Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (1089 page)

“We were presently at anchor in a singular berth, boxed all about; our late entrance, our future exit not to be discovered; in front the lagoon, where I counted the next day upwards of thirty horses’ heads in easy view; behind, the groves of the isle and the crowded houses of the village. Many boats lay there at moorings: in the verandah, folk were congregated gazing at the ship; children were swimming from the shore to board us; and from the lagoon, before a gallant breeze, other boats came skimming homeward. The boats were gay with white sails and bright paint; the men were clad in red and blue, they were garlanded with green leaves or gay with kerchiefs; and the busy, many-coloured scene was framed in the verdure of the palms and the opal of the shallow sea. “It was a pretty picture, and its prettiest element, the coming of the children. Every here and there we saw a covey of black heads upon the water. . . . Soon they trooped up the side-ladder, a healthy, comely company of kilted children; and had soon taken post upon the after-hatch, where they sat in a double row, singing with solemn energy.”

But on the whole Stevenson did not benefit greatly by the voyage. He now turned to the “ letters “ upon his experiences for the American syndicate; from the first they failed to satisfy him, although he regarded them, even in their final form, as only the rough material for the book. The heat of the steamer, driven before the wind, was often intolerable; he had another hemorrhage, and remained languid and unfit for work. On the return journey the Janet turned off to New Caledonia, and thence went direct to Sydney. Stevenson, however, landed at Noumea, where he spent a few days by himself, observing the French convict settlement, and learning something of the methods of dealing with natives. It was the only time he was ever among Melanesian tribes, although occasionally he met with isolated individuals, especially in Samoa, where they are frequently imported as labourers for the German firm.

He followed his wife and stepson to Sydney, whence Mr. Osbourne left for England, finally to arrange their affairs, and bring out the furniture from Skerryvore for the “yet unbuilt house on the mountain.”

All idea of this journey had been given up by Stevenson himself in the course of the past voyage, and indeed, having reached Sydney, he was confined to his room in the Union Club, and left it only to return to Samoa. From this time forth, although he formed various projects, never realised, of seeing his friends, and especially Mr. Colvin, in Egypt, Honolulu, or Ceylon, he never, so far as I know, again looked forward to setting foot upon his native shores.

With his wife he left for Apia, and on their arrival they camped in gipsy fashion in the four-roomed wooden house which was all, except a trellised arbour, that had yet been erected on the property. Here for the next six months they lived alone with one servant, until the ground was further cleared and the permanent house built.

Into the details of Stevenson’s life at this time there is no need to go; it was a period of transition, and it is sufficiently described in the Vailima Letters. Most of his material difficulties were crowded into it; but even from them he derived a great deal of enjoyment. There were daily working on the land a number of labourers, partly Samoans, partly natives of other groups, superintended for most of the time by a Samoan who figures largely in the first part of the letters to Mr. Colvin. After a while, as soon as the lie of the ground could be more clearly seen, the site of the new house was selected on a plateau a couple of hundred yards higher up the hill, and the building itself was begun by white carpenters.

This was the only time their food-supply ever ran at all short; but after their experiences in schooners and on low islands, they found little to complain of, as they felt that if it ever came to the worst, two miles off there was always an open restaurant. Their one ser- 11  113

vant was a German ex-steward, a feckless, kindly creature, who seemed born with two left hands, but was always ready to do his best. But the less competent the servant, the more numerous and miscellaneous were the odd jobs which devolved upon his master and mistress.

Thus in the meantime Stevenson’s own work went on under great disadvantages. Much of his effort was expended upon the South Sea Letters; but this was the time when he saw most of the virgin forest, and his solitary expeditions and the hours spent in weeding at the edge of the “bush” were, as we shall see, not without effect upon his writing.

In January, 1891, he left his wife in sole charge and went to Sydney to meet his mother, who was to arrive there from Scotland on her way to Samoa. The shaft of the LUbeck broke when she was near Fiji, at the worst of seasons and in the most dangerous of waters; but it was patched up with great skill, and, under sail and to the astonishment of the whole port, she arrived at her destination only four days late. Stevenson as usual “fell sharply sick in Sydney,” but was able to go on board the Lilbech again and convoy his mother to her new home. The house, after all, was not ready to receive her, and, having taken her first brief glimpse of Samoa, she returned to the Colonies for another couple of months.

Stevenson then accompanied Mr. Harold Sewall, the American Consul-General, upon a visit to Tutuila, the easternmost island of the group, now added to the territory of the United States.

Here they spent three weeks, partly by the shores of 114

the great harbour of Pagopago, partly on an attempt to reach the islands of Manu’a in a small schooner, and partly in circumnavigating Tutuila by easy stages in a whale-boat. The expedition was rather at the mercy of its interpreter; but the island was new to them, and they all greatly enjoyed their experiences. It was the best view Stevenson ever had of the more remote Sa- moans in their own homes, and the scenery and the life attracted him more than ever. Fortunately he kept a diary, from which I have taken a few characteristic passages: —

“Pagopago “ The island at its highest point is nearly severed in two by the long-elbowed harbour, about half a mile in width, cased everywhere in abrupt mountain-sides. The tongue of water sleeps in perfect quiet, and laps around its continent with the flapping wavelets of a lake. The wind passes overhead; day and night overhead the scroll of trade-wind clouds is unrolled across the sky, now in vast sculptured masses, now in a thin drift of debris, singular shapes of things, protracted and deformed beasts and trees and heads and torsos of old marbles, changing, fainting, and vanishing even as they flee. Below, meanwhile, the harbour lies unshaken and laps idly on its margin; its colour is green like a forest pool, bright in the shallows, dark in the midst with the reflected sides of woody mountains. At times a flicker of silver breaks the uniformity, miniature whitecaps flashing and disappearing on the sombre ground; to see it, you might think the wind was treading on and toeing the flat water, but not so — the harbour lies unshaken, and the flickering is that of fishes.

“Right in the wind’s eye, and right athwart the dawn, a conspicuous mountain stands, designed like an old fort or castle, with naked cliffy sides and a green head. In the peep of the day the mass is outlined dimly; as the east fires, the sharpness of the silhouette grows definite, and through all the chinks of the high wood the red looks through, like coals through a grate. From the other end of the harbour, and at the extreme of the bay, when the sun is down and night beginning, and colours and shapes at the sea-level are already confounded in the greyness of the dusk, the same peak retains for some time a tinge of phantom rose.

“Last night I was awakened before midnight by the ship-rats which infest the shores and invade the houses, incredible for numbers and boldness. 1 went to the water’s edge; the moon was at the zenith; vast fleecy clouds were travelling overhead, their borders frayed and extended as usual in fantastic arms and promontories. The level of their flight is not really high, it only seems so; the trade-wind, although so strong in current, is but a shallow stream, and it is common to see, beyond and above its carry, other clouds faring on other and higher winds. As I looked, the skirt of a cloud touched upon the summit of Pioa, and seemed to hang and gather there, and darken as it hung. I knew the climate, fled to shelter, and was scarce laid down again upon the mat before the squall burst. In its decline, I heard the sound of a great bell rung at a distance; I did not think there had been a bell upon the island. I thought the hour a strange one for the ring- ing, but I had no doubt it was being rung on the other side at the Catholic Mission, and lay there listening and thinking, and trying to remember which of the bells of Edinburgh sounded the same note. It stopped almost with the squall. Half an hour afterwards, another shower struck upon the house and spurted awhile from the gutters of the corrugated roof; and again with its decline the bell began to sound, and from the same distance. Then I laughed at myself, and this bell resolved into an eavesdrop falling on a tin close by my head. All night long the flaws continued at brief intervals. Morning came, and showed mists on all the mountain- tops, a grey and yellow dawn, a fresh accumulation of rain imminent on the summit of Pioa, and the whole harbour scene stripped of its tropic colouring and wearing the appearance of a Scottish loch.

“And not long after, as I was writing on this page, sure enough, from the far shore a bell began indeed to ring. It has but just ceased, boats have been passing the harbour in the showers, the congregation is within now, and the mass begun. How very different stories are told by that drum of tempered iron! To the natives a new, strange, outlandish thing: to us of Europe, redolent of home; in the ear of the priests, calling up memories of French and Flemish cities, and perhaps some carved cathedral and the pomp of celebrations; in mine, talking of the grey metropolis of the north, of a village on a stream, of vanished faces and silent tongues.

“The Bay of Oa “ We sailed a little before high-water, and came skirting for some while along a coast of classical landscapes, cliffy promontories, long sandy coves divided by semi- independent islets, and the far-withdrawing sides of the mountain, rich with every shape and shade of verdure. Nothing lacked but temples and galleys; and our own long whale-boat sped (to the sound of song) by eight nude oarsmen figured a piece of antiquity better than perhaps we thought. No road leads along this coast; we scarce saw a house; these delectable islets lay quite desert, inviting seizure, and there was none like Keats’s Endymion1 to hear our snowlight cadences. On a sudden we began to open the bay of Oa. At the first sight my mind was made up — the bay of Oa was the place for me. We could not enter it, we were assured; and being entered we could not land; both statements plainly fictive; both easily resolved into the fact that there was no guest-house, and no girls to make the kava for our boatmen and admire their singing. A little gentle insistence produced a smiling acquiescence, and the eight oars began to urge us slowly into a bay of the /Eneid. Right overhead a conical hill arises; its top is all sheer cliff of a rosy yellow, stained with orange and purple, bristled and ivied with individual climbing trees; lower down the woods are massed; lower again the rock crops out in a steep buttress, which divides the arc of beach. The boat was eased in, we landed and turned this way and that like fools in a perplexity of pleasures; now some way into the wood toward the spire, but the woods had soon strangled the path — in the Samoan phrase, the way was dead — and we began to flounder in impenetrable bush, still far from the foot of the ascent, although already i Book II. 1. 8o. n8

the greater trees began to throw out arms dripping with lianas, and to accept us in the margin of their shadows. Now along the beach; it was grown upon with crooked, thick-leaved trees down to the water’s edge. Immediately behind there had once been a clearing; it was all choked with the mummy-apple, which in this country springs up at once at the heels of the axeman, and among this were intermingled the coco-palm and the banana. Our landing and the bay itself had nearly turned my head. ‘ Here are the works of all the poets passim,’ I said, and just then my companion stopped. ‘Behold an omen,’ said he, and pointed. It was a sight I had heard of before in the islands, but not seen: a little tree such as grows sometimes on infinitesimal islets on the reef, almost stripped of its leaves, and covered instead with feasting butterflies. These, as we drew near, arose and hovered in a cloud of lilac and silver-grey1. . . .

“All night the crickets sang with a clear trill of silver; all night the sea filled the hollow of the bay with varying utterance; now sounding continuous like a mill-weir, now (perhaps from further off) with swells and silences. I went wandering on the beach, when the tide was low. I went round the tree before our boys had stirred. It was the first clear grey of the morning; and I could see them lie, each in his place, enmeshed from head to foot in his unfolded kilt. The Highlander with his belted plaid, the Samoan with his Iavalava, each sleep in their one vesture unfolded. One 1 “ Later on I found the scene repeated in another place; but here the butterflies were of a different species, glossy brown and black, with arabesques of white.”

boy who slept in the open under the trees had made his pillow of a smouldering brand, doubtless for the convenience of a midnight cigarette; all night the flame had crept nearer, and as he lay there, wrapped like an oriental woman, and still plunged in sleep, the redness was within two handbreadths of his frizzled hair.

“I had scarce bathed, had scarce begun to enjoy the fineness and the precious colours of the morning, the golden glow along the edge of the high eastern woods, the clear light on the sugar-loaf of Maugalai, ‘.tie woven blue and emerald of the cone, the chuckle of morning bird-song that filled the valley of the woods, when upon a sudden a draught of wind came from the leeward and the highlands of the isle, rain rattled on the tossing woods; the pride of the morning had come early, and from an unlooked-for side. I fled for refuge in the shed; but such of our boys as were awake stirred not in the least; they sat where they were, perched among the scattered boxes of our camp, and puffed at their stubborn cigarettes, and crouched a little in the slanting shower. So good a thing it is to wear few clothes. I, who was largely unclad — a pair of serge trousers, a singlet, woollen socks, and canvas shoes; think of it — envied them in their light array.