The Girl Crusoes Part 27

"We gain nothing by refusing, so she may as well," said Elizabeth.

She waved her hands toward the second native, and Fangati, who had been watching her wistfully, bounded off with a gay laugh.

The girls awaited her return with mixed feelings. They were glad to see Fangati again, but they did not much desire the acquaintance of a strange native. They did not yet know whether it was a man or woman.

This doubt, however, was resolved in a few minutes. Scanning the approaching couple anxiously, they saw that Fangati's companion was a grey, shrunken old man, apparently feeble, for he moved slowly and leant on the girl for support.

"I believe it's the man we saw at the native hut," said Mary.

"Not much to be afraid of, after all," said Tommy. "He looks hardly strong enough to kill a fly."

"How shall we speak to him?" said Elizabeth.

"It will be rather a pantomime," rejoined Tommy. "Be very grave and dignified, Bess. Impress him with your importance, Queen Bess, monarch of all she surveys."

"Don't be ridiculous, Tommy," said Elizabeth, feeling it was no time for jesting. The old man certainly looked harmless enough, but she was by no means easy in mind.

After what seemed a long time, Fangati led the man up to the girls.

"Bess, Mailee, Me Tommee," she said, pointing to each in turn.

The old man made a salutation, and the girls looked at him with interest. His face and every visible part of his body was hideously tattooed, his thin bare legs looking as if they were covered with indigo-blue stockings. A stick was thrust cross-wise through his mop of grizzled hair. Certainly he was not a prepossessing object.

The girls were wondering what they ought to do, when they were surprised to hear the man address them.

"I speak Inglis," he said; "I Maku. Good-day all-same velly much."

Tommy turned aside so that her smile should not irritate or offend.

Elizabeth, with admirable composure, said--

"How do you do, Mr. Maku! Fangati is your granddaughter, I suppose?"

It was at once clear that Maku's English was not very abundant. The word grand-daughter puzzled him. He looked at Fangati dully; then his eyes suddenly brightened.

"Fangati, he my son chile," he said. "He velly good chile. He get plenty piecee me eat. To-mollow he go; I velly solly, eh! eh! I cly."

Elizabeth in her turn was puzzled, and it was Mary who first saw the old man's meaning.

"He says that Fangati got him plenty to eat, but disappeared one day, and he was very sorry, and cried."

"No wonder, poor old man!" cried Tommy. "He looks half-starved.

There's no one else living in their hut, then?"

"Have you wife, children, friends?" asked Elizabeth.

The old man shook his head.

"Wife he dead long-timey. Chil'en big long way." He waved his arm to indicate distance. "Plen: ah! mikinaly he plen; he all-same gone away; eh! eh! all-same dead."

From this Mary made out that he had a missionary friend who had gone away and might now be dead.

A few more questions satisfied the girls that, as far as he knew, there were no more natives on the island except himself and his granddaughter. Intensely relieved on this score, they were ready to be hospitable, and to Fangati's delight, invited the man to come towards their hut and talk to them.

Seated on the ground in front of the hut with the girls in the entrance, the old man related a story of which they understood little at the time. It was some few days before Mary, thinking over what he had said, and puzzling about it, arrived at something like a coherent narrative. Even then she was only partially successful. What he had tried to explain in his scanty English was as follows.

He had been chief of a small island a day's paddling to the eastward.

It was remote from the usual trade-tracks, and for this reason had remained longer in heathendom and cannibalism than most of the Pacific Islands. But a white missionary had at last come and taken up his abode on the island, by whose skill in medicine, earnest teaching, and n.o.ble character, Maku and some of his sons had been won over.

There were certain soothsayers among the people, who hated the new teacher when they found their influence with the chief gone. Working on the superst.i.tions of the islanders, they secretly stirred up a revolt. But for the quickness of Fangati he would have been attacked and killed. She discovered what was going on, informed her grandfather, and persuaded him to put to sea by night in a canoe, with the intention of paddling to an island to the southward, where Maku would find friends. Forced out of their course by wind and current, they were nearly exhausted when by good fortune they found themselves on the sh.o.r.e of this island. They landed, erected a hut, and had since lived there, not caring to risk another voyage, and finding abundance of food.

Maku could not say how long he had been on the island, nor were the girls able to discover whether his arrival had preceded or succeeded theirs. He told them that one day Fangati, who had been to gather fruit, reported that she had seen white people. Though he thought she must be mistaken, he bade her run away at once if she saw any one again, white or brown. He did not like white people. Since they came to the Pacific the brown people had not been happy. They had been forced to work; some had been taken from their own islands and carried away to toil on distant plantations; new diseases had been brought among them. He had one friend among the white people--the "mikinaly"; he was a good man and did good things. He had taught Maku English.

True, Fangati had said that the strangers she had seen were women; but Maku could not believe that white women could have come to this island without white men. And he was desperately afraid of being betrayed to the ill-disposed mystery men among his own people; for before he had been long on the island he discovered that it was the scene of certain ceremonies conducted by these mystery men. At long intervals, before he became a Christian, he had himself accompanied his people in solemn expeditions to the island. The accession of a new chief was celebrated with special rites; years and years before, in his heathen days, his own accession had been marked by a great cannibal feast. He was much afraid that white people might sell him to his revolted tribesmen, who would make him a victim.

When Fangati disappeared he was convinced that she had been captured by the white people, and he would never see her again. He missed her very much, for, being old and infirm, he depended almost entirely on her for his food. But when she suddenly returned and told him how she had been carried out to sea while fis.h.i.+ng, and how the white women had rescued her and treated her kindly, he felt that he must make his presence known to them, and especially warn them of their danger.

At this Elizabeth asked anxiously what danger was likely to a.s.sail them. The man hesitated. Now that it had come to the point he seemed to be unwilling to say more. But at length he explained that the spot at which they had landed was the usual landing-place of his people when they came to visit the island, and all the ground between it and the ridge was tapu. He struggled with his imperfect English in trying to make clear to the girls what that meant. They understood at last that their side of the island was sacred; its grounds were only to be trodden when the people came to hold their ceremonies, and anybody trespa.s.sing upon it would incur the wrath of the mystery men, and bring down upon themselves a terrible punishment. The forbidden ground was marked off from the rest of the island by a line of poles set upon the ridge. Maku confessed that he himself felt very uneasy at having violated the tapu; and Elizabeth, questioning him, found that beneath his recently a.s.sumed Christianity there lay a deep stratum of superst.i.tion. When the "mikinaly" was with him tapu had no horrors for him; but the missionary had left his island some time before the rising took place, and with the removal of his influence the chief had relapsed to some extent into the superst.i.tions of his early manhood.

The girls were not at first much alarmed at what he told them. But when he added that his people would certainly choose another chief in his place, and come to the island for the usual inaugural ceremonies, the thought of being discovered by the savages at such a time filled them with dread. Their hut lay in the direct path of the procession to the ridge; it could not escape detection, and they trembled at the idea of falling into the hands of people who might be worked up to religious frenzy by their mystery men. To violate the tapu would be bad enough for a brown man; it would be worse for white people.

Maku made a suggestion. Let them dismantle the hut, he said, destroy all traces of their occupation, and remove to the other side of the island, where at least they would not have to reckon with the anger of the mystery men at finding them on forbidden ground. The girls discussed the suggestion earnestly, and decided to follow his advice.

It gave them a pang to pull down the little home to which they had become accustomed: but they lost no time in setting about it, carrying the material down to the boat. Meanwhile, the old man and Fangati scattered the stones of their oven, and tried to obliterate the signs of habitation. Maku shook his head when he saw the bleached gra.s.s on what had been the floor of the hut. Even in this land of quick growth it must take some time before so tell-tale an evidence was done away.

It was decided that Elizabeth and Mary should row the boat round to Maku's landing-place with the canoe in tow, while Tommy walked with the old man across the island. The chief did not follow the long route up the stream by which the girls had reached the ridge, but took a more slanting course through a wild and rugged region which they had never explored. As they were crossing the ridge he pointed out to Tommy in the distance the entrance to the great cave in which the ceremonies of his tribe were conducted. Tommy s.h.i.+vered; the thought of wild men engaged in mysterious rites terrified her imagination. Choosing a steep path that wound down the eastern side of the ridge, Maku led the two young girls to the open s.p.a.ce near the waterfall, and in a few minutes reached his hut. He and Fangati at once began to rig up near by a temporary shelter for the English girls, and it was almost finished by the time Elizabeth and Mary arrived.

The girls were provided by their new friends with an excellent meal of fish, breadfruit and other fruits, some of which were strange to them.

Immediately afterwards, Maku and his granddaughter set to work to build them a hut in the native fas.h.i.+on. Elizabeth doubted whether they would like a house which must be inevitably close and stuffy with a doorway only high enough to crawl through. Their own hut had been fresh and breezy. But it seemed better to let the natives have their way. They would build much faster than the English girls; and if strange natives should make their appearance in this part of the island, they would not be rendered suspicious as they might be if they saw a hut so different from what they were accustomed to.

The girls slept in their temporary shelter that night. They had lost their fear of savage neighbours, but this had been replaced by a new fear of possible visitors from beyond. Tommy had asked Maku during their walk whether there was any chance of a s.h.i.+p coming to the island.

"No s.h.i.+p," he answered. "No come this side. Melican s.h.i.+p come one time, my place; mikinaly come in Melican s.h.i.+p; all-same, no mo'e."

CHAPTER XIX

THE SHARK

The change of circ.u.mstances pleased every one except Billy the parrot.

He had never taken kindly to Fangati, but had always ruffled his feathers and squawked angrily when he saw her with Tommy. The girls laughed at these manifestations of jealousy. But when Billy was removed from his home, and found that his mistress's attentions were shared by still another person, he became sulky. He would sit on a rock, or the bough of a tree, blinking his bead-like eyes and maintaining a sullen and reproachful silence.

Tommy was so much taken up with Fangati that it is to be feared she somewhat neglected her old favourite, as was perfectly natural under the circ.u.mstances. When Fangati and her grandfather had finished the new hut, which occupied them only two days, the young girls were constantly together. Tommy, now that her fear of cannibal neighbours was removed, became again the active, light-hearted, adventurous girl she had ever been. She roamed all over the island with Fangati, not even excepting the region of the tapu, for she found that the native girl was ready to go in any direction, provided she did not catch sight of the posts on the ridge. They discovered in company other plantations of wholesome fruits, of kinds which Tommy already knew, and of others which were strange to her. Fangati showed her how to fish in the native way with a spear of sharpened wood. At first Tommy was sceptical about this, declaring that with the line and hook she would catch more fish than Fangati with the spear. But she soon found that she was quite wrong. Leaning over the edge of a rock, with her keen eyes fixed on the water, Fangati would plunge her spear rapidly, and scarcely ever failed to bring up a fish as large as Tommy caught, and much more quickly. Tommy tried to imitate her, and was exceedingly proud when, after dozens of fruitless attempts, she succeeded in spearing her first fish.

In the course of one of their early rambles the girls came to the pit into which Tommy had fallen. Fangati was much interested in this, having never seen it before, and she ran to fetch her grandfather to the spot. The girls asked him what was the purpose of the pit, and he thought at first that it had been dug as a storehouse for breadfruit.

But when Tommy told him about the tunnel through which she had crawled, and of the hole in the wall at the farther end, he looked puzzled and declared that he would go down and see for himself. It did not take long to construct a serviceable ladder with stout canes bound together with creepers, and the whole party descended into the pit and followed Tommy through the tunnel.

Arriving at the end, Maku looked curiously over the ledge. He explained to the girls that the dim-lit s.p.a.ce beyond was the cave in which the mystic ceremonies of his people were conducted. The reason of the existence of the pit was now plain to him. There was a tradition among his tribe that one of his predecessor chiefs had shown an extraordinary knowledge of some of the secret performances of the mystery men at which he had not been present.