White Fire Part 27

And instantly they dropped what they were at, to scramble up the shoulder of the hill and wave their joyful welcome. Not a white man or woman there but felt a new sense of security and hopefulness at sight of her, and it was chiefly because on board of her was the wise head and great heart to which they had all come to look for guidance and inspiration in their work.

It was a very joyful meeting when the anchor rattled down, and Blair and Stuart and Captain Cathie jumped ash.o.r.e from the whale-boat, and the brown men welcomed them, outwardly at all events, with as much gusto as the whites.

And great stories Blair and the others had to tell of their doings out beyond. The brown men and women crowded round the platform till late into the night, laughing and chattering with appreciation of the white men's volubility, though they could not understand a word of it all.

It had been a most satisfactory trip. They had visited all the six islands of the group, and had landed at various places on each of them.

They had found the natives suspicious at first, but amenable to presents and open to their advances when they found nothing ulterior in them. In fact, in several places, when the brown men found them actually going away, without any attempts at kidnapping or otherwise molesting them, they followed in their canoes for long distances begging them to return.

"It's a glorious field," said Blair, stretching out his arms energetically as though to gather it all in at once, "if we can only occupy it and fence it round before the degraders come. And we must, for one of those islands given over to the devil would be like a plague spot infecting all the rest."

Then they told him of the happenings at home. He was startled at Ra'a's outbreak and at thought of the consequences if it had proved successful.

"I hate the thought of coercing him or any one," he said thoughtfully; "but until he either comes in, which I fear is hopeless, or is got rid of in some way, he is going to be a terrible hindrance to our work."

"Deport him to yon outer island, Mr. Blair, with such of his people as stick to him," suggested Cathie; "then the rest will have peace."

"Easily said, captain, and a good idea; but how?"

"It would mean fighting, I suppose," said Cathie briskly, "unless common-sense led him to give in quietly. Sometimes it pays best in the long run to grip your nettle at once and grip it hard."

"He'll never give in till he is forced to," said Blair. "Yet I can't see my way to use our force against him. How can we preach peace to these people if we begin by using the sword ourselves?"

"If you give the rest peace, it may be better than preaching it," said Aunt Jannet. "I agree with Captain Cathie. There'll be no peace till that man is got rid of. And, for goodness' sake, do stop them eating one another, Kenneth. I haven't enjoyed a meal since, and I can't look at one of them without thinking that a day or two ago he was munching one of his fellows."

"We shall break them off it by degrees."

"By degrees!--by degrees!" cried Aunt Jannet. "It is too horrible.

You ought to go straight to Ha'o and tell him we won't have any more of it."

"And suppose he said, as would be very natural, that he'd do as he pleased? What would you do then, Aunt Jannet?"

"I'd tell him if he didn't stop it I'd make him, or else we'd all go away and leave him."

"Ay, well, you see, we can't make him and we're not going away, so it's no good telling him that. We must use our common sense. These people have eaten human flesh all their lives. It is the greatest treat they can have. If you argued the point with Ha'o, he would probably say that, as between man and pig, man is the cleaner feeder of the two, and therefore must be the better eating. When we have pigs enough, we'll work them on to pork. Until we can get them on to something they like as much, or, better still, get them to feel that man was not meant to be eaten by man, I fear words won't go for much."

"And do you mean to say that you'll pa.s.s the matter over without a word, Kenneth?" asked Aunt Jannet.

"I don't say that, and I don't intend to. But if you imagine, Aunt Jannet, that a cannibal is going to give up his daintiest dish simply for being spoken to, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed."

He made his first attempt against cannibalism the next day, and returned from it with a humorous twinkle in his eye.

"Well?" asked Aunt Jannet.

"Well," said Blair, "Ha'o holds that it can't be wrong for him to eat men when we do the same."

"If he'll wait till he sees us doing it, I'll find no fault with him."

"I a.s.sured him that white people never ate human flesh. And what do you think was his proof that we did? He pointed to some of those corned-beef tins with George Washington's head on the label, and said, 'There!' and nothing I could say would convince him that George Washington did not represent the contents. He is under the impression that we can our people at home for convenience, and carry them about with us in that way. I a.s.sured him it was cow, but it was no use. He could not believe anyone would kill such a beautiful animal as a cow simply for food. He said he would give ten men for one cow any day.

So there we are, you see. It will be a matter of time. Meanwhile, I suggest peeling George Washington off the rest of those meat tins!"

"Well, I never!" said Aunt Jannet. "And Ra'a?"

"He is as anxious as you and Captain Cathie to make an end of him; but he acknowledges that it would be dangerous to follow him into the hills, and would certainly mean considerable loss of life, so for the present I have dissuaded him from it."

CHAPTER XIX

FORWARD

This is not a missionary chronicle, but simply a brief record of some of the doings of Jean and Kenneth Blair. It is impossible, therefore, to enter into anything like a detailed account of their work among their chosen people, interesting as that would be. Only the more salient points can be touched upon, such as stood out from the level of hard, plodding, often dry and dreary work, as G.o.d's mountain masterpieces stand out in our travel-memories, and remain with us when the long level plains are forgotten. And just as the mountain's grandeur is the record of Nature's strife and endurance, so these salient points in a man's life as a rule mark battle-grounds and commemorate strife--and sometimes victory.

Kenneth Blair always found a vast and quite unique enjoyment in the first beginnings of things. I myself have heard him express a whimsically-veiled, but none the less profound, regret that it had not been possible for him to be present at the very first beginning of all, when "in the dim grey dawn of things, earth drew from out the void and rounded to its shape."

It was very characteristic of the man, and explains to some extent the whole-hearted delight he found in his work in the Dark Islands.

Here, if not a new-created world, was one sunk in nether gloom, to which no glimmer of the light had yet penetrated. As regards things spiritual, it was virgin soil--worse, it was a veritable swamp of heathenism, a quagmire overlaid with the strangling growths and festering remains of ages of superst.i.tion, cruelty, and thick darkness.

And this in one of the fairest spots on earth.

You anti-missioners, who sit at home and mumble plat.i.tudes on the needless waste of life and time and money, spent in the effort to lift these outer fringes of the night, how very little you know!

They are quite happy as they are, those outer ones, you say. Life comes--and goes--easily with them. They have all they want. Why disturb them? Why introduce upsetting notions? Why open their minds to wants only to fill them at so heavy a cost?

The answer is so simple. Would you see any child of yours condemned, for no fault of its own, to sit in outer darkness, if at any cost to yourself you could open the door to the light and warmth you yourself enjoy? Would you refrain from opening the door to a neighbour's child, to a stranger's child, to any child whatsoever, if your hand was on the handle?

These others are children also. In spite of their blue skies and crystal seas and waving palms, they are buried in a darkness like unto death. It is for us who rejoice in the light to help them towards it.

Our own great inheritance carries with it an inevitable and inalienable obligation. Shirk it we may and do, cancel it we cannot.

It was the recognition of this paramount duty, in perhaps somewhat abnormal measure, that made Kenneth Blair what he was. He brought to the work the white fire of a mighty enthusiasm which nothing could damp, and which did one good to look upon. The spur of what he deemed a former lapse urged him at times, perhaps, to extremes in the matter of personal risk; but if any man ever carried the courage of his convictions to their fullest limit, without a thought for himself, that did Kenneth Blair. With it all a simplicity of manner which was never at fault, because it a.s.sumed nothing; a natural gaiety and high-heartedness which carried him bravely through many a difficult place, and drew even the brown men to him; and a width of view, with a long forward reach, which might have made a statesman of him, had he not chosen this higher path.

To see him at football on the beach with a shrieking crowd of brown boys, himself as much a boy as the nakedest of the lot, was one thing.

And to see him pondering, or hear him unfolding to the others, his plans for the Dark Islands, was quite another.

He had seen the strange, and in some cases awful, developments of civilisation in some of the other islands. He had pondered them for years, and had studied cause and effect from germ to ultimate issue.

They were as warning lights to him. The wonderful chance which placed in his hands the financial lever had awakened mighty hopes in him. In his mind's eye he saw the Dark Islands enlightened, self-governing, self-possessing, self-supporting--a prospect worth any man's life's work.

Of the preliminary clearing work, then, we will say little. It was dry and dull and dreary enough at times to provoke Aunt Jannet Harvey to active remonstrance at the apparent inactivity of the propaganda. But the quiet work, confined as it was almost entirely to the presentation of better ways of life by force of example, and the very occasional dropping here and there of a seed of precept, began to show some small signs of fruit at last.

Within a very short time Nai's advanced notions in the matter of dress had caught on, and instead of the precarious ridi fringe, towels, or, in default of them, a strip of striped calico, had become the fashionable female attire. Within six months the brown men were going about fully clothed--in a loin cloth.

"It's better than nothing," said Aunt Jannet. "It keeps them from looking absolutely indecent anyway, and as for the children it doesn't matter," for the children all flatly refused any attempt to clothe them. Time after time she had made furtive experiments on them, but they all proved abortive. They took her gifts of cloth and so on willingly, but turned them to unexpected and unintended uses.

Within six months the children were coming to school--some of them, and irregularly--and were actually, in some cases, beginning to have vague ideas as to why they came. It was not much, but it was in the right direction.

Within six months the white men had learned enough of the language to be able, with their additional slight knowledge of Samoan, to understand and make themselves understood--to some extent. And the brown men, in exchange, had acquired a number of English words and had added considerably to their repertoire of hymns--the tunes they picked up marvellously, and the words they chattered like parrots.

They had also learned to handle white men's tools with facility, and they still stole them when opportunity offered, though not quite so freely as at first. They had also seen marvellous things come up out of the earth from the white men's plantings, and had learned to what uses they could be put. They had seen wonders of the white men's ingenuity, chief among which was the diversion of a rapid little stream, which from time immemorial had flowed to the sea on the other side of the ridge. By a very simple damming operation, to which the cracks and cavities of the ridge readily lent themselves, the torrent now came down the nearer side, and by means of a water-wheel, of John MacNeil's construction operated a circular saw and various other labour-saving appliances, and then flowed in a sparkling stream through the middle of the mission settlement. The water-wheel and the circular saw were endless enjoyments to the brown men, women, and children, and they would sit watching them by the hour when they could have been more profitably employed about their other affairs.