The Far Side of the World

  He was about to tell Jack of his discovery and his conclusions, to caution him against the least ill-humour and to advise submission, meekness, a deferential bearing and above all no hint of gallantry however innocent, when he found that he was alone. Jack had left him when the second part of the crew started their washing and the first set about arranging their hair, all this on the windward side of the platform. He walked aft along to the other side, taking great notice of the shaped planks, sewn together edge to edge and caulked with what he took to be coconut fibre mixed with something sticky, of the cordage and the sails, made of fine matting with an immensely long piece of creeper or supplejack as a bolt-rope; and skirting the deck-house, in which several women were all talking at once in loud contentious voices, he came to the helm. It was a large paddle, but to his astonishment he found that it was not moved from side to side, rudder-fashion, but thrust down to turn from the wind and raised to luff it up. the woman who held it had a sensible, manly look as far as could be seen through the complex lines and spirals of her tattoo; she understood him quite readily, demonstrated the use of the paddle and showed him that the vessel could come tolerably close to the wind, though of course you had to reckon on a good deal of leeway—she showed the angle with her parted fingers and blew to indicate the increasing force of the wind. But she could make nothing of his other inquiries, to do with the stars, navigation by night, and the vessel's destination, even though he illustrated them with gestures.

  He was trying to make himself plainer when three stout middle-aged women like bosun's mates came round the corner from the deck-house, gasped with indignation and hustled him forward at a great pace, one helping him on his way with a flying kick that would have done credit to a Spithead nightingale. All three, and some of the other women, seemed very angry; they railed and scolded for a quarter of an hour, and then Jack was given a mortar with some dried roots in it and a heavy pestle, while Stephen was put to mind a young hog. Like most of the animals on deck it was in a basket, but unlike the others it was restless, and in poor health. It had to be nursed and it would not keep still.

  For some time the bosun's mates stood just behind, pinching and slapping them if the hog complained or the roots skipped out of the mortar, and sometimes for no reason at all. But presently other duties called them away and in a low voice Jack said, 'I should never have gone aft. We are clearly foremast hands, no more, and must never move from here unless we are told.'

  Stephen was about to agree, and to add his recommendations about their behaviour, his hypothesis on the nature of this community and the purpose of its voyage, and some remarks on the prevalence of cannibalism in the South Seas, when Jack interrupted; saying, 'Ain't you hellfire thirsty, Stephen? I am. I believe it was those dried fish. But, you know, they don't seem to like the look of me; whereas you are almost as brown as they are.'

  'This I attribute to my practice of aprication,' said Stephen, looking at his bare belly with some complacency. It was true: Stephen regularly sat in the tops with nothing on and he had none of the dank, corpselike pallor of naked Europeans. 'I have little doubt that to them you resemble a leper; or at any rate something diseased, unwholesome. The colour of your hair is disgusting. To those who are not used to it, I mean.'

  'Yes,' said Jack, 'so pray be a good fellow and sing out to the girl forward there, among the coconuts.'

  Stephen's first gentle call, accompanied by a timid gesture of drinking, was unsuccessful; she pursed her lips and looked coldly away, with a righteous expression. His second had more luck. Manu was passing by and she brought four nuts across and opened the shells with a shark's tooth set in a handle; and as they drank the exquisite milk she spoke to them rather severely, no doubt telling them something for their own good. At one time she put her hands together, as though in prayer, and looked emphatically aft; they could make nothing of it at all, but they both nodded gravely and said, 'Yes indeed, ma'am. Certainly. We are most obliged to you.'

  Once again Stephen was about to tell Jack of his intimate conviction, derived not only from the figureheads but from many little signs, forms of behaviour, caresses, quarrels and reconciliations, that they were aboard a vessel belonging to women who did not like men, who had revolted from the tyranny of men, and who were sailing away to some island, perhaps a great way off, to set up a female commonwealth; and to say that he dreaded the possibility of Jack's being gelded, knocked on the head, and eaten. But before he could do so his hog grew restless, squealed and fouled the deck; at the same time Jack was seen to be idling with his pestle, and the bosun's mates stepped in. When the mess was cleaned, and Stephen's trousers too—this they insisted upon, having an exceedingly high standard of cleanliness: they made him take them off and wring them out again and again before they were satisfied—and when all the shouting, cuffing, pinching, slapping and reproof had died down, Jack said, 'Here comes the captain, I believe; and the officers.'

  She was a broad, squat woman, much darker than most, with a long trunk and short legs; she had a handsome, high-nosed, but exceedingly cross and authoritarian face; and as she made her tour of the vessel she was accompanied by two taller women, obviously stupid and obviously devoted to her. They both carried the same weapons, a three-foot palm-rib topped with a hardwood knob with mother-of-pearl eyes on either side of an obsidian beak, possibly a mark of rank, since they held them with a certain amount of pomp. She had no mark of rank—far from it: she was casually nibbling at something she held—but as she came forward the members of the crew stood with their hands clasped and their heads bowed.

  'Perhaps we should adopt a respectful submissive attitude,' murmured Stephen; and as the captain came nearer he saw that what she was gnawing was a hand, a smoked or pickled hand. She looked at Jack and Stephen without any pleasure or interest and without making any reply to their bows or their 'Your most humble devoted servant, ma'am,' and 'Most honoured and happy to be aboard you, ma'am.' And having looked at them she entered into a long, displeased conversation with Taio and Manu, who in spite of their clasped hands spoke up very freely in their clear young voices: Stephen suspected that they belonged to a privileged class—they were taller, lighter in colour, and their tatooing was quite different; and the captain's attitude towards Manu in particular was civiller than it was to the others.

  The captain and her officers went by walking aft along the larboard side; and a little later Jack, having turned the mortar so that he could see, said, 'I believe they are rigging church.' Indeed something very like an altar appeared in the middle of the platform and six mother-of-pearl discs and an obsidian knife were laid upon it, with a variety of weapons ranged in front. Again Jack and Stephen slackened a little in their attention to work and again some sort of ship's corporal brought them back to a sense of duty with a furious roar; she then harangued them at length, with gestures, and although no single word had any meaning it was clear from her intonation that sometimes she was describing the conduct of the virtuous, sometimes that of the worthless. And behind her Taio, Manu and half a dozen of the jollier girls imitated her gestures and her expressions with such perfection that at last Jack could not contain but burst out into a strangled horse-laugh. The ship's corporal darted to the row of weapons and came at him with just such a beaked club as the officers carried, a tool designed to peck through a skull at a single blow; but in fact she only kicked him in the stomach. She had scarcely done so before the whole thing was over: everybody was shrieking and pointing over the side, where Manu had sighted a shark close on the starboard beam.

  It was a medium-sized brute, twelve or thirteen feet long, though of what species Stephen could not tell; nor had he any time for deliberation, for Manu, catching up the obsidian knife from the altar, slipped into the sea between the two hulls. What happened next he could not make out, but there was a furious threshing convulsion a few yards out to starboard and there were the girls and the ship's corporal laughing heartily as Manu came dripping aboard and the shark dropped astern, disembowelled but still
lashing with enormous force.

  Clearly no one but Jack and Stephen thought it out of the way; the others carried on with their preparations for church as though nothing of importance had happened, except that two of them helped Manu rearrange her wet hair. A bosun's mate, now dressed in a striped garment with tags, had just time to throw Jack more roots to grind and to give him a passing swipe with a rope's end and drums started to beat.

  The ceremony began with a dance: two lines of women facing the captain, rhythmically advancing, retiring, waving their weapons while she chanted, and at the end of each verse they all cried Wahu. Their weapons were spears, the hardwood skull-splitter called pattoo-pattoo, a name that came to Stephen the moment he saw it, and clubs, some studded with human teeth, some with those of sharks; and all the women, even the kava-chewing girls, handled them most convincingly.

  The dance went on and on and on, the drum-beat acquiring a hypnotic quality. 'Stephen,' whispered Jack, 'I must go to the head.'

  'Very well,' said Stephen, calming his hog. 'I have seen the women do so repeatedly. They mostly go over the side.'

  'But I shall have to take off my trousers,' said Jack.

  'Then no doubt it would be more seemly to dip between the two floaters, holding on to the platform; for although they seem to be innocent as Eve before the apple, at least as far as nakedness is concerned, they may not view the shameful parts of a man in quite the same light.'

  'I believe it was that dried fish,' said Jack. 'But perhaps I can wait. To tell you the truth, that ill-looking bitch'—lowering his voice and nodding towards the captain—'quite daunts me. I do not know what she would be at.'

  'Go on, Jack—go on while you may—it may be worse later—go on directly—I believe they are reaching their climax.'

  Rarely had Stephen given better advice. Jack had not been back to his pestle five minutes, with a look of profound relief on his face, before the dancing stopped and the ill-looking bitch delivered a long address, during which she often pointed at the men, growing steadily more passionate.

  The address came to an end and the congregation got up and moved about; but this was only the beginning of the real ceremony. The fire that Jack had noticed on his way aft was brought forward—embers in a bowl that floated in another—and set down before the altar. Presently the smell of grilling flesh came forward, together with ritual cries; but glancing discreetly round Stephen observed that the captain and her officers were in fact drinking the kava prepared that morning. The flesh was only formal at this stage.

  'Some say that kava is not truly intoxicating,' remarked Stephen, 'that it contains no alcohol. I wish they may be right.'

  Alcohol or no, the captain, her officers and the big middle-aged women were obviously affected when at last they came forward, dancing heavily behind their leader, who held the obsidian knife in her hand. The effect would have been grotesque but for the fact that the jaw-bones they had now hung round their necks were in most cases quite fresh and that drunk or not they handled their weapons with great dexterity.

  The captain's mood had been disagreeable in the first place; it was now very much worse, much more fierce and aggressive. She stood in front of the men with her knees bent, her head thrust forward, pouring out words that sounded full of blame, indeed of intense hatred. Yet she did not carry the whole crew with her; the older women were clearly on her side and they often repeated her last words when she paused for breath, but several of the younger were not. They seemed uneasy, unwilling, displeased, and Manu and the spear-girl obviously spoke for them when they broke in during the pauses or even frankly interrupted the full flow, so that on occasion at least three were talking at the same time. Manu was the chief interrupter and Stephen became even more convinced that there was a special relation between her and the captain that gave her more than usual confidence. She kept pointing away over the starboard bow towards a little patch of white unmoving cloud but every time the captain brushed her words aside with the same set of phrases and a sweep of the obsidian knife. Yet in spite of the captain's vehemence—vehemence that increased with the last few interruptions—Stephen felt that she knew she was no longer in full control, that she had gone on too long, that the climax was slipping away from her; and he was afraid she would do something exceptionally violent to reestablish the situation. Indeed she did call out some orders and the biggest of the women moved closer, some with cords, some with clubs; but once again Manu interrupted and before the captain could reply Stephen stepped forward, and pointing at Jack's loins he said, 'Bah, bah, bah. Taboo,' his third Polynesian word.

  It had an instant effect. 'Taboo?' they said 'Taboo!' in every tone of affirmation, astonishment, and concern, every tone but that of scepticism. The tension fell at once: the club-bearers moved away, and Stephen sat down again with his hog, which had begun to whimper. He paid little attention to the subsequent discussion, which went on in a more normal tone, though he did notice accusations, tears and reproaches.

  For a great while Jack and Stephen had thought it more prudent, more discreet, not to speak, but now Jack whispered, 'They have altered course,' and Stephen observed that the vessel was heading for the patch of white cloud.

  Presently the talking died away. The captain and the officers retired to the deckhouse. Stephen's hog was taken from him and Jack's mortar; they were put to sit in the starboard hull among the drinking-coconuts, and there, towards the middle of the afternoon, they were fed with little separate baskets of raw fish, breadfruit pap and taro. But there was no cheerfulness, no merriment, no curiosity. A flatness and gloom had come over the pahi's company, so lively before; and in spite of their enormous relief it affected even Jack and Stephen as they sat there, watching the clouds and then the little island under them come closer. When Manu brought the outrigger round to take them ashore she had clearly been crying.

  It was a charming little island, not ten acres in an infinity of sea, green in the middle with a grbve of palm-trees, a brilliant white strand all round, and surrounding the whole a broad coral reef, two hundred yards out. Manu obviously knew the island; she put the canoe through a gap in the reef so narrow that the outrigger clipped weed from the far side. She rounded to a few yards from the shore, and as Jack stood there up to his middle, turning the canoe, she gave him two mother-of-pearl fish-hooks and a length of fine line. Then she hauled in the sheet, Jack shoved her off, and the canoe raced back for the gap with the strong breeze abeam and Manu standing up braced against it, as lovely a sight as could be imagined. They waved until she was far out at sea, but she never replied.

  Chapter Eight

  The sea increased during the night, so that by dawn the reef surrounding the little island was whiter still with broken water flying high, particularly on the windward side, and the solemn, measured boom of rollers filled the air. Jack was conscious of this before he opened his eyes, he was also pretty sure that the breeze had strengthened too, backing perhaps as much as a whole point, and this was confirmed when he walked quietly from their shelter under the palmtrees, leaving Stephen curled in sleep, and sat on the white strand, yawning and stretching himself.