After the shooting was over, everybody seemed to take courage. The natives moved about more freely. Only about a third remained armed and ready for summons. They were apparently satisfied that their enemies, convinced that they were well supplied with ammunition, would be afraid to start hostilities. We ourselves were more at ease, and I went up to some of the soldiers and examined their fighting equipment. Their guns were, as usual, old and rusty, but they all had cartridges, which they carried in leather cartridge cases slung over their shoulders. I was surprised to find that none had clubs. Instead, they had big knives, some of them three feet long, for hand-to-hand fighting. Paul told me that such knives had become the most sought-for articles of trade. There was no Government ban on them as on rifles and cartridges.
RAMBI
On the afternoon of our fourth day in the village, Nagapate brought up a man we had not seen before. He was nearly as large as Nagapate himself, and had, like Nagapate, an air of commanding dignity.
“Rambi! Rambi!” growled Nagapate, pointing to his companion. Then the chief went through a rapid pantomime, in which he seemed to kill off a whole army of enemies. We gathered that Rambi was minister of war, as indeed he was; but Osa dubbed him chief of police. We learned from Paul that the tribe was ruled by a sort of triumvirate, with Nagapate in supreme command and Rambi and a third chief named Velle-Velle, who acted as a primitive prime minister, next in authority.
Rambi was a Godsend. He enjoyed being photographed, although he did not have the slightest idea of what the operation meant. He forgot his dignity and capered like a monkey in front of my camera and actually succeeded in injecting a little enthusiasm into the rest of the natives, who still suffered from stage fright.
I gave presents of tobacco for every picture I made. I must have paid out several dollars’ worth of tobacco each day. Ten years earlier, when I was on the Snark with Jack London, trade tobacco made from the stalks and refuse from the Virginia tobacco factories had cost less than a cent a stick. The supply I had with me in Malekula had cost almost four cents a stick. Thus the high cost of living makes itself felt even in the South Seas. Tinned foods, cartridges, gasoline, mirrors, knives, and calico also have increased in price enormously since the war. An explorer must expect his expenses to be just about four hundred per cent higher than they were ten years ago. And the trader is in a bad way. For the natives learned how to value trade-stuffs years ago and they insist on buying at the old rate. Increased costs and greater difficulty of transportation mean nothing to them.
On the next day, we went, with an escort of several of Nagapate’s men, to another Big Numbers village about four miles away. That trip was typical of the many downs that are mingled with the ups in a motion-picture man’s existence. The four miles were the hardest four miles I ever walked. The trail lay along the side of a hill, following a deep valley. It was seldom used, and it slanted toward the valley in an alarming way. It was slimy with mud and decayed vegetation, and in many places a slip would have meant a slide of several hundred feet down a steep hill. Both Osa and I had on spiked boots, but they soon became clogged with mud and offered less grip than ordinary shoes. We crept along at a snail’s pace, testing every foothold. Though we left Nagapate’s village at dawn, we did not reach our destination until after ten o’clock. It was a poor and uninteresting village of about thirty houses. Most of the men were off on a pig hunt, and all the women were out collecting firewood and fruits and vegetables. About noon, it began to drizzle. By three o’clock, it had settled down to a good downpour. The women straggled in one by one and retreated into their houses. The men returned in a sullen humor, with a few skinny pigs. According to custom, they broke one hind leg and one front leg of each animal to prevent its escape and threw the wretched little creatures in a squalling, moaning heap. Those on the bottom probably suffocated before morning.
We could not think of retracing our steps over the treacherous trail in that downpour; so we persuaded a native and his wife and two sore-faced children to give up their hut to us. Since we had no blankets, we lay on the hard ground and made the best of a bad bargain.
Next morning, the rain had ceased. But the cane-grass was as wet as a sponge. We had not gone a hundred yards toward Nagapate’s village before we were soaked through. The trail was more slippery than ever. About every quarter of a mile we had to stop and rest. The sun came out boiling hot and sucked up the moisture, which rose like steam all about us. We were five hours in this natural Turkish bath. When we reached our destination, we threw ourselves down and fell asleep in sheer exhaustion. We had not secured a single foot of film, and we felt miserably that we stood a very good chance of contracting fever, which so far we had luckily escaped.