Twelve years ago, from the deck of the Snark, I had my first glimpse of the New Hebrides. I was standing my trick at the wheel. Jack London and his wife, Charmian, were beside me. It was just dawn. Slowly, out of the morning mists, an island took shape. The little ship rose and sank on the Pacific swell. The salt breeze ruffled my hair. I played my trick calmly and in silence, but my heart beat fast at the sight of that bit of land coming up like magic out of the gray water. For I knew that of a

Osa and I were nearing the end of a long cruise through the South Seas. We had come in contact with many wild peoples, but none of them were quite wild enough. I had made motion-pictures of cannibals in the Solomons. They were bona-fide cannibals, fierce and naked. But somehow, I never quite felt that they were the real thing: they so obviously respected the English Government officers and native police boys who accompanied and protected us. I wanted to get among savages who were unspoiled—to ma

Osa and I were sure, after our first adventure in Malekula, that we had had enough of cannibals to last us for the rest of our natural lives. But when we reached Sydney, on our way home, and had our films developed, we began to weaken. Our pictures were so good that we almost forgot the risk we had taken to get them. The few feet I had managed to grind out on Malekula were no “staged” pictures of savage life. They were so real and convincing that Osa declared her knees went wobbly every time she

We left New Caledonia at midnight on July 3d, and steamed over a calm sea to Vila. Vila is the commercial center as well as the capital of the New Hebrides and its harbor is one of the finest in the South Seas. On our right, as we steamed in, was the island of Irriki, a mountain peak rising out of the sea, on the highest point of which Mr. King has built his house. Vila is a typical South Seas town—a rambling mixture of tropical and European architecture and no architecture at all. Its public bu

Long before our reënforcements were due to arrive, we began to feel uneasy on Vao. I found our neighbors far too friendly with the unregenerate Malekula bushmen to be entirely trustworthy. The bush people had no canoes. But when they wanted to visit Vao, they would sing out from the shore, and the Vao men would go after them and bring them over, fifteen or twenty of them at a time. The Malekula men never came near our clearing, but the knowledge that they were on the island made us uncomfortable

Next morning, before daybreak, we were on the beach. The embers of the camp-fire remained, but our escort had vanished. I was filled with misgivings. Did Nagapate plan treachery? We were thirty-one—twenty-six trustworthy native boys, four white men, and Osa. We were all well equipped with repeating rifles and automatic pistols. In open fight, we could have stood off a thousand savages. But I knew that the men of Malekula, though they are notoriously bad shots, could pick us off one by one, if th

Early on the morning of the show, we got the whaleboats to work and took all my projection machinery ashore. Soon I had everything set up, ready for the show. But when I tried out the projector to see if it was shipshape, I found that my generator was out of order. Work as I would, I could not get a light. I was blue and discouraged. I had been looking forward to this show for two years, and now, apparently, it was not going to come off. Imagine going back several hundred thousand years and show

The morning after our motion-picture show on the beach at Malekula found us anchored off Vao. We got our luggage ashore as quickly as possible and then turned in to make up for lost sleep. We had slept little during our eight days in the village of Nagapate. We had been in such constant fear of treachery that the thud of a falling coconut or the sound of a branch crackling in the jungle would set our nerves atingle and keep us awake for hours. Now we felt safe. We knew that the four hundred sava

The Euphrosyne, with the British Commissioner aboard, was about two weeks overdue and we were growing impatient to be off. It was not the Euphrosyne, however, but the queerest vessel I have ever seen, that anchored off Vao, one night at midnight. She was about the size of a large schooner and nearly as wide in the beam as she was long. She had auxiliary sails, schooner-rigged. Her engine burned wood. And her name—as we discovered later—was Amour. Queer as she was, she was a Godsend to us, maroon

At daylight we pulled anchor and set the sails and started the engine. With the wind to help us, we made good progress. In three hours we had reached our next anchorage, a small bay said to be the last frequented by the Big Numbers people. We were in the territory of the largest tribe on the west side of Malekula. Moran told me that no white man had ever penetrated the bush and that the people were very shy and wild. We landed, but saw no signs of savages. We thought we had the beach to ourselve

After three days among the nomads, we decided that there was no cannibalism among a people so mild and spiritless, and so we packed our belongings and set off for the Amour. We thought we had half a day’s journey ahead of us, but to our surprise we reached the ship in less than two hours. Nella, to be on the safe side, had led us to the headquarters of the tribe by a circuitous route. It was high tide when we reached the beach; so we took the opportunity of getting the Amour off the sand. A good

We were safe on board the Amour, but we could still hear the boo-boos marking the time for the wild dance back in the hills. I awoke several times during the night. The boom-boom still floated across the water. I was glad that we had taken to our heels when we did, though I still regretted the picture I might have got if we could have stayed. At dawn, there was silence. The dance was over. A trader who put in at Southwest Bay late in the morning told us of a man who had been brutally murdered at

We chugged away from Tomman and for a week we cruised along the southern end of Malekula. In this region, the mountains come down to the sea. Beyond them lies dangerous territory. It was not safe for us to cross them with the force we had; so we had to be content with inspecting the coast. There we found only deserted villages and a few scattered huts inhabited by old men left to die alone. Finally we rounded the end of the island and steamed up the eastern coast. One evening we came to anchor i

For two days we developed films and plates. On the third, we attended what might be called the New Year’s celebration of Vao. Fires are made among the islanders by the primitive method by rubbing two sticks together. Though the operation takes only a minute, the savages are too lazy to light a fire every time they need one, so once a year, in the largest house of the village, they make a big fire, which is kept burning to furnish embers from which all the other fires may be lighted. At the end o