_Schooner_ ‘_Equator_,’ _Apaiang Lagoon_, _August_ 22_nd_, 1889.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—The missionary ship is outside the reef trying (vainly)
to get in; so I may have a chance to get a line off. I am glad to say I
shall be home by June next for the summer, or we shall know the reason
why. For God’s sake be well and jolly for the meeting. I shall be, I
believe, a different character from what you have seen this long while.
This cruise is up to now a huge success, being interesting, pleasant, and
profitable. The beachcomber is perhaps the most interesting character
here; the natives are very different, on the whole, from Polynesians:
they are moral, stand-offish (for good reasons), and protected by a dark
tongue. It is delightful to meet the few Hawaiians (mostly missionaries)
that are dotted about, with their Italian _brio_ and their ready
friendliness. The whites are a strange lot, many of them good, kind,
pleasant fellows; others quite the lowest I have ever seen even in the
slums of cities. I wish I had time to narrate to you the doings and
character of three white murderers (more or less proven) I have met.
One, the only undoubted assassin of the lot, quite gained my affection in
his big home out of a wreck, with his New Hebrides wife in her savage
turban of hair and yet a perfect lady, and his three adorable little
girls in Rob Roy Macgregor dresses, dancing to the hand organ, performing
circus on the floor with startling effects of nudity, and curling up
together on a mat to sleep, three sizes, three attitudes, three Rob Roy
dresses, and six little clenched fists: the murderer meanwhile brooding
and gloating over his chicks, till your whole heart went out to him; and
yet his crime on the face of it was dark: disembowelling, in his own
house, an old man of seventy, and him drunk.
It is lunch-time, I see, and I must close up with my warmest love to you.
I wish you were here to sit upon me when required. Ah! if you were but a
good sailor! I will never leave the sea, I think; it is only there that
a Briton lives: my poor grandfather, it is from him I inherit the taste,
I fancy, and he was round many islands in his day; but I, please God,
shall beat him at that before the recall is sounded. Would you be
surprised to learn that I contemplate becoming a shipowner? I do, but it
is a secret. Life is far better fun than people dream who fall asleep
among the chimney stacks and telegraph wires.
Love to Henry James and others near.—Ever yours, my dear fellow,