Our rejoicings, however, we found to have been partly premature. The warship had unfortunately brought with her large gifts of clothes for the natives from well-wishers in Chile. Some little while before attention had been drawn to the inhabitants of Easter, by an Australian captain who had touched there on his homeward voyage. The natives had, as usual, come off to his ship in their oldest garments; he had been impressed with their ragged condition and made a collection of clothes for them in Australia amounting to many bales, but on his next voyage to Chile he had been unable to touch again at the island and had left them at Valparaiso. We had been asked to bring these bales, but had declined on the score of space.[[16]] The Chileans disliked the idea of their protectorate being indebted to strangers, made a collection on their own account, and despatched them by the Baquedano. It seemed unthinkable that people, every one of whom for weeks had been consuming stolen goods, and who, two days before, had been on the verge of murder, should be immediately presented officially with the commodity they most prized. I therefore went on board the Baquedano, saw the Captain, and ventured to request that the goods should be handed over to us, promising personally to visit every house before our departure, ascertain the needs of the people, and distribute the articles. “Surely,” he said, “you shall have them.” Within a few hours they had been distributed by his officers on the beach. Some of the garments were useful, but an assortment of ball-slippers seemed a little out of place, and the greater part of the community, men and women, blossomed out into washing waistcoats. The stolen sheepskins, or some of them, were returned, but three of the four ringleaders were set at liberty, and no corporate punishment was inflicted; indeed, the Captain had told me he considered that the natives had “behaved very well not to murder Mr. Edmunds” prior to our arrival.

Before the ship left the island, the Captain wrote officially to the “Head of the British Scientific Expedition” to the effect, that the action he had been obliged to take to restore order would probably have the result of rousing more feeling against foreigners; he therefore could not guarantee our safety and offered us passages to Chile—an offer which, needless to say, we declined. So ended the Revolution; we felt with interest that the confidence of the Prophetess had been justified, at any rate as far as 249 Kanakas were concerned out of the 250.

The old lady died six months later; I attended her funeral. The coffin was pathetically tiny, and neatly covered with black and white calico. A service was first held in the church where, during the rising, she used to take part in the assemblies and address her adherents. There figured prominently in the ceremony a model of the building and also two prie-dieu, roughly made of boards, one of which she had used in private, the other in public worship. She was laid to rest beneath the great wooden cross, which marks the Kanaka burying-ground, between the village and the bay. I stood at a little distance watching gleams of sunshine on the great stones of the terrace of Hanga Roa and on the grey sea beyond, and musing on the strange life now closed, whose early days had been spent in a native hut beneath the standing images of Raraku. My attention was recalled by an evident hitch in the proceedings: difficulty had arisen in lowering the coffin, owing to the fact that the prie-dieu was also being fitted into the grave. When all had been finally adjusted and the interment was completed, a sound was heard, unusual in such circumstances—three English cheers—hip, hip, hooray; the natives had learnt it from passing ships and esteemed it an essential part of a ceremony. The company was not large for the obsequies of one who had so recently been the heroine of the village, and on asking in particular why a certain near relative was absent, the answer received was that “there was to be a great feast of pigs, and he was busy preparing it”; doubtless others were similarly detained.

During the remainder of our sojourn there were, as will be seen, additional white men on the island. The Kanakas were occupied in various ways and there was no further open demonstration, but their independence and demands increased daily. Since we left, a white employé of the Company has been murdered by them and thrown into the sea.

CHAPTER XII
A GERMAN BASE

Mana appeared on August 23rd, a week after the warship left, and not before we had become a little anxious about her. She had done the passage to the mainland in eighteen days, establishing a record, but had had bad luck on her return journey, the voyage having taken forty-one days. Even after her arrival there was the usual chase to get hold of her, and we did not receive the mail till late one night. We had had no letters since we left Talcahuano the preceding February, and read them eagerly during the small hours; it was the greatest relief to find that at home all was well. The yacht had to put out again to sea before the newspapers could be landed, but we later received in them the accounts of the murder of the Austrian Archduke and Duchess; even then, of course, Ireland and labour troubles loomed much more largely on the political horizon. As soon as the return mail was ready, on September 4th, we despatched Mana again, the instructions sent home being that everything was to be sent to Tahiti, as we expected to get off when she once more returned the following November.

The Baquedano had brought some additions to the community on the island: one or two Europeans to work on the estate and a German to plant tobacco. The fact that the presence of this last coincided with the declaration of the war, and the subsequent use of the island by his nation as a naval base, gave rise later to a good deal of comment; it is certain that but little effort was made to grow tobacco. He left shortly before we did. A schoolmaster from Chile was also among the new-comers; he was sent by the Government, and brought an expensive school building. In this he entertained us all to celebrate the day of Chilean Independence, September 18th, when the natives gave some masque dances, a fashion imported from Tahiti. It was interesting to notice that the women always preferred to wear for best occasions their own distinctive dress, rather than the smart clothes of the Baquedano, or similar gifts, which were relegated to every-day service; I have seen a really beautifully embroidered underskirt used for riding astride. The native garment is of any washing material, preferably white for Sundays. It falls straight and loosely down from a yoke, and is worn unreasonably long; the sleeves are made to the wrist, with puffs at the top (fig. 29). This fashion is said to be common throughout the South Seas, presumably dating from the first introduction of clothes by the missionaries.[[17]]

School was duly begun, but after a few days the children ceased to appear, the master declared he was “not an attendance officer,” and from then till we left, nearly a year later, no school was held; the last we saw of the blackboard and counting-frame, they were rotting in a field some two miles off, where they had been taken by the French marooned sailors for use in some carnival pony-races. The warship also brought an epidemic of bad colds: every ship except Mana left some such legacy.

Now that peace was in some measure restored, we set to work to excavate some of the statues which stood on the slope of the Raraku mountain. The natives were entirely indifferent whether they worked or not, but by paying high wages and giving any quantity of mutton, we were able at this time to get a certain amount of precarious labour for digging and camp work. The whole lot, including my maid-servant, went in for every week-end to the village, and it was always a matter of anxiety to know whether they would ever return. Our Sundays were spent peacefully, doing housework, taking the ponies to water in the crater, changing their pitches at due intervals, and similar jobs.

We had just begun the week’s work on Monday, October 12th, when word was brought that some steamers had appeared. The whole of the native staff, of course, at once departed to see what could be begged from the ships. The vessels turned out to be a German squadron, going, they said, “from the China station to Valparaiso.” Some more turned up later, till there were twelve in all, four or five of the number being warships, and the remainder colliers or other smaller vessels. They kept entire silence on the European situation. We had not, of course, the slightest idea that war had broken out, still less that our lonely island was the meeting-place, cleverly arranged by Admiral von Spee, for his ships from Japan—the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau—with the other German warships in this region; the Nürnberg and Leipzig had turned up from the west coast of Mexico, and the Dresden from the other side of South America. A writer in the Cornhill (August 1917) states “there happened to be upon it [Easter Island] a British scientific expedition, but busied over the relics of the past, the single-minded men of science did not take the trouble to cross the island to look at the German ships.” S. was, as a matter of fact, twice over at Mataveri while they were in Cook’s Bay, but it is true of this “single-minded” woman, who felt she had something else to do than to ride for some four hours to gaze at the outside of German men-of-war. What did interest us was that presumably, after the usual manner of passing ships, the officers would come over to Raraku, and being intelligent Germans, would photograph our excavations. We therefore turned to, and with our own hands covered up our best things.