第12章 DEATH(3)

The exports of the group decline out of all proportion even with the death-rate of the islanders.'The coral waxes,the palm grows,and man departs,'says the Marquesan;and he folds his hands.And surely this is nature.Fond as it may appear,we labour and refrain,not for the rewards of any single life,but with a timid eye upon the lives and memories of our successors;and where no one is to succeed,of his own family,or his own tongue,I doubt whether Rothschilds would make money or Cato practise virtue.It is natural,also,that a temporary stimulus should sometimes rouse the Marquesan from his lethargy.Over all the landward shore of Anaho cotton runs like a wild weed;man or woman,whoever comes to pick it,may earn a dollar in the day;yet when we arrived,the trader's store-house was entirely empty;and before we left it was near full.So long as the circus was there,so long as the CASCOwas yet anchored in the bay,it behoved every one to make his visit;and to this end every woman must have a new dress,and every man a shirt and trousers.Never before,in Mr.Regler's experience,had they displayed so much activity.

In their despondency there is an element of dread.The fear of ghosts and of the dark is very deeply written in the mind of the Polynesian;not least of the Marquesan.Poor Taipi,the chief of Anaho,was condemned to ride to Hatiheu on a moonless night.He borrowed a lantern,sat a long while nerving himself for the adventure,and when he at last departed,wrung the CASCOS by the hand as for a final separation.Certain presences,called Vehinehae,frequent and make terrible the nocturnal roadside;I was told by one they were like so much mist,and as the traveller walked into them dispersed and dissipated;another described them as being shaped like men and having eyes like cats;from none could I obtain the smallest clearness as to what they did,or wherefore they were dreaded.We may be sure at least they represent the dead;for the dead,in the minds of the islanders,are all-pervasive.'When a native says that he is a man,'writes Dr.

Codrington,'he means that he is a man and not a ghost;not that he is a man and not a beast.The intelligent agents of this world are to his mind the men who are alive,and the ghosts the men who are dead.'Dr.Codrington speaks of Melanesia;from what I have learned his words are equally true of the Polynesian.And yet more.Among cannibal Polynesians a dreadful suspicion rests generally on the dead;and the Marquesans,the greatest cannibals of all,are scarce likely to be free from similar beliefs.Ihazard the guess that the Vehinehae are the hungry spirits of the dead,continuing their life's business of the cannibal ambuscade,and lying everywhere unseen,and eager to devour the living.

Another superstition I picked up through the troubled medium of Tari Coffin's English.The dead,he told me,came and danced by night around the paepae of their former family;the family were thereupon overcome by some emotion (but whether of pious sorrow or of fear I could not gather),and must 'make a feast,'of which fish,pig,and popoi were indispensable ingredients.So far this is clear enough.But here Tari went on to instance the new house of Toma and the house-warming feast which was just then in preparation as instances in point.Dare we indeed string them together,and add the case of the deserted ruin,as though the dead continually besieged the paepaes of the living:were kept at arm's-length,even from the first foundation,only by propitiatory feasts,and,so soon as the fire of life went out upon the hearth,swarmed back into possession of their ancient seat?

I speak by guess of these Marquesan superstitions.On the cannibal ghost I shall return elsewhere with certainty.And it is enough,for the present purpose,to remark that the men of the Marquesas,from whatever reason,fear and shrink from the presence of ghosts.

Conceive how this must tell upon the nerves in islands where the number of the dead already so far exceeds that of the living,and the dead multiply and the living dwindle at so swift a rate.

Conceive how the remnant huddles about the embers of the fire of life;even as old Red Indians,deserted on the march and in the snow,the kindly tribe all gone,the last flame expiring,and the night around populous with wolves.