PORT AND STARBOARD LIGHTS
There are men whose lives develop in gradations of gentle growth. Decade
merges into decade by unstartling evolution. Variations of thread and
color run smoothly into the life-pattern. With me it has been otherwise.
The constantly recurring dream of the portal in the cliff was in a
fashion symbolical of my life. The dreamed-of rescue never came by
degrees, but by the abrupt opening of a door where there had been no
door before and by the sudden changing of worlds in a step across the
threshold. For me epoch had followed epoch with sudden breaks and few
connecting threads. One day I was a bored tourist lounging under the
striped awnings of Shepheard's Hotel. The next day found me on a
disreputable ocean tramp bound for the Ultima Thule. That voyage had
ended as suddenly as it began--with a quick curtain of unconsciousness
on a tableau of violence. Mansfield, too, dropped out of my life with
more instant suddenness that he had entered it. Now, presto! with the
sudden trickeries of a mountebank the sprite who played with my
destinies ushered in another unprefaced era. Across an invisible line I
stepped into days of luxury and prosperity.
It is told that the Inca god-kings breakfasted each morning on fruit
fresh plucked from growing-places a hundred miles away. In a horseless
land relays of runners, each dashing his appointed distance, saw to it
that a perishable dainty outlived its journey across a mountain range.
This gives a key to my mode of existence, for several months following,
though my luxury was of a lesser scale. In those months I mastered some
vocabulary--and in so crude a dialect vocabulary suffices. I lacked
fluency, of course, and had trouble with their consonant-locked
syllables and gutturals, but in a fashion I could talk. Day followed day
with a monotony of ease. I was no longer satisfied with the noisome
flesh of disgusting crabs, and gull eggs far advanced toward the
hatching. Delicacies of fish and flesh and hitherto unheard-of fruits
were served up to me to satiation. My tattered pajamas gave way to
garments of cocoa-fiber and feathered finery for ceremonial wear. The
necessity of entering into the lives of the natives brought repulsive
revelations which I endured as best I could since if I were to influence
them I must proceed with a nice diplomacy. My "fluttered folk and wild"
could not be hurriedly herded into new folds. Departing spirits, they
believed, followed the sun into the west. Gods visited mortals though
usually in invisible forms and were fond of the flesh of enemies slain
in battle. Fetich and superstition took a hundred phases. Their gusty
and savage minds were childishly susceptible and in their quickly roused
affections they were as demonstrative as collies. I began shortly to
look about for some simple miracle wherein the new goddess might
manifest herself as a deity of benefaction as well as of condign
punishment. The opportunity came in a fashion most unexpected and the
result hardly made for a reform of enlightenment. I was told that there
dwelt in stilt-supported villages of grass on the far side of the island
a warlike tribe, with whom my people were hostile.
My folk were bushmen and dreaded the sea, but these enemies were
salt-water men, who could with axe and adz scoop from the solid tree
outrigger canoes and who were terrible in their strength. Their king was
lord over several villages and about his house went (this they told me
with bated breath) a row of many round stones, and each stone stood for
an enemy slain and eaten. For many seasons there had been peace, but one
day there arrived at my plateau a delegation of grief-torn warriors. A
small village had been attacked and two heads taken to swell the row of
stones around the canoe house. They had now come to propitiate the deity
bearing fruits and exquisitely wrought spears. They besought the
forgiveness of my Gracious Lady, because they could offer no enemies'
flesh--the most god-satisfying of sacrifices. This omission, however,
they swore to remedy, if victory were permitted to hover over them in
fight. Among the most devout of the petitioners was Ra Tuiki, the aged
chief with white hair. They urged me to accompany them to their
principal village and lay the hand of blessing on their clubs and
spears.
Through dense tangles of palm and fern, mangrove and moss I was borne in
a rough hammock of fiber. Great soft-winged butterflies flapped across
the course of our march. Brilliant birds fluttered off, twittering and
screaming. I should have preferred walking, but my position prohibited
it. To condescend meant to become a mere man.
In their squalid villages of grass hovels I found filth and the
excitement of battle preparation. It was my first view of their home
life--and my last. I was taken to the house of a chief or sub-king, who
lay mortally hurt of an arrow wound, and who wished to have the blessing
of the highest priest that his spirit might take its course honorably,
and without curse, to the west. He lay on his mat dying, and was older
and more repulsive to the eye than Ra Tuiki. His ears had been
stretched by many huge ornaments, and the cartilage of his nose was torn
and ragged where the chances of battle had pulled out rings and spikes.
His eager eyes gazed up at me out of a face stiffened and set with
elephantiasis, and by his mat lay, unwrapped from their fiber coverings,
that they might comfort his passing spirit, two excellently preserved
negroid heads. I shuddered, but I laid my hand on his slanting
forehead--and I have seen men die with less dignity.
As night brought the closing in of choking jungle shadows, a half-dozen
red fires leaped up to drive their ribbons of red flare into the
blackness. They wavered fitfully and grotesquely upon twisting, leaping
bodies, which were paradoxically preparing for the ordeal of the morrow
by hideous orgies and dances and fatigue and nerve waste. But when the
first light of sunrise attacked the reek of dew that veiled the jungle,
while the dying fires still smouldered into gray ash and my throat
labored in stifling gasps of wet, they trailed out silently into the
bush. They were a long line of shadow shapes whose footfall made no
sound, and whose pigmy bodies melted into the tangle as impalpably as
the dissipating mists. My bearers carried me back to the shore. Two days
later their delegation came chattering in hysterical delight and
bringing in native triumph the head of the king who had three hundred
stones about his house.
About this time I instituted an important policy. By night I had signal
fires kept burning on every high place along the coast. I disingenuously
told my people that where a great shrine is, there must also be at
nightfall mighty banners of flame. They liked the idea. Despite their
hideous ferocity, they liked everything which might have appealed to the
imagination of a child. They liked music, they liked color. The greatest
privilege that their warriors could earn, was that of coming, to the
number of a dozen at a time, to my plateau by night and after due
reverence of squatting for hours on their haunches, while I coaxed from
the violin airs from opera or music hall.
On the point above us blazed one of our signal fires, and between the
reddened crevices of rock its flare struck down and yellowed our
gathering. The portrait would catch the light and leap from its shadow.
Over us were the stars. In a circle of silent absorption sat dark
immovable figures, with high lights gleaming, here and there, on the
mahogany of cheek-bone or forehead. Some fantastic painter might portray
these gatherings on canvas. He would need a bold brush. I find no words
for its description, but fantastic it was and strange. Under the fetich
of the starlight I would find myself drifting away into realms of
storied romance with the woman I loved and had not seen. Then my bow
would all unconsciously drift into love songs. I would find myself
singing--"Ever the wide world over, lass"--and oftentimes when my voice
rose to the strain I could fancy that She joined me in its singing. Her
voice sang in my brain definitely and with the sweetness of the beloved
and familiar. I had, of course, never heard a syllable from her lips,
and yet I was sure that could I hear her voice in life I should
instantly recognize it, though blindfolded. I thought of it as a richly
sweet contralto. It never for a moment occurred to me to fancy it might
be anything else.
Once for a week the sky ceased to smile, and grew black. The jungle was
lashed and stripped with hurricanes and on several occasions the earth
trembled. The sea pounded our porous coast and boiled into a tremendous
tide. I knew that if the cyclonic scope was general, ships were having
trouble, but in that thought lurked a vague hope. If any power were to
drive a vessel to my rescue it would be a power which carried sailors
out of their ordered courses. One night, some six months after the wreck
of the _Wastrel_, when the skies were serene again I found myself more
than ordinarily adrift on the tide of imagination. The march of the
stars showed that midnight had passed, and yet the natives sat
unhurried, and I, as unhurried as they, was still absorbed with the
violin.
My eyes traveled out to sea, absently and without reason. Suddenly the
bow stopped half-way across the strings with a rasping gasp of the
catgut. The instrument itself fell from my hands and I sat rigid and
staring like a man suddenly stricken. The other eyes followed mine and
also remained riveted. Leagues away over the phosphorescent waste of
water, but clear and unblinking, glowed the green spot of a ship's
starboard light. I tried to speak, but for the moment my grasp on their
dialect slipped from me and left me dumb. I was trembling with
heart-bursting excitement, and at sight of my emotion they began to stir
uneasily with a threat of panic.
As suddenly as it had left me my self-possession returned. With a
sweeping gesture I pointed to the myriad stars that gemmed the heavens
and told them that one of these had come down to the sea, bringing other
demi-gods like myself. I adjured them to build up the fires of welcome
until the island might seem a mountain of flame. Their strongest men
must feed, as never fires had before been fed, and all others must go to
their huts and await the morrow.
Alone on my plateau I saw the fires leap up in a coast-wise line of
beacons that dyed the night vermilion. The tiny point of seaward green
was crawling snail-like on the sea and at last my gaze was rewarded by a
slender flowering spray of rocket fire, followed by another and
another. Then the point of light ceased crawling and stood still. I let
my head fall forward in my palms and my breath came in spasmodic gasps.
But as I raised my eyes they fell on the smiling lips of the portrait.
It seemed to me that Her lips and eyes, still gracious, even
congratulatory, held a touch of wistful sadness which had not been there
before. They seemed such lips and eyes as say, "_Bon voyage_ and
farewell."
The glow of wine-like exultation died in my arteries and a chill settled
on my heart. There, in the world of tangible things and unrelenting
facts, what room would there be for such a companionship? Was this
strongest love of my life to melt into nothing now that I no longer
needed its support? Was it a dream? If so it was a dream from which I
should awake to an empty life. No! I would set out to find her in the
flesh. I halted my reflections with a start. And when I found her--what?
I sat there in the midst of silences, and the sweep of essential things.
About me lay leagues of sea, miles of rock, an infinity of sky. They
brooded gigantically over me and whispered that there are mysterious
influences greater than man's cold facts. Man's thought became only a
fluttering stir in a center of protoplasm. I was as near to the
beginnings of things as to the present. It was as easy to believe in the
love of souls that had not met as in other matters.
"No--no!" I cried out, bending before the face, "Whatever it be, there
are loves great enough to burn into miracles. This is not the first time
I have loved you--nor the last. Through aeons of reincarnation a love
like this runs on." I paused awhile, then added, with an effort to
smile. "Don't you remember even one or two former lives, dear?
"'... happy we lived and happy we loved
And happy at last we died;
And deep in the rift of a Caradoc drift
We slumbered side by side.
The world turned on in the lathe of time,
The hot sands heaved amain,
Till we caught our breath from the womb of death
And crept into light again.'"
My eyes were fixed so tensely on the portrait that it grew blurred.
Slowly it seemed to me to vanish and in its place stood a real and
living figure. I could give no detail of its dress or coloring, but it
was a figure of marvelous beauty, and it gazed into my eyes and shook
its head. Then it faded and I was looking again at the portrait. There
was a choke in my throat, and, falling to my knees, I kissed the printed
lips.