Felix again endeavoured to fathom the mysteries of the _hula-hula_. Was

it something to eat?--did they keep it tied in the daytime?--what was

its colour? etc., till the amused gentleman who was conducting us to an

exhibition of the great Unknown nearly capsized our absurdly narrow

canoe in the very deepest part of the creek. Bands of fishermen and

women passed us, wading breast-high in the water, beating it into a foam

before them, and singing at the top of their voices as they drove the

fish down stream into a broad net a few rods below. Grass-houses, half

buried in foliage, lined the mossy banks; while the dusky groups of

women and children, clustering about the smouldering flames that

betokened the preparation of the evening meal, added not a little to the

poetry of twilight in the tropics.

Felix thought he would like to turn Kanaka on the spot; so we beached

the canoe, and approached the fire, built on a hollow stone under a

tamarind-tree, and were at once offered the cleanest mat to sit on, and

a calabash of _poi_ for our refreshment. How to eat paste without a

spoon was the next question. The whole family volunteered to show us;

drew up around the calabash in a hungry circle, and dipped in with a

vengeance. Six right hands spread their first and second fingers like

sign-boards pointing to a focus in the very centre of that _poi_-paste;

six fists dove simultaneously, and were buried in the luscious mass.

There was a spasmodic working in the elbows, an effort to come to the

top, and in a moment the hands were lifted aloft in triumph, and seemed

to be tracing half a dozen capital O's in the transparent air, during

which manoeuvre the mass of _poi_ adhering to the fingers assumed fair

proportions, resembling, to a remarkable degree, large, white swellings;

whereupon they were immediately conveyed to the several mouths,

instinctively getting into the right one, and, having discharged

freight, reappeared as good as ever, if not better than before.

"Disgusting!" gasped Felix, as he returned to the water-side. I thought

him unreasonable in his harsh judgment, assuring him that our own flour

was fingered as often before it came, at last, to our lips in the form

of bread. "Moreover," I added, "this _poi_ is glutinous: the moment a

finger enters it, a thin coating adheres to the skin, and that finger

may wander about the calabash all day without touching another particle

of the substance. Therefore, six or sixteen fellows fingering in one

dish for dinner are in reality safer than we, who eat steaks that have

been mesmerized under the hands of the butcher and the cook."

Felix scorned to reply, but breathed a faint prayer for a safe return to

Chicago, as we slid into the middle of the stream, and resumed our

course.

The boughs of densely-leaved trees reached out to one another across the

water. We proceeded with more caution as the channel grew narrow; and

pressing through a submerged thicket of reeds, we routed a flock of

water-fowls that wheeled overhead on heavy wings, filling the valley

with their clamour.

Two or three dogs barked sleepily off somewhere in the darkness, and the

voice of some one calling floated to us as clear as a bird's note,

though we knew it must be far away. We strode through a cane-field, its

smoky plumes just tipped with moonlight, and saw the pinnacle of Mauna

Kea, as spacious and splendid as the fairy pavilion that Nourgihan

brought to Pari-Banou, illuminated as for a festival. To the left, a

stream fell from the cliff, a ribbon of gauze fluttering noiselessly in

the wind.

"O, look!" said Felix, who had yielded again to the influences of

Nature. Looking, I saw the moon resting upon the water for a moment,

while the dew seemed actually to drip from her burnished disc. Again

Felix exclaimed, or was on the point of exclaiming, when he checked

himself in awe. I ran to him, and was silent with him, while we two

stood worshipping one stately palm that rested its glorious head upon

the glowing bosom of the moon, like the Virgin in the radiant auroela.

"Well," said our host, "supposing we get along!" We got along, by land

and water, into a village in an orange-grove. There was a subdued murmur

of many voices. I think the whole community would have burst out into a

song of some sort at the slightest provocation. On we paced, in Indian

file, through narrow lanes, under the shining leaves. Pale blossoms

rained down upon us, and the air was oppressively sweet. Groups of

natives sat in the lanes, smoking and laughing. Lovers made love in the

face of heaven, utterly unconscious of any human presence. Felix grew

nervous, and proposed withdrawing; but whither, O Felix, in all these

islands, wouldst thou hope to find love unrequited, or lovers shamefaced

withal? Much Chicago hath made thee mad!

Through a wicket we passed, where a sentinel kept ward. Within the

bamboo paling, a swarm of natives gathered about us, first questioning

the nature of our visit, which having proved entirely satisfactory, we

were welcomed in real earnest, and offered a mat in an inner room of a

large house, rather superior to the average, and a disagreeable

liquor,--brewed of oranges, very intoxicating when not diluted, and

therefore popular.

We were evidently the lions of the hour, for we sat in the centre of the

first row of spectators who were gathered to witness the _hula-hula_. We

reclined as gracefully as possible upon our mats, supported by plump

pillows, stuffed with dried ferns. Slender rushes--strung with

_kukui_-nuts, about the size of chestnuts, and very oily--were planted

before us like footlights, which, being lighted at the top, burned

slowly downward, till the whole were consumed, giving a good flame for

several hours.

The great mat upon the floor before us was the stage. On one side of it

a half-dozen muscular fellows were squatted, with large calabashes

headed with tightly-drawn goat skins. These were the drummers and

singers, who could beat nimbly with their fingers, and sing the epics of

their country, to the unceasing joy of all listeners. "It's an opera!"

shouted Felix, in a frenzy of delight at his discovery. A dozen

performers entered, sitting in two lines, face to face,--six women and

six men. Each bore a long joint of bamboo, slit at one end like a broom.

Then began a singularly intricate exercise, called _pi-ulu_. Taking a

bamboo in one hand, they struck it in the palm of the other, on the

shoulder, on the floor in front, to left and right; thrust it out before

them, and were parried by the partners opposite; crossed it over and

back, and turned in a thousand ways to a thousand metres, varied with

chants and pauses. "Then it's a pantomime," added Felix, getting

interested in the unusual skill displayed. For half an hour or more the

thrashing of the bamboos was prolonged, while we were hopelessly

confused in our endeavours to follow the barbarous harmony, which was

never broken nor disturbed by the expert and tireless performers.

During the first rest, liquor was served in gourds. Part of the company

withdrew to smoke, and the conversation became general and noisy. Felix

was enthusiastic, and drank the health of some of the younger members of

the _troupe_ who had offered him the gourd.

A rival company then repeated the _pi-ulu_, with some additions; the

gourds were again filled and emptied. "Now for the _hula-hula_," said

the host, who had imbibed with Felix, though he reserved his enthusiasm

for something less childish than _pi-ulu_. It is the national dance,

taught to all children by their parents, but so difficult to excel in

that the few who perfect themselves can afford to travel on this one

specialty.

There was a murmur of impatience, speedily checked, and followed by a

burst of applause, as a band of beautiful girls, covered with wreaths of

flowers and vines, entered and seated themselves before us. While the

musicians beat an introductory overture upon the tom-toms, the dancers

proceeded to bind shawls and scarfs about their waists, turban-fashion.

They sat in a line, facing us, a foot or two apart. The loose sleeves of

their dresses were caught up at the shoulder, exposing arms of almost

perfect symmetry, while their bare throats were scarcely hidden by the

necklaces of jasmines that coiled about them.

Then the leader of the band, who sat, grey-headed and wrinkled, at one

end of the room, throwing back his head, uttered a long, wild, and

shrill guttural,--a sort of invocation to the goddess of the

_hula-hula_. There had, no doubt, been some sort of sacrifice offered in

the early part of the evening,--such as a pig or a fowl,--for the dance

has a religious significance, and is attended by its appropriate

ceremonies. When this clarion cry had ended, the dance began, all

joining in with wonderfully accurate rhythm, the body swaying slowly

backward and forward, to left and right; the arms tossing, or rather

waving, in the air above the head, now beckoning some spirit of light,

so tender and seductive were the emotions of the dancers, so graceful

and free the movements of the wrists; now in violence and fear, they

seemed to repulse a host of devils that hovered invisibly about them.

The spectators watched and listened breathlessly, fascinated by the

terrible wildness of the song and the monotonous thrumming of the

accompaniment. Presently the excitement increased. Swifter and more

wildly the bare arms beat the air, embracing, as it were, the airy forms

that haunted the dancers, who rose to their knees, and, with astonishing

agility, caused the clumsy turbans about their loins to quiver with an

undulatory motion, increasing or decreasing with the sentiment of the

song and the enthusiasm of the spectators.

Felix wanted to know "how long they could keep that up and live?"

Till daybreak, as we found! There was a little resting spell--a very

little resting spell, now and then--for the gourd's sake, or three

whiffs at a pipe that would poison a white man in ten minutes; and

before we half expected it, or had a thought of urging the unflagging

dancers to continue their marvellous gyrations, they were at it in

terrible earnest.

From the floor to their knees, from their knees to their feet, now

facing us, now turning from us, they spun and ambled, till the ear was

deafened with cheers and boisterous, half-drunken, wholly passionate

laughter.

The room whirled with the reeling dancers, who seemed encircled with

living serpents in the act of swallowing big lumps of something from

their throats clear to the tip of their tails, and the convulsions

continued till the hysterical dancers staggered and fell to the floor

overcome by unutterable fatigue.

The sympathetic Felix fell with them, his head sinking under one of the

rush candles, that must have burned into his brain had he been suffered

to immolate himself at that inappropriate and unholy time and place.

This was the seductive dance still practised in secret, though the law

forbids it; and to the Hawaiian it is more beautiful, because more

sensuous, than anything else in the world.

I proposed departing at this stage of the festival, but Felix said it

was not practicable. He felt unwell, and suggested the efficacy of

another attack of _lomi-lomi_.

A slight variation in the order of the dances followed. A young lover,

seated in the centre of the room, beat a tattoo upon his calabash and

sang a song of love. In a moment he was answered. Out of the darkness

rose the sweet, shrill voice of the loved one. Nearer and nearer it

approached; the voice rang clear and high, melodiously swelling upon the

air. It must have been heard far off in the valley, it was so plaintive

and penetrating. Secreted at first behind shawls hung in the corner of

the room, some dramatic effect was produced by her entrance at the right

moment. She enacted her part with graceful energy. To the regular and

melancholy thrumming of the calabash, she sang her song of love.

Yielding to her emotion, she did not hesitate to betray all, neither was

he of the calabash slow to respond; and scorning the charms of goat-skin

and gourd, he sprang toward her in the madness of his soul, when she,

having reached the climax of desperation, was hurried from the scene of

her conquest amid whirlwinds of applause.

"It's a dance, that's what it is!" muttered Felix, as the audience

began slowly to disperse. Leading him back to the canoe, we had the

whole night's orgie reported to us in a very mixed and reiterative

manner, as well as several attempts at illustrating the peculiarities of

the performance, which came near resulting in a watery grave for three,

or an upset canoe, at any rate. Our host, to excuse any impropriety, for

which he felt more or less responsible, said "it was so natural for them

to be jolly under all circumstances, that when they have concluded to

die they make their P.P.C.'s with infinite grace, and then die on time."

Of coarse they are jolly; and to prove it, I told Felix how the lepers,

who had been banished to one little corner of the kingdom, and forbidden

to leave there in the flesh, were as merry as the merriest, and once

upon a time those decaying remnants of humanity actually gave a grand

ball in their hospital. There was a general clearing out of disabled

patients, and a brushing up of old finery, while the ball itself was

_the_ topic of conversation. Two or three young fellows, who had a few

fingers left (they unjoint and drop off as the disease progresses),

began to pick up a tune or two on bamboo flutes. Old, young, and

middle-aged took a sly turn in some dark corner, getting their stiffened

joints limber again.

Night came at last. The lamps flamed in the death-chamber of the

lazar-house. Many a rejoicing soul had fled from that foul spot, to

flash its white wings in the eternal sunshine.

At an early hour the strange company assembled. The wheezing of voices

no longer musical, the shuffling of half-paralyzed limbs over the bare

floor, the melancholy droning of those bamboo flutes, and the wild sea

moaning in the wild night were the sweetest sounds that greeted them.

And while the flutes piped dolorously to this unlovely spectacle, there

was a rushing to and fro of unlovely figures; a bleeding, half-blind

leper, seizing another of the accursed beings,--snatching her, as it

were, from the grave, in all her loathsome clay,--dragged her into the

bewildering maelstrom of the waltz.

Naturally excitable, heated with exertion, drunk with the very odours of

death that pervaded the hall of revels, that mad crowd reeled through

the hours of the _fête_. Satiated, at last, in the very bitterness of

their unnatural gaiety, they called for the _hula-hula_, as a fitting

close.

In that reeking atmosphere, heavy with the smoke of half-extinguished

lamps, they fed on the voluptuous _abandon_ of the dancers till passion

itself fainted with exhaustion.

"That was a dance of death, was it not, Felix?" Felix lay on his mat,

sleeping heavily, and evidently unmindful of a single word I had

uttered.

Our time was up at daybreak, and, with an endless deal of persuasion,

Felix followed me out of the valley to the little chapel on the cliff.

Our horses took a breath there, and so did we, bird's-eyeing the scene

of the last night's orgie.

Who says it isn't a delicious spot,--that deep, narrow, and secluded

vale, walled by almost perpendicular cliffs, hung with green tapestries

of ferns and vines; that slender stream, like a thread of silver,

embroidering a carpet of Nature's richest pattern; that torrent,

leaping from the cliff into a garden of citrons; the sea sobbing at its

month, while wary mariners, coasting in summer afternoons, catch

glimpses of the tranquil and forbidden paradise, yet are heedless of all

its beauty, and reck not the rustling of the cane-fields, nor the voices

of the charmers, because--because these things are so common in that

latitude that one grows naturally indifferent?

As for Felix, who talks in his sleep of the _hula-hula_, and insists

that only by the _lomi-lomi_ he shall be saved, he points a moral,

though at present he is scarcely in a condition to adorn any tale

whatever; and the said moral I shall be glad to furnish, on application,

to any sympathetic soul who has witnessed by proxy the unlawful revels

of those night-dancers of Waipio.

PEARL-HUNTING IN THE POMOTOUS.

The "Great Western" ducked in the heavy swell, shipping her regular

deck-load of salt-water every six minutes. Now the "Great Western" was

nothing more nor than a seventeen-ton schooner, two hours out from

Tahiti. She was built like an old shoe, and shovelled in a head-sea as

though it was her business.

It was something like sea life, wading along her submerged deck from

morning till night, with a piece of raw junk in one hand and a briny

biscuit in the other; we never _could_ keep a fire in _that_ galley; and

as for hard tack, the sooner it got soaked through the sooner it was off

our minds, for we knew to this complexion it must shortly come.

Two hours out from Tahiti we settled our course, wafting a theatrical

kiss or two toward the gloriously green pyramid we were turning our

backs on, as it slowly vanished in the blue desert of the sea.

A thousand palm-crowned and foam-girdled reefs spangle the ocean to the

north and east of Tahiti. This train of lovely satellites is known as

the Dangerous Archipelago, or, more commonly in that latitude, the

Pomotou Islands. It's the very hotbed of cocoa-nut-oil, pearls,

half-famished Kanakas, shells, and ship-wrecks. The currents are rapid

and variable; the winds short, sharp, and equally unreliable. If you

would have adventure, the real article and plenty of it, make your will,

bid farewell to home and friends, and embark for the Pomotous. I started

on this principle, and repented knee-deep in the deck-breakers, as we

butted our way through the billows, bound for one of the Pomotous on a

pearl hunt.

Three days I sat in sackcloth and salt water. Three nights I swashed in

my greasy bunk, like a solitary sardine in a box with the side knocked

out. In my heart of hearts I prayed for deliverance: you see there is no

backing out of a schooner, unless you crave death in fifty fathoms of

phosphorescent liquid and a grave in a shark's maw. Therefore I prayed

for more wind from the right quarter, for a sea like a boundless

mill-pond; in short, for speedy deliverance on the easiest terms

possible. Notwithstanding, we continued to bang away at the great waves

that crooked their backs under us and hissed frightfully as they

enveloped the "Great Western" with spray until the fourth night out,

when the moon gladdened us and promised much while we held our breath in

anxiety.

We were looking for land. We'd been looking for three hours, scarcely

speaking all that time. It's a serious matter raising a Pomotou by

moonlight.

"Land!" squeaked a weak voice about six feet above us. A lank fellow,

with his legs corkscrewed around the shrouds, and his long neck

stretched to windward, where it veered like a weather-cock in a

nor'wester, chuckled as he sang out "Land!" and felt himself a little

lower than Christopher Columbus thereafter. "Where away?" bellowed our

chunky little captain, as important as if he were commanding a grown-up

ship. "Two points on the weather-bow!" piped the lookout, with the voice

of one soaring in space, but unhappily choked in the last word by a

sudden lurch of the schooner that brought him speedily to the deck,

where he lost his identity and became a proper noun, second person

singular, for the rest of the cruise.

Now, "two points" is an indefinite term that embraces any obstacle ahead

of anything; but the "weather-bow" has been the salvation of many a

craft in her distress; so we gave three cheers for the "weather-bow,"

and proceeded to sweep the horizon with unwinking gaze. We could

scarcely tell how near the land might lie; fancied we could already hear

the roar of surf-beaten reefs, and every wave that reared before us

seemed the rounded outline of an island. Of course we shortened sail,

not knowing at what moment we might find ourselves close upon some low

sea-garden nestling under the rim of breakers that fenced it in, and

being morally averse to running it down without warning.

It was scarcely midnight; the moon was radiant; we were silently

watching, wrapped in the deep mystery that hung over the weather-bow.

The wind suddenly abated; it was as though it sifted through trees and

came to us subdued with a whisper of fluttering leaves and a breath of

spice. We knew what it meant, and our hearts leaped within us as over

the bow loomed the wave-like outline of shadow that sank not again like

the other waves, neither floated off cloud-like, but seemed to be

bearing steadily down upon us,--a great whale hungry for a modern Jonah.

What a night it was! We heard the howl of waters now; saw the

palm-boughs glisten in the moonlight, and the glitter and the flash of

foam that fringed the edges of the half-drowned islet.

It looked for all the world like a grove of cocoa-trees that had waded

out of sight of land, and didn't know which way to turn next. This was

the Ultima Thule of the "Great Western's" voyage, and she seemed to know

it, for she behaved splendidly at last, laying off and on till morning

in fine style, evidently as proud as a ship-of-line.

I went below and dozed in the cabin, with the low roar of the reef quite

audible; a fellow gets used to such dream-music, and sleeps well to its

accompaniment.

At daybreak we began beating up against wind and tide, hoping to work

into smooth water by sunrise, which we did easily enough, shaking hands

all around over a cup of thick coffee and molasses as three fathoms of

chain whizzed overboard after a tough little anchor that buried itself

in a dim wilderness of corals and sea-grass.

Then and there I looked about me with delighted eyes. The "Great

Western" rode at anchor in a shallow lake, whose crystal depths seemed

never to have been agitated by any harsher breath than at that moment

kissed without ruffling its surface. Around us swept an amphitheatre of

hills, covered with a dense growth of tropical foliage and cushioned to

the hem of the beach with thick sod of exquisite tint and freshness. The

narrow rim of beach that sloped suddenly to the tideless margin of the

lake was littered with numberless slender canoes drawn out of the water

like so many fish, as though they would navigate themselves in their

natural element, and they were, therefore, not to be trusted alone too

near it. Around the shore, across the hills, and along the higher ridges

waved innumerable cocoa-palms, planted like a legion of lances about the

encampment of some barbaric prince.

As for the very blue sky and the very white scud that shot across it,

they looked windy enough; moreover we could all hear the incoherent

booming of the sea upon the reef that encircled our nest. But we forgot

the wind and the waves in the inexpressible repose of that armful of

tropical seclusion. It was a drop of water in a tuft of moss, on a very

big scale; that's just what it was.

In a few moments, as with one impulse, the canoes took to water with a

savage or two in each, all gravitating to the schooner, which was for

the time being the head-centre of their local commerce; and for an hour

or more we did a big business in the exchange of fish-hooks and fresh

fruit.

The proportion of canoes at Motu Hilo (Crescent Island) to the natives

of said fragment of Eden was as one to several; but the canoeless could

not resist the superior attraction of a foreign invader, therefore the

rest of the inhabitants went head-first into the lake, and struck out

for the middle, where we peacefully swung at anchor.

The place was sharky, but a heavy dirk full twenty inches tall was held

between the teeth of the swimmers; and if the smoke-coloured dorsal of

any devil of a shark had dared to cut the placid surface of the water

that morning, he would speedily have had more blades in him than a

farrier's knife. A few vigorous strokes of the arms and legs in the

neighbourhood, a fatal lunge or two, a vermilion cloud in a sea churned

to a cream, and a dance over the gaping corpse of some monster who has

sucked human blood more than once, probably, does the business in that

country.

It was a sensation for unaccustomed eyes, that inland sea

covered--littered, I might say, with woolly heads, as though a cargo of

cocoanuts had been thrown overboard in a stress of weather. They

gathered about as thick as flies at a honey-pot, all talking, laughing,

and spouting mouthfuls of water into the air, like those impossible

creatures that do that sort of thing by the half-dozen in all high-toned

and classical fountains.

Out of this amphibious mob one gigantic youth, big enough to eat half

our ship's crew, threw up an arm like Jove's, clinched the deck-rail

with lithe fingers, and took a rest, swinging there with the utmost

satisfaction.

I asked him aboard, but he scorned to forsake his natural element: water

is as natural as air to those natives. Probably he would have suffered

financially had he attempted boarding us, for his thick back hair was

netted with a kind of spacious nest and filled with eggs on sale. It was

quite astonishing to see the ease with which he navigated under his

heavy deck-load.

This colossal youth having observed that I was an amateur humanitarian,

virtue received its instant reward (which it does not in all climates),

for he at once offered me three of his eggs in a very winning and

patronizing manner.

I took the eggs because I like eggs, and then I was anxious to get his

head above water if possible; therefore I unhesitatingly took the eggs,

offering him in return a fish-hook, a tenpenny nail, and a dilapidated

key-ring.

These tempting _curios_ he spurned, at the same moment reaching me

another handful of eggs. His generosity both pleased and alarmed me. I

saw with joy that his chin was quite out of water in consequence of his

charity, even when he dropped back into the sea, floating for a few

moments so as to let the blood circulate in his arm again; but whether

this was his magnanimous gift, or merely a trap to involve me in

hopeless debt, I was quite at a loss to know, and I paused with my hands

full of eggs, saying to myself, There is an end to fish-hooks in the

South Pacific, and dilapidated key-rings are not my staple product!

In the midst of my alarm he began making vows of eternal friendship.

This was by no means disagreeable to me. He was big enough to whip any

two of his fellows, and one likes to be on the best side of the stronger

party in a strange land.

I reciprocated!

I leaned over the stern-rail of the "Great Western" in the attitude of

Juliet in the balcony scene, assuring that egg-boy that my heart was

his if he was willing to take it at second-hand.

He liked my sentiments, and proposed touching noses at once (a barbarous

greeting still observed in the most civilized countries with even

greater license, since with Christians it is allowable to touch mouths).

We touched noses, though I was in danger of sliding headlong into the

sea. After this ceremonial he consented to board the "Great Western,"

which having accomplished with my help, he deposited his eggs at my

feet, offered me his nose once more, and communicated to me his name,

asking in the same breath for mine.

He was known as Hua Manu, or Bird's Egg. Every native in the South Sea

gets named by accident. I knew a fellow whose name was "Cock-eye;" he

was a standing advertisement of his physical deformity. A fellow that

knew me rejoiced in the singular cognomen of "Thrown from a horse."

Fortunately he doesn't spell it with so many letters in his tongue. His

christening happened in this wise: A bosom friend of his mother was

thrown from a horse and killed the day of his birth. Therefore the

bereaved mother reared that child, an animated memorial, who in after

years clove to me, and was as jolly as though his earthly mission wasn't

simply to keep green the memory of his mother's bosom friend sailing

through the air with a dislocated neck.

I turned to my new-found friend. "Hua Manu," said I, "for my sake you

have made a bird's-nest of your back hair. You have freely given me your

young affection and your eggs. Receive the sincere thanks of yours

truly, together with these fish-hooks, these tenpenny nails, this

key-ring." Hua Manu smiled and accepted, burying the fish-hooks in his

matted forelock, and inserting a tenpenny nail and a key-ring in either

ear, thereby making himself the envy of the entire population of Motu

Hilo, and feeling himself as grand as the best chief in the archipelago.

So we sat together on the deck of the "Great Western," quite dry for a

wonder, exchanging sheep's-eyes and confidences, mutually happy in each

other's society. Meanwhile the captain was arranging his plans for an

immediate purchase of such pearls as he might find in possession of the

natives, and for a fresh search for pearl oysters at the earliest

possible hour. There were no pearls on hand. What are pearls to a man

who has as many wives, children, and cocoanuts as he can dispose of?

Pearls are small and colourless. Give them a handful of gorgeous glass

beads, a stick of sealing-wax, or some spotted beans, and keep your pale

sea-tears, milky and frozen, and apt to grow sickly yellow and die if

they are not cared for.

Motu Hilo is independent. No man has squatted there to levy tax or toll.

We were each one of us privileged to hunt for pearls and keep our stores

separate. I said to Hua Manu, "Let's invest in a canoe, explore the

lagoon for fresh oyster-beds, and fill innumerable cocoanut shells with

these little white seeds. It will be both pleasant and profitable,

particularly for me." We were scarcely five minutes bargaining for our

outfit, and we embarked at once, having agreed to return in a couple of

days for news concerning the success of the "Great Western" and her

probable date of sailing.

Seizing a paddle, Hua Manu propelled our canoe with incredible rapidity

out of the noisy fleet in the centre of the lake, toward a green point

that bounded it, one of the horns of the crescent. He knew a spot where

the oyster yawned in profusion, a secret cave for shelter, a forest

garden of fruits, a never-failing spring, etc. Thither we would fly and

domesticate ourselves. The long, curved point of land soon hid the inner

waters from view. We rose and sank on the swell between the great reef

and the outer rim of the island, while the sun glowed fiercely overhead

and the reef howled in our ears. Still on we skimmed, the water hissing

along the smooth sides of the canoe, that trembled at every fierce

stroke of Hua Manu's industrious paddle. No chart, no compass, no

rudder, no exchange of references, no letter of introduction, yet I

trusted that wild Hercules who was hurrying me away, I knew not whither,

with an earnestness that forced the sweat from his naked body in living

streams.

At last we turned our prow and shot through a low arch in a cliff, so

low that we both ducked our heads instinctively, letting the vines and

parasites trail over our shoulders and down our backs.

It was a dark passage into an inner cave lit from below,--a cave filled

with an eternal and sunless twilight that was very soothing to our eyes

as we came in from the glare of sea and sky.

"Look!" said Hua Manu. Overhead rose a compressed dome of earth, a thick

matting of roots, coil within coil. At the side innumerable ledges,

shelves, and seams lined with nests, and never a nest without its egg,

often two or more together. Below us, in two fathoms of crystal, sunlit

and luminous bowers of coral, and many an oyster asleep with its mouth

open, and many a prismatic fish poising itself with palpitating gills,

and gauzy fins fanning the water incessantly.

"Hua Manu!" I exclaimed in rapture, "permit me to congratulate you. In

you I behold the regular South Sea Monte Christo, and no less

magnificent title can do you justice." Thereat Hua Manu laughed

immoderately, which laugh having run out we both sat in our canoe and

silently sucked eggs for some moments.

A canoe-length from where we floated a clear rill stole noiselessly from

above, mingling its sweet waters with the sea; on the roof of our cavern

fruits flourished, and we were wholly satisfied. After such a lunch as

ours it behoved us to cease idling and dive for pearls. So Hua Manu

knotted his long hair tightly about his forehead, cautiously transferred

himself from the canoe to the water, floated a moment, inhaling a

wonderfully long breath, and plunged under. How he struggled to get down

to the gaping oysters, literally climbing down head-first! I saw his

dark form wrestling with the elements that strove to force him back to

the surface, crowding him out into the air again. He seized one of the

shells, but it shut immediately, and he tugged and jerked and wrenched

at it like a young demon till it gave way, when he struck out and up for

air. All this seemed an age to me. I took full twenty breaths while he

was down. Reaching the canoe, he dropped the great, ugly-looking thing

into it, and hung over the outrigger gasping for breath like a man half

hanged. He was pale about the mouth, his eyes were suffused with blood,

blood oozed from his ears and nostrils; his limbs, gashed with the sharp

corals, bled also. The veins of his forehead looked ready to burst, and

as he tightened the cords of hair across them it seemed his only

salvation.

I urged him to desist, seeing his condition, and fearing a repetition of

his first experience; but he would go once more; perhaps there was no

pearl in that shell; he wanted to get me a pearl. He sank again and

renewed his efforts at the bottom of the sea. I scarcely dared to count

the minutes now, nor the bubbles that came up to me like little balloons

with a death-message in each. Suppose he were to send his last breath in

one of those transparent globes, and I look down and see his body snared

in the antlers of coral, stained with his blood? Well, he came up all

right, and I postponed the rest of my emotion for a later experience.

Some divers remain three minutes under water, but two or three descents

are as many as they can make in a day. The ravages of such a life are

something frightful.

No more pearl-hunting after the second dive that day; nor the next,

because we went out into the air for a stroll on shore to gather fruit

and stretch our legs. There was a high wind and a heavy sea that looked

threatening enough, and we were glad to return after an hour's tramp.

The next day was darker, and the next after that, when a gale came down

upon us that seemed likely to swamp Motu Hilo. A swell rolled over the

windward reef and made our quarters in the grotto by no means safe or

agreeable. It was advisable for us to think of embarking upon that

tempestuous sea, or get brained against the roof of our retreat.

Hua Manu looked troubled, and my heart sank. I wished the pearl oysters

at the bottom of the sea, the "Great Western" back at Tahiti, and I

loafing under the green groves of Papeete, never more to be deluded

abroad.

I observed no visible changes in the weather after I had been wishing

for an hour and a half. The swell rather increased; our frail canoe was

tossed from side to side in imminent danger of upsetting.

Now and then a heavy roller entirely filled the mouth of our cavern,

quite blinding us with spray; having spent its fury, it subsided with a

concussion that nearly deafened us, and dragged us with fearful velocity

toward the narrow mouth of the cave, where we saved ourselves from being

swept into the sea by grasping the roots overhead and within reach.

Could I swim? asked Hua Manu. Alas, no! That we must seek new shelter at

any risk was but too evident. "Let us go on the next wave," said Hua, as

he seized a large shell and began clearing the canoe of the water that

had accumulated. Then he bound his long hair in a knot to keep it from

his eyes, and gave me some hasty directions as to my deportment in the

emergency.

The great wave came. We were again momentarily corked up in an air-tight

compartment. I wonder the roof was not burst open with the intense

pressure that nearly forced the eyes out of my head and made me faint

and giddy. Recovering from the shock, with a cry of warning from Hua,

and a prayer scarcely articulated, we shot like a bomb from a mortar

into the very teeth of a frightful gale.

Nothing more was said, nothing seen. The air was black with flying

spray, the roar of the elements more awful than anything I had ever

heard before. Sheets of water swept over us with such velocity that they

hummed like circular saws in motion.

We were crouched as low as possible in the canoe, yet now and then one

of these, the very _blade_ of the wave, struck us on the head or

shoulders, cutting us like knives. I could scarcely distinguish Hua's

outline, the spray was so dense, and as for him, what could he do?

Nothing, indeed, but send up a sort of death-wail, a few notes of which

tinkled in my ear from time to time, assuring me how utterly without

hope we were.

One of those big rollers must have lifted us clean over the reef, for we

crossed it and were blown into the open sea, where the canoe spun for a

second in the trough of the waves, and was cut into slivers by an

avalanche of water that carried us all down into the depths.

* * * * *

I suppose I filled at once, but came up in spite of it (almost every one

has that privilege), when I was clutched by Hua Manu and made fast to

his utilitarian back-hair. I had the usual round of experiences allotted

to all half-drowned people: a panoramic view of my poor life crammed

with sin and sorrow and regret; a complete biography written and read

through inside of ten seconds. I was half strangled, call it two-thirds,

for that comes nearer the truth; heard the water singing in my ears,

which was _not_ sweeter than symphonies, nor beguiling, nor in the least

agreeable. I deny it! In the face of every corpse that ever was drowned

I emphatically deny it!

Hua had nearly stripped me with one or two tugs at my thin clothing,

because he didn't think that worth towing off to some other island, and

he was willing to float me for a day or two, and run the risk of saving

me.

When I began to realize anything, I congratulated myself that the gale

was over. The sky was clear, the white caps scarce, but the swell still

sufficient to make me dizzy as we climbed one big, green hill, and slid

off the top of it into a deep and bubbling abyss.

I found Hua leisurely feeling his way through the water, perfectly

self-possessed and apparently unconscious that he had a deck passenger

nearly as big as himself. My hands were twisted into his hair in such a

way that I could rest my chin upon my arms, and thus easily keep my

mouth above water most of the time.

My emotions were peculiar. I wasn't accustomed to travelling in that

fashion. I knew it had been done before. Even there I thought with

infinite satisfaction of the Hawaiian woman who swam for forty hours in

such a sea, with an aged and helpless husband upon her back. Reaching

land at last she tenderly drew her burden to shore and found him--dead!

The fact is historical, and but one of several equally marvellous.

We floated on and on, cheering each other hour after hour; the wind

continuing, the sea falling, and anon night coming like an

ill-omen,--night, that buried us alive in darkness and despair.

I think I must have dozed, or fainted, or died several times during the

night, for it began to grow light long before I dared to look for it,

and then came sunrise,--a sort of intermittent sunrise that gilded Hua's

shoulder whenever we got to the top of a high wave, and went out again

as soon as we settled into the hollows.

Hua Manu's eyes were much better than mine; he seemed to see with all

his five senses, and the five told him that _there was land not far

off_! I wouldn't believe him; I think I was excusable for questioning

his infallibility then and there. The minute he cried out "Land!" I gave

up and went to sleep or to death, for I thought he was daft, and it was

discouraging business, and I wished I could die for good. Hua Manu, what

a good egg you were, though it's the bad that usually keep atop of the

water, they tell me!

* * * * *

Hua Manu was right! he walked out of the sea an hour later and stood on

a mound of coarse sand in the middle of the ocean, with my miserable,

water-logged body lying in a heap at his feet.

The place was as smooth and shiny and desolate as anybody's bald head.

That's a nice spot to be merry in, isn't it? Yet he tried to make me

open my eyes and be glad.

He said he knew the "Great Western" would be coming down that way

shortly; she'd pick us off the shoal, and water and feed us.

Perhaps she might! Meantime we hungered and thirsted as many a poor

castaway had before us. That was a good hour for Christian fortitude:

beached in the middle of the ocean; shelterless under a sun that

blistered Hua's tough skin; eyes blinded with the glare of sun and sea;

the sand glowing like brass and burning into flesh already irritated

with salt water; a tongue of leather cleaving to the roof of the mouth,

and no food within reach, nor so much as a drop of fresh water for

Christ's sake!

Down went my face into the burning sand that made the very air _hop_

above it.... Another night, cool and grateful; a bird or two flapped

wearily overhead, looking like spirits in the moonlight. Hua scanned

earnestly our narrow horizon, noting every inflection in the voices of

the wind and waves,--voices audible to him, but worse than dumb to

me,--mocking monotones reiterated through an agonizing eternity.

A wise monitor was Hua Manu, shaming me to silence in our cursed

banishment. Toward the morning after our arrival at the shoal, an owl

fluttered out of the sky and fell at our feet quite exhausted. It might

have been blown from Motu Hilo, and seemed ominous of something, I

scarcely knew what. When it had recovered from its fatigue, it sat

regarding us curiously. I wanted to wring its short, thick neck, and eat

it, feathers and all. Hua objected; there was a superstition that gave

that bland bird its life. It might continue to ogle us with one eye as

long as it liked. How the lopsided thing smirked! how that stupid

owl-face, like a rosette with three buttons in it, haunted me! It was

enough to craze any one; and, having duly cursed him and his race, I

went stark mad and hoped I was dying for ever.

* * * * *

There are plenty of stars in this narrative. Stars, and plenty of them,

cannot account for the oblivious intervals, suspended animation, or

whatever it was, that came to my relief from time to time. I cannot

account for them myself. Perhaps Hua Manu might; he seemed always awake,

always on the lookout, and ever so patient and painful. A dream came to

me after that owl had stared me into stone,--a dream of an island in a

sea of glass; soft ripples lapping on the silver shores; sweet airs

sighing in a starlit grove; some one gathering me in his arms, hugging

me close with infinite tenderness; I was consumed with thirst,

speechless with hunger; like an infant I lay in the embrace of my

deliverer, who moistened my parched lips and burning throat with

delicious and copious draughts. It was an elixir of life; I drank health

and strength in every drop; sweeter than mother's milk flowed the warm

tide unchecked, till I was satisfied, and sank into a deep and dreamless

sleep.

* * * * *

The "Great Western" was plunging in her old style, and I swashed in my

bunk as of yore. The captain sat by me with a bottle in his hand and

anxiety in his countenance.

"Where are we?" I asked.

"Two hours out from Tahiti, inward bound."

"How! What! When!" etc.; and my mind ran up and down the record of the

last fortnight, finding many blots and some blanks.

As soon as I got into my right mind I could hear all about it; and the

captain shook his bottle, and held on to the side of my bunk to save

himself from total wreck in the lee-corners of the cabin.

"Why, wasn't I right-minded? I could tell a hawk from a hernshaw; and,

speaking of hawks, where was that cursed owl?"

The captain concluded I was bettering, and put the physic into the

locker, so as to give his whole attention to keeping right side up.

Well, this is how it happened, as I afterward learned: The "Great

Western" suffered somewhat from the gale at Motu Hilo, though she was

comparatively sheltered in that inner sea. Having repaired, and given me

up as a deserter, she sailed for Tahiti. The first day out, in a light

breeze, they all saw a man apparently wading up to his middle in the

sea. The fellow hailed the "Great Western," but as she could hardly

stand up against the rapid current in so light a wind, the captain let

her drift past the man in the sea, who suddenly disappeared. A

consultation of officers followed. Evidently some one was cast away and

ought to be looked after; resolved to beat up to the rock, big turtle,

or whatever it might be that kept that fellow afloat, provided the wind

freshened sufficiently; wind immediately freshened; "Great Western" put

about and made for the spot where Hua Manu had been seen hailing the

schooner. But when that schooner passed he threw himself upon the sand

beside me, and gave up hoping at last, and was seen no more.

What did he then? I must have asked for drink. He gave it me from an

artery in his wrist, severed by the finest teeth you ever saw. That's

what saved me. On came the little schooner, beating up against the wind

and tide, while I had my lips sealed to that fountain of life.

The skipper kept banging away with an old blunderbuss that had been left

over in his bargains with the savages, and one of these explosions

caught the ears of Hua. He tore my lips from his wrist, staggered to his

feet, and found help close at hand. Too late they gathered us up out of

the deep and strove to renew our strength. They transported us to the

little cabin of the schooner, Hua Manu, myself, and that mincing owl,

and swung off into the old course. Probably the "Great Western" never

did better sailing since she came from the stocks than that hour or two

of beating that brought her up to the shoal. She seemed to be emulating

it in the home run, for we went bellowing through the sea in a stiff

breeze and the usual flood-tide on deck.

I lived to tell the tale. I should think it mighty mean of me not to

live after such a sacrifice. Hua Manu sank rapidly. I must have nearly

drained his veins, but I don't believe he regretted it. The captain said

when he was dying his faithful eyes were fixed on me. Unconsciously I

moved a little; he smiled, and the soul went out of him in that smile,

perfectly satisfied. At that moment the owl fled from the cabin, passed

through the hatchway, and disappeared.

Hua Manu lay on the deck, stretched under a sail, while I heard this. I

wondered if a whole cargo of pearls could make me indifferent to his

loss. I wondered if there were many truer and braver than he in

Christian lands. They call him a heathen. It _was_ heathenish to offer

up his life vicariously. He might have taken mine so easily, and perhaps

have breasted the waves back to his own people, and been fêted and sung

of as the hero he truly was.

Well, if he is a heathen, out of my heart I would make a parable, its

rubric bright with his sacrificial blood, its theme this glowing text:

"Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for a

friend."

THE LAST OF THE GREAT NAVIGATOR.

Think of a sea and a sky of such even and utter blueness that any

visible horizon is out of the question. In the midst of this pellucid

sphere the smallest of propellers trailing two plumes of sea-foam, like

the tail-feathers of a bird of paradise, and over it all a league of

floating crape,--for so seem the heavy folds of smoke that hang above

us.

Thus we pass out of our long hours of idleness in that grove of eight

thousand cocoa-palms by the sea-shore,--the artist and I seeking to

renew our _dolce far niente_ in some new forest of palms by any shore

whatever. Enough that it is sea-washed, and hath a voice and an eternal

song.

Now turn to the stone quarry darkened with the groups of the few

faithful friends and many islanders. They are so ready to kill time in

the simplest manner; why not in staring our awkward little steamer out

of sight?

One glimpse of the white handkerchiefs, fluttering like a low flight of

doves, and then with all the sublime resignation of the confessed

lounger, we await the approach of twilight and the later hours that

shall presently pass silver-footed over this tropic sea.

Four p.m., and the roar of the reef lost to us voyagers. The sun an hour

high. The steams of dinner appealing to us through the yawning

hatches,--everything yawning in this latitude, animate and

inanimate,--and the world as hot as Tophet. We lie upon our mattresses,

brought out of the foul cabin into the sweet air, and pass the night

half intoxicated with romance and cigarettes. The natives cover the deck

of our little craft in lazy and laughing flocks. Some of them regard us

tenderly; they are apt to love at sight, though Heaven knows there is

little in our untrimmed exteriors to attract any one under the stars.

We hear, now and then, the sharp click of flint and steel, and after it

see the flame, and close to the flame a dark face, grotesque it may be,

like an antique water-spout with dust in its jaws. But some are

beautiful, with glorious eyes that shine wonderfully in the excitement

of lighting the pipe anew.

Voices arise at intervals from among the groups of younger voyagers. We

hear the songs of our own land worded in oddly and rather prettily

broken English. "Annie Laurie," "When the cruel war is over," and other

equally ambitious and proportionately popular ballads ring in good time

and tune from the lips of the young bloods, but the girls seldom join to

any advantage. How strange it all seems, and how we listen!

With the first and deepest purple of the dawn, the dim outlines of

Molokai arise before us. It is an island of cliffs and cañons, much

haunted of the King, but usually out of the tourist's guide-book.

It is hinted one may turn back this modern page of island civilization,

and with it the half-christianized and wholly bewildered natures of the

uncomprehending natives, and here find all of the old superstitions in

their original significance, the temples, and the shark-god, and the

_hula-hula_ girls, beside whose weird and maddening undulations your

_can-can_ dancers are mere jumping-jacks.

Listen for faint music of the wandering minstrels! No, we are too far

out from shore: then it is the wrong end of the day for such festivals.

A brief siesta under the opening eyelids of the morn, and at sunrise we

dip our colours abreast charming little Lahaina, drowsy and indolent,

with its two or three long, long avenues overhung with a green roof of

leaves, and its odd summer-houses and hammocks pitched close upon the

white edge of the shore.

We passed to and fro in the shadow paths an hour or two, eat of the

fruits, luscious and plentiful, and drink of its liquors, vile and

fortunately scarce, and get us hats plaited of the coarsest straw and of

unbounded rim, making ourselves still more hideous, if indeed we have

not already reached the acme of the unpicturesque.

Now for hours and hours we hug the shore, slowly progressing under the

insufficient shadow of the palms, getting now and then glimpses of

valleys folded inland, said to be lovely and mystical. Then there are

mites of villages always half-grown and half-starved looking, and always

close to the sea. These islanders are amphibious. The little bronze

babies float like corks before they can walk half the length of a

bamboo-mat.

Another night at sea, in the rough channel this time, and less

enjoyable for the rather stiff breeze on our quarter, and some very

sour-looking clouds overhead. All well by six, however, when we hear the

Angelus rung from the lower tower of a long coral church in another

sea-wedded hamlet. Think of the great barn-like churches, once too small

for the throngs that gathered about them, now full of echoes, and whose

doors, if they still hang to their hinges, will soon swing only to the

curious winds!

In and out by this strange land, marking all its curvatures with the

fidelity of those shadow lines in the atlas, and so lingering on till

the evening of the second day, when, just at sunset, we turn suddenly

into the bay that saw the last of Captain Cook, and here swing at anchor

in eight fathoms of liquid crystal over a floor of shining white coral,

and clouds of waving sea-moss. From the deck behold the amphitheatre

wherein was enacted the tragedy of "The Great Navigator, or the

Vulnerable God." The story is brief and has its moral.

The approach of Captain Cook was mystical. For generations the islanders

had been looking with calm eyes of faith for the promised return of a

certain god. Where should they look but to the sea, whence came all

mysteries, and whither retreated the being they called divine?

So the white wings of the "Resolution" swept down upon the lifelong

quietude of Hawaii like a messenger from heaven, and the signal gun sent

the first echoes to the startled mountains of the little kingdom.

They received this Jupiter, who carried his thunders with him and

kindled fires in his mouth. He was the first smoker they had seen,

though they are now his most devout apostles. Showing him all due

reverence, he failed to regard their customs and traditions, which was

surely ungodlike, and it rather weakened the faith of their sages.

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

While engaged in conversation, one of the chiefs was to rush at Cook

with a weapon; should he cry out or attempt to run, he was no god, for

the gods are fearless; and if he was no god, he deserved death for his

deception. But if a god, no harm could come of it, for the gods are

immortal.

So they argued, and completed their plans. It came to pass in the

consummation of them that Cook did run, and thereupon received a stab in

the back. Being close by the shore he fell, face downward in the water

and died a half-bloody, half-watery, and wholly inglorious death. His

companions escaped to the ship and peppered the villages by the harbour,

till the inhabitants, half frantic, were driven into the hills.

Then they put to sea, leaving the body of their commander in the hands

of the enemy, and with flag at half-mast were blown sullenly back to

England, there to inaugurate the season of poems, dirges, and pageants

in honour of the Great Navigator.

His bones were stripped of flesh, afterwards bound with _kapa_, the

native cloth, and laid in one of the hundred natural cells that

perforate the cliff in front of us, and under whose shadow we now float.

Which of the hundred is the one so honoured is quite uncertain. What

does it matter, so long as the whole mountain is a catacomb of kings?

No commoners are buried there. It was a kind and worthy impulse that

could still venerate so far the mummy of an idol of such palpable clay

as his.

Many of these singular caverns are almost inaccessible. One must climb

down by ropes from the cliff above. Rude bars of wood are laid across

the mouths of some of them. It is the old _tabu_ never yet broken. But a

few years back it was braving death to attempt to remove them.

Cook's flesh was most likely burned. It was then a custom. But his heart

was left untouched of the flames of this sacrifice. What a salamander

the heart is that can withstand the fires of a judgment!

The story of this heart is the one shocking page in this history: some

children discovered it afterwards, and, thinking it the offal of an

animal, devoured it. Whoever affirms that the "Sandwich-Islanders eat

each other," has at least this ground for his affirmation. Natives of

the South Sea Islands have been driven as far north as this in their

frail canoes. They were cannibals, and no doubt were hungry, and may

have eaten in their fashion, but it is said to have been an acquired

taste, and was not at all popular in this region. Dramatic justice

required some tragic sort of revenge, and this was surely equal to the

emergency.

Our advanced guard, in the shape of a month-earlier tourist, gave us the

notes for doing this historical nook in the Pacific. A turned-down page,

it is perhaps a little too dog-eared to be read over again, but we all

like to compare notes. So we noted the items of the advance-guard, and

they read in this fashion:--

OBJECTS OF INTEREST RELATING TO CAPTAIN COOK.

Item I. The tree where Cook was struck.

" II. The rock where Cook fell.

" III. The altar on the hill-top.

" IV. The riven palms.

" V. The sole survivor,--the boy that ran.

" VI. A specimen sepulchre in the cliff.

Until dark the native children have been playing about as in the sea,

diving for very smooth "rials," and looking much as frogs must look to

wandering liliputians. The artist cares less for these wild and graceful

creatures than one would suppose, for he confesses them equal in

physical beauty to the Italian models. All sentiment seemed to have been

dragged out of him by much travel. At night we sit together on the

threshold of our grass house, and not twenty feet from the rock--under

water only at high tide--where Cook died. We sit talking far into the

night, with the impressive silence broken only by the plash of the sea

at our very door.

By-and-by the moon looks down upon us from the sepulchre of the kings.

We are half clad, having adopted the native costume as the twilight

deepened and our modesty permitted. The heat is still excessive. All

this low land was made to God's order some few centuries ago. We wonder

if He ever changes His mind; this came down red-hot from the hills

yonder, and cooled at high-water mark. It holds the heat like an

oven-brick, and we find it almost impossible to walk upon it at

noontime, even our sole-leather barely preserving our feet from its

blistering surface. The natives manage to hop over it now and then; they

are about half leather anyhow, and the other half appetite.

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

Let us pass down to the rock, and cool ourselves in the damp moss that

drapes it. It is almost as large as a dinner-table, and as level. You

can wade all around it, count a hundred little crabs running up and down

over the top of it. So much for one object of interest, and the artist

draws his pencil through it. At ten p.m. we are still chatting, and have

added a hissing pot of coffee over some live coals to our housekeeping.

Now down a little pathway at our right comes a native woman, with a

plump and tough sort of a pillow under each arm. These she implores us

to receive and be comfortable. We refuse to be comforted in this

fashion, we despise luxuries, and in true cosmopolitan independence hang

our heads over our new saddle-trees, and sleep heavily in an atmosphere

rank with the odour of fresh leather; but not till we have seen our

human visitor part of the way home. Back by the steep and winding path

we three pass in silence. She pauses a moment in the moonlight at what

seems a hitching-post cased in copper. It is as high as our hip, and has

some rude lettering apparently scratched with a nail upon it. We

decipher with some difficulty this legend:--

+

Near this spot fell

CAPTAIN JAMES COOK, R.N.,

the

Renowned Circumnavigator,

who

discovered these islands,

A.D. 1778.

His Majesty's Ship

Imogene,

Oct. 17, 1837.

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

"_Aloha!_" cries a soft voice in the distance. Our native woman has left

us in our pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, and now there is no

visible trace of her and her pillows,--only that voice out of the

darkness crying, "Love to you!" She lives in memory,--this warm-hearted

_Waihine_; so do her pillows.

Returning to our lodgings, we discover a square heap of broken lava

rocks. It seems to be the foundation for some building; and such it is,

for here the palace of Kamehameha I. stood,--a palace of grass like this

one we are sleeping in. Nothing but the foundation remains now. Half a

dozen rude stairs invite the ghosts of the departed courtiers to this

desolate ruin.

They are all Samaritans in this kingdom. By sunrise a boy with fresh

coffee and a pail of muffins rides swiftly to our door. He came from

over the hill. Our arrival had been reported, and we are summoned to a

late breakfast in the manner of the Christians. We are glad of it. Our

fruit diet of yesterday, the horrors of a night in the saddle--a safe

and pretty certain mode of dislocating the neck--makes us yearn for a

good old-fashioned meal. Horses are at our service. We mount after

taking our muffins and coffee in the centre of a large and enthusiastic

gathering of villagers. They came to see us eat, and to fumble the

artist's sketches, and wonder at his amazing skill.

Up the high hill with the jolliest sun shining full in our eyes,

brushing the heavy and dew-filled foliage on both sides of the trail,

and under the thick webs spun in the upper branches, looking like silver

laces this glorious morning,--on, till we reach the hill-top.

Here the guide pauses and points his horse's nose toward a rude

_corral_. The horses seem to regard it from habit,--we scarcely with

curiosity. A wall half in ruins in the centre, rising from a heap of

stones tumbled together, a black, weather-stained cross, higher than our

heads as we sit in the saddle. It is the altar of sacrifice. It is here

that the heart of the great navigator survived the flames.

No. III. scored off. At this rate we shall finish by noon easily. The

sequel of an adventurous life is soon told.

After breakfast, to horse again, and back to the little village by the

sea. We ride into a cluster of palms, our guide leading the way, and

find two together, each with a smooth and perfectly round hole through

its body about three feet from the roots, made by the shot of Cook's

avengers. A lady could barely thrust her hand through them; they

indicate rather light calibre for defence nowadays, but enough to

terrify these little villages, when Cook's men sent the balls hissing

over the water to bite through the grit and sap of these slender shafts.

They still live to tell the tale in their way. So much for No. IV.

We pause again in the queer little straggling alleys of the village,

planned, I should think, after some spider's web. They are about as

regular in their irregularity. It is No. V. this time. A bit of withered

humanity doubled up in the sun, as though some one had set him on that

wall to bake. He is drawn all together; his chin sunk in between his

knees, his knees hooped together with his dreadfully slim arms, a round

head, sleek and shining as an oiled gourd; _sans_ teeth; eyes like the

last drops in desert wells; the skeleton sharply quick and protruding;

no motion; apparently no life beyond the incessant blinking of the

eyelids,--the curtains fluttering in the half-shut windows of the soul.

_Is_ it a man and a brother? Yes, verily! When the uncaptured crew of

the "Resolution" poured their iron shot into the tents of the adversary,

this flickering life was young and vigorous, and he ran like a good

fellow. Better to have died in his fiery youth than to have slowly

withered away in this fashion. For here is the philosophy of mammon left

to itself: when you get to be an old native, it is your business to die;

if you don't know your business, you are left to find it out: what are

you good for but to bury?

Let us slip over the smooth bay, for we must look into one of these

caverns. Cross in this canoe, so narrow that we cannot get into it at

all, but balance ourself on its rim and hold our breath for fear of

upsetting. These odd-looking outriggers are honest enough in theory, but

treacherous in practice; and a shark has his eye on us back yonder.

Sharks are mesmeric in their motions through the water, and

corpse-coloured.

A new guide helps us to the most easily reached cave, and with the lad

and his smoking torch we climb into the dusky mouth.

There is dust everywhere, and cobwebs as thick as cloth, hanging in

tatters. An almost interminable series of small cells, just high enough

to straighten one's back in, leads us farther and farther into the

mountain of bones. This cave has been pillaged too often to be very

ghostly now. We find a little parcel of bones here. It might have been a

hand and an arm once, cunning and dexterous. It is nothing now but a

litter. Here is an infant's skull, but broken, thin and delicate as a

sea-shell, and full of dust. Here is a tougher one, whole and solid; the

teeth well set and very white; no signs of decay in any one of these

molars. Perhaps it is because so little of their food is oven warm when

they eat it. This rattles as we lift it. The brain and the crumbs of

earth are inseparably wedded. Come with us, skull. You look scholarly,

and shall lie upon our desk,--a solemn epistle to the living. But the

cave is filled with the vile smoke of our torch, and we are choked with

the heat and dust. Let us out as soon as possible. The Great Navigator's

skeleton cannot be hidden in this tomb. Down we scramble into the sand

and shadow by the water, and talk of departing out of this place of

relics.

We are to cross the lava southward where it is frescoed with a

wilderness of palm-trees: for when the mountain came down to the sea,

flowing red-hot, but cooling almost instantly, it mowed down the forests

of palms, and the trunks were not consumed, but lay half buried in the

cooling lava, and now you can mark every delicate fibre of the bark in

the lava, as firm as granite.

Still farther south lies the green slope that was so soon to be shaken

to its foundations. I wonder if we could discover any of the peculiar

loveliness that bewitched us the evening we crossed it in silence. There

was something in the air that said, "Peace, peace"; and we passed over

the fatal spot without speaking. But the sea spoke under the cliffs

below us, and the mountain has since replied.

This place is named prettily, _Kealekakua_. You see that mountain?

There are paths leading to it. Thither the gods journeyed in the days of

old. So the land is called "the path of the gods."

It is a cool, green spot up yonder; the rain descends upon it in

continual baptism. The natives love these mountains and the sea. They

are the cardinal points of their compass. Every direction given you is

either toward the mountain or toward the sea.

There is much truth in the Arabian tale, and it is time to acknowledge

it. Mountains are magnetic. The secret of their magnetism may lie in the

immobility of their countenances. Praise them to their face, and they

are not flattered; forget them for a moment: but turn again, and see

their steadfast gaze! You feel their earnestness. It is imposing, and

you cannot think lightly of it. Who forgets the mountains he has once

seen? It is quite probable the mountain cares little for your

individuality: but it has given part of itself to the modelling of your

character; it has touched you with the wand of its enchantment; you are

under the spell. Somewhere in the recesses of this mountain are locked

the bones of the Great Navigator, but these mountains have kept the

secret.

A CANOE CRUISE IN THE CORAL SEA.

If you can buy a canoe for two calico shirts, what will your annual

expenses in Tahiti amount to? This was a mental problem I concluded to

solve, and, having invested my two shirts, I began the solution in this

wise: My slender little treasure lay with half its length on shore, and

being quite big enough for two, I looked about me, seeking some one to

sit in the bows, for company and ballast.

Up and down the shady beach of Papeete I wandered, with this

advertisement written all over my anxious face:--

"WANTED--A crew about ten years of age; of a mild disposition, and

with no special fondness for human flesh; not particular as to sex!

Apply immediately, at the new canoe, under the bread-fruit tree,

Papeete, South Pacific."

Some young things were pitching French coppers so earnestly they didn't

read my face; some were not sea-faring at that moment; while most of

them evidently ate more than was good for them, which might result

disastrously in a canoe cruise, and I set my heart against them. The

afternoon was waning, and my ill-luck seemed to urge upon me the

necessity of my constituting a temporary press-gang for the kidnapping

of the required article.

"Who is anxious to go to sea with me?" I shouted, revisiting the mob of

young gamblers, all intently disinterested in everything but "pitch and

toss." Not far away a group of wandering minstrels--such as make musical

the shores of Tahiti--sat in the middle of the street, chanting. One

youth played with considerable skill upon a joint of bamboo, of the

flute species, but breathed into from the nostrils, instead of the lips.

Three or four minor notes were piped at uncertain intervals, playing an

impromptu variation upon the air of the singers. Drawing near, the music

was suspended, and I proposed shipping one of the melodious vagabonds,

whereupon the entire chorus expressed a willingness to accompany me in

any capacity whatever, remarking, at the same time, that "they were a

body bound, so to speak, by cords of harmony, and any proposal to

disband them would, by it, be regarded as highly absurd." Then I led the

solemn procession of volunteers to my canoe, and we regarded it in

silence; it was something larger than a pea-pod, to be sure, but about

the shape of one. After a moment of deliberation, during which a great

throng of curious spectators had assembled, the orchestra declared

itself in readiness to ship before the paddle for the trifling

consideration of seventeen dollars. I knew the vague notion that money

is money, call it dollar or dime, generally entertained by the innocent

children of nature; and, dazzling the unaccustomed eyes of the flutist

with a new two-franc piece, he immediately embarked. The bereaved

singers sat on the shore and lifted up their voices in resounding

discord, as the canoe slid off into the still waters, and my crew, with

commendable fortitude, laid down the nose-flute, took up the paddle, and

we began our canoe cruise.

The frail thing glided over the waves as though invisible currents were

sweeping her into the hereafter; the shore seemed to recede, drawing the

low, thatched houses into deeper shadow; other canoes skimmed over the

sea, like great water-bugs, while the sun set beyond the sharp outlines

of beautiful Morea, glorifying it and us.

There was a small islet not far away,--an islet as fair and fragrant as

a bouquet,--looking, just then, like a mote in a sheet of flame. Thither

I directed the reformed flutist, and then let myself relapse into the

all-embracing quietness that succeeds nearly every vexation that flesh

is heir to.

There was something soothing in the nature of my crew. He sat with his

back to me,--a brown back, that glistened in the sun, and arched itself,

from time to time, cat-like, as though it was very good to be brown and

bare and shiny. From the waist to the feet fell the resplendent folds of

a _pareu_, worn by all Tahitians, of every possible age and sex, and

consisted, in this case, of a thin breadth of cloth, stamped with a deep

blue firmament, in which supernaturally yellow suns were perpetually

settling in several spots. A round head topped his chubby shoulders, and

was shaven from the neck to the crown, with a matted forelock of the

blackness of darkness falling to the eyes and keeping the sun out of

them. One ear was enlivened with a crescent of beaten gold, which

decoration, having been won at "pitch and toss," will probably never

again, in the course of human events, meet with its proper mate. On the

whole, he looked just a little bit like a fantail pigeon with its wings

plucked.

At this point, my crew suddenly rose in the bows of the canoe, making

several outlandish flourishes with his broad paddle. I was about to

demand the occasion of his sudden insanity, when we began to grate over

some crumbling substance that materially impeded our progress and

suggested all sorts of disagreeable sensations,--such as knife-grinding

in the next yard, saw-filing round the corner, etc. It was as though we

were careering madly over a multitude of fine-tooth combs. With that

caution which is inseparable from canoe-cruising in every part of the

known world, I leaned over the side of my personal property, and

penetrated the bewildering depths of the coral sea.

Were we, I asked myself, suspended about two feet above a garden of

variegated cauliflowers? Or were the elements wafting us over a minute

winter-forest, whose fragile boughs were loaded with prismatic crystals?

The scene was constantly changing: now it seemed a disordered bed of

roses,--pink, and white, and orange; presently we were floating in the

air, looking down upon a thousand-domed mosque, pale in the glamour of

the Oriental moon; and then a wilderness of bowers presented

itself,--bowers whose fixed leaves still seemed to quiver in the slight

ripple of the sea,--blossoming for a moment in showers of buds, purple,

and green, and gold, but fading almost as soon as born. I could scarcely

believe my eyes, when these tiny, though marvellously brilliant fish

shot suddenly out from some lace-like structure, each having the lurid

and flame-like beauty of sulphurous fire, and all turning instantly, in

sudden consternation at finding us so near, and secreting themselves in

the coral pavilion that amply sheltered them. Among the delicate anatomy

of these frozen ferns our light canoe was crashing on its way. I saw the

fragile structures overwhelmed with a single blow from the young savage,

who stood erect, propelling us onward amid the general ruins. With my

thumb and finger I annihilated the laborious monuments of centuries, and

saw havoc and desolation in our wake.

There, in one of God's reef-walled and cliff-sheltered aquaria, we

drifted, while the sky and sea were glowing with the final triumphant

gush of sunset radiance. Fefe at last broke the silence, with an

interrogation: "Well, how do you feel?" "Fefe," I replied, "I feel as

though I were some good and faithful bee, sinking into a sphere of

amber, for a sleep of a thousand years." Fefe gave a deep-mouthed and

expressive grunt, as he laid his brown profile against the sunset sky,

thereby displaying his solitary earring to the best advantage, and with

evident personal satisfaction. "And how do you feel, Fefe?" I asked. He

was mum for a moment; arched his back like any wholesome animal when the

sun has struck clean through it; ejaculated an ejaculation with his

tongue and teeth that cannot possibly be spelled in English, and

thereupon his nostril quivered spasmodically, and was only comforted by

the immediate application of his nose-flute, through which dulcet organ

he confessed his deep and otherwise unutterable joy. I blessed him for

it, though there were but three notes, all told, and those minors and a

trifle flat.

Fefe's impassioned soul having subsided, we both looked over to

beautiful Morea, nine miles away. How her peaks shone like steel, and

her valleys looked full of sleep! while here and there one golden ray

lingered for a moment to put the final touch to a fruit it was ripening

or a flower it was painting,--for they each have their perfect work

allotted to them, and they don't leave it half completed.

It was just the hour that harmonizes everything in nature, and when

there is no possible discord in all the universe. The fishes were

baptizing themselves by immersion in space, and kept leaping into the

air, like momentary inches of chain-lightning. Our islet swam before us,

spiritualized,--suspended, as it were, above the sea,--ready at any

moment to fade away. The waves had ceased beating upon the reef; the

clear, low notes of a bell vibrating from the shore called us to prayer.

Fefe knew it, and was ready,--so was I,--and with bare heads and souls

utterly at peace we gave our hearts to God--for the time being!

Then came the hum of voices and the rustle of renewed life. On we

pressed towards our islet, under the increasing shadows of the dusk. A

sloping beach received us; the young cocoa-palms embraced one another

with fringed branches. Through green and endless corridors we saw the

broad disc of the full moon hanging above the hill.

Fefe at once chose a palm, and, having ascended to its summit, cast down

its fruit. Descending, he planted a stake in the earth, and striking a

nut against its sharpened top, soon laid open the fibrous husk, with

which a fire was kindled.

Taking two peeled nuts in his hands, he struck one against the other and

laid open the skull of it,--a clear sort of scalping that aroused me to

enthusiasm. There is one end of a cocoanut's skull as delicate as a

baby's, and a well-directed tap does the business; possibly the same

result would follow with those of infants of the right age,--twins, for

instance. Fefe agrees with me in this theory now first given to the

public.

Then followed much talk, on many topics, over our tropical supper,--said

supper consisting of seaweed salad, patent self-stuffing

banana-sausages, and cocoanut hash. We argued somewhat, also, but in

South Pacific fashion,--which would surely spoil if imported; I only

remember, and will record, that Fefe regarded the nose-flute as a

triumph of art, and considered himself no novice in musical science, as

applicable to nose-flutes in a land where there is scarcely a nose

without its particular flute, and many a flute is silent for ever,

because its special nose is laid among the dust.

Having eaten, I proposed sleeping on the spot, and continuing the cruise

at dawn. "Why should we return to the world and its cares, when the sea

invites us to its isles? Nature will feed us. In that blest land,

clothing has not yet been discovered. Let us away!" I cried. At this

juncture, voices came over the sea to us,--voices chanting like sirens

upon the shore. Instinctively Fefe's nose-flute resumed its _tremolo_,

and I knew the day was lost. "Come!" said the little rascal, as though

he were captain and I the crew, and he dragged me toward the skiff. With

terrific emphasis, I commanded him to desist. "Don't imagine," I said,

"that this is a modern "Bounty," and that it is your duty to rise up in

mutiny for the sake of dramatic justice. Nature never repeats herself,

therefore come back to camp!"

But he wouldn't come. I knew I should lose my canoe unless I followed,

or should have to paddle back alone,--no easy task for one unaccustomed

to it. So I moodily embarked with him; and having pushed off into deep

water, he sounded a note of triumph that was greeted with shouts on

shore, and I felt that my fate was sealed.

It had been my life-dream to bid adieu to the human family, with one or

two exceptions; to sever every tie that bound me to anything under the

sun; to live close to Nature, trusting her, and getting trusted by her.

I explained all this to the young "Kanack," who was in a complete state

of insurrection, but failed to subdue him. Overhead the air was flooded

with hazy moonlight; the sea looked like one immeasurable drop of

quicksilver, and upon the summit of this luminous sphere our shallop was

mysteriously poised. A faint wind was breathing over the ocean; Fefe

erected his paddle in the bows, placed against it a broad mat that

constituted part of my outfit for that new life of which I was

defrauded, and on we sped like a belated sea-bird seeking its mossy

nest.

Beneath us slept the infinite creations of another world, gleaming from

the dark bosom of the sea with an unearthly pallor, and seeming to

reveal something of the forbidden mysteries that lie beyond the grave.

"La Petite Pologne," whispered Fefe, as he arched his back for the last

time, and stepped on shore at the foot of this singular rendezvous,--a

narrow lane threading the groves of Papeete, bordered by wine-shops,

bakeries, and a convent-wall, lit at night by smoky lanterns hanging

motionless in the dead air of the town, and thronged from 7 p.m. till 10

p.m. by people from all quarters of the globe.

Fefe having resumed his profession as soon as his bare foot was on his

native heath again, the minstrels moved in a hollow square through the

centre of La Petite Pologne. They were rendering some Tahitian

madrigal,--a three-part song, the solo, or first part, of which being

got safely through with,--a single stanza,--it was repeated as a duo,

and so re-repeated through simple addition with a gradually increasing

chorus; the nose-flute meantime getting delirious, and sounding its

_finale_ in an ecstasy prolonged to the point of strangulation, when the

whole unceremoniously terminated, and everybody took a rest and a fresh

start. During these performances, the audience was dense and

demonstrative. Fefe was in his element, sitting with his best side to

the public, and flaunting his earring mightily. A dance followed: a

dance always follows in that land of light hearts; and as one after

another was ushered into the arena and gave his or her body to the

interpretation of such songs as would startle Christian ears,--albeit

there be some Christian hearts less tender, and Christian lips less

true,--to my surprise, Fefe abandoned his piping and danced before me,

and then came a flash of intuition,--rather late, it is true, but still

useful as an explanatory supplement to my previous vexations. "Fefe!" I

gasped (Fefe is the Tahitian for _Elephantiasis_), and my Fefe raised

his or her skirts, and danced with a shocking leg. I really can't tell

you what Fefe was. You never can tell by the name. He might have been a

boy, or she might have been a girl, all the time. I don't know that it

makes any particular difference to me what it was, but I cannot

encourage elephantiasis in anything, and therefore I concluded my naval

engagement with Fefe, and solemnly walked toward my chamber, scarcely a

block off. The music followed me to my door with a song of some kind or

other, but the real nature of which I was too sensitive to definitely

ascertain.

Gazelle-eyed damsels, with star-flowers dangling from their ears,

obstructed the way. The _gendarmes_ regarded me with an eye single to

France and French principles. Mariners arrayed in the blue of their own

sea and the white of their own breakers bore down upon us with more than

belonged to them. Men of all colours went to and fro, like mad

creatures; women followed; children careered hither and thither. Wild

shouts rent the air; there was an intoxicating element that enveloped

all things. The street was by no means straight, though it could

scarcely have been narrower; the waves staggered up the beach, and

reeled back again; the moon leered at us, looking blear-eyed as she

leaned against a cloud; and half-nude bodies lay here and there in dark

corners, steeped to the toes in rum. Out of this human maelstrom, whose

fatal tide was beginning to sweep me on with it, I made a plunge for my

door-knob and caught it. Twenty besetting sins sought to follow me,

covered with wreaths and fragrant with sandalwood oil; twenty besetting

sins rather pleasant to have around one, because by no means as

disagreeable as they should be. Fefe was there also, and I turned to

address him a parting word,--a word calculated to do its work in a soil

particularly mellow.

"Fefe," I said, "how can I help regarding it as a dispensation of

Providence that your one leg is considerably bigger than your other? How

can I expect you, with your assorted legs, to walk in that straight and

narrow way wherein I have frequently found it inconvenient to walk

myself, to say nothing of the symmetry of my own extremities? Therefore,

adieu, child of the South, with your one earring and your pianoforte

leg; adieu--for ever."

With that I closed my door upon the scene, and strove to bury myself in

oblivion behind the white window-shade. In vain: the shadow with the

moustache and goatee still pursued the shadow with the flowing locks

that fled too slowly. Voices faint, though audible, indulged in

allusions more or less profane, and with a success which would be

considered highly improper in any latitude.

Thus sinking into an unquiet sleep, with a dream of canoe-cruising in a

coral sea, whose pellucid waves sang sadly upon the remote shores of an

ideal sphere, across the window loomed the gigantic shadow of some brown

beauty, whose vast proportions suggested nothing more lovely than a new

Sphinx, with a cabbage in either ear.

UNDER A GRASS ROOF.

A LEAF TORN AT RANDOM FROM A TROPICAL NOTE-BOOK.

At Kahakuloa, under a terrific hill and close upon a frothing tongue of

the sea, I draw rein. The act is simply a formality of mine; probably

the animal would have paused here of his own free will, for he has been

rehearsing his stops a whole hour back, during which time he limped

somewhat and reaped determinedly the few tufts of dry grass that Nature

had provided him by the trail-side. The clouds are falling; the cliffs

are festooned with damp gauze; the air is moist and cool; a grass hut of

uncommon purity stands invitingly by. A moon-faced youth, whose spotless

garments appealed to me as he overtook our caravan a mile back, says,

"Will you eat and sleep?" I am but human, and a hungry and sleepy human

at that; so I tip off from my mule's back with gratitude and alacrity.

In a moment the fine linen of mine host is hung upon its peg, and a good

study of the Nude returns to me for further orders. I am literally

famishing, and the mule is already up to his ears in watercress; but

then I have ridden and he has carried me. How just, O Mother Nature, are

thy judgments!

With the superb poses of a trained athlete, the Nude swings a fowl by

the neck, and shortly it is plucked and potted, together with certain

vegetables of the proper affinities. Then he swathes a fish in succulent

leaves, and buries it in hot ashes; and then he smokes his peace-pipe.

Pipe no sooner lighted than mouths mysteriously gather: five, ten, a

dozen of them magically assemble at the smell of smoke and take their

turn at the curled shell, with a hollow stalk for a mouthpiece. Dinner

at last. O fish, fruit, and fowl on a mat on a floor in a grass hut at

evening! How excellent are these--amen! Night--supper over--some one

twanging upon a stringed instrument of rude native origin. Gossip

lags,--darkness and silence, and a cigarette. The Nude rises haughtily

and lights a lamp that looks very like a diminutive coffee-pot with a

great flame in the nose of it. He hangs it against a beam already

blackened with smoke to the peak of the roof. Again the peace-pipe

sweeps the home-circle, and is passed out to the mouths of the

neighbourhood.

Guests drop down upon us and fill the one aperture of the hut with rows

of curious, welcoming faces; assorted dogs press through the door in

turn, receive a slap from each member of the family, and retreat with

invisible tails; sudden impulses set all tongues wagging in unison;

impulses, equally sudden and unaccountable, enjoin protracted intervals

of silence. The sea breathes heavily; there is a noise of rain-drops

sliding down the thatch. Guests disperse with a kind "_aloha_." We are

alone with the night. The spirit of repose descends upon us; one after

another the several members of mine host's household roll themselves

into mummies and lie in a solemn row along the side of the room,

sleeping. I, also, will sleep. A great bark-cloth (_kapa_) that rattles

as though it had received seven starchings, is all mine for covering,--a

royal _kapa_ this, of exceeding stiffness. I lie with my eyes to the

roof, and count the beams that look like an arbour. What is it, as large

as my thumb, cased in brown armour? A roach!--a melancholy procession of

roaches passing from one side of the hut, over the roof, with their

backs downward, and descending on the other side by the beams,--a

hundred of them, perhaps, or a thousand: the cry is, "Still they come!"

There is a noise of tiny feet upon the roof, and it isn't rain; there is

a sound as of falling objects that escape before I can catch them. My

hand rests upon a cool, moist creature that writhes under it,--an

animated spinal column with four legs at one end of it. Away, thou slimy

newt! Something runs over the matting, making a still, small clatter as

it goes,--something looking like a toy train of dirt-cars. Ha! the

venomous and wily centipede! Put out the coffee-pot, for these sights

are horrible!

Now I will sleep with my face under the _kapa_,--silence, serene

silence, and darkness profound; the sea beating in agony at the foot of

the big hill,--a time for lofty and sublime revery. More rain outside

the hut; gusts of wind, wailing as they rush past us. Thanks for this

shelter. My pillow saturated with cocoanut oil--ah, what savage dreams

may have disturbed these sleepers! No matter. Will get a wink of sleep

before daybreak. Sleep, at last,--how refreshing art thou!

Hello! the coffee-pot in a blaze again; the Nude smoking his

peace-pipe; children eating and making merry. Daybreak? No; midnight,

perchance,--darkness without, darkness once more (by request) within.

"Come again, bright dream." Horror! the house shaken as by an

earthquake; gnashing of teeth distinctly audible,--the mule undoubtedly

eating up the side of the grass hut! Anon, quiet restored. A suggestion

of moonlight through the open door; the twanging of the stringed affair;

a responsive twang in the distance. Some one steals cautiously forth

into the starlight. All is not well in Kahakuloa. Rain over; mule

vegetating elsewhere; roaches subdued; sea comparatively quiet. Welcome,

kind Nature's sweet restorer!... Humming of voices; rolling of dogs

about the house; ditto of children ditto; broad daylight, and breakfast

waiting. Mule saddled, and, with a mouthful of roses, looking fresh and

happy. Mule-boy eager for the fray. Time up. Adieu, adieu--O beautiful

Kahakuloa! I must away.

Above the terrible hill hang clouds and shadows; fringes of rain obscure

the trail as it climbs persistently to heaven; but up that trail, into

and through those clouds and shadows, I pursue my solitary pilgrimage.

MY SOUTH-SEA SHOW.

High in her lady's chamber sat Gail, looking with calm eyes through the

budding maples across the hills of spring. Her letter was but half

finished, and the village post was even then ready; so she woke out of

her reverie, and ended the writing as follows:--

"SPRING,----.

"I know not where you may be at this moment,--living with what

South-Sea Island god, drinking the milk of cocoanut, and eating

bread-fruit,--but wherever you are, forget not your promise to come

home again, bringing your sheaves with you."

Anon she sealed it and mailed it, and it was hurried away, over land and

sea, till, after many days, it found me drinking my cocoa-milk and

refreshing myself with bread-fruits.

Anon I replied to her, not on the green enamel of a broad leaf, with a

thorn stylet, but upon the blank margins of Gail's letter, with my last

half-inch of pencil. I said to her:--

"SUMMER,----.

"By-and-by I will come to you, when the evenings are very long, and

the valley is still. I will cross the lawn in silence, and stand

knocking at the south entry. Deborah will open the door to me with

fear and trembling, for I shall be sunburnt and brawny, with a baby

cannibal under each arm. Then at a word a tattooed youngster shall

reach her a Tahitian pearl, and I will cry 'Give it to Mistress

Gail'; whereat Deborah will willingly withdraw, leaving me

motionless in the dead leaves by the south entry. You will take the

token, dear Gail, and know it as the symbol of, my return. You will

come and greet us, and lead us to the best chamber, and we will

feast with you as long as you like,--I and my cannibals."

I was never quite sure of what Gail said to my letter, but I knew her

for a true soul; so I gathered my cannibals under my metaphorical wings,

and journeyed unto the village, and came into it at sunset, while it was

autumn. We passed over the lawn in silence, and stood knocking at the

south entry, in real earnest. Deborah came at last, and the little

striped fellow bore aloft his pearl of Tahitian beauty, while I gave my

message, and Deborah was terrified and thought she was dreaming. But she

took the pearl and went, and we stood in the keen air of autumn, and my

South Sea babies were very cold and moaned pitifully under my arms, and

the little pearl-bearer shivered in all his stripes, and capered in the

dead leaves like an imp of darkness.

Then Gail came to us and let us in, and we camped by the great fire in

the sitting-room, whither Deborah brought bowls of new milk for the

little ones, and was wonderfully amazed at their quaintness and beauty,

but quite failed to affiliate with my striped pearl-bearer.

So I said, "Sit you down, Deborah, and hear the true story of my Zebra."

Gail had already captured the bronze babies, and was helping them with

their bowls of milk as they nestled at her feet; and I took my striped

beauty between my knees, and stroked his soft wool, and told how he

saved me from a watery death, and again from the fiery stake, and was

doubly dear to me for evermore:--

"We were at the island of Pottobokee, getting water and fruit; had

stacked the last sack of mangoes and limes in the boat, and were off for

the ship, glad to escape with our scalps, when a wave took us amidships

on the reef, and we swamped in the dreadful spume. Some were drowned;

some clung to the boat, though it was stove badly, while relief came

from the vessel as quickly as possible, and the fragments were gathered

out of the waves and taken aboard.

"They thought themselves lucky to escape with the remnants, for they

knew the natives for cannibals, and the shore was black and noisy within

ten minutes after the accident. It looked stormy in that neighbourhood:

hence the caution and haste of the relief-crew, who left me for drowned,

I suppose, as they never came after me, but spread everything, and went

out of sight before dark that evening.

"I was no swimmer at all, but I kicked well, and was about diving the

fatal dive,--last of three warnings that seem providentially allotted

the luckless soul in its extremity: I was just upon the third sinking,

when a tough little arm gripped me under the breast, and I hung over it

limp and senseless, knowing nothing further of my deliverance, until I

found myself a captive in Kabala-kum,--a heathenish sort of paradise, a

little way back from the sea-coast.

"The natives had given up all hope of feasting upon me, for there wasn't

a respectable steak in my whole carcase, nor was my appetite promising;

so they resolved to make a bonfire of me, to get me out of the way. But

that tough little arm that saved me from an early grave in the water was

husband to a tough little heart, that resolved I shouldn't be burnt. I

was his private and personal property; he had fished me out of the sea;

he would cook me in his own style when he got ready, and no one else was

to have a word in the matter.

"There he showed his royal blood, Deborah, for he was the King's son:

this marvellous tattooing proclaims his rank. Only the noble and brave

are permitted to brand these rainbows into their brown skins.

"I was almost frightened when I first returned to consciousness, and saw

this little fellow pawing me in his tender and affectionate way. He was

lithe as a panther, and striped all over with brilliant and changeless

stripes; so I called him my boy Zebra, and I suppose he called me his

white mouse, or something of that sort.

"Well, he saved me at all events; and having heard something of you and

Gail from me, he wanted to see you very much, and we made our escape

together, though he had to sacrifice all his bone-jewelry, and lots of

skulls and scalps: and here he is, and you must like him, Deborah,

because he is a little heathen, and doesn't go to sabbath-school, as a

general thing, and worships idols very badly."

Deborah did me the compliment to absorb a tear in the broad hem of her

apron, at the conclusion of my episode, whereat my beautiful Zebra

regarded her in utter amazement, then turned his queer face--ringed,

streaked, and striped--up to mine, and laughed his barbaric laugh. He

was wonderful to see, with his breast like a pigeon; his round, supple,

almost voluptuous limbs, peculiar to his amphibious tribe; his head

crowned with a turban of thick wool, so fine and flossy, it looked as

though it had been carded: it stood two inches deep at a tangent from

his oval pate.

From his woolly crown to the soles of his feet, my Zebra was frescoed in

the most brilliant and artistic fashion. Every colour under the sun

seemed pricked into his skin (there he discounted the zebras, who are

limited in their combinations of light and shade): this, together with

the multiplicity of figures therein wrought, was a never-failing joy to

me. O my Zebra! how did you ever grow so splendid off yonder in the

South Seas?

We chatted that evening by Gail's fire, till my Zebra's wholly head went

clean to the floor, and he looked like some prostrate idol about to be

immolated on that Christian hearth; and the baby cannibals were as funny

as two little brown rabbits, with their ears clipped, nestling at Gail's

patient feet.

It was fully nine o'clock by this time, so Deborah got the Bible,

smoothed out her apron, and opened it thereon, while she read a chapter.

We sat by the fire and listened. I heard the earnest voice of the

reader, while the autumn winds rose in gusts, and puffed out the

curtains now and then. I thought of the chilly nights and frosty

mornings we were to endure,--we exiles of the South. I thought of the

snows that were to follow, and of the little idolaters sleeping through

the gospel, with deaf ears, while their hearts panted high in some dream

of savage joy.

There was a big bed made upon the floor of my room,--the best chamber at

Gail's,--and there I laid out my little pets, tucking them in with

infinite concern; for they looked so like three diminutive dummies, as

they lay there, that I did not know whether they would think it worth

while to wake up again in life; and what should I be worth then, without

my wild boys? I, who was born, by some mischance, out of my tropical

element, and whose birthright is Polynesia! Gail laughed when she saw me

fretting so, and she patted the curly heads of the babies, and stroked

the Zebra's shaggy pate, and said "Good-night" to us, as her step

measured the hall, and a door closed in the distance; whereupon, instead

of freezing in the icy linen of the spare bed at the other end of the

room, I crept softly into the nest of the cannibals, and we slept like

kittens until morning.