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SOUTH SEA FOAM
---------------------
A. SAFRONI-MIDDLETON
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SOUTH SEA FOAM
THE ROMANTIC ADVENTURES
OF A MODERN DON QUIXOTE
IN THE SOUTHERN SEAS
BY
A. SAFRONI-MIDDLETON
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
------------------------------------------------------------------------
COPYRIGHT, 1920,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO
G. B. S.-M.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
“On the open window-sill of the universal soul the ancient æolian harp
awakes.”—ANDREW MILLAR, _Robes of Pan_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE
THOUGH the adventures recorded in this book may set up the impression
that I am a kind of Don Quixote of the South Seas, I do not claim to
have sought to redress wrongs done to beauteous dusky maidens. It was
the ardent, adventurous spirit of youth that brought me to the side of
such original characters as Fae Fae, Soogy, and Fanga, and gave me the
charming friendship of those pagan chiefs who have inspired me to write
this book. It is possible that many stay-at-homes will think I have
romanced, will think it incredible that such characters as I have
attempted to portray really existed. Well, all I can say is, that my
greatest literary effort in the following pages has been to keep to the
truth of the whole matter, even though such frankness should leave me,
at the end of this volume, with a blackened name.
As I have introduced several Polynesian legends and myths in this book,
I would like to make a few remarks with reference thereto. In recording
my memories of Island folk-lore I have to use, of course, my own order
of intelligence—as compared with that of the wild people who told the
stories—when I attempt to recreate the legendary lore, the poetry, and
the loveliness of the natural world as it must have appeared to the
imagination of primitive minds believing in them. In doing this I merely
accept the inevitable transmutation which all legends and myths of
primitive peoples must undergo when written down.
Myths in their earliest stage were the poetic babblings of the children
of nature. It is certain that folk-lore which comes to us in written
form has been subjected to obvious transformation. All creation-myths
and subtle moving legends that are representative of human passions and
yearning, be they from the lore of the ancient Finns, Hindoos,
Babylonians, Japanese, Egyptians, or Greeks, have been completely
transformed before they reached us. Legends are told, retold, and
embellished in accordance with the storyteller’s notion of what seems
compatible with and faithful to primitive conceptions, until, out of the
imaginative fires of a dozen or so narrators, we get the poetic picture
which the primitive mind probably conceived, but was unable to express.
There is little doubt, I imagine, that, if it were possible to trace our
great epic poems to their remote original sources, we should find them
based on simple poetic superstition which had its origin in the minds of
the lowest tribes of primitive man. Thus, through the influence of mind
on mind, the world’s great epic, when compared to that far-off original,
will resemble it as much as the nightingale’s egg of this summer will
resemble the full-fledged bird’s midnight-song to next year’s moon.
So much would I say for my method in writing my reminiscences of heathen
fairy-land. As for idol-worship, I have written about it just as O’Hara
and I saw it with our own eyes, distinct and solid as are the biblical
images of stone in the churches of our own sacred creed.
I make no attempt to trace outside influences on the mythologies of
Island creeds; indeed, no influences can be traced. The only influence I
was aware of, or ever heard discussed, was this, that with the advent of
the missionary, Island mythology and heathen legends were sponged off
the map of existence. The missionaries, naturally enough, could see no
use in preserving legendary creeds founded on idol-worship and
sacrificial cannibalism, and all that was certainly “not the correct
thing” in a world where morals and manners differ so greatly from our
own. In this way, both the old legends and the crude, primitive
conceptions of religious worship have long since been swept away, and
sometimes also the tribes that cherished these crude ideas were swept
away with their creeds.
Islands that twenty years ago had populations numbering many thousand,
to-day have a scattered population of a hundred or so. The blue-blooded
Marquesan tribes have been wiped out. The survivors are so mixed in
blood that they do not seem the children of their fathers. So rapid has
been the change that many old chiefs are still living who recall the
days when the voices of the winds and mountains were mutterings of the
mighty gods of shadowland. Born under the influences of new conditions,
the natives of to-day do not look back beyond the _lotu_ times. Their
imaginations are steeped in the atmosphere of the biblical stories they
learn in the mission-room. Having a sense of shame for the sins of their
fathers, they deny even the far-off wonders of the tapu-groves. In these
tapu-groves, and beneath the sacred banyan trees, there once stood the
heathen temples (_mareas_), the dwelling-places of those terrible
priests who, empowered by superstitious reverence, officiated at the
sacrificial altars. These priests were more powerful in their profession
than cannibal chiefs or heathen kings. Looking at the ruins of the
altars overgrown with weeds, it seems incredible that human hands were
once lifted in supplication to relentless captors before they were
sacrificed to the bigotry of heathen gospel. It forces upon us the
similarity of their fate and that of our old English martyrs. In the
forest, hard by, slept the dead—the dead who were the strange, wild
peoples that once made every shadow a lurking god, their superstitious
eyes seeing the starlit forest’s height as some mighty dark-branched
brain of a heathen deity’s glittering thoughts.
The Polynesians believed that their great ancestors were metamorphosed
into stars; in this belief there is something of the Egyptian and
Hellenic touch. There are many star-legends concerning the origin of the
conspicuous constellations of their lovely skies, legends that strangely
resemble those of Greek mythology. As Circé turned Odysseus’ comrades
into swine, so did the heathen goddesses turn Samoan warriors into
crabs, snakes, and cuttle-fish. Travellers have often been struck by
this resemblance in South-Sea mythology to the folk-lore of the western
world. The resemblance, I think, is easy enough to understand, for Man
is man wherever one goes in this wide world. Be he black, tawny, or
white, his innermost hopes and aspirations are much the same.
The South-Sea savage gazed with the same wondering eyes of hope on the
travelling sun, moon, and stars. To his childlike mind they were the
movements of his mighty deities and ancestors. He too peopled the
visible universe with gods and goddesses, as did the ancient Greeks; the
phenomena of nature impressed his mind in much the same way as it has
impressed mankind from the remotest ages. The same kind of sorrow dwelt
in the hearts of those old-time savages when they gazed on the dead
child in the forest. The sunsets blew the silent bugles of mysterious
hues along their horizons, touching their lovely skylines with unheard
but visible melodies over the briefness of all living things. They too
crept out of their forests long ages ago, and stared with wonder on the
rainbow that shone over their empurpled seas. Those old rainbows,
sunsets, and stars left the first etherealized impressions of beauty in
the heart of primeval Man the world over. And those old rainbows,
sunsets, and stars still exist, are shining to-day in Man’s imagination,
in all those longings for the beautiful that we call “Strivings after
Art.” Thus there is a strong link, a twinship between us and those past
savage races. Their old symbols of the stars, drifting clouds, fading
sunsets, and moons that once hung in the wide galleries of their heaven
still exist in all our poetic conceptions of that which is wild and
beautiful. Through the alchemy of man’s transmuting mind, the wonders of
that old world are represented in all that is highest in our Art; the
very landscape-painting that hangs on our homestead walls to-day faintly
expresses the poetic light that once sparkled in the eyes of those who
lived when the world dreamed in its savage childhood. The music
_maestro_ to-day stands before the footlights, not of the stars, but
before Man’s artificial splendour of lamplit halls, a highly-cultured
savage, some wonderful embodiment of the genius who once blew in the
magical conch-shell—that old barbarian musician who instinctively caught
the harmonies of creation from the resounding primeval seas, the winds
in the forests, and the songs of the first birds, applying them as
sympathetic symbols of sound that he might please the earnest longings,
the deepest dreams of that shaggy-haired, fierce audience that assembled
in their barbarian forest halls. So it seems that nothing that pleases
our eyes and senses belong to civilization or is of our own making. I
imagine that it has all been derived from the first tremendous
blackboard—the primitive days and starlit nights of heathen lands. And,
so, the first wild children of creation were our masters, who
unconsciously studied in the great school of Art under God’s mysterious
tuition that we might feel the pride and glory of all that is beautiful
and divine, with hope in this far-away New Day! We dwell to-day in a
materialistic age of brassy-blare and “advanced thought.” We have
weighted ourselves with the thick armour of civilization, till we fight
on with curved spines, hardly listing where we may fall. The old
mythological light of the stars is now switched on the pounding
machinery of our cities, instead of being fixed on our imaginations. We
grope in some darkness of our own making, as a thousand sects mumble in
their beards about some dubious hope beyond the grave. We are chained
prisoners in the stone cells of our own vaunted ambitions. No flower or
singing bird is a true symbol of hope, delight, or wonder; all that we
see is divested of the fairy-wings of that imagination that brings us
wealth beyond our fleshly selves. The true poetry of life has gone for
ever. The wild bird’s song steams in our old stew-pot—we like it better
that way! But one must suppose that all this is as it should be.
Nevertheless, we are the old savages, the Dark Ages, in a double sense,
dreaming that we are the children of the Golden Age! The nursery tale
told to the children as they sat by some Kentish homestead’s fireside
last night, was whispered into the ears of wondering children of the
South Seas long ages ago.
In reference to the general style of my book, I have written on the
theory that autobiographical writing should be inspired, not by any idea
of the apparent merits of those things which the author may feel that he
has done well, but from his indwelling regret over the many things which
he has never succeeded in doing at all. I imagine that it is so easy to
convince the world of our faults and so difficult to interest it by
putting down on paper those virtues we all secretly hope we possess.
However that may be, my reader can rest assured that my memoirs are
based on my happy meditations over all the great, worldly things that I
have never succeeded in doing, and so, whatever interest my book lacks,
is not lacking through any fault of my own.
I feel that it is necessary to admit here that I have been obliged to
dig deep whilst resuscitating from the legendary dark the old mummies,
the gods and goddesses which I found buried in the pyramids of heathen
mythology. It is I who have breathed the new breath of life into their
dusty nostrils as I unrolled their spiced, rotting swathings so that
they might have some resemblance to the time when they had true
visionary existence before the wondering eyes of those wild, savage
peoples of a mythological past. I have placed them, with a little
diffidence, on their crumbling feet, refashioning them with their unsewn
eyelids and mouths somewhat awry, on show in the temple of my memoirs,
in full view, standing along the aisles of dim remembrance, faintly lit
up, I hope, by the light of my own imagination.
As books of an autobiographical nature usually devote a chapter or so to
incidents connected with the author’s birth and childhood, and as some
of the critics of my previous books wished to know something of my
genesis, I am pleased to say that I am still full of go, still following
the sea-birds and land-birds on my vagabond travels. Through my
parentage I can claim the blood of three nations—English, Scottish, and
a strain of Italian—my mother being a descendant of Thomas Haynes Bayly,
the English ballad-writer; my father, a literary man, a descendant of
Charles, the second Earl of Middleton, and a lady of the Italian Court:
I believe this lady wrote some revolutionary songs, which were the
direct cause of her enforced flight from her own country. Having said
this much, I will retire as gracefully as possible by saying that I have
only stepped on the stage of this book as one of its humblest actors, as
a hollow-voiced prompter who would bolster up the reputations of his old
friends of the past with the weight of his fleshly self. And so I am
here in the spirit of good comradeship, the far-away echo of my violin
on the South-Sea buskin march assisting those who are scattered or dead,
and no longer able to help themselves on this new stage of a shadowy
drama in which I have placed them.
A. S.-M.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
PART ONE
PAGE
CHAPTER I. SAMOA: FIRST IMPRESSIONS 23
Author’s Heritage—Arrives at
Samoa—Disillusioned—Illusive Romance—Golden-skinned
Polynesian Maids—Meets great Heathen Philosophers—The
Samoan Chief, O Le Tao
CHAPTER II. TROUBADOURING IN TAHITI 49
I ship with a genuine Old-time Crew—Poetic
Nightmares—Tattooed Manuscripts of the Seas!—I learn the
Art of Forcible Expression—Tar-pots—The Storm—Washed
Overboard—Papeete—Pokara—How the first Coco-nuts
came—Star Myths
CHAPTER III. POKARA’S STORY 92
Pokara tells me how the first Idol came to be Worshipped
CHAPTER IV. I MEET ALOA 100
The Hut in the Mountains—A Modern Fairy—The
Escape—Love’s Hospitality—The Stranger from the Infinite
Seas!
CHAPTER V. FAE FAE 106
I meet O’Hara—The Emotional Irish Temperament—The
Tahitian Temperament—O’Hara and I go
Pearl-hunting—Tapee, the Old-time Idol-worshipper
CHAPTER VI. ABDUCTION OF A PRINCESS 115
O’Hara in Love—Fae Fae’s Midnight Elopement—Chased—A
Melodramatic Race for Life—The Innocence of
Eve—Temptation—The Lost Bride—The Madness of
Romance—Outbound for Honolulu
CHAPTER VII. THE HEATHEN’S GARDEN OF EDEN 144
Tangalora the Samoan Scribe—Where the Gods and Goddesses
first met in Council—The Materials of which the first
Mortal Children were Fashioned—The first Wondering
Men—The first Women—How the first Babies came to their
Mothers
CHAPTER VIII. IN OLD FIJI 158
A Heathen Monastery—A Scene of Primitive Heathenism—My
unsolicited Professional Engagement—I imbibe Kava—I
am made “Taboo”—Things that I may not Confess—My
Escape—Fanga Loma—A Native Village—The Enchantress of
the Forest—Temptation—In Suva again
CHAPTER IX. KASAWAYO AND THE SERPENT 175
(A FIJIAN LEGEND FOR YOUNG AND OLD CHILDREN)
A Goddess in the Garb of Mortality—A Garden of
Eden—Temptation—Kasawayo and Kora the Mortal—The Battle
Flight to Shadowland
PART TWO
CHAPTER X. O LE LANGI THE PAGAN POET 203
A Pagan Poet—Influence of Byron and Keats—Star-myths
Enchanted Crab
CHAPTER XI. R. L. S. IN SAMOA 214
O Le Langi’s Influence—Heathen Magic—Poetic
Aspirations—Ramao and Essimao-Samoan Types—Robert Louis
Stevenson and the “Beautiful White Woman”—O Le Langi
becomes a Part of the Forest—“Here lies O Le Langi”—A
Great Truth
CHAPTER XII. A MOHAMMEDAN BANQUET 238
A Child of American Democracy—Rajah
Barab—Barbarossa—Brown-Slave Traffic Methods—Motavia’s
Grave—The Magic Casement—The Splendour of Rose-coloured
Spectacles—Mohammedanistic Desires—Giovanni’s Love
Affairs—Exit Barab
CHAPTER XIII. AN OLD MARQUESAN QUEEN 254
In Tai-o-hae—I come across a widowed Marquesan Queen—Am
received with Dignity—The Artistic Tattoo on Loi
Vakamoa’s Royal Person—The Queen tells how she was
married to a certain Martin Smith of New South Wales—An
aged Queen’s Vanity—A Heathen Necropolis
CHAPTER XIV. TISSEMOA AND THE CUTTLE-FISH 265
Impressionistic Scene in Nuka Hiva—Tissemao listens to
the Luring Voice of a Cuttle-fish—The Love-stricken
Cuttle-fish—When Crabs are Brave
CHAPTER XV. CHARITY ORGANIZATION OF THE SOUTH SEAS 273
I fall from Space—Court Violinist—Arrive in Fiji—With
the Great Missing
CHAPTER XVI. YORAKA’S DAUGHTER 287
The Wild White Girl—The Wagner of Storms—A Pagan
Citadel—Pagan Democracy—Ye Old Britisher—A Battle in the
Dark
CHAPTER XVII. SOOGY, CHILD OF POETRY 318
Poetry’s Legitimate Child—Music’s Fairyland—A Civilized
Old Man of the Sea—A Clerical Hat is the Symbol of
Modern Religion
CHAPTER XVIII. RETROSPECT 326
The Modern Old Man of the Sea—Fifty Pounds!—A Human
Octopus—Adrift at Sea—Sorrow—Saved—In Tonga—Our Old
Man’s last Hiding-place—Retrospect
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO YOU MEN OF THE CITIES
Come! follow me o’er the sun-bleached sands by the seas where the small
grog-shanty stands
On the Wallaby track to Falaboo.
Come! drink of the sunsets, rich old wine from the wandering sinful
days of mine,
For ’tis only in dreams the world rings true.
Come! dream of some magic, far-off day, some lone backyard in the Milky
way!
I’ll fiddle; how the wandering stars will dance!
We’ll sing together—“Yo ho! yo ho!” as on the mighty God-winds blow
Through the dreams of my world of gay romance.
I’ve tramped the tracks to Malabo, I’ve been the way the fallen go!
When times were bad my fiddle wailed their grief—
Till, by the camp-fires on the steep, one by one they fell asleep:
(I’ve buried three, dead in their boots beneath
The breadfruit trees, with all their dreams and Heaven knows what
thwarted schemes!)
We’d tramped the cities, then we sought the huts.
And now?—secure on heathen isles, my pals still sport their hopeful
smiles:
We’re looking thin on rum and coco-nuts!
So read these pioneer strains of mine, and drink deep, friend, as men
do wine,
Of sunsets on the ocean’s foaming rim,
Of far-away and long ago where the scented trade winds blow
Till skylines sigh the stars full to the brim!
As on I tramp through sun-parched days or camp beside the trackless
ways,
Here with my fiddle in the jungle curl’d,
Weighed down with wealth!—my tropic seas, my roof of stars above palm
trees,
My home the hills and highways of the world!
But—if you men of far-off towns have got a few spare old half-crowns,
Just buy my book, it’s really not the worst
Man ever wrote, but nearly so, and that’s quite near enough, you know;
So, be my friend—and read it “till you burst.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_Part One_
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SOUTH SEA FOAM
PART ONE
CHAPTER I. SAMOA: FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Author’s Heritage—Arrives at
Samoa—Disillusioned—Illusive Romance—Golden-skinned
Polynesian Maids—Meets great Heathen Philosophers—The
Samoan Chief, O Le Tao.
I’d fiddled in Australia, lived on cheek,
Cursed all the gold-fields ever found down South,
Lived with mosquitoes down by Bummer’s Creek—
To say the least, I’d felt down in the mouth.
I’d tramped the seaboard cities with my fiddle
To make my fortune, but ne’er solved the riddle.
I’d got quite thin on nuts and grins and smiles,
So emigrated to the South Sea Isles—
That Eldorado where men yawned and seemed to make their piles!
EVEN the wind, my boon companion—for are we not both born roamers?—seems
to blow chunks of old memories through the moonlit, tossing pines that
are sighing to-night outside this wayside inn. It’s here that we rest
awhile, my fiddle and I, as I take up my pen to record some of the
incidents from my early travels. Time, in its everlasting hurry, gives
me the briefest space to say all I wish to say; and ere the month ends I
shall be, once more, outbound on the western ocean.
Personally, I think that to have inherited a pair of rose-coloured
spectacles from one’s ancestors is to have been endowed at birth with
inexhaustible wealth, as well as being born a king in one’s own right.
Such an inheritance enables one to conjure up the finest illusions,
helps one to surmount apparently impossible heights, and also cheers one
in each inevitable precipitous fall. I’ve often blessed the fates in the
thought that they so kindly enabled me to warm my hands and heart by an
imaginary fire when the winds were blowing cold. So much would I say, in
complete humbleness, about my special gift. Possibly the aforesaid gift
is the only inherited privilege that entitles me to write this book
dealing with my life and travels in the South Seas. So far as the
world’s and my own opinion goes, I’ve no violent claim to write more
than three books. For, true enough, it does not make for notoriety and a
keen interest in one’s self from a wide public to have done the things
that I’ve done. I seriously doubt if my effigy will be seen in Madame
Tussaud’s waxwork show when I come to die. The plain fact is, that it is
not considered highly respectable to have slept in a wharf-dustbin in a
strange land, unashamed, and with the lid on! And to have knelt in the
complete obeisance of idolatry before a wooden idol with a tattooed
heathen poet, and deliberately worshipped at the old shrine of the
stars, is, to say the least, _not quite the thing_. Neither does a
wandering vagabond life, and a deep feeling of kinship with strange old
shellbacks, ragged derelicts, and tattooed chiefs, lay a suitable
foundation for recording one’s omissions and sins in polite form.
However that may be, I believe that to have dined deeply on salt-horse
and weevily hard-tack, and to have played the fiddle on the “Wallaby
track” from Maoriland to the Solomon Isles, is to have gathered an
outfit of dire accomplishments that I hope may have inspired me with
something to say.
First of all, I will say that, though I had been smashing about the
seaports from Shanghai to Callao, and had trekked across the Never-Never
land, generally bound for Nowhere, I still had strange hopes that wild
pioneer life and romance, as I had read about it ere I ran away to sea,
existed somewhere in the world. I was down in the dumps, stranded in
Sydney, when the great opportunity presented itself. By the wharf, in
the harbour, lay a three-masted ship. When I went aboard I heard that
she was bound for the South Sea Islands—the Isles of the Blest!
“Any chance of a job?” I said to the chief mate. He solemnly shook his
head, then critically scanned me, then pointing towards the cuddy aft,
referred me to the skipper. Entering the gloom of the cuddy’s small
alley-way, I bumped up against the “Old Man.”
“What yer wan?”
“Any chance of a job, sir?” I murmured in my very best longing-for-work
voice. The skipper stood stroking his whiskers, and, after scrutinizing
me from head to feet, demanded to see my discharges.
“Git yer traps and come aboard.”
I was engaged as a member of the crew.
Next day we were towed down the harbour by a tug, and by midnight had a
steady wind on the quarter, which took us out with all sails set into
the Pacific.
It was a monotonous, long voyage. The “Saga,” for that was the name of
the ship, wasn’t a “Cutty Sark” or a “Thermopylae” for speed.[1] Anyway,
the length of the voyage helped to warm my ardent longing to arrive at
the palmy coral isles.
Footnote 1:
The “Cutty Sark” and “Thermopylae” were two of the fastest sailing
ships running from London to Sydney. The author sailed before the mast
from Sydney to San Francisco on the “Cutty Sark.”
I think I was the happiest member of the crew when, after much buffeting
with wild weather and stinking pork and maggoty hard-tack, our old
wind-jammer hugged the outer reefs of the Samoan Isles. Ah, the music of
the long-drawn sounds of the surges beating over the barrier reefs! I
half fancied I could hear the palms sighing lyrical melodies as the
winds crept like overflowing zephyrs from some great scented dream
across that pagan world. On the dim blue horizon rose ranges of
mountains, apparently touching the tropic sky: they were, to me, the
peaks of romance!
The dry tongues of the aged, seasoned sailors hung out as they rubbed
their tarry hands and sniffed the distant grog-saloon. Old M’Dougal, the
ship’s carpenter, danced a jig and looked human for the first time. The
Dutch boatswain pulled his red beard, gave a terrific grin in the
moonlight, and muttered something about “Voomen and vine.” Then I got my
few belongings together, packed my violin carefully, and was ready to go
ashore.
It was quite dark when I found myself being rowed, or rather paddled,
ashore in an outrigger canoe. As I went gliding by the moon-ridden
lagoons, I felt that at last I had surely entered some magical harbour
of a fairy-land.
Even when sunrise came like a silent crash of liquid gold over the wide
Pacific, touching the mountain peaks and the scattered bee-hive-shaped
huts of the forest townships, I was not disillusioned. All seemed as I
had so fondly anticipated; it was as I had read about it all. Men yarned
and argued dogmatically as they stood, fierce-eyed, before the bar of
the wooden grog-shanty; there they stood, attired in large slouched
hats, telling such mighty things about their thrilling travels that even
old Homer, could he have heard, might well have sighed with envy!
When dusk came and I heard the tribal drums beating the stars in far
away up in the forest villages, I thought, “Here at least I shall find
rest from the hot-footed turbulency of civilized humanity; here I can
dwell beneath the Eden-like shades of feathery palms, and listen to the
wind-blown melodies as they come in from the sea and run across the
island trees.” I revelled in such like thoughts. I felt that I had come
across a pagan world where no more should I hear servile mumblings of a
conventional people. I would peer into savage bright eyes and listen to
the poetic lore of people who worshipped at the shrine of the stars and
counted their days by the fading moons. But when the fierce-eyed,
tattooed chief, leaning on his war-club before the rough customers of
the grog-shanty’s bar, looked straight into the eyes of an old
shellback, and, bringing his club down with a crash, said, with much
vehemence, that he preferred Solomon’s Songs to the second chapter of
the Corinthians, I rubbed my eyes and thought I dreamed! My chagrin was
immense; those delectable palm-clad isles of primitive lore and romance
had come under the blighting influence of civilization and of
missionaries!
I was in Apia, Samoa, R. L. S., attired in his velvet coat, walked into
the bar-room and then suddenly said, “Damn!” when the Beachcomber trod
on his toe, bowed, and said, “Beg pawden, soir!” I strolled afar and
discovered that bright-eyed babies, nestling at the bosoms of their
shaggy-haired, handsome mothers, slept as “safe as houses” in doorless,
small-thatched dens under the moonlit palms. And, wandering on, I saw
star-eyed, nymph-like girls with tossing, coral-dyed hair, pass and
repass me on the lonely forest track, singing merrily in a musical
tongue as they dived once more into the shadows of the coco-palms.[2]
All this was extremely pleasing. But one may imagine how my tenacious
illusions were grossly shattered when the majestic ex-king Malaetoa of
the proud _O Le Solu_ Dynasty, last of his ancient line, followed me
into the isolated grog-shanty hard by, gazed into my eyes with fondest
affection, and said, “Mine’s a bitter!”
Footnote 2:
The Samoans are not tawny or mahogany-coloured, but are of a pleasing,
golden-skinned hue, sometimes fairer than Europeans.
O, illusive Romance!
Nevertheless adventure abounded. Those semi-savage men sang weird
soulful songs, melodious ballads, about half-forgotten legends, and
battles long ago; and their love-songs were as pleasing as the beauty
and innocence of their womenkind. I roamed those palm-clad shores for
days, and was considerably enlightened in an educational way, for I came
across clans of strange old heathens, who seemed to me to be the
disciples of the one true transcendent democracy. They were semi-naked
heathen philosophers, old men clad in loin-cloths only. My pleasure was
immense when I observed them sitting by their coral cave doors, solemnly
chewing nuts, apparently as happy as the sunny, livelong day. It was
sunset, and when they all commenced to beat their drums violently,
beating the stars in, it seemed that their hoarse, quaintly musical
voices, wailed out, “Behold! we are the people! Creation hath nobly
toiled through the ages till, lo! the blessed sun warms our aged bones
as nature casts into our trembling hands digestible nuts and
sweet-scented taro!”
Could I help liking the companionship of such happy, wise old
philosophers?
Many of those old-time natives were endowed with wonderful poetic
intellect. And I vow that such an intellect my old Samoan friend, O Le
Tao, possessed. I came across Tao about three weeks after arriving in
Upolu. And I may say, that though I’ve played the fiddle under a palm
tree outside a barbarian queen’s royal seraglio, and have been given the
_Freedom of the pagan city_ in consequence, I can recall no one who was
more hospitable to me than O Le Tao. And so, before proceeding with the
wild life and adventures which I experienced after leaving Samoa for
Tahiti, I would like just to touch on O Le Tao’s character and genius by
the way. In fact, O Le Tao was interesting, if only on account of his
physiognomy, which strangely resembled the weird scenery of Samoa by
moonlight—scenery that I feel is an eminently suitable background for
introducing him, and not in an impressionistic sketch either, but just
as I knew him in his meditative old age.
First, I would tell you that it was a lovely sight to see the tropical
orange flush of evening fade to a deep, fairy-like green on the sea’s
horizon beyond the scimitar-shaped bay off Apia. Then, one by one, the
stars peeped out, not down from the sky, but wistful-like up from the
lagoons along the shore. It was an Olympian scene and one that I should
imagine would inspire the most unimaginative observer. The native
villages were silent; the mountains, like mighty sentinels staring out
to sea, stood with tangled forest beards, sighing down to their rugged
knees. Moonlit lines of palms waved like majestic plumes against the
crystalline skies; a falling star seemed a pale ember blown out of the
far-off constellations. But for the tiny pagan city of huts, nestling as
it were in the crevice of the mountain’s hip, it might have been an
uninhabited island world. Far down in the lower regions, in the vicinity
of the mountain’s vast feet, a canoe was paddled out from the hairy
growths between those mighty toes. It was a savage, wrinkled old man of
another age, paddling off for the silent waters in a canoe, that was, to
him, a small argosy bearing him away to the wonders of shadowland! But
it wasn’t as weird as all that; it was simply the Samoan chief, O Le
Tao, stealing away under the cover of night to one of the neighbouring
islets, so that he might worship his hidden idol. Though I cannot claim
to have been there on that special night, I well know it was none other
than O Le Tao. And how I know this is my own secret. Possibly I’ve been
a heathen too, and have prostrated myself before an idol; I’m queer
enough for anything. However that may be, I recall that I met O Le Tao
next day. I was travelling along in the vicinity of Mount Vala. I had
just had an appetizing meal of Bass’s Ale and monkey-nuts—and was
feeling in good humour. Coco-palms, breadfruits, and other picturesque
trees sheltered me from the hot sunlight and my banana-leaf socks hardly
swished as I softly trod the beautifully woven carpet of flower and fern
that Nature’s patient hand had spread across the forest floor. The sea
breeze swept pungent whiffs, like iced wine, to my nostrils, as I
followed the track made by soft-footed savages for ages. Suddenly I was
startled by seeing a frizzly, partially bald head protrude through the
bamboos. It was O Le Tao’s cranium.
“What you wanter here?” he said.
“Talofa! e maloto ea oe” (I greet you, comrade, and hope you are well),
I responded, as the chief’s brow puckered up with suspicion.
“What you gotter there—moosic?”
“Yes,” I responded, as he eyed my violin.
“You no tafoa vale?”
“No; I’m a friend,” I replied, as I handed him a mark. This largesse
changed his aggressive look into a broad smile of welcome. Following
him, I entered his hut. I sat on his best mat and drank refreshing
coco-nut milk. Suddenly we were disturbed by hearing loud grunts, heavy
breathing, and smashing of twigs. In another moment an aged Samoan woman
entered the hut. She was a fine-looking old woman, and had kind eyes.
She was carrying a huge calabash of water beneath one arm. Its
cumbersome weight did not deter her from further efforts—in the other
hand she held a coco-nut, a basketful of fish—all alive O!—on her back a
bunch of bananas, and between her teeth two fishing rods. She was O Le
Tao’s industrious better half. She too made me welcome. Then pretty
Cenerita, their daughter, arrived. She had pretty hair, and eyes that
outshone the gleams of the three coco-nut-oil lamps, hanging from the
hut’s low roof that night; for it all ended in O Le Tao asking me to
stay the night with them.
When the hour was late, I felt very contented as I squatted by their
homestead’s door by Cenerita’s side. Then the old chief commenced to
tell me about the grand old freebooting times.
O Le Tao was over seventy years of age, and so was a reliable authority
on the old sins and wonders of the heathen period of his palmy isles.
As the old chief spoke on, and his wife, Cenerita, and I sat by the
doorway that faced the ocean, I too became transformed into a
semi-heathen, the Samoan underworld becoming some dim, far-off reality
to my brain. The moon shone over the dark waters, and the voices coming
from the dark shore caves just below seemed to drum out muffled echoes
from the old gods of shadowland, as I listened to all that O Le Tao
told.
Cenerita had ceased to sing. We could faintly hear the _o le sanga_
(red-winged nightingale) whistling its melodious song somewhere up in
the mountain breadfruits. And still O Le Tao spoke on in this wise:
“O Papalagi, you must know and believe that, in those far-off days, the
great spirits of shadowland did walk about the native villages by night.
Often would the gods knock at the doors of the great _Atuiis_ (high
chiefs), bidding them strive for their mighty requirements; which were
many. And sad enough for us in the great sacrificial month!” said O Le
Tao after a pause; then he continued: “O white man, I must tell you that
Lao-mio was my kinsman’s child and was a maid beautiful to gaze upon.”
“Doubtless,” I said, as he continued.
“And of course she was daughter of great chief, so to fall in love with
a low-caste youth, as she did, was a terrible disgrace to me and my
people. Also the gods, Tangaloa, Tuli, Tane, and the goddesses of O E
Langi (Elysium) were dark-browed with anger about it all. ’Tis true that
the low-caste youth was handsome to look upon, straight as a coco-palm,
with eyes like a katafa bird’s. But such things do not make up for the
lack of great blood and the pride of the gods in one’s heart.”
“No, certainly not,” said I, as O Le Tao’s wrinkled physiognomy revealed
the pride he felt over those old ancestors that he claimed. Then he
continued:
“One night, when we were all fast asleep in our village by Tewaka, we
did all leap suddenly up from our sleeping mats, for lo! the
conch-shells of the gods in shadowland were blowing! True enough the
gods and goddesses were rushing about the forests in great anger! We did
know that something terrible had occurred, for their voices sounded like
to thunder and echoed to the mountain tops. As all my people did rush
from their huts, the gods disappeared in the moonlight, but we were all
just in time to see a canoe being fast paddled across the bay out to
sea! Ah, Papalagi, ’twas great insult; for it was that low-caste youth
Ko-Ko, for that was his name, and Lao-mio, the high-caste maid, in
flight together. For a moment we gazed dumb-struck, the horror of the
scene before us being on the faces of all the chiefs. And the _O
tausalas_ (high-class girls and women) weep to see so wicked a sight.”
Saying the foregoing, O Le Tao placed his wrinkled hand to his brow and
gazed in deep reflection on the scene that was apparently before his
memory. Then, as his old wife handed him a goblet of kava (he swallowed
it at a gulp), he cast his eyes skyward and continued:
“Suddenly we all recover our senses, and go rushing down to the shore.
But it was too late. The cunning Ko-Ko had severed the sennet tackles
and had cast all our canoes adrift, so that we could not follow him. He
was very low-caste too, for, as the canoe turned round by the
promontory, he did turn his face to us and waved his paddle jeeringly!
And though my kinsmen and many of the tausalas did dance with much rage
on the shore at this act of Ko-Ko’s, I did myself keep calm, as great
chief should keep; crossing my arms on my breast, I did spit seaward. It
was then that we all turned, and rushing way back to the village we
looked into the hut wherein Lao-mio had slept. Lo, master, we found
_all_ her clothes—she had left them behind! ’Twas sad enough, this act
of an erstwhile modest tausala maid, but we did all beat our chests when
we find the maid had left a note behind her too, and this note said: ‘O
stink chiefs of Samoa, I go away with my true love Ko-Ko, for his eyes
are like unto the gods! And I would have you know, O meddling people of
the village, that my children shall bless me for having so god-like a
husband!’
“At reading this insult about the godliness of a low-caste, we did all
beat our limbs and bodies till the blood fell. And as we did this act we
heard the mighty, far-off voices of the gods cursing our village, to
think that a high-caste tausala should elope with a cheeky low-caste
like Ko-Ko. The next day the great _toas_ (high chiefs) went away in
sorrow to the sacred altars at Manono, and, paying obeisance to the
_autiis_ (priests), asked them to find out what the gods would have them
do about the whole matter. After many libations of ceremonial kava and
sacred offerings to the God of gods, the vassals of shadowland did say:
‘You disgraced people of Manono must away go into the forest by Lauii;
and when you are there you must play sweetest music on the vuvu and the
magic conch-shells while the moon shines over the sea. It is then that
the spirits will hear, and will tell you what is best to be done to
enable you to catch the wicked lovers.’”
Saying this, O Le Tao paused a moment, then, swelling his tattooed chest
to its full proportions, and with his arms crossed high thereon, he
gazed majestic-wise upon Cenerita, his wife, and my humble self. Then,
turning his head and face round in the direction of the mountains, he
gazed in such a manner that it was plainly evident he was about to
divulge something reflecting no small amount of glory upon his person.
He continued:
“When the village did hear that which the gods wished to be done, they
all meet by the sacred banyans, and say, ‘Who? Who in our village am
_great_ enough to respond to the wishes of the gods?’ And, Papalagi, I
would have you know that, whilst this talk go on, I sit in full
humbleness behind the assembled tribe in deep shadow of breadfruit
trees.” (I nodded my head, intimating that I quite understood O Le Tao’s
humility.) Then he coughed, and proceeded: “For awhile I keep my face
bowed towards the earth; but still they call in one great voice again,
and yet again! And so, knowing well that one cannot cast the power, the
glory, and majesty from one’s own person, I slowly did arise, and,
standing forth into the clear light of the moon’s fullness, I say, ‘Who
is this that calls aloud for O Le Tao?’
“And, in this wise, was I chosen above all others, O Papalagi!
“That same night I and Lao-mio’s father, who was a kinsman of mine, did
go away to seek the magic caves where dwelt the vassals of the gods of
the underworld. When we arrived by the seashore we perceive four young
coco-palms growing, that had not been there before. And, as we blew the
conch-shells, the four coco-palms did commence to quiver in the light of
the moon, the plumes and bunches of nuts that sprouted at the tops
starting to swell visibly. Still we did blow and blow the vuvu and
conch-shell; and still the coco-nuts swell and swell till they gleam in
the moonlight, and lo! they were the big faces of the gods! We did then
notice that the trunks of the palms were their legs. My kinsman and I
did lean one against the other, so great was our surprise to hear their
voices. For, lifting their shivering arms to the sky, they say, ‘O great
O Le Tao, and he too who am shadowed in your presence.’”
“I suppose the gods alluded to your kinsman?” said I, interrupting the
old chief.
“That am so, Papalagi,” said Tao, as I struck a match on my knee and
intimated by a nod of my head that I wished him to proceed. Then he
continued in this wise: “The gods looked down upon us and said, ‘If you
would once more get Lao-mio the maid back to your village, you must go
along the coast and approach the caves wherein dwells the beautiful
goddess Pafuto. She will stand in your presence, and then lead you
across the sea to Savaii Isle so that you may get at the maid Lao-mio.’
“At saying these things they did look upon myself and my kinsman with
deep concern shining like a shadow on moonlit waters in their eyes, and
then, again said: ‘You are mortals, and so we would tell you that,
whatever you do, you must not gaze upon the goddess Pafuto’s face or
form with amorous eyes, neither may you let your hearts hold such
thoughts as one may have when gazing upon a beauteous mortal maid.’
“Well, Papalagi, this wish of the gods did not trouble us; but pulling
my tappa robe around me I did at once commence to go with my kinsman to
the spot where we might see the great goddess. When we did at length
come to the sea, the moonlight lay fast asleep on the deep waters. The
_o le manu ao_ (Samoan nightingale), hearing our approach, started
singing its midnight song to its favourite goddess _Langi_ (heaven). We
listened until our hearts were charmed very much, so much so that we
both felt that our hearts were fit to urge our voices to speak out those
things which the gods had told. And so I stepped forward, and say, ‘O le
sanga oa e magi langi.’ At hearing me speak, the _o le manu_ at once
cease its song. Silence did fall and run on silvery moonlight feet
across the forest. Then, lo, a shadow fell slantwise across the lagoon
that faced the sleeping ocean. We turn our eyes, and there, stepping
forth from her big shore cave, was the goddess Pafuto!
“Ah, Papalagi, never before did my eyes behold so beautiful a goddess.
Her raiment was made from the finest wove seaweed. Her hair tresses,
falling like a golden river on the sunset mountains, made a wonderful
mat for her nicest of feet.”
At this moment the old chief’s story was interrupted by the arrival of
Cenerita’s fiancé, a handsome youth named Tamariki. As the youth sat at
Cenerita’s feet, O Le Tao gave him a freezing look that he should
intrude at such a moment. Then the old man placed his hand archwise over
his eyes in some memory of the dazzling beauty of the goddess Pafuto,
and continued: “The goddess gaze on us with magical light stealing
through her eyes, then she plucked a reed from the lagoon’s edge and
blew out a note of sweetest music. At once the _o le manu ao_ commenced
to sing again, and out of the cavern to the right of us came floating a
_taumualua_ (native boat). My kinsman and I at once did that which the
goddess commanded, for we at once jump into the taumualua. As we sat in
the magic canoe, she did softly step into it and give a magic sign. It
was with much sorrow that I did notice that the taumualua carry no
paddles, for, Papalagi, I feel that the goddess may be for voyaging
_beneath_ the sea instead of moving over the waters. But just as I did
look into my kinsman’s eyes in sorrow, the goddess did stand upright
between us. She was as tall as a mast and as straight. Uplifting her
robes and stretching her curved arms out like unto sails of a ship, the
night wind did at once commence to softly blow. It was a wonderful sight
to see her robes gently fill out like big sails to the blowing airs as
the magical canoe start to move silently across the moonlit waters.
“As we did glide over the sea we could distinctly see her shadow
reflected in the water beside us, beside the imaged moon that was full
of brightness. Ah, Papalagi, it was this uprightness of the goddess that
did bring about the fall of my kinsman. Alas, as she became like to
sails of a taumualua, because of the uplifting of her robes there beside
us, her graceful limbs were revealed to half a finger’s length above the
knees. Truly, Papalagi, it was a sight to tempt even the gods, let alone
us poor mortals as we sat there, one each side of that wondrous figure,
my cheek almost touching the right flank, and my kinsman’s the left
knee.
“Knowing deep in our hearts what the gods had warned us about, we tried,
more than I may tell, not to behold or dream of her gracefulness and the
secret glory of such womanly loveliness, as we could have done had she
been a mortal.
“So, Papalagi, I did perspire overmuch through trying to kill those
thoughts that _will_ afflict us poor mortals. I sighed and prayed, and
even sang a short _lotu-song_ (hymn) to help stifle those thoughts that
dare not rise from my heart. It was during this misery of mine in
endeavouring to keep faith with the gods and our promises that I did
notice my kinsman breathing heavily. I look long upon him, and then see
that he was near to being _fauti_ (in a fit) for trying also to stay his
deeper thoughts. Much fright came to my soul at seeing the state of one
whom I loved much and who was near to me in blood. I did look eagerly
across the sea, and with much sorrow notice that we were still more than
a mile from the lonely shores of Savaii Isle. The promontory was just
visible far away to the north.
“‘What shall we do? What shall we do?’ I mutter as I did see my
kinsman’s form writhe in the agony of his desires.
“At this moment the goddess slightly swerved her outstretched arms
around to the north-east so that she might catch the fairer wind. In
this sudden action of hers, her mass of beautiful hair fell about our
shoulders, for she had slowly moved her head likewise, so that her face
should be turned to the south-west; so that, while her left arm point
north-east, her face turn south-west. Whether it was this movement of
the changing winds that made her tresses fall and prove my kinsman’s
undoing, I know not. But it is certain that, as her masses of hair fell
tenderwise on his face and shoulders, her eyes, inclined sideways, gazed
on him and on me in such a way as surely goddess never gazed to tempt
mortals before. And then, alas, whether the knees moved through the soft
swaying of the canoe or through the sudden veering of the night wind, I
know not, but my kinsman’s lips did suddenly touch the left knee of the
goddess!
“In a moment, as though lightning swept across the moonlit waters, a
flash of light leapt from the goddess’s eyes—the canoe wherein we sat
vanished—was as nothing!
“For longer time I did swim and swim. And when at length I sat on the
shore, only the great goddess Pafuto sat beside me! It was then I knew
that my sad kinsman had been unable to control his mortal thoughts, and
so was lying somewhere dead at the bottom of the _moana uli_ (the blue
sea). Gazing upon me, the goddess said, ‘O Le Tao, thou art a great
chief. Thou hast seen mucher beauty of the goddesses of Langi in their
true nakedness, and thou hast proven that thou lovest the light of
heaven in their eyes only.’
“At hearing this, I felt much pride. Yet, true enough, my heart did
quake overmuch, for well I knew how near I was to falling as my kinsman
fell.”
The old Samoan chief ceased for a moment. The night winds blew softly,
drifting the scents of ripe lemons and breaths of decaying flowers to
our nostrils. Cenerita, under the influence of her parent’s story,
peered into the forest glooms. The grand chiefess, Madame O Le Tao,
puffed her cigarette and revealed by the erect pose of her scraggy neck
that she realized the import of her position as O Le Tao’s faithful
spouse. The old chief, continuing his story, said:
“O Papalagi, when the goddess Pafuto said that to me which I have just
told you, I feel much proud and thankful for her mercy. I well knew that
she know in her heart that I too had been near to breaking my promise
when the taumualua swayed. But, still, she know what great soul O Le Tao
am!—so she say no more. Indeed, it was at this moment that she did bend
forward, softly touching me on the shoulder with her lips, and so did
make me _taboo_ (a sacred personage). When I did get back to the village
and told the chiefs all that had happened, they, though much grieved to
hear of my kinsman’s death, thought little more of the flight of the
lovers, Lao-mio and K-ko-ko. They did at once prepare great festival to
celebrate the glory that the goddess Pafuto had sent back such a great
one as I to still dwell amongst them.”
When he had made an end, the old chief lifted his shoulders
majestically, surveying me keenly the while with his dim eyes. It was
then that I realized how those island chiefs and the ancestors of
knights and kings of all lands had first gained their power, their
possessions, and mighty insignia. I instinctively knew that not only in
those wild isles were men gifted with an imagination that made them have
firm belief in all that they dreamed of over their own greatness. I half
envied O Le Tao’s gifts—gifts he had so well utilized. For as he sat
there I saw that he was enthroned on the heights of magnificent
imagination and lived in the light of respect from all men’s eyes.
Such was O Le Tao’s story of the goddess Pafuto, as told me while the
Samoan night doves moaned musically in the tamanu trees.
During my stay the semi-heathen chief took me to many interesting
places, showing me spots in the forests and along the shores where once
some great tribal battle had been fought, or some cave wherein, on
certain occasions, gods and goddesses met in midnight council. After
that, O Le Tao took Cenerita, Tamariki, and myself to a night dance in
the shore village near Monono. I am assured that Man cannot improve on
Nature’s handiwork in building roomy halls for secret congregations of
human beings who would indulge in heathenish capers that endeavour to
express the inherent impulses of mankind. The gnarled pillars and
flower-bespangled curtains of that wonderful forest opera-house,
decorated by Nature’s artless, silent-moving hands, left nothing to be
desired even by the most critical _Maestro_ who might happen to perform
on the wide, branch-roofed stage. The moon hanging in the vaulted roof
of space over the trees, was sufficient for all purposes. The acoustic
properties were perfect, the neighbouring hills echoing back each
orchestral crescendo and each encore in obsequious, weird diminuendos.
In the intervals of silence it would often seem that I heard some
phantom-like accompaniment, and faint encores coming from the gods of
shadowland, ere the barbaric orchestra of fifes, bone flutes, and drums
once more recommenced its terrific ensemble. I was more than astonished
to see O Le Tao suddenly throw his stiff legs out as he commenced to
dance with an elderly chiefess of enormous girth. A hundred dusky Eyes
seemed to tempt a hundred willing Adams as the sarong-like robes swished
to tripping feet when the whole audience began to dance before the
footlights of the stars! With the characteristic restraint of my race, I
clenched my fist in a great mental, virtuous effort, but only to fail
through my miserable fallibility, for, opening my closed eyelids, I
stared with unblushing effrontery at the _prima donna’s_ exquisitely
woven concert-robe—the equivalent of the South Sea fig-leaf!
She still danced on, a fascinating being, with the golden light of some
witchery in her eyes. Her clustered tresses were distinctly visible by
the pale glimmerings of the moon that silvered the huge colonnades of
the stage. And, all the while she danced, she sang an ear-haunting
melody, swaying her limbs, a scarlet blossom nestling in the hollow of
her bosom. “Aue! Aue! Talofa!” came from the lips of the tiers of gay
warriors and great high chiefs who squatted in the royal boxes. When the
handsome young chief, Tusita Le Salu—the head-dancer’s affianced—stepped
down from his perch in the breadfruit tree on the stage, the hubbub was
immense. He at once faced the dancer in a god-like style, and commenced
to sing a duet with her. They danced and tumbled about in a marvellous
way. And when she lifted the pretty blue sarong robe up to her knees, I
distinctly heard the aged O Le Tao groan through some pathetic
realization over his departed youth. Yet the most fastidious could have
gazed with delight on that scene: the whole thing was fairy-like, the
girl’s dancing creating an atmosphere that was full of poetic mystery
and nothing more.
The festival’s orchestra helped in no small way to enhance the poetic
beauty of the whole scene. The bamboo flutes and bone-clappers (made
from the skeletons of dead chiefs) played a suitable accompaniment to
the many “turns” that I witnessed. The special music that was performed
on this occasion was something between a Marquesan _Tapriata_ and a
Samoan _Siva dance_. Though I cannot reproduce the moaning of the
resounding seas on the shore below or the echoes in the mountains, I
give here an impressionist piano-forte arrangement of the wild music I
heard that night.
It is many years since O Le Tao departed for the legendary splendours of
his beloved shadowland: that much I certainly know. For, on a voyage
bound for the Malay Archipelago, not so long ago, my ship put into
Samoa, and, standing in the small village cemetery near Safuta, I gazed
in sorrow on a little wooden cross, and distinctly made out these words,
written in English and Samoan:
“Here lieth the mortal remains of High Chief
O LE TAO
Died, aged 83, in the year of our Lord, 1903.”
“In my Father’s House are Many Mansions.”
Gazing on that grave, I realized the briefness of all living things, be
they great or small. There was something pathetic too in so humble a
tomb for one who had dwelt in such imaginative splendour. For the island
nightingale still sang its passionate song in the breadfruit, as the
same aged tamanu trees sighed in their glory by the sea. But, doubtless,
the children of a new age still whisper his name in wonder, telling how
he was favoured by the goddess Pafuto for the majesty and inborn virtue
of his mighty heart.
* * * * *
When I left O Le Tao’s hospitable homestead it was with feelings of
regret, and it was a long time before I returned to Samoa. Brief as was
my stay with that old chief, it was of long enough duration to influence
me; indeed, I might say that I became a semi-pagan too. Cenerita no
longer pointed in vain to the moonlit mountains, attempting to show my
blind eyes the shadow-gods that she declared were stalking across the
moon-ridden hills—I too saw them! I became a veritable heathen. My
personality became robed in the weird atmosphere of pagan dreams.
Civilization fell from me like an immaculate tall hat knocked off one’s
head with a brick. The stern, dull, drab colour of the world changed for
me. The bright-winged _katafa_, the brown-robed _O Le mao_ bird, and
bronzed-winged Samoan doves became warm-throated goddesses sitting in
the breadfruit trees over our heads, their eyes bright with discovery as
I played heathenish melodies and Cenerita sang. I was happy enough, for
I lived in a small native house all alone; it had two rooms and was
allotted me by the kindness of O Le Tao. That hut was my tiny grand
ancestral hall. Just beyond my threshold waved the plumes of my
coat-of-arms—a coco-nut tree crowned with a tawny bunch of fruit. My
clock, far away over the wide waters of my blue demesne, chimed each
sunset on the wave! Sometimes, when I played my violin far into the
night, I saw ghostly shadows moving under my lovely garden trees; then I
knew that I had awakened the wild people of another world, who came to
listen with delight to the Tusitala of the “magic-stick” from the lands
beyond the setting suns. Sometimes I would invite Tamariki, Cenerita,
and a few more sweet-minded Samoan children to spend the evening with
me. They would sing part-songs, melodies of which none knew the
composer, wonderful strains that had been mysteriously blown into some
old Samoan musician’s soul from the moonlit ocean caves. Crude as some
of those songs were, I heard the true note. Metaphorically speaking, I
threw all my music studies away. Away with such rubbish! No western
music ever thrilled me as I was thrilled by the haunting poetry of wild
sweet sounds such as I heard on those Samoan nights. It often seemed
unbelievable, dream-like, when I sat on a fibre mat before the limelight
of the stars and whiffed the odours of wild flowers and listened to the
perfect strains of that great University of Samoan elemental musical
art. Often when I heard the final chant of some musical genius I would
arise and cheer loudly, as the rough, tattooed audience beat their drums
and whistled their encores. Sometimes a sun-varnished maid would stand
before the forest audience and sing some masterpiece that expressed all
the impassioned melody of music’s far-away, forgotten childhood. I would
hear the seawinds sigh their long-drawn accompaniment across the lovely
wild-stringed harp of forest trees; a cloud would pass away from the
moon and so lift a great silver curtain of ghostly light from the leafy,
gnarled colonnades. And then the dusky, star-eyed _prima donna_ of the
forest would bow with a grace that was seemingly quite out of place as
one listened to the wild hubbub of the fierce-eyed, tawny men who waved
their arms as they cheered from the orchestral stalls of jungle, bush,
and fern. Such sights, such experiences might well turn the brain of a
much more sober head than I claim to possess.
[Music: MARQUESAN TAPRIATA.
(Dance.) A. S. M.
_Andante_
Piano _ff_
_mf_ Drum effects
etc.
_p_ Tambourine.
_f_ etc.
]
I’d sooner be a pagan in this hut,
Wherein the singing spheres creep thro’ my door,
And dance and dance upon my bedroom floor,
As ’tween the sheets I watch with eyes unshut,
And on my bed-rail, wailing o’er the din,
A gnat plays on its tiny violin!
I’m wrapt in some fine madness of a sense
That robes me with the magic of those things
That lend imagination lyric-wings,
Imparadising all my dreams intense.
’Twill fade away, I know, and once again
I shall half-weep—to find I am quite sane!
Alas! I’ve worshipped stricken things called “Men”;
I’ve travelled down their groves and found their light
Hid magic splendours of the glorious night
Of things unseen. And now?—clear to my ken,
The sad old trees are whispering on the wind
The harmonies that _maestros_ seek to find!
Last night those old trees said: “Oh, brother, stay!
That song you played just now we seem to know,
We heard it sung a million years ago!”
I said “It’s mine!” They sighed. I passed away;
And even the flowers along the lonely track
Said: “Poor, brief thing with feet and weary back.”
’Twas then the River, old and full of tears,
Stopped by the hills and called, inquired of me—
“Comrade, is this the right way to the sea?”
I kissed its breast, I soothed its wandering fears
As on we tramped; then, at the close of day,
It said “Good-bye, old friend,” and crept away.
And now?—a beauteous melody I hear,
As constellations tumbling from the skies,
Are dancing on the floor before my eyes;
Nor do I dream at all, for, sitting near,
A gnat plays perfectly the sweeping strain
That Man’s ambitious mind strives for—in vain!
I could cry out in spite to think for years
I’ve sought applause, played to sad men and kings,
To find, at last, the universe, of all things,
Lo, hires a gnat to make the starry spheres
Trip to and fro, go gaily o’er and o’er
In perfect time across my bedroom floor!
And still they dance and dance, and still the trees
Sigh grand _adagios_ as that _maestro_
Sits on my bed-rail sweeping from its bow
The music of the grand infinite seas,
Till ’neath the sheets I hide my head for shame
To think, alas, a gnat achieves such fame!
After leaving O Le Tao I came across a kind of South Sea Mozart. He was
a young Samoan of about fourteen years. He possessed a cheap German
fiddle, and on its frayed strings extemporized melodies of the weirdest
beauty.
“What’s that song, Pango-Pango?” said I.
He shook his curly head and said, “Me knower not, nice songer camer me
out of win’ (wind) of the forest, from moan of sea-cave and stars of big
sky-land.”
Saying that, he once more placed his fiddle (’cello style) between his
knees, and performed a melody that might well have haunted the brain of
a Brahms, a Schubert, or an Elgar. He was a handsome little fellow, with
beautiful bird-like eyes. He was absolutely unconscious of the gift he
possessed. He seemed, to me, the sun-varnished, perfect-limbed
personification of Music itself, Music’s youth, light-winged,
passionate, beautiful with elemental sweetness, the ecstasy of
melancholy and inartistic carelessness. He played to his shadow in the
lagoons. There was a fascinating witchery in all his ways. Yet I doubt
whether such a soul as Pango’s could ever develop into that stage of
music which men call “Classic.” His genius was the genius of youth, and
could never grow old, and, rusting, develop into the austere
ossification of the fashionable musical cranium, that awful unvibrant
curvature of the musical spine that seems the melody of beauteous youth.
Pango was as natural in his art as are the flowers and birds on the
hillside. He could never have attained that decrepitude of imagination
that invests itself in a robe of artistries, making sad old men and
women imagine they hear the beautiful by having their unresponsive
spines forcibly shaken by the thunderous crash, the multitudinous rumble
and groan of artificial musical art. Ah, memory of Pango! Though a true
musician, he would have been nowhere as a music-hall composer. Nor could
he place suggestive words to music. He lacked British spiciness, too.
But I vow that he _did_ put the stars and forest streams to music as he
sat out on the promontory’s edge by moonlight, looking like some young
Grecian god as he hummed and played a strain that sounded like infinity
in pain. To my great regret I lost sight of Pango-Pango for quite a year
after that. The fact is, I left Samoa. How I left, and of the wonders of
the sea, I will tell in the next chapter.
------------------------------------------------------------------------