White Shadows in the South Seas Part 31

The Hapaas were now become lovers of the whites, and sent a deputation to complain that the Taipis (Typees), in another valley, harra.s.sed them and, being their traditional enemies, were contemplating raiding Hapaa Valley. The Typees were the most terrible of all the Nuka-hivans, with four thousand fighting men, with strongest fortifications and the most resolute hearts.

The Typees were informed that they must be peaceful, also that they must send many presents as proof of friendliness, or the white men would drive them from their valley. The Typees replied that if Porter were strong enough, he could come and take them. They said the Americans were white lizards; they could not climb the mountains without Marquesans to carry their guns, and yet they talked of chastising the Typees, who had never fled before an enemy and whose G.o.ds were unbeatable. They dared the white men to come among them.

At this juncture Porter faced treachery in his own camp. He had many English prisoners captured from British ships, and these made a plot to escape by poisoning the rum of the Americans. Porter learned of this, and finding an American sentry asleep he shot him with his own hand, and ordered every Englishman put in irons. He was also troubled by mutinies among his own men, who were loth to face any more battles, being contented as they were with plenty of drink, the best of food, and the pa.s.sionate devotion of the native women, who thronged the camp day and night. With no light hand Porter put down revolt and mutiny, and prepared to begin war on the Typees.

First he built a strong fort, a.s.sisted by the Tai-o-haes and Hapaas, and there he took possession of the Marquesas in the name of the United States. On November 19, 1813, the American flag was run up over the fort, a salute of seventeen guns was fired from the artillery mounted there and answered from the ships in the bay. Rum was freely distributed, and standing in a great concourse of wondering natives, with the Englishman, Wilson, at his side interpreting his words, Porter read the following proclamation:

It is hereby made known to the world that I, David Porter, a captain in the navy of the United States of America, now in command of the United States frigate _Ess.e.x_, have, on the part of the United States, taken possession of the island called by the natives Nooaheevah, generally known by the name of Sir Henry Martin's Island, but now called Madison's Island. That by the request and a.s.sistance of the friendly tribes residing in the valley of Tieuhoy, as well as of the tribes residing on the mountains, whom we have conquered and rendered tributary to our flag, I have caused the village of Madison to be built, consisting of six convenient houses, a rope-walk, bakery, and other appurtenances, and for the protection of the same, as well as for that of the friendly natives, I have constructed a fort calculated for mounting sixteen guns, whereon I have mounted four, and called the same Fort Madison.

Our rights to this island being founded on Priority of discovery, conquest, and possession, cannot be disputed. But the natives, to secure to themselves that friendly protection which their defenseless situation so much required, have requested to be admitted into the great American family, whose pure republican policy approaches so near their own. And in order to encourage these views to their own interest and happiness, as well as to render secure our claim to an island valuable on many considerations, I have taken on myself to promise them that they shall be so adopted; that our chief shall be their chief; and they have given a.s.surances that such of their brethren as may hereafter visit them from the United States shall enjoy a welcome and hospitable reception among them and be furnished with whatever refreshments and supplies the island may afford; that they will protect them against all their enemies and as far as lies in their power prevent the subjects of Great Britain from coming among them until peace shall take place between the two nations.

There followed a list of the tribes from whom Porter had received presents, to the number of thirty-one tribes, and the doc.u.ment continued:

Influenced by considerations of humanity, which promise speedy civilization to a race of men who enjoy every mental and bodily endowment which nature can bestow, and which requires only art to perfect, as well as by views of policy, which secure to my country a fruitful and populous island possessing every advantage of security and supplies for ships, and which of all others is most happily situated as respects climate and local position, I do declare that I have, in the most solemn manner, under the American flag displayed in Fort Madison and in the presence of numerous witnesses, taken possession of the said island for the use of the United States.

To the guileless natives, made happy with rum, listening to the necessarily imperfect translation of these words, the ceremony may well have been a strange magic to unknown G.o.ds, but it is not difficult to imagine the feelings of Wilson, the tattooed Englishman, as he translated this proclamation giving the rich and happy islands to a country at war with his own. He listened and repeated, however, with patriotic protests unuttered, and prepared to a.s.sist Porter in his contemplated war against the Typees.

A week later one of the warships, with five boats and ten war-canoes, sailed for the Typee beach. Ten canoes of Hapaas joined them there.

The tops of all the neighboring mountains were thronged with friendly warriors armed with clubs, spears, and slings, and altogether not less than five thousand men were in the forces under Porter, among them thirty-five Americans with guns, which he thought enough.

The Typees pelted them with stones as they sat at breakfast, and Porter sent a native amba.s.sador, offering peace at the price of submission. He came back, running madly and bruised by his reception.

Porter then ordered the advance.

The company advanced into the bushes, and were received by a veritable rain of stones and spears. Not an enemy was in sight. On all sides they heard the snapping sound of the slings, the whistling of the stones, the sibilant hiss of the spears that at every step fell in increasing numbers, but they could not see whence they came, and no whisper or rustle of underbrush revealed the lurking Typees.

They pushed on, hoping to get through the thicket, which Wilson had a.s.sured them was of no great extent. Lieutenant Down's leg was shattered by a stone, and Porter had to send a party with him to the rear. This left but twenty-four white men. The native allies did no fighting, but merely looked on. They were not going to make bitterer enemies of the Typees if the G.o.dlike whites could not whip them. The situation was desperate.

However, Porter chose to go on. They crossed a river, and in a jungle had to crawl on their hands and knees to make progress. They thought themselves happy to make their way through this, but immediately found themselves confronted by a high wall of rock, beyond which the enemy took their stand and showered down stones.

The cartridges were almost exhausted. Porter sent four men to the ship for more, and, with three men knocked senseless by stones, was reduced to sixteen men.

There was nothing to do but run for safety, and pursued by the sneering foe, they gained the beach. Thence he sent another messenger to the Typees offering them another chance to surrender and pay tribute.

The Typees returned word that they "had driven the whites before them, that their guns missed fire often, that bullets were not as painful as stones or spears, that they had plenty of men to spare and the whites had not. They had counted the boats, knew the number they would carry, and laughed at the whites."

The Hapaas and other allies came down from the hills and began to discuss the victory of the Typees, with fear in their voices and a certain disdain of the whites. Porter ordered his men into the boats to return to the ship, but scarcely had they reached it when the Typees rushed on the Hapaas and drove them into the water. Porter returned to Tai-o-hae.

There he saw no alternative but to whip the Typees soundly. This time he determined to lack no force, and to go without allies. He selected two hundred men from his ships and prizes, and, with guides, upon a moonlight evening started to march overland to Typee Valley.

At midnight they heard the drums beating in Typee Valley. They had had a fearful march over mountain and dale and around yawning precipices. Silently they had struggled on, so as to give no hint of their intention to Typee sentinels or even to a Hapaa village.

Numbers of the Tai-o-hae had followed them, but quietly, and these now told Porter that the songs floating up from the Typee settlements were rejoicings at their victory over the Whites and prayers to the G.o.ds to send rain to spoil the guns.

Porter was for descending at once, but the Tai-o-haes warned him that the path was so steep and dangerous that even in daylight it would take all their skill to go down it. To attempt it at night would be inviting death.

The Americans lay down to rest on this height, which commanded Typee Valley, and shortly rain began to fall in torrents. Cries of joy and praise to their G.o.ds arose from the Typees. Porter and his men, huddled in puddles, unable to find shelter, and fearful that every blast of the storm might hurl them from their slippery height, tried in vain to keep muskets and powder dry.

At daybreak they found half the ammunition useless, and themselves wearied, while the steepness of the track to the valley, and its treacherous condition after the rain made it wise to seek the Hapaas for rest and food. But, first, they fired a volley to let friendly tribes know they still had serviceable weapons, and as threat and warning to the Typees. They heard the echo in the blowing of war-conches, shouts of defiance, and the squealings of the pigs which the Typees began to catch for removal to the rear.

The Hapaas were none too pleasant to the whites, and had to be forced by threats to bringing and cooking hogs and breadfruit. All day the Americans rested and prepared their arms, at night they slept, and at the next daybreak they stood again to view the scene of their approaching battle.

The valley lay far below them, about nine miles in length and three in width, surrounded on every side, except at the beach, by lofty mountains. The upper part was bounded by a precipice many hundred feet in height, from which a handsome waterfall dropped and formed a meandering stream that found its outlet in the sea. Villages were scattered here and there, in the shade of luxuriant cocoanut- and breadfruit-groves; plantations were laid out in good order, enclosed within stone walls and carefully cultivated; roads hedged with bananas cut across the spread of green; everything spoke of industry, abundance, and happiness.

A large force of Typee warriors, gathered beside the river that glided near the foot of the mountain, dared the invaders to descend.

In their rear was a fortified village, secured by strong stone walls.

Nevertheless, the whites started down, and in a shower of stones captured the village, killed the chief Typee warrior, and chasing his men from wall to wall, slew all who did not escape. Few fled, however; they charged repeatedly, even to the very barrels of the muskets and pistols.

Porter realized that he would have to fight his way over every foot of the valley. He cautioned conservation of cartridges, and leaving two small parties behind to guard the wounded, he, with the main body, marched onward, followed by hordes of Tai-o-hae and Hapaa men, who dispatched the wounded Typees with stones and spears. They burned and destroyed ten villages one by one as they were reached, until the head of the valley was reached.

At the foot of the waterfall they turned and began the nine-mile tramp to the bay. Again they had to meet spear and stone as they burned temples and homes, great canoes, and wooden G.o.ds. Finally Porter attained the fort that had stopped him during the first fight, and found it a magnificent piece of construction, of great basaltic slabs, impregnable from the beach side. He saw that if he had tried that entrance to the valley again, he would have failed as before.

Only heavy artillery could have conquered that mighty stronghold.

From the beach the Americans climbed by an easier ascent into the mountains, leaving a desolated valley behind them, and after feasting with the Hapaas, they marched back to Tai-o-hae almost dead with fatigue.

The Typees sued for peace, and when asked for four hundred hogs sent so many that Porter released five hundred after branding them. He had made peace between all the tribes; war was at an end; and with the island subdued, Porter sailed again to make war on British shipping.

He left behind him three captured ships in charge of three officers and twenty men, with six prisoners of war, ordering them to remain five months and then go to Chile if no word came from him. Within a few days the natives began again to show the spirit of resistance and were brought to courtesy by a show of force. Then another difficulty arose. All but eight of the crew joined with the English prisoners in seizing the officers, and put Lieutenant Gamble, the commander, with four loyal seamen, adrift in a small boat, while the mutineers went to sea in one of the English ships.

The five men reached another of the ships in the bay, where they learned that Wilson had instigated the mutiny. The worst had not come, for very soon the natives, perhaps also urged on by the Englishman, murdered all the others but Gamble, one seaman, one midshipman, and five wounded men. Of the eight survivors, only one was acquainted with the management of a ship, and all were sufferings from wounds or disease. With these men Lieutenant Gamble put to sea.

After incredible hardship, he succeeded in reaching Hawaii, only to be captured by a British frigate which a few weeks earlier had a.s.sisted in the capture of the _Ess.e.x_ and Captain Porter. The United States never ratified Porter's occupation of Nuka-hiva, and it was left for the French thirty years later to seize the group. At about the same time Herman Melville, an American sailor, ventured overland into Typee Valley, and was captured and treated as a royal guest by the Typee people. He lived there many months, and heard no whisper of the havoc wrought by his countrymen a little time before.

The Typees had forgiven and forgotten it; he found them a happy, healthy, beautiful race, living peacefully and comfortably in their communistic society, coveting nothing from each other as there was plenty for all, eager to do honor to a strange guest who, they hoped, would teach them many useful things.

CHAPTER XXVI

A visit to Typee; story of the old man who returned too late.

I said, of course, that I must visit Typee, the scene of Porter's b.l.o.o.d.y raid and Herman Melville's exploits, and while I was making arrangements to get a horse in Tai-o-hae I met Haus Ramqe, supercargo of the schooner _Moana_, who related a story concerning the valley.

"I was working in the store of the Soceite Comerciale de l'Ocean in Tai-o-hae when the _Tropic Bird_, a San Francisco mail-schooner, arrived. That was ten years ago. An old man, an American, came into our place and asked the way to Typee.

"'Ah,' I said, 'you have been reading that book by Melville.' He made no reply, but asked me to escort him to the valley. We set out on horseback, and though he had not said that he had ever been in these islands before, I saw that he was strangely interested in the scenes we pa.s.sed. He was rather feeble with age, and he grew so excited as we neared the valley that I asked him what he expected to see there.

"He stopped his horse, and hesitated in his reply. He was terribly agitated.

"'I lived in Typee once upon a time,' he said slowly. 'Could there by chance be a woman living there named Manu? That was a long time ago, and I was young. Still, I am here, and she may be, too.'

"I looked at him and could not tell him the truth. It was evident he had made no confidant of the captain or crew of the _Tropic Bird_, for they could have told him of the desolation in Typee. I hated, though, to have him plump right into the facts.

"'How many people were there in your day?' I asked him. He replied that there were many thousands.

"'I lived there three years,' he said. 'I had a sweetheart named Manu, and I married her in the Marquesan way. I was a runaway sailor, and one night on the beach I was captured and taken away on a ship. I have been captain of a great American liner for years, always meaning to come back, and putting it off from year to year. All my people are dead, and I thought I would come now and perhaps find her here and end my days. I have plenty of money.'

"He seemed childish to me--perhaps he really had lost mental poise by age. I hadn't the courage to tell him the truth. We came on it soon enough. You must see Typee to realize what people mean to a place.

"The _nonos_ were simply h.e.l.l, but as I had lived a good many years in Tai-o-hae I was hardened to them. The old man slapped at them occasionally, but made no complaint. He hardly seemed to feel them, or to realize what their numbers meant. It was when we pushed up the trail through the valley, and he saw only deserted _paepaes_, that he began to look frightened.