The first cool breaths of the land breeze, chilled by its passage
through the dew-laden forest, touched our cheeks softly that night as
we sat on the traders' verandah, facing the white, shimmering beach,
smoking and watching the native children at play, and listening for the
first deep boom of the wooden _logo_ or bell that would send them racing
homewards to their parents and evening prayer.
*****
“There it is,” said our host, who sat in the farthest corner, with his
long legs resting by the heels on the white railing; “and now you'll see
them scatter.”
The loud cries and shrill laughter came to a sudden stop as the boom of
the _logo_ reached the players, and then a clear boyish voice reached
us--“_Ua ta le logo_” (the bell has sounded). Like smoke before the gale
the lithe, half-naked figures fled silently in twos and threes between
the cocoanuts, and the beach lay deserted.
*****
One by one the lights gleamed brightly through the trees as the women
piled the fires in each house with broken cocoanut shells. There was but
the faintest breath of wind, and through the open sides of most of the
houses not enough to flicker the steady light, as the head of the family
seated himself (or herself) close to the fire, and, hymn-book in hand,
led off the singing. Quite near us was a more pretentious-looking
structure than the others, and looking down upon it we saw that the
gravelled floor was covered with fine, clean mats, and arranged all
round the sides of the house were a number of camphorwood boxes,
always--in a Samoan house--the outward and visible sign of a well-to-do
man. There was no fire lighted here; placed in the centre of the one
room there stood a lamp with a gorgeous-looking shade, of many colours.
This was the chief's house, and the chief of Aleipata was one of the
strong men of Samoa--both politically and physically. Two of our party
on the verandah were strangers to Samoa, and they drew their chairs
nearer, and gazed with interest at the chief and his immediate following
as they proceeded with their simple service. There were quite a number
of the _aua-luma_ (unmarried women) of the village present in the
chief's house that evening, and as their tuneful voices blend in an
evening hymn--
“_Matou te nau e faafetai_”--we wished that instead of four verses there
had been ten.
“Can you tell us, Lester,” said one of the strangers to our host, “the
meaning of the last words?--they came out so clearly that I believe I've
caught them,” and to our surprise he sang the last line--
Ia matou moe tau ia te oe.
*****
“Well, now, I don't know if I can. Samoan hymns puzzle me; you see the
language used in addressing the Deity is vastly different to that used
ordinarily, but I take it that the words you so correctly repeated mean,
'Let us sleep in peace with Thee.' Curious people these Samoans,” he
muttered, more to himself than for us: “soon be as hypocritical as the
average white man. 'Let us sleep in peace with Thee,' and that fellow
(the chief), his two brothers, and about a paddockful of young Samoan
bucks haven't slept at all for this two weeks. All the night is spent in
counting cartridges, melting lead for bullets, and cleaning their arms,
only knocking off for a drink of kava. Well, I suppose,” he continued,
turning to us, “they're all itching to fight, and as soon as the U.S.S.
_Resacca_ leaves Apia they'll commence in earnest, and us poor devils of
traders will be left here doing nothing and cursing this infernal love
of fighting, which is inborn with Samoans and a part of their natural
cussedness which, if the Creator hadn't given it to them, would have put
many a dollar into my pocket.”
*****
“Father,” said a voice that came up to us from the gloom of the young
cocoanuts' foliage at the side of the house, “Felipe is here, and
wants to know if he may come up and speak to the _alii papalagi_ (white
gentlemen).”
“Right you are, Felipe, my lad,” said the trader in a more than usual
kindly voice, “bring him up, Atalina, and then run away to the chief's
and get some of the _aua-luma_ to come over, with you and make a bowl of
kava.”
“Now, Doctor L------,” Lester continued, addressing himself to one of
his guests, the surgeon of an American war vessel then stationed in
Samoa, and a fellow-countryman of his, “I'll show you as fine a specimen
of manhood and intelligence as God ever made, although he has got a
tanned hide.”
*****
The native that ascended the steps and stood before us with his hat in
his hand respectfully saluting, was indeed, as Lester called him,
“a fine specimen.” Clothed only in a blue and white _lava lava_ or
waist-cloth, his clean-cut limbs, muscular figure, and skin like
polished bronze, stood revealed in the full light that now flooded room
and verandah from the lamp lit in the sitting-room. The finely-plaited
Manhiki hat held in his right hand seemed somewhat out of place with the
rest of his attire, and was evidently not much worn. Probably Felipe had
merely brought it for the occasion, as a symbol to us of his superior
tastes and ideas.
He shook hands with us all round, and then, at Lester's invitation,
followed us inside, and sat down cross-legged on the mats and
courteously awaited us to talk to him. The American surgeon offered him
a cigar, which he politely declined, and produced from the folds of
his _lava lava_ a bundle of banana-leaf cigarettes, filled with strong
tobacco. One of these, at a nod from the trader, he lit, and commenced
to smoke.
*****
In a few minutes we heard the crunching of the gravelled path under bare
feet, and then some three or four of the _aua-luma_--the kava-chewing
girls--ascended the steps and took up their position by the huge wooden
kava bowl. As the girls, under the careful supervision of the trader's
wife, prepared the drink, we fell into a general conversation.
“I wonder now,” said the doctor to the trader, “that you, Lester, who,
by your own showing, are by no means infatuated with the dreamy monotony
of island life, can yet stay here, year after year, seeing nothing and
hearing nothing of the world that lies outside these lonely islands.
Have you no desire at all to go back again into the world?”
A faint movement--the index of some rapidly passing emotion--for a
moment disturbed the calm, placid features of Lester, as he answered
quietly: “No, doctor, I don't think it's likely I'll ever see the
outside world, as you call it, again. I've had my hopes and ambitions,
like every one else; but they didn't pan out as I expected,... and then
I became Lester the Trader, and as Lester the Trader I'll die, have
a whitey-brown crowd at my funeral; and, if you came here ten years
afterwards, the people couldn't even tell you where I was planted.”
The doctor nodded. “Just so. Like all native races, their affections and
emotions are deep but transient--no better in that way than the average
American nigger.”
The kava was finished now, and was handed round to us by the slender
graceful hands of the trader's little daughter. As Felipe, the last to
drink, handed back the _ipu_ to the girl, his eyes lit up, and he spoke
to our host, addressing him, native fashion, by his Christian name, and
speaking in his own tongue.
“How is it, Tiaki (Jack), that I hear thee tell these thy friends that
we of the brown skins have but shallow hearts and forget quickly? Dost
think that if, when thy time comes, and thou goest, that thy wife and
child will not grieve? Hast thou not heard of our white man who, when he
died, yet left his name upon our hearts?--and yet we were in those days
heathens and followers of our own gods.”
The trader nodded kindly, and turned to us. “Do you want to hear a
yarn about one of the old style of white men that used to live like
fighting-cocks in Samoa? Felipe here has rounded on me for saying that
his countrymen soon forget, and has brought up this wandering _papalagi
tafea_ (beachcomber) as an instance of how the natives will stick to a
man once he proves himself a man.”