Many of the maidens from the surrounding villages came running up the bush track and delightedly joined in the circling ring of dancers. A few of the latter, who belonged to the low-caste toiling natives, availed themselves of the opportunity to show their figures off, and though the majority of the dancers were innocent enough, in their way, these looser ones swayed about and went through preposterous antics, endeavouring to please the eyes of the semi-savage native men who squatted round as sightseers. Great was their applause at frequent intervals, and deep the pleasure of those women who eagerly sought to please the eyes of prospective husbands.
Reviere and I stood watching this scene; neither of us spoke, so deeply were we interested in all about us. Then I touched Reviere, and told him to look behind him; there sat Mabau at the feet of a villainous-looking old witch who, responding to her pleadings, was doubtless telling Mabau how to win back Vituo’s love. There she sat, that artless, deceived maid, rubbing together the magic sticks and repeating word for word all that the old witch told her. It sounded in this wise: “O wao, we wao, wai wai, O mio mio, mio mi”; and so on, over and over again. Poor little Mabau, how fast she rubbed the magic sticks as, unperceived, Reviere and I watched her from the shadows and the old crony picked her two black front teeth with a bone skewer and thought over some new phrase for Mabau and the other maids to repeat after her. Many maids appealed to her and rubbed the sticks, some crossways and some downways, as they thought of the bonny promised babies that would be theirs. Two ugly old divorced wives, who had been foretold new husbands and children if they rubbed the magic sticks the right way, rubbed and rubbed so hard that their dark bodies were steaming with perspiration in the moonlight!
Neither of us approached Mabau as we watched; we saw why she had been absent from us for two nights. We had no doubt that each night she had sat at the black crone’s feet, listening to her prophecies and doing all she told her to do with those bits of stick, while Vituo, away in Suva, made love to the young white woman and thought no more of Mabau, who was to bring down vengeance on his head for his sins.
Next night Mabau watched at the trysting-place for the old witch’s prophecies to be fulfilled, but found that Vituo did not come as had been foretold, so as she knew of an old and lonely missionary who lived some eight miles from the spot where Reviere and I witnessed the native fête, she told us that she would go and visit the good white man and see if he could help her in her sorrow. Finding out from Bones where the recluse lived, I, being deeply interested, went off the following afternoon to see him. After four hours’ hard walking I inquired from some natives, and following a track which was thickly covered with thangi-thangi and drala growth, arrived at Naraundrau, which was situated south-east of the Rewa river and not far from the seashore. There in a secluded spot close by a stream was a small, neatly thatched homestead. As I approached all seemed silent, deserted and overgrown; the trees that shaded the hut-like home were heavy with thick, human-hand-shaped leaves, which intensified the gloom and isolation. I coughed purposely; the door opened, and there, framed in the doorway, stood a tall, stooping, grey-bearded man of about seventy or seventy-five years of age.
“Welcome, my son,” he said as I introduced myself, and he noticed that I was tired, for the heat of the sun had been terrific and I was parched with thirst. I had brought my violin with me for companionship and safety; though I had great faith in the Organization officials, I did not wish to tempt their integrity by leaving my instrument behind.
CHAPTER XXIII
Father Anster—Fijian Legendary Lore—Forest Graves—The Blind Chief—Mythology and Love-making—Falling Stars—The Change—A Drove of Native Children—The Village Missionary—A Native Supper—An Old Chief’s Reminiscences—Fijian Poets and Musicians—A Tribute to the Humbug of Civilisation
I SAT and gazed round that little lonely homestead by the shore-side at Naraundrau. The scent of the jungle blooms and dead grass crept into my nostrils as soft winds came up from the sea, blew in at the small doorway and fell asleep in the leafy hollows. Opposite the doorway, by his broken coloured-glass window, sat the missionary to whom Mabau had appealed. He had already given her his advice.
He was a venerable-looking old man, with earnest, sunken grey eyes. As his aged, bearded lips moved, and he spoke in a sensitive, musical voice, I at once felt a liking for him, and I seemed to be back in the days of an age that had long since passed away. For this lonely old missionary was the sole survivor of the first white men who had exiled themselves from their native lands with the one intense motive only in their hearts—to endeavour to preach the word of Christ and better the conditions of heathen lands. No ambition in his mind had craved for recognition; he had done his day’s work, and there, weighed down with years, he waited sadly, yet patiently, the last act of life’s drama, the call of his Creator, to whose service he had devoted his earnest existence. He died, quite unknown to men on earth, for if men do not strive for fame it seldom will come to them, unless they do not deserve it.