Others had haggard faces that expressed something of bygone refinement, and hunted-looking eyes, telling of a mind distraught with fears—and sometimes, who knows, an intense longing for the homeland. Those rough men, many quite youthful, would often disappear as mysteriously as they appeared, probably stowed away on the outbound friendly schooners, never to be heard of again—but stay, I forget—sometimes they came back—with the tide, as a derelict corpse washed up on the shores of one of the numerous Pacific Isles. I often saw those returning visitors, stricken dead men—and women too! I’ve folded the hands together, looked on the dead face and wondered if I dreamed it all—so sacred-looking, so ineffably sad were the faces. Alas! it was no dream. Often a brief note was found on the body, a last request for the one whom he thought might still retain a tender thought for his memory in the world that he had left for ever. These notes would sometimes awaken sentimental discussion in the grog shanties, bring a Bret Harte atmosphere and a whiff of pathos into the bar. At times the rough listeners received a bit of a shock when the biggest scoundrel of the group ceased his volley of oaths, and with emotion said something that revealed a long unsuspected organ—a heart, after all, pulsed in his sinful anatomy!
These travellers were not the only suspicious arrivals who sought the seclusion of the isles without letters of introduction. There also arrived, about that period, several stealthy-footed followers of Mohammed, a kind of mongrel, half-caste Chinese-Indian, hailing mostly from the Malay archipelagos. I think they had been expelled from Fiji for indulging in licentious orgies with natives. It was hard to tell their origin. The traders called them “B—— Kanakas.”
Some wore turbans and looked genuine specimens of the man tribe; but not one of them was as innocent, as artless-looking, as the little tapestry-carpet bag that he carried. This little bag was generally full of feminine linen and delicate Oriental silks, modest-looking merchandise that was their stock-in-trade, which they hawked for a living. A few worked on the copra, sugar or pineapple plantations. Their chief ambition seemed to be to try to get native converts to their creed and their moral codes.
A silk Oriental handkerchief, or a pair of bright yellow stockings, made the eyes of the native girls positively shine with avarice—and true belief!
Those swarthy men blessed Mohammed and had fine old times.
I would not wish to infer that Mohammedans are worse than others who are successful in their ambitions. But I would emphatically assert that the emigrant portion of Malay Indians of that day were a decidedly scummy lot. Briefly speaking, they made converts of many of the native women, reconverting them from Christianity to the bosom of Islam—and their own.
I recall that I had been in Tai-o-hae about two weeks when I heard that a native festival was in progress. My curiosity was at once aroused. I had read in South Sea reminiscent, missionary volumes about Marquesan native dances, but still I was eager to see the real thing in its natural element. Though I had secured a berth on a schooner that was going to Papeete, I was not over-anxious to sail. I had been to Papeete before, and knew well enough that I was as likely to be stranded there as at Nuka Hiva, so I let the job go. Indeed as that very schooner went seaward I stood in the forest thrilled with delight, as fierce, stalwart savage men and women danced around a monstrous wooden idol. The missionaries had long since issued an edict that no idols were to be worshipped. The penalty for so doing was the calaboose (jail), or a fine that would plunge the culprit into life-long debt. It follows, naturally enough, that idols were worshipped in secret. Consequently, that secret pagan festival I witnessed was attended by all the adventurous half-caste girls and youths, and made the more fascinating from its being strictly forbidden. I must admit that the scene I witnessed was a jovial contrast to the dull routine of Christianised native life, and I count myself as the holiest culprit at the festival in question.
I had seen idols in the British Museum, London, also in Fiji, one or two in Samoa, and rotting in the mountains of Solomon Isles, but the one that I saw that day in Tai-o-hae was exceptionally interesting. I was fascinated by its emblematical expression of material might. As the forest children crept from their citadel huts just by and knelt in its presence, I too felt a strange reverence for it! It looked an awesome yet harmless thing to worship. Its big, bulged, glass eyes, staring eternally through the forest tree trunks, gave out no gleam of light to those leafy glooms; its big wooden ears, stretched out, ever listening, were deaf to all human appeals as the forest children wailed to its wooden anatomy.
Though it is now many years since I stood before that thing, I still recall the glassy stare of wonder, the grin of the wide, carven lips, the one huge red, curved tooth. It may have been but a wayward boy’s imagination, but that idol seemed to express to my soul the great, indefinable something representing the Vast Unknown! I also felt the awful reverence that was so deep within the dreams of those barbarian children—dreams far more intense than the religious fervour of the cultured minds of the civilised world.
I know that I’m incorrigible. I know that my confession will strike horror into the hearts of white people—but I cannot help it—I still retain a deep, reverent affection for that heathen idol! To me it still possesses manifold virtues. The golden silence of its physiognomy, its awe-inspiring grin—as if fully appreciating the fantastic movements of those semi-nude high chiefs dancing in wild whirls with pretty maids round its monstrous feet—filled me with strange reverence. I could not deplore the fact that its wooden, hollow throat whispered no rebuke against the irreligious levity that I beheld. And the whole time barbarian drums crashed fortissimo, whilst heathen maids chanted. No solemn denunciation came from its lips to thwart human happiness. It seemed to say, with the great voice of silence: “O children of the forest, drink kava, dance and be merry, for to-morrow you die!” The furrowed frown of its carven brow seemed to wail: “Look ye upon me, here am I stuck up like an emblem of unjoyous death that is devoid of evil motives, secret human passions and ribald song. I say, can I help this cruel dilemma? O children, what else can I do but grin in perpetual silence—till my lips, as yours, in ripeness of time fall to dust? Who am I? Why this monstrous infinity cast about me, I, who yearn to lift these wooden feet and fly from the worship of mankind—or dance with ye all!”