Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated)

by Robert Louis Stevenson

  Stevenson’s former experience lay, his future was almost entirely to lie, among the Polynesians — the tall, fine, copper-coloured race, speaking closely allied dialects of the same language, and including among their family the Hawaiians, Marquesans, Tahitians, Samoans, and the Maoris of New Zealand. The Gilbert and Marshall natives, on the other hand, are Micronesians — darker, shorter, and to my taste less comely folk- speaking languages widely removed from the Polynesian — people with a dash of black blood, stricter in morals and more ferocious, with an energy and backbone which the others but rarely possess. It is noteworthy that Polynesians never commit suicide; on the Line jt is not uncommon; and the frequent causes are unrequited love, or grief for the dead.

  When this visit should be finished, the travellers were not finally committed to any plan, but their latest intention was to proceed to the Marshalls and thence to the Carolines, and so “ return to the light of day by way of Manila and the China ports.”

  Scarcely, however, were they at sea before these schemes were modified. One moonlight night, in the neighbourhood of Johnstone Island, the talk fell upon the strange history of the loss of the brigantine Wandering Minstrel, and from this germ was quickly developed the plot of The Wrecker. The life of cruising was for the time all that Stevenson could desire: after the depression of Honolulu he had entirely recovered his health and spirits on the open sea, and the only difficulty in continuing his cure was its great expense. Surely if he possessed a schooner of his own, he might make his home on board and pay the current charges, at all events in part, by trading. So Tbe Wrecker was to be written and sent to a publisher from Samoa, and there with the proceeds they were to buy a schooner, stock the trade-room, and start upon their wanderings under the guidance of Denis Reid, who threw himself heart and soul into the spirit of the new venture.

  It was a wild scheme. Versatile as Stevenson was, it is impossible even to think of him as a “ South Sea merchant,” haggling with natives over the price of copra1 and retailing European goods to them at a necessarily exorbitant rate. But the project, though never realised, did finally determine the course of his life, for instead of taking him to Ponape, Guam, and the Philippines, it sent him south to Samoa, there to take up his abode and live and die.

  In the meanwhile the first part of the voyage was safely performed, and the schooner arrived at the town of Butaritari in the island of Great Makin. Under ordinary conditions a white man, if he conducted himself reasonably, might wander through all the group in perfect safety, but the arrival of the Equator fell at an unpropitious moment. For the first and probably the only time in his wanderings, Stevenson was in real danger of violence from natives.

  The two principal firms trading in Butaritari belonged to San Francisco; the missionaries in the group were sent there by the Boston Society, and the influence of American ideas was considerable. Nine days before 1 The dried kernel of the cocoanut, largely used in making soap, candles, oil-cake, etc.

  Stevensons arrival was the Fourth of July; the king of Butaritari had observed the festival with enthusiasm, but not wisely, nor in accordance with missionary views, for he had removed the taboo upon spirits which ordinarily was imposed for all his subjects.

  Neither sovereign nor courtiers had been sober since, and though, with a lofty Sabbatarianism, the king declined to be photographed upon a Sunday, it was not to be supposed that he could be refused more drink if he offered to purchase it at the usual price. There was this further difficulty in the way of restoring sobriety to his dominions, that even if one firm declined to supply him, there was the rival house, which, having as yet sold less of its liquor, might be less anxious for the special open season to come to an end. So the carnival continued for ten days more, and all the white men could do was to get out their pistols and show in public such skill as they possessed in shooting at a mark.

  Twice a large stone was hurled at Stevenson as he sat in his verandah at dusk, just as the lamp was brought out and placed beside him. He now entered into negotiations with the German manager of the other firm, whom he found to take a far more serious view of the situation than any of them, and whom he induced by diplomacy to discontinue to supply the natives. The crisis was now reached: would the populace, irritated by refusal, carry either of the bars with a rush?

  Fortunately all passed off smoothly. The king came to his senses, and the taboo was re-imposed. Quiet was restored, and only just in time, for a day or two later a large body of rather turbulent natives arrived from the next island for a dance competition, quite ready to profit by any political trouble.

  The danger having been averted, the party lived at peace in the house of Maka, the Hawaiian missionary, one of the most lovable of men. They saw the dances, they gave exhibitions of their magic lantern, and as all pictures were supposed to be photographs, and photographs could only be taken from actual scenes, their slides of Bible history brought about a distinct religious reaction among the people. They made friends with various natives, but the end of their stay was by comparison tame and dull, and after about a month the Equator returned and carried them away.

  The terms of the elaborate charter party were entirely disregarded. The captain from the beginning acted as though the vessel were Stevenson’s yacht, and went or stayed according to the wishes of his passenger. Stevenson, on his part, took a keen interest in the ship’s fortunes, and was as eager to secure copra as any one on board. The captain acted as showman of the group. “ I remember once,” says Mr. Osbourne, “ that he banged the deck with a marlinspike and called below to Louis: ‘Come on deck, quick, Kaupoi; here’s the murderer and the poisoner I told you of, coming off in a boat.’“ It was Stevenson’s fate in the Pacific, at the times when he was most anxious about his finances, to be regarded by the natives as the wealthiest of men, and addressed accordingly. Thus “ Kaupoi “ in the Gilberts and “Ona” in Samoa are equivalent to “Dives,” or “Richie,” as Stevenson himself used to render it. “Ona,” by the way, is not a genuine Samoan word, but” owner,” the wealthy and powerful person whom even ship-captains obey.

  They visited the island of Nonuti, and were then continuing on a southward course, when the wind veered and they made for Apemama, a large island ruled by the despot Tembinok’, who allowed no white man in his kingdom. As an exceptional favour, however, granted only after a long inspection of the party and two days devoted to consideration, Stevenson and his family were admitted as the special guests of the king. He cleared a site for them, pitched four houses upon it for their accommodation, and tabooed with a death penalty their well and their enclosure against all his subjects. The settlement was begun to the discharge of a rifle; the cook who was lent to the Steven- sons, and was guilty of gross misbehaviour, received six shots from the king’s Winchester over his head, at his feet, and on either side of him; and though no life was actually taken while the white men were on the island, yet the power of life and death in the king’s hands was plainly shown to be no obsolete prerogative.

  In Apemama the party spent a couple of months in daily intercourse with this very remarkable personage, with whom they entered into close relations of friendship. Of all the chiefs Stevenson knew in the Pacific, Ori, the Tahitian, was probably the one for whom he had most affection; Mataafa, in Samoa, probably he most respected; but Tembinok’ was unquestionably the strongest character, and the man who interested him the most. Who that has read the South Sea chapters has forgotten his appearance?

  “A beaked profile like Dante’s in the mask, a mane of long black hair, the eye brilliant, imperious, and inquiring; for certain parts in the theatre, and to one who could have used it, the face was a fortune. His voice matched it well, being shrill, powerful, and uncanny, with a note like a sea-bird’s. Where there are no fashions, none to set them, few to follow them if they were set, and none to criticise, he dresses — as Sir Charles Grandison lived — ’to his own heart.’ Now he wears a woman’s frock, now a naval uniform, now (and more usually) figures in a masquerade costume o
f his own design — trousers and a singular jacket with shirt-tails, the cut and fit wonderful for island workmanship, the material always handsome, sometimes green velvet, sometimes cardinal-red silk. This masquerade becomes him admirably. I see him now come pacing towards me in the cruel sun, solitary, a figure out of Hoffmann.”1

  In spite of this grotesque disguise, there was nothing ridiculous about the man. He had been a fighter and a conqueror, “the Napoleon” of his group; he was, besides, a poet, a collector, the sole trader and man of business, and a shrewd judge of mankind. Having admitted the missionaries to his island, he had learned to read and write; having found the missionaries interfering, as he thought, with his trade and his government, without hesitation he had banished them from his domains.

  For the account of this unique society, this masterful sway, I must refer the reader to the seventy pages of Stevenson’s own description, which were the part of his diary least disappointing to himself. It could hardly 1 In tit Souti Seas, p. 310. be told in fewer words, and extracts can do it no justice. It is the more valuable in that it represents a state of things which is gone for ever. Only four years later, when I visited the island, all was changed. Tembinok’ was dead, the Gilbert Islands had been annexed by Great Britain, and a boy was king under the direction of a British Resident. How severe the old discipline had been was proclaimed by a large “ speak-house” at Tuagana, some two hours’ sail down the coast, where all round the interior of the house, at the end of the roof-beams, there had been a set of eight-and-forty human skulls, of which nearly twenty were still remaining. The house had been built by Tembinok”s father, and the heads were those of malefactors, both white and native, or, at all events, of people who had caused displeasure to the king. The Stevensons had never heard of the existence of this place from Tembinok’, though his father’s grave was here, and here also were lying the two finest sea-going canoes in all the island.

  But for the history of Tembir.ok’, and for Stevenson’s experience — how he was mesmerised for a cold by a native wizard, and how, with many searchings of conscience, he bought for Mr. Andrew Lang the devil- box of Apemama, the reader must go — and will thank me for sending him — to Stevenson’s own pages. I will quote here only the king’s leave-taking of his guest, and the impression which Stevenson had produced upon this wild, stern, and original nature: —

  “As the time approached for our departure Tembinok’ became greatly changed; a softer, more melancholy, and, in particular, a more confidential man appeared in his stead. To my wife he contrived laboriously to ex- plain that though he knew he must lose his father in the course of nature, he had not minded nor realised it till the moment came; and that now he was to lose us, he repeated the experience. We showed fireworks one evening on the terrace. It was a heavy business; the sense of separation was in all our minds, and the talk languished. The king was specially affected, sat disconsolate on his mat, and often sighed. Of a sudden one of the wives stepped forth from a cluster, came and kissed him in silence, and silently went again. It was just such a caress as we might give to a disconsolate child, and the king received it with a child’s simplicity. Presently after we said good-night and withdrew; but Tembinok’ detained Mr. Osbourne, patting the mat by his side and saying: ‘ Sit down. I feel bad, I like talk.’ ‘ You like some beer? ‘ said he; and one of the wives produced a bottle. The king did not partake, but sat sighing and smoking a meerschaum pipe. ‘I very sorry you go,’ he said at last. ‘ Miss Stlevens he good man, woman he good man, boy he good man; all good man. Woman he smart all the same man. My woman,’ glancing towards his wives, ‘ he good woman, no very smart. I think Miss Stlevens he big chiep all the same cap’n man-o’-wa’. 1 think Miss Stlevens he rich man all the same me. All go schoona. I very sorry. My patha he go, my uncle he go, my cutcheons he go, Miss Stlevens he go: all go. You no see king cry before. King all the same man: feel bad, he cry. I very sorry.’

  “In the morning it was the common topic in the village that the king had wept. To me he said: ‘Last night I no can ‘peak: too much here,’ laying his hand upon his bosom. ‘ Now you go away all the same my 11 97

  pamily. My brothers, my uncle go away. All the same.’ This was said with a dejection almost passionate. . . . The same day he sent me a present of two corselets, made in the island fashion of plaited fibre, heavy and strong. One had been worn by his grandfather, one by his father, and, the gift being gratefully received, he sent me, on the return of his messengers, a third — that of his uncle. . . .

  “The king took us on board in his own gig, dressed for the occasion in the naval uniform. He had little to say, he refused refreshments, shook us briefly by the hand, and went ashore again. That night the palmtops of Apemama had dipped behind the sea, and the schooner sailed solitary under the stars.”1

  The remainder of Stevenson’s notes on the Gilberts relate chiefly to the white, or, at any rate, the alien population of the group, which at that date was naturally a sort of No Man’s Land — one of the last refuges for the scoundrels of the Pacific. Not that all the traders by any means were black sheep; some of them and some of the captains and mates working in those waters were decent fellows enough, but among them were thieves, murderers, and worse, patriots who showed an uncommon alacrity in changing their nationality when any man-of-war of their own government happened to come their way. When the Gilberts were finally annexed in 1892, a labour vessel took a shipload of these gentry on board, bound for a South American republic, which, fortunately for that State, they never reached — the vessel being lost at sea with all hands.

  1 In tie South Seas, p. 378. Of the stories that were then current Stevenson collected a number, and had he been a realist, his readers might have been depressed through many volumes by the gloom and squalor of these tragedies; as it was, he utilised only a little of what he had actually seen as material for the darker shadows in the romantic and spirited Beach of Falesd.

  After returning to Butaritari, the Equator, with Stevenson and his party on board, left for Samoa. The trip was tedious but for the excitement of running by night between the three different positions assigned by the charts to a reef which possibly had no real existence. There were the usual squalls, in one of which, during the night, the safety of the ship depended entirely on the cutting of a rope. The foretopmast snapped across and the foresail downhaul fouled in the wreckage, but Ah Fu climbed to the top of the galley with his knife, and the position was saved. Next morning, however, the signal halyard had disappeared, nor was its loss accounted for until several weeks afterwards, when the Chinaman presented his mistress with a neat coil of the best quality of rope. He had once heard her admiring it, and took occasion of the squall and extremity of danger to procure it for her as a present.

  The schooner arrived about the 7th of December at Apia, the capital and port of Upolu, the chief of the group known collectively as Samoa1 or the Navigator 1 The first two syllables are long: Sa-moa; similarly Vai-lima; but Fale-sa. The first A in A-pia is shorter, but the vowel-sounds throughout are as in Italian. The consonants are as in English, but g = ng. Thus Pagopago is pronounced Pangopango. &

  Islands, which Stevenson now saw for the first time, and which he had every intention of leaving finally within two months of his arrival.

  The Equator’s charter now came to an end. Hiring a cottage in the hamlet a mile above the town, Stevenson began to collect the material necessary for those chapters which should be allotted to Samoa in his book upon the South Seas. This obtained, he proposed to start at once for Sydney, and thence proceed to England.

  The Samoan record, as he anticipated from the outset, would deal chiefly with the history of the recent war, and for this he engaged in a most painstaking and — so far as I can judge — most successful judicial investigation into the actual facts and the course of events within the last few years. It is difficult for any one who has not lived hard by a South Sea “ Beach “ to realise how contradictory and how elusive are its rumours, and how widely remov
ed from anything of the nature of “ evidence.” But into this confused mass Stevenson plunged, making inquiries of every one to whose statements he could attach any importance, American or English or German (my order is alphabetical), and invoking the aid of interpreters for native sources of information. He weighed and sifted his information with the greatest care, and I have never heard any of the main results contested which were embodied in A Foot-note to History.

  For the sake of this work he lived chiefly in Apia,1 at the house of an American trader, Mr. H. J. Moors. He 1 For convenience I have spoken throughout of the whole town as Apia, though the name is in strict usage limited to one of its four districts.

  made the acquaintance of Colonel de Coetlogon, the English consul, with whom he maintained the most friendly terms, who had been with Gordon in Khartoum; of Dr. Stuebel, the German Consul-General, perhaps the ablest and most enlightened, and certainly not the least honourable diplomatist that the Great Powers ever sent to the South Seas; of the Rev. W. E. Clarke and other members of the London Mission, his warm friends then and in later days; and especially of the high chief Mataafa, who impressed him at once as the finest of the Samoans.

  It was the only time Stevenson ever lived in Apia or its immediate suburbs, and a few words in passing should be devoted to the Beach with which now, more than at any time, he was brought into contact. This term, common to other South Sea islands, comprises, as I understand, every white resident in a place who has not some position that can be definitely described: in the last instance it denotes the mere beach-combers, loafers or mean whites, although most people would include in it all persons of markedly less consideration than themselves. There was much kindliness and generosity even among the lowest, and not more want of energy or of scruple than might have been expected. There was also a genial readiness to believe rumours, balanced by a willingness to think no worse of the persons against whom they were told. It might have been described as a society for investigation but not for promulgation of the truth. The number of white or half-caste residents in Apia was supposed to be about three hundred, of whom about two-thirds were British subjects, the bulk of the remainder being Germans.