[Illustration]
Island Nights’ Entertainments
by Robert Louis Stevenson
Contents
The Beach of Falesá
A south sea bridal
The Ban
The Missionary
Devil-work
Night in the bush
The Bottle Imp
The Isle of voices
THE BEACH OF FALESÁ.
CHAPTER I.
A SOUTH SEA BRIDAL.
I saw that island first when it was neither night nor morning. The moon
was to the west, setting, but still broad and bright. To the east, and
right amidships of the dawn, which was all pink, the daystar sparkled
like a diamond. The land breeze blew in our faces, and smelt strong of
wild lime and vanilla: other things besides, but these were the most
plain; and the chill of it set me sneezing. I should say I had been for
years on a low island near the line, living for the most part solitary
among natives. Here was a fresh experience: even the tongue would be
quite strange to me; and the look of these woods and mountains, and the
rare smell of them, renewed my blood.
The captain blew out the binnacle lamp.
“There!” said he, “there goes a bit of smoke, Mr. Wiltshire, behind the
break of the reef. That’s Falesá, where your station is, the last
village to the east; nobody lives to windward—I don’t know why. Take my
glass, and you can make the houses out.”
I took the glass; and the shores leaped nearer, and I saw the tangle of
the woods and the breach of the surf, and the brown roofs and the black
insides of houses peeped among the trees.
“Do you catch a bit of white there to the east’ard?” the captain
continued. “That’s your house. Coral built, stands high, verandah you
could walk on three abreast; best station in the South Pacific. When
old Adams saw it, he took and shook me by the hand. ‘I’ve dropped into
a soft thing here,’ says he.—‘So you have,’ says I, ‘and time too!’
Poor Johnny! I never saw him again but the once, and then he had
changed his tune—couldn’t get on with the natives, or the whites, or
something; and the next time we came round there he was dead and
buried. I took and put up a bit of a stick to him: ‘John Adams, _obit_
eighteen and sixty-eight. Go thou and do likewise.’ I missed that man.
I never could see much harm in Johnny.”
“What did he die of?” I inquired.
“Some kind of sickness,” says the captain. “It appears it took him
sudden. Seems he got up in the night, and filled up on Pain-Killer and
Kennedy’s Discovery. No go: he was booked beyond Kennedy. Then he had
tried to open a case of gin. No go again: not strong enough. Then he
must have turned to and run out on the verandah, and capsized over the
rail. When they found him, the next day, he was clean crazy—carried on
all the time about somebody watering his copra. Poor John!”
“Was it thought to be the island?” I asked.
“Well, it was thought to be the island, or the trouble, or something,”
he replied. “I never could hear but what it was a healthy place. Our
last man, Vigours, never turned a hair. He left because of the
beach—said he was afraid of Black Jack and Case and Whistling Jimmie,
who was still alive at the time, but got drowned soon afterward when
drunk. As for old Captain Randall, he’s been here any time since
eighteen-forty, forty-five. I never could see much harm in Billy, nor
much change. Seems as if he might live to be Old Kafoozleum. No, I
guess it’s healthy.”
“There’s a boat coming now,” said I. “She’s right in the pass; looks to
be a sixteen-foot whale; two white men in the stern sheets.”
“That’s the boat that drowned Whistling Jimmie!” cried the Captain;
“let’s see the glass. Yes, that’s Case, sure enough, and the darkie.
They’ve got a gallows bad reputation, but you know what a place the
beach is for talking. My belief, that Whistling Jimmie was the worst of
the trouble; and he’s gone to glory, you see. What’ll you bet they
ain’t after gin? Lay you five to two they take six cases.”
When these two traders came aboard I was pleased with the looks of them
at once, or, rather, with the looks of both, and the speech of one. I
was sick for white neighbours after my four years at the line, which I
always counted years of prison; getting tabooed, and going down to the
Speak House to see and get it taken off; buying gin and going on a
break, and then repenting; sitting in the house at night with the lamp
for company; or walking on the beach and wondering what kind of a fool
to call myself for being where I was. There were no other whites upon
my island, and when I sailed to the next, rough customers made the most
of the society. Now to see these two when they came aboard was a
pleasure. One was a negro, to be sure; but they were both rigged out
smart in striped pyjamas and straw hats, and Case would have passed
muster in a city. He was yellow and smallish, had a hawk’s nose to his
face, pale eyes, and his beard trimmed with scissors. No man knew his
country, beyond he was of English speech; and it was clear he came of a
good family and was splendidly educated. He was accomplished too;
played the accordion first-rate; and give him a piece of string or a
cork or a pack of cards, and he could show you tricks equal to any
professional. He could speak, when he chose, fit for a drawing-room;
and when he chose he could blaspheme worse than a Yankee boatswain, and
talk smart to sicken a Kanaka. The way he thought would pay best at the
moment, that was Case’s way, and it always seemed to come natural, and
like as if he was born to it. He had the courage of a lion and the
cunning of a rat; and if he’s not in hell to-day, there’s no such
place. I know but one good point to the man: that he was fond of his
wife, and kind to her. She was a Samoa woman, and dyed her hair red,
Samoa style; and when he came to die (as I have to tell of) they found
one strange thing—that he had made a will, like a Christian, and the
widow got the lot: all his, they said, and all Black Jack’s, and the
most of Billy Randall’s in the bargain, for it was Case that kept the
books. So she went off home in the schooner _Manu’a_, and does the lady
to this day in her own place.
But of all this on that first morning I knew no more than a fly. Case
used me like a gentleman and like a friend, made me welcome to Falesá,
and put his services at my disposal, which was the more helpful from my
ignorance of the native. All the better part of the day we sat drinking
better acquaintance in the cabin, and I never heard a man talk more to
the point. There was no smarter trader, and none dodgier, in the
islands. I thought Falesá seemed to be the right kind of a place; and
the more I drank the lighter my heart. Our last trader had fled the
place at half an hour’s notice, taking a chance passage in a labour
ship from up west. The captain, when he came, had found the station
closed, the keys left with the native pastor, and a letter from the
runaway, confessing he was fairly frightened of his life. Since then
the firm had not been represented, and of course there was no cargo.
The wind, besides, was fair, the captain hoped he could make his next
island by dawn, with a good tide, and the business of landing my trade
was gone about lively. There was no call for me to fool with it, Case
said; nobody would touch my things, everyone was honest in Falesá, only
about chickens or an odd knife or an odd stick of tobacco; and the best
I could do was to sit quiet till the vessel left, then come straight to
his house, see old Captain Randall, the father of the beach, take
pot-luck, and go home to sleep when it got dark. So it was high noon,
and the schooner was under way before I set my foot on shore at Falesá.
I had a glass or two on board; I was just off a long cruise, and the
ground heaved under me like a ship’s deck. The world was like all new
painted; my foot went along to music; Falesá might have been Fiddler’s
Green, if there is such a place, and more’s the pity if there isn’t! It
was good to foot the grass, to look aloft at the green mountains, to
see the men with their green wreaths and the women in their bright
dresses, red and blue. On we went, in the strong sun and the cool
shadow, liking both; and all the children in the town came trotting
after with their shaven heads and their brown bodies, and raising a
thin kind of a cheer in our wake, like crowing poultry.
“By-the-bye,” says Case, “we must get you a wife.”
“That’s so,” said I; “I had forgotten.”
There was a crowd of girls about us, and I pulled myself up and looked
among them like a Bashaw. They were all dressed out for the sake of the
ship being in; and the women of Falesá are a handsome lot to see. If
they have a fault, they are a trifle broad in the beam; and I was just
thinking so when Case touched me.
“That’s pretty,” says he.
I saw one coming on the other side alone. She had been fishing; all she
wore was a chemise, and it was wetted through. She was young and very
slender for an island maid, with a long face, a high forehead, and a
shy, strange, blindish look, between a cat’s and a baby’s.
“Who’s she?” said I. “She’ll do.”
“That’s Uma,” said Case, and he called her up and spoke to her in the
native. I didn’t know what he said; but when he was in the midst she
looked up at me quick and timid, like a child dodging a blow, then down
again, and presently smiled. She had a wide mouth, the lips and the
chin cut like any statue’s; and the smile came out for a moment and was
gone. Then she stood with her head bent, and heard Case to an end,
spoke back in the pretty Polynesian voice, looking him full in the
face, heard him again in answer, and then with an obeisance started
off. I had just a share of the bow, but never another shot of her eye,
and there was no more word of smiling.
“I guess it’s all right,” said Case. “I guess you can have her. I’ll
make it square with the old lady. You can have your pick of the lot for
a plug of tobacco,” he added, sneering.
I suppose it was the smile stuck in my memory, for I spoke back sharp.
“She doesn’t look that sort,” I cried.
“I don’t know that she is,” said Case. “I believe she’s as right as the
mail. Keeps to herself, don’t go round with the gang, and that. O no,
don’t you misunderstand me—Uma’s on the square.” He spoke eager, I
thought, and that surprised and pleased me. “Indeed,” he went on, “I
shouldn’t make so sure of getting her, only she cottoned to the cut of
your jib. All you have to do is to keep dark and let me work the mother
my own way; and I’ll bring the girl round to the captain’s for the
marriage.”
I didn’t care for the word marriage, and I said so.
“Oh, there’s nothing to hurt in the marriage,” says he. “Black Jack’s
the chaplain.”
By this time we had come in view of the house of these three white men;
for a negro is counted a white man, and so is a Chinese! a strange
idea, but common in the islands. It was a board house with a strip of
rickety verandah. The store was to the front, with a counter, scales,
and the poorest possible display of trade: a case or two of tinned
meats; a barrel of hard bread; a few bolts of cotton stuff, not to be
compared with mine; the only thing well represented being the
contraband, firearms and liquor. “If these are my only rivals,” thinks
I, “I should do well in Falesá.” Indeed, there was only the one way
they could touch me, and that was with the guns and drink.
In the back room was old Captain Randall, squatting on the floor native
fashion, fat and pale, naked to the waist, grey as a badger, and his
eyes set with drink. His body was covered with grey hair and crawled
over by flies; one was in the corner of his eye—he never heeded; and
the mosquitoes hummed about the man like bees. Any clean-minded man
would have had the creature out at once and buried him; and to see him,
and think he was seventy, and remember he had once commanded a ship,
and come ashore in his smart togs, and talked big in bars and
consulates, and sat in club verandahs, turned me sick and sober.
He tried to get up when I came in, but that was hopeless; so he reached
me a hand instead, and stumbled out some salutation.
“Papa’s [1] pretty full this morning,” observed Case. “We’ve had an
epidemic here; and Captain Randall takes gin for a prophylactic—don’t
you, Papa?”
“Never took such a thing in my life!” cried the captain indignantly.
“Take gin for my health’s sake, Mr. Wha’s-ever-your-name—’s a
precautionary measure.”
“That’s all right, Papa,” said Case. “But you’ll have to brace up.
There’s going to be a marriage—Mr. Wiltshire here is going to get
spliced.”
The old man asked to whom.
“To Uma,” said Case.
“Uma!” cried the captain. “Wha’s he want Uma for? ’s he come here for
his health, anyway? Wha’ ’n hell’s he want Uma for?”
“Dry up, Papa,” said Case. “’Tain’t you that’s to marry her. I guess
you’re not her godfather and godmother. I guess Mr. Wiltshire’s going
to please himself.”
With that he made an excuse to me that he must move about the marriage,
and left me alone with the poor wretch that was his partner and (to
speak truth) his gull. Trade and station belonged both to Randall; Case
and the negro were parasites; they crawled and fed upon him like the
flies, he none the wiser. Indeed, I have no harm to say of Billy
Randall beyond the fact that my gorge rose at him, and the time I now
passed in his company was like a nightmare.
The room was stifling hot and full of flies; for the house was dirty
and low and small, and stood in a bad place, behind the village, in the
borders of the bush, and sheltered from the trade. The three men’s beds
were on the floor, and a litter of pans and dishes. There was no
standing furniture; Randall, when he was violent, tearing it to laths.
There I sat and had a meal which was served us by Case’s wife; and
there I was entertained all day by that remains of man, his tongue
stumbling among low old jokes and long old stories, and his own wheezy
laughter always ready, so that he had no sense of my depression. He was
nipping gin all the while. Sometimes he fell asleep, and awoke again,
whimpering and shivering, and every now and again he would ask me why I
wanted to marry Uma. “My friend,” I was telling myself all day, “you
must not come to be an old gentleman like this.”
It might be four in the afternoon, perhaps, when the back door was
thrust slowly open, and a strange old native woman crawled into the
house almost on her belly. She was swathed in black stuff to her heels;
her hair was grey in swatches; her face was tattooed, which was not the
practice in that island; her eyes big and bright and crazy. These she
fixed upon me with a rapt expression that I saw to be part acting. She
said no plain word, but smacked and mumbled with her lips, and hummed
aloud, like a child over its Christmas pudding. She came straight
across the house, heading for me, and, as soon as she was alongside,
caught up my hand and purred and crooned over it like a great cat. From
this she slipped into a kind of song.
“Who the devil’s this?” cried I, for the thing startled me.
“It’s Fa’avao,” says Randall; and I saw he had hitched along the floor
into the farthest corner.
“You ain’t afraid of her?” I cried.
“Me ’fraid!” cried the captain. “My dear friend, I defy her! I don’t
let her put her foot in here, only I suppose ’s different to-day, for
the marriage. ’s Uma’s mother.”
“Well, suppose it is; what’s she carrying on about?” I asked, more
irritated, perhaps more frightened, than I cared to show; and the
captain told me she was making up a quantity of poetry in my praise
because I was to marry Uma. “All right, old lady,” says I, with rather
a failure of a laugh, “anything to oblige. But when you’re done with my
hand, you might let me know.”
She did as though she understood; the song rose into a cry, and
stopped; the woman crouched out of the house the same way that she came
in, and must have plunged straight into the bush, for when I followed
her to the door she had already vanished.
“These are rum manners,” said I.
“’s a rum crowd,” said the captain, and, to my surprise, he made the
sign of the cross on his bare bosom.
“Hillo!” says I, “are you a Papist?”
He repudiated the idea with contempt. “Hard-shell Baptis’,” said he.
“But, my dear friend, the Papists got some good ideas too; and tha’ ’s
one of ’em. You take my advice, and whenever you come across Uma or
Fa’avao or Vigours, or any of that crowd, you take a leaf out o’ the
priests, and do what I do. Savvy?” says he, repeated the sign, and
winked his dim eye at me. “No, _sir_!” he broke out again, “no Papists
here!” and for a long time entertained me with his religious opinions.
I must have been taken with Uma from the first, or I should certainly
have fled from that house, and got into the clean air, and the clean
sea, or some convenient river—though, it’s true, I was committed to
Case; and, besides, I could never have held my head up in that island
if I had run from a girl upon my wedding-night.
The sun was down, the sky all on fire, and the lamp had been some time
lighted, when Case came back with Uma and the negro. She was dressed
and scented; her kilt was of fine tapa, looking richer in the folds
than any silk; her bust, which was of the colour of dark honey, she
wore bare only for some half a dozen necklaces of seeds and flowers;
and behind her ears and in her hair she had the scarlet flowers of the
hibiscus. She showed the best bearing for a bride conceivable, serious
and still; and I thought shame to stand up with her in that mean house
and before that grinning negro. I thought shame, I say; for the
mountebank was dressed with a big paper collar, the book he made
believe to read from was an odd volume of a novel, and the words of his
service not fit to be set down. My conscience smote me when we joined
hands; and when she got her certificate I was tempted to throw up the
bargain and confess. Here is the document. It was Case that wrote it,
signatures and all, in a leaf out of the ledger:—
This is to certify that Uma, daughter of Fa’avao of Falesá, Island of
——, is illegally married to Mr. John Wiltshire for one week, and Mr.
John Wiltshire is at liberty to send her to hell when he pleases.
JOHN BLACKAMOAR.
Chaplain to the hulks.
Extracted from the Register
by William T. Randall,
Master Mariner.
A nice paper to put in a girl’s hand and see her hide away like gold. A
man might easily feel cheap for less. But it was the practice in these
parts, and (as I told myself) not the least the fault of us white men,
but of the missionaries. If they had let the natives be, I had never
needed this deception, but taken all the wives I wished, and left them
when I pleased, with a clear conscience.
The more ashamed I was, the more hurry I was in to be gone; and our
desires thus jumping together, I made the less remark of a change in
the traders. Case had been all eagerness to keep me; now, as though he
had attained a purpose, he seemed all eagerness to have me go. Uma, he
said, could show me to my house, and the three bade us farewell
indoors.
The night was nearly come; the village smelt of trees and flowers and
the sea and bread-fruit-cooking; there came a fine roll of sea from the
reef, and from a distance, among the woods and houses, many pretty
sounds of men and children. It did me good to breathe free air; it did
me good to be done with the captain and see, instead, the creature at
my side. I felt for all the world as though she were some girl at home
in the Old Country, and, forgetting myself for the minute, took her
hand to walk with. Her fingers nestled into mine, I heard her breathe
deep and quick, and all at once she caught my hand to her face and
pressed it there. “You good!” she cried, and ran ahead of me, and
stopped and looked back and smiled, and ran ahead of me again, thus
guiding me through the edge of the bush, and by a quiet way to my own
house.
The truth is, Case had done the courting for me in style—told her I was
mad to have her, and cared nothing for the consequence; and the poor
soul, knowing that which I was still ignorant of, believed it, every
word, and had her head nigh turned with vanity and gratitude. Now, of
all this I had no guess; I was one of those most opposed to any
nonsense about native women, having seen so many whites eaten up by
their wives’ relatives, and made fools of in the bargain; and I told
myself I must make a stand at once, and bring her to her bearings. But
she looked so quaint and pretty as she ran away and then awaited me,
and the thing was done so like a child or a kind dog, that the best I
could do was just to follow her whenever she went on, to listen for the
fall of her bare feet, and to watch in the dusk for the shining of her
body. And there was another thought came in my head. She played kitten
with me now when we were alone; but in the house she had carried it the
way a countess might, so proud and humble. And what with her dress—for
all there was so little of it, and that native enough—what with her
fine tapa and fine scents, and her red flowers and seeds, that were
quite as bright as jewels, only larger—it came over me she was a kind
of countess really, dressed to hear great singers at a concert, and no
even mate for a poor trader like myself.
She was the first in the house; and while I was still without I saw a
match flash and the lamplight kindle in the windows. The station was a
wonderful fine place, coral built, with quite a wide verandah, and the
main room high and wide. My chests and cases had been piled in, and
made rather of a mess; and there, in the thick of the confusion, stood
Uma by the table, awaiting me. Her shadow went all the way up behind
her into the hollow of the iron roof; she stood against it bright, the
lamplight shining on her skin. I stopped in the door, and she looked at
me, not speaking, with eyes that were eager and yet daunted; then she
touched herself on the bosom.
“Me—your wifie,” she said. It had never taken me like that before; but
the want of her took and shook all through me, like the wind in the
luff of a sail.
I could not speak if I had wanted; and if I could, I would not. I was
ashamed to be so much moved about a native, ashamed of the marriage
too, and the certificate she had treasured in her kilt; and I turned
aside and made believe to rummage among my cases. The first thing I
lighted on was a case of gin, the only one that I had brought; and,
partly for the girl’s sake, and partly for horror of the recollections
of old Randall, took a sudden resolve. I prized the lid off. One by one
I drew the bottles with a pocket corkscrew, and sent Uma out to pour
the stuff from the verandah.
She came back after the last, and looked at me puzzled like.
“No good,” said I, for I was now a little better master of my tongue.
“Man he drink, he no good.”
She agreed with this, but kept considering. “Why you bring him?” she
asked presently. “Suppose you no want drink, you no bring him, I
think.”
“That’s all right,” said I. “One time I want drink too much; now no
want. You see, I no savvy I get one little wifie. Suppose I drink gin,
my little wifie he ’fraid.”
To speak to her kindly was about more than I was fit for; I had made my
vow I would never let on to weakness with a native, and I had nothing
for it but to stop.
She stood looking gravely down at me where I sat by the open case. “I
think you good man,” she said. And suddenly she had fallen before me on
the floor. “I belong you all-e-same pig!” she cried.