A crowd of a hundred natives, perhaps less, were gathered at the landing place watching our approach. They were ferocious-looking black warriors. We had now passed from the region of the brown, indolent Polynesians to those of the black, warlike Melanesians.
"What ugly customers," I said to Leudemann. "They look like cannibals."
The forbidding battle array on shore stirred a new strength in us. It certainly looked like a cannibal island, and miserable as we were, still we could not escape the thought of our skin and bones being fattened up in preparation for an old-time South Sea banquet.
"Clear the boat for action!" I ordered. Even in our present straits, we could still remember our old naval ways.
The German flag went jerking to our masthead, and rifles and machine guns were displayed.
A shout went up on shore and a babel of talk. Voices yelled in pidgin English.
"You Germans? How you get here from way off? Come on. Germans great warriors."
Still wary, we drew near the landing pier and talked with the natives. They were unmistakably friendly, very cordial. From what they told us they had, in the first place, grievances against their masters, the British. Then quite a number had been recruited and sent to the trenches in France. There some had been killed and some wounded, and most who survived had contracted tuberculosis from the unaccustomed climate and had been returned to the island worn-out shells of men. One of their most influential chiefs was particularly concerned about the war. He was on the pier, and he reasoned thus:
"White man send missionary. Missionary say we must not fight. Because all men children of God. All men brothers. They say we can have war no more. Then they say we must go fight. They have war. We no fight for ourselves, they say, we fight for them. How, if men are brothers? Our men killed. Our men come back sick with cough. Cough never goes away."
These people were of a warrior race. What the British had told them about how bad the Germans were had not made much impression. What stuck in their minds was the fighting power of the Germans. They had heard about it from the British, and those who had been in the trenches of Flanders knew about it first-hand. The sudden appearance of armed Germans at their remote island could but increase their admiration. Morality among them had principally to do with a man's fighting spirit.