The Last Bookaneer

by Matthew Pearl

  I knew these were the feared and famed runaways—men and boys like Nobolo—escaped from the plantations of the Firm. To challenge this posse would be suicide.

  I was marched into a different part of the woods and made to stand for what might have been hours, until my knees were about to buckle. A newcomer, who carried an ornate spear, seemed to be the group’s leader. His bleached hair glowed with light even in the absence of sun. I went quietly in defeat as I was forced onward. In sight came a small village of mud huts with brown grass roofs that were barely distinguishable from their surroundings. Another white man, wrists tied behind his back, was pushed into our path.

  “Hines!”

  His face, streaked with mud, turned toward me with an expression of horror. “How on earth do you know me? Who are you?”

  I realized only then how the time surviving in the mountains and wilderness must have changed me. I had lost twelve or fifteen pounds, my face was drawn and haggard, my skin as darkened by sun and dirt as a shriveled Egyptian mummy. “Edgar Fergins. From our passage together on the man-of-war. How did you get here?”

  “I was on one of my excursions to negotiate a deal for land, until these black devils grabbed me. Why, you’re the blasted bookworm!”

  “I cannot understand you, Hines. You risk your life in order to try to trick natives into selling or trading for land?”

  “Of course you can’t understand! You have a damned poor brain for business. The Firm will pay through the clouds for those lands once they’ve gotten this whole place under their fist.”

  “I suppose you put up a fight, which is why they tied you.”

  “You’d better try to do the same. Savvy? We’re both about to be stewed, chopped, and cooked by these flesh eaters unless we do something, you damn fool!”

  “Rope or not, we’d have no chance by fighting,” I replied.

  “You keen on becoming dinner, is that it?”

  I gave a little shrug of contempt to my adversary from the Colossus. There had been no sign of Vao. Even if she had seen what happened to me, she would be powerless against this ferocious group. I had one prayer left: that Nobolo had reached the cannibal village by now and would see me and protect me. But my heart sank again as we were steered ahead and I could make out a pair of the runaways digging in the ground. A fire nearby suggested this was their current camp. There was a body next to them. The body of my former companion.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” Hines could sense my grief and fear.

  I ran ahead and flung myself down at the side of the body, cradling the head and hair I had so recently trimmed with my own hands. Nobolo had a hole in his chest, in his heart. I was dragged away, now my wrists tied, before being brought back to the procession.

  “They’re out for blood,” I said to Hines, recovering my composure long enough to explain.

  “What?”

  “The Germans shot down one of the runaways from their labor farm,” I said. “Back there. His name is Nobolo.”

  “How could you possibly know the name of one of these cockroaches? Anyway, one less black pig to contend with.”

  “It didn’t make sense that the runaways would stray from their encampment where they are safe,” I said with a burst of realization, ignoring his crudeness. “They must have sent their men out to look for who could have killed Nobolo.”

  “You mean they captured us because they think we did that? That we killed their friend?” Hines asked, gasping in horror.

  I didn’t bother to give him an answer, but the obvious one occurred to me: Why shouldn’t they? For all the runaways knew, this wretched merchant and I were among those nameless white overseers who kidnapped their people from distant island tribes, enslaved them, hunted down those who dared run as examples to the rest. I fought the onslaught of emotions, of fear and anger at these dark strangers, but the anger didn’t hold. Why should they show any mercy to white men, who had shown them nothing like it?

  Behind the large open fire were more mud huts. Two men, older than the others, sat there and warmed up some bowls, the same kind of “brain bowls” displayed in the Stevensons’ library. Hines sobbed and his whole body became slack as he sloppily panted for air and babbled.

  “I saw them,” he shouted, turning his anger toward me. “Your spectacles.”

  “What are you going on about?”

  “At Vailima. On the frigate you acted like you knew nothing about Stevenson, but a man doesn’t simply walk up to Vailima and let himself in the front door. You hid something from me. You and that somber friend of yours, you came here for some mischief. Didn’t you? You’d better get me out of this situation or I’ll see to it that everyone here and in England knows you are a sneak and a blackguard! I’ll ruin you! Savvy?”

  “I suppose you think I would allow that,” I said tersely.

  “What the devil would a blasted bookworm do about it?”

  When we reached the destination, the sound of hoof falls perked up all of us, islanders and whites alike. A horse broke through the indistinct shapes of the forest. Vao sat atop.

  “We’ve been found.” Hines began to laugh with the same touch of mania as his sobbing. “Saved. We’re saved, bookworm, old boy, our hides are saved! Over here!”

  He was screaming. I could see the runaways become tense with anticipation. “Hines, be quiet!”

  He was hollering now, losing control. “Kill these damn darkies, in the name of God! Kill every last savage!”

  I watched as the fool’s mouth creaked open but this time no more sounds emerged, just a stream of dark red. A spear pierced through his throat, the runaway who had thrust it in waiting a moment before withdrawing it. Hines collapsed without another sound and I watched the life wriggle out of him, knowing I was next. Two of the fast-moving cannibals pulled the merchant’s body away by the ankles and though I could not see, I heard the moist crashes of the axes as they hacked through flesh. I averted my eyes and cried out for mercy for myself. I had a thought: They want to make an example, to warn whomever comes to stay away.

  Terror overcame me. I tried not to see, not to look at the freshly cut head as it was placed upright on the same bloodied spear that had felled the man. Yet, I admit, when I recall these events, though I am still filled with utter revulsion, I never did pause to mourn my former tormenter. We are born to be susceptible to savagery when we have nothing else.

  The hoof falls grew closer. The runaways still seemed startled by the appearance of the beautiful Samoan atop the horse, but regained their senses and began to approach with weapons readied to take her. She would be no match.

  “Don’t fight them, Vao,” I shouted.

  Next came more sounds of horses and a larger steed, Stevenson sitting tall, followed by John Chinaman and two of the best native warriors from Vailima, Sao and Laefoele. The latter two had faces painted for war, with black streaks under the eyes and across their cheeks. But the newcomers all appeared either unarmed or only lightly armed, and would be easily overtaken.

  “Vao, get them all away!” I called out. “Ride now and save yourselves! Ride, Tusitala!” I cried out my admonitions again and again at the top of my lungs until my captors muzzled me.

  “Tusitala” was repeated and murmured around the makeshift village of runaways. Soon, the hand across my mouth came free. The light-haired cannibal leader moved to the front, his eyes bright, and repeated, forcefully, that one word, which in his mouth became a wish, a demand: Tusitala!

  Stevenson remained in the saddle on Jack and began speaking the runaways’ language. He spoke fluently and, as it seemed to my ears, eloquently.

  I watched the watchers held spellbound. In that tide of words that I could not recognize or understand, I saw Stevenson, perhaps for the first time, as the natives had seen him all along. Not as a writer, not as author or novelist. Tusitala: the teller of tales. I could finally believe in that Tu
sitala, as though I had received from above the brief and radiant gift to believe in a prophet or oracle. I understood, too, what kept Tusitala here. In the South Seas, in this land unencumbered by the powerful and suffocating printed page, the novelist had not forsaken what he had once been; he had finally become himself, even if it cost him everything else he’d ever had.

  After Stevenson finished, the cannibals untied me and pushed me into the circle of my rescuers.

  “Let us return to Vailima,” Stevenson said.

  John Chinaman came over, his tanned face appearing flushed in the torchlight. He lifted his bandana and wiped his forehead. Though he was speaking Chinese, it became clear by his gestures that he objected to the idea of me coming back with them. Stevenson’s eyes caught mine for a moment.

  “He has been officially ruled a free man when released from jail,” Stevenson reminded his attendant. But after another round of argument from the usually obedient fellow, Stevenson relented: “Very well. Then he will not come back with us. Take him to Apia, John, but from there he may do as he’d like. He is not a prisoner of ours or the island’s. Vao,” he said, turning to her and frowning, “no more adventures of vengeance for you. The war clouds are moving over the island fast, and a bloody battle is expected any day. You are to come back home with us.”

  “Tusitala,” she said, bowing her head and seeming to be a much younger girl again.

  “Tusitala,” I called out to him, knowing it could be my last time ever speaking with him. “What was it you said to the cannibals?”

  “Do you think a man jogging to his club in London has so much to interest him? Can you still not conceive of why this place is awful fun?” Stevenson remarked as he looked around the dark, unforgiving woods, holding up his long fingers to the sky. He came around to answering my question. “I told them a yarn about you, Mr. Fergins.”

  No answer could have surprised me more. “Me?”

  “Yes, about you and Mr. Davenport, and your expedition, and imprisonment, and the machinations of Belial.”

  “But they wouldn’t know the first thing about such matters.”

  “Of course, you are right, they do not care about Davenport, or you, or me for that matter. Do they care how many novels I have published, how many pages written, or how many copies sold or stolen by literary pirates? No, they would have heard about me as they hear of the various spirits and demons of the island. Would they care about Belial the high and mighty bookaneer? Would they care whether Davenport ever achieved the pinnacle of his calling? No, you are right, they would not. But they would understand—deep in their veins—the desire for your revenge against a man who took something away that you believed belonged to you. To tell a story of vengeance that is yet to be satisfied is to forge a connection with them, to bring to boil what simmers always in their blood, and to draw them into your sphere, which would otherwise be a foreign and unknowable thing. Do you know why they eat other men? They eat other men because they believe the spirits of their enemies occupy them, and it is the only way to chase those away—but if they think they begin to understand you, they will not eat you. Usually.” The last word was added with a deep but hoarse tone, a primeval growl I only ever heard in my life from Robert Louis Stevenson.

  XVI

  The Chinese servant was a brisk, controlled rider. The passage to the beach felt even longer than it was because of the distrust and anger I could sense from him as I sat behind him in the saddle. Though the island had altered his dress and even the tint of his skin, there was something about the way he rode that remained different than that of the natives and Europeans—something that harkened to faraway lands.

  Lloyd Osbourne traveled alongside us on his horse and treated the ride as he seemed to treat everything he did—half pleasure and half inconvenience. We slowed down several times to wait for him to catch up, each halt accompanied by a snort from John that mixed with those of the impatient animal beneath our hips.

  Other things weighed down my mind despite the reprieve from the cannibals delivered by Stevenson: Nobolo’s murder, the horrific sight and sounds of Hines’s brutal demise, the abrupt loss of Vao’s companionship, Davenport’s imprisonment, the lost hope of ever finding Belial.

  The final time the horses took on water, we were perched on a hill overlooking the village of Apia. It was dawn on a foggy morning. We saw a troop of natives with tall headdresses, their faces covered in black war paint, while from somewhere in the bush, war drums pounded.

  “Is it true that if war comes, this time the whites will all be killed?” I asked.

  “Hopefully not, selfishly speaking,” Lloyd said, after thinking about it for a moment.

  There were sounds of another approaching party below. John removed a spyglass and, extending it, watched with interest before passing the lens to Lloyd. I asked if I could have a look and was given the instrument by Lloyd, whose smile seemed to bear no grudges about what had happened in Vailima. I removed my spectacles and pressed my eye against the instrument. I could make out a group of two dozen Chinese men marched across a road by armed natives. They were not chained, but were being kept in a controlled formation. Two Europeans headed the group. John began to roll a fresh smoke in the style of Stevenson, as though dangling a reminder over me that he remained part of Vailima while my place had been permanently forfeited. I studied his reaction to the strange vision below.

  “Wherever there are merchants, there are men in chains, metaphorical or otherwise,” Lloyd philosophized, modifying one of Stevenson’s axioms about arms and ammunition. “Aphorism: Lloyd Osbourne.”

  John could see I was waiting for his thoughts.

  He turned toward me, his usual look of harsh scrutiny softened. It is hard to represent for you the broken and frustrated way he spoke in English, for anything more than a few words was obviously a great effort for him, and a challenge to understand. In fact, it made me feel honored that he used so much energy to address me. He explained that when he was eight years old he was sold to a French merchant, and brought to the Marquesas Islands as a plantation slave. He was later forced to be a soldier in the civil wars there. He continued: One day, he escaped his enslavement in a rickety boat and would have drowned if he had not been picked up by the ship Stevenson sailed in. “He ask me if I wished to be cook. I offer my services as servant for life.”

  “In return for rescuing you?”

  “Tusitala not rescue me. He was just passenger. No, not for rescue. He did not order, did not try to purchase or demand. He asked me, with . . .” He bobbed his head and ground his teeth together until he found the right word. “Respect. I am called John Chinaman so that real name not heard-over and repeated to someone who might encounter my former master. Heard-over by traders like men there.” He gestured toward the party in the valley below us sloping into the village. “Tusitala remarkable man. Man dedicate himself to write is a man of courage because he rely on his mind, nothing more. That you not understand.”

  “Those men,” I replied, spurred to a new thought. “The Chinese ones being moved. Have they been sold into labor here?”

  “No, not likely,” Lloyd chimed in. “The Germans do not like having such light-skinned men perform their labor for them. They would have been brought from one of the outer islands, and probably taken here only for transport from our harbor to another island, or perhaps to America for railroad work. What do you make of that?”

  I rose to my feet from the rocks where we were sitting.

  “What is it?” Lloyd asked me, noticing a change had come over me.

  “The harbor.”

  Those men, I knew, must have been on their way to some kind of vessel, and one big enough to take them all together and to travel far. Chinese laborers would not be transported on a man-of-war, which meant it had to be a merchant ship. We had heard of one coming in with the mails. If it was ready to sail now, Belial already would be on it. I was certain of it. I woul
d be on it, too.

  • • •

  THE HASTILY CONSTRUCTED BERTHS on the lower deck of a merchant vessel are not made with the comfort of man (or beast) in mind. They represent a calculation of maximum profit, in this case for human chattel. How I longed for that humble berth on the Colossus that once seemed to me a coffin.

  A formless mattress, spitting out the shavings with which it was stuffed, fitted into a kind of netted hammock that was attached to two hooks in the beams of the ceiling. A small box nailed to the floor in which to keep belongings, with the end of my misshapen umbrella hooked to it. That was all. My so-called bed swayed with every awful motion of the ship. There were four other men in my berth, Chinese members of the group we had observed on our way to the beach. We each had a pot, spoon, and a cup that we kept in our respective boxes and brought with us to the mess for our mealtime rations, though our stomachs were usually too unwell for eating, for they rolled and pitched as much as the vessel. The Chinese passengers may have been just as miserable and sick, but at least they could converse with each other about it.

  I have seen you cast your eyes on my coat rack, Mr. Clover, remembering I had parted with my umbrella under desperate circumstances and wondering how it appears here in New York and, in my narrative, on the merchant vessel. I will explain. Shortly before the vessel launched, I heard cries of “White Chief! White Chief!” There was the unexpected sight of a Samoan waving around my umbrella and running toward the ship. He explained to me that the chief of the village where I had traded the thing had been informed by an elder that the umbrella was an object of bad luck, due to its stripes, or perhaps its bloodstains, I could not make out the reason. The chief had ordered that I be found because according to the superstitions of this particular village, a talisman of ill fortune could not simply be discarded; it had to be reunited with its original owner. Much frantic searching ensued until this representative of the tribe discovered me on the beach hurriedly preparing for my passage. It was a relief to them and a small stroke of luck for me, as I now opened and closed its ribs to create a bit of breeze when I felt I was suffocating belowdecks. When you are reduced to nothing, you make use of everything.