A visit to the hermit of Taha-Uka valley; the vengeance that made the
Scallamera lepers; and the hatred of Mohuto.
Le Verogose, a Breton planter who lived in Taka-Uka Valley, was full
of _camaraderie_, esteeming friendship a genuine tie, and given to
many friendly impulses. He had a two-room cabin set high on the
slope of the river bank, unadorned, but clean, and though his busy,
hardworking days gave him little time for social intercourse, he
occasionally invited me there to dinner with him and his wife.
One Sunday he dined me handsomely on eels stewed in white wine, tame
duck, and codfish balls, and after the dance, in which his wife,
Ghost Girl, Malicious Gossip, Water, and the host joined, we sat for
some time singing "Malbrouck se va t'en guerre," "La Carmagnole,"
and other songs of France. Stirred by the memories of home, these
melodies awakened, Le Vergose remembered a countryman who lived
nearby.
"There is a hermit who lives a thousand feet up the valley," said he.
"We might take him half a litre of rum. He is a Breton of Brest who
has been here many years. He eats nothing but bananas, for he lives
in a banana grove, and he is able only to totter to the river for
water. He never moves from his little hut except to pick a few
bananas. He lives alone. Hardly any one sees him from year to year.
I think he would be glad to have a visitor."
A wet and slippery trail through the forest along the river bank led
toward the hermit's grove. Toiling up it, sliding and clutching the
boughs that overhung and almost obliterated it, we passed a small
native house of straw, almost hidden by the trees, and were hailed
by the voice of a woman.
"_I hea?_ Where do you go?" The words were sharp, with a tone almost
of anxiety, of fear.
"We go to see Hemeury Francois," replied Le Vergose.
The woman who had spoken came half-way down the worn and dirty steps
of her _paepae_. She was old, but with an age more of bitter and
devastating emotion than of years. Her haggard face, drawn and
seamed with cruel lines, showed still the traces of a beauty that had
been hard and handsome rather than lovely. She said nothing more,
but stood watching our progress, her tall figure absolutely
motionless in its dark tunic, her eyes curiously intent upon us. I
felt relief when the thick curtains of leaves shut us from her view.
"That is Mohuto," said Le Vergose. "She is a solitary, too. All her
people have died, and she has become hard and bitter. That is a
strange thing, for an islander. But she was beautiful once. Perhaps
she broods upon that."
We entered the banana-grove, an acre or two of huge plants, thirty
feet high, so close together that the sun could not touch the soil.
The earth was dank and dark, almost a swamp, and the trees were like
yellowish-green ghosts in the gloom. Their great soft leaves shut out
the sky, and from their limp edges there was a ceaseless drip of
moisture. A horde of mosquitos, black and small, emerged from the
shadows, thousands upon thousands, and smote us upon every exposed
part. In a few minutes our faces were smeared with blood from their
killing. Curses in Breton, in Marquesan, and American rent the
stillness.
In this dismal, noisome spot was a wretched hut built of _purau_
saplings, as crude a dwelling as the shelter a trapper builds for a
few days' habitation. It was ten feet long and four wide, shaky and
rotten. Inside it was like the lair of a wild beast, a bed of moldy
leaves. A line stretched just below the thatched roof held a few
discolored newspapers.
On the heap of leaves sat the remnant of a man, a crooked skeleton
in dirty rags, his face a parchment of wrinkles framed by a mass of
whitening hair. He looked ages old, his eyes small holes, red rimmed,
his hands, in which he held a shaking piece of paper, foul claws.
His flesh, through his rags, was the deadly white of the morgue. He
looked a Thing no soul should animate.
"Ah! Hemeury Francois," said Le Vergose in the Breton dialect that
recalled their childhood home, "I have brought an American to see you.
You can talk your English to him."
"By damn, yes," croaked the hermit, in the voice of a raven loosed
from a deserted house. But he made no movement until Le Vergose held
before his bone-like nose a pint of strong Tahiti rum. Far back in
his eyes, away beyond the visible organs, there came a gleam of
greater consciousness, a realization of life around him. His mouth,
like a rent in an old, battered purse, gaped, and though no teeth
were there, the vacuity seemed to smile feebly.
He felt about the litter of paper and leaves and found a dirty
cocoanut-shell and a calabash of water. Shaking and gasping, he
poured the bottle of rum into the shell, mixed water with it and
lifted the precious elixir tremblingly to his lips. He made two
choking swallows, and dropped the shell--empty.
His eyes, that had been lost in their raw sockets, scanned me. Then
in mixed French and English he began to talk of himself. From his
rags he produced a rude diary blocked off on scraps of paper, a
minute record of the river and the weather, covering many years.
"Torrent, torrent, torrent." That word was repeated many tunes.
_Hause_ appeared often, signifying that the brook had risen. Every
day he had noted its state. The river had become his god. Alone among
those shadowing, dripping banana-plants, with no human companionship,
he had made his study of the moods of the stream a worship. Pages
and pages were inscribed with lines upon its state.
"Bacchus," I saw repeated on the dates July 13, 14, 15.
"Another god on the altar then?" I asked. "_Mais, oui_," he answered
in his rusty voice. "The Fall of the Bastile. Le Vergose sent me a
bottle of rum to honor the Republic."
What he had just drunk was seething in him. Little by little he
commanded that long disused throat, he recalled from the depths of
his uncertain mind words and phrases. In short, jerky sentences,
mostly French, he spun his tale.
"Brest is my home, in Finnistere. I have been many years in these
seas. I forget how many. How many years--? _Sacré!_ I was on the
_Mongol_. She was two thousand tons, clipper, and with skysails.
The captain was Freeman. We brought coals from Boston to San
Francisco. That was long ago. I was young. I was young and handsome.
And strong. Yes, I was strong and young.
"That was it--the _Mongol_. A clipper-ship from Boston, two thousand
tons, and with skysails. Around the Horn it almost blew the sticks
out of that _Mongol_. We froze; we worked day and night. It was
terrible. The seas almost drowned us. Ah, how we cursed! _Tonnerre
de dieu!_ Had we known it we were in Paradise. The inferno--we were
coming to the inferno."
It took him long to tell it. He wanted to talk, but weakness
overcame him often, and the words were almost hushed by his breath
that came short and wheezing.
"One day we opened the hatches to get coal for the galley. The smell
of gas arose. The coal was making gas. No fire. Just gas. If there
was fire we never knew it. We felt no heat. We could find no fire.
But every day the gas got worse.
"It filled the ship. The watch below could not sleep because of it.
If we went aloft, still we smelled it. The food tasted of gas. Our
lungs were pressed down by it. Day after day we sailed, and the gas
sailed with us.
"The bo'sn fell in a fit. A man on the t'gallant yard fell to the
deck and was killed. Three did not awake one morning. We threw their
bodies over the side. The mate spat blood and called on God as he
leaped into the sea. The smell of the gas never left us.
"The captain called us by the poop-rail, and said we must abandon
the ship any time.
"We were twenty men all told. We had four whale-boats and a yawl.
Plenty for all of us. We provisioned and watered the boats. But we
stayed by the _Mongol_. We were far from any port and we dared not
go adrift in open boats.
"Then came a calm. The gas could not lift. It settled down on us. It
lay on us like a weight. It never left us for a moment. Men lay in
the scuppers and vomited. Food went untouched. No man could walk
without staggering. At last we took to the boats. Two thousand miles
from the Marquesas. We lit a fuse, and pushed off. Half a mile away
the _Mongol_ blew up.
"We suffered. _Mon dieu_, how we suffered in those boats! But the
gas was gone. We struck Vait-hua on the island of Tahuata. It was
heaven. Rivers and trees and women. Women! _Sacré!_ How I loved them!
"I came to Taha-Uka with Mathieu Scallamera. We worked for Captain
Hart in the cotton, driving the Chinese and natives. Bill Pincher
was a boy, and he worked there, too. In the moonlight on the beach
there were dances. The women danced naked on the beaches in the
moonlight. And there was rum. Mohuto danced. Ah, she was beautiful,
beautiful! She was a devil.
"Scallamera and I built a house, and put on the door a lock of wood.
It was a big lock, but it had no key. The natives stole everything.
We could keep nothing. Scallamera was angry. One day he hid in the
house while I went to work. When a hand was thrust through the
opening to undo the lock, Scallamera took his brush knife and cut it
off. He threw it through the hole and said, 'That will steal no more.'"
The hermit laughed, a laugh like the snarl of a toothless old tiger.
"That was a joke. Scallamera laughed. By gar! But that without a
hand lived long. He gave back all that he had taken. He smiled at
Scallamera, and laughed, too. He worked without pay for Scallamera.
He became a friend to the man who had cut off his hand. A year went
by and two years and three and that man gave Scallamera a piece of
land by Vai-ae. He helped Scallamera to build a house upon it.
"Land from hell it was, land cursed seven times. Did not Scallamera
become a leper and die of it horribly? And all his twelve children
by that Henriette? It was the ground. It had been leprous since the
Chinese came. Oh, it was a fine return for the cut-off hand!"
Gasping and choking, the ghastly creature paused for breath, and in
the shuddering silence the banana-leaves ceaselessly dripped, and
the hum of innumerable mosquito-wings was sharp and thin.
"I did not become a leper. I was young and strong. I was never sick.
I worked all day, and at night I was with the women. Ah, the
beautiful, beautiful women! With souls of fiends from hell. Mohuto
is not dead yet. She lives too long. She lives and sits on the path
below, and watches. She should be killed, but I have no strength.
"I was young and strong, and loved too many women. How could I know
the devil behind her eyes when she came wooing me again? I had left
her. She was with child, and ugly. I loved beautiful women. But she
was beautiful again when the child was dead. I was with another.
What was her name? I have forgotten her name. Is there no more rum?
I remember when I have rum.
"So I went again to Mohuto. The devil from hell! There was poison in
her embraces. Why does she not die? She knew too much. She was too
wise. It was I who died. No, I did not die. I became old before my
time, but I am living yet. The Catholic mission gave me this land. I
planted bananas. I have never been away. How long ago? _Je ne sais
pas._ Twenty years? Forty? I do not see any one. But I know that
Mohuto sits on the path below and waits. I will live long yet."
He was like a two-days' old corpse. He rose to his feet, staggered,
and lay down on the heap of soggy leaves. The mosquitos circled in
swarms above him. They were devouring us, but the hermit they never
lighted on. Le Vergose and I fled from the hut and the grove.
"He is an example like those in Balzac or the religious books," said
the Breton, crossing himself. "I have been here many years, and
never before did I come here, and again. _Jamais de la vie!_ I must
begin to go to church again."
We said nothing more as we slid and slipped downward on the wet trail,
but when we came again to the straw hut hidden in the trees Mohuto
was still on the _paepae_, watching us, and I paused to speak to her.
"You knew Hemeury Francois when he was young?"
She put her hand over her eyes, and spat.
"He was my first lover. I had a child by him. He was handsome once."
Her eyes, full of malevolence, turned to the dark grove. "He dies
very slowly."
The memory of her face was with me when at midnight I went alone to
my valley. On my pillows I heard again the cracked voice of the
hermit, and saw the blue-white skin upon his shaking bones. He could
not believe in Po, the Marquesan god of Darkness, or in the _Veinehae_,
the Ghost-Woman who watches the dying; nor did I believe in them or
in Satan, but about me in my Golden Bed until midnight was long past
the spirits that hate the light moaned and creaked the hut.