Chapter VII: Part III: Barbarian Days (4)

What did he then? I must have asked for drink. He gave it me from an artery in his wrist, severed by the finest teeth you ever saw. That's what saved me. On came the little schooner, beating up against the wind and tide, while I had my lips sealed to that fountain of life.

The skipper kept banging away with an old blunderbuss that had been left over in his bargains with the savages, and one of these explosions caught the ears of Hua. He tore my lips from his wrist, staggered to his feet, and found help close at hand. Too late they gathered us up out of the deep and strove to renew our strength. They transported us to the little cabin of the schooner, Hua Manu, myself, and that mincing owl, and swung off into the old course. Probably the Great Western never did better sailing since she came from the stocks than that hour or two of beating that brought her up to the shoal. She seemed to be emulating it in the home run, for we went bellowing through the sea in a stiff breeze and the usual flood-tide on deck.

I lived to tell the tale. I should think it mighty mean of me not to live after such a sacrifice. Hua Manu sank rapidly. I must have nearly drained his veins, but I don't believe he regretted it. The captain said when he was dying, his faithful eyes were fixed on me. Unconsciously I moved a little; he smiled, and the soul went out of him in that smile, perfectly satisfied. At that moment the owl fled from the cabin, passed through the hatchway, and disappeared.

Hua Manu lay on the deck, stretched under a sail, while I heard this. I wondered if a whole cargo of pearls could make me indifferent to his loss. I wondered if there were many truer and braver than he in Christian lands. They call him a heathen. It _was_ heathenish to offer up his life vicariously. He might have taken mine so easily, and perhaps have breasted the waves back to his own people, and been fêted and sung of as the hero he truly was.

Well, if he is a heathen, out of my heart I would make a parable, its rubric bright with his sacrificial blood, its theme this glowing text: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for a friend."

[Decoration]

THE LAST OF THE GREAT NAVIGATOR.

Think of a sea and sky of such even and utter blueness, that any visible horizon is out of the question. In the midst of this pellucid sphere the smallest of propellers trailing two plumes of sea-foam, like the tail-feathers of a bird of paradise, and over it all a league of floating crape,--for so seem the heavy folds of smoke that hang above us.

Thus we pass out of our long hours of idleness in that grove of eight thousand cocoa-palms by the sea-shore,--the artist and I seeking to renew our _dolce far niente_ in some new forest of palms by any shore whatever. Enough that it is sea-washed, and hath a voice and an eternal song.

Now turn to the stone-quarry darkened with the groups of the few faithful friends and many islanders. They are so ready to kill time in the simplest manner; why not in staring our awkward little steamer out of sight?

One glimpse of the white handkerchiefs, fluttering like a low flight of doves, and then with all the sublime resignation of the confessed lounger, we await the approach of twilight and the later hours that shall presently pass silver-footed over this tropic sea.

Four, P. M., and the roar of the reef lost to us voyagers. The sun an hour high. The steams of dinner appealing to us through the yawning hatches,--everything yawning in this latitude, animate and inanimate,--and the world as hot as Tophet. We lie upon our mattresses, brought out of the foul cabin into the sweet air, and pass the night half intoxicated with romance and cigarettes. The natives cover the deck of our little craft in lazy and laughing flocks. Some of them regard us tenderly; they are apt to love at sight, though Heaven knows there is little in our untrimmed exteriors to attract any one under the stars.

We hear, now and then, the sharp click of flint and steel, and after it see the flame, and close to the flame a dark face, grotesque it may be, like an antique water-spout with dust in its jaws. But some are beautiful, with glorious eyes that shine wonderfully in the excitement of lighting the pipe anew.

Voices arise at intervals from among the groups of younger voyagers. We hear the songs of our own land worded in oddly and rather prettily broken English. "Annie Laurie," "When the Cruel War is over," and other equally ambitious and proportionately popular ballads ring in good time and tune from the lips of the young bloods, but the girls seldom join to any advantage. How strange it all seems, and how we listen!

With the first and deepest purple of the dawn, the dim outlines of Molokai arise before us. It is an island of cliffs and cañons, much haunted of the King, but usually out of the tourist's guide-book.

It is hinted one may turn back this modern page of island civilization, and with it the half-christianized and wholly bewildered natures of the uncomprehending natives, and here find all of the old superstitions in their original significance, the temples, and the shark-god, and the _hula-hula_ girls, beside whose weird and maddening undulations your _can-can_ dancers are mere jumping-jacks.

Listen for faint music of the wandering minstrels! No, we are too far out from shore: then it is the wrong end of the day for such festivals.

A brief siesta under the opening eyelids of the morn, and at sunrise we dip our colors abreast charming little Lahaina, drowsy and indolent, with its two or three long, long avenues overhung with a green roof of leaves, and its odd summer-houses and hammocks pitched close upon the white edge of the shore.

We wander up and down these shady paths an hour or two, eat of the fruits, luscious and plentiful, and drink of its liquors, vile and fortunately scarce, and get us hats plaited of the coarsest straw and of unbounded rim, making ourselves still more hideous, if indeed we have not already reached the acme of the unpicturesque.

Now for hours and hours we hug the shore, slowly progressing under the insufficient shadow of the palms, getting now and then glimpses of valleys folded inland, said to be lovely and mystical. Then there are mites of villages always half-grown and half-starved looking, and always close to the sea. These islanders are amphibious. The little bronze babies float like corks before they can walk half the length of a bamboo-mat.

Another night at sea, in the rough channel this time, and less enjoyable for the rather stiff breeze on our quarter, and some very sour-looking clouds overhead. All well by six, however, when we hear the Angelus rung from the low tower of a long coral church in another sea-wedded hamlet. Think of the great barn-like churches, once too small for the throngs that gathered about them, now full of echoes, and whose doors, if they still hang to their hinges, will soon swing only to the curious winds!

In and out by this strange land, marking all its curvatures with the fidelity of those shadow lines in the atlas, and so lingering on till the evening of the second day, when, just at sunset, we turn suddenly into the bay that saw the last of Captain Cook, and here swing at anchor in eight fathoms of liquid crystal over a floor of shining white coral, and clouds of waving sea-moss. From the deck behold the amphitheatre wherein was enacted the tragedy of "The Great Navigator, or the Vulnerable god." The story is brief and has its moral.

The approach of Captain Cook was mystical. For generations the islanders had been looking with calm eyes of faith for the promised return of a certain god. Where should they look but to the sea, whence came all mysteries and whither retreated the being they called divine?

So the white wings of the Resolution swept down upon the life-long quietude of Hawaii like a messenger from heaven, and the signal gun sent the first echoes to the startled mountains of the little kingdom.

They received this Jupiter, who carried his thunders with him and kindled fires in his mouth. He was the first smoker they had seen, though they are now his most devout apostles. Showing him all due reverence, he failed to regard their customs and traditions, which was surely ungodlike, and it rather weakened the faith of their sages.

A plot was devised to test the divinity of the presuming captain.

While engaged in conversation, one of the chiefs was to rush at Cook with a weapon; should he cry out or attempt to run, he was no god, for the gods are fearless; and if he was no god, he deserved death for his deception. But if a god, no harm could come of it, for the gods are immortal.

So they argued, and completed their plans. It came to pass in the consummation of them that Cook did run, and thereupon received a stab in the back. Being close by the shore he fell face downward in the water and died a half-bloody, half-watery, and wholly inglorious death. His companions escaped to the ship and peppered the villages by the harbor, till the inhabitants, half frantic, were driven into the hills.

Then they put to sea, leaving the body of their commander in the hands of the enemy, and with flag at half-mast were blown sullenly back to England, there to inaugurate the season of poems, dirges, and pageants in honor of the Great Navigator.

His bones were stripped of flesh, afterwards bound with _kapa_, the native cloth, and laid in one of the hundred natural cells that perforate the cliff in front of us, and under whose shadow we now float. Which of the hundred is the one so honored is quite uncertain. What does it matter, so long as the whole mountain is a catacomb of kings? No commoners are buried there. It was a kind and worthy impulse that could still venerate so far the mummy of an idol of such palpable clay as his.

Many of these singular caverns are almost inaccessible. One must climb down by ropes from the cliff above. Rude bars of wood are laid across the mouths of some of them. It is the old _tabu_ never yet broken. But a few years back it was braving death to attempt to remove them.

Cook's flesh was most likely burned. It was then a custom. But his heart was left untouched of the flames of this sacrifice. What a salamander the heart is that can withstand the fires of a judgment!

The story of this heart is the one shocking page in this history: some children discovered it afterward, and, thinking it the offal of an animal, devoured it. Whoever affirms that the "Sandwich-Islanders eat each other," has at least this ground for his affirmation. Natives of the South Sea Islands have been driven as far north as this in their frail canoes. They were cannibals, and no doubt were hungry, and may have eaten in their fashion, but it is said to have been an acquired taste, and was not at all popular in this region. Dramatic justice required some tragic sort of revenge, and this was surely equal to the emergency.

Our advance guard, in the shape of a month-earlier tourist, gave us the notes for doing this historical nook in the Pacific. A turned-down page, it is perhaps a little too dog-eared to be read over again, but we all like to compare notes. So we noted the items of the advance guard, and they read in this fashion:--

OBJECTS OF INTEREST RELATING TO CAPTAIN COOK.

Item I. The tree where Cook was struck.
" II. The rock where Cook fell.
" III. The altar on the hill-top.
" IV. The riven palms.
" V. The sole survivor,--the boy that ran.
" VI. A specimen sepulchre in the cliff.

Until dark the native children have been playing about us in the sea, diving for very smooth "rials," and looking much as frogs must look to wandering lilliputians. The artist cares less for these wild and graceful creatures than one would suppose, for he confesses them equal in physical beauty to the Italian models. All sentiment seemed to have been dragged out of him by much travel. At night we sit together on the threshold of our grass house, and not twenty feet from the rock--under water only at high tide--where Cook died. We sit talking far into the night, with the impressive silence broken only by the plash of the sea at our very door.

By and by the moon looks down upon us from the sepulchre of the kings. We are half clad, having adopted the native costume as the twilight deepened and our modesty permitted. The heat is still excessive. All this low land was made to God's order some few centuries ago. We wonder if He ever changes his mind; this came down red-hot from the hills yonder, and cooled at high-water mark. It holds the heat like an oven-brick, and we find it almost impossible to walk upon it at noontime, even our sole-leather barely preserving our feet from its blistering surface. The natives manage to hop over it now and then; they are about half leather, anyhow, and the other half appetite.

We come first upon No. II. in the list of historic haunts.

Let us pass down to the rock, and cool ourselves in the damp moss that drapes it. It is almost as large as a dinner-table, and as level. You can wade all around it, count a hundred little crabs running up and down over the top of it. So much for one object of interest, and the artist draws his pencil through it. At ten, P. M., we are still chatting, and have added a hissing pot of coffee over some live coals to our housekeeping. Now down a little pathway at our right comes a native woman, with a plump and tough sort of pillow under each arm. These she implores us to receive and be comfortable. We refuse to be comforted in this fashion, we despise luxuries, and in true cosmopolitan independence hang our heads over our new saddle-trees, and sleep heavily in an atmosphere rank with the odor of fresh leather; but not till we have seen our humane visitor part of the way home. Back by the steep and winding path we three pass in silence. She pauses a moment in the moonlight at what seems a hitching-post cased in copper. It is as high as our hip, and has some rude lettering apparently scratched with a nail upon it. We decipher with some difficulty this legend:--

+
Near this spot
fell
~CAPTAIN JAMES COOK, R. N.,~
the
Renowned Circumnavigator,
who
discovered these islands,
A. D. 1778.

His Majesty's Ship
Imogene,
Oct. 17, 1837.

So No. I. of our list is checked off, and no lives lost.

"_Aloha!_" cries a soft voice in the distance. Our native woman has left us in our pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, and now there is no visible trace of her and her pillows,--only that voice out of the darkness crying, "Love to you!" She lives in memory,--this warm-hearted _Waihine_; so do her pillows.

Returning to our lodgings, we discover a square heap of broken lava rocks. It seems to be the foundation for some building; and such it is, for here the palace of Kamehameha I. stood,--a palace of grass like this one we are sleeping in. Nothing but the foundation remains now. Half a dozen rude stairs invite the ghosts of the departed courtiers to this desolate ruin.

They are all Samaritans in this kingdom. By sunrise a boy with fresh coffee and a pail of muffins rides swiftly to our door. He came from over the hill. Our arrival had been reported, and we are summoned to a late breakfast in the manner of the Christians. We are glad of it. Our fruit diet of yesterday, the horrors of a night in the saddle--a safe and pretty certain mode of dislocating the neck--make us yearn for a good old-fashioned meal. Horses are at our service. We mount after taking our muffins and coffee in the centre of a large and enthusiastic gathering of villagers. They came to see us eat, and to fumble the artist's sketches, and wonder at his amazing skill.

Up the high hill with the jolliest sun shining full in our eyes, brushing the heavy and dew-filled foliage on both sides of the trail, and under the thick webs spun in the upper branches, looking like silver laces this glorious morning,--on, till we reach the hill-top.

Here the guide pauses and points his horse's nose toward a rude _corral_. The horses seem to regard it from habit,--we scarcely with curiosity. A wall half in ruins in the centre, rising from a heap of stones tumbled together, a black, weather-stained cross, higher than our heads as we sit in the saddle. It is the altar of sacrifice. It is here that the heart of the great navigator survived the flames.

No. III. scored off. At this rate we shall finish by noon easily. The sequel of an adventurous life is soon told.

After breakfast, to horse again, and back to the little village by the sea. We ride into a cluster of palms, our guide leading the way, and find two together, each with a smooth and perfectly round hole through its body, about three feet from the roots, made by the shot of Cook's avengers. A lady could barely thrust her hand through them; they indicate rather light calibre for defence nowadays, but enough to terrify these little villages, when Cook's men sent the balls hissing over the water to bite through the grit and sap of these slender shafts. They still live to tell the tale in their way. So much for No. IV.

We pause again in the queer little straggling alleys of the village, planned, I should think, after some spider's web. They are about as regular in their irregularity. It is No. V. this time. A bit of withered humanity doubled up in the sun, as though some one had set him up on that wall to bake. He is drawn all together; his chin sunk in between his knees, his knees hooped together with his dreadfully slim arms, a round head, sleek and shining as an oiled gourd; _sans_ teeth; eyes like the last drops in desert wells; the skeleton sharply protruding; no motion; apparently no life beyond the quick and incessant blinking of the eyelids,--the curtains fluttering in the half-shut windows of the soul. _Is_ it a man and a brother? Yes, verily! When the uncaptured crew of the Resolution poured their iron shot into the tents of the adversary, this flickering life was young and vigorous, and he ran like a good fellow. Better to have died in his fiery youth than to have slowly withered away in this fashion. For here is the philosophy of mammon left to itself: when you get to be an old native, it is your business to die; if you don't know your business, you are left to find it out: what are you good for but to bury?

Let us slip over the smooth bay, for we must look into one of these caverns. Cross in this canoe, so narrow that we cannot get into it at all, but balance ourself on its rim and hold our breath for fear of upsetting. These odd-looking out-riggers are honest enough in theory, but treacherous in practice; and a shark has his eye on us back yonder. Sharks are mesmeric in their motions through the water, and corpse-colored.

A new guide helps us to the most easily reached cave, and with the lad and his smoking torch we climb into the dusky mouth.

There is dust everywhere and cobwebs as thick as cloth, hanging in tatters. An almost interminable series of small cells, just high enough to straighten one's back in, leads us farther and farther into the mountain of bones. This cave has been pillaged too often to be very ghostly now. We find a little parcel of bones here. It might have been a hand and an arm once, cunning and dexterous. It is nothing now but a litter. Here is an infant's skull, but broken, thin and delicate as a sea-shell, and full of dust. Here is a tougher one, whole and solid; the teeth well set and very white; no sign of decay in any one of these molars. Perhaps it is because so little of their food is even warm when they eat it. This rattles as we lift it. The brain and the crumbs of earth are inseparably wedded. Come with us, skull. You look scholarly, and shall lie upon our desk,--a solemn epistle to the living. But the cave is filled with the vile smoke of our torch, and we are choked with the heat and dust. Let us out as soon as possible. The Great Navigator's skeleton cannot be hidden in this tomb. Down we scramble into the sand and shadow by the water, and talk of departing out of this place of relics.

We are to cross the lava southward where it is frescoed with a wilderness of palm-trees: for when the mountain came down to the sea, flowing red-hot, but cooling almost instantly, it mowed down the forests of palms, and the trunks were not consumed, but lay half buried in the cooling lava, and now you can mark every delicate fibre of the bark in the lava, as firm as granite.

Still farther south lies the green slope that was so soon to be shaken to its foundations. I wonder if we could discover any of the peculiar loveliness that bewitched us the evening we crossed it in silence. There was something in the air that said, "Peace, peace"; and we passed over the fatal spot without speaking. But the sea spoke under the cliffs below us, and the mountain has since replied.

This place is named prettily, _Kealekakua_. You see that mountain? There are paths leading to it. Thither the gods journeyed in the days of old. So the land is called "the path of the gods."

It is a cool, green spot up yonder; the rain descends upon it in continual baptism. The natives love these mountains and the sea. They are the cardinal points of their compass. Every direction given you is either toward the mountain or toward the sea.

There is much truth in the Arabian tale, and it is time to acknowledge it. Mountains are magnetic. The secret of their magnetism may lie in the immobility of their countenances. Praise them to their face, and they are not flattered; forget them for a moment: but turn again, and see their steadfast gaze! You feel their earnestness. It is imposing, and you cannot think lightly of it. Who forgets the mountains he has once seen? It is quite probable the mountain cares little for your individuality: but it has given part of itself to the modelling of your character; it has touched you with the wand of its enchantment; you are under the spell. Somewhere in the recesses of this mountain are locked the bones of the Great Navigator, but these mountains have kept the secret.

[Decoration]

A CANOE-CRUISE IN THE CORAL SEA.

If you can buy a canoe for two calico shirts, what will your annual expenses in Tahiti amount to? This was a mental problem I concluded to solve, and, having invested my two shirts, I began the solution in this wise: My slender little treasure lay with half its length on shore, and, being quite big enough for two, I looked about me, seeking some one to sit in the bows, for company and ballast.

Up and down the shady beach of Papeete I wandered, with this advertisement written all over my anxious face:----

"WANTED--A crew about ten years of age; of a mild disposition,
and with no special fondness for human flesh; not particular as
to sex! Apply immediately, at the new canoe, under the
breadfruit-tree, Papeete, South Pacific."

Some young things were pitching French coppers so earnestly they didn't read my face; some were not seafaring, at that moment; while most of them evidently ate more than was good for them, which might result disastrously in a canoe-cruise, and I set my heart against them. The afternoon was waning, and my ill-luck seemed to urge upon me the necessity of my constituting a temporary press-gang for the kidnapping of the required article.

"Who is anxious to go to sea with me?" I bawled, returning through the crowds of young gamblers, all intently disinterested in everything but "pitch and toss." Not far away a group of wandering minstrels--such as make musical the shores of Tahiti--sat in the middle of the street, chanting. One youth played with considerable skill upon a joint of bamboo, of the flute species, but breathed into from the nostrils, instead of the lips. Three or four minor notes were piped at uncertain intervals, playing an impromptu variation upon the air of the singers. Drawing near, the music was suspended, and I proposed shipping one of the melodious vagabonds, whereupon the entire chorus expressed a willingness to accompany me, in any capacity whatever, remarking, at the same time, that "they were a body bound, so to speak, by chords of harmony, and any proposal to disband them would, by it, be regarded as highly absurd." Then I led the solemn procession of volunteers to my canoe, and we regarded it in silence; it was something larger than a pea-pod, to be sure, but about the shape of one. After a moment of deliberation, during which a great throng of curious spectators had assembled, the orchestra declared itself in readiness to ship before the paddle for the trifling consideration of $17. I knew the vague notion that money is money, call it dollar or dime, generally entertained by the innocent children of Nature; and, dazzling the unaccustomed eyes of the flutist with a new two-franc piece, he immediately embarked. The bereaved singers sat on the shore and lifted up their voices in resounding discord, as the canoe slid off into the still waters, and my crew, with commendable fortitude, laid down the nose-flute, took up the paddle, and we began our canoe-cruise.

The frail thing glided over the waves as though invisible currents were sweeping her into the hereafter; the shore seemed to recede, drawing the low, thatched houses into deeper shadow; other canoes skimmed over the sea, like great water-bugs, while the sun set beyond the sharp outlines of beautiful Morea, glorifying it and us.

There was a small islet not far away,--an islet as fair and fragrant as a bouquet,--looking, just then, like a mote in a sheet of flame. Thither I directed the reformed flutist, and then let myself relapse into the all-embracing quietness that succeeds nearly every vexation that flesh is heir to.

There was something soothing in the nature of my crew. He sat with his back to me,--a brown back, that glistened in the sun, and arched itself, from time to time, cat-like, as though it was very good to be brown and bare and shiny. From the waist to the feet fell the resplendent folds of a _pareu_, worn by all Tahitians, of every possible age and sex, and consisted, in this case, of a thin breadth of cloth, stamped with a deep blue firmament, in which supernaturally yellow suns were perpetually setting in several spots. A round head topped his chubby shoulders, and was shaven from the neck to the crown, with a matted forelock of the blackness of darkness falling to the eyes and keeping the sun out of them. One ear was enlivened with a crescent of beaten gold, which decoration, having been won at "pitch and toss," will probably never again, in the course of human events, meet with its proper mate. On the whole, he looked just a little bit like a fan-tail pigeon with its wings plucked.

At this point my crew suddenly rose in the bows of the canoe, making several outlandish flourishes with his broad paddle. I was about to demand the occasion of his sudden insanity, when we began to grate over some crumbling substance that materially impeded our progress and suggested all sorts of disagreeable sensations,--such as knife-grinding in the next yard, saw-filing round the corner, etc. It was as though we were careering madly over a multitude of fine-tooth combs. With that caution which is inseparable from canoe-cruising in every part of the known world, I leaned over the side of my personal property and penetrated the bewildering depths of the coral sea.

Were we, I asked myself, suspended about two feet above a garden of variegated cauliflowers? Or were the elements wafting us over a minute winter-forest, whose fragile boughs were loaded with prismatic crystals?

The scene was constantly changing: now it seemed a disordered bed of roses,--pink, and white, and orange; presently we were floating in the air, looking down upon a thousand-domed mosque, pale in the glamour of the Oriental moon; and then a wilderness of bowers presented itself,--bowers whose fixed leaves still seemed to quiver in the slight ripple of the sea,--blossoming for a moment in showers of buds, purple, and green, and gold, but fading almost as soon as born. I could scarcely believe my eyes, when these tiny, though marvellously brilliant fish shot suddenly out from some lace-like structure, each having the lurid and flame-like beauty of sulphurous fire, and all turning instantly, in sudden consternation at finding us so near, and secreting themselves in the coral pavilion that amply sheltered them. Among the delicate anatomy of these frozen ferns our light canoe was crashing on its way. I saw the fragile structures overwhelmed with a single blow from the young savage, who stood erect, propelling us onward amid the general ruins. With my thumb and finger I annihilated the laborious monuments of centuries, and saw havoc and desolation in our wake.

There, in one of God's reef-walled and cliff-sheltered _aquaria_, we drifted, while the sky and sea were glowing with the final, triumphant gush of sunset radiance. Fefe at last broke the silence, with an interrogation: "Well, how you feel?" "Fefe," I replied, "I feel as though I were some good and faithful bee, sinking into a sphere of amber, for a sleep of a thousand years." Fefe gave a deep-mouthed and expressive grunt, as he laid his brown profile against the sunset sky, thereby displaying his solitary ear-ring to the best advantage, and with evident personal satisfaction. "And how do you feel, Fefe?" I asked. He was mum for a moment; arched his back like any wholesome animal when the sun has struck clean through it; ejaculated an ejaculation with his tongue and teeth that cannot possibly be spelled in English, and thereupon his nostril quivered spasmodically, and was only comforted by the immediate application of his nose-flute, through which dulcet organ he confessed his deep and otherwise unutterable joy. I blessed him for it, though there were but three notes, all told, and those minors and a trifle flat.

Fefe's impassioned soul having subsided, we both looked over to beautiful Morea, nine miles away. How her peaks shone like steel, and her valleys looked full of sleep! while here and there one golden ray lingered for a moment to put the final touch to a fruit it was ripening or a flower it was painting,--for they each have their perfect work allotted to them, and they don't leave it half completed.

It was just the hour that harmonizes everything in nature, and when there is no possible discord in all the universe. The fishes were baptizing themselves by immersion in space, and kept leaping into the air, like momentary inches of chain-lightning. Our islet swam before us, spiritualized,--suspended, as it were, above the sea,--ready at any moment to fade away. The waves had ceased beating upon the reef; the clear, low notes of a bell vibrating from the shore called us to prayer. Fefe knew it, and was ready,--so was I; and with bare heads and souls utterly at peace we gave our hearts to God--for the time being!

Then came the hum of voices and the rustle of renewed life. On we pressed towards our islet, under the increasing shadows of the dusk. A sloping beach received us; the young cocoa-palms embraced one another with fringed branches. Through green and endless corridors we saw the broad disk of the full moon hanging above the hill.

Fefe at once chose a palm, and having ascended to its summit cast down its fruit. Descending, he planted a stake in the earth, and striking a nut against its sharpened top soon laid open the fibrous husk, with which a fire was kindled.

Taking two peeled nuts in his hands, he struck one against the other and laid open the skull of it,--a clear sort of scalping that aroused me to enthusiasm. There is one end of a cocoa-nut's skull as delicate as a baby's, and a well-directed tap does the business; possibly the same result would follow with those of infants of the right age,--twins, for instance. Fefe agrees with me in this theory, now first given to the public.

Then followed much talk, on many topics, over our tropical supper,--said supper consisting of sea-weed salad, patent self-stuffing banana-sausages, and cocoa-nut hash. We argued somewhat, also, but in South Pacific fashion,--which would surely spoil, if imported; I only remember, and will record, that Fefe regarded the nose-flute as a triumph of art, and considered himself no novice in musical science, as applicable to nose-flutes in a land where there is scarcely a nose without its particular flute, and many a flute is silent forever, because its special nose is laid among the dust.

Having eaten, I proposed sleeping on the spot, and continuing the cruise at dawn. "Why should we return to the world and its cares, when the sea invites us to its isles? Nature will feed us. In that blest land, clothing has not yet been discovered. Let us away!" I cried. At this juncture, voices came over the sea to us,--voices chanting like sirens upon the shore. Instinctively Fefe's nose-flute resumed its _tremolo_, and I knew the day was lost. "Come!" said the little rascal, as though he were captain and I the crew, and he dragged me toward the skiff. With terrific emphasis, I commanded him to desist. "Don't imagine," I said, "that this is a modern _Bounty_, and that it is your duty to rise up in mutiny for the sake of dramatic justice. Nature never repeats herself, therefore come back to camp!"

But he wouldn't come. I knew I should lose my canoe unless I followed, or should have to paddle back alone,--no easy task for one unaccustomed to it. So I moodily embarked with him; and having pushed off into deep water, he sounded a note of triumph that was greeted with shouts on shore, and I felt that my fate was sealed.

It had been my life-dream to bid adieu to the human family, with one or two exceptions; to sever every tie that bound me to anything under the sun; to live close to Nature, trusting her, and getting trusted by her.

I explained all this to the young "Kanack," who was in a complete state of insurrection, but failed to subdue him. Overhead the air was flooded with hazy moonlight; the sea looked like one immeasurable drop of quicksilver, and upon the summit of this luminous sphere our shallop was mysteriously poised. A faint wind was breathing over the ocean; Fefe erected his paddle in the bows, placed against it a broad mat that constituted part of my outfit for that new life of which I was defrauded, and on we sped like a belated sea-bird seeking its mossy nest.

Beneath us slept the infinite creations of another world, gleaming from the dark bosom of the sea with an unearthly pallor, and seeming to reveal something of the forbidden mysteries that lie beyond the grave. "La Petite Pologne," whispered Fefe, as he arched his back for the last time, and stepped on shore at the foot of this singular rendezvous,--a narrow lane threading the groves of Papeete, bordered by wine-shops, bakeries, and a convent-wall, lit at night by smoky lanterns hanging motionless in the dead air of the town, and thronged from 7 P. M. till 10 P. M. by people from all quarters of the globe.

Fefe having resumed his profession as soon as his bare foot was on his native heath again, the minstrels moved in a hollow square through the centre of La Petite Pologne. They were rendering some Tahitian madrigal,--a three-part song, the solo, or first part, of which being got safely through with,--a single stanza,--it was repeated as a duo, and so re-repeated through simple addition with a gradually-increasing chorus; the nose-flute meantime getting delirious, and sounding its _finale_ in an ecstasy prolonged to the point of strangulation, when the whole unceremoniously terminated, and everybody took a rest and a fresh start. During these performances, the audience was dense and demonstrative. Fefe was in his element, sitting with his best side to the public, and flaunting his ear-ring mightily. A dance followed: a dance always follows in that land of light hearts, and as one after another was ushered into the arena and gave his or her body to the interpretation of such songs as would startle Christian ears,--albeit there be some Christian hearts less tender, and Christian lips less true,--to my surprise, Fefe abandoned his piping and danced before me, and then came a flash of intuition,--rather late, it is true, but still useful as an explanatory supplement to my previous vexations. "Fefe!" I gasped (Fefe is the Tahitian for _Elephantiasis_), and my Fefe raised his or her skirts, and danced with a shocking leg. I really can't tell you _what_ Fefe was. You never can tell by the name. He might have been a boy, or she might have been a girl, all the time. I don't know that it makes any particular difference to me what it was, but I cannot encourage elephantiasis in anything, and therefore I concluded my naval engagement with Fefe, and solemnly walked toward my chamber, scarcely a block off. The music followed me to my door with a song of some kind or other, but the real nature of which I was too sensitive to definitely ascertain.

Gazelle-eyed damsels, with star-flowers dangling from their ears, obstructed the way. The _gendarmes_ regarded me with an eye single to France and French principles. Mariners arrayed in the blue of their own sea and the white of their own breakers bore down upon us with more than belonged to them. Men of all colors went to and fro, like mad creatures; women followed; children careered hither and thither. Wild shouts rent the air; there was an intoxicating element that enveloped all things. The street was by no means straight, though it could scarcely have been narrower; the waves staggered up the beach, and reeled back again; the moon leered at us, looking blear-eyed as she leaned against a cloud; and half-nude bodies lay here and there in dark corners, steeped to the toes in rum. Out of this human maelstrom, whose fatal tide was beginning to sweep me on with it, I made a plunge for my door-knob and caught it. Twenty besetting sins sought to follow me, covered with wreaths and fragrant with sandalwood oil; twenty besetting sins rather pleasant to have around one, because by no means as disagreeable as they should be. Fefe was there also, and I turned to address him a parting word,--a word calculated to do its work in a soil particularly mellow.

"Fefe," I said, "how can I help regarding it as a dispensation of Providence that your one leg is considerably bigger than your other? How can I expect you, with your assorted legs, to walk in that straight and narrow way wherein I have frequently found it inconvenient to walk myself, to say nothing of the symmetry of my own extremities? Therefore, adieu, child of the South, with your one ear-ring and your piano-forte leg; adieu--forever."

With that I closed my door upon the scene, and strove to bury myself in oblivion behind the white window-shade. In vain: the shadow with the mustache and goatee still pursued the shadow with the flowing locks that fled too slowly. Voices faint, though audible, indulged in allusions more or less profane, and with a success which would be considered highly improper in any latitude.

Thus sinking into an unquiet sleep, with a dream of canoe-cruising in a coral sea, whose pellucid waves sang sadly upon the remote shores of an ideal sphere, across the window loomed the gigantic shadow of some brown beauty, whose vast proportions suggested nothing more lovely than a new Sphinx, with a cabbage in either ear.

[Decoration]

[Decoration]

UNDER A GRASS ROOF.

A LEAF TORN AT RANDOM FROM A TROPICAL NOTEBOOK.

At Kahakuloa, under a terrific hill and close upon a frothing tongue of the sea, I draw rein. The act is simply a formality of mine; probably the animal would have paused here of his own free will, for he has been rehearsing his stops a whole hour back, during which time he limped somewhat and reaped determinedly the few tufts of dry grass that Nature had provided him by the trail-side. The clouds are falling; the cliffs are festooned with damp gauze; the air is moist and cool; a grass hut of uncommon purity stands invitingly by. A moon-faced youth, whose spotless garments appealed to me as he overtook our caravan a mile back, says, "Will you eat and sleep?" I am but human, and a hungry and sleepy human at that; so I tip off from my mule's back with gratitude and alacrity. In a moment the fine linen of mine host is hung upon its peg, and a good study of the Nude returns to me for further orders. I am literally famishing, and the mule is already up to his ears in water-cress; but then I have ridden and he has carried me. How just, O Mother Nature, are thy judgments!

With the superb poses of a trained athlete, the Nude swings a fowl by the neck, and shortly it is plucked and potted, together with certain vegetables of the proper affinities. Then he swathes a fish in succulent leaves, and buries it in hot ashes; and then he smokes his peace-pipe. Pipe no sooner lighted than mouths mysteriously gather: five, ten, a dozen of them magically assemble at the smell of smoke and take their turn at the curled shell, with a hollow stalk for a mouth-piece. Dinner at last. O, fish, fruit, and fowl on a mat on a floor in a grass hut at evening! How excellent are these--amen! Night--supper over--some one twanging upon a stringed instrument of rude native origin. Gossip lags,--darkness and silence, and a cigarette. The Nude rises haughtily and lights a lamp that looks very like a diminutive coffee-pot with a great flame in the nose of it. He hangs it against a beam already blackened with smoke to the peak of the roof. Again the peace-pipe sweeps the home-circle, and is passed out to the mouths of the neighborhood.

Guests drop down upon us and fill the one aperture of the hut with rows of curious, welcoming faces; assorted dogs press through the door in turn, receive a slap from each member of the family, and retreat with invisible tails; sudden impulses set all tongues wagging in unison; impulses, equally sudden and unaccountable, enjoin protracted intervals of silence. The sea breathes heavily; there is a noise of rain-drops sliding down the thatch. Guests disperse with a kind "_aloha_." We are alone with the night. The spirit of repose descends upon us; one by one the dusky members of mine host's household roll themselves into mummies and lie in a solemn row along the side of the room, sleeping. I, also, will sleep. A great bark-cloth (_kapa_) that rattles as though it had received seven starchings, is all mine for covering,--a royal _kapa_ this, of exceeding stiffness. I lie with my eyes to the roof, and count the beams that look like an arbor. What is it, as large as my thumb, cased in brown armor? A roach!--a melancholy procession of roaches passing from one side of the hut, over the roof, with their backs downward, and descending on the other side by the beams,--a hundred of them, perhaps, or a thousand: the cry is, "Still they come!" There is a noise of tiny feet upon the roof, and it isn't rain; there is a sound as of falling objects that escape before I can catch them. My hand rests upon a cool, moist creature that writhes under it,--an animated spinal column with four legs at one end of it. Away, thou slimy newt! Something runs over the matting, making a still, small clatter as it goes,--something looking like a toy train of dirt-cars. Ha! the venomous and wily centipede! Put out the coffee-pot, for these sights are horrible!

Now I will sleep with my face under the _kapa_,--silence, serene silence, and darkness profound; the sea beating in agony at the foot of the big hill,--a time for lofty and sublime revery. More rain outside the hut; gusts of wind, wailing as they rush past us. Thanks for this shelter. My pillow saturated with cocoa-nut oil--ah, what savage dreams may have disturbed these sleepers! No matter. Will get a wink of sleep before daybreak. Sleep, at last,--how refreshing art thou!

Hello! the coffee-pot in a blaze again; the Nude smoking his peace-pipe; children eating and making merry. Daybreak? No; midnight, perchance,--darkness without, darkness once more (by request) within. "Come again, bright dream." Horror! the house shaken as by an earthquake,--gnashing of teeth distinctly audible; the mule undoubtedly eating up the side of the grass hut! Anon, quiet restored. A suggestion of moonlight through the open door; the twanging of the stringed affair; a responsive twang in the distance. Some one steals cautiously forth into the starlight. All is not well in Kahakuloa. Rain over; mule vegetating elsewhere; roaches subdued; sea comparatively quiet. Welcome, kind Nature's sweet restorer!... Humming of voices; rolling of dogs about the house; ditto of children ditto; broad daylight, and breakfast waiting. Mule saddled, and, with a mouthful of roses, looking fresh and happy. Mule-boy eager for the fray. Time up. Adieu, adieu--O beautiful Kahakuloa! I must away,

Above the terrible hill hang clouds and shadows; fringes of rain obscure the trail as it climbs persistently to heaven; but up that trail, into and through those clouds and shadows, I pursue my solitary pilgrimage.

[Decoration]

[Decoration]

MY SOUTH-SEA SHOW.

High in her lady's-chamber sat Gail, looking with calm eyes through the budding maples across the hills of spring. Her letter was but half finished, and the village post was even then ready; so she woke out of her revery, and ended the writing as follows:

"SPRING, ----.

"I know not where you may be at this moment,--living with what
South-Sea Island god, drinking the milk of cocoa-nut, and
eating bread-fruit,--but wherever you are, forget not your
promise to come home again, bringing your sheaves with you."

Anon she sealed it and mailed it, and it was hurried away, over land and sea, till, after many days, it found me drinking my cocoa-milk and refreshing myself with bread-fruits.

Anon I replied to her, not on the green enamel of a broad leaf, with a thorn stylet, but upon the blank margins of Gail's letter, with my last half-inch of pencil. I said to her:--

"SUMMER, ----.

"By and by I will come to you, when the evenings are very long,
and the valley is still. I will cross the lawn in silence, and
stand knocking at the south entry. Deborah will open the door
to me with fear and trembling, for I shall be sunburnt and
brawny, with a baby cannibal under each arm. Then at a word a
tattooed youngster shall reach her a Tahitian pearl, and I will
cry, 'Give it to Mistress Gail'; whereat Deborah will willingly
withdraw, leaving me motionless in the dead leaves by the south
entry. You will take the token, dear Gail, and know it as the
symbol of my return. You will come and greet us, and lead us to
the best chamber, and we will feast with you as long as you
like,--I and my cannibals."

I was never quite sure of what Gail said to my letter, but I knew her for a true soul; so I gathered my cannibals under my metaphorical wings, and journeyed unto the village, and came into it at sunset, while it was autumn. We passed over the lawn in silence, and stood knocking at the south entry, in real earnest. Deborah came at last, and the little striped fellow bore aloft his pearl of Tahitian beauty, while I gave my message, and Deborah was terrified and thought she was dreaming. But she took the pearl and went, and we stood in the keen air of autumn, and my South Sea babies were very cold and moaned pitifully under my arms, and the little pearl-bearer shivered in all his stripes, and capered in the dead leaves like an imp of darkness.

Then Gail came to us and let us in, and we camped by the great fire in the sitting-room, whither Deborah brought bowls of new milk for the little ones, and was wonderfully amazed at their quaintness and beauty, but quite failed to affiliate with my striped pearl-bearer.

So I said, "Sit you down, Deborah, and hear the true story of my Zebra." Gail had already captured the bronze babies, and was helping them with their bowls of milk as they nestled at her feet, and I took my striped beauty between my knees and stroked his soft wool, and told how he saved me from a watery death, and again from the fiery stake, and was doubly dear to me forevermore:--

"We were at the island of Pottobokee, getting water and fruit; had stacked the last sack of mangoes and limes in the boat, and were off for the ship, glad to escape with our scalps, when a wave took us amidships on the reef, and we swamped in the dreadful spume. Some were drowned; some clung to the boat, though it was stove badly, while relief came from the vessel as quickly as possible, and the fragments were gathered out of the waves and taken aboard.

"They thought themselves lucky to escape with the remnants, for they knew the natives for cannibals, and the shore was black and noisy within ten minutes after the accident. It looked stormy in that neighborhood: hence the caution and haste of the relief-crew, who left me for drowned, I suppose, as they never came after me, but spread everything, and went out of sight before dark that evening.

"I was no swimmer at all, but I kicked well, and was about diving the fatal dive,--last of three warnings that seem providentially allotted the luckless soul in its extremity: I was just upon the third sinking, when a tough little arm gripped me under the breast, and I hung over it limp and senseless, knowing nothing further of my deliverance, until I found myself a captive in Kabala-kum,--a heathenish sort of paradise, a little way back from the sea-coast.

"The natives had given up all hope of feasting upon me, for there wasn't a respectable steak in my whole carcass, nor was my appetite promising; so they resolved to make a bonfire of me, to get me out of the way. But that tough little arm that saved me from an early grave in the water was husband to a tough little heart, that resolved I shouldn't be burnt. I was his private and personal property; he had fished me out of the sea; he would cook me in his own style when he got ready, and no one else was to have a word in the matter.

"There he showed his royal blood, Deborah, for he was the King's son: this marvellous tattooing proclaims his rank. Only the noble and brave are permitted to brand these rainbows into their brown skins.

"I was almost frightened when I first returned to consciousness, and saw this little fellow pawing me in his tender and affectionate way. He was lithe as a panther, and striped all over with brilliant and changeless stripes; so I called him my boy Zebra, and I suppose he called me his white mouse, or something of that sort.