The malaga most in use is but little larger than the regulation whaleboat. It is stepped for two masts, and, with a big leg-o'-mutton sail hoisted on each, makes good speed if the wind is anywhere abaft the beam. Within eight points of the wind, if any sea is running, too much water comes aboard to make sailing practicable. At such times the canvas is taken in and the oars resorted to until a shift of wind or a change of course makes sailing again possible.
The Samoan invariably sings when he rows, and stopping his mouth would interfere quite as much with the progress of the boat as binding his arms. They pull one man to the oar and take their stroke from the rhythm of the song of the leader. Ask your Samoan boatman how far the next point is, or how long it will take to reach it, and he will tell you "three songs," or four or five songs, as he happens to judge it. On a hot day a crew will stop oftener to rest its throats than its backs. Entering a tortuous, surf-beset passage through a reef, such as leads into all the bays of Tutuila except Pago Pago, a man takes his station on the prow of the malaga and, signalling with his hands, now on one side and now on the other, keeps the helmsman advised of the lay of the channel.
Captain and Mrs. Underwood came off to the yacht the afternoon following our arrival at Pago Pago, their call proving most opportune in chancing to coincide with that of Seuka, the taupo of the village. The latter, in company with her hand-maidens, a dozen or more in all, bearing presents of tapa and fruit, came off in the official malaga, and through neglecting to bring an interpreter with her narrowly missed being taken for a curio vendor and being put off until another day. The Underwoods came to the rescue, however, and prolonged their call until everybody was acquainted.
The taupo or "village maiden" is a functionary as indispensable to a Samoan village as a chief, or even a missionary. She is, in fact, usually the daughter of the chief; or, if that dignitary has no girl in his family, the most attractive maiden chosen from among his near relations. Her duties are the traditional ones of making the official kava, leading the official dances called siva-sivas, and looking after the entertainment and personal comfort of distinguished visitors. Formerly she acted as a sort of vivandiere in time of tribal wars, encouraging her chief's forces by singing in the forefront of the battle. This latter, strange as it may seem, is not an ancient custom by any means. The still young and beautiful wife of Judge E. W. Gurr of Pago Pago, who was taupo of Apia at the time of the now historic war between Maletoa and Mataafa for supremacy in Samoa, went through that sanguinary struggle at the side of her adopted father, the distinguished chief, Seumana-Tafa, and her delightful accounts of her experiences in those stirring days we were privileged to enjoy on a number of occasions during our visit.
The taupo lives in a house of her own, attended by eight or ten handmaidens and a stern—a very stern—duenna. The handmaidens are the most attractive unmarried girls in the village after the taupo, and are chosen for their faces and figures and their ability to dance. Beyond following the taupo in the mazes of the siva-siva and accompanying her on official calls, they have no duties to speak of, but as each one lives in hope of being chosen as a successor when their leader passes from them by marriage or for any other cause, their life is largely a schooling toward that felicitous end. The kava and siva-siva ceremonies are so numerous and intricate that nothing short of many years of instruction and practice can fit a girl properly to perform them, and in this respect the training of a taupo is not unlike that of the court geishas of Japan or certain of the temple nautch girls of India.
The duenna is the guardian of the taupo's morals. To her is delegated the important duty of seeing that the feet of that often temperamental and wilful young personage do not stray from the path of rectitude. Escort, watcher, protector, she is supposed never to let her charge stray beyond the sweep of her eye by day nor the reach of her arm at night. In the old days, in the event of a contretemps, the life of the duenna as well as that of the taupo was forfeit, whether she was guilty of "contributory negligence" or not. Today, although virginity is still the sine qua non of a taupo, the punishment for obliquities is somewhat less drastic, both for guard and guarded.
Seuka had come off to the yacht to invite us to a talolo or official reception to be given in our honour the following evening by Chief Mauga of Pago Pago. After the talolo she and her girls would dance the siva-siva for us, and there would also be some dancing by the men. Of course we accepted the invitation with alacrity.
To this function we went in state, convoyed by a flotilla of canoes sent down by Mauga, the occupants of which enlivened the progress by singing swinging choruses extemporized in our praise. The tide was out when we reached our destination at the end of the bay, as a result of which our cutter grounded upon the edge of the reef. Instantly the members of our escort jumped out of their canoes and swarmed alongside to carry us in across the fifty yards of intervening shallows to the beach. The Commodore and I saw the Mater and Claribel borne unresistingly off in the arms of two bronze, flower-crowned giants, and then, judging it more compatible with our dignity, made the fatal mistake of electing to take the journey "pick-a-back." Before my "mount" had splashed a dozen yards I came to a realization of the fact that it was going to be out of the question to retain my hold on his coco-oiled shoulders while he traversed the whole distance; so, rather than prolong the agony, I dropped off into the water and trudged ashore alone. The air was warm, my ducks were soiled already, and most of the guests would be barefoot anyway, I told myself philosophically. But the Commodore, who, as the official head of the party was out in his nattiest uniform and did not, as he explained later, desire to make his first appearance before the highest chief on the island of Tutuila looking like a ship-wrecked sailor, would not give up without a struggle.
Unfortunately for the Commodore's hopes, the vigorous strangle hold with which he endeavoured to maintain himself on his precarious perch shut off the wind, and with it the song, of the man who was trying to carry him; and because a Samoan cannot perform any kind of labour—and especially a labour of love like the lift in question—without singing, this one came to a quick stop. The jolt started the Commodore slipping, and I was just congratulating myself on the probability that he was going to appear at the party more mussed up than I was, when there came a quick rush from behind and another of the canoeists scooped up the suspended bundle of white in his arms and, carrying it as a mother carries a babe—even as the Mater and Claribel had been borne off—splashed through to the beach.