“Art bound to Savai'i?” he asked quickly.
“Nay. We beat against the wind. To-night we anchor at Mulifanua.”
“Ah!” and his face changed, “then I must leave, for it is to Savai'i I go,” and he was about to go over the rail when we held him back.
“Wait, friend. In a little time the ship will be close in to the passage through the reef at Saleleloga” (a town of Savai'i), “and then as we put the ship about, thou canst go on thy way. Why swim two leagues and tempt the sharks when there is no need. Come below and eat and drink, and have no fear. We shall take thee as near to the passage as we can.”
The skipper came below with us, and after providing our visitor with a navy blue waistcloth, we gave him a stiff tumbler of rum, and some bread and meat. He ate quickly and then asked for a smoke, and in a few minutes more we asked him who he was, and why he was swimming across the straits. We spoke in Samoan. “Friends,” he said, “I will tell the truth. I am one of the kau galuega (labourers) on Mulifanua Plantation. Yesterday being the Sabbath, and there being no work, I went into the lands of the Samoan village to steal young nuts and taro. I had thrown down and husked a score, and was creeping back to my quarters by a side path through the grove, when I was set upon by three young Samoan manaia (bloods) who began beating me with clubs—seeking to murder me. We fought, and I, knowing that death was upon me, killed one man with a blow of my tori nui{*} (husking stick) of iron-wood, and then drove it deep into the chest of another. Then I fled, and gaining the beach, ran into the sea so that I might swim to Savai'i, for there will I be safe from pursuit” “'Tis a long swim, man—'tis five leagues.” He laughed and expanded his brawny chest “What is that to me? I have swam ten leagues many times.”
* A heavy, pointed stick of hardwood, used for husking coco-
nuts.
“Where do you belong?” asked the skipper in English.
He answered partly in the same language and partly in his curious Samoan.
“I am of Anuda.{*} My name is Vanàki. Two years ago I came to Samoa in a German labour ship to work on the plantations, for I wanted to see other places and earn money, and then return to Anuda and speak of the things I had seen. It was a foolish thing of me. The German suis (overseers) are harsh men. I worked very hard on little food. It was for that I had to steal. And I am but one man from Anuda, and there are four hundred others from many islands—black-skinned, man-eating, woolly-haired pigs from the Solomon and New Hebrides, and fierce fellows like these Tafito{**} men from the Gilbert Islands such as I now see here on this ship. No one of them can speak my tongue of Anuda. And now I am a free man.”
* Anuda or Cherry Island is an outlier of the Santa Cruz
Group, in the South Pacific. The natives are more of the
Polynesian than the Melanesian type, and are a fine,
stalwart race.
** Tafitos—natives of the Pacific Equatorial Islands such
as the Gilbert Group.