“Methinks I see great Hot-Water now, with chiefly bearing, in his habit as he lived. He is at the Place-of-Dying, overlooking the sea, where the human spirits of our tribe take their departure for the other world. See! He is looking with his large earnest eyes towards the beach just in front of the village! His gaze is fixed upon his favorite canoe, drawn up on the sand and partly shaded by that clump of palms. Day after day, for a week or more, he has come to look at that little craft, the father of delightful reminiscences to him. Hark! He speaks! He is saying to himself ‘Oh, that canoe! Why don’t they put it on my grave! Oh, that fast little sailer! If it were only here, shouldn’t I be able to hoist sail, and away to those who await my coming!’ But, alas! his friends have been unmindful of their duty. The spirit of the canoe cannot therefore depart to its late owner and captain, who must now proceed on the inevitable submarine passage as best he may.
“Now he takes the dreadful dive into the Great Passage. The waters have not overwhelmed him—he emerges in the Place of Refuge. I see him with other spirits at the Face-Washing-Water, where they are washed with boiling water, which removes their outward and worldly appearance. One of Hot-Water’s companions is a bachelor. May the gods befriend him! This is no place for single spirits. Already the officers of the place are putting him under a large rock which will press him as a beetle is pressed under the foot of mortals! Bear up, brave heart! The utmost limit of thy fortitude must be fully ascertained by those who are now thy spiritual chiefs. According to thy endurance and chiefly bearing under trial shall their future treatment of thee be.
“Behold, a beautiful tree appears in view. Have a care, good spirits, for here lurks a grim monster, the King of the state you are now traversing. The lake hard by is the Face-Washing-Water. Speed on, but beware the fence guarded by King Spirit-Smiter. Dash on bravely now, and heed not the ghostly figure, or dreadful will be your doom. On, great Hot-Water presses, with club upraised—the spirit of the very club he used in the wars of earth, and which his weeping friends put into his hands just as he was coming away. Uplifted also is the club of the great Smiter; and now, crash! crash! crash! To right and left flies the flimsy fence. Well done, great chief. The horrible Smiter’s hands are paralysed, and he himself stands aside in blank wonderment at the uncommon daring of the hero, whose spirit, he now sees, is that of no ordinary child of earth, but one of the bravest of the brave.
“Now the great chief looks seaward, expecting some one from out the briny deep from which he himself but lately emerged. He pauses in front of a screw-pine, and throws whales’ teeth at it. Once, twice, three times, twenty times! and struck the mark ten times! He has twenty wives, and ten of them are being strangled that they may have the privilege of accompanying their lord through all the kingdoms of this mysterious world. How the prospect has lifted the cloud which a few minutes ago rested on his chiefly features! How quickly now he turns with cheerful face and beaming eye towards the beach, remarking as he does so, ‘They cannot be long in coming! They will soon be here!’ True, indeed. Even as he speaks, the ten wives arrive by the old and well-beaten submarine road. The water is dripping from their hair, and the mark of the strangling cord is still about their necks, which, but yesterday, sweet-smelling flowers bedecked. Oh! beneficent customs of our fatherland, long may they survive, and may the people never turn from the instructions of their priests.
“Again, I see Hot-Water in the Third State. Being a man of arms, he bears a club upon his shoulder. Here the country is well planted with food for the benefit of new arrivals. Hot-Water was not cut off untimely, for see! his bananas in Hades are ripe. Yonder wretched spirit is that of a poor man who committed suicide in his youth, and he is obliged to live on green fruit.
“Hark! Do you not hear sounds as from a multitude of voices chanting. We are in the Fourth State of the Spirit-World—the Land of Song. The great King of the country is also its music-master. There is no place so joyous and gleesome as this. Great Hot-Water seems himself again. His moonlight nights are all come back to him, and he enjoys them as heartily as he used to do in the old world.
“Slowly and reluctantly the spirits are gliding away to the Fifth State. Their eyes are drooping and fireless, and their faces are pale with the paint of Death, who, for the fifth time, is already touching them with his icy hand. Even now they are in the country where reigns and rules with iron will the hideous despot, King Back-Chopper. The song is hushed, and the dance is done. No more are there any sweet-smelling flowers, or cool breezes, or moonlight walks under the village trees! Nothing but the awful King, stalking abroad to chop, with his spiritual tomahawk, the backs of his spiritual subjects! Hot-Water bears the torture bravely. He knows that it cannot last for ever, and that with none but himself to thank, King Back-Chopper has hourly to behold, to his infinite chagrin, spirits whom he has long victimised, bolting at last through the very gate of which he is himself the porter, to
“The Sixth and Last State—‘the Place-of-Everlasting-Standing.’ Hot-Water is in the land of shadows. I see his noble spirit moving through space in the care of the gods. It is enough. Great is Dengeh, and the priests are his prophets.”
I learned from this semi-visionary deliverance of the wily Box-of-Tricks more than I had ever known before of the future state the Fijians believe in. The old priest was now too excited to talk to me on any other subject, so I left him to his mummeries.