I Married Adventure

by Osa Johnson

  The thick ropes that had held the boat to the dock plopped into the water and the boat shuddered all over; then, suddenly, I knew we were moving. We were under way!

  “Golly!” Not knowing what else to do, I squeezed Martin’s hand. “It’s wonderful!” I said.

  Martin grinned. “I hope you’ll remember that if it gets rough and you’re hanging over the rail.”

  “Over the rail?”

  “Yes. You know, seasick?”

  “Oh, seasick.”

  “Yep. If you get seasick you’ll probably wish yourself dead, but everybody does.”

  “You mean everybody gets seasick?”

  “Well, practically.”

  “You mean—you too? Worse than when we went to London?”

  “Lord, yes!” Martin laughed. “A big hard roll of the ship and I’m on my back.”

  This was a sobering thought. “My goodness,” I said.

  Captain Trask was a big man with a seamed, weathered face, a fine big nose, and an air of awe-inspiring authority. I admired him very much and was prouder than ever of my husband when I saw how much the captain liked him. They talked a lot, of places and people that I knew nothing about, so I decided the best thing for me would be to listen and learn—and all the more so because it was apparent that the captain had put me down as little, soft, and generally useless. He had known Jack and Charmian London, and very pointedly every now and then—squinting at me under his heavy brows—he spoke of Charmian.

  “There’s a woman for you,’ ” he’d say. “She had the soft ways of a kitten and the heart of a lioness, and her beat never lived and never will.”

  “You’re right there.” Martin was thoughtful. “She was perfect for Jack. Never a squawk out of her; the best wife a man ever had.”

  “Aye,” the captain nodded with another look at me. “A woman that’s too soft and sweet is like tapioca pudding—fine for them as likes it.” Then he said something about the barometer falling, but I wasn’t interested, and when I climbed into my berth that night I thought about snakes and cannibals and dried human heads and wondered miserably if the day would ever come when I would fail Martin. I fell into a troubled sleep and woke up in the act of pitching from my berth and landing on my shoulder. I tried to get to my feet and found that the floor had taken the angle of our cellar door back in Chanute. Just as I had figured this out, the up part was down and the down part was up. Then I heard a groan. It was Martin.

  “I wish I could die,” he said.

  I did everything I could for the rest of the night to help Martin be a little less miserable. Then, when I saw it was morning, I scrambled into some clothes and went up on deck. It was wonderful, though I had to hang on like mad. It didn’t seem possible there could be waves of such size. They piled up and piled up, until there was one that curled and broke right where I stood. It hit me with the force of a sack of sand, and the next instant I found myself in a swirl of green water and foam, and being swept to the other side of the deck.

  Stunned and limp as a half-drowned kitten, I felt myself being picked up by the back of my jacket, then heard myself roughly ordered below. It was Captain Trask, and he was in a fury that I would show myself above deck on such a day.

  “Why aren’t you sick?” he thundered. “Sick and in your bunk and out of the way like other decent folk!”

  “I don’t want to be sick,” I replied crossly as he pushed me ahead of him down the companionway. “And I don’t like my bunk, and just because you’re a captain of a ship I suppose you think you can order everybody around, but I don’t like being ordered around—”

  We had reached the bottom of the swaying companionway. The captain was still scowling.

  “Well, I’m ordering you right now to stay off that deck until the ropes are strung, understand? Whether you’re washed overboard or not doesn’t interest me. Whether I have to put back to pick you up does interest me. I can’t afford the time. Now you get into your bunk and stay there!”

  “Then what do I do about breakfast? Martin doesn’t want any, but I’m starved, and if you think I’m going back to bed without any breakfast—”

  Captain Trask squinted at me. “How about some hot cakes,” he said, “and a lot of butter and syrup, maybe some pig sausages and fried potatoes and a couple of cups of coffee?”

  “Wonderful!”

  The captain grinned. “All right, sailor,” he said. “Get into some dry clothes and you shall have breakfast with me.” When I found that everybody aboard was sick except the captain and me—and, I suppose, some of the crew—everything brightened, especially when it became apparent that the captain now regarded me as a right and good companion for Martin. Nothing more than this could I ask of either heaven or earth, and cannibals and snakes became mere trifles to take in my stride. At least, so I thought.

  All the way across the Pacific to Honolulu, to Samoa, to Pago Pago, and finally to Sydney, Australia, my confidence grew. The captain became jollier by the minute and even played deck games with us, and when, on parting at Sydney, he told Martin I was “all right,” it seemed to me I ought to burst, I was so proud. It took a few cockroaches to lay me low.

  It was several days later. We were on our way from Sydney to the Solomon Islands aboard a tramp steamer, and while I longed for the departed comforts and cleanliness of Captain Trask’s ship, I did what I was sure Charmian London would have done under the circumstances. I wore a smile. The captain, crew, and ship were filthy and the cockroaches everywhere, some no less than two inches long. The mess swarmed with them, and I saw Martin every now and then jounce them off his shoes and go right on eating. Doggedly, I did the same and derived a glum satisfaction out of telling myself that from matters such as these, one probably acquired that easy, well-traveled look.

  It’s one thing to be brave when you’re awake; it’s another when you’re asleep. Something crossing my cheek that night startled me into instant wakefulness, and in the dim light I saw a roach scurry across my pillow, then heard it drop to the floor. I clenched my teeth against a scream, then suddenly was aware of a curious activity at the tips of my fingers. My hands lay at my sides on the sheet which was my only cover, and I found, on inspection, that roaches were nibbling at my fingernails. My screams must have been heard from stem to stern of the ship.

  Martin, laughing, took me in his arms. “That’s nothing,” he said. “Wait till you get down to the Solomons. Those coconut crabs down there aren’t polite enough just to give you a manicure; they take your fingers right off!”

  * * *

  —

  The next few months were disappointing and anxious ones. In whalers, luggers, and merchants we sailed from island to island of the Solomon group and found many primitive people. We even found some that were said to be cannibals, but always Martin shook his head and pushed on. Often I found this difficult to understand. It was incredible to me that anywhere in the world there could be wilder, more vicious-looking people than we had already seen. Because our funds were so limited I knew we couldn’t cruise about indefinitely, and Martin insisted that because our film was so limited we could use it only when he was satisfied that he had found natives that were completely untouched by civilization. Then he pointed out that all of those we had seen so far had been under the firm control of British government authorities. They were subdued, tamed. Nothing I could say would persuade him to the contrary. His mouth, tender and fine, could become very stubborn, and his eyes, usually gay and carefree, would take on a look of pure, hard steel.

  There were those aboard the different boats we took, traders and the like, who couldn’t understand Martin’s not herding some of the savage-looking natives together, giving them trade stuff, and “staging” some scenes. It had been done, they said, but then, as always, Martin was a patient, persistent artist who would never be satisfied with anything but the truth. It seems to me that everywhere he went he asked hun
dreds of questions. He made hundreds of notes, and finally his decision was made. Malekula, the second-largest island of the New Hebrides group, was, he learned, the subject of disputed ownership between the French and British, and this meant a lack of the usual patrolling and discipline. If man in his savage and original state existed anyplace in the world, he existed here. Further investigation revealed that there were parts of Malekula that had never been explored by white men, and it was rumored that cannibalism and head-hunting were common practices.

  We returned to Sydney, where Martin searched out the captain of a small ship that was leaving in a few days for the upper part of the Hebrides group. Once aboard, and our destination and purpose made known, a storm of protest and warning broke around us. The captain himself came to us, bringing a copy of the Pacific Island Pilot.

  “Now, you listen to me, young fellow,” he said. “I don’t want to scare the little lady, but it says right here in the Pilot that the natives of Malekula are a wild and savage race, that they’re treacherous, and it’s a known fact that they still practice cannibalism!”

  Martin smiled. He was happier than he’d been in months.

  “I’ve had some experience with such natives,” he said, “and with plenty of tobacco and trade stuff, we’ll be safe enough.”

  A recruiter of blacks, heavy, scarred, and rough, broke into the conversation.

  “The captain’s right, sir,” he said to Martin. “Why, I wouldn’t go onto that island for a thousand pounds; at least, not without a gunboat at my back.”

  “I’m afraid we don’t happen to have a gunboat in our equipment,” Martin grinned.

  “If you go through with this, you’ll find it’s no joking matter,” the captain growled.

  “But why should the natives hurt us?” I said, putting in my bit. “My husband is only going to take their pictures.”

  “Take their pictures!” the captain snorted. “When you two get close enough to them for that, you can tell each other good-bye!” He drank noisily from a flask, then continued: “Pictures of them cannibals! Why, they’re ugly as the devil’s own brats—and that’s what they are, devils! Savage, cruel, murderous black devils!” His voice thundered. “And what’s more, I’ll not go off my course to set you down on Malekula, understand? Not with a woman along! It would be murder, that’s what, woman murder, and I’ll not be guilty of it!”

  I couldn’t even look in Martin’s direction, for it was I—my coming with him—that hampered all his plans. Already we were in sight of Malekula. In length it was seventy-five miles or more, the recruiter told us, shaped like an hourglass and about thirty miles across at its widest part.

  “There’s around forty thousand natives on that island,” he continued. “Strong fellows too, especially among the Big Nambas, but much as I’m needing blacks, I’ll get ’em someplace else.”

  Forty thousand natives on one island. I was staggered.

  Martin’s interest sharpened. “Strong fellows, you say, the Big Nambas?”

  “The most powerful tribe on the island, and they’ve got a chief, Nagapate, that’s a holy terror.”

  Martin prodded the recruiter with more questions and learned that the Big Nambas, who derived their name from wearing a huge pandanus fiber, occupied the greater portion of the north end of the island, and that by sufferance another tribe, known as the Small Nambas, was permitted to occupy a minor portion. The latter, he said, wore merely a bit of twisted leaf.

  I could see from the way Martin looked off toward the blue-gray mass that was Malekula that somehow he would contrive to get there. A smaller shape, separated from the big island, now appeared, and quickly Martin asked about it.

  “That’s the island of Vao,” the recruiter said. “About a mile and a half across and maybe four hundred natives.” He paused, with a look at me. A couple of tears had dripped off the end of my nose. “You know,” he said, “I think Vao would be the very ticket for you and the little lady here. Four hundred wild men would be about as many as you could get in that camera of yours anyhow, and from all reports, even though the British patrol boat circles the island every so often and could rake it from end to end with fire, I hear that those fellows on Vao still bury their old people alive and eat long pig.”

  “And how far did you say Vao was from Malekula?” Martin asked cautiously.

  “About a mile,” the recruiter answered, “and there’s a French mission there, too, run by Father Prin.”

  Martin seized his hand: “A great idea,” he shouted. “Great!”

  The captain eyed us suspiciously as we debarked at Vao; he knew that we could get to Malekula from there with very little trouble. Then he shrugged. If we were reckless enough to risk being served up as “long pig,” that was our lookout, not his.

  * * *

  —

  Father Prin gave us a hearty, if puzzled, welcome. This dear soul, who had worked among these people on the small island for nearly thirty years, was a volume in himself, and all the more so when one considered that the only discernible result of his labor was a mere seventeen converts. I marveled at his patience and loved him for his faith.

  The little mud-and-grass church, with its quiet images and dim altar, seemed strange and beautiful on this distant island. The priest’s small, three-room home adjoining it was a sanctuary of cleanliness and repose. It was here we rested and made our plans.

  Father Prin gravely shook his head and confirmed the stories we had already heard of the cruelties practiced even on Vao. How much worse it must be on Malekula, where even the most hardened recruiters feared to land, should, he said, be perfectly apparent to us. I could see reproach in his eyes as he looked at Martin, and, worse, I could see that Martin himself was beginning to fear for me. Always me!

  With evening the boo-boos (native drums) began to sound back in the bush of Vao, and suddenly Father Prin pointed from the window of his hut. Martin and I looked, and there at the edge of the clearing we saw peering at us men whose black faces were so seamed and hideous that it was hard to believe they were men at all.

  “Th-that thing through their noses,” I heard myself asking in a squeaky whisper. “What’s that?”

  “Bone,” Father Prin replied. “Human bone.”

  Martin drew me away from the window. “I don’t know, darling,” he said, “but I’m afraid I can’t risk taking you to Malekula. You’ll be safe here with Father Prin. Please, Osa, for my sake.”

  Suddenly I was in a rage, with every bit of fear burned out of me.

  “If you go, I’m going with you, Martin Johnson. That’s what I came for and that’s how it’s going to be—the whole way. The whole way!” I repeated.

  Seeing that I would not be swerved, the good priest gave us every help in his power, and a twenty-eight-foot whaleboat together with a crew of five trustworthy Vao men was put at our disposal. Before sun-up the following morning we were stowing our cameras, film, and trade goods in the boat. Then, hoisting a small jib and a miniature mainsail, we pushed off for Malekula, with Father Prin giving us his blessings from the shore.

  Following the good father’s advice, we first landed at a small saltwater village on the Vao side of Malekula, where the natives, because of their accessibility, had learned to respect the British gunboats and to recognize authority beyond their own, and where we added three more to our crew. Their being Malekulans would help us, Father Prin felt, to contact the bush people of the island. We then set sail for Tanemarou Bay, in the Big Nambas’ territory.

  The trip along the rocky shore was not very reassuring so far as the aims of our little expedition were concerned, for only now and then did we catch a glimpse of the natives, and they vanished as we rapidly approached. This apparent timidity eased our fears for our own personal safety, however, and when we reached the beach at Tanemarou, a strip of dazzling yellow sand separating the sea from the thick bush, we found it deserted, and stepped
boldly out of the whale boat.

  “How does this look to you, kitten?” Martin asked. His eyes were dancing with excitement.

  “Why—all right, I guess,” I answered doubtfully. Then, trying to be funny, “But I thought somebody said something about forty thousand natives on Malekula.”

  “Don’t worry. They’re back there in the bush, plenty of them.”

  He pantomimed to the men to take the trade stuff out of the boat. Our one precious motion-picture camera he handled himself.

  “Looks like a kind of trail into the bush over there,” I said. Then I stopped short. “Oh!” I said.

  A lone native had appeared out of the jungle. Our men, seeing him, moved back toward the boat—and with good reason. He was the most horrible-looking creature I had ever laid eyes on. Coal black and incredibly filthy, his shock of greasy hair and heavy wool beard were probably the nesting place of every sort of vermin.

  A gorget of pig’s teeth hung around his neck, he wore a bone through his nose, and he was entirely naked except for a large breechclout of dried pandanus fiber. As he came nearer, I saw that his deeply creviced face was horribly distorted. It made me think of a grotesque mask—one I had seen on a theater program in New York, I think—representing “Tragedie.” I moved closer to Martin.

  The black spoke in a gutteral Bêche-de-Mer that astonished me with its scattering of English words.

  “My word! Master! Belly belong, me walk about too much!” He pressed his hands dramatically to his stomach.

  I looked at Martin incredulously. We had come to Malekula warned and forewarned of natives who dealt swift and savage death to intruders, to be met by a native with a stomachache!

  We rocked with laughter—which doubtless was part relief—then I opened our kit and poured out a small handful of cascara tablets. Martin explained carefully to the gaping native that he was to take part of them when the sun went down and the other part when the sun came up. The native listened with apparent intentness to the end of the instructions, then opened his slobbery mouth and downed all the tablets at one gulp.