Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (1084 page)

In contrast to this melancholy vigil were Stevenson’s ecstasy of life and the joy with which he entered into gathering shells upon the shore. Charles Kingsley was not happier when landed at last upon the tropical beach he had been longing all his life to see.

“Ashore to the cove and hunted shells, accordingto my prevision; but the delight of it was a surprise. To stand in the silver margin of the sea, now dry-shod, now buried to the ankle in the thrilling coolness, now higher than the knee; to watch, as the reflux drew n   65

down, wonderful marvels of colour and design fleeting between my feet, to grasp at, to miss, to seize them; and now to find them what they promised, and now to catch only maya of coloured sand, pounded fragments, and pebbles, that, as soon as they were dry, became as dull and homely as the flint upon a garden path. I toiled about this childish pleasure in the strong sun for hours, sharply conscious of my incurable ignorance, and yet too much pleased to be ashamed. Presently I came round upon the shelves that line the bottom of the cliff; and there, in a pool where the last of the surf sometimes irrupted, making it bubble like a spring, I found my best, that is, my strangest, shell. It was large, as large as a woman’s head, rugged as rock, in colour variegated with green and orange; but alas, the ‘ poor inhabitant’ was at home. On the struggles of conscience that ensued I scorn to dwell; but my curiosity, after several journeys in my hand, returned finally to his rock home, of whose sides he greedily laid hold, and he gained a second term of the pleasures of existence.”

On August 22nd the Casco left Nukahiva, and arrived the following day at Taahauku in the island of Hiva-oa, a more remote and even more thinly populated island. Here they stayed twelve days, and here Stevenson and his family went through the ceremony of adoption into the family of Paa-aeua, the official chief of Atuona, while Mr. Osbourne “ made brothers “ also with the deposed hereditary chief, Moipu.

These observances meant anything or nothing, according to the desire of the initiated. 1 single them out for mention here because (apart from white men living among the Kanakas) they were offered to and accepted by those only who, like Bishop Dordillon, had a close intimacy and sympathy with the natives.

Here is the rough sketch of their last berth in the Marquesas: —

“24th August. — Taahauku is a very little anchorage, set between low points sparsely wooded with young palms, and opening above upon a woody valley. The next bay, Atuona, is set in a theatre of lofty mountains which dominate the more immediate setting of Taahauku and give the salient character of the scene. In the morning, when the sun falls directly on their front, they stand like a vast wall greened to the summit, watercourses here and there delineated on their face as narrow as cracks. But towards afternoon the light comes more obliquely, gorges yawn in undecipherable shadow, spurs and buttresses stand out, carved in sunlight; the whole range looks higher and more solemn, and wears a stern appearance of romance. It looks, and it very nearly is, impassable: shutting off the southwest corner of the island save by way of sea. A great part of the charm of Taahauku itself lies in the dominant contrast of that mountain barrier.

“The climate is that of the trade-winds; all night long, in fine weather, the same attenuated snowy clouds fleet over the moonlit heaven, or hang in mists upon the mountain, and day and night, save for the chill draughts of the land breeze, the same slightly varying and squally wind blows overhead. On one side of the anchorage the surf leaps white upon the rocks and keeps a certain blow-hole sounding and smoking like a cannon. The other side is smoother but still rocky; and the accepted landing-place is on the narrow beach at the shore end, where, after a race through the breaking waves, the seaman is landed in a somewhat damp condition. In front of him a little copra warehouse stands in the shadow of some trees, flitted about for ever by a clan of dwarfish swallows. A line of rails bends out of the mouth of the valley and comes to the bend of the beach; walking on which the newly arrived traveller presently becomes aware of a beautiful freshwater lagoon, with a boat-house, and behind that a grove of noble cocos.”

But the time had come to start for Tahiti by a course lying through the Paumotusor Dangerous Archipelago, a group of numerous low islands, unlighted save for one or two pier-head lamps, and most inadequately laid down upon the chart.

For this reason at Taiohae they had shipped a mate who knew those waters well. The much-travelled Japanese cook had been returned to his home, and his place taken by a genuine Chinaman. Ah Fu came to the Marquesas as a child and had grown up among the natives; he now followed the fortunes of his new masters with entire devotion for two years, until the claims of his family were asserted and took him home reluctantly to China.1

1 Mrs. Stevenson writes: “ In fact it broke his heart to go. Ah Fu had as strong a sense of romance as Louis himself. He returned to China with a belt of gold round his waist, a ninety-dollar breechloader given him by Louis, and a boxful of belongings. His intention was to leave these great riches with a member of the family who lived outside the village, dress himself in beggar’s rags, and go to his mother’s house to solicit alms. He would draw from her the account of the son who had been lost when he was a little child; at the psy- On September 4th the Casco sailed, and three days later, before sunset, the captain expected to sight the first of the Paumotus.

It was not, however, till sunrise on the following morning that they saw land, and then it was not the island they had expected to make; in place of having been driven to the west, they had been swept by a current some thirty miles in the opposite direction. The first atoll was “flat as a plate in the sea, and spiked with palms of disproportioned altitude.” The next, seen some hours later, was “ lost in blue sea and sky: a ring of white beach, green underwood, and tossing palms, gem-like in colour; of a fairy, of a heavenly prettiness. The surf was all round it, white as snow, and broke at one point, far to seaward, on what seems an uncharted reef.”

Night fell again, and found them amid a wilderness of reefs corresponding so little with the maps that the schooner must lie to and wait for the morning.

The next day they ran on to Fakarava, and entered chological moment, when the poor lady was weeping, Ah Fu would cry out: ‘ Behold your son returned to you, not a beggar, as I appear, but a man of wealth!’ Ah Fu’s last speech to me was very unlike what one expects from a Chinaman. As well as I can recollect, he said: ‘ You think I no solly go way? I too much solly. My mother she forget me. You heart my mother. You my mother, not that woman. When boss go way to Molokai, you look see me? I no smile, no smile, allee time, work littee, go see ship come — work Iittee, go look see. Boss come, I make big feast. You go way, I no go look see ship; I no can, I no see, too much cly allee time in my eyes. You come, I smile, smile, no can make feast; my heart too muchee glad, no can cook.’“

Then China reabsorbed him, and he v/as seen no more. the lagoon in safety. It was a typical low island, some eighty miles in circumference by a couple of hundred yards broad, chosen to be the headquarters of the government only on account of two excellent passages in the barrier reef, one of which was sure to be always available.

In one respect they were fortunate: “ We were scarce well headed for the pass before all heads were craned over the rail. For the water, shoaling under our board, became changed in a moment to surprising hues of blue and grey; and in its transparency the coral branched and blossomed, and the fish of the inland sea cruised visibly below us, stained and striped, and even beaked like parrots. ... I have since entered, I suppose, some dozen atolls in different parts of the Pacific, and the experience has never been repeated. That exquisite hue and transparency of submarine day, and these shoals of rainbow fish, have not enraptured me again.”1

A fortnight spent in Fakarava passed uneventfully away. There were few inhabitants left on the island, which was never very populous at any time. Stevenson lived ashore in a house among the palms, where he learned much of the natives and their customs and beliefs from the half-caste Vice-Resident, M. Donat.

The chief wealth of the group lay in the beds of pearl- shell, but of this there was nothing to be seen at Fakarava. “In the lagoon was little pearl-shell, and there were many sharks. . . . There was no fishing, and it seemed unfit to leave the archipelago of pearls and have no sight of that romantic industry. On all other sides were isles, if I could only reach them, where 1 In the South Seas, p. 167. divers were at work; but Captain Otis properly enough refused to approach them with the Casco, and my attempts to hire another vessel failed. The last was upon Francois’ cutter, where she lay down-up from her late shipwreck. She might be compared for safety to a New York cat-boat fortified with a bowsprit and a jib; and as I studied her lines and spars, desire to sail in her upon the high seas departed from my mind. ‘Je le pensais bien,’ said Francois.”

In the last week of September they left for Tahiti, and in two days were anchored safely at Papeete, the capital and port of entry of the Society group. Beautiful as all the high islands of the South Seas are, it is in Tahiti and its neighbours — the Otaheite of Captain Cook — that the extreme point of sublimity and luxuriance is reached. The vegetation is not less lovely, nor the streams and waterfalls less beautiful or less abundant than elsewhere, but the crags and pinnacles of the lofty mountains there are far more picturesque, and so abrupt that they are not smothered in the greenery which gives an appearance of tameness to other islands in the same latitudes.

Stevenson and his wife lived ashore in a small house, where he prepared his correspondence for the outgoing mail. He was very unwell; he went nowhere, saw no one of any interest, native or foreign, and soon grew tired of Papeete. A cold caught at Fakarava increased, with access of fever and an alarming cough. He mended a little, but Papeete was not a success, so after a time the Casco, with a pilot on board, took the party round to Taravao, on the south side of the island. On this passage they were twice nearly lost. The first day they had a long beat off the lee-shore of the island of Eimeo; and the following day were suddenly becalmed, and began to drift towards the barrier reef of Tahiti. “The reefs were close in,” wrote Stevenson,1 “with, my eye! what a surf! The pilot thought we were gone, and the captain had a boat cleared, when a lucky squall came to our rescue. My wife, hearing the order given about the boats, remarked to my mother, ‘Is n’t that nice? We shall soon be ashore!’ Thus does the female mind unconsciously skirt along the verge of eternity.” Their danger was undoubtedly great, greater far than they suspected.

The atmosphere at Taravao was close, and mosquitoes were numerous; by this time Stevenson was so ill that it was necessary, without a moment’s delay, to secure more healthy quarters. Accordingly his wife went ashore, and following a path, discovered the shanty of a Chinaman who owned a wagon and a pair of horses. These she hired to take them to Tautira, the nearest village of any size, a distance of sixteen miles over a road crossed by one-and-twenty streams. Stevenson was placed in the cart, and, sustained by small doses of coca, managed, with the help of his wife and Valentine, to reach his destination before he collapsed altogether. Being introduced at Tautira by the gendarme, they were asked an exorbitant rent for a suitable house, but they secured it, and there made the patient as comfortable as possible. The next day there arrived the Princess Moe, ex-Queen of Raiatea, one of the kindest and most charming of Tahitians, who lives in the pages of Pierre Loti and Miss Gordon Cumming. She had come to the village, and hearing there was a 1 Letters, ii. 137. white man very ill, she came over to the house. “ I feel that she saved Louis’ life,” writes Mrs. Stevenson. “He was lying in a deep stupor when she first saw him, suffering from congestion of the lungs and in a burning fever. As soon as he was well enough, she invited us to live with her in the house of Ori, the sub- chief of the village, and we gladly accepted her invitation.”

Meanwhile, at Taravao, it was discovered that the schooner’s jib-boom was sprung; it was duly spliced, and when Stevenson was really better, the Casco came round to Tautira. Here a more startling discovery was made, and the party learned what their true position had been two or three weeks before. The elder Mrs. Stevenson gave a feast on board to the women of Tautira, and one old lady offered up a prayer, asking that if anything were wrong with the masts it might be discovered in time. As soon as the guests were gone, the Yankee skipper, acting no doubt on the principle of keeping his powder dry, went aloft, and subjected the masts to a close examination. They were both almost eaten out with dry-rot. Had either of them gone by the board during the voyage in the Moorea channel, or off the reefs in any of the islands, nothing could have saved the Casco, even if her passengers and crew had escaped in one of the boats. It was now considered hardly safe for any one to remain on deck; but, with many reefs in her mainsail, the schooner was sent to Papeete, where the masts were patched up as far as was possible, no new spars of sufficient size being obtainable.

The intended visit to the neighbouring islands of 73

Huahine, Raiatea, and Borabora was abandoned, Stevenson and his party remaining at Tautira until the Casco should be ready to take them back to civilisation. His health again recovered, and he enjoyed the new conditions of life beyond words — scenery, climate, and company. Tautira was “ the most beautiful spot” and “its people the most amiable “ he had ever encountered. Except for the French gendarme and Pere Bruno, the priest, a Dutchman from Amsterdam who had forgotten his own language, the travellers had passed beyond the range of Europeans and lived in a Tahiti touched as little as might be by any foreign influence. They dwelt in one of the curious “bird-cage “ houses of the island, and were on the friendliest terms with all the village.

Their host, Ori, was a perpetual delight to them all. “A Life-guardsman in appearance,” as Mr. Osbourne describes him, “six foot three in bare feet; deep and broad in proportion; unconsciously English to an absurd extent; feared, respected, and loved.”