[15]. Altar.
The simile may not be perfect, but neither is anything that is human. But I must ramble on my way, for I am now well on the road to my reminiscences of Fiji.
Years ago, just off the Rewa river, which is navigable fifty or sixty miles inland, there was a wooden shanty. It had two compartments; the walls were made of coco-palm stems tied strongly together with wild hemp. Situated at a lonely spot, surrounded by primeval vegetation, coco-palms, backa-trees and wild, tropical, twining vines, it was eminently suitable for the purpose for which it was used, for in its snug rooms lived the men who were members of the Charity Organization of the South Seas! The officials did not run the place on Western lines, for it was a true home for the fallen: no questions were asked when suddenly the hunted, haggard, unshaved face appeared; to be hunted was a sufficient reference to enable the applicant to be at once enrolled as a member. Twelve fierce-eyed, rough-looking men, attired in big-brimmed hats and belted trousers, would greet the new arrival, and with the instinct of bloodhounds stare, and reckon up the new visitor’s pedigree. If he looked sufficiently villainous and haggard, and pathetically told the woe of some criminal ambition that had been frustrated by the vigilant eye of civilisation, he was immediately given the first grade diploma, a tin mug of the best Fijian rum! If he still possessed any part of the spoil he could have an extra mugful, for the Organization was not a rich one. A little off-side room was artistically arranged; a small looking-glass, brush and comb, and all those things that tell of gentleness and frailness completed its furniture. There it was, silent, clean, tenantless and ready, for often from other lands, with the spoil, the missing man would arrive with the cause of his downfall weeping beside him, and in there she slept!
No one could tell the individual histories of these men. It will be sufficient to say that they were there.
Ere I proceed I must tell you that when I speak of the Organization’s whereabouts I mislead you in the name only; the true vicinity characteristically resembles my description. It is obvious that to be faithful to those who befriended me I must be secretive in some of the details which tell of this isle of the South Seas, where men sought, and probably still seek, a harbour of refuge safe from the stern law of civilised cities. To-day this institution exists and still carries on its varied work of extreme humanity. The low-roofed den, the old bench surrounded by the swarthy, unshaved faces of the secretive crew, like bending shadows in tobacco smoke, breathing oaths as the cards are shuffled, has disappeared; but still the game is carried on, though in more magnificent style, for as the cities rise the aristocracy of crime fortifies itself, becoming more guarded and respectable in outward appearance. Be assured that I dip my pen in stern experience for that which I tell you.
When you see these headlines in your daily paper, “Bank Manager Disappears. Officials in the Dock”, “Mayor and Vicar Missing,” be sure that the head of the Charity Organization of the South Seas has read the Colonial cable in The Marquesa News or Apia Times, and has rubbed his hands with delighted expectation, and that his agents are watching at the warden gates of the high sea ports of the tropic world. Forest lands, caves and mountain fastnesses and unknown isles of security are fast disappearing from the world as it becomes polite.
Where the bokai feast roared and revelled, and the Fijian war dancers in the moonlight of other years whirled, in bloodthirsty revelry, by the Rewa river, now rise the church spires! Where the ambushed tribe once watched from the jungle with gleaming eyes pass austere university men clad in gowns, with Bibles in their hands, to lecture on Christianity to open-mouthed natives. So things have changed, and the heathenish creeds of the old days faded, and it is my wish to give you one glimpse of that which has been.
It was my lot to stay in the Organization I speak of. A mile off was a small native village, where Mabau, a Fijian maid who helped Bones, the Organization overseer, to keep the rooms clean and tidy, lived. Bones was the descendant of one of those old Botany Bay convicts who, escaping in a boat, put to sea, and eventually drifting ashore in Fiji, made their homes there, and inculcated in the islanders’ minds the first contempt for the white race: contempt which, by an age of vigorous striving, missionaries have at last removed. Bones told me much of his convict ancestor, who had been transported from England for stealing a hammer, and so Bones was born in the South Seas. He had a firm, open face, grey, English eyes and a Fijian mouth. He was a fairly well-educated man, and though he looked rough, at heart was kind; he kissed Mabau’s pretty face as though she were his own child. In fact Bones in every way struck me as being most suitable for his job of running a South Sea Charity Organization, which was run upon exactly opposite lines to the charity organizations of the Western seas, where the officials have stony eyes and steel-trap mouths. As I have told you, Bones had neither; and as I sat by him and a strange bird in the coco-tree sang to the sunset, I felt drawn to him, and told him more than I would tell most men. It was a beautiful night; most of Bones’s friends were away, some at work and some at sea on trading schooners. Bones played the banjo and I the fiddle, and after indulging in some European and native folk-songs he lit his pipe and I strolled off under the palms.
It was on this night that I met Mabau again. Now Mabau was a Fijian maid of rare beauty. She had shining dark eyes and a thick mop of hair; the graceful curves of her bare brown body as she glided ’neath the sunlit palms made many Fijian youths gaze enviously upon her. The Chief Kaifa, her father, sat by his hut door; he had been one of the high chiefs of Thakambau, the last of the Fijian kings. Kaifa was a majestic-looking man; in spite of his thick lips he had fine features, with earnest eyes, and was straight-figured as a coco-palm. As he sat there, dressed in his native sulu, he smiled as I spoke to his daughter Mabau. I knew more of her doings than he thought. She was a true daughter of Eve, for her glance gave no hint whatever that we had met before.
For in my forest wanderings, about two days before the evening I have mentioned, I had met Mabau. She did not know at first that I had perceived her in a lonely spot. She knelt on her knees before a rotting, cast-off wooden idol. Sunset had fired with red and gold the tops of the coco-palms and forest trees; overhead a few birds were still whistling. As I approached, and the dead scrub cracked beneath my feet, the heathen-hearted little maid looked hastily over her bare shoulder and, seeing me, arose swiftly, as though for flight. My voice must have had a note in it that appealed to and reassured the guilty forest child, for I called softly, and then smiled to let her know that from me no harm should befall her. “Why do you pray to that wooden thing?” I said, and then I gave the monstrous effigy a kick. With a frightened sigh she looked up at me and said: “O Papalangi, I love Vituo the half-caste.” Then with a blush she told me all, and it seemed that the soul of innocence peered through her eyes and asked for mercy as she looked down at herself and then up to me again, one hand resting on her brown breast. I gazed silently and knew all. The perfidious Vituo had stolen her heart.