If they had wished they could have picked us off like tender fowls for Sunday dinner, for nobody knew how many were hiding behind cover. We were entirely unarmed, except for four policemen in dungaree uniforms—opposed to a whole island of untamed savages who openly boasted of cannibalism. It was surprising to see their frightened faces as they came up and shook hands with the missionaries; they were too shy to talk to government officials. Then with the suddenness of all savage things a thin, tall old man appeared. His beard and his eyes were somehow alike, wildly roving. He was the first of the accused wizards. I had expected an arrogant figure, threatening us with all the powers of sea and air. He slunk up, a picture of abject fright. The other, who followed soon after, dragged back at every step like a schoolboy about to be spanked.
They had fallen into a trap. The Resident Commissioner had given it out that he had come to discuss some abuses on the part of the “recruiters” who haul in contract labor. The natives huddled around, hanging on Smith-Rewse’s words—then abruptly he turned his questions on the two witch doctors, who seemed to have lost the power of invisibility. Four policemen seized them, and as they were dragged to the boat the air was filled with pleas for mercy. I was only sorry for them.
For three days, going toward the Vila jail, the older one was just a plaintive, seasick old man. He gave me a nicely curled pig’s tusk, a pledge of friendship, and admitted with the artlessness of a child that he had planned to kill off the converts in the new Adventist mission. He grew more and more downcast, and as we neared Vila he asked in quavering pidgin, “How soon will you eat us?” I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. The poor old devil thought that our expedition was a cannibal raid.
The Vila authorities sentenced him to a jail term long enough to untwist his imagination. When I saw him in the jail yard he was very docile. He even allowed me to treat him for hookworm. That was something of a triumph for modern medicine.
The witch-doctor affair didn’t end with the arrest. Nine days later an Adventist convert named Harry, working in his garden, was shot from ambush. He had been spokesman for Mr. Smith-Rewse during the capture of the magicians; also friends of the sorcerers accused him of having informed on them. After the shooting he lay for a long time on the beach; riflemen in the bush dared the rescuing Adventists to come ashore. Then one missionary recognized an acquaintance and arranged a truce. I don’t know whether Harry lived. He had gone to the village of the magicians to assure the women that the wizards were only under arrest and would come back. The villagers had decided that he was there to seduce their wives—or that was the story they told.
I offer these scenes as samples of a country where a Foundation doctor was trying to make medical sense. Later on, when I made my return visits, we met every possible condition, good and bad—mostly bad—and often went alone among the most backward savages. None of us was murdered, but there was still a chance of a white man’s blood being shed, if some fanatic should arise with a crusade against the oppressor. It had happened before.
For instance, there was the prophet Ronivira. Once in the early yam season he awoke to find that his navel was blown out. The uninitiated would have put it down to too much yam, but Ronivira arose and proclaimed that ghosts in his belly had given him power to raise the dead; price one pound to revivify a male relative, ten shillings for a female, five bob for a child. He didn’t do any revivifying, but made a huge impression. His platform was the Bible, his program anti-white. He built warehouses to receive goods from a sympathetic United States—for the New Hebridean believes that all Americans are black men.
Finally the Resident Commissioner took him aboard the government yacht. In the midst of cross-questioning a storm broke with a clap of thunder; and thunder was so unusual in those parts that the Commissioner, so I was told, lost his nerve and let Ronivira go. After a time doubting Thomases began asking the prophet why he didn’t raise any dead. When his wife died he stood over the corpse and made all the passes in his repertory, but Mrs. Ronivira didn’t respond. To bolster his falling stocks he said that white magicians were working against him. Therefore all white men and their sympathizers must die. A high mast was erected on the beach for the hanging of all native skeptics; and when a white rag fluttered from the yard-arm it meant a European must die before sundown.
They murdered one white, at least, ate part of the body and threw the rest to the dogs. Finally the Resident Commissioner arrested Ronivira in earnest; but the yacht taking him to Vila met a storm that all but wrecked it. Although his trial was prolonged by witnesses afraid to testify, the authorities finally hanged the Great Resurrector. Otherwise the Condominium’s frail hold on the native might have collapsed.
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