It was of the death of the native races that the King spoke—and of his own ambition, that Faloo should become a refuge for them from the deadly effects of civilisation, that in the future no white man should ever be allowed to set foot there. Let Great Britain undertake just that work of protection and close the island definitely to all but the natives. Let her say that neither British nor French nor German, nor any other white man, might land there. King Smith said that he knew little of the conditions that might be demanded, but if Great Britain wished him to renounce his title of King he would resign it willingly; if tribute were wanted, he would see that it was paid punctually. All he asked was Great Britain’s guarantee that in Faloo the island people should be left absolutely to themselves, to live their own life in the old way, and so to escape the racial destruction that was coming swiftly upon them.
He laid before Lechworthy the pictorial evidence of travellers and the unimpassioned figures of the statistics. Everywhere in the islands, as civilisation advanced, the native race died out. The King made no attack upon civilisation, wasted no time in idle epigrams. Civilisation might have all the merits and all the advantages, but it had been proved in cold history that the island races could not accept it. In childish and rather pathetic good-will they had tried to accept it, and in consequence many had died out and the rest were dying.
It was not merely a question of drink. It was true, of course, that alcohol, which harmed the habituated European, quickly demoralised and killed the unhabituated islanders. But there was hardly a part of civilisation that did not help to kill him. Civilisation called him from the open air into houses where he was poisoned and stifled. It clothed his partial nakedness with European stuffs and pneumonia followed. It gave him things to learn for which his mind was unfit, and he became obtuse and devitalised. Nature had spared him and put him in places where food and such shelter as he needed might be had free or for a minimum of labour; civilisation put a stress upon him and paid him in luxuries that were bad for him. Tinned meat and multiplication tables, gin and geography, feather beds and tight boots, worry and hypocrisy, everything worked together for bad for the islander. Civilisation increased his needs and sapped his powers. He went down, down inevitably, in his struggle with it.
“Excuse me, sir,” said Lechworthy. “What you say is true; I have heard something of this before, though far less than you have told me. But your own case hardly supports your argument.”
“I know it. I admit that I am quite exceptional. Heredity may have something to do with it. There is a legend of white blood in my family, a long way back. It may be so or it may not—such inter-marriages do not generally have a good result. But my grandfather died of drink, and my father was a very great friend of the missionaries. So perhaps I was born—what is the word?—yes, perhaps I was born immune. There are no missionaries here now, except the two French priests, and they do nothing; you see, they have grown old and very, very fat.”
“Your father then—he was a convert?”
“The missionaries thought so, and he did what they liked; you see, he was a good friend to them, and they taught him. My father could read English, and he spoke it too, but not very correctly. He was a kind man, but he was not very much converted, I think. He began to teach me when I was quite young, and always I wanted to learn more. It was he who showed me what the white man is doing in these islands. So it is very many years since I first thought that Faloo is not a great island, and had been left over, and perhaps I might in time secure it so that it should be the last home of my people, lest they all died. And I have gone on thinking it always; it is for that that I have done good and also bad things.”
“But you speak English remarkably, sir. You did not learn it from your father alone.”
“Oh, no. For nearly ten years the Exiles’ Club has been here, and I have been the friend of the white men just as my father in his time was the friend of the missionaries. The men of the Exiles’ Club came to me, and there was always whisky and cigars and whatever they wanted. So they would sit and talk with me. That Mr Cyril Mast came very often. Most days he is very bad and also drunken. But he is beautifully educated, and he told me much about England. Sometimes Sir John Sweetling, who started the club, would talk about your financial world, though it was mostly on our joint business he came to see me. This Bassett also talked. Even Lord Charles Baringstoke—”
“What? Is that young scamp here?”