And now for a word to the uninitiated concerning the _Lanai_ in

question. Off there in the Pacific, under the vertical sun, all shadow

is held at a premium. There are stationary caravans of cocoa-trees, that

seem to be looking for their desert home,--weird, slender trees, with

tattered plumes, and a hopeless air about them, as though they were born

to sorrow, but meant to make the best of it. Still, these fine old palms

cast a thin shadow, about the size and shape of a colossal spider, and

there is no comfort in trying to sit in it. There are likewise trees

with more foliage, and vines that run riot and blossom themselves to

death; but somehow the sharp arrows of sunshine dart in and sting a

fellow in an unpleasant fashion, and nothing short of a good thatch is

to be relied upon. So out from the low eaves of the Commodore's cottage,

on the seaward side, there was a dense roof of leaves and grass, that

ran clear to the edge of the sea, and looked as though it wanted to go

farther; but the Commodore knew it was useless to attempt to roof over

that institution. There was a leafy tapestry hanging two feet below the

roof on the three sides thereof, and from the floor of the inclosure

rose a sort of trellis of woven rushes that hedged us in to the waist.

There was a wicker gate, and an open space between the leafy stalactite

and stalagmite barricade for ventilation and view, and everywhere there

was a kind of semi-twilight that seamed crammed full of dreams and

delicious indolence,--and this is the Hawaiian _Lanai_!

Of course the Commodore always dined in his _Lanai_. It was like taking

curry on the quarter-deck of the "Whatyoucallher," in the dead calm of

the Indian seas; and when that mahogany steward entered with turban and

mock-turtle,--he always looked to me like a full-blooded

snake-charmer,--I had the greatest difficulty in restraining myself, for

it seemed to me incredible that any Jack-ashore could dine in a _Lanai_

with his Excellency, and not rise between each savory course to make a

dozen profound _salaams_ to the fattish gentleman at the head of the

table, who was literally covered with invisible naval buttons, and the

hallucination increased as the dinner-courses multiplied.

At this stage,--just as the snake-charmer was entering with something

that seemed to have come to an untimely end in wine-sauce,--at this

stage the Commodore turned to us as though he were about to give some

order that we might disregard at the peril of our lives,--these sea-dogs

never quite outgrow that sort of thing. "Gentlemen," said he, casting a

watchful and suspicious eye over the weather-bow, "there is to be a

_Luou_--a native feast--in the adjoining premises. Will you do me the

honour to accompany me thither after we have lighted our cigars?"

I forget what answer we made; but then dinner was well on toward

dessert, and our answer was immaterial. We had our orders, couched in

courteous language, and we were thankful for this consideration;

moreover, we were wild to see a native feast! There is a peculiar charm

in obeying our superiors, when we happen, by some dispensation of Divine

Providence, to be exactly of the same mind.

Black coffee was offered us, in cups of the pattern of gull's-eggs. By

this time all the sky was saffron, all the sea a shadow of saffron; and

in the golden haze that lay between, a schooner with a piratical slant

to her masts swam by, beyond the foam that hissed along the reef. It was

a wonderful picture, but it came in between the courses of the

Commodore's dinner as though it were nothing better than a

panel-painting in the after-cabin of the "Whatyoucallher." However, as

she swung in toward the mouth of the harbour, and passed a bottle of

Burgundy in safety, but seemed in imminent danger of missing stays

abreast of an enormous pyramid of fruit,--from the Commodore's point of

sight, you know,--the old gentleman lost his temper, and gave an order

in such peremptory terms that I cheerfully refrain from reproducing it

on this occasion. To cover our confusion, we immediately adjourned to

the native feast.

Hawaiian feast days are not set down in the calendar. Somebody's child

has a birthday, or there is a new house that needs christening; or

perhaps a church is in want, and the feast can net a hundred or two

dollars for it,--since all the eatables in such cases are donated, and

the eaters enter to the feast with the payment of one dollar per head.

Our feast was not sanctified; a chief of the best blood was in the

humour to entertain his friends, countrymen, and lovers. We belonged to

the first order; or, rather, the Commodore was his friend, and we

speedily became as friendly as possible. As we entered the premises, it

appeared to us that half the island was under cover; for limitless

_Lanais_ seemed to run on to the end of time in bewitching vistas.

Numberless lanterns swung softly in the evening gale. A multitude of

white-robed native girls passed to and fro, with that inimitable grace

which I have always supposed Eve copied from the serpent and imparted to

her daughters, who still affect the modern Edens of the earth. Young

Hawaiian bloods, clad in snow-white trousers and ballet-shirts, with

wreaths of _mailné_ around their necks, and ginger-flowers in their

hair, grouped themselves along the evergreen corridors, and looked

unutterable things without any noticeable effort on their part.

Through the central corridor, under a long line of lanterns, was spread

the corporeal feast, and on either side of it, in two ravenous lines,

sat, tailor-fashion, the hungry and the thirsty. It is useless to

attempt an idealization of the Hawaiian eater. He simply devours

whatever suits his palate, as though he were a packing-case that needed

filling, and the sooner filled the more creditable the performance. But

the amount of filling that he is equal to is the marvel; and the patient

perseverance of the man, so long as there is a crumb left, is something

that I despair of reconciling with any known system of physiology. The

mastication began early in the afternoon. It was eight p.m. when we

looked in upon the orgie, and the bones were not all picked, though they

seemed likely to be before mid night.

"Will you eat?" said the host. It was not etiquette to decline, and we

sat at the end of the _Lanai_, with nameless dishes strewn about us in

hopeless confusion. We dipped a finger into pink _poi_, and took a pinch

of baked dog. We had limpits with rock-salt; kukui-nuts roasted and

pulverized; and the pale, quivering bits of fish-flesh, not an hour

dead, and still cool with the native coolness of the sea. It was a

fishful feast, any way; and not even the fruits or the flowers could

entirely alleviate the inward agony consequent upon a morsel of raw

fish, swallowed to please our host.

There was music at the farther end of the palm-leaf pavilion, and

thither we wended our way. The inner court was festooned with flags, and

covered with a large mat. Upon the mat sat, or reclined, several

chiefesses. I am never able to account for the audacious grace of these

women, who throw themselves upon the floor and stretch their supple

limbs like tigresses, with a kind of imperial scorn for your one-horse

proprieties. Their voluminous light garments scarcely concealed the

ample curves of their bodies, and the marvellous creatures seemed to be

breathing to slow music, while their slumberous eyes regarded us with a

gentle indifference that was more tantalizing than any other species of

coquetry that I have knowledge of.

At one side of the enclosure sat a group of musicians, twanging upon

native harps, and beating the national calabash. Song after song was

sung, pipe after pipe was smoked, and bits of easy and playful

conversation filled the intervals. The evening waned. The eaters and

drinkers were still unsatisfied, because the eatables and drinkables

were not exhausted; but the moon was high and full, and the reef moaned

most musically, and seemed to invite us to the shore.

The great charm of a native feast is the entire absence of all

formality. Every man is privileged to seek whom his heart may most

desire, and every woman may receive him or reject him as her spirit

prompts. We noticed that the Commodore was uneasy. He was as plump as a

seal, and the crowd oppressed him. We resolved to get the old gentleman

out of his misery, and proposed an immediate adjournment to the beach.

The inner court was soon deserted, and our little party--which now

embraced, figuratively, several magnificent chiefesses, as well as the

primitive Hawaiian orchestra--moved in silence toward the sea. The long,

curving beach glistened and sparkled in the moonlight. The sea, within

the reef, was like a tideless river, from whose pellucid depths, where

the coral spread its wilderness of branches, an unearthly radiance was

reflected. A fleet of slender canoes floated to and fro upon the water,

and beyond them the creaming reef flashed like a girdle of silver,

belting us in from all the world.

The crowning luxury of savage life is the multitudinous bondsman who

anticipates your every wish, and makes you blush at your own poverty of

invention by his suggestions of unimagined joys. Mats--broad, sweet, and

clean--lay under foot, and served our purpose better than Persian

carpets. The sea itself fawned at our feet, and all the air was shining

and soft as though the moon had dissolved in an ecstasy, and nothing but

a snap of cold weather could congeal her again. Wherever we lay, pillows

were mysteriously slipped under our heads, and the willingest hands in

the world began an involuntary performance of the _lomi-lomi_. Let me

not think upon the _lomi-lomi_, for there is none of it within reach;

but I may say of it that, before the skilful and magnetic hands of the

manipulator are folded, every nerve in the body is seized with an

intense little spasm of recognition, and dies happy. A dreamless sleep

succeeds, and this is followed by an awakening into new life, full of

proud possibilities.

We were _lomi-lomied_ to the murmurs of the reef, and during the

intervals of consciousness saw an impromptu rehearsal of the "Naiad

Queen," in operatic form. The dancing-girls, being somewhat heated, had

plunged into the sea, and were complaining to the moon in a chorus of

fine harmonies. History does not record how long their sea-song rang

across the waters. I know that we dozed, and woke to watch a silver sail

wafted along the vague and shadowy distance like a phantom. We slept

again, and woke to a sense of silence broken only by the unceasing

monody of the reef; slept and woke yet again in the waning light, for

the moon had sunk to the ragged rim of an old crater, and seemed to have

a large piece bitten out of her glorious disc. Then we broke camp by the

shore,--for the air was a trifle chilly,--and withdrew into the

seclusion of the Commodore's _Lanai_, where we threw ourselves into

hammocks and swung until daybreak.

In those days we fed on lotus-flowers. Jack-ashore lives for the hour

only, and the very air of such a latitude breathes enchantment. I

believe we bathed before sunrise, and then went regularly to bed and

slept till noon. Such were the Commodore's orders, and this is our

apology. There was a breakfast about one p.m., at which we were

permitted to appear in undress. The Commodore set the example by

inviting us to the table in an extraordinary suit of cream-coloured

silk, that was suggestive of _panjamas_, but might have been some

Oriental regalia especially designed for morning wear. He looked like a

ship under full sail, rocking good-naturedly in a dead calm. The

Commodore was excessively formal at first sight,--that is, just before

breakfast,--but his heart warmed toward mankind in general, and his

guests in particular, as the meal progressed. Some people never are

themselves until they have broken their fast; they are so cranky, and

seem to lack ballast.

The snaky steward sloughed his clothes twice a day. He was a slim,

noiseless, gliding fellow at breakfast, but he was positively gorgeous

at dinner. Of course, the Commodore had ordered this nice distinction in

the temporal affairs of his servant, for he kept everything about the

place in ship-shape, even to the flying of his private signal from

sunrise to sunset at the top of a tall staff, that rivalled the royal

ensign floating from a similar altitude not a quarter of a mile distant.

His Majesty has a summer palace in Wai-ki-ki, and it has been whispered

that the Commodore refused to recognize him, and never dipped his

colours as the King cantered by in a light buggy drawn by a pair of

spanking bays.

After breakfast, the cribbage-board was produced, and for three mortal

hours the Commodore kept his peg on the steady march. At cribbage the

old gentleman was expected to lose his temper. He stormed with the

arrogance of a veteran card-player, than whom no man is supposed to make

himself more disagreeable on short notice. Lieutenant Blank was usually

the victim, but he deserved it. The true story of Lieutenant Blank--his

name is suppressed out of consideration for his family--is so common in

tropical seaports that I do not hope in this epitome to offer anything

novel. The Lieutenant was a typical Jack-ashore. He had twice the mail

that came to the rest of us, and he read his love-letters to the mess

with a gusto. He boasted fresh victims in every port, and gloried in his

lack of principle. It did not surprise me at all that the Lieutenant had

_shaken_ his mother. In fact, under the circumstances, I think his

mother would have been justified in shaking him, if she could have got

her hands on him. In the love-light of the Commodore's _Lanai_, life was

very precious to this particular Jack-ashore. To him a _Lanai_ was a

city of refuge, provided by an all-wise Commodore for those fascinating

lieutenants who were pursued by the chief women of the tribe; yet he

loved to loiter without the walls, during the off-hours from cribbage.

No man so relished the _lomi-lomi_; no man, except the native-born, so

clamoured for the _hula-hula_; and no man, not even the least of these,

forgot himself to the same alarming extent whenever there was the

slightest provocation.

Of course, he met a chiefess and surrendered; of course, he meant in

time to crush the heart that pulsated with the blood-royal. He simpered

and tried to turn semi-savage, and was simply ridiculous. He made silly

speeches in the worst possible Hawaiian, and afforded unlimited

amusement to the women, who are wiser in their dark skins than the

children of light. He tried to eat _poi_, and ruined his linen. He

suffered himself to be wreathed and garlanded, until he was the picture

of a sacrificial calf. He gave gifts, and babbled in his sleep. But in

the hour when his triumph seemed inevitable he was beautifully snubbed

by his supposed victim. The syrens of Scylla are a match for any mariner

who sails with unwadded ears. The Lieutenant cannot hope to hear the

last of that adventure, though the subject is never broached by himself.

If we had dwelt a thousand years with the Commodore, and sipped the

elixir of life from the gourd that hung by the door of the wine-closet,

I suppose we should have had the same daily and nightly experiences to

go through with, barring a slight variation in the matter of moonshine.

But there were orders superior to the Commodore's, since he was off

active duty, and these orders demanded our reappearance on shipboard at

an early hour of the day following. There was a farewell round of

everything that had been introduced during our brief stay at

Wai-ki-ki,--dances, songs, sea-baths, and flirtations. The moon rose

later, and was but a shadow of her former self; but the stars burned

brightly, and we could still trace the noiseless flight of the solitary

sail that passed like a spirit over the dusky sea.

I know that in after years, whenever I come within sound of surf under

the prickly sunshine, my fancy will conjure up a picture of that grass

cottage on the slope of a dazzling beach, and the portly form of the old

Commodore stored snugly in the spacious hollow of a bamboo settee, drawn

up on the stocks, as it were, for repairs, with a bandanna spread over

his face, and a dark-eyed crouching figure beside him, fighting

mosquitoes with a tuft of parrot-feathers. No wonder that a body-guard

of some kind was necessary, for I believe that the old Commodore's veins

ran nothing but wine, and mosquitoes are good tasters.

The picture would not be complete without the attendant houris, and with

their image comes an echo of barbarous chants and the monotonous thump

of the tom-tom; of swaying figures; of supple wrists; of slender,

lascivious hands tossed skilfully in the air, seeking to interpret their

pantomimic dances, and doing it with remarkable freedom and grace. I

shall hear that one song, like an echo eternally repeated,--the song

that was sung by all the lips that had skill to sing, in every valley

under the Hawaiian sun. I remember it as a refrain that was first raised

in Honolulu, but for the copyright of which the respective residents of

Hawaii and Nihau would willingly lay down their lives with the last

words of the song rattling in their throats.

"_Poli-anu_" or "Cool-bosom," is a fair specimen of the ballad

literature of Hawaii, and the following free translation will perhaps

give a suggestion of the theme. "_Poli-anu_" is sung by the old and

decrepid, the lame, the halt, and the blind, as well as by the merest

children. I have heard it carolled by a solitary boy tending goats upon

the breezy heights of Kaupo. I have listened to it in the market-place,

where a chorus of a dozen voices held the customer entranced. In the

high winds of the middle channel the song is raised, as the schooner

lays over at a perilous angle, and ships water enough to dampen the

ardour of most singers. It is sung in the church-porch, by the brackish

well in the desert, under the moonlit palms, and everywhere else. It

cheers the midnight vigil of the prisoner, and makes glad the heart of

the sorrowful. It is altogether useful as well as ornamental; and the

Hawaiian who does not number among his accomplishments the ability to

sing "_Poli-anu_" tolerably well, is unworthy of the name.

POLI-ANU.

Bosom, here is love for you,

O bosom cool as night!

How you refresh me as with dew,--

Your coolness gives delight.

Rain is cold upon the hill,

And water in the pool,

Yet all my frame is colder still

For you, O bosom cool.

Face to face beneath a bough

I may not you embrace,

But feel a spell on breast and brow

While sitting face to face.

Thoughts in absence send a thrill

Like touch of sweeter air:

I sought you, and I seek you still,

O bosom cool and fair!

That is all of it; but your Hawaiian turns back and begins over again,

until he has enough.

I suppose it is no breach of confidence on my part to state that the

gorgeous old Commodore is dead. There was nothing in his _Lanai_ life to

die of, except an accident, and in course of time he met with one. I

forget the nature of it, but it finished him. There was wailing for

three mortal days in the solemn shadow of the _Lanai_; and then one of

the large, motherly-looking creatures, with numberless gauzy folds in a

dress that fell straight from her broad shoulders, moved in. After three

days of feasting, all vestiges of the Commodore's atmosphere had

disappeared from the premises. I fancy she always felt at home there,

although she was never known to open her lips in the presence of the

Commodore's guests. Life was a little more intense after that. The snaky

steward disappeared, without any sort of warning. I have always believed

that he crawled under some rock, and laid himself away in a coil; that

he will sleep for a century or so, then come out in his real character,

and astonish the inhabitants with his length and his slimness.

Lieutenant Blank survives, and sails the stormy seas on a moderate

salary, the major portion of which he turns into naval buttons. I hear

from him once in a dog's age. He is first at Callao, with a daily jaunt

into Lima; and then at one of the South Sea paradises; next at

Australia, or in the China Sea; and in the future--heaven knows where!

He vibrates between the two hemispheres, working out his time, and

believing himself supremely happy. I doubt not that he is happy, being

about as selfish as men are made.

As for myself, I am a landsman. After all that is said, the sea is

rather a bore, you know; but I do not forget the dreamy days of calm in

the flowering equatorial waters, nor the troubled days of storm. There

are a thousand-and-one trifling events in the fragmentary experiences of

the seafarer that are of more importance than this stray leaf, but

perhaps none that will serve my purpose better. For this yarn is as

fine-drawn as the episodes in an out-of-the-way port,--with nothing but

the faint odour of its fruits a little over-ripe, of its flowers a

little over-blown, and a general sense of uncomfortable warmth, to give

it individuality. I have found these experiences excellent memories; for

though the dull "waits" between the acts and the sluggishness of the

action at best are a little dreary at times, they are forgotten,

together with most disagreeable matter. I'll warrant you, Lieutenant

Blank, strutting his little hour between-decks, or in the fleeting

moments of the delectable "dog-watch," muses upon the past. When he has

aroused the fever in his blood, and can no longer hold his tongue, he

heaves an ominous sigh, knits his brows, and, in a voice that quivers

with emotion, he whispers to the marines the beguiling romance of his

_Love-life in a Lanai_.

IN A TRANSPORT.

A LITTLE French _aspirant de marine_, with an incipient moustache, said

to me, confidentially, "Where you see the French flag, you see France!"

We were pacing to and fro on the deck of a transport that swung at

anchor off San Francisco, and, as I looked shoreward for almost the last

time,--we were to sail at daybreak for a southern cruise,--I hugged my

Ollendorf in despair as I dreamed of "French in six easy lessons,"

without a master, or a tolerable accent, or anything, save a suggestion

of Babel and a confusion of tongues at sea.

Thanaron, the aspirant in question, embraced me when I boarded the

transport with my baggage, treated me like a long-lost brother all that

afternoon, and again embraced me when I went ashore towards evening to

take leave of my household. There was something so impulsive and boyish

in his manner that I immediately returned his salute, and with

considerable fervour, feeling that kind Heaven had thrown me into the

arms of the exceptional foreigner who would, to a certain extent,

console me for the loss of my whole family. The mystery that hangs over

the departure of any craft that goes by wind is calculated to appal the

landsman; and when the date of sailing is fixed, the best thing he can

do is to go aboard in season and compose his soul in peace. To be sure,

he may swing at anchor for a day or two, in full sight of the domestic

circle that he has shattered, but he is spared the repetition of those

last agonies, and cuts short the unravelling hours just prior to a

separation, which are probably the most unsatisfactory in life.

Under cover of darkness a fellow can do almost anything, and I concluded

to go on board. There was a late dinner and a parting toast at home, and

those ominous silences in the midst of a conversation that was as

spasmodic and disconnected and unnatural as possible. There was

something on our minds, and we relapsed in turn and forgot ourselves in

the fathomless abysses of speculation. Some one saw me off that

night,--some one who will never again follow me to the sea, and welcome

me on my return to earth after my wandering. We sauntered down the dark

streets along the city front, and tried to disguise our motives, but it

was hard work. Presently we heard the slow swing of the tide under us,

and the musty odour of the docks regaled us; one or two shadows seemed

to be groping about in the neighbourhood, making more noise than a

shadow has any right to make.

Then came the myriad-masted shipping, the twinkling lights in the

harbour, and a sense of ceaseless motion in waters that never can be

still. We did not tarry there long. The boat was bumping her bow against

a pair of slippery stairs that led down to the water, and I entered the

tottering thing that half sunk under me, dropped into my seat in the

stern, and tried to call out something or other as we shot away from the

place, with a cloud over my eyes that was darker than night itself, and

a cloud over my heart that was as heavy as lead. After that there was

nothing to do but to climb up one watery swell and slide down on the

other side of it, to count the shadow-ships that shaped themselves out

of chaos as we drew near them, and dissolved again when we had passed;

while the oars seemed to grunt in the rowlocks, and the two jolly tars

in uniform--they might have been mutes, for all I know--swung to and

fro, to and fro, dragging me over the water to my "ocean bride,"--I

think that is what they call a ship, when the mood is on them!

She did look pretty as we swam up under her. She looked like a great

_silhouette_ against the steel-grey sky; but within was the sound of

revelry, and I hastened on board to find our little cabin blue with

smoke, which, however, was scarcely dense enough to muffle the martial

strains of the _Marseillaise_, as shouted by the whole mess.

Thanaron--my Thanaron--was in the centre of the table, with his curly

head out of the transom,--not that he was by any means a giant, but we

were all a little cramped between-decks,--and he was leading the chorus

with a sabre in one hand and the head of the Doctor in the other.

Without the support of the faculty, he would probably not have ended his

song of triumph as successfully as he ultimately did, when Nature

herself had fainted from exhaustion. It was the last night in port, a

few friends from shore had come to dine, and black coffee and cognac at

a late hour had finished the business.

If there is one thing in this world that astonishes me more than

another, it is the rapidity with which some people talk in French.

Thanaron's French, when he once got started, sounded to me like the

well-executed trill of a _prima-donna_, and quite as intelligible. The

joke of it was, that Frenchmen seemed to find no difficulty in

understanding him at his highest speed. On the whole, perhaps, this fact

astonishes me more than the other.

Dinner was as far over as it could get without beginning again and

calling itself breakfast; so the party broke up in a whirlwind of

patriotic songs, and, one by one, we dropped our guests over the side of

the vessel until there was none left, and then we waved them a thousand

adieus, and kept up the last words as long as we could catch the

faintest syllable of a reply. There were streaks of dull red in the east

by this time, and the outlines of the city were again becoming visible.

This I dreaded a little; and, when our boat had returned and everything

was put in shipshape, I deliberately dropped a tear in the presence of

my messmates, who were overcome with emotion at the spectacle; and,

having all embraced, we went below, where I threw myself, with some

caution, into my hammock, and slept until broad daylight.

I did not venture on deck again until after our first breakfast,--an

informal one, that set uneasily on the table, and seemed inclined to

make its escape from one side or the other. Of course, we were well

under way by this time. I was assured of the fact by the reckless

rolling of the vessel and the strange and unfamiliar feeling in my

stomach, as though it were some other fellow's stomach, and not my own.

My legs were a trifle uncertain; my head was queer. Everybody was

rushing everywhere, and doing things that had to be undone or done over

again in the course of the next ten minutes. I resolved to pace the

deck, which is probably the best thing for a man to do when he goes down

to the sea in ships, and does business--you could hardly call it

pleasure--on great waters.

I went up the steep companion-way, and found a deck-load of ropes, and

the entire crew--dressed in blue flannel, with broad collars--skipping

about in the most fantastic manner. It was like a ballet scene in

_L'Africaine_, and highly diverting--for a few minutes! From my

stronghold on the top stair of the companion-way, I cast my eye

shoreward. The long coast ran down the horizon under a broadside of

breakers that threatened to engulf the continent; the air was grey with

scattering mist; the sea was much disturbed, and of that ugly

yellowish-green tint that signifies soundings. Overhead, a few sea-birds

whirled in disorder, shrieking as though their hearts would break. It

looked ominous, yet I felt it my duty, as an American under the shadow

of the tricolour, to keep a stiff upper lip,--and I flatter myself that

I did so. Figuratively speaking, I balanced myself in the mouth of the

companion-way, with a bottle of claret in one pocket and a French roll

in the other, while I brushed the fog from my eyes with the sleeve of my

monkey-jacket, and exclaimed with the bard, "My native land,

good-night."

It was morning at the time, but I did not seem to care much. In fact,

time is not of the slightest consequence on shipboard. So I withdrew to

my hammock, and having climbed into it in safety ended the day after a

miserable fashion that I have deplored a thousand times since, during

the prouder moments of my life.

A week passed by--I suppose it was a week, for I could reckon only seven

days, and seven nights of about twice the length of the days--- during

that interval; yet I should, in the innocence of my heart, have called

it a month, without a moment's hesitation. We arose late in the

morning,--those of us who had a watch below; ate a delightfully long and

narrow breakfast, consisting of an interminable procession of dishes in

single file; paced the deck and canvassed the weather; went below to

read, but talked instead; dined as we had breakfasted, only in a far

more elaborate and protracted manner, while a gentle undercurrent of

side-dishes lent interest to the occasion. There was a perpetual stream

of conversation playing over the table, from the moment that heralded

the soup until the last drop of black coffee was sopped up with a bit of

dry bread. By the time we had come to cheese, everybody felt called upon

to say his say, in the face of everybody else. I alone kept my place,

and held it because the heaviest English I knew fell feebly to the floor

before the thunders of those five prime Frenchmen, who were flushed with

enthusiasm and good wine. I dreamed of home over my cigarette, and tried

to look as though I were still interested in life, when, Heaven knows,

my face was more like a half-obliterated cameo of despair than anything

human. Thanaron, my foreign affinity, now and then threw me a

semi-English nut to crack, but by the time I had recovered myself,--it

is rather embarrassing to be assaulted even in the most friendly manner

with a batch of broken English,--by the time I had framed an

intelligible response, Thanaron was in the heat of a fresh argument,

and keeping up a running fire of small shot that nearly floored the

mess.

But there is an end even to a French dinner, and we ultimately adjourned

to the deck, where, about sunset, everybody took his station while the

_Angelus_ was said. Then twilight, with a subdued kind of skylarking in

the forecastle, and genteel merriment amidships, while _Monsieur le

Capitaine_ paced the high quarter-deck with the shadow of a smile

crouching between the fierce jungles of his intensely black

side-whiskers. Ah, sir, it was something to be at sea in a French

transport with the tricolour flaunting at the peak; to have four guns

with their mouths gagged, and oilcloth capes lashed snugly over them; to

see everybody in uniform, each having the profoundest respect for those

who ranked a notch above him, and having, also, an ill-disguised

contempt for the unlucky fellow beneath him! This spirit was observable

from one end of the ship to the other, and, sirs, we had a little world

of our own revolving on a wabbling axis between the staunch ribs of the

old transport "Chevert."

We were bound for Tahiti, God willing and the winds favourable; and the

common hope of ultimately finding port in that paradise was all that

held us together through thick and thin. We might wrangle at dinner, and

come to breakfast next morning with bitterness in our hearts; we might

sink into the bottomless pit of despond; we might revile _Monsieur le

Capitaine_ and _Monsieur le Cuisinier_, including in our anathemas the

elements and some other things; they (the Frenchmen) might laugh to

scorn the great American people,--and they did it, two or three

times--and I, in my turn, might feel a secret contempt for Paris,

without having the power to express the same in tolerable French, so I

felt it, and held my tongue. Even Thanaron gave me a French shrug now

and then that sent the cold shivers through me; but there was sure to

come a sunset like a sea of fire, at which golden hour we were

marshalled amidships, and stood with uncovered heads and the soft light

playing over us, while the littlest French boy in the crew said the

evening prayer with exceeding sweetness,--being the youngest, he was the

most worthy of saying it,--and then we all crossed ourselves, and our

hearts melted within us.

There was something in the delicious atmosphere, growing warmer every

day, and something in the delicious sea, that was beginning to rock her

floating gardens of blooming weed under our bows, and something in the

aspect of _Monsieur le Capitaine_, with his cap off and a shadow of

prayer softening his hard, proud face, that unmanned us; so we rushed to

our own little cabin and hugged one another, lest we should forget how

when we were restored to our sisters and our sweethearts, and everything

was forgiven and forgotten in one intense moment of French remorse.

Who took me in his arms and carried me the length of the cabin in three

paces, at the imminent peril of my life? Thanaron! Who admired

Thanaron's gush of nature, and nearly squeezed the life out of him in

the vain hope of making their joy known to him? Everybody else in the

mess! Who looked on in bewilderment, and was half glad and half sorry,

though more glad than sorry by half, and wondered all the while what

was coming next? Bless you, it was I! And we kept doing that sort of

thing until I got very used to it, and by the time we sighted the green

summits of Tahiti, my range of experience was so great that nothing

could touch me further. It may not be that we were governed by the laws

of ordinary seafarers. The "Chevert" was shaped a little like a

bath-tub, with a bow like a duck's breast, and a high, old-fashioned

quarter-deck, resembling a Chinese junk with a reef in her stern. Forty

bold sailor-boys, who looked as though they had been built on precisely

the same model and dealt out to the government by the dozen, managed to

keep the decks very clean and tidy, and the brass-work in a state of

dazzling brightness. The ship was wonderfully well-ordered. I could tell

you by the sounds on deck, while I swung in the comfortable seclusion of

my hammock, just the hour of the day or night, but that was after I had

once learned the order of events. There was the Sunday morning

inspection, the Wednesday sham naval battle, the prayers night and

morning, and the order to shorten sail each evening. Between times the

decks were scrubbed and the whole ship renovated; sometimes the rigging

was darkened with drying clothes, and sometimes we felt like ancient

mariners, the sea was so oily, and the air so hot and still. There was

nothing stirring save the sea-birds, who paddled about like tame ducks,

and the faint, thin thread of smoke that ascended noiselessly from the

dainty rolls of tobacco in the fingers of the entire ship's crew. In

fact, when we moved at all in these calm waters, we seemed to be

propelled by forty-cigarette power, for there was not a breath of air

stirring.

It was at such times that we fought our bloodless battles. The hours

were ominous; breakfast did not seem half a breakfast, because we

hurried through it with the dreadful knowledge that a conflict was

pending, and possibly--though not probably--we might never gather at

that board again, for a naval engagement is something terrible, and life

is uncertain in the fairest weather. Breakfast is scarcely over when the

alarm is given, and with the utmost speed every Frenchman flies to his

post. Already the horizon is darkened with the Prussian navy, yet our

confidence in the staunch old "Chevert," in each particular soul on

board, and in our undaunted leader,--_Monsieur le Capitaine_, who is

even now scouring the sea with an enormous marine glass that of itself

is enough to strike terror to the Prussian heart,--our implicit

confidence in ourselves is such that we smilingly await the approach of

the doomed fleet. At last they come within range of our guns, and the

conflict begins. I am unfortunately compelled to stay beneath the

hatches. A sham battle is no sight for an inexperienced landsman to

witness, and, moreover, I should doubtless get in the way of the frantic

crew, who seem resolved to shed the last drop of French blood in behalf

of _la belle France_.

Marine engagements are, as a general thing, a great bore. The noise is

something terrific; ammunition is continually passed up through the

transom over our dinner-table, and a thousand feet are rushing over the

deck with a noise as of theatrical thunder. The engagement lasts for an

hour or two. Once or twice we are enveloped in sheets of flame. We are

speedily deluged with water, and the conflict is renewed with the

greatest enthusiasm. Again, and again, and again, we pour a broadside

into the enemy's fleet, and always with terrific effect. We invariably

do ourselves the greatest credit, for, by the time our supplies are

about exhausted, not a vestige of the once glorious navy of Prussia

remains to tell the tale. The sea is, of course, blood-stained for miles

around. The few persistent Prussians who attempt to board us are

speedily despatched, and allowed to drop back into the remorseless

waves. A shout of triumph rings up from our triumphant crew, and the

play is over.

Once more the hatches are removed; once more I breathe the sweet air of

heaven, for not a grain of powder has been burned through all this

fearful conflict; once more my messmates rush into our little cabin and

regale themselves with copious draughts of absinthe, and I am pressed to

the proud bosom of Thanaron, who is restored to me without a scar to

disfigure his handsome little body. I grew used to these weekly wars,

and before we came in sight of our green haven, there was not a Prussian

left in the Pacific. It is impossible that any nation, though they be

schooled to hardships, could hope to survive such a succession of

disastrous conflicts. On the whole, I like sham battles; they are deuced

exciting, and they don't hurt.

How different, how very different those sleepy days when we were

drifting on towards the Marquesas Islands! The silvery phaetons darted

overhead like day-stars shooting from their spheres. The seaweed grew

denser, and a thousand floating things,--broken branches with a few

small leaves attached, the husk of a cocoanut, or straws such as any

dove from any ark would be glad to seize upon,--these gave us ample food

for speculation. "Piloted by the slow, unwilling winds," we came close

to the star-lit Nouka Hiva, and shortened sail right under its fragrant

shadow. It was a glorious night. There was the subtile odour of earth in

the warm, faint air, and before us that impenetrable shadow that we knew

to be an island, yet whose outlines were traceable only by the

obliterated stars.

At sunrise we were on deck, and, looking westward, saw the mists melt

away like a veil swept from before the face of a dusky Venus just rising

from the waves. The island seemed to give out a kind of magnetic heat

that made our blood tingle. We gravitated toward it with an almost

irresistible impulse. Something had to be done before we yielded to the

fascinations of this savage enchantress. Our course lay to the windward

of the south-eastern point of the land; but, finding that we could not

weather it, we went off before the light wind and drifted down the

northern coast, swinging an hour or more under the lee of some parched

rocks, eyeing the "Needles,"--the slender and symmetrical peaks so

called,--and then we managed to work our way out into the open sea

again, and were saved.

Valleys lay here and there, running back from the shore with green and

inviting vistas; slim waterfalls made one desperate leap from the clouds

and buried themselves in the forests hundreds of feet below, where they

were lost for ever. Rain-clouds hung over the mountains, throwing deep

shadows across the slopes that but for this relief would have been too

bright for the sentimental beauty that usually identifies a tropical

island.

I happened to know something about the place, and marked every inch of

the scorching soil as we floated past groves of rosewood, sandal-wood,

and a hundred sorts of new and strange trees, looking dark and velvety

in the distance; past strips of beach that shone like brass, while

beyond them the cocoa-palms that towered above the low, brown huts of

the natives seemed to reel and nod in the intense meridian heat. A moist

cloud, far up the mountain, hung above a serene and sacred haunt, and

under its shelter was hidden a deep valley, whose secret has been

carried to the ends of the earth; for Herman Melville has plucked out

the heart of its mystery, and beautiful and barbarous Typee lies naked

and forsaken.

I was rather glad we could not get any nearer to it, for fear of

dispelling the ideal that has so long charmed me. Catching the wind

again, late in the afternoon, we lost the last outline of Nouka Hiva in

the soft twilight, and said our prayers that evening as much at sea as

ever. Back we dropped into the solemn round of uneventful days. Even the

sham battles no longer thrilled us. In fact, the whole affair was a

little too theatrical to bear frequent repetition. There was but one of

our mess who could muster an episode whenever we became too stagnant for

our health's good, and this was our first officer,--a tall, slim fellow,

with a warlike beard, and very soft, dark eyes, whose pupils seemed to

be floating aimlessly about under the shelter of long lashes. His face

was in a perpetual dispute with itself, and I never knew which was the

right or the wrong side of him. B---- was the happy possessor of a tight

little African, known as Nero, although I always looked upon him as so

much Jamaica ginger. Nero was as handsome a specimen of tangible

darkness as you will sight in a summer's cruise. B---- loved with the

ardour of his vacillating eyes, yet governed with the rigour of his

beard. Nero was consequently prepared for any change in the weather, no

matter how sudden or uncalled for. In the equatorial seas, while we

sailed to the measure of the Ancient Mariner, B---- summoned Nero to the

sacrifice, and, having tortured him to the extent of his wits, there was

a reconciliation more ludicrous than any other scene in the farce. It

was at such moments that B----'s eyes literally swam, when even his

beard wilted, while he told of the thousand pathetic eras in Nero's

life, when he might have had his liberty, but found the service of his

master more beguiling; of the adventures by flood and field, where B----

was distinguishing himself, yet at his side, through thick and thin,

struggled the faithful Nero. Thus B---- warmed himself at the fire his

own enthusiasm had kindled on the altar of self-love, and every moment

added to his fervour. It was the yellow fever, and the cholera, and the

smallpox, that were powerless to separate that faithful slave from the

agonizing bedside of his master. It was shipwreck, and famine, and the

smallest visible salary, that seemed only to strengthen the ties that

bound them the one to the other. Death--cruel death--alone could

separate them; and B---- took Nero by the throat and kissed him

passionately upon his sooty cheek, and the floating eyes came to a

standstill with an expression of virtuous defiance that was calculated

to put all conventionalities to the blush. We were awed by the

magnanimity of such conduct, until we got thoroughly used to it, and

then we were simply entertained. We kept looking forward to the

conclusion of the scene, which usually followed in the course of half an

hour. B---- having fondled Nero to his heart's content, and Nero having

become somewhat bored, there was sure to arise some mild disturbance,

aggravated by both parties, and B----, believing he had endured as much

as any Frenchman and first officer is expected to endure without

resentment, suddenly rises, and, seizing Nero by the short, wiry moss of

his scalp, kicks him deliberately from the cabin, and returns to us

bursting with indignation. This domestic equinox we soon grew fond of,

and, having become familiar with all its signals of approach, we watched

with agreeable interest the inevitable climax. It was well for Nero that

Nature had provided against any change of colour in his skin, for he

must have borne the sensation of his chastisement for some hours, though

he was unable to give visible expression of it. By-and-by came B----'s

own private birthday. Nothing had been said of it at table, and, in

fact, nothing elsewhere, that I remember; but Nero, who had survived

several of those anniversaries, bore it in mind, and our dinner was

something gorgeous--to look at! Unhappily, certain necessary ingredients

had been unavoidably omitted in the concocting of the dessert,

ornamental pastry not being set down in our regular bill of fare; but

B---- ate of pies that were built of chips, and of puddings that were

stuffed with sawdust, until I feared we should be called upon to mourn

the loss of a first officer before morning.

Moreover, B---- insisted that everything was unsurpassed; and, heaven be

thanked! I believe the pastry could easily lay claim to that

distinction. At any rate, never before or since have I laid teeth to

such a Dead Sea dessert. At this point, B---- naturally called Nero to

him and thanked him, with moist and truthful eyes, and the ingenuous

little Jamaican dropped a couple of colourless tears that would easily

have passed for anybody's anywhere. For this mutual exhibition of

sentiment every one of us was duly grateful, and we never afterward

scorned B---- for his eccentricities, since we knew him to be capable of

genuine feeling. Moreover, he nearly died of his birthday feast, yet did

not once complain of the unsuspecting cause of all his woe, who was at

his side night and day, anticipating all his wishes, and deploring the

unaccountable misfortunes of his master.

So the winds blew us into the warm south latitudes. I was getting

restless. Perhaps we had talked ourselves out of legitimate topics of

conversation, and were forcing the social element. It was tedious beyond

expression, passing day after day within sound of the same voices, and

being utterly unable to flee into never so small a solitude, for there

was not an inch of it on board. Swinging at night in my hammock between

decks, wakefully dreaming of the future and of the past, again and again

I have stolen up on deck, where the watch lay in the moonlight, droning

their interminable yarns and smoking their perpetual cigarettes,--for

French sailors have privileges, and improve them with considerable

grace.

It was at such times that the wind sung in the rigging, with a sound as

of a thousand swaying branches full of quivering leaves,--just as the

soft gale in the garden groves suggests pleasant nights at sea, the

vibration of the taut stays, and the rush of waters along the smooth

sides of the vessel. A ship's rigging is a kind of sea-harp, played upon

by the four winds of heaven.

The sails were half in moonlight and half in shadow. Every object was

well defined, and on the high quarter-deck paced Thanaron, his boyish

figure looking strangely picturesque, for he showed in every motion how

deeply he felt the responsibility of his office. There was usually a

faint light in the apartments of _Monsieur le Capitaine_, and I thought

of him in his gold lace and dignity, poring over a French novel, or

cursing the light winds. I used to sit upon the neck of a gun,--one of

our four dummies, that were never known to speak louder than a

whisper,--lay my head against the moist bulwarks, and listen to the

half-savage chants of the Tahitian sailors who helped to swell our crew.

As we drew down toward the enchanted islands they seemed fairly

bewitched, and it was with the utmost difficulty that they could keep

their mouths shut until evening, when they were sure to begin intoning

an epic that usually lasted through the watch. Sometimes a fish leaped

into the moonlight, and came down with a splash; or a whale heaved a

great sigh close to us, and as I looked over the bulwarks, I would catch

a glimpse of the old fellow just going down, like a submerged island.

Occasionally a flying-fish--a kind of tangible moonbeam--fell upon deck,

and was secured by one of the sailors; or a bird, sailing about with an

eye to roosting on one of our yards, gave a plaintive, ominous cry, that

was echoed in falsetto by two or three voices, and rung in with the

Tahitian cantata of island delights. Even this sort of thing lost its

charm after a little. Thanaron could not speak to me, because Thanaron

was officer of the deck at that moment, and Thanaron himself had said to

me, "Order, Monsieur, order is the first law of France!" I had always

supposed that Heaven had a finger in the making of that law,--but it is

all the same to a Frenchman.

Most sea-days have a tedious family resemblance, their chief

characteristic being the almost total absence of any distinguishing

feature. Fair weather and foul; sunlight, moonlight, and starlight;

moments of confidence; oaths of eternal fidelity; plans for the future

long enough to crowd a century uncomfortably; relapses, rows,

recoveries; then, after many days, the water subsided, and we saw land

at last.

Land, God bless it! Long, low coral reefs, with a strip of garden

glorifying them; rocks towering out of the sea, palm-crowned,

foam-fringed; wreaths of verdure cast upon the bosom of the ocean, for

ever fragrant in their imperishable beauty; and, beyond and above them

all, gorgeous and glorious Tahiti.

On the morning of the thirty-third day out, there came a revelation to

the whole ship's company. A faint blue peak was seen struggling with the

billows; presently it seemed to get the better of them, growing broader

and taller, but taking hours to do so. The wind was stiff, and the sea

covered with foam; we rolled frightfully all day. Our French dinner lost

its identity. Soup was out of the question; we had hard work to keep

meat and vegetables from total wreck, while we hung on to the legs of

the table with all our strength. How the old "Chevert" "bucked," that

day, as though conscious that for months to come she would swing in

still waters by the edge of green pastures, where any such conduct would

be highly inappropriate.

Every hour the island grew more and more beautiful, as though it were

some lovely fruit or flower, swiftly and magically coming to maturity. A

central peak, with a tiara of rocky points, crowns it with majesty, and

a neighbouring island of great beauty seems its faithful attendant. I do

not wonder that the crew of the "Bounty" mutinied when they were ordered

to make sail and turn their backs on Tahiti; nor am I surprised that

they put the captain and one or two other objectionable features into a

small boat, and advised them to continue their voyage if they were

anxious to do so: but as for them, give them Tahiti, or give them worse

than death,--and, if convenient, give them Tahiti straight, and keep all

the rest for the next party that came along.

As soon as we were within hailing distance, the pilot came out and took

us under his wing. We kissed the hand of a citizen of the new world,

and, for the first time since losing sight of the dear California coast,

dismissed it from our minds. There was very little wind right under the

great green mountains, so the frigate "Astrea" sent a dozen boats to tow

us through the opening in the reef to our most welcome anchorage. No

Doge of Venice ever cruised more majestically than we, and our

sea-pageant was the sensation of the day.

"Click-click" went the anchor-chains through the hawse-holes, down into

a deep, sheltered bowl of the sea, whose waters have never yet been

ruffled by the storms that beat upon the coral wall around it. Along the

crescent shores trees dropped their yellow leaves into the water, and

tried their best to bury the slim canoes drawn up among their roots.

Beyond this barricade of verdure the eye caught glimpses of every sort

of tropical habitation imaginable, together with the high roofs and

ponderous white walls of the French government buildings. The foliage

broke over the little town like a green sea, and every possibility of a

good view of it was lost in the inundation. Above it towered the sublime

crest of the mountain, with a strip of cloud about its middle in true

savage fashion. Perpetual harvest lay in its lap, and it basked in the

smile of God.

Twilight, fragrant and cool; a fruity flavour in the air, a flower-like

tint in sea and sky, the ship's boat waiting to convey us shoreward....

O Thanaron, my Thanaron, with your arms about my neck, and B----'s arms

about you, and Nero clinging to his master's knees,--in fact, with

everybody felicitating every other body, because it was such an evening

as descends only upon the chosen places of the earth, and because,

having completed our voyage in safety, we were all literally in a

transport!

A PRODIGAL IN TAHITI.

Let this confession be topped with a vignette done in broad, shadowless

lines, and few of them,--something like this:--

A little, flyblown room, smelling of garlic; I cooling my elbows on the

oily slab of a table (breakfast for one), and looking through a window

at a glaring, whitewashed fence high enough to shut out the universe

from my point of sight. Yet it hid not all, since it brought into relief

a panting cock (with one leg in a string), which had so strained to

compress itself into a doubtful inch of shade that its suspended claw

clutched the air in real agony.

Having dazzled my eyes with this prospect, I turned gratefully to the

vanities of life that may be had for two francs in Tahiti. _Vide_ bill

of fare: One fried egg, like the eye of some gigantic Albino; potatoes

hollowed out bombshell fashion, primed with liver-sausage, very

ingenious and palatable; the naked corpse of a fowl that cared not to

live longer, from appearances, yet looked not happy in death.

Item: Wonder if there _is_ a more ghastly spectacle than a chicken

cooked in the French style; its knees drawn up on its breast like an

Indian mummy, while its blue-black, parboiled, and melancholy visage

tearfully surveys its own unshrouded remains. After a brief season of

meditation, I said, and I trust I meant it, "I thank the Lord for all

these blessings." Then I gave the corpse of the chicken Christian burial

under a fold of the window curtain, disposed of the fried eye of the

Albino, and transformed myself into a mortar for the time being, taking

potato-bombshells according to my calibre.

There was claret all the while and plenty of butterless roll, a shaving

of cheese, a banana, black coffee and cognac, when I turned again to

dazzle myself with the white fence, and saw with infinite pity,--a

sentiment perhaps not unmixed with a suspicion of cognac or some other

temporary humanizing element,--I saw for a fact that the poor cock had

wilted, and lay flat in the sun like a last year's duster. That was too

much for me. I wheeled towards the door where gleamed the bay with its

lovely ridges of light; canoes drifting over it drew the eye after them

irresistibly; I heard the ship-calkers on the beach making their

monotonous clatter, and the drone of the bareheaded fruitsellers

squatted in rows chatting indolently, with their eyes half shut. I could

think of nothing but bees humming over their own sweet wares.

About this time a young fellow at the next table, who had scarcely a

mouthful of English at his command, implored me to take beer with him;

implying that we might, if desirable, become as tight as two bricks. I

declined, much to his admiration, he regarding my refusal as a clear

case of moral courage, whereas it arose simply and solely from my utter

inability to see his treat and go him one better.

An adult in Tahiti has an eating hour allotted to him twice a day, at 10

a.m. and 5 p.m. My time being up, I returned to the store in an

indifferent frame of mind, and upon entering the presence of my

employer, who had arrived a moment before me, I was immediately covered

with the deep humiliation of servitude, and withdrew to an obscure

corner, while Monsieur and some naval guests took absinthe unblushingly,

which was, of course, proper enough in them. Call it by what name you

will, you cannot sweeten servility to my taste. Then why was I there and

in bondage? The spirit of adventure that keeps life in us, yet comes

near to worrying it out of us now and then, lured me with my handful of

dollars to the Garden of the Pacific. "You can easily get work," said

some one who had been there and didn't want it. If work I must, why not

better there than here, thought I; and the less money I take with me the

surer am I to seek that which might not attract me under other

circumstances. A few letters which proved almost valueless; an abiding

trust in Providence, afterward somewhat shaken I am sorry to state,

which convinces me that I can no longer hope to travel as a shorn lamb;

considerable confidence in the good feeling of my fellow-men, together

with the few dollars above referred to,--comprised my all when I set

foot on the leaf-strewn and shady beach of Papeete.

Before the day was over I saw my case was almost hopeless; I was one too

many in a very meagre congregation of foreigners. In a week I was

desperate, with poverty and disgrace brooding like evil spirits on

either hand. Every ten minutes some one suggested something which was

almost immediately suppressed by the next man I met, to whom I applied

for further information. Teach, said one: there wasn't a pupil to be had

in the dominion. Clerkships were out of the question likewise. I might

keep a store, if I could get anything to put in it; or go farther, as

some one suggested, if I had money enough to get there. I thought it

wiser to endure the ills I had than fly to others that I knew not of. In

this state I perambulated the green lanes of Papeete, conscious that I

was drawing down tons of immaterial sympathy from hearts of various

nationalities, beating to the music of regular salaries in hard cash,

and the inevitable ringing of their daily dinner-bell; and I continued

to perambulate under the same depressing avalanches for a fortnight or

more,--a warning to the generation of the inexperienced that persists in

sowing itself broadcast upon the edges of the earth, and learns too late

how hard a thing it is to take root under the circumstances.

One gloomy day I was seized in the market-place and led before a French

gentleman who offered me a bed and board for such manual compensation as

I might be able to give him in his office during the usual business

hours, namely, from daybreak to sometime in the afternoon, unless it

rained, when business was suspended, and I was dropped until fair

weather should set that little world wagging again.

I was invited to enter into the bosom of his family, in fact, to be

_one_ of them, and no single man could ask to be more; to sit at his

table and hope for better days, in which diversion he proposed to join

me with all his soul.

With an emotion of gratitude and a pang at being thus early a subject

of charity, I began business in Papeete, and learned within the hour how

sharper than most sharps it is to know only your own mother-tongue when

you're away from home.

Nightly I walked two hot and dusty miles through groves of bread-fruit

and colonnades of palms to my new master's. I skirted, with loitering

steps, a placid sea whose crystalline depths sheltered leagues and

leagues of sun-painted corals, where a myriad fish, dyed like the

rainbow, sported unceasingly. Springs gushed from the mountain, singing

their song of joy; the winds sang in the dark locks of the sycamore,

while the palm-boughs clashed like cymbals in rhythmical accompaniment;

glad children chanted their choruses, and I alone couldn't sing, nor

hum, nor whistle, because it doesn't pay to work for your board, and

settle for little necessities out of your own pocket, in any latitude

that I ever heard of.

We lived in a grove of ten thousand cocoa-palms crowning a hill-slope to

the west. How all-sufficient it sounds as I write it now, but how little

I cared then, for many reasons! My cottage had prior tenants, who

disputed possession with me,--winged tenants who sought admission at

every cranny and frequently obtained it in spite of me; these were not

angels, but hens. My cottage had been a granary until it got too poor a

receptacle for grains, and a better shelter left it open to the

barn-fowls until I arrived. They hated me, these hungry chickens; they

used to sit in rows on the window-sill and stare me out of countenance.

A wide bedstead, corded with thongs, did its best to furnish my

apartment. An arrow, a very narrow and thin ship's mattress, that had

been a bed of torture for many a sea-sick soul before it descended to

me; a flat pillow like a pancake; a condemned horse-blanket contributed

by a good-natured Kanack who raked it from a heap of refuse in the yard,

together with two sacks of rice, the despair of those hens in the

window, were all I could boast of. With this inventory I strove (by

particular request) to be one of those who were comfortable enough in

the château adjoining. Summoned peremptorily to dinner, I entered a

little latticed saloon connected with the château by a covered walk,

discovered Monsieur seated at table and already served with soup and

claret; the remainder of the company helped themselves as they best

could; and I saw plainly enough that the family bosom was so crowded

already, that I might seek in vain to wedge myself into any corner of

it, at least until some vacancy occurred.

After dinner, sat on a sack of rice in my room while it grew dark and

Monsieur received calls; wandered down to the beach at the foot of the

hill and lay a long time on a bed of leaves, while the tide was out and

the crabs clattered along shore and were very sociable. Natives began to

kindle their evening fires of cocoanut husks; smoke, sweet as incense,

climbed up to the plumes of the palm-trees and was lost among the stars.

Morsels of fish and bread-fruit were offered me by the untutored savage,

who welcomed me to his frugal meal and desired that I should at least

taste before he broke his fast. Canoes shot out from dense, shadowy

points, fishers standing in the bows with a poised spear in one hand; a

blazing palm-branch held aloft in the other shed a warm glow of light

over their superb nakedness. Bathed by the sea, in a fresh, cool

spring, and returned to my little coop, which was illuminated by the

glare of fifty floating beacons; looking back from the door I could see

the dark outlines of the torch-bearers and hear their signal calls above

the low growl of the reef a half-mile farther out from shore. It was a

blessing to lie awake in my little room and watch the flicker of those

fires; to think how Tahiti must look on a cloudless night from some

heavenly altitude,--the ocean still as death, the procession of

fishermen sweeping from point to point within the reef, till the island,

flooded with starlight and torchlight, lies like a green sea-garden in a

girdle of flame.

A shrill bell called me from my bed at dawn. I was not unwilling to

rise, for half the night I lay like a saint on the tough thongs, having

turned over in sleep, thereby missing the mattress entirely. Made my

toilet at a spring on the way into town; saw a glorious sunrise that was

as good as breakfast, and found the whole earth and sea and all that in

them is singing again while I listened and gave thanks for that

privilege. At ten a.m. I went to breakfast in the small restaurant where

I have sketched myself at the top of this chronicle, and whither we may

return and begin over again if it please you.

I was about to remark that probably most melancholy and homesickness may

be cured or alleviated by a wholesome meal of victuals; but I think I

won't, for, on referring to my note-book, I find that within an hour

after my return to the store I was as heart-sick as ever, and wasn't

afraid to say so. It is scarcely to be wondered at: the sky was dark;

aboard a schooner some sailors were making that doleful whine peculiar

to them, as they hauled in to shore and tied up to a tree in a sifting

rain; then everything was ominously still as though something

disagreeable were about to happen; thereupon I doubled myself over the

counter like a half-shut jack-knife, and burying my face in my hands

said to myself, "O, to be alone with Nature! her silence is religion and

her sounds sweet music." After which the rain blew over, and I was sent

with a hand-cart and one underfed Kanack to a wharf half a mile away to

drag back several loads of potatoes. We two hungry creatures struggled

heroically to do our duty. Starting with a multitude of sacks it was

quite impossible to proceed with, we grew weaker the farther we went, so

that the load had to be reduced from time to time, and I believe the

amount of potatoes deposited by the way considerably exceeded the amount

we subsequently arrived at the store with. Finding life a burden, and

seeing the legs of the young fellow in harness with me bend under him in

his frantic efforts to get our cart out of a rut without emptying it

entirely, I resolved to hire a substitute at my own expense, and save my

remaining strength for a new line of business. Thus I was enabled to sit

on the wharf the rest of the afternoon and enjoy myself devising new

means of subsistence and watching the natives swim.

Some one before me found a modicum of sweets in his cup of bitterness,

and in a complacent hour set the good against the evil in single entry,

summing up the same to his advantage. I concluded to do it myself, and

did it thus:--

Evil. Good.

I find myself in a foreign But I may do as I please in

land with no one to love and consequence, and it is nobody's

none to love me. business save my own.

I am working for my board But I may quit as soon as I

and lodging (no extras), and feel like it, and shall have no

find it very unprofitable. occasion to dun my employer

for back salary so long as I stop

with him.

My clothes are in rags. I But the weather is mild and

shall soon be without a stitch to the fig-tree flourisheth. Moreover

my back. many a good savage has

gone naked before me.

I get hungry before breakfast But fasting is saintly. Day

and feel faint after dinner. by day I grow more spiritual,

What are two meals a day to a and shall shortly be a fit subject

man of my appetite? for translation to that better

world which is doubtless the

envy of all those who have lost

it by over eating and drinking.

Nothing can exceed the satisfaction with which I read and re-read this

philosophical summary, but I had relapses every few minutes so long as I

lived in Tahiti. I remember one Sunday morning, a day I had all to

myself, when I cried out of the depths and felt better after it. It was

a real Sunday. The fowls confessed it by the indifference with which

they picked up a grain of rice now and then as though they weren't

hungry. The family were moving about in an unnatural way; some people

are never themselves on the Lord's day. The canoes lay asleep off upon

the water, evidently conscious of the long hours of rest they were sure

of having. To sum it all, it seemed as though the cover had been taken

off from the earth, and the angels were sitting in big circles looking

at us. Our clock had run down, and I found myself half an hour too early

at mass. Some diminutive native children talked together with infinite

gesticulation, like little old men. At every lag in the conversation,

two or three of them would steal away to the fence that surrounded the

church and begin diligently counting the pickets thereof. They were

evidently amazed at what they considered a singular coincidence, namely,

that the number of pickets, beginning at the front gate and counting to

the right, tallied exactly with the do. do. beginning at the do. do. and

counting to the left; while they were making repeated efforts to get at

the heart of this mystery, the priest rode up on horseback, dismounted

in our midst, and we all followed him into chapel to mass.

A young Frenchman offered me holy-water on the tips of his fingers, and

I immediately decided to confide in him to an unlimited extent if he

gave me the opportunity. It was a serious disappointment when I found

later, that we didn't know six words in any common tongue. Concluded to

be independent, and walked off by myself. Got very lonesome immediately.

Tried to be meditative, philosophical, botanical, conchological, and in

less than an hour gave it up,--homesick again, by Jove!

Strolled to the beach and sat a long time on a bit of wreck partly

imbedded in the sand; consoled by the surpassing radiance of sunset,

wondered how I could ever have repined, but proceeded to do it again as

soon as it grew dark. Some natives drew near, greeting me kindly. They

were evidently lovers; talked in low tones, deeply interested in the

most trivial things, such as a leaf falling into the sea at our feet

and floating stem up, like a bowsprit; he probably made some poetic

allusion to it, may have proposed braving the seas with her in a shallop

as fairy-like, for both fell a-dreaming and were silent for some time,

he worshipping her with fascinated eyes, while she, woman-like,

pretended to be all unconscious of his admiration.

Silently we sat looking over the sea at Moorea, just visible in the

light of the young moon, like a spirit brooding upon the waters, till I

broke the spell by saying "Good-night," which was repeated in a chorus

as I withdrew to my coop and found my feathered guests had beaten in the

temporary barricade erected in the broken window, entered and made

themselves at home during my absence,--a fact that scarcely endeared the

spot to me. Next morning I was unusually merry; couldn't tell why, but

tried to sing as I made my toilet at the spring; laughed nearly all the

way into town, saying my prayers, and blessing God, when I came suddenly

upon a horse-shoe in the middle of the road. Took it as an omen and a

keepsake; horse-shoes aren't shed everywhere nor for everybody. I

thought it the prophecy of a change, and at once cancelled my engagement

with my employer without having set foot into his house farther than the

dining-room, or made any apparent impression upon the adamantine bosom

of his family.

After formally expressing my gratitude to Monsieur for his renewed

offers of hospitality, I turned myself into the street, and was once

more adrift in the world. For the space of three minutes I was wild with

joy at the thought of my perfect liberty. Then I grew nervous, began to

feel unhappy, nay, even guilty, as though I had thrown up a good thing.

Concluded it was rash of me to leave a situation where I got two meals

and a mattress, with the privilege of washing at my own expense. Am not

sure that it wasn't unwise, for I had no dinner that afternoon; and

having no bed either, I crept into the verandah of a house to let, and

dozed till daybreak.

There was but one thing to live for now, namely, to see as much of

Tahiti as possible, and at my earliest convenience to return like the

prodigal son to that father who would doubtless feel like killing

something appropriate as soon as he saw me coming. I said as much to a

couple of Frenchmen, brothers, who are living a dream-life over yonder,

and whose wildest species of dissipation for the last seven years has

been to rise at intervals from their settees in the arbour, go

deliberately to the farther end of the garden and eat several mangoes in

cold blood.

To comprehend Tahiti, a man must lose himself in forests whose resinous

boughs are knotted with ribbons of sea-grass; there, overcome by the

music of sibilant waters sifting through the antlers of the coral, he is

supposed to sink upon drifts of orange-blossoms only to be resuscitated

by the spray of an approaching shower crashing through the green

solitudes like an army with chariots,--so those brothers said, with a

mango poised in each hand; and they added that I should have an official

document addressed to the best blood in the kingdom, namely, Forty

Chiefs of Tahiti, who would undoubtedly entertain me with true barbarian

hospitality, better the world knows not. There was a delay for some

reason; I, rather impatient, and scarcely hoping to receive so graceful

a compliment from headquarters, trudged on alone with a light purse and

an infinitesimal bundle of necessities, caring nothing for the weather

nor the number of miles cleared per day, since I laid no plans save the

one to see as much as I might with the best grace possible, keeping an

eye on the road for horse-shoes. Through leagues of verdure I wandered,

feasting my five senses and finding life a holiday at last. There were

numberless streams to be crossed, where I loafed for hours on the

bridges, satisfying myself with sunshine. Not a savage in the land was

freer than I. No man could say to me, "Why stand ye here idle?" for I

could continue to stand as long as I liked and as idly as it pleased me

in spite of him! There were bridgeless streams to be forded; but the

Tahitian is a nomad continually wandering from one edge of his fruitful

world to the other; moreover, he is the soul of peace towards men of

good-will: I was invariably picked up by some bare-backed Hercules, who

volunteered to take me over the water on his brawny brown shoulders, and

could have easily taken two like me. It was good to be up there while he

strode through the swift current, for I felt that he was perfectly able

to carry me to the ends of the earth without stopping, and that sense of

reliance helped to reassure my faith in humanity.

As I wandered, from most native houses came the invitation to enter and

eat. Night after night I found my bed in the corner of some dwelling

whither I had been led by the master of it with unaffected grace. It

wasn't simply showing me to a spare room, but rather unrolling the best

mat and turning everything to my account so long as it pleased me to

tarry. Sometimes the sea talked in its sleep not a rod from the house;

frequently the mosquitoes accepted me as a delicacy and did their best

to dispose of me. Once I awoke with a headache, the air was so dense

with the odour of orange-blossoms.

There was frequently a strip of blue bay that ebbed and flowed

languidly, and had to be lunched with; or a very deep and melodious

spring, asking for an interview, and, I may add, it always got it. I

remember one miniature castle built in the midst of a grassy Venice by

the shore. Its moats, shining with gold-fish, were spanned with slender

bridges, toy fences of bamboo enclosed the rarer clumps of foliage; and

there was such an air of tranquillity pervading it that I thought I must

belong there. Something seemed to say, "Come in." I went in, but left

very soon; the place was so fairy-like, I felt as though I were liable

to step through it and come out on some other side, and I wasn't anxious

for such a change.

I ate when I got hungry, a very good sort of a meal, consisting usually

of a tiny piglet cooked in the native fashion, swathed in succulent

leaves and laid between hot stones till ready for eating; bread-fruit,

like mashed potato, but a great deal better; orange-tea and cocoa-milk,

surely enough for two or three francs. Took a sleep whenever sleep came

along, resting always till the clouds or a shadow from the mountain

covered me so as to keep cool and comfortable. Natives passed me with

salutations. A white man now and then went by barely nodding, or more

frequently eyeing me with suspicion, and giving me as much of his dust

as he found convenient. In the wider fellowship of nature, I forswore

all blood relations, and blushed for those representatives of my own

colour as I footed it right royally. Therefore, I was enabled to scorn

the fellow who scorned me while he flashed the steel hoofs of his

charger in my face and dashed on to the village we were both approaching

with the dusk.

What a spot it was! A long lane as green as a spring meadow, lying

between wall-like masses of foliage whose deep arcades were frescoed

with blossoms and festooned with vines. It seemed a pathway leading to

infinity, for the blood-red bars of sunset glared at its farther end as

though Providence had placed them there to keep out the unregenerated.

Not a house visible all this time, nor a human, though I was in the

heart of the hamlet. Passing up the turf-cushioned road, I beheld, on

either hand, through a screen of leaves, a log spanning a rivulet that

was softly singing its monody; at the end of each log the summer-house

of some Tahitian, who sat in his door smoking complacently. It was a

picture of still-life with a suggestion of possible motion; a village to

put into a greenhouse, water, and keep fresh for ever. Let me picture it

once more,--one mossy street between two babbling brooks, and every

house thereof set each in its own moated wilderness. This was Papeali.

Like rows of cages full of chirping birds those bamboo hats were

distributed up and down the street. As I walked I knew something would

cause me to turn at the right time and find a new friend ready to

receive me, for it always does. So I walked slowly, and without

hesitation or impatience, until I turned and met him coming out of his

cage, crossing the rill by his log and holding out his hand to me in

welcome. Back we went together, and I ate and slept there as though it

had been arranged a thousand years ago; perhaps it was! There was a

racket up at the farther end of the lane, by the chief's house; songs

and nose-flutings upon the night air; moreover, a bonfire, and doubtless

much nectar,--too much, as usual, for I heard such cheers as the soul

gives when it is careless of consequences, and caught a glimpse of the

joys of barbarism such as even we poor Christians cannot wholly

withstand, but turning our backs think we are safe enough. Commend me to

him who has known temptation and not shunned it, but actually withstood

it!

It was the dance, as ever it is the dance where all the aspirations of

the soul find expression in the body; those bodies that are incarnate

souls, or those souls that are spiritualized bodies, inseparable,

whatever they are, for the time being. The fire glowed fervently;

bananas hung out their tattered banners like decorations; palms rustled

their silver plumes aloft in the moonlight; the sea panted on its sandy

bed in heavy sleep; the night-blooming cereus opened its waxen chambers

and gave forth its treasured sweets. Circle after circle of swart savage

faces were turned upon the flame-lit arena where the dancers posed for a

moment with their light drapery gathered about them and held carelessly

in one hand. The music again sounded a reiteration of chords caught from

the birds' treble and the wind's bass; full and resounding syllables,

richly poetical, telling of orgies and of the mysteries of the forbidden

revels in the charmed valleys of the gods, hearing which it were

impossible not to be wrought to madness; and the dancers thereat went

mad, dancing with infinite gesticulation, dancing to whirlwinds of

applause till the undulation of their bodies was serpentine, and at last

in frenzy they shrieked with joy, threw off their garments, and were

naked as the moon. So much for a vision that kept me awake till morning,

when I plodded on in the damp grass and tried to forget it, but couldn't

exactly, and never have to this hour. Went on and on over more bridges

spanning still-flowing streams of silver, past springs that lay like

great crystals framed in moss under dripping, fern-clad cliffs that the

sun never reaches. Came at last to a shining, whitewashed fort, on an

eminence that commands the isthmus connecting the two hemispheres of

Tahiti, where down I dropped into a narrow valley full of wind and

discord and a kind of dreary neglect that made me sick for any other

place. More refreshment for the wayfarer, but to be paid for by the

dish, and therefore limited. Was obliged to hate a noisy fellow with too

much bushy black beard and a freckled nose, and to like another who eyed

me kindly over his absinthe, having first mixed a glass for me. A native

asked me where I was going; being unable to give any satisfactory

answer, he conducted me to his canoe, about a mile distant, where he cut

a sapling for a mast, another for a gaff, twisted, in a few moments, a

cord of its fibrous bark, rigged a sail of his sleeping-blanket, and we

were shortly wafted onward before a light breeze between the reef and

shore.

Three of us with a bull-pup in the bows dozed under the afternoon sun.

He of the paddle awoke now and then to shift sail, beat the sea

impetuously for a few seconds, and fell asleep again. Voices roused me

occasionally, greetings from colonies of indolent Kanacks on shore,

whose business it was to sit there till they got hungry, laughing

weariness to scorn.

Close upon our larboard-bow lay one of the islands that had bewitched me

as I passed the shore but a few days previous; under us the measureless

gardens of the sea unmasked a myriad imperishable blossoms, centuries

old some of them, but as fair and fresh as though born within the hour.

All that afternoon we drifted between sea and shore, and beached at

sunset in a new land. Footsore and weary, I approached a stable from

which thrice a week stages were despatched to Papeete.

A modern pilgrim finds his scrip cumbersome if he has any, and deems it

more profitable to pay his coach-man than his cobbler.

I climbed to my seat by the jolly French driver, who was continually

chatting with three merry nuns sitting just back of us, returning to the

convent in Papeete after a vacation retreat among the hills. How they

enjoyed the ride, as three children might! and were quite wild with

delight at meeting a corpulent _père_, who smiled amiably from his

saddle and offered to show them the interior of the pretty chapel at

Faaa (only three _a_'s in that word),--the very one I grew melancholy in

when I was a man of business.

So they hurled themselves madly from the high seat, one after the other,

scorning to touch anything so contaminating as a man's hand, though it

looked suicidal, as the driver and I agreed while the three were at

prayers by the altar. Whipping up over the road townward, I could

almost recognize my own footprints left since the time I used to take

the dust in my face three mornings a week from the wheels of that very

vehicle as I footed it in to business. Passing the spring, my toilet of

other days, drawing to the edge of the town, we stopped being jolly, and

were as proper as befitted travellers. We looked over the wall of the

convent garden as we drove up to the gate, and saw the mother-superior

hurrying down to us with a cumbersome chair for the relief of the nuns,

but before she reached us they had cast themselves to earth again in the

face of destiny, and there was kissing, crying, and commotion as they

withdrew under the gateway like so many doves seeking shelter. When the

gate closed after them, I heard them all _cooing_ at once, but the world

knows nothing further.

Where would I be dropped? asked the driver. In the middle of the street,

please you, and take half my little whole for your ride, sir! He took

it, dropped me where we stood, and drove away, I pretending to be very

much at my ease. God help me and all poor hypocrites!

I sought a place of shelter, or rather retirement, for the air is balm

in that country. There was an old house in the middle of a grassy lawn

in a by-street; two of its rooms were furnished with a few papers and

books, and certain gentlemen who contribute to its support lounge in

when they have leisure for reading or a chat. I grew to know the place

familiarly. I stole a night's lodging on its verandah in the shadow of a

passion-vine; but, for fear of embarrassing some early student in

pursuit of knowledge, I passed the second night on the floor of the

dilapidated cook-house, where the ants covered me. I endured the

tortures of one who bares his body to an unceasing shower of sparks; but

I survived.

There was, in this very cook-house, a sink six feet in length and as

wide as a coffin; the third night I lay like a galvanized corpse with

his lid off till a rat sought to devour me, when I took to the streets

and walked till morning. By this time the president of the club, whose

acquaintance I had the honour of, tendered me the free use of any

portion of the premises that might not be otherwise engaged. With a

gleam of hope I began my explorations. Up a narrow and winding stair I

found a spacious loft. It was like a mammoth tent, a solitary

centre-pole its only ornament. Creeping into it on all-fours, I found a

fragment of matting, a dry crust, and an empty soda bottle,--footprints

on the sands of time.

"Poor soul!" I gasped, "where did _you_ come from? What _did_ you come

for? Whither, O whither, have you flown?"

I might have added, How did you manage to get there? But the present was

so important a consideration, I had no heart to look beyond it. The next

ten nights I passed in the silent and airy apartment of my anonymous

predecessor. Ten nights I crossed the unswept floor that threatened at

every step to precipitate me into the reading-room below. With a faint

heart and hollow stomach I threw myself upon my elbow and strove to

sleep. I lay till my heart stopped beating, my joints were wooden, and

my four limbs corky beyond all hope of reanimation. There the mosquito

revelled, and it was a promising place for centipedes.

At either end of the building an open window admitted the tip of a

banana-leaf; up their green ribs the sprightly mouse careered. I broke

the backbones of these banana-leaves, though they were the joy of my

soul and would have adorned the choicest conservatory in the land. Day

was equally unprofitable to me. My best friends said, "Why not return to

California?" Every one I met invited me to leave the country at my

earliest convenience. The American consul secured me a passage, to be

settled for at home, and my career in that latitude was evidently at an

end. In my superfluous confidence in humanity, I had announced myself as

a correspondent for the press. It was quite necessary that I should give

some plausible reason for making my appearance in Tahiti friendless and

poor. Therefore, I said plainly, "I am a correspondent, friendless and

poor," believing that any one would see truth in the face of it, with

half an eye. "Prove it," said one who knew more of the world than I.

Then flashed upon me the alarming fact that I couldn't prove it, having

nothing whatever in my possession referring to it in the slightest

degree. It was a fatal mistake that might easily have been avoided, but

was too well established to be rectified.

In my chagrin I looked to the good old bishop for consolation.

Approaching the Mission House through sunlit cloisters of palms, I was

greeted most tenderly. I would have gladly taken any amount of holy

orders for the privilege of ending my troublous days in the sweet

seclusion of the Mission House.

As it was, I received a blessing, an autograph, and a "God speed" to

some other part of creation. Added to this I learned how the address to

the Forty Chiefs of Tahiti in behalf of the foreign traveller, my poor

self, had been despatched to me by a special courier, who found me not;

and doubtless the _fêtes_ I heard of and was for ever missing marked the

march of that messenger, my proxy, in his triumphal progress. In my

innocent degradation it was still necessary to nourish the inner man.

There is a market in Papeete where, under one broad roof, threescore

hucksters of both sexes congregate long before daylight, and while a few

candles illumine their wares, patiently await custom. A half-dozen

coolies with an eye to business serve hot coffee and chocolate at a dime

per cup to any who choose to ask for it. By seven a.m. the market is so

nearly sold out that only the more plentiful fruits of the country are

to be obtained at any price. A prodigal cannot long survive on husks,

unless he have coffee to wash them down. I took my cup of it, with two

spoonfuls of sugar and ants dipped out of a cigar-box, and a crust of

bread into the bargain, sitting on a bench in the market-place, with a

coolie and a Kanack on either hand.

It was not the coffee nor the sugared ants that I gave my dime for, but

rather the privilege of sitting in the midst of men and women who were

willing to accept me as a friend and helpmate without questioning my

ancestry, and any one of whom would go me halves in the most

disinterested manner. Then there was sure to be some superb fellow close

at hand, with a sensuous lip curled under his nostril, a glimpse of

which gave me a dime's worth of satisfaction and more too. Having

secreted a French roll, five cents, all hot, under my coat, and gathered

the bananas that would fall in the yard so seasonably, I made my day as

brief and comfortable as possible by filling up with water from time to

time.

The man who has passed a grimy chop-house, wherein a frowzy fellow sat

at his cheap spread, without envying the frowzy fellow his cheap spread,

cannot truly sympathize with me.

The man who has not felt a great hollow in his stomach which he found

necessary to fill at the first fountain he came to, or go over on his

beam-ends for lack of ballast, cannot fall upon my neck and call me

brother.

At daybreak I haunted those street fountains, waiting my turn while

French cooks filled almost fathomless kegs, and coolies filled

potbellied jars, and Kanacks filled their hollow bamboos that seemed

fully a quarter of a mile in length. There I meekly made my toilet, took

my first course of breakfast, rinsed out my handkerchiefs and stockings,

and went my way. The whole performance was embarrassing, because I was a

novice, and a dozen people watched me in curious silence. I had also a

boot with a suction in the toe; there is dust in Papeete; while I walked

that boot loaded and discharged itself in a manner that amazed and

amused a small mob of little natives who followed me in my free

exhibition, advertising my shooting-boot gratuitously.

I was altogether shabby in my outward appearance, and cannot honestly

upbraid any resident of the town for his neglect of me. I know that I

suffered the agony of shame and the pangs of hanger; but they were

nothing to the utter loneliness I felt as I wandered about with my heart

on my sleeve, and never a bite from so much as a daw.

Did you ever question the possibility of a man's temporary

transformation under certain mental, moral, or physical conditions?

There are seasons when he certainly isn't what he was, yet may be more

and better than he has been, if you give him time enough.

I began to think I had either suffered this transformation or been

maliciously misinformed as to my personality. Was I truly what I

represented myself to be, or had I been a living deception all my days?

No longer able to identify myself as any one in particular, it occurred

to me that it would be well to address a few lines to the gentleman I

had been in the habit of calling "father," asking for some particulars

concerning his absent son. I immediately drew up this document ready for

mailing:--

MOSQUITO HALL,

CENTIPEDE AVENUE, PAPEETE.

DEAR SIR,--A nondescript awaits identification at this office.

Answers to the names at the foot of this page, believes himself to

be your son, to have been your son, or about to be something

equally near and dear to you. He can repeat several chapters of the

New Testament at the shortest notice; recites most of the Catechism

and Commandments; thinks he would recognize two sisters and three

brothers at sight, and know his mother with his eyes shut.

He likewise confesses to the usual strawberry-mark in fast colours.

If you will kindly send by return mail a few dollars, he will

clothe, feed, and water himself, and return immediately to those

arms which, if his memory does not belie him, have more than once

sheltered his unworthy frame. I have, dear sir, the fortune to be

the article above described.

The six months which would elapse before I could Hope for an answer

would probably have found me past all recognition, so I ceased crying to

the compassionate bowels of Tom, Dick, and Harry, waiting with haggard

patience the departure of the vessel that was to bear me home with a

palpable C. O. D. tacked on to me. Those last hours were brightened by

the delicate attentions of a few good souls who learned, too late, the

shocking state of my case. Thanks to them, I slept well thereafter in a

real bed, and was sure of dinners that wouldn't rattle in me like a

withered kernel in an old nutshell.

I had but to walk to the beach, wave my lily hand, heavily tanned about

that time, when lo! a boat was immediately despatched from the plump

little corvette "Chevert," where the tricolour waved triumphantly from

sunrise to sunset, all the year round.

Such capital French dinners as I had there, such offers of bed and board

and boundless sympathy as were made me by those dear fellows who wore

the gold lace and had a piratical-looking cabin all to themselves, were

enough to wring a heart that had been nearly wrung out in its battle

with life in Tahiti.

No longer I walked the streets as one smitten with the plague, or

revolved in envious circles about the market-place, where I could have

got my fill for a half-dollar, but had neither the one nor the other. No

longer I went at daybreak to swell the procession at the water-spout, or

sat on the shore the picture of despair, waiting sunrise, finding it my

sole happiness to watch a canoe-load of children drifting out upon the

bay, singing like a railful of larks; nor walked solitarily through the

night up and down the narrow streets wherein the _gendarmes_ had learned

to pass me unnoticed, with my hat under my arm and my heart in my

throat. Those delicious moons always seduced me from my natural sleep,

and I sauntered through the cocoa-groves whose boughs glistened like row

after row of crystals, whose shadows were as mosaics wrought in blocks

of silver.

I used to nod at the low, whitewashed "calabooses" fairly steaming in

the sun, wherein Herman Melville got some chapters of "Omoo."

Over and over again I tracked the ground of that delicious story, saying

to the bread-fruit trees that had sheltered him, "Shelter me also, and

whoever shall follow after, so long as your branches quiver in the

wind!"

O reader of "Omoo," think of "Motoo-Otoo," actually looking warlike in

these sad days, with a row of new cannons around its edge, and pyramids

of balls as big as cocoanuts covering its shady centre.

Walking alone in those splendid nights I used to hear a dry, ominous

coughing in the huts of the natives. I felt as though I were treading

upon the brinks of half-dug graves, and I longed to bring a respite to

the doomed race.

One windy afternoon we cut our stern hawser in a fair wind and sailed

out of the harbour; I felt a sense of relief, and moralized for five

minutes without stopping. Then I turned away from all listeners, and saw

those glorious green peaks growing dim in the distance; the clouds

embraced them in their profound secrecy; like a lovely mirage Tahiti

floated upon the bosom of the sea. Between sea and sky was swallowed up

vale, garden, and waterfall; point after point crowded with palms; peak

above peak in that eternal crown of beauty; and with them the nation of

warriors and lovers falling like the leaf, but, unlike it, with no

followers in the new season.

THE END

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO

London & Edinburgh

AN AFTERGLOW.

There is a bell in a tower in the middle of our Square. At six every

morning that bell does its best to tip over in delirious joy, but a

dozen strokes with the big tongue of it is about all that is ever

accomplished.

I like to be wakened by that bell; I like to hear it at meridian when my

day's work is nearly done. It is swinging at this very minute, and the

iron hammer is bumping its head on either side, wrought with melodious

fury.

The voice of it is so like the voice of a certain bell I used to hear in

a dreamy seaside village off in the tropics, that I have only to close

my eyes and I am over the seas again where I belong.

As it rings now, I fancy I am in a great stone house with broad

verandahs, that stands in the centre of a grove of palms; across a dusty

lane lies the churchyard, and in the midst of the congregation of the

departed I catch a glimpse of the homely whitewashed walls of the old

missionary church.

As the bell rings out at high noon, the pigeons flutter from the eaves

of this old church, and sail about, half afraid, yet seeming to be a

part of the service that is renewed from day to day.

In spirit I pace again those winding paths; I meet dark faces, that

brighten as I greet them; I hear the reef-music blown in from the summer

sea; through leafy trellises I look into the watery distance, across

which white sails are wafted like feathers in an azure sky.

A dry and floating dust, like powdered gold, glorifies the air. The

vertical sun has driven the shadows to the wall, and the dry pods of the

tamarind rattle and crackle in the intense heat, or perhaps a cocoanut

drops suddenly to the grass with a dull _thud_.

A vixenish hornet swaggers in at the window, dangling its legs, the very

ghost of an emaciated ballet-girl, and pirouettes about my head while I

sit statue-like, but presently flirts out of the window and is gone.

Do you think nothing transpires in this corner of the world? The Coolie

who brings me my morning cocoanut, the milk of which I drink from the

shell, is just now picking up leaves as big as a panama hat out in the

croquet-ground. Is that a common sight?

Were I in Honolulu--the metropolis, you know--from my window I could see

as of yore a singularly-shaped hill called Punch-bowl, that looms above

the mass of foliage engulfing the pretty village. This Punch-bowl has

been empty for ages, so have all the craters in that particular island.

It has baked hard in the sun and is as red as clay, though a tinge of

green in all its chinks suggests those antique bronzes of uncertain

origin. Above it roll the snow-white trade-wind clouds, those commercial

travellers that rush over us as though they had special business

elsewhere. Beyond all is the eternally blue sky of the tropics, which

generally seems so awfully high and hollow, that it makes a fellow

lonesome to look at it.

I like better to picture the narrow street in the neighbourhood, wherein

man and beast travel amicably, and a disconsolate old kanaka, done up in

a shirt or a sheet, settles wherever it pleases him, to take about three

whiffs of tobacco from a stubby, black, brass-bound pipe before

continuing his journey.

Over the way there is a small shed, with one of its beams hung full of

dead-ripe bananas; on a little counter, right under these yellow pouches

of creamy pulp, lie heaps of native water-melons, looking very

delicious. A pretty native girl, with an uncombed head, but pretty for

all that, will sell you her poorest stores with a grace that is worth

twice the money.

Just beyond my window wave mango boughs heavily fruited. There are

strange flowers palpitating in the sunshine, covered with dust-pollen;

flowers whose ancestors have lived and died in Ceylon, Java, Japan,

Madagascar, and all of those far-away lands, that make a boy's mouth

water in study hours as he pores over his enchanted atlas.

Sindbad had some rough experiences while he was travelling correspondent

of the _Daily Arabian Nights_; but I warrant you there are plenty of us

nowadays who would risk life and reputation for a tithe of his wonderful

adventure.

I hear the tramp of hoofs upon the hard-baked street; horsemen and

horsewomen dash by, the men sitting limp in their saddles like our

native Californians, and seeming almost a part of the animal, but the

women erect and bold, astride their horses man-fashion, with an ample

spread of the knees, that at first strikes the foreigner as being novel

and a little vulgar,--but of course it isn't, for having once become

accustomed to it, it seems the only natural and graceful way of sitting

a horse.

What the down is to the peach so is the last hour of sunshine to the

tropical day; it is the finishing touch that makes perfect the whole.

The bell has just struck again, and its reverberating note seems of a

colour with the picture in my mind--a bell for sunset, the _angelus_

that calls me back to the little village that lies half asleep over the

water. Just fancy a long beach, with the sea rushing upon it, and

turning a regular summersault, all spray and spangles, just before it

gets there; a unique lighthouse at the top of the one solitary wharf,

where the small boats land; the white spires of two churches at the two

ends of the town, and a sprinkling of roofs and verandah s but

half-discovered in the confusion of green boughs,--that is Lahaina from

the anchorage, to me the prettiest sight in the Hawaiian kingdom.

Let us hasten shoreward. Perhaps we wonder if that ridge of breakers is

to be climbed; perhaps we look with a tinge of superstition into the

affairs of Lahaina, wondering if it be really the abode of men in the

flesh, or but a dream wherein spirits move and have their being.

But we are speedily awakened by the boat-boy. Great is the boat-boy of

Lahaina! He is amphibious and agile and impudent, and altogether

comical. He has carried all the population of Lahaina, some two or three

thousand, in his boat, first and last. He complacently suns himself on

that solitary wharf, awaiting a fresh arrival and a renewal of business.

He poses himself against the whitewash of the wooden lighthouse in

tremendous relief; he recognizes you in spite of your week-old beard and

the dilapidated state of your travelling suit; he hails you with the

utmost cordiality; it is impossible not to brave the sea with him,

whether you will or no, for he is the embodiment of presuming

good-nature, and you are as wax under the influence of his beaming and

persuasive smile. The finger of Time doubles up the moment it points

toward him; he is the same yesterday, to-day, and in the middle of next

week. I can lead you to the very boat-boy who collared me ten years ago,

for he is still lying in wait for me; and were I there in the flesh as I

am there in the spirit, I should expect to fall into his hands within

the hour, and would instinctively surrender whatever plans I may have

cherished without a struggle and without a murmur.

At six o'clock this evening the bell will ring again, and again I shall

be transported; then will shadows, very long cool shadows, stretch

through the little tropical village; at dusk the reef is stiller, and

its roar sounds faint and far off, and is sometimes lost altogether. The

pigeons are once more driven from their home in the belfry, but they

soon return to it, and waltzing about on their slender pink legs for a

moment, they disappear within the shelter of the tower.

Every one has his easy-chair, smoking, chatting, or dreaming; there is a

sudden flush along the evening sky; the marsh hens begin to pipe in the

rushes; the moths hover about, with big, staring, carnelian eyes, and

dash frantically at the old-fashioned solar-lamp that stands on the

centre table in the open parlour.

The night falls suddenly; the air grows cool and moist; a great golden

star sails through the sky, leaving a wake of fire. O Island Home! made

sacred with a birth and with a death! haunted with sweet and solemn

memories! What if thy rocking palm boughs are as muffled music and thy

reef a dirge? The joy bells that have rung in the happy past shall ring

again in the hopeful future, and life grows rosy in the radiance of the

Afterglow.

* * * * *

These typographical errors have been corrected by the etext transcriber:

green aad glorious mountains=>green and glorious mountains

In this chyrsalis=>In this chrysalis

symptoms of returningday;=>symptoms of returning day;

Hello! the coffee-pot in ablaze again=>Hello! the coffee-pot in a blaze

again

about one for ever human;=>about one for every human;

to thin khow Tahiti must look=>to think how Tahiti must look

Centipede Avenue, Papete=>Centipede Avenue, Papeete