Faa-oo-pea, chieftainess of Pago Pago, making kava
Seuka, taupo of Pago Pago, illustrating a movement in
the Siva
Since Claribel had not seen fit to prepare us for it, the coming of Seuka wearing, besides her tuiga, only a cincture of bright ti leaves on each ankle and an almost negligible bit of ancestral tappa wreathed in a precarious twist about her waist, created something of a stir in a portion of our party. Was it really the same Seuka, she of the downcast eye and the blushing cheek and the long, trailing holakau of the previous afternoon? we asked ourselves. There was the same liquid eye and the same rounded cheek, but now the one was flashing and the other flushing with the surging "dance passion," and as for the holakau, the Commodore avers that his falling out of sympathy with the missionary—the introducer of that atrocious hider-of-charms—dates from that moon-lit evening by the bay of Pago Pago when Seuka danced the siva to the throb of the drum-logs and the music of the ripple of the wavelets on the beach.
On the Samoan siva-siva and its concomitant, the kava ceremony, I will write in another chapter; of this particular siva—our first one—I note here only the high lights of the mental picture which the mention of it always conjures up—the half-lighted interior of the thatch-roofed, mat-floored faletele, with slices of the blue moonlight diverging to mountain and grove and bay through rifts in the woven blinds; the lap of the waves on the coral strand and the lisp of the wind in the bananas running through the boom of the tom-toms and the guttural chants of the spectators, and, in the flickering light of the candlenut torches, those glistening limbs of mahogany, rippling, swaying, flashing, in the infinitely alluring movements of the native dances.
This dance was one of a dozen or more entertainments arranged by the hospitable natives during the time the yacht remained in Pago Pago Bay. One day it was a picnic and swim at a mountain waterfall; again a canoeing party, and another time an evening of Samoan singing. A ten-day-long cricket game between the teams of Pago Pago and Fuaga-sa furnished so much excitement that I am reserving the account of it for a special chapter. The chiefs of nearly every village on the island came and paid us visits of ceremony and brought presents, some of them journeying two days and more by land and water. Our most distinguished visitor was Chief—formerly King—Tufeli, of Manua, a group of small islands which is included with Tutuila in the American protectorate. Tufeli, a man of heroic stature and a most pleasing personality, came over for the express purpose of buying the yacht and sailing her back to Manua. He was not a little disappointed to learn that the Commodore would not find it convenient to turn her over to him in exchange for his season's copra output, but appeared considerably consoled by the barrel of salt beef we gave him as a compromise.
Most pleasant, too, were our relations with the officers of the Naval Station. Shortly after our arrival the Adams came to relieve the Wheeling and the fortnight during which the two American warships were in the harbour was a continual round of festivities. The Residency kept open house, as did also Judge E. W. Gurr, Chief Secretary of Naval Affairs, in his beautiful half-Samoan, half-foreign home on the mountainside.
Judge Gurr, whose wife I have mentioned as having been at one time the taupo of Apia, was for many years Stevenson's attorney and intimate friend in Upolou, and since taking charge of native affairs in Tutuila his thorough knowledge of Samoan character and his sympathetic interest in the welfare of the people have made his services invaluable to the American government. Judge Gurr arranged a voyage around the island for the Lurline, with visits to the principal villages along the coast, a fascinating excursion which was finally given up on account of uncertain harbour facilities. This trip was undertaken, however, by Judge Gurr and myself in the former's whaleboat, and, thanks to my sponsor's prestige, turned out most interestingly.
In no one particular does the lightness with which the Samoan has been touched by outside influence show more clearly than in his architecture. He builds and lives in the same style of house today that was used by his ancestor of a hundred—perhaps a thousand—years ago. Unlike the Hawaiian, Tahitian and Fijian, he has not taken kindly to sawn timber, galvanized iron, nails and glass, and nowhere is his conservatism in this respect more in evidence than in the villages of Tutuila. For this reason a brief description of the construction and furnishing of a typical Pago Pago dwelling may be of interest, and for this I am indebted to Claribel, who spent a whole afternoon, with pencil and notebook, jotting down the details at first hand.
"Although not a nail or dressed board is used in the Samoan house, the finished structure is exceedingly strong and especially attractive to look at. The uprights that support the roofs are the peeled trunks of young breadfruit trees. They are about six inches in diameter, and are set something like a yard apart around a raised oval floor-space that is paved with small smooth stones from the beach. Upon these posts rests the set of beams that support the rafters. The rafters run from the top of the posts to the roof-tree, which is supported by four or five uprights set in the centre of the floor-space. These beams are all laced together with braided coconut fibre, sometimes gaily coloured. The neatest joinery is in the roof, the ceiling being the under side of the thatching, which is laced between small, smoothly dressed branches. These beams are not long, curved tree-trunks as they appear, but comparatively short sections of coconut wood, fitted and dressed and lashed together with fibre so neatly that the joints are not readily discovered.
"Usually the thatch is of sugar cane leaves, though occasionally coco fronds or pandanus blades are used. The walls are made by letting down the 'Venetian blinds' of braided coco palm leaves which hang from the roof beams about four feet above the ground. Although there is no indicated door, the customary entrance is through the opening between the posts to the right of a line drawn through the house between the centre supports of the roof-tree. This is the 'front door'; the 'back door' is any opening between the posts behind a line at right angles to the one just mentioned, and dividing the house between the first two of the central posts. Before these centre posts the host and hostess sit when receiving their guests, and here the taupo sits when she makes the kava. It is the seat of honour for the inmates of the house.
A Samoan house in the course of construction
"Chief Tufeli came over for the express purpose of buying the yacht"
"The furniture of the Samoan house consists mainly of mats woven from coconut and pandanus leaves, some large chests containing the family wardrobe, dishes, arms and trinkets. Most of the food is served on the leaves of the bread-fruit tree or the fau. The fine mats and tappa, which constitute the family heirlooms, are kept in rolls upon the rafters. The beds are piles of mats, six or eight deep, above which are suspended regulation mosquito nets."
An interesting feature of this description is the extent to which it shows the coconut as figuring as a building material in the Samoan house, and now that the utility of that remarkable tree has been mentioned, this will be an appropriate place to outline a few of the indispensable functions it fulfils in the life of all South Sea islanders.
There are several articles of food and general utility, both animal and vegetable, which are of almost vital importance to the peoples by whom they are used, and prominent among these may be noted the seal of the Esquimaux, the salmon of the British Columbian and Alaskan Indians, and the rice and bamboo of the Japanese, Chinese and East Indians. Yet none of these to their respective users occupies anything near so important a place as does the coconut to the South Sea islander. Copra, the dried kernel of the coconut, is the leading, and almost the only, article of commerce in every island of the South Pacific, and as such is the principal contributor to the income of the natives from which everything else they use is bought. The copra of the South Pacific islands is incomparably finer than that of the South American, West Indian or African tropics, and the plantations of Samoa, Fiji and Tahiti are the largest and most productive in the world. Practically all of the copra goes to London or San Francisco to be elaborated into a great variety of products, ranging from railroad grease to high class toilet soap and confectionery. A large and rapidly increasing trade has also sprung up in the outer husk of the coconut which is used in the manufacture of a very durable floor matting.
It is through its direct utility to the South Sea native, however, rather than for its commercial value, that the coconut attains its real importance, for it furnishes him with food, drink and shelter, and figures in some form or other as an almost indispensable adjunct to every pursuit, occupation and recreation in which he indulges. Cuts from the long, tough trunk of the tree are used for fence posts and in bridge construction, while on those islands where no other suitable trees are found a complete and adequate dwelling may be built from the coco palm alone. The trunks serve for uprights, rafters and cross-braces, while the leaves make a durable and waterproof thatch and a light but strong siding. These may also be woven into a dozen different kinds of baskets, bags and trays, and, braided end to end, make an excellent drag-net for catching fish.
The water of the half-ripe nuts is the standard drink of the islands. A good-sized nut will furnish close to a quart of liquid which, no matter how high the temperature of the air, is always cool, sweet and slightly effervescent. The milk of the nut, which is extracted from the kernel by grating and pressing, is used as a flavouring for various dishes, and with coffee makes an excellent substitute for cream. Boiled and pressed, the kernel yields an oil which is of considerable value as a lubricant, and as a stimulator of the growth of the hair is without a peer. It is to their free use of coconut oil, in fact, that the remarkable hirsute growth of the Fijians and other South Sea islanders is directly attributed. The refuse left after making oil is fed to pigs and poultry, a purpose to which it is admirably suited. On the delights of eating coconut-fattened pig, roasted on hot stones and served with miti-hari sauce—itself a mixture of coco milk and lime juice—I have rhapsodized in one of the Tahiti chapters.
The husk of the coconut is woven up into cinnet, lines and ropes, and as such employed in house and boat construction, for fishing, and for every other purpose in which strands of manila, sisal or cotton ordinarily serve. The flint-like shell of the coconut makes a useful grater and scraper, and when heated with the air excluded is reduced to a splendid quality of charcoal. The shells are also used for drinking cups, water-bottles, scoops, catch-alls and bailers for canoes. Tapped at its heart, the trunk yields a liquid which makes an excellent substitute for yeast, while chunks cut from the same portion of the tree forms the base of a salad which is the delight of epicures, both native and white. A still more delectable salad is made from the crisp meat of the budding nuts.
I pause with the list still incomplete, but enough uses have been enumerated, I trust, to make it comprehensible that the most drastic punishment that can be meted out to a South Sea village—one that is still resorted to in the Solomons and New Hebrides when a missionary is murdered or a labour schooner "cut out"—is to destroy its coconut trees.
Our Samoan laundryman was the source of considerable amusement during our stay in Pago Pago. Several of those indispensable functionaries came alongside on the day of the yacht's arrival, all bearing credentials of the highest order. One Maritomi, however, with a testimonial on the crested note paper of the Earl of Crawford affirming that the bearer had done the washing for his yacht, Valhalla, during her visit to Pago Pago, and had performed the work with neatness and dispatch, made the most favourable impression and was given a trial bundle. Among the things was a number of white duck uniforms, from the coats of which, in the hurry of arrival, the brass buttons had not been removed. The coats came back in time, neatly laundered, but unaccompanied either by the buttons or an explanation.
When Maritomi came round for the washing the following week he at first denied all knowledge of the missing buttons, asseverating that he was a "mitinary" boy and therefore could not steal even if he wanted to. This failing to make an impression, he finally admitted that he had the buttons, but claimed that buttons were his rightful perquisites, adding that he had kept the buttons of the Earl of Crawford every wash and had still been given a good character by His Lordship's steward. What was more, he said he was going to keep all of our buttons he could lay his hands on, and was going to feel very hurt if we, too, didn't give him a good character on our departure. We didn't think we were better than the Earl of Crawford, did we? That would be too absurd when the Valhalla was three times as big as the Lurline and had steam-power besides. Of course there was no upsetting a precedent established by so illustrious a personage as the Earl of Crawford, and therefore it was that all that our good laundryman threatened came to pass.
On the morning of our departure when he came off with farewell presents of tappa and war clubs, the grateful Maritomi showed his appreciation of the testimonial we had given him by appearing in one of the Commodore's white duck uniforms, with Lurline buttons drawing the jacket together across his brawny chest, while the delivery boy who accompanied him perspired in the unwonted grip of a dress coat of an officer of the Valhalla. We forgave Maritomi much for the delicacy of feeling he displayed in putting the Valhalla coat on the delivery boy.
CHAPTER XIII
SAMOAN CRICKET: FAUGA-SA V. PAGO PAGO
The captain of Fauga-sa drank deep from his epu of kava, tossed the heel-taps over his shoulder as etiquette required, and sent the shining coconut cup spinning back across the mat to the feet of the taupo, who, in festal regalia of dancing skirt and tuiga, presided at the kava bowl. Then he nodded gravely to the Pago Pago captain opposite, and each leaned forward and laid a honey-hearted hibiscus blossom in the palm of his outstretched hand.
Instantly every voice within and without the council house was hushed, and in the waiting silence the buzzing of a huge blue-bottle fly sounded insistently above the lap of the wavelets on the beach and the lisp of the leaves of the palms. Suddenly the buzzing ceased, and with a great shout of triumph the Fauga-sa captain sprang to his feet and waved a hand from the doorway, on which action his shout was immediately taken up by the other eight and sixty members of his team, who fairly set the hillsides ringing with their ululating cries.
And why should they not cheer? Had not the fly alighted upon the hand of their chief and captain, Malatoba, thus giving him the "choice," and would he not send the Pago Pagos in to bat during the storm which every sign said was due for the next morning, leaving Fauga-sa the cool, dry days that always follow a storm to finish in? What matter if Pago Pago had eighty-five men to their sixty-nine?—the mud would soon wear down the opposing runners and more than make up for so slight a handicap. They arrive at the decision somewhat differently on the beach of Pago Pago than at Lord's, but the winning of the toss is of no less importance in Samoan cricket than in English.
Samoan cricket is not quite so primitive as that of the Esquimau tribe in which the batsman, with a thigh bone, defends a wicket made of ribs of the animal whose skull the bowler launches at it; but it has sufficient points of divergence from its original model to make some prefatory explanation essential to an understanding of it. In the first place, then, a contest between two localities is a far more representative one in the island game than in real cricket, for a team consists of every able-bodied man in the village—every male not in his first or second childhood—and if one village chances to be larger than another it is all in the fortunes of war. The overwhelming advantage this scheme might give to a large village over a small one is, to a certain extent, minimized by the custom of having a relay of four men to do the running for all of the batsmen of each team; and if its runners are not men of great endurance as well as speed, a big team may beat itself by wearing them out by heavy scoring in the earlier stages of the contest.
The ball is "regulation," but the bat, in size and shape, is more like that used in baseball than in cricket. It is made of light-coloured native wood of medium weight, is of about three feet in length, and has its large end slightly flattened for striking the ball. The handle is bound with cinnet to insure a grip. The wicket consists of one stick instead of three, the difficulty of hitting which, even undefended, makes anything of the nature of "stone-walling" tactics quite superfluous. The batsman, having no running to do, simply stands up and drives the ball about until he is out, the latter event, except for special ground rules that vary even between village and village, occurring under practically the same conditions as in the orthodox game. Bowling, both as regards "overs" and the distance from which, and the manner in which, the ball is delivered, does not differ materially from ordinary cricket.
A game consists of but a single inning, and is never "drawn" unless the score chances to be tied. It is finished when every man playing has had his turn with the bat, a consummation which may be reached in anything from four to twelve days. Time is not of the essence of the contest, and as no one ever has any business or other engagements to call him away, the game is always fought out to the bitter end.
The visiting team proceeds in boats to the village with which it is to play, and remains there, the guest of the resident chief, during the period of the match. Play on the first day usually commences in the afternoon, but on the days following, except for short intermissions taken by the fielding team for a triumphal dance after each "out," lasts from daylight to dark. The nights are spent in kava drinking and siva-sivas, and a Samoan village after a week of cricket is over always relapses into an equal period of almost absolute somnolence while it takes the rest cure.
The exhibition cricket which is occasionally arranged for the benefit of visitors in Samoa is usually played on a comparatively smooth and level open space, bearing some slight resemblance to a regular field, but when the natives are playing for their own amusement the pitch is more likely than not to be located in the midst of a coconut grove, and in the closest-built part of the village. Twelve successive hours of fielding with a grilling tropical sun on the naked back has its terrors even for a Samoan. He likes the shade of the coconuts and the overhanging eaves of thatch, and there is something in the uncertainty of handling the elusive caroms from ridge poles and palm fronds that appeals to his simple native mind.
The game in question was between the teams of the villages of Fauga-sa—the Falesá of Stevenson's story, "The Beach of Falesá"—and Pago Pago, respectively the champions of the leeward and windward sides of the island of Tutuila. The winning of the "toss" by Malatoba of Fauga-sa was considered of great importance, for all the signs were for a southwest gale during the first days of the match, and as no game is ever called on account of inclement weather, it was figured that Pago Pago's runners would soon tire in the rain and wind, making heavy scoring impossible, while the batsmen could be retired just as fast in rain as in sunshine. And, to a certain degree, thus it happened; but the handicap to Pago Pago was only sufficient to cut down that team's excess of batsmen and bring the game to the most spectacular finish in the history of Samoan cricket.
The custom of having special men to do the running for the batsmen originated, it is said, in the early days of the game, when a chief who had been lamed in battle, and whose presence in the game was strictly necessary from a social standpoint, was allowed the privilege of a running substitute. The effect of the practice is the centring of this work upon men specially chosen and trained for swiftness and endurance, while any man able to stand erect qualifies as a batsman. The best bat of the Apia team for many years was a grizzled old warrior with an aromatic piece of sandal wood in place of a left leg that had been snapped off by a shark in his younger days.
Pago Pago's main reliance in this game was not upon the number and prowess of its batsmen, nor upon the skill and quickness of its fielders, nor yet upon the speed and accuracy of its bowlers, but rather upon two phenomenally swift runners imported for the occasion from the crack Apia team of the island of Upolou. These men, Motu and Roboki, were reputed so speedy that they could exchange places while the ball was being passed from the wicket-keeper to the bowler, and on good clean drives into the ocean it was said that they had often piled up a dozen, and even a score, of runs. A Samoan cricket field has no "boundaries," and running is kept up until the ball is returned or declared "officially lost" by the umpire, a maximum of twenty runs being allowed in the latter event.
With a great beating of drums, tooting of conches and blowing of horns, the Fauga-sa men scattered out to their places, while Chief Mauga of Pago Pago squared away to face the bowling of Chief Malatoba. Motu and Roboki, the runners, crouched in readiness for a lightning start, the umpires waved their insignias of office, folded umbrellas, and the big game had begun!
The first ball struck a lump of coral, broke sharply to leg, and Mauga ducked just in time to save his ribs, while the spheroid, spinning off the wicket-keeper's fingers, struck a coconut trunk and ricocheted into a bunch of bananas, Motu and Roboki completing four swift dashes up and down their coral path before it was returned. The second ball came straight for the wicket, and though it fell dead from Mauga's bat almost at his feet, the nimble runners, like two dark spectres, again changed ends. Eight more times they passed each other for the next three balls, only one of which was touched by the batsman, and when, on the last ball of the "over," Mauga stepped forward and laced out a screaming drive high above the council house and into the bay, the Pago Pago sympathizers fairly went wild with excitement. While a lithe-limbed Fauga-sa fielder went darting like a seal through the water after the ball, Motu and Roboki, their every nerve and muscle strained to its utmost, were piling up the runs for Pago Pago.
"Chief Mauga squared away to face the bowling of Chief
Malatoba"
To-a, who made the best score for Pago Pago, facing the bowler
(Note his runner waiting, stick in hand, with foot raised)
Seven times they had passed each other and turned and passed again, and the swimmer had only reached the ball and thrown it awkwardly to a team-mate close behind him. Twice more the runners flashed by each other, and the ball was only at the shore. Motu signalled for still another effort, and with canes outstretched the game fellows went racing, each toward his goal. Half way up from the shore a Fauga-sa fielder fumbled the ball, and all looked safe for the runners, when a fragment of coco husk caused Roboki to turn his ankle just at the instant he was about to pass his partner, sending him plunging, head-on, into Motu, both of them collapsing into a jumbled heap. The ball came on an instant later and both batsmen, through the failure of their runners, were declared out. Motu and Roboki recovered consciousness in the course of the next hour, but were of no further use to their team until the following day.
Out of deference to the feelings of their opponents, the Fauga-sas omitted the dance customarily indulged in each time a batsman is put out, but when the next man to face the bowling popped up an easy ball and was caught in the slips, they made up for lost time. Whirling and yelling like dervishes, they rushed into a solid phalanx formation, and then, with rhythmic clappings of hands and stampings of feet, made a circuit of the ground, finally to end up in front of the squatting ranks of the waiting batsmen of Pago Pago. Here they continued their antics for a minute or two more, jocosely pointing out the fate of the man just disposed of as the fate which awaited the rest of his team. Then they broke up and went to playing again.
Not in the least disheartened by so unpropitious a start, the Pago Pago batsmen began slamming the ball about at this juncture, and by dark, though only fifteen wickets had fallen, a total of 240 runs had been put up, the largest half-day's score ever made in Samoa. Most of these runs were the result of long drives, which, though high in the air, were almost impossible to catch on account of the trees. Only one man was clean bowled, most of the outs being due to balls which flew up from the bat and were caught by one of the horde that clustered at point.
A local ground rule which held that a ball was fairly caught when intercepted rolling from a roof or dropping from a tree was responsible for the finish of several good batsmen. Almost in the middle of the field was a large thatch-roofed house, oval in form, temporarily occupied by the scorers, the taupo and her handmaidens, and the distinguished visitors. A solid circle of fielders ringed this house, and several men were retired on balls smartly caught as they cannoned from the springy thatch.
Perhaps the most amusing event of the afternoon was the disgrace brought upon himself by Samau, son of Chief Malatoba, and the crack bat and fielder of the Fauga-sas. Samau was a dandified young blade with a great opinion of himself as a lady's man, who, because of his rather clever handling of a couple of long drives early in the game, had been giving himself airs and doing a deal of noisy boasting. Just as the setting sun dipped behind the towering backbone of the island and a grateful coolness came creeping down with the shadows from the bosky hillsides, Seuka, the pretty taupo of Pago Pago, strolled out through the coconuts, and when near Samau, threw up her lovely arms and hands in the expressive Samoan gesture signifying a complete surrender of heart and soul. Apparently no whit moved, the haughty youth only tossed his Turkish towel-beturbaned head and proceeded to knock down with one hand a sizzling hot drive that came toward him headed for the beach. Thus spurned, the artful Seuka sank down for a space upon a nearby mat in an attitude suggestive of the profoundest grief, shortly, however, to return to the attack from a perch on the veranda of the little white Mission church which stood in the middle of Samau's territory.
The proud youth tried valiantly for a while to stem the tide of his ebbing interest in the game, but the little lady seemed so palpably smitten with his charms that, out of the very softness of his heart, he finally edged over and, still keeping his eye fixed on the batsman, began to talk to her. Soon Seuka was observed holding something playfully behind her back and tantalizing the scornful Samau by denying him a look. At last the unlucky fellow's curiosity got the better of him, and for one fatal moment he was seen to turn his back and begin to scuffle with the laughing coquette for the possession of the keepsake she was withholding. At the same instant the batsman smote the ball a ringing crack and sent it flying into the top of a tall coco palm above the church. From the palm the ball dropped to the roof of the mission, rolled to the veranda, and finally fell off almost upon the head of the frightened Samau, who was standing gaping foolishly at the wildly gesticulating horde of his team mates who came bearing down upon him. It would have been an easy catch had he been attending to business, and as the full enormity of the crushed dandy's offence dawned upon him, he turned tail and ran for the bush, closely followed by a dozen irate Fauga-sa men and a black and white cur. Being the fastest man on his team, Samau easily outdistanced the pursuit, but it was said that he stayed in the bush all night, and that he was only allowed to enter the game next day upon the solemn promise not to speak to another woman until his return to the home village.
The second day the expected storm came on, and on that and the two following days there was a gale of wind and almost incessant rain. Through it all the game went merrily on, and despite unfavourable conditions Pago Pago continued to add to its score until, when the last batsman was out on the fifth day, a total of 1,386 runs had been chalked up to its credit. By this time fine weather had set in again, but even with this in their favour it did not seem possible for the Fauga-sas to equal the tremendous score that faced them. When twenty-three wickets went down the first day for a paltry three hundred runs the situation looked more hopeless than ever.
Things brightened up for a while on the second day when Samau, the disgraced one, batted up a rattling eighty-two, fifteen of which were put up by his speedy runners during a diversion among the fielders caused by a nest of hornets which one of the batsman's swift drives had unexpectedly dislodged from a bread-fruit tree. After this the Fauga-sa batting slumped off again, and the day closed with something in excess of seven hundred runs to the team's credit, and thirty-nine wickets down. The third day seventeen more wickets fell for fewer than three hundred runs, so that on the morning of the fourth day—the ninth of the match—the fag end of the Fauga-sa batting faced a shortage of nearly four hundred runs.
The first man to encounter the bowling on what proved to be the final day of the match was a youth called "Johnny," a nickname which took its origin from the fact that its bearer had once been employed as a dishwasher in the galley of the American gunboat stationed in the harbour. He had been playing baseball with the Yankee marines, and that this was his first game of cricket was evident when he squared away with his bat over his shoulder as though facing pitching instead of bowling. Heedless of the ridicule heaped upon him for his lack of "form," "Johnny" calmly stepped out and slammed the first ball—which chanced to be a full pitch—over the tops of the highest palms and down into a running stream in the bottom of a little gully. Down the stream it went, bobbing merrily on the way to the beach, and before it was recovered the swift-footed runners had traversed the course a dozen times. The second ball came at the batsman's feet, and the hockey-like sweep he made of it narrowly missed being caught by the bowler. The third ball struck away in front of him, and, stepping back, "Johnny" smote it hard and true, straight into the house where sat the scorers, the visitors and the members of Chief Mauga's household. All scattered as they saw it coming, and the whizzing sphere had traversed nearly the whole distance to the further side of the house before it landed, dull and heavy, in the ribs of little Oo-hee, the misshapen dwarf kept by Mauga in the capacity of mascot and jester.
Oo-hee was stretched bawling on the mat, but the question of how hard he was hit was entirely lost sight of in the excitement surrounding the momentous import attaching to the fact that he had been hit at all. A dwarf is regarded with the same superstitious awe in Samoa as in other parts of the world, and there, too, no better method is known of deflecting a current of bad luck than by touching the hump of a hunchback. But actually to bring down a hunchback with a cricket ball was a thing unprecedented. Pago Pago looked serious about it and Fauga-sa began to take heart—surely something was going to happen!
And something did happen, too, and that right speedily. "Johnny" missed his fourth ball, and the fifth, just touching the butt of his bat, went hopping and spinning off along the ground like a wounded duck. Some idea of such a resemblance must have been awakened in the active mind of the little black and white village cur, who, cocked up in the shade of a palm had been conducting a punitive expedition against a particularly aggravating flea, for he pounced on the ball with a glad yelp and began shaking it like a thing alive. No whit dampened in ardour by the failure of the object of his attack to fight back, the frisky canine kept valiantly at his task, and when the onrush of fielders seemed to threaten him with total annihilation, he began to dodge and skip about among them as though proud to be the centre of so much attention. But when he saw Mauga, roaring with rage at the thought of the Fauga-sa runners adding to their team's score at the rate of a run every three or four seconds, seize a cutlass and come charging down upon him, he realized that he had made a mistake. Whereupon, therefore, he tucked his wisp of a tail between his legs and flew as the bee flies, straight for the bush, even forgetting, in his terror, to drop the ball.
When Mauga and the rest of his braves came back from a bootless chase, it was to be met with the disconcerting news that not another ball was to be found in the village. Anxiously renewed inquiry, however, met with better reward, for one of the missionary's boys was found to have an old ball, still quite hard and round and in good condition in every respect, save for the fact that one side of it, in lieu of anything better to hand, had been patched with a piece of shark's hide. Under ordinary conditions the Pago Pagos would not have thought of consenting to use such a ball, for the surface of dry shark's hide has all the roughness of a rasp combined with the sharpness of the nettle; but the game seemed nearly won, and it is not in the Samoan nature to brook the postponement of a certain triumph if it can possibly be helped.
Fauga-sa was chalked up with twenty runs for the lost ball, and the game was started up again. Gingerly settling the prickly sphere back in his fingers, the bowler delivered the sixth ball of "Johnny's" over, and this the latter, swinging wildly, missed and was clean bowled.
This lucky beginning filled the Pago Pagos with great elation, from which state they were rudely jostled a moment later when the next batsman drove a hot line ball which scoured out the palm of the hand of one of the swarm of cover-points and set him howling home to bind the wound with ti leaves. After that the fielders handled the dreaded ball as if it was a live coal, and though wickets kept falling from time to time, runs came fast between until, when the last Fauga-sa man but one was out, the total of the team's runs was but four behind the aggregate of Pago Pago.
The final batsman was an old man with weak eyes, who, after missing three balls, caught the fourth on the edge of his bat and shot it high up into the top of a towering coconut palm. Like a swarm of wolves the Pago Pago fielders, with outstretched hands, crowded beneath the preciously-freighted fronds, and like the shuttles of a madly-driven loom the runners of Fauga-sa darted back and forth. Once, twice, thrice, four times—and finally—five times they go, and then one of the umpires waves his umbrella and announces that Fauga-sa has won the game.
"Whirling and yelling like dervishes they made a
circuit of the ground"
"A sinewy brown figure starts clambering up the tree"
But stay! A sinewy brown figure starts clambering up the tree. Now he has reached the top, now grasped the ball with eager hand, and now he is back among his team-mates on the ground. And listen! What was that? The second umpire is speaking—he announces that Pago Pago wins the game.
And which team really won the contest is a moot question to this day; but if ever you chance to go to the island of Tutuila and desire to start a Samoan "Donnybrook," just mention, on an occasion when one or more stalwarts from both of these villages are within hearing of your voice, the last championship game that was ever played between the Pago Pago and Fauga-sa teams.
CHAPTER XIV
A VISIT TO APIA
On the 9th of June we sailed from Pago Pago for Apia, planning to return at the end of a week in order to be present at an official flag-raising which our patriotic friend, Chief Mauga, was preparing for. We found the breeze veering and uncertain as we beat out of the harbour late in the afternoon, but ample working room and the absence of strong currents in the entrance to this splendid bay made the direction of the wind of little moment. Beyond the shelter of the harbour walls the waves, driven by an unusually heavy Trade, were running tumultuously from the southeast in frothy hummocks of cotton wool. For a couple of miles, close-hauled, we stood straight out from the land, the yacht one moment burying her nose in a malignant curl of green, and the next tossing it skyward while a ton or two of solid water went bounding back along the deck and gurgled hoarsely out through the overworked scuppers. When the offing was sufficient sheets were slacked off and we headed down the coast on a broad reach, making good speed in spite of heavy rollings in the wrench of the quartering seas.
The west blazed for a few moments as the sun went down, to be quickly quenched by a curtain of black cloud that was thrown across the heavens in a final shifting of the scenery for the most spectacular exhibition of marine pyrotechnics that is to be seen in the whole length and breadth of the Seven Seas—a June night assault by the Pacific upon the "Iron Bound Coast" of Tutuila.
The "Iron Bound Coast" opens up beyond the first point west of the entrance to Pago Pago Bay and runs up the island for a half-dozen miles or more, squarely across the path of advancing lines of seas that have been charging to the attack and gathering weight, impetus and arrogance in a thousand miles of unbroken rush before the scourges of the Southeast Trade. Their repulse is sudden, sharp and decisive, and the beetle-browed, black-ribbed cliffs accomplish it without a change of expression. The waves have been beating their heads to pieces against these same frowning, impassive barriers for a million years, more or less, and yet they are never able to overcome their surprise, never stoical enough to hide their resentment, never capable of restraining their expostulations. And what floods of supplications, what varieties of protests they pour out! If you approach near enough, following the thundering crash against the cliff, they appeal to you from where they fall with sobs of anguish and groans of pain; if you gaze from afar they beckon you with high-flung distress flags of white foam, and if you pass in the darkness they signal their despair with ghostly bonfires of glowing spume and phantom rockets of phosphorescent spray.
It was such a display that we were treated to on the night of the 9th of June, and under a fortunate combination of circumstances that made it especially impressive. The seas about the Samoas are extraordinarily prolific of the animalculæ whose presence makes sea water phosphorescent, and in May and June occur their periods of greatest activity. That this night was moonless and heavily overcast made the conditions especially favourable. Daylight and twilight had passed in swift transition, and the yacht was sailing in inky darkness as she rounded the point and opened up the Iron Bound Coast. For a moment the darkness held, and through it the imminent loom of the island was only a blur of darker opacity against the starless void above. Then a great splash of flame burst forth, and in an instant more the coast was picked out in lines of liquid fire, the reflections from which bathed the whole mountainside in fluttering waves of ghostly blue light. Here a great sea struck and erupted like a volcano set-piece, spreading out fan-wise and falling back in lines of vivid light; there a big blow-hole exploded in thunderous geysers of flame, and close by a smaller vent projected, as from the nozzle of a hose, a slender, gleaming stream of liquid fire. In places, where the rock ribs of the cliff broke evenly, the flashes burst out in regular spurts of pale flame like those from the broadside of a warship, and again, where submerged rocks and crooked elbows threw one wave back upon another, there appeared great welters of green light that churned and bubbled and swirled like liquid lava.
Like the film of a biograph the vivid panorama of flame slipped past, and by nine o'clock the ridge of Sail Rock Point had interposed and blotted out the last of it. Beyond, the island broke into hollow, smooth-beached bays, where submerged reefs clipped the claws of the breakers and dissolved them in broad patches of faint luminosity before they reached the shore. At ten o'clock, in order not to reach Apia before morning, jib and mainsail were taken in and the night run out under foresail and forestay-sail.
The smooth, green hills of Upolou were close at hand to the southwest at daybreak, and at seven o'clock, with jack hoisted for a pilot, we were off the entrance of Apia harbour. The passage to the bay is broad and straight, but, as that port was German at the time, the taking of a pilot was compulsory. That functionary came out promptly in response to our signal, and a half hour later left the yacht at anchor a quarter of a mile off the beach and a hundred yards from where, a broken-backed frame of rusting steel, the wreck of the ill-fated German warship, Adler, lay high up on the coral reef, just as it had been left by the waves in the great hurricane of 1889.
We heard from eye-witnesses the story of that hurricane when we went ashore in the afternoon; of how the powerful British Calliope, cheered by the doomed sailors in the shrouds of the American ships, forced her way in the teeth of the storm out through the passage to safety; of the destruction of the Olga and Adler and Eber, and Trenton and Vandalia and Nipsic; of the frightful loss of life; of the heroism of the natives in risking their lives in the mountainous surf and treacherous back-wash to save their late enemies, and a hundred other things closely or remotely bearing on that remarkable disaster. Told by men to whom the memory of the storm was still fresh and clear, with the theatre of the great tragedy opening before us, and countless souvenirs of one kind or another at hand to crystallize interest, the recitals were graphic in the extreme and made deep impression upon us of the Lurline, who had also had some experience of the way of the sea in its harsher moods.
At evening as we came down to the landing for our boat the Commodore's gaze wandered from the great pile of riven steel on the reef to where the yacht, a slender sliver of silver, swung slowly to her anchor in the ebbing tide. At that moment the last rays of the setting sun, striking through the gaunt ribs of the Adler's sinister skeleton, threw a frame of black shadows across the water to rest for an instant in dark blotches on Lurline's snowy side and break the gleaming lines of her standing rigging into rows of detached bars floating in space. Then the sun dipped behind the mountain and the outlines of reef and wreck and schooner began dimming under a veil of purple mist.
"I don't go much on signs myself," said the Commodore musingly as he seated himself in the stern-sheets of the waiting boat and took the yoke lines, "but I suppose there are a good many sailors who would worry about a coincidence like that. Funny thing, too, that just as it happened I was trying to figure out what kind of a chance our poor little Lurline, without steam or power of any description, would stand in a storm that could throw a ship like the Adler high and dry out of the water. And—hurricane season is coming on, you know—I'm still wondering a little, that's all."
Strangely enough, it was written that the question should, in a measure, be answered within the fortnight, though the demonstration, fortunately, was not to take place in a reef-encompassed harbour.
The Bay of Apia, like that of Papeete, is a typical South Pacific harbour; an open roadstead on the leeward side of the island, with a reef cutting it off from the sea and giving good protection in ordinary weathers. The only reason that there have not been other great disasters like that of 1889 is because there has never again chanced to be so many large ships in the harbour when a hurricane came along. The hurricanes still blow up every now and then, and, just as in that historic storm, all the shipping that cannot go to sea goes ashore. The bottom of Apia Bay is almost as thickly littered with trading schooner wreckage as with pink coral.