I Married Adventure

by Osa Johnson

  “He stop along ground,” they explained.

  We had drawn attention to the old man, unfortunately, and the chiefs, deciding with relentless logic that he had outlived his usefulness, buried him alive, as was their custom. He had been permitted life this long, Atree cheerfully informed us, because he once had been an important chief.

  * * *

  —

  With his laboratory work complete, and the equipment in order, so that we could leave at a moment’s notice when a boat did put in at Vao, Martin grew daily more restless.

  “Why not take some pictures of the Vao natives while we wait?” I suggested one day.

  Martin shrugged. “I can’t get up much interest in them—not after the Malekulans. Too tame.”

  My husband agreed, finally, that perhaps something interesting would develop. Next morning, with Atree as guide, we went into the interior of the little island. There we took pictures of the villages, the huts, the boo-boos. The natives paid very little attention to us. Obviously they resented our presence on their island, but only mildly. We ran across a minor feast, the birth of a boy. Because every event of birth, marriage, or death is celebrated with a feast, pigs play an extremely important part in the lives of these natives. Pigs are wealth with which a man may buy a wife. The number of pigs he has killed on the hunt is the measure of his prowess, and pigs’ tusks are the New Hebrides money. Most natives keep them in a “bokus belong bell,” a European-made box obtained from the traders, in which a bell rings when the lid is raised. The idea must have originated not out of necessity but with some smart trader, for, as Martin loved to tell our friends and business associates back in the States, “these people are uncivilized, therefore they do not steal.”

  We had started back to our camp “home” when we heard, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, a woman’s piercing screams. Pushing as quickly as we could through the thick undergrowth, we came upon a scene which for sheer horror I have never seen duplicated.

  A young native girl lay writhing on the ground in an agony of pain. Two great holes had been burned in the fleshy parts of her right leg, just above and below the knee.

  “One fellow man, him name belong Nowdi, he ketchum plenty coconuts, he ketchum plenty pigs, he ketchum plenty Mary [woman],” Atree explained, completely unmoved.

  It seemed that Nowdi had paid a top price of twenty pigs for this girl, but she would not live with him, and four times had run away. Each time she was caught and brought back. The last time she eluded her captor for nearly six months but was caught hiding in the jungle. The chiefs of the village then had passed sentence, and what we had come upon was the result. Four men had held the girl, Atree said, while a fifth placed a white-hot stone in the hollow of her knee, then drew her leg back until the heel touched the thigh. It had been bound there for an hour.

  That was the custom, Atree concluded pleasantly, and I remembered one or more women in every native village we had visited whose leg had been drawn and crippled just as this girl’s would be when it was healed.

  Only a few moments before, the thong had been cut and the blackened stone, carrying some of the girl’s flesh with it, had rolled perhaps a foot away and lay there, still smoking. Jeering, the men jerked the girl to her feet and told her to run away—if she could.

  I must have fainted, for I found myself being carried in Martin’s arms. Atree was carrying the camera, and we were beyond reach of the tortured girl’s screams.

  Chapter 13

  It must have been all of a month after our return to Vao. Each day we had waited with steadily decreasing patience for a boat, any boat, to put in there. I was giving Martin his supper when right before my eyes I saw a large schooner steaming into the little harbor.

  “Martin! Look!” That’s all I could think of to say.

  We ran down to the beach, got into our little canoe, and paddled straight out to what we agreed was the queerest but most welcome vessel we had ever seen. Nearly as wide in the beam as she was long, she reminded us both of a very fat woman as she moved to what she decided was a satisfactory spot for anchorage. As we paddled up under her bow we found she bore the astonishing name of Amour. And, to our delight, we learned that her commander and owner was none other than Captain Charles Moran, whom we had met more than a year before in the Solomon Islands.

  Fortunately for us, the captain had no particular destination. He was merely sailing about, picking up copra wherever he could find it, and we were overjoyed when he agreed to rent his schooner to us. Together with his brother, who was the engineer, he probably knew as much about the islands and natives of the South Seas as any living white man. This was indeed luck.

  While the crew was cutting fuel for the Amour, for she was a “wood-burner,” Martin and I loaded our supplies. At dawn the next day we were off.

  With perfect weather to help us, we reached Lambuma Bay on the morning of the third day. This was on the isthmus connecting northern and southern Malekula.

  We had heard many conflicting tales of this section. Some said it was uninhabited; others told of nomadic tribes. We wanted to find out. So, leaving the Amour in charge of a couple of men, we started out with Captain Moran, his brother, and most of the crew as an escort, in search of natives. The moment we landed we knew the territory was populated because of the well-beaten trails leading to the interior. It was beautiful country, gay with tropical birds, and orchids hung from nearly every tree. I carried armfuls of them and felt grander than any lady going to the opera.

  For two days we saw no natives, but on the third morning Martin turned a sharp bend in the trail, around a big banyan-like tree, and almost collided with one. To his astonishment, the man literally melted into the jungle, and the rest of us, right on Martin’s heels, neither saw nor heard him. Again and again we caught fleeting glimpses of these elusive people, but we began to despair of ever getting close enough to photograph them.

  The seeds of these banyan-type trees take root in a palm or other tree and send rope-like tendrils to the ground. Each of these then takes root and gradually thickens into a trunk, often twenty feet in diameter. The trunk grows branches which in turn drop their tendrils, and so on indefinitely, until each tree becomes an individual forest crowned with heart-shaped leaves. It was Martin’s interest in studying the curious construction of these trees that led to the solution of what had been a baffling mystery: the unique talent of the natives for just plain vanishing. It was all very simple, Martin discovered. A ladder made of the tough tendrils had been hung in the center of most of the large clusters. By means of these ladders, plus their natural agility, the natives were able to disappear almost instantaneously into the overhead.

  The more difficult a task, the more stubborn Martin became. He was determined not to go back to the boat until he had secured some pictures of these tree-climbing natives, and his persistence was rewarded. We were having breakfast on the beach one morning when a native, small of stature, finely muscled, and highly intelligent, marched boldly down to us and demanded in bad but vigorous Bêche-de-Mer what we wanted, who we were, where we came from, and what right did we think we had to chase him and his people all over the treetops. In short, they were growing very tired of the whole business.

  Martin, answering in Bêche-de-Mer, started to assure the indignant man that we meant no harm, but he got no further. That, in effect, said our interviewer impatiently, was apparent. He and his people had studied us for days from the branches of the trees. He himself had once been “blackbirded” off to Queensland and hence knew white men and their methods, but what we were up to neither he nor his people could decide, and they were very tired of being worried by us.

  We put a clay pipe, a box of matches, and some tobacco into the man’s lean, strong hands. We talked and he talked. Naturally, it was impossible to convey anything to him about our camera or what we wanted to do with it. He studied us all closely. Captain Moran and his brother held doubtful a
ttention for some minutes, but something about Martin himself apparently assured the man, for abruptly he agreed to lead us to the headquarters of his people.

  The trail along which we were led was one we had already explored, but suddenly our guide turned off into another trail, the entrance to which was masked by cane-grass. We followed this for perhaps a mile and then were brought peremptorily to a halt by our native friend. A born leader if ever there was one, he commanded us to remain where we were, then vanished into the depths of the trees, and it seemed to us, watching him closely, that not so much as a leaf moved. When he reappeared, he was accompanied by three young natives and an old man.

  I stared open-mouthed at this aged native. His bright, shoe-button eyes glinted out from a mass of woolly hair. A set of beautiful white, perfect teeth was visible each time he opened his enormous mouth. His movement were quick, nervous, and sure. His feet were almost ape-like. He could grasp a branch with his great flat feet almost as easily as I could with my hand. Martin’s attempt at a handshake alarmed him, but our presents of trade goods, together with the endorsement of their “envoy,” reassured him.

  We were extremely curious about these unusual people, but all attempts to extract information from them met with utter failure. They talked a great deal, but only among themselves, and they completely ignored our Bêche-de-Mer. Their appearance, while grotesque, was peaceful, and when they rubbed my skin to see if the color would come off, examined my hair to see if it was really yellow and straight, and fingered my boots admiringly, I felt no apprehension whatever.

  Some wore the clout of pandanus fiber of the Big Nambas, and others were scantily draped with leaves after the fashion of the Small Nambas. They had no villages, built no huts, cultivated no land, raised no livestock. On the contrary, they kept continually on the move and, like monkeys, made the treetops their homes.

  Little by little, after much probing, Martin pieced together the history of these natives and found that what lay behind their nomadic existence on this small and savage island was the history of the larger world repeating itself. In the northern and southern ends of Malekula lived powerful tribes who for generations had preyed upon the lesser tribes of the isthmus, killing their men and carrying off their women and children. The gardens and villages of these peace-loving and industrious people were the centers of attack, and one by one they were abandoned. Without weapons, these people lived in the almost impenetrable jungles of the lower lands and fought simply to exist. Generations later, when we found them, their number had increased to several thousands, and they had learned to elude their invaders by hiding in the dense tops of the trees. Their food consisted almost entirely of whatever wild fruit and nuts they could find, together with an occasional fish caught along the shore of the bay. Refugees from the Big Nambas in the north and Small Nambas in the south accounted for the variations in their dress.

  We spent only five days among these intelligent and interesting people, but with the help of the man who first accosted us and then acted as our guide, Martin secured some extremely fine pictures.

  Back on the boat we sailed at once, and at midnight we were anchored in what is known as the Southwest Bay of Malekula. Early the next morning we launched one of the Amour’s small boats and explored a narrow and sluggish river. The water moved so slowly that a green scum along the banks was left undisturbed, and the fetid smell of rotting vegetation hung heavy in the warm, moist air. Some two miles farther, a bend in the river brought us to our destination, the village of a tribe of longheaded black people.

  We went ashore, taking with us our usual trade stuff and cameras, but these strange natives showed little interest either in us or in our gifts. There were possibly thirty men, women, and children about the small village when we landed, and they stared at us, but without either fear or curiosity. In most people the instinct to live is strong, but these people appeared to be wholly without even this impulse. Their apathy showed in the flabbiness of their bodies, the decay of four or five huts, the disintegration of their idols. These last apparently had fallen to the ground. Very little effort would have restored them to their upright positions, but they were allowed to remain where they were, crumbling into the earth. There were no signs anywhere of either ceremonies or celebration. Mental and physical decay lay heavy here, and, saddened, I drew close to Martin. His sensitive mouth showed that he was affected exactly as I was by the hopeless lives of these people.

  Apparently the only custom kept alive was that of elongating their heads. This was done by binding soft, oiled coconut fiber around the skulls of infants shortly after birth and leaving it there for something over a year. The narrower and longer the head when the basket contrivance was removed, the greater the pride of the mother. That her baby had cried almost without ceasing during this period of distortion was of no concern whatsoever. Martin and I wondered whether this one surviving custom, this one evidence of pride, wasn’t perhaps the very thing that had brought about the decadence of a once alert and virile tribe of natives. Certainly the ancient human heads hanging from the rafters and center poles of the huts, blackened and dried with the smoke of perhaps a hundred years, suggested that these once had been an active and aggressive people.

  On our return to the Amour that evening, Captain Moran’s native men told us excitedly of seeing scores of other natives along the shore of the island, all painted in war colors and armed with guns. This promised to be interesting. Martin whistled happily that night as he polished his camera lenses and loaded our film.

  At daybreak the next morning, Captain Moran and his brother and the five men of the crew, all well armed, took us in the Amour’s sturdy whaleboat on a cruise of the shore.

  We ran along the rocky island coast for perhaps five miles without seeing a trace of the natives. The spiral of smoke from a recent camp on a smooth stretch of beach drew our hopeful attention. We turned the nose of the boat into the shore, but just as we were beaching, our men paddled frantically out again.

  Some twenty of the most ferocious-looking men I had ever seen were marching down to the beach from the jungle. Each carried a gun and all wore paint—nothing else. From the edges of their hair to the soles of their feet, their coal-black bodies had been painted in dizzying designs, with stripes, dots, and circles in yellow, white, blue, and red running a fearful riot. Their bushy hair stood straight out from their heads and bristled with harshly brilliant feathers.

  Peremptorily, these warrior natives signaled to us to land. Martin was beside himself with eagerness. Here was material made to order for the camera, but our native crew, with eyes popping, stubbornly held the boat out beyond the surf, and there was nothing that Captain Moran, either with threats or offers of money, could do about it.

  Martin solved the problem finally by swimming ashore. Our crew moaned dolefully as they watched him and rolled their heads from side to side; they expected momentarily to witness a murder. My face was fixed in what I hoped passed for a confident smile. Then we saw my husband simply walk out of the water straight into the midst of the natives, and next we saw them stacking their guns. Promises of tobacco, Martin said afterward, brought about this miracle.

  Our crew, though still reluctant, now rowed us into shore. As we beached our boat the natives pushed close around us, demanding their tobacco. Our men clutched their guns in panic, assuming this was an attack, but Martin quickly handed out the coveted weed and some clay pipes, and all panic subsided.

  More than solving our immediate problem, Martin’s swimming into shore had won the painted natives completely. They knew they were a fierce-looking people, and to them his bravery was something stupendous. They invited him—then included us—to attend a feast in a village some three miles inland. Martin accepted, after examining their guns and finding that only two contained cartridges and that the rest were broken or too rusty to shoot.

  “All front, these men,” my husband said, grinning at me.

  After
a walk of perhaps half an hour over a good trail, we began to hear the throbbing of jungle drums, and again, as always, the nerve-shattering boom sent a wave of instinctive panic through me. We were now at the foot of a sharp hill, and our escort of twenty painted black men told us that they were permitted to go no farther until summoned, that we must go on alone. We did so, with Captain Moran prodding his reluctant men from the rear and with each difficult step of the climb taking us closer to the boo-boos, which now took on a wilder cadence. The pulses in my throat began to beat chokingly in the same rhythm.

  A short, hard climb brought us to the top of the hill and there, spread before us on a sort of plateau around their huge boo-boos and idols, were more natives than I had ever seen gathered in one place—easily a thousand of them—all naked except for their paint and head feathers. The effect from their viewpoint must have been satisfactorily impressive and frightening. To me it was terrifying, and I saw Martin’s face tighten.

  Abruptly the thud of the boo-boos stopped. Every eye was upon us. There was a moment of tense silence. Then out of the center of the painted throng stepped an old man smeared from head to foot with yellow ocher. We were pushed forward into his immediate presence, and he glared at us in apparent rage. In Bêche-de-Mer he demanded to know what we wanted, and how we dared intrude here. His eyes darted from one to another of us, and I put on my set smile of confidence.

  “We walk about, no more,” Martin explained humbly. “We bringem presents for big fellow master belong village.”

  The old fellow’s eyes narrowed shrewdly, then, grandly and with much chest-thumping, he announced that he was the most important chief of all chiefs, and that therefore he must receive the most presents. Then he pointed out that there were many other lesser chiefs and that we must make presents to all of them. There was no show of either courtesy or diplomacy. He had said “must,” and he meant it. Martin and I exchanged quick looks, hoping we’d have enough stuff to satisfy this greedy chief, and then set about distributing our trade goods. Never before had we given out so much, and never had I known such chaos. The barbarians milled about us, pushing angrily, shouting orders until we were deafened, and there was something in the voices of these natives that chilled me to the marrow. Our men huddled back to back, fingering the triggers of their rifles.