When John Frum Came

by Bill Schroeder

  “Let’s establish a pecking order here,” West said one day. “It’s time we taught these filthy savages who’s really in charge.” The method he had in mind involved bringing back his rifle and a supply of ammunition during one of his visits to the boat.

  “Yani,” he called out in full view of the fishing party on the beach. “Set three of those coconuts on the big rock by the ocean.”

  Yani did as he was told, and while he was walking away from them, West got off a quick shot that made one of them explode. Yani jumped in the air, then fell in the sand, terrified. He had never heard a rifle shot before, much less seen the damage it could do.

  The fishermen dropped their nets, and crowded cautiously around West and his men to find the cause of the exploding coconut. Yani recovered from his fright enough to join them.

  When West had everyone’s attention, he raised the rifle to his shoulder again. The remaining two coconuts were in line, so he decided to take them both out with one shot. He pulled the trigger, and both brown globes flew to pieces.

  The natives grabbed each other for protection at the deafening roar. West told Yani in Pidgin to translate his words so they would understand them. “Tell them that Captain West can blow heads away as easy as coconuts, so don’t get any ideas about having us for dinner any time in the near future.”

  The younger men and boys were impressed with the shooting demonstration but the village elders worried. They had seen what Witmen with guns could do from earlier encounters. The German traders hired mercenaries to “tame” the island when they were colonizing 25 years before. Scores of natives were killed before it was decided that Chase Island would be unsuitable for the plantations they had in mind.

  The most exciting thing Yani found in the inexplicable treasure-trove from the boat was “tinkens” (Pidgin: tin cans) of corned beef. He could not get enough of it. He traded all manner of fresh seafood and fruit for even small portions. The sailors told him that the meat was put in the cans back in Australia, but even they had only a sketchy idea of the technology involved. Yani became preoccupied with the riddle of how the tasty, salted beef got into the can. It also laid the foundation for a lifetime pre-occupation with how the Witmen got the tinkens in the first place.

  ***

  The fact that the Australian authorities classified the Chase Islanders as a Stone Age culture did not hinder them from developing a rather sophisticated philosophy about the nature of reality. Since life did not require a minute to minute struggle to get enough food while dodging carnivorous animals, certain members of the tribe had time to think about how things got the way they were. During the five years since his initiation, Yani had spent the greater part of his time in the company of Ooma, asking questions.

  Knowledge fell into two categories — secular and sacred. “Everyone knows how to fish, grow taro, and hunt for wild pigs,” Ooma explained to Yani at one of the daily kava-drinking sessions. “A boy copies his elders in daily work. He watches — he does.”

  Ooma used his fingers to pick up a burning ember from the fire without apparently burning himself. “A boy learns about fire by burning his fingers.” The shaman ran the sharp edge of a steel knife along the back of left forearm. It made a mark, but did not bleed. “He learns about knives by cutting himself. This is nothing. Life is a learning experience.”

  They both drank some more kava. “Do you understand?” the old man asked.

  Yani lacked the words in any language to express the idea that “Sacred knowledge is paramount.” But he understood that to his people real knowledge ... the knowledge of myths, reading dreams, and the mastery of esoteric formulas was True Knowledge. Knowing how to make a bow was elementary knowledge, very low on the scale of intellectual achievement.

  “I want to be like Ooma,” he told his mentor. “You are one who really knows. I wish to understand. The others do not know.

  “Men say our blood is dying,” Yani said. ”We have not had a raiding party against the kanakas in the bush since I became a man. We pretend war in our dances, but the kanakas live on the far slopes of the volcano. We live by the lagoon. We grow fat and lazy eating fish. Do not our spirits need exercise?”

  Ooma shook his head. “The Witmen took away our protective spirits when they killed so many. I have thought to strengthen our blood by sending you and ten men to the islands just beyond the horizon to the south. You could satisfy our spiritual needs if we had two or three heads.”

  War for the Chase Islanders had nothing to do with economics and territorial expansion. For the past ten years, the vitality of the tribe had been declining. In short, things had been pretty placid. The arrival of the Witmen was creating some deep stirrings. The young men were beginning to show anxiety.

  Yani and Ooma sat in silence for a few minutes, then Yani said, “Why are the Witmen here, Ooma?”

  “I have thought on this many days and nights. From the first day they arrived.”

  Yani did not expect him to blurt out all the answers at once. He knew that the answer would come in the form of a recounting of a myth. His people dismissed the principle of intellectual discovery. To figure something out logically was not the route to credibility. Accepted myths were the sole and unquestionable source of all important truth. Even when a man composed a new melody or dance, he had to authenticate it by claiming that it came in a dream from a deity rather than out of his own head.

  “I have dreamed of Kilibob and Manup. Do you know the story?” the headman said, ready to reveal his enlightenment.

  “No, Ooma. I have not heard it,” Yani said. Any other response would have been disrespectful. Actually, he had heard versions of it dozens of times. If he told Ooma he heard it, it would be a great insult and the conversation would be at an end. Saying he had not, would allow the old man to modify, add to, or completely change the story to fit the situation.

  “Kilibob and Manup were brothers created by Anut, the first god. One day they quarreled about their wives. Manup killed Kilibob. Anut breathed life back into Kilibob and the brothers decided to leave their birthplace. Manup made a small canoe, while Kilibob built a ship with a bottom like the one on the beach.”

  Yani liked it when Ooma got down to the relevant details. He listened attentively.

  “The two brothers launched their vessels. Kilibob‘s was so much better, that Manup departed in shame from the sunrise side of the island to find a new home. Kilibob then provisioned his own vessel. He stocked it with iron tools and food plants and tinkens. He created men and kept them below deck. When all was ready, he left. He sailed from the sunset side of the island to find other places.

  “At each of the big islands he put a man ashore. He offered him the choice between a rifle, like these Witmen have, and a bow and arrow. He let them choose between a hollow boat like the one on the beach and a native canoe. He offered them taro and breadfruit, or they could have tinkens. In each case, the man rejected the rifle. He would say, ‘This is a short and useless lump of wood.’ Then he chose the bow and arrow because it was lighter and easier to handle.

  “He rejected the hollow boat with a round bottom because it rocked in the choppy sea. He accepted the canoe. With its outrigger, it rode steady and firm. The man rejected the tinkens and chose the taro and the breadfruit plants.

  “When all the men he created were placed on the islands, Kilibob sailed a long distance. He found a country where the Witmen lived. He gave them everything that was left in his boat. They took the rifles and the boats, and the tinkens which the islanders turned down because of their own stupidity.”

  Yani was spellbound. “Then the Witmen took Kilibob’s gifts. Blackfella,” he said using his new Pidgin word for native, “had to live with poor sticks and what he could find? Right?”

  “More important,” Ooma added, “Kilibob also taught them the ritual to get knives of iron,” pointing to the one on Yani’s belt. “He taught them the formula for making magic food in tinken. When they say the words, they get more food without a garden.
They get metal tools just by asking.”

  “How can Blackfella get back Kilibob’s gifts?” Yani wanted to know.

  Ooma thought back to the slaughter his tribe had endured when the island was taken over by the German trading companies when he was a boy, and then humiliation at the hands of the Australian authorities. Almost from the beginning of their contact, the islanders had envied the material wealth of the white men. He had heard from island traders that efforts by black natives to get the things the Europeans had had ended in disaster.

  He did his best to explain to Yani the stories he had heard, but the young man’s own personal experience was too limited for him to truly understand. However, he did know that others had tried.

  Ooma indulged himself in a bit of reading the future. “After a war with the Witmen, Kilibob and Manup will be friends again,” he said. “They will return and bring a period of peace and plenty. At the homecoming of the two brothers, they will provide us with the goods Kilibob took away before. We will have the rifles, not to fight each other, but the Witmen.”

  Yani was enthralled. He now had sacred knowledge of what lay ahead for the Chase Islanders, indeed, without realizing it, for the whole Pacific. Now he wanted to go to the Witman’s island and find Kilibob. He must be persuaded to make up with his brother, and return to his people with the gifts that were due them.

  Chapter 3

  It was one month to the day since Captain West and the good ship Salvation had been deposited on the shores of Chase Island. The day started with Gash severely beating one of the men who had loaned him a wife. He had left the man with a scar like the one that had earned him his name. Afterwards, he ran down to the boat to get away from the injured man’s relatives. Retribution was sure to follow.

  The Englishman and the other two crewmen were putting the finishing touches on the yawl in preparation for their departure. They had loaded breadfruit, bananas, and coconuts aboard and filled the water casks themselves, since the boat was still taboo to the natives. West was aware of raised voices that carried from the village and a number of belligerent looking men, who were carrying war spears.

  They were addressing the elders, and Ooma was trying to quiet them down. Yani sat with the men who were not involved and listened to the arguments. It was quite simple: it was clear the Witmen were getting ready to leave the island, but they had not cleared up their accounts. The sailors had had sex with the wives of these men numerous times. All they had received in return was some tobacco, and a small amount of whiskey that was left in some of the bottles that were stored on board.

  “What is it you want from the Witmen?” Ooma asked.

  “We have decided that we should each receive one pig,” one of the self-appointed spokesmen said. “It is only fair. They have used our women for their pleasure for a full turn of the moon.”

  “They have no pigs,” Ooma pointed out. “They had nothing when they came here, and are leaving with food we have provided. We are better off with them out of our village.”

  The same young warrior that made a similar suggestion when they arrived, again proposed “I am pooja. I must not be dishonored by ‘trash men.’ I say we should take their heads.”

  This time the reaction of the crowd indicated that they liked the idea. “We have not had a battle with an enemy in many years,” an older warrior said loudly. “We have been dishonored, and their spirits deserve to be ours.”

  “I agree. Let’s take their heads in payment.”

  “Then Kilibob’s boat will become ours. We can go to their island and bring back all their gifts,” said a man who had heard the story Ooma now told on a regular basis during kava sessions.

  “They have a rifle,” Ooma cautioned. “You have seen what it can do to coconuts. I have seen what it can do to a man.”

  “I have whispered my secret protection into the paint that covers my shield,” one of the men said. “Their rifle will be useless against my spirit protection.”

  “Manup told me in a dream that we should kill them,” still another voice said.

  Yani got up and slipped away from the heated discussion. He headed down to the boat and went directly to West. “You owe men pigs. You not have pigs. They take your heads,” he told him in Pidgin. “They will be here in a short time.”

  “Let them come,” West boasted, slapping a cartridge into the chamber of the rifle propped against the side of the boat. “I’ll shoot any bloody spear-chucker that has the guts to come out to the beach.”

  Gash, Shim-shi and Bano looked worried. They did not share West’s confidence. “We only have a few minutes to get clear of the reef while the tide is high enough,” Shim-shi said. “We go chop-chop.”

  Bano and Gash jumped down from the deck where they had been running up the main sail. They started shoving the hull of the boat up and out of the sand that held it. Shim-shi was waist-high in shallow waves and pulling on a rope in an effort to get the sailboat into deeper water.

  West watched the edge of the jungle and saw the pooja were lining up with their spears and shields at the ready. A charge was about to be mounted.

  “Yani! Get up here on deck with me,” West yelled.

  “Boat taboo. No can touch boat,” Yani replied.

  “Fuck the taboo. I said get up here.” He fired a round into the sand next to where Yani stood. In fear, he fell to the ground, and from the jungle, it looked as though West had shot him.

  Ooma was shocked. He regarded Yani as a son. “Pooja! Pooja! Pooja!” he shrieked.

  The warriors let loose a flight of spears that gave the impression of a flock of birds taking off from the jungle. They all fell short by a couple yards.

  Pointing to the fallen Yani, West called out, “Gash, drag him over here to the boat. We’ll use him as a hostage. We’ll use him for a shield.”

  Gash was a large and strong man. He literally picked Yani up by the thick mop of red hair on the top of his head and handed the frightened youth to West. The Captain dragged him up on deck by the hair and forced him to his feet. He held the young islander in front of him as he fired a shot at the line of dark-skinned men slowly advancing toward the lagoon. One fell. They all stopped momentarily and looked. It was the man whose shield was covered with the bulletproof paint.

  West kicked Yani’s feet out from under him, and gave him a quick butt stroke with the rifle, knocking him out. This freed his hands so he could reload his rifle again. His second shot found a second victim.

  However, it was also the signal for another hail of spears. Gash was just clamoring aboard when a slender, barbed spear pierced his arm and he lost his grip. But, at the same moment, a breeze magically billowed the mainsail, and the Salvation briskly pulled out into the deeper water, and headed for the flooded reef. Shim-shi climbed up the rope on to the deck, where he found Bano already frantically working the tiller. In a surprising display of seamanship and luck, West headed his craft toward the shallow opening in the reef. He cleared it with only inches to spare.

  The salt spray splashed on Yani’s face, restoring him to consciousness. When he figured out where he was, he looked over the gunnels toward the shore. He could see Ooma waving something at the departing Witmen. It was Gash’s head.

  ***

  For most of his first day on the small boat, Yani just sat on the deck and looked at the water. He had been off the island on an outrigger, but never out of sight of land. He knew that to the south of Chase were islands with other people. They came on occasion to trade, and then paddled out of sight again. Being out on this magnificent, endless blue sea with no land on the horizon was frightening. He also knew they weren’t going south; they were going toward the setting sun.

  J.R. West paid little attention to Yani and when he did, no doubt gave thought to throwing him overboard to save on food and water. Shim-shi offered him a cup of water and a banana in the middle of the afternoon. Of his three shipmates, the Korean was the friendliest. He put his hand on the islander’s shoulder and said things in his native l
anguage that had a reassuring tone.

  “If you plan to keep him as a pet,” West said sarcastically, you better teach him to do some useful tricks. This is too big a boat for just the three of us.” Short of an emergency, the Englishman was too busy being Captain to do any physical labor himself. Bano was the helmsman, and Shim-shi wrestled with the ragged sails. Nothing had been done to improve the condition of the boat while they were on the island. For one thing, there was no usable material on the island to work with. From their conversations, Yani had determined that they had run out of water two days before he found the boat drifting into Chase Island’s lagoon. Like fools, they had drunk large amounts of gin and whiskey with the net result of dehydration and heat stroke. The liquor had come from their last port of call where (Gash had boasted) they had killed a trading post operator and two native employees. In their hasty departure, they took all the food and liquor they could carry, but no water. Then, as now, they set sail for wherever the wind might take them.

  At first, the Chase islander did not understand the theory or principles of sailing, but worked the ropes as Shim-shi showed him. In a matter of a few days, he was quite at home and resigned to the new adventure that lay before him. Bano taught him how to open the cans of food from the storage locker in the galley, which he did whenever he had the chance. He was disappointed to find that some of them contained vegetables and usually left those uneaten.

  Aside from keeping the boat heading westward, there was little to do but talk. Yani liked his new-found language, a sing-song mélange of words from everywhere. He had a very strange introduction to the ways of the Witmen, and he found that he could convey ideas that were foreign to his native dialect.

  For five days, the little boat corrected its course each evening by steering into the setting sun. With its four-man crew it went from one small, uninhabited atoll to another. They were looking for anyone who could tell them where they were, and were ready to beg, trade, or preferably steal what they wanted.