Chapter XIV headpiece
CHAPTER XIV
The Island called "Savage," including the ordeal by
Hospitality
When Captain Cook discovered Niué in 1774, he christened it "Savage Island," and went on his adventurous way without landing because of the ferocious appearance and demeanour of the natives.
They, poor fellows, protest to this day that the great navigator's title is a misnomer, that they have ever been as peaceful a folk as any in the South Seas, and that the true cause of their ancestors' objection to a landing-party was their fear of white men's diseases, of which they had heard painful accounts.
We of the dream ship could sympathize with both parties. On the one hand, the track of infection is scored deep across the fair face of the Pacific, and on the other we had never beheld such a villainous-looking horde of natives as came to greet us at Niué. There were hundreds of them, each in a remarkably seaworthy type of dugout canoe painted black, so that the whole resembled a mammoth shoal of porpoises as they leapt from wave to wave.
This, however, is where the resemblance ended, for the porpoise is a sleek and silent gentleman, and the Niuéan is anything but that. He catches sight of a dream ship gliding slowly along his coasts under power, hurls himself into his canoe and paddles, yelling like a maniac, in her wake. He then rears himself on end, waves his paddle, and yells some more. By Herculean efforts he gains on her, comes alongside, grins malevolently, and yells into one's very face.
No wonder Captain Cook thought better of his shore-leave.
Yet when one comes to know these people better, as we of the dream ship did during the ensuing week, they are the most inoffensive, good-natured, open-hearted creatures imaginable. This naval reception was their idea of a really touching welcome. They were glad to see us—they are glad to see any one on Niué. Appearances are against them, that is all.
No sooner had we dropped hook at Alofi, the deepest bay around this iron-bound coast, than we were boarded by three gentlemen of a magnificence, in their crisp white drills, that put us to shame. But we of the dream ship had suffered this type of indignity so often that we were used to it. Besides, the magnificence of our visitors was happily only external, though they proved to be the Resident Commissioner, the Judge of the High Court, the Judge of the Native Land Court, the Collector of Customs, and the Postmaster; the Registrar of Courts and the Registrar of Births, Deaths, and Marriages; and the Chief Medical Officer.