THE RAIN-MAKERS.
In Ambrym there is foolishness upon the coast, and wisdom among the hills. For two whole months there had been peace: the clubs lay idle in the eaves; the digging-stick replaced the spear; bold warriors ingloriously tilled the soil; and yet there was scarcity. Peace, and yet famine! December had come, but the yam-vines, already twining on the sticks, had sickened and withered; the taro swamp was hard and fissured, like old Turo’s face, and a stalk or two, blackened as by fire, was all that was left of the taro; the plantain-leaves were yellow and wrinkled; and still the earth was as iron and the heaven was as brass. Not even Turo remembered such a season.
It was useless to wait longer for rain: a few weeks longer and there would be no one left to wait. Something must be done, and done at once. But what? The ancient arts were forgotten. What is the use of being able to creep unheard upon an unsuspecting foe, if one has forgotten how to control the unseen powers? What profits it that one can strike one’s foe with the club, if one no longer knows how to slay him with magic leaves as the hillmen do? For there is foolishness upon the coast, and wisdom dwells only among the hills.
But to go to the hills for wisdom can only be resorted to under the direst necessity. It is true that brains have often been brought from the hills, but that was in a material form, for purposes of decoration, as the grinning row of skulls under the eaves, that form Turo’s patent of nobility, bear witness; and as the end one, added only eight weeks ago, has not yet been paid for in the usual way, there is a natural delicacy in applying for the loan of the wisdom seated in the crania of the survivors. If only the hillmen’s heads, when sundered from their wretched carcases, were not useless for purposes of consultation, the difficulty would be solved.
But any death is better than starvation. An ambassador must be sent. If he does not come back, he will be no worse off than if he starved at home, save that his body will play an important rôle at a mountain feast, and his head will grin derisively at the mountain children playing before the chief’s house. But even so the hillmen will be one head to the bad, and what is the use of a big score if there be no one left to glory in it? In a week the warriors will be so famine-weakened that the hillmen could hold them by the hair while the boys beat them to death, as Turo used to do when he was younger. Yes, some one must go, and who better than Erirala the orator?
The matter is put before Erirala at the evening conclave. Erirala approves of the principle, but thinks that Malata would make a better envoy, seeing that his brother married a hillman’s third cousin. Malata is diffident about his powers of persuasion, and the point is submitted to old Turo as he squats in his doorway, still trying with palsied hands to carve the club he began two years ago.
“Let Erirala go,” he pipes, and there is nothing more to be said.
That night the limestone ring, the handiwork of the gods, is unburied from its hiding-place. It is beyond all price but that of rain. Ten barbed spears—not the shin-bone ones, because to present them to the relations of the shin-bones would be indelicate, but good spears, inlaid with mother-of-pearl—and eight strings of shell money, are the price with which the precious rain is to be bought. Erirala leaves at daybreak, after being wept over by his three wives and the sister-in-law who digs his plantation. There is nothing to do but to wait till he either comes back or—till bad news comes. The pitiless sun rides through the burning sky, and sinks at last behind the western hills, leaving the air hazy and tremulous. The tide goes out, and the mud hardens and cracks behind it as it goes. The very crickets are silent—dead, probably, of thirst—and the people still sit, spear in hand, beneath the palm-trees waiting. It grows dark, and still he fails to come. Surely the worst has happened.
A cry at last from the forest. A hundred voices answer, a hundred wasted bodies spring up to welcome Erirala returned from the dead. The silent village has found its voice at last, and every inhabitant, down to the dingo dogs, has something to say, and says it at the top of his voice. Brands are snatched from the fire, and then Erirala is seen standing on the bush-path imploring silence in dumb show. At last he gets it, and tells his news. The wise have taken pity and come to the foolish; but unless the foolish keep silence, the wise will be frightened and take to their heels, if they have not already done so. The wise know that better men than they have been enticed by fair words and gifts, and fallen into an ambush from which not even their gods could save them, and never came back to tell their friends how it happened.
There is silence, and Erirala retires into the bush and calls. No answer. He shouts again with long-drawn mountain vowels. From far up the hillside comes a faint answer. The wise have run fast and far, and must be reassured, and Erirala bawls comforting words into the darkness. In twenty minutes the two wary old birds emerge into the village square, and stand blinking in the circle of flickering light cast by the fire. The children crowd wonderingly round them, and their elders scan them from the dense shadow of the huts. Will the wise stay the night? No; the wise have a particular engagement at home before morning. Won’t they at least wait till a meal can be cooked? No; the wise have come on business, and that done, they must needs return. Well, then, since they won’t, let Erirala go with them to fetch rain.
The chief magician leads the way to the river, now nearly dry. He is elderly and wizened, with no clothes but a shell and a stick thrust through the cartilage of his nose. His familiar is a trifle younger, attired in the same cool garb, but dignified with an ear-lobe pierced and distended enough to carry an empty caviare tin whole. The left lobe, following a natural law, had broken under the strain, and after dangling for months on the shoulder, has lately been excoriated and tastefully spliced with grass bandages. The familiar carries a roll of bark-cloth under his arm. Equipped with this only and wisdom, the magicians would force the heavens to give rain. How wonderful is human intellect, and how high above the beasts is man!
Arrived on the river-bank, Erirala is commanded to advance no farther, for it is not permitted the common mortal to witness the mysteries of the intercourse between the gods and their chosen ones. Together they pick their way among the round boulders that form the dry river-bed, till they come to the inch-deep stream that is all that is left of the river. Together they grope to a certain boulder, with a flat top, whose base is washed by the trickling stream. “This is the place,” says the magician. The familiar grasps it, strains at it, and raises one end a few inches from the water. The wise one snatches the cloth from under the familiar’s arm and thrusts it under the stone, which falls on it with a heavy thud. Then in the pitchy darkness, with no sound but the faint gurgle of the shallow stream, he chants magic words in a quavering treble—words whose meaning is hidden from degenerate man, but which were handed down by the wise men of old, in the days when gods came up from the sea with white faces, strange head-gear, and turtles’ shells on their backs, and slew their forefathers, and sailed away in a magic canoe to the heavens whence they came. Whatever the words meant, the gods always obeyed them, provided that the right kind of cloth had been put under the right kind of stone. Would they disobey now?
When they came back Erirala was sitting on the bank, slapping his bare limbs to kill the mosquitoes and keep his spirits up. “Erirala, there will be rain,” said the sage; and without another word he plunged with his companion into the bush, and was gone. The envoy returned to the village. In answer to his anxious questioners, he could only say that he had seen nothing and knew nothing, except that the rain was coming.
Next morning the brazen sun climbed into a copper sky. Not a breath of air rippled the oily sea; even the distant reef was silent. It was just such a morning as the rest, and the rain-god laughed at spells. Nevertheless, the women were sent to cut firewood to store in the huts, and to gather a store of bush-nuts against the time when the bush would be impassable. The canoes at the river-mouth were hauled up lest the flood should carry them away, and old Turo sat on the beach looking eastwards, and chuckling to himself.
But at noon the day is not like other days. The cockatoos are screaming, which they never do at noon on other days. Insect life is awake. The whole bush is singing, and only dull-witted man awaits a clearer sign. And now even that is given. A purple haze has gathered in the south-west. It resolves into a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand; there is a muttering in the heavens, the clouds rush up the sky, though not a breath as yet cools the simmering air or stirs the palm-leaves. The muttering grows to a murmur, the murmur to a distant roar. The air becomes dark; the roar gathers volume. There! there! to the south a great grey pillar rolls towards us, lashing the forest beneath it: the air grows cold. To your huts! it is upon us! and with a savage roar the rain-storm bursts. It does not break up into paltry drops, but gushes down upon the thirsty earth in one broad torrent, and the parched soil drinks it greedily, and sends up a sweet fresh smell in gratitude. Did the windows of heaven open so wide as this when Noah launched his clumsy craft upon the waters? Surely the ocean will overflow and engulf Ambrym.
Rain, rain, rain! The sodden thatch has long since ceased to turn the flood. The water beats down the tree-tops, bowing beneath its weight. A raging torrent has been formed through the village square. The soil is crumbling away to the house-foundations, and fast pouring out seawards. There are six inches of water in every house. The crazy rafters of Turo’s house have given way, and the last trophy has fallen and been whirled out to sea, grinning at its enemies’ new misfortunes. Voices are drowned in the never-ceasing roar of rushing water. It grows dark and light again, and again dark, and the people, hearing, seeing, and breathing nothing but water, cling helpless and dismayed to their house-posts, and wish for the day. The third morning dawns, and the men gather round the wreck of Turo’s house. Their voices are drowned by the rain and the river, whose trickling stream has long burst its banks and become a furious torrent. They shout to one another that the rain must be stopped. But who can stop it but the rain-makers? Erirala must again go to the wise with greater presents than those that brought the rain. The treasures of the village are collected, and Erirala, half drowned, is laden for his second embassy. Knee-deep in the swift muddy stream that has torn its way through the village, he toils step by step up what was once the path, and disappears. It is night when he reaches the rocky spur on which are perched the dwellings of the wise. He gropes his way to a hut, and shouts greetings through the blinding rain. A voice from within replies. The leaf door slides to one side, and a skinny arm is thrust out for the presents, yet is the envoy not invited in. He proffers his request. The foolish have had the rain. It was good. But there was a little too much of it. Will the wise be of a good mind and turn it off? The wise will do their best: and with this slender comfort Erirala is left to find his way back in the dark, half swimming and half sliding down the slippery path.
But with the dawn the rain has not ceased—nay, it has gathered double volume. What do these crafty hillmen mean? Will they kill us with water since they failed with drought? Or are they too lazy to raise a finger to save us?
Another night passes, and with the morning comes stern resolve. There is no doubt now what are the hillmen’s motives, and if we needs must die of water, let us at least redden it with our enemies’ blood. There shall be one last embassy to them, and they shall understand that the coast warriors will be trifled with no more. An ultimatum shall be sent to these crafty foes, and the rain shall either cease or be dyed with the blood of the rain-makers. Angry and defiant words are spoken at the meeting on the spur overlooking the village whither the foolish have removed from their inundated dwellings. Hungry and cold, they cower in the driving rain, without any shelter but the dripping trees,—men, women, and crying children huddled together, the victims of a cruel conspiracy between the malignant spirits and their mountain foes. Wearily Erirala leaves them, bound upon his last embassy, without presents this time, but with a stern message instead.
Hour after hour passes, and it is near nightfall when they hear his cry from the forest above them on the hillside. The men seize their weapons, and spring forward to meet him. “I told them that there would be evil unless the rain stopped to-night,” he answers; “and they said, ‘Draw out the cloth from under the stone and the rain will cease: it is a flat-topped stone.’”
What stone? Why, the river-bed, of course. Not a man is left to guard the women and children, for the whole of the warriors follow Erirala towards the river-bank. The roar gets louder as they rush on. It is the river—a broad foaming cataract by this time. What hope of finding the stone in such a hell of waters as this? But Erirala knows the place. A party is told off to cut stout vines from the forest, and in ten minutes a rope, to which a ship might swing, is made and fastened to a tree in the bend of the river, round which the flood-water swirls and eddies. Clinging to the other end, Erirala and the boy Narau are paid out into the stream, and as the current strikes their bodies they are whirled from side to side like a pendulum girt with a belt of foam, and followed by a foamy wake, like the track of a fast steamer. Near the middle of the stream there is a deep eddy. As Erirala reaches this he stretches up his arm, and perhaps shouts, though no sound is heard by those on shore. Both he and his companion disappear for a moment, come up for breath, dive again, and then emerge, waving their arms. The people on shore strain at the vine-rope. It does not yield an inch. Now, all together—pull! The rope stretches, yields an inch, another, and suddenly gives some six feet with a jerk. Narau disappears for a moment, and is then seen whirling downstream on the swift current, waving a dripping, sodden, greyish-looking rag. Poor Erirala is forgotten as the whole party rush for the point for which Narau is swimming. A dozen hands are stretched out to pull him ashore. Erirala, leaving the rope tied to the flat-topped stone, strikes out, and in a moment lands at the same place. Yes. Narau has the cloth, sodden though it be to a pulp of bark-fibre, scarce adhering together.
Surely already the rain is abating! Yes; there is no doubt of it! Why, there to the north-west, it is lighter! There is a break in the clouds. One can almost see where the sun is setting. It is little more than a drizzle now—not even that, for we are under the dripping trees. Two hours later one can see the stars, and the clouds are sweeping away in heavy masses to the southward.
But just think what would have happened if Erirala had not found the cloth under the flat-topped stone!