After the wayugo has been ritually brought in, the lashing of the canoe begins. First of all the ribs are lashed into position then the planks, and with this the body of the canoe is ready. This takes a varying time, according to the number of people at work, and to the amount of tallying and adjusting to be done at the final fitting. Sometimes one whole day’s work is spent on this stage, and the next piece of work, the construction of the outrigger, has to be postponed to another day. This is the next stage, and there is no magic to punctuate the course of technical activities. The big, solid log is put alongside the canoe, and a number of short, pointed sticks are driven into it. The sticks are put in crossways on the top of the float (lamina). Then the tops of these sticks are again attached to a number of horizontal poles, which have to be thrust through one side of the canoe-body, and attached to the other. All this naturally requires again adjusting and fitting. When these sticks and poles are bound together, there results a strong yet elastic frame, in which the canoe and the float are held together in parallel positions, and across them transversely there run the several horizontal poles which keep them together. Next, these poles are bridged over by many longitudinal sticks lashed together, and thus a platform is made between the edge of the canoe and the tops of the float sticks.
When that is done, the whole frame of the canoe is ready, and there remains only to caulk the holes and interstices. The caulking substance is prepared in the hut of the toliwaga, and a spell is recited over it on the evening before the work is begun. Then again, the whole community turn out and do the work in one day’s sitting.
The canoe is now ready for the sea, except for the painting, Which is only for ornamentation. Three more magical rites have to be performed, however, before it is painted and then launched. All three refer directly to the canoe, and aim at giving it speed. At the same time all three are exorcisms against evil influences, resulting from various defilements or broken taboos, which possibly might have desecrated the waga. The first is called Vakasulu, which means something like “ritual cooking” of the canoe. The toliwaga has to prepare a real witches’ cauldron of all sorts of things, which afterwards are burnt under the bottom of the canoe, and the smoke is supposed to exercise a speed-giving and cleansing influence. The ingredients are: the wings of a bat, the nest of a very small bird called posisiku, some dried bracken leaves, a bit of cotton fluff, and some lalang grass. All the substances are associated with flying and lightness. The wood used for kindling the fire is that of the light-timbered mimosa tree (liga). The twigs have to be obtained by throwing at the tree a piece of wood (never a stone), and when the broken-off twig falls, it must be caught in the hand, and not allowed to touch the ground.
The second rite, called Vaguri, is an exorcism only, and it consists of charming a stick, and then knocking the body of the canoe all over with it. This expels the evil witchery (bulubwalata), which it is only wise to suspect has been cast by some envious rivals, or persons jealous of the toliwaga.
Finally, the third of these rites, the Kaytapena waga, consists in medicating a torch of coco-leaf with the appropriate spell, and fumigating with it the inside of the canoe. This gives speed and once more cleanses the canoe.
After another sitting of a few days, the whole outside of the canoe is painted in three colours. Over each of them a special spell is chanted again, the most important one over the black colour. This is never omitted, while the red and white spells are optional. In the rite of the black colour, again, a whole mixture of substances is used—a dry bracken leaf, grass, and a posisiku nest—all this is charred with some coco-nut husk, and the first strokes of the black paint are made with the mixture. The rest is painted with a watery mixture of charred coco-nut. For red colour, a sort of ochre, imported from the d’Entrecasteaux Islands, is used; the white one is made of a chalky earth, found in certain parts of the sea shore.
Sail-making is done on another day, usually in the village, by communal labour, and, with a number of people helping, the tedious and complicated work is performed in a relatively short time. The triangular outline of the sail is first pegged out on the ground, as a rule the old sail being used as a pattern. After this is done, tapes of dried pandanus leaf (see Plates [XXVIII], [XXIX]) are stretched on the ground and first fixed along the borders of the sail. Then, starting at the apex of the triangle, the sail-makers put tapes radiating towards the base, sewing them together with awls of flying fox bone, and using as thread narrow strips of specially toughened pandanus leaf. Two layers of tapes are sewn one on top of the other to make a solid fabric.
IV
The canoe is now quite ready to be launched. But before we go on to an account of the ceremonial launching and the associated festivities, one or two general remarks must be made retrospectively about the proceedings just described.