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Samoa Under the Sailing Gods

Prologue — The Beach—1923

page 1

Prologue
The Beach
—1923

I

There had been unwonted activity on the wide veranda in the western side of the large, raised bungalow for a day or two; with the elfin Fifiloi and another of the Samoan retainers, to be seen above the hedge, pouring liquor from cauldrons into flat, steaming pans, set out upon the floor, and Charlie Roberts hovering with a thermometer; for he had a theory that beer should be cooled off quickly in the breeze. I was not surprised, for his daughter's twenty-first birthday was pending. One afternoon, instead of merely waving, he called me in. "I don't know what to do; I've made four hundred bottles of beer for Norma's party to-morrow, and it's as bitter as bloody gall!" From the veranda, beyond the steep brown roof-thatch of the elliptical, open-walled hut, or native fale, across the road, could be seen the blue waters of the reef-bound harbour; and behind the white buildings of the town, that fringed the fair buttock of the bay circling to our left, rose the solitary woody hill—advanced from the central masses of the island—on the summit of which was buried R. L. Stevenson.

We were all making illicit liquor, despite—or, indeed, because of—Prohibition; I having been initiated by the famous Charlie, whose house, nearly opposite the red-roofed Pilot Station on Matautu Point, I passed on my way home to my cottage at Vaiala. Often, as to-day, he would be on the veranda and beckon me in—a small, frail figure, with cropped head, in pyjamas and dressing-gown, or tussore silk suit with gold watch-chain hung across the loose waistcoat. "I want you to try some of this!" And then he would talk; he was incisively interesting, and had the finest library in the islands. When first I saw a spacious room he kept alongside it lined with casks of liquor in various stages of fermentation, I was alarmed page 2for him. "Are you not afraid of the police dropping in on this?" I asked. "Not at all," he replied. "I know too much about them!"

Nearly every writer who visited the islands, including Mrs. Jack London, mentioned him; and in this connection he told one or two stories against himself. "The first man I met on landing at Apia was Charlie Roberts—an Australian. The shape of his head showed his criminal ancestry," was the pronouncement of a German. Actually, he was English—possibly, as he claimed, an Oxford man, and he asserted also that he had been associated with the old Pink 'Un crowd in London: Pitcher, the Ape, the Dwarf of the Blood, and the rest of them. He had spent some time on the Australian Turf; was once a "tic-tac," or signaller to a bookmaker; had been barred from the racecourses; and had gone on them in blue goggles and other disguise, so it was said. He told me that he had been offered a considerable sum of money—which he refused—by a firm of Australian publishers, for his reminiscences of the Australian Turf.

Having come to Samoa before the end of the last century he traded for a time in contraband arms, and was present with his friend Blacklock, the American Consul, to hear the first shot fired in history by the Americans and British in alliance, in the Samoan War of 1899. After the hoisting of the German flag in 1900, he had kept, in succession, two or three remarkable and characteristic hotels—or saloons—until 1914. The last of these was named the Tivoli.

In August 1914, when a New Zealand expeditionary force under Colonel Logan dropped anchor in Apia Harbour, and while the Germans capitulated within the half-hour that was allowed, Charlie Roberts was in hospital. (By his own account he had been in the habit of drinking a bottle of whisky before breakfast.) Dick Williams, the Deputy Administrator of Savaii—the largest island of the Samoa Group—the only British subject it was said in the German Colonial Service—had come across from Savaii to hand his resignation to the German Governor, and was present when the Union Jack was hoisted above the Court House. He made himself known to Colonel Logan. "Ah!" remarked Logan. "The very man I want! I have page 3to set up an administration. You, of course, will go back to Savaii—your place is there. I have men who will fill many of the offices; but I must have a man for Chief Judge with knowledge of English and German law and one who also knows the natives. Whom do you suggest?" "Charlie Roberts is the man, sir!" replied Williams. "Right!" said Logan, and noted down the name. Shortly after, the residents of Apia were notified, to their surprise, by proclamation, that Charles Roberts was Chief Judge. It was generally agreed that he was the best Chief Judge the islands ever had. He remained in office until after the War. At the time of which I write he was practising as a lawyer on the beach. He had, while hotel-keeping, appeared occasionally before the German court as a legal agent.

I was able to offer no suggestion for dealing with the four hundred bottles of beer that was too bitter; and indeed it is unlikely that any was expected of me, for I specialized in making wine. When I left, the beer was being decanted into a large tub.

The party on the night following—Norma's birthday party; for "fa'a Samoa," having been born in the islands, she was "Norma" to everyone on the beach—was quite the most noteworthy I have ever seen. There was Charlie, in full evening-dress—very loose-fitting—leaning up against a wall and talking, between asthmatic pauses, with humorous mobile mouth; Mrs. Roberts—a stout and elderly, but rather handsome woman, an Australian, who had once been in the chorus I believe—also in black, bustling about; as was Loibl—the Treasurer to the Administration under Logan's Government—a little man, who went not long ago to search for Jesuit treasure in Bolivia or Peru. Some of the Gentlemen Adventurers from the Narwhal, which was then in port, were likewise there in conventional evening garb; the rest of the men were in the motley of the tropics—a white mess-jacket and black trousers.

The half-caste element, of course, was strong. In Samoa the half-castes rank as Europeans. Some of their dark-haired golden-armed women are lissom and beautiful, and dress very elegantly and in rare good taste, whereby, perhaps deservedly, they have the name of being extravagant. Many white men, including Government officials, were married to these—and page 4alleged, most of them, to be in debt at nearly every store along the beach.

The largest room—a double room it must have been—was cleared for dancing, and there was a bar or buffet somewhere in the offing. Behind this were bar-tenders, who served the drinks into glasses from a variety of receptacles. There was beer, punch, and lemonade. On long tables, behind hedgerows, in the illumined garden, below the high veranda, before the house and to one side, and spread with cloths of snowy whiteness, were piles of eatables: chicken, fish, sweets, salads, cold meats, and a solitary plate piled high with a cone of sliced pineapple—the first perhaps of the season.

The drinks appeared to be remarkably innocuous: the beer was not too strong nor too bitter, the punch—mixed in a cask—as mild as milk. I, in quest of the spirit of the dance, changed from one to another, and then back again; as, no doubt, did many others. The dance was in full swing, and the tropic night was warm.

The first symptom which caused me to think I might have overstepped the mark, was that I cannoned into someone when crossing the otherwise empty floor at the conclusion of a dance.

The next thing I remember is standing near one of the supper-tables in the garden and being highly diverted by the behaviour of one of the tail-coated guests. He was gazing, horror-struck and incredulous, at the empty plate which recently had held the solitary pineapple. "Who's taken this —— pineapple?" he gasped. Then he bent lower as if unable to believe his eyes: "Who's taken this —— pineapple?" he exclaimed. He stooped lower still; his eye now was on a level with the table, and his voice rose to a scream: "Who's taken this bloody —— pineapple?" I saw the Aide-de-Camp make a stampede for the house with two young people of whom he was in charge, driving them before him as a flurried hen does chicks.

It was a somewhat remarkable party, and it marked the end of an era. There were anything up to three hundred people present; nearly everyone of any consequence in Apia. And the larger proportion were anything but sober; but for this I page 5blame in part the insidious nature of the drinks. However, I doubt if it did any harm; and I for one have often looked back to it with pleasure.

II

From the Pilot Station at Matautu, which capped the eastern horn of the Apia Bay, on the line of the main coast of the island looking east, could be seen, first the American Consulate at Vaiala—with the Stars and Stripes flying from a staff across the road before it—a few other European houses, all backed by the humped roofs of a scattered native village, each with its dark interior beneath; and a quarter of a mile beyond, my cottage, which was the last habitation until one came to the Quarantine Station around the bend. The whole was a flat sandy slab of shore, covered by turf, boasting one white Noah's Ark church, two or three feet above sea-level. The road turned off inland short of my cottage—which lay beyond a small river—and was overhung by occasional lofty palms and bordered by the bluest of clear blue water, where it skirted the lagoon. The reef is awash about half a mile out; and the glare of torches, red, in patches, along it, marking men and women fishing, was common off Vaiala of nights.

To proceed in the opposite direction from the Pilot Station and Judge Roberts's house was to follow the arc of a bay—shaped like a bite in a piece of toast—through Apia, the "port and mart" of Western Samoa and also the seat of Government, until one dead-ended at the Observatory on Mulinuu Peninsula—the opposing point to Matautu. The road at first seemed almost gloomy owing to the prevalence of shade-trees; the few houses dank and subdued. Now came a smallish triangular stretch of rough grass, and then the long white timber bridge beside the shore, spanning the shallow Vaisingano River that wanders on its shingly bed. From the bridge, looking up the confined and verdant valley into hills, one could see a distant waterfall like a short bar of steel poised high and perpendicular among their sombre, wooded greenery.

On the far side of the Vaisingano, facing the sea, stood the British Club—a weatherboarded building rather down at heel, with broad-leafed and exotic banana plants behind it. Here page 6the "Beach" commenced. Various stores—including the redoubtable Mr. Westbrook's; the head-quarters of the London Mission, a white building at the end of a long stretch of turf; a road ran off inland to Vailima—the former residence of Robert Louis Stevenson; more stores; and the block of balconied offices of white-painted wood, rather ornate, and red-painted roofing-iron, surmounted by the Union Jack—the focus for the government of the four main islands under New Zealand mandate, and known as the Court House. Before this building was a tiny square of grass with a whitewashed coping round it, and there were two or three palm-trees on the far side of the road, overhanging the harbour-lagoon.

The town of Apia, as Stevenson has said, is drawn out in strings and clusters, and they permeate from the Beach. After leaving the Court House that highway hugs the rock-built shore very closely, and the few buildings to the left are insignificant—save for the Market Hall, a large erection of concrete and corrugated-iron well back from the thoroughfare—until one comes to the Marist Brothers' school, behind a gravel playground, on the banks of the Mulivai River: a long, one-storied, open-doored fabric, within which the black-robed brothers may be seen—at certain hours of the day—giving instruction to their classes. The river, which is small and clear, is spanned by a substantial wooden bridge; and on the far side is the Catholic Mission, where, from a circular stained-glass window, between the twin towers of the white cathedral, a Samoan Christ on the Cross gazes out over the reef-scarred bay.

This is the apex of the bight.

Out to sea, and beneath the gaze of the Figure in the stained-glass window, on the inner line of reef, high and dry at low tide, rests the rusty skeleton of the German warship Adler: "the hugest structure of man's hands within a circuit of a thousand miles"—a relic of the hurricane of 1889.

The Central Hotel. More stores: first O. F. Nelson & Co., then Messrs. Meredith Ltd. The Bank of New Zealand. And by the sea—there was a crescent of grass before other stores here which divided the roadway into two, and a considerable open grassy space by the sea—the Customs House and Shed. All of this, from the Catholic Cathedral, was Matafele; although page break
Apia Harbour on the Left, Mount Vaea, on the Top of Which R. L. Stevenson was Buried

Apia Harbour on the Left, Mount Vaea, on the Top of Which R. L. Stevenson was Buried

page 7the whole town now goes by the name of Apia. The roads joined again near the Public Works Department—a white house with a Traveller's Palm growing in the front garden. And at Songi—Matautu, Apia, Matafele, Songi, were once separate native villages—a road struck off inland, by the Chinese store, crossing at length on a long causeway a dense, dark swamp of tall mangroves, and being in fact the road along the line of the main coast of the island, going west. Here ended the Beach—a name signifying not only the place, but also the people who lived along it.

To continue by the shore, however, was to pass the shipwright's shop, with the hulk of a large motor-boat drawn up on the beach; the vast Copra Sheds of the Crown Estates, all the air permeated with their scent; a long, shallow, pretentious building—the Casino—with flagstaff in front, that once had housed the clerks of the great German Firm, and now served as a boarding-house for the office staff of the Crown Estates; a string of small residential houses; and finally, backed by mangrove swamp, the "wind-swept promontory of Mulinuu," with its straggling native village, and Observatory embedded amid a grove of palm-trees.

This completed the circuit of Apia Harbour.

III

Before leaving, for a few chapters, the subject of the Beach, I should make mention of another well-known character—George Westbrook; whose store lay between the Court House and the Vaisingano. He had been for nearly fifty years in the Pacific, and for thirty-odd in Samoa. He was an Englishman, born at Camberwell—which as he said was then a good residential neighbourhood—and had run away to sea as a boy, deserting his ship in the Islands, where he had met with remarkable adventures. His letters, long and critical of the Administration, were an almost weekly feature of the Samoa Times, the one local newspaper at this period—1923—published on a Friday. There is little doubt that he neglected his business considerably; he appeared to spend nearly all day in an inner office, banging on a typewriter. Outside the store he page 8had a board posted, called the "Beach Wireless," on which were exhibited his more or less pertinent comments upon current events. Often, after a new bulletin, he would stand in the doorway of his store, a sturdy, white-clothed figure, preening himself, and directing the attention of the passer-by to his notice-board. And in conversation he would usually refer to his latest letter in the Samoa Times—"That was one for them! eh?" Sometimes he attempted to inveigle the unwary into looking over great books of press-cuttings that contained everything he had ever written. He had, actually, a certain literary ability; but his sentences being usually, long, involved, and badly arranged, it was not always easy to make much of them. Most people liked him, and I have heard of many a kind and generous action on his part—but never from him. His criticisms often were founded; but he also slammed empty doors, so no one took him very seriously. One of his loudest, verbal, complaints—for he did not confine himself exclusively to script—was the Customs House and Shed had been built at the other end of the town: ignoring the fact that wealth and its components usually gravitate toward the west.

If one went into Westbrook's store to buy, its owner troubled normally very little about the sales. More probably instead he would be striding up and down behind the counter, pen in hand, with a look of worried import on his face: "Now then, can't you give us something for Beach Patter?" Occasionally he would produce spirituous liquor to stimulate the muse—on the closed veranda upstairs, overlooking the reefs of the harbour; where was Stevenson's armchair with the straw stuffing bursting from it; and I remember taunting an acquaintance there, from the Crown Estates Office—who was generally credited with a literary bent—with being so degraded as to write paragraphs at the price of a drink apiece. To this he sardonically, and subsequently, confessed; pleading, in extenuation, Prohibition.