Chapter VII: Part 7

Tautala could not recall it, the foreign stutter being so unrememberable. Indeed, she doubted almost if she had ever heard it. “We called him Patsy,” she said, “and he used to tell us he was descended from a line of kings.”

“Wasn’t it O’ something?” I inquired.

No, she couldn’t remember. It was long ago, when she was a little child and knew nothing; but she had loved Patsy, and it was a sad day to her when the devil took him.

“Tell me about it,” I said. “I have never heard that _tala_.”

“Oh, it is a true story,” she said; “for was not my own sister Java married to Patsy, and did I not see it all with my own eyes, from the beginning even to the end? But thou must strengthen thyself to hear it, for it is a tale of sadness.”

“I will strive to bear it,” I replied.

“Well, it was this way,” she began. “Many years ago a steamer reached our bay, and it was neither a man-of-war, nor a trading-vessel, nor a ship of pleasuring; and the hold of it was filled with nothing but rope, miles and miles of rope, all of a single piece like a ball of great string; nor was the least piece of it for sale; no, not even though a ton of coprah were offered for a single fathom. The officers of the ship were most agreeable people, and so polite that, except for the colour of their skins, you would never think them white men at all; and the captain gave my father his photograph, and made for us a feast on board his ship, of sardines and tea, so that we were soon very friendly together and almost like members of one family. Then the captain begged my father’s permission to build a little house on the edge of the bay, which was no sooner asked than done; for behold, it was in measured pieces for the building. Farther inland, near the old _vi_-tree, another house was raised, this also of boards previously cut and prepared. Then the end of the big rope was carried to the beach-house in a boat, and made fast to all manner of strange _tongafiti_ within, some that ticked like clocks, and others that went ‘whir, whir,’ like a bird with a broken wing. Here, in the middle of it all, a shining chair was prepared for Patsy to sit in and a big desk for Patsy to write at. But to the inland house was brought his bed, and countless cases of sardines and pea-soup, and all the many things needed for the comfort and well-being of a white man.

“When all was thus ready to the captain’s liking, he blew his whistle and sailed out of the bay, leaving Patsy singly to take care of the end of the big rope. This Patsy did with assiduity, so that there was never a morning but found him sitting beside it, and seldom an afternoon or evening he did not visit it at intervals. Sometimes the rope would hold him there the whole night, saying without end, ‘click, click, whir, whir,’ as its manner was, so that I would fall asleep with the light of Patsy’s lamp in my eyes, and wake again at dawn to find it still burning; and if we went down to the shore, as we often did at first in our curiosity, we would see the white man lying asleep in his chair, his cold pipe on the table beside him. People asked one another the meaning of a rope so singular, and wondered ceaselessly as to the nature of Patsy’s concern with it. From all the villages expeditions came in crowded boats to behold the marvel with their own eyes, so that they, too, might hear it say ‘click, click, whir, whir,’ as its manner was, and stare the while at Patsy through the window. Songs were made about the rope, some of them gay, others grave and beautiful, with parables; it became a proverb hereabouts to say ‘as long as Patsy’s rope,’ meaning a thing without end, as the perpetual crying of a child, or the love of a maid for a man.

“Thou must not think, Siosi, that Patsy was not often asked the reason of his strange employment, and a thousand questions besides about the wonderful rope; but at first he knew nothing of our language, and when people would point at it and say, ‘click, click, whir, whir,’ in mockery of what it uttered continually, Patsy would only smile and repeat back to them, ‘click, click, whir, whir,’ so that nothing was accomplished. But he was so gentle and well-mannered, and so generous with his property, that one could hardly count him a white man at all; and those who had at first mistrusted his presence in our village began soon to love him like a relation. No music-box was sweeter than his voice, and often on a moonlight night the whole village would gather round his house to hear him sing, or to see him dance hornpipes on his verandah.

“One day, in a boat from Safotulafai, there arrived a native of this island who had long been absent, sailing in the white men’s ships. This man being, of course, familiar with the white stutter, it occurred to Nehemiah the pastor (who had long been troubled by the matter of the rope) that here, at last, was the means of learning the truth from Patsy. Whereupon a meeting of the village chiefs was summoned in the house of Nehemiah; and after a great deal of speech-making it was determined to wait on Patsy in a body, Tomasi, the seaman, going with them to interpret.

“Patsy was at his usual place beside the big rope, smoking his pipe and hearkening to the voice as it said ‘click, click, whir, whir,’ as its manner was. My father, Letonu, was the first to speak; then Nehemiah the pastor; Tomasi translating every word, as had been previously agreed. They both asked for an explanation of the great rope, and why it had been made fast to our island, and where it went to underneath the sea, and the reason of its continually saying ‘click, click, whir, whir.’

“Patsy took some thought to answer, and when at last he spoke, his words overwhelmed every one with astonishment and fear. It seemed that the devil was afraid that our village was becoming too good; for being himself so busy in Tonga and Fiji and the White Country, he could not give our place the proper oversight; and was mortified to see that every Aunu’u dead person went straight to heaven. Thereupon he had run this cable from hell, and had hired Patsy for a hundred dollars a month to warn him when anything bad was happening. Patsy explained that the great rope was like a dog: one pinched his tail here and he barked there; thus signals were exchanged, as had been earlier agreed upon, so that two barks meant A, and three meant B, and so on through the _alafapeta_.

“Then Nehemiah asked him in a trembling voice (for horror of the devil was upon them all) how dared he serve the Evil One for the sake of a few dollars this month and that, thus imperilling his own immortal soul for ever. But Patsy answered that the White Country was cold and barren, and fuller of men than our beach of grains of sand. He said that the lands, such as they were, belonged only to a few, and those who possessed none must needs seek a living where they could, or die of hunger in the road. All this was borne out by Tomasi, who himself had seen old white chieftainesses begging for food in the White Country, and little children perishing unrelieved. Patsy said that when a man was wanted to do a thing for hire, a hundred offered themselves only to be turned away, so great was the misery of the White Country, so mean the hearts of those who were rich. Whereupon, said Patsy, he had been glad to take the devil’s money and do the devil’s work, for other choice there was none.

“Then said Letonu, my father, ‘Patsy, thou must leave the devil and cease to do his bidding; and though we have no hundred dollars, we can give thee, here in Aunu’u, everything else the heart of man desires: _taro_, breadfruit, yams, pigs, _valo_, squid, and chickens, wild doves in their season, and good fish for every day of the year; and I will take thee to be my son, to live with me in my fine house and share with me everything I possess.’

“But Patsy only shook his head, and the rope, seemingly terrified lest it were about to lose him, began to click convulsively and without ceasing. Patsy kept hearkening to it while he listened also to my father, which he did with a divided face, like one hearing two voices at once. He said he thanked my father very much for his kindness, but the fact was, he liked the devil, who was now to him almost a member of his own family, and unfailing with the money, one hundred dollars this month and that. Then Nehemiah made another speech, full of piety and warning, and thereupon finding that nothing could turn Patsy’s rock-like heart, he rose slowly to his feet and led the party out of doors. There a new discussion took place, the pastor proposing to kill Patsy that night and burn down his house; my father resisting him and saying that he would permit no harm to come to his friend the white man, whether he belonged to the devil or not.

“I don’t know how it was, but from the day of that meeting Patsy began greatly to love my father, and half his time he spent in our house and near him, so that the neighbours marvelled about it and were crazed with envy. He gave my father a black coat to wear on Sundays, and cartridges for his gun, and nightly they took lessons together in our language, Letonu teaching him to say our words, while Patsy wrote them down on a sheet of paper. Nehemiah preached against us in the church, and would have stopped my father’s communion ticket, but Letonu said he would shoot him, if he did, with both barrels of his gun.

“One day my sister Java returned from Savalalo, where she had been living in the family of my uncle. She was a girl beautiful to look at, and so tall and graceful that there was not a young man in the village but whose heart burned at the sight of her. Of them all Patsy alone seemed not to care; and in the evenings, when his devil work was done and he would romp with us on the mats or talk with my father about foreign countries, he never had as much as a glance for my sister; while she, on her side, treated him always with disdain, and often kept away from the house when she knew him to be there. I think Patsy must somehow have found this out, for one night he told us that he would never come back again, as Java hated him; and he kissed us all, and departed sorrowfully into the darkness. After that, when he was not busy in the devil-house, he took long walks into the bush with his gun, or sat solitary on his verandah, reading a book; at night he sang no more, nor danced hornpipes, but read and read with a sad face, like a person who mourned a relation.

“We were angry with Java for having driven Patsy away, and told her to go back to Savalalo and let us have our darling; but she seemed not to care for what we said, and only answered that she hoped never to see the devil’s white man again. My father, who loved Patsy, was greatly vexed with her, though he said little at first, thinking that our friend would soon return and that Java would grow ashamed. But when day after day passed and he stayed away continually, my father talked to Java with severity, and bade her go down to the devil-house and ask Patsy’s pardon for her wickedness. She was very loath to obey, and only went at last when Letonu threatened to send her lashed like a pig to a pole, and pretended to call his young men together for that purpose. I was told to go with her, for thou knowest our custom forbidding a young girl to go anywhere alone, lest people should talk and take away her reputation. But I felt sorry for Patsy as I walked behind my sister down the path to his house, for she carried herself defiantly, and there were tears of anger in her beautiful eyes.

“We found Patsy sitting, as usual, in the devil-house, the great rope tail clicking at his elbow with messages from hell; and though he sprang up smiling when Java opened the door, I thought his face looked sad and changed. She bade me stay outside, and as she seated herself in Patsy’s chair and began to explain the errand on which she had come, I could see that her lips were trembling. For a long time I heard them talking in low voices, and then, growing weary of waiting, I fell asleep on the warm door-step. I do not know how long I slept, but when I at last awoke I could still hear the unceasing murmur of their voices inside the room, sweet and soft, as of pigeons cooing in the mountains. I turned the knob of the door and went in; and there, to my astonishment, I beheld my sister in Patsy’s arms, her head buried in his breast, her hands clasped thus about his neck, while he was talking foolishly like a mother to her nursing child. At the sight of me they sprang apart, laughing loudly like children at play; and when I asked Java if she had given her message, they both laughed more than ever and caught each other’s hands.

“On our return, Java asked me to say nothing of what I had seen; and told me, in answer to my questions, that Patsy had been secretly breaking his heart for her, though she had never known it; and that she, no less, had been delirious for the love of him. She said, too, that he was the most beautiful man in the world, and wise and good above all others, and that her love for him was so great that it almost choked her. When I spoke doubtfully of the devil, she said that was all a _pepelo_, a joke of Patsy’s; that the rope was what she called a _telenafo_, which ran under the sea from one country to another, telling the news of each. She said that Patsy had explained everything to her, and had even shown her the little pots of thunder and lightning with which the _telenafo_ was controlled.

“It was not long after this that Patsy and Java were married by the pastor Nehemiah, my father giving them a wedding feast the like of which had never before been seen in Aunu’u, so innumerable were the pigs, so gorgeous the fine mats and offerings. Java went to live in the inland house, and wore a gold ring on her finger and new dresses every day. Patsy gave her another sewing-machine in the place of the old one, and a present of two chests for her clothes; and every day she ate sardines and salt beef like a white person. At first she was pleased with everything, and her face was always smiling with her happiness; but as days grew on she began to tire of the white way,--which, as thou knowest, Siosi, is relentless and unchanging,--and of the work, which is continual. A daughter of a chief lives easily in Rakahanga, and little is expected of her, for there are girls to wait on her and men to do the heavy labour. Java grew sad in her elegant house, and cared less and less to paint the stove with blacking and wash greasy dishes all day, while the village maids were sporting in the lagoon or fishing by torch-light on the reef. She opened her distressed heart to Patsy, and old Ta’a was called in, at a monthly wage of three dollars, to carry the burden of these unending tasks. But old Ta’a was a busybody and a thief, and the lies she said with her tongue were worse to be endured than even the loss of kerosene and rice which took place continually. Every day something was taken, and when Patsy wondered and complained, the old one said the fault was Java’s for giving to her family like a delirious person. Were I to get a biscuit, the old one changed it into six; and were Letonu to beg a little tea and sugar for his cough, it became transformed in the telling into many basket-loads. On the other side, Ta’a slowly embittered Java’s mind against her husband, telling her that the marriage was no true marriage, and that when Patsy saw a prettier face he would not scruple to cast her off. So the old woman stayed on and thrived, like a fat maggot in a breadfruit, while Java cried in secret and Patsy grew daily more downcast and silent.

“At last the storm burst which had so long been gathering, and the little house that had been so joyful now shook with the sound of quarrelling voices. Java took her golden ring and threw it on the floor, and with it her golden comb, her much-prized ear-rings, and the brooch which in years gone by had belonged to Patsy’s mother in the White Country; she stripped off her dress, her shoes and stockings, even the ribbon from her long black hair; and then, half naked, she returned to our father’s house.

“Letonu was, of course, much concerned, and went down immediately to see Patsy in order to make things smooth again. But the white man was sullen and proud, and would talk of nothing, except that Java could do as she pleased, and that it was the same to him whether she stayed or went. My father, who had been a handsome man in his youth and knew the ways of women, urged Patsy a thousand times to make it up quickly with his wife, telling him to put his arms round her and kiss her and all would be well. ‘Thou mayest know much about the _telenafo_, and how to keep thunder and lightning in pots,’ said my wise father, ‘but assuredly, Patsy, thou art ignorant of the hearts of women.’ He told him that Java was already repentant and ashamed, and, like a person on the top of a high wall, a push would send her either way. But Patsy, like a little sulky child, sat in his chair and refused to speak, while Ta’a rattled the dishes and laughed sideways to herself. It was sad, when my father returned, to see the look that Java gave him. Her hot fit was already past, and her face was full of longing and sorrow; and on his saying that nothing could be accomplished, she lay down on a mat, and remained there all day like a sick person. She lay thus for nearly a week; and if we asked her anything, she would only groan and turn away her head. She was waiting for her man to come to her; but to him there was no such intention; for he stayed shut up in the devil-house, or wandered uselessly in the bush by himself.

“At last she got up, more dead than living, so thin she was and changed; and calling for food, she ate with the voracity of a starving person; and then she bathed, and did her hair with flowers, and put on the poor clothes she had worn as a maid. ‘Behold,’ she said, ‘I am now one of the _aualuma_ and no longer married.’ And from that day she who had been the most circumspect girl in the village, and the best behaved, became swiftly a run-wild-in-the-bush, going everywhere unattended, and sitting up with the young men at night, so that people called her a _paumotu_, and her communion ticket was withdrawn.

“Patsy never lacked for news of her down-going, for old Ta’a still kept house for him; and no tale was ever told of Java but the old one brought it to him, and more also, conceived by her lying heart. Patsy never tried to see his wife or to do anything to bring about peace between them; and if he passed her in the path he would turn away his head, even if it were night, and she alone with another man. Once, only, he showed that he still remembered her at all, at a time when she was possessed of a devil and like to die; then he came to our house, and felt her hands, and gave her medicines from a little box, and told my father to do this and that. And when she grew better and able to sit up, he sent us salt beef and sardines for her well-being.

“Now it happened there belonged to Ta’a’s family a girl named Sina, a thin, hungry piece with a canoe-nose like a white man’s, and a face so unsightly that it resembled a pig’s; and if she went anywhere the children would cry after her, ‘Pig-face, Pig-face!’ like that, so that her name of Sina was forgotten, and even members of her family called her unmindfully by the other. Compared to Java, who was tall and beautiful like a daughter of chiefs, this little Sina was no more than a half-grown child; and when she was stripped for bathing, behold, you could count the ribs of her body. But Ta’a brought her every day to Patsy’s house, so that by degrees he became accustomed to the sight of her; and all the time the old one kept telling him that the little Pig-face loved him--which, perhaps, indeed was true, for none of our young men ever looked twice her way, except to laugh, and she might have stayed out all night and no one would have thought to speak against her character. Patsy was kind and gentle to her, as he was to every one save poor Java; and the little Pig-face followed him like a dog, and lay at his feet at night, while he read and read on his front verandah. So slavish was her soul that she would have kissed his feet if he had kicked her, and nothing pleased her so much as to sit beside him when he slept and keep the flies from off his face. In the end, of course, there happened that which Ta’a had long been planning: Patsy took the little Pig-face to live with him, and pacified her father with two kegs of beef and fifteen silver dollars.

“When the news reached Java she was consumed with a frightful anger, and spoke wildly and murderously, like a drunken white man, clinching her fists and kicking with her legs. She set to sharpening a knife upon a stone, and we saw that she meant to cut off the little Pig-face’s nose; for, as thou knowest, Siosi, such is our custom here when one woman wrongs another. She called together all the old ladies of the family, and they took counsel with one another in a secret place, arranging between them a scheme for Sina’s capture. But the little Pig-face was cowardly beyond anything ever before known; she bathed not, neither did she wash nor walk about, but lay all day, trembling and noisome, at Patsy’s feet. Once, indeed, she was nearly caught, when upward of a month had passed and she had grown careless in her watching. In the middle of the night the house was set on fire, and as the two rushed out in confusion, Sina was seized in the arms of a dozen women. Had it not been for the darkness, which made seeing difficult, her canoe-nose would have been swiftly lost to her; but for light they had need to drag her to the burning house, she screaming the while like a hundred pigs. Patsy knew instantly what was happening, and began to fire his pistol in the air as he ran to his partner’s help, giving no thought at all to his perishing house. It was well for the little Pig-face that he did so, for the knife had already sunk below the skin, and a twist would have left her noseless.

“As for the house, it burned and burned until nothing was left of it, though the most of what it held was carried out in safety. The next morning Patsy moved everything down to the devil-house, making of it a fort, with a high fence of wire all round, full of barbs and points for the lacerating of flesh. And the little Pig-face, with her nose tied up in cloths, ran this way and that, helping him with nails, while Java and I lay in a hiding-place and counted her ribs.

“Thou wouldst have thought that Java might now have rested in her anger, for Patsy’s house was consumed and her rival had felt the sharp edge of her knife. But there was no appeasing Java’s heart; and wicked though she was herself, and misconducted, she still could not endure to be supplanted by another. My father spoke to her with severity, saying that she had done all that our custom demanded, and that there must now be peace and forgetting. But the blood came hotly into her face, and she answered not a word, nor made the least sign to obey Letonu’s words. Then I saw with a certainty that the war with Sina, far from being finished, was only just beginning; and my body quivered all over with the fear of what was to come.

“For a long time, however, Java did nothing, and went about as usual, seeming to take no further thought. The old women of the family returned to their ordinary occupations, and no longer lay banded in places where Sina might pass. It would have mattered nothing if they had, for the little Pig-face stuck to her house like a barnacle to a rock; and except on Sundays, when she went to church between Patsy and Ta’a, we never saw the least hair of her head. But Java knew of means more potent than knives for the undoing of a worthless person, and she sought out Malesa, the old wizard of Aleipata, to whom one went ordinarily for love-philters and medicines. For a dollar he gave Java a curse on a sheet of paper, and told her to nail it to the church door on the following Sunday. This she did, to the great indignation of Nehemiah and the elders, though to no purpose so far as concerned the little Pig-face, who happened that day and all the Sundays after to keep away from church, like a heathen in the Black Islands. For what worth is a curse if thy enemy reads it not, nor goest even near the door on which it is placed? Is it not like firing a bullet in the air, hurting nothing?

“So Java returned again to Malesa the wizard, and, for lack of better gifts, she carried with her the sewing-machine she had possessed before her marriage. But the old man said he must have more, and spoke like one delirious, of a hundred dollars and a boat; and when she cried out, he laid his skinny hand on her shoulder and looked a long time into her eyes, and then turned the wheel of the sewing-machine to show that it was broken. But Java’s heart was stronger than a man’s and full of hatred; so instead of shrinking back, as most women would have done, she told him boldly to name some other price, thinking, perhaps, to give a finger, as Fetuao had done when her husband was perishing with the measles.

“‘Thy long, curly hair,’ said Tingelau, slowly, ‘and I will make of it a head-dress for my son.’

“‘I will give thee that and more, also,’ said Java, with the tears in her eyes, for there was to her nothing so beautiful as her hair.

“Then, behold, a strange thing happened, for as she knelt before the wizard and undid the knot of her hair, letting it tumble over her bosom like a cascade, the old man touched it not with the scissors in his hand, no, not even cutting so much as a single hair.

“‘Java,’ he said, ‘thou art too beautiful to mar. Some other girl must provide a head-dress for my son, and thou shalt return perfect as thou camest; though I shall retain the sewing-machine for my pains, and from time to time, without fail, thou shalt give me a silver dollar until five be reached. And for this small, insignificant reward I shall prepare thee a curse the like of which no wizard ever made before--a curse which beside the other shall be as a man to a child, so that the whole world shall tremble and the dead turn in their graves.’

“Accordingly, in three days my sister returned to Aleipata, where old Malesa, faithful to his word, handed her the curse he had been so assiduously preparing. Ah, Siosi, the reading of it was enough to make one’s blood run cold, and palsy the hand that held the written sheet. The little Pig-face was cursed outside and inside, in this world and the next world, part by part, so that nothing was forgotten, even to the lobes of her ears and the joints of her toes. There was nothing of her but what was to be scorched with fire, torn away with pincers, scratched, pierced, and destroyed with pointed sticks; lo, she would scream for death while the sharks fought for her dismembering flesh and squid sucked out her eyes, no one being at hand to give her the least assistance. Java smiled as she read the curse aloud, and took counsel with Tu, the brave and handsome, who had agreed to nail it to Patsy’s door.

“It was black night when Tu made the attempt, holding the paper in his mouth like a dog as he climbed the scratching wall of wire. At every moment Java and I expected to hear the explosion of a gun or some sudden sound of awakening from within the devil-house; yet nothing reached our ears but the beating of our own anxious hearts. After a long while we heard Tu whispering in the darkness beside us, and our first thought was that he had failed. But we were wrong, for Tu had succeeded in every way, and that with the utmost secrecy and skill. Then we went and lay behind a big bush about a hundred fathoms inland of the house, so that we might see with advantage what was to happen in the morning; and Java and I petted Tu, and talked to him sweetly, for he had a brave heart, and his handsome body was everywhere torn with the points of wire.

“_Panga!_ Siosi, never was a dawn so slow to come as the one we then waited for, nor any so bitter and chill. Our teeth clicked in our heads, and though we lay closer together than a babe to its nursing mother, or soldiers to one another in the bush, we nearly died with the cold, like people in the White Country. When at last the sun rose in a haze like that of blood and smoke commingled, we felt, indeed, that the curse was already at work; for the air turned sultry beyond all believing, so that we breathed suffocatingly, and endured the taste of matches in our throats and mouths. Tu said prayers--very good prayers and long, which he had learned in the missionary college before he had been expelled; all of them about the beauty of holiness and well-doing. But Java attended to none of these things, nor seemed to care whether we ourselves lived or died, for her eyes were ever on Patsy’s house.

“Patsy himself was the first to come out, leaving the door open behind him, so that the curse was unluckily hidden from his view. He had clubs in his hands, which he twirled in the air as his manner was every morning for the strengthening of his arms. After a few movements he called out to the little Pig-face, saying, ‘Sina, Sina,’ like that. ‘Come out to thy work, thou idle one.’ Thereupon she too appeared, rubbing her eyes, and in her hands were two clubs like those of Patsy’s. But instead of leaving open the door, as her partner had done, she closed it with a push of her hand, and lo, the curse shone white upon it like a splash of lime on a dark cloth. At the sight of it she shrieked to Patsy, and together, side by side, they read what was there written, clinging to each other with fainting hearts.

“When Patsy had read it to an end, he uttered a great, mocking laugh, and struck the paper with his club, so that the whole house shook, and old Ta’a came tumbling out like a scared rat. Then he laughed again until the whole bay reëchoed round, and every time he laughed his voice grew more shrill and screaming, like that of a woman in a fit. But there was no laughter at all in the little Pig-face, who went and lay down in the sand, hiding her eyes with her hands. And old Ta’a, the thief, the evil-hearted, the out-islander, she tore down the curse with derisive shoutings, and danced on it a shameful dance which is prohibited by the church. But for all that, we could see that she and Patsy were greatly discountenanced, as well they might have been; for who could read such a curse without trembling, or regard with calm the smoky air now thick with the smell of matches? As for the little Pig-face, she was helped inside the house like a drowning person from the sea, for her legs would no longer carry her, and she could not breathe for very terror. The clubs were left untouched where they had fallen; and when Patsy and Ta’a had carried Sina into the devil-house they shut the door and locked themselves within.

“I don’t know how long it was after this that we lay still spying from our _ti’a_, but it seemed to me like the space of many hours. For my part, I should have gladly returned home, for I was gnawed with hunger, and stiff with the cold night watching; so also was Tu, who spoke piteously of his love for Java, and how it might be the means, through this lawless dabbling with the unseen world, of cutting him off in his prime. But so rock-like was Java’s heart, so fierce the flame of her revenge, that she had no compassion for this beautiful young man, nor a single word for the comfort of his spirit. With her burning eyes fixed on Patsy’s house, she lay motionless on the ground like a dead person, her only thought to see the curse accomplished.

“Suddenly we were startled by a peal of thunder; low at first, and then tumultuously rising, which, with repeated explosions like those of cannon, seemed to shake the island to its bottommost roots. We jumped to our feet, clinging wildly to one another, while the earth shook under us like the sea, and the skies above were rent with a thousand burstings. Even as we stood there, swaying and horror-stricken, I felt Java’s fingers tighten on my arm and heard her voice in my ear, crying, ‘Look, look!’ And behold! what did I see but Patsy’s house rising in the air and darting seaward at the tail of the great rope, which, hand over fist, the devil was now pulling in from hell. The rope was covered with long, green sea-grass, and all manner of curious shells, which sparkled and twisted in the sun; and it went thus in jumps, like the crackling of a mighty whip; and with every jerk the house skimmed forward like a boatswain-bird, showing us at a broken window the faces of the accursed, who with frenzied movements climbed the one above the other, striving to escape like a tangle of worms in a pot, each one pushing away the other, until at last the water closed over them all. And from that day to this, Siosi, nothing has ever been seen of Ta’a, nor of Sina, nor of the devil’s white man.”

THE PHANTOM CITY

THE PHANTOM CITY

“God has sent you to the right place here,” said Father Studby, solemnly, to the lay brother. “Life in Lauli’i flows in the same channel, day by day, year by year, so that we wonder to grow old and are surprised to see our changing faces in the glass. When we think, it is of the goodness of God; when we fear, it is for the sick or for the machinations of the Evil One. Our little bay is a monastery, remote from all the passions and fevers of mankind; and the people we live among are pleasant children, naïve, gay, and pious.”

“You must not consider me a sick man,” said Brother Michael, with his dark smile. “I am worn out with teaching, and the hot bustle of Nukualofa. The doctor said I needed rest, that I needed peace and fresh air, and the bishop has sent me here to get them.”

“In Nukualofa,” said the old priest, who entertained a partisan’s contempt for the neighbouring island, “in Nukualofa they do not know the meaning of those words. They exist in a frenzy of excitement, amid the intrigues of three conflicting nationalities; one’s ear is dinned with rumours; and one wearies with the very names of consuls and captains. One cannot take a walk without beholding a fresh proclamation on a cocoanut-tree, or turn round without offending some preposterous regulation. The natives wear trousers and drink whisky; they model themselves on the dissolute whites set over them, and degenerate as rapidly as their masters.”

“I never could see what people found to like in the natives,” said the lay brother. “I dare say they are good enough in their way, and fill a necessary place in the world, but to me they are greasy and offensive.”

“Ah, but you have never seen the true Samoan,” exclaimed the priest. “Here it is so different from Nukualofa. Here our people are better born; here they are self-respecting, honest, and kind; here you will see at once an astonishing contrast to those you have left.”

Once launched on his favourite topic, the superiority of Lauli’i to all the villages of the group, the old missionary knew not when to stop, and his interminable tongue ran on in an unceasing harangue. The new-comer listened with a sort of detachment, as he might have done to some strange parrot screaming in a zoo, assenting by perfunctory nods to that long tale of Samoan virtue, religion, and generosity. His black eyes ranged about the room and through the open window at its back, where, within a distance of a dozen yards, a little church half barred the vista of peaks and forest. Still talking, Father Studby led him away to see it, this scene of his professional life which had been raised, stone upon stone, by his own assiduous hands. The lay brother was shown the altar, with its artless decoration of tissue-paper flowers; the pulpit inlaid with pearl-shell; the sacramental vessels in their wrappings of tapa-cloth. The father seated himself at a crazy harmonium, which was planted on the sandy floor like some derelict cast up by the sea, and ran his fingers over the yellow keys. He played, after a manner, with considerable skill and vivacity, his preference being for the sentimental ballads of his youth, and the dance-music which had then been in fashion. It was strange to hear these old waltzes, so long dead and forgotten, coming to life again in that darkened chapel and from the hands of such a player. The lay brother leaned against an open window, from which there was a wonderful view of wooded mountains half screened in mist, and sighed moodily as he gazed about him. Under the spell of those swaying measures, his heart returned to the Australian plains where he had been born, and he felt himself, indeed, an exile.

On leaving the church, the father took him on a little tour of the garden: showed him the cemented oven where the bread was baked, the roofed-in spring, the hives, the cow, the imported cock, everything, in fact, down to the grindstone and the rusty scythe.

Michael followed as in duty bound; asked the proper questions; showed everywhere a becoming interest; endured it all with propriety. He asked his host many questions, some of them the inspiration of mere politeness, such as the best food for chickens, and the precautions to be taken in handling bees; others, in which he seemed more genuinely concerned, as to the nature of the inland country and its resources. He was surprised to hear that the island had only once been crossed by whites; he was impatient of the priest’s statement that it did not greatly matter, as the natives suffered in social consideration by living too far from the sea, and were, besides, better off for the fish it afforded and the easy means of communication.

“There are other things in Samoa besides Samoans,” exclaimed Brother Michael, with a disdain that he could but ill conceal. “Here is an island scarcely forty miles wide, which apparently has only once been crossed in the memory of living man. Why, the thing stirs the imagination; it makes the blood tingle in one’s veins; it makes one speculate on a thousand possibilities. In those secluded depths there may be the ruins of ancient cities; mouldering tombs covered with hieroglyphs; perhaps even another race still surviving in those inner valleys! There may be whole forests of sandalwood, beds of fine coal, deposits of rich ores. Who knows, but there may be gold!”

Father Studby crossed himself.

“God forbid,” he said.

“You must remember,” he went on, “that every village has some knowledge of the land behind it, and if you could combine what they know you would find that the interior is not such a mystery as you imagine; though, of course, there may be tracts which have never yet been penetrated by a white man. At one time and another I have been many miles inland of Lauli’i, but I never got so far but what every gully had a name, every acre an owner. Why our people should dispute among themselves for such blocks of worthless forest and rock is a thing beyond my comprehension; but as a matter of fact they do attach an inordinate value to them, and it would astound you to find how exactly the boundaries are remembered.”

“You interest me immensely,” said the lay brother. “I see that you can tell me everything I want to know, and I congratulate myself again that my lucky star has brought me to your door. In Nukualofa they could not answer half my questions.”

“In Nukualofa,” said Father Studby, bitterly, “they know nothing,--less than nothing,--for they mislead you and tell you lies. The natives there, besides, are of a low stock, interbred with out-islanders and without an ancestry among them. You will look in vain for such a man as our Maunga, who goes back seventeen generations to the legendary Fasito’o, or a family such as the Sā; Satupaialā;, who have what you might almost call a special language of their own. They die, they spit, they moor a boat, they steal breadfruit, they commit adultery, all in different words from those commonly employed. It has been my pleasure, you might almost call it my folly, to absorb myself in such studies. I am afraid you will find me nothing more than an old Kanaka pundit, with my cracked head full of legends and ancient songs.”

The priest saw very little of his guest, who followed the doctor’s prescription of fresh air with a literalness that made him almost a stranger in the house. Every morning, after participating in the service in the little church, Brother Michael would take his gun and disappear for the day, returning at sundown with what pigeons he had shot, and an appetite that played havoc with his host’s frugal housekeeping. He would eat a pound of meat at a sitting, make way with an entire loaf of bread, and thought nothing of helping himself four times to marmalade, in spite of the father’s disapproving looks, and the calculated contrast of his bare plate. In the light of that frightful inroad on his provisions, Father Studby’s good opinion of the stranger began to change into a sentiment approaching aversion, and it seemed to him an added injury that the young man would no longer eat his own pigeons, insisting, with gross self-indulgence, on an unending succession of chicken, ham, and costly preserves. He said that _taro_ gave him heartburn, evoked the physician’s ban on all native food, and demanded, on the same shadowy authority, a daily ration of brandy from the father’s slender stock. It was hard on the old missionary, who was abstemious to a degree and seldom allowed himself the comfort of a dram, to pour his liquor down that insatiable throat, and be condemned to hold the bottle, while the other smacked his lips like a beach-comber in a bar, in no wise ashamed to drink alone. The bottle, too, until it was placed under lock and key, showed a tendency to decline unduly, and even biscuit and sardines were not exempt from a similar and no less exasperating shrinkage. And then, in his religious exercises the lay brother betrayed a disheartening coldness, and what spiritual fire had ever been in him seemed smothered over with torpor and indifference. His vocation meant no more to him than a means to live. He yawned at mass, nodded intermittently through the priest’s interminable sermons, and when it was proposed that he should take temporary charge of the school he did not hesitate for a moment to refuse.

Of course, a word to Nukualofa would have speedily rid Father Studby of his guest; he had only to write, to expostulate, and the thing was done. More than once, under the influence of some particular indignation, he had set himself to the task. But he had never got beyond the first few lines before his natural generosity reasserted itself. Who was he, that he should make himself the young man’s judge; that he should help, perhaps, to mar prospects none too bright, and throw the last stone at one already tottering to his fall? Besides, were the grounds of his objection as sincere as he imagined? Was he not meanly condemning the lay brother for his appetite, for the hole that he was making in that dwindling larder, rather than for his lack of religious conviction which at times seemed so shocking? After all, was it not natural for a young man to eat well, to help himself unchecked to marmalade, to devour expensive tinned meats like a wolf? It was the result of those immense walks, ordered by the doctor, to which Michael so assiduously applied himself. Was there not something even admirable in so strict an obedience to hygiene, especially in one constitutionally slothful and self-indulgent?

One afternoon Michael returned from his walk in a state of high excitement. His black eyes were burning, and for once, contrary to his usual habit, he was extraordinarily noisy and talkative. He kept breaking out into wild laughter, even when not a word was said, and seemed to possess, buried somewhere within him, the secret of an unextinguishable entertainment. Instead of dozing after supper in his chair, he grew, if anything, wider awake than ever, and his hilarity continued with a kind of violence. Father Studby was carried off his feet by that wave of gaiety; he felt the contagion of that singular fever which had so transformed his companion; he, too, laughed at nothing, and found himself talking with an animation that he could not remember to have displayed for years. But with it all he had an unaccountable sense of suspicion, of being on his guard against something, he knew not what, of some pitfall yawning for his unwary feet. He felt that he was watched; that those strange, mocking eyes of his companion were mutely tempting him to evil; at times he almost wondered whether the dark lay brother were not the devil himself.

The young man’s talk was rambling and inconsequent, a mere rattle of autobiography, punctuated with laughter. He had much to say of his college days; his penury; his struggles; his shabby makeshifts; the pranks he and his companions had played on the professors. He roared as he recalled them, and hammered the table with his fist. He spoke of his mother and her hard life; the ne’er-do-well father; the brother that drank; the sister with the hip disease. And from that again to the price of native land, the way to secure good titles, the need, as he had been told, to buy the same property from a dozen conflicting owners. Then he broke out about the power of money, the unlimited power of money, the lawlessness of money in unprincipled hands; the way it could buy everything the world had to offer, social position, beautiful women, the entrée to great houses. With money, what could a man ask for in vain! In this world, he meant, of course--in this world. In the next, thank God, it would be different; the rich would pay through the nose then for their pleasures. But some of them perhaps would not repent it; the most would be as bad again, if only the chance were offered; the dogs would return to their vomit.

Father Studby listened to these confidences with amazement; they depressed and angered him unspeakably; they seemed to disclose in his companion a cynicism and a moral deficiency that he had not previously suspected. He felt, too, as he had never felt before, the full horror of that brutal civilisation, so merciless, so inexorable, its obliterating march whitened with the bones of thousands; everything with its price, even to the honour of shrinking women and the corpses of the dead. If you had no money the wheels rolled over you; if you had no money you sank and died. There was no one to help, no one to pity; all were scrambling horribly to save themselves on the shoulders of those below. What a contrast to the calm of that Samoan life, primitive, kindly, and religious, in which accursed money was unknown! He was led to declaim hotly on the high breeding and chivalry of these misjudged people, and protested that they had more to teach than to learn. Where, he demanded of the lay brother, could one find such hearts as these? where such brave men and compassionate women? where else a land with neither rich nor poor? Here, if one starved, all starved; here, if need be, the last banana was divided into a hundred pieces; here they would all take shame if a single child went hungry.

The old priest went on and on with his tale of Samoan virtue, of Samoan superiority. God had never made such a people; there was in them the seed that would regenerate the world. There was nothing in which they did not excel. He carried his reluctant hearer into the mazes of native poetry; he repeated hundreds of lines in his resounding voice, blowing out clouds of tobacco smoke between each stanza. Where, he asked, were the whites who could match such things as these; who could bring the tears to your eyes or convulse you with laughter at will? He would repeat that last verse, if his companion did not mind; it described how To, wandering on the sea-shore at dawn, met Tingalau returning from his fishing, and led on to twenty stanzas more of what To said to Tingalau, and Tingalau to To!

Michael lay back in his chair, scarce heeding the soft gibberish that to him meant nothing. He was living in a tumult of his own thoughts--thoughts in which Kanaka poetry had no part, though the priest himself was sometimes present, but whether as a friend or foe he could not yet determine; and while he wondered and conjectured the old man himself seemed to disappear in his own smoke, until nothing remained of him but a faint, passionate buzzing, like that of a bumblebee in a field.