Horror in Paradise (23 page)

Toga, Torres Islands

THE eye is caught at once by a white cross of coral cement, which evidently marks a Christian grave. The wife of a former teacher was buried here. A year or two ago the priest-in-charge saw a crowd clustered round this grave, the center of their interest being a woman who was handling a land-crab of a species whose bite the natives fear. She, however, seemed quite unafraid, allowing the creature to crawl about her at will. Presently she put it down on the ground, and at once it sidled off into a hole under the cross.

The scene was interpreted afterwards in the confidence that evening brings. The woman was one reputed to be in touch with the spirit-world, and able to communicate with ghosts and see beings invisible to ordinary eyes. When she was thus engaged it was said that her face changed and her eyes protruded crabwise. The crab itself was the soul of the teacher’s dead wife, whose remains were buried there. The hole was the passage by which it came up from Panoi, always taking the same visible shape.

Remembering the legend, I questioned one of the women who was standing by me, and she corroborated it, adding that the Toga belief is that all dead folks’ souls go down into Panoi by crab holes, and reappear on occasion in crab form. “But some there are among us now who do not believe it,” she added.

Tikopia

WHILE writing of customs I must mention that which concerns betrothal. An offer of marriage in Tikopia is made by the handing of a nut to a girl by her admirer, and if she accepts him she accepts the nut. Nor will she refuse him lightly, for if that significant nut be rejected, the girl by her action signs her own death-warrant. She is actually compelled by social custom to commit suicide, and it is said that every year several girls drown themselves rather than marry the man who handed the nut.

San Cristoval

OLD Taki, the chief of Waño, evolved a grudge against a certain man, and resolved to punish him for it. He killed a large pig, and sent it as a gift to the offender, accompanied with a huge quantity of yams.

San Cristoval etiquette does not admit of the refusal of a chiefly gift: such would be an open and flagrant insult, bringing speedy chastisement. It is obligatory on the recipient to accept both pig and yams, and to make therewith a banquet. This does not sound like a very dire punishment. But the sting lies in the tail.

By the inexorable law of native custom the poor fellow knew himself compelled to send in return a present equal to, if not exceeding in value, what he had received. Taki was rich; his victim, poor already, was by the chief’s lavish generosity reduced to beggary. His small garden was insufficient to supply the yams required, and all his money was exhausted in buying food for the man of abundance!

Taki still lives and flourishes—an interesting character, whose portrait I am able to reproduce. Until about 1890 he was notorious as a leading headhunter and cannibal.

Perhaps thirty years ago some influence induced him to give his son to the white men to be trained in our Norfolk Island Industrial College. But on the lad’s return Taki would have none of his newfangled ways. He dragged the lad down again into shameless savagery, and gloried in it. But the youth had hardly attained maturity when he was killed by a bite from a shark, and about the same time Taki lost both wife and brother. We have in our possession the stock which Taki caused to be carved to memorialize his son. It represents a shark’s head, with the miniature figure of a man in its jaws. Thenceforth Taki declared war upon all sharks; the whole ocean tribe suffer for the act of the one. But he wanted something more valuable than the life of many sharks in revenge for the loss of his nearest. He wanted
heads!
And they were not so easy to obtain in 1885 as they had been in, say, 1880.

In vain he urged and gibed at the young men of his village for their cowardice; in vain he lamented and bewailed their desertion and his desolation. They were learning the new way, and could not be prevailed upon to organize one of the night-raids so dear to them of old time. Taki bound around him the girdle that signifies married-womanhood in San Cristoval. It was a sign to the world that he was in the position of an old woman, having lost his nearest and dearest, and yet being unable to obtain human heads with which to honor their tombs.

But in 1887 the girdle was put off. His desire was fulfilled. Two laborers returning from the Queensland sugar plantations, afraid to set foot in their native land, the wild island of Mala, pleaded for shelter in Taki’s village, hoping for safety, no doubt, where a Mission school was planted. Taki was more than willing to receive them; he was delighted. Forthwith he sent money and instructions to some heathen down the coast, and the heads of the two Mala men were added to Taki’s trophies.

The murder accomplished, Taki explained that a vow he had made necessitated his action, but that now all was over he would like to make a fresh start, follow his people in forsaking savagery, and learn the Peace Teaching! . . .

Touching David Bo, it may be mentioned that one of our head boys at Norfolk Island, a native of Heuru, remarked one morning a few months ago that he believed his chief had died. On inquiry he said that he had dreamed of him, and that although the chief seemed perfectly happy and full of life, he himself had wept greatly. A few weeks later the
Southern Cross,
returning from the islands, brought news of David Bo’s death on the very night of the lad’s dream.

Ulawa, Solomon Islands

AS San Cristoval is the heart of snake-worship, so Ulawa seems to have been in former days of shark worship. Throughout the Solomons these creatures are looked upon with much dread, and regarded as the abode of ghosts. A man on his deathbed will predict his future appearance in the form of a shark, and when one distinguished in any way by its size or color is observed to frequent a certain rock or strip of beach, it is regarded as representing the deceased or his ghost, and his name is bestowed upon it. I believe off Ulawa there still ranges a fierce maneating shark, called after one Sautahimatawa, to whom propitiatory money is offered in the much-prized porpoise teeth.

In the two or three heathen villages yet remaining in Ulawa, the sharks are worshiped by all the people, who not merely expect to inhabit them hereafter, but in a vague, quasi-totemic way consider themselves the descendants of sharks. It is not every one who can communicate with them; only certain men are possessed of the requisite mana. The test is from a canoe, by means of a very heavy red stone or a very large, light fruit. The man who wishes to prove his power throws out either one or the other, and should the fruit sink or the stone miraculously float, it is clear evidence that he has the desired mana.

The sharks seem to have a very proper feeling, for it is said that where they are worshiped they harm no one. They strictly confine themselves to
killing to order
; there is no freelance work. Their worshipers supply them with occupation, dispatching them on killing expeditions as far as San Cristoval and Ugi.

One of the villages boasts a famous school of sacred sharks. A certain man has mana to summon them when wanted, and a second knows how to send them about their business. According to the native account, which is very precise on the subject, they come when called in a regular order—two in front, and ten couples behind, nose level with nose, swimming straight into the small enclosed harbor where they are to receive their instructions.

Every shark is named. The leader is addressed, and to him is confided the name of his victim-designate. If possible, something connected with the man is supplied to the shark to assist the scent, even if it be only a handful of sand scraped by his foe from his footprints on the beach. Having heard their instructions, the sharks turn again and swim orderly off to work.

The shark especially named selects a large skate for its companion, whose duty it is to lash with its tail the doomed man’s canoe until it is upset. Then it is the part of the shark to swallow the man headfirst, but without killing him. Off he goes, a pair of legs sticking out of his mouth, to the spot where his worshiper awaits him, and at his feet the prey is disgorged. The man will not be dead: he must not be! No sacred shark will eat a man unless he has been formally strangled to death. But he is extremely weak, “trembling and sobbing,” they say. He knows he can hope for no mercy from the ruthless enemy at whose feet he lies. He is strangled and flung back to the shark for a meal.

Cases are told of a shark sent to destroy a man taking instead a capricious fancy to him—holding him under water once or twice for fun, playing with him, and then releasing him.

There was a famous shark-leader named Huaaha, particularly proficient in his profession. One day when the shark clan was summoned, Huaaha was not amongst them. At the same time came the news of the killing of a great shark in another village where they were no longer held in honor. Thither hurried the shark worshippers, to find that the body of the shark had been already consumed, and only the head remained on the shore.

The question was solemnly addressed to it, “Are you Huaaha?” and forthwith it stood up on end! Upon such conclusive evidence the infuriated people went straight up into the village, where the terrified inhabitants made no show of resistance, and ransacked the houses, burning and destroying everywhere. Down they surged to the beach, and broke up every canoe; up to the gardens in the bush, and ravaged them utterly; and then, glutted with vengeance, returned home.

In the same place there is said to be a hybrid sea monster, with the head of a shark and the legs of a man, who harms no one, but swims sadly about, off the village where sharks are worshipped, with which he is friendly.

The bodies of great chiefs only are buried in the heathen parts of Ulawa. All other corpses are the recognized food of the sharks, offered, as it were, in sacrifice to please them. Many were the battles waged in the Mission’s early days between Christian and heathen relatives touching the disposal of the bodies of the baptized.’Great and real was the terror of the sharks’ indignation at being deprived of their accustomed privilege. But now, of course, burial is the rule, and shark propitiation the exception.

Bugotu, Solomon Islands

AMONG the first of the chiefs of Bugotu with whom the Mission came in contact was one Bera, a very savage ruffian, whose worst barbarities were the offspring of his mother’s brain, she being a terrible old hag, who might have served as model for the character of “Gagool” herself!

It pleased Bera (and his mother) to appoint as his successor his grandson, Kikolo, a quiet, well-dispositioned young fellow, who had already joined the Mission school as a hearer. But shortly afterwards signs of wasting and decline were visible in the youth, and Bera was almost beside himself with anxiety. Curiously enough, he seems to have attached no blame to the New Teaching with which Kikolo had connected himself; but, making up his mind that his grandson had offended the local
tindato,
he bore him hither and thither, from islet to islet, in a vain endeavor to escape out of his jurisdiction. Kikolo’s weakness increased, and at last in despair he was brought back to Bera’s own house, that there he might die and be buried in chiefly fashion. But one last resource remained, and that should be tried. The
tindalo
might perchance yet be appeased by a human sacrifice.

A mother was working in her garden with her little child beside her, three or four years of age. She never noticed the stealthy approach of one of Bera’s men, who, from a short distance away, attracted the infant’s attention, and lured it towards him. As soon as it could safely be done, the child was seized and carried off in a canoe to where Bera impatiently awaited the fulfilment of his command.

The poor little innocent was borne into the presence of the dying youth, and its throat was cut so that the blood flowed around him, while Bera cried to the
tindalo
to accept the child’s life in lieu of his grandson’s. But the same day Kikolo died.

On hearing of the death, the teacher hurried to the chief; and offered to make a coffin and bury the body. Something induced Bera to accede to his suggestion, but he reckoned without his mother, who insisted on the old ceremonies being performed.

A large, deep grave was dug according to custom, in which the corpse was placed upright. Then Kikolo’s wife and child were dragged thither, strangled on the brink, and cast into the grave. All the dead man’s goods followed—his rifle, his money, and so forth. Every one owning allegiance to Bera next advanced bearing an offering of some sort, which was in like manner thrown into the grave. Then the earth was filled in up to the dead man’s neck, the head protruding from the ground. Round this fires were lighted, and kept burning until the flesh was cinders and the skull bare. This was then carried to the great canoe house, and there deposited, henceforth to receive worship and sacrifice as a
tindalo.

The dead man’s property—coco palms and banana groves—were all hacked down, a heap of stones was piled over the grave, and the period of howling and wailing set in. An expedition for compensatory heads would be set afoot as soon as possible, for until these are obtained, no one leaves the village or resumes ordinary life.

Jack London

In the spring of 1907, Jack London (1876-1916) and his wife Charmian sailed their ketch
Snark
to Hawaii to begin two years of cruising the Pacific, including the Marquesas group, the Societies, Samoa, Fiji, the New Hebrides, and the Solomons. No fewer than nine books by London deal with the Pacific region. Before his death he became the best known, highest paid, and most popular writer in the world.

After adventures among “the terrible Solomons,” including the grim island of cannibal Malaita and black Guadalcanal, the Londons took a horrifying cruise on a blackbirding vessel and then, against dangerous odds, headed the
Snark
for a visit to Ontong Java or Lord Howe Island. On their return to their base at Guadalcanal, it became alarming clear that their dream voyage must end.

“The Amateur M.D.” comprises the final chapter of London’s fascinating chronicle,
The Cruise of the Snark
(1913).