Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas

by Lloyd Osbourne

"Lo! I have things in my head also," said Malamalama, "and I pass my life, besides, like a man, diving for shell, and cutting copra on my property, and attending to the affairs of the church where I am deacon, and finding everywhere a better employment than that of looking at dead fish through bits of glass."

"Malamalama," said Salesa, "divorce me and let me go, and take thy choice of all the maids of Uvea in my stead. Professor No No loves me not, but I am his bondslave in love, and care for no other man but him."

Now this was very good advice, and the chief would have done well to follow it. But there is in men a pride about their women that blinds their eyes to sense, and Malamalama, instead of heeding, grew, on the contrary, morose and willful. He listened more greedily than ever to Billy Hindoo, and to the tales the nigger brought him constantly of Salesa's misdoing; for Billy Hindoo was crazed with anger against his master, and against the woman who had so successfully supplanted him, and was eager to revenge himself on both. And one day he brought not only a new tale, but a bottle of gin he had managed to pilfer from the camp of Professor No No.

Malamalama began to drink the gin, and the more he drank the more he began to feel the aching of his spirit. He stopped the passers-by and told them of his wrongs; he rolled over in the road, so that he was all dirty, calling out curses on his wife and Professor No No. He cried and cried, and staggered about and shouted, and rushed hither and thither, exclaiming, "I will kill them! I will kill them!" And all the while he drank of the gin with an increasing fury, so that he went at last and got his rifle and four boxes of cartridges and walked unsteadily toward the lagoon, weeping and laughing and beating the air with his loaded gun. And I, then only a little child, followed him at a distance, wondering and mocking with the others.

Now on this occasion it happened that Salesa was away in the boat, and Professor No No, all alone, was sitting at his table and looking at dead fish through bits of glass. Malamalama stopped at the taboo line, not daring to cross it, and withheld, besides, by the notice on the tree; and he was so tipsy with the gin that he could barely shout, nor hold the gun up to his shoulder. But he fired, as straight as he could, in the direction of Professor No No, and shattered a glass barrel of dead fish at his elbow. Professor No No leaped in the air, so that at first we thought, erroneously, that he had been hurt; and he ran this way and that, dodging the bullets from Malamalama's gun. He seemed to believe that the taboo gave him protection, for, instead of bolting into the undergrowth, he raced around and around in a circle, and then inside this tent and that, so that it was laughable to watch him popping in and out like a terrified rat. And Malamalama, so overcome with gin that he could barely see, fired and fired and fired from the four boxes of his cartridges. Then, when all was finished, he rose and went home, while the children crowded the line and shouted, "Professor No No, art thou dead?"

That night there was a meeting of the ancients in the speak-house, and all the culprits were there under guard to receive a judgment. Malamalama was fined one dollar for being drunk and fifteen dollars for firing unwarrantably at Professor No No; and Professor No No was fined fifteen dollars for having won Salesa from her husband; and Billy Hindoo was fined fifteen dollars for having given the gin to Malamalama and for the mischief he had caused with his lying tongue; and Salesa was surrendered to the matrons of the village to receive a lashing for her misconduct. Then Tanielu, the pastor, prayed that God's wrath might be averted from so wicked a village, and made a beautiful parable about the Garden of Eden and the serpent.

One might have thought that this would have healed the matter, and that a punishment so nearly equal would have been submitted to with humility and grace. But, on the contrary, the quarrel went from bad to worse, so that Tanielu, the pastor, would say sorrowfully from the pulpit that Uvea was like another hell, but with four devils instead of one. Malamalama, once a pillar of the church, was degraded from the rank of deacon and expelled, becoming speedily dissolute and abandoned, opening his house for forbidden dances, and taking new wives in shameless succession; and Salesa, her pretty body red with stripes, found no consolation whatever in her white darling, who ran at her repellingly, shouting "No, no!" like a lion; and Billy Hindoo, of whom everyone had tired on account of his light fingers and calumniating tongue, grew increasingly burdensome to his adopted family, and spent most of his time in stoning Professor No No from a safe distance and demanding his wages even to that day, together with a passage at once to the white country.

During this season no ship at all came to Uvea, though Professor No No watched unceasingly for one, and likewise Billy Hindoo, and likewise Malamalama, the chief; and Tanielu prayed and prayed and prayed without end, "Lord, send Thou speedily a vessel and rid us of these intruders." The white man, for all his wisdom, was cowardly beyond belief, and so fearful of Malamalama that the sight of Salesa made him tremble forthwith with apprehension. And she, repelled by her husband and dependent on the bounty of those that despised her, became as one lost to all propriety, and would run at Professor No No and clasp him in her arms and cherish him, he fighting and resisting with all his might, crying "No, no!" in a terrible voice. Were he to unmoor his boat, lo! she was there swimming in its wake and demanding to be taken in, lest she drown; were he to sit down and quietly look at dead fish through bits of glass, lo! there also was she beside him in a chair; were he to slumber in a shady place during the afternoon, he would awake with his head in her lap or with her kisses against his lips.

So weak, indeed, was his heart, that he was not even grateful for her assistance against Billy Hindoo, who came constantly, this day and that, with unfailing regularity, to throw stones at his former master and cry threateningly, "Hi, yi! give me wages even to this day, and return me to the white country according to thy covenant." Then it was that Salesa would throw stones back again, or would hide in the bushes and try to strike the nigger with a knife, saying in mockery as she sprang at him, "Hi, yi! take that!" And once she came to him so close that she slashed him across the breast, and he hastened bleeding before the ancients and vociferously complained. Then she was whipped again by the matrons, and Billy Hindoo was fined for throwing stones, and Professor No No was fined yet a second time for stealing away Malamalama's wife, and Malamalama was fined for leading a life of infamy and riot, and Tanielu said again from the pulpit, "Hasten, Lord, or Thy servants perish!"

Thus the days passed in unending strife and bitterness, terrible now to be recalled. When Malamalama took a new wife, the former wife's family would lie in wait and try to kill him; and other husbands, before exemplary and well conducted, growing restive to see him so successful in his unbridled wickedness, took in their turn the pick of the village maids, propagating hatred and disorder the like of which had never before been known in Uvea. Then the drought came, and the young nuts shriveled on the trees, and the sky, as far as one's eye could reach, remained like shining copper, without a breath. It was plainly seen that God, in anger, was laying His hand heavily on Uvea; and lo! He spoke through the pastor Tanielu, saying, "Repent, repent, or else ye perish!"