South-Sea Idyls Part 12

~THE WONDERFUL BOY~ ZEBRA, A CANNIBAL PRINCE, FROM THE PALMY PLAINS OF POTTOBOKEE, =IN THEIR GRAND MORAL DIVERSION=.

[hand pointing right] The first and only opportunity is now afforded the great public to observe with safety how the heathen, in his blindness, bows down to wood and stone.

[hand pointing right] These are the only original and genuine representatives of the Kabalak.u.mists and Pottobokees that ever left their coral strand.

ADMISSION, ----. CHILDREN, HALF PRICE.

Deborah was awed into silence, and Gail was apparently thinking over the possible result of this strange advertis.e.m.e.nt, for she said nothing, but took deliberate sips of coffee, and broke the dry toast between her fingers, while she looked at all four of us savages in a peculiar and ominous manner. Nothing was said, however, to disparage any further announcement of the entertainment; and, having appeased our hunger, we adjourned to the reading of another chapter, during which the South Sea babies _would_ play cat's-cradles under Gail's writing-table, and the Zebra put his foot into the middle of her work-basket, and was very miserable indeed.

My hands were full of business. As an _impressario_ I had to rush about all day, mustering the Great Public for the evening. Out I went, full of it, while the bronze midgets were left in charge of Gail and Deborah, and the Zebra was locked in an upper room, with plenty to eat, and no facilities for getting into mischief. I saw the leading men in town: the preacher, who was deeply interested, proposing to take up a collection on the next sabbath, for our benefit,--which proposition I received with a graceful acquiescence peculiarly my own; the professor, at the Seminary, who was less affable, but whose pupils were radiant at the prospect of getting into the cannibals at reduced rates; and the editor, who desired to print full biographies of myself and cannibals, with portraits and fac-simile of autographs. He strongly urged the plausibility of this new method of winning the heart of the Great Public, and was willing to take my note for thirty days, in consideration of his personal friendship for me, and his sympathy, as a public man and a member of the press, with the show business.

Everything worked so nicely that it really seemed quite providential that I had come, as I had, like anything in the night,--noiseless and unheralded. Everything was in good order, and, after our late dinner, I went out again, to finish for the evening,--portioning off my charges, as before, and returning, at the last moment, to bring them up to the hall for their _debut_. But judge of my horror at finding my Zebra stretched upon the floor of his room, quite insensible; and all this time, Jenkins's Hall was thronged with the Great Public, who had come to see us bow down to wood and stone.

I was greatly alarmed. What could this sudden attack mean? He was not subject to disorders of that nature,--at least, I had never seen him in a similar condition. The little fellows began to cry, in their peculiar fashion, which is simply raising the voice to the highest and shrillest pitch, and then shaking to an unlimited degree. Gail was by no means charmed at these new developments, and Deborah fled from the room. In a moment the cause of our trouble was disclosed. Gail's cologne bottles were exhumed from under the bed--but quite empty. Their contents had been imbibed by the Zebra in an extemporaneous baccha.n.a.lian festival, tendered to himself by himself, in honor of the occasion.

It was useless to borrow further trouble, so I prepared my apology: "The sudden indisposition peculiar to young cannibals during the early stages of a public and Christian career had quite prostrated the representative from many a palmy plain; and the South Sea babies would endeavor to fill the vacancy caused by his absence with several new and interesting features not set down in the bills."

I was most cordially received by the audiences and the little midgets danced their weird and fantastic dances, in the least possible clothing imaginable, and sang their love-lyrics, and chanted their pa.s.sionate war-chants, and gave the funeral wail in a manner that reflected the highest credit upon their respective South-Sea papas and mammas. I considered it an entire success, and pocketed the proceeds with considerable satisfaction.

But to return to my poor little Zebra. His cologne-spree had been quite too much for him. He was mentally and physically demoralized, and could be of no use to me, professionally, for a week, at least. I at once saw this, and as I had two or three engagements during that time, I begged Gail to allow him to remain with her during his convalescence, while I went on with the babes and fulfilled my engagements. She consented.

Deborah also promised to be very good to him. I think she took a deeper interest in him when she found how very human he was,--a fact she did not fully realize until he took to drinking.

On we went, through three little villages, in three little valleys, with crowded houses every evening. Delighted and enthusiastic audiences wanted the midgets pa.s.sed around, just as we pa.s.sed the bone fish-hooks and shark's-teeth combs, for inspection.

About this time I received a short and decisive epistle from Gail,--an immediate summons home. The Zebra, in an unwatched moment, had got into the kerosene, and was considered no longer a welcome guest at Gail's.

Deborah was praying with him daily, which didn't seem to have the desired effect, for he was growing worse and worse every hour.

There were at least seven towns anxiously awaiting my South-Sea Lecture, with the "heathen in his blindness" attachment. Yet it was out of the question to think of pressing on in my tour, thereby sacrificing my poor Zebra, and possibly Gail as well. I feared it was already too late to save him, for I knew the nature of his ailment, and foresaw the almost inevitable result. When we returned, Gail met us with tears in her eyes and furrows of care foreshadowed in her face. I felt how great a responsibility I had shifted upon her shoulders, and accused myself roundly for such selfishness. The babes rushed into her arms with the first impulse of love, and refused to allow her out of their sight again for some hours.

Deborah was, even then, wrestling with the angels up in Zebra's room, and I waited until she came down, with her eyes red and swollen,--a bottle of physic in one hand and a Bible in the other; then I went in to my poor, thin, shadowy little Zebra, who was wild-eyed and nervous, and scarcely knew me at first, but went off into hysterics the moment he found me out, to make up for it. He had had no opportunity of speaking to any one, save in his broken English, for several days, and he rushed into a torrent of e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns so violent and confusing that I was thoroughly alarmed at his condition. Presently he grew quieter, from sheer exhaustion, and then I learned how he had taken Deborah's well-intended efforts toward his spiritual conversion. _He believed her praying him to death!_ Deborah knew nothing of the sensitive organism of these islanders. When moved by a spirit of revenge, they threaten one another with prayers. Incantations are performed and sacrifices offered, under which fearful spells the unhappy victim of revenge cannot think of surviving. So he lies down and dies, without pain, or any effort on his part; and all your physic is like so much water, administer it in what proportions you choose.

I went into the garden, where I saw Gail under the maples,--the very maples that were budding in pink and white when she wrote me the letter bidding me come out of the South, bringing my sheaves with me. The animated sheaves were even then swinging on the clothes-lines, and taking life easily. "Gail," I said, "O Gail, the Zebra is a dead boy!"

Gail was shocked, and silent. I told her how useless, how hopeless it was to think of saving him. All the doctors and all the medicines in the world were a fallacy where the soul was overshadowed with a malediction.

"Gail," I said, "that Zebra says he wants to be an angel, and he couldn't possibly have decided upon anything more unreasonable than this. What shall I do without my Zebra?" And I walked off by myself, and felt desperately, while Gail was wrapped in thought, and the babes continued to do inexpressible things on the clothes-lines, to the intense admiration of three small boys on the other side of the garden-fence.

The doctor had already been called, and the physic that Deborah carried about with her was a legitimate draught prescribed by him. Little did he know of the death-angel that walks hand-in-hand with a superst.i.tion as antique as Mount Ararat. So day by day the little Zebra grew more and more slender, till his frail, striped skeleton stretched itself in a hollow of the bed, and great gleaming eyes watched me as they would devour me with deathless and pa.s.sionate love.

Sometimes his soul seemed to steal out of his withering body and make mysterious pilgrimages into its native clime. I heard him murmuring and muttering in a language unfamiliar to me. I remembered that the chiefs had a dialect of their own,--a vocabulary so sacred and secret that no commoner ever dared to study out its meaning. This I took to be his cla.s.sical and royal tongue, for he was of the best blood of the kingdom, and a King's heir.

Deborah, at the delicate suggestion of Gail, discontinued her visitations to his chamber, as it seemed to excite him so sadly; but her earnest soul never rested from prayer in his behalf till his last breath was spent, and his splendid stripes grew livid for a moment, and seemed to change like the dolphin's before their waning glories were faded out in the lifeless flesh.

One twilight I took the midgets into the darkened room. They scarcely knew the thin, drawn face, with the slender, wiry fingers locked over it, but they recognized the death-stroke with prophetic instinct, and, crouching at the foot of the bed, rocked their dusky bodies to and fro, to and fro, wailing the death-wail for Zebra.

Then I longed for wings to fly away with my savage brood,--away, over seas and mountains, till the palms waved again their phantom crests in the mellow starlight, and the sea moaned upon the reef, and the rivulet leaped from crag to crag through silence and shadow: where death seemed but a grateful sleep; for the soul that dawned in that quiet life had never known the wear and tear of this one, but was patient, and peaceful, and ready at any hour of summons.

Dear Gail strove to comfort me in my tribulation; but the Great Public went its way, and knew nothing of the young soul that was pa.s.sing in speedy death. Yet the Great Public was my guide, philosopher, and friend. I could do nothing without its sanction and co-operation. I basked in its smiles. I trembled at the thought of its displeasure; and now death was robbing me of my hard-earned riches, and annihilating my best attraction. No wonder I fretted myself, and berated my ill-fortune.

Poor Gail had her hands full to keep me within bounds. I rushed to the Zebra's room, and vowed to him that if he wouldn't die just yet, I would take him home at once to his kingdom, and we'd always live there, and die there, by and by, when we were full of years.

Alas, it was too late! "I want to be an angel," reiterated my Zebra, his thin face brightening with an unearthly light; "to be an angel,"

whispered that faint and failing voice, while his humid eyes glowed like twin moons sinking in the far, mystical horizon of the new life he was about to enter upon. I struggled with him no longer. I bowed down by his pillow, and pressed the shadowy form of my once beautiful Zebra. "Well, be an angel, little prince," said I; "be anything you please, now, for I have done my best to save you, and failed utterly."

So he pa.s.sed hence to his destiny; and his nation wept not, neither wore they ashes upon their foreheads, nor burned seams in their flesh; for they knew not of his fate. But there was a small grave digged in the orchard, and at dusk I carried the coffin in my arms thither: how light it was! he could have borne me upon his brawny shoulders once,--strong as a lion's. Gail cried, and Deborah cried; and I was quite beside myself. The mites of cannibals ate earth and ashes, and came nearly naked to the obsequies, refusing to wear their jackets, though the air was frosty and the night promised snow. We knelt there, to cover Zebra for the last time, crying and shivering, and feeling very, _very_ miserable.

I took a little rest from business after that; seeing, meantime, a stone cut in this manner:--

Here lies, In this far land, A PRINCE OF THE SAVAGE SOUTH, And the Last of his Tribe.

But life called me into the arena again. A showman has little time to waste in mourning over his losses, however serious they may be.

One frosty evening I got my brace of cannibals into the lumbering ambulance that const.i.tuted my caravan, with our boxes of war-clubs and carved whale's-teeth lashed on behind us; plenty of buffalo-robes around us, and a layer of hot bricks underfoot, and so we started for our next scene of action. The inexorable calls of the profession forbade our lingering longer under Gail's hospitable roof; and it was not without pangs of inexpressible sorrow that we turned from her door, and knew not if we were ever again to enjoy the pure influences of her household.

My heart warmed toward poor, disconsolate Deborah in that moment, and I forgave her all, which was the most Christian act I ever yet performed.

As we rode down the lane, I caught a glimpse of the low mound in the orchard, and I buried my little barbarians under my great-coat, so as to spare them a fresh sorrow, while I thought how, spring after spring, that small grave would be covered with drifts of pale apple-blossoms, and in the long winters it would be hidden under the paler drifts of snow,--when it should be strewn with sea-sh.e.l.ls, and laid away under a cactus-hedge, in a dense and fragrant shade; and I gathered my little ones closer to me, and said in my soul: "O, if the August Public could only know them as I know them, it would doubt us less, and love us more!

The Zebra is gone, indeed, but my babes are here, fresh souls in perfect bodies, like rareripe fruits, untouched as yet, with the nap and the dew upon them." The stars sparkled and flashed in the cloudless sky, as we hurried over the crisp ground,--a little, bereaved, benighted company of South-Sea strollers, who ask your charity, and give their best in return for it.

I have told you of my South-Sea show. You may yet have an opportunity of judging how you like it, provided my baby heathens don't insist upon turning into angels before their time, after the manner of the lamented Zebra. In the mean time, the dread of this not improbable curbing of my high career is but one of the sorrows of a South-Sea showman.

[Decoration]

[Decoration]

THE HOUSE OF THE SUN.

My Hawaiian oracle, Kahele, having posed himself in compact and chubby grace, awaited his golden opportunity, which was not long a coming. I sat on the steps of L----'s veranda, and yawned frightfully, because life was growing tedious, and I did not know exactly what to do next.

L----'s house was set in the nicest kind of climate, at the foot of a great mountain, just at that alt.i.tude where the hot air stopped dancing, though it was never cool enough to shut a door, or to think of wearing a hat for any other purpose than to keep the sun out of one's eyes.

L----'s veranda ran out into vacancy as blank as cloudless sky and shadowless sea could make it; in fact, all that the eye found to rest upon was the low hill jutting off from one corner of the house beyond a jasmine in blossom; and under the hill a flat-sailed schooner rocking in a calm. I think there was nothing else down the slope of the mountain but tangled yellow gra.s.s, that grew brown and scant as it crept into the torrid zone, a thousand feet below us, and there it had not the courage to come out of the earth at all; so the picture ended in a blazing beach, with warm waves sliding up and down it, backed by blue-watery and blue-airy s.p.a.ce for thousands and thousands of miles.

Why should not a fellow yawn over the situation? especially as L---- was busy and could not talk much, and L----'s books were as old as the hills and a good deal drier.

Having yawned, I turned toward Kahele, and gnashed my teeth. The little rascal looked knowing; his hour had come. He fired off in broken English, and the effect was something like this:--

"Suppose we sleep in House of the Sun,--we make plenty good sceneries?"

"And where is that?" quoth I.

Kahele's little lump of a nose was jerked up toward the great mountain at the back of L----'s house. "Haleakala!"[A] cried he, triumphantly, for he saw he had resurrected my interest in life, and he felt that he had a thing or two worth showing, a glimpse of which might content me with this world, dull as I found it just then. "Haleakala--the House of the Sun--up before us," said Kahele.

[A] Haleakala, an extinct crater in the Sandwich Islands, supposed to be the largest in the world.

"And to get into the Sun's House?"

"Make a good climb up, and go in from the top!"