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Samoa Under the Sailing Gods

II

II

The Apia Race Track lay some half-mile behind Apia, in the direction of the Quarantine Station. It was neat and concise and included a small grandstand and totalisator. It had been made in the German days, and only recently reopened. Admission cost two shillings. All of the riders—whites, half-castes, and Samoans—were amateurs. The meetings were of a purely sporting character, attended by the Administrator—usually in military uniform—and nearly everyone in town, race-day being in the nature of a gala.

I had heard, since my return to Apia, a rumour that a prominent official of the Administration was involved in serious trouble; but I had not been informed his name, and had paid the report no particular attention. As I was standing watching one of the races a man whom I knew well, the manager of a Government plantation, knowing I had just arrived back from page break
Charlie Roberts About 1913

Charlie Roberts About 1913

page 157Savaii, came up and asked me how much I knew about the matter. I answered that I knew nothing, and we strolled behind the grandstand, where we could talk freely, and he there recounted to me certain details of the case. The official in question had several weeks previously made a malanga round Savaii, and after traversing one of the lava-fields, and addressing the chiefs in the village where he then arrived, he continued on to the next village, and after a meeting with the chiefs there, it being night, he went to bed, and a woman was sent for to give him a lomi-lomi; and there she stayed, beneath the mosquito-screen, till dawn. Within the last few days, long after his return to Apia, he was confronted by the Administrator with a letter of complaint from the Faipule of the district, who resided at that particular village, and his resignation was now demanded. He insisted on an inquiry, and this was pending.

There were some objectionable features to the case. In the first place there was the delay in making the complaint. Secondly, the letter was written in a canting strain, almost certainly inspired by a European. Thirdly, the Faipule had made a trip to Apia before so writing. It was considered possible that he had been specially summoned here for that purpose.

Mr. Griffin, the Secretary of Native Affairs, with the new Chief Judge and the Crown Solicitor—who had until recently been Registrar of the Court—formed the Board of Inquiry. Griffin, one of the assessors, apparently constituted himself a sort of prosecuting counsel for the occasion; and a member of the Native Department who had accompanied the official on malanga as interpreter and had been well treated by him, seemed equally anxious to secure an adverse decision. The original charge—of rape—could not be sustained, and was admitted to be false; but the official was found guilty of conduct unbecoming to a high Government official.

To the Administrator, knowing little of the country, this case must have appeared perfectly plain. But since there was obviously more in it than met the eye, it left a very nasty impression among a considerable section of the Europeans. Ritchie, the Director of Agriculture, on matters of Samoan custom, gave evidence in the official's favour.

page 158

The official in question, a member of the Treasury, left the country within the next few weeks; and to add to his distress of mind, which was considerable, was the death of Charlie Roberts on October 15th. The ex-Judge had long been ailing, and was recovering from one of his periodic attacks when he was approached for advice in this matter. Roberts's indignation and excitement—for he held the official in high esteem—is said to have occasioned his relapse. Had Roberts been able to undertake the defence, as was intended, the case should have gone differently; the whole truth at least might have come out, whatever it may have been. Roberts suspected a "frame-up."

We of the Agricultural Department had returned to Savaii to finish our inspection when the ex-Judge's death occurred. We knew when we left Apia that he was dying. His death occasioned no fewer than four valedictory articles in the Samoa Times. "To our honour be it said," ran one, "we knew him as a man far beyond the ordinary, and buried him with such honour as Samoa has rarely seen." The writer—Peacock—went on to lament that, Roberts being the last, we were now entirely mundane—a piece of suburbia.

The following, expressing the hope that Roberts would find his biographer, was from Ritchie:

"… Here my mind goes back to the day of my arrival in Samoa and my first meeting with Roberts. I recall leaning over the ship's side, awaiting the arrival of a boat to take me ashore, when someone behind me coughed. Turning round I found myself confronted by a person holding out what I took to be a picture-postcard. Without more ado I waved him airily aside, but in doing so could not but observe the twinkle in a pair of bright eyes and the suspicion of a smile lurking in the corners of an otherwise immobile mouth. Before leaving for the shore I was 'called to the bar,' at the invitation of a friend, and lo and behold I was forthwith introduced to the one and only Charles Roberts, the picture-postcard purveyor whom I had dismissed a few moments before. 'Ha, Ha! my Christian friend,' said he as we were introduced; 'will you purchase a postcard now?' and thereupon he insinuated into my hand a picture of the Tivoli Hotel, of which he was then the proprietor. We shook, drank to each other's health, and straightway I came under the influence of his magnetic personality,"

page 159

The Director of Agriculture then tells of a valuable racehorse that Roberts imported in the German days—to uphold the prestige of the British in Apia, for the Germans were getting away with all the races. And of the spirit in which the owner took it when the mare staked herself, as the result of a broken stirrup, with Ritchie riding, while in training: His chief concern being for the jockey, and for the mare was anticipated a bullet. And yet, thanks to a surgeon from a British warship then in port, the mare lived to maintain an unbroken winning record.

"I have done many things," said Roberts once, "of which I am ashamed. But I have had my back against the wall all my life." I have often thought of this. With his death there passed the principal personality of the Beach.