Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (445 page)

“Make dead,” said she.

“The devil it does!” says I.  “Did ever you hear that Case had poisoned Johnnie Adams?”

“Every man he savvy that,” says Uma, scornful-like.  “Give him white sand — bad sand.  He got the bottle still.  Suppose he give you gin, you no take him.”

Now I had heard much the same sort of story in other islands, and the same white powder always to the front, which made me think the less of it.  For all that, I went over to Randall’s place to see what I could pick up, and found Case on the doorstep, cleaning a gun.

“Good shooting here?” says I.

“A 1,” says he.  “The bush is full of all kinds of birds.  I wish copra was as plenty,” says he — I thought, slyly — ”but there don’t seem anything doing.”

I could see Black Jack in the store, serving a customer.

“That looks like business, though,” said I.

“That’s the first sale we’ve made in three weeks,” said he.

“You don’t tell me?” says I.  “Three weeks?  Well, well.”

“If you don’t believe me,” he cries, a little hot, “you can go and look at the copra-house.  It’s half empty to this blessed hour.”

“I shouldn’t be much the better for that, you see,” says I.  “For all I can tell, it might have been whole empty yesterday.”

“That’s so,” says he, with a bit of a laugh.

“By-the-bye,” I said, “what sort of a party is that priest?  Seems rather a friendly sort.”

At this Case laughed right out loud.  “Ah!” says he, “I see what ails you now.  Galuchet’s been at you.” —
Father Galoshes
was the name he went by most, but Case always gave it the French quirk, which was another reason we had for thinking him above the common.

“Yes, I have seen him,” I says.  “I made out he didn’t think much of your Captain Randall.”

“That he don’t!” says Case.  “It was the trouble about poor Adams.  The last day, when he lay dying, there was young Buncombe round.  Ever met Buncombe?”

I told him no.

“He’s a cure, is Buncombe!” laughs Case.  “Well, Buncombe took it in his head that, as there was no other clergyman about, bar Kanaka pastors, we ought to call in Father Galuchet, and have the old man administered and take the sacrament.  It was all the same to me, you may suppose; but I said I thought Adams was the fellow to consult.  He was jawing away about watered copra and a sight of foolery.  ‘Look here,’ I said, ‘you’re pretty sick.  Would you like to see Galoshes?’  He sat right up on his elbow.  ‘Get the priest,’ says he, ‘get the priest; don’t let me die here like a dog!’  He spoke kind of fierce and eager, but sensible enough.  There was nothing to say against that, so we sent and asked Galuchet if he would come.  You bet he would.  He jumped in his dirty linen at the thought of it.  But we had reckoned without Papa.  He’s a hard-shell Baptist, is Papa; no Papists need apply.  And he took and locked the door.  Buncombe told him he was bigoted, and I thought he would have had a fit.  ‘Bigoted!’ he says.  ‘Me bigoted?  Have I lived to hear it from a jackanapes like you?’  And he made for Buncombe, and I had to hold them apart; and there was Adams in the middle, gone luny again, and carrying on about copra like a born fool.  It was good as the play, and I was about knocked out of time with laughing, when all of a sudden Adams sat up, clapped his hands to his chest, and went into the horrors.  He died hard, did John Adams,” says Case, with a kind of a sudden sternness.

“And what became of the priest?” I asked.

“The priest?” says Case.  “O! he was hammering on the door outside, and crying on the natives to come and beat it in, and singing out it was a soul he wished to save, and that.  He was in a rare taking, was the priest.  But what would you have?  Johnny had slipped his cable; no more Johnny in the market; and the administration racket clean played out.  Next thing, word came to Randall the priest was praying upon Johnny’s grave.  Papa was pretty full, and got a club, and lit out straight for the place, and there was Galoshes on his knees, and a lot of natives looking on.  You wouldn’t think Papa cared — that much about anything, unless it was liquor; but he and the priest stuck to it two hours, slanging each other in native, and every time Galoshes tried to kneel down Papa went for him with the club.  There never were such larks in Falesá.  The end of it was that Captain Randall knocked over with some kind of a fit or stroke, and the priest got in his goods after all.  But he was the angriest priest you ever heard of, and complained to the chiefs about the outrage, as he called it.  That was no account, for our chiefs are Protestant here; and, anyway, he had been making trouble about the drum for morning school, and they were glad to give him a wipe.  Now he swears old Randall gave Adams poison or something, and when the two meet they grin at each other like baboons.”

He told this story as natural as could be, and like a man that enjoyed the fun; though, now I come to think of it after so long, it seems rather a sickening yarn.  However, Case never set up to be soft, only to be square and hearty, and a man all round; and, to tell the truth, he puzzled me entirely.

I went home and asked Uma if she were a Popey, which I had made out to be the native word for Catholics.

“
E le ai
!” says she.  She always used the native when she meant “no” more than usually strong, and, indeed, there’s more of it.  “No good Popey,” she added.

Then I asked her about Adams and the priest, and she told me much the same yarn in her own way.  So that I was left not much farther on, but inclined, upon the whole, to think the bottom of the matter was the row about the sacrament, and the poisoning only talk.

The next day was a Sunday, when there was no business to be looked for.  Uma asked me in the morning if I was going to “pray”; I told her she bet not, and she stopped home herself with no more words.  I thought this seemed unlike a native, and a native woman, and a woman that had new clothes to show off; however, it suited me to the ground, and I made the less of it.  The queer thing was that I came next door to going to church after all, a thing I’m little likely to forget.  I had turned out for a stroll, and heard the hymn tune up.  You know how it is.  If you hear folk singing, it seems to draw you; and pretty soon I found myself alongside the church.  It was a little long low place, coral built, rounded off at both ends like a whale-boat, a big native roof on the top of it, windows without sashes and doorways without doors.  I stuck my head into one of the windows, and the sight was so new to me — for things went quite different in the islands I was acquainted with — that I stayed and looked on.  The congregation sat on the floor on mats, the women on one side, the men on the other, all rigged out to kill — the women with dresses and trade hats, the men in white jackets and shirts.  The hymn was over; the pastor, a big buck Kanaka, was in the pulpit, preaching for his life; and by the way he wagged his hand, and worked his voice, and made his points, and seemed to argue with the folk, I made out he was a gun at the business.  Well, he looked up suddenly and caught my eye, and I give you my word he staggered in the pulpit; his eyes bulged out of his head, his hand rose and pointed at me like as if against his will, and the sermon stopped right there.

It isn’t a fine thing to say for yourself, but I ran away; and if the same kind of a shock was given me, I should run away again to-morrow.  To see that palavering Kanaka struck all of a heap at the mere sight of me gave me a feeling as if the bottom had dropped out of the world.  I went right home, and stayed there, and said nothing.  You might think I would tell Uma, but that was against my system.  You might have thought I would have gone over and consulted Case; but the truth was I was ashamed to speak of such a thing, I thought everyone would blurt out laughing in my face.  So I held my tongue, and thought all the more; and the more I thought, the less I liked the business.

By Monday night I got it clearly in my head I must be tabooed.  A new store to stand open two days in a village and not a man or woman come to see the trade was past believing.

“Uma,” said I, “I think I’m tabooed.”

“I think so,” said she.

I thought awhile whether I should ask her more, but it’s a bad idea to set natives up with any notion of consulting them, so I went to Case.  It was dark, and he was sitting alone, as he did mostly, smoking on the stairs.

“Case,” said I, “here’s a queer thing.  I’m tabooed.”

“O, fudge!” says he; “‘tain’t the practice in these islands.”

“That may be, or it mayn’t,” said I.  “It’s the practice where I was before.  You can bet I know what it’s like; and I tell it you for a fact, I’m tabooed.”

“Well,” said he, “what have you been doing?”

“That’s what I want to find out,” said I.

“O, you can’t be,” said he; “it ain’t possible.  However, I’ll tell you what I’ll do.  Just to put your mind at rest, I’ll go round and find out for sure.  Just you waltz in and talk to Papa.”

“Thank you,” I said, “I’d rather stay right out here on the verandah.  Your house is so close.”

“I’ll call Papa out here, then,” says he.

“My dear fellow,” I says, “I wish you wouldn’t.  The fact is, I don’t take to Mr. Randall.”

Case laughed, took a lantern from the store, and set out into the village.  He was gone perhaps a quarter of an hour, and he looked mighty serious when he came back.

“Well,” said he, clapping down the lantern on the verandah steps, “I would never have believed it.  I don’t know where the impudence of these Kanakas ‘ll go next; they seem to have lost all idea of respect for whites.  What we want is a man-of-war — a German, if we could — they know how to manage Kanakas.”

“I
am
tabooed, then?” I cried.

“Something of the sort,” said he.  “It’s the worst thing of the kind I’ve heard of yet.  But I’ll stand by you, Wiltshire, man to man.  You come round here to-morrow about nine, and we’ll have it out with the chiefs.  They’re afraid of me, or they used to be; but their heads are so big by now, I don’t know what to think.  Understand me, Wiltshire; I don’t count this your quarrel,” he went on, with a great deal of resolution, “I count it all of our quarrel, I count it the White Man’s Quarrel, and I’ll stand to it through thick and thin, and there’s my hand on it.”

“Have you found out what’s the reason?” I asked.

“Not yet,” said Case.  “But we’ll fix them down to-morrow.”

Altogether I was pretty well pleased with his attitude, and almost more the next day, when we met to go before the chiefs, to see him so stern and resolved.  The chiefs awaited us in one of their big oval houses, which was marked out to us from a long way off by the crowd about the eaves, a hundred strong if there was one — men, women, and children.  Many of the men were on their way to work and wore green wreaths, and it put me in thoughts of the 1st of May at home.  This crowd opened and buzzed about the pair of us as we went in, with a sudden angry animation.  Five chiefs were there; four mighty stately men, the fifth old and puckered.  They sat on mats in their white kilts and jackets; they had fans in their hands, like fine ladies; and two of the younger ones wore Catholic medals, which gave me matter of reflection.  Our place was set, and the mats laid for us over against these grandees, on the near side of the house; the midst was empty; the crowd, close at our backs, murmured and craned and jostled to look on, and the shadows of them tossed in front of us on the clean pebbles of the floor.  I was just a hair put out by the excitement of the commons, but the quiet civil appearance of the chiefs reassured me, all the more when their spokesman began and made a long speech in a low tone of voice, sometimes waving his hand towards Case, sometimes toward me, and sometimes knocking with his knuckles on the mat.  One thing was clear: there was no sign of anger in the chiefs.

“What’s he been saying?” I asked, when he had done.

“O, just that they’re glad to see you, and they understand by me you wish to make some kind of complaint, and you’re to fire away, and they’ll do the square thing.”

“It took a precious long time to say that,” said I.

“O, the rest was sawder and
bonjour
and that,” said Case.  “You know what Kanakas are.”

“Well, they don’t get much
bonjour
out of me,” said I.  “You tell them who I am.  I’m a white man, and a British subject, and no end of a big chief at home; and I’ve come here to do them good, and bring them civilisation; and no sooner have I got my trade sorted out than they go and taboo me, and no one dare come near my place!  Tell them I don’t mean to fly in the face of anything legal; and if what they want’s a present, I’ll do what’s fair.  I don’t blame any man looking out for himself, tell them, for that’s human nature; but if they think they’re going to come any of their native ideas over me, they’ll find themselves mistaken.  And tell them plain that I demand the reason of this treatment as a white man and a British subject.”

That was my speech.  I know how to deal with Kanakas: give them plain sense and fair dealing, and — I’ll do them that much justice — they knuckle under every time.  They haven’t any real government or any real law, that’s what you’ve got to knock into their heads; and even if they had, it would be a good joke if it was to apply to a white man.  It would be a strange thing if we came all this way and couldn’t do what we pleased.  The mere idea has always put my monkey up, and I rapped my speech out pretty big.  Then Case translated it — or made believe to, rather — and the first chief replied, and then a second, and a third, all in the same style, easy and genteel, but solemn underneath.  Once a question was put to Case, and he answered it, and all hands (both chiefs and commons) laughed out aloud, and looked at me.  Last of all, the puckered old fellow and the big young chief that spoke first started in to put Case through a kind of catechism.  Sometimes I made out that Case was trying to fence, and they stuck to him like hounds, and the sweat ran down his face, which was no very pleasant sight to me, and at some of his answers the crowd moaned and murmured, which was a worse hearing.  It’s a cruel shame I knew no native, for (as I now believe) they were asking Case about my marriage, and he must have had a tough job of it to clear his feet.  But leave Case alone; he had the brains to run a parliament.