第62章 TRAITS AND SECTS IN THE PAUMOTUSTHE MOST(4)

The performances of the Whistlers are more business-like.Their meetings are held publicly with open doors,all being 'cordially invited to attend.'The faithful sit about the room -according to one informant,singing hymns;according to another,now singing and now whistling;the leader,the wizard -let me rather say,the medium -sits in the midst,enveloped in a sheet and silent;and presently,from just above his head,or sometimes from the midst of the roof,an aerial whistling proceeds,appalling to the inexperienced.This,it appears,is the language of the dead;its purport is taken down progressively by one of the experts,writing,I was told,'as fast as a telegraph operator';and the communications are at last made public.They are of the baldest triviality;a schooner is,perhaps,announced,some idle gossip reported of a neighbour,or if the spirit shall have been called to consultation on a case of sickness,a remedy may be suggested.One of these,immersion in scalding water,not long ago proved fatal to the patient.The whole business is very dreary,very silly,and very European;it has none of the picturesque qualities of similar conjurations in New Zealand;it seems to possess no kernel of possible sense,like some that I shall describe among the Gilbert islanders.Yet I was told that many hardy,intelligent natives were inveterate Whistlers.'Like Mahinui?'I asked,willing to have a standard;and I was told 'Yes.'Why should I wonder?Men more enlightened than my convict-catechist sit down at home to follies equally sterile and dull.

The medium is sometimes female.It was a woman,for instance,who introduced these practices on the north coast of Taiarapu,to the scandal of her own connections,her brother-in-law in particular declaring she was drunk.But what shocked Tahiti might seem fit enough in the Paumotus,the more so as certain women there possess,by the gift of nature,singular and useful powers.They say they are honest,well-intentioned ladies,some of them embarrassed by their weird inheritance.And indeed the trouble caused by this endowment is so great,and the protection afforded so infinitesimally small,that I hesitate whether to call it a gift or a hereditary curse.You may rob this lady's coco-patch,steal her canoes,burn down her house,and slay her family scatheless;but one thing you must not do:you must not lay a hand upon her sleeping-mat,or your belly will swell,and you can only be cured by the lady or her husband.Here is the report of an eye-witness,Tasmanian born,educated,a man who has made money -certainly no fool.In 1886he was present in a house on Makatea,where two lads began to skylark on the mats,and were (I think)ejected.

Instantly after,their bellies began to swell;pains took hold on them;all manner of island remedies were exhibited in vain,and rubbing only magnified their sufferings.The man of the house was called,explained the nature of the visitation,and prepared the cure.A cocoa-nut was husked,filled with herbs,and with all the ceremonies of a launch,and the utterance of spells in the Paumotuan language,committed to the sea.From that moment the pains began to grow more easy and the swelling to subside.The reader may stare.I can assure him,if he moved much among old residents of the archipelago,he would be driven to admit one thing of two -either that there is something in the swollen bellies or nothing in the evidence of man.

I have not met these gifted ladies;but I had an experience of my own,for I have played,for one night only,the part of the whistling spirit.It had been blowing wearily all day,but with the fall of night the wind abated,and the moon,which was then full,rolled in a clear sky.We went southward down the island on the side of the lagoon,walking through long-drawn forest aisles of palm,and on a floor of snowy sand.No life was abroad,nor sound of life;till in a clear part of the isle we spied the embers of a fire,and not far off,in a dark house,heard natives talking softly.To sit without a light,even in company,and under cover,is for a Paumotuan a somewhat hazardous extreme.The whole scene -the strong moonlight and crude shadows on the sand,the scattered coals,the sound of the low voices from the house,and the lap of the lagoon along the beach -put me (I know not how)on thoughts of superstition.I was barefoot,I observed my steps were noiseless,and drawing near to the dark house,but keeping well in shadow,began to whistle.'The Heaving of the Lead'was my air -no very tragic piece.With the first note the conversation and all movement ceased;silence accompanied me while I continued;and when I passed that way on my return I found the lamp was lighted in the house,but the tongues were still mute.All night,as I now think,the wretches shivered and were silent.For indeed,I had no guess at the time at the nature and magnitude of the terrors I inflicted,or with what grisly images the notes of that old song had peopled the dark house.