Rascals in Paradise

  Finau therefore commanded an attack to be made on the outer defenses, while two strong parties were sent to stand by the two landward entrances to the fort, to deal with anyone trying to escape. The frontal attackers set the fences on fire and the flame spread furiously. Finau’s men penetrated the defenses, and the carronades fired blank charges so as to scare the enemy without hurting the attackers. When those inside the fort tried to flee, many were killed by ambushes at the rear exits. Soon the frontal party got to the innermost stockade, and there they clubbed down men, women and children with equal ruthlessness, according to the methods recently learned in Fiji. In less than an hour this famous fort, strongest in all Tonga, had been completely destroyed, and its garrison lay groaning and dying amid the whoops of the victorious men of Finau II.

  This chief now climbed the hill to observe the smoking ruins, and was amazed at the havoc wrought by the gunfire. Several large canoes had been shattered, while 350 corpses lay around, many of them dismembered by cannon balls. A few of the enemy who had been taken alive said that the balls, not content with destroying the inner houses, had glanced off the house posts and went rushing around seeking someone to kill. Thus fell the fortress which had withstood all attacks for more than eleven years.

  The white cannoneers, headed by Mariner, now urged Finau to follow up his victory—to pursue his retreating foes, destroy every fort in the country, and wipe out all enemies so that he would be proclaimed hau, or military leader, of all Tonga. Such European tactics, however, would have been contrary to all Tongan teaching. First the army would have to get the priests to consult the gods of Tonga as to the next move.

  After full ceremony, the chief priest went into a convulsion and then spoke the message of the gods. Finau, before he could do anything else, must first restore and rebuild the fort of Nuku’alofa which he had that morning destroyed! Appeal from such a judgment was unthinkable.

  The process of gathering the required material would have taken many days had it not been for the use of steel axes stolen from the Port-au-Prince. Then Finau summoned all his army to start the rebuilding. Without bothering to haul away the hundreds of decaying bodies that littered the site, the army amid the stench began erecting the new fort, which was defended on each side by one of the carronades that had done such good service.

  The wars in Tongatapu had destroyed all the crops, and Finau sent his canoes back to Ha’apai to obtain provisions. Meanwhile he put out foraging parties, and when his men were harried by a party of the defenders of the land, Finau ordered two hundred of his best warriors to destroy them. In the fight that followed, many of Finau’s warriors were decoyed into an ambush, and the rest ran for their lives. Among these was Will, who had the bad luck to tumble into a hidden pit six feet deep. Fortunately it was not lined with rows of sharpened bamboo spikes, as was the usual practice. With the enemy on their heels, four of his comrades stopped and hauled him out of the pit, and one of them was killed on the spot by an arrow. Will and the remaining three resolved to sell their lives dearly, but luckily some of the other men of the war party appeared and routed the attackers. When the band at last reached the safety of the fort, they were exhausted and hungry beyond belief.

  They had brought back fifteen prisoners, and since the canoes had not yet returned, some of the Ha’apai chiefs who had lately been in Fiji proposed that they appease their hunger by killing and roasting some of their captives. Despite objections from most of the army, this was done, and cannibalism was introduced into Tonga. Will was not yet enough of a savage to partake of such a dish, however, and starved for several more days until the canoes, loaded with provisions, but delayed by storms, at last arrived.

  It was now nearing the end of July, 1807, and Finau II was called back to Ha’apai to take part in the lifting of the tabu which had been in force for eight months after the death of the Tui Tonga, supreme hereditary ruler of all the island group. Finau decided to leave the fort of Tongatapu under the command of a local chief who had surrendered and had tendered his allegiance to Finau. But no sooner had the forces of Finau headed north than flames from the hill showed that the faithless chief had burned down the fort to show his hatred of the invaders from Ha’apai.

  The anger of Finau was partly diverted when Will Mariner showed him some white man’s magic. Will had left a written message with a chief at the fort, to be given to the captain of the next ship that might stop at that island. The letter warned all ships not to trust the Tongans and told of the dire fate of the Port-au-Prince. It also proposed that the visiting captain seize some chiefs as hostages until Mariner and his friends were given up to them.

  The vengeful Hawaiian, Kuikui, had gotten hold of the message and now told Finau what his favorite, young Toki, had done. Finau handled the paper wonderingly, for he had never heard of writing; then he gave it to a white lad named Higgins and asked him what it meant. Young Higgins, who like the others could now speak Tongan fairly well, with quick wit pretended to translate it and said that it merely asked any English captain who might visit the islands to request that Finau allow all the castaways to go back in his ship, saying that they had been kindly treated by the chief, but that, after all, they would like to go back to their own land.

  Finau agreed that this was a natural sentiment. He remained interested, however, in the mystery of how black marks on a paper could reveal secret thoughts, and calling Mariner to him, asked for demonstrations. When the foreign lads revealed that they could communicate to each other ideas about things which they had never even seen, the chief’s bafflement knew no bounds, and he decided that this white-man witchcraft was a dangerous thing and that he would never permit it in Tonga, or the islands would soon be filled with conspiracies and scandals.

  The lifting of the tabu was accomplished successfully and Finau then turned his attention once more to winning the title of hau of Tonga. Craftily he sought to clear his way by assassination, the main means of political change in Tonga. He had recently become suspicious of his half-brother, Tubou-niua, who had been his instrument in the killing of the reigning Tui Tonga in 1797. Tubou-niua, who had done the deed to bring liberty for his country, was in many ways a noble and honorable man, and as governor of the northern islands of Vava’u had contributed his troops to Finau’s assault on Tongatapu. But Finau could not tolerate any rival, not even his brother. Yet he refrained from personally killing Tubou-niua, for fear that murdering such a popular man might cause his own downfall.

  Again he found an instrument—this time a low-born son of the Tui who had been killed by Tubou-niua. This young man was known to be seeking vengeance, and when the returning armies were in Lifuka, Will Mariner, who was a good friend of Tubou-niua, begged that noble chief to go armed and watch out for knavery. But Tubou-nuia disdained any act that might seem to show that he distrusted his brother. “It is better to die than to live innocent and yet be thought capable of treachery!” he responded proudly.

  One night Will Mariner was returning with Finau, in company with the unsuspecting Tubou-niua, from a trip to a nearby village. As the party, walking in single file in the moonlight, stepped beyond the village fence, five men leaped forth with uplifted clubs and fell upon the unarmed Tubou-niua. The first blow missed his head and struck his shoulder. He shouted: “Oh, Finau, am I to be killed?”

  Finau, several yards ahead, turned and ran back with feigned efforts to defend his brother; but as part of the plan, several of the attackers seized Finau and pinned him against the fence. It had all been carefully plotted; the leader of the assassins was found to be the low-born son of the former Tui. The doomed Tubou-niua used only his bare hands and arms to protect himself from the blows of the clubs that fell upon him until both arms were broken. Then the leader of the thugs felled the chief to the ground and clubbed him until long after his life had departed from his body.

  Will Mariner, last in the line, thought at first that Finau was being murdered, and although unarmed, rushed ahead to help his friend. Had he succeeded in reachi
ng the scene of the murder, he would have been killed also, but fortunately for him, he was grabbed by one of the attackers, a big savage who held the boy’s arms at his sides until the gruesome business was over.

  The guilty Finau then addressed his forces with the high power of oratory for which he was famous. Unctuously, he pretended to give a straightforward explanation of the whole bloody business. He admitted that he knew that the avenger had plotted to kill Tubou-niua and that he, Finau, had even pretended to assist him, in order to satisfy the man for a time, hoping thus to prevent the murder. Unfortunately, the crime had been committed too quickly for him to prevent it.

  After he finished there was silence for half an hour in the council, but no one dared to object for fear that he also would lose his life. Will Mariner, as a foreigner who would escape the dire tabu of handling a dead body, sorrowfully prepared the corpse of Tubou-niua for burial, a ceremony attended by more than sixty canoe loads of mourners.

  Finau then declared that the slain man’s place as governor of Vava’u would be taken by Finau’s aunt, Toe-umu. But when the men of Vava’u returned home with the tale of the murder, this loyal woman was horrified, and demanded that Vava’u at once declare war upon her perfidious nephew. Thus Finau’s hopes of becoming hau of all Tonga were again thwarted, and he lost not only Tongatapu but Vava’u as well.

  Preparations for war were interrupted by the arrival of Finau’s eldest son and heir, Moenga, who as part of his education as a young chief had been sojourning for five years in Samoa. Moenga, who was to become Will Mariner’s closest friend, was at this time about twenty-two years old. He was tall and athletic, with an open countenance and a cheery sense of humor. He was the finest flower of Tongan nobility, and was intelligent as well. The prince was curious to learn all the lore of the papalangi, or strangers, and Mariner was strongly attracted to him from the start.

  Having awaited his son’s return for several years, Finau had set aside two charming ladies, daughters of chiefs, to be his wives; and it was decided that Moenga should marry both of them as soon as possible. Moenga had already brought back two wives from Samoa, but for a young prince of his position a couple more could easily be justified.

  The wedding preparations—and the feasting and dancing after the ceremony—delayed the civil war for several weeks. Then Finau assembled an army of six thousand men, their bodies and faces painted with horrifying designs after the Fijian fashion. Again the high chief roared his instructions, and emphasized that the papalangi method of fighting with the aid of big cannons would be followed. When his peace overtures failed, Finau’s fleet finally landed at Vava’u, along with the four famous carronades and eight white gunners, all under the command of Will Mariner.

  But in this campaign the two sides were more evenly matched than at Tongatapu, and during the months of ceremonial warfare that followed, the fighting settled down to a tiresome siege marked by desultory skirmishes for possession of one yam patch or another. In one of these raids Will was wounded in the foot by an arrow. At last Finau resorted to involved diplomacy by which the fighting was ended and he, acknowledged by the people of Vava’u as their hau, was able to withdraw to Ha’apai without loss of face.

  During this expedition Will Mariner and the young prince Moenga had become fast friends, and together advanced their education in gentlemanly accomplishments, which included not only the use of club and spear, but also boxing, wrestling, swimming, diving under water for long periods, handling a canoe, casting a fishing net in the shallows and the graces of Tongan singing and dancing. Young Chief Toki, as the white lad was now always called, had justified Finau’s interest in him, and had become in all respects a polished courtier of the Tongan court.

  At this time a chief turned over to Finau his estates on the island of Vava’u. Will, weary of being a landless hanger-on in the high chief’s household, asked Finau to give him the lease of these northern lands, as well as twenty-one workers, over whom he would have the powers of life and death. Finau agreed, and thus the boy who had been a lawyer’s apprentice became a landholding chieftain on a South Sea island.

  His plantation was half a mile wide and ran inland for about a mile and a half. The region was one of the loveliest in the lovely isle of Vava’u. Toki’s domain included gardens of yams, taro and sugar cane, and was shaded with shapely coconut palms, green breadfruit trees, gray casuarinas and spreading banyans. It ended at a towering cliff overlooking a sparkling bay, the view from which was the subject of many a romantic Tongan song.

  His idyllic existence as a landed proprietor was interrupted by the news that a whale had gone ashore on a reef near Vava’u. Now the tooth of a sperm whale was considered to be a treasure of untold value among the natives of the South Pacific, and at once Finau, accompanied by Will and others, headed for the reef to cut out the teeth from the lower jaw of the dead whale and share them like fabled jewels.

  It was now almost three years since the burning of the Port-au-Prince, and for the first time a foreign ship was reported in these waters. Will went to Finau and told him that he was called on a quest even more important than the winning of a whale’s tooth. Could he depart for his homeland on this ship? He was loath to leave his great friends of Tonga and his foster mother; but he yearned to see again his own father and mother, and the papalangi people among whom he rightfully belonged.

  Will Mariner’s heart beat wildly as Finau gave the necessary permission, and ordered three fishermen to take Toki in a good canoe and put him on board the ship, which lay ten miles out to sea.

  After four hours of hard paddling, Will’s canoe came alongside the ship, which turned out to be the Hope, of New York. On the deck waving at him were three of his former shipmates, who had been taken on board at an earlier stop up the coast and had warned Captain Chase about the massacre of the Port-au-Prince—that was the reason the cautious shipmaster was out at such a distance from the land of the dangerous Tongans.

  From his small canoe Will hailed the ship and asked to be taken aboard. Captain Chase gazed sullenly down at him. “We can’t take you, young man,” he growled. “We have more hands aboard than we know what to do with.”

  Will couldn’t believe his ears. “Not take me? I am the only white man left here,” he pleaded, ignoring other survivors on other islands. “If you have three of my mates there on deck, why not take me?”

  “It’s no use saying any more. We can’t take you, and that’s that.” The captain turned his back and walked away.

  In a frenzy, Will offered to bring out any provisions that the captain might need; but the master of the Hope was not listening.

  Plunged into despair, Will was now in great danger. If it became known ashore that the captain had refused him the passage, all Will’s hard-earned prestige would fall to the ground, and he would be returned to the status of a low peasant. Fortunately, the three fishermen had been so busy staring at the rigging of the papalangi vessel that they had missed the drift of the short conversation. Will put on a cheerful face and told them that the ship was bound for a country far from his own, and that he had determined to stay in Tonga after all, until some other ship came out that was bound for his homeland of Bolotané.*

  Shouting to his three shipmates to send messages to his parents in London that he was still alive, Will, sick at heart, ordered the fishermen to begin the long pull back to the islands, as the Hope filled her sails and steered away to the westward without the sad castaway.

  Finau and his chiefs marveled at the lad’s return, but swallowed his excuses. The main surprise was that he had brought them no presents from the ship. For some days afterward he was the butt of many a joke. “What a lot of steel axes he has brought back for us!” they would remark. “And beads and mirrors will become all too common among the girls of Vava’u, now that Toki has returned with such a load of gifts!” Poor Will lamely explained that he had been so upset at finding that the ship was not going to Bolotané that he had forgotten to ask for presents. But Finau consoled him,
and promised that he should surely depart on the next ship bound for home.

  Early in 1810 the surprising news came that the governor of Tongatapu, weary of strife, was offering to acknowledge Finau as the military ruler of all the Friendly Islands, and this governor came to Ha’apai and in a great ceremony submitted himself to Finau’s overlordship. Thus, without further war, Finau realized his high ambition of becoming hau of all Tonga.

  But within a few weeks his joy was spoiled. One of his daughters, a little girl of six to whom he was wildly devoted, fell ill. In despair, the high chief supplicated all the various old gods of Tonga, and dragged the ailing child from one shrine to another. Day after day the child drew closer to death. The oracles of the priests finally uttered the grim word that Finau must be punished for his notorious disdain of the ancient religion, and that either his beloved daughter must die or he, Finau, must die in her place.

  Frantic with despair, the chief had the girl hauled to still other god-houses, but while he was taking her in a canoe to another island, the little girl died.

  In his angry grief, Finau decided to show his resentment by offering openly to the gods the most violent insults that he could invent. Disdaining the usual funeral, he wrapped the body of the girl in muslin looted from the Port-au-Prince and put it in a cedarwood chest belonging to the dead Captain Brown. This casket was carried with the chief for days, wherever he went. Then Finau sent four of his trusted warriors, who like him were skeptical about the old religion, and ordered them to seize and bind the high priest and then to kill him in any manner they pleased.

  But before the high priest could be executed, the gods of Tonga exacted a fearful revenge. Finau’s final outrage was too sacrilegious to be endured, and as he lay down to rest, tired by the long festival of defiance—celebrated as if the girl’s death were an occasion for rejoicing—he was seized with a sudden fit of choking. His jaws shook, he groaned in great agony, his lips became purple with pain. The gods, it was clear, had taken him by the throat.