Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (1127 page)

On September 8 they ran into the lagoon of Fakarava, a typical low island forming a great ring some eighty miles in circumference by only a couple of hundred yards in width, and lying not more than twenty feet above the sea. Their experiences during a fortnight’s stay on this bird’s roost in the Pacific are thus described by Mrs. Stevenson:

“Leaving the yacht Casco in the lagoon, we hired a cottage on the beach where we lived for several weeks. Fakarava is an atoll of the usual horseshoe shape, so narrow that one can walk across it in ten minutes, but of great circumference; it lay so little above the sea level that one had a sense of insecurity, justified by the terrible disasters following the last hurricane in the group. Not far from where we lived the waves had recently swept over the narrow strip of coral during a storm. Our life passed in a gentle monotony of peace. At sunrise we walked from our front door into the warm, shallow waters of the lagoon for our bath; we cooked our breakfast on the remains of an old American cooking stove I discovered on the beach, and spent the rest of the morning sorting over the shells we had found the previous day. After lunch and a siesta we crossed the island to the windward side and gathered more shells. Sometimes we would find the strangest fish stranded in pools between the rocks by the outgoing tide, many of them curiously shaped and brilliantly coloured. Some of the most gorgeous were poisonous to eat, and capable of inflicting very unpleasant wounds with their fins. The captain suffered for a long time with a sort of paralysis in a finger he had scratched when handling a fish with a beak like a parrot....

“The close of the placid day marked the beginning of the most agreeable part of the twenty-four hours; it was the time of the moon, and the shadows that fell from the cocoanut leaves were so sharply defined that one involuntarily stepped over them. After a simple dinner and a dip in the soft sea, we awaited our invariable visitor, M. Donat Rimareau, the half-caste vice-president. As it was not the season for pearl fishing, there were no white men on the island, though now and again a schooner with a French captain would appear and disappear like a phantom ship. The days were almost intolerably hot, but with the setting of the sun a gentle breeze sprang up. We spent the evenings in the moonlight, sitting on mattresses spread on the veranda, our only chair being reserved for our guest. The conversation with M. Rimareau, who was half Tahitian, was delightful. Night after night we sat entranced at his feet, thrilled by stories of Tahiti and the Paumotus, always of a supernatural character. There was a strange sect in Fakarava called the ‘Whistlers,’ resembling the spiritualists of our country, but greater adepts. When M. Rimareau spoke of these people and their superstitions his voice sank almost to a whisper, and he cast fearful glances over his shoulder at the black shadows of the palms. I remember one of the stories was of the return of the soul of a dead child, the soul being wrapped in a leaf and dropped in at the door of the sorrowing parents. I am sure that when my husband came to write The Isle of Voices he had our evenings in Fakarava and the stories of M. Rimareau in mind. I know that I never read The Isle of Voices without a mental picture rising before me of the lagoon and the cocoa palms and the wonderful moonlight of Fakarava.”

It was the Fakaravans who gave the name of Pahi Muni, the shining or silver ship, to the Casco.

Here the two ladies of the Stevenson party took lessons from the niece of a chief in plaiting hats of bamboo shavings and pandanus, and Mrs. Louis learned how to make them beautifully. This hat-making is the constant “fancy-work” of all Tahitian women, and serves in lieu of the tatting and embroidery of civilized lands. The best hats are made of the stalks of the arrowroot plant.

In the last week of September, bidding a regretful farewell to M. Rimareau and his delightful moonlight talks, they set sail for Papeete, the capital and port of entry of the Society Group — most beautiful of all the islands of the Pacific. But, though they were entranced with the grandeur and charm of its scenery — its towering cliffs, leaping cascades, and green, palm-fringed flat land of the coast — Papeete did not treat them well, and their old enemy, which had forgotten them for some happy months, again found them out there and Louis had a severe relapse, with a return of the hemorrhages. It was clear that Papeete did not agree with him, and it was decided to remove him to a more suitable place. After a perilous trip around the island in the Casco, during which the ship was twice nearly lost on the reefs, they reached Taravao, but found it hot and full of mosquitoes. Mr. Stevenson was now very ill, and it was imperatively necessary, not only to find a more salubrious spot, but also some means of transporting him to it. His wife, equal to the occasion, as always, set out on foot across the island, following a trail until she reached the shanty of a Chinese who had 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 their servant, to reach his destination before he collapsed altogether.”

They found a house and made him as comfortable as possible. It was not long before Princess Moë, ex-queen of Raiatea, and a most charming person, heard of their arrival and came to see them. “I feel,” writes Mrs. Stevenson, “that she saved Louis’s life. He was lying in a deep stupor when she first saw him, suffering from congestion of the lungs and a burning fever. She made him a dish of raw fish salad, the first thing he had eaten for days; he liked it and began to pick up from that day. 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.” There they lived as “in fairyland, the guests of a beautiful brown princess.”

When the Casco had been brought around to Tautira it was discovered in a peculiar way that their danger in the recent trip from Papeete had been greater than they had realised. The elder Mrs. Stevenson gave a feast on board to a number of native women, and during its progress one of the women offered a prayer for their deliverance from the perils of the sea, praying especially that if anything were wrong with the ship it might be discovered in time. The elder Mrs. Stevenson had tried in vain to persuade Captain Otis to go to church at the places where they stopped. This time the church came to him and he couldn’t escape, but stood leaning disgustedly against the mast while the prayer was said. After the visitors left he made some impatient exclamation against “psalm-singing natives,” and struck the mast a hard blow with his fist. It went through into decayed wood, and the captain was aghast. Mrs. Stevenson, on her part, was triumphant, and she always loved to tell that story and dwell on the expression of the scoffing captain’s face as he saw a prayer answered. Both masts were found to be almost entirely eaten out with dry-rot, and if either had gone by the board off the reefs of any of the islands nothing could have saved the Casco from going to the bottom. The ship was at once sent to Papeete for repairs, but as it was impossible to obtain new masts of a proper size there, they were obliged to be content with patching up the old ones. This let the party in for a long stay at Tautira, at which none repined, for the scenery and climate were delightful, and their new friends hospitable and interesting.

Following island custom, Mrs. Louis Stevenson and the Princess Moë exchanged names — each taking the name of the other’s mother — that of Mrs. Stevenson being Terii-Tauma-Terai, part of which meant heaven and part gave her a claim to some land in the neighbourhood.

Chief Ori a Ori (Ori of Ori, a clan name) was a magnificent figure of a man, standing six feet three and broad and strong in proportion. “He looked like nothing so much as a Roman emperor in bronze,” says Mrs. Stevenson, and when he appeared at a feast with a wreath of golden yellow leaves on his head, all the company cried out in admiration. As he spoke very good French, communication with him was easy, and many a pleasant evening was spent in his house at Tautira, exchanging strange tales of old, wild, bloody days in the Scottish Highlands and in the Southern Seas. Both the Stevensons conceived a warm friendship for Ori, which endured as long as they lived.

As they used to do in Barbizon, in the old French days, Mrs. Louis Stevenson set herself to making silhouettes of the different members of the strangely assorted company, gathered from the four quarters of the globe. First she did the portrait of Ori by throwing the shadow of his head on the wall with the help of a lamp, then drawing the outline and filling it in with India ink. It turned out so good that Ori demanded likenesses of all the rest, and soon the house was turned into a veritable picture-gallery.

A feast was given by the chief for the captain of the Casco, and, says the elder Mrs. Stevenson, “Ori had such respect for Fanny’s cooking powers that he insisted she should prepare the feast; so she stuffed and cooked a pair of fowls, two roast pigs, and made a pudding.”

These days of pleasant intimacy with the Stevensons were doubtless the brightest in the whole life of the island chief, and he kept them always in affectionate remembrance. Years afterwards, when Mrs. Stevenson was living in San Francisco after the death of her husband, two of her friends, Doctor and Mrs. Russell Cool, went to Tahiti, and were commissioned by her to visit Chief Ori a Ori. The Cools took with them a phonograph and themselves made records of a speech by Ori to Mrs. Stevenson, which, with its translation, was afterwards reproduced for her in San Francisco. But let us hear Mrs. Cool’s own story of this visit:

“Ori had never seen a phonograph in his life, but his interest was that of a clever and civilized person — with none of the ignorance and terror and superstition of a savage. He was more than interested in everything relating to Louis and Tamaitai, asking all sorts of questions, intelligent ones, too, about their life in Samoa; then in San Francisco; about Tamaitai’s personal appearance — if her hair was gray; whether she had a town house and country house, and whether they were near the ocean and the mountains. He had a perfect picture when we had answered them all, and he was so pleased and grateful to us — bearers of interesting news. All this time we sat out on the veranda of his cottage, on a moonlight night almost too heavenly to be real — a tropical night filled with beauty and romance. Then there was a lull in the conversation, and Ori said: ‘And now tell me about John L. Sullivan!’ We fell down from romantic heights with a thud! Then we reflected that as Louis was the greatest man intellectually that Ori had ever met, so John L. Sullivan, the famous fighter, was the greatest man in that line of his time. The islanders, in common with other primitive peoples, admire physical perfection tremendously, and feats of strength are celebrated in fable, song, and story. To Ori there was nothing incongruous in placing John L. Sullivan, the famous prizefighter, and Robert Louis Stevenson, the noted writer — two great men — side by side.

“We stayed all night out at Ori’s place, and as a mark of honor my husband was given Louis’s bed and I was given Tamaitai’s. Ori’s wife, a little dear, kissed our hands all round because we came from Tamaitai. Their love and admiration for her was so sincere and touching — it is the sweetest memory I have of Tahiti. We went to see Ori especially for Tamaitai, for she wished to know the condition of his eyes, and whether he needed glasses. His eyes were all right then, but later on developed some trouble, but he was so very old at that time that he was not willing to make the trip around the island for examination.”

In 1906 the Society Islands were devastated by a terrific hurricane, and, hearing that Ori had suffered great loss, Mrs. Stevenson sent him a sum of money to help tide him over the crisis. He was very grateful for this assistance and wrote her a letter of heartfelt thanks, saying the money would be used to build a new house for himself and family to take the place of the houses that had been swept away.

Two dream-like months were spent on this lovely island of Tautira, while day after day, like shipwrecked mariners, they scanned the sea in vain for some signs of the long-delayed Casco. At last provisions fell so low that there seemed no prospect ahead of them but to live on the charity of their kind friend Ori. Thinking of this one day Mrs. Stevenson could not restrain her tears, and the chief, divining the cause of her distress, said to Louis: “You are my brother; all that I have is yours. I know that your food is done, but I can give you plenty of fish and taro. We like you and wish to have you here. Stay where you are till the Casco comes. Be happy — et ne pleurez pas!” They were deeply moved by this generous offer from a man to whose island they had come as utter strangers, and to celebrate the occasion Louis opened a bottle of champagne, which, curiously enough, was all that was left in their provision-chest. From this time they lived almost entirely on native food — raw fish with sauce made of cocoanut milk mixed with sea-water and lime-juice, bananas roasted in a little pit in the ground, with cocoanut cream to eat with them, etc. All this sounds luxurious, but after some time on this diet the white man begins to feel a consuming longing for beefsteak and bread and coffee.

At last the repaired Casco hove in sight, and, after a heart-breaking farewell from their now beloved friend, Ori a Ori, and his family, they set sail for Honolulu. The voyage of thirty days was a wild and stormy one, and they were obliged to beat about the Hawaiian Islands for some days before they could enter, eating up the last of their food twenty-four hours before arrival, but finally the Silver Ship, flying like a bird before a spanking trade-wind, ran into port around the bold point of Diamond Head. The deep translucent blue of the water was broken by ruffles of dazzling foam where treacherous reefs lay hidden, and on the horizon lay piles of those fat feather-bed clouds that are never seen so intensely white in any other place. Their arrival was the cause of great rejoicing to Mrs. Stevenson’s daughter, who was then living in Honolulu, for the Casco, long overdue, had been given up as lost.