Show Me the Sky - Nicholas Hogg [70]
The sentence was light – each of the four men involved in the pilfering having their little finger docked by the slice of an axe – though the Rev. Collins did not agree, horrified at being presented with the removed digits. Once his pink face returned from pale green, he insisted that this ‘barbaric retribution cease immediately’, making it clear to the king that it was not a godly justice he had administered.
The king expanded his considerable girth like a beached puffer fish, letting out a sigh that would have blown coconuts from their branches, and retorted, ‘This is not England! This is Fiji!’
With that he gestured for us to be gone, flapping his hand as though swatting away a fly.
The Rev. Collins, seeing this episode as the lowest point of our stay thus far, sought my counsel on why the king would not convert. I explained that though he was ruler of this isle, Lakemba was but a jewel in the crown of the kingdom of Fiji, and that this crown was worn by the chiefs of Bau and Rewa.
3 June 1835
The Rev. Collins is adamant that the only way to evangelise my heathen shores ‘from north to south and east to west, not merely the toe of the devil but his entire body’ is to establish a mission on Viti Levu – without delay.
The Rev. Thomas, who sulked like a child at this news for several days, protested that a mission could not function on his sole administration, and that his reading class of young women would suffer in their progress if he were to leave now. Though I have ample time to teach both the men and women their letters, he had insisted that he take charge of tutoring the maidens.
The Rev. Collins then praised the Rev. Thomas on his fine teaching, and suggested that the population of Bau and Rewa would also require education beyond the Gospel.
Either this opportunity of instruction, or the news that I would accompany him to the new mission, excited him so that the removal to Viti Levu was thus agreed.
I have not told my brother yet, nor my mother or father. My brother will wail that I am leaving before I have even arrived. I will be happy if my father simply looks me in the eye, or if my mother raises her head from where she lays.
After so long apart from my family, it is only the call of God that could take me from them once again. If Abraham can offer his only son, surely I can sacrifice a further absence from my family?
6 June 1835
We wait for a wind to blow us east, to Bau and Rewa, where the Rev. Thomas and I will carry the torch of Jesus Christ.
Since the announcement of our moving on, I have not seen my father for two days.
7 June 1835
The canoe that will carry us across the waves to Viti Levu has now been prayed over by both the king’s priest and the Rev. Collins. The priest, while chanting his pagan incantations, ignored the protests of the reverends, insisting that their presence in Lakemba had angered the gods enough already, and that as one of his brothers would be crew for our voyage, he had authority to petition for blessings beyond the ‘lying book’ of the white man.
Blessed by all, the canoe is provisioned and ready to sail, and we await favourable conditions.
Still my father is missing.
8 June 1835
Dawn this morning my father shook me from sleep. I had been dreaming I was again a boy in his arms, and at first thought his hand on my shoulder was imagined.
Then he said, ‘Naqarase, come.’
The sun was still a promise in the eastern sky. Neither the reverends nor Mrs Collins and her children stirred as we crept from the house. I trailed my father through the soft light, along a path that led beyond the village, rising above the shoreline. When I asked where we were going he did not answer. We walked far from the houses, above the craggy cliff tops, past the nests of screeching gulls and down to a small, forbidden cove, a taboo place that rests the spirits of the dead. Then we sat, I still awaiting my father to speak.
When the sun rose, the sea lapped against the shore like liquid