Head-hunters, black, white, and brown

by Alfred C. Haddon

“I was sorry I was in the house at the time, as I should have liked to experience the sensation. I should think each shock must have lasted about two minutes, with an interval of five minutes between them.

“After evening school I saw some of those who had been to their gardens on the top of the hill. From their description the earthquake was felt worse up there. Pasi told me he was sitting down on the ground nursing the baby when the first shock came, and he and the baby commenced to bob up and down, and he felt as if he were sitting on something that was giving way with him. When the second shock came, the coconuts on the trees were bobbing up and down, everything was trembling and swaying; a bucket on the ground opposite him was jumping up and down. He thought it was the devil, and that he was bewitched, so he got up and called his wife to come away. Soon they met other frightened people running home. Pasi said he was ‘very glad to hear all man feel him all the same as myself.’

“No doubt the people received a great scare. They were going about in quite a subdued manner for a few days. When Sunday came they were told by Finau that God was angry with them. God has been very angry with them here this year; they were told the same after the hurricane took place. But then I remember the Princess Alice disaster on the Thames was referred to in the same manner by Mr. Spurgeon at the Tabernacle; so we cannot wonder at the coloured teacher attributing all disasters to the wrath of an offended Deity.

“I had rather an amusing reason given to me why the cyclone of the 4th and 5th of March (1899) happened. There was a crowd of boats anchored in the bay, and a South Sea man wanted to hold a service on the beach, but very few went to hear him pray. Whilst he was praying, some unregenerate nigger had the impiety to play on his concertina. That day the hurricane came. The men who told me this thoroughly believed, since the praying South Sea man had asserted it, that God had sent the hurricane because of that man playing the concertina.

“That is the kind of God they like to have described to them, and no other. Really the South Sea teachers know the kind of God to depict to the native far better than the white missionary does; his God of Love is beyond their comprehension. They look as if they believed in Him, but converse with them, and you find the God of Wrath is their ideal of what God is. He takes the place of Bomai, etc., which they have lost.

“At the opening of the new church at Erub, in September, all the South Sea teachers from the Torres Straits were gathered together. Captain H⸺ had just come across an article in a newspaper, written by some German scientist, that a comet was to appear in the heavens some time in October, and that it would strike our planet on the 5th of November. The Captain described the comet to the Erub Mamoose, who in his turn told the assembled teachers, and they, not unnaturally, went to Captain H⸺ for further information. The Captain, nothing loth, gave them what they wanted, with a practical illustration of how the comet would act when it came in collision with the earth. He got a ball of paper and a stick, making the latter violently strike the ball of paper, which flew some distance away. ‘That,’ said he, ‘is the way our world will go, and I know that Old Nick is preparing his fires for a lot of you fellows now.’

“The teachers held a meeting, and arranged that when each teacher went home to his station he was to appoint three weeks of special prayer, and to beseech God not to allow the comet to destroy the earth. Finau arrived here full of it, and the people with him arrived equally full of influenza through living in over-crowded houses in Darnley.

“On Sunday I went as usual to church. At the close of the service Finau told all the people to remain, as a special service was to be held; so I remained along with the rest.

“After a short interval Finau told them about the comet, and that a very wise man had written in the newspaper that the world was shortly to come to an end. This was true. He then read from the Gospel of Mark, chapter xiii., from which he proved that this was the time all these things were to happen, because this wise man said so in the newspaper.

“He kept on until he had all the people in a proper state of fear. Then he directly referred to me that I knew it was all true, and would happen. I said ‘No.’ He took no notice, but told them that in three weeks’ time, on the 5th of November, if God did not hear their prayers, they would all be destroyed.