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It was the island of Fitu-Iva—the last independent Polynesian
stronghold in the South Seas. Three factors conduced to Fitu-Iva's
independence. The first and second were its isolation and the warlikeness
of its population. But these would not have saved it in the end had it not
been for the fact that Japan, France, Great Britain, Germany, and the
United States discovered its desirableness simultaneously. It was like
gamins scrambling for a penny. They got in one another's way. The war
vessels of the five Powers cluttered Fitu-Iva's one small harbour. There
were rumours of war and threats of war. Over its morning toast all the
world read columns about Fitu-Iva. As a Yankee blue jacket epitomized it
at the time, they all got their feet in the trough at once.
So it was that Fitu-Iva escaped even a joint protectorate, and King
Tulifau, otherwise Tui Tulifau, continued to dispense the high justice and
the low in the frame-house palace built for him by a Sydney trader out of
California redwood. Not only was Tui Tulifau every inch a king, but he
was every second a king. When he had ruled fifty-eight years and five
months, he was only fifty-eight years and three months old. That is to
say, he had ruled over five million seconds more than he had breathed,
having been crowned two months before he was born.
He was a kingly king, a royal figure of a man, standing six feet and a
half, and, without being excessively fat, weighing three hundred and
twenty pounds. But this was not unusual for Polynesian "chief stock."
Sepeli, his queen, was six feet three inches and weighed two hundred and
sixty, while her brother, Uiliami, who commanded the army in the
intervals of resignation from the premiership, topped her by an inch and
notched her an even half-hundred weight. Tui Tulifau was a merry soul, a
great feaster and drinker. So were all his people merry souls, save in
anger, when, on occasion, they could be guilty even of throwing dead
pigs at those who made them wroth. Nevertheless, on occasion, they
could fight like Maoris, as piratical sandalwood traders and Blackbirders
in the old days learned to their cost.
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