I imagined how she would feel sitting by those huts with her new-made friends, how the gloom and the wild mystery of her surroundings must have depressed her. Even I felt the distance from home; indeed I could have half believed that I stood away back in some world of the darkest ages. The stars were out in their millions when I left my host and wandered into the village. I never saw such a sight as I witnessed that night. Notwithstanding the guttural voices, the strange hubbub of foreign tongues, the dim tracks and the little huts with their coco-nut-oil lamps glimmering at the doors, I felt that I stood in some phantom village. It seemed that representative types of all the ancient nations flitted around me. The strange odour of dead flowers and sandalwood intensified the magic of the scene, as the hubbub of the Babylonian-like rabble hummed in my ears. Through the forest glooms wandered soft, bright eyes, fierce eyes, alert eyes, hard faces, long faces, short faces, sardonic and cynical faces. Some had thick lips, some thin, with bodies sun-varnished, tattooed and magnificent, or white-splashed, shapely and graceful; others were disease-eaten. Like happy phantoms the girls rushed by, the symmetry and grace of their tawny limbs exposed as the Oriental jewellery from the magical carpet bag jingled on their arms and legs. Some of them were graceful, pretty girls, others voluptuous-lipped, their eyes alight with greed and jealousy as they revealed their charms, and sought the approval of likely customers.
At first I thought that some native carnival was in progress, but it was not so. It was simply the natives and the mixed emigrants jumbling and tumbling about together. Many of these emigrants were Indians who dwelt in hovels just outside the village. These hovels were called the Indian Lines. The men who inhabited them were mostly Mohammedans, swarthy men who made converts from the Fijians.
One of my supreme gifts is insatiable curiosity, consequently I can assert that the scenes I witnessed almost outrivalled the orgies of the harem cave near Tai-o-hae. The Christian missionaries had done good work in Fiji for many years. It was they who abolished cannibalism and idol-worship, but as far as the ultimate result of their labours was concerned, they might as well have never moved a finger. For those Fijians were revelling in a sensual creed of emigrant Mohammedanism.
Sickening of the sights that I witnessed just outside that village, I went back to that semi-pagan citadel. All the conical-shaped huts were sheltered by tall, feathery palms, clumps of scarlet ndrala and bread-fruits. At different points crowds of natives were collected, listening to the different lecturers who aspired to propagate their special views much the same as the chapel-goers of the civilised cities. One tawny, aged chief stood on a huge rum barrel yelling forth the manifold virtues of the olden heathen creed. As I strolled by, the listening crowd cheered him: “Vinaka! Te rum! Vinaka soo-lo!” they shouted. A little farther off, yet again another lecturer who roared forth the glory of Mohammed. In his hand he waved the Fijian Koran. Outside the village stores, elevated on a tree stump, stood the village poet, yelling forth vers libre and singing legendary chants of the stars and winds in the tree-tops. One old chief, who was tattooed from head to feet, his tawny face wrinkled like the parchment of a broken drum, stood on a large gin-case. He was a kind of South Sea Caliban. As he stood waving his long, tattooed arms and shouting to his followers who were assembled in that tiny forum, he spotted my white face. “Down with the heathen papalagi!” he shouted. Then he glared scornfully at the turbaned Indian men who stood about him, and on the native maids who suckled babies with tiny, fierce, Indian-like faces.
“Down with the Mohametbums!” he yelled over and over again.
I never saw such a wise-looking old Fijian as he looked. I can fancy I hear him now as I dream, as he stands there shouting:
“Down with papalagis! Fiji for the Fijians!”
They were not bad people when left to themselves. Indeed they had already successfully overthrown the curse of militarism that had crushed their isle during Thakombau’s terrible reign. In their huts, hard by, hung the old war-clubs. Only those mighty weapons and a few bleached skulls told of the pre-Christian days.
But I must not digress too much, for I have a long way to go yet. I only stayed in that village one night. At daybreak I was up with the flocks of green parrots that swept across the sky, whirling like wheels of screaming feathers as they left their homes in the mountains.
I made up my mind to go straight back to Suva. I had got it into my head that Waylao must have gone that way, possibly to inquire for me, to see if I had turned up after she had been thrown out of the Pinks’ establishment.