One November night, in the village of Tautira, we sat at the high
table in the hall of assembly, hearing the natives sing. It was dark
in the hall, and very warm; though at times the land wind blew a little
shrewdly through the chinks, and at times, through the larger openings,
we could see the moonlight on the lawn. As the songs arose in the
rattling Tahitian chorus, the chief translated here and there a verse.
Farther on in the volume you shall read the songs themselves; and I am
in hopes that not you only, but all who can find a savour in the ancient
poetry of places, will read them with some pleasure. You are to conceive
us, therefore, in strange circumstances and very pleasing; in a strange
land and climate, the most beautiful on earth; surrounded by a foreign
race that all travellers have agreed to be the most engaging; and taking
a double interest in two foreign arts.
We came forth again at last, in a cloudy moonlight, on the forest
lawn which is the street of Tautira. The Pacific roared outside upon
the reef. Here and there one of the scattered palm-built lodges shone
out under the shadow of the wood, the lamplight bursting through the
crannies of the wall. We went homeward slowly, Ori a Ori carrying behind
us the lantern and the chairs, properties with which we had just been
enacting our part of the distinguished visitor. It was one of those
moments in which minds not altogether churlish recall the names and
deplore the absence of congenial friends; and it was your name that
first rose upon our lips. "How Symonds would have enjoyed this evening!"
said one, and then another. The word caught in my mind; I went to bed,
and it was still there. The glittering, frosty solitudes in which your
days are cast, arose before me: I seemed to see you walking there in
the late night, under the pine-trees and the stars; and I received the
image with something like remorse.
There is a modern attitude towards fortune; in this place I will not
use a graver name. Staunchly to withstand her buffets and to enjoy
with equanimity her favours was the code of the virtuous of old. Our
fathers, it should seem, wondered and doubted how they had merited their
misfortunes: we, rather how we have deserved our happiness. And we stand
often abashed, and sometimes revolted, at those partialities of fate
by which we profit most. It was so with me on that November night: I
felt that our positions should be changed. It was you, dear Symonds,
who should have gone upon that voyage and written this account. With
your rich stores of knowledge, you could have remarked and understood a
thousand things of interest and beauty that escaped my ignorance; and
the brilliant colors of your style would have carried into a thousand
sickrooms the sea air and the strong sun of tropic islands. It was
otherwise decreed. But suffer me at least to connect you, if only in
name and only in the fondness of imagination, with the voyage of the
_Silver Ship_.