The Cruise of the "Janet Nichol" Among the South Sea Islands: A Diary

by Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson

Mr. Hird tells us a story it is well to remember. There was some sort of disturbance at Penrhyn, where his vessel was trading, and all on the ship were afraid for their lives to go ashore except himself. The moment his boat touched ground he dashed up to a little maid of seven, the chief's daughter, and, taking her by the hand, calmly walked to where he wished to go.

Last night, as we were sitting round the lamp, some one looked up and perceived that all three port-holes had as many faces looking through them as could find an eyehole. Mr. Henderson went into his room and arranged a few conjuring tricks. When he returned he made money disappear in a box, bits of cork change places, etc. While speaking to one of us he carelessly tore off a piece of newspaper and handed it to a man at the port-hole, but as the man's fingers closed on it the paper disappeared. "Tiaporo!" (the devil!) he cried, his eyes almost starting from his head. This was followed by the throwing up of money which apparently fell back through the crown of a hat and jingled inside. The last and most thrilling feat was after Mr. Henderson had been pulling money from all our heads, noses, and ears. He seemed to be retiring quietly to his room when he gave a start, looked up in the air over his head, and with a leap caught a silver dollar that seemed to be falling from the ceiling.

I forgot to say that in the afternoon Louis was dictating to Lloyd, who used his typewriter. All the air and most of the light was cut off from them by heads at the port-holes. I watched the faces and saw one intelligent old man explaining to the others that Lloyd was playing an accompaniment to Louis's singing; the old man several times tried to follow the tune but found it impossible. He did not appear to think it a good song, and once, with difficulty, restrained his laughter.

9th.—We should have picked up Arorai yesterday at four o'clock, but somehow missed it and did not arrive until this morning. An atoll about six miles long, the first of the Kingsmills (or Gilberts). Natives swarmed round the ship in canoes built somewhat after the pattern of the American Indian birch-bark canoe. The pieces are tied together with cocoanut sennit and the boats leak like sieves. Louis, Lloyd, and I went on shore in the afternoon; Louis, to my distress, for it was very hot, with a hammer to break off bits of the reef for examination and Lloyd with the camera. Louis found the rock he wished to break but was a little afraid to use the force necessary. Seeing a powerful young man standing near, he offered a stick of tobacco for the job. The fellow smiled with delight, took the hammer, and struck one blow. "Too much work," said he, dropping the hammer.

Lloyd and I were taken in tow by an old man and led to the house of the missionary, who was himself on board the ship; but his wife and family, a handsome young Samoan woman with a pair of sickly twins, were at the door to give us welcome. We drank cocoanuts with her and took a photograph of the group.

There is very little soil on the island, which is subject to severe droughts; yet there are a number of breadfruit and jack-fruit trees growing luxuriantly, not many, however, old enough to bear. The village looked clean and prosperous. Children and women were pulling weeds and carrying them away in baskets. Lloyd and I strolled along a wide avenue that ran through the town for about a quarter of a mile, stopping once to photograph an old woman who had evidently dressed up for the ship. She was standing in the doorway of a neat house built of stockades tied together—the first I've seen in these islands. The house belonged to a trader who was abroad at the time. Returning, we saw two women, tall and superior in carriage and looks to the common people, marching abreast toward us; they were dressed in gala-day ridis of smoked and oiled pandanus strips and swung the heavy fringe from side to side, as they walked, in the most approved and latest style. As they came nearer to us their four eyes were fixed on the horizon behind us, and they swaggered past as though unaware of our existence, though we were attended by a following of the greater part of the village. I stopped and looked after them, but neither turned a head.[13]

At the veranda of the mission house we found Louis entertained by the old man and indignant at receiving no attention from the missionary people; we suggested that his chopping at the reef in the hot sun had convinced them that he was a lunatic.

We had heard of a sick trader, so we all three went to his house with an immense tail of followers, who seated themselves outside in a circle eight or ten deep while we talked to the sick man. A forlorn being he looked, lying on a mat, his head thrust out into the open through the thatched sides of the hut to catch what air there was. He had been ill a month and a half, he said; the whole population had been ill, also, his wife and children with the rest. With them it came first as a rash, then a fever, followed by convalescence. He had no rash, but after feeling very badly for a week or two, fell down in a fit, foaming at the mouth and black in the face. Since then he had been suffering from an intolerable pain in the head and could not stand for weakness. I asked if he had proper food, which Louis followed by asking if his appetite was good. When he could get anything to eat, he replied, he liked it well enough; but he could not get anything. A bit of fish or a chicken he could relish, but the people seldom fished and a chicken was impossible. His food consisted almost entirely of pounded pandanus seeds, in which there was about as much nourishment as in chopped straw. His hands and feet were pallid and bloodless and he looked very near the end. He was born, he said, in Colton Terrace, Edinburgh. "I'm frae Edinburgh mysel'," said Louis. "We are far frae hame," returned the poor fellow with a sigh. We went at once to the beach to get a boat, intending to consult "Hartshorn," our medical authority, as to his case, which I believed to be suppressed measles. Louis spoke to Mr. Henderson about sending the man a case of soups to begin with, anything heavier being dangerous in his weak state and semistarved condition. Mr. Henderson, who is generosity itself, seemed rather hurt that we had not taken it for granted that anything the man needed would be supplied him at once. Mr. Henderson's only fear was that the man would, in the usual native custom, give all the food away. He first divides with his family, and then they divide with the outside relations, so that provisions sufficient for a month may only last a day. It is an amiable weakness, certainly, but one could wish that the recipients of his bounty showed a little more gratitude. Fishing would be no more than play for them; but I fear neither fish, flesh, nor fowl can save him now.

The missionary who came aboard showed Louis his eye, in which he was blind, the effect of measles, and begged for a cure. Of course there was none, but Louis advised him to live as generously as possible and, instead of a continual diet of pandanus seeds, to try and get some fish. As soon as it was dark the sea was crowded with fishing-boats, lighted up with flaring torches, made by wrapping sennit round a dry cocoanut leaf; so we hope our poor trader may receive some benefit, also. We could see that they were scooping up in their nets many flying-fish. The light from the torch attracts the fish, which come to the surface of the water round the boats and are then dipped up in little nets on the ends of long poles.