Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (506 page)

Sick of soul he drew near, making his courage stout;

And he looked in the face of the thing, and the life of the thing went out.

And he gazed on the tattooed limbs, and, behold, he knew the man:

Hoka, a chief of the Vais, the truculent foe of his clan:

Hoka a moment since that stepped in the loop of the rope,

Filled with the lust of war, and alive with courage and hope.

Again to the giddy cornice Rua lifted his eyes,

And again beheld men passing in the armpit of the skies.

“Foes of my race!” cried Rua, “the mouth of Rua is true:

Never a shark in the deep is nobler of soul than you.

There was never a nobler foray, never a bolder plan;

Never a dizzier path was trod by the children of man;

And Rua, your evil-doer through all the days of his years,

Counts it honour to hate you, honour to fall by your spears.”

And Rua straightened his back. “O Vais, a scheme for a scheme!”

Cried Rua and turned and descended the turbulent stair of the stream,

Leaping from rock to rock as the water-wagtail at home

Flits through resonant valleys and skims by boulder and foam.

And Rua burst from the glen and leaped on the shore of the brook,

And straight for the roofs of the clan his vigorous way he took.

Swift were the heels of his flight, and loud behind as he went

Rattled the leaping stones on the line of his long descent.

And ever he thought as he ran, and caught at his gasping breath,

“O the fool of a Rua, Rua that runs to his death!

But the right is the right,” thought Rua, and ran like the wind on the foam,

“The right is the right for ever, and home for ever home.

For what though the oven smoke? And what though I die ere morn?

There was I nourished and tended, and there was Taheia born.”

Noon was high on the High-place, the second noon of the feast;

And heat and shameful slumber weighed on people and priest;

And the heart drudged slow in bodies heavy with monstrous meals;

And the senseless limbs were scattered abroad like spokes of wheels;

And crapulous women sat and stared at the stones anigh

With a bestial droop of the lip and a swinish rheum in the eye.

As about the dome of the bees in the time for the drones to fall,

The dead and the maimed are scattered, and lie, and stagger, and crawl;

So on the grades of the terrace, in the ardent eye of the day,

The half-awake and the sleepers clustered and crawled and lay;

And loud as the dome of the bees, in the time of a swarming horde,

A horror of many insects hung in the air and roared.

Rua looked and wondered; he said to himself in his heart:

“Poor are the pleasures of life, and death is the better part.”

But lo! on the higher benches a cluster of tranquil folk

Sat by themselves, nor raised their serious eyes, nor spoke:

Women with robes unruffled and garlands duly arranged,

Gazing far from the feast with faces of people estranged;

And quiet amongst the quiet, and fairer than all the fair,

Taheia, the well-descended, Taheia, heavy of hair.

And the soul of Rua awoke, courage enlightened his eyes

And he uttered a summoning shout and called on the clan to rise.

Over against him at once, in the spotted shade of the trees,

Owlish and blinking creatures scrambled to hands and knees;

On the grades of the sacred terrace, the driveller woke to fear,

And the hand of the ham-drooped warrior brandished a wavering spear.

And Rua folded his arms, and scorn discovered his teeth;

Above the war-crowd gibbered, and Rua stood smiling beneath.

Thick, like leaves in the autumn, faint, like April sleet,

Missiles from tremulous hands quivered around his feet;

And Taheia leaped from her place; and the priest, the ruby-eyed,

Ran to the front of the terrace, and brandished his arms and cried:

“Hold, O fools, he brings tidings!” and “Hold, ‘tis the love of my heart!”

Till lo! in front of the terrace, Rua pierced with a dart.

Taheia cherished his head, and the aged priest stood by,

And gazed with eyes of ruby at Rua’s darkening eye.

“Taheia, here is the end, I die a death for a man.

I have given the life of my soul to save an unsavable clan.

See them, the drooping of hams! behold me the blinking crew;

Fifty spears they cast, and one of fifty true!

And you, O priest, the foreteller, foretell for yourself if you can,

Foretell the hour of the day when the Vais shall burst on your clan!

By the head of the tapu cleft, with death and fire in their hand,

Thick and silent like ants, the warriors swarm in the land.”

And they tell that when next the sun had climbed to the noonday skies,

It shone on the smoke of feasting in the country of the Vais.

TICONDEROGA

A LEGEND OF THE WEST HIGHLANDS

TICONDEROGA

This is the tale of the man

Who heard a word in the night

In the land of the heathery hills,

In the days of the feud and the fight.

By the sides of the rainy sea,

Where never a stranger came,

On the awful lips of the dead,

He heard the outlandish name.

It sang in his sleeping ears,

It hummed in his waking head:

The name — Ticonderoga,

The utterance of the dead.

I

THE SAYING OF THE NAME

On the loch-sides of Appin,

When the mist blew from the sea,

A Stewart stood with a Cameron:

An angry man was he.

The blood beat in his ears,

The blood ran hot to his head,

The mist blew from the sea,

And there was the Cameron dead.

“O, what have I done to my friend,

O, what have I done to mysel’,

That he should be cold and dead,

And I in the danger of all?

“Nothing but danger about me,

Danger behind and before,

Death at wait in the heather

In Appin and Mamore,

Hate at all of the ferries,

And death at each of the fords,

Camerons priming gun-locks

And Camerons sharpening swords.”

But this was a man of counsel,

This was a man of a score,

There dwelt no pawkier Stewart

In Appin or Mamore.

He looked on the blowing mist,

He looked on the awful dead,

And there came a smile on his face

And there slipped a thought in his head.

Out over cairn and moss,

Out over scrog and scaur,

He ran as runs the clansman

That bears the cross of war.

His heart beat in his body,

His hair clove to his face,

When he came at last in the gloaming

To the dead man’s brother’s place.

The east was white with the moon,

The west with the sun was red,

And there, in the house-doorway,

Stood the brother of the dead.

“I have slain a man to my danger,

I have slain a man to my death.

I put my soul in your hands,”

The panting Stewart saith.

“I lay it bare in your hands,

For I know your hands are leal;

And be you my targe and bulwark

From the bullet and the steel.”

Then up and spoke the Cameron,

And gave him his hand again:

“There shall never a man in Scotland

Set faith in me in vain;

And whatever man you have slaughtered,

Of whatever name or line,

By my sword and yonder mountain,

I make your quarrel mine.

I bid you in to my fireside,

I share with you house and hall;

It stands upon my honour

To see you safe from all.”

It fell in the time of midnight,

When the fox barked in the den,

And the plaids were over the faces

In all the houses of men,

That as the living Cameron

Lay sleepless on his bed,

Out of the night and the other world,

Came in to him the dead.

“My blood is on the heather,

My bones are on the hill;

There is joy in the home of ravens

That the young shall eat their fill.

My blood is poured in the dust,

My soul is spilled in the air;

And the man that has undone me

Sleeps in my brother’s care.”

“I’m wae for your death, my brother,

But if all of my house were dead,

I couldna withdraw the plighted hand,

Nor break the word once said.”

“O, what shall I say to our father,

In the place to which I fare?

O, what shall I say to our mother,

Who greets to see me there?

And to all the kindly Camerons

That have lived and died long-syne —

Is this the word you send them,

Fause-hearted brother mine?”

“It’s neither fear nor duty,

It’s neither quick nor dead,

Shall gar me withdraw the plighted hand,

Or break the word once said.”

Thrice in the time of midnight,

When the fox barked in the den,

And the plaids were over the faces

In all the houses of men,

Thrice as the living Cameron

Lay sleepless on his bed,

Out of the night and the other world

Came in to him the dead,

And cried to him for vengeance

On the man that laid him low;

And thrice the living Cameron

Told the dead Cameron, no.

“Thrice have you seen me, brother,

But now shall see me no more,

Till you meet your angry fathers

Upon the farther shore.

Thrice have I spoken, and now,

Before the cock be heard,

I take my leave for ever

With the naming of a word.

It shall sing in your sleeping ears,

It shall hum in your waking head,

The name — Ticonderoga,

And the warning of the dead.”

Now when the night was over

And the time of people’s fears,

The Cameron walked abroad,

And the word was in his ears.

“Many a name I know,

But never a name like this;

O, where shall I find a skilly man

Shall tell me what it is?”

With many a man he counselled

Of high and low degree,

With the herdsman on the mountains

And the fishers of the sea.

And he came and went unweary,

And read the books of yore,

And the runes that were written of old

On stones upon the moor.

And many a name he was told,

But never the name of his fears —

Never, in east or west,

The name that rang in his ears:

Names of men and of clans;

Names for the grass and the tree,

For the smallest tarn in the mountains,

The smallest reef in the sea:

Names for the high and low,

The names of the craig and the flat;

But in all the land of Scotland,

Never a name like that.

II

THE SEEKING OF THE NAME

And now there was speech in the south,

And a man of the south that was wise,

A periwig’d lord of London,

Called on the clans to rise.

And the riders rode, and the summons

Came to the western shore,

To the land of the sea and the heather,

To Appin and Mamore.

It called on all to gather

From every scrog and scaur,

That loved their fathers’ tartan

And the ancient game of war.

And down the watery valley

And up the windy hill,

Once more, as in the olden,

The pipes were sounding shrill;

Again in Highland sunshine

The naked steel was bright;

And the lads, once more in tartan,

Went forth again to fight.

“O, why should I dwell here

With a weird upon my life,

When the clansmen shout for battle

And the war-swords clash in strife?

I canna joy at feast,

I canna sleep in bed,

For the wonder of the word

And the warning of the dead.

It sings in my sleeping ears,

It hums in my waking head,

The name — Ticonderoga,

The utterance of the dead.

Then up, and with the fighting men

To march away from here,

Till the cry of the great war-pipe

Shall drown it in my ear!”

Where flew King George’s ensign

The plaided soldiers went:

They drew the sword in Germany,

In Flanders pitched the tent.

The bells of foreign cities

Rang far across the plain:

They passed the happy Rhine,

They drank the rapid Main.

Through Asiatic jungles

The Tartans filed their way,

And the neighing of the war-pipes

Struck terror in Cathay.

“Many a name have I heard,” he thought,

“In all the tongues of men,

Full many a name both here and there,

Full many both now and then.

When I was at home in my father’s house,

In the land of the naked knee,

Between the eagles that fly in the lift

And the herrings that swim in the sea,

And now that I am a captain-man

With a braw cockade in my hat —

Many a name have I heard,” he thought,

“But never a name like that.”

III

THE PLACE OF THE NAME

There fell a war in a woody place,

Lay far across the sea,

A war of the march in the mirk midnight