Captain Andy Thompson of the Tagua, which took us from atoll to atoll, was a Yankee from Minnesota. As confirmed fishermen, Andy and I were soulmates. In those waters you might land anything from a minnow to a hammerhead shark. What happened one afternoon might serve as a Polynesian parable, and Andy was the philosopher to interpret it. Andy’s line grew rather taut, and as he pulled it lazily in he said, “Just a little one!” The fish was halfway in when the line started out to sea. “Guess it’s a big one,” Andy decided, holding on. Then as suddenly the line slacked; there was some dead weight on it. Andy pulled it in, 300 pounds of kingfish, which might have weighed considerably more if half its tail end hadn’t been bitten off while it was being hauled into the boat. Put me down for a liar, but this is what I saw. The big fish had swallowed the hook so deeply that we had to slit its belly. In the postmortem we found a thirty-pound cod attached to the hook, which it had just gobbled when the kingfish grabbed it. Further scientific curiosity caused us to open the cod and find a two-pound mackerel. “Well,” drawled Andy, “that’s the Pacific all over again! England swallows New Zealand, New Zealand swallows the Cooks....” He was like a Roman augur, interpreting guts at the altar. I studied the kingfish and wondered what sea monster had eaten its tail. And would this be the fate of Pacific empire when its shrinking population had grown too feeble to serve European needs and hordes of orientals swarmed over the plantations to overthrow the economic balance until some monster military machine would swim up and kill a fish it was not quite able to swallow? 1940 was to threaten the world with that very thing.
This fishing interlude came when we were approaching low-lying Mauke, where I was entertained by hospitable traders, many of whom had native wives. The Cook Islands might well be named after the prevalent good cooking; the tenderly roasted sucking pig and Mitiaro eels, found nowhere else, are something to recall with watering mouth.
Our work in the New Hebrides was sometimes delayed by native hostility, but more often it was native hospitality that set us back, in the Cooks. Not all native, either. On the beach at Aitutaki was Whiskey Smith, reputed to be the Pacific’s most disagreeable trader. Sourly he defied us to have a drink of his home-brew bush beer, and in vain hopes of establishing cordial relations I tasted it. Whenever I think of it my head begins to ache. In subsequent meetings Smith refused to know me, then one day he barked, “Come in and meet the wife!” He produced a dingy grotesque of womanhood and said with a flourish, “Ah, a perfect type of native beauty!”
As soon as our ship was sighted whole islands would put on gala dress. They were going to have official visitors, a chance to entertain company! Everybody turned out, from the schoolmaster to the village idiot. Houses were decked with flowers, pretty girls wore fashionable dresses that traders had brought from Wellington. Out came the local string orchestra, playing American jazz and British hymn tunes.
Then the anticlimax. What a blight fell over the festival scene when it was known that the foreign doctor had come only to examine them for hookworm! That was a tedious test, likely to spoil any party, for it required forty-eight hours of dull dosing and unpleasant purging; when it was over we should have been about as popular as Mussolini after his castor-oily march on Rome. But the Maori has a reasoning mind. One of my patients, a chief with a wide white smile, said, “Now we’ll feel better, so we can go on with the dances in your honor.” They would line up the girls and regale us with remarkably loose-muscled huras. Then the orchestra would play prewar tunes from Broadway or Piccadilly. All over the Cooks, wherever I found boys and girls who co-operated in my treatments, I would give them lessons in the fox-trot, the latest wrinkle. I carried this fancy step with me, like a message from another world, and gave dancing lessons on every island I visited. If I wasn’t popular as a doctor, I was a toast as a dancing master. And there was always a feast. Stuffed with tender pork, chicken, turkey, fish, tomatoes, taro, native oranges, I politely ate my way through the islands. This was no place for a fat man.
In Rarotonga’s hard-working, understaffed hospital they were beginning to work out the New Zealand plan of visiting nurses. There were two European nurses, one who supervised the Rarotonga hospital, another who took care of babies and other things at Aitutaki. One schoolmaster’s wife was a Government Nurse.
On that first trip I was covering the ground and studying the needs, and on the later visit we campaigned for a latrine back of every house in the Cooks. It was all prearranged and set to go; and it did go in all the lower group. The Foundation was sharing in the overhead; otherwise a paternal government paid for the whole job, with the exception of the labor which the natives contributed. The buildings were made according to the best economical design, and the islanders rivaled one another in producing decorative effects. They were becoming esthetically health-conscious.
Speaking of esthetics, I must mention a social event among the Europeans, known as “the Privy Tea-party.” Its host was Mr. David Brown of the Cook Island Native Store. It was an official opening of the model latrine which had been endorsed by New Zealand and built on the Foundation’s plans. The building, garlanded with flowers, was set up on one end of the lawn while at convenient tables tea was served to Rarotonga’s élite. The ceremonial unlocking of the door was spectacular. Then the master of ceremonies delivered his speech from the throne. This was horseplay, but splendid propaganda; for the whole official personnel was there and heard a clear outline of the benefits which more little throne rooms would bring to the Cook Islands. There were some jokes at my expense, but I didn’t mind in the least. The core of the speaker’s argument was something that I had preached a thousand times: “When you build a house, build a sanitary latrine first, then a sanitary kitchen; then parlor and bedroom arrangements to suit yourself.”
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On Mauke, above-mentioned for its hospitality, I lived with the Resident Commissioner, Mr. Dwyer, who not only showed me that young octopus served with sauce of salted ground coconut can be a dish for the sea gods, but made us the guests of the island. Mana, son of King Tamuero the Second, made a fine point of Polynesian courtesy when he moved in with his wife and took charge of the household, to see that we were comfortable. Like most good husbands, he was confidential only when his wife wasn’t listening; if she heard him explaining things to me she would warn him not to talk to strangers. However, he found a chance to tell me about the three kings of Mauke who built the London Missionary Society’s famous old church.