Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (504 page)

Vengeance: that must be his. But much was to do before;

And first a single life to be snatched from a deadly place,

A life, the root of revenge, surviving plant of the race:

And next the race to be raised anew, and the lands of the clan

Repeopled. So Rahéro designed, a prudent man

Even in wrath, and turned for the means of revenge and escape:

A boat to be seized by stealth, a wife to be taken by rape.

Still was the dark lagoon; beyond on the coral wall,

He saw the breakers shine, he heard them bellow and fall.

Alone, on the top of the reef, a man with a flaming brand

Walked, gazing and pausing, a fish-spear poised in his hand.

The foam boiled to his calf when the mightier breakers came,

And the torch shed in the wind scattering tufts of flame

Afar on the dark lagoon a canoe lay idly at wait:

A figure dimly guiding it: surely the fisherman’s mate.

Rahéro saw and he smiled. He straightened his mighty thews:

Naked, with never a weapon, and covered with scorch and bruise,

He straightened his arms, he filled the void of his body with breath,

And, strong as the wind in his manhood, doomed the fisher to death.

Silent he entered the water, and silently swam, and came

There where the fisher walked, holding on high the flame.

Loud on the pier of the reef volleyed the breach of the sea;

And hard at the back of the man, Rahéro crept to his knee

On the coral, and suddenly sprang and seized him, the elder hand

Clutching the joint of his throat, the other snatching the brand

Ere it had time to fall, and holding it steady and high.

Strong was the fisher, brave, and swift of mind and of eye —

Strongly he threw in the clutch; but Rahéro resisted the strain,

And jerked, and the spine of life snapped with a crack in twain,

And the man came slack in his hands and tumbled a lump at his feet.

One moment: and there, on the reef, where the breakers whitened and beat,

Rahéro was standing alone, glowing, and scorched and bare,

A victor unknown of any, raising the torch in the air.

But once he drank of his breath, and instantly set him to fish

Like a man intent upon supper at home and a savoury dish.

For what should the woman have seen? A man with a torch — and then

A moment’s blur of the eyes — and a man with a torch again.

And the torch had scarcely been shaken. “Ah, surely,” Rahéro said,

“She will deem it a trick of the eyes, a fancy born in the head;

But time must be given the fool to nourish a fool’s belief.”

So for a while, a sedulous fisher, he walked the reef,

Pausing at times and gazing, striking at times with the spear:

— Lastly, uttered the call; and even as the boat drew near,

Like a man that was done with its use, tossed the torch in the sea.

Lightly he leaped on the boat beside the woman; and she

Lightly addressed him, and yielded the paddle and place to sit;

For now the torch was extinguished the night was black as the pit.

Rahéro set him to row, never a word he spoke,

And the boat sang in the water urged by his vigorous stroke.

— ”What ails you?” the woman asked, “and why did you drop the brand?

We have only to kindle another as soon as we come to land.”

Never a word Rahéro replied, but urged the canoe.

And a chill fell on the woman. — ”Atta! speak! is it you?

Speak! Why are you silent? Why do you bend aside?

Wherefore steer to the seaward?” thus she panted and cried.

Never a word from the oarsman, toiling there in the dark;

But right for a gate of the reef he silently headed the bark,

And wielding the single paddle with passionate sweep on sweep,

Drove her, the little fitted, forth on the open deep.

And fear, there where she sat, froze the woman to stone:

Not fear of the crazy boat and the weltering deep alone;

But a keener fear of the night, the dark, and the ghostly hour,

And the thing that drove the canoe with more than a mortal’s power

And more than a mortal’s boldness. For much she knew of the dead

That haunt and fish upon reefs, toiling, like men, for bread,

And traffic with human fishers, or slay them and take their ware,

Till the hour when the star of the dead goes down, and the morning air

Blows, and the cocks are singing on shore. And surely she knew

The speechless thing at her side belonged to the grave.

It blew

All night from the south; all night, Rahéro contended and kept

The prow to the cresting sea; and, silent as though she slept,

The woman huddled and quaked. And now was the peep of day.

High and long on their left the mountainous island lay;

And over the peaks of Taiárapu arrows of sunlight struck.

On shore the birds were beginning to sing: the ghostly ruck

Of the buried had long ago returned to the covered grave;

And here on the sea, the woman, waxing suddenly brave,

Turned her swiftly about and looked in the face of the man.

And sure he was none that she knew, none of her country or clan:

A stranger, mother-naked, and marred with the marks of fire,

But comely and great of stature, a man to obey and admire.

And Rahéro regarded her also, fixed, with a frowning face,

Judging the woman’s fitness to mother a warlike race.

Broad of shoulder, ample of girdle, long in the thigh,

Deep of bosom she was, and bravely supported his eye.

“Woman,” said he, “last night the men of your folk —

Man, woman, and maid, smothered my race in smoke.

It was done like cowards; and I, a mighty man of my hands,

Escaped, a single life; and now to the empty lands

And smokeless hearths of my people, sail, with yourself, alone.

Before your mother was born, the die of to-day was thrown

And you selected: — your husband, vainly striving, to fall

Broken between these hands: — yourself to be severed from all,

The places, the people, you love — home, kindred, and clan —

And to dwell in a desert and bear the babes of a kinless man.”

THE FEAST OF FAMINE

MARQUESAN MANNERS

I

THE PRIEST’S VIGIL

In all the land of the tribe was neither fish nor fruit,

And the deepest pit of popoi stood empty to the foot.

The clans upon the left and the clans upon the right

Now oiled their carven maces and scoured their daggers bright;

They gat them to the thicket, to the deepest of the shade,

And lay with sleepless eyes in the deadly ambuscade.

And oft in the starry even the song of morning rose,

What time the oven smoked in the country of their foes;

For oft to loving hearts, and waiting ears and sight,

The lads that went to forage returned not with the night.

Now first the children sickened, and then the women paled,

And the great arms of the warrior no more for war availed.

Hushed was the deep drum, discarded was the dance;

And those that met the priest now glanced at him askance.

The priest was a man of years, his eyes were ruby-red,

He neither feared the dark nor the terrors of the dead,

He knew the songs of races, the names of ancient date;

And the beard upon his bosom would have bought the chief’s estate.

He dwelt in a high-built lodge, hard by the roaring shore,

Raised on a noble terrace and with tikis at the door.

Within it was full of riches, for he served his nation well,

And full of the sound of breakers, like the hollow of a shell.

For weeks he let them perish, gave never a helping sign,

But sat on his oiled platform to commune with the divine,

But sat on his high terrace, with the tikis by his side,

And stared on the blue ocean, like a parrot, ruby-eyed.

Dawn as yellow as sulphur leaped on the mountain height:

Out on the round of the sea the gems of the morning light,

Up from the round of the sea the streamers of the sun; —

But down in the depths of the valley the day was not begun.

In the blue of the woody twilight burned red the cocoa-husk,

And the women and men of the clan went forth to bathe in the dusk,

A word that began to go round, a word, a whisper, a start:

Hope that leaped in the bosom, fear that knocked on the heart:

“See, the priest is not risen — look, for his door is fast!

He is going to name the victims; he is going to help us at last.”

Thrice rose the sun to noon; and ever, like one of the dead,

The priest lay still in his house, with the roar of the sea in his head;

There was never a foot on the floor, there was never a whisper of speech;

Only the leering tikis stared on the blinding beach.

Again were the mountains fired, again the morning broke;

And all the houses lay still, but the house of the priest awoke.

Close in their covering roofs lay and trembled the clan,

But the aged, red-eyed priest ran forth like a lunatic man;

And the village panted to see him in the jewels of death again,

In the silver beards of the old and the hair of women slain.

Frenzy shook in his limbs, frenzy shone in his eyes,

And still and again as he ran, the valley rang with his cries.

All day long in the land, by cliff and thicket and den,

He ran his lunatic rounds, and howled for the flesh of men;

All day long he ate not, nor ever drank of the brook;

And all day long in their houses the people listened and shook —

All day long in their houses they listened with bated breath,

And never a soul went forth, for the sight of the priest was death.

Three were the days of his running, as the gods appointed of yore,

Two the nights of his sleeping alone in the place of gore:

The drunken slumber of frenzy twice he drank to the lees,

On the sacred stones of the High-place under the sacred trees;

With a lamp at his ashen head he lay in the place of the feast,

And the sacred leaves of the banyan rustled around the priest.

Last, when the stated even fell upon terrace and tree,

And the shade of the lofty island lay leagues away to sea,

And all the valleys of verdure were heavy with manna and musk,

The wreck of the red-eyed priest came gasping home in the dusk.

He reeled across the village, he staggered along the shore,

And between the leering tikis crept groping through his door.

There went a stir through the lodges, the voice of speech awoke;

Once more from the builded platforms arose the evening smoke.

And those who were mighty in war, and those renowned for an art

Sat in their stated seats and talked of the morrow apart.

II

THE LOVERS

Hark! away in the woods — for the ears of love are sharp —

Stealthily, quietly touched, the note of the one-stringed harp.

In the lighted house of her father, why should Taheia start?

Taheia heavy of hair, Taheia tender of heart,

Taheia the well-descended, a bountiful dealer in love,

Nimble of foot like the deer, and kind of eye like the dove?

Sly and shy as a cat, with never a change of face,

Taheia slips to the door, like one that would breathe a space;

Saunters and pauses, and looks at the stars, and lists to the seas;

Then sudden and swift as a cat, she plunges under the trees.

Swift as a cat she runs, with her garment gathered high,

Leaping, nimble of foot, running, certain of eye;

And ever to guide her way over the smooth and the sharp,

Ever nearer and nearer the note of the one-stringed harp;

Till at length, in a glade of the wood, with a naked mountain above,

The sound of the harp thrown down, and she in the arms of her love.

“Rua,” — ”Taheia,” they cry — ”my heart, my soul, and my eyes,”

And clasp and sunder and kiss, with lovely laughter and sighs,

“Rua!” — ”Taheia, my love,” — ”Rua, star of my night,

Clasp me, hold me, and love me, single spring of delight.”

And Rua folded her close, he folded her near and long,

The living knit to the living, and sang the lover’s song:

Night, night it is, night upon the palms.

Night, night it is, the land-wind has blown.

Starry, starry night, over deep and height;

Love, love in the valley, love all alone.

“Taheia, heavy of hair, a foolish thing have we done,

To bind what gods have sundered unkindly into one.

Why should a lowly lover have touched Taheia’s skirt,

Taheia the well-descended, and Rua child of the dirt?”

— ”On high with the haka-ikis my father sits in state,

Ten times fifty kinsmen salute him in the gate;

Round all his martial body, and in bands across his face,

The marks of the tattooer proclaim his lofty place.

I too, in the hands of the cunning, in the sacred cabin of palm,

Have shrunk like the mimosa, and bleated like the lamb;

Round half my tender body, that none shall clasp but you,

For a crest and a fair adornment go dainty lines of blue.

Love, love, beloved Rua, love levels all degrees,

And the well-tattooed Taheia clings panting to your knees.”

— ”Taheia, song of the morning, how long is the longest love?

A cry, a clasp of the hands, a star that falls from above!