As we strolled under the straight-stemmed palms the silvered moonlit waves splashed over the coral reefs below, and across the waters, like a weird shadow, passed a canoe filled with singing natives.
“Who sleeps there?” I asked him as we passed a mound of earth whereon was a cross half hidden in drala weed. He told me that it was the grave of a white man who had left a ship at Viti Levu and had become attached to the wife of a notable chief. The chief discovered them together by the shore, and after a terrible battle, the white man with a rifle-butt and the chief with a club, the white man fell mortally wounded. In the struggle the native wife was shot dead, and her spirit, the natives say, was carried on wings of fire up through the trees towards the stars that light the shores of that heathen land which was ruled by Mburotu. The missionary told me that he crept through the forest and with his own hands dug a grave under the pandanus palms for the slain body of the white man, and night after night he came and prayed fervently over the man of his race, asking God to forgive and grant to his soul salvation.
I was much impressed as he told me these things, and also by seeing how, as we walked along, he would tenderly bend and touch the tall flowers with his lips. “Under them sleeps the child I loved, or the chief who fell in some bloody tribal fight,” he would say; and he told me also that often in the Fijian wilds men, women and children were buried in spots known only to those who loved and buried them.
That same night as we walked along the narrow track by the shore-side at Naraundrau the aged missionary took me gently by the arm and, turning up the inland track, we stood by a native’s conical-shaped hut. In it sat an old, almost blind chief, the half-brother of Vakambau, a great warrior who was dead. It appeared that he loved the missionary, and though he would not give up his heathen faith had, owing to the supplications of my host, half embraced Christianity.
It was the habit of the Father to call night after night and pray with the old heathen chief before he slept. I felt very strange as I stood watching the white man and the old Fijian kneeling side by side praying, while three old women squatting in the corner of the den gazed on silently, as though they were carved stone images. They were his servants; being of Fijian royal blood, he would not move himself. Often as he sat there he imperiously pointed to a stone flask wherein was some yangona,[[16]] and at once the slaves of royalty, with machine-like swiftness, filled a stone bowl and held it to his lips. Suddenly starting up, he rushed to the den door and gazed up at the trees, shouting, “Wai, wai, taho mi,” then waved his arms, lifted his chin towards the stars and called to the memory of dead warriors and comrades dead with heathen gods. As the Pacific wind sighed softly through the giant backa-trees he bowed his head reverently, for to him so answered the gods.
[16]. Native wine made from a root.
I stayed that night with the missionary, and the next day and night also, and heard many strange things. Beautiful were some of the legends of the forest children that my host told me. The stars were the eyes of the fiercer gods, and the falling stars the bright tears of the powerful Muburto and Nedengi’s warriors. Fijian maidens and youths prayed to the eyes of shadow-land, and if, as their impassioned lips met, a star fell and arched over them in the vault of night, great was their sorrow, for a god had shed a tear over the grief that would befall the life of the first-born. But if, ere the lovers said farewell, more stars fell, great was their rejoicing, for it was a sign that other gods were pleading to the greater god to stay the evil that was predestined by the first star that burst out of the dark soul of evil Destiny. So, notwithstanding heathenism and the gruesome cannibalistic customs of the old times, much innocence and poetry softened the hearts of the wild native children of those dim lands. It was a common sight by night in the shade of the coco-palms to see love-sick maids in the arms of the Fijian youths, gazing at the skies, yearning for the sight of the vast gods shedding starry tears on their behalf, and often great was their delight to find the foretold grief to their first-born overthrown by the power of other gods. Then the innocent maids gave themselves, body and soul, to the infatuated, delighted youths, and fell with the falling of the stars! When the stars on windy nights twinkled fiercely through the wailing boughs of the bending forest giants, lovers gazed heavenward anxiously, for to them the glimmering stars were the tiny bright legs of their unborn children running happily across the fields of paradise. Often, too, sorrowing mothers would peer up for hours on those windy, starlit nights, as they watched their dead children’s bright legs twinkling as they ran laughing over the forest trees in the far-off fields of shadow-land.
As I heard these beliefs of the forest I thought of Mabau, and wondered whether, while she was in the arms of Vituo, the stars had fallen, and in her poetic faith she had given herself to him; and I saw that though the native legends were beautiful, it was sad for the maids; for the stars foretold many things that did not come to pass, and mythology, when applied to morals, brought much sorrow to those that loved.
The aged missionary spoke the language like a native and so, through mixing with the remnants of his old flock for years, isolated as he was, knew all their ways and their passions and aspirations. He told me that the mythology and religions of the South Seas revealed, through their poetic, heathen expression, much that was “new thought” in modern Europe, and that all those things which the great minds of my country had discussed and the nobleness they had overthrown by their doctrine of the “survival of the fittest,” a doctrine bringing the whole creed of self-sacrifice and bravery down to selfish motives, had been discussed and expressed in mythology and heathen song by the cannibalistic bards and philosophical savages at the bokai feasts of those heathen lands.
Lands where maidens gave their lives for their lovers, and wives for their husbands, for it had been the custom that when a chief died his wife should be buried alive with him; and so strong was the faith of these people that they met their terrible end bravely, and sang death songs, which could be heard faint and muffled as the tombstone closed over them. It was even then the custom of maids to die and be buried with their dead lovers, their belief being that they appeared before the gods as they died. Those who thought themselves young and beautiful sacrificed themselves, so that in spirit-land they might be ever young and fortunate in their love affairs. Often I saw skeletons in caves, which were the remains of old age; they had been strangled by their relatives to avoid further trouble from the complainings of their infirmities.