The Pacific Triangle Part 8

A gentle breeze crept down from the hills and swept its way among the pillars of this peaceful hut and skipped on through the palms out to sea. As far as the eye could reach through the village there was no sign of uncleanliness, no stifling enclosures, no frills to catch the unwary.

The afternoon was well-nigh gone when I moved reluctantly away from this charmed spot. Slowly life was becoming more discontented with ease and bestirred itself to the satisfaction of wants. A few hours of toil, in the gathering of fruits, and one phase of tropical life was rounded out.

It might be more pleasant to believe that that is the only side, but such faith is treacherous. The life of the average South Sea islander is as arduous as any. Fruits there are usually a-plenty, but they must be gathered and stored against famine and storm. Be that as it may, the open life, the things one has which require only wishing to make them one's own, the uncramped open world,--by that much every man is millionaire in the tropics, and it is pleasant to forget if one can that there is exploitation, despoliation, and oppression as well, both of native and of alien origin. But for the time at least we may as well enjoy that which is lovely.

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That night I witnessed the usual events at the British Club. The substance of the evening's conversation, every word of which was in my own language, was quite foreign to me. It comprised "Dr. Funk" and his special services in counteracting dengue fever. The aim and object of every man there seemed to be to make me drink, quite against my will.

A visiting doctor added the weight of his learning to induce me to turn from heedlessly falling a victim to fever by engaging "Dr. Funk." I was inclined to dub him "Dr. Bunk," but why arouse animosity in the tropics?

there is enough of it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE STREET ALONG THE WATERFRONT OF APIA, SAMOA]

[Ill.u.s.tration: I THOUGHT THE VILLAGE BACK OF APIA, SAMOA, WAS DESERTED, BUT IT WAS ONLY THE NOON HOUR]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CONTACT WITH CALIFORNIA CREATED THIS COMBINATION OF SCOWL, BRACELETS AND BOY'S BOOTS--BUT FULAANU BESIDE HER WAS UNCORRUPTIBLE]

[Ill.u.s.tration: TATTOOING OF THE LEGS IS AN ESSENTIAL IN SAMOA]

But I couldn't help contrasting in my own mind the little gathering on the shingle-paved floor of that corrugated iron hut with the more elaborate club that changed its name from German to British with no little hauteur. More than once I wished that I had had command of the language of those people in the hut where allegory, mixed with superst.i.tion but seasoned with gentle hospitality--and not rum--was the order of the day.

Weary of refusing booze and more booze, I set off for the sh.o.r.e. Though military order forbade either natives or Germans or any one else without a permit to be out after ten o'clock, I had had no difficulty in securing a permit to roam about at will, day or night. The new military Inspector of Police strolled out with me and we took to the road that led out of Apia to the left, past the barracks, past the school, and the church, past all the crude replicas of our civilization.

"Oh, how I loathe it all!" said Heasley to me. "G.o.d, what wouldn't I give to be back with my wife and kiddies! This everlasting boozing, this mingling with people whom I wouldn't recognize in Wellington, being herded with the riffraff of the world. They talk of the lovely maidens.

Tell me, Greenbie, have you seen any here you'd care to mess about with?

The tropics!--rot!"

I saw that I had to deal with a frightfully homesick man, and there was no point in running counter to him. The fact that to me the tropics were lovely only when seen as an objective thing, not as something to feel a part of, would have made little impression on his mind. He was condemned to an indefinite sojourn, whereas I was foot-loose, had come of my own free will, and was going as soon as I had had enough of it. To him the daily round of drink and cheap disputes, the longing for his wife and kiddies, the heat, the mosquitos, the mold, the cheap beds and unvaried fare, the weeks during which the British troops had virtually camped on the beach in the steady downpouring tropical rains; the inability to dream his way into appreciation of South Sea life; the necessity of looking upon the natives as possible rebels; suspicions of the few Germans there, suspicions of every new-comer, suspicions of even the death-dealing sun,--no wonder there was nothing romantic about it to him!

But as we wandered along, chatting in an intimate way, as only men gone astray from home will chat when they meet on the highways of the world, he seemed to grow more cheerful. Time and again he told me what a relief I was to him, how being able really to talk freely with me was balm to his troubled spirit. I knew that an hour after my departure he would forget all about me, that there was nothing permanent in his regard, that I really meant nothing to him beyond an immediate release for his pent-up mind,--but I felt that he was sincere.

As we kicked our way along the dusty road we came to a stretch where the palm-trees stood wide apart. The smooth waters covered the reefs, and a million moonbeams danced over them. Within the palm groves camp-fires blazed beneath domes of moon-splattered thatch, and from all directions deep, clear voices quickened the night air. We of the Northern lands do not know what communal life is. We move in throngs, we crowd the theaters, we crowd the summer resorts,--but still we do not know what communal life is. We are separate icicles compared with the people of the tropics. Only to one adrift at night within a little South Sea village is the meaning of human commonalty revealed. It seemed to touch Heasley as nothing had done before. After our little conversation he appeared relieved and receptive. We wandered about till long after midnight, long after the village had sung itself to sleep, even then reluctant to take to our musty beds.

Thus did one day pa.s.s in Samoa, and every day is like the other, and my tale is told.

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I tapped one man after another in Samoa for some personal recollections of Stevenson, but without success. At last I heard of an American trader who had been an intimate friend of R. L. S. and knew more about him than any other. So to him I went. He was a round-headed, red-faced, bald individual in the late fifties, deeply engrossed in the sumptuous acc.u.mulations he had made during more than a quarter-century of residence in Samoa. His reactions to my declaration of interest in Stevenson made me think he was turning to lock his safe and order his guard, but instead he really opened the safe and dismissed all pretense.

In other words, he realized, it seemed to me, that he had another chance of adding l.u.s.ter not to Stevenson, but to himself. Stevenson he dismissed with, "Well, you know, after all he was just like other men.

Often he was disagreeable, ill-tempered," etc. The thing worth while was the fact that _he_ had written a book about Stevenson, in which _he_ had exhausted all he knew of the man, so why did I not read that and not bother him about it! I felt apologetic, almost inclined to bow myself out, backward, when he announced that he too had written stories of the South Seas. My interest was whetted. I asked to be shown. He drew from among his bills and invoices a packet of ma.n.u.scripts, and handed one to me to read. I thought of Setu and his enthusiasm at the recognition at sea of the light from Vailima, and felt that, as far as Stevenson's own life went, Setu was, to me at least, more important.

Notwithstanding all the cynics who laugh at those who come to Samoa to climb to Stevenson's grave, I was determined to make the ascent. I could get no one to make it with me. At five o'clock in the morning I mustered what energy I had left from the North, ready to spend it all for the sake of seeing Stevenson's grave. By six, the wind was already warm and dragged behind it heavy rain-clouds. Hot and brain-f.a.gged, I pressed on, my body pushing listlessly forward while my mind battled with the temptation to turn back. Near the end of European Apia I turned toward the hills, into a wide avenue cut through the growths of s.h.a.ggy palms.

Suddenly opening out from the main street, it as suddenly closes up, an oblong that dissipates in a narrow, irregular roadway farther on. It was too overgrown to indicate any great usefulness, yet in the history of roads, none, I believe, is more unique. In the days when Samoa was the scene of cheap international squabbles among England, France, Germany, and America, Stevenson, the Scotsman, mindful of the fate of Scotland and of the similarity between his adopted and his native land, stood by the natives as against the foreign powers (Germany in particular). He took up the challenge for Mataafa, courageously cuddled these children while in prison, and won their everlasting good-will. Later, as a mark of grat.i.tude, they decided voluntarily to build a wide road to Vailima, Stevenson's home. Their ambitions did not live long. The road was never finished. But this is indicative not of diminished grat.i.tude, but of the overwhelming hopelessness of their situation in face of foreign pressure and native temperature.

For everything in the tropics seems on the verge of exhaustion, a keen enthusiasm in life which finds its ebb before it has reached high tide.

Only a supreme endeavor, a will sharper than nature, can overcome the spirit of non-resistance which condemns native life from very birth. And it was the remnant of determination bred in another climate that carried me on toward the remains of the object of that grat.i.tude which this road symbolized.

Vailima was four miles from Apia, hidden within a rich tropical growth well up the mountain side. Half the time I rested in the shade, taking my cue from my idol that it was better to travel than to arrive. No one was about, except here and there a child in search of fruit dropped from the tall trees. Presently I came to a set of wooden buildings on the road which upon investigation turned out to be the temporary barracks for the guard of Colonel Logan, commander of the forces of occupation.

The soldiers directed me most cordially to a path near the barracks, and there a board sign announced the way to "STEVENSON'S GRAVE."

Crossing a creek and turning to the right, I found myself immediately at the foot of Mount Vaea. At this juncture lay a small concrete pool obviously belonging to the cottage, well-preserved and clean. So was the path upward. Strange contrasts here, for both pool and path were the result of the private interest of the German Governor of Samoa who, despite Stevenson's bitter opposition to German possession of the islands, had generously had the path cleared and widened so that lovers of the great man might visit his tomb with ease. It had been neglected for ten years until this German reclaimed it.

For a decade the grave lay untended. At the moment of death, the silence is deep. The pain is too fresh. Out of very love neglect is justifiable, for it is the train of dejected mourners who cannot think of niceties.

But then come the "knockers at the gate," they who know nothing of the frailties of men and revel in an immortality that is memory.

I paused frequently during that half-hour climb. Cooing doves called to one another understandingly across the death-like stillness which filled the valley below. From the direction of Apia came the sound of the lali, which seemed only to quicken mystery into being. I breathed more heavily. There, alone on the slopes of that peak, with the only thing that makes it memorable beneath the sod on the summit, I felt strangely in touch with the dead. The isolation gave distinction to him who had been laid there, which no monument, however superb, can give in the crowded graveyard. The personality of the departed hovers round in the silence.

Still, the thought of death itself is alien here. Fear is barren. One climbs on with an easy, smiling recognition of the summit of all things,--not as death, but as life. Oh, the sweet silence that m.u.f.fles all!

A strange relapse into the ordinary came to me as I reached the top. I took a picture of the tomb, gazed out across the hazy blue world about,--and thought of nothing. I was not disappointed, nor sad. Had I found myself sinking, dying, I believe that it would not have ruffled my emotions any more than the flight of a bird leaves ripples in the air.

Below, five miles away, the waves broke upon the reefs and spread in smooth foam which reached endlessly toward the sh.o.r.e. "It is better to travel than to arrive," they seemed to say to me across the void.

The red hibiscus was in bloom around the tomb. A sweet-scented yellow flower made the air heavy with its rich perfume. The trees speckled the simple concrete casing over the grave with their restless little shadow leaves. The spot was cool and free from growths. And it was, then, a symbol of a quarter of a century made real.

Glad did I live and gladly die And I laid me down with a will.

Savage, child, romancer, literary stylist,--all have been under the influence of this wandering Scotsman, and the manner of showing him love and grat.i.tude has been not in imitation only. At Monterey in California he was nursed by an old Frenchman through a long period of illness; in semi-savage Samoa men untutored in our codes of affection beat not a path but a road to his door, and carried his body up the steep slope of Mount Vaea. And the month before I stood beside his tomb, the ashes of his wife and devoted helpmate were deposited beside him by his stepdaughter, who had journeyed all the way from California to unite their remains.

Tusitala, the tale-teller, the natives called him, and in the sheer music of that strange word one senses something of the regard it was meant to convey. And in the years to come, when Samoans become a nation in the Pacific, part of the Polynesian group, Tusitala will doubtless be one of the heroes, tales of whose beneficence will light the way for little Polynesians growing to manhood.

It was becoming too hot up there on the peak for me before breakfast-time was over, so I slipped down into the valley. At the barracks the soldiers invited me to have a bite with them. The simple porridge, the crude utensils, the bare benches would elsewhere after so long a walk and so steep a climb have been a G.o.dsend; but here, in the tropics, it seemed that more would have been a waste of human life. The sergeant-at-arms asked me if I should like to have some breadfruit. He stepped out into the yard and gathered a round, luscious melon-like fruit which, when cut, opened the doors of alimentary bliss to me. The trees grow in bis.e.xual pairs, male and female, the female tree bearing the fruit.

The sergeant then took me to Vailima, Stevenson's last home, now the residence of the governor-general. It was, of course, stripped of everything which once was Stevenson's, and had acquired wings and porticos, gaunt and disproportioned. I could not work up any sentimental regret at this change, for that is what Stevenson himself would have wished. The best way to preserve a thing is to keep it growing.

Stevenson worked here for four years; others may tamper with it for four hundred years without completely obliterating the character given it by its first maker.

When I entered I was somewhat surprised at the hangings on the walls.

Pictures of the kaiser, pretty scenes along the Rhine, German castles,--what had they to do with Stevenson? what with Colonel Logan and British occupation? The chambers are so large and the woodwork is so somber that these pictures fairly shrieked out at one, like a flock of eagles in high alt.i.tudes. I felt almost guilty, myself, simply for being in the presence of such enemy decorations, and remarked about them to my guide.

"The colonel won't touch them," he said, respectfully. "They are the property of the German Governor, and till the disposition of the islands is finally settled, the colonel won't move them. He's a soldier, y'know."

We came out again upon the veranda just in time to see Colonel and Mrs.

Logan arrive in their trap. He was tall, straight, an icy chill of reserve in his bearing. Mrs. Logan was a pretty young woman, as warm and cordial as he was stiff. He preceded her up the steps and was saluted by the sergeant with the explanation of my presence.

"Am showing this gentleman round a bit," he said.

"Has he had a look round?" said the colonel, perfunctorily, saluted stiffly, and pa.s.sed by as though I didn't exist. As Mrs. Logan came up behind she suppressed a smile that threatened to make her face still more charming, and the two pa.s.sed within.

I smiled to myself. How should I have been received had Stevenson come up those steps that day? To the colonel there was nothing in my journey to the tomb. Nor was there anything in it to the soldiers at the barracks. Yet the fact that I had been there made me one of them.

"How'd ye like it?" asked a soldier on my return, with the same manner as though I had gone to see a c.o.c.k-fight. "Blaim me if Oi'd climb that yer 'ill on a day as 'ot as this to see a dead man's grave."

They asked me if I'd like to take a swim in the stream Stevenson liked so well, and on the strength of my great interest three of them got leave to accompany me. They winked to me when the sergeant agreed. We wandered along, jumping fences, crossing a gra.s.sy slope, and cutting through a spare woods. The bamboo-trees creaked like rusty hinges. Cocoa plantations stood ripe for picking. The luscious mango kept high above our reach, so that we were compelled to devise means of getting at it.

The soldiers seemed concerned about my seeing everything, tasting everything, learning everything the place afforded. We chatted sociably, plunging about in the stream, with only a few stray natives looking on.

Then we made our way back as leisurely as possible, they being in no hurry to return to the barracks. How I got back to Apia I haven't the faintest recollection.

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