There are certainly two sides to the labor question in the New Hebrides. Yet the whole development of the islands hangs upon cheap and efficient labor. Where it is to come from is a question. The recruiting of Orientals for service in British possessions in the South Seas is forbidden. Even if it were permitted, it would not solve the problem, for the coolie of China or Japan or India is not adapted to the grilling labor of clearing bush.
Mr. Mitchell discussed the labor problem as long and as bitterly as any employer back home. The natives of Api, while friendly and mild, were entirely averse to toil. He had to import hands from other islands. Only occasionally could he persuade the Api people to do a few days’ work in order to secure some object “belong white man.”
Often they coveted curious things. One morning, during our stay, a delegation of natives appeared and said they had come for “big-fellow-bokkus (box).” A servant, summoned by Mitchell, brought out a wooden coffin, one of the men counted out some money, and the natives shouldered their “bokkus” and went away.
Mitchell laughed as he watched them depart. That coffin had a history. About six weeks previously, a delegation of natives had appeared, with a black who had seen service on a New Zealand plantation acting as spokesman. He informed Mitchell that their old chief was dying and that they had decided to pay him the honor of burying him in “bokkus belong white man.” They asked Mitchell if he would provide such a “bokkus” and for how much. Mitchell had a Chinese carpenter and a little supply of timber; so he very gladly consented to have a coffin made. He figured the cost at ten pounds. That appeared to the delegation to be excessive, and they went off to the hills. The next day, however, they reappeared and requested that he make a coffin half the size for half the money. Mitchell protested that a coffin half the size originally figured upon would not be long enough to hold the chief. And they replied that they would cut his arms and legs off to make him fit in. At that, Mitchell, with an eye to labor supply, said that, if they must have a coffin, they must have a proper coffin. He would order the carpenter to make one large enough to hold the chief without mutilation, and he would charge them only five pounds for it, though that meant a loss to him. The carpenter went to work. Most of the village came down to supervise the job, and every few hours, until the coffin was finished, a messenger reported on the chief’s condition. When the “bokkus” was at last done, they carried it up the trail with great rejoicing. But the next day they brought it back. The old chief was up and about, and they had no use for it. They laid it down at Mitchell’s feet and demanded their money back. Mitchell protested that he had no use for the coffin, either, but they were firm. And he, remembering how difficult it is to get hands in the copra-cutting season, meekly returned the five pounds, and put the coffin in his storehouse. Now, a month later, the old chief had died, and the natives had come for the coffin. We could hear them chanting as they went up the trail.
The next day we set sail on the Pacifique, which had arrived during the night with letters and papers a month old, and we were dropped at Port Sandwich, which was sparsely populated with sullen and subdued savages, to await whatever trader might happen along to take us back to Vao. We had used all our films and were thoroughly tired of Port Sandwich when a trader finally put in an appearance. His boat was a twenty-four-foot launch, barely large enough to contain us and our equipment. When we hoisted our dinghy aboard, its bow and stern protruded several feet beyond the sides of the launch. Next morning, with some misgivings, we set out on the fifty-five-mile journey that would complete our round of Malekula and bring us back to Vao.
We got “home” about four in the afternoon, tired and half-cooked from the broiling sun that had beat down upon us all day. We received a royal welcome. A great crowd of natives met us at the beach, and each seized a box or package and carried it at top speed up to the bungalow. In half an hour everything was in the house. It had been a long time since our Vao neighbors had had any of our tobacco!
CHAPTER XIII
ESPIRITU SANTO AND A CANNIBAL FEAST
For two days we developed films and plates. On the third, we attended what might be called the New Year’s celebration of Vao. Fires are made among the islanders by the primitive method by rubbing two sticks together. Though the operation takes only a minute, the savages are too lazy to light a fire every time they need one, so once a year, in the largest house of the village, they make a big fire, which is kept burning to furnish embers from which all the other fires may be lighted. At the end of the year, the fire is put out with great solemnity, and a new one is lighted. The ceremony lasts all day and all night. It is called “killing the Mankki.”
On the morning of the festivities, bush natives began to arrive before daylight. The young boys of Vao served as ferrymen. A group of men would come down to the beach at Malekula and shout across the water, and the Vao boys would put out in their funny little crooked canoes—for wood is so scarce that even bent trees are made to do duty as dugouts—and bring back a load of passengers. Natives came from other islands near by. By night, there were more than a thousand people on the islands.
From early in the morning, there was dancing and pig-killing in the clearings of the three villages. The different tribes did not mingle together. One group would come out of the bush into the clearing, dance its dance, kill a score or so of pigs, and then retire into the bush again.