When Nei Takauti had a headache Nan Tok’ was full of attention and

concern. When the husband had a cold and a racking toothache the wife

heeded not, except to jeer. It is always the woman’s part to fill and

light the pipe; Nei Takauti handed hers in silence to the wedded page;

but she carried it herself, as though the page were not entirely trusted.

Thus she kept the money, but it was he who ran the errands, anxiously

sedulous. A cloud on her face dimmed instantly his beaming looks; on an

early visit to their maniap’ my wife saw he had cause to be wary. Nan

Tok’ had a friend with him, a giddy young thing, of his own age and sex;

and they had worked themselves into that stage of jocularity when

consequences are too often disregarded. Nei Takauti mentioned her own

name. Instantly Nan Tok’ held up two fingers, his friend did likewise,

both in an ecstasy of slyness. It was plain the lady had two names; and

from the nature of their merriment, and the wrath that gathered on her

brow, there must be something ticklish in the second. The husband

pronounced it; a well-directed cocoa-nut from the hand of his wife caught

him on the side of the head, and the voices and the mirth of these

indiscreet young gentlemen ceased for the day.

The people of Eastern Polynesia are never at a loss; their etiquette is

absolute and plenary; in every circumstance it tells them what to do and

how to do it. The Gilbertines are seemingly more free, and pay for their

freedom (like ourselves) in frequent perplexity. This was often the case

with the topsy-turvy couple. We had once supplied them during a visit

with a pipe and tobacco; and when they had smoked and were about to

leave, they found themselves confronted with a problem: should they take

or leave what remained of the tobacco? The piece of plug was taken up,

it was laid down again, it was handed back and forth, and argued over,

till the wife began to look haggard and the husband elderly. They ended

by taking it, and I wager were not yet clear of the compound before they

were sure they had decided wrong. Another time they had been given each

a liberal cup of coffee, and Nan Tok’ with difficulty and disaffection

made an end of his. Nei Takauti had taken some, she had no mind for

more, plainly conceived it would be a breach of manners to set down the

cup unfinished, and ordered her wedded retainer to dispose of what was

left. ‘I have swallowed all I can, I cannot swallow more, it is a

physical impossibility,’ he seemed to say; and his stern officer

reiterated her commands with secret imperative signals. Luckless dog!

but in mere humanity we came to the rescue and removed the cup.

I cannot but smile over this funny household; yet I remember the good

souls with affection and respect. Their attention to ourselves was

surprising. The garlands are much esteemed, the blossoms must be sought

far and wide; and though they had many retainers to call to their aid, we

often saw themselves passing afield after the blossoms, and the wife

engaged with her own in putting them together. It was no want of only

that disregard so incident to husbands, that made Nei Takauti despise the

sufferings of Nan Tok’. When my wife was unwell she proved a diligent

and kindly nurse; and the pair, to the extreme embarrassment of the

sufferer, became fixtures in the sick-room. This rugged, capable,

imperious old dame, with the wild eyes, had deep and tender qualities:

her pride in her young husband it seemed that she dissembled, fearing

possibly to spoil him; and when she spoke of her dead son there came

something tragic in her face. But I seemed to trace in the Gilbertines a

virility of sense and sentiment which distinguishes them (like their

harsh and uncouth language) from their brother islanders in the east.

PART IV: THE GILBERTS—APEMAMA

CHAPTER I—THE KING OF APEMAMA: THE ROYAL TRADER

There is one great personage in the Gilberts: Tembinok’ of Apemama:

solely conspicuous, the hero of song, the butt of gossip. Through the

rest of the group the kings are slain or fallen in tutelage: Tembinok’

alone remains, the last tyrant, the last erect vestige of a dead society.

The white man is everywhere else, building his houses, drinking his gin,

getting in and out of trouble with the weak native governments. There is

only one white on Apemama, and he on sufferance, living far from court,

and hearkening and watching his conduct like a mouse in a cat’s ear.

Through all the other islands a stream of native visitors comes and goes,

travelling by families, spending years on the grand tour. Apemama alone

is left upon one side, the tourist dreading to risk himself within the

clutch of Tembinok’. And fear of the same Gorgon follows and troubles

them at home. Maiana once paid him tribute; he once fell upon and seized

Nonuti: first steps to the empire of the archipelago. A British warship

coming on the scene, the conqueror was driven to disgorge, his career

checked in the outset, his dear-bought armoury sunk in his own lagoon.

But the impression had been made; periodical fear of him still shakes the

islands; rumour depicts him mustering his canoes for a fresh onfall;

rumour can name his destination; and Tembinok’ figures in the patriotic

war-songs of the Gilberts like Napoleon in those of our grandfathers.

We were at sea, bound from Mariki to Nonuti and Tapituea, when the wind

came suddenly fair for Apemama. The course was at once changed; all

hands were turned-to to clean ship, the decks holy-stoned, all the cabin

washed, the trade-room overhauled. In all our cruising we never saw the

_Equator_ so smart as she was made for Tembinok’. Nor was Captain Reid

alone in these coquetries; for, another schooner chancing to arrive

during my stay in Apemama, I found that she also was dandified for the

occasion. And the two cases stand alone in my experience of South Sea

traders.

We had on board a family of native tourists, from the grandsire to the

babe in arms, trying (against an extraordinary series of ill-luck) to

regain their native island of Peru. {275} Five times already they had

paid their fare and taken ship; five times they had been disappointed,

dropped penniless upon strange islands, or carried back to Butaritari,

whence they sailed. This last attempt had been no better-starred; their

provisions were exhausted. Peru was beyond hope, and they had cheerfully

made up their minds to a fresh stage of exile in Tapituea or Nonuti.

With this slant of wind their random destination became once more

changed; and like the Calendar’s pilot, when the ‘black mountains’ hove

in view, they changed colour and beat upon their breasts. Their camp,

which was on deck in the ship’s waist, resounded with complaint. They

would be set to work, they must become slaves, escape was hopeless, they

must live and toil and die in Apemama, in the tyrant’s den. With this

sort of talk they so greatly terrified their children, that one (a big

hulking boy) must at last be torn screaming from the schooner’s side.

And their fears were wholly groundless. I have little doubt they were

not suffered to be idle; but I can vouch for it that they were kindly and

generously used. For, the matter of a year later, I was once more

shipmate with these inconsistent wanderers on board the _Janet Nicoll_.

Their fare was paid by Tembinok’; they who had gone ashore from the

_Equator_ destitute, reappeared upon the _Janet_ with new clothes, laden

with mats and presents, and bringing with them a magazine of food, on

which they lived like fighting-cocks throughout the voyage; I saw them at

length repatriated, and I must say they showed more concern on quitting

Apemama than delight at reaching home.

We entered by the north passage (Sunday, September 1st), dodging among

shoals. It was a day of fierce equatorial sunshine; but the breeze was

strong and chill; and the mate, who conned the schooner from the

cross-trees, returned shivering to the deck. The lagoon was thick with

many-tinted wavelets; a continuous roaring of the outer sea overhung the

anchorage; and the long, hollow crescent of palm ruffled and sparkled in

the wind. Opposite our berth the beach was seen to be surmounted for

some distance by a terrace of white coral seven or eight feet high and

crowned in turn by the scattered and incongruous buildings of the palace.

The village adjoins on the south, a cluster of high-roofed maniap’s. And

village and palace seemed deserted.

We were scarce yet moored, however, before distant and busy figures

appeared upon the beach, a boat was launched, and a crew pulled out to us

bringing the king’s ladder. Tembinok’ had once an accident; has feared

ever since to entrust his person to the rotten chandlery of South Sea

traders; and devised in consequence a frame of wood, which is brought on

board a ship as soon as she appears, and remains lashed to her side until

she leave. The boat’s crew, having applied this engine, returned at once

to shore. They might not come on board; neither might we land, or not

without danger of offence; the king giving pratique in person. An

interval followed, during which dinner was delayed for the great man—the

prelude of the ladder, giving us some notion of his weighty body and

sensible, ingenious character, had highly whetted our curiosity; and it

was with something like excitement that we saw the beach and terrace

suddenly blacken with attendant vassals, the king and party embark, the

boat (a man-of-war gig) come flying towards us dead before the wind, and

the royal coxswain lay us cleverly aboard, mount the ladder with a

jealous diffidence, and descend heavily on deck.

Not long ago he was overgrown with fat, obscured to view, and a burthen

to himself. Captains visiting the island advised him to walk; and though

it broke the habits of a life and the traditions of his rank, he

practised the remedy with benefit. His corpulence is now portable; you

would call him lusty rather than fat; but his gait is still dull,

stumbling, and elephantine. He neither stops nor hastens, but goes about

his business with an implacable deliberation. We could never see him and

not be struck with his extraordinary natural means for the theatre: a

beaked profile like Dante’s in the mask, a mane of long black hair, the

eye brilliant, imperious, and inquiring: for certain parts, and to one

who could have used it, the face was a fortune. His voice matched it

well, being shrill, powerful, and uncanny, with a note like a sea-bird’s.

Where there are no fashions, none to set them, few to follow them if they

were set, and none to criticise, he dresses—as Sir Charles Grandison

lived—‘to his own heart.’ Now he wears a woman’s frock, now a naval

uniform; now (and more usually) figures in a masquerade costume of his

own design: trousers and a singular jacket with shirt tails, the cut and

fit wonderful for island workmanship, the material always handsome,

sometimes green velvet, sometimes cardinal red silk. This masquerade

becomes him admirably. In the woman’s frock he looks ominous and weird

beyond belief. I see him now come pacing towards me in the cruel sun,

solitary, a figure out of Hoffmann.

A visit on board ship, such as that at which we now assisted, makes a

chief part and by far the chief diversion of the life of Tembinok’. He

is not only the sole ruler, he is the sole merchant of his triple

kingdom, Apemama, Aranuka, and Kuria, well-planted islands. The taro

goes to the chiefs, who divide as they please among their immediate

adherents; but certain fish, turtles—which abound in Kuria,—and the whole

produce of the coco-palm, belong exclusively to Tembinok’. ‘A’ cobra

{279a} berong me,’ observed his majesty with a wave of his hand; and he

counts and sells it by the houseful. ‘You got copra, king?’ I have heard

a trader ask. ‘I got two, three outches,’ {279b} his majesty replied: ‘I

think three.’ Hence the commercial importance of Apemama, the trade of

three islands being centred there in a single hand; hence it is that so

many whites have tried in vain to gain or to preserve a footing; hence

ships are adorned, cooks have special orders, and captains array

themselves in smiles, to greet the king. If he be pleased with his

welcome and the fare he may pass days on board, and, every day, and

sometimes every hour, will be of profit to the ship. He oscillates

between the cabin, where he is entertained with strange meats, and the

trade-room, where he enjoys the pleasures of shopping on a scale to match

his person. A few obsequious attendants squat by the house door,

awaiting his least signal. In the boat, which has been suffered to drop

astern, one or two of his wives lie covered from the sun under mats,

tossed by the short sea of the lagoon, and enduring agonies of heat and

tedium. This severity is now and then relaxed and the wives allowed on

board. Three or four were thus favoured on the day of our arrival:

substantial ladies airily attired in _ridis_. Each had a share of copra,

her _peculium_, to dispose of for herself. The display in the

trade-room—hats, ribbbons, dresses, scents, tins of salmon—the pride of

the eye and the lust of the flesh—tempted them in vain. They had but the

one idea—tobacco, the island currency, tantamount to minted gold;

returned to shore with it, burthened but rejoicing; and late into the

night, on the royal terrace, were to be seen counting the sticks by

lamplight in the open air.

The king is no such economist. He is greedy of things new and foreign.

House after house, chest after chest, in the palace precinct, is already

crammed with clocks, musical boxes, blue spectacles, umbrellas, knitted

waistcoats, bolts of stuff, tools, rifles, fowling-pieces, medicines,

European foods, sewing-machines, and, what is more extraordinary, stoves:

all that ever caught his eye, tickled his appetite, pleased him for its

use, or puzzled him with its apparent inutility. And still his lust is

unabated. He is possessed by the seven devils of the collector. He

hears a thing spoken of, and a shadow comes on his face. ‘I think I no

got him,’ he will say; and the treasures he has seem worthless in

comparison. If a ship be bound for Apemama, the merchant racks his brain

to hit upon some novelty. This he leaves carelessly in the main cabin or

partly conceals in his own berth, so that the king shall spy it for

himself. ‘How much you want?’ inquires Tembinok’, passing and pointing.

‘No, king; that too dear,’ returns the trader. ‘I think I like him,’

says the king. This was a bowl of gold-fish. On another occasion it was

scented soap. ‘No, king; that cost too much,’ said the trader; ‘too good

for a Kanaka.’ ‘How much you got? I take him all,’ replied his majesty,

and became the lord of seventeen boxes at two dollars a cake. Or again,

the merchant feigns the article is not for sale, is private property, an

heirloom or a gift; and the trick infallibly succeeds. Thwart the king

and you hold him. His autocratic nature rears at the affront of

opposition. He accepts it for a challenge; sets his teeth like a hunter

going at a fence; and with no mark of emotion, scarce even of interest,

stolidly piles up the price. Thus, for our sins, he took a fancy to my

wife’s dressing-bag, a thing entirely useless to the man, and sadly

battered by years of service. Early one forenoon he came to our house,

sat down, and abruptly offered to purchase it. I told him I sold

nothing, and the bag at any rate was a present from a friend; but he was

acquainted with these pretexts from of old, and knew what they were worth

and how to meet them. Adopting what I believe is called ‘the object

method,’ he drew out a bag of English gold, sovereigns and

half-sovereigns, and began to lay them one by one in silence on the

table; at each fresh piece reading our faces with a look. In vain I

continued to protest I was no trader; he deigned not to reply. There

must have been twenty pounds on the table, he was still going on, and

irritation had begun to mingle with our embarrassment, when a happy idea

came to our delivery. Since his majesty thought so much of the bag, we

said, we must beg him to accept it as a present. It was the most

surprising turn in Tembinok’s experience. He perceived too late that his

persistence was unmannerly; hung his head a while in silence; then,

lifting up a sheepish countenance, ‘I ‘shamed,’ said the tyrant. It was

the first and the last time we heard him own to a flaw in his behaviour.

Half an hour after he sent us a camphor-wood chest worth only a few

dollars—but then heaven knows what Tembinok’ had paid for it.

Cunning by nature, and versed for forty years in the government of men,

it must not be supposed that he is cheated blindly, or has resigned

himself without resistance to be the milch-cow of the passing trader.

His efforts have been even heroic. Like Nakaeia of Makin, he has owned

schooners. More fortunate than Nakaeia, he has found captains. Ships of

his have sailed as far as to the colonies. He has trafficked direct, in

his own bottoms, with New Zealand. And even so, even there, the

world-enveloping dishonesty of the white man prevented him; his profit

melted, his ship returned in debt, the money for the insurance was

embezzled, and when the _Coronet_ came to be lost, he was astonished to

find he had lost all. At this he dropped his weapons; owned he might as

hopefully wrestle with the winds of heaven; and like an experienced

sheep, submitted his fleece thenceforward to the shearers. He is the

last man in the world to waste anger on the incurable; accepts it with

cynical composure; asks no more in those he deals with than a certain

decency of moderation; drives as good a bargain as he can; and when he

considers he is more than usually swindled, writes it in his memory

against the merchant’s name. He once ran over to me a list of captains

and supercargoes with whom he had done business, classing them under

three heads: ‘He cheat a litty’—‘He cheat plenty’—and ‘I think he cheat

too much.’ For the first two classes he expressed perfect toleration;

sometimes, but not always, for the third. I was present when a certain

merchant was turned about his business, and was the means (having a

considerable influence ever since the bag) of patching up the dispute.

Even on the day of our arrival there was like to have been a hitch with

Captain Reid: the ground of which is perhaps worth recital. Among goods

exported specially for Tembinok’ there is a beverage known (and labelled)

as Hennessy’s brandy. It is neither Hennessy, nor even brandy; is about

the colour of sherry, but is not sherry; tastes of kirsch, and yet

neither is it kirsch. The king, at least, has grown used to this amazing

brand, and rather prides himself upon the taste; and any substitution is

a double offence, being at once to cheat him and to cast a doubt upon his

palate. A similar weakness is to be observed in all connoisseurs. Now

the last case sold by the _Equator_ was found to contain a different and

I would fondly fancy a superior distillation; and the conversation opened

very black for Captain Reid. But Tembinok’ is a moderate man. He was

reminded and admitted that all men were liable to error, even himself;

accepted the principle that a fault handsomely acknowledged should be

condoned; and wound the matter up with this proposal: ‘Tuppoti {283} I

mi’take, you ’peakee me. Tuppoti you mi’take, I ’peakee you. Mo’

betta.’

After dinner and supper in the cabin, a glass or two of ‘Hennetti’—the

genuine article this time, with the kirsch bouquet,—and five hours’

lounging on the trade-room counter, royalty embarked for home. Three

tacks grounded the boat before the palace; the wives were carried ashore

on the backs of vassals; Tembinok’ stepped on a railed platform like a

steamer’s gangway, and was borne shoulder high through the shallows, up

the beach, and by an inclined plane, paved with pebbles, to the glaring

terrace where he dwells.

CHAPTER II—THE KING OF APEMAMA: FOUNDATION OF EQUATOR TOWN

Our first sight of Tembinok’ was a matter of concern, almost alarm, to my

whole party. We had a favour to seek; we must approach in the proper

courtly attitude of a suitor; and must either please him or fail in the

main purpose of our voyage. It was our wish to land and live in Apemama,

and see more near at hand the odd character of the man and the odd (or

rather ancient) condition of his island. In all other isles of the South

Seas a white man may land with his chest, and set up house for a

lifetime, if he choose, and if he have the money or the trade; no

hindrance is conceivable. But Apemama is a close island, lying there in

the sea with closed doors; the king himself, like a vigilant officer,

ready at the wicket to scrutinise and reject intrenching visitors. Hence

the attraction of our enterprise; not merely because it was a little

difficult, but because this social quarantine, a curiosity in itself, has

been the preservative of others.

Tembinok’, like most tyrants, is a conservative; like many conservatives,

he eagerly welcomes new ideas, and, except in the field of politics,

leans to practical reform. When the missionaries came, professing a

knowledge of the truth, he readily received them; attended their worship,

acquired the accomplishment of public prayer, and made himself a student

at their feet. It is thus—it is by the cultivation of similar passing

chances—that he has learned to read, to write, to cipher, and to speak

his queer, personal English, so different from ordinary ‘Beach de Mar,’

so much more obscure, expressive, and condensed. His education attended

to, he found time to become critical of the new inmates. Like Nakaeia of

Makin, he is an admirer of silence in the island; broods over it like a

great ear; has spies who report daily; and had rather his subjects sang

than talked. The service, and in particular the sermon, were thus sure

to become offences: ‘Here, in my island, _I_ ’peak,’ he once observed to

me. ‘My chieps no ’peak—do what I talk.’ He looked at the missionary,

and what did he see? ‘See Kanaka ’peak in a big outch!’ he cried, with a

strong ring of sarcasm. Yet he endured the subversive spectacle, and

might even have continued to endure it, had not a fresh point arisen. He

looked again, to employ his own figure; and the Kanaka was no longer

speaking, he was doing worse—he was building a copra-house. The king was

touched in his chief interests; revenue and prerogative were threatened.

He considered besides (and some think with him) that trade is

incompatible with the missionary claims. ‘Tuppoti mitonary think “good

man”: very good. Tuppoti he think “cobra”: no good. I send him away

ship.’ Such was his abrupt history of the evangelist in Apemama.

Similar deportations are common: ‘I send him away ship’ is the epitaph of

not a few, his majesty paying the exile’s fare to the next place of call.

For instance, being passionately fond of European food, he has several

times added to his household a white cook, and one after another these

have been deported. They, on their side, swear they were not paid their

wages; he, on his, that they robbed and swindled him beyond endurance:

both perhaps justly. A more important case was that of an agent,

despatched (as I heard the story) by a firm of merchants to worm his way

into the king’s good graces, become, if possible, premier, and handle the

copra in the interest of his employers. He obtained authority to land,

practised his fascinations, was patiently listened to by Tembinok’,

supposed himself on the highway to success; and behold! when the next

ship touched at Apemama, the would-be premier was flung into a boat—had

on board—his fare paid, and so good-bye. But it is needless to multiply

examples; the proof of the pudding is in the eating. When we came to

Apemama, of so many white men who have scrambled for a place in that rich

market, one remained—a silent, sober, solitary, niggardly recluse, of

whom the king remarks, ‘I think he good; he no ’peak.’

I was warned at the outset we might very well fail in our design: yet

never dreamed of what proved to be the fact, that we should be left

four-and-twenty hours in suspense and come within an ace of ultimate

rejection. Captain Reid had primed himself; no sooner was the king on

board, and the Hennetti question amicably settled, than he proceeded to

express my request and give an abstract of my claims and virtues. The

gammon about Queen Victoria’s son might do for Butaritari; it was out of

the question here; and I now figured as ‘one of the Old Men of England,’

a person of deep knowledge, come expressly to visit Tembinok’s dominion,

and eager to report upon it to the no less eager Queen Victoria. The

king made no shadow of an answer, and presently began upon a different

subject. We might have thought that he had not heard, or not understood;

only that we found ourselves the subject of a constant study. As we sat

at meals, he took us in series and fixed upon each, for near a minute at

a time, the same hard and thoughtful stare. As he thus looked he seemed

to forget himself, the subject and the company, and to become absorbed in

the process of his thought; the look was wholly impersonal; I have seen

the same in the eyes of portrait-painters. The counts upon which whites

have been deported are mainly four: cheating Tembinok’, meddling overmuch

with copra, which is the source of his wealth, and one of the sinews of

his power, _’peaking_, and political intrigue. I felt guiltless upon

all; but how to show it? I would not have taken copra in a gift: how to

express that quality by my dinner-table bearing? The rest of the party

shared my innocence and my embarrassment. They shared also in my

mortification when after two whole meal-times and the odd moments of an

afternoon devoted to this reconnoitring, Tembinok’ took his leave in

silence. Next morning, the same undisguised study, the same silence, was

resumed; and the second day had come to its maturity before I was

informed abruptly that I had stood the ordeal. ‘I look your eye. You

good man. You no lie,’ said the king: a doubtful compliment to a writer

of romance. Later he explained he did not quite judge by the eye only,

but the mouth as well. ‘Tuppoti I see man,’ he explained. ‘I no tavvy

good man, bad man. I look eye, look mouth. Then I tavvy. Look _eye_,

look mouth,’ he repeated. And indeed in our case the mouth had the most

to do with it, and it was by our talk that we gained admission to the

island; the king promising himself (and I believe really amassing) a vast

amount of useful knowledge ere we left.

The terms of our admission were as follows: We were to choose a site, and

the king should there build us a town. His people should work for us,

but the king only was to give them orders. One of his cooks should come

daily to help mine, and to learn of him. In case our stores ran out, he

would supply us, and be repaid on the return of the _Equator_. On the

other hand, he was to come to meals with us when so inclined; when he

stayed at home, a dish was to be sent him from our table; and I solemnly

engaged to give his subjects no liquor or money (both of which they are

forbidden to possess) and no tobacco, which they were to receive only

from the royal hand. I think I remember to have protested against the

stringency of this last article; at least, it was relaxed, and when a man

worked for me I was allowed to give him a pipe of tobacco on the

premises, but none to take away.

The site of Equator City—we named our city for the schooner—was soon

chosen. The immediate shores of the lagoon are windy and blinding;

Tembinok’ himself is glad to grope blue-spectacled on his terrace; and we

fled the neighbourhood of the red _conjunctiva_, the suppurating eyeball,

and the beggar who pursues and beseeches the passing foreigner for eye

wash. Behind the town the country is diversified; here open, sandy,

uneven, and dotted with dwarfish palms; here cut up with taro trenches,

deep and shallow, and, according to the growth of the plants, presenting

now the appearance of a sandy tannery, now of an alleyed and green

garden. A path leads towards the sea, mounting abruptly to the main

level of the island—twenty or even thirty feet, although Findlay gives

five; and just hard by the top of the rise, where the coco-palms begin to

be well grown, we found a grove of pandanus, and a piece of soil

pleasantly covered with green underbush. A well was not far off under a

rustic well-house; nearer still, in a sandy cup of the land, a pond where

we might wash our clothes. The place was out of the wind, out of the

sun, and out of sight of the village. It was shown to the king, and the

town promised for the morrow.

The morrow came, Mr. Osbourne landed, found nothing done, and carried his

complaint to Tembinok’. He heard it, rose, called for a Winchester,

stepped without the royal palisade, and fired two shots in the air. A

shot in the air is the first Apemama warning; it has the force of a

proclamation in more loquacious countries; and his majesty remarked

agreeably that it would make his labourers ‘mo’ bright.’ In less than

thirty minutes, accordingly, the men had mustered, the work was begun,

and we were told that we might bring our baggage when we pleased.

It was two in the afternoon ere the first boat was beached, and the long

procession of chests and crates and sacks began to straggle through the

sandy desert towards Equator Town. The grove of pandanus was practically

a thing of the past. Fire surrounded and smoke rose in the green

underbush. In a wide circuit the axes were still crashing. Those very

advantages for which the place was chosen, it had been the king’s first

idea to abolish; and in the midst of this devastation there stood already

a good-sized maniap’ and a small closed house. A mat was spread near by

for Tembinok’; here he sat superintending, in cardinal red, a pith helmet

on his head, a meerschaum pipe in his mouth, a wife stretched at his back

with custody of the matches and tobacco. Twenty or thirty feet in front

of him the bulk of the workers squatted on the ground; some of the bush

here survived and in this the commons sat nearly to their shoulders, and

presented only an arc of brown faces, black heads, and attentive eyes

fixed on his majesty. Long pauses reigned, during which the subjects

stared and the king smoked. Then Tembinok’ would raise his voice and

speak shrilly and briefly. There was never a response in words; but if

the speech were jesting, there came by way of answer discreet, obsequious

laughter—such laughter as we hear in schoolrooms; and if it were

practical, the sudden uprising and departure of the squad. Twice they so

disappeared, and returned with further elements of the city: a second

house and a second maniap’. It was singular to spy, far off through the

coco stems, the silent oncoming of the maniap’, at first (it seemed)

swimming spontaneously in the air—but on a nearer view betraying under

the eaves many score of moving naked legs. In all the affair servile

obedience was no less remarkable than servile deliberation. The gang had

here mustered by the note of a deadly weapon; the man who looked on was

the unquestioned master of their lives; and except for civility, they

bestirred themselves like so many American hotel clerks. The spectator

was aware of an unobtrusive yet invincible inertia, at which the skipper

of a trading dandy might have torn his hair.

Yet the work was accomplished. By dusk, when his majesty withdrew, the

town was founded and complete, a new and ruder Amphion having called it

from nothing with three cracks of a rifle. And the next morning the same

conjurer obliged us with a further miracle: a mystic rampart fencing us,

so that the path which ran by our doors became suddenly impassable, the

inhabitants who had business across the isle must fetch a wide circuit,

and we sat in the midst in a transparent privacy, seeing, seen, but

unapproachable, like bees in a glass hive. The outward and visible sign

of this glamour was no more than a few ragged coco-leaf garlands round

the stems of the outlying palms; but its significance reposed on the

tremendous sanction of the tapu and the guns of Tembinok’.

We made our first meal that night in the improvised city, where we were

to stay two months, and which—so soon as we had done with it—was to

vanish in a day as it appeared, its elements returning whence they came,

the tapu raised, the traffic on the path resumed, the sun and the moon

peering in vain between the palm-trees for the bygone work, the wind

blowing over an empty site. Yet the place, which is now only an episode

in some memories, seemed to have been built, and to be destined to

endure, for years. It was a busy hamlet. One of the maniap’s we made

our dining-room, one the kitchen. The houses we reserved for sleeping.

They were on the admirable Apemama plan: out and away the best house in

the South Seas; standing some three feet above the ground on posts; the

sides of woven flaps, which can be raised to admit light and air, or

lowered to shut out the wind and the rain: airy, healthy, clean, and

watertight. We had a hen of a remarkable kind: almost unique in my

experience, being a hen that occasionally laid eggs. Not far off, Mrs.

Stevenson tended a garden of salad and shalots. The salad was devoured

by the hen—which was her bane. The shalots were served out a leaf at a

time, and welcomed and relished like peaches. Toddy and green cocoa-nuts

were brought us daily. We once had a present of fish from the king, and

once of a turtle. Sometimes we shot so-called plover along on the shore,

sometimes wild chicken in the bush. The rest of our diet was from tins.

Our occupations were very various. While some of the party would be away

sketching, Mr. Osbourne and I hammered away at a novel. We read Gibbon

and Carlyle aloud; we blew on flageolets, we strummed on guitars; we took

photographs by the light of the sun, the moon, and flash-powder;

sometimes we played cards. Pot-hunting engaged a part of our leisure. I

have myself passed afternoons in the exciting but innocuous pursuit of

winged animals with a revolver; and it was fortunate there were better

shots of the party, and fortunate the king could lend us a more suitable

weapon, in the form of an excellent fowling-piece, or our spare diet had

been sparer still.

Night was the time to see our city, after the moon was up, after the

lamps were lighted, and so long as the fire sparkled in the cook-house.

We suffered from a plague of flies and mosquitoes, comparable to that of

Egypt; our dinner-table (lent, like all our furniture, by the king) must

be enclosed in a tent of netting, our citadel and refuge; and this became

all luminous, and bulged and beaconed under the eaves, like the globe of

some monstrous lamp under the margin of its shade. Our cabins, the sides

being propped at a variety of inclinations, spelled out strange, angular

patterns of brightness. In his roofed and open kitchen, Ah Fu was to be

seen by lamp and firelight, dabbling among pots. Over all, there fell in

the season an extraordinary splendour of mellow moonshine. The sand

sparkled as with the dust of diamonds; the stars had vanished. At

intervals, a dusky night-bird, slow and low flying, passed in the

colonnade of the tree stems and uttered a hoarse croaking cry.

CHAPTER III—THE KING OF APEMAMA: THE PALACE OF MANY WOMEN

The palace, or rather the ground which it includes, is several acres in

extent. A terrace encloses it toward the lagoon; on the side of the

land, a palisade with several gates. These are scarce intended for

defence; a man, if he were strong, might easily pluck down the palisade;

he need not be specially active to leap from the beach upon the terrace.

There is no parade of guards, soldiers, or weapons; the armoury is under

lock and key; and the only sentinels are certain inconspicuous old women

lurking day and night before the gates. By day, these crones were often

engaged in boiling syrup or the like household occupation; by night, they

lay ambushed in the shadow or crouched along the palisade, filling the

office of eunuchs to this harem, sole guards upon a tyrant life.

Female wardens made a fit outpost for this palace of many women. Of the

number of the king’s wives I have no guess; and but a loose idea of their

function. He himself displayed embarrassment when they were referred to

as his wives, called them himself ‘my pamily,’ and explained they were

his ‘cutcheons’—cousins. We distinguished four of the crowd: the king’s

mother; his sister, a grave, trenchant woman, with much of her brother’s

intelligence; the queen proper, to whom (and to whom alone) my wife was

formally presented; and the favourite of the hour, a pretty, graceful

girl, who sat with the king daily, and once (when he shed tears) consoled

him with caresses. I am assured that even with her his relations are

platonic. In the background figured a multitude of ladies, the lean, the

plump, and the elephantine, some in sacque frocks, some in the

hairbreadth _ridi_; high-born and low, slave and mistress; from the queen

to the scullion, from the favourite to the scraggy sentries at the

palisade. Not all of these of course are of ‘my pamily,’—many are mere

attendants; yet a surprising number shared the responsibility of the

king’s trust. These were key-bearers, treasurers, wardens of the

armoury, the napery, and the stores. Each knew and did her part to

admiration. Should anything be required—a particular gun, perhaps, or a

particular bolt of stuff,—the right queen was summoned; she came bringing

the right chest, opened it in the king’s presence, and displayed her

charge in perfect preservation—the gun cleaned and oiled, the goods duly

folded. Without delay or haste, and with the minimum of speech, the

whole great establishment turned on wheels like a machine. Nowhere have

I seen order more complete and pervasive. And yet I was always reminded

of Norse tales of trolls and ogres who kept their hearts buried in the

ground for the mere safety, and must confide the secret to their wives.

For these weapons are the life of Tembinok’. He does not aim at

popularity; but drives and braves his subjects, with a simplicity of

domination which it is impossible not to admire, hard not to sympathise

with. Should one out of so many prove faithless, should the armoury be

secretly unlocked, should the crones have dozed by the palisade and the

weapons find their way unseen into the village, revolution would be

nearly certain, death the most probable result, and the spirit of the

tyrant of Apemama flit to rejoin his predecessors of Mariki and Tapituea.

Yet those whom he so trusts are all women, and all rivals.

There is indeed a ministry and staff of males: cook, steward, carpenter,

and supercargoes: the hierarchy of a schooner. The spies, ‘his majesty’s

daily papers,’ as we called them, come every morning to report, and go

again. The cook and steward are concerned with the table only. The

supercargoes, whose business it is to keep tally of the copra at three

pounds a month and a percentage, are rarely in the palace; and two at

least are in the other islands. The carpenter, indeed, shrewd and jolly

old Rubam—query, Reuben?—promoted on my last visit to the greater dignity

of governor, is daily present, altering, extending, embellishing,

pursuing the endless series of the king’s inventions; and his majesty

will sometimes pass an afternoon watching and talking with Rubam at his

work. But the males are still outsiders; none seems to be armed, none is

entrusted with a key; by dusk they are all usually departed from the

palace; and the weight of the monarchy and of the monarch’s life reposes

unshared on the women.

Here is a household unlike, indeed, to one of ours; more unlike still to

the Oriental harem: that of an elderly childless man, his days menaced,

dwelling alone amid a bevy of women of all ages, ranks, and

relationships,—the mother, the sister, the cousin, the legitimate wife,

the concubine, the favourite, the eldest born, and she of yesterday; he,

in their midst, the only master, the only male, the sole dispenser of

honours, clothes, and luxuries, the sole mark of multitudinous ambitions

and desires. I doubt if you could find a man in Europe so bold as to

attempt this piece of tact and government. And seemingly Tembinok’

himself had trouble in the beginning. I hear of him shooting at a wife

for some levity on board a schooner. Another, on some more serious

offence, he slew outright; he exposed her body in an open box, and (to

make the warning more memorable) suffered it to putrefy before the palace

gate. Doubtless his growing years have come to his assistance; for upon

so large a scale it is more easy to play the father than the husband.

And to-day, at least to the eye of a stranger, all seems to go smoothly,

and the wives to be proud of their trust, proud of their rank, and proud

of their cunning lord.

I conceived they made rather a hero of the man. A popular master in a

girls’ school might, perhaps, offer a figure of his preponderating

station. But then the master does not eat, sleep, live, and wash his

dirty linen in the midst of his admirers; he escapes, he has a room of

his own, he leads a private life; if he had nothing else, he has the

holidays, and the more unhappy Tembinok’ is always on the stage and on

the stretch.

In all my coming and going, I never heard him speak harshly or express

the least displeasure. An extreme, rather heavy, benignity—the benignity

of one sure to be obeyed—marked his demeanour; so that I was at times

reminded of Samual Richardson in his circle of admiring women. The wives

spoke up and seemed to volunteer opinions, like our wives at home—or,

say, like doting but respectable aunts. Altogether, I conclude that he

rules his seraglio much more by art than terror; and those who give a

different account (and who have none of them enjoyed my opportunities of

observation) perhaps failed to distinguish between degrees of rank,

between ‘my pamily’ and the hangers-on, laundresses, and prostitutes.

A notable feature is the evening game of cards when lamps are set forth

upon the terrace, and ‘I and my pamily’ play for tobacco by the hour. It

is highly characteristic of Tembinok’ that he must invent a game for

himself; highly characteristic of his worshipping household that they

should swear by the absurd invention. It is founded on poker, played

with the honours out of many packs, and inconceivably dreary. But I have

a passion for all games, studied it, and am supposed to be the only white

who ever fairly grasped its principle: a fact for which the wives (with

whom I was not otherwise popular) admired me with acclamation. It was

impossible to be deceived; this was a genuine feeling: they were proud of

their private game, had been cut to the quick by the want of interest

shown in it by others, and expanded under the flattery of my attention.

Tembinok’ puts up a double stake, and receives in return two hands to

choose from: a shallow artifice which the wives (in all these years) have

not yet fathomed. He himself, when talking with me privately, made not

the least secret that he was secure of winning; and it was thus he

explained his recent liberality on board the _Equator_. He let the wives

buy their own tobacco, which pleased them at the moment. He won it back

at cards, which made him once more, and without fresh expense, that which

he ought to be,—the sole fount of all indulgences. And he summed the

matter up in that phrase with which he almost always concludes any

account of his policy: ‘Mo’ betta.’

The palace compound is laid with broken coral, excruciating to the eyes

and the bare feet, but exquisitely raked and weeded. A score or more of

buildings lie in a sort of street along the palisade and scattered on the

margin of the terrace; dwelling-houses for the wives and the attendants,

storehouses for the king’s curios and treasures, spacious maniap’s for

feast or council, some on pillars of wood, some on piers of masonry. One

was still in hand, a new invention, the king’s latest born: a European

frame-house built for coolness inside a lofty maniap’: its roof planked

like a ship’s deck to be a raised, shady, and yet private promenade. It

was here the king spent hours with Rubam; here I would sometimes join

them; the place had a most singular appearance; and I must say I was

greatly taken with the fancy, and joined with relish in the counsels of

the architects.

Suppose we had business with his majesty by day: we strolled over the

sand and by the dwarfish palms, exchanged a ‘_Kõnamaori_’ with the crone

on duty, and entered the compound. The wide sheet of coral glared before

us deserted; all having stowed themselves in dark canvas from the excess

of room. I have gone to and fro in that labyrinth of a place, seeking

the king; and the only breathing creature I could find was when I peered

under the eaves of a maniap’, and saw the brawny body of one of the wives

stretched on the floor, a naked Amazon plunged in noiseless slumber. If

it were still the hour of the ‘morning papers’ the quest would be more

easy, the half-dozen obsequious, sly dogs squatting on the ground outside

a house, crammed as far as possible in its narrow shadow, and turning to

the king a row of leering faces. Tembinok’ would be within, the flaps of

the cabin raised, the trade blowing through, hearing their report. Like

journalists nearer home, when the day’s news were scanty, these would

make the more of it in words; and I have known one to fill up a barren

morning with an imaginary conversation of two dogs. Sometimes the king

deigns to laugh, sometimes to question or jest with them, his voice

sounding shrilly from the cabin. By his side he may have the

heir-apparent, Paul, his nephew and adopted son, six years old, stark

naked, and a model of young human beauty. And there will always be the

favourite and perhaps two other wives awake; four more lying supine under

mats and whelmed in slumber. Or perhaps we came later, fell on a more

private hour, and found Tembinok’ retired in the house with the

favourite, an earthenware spittoon, a leaden inkpot, and a commercial

ledger. In the last, lying on his belly, he writes from day to day the

uneventful history of his reign; and when thus employed he betrayed a

touch of fretfulness on interruption with which I was well able to

sympathise. The royal annalist once read me a page or so, translating as

he went; but the passage being genealogical, and the author boggling

extremely in his version, I own I have been sometimes better entertained.

Nor does he confine himself to prose, but touches the lyre, too, in his

leisure moments, and passes for the chief bard of his kingdom, as he is

its sole public character, leading architect, and only merchant.

His competence, however, does not reach to music; and his verses, when

they are ready, are taught to a professional musician, who sets them and

instructs the chorus. Asked what his songs were about, Tembinok’

replied, ‘Sweethearts and trees and the sea. Not all the same true, all

the same lie.’ For a condensed view of lyrical poetry (except that he

seems to have forgot the stars and flowers) this would be hard to mend.

These multifarious occupations bespeak (in a native and an absolute

prince) unusual activity of mind.

The palace court at noon is a spot to be remembered with awe, the visitor

scrambling there, on the loose stones, through a splendid nightmare of

light and heat; but the sweep of the wind delivers it from flies and

mosquitoes; and with the set of sun it became heavenly. I remember it

best on moonless nights. The air was like a bath of milk. Countless

shining stars were overhead, the lagoon paved with them. Herds of wives

squatted by companies on the gravel, softly chatting. Tembinok’ would

doff his jacket, and sit bare and silent, perhaps meditating songs; the

favourite usually by him, silent also. Meanwhile in the midst of the

court, the palace lanterns were being lit and marshalled in rank upon the

ground—six or eight square yards of them; a sight that gave one strange

ideas of the number of ‘my pamily’: such a sight as may be seen about

dusk in a corner of some great terminus at home. Presently these fared

off into all corners of the precinct, lighting the last labours of the

day, lighting one after another to their rest that prodigious company of

women. A few lingered in the middle of the court for the card-party, and

saw the honours shuffled and dealt, and Tembinok’ deliberating between

his two; hands, and the queens losing their tobacco. Then these also

were scattered and extinguished; and their place was taken by a great

bonfire, the night-light of the palace. When this was no more, smaller

fires burned likewise at the gates. These were tended by the crones,

unseen, unsleeping—not always unheard. Should any approach in the dark

hours, a guarded alert made the circuit of the palisade; each sentry

signalled her neighbour with a stone; the rattle of falling pebbles

passed and died away; and the wardens of Tembinok’ crouched in their

places silent as before.

CHAPTER IV—THE KING OF APEMAMA: EQUATOR TOWN AND THE PALACE

Five persons were detailed to wait upon us. Uncle Parker, who brought us

toddy and green nuts, was an elderly, almost an old man, with the

spirits, the industry, and the morals of a boy of ten. His face was

ancient, droll, and diabolical, the skin stretched over taut sinews, like

a sail on the guide-rope; and he smiled with every muscle of his head.

His nuts must be counted every day, or he would deceive us in the tale;

they must be daily examined, or some would prove to be unhusked; nothing

but the king’s name, and scarcely that, would hold him to his duty.

After his toils were over he was given a pipe, matches, and tobacco, and

sat on the floor in the maniap’ to smoke. He would not seem to move from

his position, and yet every day, when the things fell to be returned the

plug had disappeared; he had found the means to conceal it in the roof,

whence he could radiantly produce it on the morrow. Although this piece

of legerdemain was performed regularly before three or four pairs of

eyes, we could never catch him in the fact; although we searched after he

was gone, we could never find the tobacco. Such were the diversions of

Uncle Parker, a man nearing sixty. But he was punished according unto

his deeds: Mrs. Stevenson took a fancy to paint him, and the sufferings

of the sitter were beyond description.

Three lasses came from the palace to do our washing and racket with Ah

Fu. They were of the lowest class, hangers-on kept for the convenience

of merchant skippers, probably low-born, perhaps out-islanders, with

little refinement whether of manner or appearance, but likely and jolly

enough wenches in their way. We called one _Guttersnipe_, for you may

find her image in the slums of any city; the same lean, dark-eyed, eager,

vulgar face, the same sudden, hoarse guffaws, the same forward and yet

anxious manner, as with a tail of an eye on the policeman: only the

policeman here was a live king, and his truncheon a rifle. I doubt if

you could find anywhere out of the islands, or often there, the parallel

of _Fatty_, a mountain of a girl, who must have weighed near as many

stones as she counted summers, could have given a good account of a

life-guardsman, had the face of a baby, and applied her vast mechanical

forces almost exclusively to play. But they were all three of the same

merry spirit. Our washing was conducted in a game of romps; and they

fled and pursued, and splashed, and pelted, and rolled each other in the

sand, and kept up a continuous noise of cries and laughter like holiday

children. Indeed, and however strange their own function in that austere

establishment, were they not escaped for the day from the largest and

strictest Ladies’ School in the South Seas?

Our fifth attendant was no less a person than the royal cook. He was

strikingly handsome both in face and body, lazy as a slave, and insolent

as a butcher’s boy. He slept and smoked on our premises in various

graceful attitudes; but so far from helping Ah Fu, he was not at the

pains to watch him. It may be said of him that he came to learn, and

remained to teach; and his lessons were at times difficult to stomach.

For example, he was sent to fill a bucket from the well. About half-way

he found my wife watering her onions, changed buckets with her, and

leaving her the empty, returned to the kitchen with the full. On another

occasion he was given a dish of dumplings for the king, was told they

must be eaten hot, and that he should carry them as fast as possible.

The wretch set off at the rate of about a mile in the hour, head in air,

toes turned out. My patience, after a month of trial, failed me at the

sight. I pursued, caught him by his two big shoulders, and thrusting him

before me, ran with him down the hill, over the sands, and through the

applauding village, to the Speak House, where the king was then holding a

pow-wow. He had the impudence to pretend he was internally injured by my

violence, and to profess serious apprehensions for his life.

All this we endured; for the ways of Tembinok’ are summary, and I was not

yet ripe to take a hand in the man’s death. But in the meanwhile, here

was my unfortunate China boy slaving for the pair, and presently he fell

sick. I was now in the position of Cimondain Lantenac, and indeed all

the characters in _Quatre-Vingt-Treize_: to continue to spare the guilty,

I must sacrifice the innocent. I took the usual course and tried to save

both, with the usual consequence of failure. Well rehearsed, I went down

to the palace, found the king alone, and obliged him with a vast amount

of rigmarole. The cook was too old to learn: I feared he was not making

progress; how if we had a boy instead?—boys were more teachable. It was

all in vain; the king pierced through my disguises to the root of the

fact; saw that the cook had desperately misbehaved; and sat a while

glooming. ‘I think he tavvy too much,’ he said at last, with grim

concision; and immediately turned the talk to other subjects. The same

day another high officer, the steward, appeared in the cook’s place, and,

I am bound to say, proved civil and industrious.

As soon as I left, it seems the king called for a Winchester and strolled

outside the palisade, awaiting the defaulter. That day Tembinok’ wore

the woman’s frock; as like as not, his make-up was completed by a pith

helmet and blue spectacles. Conceive the glaring stretch of sandhills,

the dwarf palms with their noon-day shadows, the line of the palisade,

the crone sentries (each by a small clear fire) cooking syrup on their

posts—and this chimæra waiting with his deadly engine. To him, enter at

last the cook, strolling down the sandhill from Equator Town, listless,

vain and graceful; with no thought of alarm. As soon as he was well

within range, the travestied monarch fired the six shots over his head,

at his feet, and on either hand of him: the second Apemama warning,

startling in itself, fatal in significance, for the next time his majesty

will aim to hit. I am told the king is a crack shot; that when he aims

to kill, the grave may be got ready; and when he aims to miss, misses by

so near a margin that the culprit tastes six times the bitterness of

death. The effect upon the cook I had an opportunity of seeing for

myself. My wife and I were returning from the sea-side of the island,

when we spied one coming to meet us at a very quick, disordered pace,

between a walk and a run. As we drew nearer we saw it was the cook,

beside himself with some emotion, his usual warm, mulatto colour declined

into a bluish pallor. He passed us without word or gesture, staring on

us with the face of a Satan, and plunged on across the wood for the

unpeopled quarter of the island and the long, desert beach, where he

might rage to and fro unseen, and froth out the vials of his wrath, fear,

and humiliation. Doubtless in the curses that he there uttered to the

bursting surf and the tropic birds, the name of the Kaupoi—the rich

man—was frequently repeated. I had made him the laughing-stock of the

village in the affair of the king’s dumplings; I had brought him by my

machinations into disgrace and the immediate jeopardy of his days; last,

and perhaps bitterest, he had found me there by the way to spy upon him

in the hour of his disorder.

Time passed, and we saw no more of him. The season of the full moon came

round, when a man thinks shame to lie sleeping; and I continued until

late—perhaps till twelve or one in the morning—to walk on the bright sand

and in the tossing shadow of the palms. I played, as I wandered, on a

flageolet, which occupied much of my attention; the fans overhead rattled

in the wind with a metallic chatter; and a bare foot falls at any rate

almost noiseless on that shifting soil. Yet when I got back to Equator

Town, where all the lights were out, and my wife (who was still awake,

and had been looking forth) asked me who it was that followed me, I

thought she spoke in jest. ‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘I saw him twice as

you passed, walking close at your heels. He only left you at the corner

of the maniap’; he must be still behind the cook-house.’ Thither I

ran—like a fool, without any weapon—and came face to face with the cook.

He was within my tapu-line, which was death in itself; he could have no

business there at such an hour but either to steal or to kill; guilt made

him timorous; and he turned and fled before me in the night in silence.

As he went I kicked him in that place where honour lies, and he gave

tongue faintly like an injured mouse. At the moment I daresay he

supposed it was a deadly instrument that touched him.

What had the man been after? I have found my music better qualified to

scatter than to collect an audience. Amateur as I was, I could not

suppose him interested in my reading of the _Carnival of Venice_, or that

he would deny himself his natural rest to follow my variations on _The

Ploughboy_. And whatever his design, it was impossible I should suffer

him to prowl by night among the houses. A word to the king, and the man

were not, his case being far beyond pardon. But it is one thing to kill

a man yourself; quite another to bear tales behind his back and have him

shot by a third party; and I determined to deal with the fellow in some

method of my own. I told Ah Fu the story, and bade him fetch me the cook

whenever he should find him. I had supposed this would be a matter of

difficulty; and far from that, he came of his own accord: an act really

of desperation, since his life hung by my silence, and the best he could

hope was to be forgotten. Yet he came with an assured countenance,

volunteered no apology or explanation, complained of injuries received,

and pretended he was unable to sit down. I suppose I am the weakest man

God made; I had kicked him in the least vulnerable part of his big

carcase; my foot was bare, and I had not even hurt my foot. Ah Fu could

not control his merriment. On my side, knowing what must be the nature

of his apprehensions, I found in so much impudence a kind of gallantry,

and secretly admired the man. I told him I should say nothing of his

night’s adventure to the king; that I should still allow him, when he had

an errand, to come within my tapu-line by day; but if ever I found him

there after the set of the sun I would shoot him on the spot; and to the

proof showed him a revolver. He must have been incredibly relieved; but

he showed no sign of it, took himself off with his usual dandy

nonchalance, and was scarce seen by us again.

These five, then, with the substitution of the steward for the cook, came

and went, and were our only visitors. The circle of the tapu held at

arm’s-length the inhabitants of the village. As for ‘my pamily,’ they

dwelt like nuns in their enclosure; only once have I met one of them

abroad, and she was the king’s sister, and the place in which I found her

(the island infirmary) was very likely privileged. There remains only

the king to be accounted for. He would come strolling over, always

alone, a little before a meal-time, take a chair, and talk and eat with

us like an old family friend. Gilbertine etiquette appears defective on

the point of leave-taking. It may be remembered we had trouble in the

matter with Karaiti; and there was something childish and disconcerting

in Tembinok’s abrupt ‘I want go home now,’ accompanied by a kind of

ducking rise, and followed by an unadorned retreat. It was the only blot

upon his manners, which were otherwise plain, decent, sensible, and

dignified. He never stayed long nor drank much, and copied our behaviour

where he perceived it to differ from his own. Very early in the day, for

instance, he ceased eating with his knife. It was plain he was

determined in all things to wring profit from our visit, and chiefly upon

etiquette. The quality of his white visitors puzzled and concerned him;

he would bring up name after name, and ask if its bearer were a ‘big

chiep,’ or even a ‘chiep’ at all—which, as some were my excellent good

friends, and none were actually born in the purple, became at times

embarrassing. He was struck to learn that our classes were

distinguishable by their speech, and that certain words (for instance)

were tapu on the quarter-deck of a man-of-war; and he begged in

consequence that we should watch and correct him on the point. We were

able to assure him that he was beyond correction. His vocabulary is apt

and ample to an extraordinary degree. God knows where he collected it,

but by some instinct or some accident he has avoided all profane or gross

expressions. ‘Obliged,’ ‘stabbed,’ ‘gnaw,’ ‘lodge,’ ‘power,’ ‘company,’

‘slender,’ ‘smooth,’ and ‘wonderful,’ are a few of the unexpected words

that enrich his dialect. Perhaps what pleased him most was to hear about

saluting the quarter-deck of a man-of-war. In his gratitude for this

hint he became fulsome. ‘Schooner cap’n no tell me,’ he cried; ‘I think

no tavvy! You tavvy too much; tavvy ’teama’, tavvy man-a-wa’. I think

you tavvy everything.’ Yet he gravelled me often enough with his

perpetual questions; and the false Mr. Barlow stood frequently exposed

before the royal Sandford. I remember once in particular. We were

showing the magic-lantern; a slide of Windsor Castle was put in, and I

told him there was the ‘outch’ of Victoreea. ‘How many pathom he high?’

he asked, and I was dumb before him. It was the builder, the

indefatigable architect of palaces, that spoke; collector though he was,

he did not collect useless information; and all his questions had a

purpose. After etiquette, government, law, the police, money, and

medicine were his chief interests—things vitally important to himself as

a king and the father of his people. It was my part not only to supply

new information, but to correct the old. ‘My patha he tell me,’ or

‘White man he tell me,’ would be his constant beginning; ‘You think he

lie?’ Sometimes I thought he did. Tembinok’ once brought me a

difficulty of this kind, which I was long of comprehending. A schooner

captain had told him of Captain Cook; the king was much interested in the

story; and turned for more information—not to Mr. Stephen’s Dictionary,

not to the _Britannica_, but to the Bible in the Gilbert Island version

(which consists chiefly of the New Testament and the Psalms). Here he

sought long and earnestly; Paul he found, and Festus and Alexander the

coppersmith: no word of Cook. The inference was obvious: the explorer

was a myth. So hard it is, even for a man of great natural parts like

Tembinok’, to grasp the ideas of a new society and culture.

CHAPTER V—KING AND COMMONS

We saw but little of the commons of the isle. At first we met them at

the well, where they washed their linen and we drew water for the table.

The combination was distasteful; and, having a tyrant at command, we

applied to the king and had the place enclosed in our tapu. It was one

of the few favours which Tembinok’ visibly boggled about granting, and it

may be conceived how little popular it made the strangers. Many

villagers passed us daily going afield; but they fetched a wide circuit

round our tapu, and seemed to avert their looks. At times we went

ourselves into the village—a strange place. Dutch by its canals,

Oriental by the height and steepness of the roofs, which looked at dusk

like temples; but we were rarely called into a house: no welcome, no

friendship, was offered us; and of home life we had but the one view: the

waking of a corpse, a frigid, painful scene: the widow holding on her lap

the cold, bluish body of her husband, and now partaking of the

refreshments which made the round of the company, now weeping and kissing

the pale mouth. (‘I fear you feel this affliction deeply,’ said the

Scottish minister. ‘Eh, sir, and that I do!’ replied the widow. ‘I’ve

been greetin’ a’ nicht; an’ noo I’m just gaun to sup this bit parritch,

and then I’ll begin an’ greet again.’) In our walks abroad I have always

supposed the islanders avoided us, perhaps from distaste, perhaps by

order; and those whom we met we took generally by surprise. The surface

of the isle is diversified with palm groves, thickets, and romantic

dingles four feet deep, relics of old taro plantation; and it is thus

possible to stumble unawares on folk resting or hiding from their work.

About pistol-shot from our township there lay a pond in the bottom of a

jungle; here the maids of the isle came to bathe, and were several times

alarmed by our intrusion. Not for them are the bright cold rivers of

Tahiti or Upolu, not for them to splash and laugh in the hour of the dusk

with a villageful of gay companions; but to steal here solitary, to

crouch in a place like a cow-wallow, and wash (if that can be called

washing) in lukewarm mud, brown as their own skins. Other, but still

rare, encounters occur to my memory. I was several times arrested by a

tender sound in the bush of voices talking, soft as flutes and with quiet

intonations. Hope told a flattering tale; I put aside the leaves; and

behold! in place of the expected dryads, a pair of all too solid ladies

squatting over a clay pipe in the ungraceful _ridi_. The beauty of the

voice and the eye was all that remained to those vast dames; but that of

the voice was indeed exquisite. It is strange I should have never heard

a more winning sound of speech, yet the dialect should be one remarkable

for violent, ugly, and outlandish vocables; so that Tembinok’ himself

declared it made him weary, and professed to find repose in talking

English.

The state of this folk, of whom I saw so little, I can merely guess at.

The king himself explains the situation with some art. ‘No; I no pay

them,’ he once said. ‘I give them tobacco. They work for me _all the

same brothers_.’ It is true there was a brother once in Arden! But we

prefer the shorter word. They bear every servile mark,—levity like a

child’s, incurable idleness, incurious content. The insolence of the

cook was a trait of his own; not so his levity, which he shared with the

innocent Uncle Parker. With equal unconcern both gambolled under the

shadow of the gallows, and took liberties with death that might have

surprised a careless student of man’s nature. I wrote of Parker that he

behaved like a boy of ten: what was he else, being a slave of sixty? He

had passed all his years in school, fed, clad, thought for, commanded;

and had grown familiar and coquetted with the fear of punishment. By

terror you may drive men long, but not far. Here, in Apemama, they work

at the constant and the instant peril of their lives; and are plunged in

a kind of lethargy of laziness. It is common to see one go afield in his

stiff mat ungirt, so that he walks elbows-in like a trussed fowl; and

whatsoever his right hand findeth to do, the other must be off duty

holding on his clothes. It is common to see two men carrying between

them on a pole a single bucket of water. To make two bites of a cherry

is good enough: to make two burthens of a soldier’s kit, for a distance

of perhaps half a furlong, passes measure. Woman, being the less

childish animal, is less relaxed by servile conditions. Even in the

king’s absence, even when they were alone, I have seen Apemama women work

with constancy. But the outside to be hoped for in a man is that he may

attack his task in little languid fits, and lounge between-whiles. So I

have seen a painter, with his pipe going, and a friend by the studio

fireside. You might suppose the race to lack civility, even vitality,

until you saw them in the dance. Night after night, and sometimes day

after day, they rolled out their choruses in the great Speak House—solemn

andantes and adagios, led by the clapped hand, and delivered with an

energy that shook the roof. The time was not so slow, though it was slow

for the islands; but I have chosen rather to indicate the effect upon the

hearer. Their music had a church-like character from near at hand, and

seemed to European ears more regular than the run of island music. Twice

I have heard a discord regularly solved. From farther off, heard at

Equator Town for instance, the measures rose and fell and crepitated like

the barking of hounds in a distant kennel.

The slaves are certainly not overworked—children of ten do more without

fatigue—and the Apemama labourers have holidays, when the singing begins

early in the afternoon. The diet is hard; copra and a sweetmeat of

pounded pandanus are the only dishes I observed outside the palace; but

there seems no defect in quantity, and the king shares with them his

turtles. Three came in a boat from Kuria during our stay; one was kept

for the palace, one sent to us, one presented to the village. It is the

habit of the islanders to cook the turtle in its carapace; we had been

promised the shells, and we asked a tapu on this foolish practice. The

face of Tembinok’ darkened and he answered nothing. Hesitation in the

question of the well I could understand, for water is scarce on a low

island; that he should refuse to interfere upon a point of cookery was

more than I had dreamed of; and I gathered (rightly or wrongly) that he

was scrupulous of touching in the least degree the private life and

habits of his slaves. So that even here, in full despotism, public

opinion has weight; even here, in the midst of slavery, freedom has a

corner.

Orderly, sober, and innocent, life flows in the isle from day to day as

in a model plantation under a model planter. It is impossible to doubt

the beneficence of that stern rule. A curious politeness, a soft and

gracious manner, something effeminate and courtly, distinguishes the

islanders of Apemama; it is talked of by all the traders, it was felt

even by residents so little beloved as ourselves, and noticeable even in

the cook, and even in that scoundrel’s hours of insolence. The king,

with his manly and plain bearing, stood out alone; you might say he was

the only Gilbert Islander in Apemama. Violence, so common in Butaritari,

seems unknown. So are theft and drunkenness. I am assured the

experiment has been made of leaving sovereigns on the beach before the

village; they lay there untouched. In all our time on the island I was

but once asked for drink. This was by a mighty plausible fellow, wearing

European clothes and speaking excellent English—Tamaiti his name, or, as

the whites have now corrupted it, ‘Tom White’: one of the king’s

supercargoes at three pounds a month and a percentage, a medical man

besides, and in his private hours a wizard. He found me one day in the

outskirts of the village, in a secluded place, hot and private, where the

taro-pits are deep and the plants high. Here he buttonholed me, and,

looking about him like a conspirator, inquired if I had gin.

I told him I had. He remarked that gin was forbidden, lauded the

prohibition a while, and then went on to explain that he was a doctor, or

‘dogstar’ as he pronounced the word, that gin was necessary to him for

his medical infusions, that he was quite out of it, and that he would be

obliged to me for some in a bottle. I told him I had passed the king my

word on landing; but since his case was so exceptional, I would go down

to the palace at once, and had no doubt that Tembinok’ would set me free.

Tom White was immediately overwhelmed with embarrassment and terror,

besought me in the most moving terms not to betray him, and fled my

neighbourhood. He had none of the cook’s valour; it was weeks before he

dared to meet my eye; and then only by the order of the king and on

particular business.

The more I viewed and admired this triumph of firm rule, the more I was

haunted and troubled by a problem, the problem (perhaps) of to-morrow for

ourselves. Here was a people protected from all serious misfortune,

relieved of all serious anxieties, and deprived of what we call our

liberty. Did they like it? and what was their sentiment toward the

ruler? The first question I could not of course ask, nor perhaps the

natives answer. Even the second was delicate; yet at last, and under

charming and strange circumstances, I found my opportunity to put it and

a man to reply. It was near the full of the moon, with a delicious

breeze; the isle was bright as day—to sleep would have been sacrilege;

and I walked in the bush, playing my pipe. It must have been the sound

of what I am pleased to call my music that attracted in my direction

another wanderer of the night. This was a young man attired in a fine

mat, and with a garland on his hair, for he was new come from dancing and

singing in the public hall; and his body, his face, and his eyes were all

of an enchanting beauty. Every here and there in the Gilberts youths are

to be found of this absurd perfection; I have seen five of us pass half

an hour in admiration of a boy at Mariki; and Te Kop (my friend in the

fine mat and garland) I had already several times remarked, and long ago

set down as the loveliest animal in Apemama. The philtre of admiration

must be very strong, or these natives specially susceptible to its

effects, for I have scarce ever admired a person in the islands but what

he has sought my particular acquaintance. So it was with Te Kop. He led

me to the ocean side; and for an hour or two we sat smoking and talking

on the resplendent sand and under the ineffable brightness of the moon.

My friend showed himself very sensible of the beauty and amenity of the

hour. ‘Good night! Good wind!’ he kept exclaiming, and as he said the

words he seemed to hug myself. I had long before invented such

reiterated expressions of delight for a character (Felipe, in the story

of _Olalla_) intended to be partly bestial. But there was nothing

bestial in Te Kop; only a childish pleasure in the moment. He was no

less pleased with his companion, or was good enough to say so; honoured

me, before he left, by calling me Te Kop; apostrophised me as ‘My name!’

with an intonation exquisitely tender, laying his hand at the same time

swiftly on my knee; and after we had risen, and our paths began to

separate in the bush, twice cried to me with a sort of gentle ecstasy, ‘I

like you too much!’ From the beginning he had made no secret of his

terror of the king; would not sit down nor speak above a whisper till he

had put the whole breadth of the isle between himself and his monarch,

then harmlessly asleep; and even there, even within a stone-cast of the

outer sea, our talk covered by the sound of the surf and the rattle of

the wind among the palms, continued to speak guardedly, softening his

silver voice (which rang loud enough in the chorus) and looking about him

like a man in fear of spies. The strange thing is that I should have

beheld him no more. In any other island in the whole South Seas, if I

had advanced half as far with any native, he would have been at my door

next morning, bringing and expecting gifts. But Te Kop vanished in the

bush for ever. My house, of course, was unapproachable; but he knew

where to find me on the ocean beach, where I went daily. I was the

_Kaupoi_, the rich man; my tobacco and trade were known to be endless: he

was sure of a present. I am at a loss how to explain his behaviour,

unless it be supposed that he recalled with terror and regret a passage

in our interview. Here it is:

‘The king, he good man?’ I asked.

‘Suppose he like you, he good man,’ replied Te Kop: ‘no like, no good.’

That is one way of putting it, of course. Te Kop himself was probably no

favourite, for he scarce appealed to my judgment as a type of industry.

And there must be many others whom the king (to adhere to the formula)

does not like. Do these unfortunates like the king? Or is not rather

the repulsion mutual? and the conscientious Tembinok’, like the

conscientious Braxfield before him, and many other conscientious rulers

and judges before either, surrounded by a considerable body of

‘grumbletonians’? Take the cook, for instance, when he passed us by,

blue with rage and terror. He was very wroth with me; I think by all the

old principles of human nature he was not very well pleased with his

sovereign. It was the rich man he sought to waylay: I think it must have

been by the turn of a hair that it was not the king he waylaid instead.

And the king gives, or seems to give, plenty of opportunities; day and

night he goes abroad alone, whether armed or not I can but guess; and the

taro-patches, where his business must so often carry him, seem designed

for assassination. The case of the cook was heavy indeed to my

conscience. I did not like to kill my enemy at second-hand; but had I a

right to conceal from the king, who had trusted me, the dangerous secret

character of his attendant? And suppose the king should fall, what would

be the fate of the king’s friends? It was our opinion at the time that

we should pay dear for the closing of the well; that our breath was in

the king’s nostrils; that if the king should by any chance be bludgeoned

in a taro-patch, the philosophical and musical inhabitants of Equator

Town might lay aside their pleasant instruments, and betake themselves to

what defence they had, with a very dim prospect of success. These

speculations were forced upon us by an incident which I am ashamed to

betray. The schooner _H. L. Haseltine_ (since capsized at sea, with the

loss of eleven lives) put into Apemama in a good hour for us, who had

near exhausted our supplies. The king, after his habit, spent day after

day on board; the gin proved unhappily to his taste; he brought a store

of it ashore with him; and for some time the sole tyrant of the isle was

half-seas-over. He was not drunk—the man is not a drunkard, he has

always stores of liquor at hand, which he uses with moderation,—but he

was muzzy, dull, and confused. He came one day to lunch with us, and

while the cloth was being laid fell asleep in his chair. His confusion,

when he awoke and found he had been detected, was equalled by our

uneasiness. When he was gone we sat and spoke of his peril, which we

thought to be in some degree our own; of how easily the man might be

surprised in such a state by _grumbletonians_; of the strange scenes that

would follow—the royal treasures and stores at the mercy of the rabble,

the palace overrun, the garrison of women turned adrift. And as we

talked we were startled by a gun-shot and a sudden, barbaric outcry. I

believe we all changed colour; but it was only the king firing at a dog

and the chorus striking up in the Speak House. A day or two later I

learned the king was very sick; went down, diagnosed the case; and took

at once the highest medical degree by the exhibition of bicarbonate of

soda. Within the hour Richard was himself again; and I found him at the

unfinished house, enjoying the double pleasure of directing Rubam and

making a dinner of cocoa-nut dumplings, and all eagerness to have the

formula of this new sort of _pain-killer_—for _pain-killer_ in the

islands is the generic name of medicine. So ended the king’s modest

spree and our anxiety.

On the face of things, I ought to say, loyalty appeared unshaken. When

the schooner at last returned for us, after much experience of baffling

winds, she brought a rumour that Tebureimoa had declared war on Apemama.

Tembinok’ became a new man; his face radiant; his attitude, as I saw him

preside over a council of chiefs in one of the palace maniap’s, eager as

a boy’s; his voice sounding abroad, shrill and jubilant, over half the

compound. War is what he wants, and here was his chance. The English

captain, when he flung his arms in the lagoon, had forbidden him (except

in one case) all military adventures in the future: here was the case

arrived. All morning the council sat; men were drilled, arms were

bought, the sound of firing disturbed the afternoon; the king devised and

communicated to me his plan of campaign, which was highly elaborate and

ingenious, but perhaps a trifle fine-spun for the rough and random

vicissitudes of war. And in all this bustle the temper of the people

appeared excellent, an unwonted animation in every face, and even Uncle

Parker burning with military zeal.

Of course it was a false alarm. Tebureimoa had other fish to fry. The

ambassador who accompanied us on our return to Butaritari found him

retired to a small island on the reef, in a huff with the Old Men, a tiff

with the traders, and more fear of insurrection at home than appetite for

wars abroad. The plenipotentiary had been placed under my protection;

and we solemnly saluted when we met. He proved an excellent fisherman,

and caught bonito over the ship’s side. He pulled a good oar, and made

himself useful for a whole fiery afternoon, towing the becalmed _Equator_

off Mariki. He went to his post and did no good. He returned home

again, having done no harm. _O si sic omnes_!

CHAPTER VI—THE KING OF APEMAMA: DEVIL-WORK

The ocean beach of Apemama was our daily resort. The coast is broken by

shallow bays. The reef is detached, elevated, and includes a lagoon

about knee-deep, the unrestful spending-basin of the surf. The beach is

now of fine sand, now of broken coral. The trend of the coast being

convex, scarce a quarter of a mile of it is to be seen at once; the land

being so low, the horizon appears within a stone-cast; and the narrow

prospect enhances the sense of privacy. Man avoids the place—even his

footprints are uncommon; but a great number of birds hover and pipe there

fishing, and leave crooked tracks upon the sand. Apart from these, the

only sound (and I was going to say the only society), is that of the

breakers on the reef.

On each projection of the coast, the bank of coral clinkers immediately

above the beach has been levelled, and a pillar built, perhaps

breast-high. These are not sepulchral; all the dead being buried on the

inhabited side of the island, close to men’s houses, and (what is worse)

to their wells. I was told they were to protect the isle against inroads

from the sea—divine or diabolical martellos, probably sacred to Taburik,

God of Thunder.

The bay immediately opposite Equator Town, which we called Fu Bay, in

honour of our cook, was thus fortified on either horn. It was well

sheltered by the reef, the enclosed water clear and tranquil, the

enclosing beach curved like a horseshoe, and both steep and broad. The

path debouched about the midst of the re-entrant angle, the woods

stopping some distance inland. In front, between the fringe of the wood

and the crown of the beach, there had been designed a regular figure,

like the court for some new variety of tennis, with borders of round

stones imbedded, and pointed at the angles with low posts, likewise of

stone. This was the king’s Pray Place. When he prayed, what he prayed

for, and to whom he addressed his supplications I could never learn. The

ground was tapu.

In the angle, by the mouth of the path, stood a deserted maniap’. Near

by there had been a house before our coming, which was now transported

and figured for the moment in Equator Town. It had been, and it would be

again when we departed, the residence of the guardian and wizard of the

spot—Tamaiti. Here, in this lone place, within sound of the sea, he had

his dwelling and uncanny duties. I cannot call to mind another case of a

man living on the ocean side of any open atoll; and Tamaiti must have had

strong nerves, the greater confidence in his own spells, or, what I

believe to be the truth, an enviable scepticism. Whether Tamaiti had any

guardianship of the Pray Place I never heard. But his own particular

chapel stood farther back in the fringe of the wood. It was a tree of

respectable growth. Around it there was drawn a circle of stones like

those that enclosed the Pray Place; in front, facing towards the sea, a

stone of a much greater size, and somewhat hollowed, like a piscina,

stood close against the trunk; in front of that again a conical pile of

gravel. In the hollow of what I have called the piscina (though it

proved to be a magic seat) lay an offering of green cocoa-nuts; and when

you looked up you found the boughs of the tree to be laden with strange

fruit: palm-branches elaborately plaited, and beautiful models of canoes,

finished and rigged to the least detail. The whole had the appearance of

a mid-summer and sylvan Christmas-tree _al fresco_. Yet we were already

well enough acquainted in the Gilberts to recognise it, at the first

sight, for a piece of wizardry, or, as they say in the group, of

Devil-work.

The plaited palms were what we recognised. We had seen them before on

Apaiang, the most christianised of all these islands; where excellent Mr.

Bingham lived and laboured and has left golden memories; whence all the

education in the northern Gilberts traces its descent; and where we were

boarded by little native Sunday-school misses in clean frocks, with

demure faces, and singing hymns as to the manner born.

Our experience of Devil-work at Apaiang had been as follows:—It chanced

we were benighted at the house of Captain Tierney. My wife and I lodged

with a Chinaman some half a mile away; and thither Captain Reid and a

native boy escorted us by torch-light. On the way the torch went out,

and we took shelter in a small and lonely Christian chapel to rekindle

it. Stuck in the rafters of the chapel was a branch of knotted palm.

‘What is that?’ I asked. ‘O, that’s Devil-work,’ said the Captain. ‘And

what is Devil-work?’ I inquired. ‘If you like, I’ll show you some when

we get to Johnnie’s,’ he replied. ‘Johnnie’s’ was a quaint little house

upon the crest of the beach, raised some three feet on posts, approached

by stairs; part walled, part trellised. Trophies of

advertisement-photographs were hung up within for decoration. There was

a table and a recess-bed, in which Mrs. Stevenson slept; while I camped

on the matted floor with Johnnie, Mrs. Johnnie, her sister, and the

devil’s own regiment of cockroaches. Hither was summoned an old witch,

who looked the part to horror. The lamp was set on the floor; the crone

squatted on the threshold, a green palm-branch in her hand, the light

striking full on her aged features and picking out behind her, from the

black night, timorous faces of spectators. Our sorceress began with a

chanted incantation; it was in the old tongue, for which I had no

interpreter; but ever and again there ran among the crowd outside that

laugh which every traveller in the islands learns so soon to

recognise,—the laugh of terror. Doubtless these half-Christian folk were

shocked, these half-heathen folk alarmed. Chench or Taburik thus

invoked, we put our questions; the witch knotted the leaves, here a leaf

and there a leaf, plainly on some arithmetical system; studied the result

with great apparent contention of mind; and gave the answers. Sidney

Colvin was in robust health and gone a journey; and we should have a fair

wind upon the morrow: that was the result of our consultation, for which

we paid a dollar. The next day dawned cloudless and breathless; but I

think Captain Reid placed a secret reliance on the sibyl, for the

schooner was got ready for sea. By eight the lagoon was flawed with long

cat’s-paws, and the palms tossed and rustled; before ten we were clear of

the passage and skimming under all plain sail, with bubbling scuppers.

So we had the breeze, which was well worth a dollar in itself; but the

bulletin about my friend in England proved, some six months later, when I

got my mail, to have been groundless. Perhaps London lies beyond the

horizon of the island gods.

Tembinok’, in his first dealings, showed himself sternly averse from

superstition: and had not the _Equator_ delayed, we might have left the

island and still supposed him an agnostic. It chanced one day, however,

that he came to our maniap’, and found Mrs. Stevenson in the midst of a

game of patience. She explained the game as well as she was able, and

wound up jocularly by telling him this was her devil-work, and if she

won, the _Equator_ would arrive next day. Tembinok’ must have drawn a

long breath; we were not so high-and-dry after all; he need no longer

dissemble, and he plunged at once into confessions. He made devil-work

every day, he told us, to know if ships were coming in; and thereafter

brought us regular reports of the results. It was surprising how

regularly he was wrong; but he always had an explanation ready. There

had been some schooner in the offing out of view; but either she was not

bound for Apemama, or had changed her course, or lay becalmed. I used to

regard the king with veneration as he thus publicly deceived himself. I

saw behind him all the fathers of the Church, all the philosophers and

men of science of the past; before him, all those that are to come;

himself in the midst; the whole visionary series bowed over the same task

of welding incongruities. To the end Tembinok’ spoke reluctantly of the

island gods and their worship, and I learned but little. Taburik is the

god of thunder, and deals in wind and weather. A while since there were

wizards who could call him down in the form of lightning. ‘My patha he

tell me he see: you think he lie?’ Tienti—pronounced something like

‘Chench,’ and identified by his majesty with the devil—sends and removes

bodily sickness. He is whistled for in the Paumotuan manner, and is said

to appear; but the king has never seen him. The doctors treat disease by

the aid of Chench: eclectic Tembinok’ at the same time administering

‘pain-killer’ from his medicine-chest, so as to give the sufferer both

chances. ‘I think mo’ betta,’ observed his majesty, with more than his

usual self-approval. Apparently the gods are not jealous, and placidly

enjoy both shrine and priest in common. On Tamaiti’s medicine-tree, for

instance, the model canoes are hung up _ex voto_ for a prosperous voyage,

and must therefore be dedicated to Taburik, god of the weather; but the

stone in front is the place of sick folk come to pacify Chench.

It chanced, by great good luck, that even as we spoke of these affairs, I

found myself threatened with a cold. I do not suppose I was ever glad of

a cold before, or shall ever be again; but the opportunity to see the

sorcerers at work was priceless, and I called in the faculty of Apemama.

They came in a body, all in their Sunday’s best and hung with wreaths and

shells, the insignia of the devil-worker. Tamaiti I knew already:

Terutak’ I saw for the first time—a tall, lank, raw-boned, serious

North-Sea fisherman turned brown; and there was a third in their company

whose name I never heard, and who played to Tamaiti the part of

_famulus_. Tamaiti took me in hand first, and led me, conversing

agreeably, to the shores of Fu Bay. The _famulus_ climbed a tree for

some green cocoa-nuts. Tamaiti himself disappeared a while in the bush

and returned with coco tinder, dry leaves, and a spray of waxberry. I

was placed on the stone, with my back to the tree and my face to

windward; between me and the gravel-heap one of the green nuts was set;

and then Tamaiti (having previously bared his feet, for he had come in

canvas shoes, which tortured him) joined me within the magic circle,

hollowed out the top of the gravel-heap, built his fire in the bottom,

and applied a match: it was one of Bryant and May’s. The flame was slow

to catch, and the irreverent sorcerer filled in the time with talk of

foreign places—of London, and ‘companies,’ and how much money they had;

of San Francisco, and the nefarious fogs, ‘all the same smoke,’ which had

been so nearly the occasion of his death. I tried vainly to lead him to

the matter in hand. ‘Everybody make medicine,’ he said lightly. And

when I asked him if he were himself a good practitioner—‘No savvy,’ he

replied, more lightly still. At length the leaves burst in a flame,

which he continued to feed; a thick, light smoke blew in my face, and the

flames streamed against and scorched my clothes. He in the meanwhile

addressed, or affected to address, the evil spirit, his lips moving fast,

but without sound; at the same time he waved in the air and twice struck

me on the breast with his green spray. So soon as the leaves were

consumed the ashes were buried, the green spray was imbedded in the

gravel, and the ceremony was at an end.

A reader of the _Arabian Nights_ felt quite at home. Here was the

suffumigation; here was the muttering wizard; here was the desert place

to which Aladdin was decoyed by the false uncle. But they manage these

things better in fiction. The effect was marred by the levity of the

magician, entertaining his patient with small talk like an affable

dentist, and by the incongruous presence of Mr. Osbourne with a camera.

As for my cold, it was neither better nor worse.

I was now handed over to Terutak’, the leading practitioner or medical

baronet of Apemama. His place is on the lagoon side of the island, hard

by the palace. A rail of light wood, some two feet high, encloses an

oblong piece of gravel like the king’s Pray Place; in the midst is a

green tree; below, a stone table bears a pair of boxes covered with a

fine mat; and in front of these an offering of food, a cocoa-nut, a piece

of taro or a fish, is placed daily. On two sides the enclosure is lined

with maniap’s; and one of our party, who had been there to sketch, had

remarked a daily concourse of people and an extraordinary number of sick

children; for this is in fact the infirmary of Apemama. The doctor and

myself entered the sacred place alone; the boxes and the mat were

displaced; and I was enthroned in their stead upon the stone, facing once

more to the east. For a while the sorcerer remained unseen behind me,

making passes in the air with a branch of palm. Then he struck lightly

on the brim of my straw hat; and this blow he continued to repeat at

intervals, sometimes brushing instead my arm and shoulder. I have had

people try to mesmerise me a dozen times, and never with the least

result. But at the first tap—on a quarter no more vital than my

hat-brim, and from nothing more virtuous than a switch of palm wielded by

a man I could not even see—sleep rushed upon me like an armed man. My

sinews fainted, my eyes closed, my brain hummed, with drowsiness. I

resisted, at first instinctively, then with a certain flurry of despair,

in the end successfully; if that were indeed success which enabled me to

scramble to my feet, to stumble home somnambulous, to cast myself at once

upon my bed, and sink at once into a dreamless stupor. When I awoke my

cold was gone. So I leave a matter that I do not understand.

Meanwhile my appetite for curiosities (not usually very keen) had been

strangely whetted by the sacred boxes. They were of pandanus wood,

oblong in shape, with an effect of pillaring along the sides like straw

work, lightly fringed with hair or fibre and standing on four legs. The

outside was neat as a toy; the inside a mystery I was resolved to

penetrate. But there was a lion in the path. I might not approach

Terutak’, since I had promised to buy nothing in the island; I dared not

have recourse to the king, for I had already received from him more gifts

than I knew how to repay. In this dilemma (the schooner being at last

returned) we hit on a device. Captain Reid came forward in my stead,

professed an unbridled passion for the boxes, and asked and obtained

leave to bargain for them with the wizard. That same afternoon the

captain and I made haste to the infirmary, entered the enclosure, raised

the mat, and had begun to examine the boxes at our leisure, when

Terutak’s wife bounced out of one of the nigh houses, fell upon us, swept

up the treasures, and was gone. There was never a more absolute

surprise. She came, she took, she vanished, we had not a guess whither;

and we remained, with foolish looks and laughter on the empty field.

Such was the fit prologue of our memorable bargaining.

Presently Terutak’ came, bringing Tamaiti along with him, both smiling;

and we four squatted without the rail. In the three maniap’s of the

infirmary a certain audience was gathered: the family of a sick child

under treatment, the king’s sister playing cards, a pretty girl, who

swore I was the image of her father; in all perhaps a score. Terutak’s

wife had returned (even as she had vanished) unseen, and now sat,

breathless and watchful, by her husband’s side. Perhaps some rumour of

our quest had gone abroad, or perhaps we had given the alert by our

unseemly freedom: certain, at least, that in the faces of all present,

expectation and alarm were mingled.

Captain Reid announced, without preface or disguise, that I was come to

purchase; Terutak’, with sudden gravity, refused to sell. He was

pressed; he persisted. It was explained we only wanted one: no matter,

two were necessary for the healing of the sick. He was rallied, he was

reasoned with: in vain. He sat there, serious and still, and refused.

All this was only a preliminary skirmish; hitherto no sum of money had

been mentioned; but now the captain brought his great guns to bear. He

named a pound, then two, then three. Out of the maniap’s one person

after another came to join the group, some with mere excitement, others

with consternation in their faces. The pretty girl crept to my side; it

was then that—surely with the most artless flattery—she informed me of my

likeness to her father. Tamaiti the infidel sat with hanging head and

every mark of dejection. Terutak’ streamed with sweat, his eye was

glazed, his face wore a painful rictus, his chest heaved like that of one

spent with running. The man must have been by nature covetous; and I

doubt if ever I saw moral agony more tragically displayed. His wife by

his side passionately encouraged his resistance.

And now came the charge of the old guard. The captain, making a skip,

named the surprising figure of five pounds. At the word the maniap’s

were emptied. The king’s sister flung down her cards and came to the

front to listen, a cloud on her brow. The pretty girl beat her breast

and cried with wearisome iteration that if the box were hers I should

have it. Terutak’s wife was beside herself with pious fear, her face

discomposed, her voice (which scarce ceased from warning and

encouragement) shrill as a whistle. Even Terutak’ lost that image-like

immobility which he had hitherto maintained. He rocked on his mat, threw

up his closed knees alternately, and struck himself on the breast after

the manner of dancers. But he came gold out of the furnace; and with

what voice was left him continued to reject the bribe.

And now came a timely interjection. ‘Money will not heal the sick,’

observed the king’s sister sententiously; and as soon as I heard the

remark translated my eyes were unsealed, and I began to blush for my

employment. Here was a sick child, and I sought, in the view of its

parents, to remove the medicine-box. Here was the priest of a religion,

and I (a heathen millionaire) was corrupting him to sacrilege. Here was

a greedy man, torn in twain betwixt greed and conscience; and I sat by

and relished, and lustfully renewed his torments. _Ave_, _Cæsar_!

Smothered in a corner, dormant but not dead, we have all the one touch of

nature: an infant passion for the sand and blood of the arena. So I

brought to an end my first and last experience of the joys of the

millionaire, and departed amid silent awe. Nowhere else can I expect to

stir the depths of human nature by an offer of five pounds; nowhere else,

even at the expense of millions, could I hope to see the evil of riches

stand so legibly exposed. Of all the bystanders, none but the king’s

sister retained any memory of the gravity and danger of the thing in

hand. Their eyes glowed, the girl beat her breast, in senseless animal

excitement. Nothing was offered them; they stood neither to gain nor to

lose; at the mere name and wind of these great sums Satan possessed them.

From this singular interview I went straight to the palace; found the

king; confessed what I had been doing; begged him, in my name, to

compliment Terutak’ on his virtue, and to have a similar box made for me

against the return of the schooner. Tembinok’, Rubam, and one of the

Daily Papers—him we used to call ‘the Facetiæ Column’—laboured for a

while of some idea, which was at last intelligibly delivered. They

feared I thought the box would cure me; whereas, without the wizard, it

was useless; and when I was threatened with another cold I should do

better to rely on pain-killer. I explained I merely wished to keep it in

my ‘outch’ as a thing made in Apemama and these honest men were much

relieved.

Late the same evening, my wife, crossing the isle to windward, was aware

of singing in the bush. Nothing is more common in that hour and place

than the jubilant carol of the toddy-cutter, swinging high overhead,

beholding below him the narrow ribbon of the isle, the surrounding field

of ocean, and the fires of the sunset. But this was of a graver

character, and seemed to proceed from the ground-level. Advancing a

little in the thicket, Mrs. Stevenson saw a clear space, a fine mat

spread in the midst, and on the mat a wreath of white flowers and one of

the devil-work boxes. A woman—whom we guess to have been Mrs.

Terutak’—sat in front, now drooping over the box like a mother over a

cradle, now lifting her face and directing her song to heaven. A passing

toddy-cutter told my wife that she was praying. Probably she did not so

much pray as deprecate; and perhaps even the ceremony was one of

disenchantment. For the box was already doomed; it was to pass from its

green medicine-tree, reverend precinct, and devout attendants; to be

handled by the profane; to cross three seas; to come to land under the

foolscap of St. Paul’s; to be domesticated within the hail of Lillie

Bridge; there to be dusted by the British housemaid, and to take perhaps

the roar of London for the voice of the outer sea along the reef. Before

even we had finished dinner Chench had begun his journey, and one of the

newspapers had already placed the box upon my table as the gift of

Tembinok’.

I made haste to the palace, thanked the king, but offered to restore the

box, for I could not bear that the sick of the island should be made to

suffer. I was amazed by his reply. Terutak’, it appeared, had still

three or four in reserve against an accident; and his reluctance, and the

dread painted at first on every face, was not in the least occasioned by

the prospect of medical destitution, but by the immediate divinity of

Chench. How much more did I respect the king’s command, which had been

able to extort in a moment and for nothing a sacrilegious favour that I

had in vain solicited with millions! But now I had a difficult task in

front of me; it was not in my view that Terutak’ should suffer by his

virtue; and I must persuade the king to share my opinion, to let me

enrich one of his subjects, and (what was yet more delicate) to pay for

my present. Nothing shows the king in a more becoming light than the

fact that I succeeded. He demurred at the principle; he exclaimed, when

he heard it, at the sum. ‘Plenty money!’ cried he, with contemptuous

displeasure. But his resistance was never serious; and when he had blown

off his ill-humour—‘A’ right,’ said he. ‘You give him. Mo’ betta.’

Armed with this permission, I made straight for the infirmary. The night

was now come, cool, dark, and starry. On a mat hard by a clear fire of

wood and coco shell, Terutak’ lay beside his wife. Both were smiling;

the agony was over, the king’s command had reconciled (I must suppose)

their agitating scruples; and I was bidden to sit by them and share the

circulating pipe. I was a little moved myself when I placed five gold

sovereigns in the wizard’s hand; but there was no sign of emotion in

Terutak’ as he returned them, pointed to the palace, and named Tembinok’.

It was a changed scene when I had managed to explain. Terutak’, long,

dour Scots fisherman as he was, expressed his satisfaction within bounds;

but the wife beamed; and there was an old gentleman present—her father, I

suppose—who seemed nigh translated. His eyes stood out of his head;

‘_Kaupoi_, _Kaupoi_—rich, rich!’ ran on his lips like a refrain; and he

could not meet my eye but what he gurgled into foolish laughter.

I might now go home, leaving that fire-lit family party gloating over

their new millions, and consider my strange day. I had tried and

rewarded the virtue of Terutak’. I had played the millionaire, had

behaved abominably, and then in some degree repaired my thoughtlessness.

And now I had my box, and could open it and look within. It contained a

miniature sleeping-mat and a white shell. Tamaiti, interrogated next day

as to the shell, explained it was not exactly Chench, but a cell, or

body, which he would at times inhabit. Asked why there was a

sleeping-mat, he retorted indignantly, ‘Why have you mats?’ And this was

the sceptical Tamaiti! But island scepticism is never deeper than the

lips.

CHAPTER VII—THE KING OF APEMAMA

Thus all things on the island, even the priests of the gods, obey the

word of Tembinok’. He can give and take, and slay, and allay the

scruples of the conscientious, and do all things (apparently) but

interfere in the cookery of a turtle. ‘I got power’ is his favourite

word; it interlards his conversation; the thought haunts him and is ever

fresh; and when be has asked and meditates of foreign countries, he looks

up with a smile and reminds you, ‘_I_ got _Power_.’ Nor is his delight

only in the possession, but in the exercise. He rejoices in the crooked

and violent paths of kingship like a strong man to run a race, or like an

artist in his art. To feel, to use his power, to embellish his island

and the picture of the island life after a private ideal, to milk the

island vigorously, to extend his singular museum—these employ

delightfully the sum of his abilities. I never saw a man more patently

in the right trade.

It would be natural to suppose this monarchy inherited intact through

generations. And so far from that, it is a thing of yesterday. I was

already a boy at school while Apemama was yet republican, ruled by a

noisy council of Old Men, and torn with incurable feuds. And Tembinok’

is no Bourbon; rather the son of a Napoleon. Of course he is well-born.

No man need aspire high in the isles of the Pacific unless his pedigree

be long and in the upper regions mythical. And our king counts

cousinship with most of the high families in the archipelago, and traces

his descent to a shark and a heroic woman. Directed by an oracle, she

swam beyond sight of land to meet her revolting paramour, and received at

sea the seed of a predestined family. ‘I think lie,’ is the king’s

emphatic commentary; yet he is proud of the legend. From this

illustrious beginning the fortunes of the race must have declined; and

Teñkoruti, the grandfather of Tembinok’, was the chief of a village at

the north end of the island. Kuria and Aranuka were yet independent;

Apemama itself the arena of devastating feuds. Through this perturbed

period of history the figure of Teñkoruti stalks memorable. In war he

was swift and bloody; several towns fell to his spear, and the

inhabitants were butchered to a man. In civil life this arrogance was

unheard of. When the council of Old Men was summoned, he went to the

Speak House, delivered his mind, and left without waiting to be answered.

Wisdom had spoken: let others opine according to their folly. He was

feared and hated, and this was his pleasure. He was no poet; he cared

not for arts or knowledge. ‘My gran’patha one thing savvy, savvy pight,’

observed the king. In some lull of their own disputes the Old Men of

Apemama adventured on the conquest of Apemama; and this unlicked Caius

Marcius was elected general of the united troops. Success attended him;

the islands were reduced, and Teñkoruti returned to his own government,

glorious and detested. He died about 1860, in the seventieth year of his

age and the full odour of unpopularity. He was tall and lean, says his

grandson, looked extremely old, and ‘walked all the same young man.’ The

same observer gave me a significant detail. The survivors of that rough

epoch were all defaced with spearmarks; there was none on the body of

this skilful fighter. ‘I see old man, no got a spear,’ said the king.

Teñkoruti left two sons, Tembaitake and Tembinatake. Tembaitake, our

king’s father, was short, middling stout, a poet, a good genealogist, and

something of a fighter; it seems he took himself seriously, and was

perhaps scarce conscious that he was in all things the creature and

nursling of his brother. There was no shadow of dispute between the

pair: the greater man filled with alacrity and content the second place;

held the breach in war, and all the portfolios in the time of peace; and,

when his brother rated him, listened in silence, looking on the ground.

Like Teñkoruti, he was tall and lean and a swift talker—a rare trait in

the islands. He possessed every accomplishment. He knew sorcery, he was

the best genealogist of his day, he was a poet, he could dance and make

canoes and armour; and the famous mast of Apemama, which ran one joint

higher than the mainmast of a full-rigged ship, was of his conception and

design. But these were avocations, and the man’s trade was war. ‘When

my uncle go make wa’, he laugh,’ said Tembinok’. He forbade the use of

field fortification, that protractor of native hostilities; his men must

fight in the open, and win or be beaten out of hand; his own activity

inspired his followers; and the swiftness of his blows beat down, in one

lifetime, the resistance of three islands. He made his brother

sovereign, he left his nephew absolute. ‘My uncle make all smooth,’ said

Tembinok’. ‘I mo’ king than my patha: I got power,’ he said, with

formidable relish.

Such is the portrait of the uncle drawn by the nephew. I can set beside

it another by a different artist, who has often—I may say

always—delighted me with his romantic taste in narrative, but not

always—and I may say not often—persuaded me of his exactitude. I have

already denied myself the use of so much excellent matter from the same

source, that I begin to think it time to reward good resolution; and his

account of Tembinatake agrees so well with the king’s, that it may very

well be (what I hope it is) the record of a fact, and not (what I

suspect) the pleasing exercise of an imagination more than sailorly. A.,

for so I had perhaps better call him, was walking up the island after

dusk, when he came on a lighted village of some size, was directed to the

chief’s house, and asked leave to rest and smoke a pipe. ‘You will sit

down, and smoke a pipe, and wash, and eat, and sleep,’ replied the chief,

‘and to-morrow you will go again.’ Food was brought, prayers were held

(for this was in the brief day of Christianity), and the chief himself

prayed with eloquence and seeming sincerity. All evening A. sat and

admired the man by the firelight. He was six feet high, lean, with the

appearance of many years, and an extraordinary air of breeding and

command. ‘He looked like a man who would kill you laughing,’ said A., in

singular echo of one of the king’s expressions. And again: ‘I had been

reading the Musketeer books, and he reminded me of Aramis.’ Such is the

portrait of Tembinatake, drawn by an expert romancer.

We had heard many tales of ‘my patha’; never a word of my uncle till two

days before we left. As the time approached for our departure Tembinok’

became greatly changed; a softer, a more melancholy, and, in particular,

a more confidential man appeared in his stead. To my wife he contrived

laboriously to explain that though he knew he must lose his father in the

course of nature, he had not minded nor realised it till the moment came;

and that now he was to lose us he repeated the experience. We showed

fireworks one evening on the terrace. It was a heavy business; the sense

of separation was in all our minds, and the talk languished. The king

was specially affected, sat disconsolate on his mat, and often sighed.

Of a sudden one of the wives stepped forth from a cluster, came and

kissed him in silence, and silently went again. It was just such a

caress as we might give to a disconsolate child, and the king received it

with a child’s simplicity. Presently after we said good-night and

withdrew; but Tembinok’ detained Mr. Osbourne, patting the mat by his

side and saying: ‘Sit down. I feel bad, I like talk.’ Osbourne sat down

by him. ‘You like some beer?’ said he; and one of the wives produced a

bottle. The king did not partake, but sat sighing and smoking a

meerschaum pipe. ‘I very sorry you go,’ he said at last. ‘Miss Stlevens

he good man, woman he good man, boy he good man; all good man. Woman he

smart all the same man. My woman’ (glancing towards his wives) ‘he good

woman, no very smart. I think Miss Stlevens he is chiep all the same

cap’n man-o-wa’. I think Miss Stlevens he rich man all the same me. All

go schoona. I very sorry. My patha he go, my uncle he go, my cutcheons

he go, Miss Stlevens he go: all go. You no see king cry before. King

all the same man: feel bad, he cry. I very sorry.’

In the morning it was the common topic in the village that the king had

wept. To me he said: ‘Last night I no can ’peak: too much here,’ laying

his hand upon his bosom. ‘Now you go away all the same my pamily. My

brothers, my uncle go away. All the same.’ This was said with a

dejection almost passionate. And it was the first time I had heard him

name his uncle, or indeed employ the word. The same day he sent me a

present of two corselets, made in the island fashion of plaited fibre,

heavy and strong. One had been worn by Teñkoruti, one by Tembaitake; and

the gift being gratefully received, he sent me, on the return of his

messengers, a third—that of Tembinatake. My curiosity was roused; I

begged for information as to the three wearers; and the king entered with

gusto into the details already given. Here was a strange thing, that he

should have talked so much of his family, and not once mentioned that

relative of whom he was plainly the most proud. Nay, more: he had

hitherto boasted of his father; thenceforth he had little to say of him;

and the qualities for which he had praised him in the past were now

attributed where they were due,—to the uncle. A confusion might be

natural enough among islanders, who call all the sons of their

grandfather by the common name of father. But this was not the case with

Tembinok’. Now the ice was broken the word uncle was perpetually in his

mouth; he who had been so ready to confound was now careful to

distinguish; and the father sank gradually into a self-complacent

ordinary man, while the uncle rose to his true stature as the hero and

founder of the race.

The more I heard and the more I considered, the more this mystery of

Tembinok’s behaviour puzzled and attracted me. And the explanation, when

it came, was one to strike the imagination of a dramatist. Tembinok’ had

two brothers. One, detected in private trading, was banished, then

forgiven, lives to this day in the island, and is the father of the

heir-apparent, Paul. The other fell beyond forgiveness. I have heard it

was a love-affair with one of the king’s wives, and the thing is highly

possible in that romantic archipelago. War was attempted to be levied;

but Tembinok’ was too swift for the rebels, and the guilty brother

escaped in a canoe. He did not go alone. Tembinatake had a hand in the

rebellion, and the man who had gained a kingdom for a weakling brother

was banished by that brother’s son. The fugitives came to shore in other

islands, but Tembinok’ remains to this day ignorant of their fate.

So far history. And now a moment for conjecture. Tembinok’ confused

habitually, not only the attributes and merits of his father and his

uncle, but their diverse personal appearance. Before he had even spoken,

or thought to speak, of Tembinatake, he had told me often of a tall, lean

father, skilled in war, and his own schoolmaster in genealogy and island

arts. How if both were fathers, one natural, one adoptive? How if the

heir of Tembaitake, like the heir of Tembinok’ himself, were not a son,

but an adopted nephew? How if the founder of the monarchy, while he

worked for his brother, worked at the same time for the child of his

loins? How if on the death of Tembaitake, the two stronger

natures, father and son, king and kingmaker, clashed, and Tembinok’, when

he drove out his uncle, drove out the author of his days? Here is at

least a tragedy four-square.

The king took us on board in his own gig, dressed for the occasion in the

naval uniform. He had little to say, he refused refreshments, shook us

briefly by the hand, and went ashore again. That night the palm-tops of

Apemama had dipped behind the sea, and the schooner sailed solitary under

the stars.

* * * * *

THE END.

* * * * *

BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES

{12} Where that word is used as a salutation I give that form.

{29} In English usually written ‘taboo’: ‘tapu’ is the correct Tahitian

form.—[ED.]

{86} The reference is to Maka, the Gawaiian missionary, at Butaritari in

the Gilberts.

{122} Elephantiasis.

{156} Arorai is in the Gilberts, Funafuti in the Ellice Islands.—ED.

{231} Gin and brandy.

{275} In the Gilbert group.

{279a} Copra: the dried kernel of the cocoa-nut, the chief article of

commerce throughout the Pacific Islands.

{279b} Houses.

{283} Suppose.