CHAPTER XXII
I arrive at the Organization—Bones and his Officials—Mabau, the Maid—Chief Kaifa—Mabau in trouble—I advise her—Thakambau’s Harem—Chief Kaifa on Christianity—Enoch—Escaped Convicts—Music—Witchcraft—The Hermit Missionary
... While sweetly some
Play on soft flutes and lyres, I, by gum!
Beat with delight the big barbarian drum
Before this drama of the great Limelight
Of stars—and dancing shadows infinite.
THE best part of truth is hidden in the heart of humanity. How different is that which we reveal from that which we think of in silence. Our outward demeanour is civilisation; our hidden inward cravings are barbarism. To some extent these pages will deal with the savage instincts of the natives of tropical isles, and with men who have found refuge in those lands far from the cities of the Western world.
To tell you of the semi-heathen is much akin to telling you of ourselves, for are not the barbarian instincts which we all have within us our own tiny, savage, dusky children? We chide them for their waywardness, but do we not encourage them in secret, as the savage outwardly does, expressing joyously that which we are ashamed of? One has the virtue of truth and the other of polished deceit. Notwithstanding this, I think civilisation the best of all possible things. Truly, however, civilisation is built on a quicksand, and now that the Fijian forest battles and cannibalistic feasts have become fierce and gruesome history the great tribalistic clash of nations, in full swing as I write, reveals more than words the relentless link that binds white and brown men together.
Once when I was wandering in the Marquesan Group I suddenly came across the ruins of an old cannibalistic amphitheatre standing lonely by the forest palms. The stone cooling-shelves, whereon once lay the dead men and women in hot weather, were still intact, but thickly overgrown with moss and sheltered by bamboos; the festival arena and its surroundings of artistic savagery were all gone; the barbarian log walls had fallen. Wild tropical vines, smothered with wild flowers, thickly covered all that tomb-like place, where savages once ate their foes and whirled in the cannibalistic dance, revealing the shapes of the stone edifice, the pae-pae,[[15]] the turrets and log walls. The savage tribes with their sighs and laughter lay dead, silent dust in the forest hard by. I looked up through that amphitheatre-shaped growth. It was night; I saw the stars glimmering through the dark palms as the trade wind stirred them. Now I think those vanished walls were as civilisation, and the green clinging boughs remaining and revealing the amphitheatre’s shape sad humanity clinging to the best it has left.