Island-India

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The Music of Island-India

WHEN Cornelis de Houtman's fleet entered the Moluccan Seas - the adventurers' eyes grew fierce with desire as they saw the hill-crested island, the world's spice-garden, rise blue against the purple dawn - there floated toward them a music most melodiously merry, breathing out of the unseen. It seemed as if it were the sea itself that sang.

Astounded, the men listened, all unwillingly, mistrustful.

‘What witchery is this?’

But from the crow's-nest the little midshipman cried out, ‘Brown folk are coming in boats, sounding flutes and beating drums!’ And out of the blurred green of wooded cliffs and islets there glided forth the flotilla of orembays surrounding the princely barge with its forty rowers seated on the ribs of its broad-spread wings. It carried a multitude of musicians and bearers of garland-decked gifts, in the midst of whom shone the Island-King.

De Houtman kept his hand on his sword-hilt as he listened to salute and felicitation and to the Sultan's prayer, proudly humble, for the Hollander's aid against the cruel Spaniard, the robber of spice, the enslaver of free men, the murderer of peaceful folk.

With the semblance of a smile he gazed after the islanders as, gladdened by his warily worded promise, they conducted his ships toward the safe anchorage, making music to the rise and fall of their oars.

His companions-at-arms stood appraising the Sultan's gifts of honour and welcome, earnest of booty untold; in baskets gracefully woven were heaped-up cloves that quickened the languid air with a sweet pungency; plumage of birds of paradise that was like sunbeams and moonshine intermingled and radiance of darting flames; regal ornaments, curiously wrought, resplendent with diamond, ruby, and sapphire. No one heeded the music. But the lad in the crow's-nest had slid down the mast, and hanging a garland golden and starrily white about his shoulders and thin young neck, he set off capering, twinkling along the deck barefooted, arms flung aloft, and fingers snapping to the beat of the frolicsome music.

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The flute-players and the drummers in the Sultan's barge, smiling, played all the more merrily. The boy, smiling back, waved his hands at them.

Three hundred years and more have gone by since then.

Tens of thousands from that day to this have gone the wave-way to Island-India, which Cornelis de Houtman opened to them, seeking the things that he sought, power and wealth. And still the music meets them that met the first adventurers' ships, the music that simple hearts do make in concert with sea and earth and sun, merry at times, and at times mournful, melodious always. And still the many heed it not, being busy with things that to them seem weighty. But the child hears and the poet; and, hearing, they rejoice or mourn, fraternally.

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Papuan Girl