CHAPTER XIII
My first business now, was to try and find out the nature of the rapid and deadly disease from which the people were suffering, and with this object in view I consulted the priests of the Sacred Heart. The only London Missionary Society man in the district had just left for England. The priests were looking after his Samoan and Fijian teachers, who were all blue with funk, and were also supplying them with medicines. I believe four of the teachers died during the epidemic, as well as a number of the European members of the Sacred Heart. I soon came to the conclusion that the source of the infection was in the water supply of the villages, and ordered that all water for the domestic use of the villagers should be drawn from the San Joseph river, or other big streams, where pollution was practically impossible, instead of from pools near the river. Threats, punishment, persuasion, nothing was of any avail; still the people would persist in drawing and drinking the water from the pools to which they had been in the habit of going.
I rushed through the district with a flying patrol, and made the lives of the village constables and chiefs a burden to them; but still the natives died like flies, and still they drank from the pools. In each village I made the village constable give me a list of houses in which bodies had been buried, and then set the police to prod with their bayonets through the earthen floor until the corpses were discovered; whereupon, we made the householder disinter them and plant them in the cemetery; if there were no cemetery, I laid one out for them. I sent every householder off to gaol in whose house I found a corpse, until Basilio sent to say there would soon be a famine in the Station; then, to prevent this, I levied toll of food upon the villagers, and plundered their gardens if they did not pay. But still the people drank from the pools, and sickened and died.
I called a meeting of chiefs and village constables, and threatened and prayed them to stop the burial in the houses and the drinking of polluted water. “We can’t stop it,” they said; “you are strong and wise, tell us what to do.” I racked my brains, and at last I thought I saw a way out. “Take this message to your people,” I said: “I am going myself to poison every hole from which they draw water, except running streams, and they can come and see me do it; after that, I shall burn down every house in which a man is buried, and if I find five corpses in one village, I shall burn the whole village. In the meantime they are all to leave the villages, and camp in shelters half a mile away.” Then I wondered how I could make the people believe that their wells and pools were really poisoned; hunting amongst my supply of drugs, I found about half a pound of Permanganate of Potash, a few grains of which, placed in a bucketful of water, is sufficient to produce a red colour. “Ah,” I thought to myself, “now for a little sorcery.” I carefully filled up two wine glasses, one with Ipecacuanha wine, an emetic; the other with water, coloured by Permanganate to a passable imitation of it. Then I returned to my meeting of chiefs and village constables, carrying the glasses in my hands.
I addressed the meeting in this way. “You see these glasses? They contain a virulent poison, the poison I am going to put in the wells and pools. I am going to drink one glassful and Maina, v.c., the other; but the strength of my magic will save us from dying, though you will be able to see what a bad poison it is.” Maina was not at all keen on drinking his brew, but as his brother v.c.’s all told him to rely upon me, and I told him he would get the sack as a v.c., and gaol for disobedience of orders, if he did not, he plucked up courage and swallowed the nauseous draught with many grimaces. I then swallowed mine, passed round cigarettes, and awaited developments. In twenty minutes Maina asked whether I was certain of the efficacy of my protection against the poison I had given him, as he was feeling very ill. I explained that I was, and that he would be quite safe, unless at any time he had neglected his duties as a v.c.: should he have done that, he would be extremely ill for a few minutes, and then get quite well again. Somehow or other I think Maina must have been remiss in his duties, for in a few minutes he was most uncommonly sick, after which he rapidly recovered. The meeting then dispersed, fully convinced that my threat of poisoning the water was no idle one, and prepared to explain to the people the colour and nature of the poison I intended using.
Village after village I then visited, drawing from each well or pool a bucketful of water, which I coloured red with Permanganate and exhibited to the natives: after which, I made some hocus pocus passes with my hands over the pool or well, whilst I poured in the mixture, dismally chanting all the time, “Boney was a warrior, Boney was a thief, Boney came to my house and stole a leg of beef.” My voice, I may remark, is not a melodious one. At very big pools I constructed a little boat of leaves—like the paper boats made by children—and placing a little gunpowder in it, I focussed the rays of the sun through one of the lenses removed from my field-glasses, until it exploded in a puff of fire and smoke. Then, gazing severely at the village constable and assembled villagers, I would groan loudly, and explain that the poison devils I had placed in that particular pool were of the most malignant description, and I hoped that they would not be fools enough to allow them to enter their systems through the medium of the water. “Not much!” was the equivalent of their reply; “we are not going to risk magic of this sort. No! Not even if we have to walk miles for our water.”
I sent a report to Blayney describing the symptoms of the sick, and asking for advice. Blayney was a doctor, as well as R.M., the only one besides Sir William MacGregor in New Guinea. He replied, “I can’t come to help you, I am tied up by this infernal Treasury work; there is no doubt, I think, that the illness is enteric fever. Look to your water supply and drive the people out of the infected houses.” I had already done all this, so I merely continued patrols to make sure that the natives were carrying out my orders; the immediate effect being, that the sickness slackened and the deaths dwindled down to almost nothing. “Thank Heaven,” I thought, “I have got it under.” Suddenly a fresh outburst occurred, sweeping like a wave with awful virulence through the people, who were now mostly camped away from the villages.
At my wits’ end, I again assembled the chiefs and village constables. “What foolery are you up to now?” I asked. “Are you drinking the water from the poisoned wells, or burying the dead in the villages or houses?” “Oh no,” they said, “we have obeyed you most strictly; also we have carried out a precaution suggested by the sorcerers.” “What was that?” I demanded. “They have told us that when a death takes place, the body of the dead person is to be licked by all the relations.” Frantic with rage, I jumped to my feet and howled for the Station guard. “Strip the uniform and Government clothes off these men, and throw them into gaol, until I can devise some means of bringing them to their senses,” I yelled, as the police came running up. Pallid with funk, and loudly protesting that they were good and loyal servants of the Government, my village constables and chiefs were hauled away. Soon, from the villages, came streaming in the wives, friends, and relations of the imprisoned men, weeping bitterly and praying me to release their husbands, fathers, brothers, etc. Then I took counsel with Basilio. “The men are not to blame,” he said, “it is the sorcerers; you will do no good by punishing the v.c.’s and chiefs, who are trying to help you, merely because they are fools.” “Very true; but how can I catch the elusive sorcerer?” I remarked. “The v.c.’s are badly frightened now,” said Basilio; “scare them a little more, and they will drop a hint as to the whereabouts of some of them.” I had my v.c.’s brought back, and threatened and abused them alternately; they all—with one exception—squirmed, lied, and tried to excuse themselves, and all denied knowledge as to the whereabouts of the sorcerers. “How then did you receive the message from them, as to the licking of the bodies of the dead?” I demanded. Dead silence and more squirms.
Then I turned to the one man who had not lied and excused himself. “What have you to say for yourself?” “Nothing: if you choose to put me in gaol, put me there; but since you came, I have most strictly carried out the orders of the Government, and I have had no communication with sorcerers; neither have I had any deaths in my village since you closed the wells; also the people of my village have not licked the bodies of the dead.” Three minutes’ inquiry confirmed the truth of this village constable’s statement: whereupon, I returned his uniform, gave him a brass bird of paradise badge (the badge worn on the caps of the constabulary), and told him, that for the future he was senior village constable for the district with double pay, and when he visited the Station he should have the right to sleep in the constabulary barracks, instead of in the visitors’ house. The name of this man was Aia Kapimana, and on his leaving to return to his village, he called up a youth of about fourteen: “My son,” he proudly said; “I give him to you as a servant.” I didn’t want a servant, but not wishing to offend the man, whose feelings I had already most unjustly hurt, I said I would keep him for a while. The boy had the same name as his father, “Aia,” and was a nice smart-looking lad; I sent him to join Poruta.
This youth remained in my private service for many months, accompanying me afterwards when I left the Mekeo district to go to the South-Eastern Division; I found him to be always loyal and obedient. After he left my service and returned to Mekeo, he was engaged as a private servant by my successor, Amedeo Giulianetti, who was a man, like myself, very severe upon the sorcerers: unfortunately for him, however, he was never very popular with the constabulary. One night Giulianetti was sleeping in the house of the local London missionary on the coast, about twenty miles from Mekeo Station, while his police and Aia were sleeping in native houses some distance away. To Aia, came a sorcerer and said, “You are to shoot your master dead; if I could shoot, I would do it; but as I cannot, you must; and if you refuse I shall strike you dead.” Aia took a police rifle and, accompanied by the sorcerer, walked up to the Mission house; Giulianetti was sleeping with a lighted lamp on a chair beside his bed; Aia blew out Giulianetti’s brains, then, firing another shot at him, fled—as did the sorcerer. The sorcerer, in fording a stream during his flight, was seized by an alligator and severely mangled before he could escape from its jaws; believing then that the alligator was on the side of the Government and that escape was hopeless, he made no further effort to get away, and was secured by the police. Aia either gave himself up to them or was secured by the fathers of the Sacred Heart Mission. These, shortly, were the facts elicited at the trial of Aia and the sorcerer, both of whom were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.