Sunday, June 28, 1908.
They had big heads of bushy hair. Half of them wore large nose-rings of tortoise shell and of wild-boar tusks. All of them were adorned with ear-rings. p288 Some ears were plugged with small logs of wood, two inches in diameter. One had the handle of an old teacup in his ear. The men of the New Hebrides looked truly civilised beside these fierce and grotesque figures. One of the islanders had the tin-wire sardine-can openers in his ears; but the strangest of all was the one who had the shell of a clock depending from the cartilage of his nose. All had anklets and armlets, and wore short lava-lavas of native cloth. And all were armed with spears, bows and arrows, and clubs. Some had immense bamboo combs in their hair; and through the noses of fully half our visitors were thrust long bamboo needles—clear through, so that the ends stuck out far beyond the cheeks; and on these ends were, in some cases, hung little rings, or pieces of shell. Their cheeks were tattooed in monstrous designs: little boys ornamented and tattooed just as fantastically as were the elders. Their teeth were filed to points, and were dead black; their lips, large and negroid, were ruby red.
Their canoes were the prettiest and most graceful of any we have yet seen. They are not mere dugouts with an outrigger, but long double-ended light-shell boats, the bows making a graceful curve several feet in the air. There is no outrigger. The canoes are paddled with long, slim, strangely carved paddles. Each boat is painted a different design, like a fine piece of tapa cloth. They glided round the Snark in the twinkling of an eye. It was all we could do to keep p289 the savages from boarding us. Not that they acted hostile, but they looked it.
Soon other canoes arrived from the other island, and there is no use denying that we were getting pretty well frightened, until, along about the middle of the afternoon, a canoe with only one occupant came alongside, and a big, naked savage, uglier than the rest, paddled round and round the Snark, trying to attract our attention. He smiled an ugly, ghastly smile that made us shudder, and finally, when he had our attention, he stood upright in his canoe, and with a bow that was meant to be graceful, said: "How-de-do," and then, losing his balance, fell into the water, his canoe turned over, and those three or four hundred cannibals laughed until their sides ached. It turned the tide for us, for the native swam to the side of the Snark and we could not refuse to let him aboard. Then he started talking English to us, real genuine English, and so far as I can remember, this is what he said:
"What name he belong you? Peter he name belong me. You no fright along people along Santa Anna, every people he stop along shore. He good people. You come along shore along me, me make 'm good time along you too much."
Being questioned, Peter told us that he had worked on a plantation for a missionary, and that the missionary had taught him English. He said that his people were good people, and asked us to go ashore with him. p290
Only one white man is on this island, a trader named Tom Butler. He had been to the other side of the island, but hearing of our arrival, he came aboard from his cutter, which, loaded with cocoanuts, was on the way home. Butler is nearly in his grave. He could scarcely get aboard, for he seems to be nearly paralysed. He was a sailor on a trading schooner until his mate was killed and kai-kai'd (eaten). He killed seven of the natives and could not get aboard again, so made his way here, and has been trading ever since. As he came over the rail, he whispered to Jack to watch out for Peter, the native who speaks English. He said he had tried to spear the manager of a big island trading concern who came here in his own schooner six months ago. These natives are all head-hunters. This village and the one across the bay are continually at war with each other, and each tribe collects the heads of the other tribe. Jack and Mrs. London went ashore with him, and brought back news that it is the most heathenish place they ever saw. The women, they say, are naked. Large carved totem poles in the centre of the village are covered with obscene figures. The natives are all armed with clubs, spears and bows. To-morrow I shall go ashore, and see for myself. In the morning the natives are coming out with weapons and other curios for us to buy. I'm very much frightened about my right foot. On the shin a large sore, big as a dollar, has started, and it is eating right into my leg. It seems that no medicine p291 aboard will cure it, and there is no doctor within thousands of miles that we know of. My ankle and leg has swollen to twice its natural size. Jack, I'm afraid, has one of these eating ulcers, too. If no doctor is on Florida Island, and if we are no better when we get there, I think we will sail for Sydney, Australia, for treatment, and that without delay.