“Recruiting,” that legalized form of contract labor, might act as an educator. The High Commission Government was already requiring that plantation hands should be well-cared-for medically and sufficiently fed.
In a lonely bay I saw recruiters at work. One man with a rifle lay flat in the bow of a cutter, covering every movement of another man who approached the shore in a whaleboat. The whaleboat backed water all the way, and the man sent to parley stood up, carefully facing the naked savages who waited on the beach. All during the long powwow the hidden rifle was carefully aimed. These labor conferences were no job for a coward. So many lone recruiters had been killed on duty that the Government had made it a law that they must hunt in pairs.
Considering the vast work which we must soon undertake in the Solomon Islands, I was encouraged when I found that the intelligent native looked upon indentured labor service as a blessing, just as it had been in Papua. An island boy said to me, “I wish the Hawk would come soon.” The Hawk was a recruiting ship. I asked him why he wanted it to come soon, and he said, “There are so many sore-legs in the village.” This boy knew what was good for his people, and I hoped that there would be many more like him.
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I never think of Sikiana without a little sadness. Three small atolls all but link. The Sikiana Group was the last land to be discovered in 1791 and since then very few vessels had touched there. The inhabitants were pure Polynesian people; and because our crew was composed of Sikiana men our landing was a joyous homecoming. Every man-jack in the village was lightly lit on homemade toddy; the Ellice Islanders, their blood-cousins, had taught them how to cut the central spathe of the coconut, catch the drip, and trust in fermentation. Unfermented, it makes a fine baby food. In toddy form, it is intoxicating.
There was some heathen religious festival going on, hence the bibulous hilarity. The women, who never drank, couldn’t speak pidgin. Much gesturing, and the aid of our Sikiana sailors, who were sharing the toddy, sent swimmers and canoemen to the neighboring atolls to spread the news. And the people danced. Not lewdly, but with the natural grace of unspoiled bodies. They were completely pagan. No missionary had ever settled here. Traders hadn’t debauched them; the soil was too poor to produce anything worth trading for.
The girls were lovely with their long, fine, glossy hair; they hadn’t learned to bob it as they were doing on the missionized islands. They wore modest lavalavas from waist to ankles, and a kerchief which they knotted around the neck and drew under one arm. Some of the men wore their hair long, too, in ancient Polynesian fashion. I made friends with a splendid young fellow named Lautaua, who talked fair pidgin and told me how “in the time of his grandfather” (that might mean a thousand years ago; they had a habit of reckoning time by grandfathers) the Tongafiti had come to Sikiana and killed everybody except the women, and how succeeding migrations from Ongtong Java and the Ellices had drifted there in lost canoes.
I only mention their drinking because it was something of a freak in that corner of the Pacific. The Sikiana folk only made toddy on festival occasions, and never took it beyond the point of exhilaration. Later on, taking the advice of Mr. Barley, who was always their generous friend, they stopped making and drinking toddy. In Sikiana they were gay enough without false stimulation—a friendly, virtuous, lovable people; perhaps their custom of keeping women away from liquor helped maintain their racial self-respect. By and large, I have found the tribes on comparatively sterile islands superior in health and character to their neighbors who had little to do but lie in the shade and catch bananas. It’s the same the wide world over; those of Adam’s sons who work for a living are better fitted to cope with the cruelties of life.
Young children held our hands and drew our arms around them. The moon swung high over the lagoon and our returned sailors, quite sober now, daintily walked with their girls, up and down the beach. As we sat on the sand, waiting for the lecture audience to come on, young girls put garlands around our necks, chains which would bind our memories to Sikiana; these were ropes of hair, a strand from the head of every girl.
I had given lectures under odd conditions, but never before like this. White moonlight, pretty, laughing faces, simple people who took it all as the greatest joke in the world, but were so kind-hearted that they followed our instructions faithfully, as one might indulge a feeble-minded person of whom one is fond. Everybody smiled, even the dignified patriarch whom we called Old Number One; he was an unsalaried official representative of the Government. Between Old Number One and Lautaua, everything was arranged for us. Next day when we departed all was in order.