d without a
sound. It all seemed unnatural and uncanny, and this may have produced
the frightened feeling that held us all that morning. While we were
crossing over to Port Patterson a sharp wind rose from the north,
and the barometer fell, so that we feared another edition of the
storm. If our engines had broken down, which happened often enough,
we should have been lost, for we were in a region where the swell
came from two directions, and the waves were even higher than in
the morning. Fortunately the wind increased but slowly; presently
we were protected by the coast, and at night we arrived at Port
Patterson. The men had given us up, and welcomed us with something
akin to tenderness. Here, too, the cyclone had been terrible, the
worst of the three that had passed in four weeks.

Soon afterwards the steamer arrived, bringing news of many wrecks and
accidents. A dozen ships had been smashed at their anchorages, four
had disappeared, and three were known to have foundered; in addition,
news came of the wreck of a steamer. Hardly ever had so many fallen
victims to a cyclone.

Painfully and slowly our steamer ploughed her way south through the
abnormally high swell. None of the anchorages on the west coast could
be touched, and everywhere we saw brown woods, leafless as in winter,
and damaged plantations; and all the way down to Vila we heard of
new casualties.

CHAPTER XV

TANNA

Of the larger inhabited islands of the New Hebrides, only Tanna
remained to be visited. Instead of stopping at Vila, I went on to
White Sands, Tanna, where the Rev. M. was stationed. The large
island of Erromanga has but little native population, and that
is all christianized; the same is true of the smaller islands of
Aneityum, Aniwa and Futuna. I preferred to study Tanna, as it is
characteristic of all the southern part of the archipelago. The
population is quite different from that in the north, and one would
call it Polynesian, were it not for the curly hair which shows
Melanesian admixture. Light-coloured, tall, strong, with the fleshy
body that is often a feature of the Polynesian, the people have, not
infrequently, fine open features, small noses and intelligent faces
of oval outline. They are more energetic, warlike and independent
than those up north, and their mode of life is different, the Suque
and everything connected with it being entirely absent. Instead, we
find hereditary chieftainship, as in all Polynesia, a