Trip with Murderers

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 71, Issue 219, 15 September 1928, Page 13 (Supplement)

Trip with Murderers

WEIRD ISLAND “WEDDING” TJhi© C©imtess Titayima Wms a lß©ft

AND YOU THINK that a pretty woman, alone and unarmed, could venture into the remotest corners of the earth and Jive in the jungle haunts of primitive men without coming to grief?” The duchess, a leader of Parisian society, chuckled, but the face of the Countess Titayna did not flinch. “I will prove it can be done,” she announced. “In a year’s time I shall be back here in Paris, and let you judge for yourselves. I shall sail from Marseilles as the only woman on a French schooner, and go by way of the Panama Canal to tho Pacific. I shall take my chance with the Fiji Islanders, the head-hunters of Sumatra, fanatical jungle men of Cochin China, and the rascals of Polynesia.’ ’ That was rather more than a year ago. Titayna, as the young Countess du Caylar-Toiras is known, kept her promise and won her bet. “My worst experience was aboard a Polynesian convict ship,” she said, in relating her experiences. “The ship was manned by about twenty viciouslooking convicts who were not allowed to set foot on land. No sooner were we clear of Papeete than I began to feel anxious. The only decent fellow was the cook, it seemed to me. Vana was about thirty, lithe and strong as a panther, and had been sentenced to four years’ imprisonment for killing a man who refused to exchange wives with him. “I played cards with the crew and had all of them subdued except a murderer named Gham, who early one morning, about 3 o’clock, crawled toward me. I gave him a cigarette and tried in vain to get him into conversation. I might as well have tried to caress an angry cobra. I had bought a small automatic revolver at Papeete, but with a sweep of his

fist he knocked it from my hand. Then the unexpected happened. From behind a pile of boxes another man jumped up. It was Vana. In a moment the two men were wrestling on the deck—then there was silence. Gham lay dead at my feet. “T must save myself by swimming,’ Vana said. I knew it was reckless of me to remain on the ship, so I jumped with him, and it was more than an hour before we reached a palm-fringed island. ‘This is the island of Vanavana/ said my guide. ‘Aly ancestors were great in these forests, and I have hidden twenty times as many pearls as you can count on your fingers. They will be yours.’ “Then Vana called a man from one of the huts. He was white, and spoke with an English accent. Vana told him to marry us according to western law. He made us hold hands and mumbled something in his funny French. “‘I will bring the pearls now,’ said Vana, who left in the direction of the forests. When he had gone I handed a purse to the supposed preacher, telling him I must get to Tahiti. ‘Come now, be quick,’ I added in English. ‘Aly boy will take you to Tematangi,’ he said, and a little later I was in the canoe with a boy. “ ‘Good-bye, madam, the strange man said, ‘and don’t worry. I’m no preacher.’ “But who are you?” “A look of sadness passed over his face. ‘lv’e been marrying people for sixteen years on this island,’ he said. ‘I am an Englishman, and used to be a clown in a circus.’ ”