[CHAPTER VIII]
A NATIVE ENTERTAINMENT
IT was not in accordance with Niuéan custom that visitors should go away empty-handed. At three o'clock one sunny afternoon we were summoned to an entertainment on the square of grass before the Mission-house. Sitting with our backs to the gate, we faced a grassy stage, built, as it were, of palm trees—their stems for wings, their feathery, glistening fronds for flies, and for background the blue Pacific clear to the horizon, save for the Porpoise lying at anchor below.
First there came a band of shy girls with garlands twined in their black tresses and presents in their hands, shepherded by a few armed warriors (in coat and trousers, be it confessed) and three or four aged women capering grotesquely. Sitting down in two double rows facing one another, they began to chant pæans in our honour to the cadence of an English drum. Mr. Lawes, sitting at my elbow, translated as they sang. It must be confessed that both in voice and melody they fell far behind the Samoans and the Tongans, but a people who in a single night can compose and teach to a chorus of fifty persons words and music, with the accompanying gestures, is not lightly to be called unmusical. One of the songs described the hoisting of the flag; the girls imitated the action of hauling on a rope and the salute fired from the ship as they sang "Fusi! Fusi!" ("Pull up! Pull up!"). Viewed in a body like this, the women were not prepossessing. Their straight, greasy-looking black hair, fat cheeks, ill-shaped features, and clumsy figures wanted more than a good-natured expression and bright smiles to redeem them from ugliness. The songs were led by the composer, a daughter of the late king and sister to the young gentleman who had acted as our pilot, an enormously fat girl, with a smile that seemed to lose itself behind her ears. After the singing had been protracted into the second half-hour the old gentleman of the nautical uniform, whom we had nicknamed "the Admiral," broke in upon the stage to expostulate. It appeared that he too had a band of singers behind the scenes, and that the first choir was cheating him of his fair share of our attention. He had now discarded his ancient beaver for a homemade cocked hat, hastily constructed in imitation of mine. At his remonstrance the first choir good-naturedly yielded him place, which meant that every member of the troupe came up to us in turn, presenting us with some trinket with the left hand and shaking hands with the right. The pile of presents between our feet rose higher and higher, and the garlands wreathed our knees until we looked too Bacchanalian for the gravity of the crowd of blue-jackets who were looking on. There were fans and shells and coloured pebbles, and crab shells with scarlet spots upon them, and tail feathers of the frigate bird, and live chickens bound fast by the leg, and necklaces of little yellow shells, which, as we afterwards found, are highly prized in Tonga.
THE KING AND QUEEN TAKE THEIR SEATS
The man on the right is armed with both spear and paddle-club
The Admiral's troupe now advanced upon the stage, and we were again reminded that dignity is little accounted of in Niué. At its head capered the Admiral and three old ladies, and warriors with spears in poise danced awkwardly in the rear. While the song was in progress the Admiral's sister, a dame as old as himself, danced before us in a flame-coloured nightgown. No stately measure was this, but a vulgar caper of the Moulin Rouge that recked not of singers or of drum-beat. With her fists clenched on a level with her ears, this weird old person pranced solemnly in the background until she wore down the other dancers and was left to caper by herself. When flesh and blood would bear no more, she sat down panting beside us. Blown though she was, she had no intention of yielding the crachoir to the legitimate performers, for now she called for a wooden drum, upon which she beat vigorously for a few minutes quite out of time to the music. Then, flinging it aside, she whipped a nose-flute from the bosom of her nightgown, and blew soft notes upon it with one nostril, watching us the while out of the corner of her eye, lest our attention should stray from her. Whatever further tricks she had to show us were cut short by the close of the singing and the consequent handshaking, in which she gravely took her part, presenting me with her nose-flute. Her buffoonery did not provoke a smile from the other performers until they noticed our amusement, when some of the girls smiled indulgently upon her. It is possible that she was touched in the head, though Mr. Lawes had always known her as a staid matron and a regular attendant at church. We were told that this dance of old women, which is practised, so far as I know, in no other part of Polynesia, and which Mr. Lawes had never seen, was a revival of an ancient custom.
The warriors now engaged in mimic duel. A short man brandishing a paddle-club with both hands challenged another armed with a spear. Contorting his features into the most horrible grimaces, the club man rushed upon his antagonist, and appeared to be on the point of cracking his skull, when he seemed to take alarm at the spear and retired step by step before the other's onset. Thus by alternate rushes the fight swayed to and fro, until both the duellists were out of breath and gave place to others. The feints were so cleverly done that more than once I feared for a moment that they had lost their heads in the excitement, and that one or the other would receive a dangerous wound. What they must have looked in war paint, with tangled locks over their eyes and matted beards chewed between their teeth, it was easy to imagine, and I think that the success of the performance, which was so popular that we had to interfere when we had had enough of it, was due to the fact that it was not play-acting at all, but actual warfare as it was waged in the old days; for, as I shall presently explain, there is good reason to believe that hand-to-hand fighting was seldom more than a series of feints persisted in until the weaker vessel ran away, leaving his antagonist master of the field.