Chapter II: Another Island Night’s Entertainment (1)

Late in 1930, shortly before I broached the egg-and-brandy riddle to Mr. Fosdick, the beautiful yacht _Zaca_ pulled in at Suva. Templeton Crocker, who had inherited richly from banks and mines in California, was taking friends on a world cruise. He had a thirst for anthropology and scientific exploration, and it was rumored that he might later equip his fine ship for research in far places. I am afraid my sigh was a bit envious as I watched the _Zaca_ steam gracefully in. I had scoured the southern seas in so many tubs, junks, bumboats, leaky launches and cockroach-ridden steamers that my bones ached at the very thought of them. Crocker’s explorations were _de luxe_; most of mine had been _de louse_.

Templeton Crocker came to my office, a well-favored man in his late forties, pleasant and almost boyishly anxious to learn. He seemed much impressed because I was just back from Rennell Island and its little neighbor, Bellona. Did they come up to my expectations? Yes, I said, when you fly to the moon you may be sure it will come up to your expectations. His curiosity was on edge; had I taken notes, could he see some of them? I handed him a small batch of rough dictation, not enough to tell him all by any means. I could see by his excitement that Rennell Island had the same pull on his imagination that it had had on mine all the eight years that I had awaited an opportunity to see it.

When we dined on the _Zaca_ the owner showed me around and explained that she was an enlarged “bluenose.” The main dining room was also the lounge, but the Crocker party ate mostly on deck, tropical style. Everything was roomy, the cabins plain but comfortable, equipped with electric lights and fans. Gus Schmidt, who managed the galley, was a real chef, and there were quantities of refrigerators to help him out. The ship carried what they called “frozen foods”--Idaho steaks, Long Island duck, fresh peas and strawberries--about all the luxuries for which we tropicals were hungry. Crocker had a plentiful supply of wines, used with judgment; when there was an occasion for it he could surprise you with a rare vintage.

He was at our house a great deal, always asking about Rennell Island. When he didn’t dine with us he dropped in for a rum cocktail. We played bridge, and I was surprised to find that he was making money; a rare feat in Suva, where the game is sharp as a razor blade. When we dined on the _Zaca_ my inner mind kept exclaiming, “Think of following a health campaign on a ship like this!”

The night before his boat sailed he came around with my notes; I knew he couldn’t have made much out of them, the stuff was so scrambled. At dinner I complimented him on the _Zaca’s_ cook, and he said the great trouble was getting fresh eggs. On the _Zaca’s_ long hauls even refrigeration wouldn’t keep them fresh. I mentioned doing something about it--then Eloisa gave me the matrimonial look. Wherever Eloisa settled down, she started to raise chickens; she had a way with chickens.

But on Crocker’s mind there was something heavier than an egg. It was Rennell Island, I knew before he had said a word. Finally he said, “I wish you would tell me all about that trip.” He and I were having coffee on the veranda, and I said, “You remember that girl of the Arabian Nights who had to tell the sultan a story between dark and dawn--or else? Well, we’d better have a fresh pot of coffee, because this story is going to be pretty long.”

“I can stand it,” he said, and waited for me to begin.

* * * * *

Last May [I said] I was in Tulagi, capital of the Solomon Islands, looking over our health campaign. I don’t have to tell you how long I had waited for a chance to see Rennell Island; and mine wasn’t all an explorer’s curiosity. When George Fulton told me, back in 1920, that the Rennellese were “practically untouched” I had wondered if these seemingly archaic people were infected with one of the known varieties of hookworm. Or if they were infected at all, would it be a variety hitherto undiscovered? If so, I might be able to furnish valuable data on the origin of a race that had been so long lost to the world.

From inquiry and general reading I knew that Rennell Island, and its tiny companion Bellona, had been visited in the past; but those visits were few and far between, even in the Pacific sense of the term. Some sailors might have penetrated to the interior. Two brave bishops, Selwyn and Patterson, touched there in 1856, and fifty years later C. M. Woodford and A. G. Stephens had made geological surveys around the shore. Dr. Northcote Deck, of the South Sea Evangelists, visited several times with a companion missioner, between 1908 and 1911; Deck made a gory mess of proselytizing. Resident Commissioner Kane, on his official inspection of 1925, might have been the first white man that ever went into the interior. A few years before that, the powerful Lever Brothers had “recruited” some labor from offshore; but the natives were so unresistant to disease that the recruiters had decided to take back the ones who survived. In 1928 Stanley and Hogbin made a geological survey for the High Commission, and reported that they had found absolutely nothing of commercial importance.

The next year the Whitney South Sea Expedition went there collecting birds for New York’s Natural History Museum. The young men from this expedition, on its second trip, were the ones who brought me into the story. Rennell lay only 150 miles to the southeast of Tulagi; it was hard to realize that it was so near, or that in 1930 one could turn back the book of mankind’s history for thousands of years and read the living page; that the voyager of today might thrill as Captain Cook thrilled when he first saw a Pacific island.

Well, I talked about Rennell to Captain Ashley, Resident Commissioner at Tulagi, and he offered to take me there on his next cruise. He’d have to drop me on the beach and pick me up when his yacht swung around that way again. But Rennell Island wasn’t very safe for strangers, he said. A few years ago when Dr. Deck of the South Sea Evangelists had sent three native missionaries there the Rennellese had killed them off; eaten them, probably, for nobody ever found the bodies. No, the safest way to see Rennell would be behind an armed guard.

Time was precious and there was no telling when Captain Ashley’s boat would take a notion to come. Then I saw a stout but battered little auxiliary schooner lying offshore. It looked like a turn of Providence, for she was the same _France_ that had taken the Whitney Expedition to Rennell three years before. A crowd of young men came ashore, looking more like hoboes than naturalists. Their leader was Hannibal Hamlin, grandson of Lincoln’s Vice President, and an old Yale football player. I pricked up my ears when Hamlin said that they were heading the _France_ for Rennell Island again, if they could make it. My ears stood higher still when he said that he was the second white man, perhaps, to have gone inland as far as the Lake.

I wasted no time, you can well believe, in asking them what dicker I could make to go along. Hamlin showed true American generosity. They were indebted to Captain Ashley for a lot of things, and if I was his friend they’d do anything to oblige me; only trouble was the Whitney Expedition backers hadn’t come across with their check. They were out of provisions. All right, said I, provisions and trade were on me. Let’s take them on and get started. At the Burns-Phillip Store Hamlin took on some very odd supplies, including a great number of adzes, hatchets and trade knives with wooden handles and blades six inches long. When I asked him if we were going to use them on the savages he said, “No, but that’s what they’ll want.” I could understand the jumble of cheap mirrors and scissors. When he called for calico and beads he always asked for red. Why red? “That’s the color they’ll want,” he said, and started dickering for three pasteboard trade boxes with flimsy locks.

Our only stop was at Gaudalcanar where Gordon White was heading one of my Solomon Islands treatment units. He was an especially valuable addition to the party, as he had been to Rennell Island on the Stanley Expedition, two years before. On this trip he was to act as my microscopist.

We were a careless, happy company, getting dirtier every hour. We had with us a youngish German named Walter--I can’t remember the rest of it--who was a shell collector and looked the part. Our skipper was an ancient Scot, sour with religion. Gordon White had brought on three Solomon Island attendants, and he lent me a very black one named Ga’a, four feet high, aged fourteen, and proud as Punch to be serving a white gentleman. Service consisted mostly in opening tinned food and throwing the empty tins overboard--or letting them roll. The main cabin was so small that you couldn’t stretch without banging your elbows; here we ate amidst fumes from the engine. We only used the engine in dead calm, when it could make four miles an hour. We had a small lavatory and a shower, neither of which worked. I was more than grateful to my companions when they allotted me--out of respect to my superior girth--the largest berth on the ship. It was right off the cabin, and there was no privacy. But privacy was a stranger to the _France_.

There was a place for nothing, and nothing in its place. Walter the German strewed shells, Hamlin and Coultas stuffed birds and scattered feathers so that some of them always managed to get into the stew. Our native deck-hands slept in places where you couldn’t help stumbling over them. Gordon White, when he wasn’t trying to find where he had stowed his microscopic outfit, turned on the phonograph and shouted.

We were on our way to Rennell Island--maybe. And just another touch to our oddity: We had a stumpy black Hercules who helped the cook by spilling soup, waited on table by dropping dishes, cleaned the cabin by pushing the dirt across into another corner. He was an ebony figure of the Masculine. And his name was Bella.

* * * * *

When the report came that we would reach our destination next day I began looking into the physical condition of all aboard. If the Rennellese were as primitive as I had heard, any introduced germ would catch like wild fire, and we might spread a scourge. Harry, our Solomon Island cook, had developed a nasty eye condition; he was a spectacle in the galley, with that dirty rag over his eye. White and I treated him and he began to improve. Still I was worried, wondering how his infection would react on the people we were about to visit.

I looked them all over. There were no common colds, and that was satisfactory. How about that quick-moving venereal contagion, gonorrhea? To the embarrassment of some, and the merriment of many, I lined them all up, from black crew to white captain, and gave them what the Army calls “short-arm inspection.” They were all negative. Satisfactory again. Also there were no visible signs of skin infection. We seemed to be, all told, a very healthy lot.

Then I got my thrill when Hamlin called me on deck, pointed over the bow and said, “There she is!” It lay isolated in the sea. I saw a straight line of cliff, sheer as a prison wall, lifted some 400 feet and running as far as the eye could travel. Scraggly foliage showed faintly at the top. What except an airplane could get anybody up there?

Hamlin, all out of patience, told me that there was only one dent in the cliff, a narrow passage called Kungava Bay, the “White Sands.” If the Scotch skipper hadn’t been so stubborn we could have sailed straight into it. As it was that day was gone and most of the next before we made our final tack and found the opening in the cliffs which marked Rennell’s only landing place, a pin-point approach to an island that was fifty miles long and some fifteen wide. Those guardian cliffs were relics of a strange volcanic action which pushed the Pacific’s largest atoll into high prominence. The island was so tightly ringed with a collar of coral-stone that Sinbad himself could not have found the entrance without a chart. Fortunately Hamlin had one which his navigator on the former trip had made for him.

We shot through the reef and found anchorage inside a beautiful, sheltered bay; it was especially serene because the cliffs protected it on two sides; below their impressive height the beach curved like a white necklace. Things began to move. Two rudely built outrigger canoes came paddling up to us, and I got my first glimpse of these strange people. There were two men, a woman and a couple of small boys. They were not like anything I had ever seen before, and I remembered what Fulton had said: “About twenty thousand years behind modern history.” At the risk of being trite, let me say that the men, very tall and handsomely muscled, had the figures of Greek gods. Around the loins they were swaddled in folds of clumsy tapa (_kongoa_), made grotesque by a palm-leaf fan stuck in the back. The fans, I learned later, were for protecting the hair when it rained, or for brushing away flies when it shone. Their heads were impressive, dark as to hair and brows, and with strong, well-modeled features. Their hair, almost straight, was coiled in a bun at the back. Their dark, expressive eyes were somewhat slanting, but not Mongoloid fashion, more like the American Indians’. Although they wore small tortoise-shell ornaments stuck through the septum, their noses were slenderly arched. There was nothing negroid about their gracefully cut mouths. What were they like? Somehow you couldn’t call them either Polynesian or Caucasian. Yet there was something indefinitely Caucasian in their features.

The woman was shorter, nude save for a long strip of tapa, bound so tightly around her hips that it seemed to hold her legs together. Those legs were her imperfection, for they were short, stocky and knock-kneed. I wondered if this peculiarity, which I saw later in the majority of the women here, had something to do with the tight binding of the thighs. Or was it an occupational distortion, caused by carrying heavy loads? In the Kuni dwarfs of Papua I have remarked on another sort of occupational distortion--they were pigeon-breasted and duck-footed from climbing hills all their lives. This Rennellese wife, like the man, was well tattooed except for her face and back The designs seemed to be all in the same pattern.

They had hardly gotten aboard before they were all over the ship, prying into everything, handling everything, including ourselves. Delicate, dirty fingers felt of our shirts, felt of the buttons on our shorts, patted us all over to see if these strange beings were real. One of the small boys patted my stomach, not satirically, but in admiring surprise that it could be so big. One of the men went into the galley where he tunked the tin pans and chuckled strange words in a dialect which was not quite Polynesian.

Hamlin and I went down the ladder to look at their canoes, strange hulks gnawed from thick logs--gnawed is the word, for they had been hollowed out in the most primitive possible way.

Hamlin said, “Yes, they char the wood and hack it with shells. But these canoes are better made than the ones I saw before. I gave them some hatchets, and they’re working with them. They’re crazy to get iron and steel. They’ll do anything for it, give you anything they’ve got, and that isn’t much--mostly women.”

Back on deck I saw the woman making up to Bella, the cook’s powerful helper. There was danger ahead, I feared. Not the danger of being clubbed to death, as they had clubbed the mission teachers; but the trouble that comes to any island visitor when crews go ashore to “refresh.”

The people who had come aboard spoke a little queer pidgin English, just a word here and there which they had picked up God knows where. They didn’t know much of it, for when we first spoke to them they returned a polite, blank stare. Then the woman saw an empty beer bottle, and said “Me want,” in a pretty, husky contralto. But when we tried more pidgin on her she was dumb. “What does she want with an empty beer bottle?” I asked Hamlin, and he explained, “The men break them up to shave with. Until beer bottles came the older men were all bearded. The young bucks pulled ’em out by using clam shells, like tweezers. I guess you could buy the island for a dozen razor blades.”

Then a few more canoes straggled out to let men, women and children clamber aboard, to make themselves at home. They had never heard of privacy. Why should they have heard of it? They were the primitives of primitives, therefore naïvely communistic. They poked their fingers into every hole in the main cabin, turned up our mattresses and wondered what they were, tried to find out why locked boxes and cupboards wouldn’t open. Occasionally they would slip some small thing like a shoelace or a beer-bottle cap into their tapa sashes. A few of the girls could say, “Me want knifie,” putting a caress into their voices as they handled our shirt collars. Late that night unmistakable sounds from the crew’s quarters indicated that some local beauties had remained to earn a knife or bottle.

* * * * *

(Here I paused to give Templeton Crocker the last cup of coffee in the pot. Then I went on.)

* * * * *

When we were at meals they’d leave us alone--and that was the only time, why I don’t know. Right after dinner or breakfast they’d be back. We tried to play cards, but with beautiful torsos pressing against our shoulders, backs and arms, it was hard to concentrate.... Two new arrivals came into the cabin, and Hamlin recognized a friend of his former trip. He got up and rubbed noses solemnly with a bright-eyed, nuggety little fellow, whose look was quick with intelligence. “This is Buia of Kanava,” Hamlin said, and then of the taller, younger one, “he’s named Buia too. He’s Buia the Bastard. Buia of Kanava is heir to one of the Big Masters--that’s what they call their chiefs here--and he speaks a little pidgin.”

At once I decided that Buia of Kanava should be my very own for the duration of the trip. His pidgin was quite bad, but intelligible. When I asked him how he learned it, he said the Japanese sailors had taught him. He was a progressive spirit, far beyond the island average. One day he had swum out to a Japanese pearler, lying offshore, and offered his services for a trip of a few hundred miles. He was there to learn the white man’s ways; Japanese or Swedes were all the same to him.

To bind his service securely I took Buia to my cabin and laid an offering out on my berth; an adze, a hatchet, a trade-knife with a six-inch blade and one of the pasteboard lock-boxes Hamlin had been foresighted enough to buy. He gazed, dumb with fascination; he was like Aladdin at first sight of the jewel-filled cave. “Belong me?” he murmured. Yes, they were all for him, _if_ he would be goodfellow boy, show me everything and tell me everything. When I got a key and opened the box Buia was mine for a lifetime, if I wanted him that long. I replaced the treasures in a cupboard, but every afternoon while we were on the island he would appear in my cabin and beseech me to let him look at them again. I would lay them out on the berth and watch him gloat, rubbing his hands. He would be a very rich man.

By piecing Buia’s words together I gained some knowledge of a religious and social structure which had only moved forward a third of the distance from the Glacial Period.

* * * * *

Buia told me that Rennell Island was divided into five districts, each ruled by a kingly chief called a Big Master. The two most powerful Big Masters were Tahua, Lord of the White Sands, and Taupangi, Lord of the Lake--the lake was Tenggano, lying in the center of the island. The people did not worship images and they had few devils. They adored an unseen God (Big Master Walk along Sky, according to pidgin). The Big Masters were the most powerful because God lived in their heads. (“God does _what_?” I asked.) God lived in their heads, Buia insisted earnestly; so they were wiser and stronger than other men. Once a year, at the harvest festival up by the Lake, Tahua and Taupangi could wish God to leave their heads, just for the period, and dwell behind the brows of some chosen subordinate. Then the subordinates were very strong and wise, but God always came back to the Big Masters. The harvest festival was being celebrated right now, Buia said, and that was why Big Master Tahua was not on the White Sands.

Then Buia came out with a scandal which somewhat alarmed me for the future of these “untouched” people. It was a real-estate deal with more of Hollywood’s flavor than Rennell’s. Probably the five big chiefs were descendants of five sons of the early conquerors, and Taupangi, Lord of the Lake, was of the eldest line; at least he was the most powerful. Once he ruled both the Lake and the White Sands; but the beach looked useless to him. Perhaps God told Tahua of Kanava that beach property had a future. At any rate Taupangi was induced to give Tahua temporary use of the White Sands, but when he saw vessels anchoring there, with good trading in iron, Taupangi realized his mistake and ordered Tahua out. This started a war, and the enterprising Tahua must have won it, for when we got there he was well established as Lord of the White Sands.

The yams on the Lake were small and poor, but the beach was a different matter. Iron was gold. Iron would put Rennell on its feet. Rennell had girls, the incoming ships had knives, axes, scrap iron. With a corner on iron Tahua could become master of the Big Masters.

As a public health physician I didn’t like the sound of this. Trading love for iron was going to work havoc with these natives, unless this form of commercialism was soon discouraged.

Since the main object of my visit was to look into hookworm infection, if it existed, and to study the nature of the parasite which, if they had it, must have been borne by their ancestors generations before the dawn of our modern history, it was necessary to use Buia as a go-between. If he could get it through his head that we were here to examine feces specimens, he could explain it to his people. But after two patient hours of careful pidgin I saw that I was making no headway. Buia simply didn’t understand what I wanted. I had been using the lingo almost daily for thirteen years, and had never before had such trouble in making myself clear. Then it dawned upon me that it wasn’t entirely the man’s faulty knowledge of pidgin. He had no conception of disease, as we view it. All sickness was punishment from their offended god, penalizing the evildoer. That was the only reaction that I got from him after steady pegging away. Finally we changed the subject.

Gordon White and three boys went ashore and erected a tent and fly where we could go properly to work on our examinations. Walking along the sparkling beach I was surprised to find only one house, such as it was, a leaf-building with a steep-sloping roof, eaves that almost touched the ground and no doors. But where did the people sleep? In caves? On the bare ground, with the rain sifting over them? When I knew them better I found that was what they did.

I got around to the subject of murder, for I never quite forgot Dr. Deck’s three murdered evangelists. I asked Buia what he would do if somebody tried to kill him. “Who would want to kill me?” he asked, surprised. Suppose somebody should steal his land? “But who would want to steal my land?” Then I got around to Mr. Deck’s slain teachers; Rennell people had certainly killed them--and I had heard that they had eaten them, too. Buia’s face clouded. “Those mission boys were very bad fellows. They asked our people to build them a house, and when the work did not suit those mission people they were very cross. They gave no presents although they were rich. So our people killed them.” And ate the bodies? “No!” Indignantly. “My people have never eaten men. It is not the fashion.” I knew he was telling the truth. Cannibalism might be like many another curse, imported. The Rennellese had never acquired a taste for long pig, or for pig of any kind. Their diet was simple in the extreme: the small variety of fruit and vegetables they could grow, what fish their clumsy wooden hooks could bring in, what birds their arrows reached. They ate just one thing at a meal. If it was fish, it was fish and nothing else. If it was yams, it was yams alone.

There were many things they couldn’t understand, but their bright minds were quick to learn. Our ornithologists were out for specimens, and Hamlin had given a few native boys their first lessons with a shotgun, half an hour’s target practice on the rare birds flying about. Then he had casually handed guns to the boys and told them to go to it. They came back loaded with feathery game. What was still more wonderful was that nobody had shot himself in the foot.

So I sat down at my typewriter to write a report, something that couldn’t be done in sociable Kungava Bay. The boat was swarming. Native heroes and their women had gone into about everything on board, and were helping themselves rather freely. It was neither politic nor polite to offend these charming people by telling them to go home and stay there until they were invited. As a counter-attraction I had set the phonograph up in the bow and ordered little Ga’a to keep the needle going till it wore out. The ghost-music attracted part of the crowd part of the time, but they always came back to me. The phonograph was all right as a miracle, but what really puzzled and charmed them was my portable typewriter.

A baker’s dozen of the brown-skinned young things lolled over my shoulders, touching the keys as they flew, drawing their fingers over the ribbon to see the ink come off. What was this strange box that made such straight tattoo marks across a very white sheet? Finally I gave up all pretense of working and called Buia. His eyes, like all the others’, were fixed on my portable. He said that they all wanted to know what I was doing. I told him that if he would push the girls back a few inches I would try to show him. This machine, I said, made talk. Those things I was tattooing on the white sheet were words; if Buia were to carry the sheet as far as the albatross flies, a man on the other end would just look at it and the words would talk to him. Buia’s bright eyes were standing out of his head as he murmured, “Me no sabe dis fellow talk.” “I’ll show you,” I said, and tick-tacked on a piece of paper, “_Hamlin, please give Buia a tin of cigarettes_.” I told what the paper would say to Hamlin, and sent Buia below.

Presently he staggered back, a tin of Chesterfields shuddering in his hand. Furtively he whispered the miracle to the huddled islanders. And it _was_ a miracle in a land where there had never been the slightest trace of a written language, not even picture writing. In their excited faces I saw a hungry eagerness to learn. Experimentally I lined them up, and as each one told me his name or hers I would typewrite it and have the bearer take it down to a man in the engineroom, who would read it out to them. This game lasted until my fingers were tired of hitting the keyboard. Some of them tried to help me; mischievous fingers would poke at random, and the ship would be a gale of rough contralto laughter when a key flew up and struck the paper.

That night I wrestled with Buia again over the subject of hookworm. Carefully I told him of the snake that hung to the human intestine and sent its eggs out with the bowel motion. In my jungle campaigns I had informed the most backward and savage Melanesians that they had “senake in bel’” which their witch doctors could not cure because they only removed the ghost of a snake, but we could fetch the real thing. I had worked in safety among tough cannibals and found that they were afraid to attack a man who could do such magic.

I thought that my detailed explanation had at last got under Buia’s skin. He was politely impressed, and I felt sure that he would act as my friend and interpreter tomorrow when I would begin the delicate work of collecting specimens of feces.

Next morning Gordon White and I went to the beach with our microscope and little tin containers; the first thing I did was to give a container to Buia, and ask him if he remembered what I had told him. Now Buia seemed unable to understand. Gordon White came to my rescue and said, “Doctor, I’ll go and demonstrate to these bastards, personally.” With Buia and a retinue of small boys he retired into the bushes. Silence. Then a perfect bedlam of frightened yells. Small boys came scampering out, hands in air, mouths open, screaming. And Buia followed the panicky retreat. They ran as though a mad dog were after them, nipping.

At last Gordon came out, dejectedly holding a tin. “When I put the specimen in and closed the lid,” he said, “they stared as if they were accusing me of an atrocious crime.” The natives of the beach kept away from us for a bad half-hour; we were isolated among a lot of savages who had interpreted our well meant attempt as the grossest insult. These men carried spears and clubs; we knew how they dealt with those who offended them. Whether or not they had eaten Deck’s missioners was only of academic importance. What happens after you’re dead doesn’t matter much. The main thing was to keep alive....

Then Buia came sidling back to our tent. His look was portentous. He said, “Master, dis fellow he something altogether tabu. Him he tabu too much. Suppose Big Master Tahua sabe something belong dis fashion, he altogether too bad along you fellow me fellow”--Meaning that if we went on with our search for hookworm eggs Tahua would kill us all, including Buia. We heard the noise of people scrambling down the precipice. Buia told us that they were from Lake Tenggano. And as we valued our lives, he said, we mustn’t even hint at what happened in the bushes. Otherwise terrible things would befall us for breaking their tabu.

Well, there we were, on the third day, absolutely bunkered on the main object of our trip. When I went back to the _France_, feeling that my investment had turned out a total loss, I found the people of the Lake swarming over everything, and among them a grandee of the White Sands, an adopted son of Tahua. And there was Tamata, too, adopted son of Taupangi. They seemed to be a reception committee from the Big Masters, inviting us to the harvest festival at the Lake.

Hamlin had warned me of difficulties going overland to the Lake. But our failure of that morning had roused all the mule blood in me. If I went to the Lord of the Lake and prevailed on him to cancel the tabu and let me make the necessary examinations I might accomplish the purpose of my visit. After all, it was only a walk of seven or eight miles, I was in fair condition, and impatient when Hamlin argued that I had better not try it. I didn’t know what I was in for....

* * * * *

(Here I paused and looked at the empty coffeepot. “Guess I’d better make some more,” I said to Templeton Crocker. When I got back with the coffee I asked, “Are you tired of listening?” “Lord, no!” said Crocker. “And I hope you’re not tired of talking.” “I’m never tired of talking,” I said, and went on.)

* * * * *

I was rather glad to be away from the _France_ for a while. The sociability on board was getting on my nerves. I had already learned that their dialect was akin to Polynesian and that the word _tabu_ was feared and respected. But it wasn’t at all like the German _verboten_. We didn’t use _tabu_ properly or understand it properly. A thing could be tabu one minute, I discovered, and not tabu the next. When I found standing room only in my cabin, everything in it being pulled up or pulled down by curious island fingers, I would smile mildly and say, “Tabu, tabu!” It wouldn’t do to lose patience and push them out. They would be tabu-ed out of the main cabin, but we only had to wait a little before a head, then an arm, then a leg would appear slyly in the companionway. Then they would all ooze in again. We had talked it over among ourselves and had decided that they were Polynesians, kind and courteous to friends; but an uncouth word might rouse their tempers to a fury.

We started on our little stroll to the Lake. At Hamlin’s suggestion I put on a pair of heavy army shoes with stout brass screws in soles and heels--seemed rather a silly precaution. Buia was guiding us and we had a few carriers for our light packs. A tin of sardines and two ship’s biscuits would be enough for each of us, in case of famine. My pack included a light change of clothes and toilet necessities. Also we had a bundle of tribute-gifts for Tahua and Taupangi. Hamlin had been foresighted enough to include tea, butter, sugar, salt, pepper and a benzine tin to make tea in. Otherwise we expected to live off the country.

Our march began with a climb up 400 feet of cliff, up a sort of ladder trail which generations had scooped out with shells. The coral stone seemed to be so many little daggers, slicing at me until my hands and knees began to bleed. Once on the summit, there were slopes of coral; everything on the island was coral, except thin patches of earth that had caught on the surface. I think that the people got what they ate by moving from patch to patch and picking whatever grew there. We found a grove of pawpaws. The carriers were eating the fruit green, so I tried a paw. They were not bad. Green pawpaws are full of papain, with an action similar to that of pepsin.... Walking along, nibbling, I began to feel that the difficulties of the trip had been overrated. Then beyond the grove I looked across the bleakness of the land from which a healthy people had hacked their bare living through ages of struggle. Over the trail in front of us was a mass of briary vines. Must we go through that? Buia led the way.

I wore a helmet and was sorry, for the rest of the way we had to walk at a crouch through a tunnel of close-woven twigs. Vines pulled off my helmet, tripped me up, flung me about. Two good men with machetes could have cleared this trail; but there were no machetes in this land of little iron. There was always coral underfoot, cutting with thousands of minute edges. Beyond the vines trees were growing out of solid coral; the forest was so dense that we were in twilight, all the way to the Lake. Perspiration oozed out of us, rain oozed in, wetting us through. Yet we were so thirsty that we must stop every half-mile or so to swig from our water-bottles. A cigarette would have helped, but they were saturated by misty rain the instant they came out of the box.

The barefoot carriers didn’t seem to mind the jagged stuff; they would step daintily around a bristling lump which could have opened an artery. Now I knew why Rennellese legs were always scarred up to the knee. The gods of Rennell Island had thrown up another barrier against strangers. When we approached an especially bad lump Buia would point it out in time for me to balance myself on my cane to avoid a fall that might have scraped me to death.

Maybe you have scared your children to sleep by telling of obstacles, natural and supernatural, which the hero must overcome in his climb to the ogre’s castle. On that walk to the Lake fissures would appear in the rock, spanned by rain-slippery, mossy logs. Buia would stand on the slimy thing, agile as a monkey, and pleasantly help us across the void. I wore two pairs of woolen stockings when I started out; now they hung in shreds against my bleeding calves. At the first step on a log I saw that the thick leather of my shoes was torn as if it had been scraped across yards of barbed wire. Now I knew why Hamlin had thought that I couldn’t finish this little tour. By the time we reached the muddy shores of the Lake my dreadnaught shoes had about gone back on me, and the brass-studded soles were flopping about like broken wings.

On a knoll some fifty yards from the Lake we came upon another of those queer Rennell houses, practically all roof with eaves a couple of feet from the ground. There were no doors or windows, so you got in by crawling under the eaves. There was nothing inside but a great pile of coconuts. We were told not to touch them because they were extra tabu. Coconuts were very scarce. Hog-dirty, dog-tired, White and Hamlin and I tumbled down and panted, quite willing to die among the coconuts, if only they let us alone.

Somebody was crawling in after us. It was Buia with a couple of handsome natives. Buia said that we had better hurry up, as the Big Masters, Tahua and Taupangi, were waiting to receive us. So we were up again, mucking our way through a mile of lakeside and up to a so-called village. There were shackly palm-leaf canopies on crooked poles--where people slept, perhaps. There were caverns in the coral over yonder, which might serve as apartments. We came to another Rennell house, slightly larger than the one we had been in. In a palace like this there is no question of Majesty having obeisance paid it or of a court officer instructing one how to bow and kneel. You crawl in on all fours, and on all fours you greet the reigning sovereign. Taupangi, Lord of the Lake, sat in state on a pile of native mats, and was properly dressed for the religious ceremonies. Around his waist he wore a wide tapa and a fancifully woven mat. His hair was in a knot at the back of his head and he was smeared all over with sacred yellow turmeric. He was still young, and about the biggest man I saw on Rennell Island, with shoulders like an ox’s yoke and a wonderfully proportioned body. All of the Big Masters that I saw were handsome men, none of them running to fat as Polynesians do in middle age.

At the other end of the house sat a younger, still handsomer man, enthroned on mats. He had the perfect classic profile and his tattooed torso was magnificent. This was Tekita, who had acted as the Big Master’s substitute during the ceremonies of the week; during the ritual God had passed from Taupangi’s head and into Tekita’s. He was being king for a day, as it were, for the great spirit (Tainatua) owned every stick and stone on Rennell Island, and the man whose head possessed him spoke with the voice of God. Taupangi, for the nonce, was only human. Soon, when Divinity resumed its seat in his brain, he would again be all powerful over the division of labor, crops and everything else in his little realm.

Tekita, the substitute, had been chewing betel-nuts, and seemed excited, as well he might be considering his lofty rise. Superficially he behaved like quite a conceited young fellow. He spoke pidgin English fairly well--he might have been one of those whom Lever Brothers’ yacht had taken away on an unsuccessful attempt at recruiting. With all the gestures of royalty Tekita seated himself next to the Big Master and graciously did some interpreting. As he talked he rolled his eyes and every few moments he would go into a silent semi-trance. He was going on much like any charlatan trying to impress an audience. In a prophetic voice he admitted that he was glad to see Hamlin again. “Hamlin fadder belong me,” he said. And promptly wanted to know what present “fadder belong him” had brought. This honorary fatherhood, although it cemented our friendship with Taupangi’s people, was becoming a bit of a nuisance.

I found more pidgin than I had expected, at first. It was gradually filtering in. (I can’t forget Tekita’s lordly farewell, spoken between trances: “Me too sorry belong you fellow you come along here.” Meaning, of course, that he was glad; but he had somehow mixed his adjectives.)

I wanted to see Tahua, Lord of the White Sands, but when I asked this favor of Taupangi, the Lord of the Lake, he was jealously evasive. Our tribute of an adze and axe changed his mind (which was Tekita, speaking with the voice of God). Guides led us over to a miserable little hut of sticks and vines. Apparently Taupangi wasn’t being too lavish with his rival. But there was enough room inside for the bearded, muscular Tahua to sit in state opposite his divinely inspired substitute. Tahua relaxed to a somewhat cupidinous smile when we presented him with an adze. This meeting wasn’t much, but it was what a bond salesman would call a “contact.” I knew that I would have to gain Tahua’s good will before I could even attempt hookworm examinations on his side of the island.

Tomorrow would end the festival, with the ceremony of putting God back into the heads of the Big Masters. I was too tired to care. I had sloshed through mud until I found fresh water, made a pretense of washing my face and hands and came back dirtier than before. Now I could see why the inland Rennellese went unbathed, except when it happened to rain on them. I crawled into the guest house--not daring to touch the pile of sacred coconuts--and eased my feet with clean socks and tennis shoes. Then I spread out my blanket and got on it.

“Oh, sleep! it is a gentle thing,” said the Ancient Mariner. In Taupangi’s domain it was a mixed blessing. When I started to drowse, our courteous hosts came in with a rough wooden bowl filled with _pana_, a glorified sweet potato. Although they had peeled the vegetables with their dirty fingers, the smell of food woke me pleasantly. Since leaving the _France_ we had had nothing but a few sardines and one sea-biscuit apiece. I had watched the natives cooking; Rennellese fire-sticks were pieces of rotten wood which they rubbed until the spark came. They lined a hole with coral stones, started a fire on them and kept it going until the stones were white hot. Then they wrapped food in leaves, laid it on the stones, covered it with earth and let nature take its course.

Except for a small clamshell, which they used mostly to scrape the meat from coconuts, the wooden bowl was their only eating utensil. At festival dances they used the bowls as drums. These, and big wooden drums, were the only musical instruments they had. I was sorry that we had forgotten to bring them jew’s harps, which would have charmed them into ecstasies.

To say that I slept that night would be a gross exaggeration. Every man, woman and child who could crowd in became our bedmate. Communism and comfort seem to be strangers. We lay all coiled together, Gordon White and I sharing the common lot. The rest of our crowd had had sense enough to find some sort of shelter outside. Before we slept--if it could be called sleeping--a burly, blustery fellow named Panio came in and showed all the specious heartiness of the typical politician. Instinctively I felt that we might have trouble with Panio. If I had known, as I learned later, that he belonged on the beach, a henchman of Tahua, and was one of the three that had killed Deck’s missionaries, I might have slept even more lightly than I did.

Lying on the floor, cuddled very close to me, was Tamata, son of Taupangi, and on the other side, equally intimate, was Tahua’s adopted son. I could see why the house was so popular, for the night was quite cool; outside in the ridiculous leaf-and-stick shelters only a mat protected the sleeper. I had seen women lying in the open, babes in arms, snoring serenely with cold rain sifting all over them.

The house inside reminded me of Mark Twain’s description of Brigham Young’s bed; if anybody turned they all had to turn. Far into the night, pidgin English questions were pegged at me from this side and that. They all wanted to learn a little more while they had the opportunity. Indoors or out, it was the crudest existence imaginable, not far removed from the animal. Yet they thrived on it, to all appearances....

Next morning, after we had implored our hosts to break their one-meal-a-day custom and cook us a fish, we went over to the harvest festival, which was drawing to a dramatic close.

* * * * *

(I paused to light a cigarette, and Crocker prompted me with “What happened then?”)

* * * * *

Well (I said) the show was held near Taupangi’s house. He and his rival, Tahua, with several other Big Masters, were the features. They had laid aside their bunchy loin coverings and wore nothing but strips of tapa between their buttocks and around their waists. From head to foot they were yellow with royal turmeric. Tahua’s first gesture, when he saw me, was to point at my bare legs. I didn’t understand, until I learned that Resident Commissioner Dick Kane, the first white man known to have penetrated as far as the Lake, had worn woolen stockings. When the natives were curious, he told them that in civilization only big chiefs were allowed to wear stockings. Next time I visited Taupangi I restored my status by covering my calves.

There was a rough dirt court, about fifty yards by ten. They had fenced it with sticks and leaves, higher than a man’s head. This was to keep women out. If any female looked in on the ceremony she would surely die, they said. There was some trouble about letting us into the enclosure. We were told that the gods, angered at our presence, might do us harm. Finally, as a measure of protection, Taupangi sat between us and danger. Before he rose to take part in the ceremonies he insisted that another Master, a very old one, should sit in his place, so that at all times we were well insulated against the supernatural.

The precious coconuts which we had been sleeping with were now piled in the center of the court; beside them was a rude platform where sat the two young men who had substituted as godheads for the two Big Masters.

Then the Masters--there were about twenty of the minor ones in all--began filing slowly around the coconut pile, their faces turned heavenward as they chanted. First Taupangi would take up the theme, then the others would join in a sort of obbligato. The walk sped up gradually to a curious leaping, first on one foot then the other; they hopped by rule, two on the right leg, two on the left. The pounding of drums and food-bowls, the howling song and general yelling increased to a hubbub. Abruptly the dancers would sit down, and the racket would cease. Finally Tekita (still monarch pro tem) rose from his platform and distributed coconuts from the pile.

The big moment came. The celebrants began working God out of the two substitutes and back into the heads of Taupangi and Tahua. The faces of both Big Masters were set in earnest religious devotion. The lesser Masters formed a line, four abreast, and hopped some distance toward the house where Tekita had been sitting. Singing at the top of their lungs, their hands outstretched toward Heaven, they hopped back. Their slow retreat and progress brought them nearer the house each time; they came at last within six feet of the eaves. At last with a bloodcurdling howl they rushed up and struck the roof with the flat of their hands. Then, apparently, God flew from his temporary dwelling back into the heads of Tahua and Taupangi.

The minute this transfer was made Taupangi’s substitute seemed to come back to normal. He had lost the superiority complex altogether, and was a relaxed, courteous and jolly fellow.

That night our bird hunters brought in some ducks, which we ate half raw, because the natives only knew how to scorch them. Themselves, they never ate ducks; ducks were unclean feeders, the people said. Thinking that we might protect ourselves from the sociability of the house, we set up a tent. In fifteen minutes our tent was jammed with self-invited guests. The frail canvas came down two or three times during the night from the pressure of those inside getting out and those outside getting in. In the weary, dreary morning, plagued with thirst, I tried drinking water from the Lake, where the natives seemed to get theirs. On the coral-jagged march back to the beach, I found to my embarrassment that the Lake was quite unfriendly to a white man’s digestion.

When we reached the White Sands some interesting gossip was going the rounds. It was about Tekita, who had been substituting for Taupangi. By all the rules a substitute was supposed to be very tabu during that period, especially for women. But when God got back into Taupangi’s head he told on Tekita, who had broken his tabu with a certain village maiden. So God visited his punishment on Taupangi, not Tekita, and told him that he could not go down to the _France_ while she was in the bay. Somehow the Almighty must have reversed himself, for Taupangi visited us a few days later.

* * * * *

While I was at the Lake I never for a moment overlooked the problem of hookworm examinations, nor did I fail to put in a great deal of time making a census of the people for apparent diseases. Since Buia had warned me not to mention hookworms to the Big Master, I was still searching for a way to go ahead. Then Buia fixed it. My guess was that he spoke to Mua, son of Taupangi; for both the Lord of the Lake and his son had first class minds. Tahua, Lord of the White Sands, was reputed to have less “power” than Taupangi; that is to say, he was unable to go into a “sweating trance” as the chief of Lake Tenggano could, they said. Mua told me that Taupangi could kill by wishing, through his closer connection with the Grandson God.