South-Sea Idyls Part 7

Till daybreak, as we found! There was a little resting-spell--a very little resting-spell, now and then--for the gourd's sake, or three whiffs at a pipe that would poison a White Man in ten minutes; and before we half expected it, or had a thought of urging the unflagging dancers to renew their marvellous gyrations, they were at it in terrible earnest.

From the floor to their knees, from their knees to their feet, now facing us, now turning from us, they spun and ambled, till the ear was deafened with cheers and boisterous, half-drunken, wholly pa.s.sionate laughter.

The room whirled with the reeling dancers, who seemed encircled with living serpents in the act of swallowing big lumps of something from their throats clear to the tips of their tails, and the convulsions continued till the hysterical dancers staggered and fell to the floor, overcome by unutterable fatigue.

The sympathetic Felix fell with them, his head sinking under one of the rush candles, that must have burned into his brain had he been suffered to immolate himself at that inappropriate and unholy time and place.

This was the seductive dance still practised in secret, though the law forbids it; and to the Hawaiian it is more beautiful, because more sensuous, than anything else in the world.

I proposed departing at this stage of the festival, but Felix said it was not practicable. He felt unwell, and suggested the efficacy of another attack of _lomi-lomi_.

A slight variation in the order of the dances followed. A young lover, seated in the centre of the room, beat a tattoo upon his calabash and sang a song of love. In a moment he was answered. Out of the darkness rose the sweet, shrill voice of the loved one. Nearer and nearer it approached; the voice rang clear and high, melodiously swelling upon the air. It must have been heard far off in the valley, it was so plaintive and penetrating. Secreted at first behind shawls hung in the corner of the room, some dramatic effect was produced by her entrance at the right moment. She enacted her part with graceful energy. To the regular and melancholy thrumming of the calabash, she sang her song of love.

Yielding to her emotion, she did not hesitate to betray all, neither was he of the calabash slow to respond; and, scorning the charms of goat-skin and gourd, he sprang toward her in the madness of his soul, when she, having reached the climax of desperation, was hurried from the scene of her conquest amid whirlwinds of applause.

"It's a dance, that's what it is!" muttered Felix, as the audience began slowly to disperse. Leading him back to the canoe, we had the whole night's orgie reported to us in a very mixed and reiterative manner, as well as several attempts at ill.u.s.trating the peculiarities of the performance, which came near resulting in a watery grave for three, or an upset canoe, at any rate. Our host, to excuse any impropriety, for which he felt more or less responsible, said "it was so natural for them to be jolly under all circ.u.mstances that when they have concluded to die they make their P. P. C.'s with infinite grace, and then die on time."

Of course they are jolly; and to prove it, I told Felix how the lepers, who had been banished to one little corner of the kingdom, and forbidden to leave there in the flesh, were as merry as the merriest, and once upon a time those decaying remnants of humanity actually gave a grand ball in their hospital. There was a general clearing out of disabled patients, and a brushing up of old finery, while the ball itself was _the_ topic of conversation. Two or three young fellows, who had a few fingers left (they unjoint and drop off as the disease progresses), began to pick up a tune or two on bamboo flutes. Old, young, and middle-aged took a sly turn in some dark corner, getting their stiffened joints limber again.

Night came at last. The lamps flamed in the death-chamber of the lazar-house. Many a rejoicing soul had fled from that foul spot, to flash its white wings in the eternal sunshine.

At an early hour the strange company a.s.sembled. The wheezing of voices no longer musical, the shuffling of half-paralyzed limbs over the bare floor, the melancholy droning of those bamboo flutes, and the wild sea moaning in the wild night were the sweetest sounds that greeted them.

And while the flutes piped dolorously to this unlovely spectacle, there was a rushing to and fro of unlovely figures; a bleeding, half-blind leper, seizing another of the accursed beings,--s.n.a.t.c.hing her, as it were, from the grave, in all her loathsome clay,--dragged her into the bewildering maelstrom of the waltz.

Naturally excitable, heated with exertion, drunk with the very odors of death that pervaded the hall of revels, that mad crowd reeled through the hours of the _fete_. Satiated, at last, in the very bitterness of their unnatural gayety, they called for the _hula-hula_ as a fitting close.

In that reeking atmosphere, heavy with the smoke of half-extinguished lamps, they fed on the voluptuous _abandon_ of the dancers till pa.s.sion itself fainted with exhaustion.

"That was a dance of death, was it not, Felix?" Felix lay on his mat, sleeping heavily, and evidently unmindful of a single word I had uttered.

Our time was up at daybreak, and, with an endless deal of persuasion, Felix followed me out of the valley to the little chapel on the cliff.

Our horses took a breath there, and so did we, bird's-eying the scene of the last night's orgie.

Who says it isn't a delicious spot,--that deep, narrow, and secluded vale, walled by almost perpendicular cliffs, hung with green tapestries of ferns and vines; that slender stream, like a thread of silver, embroidering a carpet of Nature's richest pattern; that torrent, leaping from the cliff into a garden of citrons; the sea sobbing at its mouth, while wary mariners, coasting in summer afternoons, catch glimpses of the tranquil and forbidden paradise, yet are heedless of all its beauty, and reck not the rustling of the cane-fields, nor the voices of the charmers, because--because these things are so common in that lat.i.tude that one grows naturally indifferent?

As for Felix, who talks in his sleep of the _hula-hula_, and insists that only by the _lomi-lomi_ he shall be saved, he points a moral, though at present he is scarcely in a condition to adorn any tale whatever; and said moral I shall be glad to furnish, on application, to any sympathetic soul who has witnessed by proxy the unlawful revels of those night-dancers of Waipio.

[Decoration]

PEARL-HUNTING IN THE POMOTOUS.

The Great Western ducked in the heavy swell, shipping her regular deck-load of salt-water every six minutes. Now the Great Western was nothing more nor less than a seventeen-ton schooner, two hours out from Tahiti. She was built like an old shoe, and shovelled in a head sea as though it was her business.

It was something like sea life, wading along her submerged deck from morning till night, with a piece of raw junk in one hand and a briny biscuit in the other; we never _could_ keep a fire in _that_ galley, and as for hard tack, the sooner it got soaked through the sooner it was off our minds, for we knew to this complexion it must shortly come.

Two hours out from Tahiti we settled our course, wafting a theatrical kiss or two toward the gloriously green pyramid we were turning our backs on, as it slowly vanished in the blue desert of the sea.

A thousand palm-crowned and foam-girdled reefs spangle the ocean to the north and east of Tahiti. This train of lovely satellites is known as the Dangerous Archipelago, or, more commonly in that lat.i.tude, the Pomotou Islands. It's the very hot-bed of cocoa-nut oil, pearls, half-famished Kanakas, sh.e.l.ls, and shipwrecks. The currents are rapid and variable; the winds short, sharp, and equally unreliable. If you would have adventure, the real article and plenty of it, make your will, bid farewell to home and friends, and embark for the Pomotous. I started on this principle, and repented knee-deep in the deck-breakers, as we b.u.t.ted our way through the billows, bound for one of the Pomotous on a pearl hunt.

Three days I sat in sackcloth and salt water. Three nights I swashed in my greasy bunk, like a solitary sardine in a box with the side knocked out. In my heart of hearts I prayed for deliverance: you see there is no backing out of a schooner, unless you crave death in fifty fathoms of phosph.o.r.escent liquid and a grave in a shark's maw. Therefore I prayed for more wind from the right quarter, for a sea like a boundless mill-pond; in short, for speedy deliverance on the easiest terms possible. Notwithstanding, we continued to bang away at the great waves that crooked their backs under us and hissed frightfully as they enveloped the Great Western with spray until the fourth night out, when the moon gladdened us and promised much while we held our breath in anxiety.

We were looking for land. We'd been looking for three hours, scarcely speaking all that time. It's a serious matter raising a Pomotou by moonlight.

"Land!" squeaked a weak voice about six feet above us. A lank fellow, with his legs corkscrewed around the shrouds, and his long neck stretched to windward, where it veered like a weather-c.o.c.k in a nor'wester, chuckled as he sung out "Land!" and felt himself a little lower than Christopher Columbus thereafter. "Where away?" bellowed our chunky little captain, as important as if he were commanding a grown-up ship. "Two points on the weather-bow!" piped the lookout, with the voice of one soaring in s.p.a.ce, but unhappily choked in the last word by a sudden lurch of the schooner that brought him speedily to the deck, where he lost his ident.i.ty and became a proper noun, second person, singular, for the rest of the cruise.

Now, "two points" is an indefinite term that embraces any obstacle ahead of anything; but the "weather-bow" has been the salvation of many a craft in her distress; so we gave three cheers for the "weather-bow,"

and proceeded to sweep the horizon with unwinking gaze. We could scarcely tell how near the land might lie; fancied we could already hear the roar of surf-beaten reefs, and every wave that reared before us seemed the rounded outline of an island. Of course we shortened sail, not knowing at what moment we might find ourselves close upon some low sea-garden nestling under the rim of breakers that fenced it in, and being morally averse to running it down without warning.

It was scarcely midnight; the moon was radiant; we were silently watching, wrapped in the deep mystery that hung over the weather-bow.

The wind suddenly abated; it was as though it sifted through trees and came to us subdued with a whisper of fluttering leaves and a breath of spice. We knew what it meant, and our hearts leaped within us as over the bow loomed the wave-like outline of shadow that sank not again like the other waves, neither floated off cloud-like, but seemed to be bearing steadily down upon us,--a great whale hungry for a modern Jonah.

What a night it was! We heard the howl of waters now; saw the palm boughs glisten in the moonlight, and the glitter and the flash of foam that fringed the edges of the half-drowned islet.

It looked for all the world like a grove of cocoa-trees that had waded out of sight of land, and didn't know which way to turn next. This was the Ultima Thule of the Great Western's voyage, and she seemed to know it, for she behaved splendidly at last, laying off and on till morning in fine style, evidently as proud as a ship-of-line.

I went below and dozed, with the low roar of the reef quite audible; a fellow gets used to such dream-music, and sleeps well to its accompaniment.

At daybreak we began beating up against wind and tide, hoping to work into smooth water by sunrise, which we did easily enough, shaking hands all around over a cup of thick coffee and mola.s.ses as three fathoms of chain whizzed overboard after a tough little anchor that buried itself in a dim wilderness of corals and sea-gra.s.s.

Then and there I looked about me with delighted eyes. The Great Western rode at anchor in a shallow lake, whose crystal depths seemed never to have been agitated by any harsher breath than at that moment kissed without ruffling its surface. Around us swept an amphitheatre of hills, covered with a dense growth of tropical foliage and cushioned to the hem of the beach with thick sod of exquisite tint and freshness. The narrow rim of beach that sloped suddenly to the tideless margin of the lake was littered with numberless slender canoes drawn out of the water like so many fish, as though they would navigate themselves in their natural element, and they were, therefore, not to be trusted alone too near it.

Around the sh.o.r.e, across the hills, and along the higher ridges waved innumerable cocoa-palms, planted like a legion of lances about the encampment of some barbaric prince.

As for the very blue sky and the very white scud that shot across it, they looked windy enough; moreover we could all hear the incoherent booming of the sea upon the reef that encircled our nest. But we forgot the wind and the waves in the inexpressible repose of that armful of tropical seclusion. It was a drop of water in a tuft of moss, on a very big scale; that's just what it was.

In a few moments, as with one impulse, the canoes took to water with a savage or two in each, all gravitating to the schooner, which was for the time being the head-centre of their local commerce; and for an hour or more we did a big business in the exchange of fish-hooks and fresh fruit.

The proportion of canoes at Motu Hilo (Crescent Island) to the natives of said fragment of Eden was as one to several; but the canoeless could not resist the superior attraction of a foreign invader, therefore the rest of the inhabitants went head-first into the lake, and struck out for the middle, where we peacefully swung at anchor.

The place was sharky, but a heavy dirk full twenty inches tall was held between the teeth of the swimmers; and if the smoke-colored dorsal of any devil of a shark had dared to cut the placid surface of the water that morning, he would speedily have had more blades in him than a farrier's knife. A few vigorous strokes of the arms and legs in the neighborhood, a fatal lunge or two, a vermilion cloud in a sea churned to a cream, and a dance over the gaping corpse of some monster who has sucked human blood more than once, probably, does the business in that country.

It was a sensation for unaccustomed eyes, that inland sea covered, littered, I might say, with woolly heads, as though a cargo of cocoa-nuts had been thrown overboard in a stress of weather. They gathered about as thick as flies at a honey-pot, all talking, laughing, and spouting mouthfuls of water into the air like those impossible creatures that do that sort of thing by the half-dozen in all high-toned and cla.s.sical fountains.

Out of this amphibious mob one gigantic youth, big enough to eat half our ship's crew, threw up an arm like Jove's, clinched the deck-rail with lithe fingers, and took a rest, swinging there with the utmost satisfaction.

I asked him aboard, but he scorned to forsake his natural element: water _is_ as natural as air to those natives. Probably he would have suffered financially had he attempted boarding us, for his thick back hair was netted with a kind of s.p.a.cious nest and filled with eggs on sale. It was quite astonishing to see the ease with which he navigated under his heavy deck-load.

This colossal youth having observed that I was an amateur humanitarian, virtue received its instant reward (which it doesn't in all climates), for he at once offered me three of his eggs in a very winning and patronizing manner.

I took the eggs because I like eggs, and then I was anxious to get his head above water if possible; therefore I unhesitatingly took the eggs, offering him in return a fish-hook, a tenpenny nail, and a dilapidated key-ring.

These tempting _curios_ he spurned, at the same moment reaching me another handful of eggs. His generosity both pleased and alarmed me. I saw with joy that his chin was quite out of water in consequence of his charity, even when he dropped back into the sea, floating for a few moments so as to let the blood circulate in his arm again; but whether this was his magnanimous gift, or merely a trap to involve me in hopeless debt, I was quite at a loss to know, and I paused with my hands full of eggs, saying to myself, There is an end to fish-hooks in the South Pacific, and dilapidated key-rings are not my staple product!

In the midst of my alarm he began making vows of eternal friendship.

This was by no means disagreeable to me. He was big enough to whip any two of his fellows, and one likes to be on the best side of the stronger party in a strange land.

I reciprocated!