PART IV: THE GILBERTS--APEMAMA
CHAPTER I--THE KING OF APEMAMA: THE ROYAL TRADER
There is one great personage in the Gilberts: Tembinok' of
Apemama: solely conspicuous, the hero of song, the butt of gossip.
Through the rest of the group the kings are slain or fallen in
tutelage: Tembinok' alone remains, the last tyrant, the last erect
vestige of a dead society. The white man is everywhere else,
building his houses, drinking his gin, getting in and out of
trouble with the weak native governments. There is only one white
on Apemama, and he on sufferance, living far from court, and
hearkening and watching his conduct like a mouse in a cat's ear.
Through all the other islands a stream of native visitors comes and
goes, travelling by families, spending years on the grand tour.
Apemama alone is left upon one side, the tourist dreading to risk
himself within the clutch of Tembinok'. And fear of the same
Gorgon follows and troubles them at home. Maiana once paid him
tribute; he once fell upon and seized Nonuti: first steps to the
empire of the archipelago. A British warship coming on the scene,
the conqueror was driven to disgorge, his career checked in the
outset, his dear-bought armoury sunk in his own lagoon. But the
impression had been made; periodical fear of him still shakes the
islands; rumour depicts him mustering his canoes for a fresh
onfall; rumour can name his destination; and Tembinok' figures in
the patriotic war-songs of the Gilberts like Napoleon in those of
our grandfathers.
We were at sea, bound from Mariki to Nonuti and Tapituea, when the
wind came suddenly fair for Apemama. The course was at once
changed; all hands were turned-to to clean ship, the decks holy-
stoned, all the cabin washed, the trade-room overhauled. In all
our cruising we never saw the Equator so smart as she was made for
Tembinok'. Nor was Captain Reid alone in these coquetries; for,
another schooner chancing to arrive during my stay in Apemama, I
found that she also was dandified for the occasion. And the two
cases stand alone in my experience of South Sea traders.
We had on board a family of native tourists, from the grandsire to
the babe in arms, trying (against an extraordinary series of ill-
luck) to regain their native island of Peru. Five times already
they had paid their fare and taken ship; five times they had been
disappointed, dropped penniless upon strange islands, or carried
back to Butaritari, whence they sailed. This last attempt had been
no better-starred; their provisions were exhausted. Peru was
beyond hope, and they had cheerfully made up their minds to a fresh
stage of exile in Tapituea or Nonuti. With this slant of wind
their random destination became once more changed; and like the
Calendar's pilot, when the 'black mountains' hove in view, they
changed colour and beat upon their breasts. Their camp, which was
on deck in the ship's waist, resounded with complaint. They would
be set to work, they must become slaves, escape was hopeless, they
must live and toil and die in Apemama, in the tyrant's den. With
this sort of talk they so greatly terrified their children, that
one (a big hulking boy) must at last be torn screaming from the
schooner's side. And their fears were wholly groundless. I have
little doubt they were not suffered to be idle; but I can vouch for
it that they were kindly and generously used. For, the matter of a
year later, I was once more shipmate with these inconsistent
wanderers on board the Janet Nicoll. Their fare was paid by
Tembinok'; they who had gone ashore from the Equator destitute,
reappeared upon the Janet with new clothes, laden with mats and
presents, and bringing with them a magazine of food, on which they
lived like fighting-cocks throughout the voyage; I saw them at
length repatriated, and I must say they showed more concern on
quitting Apemama than delight at reaching home.
We entered by the north passage (Sunday, September 1st), dodging
among shoals. It was a day of fierce equatorial sunshine; but the
breeze was strong and chill; and the mate, who conned the schooner
from the cross-trees, returned shivering to the deck. The lagoon
was thick with many-tinted wavelets; a continuous roaring of the
outer sea overhung the anchorage; and the long, hollow crescent of
palm ruffled and sparkled in the wind. Opposite our berth the
beach was seen to be surmounted for some distance by a terrace of
white coral seven or eight feet high and crowned in turn by the
scattered and incongruous buildings of the palace. The village
adjoins on the south, a cluster of high-roofed maniap's. And
village and palace seemed deserted.
We were scarce yet moored, however, before distant and busy figures
appeared upon the beach, a boat was launched, and a crew pulled out
to us bringing the king's ladder. Tembinok' had once an accident;
has feared ever since to entrust his person to the rotten chandlery
of South Sea traders; and devised in consequence a frame of wood,
which is brought on board a ship as soon as she appears, and
remains lashed to her side until she leave. The boat's crew,
having applied this engine, returned at once to shore. They might
not come on board; neither might we land, or not without danger of
offence; the king giving pratique in person. An interval followed,
during which dinner was delayed for the great man--the prelude of
the ladder, giving us some notion of his weighty body and sensible,
ingenious character, had highly whetted our curiosity; and it was
with something like excitement that we saw the beach and terrace
suddenly blacken with attendant vassals, the king and party embark,
the boat (a man-of-war gig) come flying towards us dead before the
wind, and the royal coxswain lay us cleverly aboard, mount the
ladder with a jealous diffidence, and descend heavily on deck.
Not long ago he was overgrown with fat, obscured to view, and a
burthen to himself. Captains visiting the island advised him to
walk; and though it broke the habits of a life and the traditions
of his rank, he practised the remedy with benefit. His corpulence
is now portable; you would call him lusty rather than fat; but his
gait is still dull, stumbling, and elephantine. He neither stops
nor hastens, but goes about his business with an implacable
deliberation. We could never see him and not be struck with his
extraordinary natural means for the theatre: a beaked profile like
Dante's in the mask, a mane of long black hair, the eye brilliant,
imperious, and inquiring: for certain parts, and to one who could
have used it, the face was a fortune. His voice matched it well,
being shrill, powerful, and uncanny, with a note like a sea-bird's.
Where there are no fashions, none to set them, few to follow them
if they were set, and none to criticise, he dresses--as Sir Charles
Grandison lived--'to his own heart.' Now he wears a woman's frock,
now a naval uniform; now (and more usually) figures in a masquerade
costume of his own design: trousers and a singular jacket with
shirt tails, the cut and fit wonderful for island workmanship, the
material always handsome, sometimes green velvet, sometimes
cardinal red silk. This masquerade becomes him admirably. In the
woman's frock he looks ominous and weird beyond belief. I see him
now come pacing towards me in the cruel sun, solitary, a figure out
of Hoffmann.
A visit on board ship, such as that at which we now assisted, makes
a chief part and by far the chief diversion of the life of
Tembinok'. He is not only the sole ruler, he is the sole merchant
of his triple kingdom, Apemama, Aranuka, and Kuria, well-planted
islands. The taro goes to the chiefs, who divide as they please
among their immediate adherents; but certain fish, turtles--which
abound in Kuria,--and the whole produce of the coco-palm, belong
exclusively to Tembinok'. 'A' cobra berong me,' observed his
majesty with a wave of his hand; and he counts and sells it by the
houseful. 'You got copra, king?' I have heard a trader ask. 'I
got two, three outches,' his majesty replied: 'I think three.'
Hence the commercial importance of Apemama, the trade of three
islands being centred there in a single hand; hence it is that so
many whites have tried in vain to gain or to preserve a footing;
hence ships are adorned, cooks have special orders, and captains
array themselves in smiles, to greet the king. If he be pleased
with his welcome and the fare he may pass days on board, and, every
day, and sometimes every hour, will be of profit to the ship. He
oscillates between the cabin, where he is entertained with strange
meats, and the trade-room, where he enjoys the pleasures of
shopping on a scale to match his person. A few obsequious
attendants squat by the house door, awaiting his least signal. In
the boat, which has been suffered to drop astern, one or two of his
wives lie covered from the sun under mats, tossed by the short sea
of the lagoon, and enduring agonies of heat and tedium. This
severity is now and then relaxed and the wives allowed on board.
Three or four were thus favoured on the day of our arrival:
substantial ladies airily attired in ridis. Each had a share of
copra, her peculium, to dispose of for herself. The display in the
trade-room--hats, ribbbons, dresses, scents, tins of salmon--the
pride of the eye and the lust of the flesh--tempted them in vain.
They had but the one idea--tobacco, the island currency, tantamount
to minted gold; returned to shore with it, burthened but rejoicing;
and late into the night, on the royal terrace, were to be seen
counting the sticks by lamplight in the open air.
The king is no such economist. He is greedy of things new and
foreign. House after house, chest after chest, in the palace
precinct, is already crammed with clocks, musical boxes, blue
spectacles, umbrellas, knitted waistcoats, bolts of stuff, tools,
rifles, fowling-pieces, medicines, European foods, sewing-machines,
and, what is more extraordinary, stoves: all that ever caught his
eye, tickled his appetite, pleased him for its use, or puzzled him
with its apparent inutility. And still his lust is unabated. He
is possessed by the seven devils of the collector. He hears a
thing spoken of, and a shadow comes on his face. 'I think I no got
him,' he will say; and the treasures he has seem worthless in
comparison. If a ship be bound for Apemama, the merchant racks his
brain to hit upon some novelty. This he leaves carelessly in the
main cabin or partly conceals in his own berth, so that the king
shall spy it for himself. 'How much you want?' inquires Tembinok',
passing and pointing. 'No, king; that too dear,' returns the
trader. 'I think I like him,' says the king. This was a bowl of
gold-fish. On another occasion it was scented soap. 'No, king;
that cost too much,' said the trader; 'too good for a Kanaka.'
'How much you got? I take him all,' replied his majesty, and
became the lord of seventeen boxes at two dollars a cake. Or
again, the merchant feigns the article is not for sale, is private
property, an heirloom or a gift; and the trick infallibly succeeds.
Thwart the king and you hold him. His autocratic nature rears at
the affront of opposition. He accepts it for a challenge; sets his
teeth like a hunter going at a fence; and with no mark of emotion,
scarce even of interest, stolidly piles up the price. Thus, for
our sins, he took a fancy to my wife's dressing-bag, a thing
entirely useless to the man, and sadly battered by years of
service. Early one forenoon he came to our house, sat down, and
abruptly offered to purchase it. I told him I sold nothing, and
the bag at any rate was a present from a friend; but he was
acquainted with these pretexts from of old, and knew what they were
worth and how to meet them. Adopting what I believe is called 'the
object method,' he drew out a bag of English gold, sovereigns and
half-sovereigns, and began to lay them one by one in silence on the
table; at each fresh piece reading our faces with a look. In vain
I continued to protest I was no trader; he deigned not to reply.
There must have been twenty pounds on the table, he was still going
on, and irritation had begun to mingle with our embarrassment, when
a happy idea came to our delivery. Since his majesty thought so
much of the bag, we said, we must beg him to accept it as a
present. It was the most surprising turn in Tembinok's experience.
He perceived too late that his persistence was unmannerly; hung his
head a while in silence; then, lifting up a sheepish countenance,
'I 'shamed,' said the tyrant. It was the first and the last time
we heard him own to a flaw in his behaviour. Half an hour after he
sent us a camphor-wood chest worth only a few dollars--but then
heaven knows what Tembinok' had paid for it.
Cunning by nature, and versed for forty years in the government of
men, it must not be supposed that he is cheated blindly, or has
resigned himself without resistance to be the milch-cow of the
passing trader. His efforts have been even heroic. Like Nakaeia
of Makin, he has owned schooners. More fortunate than Nakaeia, he
has found captains. Ships of his have sailed as far as to the
colonies. He has trafficked direct, in his own bottoms, with New
Zealand. And even so, even there, the world-enveloping dishonesty
of the white man prevented him; his profit melted, his ship
returned in debt, the money for the insurance was embezzled, and
when the Coronet came to be lost, he was astonished to find he had
lost all. At this he dropped his weapons; owned he might as
hopefully wrestle with the winds of heaven; and like an experienced
sheep, submitted his fleece thenceforward to the shearers. He is
the last man in the world to waste anger on the incurable; accepts
it with cynical composure; asks no more in those he deals with than
a certain decency of moderation; drives as good a bargain as he
can; and when he considers he is more than usually swindled, writes
it in his memory against the merchant's name. He once ran over to
me a list of captains and supercargoes with whom he had done
business, classing them under three heads: 'He cheat a litty'--'He
cheat plenty'--and 'I think he cheat too much.' For the first two
classes he expressed perfect toleration; sometimes, but not always,
for the third. I was present when a certain merchant was turned
about his business, and was the means (having a considerable
influence ever since the bag) of patching up the dispute. Even on
the day of our arrival there was like to have been a hitch with
Captain Reid: the ground of which is perhaps worth recital. Among
goods exported specially for Tembinok' there is a beverage known
(and labelled) as Hennessy's brandy. It is neither Hennessy, nor
even brandy; is about the colour of sherry, but is not sherry;
tastes of kirsch, and yet neither is it kirsch. The king, at
least, has grown used to this amazing brand, and rather prides
himself upon the taste; and any substitution is a double offence,
being at once to cheat him and to cast a doubt upon his palate. A
similar weakness is to be observed in all connoisseurs. Now the
last case sold by the Equator was found to contain a different and
I would fondly fancy a superior distillation; and the conversation
opened very black for Captain Reid. But Tembinok' is a moderate
man. He was reminded and admitted that all men were liable to
error, even himself; accepted the principle that a fault handsomely
acknowledged should be condoned; and wound the matter up with this
proposal: 'Tuppoti I mi'take, you 'peakee me. Tuppoti you
mi'take, I 'peakee you. Mo' betta.'
After dinner and supper in the cabin, a glass or two of 'Hennetti'-
-the genuine article this time, with the kirsch bouquet,--and five
hours' lounging on the trade-room counter, royalty embarked for
home. Three tacks grounded the boat before the palace; the wives
were carried ashore on the backs of vassals; Tembinok' stepped on a
railed platform like a steamer's gangway, and was borne shoulder
high through the shallows, up the beach, and by an inclined plane,
paved with pebbles, to the glaring terrace where he dwells.
