Henry obliged. “Our weaponry was not dropped onto our laps one morning. It is not manna from Sinai’s skies. Since Agincourt, the White man has refined & evolved the gunpowder sciences until our modern armies may field muskets by the tens of thousands! ‘Aha!’ you will ask, yes, ‘But why us Aryans? Why not the Unipeds of Ur or the Mandrakes of Mauritius?’ Because, Preacher, of all the world’s races, our love—or rather our rapacity—for treasure, gold, spices & dominion, oh, most of all, sweet dominion, is the keenest, the hungriest, the most unscrupulous! This rapacity, yes, powers our Progress; for ends infernal or divine I know not. Nor do you know, sir. Nor do I overly care. I feel only gratitude that my Maker cast me on the winning side.”
Henry’s forthrightness was misconstrued as incivility & Preacher Horrox, the Napoleon of his equatorial Elba, was pinkening with indignation. I complimented our hostess’s soup (though in truth my craving for vermicide makes it difficult to ingest any but the plainest fare) & asked if the turtles were caught on nearby beaches or imported from afar.
Later, lying abed in the muggy darkness, eavesdropped by geckos, Henry confided that the day’s surgery had been “a parade of hysterical sun-baked women who need no medicine but hosiers, milliners, bonnet makers, perfumeries & sundry trappings of their sex!” His “consultations,” he elaborated, were one part medicine, nine parts tittle-tattle. “They swear their husbands are tupping the Native women & live in mortal fear they’ll catch ‘something.’ Handkerchiefs aired in rotation.”
His confidences made me uneasy & I ventured that Henry might practice a little reserve when disagreeing with our host. “Dearest Adam, I was practicing reserve, & more than a little! I longed to shout this at the old fooclass="underline" —‘Why tinker with the plain truth that we hurry the darker races to their graves in order to take their land & its riches? Wolves don’t sit in their caves, concocting crapulous theories of race to justify devouring a flock of sheep! “Intellectual courage”? True “intellectual courage” is to dispense with these fig leaves & admit all peoples are predatory, but White predators, with our deadly duet of disease dust & firearms, are examplars of predacity par excellence, & what of it?’ ”
It upsets me that a dedicated healer & gentle Christian can succumb to such cynicism. I asked to hear Goose’s Second Law of Survival. Henry grinned in the dark & cleared his throat. “The second law of survival states that there is no second law. Eat or be eaten. That’s it.” He began snoring soon after, but my Worm kept me awake until the stars began weakening. Geckos fed & padded softly over my sheet.
Dawn was sweating & scarlet as passionfruit. Male & female Natives alike drudged up “Main Street” to the church plantations atop the hill, where they worked until the afternoon heat was intolerable. Before the skiff came to take Henry & me back to the Prophetess, I went to watch the workers plucking weeds from the copra. Peradventure it fell to young Mr. Wagstaff to be their overseer this morning & he had a Native boy bring us cocoa-nut milk. I withheld from asking after his family & he did not mention them. He carries a whip, “but I rarely employ it myself, that’s what the Guard of Christ the King are for. I just watch the watchers,” he said.
Three of these dignitaries watched their fellows, leading hymns (“land shanties”) & reprimanding slackers. Mr. Wagstaff was less inclined to conversation than yesterday & let my pleasantries lapse into silence broken only by sounds of the jungle & laborers. “You’re thinking, aren’t you, that we’ve made slaves out of free peoples?”
I avoided the question by saying Mr. Horrox had explained their labors paid for the benefits of Progress brought by the Mission. Mr. Wagstaff did not hear me. “There exists a tribe of ants called the slave maker. These insects raid the colonies of common ants, steal eggs back to their own nests & after they hatch, why, the stolen slaves become workers of the greater empire & never even dream they were once stolen. Now if you ask me, Lord Jehovah crafted these ants as a model, Mr. Ewing.” Mr. Wagstaff’s gaze was gravid with the ancient future. “For them with the eyes to see it.”
People of shifting character unnerve me & Mr. Wagstaff was one such. I made my excuses & proceeded to my next port of call, viz., the schoolroom. Here, infant Nazarenes of both hues study Scripture, arithmetic, and their ABC’s. Mrs. Derbyshire teaches the boys & Mrs. Horrox the girls. In the afternoon the White children have an additional three hours’ tutelage in a curriculum appropriate to their station (though Daniel Wagstaff for one appears immune to his educators’ wiles), while their darker playmates join their parents in the fields before the daily vespers.
A short revue was staged in my honor. Ten girls, five White, five Black, recited a Holy Commandment apiece. Then I was treated to “O! Home Where Thou Art Loved the Best” accompanied by Mrs. Horrox on an upright piano whose past was more glorious than its present. The girls were then invited to ask the visitor questions, but only White misses raised their hands. “Sir, do you know George Washington?” (Alas, no.) “How many horses pull your carriage?” (My father-in-law keeps four, but I prefer to ride a single mount.) The littlest asked of me, “Do ants get headaches?” (Had her classmates’ titters not reduced my interrogator to tears, I should be standing there pondering this question still.) I told the students to live by the Bible & obey their elders, then took my leave. Mrs. Horrox told me departees were once presented with a garland of plumeria, but the Mission elders deemed garlands immoral. “If we allow garlands today, it will be dancing tomorrow. If there is dancing tomorrow . . .” She shuddered.
’Tis a pity.
By noon the men had loaded the cargo & the Prophetess was kedging out of the bay against unfavorable winds. Henry & I have retired to the mess room to avoid the spray & oaths. My friend is composing an epic in Byronic stanzas entitled “True History of Autua, Last Moriori” & interrupts my journal writing to ask what rhymes with what:—“Streams of blood”? “Themes of mud”? “Robin Hood”?
I recall the crimes Mr. Melville imputes to Pacific missionaries in his recent account of the Typee. As with cooks, doctors, notaries, clergymen, captains & kings, might evangelists also not be some good, some bad? Maybe the Indians of the Societies & the Chathams would be happiest “undiscovered,” but to say so is to cry for the moon. Should we not applaud Mr. Horrox’s & his brethren’s efforts to assist the Indian’s climb up “Civilization’s Ladder”? Is not ascent their sole salvation?
I know not the answer, nor whence flew the surety of my younger years.
During my night at the Horroxes’ Parsonage, a burglar broke into my coffin & when the reprobate could not locate my jackwood trunk’s key (I wear it around my neck), he attempted to force the lock. Had he succeeded, Mr. Busby’s deeds & documents would now be fodder for sea horses. How I wish our captain was cut from trustworthy Cpt. Beale’s cloth! I dare not give Cpt. Molyneux custody of my valuables & Henry warned me against “stirring the hornets’ nest” by raising the attempted crime with Mr. Boerhaave, lest an investigation spur every thief aboard to try his luck whenever my back is turned. I suppose he is right.