Susâni - George Lewis Becke (best books to read now txt) 📗

A few weeks ago I was reading a charmingly written book by a lady (the wife of a distinguished savant) who had spent three months on Funafuti, one of the lagoon islands of the Ellice Group. Now the place and the brown people of whom she wrote were once very familiar to me, and her warm and generous sympathy for a dying race stirred me greatly, and when I came across the name "Funafala," old, forgotten memories awoke once more, and I heard the sough of the trade wind through the palms and the lapping of the lagoon waters upon the lonely beaches of Funafala, as Senior, the mate of the _Venus_, and myself watched the last sleep of Susani.

Funafala is one of the many islands which encircle Funafuti lagoon with a belt of living green, and to Funafala--"the island of the pandanus palm"--Senior and I had come with a party of natives from the village on the main island to spend a week's idleness. Fifty years ago, long before the first missionary ship sailed into the lagoon, five or six hundred people dwelt on Funafala in peace and plenty--now it holds but their bones, for they were doomed to fade and vanish before the breath of the white man and his civilisation and "benefits," which to the brown people mean death, and as the years went by, the remnant of the people on Funafala and the other islets betook themselves to the main island--after which the lagoon is named--for there the whale-ships and trading schooners came to anchor, and there they live to this day, smitten with disease and fated to disappear altogether within another thirty years, and be no more known to man except in the dry pages of a book written by some learned ethnologist.

But twice every year the people of Funafuti betake themselves to Funafala to gather the cocoa-nuts, which in the silent groves ripen and fall and lie undisturbed from month to month; then for a week or ten days, as the men husk the nuts, the women and children fish in the daytime among the pools and runnels of the inner reef, and at night with flaring torches of palm-leaf they stand amid the sweeping surf on the outer side of the narrow islet, and with net and spear fill their baskets with blue and yellow crayfish. Then when all the work is done, the canoes are filled with the husked cocoanuts, and with laughter and song--for they are yet a merry-hearted though vanishing people--they return to the village, and for another six months Funafala is left to the ceaseless call of the restless sea upon the outer reef, and the hoarse cry of the soaring frigate birds.

One afternoon Senior and myself, accompanied by a young, powerfully-built native named Suka, were returning to the temporary village on Funafala--a collection of rude huts thatched with palm leaves--from a fishing excursion on the outer reef, when we were overtaken by a series of sudden squalls and downpours of rain. We were then walking along the weather shore of the island, which was strewn with loose slabs of coral stone, pure white in colour and giving forth a clear, resonant sound to the slightest disturbing movement On our right hand was a scrub of _puka_ trees, which afforded no shelter from the torrential rain; on our left the ocean, whose huge, leaping billows crashed and thundered upon the black, shelving reef, and sent swirling waves of whitened foam up to our feet.

For some minutes we continued to force our way against the storm, when Suka, who was leading, called out to us that a little distance on along the beach there was a cluster of _papa_ (coral rocks), in the recesses of which we could obtain shelter. Even as he spoke the rain ceased for a space, and we saw, some hundreds of yards before us, the spot of which he had spoken--a number of jagged, tumbled-together coral boulders which some violent convulsion of the sea had torn away from the barrier reef and hurled upon the shore, where, in the course of years, kindly Nature had sent out a tender hand and covered them with a thick growth of a creeper peculiar to the low-lying atolls of the mid-Pacific, and hidden their rugged outlines under a mantle of vivid green.

As we drew near, the bright, tropic sun shone out for a while, and the furious wind died away, seeming to gather fresh strength for another sweeping onslaught from the darkened weather horizon.

"Quick," said Suka, pointing to the rocks, "'tis bad to be smitten with such rain as this. Let us rest in the _papa_ till the storm be over."

Following our all but naked guide, who sprang from stone to stone with the surefootedness of a mountain goat, we soon reached the cluster of rocks, the bases of which were embedded in the now hard and stiffened sand, and almost at the same moment another heavy rain squall swept down and blurred sea and sky and land alike.

Bidding us to follow, Suka began to clamber up the side of the highest of the boulders, on the seaward face of which, he said, was a small cave, used in the olden days as a sleeping place by fishermen and sea-bird catchers. Suddenly, when half-way up, he stopped and turned to us, and with a smile on his face, held up his hand and bade us listen. Some one was singing.

"It is Susani," he whispered, "she did not sleep in the village last night. She comes to this place sometimes to sing to the sea. Come, she is not afraid of white men."

Grasping the thick masses of green vine called _At At_ which hung from the summit of the rock, we at last reached the foot of the cave, and looking up we saw seated at the entrance a young native girl of about twelve years of age. Even though we were so near to her she seemed utterly unconscious of our presence, and still sang in a low, soft voice some island chant, the words of which were strange to both my companion and myself although we were well acquainted with nearly all the _Tokelauan_ dialects.

Very quietly we stood awaiting till she turned her face towards us, but her eyes were bent seaward upon the driving sheets of rain, and the tumbling surf which thrashed upon the shore.

"Wait," said Suka in a low voice; "she will see us soon. 'Tis best not to disturb her. She is afflicted of God and seeth many things."

Her song ceased, and then Suka, stepping forward, touched her gently upon the arm. She looked up and smiled into his face, and then she let her full, dark eyes rest upon the strangers who stood behind, then again she turned to Suka in mute, inquiring wonder.

He bent down and placed his cheek against hers, "Be not afraid, Susani; they be good friends. And see, little one, sit thee further back within the cave, for the driving rain beats in here at the mouth and thy feet are wet and cold."

She rose without a word and stood whilst the kindly-hearted native unrolled an old mat which lay at the end of the cave and spread it out in the centre.

"Come, Susani, dear one," he said gravely, and his usually harsh and guttural voice sounded soft and tender. "Come, sit thee here, and then in a little while shall I get wood and make a fire so that we may eat. Hast eaten to-day, little one?"

She shook her head; a faint smile parted her lips, and then her strange, mournful eyes for a moment again sought ours as she seated herself on the mat Suka beckoned us to approach and sit near her, himself sitting a little apart and to one side.

"Susani," he said, bending forward and speaking slowly and carefully, "_fealofani tau lima i taka soa_" ("give your hand to my friends ").

The girl held out her left hand, and Senior and I each took it in turn gently within our own, and uttered the native greeting of "_Fakaalofa_."

"She can talk," said Suka, "but not much. Sometimes for many days no word will come from her lips. It is then she leaveth the village and walks about in the forest or along the beaches when others sleep. But no harm can come to her, for she is _tausi mau te Atua_.{*} And be not vexed in that she gave thee her left hand, for, see----"


* In God's special keeping.


He touched the girl's right arm, and we now saw that it hung limp and helpless upon her smooth, bared thigh.

"Was she born thus?" asked Senior, as he placed his strong, rough hand upon her head and stroked her thick, wavy hair, which fell like a mantle over her shoulders and back.

"Nay, she was born a strong child, and her mother and father were without blemish, and good to look upon--the man was as thick as me" (he touched his own brawny chest), "but as she grew and began to talk, the bone in her right arm began to perish. And then the hand of God fell upon her mother and father, and they died. But let me go get wood and broil some fish, for she hath not eaten." Then he bent forward and said--

"Dost fear to stay here, Susani, with the white men?"

She looked at us in turn, and then said slowly--

"Nay, I have no fear, Suka."

"Poor little beggar!" said Senior pityingly.

Ten minutes later Suka had returned with an armful of dry wood and some young drinking cocoanuts. Fish we had in plenty, and in our bags were some biscuits, brought from the schooner. As Senior and I tended the fire, Suka wrapped four silvery sea mullet in leaves, and then when it had burnt down to a heap of glowing coals he laid them in the centre and watched them carefully, speaking every now and then to the child, who seemed scarcely to heed, as she gazed at Senior's long, yellow beard, and his bright, blue eyes set in his honest, sun-tanned face. Then, when the fish were cooked, Suka turned them out of their coverings and placed them on broad, freshly plucked _puka_ leaves, and Senior brought the hard ship biscuits, and, putting one beside a fish, brought it to the child and bade her eat.

She put out her left hand timidly, and took it from him, her strange eyes still fixed wonderingly upon his face. Then she looked at Suka, and Suka, with an apologetic cough, placed one hand over his eyes and bent his head--for he was a deacon, and to eat food without giving thanks would be a terrible thing to do, at least in the presence of white men, who, of course, never neglected to do so.

The child, hungry as she must have been, ate her food with a dainty grace, though she had but one hand to use, and our little attentions to her every now and then seemed at first to increase her natural shyness and timidity. But when the rude meal was finished, and my companion and myself filled our pipes and sat in the front of the cave, she came with Suka and nestled up against his burly figure as he rolled a cigarette of strong, black tobacco in dried banana leaf. The rain had ceased, but the