Haggard Anthology Vol 4, page 100
That night, toward dawn, they were awakened by a great tumult. Women shrieked and men shouted. The boy Foh, who slept on the other side of the hut behind a skin curtain, crept out to see what was the matter, thinking, perhaps, that the wolves had carried off someone. Presently he returned and reported that there was fighting going on, but he did not know what about.
Now Wi wished to rise, and look into the matter, but Aaka bade him lie still, saying:
"Keep quiet. It is your new law at work, that is all."
When morning came, this proved to be true enough. Some wives of old husbands had run away from them to young lovers, and some men who had no wives had captured or tried to capture them by force, with the result that there was much fighting, in which one old man had been killed and others, male and female, injured.
Aaka laughed at Wi about this business, but he was so sad that he did not try to answer her, only he said:
"You treat me hardly, Wife, of late, who am trying to do my best and who love you, as I proved long ago when I fought a man who wished to take you against your will and killed him, which brought much anger and trouble on me. Then you thanked me and we came together and for years lived happily. At last Henga, who hated me and had always desired to take you into the cave, caught our daughter Fo-a and killed her, and from that time you who loved Fo-a more than you do Foh, have changed toward me, although that this happened was no fault of mine."
"It was your fault," she answered, "for you should have stayed to watch Fo-a instead of going out to hunt to please yourself."
"I did not hunt to please myself, I hunted to get meat. Moreover, if you had asked me, I would have left Pag to watch the girl."
"So the dwarf has been telling you that tale, has he? Then know the truth. He did offer to stay with Fo-a, but I would not have that hideous beast guarding my daughter."
"Pag has told me no tale, though it is true that, doubtless to shield you, he reproached me for having taken him out hunting when there was danger from Henga. Wife, you have done ill, for, if you hate Pag, yet he loves me and mine, and had you allowed him to bide with Fo-a, she would have been alive to-day. But let that matter be—the dead are dead and we shall see them no more. Afterward, I prayed to the gods, as you wished, and challenged Henga, and killed him, taking vengeance on him, as you also wished, Pag helping me with his wisdom and by the gift of the ax. And now I have driven away all the chief's women, who were mine by right of custom, and have made a law that henceforth a man shall have but one wife; and, that I might set an example as chief, have called down curses on my head; and, that I might never weaken in this matter, on the tribe, too, if I myself should break that law. And yet you are still bitter against me. Have you then ceased to love me?"
"Would you know the truth, Wi?" she answered, looking him in the eyes. "Then I will tell you. I have not, I who never had a thought toward another man. I love you as well as I did on the day when you killed Rongi for my sake. But hearken—I love not Pag, who is your chosen friend, and it is to Pag that you turn, not to me. Pag is your counsellor—not I. It is true that since Fo-a was killed all water is bitter to my taste and all meat is sprinkled with sand, and in place of my heart a stone beats in my breast, so that I care for nothing and am as ready to die as to live, which I thought I must do when the huge cave dweller hurled you down. Yet I say this to you—drive out Pag, as you can do, being chief, and, so far as I am able, I will be to you what I was before, not only your wife, but your counsellor. Choose then between me and Pag."
Now Wi bit his lip, as was his fashion when perplexed, and looked at her sadly, saying:
"Women are strange; also they know not the thing that is just. Once I saved Pag's life, and because of that he loves me; also, because he is very wise, the wisest, I think, of all the people, I listen to his words. Further, by his craft and counsel, and with the help of the gift he gave me," and he looked at the ax hanging from his wrist, "I slew Henga, who without these should now myself be dead. Also, Foh, our son loves him, and he loves Foh, and with his help I have fashioned new laws which shall make life good for all the tribe. Yet you say to me, 'Drive out Pag, my friend and helper,' knowing that, if he ceased to sit in my shadow, the women, who are his enemies, would kill him, or he must wander away and live like a wild beast in the woods. Wife, if I did this, I should be a treacherous dog, not a man, and much less a chief whose duty it is to do justice to all. Why, because you are jealous of him, do you ask such a thing of me?"
"For my own reasons, Wi, which are enough. Well, I ask, and you do not grant, so go your road and I will go mine, though among the people it need not be known that we have quarrelled. As for these new laws, I tell you that they will bring you trouble and nothing else. You seek to cut down an old tree and to plant a better in its place, but, if it ever grows at all, you will be dead before it keeps a drop of rain from off you. You are vain and foolish, and it is Pag who has made you so."
Thus they parted, Wi going away full of sadness, for now he was sure that nothing he could say or do would change Aaka's heart. Had he been as were the others of the people, he would have rid himself of her and taken another wife, leaving her to take another husband, if she chose. But Wi was not like the rest of the tribe; he was one born out of his time, a forerunner, one with imagination who could understand others and see with their eyes. He understood that Aaka was jealous by nature, jealous of everyone, not only of other women. That which she had she wanted to keep for herself alone; she would rather that Wi should lack guidance and help than that he should find these in the dwarf Pag or in other men. She was even jealous of her son Foh, because he loved him, his father, better than he did her.
Now, with Fo-a it had been otherwise, for, although he had loved her so much, she had taken little note of her father and had clung close to her mother. So, when Fo-a was killed, Aaka had lost everything; moreover, she knew that she herself was to blame, for when Wi went hunting, as he must, she would not suffer Pag to protect the child, both because she hated him and because Fo-a liked Pag. Therefore, through her own folly, she had lost her daughter, and knew that this was so, and yet blamed, not herself, but Wi, because Pag was his friend—which caused her to hate Pag so much that she would not suffer him to guard Fo-a. From that moment, as she had said, water had become bitter to her, and all meat full of sand; she was soured and different from what she had been—indeed, another woman.
In the old days, with a kind of trembling joy she had thought how one day Wi might become chief of the tribe; now she did not care whether he were chief or not; even to have become the first woman in the tribe gave her no pleasure. For the blow of the death of Fo-a, although she knew it not, had fallen on her brain and disturbed her reason—the more so because she was sure that she would bear no other children. Yet, deep in her heart, she loved Wi better than she had ever done and suffered more than she could have told because she feared lest some other woman should appear to whom he might turn for the fellowship and comfort she would no longer give.
Now, all these things Wi knew better than did Aaka herself, because by nature he was a man with an understanding heart, although but a poor savage who as yet had no pot in which to boil his food. Therefore, he was very sad and yet determined to be patient, hoping that Aaka's mind would right itself and that she would change her face toward him.
When Wi reached the cave, he found Pag waiting for him with food, which Foh, who had gone before him at the break of day, served with much stir and mystery. Eating of this food—it was a small salmon new run from the sea—Wi noted, oddly enough, that it was cooked in a new fashion and made savoury with salt, shellfish, and certain herbs.
"I have never tasted the like of this before," he said. "How is it prepared?"
Then, with triumph, Foh pointed out to him a vessel hollowed from a block of wood which stood by the fire, and showed him that in this vessel water boiled.
"How is it done?" asked Wi. "If wood is placed upon fire, it burns."
Next Foh raked away some ashes, revealing in the heart of the fire a number of red-hot stones.
"It is done thus, Father," he said; "for days I have been hollowing out that block of black wood which comes from the swamp where it lay buried, by burning it, and when it was charred, cutting it away with a piece of that same bright stone of which your ax is made. Then, when it was finished and washed, I filled it with water and dropped red-hot stones into it till the water boiled. After this, I put in the cleaned fish with the oysters and the herbs, and kept on dropping in red-hot stones till the fish was cooked. That's how it is done, Father—and is the fish nice?" and he laughed and clapped his hands.
"It is very nice, Son," said Wi, "and I would that I had more stomach to eat it. But who thought of this plan, which is clever?"
"Oh! Pag thought of it, Father, but I did nearly all the work."
"Well, Son, take away the rest of the fish and eat it, and then go wash out your pot lest it should stink. I tell you that you and Pag have done more than you know and that soon you will be famous in the tribe."
Then Foh departed rejoicing, and afterward even took the pot to his mother to show her all, expecting that she would praise him. But in this he was disappointed, for when she learned that Pag had hit upon this plan, she said that, for her part, she was content with food cooked as her forefathers had cooked it from the beginning, and that she was sure that seethed flesh would make those who ate of it very sick.
But it did not make them sick, and soon this new fashion spread and the whole tribe might be seen burning hollows in blocks of wood, cutting away the char that was left with their chipped flints, and when the pots were finished, making water boil with the red-hot stones and placing in it meat that was tough from having been stored in the ice, or fish or eggs, or whatever they needed to cook. Thus, those who were old and toothless could now eat again and grew fat; moreover, the health of the tribe improved much, especially that of the children, who ceased to suffer from dysentery brought on by the devouring of lumps of flesh charred in the fire.
VIII. Pag Traps the Wolves
On the afternoon of this day of his quarrel with Aaka and of the boiling of the salmon, Wi and his counsellors again met the tribe in front of the cave to declare to them more of his new laws. This time, however, not so many attended because, as a fruit of the first law, a number of them were laid by hurt, while others were engaged quarrelling over the women, or, if they belonged to the unmarried, in building huts large enough to hold a wife.
At once, before the talk began, many complaints were laid as to the violence worked upon the previous night, and demands made for compensation for injuries received. Also, there were knotty points to be decided as to the allotment of women when, for example, three or four men wished to marry one girl, which of them was to take her.
This, Wi decided, must be settled by the girl choosing which of them she would, an announcement that caused wonder and dismay, since never before had a woman been allowed to make choice in such a matter, which had been settled by her father, if he were known, or, more frequently, by her mother, or sometimes, if there were none to protect her, by her being dragged off by the hair of her head by the strongest of her suitors after he had killed or beaten the others.
Soon, however, Moananga and Pag pointed out to him that, if he stopped to hear and give judgment on all these causes, no more new laws would be declared for many days. Therefore, he adjourned them till some future time, and set out the second law, which declared that, in future, no female child should be cast forth to be taken by the wolves or to perish of cold, unless it were deformed. This announcement caused much grumbling, because, said the grumblers, the child belonged to the parents and especially to the mother, and they had a right to do with their own as they wished.
Then an inspiration seized Wi and he uttered a great saying which afterward was to be accepted by most of the world.
"The child comes from heaven and belongs to the gods, whose gift it is and who will require account of it from those to whom it has been lent," he said.
These words, so amazing to the people, who had never even dreamed their like, were received in astonished silence. Urk the Aged, sitting at Wi's side, muttered that he had never heard anything of the sort from his grandfather, while Pag the Sceptic, behind him, asked:
"To what gods?"
Again an inspiration came to Wi, and he answered aloud:
"That we shall learn when we are dead, for then the hidden gods will become visible."
Next, he went on hastily to declare the punishment for the breaking of this law. It was terrible: namely, that the casters-forth should themselves be cast forth to suffer the same fate and that none should succour them.
"But if we had no food for the children?" cried a voice.
"Then, if that is proved to be so, I, the chief, will receive them and care for them as though they were my own, or give them to others who are barren."
"Surely soon we shall have a large family," Aaka remarked to Tana.
"Yes," said Tana. "Still, Wi has a great heart, and Wi is right."
At this point, as though by general consent, the meeting broke up, for all felt that they could not swallow more than one law a day.
On the following afternoon, they came together again, but in still fewer numbers, and Wi continued to give out laws, very excellent laws, which did not interest his audience much, either because, as one of them said, they were "full to the throat with wisdom," or for the reason that, like other savages, they could not keep their attention fixed for long on such matters.
The end of it was that no one came at all to listen, and that the laws must be proclaimed throughout the tribe by Wini-wini with his horn. For days he might be seen going from hut to hut blowing his horn and shouting out the laws into the doorways, till at last the women grew angry and set on the children to pelt him with eggshells and dried cods' heads. Indeed, by the time he had finished, those in the first huts, where he began, had quite forgotten of what he was talking. Still, the laws, having been duly proclaimed without any refusal of them, were held to be in force, nor was ignorance of them allowed to be pleaded as excuse for their breaking, every man, woman, and child being presumed to know the laws, even if they did not obey them.
Yet Wi discovered that it is much easier to make laws than to force people to keep them, with the result that, soon, to his office of lawgiver, he must add that of chief magistrate. Nearly every day was he obliged to sit in front of the cave, or in it when the weather was bad, to try cases and award punishments which were mostly inflicted by certain sturdy fellows who wielded whips of whalebone. In this fashion, a knowledge of the code and of what happened to those who broke it grew by degrees. Thus, when Turi the Food-Hoarder managed to secure more than his share of the spread of stockfish by arriving earlier than the others, his hoard was raided and most of it distributed among the poor, after which he was more careful in the hiding of his ill-gotten gains.
Again, when Rahi, the rich trader, was proved to have supplied bad bone-fish hooks, broken at the point or weak in the shank, in exchange for skins which had been received by him in advance, Moananga went with some men, and digging beneath the floor of his hut, found scores of hooks wrapped up in hide, which they took and distributed amongst those of the tripe who had none. Great was the outcry of Rahi, but in this case few joined in it, for all loved to see who battened on the poor in the hour of their necessity forced to disgorge some of his gain.
Moreover, although he offended many who murdered and plotted against him on the whole, Wi gained great credit for these good laws of his. For now the people knew that he who dwelt in the cave was no murderer or robber, as Henga and other chiefs had been, but a man who, taking from them as little as might be, was honest, and although often, as they thought, foolish, one who strove for the good of all. Therefore, by degrees, they came to obey his laws—some more and some less—and, although they abused him openly, in private they spoke well of him and hoped that his rule would continue.
Yet at last trouble came. It chanced that a certain sour-natured woman named Ejji bore a female child, and, not wishing to be troubled with it, forced her husband to lay it on a stone at the edge of the forest where the wolves came every night, that it might be devoured by them. But this woman was watched by other women—set about the business by Pag, who knew her heart and suspected her—as was her husband, who was seized when he had laid the child upon the stone at nightfall even as he told his wife Ejji what he had done and received her thanks.
Next morning, both of them were brought before Wi, who sat dealing out justice at the mouth of the cave. He asked them what had become of the girl child that was born to them within a moon. Ejji answered boldly that it had died and its body had been cast away according to custom. Thereon Wi made a sign and a foster mother was led from the cave bearing the child in her arms, for thither it had been taken, as Wi had promised should be done in such cases. The woman Ejji denied that it was her child, but the husband, taking it in his arms, said otherwise and, on being pressed, admitted that what he had done was against his will and for the sake of peace in his home.
Then, when the finding of the child had been proved, Wi, after reciting the law, ordered that these two, who were rich and not driven by need, should be taken at sunset and tied to trees by that stone upon which they had exposed the child, that the wolves might devour them. At this stern sentence there was much trouble among the tribe, most of whom had thrown out female infants in their time, and threats were made against Wi.
Yet he would not change his judgment, and at nightfall, amidst lamentations from their relatives and friends, the pair were taken out and tied to the trees, whereon they were abandoned by all as evildoers who had been unlucky enough to be found out.
