A Yankee doctor in paradise

by S. M. Lambert

CHAPTER IV

THE FATE OF A RACE

Again the great coral wall with its skimpy crown of trees; again the mysterious crack in the cliffs that marked Kungava Bay. Buia, who had acquired malaria on his trip, had been running a temperature all night. He was quite normal now, but excited. His eyes glistened, his white teeth shone as he pointed out familiar landmarks. Over there was Ungu Ungu (Head Head) point. He had a place there, but no house; the piece of land he had inherited from his father’s line. On Kanava he had three pieces of land and a fine, big house. Yes, Buia had improved a lot since last night, when he had mourned, “Belly belong me he no good kaikai belong white man. Now me no look him Kanava again.” Part of that depression was malaria, the rest sea-sickness, for the ship had rolled heavily.

Canoes began pulling out toward us. Friends were coming aboard, and the foremost among them was Buia the Bastard, full of news, because the Big Master of Mengehenua was dead. God, who was “Master along Sky,” had cursed the chief for neglecting to send him gifts of food. Another Big Master had also forgotten his God, and was pretty sick. “Sick belong wind, him he too cold.” Whether he was describing influenza or tuberculosis it was hard to say.

After we had anchored inside the reef and come ashore we were permitted to approach Tahua, whom we found seated in state on a soapbox. On behalf of Mr. Crocker I made a presentation speech and laid an adze, a string of red beads, two razor blades and a butcher knife before the Presence. Tahua said simply, “Thank you.” The men of Rennell have no taste for the echo-ringing oratory of Samoa and Tonga.

Because it was raining, Tahua took us to his “house,” merely a tiny shelter, open at one end. “House him all bugger up,” he apologized, and showed a pile of beams cleverly hewn with the axes we had left on our former trip; all ready for the grand new architectural effect he was planning, to be Rennell’s show place, and to Tahua the largest building in the world. There was a ridgepole thirty-five feet long and several curved ribs to support the sloping pandanus-leaf roof. Tahua was getting to be a very rich man.

He was nobody’s fool. When I told him about the needles we wanted to use for the good of the people he understood and said that he would summon many for the stick-medicine. Shrewdly he added that when so many came around he could put them to work building his new house. He obliged Macgregor, there to inquire into racial origins, by reciting twenty-four generations of his ancestors and scraps of mouth-to-mouth history which, I think, had been garbled by European recorders. He told us that all the people of his district were blood kin, related to him. A common ancestor had come from Uvea (Wallis Island, directly to the west) and had crossed Rotumah and the Solomons. Tahua’s history, liberally salted with myth and demonology, might have been partly authentic. Undoubtedly all the Rennellese were first or second cousins; a picture of an inbred people who were far from physically degenerate. Their tabu against incestuous unions was so strict that brother and sister were not allowed to take medicine out of the same glass.

Macgregor, who talked with Tahua whenever he could, told me that the Big Master had named a great many of the islands where his ancestor had touched on his long voyage to Rennell. This was interesting, but threw no light on the racial origin. Their language was so nearly Polynesian that Macgregor could piece out whole sentences; his Polynesian was so like their own tongue that the people thought that he must have come from Rotumah, and took it for granted that he knew much more than he did of their customs and theogony. For this reason they showed him many sacred places hidden in the bush, forbidden to all but the initiate.

Tahua was grimly silent about Mr. Borgas, the missionary who had tagged him “M.V.,” but when the inhabitants came crowding into our ship we soon found that the missionary scandal was the biggest news that had broken on Rennell since the day of the famous murder. Superficially these natives had not changed much, except that they spoke more pidgin and had somehow lost their light-fingered habit of carrying away every little thing they happened to fancy. Already the girls were approaching the personable members of our crew, and by their clamorous “Me want knifie” and “Me want akis (axe)” it was plain to see that the price of love had gone up. Razor blades were coming in, so empty beer bottles had lost their market value.

In all his wide travel Crocker had never seen anything like the Rennellese. Aside from their racial oddity, he said, they were the friendliest people he had yet encountered. I mentioned a doctor I once knew who was so darned sociable—always poking me with a toothbrush—that I learned to dislike him. Crocker didn’t understand my simile—then. Later on he did.

One big man, kneeling beside my table, talked volubly about missionary Borgas. He called him “Bawgus” as in the tone in which you’d mention some unmentionable disease. Bawgus had baited the hook by asking them aboard ship—“You like lookim along shippie?” So they looked along shippie. “Then he go ashore he putim tabu along shippie.” Mr. Borgas hadn’t offered any tribute to Tahua, either in the way of food or tobacco. The only thing he had to offer gratis was Salvation—and “M.V.” armbands.... My faith in Rennell was somewhat renewed when the kneeling man beside me said, “Mission he come, Master he finish. Big Master along Sky he finish too.” Meaning, in plain English, that if Rennell became missionized its past would vanish; and they were on the alert.

I hope I haven’t satirized the friendliness of these people. Their generosity surpassed anything I have seen anywhere, the Cook Islands not excepted. They may have seemed overeager in grasping for the things they wanted—mostly things of steel; but in their trades they gave away the best they had, and with the faith of little children. I was fairly sickened by the sight of their carefree swapping with some of our crew—precious heirlooms for a few cigarettes or a tin rattle. I saw one beautifully carved and polished ebony “Big Master’s stick”—a royal scepter to them—go to a sailor for a penny stick of rank twist. The sailor wanted the stick, and the owner just couldn’t refuse. There were many fine museum pieces frittered away like that. Why argue about the price, when visitors were so pleasant?

From a doctor’s point of view, the traffic in women was still more discouraging. Tahua, as a mark of extreme favor, offered me his daughter, although, he explained, she was promised to Buia the Bastard. When I informed him that I was married and had a “mary” of my own, he listened respectfully; I’m sure he didn’t know what that had to do with it.

For several nights the parties in the forecastle went on at a furious pace; they kept it up until Crocker showed the sailors that he was boss of the Zaca and would allow no visitors aboard after six o’clock. In the riotous period that led up to the ultimatum I found one deck hand solemnly scrubbing a native beauty with a piece of brown soap and rinsing her at the end of a hose. It was probably the first real bath she ever had; I was surprised at the lightness of her skin, which would match that of the purest Polynesian.

When I had come there on the France, we jaunty explorers were all so dirty that we had somewhat deadened our sense of smell. But fresh from the luxurious cleanliness of the Zaca, I was conscious of the prevalent B.O. of Rennell. It took some tact for me to remind Buia that what he needed was a bath. He received the news amiably, dived into the bay and swam like a fish. Even without soap he lightened at least two shades, and was vain about it when I held up a mirror.

Panio, the political strong-arm, was especially aromatic; I was quite overcome by his meekness when I suggested that he follow Buia’s example. When he came out of the water, a paler and a better man, he told me that he had had some experience with talk-marks, the kind I made on the typewriter. But his words hadn’t been any good. He handed me a piece of paper which a visiting skipper had given him by way of introduction to passing ships. But when Panio had shown it to other skippers they had been cross too much. I read his paper and quite understood. It said, “To whom it may concern. Don’t have anything to do with this bloody bastard. He is a proper wrong un.” The skipper who wrote that reference was a student of human nature.

I had thought that Templeton Crocker’s firm stand against midnight visitors might have dangerous repercussions. Or at least the effect wouldn’t be very lasting. It was good for about twenty-four hours, I found; the people were kind but insinuating, and they all came back. The only way to shorten visiting hours, we learned, was to see the Big Masters; and when we managed that, the scene grew quieter—Or did it? One evening after dinner, a number of native beauties were draping their pretty figures over about everything on the ship, animate or inanimate. “Maury” Willowes, who was serving as a human coat-hanger for about six of the clinging ladies, did not attempt to brush them off as he made his bon mot: “Just another quiet evening at home.” And our host, who had at first declared the Rennellese among the most beautiful works of nature, sniffed a little at the prevalent native bouquet.

Next day I wrote in my diary:—

Mr. Crocker is working on the deck astern, or trying to; Panio is summoning some friends at a half-mile distance, in a voice that might blow a hole in the ship; a girl and two boys are playing mouth organs steadily in my right ear; Maury, heaven help us, is trading out baby rattles, the kind with bells on them; a man is bouncing a rubber ball, and is so awkward about catching it that my little Sara Celia could show him how. Older men are clamoring for knives and hatchets, but the ones of military age have gone crazy about musical tops.... Where was I, anyhow? Oh, yes, this morning on the beach I gave a cigarette to Teina, and he said, “You pickaninny belong me.” I suppose he was trying to say that I was his father....

Rennell Island was advancing, but in her march of progress she had taken the wrong fork in the road. A great many of the men had discarded native costume and were taking a fancy to lavalavas. To impress us, perhaps, they would pull lavalavas over the time-honored breachclouts they called kongoa. Or they’d take off the kongoa altogether and substitute “calicoes” for them. On Barley’s recent trip his crew had brought in several thousand cigarettes, salvaged from a wrecked Japanese vessel, and the Rennellese had taken to them like so many ducks to water. New tastes, new ways.... The growing craze for European costume was illustrated in the behavior of Mua, son of Taupangi, who followed me around the ship, archly suggesting that I give him a pair of trousers and a shirt. I tried to tell him that it would curse Rennell, if he started such nonsense.

******

What had happened to the fierce tabu on feces examinations, which had embarrassed us on our former trip? Old Tahua, in whose presence we had not dared to whisper the forbidden thing, was now strangely approachable. Perhaps an extra box of fishhooks tickled his overdeveloped acquisitiveness. At any rate, he permitted Malakai, aided by Buia, to give him our stock hookworm lecture with chart and all the fixings. Immediately he commanded that a number of young boys should report to the tent we had set up on the beach, and be properly examined. Later on he ordered out a number of women for the same inspection.

This concession was obliging to us and convenient to our work. But underneath the courtesy I felt a certain loosening of the old religious ties which had held Rennell’s proud racial identity. World without end, they had worshiped with a single-mindedness which was like that of Medieval Europe when the Church was all in all and the Pope its interpreter. Religion had come first with the Rennell folk, and had entered into every duty of their practical lives.

Outwardly they were still religious. But what undercurrents of doubt were entering the new desires and ambitions? They still seemed unquestioningly obedient to the Big Masters, who spoke with the voice of God. Did the Divine One and his lesser divinities still listen to their inner thoughts, as they had three short years ago? Their code of sins and virtues had been different from ours, but just as strict. What would happen to them when all their traditions went to the junk-pile?

As I worked in my tent on the beach, many things that I had not known before came filtering in. Dr. Macgregor told me more, for he was there to study the past and present of a strange people. Through Buia, loyal to the White Sands, I learned why I had better not go to the Lake this time. Tahua and Taupangi were in a jealous quarrel again over property rights. In the past year or so Taupangi had had an inspiration: If Tahua got iron through his possession of the White Sands, then Taupangi would have an anchorage of his own. Therefore he had made a three-mile shortcut to a place in the cliffs where it was just possible to get up and down. Here he could launch canoes and invite the crews of passing ships to come to the Lake by the shortest way; something like our road-signs, “Shortest Route to Atlantic City.” Roughhewn as the idea was, it fetched some trade to Taupangi’s district. Tahua was in a boiling rage, and the people of the White Sands well knew that the two lesser Masters who had aided in Taupangi’s forbidden trail had been afflicted with a fatal sickness which only Tahua’s God could inflict.

An embassy from the Lake visited my tent with Taupangi’s cordial invitation to come to his district with my treatments. Buia gave me a warning look, so I was obliged to decline. We were indebted to the White Sands for our anchorage and headquarters. No telling what Tahua might do if the white witch doctor should desert him for a hated rival. So I let Gordon White go to the Lake with some of the Zaca’s scientists. Tahua granted them that favor, after I had offered a practical idea for his benefit. Why not join forces with the Lake people and cut a good trail across that awful eight miles of vines and coral? Make communications easy, and Taupangi would forget about his rival anchorage.... It was like asking a blue Republican to junk a tariff barrier for the benefit of mutual trade. But Tahua thought it over....

They were pouring in from every district to be lined up in our tent. While we worked at our trade Macgregor, at the other end, worked at his, and Dr. Hynes, our surgeon, studied the blood groupings of 100 people in hopes of throwing some light on their racial origin. They were almost equally divided between Group O and Group B, with almost no A’s or AB’s, a quite different finding than European grouping, which furnishes data for specialist study in anthropology; and they did not seem to check up with other Polynesian typing.

Dr. Macgregor, who was a Harvard Ph.D. in anthropology and had had the superlative advantages offered by the Bishop Museum, was a young scientist with the proper equipment of learning and enthusiasm. As the line of natives passed through our tent he took head measurements and found a cephalic index of 74-75, about the same as that of the so-called Nordics. He reached the conclusion that they were not usual Polynesians in the sense that Hawaiians, Samoans, Cook Islanders, and others are Polynesians. They had many elements of Melanesian culture, such as certain points in their god-worship, and their habit of betel-chewing. They knew nothing of that Polynesian favorite, kava; and many of their words were not Polynesian at all. But physically they were not Melanesian, nor were they of the Micronesian race that I myself had seen in the Gilberts and the western Bismarcks. It was no wild conjecture to call them pre-Polynesian, of which there is still a small element in Tonga.

Somewhere in their first long voyage from Nowhere to Nowhere they had picked up certain Polynesian arts and habits: like the making of tapa cloth and the smearing of their bodies with sacred turmeric. History records that the Tongafiti, conquering fathers of Polynesia, had fallen upon Rennell Island some 400 years before; but not to conquer. The Rennellese warriors had slain all but one man. That man finally built a canoe and started for his home. The Rennellese had some knowledge of invaders very like the Tongafiti. As we saw them there were no mixed bloods—with the exception of two half-castes, probably the issue of visiting sailors.

Malakai and I, representing the medical end of the enterprise, were busy with a count of native diseases. We were saving hookworm examinations for the last and were winning popular confidence through less objectionable tests. If I had been pessimistic when I came back to Rennell, I was glad to find many of my fears groundless. There was no filariasis, nor was any evidence to be found of the anopheline mosquito; and there were no diagnostic signs of malaria. Buia actually had malaria; I knew, because I treated him for it. But he had been with Barley on Malaita, where he undoubtedly picked it up. As to tuberculosis, I found less on Rennell than anywhere else I had visited. Yaws was no menace; the local habit of isolating sufferers until the sores were healed had reduced the disease to a few tertiary cases—Buia told me that I would find much yaws on Bellona, where they did not practise the ancient quarantine custom. There was still plenty of itch on Rennell, but that too seemed to be wearing itself out.

I have described the technique of getting hookworm, but because the question was most important to me on Rennell, I hope to be forgiven for describing it again.

Little tins are given out for feces specimens, and their contents examined. If you want worms you choose the people who have been found positive through examination; positive because hookworm eggs have been found in their specimens. You dose them with the drug, say tetrachloride, then you give them a “jerry,” which is usually a five-gallon benzine tin, and tell them that all their bowel motions for die day must be deposited in the big container. A purge has been given after the tetrachloride, to hurry things up. At the end of twenty-four hours the whole stool is washed through several thicknesses of surgical gauze until only a sediment remains. This sediment is taken by tablespoonful and floated with a little water in a photograph tray, where the worms can be seen with difficulty, especially if die patient has been eating fibrous vegetables. Then he is given another saline purge and he deposits his bowel motion for another twenty-four hours. Then the same procedure is repeated. To do a good job another day’s collection should be made. This is difficult in a hospital, and much more difficult among savages. In New Guinea we had to put them behind barbed wire, in Fiji we often locked them up.

On Rennell we were not given permission to do this work until the last few days, and we only got Tahua’s consent by paying him liberally in fishhooks. The examinations were on the beach, and the subjects all girls; they had been forced to submit by the Big Master, who cannily believed that if some magic curse should fall on a few girls it wouldn’t matter. Malakai and Gordon were supposed to keep guard over these patients; but with new ones coming all the time, they were probably not very well watched. The infection was very light, and probably many of the stools missed. Later on, when we examined the material, we found no worms. The trouble was that the Big Master’s permission had come so late that a technique suited to such bizarre circumstances was impossible. The delay resulted in our frustration.

They had no conception of disease. When it came to tuberculin tests we had immense difficulty in getting them to report for more than one injection, for the Big Parade was always going on and they didn’t want to miss any of it. Time, of course, was nothing to them. That mental quirk, as well as those above noted, worked dead against us. Remember, it was a land of savages, a stark beach, no houses to speak of and an almost constant rain. Add to this the native’s superstitious shyness. Once, when I caught Buia in a very personal occupation, he almost died of fear.

I had done my best to inquire into the prevalence of gonorrhea, the old enemy of racial fertility. Examinations were, of course, out of the question—you could examine a Rennellese man only by felling him with an ax. I suspected that this venereal germ had revisited Rennell, and when I looked over our crew after departure my suspicions were justified. I could learn little from a people who in no way associated the infection with promiscuity; they regarded all disease as merely a curse following the violation of a tabu, even an unconscious violation. But what I found that our sailors had picked up from Rennell alarmed me as to the island’s future. The barriers were down, the White Sands were offering the most generous hospitality to visiting sailors. I had seen other island populations sink for similar reasons.

A nightly chore was counting the sick aboard ship. Templeton Crocker’s foot was about well; however we had persuaded him not to bruise it again in that awful overland walk to the Lake. Stuart, our botanical collector, was in bed with a severe leg ulcer. He had tramped all over Java and Borneo in the Chancellor-Stuart expedition, and now he chafed because his legs were not taking him along. Toschio seemed to have recovered from the sickness that took us to Tulagi, and otherwise we seemed fit to carry on. Except that I was suffering from a boil on my leg.

One night Buia came aboard and asked Malakai to intervene with Mr. Crocker for more food for the people who had come down to be treated. Malakai, always a sympathetic observer of the natives, said that he had watched them and they had gone all day without a thing to eat. These people were nomads, really—nomads on an island fifty miles long. When they traveled they never thought of carrying provisions. I went to Crocker, and found him generous again. In free feeds for Rennell he had already dipped pretty deep into our stock of eatables, but he managed to dig up another banquet and send it ashore. I asked Buia why the people went hungry when they could fish in the bay, and he said it was tabu to eat fish from the bay while our sewage was emptying there.

I caught Buia off his guard and told him that I had learned the names of the two Gods who ruled his island: they were the old Tetanosanga, whose girth measured ten fathoms, and his grandson Teaitutabu. Listening to the sacred words, Buia stood aghast and begged me never, never to say those names again. Only the Big Masters could speak them, and that only in a whisper. I liked Buia for his reverence, when he prayed away my rash impiety. While he prayed I felt that faith had not departed from his people, and might strengthen them to stand against the white invader, as they had stood against the Tongafiti.

Prayer was a part of their daily lives. Gordon Macgregor on his visit to the Lake saw a sacred and secret ceremony never before shown to a white man. He had asked a question, and old Taupangi went into a “sweating trance,” seeking divine guidance. His two companions held the chiefs heavily perspiring body while his eyes rolled and his head fell. They were afraid he would die. At last his assistant took a strip of tapa and bound it tightly around his waist to squeeze out the possessing spirit. Then he recovered from his trance and delivered a somewhat confused message: Possibly it would be all right, he said, for his son to go on a trip with Macgregor.

Taupangi was the only one of the five Big Masters who could speak directly to God. The others had to communicate through an intermediary. Tahua lacked the mystic power. With receptive soul he had waited all his life for God to enter him and show favor, but he died with his wish unanswered.

Religion was an everyday, every hour affair with these simple, devout people, and the way to Heaven was marked out for them. When a soul entered Paradise it was a very small soul, but it grew as a child grows, and attained magnificent size among the immortals. It was a man’s Heaven, for earth-women were hardly worth sending there, especially since Eternity was supplied with many beautiful creatures, superior in every way to the merely human female. When a Big Master died a heavy club was buried with him to protect him against devil-devils on the way to his Valhalla. The “Big Master’s stick,” his wand of office, was stuck on the top of his grave, and this marked his term of office as a spiritual interpreter; for as long as the stick lasted his earthly successor might use it as a mouthpiece to Heaven and consult with the late Big Master, and with the supreme Ngenggo, the Grandson God. When the stick rotted in the ground the deceased was no longer the heavenly interpreter, and the next in line assumed the office.

Macgregor was at last keen enough to see that my pidgin was a valuable means of communication. He found that the sacred name for their god was Ngenggo, the same as Rengo in Rotumah.[6] Rengo was another name for turmeric, sacred to the bodies of high personages. Between us we found that the Big Masters spoke indirectly to the gods, through their ancestors. As if to throw up a defense across the sacred names, they had two names at least for the two principal gods. On my first trip a Master told me that the principal god was called Tainatua, as I understood it—really Taiinggatua. Then Barley, a little later, learned that the two were Tetanosanga and Teaitutabu (the Sacred God). At the Lake, Macgregor found that Teaitutabu and Ngenggo were one and the same. He collected some wonderful material there, especially concerning religion and ceremonies, and was able to improve on it through his wide experience in Rotumah and the Tokelaus. Incidentally Macgregor saw a two-headed stick used as an object of worship.

As we worked out the puzzling pantheon, Tetanosanga (another name for Taiinggatua) was grandfather to the god Teaitutabu (otherwise Ngenggo). They presided over the world, as Rennell knew it, and Ngenggo never left his home in the skies. His grandfather, however, roamed the earth and reported happenings to Ngenggo. The Grandson God was the most powerful of the Sky Masters, and Buia said, “Suppose him he talk-talk he sabe make you die quick.” While Ngenggo stayed at home the Old One went everywhere, saw and heard everything, and if there were those who ignored divine laws, Ngenggo punished them. Not only could he kill men, but he could demolish trees, islands, anything. There were prayers to the gods before every simple meal. There were ceremonies of food presentation to the gods, too involved to describe in anything but a book on anthropology. But if the regular tribute of food to a god was neglected, the offender would surely sicken and die.

Buia told me of Charley Cowan’s ship which had anchored at Taupangi’s Lake anchorage. Charley, Buia said, gave the ship to Taupangi, and Taupangi in turn gave it to the Big Master along Skies. Then the divinity replied that Cowan might go on using his vessel, provided that he came back at intervals to Taupangi’s anchorage. The Big Master warned him not to take it to Tahua’s beach, but Cowan on his next trip went to the White Sands. As a result of this disobedience, Buia said, Taupangi “talked along” the watchful Grandson God, and as a result both Cowan and his partner died. (As a matter of fact, these men did die, to my knowledge.) It was post hoc rather than propter hoc; but try to make a Rennellese believe that Taupangi didn’t pray them to death! Buia was afraid for the Zaca if it called at Taupangi’s anchorage for Macgregor and White....

Nothing was attempted and few thoughts conceived without first seeking the advice of the gods. The people even consulted their ancestors through a bamboo stick dug into a grave. I once caught the tough Panio using this sort of spirit-telephone.

Gordon White, coming back from Tenggano with the usual tatters and coral scratches, reported that the Lake People had not depreciated much in health. He said that my old chum Taupangi grieved that I had not come up to live with him for the balance of my life. The Zaca’s party at the Lake had dined with the Big Master every day, and were interested to find that somebody had taught him to eat with a fork and drink tea out of a china cup. He liked plenty of sugar in his tea and stirred it for five minutes, with his fork. They took movies of the harvest festival, and Gordon noticed what a change had come over the scene since last we saw it. There was no high fence around the grounds, and women were allowed to look on. Another old tabu was fading out.

Not to be outdone by his hated rival, Taupangi had loosened up on the hookworm tabu; but his people were still so queer about being examined that our party got no good specimens. There was an epidemic of head colds, so frequent that our outfit was now catching the germ from Rennell—a reversal of our first experience there.

When Macgregor came back to the White Sands the majority of the Lake population followed him, crazy to see the Zaca. Gordon White tried to bribe them to stay home, offering toy balloons and tin trumpets, but these things bored them. They were out for iron, and intended to get it. Taupangi overcame his grouch against Tahua (who would allow him nothing better than a leaky leaf-shelter when he was on the beach) and joined the exodus. So did Tekita and Tamata. Only Mua remained as intermediary; although he was the Big Master’s son and heir he hadn’t had enough of God’s authority to coax the people up to Gordon’s tent, so it had become a matter of visiting every leaf-shelter in the place and giving tests. Tuberculosis didn’t seem alarming. Wanderlust was the prevailing ailment. Mua, Tekita, Tamata, everybody who could get a word in edgewise, had tried to wheedle Gordon into taking them away on the boat. If Buia had traveled and learned about the great world, why shouldn’t they? These simple folk, to whom Rennell had been all in all, were growing restless, discontented with this frugal island which had once satisfied their every want—because they had never learned to want the unnecessary. A self-containing social structure, an unquestioning faith in divinities who could give and who could take away, scanty food which they gained by wholesome labor and gratefully thanked God for.... That was their plenty. But to human nature, plenty is too often not enough. Perhaps that is the real Martyrdom of Man.

******

Little Bellona Island (Mungiki) lay twenty-five miles over there, and I was anxious to survey it again, and to show it to Crocker’s expedition. The Big Masters of Rennell had explained carefully why Mungiki had a richer soil than theirs. In days of old, the semi-mythical Ko Fiti had been driven out of Rennell, but before they left they had done a spiteful thing; they had scraped the good topsoil off Rennell and dumped it on Mungiki.

Our Zaca moved across the short stretch of sea. In sight of Bellona’s forbidding cliffs I sent a short radio message to Eloisa; a demonstration of science in the midst of savagery.

A man came out in a canoe and gave his name as Samoana, which was pure Samoan for Guardian of the Sea. He guided us to a beach which had changed so in three years that I hardly knew it. Great storms had washed it clean of sand; now it was a forest of sharp coral points. When I sat down on the softest lump I could find, I was immediately surrounded by a half-hundred fierce faces; threatening fists were full of bows, arrows and spears. A man who came out of a cave seemed to own the beach, and I asked him if we might pitch our tent there. No, he said archly, if we set up a tent (“big calico”) we might take a notion to stay. A poor start, but with the help of Buia I managed to persuade him that we were moving on in four days. When I asked for the chiefs to come to me—a policy I adopted on Bellona—Samoana went away, then came back to report that Ponge, the Big Master, sat with three lesser Masters, presiding at a great festival. He couldn’t possibly come, as he was very tabu; his face was blackened, which was the deepest of all tabus.

Buia brought in the three lesser Masters, who surprised me with their willingness to have the people inspected. And of course it would be all right to have the big calico on the shore—if we didn’t stay too long. When I told them that I had left much of my equipment in a big calico on the White Sands, with the assurance that nothing would be stolen, the three Masters promised me that my goods would be respected. And they kept their word. Even on Rennell I had found that the people were learning the difference between meum and teum. Sleeping on that beach would be about as comfortable as a Hindu fakir’s bed of nails, and Bellona’s geological freaks made water available only by catching it in coconut shells or the funny wooden bowls they used for that purpose. The Bellonese, who were the gentlest people in the world in spite of their savage look, seemed to subsist almost without water. A little coconut juice satisfied bodies that had adjusted themselves to conditions.

I loaded the three Masters on the small boat and we presented them with candy and tinned meat. Crocker turned on the phonograph, with startling effect. They all began to shake and shiver; Buia’s cousin Takeika rose nervously and tried to take the machine down to his canoe. We had to tell him that it was very tabu for anybody but Crocker, who was Captain to them—the highest title they could understand. We didn’t turn the record on again. They were very curious about the two little fishes which Buia had tattooed on my left ankle. They didn’t know that my ankle was still sore where a needle (made from a sliver of human bone) had gone in, or that my leg was sensitive from a couple of buried boils, which I had carried with me from Suva and hadn’t given a chance to cure. They smacked their lips and rolled their eyes, marveling at the tattooed fishes, symbols of Rennell.

They seemed to think that the Rennell people put on airs. Macgregor found that Bellona gave a soft sound to ng, as in “sing,” where Rennell hardened it to ngg, as in “finger.” Probably considered an affectation, like the English broad a....

Malakai and I, setting up a tent on the beach, found that the petting habit on Bellona was slightly worse than that of Rennell. People surrounded us like sticky flies. Two or three would run their hands down my shirt collar, to see if my worshipful belly was real or just padding; two or three more would be lifting up my trousers to marvel at my white ankles, and the tattooed fishes. That massage, with inquisitive and dirty hands, went on for four days. It went hardest with Crocker, who had more respect for his personal dignity than some of us. He was getting used to being called Captain—on Rennell he had tried to insist that his name was Owner, but that hadn’t made sense to the native. Captain meant Boss, and you couldn’t go any higher than that.

At last we went to Big Master Ponge, since he was too sacred to move from his seat of dignity. Every time my sore leg came down I suppressed a moan, and wondered why I had ever left Suva in such condition. Whenever the choking scrub along the way opened up a little I had pleasant views of the neat, thatched houses. They looked very pretty at a distance, but when I went into some of them I found only dirt floors, with hardly a mat to squat on—and all the time dirty natives were patting my hands, pawing my shoes, stockings, every inch of me.

Big Master Ponge had invited us to a dance, and that was the reason for those weary three miles. As we had done in Rennell, we crawled on our stomachs under the low eaves and faced the Presence on all fours. And there was the great Ponge, seated on his dais and looking for all the world, as Maury said, like a Chinese mandarin. But a mandarin doing a black-face act, for his cheeks, nose and forehead were thick with tabu soot. He shook hands all round and listened carefully when I told him why we had come, and how Crocker had invited him to visit the Zaca. Macgregor talked, and presented him with a cane-knife—and I hoped he’d use it to clear a path through that awful scrub. In behalf of his Master Tahua, Buia gave him an American ax. By way of ecclesiastical blessing Ponge pronounced us “good fellow too much.” I didn’t wait for the dance, but limped back over the terrible trail. I had business awaiting me on the beach.

I looked over the people that filed through my tent and was surprised to see how much clearer skinned and robust they were than the inhabitants of the White Sands. They appeared cleaner, but they smelled a little worse than the Rennellese. I saw some hideous cases of yaws, and remembered what Buia had said: The Bellona folk did not quarantine it. In fact the Rennellese quarantine was the only one I ever saw among primitive people.

Bellona called it caho, and when I asked in the presence of the crowd where caho came from, they answered to a man that Dr. Deck’s missionaries had brought it. Dr. Deck had botched his expeditions sufficiently, without this. Even though Deck’s excursions might have brought some of it, it was just a case of yaws meet yaws, I thought. If the people of Bellona were Polynesian, this was the only Polynesian spot on the Pacific where the disease was not called tona or some name much like it. Their ignorance of the word suggested that they had been pushed out of some Western Polynesian group before they had had a chance to come in contact with the Tongans; for yaws is a curse that does not die out of itself, and if they had come to Bellona after meeting Tongans, they would have carried the Tongan name tona.

Macgregor, taking anthropological measurements, found them physically identical with the Rennellese—probably the relics of a pre-Polynesian race. I found that they needed a doctor for yaws, and not much more; otherwise they would be a thousand times better off if no white man’s foot ever again touched their coral-scragged beach. Isolation had made them happier than the Rennellese, I thought. Five ships had touched at Rennell Island in three years, and more were coming. Bellona had only seen two in that time, and those two had been given a cool reception. An object lesson in self-preservation.

It seemed strange that they had more iron tools per capita than the Rennellese, until I heard that Bellona was arrow-maker for Rennell, and demanded her pay in iron. The chiefs might have been sharp traders, but one of the Masters was pretty dull when he gave Crocker a royal treasure out of respect to his rank as “Captain.” The gift might take rank with Charlemagne’s scepter for its antiquarian value and its rare material. It was a king’s mace, a shaft of wood with a knob of stone on the end. To Rennell and Bellona real stone was worth its weight in diamonds, for there was absolutely none of it between the beetling coral cliffs. The piece that tipped this relic might have come from Tucopia in olden times, or from undreamed-of distances. It was the last king’s mace on either island, and there are only four in the world. The other three are in museums: at Brisbane, Cambridge University, and the British Museum.

Macgregor had tried sleeping in the tent on the beach, but had given it up for uncanny reasons. He had set up an army cot, got into it—and found that two local chiefs had decided to sleep on the coral floor right under him. In the middle of the night his cot began to shake, and he found the worried chiefs rousing him. “Master,” they said, “you must go at once. In our dreams God spoke in our heads asking, ‘Who is this that dares sleep above me?’” Macgregor didn’t argue the point, but went.

On Bellona there was one big native who seemed to double for Panio as local nuisance. He had bothered me a great deal when we were there on the France expedition. Now he was on and off the Zaca, strutting like a magpie and yelling his slogan in my ear: “Gimme, thank you! Gimme, thank you!” I called him Mr. Gimme and tried to laugh him off, which was pretty hard to do when I was giving injections on the beach with him clinging to my elbow. Our last afternoon at Bellona I told Maury Willowes how I should love to plant my foot on Mr. Gimme’s sciatic nerve, and Maury grinned, “Why don’t you?”

We were safely near sailing time when Mr. Gimme came at me again and had hardly opened his mouth for the familiar slogan when I put my walking stick against his mid-section and firmly poked him halfway down the accommodation ladder. He plunked into his canoe and his look was demoniacal as he yelled his farewell curse: “Gimme, thank you!”

There were no reprisals. Peaceably the three kings came aboard to shake hands all around and receive their final gift of hardware. They were very cordial, glad that we were going so soon. I admired their self-protective attitude, and hoped that they wouldn’t weaken, as Rennell was weakening. They were fine people, and I didn’t hold Mr. Gimme against them. There is at least one Panio in every neighborhood that I know of.

******

Before the Zaca pulled away from the White Sands and headed toward Tulagi I had a farewell glimpse of a people who were turning too soon towards ideals which could never work anything but harm for them. Over on the beach Tahua was bossing a construction gang. They were putting up the frame of his house, a big house, a fine house, a house that would make Taupangi feel pretty small. Keeping up with the Joneses, and a lap ahead of them.... When Taupangi came aboard to rub noses and wish us all back soon, he reminded Gordon White that he had given him a present of fine mats—but he was keeping them for him up at the Lake, so that Gordon would be sure and return there with more medicine. Competition was making old Taupangi canny as a Scot. Many of the natives, who stayed with us until the ship’s propeller turned, came in fashionable lavalavas.

Buia remained aboard until we were rounding Unga Unga, then a canoe picked him up. Buia, I am afraid, was getting a touch of bighead. He was too intelligent to become another Panio, but his reputation as a cruise conductor had done him no good. Crocker had been annoyed with his way of walking in on every party and taking possession. I was more relenting, for I had a real affection for this heir to a Big Mastership, and knew that he might rule with wisdom, if only he were let alone to serve his native God. To him we were something to be admired and imitated, and he had sought to adjust himself as best he knew how. Hadn’t they all?

He paddled away in his canoe. The Zaca turned out to sea; Rennell Island became a faint blue shadow in the distance. I wondered what could be done about these unique people, infinitely valuable to scientific study. It was something like an emergency case; but in the wide Pacific you can’t send a fast ambulance to emergency cases. Relief comes slowly, biding its time for the Government to make up its mind, for competent medical men to take over the work, for boats to sail, for treasuries to cover the necessary expenses. Sometimes years pass between visit and visit—especially to a small world like Rennell Island, which needed protection far more than it needed medicine.

******

At last, graduate N.M.P.’s were sent to Rennell Island; they went one at a time for a six months’ service, fully equipped, but alone. An outstanding one was Eroni, a full-blood Fijian who gained a nickname: “the only white man on Mungava.” Patient and responsible as only a Fijian can be, he went barefoot over every coral snag and bog on the island. Conscientiously he treated everything they had. Once he saw the natives catch a shark according to custom; they wrestled with it in the water, bound it with ropes and hauled it in. One man had his hand bitten off, and Eroni saved him with a tourniquet. He was surprised to find that the Rennellese themselves had always known how to apply a tourniquet. Eroni was ever ready for emergency calls as well as methodical mass treatments.

But one medical man, work as he might, could not enforce that ounce of prevention which, on Rennell, would have been worth many pounds of cure.

Before the High Commission in Suva I tried to drive home the necessity of government protection for these defenseless people. The waters should be patrolled and mischievous ships kept away. Medical authority should be carefully admitted, and a properly hand-picked anthropologist. At the very mention of the latter profession I met opposition. A number of vicious playboys who masked as “scientific investigators” had put anthropology in bad odor. It used to be that everybody’s hat was off to every wandering bluffer who claimed to hold a key to the mystery of man’s origin. Too many of these fellows had overstayed their time—usually on islands where women were the prettiest. One “anthropologist” had just been ordered off the Pacific; he had been charged with violating two little girls. So the High Commission, although they quite understood my attitude, rather thought that I should take the matter up in London. The snag was somewhere in the Colonial Office, they said.

Here are a few lines from a letter I wrote His Excellency, the High Commissioner; just an item in the literature that passed back and forth in my long plea for the Rennell Islanders:—

Spiritually they have a gentle religion in which there is no skepticism and no cruelty. Socially it would be hard to convince me that these savages are not more highly advanced than we are. There is almost a complete absence of crime. Morally they have a code which suits them, and to which they adhere exactly. They themselves say that they do not want government, missions or doctors....

The High Commissioner’s reply, in part:—

The Bishop of Melanesia has suggested that he should be allowed to select young men from Rennell, train them as preachers, and send them back. What is your view of this proposal?

My answer in brief:—

... Unfortunately, when anyone’s ideas on any subject differ from those of a missionary, he is immediately put down as anti-missionary, if not anti-Christian. The only question on which all of the Mission Societies will unite is opposition to any attempt to limit in the least degree, for any purpose whatsoever, the extension of mission work. On all other questions they are drawn up in armed camps against each other. I am not anti-mission in any particular, and any reasonable man must be pro-mission, if he is acquainted with the history of mission efforts in the Pacific, where they have been the great humanizers and educators of the native races. However....

In 1936 the Foundation’s business took me to London, where I told my story to three famous anthropologists: Elliot-Smith, Haddon and Malinowski; their sympathy was all with my plan to protect the two islands, Rennell and Bellona. The important man to see was Sir Thomas Stanton, Briton’s Chief Medical Officer. Sir Thomas was easy to meet and to talk to. He was one of the Central Medical School’s enthusiasts. When I had finished my work in Fiji, he suggested, why couldn’t I go to the West Indies and organize an institution on the Suva plan? And I was delighted to hear that he had about decided to promote my friend, Dr. McGusty, to the post of the High Commission’s C.M.O. Nothing could be better luck for the Pacific, and I am proud if I put in a good word for a good man. I hope I had a share in his appointment.

My main proposal, aside from a plan to protect Rennell from mischievous influences, was to have a thorough anthropological survey made there. I suggested that the Bishop Museum of Honolulu take charge of this, for it had been founded in memory of a high-born Hawaiian lady, and her husband’s wealth had made it pre-eminent in Polynesian culture. Dr. Peter Buck, a Maori, was curator; the Museum could furnish just the talent we needed.

I was referred to the Colonial Office, where I struck the mysterious snag. Possibly the British objected because the Bishop Museum was an American institution; if so, they were stretching a point, for its leader was (and still is) a New Zealand Maori.

More likely it was the Church that stood in our way. When the news spread that I thought the old-time religion of Rennell was good enough for the people, and that the missionaries had only brought murder, disease and discontent to the little island, the Bishop of Melanesia sent a thundering message, declaring that he could “permit no boundaries to the Empire of Christ.” Possibly the Adventists were putting in an oar, too; for I had heard one of them say in objection to the exclusion of his faith: “For we bring to the Rennellese God’s greatest gift, the Bible.” And there was another who said, “I would feel that I must go, even if I knew that as a result every one of them would die.”

Governments and missions have been too often slandered, I think, because they have failed to accomplish miracles. In the Pacific they have been called upon to face hell and high water, literally, and my hat is off to their many achievements for the good of humanity. But I left London with the bitter knowledge that I had encountered the blind side of Christian officialdom—the sort of bigotry which means lack of understanding.

Perhaps I carried my message a year too late. As Barley said, “Sea-changes are very sudden on the Pacific.”

Four years after the Zaca cruise I received reports from Eroni, saying that gonorrhea had spread from the White Sands to remoter districts where white men had never gone. Malaria was everywhere—and I had found no trace of it when I surveyed the island in 1930 and 1933.

Outwardly the natives were prospering. The chiefs were building more and better houses with the handy tools for which they had traded their racial integrity. In 1920 when George Fulton’s ship went there to recruit, he had seen no houses at all; a healthy, contented people were sleeping in caves or in the open. Now Rennell Island was having a building boom, and her population was going steadily downhill at the beck and call of every trading stranger.

******

About 1937 Dr. Crichlow made a survey there, and his worried findings came to me roundabout, in a letter from the Solomons. Everything that I had feared had come to pass. Gonorrhea had increased so that not a child had been born on Rennell Island in the past eighteen months.

I lost all desire to go back. I didn’t care to see a splendid and unique race dying on its feet.