The Island Home

by Richard Archer

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

  ABOUT TEWA.

  A DULL CHAPTER, BUT NECESSARY--WAKATTA AND ATOLLO--A GENTLE HINT--MAX ASAN ARCHITECT.

  "In the forest hollow roaring, Hark! I hear a deepening sound, Clouds rise thick with heavy lowering, See! the horizon blackens round."

  It must not be inferred from the occasional bursts of holiday humour, inwhich we indulged, that we had become reconciled to our exile, and werenow ready to subside into a state of indolent contentment satisfied withsecurity from present danger, and the abundant means of subsistencewhich we had discovered.

  Not even a tropical paradise, with its warm, glowing sky and balmyatmosphere, its "ambrosial fruits and amaranthine flowers," could charmus into oblivion of home, and those who made it dear; or diminish thebitterness of the thought of being cut off for ever from humanintercourse, and of having all our plans of life deranged andfrustrated. Though we did not brood continually over our unfortunatesituation, we were far from being insensible to it. The loveliestisland that ever reposed in undiscovered beauty, upon the bosom of the"blue summer ocean," though rich in all things necessary to supply everymaterial want, must still have seemed to us but as a gilded andluxurious prison, from which we should never cease to sigh for anescape.

  Arthur's conclusion, mentioned at the end of the last chapter, seemed initself so probable, and was confirmed by so many circumstances, that itwas readily adopted by us all; and believing that the party, of whosepresence at one time upon the island the hat was an evidence, had leftit years ago, the occurrence no longer appeared to possess anyimportance, and we dismissed it altogether from our thoughts.

  Eiulo, when questioned on the subject of the white men living among hisown people, repeated substantially his former statement, that they camefrom an island lying south of his father's, and distant from it lessthan a day's sail. It seemed, also, that before the arrival of thewhites, an island lying in the direction from which they had come, hadbeen known to some, at least, of the natives, and visited by them. Inthe course of the conversations which he had with Arthur, at varioustimes, about his father's people and their affairs, Eiulo had oftenspoken of an old warrior, Wakatta by name, famous for his courage andgreat personal strength, of which he related many remarkable instances.Through two generations he had been the most devoted and valued friendof the family of his chief; and upon his wisdom, sagacity, and prowess,Eiulo's father and grandfather had relied in many an emergency, andseldom in vain. Formerly, the three islands were independent of eachother, and were ruled by separate chiefs, who sometimes engaged insanguinary wars among themselves, in most of which Wakatta had played aprominent part.

  A great many moons ago, as Eiulo expressed it, the chiefs of the twosmaller islands had united their forces against his grandfather, who wasthen chief of Tewa, the third and largest. To this enterprise they hadbeen incited by Atollo, an uncle of Eiulo, and younger brother of thepresent chief, his father. This man was possessed of great ability, andhis reputation as a warrior was second only to that of Wakatta, who wasmany years his senior, so that among those of his own age he wasconsidered without an equal. But, though eminent for talent andcourage, he seemed to be entirely destitute of principle or feeling; andimpelled, as was supposed, by a spirit of unscrupulous ambition, (for noother motive could be assigned), this unnatural son plotted against thelives of his own father and elder brother. His designs beingdiscovered, and fully exposed, he fled to one of the neighbouringislands, and sought the protection of its chief, his father's mostformidable and inveterate enemy. Afterwards, by his address and energy,he succeeded in bringing about a league between the chiefs of the twosmaller islands, for the purpose of an attack against Tewa, by theircombined forces. The enterprise was planned with the greatest secrecy,and executed with equal skill and daring. At midnight, the allies setsail, in a fleet of war canoes, and two hours before dawn they haddisembarked at Tewa, marched to the principal village, where the chiefresided, and made all their dispositions for the attack, which was sototally unexpected, that it was crowned with complete success. Scarcelyany resistance was made: the principal Tewan warriors were slain intheir beds, or taken prisoners; and Eiulo's father and grandfather, withWakatta, only saved their lives by fleeing to the mountains. Knowingthat the strictest search would be made for them, and that if taken,instant death would be their doom; they stole forth from theirlurking-place by night, repaired to the beach, and taking a large canoe,which they discovered there, set sail in her, steering boldly southward,in search of a considerable island which was believed to lie in thatdirection. Soon after sunrise they came in sight of land, but, onapproaching it, they found that the surf was bursting with great furyupon a barrier reef, stretching between them and the shore; and it wasnot until they had coasted along it for many hours, that they succeededin effecting a landing. Eiulo had heard both his father and Wakattaspeak of the island as a singularly beautiful spot, nearly as large asTewa, and abounding in bread-fruit and cocoa-nut trees. Here thefugitives remained for several months, until, becoming wearied of theirsolitary life, and possessed by an irresistible longing to revisit theirhomes, they came to the determination to venture back, and learn thestate of things there, at every hazard. They accordingly set sail oneday at noon, in order that they might reach their destination undercover of night, in which they succeeded.

  Seeking a temporary place of concealment in the woods, they seizedfavourable opportunities to discover themselves to some friends, on whomthey could rely. They learned that the victorious allies had beenguilty of the most intolerable cruelty towards the people of Tewa. Manyof the prisoners had been slain, as sacrifices to the gods, and manymore had been made slaves. Atollo had established himself as chief atthe conquered island, and had gathered about him a band of the mostferocious and desperate men, who practised every species of cruelty andoppression upon the inhabitants. The latter, driven to the utmost vergeof endurance, were now ready to incur any risk in an attempt to deliverthemselves from a yoke so galling. They needed only a leader, and theexperience and prowess of Wakatta, together with the presence of theirancient and rightful chief and his son, inspired them with confidenceand courage. Gathering a small, but resolute, band of warriors, theyawaited the favourable moment to strike a decisive blow; and then,emulating the secrecy and suddenness of Atollo's recent enterprise, theysallied forth at night, from their rendezvous in the forest and fellupon him and his adherents. Wakatta was unable to restrain the ferocityof his followers, excited by the insults and injuries they had suffered,and they killed on the spot all who fell into their hands, pausing tomake no prisoners. Atollo, after fighting like a tiger, though almostalone, succeeded in making his escape with a few of his attendants. Thevictors promptly carried the war into the neighbouring islands, both ofwhich were completely subdued, and afterwards remained under the sway ofEiulo's grandfather until his death, when the present chief succeeded.Atollo, after resisting as long as there remained the slightest prospectof success, had sought refuge among the recesses of the mountains, wherehe still lurked with a few outlaw followers, as desperate as himself.His father had forbidden any search for him, or any efforts for hiscapture to be made; and such was the dread inspired by his desperatecourage, ferocity, and cunning, and such the superstitious terror withwhich he was generally regarded, that few felt any inclination totransgress this command, or to meddle in any way with him or hisfollowers; and he was consequently left unmolested in his favouritehaunts, among the wild and almost inaccessible precipices of theinterior. In seasons of scarcity, his father had even caused suppliesof food to be placed where they would be likely to fall in his way.Eiulo always shuddered when he spoke of this man. Once, whenaccompanied by a young playmate and an attendant, he had strayed a longway into the wood in search of wild-flowers, and had, without beingaware of it, approached the region frequented by the outlaws, a spearhad suddenly been hurled at him from an adjacent thicket, with so deadlya purpose, that it whistled past within a few inches of his side. As
they fled in alarm, and were clambering hastily down a steep descent, amass of rock was disengaged from the verge of an overhanging precipice,and came near crushing them all. Looking back, in their flight, theysaw a wild figure, which the attendant recognised at once as that ofEiulo's uncle, stooping at the edge of the cliff, in the act ofloosening another large stone. Notwithstanding this murderous attempt,the present chief of Tewa continued to pursue the same forbearing coursewhich his father had adopted, and Atollo was still permitted to remainunmolested among his mountain fastnesses.

  Eiulo, even before the discovery of the hat, had believed that we wereupon the same island which his father had visited, as above related, andfrom which the whites had afterwards come. He was confident that bysailing northward, with a fair wind, we should reach Tewa in less than aday. Though generally cheerful, and overflowing with boyish spirits,there were times when it was apparent that he pined for his home; and,though he never directly urged it, he earnestly wished to have us makethe attempt to reach his father's island in the yawl.

  At length I began to suspect, from the constant and minute inquirieswhich Arthur made in relation to Tewa, and its people, their usages,habits, etcetera, that he was thinking seriously of some such attempt.He directed his inquiries particularly to the point whether the islandwas ever visited by ships. Eiulo remembered hearing his father speak ofbig canoes, without any outriggers, and whose masts were as high as acocoa-nut-tree, having passed in sight of the island. He had heard,too, that a long while ago, one of these great vessels had got aground,upon a reef between Tewa and the adjacent island, and that the nativeshad gone off to her in their canoes, and some of them had ventured onboard at the invitation of the strangers. Old Wakatta was one of these,and he had received a wonderful present from the white chief, which hehad often exhibited to Eiulo, and which, from his description of it,appeared to be neither more nor less than a small looking-glass. Thegreat canoe had, by throwing overboard a part of her cargo, got off fromthe reef at the rising of the tide, and resumed her voyage. It waspretty evident that the arrival of a European vessel at the islands, wasan event of very rare occurrence, and in all probability the result ofmere accident. Except that he steadily pursued inquiries of this kind,Arthur said nothing to show that he entertained the thought of such anundertaking as I suspected him to be revolving. Browne and Morton bothhad exaggerated notions of the cruelty and treachery of the "heathennative;" as the former called them, and would, I had no doubt, bestrongly averse to any step calculated to place us in their power,unless it should also, in some way, increase our prospects of ultimatelygetting home.

  For several days after the occurrences narrated in the last chapter, weremained at Castle-hill, making little excursions daily in variousdirections. Having now discovered a supply of fresh water, and abundantmeans of subsistence, it seemed as though there was at present nothingfurther for us to do, except to assist Arthur, as far as we could; inhis preparations for manufacturing tappa. The weather was so genial,(except during the middle of the day, when the heat was frequentlyintolerable), that we felt no want of any other shelter than such as thegrove afforded us. Generally, towards evening, a refreshing breeze setin from the sea, and lasted several hours. We experienced no badeffects from sleeping in the open air, and far from finding it ahardship, we soon came to consider it every way more pleasant, than tobe cribbed and cabined within four close walls. There was somethingdelightful, in dropping off into dreamland, listening to the whisperingof the leaves above you, and catching glimpses through them, of a sky sodeliciously blue, and stars so wonderfully bright. It seemed as thoughin this favoured spot, the fable of a perpetual summer was to berealised, and the whole circle of the year was to be crowned with thesame freshness and verdure and beauty, the same profusion of fruits andflowers, which we had thus far enjoyed. But such expectations, if anyof us were beguiled into entertaining them, were destined to be rudelydissipated. One hot afternoon, we were startled from a drowsy siesta inthe grove, by a peal of thunder, such as is rarely heard in temperateclimates, and on springing up and looking about us, we beheld above andaround us, certain indications, which it would have been far moreinteresting and agreeable to contemplate from beneath the shelter of asnug and comfortable dwelling. The wind moaned through the bendingtree-tops; the face of the heavens was black as night, and the waters ofthe lagoon, and of the ocean, had darkened to a steely blue beneaththeir frown. Before we had fairly shaken off our drowsiness, anotherabrupt peal of thunder burst overhead, with a suddenness that seemed tojar the very clouds and shake the water out of them, for the rain beganall at once to come down violently, in big drops, that rattled likehailstones upon the crisp leaves of the forest. The thunder appeared tohave completed its office in giving the signal for the clouds todischarge their contents, and we heard it no more. For a time, thedense foliage of the large tree under which we gathered, completelysheltered us; but soon the moisture began to drip slowly from the lowerleaves, and occasionally fell in sudden showers, as the branches wereshaken by the wind.

  At length, the ground became thoroughly saturated, shallow puddlesformed in every little hollow or depression, and there was the prospectof a most miserable night if the storm should continue. Happily, thisdid not prove to be the case; in about an hour after we had been arousedby the first thunder peal, the clouds dispersed almost as suddenly asthey had gathered; the sun shone forth brightly; the trees and the grasssparkled with raindrops, lustrous as diamonds, and the whole landscapesmiled in fresher beauty than ever.

  This little occurrence, however, served as a seasonable hint to recallto our minds the importance of contriving some kind of a dwelling toafford us shelter in bad weather, and we resolved to lose no time insetting about it. Accordingly, the day following that of the thundershower, as soon as we had returned from the beach, after taking ourregular morning swim, Arthur called a council, to deliberate anddetermine upon the matter of house-building. The first thing was to fixupon a site; the only objection to the level space at the top of thehill, was its elevated position, exposing it to the full force of theviolent winds which prevail at certain periods of the tropical year.But on that side from which the strongest winds blow, the spot wasprotected by still higher land towards the interior, and the fine treesof various kinds and sizes, (some of them evidently the growth of manyyears), among which could be seen no prostrate trunks, showed, as wethought, that nothing was to be feared from that source.

  We, therefore, selected a smooth, open space, near the edge of theterrace, commanding a view of the sea, through a vista of noble trees.Max insisted, that, inasmuch as with our limited architectural resourceswe could not make our house of more than one storey, we ought to buildin "cottage style," and make up for deficiency in height, by spreadingover a large surface. He then proceeded to mark out a ground-plan, upona scale that would have been shockingly extravagant, had we been in apart of the world where the price of building-lots was to be taken intoconsideration. A parallelogram, nearly forty feet long by twenty-fivein width, the narrower side fronting the sea, was the plan of the mainbuilding. This was to be flanked by two wings, each some sixteen feetsquare, which would serve to strengthen and support the principalstructure. "Upon this model," Max complacently observed, "he intendedone of these days to build his country-seat, near Mount Merino, on theHudson: meantime, we were welcome to the benefit of the idea."

  "Really, we're greatly obliged to you, Max," said Browne, "for helpingus so generously through with the most difficult part of the business.All that we now want in order to finish it at once, is merely a fewloads of joist, plank, pine-boards, shingles, and window-sash; a supplyof nails, a set of carpenter's tools, and a couple of carpenters to usethem."

  "Of course," rejoined Max, "we shall want a supply of buildingmaterials, tools, etcetera, and I am expecting them along daily. Wehave now been here several weeks, and it is quite time, in the naturaland regular course of things, and according to the uniform experience ofpeople situated as we are, for a sh
ip heavily laden, (say in our case),with lumber and hardware, to be driven upon our shores in the midst of aterrible storm, (yesterday, when it began to thunder, I thought it wasat hand). The ship will come driving upon the reef--the crew will taketo the boats, but no boat can live in such a sea, and notwithstandingour humane and daring efforts to assist them, all perish among thebreakers--that is to say, all except the carpenter--whom I rescue, byplunging into the raging flood and dragging him ashore by the hair, justas he is about sinking for the third time."

  "Nobly done!" said Browne, "but couldn't you at the same time manage tosave a drowning washerwoman? she would be as great an acquisition as thecarpenter, in my mind."

  "At length," resumed Max, "the storm abates--the sea becomes smooth--wego out in the yawl to the stranded vessel, where she lies upon a coralpatch, and bring off, in two boat loads, the carpenter's chest, a keg ofgunpowder, a blunderbuss, seven muskets, fourteen pairs of pistols, anda bag of doubloons, (think of that, Johnny!) That very night the windrises again: the surf breaks the wreck to pieces, and washes thefragments ashore, and in the morning the sea is strewn far and wide withfloating spars, and bales, and barrels; and the reef is covered formiles with `joist, plank, pine-boards, shingles, window-sash,' andwhatever other trifling conveniences are requisite for building mycottage. This is what Johnny and I confidently calculate upon."

  "In the meantime," said Arthur, "in case by any unfortunate accidentyour ship should fail to arrive in time to enable us to get the cottageup before the rains set in, I propose that we commence a less ambitiousstructure." He began to trace upon the ground with a pointed stick, theoval outline of what he called a `Tihitian fare.' "But even for myfare," he added, "we shall need the means of cutting down a number ofgood-sized trees."

  "Of which we are entirely destitute," said Max, with an air of triumph,"and I don't see but that we shall have to wait for my ship after all."

  "Not so," answered Arthur, "for I think that two or three of thecutlasses may be converted into tolerable saws, with which, by dint of alittle patience, we can get out as many posts and rafters as will berequisite for the frame of our building, though I admit it will betedious work."

  Johnny heaved a profound sigh at the prospect of the difficulties thatlay in the way of his pet project of house-building, and wished that"that old magician who built the castle with a thousand windows forAladdin, in a single night, would only be clever enough to lend us hisassistance." But upon second thought, he concluded that there would be"no fun" in having our house ready-made for us, and magnanimouslydeclared that if he had the wonderful lamp in his hands that minute,with full power to summon up the obedient genius, and set him to work,he would not do it.

  "I hope you would make him supply us with a few good axes, Johnny, atleast," said Browne.

  But Johnny was disposed to be very self-denying and high-minded; he didnot think he ought to do it; we should take a great deal more pleasurein our house if we made it ourselves, without any magical assistance ofany kind.

  "Now, that you mention axes," said Morton, "it occurs to me that thereis an old hatchet-head among the rubbish in the locker of the yawl, andthough it is a good deal battered and worn, it could be fitted with ahandle and made useful."

  We all now remembered having seen it, though no one had before thoughtof it. Arthur suggested that we should make an excursion to Palm-Isletas soon as the heat of the day was over, and the sea-breeze had set in,for the purpose of getting the hatchet, and bringing the boat round tothe side of the island where we intended to fix our residence, as wemight have occasion for its use. "We can get there before dark," saidhe, "and pass the night once more at our old quarters on the littleisland; then we can row back in the fresh of the morning, beforesunrise, and be ready to commence our building in earnest."