Dennis Wheatley - The White Witch of the South Seas

Turning on his heel, he threw a twisted smile over his shoulder and added, `You won't need the return half of your ticket.'

8

Of Cannibals and Paradise

As Lacost moved away, James' dark eyes flashed with anger and he shot out a great hand to grab the Colon by the shoulder. But Gregory was quicker. With a swift movement he knocked up James' arm and said sharply

`Don't act like a fool! If you start a brawl here it would lead to our all being pulled in by the police and we'd miss the aircraft. With luck we'll get him in a quiet corner sometime. Provided there's no risk of your being found out, I won't lift a finger then to prevent you from strangling the swine. He's asked for it by killing that poor boatman.'

On seeing Lacost approach, Manon had kept her eyes averted, fearful lest anger at finding her two companions still alive should lead him, in a fit of spite, to disclose that she was his mistress and that they had been working together. Having heard him utter his new threat, she was greatly tempted again to urge Gregory to abandon his plans while there was still time. But, knowing that almost certainly it would be useless, she resisted it and decided to hold her fire until they were in Fiji.

Twenty minutes later they boarded the aircraft. The economy section was full, but the first class compartment, in which Gregory had asked for seats, half empty. As the Colons were travelling economy, the two parties did not even see each other again until they arrived in Tahiti soon after half past five the following morning. Dawn was coming up and the mountains behind the airport provided a wonderful backdrop. Lacost and Corbin disappeared into the Customs, while Gregory and his friends went into the cafeteria to revive themselves, after their night flight, with coffee laced with cognac.

There, Manon ran into a woman she had known well during the months she had lived on Tahiti; she was about to take a plane for Hawaii, where she intended to settle permanently. The friend said that, since Manon had left, conditions in Tahiti had worsened considerably.

Not only were they still saddled with thousands of down at heel, often dangerous, Colons, but de Gaulle was now using the island as the headquarters of his nuclear bomb experiments in the Pacific. Why he should require such great numbers of troops for security purposes no one could imagine, but he had recently increased the garrison of the island by thirty thousand men. Added to that, France ’s great new aircraft carrier, with an escort of destroyers, was due to arrive shortly, and to remain stationed there indefinitely. This big influx of Servicemen was leading to an all time high boom in the bars and nightclubs, but had already become a terrible infliction on the residents. With so much easy money about, the shopkeepers had become insolent; menservants could earn more doing a job for the Army, and it was now almost impossible to get maidservants because so many of them had become prostitutes.

After the usual hour for refuelling, the QANTAS aircraft left for Fiji, arriving at 7.40 a.m. Fiji time. And there it was still Wednesday, for some four hundred miles to the east they had crossed the Date Line; thus theoretically, having gained a day in their lives.

Suva, the capital of Fiji, lies at the eastern end of Viti Levu, the largest and most populous of the three hundred islands in the group, but its airport is not big enough to receive jet liners, so these come down at Nandi, a hundred miles away at the western extremity of the island.

From Guatemala, at Manon's suggestion, Gregory had cabled Hunt's Travel Service to make all arrangements for them, so they were duly met, seen through the Customs and promptly whisked away to the Mocambo Hotel. To Gregory's surprise, it was not simply a hostel for the overnight convenience of air passengers, but a luxury resort where scores of wealthy people were enjoying the attractions. After a good breakfast they went to bed, having agreed to meet again for drinks before dinner.

As soon as they had settled down in the dim, cool lounge over their Planter's Punches, Manon endeavoured to persuade Gregory to go with her next day to Lautoka, the principal port at the western end of the island, where they could hire a boat to take them to her home in the Mamanuca Group, which lay only twenty miles to the west. But he firmly declined her invitation, on the grounds that they must secure salvaging equipment as soon as possible; and that he had already asked Hunt's representative to secure seats for them on the local flight to Suva the next morning.

They had just ordered their second round of drinks when they were joined by a Mr. and Mrs. Ronald Knox Mawer, whom Manon had met soon after coming to live in Fiji. It emerged that he was the Puisne Judge, who administered justice throughout that part of Viti Levu, and that his wife, June, was the author of a recently published book called A Gift of Islands, describing life in Fiji. They had previously been stationed for several years in Aden, about which she had written an earlier book, The Sultans Came to Tea. Gregory happened to have read it, and greatly enjoyed its interest and humour, so he was delighted at this opportunity to talk to her and her husband for he felt that few couples could tell him more about this colony in which he expected to make his headquarters for several months.

They all dined together, and afterwards, over their brandies, the young Judge told Gregory about the islands. The Dutch explorer Tasman had been the first, in 1643, to discover the Fiji Group; but the whole South Pacific remained on the imaginative maps of those days for another one hundred and forty years, under the description `Here be Dragons'. It was not until 1774 that Captain James Cook learned of them in Tonga, but only touched upon them. Then, fifteen years later, Lieutenant Bligh, of Bounty fame, when put overboard off Tonga by mutineers, with eighteen loyal officers and men in a six oared boat only twenty three feet long, had become the real discoverer of the Fijis. Tahiti had been nearer, but the winds contrary, so with great courage he had decided to attempt the three thousand miles voyage to the Dutch East Indies. During it he had passed right through the Fiji Group and in 1792 he had returned to chart many of its islands.

This led to European and, a little later, American ships calling fairly frequently at the Fijis. Then, early in the nineteenth century, they began to arrive in scores. The reason was the discovery of sandalwood at the south west end of Vanua Levu, the second largest island. The wood was greatly prized by the Chinese for making articles used in religious ceremonies, and its dust was turned into joss sticks. The profits in this trade were enormous, six hundred per cent being the average. One ship, the Jenny, traded fifty pounds' worth of trash for a cargo of two hundred and fifty tons which realised twenty thousand pounds.

Eventually the supply of sandalwood gave out and new sources were found near Noumea. But in the 1830s and 40s the Fijis enjoyed another boom, owing to the discovery that the rocks in their innumerable shallow lagoons were great breeding grounds for beche de mer. These are the sea slug Holathusia, about eight inches long and three thick, having rough skins thickly coated with slime. Before shipping, the slugs were cleaned, par boiled and smoked. Again the Chinese were eager buyers, because when the cured slugs had been made into soup it was believed to be a marvellous aphrodisiac. At small expense native divers could be paid to collect the beche de mer and in less than a year a Captain could sail away with a cargo of them worth sixty thousand pounds.

Before the coming of the white man, and for nearly a century afterwards, the Fijis were peopled by innumerable small and large tribes, ruled over by independent hereditary chiefs. They were nearly always at war with one another, although there was little loss of human life. Often, for months at a stretch, a war would consist of small parties creeping into their neighbours' territories, surprising a few of them cultivating their vegetable gardens, clubbing the men and carrying off the women. Occasionally, there would be a great gathering of ferociously painted warriors who, after much shouting and boasting, would set off in their canoes. This could lead to 'battles' with a thousand or more men on either side. When the clash came there was more shouting and still more boasting, but when half a dozen men had been killed or, to the superstitious terror of all concerned, a Chief had by accident been struck down both sides called it a day. Eventually, one side gave in and brought basket’s full of earth to the enemy in token of submission. The victors burned the huts and destroyed the vegetable gardens of the defeated, then went home happily declaiming on their bravery, taking with them the bodies of the slain to be cooked and eaten at a joyful celebration.