Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (503 page)

The clans of the island. “To war,” said they, “now set we an end,

And hie to the Námunu-úra even as a friend to a friend.”

So judged, and a day was named; and soon as the morning broke,

Canoes were thrust in the sea, and the houses emptied of folk.

Strong blew the wind of the south, the wind that gathers the clan;

Along all the line of the reef the clamorous surges ran;

And the clouds were piled on the top of the island mountain-high,

A mountain throned on a mountain. The fleet of canoes swept by

In the midst, on the green lagoon, with a crew released from care,

Sailing an even water, breathing a summer air,

Cheered by a cloudless sun; and ever to left and right,

Bursting surge on the reef, drenching storms on the height.

So the folk of Vaiau sailed and were glad all day,

Coasting the palm-tree cape and crossing the populous bay

By all the towns of the Tevas; and still as they bowled along,

Boat would answer to boat with jest and laughter and song,

And the people of all the towns trooped to the sides of the sea,

And gazed from under the hand or sprang aloft on the tree

Hailing and cheering. Time failed them for more to do;

The holiday village careened to the wind, and was gone from view

Swift as a passing bird; and ever as onward it bore,

Like the cry of the passing bird, bequeathed its song to the shore —

Desirable laughter of maids and the cry of delight of the child.

And the gazer, left behind, stared at the wake and smiled.

By all the towns of the Tevas they went, and Pápara last,

The home of the chief, the place of muster in war; and passed

The march of the lands of the clan, to the lands of an alien folk.

And there, from the dusk of the shoreside palms, a column of smoke

Mounted and wavered and died in the gold of the setting sun,

“Paea!” they cried. “It is Paea.” And so was the voyage done.

In the early fall of the night Hiopa came to the shore,

And beheld and counted the comers, and lo, they were forty score;

The pelting feet of the babes that ran already and played,

The clean-lipped smile of the boy, the slender breasts of the maid,

And mighty limbs of women, stalwart mothers of men.

The sires stood forth unabashed; but a little back from his ken

Clustered the scarcely nubile, the lads and maids, in a ring,

Fain of each other, afraid of themselves, aware of the king

And aping behaviour, but clinging together with hands and eyes,

With looks that were kind like kisses, and laughter tender as sighs.

There, too, the grandsire stood, raising his silver crest,

And the impotent hands of a suckling groped in his barren breast.

The childhood of love, the pair well married, the innocent brood,

The tale of the generations repeated and ever renewed —

Hiopa beheld them together, all the ages of man,

And a moment shook in his purpose.

But these were the foes of his clan,

And he trod upon pity, and came, and civilly greeted the king,

And gravely entreated Rahéro; and for all that could fight or sing,

And claimed a name in the land, had fitting phrases of praise:

But with all who were well-descended he spoke of the ancient days.

And “‘Tis true,” said he, “that in Paea the victual rots on the ground;

But, friends, your number is many; and pigs must be hunted and found,

And the lads must troop to the mountains to bring the féis down,

And around the bowls of the kava cluster the maids of the town.

So, for to-night, sleep here; but king, common, and priest

To-morrow, in order due, shall sit with me in the feast.”

Sleepless the live-long night, Hiopa’s followers toiled.

The pigs screamed and were slaughtered; the spars of the guest-house oiled,

The leaves spread on the floor. In many a mountain glen

The moon drew shadows of trees on the naked bodies of men

Plucking and bearing fruits; and in all the bounds of the town

Red glowed the cocoa-nut fires, and were buried and trodden down.

Thus did seven of the yottowas toil with their tale of the clan,

But the eighth wrought with his lads, hid from the sight of man.

In the deeps of the woods they laboured, piling the fuel high

In fagots, the load of a man, fuel seasoned and dry,

Thirsty to seize upon fire and apt to blurt into flame.

And now was the day of the feast. The forests, as morning came,

Tossed in the wind, and the peaks quaked in the blaze of the day —

And the cocoa-nuts showered on the ground, rebounding and rolling away:

A glorious morn for a feast, a famous wind for a fire.

To the hall of feasting Hiopa led them, mother and sire

And maid and babe in a tale, the whole of the holiday throng.

Smiling they came, garlanded green, not dreaming of wrong;

And for every three, a pig, tenderly cooked in the ground,

Waited; and féi, the staff of life, heaped in a mound

For each where he sat; — for each, bananas roasted and raw

Piled with a bountiful hand, as for horses hay and straw

Are stacked in a stable; and fish, the food of desire,

And plentiful vessels of sauce, and bread-fruit gilt in the fire; —

And kava was common as water. Feasts have there been ere now,

And many, but never a feast like that of the folk of Vaiau.

All day long they ate with the resolute greed of brutes,

And turned from the pigs to the fish, and again from the fish to the fruits,

And emptied the vessels of sauce, and drank of the kava deep;

Till the young lay stupid as stones, and the strongest nodded to sleep.

Sleep that was mighty as death and blind as a moonless night

Tethered them hand and foot; and their souls were drowned, and the light

Was cloaked from their eyes. Senseless together, the old and the young,

The fighter deadly to smite and the prater cunning of tongue,

The woman wedded and fruitful, inured to the pangs of birth,

And the maid that knew not of kisses, blindly sprawled on the earth.

From the hall Hiopa the king and his chiefs came stealthily forth.

Already the sun hung low and enlightened the peaks of the north;

But the wind was stubborn to die and blew as it blows at morn,

Showering the nuts in the dusk, and e’en as a banner is torn,

High on the peaks of the island, shattered the mountain cloud.

And now at once, at a signal, a silent, emulous crowd

Set hands to the work of death, hurrying to and fro,

Like ants, to furnish the fagots, building them broad and low,

And piling them high and higher around the walls of the hall.

Silence persisted within, for sleep lay heavy on all

But the mother of Támatéa stood at Hiopa’s side,

And shook for terror and joy like a girl that is a bride,

Night fell on the toilers, and first Hiopa the wise

Made the round of the hose, visiting all with his eyes;

And all was piled to the eaves, and fuel blockaded the door;

And within, in the house beleaguered, slumbered the forty score.

Then was an aito despatched and came with fire in his hand,

And Hiopa took it. — ”Within,” said he, “is the life of a land;

And behold! I breathe on the coal, I breathe on the dales of the east,

And silence falls on forest and shore; the voice of the feast

Is quenched, and the smoke of cooking; the roof-tree decays and falls

On the empty lodge, and the winds subvert deserted walls.”

Therewithal, to the fuel, he laid the glowing coal;

And the redness ran in the mass and burrowed within like a mole,

And copious smoke was conceived. But, as when a dam is to burst,

The water lips it and crosses in silver trickles at first,

And then, of a sudden, whelms and bears it away forthright;

So now, in a moment, the flame sprang and towered in the night,

And wrestled and roared in the wind, and high over house and tree,

Stood, like a streaming torch, enlightening land and sea.

But the mother of Támatéa threw her arms abroad,

“Pyre of my son,” she shouted, “debited vengeance of God,

Late, late, I behold you, yet I behold you at last,

And glory, beholding! For now are the days of my agony past,

The lust that famished my soul now eats and drinks its desire,

And they that encompassed my son shrivel alive in the fire.

Tenfold precious the vengeance that comes after lingering years!

Ye quenched the voice of my singer? — hark, in your dying ears,

The song of the conflagration! Ye left me a widow alone?

— Behold, the whole of your race consumes, sinew and bone

And torturing flesh together: man, mother, and maid

Heaped in a common shambles; and already, borne by the trade,

The smoke of your dissolution darkens the stars of night.”

Thus she spoke, and her stature grew in the people’s sight.

III

RAHÉRO

Rahéro was there in the hall asleep: beside him his wife,

Comely, a mirthful woman, one that delighted in life;

And a girl that was ripe for marriage, shy and sly as a mouse;

And a boy, a climber of trees: all the hopes of his house.

Unwary, with open hands, he slept in the midst of his folk,

And dreamed that he heard a voice crying without, and awoke,

Leaping blindly afoot like one from a dream that he fears.

A hellish glow and clouds were about him; — it roared in his ears

Like the sound of the cataract fall that plunges sudden and steep;

And Rahéro swayed as he stood, and his reason was still asleep.

Now the flame struck hard on the house, wind-wielded, a fracturing blow,

And the end of the roof was burst and fell on the sleepers below;

And the lofty hall, and the feast, and the prostrate bodies of folk,

Shone red in his eyes a moment, and then were swallowed of smoke.

In the mind of Rahéro clearness came; and he opened his throat;

And as when a squall comes sudden, the straining sail of a boat

Thunders aloud and bursts, so thundered the voice of the man.

— ”The wind and the rain!” he shouted, the mustering word of the clan,

And “Up!” and “To arms, men of Vaiau!” But silence replied,

Or only the voice of the gusts of the fire, and nothing beside.

Rahéro stooped and groped. He handled his womankind,

But the fumes of the fire and the kava had quenched the life of their mind,

And they lay like pillars prone; and his hand encountered the boy,

And there sprang in the gloom of his soul a sudden lightning of joy.

“Him can I save!” he thought, “if I were speedy enough.”

And he loosened the cloth from his loins, and swaddled the child in the stuff:

And about the strength of his neck he knotted the burden well.

There where the roof had fallen, it roared like the mouth of hell.

Thither Rahéro went, stumbling on senseless folk,

And grappled a post of the house, and began to climb in the smoke:

The last alive of Vaiau; and the son borne by the sire.

The post glowed in the grain with ulcers of eating fire,

And the fire bit to the blood and mangled his hands and thighs;

And the fumes sang in his head like wine and stung in his eyes;

And still he climbed, and came to the top, the place of proof,

And thrust a hand through the flame, and clambered alive on the roof.

But even as he did so, the wind, in a garment of flames and pain,

Wrapped him from head to heel; and the waistcloth parted in twain;

And the living fruit of his loins dropped in the fire below.

About the blazing feast-house clustered the eyes of the foe,

Watching, hand upon weapon, lest ever a soul should flee,

Shading the brow from the glare, straining the neck to see.

Only, to leeward, the flames in the wind swept far and wide,

And the forest sputtered on fire; and there might no man abide.

Thither Rahéro crept, and dropped from the burning eaves,

And crouching low to the ground, in a treble covert of leaves

And fire and volleying smoke, ran for the life of his soul

Unseen; and behind him under a furnace of ardent coal,

Cairned with a wonder of flame, and blotting the night with smoke,

Blazed and were smelted together the bones of all his folk.

He fled unguided at first; but hearing the breakers roar,

Thitherward shaped his way, and came at length to the shore.

Sound-limbed he was: dry-eyed; but smarted in every part;

And the mighty cage of his ribs heaved on his straining heart

With sorrow and rage. And “Fools!” he cried, “fools of Vaiau,

Heads of swine — gluttons — Alas! and where are they now?

Those that I played with, those that nursed me, those that I nursed?

God, and I outliving them! I, the least and the worst —

I, that thought myself crafty, snared by this herd of swine,

In the tortures of hell and desolate, stripped of all that was mine:

All! — my friends and my fathers — the silver heads of yore

That trooped to the council, the children that ran to the open door

Crying with innocent voices and clasping a father’s knees!

And mine, my wife — my daughter — my sturdy climber of trees,

Ah, never to climb again!”

Thus in the dusk of the night

(For clouds rolled in the sky and the moon was swallowed from sight),

Pacing and gnawing his fists, Rahéro raged by the shore.