Barley was going to be married; nice Australian girl—he hoped she wouldn’t be lonely out here. (As if anybody could be lonely with him.) He had just gotten back from Rennell Island, he said, and had brought Buia with him. Buia! Sure enough, there was Buia, somewhat disguised in a pair of shorts, but the same muscular hunky figure. We didn’t rub noses this time, but shook hands, European style. Buia was becoming a man of the world.
And how was Rennell? Well, said Barley, what had happened there might have sounded funny, only it was rather terrible. Too many visiting ships, of course, with Tahua’s charming girls to lure them into the White Sands. But there was something much worse. The Seventh Day Adventist outfit had gotten at them, rather. Pastor Borgas landed on the White Sands and informed the Big Masters that they had come to “teach” them. “You know,” said Barley, “how crazy the Rennellese are to learn English. They thought teaching meant just that. When the Adventists taught them to say ‘Me want skula’—meaning ‘We want a school’—they didn’t know that school was the Adventist word for batches of New Testament and vegetarian diet. Old Testament for a people living in an age that’s older than Isaac and Rebecca; vegetarian diet for a race that’s starving for meaty proteins! Well, before Mr. Borgas went home he gave strips of white cloth for Tahua and Taupangi to wear; white arm bands with ‘M.V.’ marked on them in big black letters.”
“What’s ‘M.V.’?” I asked.
“Mission Volunteer,” said Barley with a wry smile.
I let out a whoop. Imagine those archaic and bearded kings strutting around with Mission Volunteer on their arms!
But Barley couldn’t see the comic side. Neither could I after he told me the rest. “When Taupangi and Tahua found out what those cranks had been up to, they flew into a rage and vowed that no missionary should ever again come within bow-shot of their island. I say, this thing is breeding trouble. Next thing you know they’ll be killing off another parcel of Christian teachers. Then there’ll be hell to pay. I don’t want to see a punitive expedition go into Rennell Island and hang a lot of them.”
Barley seemed to be reading my thoughts when he said: “If I had my way I’d put a reliable N.M.P. or two on that island, with plenty of medicine. And I’d keep everybody else out, except scientists, maybe. You won’t find the people in as good condition as they were when you saw them last. Sea-changes are very sudden in the Pacific.”
So Barley went back with me to the Zaca. It was one of Crocker’s company dinners—grilled steak which had come frosted from Montana, and 1922 Perrier-Jouët. Barley was answering a shower of questions. The Malaita warriors, he said, were Proper Men, and took no nonsense from anybody. They didn’t know how to lie. When you asked them how many they had killed they either told you that it was none of your business, or candidly counted over the murders to their credit....
Under softly shaded table lamps our stewards were delicately pouring vintage wine. Right over there, blacker than the darkness, lay Malaita....
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