Show Me the Sky - Nicholas Hogg [71]
Then my father turned to me, ‘This is a world no book can hold,’ he said. ‘What is on paper that is better? What kind of god would need to write this down? Only the people who do not know God need to read about Him.’
I tried to say something about one true God but he shook his head. I spoke to his turned back. I was somehow ashamed, saddened to tell him that God had sent me on a mission I could not refuse.
‘And what is that mission? To lay waste to all of Fiji? To make space for the British? In my short life the sandalwood tree has gone, chopped down and carried across the seas. Now they come for whales and the sea slug, soon these will be no more than a tale to tell our children. And what do we have in return? Tobacco and guns. A book that tells me to wear clothes, to not fish on Sunday. A book that says only it can show me the sky.’
I had no answer that he would understand. My father had not the love for the Lord that I have. He knew not of the Almighty and His grand design.
‘Stay,’ he said.
I did not have to reply because he knew the answer. He did not ask again. He did not cry, nor get angry. Instead he walked to the edge of the cove, picked up two, fist-size rocks from on top of the taboo boulder, and waded into the mouth of the inlet until the sea was about his waist.
And he sang, an ancient song I did not understand, the words and their meaning lost long before my birth. He sang as though the rhythm of the waves kept his beat. He sang to the sun as though it were listening. When he stopped, and raised the stones above his head in the fashion of bringing them down upon his skull, I almost ran into the sea to save him from himself.
But he clacked each stone against the other, a metronome for the tide as each wave broke on the sand, the sound echoing through the cove.
Then, like a family would gather around their father, or subjects before their God, giant turtles circled. When they breached the surface, they lifted their prehistoric heads from the sea, as though in reverence to him who had called them from the deep.
20 June 1835
Two days ago we touched ashore at Rewa. Though the sea journey was more tiresome than troublesome, a Fijian canoe is far from the luxury of the Caroline. On several instances, when larger waves broke over the bows and threatened to swamp the bailers, the helmsman tossed whale’s teeth into the water to abate the swell. The Rev. Thomas had shaken his head, snickered ‘Preposterous’, and offered a prayer that he said ‘would actually be heard and not sunk to the depths’.
We approached the village by paddling up the Rewa River, the biggest in all of Fiji, tumbling down from the Nakauvadra Range and snaking a maze of narrow tributaries through a delta of mangroves and villages.
News of our arrival had preceded us, and the banks thronged with locals shouting and waving – a most cheering sight.
On shore we were greeted by several principal men of King Tanoa, who merrily bid us welcome and escorted us to the fort. The king, an old man without the glowing countenance or physical prowess of King Nayau of Lakemba, saw it fit that a mission be granted upon his shores.
The Rev. Thomas, fast becoming a capable speaker of Fijian, has been more than involved in the construction of our residence, though he did cause some debate among the carpenters on his choice of location, not understanding – or not wanting to – that a hill is a poor position for a house, as all supplies and fresh water will have to be carried up to his kitchen.
21 June 1835
Again the Rev. Thomas used the story of Noah to excite his congregation, reciting much of it in Fijian. A gathering of nearly two hundred were suitably moved, with several scores pledging their souls.
I believe the rev. has been most charged in his autonomy of the mission, and also the importance that has been bestowed upon him by the king and his subjects. Already he has a small group of followers that gather about him like a flock of sheep would a shepherd.
23 June 1835
Even before our arrival, Bithi, the