After the exciting experience which I related to you in the last chapter, when I think I was within an ace2 of being eaten by that cannibal tribe, I started off cruising with “Castle” and my friend the Danish poet. We made a happy trio and many were the subsequent adventures which we had together. Hornecastle hired a sloop3 and made a good bit of cash at times by trading around the Islands, and I was delighted to go off with him. It took us several days to reach the Fiji Islands. I shall never forget the times we had together and the strange people we came in contact with. The Fijians struck me as a very different type of people from the Samoans, who are much more intellectual-looking, and when Hornecastle and the poet and I went ashore4 we soon found plenty to interest us. There were plenty of whites there, half-castes and Indians who worked on the plantations5.
I chummed in with an Australian fellow and we went up towards the mountains and saw the Fijians in their homesteads. They were neat little thatched homes; some of them shaped something like a haystack as seen in English fields. I and my friend, who 104could speak a bit of their language, went inside one or two of these and watched them squatting6 on their haunches at dinner eating steaming stuff out of earthen bowls, using their fingers as knives and forks. I made friendly signs to a Fijian mother and her eyes quickly brightened up as I took her baby in my arms and examined its tiny wild face, its jewel-like eyes twinkling with fright. I never saw such pretty babies anywhere in the world as the mites7 of the South Seas. Their little plump bodies are as soft as velvet8 and the expression on the face like that of a baby kitten, and the mothers are as proud as Punch when you admire and kiss them, as I have often done, but you have to be careful that you kiss them all—I mean the babies—because mothers are just as jealous in the South Seas as in the Isles9 of the English seas. And so after I had committed myself and held up that little Fijian kid, I went from one mother to the other and did likewise to their offspring, and those dark naked mothers (for they were only dressed in a loin-cloth) all admired me and even the eyes of the men looked pleased as they offered me food, and the native youths clambered around us as we crept out of the door, and tried to steal the buttons off our clothes. They are all terrible thieves and the thieving instinct is so strong in all of the Islanders of the Pacific that they only place half the value on goods which are given them and jealously guard and over-estimate all that they steal.
I shall always remember vividly11 that ramble12 in 105the mountains of Fiji, because we came across a white man who had married a native woman. I suppose the marriage was something after the wild bird marriage act, anyway there he was sitting by his dusky beauty on the slopes that rolled seaward, quite as proud as any English father of his two tiny half-caste brats13. His wife, dressed only in an old red flannel14 skirt, smoked a cigarette by the hut door, and every now and again gave the little whitish beggars as they romped15 and quarrelled with each other a terrible spank16. I never saw children turn head over heels as those two nippers did; over and over they went down the slope like two big brown balls, uncurled themselves and came racing17 up to us again and then off once more as I stood sweltering under the tropic sun fanning myself with a large palm leaf speaking to their proud father. He was a Cockney from Mile End! You can imagine my astonishment18 when he asked all sorts of questions about my own birthplace and sighed as he said, “The dear old smoke,” meaning London Town. From the little that he let out I could see that he had previously19 been to sea as a coal trimmer on a tramp steamer. He was a man of about thirty-eight to forty years of age, but looked older through growing a scrubby beard, possibly to disguise himself from the English police! He seemed happy enough sitting there under his big umbrella hat, with white pants to his waist, and beyond those two articles of dress quite bare and cool.
His wife could speak English very well indeed and 106I must say I admired her husband’s taste, for though she was the descendant of South Sea savages20, cannibals, she would have put nearly all the Mile End women of his native land into the shade, and the West End ones too! She had a fine head for a woman, a voluptuous21 soft curved body, earnest dark eyes, darkish high-bunched hair, and a freedom of manner and modest exposure of the upper part of her body and lower limbs which was very fascinating. She would have created an enormous sensation could she have been transported just as she was to Piccadilly or the Strand22. I am quite sure that the Mile End Cockney would have been envied and would have had to keep his weather-eye open too, as the Christians23 of London Town came into contact with the innocence24 of the heathen South Seas.
“You come England?” she said, as I spoke25 to her husband. “Yes,” I said, “same country,” and she smiled with approval that such as I should have had the honour of hailing from the same country as her children’s father, and going into the hut brought my chum and me both a drink. I don’t know what it was, but English beer tastes like poison compared to it. I have been to many afternoon teas since that time, but never have I had a sweeter hostess or seen softer eyes, and all those things that make Nature’s lady. I have heard a lot about “Nature’s gentleman,” but I tell you this, Nature’s lady is nicer to meet and as rare, and I’ve found her just as she was turned out of the Garden 107of Eden and just as beautiful and innocent, as she sat on that little stump26, bare as at her birth, excepting for her lava-lava, with her pretty one-month-old baby’s tiny mouth toiling27 away at her breast for all it was worth. As the sunset faded out seaward the Cockney sailor, his “savage” wife, my chum and I sang all together, to the sailor’s accordion28, “The Old Rustic29 Bridge by the Mill,” also “White Wings they never Grow Weary,” and I can never hear those songs now but I see that scene again, the half-dressed sailor, my freckled30 lanky31 Australian chum, the Fijian beauty, singing at the top of her voice on the Pacific slope by the Island hut.
We only stayed at that Island two days and then sailed off to Lakemba and other Isles of the same group. We carried Hornecastle on board and dropped him in his bunk32 when we left Suva. I do not know what he had been drinking, but it made him pretty bad. We set the jibs and big mutton sail and the trade-wind took us along at a splendid pace. I was the second in command, and though she was a rotten old tub I was the proudest officer on the high seas! Hornecastle kept me awake that night. The poet and I got a bit worried; we thought he’d got a touch of the d.t.’s, and from what I could gather by his delirious33 mutterings he’d actually got married during that short stay and was frightened out of his life of being pursued by his irate34 bride!
Next day he was on his legs again and looked better than ever. I tried to pump him and find out 108what he had done to get so drunk and look so worried, but he would not budge35 an inch, and to all my innocent queries36 only told me to mind my own business and look after the wind!
I cannot for the life of me tell you the correct name of the Isle10 we next called at; they all had native names and I never could understand half of them. I think it was called Mulooka; anyway it was a fine place and well wooded. I shall never forget the beautiful sight of the forest-clad country and the intense loneliness of the wooded depths away from the tracks. I stood in the wood alone and gazed up at the branches overhead. They were covered with big breathing blossoms that had beaks37 on them; they were big fat parrot-birds chuckling38 away to themselves as the trade-wind swept across, blew the top branches aside and revealed the deep blue skies. I turned round and looked west; there through the trees far away stretched the dark blue crinkling Pacific, dotted here and there with native canoes, paddled along swiftly from shore to shore. On the beach far below were groups of dark men and half-castes by our little sloop.
I must tell you of the fashions of those times. Some of the chiefs wore a dirty white collar only, and a waistbelt wherein was stuck an old-fashioned revolver and rusty39 knife. Another stood on the shore as proud as possible attired40 in a waistcoat. Men and women seemed to vie with one another at making themselves look ridiculous and outrageous41 too. Of course, most people were amused 109by them. I shall never forget how the Dane laughed; he was a real good fellow that poet. I laughed too, but not like him; I was getting a bit used to sights of that kind. As for Hornecastle he simply looked on and yawned. Finding that he was staying the night and did not intend leaving till late the next day, I made up my mind to have a look round and go into the interior, so off I went alone. I am constituted that way and am never so happy as when I am completely alone with no one to ply43 me with questions or tell me their experiences while I am keenly interested in my own at that precise moment.
About a mile from the shore I came across a village of native homesteads built on a beautiful spot shaped out and shaded by the hand of instinct. There they stood dotting the landscape by the cooling shade of palms, yams, orange and other trees of luxuriant tropic foliage44. In the cleared spaces by those huts squatted45 the tribes of powerful mothers and men, all of them dressed in no clothes excepting their hair, which sprouted46 upwards47 on the top of their heads and shone in the sunlight. As I emerged from the forest trees into full view the tiny children stopped from their gambolling48, stared at me for a moment and then all raced off towards the village homesteads as though for dear life. They ran so fast that I could only see their legs twinkling in the sun-gleam. Then uprose the wild mothers and stalwart forest men, and between their bare legs, 110with little wistful demon-like faces, those frightened children peeped at me as I walked across the scrub and waved my hand, smiling as I approached them.
I found them a very hospitable49 people; they gave me food and drink and I well repaid those wild mothers for their kind thoughtfulness as I stroked the small frizzing heads of their babes and raced the little naked beggars, boys and girls, across the track and gave the winners buttons for prizes. “Moora, moora,” they shouted as I gave the last button away, and then I held on to myself tightly as they scrambled50 around me and tried to steal the buttons off my clothes! “No, no,” I shouted to one persevering51 little imp42, and his mother, seeing my annoyance52, picked up a large plank53 and struck him over the head with a terrible crash! By Jove, I was astonished when she did that, but the poor little devil simply looked a bit crestfallen54, looked up to me for sympathy, instead of his mother, and I rubbed the top of his head and made him happy. I found out afterwards that the top of their heads is the safest place to hit, the South Sea Island skull55 being very thick indeed.
I don’t know how those natives lived or what employment they followed. I suppose some of them worked at copra gathering56 or some other work which was useful to the white traders; anyway they all looked fat and well and their native villages like little bits of paradise compared with European cities. 111Away further in the interior were living (so I heard) tribes that still encouraged the cannibalistic tendency. I suppose they were still under the influence of the older men and women who had memories in their heads of the olden days when they dined off their enemies and discovered the good points of old rivals at the festive57 board. I never went off into the interior to see if it was so; my past experience was quite sufficient for me and I did not intend to take any more risks.
Before I leave that native village I must tell you of their idol worship. Before sunset I went back to the beach, and loitering about got in with some sailors, and together that night we went over the hills and down into the village and strolled among the natives, and going behind one of the larger huts there stood before us monstrous58 effigies59 with hideous60 faces and eyes bulging61 out like unburst soap-bubbles, and before them on little mats knelt the elder native men bowing and chanting prayers at the top of their voices, throwing their long arms up over their heads all the time. They were earnest enough in those fetish rites62, and as we stood there, white-faced men of the Western world, watching, they took not the slightest notice of us, so deeply were they engrossed63 in their pleadings to those dirty wooden deaf idols64. Of course I could not understand a word they were saying, but the note of the chant had grief in it and sounded to me like “Winga-wonga, wonga-winga,” repeated over and over again to a minor65 cadence66 112that fell and rose as their bodies and arms moved up and down.
My comrades and I were somehow impressed by that strange sight of religious old-world grief which sounded the same note and showed the same earnestness as the creed67 expression of the modern civilised world. The missionaries68 were, and are, of course, dead against the idol worship, and so as time goes on and the methods of Christianity get hold of the people the idols rot away or are touched up and hidden in the secret depths of the forest, safe from the destroying hands of those who have gone over to the new creed. Often the wanderer among the primeval woods will come across the relics69 of those gods standing70 in some secluded71 gully under the shade of banyan-trees and rotting tropic trunks, covered with wild vines, vividly coloured with gorgeous flowers, still upright, with perhaps one eye missing and the face thus obliterated72 by decaying rot made more hideous than ever. Yet some indefinable awe73 still clings to them as they stand there deserted74 by the poor heathen children who once appealed to them with their whole hearts, sorrowing over “the giant agony of the world,” now long dead in their forest graves.
I have told you all this because I once saw it, just as I have attempted to describe it to you, and as I stood gazing, quite alone, I looked up over the rotting, eyeless head and saw a branch with about twenty human skulls75 hanging in a row. The tropic rains had washed them quite white and 113as they swayed and clinked one against the other as the wind swept mournfully through the trees I became nervous and made off from the spot as quickly as I could. I am very fond of music, but the funereal76 notes of those tinkling77 skulls did not appeal to me and make me brave.
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1
idol
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| n.偶像，红人，宠儿 | |
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ace
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| n.A牌；发球得分；佼佼者；adj.杰出的 | |
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sloop
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| n.单桅帆船 | |
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ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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plantations
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| n.种植园，大农场( plantation的名词复数 ) | |
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squatting
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| v.像动物一样蹲下( squat的现在分词 )；非法擅自占用（土地或房屋）；为获得其所有权；而占用某片公共用地。 | |
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mites
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| n.（尤指令人怜悯的）小孩( mite的名词复数 )；一点点；一文钱；螨 | |
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velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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isles
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| 岛( isle的名词复数 ) | |
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isle
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| n.小岛，岛 | |
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vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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ramble
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| v.漫步，漫谈，漫游；n.漫步，闲谈，蔓延 | |
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brats
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| n.调皮捣蛋的孩子( brat的名词复数 ) | |
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flannel
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| n.法兰绒；法兰绒衣服 | |
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romped
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| v.嬉笑玩闹( romp的过去式和过去分词 )；（尤指在赛跑或竞选等中）轻易获胜 | |
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spank
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| v.打，拍打(在屁股上) | |
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racing
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| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
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astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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savages
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| 未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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voluptuous
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| adj.肉欲的，骄奢淫逸的 | |
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strand
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| vt.使（船）搁浅，使（某人）困于（某地） | |
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Christians
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| n.基督教徒( Christian的名词复数 ) | |
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innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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stump
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| n.残株，烟蒂，讲演台；v.砍断，蹒跚而走 | |
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27
toiling
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的现在分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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accordion
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| n.手风琴；adj.可折叠的 | |
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rustic
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| adj.乡村的，有乡村特色的；n.乡下人，乡巴佬 | |
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freckled
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| adj.雀斑；斑点；晒斑；（使）生雀斑v.雀斑，斑点( freckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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lanky
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| adj.瘦长的 | |
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bunk
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| n.(车、船等倚壁而设的)铺位；废话 | |
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delirious
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| adj.不省人事的，神智昏迷的 | |
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irate
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| adj.发怒的，生气 | |
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budge
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| v.移动一点儿；改变立场 | |
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queries
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| n.问题( query的名词复数 )；疑问；询问；问号v.质疑，对…表示疑问( query的第三人称单数 )；询问 | |
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beaks
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| n.鸟嘴( beak的名词复数 )；鹰钩嘴；尖鼻子；掌权者 | |
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chuckling
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的现在分词 ) | |
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rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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attired
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| adj.穿着整齐的v.使穿上衣服，使穿上盛装( attire的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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outrageous
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| adj.无理的，令人不能容忍的 | |
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imp
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| n.顽童 | |
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ply
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| v.(搬运工等)等候顾客，弯曲 | |
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foliage
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| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
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45
squatted
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| v.像动物一样蹲下( squat的过去式和过去分词 )；非法擅自占用（土地或房屋）；为获得其所有权；而占用某片公共用地。 | |
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46
sprouted
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| v.发芽( sprout的过去式和过去分词 )；抽芽；出现；（使）涌现出 | |
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upwards
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| adv.向上，在更高处...以上 | |
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gambolling
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| v.蹦跳，跳跃，嬉戏( gambol的现在分词 ) | |
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hospitable
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| adj.好客的；宽容的；有利的，适宜的 | |
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scrambled
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| v.快速爬行( scramble的过去式和过去分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞 | |
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persevering
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| a.坚忍不拔的 | |
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annoyance
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| n.恼怒，生气，烦恼 | |
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plank
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| n.板条，木板，政策要点，政纲条目 | |
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crestfallen
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| adj. 挫败的，失望的，沮丧的 | |
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skull
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| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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festive
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| adj.欢宴的，节日的 | |
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monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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effigies
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| n.（人的）雕像，模拟像，肖像( effigy的名词复数 ) | |
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hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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bulging
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| 膨胀； 凸出（部）； 打气； 折皱 | |
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rites
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| 仪式，典礼( rite的名词复数 ) | |
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engrossed
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| adj.全神贯注的 | |
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idols
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| 偶像( idol的名词复数 )； 受崇拜的人或物； 受到热爱和崇拜的人或物； 神像 | |
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minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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cadence
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| n.（说话声调的）抑扬顿挫 | |
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creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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missionaries
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| n.传教士( missionary的名词复数 ) | |
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relics
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| [pl.］n.遗物，遗迹，遗产；遗体，尸骸 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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secluded
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| adj.与世隔绝的；隐退的；偏僻的v.使隔开，使隐退( seclude的过去式和过去分词) | |
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obliterated
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| v.除去( obliterate的过去式和过去分词 )；涂去；擦掉；彻底破坏或毁灭 | |
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73
awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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74
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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75
skulls
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| 颅骨( skull的名词复数 )； 脑袋； 脑子； 脑瓜 | |
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76
funereal
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| adj.悲哀的；送葬的 | |
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77
tinkling
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| n.丁当作响声 | |
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