A CALL FROM NAGAPATE
An hour later, while we ate our dinner of tinned beef, Nagapate, with two of his men, squatted on the deck at our feet and ate hard-tack and white trade-salmon. Afterwards I brought out pictures I had made on my first visit. The savages gave yells of excitement when they saw Nagapate’s face caught on paper. When I produced a large colored poster of the chief and presented it to him, he was speechless. The three savages, looking at this mysterious likeness, were almost ready to kow-tow to us, as they did to their devil-devils in the bush.
But the crowning touch of all came when we had grown a little tired of our guests, and Osa brought out her ukulele and commenced to sing. To our surprise Nagapate joined in, chanting a weird melody, which his men took up. After a few bars, they were made shy by the sound of their own voices. Nagapate stopped his song and vainly tried once more to look dignified. In fact, that old man-eater showed every manifestation of a young and awkward boy’s self-consciousness!
We bridged over the awkward situation with more salmon and about ten o’clock sent him ashore happy, with his bare arms full of knives and calico and tobacco. We judged by his farewell that we would be welcome any time we cared to drop in on him for dinner and that we had a fair prospect of not being served up as the main course. In any case, on the strength of his visit, I determined to chance a visit to his village on the following day, though I realized that the visit, in many ways significant, did not give the least assurance of continued friendliness. These savages are as willful and as uncertain in their moods as children. When they are sulky, they are as likely to murder treacherously whoever arouses their ill-will as a small boy is to throw a stone. There is no one to control or guide them. They are physically powerful, they are passionate, and they possess deadly weapons. We could be no more certain that our lives would be safe with them than a man with a silk hat can be sure of his headgear among three hundred schoolboys fighting with snowballs.
We were awakened at daybreak by a shout from the shore. A score of natives stood on the beach, calling and gesticulating. I went ashore, accompanied by Paul Mazouyer, and found that they had presents from their chief, Nagapate—yams and coconuts and wild fruits. But the presents were not for me. In their almost unintelligible bêche-de-mer, the natives explained that the fruits were for “Mary”—their bêche-de-mer word for woman. I could scarcely believe my ears. In all my experience among the blacks of the South Seas, I had never known a savage to pay any attention to a woman, except to beat her or to growl at her. The women of the islands are slaves, valued at so many pigs. They do all the work that is done in the native villages and get scoldings and kicks for thanks. I went doubtfully back to the schooner and brought Osa ashore. The natives greeted her with grunts of satisfaction and laid their offering at her feet.
My respect for Nagapate increased. I saw that he was a diplomat. He had observed that this little person in overalls, who had approached him so fearlessly, was treated with the utmost deference by the crews of the schooners and by the white men. He had come to the conclusion that she was the real boss of the expedition. And he was very nearly right!
Perrole and Stephens joined us, and we remained on the beach all morning. Osa and I took pictures of the natives squatting about us and watched for Nagapate himself to put in an appearance. I was eager to invite him to his first “movie.” He had been overcome with awe at sight of a photograph of himself. What would he say to motion-pictures that showed him talking, with threatening gestures, and scowling as on that memorable day two years before?
Every now and then a new delegation of natives arrived on the beach. In spite of the law that prohibits the sale of firearms to the natives, they all carried rifles. I examined some of the guns. They were old, but not too old to do damage, and every native had a supply of cartridges. I found later that spears and bows and arrows are almost out of use among the Big Numbers. Nine men out of ten own guns. Where do they get them? No native will tell, for telling would mean no more rifles and no more cartridges. The white people of the islands know, but they keep their information to themselves. I know, too, but I am not doing any talking either, for I want to go back to the New Hebrides some day.
Our own boys remained close by us all the morning and we kept sharp watch for any sign of treachery. By noon, the savages had lost their suspicion of us. They stacked their rifles against rocks and trees and moved about, talking to each other in their strange, grunting speech. We, too, moved about more freely. And I tried to gain the confidence of the natives by talking to them. My attempts to learn their language with bêche-de-mer as a medium brought great guffaws. But in spite of the friendliness of our visitors, we were never quite at ease. Their appearance was against them. Their ugly faces—eyes with scarcely any pupils, flat noses made twice their normal size by the wooden plugs thrust through the cartilage dividing the nostrils, great mouths with thick, loose lips—their stealthy way of walking, their coarse, rapid, guttural speech, which sounded angry even when they spoke to one another, the quick gestures with which they filled in the gaps in their limited language—none of these things tended to make us feel at home.
I kept wondering how some of Osa’s sheltered young friends back home would act, if they were to be set down, as she was, on a sandy beach, miles from civilization, and surrounded with fierce cannibals—hideous and worse than naked; for they worship sex, and what clothing they wear calls attention to their sex rather than conceals it. I watched her admiringly as she went about taking snapshots as unconcernedly as if the savages had been Boy Scouts on an outing. And I thought, as I have thought many many times in the nine years we have gone about together, how lucky I was. Osa has all the qualities that go to make an ideal traveling companion for an explorer—pluck, endurance, cheerfulness under discomfort. In an emergency, I would trust her far sooner than I would trust most men.