleached, it is dyed deep purple.

After Osa in turn had presented the wives with salmon and sea-biscuits
(which I afterward saw Nagapate and his men devouring) and strings of
bright-colored beads, Nagapate agreed to get his men to dance for me, if
I would come to his village. I did not relish the idea of the long trip
into the hills, but I wanted the picture. Osa returned to the schooner,
and Captain Moran and I, with five boys, went inland. We made the
village in four hours. When we arrived, I was ready to drop with
exhaustion, and lay down on the ground for half an hour to recover.
Savages squatted about me and watched me while I rested, then crowded
about me while I got my cameras ready for action. Nagapate sent out for
the men to come to the clearing, and they straggled in, sullen and
cranky. They did not want to dance, but Nagapate’s word was law. At his
command, a few men went to the great boo-boos and beat out a weird
rhythm that seemed to me to express the very essence of cannibalism. At
first the savages danced in a half-hearted fashion, but gradually they
warmed up. Soon they were doing a barbaric dance better than any I had
ever seen. They marched quickly and in perfect time around the boo-boos.
Then they stopped suddenly, with a great shout, stood for a moment
marking time with their feet, marched on again and stopped again, and so
on, the march becoming faster and faster and the shouting wilder and
more continuous, until at last the dancers had to stop from sheer
exhaustion.

I got a fine picture, well worth the long trip up the mountains, but it
was very late before we got started beachward, accompanied by Nagapate
and a number of his men. We went down the slippery trail as fast as we
could go. I should have been afraid, in my first days in the islands,
that the boys might fall with my cameras if we went at such a rate, but
by now I had found that they were as sure-footed as mountain sheep. They
carried my heavy equipment as if it had been bags of feathers and
handled it much more carefully than I should have been able to.

In spite of our haste, it grew dark before we reached the beach. The
boys cut dead bamboo for torches and in the uncertain light they gave,
we stumbled along. When we were within about a quarter of a mile from
the sea, we fired a volley to let Osa know that we were coming. To our
surprise, when we came out on the beach, we were greeted by Osa and
Engineer Moran and the remainder of the crew of the Amour, all armed to
the teeth. Osa was crying. It was the first time I had ever known her to
resort to tears in the face of danger. But when she learned that we were
all there and safe, and that the volley had been a signal of our
approach and not an indication that we had been attacked, her tears
dried and she scolded me roundly for having frightened her.

I went to the boat and got a crate of biscuits and a small bag of rice
and took them back to Nagapate for a feast for him and his men. Then I
said good-bye. I believe that the old cannibal was really sorry to see
us go—and not only for the sake of the presents we had given him. Some
day I am going back to see him once more.

CHAPTER IX
THE MONKEY PEOPLE

At daylight we pulled anchor and set the sails and started the engine.
With the wind to help us, we made good progress. In three hours we had
reached our next anchorage, a small bay said to be the last frequented
by the Big Numbers people. We were in the territory of the largest tribe
on the west side of Malekula. Moran told me that no white man had ever
penetrated the bush and that the people were very shy and wild. We
landed, but saw no signs of savages. We thought we had the beach to
ourselves, and I set about making pictures of a beautiful little river,
all overhung with ferns and palms, that ran into the sea at one side of
the bay. As I worked, one of the boys ran up to me and told me in very
frightened _bêche-de-mer_ that he had seen “plenty big fellow man along
bush,” and we beat a hasty retreat from the river, with its beautiful
vegetation, well fitted for concealing savages.

I was very anxious to secure some photographs of the savages, and all
the more so because they were said to be so difficult of approach, so I
walked along the beach until I came to a trail leading into the
interior. It was easy to locate the trail, for it was like a tunnel
leading into the dark jungle. At its mouth, I set up my camera, attached
a telephoto lens, bundled up a handful of tobacco in a piece of calico,
placed my bait at the entrance of the trail, and waited. A half-hour
passed, but nothing happened. Then, quick as a wink, a savage darted
out, seized the bundle and disappeared before I had time to take hold of
the crank of my camera. My trap had worked too well. Now I was
determined to get results, so I had our armed crew withdraw to the edge
of the beach and asked Captain Moran and Osa to set their guns against a
rock so that the savages could see that we were not armed. I knew that,
in case of emergency, we could use the pistols in our pockets. Then I
sat down on my camera case and waited. At noon we sent one of the boys
back to the boat for some tinned lunch. We ate with our eyes on the
trail. It was two o’clock before four savages, with guns gripped tight
in their hands, came cautiously out of the jungle, ready to run at the
first alarm. I advanced slowly, so as not to frighten them, holding out
a handful of tobacco and clay pipes. They timidly took my presents, and
I tried to make them understand, by friendly gestures and soft words,
which they did not comprehend, that we could not harm them. To make a
long story short, I worked all afternoon to gain their confidence—and it
was work wasted, for I could get no action from them. They simply stood
like hitching-posts and let me take pictures all around them. At sundown
we went back to the ship, with nothing to show for our day’s effort.

Next morning, we set sail betimes. It did not take us long to reach
Lambumba Bay, on the narrow isthmus that connects northern and southern
Malekula. I had been anxious to visit this region, for I had heard
conflicting tales concerning it. Some said that it was inhabited by
nomad tribes; others said that the nomads were a myth—that the region
was uninhabited. I wanted to see for myself. So I instructed Captain
Moran to find a good anchorage, where the ship would be sheltered in
case a westerly wind should spring up. I wanted him to feel safe in
leaving the Amour in charge of a couple of blacks, for I needed him and
his brother and the majority of the crew to accompany us into the
interior. We found a small cove at the mouth of a stream and with the
kedge anchor we drew the Amour in until the branches of the trees hung
over the decks. At high tide we pulled the bow of the schooner up into
the sand. At low tide she was almost high and dry, and she was safe from
any ordinary blow. Since this was not the hurricane season, no great
storm was to be expected. In the evening, Osa made up the lunch-bags for
the following day, and early next morning, we struck inland along a
well-beaten trail. We followed this trail all day, but we saw no signs
of natives. Next day we took a second trail, which crossed the first.
Again we met no one. But we found baskets hanging from a banian and the
embers of a fire, still alive under a blanket of ashes.

Though we were accomplishing nothing, we were having a very enjoyable
time, for this was the most beautiful part of Malekula we had seen. The
trails were well-beaten and for the most part followed small streams
that cut an opening in the dense jungle to let the breeze through. Here,
as elsewhere, we were surrounded by gay tropical birds, and in the trees
hung lovely orchids. Osa kept the boys busy climbing after the flowers.
They were plainly amazed at the whim of this white “Mary,” who filled
gasoline tins with useless flowers, but they obeyed her willingly
enough, and she, with arms full of the delicate blossoms, declared that
she was willing to spend a month looking for the savages.

We discovered them, however, sooner than that. On the third morning we
took a new trail. We were walking along very slowly. I was in the lead.
I turned a sharp corner around a big banian—and all but collided with a
savage. The savage was as astonished as I, but he got his wits back more
quickly than I did mine, and flitted off into the jungle as quietly as a
butterfly. When the others came, I could scarcely make them believe that
I had seen him; for he left no trail in the underbrush, and they had not
heard a sound. In the hope of surprising other natives, we agreed to
stay close together and to make as little noise as possible. In about
half an hour four natives appeared on the brow of a low hill, directly
in front of us. They, too, turned at the sight of us and ran off.

We followed along the trail by which they had disappeared. In about
fifteen minutes we stopped to rest near a great banian. Now the banian,
which is characteristic of this section of Malekula, begins as a
parasite seedling that takes root in a palm or some other tree. This
seedling grows and sends out branches, which drop ropelike tendrils to
the ground. The tendrils take root and gradually thicken into trunks.
The new trunks send out other branches, which in turn drop their
tendrils, and so on, indefinitely. The banian near which we had stopped
was some twenty feet in diameter. Its many trunks grew close together
and it was covered with a crown of great heart-shaped leaves. Since
conditions seemed favorable for a picture, I got a camera ready and
turned to the tree to study the lights and shadows before I adjusted the
shutters. As I grew accustomed to the light, I saw dimly, peering from
behind the tendrils, four intent black faces. We had caught up with the
men we had surprised on the trail.

I spent an hour in trying to coax them into the open. I held out toward
them the things most coveted by the natives of the New Hebrides—tobacco,
salt, a knife, a piece of red calico. But they did not stir. I made an
attractive heap of presents on the ground and we all stood back, hoping
that the shy savages would pick up courage to come out and examine them.
But they refused to be tempted. At last I lost patience and ordered the
boys to surround the banian. When I was sure that we had the natives
cornered, I went under the tree and hunted around among its many trunks
for my captives. There was not a sign of them. But in the center of the
banian was an opening in which hung long ladders fashioned from the
tendrils. The savages had escaped over the tops of the trees. We did not
get another glimpse of them that day, but when we returned to the Amour,
we saw footprints in the sand of the beach. And the two boys we had left
in charge said that a number of savages had inspected the vessel from a
distance, disappearing into the jungle just before our arrival.

[Illustration: ONE OF THE MONKEY MEN]

I was convinced by this time that we had really discovered the nomads,
but I began to despair of ever getting a close-up of them. Early next
morning, however, as we were eating breakfast, a native who might have
been twin brother to those of the banian marched boldly down the beach
and up to the side of the ship. In bad _bêche-de-mer_ he asked us who we
were and where we came from and what we wanted. We learned that he had
been “blackbirded” off to Queensland long before and had made his way
back home after a year’s absence. He knew all about the white men and
their ways, he told us, and proved it by asking for tobacco.

I gladly got out some tobacco and gave it to him. Then he informed us
that he had no pipe and I made him happy with a clay pipe and a box of
matches.

I invited him to come on board, but he refused; one “blackbirding”
experience had been enough for him. He squatted on the sand, within
talking distance, and told us what a great man he was. He was the only
one of his tribe who knew “talk belong white man.” He was a famous
fighter. The enemies of his people ran when they saw him. He had killed
many men and many pigs. He recited his virtues over and over, utterly
ignoring my questions about his people. But finally I succeeded in
extracting from him an agreement to guide us to the headquarters of his
tribe.

When we stood on the shore, ready to go, Nella—for that was the name of
our visitor—looked Osa over from head to foot. She wore her usual jungle
costume of khaki breeches and high boots. When he had completed his
inspection, he turned to me and said wisely, “Me savvy. He Mary belong
you.” Then, adding in a business-like tone, “Me think more better you
bringem altogether tobacco,” he turned and led the way into the jungle.

He took us along one of the trails that we had followed in vain during
the preceding days. But presently he turned off into another trail that
we had not noticed. The entrance was masked with cane-grass. After about
ten feet, however, the path was clean and well-beaten. When we had
passed through the cane, Nella returned and carefully straightened out
the stalks that we had trampled down.

When we had traversed a mile or so of trail, Nella called a halt and
disappeared into the depths of a banian. Soon he returned, followed by
three young savages and an old man, who was nearer to a monkey than any
human being I have ever seen before or since—bright eyes peering out
from a shock of woolly hair; an enormous mouth disclosing teeth as white
and perfect as those of a dental advertisement; skin creased with deep
wrinkles; an alert, nervous, monkey-like expression; quick, sure,
monkey-like movements. He approached us carefully, ready to turn and run
at the slightest alarm. I endeavored to shake hands with him, but he
jerked his hand away. The friendly greeting had no meaning for him. My
presents, however, talked to him. Reassured by them and the voluble
Nella, who was greatly enjoying his position as master of ceremonies,
the savages squatted near us.

I began digging after information, but information was hard to get.
Nella preferred asking questions to answering them. All that I could
learn from him was that there were many savages in the vicinity and that
we would see them all in due time.

The conversation became one-sided. The five savages sat and discussed us
in their own language of growls and ape-like chattering. They tried to
examine the rifles carried by our boys, but the boys were afraid to let
their guns out of their hands. Osa, more confident, explained to the
savages the working of her repeater. Then they focused their attention
on her. They felt her boots and grunted admiringly. They fingered her
blond hair and carefully touched her skin, giving strange little
whistles of awe. Osa was used to such attentions from savages and took
them as a matter of course.

In spite of their grotesque appearance, there was little that was
terrifying about our new acquaintances. They seemed not at all warlike.
Only two of the five carried weapons, the one a bow and arrow, the other
a club. I was interested to observe that the old man, who apparently was
a chief, wore the Big Numbers costume—a great clout of pandanus
fiber—while the others were still more lightly clothed according to the
style in vogue among the Small Numbers. I tried to find out the reason
for the variation. But Nella was not interested in my questions.
Finally, I realized that there was no use in trying to get information
in a hurry. Time means nothing to savages. We examined the banian from
which our visitors had come. Like the tree we had seen on the previous
day, it had a hole in the center, in which hung a ladder for hasty
exits. Empty baskets, hung from the branches, showed that the place was
much frequented.

After a while about twenty natives came along the trail. They joined the
five natives already with us, and the examination of us and our
belongings began all over. Osa went among the newcomers with her kodak,
taking snapshots, and I set up my moving-picture camera on a tripod,
selected a place where the light was good, and tried to get the savages
in front of my lens. They would not move; so I pointed my camera at them
and began to turn the crank. Like lightning, they sprang to their feet
and ran to the banian. They scampered up the tendrils like monkeys, and
by the time I could follow them with the camera, I could see only their
bright eyes here and there peering from the crevices.

Through Nella we coaxed them back, and down they came, as quickly as
they had gone up, while I ground out one of the best pictures I ever
got. Osa at once dubbed them the “monkey people.” And indeed they were
nearer monkeys than men. They had enormous flat feet, with the great toe
separated from the other toes and turned in. They could grasp a branch
with their feet as easily as I could with my hands. For speed and
sureness and grace in climbing, they outdid any other men I had ever
seen.

When luncheon-time came, we spread out our meal of cold broiled
wood-pigeon, tinned asparagus, and sea-biscuit and began to eat. After
watching us for a few moments, two or three savages went and fetched
some small almond-like nuts, which they shared with their companions.
They seemed more like monkeys than ever as they squatted there, busily
cracking the nuts with stones and picking out the meats with their
skinny fingers.

By dint of many presents, I won the confidence of the chief and, before
the afternoon was over, I was calling him by his first and only name,
which was, as near as I can spell it phonetically, Wo-bang-an-ar. He was
a strange crony. He was covered with layer after layer of dirt. No one
who has not been among savage tribes can image a human being so filthy.
His hair had never been combed or cut; it was matted with dirt and
grease. His eyes were protruding and bloodshot and they were never
still. His glance darted from one to another of us and back again. But,
like Nagapate, he proved to be a real chief, and his people jumped
whenever he gave a command. He ordered them to do whatever I asked, and
I made pictures all the afternoon.

[Illustration: WO-BANG-AN-AR]

That night we slept in the banian, and next day Nella led us through the
jungle to a clearing some five miles distant. There we found about a
hundred men, women, and children. All of them, save Wo-bang-an-ar, who
had his food supplied to him by his subjects, looked thin and drawn.
Some of the men wore the Big Numbers costume, some that of the Small
Numbers. The women wore the usual Small Numbers dress of a few leaves. A
few men carried old rifles, but they had only about half a dozen
cartridges among them; a few others had bows and arrows or clubs, but
the majority were unarmed. This seemed strange, in the light of our
experience among the tribes of northern Malekula, but even stranger was
the fact that these people had no houses or huts—no dwellings of any
kind. They lived in the banians. Sometimes they put a few leaves over
the protruding roots as a shelter from rain. Occasionally, they built
against the great central trunk of the tree a rough lean-to of sticks
and leaves. Beyond that they made no attempt at constructing houses.

During the three days we spent among them, I picked up fragments of
their history, which runs somewhat as follows:

Years ago, before the white men came to Malekula, there were many more
people on the island than there are to-day. In the north and in the
south there were great tribes, who were fierce and warlike. They fell
upon the people who dwelt in the isthmus, and destroyed their villages.
Again and again this happened. The tribes that lived in the isthmus grew
smaller and smaller. Their men were killed and their women were carried
off. Finally the few that were left no longer dared to build villages;
for a village served merely to advertise their whereabouts to their
enemies. They became nomads, living in trees. They even ceased the
cultivation of gardens and depended for their food on wild fruits and
nuts, the roots of trees, and an occasional bit of fish. Their number
was augmented from time to time by refugees from the Big Numbers tribes
on the north and from the Small Numbers on the south—a fact that
explained the variation in dress we had noticed. They were unarmed,
because their best means of defense was flight. They could not stand
against their warlike neighbors, but they could elude them by climbing
trees and losing themselves in the dark, impenetrable jungles.

CHAPTER X
THE DANCE OF THE PAINTED SAVAGES

After three days among the nomads, we decided that there was no
cannibalism among a people so mild and spiritless, and so we packed our
belongings and set off for the Amour. We thought we had half a day’s
journey ahead of us, but to our surprise we reached the ship in less
than two hours. Nella, to be on the safe side, had led us to the
headquarters of the tribe by a circuitous route.

It was high tide when we reached the beach; so we took the opportunity
of getting the Amour off the sand. A good breeze took us rapidly down
the coast. At nightfall we started the engine and by midnight we had
anchored in Southwest Bay.

[Illustration: SOUTHWEST BAY]

The next morning, at daybreak, we were surrounded by natives in canoes,
with fruit and yams and fish for sale. Since the fish were old and
smelly, we decided to catch some fresh ones by the dynamite method in
use throughout the South Seas wherever there are white men to employ
their “magic”! We lowered the two whaleboats. I set my camera in one and
lashed the other alongside to steady my boat which bobbed about a good
bit as it was, but not enough to spoil the picture. I next set the
natives to hunting for a school of fish. In a few moments they signaled
that they had found one. We approached slowly and quietly and threw the
dynamite. It exploded with a roar and sent a spout of water several feet
into the air. After the water had quieted, the fish began to appear.
Soon some three hundred mullets, killed from the concussion, were
floating on the surface and the natives jumped overboard and began to
gather the fish into their canoes. Suddenly one of the blacks yelled in
terror. He scrambled into his canoe and his companions did likewise. I
saw the dark edge of a shark’s fin coming through the water. He was an
enormous shark and in his wake came a dozen others. They made the water
boil as they gobbled down our catch. Captain Moran seized his gun and
put a bullet through the nose of one of the largest of them. The shark
leaped ten feet out of the water, and in huge jumps made for the open
sea, lashing the water into foam with his tail every time he touched the
surface. I got some fine pictures.

Before the sun was up, we were well on our way, with an escort of a
dozen canoes. The river was broad and beautiful. On one side was a sandy
beach. On the other was jungle, clear to the water’s edge. After we had
paddled for about two miles, we came unexpectedly into a lagoon about
three miles long and two wide, and dotted with tiny, jungled islands. As
we were making pictures of the lovely scene, several natives came out in
canoes and invited us to land. They were the first of the long-headed
people that we had seen. Their heads were about half as long again as
they should have been and sloped off to a rounded point. We landed and
visited several villages, each consisting of no more than three or four
tumble-down huts. There were a few wretched, naked women, a half-dozen
skinny children, and several half-starved pigs about. Some of the women
had strapped to their backs babies who wore the strange baskets that
mould their heads into the fashionable shape. One of these baskets is
put on the head of each child when it is about three days old. First a
cloth woven from human hair is fitted over the head. This is soaked with
coconut oil to soften the skull. Then, after a few days, the basket is
put on, and the soft skull immediately takes on the elongated shape
desired. The basket is woven of coconut fiber in such a manner that the
strands can be tightened day after day, until the bones are too hard to
be further compressed. When the child is a year old, the basket is taken
off.

In time gone by, the lagoon tribes, like the “monkey people,” had
suffered much from wars. The few survivors had lost interest in life.
They no longer repaired their houses. Their devil-devils were falling
into decay. The clearings, instead of being beaten hard, as is usually
the case, were overgrown with grass; for dances and ceremonies were rare
among these sadly disheartened folk.

Inside the houses were gruesome ornaments. Human heads, dried and
smoked, hung from the rafters or leered from the ends of the poles on
which they were impaled. In some houses there were mummified bodies,
with pigs’ tusks in the place of feet. Somehow, in the general
atmosphere of decay, these things seemed pitiful rather than terrifying.

When we returned to the beach, a little after dark, the boys told us
that scores of natives, well armed and painted in war-colors, had spent
a day on the beach on the opposite side of the bay. As soon as it was
daylight, we embarked in the whaleboat to look for them. For about five
miles, we ran along the coast without seeing a trace of a human being.
The jungle came down to the water’s edge and dangled its vines in the
water. But at last we came to a long, sandy beach well packed down by
bare feet. A number of baskets hung from the trees at the edge of the
jungle. We headed the boat for the shore, but just before she ran her
nose into the sand, some twenty savages emerged without warning from the
bush. One glance, and our boys frantically put out to sea again. We were
thankful enough for their presence of mind, for the natives were a
terrifying sight. Their faces and heads were striped with white lime;
their black bodies were dotted with spots of red, yellow, blue, and
white, and their bushy hair bristled with feathers. They all carried
guns. How many of them had bullets was another question—but we did not
care to experiment to find the answer.

When we were about fifty feet from shore, I called a halt and tried to
get into communication with the natives. I had small success. They kept
saying something over and over, but what it was, I could not understand.
The tide carried us up the coast and the men followed at the water’s
edge. Finally, realizing that we did not trust them, they went back to
the jungle and leaned their guns against a tree. Then they came down to
the water-line again, and we rowed inshore until the bow of our boat was
anchored in the sand.

[Illustration: WOMAN AND CHILD OF THE LONG-HEADS, TOMMAN]

The savages waded out to us. Our boys held their guns ready for action;
for the visitors were certainly a nasty-looking lot. They were as naked
as when they were born, and they had great, slobbery mouths that seemed
to bespeak many a cannibal feast. They begged for tobacco and I gave
each of them a stick and a clay pipe. Then one of them, who spoke a
little _bêche-de-mer_, told us that a big feast was taking place at a
village about three miles inland. He and his companions were waiting for
the boo-boos to announce that it was time for them to put in an
appearance.

I decided, and Captain Moran and his brother agreed with me, that there
would be no danger in attending the ceremony. From what I could extract
from the natives, I gathered that there would not be more than a hundred
and fifty persons present. Our black boys seemed willing to make the
trip—a good sign, for they were quick to scent danger and determined in
avoiding it, so we landed.

Experience had taught me that the possession of a rifle does not
necessarily make a native dangerous, and, sure enough, when I examined
the guns leaning against the tree, I found that only four of the guns
had cartridges. The rest were all too old and rusty to shoot.

Twenty savages led us inland over a good trail. Before we had walked
half an hour, we could hear the boom of the boo-boos. I have never been
able to get used to that sound. Often as I have heard it, it sends a
chill down my spine. After an hour, it began to get on my nerves. By
that time we had reached the foot of a steep hill, and our escort told
us that they could go no farther until they were summoned. We went on
alone, the sound of the boo-boos growing louder and more terrifying with
each step. Osa began to wonder about the advisability of bursting on the
natives unannounced. She hinted vaguely that it might be wise to return
to the boat. But we kept on.

It was a hard climb. We had to stop several times to rest. The revolvers
that Osa and I carried in our hip pockets seemed heavy as lead. At last,
however, we made the top of the hill, and found ourselves at the edge of
a clearing about a quarter of a mile in diameter. In the center, around
a collection of huge boo-boos and devil-devils, were a thousand naked
savages. That was my first estimate. A little later I divided the number
in two, but even at that, there were more savages than I had ever before
seen at one time. And they were the fiercest-looking lot I had ever laid
my eyes on. White lead, calcimine, red paint, and common bluing are
among the most valued trade articles in this region, and the savages had
invested heavily in them, and besides had added to their make-up boxes
yellow ocher and coral lime and ghastly purple ashes. Every single one
had a gun or a bow and arrows, and looked as if he would use it at very
slight provocation.

As we appeared, the boom of the boo-boos ceased. The savages who had
been dancing stopped. Every eye was turned on us. After a moment’s
silence, all the natives began to talk. Then a number separated
themselves from the mob, and, led by an old man who was smeared with
yellow ocher from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet,
approached us.

The old man spoke to us severely in _bêche-de-mer_, asking our business.

“We walk about, no more,” I explained humbly. “We bringem presents for
big fellow master belong village.”

The haughty old man then informed us that, though he himself was the
biggest chief of all, there were many other chiefs present, and that I
must make presents to all of them. He was not at all polite about it. He
said “must” and he meant “must.” I took one glance at the hundreds of
fierce, painted faces in the clearing, and then I had one of the boys
bring me the big ditty-bag. Then and there I distributed about
twenty-five dollars’ worth of trade-stuff—the most I had ever given at
one time.

The uproar was fairly deafening—I was thoroughly alarmed. The voices of
the savages were angry. Men ran from group to group, apparently giving
commands. Moran put his two hands in his pockets where he kept his
revolvers and I told Osa to do likewise. Our boys huddled close around
us. No need to tell them to keep their guns ready.

The bag was soon empty, and there was nothing further to do but await
developments. To retreat would be more dangerous than to stay. In order
to keep Osa from guessing how scared I was, I got out my moving-picture
camera. I wish I could have photographed what happened then; for the
entire mob broke and ran for cover. I wondered if they had ever seen a
machine-gun. I couldn’t explain their fright on any other grounds. Only
old Yellow Ocher stood his ground. He was scared, but game, and asked me
excitedly what I was up to. I explained the camera to him and opened it
up and showed him the film and the wheels. He shouted to the other
natives to come back, and they returned to the clearing, muttering and
casting sullen glances in our direction. The old man was angry. We had
nearly broken up the show. He gave us to understand that he washed his
hands of us.

He then turned his attention to the ceremony. In a few moments a dozen
savages took their places at the boo-boos and a few men started a
half-hearted chant. A score of young savages began to dance, but without
much spirit. It was half an hour before they warmed up, but at the end
of that time the chant was loud and punctuated with blood-thirsty yells,
and a hundred men were dancing in the clearing. I call the performance
“dancing,” but it was simply a march, round and round, quickening
gradually to a run punctuated by leaps and yells. Soon women and
children came out of the jungle. That was a good sign. For the time
being, we were in no danger.

The dance ended abruptly with a mighty yell. The men at the boo-boos
changed their rhythm and the twenty savages we had met on the beach
burst from the jungle into the clearing and began to dance. There was a
rough symbolism in their dance. But we could not decipher the meaning of
the pantomime. They picked up a bunch of leaves here and deposited them
there. Then they charged a little bundle of sticks and finally gathered
them up and carried them off. When they were tired out, they withdrew to
the side-lines, and another group, all painted alike, in an even fiercer
pattern than that of the first group, made a similar dramatic entrance
and danced themselves into exhaustion. They were followed by other
groups. By the time three hours had passed, there were fully a thousand
savages in the clearing.

It was a wonderful sight. My “movie” sense completely overcame my fears,
and I ground out roll after roll of film. When the afternoon was well
advanced, a hundred savages began to march to slow time around the
devil-devils. Others joined in. They increased their pace. Soon more
than half the natives were in a great circle, running and leaping and
shouting around the clearing. Those who were left formed little circles
of their own, the younger men dancing and the older ones watching with
unfriendly eyes the actions of the rival groups. Even the women and
children were hopping up and down and shouting. Occasionally a
detachment of natives came toward us. At times we were completely
surrounded, though we tried our best by moving backward to prevent the
savages from getting in our rear.

[Illustration: THE PAINTED DANCERS OF SOUTHWEST BAY]

As the dance grew wilder, however, the savages lost all interest in us.
Soon every one of them was dancing in the clearing. I shall never forget
that dance—a thousand naked, painted savages, running and leaping in
perfect time to the strange beat-beat-beat of the boo-boos and the wild,
monotonous chant punctuated with brutal yells. The contagion spread to
the women and children and they hopped up and down like jumping-jacks
and chanted with the men. I turned the crank of my camera like mad. The
sun sank behind the trees and Osa and Moran urged me to return to the
beach, but I was crazy with excitement over the picture I was getting
and I insisted on staying: I lighted a number of radium flares. The
savages muttered a bit, but they were worked up to too high a pitch to
stop the dance, and, when they found that the flares did no harm, they
rather liked them. Old Yellow Ocher, seeing that the bluish-white light
added to the spectacular effect, asked me for some more flares. I gave
him my last two, and he put them among the devil-devils and lighted
them. He could not have done me a greater service. The light from the
flares made it possible to get a picture such as I never could have
secured in the waning daylight.

The savages were sweating and panting with their exertions, but now they
danced faster than ever. They seemed to have lost their senses. They
leaped and shouted like madmen. Osa swallowed her pride and begged me to
put up my camera, and at last I reluctantly consented. As I packed my
equipment, I found two hundred sticks of tobacco that had escaped my
notice. Without thinking of consequences, I put them on the edge of the
clearing and motioned to Yellow Ocher to come and get them. But some of
the young bucks saw them first. They leaped toward them. The first dozen
got them. The next hundred fought for them. The dance ended in uproar.

For the first time in our island experiences, Osa was frightened. She
took to her heels and ran as she had never run before. The boys grabbed
up my cameras and followed her. Captain Moran stood by me. He urged me
to run, but I felt that, if we did so, we should have the whole pack on
us. Old Yellow Ocher and some of the other chiefs came up to us and
yelled something that we could not understand and did not attempt to
answer. There was no chance for explanations in that uproar. We edged
toward the trail. The chiefs pressed after us, yelling louder than ever.
Their men were at their heels. Luckily some of the natives began to
fight among themselves and diverted the attention of the majority from
us. Only a small group followed us to the edge of the hill. When we
reached the trail, Moran said we had better cut and run, and we made the
steep descent in record time.

Our boys were a hundred yards ahead of us. Osa, with nothing to carry,
was far in the lead. When I caught up with her, she was crying, not with
fear, but with anger. When she got her breath back, she told me what she
thought of me for exposing us all to danger for the sake of a few feet
of film. I took the scolding meekly, for I knew she was right. But I
kept wishing that we had been twelve white men instead of three. Then I
could have seen the dance through to the end.

CHAPTER XI
TOMMAN AND THE HEAD-CURING ART

We were safe on board the Amour, but we could still hear the boo-boos
marking the time for the wild dance back in the hills. I awoke several
times during the night. The boom-boom still floated across the water. I
was glad that we had taken to our heels when we did, though I still
regretted the picture I might have got if we could have stayed. At dawn,
there was silence. The dance was over.

A trader who put in at Southwest Bay late in the morning told us of a
man who had been brutally murdered at the very village we had visited.
It was his belief that we had escaped only because the memory of the
punitive expedition that had avenged the murder was still fresh in the
minds of the natives. Even that memory might have failed to protect us,
he told us, if the natives had really been in the heat of the dance. And
he and Captain Moran swapped yarns about savage orgies until Osa became
angry with me all over again for having stayed so long on the hill to
witness the dance.

After a day’s rest, we continued on our journey in search of cannibals.
Our next stop was Tomman, an island about half a mile off the
southernmost tip of Malekula. Since we found the shore lined with
canoes, we expected to be surrounded as usual, as soon as we had dropped
anchor, by natives anxious to trade. To our surprise, there was not a
sign of life. We waited until it was dark and then gave up expecting
visitors, for the savages of the New Hebrides rarely show themselves
outside their huts after dark for fear of spirits. Early next morning,
however, we were awakened by hoarse shouts, and found the Amour
surrounded by native craft. We then discovered that we had arrived
inopportunely in the midst of a dance. Dances in the New Hebrides are
not merely social affairs. They all have some ceremonial significance
and accordingly are not to be lightly interrupted.

Captain Moran assured us that, since the natives of this island, like
those of Vao, were sufficiently acquainted with the Government gunboat
to be on their good behavior where white men were concerned, it would be
safe to go ashore. We launched a whaleboat and set out for the beach,
escorted by about a hundred savages, who came to meet us in canoes.
These natives, like some of those we had met with in the region around
Southwest Bay, had curiously shaped heads. Their craniums were almost
twice as long as the normal cranium and sloped to a point at the crown.
The children, since their hair was not yet thick enough to conceal the
conformation, seemed like gnomes with high brows and heads too big for
their bodies.

When we reached shore, we beached the whaleboat at a favorable spot and,
leaving it in charge of a couple of the crew, followed a well-beaten
trail that led from the beach to a village near by. At the edge of a
clearing surrounded by ramshackle huts, we stopped to reconnoiter.

I have never seen a more eerie spectacle. In the center of the clearing,
before a devil-devil, an old man was dancing. Very slowly he lifted one
foot and very slowly put it down; then he lifted the other foot and put
it down, chanting all the while in a hoarse whisper. At the farther side
of the clearing, a group of old savages were squatting near a smoldering
fire, intently watching one of their number, the oldest and most wizened
of them all, as he held in the smoke a human head, impaled on a stick.
Near by, on stakes set in the ground, were other heads.

[Illustration: THE OLD HEAD-CURER]

The natives who had accompanied us up the trail shouted something and
the men about the fire looked up. They seemed not at all concerned over
our sudden appearance and made no attempt to conceal the heads. As for
the old dancer, he did not so much as glance our way.

We went over to the men crouched about the fire and spoke to them. They
paid scant attention to Moran and me, but they forsook their heads to
look at Osa. She was always a source of wonder and astonishment to the
natives, most of whom had never before seen a white woman. These old men
went through the usual routine of staring at her and cautiously touching
her hands and hair, to see if they were as soft as they appeared to be.

I discovered that the old head-curer knew _bêche-de-mer_ and could tell
me something of the complicated process of his trade. The head was first
soaked in a chemical mixture that hardened the skin and, to a certain
extent, at least, made it fireproof. Next, the curer held it over a
fire, turning and turning it in the smoke until the fat was rendered out
and the remaining tissue was thoroughly dried. After the head had been
smeared with clay to keep it from burning, it was again baked for some
hours. This process consumed about a week of constant work. The dried
head was then hung up for a time in a basket of pandanus fiber, made in
the shape of a circular native hut with a thatched roof, and finally it
was exhibited in the owner’s hut or in a ceremonial house; but for a
year it had to be taken out at intervals and smoked again in order to
preserve it.

The old head-curer was an artist, with an artist’s pride in his work. He
told me that he was the only one left among his people who really
understood the complicated process of drying heads. The young men were
forsaking the ways of their fathers. Of the old men, he was the most
skilled. All the important heads were brought to him for curing, and he
was employed to dry the bodies of great chiefs, smearing the joints with
clay to keep the members from falling apart, turning each rigid corpse
in the smoke of a smoldering fire until it was a shriveled mummy,
painting the shrunken limbs in gay colors, and substituting pigs’ tusks
for the feet. The old man told me that heads nowadays are not what they
were in olden times. He said what I found hard to believe—that the
craniums of his ancestors were twice as long as those of present-day
islanders.

Specimens of the head-curer’s art were displayed in every hut in the
village. The people of Tomman are not head-hunters in the strict sense
of the word. They do not go on head-raids as do the men of Borneo. But
if they kill an enemy, they take his head and hang it up at home to
frighten off the evil spirits. The heads of enemies are roughly covered
with clay and hastily and carelessly cured, but those of relatives are
more scientifically treated, for they are to be cherished in the family
portrait gallery. While the natives of Tomman do not produce works of
art comparable to the heads treated by the Maoris of New Zealand, the
results of their handiwork show a certain dignity and beauty. One
forgets that the heads were once those of living men, for they are
dehumanized and like sculptures. Each household boasted a few mummies
and a number of heads, and, to our surprise, the people willingly showed
us their treasures and allowed us to photograph them. In northern
Malekula, as we had learned, it is as much as a white man’s life is
worth to try to see the interior of a head-hut, and demands for heads—or
skulls, rather, for the natives of the northern part of the island do
not go in for head-curing—are usually met with sullen, resentful
silence. Here, the natives not only brought out heads and bodies for us
to photograph, but in exchange for a supply of tobacco permitted me to
make a flashlight picture of a big ceremonial hut containing about fifty
heads and fifteen mummified bodies.

This hut seemed to be a club for the men of the village. Almost every
village of the New Hebrides boasts some sort of a club-house, which is
strictly taboo for women and children. Here, the devil-devils are made
and, it is rumored, certain mysterious rites are performed. Be that as
it may, club-life in the New Hebrides seemed to me to be as stupid and
meaningless as it usually is in the West. Instead of lounging in
plush-covered armchairs and smoking Havana cigars, the men of the New
Hebrides lay on the ground and smoked Virginia cuttings in clay pipes.
Each man had his favorite resting-place—a hollow worn into the ground by
his own body. He was content to lie there for hours on end, almost
motionless, saying scarcely a word; but the women and children outside
thought that he was engaged in the strange and wonderful rites of his
“lodge”!

[Illustration: A CLUB-HOUSE IN TOMMAN WITH MUMMIED HEADS AND BODIES]

Toward evening the women of the village appeared with loads of firewood
and fruits and vegetables. On top of nearly every load was perched a
child or a young baby, its head fitted snugly with a basket to make the
skull grow in the way in which, according to Tomman ideals of beauty, it
should go. The women of Tomman we found a trifle more independent than
those of other islands of the New Hebrides. Of course, their upper front
teeth were missing—knocked out by their husbands as part of the marriage
ceremony. The gap was the Tomman substitute for a wedding-ring. But on
Tomman, as elsewhere in the New Hebrides, wives are slaves. Since a good
wife is expensive, costing from twenty to forty pigs, and the supply is
limited, most of the available women are cornered by the rich. A young
man with little property is lucky if he can afford one wife. He looks
forward to the day when he will inherit his father’s women. Then he will
have perhaps a dozen willing hands to work for him. He will give a great
feast and, if he kills enough pigs, he will be made a chief.

When we went back to the ship at sunset, the old man was still doing his
solitary dance in front of the devil-devil. In the morning, when we
returned to the village, he was already at it, one foot up, one foot
down. When we left Tomman, four days after our arrival, he was still
going strong. I tried to discover the reason for the performance, but
the natives either could not or would not tell me.

Although Tomman was an interesting spot, we did not remain there long. I
was looking for cannibals, and experience had taught me that
head-hunters were rarely cannibals or cannibals head-hunters. So, since
our time in the islands was growing short, we decided to move on.

CHAPTER XII
THE WHITE MAN IN THE SOUTH SEAS

We chugged away from Tomman and for a week we cruised along the southern
end of Malekula. In this region, the mountains come down to the sea.
Beyond them lies dangerous territory. It was not safe for us to cross
them with the force we had; so we had to be content with inspecting the
coast. There we found only deserted villages and a few scattered huts
inhabited by old men left to die alone.

Finally we rounded the end of the island and steamed up the eastern
coast. One evening we came to anchor in Port Sandwich—a lovely,
land-locked bay. Since it was very late, we deferred explorations until
the following morning and turned in almost as soon as we had anchored,
so as to be ready for work betimes.

At about three o’clock, Osa and I, who slept on deck, were rudely
awakened by being thrown into the scuppers. We pulled ourselves to our
feet and held tight to the rail. The ship rolled and trembled violently.
Though there seemed to be no wind, the water boiled around us and the
trees on shore swayed and groaned in the still air.

Captain Moran and his brother came rushing from their cabins. The black
crew tumbled out of the hold, yelling with terror. There was a sound of
breaking crockery. A big wave washed over the deck and carried overboard
everything that was loose. The water bubbled up from below as if from a
giant caldron and fishes leaped high into the air. After what seemed to
be half an hour, but was in reality a few minutes, the disturbance
subsided. We had been through an earthquake.

The volcanic forces that brought the New Hebrides into being are still
actively at work. Small shocks are almost a daily occurrence in the
islands. But this had been no ordinary earthquake. The next morning,
when we went ashore, we found that half the native huts of the little
settlement near the mouth of the bay had collapsed like card houses. The
devil-devils and boo-boos stood at drunken angles—some of them had
fallen to the ground—and, in the village clearings and other level
places, the ground looked like a piece of wet paper that had been
stretched until it was full of wrinkles and jagged tears. Streaks of red
clay marked the courses of landslides down the sides of the mountains.
The old men of the settlement said that the earthquake was the worst
they had ever experienced. And when we returned to Vao, we found that
two sides of our own bungalow had caved in as a result of the shock.

[Illustration: TOMMAN WOMEN, SHOWING GAP IN TEETH]

A visit to the volcano Lopevi gave us further proof of the uncertain
foundation on which the islands rest.

On the morning after the earthquake, Mr. King, the British Commissioner,
appeared in the Euphrosyne, on his way to Vao to fetch us for a visit at
Vila. We told him regretfully that we had no time for visiting, and then
he proposed a jaunt to Lopevi, a great volcano about thirty miles from
Malekula. We were glad of the opportunity to see the volcano, which was
reputed to be one of the most beautiful in the world. So we said
good-bye to Captain Moran, who departed at once to continue his
interrupted trading, and we transferred our belongings to the
Euphrosyne, where we reveled in the unaccustomed luxury of good beds and
good service by attentive servants.

We left Port Sandwich at daybreak, and in a few hours we saw Lopevi, a
perfect cone, rising abruptly out of the water to a height of nearly six
thousand feet. When we came within range, I got my camera ready. A fine
fringe of thunder-clouds encircled the island about halfway down, but
the top was free. The light was perfect. I was grinding happily away,
when a miracle happened. Lopevi sent up a cloud of smoke. Then she
growled ominously, and shot out great tongues of lapping flame. More
smoke, and she subsided into calm again. I had secured a fine picture
and congratulated myself on having arrived just in the nick of time.
Suddenly, as we discussed the event, Lopevi became active again. And
after that there was an eruption every twenty minutes from ten in the
morning until four in the afternoon. We steamed all around the island,
stopping at favorable points to wait for a good “shot.” At four o’clock,
we sailed for Api, where we were to harbor for the night. And from the
time we turned our backs on Lopevi, there was not another eruption. Her
cone was in sight for an hour that night, and next morning, from
Ringdove Bay where we were anchored, she was plainly visible. But she
did not emit a single whiff of smoke. Osa called her our trained
volcano.

We remained on Api for four days. Since Mr. King was due back at Vila,
he had to leave on the morning after our arrival; so we took up our
quarters with Mr. Mitchell, the English manager of one of the largest
coconut plantations on the island.

In more civilized regions one might hesitate before descending, bag and
baggage, upon an unknown host, to wait for a very uncertain steamer; but
in the islands of the South Seas one is almost always sure of a welcome.
The traders and planters lead lonely lives. They have just three things
to look forward to—the monthly visit of the Pacifique, a trip once a
year to Sydney or New Caledonia, and dinner. For the Englishman in
exile, dinner is the greatest event of the day. He rises at daybreak
and, after a hasty cup of coffee, goes out on the plantation to see that
work is duly under way. He breakfasts at eleven and then sleeps for a
couple of hours, through the heat of the day. His day’s work is over at
six; then he has a bath and a whiskey-and-soda—and dinner. Another
drink, a little quiet reading, then off with the dinner clothes and to
bed.

Yes, I said dinner clothes. For dinner clothes are as much _de rigueur_
in Ringdove Bay as they are on Piccadilly. I, who have a rowdy fondness
for free-and-easy dress and am only too glad when I can escape from the
world of dinner coats and white ties, suggested, on the second evening
of our stay at Api, that, since Mrs. Johnson was used to informal
attire, we could dispense, if Mr. Mitchell desired, with the ceremony of
dressing.

“But, my dear Johnson,” said Mitchell, “I dress for dinner when I am
here alone.”

That ended the matter. I knew that I was up against an article of the
British creed and might as well conform.

When I first went out to the South Seas, I was disposed to regard the
punctiliousness in dress of the isolated Britisher as more or less of an
affectation. But now I realize that a dinner coat is a symbol. It is a
man’s declaration to himself and the world that he has a firm grasp on
his self-respect. A Frenchman in the islands can go barefooted and
half-clothed, can live a life ungoverned by routine, rising at will,
going to bed at will, working at will, can throw off every convention,
and still maintain his dignity. With the Anglo-Saxon it is different.
The Englishman must hold fast to an ordered existence or, in nine cases
out of ten, the islands will “get” him.

It is customary to waste a lot of pity on the trader and the planter in
remote places—lonely outposts of civilization, but, from my observation,
they do not need pity. The man who stays in the islands is fitted for
the life there; if he isn’t, he doesn’t stay, and, if he does stay, he
can retire, after fifteen or twenty years, with a tidy fortune.

Of course the road to fortune is a long and hard one. The average
planter starts out with a little capital—say five hundred dollars. He
purchases a plot of land. The price he pays depends upon the locality in
which he buys. In regions where the natives are still fairly
unsophisticated, he may get his land for almost nothing. Even where the
natives are most astute, he can buy a square mile for what he would pay
for an acre back home. His next step is to get his land cleared. To that
end, he buys a whaleboat and goes out to recruit natives to act as
laborers. He needs five or six blacks. They will build his house and
clear his land and plant his coconuts. Since it takes seven years for
the coconuts to mature, sweet potatoes and cotton must be planted
between the rows of trees. The sweet potatoes, with a little rice, will
furnish all the food required by the blacks. The cotton, if the planter
is diligent and lucky, will pay current expenses until the coconuts
begin bearing.

Though his small capital of five hundred dollars may be eaten up early
in the game, the settler need not despair. The big trading companies
that do business in the islands will see him through if he shows any
signs of being made of the right stuff. They will give him credit for
food and supplies and they will provide him with knives, calico, and
tobacco, which he can barter with the blacks for the sandalwood and
copra that will help balance his account with the companies. And after
the first trying seven years, his troubles are about over—if he can get
labor enough to keep his plantation going.

Even in the remote islands of the New Hebrides, the labor problem has
reared its head. The employer, in civilized regions, has a slight
advantage resulting from the fact that men must work to live. In the New
Hebrides, indeed all throughout Melanesia, the black man can live very
comfortably, according to his own standards, on what nature provides.
Only a minimum of effort is required to secure food and clothing and
shelter, and most of that effort is put forth by the female slaves he
calls his wives. Even the experienced recruiter finds it hard to get the
Melanesian to exchange his life of ease for a life of toil. And the
inexperienced recruiter finds it very hard. The days when natives could
be picked up on any beach are past. The blacks in the more accessible
regions know what recruiting means—two years of hard labor, from which
there is no escape and from which a man may or may not return home. So
the recruiter must look for hands in the interior, where knowledge of
the white man and his ways has not penetrated. Even here, the
inexperienced recruiter is at a disadvantage. For the experienced
recruiter has invariably preceded him.

Each year, the number of available recruits is growing fewer, for the
native population is dwindling rapidly. As a result, the cost of labor
is high. In the Solomons, one may secure a native for a three years’
term at five or six pounds a year in the case of inexperienced workmen,
or at nine pounds a year in the case of natives who have already served
for three years. In the New Hebrides, planter bids against planter, and
the native benefits, receiving from twelve to fifteen pounds a year for
his work. The planters complain of the high cost of labor. But the big
planters, the capitalists of the South Seas, who have their chains of
copra groves, with a white superintendent in charge of each one,
certainly do not suffer. I remember being on one big Melanesian
plantation on the day when natives were paid for two years’ work all in
a lump. About four thousand dollars was distributed among the workers. I
watched them spend it in the company store. A great simple black, clad
in a nose-stick and a yard of calico, would come in and after an hour of
happy shopping would go off blissfully with little or no money and a
collection of cheap mirrors and beads and other worthless gew-gaws all
in a shiny new “bokkus b’long bell.” By night, about three thousand
dollars had been taken in by the company store-keeper. I was reminded of
a rather grimly humorous story of a day’s receipts that totaled only
$1800 after a $2000 pay-day. When the report reached the main office in
Sydney, a curt note was sent to the plantation store-keeper asking what
had become of the other $200!

There are certainly two sides to the labor question in the New Hebrides.
Yet the whole development of the islands hangs upon cheap and efficient
labor. Where it is to come from is a question. The recruiting of
Orientals for service in British possessions in the South Seas is
forbidden. Even if it were permitted, it would not solve the problem,
for the coolie of China or Japan or India is not adapted to the grilling
labor of clearing bush.

Mr. Mitchell discussed the labor problem as long and as bitterly as any
employer back home. The natives of Api, while friendly and mild, were
entirely averse to toil. He had to import hands from other islands. Only
occasionally could he persuade the Api people to do a few days’ work in
order to secure some object “belong white man.”

Often they coveted curious things. One morning, during our stay, a
delegation of natives appeared and said they had come for
“big-fellow-bokkus (box).” A servant, summoned by Mitchell, brought out
a wooden coffin, one of the men counted out some money, and the natives
shouldered their “bokkus” and went away.

Mitchell laughed as he watched them depart. That coffin had a history.
About six weeks previously, a delegation of natives had appeared, with a
black who had seen service on a New Zealand plantation acting as
spokesman. He informed Mitchell that their old chief was dying and that
they had decided to pay him the honor of burying him in “bokkus belong
white man.” They asked Mitchell if he would provide such a “bokkus” and
for how much. Mitchell had a Chinese carpenter and a little supply of
timber; so he very gladly consented to have a coffin made. He figured
the cost at ten pounds. That appeared to the delegation to be excessive,
and they went off to the hills. The next day, however, they reappeared
and requested that he make a coffin half the size for half the money.
Mitchell protested that a coffin half the size originally figured upon
would not be long enough to hold the chief. And they replied that they
would cut his arms and legs off to make him fit in. At that, Mitchell,
with an eye to labor supply, said that, if they must have a coffin, they
must have a proper coffin. He would order the carpenter to make one
large enough to hold the chief without mutilation, and he would charge
them only five pounds for it, though that meant a loss to him. The
carpenter went to work. Most of the village came down to supervise the
job, and every few hours, until the coffin was finished, a messenger
reported on the chief’s condition. When the “bokkus” was at last done,
they carried it up the trail with great rejoicing. But the next day they
brought it back. The old chief was up and about, and they had no use for
it. They laid it down at Mitchell’s feet and demanded their money back.
Mitchell protested that he had no use for the coffin, either, but they
were firm. And he, remembering how difficult it is to get hands in the
copra-cutting season, meekly returned the five pounds, and put the
coffin in his storehouse. Now, a month later, the old chief had died,
and the natives had come for the coffin. We could hear them chanting as
they went up the trail.

The next day we set sail on the Pacifique, which had arrived during the
night with letters and papers a month old, and we were dropped at Port
Sandwich, which was sparsely populated with sullen and subdued savages,
to await whatever trader might happen along to take us back to Vao. We
had used all our films and were thoroughly tired of Port Sandwich when a
trader finally put in an appearance. His boat was a twenty-four-foot
launch, barely large enough to contain us and our equipment. When we
hoisted our dinghy aboard, its bow and stern protruded several feet
beyond the sides of the launch. Next morning, with some misgivings, we
set out on the fifty-five-mile journey that would complete our round of
Malekula and bring us back to Vao.

We got “home” about four in the afternoon, tired and half-cooked from
the broiling sun that had beat down upon us all day. We received a royal
welcome. A great crowd of natives met us at the beach, and each seized a
box or package and carried it at top speed up to the bungalow. In half
an hour everything was in the house. It had been a long time since our
Vao neighbors had had any of our tobacco!

CHAPTER XIII
ESPIRITU SANTO AND A CANNIBAL FEAST

For two days we developed films and plates. On the third, we attended
what might be called the New Year’s celebration of Vao. Fires are made
among the islanders by the primitive method by rubbing two sticks
together. Though the operation takes only a minute, the savages are too
lazy to light a fire every time they need one, so once a year, in the
largest house of the village, they make a big fire, which is kept
burning to furnish embers from which all the other fires may be lighted.
At the end of the year, the fire is put out with great solemnity, and a
new one is lighted. The ceremony lasts all day and all night. It is
called “killing the Mankki.”

On the morning of the festivities, bush natives began to arrive before
daylight. The young boys of Vao served as ferrymen. A group of men would
come down to the beach at Malekula and shout across the water, and the
Vao boys would put out in their funny little crooked canoes—for wood is
so scarce that even bent trees are made to do duty as dugouts—and bring
back a load of passengers. Natives came from other islands near by. By
night, there were more than a thousand people on the islands.

From early in the morning, there was dancing and pig-killing in the
clearings of the three villages. The different tribes did not mingle
together. One group would come out of the bush into the clearing, dance
its dance, kill a score or so of pigs, and then retire into the bush
again.

It was bad weather for photography. It rained all day—a fine, drizzling
rain. But I worked hard, hoping to secure some good film, for the dances
were unusually interesting. One especially good dance was a snake dance,
in which the natives brandished small snakes tied to coconut leaves.
They are deadly afraid of snakes. They have a saying that holds good
pretty much the world over, to the effect that snakes with blunt tails
are always poisonous and those with long, pointed tails are harmless. I
noted that the snakes used for the dance were very small and of a
long-tailed variety. At the end of the dance each man killed his snake
and fed it to a pig. Then each man killed a pig.

The slaughter of pigs was enormous. I am sure some five hundred must
have been killed during the day—far more than could be eaten. As each
pig was killed, his tusks were removed and placed upon platforms that
had been erected to hold them. Pigs’ tusks are always carefully
preserved. They ornament the houses. They form necklaces for the
devil-devils. They are placed in the crotches of trees.

I was convinced, as the day wore on, that pork was not the only meat on
the bill of fare. It seemed to me that I was at last hot on the trail of
cannibalism; the men from Malekula had brought with them strange
packages wrapped in leaves, which, I suspected, contained human flesh.
The action of the blacks confirmed my suspicion, for they guarded their
packages carefully, and would not let me come near with my cameras.

They were threatening in their attitude all day. Even my tobacco did not
thaw them out. The Vao people tolerated me, in return for a case of
tobacco, but their eyes were far from friendly, and the old men muttered
evilly every time they looked our way.

By dark things were getting lively. The mob of savages surged back and
forth from one village to another, shouting and singing. I made a great
discovery for thirsty America—that people can actually get drunk on
imagination. The natives had no intoxicating liquor. Their only drink
was water, and yet they lurched drunkenly when they walked, and sang as
only drunken men and women sing.

I did not see the fire put out and the new one built. As it grew later,
the mob became wilder. I began to think of the long, dark trail to the
bungalow, where we would be absolutely at the mercy of lurking savages,
and decided that discretion was the better part of valor. So Osa and I
went home. We slept with our guns handy—and we did not sleep much at
that, for the boo-boos sounded all night and the shouting and singing
sometimes surged very near.

We spent the next few days in visits to the northern coast of Malekula,
but we did not dare venture inland, for the attitude of the natives was
at once suspicious and threatening. We talked the matter over and
decided that we had seen about enough of Malekula and Vao and might as
well pursue our investigations elsewhere. Espiritu Santo was some forty
miles away. In the southern portion there was reported to be a race of
dwarfs, and cannibalism was said to be general there, as on Malekula. We
had almost despaired of getting actual proof that man ate man in the New
Hebrides. We ourselves had seen enough to be convinced that “long pig”
was on many a bill of fare, but we could not prove anything; for, since
the Government metes out severe punishment to eaters of human flesh, the
savages are careful not to be caught at their ghoulish feasts. Still,
our luck might turn, we thought, if we changed islands, and we should
find the evidence we had been seeking for so many weeks.

The very day after we made this decision, a small cutter nosed into the
passage between Vao and Malekula. The owner was a full-blooded Tongan
trader, named Powler. He was on his way to get some coconuts he had
bought from a native on an island near by, but he promised to return in
a few days and take us to Santo. When he arrived, we had our equipment
packed and were ready to go aboard. The natives helped us with a will
and showed real regret at parting with us, for they knew that they would
never again get so much tobacco in return for so little work.

The wind was favorable, and we fairly flew along. Shortly after dark we
anchored off Tongoa, a small island a stone’s throw from Santo. To my
great delight, Powler agreed to remain with us. He was a great,
good-natured giant, never out of sorts and strong as an ox. I wished we
had met with him sooner. The natives trusted him. His dark skin and his
ability to grasp the languages of the island tribes stood him in good
stead. Besides, he had the reputation, among both natives and whites, of
being absolutely honest in his dealings—a trait as rare in the South
Seas as elsewhere. In his company, we went ashore early on the morning
after our arrival.

We found the men of Santo, who gathered on the beach to greet us, quite
different in type from the Malekula bush savages. They were smaller and
more gracefully built. They wore flowers and feathers in their hair.
They had a curious custom of removing part of the bone that divides the
nostrils so that the bridges of their noses had fallen in and they
appeared to be always scowling. To enhance their fierceness still
further, they put sticks through their noses.

Such nose ornaments are characteristic of the blacks of the South Seas.
The Solomon Islander wears a ring fashioned from bone or shell and
highly polished and ornamented. The native of Santa Cruz adorns himself
with a piece of polished tortoise-shell shaped like a padlock. But the
man of the New Hebrides thrusts into his nose anything that he happens
upon—usually a stick picked up along the trail.

To my great delight, the Santo men wore a geestring of calico. As I have
said before, the dress of the men of Malekula, if you can call it dress,
draws attention to their sex rather than conceals it. On my first visit
among them, I had taken motion-pictures of them as they were. When I
returned to America, I found that naked savages shocked the public. Some
of my best films were absolutely unsalable. On this second trip,
accordingly, I managed, whenever possible, to persuade the savages to
wear geestrings or loin-cloths or aprons of leaves. Since “costuming”
was very difficult (the blacks, naturally enough, could see no reason
for it), I was glad that I should not have to spend time in persuading
the men of Santo to put on more clothing.

At daybreak on the following morning, we started for the hills. With us
were Powler and three of his boys and fifteen trustworthy Tongoa
natives. We were bound for a village of pottery-makers—but we never got
there. We had tramped for about three hours when we came suddenly upon a
group of little men. They were too surprised to run, and too frightened.
They were all, with the exception of one of their number who carried a
gun as big as he was, armed with bows and arrows, but they did not show
any hostility. Instead, they just gathered close together and stared at
us in terror.

These were the dwarfs I had heard about. I got out some presents for
them. Soon their timidity wore off, and I persuaded them to walk one by
one under my outstretched arm. Although their fuzzy wool stood out in
great bushy mops, not a hair touched my arm as they passed under. There
were sixteen of them, all told. Five were old fellows with grizzled
whiskers, ten were of middle age, and one, the tallest of them all, was
a boy of about fifteen.

We settled down near a stream and I took pictures as long as the light
lasted. That night, our little friends camped close by, and the next
day, when we set out for the beach, they followed us. We showed them
everything we had in our trunks. They were as pleased as children, and,
when I allowed the old chief to shoot my big automatic revolver, he
fairly danced with excitement.

[Illustration: DWARFS OF ESPIRITU SANTO]

The next day, I sent messengers into the hills to hunt for a chief about
whom Mr. King had told us. This chief had achieved a great reputation as
a prophet and a worker of magic. A year before, he had been nobody—just
a savage. Then he had gone mad. He had once been recruited as a member
of the crew of a mission ship, where he had heard hymns and Bible
stories, which he now adapted to his own use. He told the natives there
was going to be a great flood, which would cover Santo. He himself,
however, would not be drowned, for he was going to bring Hat Island, a
little island off the coast, over to rest on Santo Peak. Hat Island was
a barren and undesirable piece of real estate, but the prophet said that
he had made arrangements to have twenty European steamers come regularly
with food and tobacco for the inhabitants. Since he had been fairly
successful in foretelling the weather, the natives believed in him, and
each clamored for a place on Hat Island. But the salvation offered by
the old savage came high. Reservations on Hat Island could be secured
only at the price of ten pigs each. Soon the prophet had cornered most
of the pigs in that section of Santo. Seeing his power, he raised the
price of admission. He secured, in addition to the pigs, the most
desirable women in the vicinity. In fact, he appropriated everything he
wanted, and occasionally he ran _âmok_ and killed several of his
compatriots—as he said, to put the fear of God into them.

The next recruiter that came to Santo was besieged with savages begging
to be allowed to go to work on copra plantations. He soon learned that
the natives had not suddenly grown industrious, but that even work
seemed pleasant in contrast with the reign of terror of the inspired
chief. The chief saw possibility of profit in the desire of his people
to escape and made the recruiter pay heavily in tobacco and calico for
every native taken away.

Reports of his rule had reached the Government officers at Vila, and
Commissioner King, who had sent for him several times to no avail, had
given me a letter to present to the old fellow, in case I should go to
Santo. I now sent word to the chief that I had an important message that
could be delivered only to him in person. To my surprise, two days after
the message had been delivered, the prophet appeared.

I had made everything ready for a motion-picture show to entertain my
pigmies. Just before dark, as I was testing my projector, thirty armed
natives came down the beach. The dwarfs wanted to run, but we made them
understand that we would protect them, and they huddled behind us,
frightened, but with perfect faith in our ability and readiness to take
care of them in any crisis.

The newcomers were a nasty-looking lot. The prophet, ridiculous in a
singlet and overalls and a high hat, came up to me with no sign of
hesitation and held out his hand. I could distinguish words in the
greeting he grunted at me, but they had no connection. His eyes were
bloodshot and wild, his lips were abnormally red, and he drooled as he
talked.

I presented Commissioner King’s letter, which was an imposing document
with a red official seal. In high-sounding language it enjoined the
chief to give me and my party every possible aid, and ended with an
invitation to his prophetic highness to come to Vila on the Euphrosyne
the next time she passed that way and the promise that he would not be
harmed if he would do so.

When the prophet saw the red seal, his assurance fell from him, and he
rolled his eyes in terror.

“Me sick; me sick,” he repeated over and over. I tried to explain that
Commissioner King realized that he was sick, and for that very reason
wanted to see him and help him, but I doubt if he understood anything I
said.

After dark, we started the show. The dwarfs chattered and giggled like
children, but our other guests were unsmiling and ominously silent. Only
the prophet kept talking. One of the boys told me afterward that he was
telling his men that he had sent for me in order to work his magic
through me—that I and my projector had nothing to do with the pictures;
he himself was responsible.

But halfway through the performance he apparently began to doubt his
power. Rocking back and forth, he repeated over and over, “By-em-by me
die, by-em-by me die.” He was looking forward to the day when he would
be captured and carried off to Vila and, as he imagined, put to death. I
was glad when the show was over and the prophet and his followers
withdrew for the night. It had not been an especially merry evening.

Early next morning a delegation of the prophet’s followers sought me out
and begged me to take their chief by force to Vila and have him hanged.

“He bad. He takem plenty pigs; he takem plenty women; he killem plenty
men,” they explained.

I was sorry for them, but I could do nothing. I tried to make them
understand that I had nothing to do with the Government and consequently
no authority to arrest a man, but I could see that they did not quite
believe me. They went off muttering to themselves.

In a few minutes they departed with their chief in quest of a certain
kind of shellfish to be found about five miles up the beach, and we
decided to take advantage of their absence and visit one of the villages
in the prophet’s territory.

We walked for about three hours without seeing any signs of a village.
Then we heard, faint in the distance, the sound of a tom-tom. Soon we
were within hearing of a chanted song. We advanced with caution, until
we reached the edge of a village clearing. From behind a clump of bushes
we could watch the natives who danced there. The dance was just the
ordinary native hay-foot, straw-foot, around the devil-devils in the
center of the clearing, now slow, now gradually increasing in tempo
until it was a run.

What interested me was the feast that was in preparation. On a long
stick, over the fire, were a dozen pieces of meat. More meat was
grilling on the embers of another fire. On leaves near by were the
entrails of the animal that was cooking. I do not know what it was that
made me suspect the nature of this meat. It certainly was not much
different in appearance from pork. But some sixth sense whispered to me
that it was not pork.

The savages had no suspicion of our nearness. As a matter of fact, the
keenness of sight and hearing that primitive peoples are generally
credited with are entirely lacking in the New Hebrideans. Many a time
Osa and I have quietly crept up to a native village and stolen away
again without being detected. Often on the trail we have literally run
into blacks before they realized that we were approaching. Even the
half-starved native dogs have lost their alertness. More than once I
have come suddenly on a cur and laughed at him as he rolled over
backward in an attempt to escape. With the natives lost in a dance, we
were quite safe.

For an hour we watched and took long-range photographs. The dance
continued monotonously. The meat sizzled slowly over the fire—and
nothing happened. Then I gave one of the Tongoa boys who accompanied us
a radium flare and told him to go into the clearing, drop the flare into
the fire, and run to one side out of the picture. He did as I asked him.
The natives stopped dancing and watched him as he approached. He threw
the flare into the fire and jumped aside. As they stooped down close to
the flame to see what he had thrown there, the flare took fire and sent
its blinding white light into their faces. With a yell they sprang back
and ran in terror directly toward us. When they saw us, they stopped so
quickly that they almost tumbled backward. Then they turned and ran in
the opposite direction. The half-minute flare had burned out; so they
grabbed the meat from the fire and carried it with them into the bush.

[Illustration: THE CANNIBAL DANCE]

My boys sprang into the clearing. I, with my camera on my shoulder, was
just behind them. When I came up to them, they were standing by the
fire, looking at the only remnant of the feast that was left on the
embers. It was a charred human head, with rolled leaves plugging the
eye-sockets.

I had proved what I had set out to prove—that cannibalism is still
practiced in the South Seas. I was so happy that I yelled. After
photographing the evidence, I wrapped the head carefully in leaves, to
take away with me. We picked the fire over, but could find no other
remainder of the gruesome feast. In one of the huts, however, we
discovered a quantity of human hair, laid out on a green leaf, to be
made into ornaments.

Some of the cannibals returned and, from a distance, watched us search
their huts. I then took their pictures. They grinned into the camera, as
innocent as children.

We arrived at the beach a little after dark. Powler had shot some
pigeons, fried their breasts, and made a soup from the remainder, and he
had cut down a coconut tree and made a salad of the heart. We did full
justice to the meal. After it was over, we sat and admired the roasted
head—at least I admired it. Osa did not think much of it. As for Powler,
he tried in vain to conceal that he thought me absolutely crazy to care
so much about an old charred head.

The next day, while I was printing pictures on the beach, a delegation
of cannibals appeared on the scene. They were good-natured and friendly.
I showed them a big mirror. It was apparently the first they had ever
seen. They were awed and puzzled, touching the glass with cautious
fingers and looking behind the mirror suddenly, to surprise whoever
might be fooling them. I photographed them as they peered at their
reflection and grimaced like a bunch of monkeys. We invited them to
luncheon. Their favorite dish of “long pig” was not on the bill of fare.
But they ate our trade salmon and biscuits with gusto and smacked their
lips over the coffee that Osa made for them—the first they had ever
tasted. They remained with us until the following day, when we picked up
our apparatus and sailed off on the first lap of our journey home.

In seven months in the New Hebrides I had exposed twenty-five thousand
feet of film, and had, besides, about a thousand “stills.” I was well
satisfied with my work; for I knew that my pictures would help the
Western world to realize the life lived by the fast-disappearing
primitive races of the earth; and I had actual evidence—my long-range
photographs and the charred head that I so carefully cherished—that
cannibalism is still practiced in the islands of the South Seas.

THE END

------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Cannibal-land - Adventures with a camera in the New Hebrides" ***

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