IRONY: A True Story of Old Fiji

By A. Cross

THIS is a story of old Fiji, of my friend Mac—and the working of a malign Fate.

Mac was the son of a planter, born at a time when planting coconuts was profitable; he was expensively educated abroad. Not until his father was dead, and he was a young man fully grown did he return to the land of his birth and to an inheritance that was large: a coconut plantation on an isolated island and credit in the local bank.

He was easy-going and good natured in a way known only to the sons of rich men, and the friends he made were many, and eager to teach him the more pleasant ways of the tropics. He put up at the best hotels, saw his plantation seldom, and made free use of his cheque book both for himself and to finance his friends, who grew in number and in creased in demands, even as his bank balance decreased.

So, one day, as was inevitable, Mac found himself thrown back on the world with a college education, expensive tastes and an inheritance that had gone on the tropic breeze and was no more. Without money to ease his way through life, and suddenly bereft of friends, who now found business elsewhere, he became a first-class drifter, finally coming to rest as an overseer on a plantation.

During this period, he married a native woman of high caste, with land of her own, and by whom he had two children.

Many years passed, his wife died, and then, with his children almost grown, he began once more the old habit of physical and mental drift.

Again he married, this time to a woman who had as few roots as Mac himself, and they finally settled down on a small piece of land within sight of the island-pantation that Mac himself had owned. It seemed to please him to let his eyes wander over the outline of the distant island, and at the same time point out to his children the evils that befall one through bad companions and extravagance.

AFTER his second wife died he tried to do his best for her two sons; but what small ties he had had in the district were broken and he wandered from one job to another, taking the children with him. As well as they were able, they kept house for him, but they learned, too, the native arts; to keep a fire going for months without matches by banking the logs with ashes; to throw an unerring spear into a school of fish; to dig for wild yams; to be children of the natural environment in which they lived. In the evening Mac would bring out books and pencils, and by the light of an old oil lamp would teach the boys to read and write.

When Jim was 12 years old and George nine, a certain gentleman—we will call him Brown—offered Mac a job of plant

ing up a small island with coconuts.

Affairs in the Mac menage had been go ing more ill than was even usual, and the job was accepted without much questioning, a contract drawn up and and he and his two small sons 'embarked on Brown’s cutter for their new home.

The island was miles off the beaten track of any shipping, one of the most god-forsaken, isolated spots in an ocean famous for its tiny islands and atolls, scattered far from the haunts of civi lisation. It was perhaps 50 acres in extent, encircled by beaches of fine, white sand, behind which, in some places, towered limestone cliffs full of dry, sandy caves, the home of a tiny native bat no larger than a butterfly. Dense under growth covered the island —wild plan tains, citrus, a few welcome breadfruit trees and coconuts planted by visiting natives on turtle fishing expeditions.

There was a grass hut for their shelter and a small spring to supply them with water, and here on this island outpost they were put ashore with sufficient stores to last them three months.

THE days of the father and his sons were full of hardship and toil.

Together they would cut the under brush and clear the land with long cane knives until their hands were blistered and then gather the sprouting coconuts and plant them in rows, each small tree a measured distance from its neighbour to prevent overcrowding when they should, at last, be grown into tall, grace ful palms.

For diversion they collected turtle shell. The island was the breeding-place for huge shell-bearing turtles that waddled ashore to deposit their eggs, and under the guidance of Mac the lads soon learned the art of turning them helplessly on their backs. Turtle eggs and turtle steak made a welcome change from their monotonous diet, and the valu able shell was saved carefully against the day when they should return to civilisation and be able to convert it into cash.

But Mac himself was not well. For years he had been a martyr to malaria and elephantaisis; one leg and one arm were swollen to twice normal size. And now his attacks became more frequent, and he would be forced to retire to their miserable shack, turn into bed with all their stock of blankets upon him and dose himself with aspirin and quinine.

During these periods the children carried on the job of weeding and planting alone, stopping only long enough during daylight hours to brew their father hot lemon drinks or to spear a fish to make him nourishing soup.

Days became weeks, and the weeks months, but still no sign of the returning cutter rewarded their sometimes thrice daily climbs to the knoll behind the hut, from whose summit a huge expanse of ocean could be seen. The cutter was long overdue; they lived on boiled plan tains and fish, their tea, sugar and other foodstuffs having finished long ago.

Mac's medicine was finished also, and now, without his drugs, his attacks of fever became more frequent, more weakening and of greater length.

Still they plodded on, planting, weed ing and clearing when they could and adding to the store of turtle shell. “Some thing towards getting you lads fitted out for school," Mac would say. Weak and foolish in his youth, a drifter still, he was to the two boys all that was fine

and great in a man. He was their fount of knowledge, their world.

But soon old Mac took to his bed again, in a more severe attack than any he had suffered previously. He alter nately shivered and burned with fever while the boys boiled water and filled empty bottles in an endeavour to bring heat and relief to the shaking limbs; or cooked soup that would give him strength.

ON the third day of his illness he asked them to make up a bed for him on the floor just near the front door of the hut—“so as to get some fresh air,” he explained—and when it was finished they lifted him on to it. “And now,” he said, “I want you to dig me a deep trench beside the door—l will tell you why later.”

Obediently, but not understanding, the boys began to dig, excavating a hole in the sand 8 ft. long, which hourly grew deeper. When they came inside for rest periods, Mac woud ask them how deep it was and urge them on to fresh efforts.

He wanted it for a well, he said.

This they could scarcely believe, as they had no use for a well, but Mac had a way of exacting unquestioned obedience and the boys dug on until late after noon when, standing at the bottom, they could no longer see over the rim of it.

It was sufficient for the time being, Mac told them—George could go now and spear a fish for supper.

The lad bounded away, glad to be re leased from monotonous sand-shifting, and Mac called the elder lad to him.

“Jim,” he said, “I wanted you alone. I must say what I want while there is still time. My boy, I am going to leave you.

I know this attack is the last—l have no strength to fight it off. My hours are numbered. That is why I made you both dig that hole. It is my grave.”

Horror looked out of the child’s eyes.

He clung to the man’s wasted hands, crying his father’s name.

“You are the elder, son,” Mac told him. “You must face this and help George to face it, too. Listen, now —if when you should call me I fail to answer you will know someone else has called and that I have gone to His bidding.

Don’t disturb me, but leave me a while.”

He explained to the boy the signs of rigor mortis and directed him to bury him in the grave he and George had dug that day. Jim could reply only with sobs.

“The turtle shell is to be used for your schooling—and the balance of the wages due to me, too. When Brown comes, collect from him, and, when you can, strike back to some township and get a bit of schooling for your brother and yourself. The rest of your life, son, depends on yourself. Never forget that a man’s best friend is his pocket and never be afraid of honest work. I wish that I could leave you more, but it is no use having regrets at this stage.

“Now, run along and get George, and see that the fish is cooked for me.”

OBEDIENTLY, his eyes streaming, Jim stumbled off to the beach, where he threw himself down in a fury of weeping at the thought of the task he had promised that he would do for his father. He had never seen death, but the idea filled him with horror and that such a thing could happen to his beloved father was almost beyond belief.

The paroxysm of weeping past, he tried to comfort himself. His father was weak and low-spirited from his illness, the lateness of the boat and lack of proper medicine. He sat up, wiped the tears away with his hand and it was so George found him, telling him of the large sea-crab he had secured.

Together they went back to the hut.

“Father, we’ve caught you a crab as well

as some fish,” George called through the door. But there was no reply.

Suddenly panic-stricken, Jim pushed past him. He had not looked upon death before, but he realised that he looked upon it now, and that the old man had been thoughtful to the last in sending him away on a pretext so that he should not witness his father’s end.

He took his young brother’s hand and led him away up the knoll behind the hut, and there, with the wide sweep of empty sea before them, he told him that their father was at rest and that they must now carry on alone. The younger boy was heart-broken, and, together on that lonely hill-top, the two children wept together. Tropic sunshine never fell upon a more desolate pair.

At last they returned to the hut, Jim mindful of his father’s last instructions.

They lined the grave with ferns, and, sobbing bitterly, lowered the big form into it, covering his body with their few pitiful blankets in order that the sand should not touch it.

It was dusk by the time the grave was filled-in and crowned with stones. Sadly they went into the now empty hut, but the sight of the bed alongside the open door was more than could be borne. They fled, filled with a nameless terror, until they came to the opposite side of the island, where they crept into a cave, and, locked in each other’s arms, cried them selves into an exhausted sleep.

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DAWN came, and with it the rattle of an anchor chain, running through a hause-pipe. The boys awoke and looked out. There, riding gently at anchor, was the long-overdue cutter.

With mixed feelings they watched Brown being rowed ashore—too late now to help their father—and together the two forlorn, little figures walked down the hill to await his arrival at the hut.

He sprang ashore and called. “Hi, Mac—where are you?” He bustled into the hut, and asked them where their father was. Wordlessly they pointed to the mound he had stepped over to come in the door.

“Thought you had planned to build a step or porch or something,” he grunted.

“Well, get your duds and I’ll take you back home.”

They gathered their few poor belong ings together while he questioned them about their father’s death. When they hauled their catch of turtle-shell out of the corner he cried: “Hullo—where did you get that?”

They explained that it was off the turtle that came ashore to lay eggs.

“Caught on my property,” he said. “This belongs to me.”

AND so the story of Mac ends with the return of his small sons to the mainland, not to school, as he had so belatedly planned, but to hard work.

The legacy he left them materially was nil, but morally much: the belief in the innate goodness and consideration of the drifter who was their father, and the ineradicable memory of two children shovelling sand into buckets, performing a horrible task, and the arrival of relief just one day too late.

The Rev. Brandt, of the American Lutheran Church, is at present waiting in Queensland for a permit to proceed to New Guinea.