第24章 THE PORT OF ENTRY(3)

He had entered a house about eight in the morning,forced a trunk,and stolen eleven hundred francs;and now,under the horrors of darkness,solitude,and a bedevilled cannibal imagination,he was reluctantly confessing and giving up his spoil.From one cache,which he had already pointed out,three hundred francs had been recovered,and it was expected that he would presently disgorge the rest.This would be ugly enough if it were all;but I am bound to say,because it is a matter the French should set at rest,that worse is continually hinted.I heard that one man was kept six days with his arms bound backward round a barrel;and it is the universal report that every gendarme in the South Seas is equipped with something in the nature of a thumbscrew.I do not know this.

I never had the face to ask any of the gendarmes -pleasant,intelligent,and kindly fellows -with whom I have been intimate,and whose hospitality I have enjoyed;and perhaps the tale reposes (as I hope it does)on a misconstruction of that ingenious cat's-cradle with which the French agent of police so readily secures a prisoner.But whether physical or moral,torture is certainly employed;and by a barbarous injustice,the state of accusation (in which a man may very well be innocently placed)is positively painful;the state of conviction (in which all are supposed guilty)is comparatively free,and positively pleasant.Perhaps worse still,-not only the accused,but sometimes his wife,his mistress,or his friend,is subjected to the same hardships.I was admiring,in the tapu system,the ingenuity of native methods of detection;there is not much to admire in those of the French,and to lock up a timid child in a dark room,and,if he proved obstinate,lock up his sister in the next,is neither novel nor humane.

The main occasion of these thefts is the new vice of opium-eating.

'Here nobody ever works,and all eat opium,'said a gendarme;and Ah Fu knew a woman who ate a dollar's worth in a day.The successful thief will give a handful of money to each of his friends,a dress to a woman,pass an evening in one of the taverns of Tai-o-hae,during which he treats all comers,produce a big lump of opium,and retire to the bush to eat and sleep it off.Atrader,who did not sell opium,confessed to me that he was at his wit's end.'I do not sell it,but others do,'said he.'The natives only work to buy it;if they walk over to me to sell their cotton,they have just to walk over to some one else to buy their opium with my money.And why should they be at the bother of two walks?There is no use talking,'he added -'opium is the currency of this country.'

The man under prevention during my stay at Tai-o-hae lost patience while the Chinese opium-seller was being examined in his presence.

'Of course he sold me opium!'he broke out;'all the Chinese here sell opium.It was only to buy opium that I stole;it is only to buy opium that anybody steals.And what you ought to do is to let no opium come here,and no Chinamen.'This is precisely what is done in Samoa by a native Government;but the French have bound their own hands,and for forty thousand francs sold native subjects to crime and death.This horrid traffic may be said to have sprung up by accident.It was Captain Hart who had the misfortune to be the means of beginning it,at a time when his plantations flourished in the Marquesas,and he found a difficulty in keeping Chinese coolies.To-day the plantations are practically deserted and the Chinese gone;but in the meanwhile the natives have learned the vice,the patent brings in a round sum,and the needy Government at Papeete shut their eyes and open their pockets.Of course,the patentee is supposed to sell to Chinamen alone;equally of course,no one could afford to pay forty thousand francs for the privilege of supplying a scattered handful of Chinese;and every one knows the truth,and all are ashamed of it.French officials shake their heads when opium is mentioned;and the agents of the farmer blush for their employment.Those that live in glass houses should not throw stones;as a subject of the British crown,I am an unwilling shareholder in the largest opium business under heaven.

But the British case is highly complicated;it implies the livelihood of millions;and must be reformed,when it can be reformed at all,with prudence.This French business,on the other hand,is a nostrum and a mere excrescence.No native industry was to be encouraged:the poison is solemnly imported.No native habit was to be considered:the vice has been gratuitously introduced.And no creature profits,save the Government at Papeete -the not very enviable gentlemen who pay them,and the Chinese underlings who do the dirty work.