The Project Gutenberg EBook of Susani, by Louis Becke

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: Susani
1901

Author: Louis Becke

Release Date: April 19, 2008 [EBook #25109]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUSANI ***

Produced by David Widger

SUSANI

From "The Tapu Of Banderah and Other Stories"

By Louis Becke

C. Arthur Pearson Ltd.

1901

A few weeks ago I was reading a charmingly written book by a lady (the
wife of a distinguished savant) who had spent three months on Funafuti,
one of the lagoon islands of the Ellice Group. Now the place and the
brown people of whom she wrote were once very familiar to me, and her
warm and generous sympathy for a dying race stirred me greatly, and when
I came across the name "Funafala," old, forgotten memories awoke once
more, and I heard the sough of the trade wind through the palms and the
lapping of the lagoon waters upon the lonely beaches of Funafala, as
Senior, the mate of the _Venus_, and myself watched the last sleep of
Susani.

Funafala is one of the many islands which encircle Funafuti lagoon with
a belt of living green, and to Funafala--"the island of the pandanus
palm"--Senior and I had come with a party of natives from the village on
the main island to spend a week's idleness. Fifty years ago, long before
the first missionary ship sailed into the lagoon, five or six hundred
people dwelt on Funafala in peace and plenty--now it holds but their
bones, for they were doomed to fade and vanish before the breath of the
white man and his civilisation and "benefits," which to the brown people
mean death, and as the years went by, the remnant of the people
on Funafala and the other islets betook themselves to the main
island--after which the lagoon is named--for there the whale-ships
and trading schooners came to anchor, and there they live to this day,
smitten with disease and fated to disappear altogether within another
thirty years, and be no more known to man except in the dry pages of a
book written by some learned ethnologist.

But twice every year the people of Funafuti betake themselves to
Funafala to gather the cocoa-nuts, which in the silent groves rip