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WINE-DARK SEAS AND TROPIC SKIES
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[Illustration: LAGOON SCENE, APIA]
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WINE-DARK SEAS
AND
TROPIC SKIES
REMINISCENCES AND A ROMANCE OF
THE SOUTH SEAS
BY
A. SAFRONI-MIDDLETON
❦
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1918
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PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED
EDINBURGH
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_I dedicate this book to you,
To your wild songs and laughter,
And to the half-remembered light
Here in my dreams years after;
To you, the men who sailed with me
Beyond each far sky-line,
And my dead self—the boy I knew
In days of auld lang syne._
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CONTENTS
PAGE
FOREWORD 11
CHAPTER I 19
CHAPTER II 28
CHAPTER III 43
CHAPTER IV 50
CHAPTER V 54
CHAPTER VI 59
CHAPTER VII 74
CHAPTER VIII 80
CHAPTER IX 83
CHAPTER X 93
CHAPTER XI 104
CHAPTER XII 112
CHAPTER XIII 128
CHAPTER XIV 138
CHAPTER XV 142
CHAPTER XVI 150
CHAPTER XVII 167
CHAPTER XVIII 179
CHAPTER XIX 196
CHAPTER XX 201
CHAPTER XXI 205
CHAPTER XXII 223
CHAPTER XXIII 246
CHAPTER XXIV 258
CHAPTER XXV 271
CHAPTER XXVI 291
EPILOGUE 299
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
LAGOON SCENE, APIA _Frontispiece_
MOUNTAIN SCENERY, NUKA HIVA 24
NATIVE TATTOOED WITH ARMORIAL 80
BEARINGS
FOREST SCENE, MARQUESAS GROUP 114
PINEAPPLE PLANTATION, FIJI 198
BANANA PLANTATION, FIJI 220
BY APIA HARBOUR 268
HALF-CASTE SAMOAN CHIEF 294
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FOREWORD
IN this volume of reminiscences and impressions I have endeavoured to
express some of the elements of romance that remain in my memory of
wanderings in the South Seas.
My characters are all taken from life, both the settlers and the
natives. I have striven to give an account of native life, modes and
codes, and to describe the general characteristics of certain island
tribes that are now extinct.
My attempt is not so much the wanderer’s usual book with its inevitable
blemishes, for the reason that it is one voluminous blemish, but I’m
hoping that, after a lapse of years, my mind has retained the
_something_ that’s worth the recording. Besides, I’ve smashed about so
much in this grey, swashbuckling world of Grand Old Liars, knighted
thieves, rogues and successful hypocrites, that the background of my
life in early boyhood seems a dim fairyland, whereover I roamed at will
from wonder to wonder, laden with the wealth of cheek and impudence
enormous. Reaping such wonders I fail to find in pages of romance
experiences that outrival those of my boyhood, which leads me to imagine
that I can paint down, out of the Past, some of the sparkling atmosphere
that buoyed me up in the wide travels of my youth.
Wonderful and unsuspected are the unheard harmonies that guide the
footsteps of romantic vagabonds. They know not that deep in the heart of
their existence bubble the eternal springs of beauty, and, as they tramp
on, their footsteps beat to the rhythm of the song they will not
hear—until they be older! And stranger still have been my own immediate
experiences. I once officiated as chief mourner at the burial of a
romantic old trader who had suddenly died through the effects of a great
spree! He had a wooden leg, a limb that he had extemporised from good,
green wood. We stuck that sad heritage (it was all that he could leave
us) over his grave in the forest, having made a cross of it. On visiting
the spot about three months afterwards I observed that the old wooden
leg had burst into leaf—had blossomed forth into pretty blue flowers!
Sure am I that neither our old dead pal, in his wildest and most
romantic moods, nor indeed one of us, had dreamed of the hidden
potentialities of that wooden leg—how one day it would once more come to
the poor body’s assistance, making his very grave in the solitude
beautiful.
Well, in a way, I would think that my book is like unto that wooden leg;
for, as that artificial member—being green—did not snap as it helped our
stumbling pal along, so has the romance in these pages helped me along
on my travels, buoying me up in my weakest hours. And now I feel that,
like my old pal’s wooden leg, my half-remembered romance, reviving, may
blossom over the long-buried light of other days.
So, should anyone notice that I sometimes write in a reflective strain
when describing my experiences and those of my characters, it is because
it is in that way the past is now presented to my mind. All that I wish
to attempt is to throw my different characters into clear relief, and
bring to the surface a hint of the undercurrents that moved them on
their wandering ways.
Looking back, it seems like some wild dream that I arrived in that
romantic world of islands when a boy; that I once stood in the presence
of tawny, majestic, tattooed potentates who loved to hear me play the
violin. Yet ’tis true enough. I have lingered by the side of dethroned
kings and romantic queens, taken their hands in fellowship, lending a
willing ear to their griefs. For I was in at the death of that
tottering, barbarian dynasty of mythological splendour—the aristocratic
world of force—which has now faded into the historic pages of romantic,
far-off, forgotten things.
Not only those chiefs and chiefesses of the forests impressed my
imagination, but also the white men, the settlers of those days. They
were self-exiled men. Some belonged to the lost brigade, drifting to the
security of those palmy isles.
When I think of that wild crew, their manly ways, keen eyes and strong,
sunburnt faces, their diversified types, their brave, strangely original
characters, it almost seems that I went away ages ago to another world,
where I explored the regions of wonderful minds. And now I stare across
the years into the nebulous memories of far-off, bright constellations
of friendly eyes and hopes. Such hopes!
I now recall those rough men revealed to me the best and most
interesting phases of the human mind roaming the plains of life, some
staring at the stars with earnest wonder, and some searching for the
lights of distant grog shanties!
Much of my apparently strained philosophical reflections may appear like
strange digressions and slightly unbalanced rhapsodies. My excuse for
this is, that I am endowed with a strange mixture of misanthropy and
misplaced humour. Humour is like poetry, it cannot be defined. The
humour that I possess is something of an unrecognisable quality, and I
have often spent sleepless nights laughing convulsively over my own
jokes! Often have I sat in some South Sea grog shanty telling my most
exquisite joke, only to look up to see all the rough men burst into
tears! On one occasion I told what I thought to be the most pathetic
incident I knew—lo! men smacked me on the back and were seized with
paroxysms of ecstatic laughter!
When I dwelt for a brief period in England I listened to many thousands
of British jokes, but I cannot recall that I laughed more than twice.
This fact alone convinces me that I am incorrigibly dull and devoid of
recognised mirth. So, whoever takes up my book with the idea of
gathering laughter will lay it down disappointed. I feel that it is
better to make this confession at the outset.
Well, the men who travelled the South Seas in the days when I was a boy
will vouch for the truth of what I say about the strange characters who
lived in those wild parts—and they _were_ wild in those days. I
guarantee that, as I proceed with my chapters, my only artificial
colouring will be introduced to enable me to touch up some of my
characters so that they may be presented to polite readers in polite
form.
When I think of those castaways from civilised lands, how I tramped
across vast plains in their company, sat by their camp-fires far away in
the Australian and New Zealand bush, I feel that I once met humanity in
its most blessed state. Often they would sit and sing some old English,
Irish or Scots song, as the whimpering ’possums leapt across the moonlit
branches of our roof. Listening to their tales of better days, it seemed
incredible that there really _was_ a civilised world thousands of miles
across the seas. The memories of the great cities appeared like far-off
_opéra bouffe_, where the actors rushed across the phantom limelight in
some terrified fright from their own dreams. The thought of vigilant
policemen on London’s streets, the cataclysm of running wheels, crowds
of huddled women and men staring in lamp-lit, serrated shop windows,
pale-faced street arabs shouting “_Evening News_! _Star_ and _Echo_!”
swearing bus-men, shrieking engines, trains pulling back to the suburbs
cargoes of wretched people who thought they were intensely happy—seemed
something absurd, something that I dreamed before my soul fledged its
wings and flew away from the homestead surrounded by the windy poplar
trees—away to the steppes of another world.
Yet—and strange it is—had an English thrush, in some mysterious way,
commenced to sing somewhere down the wide groves of banyans and
karri-karri trees, our hearts’ blood would have pulsed to the soul of
England!
One may ask, in this sceptical old world, why such fine fellows as my
old beachcombers and shellbacks turned out such apparent rogues. I must
say that I, too, have pondered on the mystery of it all. The only
conclusion that I can arrive at is, that they were, very often, men who
had been spirited, courageous, romantic-minded boys, and so had once
aspired beyond the beaten track and made a bold plunge into pioneer
life.
All men have some besetting sin, and it is so easy to slip and fall by
the wayside, to wrap one’s robe of shattered dreams about one, and tell
the civilised communities to go and hang themselves.
In reference to the half-caste girl and the white girl, Waylaos and
Paulines exist in this grey old world by millions, and will do so as
long as skies are blue and fields are green. Waylao was a half-caste
Marquesan girl; and Pauline—well, she _was_ Pauline! Neither are the
leper lovers introduced for scenic effects. They, too, were terribly
real. Their whitened bones still lie clasped together in the island cave
in the lone Pacific. Terrible as their fate may appear, believe me, the
terror, the horror of the leper dramas enacted on the desolate seas by
Hawaii are only faintly touched upon in my book.
Old Matafa and his wife I number amongst my dearest Samoan comrades. It
was with them that I stayed during my last two sojourns in Apia. The
grog shanty near Tai-o-hae has possibly vanished. Could I be convinced
that it still stands beneath the plumed palms, with its little door
facing the moonlit sea, the dead men, out of their graves, roaring their
rollicking sea chanteys, what should I do? I would long to speed across
the seas, to become some swift, silent old sea-gull. Yes, to be numbered
with the dead so that I might rejoin those ghosts and find such good
company again.
As for Abduh Allah, the Malay Indian, I have expressed my opinion of
that worthy in the book. I have no personal grudge against Mohammedanism
in the South Seas, any more than I have for the Mohammedans and their
white converts in the Western Seas. The islands—especially Fiji—through
the immigration of men from the Indian, China, and Malay archipelagos
are rapidly becoming South Sea India, the white man’s creed being
converted into a kind of pot-pourri of Eastern, Southern and Western
theology, doing the can-can.
When I, as a lad, arrived at the islands, the Marquesan race was fast
ebbing to the grave. So my readers may take these incidents, of their
dances, songs, ideas and laughter, as the last record of the Marquesans.
We are but wandering bundles of dreams!—Swagmen tramping across the
drought-stricken track on the great, gold rush of this life’s
NEVER-NEVER-LAND.
I recall to mind how I once met a derelict old sundowner. I was quite a
lad then, tramping alone across the Australian bush on the borders of
Queensland. He hove into sight as a real godsend to me, and looked an
awe-inspiring being. His ancient wardrobe, his enormous bushy grey
beard, made him appear like a wonderful, emblematical ship’s figurehead
from some wreck on the coast with all the crew lost; an apostolic
figurehead, that had in some mysterious way become endowed with life and
was curiously roaming inland. Approaching IT with considerable
trepidation, I played a tender, conciliatory strain on my violin. Having
the desired effect, we chummed together, and, notwithstanding his
peculiarities, he became a boon and a blessing to me. His enormous grey
beard, clotted with spittle and tobacco juice of other years, attracted
all the irritating bush flies, and gyrating bunches of hungry, fierce
mosquitoes. And as I kept to leeward of him, I travelled on quite
untormented by the buzz of his mighty beard. Indeed I felt like some
Pied Piper of Hamelin as I fiddled away by his side, happy as one could
well be, all the flies dancing, like the singing spheres, to the leeward
of that beard, as we tramped southward bound for Bummer’s Creek!
I recall that strange old sundowner because I cannot help feeling that
his old beard, hoarding all the flies, bringing me intense relief
beneath the scorching, tropical suns, resembled the vast cities of the
world, which are like dirty, old, tangled, smelling beards that collect
hungry, aspiring humanity, whilst the happy, musical vagabond, tramps
along untormented by flies or men, out in the wide spaces of the world,
breathing the transcendent beauty of God’s blue heaven. And now I could
half imagine that that old man was like unto God Himself as he tramped
across the spaces, his monstrous beard followed by the singing
spheres—the fireflies by night—till, with his swag on his back, he
disappears for ever from my sight, passing away into the silence of the
ragged gum-trees on the sky-line.
So one may perceive that I have had more advantages than most men in
this world where men stare fiercely, or kindly, at each other as they
express their own opinions, and then depart!
Thus do I—by reviewing the shadowy pageantry of the sympathetic period
of my career—apologise to myself for my book.
Gone the mediæval, heroic age of my existence, when chivalry’s wondrous
light glistened in the deep eyes and on the tangled, kingly beards of
strange, apostolic old men, and on the bronzed faces of hairy-chested
sailormen. But the ineffable, eternal glory of romantic beauty still
shines in the sad eyes of mysterious, homeless women and girls, men and
yearning boys, who are, to me, the lost, wandering children of some
far-off Israel of the great, glorious Bible of Youth—the shrivelled,
fingered pages of the unforgotten light of other days—the light that
warms the world.
A. S. M.
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I cast my bread on the waters
In dreams of feverish haste,
But it came back after many days
Buttered with phosphorous paste!
_New Proverb._
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CHAPTER I
Impecunious Youth—In Sydney—Once more I go Seaward—In Fiji—Lose my
Comrade—I arrive off Tai-o-hae—The Isles of Romance—French
Officials and Convicts—I am welcomed by a Pretty Chiefess—The
Brown Maids’ Preference for English Sailormen—Nuka Hiva by
Night—Ranjo’s Grog Shanty—I sleep beneath the Palms—My First
Meeting with Waylao, the Half-caste Girl—The Passing of the Great
Mohammed—I feel a bit fascinated by the Half-caste Girl—Planting
Nuts for a Living
I HAD been travelling a good deal when at length I left a ship and was
stranded for the fourth time in Sydney. In those days the Australian
seaboard cities seemed to have come into existence by special grace of
Providence. They were kind harbours where Fate could dump, at leisure,
impecunious, hopeful youths on the various wharves. Nor do I claim to
have been the least hopeful of the multitudinous youths who in my day
arrived fresh and green from other lands.
I do not think I was “on the rocks” for more than three weeks before the
opportunity presented itself, and once more I secured a berth on a
schooner that happened to be bound for the islands of the South Seas. I
recall that I met an old pal at this period. We had been several voyages
together and had shared many exciting adventures, through a deep faith
in the impossible and absurd. This pal of mine secured a job on the same
ship.
I was about sixteen years of age at this time. Crammed with the
enthusiasm of romantic youth, nothing seemed improbable, and all that
which was hopelessly absurd to the matured mind of man was to me
something that glowed with inexhaustible possibilities. And all this
notwithstanding the fact that I had already travelled the Australian and
New Zealand bush, lived with deported Chinamen in ’Frisco and exiled
wild, white men from civilised cities, besides roughing it before the
mast on voyages across the world. Also, and not least, I had lived on
nuts, green bananas, hard tack and the dubious “locusts and wild honey”
of the wildernesses, and much suspicious-looking soup in the cities.
One fine morning, as sunrise imparadised the clean waters of beautiful
Sydney harbour, off we went. I was delighted to see the steam-tug
dragging our schooner from the miserable wharf near Miller’s Point. In
due course we arrived at Fiji, where my comrade and I “jumped the ship,”
as they say in sea parlance. A few days after arriving in Suva my pal
came to me with melancholy aspect and told me that he had fallen in love
with a nut-brown lassie.
I condoled with him and made strenuous efforts to restore his mental
balance, but to no purpose whatsoever.
Fiji was a wild enough, God-forsaken, missionary-stricken township in
those days, and to finish my last hopes my pal, on the third day, in a
paroxysm of grief, eloped into the mountains with a celebrated high
chief’s faithless partner—and I saw him no more.
A few days after, being quite fed up with Suva, I secured a berth on a
schooner and again went seaward across the Pacific. We called at many
wonderful isles, which suddenly loomed on the sky-line like enchanted
lands of untravelled seas. I could devote chapters to the wonders of
that voyage, the strange peoples I met, people wild and romantic, clad
in no clothes, beautifully varnished by the tropical sunlight of ages.
How they laughed and sang their wonderful songs to the sailors—songs
that seemed to have been composed in deep ocean caves and blown into
their heathenish brains on patches of moonlight. But I digress. The
climax arrived when we reached Nuka Hiva—the shores of the gloriously
romantic Marquesan Isles.
Though I was penniless, I felt as happy as a sand-boy when at last we
dropped anchor in the bay off Tai-o-hae.
I was entranced as I stood on deck, and with all the fevered imagination
of boyhood drank in the natural beauties of that land-locked bay. The
inland mountain slopes, that reached their zenith in the peak of Ua Pu,
were clad with feathery palms and beautiful pauroas. Peeping beneath the
shore palms were the birdcage-shaped bamboo homes of the native village.
It was silent and deserted on that “Pious Morn,” but its inhabitants
would return. For lo! floundering in the ocean waters around the
schooner, and clambering on the deck, were the handsome, mahogany-hued,
scantily attired people of that little village. No wonder that I felt
that I had, at last, arrived at the wonderful isles of dim Romance.
I made no delay in getting ashore. A large silk handkerchief contained
my worldly goods, which consisted of a violin and bow, two flannel
shirts, a small-tooth comb and one flask of bug-powder. It was
terrifically hot. Leaving the curious traders loafing on the beach, I
made my way up a track that led to the jungle-like scenery that
overlooked the bay. I longed to be alone. I yearned to think out of
earshot, away from the oaths and grousing of the crew who had been
informed that the beer in the shore shanty had gone quite sour through
the hot weather.
As I went up the track I was enthusiastically welcomed by vast crowds of
sandflies. How happy I was! Turning seaward I saw the unrivalled blaze
of the sun’s dying splendour flood the horizon.
I vividly recall the beauty of that sunset when, a romantic lad, I
watched the tremulous stains of the western sea-line. Standing beneath
the interlacing boughs of scarlet-flowered tropical trees, I seemed to
be staring down upon some enchanted hamlet of romance that was nestling
at the rugged feet of the mountains. That hamlet, the small, semi-pagan
city of old Tai-o-hae, lay silent, like some little sculptured city
beautifully engraved on a slope that fronted the sea. Its one little
shore street of wooden houses stood out in clear relief in the light of
the low sunset. The green jungle pauroas and feathery palm groves that
sheltered the township of tin roofs were unstirred by one breath of
wind. Out in the bay lay two schooners, their canvas hanging as
motionless as though they were painted ships on an oil-painted bay of
the deepest indigo-blue water.
But it was no painting, for the group of huddled Chinamen who toiled on
the pineapple plantations by Prison Hill moved, and their pigtails
tossed, and the grog shanty door by the shore-side opened as two traders
emerged and spat violently seaward.
Such was the scene that met my eyes as I stood alone by that capital of
Nuka Hiva. With the approaching coolness of night Tai-o-hae awoke from
its lethargy, for only the Chinese worked in the heat of the tropic day.
The French officials spent the day in a deep siesta, dreaming of La
Belle France and sipping absinthe between their yawns.
Walking down the rugged slopes I met a white settler, who dwelt in a
neat bungalow near an old mission-room.
“Where yer hail from, mate?” said he.
I told him.
“Any chance of getting a living if I stick here?” said I to him.
Hitching his trousers up he regarded me almost fiercely, as he
scornfully ejaculated: “Why, don’t yer know this is God’s own country?”
“Oh yes, I quite forgot,” I said, half to myself as I smiled, for at
every Australian and American port that I had entered I had never failed
to meet some shore loafer who enthusiastically welcomed me to “God’s own
Country.”
But still, Tai-o-hae certainly looked as though the Hand of the Creator
had succeeded in making it the most picturesque and romantic-looking
isle that one could well wish to come across.
For a time I wandered about like an inquisitive schoolboy. I went up to
Prison Hill and watched some native convicts sweep the roads. A gendarme
kindly pointed out Queen Vaekehu’s palace. He enlightened me as to
Vaekehu’s past. I had already heard of that queen’s barbarian fame as a
multitudinous lover and cannibal.
“Is she a cannibal now?” said I, as I stared beneath the palms and spied
the old queen and her obsequious retinue of dusky chiefs on the verandah
of her wooden palace. She had been a kind of Helen of Troy in the
pre-Christian times of Tai-o-hae.
“Ah, no, monsieur, she is not zee cannibal now.” So saying, the
gendarme, as he smiled and shrugged his shoulders, banged a native
convict over the head with his bamboo truncheon by way of harmless
digression. At this moment several natives, handsome youths and
Marquesan maids, went laughing by. As they passed me they called out,
“Aloah, monsieur!” One pretty chiefess, who had a figure like a goddess,
arrayed in hibiscus blossoms and weaved grass, threw me a kiss.
“I’m going to stop on this isle,” murmured I to myself as I walked on.
The shadows fell over the mountain range and hid the pinnacles of Ua Pu.
I was still tramping inland, once more alone. The scene, as night fell,
changed to one of magical beauty. Such a change! I heard the wild shouts
of laughter, and the musical cries of approval, as the sailors and
native girls met and whirled under the palms by the shanties. Those
maids seemed to prefer English sailors. I recall that I often heard the
Frenchmen say: “Ze Englese sailors are ze very deevils when they are
tousand of miles from Londres.”
Often when the French officials were sipping their light wines and
absinthe and gave out their toast: “Vive la France,” those sinful maids
would gaze into the English sailors’ eyes and murmur (out of earshot):
“Vive la Angleese!”
The missionaries had a great deal of trouble to keep them away from
those old sea salts, and the French authorities passed all sorts of
peculiar Acts to keep them in order. It was a sight worth seeing when a
missionary suddenly appeared on the scene where they all danced with the
white men: off they bolted into the forest like frightened rabbits! I
suppose the missionaries had gone over to Hatiheu that night, for as I
passed the shanty the laughter and wild song was in full swing.
The deserted schooners lay out in the bay, not a soul aboard. I saw a
canoe shoot across the still waters, paddled by frizzly-headed savages.
The darkened lagoons, fringed by feathery palms, mangroves and guavas,
loomed into view for miles along the shore, looking like a natural
stockade that protected the approaches to fairyland.
Even when the moon hung out in the vault of heaven, the weird beauty of
that island scene was not dispelled; for, like miniature starry
constellations, swarms of fireflies danced and twinkled in the spaces
for miles along the lagoons of the wooded coast.
I observed this from my bedroom, which, that night, was beneath a
palm-tree by the shore. I awoke late, considerably refreshed and happy.
As I looked about me, I saw several beachcombers still sleeping by me.
They were genuine beachcombers, and only left their resting-places when
the schooners arrived. These schooners brought in the generous
sailormen, who lavishly spent their wages in the grog shanty, which was
the economic centre of Tai-o-hae, for, believe me, beachcomberism in
full swing—cadging drinks in exchange for fearsome tales, punctuated by
mighty oaths—was the staple product and commercial stock exchange of
that semi-heathen-land.
[Illustration: MOUNTAIN SCENERY, NUKA HIVA]
Though I had travelled through Samoa, Fiji, Solomon Isles, Tahiti, New
Caledonia, also through the wilds of savage London town, I waxed
enthusiastic over the wild life and primeval beauty of these scenes and
wondrous folk. Touring inland, alone with my violin, I entered little
villages that were tiny pagan cities of the forest. The inhabitants, a
fine race of handsome, semi-savage people, lived in primitive splendour,
nursing their old traditions and secretly practising heathen rites that
were supposed to be extinct. Nature’s mysterious grace had given them a
palatial home of natural warmth, beauty and plenty. Fertile hills,
mountain slopes giving forth abundance of glorious fruits to the gaze of
the kind sun, surrounded me. By the hut towns mighty sheltering trees,
bending their gnarled, sympathetic arms, threw tawny bunches of
coco-nuts and delicious foods into the hands of her wild children.
Beneath the forest floor for ever toiled that patient eremite, Dame
Nature, pushing up through the mossy earth the clothes that so well
suited her children’s modest requirements: bright bows, green-fringed
kerchiefs, weaved loin-cloths, stiff grass-threads for sewing fibrous
materials into cheap scented suits, also debonair hats for their fierce
heads! I liked those fierce heads. I found them crammed with kindness.
They applauded my violin solos, and brought me sweet foods when I slept
beneath the trees, untroubled by man! Yet how wealthy was I, lying
beneath the coco-palms, counting my wealth in the numberless stars of
strange constellations till I fell asleep. It was whilst I was hard up,
sleeping beneath the friendly trees, that I first came across a native
woman, Madame Lydia. She spied me from her bungalow window hole, as,
lying on my cheap mossy sheet, I counted the clouds that crawled like
monstrous spiders across my vast, blue ceiling.
“Aloah, monsieur,” she said, as she poked her sun-varnished physiognomy
through the bamboos and handed me a pannikin of hot tea. I accepted the
gift with alacrity and thanks, and I unconsciously ingratiated myself
into her good graces. She turned out to be the kind old wife of B— —, an
English sailor and trader. She was a full-blooded Marquesan, decidedly
handsome, notwithstanding the expressive wrinkles mapped on her face. I
discovered that she dwelt in a small bungalow that stood in a most
picturesque spot on the slopes that fronted the sea. I was soon quite
chummy with this native woman, told her who I was, and finally
discovered that she was the mother of the beautiful half-caste girl,
Waylao, whom I had met the day before on the beach. So much for old
Lydia. But as my reminiscences will deal at times with the daughter, I
will introduce her.
She was an attractive girl, about sixteen years of age. When I first saw
her standing on the slopes she decidedly enhanced the scenery of
Tai-o-hae, and that’s saying something for the beauty of Waylao.
As I vividly recall her, Tai-o-hae, its romantic scenery, its background
of pinnacled mountains and dim blue ocean horizons once more surround
me. Waylao stands on the ferny slopes by the pomegranates and flamboyant
trees. She has not yet perceived me. I hold my breath as I catch sight
of her and stare with all the ardour of sanguine youth. The softest,
warm sea wind creeps through the giant bread-fruits; her loose tappa
robe stirs, lifted by the winds, and twines about the perfect limbs of
the girl’s delicate figure. Standing there, with hand held archwise at
her brow, her massive, bronzed hair uplifting to the breeze as she
stares seaward, I half fancy that the dusky heroine of a romantic South
Sea novel has suddenly stepped from the pages of my book and stands
before me, smiling in the materialised beauty of reality.
“Aloah, monsieur!”—it is a salutation in French official fashion. Her
speech rings in my ears like music. She seems even more beautiful than
she appeared yesterday when listening to my violin solo in the grog
shanty by the beach.
By degrees reality returns. It’s no dream at all. I’m an ordinary
mortal, who was bitten ferociously last night by Marquesan fleas and who
only possesses one English shilling and ten centimes in cash.
Though poor in worldly goods, I’m rich with transcendent cheek,
gallantry and the enormous deception of youth. I take a mighty interest
in all that interests the girl. I pluck a flower from the bush beside
us. She smiles deliciously when I, recalling my old aunt’s advice to be
polite to ladies, have bowed and fastened the flower in a fold of the
diaphanous robe that modestly covers her maiden bosom. As we walk up the
slope I feel that I am the old confidential friend of the family; in ten
minutes I learn the last five years of her history. I know that her
mother, old Lydia, kicks up a shindy if she’s out too late at night. I
know that Benbow (as I will call him), her father, gets awfully drunk
when home from sea. I know that, notwithstanding her rough surroundings,
she is innocent as a child; I know she loves her pet canary. I envy that
canary as she babbles on, and I catch glances from her fine lustrous
eyes, dark with a blue depth in the pupils, a depth that sparkles at
times as though a far-off star shines in their heavens.
In a few moments we part. I hear a musical ripple of laughter as she
disappears in the mission-room where resides Père de ——, the old priest,
who has known and educated Waylao since she toddled.
The next adventure that I can recall is that I was compelled to accept a
rotten job on a plantation. It somewhat grieves me to confess that such
humble employments came to me through the curse of being cashless. I
sweated in fine style whilst planting nuts. I also pulled taro, broke
copra with a native axe, cleared scrub, and did other odious things that
did not chime in with the elements of romance.
Soon afterwards I threw the job up in disgust and eventually found it
more congenial to consort with the derelicts who frequented the grog
shanty hard by.
About those men and their ways I will attempt to discourse in the next
chapter.
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