Читать книгу Cannibal-land: Adventures with a camera in the New Hebrides - Martin Johnson H. - Страница 4

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Osa and I were sure, after our first adventure in Malekula, that we had had enough of cannibals to last us for the rest of our natural lives. But when we reached Sydney, on our way home, and had our films developed, we began to weaken. Our pictures were so good that we almost forgot the risk we had taken to get them. The few feet I had managed to grind out on Malekula were no “staged” pictures of savage life. They were so real and convincing that Osa declared her knees went wobbly every time she saw them.

Before many months, Nagapate was scowling out of the screen at audiences in New York and Paris and London, and villagers who would never go a hundred miles from home were meeting him face to face in the Malekula jungle. The public wanted more—and so did we. Early in 1919, about a year after our first adventure in the Malekula bush, we were again in Sydney, preparing for a second visit to the land of the Big Numbers—the trip out of which this book has grown.

As we sailed into Sydney harbor on the S.S. Ventura, we met, sailing out, the Pacifique, the little steamer of the Messageries Maritimes that had taken us to the New Hebrides on our former visit. That meant we should have four weeks to wait before embarking on our journey to Malekula. We were impatient to be off, but we knew that the four weeks would pass quickly enough, for many things remained to be done before we should be ready for a long sojourn in the jungle.

We took up our abode with the Higginses, in their house on Darling Point Road overlooking the harbor. Ernie Higgins had handled my films for me on my previous trip, and I had found him to be the best laboratory man I had ever met with, so I was glad to be again associated with him.

The house was an old-fashioned brick house of about twelve or fourteen rooms. I fitted up one of the second-story rooms to serve as a workroom. I had electricity brought in and set up my Pathéscope projector, so that I could see the pictures I happened to be working on. Having this projector meant that the work of cutting and assembling films would be cut in two. I put up my rewinds, and soon had everything in apple-pie order.

A BEACH SCENE

From the window of my workroom, I could look over Sydney harbor. Osa and I never tired of watching the ships going in and out. We would consult the sailing lists in the newspapers, and try to identify the vessels that we saw below us. There were steamers from China and Japan and the Straits Settlements; little vessels from the various South Seas groups; big, full-rigged ships from America; steamers from Africa and Europe; little schooners from the islands; coastal boats to and from New Zealand and Tasmania, and almost every day big ships came in with returned soldiers. In the course of a week we saw boats of every description flying the flags of almost every nation on the globe.

Osa put in long days in the harbor, fishing from Mr. Higgins’s little one-man dinghy, that was nearly swamped a dozen times a day in the wash from the ferry-boats, while I worked like a slave at my motion-picture apparatus. The public thinks that a wandering camera-man’s difficulties begin with putting a roll of film in the camera and end with taking it out. If I were telling the true story of this trip, I should start with my grilling weeks of preparation in New York. But my troubles in Sydney will perhaps give sufficient idea of the unromantic back-of-the-scenes in the life of a motion-picture explorer. I had troubles by the score. My cameras acted up. They scratched the film; they buckled. When I had remedied these and a dozen other ailments, I found that my pictures were not steady when they were projected. The fault we at last located in Mr. Higgins’s printer. We repaired the printer. Then we found that the developer produced a granulated effect on the film. It took us two weeks to get the proper developer. But our troubles were not over. Great spots came out on the pictures—grease in the developing tanks. And the racks were so full of old chemicals that they spoiled the film that hung over them. I had new racks and new tanks made. They were not made according to specifications. I had them remade twice and then took them apart and did the work myself.

After I thought that my troubles were over, I found that my Pathéscope projector, which had been made for standard film, had several parts lacking. This was most serious, for it spoiled a plan that I had had in the back of my head ever since I had first seen my Malekula pictures. I wanted to show them to Nagapate and his men. It was an event that I had looked forward to ever since I had decided to revisit the island. It would be almost comparable to setting up a movie show in the Garden of Eden. Luckily, I was able to have the missing parts made in Sydney, and my apparatus was at last in order.

Then I had to collect as much information as I could about the New Hebrides and their inhabitants, so I trotted around morning after morning, to interview traders and steamship officials and missionaries. Another task, in which Osa helped me, was to ransack the second-hand clothing stores for old hats and coats and vests to serve as presents for the natives. Other trade-stuffs, such as tobacco, mirrors, knives, hatchets, and bright-colored calico, I planned to get in Vila, the principal port and capital of the New Hebrides.

The four weeks had gone by like a flash, but the Pacifique had not yet put in an appearance. She came limping into harbor at the end of another week. She had been delayed by engine trouble and by quarantines; for the influenza was raging through the South Seas. It was announced that she would sail in five days, but the sailing date was postponed several times, and it was the 18th of June before we finally lifted anchor.

It seemed good to get out of the flu-infested city, where theaters and schools and churches were closed, every one was forced to wear a mask, and the population was in a blue funk. We both loved Sydney and its hospitable people, but we were not sorry to see the pretty harbor, with its green slopes dotted with red-tiled roofs, fade into the distance.

Osa and I have often said that we like the Pacifique better than any ship we have ever traveled on. It is a little steamer—only one thousand nine hundred tons. We do not have bunks to sleep in, but comfortable beds. Morning coffee is served from five to eleven o’clock. It is an informal meal. Every one comes up for it in pajamas. Breakfast is at half-past eleven. Dinner is ready at half-past six and lasts until half-past eight. It is a leisurely meal, of course after course, with red wine flowing plentifully. After dinner, the French officers play on the piano and sing.

Most of the officers were strangers to us on this voyage, for our old friends were all down with the flu in Sydney. The doctor and the wireless operator were both missing, and the captain, Eric de Catalano, assumed their duties. He was a good wireless operator, for we got news from New Zealand each night and were in communication with Nouméa long before we sighted New Caledonia. How efficient he was as a doctor, I cannot say. But he had a big medicine chest and made his round each day among the sick, and though many of the passengers came down with influenza, none of them died. He was a handsome man, quiet and intelligent, and a fine photographer. He had several cameras and a well-fitted dark room and an enlarging apparatus aboard, and had made some of the best island pictures I had ever seen. He seemed to be a man of many talents, for the chief engineer told me that he had an electrician’s papers and could run the engines as well as he himself could.

We were a polyglot crowd aboard. We had fifteen first-class and five second-class passengers, French, Australian, English, Scotch, and Irish, and one Dane, with Osa and myself to represent America. In the steerage were twenty-five Japanese, and up forward there was a Senegalese negro being taken to the French convict settlement at Nouméa. Our officers were all French—few could speak English. Our deck crew was composed of libérés—ex-convicts from Nouméa. The cargo-handlers were native New Caledonians with a sprinkling of Loyalty Islanders. The firemen were Arabs, the dish-washers in the galley, New Hebrideans. The bath steward was a Fiji Islander, the cabin steward a Hindu, the second-class cabin steward hailed from the Molucca Islands, and our table steward was a native of French Indo-China.

Three days out from Sydney we passed Middleton Reef, a coral atoll, about five miles long and two across, with the ocean breaking in foam on its reef and the water of its lagoon as quiet as a millpond. The atoll is barely above water, and many ships have gone aground there. We sailed so close that I could have thrown a stone ashore, and saw the hull of a big schooner on the reef.

As we stood by the rail looking at her, one of our fellow-passengers, a trader who knew the islands well, came up to us and told us her story.

“She went ashore three years ago, in a big wind,” he said. “All hands stuck to the ship until she broke in two. Then they managed to reach land—captain and crew and the captain’s wife and two children. They had some fresh water and a little food. They rationed the water carefully, and there was rain. But the food soon gave out. For days they had nothing. The crew went crazy with hunger, and killed one of the children and ate it. For two days, the mother held the other child in her arms. Then she threw it into the sea so that they could not eat it. Then three of the men took one of the ship’s boats. They could not manage it in the rough sea, but by a lucky chance they were washed up on the beach. They were still alive, but the captain’s wife had lost her mind.”

We reached Nouméa on the morning of June 23d. The pilot met us outside the reef, in accordance with regulations, but he refused to come on board when he found that we had several passengers down with the influenza, so we towed him in. We were not allowed to land, but were placed in quarantine off a small island about two miles from Nouméa, between the leper settlement and Île Nou, the convict island. We were avoided as though we had leprosy. Each day a launch came with fresh meat and fresh vegetables, the French engineer and black crew all masked and plainly anxious not to linger in our vicinity any longer than necessary, and each day the doctor came and took our temperatures.

We passed our time in fishing from the deck. We had excellent luck and our catches made fine eating. Osa, of course, caught more fish than any one else, principally because she was up at sunrise and did not quit until it was time to go to bed. I relieved the monotony in the evenings by showing my pictures. I set up the Pathéscope in the saloon, and each night I gave a performance. My audience was most critical. Every one on board knew the New Hebrides and Nouméa well, and many of the passengers were familiar with the Solomons and other groups in which I had taken pictures. But my projector worked finely; I had as good a show as could be seen in any motion-picture house, and every one was satisfied.

We had been surprised, as we steamed into the harbor, to see the Euphrosyne lying at anchor there. The sight of her had made us realize that we were indeed nearing the Big Numbers territory. Strangely enough, the thought aroused no fear in us—only excitement and eagerness to get to work, and resentment against the delay that kept us inactive in Nouméa harbor.

Not until four days had passed was our quarantine lifted. On the evening of June 27th, the launch brought word that peace had been signed, and that, if no more cases of flu had developed, we would be allowed to land on the following day and take part in the peace celebration.

New Caledonia does not much resemble the other islands of the South Pacific. It has a white population of twenty thousand—about two thirds as great as the native population. Its capital, Nouméa, is an industrial city of fifteen thousand white inhabitants—the Chicago of the South Seas. In and around it are nickel-smelters, meat-canneries, sugar-works, tobacco and coconut-oil and soap factories. New Caledonia is rich in minerals. It has large deposits of coal and kaolin, chrome and cobalt, lead and antimony, mercury, cinnabar, silver, gold and copper and gypsum and marble. In neighboring islands are rich guano beds. Agriculture has not yet been crowded off the island by industry. The mountain slopes make good grazing grounds and the fertile valleys are admirably fitted for the production of coffee, cotton, maize, tobacco, copra, rubber, and cereals. Yet there is little of South Seas romance about the islands. And Nouméa is one of the ugliest, most depressing little towns on the face of the earth.

We docked there early on the morning of Saturday, the 28th of June. The wharf was packed with people, but none of them would come on board. We might have been a plague ship. As we went ashore, we looked for signs of the peace celebration. A few half-hearted firecrackers and some flags hanging limp in the heat were all. The real celebration, we were told, would take place on Monday.

In the evening, we were invited to attend one of those terrible home-talent performances that I had thought were a product only of Kansas, but, I now learned, were as deadly in the South Seas as in the Middle West. A round little Frenchman read a paper in rapid French that we could not understand, but the expression of polite interest on the faces of the audience told us that it must be like the Fourth-of-July orations in our home town. Then came a duet, by a man and woman who could not sing. Another paper. Then an orchestra of three men and four girls arranged themselves with much scraping of chairs on the funny little stage and wheezed a few ancient tunes.

On Sunday night we went to the Peace Ball in the town hall. Most of Nouméa’s fifteen thousand inhabitants were there, so dancing was next to impossible. It was like a Mack Sennet comedy ball. Ancient finery had been hauled out for the occasion, and, though most of the men appeared in full dress, scarcely one had evening clothes that really fitted. Under the too loose and too tight coats, however, there were warm and hospitable hearts, and we were treated royally. After the ball, we were entertained at supper by the governor and his suite.

Governor Joulia was a little, bald-headed man of about fifty years of age, always smiling, always polite, and always dressed in the most brilliant of brilliant uniforms, covered with decorations that he had won during campaigns in Senegal, Algeria and India. His wife was a pretty, plump woman of about thirty—she and Osa took to each other at once. They spoke no English, and our French is awful, but we struck out like drowning persons, and managed to understand each other after a fashion.

On Monday, the “real celebration” of the peace consisted in closing the stores and sleeping most of the day. In the afternoon, the governor and his wife came to the ship for us and took us to their beautiful summer place, about five miles from the city. A great park, with deer feeding under the trees, fine gardens, tennis courts, well-tended walks—and the work all done by numbered convicts.

There are convicts everywhere in and about Nouméa—convicts and libérés. Their presence makes the ugly little town seem even more unprepossessing than it is. The pleasantest spot anywhere around is Île Nou, the convict island that I have often heard called a hell on earth. On this green little island are about five hundred convicts—all old men, for France has not deported any of her criminals to New Caledonia since 1897. They are all “lifers.” Indeed, I was told of one old man who is in for two hundred years; he has tried to escape many times, and, according to a rule of the settlement, ten years are added to a man’s sentence for each attempt at escape.

We visited Île Nou in company with Governor Joulia and Madame Joulia; the Mayor of Nouméa; the manager of the big nickel mines; the Governor of the prison settlement, and a lot of aides-de-something. We saw the old prisoners, in big straw hats and burlap clothing, each with his number stamped on his back, all busy doing nothing. We were taken through the cells where, in former times, convicts slept on bare boards, with their feet through leg-irons. We were locked in dark dungeons, and, for the benefit of my camera, the guillotine was brought out and, with a banana stalk to take the place of a man, the beheading ceremony was gone through with. We were taken in carriages over the green hills to the hospitals and to the insane asylum, where we saw poor old crazy men, with vacant eyes, staring at the ceilings. Here we met the king of the world, who received us with great pomp from behind the bars of a strong iron cage, and a pitiful old inventor, who showed us a perpetual-motion machine which he had just perfected. It was made from stale bread.

LOOKING SEAWARD

Yet Île Nou is better than Nouméa, with its ugly streets full of broken old libérés. While most of the convicts were sent out for life, some were sent for five years. At the end of that time, they were freed from Île Nou and permitted to live in New Caledonia on parole, and if they had committed no fresh offense, at the end of another five years they were given their ticket back to France. Any one sentenced to a longer term than five years, however, never saw France again. He regained his freedom, but was destined to lifelong exile. Some of the libérés have found employment and have become responsible citizens of New Caledonia, but many of them drift through the streets of Nouméa, broken old men who sleep wherever they can find a corner to crawl into and pick their food from the gutters.

I was glad, while in Nouméa, to renew my acquaintance with Commissioner King of the New Hebrides, who had come to New Caledonia to have the Euphrosyne repaired. I talked over with him my proposed expedition to Malekula, and received much valuable advice. He could not give me the armed escort I had hoped to secure from him, for he had no police boys to spare. He promised, however, to pick us up at Vao, in about a month’s time, and take us for a cruise through the group in the Euphrosyne. I wanted him, and the New Caledonian officials as well, to see some of my work, so I decided to show my films in the Grand Cinéma, the leading motion-picture house of Nouméa. I gave the proprietor the films free of charge, under condition that I got fifty seats blocked off in the center of the house. We invited fifty guests, and the remainder of the house was packed with French citizens of Nouméa, Chinese and Japanese coolies and native New Caledonians. I showed the five reels called “Cannibals of the South Seas.” Then I showed my four reels of Malekula film, and ended up with a one-reel subject, Nouméa. We were given an ovation, and both Osa and I had to make speeches—understood by few of those present. The French have a passion for speeches whether they can understand them or not. The next morning, we found ourselves celebrities as we walked through the streets of Nouméa.