Henderson's Spear

by Ronald Wright

  Had Thakombau dressed as a beggar, you would still have known him for a king. He stood well over six foot, with a chest like a weightlifter’s, an august brow, and a broad face with hooded eyes that seemed incapable of surprise. He must have been close to seventy years old in 1881; no one knew the year of his birth exactly. His father had been the most powerful chief in the islands, renowned as the “Hot Stone”—because his terrible oven was seldom cool.

  The day we met Thakombau, a Sunday, began with the throb of large sharkskin drums carrying over the water. Some ratings joked about the locals getting hungry, but we were told these retired war-drums now did nothing more alarming than summon worshippers to church. After divine service on board, Mr. John Thurston, the country’s leading European and former Chief Minister to Thakombau, came in a gig to greet us and convey the Princes, their tutor, and officers not on duty to the Kings hall.

  Unlike the Fijians, few of whom stood under six foot, Thurston was a midget, a wiry Scotch-terrier of a man with truculent eyes that bulged like a terriers, and a jutting chin thicketed with beard. He said very little on this occasion. Not until later did I understand the power he wielded behind the thrones of Fiji, black and white.

  The Kings house was a large structure on a stone platform about two yards high. The roof was as prettily thatched as any in Suffolk but with a flaring Oriental line and heavy eaves. The walls were tightly woven of rattan in diamond patterns, and the entrance was flanked by posts topped with conch shells. We entered by a low door and were ushered crouching through the gloom to spots where we sat on the floor, it being an outrage for anyone to raise his head higher than a chief’s.

  The Governor, Sir William Des Voeux, came in with his wife, children, and native attendants—Fijians of rank, wearing white kilts trimmed with scarlet, a boar’s tusk pendant on each sable chest, and their great frizzes of hair in red, ochre, natural black, or combinations of all three. Not until my eyes adjusted to the gloaming did I see Thakombau clearly, at the far end among his chiefs, like the king of an ebony chess set.

  No garments concealed his upper body, which was that of a man half his age. He wore only a great band of tapa around his middle like a cummerbund, and below that a native kilt. His head and feet were bare. I heard that when the whites had crowned him King, lowering a cheap diadem with paste gems onto his bushy hair, the scene had been irresistibly absurd. A titter ran through the crowd and only Thakombau’s great dignity of bearing prevented uproar. That same night he threw his crown in the sea.

  When all were assembled, the old man gave a speech of welcome, rendered into English by Mr. Thurston. He spoke of how he had never dreamed, when he ceded Fiji to the Queen seven years ago, that his old eyes would ever live to behold her blood and sinew; for though the lands of Fiji seemed great to him, he had seen the globe that represents the world and understood how many great lands Her Majesty ruled from the rising to the setting sun, and that by comparison with all those lands, Fiji appeared no bigger than the dung of a fly.

  “We were too small to stand alone on the sea any longer,” Thakombau continued, looking steadfastly at Eddy through his rheumy eyes. “These islands are our riches. Tumult and strife are poverty. Many of the whites who came here were bad men, mere stalkers on the beach. If matters had remained as they were, Fiji would have become like a piece of driftwood, to be picked up by the first passer-by. I understood in my heart that if I and my chiefs did not cede Fiji to your grandmother, the white stalkers on the beach, the cormorants, would open their maws and swallow us.

  “When I gave Fiji to the Queen I added a small gift. I sent her my old and favourite war club, which in war was called the ‘Bloodbather’ and in peace the ‘Queen’s Bedspread,’ for with it by my hand the Lady of Bau slept soundly. With that emblem of the former law of Fiji, I sent my love to Her Majesty, that she might watch over us as I had watched over my lady.

  “Your Queen is now our Queen. Our two races are bound together. Law makes us as one, and the stronger nation lends strength to the weaker. For this we thank you, and we ask that you convey our gratitude to Queen Victoria, and our hopes that she, and you who after her will one day be Kings of Fiji, shall ever remember and care for us and our beloved islands.”

  Clearly it was Eddy’s duty to respond. I glanced anxiously at Dalton, who glanced just as anxiously at me. Eddy had seldom spoken in public during the voyage, and those few occasions had not been successes. He was tongue-tied and awkward, prone to stammer, blush and fidget.

  The Prince stood up, drawing a gasp from the natives. But the old man, without saying or doing anything, managed to radiate serenity, conveying to all present that he was aware that while Fijians sit to do honour, British rise, and that the taboo against raising one’s head above a chief’s could not apply to Eddy, for he represented the highest Chief in this world.

  The natives immediately relaxed, and Eddy … well, I’ve no idea if Eddy understood that he had made a faux pas already, but he managed to conduct himself all right. The air of goodwill in the room seemed to enter his being and endow him with confidence. His reply was short and, if not distinguished, adequate and well received. No doubt Thurston added lustre when rendering it into the native tongue.

  While this was going on my eyes strayed over the chiefs around Thakombau. Some evidently were the product of mission schools, with tamed hair and starched shirts. A few were women draped in calico. Others were wild, white-eyed old men from the mountainous interior, clad in little save animal teeth and oil, the lobes of their ears stretched like napkin rings and stuffed with rolls of banknotes and tobacco.

  Thakombau’s house, according to Thurston, was a smaller version of his palace on Bau, said to be the finest native edifice in the South Seas. What raised the rustic building to distinction was its strong, curious workmanship. The pillars, thick as Bacchantes masts, were of polished hardwood. The top of each was adorned with a band of carving and a sperm whale’s tooth hanging like a bugle from a cord. The walls were lined in tapa cloth stamped with rectangles, diamonds, hatchings, etc., in brown and black.

  The ceiling was perhaps the best feature of all, comparable in effect to hammerbeam work in an English church. Its tiebeams and king posts, stringers and struts were fastened together by sin-net lashings, very tight and neat, with chequering and hound-stooth in black and white against the chestnut-red of the rope.

  When Eddy had finished, a smile creased Thakombau’s face, and he was heard to say, as if to himself, Vinaka, vinaka, “It is good, thank you.” He gave a brief command to one of his heralds who, using a stick, fished the finest of the whale teeth from its pillar, and held it out to Thakombau, who touched it. Thurston explained afterwards that these specimens of ivory constitute a form of currency among Fijians, yet were something greater, for their value was more spiritual than financial. Even the most Christian of natives regarded them as repositories of mana, or metaphysical power.

  Thurston whispered to Eddy, who sat down cross-legged where he was. A hush descended. I became aware of sounds outside: chickens, birds, cicadas, the muffled thud of the reef. Lulled by these, by the heat, the hay smell and softness of the mats, which were laid over a thick cushion of grass, I began to doze.

  Smyth nudged me awake. The King’s herald, risen to a kneeling pose, was holding up the whale tooth and its cord while he recited a formula. When the man finished, Thurston accepted the gift with a similar speech, and held it before Eddy, who touched it as Thakombau had done.

  It was a splendid moment, the once and future Kings of Fiji, face to face; the passing of a spark of mana, the divinity that hedges kings, from the old man to the young.

  Dalton’s face was alight with triumph—and relief.

  When weather permitted, the squadron played cricket against Levuka Town. Prince George was a strong batsman. Eddy was more often seen strolling northward along the beach road, ostensibly to take the air, but really to vanish for hours on end into what remained of the roaring district, a few muddy lanes of tavern
s and bordellos.

  One sunny afternoon Mr. Thurston took us to see his botanical gardens on the hillside, reached by a long flight of steps affording fine views of harbour and sea. While walking he told us a little of his life—seaman, botanist, trader, planter, and now, as he put it, “panjandrum.” He’d arrived on the islands many years before, soaked and coral-gored, to the sound of a brig breaking up on the reef. I remember his piercing eyes framed by brows like the fibre of a coconut. He spoke energetically and floridly, using odd allusions and expressions, the style of a man who must assert himself with words, though he did so wittily, not pompously.

  Chief architect of the system of indirect rule, which included a strict ban on land sales to whites and alcohol sales to natives, he’d earned the respect of Fijians and the hatred of many of his fellow settlers. On this slope above Levuka he had established a collection of local plants, foods and medicines as well as flowers and ornamentals, above all the stately fan-palm. Export of these to collectors round the world brought a steady income with which he acquired staples such as maize and cassava, distributing seed to villages throughout the archipelago.

  Dalton and he talked learnedly for an hour, scattering the Latin pedigrees of plants like so much pollen as they walked along the terraces. Reaching the upper limit of his Kew, Thurston took us into the woods along a path beside a torrent, from bright sun to a leafy gloom that reminded Prince George of Trinidad and the cautionary tale of the “indiarubber man.” Indeed, this Eden too had its vegetal serpent, harmless to man but a patient murderer of trees.

  “We call this gentleman the ‘Scotch Lawyer,’” Thurston said to the Princes, his hand on a trunk resembling a column of tangled snakes, “because he’s like a crooked attorney who fastens onto an estate and wrings it dry.” He explained that the aspiring creeper, properly known as the strangler fig, begins as a seemingly innocent shoot beside a tall, vigorous tree. Slowly it climbs its neighbour, lacing and enmeshing the trunk, choking off the flow of sap. The host dies and rots within its assailant’s embrace, leaving the Scotch Lawyer, now sturdy enough to stand alone, flourishing over the remains.

  “Coming as I do from a line of Scots,” I remarked, “I think ‘Lawyer’ nickname enough for this odious plant.”

  Thurston laughed, unloading the heavy bags of care below his bloodshot eyes. “Indeed! Shall we call it the ‘English Planter,’ then? Or perhaps the Rampant Anglo-Saxon? Cant leave out the Americans, can we? Your South Seas Englishman’s a lazy devil. Your American’s part alligator and all the rest steam engine. We had a little civil war in Levuka on their account—they set up a branch of the Ku Klux Klan here. Called Thakombau an old nigger and me a nigger-lover. Had they prevailed, Fiji would have come to resemble this odious tree all too closely, as is happening apace in the Kingdom of Hawaii. Have you seen Honolulu?”

  “No, worse luck,” said George. “We were going to. Father and King Kalakaua are friends. But we had to go to Cape Town.”

  “Well, if you do go, you’ll hardly see a native face on the street. The whole place is Scotch Lawyers—subspecies missionary, subspecies planter, subspecies republican and democrat.”

  We walked down from the gardens to town, looking out over the harbour and our great black ships. Like many small men, Thurston didn’t walk, he stalked—hands thrust into the pockets of his linen jacket. The mental and verbal energy contained under pressure, as it were, in his diminutive frame continued to bubble out and follow us like lava down the mountainside: “Justice for the Fijians is of greater consequence than cotton growing. Or even empire building.” He shot a fraught look at Eddy and George. “I hope Mother England will remember that. God help us if she doesn’t. The Fijian is the finest friend you can ever make—and the fiercest, most tenacious foe. You don’t want another New Zealand on your hands. Ten million pounds wasted in campaigns, hundreds of settlers slaughtered, half the Maori race destroyed, and no hope of lasting peace except by destroying the rest. Or, at the eleventh hour, admitting them to government. Which is what should have been done from the start.”

  Beyond the lace of spars and rigging, the sea ran smooth to the ruled line of the sky, a sheet of cyan blue with islands near and far, and the distant 100m of others below the curve of the Earth.

  On Levuka’s waterfront near the cricket ground stood the Royal Hotel, which had the best dining-room we’d seen since Sydney.

  The building had an airy verandah where officers resorted in the evening for a quiet cigar. Being young and underpaid, I did not go often myself. However, one evening, having dined less grandly elsewhere, I was strolling by quite late when Dalton’s mighty voice boomed from the lantern glow into the night, stilling the crickets and frogs who observed a respectful pause before cautiously resuming their usual clamour.

  “Henderson! Speak of the devil! Join us.”

  He and Thurston were sitting at a corner table, and looked as though they’d been there some time. The other patrons had gone home. Dalton’s spectacles were smudged and his cravat disordered. Thurston’s eyes, always a trifle bloodshot, looked redder and glossier than usual, the whites jaundiced, though it could have been the lamplight. He seemed old and sickly, much older than the vigorous tutor, though the two were about the same age.

  Dalton was in one of his confiding moods. I accepted a glass while he finished a train of thought: “Well, you’ve done it, Thurston! A capital job of work. Fiji’s an exception to the past and a model for the future. There’s no reason in the world why the experiment shouldn’t be repeated … and soon!” The tutor winked at his companion, then addressed me.

  “What did you think of Prince Eddy the other day, Henderson—progress, eh?” I agreed.

  “I believe the time has come.…” Dalton was topping up my glass. “Drink up, dear fellow. We’re streets ahead of you. … The time has come for him to strike out on his own. Until now he’s taken his cues from Georgie, and that’s not right. It’s not natural for a young man, nearly eighteen, to look to his little brother for initiative. I want to see him build on this recent triumph. By himself. Opportunity has knocked! Can’t say more now. You’ll be getting orders. May one assume you’d have no objection to a little time away from the Squadron? Just myself, Prince Eddy, and a chap you’ll meet later—captain of a charter boat. Friend of Mr. Thurston’s here. Have I said too much?”

  “I wouldn’t say so.” Thurston replied, giving me a fore-and-aft look and reporting his impression as if I wasn’t there. “This young fellow looks steady enough to me. Though he’d better steel himself to meet an island character.” He turned to me. “Bit of a rough diamond, this captain you’ll be sailing with, but there’s no one alive knows the waters or the natives better. I was telling your shipmate how he fetched up here back in the sixties—sailed an open dinghy seven hundred miles from Apia, one hand on the tiller and the other on a missionary’s wife.” Thurston chuckled, a grinding of unsound lungs. “Cigar? Manila not Havana, I’m afraid.”

  The lamp went out, leaving an air of scorched oil about us. For ten or twenty minutes we smoked in silence, the tips of our cheroots illuminating each face in turn, answering fireflies in the palms. My eyes widened to the night. I could just make out the Brazil-nut shape of Wakaya across the bay, a black void bitten from the stars. Faint strains of Eastern music were drifting intermittently across the water, perhaps from the quarantine station for Indian coolies brought in to satisfy the planters’ appetite for labour.

  “Well, young man—what’s your answer?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. … Of course I’ll do anything you suggest, so long as it’s square with my superiors and the Governor. Wouldn’t mind a few more days away from the tub.” I waved my cigar towards the dark hull of Bacchante.

  “Des Voeux usually takes my advice.” Thurston said quietly, in a tone that implied, the Governor does as I say. I discovered later that this remark, which struck me then as arrogant, was nothing but the truth. Des Voeux was new to Fiji, a match neither in knowledge nor in personality fo
r Thurston.

  “When do we leave?”

  “Well, that’s it, Henderson,” said the tutor. “Were not leaving from here. We sail with the Squadron, then transfer to a smaller vessel at sea.”

  “An open dinghy?”

  “Hardly,” Thurston said. “You’ll like her. Belonged to a South American supremo. No expense spared. Like a French cathouse below decks and the fastest thing afloat. Steam and all, triple expansion. But whatever you do, don’t ask Captain Whosit any questions. Especially about how he came by this vessel of his. I never do. Though one hears things, of course. I’m damned glad he’s on my side. So will you be if there’s any sort of scrape.”

  “Don’t let him alarm you,” Dalton struck in nervously, more to stanch Thurston’s flow than to reassure me. “Everyone who needs to approve this … this excursion—and I mean everyone—has given his, and her, approval. But nothing more must be said of it for now. And that applies to what’s already been said.” He shook the last of the bottle into our glasses. “We’re having brandy and cigars, enjoying the night air, and complimenting Mr. Thurston on his botanical accomplishments. Nothing more.”

  Strange how much of Fiji comes back to me now as night scenes. Why doesn’t the mind’s eye light up with blazing sun and blinding sea, the emerald forest, the curtains of rain, the coral gardens? But there it is: Fiji for me is a land of soft nights, cigars glowing against the darkness, and great fires with dancing tribesmen.

  The festivities seemed to happen on their own without hint of the choreography behind the show, though Thurston must have been stage manager. It was a farewell never to be forgotten.

  In late afternoon we gathered on the green below Government House, where the Princes were resting in the cool of a summerhouse built for them by the local chiefs’ own hands. The sun sank behind the volcanoes, its rufous light sliding up the masts and rigging of the fleet. The aged King came down with his entourage, wearing brown tapa stamped with discs of black. Mats were spread along the top of the slope, facing the sea. Here the Governor sat in the native way, Thakombau at his right hand, the Admiral to his left, the Princes in front. Around them gathered all the ships’ officers, all the high-born Fijians; whilst on the lower side, across an open space, young men and women sat neatly arrayed like companies of infantry.