II.
How I Took Office.

I Heard the High Commissioner's announcement with rather mixed feelings. To be at the age of twenty-nine elder brother to a monarch of over ninety does not fall to the lot of many, and new adventures are always worth undertaking; but, on the other hand, I had already been to Tonga, and I knew enough of the place and the people to realise that, after the enthusiasm and excitement of Mr Baker's ejectment, would come a strong reaction. By this time no doubt every Tongan had made up his mind that the millennium had arrived, in which there would be no more taxes nor Government, and every man would be a law unto himself. Any Government that tried to undeceive them on this point would be unpopular, and any white man who was associated with such a Government would bear the whole brunt of the popular distrust, already aroused by the revelations of Mr Baker's delinquencies imperfectly understood. With a people who would pay no taxes, how were the liabilities to be paid off? Besides, I was to go there without any authority at my back but that which the king might choose to give me, and if I page 27failed, I alone must take the blame. The blame of failing in such a service would probably dog me for the rest of my official career.

On the other hand, I might have the luck to succeed, and the experience was certain to be amusing. On the whole it seemed worth the risk. The High Commissioner was still telling me his proposals when my mind was made up.

The plans were soon arranged. I was to go to Tonga in the steamer chartered to take back the Wesleyan exiles. I was not to be hampered by a detailed letter of instructions, but, furnished with a mere outline of the policy to be pursued, I was to present myself to the king, and thereafter be left with a free hand, to be guided by circumstances as to my future course.

Meanwhile the exiles had been sent for from the island of Koro, and on their arrival they were assembled to hear from the High Commissioner the steps that were to be taken on their behalf. They were, he said, to go back to their homes after three years of exile, which they had borne with praiseworthy fortitude. They were not sent back by the British Government: they were invited to return by their own king, to whom alone they owed allegiance. They were not to think that because they had been exiled for wishing to continue in their Church, this invitation implied that their Church had triumphed. If they adopted a triumphant attitude in Tonga, or tried to push forward the cause of their Church, disturbances would be quite certain to follow, and they would be in a worse plight than before. Any such conduct on their part would be a poor return to the British Government page 28who had befriended them, and whose one desire was to see Tonga at peace. They were especially to understand that the late events had come about from a true desire to help the king, and not from any ulterior object of extending British influence. Foolish things were often said in Tonga, and the most foolish of all was that England wished to take the country for her own, Victoria was not a "stealing Queen," and wanted no country that belonged to others. She and her officers were now, as ever, ready to endorse the proverb, "Tonga maa Tonga" (Tonga for the Tongans), and it was their duty, whenever they heard this foolish statement made, to contradict it.

Then William Maealiuaki replied on behalf of the exiles. He began with a long and very wearisome list of the presents given to them by the Fijian chiefs, and finished with a flowery oration of thanks. Charlotte, the king's daughter, an old woman of past sixty, had called upon Lady Thurston with her women, and had presented an immense roll of native cloth, which, she explained, had been brought to Fiji to serve as her shroud, but since God had allowed her to see her native country again and would let her die there, she wished to leave the shroud behind her.

On August 16th the steamer Pukaki hauled into the wharf to receive her passengers. Counting children, the exiles numbered more than 120 souls. It was a curious scene. Half the population of Suva had assembled to see them off, including the High Commissioner and the Government officials, and the wharf was crowded. Their native friends were weeping demonstratively, and the Tongans themselves were in a state of high emotion. The steamer, page 29dressed with all her signal flags, cast off amid deafening cheers from the shore party, and as she swung out into the stream she fired a salute. As the echoes of the last shot died away, the voices of the exiles were heard singing "Home, Sweet Home," in their own language, taking well-sustained parts; and they continued singing until we passed through the white line of reef-breakers, and the figures on shore had melted away in a cloud of white draperies. We had cast off our nationality, and were now Tongans.

One of the Exiles.

Our fellow-passengers spent their first day at sea in holding religious services, and in fussing about their luggage. These exiles for conscience' sake had already reaped the reward of their constancy—an earthly reward in the form of mats, native cloth, kava-bowls, and all things that are most precious to the native heart. They numbered more than 120, and had left their homes almost naked. They went back with eighty tons of luggage—far more than they could possibly have accumulated in three years had they remained in their own country. Persecution had not been unprofitable.

A grey fuzzy line just above the horizon, gradually resolving itself into cocoanut-palms—such was our first sight of Tongatabu. We steamed along the south-east coast, the Liku, watching the surf spout up in a hundred page 30geysers as each heavy sea forced the water into the cavelike tunnels in the reef; between the main island and picturesque Eua; through an intricate channel among the reef islets, until some houses showed white against the thick mass of palms. This was Nukualofa. In the sunlight every colour was intense—the blue of the sea, the white of the foam and coral-sand, and the green of the vegetation.

Nukualofa.

From the moment when the first land was sighted the exiles began to show signs of anxiety, which increased with every throb of the propeller. They got out mats from their bundles, presumably in order to land neatly dressed; but, to our surprise, we saw that the outer mat petticoats they were putting on were impossibly dirty and ragged. Not ragged enough, however, to satisfy their critical taste, for as we neared the shore they began nervously to tear and unravel the edges of these filthy garments, stopping at times to inspect their progress towards disreputability. We had yet to learn that a Tongan expresses humility, repentance, and respect for dignities by the raggedness of his attire. The High Commissioner's advice regarding their demeanour on arrival had not been lost upon them.

We were boarded by the Collector of Customs and the Vice-Consul, and while we were still talking to them, two page 31excited missionaries dashed up the ladder and fell upon their flock. It was a demonstration that might well have been spared, for the wharf was now filling with people, and it was the interest of the mission, as well as of the exiles, that they should return as the king's subjects, and not as members of a Church of which he disapproved. Meanwhile the chief men among the exiles, William Maealiuaki and Matealona, landed to report themselves to Tukuaho, the Premier, and we pulled to the wharf and landed among the crowd of sight-seers. I tried in vain to detect any enthusiasm, but, with the exception of the near relations of the exiles, who could be distinguished from the others by their eager questioning of the native crew of our boat, the people, who numbered perhaps 150, seemed to have come from mere motives of curiosity. Mrs S., the daughter of one of the missionaries, explained the absence of demonstration by saying that we had been expected on the previous Sunday, when large numbers had awaited our arrival; but this explanation scarcely accounted for the absence of the townspeople, who had had fully two hours' notice of the arrival of the steamer. The people assembled were scarcely more than would have come to see the arrival of the ordinary monthly steamer. Mrs S. went on to say that affairs were less satisfactory than had been hoped. The king had gone away to Haapai to finish the building of a church. There had been a free fight between the lads of the Government and the Wesleyan colleges. The Collector of Customs had had a difference with the Premier about a copra contract, and, to the great inconvenience of the public, had closed the Customs office for a whole day as a protest. Moreover, "certain page 32persons" had been endeavouring to set my native colleagues against me, and they were so demoralised by the turn affairs had taken that they talked freely of resignation. There were, in short, rumours of wars everywhere, and not a shilling had been taken as taxes since the High Commissioner left a month before. A little later I heard the other side of the story, which was that an enterprising copra-trader had persuaded the native Premier to proclaim that the Government would accept copra in lieu of money for taxes, and to sell the copra thus obtained to him at a fixed rate; and Tukuaho, being new to the business, had been easily persuaded that the offer was disinterested, and had acted upon it, to the great indignation of the rival traders and the detriment of the Government, as will be explained hereafter.

But the worst news of all, although the least unexpected, was that the Free Church ministers were up in arms. They felt, naturally enough, that in Mr Baker they had lost a powerful champion, and that the Government was no longer to use its machinery for the annoyance of their adversaries, the Wesleyans. The return of the exiles was a triumph for the minority, for among them were the only persons of rank who remained faithful to the old Church. Mr Baker was their prophet and their defensor fidei, who alone could keep alive the spirit of enthusiasm, and insure the punctual payment of their salaries from the annual mission collections. Naturally enough, therefore, they "talked lotu" from their pulpits—that is to say, they vilified the rival sect, and hinted that the removal of Mr Baker was but the preface to the seizure of the country by Great Britain. Now every Tongan is hysterically patri-page 33otic, and has a deep-seated conviction that the sovereigns of the other Powers do not sleep well of nights for pondering how they may plausibly compass the enthralment of Tonga. To accuse the chiefs who had taken office in the new Cabinet of selling their country to England was the surest way to make them extremely unpopular. This had been the news from Haapai, and the minds of the people in Tonga, both white and black, were deeply tinged with pessimism. There was a general undefined feeling that something was going to happen.