NORFOLK ISLAND--ARCADIA
And now, my innocence and lack of complicity in Hayston's irregularities
having been established, a revulsion of feeling took place in the minds
of the captain and officers of the _Rosario_ with regard to me.
After the fullest explanations furnished by the traders and others,
backed up by the manifest sympathy and good-will of the inhabitants of
Strong Island, it became apparent that some sort of reparation was due
to me. This took the form of a courteous invitation to accept a passage
to Sydney in H.M.S. _Rosario_, and to join the officers' mess on the
voyage. "I'm afraid that we acted hastily in your case, Mr. Telfer!"
said Captain Dupont. "You have been thoroughly cleared of all
accusations made against you. I am bound to say they were very few. And
you seem chiefly to have acted as a peacemaker and a power for good. I
have gathered that you are anxious to rejoin your friends in Sydney. I
shall be glad to have your company on the return voyage. What do you
say? I trust you will not refuse; I shall otherwise think you have not
forgiven my apparent harshness."
Thus pressed to return to family and friends--from whom, at times, in
spite of my inborn roving propensities, the separation had cost me
dear--what could I do but thank the manly and courteous potentate, and
comply with an invitation so rarely granted to a South Sea adventurer. I
was the more loth to lose the opportunity as there had come upon me of
late a violent fit of homesickness which I in vain strove to combat.
I had in truth now no particular reason for remaining at Kusaie, or
indeed anywhere in the South Seas. Hayston was gone; his magnetic
influence no longer controlled my will, as in our first acquaintance.
The _Leonora_--our pride and boast, our peerless floating home--no
longer "walked the waters like a thing of life," but lay dead,
dismantled, dishonoured on the ruthless coral rocks which had crushed
the life out of her on that fatal night.
I realised now with thankfulness that I had narrowly escaped being
liable as an accessory for some of Hayston's ultra-legal proceedings--to
call them by no harsher name.
How often, indeed, in the reckless daring of boyhood is the fatal line
crossed which severs imprudence from crime! The inexorable fiat of human
justice knows no shade of criminality. "Guilty or not guilty," goes
forth the verdict. There is no appeal on earth. And the faulty, but not
all evil-natured victim, is doomed to live out all the years of a life
branded as a felon, or maddened by the fears which must ever torture the
fugitive from justice!
If I stayed in the South Seas on my present footing, nothing remained
but the trader's life, pure and simple. I had little doubt but that I
could make a living, perhaps a competence in years to come. But that
meant exile in every sense of the word. Complete severance from my
kindred, whom my soul yearned to see again; from the friends of my
boyhood; from the loved and lovely land of my birth; from the thousand
and one luxuries, material and intellectual, which are comprehended in
the word civilisation. I had slaked my thirst for adventure, danger, and
mystery. I had carried my life in my hand, so to speak, and times
without number had doubted whether I should retain that more or less
valuable possession for the next ten minutes. I had felt the poisoned
arrows at Santa Cruz hurtling around me, even hiss through my waving
locks, when the death-scratch summoned a man on either hand. I had
nearly been "blue sharks' meat" as Hayston phrased it, on coral strand
amid "the cruel crawling foam." All chances and risks I had taken
heedlessly in the past. But now I began to feel that I must pronounce
the momentous decision which would make or mar my future career. The
island life was very fair. For one moment I saw myself the owner of a
trading station on Pingelap or Arurai. I am sitting in a large, cool
house, on soft, parti-coloured mats, surrounded by laughing girls
garlanded and flower-crowned. Around and above, save in the plantation
which surrounds the house, is the soft green light of the paradisal
woodland illumining its incredible wealth of leafage, fruit, and
flowers. Before me lies the endless, azure sea-plain. And oh, my sea! my
own, my beloved sea!--loved in childhood, youth, and age, if such be
granted to me! In my ears are the magical murmurous surge-voices, to the
lulling of which I have so often slept like a tired child. Fruit and
flowers--love and war--manly effort--danger--high health--boundless
liberty,--all things necessary to the happiness of primeval man, before
he became sophisticated by the false wisdom of these later ages, should
I not possess in profusion? Why, then, should I not remain in this land
of changeless summer--this magic treasure-house of all delights of land
and sea?
* * * * *
Long and anxiously did I ponder over my decision. Those only who have
known the witchery of the "summer Isles of Eden," have felt the charm of
the dream-life of the Southern Main--the sorcery of that lotus-eating
existence, alternating with the fierce hazards and stormy delights which
give a richness to life unknown to a guarded, narrowed civilisation--can
gauge my irresolution.
I had well-nigh resolved to adhere to the trader's life--until I had
made a fortune with which I could return in triumph--when I thought of
my mother! The old house, with its broad, stone-paved verandah came back
to me--the large, "careless-ordered" garden with its trailing, tropical
shrubs and fruit-trees--the lordly araucarias, the boat-house, the
stone-walled bath wherein I had learned to swim--all came back in that
moment when memory recalled the scenes and surroundings of my early
life. I could hear a voice ever low and sweet, as in the days of my
childhood, which said, "Oh! my boy! my boy! come back--let me see my
darling's face before I die."
I was conquered--the temptations of the strange life, with its sorceries
and phantasms, which had so long enveloped me, were swept away like a
ghost-procession at dawn. And in their place came the steadfast resolve
to return to the home of my youth, thenceforward to pursue such modes of
life as might be marked out for me. In a new land like my birth-place,
with a continent for an arena, I had no fear but that a career would
open itself for me. In no country under heaven are there so many chances
of success, so many roads to fortune, as in the lone wastes upon which
the Southern Cross looks down. On land or sea--the tracks are
limitless--the avenues to fortune innumerable. Gold was to be had for
the seeking; silver and gems lay as yet in their desert solitudes, only
awaiting the adventurer who, strong in the daring of manhood, should
compel the waste to disclose its secrets--only awaited the hour and the
man.
For such enterprises was I peculiarly fitted. So much could then be said
without boast or falsehood on my part. My frame, inured to withstand
every change of temperature which sea or land could furnish, was of
unusual strength. By hard experience I had learned to bear myself
masterfully among men of widely various dispositions and characters. I
took my stand henceforth as a citizen of the world--as a rover on sea
and land--as more than a suppliant to fortune, a "Conquistador."
* * * * *
The homeward voyage being now fairly commenced, I began to speculate on
the probabilities of my future career. During the years which I had
passed among the islands I had acquired experience--more or less
valuable--but very little cash. This was chiefly in consequence of our
crowning disaster, the wreck of the _Leonora_. But for that untoward
gale, my share of the proceeds of the venture would have exceeded the
profits of all my other trading enterprises. As it was, I was left, if
not altogether penniless, still in a position which would debar me from
making more than a brief stay with my friends in Sydney, unless I
consented to be beholden to them for support. That I held to be
impossible. For a few weeks I felt that my finances would hold out. And
after that, was there not a whole world of adventures--risks, hardships,
dangers, if you will--all that makes life worth living--open before me;
the curtain had fallen upon one act of the life drama of Hilary Telfer.
What of that? Were there not four more, at least, to come?
Even the princess had not arrived. There had been a "first robber" on
the boards, perhaps--even more of that persuasion. But the principal
stage business was only commencing--the dénouement was obviously far
off. Thereupon my hopes rose as if freshly illumined. My sanguine
nature--boundless in faith, fertile in expedient--reasserted itself.
Temporarily depressed, more in sympathy with Hayston than with my own
ill-luck, it seemed more vigorous and elastic in rebound than ever. The
memory of my island life became faint and dreamily indistinct. The forms
of Hayston, the king and queen, of Lalia, with sad, reproachful
gaze--of Hope Island Nellie, lifting a rifle with the mien of an
angered goddess--of Kitty of Ebon, incarnate daughter of the dusky
Venus--of the bronzed and wrinkled trader, with blood and to spare on
his sinewy hand--of young Harry and the negro Johnny. All these forms
and faces, once so familiar, seemed to recede into the misty distance
until they faded away from my mental vision.
With them passed into shadow-land the joyous life of my youth--of the
untrammelled, care-free existence--such as no man may find again in this
world of slow, tracking care and hasty disenchantment. "Was I wise?" I
asked myself again and again, in quitting it for the hard and anxious
pursuits of the Continent? Were there not a dozen places besides
Strong's Island where I should be welcomed, fêted, caressed, almost
worshipped as a restored divinity? Was it well to abandon the rank which
I had acquired among these simple people? Was it-- But no. For ever had I
made the decision. Once resolved, I disliked changing my plans. Burdened
with a regret which for days I could neither subdue nor remove, I
adhered unflinchingly to my resolution, and addressed myself to the
steady contemplation of the future.
Now had commenced for me a new life--a new world socially speaking. The
quiet reserve and unemotional bearing of the British officer was
substituted for the frank accost and reckless speech of the island
trader or wandering mariner. I was prompt, however, to assimilate the
modish bearing of my companions, and assisted by some natural alertness,
or perhaps inherited tendencies, soon became undistinguishable from the
honourables and lordlings of the gun-room. Upon my repose of manner,
indeed, I was often complimented. "By Jove, old fellow," one of the
offshoots of the British aristocracy would say, "one would think you had
been at Rugby or Eton. And I suppose you have never seen England.
Certainly you have the pull of us in make and shape. I can't think how
they grow such fellows,--more English than the English,--with your blue
eyes and fair hair, too, in these God-forsaken regions."
"Because," I said, "I am of as pure English blood as yourself; have been
reared, and moulded, and surrounded by English people, and have all the
traditions of the old country at my fingers' end. For the rest, I hold
that this end of the world is more favourable to the growth of
Anglo-Saxons, as you call yourselves, than the other."
"Well! it looks like it, I must say," said my new friend. "I only hope
that when the time comes for fighting, by sea and land--and, mark my
words, come it will--that you will be found as stanch as I think you
are."
"Be sure we shall be," said I. "We have inherited the true English
'grit,' as Americans say. You all said _they_ couldn't fight when their
war began; when it finished, the world gave a different verdict. We are
our fathers' sons, neither more nor less. The bull-dog and the game-cock
still fight to the death in our country. Many a time have I seen it. And
so will we when our time comes, and when we think it worth our while."
* * * * *
We carried an order from the New South Wales Government to call in at
Norfolk Island--once the ocean prison of the more desperate felons of
the old convict régime, who had been replaced by the descendants of the
Pitcairn islanders. They, in their turn the descendants of mutinous
sailors and Tahitian women--now the most moral, God-fearing, and ideally
perfect race on the face of the earth.
What a miracle had been wrought! Who could have imagined that the last
days of a rough old sailor, spent among the survivors of a group of
savage women who had butchered their mates, could have so firmly fixed
the morale of a whole community that virtue should have indelibly
impressed itself upon a hundred families. Sydney lies about S.S.W. from
Kusaie, but to avoid passing through the dangers of the New Hebrides,
and the reef-studded vicinity of New Caledonia, a direct south course
with a little easting was decided upon.
We made Norfolk Island, the distance being about two thousand miles, in
ten days' easy steaming from Strong's Island. This lovely island was
discovered by Cook in 1774.
A military man writing of it in 1798, draws a comparison between it and
Sydney much to the disadvantage of the latter. "The air is soft (he
says) and the soil inexpressibly productive. It is a perfect section of
paradise. Our officers and their wives were sensibly affected at their
departure, and what they regarded as banishment to Sydney."
Another officer writing of it in 1847, says: "It is by nature a paradise
adorned with all the choicest gifts of nature--climate, scenery, and
vegetable productions; by art and man's policy turned into an earthly
hell, disfigured by crime, misery, and despair."
The island had been brought into a high state of cultivation by convict
labour. Its roads, buildings, and gardens were in admirable order. But
with the establishment of the new régime--a different race with
different tasks--much was neglected, a part became decayed and ruinous.
The island is now partitioned into blocks of fifty acres, of which each
adult male is allowed one, drawn for and decided by lot.
Whale fishing is the favourite and most profitable occupation. From this
and the sale of farm produce, which finds a market in Sydney, the
inhabitants are furnished with all their needs require. Their wants are
few, simple, and easily supplied.
The old convict town with its huge, dilapidated barracks,
gaol-officers' quarters, and servants' houses, is situated on the
south-east edge of the island, where the little Nepean islet gives
sufficient shelter to form a precarious roadstead available in certain
winds. The old town is occupied by the Pitcairn islanders--in number
about three hundred.
Five miles across the island, on its north-eastern shore, and
communicating with it by a fair road, lies the Melanesian Mission estate
of a thousand acres. Sloping gently down to a low cliff and a rocky
shore, the land is an undulating meadow, broken by ravines, and covered
with a thick sward of conch grass or "doubh," said to have been imported
from India, whence we drew our chief food supplies so many a year ago.
Nothing more beautiful in a state of nature had ever been seen, I
thought, when I first cast my admiring eyes on it. Here and there
gigantic, graceful pines (_Araucaria excelsa_) stood in stately groves.
Higher up on the flanks of Mount Pitt (a thousand feet above) grow the
lemon and guava, cotton and wild tobacco. The island is nine hundred
miles from Sydney and thirteen hundred and fifty from Cape Pillar,
Tasmania. The Nepean and Phillip Islands lie to the south of the main
island.
We were in such a hurry to see the famous island and still more famous
islanders, that we omitted a precaution which had been earnestly
impressed upon us the day before. This was not to attempt to land unless
we had a Pitcairner to steer. When the long swell of the Pacific rolls
in upon the shallow beaches of Sydney Bay there is no more dangerous
place in the world--the roadstead of Madras hardly excepted--than the
boat harbour at Norfolk Island.
Like most sailors, and man-of-war's men in particular, the crew was
reckless and confident. For myself, I was a fair hand in a boat, and had
mixed in so many cases of touch-and-go, where all hands would have fed
the sharks in a few more minutes, that I had lost any sense of caution
that I might have originally possessed. As we neared the shore, rising
and falling upon the tremendous billows, which told of a scarce passed
gale, I felt a sense of exhilaration to which I had been long a
stranger. A party of the islanders, seeing a boat leave the ship, had
come down to watch our landing, apparently with interest. As we came
closer I noticed them talking rapidly to one another, and occasionally
waving their arms to one side or the other as if to direct our steering.
There were several women in the group, but as we neared the landing my
attention was rivetted upon a girl who stood out some distance from the
others at the end of a rocky point, which jutted beyond the narrow
beach.
I had seen strikingly beautiful faces and faultless forms among the
island girls, as all unconscious, they threw themselves into attitudes
so graceful and unstudied that a sculptor would have coveted them for
models. Among these children of nature, roaming at will through their
paradisal isles, the perfection of the human form had doubtless been
developed. But there was a subtle charm about this girl, as she stood
with bare feet beside the plashing wave,--a statuesque presentment of
nobility, courage, and refinement which I had never before recognised in
living woman. Tall and slender of frame, she yet possessed the rounded
outlines which, in all island women, promise a fuller development in the
matured stage of womanhood. Her features were delicately regular; in her
large dark eyes there was an expression of strong interest, deepening
almost into fear, as she gazed at our incoming boat. She had bent
slightly forward, and stood poised on her rock as if waiting for a
signal to plunge into the boiling surf. Her complexion was so fair that,
but for her attitude, which spoke her a daughter of the sea, one which
no mortal born away from the music of the surges could have assumed, I
might have taken her for an Englishwoman.
"In the name of all the divine maidens since Nausicaa" (I had not quite
forgotten my _Odyssey_, rusty though was my Greek) "who can she be?"
thought I.
At this point my reflections and conjectures came to an abrupt end, as,
indeed, nearly did also "the fever called living" in my particular case.
I felt the boat rise heavenwards on the back of a tremendous roller. The
islanders shouted as though to warn us of danger, the steersman gave the
tiller a wrong turn, or omitted to give it the right one, and the next
moment the boat was buried beneath an avalanche of foam, with crew and
passengers struggling for their lives. I could swim well, that is, of
course, comparatively, for the difference between the best performance
of a white man--well practised from youth though he be--and of an
islander is as that of a dog and a fish. Still, having risen to the
surface, I made no doubt but that I could easily gain a landing. In this
I was deceived. As in other spots, the constant surf concealed a
treacherous undertow against which the ordinary swimmer is powerless.
Again and again did I gain foothold, to be swept back by the resistless
power of the backward current. Each time I became weaker, and at length,
after a long fruitless struggle, I closed my eyes and resigned myself to
my fate. Borne backward and half fainting, I saw the whole party of
natives in the water mingling with the crew, who, like myself, had been
making desperate efforts to reach the landing.
My senses were leaving me; darkness was before my eyes, when dimly, as
in a dream, I seemed to mark the girl upon the rock plunge with the
gliding motion of a seal into the boiling foam. Her bosom shone as with
outstretched arms she parted the foaming tide, her short under-dress,
reaching only to the knees, offered no impediment to the freedom of her
limbs. I felt soft arms around me. A cloud of dusky hair enveloped me.
Strains of unearthly music floated in my ears. It was the dirge of the
mermaidens, as they wail over the drowned sailor and bear him with song
and lament to his burial cavern. All suddenly it ceased.
* * * * *
The mid-day sun had pierced the roof and side of the cottage wherein I
was lying upon a couch, softly matted. When I awoke I looked around.
Surely I had been drowned, and must be dead and gone! How, then, was I
once more in a place where the sun shone, where there were mats and
signs of ordinary life? I closed my eyes in half-denial of the evidences
of my so-called senses. Then, as I raised myself with difficulty, the
door opened and a man entered.
He was a tall, grandly developed Pitcairner, one of the men who had been
on board the night before. His face was dark, with the tint of those
races which, though far removed from the blackness of the Ethiop, are
yet distinct from the pure white family of mankind. But his eyes,
curiously, were of bright and distinct blue, in hereditary transmission,
doubtless, from that ancestor who had formed one of the historic
mutineers of the _Bounty_.
"You've had a close shave, Hilary. That's your name, I believe. A trifle
more salt water and you'd have been with the poor chap that's drowned.
We got all the crew out but him."
"I thought I _was_ drowned," I replied, "but I begin to perceive that
I'm alive. I see you're of the same opinion, so I suppose it's all
right."
"It's not a thing to laugh at," the Pitcairner said gravely. "God saw
fit to save you this time. To Him and Miranda you owe your thanks for
being where you are now."
"There are people in Sydney," I said, "who will be foolish enough to be
glad of it, and after I have a little time to think, I daresay I shall
be pleased myself. But who is Miranda, and how did she save me?"
"Miranda Christian, my cousin, is the girl you saw standing on the rock.
She had a strong fight of it to get you in, and but for one of us going
on each side neither of you would have come out. We had been hard at it
trying to save the crew, and nearly left it too late. She was just about
done."
"I shall be uneasy till I thank her. What a brave girl! And what am I to
call you?"
"Fletcher Quintal, and her cousin," the islander replied, drawing
himself up and looking at me with a steady gaze. "You won't see her till
the afternoon. She has gone home to rest after staying with you till you
came to. My sister, Dorcas, will bring you food directly, and perhaps
you'd better rest yourself too till sundown. Then some of us will pay
you a visit. Good morning."
A pleasant-faced damsel, with the sparkling eyes and perfect teeth of
the race, came in shortly afterwards, who smilingly informed me that her
name was Dorcas Quintal, and that her cousin Miranda had told her she
was not to talk much to me.
However, during the time occupied in making a creditable lunch--all
things considered,--I succeeded in convincing her that I was strong
enough for a decent dose of gossip, in the course of which I learned
several interesting pieces of information about Miranda, who certainly
had posed as my Guardian Angel in the late accident. She was, according
to Dorcas, the leader in all sports and pastimes, and also the most
learned and accomplished damsel on the island. "She sang and played in
their church choir. She had read all the poets in the world," Dorcas
believed. "She could recite pages and pages of poetry and history.
Altogether she was a wonderful girl to be born and brought up in such a
place as Norfolk Island, where we never see any one"--here Dorcas
wreathed her lips into an expressive pout--"that is, except captains of
ships and strangers like yourself."
"So she is quite perfect," I said, "alike on land and sea. I can vouch
for the last. I suppose she can pull an oar and is quite at home in a
boat?"
"Indeed she is," answered Dorcas, warming up. "She can sail a cutter
with any man on the island, and steer a whaleboat besides. You should
see her standing up with the big steer oar in those tiny hands of hers."
"So, then, she has no faults?" I queried, a little mischievously.
The girl smiled. "I suppose we have all some here as in other places.
She is rather proud and quiet, the other girls say. I never saw it, and
if there is anything else you must find it out for yourself. And now, as
you have finished eating and drinking, I must go. Miranda will be here
by and by."
"Only one word, Dorcas," said I, as she turned towards the doorway. "How
many admirers has she--all the young men in the island, I suppose?"
"Only one," she replied, impressively, "my brother, Fletcher Quintal. He
would die for her."
"And she?"
The girl paused before replying, and gazed earnestly at me.
"She says she will never marry." And with that she passed out and left
me to my meditations.
I must have been fatigued, even bruised and battered by my conflict with
sea and shore, as I felt a kind of lassitude creep over me, and
presently fell into a dreamless sleep, which lasted till the sun was low
and the dimness of the light told me that the day had passed.
I raised myself and saw Miranda sitting on a low stool near the window,
or the aperture which served for one. As I turned, she smiled and came
towards me, putting out her hand for me to take, and gazing into my face
with a frank pleasure of the unspoiled woman of the woods and fields. "I
have to thank you for my life," I said, as I pressed her hand warmly.
"It is of no great value to any one, as things have been going lately,
but being such as it is, you have my warmest gratitude. I should hardly
have changed for the worse if I had been lying beside poor Bill Dacre."
"You must not talk in that mocking way," she said, with a pained
expression like that of a hurt child. "God has given us all a life to
use for some good purpose. Surely you have friends? perhaps a mother and
sisters, who would weep when they heard you were lying under the waves?"
"You are right, Miranda, and I will not talk foolishly again; but I
thank you with my whole heart for your noble courage in risking your
life to save mine. I wonder now how we both got to land, in spite of
that beastly undertow?"
"I never could have done it without help," she said. "I was nearly
exhausted, yet I did not like to let you go, when Fletcher Quintal and
Peter Mills, who had each brought out a man, swam in again, and we came
in between them."
"You seem to be quite at home in the water," I said. "I thought I could
swim, and at Strong's Island and other places could hold my own with the
natives pretty well. But I found my mistake here."
"Of course we all swim well," she replied, smiling, "and know how to
manage a boat. It would be curious if we did not; there is little else
to do, in Norfolk Island, except when we are working in the fields. Our
life is sometimes dull, I must allow."
"I hear that you can do all sorts of other things," I said. "That you
are the chief musician and teacher, besides being commander of the
fleet."
"Dorcas has been chattering, I am afraid," she answered, while a blush
rose to her brow, tingeing the pallor of her ivory cheek with faint
carmine. "I certainly have a variety of occupations, and very fortunate
it is! Otherwise, I don't know what would happen to me, for I am
scarcely as contented as my cousins and the other girls on the island."
"It is the old story," I said. "Now, why should you not be contented on
this lovely island where you have all you could wish for in the
world--perfect freedom, a matchless climate, exercise, adventure, the
love of your kinsfolk, everything that satisfies the heart of woman?"
"Everything necessary to satisfy a woman's heart!" she said, rising and
walking to where the casement admitted a view of the heaving deep with
the _Rosario_ lying on and off. "Can you look at the boundless ocean
with its thousand paths to the cities of the earth and not wish to roam?
To see the glories of the old world, all the varied richly-coloured life
of ancient nations that I have read of and see in my dreams? Do you
think men only are impatient of a hemmed-in life? It is not so. Women
have their longings for a wider range, a larger sphere; and yet I am
perhaps the only girl on the island that feels what I have described."
"You must have read much," I said, rather startled at this burst of
feeling from the lips of a Norfolk Island damsel--a child of the most
contented community in the world. "These strange yearnings must have
been awakened in you through the word-painting of these wicked authors."
"And why not?" she answered, with heightened colour and flashing eye.
"That my world is one of books I do not deny. I have daily tasks and
occupations, but my evenings are my own, and in them I read and muse.
Then this little island, with its patient, primitive people, seems to
fade away. I spend hours in Italy, where I revel in Florence, the Pitti
Palace, the Arno, and roam the streets of the Eternal City amid the
monuments of the world's grandest era, their very decay 'an Empire's
dust.' I fall asleep often when reclining on the banks of 'Tiber, Father
Tiber, to whom the Romans pray.' But, oh! if I begin to wander away in
the track of my visions I shall never stop. And you," she continued with
an eager glance, "you, who have seen men and cities, are you contented
to linger away your life under cocoa-palms and bread-fruit trees, taking
in glorious ease among simple savages until you become one yourself in
all but the colour? Is this what you were born and reared and educated
for?"
As the girl thus spoke, with head upraised and exalted mien, her
wondrous eyes flashing with almost unearthly light, her mobile
lineaments changing with each varying mood, she looked in her strange
and unfamiliar beauty like some virgin prophetess of the days of old,
rousing her countrymen to deeds of patriotic valour or self-sacrificing
heroism.
All enthusiasm is contagious, more especially when the enthusiast is
fair to look upon, and belongs to that sex for, or on account of which,
so much of the world's strife has resulted.
For the first time I began seriously to ask myself what motives had led
me to waste so large a portion of my youth in heedless wandering among
these fairy isles. What were my aims in life? What did I propose to
myself? As I looked at the girl's face, aglow with the fire of a noble
ambition, I felt humbled and ashamed.
"You have spoken truly, Miranda," I replied, after a long pause, during
which my fair questioner looked with a far-away gaze across the ocean
plain, now quenching its thousand shifting gleams in the quick-falling
tropic night. "I have been idly careless and unheeding of the future,
satisfied with the day's toil and the day's pleasure. But I am going
back to my people in Australia; there I shall begin a new life. It is a
land of duty, of labour, and its enduring reward. There I shall renew
the tension of my moral fibre which has been too long relaxed. But you
must not be too hard on me. I have had to face losses, dangers, and
misfortunes. I have been wrecked; I lost everything I had in the world.
I have been ill; have been wounded; and, but for some of those simple
islanders you seem to despise, I should not have been a living man
to-day."
"I do not despise them," she said; "of course every one knows that we
are descended from those of Tahiti. I only say that they are not fit
companions for white men--I mean of educated white men who in the end
become as bad as they are--even worse--much worse. But tell me about
your being ill. And who tended you? Was it a woman?"
"I will tell you all about it to-morrow if you will walk with me and
show me some of the scenery of this beautiful island of yours. But it is
a long story, and it is too late to begin to-night."
"I should like it above all things," she said frankly, "though you must
have seen so many grand places in your roamings that our poor landscapes
will hardly interest you."
"Much depends on the guide," I said, as I gazed admiringly at her
eloquent countenance.
"I know that," she answered, meeting my too ardent gaze with perfect
unconsciousness of any hidden meaning. "They tell me I am the best guide
on the island, and indeed I should be, for my father and I were never
tired of exploring and finding out traces of the old occupation by the
Sydney Government, and many curious discoveries we made. So I will come
here after breakfast to-morrow."
She was true to her appointment, and then commenced a series of
delightful rambles which, perhaps, I more truly enjoyed than many later
and more pretentious travels.
In despite of Miranda's depreciation of her lovely isle we found endless
excuses for interest and admiration. It was truly a wonderful little
"kingdom by the sea." Scraped along the side of a hill would be one of
the beautiful roads constructed by the forced labour of the convicts
which at one time almost filled the island. Rising from the valley slope
were gigantic ferns, broad-leaved palms, lemons, oranges, guavas, all
originally imported, but now flourishing in the wildest luxuriance in
the rich soil and semi-tropical climate; while above all, stately and
columnar, rose the great Araucaria peculiar to the island--the Norfolk
Island pine of the colonists.
Hand in hand we roamed together through this Eden amid the main, as
though our great progenitors had again been transplanted to this
wondrous wild--a latter day Adam, by whose side smiled a sinless
Eve--pure as her prototype, and yet informed of much of the lore which
men had wrested from the rolling ages. Together we explored the gloomy
corridors and echoing halls of the ruinous prison houses--once the dark
abodes of sorrow, torment, and despair unutterable.
Miranda shuddered at the thought that these dismal cells and courtyards
had echoed to the cries of criminals under the lash--to the clanking of
chains--had even witnessed the death penalty inflicted on the murderer
and the mutineer.
Mute and terrible witnesses were they to the guilt to which human nature
may descend--to the abysmal depths of despair into which the felon and
the outcast may be hurled, when, hopeless of help from God or man, he
abandons himself to all the baser instincts.
We seldom lingered amid these sullen retreats, around which Miranda
always declared she heard sighs and groanings, sobs, and even shrieks,
as though the spirits of those who had suffered, and mourned, and died
amidst the horrors unspeakable of prison life still lingered amid the
ruins of their place of torment.
How strange, well-nigh impossible, it even seemed to me that the very
earth, the dumb witness of crime immeasurable, was not polluted
irredeemably by the deeds that she had perforce endured and condoned.
And now--stranger than aught that dreaming poet or seer imagined--that
this Inferno should have been transmuted into an Arcadia, purer and more
stainless than the fabled land of old, and peopled by the most
obediently moral and conscientious family of mankind that had ever
gathered the fruits of the earth since the days of our first parents.
Day after day followed of this charmed life--magical, unreal, only in
that it transcended all my other experiences in the degree that the
glamour of fairyland and the companionship of the queen of Elfland may
have exceeded the memorials of Ercildoune. If he was enchanted, I was
spellbound even as true Thomas. Never had I met with a companion who
combined all the charm of womanhood--the grace and joyousness of
girlhood's most resistless period--with the range of thought and
intellectual progress which this singular girl, amid her lonely isle and
restricted companionship, had explored. And withal, she had remained in
her almost infantine unconsciousness of evil--her virginal, instinctive
repulsion of all things forbidden and debarred--like a being of
another planet.
* * * * *
Naturally an end arrived to this blissful state of things. The
man-of-war after a few days was compelled to continue her voyage and
perform her allotted duties, which comprehended surveys of uncharted
coast-lines and suspected rocks. I had to choose between going on to
Sydney and remaining in this charmed isle. And here inclination and
duty appeared to draw different ways with equal strength. I was
naturally anxious to return to my birth-place, my family, and friends.
My feelings of home-sickness had returned with redoubled strength after
being long in abeyance. But all such doubts and distrusts were swept
away like storm wrack before the swelling surges of Miranda's own isle.
I was fain to yield to the resistless force of the passion which now
dominated, nay, consumed me. True, I had not as yet definitely assured
myself that this purest pearl of womanhood was within my grasp. I had
made no proffer of my affections. I had not, in so many words, solicited
the priceless gift of hers. But I was not so unskilled in affairs of the
heart as to mistake many a sign and symbol from Love's own alphabet,
denoting that the outworks of the citadel were yielding, and that the
fortress would ere long open gate and drawbridge to the invader.
True to nature's own teaching, Miranda had not scrupled to confess and
dilate upon the pleasure my companionship afforded her, to declare that
never before in her life had she been half so happy, to wonder if my
sisters would not die of joy when I returned, to chide me for my long
absence from them and from such a home as I had often described to her.
And all this with the steady eye and frank expression of girlish
pleasure, which a less unsophisticated damsel would scarcely have
acknowledged without conscious blushes and downcast eyes.
Miranda, on the other hand, stated her sensations calmly and fearlessly,
her wondrous eyes meeting mine with all the trustful eagerness of a
happy child, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. "You see,
Hilary," she would say, laying her hand lightly on my arm, and looking
up in an appealing manner, "I have never met any one before who seems to
understand my feelings as you do apparently by instinct. You have
travelled and been in other places besides the islands, and you have
read books--nearly all those which I have. You know that story in the
_Arabian Nights_ about the prince that was changed into a bird? He knew
that he was a prince, yet he was condemned to be dumb, and was unable to
convey his feelings, because to all the world he was only a bird.
"I sometimes think we Pitcairn girls live the life of birds--like that
one," and she pointed to a soaring white-winged sea-bird, which
presently darted downwards, falling like a stone upon the blue ocean
wave. "We swim and fish, we are almost more on the sea than the land, we
sleep on the land like that white bird, walk a little, talk a
little,--that is our whole life. I think the bird has the best of it, as
she can fly and we cannot."
"But you all seem happy and contented," I said, "you and your cousins."
"_They_ are, but I seem to have been born under a different star. I must
have inherited some of the restless, adventurous spirit of my ancestor,
Fletcher Christian.
"The feeling of unrest and the desire to see the world--the wonderful,
ancient, beautiful world of which we, in this island prison, for lovely
as it is, it is but a prison for free souls--becomes so intense at times
that I almost dread lest I should end my life like his."
"And in what way was that?" I asked. "God forbid you should ever do a
deed so terrible," I said.
"Do you not know? He used to go every day to the top of a high cliff on
the south side of Pitcairn to gaze over the ocean--as I have done
hundreds of times--thinking, perhaps, of the wonderlands beyond, where
he had forfeited the right to live by his own act; and--and one day he
threw himself over the cliff, and they found his body on the rocks
below. Poor Fletcher! I can partly understand his feelings."
This was but one of our many conversations, always fascinating to me,
as affording the rare privilege of exploring a mind naturally of high
intelligence, developed by patient thought and a wide range of
reading,--the island library, enriched by many generous gifts, being by
no means a poor one,--guarded from deterioration by an exquisite natural
refinement, yet withal clear and limpid as the transparent seas which
encircled her home, where the more deeply the eye penetrated the more
precious were the treasures disclosed.
So it came to pass that the _Rosario_ sailed without me. The Captain and
my jolly comrades of the gun-room chaffed me about what they called my
imprudent attachment. "You'll have to turn Pitcairner," they said, "and
settle down after old Nobbs has spliced you upon a fifty-acre patch,
where you can grow sweet potatoes, yams, and maize to the end of your
days. Surely a fellow like you, with a family to go back to, has
something better in view than that!"
"I shall not stay on the island," I said, "I intend to live in
Australia, perhaps near Sydney."
"Then your island princess will run away and leave you disconsolate.
They can't live away from their people and where they were brought up.
Some of them insisted on going back to Pitcairn, and are there now. They
could not be persuaded from it. They had to let them go. They would have
died else."
"I have resolved," I said. "I will take all risks. You shall all come
and see us in Sydney. We will live at North Shore, and have a yacht
built on the lines of the _Leonora_. Adios!"
So we parted. The _Rosario_ got up steam, and once more I watched the
black cloud of smoke pouring from her funnels and the waves breaking as
she moved majestically across the bright-hued ocean.
Up to the last moment my simple and warm-hearted friends on the island
had serious doubts as to whether I was not going off in the _Rosario_.
They could hardly understand how I could prefer remaining as their guest
and friend when the glory and dignity of a man-of-war--their highest
expression of maritime splendour--were open to me.
They had, it is true, implored me to stay with them for a few months
longer--the young men were equally pressing with the older members of
the community. With artless candour the girls promised that if I would
stay Miranda should be my constant companion, and, except on Sundays,
when, as their chief musician and organist, she could not naturally be
spared, I should have a monopoly of her society.
"You seem to like her so much," Dorcas Quintal repeatedly exclaimed.
"And I am certain she likes you more than any one she has ever seen. The
worst of it is that she will be so sorry when you have to go away. Clara
Young nearly died when her friend went away. That was two years ago. But
she got over it in time, and now she is happily married. But she _did_
try to drown herself one day, only we were too quick for her."
"It is a bad thing to have strangers for friends," I said, "if it may
end so tragically when they leave. I wonder you entertain such dangerous
visitors."
"I suppose we can't help it," the girl replied, laughingly. "It is so
pleasant to talk with men who know the great world we can only read
about. We just take our chance. We have plenty to do, and that prevents
us from fretting too much. I daresay you will hear a little crying
to-night. We are all very sorry the big ship is gone."
"It's the old, old story, Dorcas! Girls are a good deal alike all the
world over, I suppose, in many of their ways. But you Pitcairners are
certainly different in some respects to any women I know anywhere."
"What do you mean?" asked the girl, eagerly. "I know we are simple, and
have never been taught very much."
"It isn't that. I will tell you before I go, or rather, I will tell
Miranda, and she shall tell you what I say."
So, with the full approbation of friends and relations of every degree
of relationship, and, what was of more consequence, with the good-will
of the spiritual pastor and master of the island, whose authority was
absolute and unquestioned, Miranda and I pursued our untroubled way. In
this wondrous Arcadia there were no jealousies, no scandals, no asking
of intentions, no fiery, disappointed aspirants, no infuriated
brothers,--these obstacles to pure and true love were evidently the
outcome of a higher or a lower stage of civilisation. No evil
consequences had ever occurred from unrestricted freedom of intercourse
between the young people since the formation of the community. No such
result was regarded as possible. Immutably fixed in my own course, I
knew that nothing--humanly speaking--could affect my unalterable
resolve. I had discovered a pearl of womanhood, matchless in beauty of
mind and body, combining the higher mental qualities, indeed, with such
physical perfection as no girl reared under less fortunate conditions
was likely to possess. With regard to the future, if she consented to
link her fate with mine I was ready to take all the risks of fortune.
The fickle goddess has always favoured the brave, and with Miranda at my
side I felt that I could lead the forlorn hopes of desperate endeavour,
or endure uncomplainingly the toil and self-denial of the humblest
station. I had, it is true, led a careless, somewhat epicurean life in
the past, surrendering myself perhaps too readily to the charm of island
life. But this was of the past, and the half-instinctive folly period of
youth. Henceforth I would essay the culture of the mental qualities with
which I had been reasonably gifted, turning to account also that very
sound and thorough early tuition through which I had fortunately passed.
Thus equipped, and with a helpmate at once loving and practical--devoted
to duty and the highest forms of unselfish charity--ambitious only for
intellectual experience and development--I felt that hope became
certainty and success a mere matter of detail. After the departure of
the _Rosario_ I became almost a son by adoption among the elders of the
community. I learned to accommodate myself to their ways, after a
fashion which was rendered more easy by my years of familiarity with
island life. At the same time I was careful not to infringe in the
slightest degree upon their peculiar customs, or to shock those
religious prejudices which were so earnestly accepted in the community.
It was taken for granted that I would settle among them in right of my
bride. If I decided to marry Miranda, or any other island maiden, I
should be put in possession of a landed estate of fifty acres, where I
might dream away life in a round of labour that was half recreation,
wandering amid the island groves, reclining under giant ferns or lofty
pines, bathing in crystal founts or clear-hued seas at dawn or under the
yellow moon. Passing contentedly from youth to middle age, from that
half-way stage to a later span of life, which in this enchanted land
implied little or no diminution of natural powers. Should it be so?
This question I had asked Miranda more than once. But she would not
consent to take it seriously. One day, however, I compelled her to
listen, though she had again declared that we were so happy as we were
that no change could be for the better, possibly for the worse--even.
"Then, Miranda," I answered, "I must leave the island. Did we not hear
from the last whaler that called in for fresh provisions that my old
friend--the friend of the family, Captain Carryall, was to touch here in
the _Florentia_?" He was the best known, the most popular of all the
skippers next to Captain Hayston. Unlike him, however, his reputation
was spotless, while for fair dealing and adherence to his promises his
fame was proverbial. "Shall I go with him?" I said, "and must I go
alone?"
"And would you leave me?" she asked, imploringly--her dark eyes turned
towards my face in a passion of reproachful tenderness, of which she
herself scarce understood the meaning, "Oh! I thought once that I could
let you go, though it has been life and happiness untold having you to
talk to and read with. I fancied I should only mourn for you for a
while--like the other island girls who weep and lament, and then dry
their tears and dance and sing as if nothing had happened. But, oh! It
is not so with me. They always say the Fletcher-Christians are
different. I shall die! I shall die! I know I shall."
And with that she cast herself on my neck, sobbing as though her heart
would break. In the same breath declaring that she would never consent
to spoil my life by marriage with a poor savage island girl, but a few
degrees superior to the women of Pingelap and Ocean Island whom she had
so often despised.
By degrees I persuaded her to listen to my pleadings, and then calmly
set before her my plans for the future. We must be married here, and
after remaining on the island, living the idyllic life we were revelling
in now, we would sail for Sydney in the _Florentia_, or some other
vessel, and there begin life in earnest. Some employment would be found,
doubtless, which would pave the way, by which I might make a serious
effort towards a career, perhaps a competency in the future, or even a
fortune.
I had but little difficulty in carrying out my plan. The elders of the
community, the relations and friends of Miranda, were overjoyed at the
prospect of her marriage with a person of my position, who might also be
enabled to do them many a good turn if I settled in Sydney, a port with
which they had close business relations. I found, too, that I was not
altogether an unknown personage. Some of the young men who had made
voyages in whaleships had heard of my companionship with Captain
Hayston. However, it would seem that all the natives whom they had met
had given a good account of me as a fair dealer, and, moreover, generous
in my treatment of them,--an apparently unimportant matter at the time,
but serious enough now. Miranda told me afterwards, that had it been
otherwise nothing would have induced her guardians to give their
consent, or her to defy their decision.
As it was, however, all seemed _couleur de rose_. No great preparations
were needed. The simple island fashion was not encumbered with any great
multiplication of garments. On the happy day Miranda was escorted to the
modest building which did duty for a church by a band of white-robed
maidens, in whose dark hair was wreathed the crimson blossoms of the
coral plant and the hibiscus, with little other adornment but nature's
furnishing in the flower-time of life. My comrades were selected from
the younger men of the island, among whom I had always taken care to
stand well, joining in their sports, and entering as an equal competitor
their athletic contests. I was therefore looked upon as a most desirable
acquaintance, able to hold my own, moreover, in all manly
accomplishments (except swimming), and much esteemed for a gift of
relating adventures in strange lands, and describing the foreign manners
and customs with which a roving life had made me familiar.
It might have been imagined that a girl so singularly gifted and
attractive as Miranda would have had lovers in abundance, by whom a
successful aspirant like myself would be regarded with jealousy.
Unlikely as it may appear I observed no feeling of this kind. In that
strange society, the passions which rage so fiercely in more civilised
communities appeared to have lost their force, or to flow with the
peaceful motion of the incoming tide rather than the resistless rush of
a mountain torrent, which love, hate, jealousy, and envy in other lands
so often resemble. The young men admired Miranda, indeed, worshipped her
from afar. But they seemed rather elated by her good fortune, as it so
appeared to them, than enviously disposed, and had no thought of other
than the warmest friendship for their more fortunate companion. Even
Fletcher Quintal, who might have been expected to view with dislike, if
not a stronger sensation, my marriage with his favourite cousin, had
apparently no feeling of this sort. He certainly expressed none, but
congratulated me with all the warmth which a brother might be supposed
to exhibit at the marriage of his best loved sister with his dearest
friend. Truly it _was_ the long lost rediscovered Arcadia. There were
moments when I doubted whether it was wise to leave a land where care
was unknown; where want, with its attendant evils, had never been heard
of; where there were no rich men to envy; no bad ones to fear; no poor
to despise; where no one died but of old age or mishap; whence all the
ills that flesh is heir to had, like the snakes of Ireland, been
banished by some good genius, and only the gifts of virtue, contentment,
and regulated industry remained. But there was wild blood in my veins,
long dormant as it had lain. The murmur of the ocean seemed to call me
with a tone of magical power. I longed for the wave-music once more--for
the voyage which was to speed me to my birthland. I hurried on the
preparations for our wedding, and, lingering though were all the slow
sweet hours, endless the days, almost tedious the soft starlight glow of
the summer nights, the day of days at last dawned that was to herald the
happiness of a life-time.
* * * * *
Our small domain had been carefully measured and marked out for us. A
cottage had been built, thatched with palm leaves, floored with the soft
mats of the island, simply furnished, and, as it happened, near to a
bubbling spring, and shaded by the wondrous wild orange, which here
grows almost to the height and girth of a forest tree. It happened to be
the flower-time of these charming fruit bearers, so that wreaths and
garlands of the blossom sacred to Hymen were plentiful and profuse.