In the Track of the Trades / The Account of a Fourteen Thousand Mile Yachting Cruise to the Hawaiis, Marquesas, Societies, Samoas and Fijis

by Lewis R. Freeman

"He say he kill pig dead. You shoot gun, wake him up. Maro damn mad. He say now he kill three pigs, all one time. Maybe he mean 'long-pig.' Maro bad fella b'long Anaho," and he touched his eye with a finger as a sign that it would be well to be on guard.

The good fellow probably did Maro an injustice in charging him with harbouring the intention of converting my anatomy into that most recherché of Marquesan delicacies, "long-pig"; but if there was any doubt of his willingness, in his anger and disappointment, to tackle three pigs at once it was effectually dispelled by the events of the next few moments. The shouts of the beaters and the barking of the dogs had been growing louder all the time, and the crashings in the underbrush told that the pigs were now coming in increasing numbers. Three or four of them shortly came tearing into view, and then—all of a sudden—the path was packed with bristling black figures, the first few running hard and free and the rest crowding and stumbling.

The rush of pigs as the beaters closed in was always to be expected in this particular cul de sac, and McGrath had warned me regarding it.

"Get out of the way and sit tight," he had said; "and don't worry about the boys. They'll take care of themselves."

I appeared to be sufficiently out of the way already, and Tebu and the third native, as soon as they had caught sight of the impending avalanche, came over and joined me on the roots of the big tree. I watched them clamber up to safety and then turned to see the river of pigs sweep by—and there was that sullen, scowling tiger-cat of a Maro standing his ground in the middle of the runway. Of course, the proper thing to have done would have been for some self-sacrificing soul to leap down and snatch the would-be suicide from "under the wheels," a task for which the powerful Tebu was admirably fitted by nature. I'm not sure that the duty of indulging in this form of self-sacrifice is included in the Marquesan ethical code, but even if it had been, there was no time to put it into practice. Maro dropped his first pig and made a pass at the second even as I looked. The two animals were running almost neck-and-neck, so that the second thrust was hardly more than a slight slash upon the flying brute's shoulder. It served to turn Maro in his tracks, however, and not all of his super-feline quickness could bring him around again in time to meet the rush. The shoulder of the next pig sent him tottering sidewise as the animal passed, and in another moment he had fallen fairly across the upraising head of a huge boar in the van of the ruck. For an instant the shining bronze body ceased to flash against the heaving black background, and then, as a rat is tossed by a terrier, it was flung cleanly into the air, to come slamming down against the gnarled roots of our maupê tree and collapse into a lifeless heap. The body seemed to have struck the tree hard enough to break half of its bones; yet the worst injury, I told myself, must have come from the terrific toss that had sent it catapulting through the air.

After the rush was over we lost no time in clambering down to "view the remains." Tebu was smiling sardonically, apparently not greatly shocked by the tragedy and perhaps secretly pleased at having the only man in the island who was held his equal in pig-sticking prowess put out of the running. The other two natives seemed a little more upset, and Tavu was muttering to himself the ancient Marquesan proverb which translates literally as "Wild pig—'long-pig.'" This has lost its meaning since cannibalism became practically extinct, but in the old days it signified that when the men went out to get the meat of the wild pig, there was likely also to be man meat to eat at the feast that was held when the hunt was over.

The body lay on its back, inert as the carcasses of the pigs that littered the sides of the runway. Tebu and I picked it up and turned it over to reveal the wound which we knew must have been inflicted when it was tossed into the air—and lo, beyond some bluing bruises, there was no wound! We could only guess how so seemingly impossible a thing as a man's being tossed ten feet by a wild boar without being slashed to ribbons could have happened; but the most probable explanation seemed to be that Maro had fallen sidewise across the head of the animal, behind the tusks, so that the upward thrust of the powerful neck had only resulted in a mighty push. No bones appeared to be broken. A welt on the back of the head where it had struck the tree accounted for the senseless condition of the scrappy pig-sticker, and this, as far as we could discover, was the extent of the injuries. A dash of water from the nearby stream brought Maro back to life again, but too dazed, for the time being at least, to recall the resentment he had harboured against me on the score of the pig I had "waked up" with my pistol shots.

The natives now cleared a space of brush with their cutlasses and we prepared to rest and lunch in the shadow of the big tree. A fire was started to heat stones for roasting a young pig that had been captured, breadfruit and plantain were put to cooking, coconuts were opened and guavas, mangoes and a lucious array of other tropical fruits were laid out on the broad leaves of the taro plant. And then came the women to our Eden, and with them the Serpent.

McGrath had given the strictest orders that nothing in the form of toddy should be brought along on the hunt, and this injunction had apparently been heeded as far as the hunters themselves were concerned. But the dozen or more girls who had come on later to help as beaters and share in the division of the meat, claimed to have heard nothing of the prohibition. Possibly it was a "frame-up" on the part of the men, or perhaps it just happened. At any rate, when the beating brigade began to straggle in, it became apparent at once that tippling had been going on, and shortly I saw the bruised and battered Maro taking a long draught from a calabash that was being held to his lips by a star-eyed minx with a red hibiscus blossom behind her ear and a rakish chaplet of fern frond tilted across her comely brow.

"Coco toddy," muttered Tavu, half in alarm, half in anticipative ecstasy. "Plenty coco toddy b'long vahine."