White Fire Part 24

"A brown gentleman desires to correspond with a white lady with a view to matrimony. He wanted to know what we would take for you in coco-nuts."

"In coco-nuts indeed!" and Aunt Jannet bridled red. "And who was the impudent fellow?"

"Our enemy, our host, Mr. Ra'a. Jean made such an impression on him that I fear the brown ladies' noses will be permanently out of joint."

"H'mph!" with a snort of disgust. "He'd better keep out of my reach."

"I told him he'd have to ask you himself."

"I'd like to see him."

"A hint to that effect will bring him along hotfoot, I've no doubt.

The matter is worth consideration," he said, with an a.s.sumption of weightiness. "Royal alliance--union of opposing factions--peace secured--a very good solution of our difficulties. Say, Aunt Jannet!

will you sacrifice yourself for the good of the community?"

"Get along with you," said Aunt Jannet. "No naked brown cannibals for me."

The ice being broken with the factious ones, Blair and Stuart and Evans, with Matti still necessary as interpreter, though they were all rapidly picking up words and phrases of the island tongue, paid Ra'a several visits and did their utmost to strengthen the slim foundations of peace.

Ha'o and his people, however, declined any active intercourse with the rebels, and never ceased to warn the white men to be on their guard, a.s.serting that their present amenableness was only a.s.sumed and would be thrown off as soon as no more was to be got by it. Blair judged that likely enough, but gave no sign of it, and treated the others as though he believed them in every way worthy of confidence. And Ha'o and his people meanwhile went on steadily replenishing their houses, and constructing the weapons without which they felt but half men and wholly insecure.

The mission-houses were completed and furnished. The farmyard was transferred from the bows of the _Torch_ to suitable premises ash.o.r.e, and what with the discontented bellowings of John Bull--who was always wanting something he hadn't got, though what it was neither he nor any one else could make out--and the mellower remonstrances of his more thoughtful consort, and the satisfied gruntings and squeakings of the delighted piglets and their mother, and the bleating of the goats, and the crowings and cluckings of c.o.c.ks and hens, and the gabbling of geese in the river pools, the little settlement began to a.s.sume a most home-like appearance.

The ladies rejoiced in the feel of solid earth once more, and discovered endless delights in the nearer woods and along the beach.

Limits, however, had to be placed on their wanderings, till a.s.surance of good intent on the part of the outsiders was made doubly sure or proved entirely worthless.

Their nearest neighbours were the atoll community. These, not unnaturally, felt somewhat doubtful as to the permanence of their security among the discordant elements around them, and looked anxiously to the white men for protection. Left alone they would undoubtedly have been slaughtered and eaten out of hand, for human flesh was still the choicest dish where the only other variations from a vegetarian diet were occasional wood-pigeons, paraquets, and an unreliable choice of fish.

So far as Ha'o and his people were concerned, the atoll men were safe enough for the present and until cause might arise. They had been bed-fellows in misfortune and had shared a common deliverance, and so they were allowed to work beside the others in the taro swamp and to take their allowance of the fruits of the earth.

But there was a spirit of fear and distrust abroad--the fear that walks by night and makes light sleepers in palm-thatched houses, and no man went abroad after dark if he could help it.

With no little difficulty Blair succeeded in getting into communication also with the fourth community in the neighbourhood--the sitters on the fence, who were naturally at odds with all the others and would have fared badly but for their numbers, and for the hope each side had of eventually drawing them into their own folds.

They were perhaps more dangerous to approach even than Ra'a. For Ra'a was one, and his men obeyed his words. But these outlanders were many, and each man did what seemed right in his own eyes, and kept on terms with his neighbour and the community simply from motives of safety. In going among them, therefore, the risks were multiplied. They took all that was offered, however, and promised anything that was required of them in hopes of more.

But, obviously, four more or less distinct communities in one district were at least three too many. It was like having four savage dogs at large in one small back yard, and the proper thing to do was to get some of them to move.

Captain Cathie, coasting down the lagoon in the launch, had reported several fine wide valleys opening up into the hills, and Blair determined to try to induce some of the others to move farther down the coast and start fresh settlements there.

So far as Cathie had seen--and he was much too cautious to land until he knew more about what he might meet ash.o.r.e--these valleys seemed unoccupied and capable of profitable occupation.

But Ha'o, when the idea was mooted, only shook his head mysteriously, and said they would never go there. No one lived there. No one ever had lived there. Farther down there were scattered communities, but the men rarely came up this way because they had made a practice of eating them whenever they got the chance. Over the mountains also there were villages, exclusive for the same reason.

And when Blair suggested the idea to Ra'a and the others, and offered to a.s.sist them in laying out taro fields and yam plantations, he was met in the same way. He could get nothing more out of them. The subject was so evidently distasteful that he determined to go and find out for himself, if possible, what the objectionable features were.

And so, very early one morning, he set off in one of the whale-boats, with Matti and Stuart and four men, and they pulled quietly along round the great frontlet of the hills till they came to the first opening into the hinterland, some five miles from the settlement.

Keeping a sharp look-out, they ran in on a fine white sh.e.l.l beach, and took cautious way up a wide valley from which the hills rolled back in long sweeping slopes, well bushed, and thick with palms. Gay flights of paraquets flashed in and out of the bushes, and the soft crooning of mult.i.tudinous wood-pigeons was like the humming of bees in a summer garden. A broad stream flowed through the valley, widening into silvery pools and glittering over broken shallows.

"It's an ideal place," said Blair. "What on earth has kept them out of it?"

They pa.s.sed cautiously on through the tangled undergrowth. In front was the sound of falling waters, an intermittent drenching splash, now heard, now lost, as though a raincloud burst and pa.s.sed and came again; otherwise a wide and perfect silence, which the droning of the doves seemed but to accentuate.

Through dense tangles of lemon hibiscus, and crowding paw-paws, and stilted panda.n.u.s, and the gleaming boles of the palms, they saw the valley widen into a great arc, and caught glimpses of mighty walls of rock which marked the end of it. And presently they were standing below, and gazing up in awed amazement.

In the shadow of the cliff, with their backs to it and their faces to the sea, sat a row of gigantic stone figures, gazing out In solemn silence through the slow-waving tops of the palms, the ephemeral palms which had grown and died in countless generations, and had crept gradually nearer and nearer, since those grim figures first sat down there, with their backs to the cliff and their faces to the sea.

So huge were they that the gazers felt themselves pigmies in comparison. Each grave head bent slightly forward as though listening intently for something that should come up from the sea, and the great stone hands were crossed reverently on the ma.s.sive stone b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

From the sheer edge of the cliff above leaped streams of sparkling water, which broke in mid-air, and swung to and fro in the breeze like veils of gauze, and swept constantly over the seated figures, and wrapped them in fragmentary rainbows.

In their grim everlasting expectancy the great stone G.o.ds were very terrible to look upon, even with the eyes of understanding. More than once the gazers found themselves glancing fearfully over their shoulders towards the sea, lest perchance the long-delayed answer to that unspoken questioning might be coming. The sudden confrontation with these mighty relics of a long-vanished civilisation conjured up thoughts which bated their words to whispers.

"This accounts for it," said Blair softly. "What an amazing sight in a cannibal island! What do you make of it, Stuart?"

Stuart had been eyeing the monster nearest him with keenly critical eyes.

"Peruvian, I should say. Of the time of the Incas--or perhaps earlier still. Yes, earlier probably. I see no suns. This is mighty curious, you know. The present natives cannot be descended from them. They are pure Polynesians. And yet"--following out his own train of thought--"I'm not so sure. Ha'o and Nai and some of the others show traces of something more. I have often wondered about it. This may explain. These"--nodding at the silent figures--"or their makers, fled their country, or perhaps got blown across, and founded a new civilisation here. Then the old race ran to seed and got lost among the dark men, and ages afterwards their cousins from the mainland come across to kidnap them."

"Odd enough to think of," said Blair, "and likely enough to be true.

What were these figures for, do you suppose? Worship?"

"Worship, sacrifice. Down in the brush there we shall probably find the remains of their houses."

And they did, all overgrown and barely discernible, but ruins without a doubt, and of a city of great buildings. By dint of peeling off the superinc.u.mbent growths of the ages they even laid bare a piece of wall, huge squared blocks from which the creeping mosses and lichens had long since eaten out the mortar.

"We shall never get them to live here, that's certain," said Blair.

"The place is alive with ghosts for them. It would be an uncommonly safe place for a mission-station, if safety were the only thing. But it's too far from the parish. I think we can use it, however," he nodded thoughtfully, with some of his far-reaching schemes in view.

"How those little pigs would enjoy those big paw-paws!"

They rambled about the valley, charmed with its wealth of fruit and flower, gathered quant.i.ties of each as evidences of their visit, and pulled back home.

Every one was on fire at once to go and view the wonders of the valley.

"To-morrow we will carry over a pair of goats and half a dozen piglets and some geese. They will have rare times there. If they don't burst themselves, they will multiply rapidly. By the time we have educated our friends here to better taste in the matter of eating, the larder will be stocked. It is better for them to hunt pigs and goats than men. And the wilder the pigs and goats the better. They will carry their own sauce with them," said Blair.

"It's the very place I've dreamed of since I was six years old," said Aunt Jannet, shedding her years. "Girls! we'll go over to-morrow, with the geese and the goats and the piglets, and have a scramble and a rummage."

Which they did, and found even more than the men. For Jean, at cost of a wetting, discovered a narrow entrance behind one of the figures, and inside it a winding stone staircase which led up into its head, and found that through the eyes of the G.o.d she could see all that went on below.

And one of the things she saw was Aunt Jannet Harvey wandering amazedly in front of the great stone figures; and then in a moment the earth opened and swallowed her up. For the good lady had stepped on a carpet of beautiful green moss, and the carpet gave way beneath her and precipitated her into a chamber of horrors full of skulls and dead men's bones, whence she was extricated with difficulty and in a state of extreme nervous tension by the men from the boat. Aunt Jannet's taste for exploration was dulled somewhat by the incident, and they went back home promising to return another day.

The goats, pigs, and geese entered into their new possession with delighted gabblings, bleatings, squeakings, and proved forthwith that they could look after themselves without any outside a.s.sistance.

Meanwhile, the two nearer-home communities had been taking their first timid steps towards the light, in the very practical shape of elementary lessons in carpentry. The white men's tools, in the skilled hands of the ship's carpenter, appealed strongly to them. Their various uses were speedily grasped--the tools also, unless he kept his eyes about him, as John MacNeil very soon found out. He was inclined to wrath and the bestowal of hard names, but it was simply human nature in its most natural form, and he learned to circ.u.mvent them by using only one tool at a time and never letting it out of his hand till he put it back into safety with the others. The driving of nails, especially when they were allowed to do it themselves, marked epochs in their lives and on their thumbs. Screws and hinges were revelations to them, the saw and the plane perpetual wonders, the grindstone an endless delight.

Blair watched them quietly, showed them the uses of the various things, let them experiment for themselves, and was satisfied that his sawdust and shavings would blossom into fruit. Their interest was excited, they were taking in new ideas, more in a day than hitherto in a generation; the rest would follow.