ONE EVENING THE VILLAGERS woke earlier than usual and gathered in the road before the store to wrestle. Although Puka-Pukans are the laziest people on earth, they are the champion wrestlers of the Cook and Line Islands, a mediocre Puka-Pukan being able to throw any champion from another island.
The wrestling started with matches between boys from ten to fifteen years old, while little tots held bouts of their own. Soon half a dozen men from Windward Village stepped apart from the rest and drew themselves up in attitudes of defiance; it was a silent challenge to the men of the other villages. One by one, men from Central and Leeward Villages met them and there was good sport for everybody, both spectators and contestants. A victory consisted in throwing an opponent or in lifting him from the ground; when one knee touches the ground the man has lost. No doubt this form of wrestling was adopted because of the nature of the ground, which is rough and gravelly and strewn with fragments of coral.
I was rather pleased to see George, the boastful one, thrown by an undersized Central Villager. George, of course, was ready with his excuse: he had been netting flying-fish the previous evening and had sprained both his wrists, he said. As soon as he had recovered from this accident he would take pleasure in throwing this Central Villager and all his friends and relatives.
King-of-the-Sky was present watching the sport, but he did not join it, for he was dressed in his brass-buttoned coat and trousers of billiard-table green, which had already served several generations of Sky-Kings. The cloth was wearing exceedingly thin in spots, and King-of-the-Sky was fully aware of this. I had often noticed that when dressed in his Sunday clothes he walked with the greatest circumspection. When about to sit down in church he would ease up the cloth about his knees and loosen it around the seat of his trousers in order to avoid any embarrassing accident.
It is the custom at the wrestling matches for the people to come dressed in their Sunday best. Scratch-Woman was there in her ancient lace dress, striped socks and high-heeled shoes – not that she planned to wrestle, but she never lost an opportunity to display her mildewed finery. Ears wore his golfer’s knickerbockers and wrestled in them with Ura, his chief, who was rigged out in his commodore’s coat, epaulets and brass braid. Glory where glory belongs – the commodore’s coat soon lay prostrate in the dust. There was an amusing sequel to this episode the following day. Ura called a special meeting of his council, where he officially fired Ears from the force. This sort of thing had happened before, and Ears, as usual, refused to be dismissed. But this mattered little; Ura had performed the act of dismissal and thus regained his self-esteem.
Presently who should come to the contest but old Bones, his new mouth organ conspicuously displayed stuck in a flower wreath around the crown of his hat.
‘There’s the champion,’ said Desire. ‘He can throw any two men on the island.’
I laughed, thinking that this was her idea of a joke.
‘It’s true,’ she said, seriously; ‘Bones is the best wrestler on Puka-Puka.’
Still I didn’t believe her, and was astonished to see the old satyr walk to the centre of the ring and stand there defiantly, his arms akimbo and his legs spread apart. I laughed aloud and Bones glanced at me with an injured expression in his watery eyes. I noticed that his Pantagruelian nose was swollen to twice its ordinary size, due to a monstrous boil, fiery-red except for the centre, which was white. My fingers itched to lance the thing; it was just ripe for opening.
At first no one accepted Bones’s challenge; but presently a stalwart Windward Villager, about six feet four and all muscle, stepped forward.
‘Poor old Bones!’ I said, but Little Sea replied, ‘Just wait. Bones will throw him. Look at his arms.’
Heretofore my attention had always been fixed on Bones’s face, for it was horribly fascinating in its ugliness. But now I examined his body and was amazed to find that his hands actually reached to his knees. And the rolls of hard muscle on his arms reminded me of a mule’s hind leg. The shoulders, although sadly stooped, were powerful and easily twice as broad as mine.
Bones smiled fatuously when the Windward man stepped before him. The latter made a grab for the champion’s leg, but at the same instant a long gorilla-like arm shot out and caught him by his sennit belt. The Windward Villager, failing to grasp Bones’s leg, raised his arm quickly in an attempt to get hold of the nape of his neck. In doing so his hand accidentally struck the champion’s nose. The blow did all that my lancet could have done. The boil exploded, much to the defilement of the old man’s face.
Bones yelled with pain, and the next instant we saw the Windward Villager rise from the ground, sail through the air and land with a tremendous thud half a dozen yards away.
‘There, damn it!’ cried the feeble old man; ‘if you hadn’t smashed my boil, I’d have let you down easy!’
His face, as I have said, was ugly enough at best, and in view of what had just happened to his nose – but enough of that.
‘Good work, Bones!’ I said as he went past me, homeward.
He smiled hideously, shaking his head.
‘Ah me!’ he said. ‘I am growing old, I fear. Six months ago I could have tossed him on to the village church.’