Last evening our pigs fought like dogs, biting each other and rushing about the deck like mad. The noise they made was more like barking than grunting or squealing. The cook has cut his leg; Mr. Hird has a bad cold; the engineer, Mr. Stoddard, is sneezing, and Louis feels as though he had caught the cold also; the captain still very bad; he caught more cold last night. Lloyd's wounds, from the reef on Tin Jack's island much better. I bound them with soap and sugar first and then covered them with iodoform.
We have been to two settlements to-day and are now returning to the first. At the second Tom Day came on board and had a meal; also Captain Smith. Our coal is very low; hardly any left, in fact, and we are all burning with curiosity as to where we are going next—to the Hebrides, Fiji—or perhaps to Brisbane. Spent the evening talking to Tom Day. He told many tales of Bishop Patterson and of hunts for necklace teeth. A father who has good teeth often leaves them as a heritage to his children. They are worth a great deal—or were. He has known many murders for teeth. My necklace seems a gruesome possession.
13th.—Left Noukanau in the morning; arrived at Piru at eleven o'clock; left at one, Monday morning, for Onoatoa. Louis had a long talk there with Frank Villiero. Land here is divided into large and small lots; the large, one and a half acres, the small, half an acre. There are never any smaller divisions. A large lot is quite enough for a family to live on. Some great families own many lots and have picked as many as fifteen hundred nuts in one month. Pieces of land are confiscated for theft, or murder, by those who suffer loss through the crime. A piece of land so taken from a murderer can be regained by the criminal pouring a bottle of oil over the body of the man he has murdered. But this is never done if the person fined bears malice or enmity toward the dead man. The island was formerly in a far more prosperous state owing to the fact that a large proportion of the inhabitants were then kept as slaves.
The duties of the "old men" (the democratic islands are supposed to be ruled by the "old men," who meet in a body to make laws) are really the demarcation and recording of lands; they can go back for generations in the division of island lands. The population of Piru is about twenty-five hundred; the police, at present, number about one thousand men uniformed in blue jumpers, jean trousers, and a wisp of red on the arm. There are three districts, each being patrolled at night by the police, who call the roll of every grown person, and must be answered. The fines go one half to the teacher (for his private benefit) one fourth to the old men, one fourth to the police. Villiero has seen a policeman receive no more than ten cocoanuts for a whole year's work, and he must find his own uniform of which he is not proud. Every portion of the island is owned and the demarcations owned. They are a mean lot here; their fights mere broils, and very little feeling is shown for each other. A canoe drifted away, or a man dead, is almost instantly forgotten. Little or no sour toddy is drunk since the missionaries came. Mr. Clark, the missionary from Samoa, told them that on Sundays when a ship came up to the island they must allow a couple of men to take the trader off; formerly these boatmen were always fined.
Mr. Villiero brought his wife and adopted daughter, Miss Prout, to see me in the afternoon. It was very embarrassing, for they came laden with gifts, and I had nothing suitable to offer in return. We had an adoption ceremony by which I became either mother, or daughter, to Mrs. Villiero, no one quite knew which, not even her husband. Miss Mary Prout was quite the "young person," shy and silent. Both were well dressed and wore European rings. Mrs. Villiero makes all her husband's clothes. The presents consisted of a little full-rigged ship inside a bottle, the mouth of which it could not pass. Mr. Villiero was three weeks in making it, working all the time, a regular sailor's present; also a large, fine mat with a deep fringe of red wool, in very bad taste, a couple of plaited mats, a pair of shells, and an immense packet of pandanus sweetmeat. When we met Mrs. Villiero she threw round my neck a string of porpoise teeth, thick and long, the preliminary to adoption. With Louis's help, Mr. Villiero made his will. (He was afterward lost in a labour vessel—virtually a slaver—that sank with many unfortunate natives on board as well. It was on the way to South America.) He has a feeling that his life is not safe here with some of the other traders, the poisoners, in fact. He told Louis of an unfortunate affair that happened on the fourth of July. Villiero, Briggs, and the Chinese trader made a signed bargain that they would all buy copra at a certain fixed price, with a fine of two hundred dollars to be paid by the one breaking the bargain. Soon all the custom had fallen into the hands of the Chinaman. On inquiry it came out that while the Chinaman ostensibly bought at the agreed price, he gave a present of tobacco besides, thereby evading the letter of the bargain. Following Briggs's foolish advice, the other traders armed themselves to the teeth and went at night to the Chinaman's house. Briggs and Blanchard guarded the door, while Villiero, holding a pistol to the Chinaman's head, demanded the two hundred dollars fine. Of course it was paid. When the missionary ship came in Villiero told this tale to the white missionary who advised immediate restitution of the money, and said he was bound to report the traders' conduct. I wonder that a man of Villiero's intelligence should have been led by a person like Briggs.
The captain is very weak, but Louis better.
14th.—Onoatoa Island.
15th.—At Tamana early in the morning. One of our passengers taken on at Tom Day's island and introduced by Tom as "Captain Thomas, this old Cinderella," went on shore with all his belongings. Another passenger whom we are taking to Sydney made me a native drill which will cut through the most delicate shell, or through the iron of a boiler, or a dish, or a glass tumbler. I made holes through some red and white bone whist counters and strung them into necklaces, really very pretty. Since we were at Tamana before there has been a murder and an execution. A man from another island, indignant at being worsted in a wrestling match, watched at the church and struck a spear into his victim, who soon died. The execution was by hanging. They dragged the man up by the neck, then let him down to see if he was dead, then pulled him up again only to lower him for another look, continuing this barbarity until they were satisfied no life was left in the wretch.
16th.—Arorai in the morning. The first thing we hear is that poor McKenzie, the man who was starving, is dead, supposedly from a surfeit on the soups we left him. He ate ravenously; said in reply to a question of how he felt, "I feel full," immediately became insensible, and so remained for three days, when he died. It did not occur to me to warn him against overeating; soup seemed such an innocent thing; I was afraid to let him have solid food at first.
"Cockroach," one of our black boys, has got his fingers badly crushed. He has been crying like a child ever since. The captain still very ill; he and I went through two medical books and both came to the conclusion that he must be suffering from inflammation of the stomach. He says he has been worse ever since one day when three black boys refused to work on a Sunday. Sally Day, he says, was very impudent, and he was too weak to knock Sally down, which fact preys on his spirits.