The White Witch of the South Seas

by Dennis Wheatley

  ‘He sounds a most delightful man,’ Gregory remarked.

  ‘He is, and a brave one. He won both the O.B.E. and the M.C. in the last war. The Fijian Chiefs are splendid people. Ratu Penaia has the D.S.O. and the O.B.E., and both the Ratu George and the Ratu Mara are O.B.Es. Ratu George is the direct descendant of the hereditary King of Fiji. He is greatly respected by everybody. The Ratu Mara rules the widespread Lau group to the east of Fiji, and is the Chief Minister under the new Constitution.’

  James grinned at Gregory. ‘He is the cousin I mentioned when you remarked on my height that night we met in Rio. Mara stands six foot seven and his wife, the sweet Adi Lala, is taller than you are. The Fijian Chiefly Families are all highly educated, modern in thought and wise in their decisions. They are greatly honoured by their people, who still have the good sense to be guided by them in everything.’

  ‘I find it a little surprising,’ Gregory said, ‘that a family who were cannibals only one hundred years ago should have developed into such cultured people.’

  ‘That, I think,’ said Knox-Mawer, ‘is due to their being largely of Polynesian descent. As you doubtless know, the line dividing the Polynesian peoples from the Melanesians runs only a little to the east of Fiji, and they are utterly different races. The Polynesians of the Eastern Pacific are light-skinned, comparatively gentle and evolved a high culture of their own. Based on root similarities in language, there is even a theory now that Scandinavian Vikings came via South America to the Pacific and were among their ancestors. The Melanesians, on the other hand, infiltrated into the Western Pacific from New Guinea and came of Negroid stock. Until comparatively recent times they remained cruel and primitive savages.

  ‘The Fijians were originally pure Melanesians. But Tonga lies not very far to the south-east of Fiji, and the Tongans, a very brave and adventurous people, are Polynesians. For many years they not only frequently raided the Fijis but established permanent settlements in some parts of the Group. At times some of the leading Fiji Chiefs secured them as allies against their enemies. That led to intermarriage between the ruling castes of the two countries and, of course, the Tongan warriors often had children by the Fijian women they captured.

  ‘The present people of Fiji include many of mixed blood, and it was not only the Tongans who account for that. The white man made his contribution. Then those who settled here found the Fijians unwilling to work on their cotton and sugar plantations, so in the 1860s they began to import labour from the islands to the north and west of Fiji, where there were great numbers of hardy natives for the taking, I say “taking” because it virtually developed into a slave trade. Thousands of them were kidnapped and many thousands more induced to agree to work here for six years for what seemed to those innocents a good wage, and a promise to be shipped home when their time was up. But the planters played the wicked old game of selling them goods that got them into debt, and very few of the poor wretches ever saw their homes again.’

  After pausing to light a cigarette, the Judge continued to tell Gregory how Fiji had achieved civilisation the hard way.

  ‘The traffic had raised such indignation in the United States that there had been talk of America putting a stop to it by annexing the Fijis; but nothing came of that. Yet with every year it became clearer that the country needed some form of stable government. It had developed into a positive hell, where every man was a law unto himself. Half the white inhabitants were the dregs of humanity: castaways, deserters, escaped convicts and beachcombers who had brought with them liquor, firearms and disease. With whip and gun they terrorised the natives and battened upon them. The more prosperous defied the local Chiefs and ignored their ordinances. The warring feuds continued and tribes who were victorious carried out orgies of cruelty.

  ‘There had already emerged two major, if small, powers in Viti Levu: the people of Bau Island, which lies some twelve miles off the east coast, and those of Rewa, who occupied the delta region in the south-east of the island, where afterwards Suva was to become the capital of the whole group. In 1843 a war between them broke out. As usual, it did not concern the interests of the common people on either side, but was brought about by a quarrel between two High Chiefs.

  ‘The Principal wife of Tui Tanoa, King of Bau, happened to be a sister of Tui Dreketi, King of Rewa, and she was unfaithful to her husband. On being found out, she fled to her brother. Instead of returning or punishing her, Tui Dreketi gave her in marriage to a Rewa Chief. In the light of Fiji customs there could have been no greater insult. Tui Tanoa called on his son, Prince Thakobau, to avenge him.

  ‘Thakobau was an outstanding personality. He was brave, cunning, wise within the limits of his upbringing and by nature as well as birth an aristocrat. The war with Rewa went on for years, and in the end Thakobau won it, but only through the backing of King George of Tonga, who allowed Prince Ma’afu to bring a Tongan army to Thakobau’s assistance.

  ‘On his father’s death, Thakobau conceived the ambition of becoming King of all Fiji, and this turned Ma’afu into his enemy. The Tongan Prince was a man of great ability. As his King’s representative, he controlled the greater part of the islands in the north of the group and had a powerful army. There followed more years of wars, intrigue and treachery. There were still forty petty Kings in the Fijis, but real power lay in the hands of fewer than a dozen. At length these were brought together, Thakobau and Ma’afu agreed to sink their differences and in 1860 the Fijis were made a Confederacy.

  ‘Unfortunately, it did not last, because Thakobau and Ma’afu quarrelled again. Meanwhile, a reign of anarchy continued. A British Consul had long been resident in Fiji, but he had not been given the powers even of a magistrate over his own nationals. The white settlers rode roughshod over Thakobau’s laws and American traders blackmailed him into making over to them large tracts of land in exchange for weapons to fight his wars against the tribes up in the mountains. Up till 1854, deaf to the pleas of missionaries, he continued to feast off his captured enemies. But in that year he suffered a sudden change of heart. The missionary Water-house succeeded in converting him, and on Sunday, April 30th, he was baptised into the Christian faith as Ebenezer.

  ‘His conversion made no difference to the universal strife. In 1867 a Confederacy of Western Fiji was formed, Thako-bau gave his people a constitutional government and was formally crowned King in Bau. But the British Government refused to accept his jurisdiction over their subjects and he came no nearer to controlling his own.

  ‘For some years past the more responsible settlers had agitated for Fiji to be annexed by Britain. Thakobau, although not liking the idea, had been persuaded to make offers of cession in both 1858 and ‘59, but the British Government had declined. Early in the seventies, as the only means of establishing law and order, another appeal was made, and backed by the probability that if Britain did not take over Fiji, either America or Germany would, Ma’afu at last consented to accept Thakobau as his overlord. In 1874 Benjamin Disraeli, the champion of British interests throughout the world, placed Fiji at the feet of his Queen as another jewel in the Imperial Crown.

  ‘Sir Hercules Robinson, the Governor of New South Wales, arrived in H.M.S. Pearl to represent the Queen and the cession took place on October 10th. Thakobau, by then an old, white-haired, bearded, but still stalwart man, was at last to find peace and honour after a lifetime of troubles. With great dignity he declared, “We give Fiji unreservedly to the Queen of Britain that she may rule us justly and affectionately and that we may live in peace and prosperity.” Then, with true nobility, he handed his old and favourite war club to Sir Hercules, saying that it was the only thing he possessed that might interest Her Majesty, and that he sent it to her with his love, confident that she, and her children who succeeded her, would watch over the welfare of his people.’

  It was a touching scene that Knox-Mawer had evoked, and after a moment his wife went on to speak of the passionate loyalty that the Fijians felt towards the present Queen. In the fifties, w
hen the British forces had been hard-pressed by the Communist revolutionaries in Malaya, volunteers had been called for. The word had gone round, ‘Our Queen needs us’, and boys of sixteen had made their way from the outer islands to volunteer. Many of the Chiefs had led their troops in person. Skilled in jungle warfare, the Fijian battalions had become the terror of the enemy and had covered themselves with glory.

  Next morning, as Manon was loath to leave Gregory, all three of them took the aircraft for Suva. The Dakota flew only at a few thousand feet; so, during the short journey, Gregory was able to get a good view of the country over which they passed—the blue sea creaming white on reefs and beaches, then dense forests both down in the valleys and clothing the slopes of high mountains, until on lower ground patches of cultivation could be seen, and soon they were coming down over the great arc of Suva Bay to the little airport.

  Hunt’s had secured them rooms at the Grand Pacific Hotel. On arriving they found it to be a happy mixture of the old and the new. The centre of the main block was a series of spacious, lofty chambers leading into one another—hall, lounge, bar and dining room overlooking the bay. There were white-clad Indian servants, and fans in the ceilings, which gave it the atmosphere of old Colonial days; while adjacent to it there was a three-storey modern block, in which they were given air-conditioned rooms looking out on the pleasant, palm-fringed garden and an oval swimming pool.

  After lunch it was much too hot to go out; but at four o’clock Gregory and James had a swim in the pool, then drove the half-mile into the town to Hunt’s Travel Agency. At their request, Mr. Hunt himself saw them. He proved to be a big, cheerful man and they learned that he had formerly been a Police Inspector. No doubt it was his police training which had made him such an efficient business man, for in fewer than ten years he had built up an organisation that could offer every amenity in the island at a few hours’ notice.

  But Gregory’s request was unusual. He said that later he might want to hire a motor cruiser and make use of Hunt’s fleet of cars, but for the moment he wanted the name of the firm most likely to be able to provide equipment for salvaging a wreck.

  Mr. Hunt at once got on the telephone and made an appointment for them to see a Mr. Trollope down at the docks in half an hour’s time, then drew a sketch map showing how they could reach his office.

  As it was not far, they decided to walk, so that Gregory could see something of the town. For a capital it was small, with only one main street. There were a few modern blocks, most of the buildings were in the Edwardian Colonial style, or earlier. The first thing that struck Gregory about it was its cleanliness and orderliness, in contrast to the cities in Central and South America from which he had come, and the sight of the six-foot-plus Fijian policemen in their smart uniforms gave him real pleasure.

  The shops were adequate but not impressive. Nearly all of them were run by Indians or Chinese. Souvenirs and native work were to be seen in abundance, also beautifully-embroidered silk wraps, jackets and blouses at incredibly cheap prices. But it was the polyglot population in the streets that interested Gregory most. Hindu ladies with caste marks and wearing colourful saris, bronzed Britons in bush shirts and khaki shorts, Chinese in shoddy European suits, and tall Fijians, made still taller by their enormous puffs of thick, silky, black hair and wearing kilt-like sulus, jostled one another on the pavements.

  Crossing a bridge over an inlet from the sea, they passed the big covered market, and soon afterwards came to the docks and Mr. Trollope’s office. He was a small, sallow-faced man who looked as though he had a dash of native blood. After stating the business he had come upon, Gregory left most of the talking to James, as he was better able to describe the equipment which would be required.

  On learning that James was a Ratu, Mr. Trollope treated him with considerable respect, and for a while they discussed the technicalities of salvaging. In due course it emerged that Mr. Trollope could find the gear that was required, with a professional diver named Hamie Baker, and would be willing to hire out these facilities for three months. Gregory then agreed the price asked, and his willingness to put down a substantial deposit.

  But when it came to transporting the gear to Tujoa, Mr. Trollope said that ships big enough to carry a large crane and pontoons sailed only occasionally to make a round of the outer islands to the west, and a special arrangement would have to be made for such a ship to go on to the French-owned Nakopoa Group. It would be a fortnight or more before the material could be sent on its way, so it could not be expected to arrive in Revika until about the middle of February. Gregory was not aware that Lacost had already secured salvaging gear, but assumed that he would do so in Tahiti and, as Tahiti was two thousand five hundred miles from Tujoa, there seemed a good chance that they would get there before him. In any case, that was the best Trollope could do, so a brief letter of agreement was typed out and Gregory wrote him a cheque.

  That evening at the Grand Pacific they enjoyed a pleasant dinner, at which Manon, now on her home ground, displayed even more than her usual sparkle and vivacity. Then, after the meal, Gregory succeeded in telephoning to the home of a solicitor whom Knox-Mawer had recommended, and arranging an appointment for ten o’clock the following morning.

  The solicitor, a Mr. Firebrace, turned out to be young and keen. He said there would be no difficulties about drawing up the simple articles of a company such as Gregory and James required, and that he would at once set about it. Having given him particulars, they had another stroll round the town and, to Gregory’s delight, he found that it had one really good bookshop. It was owned by a Mr. Desai, a short, portly, cheerful and most knowledgeable Indian. In addition to thousands of paperbacks, he stocked all the latest novels and a fine selection of large, illustrated books.

  Gregory and James made several purchases, to be sent to the hotel, then, on Mr. Desai’s suggestion, went on to spend half an hour in the city aquarium. It was quite small, but contained a wonderful variety of brilliantly-coloured tropical fish.

  Over lunch, they discussed future plans. As there was no likelihood of the salvaging equipment reaching Tujoa in much under three weeks, Gregory happily accepted Manon’s renewed invitation to stay for a while at her home. But James felt that he ought to return to Tujoa, both out of duty to his people and in order to be present to stall off Lacost and his gang, should they arrive there before the machinery being sent by Trollope.

  Inland, opposite the hotel, there was an open space of several acres. On the left stood the Government buildings, overlooking the cricket ground, and on the right the Botanical Gardens, which sloped up to the Governor’s Residence. Late in the afternoon they took a stroll in the gardens to admire the magnificent specimen trees, then up the hill to the Museum. In it there were weapons galore, native basket-work, tapa cloth and a collection of the most beautiful shells, but the really impressive thing was several wood carvings, four to five feet in height, of men and women. They had been brought from Samoa; and Gregory felt that they could have held their own with anything produced in Europe during the past fifty years.

  Next morning they said good-bye to James, and Manon was by no means sorry to see him leave. The sight of his big, muscular body and bronzed, strongly-cut features, surmounted by the great puff of black hair which, refusing to become conventional, he had never had cut had stirred her sexually from time to time, and he was an amusing and charming companion. But, quite unconsciously, he had time and again played the unwelcome role of ‘gooseberry’ when she was with Gregory. And it was in his interest that Gregory was determined to expose himself to grave danger. Now, at last, she would have Gregory on his own.

  She would have liked to carry him off that Friday. But he was enjoying Suva, and had a perfect excuse for staying over the week-end, as the articles of the company, which he wished to take with him, would not be ready until the Monday morning.

  Gracefully Manon resigned herself. Together they visited the cemetery, a mile or so on the far side of the town. It was of interest
because it had several sections: Protestant, Roman Catholic, Chinese, Hindu. Occupying a sloping hillside, it was unusually attractive, as there were a number of large trees in it clipped like yews or boxes into immense, flat-topped drums.

  The Knox-Mawers had said that they must go to the St. Elizabeth’s Home for Cured Lepers to see some remarkable paintings, so they drove out there on the Sunday. In recent years leprosy has happily come under control, but there are still victims of earlier years who have to be cared for, and the Home was run for that purpose by the Sisters of Mary.

  The paintings that the Knox-Mawers had felt would interest them were by a man named Semisi Maya. In 1938 he had contracted leprosy and had been sent to the Leprosarium Island of Makogai, where in two periods he had spent fourteen years of his life. After his discharge he returned to his village, but his fingers were so contracted in towards the palms that he could not hold a brush. In spite of that, he started to paint using his knuckles and the stumps of his fingers, and with the hairs on his forearms he produces fine lines. The result is the most delightful pictures, both of Fijian scenery and abstracts with rhythmic lines in brilliant colours.

  Thirty or forty of his paintings, about fifteen by nine inches, were for sale. Manon, having worked for an art dealer in Paris, was immensely impressed; so Gregory bought several of them for her.

  On Monday morning Gregory received the articles of the company from Firebrace and, on telephoning Trollope, learned that the salvage gear would be shipped in another week, on February 7th, so should arrive at Revika about the 11th. He at once got on to Hunt’s, arranged for them to book seats for Manon and himself on the afternoon plane to Nandi, and to have a cabin cruiser at his disposal next day at Lautoka.