In the Wrong Paradise and Other Stories | ||
MY FRIEND THE BEACH-COMBER.
“Been in some near things in the islands?” said my friend the beach-comber; “I fancy I have.”
The beach-comber then produced a piece of luggage like a small Gladstone bag, which he habitually carried, and thence he extracted a cigar about the size of the butt of a light trout-rod. He took a vesuvian out of a curious brown hollowed nut-shell, mounted in gold (the beach-comber, like Mycenæ; in Homer, was polychrysos, rich in gold in all his equipments), and occupied himself with the task of setting fire to his weed. The process was a long one, and reminded me of the arts by which the beach- comber's native friends fire the root of a tree before they attack it
The beach-comber was a big man, loose (in physique only of course), broad, and black-bearded, his face about the colour of a gun-stock. We called him by the nickname he bore * (he bore it very good-naturedly), because he had spent the years of his youth among the countless little islands of the South Seas, especially among those which lie at “the back of beyond,” that is, on the far side of the broad shoulder of Queensland. In these regions the white man takes his life and whatever native property he can annex in his hand, caring no more for the Aborigines'
“Yes, I have been in some near things,” he went on, when the trunk of his cigar was fairly ignited. “Do you see these two front teeth?”
The beach-comber opened wide a cavernous mouth. The late Mr. Macadam, who invented the system of making roads called by his name, allowed no stone to be laid on the way which the stone-breaker could not put in
I did not see “these two front teeth,” because, like the Spanish Fleet, they were not in sight. But I understood my friend to be drawing my attention to their absence.
“I see the place where they have been,” I answered.
“Well, that was a near go,” said the beach-comber. “I was running for my life before a pack of screeching naked beggars in the Admiralty Islands. I had emptied my revolver, and my cartridges, Government ones, were all in a parcel—a confounded Government parcel—fastened with a strong brass wire. Where's the good of giving you cartridges, which you need in a hurry if you need them at all, in a case you can't open without a special instrument? Well, as I ran, and the spears whizzed round me, I tore at the wire with my teeth. It gave at last, or my head would now be decorating a stake outside the chief's pah. But my teeth gave when the brass cord gave, and I'll never lift a heavy table with them again.”
“But you got out the cartridges?”
“Oh yes. I shot two of the beggars, and
“Who shot him?”
“A scientific kind of poop, a botanizing shaloot that was travelling around with a tin box on his back, collecting beetles and bird-skins. Poor Thompson! this was how it happened. He was the strongest fellow I ever saw; he could tear a whole pack of cards across with his hands. That man was all muscle. He and I had paddled this botanizing creature across to an island where some marooned fellow had built a hut, and we kept a little whisky in a bunk, and used the place sometimes for shooting or fishing. It was latish one night, the botanist had not come home, I fell asleep, and left Thompson with the whisky. I was awakened by hearing a shot, and there lay Thompson, stone-dead,
“And what was done to the other man?”
“Done! why there was no one to do anything, unless I had shot him, or marooned him. No law runs in these parts. Thompson was the best partner I ever had; he was with me in that lark with the tabooed pig.”
“What lark?”
“Oh, I've often spun you the yarn.”
“Never!“
“Well, it was like this. Thompson and I, and some other chaps, started in a boat, with provisions, just prospecting about the islands. So we went in and out among the straits—horrid places, clear water full of sharks, and nothing but mangroves on every side. One of these sounds is just like another. Once I was coming home in a coasting steamer,
“But about the taboo pig? Revenons à nos cochons!“
“I'm coming to that. Well, we landed at an island we had never been on before, where there was a village of Coast natives. A crowd of beehive- shaped huts, you know, the wall about three feet high, and all the rest roof, wattle, and clay, and moss, built as neat as a bird's-nest outside, not very sweet inside. So we landed and got out the grub, and marched up to the village. Not a soul to be seen; not a black in the place. Their gear was all cleaned out too; there wasn't a net, nor a spear, nor a mat, nor a bowl (they're great beggars for making pipkins), not a blessed fetich stone
“Why on earth did he hold up his feet?”
“To show he wasn't trailing a spear between his toes; that is a common dodge of theirs. We made signs to him to come up, and up he came, speaking a kind of pigeon English. It seems he was an interpreter by trade, paying a visit to his native village; so we tried to get out of him what it was all about. Just what we might have expected. A kid had been born in the village that day.”
“What had the birth of a kid got to do with it?”
“It's like this, don't you know. Every tribe is divided into Coast natives and Bush
“And don't the others resist?”
“Resist! No! It would be the height of rudeness. Do you resist when people leave cards at your house, ‘with kind inquiries’? It's just like that; a way they have of showing a friendly interest.”
“But what can be the origin of such an extraordinary custom?”
“I don't know. Guess it has a kind of civilizing effect, as you'll see. Resources of civilization get handed on to the Bush tribes, but that can't be what it was started for. However, recently the tribes have begun to run cunning, and they hide themselves and all their goods when they have reason to
“En papillotte?”
“Just that, and broil you on the hot stones. They cook everything that way.”
“Are they cannibals?”
“Oh yes, in war-time. Or criminals they'll eat. I've often heard the queer yell a native will give, quite a peculiar cry, when he is carrying a present of cold prisoner of war
“Before entering the Mark?” I said, for I had been reading Sir Henry Maine.
“The pah, the beggars about me call it,” said the beach-comber; “perhaps some niggers you've been reading about call it the Mark. I don't know. But to be done with this pig. The fire was ready, and they were just going to cut the poor beast's throat with a green-stone knife, when the interpreter up and told them ‘hands off.’ ‘That's a taboo pig,’ says he. ‘A black fellow that died six months ago that pig belonged to. When he was dying, and leaving his property to his friends, he was very sorry to part with the pig, so he made him taboo; nobody can touch him. To eat him is death.’
“Of course this explained why that pig had been left when all the other live stock and portable property was cleared out. Nobody would touch a taboo pig, and that pig, I tell you, was tabooed an inch thick. The man he belonged to had been a Tohunga, and still ‘walked,’ in the shape of a lizard. Well, the interpreter, acting most fairly, I
“Presently the Bush fellows came down to the boat, licking their lips. There hadn't been much more than enough to go round, and they accepted some of our grub, and took to it kindly.
“‘Let's offer them some rum,’ says Thompson; he never cruised without plenty aboard. ‘No, no,’ says I; ‘tea, give them tea.’ But Thompson had a keg of rum out, and a tin can, and served round some pretty stiff grog. Now, would you believe it, these poor devils had never tasted spirits before? Most backward race they were. But they took to the stuff, and got pretty merry, till one of them tried to move back to the village. He staggered up and down, and tumbled against rocks, and finally he lay flat and held on tight. The others, most of them, were no better as soon as they tried to move.
“It was like the companions of Odysseus devouring the oxen of the Sun,” I said.
“Very likely,” replied the beach-comber. “Never heard of the parties. They're superstitious beggars, these Kanekas. You've heard of buying a thing ‘for a song’? Well, I got my station for a whistle. They believe that spirits twitter and whistle, and you'll hardly get them to go out at night, even with a boiled potato in their hands, which they think good against ghosts, for
“beach-comber” is the local term for the European adventurers and long-shore loafers who infest the Pacific Archipelagoes. There is a well- known tale of an English castaway on one of the isles, who was worshipped as a deity by the ignorant people. At length he made his escape, by swimming, and was taken aboard a British vessel, whose captain accosted him roughly. The mariner turned aside and dashed away a tear: “I've been a god for months, and you call me a (something alliterative) beach-comber!” he exclaimed, and refused to be comforted.
In the Wrong Paradise and Other Stories | ||