I asked no questions of her male companion as he and I together strolled across the landscape. I led him to the native villages, and did my best to interest him and take him out of himself during the three days that he stayed with Bones. We conceived a mutual liking for each other, and he took me sufficiently into his confidence to let me know that they were on the way to South America.
I saw them both off by the s.s. —— from Suva. Mabau carried the white girl’s things to the boat. As they stood on the ship’s deck they waved their hands to us, and we stood watching the frail girl, clinging to the man’s arm, as the vessel moved away and the tropical sunset flooded the seas. We stared till the ship was a speck on the waste of waters. So disappeared those outcasts on the horizon, together with their passion and its fruits, bound for another land, fading from our sight for ever. Mabau cried bitterly. I felt very sad also as we went down the river, and the hut looked more lonely than ever to me after they left.
I only stayed with Bones as a visitor, and several times went off to Lakemba and the various isles of the group, visiting Thombo and the Eastern Isles, also Yasawa, Kandavu and the native villages inland from Vana Levu, in the Bua district. Some of the natives owned profitable plantations, planted chiefly with coco-palms for the produce of copra and food for domestic use.
I often roamed those barbaric lands quite alone, and used to stand and reflect as I gazed through the wooded landscape; the solitude seemed so peaceful, but my dreams would conjure up pictures of the hot-footed, bloodthirsty tribes on the warpath long ago. Swarthy bodies and mop-heads moving through those glooms to charge the ambushed rival tribe, finally bringing their victims to the ovens that fizzled the “long pig.”
Where now the cattle roam at leisure, nibbling the covatu grass and milk-fern of the cleared pastures, once towered thickly wooded forest slopes of tropic fern and coco-palms. Patches of those forests still remain. In those old glooms I roamed and spent many happy and exciting times, for among them still stood native villages of semi-savage peoples; many of them clung to old heathen beliefs and sneered as they passed the den wherein moaned the wailing harmonium. Fierce fights often raged among the population, for they were a mixed party, many of them being emigrant islanders from the Gilbert, Ellice and Samoan Groups.
I used to wander about those old native villages, undecided whether to go to Australia or to get a berth on one of the trading-boats bound for Honolulu, and so make my way to San Francisco. The weather was very hot, the thermometer reaching 95°. As I sat in the shade beneath the trees, above my head chuckled peculiar, migratory birds, pruning their wings and whistling to the infinite blue above their topmost bough, which swayed gently to the welcome sea breeze that blew inland. It was there that I saw a native funeral; a Fijian girl had died. I watched the thatched den’s door open, as swarthy men, with bowed, lamenting heads, bore on their shoulders the square-shaped coffin. It was sunset and the burying-hour. The whole village started wailing, beating their breasts and naked thighs as they moved on in the grotesque but sad procession. One old woman, the great-grandmother, I think, led the way to the native cemetery. It was a mournful sight, and a novel one for Western eyes, for their grief seemed real! By a lonely forest track the procession stopped, and there, in the shade of a mighty group of banyan-trees, was the grave. Loudly the mourners started to wail, and the old woman and the girls fell flat on their faces and grovelled on the forest turf, wailing a Fijian lament, while the male mourners drank kava from little pots to keep their spirits up. To my astonishment the old woman was lowered into the grave first. She stretched her body out, feigning death so well that her naked limbs and corpulent, brown frame looked stiff with rigor mortis. Four powerful chiefs, two at her head and two at the middle, slowly lowered her into the tomb.
Then came forward one who I presumed was the high priest and, standing on the brink of the grave, he lifted his hands towards the skies and called on the gods to take the living spirit of the old woman into the land of death to look after the soul of the dead girl. As the high priest yawned and finished his speech he walked away, and maidens cast flowers on to the living body below. For a moment I thought that the old woman was to be buried alive, but to my relief I saw her dark, skinny fingers hastily emerge and cling to the grave’s brink, as up came her head and she leapt out on all-fours.
Then the lid of the coffin, wherein lay the dead girl, was lifted, and the mourners each in turn gazed upon the face and wailed. I did not look, for the sight depressed me, and I hurried away. This method of burial, and the ceremony which I have described, was an old custom modified, a method employed by a new sect, a creed which was based half on heathenism and half on Christianity, similar to the many crank offspring creeds of Europe to-day.
After staying in Suva for two or three days, idling and boarding the few trading schooners in the harbour, I went back to the Den of Mystery presided over by Mr Bones. As I entered the Organization door I saw, through the wreaths of tobacco smoke, the villainous, unshaved profiles of the gay officials, as bending over the long bench they shuffled cards, swore and drank rum. As they welcomed me their fierce, suspicious, wrinkled brows smoothed out again. I had left my violin with them and, though I had been absent several days, it stood on the shelf over their heads as I had left it. They called on me for a solo as I sat down and smoked, but when I responded to their wish a terrible discord began, for the player of the smashed cornet joined in and put my ear out; his time and tune faculties were nil. When I stopped he still blew on, puffing out tunelessness. As the night advanced yarns began, and I heard experiences of those rough men, and truly truth is stranger than fiction. Much that I heard is unprintable, not so much because of its subject and expressive thought as from the fact that in Bones’s hospitable establishment I received trust that once betrayed would bring dire disaster on fugitives who are still hiding, or have relatives of high standing in England and elsewhere.
Among others there was one weird-faced fellow there at that time. He looked thin and ill, but had been handsome in his day, and often through his rough accent came a different utterance, that of an educated man. Over his bunk were the photographs of a girl and of two old people. Something in his life had played havoc with him, for secret grief had prematurely wrinkled his brow and face. His eyes were clear, blue and earnest-looking. All the men took to him, for he was willing enough, and when they chaffed him he smiled good-naturedly and revealed the expression that had lit his face up as a boy.