Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 03.pdf/356

Rh has now become the resort of all Fijians who are in trouble or consider themselves aggrieved.

For several days witnesses and accused have been coming in from the neighboring islands, and last night the village cries proclaimed the share of the feast which each family was called upon to provide. The women have been busy since daylight bringing in yams, plantains, and taro from the plantations; while the men were digging the oven and lining it with stones that when heated will cook the pigs to a turn.

But already the height of the sun shows it to be half-past ten, and the District Court has to inquire into several charges before the Provincial Court can sit. The order is given to the native police sergeant to beat the "lali," and straightway two huge wooden drums boom out their summons to whomever it may concern. As the drum-beats become more agitated and pressing, a long file of aged natives clad in shirt and "sulu" of more or less irreproachable white, is seen emerging from the grove of cocoanut-palms which conceal the village. We have but just time to shake hands with our dusky colleague, a shrewd-looking old man with grizzled hair and beard carefully trimmed for the occasion, when the crowd begins to pour into the court-house.

The gala dresses are not a little startling. Here is a dignified old gentleman arrayed in a second-hand tunic of a marine, in much the same plight as to buttons as its owner as to "teeth." Near him stands a fine young village policeman, whose official gravity is not enhanced by the swallow-tailed coat of a nigger minstrel; while the background is taken up by a bevy of village maidens clad in gorgeous velvet pinafores, who are giggling after the manner of their white sisters, until they are fixed by the stern gray eye of the chief policeman, which turns their expression into one of that preternatural solemnity they wear in church.

The court-house, a native building carpeted with mats, is now packed with natives sitting cross-legged, only a small space being reserved in front of the table for the accused and witnesses. The magistrate takes his seat; and his scribe, sitting on the floor at his side, prepares his writing materials to record the sentences. The dignity with which the old gentleman adjusts his shirt-collar and clears his throat is a little marred when he produces from his bosom what should have been a pair of pince-nez, seeing that it was secured by a string round his neck, but is in fact a Jew's-harp. With the soft notes of this instrument the man of law is wont to beguile the tedium of a dull case. But although the spectacle of Lord Coleridge gravely performing on the Jew's-harp would at least excite surprise in England, it provokes no smile here.

The first case is called on. Reiterated calls for Samuela and Timothe produce two meek-faced youths of eighteen and nineteen, who, sitting tailor-fashion before the table, are charged with fowl-stealing. They plead "not guilty;" and the owner of the fowls, being sworn, deposes that having been awakened at night by the voice of a favorite hen in angry remonstrance, he ran out of his house, and after a hot chase captured the accused,—red-handed in two senses, for they were plucking his hen while still alive. Quite unmoved by this tragic tale, Vatureba seems to listen only to the melancholy tones of his Jew's-harp; but the witness is a chief, and a man of influence withal, and a period of awed silence follows his accusation, broken only by a subdued twanging from the bench. But Vatureba's eyes are bright and piercing, and they have been fixed for some minutes on the wretched prisoners. He has not yet opened his lips during the case; and as the Jew's-harp is not capable of much expression, it is with some interest we await the sentence. Suddenly the music ceases, the instrument is withdrawn from the mouth, the oracle is about to speak. Alas! he utters but two words, "Vulle totu" (three months), and there peals out a malignantly triumphant strain from the Jew's-harp. But