by John Wyndham
“Eighty!” exclaimed the Governer. “Why didn’t you tell me this before? They must leave. Everyone must leave. I thought you understood that.”
Tatake eyed him dully. He shrugged his big shoulders.
“Nokiki fight. Men fight,” he said. And he looked near to regret that he was not with them.
The Governor clicked his tongue impatiently.
“Lot of damned nonsense. Don’t know why you couldn’t tell me right away. You mean they defied your orders?”
Tatake looked blank. The Governor said impatiently.
“You say Nokiki come. He not come?”
Tatake nodded.
“Nokiki say fight.”
“Nonsense,” repeated the Governor. “The order was clear. If they don’t come, they’ll have to be fetched.”
It had been thought desirable to make as little show of force as possible, but the likelihood of some such situation developing had not been overlooked. The Governor conferred with his officers. Presently, one of his younger aides detached himself from the group and made his way up the beach towards the village. Close to the first hut he stopped and surveyed the empty scene. Then he raised a loudhailer, and, in a dialect close enough to the islanders’ own, spoke persuasively to the surrounding trees and bushes. At the end of a two-minute address he lowered the hailer, and awaited a response.
It came. Its form was a spear from an unseen source which struck the ground a yard to his left, and stood there quivering. The young man regarded it with disapproval. He appeared to consider trying more persuasion, and to decide against it. Then he turned, and began to walk back, with carefully unhurried steps. Another spear buried its point a foot behind him.
The Governor scribbled a note, and sent it back to the ship with the landing-craft. Ten minutes later the landing-craft returned bearing an armed and helmeted squad of police. The sergeant in charge spoke for a few moments with the Governor and with the Chief, then, with his men holding their weapons at the ready, moved up the beach and was soon out of sight among the bushes.
Ten minutes or so after they had disappeared the sound of the hailer was heard briefly again. It was followed by an outbreak of shooting; rifles and sub-machine-guns together giving an impressive burst of fire-power. In due course the platoon reappeared escorting forty or so disarmed and frightened-looking islanders. The noise of a group of small arms at close range, and the sensation of bullets ripping leaves and branches to pieces close above one’s head had not been at all what the legend of the glorious victory of 1916 had led them to expect.
The platoon, having handed over its sheepish captives, reformed and went back into the woods to look for more. A number of young women began to drift out of the trees in twos and threes to join the discouraged warriors.
Tatake made a count, and reported that Nokiki probably had no more than twenty supporters with him now.
This time, the platoon pushing inland by a path behind the village, ran into an ambush. The trap was sprung a little too early to be entirely successful. The three leading men were speared before they had time to throw the tear-gas bombs they were holding ready, but their companions threw theirs with precision – and that was, in effect, the end of Tanakuatuan resistance. The police returned to the beach once more with another fifteen lachrymose and woe-begone captives who carried one policeman dead, and two nastily wounded. Nokiki was not among them.
The Governor was angry. He turned to Tatake. For a moment he had it in mind to say what he thought of a Chief who could not control his own people. Wisely he forbore. Instead, he asked sharply:
“Not more than half a dozen of them left now, Chief?”
Tatake nodded.
The Governor, too, gave a curt nod.
“Very well. They’ve had their warning. I’m not going to risk any more of my men’s lives just to save a few stubborn oafs. They’ll have to take their chance.” He turned to board the landing-craft.
Half an hour later, with the passage of the reef safely accomplished, and the Tanakuatuans wistfully crowding the rails, the ship’s engines switched to full ahead…
♦
From the shade of a group of calophyllum trees set on a headland the remnant of the resistance party watched the ship swing round in a wide arc, and then dwindle away towards the northwest.
When she had shrunk to a speck, the rank and file of the group, three men and one woman, grew restless, uncomfortably aware that it was a long time since they had eaten. Presently they slipped quietly away.
Nokiki was unaware of them, present or absent.
Soon there was not even a speck: nothing but the wide, empty ocean.
The birds fell silent. The light went swiftly as the sun dipped.
Fireflies started to flitter among the bushes. The moon rose with a path that trembled like a band of quicksilver set in the water. Still Nokiki sat motionless.
His dark eyes were fixed now on the horizon-point of the moon-path, but they did not see it; the pictures in his mind came from faraway places and long-ago tales. He was seeing the great fleets of canoes and the floating villages of huts that had borne his ancestors over thousands of miles of ocean. He was remembering the names of the islands where they had paused for a few years, for a generation, for two or three generations, until the young men and women had grown restive again, and set out once more on the eternal search for paradise.
He was seeing their great war canoes. Craft that would sweep to a beach with the force of fifty paddles to spill out warriors who carried all before them. The names of the victories, and of the heroes who had won them, were commemorated by dances and in songs that rang in the head of every boy as he grew to manhood. They ran in Nokiki’s head now…
That was his people’s way of life. So it had been ever since Nakaa expelled men and women from the happy land: wandering across the ocean, fighting, travelling on again, searching eternally for the lost paradise.
Even the coming of the white men had made little difference to that way of life to begin with – but later, and soon, with increasing swiftness, they had changed the whole world. With the power of their weapons they had annexed territories as they chose – and the people who lived in them too. And from that they had gone on to impose their own laws, setting them above tradition, and their own prudish God above the old gods.
Shamefully, people had given in to this. Protests had been feeble and few. Most people had listened to the white men, and become confused by foreign standards. They had allowed their own customs to be derided and brushed away, neglected their observances, lost respect for their totems. Was it a matter for wonder that the offended spirits of their ancestors should have cast them off in disgust and contempt?
Gradually it became clear to Nokiki that it was with the capture of Tanakuatua that the deterioration of his own people had set in. They had arrived there in the traditional style of their migrations, and in their traditional manner they had swept ashore to conquer the island with their usual valour. But that, he saw now, was the last time it would happen: the end of an era…
For one thing since the white man had come and re-ordered the world the old way of life had become impossible. But, worse than that, he sensed an evil in Tanakuatua; an influence which had devitalized his people’s spirit.
Gradually the valour and the virtue had dwindled in them. Only once since they had come there had it flared up briefly to bring them the famous victory of 1916. Thereafter it had withered away again until, little by little, they had been reduced to the craven, timorous creatures he had watched being herded away to the ship today.
The last spark of pride had died. The valour of their ancestors had been spent in vain, their famous victories counted not at all, the voices of their ghosts were unheard, their descendants had surrendered in utter ignominy. It was the end.
The moonlight glistened on Nokiki’s cheeks. It shone on tears of shame and helpless anger: tears of requiem for heroes dead in vain, for a people in decay, for honour in desuetude, for a world th
at had vanished forever…
In the morning the other four returned. The three men sat down silently at a respectful distance. The woman came close, offering him food on a leaf mat, and water in a carved coconut shell.
Soon after the sun was up all five of them went back to the empty village together. Nokiki was already wearing his finest bone ornaments in his ears and his nose. Now he stood like a statue in his hut while the woman painted his body red and white with the traditional patterns of the tribe. Last of all she drew in red on his chest the spider totem of his clan. When that had been done he put on his necklace of shark’s teeth, his chain of turtle-shell, his strings of beads and threaded shells, and worked a carved comb into his hair. Finally he fastened on his beadwork belt, and pushed the sheath of a long knife into it. Then he strode out of the hut, and led the way towards the twin hills.
Midway along the linking saddle he selected a spot, and marked it with a white stone.
“Here,” he told the men, “we will build an altar.” Then he turned to the woman. “Woman,” he said, “go now to the Tree of Death, and weave me a mat of its leaves.”
She looked steadily into his face for some seconds, then she bowed her head to him, and went away. The four men set about collecting stones.
The altar was finished by noon, and they rested. Then Nokiki marked out a plot the size of a grave in front of the altar. There he began to dig. He would not let the others help him, so, presently, they went off to find food.
When the woman returned Nokiki had finished his work. She looked at it, and then at him. He said nothing. She unrolled the mat she had woven out of pandanus leaves, and laid it beside the open grave.
Soon after it was dark the four lay down to sleep, but Nokiki did not sleep. He sat as he had sat the night before, looking out over the ocean, seeing again the great rafts, the floating huts, and the war canoes carrying generation after generation on their intrepid odyssey; watching them turn into ghosts, and then into nothingness…
While the sky was still grey Nokiki got up. He went to the altar, and laid offerings on it. Then he sat back on his haunches, facing across the altar and the open grave beyond it to the east, waiting for the coming of Au, god of the Rising Sun.
As the first rays lit the high clouds Nokiki began to chant. His voice woke the others, they stirred, sat up, and watched.
The chant finished. Nokiki stood up, extending both arms to the first small arc of the sun, praying aloud for the blessing of Au, and, through him, of the other gods upon what their servant was about to do. He paused as if listening for an answer, then he nodded twice, and began on the work.
In the name of Au, and all lesser gods, he cursed the island of Tanakuatua for the ruin of his people. He cursed it from north to south, and from east to west, from the tops of its twin hills to the edge of its low tide. He cursed its soil and its rocks; its hot springs and its cold springs; its fruits and its trees; all that ran or crawled on it; everything that jumped on it, or flew over it; the roots in its soil, the life in its rock-pools. He cursed it by day, and he cursed it by night; in the dry season, and in the rainy season, in storm, and in calm.
His audience had never heard so comprehensive a curse, and it frightened them greatly.
But Nokiki had not done yet. He appealed above Au to Nakaa himself, Nakaa, the lawgiver, the judge before whom every man and woman must pass as he leaves this world for the land of ghosts.
He besought Nakaa to declare the island of Tanakuatua forever tabu to all men; to decree that if men should try to live on it they should sicken and die, and shrivel up so that their dust would blow away on the wind and there would be nothing of them left; and that when the ghosts of such men should come to be judged they might not go on to the Happy Land, but suffer, as all tabu-breakers do, shrieking on the stakes in the Pits for all eternity.
His plea ended, Nokiki stood perfectly still, arms by his sides. He looked the risen sun full in the eye for nearly a minute. Then, suddenly and swiftly, he snatched the knife from his belt, and drove it deep in his chest. He swayed, his knees sagged, and he fell forward across the altar…
They wrapped Nokiki in the mat of pandamus leaves, and while the men buried him in the grave he had dug, the woman searched until she found a pointed stone. On it she painted the spider totem of Nokiki’s clan, and when the grave had been filled she drove the point of the stone into the trampled earth to mark the place.
The four of them hurried back to the empty village. They paused there only long enough to collect some taros, coconuts, and dried fish, and to fill some gourds with fresh water, before they went on to the beach and launched a canoe.
From time to time as they crossed the lagoon they glanced fearfully back over their shoulders.
There could be no doubt that Nokiki’s plea, validated by his sacrifice, would be accepted, but no one could tell how long it would take Nakaa to declare his judgement, nor, consequently the exact moment when the tabu would become law.
Once they were beyond the reef their fears became less acute, and subsided still more as Tanakuatua dropped slowly astern. Nevertheless, it was not until the twin hilltops were below their horizon that the four could relax and feel that they were safely beyond the range of Nokiki’s terrible curse…
♦
Six months later, the inspection-team which visited Tanakuatua to carry out tests concluded its finding with the summary:
“The foregoing report makes it clear that the shift of wind-direction at ten thousand feet – which occurred two hours after Test Zero, and lasted for approximately three hours – carried some part of fall-out material in a south-westerly direction. The contaminated particles in the course of precipitation were, for the most part, carried back in an easterly direction by the contrary air current at lower level. Consequently, though some contamination did in fact reach the island, as suspected, the precipitation there was extremely light.
“As the figures of counts show, radio-activity is very slightly above normal on the eastern side, but negligible in the rest of the island. Nowhere, however, does it approach a degree within the definition of a dangerous concentration.
“Nevertheless, it is not impossible that an exclusive diet of foodstuffs grown in this even lightly contaminated soil might conceivably produce concentrations cumulatively harmful to growing children. This is highly unlikely, but having regard to the circumstances, and bearing in mind the public reaction which could result from any misadventure even remotely attributable to fallout from this test, it might be unwise at this stage to declare the island officially ‘clean’.
“We would advise against immediate reoccupation of the island, and suggest a further test after an interval of five years. In our view, counts taken then should almost certainly permit classification as completely ‘clean’.”
It was not, in fact, five years later, but nearer ten that the Tanakuatuans, in their reservation, were told that a ship would soon be sent to take them home. The news was not well received. Indeed, such was the outcry that the District Officer paid them a special visit of enquiry.
Tatake acquainted him with the news that the four refugees had brought The District Officer, though learning now for the first time of the tabu, recognized the seriousness of the situation.
Nevertheless, he felt he could make a suggestion:
“It seems to me,” he said after consideration, “that, men being as they are, Nakaa must receive many appeals for the imposition of a tabu. It would clearly be impossible for him to grant them all, or there might be so many that life would become too difficult to live. How is it possible, therefore, to know whether he granted Nokiki’s request for a tabu on Tanakuatua? What is the evidence that he did not refuse it?”
Tatake shook his head in reproof.
“No man asks lightly for tabu,” he said. “Tabu is a very serious matter. If he were to ask such a thing from unworthy motives his ghost would be unable to enter the Happy Land, and would suffer for ever in the Pits. Moreover, Nokiki was
no ordinary man. He was a devout and honourable man – a great maker of magic. And he surrendered his own life to Nakaa that this thing might be done. Therefore it is clear to us that this thing was done – and is so.
“As in the beginning Nakaa expelled men and women from the Happy Land, forbidding them to return; so he has now forbidden Tanakuatua to all men.”
“This is how you truly believe the matter to stand, O Chief?” asked the District Officer.
Tatake nodded.
“It is.”
“And it is what all your people believe?”
Tatake hesitated.
“There are some of the young men who doubt it,” he admitted. “Since we have been in this place the Christians have got at them. Now they do not believe anything,” he explained.
“Then they, at least, would be willing to return to Tanakuatua?”
The Chief looked doubtful.
“They might, but even without a tabu what would a score or so of young men do there? For no women would go. No,” he went on, “what they are saying now is that since the tabu cannot be lifted so that we can all go back, we should do as our ancestors would have done – find ourselves a new island, and conquer it.”
The District Officer shook his head.
“Times are not what they were, Tatake.”
Tatake nodded sadly.
“But it would be the better way for us,” he said. “Here my people are slowly rotting.”
The District Officer did not deny it. He asked:
“Isn’t there some way – some kind of propitiation, perhaps – of getting the tabu lifted?”
Tatake shrugged.
“That is what some of the young men ask. They do not understand. It comes of hearing Christian talk about forgiving. Nakaa does not forgive. When he has judged, he has judged, and it is forever. Tabu is tabu.”
“I see. Then what do you, Chief Tatake, think should be done?”
“I think it is the Government’s fault that this thing has happened to our island. I think, therefore, the Government must give us another island instead – a good island – and help us to move there. We have held councils about this. We have decided that if the Government does not agree to do this for us, we must send a man to the Queen to tell her how her servants have cheated us out of our own island of Tanakuatua, and left us in this place to rot.”