Late that afternoon, we started back for the bush. For some time we could see painted faces peeking at us through the jungle. When we arrived on board the Snark late that night, I gave a big sigh of relief. I had been far from comfortable among these ferocious-looking bush people.
I desired very much to develop my film that night, but Rev. Watt refused to let me use his dark-room. "Christians should do nothing at all on the Sabbath!" he told me; and I gathered from his tones that he knew of our expedition inland, and that he was far from approving of it.
The New Hebrides are entirely of volcanic origin. There are about thirty active volcanoes in the group, of which the greatest is on the island of Tanna. At night the sky is fiery red from the reflection of the red-hot lava in its crater, and about every half hour the air is rent with a terrific explosion, and from the direction of the volcano the sky seems afire.
On the morning after we had visited the bush people, Henry, Tehei, Nakata and myself secured guides and went to the volcano, walking for miles through barren desert land, hundreds of hot springs and geysers on all sides of us. As we drew closer, the ground under our feet would tremble with each explosion. At noon we reached the edge of the crater. Just as we got there, there came a tremendous explosion, and away p280 we ran, guides and all. When we recovered our courage, we crept up to the edge, and looked down nearly half a mile into what looked like hell. Out of the bowels of the earth were thrown huge boulders, which spent their force and fell back with hideous reverberations into the pits whence they came; and away at the bottom, the farthest down I have ever seen—and I believe it is the bottom-most point to which one can see—were two boiling lakes of lava, and when an explosion came, the lava would be thrown spattering against the encrusted crater sides, nearly to the top, and then run in thousands of rivers of liquid fire back to the bottom. The rumblings and explosions were deafening. I had to leave the edge of the crater, for there was stealing over me the overwhelming desire to jump off and to the bottom of the twin lakes of molten death—a desire that everyone has experienced when looking down from a vast elevation.
We got back to the bay about two o'clock that afternoon, where we found that a whole village of bush-boys had come down to buy tobacco. There were about fifty of them, all naked, and they had brought bows and arrows and spears. I gave a shilling, a brass ring, and a red handkerchief for a bow and two arrows, then invited the crowd aboard, for I knew Jack would want some of their bows and spears, and I myself wanted to get some good photographs of these natives. I took a few of them over in the launch, and the rest came in canoes, until we could scarcely move p281 around on deck. Jack snapped twenty good exposures of them, and I, too, got busy with my cameras. Then began the trading, which lasted for over an hour. Many a bow, spear, and pack of arrows shifted hands that afternoon, in exchange for tobacco, cheap jewellery, candy and red cloth. Jack boxed up his things and sent them back to California, while I boxed mine and sent them to Independence.
We lay at Tanna a week. Then, at four o'clock on a fine Tuesday afternoon, we motored out of the harbour and slid twenty miles up the coast, until we got out from under the lee of the land and caught a light breeze. All the next day we sailed to windward of Erromango, heaving-to at night for fear of running into land in the dark, and early the next morning putting on sail and heading for land twenty miles away.
As we were cruising in a general westerly direction through the New Hebrides, a little incident occurred which throws a side-light on the man, Jack London. One day, when weather conditions were perfect and everyone was on deck enjoying himself, an animated ball of variegated colours dropped slowly down into the cockpit at the feet of Mrs. London, who was at the wheel. She eagerly picked it up, calling out, "Lookie, lookie, what I've got!" It proved to be the prettiest little bird we had ever seen. Jack got out his book on ornithology, and proceeded to study book and bird, but nowhere was such a bird described.
It was evidently a land-bird that had gotten too far p282 from shore and had fallen exhausted on the deck of the Snark. We all stood around looking at it as it lay in Mrs. London's hand, while she chirped and tried to talk bird-talk to it. At last Jack said: "If it's a land-bird you are, to the land you go," and changing the course, we sailed for the island Mallicollo, just barely visible ten miles out of our way. We sailed as close to the shore as possible, and the little multi-coloured, pigeon-like bird, having regained its strength, flew in among the cocoanut trees. Then we headed out and continued our cruise up through the score of small islands composing the Western New Hebrides.
Critics of the man, Jack London, may call him an infidel. Colonel Roosevelt may call him a "nature faker." Others have not agreed with his ideas of life, but I have little doubt that this is the only time a captain ever went twenty miles out of his way when his fuel was low (our gasolene tanks were fast emptying), just to put a poor little bird ashore to go back to its mate and its young.
On our way through these islands we lived entirely on deck, so as to miss none of the beautiful scenery. The weather continued equable. We rode the water as silently as a canoe. The islands around us sheltered the sea from any disturbances, leaving the surface of these island straits perfectly calm. We sailed a day and a night past a score of active volcanoes. One towering cone of land protruded from the water like an enormous ant-hill, smoke wreathing the top in p283 the day, and the fiery red craters acting as lighthouses by night. Once we put into Vila, anchoring between two small schooners in the bay. Vila has only a few white people, traders and some governmental officials. And here is a queer government. These islands are owned jointly by France and England; one governor will make a law, then the other governor will make a law directly opposed. It is all a joke among the traders. The schooners we saw were blackbirders, which made a practice of going to other islands and capturing natives, to be sold in the labour markets of Fiji and Samoa. When I think of this practice, I do not really wonder that the natives are so savage against the whites. As we came into this port, the French flags were at half-mast for a captain that had been killed in another island while trying to get labour.