Chapter I: THINK that you might like to hear something of the suburban life in (2)

René, my violin friend, went off to Matahiva on some business, and I was at my wit’s end to know how to get some cash and get away from Papeite. I was offered a job by some missionaries to go off to Rarotonga to help in mission work for awhile. I considered seriously becoming a missionary myself, as it seemed a paying game, and I never saw a mission man of any sect on the beach hard up. Van Blank had long since joined the mission and he introduced me to several young Tahitian mission girls who were devout Christians. They were mostly very good-looking, wore more clothing than the inland natives, were splendid dancers, and down in the thatched homesteads of the village of Tetua I went and stayed with Van Blank, and those mission girls, good gracious me! stood on their heads, screamed with laughter, waved their legs as I played the fiddle and all went back to the barbarian stage in five seconds, and after the dance I had to fly with Van Blank as twenty of them strove to embrace us, all at once! Next day Blank and I saw them in the mission-room teaching the native children to sing “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” or a tune of that type, and as we looked in the school door they looked up at us gravely with their earnest dark eyes as though we were absolute strangers to the wild carousal of the night before. You could tramp the world over and never find people so clever in their cunning as the Tahitian Islanders, and yet they are, as I found, staunch friends in adversity and would never give a white man away to his superiors. And so all the creed denominations go swimmingly along, safe and happy in the giant hypocrisy of reformation that has brought such changes to the Pacific Isle, such happiness to the reformers, and such deceit into the hearts of the reformed.

A large trading schooner, the _Austral_, at this time arrived in Tahiti and I once more secured a job as second mate and left the island. I heard that her final destination was Samoa and Tonga; she was then bound for the Marquesas Islands. Before leaving the “Society Group” she called at “Fakarava,” “Raiatea” and “Takaroa,” beautiful Isles they were too, standing lonely out there in the wide Pacific, covered with luxurious tropical trees that sheltered the velvety skinned natives, many of whom were as wild as the savages of Captain Cook’s days. Indeed, all the races that I came in contact with were as wild at heart as ever their ancestors were; but they were clever, and they soon discovered the best policy, which was hammered into them by the arrival of a warship and a gun battery to smash them up and let them see the white man’s power and the wisdom of following all his desires and ceasing all their own desires. Then the missionaries came and the traders brought the rum, and the money to buy the rum, and gave the women the opportunity to obtain the money, for it was the women of the South Seas that started to get the money and shared it with their native husbands. I think that must be the origin of the name “White Slave Traffic” of modern England. I know from my own eyes and from the lips of the sufferers of those far-off Isles that the Black Slave Traffic was a monstrous traffic beside which the English “White Slave Traffic” is a kind of sacred concert, comparatively speaking.

As far as I could judge and criticise the civilising influence of Christianity in the South Seas was this—the English, French and Germans discovered a beautiful land in the South Seas; a few months after arriving they blew the heads of some of the natives off, cowed them completely, took a battalion of sailors inland to the wild native village and those sailors all fell madly in love with the beautiful dark-eyed women who stood trembling before them, and by the time they were due to become mothers the fathers were in England, being paid their leave money at Chatham, while the missionaries, hot with haste, were outbound for the same Islands to reform the grieving mothers and make them more upright in their morals. When those missionaries arrived they put a “penny in the slot machine” on the shore, nailed a large tract on each wall of the heathen village homesteads, and then called the people Christianised as they knelt in their nudeness and penitence at their feet in chanting rows, repeating the Lord’s Prayer with bowed heads, as the missionaries lifted their eyes heavenward and did not miss their boot-laces till long after the reformed heathen had departed.

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XVI

Hafiao—Rival Marquesan Queens—Behind the Veil—Vaca Mountain—I meet
R.L.S.—Thakambau the Last of the Fijian Kings—Apia

AFTER a monotonous voyage of adverse winds and a typhoon that brought seas over and washed me out of my bunk, smashed our deck in and carried away all the cordage and boats, we arrived at “Hivaoa.” The natives swam out to us in shoals; on they came as the anchor dropped, lines and lines of bobbing frizzly heads with swimming eyes, gliding along to the paddling hands level with the water, while racing along in front of them came canoes heavily laden with cargoes of natives evidently more successful in life than the poverty-stricken swimmers who only possessed their own skins. We threw ropes over the ship’s side and up they came, clambering, and danced over the decks. Stalwart, fine fellows they were, with large lustrous eyes, and as soon as they leapt to the deck and shook themselves as dogs do after a swim, they started rushing about singing and jabbering for a job to take us ashore in their canoes, and the skipper stood by his cabin aft with a big cigar in his mouth, shouting, “Keep yer eye on the God-damned devils,” for he had turned his head for one moment and with native alertness one of them had dived into his cabin and collared his best white duck suit. Down came a large wooden plank over the poor devil’s head as he dropped the suit on deck and with a bound went over the side into the sea.

It was after sunset before I went ashore, and with several of the crew we roamed about visiting the natives in their thatched homes and saw the native children romping around as they sneaked out of their beds to peep at us and the swarthy mothers and fathers, squatting on the floor, cross-legged, invited us to drink and eat. All about us as we walked under the palms from one home to another we saw the shadows moving as the men and women roamed about, passing from clump to clump of palm-trees which shaded the Marquesan homesteads. It was just like some fairyland, as over the clear skies shone the Southern stars, and often came the singing of the natives and the beating of their wooden drums from where some of the families were giving parties over a birthday or the anniversary of a wedding, enjoying themselves in the same spirit as they do in the suburban homes of English towns.

I saw a lot of old chiefs and wrinkled dethroned kings and queens during my stay there. The girls were nearly all dressed in leafy girdles and the youths likewise. I had heard a lot about Hivaoa from Hornecastle and I remembered that he had several wives there and large grown-up families, but I did not meet any of them to my knowledge. I only stayed there two or three days and then joined the boat again and we left for Nuka Hiva. The natives there I found were very similar to those of Hivaoa, but the Island itself struck me as very prosperous, being a good deal under cultivation. Whilst there I went inland alone and made friends with a Marquesan chief named Hafiao. He could speak English fairly well, also a little French. I remember him well, because he was such an intellectual-looking old fellow and looked very much like Gladstone, but he was more powerfully built and of course brown skinned. He told me he was over a hundred years old, and he looked it too. He had a nice house and three pretty native women looked after him. I am not so sure that they were not his wives. He told me that nearly all the whites that called at Nuka Hiva came especially inland to see him, and he was as proud as anything when I told him that Robert Louis Stevenson was greatly impressed by him and his kingly bearing. Of course I made that all up, but while he puckered his wrinkled old face up and tried to tell me of the “great white people” that had called upon him, he mentioned the name of “Stessen” and from what he said I should imagine that he meant “Stevenson,” for he described him to me at my request, and most impressively told me that he was “good white mans who saw that he the great Hafiao was no ordinary man, but a brave and mighty king of men.” He also told me that R.L.S. had come especially across the seas from the great “white country” to see him and kneel at his feet; and as he told those tales of his proud imagination he lifted his intelligent eyes to the skies and his shrivelled lips trembled with emotional pride at the thought that, though he was no longer a ruler of men, there were white men living who had bowed the knee to him and assured him that he still lived in the memory of men as great as ever, though humbled by advancing civilisation and the wrecking hand of cruel Time. And, to tell the truth, that deserted forgotten old chief of barbarian Marquesan tribes had more of the look of born kingship in his stalwart shrivelled anatomy, as he sat there almost in tears over revived memories, than all the kings of Europe bunched together; and I shall never regret going on my knee before him and bowing my head in a moment of emotional impulse as I bade him farewell and pressed a plug of ship’s tobacco into his majestic hand, which gift so delighted him that he forgot the great majesty that for a moment had crowned him, and with an aged shrill voice shouted, “Good mans, white boy,” and stood upright and gave a kind of delighted double shuffle at such a stroke of luck.

In that same village I also met wrinkled old native women who gazed with scorn on the young native girls who wore tappa girdles from their waists to their knees. One of them told me she had been the most beautiful woman of the Islands and much loved by the bravest warriors of her day. She was not unlike the old Marquesan Queen whom Hornecastle introduced me to, who had had her photograph taken by the Judge’s son whom I met at Samoa, but she had not the queenly bearing, and when I crept into the next hut I learned from another dethroned queen that it was really she who was once the most beautiful of queens and the envy of all brave warriors, and she tried to get out of me what the “bad no good woman” next door had told me; but I kept a still tongue, for I saw how things were between them and did not wish them to murder each other over the awful jealousy that I saw each had for the other. I can still see their brown wrinkled faces under the starlit palms peeping from their den doors as I bade them farewell and passed away. I never saw such evil looks as they sideways gave each other as I crept quietly on. They each thought they had succeeded in proving they were old-time queens. I did not particularly like either of them, for each had gazed at me with odd looks and stroked my white hand with their shrivelled dark paws, smacking their remnants of lips, as though remembering old days and cannibalistic feasts.

Of course it may have been purely imagination on my part, but I could not help feeling as I did, for I had seen a good deal in my wanderings among the South Sea Islanders, much more than I have told you in these reminiscences—for there are things which I must leave out, things which are too dreadful to describe in cold print to civilised eyes of the home country, but are well known to the travellers of the days when I was a boy and saw the smouldering out of the true savage races of the South Seas. I lived on the Islands and mixed with the people as though I were one of them, and though the outside world lived under the impression that all the old savage instincts had died out, I knew that they had not. The natives knew they would be punished for cannibalism and other crimes of a bloodthirsty heathenish character, and so it was all practised in secrecy, and to this day I will swear terrible things are done on the quiet! Do not the civilised polished towns of Europe harbour in their very midst men who are dangerous criminals and addicted to heinous crimes? Often those very men mingle with you and even gain your admiration and respect, for you do not dream of their true character, and yet men think that the whole of the aboriginal South Sea races have completely changed their old instincts, and all are now Christian, just as they profess they are, and nothing is done under cover as it is done under cover in European cities!

I remember how Hornecastle got hold of a book which praised the reformation of the South Sea savage and the glorious work of the American missionaries. The old fellow was eating an orange as he read, and as he roared with laughter he swallowed the whole of the half orange, turned purple in the face, and when the native put his fingers down and cleared the throat passage the old chap sat upright, put his hand on his stomach and, to my astonishment, still continued to explode with laughter, roaring out at intervals as he nearly choked, “God help the damned heathens,” “Holy Moses and Missionaries,” and then buried his nose in the book and started to read again with extreme delight and twinkling eyes, for I think of all men he knew the stealthy lives that were being lived behind the veil of native life in the South Seas, where often men disappeared and were never heard of again, as the Polynesians, Melanesians and the half-castes saw the longed-for chance occur and got their own back! Aye, there are hundreds of skeletons whitening in the forest of those Pacific Isles, skeletons of men who fell by the stealthy war club or had their heads blown off by the old-fashioned breech-loading pistols given to the natives by traders for shiploads of copra, palm oil, and sometimes for help in kidnapping girls, who often disappeared from their homes and were never seen again.

I believe if a man like Hornecastle had written a book telling all that he had seen in his own time and the time when I was on those Islands it would have been one of the most terrible human documents ever read by the eyes of men, so terrible in its revelations of bloodshed, trickery and lust, both on the white and native side, that very few people would have believed a quarter of the truth told. There are no more undiscovered shores to be found in the world now, and never again in the history of the world will the wanderers from a highly civilised race suddenly come across primeval races in far seas, who will leap from the forest and gaze with astonished eyes into the eyes of men who are their brothers of long ago, lost in the dark of ages and returned to reform the ways of the old, and heartily enjoy the change from the new.

After a stay of about two weeks I sailed on the _Austral_ away from the beautiful shores of “Nuka Hiva.” Far away the whitening waves, tossing on the reefs, faded as the sunset struck the inland forest palms and mountain ranges, and then the stars came out and overhead the song of the sails started to sing and once more I was at sea. It was a long voyage; we called at the Caroline Islands, and after an absence of quite five months I once more arrived at Samoa, and got paid off by the skipper and stopped in Apia, resting myself for several weeks, spending my days in violin-studying and calling on the storekeepers. Afterwards I went to Upolu, and while strolling by the cedar-trees that skirted the shore forest I met Robert Louis Stevenson. “Hello, young man,” he said, as I looked up and recognised him, “are you still living here?” “No,” I answered, “I’ve been to the Marquesas, and Fiji, in fact all over the place.” I told him of the chieftain Hafiao who had told me that Stevenson had bowed the knee to him. He was extremely amused at all I told him, and I got to like him exceedingly as he began to talk in an earnest way about the Island customs and what the home folks would think of life in the South Seas and the women, for as we strolled along some pretty native girls went by with baskets of fish, their lava-lavas on, their bare brown bodies shining in the sunlight. We stopped them and R.L.S. bought one of the baskets of fish and invited me to his friend’s house, and I went with him and stayed and had supper and entertained them with the violin. I think the gentleman whom he was staying with then was an American, and had something to do with the Legation offices. I had a very pleasant time, and felt extremely at home with the earnest kind-faced man who has added such interest to the sad romance of Samoa, for as the world knows he died there and was buried on the top of Vaea Mountain, and to this day that mountain is looked upon as a sacred spot by the Samoans who loved R. L. Stevenson, and the natives never hunt or fire guns or shoot the birds that roam and sing by that mighty sepulchre, for it is their faith that his songs are still being sung by the birds as the years go by and he sleeps on that mountain top.

But to go back to the invitation which I had to supper.

I had a most enjoyable evening; there was a Mr Herd also in the party. The house was only a one-storey dwelling-place, and the room wherein we dined a large dim-lit place with two windows facing seaward. The overhead hanging lamp-glass had been smashed through the clumsiness of the native girls who waited at the table, and I was deeply thankful that they had done so, for I was pretty shabby and threadbare at that time, and the gloom made me feel more at ease as I sipped my wine and had very little to say, having no confidence in myself through the knowledge that R.L.S. was a writer of books. He seemed in a good mood as he sat at the other side of the table in his white duck suit, his lean bare throat moving above his loose low shirt collar as he and his friends spoke of their experiences in the Islands and bubbled over with laughter. The native girls, attired in fringed ridis and tappu cloth reaching from their breasts, and down to their bare knees, rushed round the table waving palm leaves to create a breeze, and repulse the mosquito droves that made desperate attempts to get their share by dining off us. The American Legation gentleman seemed to be a jolly customer, and partook frequently of the whisky.

Robert Louis Stevenson seemed very temperate; he smoked cigarettes and drank the pure juice of limes, holding them over a glass he squeezed them in his hand till the glass was nearly full, added whisky and drank at a gulp, throwing the skins of the limes over the heads of his friends, out of the open window, only just missing them, and seemed greatly amused as they dodged. He treated the native girls and boys who stood around with great kindness, speaking to them as though they were little children. I think he spoke to them in the native language. They seemed to know him; after the supper was over, I noticed their good behaviour and respectfulness, as they crossed their brown hands, closed their eyes and repeated word for word after R.L.S., as he bowed his head and said grace.

“Well, Middleton,” he said, as our host sat down to an old American organ and started playing softly, his feet going up and down ten revolutions a second, as he pedalled the leaky bellows, “which do you like the best, the Old Country or the South Seas?”

“Well, for climate and novelty, I like this place, but I often have a longing for the homeland.”

“So do I. We all love our native land the best at heart,” he said, and I could see by his expression that his dreams were often overseas, for he lapsed into silence, threw the cigarette away that he had only just lit, and placed another one in his mouth, and walked up and down, as was his habit at times when in conversation with anyone.

I remember that he asked me if I was going back to England again, also if I liked sea life, and when I told him of some of my bush experiences he seemed deeply interested, and asked me a good deal about the Australian blacks. He was greatly interested in their habits, and seemed to know a lot about their history and wandering instincts, and remarked upon the great difference between the intellects of the blacks and the Islanders of the South Seas, as he sat there gazing with his keen inquiring eyes, fingering his chin as the cool wind drifted through the open window. I can still vividly remember the delight in his face as he watched the native servants. I played the violin, accompanied by our host on the organ, who played by ear, and made up for his indifferent accompaniment by singing at intervals, as I did my best to entertain. R.L.S. joined in by humming. We were suddenly disturbed by a jabbering noise outside, and then the door opened and a native woman, with barely anything on except the ridi, poked her head and body half in the room and said something to our host the American, in the Samoan language. It appeared that he was a medical man, and had been attending her child who was suffering through influenza, which had become suddenly worse, so she and a gathering of friends had rushed hurriedly to our host for help. R.L.S. and I accompanied him, as he quickly shut down the organ lid, and off we all went out into the night.

Across the forest track we hurried. Like big children, Samoan mothers, men, and their naked little ones, went running along the moonlit track in front of us, the wailing mother and father of the sick child pattering beside us, looking with relieved eyes, because we were white men, thinking that our different skin made us potent and that all would be well when the doctor reached their child. We had to walk almost half-a-mile, and then they all turned off the forest track to the left, and under the palms, to where stood their large hut homes; bending down we all entered the sick-room. It was a sweet little mite, emaciated through chest trouble. Its tiny bones seemed to be all out of place, protruding under its soft velvety brown skin, as it gazed wistfully up with small bright fevered eyes, as we all leaned over its small mat bed.

The American tenderly picked her up, gave her physic, and did all that was best for the infant, then whispered some hopeless opinion to R.L.S., who tenderly bent over the little patient, as concerned as though it were his own child, as he chuckled with his lips, and touched it softly on the chin with his finger playfully, till it actually looked up at him and gave a wan smile. The parents fell on their knees delighted, and started rapidly to say the Lord’s Prayer together as others shouted “Folofa-Mio,” which meant “better to-morrow.” It was a weird sad sight, and when we passed out under the coco-palms into the brilliantly lit moonlit space I noticed Stevenson and the doctor were very quiet, for we felt pretty sadly as our medical friend had very dubious hopes as to its recovery. A Samoan quack medicine man had been practising on the sick mite, and the disease, through improper treatment, had got the upper hand. Stevenson went off soon after we reached the house again, and though it was very late, I would not accept the invitation to stay the night, and went back to my lodging by the shore side, near Apia Town, a little shanty place of a young trader, who had let me share his home. When I arrived back I felt a bit depressed, but my friend cheered me up. He was a lively fellow, crammed full up with reminiscences, having been for some years trading among the Islanders, and he would tell me in vivid language about his experiences in the Fijian group. He had known and lived with the son of Thakambau,[3] the last of the great Cannibal Kings, who had then been dead some two or three years or more, and terrible were the deeds of that old king before he became Christianised[4] and handed over the Fiji Isles to the British Government. I had personally met old men chiefs whose sisters had been roasted in the “Bokai Ovens” at the grand cannibal festivities of their young days.

Footnote 3:

Thakambau went on a visit to N.S.W. and brought measles back to Fiji,
which carried of a quarter of the population.

Footnote 4:

The Fijian race is fast dying out. Thousands of Indians arrive yearly,
and the result is that Mohammedanism is secretly over-throwing
Christianity and the noble, if futile, efforts of many true
missionaries in Fiji and elsewhere.

My comrade kept me up nearly the whole night cheerily telling me of the wild escapades of those days, and was extremely amusing as he described Fijian weddings, which were conducted something after the Samoan fashion as far as the fantastic dancing went, but there the similarity ended. By night most of the weddings were performed, the king or head chief of the tribe taking a seat on the throne, solemnly gazing on as a kind of spiritual figure-head, as from the forest for miles around came leaping the natives, attracted by the boomed notes of the lais (wooden drum), all to assemble and witness the wedding, as the native bride, flushed with pleasure, attired in the scant robe of the period, danced the wild fantastic can-can of the South Seas before the assembled encoring tribe, dressed only in a string of shells that jingled at her sulu-cloth. There on the chosen moonlit night under the tamnu and bread-fruit trees she swayed and swerved in all the postures that would reveal her beauty to the bridegroom’s eyes, and the ring of natives would make the forest and hills re-echo as their voices extolled her female charms, as the old high priest chanting the special service gazed enviously, nudging the bride as an encore hint whenever she did anything especially pleasing to the dusky onlookers. “Mbula! Mbula!” they would shout when at last, perspiring, trembling and excited, she stood at rest. “Mbula! Mbula!” they would still cry, which meant “may the gods send thee many children,” and then the bridegroom also danced as the old king or chief descended from his throne to welcome the bashful bride, and to bow her into his home before the great wedding feast, for it was the custom of certain tribes that the bride should receive the king’s kiss first. More I cannot say, excepting for the grim rumour and respect for the first-born, whose lineaments often resembled those of the old king who officiated at the wedding, and such was the great respect held for those children who were the first born, and consequently of blood-royal, that the unloved maidens of those wild Isles, as innocent as in the Garden of Eden, and of the ways of the Western world, would often ambitiously throw themselves across the path of the royal favour.

Oft sought the king the unloved forlorn maid
With witnesses to prove she’d been betrayed!

On the other hand some of the tribes outdid the high standard of the morals of advanced civilisation, and it was considered the height of impropriety for a maid to eat in the presence of a marriageable man, and everlasting disgrace lay on the head of the native girl who had once touched a bed mat whereon had slept a man, and many of the old customs of the South Seas are still practised secretly, and this was, and is, common knowledge to the white residents of the Pacific.

But to go back to my comrade the trader, I stayed at his homestead for some time. It was a romantic spot; by our front door curled the waves up the shore, and by night across the moonlit bay in canoes paddled the natives, singing as they fished.

We made a neat galley cooking stove just outside by the door, whereby we sat at night, as the fire blazed and the cooking fish spluttered in the frying-pan. My chum was a splendid cook, and served up many dishes of yams and bread fruit, entrées, done in native fashion. From the village a mile away, inland, the natives would come every morning and clean our one-roomed dwelling out. On the wooden walls above our bunks were photographs of our relations and friends in England. I was very happy there with my amiable chum, who was always in a joking mood, and would cheerily sing as I played the fiddle.

He was a bit gone on a half-caste Samoan girl, and the only little hitch that disturbed our friendship was through my foolishness in responding to the native girl’s wish to learn to play the violin. I was innocent enough, and as soon as I saw the way the wind blew I shut right down, and the fiddle lessons ceased, and so the sulky look on my comrade’s face faded and once more the cheery smile returned; and by the crackling fire and spluttering stews, into my ears was poured the lore of the South Seas, with the human note of reality in it, till we retired to bed, and the warm wind in moonlight waved the shadows of the palm leaves outside over our faces as we lay unsleeping in our coffin-shaped bunks, my chum one side and I the other side, talking and dreaming till “Are you asleep, Middy?” sounded far away, as I sleepily answered, “Yes” over and over again as he talked on, till at last even the sound of the waves outside faded away and we both slept.

The natives got very friendly with us two, and extremely jealous of each other if we hired one of them more than another, and terrible were the tales we had to hear about the one whom we had hired.

“He not Christian man. Sin much, and steal ‘nother man’s wife” and so on, till we thought it advisable, before there was a murder in the camp, to make a bargain with the lot, and hire them all at regular intervals to do our cooking, wood collecting and the rough general work.

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XVII

Apia—R.L.S. visits Samoan Homesteads—Apia Beach Incident—Samoan Music
and Dancing—I am nearly drowned—Native Song—Native Music and my own
Compositions, which reproduce South Sea Characteristic Music and
Atmosphere—I sleep in Cannibalistic Cooling-off Larder—“Barney Dear”
and Old Naylor

ON the beach about a mile from Apia, in our ramblings together, we came across Robert Louis Stevenson. He was paddling in a shallow by the shore, his pants tucked up to his knees, his legs sun-scorched and browned. It was fearfully hot, and at first he did not recognise me, for I was as brown as a nut, and had on a tremendous umbrella hat; the rim was a foot wide and dipped downwards. I had told him when I last saw him that I was going away to South America, as at the time I thought I had secured a berth on a “Frisco” schooner that lay in the Bay, and so he was somewhat surprised to see me.

I had just caught a monster sea-eel, and as he gazed upon it I offered it to him. He would not take it till I convinced him that I did not want it. His friend plucked a palm leaf and gingerly grabbed the slippery victim, and as he did so, we were all suddenly startled by hearing shouts and the sounds of pistol shots along the shore.

“What’s that?” said R.L.S. He seemed pleasurably excited at the idea of some adventure coming, and we all went off together in the direction of the noise. At that time there was often a feud between the various native tribes who differed on some political matter; also there were often fights between the natives, some who were adherents to King Malieatoa Laupepa, and others who swore by Mataafa. It so happened that it was only a squabble of a minor kind, and when we arrived near the scene of the conflict, the ambushed natives bolted.

Stevenson seemed somewhat disappointed. I gathered from his manner that he would have loved to have seen a real native battle, for his eyes flashed with excitement at the prospect of what might be happening as we went up the steep shore, and his friend, who was a careful and jovial-looking man, about Stevenson’s own age, warned him to be careful as he heedlessly went forward.

Out came the native children rushing excitedly from among the forest trees; Stevenson spoke to them half in pigeon-English and half in Samoan, as they excitedly pointed toward the direction in which the guilty natives had gone. All being quiet, and the prospect of more excitement from that quarter disappearing, we went back to the shore, and searching about found the eel which Stevenson’s friend had dropped at the sound of the pistol firing. Having found it, we all went off into a native homestead some distance away from the shore, wherein lived a family who appeared to be on very good terms with R.L.S.

They were all dressed in the “upper ten” native fashion of Samoa. One of them was wearing an old American naval officer’s cast-off suit. The women had their hair done in fashionable style with red and white blossoms stuck in at the bunched sides, also on their native girdles, and what with their plump handsome faces and intelligent eyes, looked strikingly attractive. There were several children, and they all welcomed him and rolloped around us with delight.

Stevenson was soon engaged with the elder, who, I think, was a Mataafa chief, who could not speak English; but R.L.S. seemed to understand all he said, and by the way he made him repeat phrases over and over again, I should think the chief was correcting Stevenson’s pronunciation of some Samoan words.

The native boys and girls were dressed neatly in ridis, and tappu-cloth blouses, their hair parted and combed smoothly, and very polite, too, they were, as they brought Stevenson their school-books, wherein they had written their English lessons. Stevenson seemed to take a deep interest in their efforts, patted them on the heads approvingly as he examined their books and this greatly delighted them. In the corner of the large shed-like place, wherein we all stood, the youngest son of about six years of age, quite naked, stood on his head singing with gusto, as R.L.S. gave him a lead pencil as a gift, for he seemed to be very fond of children and greatly enjoyed seeing their delight. Lifting the little girls up, he held them high over his head, as the parents smiled approval at his antics to make them laugh, and Samoan children are never so pleasing and pretty as when their cheery little brown faces laugh, as their mouths stretch, and all their pearly teeth are exposed to view.

As we said good-bye to the chief and his wife, Stevenson put the youngest girl on his back as though to take her away with him. Although she was only a mite of about three years old, she seemed to see the joke, and waved her hands towards the homestead as we all walked away: then when he put her to the ground she scampered off so fast homeward that you couldn’t see her tiny legs going!

I am telling you all this so as to attempt to give an idea of Stevenson’s character, as he appeared to my eyes as a lad. It was then evening time, and the sun was setting over the hills as we all went down the forest track, and in the distance two white women and a native were coming up towards us. It was R.L.S.’s wife and a friend. Mrs Stevenson affectionately greeted him with a loud kiss! And then started to give him a dressing-down for going off and not keeping some domestic appointment.

She was a vivacious amiable lady, without any side whatever; dressed like an Australian squatter’s wife, and bare throated like Stevenson himself, and they both wore white shoes without wearing socks, in sandal fashion.

As we walked along the track Stevenson was very observant and asked the natives the names of various tropical trees. He had a cheery musical laugh, and a pronounced habit of gazing abstractedly in front of him while anyone was talking to him, a habit which was especially noticeable when his wife was with him, for he seemed to look upon her as a sort of helpmate to relieve him and take the burden off his shoulders, by answering and apologising to those who interrupted his meditations. At other times he was just the reverse and strangely talkative, and could not talk fast enough to his friends, whom he seemed very much attached to, as he took down notes in a pocket-book. He had the appearance of a man of very strong character, affectionate and tender to children and all those about him.

I should think he was one of those who would show great courage if he were called on to do so, for once on Apia beach a white man was thrashing a Samoan boy who had been stealing fruit and fish from a basket which he had left outside a grog saloon. Stevenson, who happened to be strolling down the beach to take a boat out to a schooner anchored in the bay, caught sight of the coward blows being inflicted on the frightened lad, and as the trader did not cease, Stevenson went straight up to him and pushed him aside, and heatedly expostulated with him about his brutality. The ruffian stared astonished at R.L.S. and then used some offensive epithet, at which Stevenson’s face went rigid as he stared at him with flashing eyes, and almost lost control of himself. I saw that had not the man had the instinct to see that Stevenson was not the slightest bit frightened of him and gone away muttering to himself, Stevenson would have knocked him down.

I think it was that same evening that I went to a native feast at Satoa village. The guests were mostly of the Samoan best-class natives. It was a lovely night. Overhead sailed the full moon in the dark blue vault of a cloudless heaven, as by the huddled native village homes the assembled privileged guests squatted around, forming a ring of dark bodies as they watched the weird fantastic dance which celebrated the birth of a child to a celebrated chief. The stage of the forest floor was adorned with the Samoan professional dancers and singers. I shall always remember the weird beauty of that romantic scene as they swayed and danced, chanting strange ear-haunting melodies, all their faces alight with animation and the joy of being alive as they sang old South Sea love songs, suddenly stopping in their wild dances as the words of the choruses breathed thoughts of love and impassioned vows of plighted lovers. They would stop perfectly still and gaze for a few moments, staring in each other’s eyes like statues, or the figures of romantic love pictures, only their lips moving as they sang the words of delight into the listening maids’ ears, then once more suddenly start off whirling round with their arms, swaying rhythmically, their faces gazing upwards, and sometimes over their shoulders.

I can truly say that I have never seen anything so really romantic, or heard music that so truly expressed human emotions, excepting perhaps when, some years after, I was troubadouring on the frontier of Spain, and played the violin, accompanying the Spanish peasants as they sang in parts the romantic “Estudiantina.” The Spanish maids gazed into their lovers’ eyes, as they sang, much the same as the savages of the South Seas did on that night of which I am now telling you.

A day or so after the preceding incidents, I made the acquaintance of a Mr Powell, who was a friend of Stevenson’s. I was playing the violin on an American ship that had put into Apia harbour, and he was on board. He was one of the head missionaries, and struck me as a very pleasant gentleman. I was trying to get a berth on the boat, which was going to San Francisco, but I did not succeed. The night before she left I was in the fo’c’sle, playing the fiddle, with the sailors who had accordions and banjos, and as we were playing “Down by the Swanee River” R.L.S. peeped in at the door. I could just see him by the dim oil lamp, as he gazed over the shoulder of Mr Powell, his friend, who was with him. His face lit up with a gleam of pleasure as he listened to the rough sailor concert as one of the crew danced a jig.

Though Stevenson at the time must have been in consumption, he never struck me as delicate, but, on the other hand, looked one of the thin wiry kind, always alert, and boyishly curious in all that was going on around him; when he laughed it was as though to himself over some pleasant memory, and his eyes gazed with a feminine gleam, half revealing the emotional strain of the woman and the firmness of the man in his intellectual face—the mixture that all brave men are made up of. I was unusually observant at that time through my increased knowledge that he was a writer far above the average, and I also noticed the respect with which he was treated by those around him, and especially the natives, who were comical in their unconcealed pride when he spoke to them.

If I had seen and spoken to R.L.S. without knowing who he was, I should have thought he was a skipper or mate of some American or English ship; his manner was easy, in fact, almost rollicking at times.

I met Mrs Stevenson again later, and she asked me to come up to their home and bring the violin, and chided me for not keeping an appointment I had made before. I promised to go, but never went; unfortunately I went off in the morning of the appointed day, on a cruise with my comrade. A hurricane came and blew us out to sea, several times we nearly turned upside down and once a sea went right over the boat, and away went my comrade. I leaned over the side to drag him back, and he grabbed hold of me and over I went also. We could both swim, but I went under, came up and found I was under the boat. It was a terrible feeling of despair and fright that went through me as my head bobbed under the keel; the universe seemed to be a tremendous black grip that had got me into its death-clutch. All the life in my body seemed to wrench my bones apart as I swallowed water and gave a desperate plunge downward in my last bit of consciousness, and came up to the surface just by the boat’s side.

My comrade clutched my head by the hair, and when I was in the boat again safe I almost hugged him with affection, the wind and the flying clouds overhead, all sunlit, made me feel delirious as I thought how near I had been to never seeing them again! At last, after a terrible struggle, we landed some miles round the coast. Our hands were bleeding and blistered through straining at the oars to keep the boat’s head to the seas, and desperate bailing to stop us from being swamped.

As we landed on the beach and pulled our boat safely up the shore, an old native man came running down from the palm patch and offered us shelter, which we gladly accepted. He turned out to be an old servant of some Mataafa chief, full of spite for being out of favour with his late illustrious master, but proud of being a late vassal to Samoan royal blood. He had a nice roomy homestead, two large rooms. Though he was old, his wife looked only twenty. They had one child, a few months old. My chum and I kissed it affectionately and drank bowls of kava which our host kindly gave us. We stayed the night, slept on sleeping mats. All night torrents of rain fell, the hurricane and wind nearly blew the house down and lifted me off my mat, for the room was open three feet from the ground all round in the Samoan style. It was a warm wind; with the moan of the seas breaking on the shore below, the moaning of the bending coco-palms and the wailing cry of the baby at regular intervals, I had no sleep.

In the morning we went down to the boat; our fishing tackle, revolver and my coat had vanished from the locker. I had my suspicions about our host, and we felt very much annoyed, for we could not go back and accuse him after his hospitality, as we were only absolutely certain in our suspicions, and had no witnesses to prove we had been betrayed—like the astute Fijian maids about whom I told you some pages back. I deeply regretted the incidents of that cruise, which caused my not being able to keep the appointment with Mrs Stevenson.

When I arrived back I went to their home, but they were all away on a cruising trip, I think. I stayed with Holders, my comrade, for some little time after that, long enough to teach him to play simple melodies on the fiddle, and on those nights I composed some of the melodies of my “Entr’actes,” “Song of the Night,” “The Monk’s Dream” and many others which have since been embodied in my compositions for pianoforte, orchestra and military bands.[5] I also composed at that time my waltz, “A Soldier’s Dream,” which was played at Government House, Sydney. I received a letter of praise from Sir Henry Parkes and felt very pleased; that waltz became popular all over New South Wales, although it was unpublished, and played from manuscript.

Footnote 5:

Published by Boosey & Co., London.

Holders was not one of the polished kind, but he was better, being a brave good-hearted fellow, and I liked his companionship all the more because he did not drink. Though I found drunken men amusing in my travels of the South Seas, my instincts secretly detested them, and gave me a kind of sorrow akin to sympathy for men so affflicted.

Eventually we both secured berths on a large schooner, bound for Fiji. On board was an American missionary who had not been long out from Home. He became very friendly with me, and I liked him very well, and there was a link of comradeship between us for we were both homesick. The crew were nearly all Samoans who cheerily sang the whole day and night. I slept in the deck-house with them as there was no room aft, where I should have slept, as we had four passengers. The skipper was never sober, and came to the deck-house one night and continued to sing. I think he had got the delirium tremens. He made us crowd sail on when it was blowing a gale and take sail in when a four-knot breeze was on; swore that he saw spirits dancing on the deck, and that the natives had put evil spirits and demons on his track. He went off to sleep at last, and I and the mate took charge of the ship and the passengers were much relieved, and the Samoans started off on their old idol songs _ad libitum_.

Two of them had fine voices; their songs were old folk-lore chants telling of South Sea heroes. I would get them to sing to me and so learnt them off by heart and played them on the violin, but the melodies all seemed to lose their wild atmosphere when played as simple strains and divided into bars, unwedded to the Samoan words and the intonation of the wild childlike voices of the Islanders. Most of the South Sea strains are in minor keys; I give you here as near as possible my own impression of the melodies as I heard them sung.

[Music: _Andante._ _Chant Style._ Composed by A.S.M. _mp_ Lais (Drums) _ff_ lais ... lais ... COPYRIGHT.]

When we arrived at Viti-Levu, I went ashore and stayed for several days and had the pleasure of hearing a Fijian princess sing native songs. She was a granddaughter of King Thakambau, and resided in one of the best houses in Suva, was a good hand at playing the guitar and took an interest in me, as I was a musician; her husband, a Fijian chief, had a deep mellow voice which was astonishingly musical for a Fijian, and they sang together to me in their native home, squatting on their mats side by side. The princess was a beautiful-looking woman for a full-blooded native, and I spent a good deal of time with them, and really appreciated her songs and playing. Some of the melodies she sang had the Western note in them. As near as I can I reproduce here one of my own impressions of a characteristic Samoan song’s note.

[Music: SAMOAN LOVE SONG[6] MINOR. _Moderato._ _mp_ Words and Music by A.S.M. Mia Ta - lo - fa, The chiefs are sleep - ing, the seas in moon - light sing. The REFRAIN, _Moderato_. _con expressione_. night-winds are sing - ing my Ma - la - boo maid Un - der the co - - - co - palms. COPYRIGHT. ]

Footnote 6:

“Mia Talofa”: Samoan waltz, for pianoforte and as a song. Also for
orchestra and military band. Published in London.

I could not stand the skipper of the boat which we had come across by (I think the name of the schooner was the _Nelson_) and so I left, and my friend Holders with me. We got into pretty low water in about a week, and both eventually secured a berth on another ship, a small barque, which was going to the Marquesas Islands. The mate was ill, and went into hospital at Suva, and I secured the berth. She was not sailing for two or three days, and so we were still stranded, beachcombers and cashless, but I met a Mr Fisher, who was a wealthy trader and had settled on the Islands. I went up to his house with my comrade and took the violin for an evening’s pleasure. We arrived a few minutes before the dining hour (in the true poet and musician style of the South Seas and Western Seas) because we had not a cent between us and on the Islands it was a great breach of etiquette not to treat the host before the meal hour. Mr and Mrs Fisher were on the look-out for us and our programme went off well, for we sat down to dinner almost immediately. We had a splendid time, received some cash in hand, warmly shook our host’s hand, and departed late at night in a misty dream, for we were not used to the strong wine which our host was so liberal with, and seemed to walk on air as our legs went up the white moonlit forest track as we tramped along together merrily singing years ago.