Chapter Eight.
In perils various.
Again we go on shore, armed as yesterday. The men cast uneasy glances around, and show no inclination to separate from each other. We meet the chief, who looks taller and fiercer than ever. His black hair is frizzled out in the most extraordinary manner, and on the top he wears twisted round it a piece of smoke-coloured native cloth like a turban. He has rings round his arms and legs, and a small piece of cloth round his loins, but otherwise this great king, as he believes himself, is entirely naked. He carries in his hand a richly carved black club—so heavy, that to strike with it is to kill. He receives us in the same haughty manner as before, as if he wished to impress us with his importance. As he strides along, the people fly on either side, or bow down before him, though he does not in the slightest degree heed them. He is on his way to witness the launching a large new war-canoe, and which, now decked with streamers, we see at some distance from the beach. Conch-shells are sounding, and there is much shouting and dancing. As we draw near, a band of prisoners, with downcast looks of horror, are driven along towards the canoe. Men stand ready with long ropes to drag her to the water. Before she is moved, the captives, bound hand and foot, are cast down before her; then loud shouts arise—the men haul at the ropes—the canoe moves, and is dragged over the bodies of the slaves, crushing them to death. No one pities them. This night the cannibal chiefs will feast on their bodies. Even now the ovens in the great square are heating to cook them. It strikes me that these people take a pride in showing to us the enormities they dare to commit.
As later in the day we are passing through the town, we see two people, a man and woman, wrangling. The man grows more and more angry. A young child is near them; it runs to its mother’s arms, but the man seizes it, and in an instant he has killed the poor little creature, and with a fierce gesture thrown the yet panting body on the ground. He gazes for a few seconds moodily at the dead child. The mother does not attempt to touch it; then he orders her to bring a spade. He digs a hole in the floor; the still warm body is thrust in; the earth is thrown back; both stamp it down, and then return to their seats as if nothing had happened.
We see another day a young man buried alive by his own parents. Taro says he had grown weary of life, and they did it to please him. We see very few old people, and we hear that when people get weak and ill from age, their children either strangle them or bury them alive. Bent tells me that human sacrifices are often made to their gods, when the priests and chiefs feast on the victims. We see many people with fingers cut off, and we hear that they have been devoted as offerings to their chiefs who have died, or may only have been ill. No crime is more common than that of killing children, especially girls, indeed, it is remarkable that these people do not seem at all sensible that they are committing crimes. At all events they glory in their shame.
I might note down many more things we see and hear during our stay in this group, but I feel sick at heart as I write and think of all that is told me; and every day, as I tread these blood-stained shores, the very air seems polluted, and the shrieks of the wretched victims of their fellows cruelty, ring in my ears. Wars seem never to cease among them. One tribe is always attacking another, and those inhabiting islands within two or three miles of each other cannot live at peace. The desire to retaliate is the great cause of all their quarrels. If a man is killed by those of another tribe, his friends are not content till they have killed some of that tribe; then the people of that tribe do not rest till they have avenged the death of their relations; and so it goes on, each murder producing another, till there is not a man among all their tribes who does not feel that there are numbers ready to take his life, while he is also on the watch to kill certain people with whom he is at feud.
Of another thing I hear, which, had I not seen so many horrible things they do, I could scarcely credit. If the people of a small island offend a chief, he does not kill them at once, but he takes away all their canoes, so that they cannot escape. Then, whenever he wants victims to offer in his temples, or to feast any friendly chief who may visit him unexpectedly, he sends and brings off one or more families, or parts of families, from the doomed island. No one knows who will be next taken, but they live on with the full consciousness of what their fate will be. They see their relatives and friends taken and carried off to be baked, and they know that, perhaps, their turn may come next. Bent was some time among them, protected by one of their chiefs, to whom he made himself useful, yet he says that he never felt sure of his life an hour together; and whenever he saw the chief handling his club, he could not help fancying that it might come down on his head.
Dreadful as these accounts are, we can speak of little else on board. “It would be as easy to wash a blackamoor white, as to make these men Christians,” observed Phineas, one evening, as we sit in the cabin. “What say you, Mr Bent; would you like to make the attempt?”