TO AUSTIN STRONG

     Vailima.

My Dear Austin, ­Now when the overseer is away I think it my duty to report to him anything serious that goes on on the plantation.

Early the other afternoon we heard that Sina’s foot was very bad, and soon after that we could have heard her cries as far away as the front balcony.  I think Sina rather enjoys being ill, and makes as much of it as she possibly can; but all the same it was painful to hear the cries; and there is no doubt she was at least very uncomfortable.  I went up twice to the little room behind the stable, and found her lying on the floor, with Tali and Faauma and Talolo all holding on different bits of her.  I gave her an opiate; but whenever she was about to go to sleep one of these silly people would be shaking her, or talking in her ear, and then she would begin to kick about again and scream.

Palema and Aunt Maggie took horse and went down to Apia after the doctor.  Right on their heels off went Mitaele on Musu to fetch Tauilo, Talolo’s mother.  So here was all the island in a bustle over Sina’s foot.  No doctor came, but he told us what to put on.  When I went up at night to the little room, I found Tauilo there, and the whole plantation boxed into the place like little birds in a nest.  They were sitting on the bed, they were sitting on the table, the floor was full of them, and the place as close as the engine-room of a steamer.  In the middle lay Sina, about three parts asleep with opium; two able-bodied work-boys were pulling at her arms, and whenever she closed her eyes calling her by name, and talking in her ear.  I really didn’t know what would become of the girl before morning.  Whether or not she had been very ill before, this was the way to make her so, and when one of the work-boys woke her up again, I spoke to him very sharply, and told Tauilo she must put a stop to it.

Now I suppose this was what put it into Tauilo’s head to do what she did next.  You remember Tauilo, and what a fine, tall, strong, Madame Lafarge sort of person she is?  And you know how much afraid the natives are of the evil spirits in the wood, and how they think all sickness comes from them?  Up stood Tauilo, and addressed the spirit in Sina’s foot, and scolded it, and the spirit answered and promised to be a good boy and go away.  I do not feel so much afraid of the demons after this.  It was Faauma told me about it.  I was going out into the pantry after soda-water, and found her with a lantern drawing water from the tank.  “Bad spirit he go away,” she told me.

“That’s first-rate,” said I.  “Do you know what the name of that spirit was?  His name was tautala (talking).”

“O, no!” she said; “his name is Tu.”

You might have knocked me down with a straw.  “How on earth do you know that?” I asked.

“Heerd him tell Tauilo,” she said.

As soon as I heard that I began to suspect Mrs. Tauilo was a little bit of a ventriloquist; and imitating as well as I could the sort of voice they make, asked her if the bad spirit did not talk like that.  Faauma was very much surprised, and told me that was just his voice.

Well, that was a very good business for the evening.  The people all went away because the demon was gone away, and the circus was over, and Sina was allowed to sleep.  But the trouble came after.  There had been an evil spirit in that room and his name was Tu.  No one could say when he might come back again; they all voted it was Tu much; and now Talolo and Sina have had to be lodged in the Soldier Room. As for the little room by the stable, there it stands empty; it is too small to play soldiers in, and I do not see what we can do with it, except to have a nice brass name-plate engraved in Sydney, or in “Frisco,” and stuck upon the door of it ­Mr. Tu.

So you see that ventriloquism has its bad side as well as its good sides; and I don’t know that I want any more ventriloquists on this plantation.  We shall have Tu in the cook-house next, and then Tu in Lafaele’s, and Tu in the workman’s cottage; and the end of it all will be that we shall have to take the Tamaitai’s room for the kitchen, and my room for the boys’ sleeping-house, and we shall all have to go out and camp under umbrellas.

Well, where you are there may be schoolmasters, but there is no such thing as Mr. Tu!

Now, it’s all very well that these big people should be frightened out of their wits by an old wife talking with her mouth shut; that is one of the things we happen to know about.  All the old women in the world might talk with their mouths shut, and not frighten you or me, but there are plenty of other things that frighten us badly.  And if we only knew about them, perhaps we should find them no more worthy to be feared than an old woman talking with her mouth shut.  And the names of some of these things are Death, and Pain, and Sorrow.

     UNCLE LOUIS.