CHAPTER XX

Transcribed from the 1908 Methuen edition by David Price, email

ccx074@pglaf.org

[Picture: Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson]

VAILIMA LETTERS

BEING CORRESPONDENCE

ADDRESSED BY

ROBERT LOUIS

STEVENSON

TO

SIDNEY COLVIN

NOVEMBER 1890 — OCTOBER 1894

* * * * *

LONDON

METHUEN AND CO.

36 ESSEX STREET

_Seventh Edition_

* * * * *

_First Published_ _November_ 1895

_Second Edition_ _December_ 1895

_Third Edition_ _February_ 1901

_Fourth Edition_ _October_ 1904

_Fifth Edition_ _March_ 1906

_Sixth Edition_ _October_ 1907

_Seventh Edition_ _December_ 1908

CONTENTS

PAGE

EDITORIAL NOTE xi

LETTER

I. November 1890 1

II. November 25—December 2, 1890 22

III. December 1890 33

IV. January 17, 1891 46

V. February 1891 51

VI. March 1891 54

VII. April 1891 65

VIII. April 29—May 19, 1891 70

IX. June 1891 77

X. September 1891 82

XI. September 28—October 13, 1891 94

XII. October 1891 102

XIII. November 25—December 7, 1891 110

XIV. December 1891—January 3, 1892 119

XV. January 31—February 1892 135

XVI. February—March 2, 1892 139

XVII. March 9—March 30, 1892 147

XVIII. May 1—May 27, 1892 158

XIX. May 29—June 1892 180

XX. July 2—July 12, 1892 202

XXI. August—September 13, 1892 205

XXII. September 15—October 8, 1892 221

XXIII. October 28—November 8, 1892 227

XXIV. December 1—December 5, 1892 236

XXV. January—January 30, 1893 239

XXVI. February 19—February 23, 1893 247

XXVII. February 1893 250

XXVIII. April—April 22, 1893 252

XXIX. April 25—May 23, 1893 260

XXX. May 29—June 15, 1893 270

XXXI. June 24—July 18, 1893 280

XXXII. August 1893 296

XXXIII. August 23—September 12, 1893 298

XXXIV. October 23—December 4, 1893 306

XXXV. December 1893 313

XXXVI. January 29, 1894 320

XXXVII. February 1894 322

XXXVIII. March 1894 324

XXXIX. May 18, 1894 330

XL. June 18, 1894 333

XLI. July 1894 336

XLII. August 7—August 13, 1894 340

XLIII. September 1894 343

XLIV. October 6, 1894 348

Epilogue 355

Appendix 360

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Portrait of R. L. Stevenson; etched by W. Strang _Frontispiece_

after a photograph by Falk of Sydney

Portrait of R. L. Stevenson on his Horse ‘Jack’ 119

Portrait of R. L. Stevenson with the Native Chief 320

Tui Malealiifano

EDITORIAL NOTE.

SO much of preface seems necessary to this volume as may justify its

publication and explain its origin. The writer was for many years my

closest friend. It was in the summer of 1873 that a lady, whose gracious

influence has helped to shape and encourage more than one distinguished

career, first awakened my interest in him and drew us together. He was

at that time a lad of twenty-two, with his powers not yet set nor his way

of life determined. But to know him was to recognise at once that here

was a young genius of whom great things might be expected. A slender,

boyish presence, with a graceful, somewhat fantastic bearing, and a

singular power and attraction in the eyes and smile, were the signs that

first impressed you; and the impression was quickly confirmed and

deepened by the charm of his talk, which was irresistibly sympathetic and

inspiring, and not less full of matter than of mirth. I have known no

man in whom the poet’s heart and imagination were combined with such a

brilliant strain of humour and such an unsleeping alertness and

adroitness of the critical intelligence. But it was only in conversation

that he could as yet do himself justice. His earliest efforts in

literature were of a very uneven and tentative quality. The reason

partly was that in mode of expression and choice of language, no less

than in the formation of opinion and the conduct of life, he was

impatient, even to excess, of the conventional, the accepted, and the

trite. His perceptions and emotions were acute and vivid in the extreme;

his judgments, whether founded on experience, reading, discussion, or

caprice (and a surprising amount of all these things had been crowded

into his youthful existence) were not less fresh and personal; while to

his ardent fancy the world was a theatre glowing with the lights and

bustling with the incidents of romance. To find for all he had to say

words of vital aptness and animation—to communicate as much as possible

of what he has somewhere called ‘the incommunicable thrill of things’—was

from the first his endeavour in literature, nay more, it was the main

passion of his life. The instrument that should serve his purpose could

not be forged in haste, still less could it be adopted at second hand or

ready-made; and he has himself narrated how long and toilsome was the

apprenticeship he served.

In those days, then, of Stevenson’s youth it was my good fortune to be of

use to him, partly by helping to soften parental opposition to his inborn

vocation for letters, partly by recommending him to editors (Mr.

Hamerton, Sir George Grove, and Mr. Leslie Stephen in succession), and a

little even by such technical hints as a classical training and five

years’ seniority enabled me to give. It belonged to the richness of his

nature to repay in all things much for little, _ἑκατομβοἶ ἐννεαβοιών_,

and from these early relations sprang both the affection, to me

inestimable, of which the following correspondence bears evidence, and

the habit, which it pleased him to maintain after he had become one of

the acknowledged masters of English letters, of confiding in and

consulting me about his work in progress. It was my business to find

fault; to ‘damn’ what I did not like; a duty which, as will be inferred

from the following pages, I was accustomed to discharge somewhat

unsparingly. But he was too manly a spirit to desire or to relish

flattery, and too true an artist to be content with doing less than his

best: he knew, moreover, in what rank of English writers I put him, and

for what audience, not of to-day, I would have him labour. _Tibi

Palinure_—so, in the last weeks of his life, he proposed to inscribe to

me a set of his collected works. Not Palinurus so much as Polonius may

perhaps—or so I sometimes suspect—have been really the character; but his

own amiable view of the matter has to be mentioned in order to account

for part of the tenor of the following correspondence.

As a letter-writer, Mr. Stevenson was punctilious in business matters

(herein putting some violence on his nature), indefatigable where there

was a service to be requited or a kindness done, and to strangers and

slight acquaintances ever courteous and attentive. I am not sure,

indeed, but that in this capacity it was the outer rather than the inner

circle of his correspondents who, speaking generally, had the best of

him. To his intimate friends he wrote charmingly indeed by fits, but

often, at least in early days, in a manner not a little trying and

tantalising. With these, his correspondence was apt to be a thing wholly

of moods. ‘Sordid facts,’ as he called them, were almost never

mentioned: date and place one could never infer except from the postmark.

He would exclaim over some predicament to the nature of which he gave no

clue whatever, or appeal for sympathy in circumstances impossible to

conjecture; or, starting in a key of vague poetry and sentiment, would

wind up (in a manner characteristic also of his talk) with a rhapsody of

hyperbolical slang. Or he would dilate on some new phase of his many

maladies with burlesque humour—with complaint never—but what had been the

nature of the attack you were left to wonder and guess in vain. During

the period of his Odyssey in the South Seas, from August 1888 until the

spring of 1890, the remoteness and inaccessibility of the scenes he

visited inevitably interrupted all correspondence for months together;

and when at long intervals a packet reached us, the facts and

circumstances of his wanderings were to be gathered from the admirable

letters of Mrs. Stevenson (who has this feminine accomplishment in

perfection) rather than from his own. But when later in the

last-mentioned year, 1890, he and his family were settled on their newly

bought property on the mountain behind Apia, to which he gave the name of

Vailima (five rivers), he for the first time, to my infinite

gratification, took to writing me long and regular monthly budgets as

full and particular as heart could wish; and this practice he maintained

until within a few weeks of his death.

It is these journal-letters from Samoa, covering with a few intervals the

period from November 1890 to October 1894, that are printed by themselves

in the present volume. They occupy a place, as has been indicated, quite

apart in his correspondence, and in any general selection from his

letters would fill a quite disproportionate space. Begun without a

thought of publicity, and simply to maintain our intimacy undiminished,

so far as might be, by separation, they assumed in the course of two or

three years a bulk so considerable, and contained so much of the matter

of his daily life and thoughts, that it by-and-by occurred to him, as may

be read on page 200, that ‘some kind of a book’ might be extracted out of

them after his death. It is this passage which has given me my warrant

for their publication, and at the same time has imposed on me no very

easy editorial task. In a correspondence so unreserved, the duty of

suppression and selection must needs be delicate. Belonging to the race

of Scott and Dumas, of the romantic narrators and creators, Stevenson

belonged no less to that of Montaigne and the literary egotists. The

word seems out of place, since of egotism in the sense of vanity or

selfishness he was of all men the most devoid; but he was nevertheless a

watchful and ever interested observer of the motions of his own mind. He

saw himself, as he saw everything else, (to borrow the words of Mr.

Andrew Lang) with the lucidity of genius, and loved to put himself on

terms of confidence with his readers; but of confidence kept always

within fit limits, and permitting no undue intrusion into his private

affairs and feelings. To maintain the same limits in the editing of an

intimate correspondence after his death would have been impossible. I

have tried to do my best under the circumstances; to suffer no feelings

to be hurt that could be spared, and only to lift the veil of family life

so far as under the conditions was unavoidable. Neither would it have

been possible from such a correspondence to expunge the record of those

trivialities which make up the chief part of life, even in surroundings

so romantic and unusual as Stevenson in these years had chosen for

himself. It belonged to the personal charm of the man that nothing ever

seemed commonplace or insignificant in his company; but in correspondence

this charm must needs to some extent evaporate.

Such as they remain, then, these letters will be found a varied record,

perfectly frank and familiar, of the writer’s every-day moods, thoughts,

and doings during his Samoan exile. They tell, with the zest and often

in the language of a man who remained to the last a boy in spirit, of the

pleasures and troubles of a planter founding his home in the virgin soil

of a tropical island; the pleasures of an invalid beginning after many

years to resume habits of outdoor life and exercise; the toils and

satisfactions, failures and successes, of a creative artist whose

invention was as fertile as his standards were high and his industry

unflinching. These divers characters have probably never been so united

in any man before. Something also they tell of the inward movements and

affections of one of the bravest and tenderest of human hearts. One part

of his life, it should be said, which his other letters will fully

reveal, finds little expression in these, namely the relations of cordial

and ungrudging kindness in which he stood towards the younger generation

of writers at home, including many personally unknown to him. Neither do

ordinary impressions of travel—impressions of the beauties of the tropics

and the captivating strangeness of the island people and their ways—fill

much space in them. These things were no longer new to the writer when

the correspondence began; they had been part of the element of his life

since the day, near two years before, when his yacht first anchored in

the Bay of Nukahiva, and his soul, to quote his own words, ‘went down

with these moorings whence no windlass may extract nor any diver fish it

up; and I, and some part of my ship’s company, were from that hour the

bondslaves of the isles of Vivien.’ In their stead we find, what to some

readers may be hardly so welcome, the observations of a close student of

native life, history, and manners, and some of the perplexities and

pre-occupations of an island politician.

The political allusions are seldom in the form of direct statement or

narrative. To understand them, the reader must bear in mind a few main

facts, which I shall state as briefly and plainly as possible. At the

date when Stevenson settled in Samoa, the government of the island had

lately been settled between the three powers interested, namely Germany,

England, and the United States, at the convention of Berlin. Under this

convention, Malietoa Laupepa, who had previously been deposed and

deported by the Germans in favour of a nominee of their own, was

reinstated as king, to the exclusion of his kinsman, the powerful and

popular Mataafa, whose titles might be held equally good and whose

abilities were certainly greater, but who was specially obnoxious to the

Germans owing to his resistance to them during the troubles of the

previous years. For a time the two kinsmen, Laupepa and Mataafa, lived

on amicable terms, but presently differences arose between them. Mataafa

had expected to occupy a position of influence in the government: finding

himself ignored, he withdrew to a camp a few miles outside the town of

Apia, where he lived in semi-royal state as a kind of passive rebel or

rival to the recognised king. In the meantime, in the course of the year

1891, the two white officials appointed under the Berlin Convention,

namely the Chief Justice, a Swedish gentleman named Cedarkrantz, and the

President of the Council, Baron Senfft von Pilsach, had come out to the

islands and entered on their duties. In Stevenson’s judgment these

gentlemen proved quite unequal to their task, an opinion which before

long came to be shared and acted on by the foreign offices of the three

powers under whom they were appointed. Stevenson was no abstracted

student or dreamer; the human interests and the human duties lying

immediately about him were ever the first in his eyes: and petty and

remote as these island concerns may appear to us, they were for him near

and urgent. A man of his eager nature and persuasive powers must

naturally acquire influence in any community in which he may be thrown,

and among the natives in especial, by kindness, justice, and a

sympathetic understanding of their ways and character, he soon came to

enjoy a singular degree of authority. His unauthorised intervention in

public matters may have been of a nature disconcerting to the official

mind, but his purposes were at all times those of a peacemaker. The

steady aim of his efforts was to bring about the withdrawal of the two

discredited white officials (against whom, it will be seen, he had no

personal animus whatever) and to procure a reconciliation between Laupepa

and Mataafa, so that the latter might exercise the share in the

government due to his character, titles, and following. The first part

of this policy commended itself after a time to the three powers and

their agents, and was carried out; the second not; and his friend Mataafa

was by-and-by attacked by the forces of Laupepa, beaten, and sent into

exile.

In reading the following pages it must be borne in mind that Mulinuu and

Malie, the places respectively of Laupepa’s and Mataafa’s residence, are

also used to signify their respective parties and followings. The reader

will have no difficulty in identifying the various personages composing

the family group whose names occur constantly in the correspondence,

namely the writer’s mother, his wife (‘Fanny’), his stepson, Mr. Lloyd

Osbourne (‘Lloyd’), his step-daughter and amanuensis, Mrs. Strong

(‘Belle’), and her young son (‘Austin’). Explanation of any other

matters seeming to require it is added in the footnotes.

S. C.

_August_ 1895.

CHAPTER I

_In the Mountain_, _Apia_, _Samoa_,

_Monday_, _November_ 2_nd_, 1890

MY DEAR COLVIN,—This is a hard and interesting and beautiful life that we

lead now. Our place is in a deep cleft of Vaea Mountain, some six

hundred feet above the sea, embowered in forest, which is our strangling

enemy, and which we combat with axes and dollars. I went crazy over

outdoor work, and had at last to confine myself to the house, or

literature must have gone by the board. _Nothing_ is so interesting as

weeding, clearing, and path-making; the oversight of labourers becomes a

disease; it is quite an effort not to drop into the farmer; and it does

make you feel so well. To come down covered with mud and drenched with

sweat and rain after some hours in the bush, change, rub down, and take a

chair in the verandah, is to taste a quiet conscience. And the strange

thing that I mark is this: If I go out and make sixpence, bossing my

labourers and plying the cutlass or the spade, idiot conscience applauds

me; if I sit in the house and make twenty pounds, idiot conscience wails

over my neglect and the day wasted. For near a fortnight I did not go

beyond the verandah; then I found my rush of work run out, and went down

for the night to Apia; put in Sunday afternoon with our consul, ‘a nice

young man,’ dined with my friend H. J. Moors in the evening, went to

church—no less—at the white and half-white church—I had never been

before, and was much interested; the woman I sat next _looked_ a

full-blood native, and it was in the prettiest and readiest English that

she sang the hymns; back to Moors’, where we yarned of the islands, being

both wide wanderers, till bed-time; bed, sleep, breakfast, horse saddled;

round to the mission, to get Mr. Clarke to be my interpreter; over with

him to the King’s, whom I have not called on since my return; received by

that mild old gentleman; have some interesting talk with him about Samoan

superstitions and my land—the scene of a great battle in his (Malietoa

Laupepa’s) youth—the place which we have cleared the platform of his

fort—the gulley of the stream full of dead bodies—the fight rolled off up

Vaea mountain-side; back with Clarke to the Mission; had a bit of lunch

and consulted over a queer point of missionary policy just arisen, about

our new Town Hall and the balls there—too long to go into, but a quaint

example of the intricate questions which spring up daily in the

missionary path.

Then off up the hill; Jack very fresh, the sun (close on noon) staring

hot, the breeze very strong and pleasant; the ineffable green country all

round—gorgeous little birds (I think they are humming birds, but they say

not) skirmishing in the wayside flowers. About a quarter way up I met a

native coming down with the trunk of a cocoa palm across his shoulder;

his brown breast glittering with sweat and oil: ‘Talofa’—‘Talofa,

alii—You see that white man? He speak for you.’ ‘White man he gone up

here?’—‘Ioe (Yes)’—‘Tofa, alii’—‘Tofa, soifua!’ I put on Jack up the

steep path, till he is all as white as shaving stick—Brown’s euxesis,

wish I had some—past Tanugamanono, a bush village—see into the houses as

I pass—they are open sheds scattered on a green—see the brown folk

sitting there, suckling kids, sleeping on their stiff wooden pillows—then

on through the wood path—and here I find the mysterious white man (poor

devil!) with his twenty years’ certificate of good behaviour as a

book-keeper, frozen out by the strikes in the colonies, come up here on a

chance, no work to be found, big hotel bill, no ship to leave in—and come

up to beg twenty dollars because he heard I was a Scotchman, offering to

leave his portmanteau in pledge. Settle this, and on again; and here my

house comes in view, and a war whoop fetches my wife and Henry (or

Simelé), our Samoan boy, on the front balcony; and I am home again, and

only sorry that I shall have to go down again to Apia this day week. I

could, and would, dwell here unmoved, but there are things to be attended

to.

Never say I don’t give you details and news. That is a picture of a

letter.

I have been hard at work since I came; three chapters of _The Wrecker_,

and since that, eight of the South Sea book, and, along and about and in

between, a hatful of verses. Some day I’ll send the verse to you, and

you’ll say if any of it is any good. I have got in a better vein with

the South Sea book, as I think you will see; I think these chapters will

do for the volume without much change. Those that I did in the _Janet

Nicoll_, under the most ungodly circumstances, I fear will want a lot of

suppling and lightening, but I hope to have your remarks in a month or

two upon that point. It seems a long while since I have heard from you.

I do hope you are well. I am wonderful, but tired from so much work;

’tis really immense what I have done; in the South Sea book I have fifty

pages copied fair, some of which has been four times, and all twice

written, certainly fifty pages of solid scriving inside a fortnight, but

I was at it by seven a.m. till lunch, and from two till four or five

every day; between whiles, verse and blowing on the flageolet; never

outside. If you could see this place! but I don’t want any one to see it

till my clearing is done, and my house built. It will be a home for

angels.

So far I wrote after my bit of dinner, some cold meat and bananas, on

arrival. Then out to see where Henry and some of the men were clearing

the garden; for it was plain there was to be no work to-day indoors, and

I must set in consequence to farmering. I stuck a good while on the way

up, for the path there is largely my own handiwork, and there were a lot

of sprouts and saplings and stones to be removed. Then I reached our

clearing just where the streams join in one; it had a fine autumn smell

of burning, the smoke blew in the woods, and the boys were pretty merry

and busy. Now I had a private design:—

[Picture: Map]

The Vaita’e I had explored pretty far up; not yet the other stream, the

Vaituliga (g=nasal n, as ng in sing); and up that, with my wood knife, I

set off alone. It is here quite dry; it went through endless woods;

about as broad as a Devonshire lane, here and there crossed by fallen

trees; huge trees overhead in the sun, dripping lianas and tufted with

orchids, tree ferns, ferns depending with air roots from the steep banks,

great arums—I had not skill enough to say if any of them were the edible

kind, one of our staples here!—hundreds of bananas—another staple—and

alas! I had skill enough to know all of these for the bad kind that

bears no fruit. My Henry moralised over this the other day; how hard it

was that the bad banana flourished wild, and the good must be weeded and

tended; and I had not the heart to tell him how fortunate they were here,

and how hungry were other lands by comparison. The ascent of this lovely

lane of my dry stream filled me with delight. I could not but be

reminded of old Mayne Reid, as I have been more than once since I came to

the tropics; and I thought, if Reid had been still living, I would have

written to tell him that, for, me, _it had come true_; and I thought,

forbye, that, if the great powers go on as they are going, and the Chief

Justice delays, it would come truer still; and the war-conch will sound

in the hills, and my home will be inclosed in camps, before the year is

ended. And all at once—mark you, how Mayne Reid is on the spot—a strange

thing happened. I saw a liana stretch across the bed of the brook about

breast-high, swung up my knife to sever it, and—behold, it was a wire!

On either hand it plunged into thick bush; to-morrow I shall see where it

goes and get a guess perhaps of what it means. To-day I know no more

than—there it is. A little higher the brook began to trickle, then to

fill. At last, as I meant to do some work upon the homeward trail, it

was time to turn. I did not return by the stream; knife in hand, as long

as my endurance lasted, I was to cut a path in the congested bush.

At first it went ill with me; I got badly stung as high as the elbows by

the stinging plant; I was nearly hung in a tough liana—a rotten trunk

giving way under my feet; it was deplorable bad business. And an axe—if

I dared swing one—would have been more to the purpose than my cutlass.

Of a sudden things began to go strangely easier; I found stumps, bushing

out again; my body began to wonder, then my mind; I raised my eyes and

looked ahead; and, by George, I was no longer pioneering, I had struck an

old track overgrown, and was restoring an old path. So I laboured till I

was in such a state that Carolina Wilhelmina Skeggs could scarce have

found a name for it. Thereon desisted; returned to the stream; made my

way down that stony track to the garden, where the smoke was still

hanging and the sun was still in the high tree-tops, and so home. Here,

fondly supposing my long day was over, I rubbed down; exquisite agony;

water spreads the poison of these weeds; I got it all over my hands, on

my chest, in my eyes, and presently, while eating an orange, _à la_

Raratonga, burned my lip and eye with orange juice. Now, all day, our

three small pigs had been adrift, to the mortal peril of our corn,

lettuce, onions, etc., and as I stood smarting on the back verandah,

behold the three piglings issuing from the wood just opposite. Instantly

I got together as many boys as I could—three, and got the pigs penned

against the rampart of the sty, till the others joined; whereupon we

formed a cordon, closed, captured the deserters, and dropped them,

squeaking amain, into their strengthened barracks where, please God, they

may now stay!

Perhaps you may suppose the day now over; you are not the head of a

plantation, my juvenile friend. Politics succeeded: Henry got adrift in

his English, Bene was too cowardly to tell me what he was after: result,

I have lost seven good labourers, and had to sit down and write to you to

keep my temper. Let me sketch my lads.—Henry—Henry has gone down to town

or I could not be writing to you—this were the hour of his English lesson

else, when he learns what he calls ‘long expessions’ or ‘your chief’s

language’ for the matter of an hour and a half—Henry is a chiefling from

Savaii; I once loathed, I now like and—pending fresh discoveries—have a

kind of respect for Henry. He does good work for us; goes among the

labourers, bossing and watching; helps Fanny; is civil, kindly,

thoughtful; _O si sic semper_! But will he be ‘his sometime self

throughout the year’? Anyway, he has deserved of us, and he must

disappoint me sharply ere I give him up.—Bene—or Peni-Ben, in plain

English—is supposed to be my ganger; the Lord love him! God made a

truckling coward, there is his full history. He cannot tell me what he

wants; he dares not tell me what is wrong; he dares not transmit my

orders or translate my censures. And with all this, honest, sober,

industrious, miserably smiling over the miserable issue of his own

unmanliness.—Paul—a German—cook and steward—a glutton of work—a splendid

fellow; drawbacks, three: (1) no cook; (2) an inveterate bungler; a man

with twenty thumbs, continually falling in the dishes, throwing out the

dinner, preserving the garbage; (3) a dr—, well, don’t let us say

that—but we daren’t let him go to town, and he—poor, good soul—is afraid

to be let go.—Lafaele (Raphael), a strong, dull, deprecatory man;

splendid with an axe, if watched; the better for a rowing, when he calls

me ‘Papa’ in the most wheedling tones; desperately afraid of ghosts, so

that he dare not walk alone up in the banana patch—see map. The rest are

changing labourers; and to-night, owing to the miserable cowardice of

Peni, who did not venture to tell me what the men wanted—and which was no

more than fair—all are gone—and my weeding in the article of being

finished! Pity the sorrows of a planter.

I am, Sir, yours, and be jowned to you, The Planter,

R. L. S.

* * * * *

_Tuesday_ 3_rd_

I begin to see the whole scheme of letter-writing; you sit down every day

and pour out an equable stream of twaddle.

This morning all my fears were fled, and all the trouble had fallen to

the lot of Peni himself, who deserved it; my field was full of weeders;

and I am again able to justify the ways of God. All morning I worked at

the South Seas, and finished the chapter I had stuck upon on Saturday.

Fanny, awfully hove-to with rheumatics and injuries received upon the

field of sport and glory, chasing pigs, was unable to go up and down

stairs, so she sat upon the back verandah, and my work was chequered by

her cries. ‘Paul, you take a spade to do that—dig a hole first. If you

do that, you’ll cut your foot off! Here, you boy, what you do there?

You no get work? You go find Simelé; he give you work. Peni, you tell

this boy he go find Simelé; suppose Simelé no give him work, you tell him

go ’way. I no want him here. That boy no good.’—_Peni_ (from the

distance in reassuring tones), ‘All right, sir!’—_Fanny_ (after a long

pause), ‘Peni, you tell that boy go find Simelé! I no want him stand

here all day. I no pay that boy. I see him all day. He no do

nothing.’—Luncheon, beef, soda-scones, fried bananas, pine-apple in

claret, coffee. Try to write a poem; no go. Play the flageolet. Then

sneakingly off to farmering and pioneering. Four gangs at work on our

place; a lively scene; axes crashing and smoke blowing; all the knives

are out. But I rob the garden party of one without a stock, and you

should see my hand—cut to ribbons. Now I want to do my path up the

Vaituliga single-handed, and I want it to burst on the public complete.

Hence, with devilish ingenuity, I begin it at different places; so that

if you stumble on one section, you may not even then suspect the fulness

of my labours. Accordingly, I started in a new place, below the wire,

and hoping to work up to it. It was perhaps lucky I had so bad a

cutlass, and my smarting hand bid me stay before I had got up to the

wire, but just in season, so that I was only the better of my activity,

not dead beat as yesterday.

A strange business it was, and infinitely solitary; away above, the sun

was in the high tree-tops; the lianas noosed and sought to hang me; the

saplings struggled, and came up with that sob of death that one gets to

know so well; great, soft, sappy trees fell at a lick of the cutlass,

little tough switches laughed at and dared my best endeavour. Soon,

toiling down in that pit of verdure, I heard blows on the far side, and

then laughter. I confess a chill settled on my heart.

Being so dead alone, in a place where by rights none should be beyond me,

I was aware, upon interrogation, if those blows had drawn nearer, I

should (of course quite unaffectedly) have executed a strategic movement

to the rear; and only the other day I was lamenting my insensibility to

superstition! Am I beginning to be sucked in? Shall I become a midnight

twitterer like my neighbours? At times I thought the blows were echoes;

at times I thought the laughter was from birds. For our birds are

strangely human in their calls. Vaea mountain about sundown sometimes

rings with shrill cries, like the hails of merry, scattered children. As

a matter of fact, I believe stealthy wood-cutters from Tanugamanono were

above me in the wood and answerable for the blows; as for the laughter, a

woman and two children had come and asked Fanny’s leave to go up

shrimp-fishing in the burn; beyond doubt, it was these I heard. Just at

the right time I returned; to wash down, change, and begin this snatch of

letter before dinner was ready, and to finish it afterwards, before Henry

has yet put in an appearance for his lesson in ‘long explessions.’

Dinner: stewed beef and potatoes, baked bananas, new loaf-bread hot from

the oven, pine-apple in claret. These are great days; we have been low

in the past; but now are we as belly-gods, enjoying all things.

* * * * *

_Wednesday_. (_Hist. Vailima resumed_.)

A gorgeous evening of after-glow in the great tree-tops and behind the

mountain, and full moon over the lowlands and the sea, inaugurated a

night of horrid cold. To you effete denizens of the so-called temperate

zone, it had seemed nothing; neither of us could sleep; we were up

seeking extra coverings, I know not at what hour—it was as bright as day.

The moon right over Vaea—near due west, the birds strangely silent, and

the wood of the house tingling with cold; I believe it must have been

60°! Consequence; Fanny has a headache and is wretched, and I could do

no work. (I am trying all round for a place to hold my pen; you will

hear why later on; this to explain penmanship.) I wrote two pages, very

bad, no movement, no life or interest; then I wrote a business letter;

then took to tootling on the flageolet, till glory should call me

farmering.

I took up at the fit time Lafaele and Mauga—Mauga, accent on the first,

is a mountain, I don’t know what Maugà means—mind what I told you of the

value of g—to the garden, and set them digging, then turned my attention

to the path. I could not go into my bush path for two reasons: 1st, sore

hands; 2nd, had on my trousers and good shoes. Lucky it was. Right in

the wild lime hedge which cuts athwart us just homeward of the garden, I

found a great bed of kuikui—sensitive plant—our deadliest enemy. A fool

brought it to this island in a pot, and used to lecture and

sentimentalise over the tender thing. The tender thing has now taken

charge of this island, and men fight it, with torn hands, for bread and

life. A singular, insidious thing, shrinking and biting like a weasel;

clutching by its roots as a limpet clutches to a rock. As I fought him,

I bettered some verses in my poem, the _Woodman_; the only thought I gave

to letters. Though the kuikui was thick, there was but a small patch of

it, and when I was done I attacked the wild lime, and had a hand-to-hand

skirmish with its spines and elastic suckers. All this time, close by,

in the cleared space of the garden, Lafaele and Maugà were digging.

Suddenly quoth Lafaele, ‘Somebody he sing out.’—‘Somebody he sing out?

All right. I go.’ And I went and found they had been whistling and

‘singing out’ for long, but the fold of the hill and the uncleared bush

shuts in the garden so that no one heard, and I was late for dinner, and

Fanny’s headache was cross; and when the meal was over, we had to cut up

a pineapple which was going bad, to make jelly of; and the next time you

have a handful of broken blood-blisters, apply pine-apple juice, and you

will give me news of it, and I request a specimen of your hand of write

five minutes after—the historic moment when I tackled this history. My

day so far.

Fanny was to have rested. Blessed Paul began making a duck-house; she

let him be; the duck-house fell down, and she had to set her hand to it.

He was then to make a drinking-place for the pigs; she let him be

again—he made a stair by which the pigs will probably escape this

evening, and she was near weeping. Impossible to blame the indefatigable

fellow; energy is too rare and goodwill too noble a thing to discourage;

but it’s trying when she wants a rest. Then she had to cook the dinner;

then, of course—like a fool and a woman—must wait dinner for me, and make

a flurry of herself. Her day so far. _Cetera adhuc desunt_.

* * * * *

_Friday—I think_.

I have been too tired to add to this chronicle, which will at any rate

give you some guess of our employment. All goes well; the kuikui—(think

of this mispronunciation having actually infected me to the extent of

misspelling! tuitui is the word by rights)—the tuitui is all out of the

paddock—a fenced park between the house and boundary; Peni’s men start

to-day on the road; the garden is part burned, part dug; and Henry, at

the head of a troop of underpaid assistants, is hard at work clearing.

The part clearing you will see from the map; from the house run down to

the stream side, up the stream nearly as high as the garden; then back to

the star which I have just added to the map.

My long, silent contests in the forest have had a strange effect on me.

The unconcealed vitality of these vegetables, their exuberant number and

strength, the attempts—I can use no other word—of lianas to enwrap and

capture the intruder, the awful silence, the knowledge that all my

efforts are only like the performance of an actor, the thing of a moment,

and the wood will silently and swiftly heal them up with fresh

effervescence; the cunning sense of the tuitui, suffering itself to be

touched with wind-swayed grasses and not minding—but let the grass be

moved by a man, and it shuts up; the whole silent battle, murder, and

slow death of the contending forest; weigh upon the imagination. My poem

the _Woodman_ stands; but I have taken refuge in a new story, which just

shot through me like a bullet in one of my moments of awe, alone in that

tragic jungle:—

_The High Woods of Ulufanua_.

1. A South Sea Bridal.

2. Under the Ban.

3. Savao and Faavao.

4. Cries in the High Wood.

5. Rumour full of Tongues.

6. The Hour of Peril.

7. The Day of Vengeance.

It is very strange, very extravagant, I daresay; but it’s varied, and

picturesque, and has a pretty love affair, and ends well. Ulufanua is a

lovely Samoan word, ulu=grove; fanua=land; grove-land—‘the tops of the

high trees.’ Savao, ‘sacred to the wood,’ and Faavao, ‘wood-ways,’ are

the names of two of the characters, Ulufanua the name of the supposed

island.

I am very tired, and rest off to-day from all but letters. Fanny is

quite done up; she could not sleep last night, something it seemed like

asthma—I trust not. I suppose Lloyd will be about, so you can give him

the benefit of this long scrawl. Never say that I _can’t_ write a

letter, say that I don’t.—Yours ever, my dearest fellow,

R. L. S.

* * * * *

_Later on Friday_.

The guid wife had bread to bake, and she baked it in a pan, O! But

between whiles she was down with me weeding sensitive in the paddock.

The men have but now passed over it; I was round in that very place to

see the weeding was done thoroughly, and already the reptile springs

behind our heels. Tuitui is a truly strange beast, and gives food for

thought. I am nearly sure—I cannot yet be quite, I mean to experiment,

when I am less on the hot chase of the beast—that, even at the instant he

shrivels up his leaves, he strikes his prickles downward so as to catch

the uprooting finger; instinctive, say the gabies; but so is man’s

impulse to strike out. One thing that takes and holds me is to see the

strange variation in the propagation of alarm among these rooted beasts;

at times it spreads to a radius (I speak by the guess of the eye) of five

or six inches; at times only one individual plant appears frightened at a

time. We tried how long it took one to recover; ’tis a sanguine

creature; it is all abroad again before (I guess again) two minutes. It

is odd how difficult in this world it is to be armed. The double armour

of this plant betrays it. In a thick tuft, where the leaves disappear, I

thrust in my hand, and the bite of the thorns betrays the topmost stem.

In the open again, and when I hesitate if it be clover, a touch on the

leaves, and its fine sense and retractile action betrays its identity at

once. Yet it has one gift incomparable. Rome had virtue and knowledge;

Rome perished. The sensitive plant has indigestible seeds—so they

say—and it will flourish for ever. I give my advice thus to a young

plant—have a strong root, a weak stem, and an indigestible seed; so you

will outlast the eternal city, and your progeny will clothe mountains,

and the irascible planter will blaspheme in vain. The weak point of

tuitui is that its stem is strong.

* * * * *

_Supplementary Page_.

Here beginneth the third lesson, which is not from the planter but from a

less estimable character, the writer of books.

I want you to understand about this South Sea Book. The job is immense;

I stagger under material. I have seen the first big _tache_. It was

necessary to see the smaller ones; the letters were at my hand for the

purpose, but I was not going to lose this experience; and, instead of

writing mere letters, have poured out a lot of stuff for the book. How

this works and fits, time is to show. But I believe, in time, I shall

get the whole thing in form. Now, up to date, that is all my design, and

I beg to warn you till we have the whole (or much) of the stuff together,

you can hardly judge—and I can hardly judge. Such a mass of stuff is to

be handled, if possible without repetition—so much foreign matter to be

introduced—if possible with perspicuity—and, as much as can be, a spirit

of narrative to be preserved. You will find that come stronger as I

proceed, and get the explanations worked through. Problems of style are

(as yet) dirt under my feet; my problem is architectural, creative—to get

this stuff jointed and moving. If I can do that, I will trouble you for

style; anybody might write it, and it would be splendid; well-engineered,

the masses right, the blooming thing travelling—twig?

This I wanted you to understand, for lots of the stuff sent home is, I

imagine, rot—and slovenly rot—and some of it pompous rot; and I want you

to understand it’s a _lay-in_.

Soon, if the tide of poeshie continues, I’ll send you a whole lot to

damn. You never said thank-you for the handsome tribute addressed to you

from Apemama; such is the gratitude of the world to the God-sent poick.

Well, well:—‘Vex not thou the poick’s mind, With thy coriaceous

ingratitude, The P. will be to your faults more than a little blind, And

yours is a far from handsome attitude.’ Having thus dropped into poetry

in a spirit of friendship, I have the honour to subscribe myself, Sir,

Your obedient humble servant,

SILAS WEGG.

I suppose by this you will have seen the lad—and his feet will have been

in the Monument—and his eyes beheld the face of George. Well!

There is much eloquence in a well!

I am, Sir

Yours

The Epigrammatist

[Picture: Robert Louis Stevenson written three times to form a triangle]

FINIS—EXPLICIT

CHAPTER II

_Vailima_, _Tuesday_, _November_ 25_th_, 1890.

MY DEAR COLVIN,—I wanted to go out bright and early to go on with my

survey. You never heard of that. The world has turned, and much water

run under bridges, since I stopped my diary. I have written six more

chapters of the book, all good I potently believe, and given up, as a

deception of the devil’s, the High Woods. I have been once down to Apia,

to a huge native feast at Seumanutafa’s, the chief of Apia. There was a

vast mass of food, crowds of people, the police charging among them with

whips, the whole in high good humour on both sides; infinite noise; and a

historic event—Mr. Clarke, the missionary, and his wife, assisted at a

native dance. On my return from this function, I found work had stopped;

no more South Seas in my belly. Well, Henry had cleared a great deal of

our bush on a contract, and it ought to be measured. I set myself to the

task with a tape-line; it seemed a dreary business; then I borrowed a

prismatic compass, and tackled the task afresh. I have no books; I had

not touched an instrument nor given a thought to the business since the

year of grace 1871; you can imagine with what interest I sat down

yesterday afternoon to reduce my observations; five triangles I had

taken; all five came right, to my ineffable joy. Our dinner—the lowest

we have ever been—consisted of _one avocado pear_ between Fanny and me, a

ship’s biscuit for the guidman, white bread for the Missis, and red wine

for the twa. No salt horse, even, in all Vailima! After dinner Henry

came, and I began to teach him decimals; you wouldn’t think I knew them

myself after so long desuetude!

I could not but wonder how Henry stands his evenings here; the Polynesian

loves gaiety—I feed him with decimals, the mariner’s compass,

derivations, grammar, and the like; delecting myself, after the manner of

my race, _moult tristement_. I suck my paws; I live for my dexterities

and by my accomplishments; even my clumsinesses are my joy—my woodcuts,

my stumbling on the pipe, this surveying even—and even weeding sensitive;

anything to do with the mind, with the eye, with the hand—with a part of

_me_; diversion flows in these ways for the dreary man. But gaiety is

what these children want; to sit in a crowd, tell stories and pass jests,

to hear one another laugh and scamper with the girls. It’s good fun,

too, I believe, but not for R. L. S., _ætat._ 40. Which I am now past

forty, Custodian, and not one penny the worse that I can see; as amusable

as ever; to be on board ship is reward enough for me; give me the wages

of going on—in a schooner! Only, if ever I were gay, which I

misremember, I am gay no more. And here is poor Henry passing his

evenings on my intellectual husks, which the professors masticated;

keeping the accounts of the estate—all wrong I have no doubt—I keep no

check, beyond a very rough one; marching in with a cloudy brow, and the

day-book under his arm; tackling decimals, coming with cases of

conscience—how would an English chief behave in such a case? etc.; and, I

am bound to say, on any glimmer of a jest, lapsing into native hilarity

as a tree straightens itself after the wind is by. The other night I

remembered my old friend—I believe yours also—Scholastikos, and

administered the crow and the anchor—they were quite fresh to Samoan ears

(this implies a very early severance)—and I thought the anchor would have

made away with my Simelè altogether.

Fanny’s time, in this interval, has been largely occupied in contending

publicly with wild swine. We have a black sow; we call her Jack

Sheppard; impossible to confine her—impossible also for her to be

confined! To my sure knowledge she has been in an interesting condition

for longer than any other sow in story; else she had long died the death;

as soon as she is brought to bed, she shall count her days. I suppose

that sow has cost us in days’ labour from thirty to fifty dollars; as

many as eight boys (at a dollar a day) have been twelve hours in chase of

her. Now it is supposed that Fanny has outwitted her; she grins behind

broad planks in what was once the cook-house. She is a wild pig; far

handsomer than any tame; and when she found the cook-house was too much

for her methods of evasion, she lay down on the floor and refused food

and drink for a whole Sunday. On Monday morning she relapsed, and now

eats and drinks like a little man. I am reminded of an incident. Two

Sundays ago, the sad word was brought that the sow was out again; this

time she had carried another in her flight. Moors and I and Fanny were

strolling up to the garden, and there by the waterside we saw the black

sow, looking guilty. It seemed to me beyond words; but Fanny’s _cri du

cœur_ was delicious: ‘G-r-r!’ she cried; ‘nobody loves you!’

I would I could tell you the moving story of our cart and cart-horses;

the latter are dapple-grey, about sixteen hands, and of enormous

substance; the former was a kind of red and green shandry-dan with a

driving bench; plainly unfit to carry lumber or to face our road.

(Remember that the last third of my road, about a mile, is all made out

of a bridle-track by my boys—and my dollars.) It was supposed a white

man had been found—an ex-German artilleryman—to drive this last; he

proved incapable and drunken; the gallant Henry, who had never driven

before, and knew nothing about horses—except the rats and weeds that

flourish on the islands—volunteered; Moors accepted, proposing to follow

and supervise: despatched his work and started after. No cart! he

hurried on up the road—no cart. Transfer the scene to Vailima, where on

a sudden to Fanny and me, the cart appears, apparently at a hard gallop,

some two hours before it was expected; Henry radiantly ruling chaos from

the bench. It stopped: it was long before we had time to remark that the

axle was twisted like the letter L. Our first care was the horses. There

they stood, black with sweat, the sweat raining from them—literally

raining—their heads down, their feet apart—and blood running thick from

the nostrils of the mare. We got out Fanny’s under-clothes—couldn’t find

anything else but our blankets—to rub them down, and in about half an

hour we had the blessed satisfaction to see one after the other take a

bite or two of grass. But it was a toucher; a little more and these

steeds would have been foundered.

* * * * *

_Monday_, 31_st_? _November_.

Near a week elapsed, and no journal. On Monday afternoon, Moors rode up

and I rode down with him, dined, and went over in the evening to the

American Consulate; present, Consul-General Sewall, Lieut. Parker and

Mrs. Parker, Lafarge the American decorator, Adams an American historian;

we talked late, and it was arranged I was to write up for Fanny, and we

should both dine on the morrow.

On the Friday, I was all forenoon in the Mission House, lunched at the

German Consulate, went on board the _Sperber_ (German war ship) in the

afternoon, called on my lawyer on my way out to American Consulate, and

talked till dinner time with Adams, whom I am supplying with

introductions and information for Tahiti and the Marquesas. Fanny

arrived a wreck, and had to lie down. The moon rose, one day past full,

and we dined in the verandah, a good dinner on the whole; talk with

Lafarge about art and the lovely dreams of art students. Remark by

Adams, which took me briskly home to the Monument—‘I only liked one

_young_ woman—and that was Mrs. Procter.’ Henry James would like that.

Back by moonlight in the consulate boat—Fanny being too tired to walk—to

Moors’s. Saturday, I left Fanny to rest, and was off early to the

Mission, where the politics are thrilling just now. The native pastors

(to every one’s surprise) have moved of themselves in the matter of the

native dances, desiring the restrictions to be removed, or rather to be

made dependent on the character of the dance. Clarke, who had feared

censure and all kinds of trouble, is, of course, rejoicing greatly. A

characteristic feature: the argument of the pastors was handed in in the

form of a fictitious narrative of the voyage of one Mr. Pye, an English

traveller, and his conversation with a chief; there are touches of satire

in this educational romance. Mr. Pye, for instance, admits that he knows

nothing about the Bible. At the Mission I was sought out by Henry in a

devil of an agitation; he has been made the victim of a forgery—a crime

hitherto unknown in Samoa. I had to go to Folau, the chief judge here,

in the matter. Folau had never heard of the offence, and begged to know

what was the punishment; there may be lively times in forgery ahead. It

seems the sort of crime to tickle a Polynesian. After lunch—you can see

what a busy three days I am describing—we set off to ride home. My Jack

was full of the devil of corn and too much grass, and no work. I had to

ride ahead and leave Fanny behind. He is a most gallant little rascal is

my Jack, and takes the whole way as hard as the rider pleases. Single

incident: half-way up, I find my boys upon the road and stop and talk

with Henry in his character of ganger, as long as Jack will suffer me.

Fanny drones in after; we make a show of eating—or I do—she goes to bed

about half-past six! I write some verses, read Irving’s _Washington_,

and follow about half-past eight. O, one thing more I did, in a

prophetic spirit. I had made sure Fanny was not fit to be left alone,

and wrote before turning in a letter to Chalmers, telling him I could not

meet him in Auckland at this time. By eleven at night, Fanny got me

wakened—she had tried twice in vain—and I found her very bad. Thence

till three, we laboured with mustard poultices, laudanum, soda and

ginger—Heavens! wasn’t it cold; the land breeze was as cold as a river;

the moon was glorious in the paddock, and the great boughs and the black

shadows of our trees were inconceivable. But it was a poor time.

Sunday morning found Fanny, of course, a complete wreck, and myself not

very brilliant. Paul had to go to Vailele _re_ cocoa-nuts; it was

doubtful if he could be back by dinner; never mind, said I, I’ll take

dinner when you return. Off set Paul. I did an hour’s work, and then

tackled the house work. I did it beautiful: the house was a picture, it

resplended of propriety. Presently Mr. Moors’ Andrew rode up; I heard

the doctor was at the Forest House and sent a note to him; and when he

came, I heard my wife telling him she had been in bed all day, and that

was why the house was so dirty! Was it grateful? Was it politic? Was

it TRUE?—Enough! In the interval, up marched little L. S., one of my

neighbours, all in his Sunday white linens; made a fine salute, and

demanded the key of the kitchen in German and English. And he cooked

dinner for us, like a little man, and had it on the table and the coffee

ready by the hour. Paul had arranged me this surprise. Some time later,

Paul returned himself with a fresh surprise on hand; he was almost sober;

nothing but a hazy eye distinguished him from Paul of the week days:

_vivat_!

On the evening I cannot dwell. All the horses got out of the paddock,

went across, and smashed my neighbour’s garden into a big hole. How

little the amateur conceives a farmer’s troubles. I went out at once

with a lantern, staked up a gap in the hedge, was kicked at by a chestnut

mare, who straightway took to the bush; and came back. A little after,

they had found another gap, and the crowd were all abroad again. What

has happened to our own garden nobody yet knows.

Fanny had a fair night, and we are both tolerable this morning, only the

yoke of correspondence lies on me heavy. I beg you will let this go on

to my mother. I got such a good start in your letter, that I kept on at

it, and I have neither time nor energy for more.

Yours ever,

R. L. S.

* * * * *

_Something new_.

I was called from my letters by the voice of Mr. —, who had just come up

with a load of wood, roaring, ‘Henry! Henry! Bring six boys!’ I saw

there was something wrong, and ran out. The cart, half unloaded, had

upset with the mare in the shafts; she was all cramped together and all

tangled up in harness and cargo, the off shaft pushing her over, Mr. —

holding her up by main strength, and right along-side of her—where she

must fall if she went down—a deadly stick of a tree like a lance. I

could not but admire the wisdom and faith of this great brute; I never

saw the riding-horse that would not have lost its life in such a

situation; but the cart-elephant patiently waited and was saved. It was

a stirring three minutes, I can tell you.

I forgot in talking of Saturday to tell of one incident which will

particularly interest my mother. I met Dr. D. from Savaii, and had an

age-long talk about Edinburgh folk; it was very pleasant. He has been

studying in Edinburgh, along with his son; a pretty relation. He told me

he knew nobody but college people: ‘I was altogether a student,’ he said

with glee. He seems full of cheerfulness and thick-set energy. I feel

as if I could put him in a novel with effect; and ten to one, if I know

more of him, the image will be only blurred.

* * * * *

_Tuesday_, _Dec._ 2_nd_.

I should have told you yesterday that all my boys were got up for their

work in moustaches and side-whiskers of some sort of blacking—I suppose

wood-ash. It was a sight of joy to see them return at night, axe on

shoulder, feigning to march like soldiers, a choragus with a loud voice

singing out, ‘March-step! March-step!’ in imperfect recollection of some

drill.

Fanny seems much revived.

R. L. S.

CHAPTER III

_Monday_, _twenty-somethingth of_

_December_, 1890.

MY DEAR COLVIN,—I do not say my Jack is anything extraordinary; he is

only an island horse; and the profane might call him a Punch; and his

face is like a donkey’s; and natives have ridden him, and he has no mouth

in consequence, and occasionally shies. But his merits are equally

surprising; and I don’t think I should ever have known Jack’s merits if I

had not been riding up of late on moonless nights. Jack is a bit of a

dandy; he loves to misbehave in a gallant manner, above all on Apia

Street, and when I stop to speak to people, they say (Dr. Stuebel the

German consul said about three days ago), ‘O what a wild horse! it cannot

be safe to ride him.’ Such a remark is Jack’s reward, and represents his

ideal of fame. Now when I start out of Apia on a dark night, you should

see my changed horse; at a fast steady walk, with his head down, and

sometimes his nose to the ground—when he wants to do that, he asks for

his head with a little eloquent polite movement indescribable—he climbs

the long ascent and threads the darkest of the wood. The first night I

came it was starry; and it was singular to see the starlight drip down

into the crypt of the wood, and shine in the open end of the road, as

bright as moonlight at home; but the crypt itself was proof, blackness

lived in it. The next night it was raining. We left the lights of Apia

and passed into limbo. Jack finds a way for himself, but he does not

calculate for my height above the saddle; and I am directed forward, all

braced up for a crouch and holding my switch upright in front of me. It

is curiously interesting. In the forest, the dead wood is

phosphorescent; some nights the whole ground is strewn with it, so that

it seems like a grating over a pale hell; doubtless this is one of the

things that feed the night fears of the natives; and I am free to confess

that in a night of trackless darkness where all else is void, these

pallid _ignes suppositi_ have a fantastic appearance, rather bogey even.

One night, when it was very dark, a man had put out a little lantern by

the wayside to show the entrance to his ground. I saw the light, as I

thought, far ahead, and supposed it was a pedestrian coming to meet me; I

was quite taken by surprise when it struck in my face and passed behind

me. Jack saw it, and he was appalled; do you think he thought of shying?

No, sir, not in the dark; in the dark Jack knows he is on duty; and he

went past that lantern steady and swift; only, as he went, he groaned and

shuddered. For about 2500 of Jack’s steps we only pass one house—that

where the lantern was; and about 1500 of these are in the darkness of the

pit. But now the moon is on tap again, and the roads lighted.

[Picture: Map]

I have been exploring up the Vaituliga; see your map. It comes down a

wonderful fine glen; at least 200 feet of cliffs on either hand, winding

like a corkscrew, great forest trees filling it. At the top there ought

to be a fine double fall; but the stream evades it by a fault and passes

underground. Above the fall it runs (at this season) full and very gaily

in a shallow valley, some hundred yards before the head of the glen. Its

course is seen full of grasses, like a flooded meadow; that is the sink!

beyond the grave of the grasses, the bed lies dry. Near this upper part

there is a great show of ruinous pig-walls; a village must have stood

near by.

To walk from our house to Wreck Hill (when the path is buried in fallen

trees) takes one about half an hour, I think; to return, not more than

twenty minutes; I daresay fifteen. Hence I should guess it was

three-quarters of a mile. I had meant to join on my explorations passing

eastward by the sink; but, Lord! how it rains.

* * * * *

(_Later_.)

I went out this morning with a pocket compass and walked in a varying

direction, perhaps on an average S. by W., 1754 paces. Then I struck

into the bush, N.W. by N., hoping to strike the Vaituliga above the

falls. Now I have it plotted out I see I should have gone W. or even W.

by S.; but it is not easy to guess. For 600 weary paces I struggled

through the bush, and then came on the stream below the gorge, where it

was comparatively easy to get down to it. In the place where I struck

it, it made cascades about a little isle, and was running about N.E., 20

to 30 feet wide, as deep as to my knee, and piercing cold. I tried to

follow it down, and keep the run of its direction and my paces; but when

I was wading to the knees and the waist in mud, poison brush, and rotted

wood, bound hand and foot in lianas, shovelled unceremoniously off the

one shore and driven to try my luck upon the other—I saw I should have

hard enough work to get my body down, if my mind rested. It was a

damnable walk; certainly not half a mile as the crow flies, but a real

bucketer for hardship. Once I had to pass the stream where it flowed

between banks about three feet high. To get the easier down, I swung

myself by a wild-cocoanut—(so called, it bears bunches of scarlet

nutlets)—which grew upon the brink. As I so swung, I received a crack on

the head that knocked me all abroad. Impossible to guess what tree had

taken a shy at me. So many towered above, one over the other, and the

missile, whatever it was, dropped in the stream and was gone before I had

recovered my wits. (I scarce know what I write, so hideous a Niagara of

rain roars, shouts, and demonizes on the iron roof—it is pitch dark

too—the lamp lit at 5!) It was a blessed thing when I struck my own

road; and I got home, neat for lunch time, one of the most wonderful mud

statues ever witnessed. In the afternoon I tried again, going up the

other path by the garden, but was early drowned out; came home, plotted

out what I had done, and then wrote this truck to you.

Fanny has been quite ill with ear-ache. She won’t go, hating the sea at

this wild season; I don’t like to leave her; so it drones on, steamer

after steamer, and I guess it’ll end by no one going at all. She is in a

dreadful misfortune at this hour; a case of kerosene having burst in the

kitchen. A little while ago it was the carpenter’s horse that trod in a

nest of fourteen eggs, and made an omelette of our hopes. The farmer’s

lot is not a happy one. And it looks like some real uncompromising bad

weather too. I wish Fanny’s ear were well. Think of parties in

Monuments! think of me in Skerryvore, and now of this. It don’t look

like a part of the same universe to me. Work is quite laid aside; I have

worked myself right out.

* * * * *

_Christmas Eve_.

Yesterday, who could write? My wife near crazy with ear-ache; the rain

descending in white crystal rods and playing hell’s tattoo, like a

_tutti_ of battering rams, on our sheet-iron roof; the wind passing high

overhead with a strange dumb mutter, or striking us full, so that all the

huge trees in the paddock cried aloud, and wrung their hands, and

brandished their vast arms. The horses stood in the shed like things

stupid. The sea and the flagship lying on the jaws of the bay vanished

in sheer rain. All day it lasted; I locked up my papers in the iron box,

in case it was a hurricane, and the house might go. We went to bed with

mighty uncertain feelings; far more than on shipboard, where you have

only drowning ahead—whereas here you have a smash of beams, a shower of

sheet-iron, and a blind race in the dark and through a whirlwind for the

shelter of an unfinished stable—and my wife with ear-ache! Well, well,

this morning, we had word from Apia; a hurricane was looked for, the

ships were to leave the bay by 10 A.M.; it is now 3.30, and the flagship

is still a fixture, and the wind round in the blessed east, so I suppose

the danger is over. But heaven is still laden; the day dim, with

frequent rattling bucketfuls of rain; and just this moment (as I write) a

squall went overhead, scarce striking us, with that singular, solemn

noise of its passage, which is to me dreadful. I have always feared the

sound of wind beyond everything. In my hell it would always blow a gale.

I have been all day correcting proofs, and making out a new plan for our

house. The other was too dear to be built now, and it was a hard task to

make a smaller house that would suffice for the present, and not be a

mere waste of money in the future. I believe I have succeeded; I have

taken care of my study anyway.

Two favours I want to ask of you. First, I wish you to get ‘Pioneering

in New Guinea,’ by J. Chalmers. It’s a missionary book, and has less

pretensions to be literature than Spurgeon’s sermons. Yet I think even

through that, you will see some of the traits of the hero that wrote it;

a man that took me fairly by storm for the most attractive, simple,

brave, and interesting man in the whole Pacific. He is away now to go up

the Fly River; a desperate venture, it is thought; he is quite a

Livingstone card.

Second, try and keep yourself free next winter; and if my means can be

stretched so far, I’ll come to Egypt and we’ll meet at Shepheard’s Hotel,

and you’ll put me in my place, which I stand in need of badly by this

time. Lord, what bully times! I suppose I’ll come per British Asia, or

whatever you call it, and avoid all cold, and might be in Egypt about

November as ever was—eleven months from now or rather less. But do not

let us count our chickens.

Last night three piglings were stolen from one of our pig-pens. The

great Lafaele appeared to my wife uneasy, so she engaged him in

conversation on the subject, and played upon him the following engaging

trick. You advance your two forefingers towards the sitter’s eyes; he

closes them, whereupon you substitute (on his eyelids) the fore and

middle fingers of the left hand; and with your right (which he supposes

engaged) you tap him on the head and back. When you let him open his

eyes, he sees you withdrawing the two forefingers. ‘What that?’ asked

Lafaele. ‘My devil,’ says Fanny. ‘I wake um, my devil. All right now.

He go catch the man that catch my pig.’ About an hour afterwards,

Lafaele came for further particulars. ‘O, all right,’ my wife says. ‘By

and by, that man he sleep, devil go sleep same place. By and by, that

man plenty sick. I no care. What for he take my pig?’ Lafaele cares

plenty; I don’t think he is the man, though he may be; but he knows him,

and most likely will eat some of that pig to-night. He will not eat with

relish.

* * * * *

_Saturday_ 27_th_.

It cleared up suddenly after dinner, and my wife and I saddled up and off

to Apia, whence we did not return till yesterday morning. Christmas Day

I wish you could have seen our party at table. H. J. Moors at one end

with my wife, I at the other with Mrs. M., between us two native women,

Carruthers the lawyer, Moors’s two shop-boys—Walters and A. M. the

quadroon—and the guests of the evening, Shirley Baker, the defamed and

much-accused man of Tonga, and his son, with the artificial joint to his

arm—where the assassins shot him in shooting at his father. Baker’s

appearance is not unlike John Bull on a cartoon; he is highly interesting

to speak to, as I had expected; I found he and I had many common

interests, and were engaged in puzzling over many of the same

difficulties. After dinner it was quite pretty to see our Christmas

party, it was so easily pleased and prettily behaved. In the morning I

should say I had been to lunch at the German consulate, where I had as

usual a very pleasant time. I shall miss Dr. Stuebel much when he

leaves, and when Adams and Lafarge go also, it will be a great blow. I

am getting spoiled with all this good society.

On Friday morning, I had to be at my house affairs before seven; and they

kept me in Apia till past ten, disputing, and consulting about brick and

stone and native and hydraulic lime, and cement and sand, and all sorts

of otiose details about the chimney—just what I fled from in my father’s

office twenty years ago; I should have made a languid engineer. Rode up

with the carpenter. Ah, my wicked Jack! on Christmas Eve, as I was

taking the saddle bag off, he kicked at me, and fetched me too, right on

the shin. On Friday, being annoyed at the carpenter’s horse having a

longer trot, he uttered a shrill cry and tried to bite him! Alas, alas,

these are like old days; my dear Jack is a Bogue, but I cannot strangle

Jack into submission.

I have given up the big house for just now; we go ahead right away with a

small one, which should be ready in two months, and I suppose will

suffice for just now.

O I know I haven’t told you about our _aitu_, have I? It is a lady,

_Aitu fafine_: she lives on the mountain-side; her presence is heralded

by the sound of a gust of wind; a sound very common in the high woods;

when she catches you, I do not know what happens; but in practice she is

avoided, so I suppose she does more than pass the time of day. The great

_aitu Saumai-afe_ was once a living woman; and became an _aitu_, no one

understands how; she lives in a stream at the well-head, her hair is red,

she appears as a lovely young lady, her bust particularly admired, to

handsome young men; these die, her love being fatal;—as a handsome youth

she has been known to court damsels with the like result, but this is

very rare; as an old crone she goes about and asks for water, and woe to

them who are uncivil! _Saumai-afe_ means literally, ‘Come here a

thousand!’ A good name for a lady of her manners. My _aitu fafine_ does

not seem to be in the same line of business. It is unsafe to be a

handsome youth in Samoa; a young man died from her favours last month—so

we said on this side of the island; on the other, where he died, it was

not so certain. I, for one, blame it on Madam _Saumai-afe_ without

hesitation.

Example of the farmer’s sorrows. I slipped out on the balcony a moment

ago. It is a lovely morning, cloudless, smoking hot, the breeze not yet

arisen. Looking west, in front of our new house, I saw, two heads of

Indian corn wagging, and the rest and all nature stock still. As I

looked, one of the stalks subsided and disappeared. I dashed out to the

rescue; two small pigs were deep in the grass—quite hid till within a few

yards—gently but swiftly demolishing my harvest. Never be a farmer.

* * * * *

12.30 _p.m._

I while away the moments of digestion by drawing you a faithful picture

of my morning. When I had done writing as above it was time to clean our

house. When I am working, it falls on my wife alone, but to-day we had

it between us; she did the bedroom, I the sitting-room, in fifty-seven

minutes of really most unpalatable labour. Then I changed every stitch,

for I was wet through, and sat down and played on my pipe till dinner was

ready, mighty pleased to be in a mildly habitable spot once more. The

house had been neglected for near a week, and was a hideous spot; my

wife’s ear and our visit to Apia being the causes: our Paul we prefer not

to see upon that theatre, and God knows he has plenty to do elsewhere.

I am glad to look out of my back door and see the boys smoothing the

foundations of the new house; this is all very jolly, but six months of

it has satisfied me; we have too many things for such close quarters; to

work in the midst of all the myriad misfortunes of the planter’s life,

seated in a Dyonisius’ (can’t spell him) ear, whence I catch every

complaint, mishap and contention, is besides the devil; and the hope of a

cave of my own inspires me with lust. O to be able to shut my own door

and make my own confusion! O to have the brown paper and the matches and

‘make a hell of my own’ once more!

I do not bother you with all my troubles in these outpourings; the

troubles of the farmer are inspiriting—they are like difficulties out

hunting—a fellow rages at the time and rejoices to recall and to

commemorate them. My troubles have been financial. It is hard to

arrange wisely interests so distributed. America, England, Samoa,

Sydney, everywhere I have an end of liability hanging out and some shelf

of credit hard by; and to juggle all these and build a dwelling-place

here, and check expense—a thing I am ill fitted for—you can conceive what

a nightmare it is at times. Then God knows I have not been idle. But

since _The Master_ nothing has come to raise any coins. I believe the

springs are dry at home, and now I am worked out, and can no more at all.

A holiday is required.

_Dec._ 28_th_. I have got unexpectedly to work again, and feel quite

dandy. Good-bye.

R. L. S.

CHAPTER IV

_S. S. Lübeck_, _between Apia and Sydney_,

_Jan._ 17_th_, 1891.

MY DEAR COLVIN,—The Faamasino Sili, or Chief Justice, to speak your low

language, has arrived. I had ridden down with Henry and Lafaele; the sun

was down, the night was close at hand, so we rode fast; just as I came to

the corner of the road before Apia, I heard a gun fire; and lo, there was

a great crowd at the end of the pier, and the troops out, and a chief or

two in the height of Samoa finery, and Seumanu coming in his boat (the

oarsmen all in uniform), bringing the Faamasino Sili sure enough. It was

lucky he was no longer; the natives would not have waited many weeks.

But think of it, as I sat in the saddle at the outside of the crowd

(looking, the English consul said, as if I were commanding the

manœuvres), I was nearly knocked down by a stampede of the three consuls;

they had been waiting their guest at the Matafele end, and some wretched

intrigue among the whites had brought him to Apia, and the consuls had to

run all the length of the town and come too late.

The next day was a long one; I was at a marriage of G. the banker to

Fanua, the virgin of Apia. Bride and bridesmaids were all in the old

high dress; the ladies were all native; the men, with the exception of

Seumanu, all white.

It was quite a pleasant party, and while we were writing, we had a

bird’s-eye view of the public reception of the Chief Justice. The best

part of it were some natives in war array; with blacked faces, turbans,

tapa kilts, and guns, they looked very manly and purposelike. No, the

best part was poor old drunken Joe, the Portuguese boatman, who seemed to

think himself specially charged with the reception, and ended by falling

on his knees before the Chief Justice on the end of the pier and in full

view of the whole town and bay. The natives pelted him with rotten

bananas; how the Chief Justice took it I was too far off to see; but it

was highly absurd.

I have commemorated my genial hopes for the regimen of the Faamasino Sili

in the following canine verses, which, if you at all guess how to read

them, are very pretty in movement, and (unless he be a mighty good man)

too true in sense.

We’re quarrelling, the villages, we’ve beaten the wooden drum’s,

Sa femisai o nu’u, sa taia o pate,

Is expounded there by the justice,

Ua Atuatuvale a le faamasino e,

The chief justice, the terrified justice,

Le faamasino sili, le faamasino se,

Is on the point of running away the justice,

O le a solasola le faamasino e,

The justice denied any influence, the terrified justice,

O le faamasino le ai a, le faamasino se,

O le a solasola le faamasino e.

Well, after this excursion into tongues that have never been alive—though

I assure you we have one capital book in the language, a book of fables

by an old missionary of the unpromising name of Pratt, which is simply

the best and the most literary version of the fables known to me. I

suppose I should except La Fontaine, but L. F. takes a long time; these

are brief as the books of our childhood, and full of wit and literary

colour; and O, Colvin, what a tongue it would be to write, if one only

knew it—and there were only readers. Its curse in common use is an

incredible left-handed wordiness; but in the hands of a man like Pratt it

is succinct as Latin, compact of long rolling polysyllables and little

and often pithy particles, and for beauty of sound a dream. Listen, I

quote from Pratt—this is good Samoan, not canine—

... ... ... ... ...

1 2 3 4 1

O le afa, ua taalili ai le ulu vao, ua pa mai le faititili.

1 almost _wa_, 2 the two _a’s_ just distinguished, 3 the _ai_ is

practically suffixed to the verb, 4 almost _vow_. The excursion has

prolonged itself.

I started by the _Lübeck_ to meet Lloyd and my mother; there were many

reasons for and against; the main reason against was the leaving of Fanny

alone in her blessed cabin, which has been somewhat remedied by my

carter, Mr. —, putting up in the stable and messing with her; but perhaps

desire of change decided me not well, though I do think I ought to see an

oculist, being very blind indeed, and sometimes unable to read. Anyway I

left, the only cabin passenger, four and a kid in the second cabin, and a

dear voyage it had like to have proved. Close to Fiji (choose a worse

place on the map) we broke our shaft early one morning; and when or where

we might expect to fetch land or meet with any ship, I would like you to

tell me. The Pacific is absolutely desert. I have sailed there now some

years; and scarce ever seen a ship except in port or close by; I think

twice. It was the hurricane season besides, and hurricane waters. Well,

our chief engineer got the shaft—it was the middle crank shaft—mended;

thrice it was mended, and twice broke down; but now keeps up—only we dare

not stop, for it is almost impossible to start again. The captain in the

meanwhile crowded her with sail; fifteen sails in all, every stay being

gratified with a stay-sail, a boat-boom sent aloft for a maintop-gallant

yard, and the derrick of a crane brought in service as bowsprit. All the

time we have had a fine, fair wind and a smooth sea; to-day at noon our

run was 203 miles (if you please!), and we are within some 360 miles of

Sydney. Probably there has never been a more gallant success; and I can

say honestly it was well worked for. No flurry, no high words, no long

faces; only hard work and honest thought; a pleasant, manly business to

be present at. All the chances were we might have been six weeks—ay, or

three months at sea—or never turned up at all, and now it looks as though

we should reach our destination some five days too late.

CHAPTER V

[_On Board Ship between Sydney and Apia_,

_Feb._ 1891.]

MY DEAR COLVIN,—The _Janet Nicoll_ stuff was rather worse than I had

looked for; you have picked out all that is fit to stand, bar two others

(which I don’t dislike)—the Port of Entry and the House of Temoana; that

is for a present opinion; I may condemn these also ere I have done. By

this time you should have another Marquesan letter, the worst of the lot,

I think; and seven Paumotu letters, which are not far out of the vein, as

I wish it; I am in hopes the Hawaiian stuff is better yet: time will

show, and time will make perfect. Is something of this sort practicable

for the dedication?

TERRA MARIQUE

PER PERICULA PER ARDUA

AMICAE COMITI

D.D.

AMANS VIATOR

’Tis a first shot concocted this morning in my berth: I had always before

been trying it in English, which insisted on being either insignificant

or fulsome: I cannot think of a better word than _comes_, there being not

the shadow of a Latin book on board; yet sure there is some other. Then

_viator_ (though it _sounds_ all right) is doubtful; it has too much,

perhaps, the sense of wayfarer? Last, will it mark sufficiently that I

mean my wife? And first, how about blunders? I scarce wish it longer.

Have had a swingeing sharp attack in Sydney; beating the fields for two

nights, Saturday and Sunday. Wednesday was brought on board, _tel quel_,

a wonderful wreck; and now, Wednesday week, am a good deal picked up, but

yet not quite a Samson, being still groggy afoot and vague in the head.

My chess, for instance, which is usually a pretty strong game, and defies

all rivalry aboard, is vacillating, devoid of resource and observation,

and hitherto not covered with customary laurels. As for work, it is

impossible. We shall be in the saddle before long, no doubt, and the pen

once more couched. You must not expect a letter under these

circumstances, but be very thankful for a note. Once at Samoa, I shall

try to resume my late excellent habits, and delight you with journals,

you unaccustomed, I unaccustomed; but it is never too late to mend.

It is vastly annoying that I cannot go even to Sydney without an attack;

and heaven knows my life was anodyne. I only once dined with anybody; at

the club with Wise; worked all morning—a terrible dead pull; a month only

produced the imperfect embryos of two chapters; lunched in the

boarding-house, played on my pipe; went out and did some of my messages;

dined at a French restaurant, and returned to play draughts, whist, or

Van John with my family. This makes a cheery life after Samoa; but it

isn’t what you call burning the candle at both ends, is it? (It appears

to me not one word of this letter will be legible by the time I am done

with it, this dreadful ink rubs off.) I have a strange kind of novel

under construction; it begins about 1660 and ends 1830, or perhaps I may

continue it to 1875 or so, with another life. One, two, three, four,

five, six generations, perhaps seven, figure therein; two of my old

stories, ‘Delafield’ and ‘Shovel,’ are incorporated; it is to be told in

the third person, with some of the brevity of history, some of the detail

of romance. _The Shovels of Newton French_ will be the name. The idea

is an old one; it was brought to birth by an accident; a friend in the

islands who picked up F. Jenkin, read a part, and said: ‘Do you know,

that’s a strange book? I like it; I don’t believe the public will; but I

like it.’ He thought it was a novel! ‘Very well,’ said I, ‘we’ll see

whether the public will like it or not; they shall have the chance.’

Yours ever,

R. L. S.

CHAPTER VI

_Friday_, _March_ 19_th_.

MY DEAR S. C.,—You probably expect that now I am back at Vailima I shall

resume the practice of the diary letter. A good deal is changed. We are

more; solitude does not attend me as before; the night is passed playing

Van John for shells; and, what is not less important, I have just

recovered from a severe illness, and am easily tired.

I will give you to-day. I sleep now in one of the lower rooms of the new

house, where my wife has recently joined me. We have two beds, an empty

case for a table, a chair, a tin basin, a bucket and a jug; next door in

the dining-room, the carpenters camp on the floor, which is covered with

their mosquito nets. Before the sun rises, at 5.45 or 5.50, Paul brings

me tea, bread, and a couple of eggs; and by about six I am at work. I

work in bed—my bed is of mats, no mattress, sheets, or filth—mats, a

pillow, and a blanket—and put in some three hours. It was 9.5 this

morning when I set off to the stream-side to my weeding; where I toiled,

manuring the ground with the best enricher, human sweat, till the

conch-shell was blown from our verandah at 10.30. At eleven we dine;

about half-past twelve I tried (by exception) to work again, could make

nothing on’t, and by one was on my way to the weeding, where I wrought

till three. Half-past five is our next meal, and I read Flaubert’s

Letters till the hour came round; dined, and then, Fanny having a cold,

and I being tired, came over to my den in the unfinished house, where I

now write to you, to the tune of the carpenters’ voices, and by the

light—I crave your pardon—by the twilight of three vile candles filtered

through the medium of my mosquito bar. Bad ink being of the party, I

write quite blindfold, and can only hope you may be granted to read that

which I am unable to see while writing.

I said I was tired; it is a mild phrase; my back aches like toothache;

when I shut my eyes to sleep, I know I shall see before them—a phenomenon

to which both Fanny and I are quite accustomed—endless vivid deeps of

grass and weed, each plant particular and distinct, so that I shall lie

inert in body, and transact for hours the mental part of my day business,

choosing the noxious from the useful. And in my dreams I shall be

hauling on recalcitrants, and suffering stings from nettles, stabs from

citron thorns, fiery bites from ants, sickening resistances of mud and

slime, evasions of slimy roots, dead weight of heat, sudden puffs of air,

sudden starts from bird-calls in the contiguous forest—some mimicking my

name, some laughter, some the signal of a whistle, and living over again

at large the business of my day.

Though I write so little, I pass all my hours of field-work in continual

converse and imaginary correspondence. I scarce pull up a weed, but I

invent a sentence on the matter to yourself; it does not get written;

_autant en emportent les vents_; but the intent is there, and for me (in

some sort) the companionship. To-day, for instance, we had a great talk.

I was toiling, the sweat dripping from my nose, in the hot fit after a

squall of rain: methought you asked me—frankly, was I happy. Happy (said

I); I was only happy once; that was at Hyères; it came to an end from a

variety of reasons, decline of health, change of place, increase of

money, age with his stealing steps; since then, as before then, I know

not what it means. But I know pleasure still; pleasure with a thousand

faces, and none perfect, a thousand tongues all broken, a thousand hands,

and all of them with scratching nails. High among these I place this

delight of weeding out here alone by the garrulous water, under the

silence of the high wood, broken by incongruous sounds of birds. And

take my life all through, look at it fore and back, and upside

down,—though I would very fain change myself—I would not change my

circumstances, unless it were to bring you here. And yet God knows

perhaps this intercourse of writing serves as well; and I wonder, were

you here indeed, would I commune so continually with the thought of you.

I say ‘I wonder’ for a form; I know, and I know I should not.

So far, and much further, the conversation went, while I groped in slime

after viscous roots, nursing and sparing little spears of grass, and

retreating (even with outcry) from the prod of the wild lime. I wonder

if any one had ever the same attitude to Nature as I hold, and have held

for so long? This business fascinates me like a tune or a passion; yet

all the while I thrill with a strong distaste. The horror of the thing,

objective and subjective, is always present to my mind; the horror of

creeping things, a superstitious horror of the void and the powers about

me, the horror of my own devastation and continual murders. The life of

the plants comes through my fingertips, their struggles go to my heart

like supplications. I feel myself blood-boltered; then I look back on my

cleared grass, and count myself an ally in a fair quarrel, and make stout

my heart.

It is but a little while since I lay sick in Sydney, beating the fields

about the navy and Dean Swift and Dryden’s Latin hymns; judge if I love

this reinvigorating climate, where I can already toil till my head swims

and every string in the poor jumping Jack (as he now lies in bed) aches

with a kind of yearning strain, difficult to suffer in quiescence.

As for my damned literature, God knows what a business it is, grinding

along without a scrap of inspiration or a note of style. But it has to

be ground, and the mill grinds exceeding slowly though not particularly

small. The last two chapters have taken me considerably over a month,

and they are still beneath pity. This I cannot continue, time not

sufficing; and the next will just have to be worse. All the good I can

express is just this; some day, when style revisits me, they will be

excellent matter to rewrite. Of course, my old cure of a change of work

would probably answer, but I cannot take it now. The treadmill turns;

and, with a kind of desperate cheerfulness, I mount the idle stair. I

haven’t the least anxiety about the book; unless I die, I shall find the

time to make it good; but the Lord deliver me from the thought of the

Letters! However, the Lord has other things on hand; and about six

to-morrow, I shall resume the consideration practically, and face (as

best I may) the fact of my incompetence and disaffection to the task.

Toil I do not spare; but fortune refuses me success. We can do more,

Whatever-his-name-was, we can deserve it. But my misdesert began long

since, by the acceptation of a bargain quite unsuitable to all my

methods.

To-day I have had a queer experience. My carter has from the first been

using my horses for his own ends; when I left for Sydney, I put him on

his honour to cease, and my back was scarce turned ere he was forfeit. I

have only been waiting to discharge him; and to-day an occasion arose. I

am so much _the old man virulent_, so readily stumble into anger, that I

gave a deal of consideration to my bearing, and decided at last to

imitate that of the late —. Whatever he might have to say, this

eminently effective controversialist maintained a frozen demeanour and a

jeering smile. The frozen demeanour is beyond my reach; but I could try

the jeering smile; did so, perceived its efficacy, kept in consequence my

temper, and got rid of my friend, myself composed and smiling still, he

white and shaking like an aspen. He could explain everything; I said it

did not interest me. He said he had enemies; I said nothing was more

likely. He said he was calumniated; with all my heart, said I, but there

are so many liars, that I find it safer to believe them. He said, in

justice to himself, he must explain: God forbid I should interfere with

you, said I, with the same factitious grin, but it can change nothing.

So I kept my temper, rid myself of an unfaithful servant, found a method

of conducting similar interviews in the future, and fell in my own

liking. One thing more: I learned a fresh tolerance for the dead —; he

too had learned—perhaps had invented—the trick of this manner; God knows

what weakness, what instability of feeling, lay beneath. _Ce que c’est

que de nous_! poor human nature; that at past forty I must adjust this

hateful mask for the first time, and rejoice to find it effective; that

the effort of maintaining an external smile should confuse and embitter a

man’s soul.

To-day I have not weeded; I have written instead from six till eleven,

from twelve till two; with the interruption of the interview aforesaid; a

damned letter is written for the third time; I dread to read it, for I

dare not give it a fourth chance—unless it be very bad indeed. Now I

write you from my mosquito curtain, to the song of saws and planes and

hammers, and wood clumping on the floor above; in a day of heavenly

brightness; a bird twittering near by; my eye, through the open door,

commanding green meads, two or three forest trees casting their boughs

against the sky, a forest-clad mountain-side beyond, and close in by the

door-jamb a nick of the blue Pacific. It is March in England, bleak

March, and I lie here with the great sliding doors wide open in an

undershirt and p’jama trousers, and melt in the closure of mosquito bars,

and burn to be out in the breeze. A few torn clouds—not white, the sun

has tinged them a warm pink—swim in heaven. In which blessed and fair

day, I have to make faces and speak bitter words to a man—who has

deceived me, it is true—but who is poor, and older than I, and a kind of

a gentleman too. On the whole, I prefer the massacre of weeds.

* * * * *

_Sunday_.

When I had done talking to you yesterday, I played on my pipe till the

conch sounded, then went over to the old house for dinner, and had scarce

risen from table ere I was submerged with visitors. The first of these

despatched, I spent the rest of the evening going over the Samoan

translation of my _Bottle Imp_ with Claxton the missionary; then to bed,

but being upset, I suppose, by these interruptions, and having gone all

day without my weeding, not to sleep. For hours I lay awake and heard

the rain fall, and saw faint, far-away lightning over the sea, and wrote

you long letters which I scorn to reproduce. This morning Paul was

unusually early; the dawn had scarce begun when he appeared with the tray

and lit my candle; and I had breakfasted and read (with indescribable

sinkings) the whole of yesterday’s work before the sun had risen. Then I

sat and thought, and sat and better thought. It was not good enough, nor

good; it was as slack as journalism, but not so inspired; it was

excellent stuff misused, and the defects stood gross on it like humps

upon a camel. But could I, in my present disposition, do much more with

it? in my present pressure for time, were I not better employed doing

another one about as ill, than making this some thousandth fraction

better? Yes, I thought; and tried the new one, and behold, I could do

nothing: my head swims, words do not come to me, nor phrases, and I

accepted defeat, packed up my traps, and turned to communicate the

failure to my esteemed correspondent. I think it possible I overworked

yesterday. Well, we’ll see to-morrow—perhaps try again later. It is

indeed the hope of trying later that keeps me writing to you. If I take

to my pipe, I know myself—all is over for the morning. Hurray, I’ll

correct proofs!

* * * * *

_Pago-Pago_, _Wednesday_.

After I finished on Sunday I passed a miserable day; went out weeding,

but could not find peace. I do not like to steal my dinner, unless I

have given myself a holiday in a canonical manner; and weeding after all

is only fun, the amount of its utility small, and the thing capable of

being done faster and nearly as well by a hired boy. In the evening

Sewall came up (American consul) and proposed to take me on a malaga,

which I accepted. Monday I rode down to Apia, was nearly all day

fighting about drafts and money; the silver problem does not touch you,

but it is (in a strange and I hope passing phase) making my situation

difficult in Apia. About eleven, the flags were all half-masted; it was

old Captain Hamilton (Samesoni the natives called him) who had passed

away. In the evening I walked round to the U.S. Consulate; it was a

lovely night with a full moon; and as I got round to the hot corner of

Matautu I heard hymns in front. The balcony of the dead man’s house was

full of women singing; Mary (the widow, a native) sat on a chair by the

doorstep, and I was set beside her on a bench, and next to Paul the

carpenter; as I sat down I had a glimpse of the old captain, who lay in a

sheet on his own table. After the hymn was over, a native pastor made a

speech which lasted a long while; the light poured out of the door and

windows; the girls were sitting clustered at my feet; it was choking hot.

After the speech was ended, Mary carried me within; the captain’s hands

were folded on his bosom, his face and head were composed; he looked as

if he might speak at any moment; I have never seen this kind of waxwork

so express or more venerable; and when I went away, I was conscious of a

certain envy for the man who was out of the battle. All night it ran in

my head, and the next day when we sighted Tutuila, and ran into this

beautiful land-locked loch of Pago Pago (whence I write), Captain

Hamilton’s folded hands and quiet face said a great deal more to me than

the scenery.

I am living here in a trader’s house; we have a good table, Sewall doing

things in style; and I hope to benefit by the change, and possibly get

more stuff for Letters. In the meanwhile, I am seized quite

_mal-à-propos_ with desire to write a story, _The Bloody Wedding_,

founded on fact—very possibly true, being an attempt to read a murder

case—not yet months old, in this very place and house where I now write.

The indiscretion is what stops me; but if I keep on feeling as I feel

just now it will have to be written. Three Star Nettison, Kit Nettison,

Field the Sailor, these are the main characters: old Nettison, and the

captain of the man of war, the secondary. Possible scenario. Chapter I.

. . .

CHAPTER VII

_Saturday_, _April_ 18_th_.

MY DEAR COLVIN,—I got back on Monday night, after twenty-three hours in

an open boat; the keys were lost; the Consul (who had promised us a

bottle of Burgundy) nobly broke open his store-room, and we got to bed

about midnight. Next morning the blessed Consul promised us horses for

the daybreak; forgot all about it, worthy man; set us off at last in the

heat of the day, and by a short cut which caused infinite trouble, and we

were not home till dinner. I was extenuated, and have had a high fever

since, or should have been writing before. To-day for the first time, I

risk it. Tuesday I was pretty bad; Wednesday had a fever to kill a

horse; Thursday I was better, but still out of ability to do aught but

read awful trash. This is the time one misses civilisation; I wished to

send out for some police novels; Montépin would have about suited my

frozen brain. It is a bother when all one’s thought turns on one’s work

in some sense or other; could not even think yesterday; I took to

inventing dishes by way of entertainment. Yesterday, while I lay asleep

in the afternoon, a very lucky thing happened; the Chief Justice came to

call; met one of our employés on the road; and was shown what I had done

to the road.

‘Is this the road across the island?’ he asked.

‘The only one,’ said Innes.

‘And has one man done all this?’

‘Three times,’ said the trusty Innes. ‘It has had to be made three

times, and when Mr. Stevenson came, it was a track like what you see

beyond.’

‘This must be put right,’ said the Chief Justice.

* * * * *

_Sunday_.

The truth is, I broke down yesterday almost as soon as I began, and have

been surreptitiously finishing the entry to-day. For all that I was much

better, ate all the time, and had no fever. The day was otherwise

uneventful. I am reminded; I had another visitor on Friday; and Fanny

and Lloyd, as they returned from a forest raid, met in our desert,

untrodden road, first Father Didier, Keeper of the conscience of Mataafa,

the rising star; and next the Chief justice, sole stay of Laupepa, the

present and unsteady star, and remember, a few days before we were close

to the sick bed and entertained by the amateur physician of Tamasese, the

late and sunken star. ‘That is the fun of this place,’ observed Lloyd;

‘everybody you meet is so important.’ Everybody is also so gloomy. It

will come to war again, is the opinion of all the well informed—and

before that to many bankruptcies; and after that, as usual, to famine.

Here, under the microscope, we can see history at work.

* * * * *

_Wednesday_.

I have been very neglectful. A return to work, perhaps premature, but

necessary, has used up all my possible energies and made me acquainted

with the living headache. I just jot down some of the past notabilia.

Yesterday B., a carpenter, and K., my (unsuccessful) white man, were

absent all morning from their work; I was working myself, where I hear

every sound with morbid certainty, and I can testify that not a hammer

fell. Upon inquiry I found they had passed the morning making ice with

our ice machine and taking the horizon with a spirit level! I had no

sooner heard this than—a violent headache set in; I am a real employer of

labour now, and have much of the ship captain when aroused; and if I had

a headache, I believe both these gentlemen had aching hearts. I promise

you, the late—was to the front; and K., who was the most guilty, yet (in

a sense) the least blameable, having the brains and character of a

canary-bird, fared none the better for B.’s repartees. I hear them hard

at work this morning, so the menace may be blessed. It was just after my

dinner, just before theirs, that I administered my redoubtable tongue—it

is really redoubtable—to these skulkers (Paul used to triumph over Mr. J.

for weeks. ‘I am very sorry for you,’ he would say; ‘you’re going to

have a talk with Mr. Stevenson when he comes home: you don’t know what

that is!’) In fact, none of them do, till they get it. I have known K.,

for instance, for months; he has never heard me complain, or take notice,

unless it were to praise; I have used him always as my guest, and there

seems to be something in my appearance which suggests endless, ovine

long-suffering! We sat in the upper verandah all evening, and discussed

the price of iron roofing, and the state of the draught-horses, with

Innes, a new man we have taken, and who seems to promise well.

One thing embarrasses me. No one ever seems to understand my attitude

about that book; the stuff sent was never meant for other than a first

state; I never meant it to appear as a book. Knowing well that I have

never had one hour of inspiration since it was begun, and have only

beaten out my metal by brute force and patient repetition, I hoped some

day to get a ‘spate of style’ and burnish it—fine mixed metaphor. I am

now so sick that I intend, when the Letters are done and some more

written that will be wanted, simply to make a book of it by the

pruning-knife.

I cannot fight longer; I am sensible of having done worse than I hoped,

worse than I feared; all I can do now is to do the best I can for the

future, and clear the book, like a piece of bush, with axe and cutlass.

Even to produce the MS. of this will occupy me, at the most favourable

opinion, till the middle of next year; really five years were wanting,

when I could have made a book; but I have a family, and—perhaps I could

not make the book after all.

CHAPTER VIII

_April_ 29_th_, ’91.

MY DEAR COLVIN,—I begin again. I was awake this morning about half-past

four. It was still night, but I made my fire, which is always a

delightful employment, and read Lockhart’s ‘Scott’ until the day began to

peep. It was a beautiful and sober dawn, a dove-coloured dawn,

insensibly brightening to gold. I was looking at it some while over the

down-hill profile of our eastern road, when I chanced to glance

northward, and saw with extraordinary pleasure the sea lying outspread.

It seemed as smooth as glass, and yet I knew the surf was roaring all

along the reef, and indeed, if I had listened, I could have heard it—and

saw the white sweep of it outside Matautu.

I am out of condition still, and can do nothing, and toil to be at my

pen, and see some ink behind me. I have taken up again _The High Woods

of Ulufanua_. I still think the fable too fantastic and far-fetched.

But, on a re-reading, fell in love with my first chapter, and for good or

evil I must finish it. It is really good, well fed with facts, true to

the manners, and (for once in my works) rendered pleasing by the presence

of a heroine who is pretty. Miss Uma is pretty; a fact. All my other

women have been as ugly as sin, and like Falconet’s horse (I have just

been reading the anecdote in Lockhart), _mortes_ forbye.

News: Our old house is now half demolished; it is to be rebuilt on a new

site; now we look down upon and through the open posts of it like a

bird-cage, to the woods beyond. My poor Paulo has lost his father and

succeeded to thirty thousand thalers (I think); he had to go down to the

Consulate yesterday to send a legal paper; got drunk, of course, and is

still this morning in so bemused a condition that our breakfasts all went

wrong. Lafaele is absent at the deathbed of his fair spouse; fair she

was, but not in deed, acting as harlot to the wreckers at work on the

warships, to which society she probably owes her end, having fallen off a

cliff, or been thrust off it—_inter pocula_. Henry is the same, our

stand-by. In this transition stage he has been living in Apia; but the

other night he stayed up, and sat with us about the chimney in my room.

It was the first time he had seen a fire in a hearth; he could not look

at it without smiles, and was always anxious to put on another stick. We

entertained him with the fairy tales of civilisation—theatres, London,

blocks in the street, Universities, the Underground, newspapers, etc.,

and projected once more his visit to Sydney. If we can manage, it will

be next Christmas. (I see it will be impossible for me to afford a

further journey _this_ winter.) We have spent since we have been here

about £2500, which is not much if you consider we have built on that

three houses, one of them of some size, and a considerable stable, made

two miles of road some three times, cleared many acres of bush, made some

miles of path, planted quantities of food, and enclosed a horse paddock

and some acres of pig run; but ’tis a good deal of money regarded simply

as money. K. is bosh; I have no use for him; but we must do what we can

with the fellow meanwhile; he is good-humoured and honest, but

inefficient, idle himself, the cause of idleness in others, grumbling, a

self-excuser—all the faults in a bundle. He owes us thirty weeks’

service—the wretched Paul about half as much. Henry is almost the only

one of our employés who has a credit.

* * * * *

_May_ 17_th_.

Well, am I ashamed of myself? I do not think so. I have been hammering

Letters ever since, and got three ready and a fourth about half through;

all four will go by the mail, which is what I wish, for so I keep at

least my start. Days and days of unprofitable stubbing and digging, and

the result still poor as literature, left-handed, heavy, unillumined, but

I believe readable and interesting as matter. It has been no joke of a

hard time, and when my task was done, I had little taste for anything but

blowing on the pipe. A few necessary letters filled the bowl to

overflowing.

My mother has arrived, young, well, and in good spirits. By desperate

exertions, which have wholly floored Fanny, her room was ready for her,

and the dining-room fit to eat in. It was a famous victory. Lloyd never

told me of your portrait till a few days ago; fortunately, I had no

pictures hung yet; and the space over my chimney waits your counterfeit

presentment. I have not often heard anything that pleased me more; your

severe head shall frown upon me and keep me to the mark. But why has it

not come? Have you been as forgetful as Lloyd?

* * * * *

18_th_.

Miserable comforters are ye all! I read your esteemed pages this morning

by lamplight and the glimmer of the dawn, and as soon as breakfast was

over, I must turn to and tackle these despised labours! Some courage was

necessary, but not wanting. There is one thing at least by which I can

avenge myself for my drubbing, for on one point you seem impenetrably

stupid. Can I find no form of words which will at last convey to your

intelligence the fact that _these letters were never meant_, _and are not

now meant_, _to be other than a quarry of materials from which the book

may be drawn_? There seems something incommunicable in this (to me)

simple idea; I know Lloyd failed to comprehend it, I doubt if he has

grasped it now; and I despair, after all these efforts, that you should

ever be enlightened. Still, oblige me by reading that form of words once

more, and see if a light does not break. You may be sure, after the

friendly freedoms of your criticism (necessary I am sure, and wholesome I

know, but untimely to the poor labourer in his landslip) that mighty

little of it will stand.

Our Paul has come into a fortune, and wishes to go home to the Hie

Germanie. This is a tile on our head, and if a shower, which is now

falling, lets up, I must go down to Apia, and see if I can find a

substitute of any kind. This is, from any point of view, disgusting;

above all, from that of work; for, whatever the result, the mill has to

be kept turning; apparently dust, and not flour, is the proceed. Well,

there is gold in the dust, which is a fine consolation, since—well, I

can’t help it; night or morning, I do my darndest, and if I cannot charge

for merit, I must e’en charge for toil, of which I have plenty and plenty

more ahead before this cup is drained; sweat and hyssop are the

ingredients.

We are clearing from Carruthers’ Road to the pig fence, twenty-eight

powerful natives with Catholic medals about their necks, all swiping in

like Trojans; long may the sport continue!

The invoice to hand. Ere this goes out, I hope to see your expressive,

but surely not benignant countenance! Adieu, O culler of offensive

expressions—‘and a’ to be a posy to your ain dear May!’—Fanny seems a

little revived again after her spasm of work. Our books and furniture

keep slowly draining up the road, in a sad state of scatterment and

disrepair; I wish the devil had had K. by his red beard before he had

packed my library. Odd leaves and sheets and boards—a thing to make a

bibliomaniac shed tears—are fished out of odd corners. But I am no

bibliomaniac, praise Heaven, and I bear up, and rejoice when I find

anything safe.

* * * * *

19_th_.

However, I worked five hours on the brute, and finished my Letter all the

same, and couldn’t sleep last night by consequence. Haven’t had a bad

night since I don’t know when; dreamed a large, handsome man (a New

Orleans planter) had insulted my wife, and, do what I pleased, I could

not make him fight me; and woke to find it was the eleventh anniversary

of my marriage. A letter usually takes me from a week to three days; but

I’m sometimes two days on a page—I was once three—and then my friends

kick me. _C’est-y-bête_! I wish letters of that charming quality could

be so timed as to arrive when a fellow wasn’t working at the truck in

question; but, of course, that can’t be. Did not go down last night. It

showered all afternoon, and poured heavy and loud all night.

You should have seen our twenty-five popes (the Samoan phrase for a

Catholic, lay or cleric) squatting when the day’s work was done on the

ground outside the verandah, and pouring in the rays of forty-eight eyes

through the back and the front door of the dining-room, while Henry and I

and the boss pope signed the contract. The second boss (an old man) wore

a kilt (as usual) and a Balmoral bonnet with a little tartan edging and

the tails pulled off. I told him that hat belong to my country—Sekotia;

and he said, yes, that was the place that he belonged to right enough.

And then all the Papists laughed till the woods rang; he was slashing

away with a cutlass as he spoke.

The pictures have decidedly not come; they may probably arrive Sunday.

CHAPTER IX

_June_, 1891.

SIR,—To you, under your portrait, which is, in expression, your true,

breathing self, and up to now saddens me; in time, and soon, I shall be

glad to have it there; it is still only a reminder of your absence.

Fanny wept when we unpacked it, and you know how little she is given to

that mood; I was scarce Roman myself, but that does not count—I lift up

my voice so readily. These are good compliments to the artist. I write

in the midst of a wreck of books, which have just come up, and have for

once defied my labours to get straight. The whole floor is filled with

them, and (what’s worse) most of the shelves forbye; and where they are

to go to, and what is to become of the librarian, God knows. It is hot

to-night, and has been airless all day, and I am out of sorts, and my

work sticks, the devil fly away with it and me. We had an alarm of war

since last I wrote my screeds to you, and it blew over, and is to blow on

again, and the rumour goes they are to begin by killing all the whites.

I have no belief in this, and should be infinitely sorry if it came to

pass—I do not mean for _us_, that were otiose—but for the poor, deluded

schoolboys, who should hope to gain by such a step.

* * * * *

[_Letter resumed_.]

_June_ 20_th_.

No diary this time. Why? you ask. I have only sent out four Letters,

and two chapters of the _Wrecker_. Yes, but to get these I have written

132 pp., 66,000 words in thirty days; 2200 words a day; the labours of an

elephant. God knows what it’s like, and don’t ask me, but nobody shall

say I have spared pains. I thought for some time it wouldn’t come at

all. I was days and days over the first letter of the lot—days and days

writing and deleting and making no headway whatever, till I thought I

should have gone bust; but it came at last after a fashion, and the rest

went a thought more easily, though I am not so fond as to fancy any

better.

Your opinion as to the letters as a whole is so damnatory that I put them

by. But there is a ‘hell of a want of’ money this year. And these

Gilbert Island papers, being the most interesting in matter, and forming

a compact whole, and being well illustrated, I did think of as a possible

resource.

It would be called

_Six Months in Melanesia_,

_Two Island Kings_,

—_Monarchies_,

_Gilbert Island Kings_,

—_Monarchies_,

and I daresay I’ll think of a better yet—and would divide thus:—

_Butaritati_.

I. A Town asleep.

II. The Three Brothers.

III. Around our House.

IV. A Tale of a Tapu.

V. The Five Day’s Festival.

VI. Domestic Life—(which might be omitted, but not well,

better be recast).

_The King of Apemama_.

VII. The Royal Traders.

VIII. Foundation of Equator Town.

IX. The Palace of Mary Warren.

X. Equator Town and the Palace.

XI. King and Commons.

XII. The Devil Work Box.

XIII. The Three Corslets.

XIV. Tail piece; the Court upon a Journey.

I wish you to watch these closely, judging them as a whole, and treating

them as I have asked you, and favour me with your damnatory advice. I

look up at your portrait, and it frowns upon me. You seem to view me

with reproach. The expression is excellent; Fanny wept when she saw it,

and you know she is not given to the melting mood. She seems really

better; I have a touch of fever again, I fancy overwork, and to-day, when

I have overtaken my letters, I shall blow on my pipe. Tell Mrs. S. I

have been playing _Le Chant d’Amour_ lately, and have arranged it, after

awful trouble, rather prettily for two pipes; and it brought her before

me with an effect scarce short of hallucination. I could hear her voice

in every note; yet I had forgot the air entirely, and began to pipe it

from notes as something new, when I was brought up with a round turn by

this reminiscence. We are now very much installed; the dining-room is

done, and looks lovely. Soon we shall begin to photograph and send you

our circumstances. My room is still a howling wilderness. I sleep on a

platform in a window, and strike my mosquito bar and roll up my

bedclothes every morning, so that the bed becomes by day a divan. A

great part of the floor is knee-deep in books, yet nearly all the shelves

are filled, alas! It is a place to make a pig recoil, yet here are my

interminable labours begun daily by lamp-light, and sometimes not yet

done when the lamp has once more to be lighted. The effect of pictures

in this place is surprising. They give great pleasure.

* * * * *

_June_ 21_st_.

A word more. I had my breakfast this morning at 4.30! My new cook has

beaten me and (as Lloyd says) revenged all the cooks in the world. I

have been hunting them to give me breakfast early since I was twenty; and

now here comes Mr. Ratke, and I have to plead for mercy. I cannot stand

4.30; I am a mere fevered wreck; it is now half-past eight, and I can no

more, and four hours divide me from lunch, the devil take the man!

Yesterday it was about 5.30, which I can stand; day before 5, which is

bad enough; to-day, I give out. It is like a London season, and as I do

not take a siesta once in a month, and then only five minutes, I am being

worn to the bones, and look aged and anxious.

We have Rider Haggard’s brother here as a Land Commissioner; a nice kind

of a fellow; indeed, all the three Land Commissioners are very agreeable.

CHAPTER X

_Sunday_, _Sept._ 5 (?), 1891.

MY DEAR COLVIN,—Yours from Lochinver has just come. You ask me if I am

ever homesick for the Highlands and the Isles. Conceive that for the

last month I have been living there between 1786 and 1850, in my

grandfather’s diaries and letters. I _had_ to take a rest; no use

talking; so I put in a month over my _Lives of the Stevensons_ with great

pleasure and profit and some advance; one chapter and a part drafted.

The whole promises well Chapter I. Domestic Annals. Chapter II. The

Northern Lights. Chapter III. The Bell Rock. Chapter IV. A Family of

Boys. Chap. V. The Grandfather. VI. Alan Stevenson. VII. Thomas

Stevenson. My materials for my great-grandfather are almost null; for my

grandfather copious and excellent. Name, a puzzle. _A Scottish Family_,

_A Family of Engineers_, _Northern Lights_, _The Engineers of the

Northern Lights_: _A Family History_. Advise; but it will take long.

Now, imagine if I have been homesick for Barrahead and Island Glass, and

Kirkwall, and Cape Wrath, and the Wells of the Pentland Firth; I could

have wept.

Now for politics. I am much less alarmed; I believe the _malo_ (=_raj_,

government) will collapse and cease like an overlain infant, without a

shot fired. They have now been months here on their big salaries—and

Cedarcrantz, whom I specially like as a man, has done nearly nothing, and

the Baron, who is well-meaning, has done worse. They have these large

salaries, and they have all the taxes; they have made scarce a foot of

road; they have not given a single native a position—all to white men;

they have scarce laid out a penny on Apia, and scarce a penny on the

King; they have forgot they were in Samoa, or that such a thing as

Samoans existed, and had eyes and some intelligence. The Chief Justice

has refused to pay his customs! The President proposed to have an

expensive house built for himself, while the King, his master, has none!

I had stood aside, and been a loyal, and, above all, a silent subject, up

to then; but now I snap my fingers at their _malo_. It is damned, and

I’m damned glad of it. And this is not all. Last ‘_Wainiu_,’ when I

sent Fanny off to Fiji, I hear the wonderful news that the Chief Justice

is going to Fiji and the Colonies to improve his mind. I showed my way

of thought to his guest, Count Wachtmeister, whom I have sent to you with

a letter—he will tell you all the news. Well, the Chief Justice stayed,

but they said he was to leave yesterday. I had intended to go down, and

see and warn him! But the President’s house had come up in the

meanwhile, and I let them go to their doom, which I am only anxious to

see swiftly and (if it may be) bloodlessly fall.

Thus I have in a way withdrawn my unrewarded loyalty. Lloyd is down

to-day with Moors to call on Mataafa; the news of the excursion made a

considerable row in Apia, and both the German and the English consuls

besought Lloyd not to go. But he stuck to his purpose, and with my

approval. It’s a poor thing if people are to give up a pleasure party

for a _malo_ that has never done anything for us but draw taxes, and is

going to go pop, and leave us at the mercy of the identical Mataafa, whom

I have not visited for more than a year, and who is probably furious.

The sense of my helplessness here has been rather bitter; I feel it

wretched to see this dance of folly and injustice and unconscious

rapacity go forward from day to day, and to be impotent. I was not

consulted—or only by one man, and that on particular points; I did not

choose to volunteer advice till some pressing occasion; I have not even a

vote, for I am not a member of the municipality.

What ails you, miserable man, to talk of saving material? I have a whole

world in my head, a whole new society to work, but I am in no hurry; you

will shortly make the acquaintance of the Island of Ulufanua, on which I

mean to lay several stories; the _Bloody Wedding_, possibly the _High

Woods_—(O, it’s so good, the High Woods, but the story is craziness;

that’s the trouble,)—a political story, the _Labour Slave_, etc.

Ulufanua is an imaginary island; the name is a beautiful Samoan word for

the _top_ of a forest; ulu—leaves or hair, fanua=land. The ground or

country of the leaves. ‘Ulufanua the isle of the sea,’ read that verse

dactylically and you get the beat; the u’s are like our double oo; did

ever you hear a prettier word?

I do not feel inclined to make a volume of Essays, but if I did, and

perhaps the idea is good—and any idea is better than South Seas—here

would be my choice of the Scribner articles: _Dreams_, _Beggars_,

_Lantern-Bearers_, _Random Memories_. There was a paper called the _Old

Pacific Capital_ in Fraser, in Tulloch’s time, which had merit; there

were two on Fontainebleau in the _Magazine of Art_ in Henley’s time. I

have no idea if they’re any good; then there’s the _Emigrant Train_.

_Pulvis et Umbra_ is in a different key, and wouldn’t hang on with the

rest.

I have just interrupted my letter and read through the chapter of the

_High Woods_ that is written, a chapter and a bit, some sixteen pages,

really very fetching, but what do you wish? the story is so wilful, so

steep, so silly—it’s a hallucination I have outlived, and yet I never did

a better piece of work, horrid, and pleasing, and extraordinarily _true_;

it’s sixteen pages of the South Seas; their essence. What am I to do?

Lose this little gem—for I’ll be bold, and that’s what I think it—or go

on with the rest, which I don’t believe in, and don’t like, and which can

never make aught but a silly yarn? Make another end to it? Ah, yes, but

that’s not the way I write; the whole tale is implied; I never use an

effect, when I can help it, unless it prepares the effects that are to

follow; that’s what a story consists in. To make another end, that is to

make the beginning all wrong. The dénouement of a long story is nothing;

it is just a ‘full close,’ which you may approach and accompany as you

please—it is a coda, not an essential member in the rhythm; but the body

and end of a short story is bone of the bone and blood of the blood of

the beginning. Well, I shall end by finishing it against my judgment;

that fragment is my Delilah. Golly, it’s good. I am not shining by

modesty; but I do just love the colour and movement of that piece so far

as it goes.

I was surprised to hear of your fishing. And you saw the ‘Pharos,’

thrice fortunate man; I wish I dared go home, I would ask the

Commissioners to take me round for old sake’s sake, and see all my family

pictures once more from the Mull of Galloway to Unst. However, all is

arranged for our meeting in Ceylon, except the date and the blooming

pounds. I have heard of an exquisite hotel in the country, airy, large

rooms, good cookery, not dear; we shall have a couple of months there, if

we can make it out, and converse or—as my grandfather always

said—‘commune.’ ‘Communings with Mr. Kennedy as to Lighthouse Repairs.’

He was a fine old fellow, but a droll.

* * * * *

_Evening_.

Lloyd has returned. Peace and war were played before his eyes at heads

or tails. A German was stopped with levelled guns; he raised his whip;

had it fallen, we might have been now in war. Excuses were made by

Mataafa himself. Doubtless the thing was done—I mean the stopping of the

German—a little to show off before Lloyd. Meanwhile—was up here, telling

how the Chief Justice was really gone for five or eight weeks, and

begging me to write to the _Times_ and denounce the state of affairs;

many strong reasons he advanced; and Lloyd and I have been since his

arrival and —’s departure, near half an hour, debating what should be

done. Cedarcrantz is gone; it is not my fault; he knows my views on that

point—alone of all points;—he leaves me with my mouth sealed. Yet this

is a nice thing that because he is guilty of a fresh offence—his

flight—the mouth of the only possible influential witness should be

closed? I do not like this argument. I look like a cad, if I do in the

man’s absence what I could have done in a more manly manner in his

presence. True; but why did he go? It is his last sin. And I, who like

the man extremely—that is the word—I love his society—he is intelligent,

pleasant, even witty, a gentleman—and you know how that attaches—I loathe

to seem to play a base part; but the poor natives—who are like other

folk, false enough, lazy enough, not heroes, not saints—ordinary men

damnably misused—are they to suffer because I like Cedarcrantz, and

Cedarcrantz has cut his lucky? This is a little tragedy, observe well—a

tragedy! I may be right, I may be wrong in my judgment, but I am in

treaty with my honour. I know not how it will seem to-morrow. Lloyd

thought the barrier of honour insurmountable, and it is an ugly obstacle.

He (Cedarcrantz) will likely meet my wife three days from now, may travel

back with her, will be charming if he does; suppose this, and suppose him

to arrive and find that I have sprung a mine—or the nearest approach to

it I could find—behind his back? My position is pretty. Yes, I am an

aristocrat. I have the old petty, personal view of honour? I should

blush till I die if I do this; yet it is on the cards that I may do it.

So much I have written you in bed, as a man writes, or talks, in a

_bittre Wahl_. Now I shall sleep, and see if I am more clear. I will

consult the missionaries at least—I place some reliance in M. also—or I

should if he were not a partisan; but a partisan he is. There’s the

pity. To sleep! A fund of wisdom in the prostrate body and the fed

brain. Kindly observe R. L. S. in the talons of politics! ’Tis

funny—’tis sad. Nobody but these cursed idiots could have so driven me;

I cannot bear idiots.

My dear Colvin, I must go to sleep; it is long past ten—a dreadful hour

for me. And here am I lingering (so I feel) in the dining-room at the

Monument, talking to you across the table, both on our feet, and only the

two stairs to mount, and get to bed, and sleep, and be waked by dear old

George—to whom I wish my kindest remembrances—next morning. I look

round, and there is my blue room, and my long lines of shelves, and the

door gaping on a moonless night, and no word of S. C. but his twa

portraits on the wall. Good-bye, my dear fellow, and goodnight. Queer

place the world!

* * * * *

_Monday_.

No clearness of mind with the morning; I have no guess what I should do.

’Tis easy to say that the public duty should brush aside these little

considerations of personal dignity; so it is that politicians begin, and

in a month you find them rat and flatter and intrigue with brows of

brass. I am rather of the old view, that a man’s first duty is to these

little laws; the big he does not, he never will, understand; I may be

wrong about the Chief Justice and the Baron and the state of Samoa; I

cannot be wrong about the vile attitude I put myself in if I blow the

gaff on Cedarcrantz behind his back.

* * * * *

_Tuesday_.

One more word about the South Seas, in answer to a question I observe I

have forgotten to answer. The Tahiti part has never turned up, because

it has never been written. As for telling you where I went or when, or

anything about Honolulu, I would rather die; that is fair and plain. How

can anybody care when or how I left Honolulu? A man of upwards of forty

cannot waste his time in communicating matter of that indifference. The

letters, it appears, are tedious; they would be more tedious still if I

wasted my time upon such infantile and sucking-bottle details. If ever I

put in any such detail, it is because it leads into something or serves

as a transition. To tell it for its own sake, never! The mistake is all

through that I have told too much; I had not sufficient confidence in the

reader, and have overfed him; and here are you anxious to learn how I—O

Colvin! Suppose it had made a book, all such information is given to one

glance of an eye by a map with a little dotted line upon it. But let us

forget this unfortunate affair.

* * * * *

_Wednesday_.

Yesterday I went down to consult Clarke, who took the view of delay. Has

he changed his mind already? I wonder: here at least is the news. Some

little while back some men of Manono—what is Manono?—a Samoan rotten

borough, a small isle of huge political importance, heaven knows why,

where a handful of chiefs make half the trouble in the country. Some men

of Manono (which is strong Mataafa) burned down the houses and destroyed

the crops of some Malietoa neighbours. The President went there the

other day and landed alone on the island, which (to give him his due) was

plucky. Moreover, he succeeded in persuading the folks to come up and be

judged on a particular day in Apia. That day they did not come; but did

come the next, and, to their vast surprise, were given six months’

imprisonment and clapped in gaol. Those who had accompanied them cried

to them on the streets as they were marched to prison, ‘Shall we rescue

you?’ The condemned, marching in the hands of thirty men with loaded

rifles, cried out ‘No’! And the trick was done. But it was ardently

believed a rescue would be attempted; the gaol was laid about with armed

men day and night; but there was some question of their loyalty, and the

commandant of the forces, a very nice young beardless Swede, became

nervous, and conceived a plan. How if he should put dynamite under the

gaol, and in case of an attempted rescue blow up prison and all? He went

to the President, who agreed; he went to the American man-of-war for the

dynamite and machine, was refused, and got it at last from the Wreckers.

The thing began to leak out, and there arose a muttering in town. People

had no fancy for amateur explosions, for one thing. For another, it did

not clearly appear that it was legal; the men had been condemned to six

months’ prison, which they were peaceably undergoing; they had not been

condemned to death. And lastly, it seemed a somewhat advanced example of

civilisation to set before barbarians. The mutter in short became a

storm, and yesterday, while I was down, a cutter was chartered, and the

prisoners were suddenly banished to the Tokelaus. Who has changed the

sentence? We are going to stir in the dynamite matter; we do not want

the natives to fancy us consenting to such an outrage.

Fanny has returned from her trip, and on the whole looks better. The

_High Woods_ are under way, and their name is now the _Beach of Falesá_,

and the yarn is cured. I have about thirty pages of it done; it will be

fifty to seventy I suppose. No supernatural trick at all; and escaped

out of it quite easily; can’t think why I was so stupid for so long.

Mighty glad to have Fanny back to this ‘Hell of the South Seas,’ as the

German Captain called it. What will Cedarcrantz think when he comes

back? To do him justice, had he been here, this Manono hash would not

have been.

Here is a pretty thing. When Fanny was in Fiji all the Samoa and Tokelau

folks were agog about our ‘flash’ house; but the whites had never heard

of it.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON,

Author of _The Beach of Falesá_.

CHAPTER XI

_Sept._ 28.

MY DEAR COLVIN,—Since I last laid down my pen, I have written and

rewritten _The Beach of Falesá_; something like sixty thousand words of

sterling domestic fiction (the story, you will understand, is only half

that length); and now I don’t want to write any more again for ever, or

feel so; and I’ve got to overhaul it once again to my sorrow. I was all

yesterday revising, and found a lot of slacknesses and (what is worse in

this kind of thing) some literaryisms. One of the puzzles is this: It is

a first person story—a trader telling his own adventure in an island.

When I began I allowed myself a few liberties, because I was afraid of

the end; now the end proved quite easy, and could be done in the pace; so

the beginning remains about a quarter tone out (in places); but I have

rather decided to let it stay so. The problem is always delicate; it is

the only thing that worries me in first person tales, which otherwise

(quo’ Alan) ‘set better wi’ my genius.’ There is a vast deal of fact in

the story, and some pretty good comedy. It is the first realistic South

Sea story; I mean with real South Sea character and details of life.

Everybody else who has tried, that I have seen, got carried away by the

romance, and ended in a kind of sugar-candy sham epic, and the whole

effect was lost—there was no etching, no human grin, consequently no

conviction. Now I have got the smell and look of the thing a good deal.

You will know more about the South Seas after you have read my little

tale than if you had read a library. As to whether any one else will

read it, I have no guess. I am in an off time, but there is just the

possibility it might make a hit; for the yarn is good and melodramatic,

and there is quite a love affair—for me; and Mr. Wiltshire (the narrator)

is a huge lark, though I say it. But there is always the exotic

question, and everything, the life, the place, the dialects—trader’s

talk, which is a strange conglomerate of literary expressions and English

and American slang, and Beach de Mar, or native English,—the very trades

and hopes and fears of the characters, are all novel, and may be found

unwelcome to that great, hulking, bullering whale, the public.

Since I wrote, I have been likewise drawing up a document to send it to

the President; it has been dreadfully delayed, not by me, but to-day they

swear it will be sent in. A list of questions about the dynamite report

are herein laid before him, and considerations suggested why he should

answer.

* * * * *

_October_ 5_th_.

Ever since my last snatch I have been much chivied about over the

President business; his answer has come, and is an evasion accompanied

with schoolboy insolence, and we are going to try to answer it. I drew

my answer and took it down yesterday; but one of the signatories wants

another paragraph added, which I have not yet been able to draw, and as

to the wisdom of which I am not yet convinced.

* * * * *

_Next day_, _Oct._ 7_th_, _the right day_.

We are all in rather a muddled state with our President affair. I do

loathe politics, but at the same time, I cannot stand by and have the

natives blown in the air treacherously with dynamite. They are still

quiet; how long this may continue I do not know, though of course by mere

prescription the Government is strengthened, and is probably insured till

the next taxes fall due. But the unpopularity of the whites is growing.

My native overseer, the great Henry Simelé, announced to-day that he was

‘weary of whites upon the beach. All too proud,’ said this veracious

witness. One of the proud ones had threatened yesterday to cut off his

head with a bush knife! These are ‘native outrages’; honour bright, and

setting theft aside, in which the natives are active, this is the main

stream of irritation. The natives are generally courtly, far from always

civil, but really gentle, and with a strong sense of honour of their own,

and certainly quite as much civilised as our dynamiting President.

We shall be delighted to see Kipling. I go to bed usually about

half-past eight, and my lamp is out before ten; I breakfast at six. We

may say roughly we have no soda water on the island, and just now

truthfully no whisky. I _have_ heard the chimes at midnight; now no

more, I guess. _But_—Fanny and I, as soon as we can get coins for it,

are coming to Europe, not to England: I am thinking of Royat. Bar wars.

If not, perhaps the Apennines might give us a mountain refuge for two

months or three in summer. How is that for high? But the money must be

all in hand first.

* * * * *

_October_ 13_th_.

How am I to describe my life these last few days? I have been wholly

swallowed up in politics, a wretched business, with fine elements of

farce in it too, which repay a man in passing, involving many dark and

many moonlight rides, secret counsels which are at once divulged, sealed

letters which are read aloud in confidence to the neighbours, and a mass

of fudge and fun, which would have driven me crazy ten years ago, and now

makes me smile.

On Friday, Henry came and told us he must leave and go to ‘my poor old

family in Savaii’; why? I do not quite know—but, I suspect, to be

tattooed—if so, then probably to be married, and we shall see him no

more. I told him he must do what he thought his duty; we had him to

lunch, drank his health, and he and I rode down about twelve. When I got

down, I sent my horse back to help bring down the family later. My own

afternoon was cut out for me; my last draft for the President had been

objected to by some of the signatories. I stood out, and one of our

small number accordingly refused to sign. Him I had to go and persuade,

which went off very well after the first hottish moments; you have no

idea how stolid my temper is now. By about five the thing was done; and

we sat down to dinner at the Chinaman’s—the Verrey or Doyen’s of Apia—G.

and I at each end as hosts; G.’s wife—Fanua, late maid of the village;

her (adopted) father and mother, Seumanu and Faatulia, Fanny, Belle,

Lloyd, Austin, and Henry Simelé, his last appearance. Henry was in a

kilt of gray shawl, with a blue jacket, white shirt and black necktie,

and looked like a dark genteel guest in a Highland shooting-box. Seumanu

(opposite Fanny, next G.) is chief of Apia, a rather big gun in this

place, looking like a large, fatted, military Englishman, bar the colour.

Faatulia, next me, is a bigger chief than her husband. Henry is a chief

too—his chief name, Iiga (Ee-eeng-a), he has not yet ‘taken’ because of

his youth. We were in fine society, and had a pleasant meal-time, with

lots of fun. Then to the Opera—I beg your pardon, I mean the Circus. We

occupied the first row in the reserved seats, and there in the row behind

were all our friends—Captain Foss and his Captain-Lieutenant, three of

the American officers, very nice fellows, the Dr., etc., so we made a

fine show of what an embittered correspondent of the local paper called

‘the shoddy aristocracy of Apia’; and you should have seen how we carried

on, and how I clapped, and Captain Foss hollered ‘_wunderschön_!’ and

threw himself forward in his seat, and how we all in fact enjoyed

ourselves like school-children, Austin not a shade more than his

neighbours. Then the Circus broke up, and the party went home, but I

stayed down, having business on the morrow.

Yesterday, October 12th, great news reaches me, and Lloyd and I, with the

mail just coming in, must leave all, saddle, and ride down. True enough,

the President had resigned! Sought to resign his presidency of the

council, and keep his advisership to the King; given way to the Consul’s

objections and resigned all—then fell out with them about the disposition

of the funds, and was now trying to resign from his resignation! Sad

little President, so trim to look at, and I believe so kind to his little

wife! Not only so, but I meet D. on the beach. D. calls me in

consultation, and we make with infinite difficulty a draft of a petition

to the King. . . . Then to dinner at M.’s, a very merry meal, interrupted

before it was over by the arrival of the committee. Slight sketch of

procedure agreed upon, self appointed spokesman, and the deputation sets

off. Walk all through Matafele, all along Mulinuu, come to the King’s

house; he has verbally refused to see us in answer to our letter,

swearing he is gase-gase (chief-sickness, not common man’s), and indeed

we see him inside in bed. It is a miserable low house, better houses by

the dozen in the little hamlet (Tanugamanono) of bushmen on our way to

Vailima; and the President’s house in process of erection just opposite!

We are told to return to-morrow; I refuse; and at last we are very sourly

received, sit on the mats, and I open out, through a very poor

interpreter, and sometimes hampered by unacceptable counsels from my

backers. I can speak fairly well in a plain way now. C. asked me to

write out my harangue for him this morning; I have done so, and couldn’t

get it near as good. I suppose (talking and interpreting) I was twenty

minutes or half-an-hour on the deck; then his majesty replied in the

dying whisper of a big chief; a few words of rejoinder (approving), and

the deputation withdrew, rather well satisfied.

A few days ago this intervention would have been a deportable offence;

not now, I bet; I would like them to try. A little way back along

Mulinuu, Mrs. G. met us with her husband’s horse; and he and she and

Lloyd and I rode back in a heavenly moonlight. Here ends a chapter in

the life of an island politician! Catch me at it again; ’tis easy to go

in, but it is not a pleasant trade. I have had a good team, as good as I

could get on the beach; but what trouble even so, and what fresh troubles

shaping. But I have on the whole carried all my points; I believe all

but one, and on that (which did not concern me) I had no right to

interfere. I am sure you would be amazed if you knew what a good hand I

am at keeping my temper, talking people over, and giving reasons which

are not my reasons, but calculated for the meridian of the particular

objection; so soon does falsehood await the politician in his whirling

path.

CHAPTER XII

_May_, _October_ 24_th_.

MY DEAR CARTHEW,—See what I have written, but it’s Colvin I’m after—I

have written two chapters, about thirty pages of _Wrecker_ since the mail

left, which must be my excuse, and the bother I’ve had with it is not to

be imagined, you might have seen me the day before yesterday weighing

British sov.’s and Chili dollars to arrange my treasure chest. And there

was such a calculation, not for that only, but for the ship’s position

and distances when—but I am not going to tell you the yarn—and then, as

my arithmetic is particularly lax, Lloyd had to go over all my

calculations; and then, as I had changed the amount of money, he had to

go over all _his_ as to the amount of the lay; and altogether, a bank

could be run with less effusion of figures than it took to shore up a

single chapter of a measly yarn. However, it’s done, and I have but one

more, or at the outside two, to do, and I am Free! and can do any damn

thing I like.

Before falling on politics, I shall give you my day. Awoke somewhere

about the first peep of day, came gradually to, and had a turn on the

verandah before 5.55, when ‘the child’ (an enormous Wallis Islander)

brings me an orange; at 6, breakfast; 6.10, to work; which lasts till, at

10.30, Austin comes for his history lecture; this is rather dispiriting,

but education must be gone about in faith—and charity, both of which

pretty nigh failed me to-day about (of all things) Carthage; 11,

luncheon; after luncheon in my mother’s room, I read Chapter XXIII. of

_The Wrecker_, then Belle, Lloyd, and I go up and make music furiously

till about 2 (I suppose), when I turn into work again till 4; fool from 4

to half-past, tired out and waiting for the bath hour; 4.30, bath; 4.40,

eat two heavenly mangoes on the verandah, and see the boys arrive with

the pack-horses; 5, dinner; smoke, chat on verandah, then hand of cards,

and at last at 8 come up to my room with a pint of beer and a hard

biscuit, which I am now consuming, and as soon as they are consumed I

shall turn in.

Such are the innocent days of this ancient and outworn sportsman; to-day

there was no weeding, usually there is however, edge in somewhere. My

books for the moment are a crib to Phædo, and the second book of

Montaigne; and a little while back I was reading Frederic Harrison,

‘Choice of Books,’ etc.—very good indeed, a great deal of sense and

knowledge in the volume, and some very true stuff, _contra_ Carlyle,

about the eighteenth century. A hideous idea came over me that perhaps

Harrison is now getting _old_. Perhaps you are. Perhaps I am. Oh, this

infidelity must be stared firmly down. I am about twenty-three—say

twenty-eight; you about thirty, or, by’r lady, thirty-four; and as

Harrison belongs to the same generation, there is no good bothering about

him.

Here has just been a fine alert; I gave my wife a dose of chlorodyne.

‘Something wrong,’ says she. ‘Nonsense,’ said I. ‘Embrocation,’ said

she. I smelt it, and—it smelt very funny. ‘I think it’s just gone bad,

and to-morrow will tell.’ Proved to be so.

* * * * *

_Wednesday_.

_History of Tuesday_.—Woke at usual time, very little work, for I was

tired, and had a job for the evening—to write parts for a new instrument,

a violin. Lunch, chat, and up to my place to practise; but there was no

practising for me—my flageolet was gone wrong, and I had to take it all

to pieces, clean it, and put it up again. As this is a most intricate

job—the thing dissolves into seventeen separate members, most of these

have to be fitted on their individual springs as fine as needles, and

sometimes two at once with the springs shoving different ways—it took me

till two. Then Lloyd and I rode forth on our errands; first to Motootua,

where we had a really instructive conversation on weeds and grasses.

Thence down to Apia, where we bought a fresh bottle of chlorodyne and

conversed on politics.

My visit to the King, which I thought at the time a particularly nugatory

and even schoolboy step, and only consented to because I had held the

reins so tight over my little band before, has raised a deuce of a

row—new proclamation, no one is to interview the sacred puppet without

consuls’ permission, two days’ notice, and an approved interpreter—read

(I suppose) spy. Then back; I should have said I was trying the new

horse; a tallish piebald, bought from the circus; he proved steady and

safe, but in very bad condition, and not so much the wild Arab steed of

the desert as had been supposed. The height of his back, after

commodious Jack, astonished me, and I had a great consciousness of

exercise and florid action, as I posted to his long, emphatic trot. We

had to ride back easy; even so he was hot and blown; and when we set a

boy to lead him to and fro, our last character for sanity perished. We

returned just neat for dinner; and in the evening our violinist arrived,

a young lady, no great virtuoso truly, but plucky, industrious, and a

good reader; and we played five pieces with huge amusement, and broke up

at nine. This morning I have read a splendid piece of Montaigne, written

this page of letter, and now turn to the _Wrecker_.

_Wednesday_—November 16th or 17th—and I am ashamed to say mail day. The

_Wrecker_ is finished, that is the best of my news; it goes by this mail

to Scribner’s; and I honestly think it a good yarn on the whole and of

its measly kind. The part that is genuinely good is Nares, the American

sailor; that is a genuine figure; had there been more Nares it would have

been a better book; but of course it didn’t set up to be a book, only a

long tough yarn with some pictures of the manners of to-day in the

greater world—not the shoddy sham world of cities, clubs, and colleges,

but the world where men still live a man’s life. The worst of my news is

the influenza; Apia is devastate; the shops closed, a ball put off, etc.

As yet we have not had it at Vailima, and, who knows? we may escape.

None of us go down, but of course the boys come and go.

Your letter had the most wonderful ‘I told you so’ I ever heard in the

course of my life. Why, you madman, I wouldn’t change my present

installation for any post, dignity, honour, or advantage conceivable to

me. It fills the bill; I have the loveliest time. And as for wars and

rumours of wars, you surely know enough of me to be aware that I like

that also a thousand times better than decrepit peace in Middlesex? I do

not quite like politics; I am too aristocratic, I fear, for that. God

knows I don’t care who I chum with; perhaps like sailors best; but to go

round and sue and sneak to keep a crowd together—never. My imagination,

which is not the least damped by the idea of having my head cut off in

the bush, recoils aghast from the idea of a life like Gladstone’s, and

the shadow of the newspaper chills me to the bone. Hence my late

eruption was interesting, but not what I like. All else suits me in this

(killed a mosquito) A1 abode.

About politics. A determination was come to by the President that he had

been an idiot; emissaries came to G. and me to kiss and be friends. My

man proposed I should have a personal interview; I said it was quite

useless, I had nothing to say; I had offered him the chance to inform me,

had pressed it on him, and had been very unpleasantly received, and now

‘Time was.’ Then it was decided that I was to be made a culprit against

Germany; the German Captain—a delightful fellow and our constant

visitor—wrote to say that as ‘a German officer’ he could not come even to

say farewell. We all wrote back in the most friendly spirit, telling him

(politely) that some of these days he would be sorry, and we should be

delighted to see our friend again. Since then I have seen no German

shadow.

Mataafa has been proclaimed a rebel; the President did this act, and then

resigned. By singular good fortune, Mataafa has not yet moved; no thanks

to our idiot governors. They have shot their bolt; they have made a

rebel of the only man (_to their own knowledge_, _on the report of their

own spy_) who held the rebel party in check; and having thus called on

war to fall, they can do no more, sit equally ‘expertes’ of _vis_ and

counsel, regarding their handiwork. It is always a cry with these folk

that he (Mataafa) had no ammunition. I always said it would be found;

and we know of five boat-loads that have found their way to Malie

already. Where there are traders, there will be ammunition; aphorism by

R. L. S.

Now what am I to do next?

Lives of the Stevensons? _Historia Samoae_? A History for Children?

Fiction? I have had two hard months at fiction; I want a change.

Stevensons? I am expecting some more material; perhaps better wait.

Samoa; rather tempting; might be useful to the islands—and to me; for it

will be written in admirable temper; I have never agreed with any party,

and see merits and excuses in all; should do it (if I did) very slackly

and easily, as if half in conversation. History for Children? This

flows from my lessons to Austin; no book is any good. The best I have

seen is Freeman’s _Old English History_; but his style is so rasping, and

a child can learn more, if he’s clever. I found my sketch of general

Aryan History, given in conversation, to have been practically correct—at

least what I mean is, Freeman had very much the same stuff in his early

chapters, only not so much, and I thought not so well placed; and the

child remembered some of it. Now the difficulty is to give this general

idea of main place, growth, and movement; it is needful to tack it on a

yarn. Now Scotch is the only History I know; it is the only history

reasonably represented in my library; it is a very good one for my

purpose, owing to two civilisations having been face to face

throughout—or rather Roman civilisation face to face with our ancient

barbaric life and government, down to yesterday, to 1750 anyway. But the

_Tales of a Grandfather_ stand in my way; I am teaching them to Austin

now, and they have all Scott’s defects and all Scott’s hopeless merit. I

cannot compete with that; and yet, so far as regards teaching History,

how he has missed his chances! I think I’ll try; I really have some

historic sense, I feel that in my bones. Then there’s another thing.

Scott never knew the Highlands; he was always a Borderer. He has missed

that whole, long, strange, pathetic story of our savages, and, besides,

his style is not very perspicuous to childhood. Gad, I think I’ll have a

flutter. Buridan’s Ass! Whether to go, what to attack. Must go to

other letters; shall add to this, if I have time.

CHAPTER XIII

_Nov._ 25_th_, 1891.

MY DEAR COLVIN, MY DEAR COLVIN,—I wonder how often I’m going to write it.

In spite of the loss of three days, as I have to tell, and a lot of

weeding and cacao planting, I have finished since the mail left four

chapters, forty-eight pages of my Samoa history. It is true that the

first three had been a good deal drafted two years ago, but they had all

to be written and re-written, and the fourth chapter is all new. Chapter

I. Elements of Discord-Native. II. Elements of Discord-Foreign. III.

The Success of Laupepa. IV. Brandeis. V. Will probably be called ‘The

Rise of Mataafa.’ VI. _Furor Consularis_—a devil of a long chapter.

VII. Stuebel the Pacificator. VIII. Government under the Treaty of

Berlin. IX. Practical Suggestions. Say three-sixths of it are done,

maybe more; by this mail five chapters should go, and that should be a

good half of it; say sixty pages. And if you consider that I sent by

last mail the end of the _Wrecker_, coming on for seventy or eighty

pages, and the mail before that the entire Tale of the _Beach of Falesá_,

I do not think I can be accused of idleness. This is my season; I often

work six and seven, and sometimes eight hours; and the same day I am

perhaps weeding or planting for an hour or two more—and I daresay you

know what hard work weeding is—and it all agrees with me at this time of

the year—like—like idleness, if a man of my years could be idle.

My first visit to Apia was a shock to me; every second person the ghost

of himself, and the place reeking with infection. But I have not got the

thing yet, and hope to escape. This shows how much stronger I am; think

of me flitting through a town of influenza patients seemingly unscathed.

We are all on the cacao planting.

The next day my wife and I rode over to the German plantation, Vailele,

whose manager is almost the only German left to speak to us. Seventy

labourers down with influenza! It is a lovely ride, half-way down our

mountain towards Apia, then turn to the right, ford the river, and three

miles of solitary grass and cocoa palms, to where the sea beats and the

wild wind blows unceasingly about the plantation house. On the way down

Fanny said, ‘Now what would you do if you saw Colvin coming up?’

Next day we rode down to Apia to make calls.

Yesterday the mail came, and the fat was in the fire.

* * * * *

_Nov._ 29_th_?

_Book_. All right. I must say I like your order. And the papers are

some of them up to dick, and no mistake. I agree with you the lights

seem a little turned down. The truth is, I was far through (if you

understand Scots), and came none too soon to the South Seas, where I was

to recover peace of body and mind. No man but myself knew all my

bitterness in those days. Remember that, the next time you think I

regret my exile. And however low the lights are, the stuff is true, and

I believe the more effective; after all, what I wish to fight is the best

fought by a rather cheerless presentation of the truth. The world must

return some day to the word duty, and be done with the word reward.

There are no rewards, and plenty duties. And the sooner a man sees that

and acts upon it like a gentleman or a fine old barbarian, the better for

himself.

There is my usual puzzle about publishers. Chatto ought to have it, as

he has all the other essays; these all belong to me, and Chatto publishes

on terms. Longman has forgotten the terms we are on; let him look up our

first correspondence, and he will see I reserved explicitly, as was my

habit, the right to republish as I choose. Had the same arrangement with

Henley, Magazine of Art, and with Tulloch Fraser’s.—For any necessary

note or preface, it would be a real service if you would undertake the

duty yourself. I should love a preface by you, as short or as long as

you choose, three sentences, thirty pages, the thing I should like is

your name. And the excuse of my great distance seems sufficient. I

shall return with this the sheets corrected as far as I have them; the

rest I will leave, if you will, to you entirely; let it be your book, and

disclaim what you dislike in the preface. You can say it was at my eager

prayer. I should say I am the less willing to pass Chatto over, because

he behaved the other day in a very handsome manner. He asked leave to

reprint _Damien_; I gave it to him as a present, explaining I could

receive no emolument for a personal attack. And he took out my share of

profits, and sent them in my name to the Leper Fund. I could not bear

after that to take from him any of that class of books which I have

always given him. Tell him the same terms will do. Clark to print,

uniform with the others.

I have lost all the days since this letter began re-handling Chapter IV.

of the Samoa racket. I do not go in for literature; address myself to

sensible people rather than to sensitive. And, indeed, it is a kind of

journalism, I have no right to dally; if it is to help, it must come

soon. In two months from now it shall be done, and should be published

in the course of March. I propose Cassell gets it. I am going to call

it ‘A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa,’ I believe.

I recoil from serious names; they seem so much too pretentious for a

pamphlet. It will be about the size of _Treasure Island_, I believe. Of

course, as you now know, my case of conscience cleared itself off, and I

began my intervention directly to one of the parties. The other, the

Chief Justice, I am to inform of my book the first occasion. God knows

if the book will do any good—or harm; but I judge it right to try. There

is one man’s life certainly involved; and it may be all our lives. I

must not stand and slouch, but do my best as best I can. But you may

conceive the difficulty of a history extending to the present week, at

least, and where almost all the actors upon all sides are of my personal

acquaintance. The only way is to judge slowly, and write boldly, and

leave the issue to fate. . . . I am far indeed from wishing to confine

myself to creative work; that is a loss, the other repairs; the one

chance for a man, and, above all, for one who grows elderly, ahem, is to

vary drainage and repair. That is the one thing I understand—the

cultivation of the shallow _solum_ of my brain. But I would rather, from

soon on, be released from the obligation to write. In five or six years

this plantation—suppose it and us still to exist—should pretty well

support us and pay wages; not before, and already the six years seem long

to me. If literature were but a pastime!

I have interrupted myself to write the necessary notification to the

Chief Justice.

I see in looking up Longman’s letter that it was as usual the letter of

an obliging gentleman; so do not trouble him with my reminder. I wish

all my publishers were not so nice. And I have a fourth and a fifth

baying at my heels; but for these, of course, they must go wanting.

* * * * *

_Dec._ 2_nd_.

No answer from the Chief Justice, which is like him, but surely very

wrong in such a case. The lunch bell! I have been off work, playing

patience and weeding all morning. Yesterday and the day before I drafted

eleven and revised nine pages of Chapter V., and the truth is, I was

extinct by lunch-time, and played patience sourly the rest of the day.

To-morrow or next day I hope to go in again and win. Lunch 2nd Bell.

* * * * *

_Dec._ 2_nd_, _afternoon_.

I have kept up the idleness; blew on the pipe to Belle’s piano; then had

a ride in the forest all by my nainsel; back and piped again, and now

dinner nearing. Take up this sheet with nothing to say. The weird

figure of Faauma is in the room washing my windows, in a black lavalava

(kilt) with a red handkerchief hanging from round her neck between her

breasts; not another stitch; her hair close cropped and oiled; when she

first came here she was an angelic little stripling, but she is now in

full flower—or half-flower—and grows buxom. As I write, I hear her wet

cloth moving and grunting with some industry; for I had a word this day

with her husband on the matter of work and meal-time, when she is always

late. And she has a vague reverence for Papa, as she and her enormous

husband address me when anything is wrong. Her husband is Lafaele,

sometimes called the archangel, of whom I have writ you often. Rest of

our household, Talolo, cook; Pulu, kitchen boy, good, steady, industrious

lads; Henry, back again from Savaii, where his love affair seems not to

have prospered, with what looks like a spear-wound in the back of his

head, of which Mr. Reticence says nothing; Simi, Manuele, and two other

labourers out-doors. Lafaele is provost of the live-stock, whereof now,

three milk-cows, one bull-calf, one heifer, Jack, Macfarlane, the mare,

Harold, Tifaga Jack, Donald and Edinburgh—seven horses—O, and the

stallion—eight horses; five cattle; total, if my arithmetic be correct,

thirteen head of beasts; I don’t know how the pigs stand, or the ducks,

or the chickens; but we get a good many eggs, and now and again a

duckling or a chickling for the table; the pigs are more solemn, and

appear only on birthdays and sich.

* * * * *

_Monday_, _Dec._ 7.

On Friday morning about eleven 1500 cacao seeds arrived, and we set to

and toiled from twelve that day to six, and went to bed pretty tired.

Next day I got about an hour and a half at my History, and was at it

again by 8.10, and except an hour for lunch kept at it till four P.M.

Yesterday, I did some History in the morning, and slept most of the

afternoon; and to-day, being still averse from physical labour, and the

mail drawing nigh, drew out of the squad, and finished for press the

fifth chapter of my History; fifty-nine pages in one month; which (you

will allow me to say) is a devil of a large order; it means at least 177

pages of writing; 89,000 words! and hours going to and fro among my

notes. However, this is the way it has to be done; the job must be done

fast, or it is of no use. And it is a curious yarn. Honestly, I think

people should be amused and convinced, if they could be at the pains to

look at such a damned outlandish piece of machinery, which of course they

won’t. And much I care.

When I was filling baskets all Saturday, in my dull mulish way, perhaps

the slowest worker there, surely the most particular, and the only one

that never looked up or knocked off, I could not but think I should have

been sent on exhibition as an example to young literary men. Here is how

to learn to write, might be the motto. You should have seen us; the

verandah was like an Irish bog; our hands and faces were bedaubed with

soil; and Faauma was supposed to have struck the right note when she

remarked (_à propos_ of nothing), ‘Too much _eleele_ (soil) for me!’ The

cacao (you must understand) has to be planted at first in baskets of

plaited cocoa-leaf. From four to ten natives were plaiting these in the

wood-shed. Four boys were digging up soil and bringing it by the boxful

to the verandah. Lloyd and I and Belle, and sometimes S. (who came to

bear a hand), were filling the baskets, removing stones and lumps of

clay; Austin and Faauma carried them when full to Fanny, who planted a

seed in each, and then set them, packed close, in the corners of the

verandah. From twelve on Friday till five P.M. on Saturday we planted

the first 1500, and more than 700 of a second lot. You cannot dream how

filthy we were, and we were all properly tired. They are all at it again

to-day, bar Belle and me, not required, and glad to be out of it. The

Chief Justice has not yet replied, and I have news that he received my

letter. What a man!

I have gone crazy over Bourget’s _Sensations d’Italie_; hence the

enclosed dedications, a mere cry of gratitude for the best fun I’ve had

over a new book this ever so!

[Picture: Photograph of Robert Louis Stevenson on his horse ‘Jack’]

CHAPTER XIV

_Tuesday_, _Dec._ 1891.

SIR,—I have the honour to report further explorations of the course of

the river Vaea, with accompanying sketch plan. The party under my

command consisted of one horse, and was extremely insubordinate and

mutinous, owing to not being used to go into the bush, and being

half-broken anyway—and that the wrong half. The route indicated for my

party was up the bed of the so-called river Vaea, which I accordingly

followed to a distance of perhaps two or three furlongs eastward from the

house of Vailima, where the stream being quite dry, the bush thick, and

the ground very difficult, I decided to leave the main body of the force

under my command tied to a tree, and push on myself with the point of the

advance guard, consisting of one man. The valley had become very narrow

and airless; foliage close shut above; dry bed of the stream much

excavated, so that I passed under fallen trees without stooping.

Suddenly it turned sharply to the north, at right angles to its former

direction; I heard living water, and came in view of a tall face of rock

and the stream spraying down it; it might have been climbed, but it would

have been dangerous, and I had to make my way up the steep earth banks,

where there is nowhere any footing for man, only fallen trees, which made

the rounds of my ladder. I was near the top of this climb, which was

very hot and steep, and the pulses were buzzing all over my body, when I

made sure there was one external sound in my ears, and paused to listen.

No mistake; a sound of a mill-wheel thundering, I thought, close by, yet

below me, a huge mill-wheel, yet not going steadily, but with a

_schottische_ movement, and at each fresh impetus shaking the mountain.

There, where I was, I just put down the sound to the mystery of the bush;

where no sound now surprises me—and any sound alarms; I only thought it

would give Jack a fine fright, down where he stood tied to a tree by

himself, and he was badly enough scared when I left him. The good folks

at home identified it; it was a sharp earthquake.

[Picture: Map]

At the top of the climb I made my way again to the water-course; it is

here running steady and pretty full; strange these intermittencies—and

just a little below the main stream is quite dry, and all the original

brook has gone down some lava gallery of the mountain—and just a little

further below, it begins picking up from the left hand in little boggy

tributaries, and in the inside of a hundred yards has grown a brook

again. The general course of the brook was, I guess, S.E.; the valley

still very deep and whelmed in wood. It seemed a swindle to have made so

sheer a climb and still find yourself at the bottom of a well. But

gradually the thing seemed to shallow, the trees to seem poorer and

smaller; I could see more and more of the silver sprinkles of sky among

the foliage, instead of the sombre piling up of tree behind tree. And

here I had two scares—first, away up on my right hand I heard a bull low;

I think it was a bull from the quality of the low, which was singularly

songful and beautiful; the bulls belong to me, but how did I know that

the bull was aware of that? and my advance guard not being at all

properly armed, we advanced with great precaution until I was satisfied

that I was passing eastward of the enemy. It was during this period that

a pool of the river suddenly boiled up in my face in a little fountain.

It was in a very dreary, marshy part among dilapidated trees that you see

through holes in the trunks of; and if any kind of beast or elf or devil

had come out of that sudden silver ebullition, I declare I do not think I

should have been surprised. It was perhaps a thing as curious—a fish,

with which these head waters of the stream are alive. They are some of

them as long as my finger, should be easily caught in these shallows, and

some day I’ll have a dish of them.

Very soon after I came to where the stream collects in another banana

swamp, with the bananas bearing well. Beyond, the course is again quite

dry; it mounts with a sharp turn a very steep face of the mountain, and

then stops abruptly at the lip of a plateau, I suppose the top of Vaea

mountain: plainly no more springs here—there was no smallest furrow of a

watercourse beyond—and my task might be said to be accomplished. But

such is the animated spirit in the service that the whole advance guard

expressed a sentiment of disappointment that an exploration, so far

successfully conducted, should come to a stop in the most promising view

of fresh successes. And though unprovided either with compass or

cutlass, it was determined to push some way along the plateau, marking

our direction by the laborious process of bending down, sitting upon, and

thus breaking the wild cocoanut trees. This was the less regretted by

all from a delightful discovery made of a huge banyan growing here in the

bush, with flying-buttressed flying buttresses, and huge arcs of trunk

hanging high overhead and trailing down new complications of root. I

climbed some way up what seemed the original beginning; it was easier to

climb than a ship’s rigging, even rattled; everywhere there was foot-hold

and hand-hold. It was judged wise to return and rally the main body, who

had now been left alone for perhaps forty minutes in the bush.

The return was effected in good order, but unhappily I only arrived (like

so many other explorers) to find my main body or rear-guard in a

condition of mutiny; the work, it is to be supposed, of terror. It is

right I should tell you the Vaea has a bad name, an _aitu fafine_—female

devil of the woods—succubus—haunting it, and doubtless Jack had heard of

her; perhaps, during my absence, saw her; lucky Jack! Anyway, he was

neither to hold nor to bind, and finally, after nearly smashing me by

accident, and from mere scare and insubordination several times,

deliberately set in to kill me; but poor Jack! the tree he selected for

that purpose was a banana! I jumped off and gave him the heavy end of my

whip over the buttocks! Then I took and talked in his ear in various

voices; you should have heard my alto—it was a dreadful, devilish note—I

_knew_ Jack _knew_ it was an _aitu_. Then I mounted him again, and he

carried me fairly steadily. He’ll learn yet. He has to learn to trust

absolutely to his rider; till he does, the risk is always great in thick

bush, where a fellow must try different passages, and put back and

forward, and pick his way by hair’s-breadths.

The expedition returned to Vailima in time to receive the visit of the R.

C. Bishop. He is a superior man, much above the average of priests.

* * * * *

_Thursday_.

Yesterday the same expedition set forth to the southward by what is known

as Carruthers’ Road. At a fallen tree which completely blocks the way,

the main body was as before left behind, and the advance guard of one now

proceeded with the exploration. At the great tree known as _Mepi Tree_,

after Maben the surveyor, the expedition struck forty yards due west till

it struck the top of a steep bank which it descended. The whole bottom

of the ravine is filled with sharp lava blocks quite unrolled and very

difficult and dangerous to walk among; no water in the course, scarce any

sign of water. And yet surely water must have made this bold cutting in

the plateau. And if so, why is the lava sharp? My science gave out; but

I could not but think it ominous and volcanic. The course of the stream

was tortuous, but with a resultant direction a little by west of north;

the sides the whole way exceeding steep, the expedition buried under

fathoms of foliage. Presently water appeared in the bottom, a good

quantity; perhaps thirty or forty cubic feet, with pools and waterfalls.

A tree that stands all along the banks here must be very fond of water;

its roots lie close-packed down the stream, like hanks of guts, so as to

make often a corrugated walk, each root ending in a blunt tuft of

filaments, plainly to drink water. Twice there came in small tributaries

from the left or western side—the whole plateau having a smartish

inclination to the east; one of the tributaries in a handsome little web

of silver hanging in the forest. Twice I was startled by birds; one that

barked like a dog; another that whistled loud ploughman’s signals, so

that I vow I was thrilled, and thought I had fallen among runaway blacks,

and regretted my cutlass which I had lost and left behind while taking

bearings. A good many fishes in the brook, and many cray-fish; one of

the last with a queer glow-worm head. Like all our brooks, the water is

pure as air, and runs over red stones like rubies. The foliage along

both banks very thick and high, the place close, the walking exceedingly

laborious. By the time the expedition reached the fork, it was felt

exceedingly questionable whether the _moral_ of the force were

sufficiently good to undertake more extended operations. A halt was

called, the men refreshed with water and a bath, and it was decided at a

drumhead council of war to continue the descent of the Embassy Water

straight for Vailima, whither the expedition returned, in rather poor

condition, and wet to the waist, about 4. P.M.

Thus in two days the two main watercourses of this country have been

pretty thoroughly explored, and I conceive my instructions fully carried

out. The main body of the second expedition was brought back by another

officer despatched for that purpose from Vailima. Casualties: one horse

wounded; one man bruised; no deaths—as yet, but the bruised man feels

to-day as if his case was mighty serious.

* * * * *

_Dec._ 25, ’91.

Your note with a very despicable bulletin of health arrived only

yesterday, the mail being a day behind. It contained also the excellent

_Times_ article, which was a sight for sore eyes. I am still _taboo_;

the blessed Germans will have none of me; and I only hope they may enjoy

the _Times_ article. ’Tis my revenge! I wish you had sent the letter

too, as I have no copy, and do not even know what I wrote the last day,

with a bad headache, and the mail going out. However, it must have been

about right, for the _Times_ article was in the spirit I wished to

arouse. I hope we can get rid of the man before it is too late. He has

set the natives to war; but the natives, by God’s blessing, do not want

to fight, and I think it will fizzle out—no thanks to the man who tried

to start it. But I did not mean to drift into these politics; rather to

tell you what I have done since I last wrote.

Well, I worked away at my History for a while, and only got one chapter

done; no doubt this spate of work is pretty low now, and will be soon

dry; but, God bless you, what a lot I have accomplished; _Wrecker_ done,

_Beach of Falesá_ done, half the _History_: _c’est étonnant_. (I hear

from Burlingame, by the way, that he likes the end of the _Wrecker_; ’tis

certainly a violent, dark yarn with interesting, plain turns of human

nature), then Lloyd and I went down to live in Haggard’s rooms, where

Fanny presently joined us. Haggard’s rooms are in a strange old

building—old for Samoa, and has the effect of the antique like some

strange monastery; I would tell you more of it, but I think I’m going to

use it in a tale. The annexe close by had its door sealed; poor Dowdney

lost at sea in a schooner. The place is haunted. The vast empty sheds,

the empty store, the airless, hot, long, low rooms, the claps of wind

that set everything flying—a strange uncanny house to spend Christmas in.

* * * * *

_Jan._ 1_st_, ’92.

For a day or two I have sat close and wrought hard at the _History_, and

two more chapters are all but done. About thirty pages should go by this

mail, which is not what should be, but all I could overtake. Will any

one ever read it? I fancy not; people don’t read history for reading,

but for education and display—and who desires education in the history of

Samoa, with no population, no past, no future, or the exploits of

Mataafa, Malietoa, and Consul Knappe? Colkitto and Galasp are a trifle

to it. Well, it can’t be helped, and it must be done, and, better or

worse, it’s capital fun. There are two to whom I have not been

kind—German Consul Becker and English Captain Hand, R.N.

On Dec. 30th I rode down with Belle to go to (if you please) the Fancy

Ball. When I got to the beach, I found the barometer was below 29°, the

wind still in the east and steady, but a huge offensive continent of

clouds and vapours forming to leeward. It might be a hurricane; I dared

not risk getting caught away from my work, and, leaving Belle, returned

at once to Vailima. Next day—yesterday—it was a tearer; we had storm

shutters up; I sat in my room and wrote by lamplight—ten pages, if you

please, seven of them draft, and some of these compiled from as many as

seven different and conflicting authorities, so that was a brave day’s

work. About two a huge tree fell within sixty paces of our house; a

little after, a second went; and we sent out boys with axes and cut down

a third, which was too near the house, and buckling like a fishing rod.

At dinner we had the front door closed and shuttered, the back door open,

the lamp lit. The boys in the cook-house were all out at the cook-house

door, where we could see them looking in and smiling. Lauilo and Faauma

waited on us with smiles. The excitement was delightful. Some very

violent squalls came as we sat there, and every one rejoiced; it was

impossible to help it; a soul of putty had to sing. All night it blew;

the roof was continually sounding under missiles; in the morning the

verandahs were half full of branches torn from the forest. There was a

last very wild squall about six; the rain, like a thick white smoke,

flying past the house in volleys, and as swift, it seemed, as rifle

balls; all with a strange, strident hiss, such as I have only heard

before at sea, and, indeed, thought to be a marine phenomenon. Since

then the wind has been falling with a few squalls, mostly rain. But our

road is impassable for horses; we hear a schooner has been wrecked and

some native houses blown down in Apia, where Belle is still and must

remain a prisoner. Lucky I returned while I could! But the great good

is this; much bread-fruit and bananas have been destroyed; if this be

general through the islands, famine will be imminent; and _whoever blows

the coals_, _there can be no war_. Do I then prefer a famine to a war?

you ask. Not always, but just now. I am sure the natives do not want a

war; I am sure a war would benefit no one but the white officials, and I

believe we can easily meet the famine—or at least that it can be met.

That would give our officials a legitimate opportunity to cover their

past errors.

* * * * *

_Jan._ 2_nd_.

I woke this morning to find the blow quite ended. The heaven was all a

mottled gray; even the east quite colourless; the downward slope of the

island veiled in wafts of vapour, blue like smoke; not a leaf stirred on

the tallest tree; only, three miles away below me on the barrier reef, I

could see the individual breakers curl and fall, and hear their conjunct

roaring rise, as it still rises at 1 P.M., like the roar of a

thoroughfare close by. I did a good morning’s work, correcting and

clarifying my draft, and have now finished for press eight chapters,

ninety-one pages, of this piece of journalism. Four more chapters, say

fifty pages, remain to be done; I should gain my wager and finish this

volume in three months, that is to say, the end should leave me per

February mail; I cannot receive it back till the mail of April. Yes, it

can be out in time; pray God that it be in time to help.

How do journalists fetch up their drivel? I aim only at clearness and

the most obvious finish, positively at no higher degree of merit, not

even at brevity—I am sure it could have been all done, with double the

time, in two-thirds of the space. And yet it has taken me two months to

write 45,500 words; and, be damned to my wicked prowess, I am proud of

the exploit! The real journalist must be a man not of brass only, but

bronze. Chapter IX. gapes for me, but I shrink on the margin, and go on

chattering to you. This last part will be much less offensive (strange

to say) to the Germans. It is Becker they will never forgive me for;

Knappe I pity and do not dislike; Becker I scorn and abominate. Here is

the tableau. I. Elements of Discord: Native. II. Elements of Discord:

Foreign. III. The Sorrows of Laupepa. IV. Brandeis. V. The Battle of

Matautu. VI. Last Exploits of Becker. VII. The Samoan Camps. VIII.

Affairs of Lautii and Fangalii. IX. ‘_Furor Consularis_.’ X. The

Hurricane. XI. Stuebel Recluse. XII. The Present Government. I

estimate the whole roughly at 70,000 words. Should anybody ever dream of

reading it, it would be found amusing. 70000/300=233 printed pages; a

respectable little five-bob volume, to bloom unread in shop windows.

After that, I’ll have a spank at fiction. And rest? I shall rest in the

grave, or when I come to Italy. If only the public will continue to

support me! I lost my chance not dying; there seems blooming little fear

of it now. I worked close on five hours this morning; the day before,

close on nine; and unless I finish myself off with this letter, I’ll have

another hour and a half, or _aiblins twa_, before dinner. Poor man, how

you must envy me, as you hear of these orgies of work, and you scarce

able for a letter. But Lord, Colvin, how lucky the situations are not

reversed, for I have no situation, nor am fit for any. Life is a steigh

brae. Here, have at Knappe, and no more clavers!

* * * * *

3_rd_.

There was never any man had so many irons in the fire, except Jim

Pinkerton. I forgot to mention I have the most gallant suggestion from

Lang, with an offer of MS. authorities, which turns my brain. It’s all

about the throne of Poland and buried treasure in the Mackay country, and

Alan Breck can figure there in glory.

Yesterday, J. and I set off to Blacklock’s (American Consul) who lives

not far from that little village I have so often mentioned as lying

between us and Apia. I had some questions to ask him for my History;

thence we must proceed to Vailele, where I had also to cross-examine the

plantation manager about the battle there. We went by a track I had

never before followed down the hill to Vaisigano, which flows here in a

deep valley, and was unusually full, so that the horses trembled in the

ford. The whole bottom of the valley is full of various streams posting

between strips of forest with a brave sound of waters. In one place we

had a glimpse of a fall some way higher up, and then sparkling in

sunlight in the midst of the green valley. Then up by a winding path

scarce accessible to a horse for steepness, to the other side, and the

open cocoanut glades of the plantation. Here we rode fast, did a mighty

satisfactory afternoon’s work at the plantation house, and still faster

back. On the return Jack fell with me, but got up again; when I felt him

recovering I gave him his head, and he shoved his foot through the rein;

I got him by the bit however, and all was well; he had mud over all his

face, but his knees were not broken. We were scarce home when the rain

began again; that was luck. It is pouring now in torrents; we are in the

height of the bad season. Lloyd leaves along with this letter on a

change to San Francisco; he had much need of it, but I think this will

brace him up. I am, as you see, a tower of strength. I can remember

riding not so far and not near so fast when I first came to Samoa, and

being shattered next day with fatigue; now I could not tell I have done

anything; have re-handled my battle of Fangalii according to yesterday’s

information—four pages rewritten; and written already some half-dozen

pages of letters.

I observe with disgust that while of yore, when I own I was guilty, you

never spared me abuse, but now, when I am so virtuous, where is the

praise? Do admit that I have become an excellent letter-writer—at least

to you, and that your ingratitude is imbecile.—Yours ever,

R. L. S.

CHAPTER XV

_Jan._ 31_st_, ’92.

MY DEAR COLVIN,—No letter at all from you, and this scratch from me!

Here is a year that opens ill. Lloyd is off to ‘the coast’ sick—_the

coast_ means California over most of the Pacific—I have been down all

month with influenza, and am just recovering—I am overlaid with proofs,

which I am just about half fit to attend to. One of my horses died this

morning, and another is now dying on the front lawn—Lloyd’s horse and

Fanny’s. Such is my quarrel with destiny. But I am mending famously,

come and go on the balcony, have perfectly good nights, and though I

still cough, have no oppression and no hemorrhage and no fever. So if I

can find time and courage to add no more, you will know my news is not

altogether of the worst; a year or two ago, and what a state I should

have been in now! Your silence, I own, rather alarms me. But I tell

myself you have just miscarried; had you been too ill to write, some one

would have written me. Understand, I send this brief scratch not because

I am unfit to write more, but because I have 58 galleys of the _Wrecker_

and 102 of the _Beach of Falesá_ to get overhauled somehow or other in

time for the mail, and for three weeks I have not touched a pen with my

finger.

* * * * *

_Feb._ 1_st_.

The second horse is still alive, but I still think dying. The first was

buried this morning. My proofs are done; it was a rough two days of it,

but done. _Consummatum est_; _na uma_. I believe the _Wrecker_ ends

well; if I know what a good yarn is, the last four chapters make a good

yarn—but pretty horrible. _The Beach of Falesá_ I still think well of,

but it seems it’s immoral and there’s a to-do, and financially it may

prove a heavy disappointment. The plaintive request sent to me, to make

the young folks married properly before ‘that night,’ I refused; you will

see what would be left of the yarn, had I consented. This is a poison

bad world for the romancer, this Anglo-Saxon world; I usually get out of

it by not having any women in it at all; but when I remember I had the

_Treasure of Franchard_ refused as unfit for a family magazine, I feel

despair weigh upon my wrists.

As I know you are always interested in novels, I must tell you that a new

one is now entirely planned. It is to be called _Sophia Scarlet_, and is

in two parts. Part I. The Vanilla Planter. Part II. The Overseers. No

chapters, I think; just two dense blocks of narrative, the first of which

is purely sentimental, but the second has some rows and quarrels, and

winds up with an explosion, if you please! I am just burning to get at

Sophia, but I _must_ do this Samoan journalism—that’s a cursed duty. The

first part of Sophia, bar the first twenty or thirty pages, writes

itself; the second is more difficult, involving a good many

characters—about ten, I think—who have to be kept all moving, and give

the effect of a society. I have three women to handle, out and

well-away! but only Sophia is in full tone. Sophia and two men,

Windermere, the Vanilla Planter, who dies at the end of Part I., and

Rainsforth, who only appears in the beginning of Part II. The fact is, I

blush to own it, but Sophia is a _regular novel_; heroine and hero, and

false accusation, and love, and marriage, and all the rest of it—all

planted in a big South Sea plantation run by ex-English officers—_à la_

Stewart’s plantation in Tahiti. There is a strong undercurrent of labour

trade, which gives it a kind of Uncle Tom flavour, _absit omen_! The

first start is hard; it is hard to avoid a little tedium here, but I

think by beginning with the arrival of the three Miss Scarlets hot from

school and society in England, I may manage to slide in the information.

The problem is exactly a Balzac one, and I wish I had his fist—for I have

already a better method—the kinetic, whereas he continually allowed

himself to be led into the static. But then he had the fist, and the

most I can hope is to get out of it with a modicum of grace and energy,

but for sure without the strong impression, the full, dark brush. Three

people have had it, the real creator’s brush: Scott, see much of _The

Antiquary_ and _The Heart of Midlothian_ (especially all round the trial,

before, during, and after)—Balzac—and Thackeray in _Vanity Fair_.

Everybody else either paints _thin_, or has to stop to paint, or paints

excitedly, so that you see the author skipping before his canvas. Here

is a long way from poor Sophia Scarlet!

This day is published

_Sophia Scarlet_

By

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

CHAPTER XVI

_Feb._ 1892.

MY DEAR COLVIN,—This has been a busyish month for a sick man. First,

Faauma—the bronze candlestick, whom otherwise I called my butler—bolted

from the bed and bosom of Lafaele, the Archangel Hercules, prefect of the

cattle. There was the deuce to pay, and Hercules was inconsolable, and

immediately started out after a new wife, and has had one up on a visit,

but says she has ‘no conversation’; and I think he will take back the

erring and possibly repentant candlestick; whom we all devoutly prefer,

as she is not only highly decorative, but good-natured, and if she does

little work makes no rows. I tell this lightly, but it really was a

heavy business; many were accused of complicity, and Rafael was really

very sorry. I had to hold beds of justice—literally—seated in my bed and

surrounded by lying Samoans seated on the floor; and there were many

picturesque and still inexplicable passages. It is hard to reach the

truth in these islands.

The next incident overlapped with this. S. and Fanny found three strange

horses in the paddock: for long now the boys have been forbidden to leave

their horses here one hour because our grass is over-grazed. S. came up

with the news, and I saw I must now strike a blow. ‘To the pound with

the lot,’ said I. He proposed taking the three himself, but I thought

that too dangerous an experiment, said I should go too, and hurried into

my boots so as to show decision taken, in the necessary interviews. They

came of course—the interviews—and I explained what I was going to do at

huge length, and stuck to my guns. I am glad to say the natives, with

their usual (purely speculative) sense of justice highly approved the

step after reflection. Meanwhile off went S. and I with the three

_corpora delicti_; and a good job I went! Once, when our circus began to

kick, we thought all was up; but we got them down all sound in wind and

limb. I judged I was much fallen off from my Elliott forefathers, who

managed this class of business with neatness and despatch. Half-way down

it came on to rain tropic style, and I came back from my outing drenched

liked a drowned man—I was literally blinded as I came back among these

sheets of water; and the consequence was I was laid down with diarrhoea

and threatenings of Samoa colic for the inside of another week.

I have a confession to make. When I was sick I tried to get to work to

finish that Samoa thing, wouldn’t go; and at last, in the colic time, I

slid off into _David Balfour_, some 50 pages of which are drafted, and

like me well. Really I think it is spirited; and there’s a heroine that

(up to now) seems to have attractions: _absit omen_! David, on the

whole, seems excellent. Alan does not come in till the tenth chapter,

and I am only at the eighth, so I don’t know if I can find him again; but

David is on his feet, and doing well, and very much in love, and mixed up

with the Lord Advocate and the (untitled) Lord Lovat, and all manner of

great folk. And the tale interferes with my eating and sleeping. The

join is bad; I have not thought to strain too much for continuity; so

this part be alive, I shall be content. But there’s no doubt David seems

to have changed his style, de’il ha’e him! And much I care, if the tale

travel!

* * * * *

_Friday_, _Feb._ ?? 19_th_?

Two incidents to-day which I must narrate. After lunch, it was raining

pitilessly; we were sitting in my mother’s bedroom, and I was reading

aloud Kinglake’s Charge of the Light Brigade, and we had just been all

seized by the horses aligning with Lord George Paget, when a figure

appeared on the verandah; a little, slim, small figure of a lad, with

blond (_i.e._ limed) hair, a propitiatory smile, and a nose that alone of

all his features grew pale with anxiety. ‘I come here stop,’ was about

the outside of his English; and I began at once to guess that he was a

runaway labourer, and that the bush-knife in his hand was stolen. It

proved he had a mate, who had lacked his courage, and was hidden down the

road; they had both made up their minds to run away, and had ‘come here

stop.’ I could not turn out the poor rogues, one of whom showed me marks

on his back, into the drenching forest; I could not reason with them, for

they had not enough English, and not one of our boys spoke their tongue;

so I bade them feed and sleep here to-night, and to-morrow I must do what

the Lord shall bid me.

Near dinner time, I was told that a friend of Lafaele’s had found human

remains in my bush. After dinner, a figure was seen skulking across

towards the waterfall, which produced from the verandah a shout, in my

most stentorian tones: ‘_O ai le ingoa_?’ literally ‘Who the name?’ which

serves here for ‘What’s your business?’ as well. It proved to be

Lafaele’s friend; I bade a kitchen boy, Lauilo, go with him to see the

spot, for though it had ceased raining, the whole island ran and dripped.

Lauilo was willing enough, but the friend of the archangel demurred; he

had too much business; he had no time. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘you too

much frightened, I go along,’ which of course produced the usual shout of

delight from all those who did not require to go. I got into my Saranac

snow boots. Lauilo got a cutlass; Mary Carter, our Sydney maid, joined

the party for a lark, and off we set. I tell you our guide kept us

moving; for the dusk fell swift. Our woods have an infamous reputation

at the best, and our errand (to say the least of it) was grisly. At last

they found the remains; they were old, which was all I cared to be sure

of; it seemed a strangely small ‘pickle-banes’ to stand for a big,

flourishing, buck-islander, and their situation in the darkening and

dripping bush was melancholy. All at once, I found there was a second

skull, with a bullet-hole I could have stuck my two thumbs in—say anybody

else’s one thumb. My Samoans said it could not be, there were not enough

bones; I put the two pieces of skull together, and at last convinced

them. Whereupon, in a flash, they found the not unromantic explanation.

This poor brave had succeeded in the height of a Samoan warriors

ambition; he had taken a head, which he was never destined to show to his

applauding camp. Wounded himself, he had crept here into the bush to die

with his useless trophy by his side. His date would be about fifteen

years ago, in the great battle between Laupepa and Talavou, which took

place on My Land, Sir. To-morrow we shall bury the bones and fire a

salute in honour of unfortunate courage.

Do you think I have an empty life? or that a man jogging to his club has

so much to interest and amuse him?—touch and try him too, but that goes

along with the others: no pain, no pleasure, is the iron law. So here I

stop again, and leave, as I left yesterday, my political business

untouched. And lo! here comes my pupil, I believe, so I stop in time.

* * * * *

_March_ 2_nd_.

Since I last wrote, fifteen chapters of _David Balfour_ have been

drafted, and five _tirés au clair_. I think it pretty good; there’s a

blooming maiden that costs anxiety—she is as virginal as billy; but David

seems there and alive, and the Lord Advocate is good, and so I think is

an episodic appearance of the Master of Lovat. In Chapter XVII. I shall

get David abroad—Alan went already in Chapter XII. The book should be

about the length of _Kidnapped_; this early part of it, about D.’s

evidence in the Appin case, is more of a story than anything in

_Kidnapped_, but there is no doubt there comes a break in the middle, and

the tale is practically in two divisions. In the first James More and

the M’Gregors, and Catriona, only show; in the second, the Appin case

being disposed of, and James Stewart hung, they rule the roast and usurp

the interest—should there be any left. Why did I take up _David

Balfour_? I don’t know. A sudden passion.

Monday, I went down in the rain with a colic to take the chair at a

public meeting; dined with Haggard; sailed off to my meeting, and fought

with wild beasts for three anxious hours. All was lost that any sensible

man cared for, but the meeting did not break up—thanks a good deal to R.

L. S.—and the man who opposed my election, and with whom I was all the

time wrangling, proposed the vote of thanks to me with a certain

handsomeness; I assure you I had earned it . . . Haggard and the great

Abdul, his high-caste Indian servant, imported by my wife, were sitting

up for me with supper, and I suppose it was twelve before I got to bed.

Tuesday raining, my mother rode down, and we went to the Consulate to

sign a Factory and Commission. Thence, I to the lawyers, to the printing

office, and to the Mission. It was dinner time when I returned home.

This morning, our cook-boy having suddenly left—injured feelings—the

archangel was to cook breakfast. I found him lighting the fire before

dawn; his eyes blazed, he had no word of any language left to use, and I

saw in him (to my wonder) the strongest workings of gratified ambition.

Napoleon was no more pleased to sign his first treaty with Austria than

was Lafaele to cook that breakfast. All morning, when I had hoped to be

at this letter, I slept like one drugged and you must take this (which is

all I can give you) for what it is worth—

D.B.

_Memoirs of his Adventures at Home and Abroad_. _The Second Part_;

_wherein are set forth the misfortunes in which he was involved upon

the Appin Murder_; _his troubles with Lord Advocate Prestongrange_;

_captivity on the Bass Rock_; _journey into France and Holland_; _and

singular relations with James More Drummond or Macgregor_, _a son of

the notorious Rob Roy_.

Chapters.—I. A Beggar on Horseback. II. The Highland Writer. III. I go

to Pilrig. IV. Lord Advocate Prestongrange. V. Butter and Thunder. VI.

I make a fault in honour. VII. The Bravo. VIII. The Heather on Fire.

IX. I begin to be haunted with a red-headed man. X. The Wood by

Silvermills. XI. On the march again with Alan. XII. Gillane Sands.

XIII. The Bass Rock. XIV. Black Andie’s Tale of Tod Lapraik. XV. I go

to Inveraray.

That is it, as far as drafted. Chapters IV. V. VII. IX. and XIV. I am

specially pleased with; the last being an episodical bogie story about

the Bass Rock told there by the Keeper.

CHAPTER XVII

_March_ 9_th_.

MY DEAR S. C.,—Take it not amiss if this is a wretched letter. I am

eaten up with business. Every day this week I have had some business

impediment—I am even now waiting a deputation of chiefs about the

road—and my precious morning was shattered by a polite old scourge of a

_faipule_—parliament man—come begging. All the time _David Balfour_ is

skelping along. I began it the 13th of last month; I have now 12

chapters, 79 pages ready for press, or within an ace, and, by the time

the month is out, one-half should be completed, and I’ll be back at

drafting the second half. What makes me sick is to think of Scott

turning out _Guy Mannering_ in three weeks! What a pull of work:

heavens, what thews and sinews! And here am I, my head spinning from

having only re-written seven not very difficult pages—and not very good

when done. Weakling generation. It makes me sick of myself, to make

such a fash and bobbery over a rotten end of an old nursery yarn, not

worth spitting on when done. Still, there is no doubt I turn out my work

more easily than of yore, and I suppose I should be singly glad of that.

And if I got my book done in six weeks, seeing it will be about half as

long as a Scott, and I have to write everything twice, it would be about

the same rate of industry. It is my fair intention to be done with it in

three months, which would make me about one-half the man Sir Walter was

for application and driving the dull pen. Of the merit we shall not

talk; but I don’t think Davie is _without_ merit.

* * * * *

_March_ 12_th_.

And I have this day triumphantly finished 15 chapters, 100 pages—being

exactly one-half (as near as anybody can guess) of _David Balfour_; the

book to be about a fifth as long again (altogether) as _Treasure Island_:

could I but do the second half in another month! But I can’t, I fear; I

shall have some belated material arriving by next mail, and must go again

at the History. Is it not characteristic of my broken tenacity of mind,

that I should have left Davie Balfour some five years in the British

Linen Company’s Office, and then follow him at last with such vivacity?

But I leave you again; the last (15th) chapter ought to be re-wrote, or

part of it, and I want the half completed in the month, and the month is

out by midnight; though, to be sure, last month was February, and I might

take grace. These notes are only to show I hold you in mind, though I

know they can have no interest for man or God or animal.

I should have told you about the Club. We have been asked to try and

start a sort of weekly ball for the half-castes and natives, ourselves to

be the only whites; and we consented, from a very heavy sense of duty,

and with not much hope. Two nights ago we had twenty people up, received

them in the front verandah, entertained them on cake and lemonade, and I

made a speech—embodying our proposals, or conditions, if you like—for I

suppose thirty minutes. No joke to speak to such an audience, but it is

believed I was thoroughly intelligible. I took the plan of saying

everything at least twice in a different form of words, so that if the

one escaped my hearers, the other might be seized. One white man came

with his wife, and was kept rigorously on the front verandah below! You

see what a sea of troubles this is like to prove; but it is the only

chance—and when it blows up, it must blow up! I have no more hope in

anything than a dead frog; I go into everything with a composed despair,

and don’t mind—just as I always go to sea with the conviction I am to be

drowned, and like it before all other pleasures. But you should have

seen the return voyage, when nineteen horses had to be found in the dark,

and nineteen bridles, all in a drench of rain, and the club, just

constituted as such, sailed away in the wet, under a cloudy moon like a

bad shilling, and to descend a road through the forest that was at that

moment the image of a respectable mountain brook. My wife, who is

president _with power to expel_, had to begin her functions. . . .

* * * * *

25_th_ _March_.

Heaven knows what day it is, but I am ashamed, all the more as your

letter from Bournemouth of all places—poor old Bournemouth!—is to hand,

and contains a statement of pleasure in my letters which I wish I could

have rewarded with a long one. What has gone on? A vast of affairs, of

a mingled, strenuous, inconclusive, desultory character; much waste of

time, much riding to and fro, and little transacted or at least peracted.

Let me give you a review of the present state of our live stock.—Six boys

in the bush; six souls about the house. Talolo, the cook, returns again

to-day, after an absence which has cost me about twelve hours of riding,

and I suppose eight hours’ solemn sitting in council. ‘I am sorry indeed

for the Chief Justice of Samoa,’ I said; ‘it is more than I am fit for to

be Chief Justice of Vailima.’—Lauilo is steward. Both these are

excellent servants; we gave a luncheon party when we buried the Samoan

bones, and I assure you all was in good style, yet we never interfered.

The food was good, the wine and dishes went round as by

mechanism.—Steward’s assistant and washman Arrick, a New Hebridee black

boy, hired from the German firm; not so ugly as most, but not pretty

neither; not so dull as his sort are, but not quite a Crichton. When he

came first, he ate so much of our good food that he got a prominent

belly. Kitchen assistant, Tomas (Thomas in English), a Fiji man, very

tall and handsome, moving like a marionette with sudden bounds, and

rolling his eyes with sudden effort.—Washerwoman and precentor, Helen,

Tomas’s wife. This is our weak point; we are ashamed of Helen; the

cook-house blushes for her; they murmur there at her presence. She seems

all right; she is not a bad-looking, strapping wench, seems chaste, is

industrious, has an excellent taste in hymns—you should have heard her

read one aloud the other day, she marked the rhythm with so much

gloating, dissenter sentiment. What is wrong, then? says you. Low in

your ear—and don’t let the papers get hold of it—she is of no family.

None, they say; literally a common woman. Of course, we have

out-islanders, who _may_ be villeins; but we give them the benefit of the

doubt, which is impossible with Helen of Vailima; our blot, our pitted

speck. The pitted speck I have said is our precentor. It is always a

woman who starts Samoan song; the men who sing second do not enter for a

bar or two. Poor, dear Faauma, the unchaste, the extruded Eve of our

Paradise, knew only two hymns; but Helen seems to know the whole

repertory, and the morning prayers go far more lively in

consequence.—Lafaele, provost of the cattle. The cattle are Jack, my

horse, quite converted, my wife rides him now, and he is as steady as a

doctor’s cob; Tifaga Jack, a circus horse, my mother’s piebald, bought

from a passing circus; Belle’s mare, now in childbed or next door,

confound the slut! Musu—amusingly translated the other day ‘don’t want

to,’ literally cross, but always in the sense of stubbornness and

resistance—my wife’s little dark-brown mare, with a white star on her

forehead, whom I have been riding of late to steady her—she has no vices,

but is unused, skittish and uneasy, and wants a lot of attention and

humouring; lastly (of saddle horses) Luna—not the Latin _moon_, the

Hawaiian _overseer_, but it’s pronounced the same—a pretty little mare

too, but scarce at all broken, a bad bucker, and has to be ridden with a

stock-whip and be brought back with her rump criss-crossed like a clan

tartan; the two cart horses, now only used with pack-saddles; two cows,

one in the straw (I trust) to-morrow, a third cow, the Jersey—whose milk

and temper are alike subjects of admiration—she gives good exercise to

the farming saunterer, and refreshes him on his return with cream; two

calves, a bull, and a cow; God knows how many ducks and chickens, and for

a wager not even God knows how many cats; twelve horses, seven horses,

five kine: is not this Babylon the Great which I have builded? Call it

_Subpriorsford_.

Two nights ago the club had its first meeting; only twelve were present,

but it went very well. I was not there, I had ridden down the night

before after dinner on my endless business, took a cup of tea in the

Mission like an ass, then took a cup of coffee like a fool at Haggard’s,

then fell into a discussion with the American Consul . . . I went to bed

at Haggard’s, came suddenly broad awake, and lay sleepless the live

night. It fell chill, I had only a sheet, and had to make a light and

range the house for a cover—I found one in the hall, a macintosh. So

back to my sleepless bed, and to lie there till dawn. In the morning I

had a longish ride to take in a day of a blinding, staggering sun, and

got home by eleven, our luncheon hour, with my head rather swimmy; the

only time I have _feared_ the sun since I was in Samoa. However, I got

no harm, but did not go to the club, lay off, lazied, played the pipe,

and read—a novel by James Payn—sometimes quite interesting, and in one

place really very funny with the quaint humour of the man. Much

interested the other day. As I rode past a house, I saw where a Samoan

had written a word on a board, and there was an A, perfectly formed, but

upside down. You never saw such a thing in Europe; but it is as common

as dirt in Polynesia. Men’s names are tattooed on the forearm; it is

common to find a subverted letter tattooed there. Here is a tempting

problem for psychologists.

I am now on terms again with the German Consulate, I know not for how

long; not, of course, with the President, which I find a relief; still,

with the Chief Justice and the English Consul. For Haggard, I have a

genuine affection; he is a loveable man.

Wearyful man! ‘Here is the yarn of Loudon Dodd, _not as he told it_,

_but as it was afterwards written_.’ These words were left out by some

carelessness, and I think I have been thrice tackled about them. Grave

them in your mind and wear them on your forehead.

The Lang story will have very little about the treasure; _The Master_

will appear; and it is to a great extent a tale of Prince Charlie _after_

the ’45, and a love story forbye: the hero is a melancholy exile, and

marries a young woman who interests the prince, and there is the devil to

pay. I think the Master kills him in a duel, but don’t know yet, not

having yet seen my second heroine. No—the Master doesn’t kill him, they

fight, he is wounded, and the Master plays _deus ex machina_. I _think_

just now of calling it _The Tail of the Race_; no—heavens! I never saw

till this moment—but of course nobody but myself would ever understand

Mill-Race, they would think of a quarter-mile. So—I am nameless again.

My melancholy young man is to be quite a Romeo. Yes, I’ll name the book

from him: _Dyce of Ythan_—pronounce Eethan.

Dyce of Ythan

by R. L. S.

O, Shovel—Shovel waits his turn, he and his ancestors. I would have

tackled him before, but my _State Trials_ have never come. So that I

have now quite planned:—

Dyce of Ythan. (Historical, 1750.)

Sophia Scarlet. (To-day.)

The Shovels of Newton French. (Historical, 1650 to 1830.)

And quite planned and part written:—

The Pearl Fisher. (To-day.) (With Lloyd a machine.)

David Balfour. (Historical, 1751.)

And, by a strange exception for R. L. S., all in the third person except

D. B.

I don’t know what day this is now (the 29th), but I have finished my two

chapters, ninth and tenth, of _Samoa_ in time for the mail, and feel

almost at peace. The tenth was the hurricane, a difficult problem; it so

tempted one to be literary; and I feel sure the less of that there is in

my little handbook, the more chance it has of some utility. Then the

events are complicated, seven ships to tell of, and sometimes three of

them together; O, it was quite a job. But I think I have my facts pretty

correct, and for once, in my sickening yarn, they are handsome facts:

creditable to all concerned; not to be written of—and I should think,

scarce to be read—without a thrill. I doubt I have got no hurricane into

it, the intricacies of the yarn absorbing me too much. But there—it’s

done somehow, and time presses hard on my heels. The book, with my best

expedition, may come just too late to be of use. In which case I shall

have made a handsome present of some months of my life for nothing and to

nobody. Well, through Her the most ancient heavens are fresh and strong.

* * * * *

30_th_.

After I had written you, I re-read my hurricane, which is very poor; the

life of the journalist is hard, another couple of writings and I could

make a good thing, I believe, and it must go as it is! But, of course,

this book is not written for honour and glory, and the few who will read

it may not know the difference. Very little time. I go down with the

mail shortly, dine at the Chinese restaurant, and go to the club to dance

with islandresses. Think of my going out once a week to dance.

Politics are on the full job again, and we don’t know what is to come

next. I think the whole treaty _raj_ seems quite played out! They have

taken to bribing the _faipule_ men (parliament men) to stay in Mulinuu,

we hear; but I have not yet sifted the rumour. I must say I shall be

scarce surprised if it prove true; these rumours have the knack of being

right.—Our weather this last month has been tremendously hot, not by the

thermometer, which sticks at 86°, but to the sensation: no rain, no wind,

and this the storm month. It looks ominous, and is certainly

disagreeable.

No time to finish,

Yours ever,

R. L. S.

CHAPTER XVIII

_May_ 1_st_. 1892.

MY DEAR COLVIN,—As I rode down last night about six, I saw a sight I must

try to tell you of. In front of me, right over the top of the forest

into which I was descending was a vast cloud. The front of it accurately

represented the somewhat rugged, long-nosed, and beetle-browed profile of

a man, crowned by a huge Kalmuck cap; the flesh part was of a heavenly

pink, the cap, the moustache, the eyebrows were of a bluish gray; to see

this with its childish exactitude of design and colour, and hugeness of

scale—it covered at least 25°—held me spellbound. As I continued to

gaze, the expression began to change; he had the exact air of closing one

eye, dropping his jaw, and drawing down his nose; had the thing not been

so imposing, I could have smiled; and then almost in a moment, a shoulder

of leaden-coloured bank drove in front and blotted it. My attention

spread to the rest of the cloud, and it was a thing to worship. It rose

from the horizon, and its top was within thirty degrees of the zenith;

the lower parts were like a glacier in shadow, varying from dark indigo

to a clouded white in exquisite gradations. The sky behind, so far as I

could see, was all of a blue already enriched and darkened by the night,

for the hill had what lingered of the sunset. But the top of my Titanic

cloud flamed in broad sunlight, with the most excellent softness and

brightness of fire and jewels, enlightening all the world. It must have

been far higher than Mount Everest, and its glory, as I gazed up at it

out of the night, was beyond wonder. Close by rode the little crescent

moon; and right over its western horn, a great planet of about equal

lustre with itself. The dark woods below were shrill with that noisy

business of the birds’ evening worship. When I returned, after eight,

the moon was near down; she seemed little brighter than before, but now

that the cloud no longer played its part of a nocturnal sun, we could see

that sight, so rare with us at home that it was counted a portent, so

customary in the tropics, of the dark sphere with its little gilt band

upon the belly. The planet had been setting faster, and was now below

the crescent. They were still of an equal brightness.

I could not resist trying to reproduce this in words, as a specimen of

these incredibly beautiful and imposing meteors of the tropic sky that

make so much of my pleasure here; though a ship’s deck is the place to

enjoy them. O what _awful_ scenery, from a ship’s deck, in the tropics!

People talk about the Alps, but the clouds of the trade wind are alone

for sublimity.

Now to try and tell you what has been happening. The state of these

islands, and of Mataafa and Laupepa (Malietoa’s _ambo_) had been much on

my mind. I went to the priests and sent a message to Mataafa, at a time

when it was supposed he was about to act. He did not act, delaying in

true native style, and I determined I should go to visit him. I have

been very good not to go sooner; to live within a few miles of a rebel

camp, to be a novelist, to have all my family forcing me to go, and to

refrain all these months, counts for virtue. But hearing that several

people had gone and the government done nothing to punish them, and

having an errand there which was enough to justify myself in my own eyes,

I half determined to go, and spoke of it with the half-caste priest. And

here (confound it) up came Laupepa and his guards to call on me; we kept

him to lunch, and the old gentleman was very good and amiable. He asked

me why I had not been to see him? I reminded him a law had been made,

and told him I was not a small boy to go and ask leave of the consuls,

and perhaps be refused. He told me to pay no attention to the law but

come when I would, and begged me to name a day to lunch. The next day (I

think it was) early in the morning, a man appeared; he had metal buttons

like a policeman—but he was none of our Apia force; he was a rebel

policeman, and had been all night coming round inland through the forest

from Malie. He brought a letter addressed

_I laua susuga_ To his Excellency

_Misi Mea_. Mr. Thingumbob.

(So as not to compromise me). I can read Samoan now, though not speak

it. It was to ask me for last Wednesday. My difficulty was great; I had

no man here who was fit, or who would have cared to write for me; and I

had to postpone the visit. So I gave up half-a-day with a groan, went

down to the priests, arranged for Monday week to go to Malie, and named

Thursday as my day to lunch with Laupepa. I was sharply ill on

Wednesday, mail day. But on Thursday I had to trail down and go through

the dreary business of a feast, in the King’s wretched shanty, full in

view of the President’s fine new house; it made my heart burn.

This gave me my chance to arrange a private interview with the King, and

I decided to ask Mr. Whitmee, one of our missionaries, to be my

interpreter. On Friday, being too much exhausted to go down, I begged

him to come up. He did, I told him the heads of what I meant to say; and

he not only consented, but said, if we got on well with the King, he

would even proceed with me to Malie. Yesterday, in consequence, I rode

down to W.’s house by eight in the morning; waited till ten; received a

message that the King was stopped by a meeting with the President and

_faipule_; made another engagement for seven at night; came up; went

down; waited till eight, and came away again, _bredouille_, and a dead

body. The poor, weak, enslaved King had not dared to come to me even in

secret. Now I have to-day for a rest, and to-morrow to Malie. Shall I

be suffered to embark? It is very doubtful; they are on the trail. On

Thursday, a policeman came up to me and began that a boy had been to see

him, and said I was going to see Mataafa.—‘And what did you say?’ said

I.—‘I told him I did not know about where you were going,’ said he.—‘A

very good answer,’ said I, and turned away. It is lashing rain to-day,

but to-morrow, rain or shine, I must at least make the attempt; and I am

so weary, and the weather looks so bad. I could half wish they would

arrest me on the beach. All this bother and pother to try and bring a

little chance of peace; all this opposition and obstinacy in people who

remain here by the mere forbearance of Mataafa, who has a great force

within six miles of their government buildings, which are indeed only the

residences of white officials. To understand how I have been occupied,

you must know that ‘Misi Mea’ has had another letter, and this time had

to answer himself; think of doing so in a language so obscure to me, with

the aid of a Bible, concordance and dictionary! What a wonderful Baboo

compilation it must have been! I positively expected to hear news of its

arrival in Malie by the sound of laughter. I doubt if you will be able

to read this scrawl, but I have managed to scramble somehow up to date;

and to-morrow, one way or another, should be interesting. But as for me,

I am a wreck, as I have no doubt style and handwriting both testify.

* * * * *

8 P.M.

Wonderfully rested; feel almost fit for to-morrow’s dreary excursion—not

that it will be dreary if the weather favour, but otherwise it will be

death; and a native feast, and I fear I am in for a big one, is a thing I

loathe. I wonder if you can really conceive me as a politician in this

extra-mundane sphere—presiding at public meetings, drafting

proclamations, receiving mis-addressed letters that have been carried all

night through tropical forests? It seems strange indeed, and to you, who

know me really, must seem stranger. I do not say I am free from the itch

of meddling, but God knows this is no tempting job to meddle in; I smile

at picturesque circumstances like the Misi Mea (_Monsieur Chose_ is the

exact equivalent) correspondence, but the business as a whole bores and

revolts me. I do nothing and say nothing; and then a day comes, and I

say ‘this can go on no longer.’

* * * * *

9.30 P.M.

The wretched native dilatoriness finds me out. News has just come that

we must embark at six to-morrow; I have divided the night in watches, and

hope to be called to-morrow at four and get under way by five. It is a

great chance if it be managed; but I have given directions and lent my

own clock to the boys, and hope the best. If I get called at four we

shall do it nicely. Good-night; I must turn in.

* * * * *

_May_ 3_rd_.

Well, we did get off by about 5.30, or, by’r lady! quarter of six: myself

on Donald, the huge grey cart-horse, with a ship-bag across my saddle

bow, Fanny on Musu and Belle on Jack. We were all feeling pretty tired

and sick, and I looked like heaven knows what on the cart horse: ‘death

on the pale horse,’ I suggested—and young Hunt the missionary, who met me

to-day on the same charger, squinted up at my perch and remarked,

‘There’s a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft.’ The boat was ready

and we set off down the lagoon about seven, four oars, and Talolo, my

cook, steering.

* * * * *

_May_ 9_th_ (_Monday anyway_).

And see what good resolutions came to! Here is all this time past, and

no speed made. Well, we got to Malie and were received with the most

friendly consideration by the rebel chief. Belle and Fanny were

obviously thought to be my two wives; they were served their kava

together, as were Mataafa and myself. Talolo utterly broke down as

interpreter; long speeches were made to me by Mataafa and his orators, of

which he could make nothing but they were ‘very much surprised’—his way

of pronouncing obliged—and as he could understand nothing that fell from

me except the same form of words, the dialogue languished and all

business had to be laid aside. We had kava, and then a dish of

arrowroot; one end of the house was screened off for us with a fine tapa,

and we lay and slept, the three of us heads and tails, upon the mats till

dinner. After dinner his illegitimate majesty and myself had a walk, and

talked as well as my twopenny Samoan would admit. Then there was a dance

to amuse the ladies before the house, and we came back by moonlight, the

sky piled full of high faint clouds that long preserved some of the

radiance of the sunset. The lagoon was very shallow; we continually

struck, for the moon was young and the light baffling; and for a long

time we were accompanied by, and passed and re-passed, a huge whale-boat

from Savaii, pulling perhaps twelve oars, and containing perhaps forty

people who sang in time as they went So to the hotel, where we slept, and

returned the next Tuesday morning on the three same steeds.

Meanwhile my business was still untransacted. And on Saturday morning, I

sent down and arranged with Charlie Taylor to go down that afternoon. I

had scarce got the saddle bags fixed and had not yet mounted, when the

rain began. But it was no use delaying now; off I went in a wild

waterspout to Apia; found Charlie (Salé) Taylor—a sesquipedalian young

half-caste—not yet ready, had a snack of bread and cheese at the hotel

while waiting him, and then off to Malie. It rained all the way, seven

miles; the road, which begins in triumph, dwindles down to a nasty,

boggy, rocky footpath with weeds up to a horseman’s knees; and there are

eight pig fences to jump, nasty beastly jumps—the next morning we found

one all messed with blood where a horse had come to grief—but my Jack is

a clever fencer; and altogether we made good time, and got to Malie about

dark. It is a village of very fine native houses, high, domed, oval

buildings, open at the sides, or only closed with slatted Venetians. To

be sure, Mataafa’s is not the worst. It was already quite dark within,

only a little fire of cocoa-shell blazed in the midst and showed us four

servants; the chief was in his chapel, whence we heard the sound of

chaunting. Presently he returned; Taylor and I had our soaking clothes

changed, family worship was held, kava brewed, I was exhibited to the

chiefs as a man who had ridden through all that rain and risked

deportation to serve their master; they were bidden learn my face, and

remember upon all occasions to help and serve me. Then dinner, and

politics, and fine speeches until twelve at night—O, and some more

kava—when I could sit up no longer; my usual bed-time is eight, you must

remember. Then one end of the house was screened off for me alone, and a

bed made—you never saw such a couch—I believe of nearly fifty (half at

least) fine mats, by Mataafa’s daughter, Kalala. Here I reposed alone;

and on the other side of the tafa, Majesty and his household. Armed

guards and a drummer patrolled about the house all night; they had no

shift, poor devils; but stood to arms from sun-down to sun-up.

About four in the morning, I was awakened by the sound of a whistle pipe

blown outside on the dark, very softly and to a pleasing simple air; I

really think I have hit the first phrase:

[Picture: Fragment of music score]

It sounded very peaceful, sweet and strange in the dark; and I found this

was a part of the routine of my rebel’s night, and it was done (he said)

to give good dreams. By a little before six, Taylor and I were in the

saddle again fasting. My riding boots were so wet I could not get them

on, so I must ride barefoot. The morning was fair but the roads very

muddy, the weeds soaked us nearly to the waist, Salé was twice spilt at

the fences, and we got to Apia a bedraggled enough pair. All the way

along the coast, the paté (small wooden drum) was beating in the villages

and the people crowding to the churches in their fine clothes. Thence

through the mangrove swamp, among the black mud and the green mangroves,

and the black and scarlet crabs, to Mulinuu, to the doctor’s, where I had

an errand, and so to the inn to breakfast about nine. After breakfast I

rode home. Conceive such an outing, remember the pallid brute that lived

in Skerryvore like a weevil in a biscuit, and receive the intelligence

that I was rather the better for my journey. Twenty miles ride, sixteen

fences taken, ten of the miles in a drenching rain, seven of them fasting

and in the morning chill, and six stricken hours’ political discussions

by an interpreter; to say nothing of sleeping in a native house, at which

many of our excellent literati would look askance of itself.

You are to understand: if I take all this bother, it is not only from a

sense of duty, or a love of meddling—damn the phrase, take your

choice—but from a great affection for Mataafa. He is a beautiful, sweet

old fellow, and he and I grew quite fulsome on Saturday night about our

sentiments. I had a messenger from him to-day with a flannel undershirt

which I had left behind like a gibbering idiot; and perpetrated in reply

another baboo letter. It rains again to-day without mercy; blessed,

welcome rains, making up for the paucity of the late wet season; and when

the showers slacken, I can hear my stream roaring in the hollow, and tell

myself that the cacaos are drinking deep. I am desperately hunted to

finish my Samoa book before the mail goes; this last chapter is equally

delicate and necessary. The prayers of the congregation are requested.

Eheu! and it will be ended before this letter leaves and printed in the

States ere you can read this scribble. The first dinner gong has

sounded; _je vous salue_, _monsieur et cher confrère_. _Tofa_, _soifua_!

Sleep! long life! as our Samoan salutation of farewell runs.

* * * * *

_Friday_, _May_ 13_th_.

Well, the last chapter, by far the most difficult and ungrateful, is well

under way, I have been from six to seven hours upon it daily since I last

wrote; and that is all I have done forbye working at Samoan rather hard,

and going down on Wednesday evening to the club. I make some progress

now at the language; I am teaching Belle, which clears and exercises

myself. I am particularly taken with the _finesse_ of the pronouns. The

pronouns are all dual and plural and the first person, both in the dual

and plural, has a special exclusive and inclusive form. You can conceive

what fine effects of precision and distinction can be reached in certain

cases. Take Ruth, i. _vv._ 8 to 13, and imagine how those pronouns come

in; it is exquisitely elegant, and makes the mouth of the _littérateur_

to water. I am going to exercitate my pupil over those verses to-day for

pronoun practice.

* * * * *

_Tuesday_.

Yesterday came yours. Well, well, if the dears prefer a week, why, I’ll

give them ten days, but the real document, from which I have scarcely

varied, ran for one night. I think you seem scarcely fair to Wiltshire,

who had surely, under his beast-ignorant ways, right noble qualities.

And I think perhaps you scarce do justice to the fact that this is a

place of realism _à outrance_; nothing extenuated or coloured. Looked at

so, is it not, with all its tragic features, wonderfully idyllic, with

great beauty of scene and circumstance? And will you please to observe

that almost all that is ugly is in the whites? I’ll apologise for Papa

Randal if you like; but if I told you the whole truth—for I did extenuate

there!—and he seemed to me essential as a figure, and essential as a pawn

in the game, Wiltshire’s disgust for him being one of the small,

efficient motives in the story. Now it would have taken a fairish dose

to disgust Wiltshire.—Again, the idea of publishing the Beach

substantively is dropped—at once, both on account of expostulation, and

because it measured shorter than I had expected. And it was only taken

up, when the proposed volume, _Beach de Mar_, petered out. It petered

out thus: the chief of the short stories got sucked into _Sophia

Scarlet_—and Sophia is a book I am much taken with, and mean to get to,

as soon as—but not before—I have done _David Balfour_ and _The Young

Chevalier_. So you see you are like to hear no more of the Pacific or

the nineteenth century for a while. _The Young Chevalier_ is a story of

sentiment and passion, which I mean to write a little differently from

what I have been doing—if I can hit the key; rather more of a sentimental

tremolo to it. It may thus help to prepare me for _Sophia_, which is to

contain three ladies, and a kind of a love affair between the heroine and

a dying planter who is a poet! large orders for R. L. S.

O the German taboo is quite over; no soul attempts to support the C. J.

or the President, they are past hope; the whites have just refused their

taxes—I mean the council has refused to call for them, and if the council

consented, nobody would pay; ’tis a farce, and the curtain is going to

fall briefly. Consequently in my History, I say as little as may be of

the two dwindling stars. Poor devils! I liked the one, and the other

has a little wife, now lying in! There was no man born with so little

animosity as I. When I heard the C. J. was in low spirits and never left

his house, I could scarce refrain from going to him.

It was a fine feeling to have finished the History; there ought to be a

future state to reward that grind! It’s not literature, you know; only

journalism, and pedantic journalism. I had but the one desire, to get

the thing as right as might be, and avoid false concords—even if that!

And it was more than there was time for. However, there it is: done.

And if Samoa turns up again my book has to be counted with, being the

only narrative extant. Milton and I—if you kindly excuse the

juxtaposition—harnessed ourselves to strange waggons, and I at least will

be found to have plodded very soberly with my load. There is not even a

good sentence in it, but perhaps—I don’t know—it may be found an honest,

clear volume.

* * * * *

_Wednesday_.

Never got a word set down, and continues on Thursday 19th May, his own

marriage day as ever was. News; yes. The C. J. came up to call on us!

After five months’ cessation on my side, and a decidedly painful

interchange of letters, I could not go down—could not—to see him. My

three ladies received him, however; he was very agreeable as usual, but

refused wine, beer, water, lemonade, chocolate and at last a cigarette.

Then my wife asked him, ‘So you refuse to break bread?’ and he waved his

hands amiably in answer. All my three ladies received the same

impression that he had serious matters in his mind: now we hear he is

quite cock-a-hoop since the mail came, and going about as before his

troubles darkened. But what did he want with me? ’Tis thought he had

received a despatch—and that he misreads it (so we fully believe) to the

effect that they are to have war ships at command and can make their

little war after all. If it be so, and they do it, it will be the

meanest wanton slaughter of poor men for the salaries of two white

failures. But what was his errand with me? Perhaps to warn me that

unless I behave he now hopes to be able to pack me off in the _Curaçoa_

when she comes.

I have celebrated my holiday from _Samoa_ by a plunge at the beginning of

_The Young Chevalier_. I am afraid my touch is a little broad in a love

story; I can’t mean one thing and write another. As for women, I am no

more in any fear of them; I can do a sort all right; age makes me less

afraid of a petticoat, but I am a little in fear of grossness. However,

this David Balfour’s love affair, that’s all right—might be read out to a

mothers’ meeting—or a daughters’ meeting. The difficulty in a love yarn,

which dwells at all on love, is the dwelling on one string; it is

manifold, I grant, but the root fact is there unchanged, and the

sentiment being very intense, and already very much handled in letters,

positively calls for a little pawing and gracing. With a writer of my

prosaic literalness and pertinency of point of view, this all shoves

toward grossness—positively even towards the far more damnable

_closeness_. This has kept me off the sentiment hitherto, and now I am

to try: Lord! Of course Meredith can do it, and so could Shakespeare;

but with all my romance, I am a realist and a prosaist, and a most

fanatical lover of plain physical sensations plainly and expressly

rendered; hence my perils. To do love in the same spirit as I did (for

instance) D. Balfour’s fatigue in the heather; my dear sir, there were

grossness—ready made! And hence, how to sugar? However, I have nearly

done with Marie-Madeleine, and am in good hopes of Marie-Salomé, the real

heroine; the other is only a prologuial heroine to introduce the hero.

* * * * *

_Friday_.

Anyway, the first prologuial episode is done, and Fanny likes it. There

are only four characters; Francis Blair of Balmile (Jacobite Lord

Gladsmuir) my hero; the Master of Ballantrae; Paradon, a wine-seller of

Avignon; Marie-Madeleine his wife. These two last I am now done with,

and I think they are successful, and I hope I have Balmile on his feet;

and the style seems to be found. It is a little charged and violent;

sins on the side of violence; but I think will carry the tale. I think

it is a good idea so to introduce my hero, being made love to by an

episodic woman. This queer tale—I mean queer for me—has taken a great

hold upon me. Where the devil shall I go next? This is simply the tale

of a _coup de tête_ of a young man and a young woman; with a nearly,

perhaps a wholly, tragic sequel, which I desire to make thinkable right

through, and sensible; to make the reader, as far as I shall be able, eat

and drink and breathe it. Marie-Salomé des Saintes-Maries is, I think,

the heroine’s name; she has got to _be_ yet: _sursum corda_! So has the

young Chevalier, whom I have not yet touched, and who comes next in

order. Characters: Balmile, or Lord Gladsmuir, _comme vous voulez_;

Prince Charlie; Earl Marischal; Master of Ballantrae; and a spy, and Dr.

Archie Campbell, and a few nondescripts; then, of women, Marie-Salomé and

Flora Blair; seven at the outside; really four full lengths, and I

suppose a half-dozen episodic profiles. How I must bore you with these

ineptitudes! Have patience. I am going to bed; it is (of all hours)

eleven. I have been forced in (since I began to write to you) to blatter

to Fanny on the subject of my heroine, there being two _cruces_ as to her

life and history: how came she alone? and how far did she go with the

Chevalier? The second must answer itself when I get near enough to see.

The first is a back-breaker. Yet I know there are many reasons why a

_fille de famine_, romantic, adventurous, ambitious, innocent of the

world, might run from her home in these days; might she not have been

threatened with a convent? might there not be some Huguenot business

mixed in? Here am I, far from books; if you can help me with a

suggestion, I shall say God bless you. She has to be new run away from a

strict family, well-justified in her own wild but honest eyes, and

meeting these three men, Charles Edward, Marischal, and Balmile, through

the accident of a fire at an inn. She must not run from a marriage, I

think; it would bring her in the wrong frame of mind. Once I can get

her, _sola_, on the highway, all were well with my narrative. Perpend.

And help if you can.

Lafaele, long (I hope) familiar to you, has this day received the visit

of his _son_ from Tonga; and the _son_ proves to be a very pretty,

attractive young daughter! I gave all the boys kava in honour of her

arrival; along with a lean, side-whiskered Tongan, dimly supposed to be

Lafaele’s step-father; and they have been having a good time; in the end

of my verandah, I hear Simi, my present incapable steward, talking Tongan

with the nondescript papa. Simi, our out-door boy, burst a succession of

blood-vessels over our work, and I had to make a position for the wreck

of one of the noblest figures of a man I ever saw. I believe I may have

mentioned the other day how I had to put my horse to the trot, the canter

and (at last) the gallop to run him down. In a photograph I hope to send

you (perhaps with this) you will see Simi standing in the verandah in

profile. As a steward, one of his chief points is to break crystal; he

is great on fracture—what do I say?—explosion! He cleans a glass, and

the shards scatter like a comet’s bowels.

_N.B._—If I should by any chance be deported, the first of the rules hung

up for that occasion is to communicate with you by telegraph.—Mind, I do

not fear it, but it _is_ possible.

* * * * *

_Monday_ 25_th_.

We have had a devil of a morning of upset and bustle; the bronze

candlestick Faauma has returned to the family, in time to take her

position of stepmamma, and it is pretty to see how the child is at once

at home, and all her terrors ended.

* * * * *

27_th_. _Mail day_.

And I don’t know that I have much to report. I may have to leave for

Malie as soon as these mail packets are made up. ’Tis a necessity (if it

be one) I rather deplore. I think I should have liked to lazy; but I

daresay all it means is the delay of a day or so in harking back to David

Balfour; that respectable youth chides at being left (where he is now) in

Glasgow with the Lord Advocate, and after five years in the British

Linen, who shall blame him? I was all forenoon yesterday down in Apia,’

dictating, and Lloyd type-writing, the conclusion of _Samoa_; and then at

home correcting till the dinner bell; and in the evening again till

eleven of the clock. This morning I have made up most of my packets, and

I think my mail is all ready but two more, and the tag of this. I would

never deny (as D. B might say) that I was rather tired of it. But I have

a damned good dose of the devil in my pipe-stem atomy; I have had my

little holiday outing in my kick at _The Young Chevalier_, and I guess I

can settle to _David Balfour_ to-morrow or Friday like a little man. I

wonder if any one had ever more energy upon so little strength?—I know

there is a frost, the Samoa book can only increase that—I can’t help it,

that book is not written for me but for Miss Manners; but I mean to break

that frost inside two years, and pull off a big success, and Vanity

whispers in my ear that I have the strength. If I haven’t, whistle ower

the lave o’t! I can do without glory and perhaps the time is not far off

when I can do without corn. It is a time coming soon enough, anyway; and

I have endured some two and forty years without public shame, and had a

good time as I did it. If only I could secure a violent death, what a

fine success! I wish to die in my boots; no more Land of Counterpane for

me. To be drowned, to be shot, to be thrown from a horse—ay, to be

hanged, rather than pass again through that slow dissolution.

I fancy this gloomy ramble is caused by a twinge of age; I put on an

under-shirt yesterday (it was the only one I could find) that barely came

under my trousers; and just below it, a fine healthy rheumatism has now

settled like a fire in my hip. From such small causes do these valuable

considerations flow!

I shall now say adieu, dear Sir, having ten rugged miles before me and

the horrors of a native feast and parliament without an interpreter, for

to-day I go alone.

Yours ever,

R. L S.

CHAPTER XIX

_Sunday_, 29_th_ _May_.

HOW am I to overtake events? On Wednesday, as soon as my mail was

finished, I had a wild whirl to look forward to. Immediately after

dinner, Belle, Lloyd and I, set out on horseback, they to the club, I to

Haggard’s, thence to the hotel where I had supper ready for them. All

next day we hung round Apia with our whole house-crowd in Sunday array,

hoping for the mail steamer with a menagerie on board. No such luck; the

ship delayed; and at last, about three, I had to send them home again, a

failure of a day’s pleasuring that does not bear to be discussed. Lloyd

was so sickened that he returned the same night to Vailima, Belle and I

held on, sat most of the evening on the hotel verandah stricken silly

with fatigue and disappointment, and genuine sorrow for our poor boys and

girls, and got to bed with rather dismal appreciations of the morrow.

These were more than justified, and yet I never had a jollier day than

Friday 27th. By 7.30 Belle and I had breakfast; we had scarce done

before my mother was at the door on horseback, and a boy at her heels to

take her not very dashing charger home again. By 8.10 we were all on the

landing pier, and it was 9.20 before we had got away in a boat with two

inches of green wood on the keel of her, no rudder, no mast, no sail, no

boat flag, two defective rowlocks, two wretched apologies for oars, and

two boys—one a Tongan half-caste, one a white lad, son of the Tonga

schoolmaster, and a sailor lad—to pull us. All this was our first taste

of the tender mercies of Taylor (the sesquipidalian half-caste introduced

two letters back, I believe). We had scarce got round Mulinuu when Salé

Taylor’s heart misgave him; he thought we had missed the tide; called a

halt, and set off ashore to find canoes. Two were found; in one my

mother and I were embarked with the two biscuit tins (my present to the

feast), and the bag with our dry clothes, on which my mother was

perched—and her cap was on the top of it—feminine hearts please

sympathise; all under the guidance of Salé. In the other Belle and our

guest; Tauilo, a chief-woman, the mother of my cook, were to have

followed. And the boys were to have been left with the boat. But Tauilo

refused. And the four, Belle, Tauilo, Frank the sailor-boy, and Jimmie

the Tongan half-caste, set off in the boat across that rapidly shoaling

bay of the lagoon.

How long the next scene lasted, I could never tell. Salé was always

trying to steal away with our canoe and leave the other four, probably

for six hours, in an empty, leaky boat, without so much as an orange or a

cocoanut on board, and under the direct rays of the sun. I had at last

to stop him by taking the spare paddle off the out-rigger and sticking it

in the ground—depth, perhaps two feet—width of the bay, say three miles.

At last I bid him land me and my mother and go back for the other ladies.

‘The coast is so rugged,’ said Salé.—‘What?’ I said, ‘all these villages

and no landing place?’—‘Such is the nature of Samoans,’ said he. Well,

I’ll find a landing-place, I thought; and presently I said, ‘Now we are

going to land there.’—‘We can but try,’ said the bland Salé, with

resignation. Never saw a better landing-place in my life. Here the boat

joined us. My mother and Salé continued in the canoe alone, and Belle

and I and Tauilo set off on foot for Malie. Tauilo was about the size of

both of us put together and a piece over; she used us like a mouse with

children. I had started barefoot; Belle had soon to pull off her gala

shoes and stockings; the mud was as deep as to our knees, and so slippery

that (moving, as we did, in Indian file, between dense scratching tufts

of sensitive) Belle and I had to take hands to support each other, and

Tauilo was steadying Belle from the rear. You can conceive we were got

up to kill, Belle in an embroidered white dress and white hat, I in a

suit of Bedford cords hot from the Sydney tailors; and conceive us,

below, ink-black to the knees with adhesive clay, and above, streaming

with heat. I suppose it was better than three miles, but at last we made

the end of Malie. I asked if we could find no water to wash our feet;

and our nursemaid guided us to a pool. We sat down on the pool side, and

our nursemaid washed our feet and legs for us—ladies first, I suppose out

of a sudden respect to the insane European fancies: such a luxury as you

can scarce imagine. I felt a new man after it. But before we got to the

King’s house we were sadly muddied once more. It was 1 P.M. when we

arrived, the canoe having beaten us by about five minutes, so we made

fair time over our bog-holes.

But the war dances were over, and we came in time to see only the tail

end (some two hours) of the food presentation. In Mataafa’s house three

chairs were set for us covered with fine mats. Of course, a native house

without the blinds down is like a verandah. All the green in front was

surrounded with sheds, some of flapping canvas, some of green palm

boughs, where (in three sides of a huge oblong) the natives sat by

villages in a fine glow of many-hued array. There were folks in tapa,

and folks in patchwork; there was every colour of the rainbow in a spot

or a cluster; there were men with their heads gilded with powdered

sandal-wood, others with heads all purple, stuck full of the petals of a

flower. In the midst there was a growing field of outspread food,

gradually covering acres; the gifts were brought in, now by chanting

deputations, now by carriers in a file; they were brandished aloft and

declaimed over, with polite sacramental exaggerations, by the official

receiver. He, a stalwart, well-oiled quadragenarian, shone with sweat

from his exertions, brandishing cooked pigs. At intervals, from one of

the squatted villages, an orator would arise. The field was almost

beyond the reach of any human speaking voice; the proceedings besides

continued in the midst; yet it was possible to catch snatches of this

elaborate and cut-and-dry oratory—it was possible for me, for instance,

to catch the description of my gift and myself as the _alii Tusitala_, _O

le alii O malo tetele_—the chief White Information, the chief of the

great Governments. Gay designation? In the house, in our three curule

chairs, we sat and looked on. On our left a little group of the family.

In front of us, at our feet, an ancient Talking-man, crowned with green

leaves, his profile almost exactly Dante’s; Popo his name. He had

worshipped idols in his youth; he had been full grown before the first

missionary came hither from Tahiti; this makes him over eighty. Near by

him sat his son and colleague. In the group on our left, his little

grandchild sat with her legs crossed and her hands turned, the model

already (at some three years old) of Samoan etiquette. Still further off

to our right, Mataafa sat on the ground through all the business; and

still I saw his lips moving, and the beads of his rosary slip stealthily

through his hand. We had kava, and the King’s drinking was hailed by the

Popos (father and son) with a singular ululation, perfectly new to my

ears; it means, to the expert, ‘Long live Tuiatua’; to the inexpert, is a

mere voice of barbarous wolves. We had dinner, retired a bit behind the

central pillar of the house; and, when the King was done eating, the

ululation was repeated. I had my eyes on Mataafa’s face, and I saw pride

and gratified ambition spring to life there and be instantly sucked in

again. It was the first time, since the difference with Laupepa, that

Popo and his son had openly joined him, and given him the due cry as

Tuiatua—one of the eight royal names of the islands, as I hope you will

know before this reaches you.

Not long after we had dined, the food-bringing was over. The gifts

(carefully noted and tallied as they came in) were now announced by a

humorous orator, who convulsed the audience, introducing singing notes,

now on the name of the article, now on the number; six thousand odd heads

of taro, three hundred and nineteen cooked pigs; and one thing that

particularly caught me (by good luck), a single turtle ‘for the King’—_le

tasi mo le tupu_. Then came one of the strangest sights I have yet

witnessed. The two most important persons there (bar Mataafa) were Popo

and his son. They rose, holding their long shod rods of talking men,

passed forth from the house, broke into a strange dance, the father

capering with outstretched arms and rod, the son crouching and gambolling

beside him in a manner indescribable, and presently began to extend the

circle of this dance among the acres of cooked food. _Whatever they

leaped over_, _whatever they called for_, _became theirs_. To see

mediæval Dante thus demean himself struck a kind of a chill of

incongruity into our Philistine souls; but even in a great part of the

Samoan concourse, these antique and (I understand) quite local manners

awoke laughter. One of my biscuit tins and a live calf were among the

spoils he claimed, but the large majority of the cooked food (having once

proved his dignity) he re-presented to the King.

Then came the turn of _le alii Tusitala_. He would not dance, but he was

given—five live hens, four gourds of oil, four fine tapas, a hundred

heads of taro, two cooked pigs, a cooked shark, two or three cocoanut

branches strung with kava, and the turtle, who soon after breathed his

last, I believe, from sunstroke. It was a royal present for ‘the chief

of the great powers.’ I should say the gifts were, on the proper signal,

dragged out of the field of food by a troop of young men, all with their

lava-lavas kilted almost into a loin-cloth. The art is to swoop on the

food-field, pick up with unerring swiftness the right things and

quantities, swoop forth again on the open, and separate, leaving the

gifts in a new pile: so you may see a covey of birds in a corn-field.

This reminds me of a very inhumane but beautiful passage I had forgotten

in its place. The gift-giving was still in full swing, when there came a

troop of some ninety men all in tafa lava-lavas of a purplish colour;

they paused, and of a sudden there went up from them high into the air a

flight of live chickens, which, as they came down again, were sent again

into the air, for perhaps a minute, from the midst of a singular turmoil

of flying arms and shouting voices; I assure you, it was very beautiful

to see, but how many chickens were killed?

No sooner was my food set out than I was to be going. I had a little

serious talk with Mataafa on the floor, and we went down to the boat,

where we got our food aboard, such a cargo—like the Swiss Family

Robinson, we said. However, a squall began, Tauilo refused to let us go,

and we came back to the house for half-an-hour or so, when my ladies

distinguished themselves by walking through a Fono (council), my mother

actually taking up a position between Mataafa and Popo! It was about

five when we started—turtle, pigs, taro, etc., my mother, Belle, myself,

Tauilo, a portly friend of hers with the voice of an angel, and a

pronunciation so delicate and true that you could follow Samoan as she

sang, and the two tired boys Frank and Jimmie, with the two bad oars and

the two slippery rowlocks to impel the whole. Salé Taylor took the canoe

and a strong Samoan to paddle him. Presently after he went inshore, and

passed us a little after, with his arms folded, and _two_ strong Samoans

impelling him Apia-ward. This was too much for Belle, who hailed,

taunted him, and made him return to the boat with one of the Samoans,

setting Jimmie instead in the canoe. Then began our torment, Salé and

the Samoan took the oars, sat on the same thwart (where they could get no

swing on the boat had they tried), and deliberately ladled at the lagoon.

We lay enchanted. Night fell; there was a light visible on shore; it did

not move. The two women sang, Belle joining them in the hymns she has

learned at family worship. Then a squall came up; we sat a while in

roaring midnight under rivers of rain, and, when it blew by, there was

the light again, immovable. A second squall followed, one of the worst I

was ever out in; we could scarce catch our breath in the cold, dashing

deluge. When it went, we were so cold that the water in the bottom of

the boat (which I was then baling) seemed like a warm footbath in

comparison, and Belle and I, who were still barefoot, were quite restored

by laving in it.

All this time I had kept my temper, and refrained as far as might be from

any interference, for I saw (in our friend’s mulish humour) he always

contrived to twist it to our disadvantage. But now came the acute point.

Young Frank now took an oar. He was a little fellow, near as frail as

myself, and very short; if he weighed nine stone, it was the outside; but

his blood was up. He took stroke, moved the big Samoan forward to bow,

and set to work to pull him round in fine style. Instantly a kind of

race competition—almost race hatred—sprang up. We jeered the Samoan.

Salé declared it was the trim of the boat: ‘if this lady was aft’

(Tauilo’s portly friend) ‘he would row round Frank.’ We insisted on her

coming aft, and Frank still rowed round the Samoan. When the Samoan

caught a crab (the thing was continual with these wretched oars and

rowlocks), we shouted and jeered; when Frank caught one, Salé and the

Samoan jeered and yelled. But anyway the boat moved, and presently we

got up with Mulinuu, where I finally lost my temper, when I found that

Salé proposed to go ashore and make a visit—in fact, we all three did.

It is not worth while going into, but I must give you one snatch of the

subsequent conversation as we pulled round Apia bay. ‘This Samoan,’ said

Salé, ‘received seven German bullets in the field of Fangalii.’ ‘I am

delighted to hear it,’ said Belle. ‘His brother was killed there,’

pursued Salé; and Belle, prompt as an echo, ‘Then there are no more of

the family? how delightful!’ Salé was sufficiently surprised to change

the subject; he began to praise Frank’s rowing with insufferable

condescension: ‘But it is after all not to be wondered at,’ said he,

‘because he has been for some time a sailor. My good man, is it three or

five years that you have been to sea?’ And Frank, in a defiant shout:

‘Two!’ Whereupon, so high did the ill-feeling run, that we three clapped

and applauded and shouted, so that the President (whose house we were

then passing) doubtless started at the sounds. It was nine when we got

to the hotel; at first no food was to be found, but we skirmished up some

bread and cheese and beer and brandy; and (having changed our wet clothes

for the rather less wet in our bags) supped on the verandah.

_Saturday_ 28_th_. I was wakened about 6.30, long past my usual hour, by

a benevolent passer-by. My turtle lay on the verandah at my door, and

the man woke me to tell me it was dead, as it had been when we put it on

board the day before. All morning I ran the gauntlet of men and women

coming up to me: ‘Mr. Stevenson, your turtle is dead.’ I gave half of it

to the hotel keeper, so that his cook should cut it up; and we got a

damaged shell, and two splendid meals, beefsteak one day and soup the

next. The horses came for us about 9.30. It was waterspouting; we were

drenched before we got out of the town; the road was a fine going

Highland trout stream; it thundered deep and frequent, and my mother’s

horse would not better on a walk. At last she took pity on us, and very

nobly proposed that Belle and I should ride ahead. We were mighty glad

to do so, for we were cold. Presently, I said I should ride back for my

mother, but it thundered again, Belle is afraid of thunder, and I decided

to see her through the forest before I returned for my other hen—I may

say, my other wet hen. About the middle of the wood, where it is

roughest and steepest, we met three pack-horses with barrels of

lime-juice. I piloted Belle past these—it is not very easy in such a

road—and then passed them again myself, to pilot my mother. This

effected, it began to thunder again, so I rode on hard after Belle. When

I caught up with her, she was singing Samoan hymns to support her

terrors! We were all back, changed, and at table by lunch time, 11 A.M.

Nor have any of us been the worse for it sinsyne. That is pretty good

for a woman of my mother’s age and an invalid of my standing; above all,

as Tauilo was laid up with a bad cold, probably increased by rage.

* * * * *

_Friday_, 3_rd_ _June_.

On Wednesday the club could not be held, and I must ride down town and to

and fro all afternoon delivering messages, then dined and rode up by the

young moon. I had plenty news when I got back; there is great talk in

town of my deportation: it is thought they have written home to Downing

Street requesting my removal, which leaves me not much alarmed; what I do

rather expect is that H. J. Moors and I may be haled up before the C. J.

to stand a trial for _lèse_-Majesty. Well, we’ll try and live it

through.

The rest of my history since Monday has been unadulterated _David

Balfour_. In season and out of season, night and day, David and his

innocent harem—let me be just, he never has more than the two—are on my

mind. Think of David Balfour with a pair of fair ladies—very nice ones

too—hanging round him. I really believe David is as a good character as

anybody has a right to ask for in a novel. I have finished drafting

Chapter XX. to-day, and feel it all ready to froth when the spigot is

turned.

O I forgot—and do forget. What did I mean? A waft of cloud has fallen

on my mind, and I will write no more.

* * * * *

_Wednesday_, _I believe_, 8_th_ _June_.

Lots of David, and lots of David, and the devil any other news.

Yesterday we were startled by great guns firing a salute, and to-day

Whitmee (missionary) rode up to lunch, and we learned it was the

_Curaçoa_ come in, the ship (according to rumour) in which I was to be

deported. I went down to meet my fate, and the captain is to dine with

me Saturday, so I guess I am not going this voyage. Even with the

particularity with which I write to you, how much of my life goes

unexpressed; my troubles with a madman by the name of —, a genuine living

lunatic, I believe, and jolly dangerous; my troubles about poor —, all

these have dropped out; yet for moments they were very instant, and one

of them is always present with me.

I have finished copying Chapter XXI. of David—‘_solus cum sola_; we

travel together.’ Chapter XXII., ‘_Solus cum sola_; we keep house

together,’ is already drafted. To the end of XXI. makes more than 150

pages of my manuscript—damn this hair—and I only designed the book to run

to about 200; but when you introduce the female sect, a book does run

away with you. I am very curious to see what you will think of my two

girls. My own opinion is quite clear; I am in love with both. I foresee

a few pleasant years of spiritual flirtations. The creator (if I may

name myself, for the sake of argument, by such a name) is essentially

unfaithful. For the duration of the two chapters in which I dealt with

Miss Grant, I totally forgot my heroine, and even—but this is a flat

secret—tried to win away David. I think I must try some day to marry

Miss Grant. I’m blest if I don’t think I’ve got that hair out! which

seems triumph enough; so I conclude.

* * * * *

_Tuesday_.

Your infinitesimal correspondence has reached me, and I have the honour

to refer to it with scorn. It contains only one statement of conceivable

interest, that your health is better; the rest is null, and so far as

disquisitory unsound. I am all right, but David Balfour is ailing; this

came from my visit to the man-of-war, where I had a cup of tea, and the

most of that night walked the verandah with extraordinary convictions of

guilt and ruin, many of which (but not all) proved to have fled with the

day, taking David along with them; he R.I.P. in Chapter XXII.

On Saturday I went down to the town, and fetched up Captain Gibson to

dinner; Sunday I was all day at Samoa, and had a pile of visitors.

Yesterday got my mail, including your despicable sheet; was fooled with a

visit from the high chief Asi, went down at 4 P.M. to my Samoan lesson

from Whitmee—I think I shall learn from him, he does not fool me with

cockshot rules that are demolished next day, but professes ignorance like

a man; the truth is, the grammar has still to be expiscated—dined with

Haggard, and got home about nine.

* * * * *

_Wednesday_.

The excellent Clarke up here almost all day yesterday, a man I esteem and

like to the soles of his boots; I prefer him to anyone in Samoa, and to

most people in the world; a real good missionary, with the inestimable

advantage of having grown up a layman. Pity they all can’t get that! It

recalls my old proposal, which delighted Lady Taylor so much, that every

divinity student should be thirty years old at least before he was

admitted. Boys switched out of college into a pulpit, what chance have

they? That any should do well amazes me, and the most are just what was

to be expected.

* * * * *

_Saturday_.

I must tell you of our feast. It was long promised to the boys, and came

off yesterday in one of their new houses. My good Simelé arrived from

Savaii that morning asking for political advice; then we had Tauilo;

Elena’s father, a talking man of Tauilo’s family; Talolo’s cousin; and a

boy of Simelé’s family, who attended on his dignity; then Metu, the

meat-man—you have never heard of him, but he is a great person in our

household—brought a lady and a boy—and there was another infant—eight

guests in all. And we sat down thirty strong. You should have seen our

procession, going (about two o’clock), all in our best clothes, to the

hall of feasting! All in our Sunday’s best. The new house had been

hurriedly finished; the rafters decorated with flowers; the floor spread,

native style, with green leaves; we had given a big porker, twenty-five

pounds of fresh beef, a tin of biscuit, cocoanuts, etc. Our places were

all arranged with much care; the native ladies of the house facing our

party; the sides filled up by the men; the guests, please observe: the

two chief people, male and female, were placed with our family, the rest

between S. and the native ladies. After the feast was over, we had kava,

and the calling of the kava was a very elaborate affair, and I thought

had like to have made Simelé very angry; he is really a considerable

chief, but he and Tauilo were not called till after all our family, _and

the guests_, I suppose the principle being that he was still regarded as

one of the household. I forgot to say that our black boy did not turn up

when the feast was ready. Off went the two cooks, found him, decorated

him with huge red hibiscus flowers—he was in a very dirty under

shirt—brought him back between them like a reluctant maid, and, thrust

him into a place between Faauma and Elena, where he was petted and

ministered to. When his turn came in the kava drinking—and you may be

sure, in their contemptuous, affectionate kindness for him, as for a good

dog, it came rather earlier than it ought—he was cried under a new name.

_Aleki_ is what they make of his own name Arrick; but instead of [the cup

of / ‘le ipu o] Aleki!’ it was called ‘le ipu o _Vailima_’ and it was

explained that he had ‘taken his chief-name’! a jest at which the

plantation still laughs. Kava done, I made a little speech, Henry

translating. If I had been well, I should have alluded to all, but I was

scarce able to sit up; so only alluded to my guest of all this month, the

Tongan, Tomas, and to Simelé, partly for the jest of making him translate

compliments to himself. The talking man replied with many handsome

compliments to me, in the usual flood of Samoan fluent neatness; and we

left them to an afternoon of singing and dancing. Must stop now, as my

right hand is very bad again. I am trying to write with my left.

* * * * *

_Sunday_.

About half-past eight last night, I had gone to my own room, Fanny and

Lloyd were in Fanny’s, every one else in bed, only two boys on the

premises—the two little brown boys Mitaiele (Michael), age I suppose 11

or 12, and the new steward, a Wallis islander, speaking no English and

about fifty words of Samoan, recently promoted from the bush work, and a

most good, anxious, timid lad of 15 or 16—looks like 17 or 18, of

course—they grow fast here. In comes Mitaiele to Lloyd, and told some

rigmarole about Paatalise (the steward’s name) wanting to go and see his

family in the bush.—‘But he has no family in the bush,’ said Lloyd.

‘No,’ said Mitaiele. They went to the boy’s bed (they sleep in the

walled-in compartment of the verandah, once my dressing-room) and called

at once for me. He lay like one asleep, talking in drowsy tones but

without excitement, and at times ‘cheeping’ like a frightened mouse; he

was quite cool to the touch, and his pulse not fast; his breathing seemed

wholly ventral; the bust still, the belly moving strongly. Presently he

got from his bed, and ran for the door, with his head down not three feet

from the floor and his body all on a stretch forward, like a striking

snake: I say ‘ran,’ but this strange movement was not swift. Lloyd and I

mastered him and got him back in bed. Soon there was another and more

desperate attempt to escape, in which Lloyd had his ring broken. Then we

bound him to the bed humanely with sheets, ropes, boards and pillows. He

lay there and sometimes talked, sometimes whispered, sometimes wept like

an angry child; his principal word was ‘Faamolemole’—‘Please’—and he kept

telling us at intervals that his family were calling him. During this

interval, by the special grace of God, my boys came home; we had already

called in Arrick, the black boy; now we had that Hercules, Lafaele, and a

man Savea, who comes from Paatalise’s own island and can alone

communicate with him freely. Lloyd went to bed, I took the first watch,

and sat in my room reading, while Lafaele and Arrick watched the madman.

Suddenly Arrick called me; I ran into the verandah; there was Paatalise

free of all his bonds and Lafaele holding him. To tell what followed is

impossible. We were five people at him—Lafaele and Savea, very strong

men, Lloyd, I and Arrick, and the struggle lasted until 1 A.M. before we

had him bound. One detail for a specimen: Lloyd and I had charge of one

leg, we were both sitting on it, and lo! we were both tossed into the

air—I, I daresay, a couple of feet. At last we had him spread-eagled to

the iron bedstead, by his wrists and ankles, with matted rope; a most

inhumane business, but what could we do? it was all we could do to manage

it even so. The strength of the paroxysms had been steadily increasing,

and we trembled for the next. And now I come to pure Rider Haggard.

Lafaele announced that the boy was very bad, and he would get ‘some

medicine’ which was a family secret of his own. Some leaves were brought

mysteriously in; chewed, placed on the boy’s eyes, dropped in his ears

(see Hamlet) and stuck up his nostrils; as he did this, the weird doctor

partly smothered the patient with his hand; and by about 2 A.M. he was in

a deep sleep, and from that time he showed no symptom of dementia

whatever. The medicine (says Lafaele) is principally used for the

wholesale slaughter of families; he himself feared last night that his

dose was fatal; only one other person, on this island, knows the secret;

and she, Lafaele darkly whispers, has abused it. This remarkable tree we

must try to identify.

The man-of-war doctor came up to-day, gave us a strait-waistcoat, taught

us to bandage, examined the boy and saw he was apparently well—he

insisted on doing his work all morning, poor lad, and when he first came

down kissed all the family at breakfast! The Doctor was greatly excited,

as may be supposed, about Lafaele’s medicine.

* * * * *

_Tuesday_.

All yesterday writing my mail by the hand of Belle, to save my wrist.

This is a great invention, to which I shall stick, if it can be managed.

We had some alarm about Paatalise, but he slept well all night for a

benediction. This lunatic asylum exercise has no attractions for any of

us.

I don’t know if I remembered to say how much pleased I was with _Across

the Plains_ in every way, inside and out, and you and me. The critics

seem to taste it, too, as well as could be hoped, and I believe it will

continue to bring me in a few shillings a year for a while. But such

books pay only indirectly.

To understand the full horror of the mad scene, and how well my boys

behaved, remember that _they believed P.’s ravings_, they _knew_ that his

dead family, thirty strong, crowded the front verandah and called on him

to come to the other world. They _knew_ that his dead brother had met

him that afternoon in the bush and struck him on both temples. And

remember! we are fighting the dead, and they had to go out again in the

black night, which is the dead man’s empire. Yet last evening, when I

thought P. was going to repeat the performance, I sent down for Lafaele,

who had leave of absence, and he and his wife came up about eight o’clock

with a lighted brand. These are the things for which I have to forgive

my old cattle-man his manifold shortcomings; they are heroic—so are the

shortcomings, to be sure.

It came over me the other day suddenly that this diary of mine to you

would make good pickings after I am dead, and a man could make some kind

of a book out of it without much trouble. So, for God’s sake, don’t lose

them, and they will prove a piece of provision for my ‘poor old family,’

as Simelé calls it.

About my coming to Europe, I get more and more doubtful, and rather

incline to Ceylon again as place of meeting. I am so absurdly well here

in the tropics, that it seems like affectation. Yet remember I have

never once stood Sydney. Anyway, I shall have the money for it all

ahead, before I think of such a thing.

We had a bowl of Punch on your birthday, which my incredible mother

somehow knew and remembered.

I sometimes sit and yearn for anything in the nature of an income that

would come in—mine has all got to be gone and fished for with the

immortal mind of man. What I want is the income that really comes in of

itself while all you have to do is just to blossom and exist and sit on

chairs. Think how beautiful it would be not to have to mind the critics,

and not even the darkest of the crowd—Sidney Colvin. I should probably

amuse myself with works that would make your hair curl, if you had any

left.

R. L S.

CHAPTER XX

_Saturday_, 2_nd_ _July_ 1892.

THE character of my handwriting is explained, alas! by scrivener’s cramp.

This also explains how long I have let the paper lie plain.

* * * * *

1 P.M.

I was busy copying David Balfour with my left hand—a most laborious

task—Fanny was down at the native house superintending the floor, Lloyd

down in Apia, and Belle in her own house cleaning, when I heard the

latter calling on my name. I ran out on the verandah; and there on the

lawn beheld my crazy boy with an axe in his hand and dressed out in green

ferns, dancing. I ran downstairs and found all my house boys on the back

verandah, watching him through the dining-room. I asked what it

meant?—‘Dance belong his place,’ they said.—‘I think this no time to

dance,’ said I. ‘Has he done his work?’—‘No,’ they told me, ‘away bush

all morning.’ But there they all stayed on the back verandah. I went on

alone through the dining-room, and bade him stop. He did so, shouldered

the axe, and began to walk away; but I called him back, walked up to him,

and took the axe out of his unresisting hands. The boy is in all things

so good, that I can scarce say I was afraid; only I felt it had to be

stopped ere he could work himself up by dancing to some craziness. Our

house boys protested they were not afraid; all I know is they were all

watching him round the back door and did not follow me till I had the

axe. As for the out boys, who were working with Fanny in the native

house, they thought it a very bad business, and made no secret of their

fears.

* * * * *

_Wednesday_, 6_th_.

I have no account to give of my stewardship these days, and there’s a day

more to account for than mere arithmetic would tell you. For we have had

two Monday Fourths, to bring us at last on the right side of the

meridian, having hitherto been an exception in the world and kept our

private date. Business has filled my hours sans intermission.

* * * * *

_Tuesday_, 12_th._

I am doing no work and my mind is in abeyance. Fanny and Belle are

sewing-machining in the next room; I have been pulling down their hair,

and Fanny has been kicking me, and now I am driven out. Austin I have

been chasing about the verandah; now he has gone to his lessons, and I

make believe to write to you in despair. But there is nothing in my

mind; I swim in mere vacancy, my head is like a rotten nut; I shall soon

have to begin to work again or I shall carry away some part of the

machinery. I have got your insufficient letter, for which I scorn to

thank you. I have had no review by Gosse, none by Birrell; another time

if I have a letter in the _Times_, you might send me the text as well;

also please send me a cricket bat and a cake, and when I come home for

the holidays, I should like to have a pony.

I am, sir, your obedient servant,

JACOB TONSON.

_P.S._ I am quite well; I hope you are quite well. The world is too

much with us, and my mother bids me bind my hair and lace my bodice blue.