South-Sea Idyls Part 10

His Majesty's Ship Imogene, Oct. 17, 1837.

So No. I. of our list is checked off, and no lives lost.

"_Aloha!_" cries a soft voice in the distance. Our native woman has left us in our pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, and now there is no visible trace of her and her pillows,--only that voice out of the darkness crying, "Love to you!" She lives in memory,--this warm-hearted _Waihine_; so do her pillows.

Returning to our lodgings, we discover a square heap of broken lava rocks. It seems to be the foundation for some building; and such it is, for here the palace of Kamehameha I. stood,--a palace of gra.s.s like this one we are sleeping in. Nothing but the foundation remains now. Half a dozen rude stairs invite the ghosts of the departed courtiers to this desolate ruin.

They are all Samaritans in this kingdom. By sunrise a boy with fresh coffee and a pail of m.u.f.fins rides swiftly to our door. He came from over the hill. Our arrival had been reported, and we are summoned to a late breakfast in the manner of the Christians. We are glad of it. Our fruit diet of yesterday, the horrors of a night in the saddle--a safe and pretty certain mode of dislocating the neck--make us yearn for a good old-fashioned meal. Horses are at our service. We mount after taking our m.u.f.fins and coffee in the centre of a large and enthusiastic gathering of villagers. They came to see us eat, and to fumble the artist's sketches, and wonder at his amazing skill.

Up the high hill with the jolliest sun shining full in our eyes, brushing the heavy and dew-filled foliage on both sides of the trail, and under the thick webs spun in the upper branches, looking like silver laces this glorious morning,--on, till we reach the hill-top.

Here the guide pauses and points his horse's nose toward a rude _corral_. The horses seem to regard it from habit,--we scarcely with curiosity. A wall half in ruins in the centre, rising from a heap of stones tumbled together, a black, weather-stained cross, higher than our heads as we sit in the saddle. It is the altar of sacrifice. It is here that the heart of the great navigator survived the flames.

No. III. scored off. At this rate we shall finish by noon easily. The sequel of an adventurous life is soon told.

After breakfast, to horse again, and back to the little village by the sea. We ride into a cl.u.s.ter of palms, our guide leading the way, and find two together, each with a smooth and perfectly round hole through its body, about three feet from the roots, made by the shot of Cook's avengers. A lady could barely thrust her hand through them; they indicate rather light calibre for defence nowadays, but enough to terrify these little villages, when Cook's men sent the b.a.l.l.s hissing over the water to bite through the grit and sap of these slender shafts.

They still live to tell the tale in their way. So much for No. IV.

We pause again in the queer little straggling alleys of the village, planned, I should think, after some spider's web. They are about as regular in their irregularity. It is No. V. this time. A bit of withered humanity doubled up in the sun, as though some one had set him up on that wall to bake. He is drawn all together; his chin sunk in between his knees, his knees hooped together with his dreadfully slim arms, a round head, sleek and shining as an oiled gourd; _sans_ teeth; eyes like the last drops in desert wells; the skeleton sharply protruding; no motion; apparently no life beyond the quick and incessant blinking of the eyelids,--the curtains fluttering in the half-shut windows of the soul. _Is_ it a man and a brother? Yes, verily! When the uncaptured crew of the Resolution poured their iron shot into the tents of the adversary, this flickering life was young and vigorous, and he ran like a good fellow. Better to have died in his fiery youth than to have slowly withered away in this fashion. For here is the philosophy of mammon left to itself: when you get to be an old native, it is your business to die; if you don't know your business, you are left to find it out: what are you good for but to bury?

Let us slip over the smooth bay, for we must look into one of these caverns. Cross in this canoe, so narrow that we cannot get into it at all, but balance ourself on its rim and hold our breath for fear of upsetting. These odd-looking out-riggers are honest enough in theory, but treacherous in practice; and a shark has his eye on us back yonder. Sharks are mesmeric in their motions through the water, and corpse-colored.

A new guide helps us to the most easily reached cave, and with the lad and his smoking torch we climb into the dusky mouth.

There is dust everywhere and cobwebs as thick as cloth, hanging in tatters. An almost interminable series of small cells, just high enough to straighten one's back in, leads us farther and farther into the mountain of bones. This cave has been pillaged too often to be very ghostly now. We find a little parcel of bones here. It might have been a hand and an arm once, cunning and dexterous. It is nothing now but a litter. Here is an infant's skull, but broken, thin and delicate as a sea-sh.e.l.l, and full of dust. Here is a tougher one, whole and solid; the teeth well set and very white; no sign of decay in any one of these molars. Perhaps it is because so little of their food is even warm when they eat it. This rattles as we lift it. The brain and the crumbs of earth are inseparably wedded. Come with us, skull. You look scholarly, and shall lie upon our desk,--a solemn epistle to the living. But the cave is filled with the vile smoke of our torch, and we are choked with the heat and dust. Let us out as soon as possible. The Great Navigator's skeleton cannot be hidden in this tomb. Down we scramble into the sand and shadow by the water, and talk of departing out of this place of relics.

We are to cross the lava southward where it is frescoed with a wilderness of palm-trees: for when the mountain came down to the sea, flowing red-hot, but cooling almost instantly, it mowed down the forests of palms, and the trunks were not consumed, but lay half buried in the cooling lava, and now you can mark every delicate fibre of the bark in the lava, as firm as granite.

Still farther south lies the green slope that was so soon to be shaken to its foundations. I wonder if we could discover any of the peculiar loveliness that bewitched us the evening we crossed it in silence. There was something in the air that said, "Peace, peace"; and we pa.s.sed over the fatal spot without speaking. But the sea spoke under the cliffs below us, and the mountain has since replied.

This place is named prettily, _Kealekakua_. You see that mountain? There are paths leading to it. Thither the G.o.ds journeyed in the days of old.

So the land is called "the path of the G.o.ds."

It is a cool, green spot up yonder; the rain descends upon it in continual baptism. The natives love these mountains and the sea. They are the cardinal points of their compa.s.s. Every direction given you is either toward the mountain or toward the sea.

There is much truth in the Arabian tale, and it is time to acknowledge it. Mountains are magnetic. The secret of their magnetism may lie in the immobility of their countenances. Praise them to their face, and they are not flattered; forget them for a moment: but turn again, and see their steadfast gaze! You feel their earnestness. It is imposing, and you cannot think lightly of it. Who forgets the mountains he has once seen? It is quite probable the mountain cares little for your individuality: but it has given part of itself to the modelling of your character; it has touched you with the wand of its enchantment; you are under the spell. Somewhere in the recesses of this mountain are locked the bones of the Great Navigator, but these mountains have kept the secret.

[Decoration]

A CANOE-CRUISE IN THE CORAL SEA.

If you can buy a canoe for two calico shirts, what will your annual expenses in Tahiti amount to? This was a mental problem I concluded to solve, and, having invested my two shirts, I began the solution in this wise: My slender little treasure lay with half its length on sh.o.r.e, and, being quite big enough for two, I looked about me, seeking some one to sit in the bows, for company and ballast.

Up and down the shady beach of Papeete I wandered, with this advertis.e.m.e.nt written all over my anxious face:----

"WANTED--A crew about ten years of age; of a mild disposition, and with no special fondness for human flesh; not particular as to s.e.x! Apply immediately, at the new canoe, under the breadfruit-tree, Papeete, South Pacific."

Some young things were pitching French coppers so earnestly they didn't read my face; some were not seafaring, at that moment; while most of them evidently ate more than was good for them, which might result disastrously in a canoe-cruise, and I set my heart against them. The afternoon was waning, and my ill-luck seemed to urge upon me the necessity of my const.i.tuting a temporary press-gang for the kidnapping of the required article.

"Who is anxious to go to sea with me?" I bawled, returning through the crowds of young gamblers, all intently disinterested in everything but "pitch and toss." Not far away a group of wandering minstrels--such as make musical the sh.o.r.es of Tahiti--sat in the middle of the street, chanting. One youth played with considerable skill upon a joint of bamboo, of the flute species, but breathed into from the nostrils, instead of the lips. Three or four minor notes were piped at uncertain intervals, playing an impromptu variation upon the air of the singers.

Drawing near, the music was suspended, and I proposed shipping one of the melodious vagabonds, whereupon the entire chorus expressed a willingness to accompany me, in any capacity whatever, remarking, at the same time, that "they were a body bound, so to speak, by chords of harmony, and any proposal to disband them would, by it, be regarded as highly absurd." Then I led the solemn procession of volunteers to my canoe, and we regarded it in silence; it was something larger than a pea-pod, to be sure, but about the shape of one. After a moment of deliberation, during which a great throng of curious spectators had a.s.sembled, the orchestra declared itself in readiness to ship before the paddle for the trifling consideration of $17. I knew the vague notion that money is money, call it dollar or dime, generally entertained by the innocent children of Nature; and, dazzling the unaccustomed eyes of the flutist with a new two-franc piece, he immediately embarked. The bereaved singers sat on the sh.o.r.e and lifted up their voices in resounding discord, as the canoe slid off into the still waters, and my crew, with commendable fort.i.tude, laid down the nose-flute, took up the paddle, and we began our canoe-cruise.

The frail thing glided over the waves as though invisible currents were sweeping her into the hereafter; the sh.o.r.e seemed to recede, drawing the low, thatched houses into deeper shadow; other canoes skimmed over the sea, like great water-bugs, while the sun set beyond the sharp outlines of beautiful Morea, glorifying it and us.

There was a small islet not far away,--an islet as fair and fragrant as a bouquet,--looking, just then, like a mote in a sheet of flame. Thither I directed the reformed flutist, and then let myself relapse into the all-embracing quietness that succeeds nearly every vexation that flesh is heir to.

There was something soothing in the nature of my crew. He sat with his back to me,--a brown back, that glistened in the sun, and arched itself, from time to time, cat-like, as though it was very good to be brown and bare and shiny. From the waist to the feet fell the resplendent folds of a _pareu_, worn by all Tahitians, of every possible age and s.e.x, and consisted, in this case, of a thin breadth of cloth, stamped with a deep blue firmament, in which supernaturally yellow suns were perpetually setting in several spots. A round head topped his chubby shoulders, and was shaven from the neck to the crown, with a matted forelock of the blackness of darkness falling to the eyes and keeping the sun out of them. One ear was enlivened with a crescent of beaten gold, which decoration, having been won at "pitch and toss," will probably never again, in the course of human events, meet with its proper mate. On the whole, he looked just a little bit like a fan-tail pigeon with its wings plucked.

At this point my crew suddenly rose in the bows of the canoe, making several outlandish flourishes with his broad paddle. I was about to demand the occasion of his sudden insanity, when we began to grate over some crumbling substance that materially impeded our progress and suggested all sorts of disagreeable sensations,--such as knife-grinding in the next yard, saw-filing round the corner, etc. It was as though we were careering madly over a mult.i.tude of fine-tooth combs. With that caution which is inseparable from canoe-cruising in every part of the known world, I leaned over the side of my personal property and penetrated the bewildering depths of the coral sea.

Were we, I asked myself, suspended about two feet above a garden of variegated cauliflowers? Or were the elements wafting us over a minute winter-forest, whose fragile boughs were loaded with prismatic crystals?

The scene was constantly changing: now it seemed a disordered bed of roses,--pink, and white, and orange; presently we were floating in the air, looking down upon a thousand-domed mosque, pale in the glamour of the Oriental moon; and then a wilderness of bowers presented itself,--bowers whose fixed leaves still seemed to quiver in the slight ripple of the sea,--blossoming for a moment in showers of buds, purple, and green, and gold, but fading almost as soon as born. I could scarcely believe my eyes, when these tiny, though marvellously brilliant fish shot suddenly out from some lace-like structure, each having the lurid and flame-like beauty of sulphurous fire, and all turning instantly, in sudden consternation at finding us so near, and secreting themselves in the coral pavilion that amply sheltered them. Among the delicate anatomy of these frozen ferns our light canoe was crashing on its way. I saw the fragile structures overwhelmed with a single blow from the young savage, who stood erect, propelling us onward amid the general ruins. With my thumb and finger I annihilated the laborious monuments of centuries, and saw havoc and desolation in our wake.

There, in one of G.o.d's reef-walled and cliff-sheltered _aquaria_, we drifted, while the sky and sea were glowing with the final, triumphant gush of sunset radiance. Fefe at last broke the silence, with an interrogation: "Well, how you feel?" "Fefe," I replied, "I feel as though I were some good and faithful bee, sinking into a sphere of amber, for a sleep of a thousand years." Fefe gave a deep-mouthed and expressive grunt, as he laid his brown profile against the sunset sky, thereby displaying his solitary ear-ring to the best advantage, and with evident personal satisfaction. "And how do you feel, Fefe?" I asked. He was mum for a moment; arched his back like any wholesome animal when the sun has struck clean through it; e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n with his tongue and teeth that cannot possibly be spelled in English, and thereupon his nostril quivered spasmodically, and was only comforted by the immediate application of his nose-flute, through which dulcet organ he confessed his deep and otherwise unutterable joy. I blessed him for it, though there were but three notes, all told, and those minors and a trifle flat.

Fefe's impa.s.sioned soul having subsided, we both looked over to beautiful Morea, nine miles away. How her peaks shone like steel, and her valleys looked full of sleep! while here and there one golden ray lingered for a moment to put the final touch to a fruit it was ripening or a flower it was painting,--for they each have their perfect work allotted to them, and they don't leave it half completed.

It was just the hour that harmonizes everything in nature, and when there is no possible discord in all the universe. The fishes were baptizing themselves by immersion in s.p.a.ce, and kept leaping into the air, like momentary inches of chain-lightning. Our islet swam before us, spiritualized,--suspended, as it were, above the sea,--ready at any moment to fade away. The waves had ceased beating upon the reef; the clear, low notes of a bell vibrating from the sh.o.r.e called us to prayer.

Fefe knew it, and was ready,--so was I; and with bare heads and souls utterly at peace we gave our hearts to G.o.d--for the time being!

Then came the hum of voices and the rustle of renewed life. On we pressed towards our islet, under the increasing shadows of the dusk. A sloping beach received us; the young cocoa-palms embraced one another with fringed branches. Through green and endless corridors we saw the broad disk of the full moon hanging above the hill.

Fefe at once chose a palm, and having ascended to its summit cast down its fruit. Descending, he planted a stake in the earth, and striking a nut against its sharpened top soon laid open the fibrous husk, with which a fire was kindled.

Taking two peeled nuts in his hands, he struck one against the other and laid open the skull of it,--a clear sort of scalping that aroused me to enthusiasm. There is one end of a cocoa-nut's skull as delicate as a baby's, and a well-directed tap does the business; possibly the same result would follow with those of infants of the right age,--twins, for instance. Fefe agrees with me in this theory, now first given to the public.

Then followed much talk, on many topics, over our tropical supper,--said supper consisting of sea-weed salad, patent self-stuffing banana-sausages, and cocoa-nut hash. We argued somewhat, also, but in South Pacific fashion,--which would surely spoil, if imported; I only remember, and will record, that Fefe regarded the nose-flute as a triumph of art, and considered himself no novice in musical science, as applicable to nose-flutes in a land where there is scarcely a nose without its particular flute, and many a flute is silent forever, because its special nose is laid among the dust.

Having eaten, I proposed sleeping on the spot, and continuing the cruise at dawn. "Why should we return to the world and its cares, when the sea invites us to its isles? Nature will feed us. In that blest land, clothing has not yet been discovered. Let us away!" I cried. At this juncture, voices came over the sea to us,--voices chanting like sirens upon the sh.o.r.e. Instinctively Fefe's nose-flute resumed its _tremolo_, and I knew the day was lost. "Come!" said the little rascal, as though he were captain and I the crew, and he dragged me toward the skiff. With terrific emphasis, I commanded him to desist. "Don't imagine," I said, "that this is a modern _Bounty_, and that it is your duty to rise up in mutiny for the sake of dramatic justice. Nature never repeats herself, therefore come back to camp!"

But he wouldn't come. I knew I should lose my canoe unless I followed, or should have to paddle back alone,--no easy task for one unaccustomed to it. So I moodily embarked with him; and having pushed off into deep water, he sounded a note of triumph that was greeted with shouts on sh.o.r.e, and I felt that my fate was sealed.

It had been my life-dream to bid adieu to the human family, with one or two exceptions; to sever every tie that bound me to anything under the sun; to live close to Nature, trusting her, and getting trusted by her.

I explained all this to the young "Kanack," who was in a complete state of insurrection, but failed to subdue him. Overhead the air was flooded with hazy moonlight; the sea looked like one immeasurable drop of quicksilver, and upon the summit of this luminous sphere our shallop was mysteriously poised. A faint wind was breathing over the ocean; Fefe erected his paddle in the bows, placed against it a broad mat that const.i.tuted part of my outfit for that new life of which I was defrauded, and on we sped like a belated sea-bird seeking its mossy nest.

Beneath us slept the infinite creations of another world, gleaming from the dark bosom of the sea with an unearthly pallor, and seeming to reveal something of the forbidden mysteries that lie beyond the grave.

"La Pet.i.te Pologne," whispered Fefe, as he arched his back for the last time, and stepped on sh.o.r.e at the foot of this singular rendezvous,--a narrow lane threading the groves of Papeete, bordered by wine-shops, bakeries, and a convent-wall, lit at night by smoky lanterns hanging motionless in the dead air of the town, and thronged from 7 P. M. till 10 P. M. by people from all quarters of the globe.

Fefe having resumed his profession as soon as his bare foot was on his native heath again, the minstrels moved in a hollow square through the centre of La Pet.i.te Pologne. They were rendering some Tahitian madrigal,--a three-part song, the solo, or first part, of which being got safely through with,--a single stanza,--it was repeated as a duo, and so re-repeated through simple addition with a gradually-increasing chorus; the nose-flute meantime getting delirious, and sounding its _finale_ in an ecstasy prolonged to the point of strangulation, when the whole unceremoniously terminated, and everybody took a rest and a fresh start. During these performances, the audience was dense and demonstrative. Fefe was in his element, sitting with his best side to the public, and flaunting his ear-ring mightily. A dance followed: a dance always follows in that land of light hearts, and as one after another was ushered into the arena and gave his or her body to the interpretation of such songs as would startle Christian ears,--albeit there be some Christian hearts less tender, and Christian lips less true,--to my surprise, Fefe abandoned his piping and danced before me, and then came a flash of intuition,--rather late, it is true, but still useful as an explanatory supplement to my previous vexations. "Fefe!" I gasped (Fefe is the Tahitian for _Elephantiasis_), and my Fefe raised his or her skirts, and danced with a shocking leg. I really can't tell you _what_ Fefe was. You never can tell by the name. He might have been a boy, or she might have been a girl, all the time. I don't know that it makes any particular difference to me what it was, but I cannot encourage elephantiasis in anything, and therefore I concluded my naval engagement with Fefe, and solemnly walked toward my chamber, scarcely a block off. The music followed me to my door with a song of some kind or other, but the real nature of which I was too sensitive to definitely ascertain.

Gazelle-eyed damsels, with star-flowers dangling from their ears, obstructed the way. The _gendarmes_ regarded me with an eye single to France and French principles. Mariners arrayed in the blue of their own sea and the white of their own breakers bore down upon us with more than belonged to them. Men of all colors went to and fro, like mad creatures; women followed; children careered hither and thither. Wild shouts rent the air; there was an intoxicating element that enveloped all things. The street was by no means straight, though it could scarcely have been narrower; the waves staggered up the beach, and reeled back again; the moon leered at us, looking blear-eyed as she leaned against a cloud; and half-nude bodies lay here and there in dark corners, steeped to the toes in rum. Out of this human maelstrom, whose fatal tide was beginning to sweep me on with it, I made a plunge for my door-k.n.o.b and caught it. Twenty besetting sins sought to follow me, covered with wreaths and fragrant with sandalwood oil; twenty besetting sins rather pleasant to have around one, because by no means as disagreeable as they should be. Fefe was there also, and I turned to address him a parting word,--a word calculated to do its work in a soil particularly mellow.

"Fefe," I said, "how can I help regarding it as a dispensation of Providence that your one leg is considerably bigger than your other? How can I expect you, with your a.s.sorted legs, to walk in that straight and narrow way wherein I have frequently found it inconvenient to walk myself, to say nothing of the symmetry of my own extremities? Therefore, adieu, child of the South, with your one ear-ring and your piano-forte leg; adieu--forever."