superiority. God had never made such a people; there was in them the
seed that would regenerate the world. There was nothing in which they
did not excel. He carried his reluctant hearer into the mazes of native
poetry; he repeated hundreds of lines in his resounding voice, blowing
out clouds of tobacco smoke between each stanza. Where, he asked, were
the whites who could match such things as these; who could bring the
tears to your eyes or convulse you with laughter at will? He would
repeat that last verse, if his companion did not mind; it described how
To, wandering on the sea-shore at dawn, met Tingalau returning from his
fishing, and led on to twenty stanzas more of what To said to Tingalau,
and Tingalau to To!
Michael lay back in his chair, scarce heeding the soft gibberish
that to him meant nothing. He was living in a tumult of his own
thoughts--thoughts in which Kanaka poetry had no part, though the
priest himself was sometimes present, but whether as a friend or foe
he could not yet determine; and while he wondered and conjectured the
old man himself seemed to disappear in his own smoke, until nothing
remained of him but a faint, passionate buzzing, like that of a
bumblebee in a field.
The next day Michael was up and gone before daybreak, and the little
service in the church proceeded for once without him. The father was
vexed at such remissness, and tolled the bell with pious indignation.
Was the young man no better than a heathen, thus to scamp God’s morning
hour--to attend so grossly to the fleshly needs and let the soul go
wanting? Depend upon it, he had not left without something to stay his
stomach, though God’s claim on him might wait. The priest turned a cold
face to his guest when the latter returned at dusk with the invariable
pigeons in his hand. But Michael was too tired to notice these altered
looks, nor did he seem concerned when at last his delinquency was
pointed out to him in no uncertain words. His church, he answered,
with mocking defiance, his church was in the woods, at the foot of a
towering banyan, or in some dim recess beside a stream; he knelt when
the impulse came to him, like some primitive monk wandering with God in
the wilds. The priest received this explanation with a dubious silence;
he was not at all satisfied with its truth, and yet scarcely knew what
to reply, feeling himself helpless and outwitted. He was almost glad
that the pigeons, still lying on the floor, gave him an obvious excuse
to leave the room.
“The chief has done well to-day,” he said to Ngalo, his servant.
The boy laughed.
“Excellency,” he said, “the Helper does not shoot these pigeons. He
buys them for sixpences from our people.”
“Impossible!” cried the old man. “Thou talkest like a delirious person.”
“Excellency,” said the boy, “saving thy presence, the Helper lies.
Behold in this pigeon the truth of what I say. Does the chief use
gravel in his gun, like a Samoan, to whom there is no lead?”
“Perhaps he does,” said the priest. “Such a thing had not occurred to
me.”
“Perhaps he does _not_,” exclaimed Ngalo, meaningly. “On Tuesday he
bought eight birds of my mother’s brother’s son; one was scented and
had to be thrown away.”
“Ngalo,” cried the priest, with a sudden change of tone, “is there a
woman in this hidden business? Is there gossip in the village?”
Ngalo shook his head.
“He is blameless of such an evil,” he said. “But the village talks
continually, and the people ask, ‘What does the Helper in the bush?’”
Father Studby breathed a great sigh of relief.
“He walks about,” he explained, “this way and that, according to the
command of the wise doctor in Nukualofa. The peace refreshes him and
makes him well. I, too, in my youth, used to wander in the mountains
and find consolation.”
Ngalo’s face showed that he had more to tell.
“The Helper does strange things,” he said. “He goes along, even as you
say, through the village and the outlying plantations like an uncaring
child, with no purpose in what it does. But when he reaches a certain
_ifi_-tree on the land we call Lefoa, behold, all is changed. He stops,
he looks about, he listens assiduously like a warrior on the outpost.
Then he puts his gun in a hidden place, and with it his shot-bottle and
his powder-bottle; then he girds up his dress to the knee, and runs
into the bush with the swiftness of a dog. When he returns, late in the
afternoon, it is with the same quickness until the tree is reached.
There he takes breath, composes himself, and with slow steps returns
seaward buying what pigeons he can on the road.”
“Well, and what else, Mr. Make-the-News?” demanded the father, as Ngalo
hesitated.
“There are those in the village who know nothing,” he went on, “mere
worthless heathen of no family, without consideration or land of
their own, living meanly like slaves on the bounty of others, who say
strenuously, with the persistency of barking dogs, that the Helper is
under the spell of Saumaiafe!”
The priest stamped his foot with anger. Was that superstition never
to die? Saumaiafe, the fabled witch, who, in the guise of a beautiful
woman, lured men to ruin in the bush! Saumaiafe, that intolerable
myth with which he had been combating for more than eighteen years!
Saumaiafe!
“Thou art a fool!” he cried. “You are all fools. Sometimes I feel as
though I had spent my life in vain. I, too, was a fool to ever think
you teachable.”
“Your Excellency is right,” said Ngalo. “It is an unendurable village
altogether, and ignorant beyond anything before conceived. Indeed, so
weak are men’s hearts in this matter of Saumaiafe and the Helper that
none now go into the bush, even those who are distressed for bamboo, or
for red clay with which to beautify their hair.”
The priest turned away without a word. He was almost inclined to laugh
as he went back to the other room, and to tell the lay brother the
commotion his actions had excited. But the sight of Michael’s face
somehow daunted him; those suspicious, bloodshot eyes suggested dangers
that he was at a loss to name. He remembered the hiding of the gun;
the strange deceit about the pigeons; he seemed to see the young man
kilting up his cassock and plunging furtively into the dark forest.
What did it all mean? he asked himself again and again. Mercy of God,
what did it mean?
That night he slept but little. He tossed on his hot bed, and whether
he lay on this side or on that, the same question dinned in his ears
without cessation. He was tortured by thoughts of hidden wickedness in
the bush; mysteries of evil in rocky defiles, in caves beside great
waterfalls. He rose and went out into the starlight, reproaching
himself for his foolishness; and even as he did so, Brother Michael’s
even breathing thrilled on his ears like a vindication. When all was
said, what was it that he feared for the young man? What could an
old priest fear but the one thing--a woman? And what woman, he asked
himself, however dissolute or abandoned, would venture alone into those
haunted woods? He could trust superstition to keep the wickedest from
such a course. Had he indeed become such an old Kanaka, that even he,
Father Studby, was to credit the existence of the witch, roving in her
naked beauty, a peril to white lay brothers? Perish the thought, so
degrading and childish! Assuredly it was not Saumaiafe he had to fear.
He got to bed again, and waited with open eyes for the approach of day.
As the cocks began to crow, he heard, with a sudden sinking of the
heart, the sound of the lay brother stirring in the next room; heard
him dress and go stealthily out, shaking the verandah under his heavy
tread.
Mercy of God, what did it all mean?
Morning after morning he asked himself the same question, as the
mysterious routine continued with unabated regularity; and the thought
of it haunted him persistently throughout the day as he tried to fix
his mind on other things. Evening after evening he saw the young man
return with his tired face, the pigeons so ambiguously obtained,
the gun that had never been fired. They would eat their silent meal
together, and then Michael would doze in his chair till bedtime. On
Sunday, the only day he remained at home, the lay brother resigned
himself to the unavoidable services of religion, going with the father
to mass, and assisting, by his presence at least, the cause to which
they had both pledged their lives. The few hours of his leisure were
spent at a little lock-fast desk; and the nature of this correspondence
became the second mystery of his singular and baffling life. Once,
looking up from his half-written page, he asked the priest how
many feet went to a mile. On another occasion he inquired as to the
soundings of the bay, and the most likely point for a steamship pier.
Steamship piers, and feet in miles! Miles of what? Whose steamships,
and what was there to bring them? Mercy of God, what did it all mean?
In the beginning, when Father Studby had first begun to suspect he knew
not what, to worry, to ask himself importunate questions, a way had
occurred to him--a way not altogether honourable nor dignified--which
could not fail to lead to some elucidation of the mystery. He had
put it behind him with decision, as unworthy of himself and his
reputation. What! act the spy and follow the young man? See with his
own eyes, from the vantage of some thick fern or bush, the nature of
that strange tryst? No; let him keep his honour, even if curiosity
went unsatisfied--even if that same curiosity were not wholly bad,
but inspired by a genuine regard for the young brother’s welfare, for
which, as the elder of the two, he was in some degree responsible. It
was only right to hold out your hand to a sinking man. But could the
lay brother be called a sinking man? Ah, if one could be sure of that,
how much might be pardoned!
One morning Father Studby could bear it no longer. As the boards
creaked in the next room, he, too, rose and dressed himself, trembling
as he did so with a sense of guilt. When the front door at length
closed on the lay brother, and his quick step was heard on the path
outside, Father Studby found himself on the verandah, looking after
him in the dawn. He would have followed; he even took a few steps down
the hill. But the folly of such a course was at once apparent. To
act the detective, one must one’s self remain undiscovered. Yet how
could he hope to elude observation and keep on Brother Michael’s heels
all through the open village and the wide _malae_? It was manifestly
impossible. In the forest it might be different; yes, in the forest,
crouching in the thick undergrowth, it would not be so hard to track a
man down.
The next night, which happened to be one of a moon almost full, the
father lay down ready dressed for a new adventure. A little after one
o’clock, he rose, crossed himself, and cautiously quitted the house,
making his way through the sleeping village to the path across the
swamp. This he followed, slipping on the sodden tree-trunks that served
as bridges, until he attained the farther region of cocoanut, banana,
and breadfruit plantations. These were in a choking tangle of weeds
and lianas; trees thirty feet in height bent under their weight of
parasites; others, still higher, were altogether overwhelmed and lost
to view in a wall of green; and in the forks of the giant breadfruits
orchids were sprouting like the scabs of some foul disease. Keeping
with difficulty on the half-obliterated track, the priest toiled slowly
and painfully through this belt of so-called cultivation, from which,
indeed, the village drew no considerable portion of its sustenance,
until at last he reached the welcome shelter of the forest. In contrast
to the zone through which he had just emerged, opened by man to the
furious energy of the sun, the forest floor itself, densely shaded from
this fecundating fire, was comparatively open and easy to penetrate.
It was dark, of course, dark as the inside of a well; and the father
stopped and lighted the lantern he carried in his hand. He peered about
him, blinded by the glare, and uncertain for the first time as to his
road. Yes, he had not been misguided; he could trust the instinct of
eighteen years to steer him through these labyrinths. Here, indeed, was
the _ifi_-tree of which Ngalo had told him, with its low, spreading
foliage that had so often concealed Michael’s gun. At the thought
of the lay brother his heart began to beat, and he crossed himself
repeatedly.
He paced off seven, eight, nine, ten yards from the trunk of the _ifi_;
and his feet at that distance carried him into a thicket of fern and
wild bananas. He blew out the lantern, and settled himself in the damp
ambush so providentially at hand, drawing the big leaves over his head
until he could no longer see the stars. From two o’clock--for such he
judged the hour when he first took up his station in the ferns--from
two o’clock till five he remained huddled in his green lair, praying
at intervals, and counting the interminable minutes to dawn. With the
first peep of day his impatience turned no less swiftly into dread.
What had tempted him to such madness, such dishonour? What if he should
be discovered in this shameful nest, and incontinently revealed to the
jeers and laughter of the man he thought to track down? What if the
lay brother, turning a little aside, should stumble over his cramped
and aching body? Explain? How could he explain? Mercy of God, what a
position for an old religious! He underwent spasms of panic; he was of
two minds whether or not to rise and run. But the sound of a footstep,
of a man’s hoarse breathing, of rustling branches and snapping twigs,
suddenly brought the heart to his mouth. The wild animal in him was
instantly on the defensive, and he flattened himself to the ground.
He lay like a log, not moving so much as an eyelash. He heard the
ring of metal as Michael apparently fumbled with his gun in the lower
branches of the _ifi_-tree. The shot-flask fell with a crash, and
the brother swore--yes, said “damn” audibly, and picked it up. Then
there was a silence; an eternity of suspense; then a faint crackling
as of parting boughs. The father peeped out, and saw a black figure
disappearing inland; an unmistakable black figure, bent and furtive,
speeding mysteriously through the gloom. He was up and following in
a second, half doubled together, like the man he pursued, eager as a
bloodhound with his nose to the spoor. The way, with few intermissions,
ran steadily uphill, up and up, faster and faster, until one’s side
seemed to crack and one’s heart to burst. Up and up, with a swing to
the right to avoid the splashing waterfalls of the Vaita’i; through
groves of _moso’oi_ that stifled the air with sweetness; under towering
_maalava_-trees that seemed to pierce the very sky.
Would he never stop?
But the lay brother, without once turning, without once stopping
either to rest or to look back, plunged forward with the certainty of
a man who knew his way blindfold. They were, now, pursued and pursuer,
on the high ridge between two river valleys; on the one hand was the
Vailoloa, a tributary of the Vaita’i, on the other the roaring Fuasou,
both racing tumultuously to the sea. The father wondered how Michael
meant to extricate himself from such a cul-de-sac, unless (and the
thought dashed his hopes to the ground) he intended to assail the
cloudy slopes of Mount Loamu itself and make a circuit of a dozen miles.
But his question no sooner suggested itself than it was answered. Of a
sudden the brother stopped on the edge of the Fuasou ravine, dropped
one leg over, then the other, and began to disappear hand over hand by
means of a hidden ladder. The priest stood where he was, transfixed
with astonishment. To hurry now seemed unwise. If he had come to
ladders he was not improbably near the goal itself. Patience! A breath
or two, a moment to cast one’s self full length on the ground and wipe
the acrid sweat from one’s eyes, and then, having given the lay brother
a minute’s start, to descend the precipice in his wake.
Father Studby approached the brink and looked over. Below him,
dropping, perhaps, sixteen feet, was a roughly made ladder of bamboo
which rested at the bottom on a rocky buttress of the cliff. On the
edge of that, again, with its splintered ends appearing through the
trampled undergrowth, was a continuing ladder, the second of a
series that dropped, one after another, into the deep defile. With
guarded steps, and after a prolonged deliberation, the priest let
himself slowly down ladder number one; down number two; down number
three, which ran so long and straight on the open face of the rock
that he faltered, turned dizzy, and had to close his eyes to recover
himself; down number four; down number five, at the base of which there
descended a zigzag path to the river. Following this unhesitatingly,
with the noise of rushing water in his ears, he emerged at last on a
basaltic shelf not six feet above the bed of the Fuasou. From this
coign of vantage he gazed about in vain for any sight of Michael,
until, on creeping to the very edge of the rock, he ventured to look
below. There, immediately beneath him, so close, indeed, that he might
have touched him with his hand, was the lay brother himself, busy
shovelling a bucket full of sand.
“Mercy of God!” exclaimed the priest below his breath; and even as he
did so, by that singular telepathy which so often confounds us, Michael
lifted his head and looked his pursuer squarely in the face. For an
appreciable instant the pair challenged each other’s eyes in silence;
the lay brother’s were kindling and fierce, the priest’s all abashed,
like those of a girl.
“Come down here,” said Michael, peremptorily. “I have something to tell
you.”
The priest obeyed, with the mien of a man descending to his execution.
“You old interloper,” cried Michael, with a mirthless laugh. “So you
are here at last, are you? I have seen it working in your silly old
head for weeks. I never looked up but I thought to see your bloody
boots!”
This unexpected address only served to add to the old man’s confusion.
He looked about him helplessly. Such unrestrained language seemed to
call for a sharp rebuke. He was shocked and frightened; as much so as
a woman insulted on the street; and yet the consciousness of his own
position--that of the detected spy--froze the words of correction on
his lips.
“Of course, you want to know what I have been doing here,” continued
Michael, in his mocking tone. “If you’ll look into that cradle you will
see quick enough. Why, man alive, don’t you know what it is?”
Amazed and ashamed, Father Studby touched the dirty sediment with his
finger.
“That’s gold!” cried the lay brother.
The priest hastily withdrew his hand and stared at his companion in
consternation.
Gold!
The priest’s head went round; his heart thumped in his breast,
with that word everything was forgotten--his shame, his anger, his
humiliation.
“Oh, Michael!” he broke out incoherently. “Oh, Michael!”
“I am taking out about twenty ounces a day,” said the lay brother.
“Some days I have touched forty.”
“Mercy of God!” cried the old man, hoarsely. “Mercy of God, show me how
you do it!”
Michael had another cradle ready to hand. It was the first he had made
he said, and nothing like so good as the other; but it would do for a
day or two until they made a new one--yes, it would do, though a lot
of the finer stuff was lost. You did it this way--so--just rocking it
like a baby’s cradle; the squares of blanket screened the gold, and you
washed them out afterwards in a pan. A place? Oh, anywhere along the
stream. It was all rotten with gold.
The priest hurried off, and was soon shaking frantically a hundred
yards below. He had not been gone an hour when he came hurrying back to
where his companion was still at work.
“Look at that!” he cried, holding out a trembling hand. “Oh, Michael,
what is it worth?”
“Three or four pounds, perhaps,” said the lay brother, indulgently.
“Mercy of God!” cried the priest, and he was off again at a run.
A little later he came back again. They were watched, he said; he was
certain they were watched. He could hardly speak for agitation. He had
heard noises behind him, again, and again, like the laughter of girls
in the bush.
But Michael only derided his fears. The bush was a creepy place, he
said, when you were all alone in it. He had felt the same way himself
when he first came, and was eternally peeping over his shoulder and
stopping his work to listen. One got used to it after a while; he
supposed it must be some kind of a bird.
All day long they worked together in the stream, stopping only at noon
for a bite of bread and a pipe. So engrossing was the occupation that
one seemed never to grow tired; the glittering reward was always a
fresh incentive to try one’s luck again. Five pounds, four pounds,
six pounds, three pounds! One lost all count, and the level of the
tobacco-tin in which the golden sand was poured rose and rose in
half-inch tides. Father Studby was almost angry when his companion
declared it was time to go. He was hurt at such a suggestion; he was
disappointed; he almost cried. Michael showed him his watch. Mercy of
God, it was past five o’clock! Then he remembered, for the first time,
his neglected duties: the morning service, the school, the woman who
lay dying in Nofo’s house; the hundred calls, great and small, that
kept his day so busy. He wondered at his own unconcern, at his own
apathy and selfishness. He felt that his contrition lacked the proper
sting; he asked himself whether, indeed, he cared. He was dizzy with
the thought of gold, of cradles and rich pockets, of those bright
specks that still stuck to his hands. He followed his companion in a
sort of dream, silent and triumphant, trying to fasten on himself a
remorse that would not come.
“I’ll never forget the first time I got into that valley,” said
Michael, on the long road home. “It was the hardest job of my life to
follow up that river. I climbed into places that would have scared a
sea-faring man; and I was no sooner up one than I would have to risk
my life shinning up another, hanging on to lianas and kicking for my
life. Tired? Why, I would regularly lie down and gasp--when there was
anything big enough to lie on; and the noise of those falls, those that
I was on top of, and those that were still to come--my word! it made me
sick to hear them. And when I at last got into the place, and sat down
by a big pool, and saw the black sand with the shrimps wriggling in it,
I simply said to myself, as quiet as that: ‘Here’s gold.’”
When they reached home Michael called loudly for brandy. The priest
himself was glad of a little after that day of days; placer-mining
was a new experience, even to that veteran of labour, and he felt
extraordinarily stiff and tired. He remembered with contrition how
often in the past he had grudged his companion the stimulant, and he
now blushed for those trivial economies with a hot sense of impatience.
Could he not take out in a day what they represented in a twelvemonth?
With a new-found sense of freedom, he helped himself again to the
bottle, and, for once in his frugal life, did not measure the allowance
with his thumb. Then Michael, with an elaborate pantomime of secrecy,
beckoned him into the other room, and, after shutting and bolting the
door, threw open the top of his trunk. Beneath the rumpled heap of
clothes there were a dozen tin cans of all shapes, some with their own
original covers, others capped with packing-paper like pots of jam.
The lay brother opened them one by one, lovingly, exultingly, his face
shining with satisfaction. Each was filled to the brim with coarse
gold-dust; each weighed down the hand like an ingot.
“Take one, father,” said Michael. “It is a little enough return for
all your kindness.”
The priest trembled and drew back.
“No, no!” he cried.
“As you like,” said Michael, with a tone of affected indifference. “You
will be doing as well yourself in a few days.”
“God help me!” exclaimed the priest, and buried his face in his hands.