ACCORDING TO THE SALUTARY REGULATION laid down by the Revd Johns during a former visit to Puka-Puka, no child shall sleep between the hours of 8 and 10 a.m., for at this time Sea Foam, assisted by Try-It (Tamata), teaches the children to read the Bible and vainly attempts to initiate them into some of the mysteries of arithmetic.
School opens with one hundred and twenty-odd children lined up before the schoolhouse. Sea Foam, followed by Try-It, a tall‚ gloomy-faced individual reminding one of the immortal Ichabod‚ marches down the line, examining the hair, eyes and noses of the children, and when, as often happens, there are evidences of failure to wash faces, the culprits are sent down to the lagoon to attend to the matter. When they reach the lagoon the children quite naturally wade in, not having any clothes to get wet. They have such a good time splashing about that they forget all about school. Anyway, school is a foolish business, and it’s much more fun swimming. The result is that Sea Foam sees no more of them that day. He doesn’t mind; he is glad to be rid of the brats, for, as he often says, there are plenty of scholars, anyway.
Following inspection comes a few minutes of callisthenics, an innovation of the Revd Johns. Imagine teaching these superbly healthy savages callisthenics! The parents stare perplexedly from their houses while their children go through the motions with grunts and sighs. ‘Vuni – tooi – treei!’ cries Sea Foam, giving them the time. A quarter of an hour later they file into the schoolhouse to read the Bible.
Sometimes Sea Foam takes a nap in the schoolhouse – in fact, he often does – whereupon all the children go home; and when the good parson wakes he finds that it is evening and he has long been alone. He puts his books under his arm and strolls home, stopping at the store for a moment to have a chat with me. School-teaching is a great burden, he informs me; often his whole day is taken up over his books, leaving him little time to search for suitable texts and quotations for his Sunday sermon.
There is a small thatched hut near the more pretentious coral-lime schoolhouse; it has open sides and a few coconut logs for benches. There Try-It herds his class of youngsters for two long hours each morning. Sometimes he instructs them in the mysteries of the ABC’s; at others he hammers the science of numbers into their heads by sing-song repetitions of ‘One times one is one; one times two is two.’ This is taught in English, so that the children may not have the remotest idea of what they are learning. At other times he reads a chapter from the Bible; and at still other times he, too, takes a nap.
One morning I looked on secretly at one of Try-It’s sessions. He sat with his back to one of the roof-posts, listening‚ perhaps, to the sing-song of the children, and again perhaps not. A faint breeze fanned the cheeks of his charges and caressed his own stubbly jowls. A soporific silence reigned in the main schoolhouse where Sea Foam was supposed to be at work.
Try-It turned his back on the children and for a time stared vacantly across the lagoon. Perhaps he was thinking. The sing-song of the scholars gradually died away until silence also reigned in the thatched hut. Several youngsters stole quietly out to play marbles; others leaned back against their coconut logs and instantly fell asleep.
Try-It dug his hand into his overalls pocket and brought forth a mouth organ. Putting it to his lips, he breathed out sleepy strains that made the very chickens scratching about the doorway drowsy. A little tot in the back row stood up to do a little dance, then sank to the gravel floor and fell asleep. Several others slipped out to join the marble-players. Try-It played on. I could see his long legs beneath his table, doing a sort of dance by themselves in time to the music.
Of a sudden he jerked up his head as though he had just remembered that he was a schoolmaster and that school was then in session. All of his scholars had gone except those who had fallen asleep on the floor. Try-It did not appear to be greatly surprised. He tiptoed softly out so as not to wake the sleeping youngsters and strolled home, the mouth organ still at his lips. By that time I too had become so drowsy that it was all I could do to stumble across the road into the store. Benny was snoring on the counter; Little Sea and Desire had fallen asleep over a game of checkers. I glanced outside once more; the village street was blazing in the sunlight and not a soul was to be seen in the length of it. I lay down on a mat, intending to read for a few moments, but the book fell from my hands before I had reached the end of the first paragraph. It’s a hard life, that of a trader on Puka-Puka.
One evening, after a hard day’s work at the schoolhouse, Sea Foam dropped in at the store. I could see that he had some request to make, for his bearing was both dignified and obsequious. It was this way, he explained: The Revd Johns was expected to visit the island shortly, and he, Sea Foam, wished to make a fine showing in the school. He remembered that on Rarotonga the schoolchildren sang certain patriotic songs in English which greatly pleased the missionaries. If I, Ropati, would consent to teach the children of Puka-Puka some such song, he, Sea Foam, would esteem it a very great favour indeed.
I readily agreed, and the next morning, donning a clean singlet and a pair of trousers, I entered the schoolhouse just as the session was beginning.
I wrote the verses of ‘God Save the King’ on the blackboard and then had the children repeat the lines of the first stanza after me. They quickly memorised it, although they were quite ignorant of its high-minded import. In three days’ time they had memorised the three stanzas.
Then I began to teach them the air. I played it over at least a score of times on my accordion to impress it well upon their minds. Then I rose, swung my hands bandmaster fashion, and said: ‘One, two, three, sing!’
Good Lord! or Carramba! as old William would say. I might as well have tried to teach them Parsifal. For a month I persevered and for a month I completely failed. Even Sea Foam gave up hope. The children simply could not grasp the melody, but must chant the words in their own guttural manner, with grunts and weird arpeggios. The bars accompanying the words, ‘Send him victorious, happy and glorious,’ they sang after a fashion, though roaring them out with barbarous gusto, like a war-cry. But the rest was impossible, and in the last line the chorus dwindled away in awful discords.
I then tried various other songs, ‘The Wearing of the Green’, ‘Hail Columbia’, ‘Marching Through Georgia’, but the result was the same.
After two months of intermittent effort I decided to give up the business altogether‚ for Viggo was expected any day, and he would bring the Revd Johns. But one evening when I was sitting with Benny, old William, Little Sea and Desire‚ I chanced to pick up my accordion and finger the keys idly, singing to myself. My friends listened patiently, as they always do, although I can see that they are bored, European or American music being altogether too strange for them to understand. I went from one song to another as they happened to come to me, and presently found myself singing the rollicking old slaver’s chantey, ‘It’s Time for Us to Go’:
A quick run to the south we had, and when we made the bight,
We kept the offing all day long and crossed the bar at night.
Six hundred niggers in the hold and seventy we did stow,
And when we’d clapped the hatches on ’twas time for us to go.
Time for us to go,
Time for us to go,
And when we’d clapped the hatches on
’Twas time for us to go.
Old William pricked up his ears, and Benny leaned forward to repeat something vaguely like ‘Time for us to go.’ To my astonishment Desire hummed the air with scarcely a mistake.
Instantly the thought came to me that this was the song to teach the schoolchildren. If Desire could hum it, they could learn it‚ and I realised that it was the kind of air they would have least difficulty with. The next morning I returned to the schoolhouse and before midday had the whole mob roaring:
Time for us to go,
Time for us to go,
When the money’s out and the liquor’s done,
Why, it’s time for us to go.
I have since had certain prickings of conscience because of this affair, for when the Revd Johns came‚ and Sea Foam had the schoolchildren rise and bellow out this slaver’s chantey, the missionary was very much upset. I have a warm place in my heart for the reverend, even though he is a little intolerant on the subject of clothing for the natives and such matters. He knew, of course, that I had taught the children this sinful song, but he never reproached me about it, or made the slightest reference to it in my presence. He merely told Sea Foam, later, that he was pleased to find the children learning English so rapidly, but on the whole he believed it would be better for them to learn no more secular songs. He preferred their singing hymns, ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee’, and ‘Bringing In the Sheaves’, in the native tongue.