Michael’s store of gold-dust into the sea, scattering it like seed on
the ocean floor at a point where the tide ran swiftest. On his return,
with a cunning that seemed to him the inspiration of the devil, he got
out the lay brother’s spare hat and some of the clothes that were in
his chest, and left them, to tell their own tale, on the sandy beach.
At dawn he made his way back to the valley, still sustained, in spite
of all his fatigue, by a consuming fire of activity. He felt that the
sands of his own life were running out; that at any moment he might be
struck down himself by an unseen hand; that those strange, benumbing
premonitions in his brain bade him imperiously to close the chapter of
his crime. The horror of dying with his purpose unfulfilled spurred him
on to desperate exertions. He stumbled again and again on the path;
he had recurring fits of giddiness, when the sun seemed darkened to
his eyes, when for a space he half forgot his dreadful errand, and
wondered to find himself in the bush. He expected, when he reached the
brink of the cliff and began to descend the long, shaky ladders, to
feel some recrudescence of the emotions of the day before. But, to his
own surprise, he discovered in himself a callousness that set all such
qualms at defiance; he had exhausted, in the course of those last forty
hours, all his capacity for such paralysing susceptibilities; like some
soldier after the battle, he was sated with the horrors through which
he had passed, and had become altogether deadened to those about him.
Even when he stood on the very place from which Michael had made his
last appeal, and, looking in the air above, more than half expected
to see the protruding muzzle of another rifle, he felt, indeed, no
answering thrill or perturbation. The burden of his own fatigue seemed
of greater moment than this reliving of a tragedy; and the thought of
how much there was for him still to do moved him infinitely more.
At the foot of the ladder, shrunken and disordered, the corpse of
the dead brother lay tumbled in the grass like a sack. With his face
upturned to the sky, his sightless eyes, filming with corruption, his
tangled hair in a slime of blood and dirt, he opposed a ghastly barrier
to the old priest’s further progress; and seemed, even in death itself,
to continue to resist and defy him. But the father had passed the stage
when such a sight could turn him back, though he faltered for a moment
in the throes of an unconquerable disgust before daring at last to set
his foot across the body. Even when he did so, driving off the swarming
flies with both his hands, it was with an agony of precaution against
the least contact with that dead flesh.
Descending into the valley, he drew together all the tell-tale
evidences of their work below, the cradles, picks, and shovels, the
tins and boxes and ends of boards and scantlings, which had been
carried, at one time and another, into that secluded place, and buried
them in one of the deepest holes along the stream. He broke down the
dams that Michael had spent days in building, the stones that had
been piled aside to uncover the ground of some new pocket, the rough
shelters he had raised here and there against the sun; he obliterated
with his knife the marks that had been blazed upon the trees, and
searched everywhere, with a feverish pertinacity that took him again
and again over the same ground, for the least detail that he might have
overlooked.
Then, in a drip of sweat, and exhausted to such a pitch that he
wondered whether he should ever leave the valley alive, he took the
spade he had kept by him to the last, and mounted the bottom ladder.
As he went he cut away the lashings that bound it to the rock, and
from the top sent it headlong behind him. In the same manner, resting
painfully at each stopping-place, he detached the second ladder and
the third, arriving once more at the wide shelf where he had meant to
dig the grave. But his little strength suddenly forsook him; he was
overcome by a deadly nausea; he could hardly stand, much less dig. He
cast the spade into a thicket, and with unflinching resolution detached
the can of gold-dust from the dead man’s neck. That, at least, should
not remain to tell its tale, and he let the stuff dribble through his
fingers over the cliff.
To do more was impossible. His only thought now was to escape; to climb
up into the fresher air above; to save himself while there was yet
time. That unmoving, silent thing in the grass, obscurely dissolving
into decay, must perforce be left as it was, to bear its horrible
witness against him. The declining margin of his strength filled him
with a frenzy of fear that if he waited overlong he might wait for
ever. Between the two risks, the one of a possible detection, the other
of a doom unspeakable, he did not venture to pause. He felt, indeed,
an extraordinary sense of relief as he began, rung by rung, to rise
above the narrow ledge; and with relief a strange fatalism, in which it
seemed to him that everything had been predestined from the beginning
of the world. As he clung to the ladder, overcome at times by spells of
faintness which he knew might bring him to the point of letting go his
hold, he was always sustained by the thought that the issue lay with
destiny. He would live, or he would fall, as it had been written.
In this singular humour, in which all human responsibility for good or
evil seemed to count for nothing, the priest continued to mount the
steep face of the cliff. He rested at every second step; he struggled
against the recurring fits of giddiness that threatened to dash him
from his perch; he fought his way up inch by inch, wondering all the
time with a grim composure whether or not he was ever destined to reach
the top. When at last he drew himself into a coign of safety and sent
the great ladder crashing in his wake, when at last he put his foot
on the final goal and lay down beneath the trees, then it was that he
began to realise the perils to which he had so nearly succumbed, and to
quake with a thousand belated apprehensions.
For an hour he remained huddled in the grass, starting at every sound,
and altogether daunted by the thought of returning to the village. How
would he dare encounter those familiar faces, take up the threads of
the old familiar life, endure those awful days to come when the mystery
of Michael’s disappearance would be in every mouth? Could he trust
himself to simulate the concern he was bound to show, the surprise,
the alarm, the increasing astonishment and horror as the days passed
and there would be still no news of the missing man? Ah, could he
trust himself? Had he in him the power to live such a lie, to go as
usual about his duties, to hear the confessions of others when his own
tortured heart was so dark with guilt?
* * * * *
When, with faltering steps, he at length reached the village, it was
to find the whole place in a tumult. Every canoe was afloat; a couple
of whale-boats were scouring the outer bay; and the _malae_, usually
so deserted on a hot afternoon, was overrun by an excited throng. Had
he not, then, heard the news? It was thought that the Helper had been
drowned that morning, and the boats were now searching for his body!
Behold, here were the unfortunate’s clothes, found even as they were,
and by order of the chief left untouched for the priest himself to see;
here, too, was old Lefao, the shrill mother of Pa’a, who had seen the
young man go in to his death, and had heard his sinking cry. “Lefao,
make for his Excellency a repetition of that mournful sound, and show
how he cast up his arms as thou watchedst him from the beach.” The old
impostor was enjoying all the importance of having such a tale to tell,
and the father winced under a pang of shame as he listened to this
unexpected confederate.
It was afterwards thought that the sad affair must have unhinged Father
Studby’s mind, for he subsequently began to show symptoms of serious
mental disturbance, which culminated a few months later in his tragic
suicide. A marble pillar, the outcome of a public subscription in
Sydney, was raised to the memory of these two martyrs of the cross. In
faded letters, beneath their crumbling names, one can still spell out
the lies:
IN LIFE THEY WERE TOGETHER;
IN DEATH THEY WERE NOT DIVIDED.
AMATUA’S SAILOR
AMATUA’S SAILOR
Amatua was running down a beautifully shaded road as fast as his
little legs would carry him, and close in chase, like a hawk after a
sparrow, was a grizzled man-of-war’s-man with a switch. The road was
long and straight; on both sides it was bordered by prickly hedges
bright with limes, and as impenetrable as a tangle of barbed wire. At
every step the white man gained on the boy, until the latter could
hear the hoarse, angry breath of his pursuer. Amatua stopped short,
and before he could even so much as turn he found himself in a grip
of iron. Whish, whish, whish! dashed the switch on his bare back and
legs, keen and stinging like the bite of fire-ants. It took all the
little fellow’s manliness to keep him from bellowing aloud. The tears
sprang to his eyes,--even the son of a chief is human like the rest of
us,--but he would not cry.
“What’s all this?” rang out a voice, as a white man reined in his
horse beside them--a tall man in spectacles, who spoke with an air of
authority.
The sailor touched his hat. “Why, sir, you’d scarcely believe it,” he
said, “the fuss I’ve had with this young savage! First he tried to
lose me in the woods. I didn’t think nothing of that; but when he got
me into a river for a swim, and then made off with my clothes, and hid
’em under a tree--I might have been looking for ’em yet, me that must
be aboard my ship at twelve o’clock. Why, it might have cost me my
stripe! I tell you, I never dreamed of such a thing, for me and Am have
been friends ever since the first day I came ashore. He’s no better
than a treacherous little what-d’ye-call-’em!”
“The chief says thou hidst his clothes,” said the stranger, in the
native language. “He says thou triedst to lose him in the woods.”
“Ask him if I haven’t always been a good friend to him,” said the
sailor. “Ask him who gave him the knife with the lanyard, and who made
him the little spear to jug fish on the reef. Just you ask him that,
sir.”
“Your Highness,” said Amatua, in his own tongue, “Bill doesn’t
understand. I love Bill, and I don’t want him to drown. I want to save
Bill’s high-chief life.”
“And so thou hidst Bill’s clothes,” said the stranger. “That was a fine
way to help him!”
“Be not angry,” said Amatua. “Great is the wisdom of white chiefs in
innumerable things, but there are some little, common, worthless things
that they don’t understand at all.”
“Tell him I’m a leading seaman, sir,” went on Bill, who of course
understood not a word of what Amatua was saying, and whose red, tired
face still showed his indignation.
“The old women say that a great evil is about to befall us,” said
Amatua, gravely, entirely disregarding Bill. “Everybody is talking of
it, your Highness, even the wise minister from Malua College, Toalua,
whose wisdom is like that of Solomon. There’s to be a storm from the
north--a storm that will break the ships into ten thousand pieces, and
line the beach with dead. Last night I could not sleep for thinking
of Bill. Then I said to myself, ‘I will lose Bill for two days in the
woods, and then he won’t be drowned at all.’ But Bill is wise, and made
the sun guide him back to the right road. Then I made Bill bathe, and
tried to steal his clothes. But Bill looked and looked and looked, and
when he found them he thought I was a very bad boy.”
The stranger laughed, and translated all this long explanation to Bill.
“Goodness gracious!” said Bill. “Do you mean that the kid believes this
fool superstition, and was trying to save me from the wreck?”
“That’s it,” said the stranger. “I’ve known Amatua for a long time, and
I think he’s a pretty square boy.”
“Why, bless his little heart,” said the sailor, catching up the boy
in his arms, “I might have known he couldn’t mean no harm! I tell
you, we’ve been like father and son, me and Am has, up to this little
picnic. But just you say to him, sir, that, storm or no storm, Bill’s
place is the post of duty, and that he’d rather die there than live to
be disgraced.”
But the white man had other work to do than translating for Bill and
Amatua. He rode off and left them to trudge along on foot. Half an hour
later they reached the beach, and saw the ships-of-war tugging heavily
at their anchors. The weather looked dark and threatening, and a leaden
surf was pounding the outer reefs. It appeared no easy matter to get
Bill into the boat that was awaiting him, for she was full of men bound
for the ship, and difficult to manage in the ebb and sweep of the seas.
Bill’s face grew stern as he stared before him. He walked to the end of
the wharf, and took a long, hawk-like look to seaward, never heeding
the shaking woodwork nor the breakers that wet him to the knees. There
was something ominous to Amatua in the sight of those deep-rolling
ships and the piercing brightness of their ensigns and signal-flags.
He was troubled, too, to see Bill so reckless in wetting his beautiful
blue trousers and reducing his sliding feet, as the natives call shoes,
his lovely patent-leather, silk-laced _se’evae_, to a state of pulp.
He tried to draw him back, and pointed to the shoes as a receding
wave left them once more to view. But Bill only laughed,--not one of
his big hearty laughs, but the ghost of a laugh,--and a queer look
came into his blue eyes. He walked slowly back to the boat, which was
still rising and falling beside the wharf with its load of silent men.
Suddenly he ran his hand into his pocket, and almost before Amatua
could realise what it all meant, he felt Bill’s watch in his hand,
and a round heavy thing that was unmistakably a dollar, and something
soft and silken that could be nothing else than the sailor’s precious
handkerchief. A second later Bill was in the boat, the tiller under his
arm, while a dozen backs bent to drive him seaward. Amatua stood on
the wharf and cried. He forgot the watch and the dollar and the silk
handkerchief; he thought only of Bill,--his friend Bill,--the proud
chief who would rather die at his post than find a coward’s place on
shore. “Come back, Bill,” he cried, as he ran out to the end of the
wharf, never caring for the waves that were dashing higher and higher.
But the boat held on her course, dipping into the seas or rising like
a storm-bird on some cresting comber until she vanished at last behind
the towering _Trenton_.
Amatua did not sob for long. He was a practical boy, and knew that it
could not help Bill,--poor Bill!--who already had all the salt water
he cared about. So Amatua made his way back to land, and sought out a
quiet spot where he could look at his new treasure and calculate on the
most profitable way of spending his dollar. You could not say that the
dollar burned a hole in his pocket, for Amatua did not use pockets, and
his only clothes consisted of a little strip of very dingy cotton; but
he was just as anxious to spend it as an American boy with ten pockets.
First he looked at the watch. It was a lovely watch. It was none of
your puny watches such as white ladies wear, but a thumping big chief
of a watch, thick and heavy, with a tick like a missionary clock. It
was of shining silver, and the back of it was all engraved and carved
with ships and dolphins. Bill had shown it to him a hundred times when
they had strolled about the town, or had gone, hand in hand, in search
of many a pleasant adventure. It brought the tears to Amatua’s eyes
to recall it all, and he pushed the watch aside to have a look at the
handkerchief. This was another old friend. It was of the softest,
thickest silk, such as girls delight in, all red and green and blue and
yellow, like the colours of a rainbow.
There was nothing small about Bill. Even the dollar seemed bigger and
fatter than any Amatua had seen; but then it must be remembered that
dollars had seldom come his way. Oh, that dollar! How was he to spend
it so that it would reach as far as two dollars?--a financial problem
every one has had to grapple with at some time or another.
He was well up in the price of hardtack. The price fluctuated in
Apia--all the way from twelve for a quarter up to eighteen for a
quarter. Quality did not count; at any rate, Amatua was not one of
those boys who mind a little mustiness in their hardtack, or that
slight suspicion of rancid whale-oil which is a characteristic of the
cheaper article. Hardtack was hardtack, and eighteen were better than
twelve. Here was one quarter gone, and hardtack made way for soap.
Yes, he must have soap. Even yesterday old Lu’au had said: “War is a
terrible thing. It makes one’s heart shake like a little mouse in one’s
body. But lack of soap is worse than war. You can get used to war; but
who ever got used to going without soap?” Yes, there must be soap to
gladden old Lu’au. This meant another quarter.
As to the third purchase there could be no manner of doubt; some
_’ava_, the white, dry root which, pounded in water and strained by the
dexterous use of a wisp of fibre, supplies the Samoan for the lack of
every comfort. Oh, how the _’ava_ would rejoice his father in those
dismal woods, where he lay with the famishing army, bearing hunger,
cold, and misery with uncomplaining fortitude. And it should be none
of that dusty, spotted stuff that so many traders sell to unknowing
whites, or natives in a hurry, but the white _’ava_ from Vaea, which
grows the very finest in the South Seas. And the last quarter? How
was that to go? Was it to be a new _lava lava_, or a white singlet,
or two rusty cans of salmon, or some barrel beef? Amatua would have
dearly loved some marbles; but in the depressed state of the family’s
finances these were not to be thought of. The beef was the thing; the
strong, rank beef that comes in barrels; you could get a slab of it
for a quarter, and Latapie, the French trader, would give you a box of
matches besides, or a few fish-hooks, for every quarter you spent at
his store.
Having finished his calculations, Amatua started off to do his
shopping. Even in the short time he had spent in the corner of the
ruined church the sea had noticeably risen and was now thundering
along the beach, while on the reefs a gleaming spray hung above the
breakers like a mist. The stormy sky was splashed with ragged clouds
and streaked with flying scud. At their moorings the seven ships rolled
under until they seemed to drown the very muzzles of their guns; and
the inky vapour that oozed from their funnels, and the incessant shrill
shrieking of the boatswains’ whistles, all told a tale of brisk and
anxious preparation. “Oh, poor Bill!” thought Amatua, and looked away.
The wharf from which he had seen the last of his friend was already a
wreck, nothing showing of it but the jagged stumps as the seas rolled
back.
Two boys told him that a boat of Misi Moa’s had been smashed to pieces,
and that a big whaler from Lufilufi that pulled fifty oars had shared
the same fate. Knots of white traders stood gazing solemnly out to sea;
the provost guards from the ships were ransacking the town for the few
men they still missed, and they were told to hurry or their boats would
never live to carry them back. There was a general air of apprehension
and excitement; people were nailing up their windows and drawing in
their boats before the encroaching ocean; and the impressiveness
of the situation was not a little heightened by the heavy guard of
blue-jackets lined up before the German consulate, and the throngs of
Tamasese’s warriors that swarmed everywhere about, fierce of mien in
that unfriendly town, with their faces blackened for war, and their
hands encumbered with rifles and head-knives. But Amatua had no time
to think of such things; the signs of war were familiar to him, and
the armed and overbearing adversaries of his tribe and people were no
longer so terrible as they once had been.
The increasing roar of the sea and the wild sky that spoke of the
impending gale kept the thought of Bill close to his heart, and he went
about his business with none of the pleasure that the spending of
money once involved. Not that he forgot his prudence or his skill at
bargaining in the anxiety for Bill that tore his little heart. By dint
of walking and chaffering, he came off with twenty hardtack for his
first quarter; with the soap he extorted a package of starch; and after
he had sniffed beef all the way from Sogi to Vaiala,--a distance of two
miles,--he became the proprietor of a hunk at least six ounces heavier
than the ruling price allowed. The _’ava_ was of a superb quality, fit
for a king to drink.
It was late when Amatua got home and crept into the great beehive
of a house that had been the pride of his father’s heart. The girls
shouted as they saw him, and old Lu’au clapped her hands as her quick
eyes perceived the soap. His mother alone looked sad--his poor mother,
who used to be so gay and full of fun in that happy time before the
war. She had never been the same since her cousin, the divinity
student, had brought back her brother’s head from the battle-field of
Luatuanuu--that terrible battle-field where the best blood of Samoa was
poured out like water.
She looked anxiously at Amatua’s parcels, and motioned him to her side,
asking him in a low voice how and where he had got them.
“It was this way,” said Amatua. “Bill and I are brothers. What is
mine is Bill’s; what is Bill’s is mine. We are two, but in heart we
are one. That’s how I understand Bill, though he talks only the white
man’s stutter. ‘Amatua,’ he said, just before he got into the boat,--I
mean what he said in his heart, for there was not time for words,--‘we
are all of us in God’s high-chief hands this day; a storm is coming,
and my place is on my ship, where I shall live or be cast away, as God
wills. Take you this dollar and spend it with care for the comfort of
all our family; take my very valuable watch, that ticks louder than a
missionary clock, and my handkerchief of silk, the like of which there
is not in Samoa, and keep them for me. My life is God’s alone, but
these things belong to all of our family. Stand firm in the love of
God, and strengthen your heart to obey his high-chief will.’”
* * * * *
It was late when Amatua awoke. The house was empty save for old Lu’au,
who was kindling a fire on the hearth. A strange uproar filled the
air, the like of which Amatua had never heard before--the tramp of
multitudes as they rushed and shouted, deafening explosions, and the
shrill, high scream of the long-expected gale. Amatua leaped from his
mats, girded up his loin-cloth, and ran headlong into the night. It
was piercing cold, and he shivered like a leaf, but he took thought
of nothing. He ran for the beach, which lay at no great distance from
his father’s house, and was soon panting down the lane beside Mr.
Eldridge’s store. It was flaming with lights and filled with a buzzing
crowd of whites and natives; and on the front verandah there lay the
dripping body of a sailor with a towel over his upturned face. The
beach was jammed with people, and above the fury of the gale and the
roaring breakers which threatened to engulf the very town there rang
out the penetrating voices of the old war chiefs as they vociferated
their orders and formed up their men. Even as Amatua stood dazed and
almost crushed in the mob, there was a sudden roar, a rush of feet, and
a narrow lane opened to a dozen powerful men springing through with the
bodies of two sailors.
Amatua turned and fought his way seaward, boring through the crowd to
where the seas swept up to his ankles, and he could make out the lights
of the men-of-war. There was a ship on the reef; he could see the
stupendous tangle of her yards and rigging; every wave swept in some
of her perishing crew. The undertow ran out like a mill-race; living
men were tossed up the beach like corks, only to be sucked back again
to destruction. The Samoans were working with desperation to save the
seamen’s lives, and more than one daring rescuer was himself swept into
the breakers.
Amatua found himself beside a man who had just been relieved, and was
thunderstruck to find that it was no other than Oa, an old friend of
his, who had been in the forest with Mataafa.
“How do you happen here, Chief Oa?” shouted Amatua.
“The Tamaseses have retired on Mulinuu,” said Oa. “It is Mataafa’s
order that we come and save what lives we can.”
“Germans, too?” asked Amatua, doubtfully, never forgetful of his
father’s wound, or of his uncle who fell at Luatuanuu.
“We are not at war with God,” said the chief, sternly. “To-night there
is peace in every man’s heart.”