III.
The Ship of State and her Crew.

My first business was to see my colleague, George Tukuaho, who had sent to say that he was confined to his house with a bad headache. On my last visit to Tonga, four years before, he was just recovering from a serious illness; and though I had seen much of his father, Tungi, I had only conversed once with Tukuaho, and then only upon such general subjects as the comparison of the military genius of Julius Cæsar and the first Napoleon, whose lives I had found him reading in his own language. He was then commandant of the king's Guards, who numbered twenty men, and in that capacity he had had the shrewdness to outwit Mr Baker, then all-powerful. It had suggested itself to the Premier's fertile brain that military service might be turned to account against the stiff-necked Wesleyans, and he had accordingly compelled a number of the College boys to enlist in the militia. They were first required to take the oath, but this they refused to do, unless they were told to what they were going to bind themselves. A refusal to take the oath being at that time in the nature of sedition, they were page 35charged with that offence before the police court; but Kubu, the new Minister of Police, who was then Police

George Tukuaho.

Magistrate, was not a creature of Mr Baker, and dismissed the case. This would not do at all, and Mr Baker page 36ordered them to be tried by court-martial. How a man who has not yet enlisted can be tried by court-martial was a technicality that did not trouble him. He sent an order to Tukuaho to form a court, but Tukuaho replied that he would like to have the order in writing. Mr Baker committed the order to paper. The court sat, and the men were found guilty of refusing to take the oath with their eyes shut. A messenger was despatched to Mr Baker to inquire what sentence was to be pronounced. The verbal answer was, "Two years." But Tukuaho wanted to have this in writing too, and Mr Baker, grumbling at his pertinacity, wrote the order on a half sheet of note-paper. All this showed no very high degree of intelligence on the part of the commandant; but the surprising incident was that he carefully preserved both letters, feeling that some day they might be useful. Many months later the High Commissioner, Sir C. Mitchell, held the inquiry before alluded to, and Mr Baker was examined as to the reason for the monstrous sentence inflicted on these men. He knew, he said, nothing whatever about it; indeed he thought it severe himself, but, being inflicted by a court-martial, he had no power to interfere. Then Tukuaho was asked why he had pronounced such a sentence for no offence at all, and he said that he would not have passed such a sentence without written orders. Could he produce these orders? He thought he could, and went, to fetch them. The Premier's face meanwhile had been undergoing a change; he was evidently feeling very uncomfortable. When the letters were produced, he said that he had quite forgotten having written them, but that they now refreshed his page 37memory, and he glanced at Tukuaho in a very peculiar way.

Soon after this Tukuaho was relieved of his command, and made mayor of his father's town, Mua, some twelve miles from the capital. He had occasion to see the Premier upon matters connected with his duties. The great man was busily writing in his office. After waiting many minutes Tukuaho rose to go, saying that he saw the Premier was engaged. "Sit where you are," replied Mr Baker, "until I am ready,"—and he wrote on as if the safety of the nation depended on his pen. At last he stopped writing, and swung round in his chair. Tukuaho had heard from others of this mode of inspiring awe, and was in nowise disconcerted; he returned the First Minister's fixed gaze. "We are alone: tell me what cause for ill-will you have against me." Tukuaho raised his eyebrows with a mild surprise, and intimated that he did not understand the question, but had come to ask when he was to distribute tax-allotments in Mua. "You know well enough what I mean. Why did you betray me?" said the Premier, coming to the point. "I have much love for you," answered Tukuaho, "and I want you to tell me about Fifita's allotment." From that day Tukuaho was a marked man, but one to be conciliated rather than threatened.

I found him in his new house still unfinished. A ngatu screen was suspended across the room, behind which a mosquito — net was visible. A lamp stood upon a trade box, and the corner of the room was piled high with official-looking papers and torn envelopes in hopeless confusion. I made a mental note of an admonition to be page 38administered to my colleague on this head, for any papers left in a Tongan's house are certain to be read by his retainers, who will straightway bruit their contents at every kava-ring in the town, supplying the gaps with imaginative but sensational details. Tungi was sitting in the middle of the floor, and rose to greet me with his usual courtly grace. He seated me on a box, and went to wake his son, who was sleeping off his headache in the mosquitonet. Tukuaho presently emerged looking very unwell, but delighted to see me. He has the same massive head and features as his father; and though only thirty-two, he already shows signs of attaining the ample proportions that no Tongan chief seems to escape. His face is peasant, though the eyes are set at a peculiar Mongolian angle, very far—apart, and the eyelids habitually droop over them. His manners err if anything on the side of showing too great a desire to please, but his conversation in his own language is very intelligent. I had hoped that he and some of my other colleagues could speak English, but I now found that their English was "pidgin," and quite unsuited for conducting diplomatic negotiations with exactitude. It was a serious disappointment, for my knowledge of Tongan was slender, and my experience in Fiji and elsewhere had taught me never to trust to an interpreter in dealing with natives. I had before me the necessity of mastering the language sufficiently to speak in public before I could really begin my work, but fortunately my knowledge of Fijian stood me in good stead; for though the two languages differ more than French differs from English, yet the idiom and metaphor is much alike, as one might expect among races who live under page 39similar conditions and have occasional intercourse with one another. Henceforward I devoted all my spare moments to the study of the language, particularly that form of it in use towards the chiefs, which may be called the language of respect: the mastery of such nuances gives the appearance of far greater facility than I was likely to acquire in the limited time at my disposal. Before I left Tonga the necessity for using the language in public, and for drafting the new code of law, had given me considerable fluency; and I was able to realise the vast superiority and richness of Polynesian as compared with Melanesian languages.

My two colleagues were in a state of the deepest dejection. They were inclined to be reticent, and told me that they could make no changes without consulting the king. I said that one change at least did not require the sanction of his Majesty—namely, that the members of the Cabinet should meet together periodically to agree upon a common policy, and that none of them should take any important action without consulting his colleagues. This, I explained, was the rule of action in every Cabinet in the world, and it was, moreover, provided for in the Tongan Constitution. They seemed much disturbed at this announcement, and Tukuaho replied that it was a new thing in Tonga, and that his colleagues would not understand it, but would say that he was arrogating to himself the powers of the king. He said that already the Hahavea chiefs, Maafu and Lavaka, actuated by jealousy, were stirring up the people against him though he had as yet done nothing, and had said bitter things in public about being subject to his family: that Tungi, page 40his father, wanted to resign, and was pressing him to follow his example. They were sowing distrust of him in the king's mind, and there was a strong party of Free Church ministers and their sympathisers in Haapai and Vavau who were doing all in their power to damage him. I soundly rated Tungi for his pusillanimity, saying that it was cowardly to throw up the sponge before we had even made one effort. They were appointed by the king, and as long as they had the king's support it did not matter two straws what people said or did. As for words, no Government in the world existed without enemies who abused it, but men who undertook public duties knew that words hurt no one. Our course was plain: we must see the king, and assure ourselves of his support; if he refused to support us, then it would be time to resign.

Tukuaho assented ruefully. Other Governments, he said, did not mind having enemies because they had friends as well; but he seemed to have lost all his friends, and the king himself listened to others rather than to him. Poor Tukuaho's political prospects did not look very bright certainly, but I would not admit this to him, and before I left we had arranged to visit the king in Haapai, while Kubu, the Minister of Police, and his uncle, Sateki, were to leave at once for the outlying groups of Vavau, Niua-foou, and Niua-tobutabu,¹ to hold meetings and explain the nature of the changes that had taken place, before any garbled account should reach, them.

Until the house lent to us by the Tongan Government page 41should be ready, we enjoyed the hospitality of Mr Campbell, who had the pretty house occupied by Mr Baker until the attempt on his life caused him to remove to the king's palace for safety. The officers of H.M.S. Egeria, who had finished their survey-work and were about to leave for China, dined with us. Our host had wisely imposed a fine for any one who uttered the word "Baker" at his table, for since the great Minister's departure his exploits had been so much discussed as to become nauseating. Fortunately for the conversation there had been a mutiny on the Egeria, and her transfer to the China station was designed to take her crew out of the Australian atmosphere, where freedom, as known to the rampant section of the press, means resistance to all constituted authority.

I spent the next day in the Premier's office. It is elaborately furnished with bookshelves and padded leather arm-chairs; but when I opened one of the cupboards in the clerk's room my heart sank. A ton or so of official documents had been pitchforked into the pigeon-holes like so much waste-paper: these must all be examined and set in order before the actual position of the Government could be ascertained. Tukuaho had been fairly active with his pen since his accession to office, but no copies of his letters were forthcoming, and none of his papers had been filed. The claims against the Government, as far as could be ascertained, amounted to some £7000, which under proper scrutiny could be reduced to something over £6000; but the arrears of pay due to Government officials exceeded £8000 — £15,000 in all — and to meet these claims there was £2000 in the page 42Treasury. The European officials were hard-working men, wretchedly underpaid, two of them being married men with families. To leave their salaries nine months in arrear was sheer cruelty, but the native officials were certain to grumble if their claims were given precedence. When, however, a few days later, a proposal to pay the European officials was laid before the king, he laughed and said, "Why not? We Tongans can live on a bit of yam or kumala, but these white men must eat money or die of hunger. Let them be paid."

One of Mr Baker's later freaks had been to import, at great expense, a number of labourers from Mangaia in the Cook group, to form banana plantations on a large scale. To make the prospect of earning working expenses still more illusory, he had ordered railway plant to take the bananas to the steamer, and had even included a passenger car, the distance being at most a mile. We had now to pay off these labourers and send them home. They had done little work, and even if they had, the proceeds of their labour would have gone into the pockets of the New Zealand firm who had contracted to buy the bananas. This charge and the Europeans' arrears of salary nearly swallowed up our scanty balance.

Our financial difficulties did not affect the spirits of the Government employees. The Premier's clerks were thoroughly happy with their new toys. Mataka, the chief clerk, had unearthed the Great Seal and a box of wafers, and was affixing it to blank sheets of note-paper. Sibu, his junior, was experimenting with a very messy contrivance, called, I believe, a pantograph, by squeegeeing printing-ink upon a stencil-paper, whence it travelled to his page 43face and clothes by way of his fingers. When order was resumed I tried to ascertain what prospect there was of our receiving any of the arrears of taxes. The first act of the new Government had been to remit the arrears of taxes due in the year 1888, and those who had paid were not unnaturally indignant, and declared that they would regard their taxes paid in that year as those due for 1889. Then the copra-trader had got hold of Tukuaho, and persuaded him that he would earn the lasting gratitude of his people if he would make them pay their taxes in copra, and refuse to accept money. But, to save appearances, tenders had been called for, and the trader in question tendered, but informally. I, knowing nothing of any arrangement between him and Tukuaho, called upon him to amend his tender to coincide with the conditions published in the 'Gazette,' and within an hour I received a visit from his partner, who flatly declined to amend the tender, on the ground that he had a private arrangement with Tukuaho. My unwary colleague seemed to have tied a millstone about our necks, for his signature could not be repudiated. He had pledged himself to compel the natives, who could readily pay money for their taxes, to bring copra—a product which many of them did not possess, and which had to be transported many miles in carts over bad roads instead of being sold to the storekeeper in their own village. Knowing that I was on my way to advise him, he had yet yielded to the first trader who had approached him; and, at the time when the natives needed every encouragement to pay their taxes, he had thrown a serious difficulty in their way. I have dwelt thus at length on this incident because it had after-page 44wards most disastrous results, and led to a lawsuit which, though amusing enough in the facts it brought to light, wasted seventeen days of valuable time. I felt bound to compromise the matter in the most advantageous manner possible, and to content myself by making the trader sign a bond which left the Government quite free as to the amount of copra they delivered, and allowed them to receive money for taxes after January 1, four months hence. I had many times to curse Tukuaho's naïveté and good-nature when I saw taxpayers turned away from the tax-office windows with money in their hands, and carts full of copra passing the Government sheds on the way to the traders', while the Treasury safes were nearly empty.

During the next few days it was clear enough that, friendly as my colleagues were, the people did not care to conceal their distrust. This was easily explained. The white traders as a body were quiet, law-abiding men, but there was the usual proportion of malcontents who are "agin any Guv'ment." If these people must have a Government, they infinitely prefer a purely native one, which allows them opportunities unattainable when a countryman of their own is at the head of affairs. Some of these, fearing that my presence would upset their pet schemes of abolition of the poll-tax on Europeans and the Customs dues, had been telling the natives that I had been sent to Tonga to smooth the way for annexation. This is the one story that every Tongan will believe, even though a white man has told it to him, and I knew that it would take months of hard work to live it down. The Free Church ministers, moreover, had not been idle, and their per-page 45sistent misrepresentation of me as a champion of the Wesleyans had contributed to the popular suspicion. The manners of the average Tongan to a white man whom he dislikes and does not fear leave much to be desired. I found myself jostled off the road by men on horseback, and subjected to many other petty annoyances. All this had to be borne good-temperedly if my mission was to be successful; and I knew that in a few months I could succeed in changing the hostility and suspicion into friendliness.

My first task was to inspire the chiefs with confidence: the people would follow their lead all in good time. As soon, therefore, as we were installed in our new house, I invited Fatafehi, the king's grandson, to visit me. This chief enjoys a far higher degree of rank than his relationship to the sovereign would confer upon him, for he is a chief of the spiritual line; and now that the office of Tui Tonga has been abolished, and Christianity has removed the superstition by which the descendant of the Immortals was surrounded, he enjoys the highest consideration in the kingdom after the king. To him alone, besides the king, is used the peculiar language of respect by which the deity is addressed. Of the curious polity of Tonga before the introduction of Christianity I shall speak hereafter.

Although hedged by divinity, Fatafehi bears his honours with great ease and good-humour. He has a jolly round face, fringed with grizzled whiskers and moustache; and his kindly expression and burly figure give him the appearance of a gentleman farmer when times were good. He is, moreover, almost the only Tongan who, in dress clothes, page 46looks like a gentleman. We had been good friends during my former visit, while his wife Fujipala was still alive. When they dined with me on that occasion, they drove up in an antiquated buggy, with a Hindustani coachman from Fiji, he in dress clothes, and she in mauve satin, bonnet and boots included, attended by four maids of honour, as befits a king's granddaughter who weighs seventeen stone. Poor Fuji! her good sense and influence are badly wanted now. Her son, Taufaahau, deprived of her control, was running wild, and since he was generally regarded as the heir to the king, it was imperative that Fatafehi should bring him under some sort of discipline. It was partly to urge this upon him that I had invited him to visit me, and partly because he had never shown animus against the Wesleyans; and I wished him, as Governor of Haapai, to endeavour to check the disaffection which the speeches of the Free Church ministers were creating. When he arrived, Vaea, a chief among the returned exiles, was drinking tea. He had just taken a cup in one hand and a piece of bread-and-butter in the other when the great man was announced. "Who?" asked Vaea, not catching the name. "Tui Belehake," I answered, giving his title; and as I spoke the portière was flung aside and Fatafehi strode in heartily. When I looked round Vaea had disappeared from his chair, and was squatting in the corner with depending lower jaw and eyes fixed vacantly on the ceiling. I spoke to him once or twice, trying to include him in the conversation, but he did not seem to hear. The only sign of life about him was the trembling of the teacup in his palsied hand. Suddenly he got up, and having no free hand to move the curtain, he plunged at it head-foremost, page 47teacup and all, and disappeared. We found the empty cup afterwards on the lawn, turned upside down in the saucer. When his hostess had recovered from the effect of this unexpected exit, she asked Fatafehi for an explanation. He laughed heartily at her ignorance of the usages of polite society, and said, "It is the tabu. He can't eat while I'm here. Ha! ha! ha!"

"He plunged at the curtain head-foremost."

Fatafehi's laugh once heard was not to he forgotten. It began low down in his person and bubbled upwards, until suddenly the upper part of his head fell back, and a mirthful roar burst forth that shook his portly presence to its foundation. It was a ready laugh, mirthcompelling, and it carried far. When we told Mrs S. of our august visitor, her first question was, "Did you notice his laugh? No other Tongan laughs like that. They say that it is hereditary in his family. You see it is his rank: no other Tongan would be allowed to laugh like that." Thereafter I looked with great respect page 48upon Fatafehi's hereditary laugh, the more since I found it useful when debates in the House were stormy, and the opposition had to be silenced.

I was anxious to learn from Fatafehi what reception the exiles had really had, for rumours were most conflicting. From his account it appeared that while they had received no welcome from the people at large, this had been unnoticed in the presents that had been showered upon them by their immediate relations and friends irrespective of Church. They were housed in a large disused building called the "Women's College," until such time as they could make arrangements for moving to their old homes, or the mission should appoint such of them as were native ministers to vacant parishes. They had not forgotten the hospitality shown to them in Fiji, for late in the afternoon G—, who was alone in the house, saw a long train of men and women approaching with bales on their shoulders, evidently bent on perpetrating a ceremony. Now one cannot express gratitude with any accuracy in dumb-show, and the servants were therefore despatched in hot haste for an interpreter. Fortunately kind Mrs S. arrived just in time to save the situation, and reply to the set speech in which we received vicariously the gratitude due to the Government of Fiji. It took the practical shape of a pony, several live pigs, rolls of ngatu, mats, combs, and the inevitable kava. Like all native presents, they had eventually to be paid for in return gifts of an equal or higher value.

Our new house adjoined the Government College, being in reality the house of the English principal when such an officer existed. The undergraduates were a continuous page 49source of amusement for the first few days. On weekdays they were taught shorthand and the higher mathematics by native tutors in cap and gown; in the evenings they sang incessantly in excellently sustained parts. On Saturday they turned out with knives and baskets to clean up the College premises; and on Sunday they all put on trousers and mortar-boards, and were marched off two and two to church, carrying their shoes in their hands. At the church-door the whole sixty pairs halted to put on their boots, and enter the house of God with dignity. They formed a magnificent choir of bass voices, and rendered the trashy Methodist hymns with a grandeur that would have greatly surprised their composers. During the sermon the sixth form were busy transcribing the homily in shorthand.