Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (837 page)

Meanwhile my appetite for curiosities (not usually very keen) had been strangely whetted by the sacred boxes.  They were of pandanus wood, oblong in shape, with an effect of pillaring along the sides like straw work, lightly fringed with hair or fibre and standing on four legs.  The outside was neat as a toy; the inside a mystery I was resolved to penetrate.  But there was a lion in the path.  I might not approach Terutak’, since I had promised to buy nothing in the island; I dared not have recourse to the king, for I had already received from him more gifts than I knew how to repay.  In this dilemma (the schooner being at last returned) we hit on a device.  Captain Reid came forward in my stead, professed an unbridled passion for the boxes, and asked and obtained leave to bargain for them with the wizard.  That same afternoon the captain and I made haste to the infirmary, entered the enclosure, raised the mat, and had begun to examine the boxes at our leisure, when Terutak’s wife bounced out of one of the nigh houses, fell upon us, swept up the treasures, and was gone.  There was never a more absolute surprise.  She came, she took, she vanished, we had not a guess whither; and we remained, with foolish looks and laughter on the empty field.  Such was the fit prologue of our memorable bargaining.

Presently Terutak’ came, bringing Tamaiti along with him, both smiling; and we four squatted without the rail.  In the three maniap’s of the infirmary a certain audience was gathered: the family of a sick child under treatment, the king’s sister playing cards, a pretty girl, who swore I was the image of her father; in all perhaps a score.  Terutak’s wife had returned (even as she had vanished) unseen, and now sat, breathless and watchful, by her husband’s side.  Perhaps some rumour of our quest had gone abroad, or perhaps we had given the alert by our unseemly freedom: certain, at least, that in the faces of all present, expectation and alarm were mingled.

Captain Reid announced, without preface or disguise, that I was come to purchase; Terutak’, with sudden gravity, refused to sell.  He was pressed; he persisted.  It was explained we only wanted one: no matter, two were necessary for the healing of the sick.  He was rallied, he was reasoned with: in vain.  He sat there, serious and still, and refused.  All this was only a preliminary skirmish; hitherto no sum of money had been mentioned; but now the captain brought his great guns to bear.  He named a pound, then two, then three.  Out of the maniap’s one person after another came to join the group, some with mere excitement, others with consternation in their faces.  The pretty girl crept to my side; it was then that - surely with the most artless flattery - she informed me of my likeness to her father.  Tamaiti the infidel sat with hanging head and every mark of dejection.  Terutak’ streamed with sweat, his eye was glazed, his face wore a painful rictus, his chest heaved like that of one spent with running.  The man must have been by nature covetous; and I doubt if ever I saw moral agony more tragically displayed.  His wife by his side passionately encouraged his resistance.

And now came the charge of the old guard.  The captain, making a skip, named the surprising figure of five pounds.  At the word the maniap’s were emptied.  The king’s sister flung down her cards and came to the front to listen, a cloud on her brow.  The pretty girl beat her breast and cried with wearisome iteration that if the box were hers I should have it.  Terutak’s wife was beside herself with pious fear, her face discomposed, her voice (which scarce ceased from warning and encouragement) shrill as a whistle.  Even Terutak’ lost that image-like immobility which he had hitherto maintained.  He rocked on his mat, threw up his closed knees alternately, and struck himself on the breast after the manner of dancers.  But he came gold out of the furnace; and with what voice was left him continued to reject the bribe.

And now came a timely interjection.  ‘Money will not heal the sick,’ observed the king’s sister sententiously; and as soon as I heard the remark translated my eyes were unsealed, and I began to blush for my employment.  Here was a sick child, and I sought, in the view of its parents, to remove the medicine-box.  Here was the priest of a religion, and I (a heathen millionaire) was corrupting him to sacrilege.  Here was a greedy man, torn in twain betwixt greed and conscience; and I sat by and relished, and lustfully renewed his torments. 
Ave, Caesar
!  Smothered in a corner, dormant but not dead, we have all the one touch of nature: an infant passion for the sand and blood of the arena.  So I brought to an end my first and last experience of the joys of the millionaire, and departed amid silent awe.  Nowhere else can I expect to stir the depths of human nature by an offer of five pounds; nowhere else, even at the expense of millions, could I hope to see the evil of riches stand so legibly exposed.  Of all the bystanders, none but the king’s sister retained any memory of the gravity and danger of the thing in hand.  Their eyes glowed, the girl beat her breast, in senseless animal excitement.  Nothing was offered them; they stood neither to gain nor to lose; at the mere name and wind of these great sums Satan possessed them.

From this singular interview I went straight to the palace; found the king; confessed what I had been doing; begged him, in my name, to compliment Terutak’ on his virtue, and to have a similar box made for me against the return of the schooner.  Tembinok’, Rubam, and one of the Daily Papers - him we used to call ‘the Facetiae Column’ - laboured for a while of some idea, which was at last intelligibly delivered.  They feared I thought the box would cure me; whereas, without the wizard, it was useless; and when I was threatened with another cold I should do better to rely on pain-killer.  I explained I merely wished to keep it in my ‘outch’ as a thing made in Apemama and these honest men were much relieved.

Late the same evening, my wife, crossing the isle to windward, was aware of singing in the bush.  Nothing is more common in that hour and place than the jubilant carol of the toddy-cutter, swinging high overhead, beholding below him the narrow ribbon of the isle, the surrounding field of ocean, and the fires of the sunset.  But this was of a graver character, and seemed to proceed from the ground-level.  Advancing a little in the thicket, Mrs. Stevenson saw a clear space, a fine mat spread in the midst, and on the mat a wreath of white flowers and one of the devil-work boxes.  A woman - whom we guess to have been Mrs. Terutak’ - sat in front, now drooping over the box like a mother over a cradle, now lifting her face and directing her song to heaven.  A passing toddy-cutter told my wife that she was praying.  Probably she did not so much pray as deprecate; and perhaps even the ceremony was one of disenchantment.  For the box was already doomed; it was to pass from its green medicine-tree, reverend precinct, and devout attendants; to be handled by the profane; to cross three seas; to come to land under the foolscap of St. Paul’s; to be domesticated within the hail of Lillie Bridge; there to be dusted by the British housemaid, and to take perhaps the roar of London for the voice of the outer sea along the reef.  Before even we had finished dinner Chench had begun his journey, and one of the newspapers had already placed the box upon my table as the gift of Tembinok’.

I made haste to the palace, thanked the king, but offered to restore the box, for I could not bear that the sick of the island should be made to suffer.  I was amazed by his reply.  Terutak’, it appeared, had still three or four in reserve against an accident; and his reluctance, and the dread painted at first on every face, was not in the least occasioned by the prospect of medical destitution, but by the immediate divinity of Chench.  How much more did I respect the king’s command, which had been able to extort in a moment and for nothing a sacrilegious favour that I had in vain solicited with millions!  But now I had a difficult task in front of me; it was not in my view that Terutak’ should suffer by his virtue; and I must persuade the king to share my opinion, to let me enrich one of his subjects, and (what was yet more delicate) to pay for my present.  Nothing shows the king in a more becoming light than the fact that I succeeded.  He demurred at the principle; he exclaimed, when he heard it, at the sum.  ‘Plenty money!’ cried he, with contemptuous displeasure.  But his resistance was never serious; and when he had blown off his ill-humour - ‘A’ right,’ said he.  ‘You give him.  Mo’ betta.’

Armed with this permission, I made straight for the infirmary.  The night was now come, cool, dark, and starry.  On a mat hard by a clear fire of wood and coco shell, Terutak’ lay beside his wife.  Both were smiling; the agony was over, the king’s command had reconciled (I must suppose) their agitating scruples; and I was bidden to sit by them and share the circulating pipe.  I was a little moved myself when I placed five gold sovereigns in the wizard’s hand; but there was no sign of emotion in Terutak’ as he returned them, pointed to the palace, and named Tembinok’.  It was a changed scene when I had managed to explain.  Terutak’, long, dour Scots fisherman as he was, expressed his satisfaction within bounds; but the wife beamed; and there was an old gentleman present - her father, I suppose - who seemed nigh translated.  His eyes stood out of his head; ‘
Kaupoi, Kaupoi
- rich, rich!’ ran on his lips like a refrain; and he could not meet my eye but what he gurgled into foolish laughter.

I might now go home, leaving that fire-lit family party gloating over their new millions, and consider my strange day.  I had tried and rewarded the virtue of Terutak’.  I had played the millionaire, had behaved abominably, and then in some degree repaired my thoughtlessness.  And now I had my box, and could open it and look within.  It contained a miniature sleeping-mat and a white shell.  Tamaiti, interrogated next day as to the shell, explained it was not exactly Chench, but a cell, or body, which he would at times inhabit.  Asked why there was a sleeping-mat, he retorted indignantly, ‘Why have you mats?’  And this was the sceptical Tamaiti!  But island scepticism is never deeper than the lips.

CHAPTER VII - THE KING OF APEMAMA

Thus all things on the island, even the priests of the gods, obey the word of Tembinok’.  He can give and take, and slay, and allay the scruples of the conscientious, and do all things (apparently) but interfere in the cookery of a turtle.  ‘I got power’ is his favourite word; it interlards his conversation; the thought haunts him and is ever fresh; and when be has asked and meditates of foreign countries, he looks up with a smile and reminds you, ‘
I
got
Power
.’  Nor is his delight only in the possession, but in the exercise.  He rejoices in the crooked and violent paths of kingship like a strong man to run a race, or like an artist in his art.  To feel, to use his power, to embellish his island and the picture of the island life after a private ideal, to milk the island vigorously, to extend his singular museum - these employ delightfully the sum of his abilities.  I never saw a man more patently in the right trade.

It would be natural to suppose this monarchy inherited intact through generations.  And so far from that, it is a thing of yesterday.  I was already a boy at school while Apemama was yet republican, ruled by a noisy council of Old Men, and torn with incurable feuds.  And Tembinok’ is no Bourbon; rather the son of a Napoleon.  Of course he is well-born.  No man need aspire high in the isles of the Pacific unless his pedigree be long and in the upper regions mythical.  And our king counts cousinship with most of the high families in the archipelago, and traces his descent to a shark and a heroic woman.  Directed by an oracle, she swam beyond sight of land to meet her revolting paramour, and received at sea the seed of a predestined family.  ‘I think lie,’ is the king’s emphatic commentary; yet he is proud of the legend.  From this illustrious beginning the fortunes of the race must have declined; and Teñkoruti, the grandfather of Tembinok’, was the chief of a village at the north end of the island.  Kuria and Aranuka were yet independent; Apemama itself the arena of devastating feuds.  Through this perturbed period of history the figure of Teñkoruti stalks memorable.  In war he was swift and bloody; several towns fell to his spear, and the inhabitants were butchered to a man.  In civil life this arrogance was unheard of.  When the council of Old Men was summoned, he went to the Speak House, delivered his mind, and left without waiting to be answered.  Wisdom had spoken: let others opine according to their folly.  He was feared and hated, and this was his pleasure.  He was no poet; he cared not for arts or knowledge.  ‘My gran’patha one thing savvy, savvy pight,’ observed the king.  In some lull of their own disputes the Old Men of Apemama adventured on the conquest of Apemama; and this unlicked Caius Marcius was elected general of the united troops.  Success attended him; the islands were reduced, and Teñkoruti returned to his own government, glorious and detested.  He died about 1860, in the seventieth year of his age and the full odour of unpopularity.  He was tall and lean, says his grandson, looked extremely old, and ‘walked all the same young man.’  The same observer gave me a significant detail.  The survivors of that rough epoch were all defaced with spearmarks; there was none on the body of this skilful fighter.  ‘I see old man, no got a spear,’ said the king.

Teñkoruti left two sons, Tembaitake and Tembinatake.  Tembaitake, our king’s father, was short, middling stout, a poet, a good genealogist, and something of a fighter; it seems he took himself seriously, and was perhaps scarce conscious that he was in all things the creature and nursling of his brother.  There was no shadow of dispute between the pair: the greater man filled with alacrity and content the second place; held the breach in war, and all the portfolios in the time of peace; and, when his brother rated him, listened in silence, looking on the ground.  Like Teñkoruti, he was tall and lean and a swift talker - a rare trait in the islands.  He possessed every accomplishment.  He knew sorcery, he was the best genealogist of his day, he was a poet, he could dance and make canoes and armour; and the famous mast of Apemama, which ran one joint higher than the mainmast of a full-rigged ship, was of his conception and design.  But these were avocations, and the man’s trade was war.  ‘When my uncle go make wa’, he laugh,’ said Tembinok’.  He forbade the use of field fortification, that protractor of native hostilities; his men must fight in the open, and win or be beaten out of hand; his own activity inspired his followers; and the swiftness of his blows beat down, in one lifetime, the resistance of three islands.  He made his brother sovereign, he left his nephew absolute.  ‘My uncle make all smooth,’ said Tembinok’.  ‘I mo’ king than my patha: I got power,’ he said, with formidable relish.