CHAPTER II
SYDNEY AND NEW CALEDONIA
Osa and I were sure, after our first adventure in Malekula, that we had had enough of cannibals to last us for the rest of our natural lives. But when we reached Sydney, on our way home, and had our films developed, we began to weaken. Our pictures were so good that we almost forgot the risk we had taken to get them. The few feet I had managed to grind out on Malekula were no “staged” pictures of savage life. They were so real and convincing that Osa declared her knees went wobbly every time she saw them.
Before many months, Nagapate was scowling out of the screen at audiences in New York and Paris and London, and villagers who would never go a hundred miles from home were meeting him face to face in the Malekula jungle. The public wanted more—and so did we. Early in 1919, about a year after our first adventure in the Malekula bush, we were again in Sydney, preparing for a second visit to the land of the Big Numbers—the trip out of which this book has grown.
As we sailed into Sydney harbor on the S.S. Ventura, we met, sailing out, the Pacifique, the little steamer of the Messageries Maritimes that had taken us to the New Hebrides on our former visit. That meant we should have four weeks to wait before embarking on our journey to Malekula. We were impatient to be off, but we knew that the four weeks would pass quickly enough, for many things remained to be done before we should be ready for a long sojourn in the jungle.
We took up our abode with the Higginses, in their house on Darling Point Road overlooking the harbor. Ernie Higgins had handled my films for me on my previous trip, and I had found him to be the best laboratory man I had ever met with, so I was glad to be again associated with him.
The house was an old-fashioned brick house of about twelve or fourteen rooms. I fitted up one of the second-story rooms to serve as a workroom. I had electricity brought in and set up my Pathéscope projector, so that I could see the pictures I happened to be working on. Having this projector meant that the work of cutting and assembling films would be cut in two. I put up my rewinds, and soon had everything in apple-pie order.
A BEACH SCENE
From the window of my workroom, I could look over Sydney harbor. Osa and I never tired of watching the ships going in and out. We would consult the sailing lists in the newspapers, and try to identify the vessels that we saw below us. There were steamers from China and Japan and the Straits Settlements; little vessels from the various South Seas groups; big, full-rigged ships from America; steamers from Africa and Europe; little schooners from the islands; coastal boats to and from New Zealand and Tasmania, and almost every day big ships came in with returned soldiers. In the course of a week we saw boats of every description flying the flags of almost every nation on the globe.
Osa put in long days in the harbor, fishing from Mr. Higgins’s little one-man dinghy, that was nearly swamped a dozen times a day in the wash from the ferry-boats, while I worked like a slave at my motion-picture apparatus. The public thinks that a wandering camera-man’s difficulties begin with putting a roll of film in the camera and end with taking it out. If I were telling the true story of this trip, I should start with my grilling weeks of preparation in New York. But my troubles in Sydney will perhaps give sufficient idea of the unromantic back-of-the-scenes in the life of a motion-picture explorer. I had troubles by the score. My cameras acted up. They scratched the film; they buckled. When I had remedied these and a dozen other ailments, I found that my pictures were not steady when they were projected. The fault we at last located in Mr. Higgins’s printer. We repaired the printer. Then we found that the developer produced a granulated effect on the film. It took us two weeks to get the proper developer. But our troubles were not over. Great spots came out on the pictures—grease in the developing tanks. And the racks were so full of old chemicals that they spoiled the film that hung over them. I had new racks and new tanks made. They were not made according to specifications. I had them remade twice and then took them apart and did the work myself.