The Isle of Vanishing Men
A Narrative of Adventure in Cannibal-land
9781465623454
208 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Two bells tinkles within the master’s cabin, and the quartermaster on the bridge repeats the announcement of nine o’clock with two strokes upon the bronze bell near his station at the wheel. It is sailing-time. The townspeople have turned out en masse to bid us farewell, and the open spaces on the new concrete wharf are ablaze with color. The chatter of a thousand voices comes to us as we stand upon the deck looking down on the scene. Every one seems happy. The great whistle on the ship’s funnel, after a preliminary gargling of its throat, shatters the tranquil air with a peremptory warning. The screw churns up a maëlstrom beneath the overhanging stern, and we swing out into the channel amid a storm of adieus spoken in a dozen tongues. We are off for the land of the cannibal Kia Kias,—the Isle of Vanishing Men. As the ship gathers way, Amboina, spice-scented “Ambon,” drops into the mists of the morning and we look around the deck for company. We are alone. Then we remember the information given us by the First Officer yesterday. We are the only first-cabin passengers on board, this trip. Few people find their way to the Isle of Vanishing Men. It offers little to the business man. The commercial traveler never goes there. Merauke, our destination, has but five white inhabitants, and their wants are few. One steamer a month carries to them the things they need and the mail from home. We shall spend our time for the next few days in lazy languor, playing an occasional game of chess with the chief engineer, chatting now and then with the very amiable captain, or, as one learns to do in the Indies, just draping ourselves over most comfortable steamer chairs and daydreaming for hours on end. The air is like silk. The piping falsetto of the deck-hands as they sing at their work lulls one into reverie, and life glides by with a smoothness that takes no count of time. There comes the day when the captain greets us at breakfast with the news that we shall arrive this evening. As he selects from the heaped platter of sliced sausage his favorite variety he tells us that we shall sight land at one this afternoon. We are agog with excitement. The cannibals are not far away now. We ply him with questions and as he spreads his bread with marmalade he tells us of the Kia Kias and what their name means. To be kikied, he avers, is to be eaten; the natives are eaters of men; hence the name. He regales us with reminiscences of his former visits to the island and roars with merriment as he relates how on one voyage a few months ago he was accompanied by his wife. The natives thronged the little wharf, clad in their birthday suits, to witness the arrival of the ship. Some of them were allowed on board, where they were awed by the marvels of the white man’s great proa. The captain’s wife was the first white woman they had ever seen, and one of the natives—a son of a chief, by the way,—became enamored of her. He immediately offered the captain two fine pigs for her. The captain refused the offer, saying it was not enough. The man withdrew, his brow wrinkled with deep thought. He left the ship and was lost in the throng that strained the underpinning of the little wharf. Two hours later he returned, accompanied by several of his friends. Each of these carried a pig trussed up with rattan hobbles. He had sold his wife and three daughters for five pigs and was raising his ante, so the captain’s story ran, and was much put out when he learned that the price offered was still inadequate.
