Beneath Rimbo’s sly commercial propensities he nourished a deep belief in the virtues of the heathen gods, as I discovered in the few conversations which I had with him after the aforesaid experience. He swore to me that he saw the old gods stalking through the forest on moonlit nights. “You no believe me?” he responded to my remarks and sceptical glance. “Allee samee, I see them go across forest, climb down the stars, down into the big _moana ali_” (ocean).
“Rimbo, I believe you,” said I, as Grimes nudged him in the ribs, saying:
“This ain’t ’alf good stuff,” then took another drink from Rimbo’s hoarded store.
It was a pleasure to encourage Rimbo to tell the wonders of his weird belief. And why shouldn’t one encourage him? Think of the thousands of people in civilised lands who believe implicitly in spiritualism and crystal-gazing. The poetic legends and creeds of the natives had their virtuous side. It is true enough that many of their songs were based on cannibalism and idol-worship, but more often they sang the praise of warrior deeds that had brought some cruel enemy to the dust. The old heathen bible had much inherent beauty in its primitive psalms, far more than has ever been intimated by early travellers. The sacrificial altar and cannibalistic horrors were much the same, and nearly as wicked, as the deeds of the stake-burning era of Christianity in civilised lands. Also, the savages were sincere in their beliefs, a fact that is proved conclusively by the noble stoicism of their now historical martyrs, who died mercifully by one blow of the war-club, whereas British chapel-goers of our dark ages hired orchestral stalls and cheered whilst the martyr died a lingering death. Their creed was a primitive Buddhism, preaching reincarnation and a divine reverence for all living things. The birds, the trees, the fish of the sea, the winds and clouds were transformed beings, the shadows and poetic voices of dead warriors beyond the grave. Indeed their apparently blood-thirsty religion possessed an inherent gospel of tenderness: all creeping and living things forming a sympathetic part of a mythology that was based on a mystic reverence for nature and the beautiful, a reverence that has never had a dominating sway in the religions of the Western world. A dash of Marquesan heathenism, as it once was, thrown into the stock-pot of modern Christianity would, I am sure, vastly improve the bigoted, outrageous godless moan that attempts to dominate human wishes and joys to-day.