Percy Pomo; or, the autobiography of a South Sea Islander

Front matter

PERCY POMO; OR, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A SOUTH SEA ISLANDER. NE W AND CHEAPER EDITION. GRIFFITH, FARRAN, OKEDEN & WELSH, West Corner of St. Paul's Churchyard, London. CONTENTS. Chap. Page. I. Myself, 1 II. My Home, 2 III. Some Friends, and Others, . 5 IV. Mischief, .... . 7 V. A Wizard at Work, .... 9 VI. Sorrow without Hope, .... 12 VII. An Inferior Race, .... 16 VIII. We go a Fishing, .... 20 IX. At Last, 28 X. In which my Fate is Sealed, . . 37 XL Describes my new Life and introduces a most important Character, . . 42 XII. Happy Island, 52 XIII. Eeports Progress and Records a Declaration of Independence, ... 58 XIV. Discipline, 61 XV. A Pombuana Welcome, . . . 63 XVI. Malagai Discourses, . . . . 70 XVII. For the First Time, .... 74 XVIII. Arrivals and Introductions, . . 78 XIX. My New Name, 82 XX.

Malagai on Washing and Mr. Wakefield on Glory, ..... 86 XXI. A Head-Hunter at Home, ... 92 XXII. Waiting, 96 XXIII. Dawn, 100 XXIV. " In Sure and Certain Hope," . . 105 XXV. Father and Son, .... 110 XXVI. Excitement, CONTENTS. IV. Chap. ?*■&*■■ XXVII. Noni, 116 XXVIII. By Water, . . . . . 120 XXIX. Good out of Evil, .... 124 XXX. Buying a Wife, 126 XXXI. Tells its own tale, .... 132 XXXII. Despair, 136 XXXIII. A very Inferior Kace, . . . 144 XXXIV. " The Minerva," 149 XXXV. In " Minerva Bay," . 157 XXXVI. "Civilization," 164 XXXVII. Diara, 172 XXXVIII. Overhauled, 180 XXXIX. Not Happy Island, .... 184 XL. Stonehenge, . . . . . 191 XLI. A March Hare and other Animals, . 1 94 XLII. I go for the Doctor, .... 199 XLIII. Somebody, 206 XLIV. A little Bit of China, . . .213 XLV. Good-bye, 216 XLVI.

The Hotel Business, . .220 XLVII. Number Fifteen, 227 XLVIII. In the hour of Death, .... 233 XLIX. Healed, 237 L. News, 240 LI. God Disposes, .... 243 LII. The Beginning of Harvest, . . . 253 LIII. Another thread snapped, . . . 259 LIV. Too Bright to Last, .... 265 LV. Belates our terrible Loss, . . . 272 LVI. Absence, ...... 277 LVII. Another Blow, ..... 284 > LVIII. Not Noni, ... -292 LIX. To-day, .... . OR THE ATJTOBIOGRAHY OF A SOUTH SEA ISLANDER. CHAPTEH I. MYSELF. AND will you, O White Reader, condescend to read this Story of mine — -of me, a Black, a "Nigger," as I have been contemptuously called by vulgar Whites ; with such a grinning of teeth about those two hard gs of yours, as made me think that the mouth which uttered them could bite as well as bark 1 Well, if you do so far condescend, I, for my part, ■will do my best to make my Story interesting.

Chapter II. My Home

My home is the beautiful green island of Pombuana, in the blue Pacific, and please pronounce it Pome-boo-anah, for I do not like to hear our musical words crunched like so much biscuit A POMBUANA INTERIOR. 3 between jaws accustomed to crush hard morsels of your own jagged talk. My own jaws ache at the thought of it. I declare that some of your words are only fit to drive chickens out of the house with ! Pombuana is not a large island ; it is in fact three islets, separated by very narrow river-like straits, running between high forest-clad hills, whence tiny houses perched on stilts keep watch upon the treacherous waters. The three islets are Bokona, Uri, and Matambala. I was born in Matambala, at Rota-in-the-Middle, a village on the hill-tops, sheltering among clumps of cocoa-nut trees, a sure sign, with us, of human habitation.

In English you have the expression, " Come under my roof ; " and that is a form of invitation fit for every Pombuana host, for our houses consist of a roof and nothing else. One gable of my father's roof rested upon the edge of the level space, which did duty for " Market-place " in our Rota ; and the other gable over-hung a precipice, and looked out over the wavy ridges of the forest, rising and falling, until they dipped their ponderous branches in the blue waters of the still lagoon. In order to get under my father's roof you must squeeze yourself through a door-hole about two-feet-and-a-half high, by one-footrand-a-half wide, which can be shut with a sliding shut ter of stoutly woven bamboo and cane ; and then, if you do not stick in the door-way, you find yourself in smoke and darkness ; for we did not have chimneys, because the smoke is useful for killing insects and for strengthening the bamboo rafters.

If you are not very careful where you tread, you will walk upon my relations, who people the darkness and cover the bamboo floor ; or what will be worse, for you at least, your feet may wander among the hot ashes on the square earth or hearth, in the middle of the inflammable floor. My father's name was Marevo, and my mother's Siama. Marevo was a tall thin man, with head clean-shaven, except a little curly mat on the top. The ear-ring holes in his ears were so large that, one day (many years later than the days I am now telling you about) he asked me to beg an empty collar box for him from my white friends. And what do you think he did with it? Why, he knocked the bottom out of it, and took the top out of the lid, and then filled out the loose skin of one ear with the box, and of the other with the cover (No. 15, too !) the skin of the ear going round the box on one side of his head, and the lid on the other, like a pair of elastic bands.

When he had nothing in them, the two loops of the skin dangled upon his shoulders ; but when he had them filled out round and open on both sides of his head, you could see the opposite mountains, trees, and houses through them, as if you were looking through a double spyglass, or the handles of a gigantic pair of scissors. My mother, Siama, was a very fine looking woman. Her face was elegantly tattooed ; not deeply, nor with dark juice as the faces of the New Zealanders are ; but only skin deep, and with a very pretty pattern : just as if you saw her brown plump cheeks through the border of a veil. She was a good woman, and a faithful wife, and brought me up in a religious way, telling me of my tribe, the Hongokama (we all belong to the tribe of our mother, and not of our father ; so that a man's sister's son is often more beloved than his own), and of the Un clean Food or abomination of my tribe, the Pigeon, to eat which, she said, would be the death of me.

Thank God, 0 English child, that you were taught to say " Our Father." When I was very small my mother slung me in a long cloth behind her, and swung me round in front at meal-times. Some times, however, I was quite satisfied with sucking the stem of her little black pipe which dangled, like me, from her neck. PORTRAIT OF A CHIEF. 5

Chapter III. Some Friends, And Others

Each of the three islets was ruled by one supreme chief, who excelled the other village chiefs in bodily strength, and therefore in wealth and power. But greatest of the three was Malagai of Uri, whose two brothers, Toroa of Matambala, and Sala tambu of Bokona, could only shine at a distance. The trio may be briefly described as three necessary nuisances. Toroa, our own particular tyrant, was tall, and had a proud, defiant air, which disguised a heart as cowardly as ever beat within human breast. He was ambitious, noisy, cruel, passionately fond of music, as tender as a mother to his favourite children, and faithful to his word once given, whether to kill or to save alive. But his malice, hatred, and revenge knew no abatement, rendering him the disturber and constant terror of all Pombuana.

Of Malagai and his burly brother Salatambu, the least selfish and cruel, but the most warlike of the three, I shall speak here after. My dearest black friend in the world was, and is, Rogani of Rota-in-the-East, as handsome a fellow as ever the wide white world could produce ; aye, and as true ! His father's name was Roe : his mother — ah, here we touch the grief that checked Rogani's cheeriest laugh. It is enough to say that her conduct had brought sorrow and disgrace upon her family. Roe became old that very day. In addition to this trouble he was persecuted by Toroa, as David was by Saul, and his life and that of his scattered family became a sore burden, scarcely worth the bearing. Often of an evening, while Rogani and I, and the other chil dren, were making the air shrill with our cries, the old hunted man would be off to Rota- West, armed with a spear and club and shield, without which we never slept or ventured forth in those fighting days — off to try and get a puff at a neighbour's pipe, and a chew at a friend's areca nuts and betel-leaves, upon which (not always borrowed, or he would have drawn in and swallowed down all that was smokable and chewable in the whole community), the old man lived.

And when at length his companions left the open-air fireside for their own homes, he would seize a flaring firebrand, and begin to jog home, being careful to throw the flickering uncertain light well upon the path, for fear of treading upon fatal ria leaves and other deadly charms. The fitful glare of the brandished fire-stick illuminated not only the path, but Ro6's downcast face, and showed it to be stamped with all the care and hopelessness of our religion of dread and death : a face with every smile torn out of it He was in one sense a dead man already ; for the only life that he lived, the life of his earthly home, had shrivelled to an empty husk, and all he looked for now was to casting it speedily behind him, and then to lie down flat at ease in death and — rest ! But there was another light already dawning upon him, coming from afar, but sent to him, and coming ; sent to that poor old black despairing man in his outlandish home : coming to us all, and bringing with it hope for our dry hearts, a looking upward for our downcast eyes, and life in our dreary deaths : the Hope — I would write it with the power of a trumpet, for it has sounded in my own and in my people's hearts, filling their heights and depths, changing them altogether, yes, and all things besides : night to day, death to life, and, hardest of all, Me, who write this story, from a stubborn, selfish, sulky one, to one who loves, because he has been loved — the Hope of Joyful Resurrection.

You who cannot remember the day when you did not know of that, nor the day when it first flashed — truth! — through and through you, cannot tell what that hope is to us, to whom, in the dark days I am now telling you about, death was — not AT TANASEMBE. 7 the end of life, even we did not believe that — but a haunted Night, without a hope of Morning. For Toroa had sworn to slay old Ro6 as soon as he could catch him, for reasons you shall hear in their own good time. And Rogani had a dear little sister named Noni, about whom I have much, ah ! very much, to tell. But at present I must take you by pen and paper to another part of Pombuana, and into rougher scenes.

Chapter IV. Mischief

I pass over six years of time, and carry you ten miles along the the coast to Tanasembe, in the middle Islet of Uri, the abode of the great Malagai. It is evening, and there upon a mat, set out in the open space in the midst of the village, sit Malagai and Toroa. They are talking and chewing the areca nut together. Some thing — mischief to a certainty— must be brewing. There am I, too, sitting upon the village settle with little lame Talisi, Malagai's favourite and youngest child. The village, by the way, consisted merely of eight houses, each appropriated to one of the Mrs. Malagais, and one for Malagai himself. I must account for my presence there, so far from home, by telling you that Mrs. Malagai No. 6 was a half-sister of mine, and I had been sent for to come to help to thatch her tumble-down house.

We two little pitchers, with the proverbial long ears, could overhear the growling talk of the two great ones, and at a call from Malagai, I jumped down off the settle, and ran into my sister Talana's house, to bid her open the earth-oven, and make mash for two. Her little daughter, Tulu, soon fished out the panas (a root like the potato) from among the hot stones with a pair of bamboo tongs, and they were mashed and made into a dumpling, which I bore in a wooden bowl and set before the chiefs. With a hop, skip, and jump I was back by the side of Talisi. The conversation on the mat changed for a while into the major key ; but the meal was a hot and hasty one, and I was soon called to wash the bowl in the sea, and to take care lest any morsels were left about, for by means of such fragments any enemy might bewitch us ; at least so we believed in those dark days.

The gloomy talk soon fell again into the minor key, and seemed to be framed out of the surrounding darkness. The murmured mention of the name Aluni attracted our attention. Aluni was the_ wife of Dolo, Rogani's elder brother, the pride and darling of the unfortunate family. Malagai was giving orders concerning her, that Haharo the wizard should bewitch Dolo, that he might sicken and die, and that then Aluni should be brought on to Tanasembe, to become Mrs. Malagai Number Eight. We could hear Toroa chuckle with delight as the prospects of money and revenge both glittered before his greedy and bloodthirsty imagination, for he bore a terrible grudge against the whole family of Roe, for having " blasphemed " his wife Uto's good name. He undertook his dirty work with a mew and a grin of eager cat-like cruelty.

" Yes, Dolo shall sicken and die— and die, dear chief ! It is my own pet work : the destruction of that crocodile brood. Shall Uto be defamed by that motherless boy Rogani t Not if the sorceries of Haharo have any virtue. To-morrow it is already done. Sleep !" And the meeting broke up. POOR TALANA. 9

Chapter V

A WIZARD AT WORK. I ran at once and told my sister what we had overheard, and we cried together over our friends' new misfortunes ; but what was our consternation when Malagai himself came in and told us later in the night that we two were to go to Matambala and bring Aluni back, under pain of death. Talana, with per haps too much plainness, said she would not — " not if he killed her." This he nearly did. Then he fled, bidding me take care lest I shared her punishment. A savage call to Talisi, whom he perched on his shoulder, and his retreating footsteps, were all we heard of him again that night. He had gone to sulk at a farm of his, westward a few miles along the shore, as was his edifying custom ; and Talisi told me afterwards (for we were like David and Jonathan together), that his father growled and trot ted the whole way down, and set to work felling trees by moon light, as if he had had a whole forest of disobedient wives to deal with.

We must now see how it fared with poor Dolo and his family. Toroa was in high spirits. He set Haharo on the track next day. The wizard procured some crumbs of Dolo's food, or a leaf with which he had scraped the sweat from his brow, and placing them upon the coral altar of his false gods of blight and death, he muttered his enchantments, saying : " O, Manoga ! thine is this portion here, this Dolo ! If thou art mighty do thou consume him. Devour him, for he is thine !" Next, he plucked a leaf of a small ginger plant, called ria, and wending his fatal way to Rota-in-the-East one stormy night, he flung it to the wind, as it rushed over Dolo's devoted roof, bearing also the deadly message to him who lay unconsciously within : " Sicken and die ! Sicken and die ! For thee, Dolo, is this ria thrown.

Let death make havoc of thy young limbs ! " As he turned away to face the storm, the wakeful ear which had heard thus far, heard further yet, the irrevocable decree, " Dolo is a dead man," The roaring of the wind and the cracking of the forest boughs covered the retreat of Rogani, who had gone out to secure the roof with some heavy palm-stems, and had also heard those woeful words; for in those dark days we were the slaves of superstitious fear, which of itself was sufficient to make us lie down and die. Rogani sent for me a few days afterwards, and Talana said she was well enough to come, too, though her face was still swollen from Malagai's attack. So, under pretence of doing the will of Malagai, we set forth upon our errand of mercy. Talana rested at a village on the beach, while I went up at once to the hill-top whereon the Three Rotas were perched.

By the way I met Toroa. He was in one of his most hateful moods, when he seemed always about to spring out upon you. He carried in his feverish grasp a long ebony spear, headed with a splintered shin-bone, which was tinged with a faint crimson hue, as if the setting sunlight fell upon it ! Over his oval swinging shield, slung on three fingers of his left hand, glared his twinkling, murderous eyes, blood-red with wanton rage. I was afraid of him, but knew that my relation ship to Malagai was better than any shield. " And what have you come up here after? " he asked, in his disagreeable, whining tone. " I have come just for my own amusement," I answered. " And I have come to see Roe, the grandfather of you and me. Do you know where he is, boy? " Of course, I did not know ; and he bid me go on my way, as is our fashion.

THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 11 He was soon far below me, and I felt lighter and brighter at his disapperance, as I hopped up the steep, rugged steps of rock. Dolo's house was almost opposite Roe's. Heaving a sigh, I stooped in through the narrow doorhole, and found the small house full of useless, suffocating people, supposed to be friends, but in reality more powerful for harm to the sick man than all Haharo's witchcraft. A muttered whisper of my name among the crowd caught Dolo's ear, and his great staring hollow eyes were looking for me when I got up to where he lay, a sudden wreck of youth, and strength, and manly beauty ! He had been the life and leader of the village ; such a player on the Move", our bamboo Jew's-harp ; such a hard worker in his garden ; such a clever dancer and good singer !

What wonder that all the world was there to mourn beside him, and, most unfortunately, to rob him of the scanty breath he gasped so hard for ! His skeleton was already plain ; his stomach had sunk away from his ribs ; and death was grinning through his face. " Aluni," he said, " come here and let me lean against you ; it eases me. O, dear ! 0, dear !" Aluni— the hunted Aluni— a young, round-faced, bright-eyed woman, rose, and, sitting behind him, cradled him in her arms, pillowing his head upon her breast, and rocking him gently to and fro. Beckoned by the lean hand, I drew closer to him, and his husky voice— not his, but Death's— panted in my ear, " Don't you soon go away, Pomo." And then the heavy arm, affectionate to the last, fell about my neck, trembling and shaking exceedingly. " They have thrown the ria over me, have the great ones of Tanas6mbe," he went on, struggling for breath; " loo— look at my poor body ; there's none of it left.

Alas ! for me, Pomo. And where— where is our friend, Rogani ? Why is he not here ? Higher, Aluni ! There— that's right ; that's easy. I"— But there was no more breath to spare. I told him not to speak, as it choked him so, and said that Rogani would be here directly, and that none of us was going away. One pang was wanting to him. He had not heard of the plan to take away, so soon as he was dead, his loving wife and nurse, Aluni. A company of old women then began to discuss his condition, but were silenced by Aluni saying : " Why chatter ? Have they not bewitched him ? What can we do ?" " What, indeed ?" groaned the dismal chorus of old women.

Chapter VI. Sorrow Without Hope

Rogani returned in the evening with two men of mysterious character, who sat down in the darkest corner they could find. Each held an end of a bamboo rod, which they worked back wards and forwards with difficulty, as though their arms were stiff, murmuring the while : " Who is it ? who is it ? Who is consuming this our brother ? Come, perch upon this rod, and tell us. Who is it ? who is it 1 who — who — who 1" But there was no voice, neither any that answered, save the slow and difficult motion of the rod, which bade us forsakp hope, and prepare to deliver to the Unseen and the Unknown our dearest earthly treasure. Had the rod worked easily the answer would have been thought favourable. Rogani bent down beside his brother and rubbed his own blooming cheek against the hollow, fading face, which instantly looked up and brightened.

" And how are you getting on now, my brother ? When OUR COMFORTLESS RELIGION. 13 are you going to be once more your own old self? When shall you and I be one again ? This accursed sickness has made two of us. I am like your shadow, wandering alone." " I am the shadow," said Dolo, with almost a smile on his face, " a shadow that the gods have wanted, and are taking away — taking a — way." For we believed that if a man's shadow fell upon the tapu (or sacred enclosure) of a spirit, that the spirit would steal the shadow, and the man would die. " They shall have mine, too," cried Rogani ; " why should I live to die after you ?" " For her !" and the dying man's eyes turned towards Aluni. '■ For her, Rogani, and the child that she shall bear. Let not unkindness come near her, for she has never known it.

O, why do they snatch me away from her ?" " Consume them, 0 Hauri !" exclaimed Rogani passionately, and meaning Malagai and Toroa, I suppose, for he continued, with tears of sorrow and anger : " May their heads rot in an enemy's land ! May all the gods of blight and withering smite them with decay ! May their children be clubbed before their smarting eyes !" Curses, more and more bitter, would have followed, but Dolo's upraised hand stayed them. After this he slept for a long time. We watched with him all that weary night, and through the scarcely less weary day. There was nothing but horror and sorrow in that house ; not one gleam of cheerfulness or of hope ; nothing to soften the grim reality of death in its most grievous form ; no one to wipe away our tears. We bowed our heads to the blow, and sat down to drink our cup of unmixed sorrow.

Opening his eyes wide, about mid-day, he looked anxiously round in search of something, and Rogani's quick ear caught the words : " My harp !" He beckoned to me where to get it, and I laid it within his reach. The poor thin fingers, whose delicate touch had fled, after hovering about it for a little while, took it up and placed it, trembling with the words he could not utter, in Rogani's lap. The loving lad brushed away some unbidden tears with his strong right arm, and took the parting gift in sobbing silence. Dolo spoke no more. The sun bent down to shoot a ray of glory through the narrow door -hole on the dying head, and all that flesh and blood could tell us more was, " Dolo was dead." Then arose the terrible " tang-i matt," or wailing for the dead. Despair's own voice, which we could only echo j for there was no one to proclaim to us the glorious news: — " I am the Resurrection and the Life."

That was still to come. It remained to close and press down with clay the darkened, though still gazing eyes, whence the bright look had soared away ; to wrap the body in its mats ; and to hang upon it all the ornaments worn in life. Aluni did not cry until we began to take her dear dead one away, and then she clung to him and tried to beat us off, saying as one who knew not what she said : " They shall not take him away from me. He is mine !'j My elder brother, Djara, caught her as she fell, exhausted with grief and want of sleep ; and we carried out Dolo to his grave in the quiet bush ; but not before we had taken off the ornaments, as we sowed him up, saying, with our characteristic common sense, " What good are they to a dead man ?" After the crowd had gone their ways, Rogani and I lingered beside his grave.

" Who can tell the worth of him who now lies here ?" cried the bereaved brother. " Half of myself is gone. 0, Dolo ! Dolo ! wide, wide is the place you have left desolate in my heart ! Who will now work in the garden, and when I am ALL'S WELL, &c. 15 tired take my chopper from me and do my share of work, as you did ? Who now will strike the harp ? who lead the dance ? 0, my life's withered root ! now, for the first time, have I learnt what sorrow is !" " Let us be going," said I. " Lead !" was his tearful answer. And so we left dear Dolo to his rest and to his visions, not to be revealed until we meet again. We returned without Aluni, bringing a pig for propitiation ; but she was brought over to Tanasemb6 by Kopa, when he came to tattoo Tulu, Talana's pretty little daughter. It was a grand occasion ; for a young girl comes of age at her tattooing.

The great canoe house — 180 feet long, 40 feet wide, and 50 feet high — was ruddy and bright with the leaping blaze of a dozen bonfires, which cast an everflitting entanglement of gigantic shadows upon the well-laced roof. The air rang with shouts and songs, and peals of untamed laughter. There was professor Kopa, getting ready his flint lancets, and there was Tulu being handed from lap to lap of a circle of ancient women, hired to keep her awake all that night, so that her sleep might be dead on the morrow ; the learned Professor not having yet discovered the uses of chloroform, and being, therefore, reduced to the extremity of employing common sleep instead. Malagai, too, was there, and happy. Meanwhile — I tremble when I think of my daring — I stole round to the house where Aluni was imprisoned, and undid the fastenings, bidding her depart, which she did, and reached her home in Bokona.

Malagai's rage I cannot describe. None knew how she escaped ; but she was recaptured afterwards, and I do not think she has had much cause to complain of her lot. She was a great favourite, and I fancy Talana was a little jealous of her.

Chapter VII

"AN INFERIOR RACE." It was on a rosy evening during the calm of the ripe gandogas (about July) that a great multitude was assembled upon the moonlit beach at Tanas6mbe\ The unusual loudness of the talk, and some things which were being handed about with great curiosity, but without names, showed the truth of the words uttered over and over again : " By the Great Shark, butwe have seen strange things to-day!" " You are right," cried an enthusiastic person ; " what a size their canoe was." " Size, indeed ! What was it they called it ? Passu ? Vaka ? what was it's name ? " " Vaka, it was," shouted Malagai, which, begging his pardon, it was not. However, Vaka became henceforth the name for the canoes of the white man ; except his very large ones, " with death on board," which we called " Manawa " (Man-of-war).