A recruiter who had been for years in the New Hebrides enlisting blacks for service in the Solomons described Malekula to me in detail. It was a large island, as my map showed me, shaped roughly like an hour-glass, about sixty miles long and about ten miles across in the middle and thirty-five or so at the ends. He said that there were supposed to be about forty thousand savages on the island, most of them hidden away in the bush. The northern part of the island was shared between the Big Numbers and the Small Numbers people, who took their names from the nambas, the garment—if it could be called a garment—worn by the men. In the case of the Small Numbers, said my informant, it was a twisted leaf. In the case of the Big Numbers, it was a bunch of dried pandanus fiber. The recruiter said that the central part of the island was supposed to be inhabited by a race of nomads, though he himself had never seen any one who had come in contact with them. In the southern region lived a long-headed people, with skulls curiously deformed by binding in infancy.
Of all these peoples the Big Numbers were said to be the fiercest. Both British and French had undertaken “armed administrations” in their territory, in an attempt to pacify them, but had succeeded only in sacrificing a man for every savage, they had killed. No white man had ever established himself upon the territory of the Big Numbers and none had ever crossed it. I decided to attempt the crossing myself and to record the feat with my cameras.
Every one to whom I mentioned this project advised me against it. I was warned that experienced recruiters of labor for the white man’s sugar and rubber plantations, who knew the islands and the natives well, never landed upon the beach unless they had a second, “covering” boat with an armed crew to protect them against treachery, and that the most daring trader planned to stop there only for a day—though perforce he often stayed for all eternity. But I had the courage born of ignorance, and ventured boldly, taking it for granted that the tales told of the savages were wildly exaggerated. Traders, missionaries, and Government officials all joined in solemn warning against the undertaking, but as none of them had ever seen a cannibal in action, I did not take their advice seriously. When they found that I was determined in my course, they gave me all the assistance in their power.
My recruiter friend suggested that I make my headquarters on Vao, a small island about a mile off the northeastern coast of Malekula, where a mission station was maintained by the French fathers. He said that between the mission and the British gunboat, which stopped there regularly, the natives of Vao had become fairly peaceable, we would be safe there, and at the same time would be in easy reach of Malekula.
Osa and I lost no time in getting to Vao, where Father Prin, an aged priest, welcomed us cordially, and set aside for us one of the three rooms in his little stone house. Father Prin had kind, beautiful eyes and a venerable beard. He looked like a saint, in his black cassock, and when we had a chance to look about at the degenerate creatures among whom he lived, we thought that he must, indeed, be one. He had spent twenty-nine years in the South Seas. During the greater part of that time he had worked among the four hundred savages of Vao. The net result of his activities was a clearing, in which were a stone church and the stone parsonage and the thatched huts of seventeen converts. The converts themselves did not count for much, even in Father Prin’s eyes. He had learned that the task of bringing the New Hebridean native out of savagery was well-nigh hopeless. He knew that, once he had left his little flock, it would undoubtedly lapse into heathenism. The faith and perseverance he showed was a marvel to me. I shall always respect him and the other missionaries who work among the natives of Vao and Malekula for the grit they show in a losing fight. I have never seen a native Christian on either of the islands—and I’ve never met any one who has seen one!
When he learned that we were bent on visiting Malekula, Father Prin added his word of warning to the many that I had received. Though he could speak many native languages, his English was limited to bêche-de-mer, the pidgin English of the South Seas. In this grotesque tongue, which consorted so strangely with his venerable appearance, he told us that we would never trust ourselves among the natives if we had any real understanding of their cruelty. He said he was convinced that cannibalism was practiced right on Vao, though the natives, for fear of the British gunboat, were careful not to be discovered. He cited hair-raising incidents of poisonings and mutilations. He told us to look around among the savages of Vao. We would discover very few if any old folk, for the natives had the cruel custom of burying the aged alive. He had done everything he could to eradicate this custom, but to no end. He told us of one old woman whom he had exhumed three times, but who had finally, in spite of his efforts, met a cruel death by suffocation. Once, he had succeeded in rescuing an old man from death by the simple expedient of carrying him off and putting him into a hut next to his own house, where he could feed him and look after him. A few days after the old man had been installed, a body of natives came to the clearing and asked permission to examine him. They looked at his teeth to see if he had grown valuable tusks; they fingered his rough, withered skin; they felt his skinny limbs; they lifted his frail, helpless carcass in their arms; and finally they burst into yells of laughter. They said the missionary had been fooled—there was not a thing about the old man worth saving! We could not look for mercy or consideration from such men as these, said Father Prin. But despite his warning, Osa and I sailed away to visit the grim island.
With the assistance of Father Prin, we secured a twenty-eight-foot whaleboat that belonged to a trader who made his headquarters on Vao, but was now absent on a recruiting trip, leaving his “store” in charge of his native wife. With the aid of five Vao boys, recommended by Father Prin as being probably trustworthy, we hoisted a small jib and a mainsail, scarcely larger, and were off.
At the last moment, Father Prin’s grave face awoke misgivings in me and I tried to dissuade Osa from accompanying me. Father Prin sensed the drift of our conversation and made his final plea.
“Better you stop along Vao,” he urged. “Bush too bad.” His eyes were anxious. But Osa was not to be dissuaded. “If you go, I’m going, too,” she said, turning to me, and that was final.
We landed at a point on the Vao side of Malekula, where there were one or two salt-water villages, whose inhabitants had learned to respect gunboats. We picked up three boys to serve as guides and carriers and then sailed on to Tanemarou Bay, in the Big Numbers territory. The shores along which we traveled were rocky. Occasionally we saw a group of natives on the beach, but they disappeared as we approached. These were no salt-water savages, but fierce bushmen. Their appearance was not reassuring; but when we reached Tanemarou Bay, we boldly went ashore. We were greeted by a solitary savage who stepped out of the darkness of the jungle into the glaring brightness of the beach. He was a frightful object to behold, black and dirty, with heavy, lumpy muscles, and an outstanding shock of greasy hair. Except for a clout of dried pandanus fiber, a gorget of pig’s teeth, and the pigtails that dangled from his ear-lobes, he was entirely naked. As he approached, we saw that his dull, shifty eyes were liquid; his hairy, deeply seamed face was contorted frightfully; and his hands were pressed tight against his stomach. Osa shrank close to me. But the first words of the native, uttered in almost unintelligible bêche-de-mer, were pacific enough. “My word! Master! Belly belong me walk about too much!”