Lucidly, and in a manner still further emphasising his one-time association with the crew of the whaler, Jimmy pointed out that the land on which the party had landed was really private property belonging to the members of his illustrious tribe. It was unfortunate, but property rights existed on the island of Sandwich, rights which had to be respected.
When it was argued that he was referring to land on the main island of Sandwich and that obviously he and his fellows lived on the small island of Vila, he replied that their settlement there was dictated by fear of the bushmen who lived inland and who sometimes raided them and their neighbours on the island of Mali. Here, his adjectives were employed even more extravagantly.
By mutual consent, the subject of land purchases was dropped for the time being, and some of the natives were paid to erect a bamboo shelter, plaited with the leaves of coconut palms. The cased goods were turned into walls, providing a shelter should the weather break, and slight protection should the savages decide to make a night attack. Jimmy was given a present, and he retired to think out further points for continuing his argument on property rights.
Accordingly, he presented himself again on the following day. He said he had called on a little matter concerning a transfer of land, and he desired to know what was going to be done about it. It would be a sad culmination of local hospitality if the people were forced to maintain their property rights with arrows and clubs. As far as he was concerned, the white men were welcome to all the land they wanted, but the common people on the island of Vila were most ungenerous. He urged the wisdom of a settlement of some kind.
After conferring among themselves, the lads parted with a considerable portion of their goods in payment for an area of land sufficient for a plantation and, the land question then being settled, Jimmy was asked to supply labour. In this matter he was as emphatic as in the matter of land purchase, pointing out that no Vila man could possibly work in his own country for others - no Hebridean gentleman could do that.
Here, as on the islands of Fiji and elsewhere in the South Pacific, the natives held it to be beneath their dignity to labour for strangers in their own territory; Jimmy, however, was obliging enough to offer to bring a party of bushmen to work for the white men.
This suited the lads, and that evening ten or a dozen men from the hills presented themselves and expressed willingness to assist in developing the plantation. They were allotted a space on which to build a shelter for themselves, and were given the first instalment of their rations. Then, at the usual hour, Cobbold and his two companions turned in, thankful that they had been farsighted enough to bring mosquito nets. That night they slept well, confident of the integrity of Jimmy and his followers.
On rising the next morning no bushmen were to be seen. The lads crossed the thirty odd yards separating the two camps and, instead of finding the sluggard natives peacefully sleeping, all they did find was broken spears and clubs and a few arrows, and many significant splashes of blood.
It is difficult to understand how the white settlers could have slept through the certain uproar when a number of natives were butchered within thirty yards of them, but it was so, and the evidence was strong that the bushmen had fought hard for their lives.
Jimmy then arrived and expressed both astonishment and indignation. That his people could have committed such an act was, of course, impossible. Those Mali men were quite capable of doing it - in fact, they would murder their mothers when life became boring, or when they felt too tired to hunt their fellow men for meat. Having castigated his neighbours with the adjectival fluency of the whaling ship he retired, overwhelmed with horror.
Then came men from the island of Mali to disclaim with equal fervour their guilt of the atrocious crime. Pilbrow conducted a kind of Court of Inquiry, and the verdict favoured the Mali men. He then suggested - and his suggestion was accepted - that they move camp out of the Vila men's territory some two miles into the territory of the Mali men. With the assistance of the Mali men, they transported their goods and persuaded the natives to assist them further in erecting a substantial house of wooden uprights, walled with bamboo and roofed with coconut grass. That done, they erected a paling fence and enclosed the house in an acre of land.
A further portion of their remaining goods were paid out for the land owned by the Mali men, the payment in goods for the land purchased from the men of Vila being written off as a dead loss. They now, however possessed their own 'castle' and they were far more firmly established.
The house was built none too soon, however, for the monsoon rains set in with terrific thunderstorms. Fever vapours rose from the drenched earth and the humid heat made life almost unbearable. Repeated earth shocks rattled their crockery so badly that many pieces were broken.
One after another the boys went down with malaria or ague fever, despite the large and repeated doses of quinine. The fever, plus the lack of fresh meat, quickly began to have inevitable effects on their constitution, while their strength was further sapped by enforced inactivity caused through the incessant rain. To attempt to labour in those weather conditions would have been fruitless. The lack of fresh meat was more keenly felt than anything else. Even if they had brought with them a small boat from which to fish in the Bay, they would have been unable to distinguish between poisonous and non- poisonous fish.
They bought a pig from a native on the condition that he slaughtered it for them. He gladly undertook to do this, taking the wretched animal into the sea and drowning it. The killing, while being both simple and effective, prevented efficient curing, however. For the purpose of a communal feast it would have been an excellent method and one giving a minimum of trouble, but since the pig was not bled properly, the curing was a dismal failure, and for one meal of fresh pork the deal with the native pig breeder was costly.
3.
The health of the youthful settlers was not good when the rains ceased and the weather improved. Naturally, men suffering ill health put off until later those things normally healthy men would have done on the day. Pilbrow appears not to have been a strong leader, and already the fire of enthusiasm for cotton growing was dying within him. As neither he nor Wetherall had ever handled a gun, it devolved to Francis Cobbold to take the single barrelled shot-gun into the dripping jungle, and there try to bag a pigeon or other edible bird. Even here discouragement was experienced, for it was difficult even to see a bird in the dense foliage, and seldom did he bring back any tangible result for his efforts.
Days would pass without the lads seeing any savages. No schooner sailed into the bay, and week by week their health and strength waned. It speaks well of Francis Cobbold's courage in that he often ventured into the jungle in search of pigeons, when memory of the fate of the bushmen must have still been keen. It was probably sharpened by such incidents as that of a native wanting to barter fresh meat offered on a plantain leaf. It was not like the flesh of any animal, bird or fish he ever had seen ... Pilbrow suffered most from malaria, and Wetherall's condition did not make him a dependable branch on which to lean.
One day, a white man visited the settlers, a runaway sailor who had gone native. He arrived with his retinue of savages from the other side of the island, having heard of the 'white invasion' at Sou'-West Bay. Naked, save for a breech clout, wearing a necklet from which was suspended a boar's curved tusk, and marked and tattooed with tribal insignia, he had taken a native wife, had become a local power and had gained a satisfying life. A year earlier he had been a member of a boat's crew sent ashore for water, and while the barrels were being filled he had run off into the jungle. There he had met and been well received by the natives of the tribe from which had come the ill-fated bushmen who had volunteered to join the young settlers' labour field.
Further to wearing a native dress, he carried the New Hebridean bow and arrows and club. Although on many counts blameworthy for his racial fall, the man cannot be judged without examination of all the facts controlling it. He was an ordinary sailor and likely enough one who would not pass high in a modern intelligence test. On any ship he would be a