Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

by Robert Louis Stevenson

  But the time had come to start for Tahiti by a course lying through the Paumotusor Dangerous Archipelago, a group of numerous low islands, unlighted save for one or two pier-head lamps, and most inadequately laid down upon the chart.

  For this reason at Taiohae they had shipped a mate who knew those waters well. The much-travelled Japanese cook had been returned to his home, and his place taken by a genuine Chinaman. Ah Fu came to the Marquesas as a child and had grown up among the natives; he now followed the fortunes of his new masters with entire devotion for two years, until the claims of his family were asserted and took him home reluctantly to China.1

  1 Mrs. Stevenson writes: “ In fact it broke his heart to go. Ah Fu had as strong a sense of romance as Louis himself. He returned to China with a belt of gold round his waist, a ninety-dollar breechloader given him by Louis, and a boxful of belongings. His intention was to leave these great riches with a member of the family who lived outside the village, dress himself in beggar’s rags, and go to his mother’s house to solicit alms. He would draw from her the account of the son who had been lost when he was a little child; at the psy- On September 4th the Casco sailed, and three days later, before sunset, the captain expected to sight the first of the Paumotus.

  It was not, however, till sunrise on the following morning that they saw land, and then it was not the island they had expected to make; in place of having been driven to the west, they had been swept by a current some thirty miles in the opposite direction. The first atoll was “flat as a plate in the sea, and spiked with palms of disproportioned altitude.” The next, seen some hours later, was “ lost in blue sea and sky: a ring of white beach, green underwood, and tossing palms, gem-like in colour; of a fairy, of a heavenly prettiness. The surf was all round it, white as snow, and broke at one point, far to seaward, on what seems an uncharted reef.”

  Night fell again, and found them amid a wilderness of reefs corresponding so little with the maps that the schooner must lie to and wait for the morning.

  The next day they ran on to Fakarava, and entered chological moment, when the poor lady was weeping, Ah Fu would cry out: ‘ Behold your son returned to you, not a beggar, as I appear, but a man of wealth!’ Ah Fu’s last speech to me was very unlike what one expects from a Chinaman. As well as I can recollect, he said: ‘ You think I no solly go way? I too much solly. My mother she forget me. You heart my mother. You my mother, not that woman. When boss go way to Molokai, you look see me? I no smile, no smile, allee time, work littee, go see ship come — work Iittee, go look see. Boss come, I make big feast. You go way, I no go look see ship; I no can, I no see, too much cly allee time in my eyes. You come, I smile, smile, no can make feast; my heart too muchee glad, no can cook.’”

  Then China reabsorbed him, and he v/as seen no more. the lagoon in safety. It was a typical low island, some eighty miles in circumference by a couple of hundred yards broad, chosen to be the headquarters of the government only on account of two excellent passages in the barrier reef, one of which was sure to be always available.

  In one respect they were fortunate: “ We were scarce well headed for the pass before all heads were craned over the rail. For the water, shoaling under our board, became changed in a moment to surprising hues of blue and grey; and in its transparency the coral branched and blossomed, and the fish of the inland sea cruised visibly below us, stained and striped, and even beaked like parrots. ... I have since entered, I suppose, some dozen atolls in different parts of the Pacific, and the experience has never been repeated. That exquisite hue and transparency of submarine day, and these shoals of rainbow fish, have not enraptured me again.”1

  A fortnight spent in Fakarava passed uneventfully away. There were few inhabitants left on the island, which was never very populous at any time. Stevenson lived ashore in a house among the palms, where he learned much of the natives and their customs and beliefs from the half-caste Vice-Resident, M. Donat.

  The chief wealth of the group lay in the beds of pearl- shell, but of this there was nothing to be seen at Fakarava. “In the lagoon was little pearl-shell, and there were many sharks. . . . There was no fishing, and it seemed unfit to leave the archipelago of pearls and have no sight of that romantic industry. On all other sides were isles, if I could only reach them, where 1 In the South Seas, . divers were at work; but Captain Otis properly enough refused to approach them with the Casco, and my attempts to hire another vessel failed. The last was upon Francois’ cutter, where she lay down-up from her late shipwreck. She might be compared for safety to a New York cat-boat fortified with a bowsprit and a jib; and as I studied her lines and spars, desire to sail in her upon the high seas departed from my mind. ‘Je le pensais bien,’ said Francois.”

  In the last week of September they left for Tahiti, and in two days were anchored safely at Papeete, the capital and port of entry of the Society group. Beautiful as all the high islands of the South Seas are, it is in Tahiti and its neighbours — the Otaheite of Captain Cook — that the extreme point of sublimity and luxuriance is reached. The vegetation is not less lovely, nor the streams and waterfalls less beautiful or less abundant than elsewhere, but the crags and pinnacles of the lofty mountains there are far more picturesque, and so abrupt that they are not smothered in the greenery which gives an appearance of tameness to other islands in the same latitudes.

  Stevenson and his wife lived ashore in a small house, where he prepared his correspondence for the outgoing mail. He was very unwell; he went nowhere, saw no one of any interest, native or foreign, and soon grew tired of Papeete. A cold caught at Fakarava increased, with access of fever and an alarming cough. He mended a little, but Papeete was not a success, so after a time the Casco, with a pilot on board, took the party round to Taravao, on the south side of the island. On this passage they were twice nearly lost. The first day they had a long beat off the lee-shore of the island of Eimeo; and the following day were suddenly becalmed, and began to drift towards the barrier reef of Tahiti. “The reefs were close in,” wrote Stevenson,1 “with, my eye! what a surf! The pilot thought we were gone, and the captain had a boat cleared, when a lucky squall came to our rescue. My wife, hearing the order given about the boats, remarked to my mother, ‘Is n’t that nice? We shall soon be ashore!’ Thus does the female mind unconsciously skirt along the verge of eternity.” Their danger was undoubtedly great, greater far than they suspected.

  The atmosphere at Taravao was close, and mosquitoes were numerous; by this time Stevenson was so ill that it was necessary, without a moment’s delay, to secure more healthy quarters. Accordingly his wife went ashore, and following a path, discovered the shanty of a Chinaman who owned a wagon and a pair of horses. These she hired to take them to Tautira, the nearest village of any size, a distance of sixteen miles over a road crossed by one-and-twenty streams. Stevenson was placed in the cart, and, sustained by small doses of coca, managed, with the help of his wife and Valentine, to reach his destination before he collapsed altogether. Being introduced at Tautira by the gendarme, they were asked an exorbitant rent for a suitable house, but they secured it, and there made the patient as comfortable as possible. The next day there arrived the Princess Moe, ex-Queen of Raiatea, one of the kindest and most charming of Tahitians, who lives in the pages of Pierre Loti and Miss Gordon Cumming. She had come to the village, and hearing there was a 1 Letters, ii. 137. white man very ill, she came over to the house. “ I feel that she saved Louis’ life,” writes Mrs. Stevenson. “He was lying in a deep stupor when she first saw him, suffering from congestion of the lungs and in a burning fever. As soon as he was well enough, she invited us to live with her in the house of Ori, the sub- chief of the village, and we gladly accepted her invitation.”

  Meanwhile, at Taravao, it was discovered that the schooner’s jib-boom was sprung; it was duly spliced, and when Stevenson was really better, the Casco came round to Tautira. Here a more startling discovery was made, and the party learned what their true position had been two or three weeks before. The
elder Mrs. Stevenson gave a feast on board to the women of Tautira, and one old lady offered up a prayer, asking that if anything were wrong with the masts it might be discovered in time. As soon as the guests were gone, the Yankee skipper, acting no doubt on the principle of keeping his powder dry, went aloft, and subjected the masts to a close examination. They were both almost eaten out with dry-rot. Had either of them gone by the board during the voyage in the Moorea channel, or off the reefs in any of the islands, nothing could have saved the Casco, even if her passengers and crew had escaped in one of the boats. It was now considered hardly safe for any one to remain on deck; but, with many reefs in her mainsail, the schooner was sent to Papeete, where the masts were patched up as far as was possible, no new spars of sufficient size being obtainable.

  The intended visit to the neighbouring islands of 73

  Huahine, Raiatea, and Borabora was abandoned, Stevenson and his party remaining at Tautira until the Casco should be ready to take them back to civilisation. His health again recovered, and he enjoyed the new conditions of life beyond words — scenery, climate, and company. Tautira was “ the most beautiful spot” and “its people the most amiable “ he had ever encountered. Except for the French gendarme and Pere Bruno, the priest, a Dutchman from Amsterdam who had forgotten his own language, the travellers had passed beyond the range of Europeans and lived in a Tahiti touched as little as might be by any foreign influence. They dwelt in one of the curious “bird-cage “ houses of the island, and were on the friendliest terms with all the village.

  Their host, Ori, was a perpetual delight to them all. “A Life-guardsman in appearance,” as Mr. Osbourne describes him, “six foot three in bare feet; deep and broad in proportion; unconsciously English to an absurd extent; feared, respected, and loved.”

  It was one of the happiest periods in the exile’s life, and perhaps in consequence his “journal,” an irregularly kept notebook, was dropped, never to be resumed. And so it happens that to this passage in his life he never returned, pen in hand, and of it he has left no other record than one or two pages in his correspondence.

  He “actually went sea-bathing almost every day”; he collected songs and legends, materials for the great book; he began to work once more at his novel, The Master of Ballantrae, and “almost finished” it. At Moe’s instance special exhibitions of the old songs and dances of Tahiti were given for him in the hall of assembly in Tautira. He was adopted into the clan of the Tevas, to which Ori belonged, and exchanged names with that chief, who thenceforward signed himself as “Rui,”1 Louis himself receiving also, in more formal fashion, the name of Teriitera.

  He now wrote the greater part of his two Polynesian ballads, The Feast of Famine, relating to the Marquesas, and The Song of Rahtro, a genuine legend of the Tevas. In the same days, however, his music brought him to write for the old Scots tune of “Wandering Willie “ that most pathetic cry of his exile —

  “Home no more home to me, whither must I wander?”

  almost the only complaint, even in a dramatic form, that he ever allowed himself to make.

  The repairs of the Casco took an unexpected time; the weather became bad, and a stormy sea and rivers in flood prevented any communication between Tautira and Papeete. The visitors used up all their money: Ori had taken charge of it for them and doled it out, a small piece at a time, until all was gone. Their supplies of food being exhausted, they were reduced to living on the bounty of the natives, and though Stevenson himself continued to eat sucking-pig with continual enjoyment, the others pined for a change. When time passed and no ship came, the whole country-side began to join in their anxiety. Each morning, as soon as the dawn lifted, a crowd ran to the beach, and the cry came back: “ E ita pahi! “ (No ship.)

  At last Ori took a party of young men in a whale- boat, although the weather was still bad, and went to Papeete to find out the cause of the delay. “When 1 I.e. Louis: there being no L in Tahitian. Ori left,’’ says Mrs. Stevenson, “ we besought him not to go, for we knew he was risking the lives of himself and his men. Then he was gone a week overtime, which made us heart-sick. He brought back the necessary money and a store of provisions, and a letter from the captain telling us when to look for him. Amongst the food was a basket of champagne. The next day we gave a commemoration dinner to Ori, when we produced the champagne. Ori drank his glass and announced it beyond excellence, a drink for chiefs. ‘ I shall drink it continually,’ he added, pouring out a fresh glass. ‘ What is the cost of it by the bottle?’ Louis told him, whereupon Ori solemnly replaced his full glass, saying, ‘ It is not fit that even kings should drink a wine so expensive!’ It took him days to recover from the shock.”

  At last the Casco was ready for sea, and on Christmas Day the party embarked for Honolulu. The farewell with Ori was heart-breaking, and all vowed never again to stay so long as two months in one place, or to form so deep and yet so brief a friendship.

  They sighted the outlying Paumotus and the mail schooner, and after that their voyage was without other incident than squalls and calms. For a while they skirted hurricane weather, though nothing came, of it; but between calms and contrary winds their progress was slow, and they nearly ran out of provisions. “ We were nearly a week hanging about the Hawaiian group,” says Mr. Osbourne, “ drifting here and there with different faint slants of wind. We had little luxuries kept back for our farewell dinner — which took place at least three times with a diminishing splendour that finally struck bottom on salt horse. It was a strange experience to see the distant lights of Honolulu, and then go to bed hungry; to rise again in the morning and find ourselves, not nearer, but further off. When at last the weather altered and we got our wind, it was a snoring Trade, and we ran into the harbour like a steamboat. It was a dramatic entry for the overdue and much-talked-of Casco, flashing past the buoys and men-of-war, with the pilot in a panic of alarm. If the Casco ever did thirteen knots, she did it then.”

  Arrived at Honolulu they found that their safety had been despaired of by all, including even Mrs. Stevenson’s daughter, Mrs. Strong, who was then living there with her husband and child.

  Of the capital city of the Hawaiian kingdom it is difficult to give any true impression, so curious in those days was the mixture of native life and civilisation. To any one coming from the islands it seemed a purely American city — not of the second or even of the third rank, modified only by its position in the verge of the tropics; for any one who entered these latitudes and saw a native population for the first time, it must have been picturesque and exotic beyond words.

  Stevenson sent the yacht back to San Francisco, and took a house at Waikiki, some four miles from Honolulu along the coast. Here he took up his abode in a lanai — a sort of large pavilion, off which the bedrooms opened, built on native lines, and provided only with jalousied shutters; and here he settled down in earnest to finish The Master of Ball antrae— “the hardest job I ever had to do “ — already running in Scrihnefs Magazine, and to be completed within a given time. He did not end his task till May—” The Master is finished, and I am quite a wreck and do not care for literature “ — for it went against the grain, with the result that the Canadian scenes have the effect rather of a hasty expedient than of the deliberate climax of the plot.1 So careful was Stevenson in his workmanship, and so accurate in his knowledge of Scotland, that it is curious to find him stumbling at the very outset of his tale, and giving an impossible title to his hero, for by invariable Scottish usage James Durie would have been “ Master of Durrisdeer” and not “of Ballantrae.” Stevenson was afterwards aware of the slip, but had fancied that there were instances to the contrary. However, his cousin, Sir James Balfour Paul, Lyon King-at-Arms, tells me that he can find “no exact precedent for the eldest son of a baron assuming a title as Master differing in name from that which his father bore.”2

  But this was a point of mere antiquarian detail, which in no way interfered with the appreciation of his read-

  1 Compare vol. ii. .r />
  2 The only other slip in reference to Scotland which, so far as I am aware, has been found in Stevenson’s works, is the statement that Gaelic was still spoken in Fife as late as the middle of the eighteenth century (Catriona, ; Letters, ii. 248). This was based on a statement of Burt to the effect that the families of Fife, when their sons went to the Lowlands as apprentices, made it a condition in the indentures of apprenticeship that they should be taught English. Sheriff /Eneas Mackay, the chief historical authority on Fife, very kindly informs me that he doubts the fact and the authority of Burt, and after adducing various evidence against the possibility of this survival, concludes: “The Ochils bordered on the Celtic line, and 1 should not like to affirm that Gaelic may not have lingered there till the sixteenth century. I don’t think it did later, or that it was habitually spoken after the twelfth or thirteenth century.” ers; and when the story was finally published in the autumn, it was at once recognised on all hands as the sternest and loftiest note of tragedy which its author had yet delivered. “I ‘m not strong enough to stand writing of that kind,” said Sir Henry Yule, on his deathbed, to Mr. Crockett, who had been reading it to him; “it’s grim as the road to Lucknow.”

  In the meantime, though Stevenson was constantly unwell, even his want of health at the worst of these times was very different from his invalid life at Bournemouth. He retired with his wife to a small and less draughty cottage about a hundred yards from the lanai, and there continued his work as before.