Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/155

Rh were to be seen together in his own village apparently on excellent terms.

There are more serious cases of conjugal infidelity on record, however. In a small village near Omarakana, there lived a man called Dudubile Kautala, who died in 1916, apparently of old age, and whose funeral I attended. I remember his wife, Kayawa, as a terrible old hag, shrivelled like a mummy and smeared all over with grease and soot as a sign of mourning; and I can still feel the dreadful atmosphere pervading her little widow's cage, where I paid her a visit soon after her bereavement. History tells us, however, that once she was fair and tempting, so that men were driven to suicide for her. Molatagula, chief of a neighbouring village, was among those who succumbed to her beauty. One day, when the husband had gone to procure fish from a lagoon village, the love-sick chieftain entered Kayawa's house knowing her to be indoors — a gross breach of usage and manners. The story runs that Kayawa lay asleep naked upon her bed, offering a most alluring sight to the intruder, as the natives somewhat crudely put it. He approached her and took advantage of her sleep and helplessness, without, says my version, still gallantly partial to the lady, any connivance on her part. But when the husband returned, panting under a load of fish, he found them together. Both were undressed and there was more besides to compromise them. The adulterer tried to carry it off with effrontery, and said he had only come to fetch some fire. But the evidence was against him, and when the husband seized an axe, the offender tore a big hole in the thatch Rh