Quaint letters came from native mission teachers, White and Steenson sent them to me as comic bits: “My deer friend Dr. Steenson, I am David Ikala write this letter to you, about all your boys, on this night, you put Goaril to look after all your things, now behind you he went down to Raresu, he going on Mother’s house and he do a trouble there, he catch hold the girls.... And another time he brake the roof of there house....”
This letter was signed “With a great love.”
It was a horse of a darker color when surreptitious notes were slipped into Gordon White’s hand, saying, “Don’t go down to Wanderer Bay,” and telling how the natives there were waiting to club the white men. Gordon White wrote casually, “Wherever I go the local lads come along with their various relations, and there is no sign of trouble or discontent.”
White had the services of Charlie One Arm, the policeman, who with his single arm could knock out all comers. Charlie’s maxim was “Treat ’em rough.” Around mission stations he would shock the pious by shouting to women who wouldn’t take their medicine, “Listen, you sunnabitch fellow!” But when I read White’s reports of threatening letters I saw Montague; we had White, Steenson and Charlie One Arm moved to safer, tamer ground. We couldn’t afford to have another Malaita murder....
Gordon White rounded off his report by telling how a flock of naked cannibals, well armed with clubs and spears, swarmed down and surrounded his tent. Had they come to finish him off? No, it turned out, they were bearing gifts. Gordon wrote, “The Malaitaman generally wants as much as he can get for anything he has to dispose of, and giving things away he looks on as sheer madness. But here they were showering me with presents, and with no apparent strings on them—cowrie shells, kai-kai spoons, a bow and a few arrows, a basket of fruit, and a middle aged rooster—I should say about forty-five.” Just a little tribute to modern medicine, and no flowery speeches; solemnly the Malaitamen strode back to their jungle....
******
I did not tell all this to Mr. Fosdick, a busy man on a busy day. But I had time to outline enough of it to hint at the problems we had to face among the howling pagans of the Solomon Islands, where the missionaries, good, bad and confused, were merely nibbling around the edges. Tuberculosis was prevalent in the Solomons, and we expected to tackle it on a grand scale when there were more N.M.P.’s.
Before we shook hands Raymond Fosdick asked: “But what about this wonderful 1835 brandy? Is it so easy down there to get hold of such rare stuff?”
“It is,” I said, “if you find the right man. I got four bottles of it in exchange for three dozen strictly fresh eggs.”
Then I told him how.