This, of course, sounds very different to the books I have read, but whoever you are, go to the South Seas, and keep your weather-eye open and you will not contradict me when I say that the money spent by Christian Societies in England and America to polish up the South Sea Island daughters and men, who were far more innocent than Europe ever remembers being, could be spent in our own countries with far greater advantage. The South Sea Islanders would be happier and the English poor and starving children better looked after.
VIII
An Old Time Marquesan Queen—Forced Teetotalism and the Result—With R.L.S. watching Native Dance—A German Missionary—A Medley of Incidents
There was an old Marquesan Queen who lived near Samoa. Years ago in the zenith of her beauty and fame she sang and danced at the cannibalistic feasts, was the belle of the Isles and a kind of Helen of Troy of the South Seas. She was taken prisoner by various tribes, bought by the big tattooed chiefs and, when they sickened of her, sold again and again until at last she emerged from the door of a South Sea Divorce Court, and fell into the arms of one of the Island Kings and, becoming a Queen, became virtuous, in so far as she possibly could be after being reformed to the Christian religion. Hornecastle called at her lonely Isle once, while we were cruising around in a sloop. He, of course, knew her well, and after introducing me to her as his son, I brought the fiddle out at “Castle’s” request, and played to her, as she sat old and wrinkled by her hut door. She was a most extraordinary-looking old woman; when she smiled her face puckered up into a map of wrinkles and her small shrunken black eyes twinkled as though through the dark came back old memories of those lusty stalwart chiefs of long ago. Then she readjusted her pince-nez and I saw the tears in her eyes as her black fingers nervously turned over leaf after leaf of the big English Bible which she had on her bony knees. She had grown very pious and sedate and no one on earth would have guessed her past history as she sat there, with nothing on except an old bustle skirt, which only reached to her knees, and stuck on her head a large Parisian hat of the fashion about the time of the French Revolution.
I suppose she’s dead now and gone to the land of her fathers. I often think of her and the way she gazed at my white face as I dropped on one knee, with all the respect due to a Queen, and kissed that shrivelled hand. I can still see the faint, majestic smile flickering on those aged lips that had received in the bloom of maidenhood how many kisses on their soft amorous curves—and the lithe brown body’s outline of breathing beauty, how often had it been folded in the arms of brief paradise? There she sat, a wrinkled-up bit of humanity, jealous and fretful of those who had not seen their day, for all the world like some old ladies of my own country, as she surveyed with approval, the decorum of the future race romping about her, tumbling head over heels on the plantation slopes, partially clothed in palm-leaf hats, and lava-lava, extending from the waist to the knees.
Hornecastle could speak the “Island lingo” like a native and many were the modest blushes she gave as the old chap went over reminiscences of the glorious past, telling her of her past beauty and swearing that she had but slightly changed, and that for the better, giving me a vigorous side wink as he told that thundering lie with its inner meaning. Poor old Castle, he may be still alive. I never met a more knowing and yet sentimental old shell-back and he grafted into my mind more than any other man the knowledge of South Sea Island life and the inefficacy of white men of religious aspirations. I would not even be surprised to hear that he was now pious and sobered down. I never met a man like Castle for strength. I’ve seen him pick up a tree trunk that weighed three hundredweight and handle it as though it were a one-seater canoe. He once told me that he had only had two illnesses in his life and they, he said, were “Bronshitus and Pew-Monja.” He was born in the early days of old England when they did not teach the boys and girls Latin, French, German and Euclid, long before children looked upon their parents as fools, and held the candle while their old mother fetched up a ton of coal.
There was one other eccentric old man whom I have forgotten to mention; his name was Bodey, he’d travelled the world over and had spent ten years of peace and rest in Darlinghurst Gaol, Sydney. I never saw him sober, so that I cannot tell you anything of his real character, excepting that he was extremely devoted to his Samoan wife, who likewise struck me as very fond of him. She was a tall, fine-looking woman of about forty years of age. Her original beauty had long since departed; her front teeth also had gone; her plump, full lips were much shrunken, but her eyes still remained cheerful-looking and moved quickly and intelligently as she spoke. Bodey gave her a terrible shock once. He broke his ankle and, being utterly helpless, could not get down to the beach drinking shanty, and so got quite sober. For two days running, his manner was so different that his wife gazed upon him as a stranger, and he too gazed upon her, as she nursed him and bathed his foot, with suspicion, quizzing her with astonishment, but I took mercy on him, went and got a bottle of Samoan whisky and the couple in half-an-hour were once more united and happy. Three weeks after that he died of shock.
Hornecastle and I went to his grave, to place a large cross on it, which we had made ourselves. When we got there Hornecastle cried like a child, and I gave a Samoan who was lying asleep near by a large silk handkerchief and one “mark” to dig a hole after we had gone, and place that cross over our dead friend. I remember well how Hornecastle in his drunken grief stuck the cross in and kept poking down and down, as though he was searching for his old comrade, and when I pulled him away he staggered back, fell on his knees and kissed the earth with his lips, crying out, “Bodey, old mate, can yer hear me?”
It upset me terribly at the time; I did not know Castle had such deep feeling in his nature. I pulled him off and told the Samoan to make the grave neat and he bowed his brown face fourteen times reverently to show me that he understood my wishes. As soon as we had gone he bolted off with the tombstone; what he wanted it for only heaven knows.