Think of the many men of distinction who have roamed and written of those Southern hemispheres. Captain Cook, the first pioneer, the cruise of the Casco with R.L.S., the Snark, Becks and Melvilles, and no such confession right up to date! I hope posterity, when I am gone, will remember with pride that it was I, a Britisher, who first told the truth about Southern Seas.
However, I must return to my description of the spectacle.
Evidently this was a special gathering of various types of dusky men and women of all the islands, tiers on tiers of handsome and ugly faces. Some were splendid savage old men, some representing the types of races that lived on isles a thousand leagues away, gathered together beneath the terraced arches of that amphitheatre of pillared bread-fruits and Nature’s colonnades of exquisitely twisted vine-work. Over this branched roof shone the stars, inextinguishably beautiful lamps of heaven. There were jovial faces; lean, avaricious faces, brooding, sardonic physiognomies; poetic faces seared with wrinkles; philosophical expressions; Voltaires, Spinozas, Darwins; sad old dethroned kings and faded queens—all squatting in the shadows as the oil lamps twinkled on the tasselled boughs above us. There were short, swarthy men, long men, fat men, wide men, square men, sensuous-looking women, voluptuous figures tattooed in conspicuous parts, scraggy women with faces like wrinkled toads, whose savage tattoo of hieroglyphic beauty showed off to advantage the handsome Marquesan physique. Honest old chiefs sat alone in their poverty, attired in primitive loin-cloths of Poverty’s scanty width. Budding poets gazed with thoughtful eyes on flippant old men and pompous chiefesses. Vainglorious girls strutted before their less fortunate sisters, wearing yellow stockings and little else. The inevitable poor relations gazed with weary, envious eyes on the huge calabash of sparkling toddy, moistening their parched lips as high chiefs and chiefesses quaffed at its rim deliciously.
Grimes and I respected those clean-bodied, handsome savages—flealess, immaculate in mind and attire, as they danced around us. And yet, alas! the hand of civilisation had touched them, for as with a crash the exiled king from the Solomon Isles fell from his bamboo erection, he still clutched at the keg of the best rum from across the seas—exchanged for copra to make scented oils to plaster down the hair of commercial savages in civilised lands!
What with the wild laughter and beating drums, it seemed more like a ghostly fête day than night, and so brilliant was the moon that one could distinguish the various shades of the uplifted hair of the Marquesan girls.
Grimes and I were not the only fascinated spectators of that barbarian burlesque. Several white settlers, French gendarmes and officials, Indians, Malay, Chinese, and one or two giant niggers stood in the shade of the bread-fruits watching that scene. The Marquesan élite sat in the royal box—a kind of platform erected in the arbour of thick bamboo clumps. These spectators belonged to the missions, and attended the stone churches near Tai-o-hae. They were attired in European garb. Some even gazed through spectacles on the scene, making critical comments on the dress of their primitive brethren or the quality of the music of that South Sea orchestra.
As the first cataclysm of sound faded away, and the chief drummer rested his arm for the new con furioso overture, Grimes and I, taking the opportunity to look round, caught sight of Waylao standing amongst the spectators by the bamboos.
Grimes was full of enthusiasm, and wanted to cross the space to speak to her. But at that moment someone leaned against the great wooden idol, it overbalanced, and fell with a crash.
This accident was a terrible omen, for the old wooden deity was tapu, which meant that anyone who touched it was liable to be clubbed on the quiet. The æsthetic-looking old chiefs and the superstitious chiefesses positively groaned in their anguish as the fallen deity was slowly lifted up from its degraded position. I don’t know what happened after that. I believe there was a general fight, the Christianised, Catholic natives of the French churches taking one side and the Protestants the other.