Orphan Island

by Rose Macaulay

  But the effects of missionary enterprise on Pacific islanders did not really interest him, and he merely said, “Look! I should think that would be a tropic-bird.”

  William, who was standing near, produced his bird-glasses and said no, it would, on the other hand, be a frigate-bird.

  “Both,” said Charles, who was superficial about birds, “have long tails,” and he strolled off to look at the turtles which Captain Paul had gathered on the beach at Natupa.

  Captain Paul walked up the deck to Rosamond, who was standing by the rail, gazing at the Pacific in a trance of joy. He liked her simplicity, her little round, yellow, bobbed head, and her happiness.

  “See the bonettas dancing, Miss Rosamond?” he said. “Down there—see—straight below us. Just beyond the foam. Gay little chaps, aren’t they?”

  Rosamond looked deep, deeper, down through blue-green waters, and saw the bonettas dancing. She nodded her head. She more often nodded than said yes. Much happiness made her more inarticulate, even, than usual.

  “Funny, silent little thing,” thought Captain Paul.

  “Albicores, too, see,” he said, jerking his pipe at the ocean.

  “Yes,” said Rosamond, and her gaze lost itself, fathoms deep, in green seas.

  Mr. Thinkwell strolled towards Mr. Merton, his glasses tilted on his peeling nose, his Panama hat pulled over his eyes, Hugo’s Russian in Three Months without a Master open in his hand, for he was a very industrious man, and would learn anything at any time, even Russian.

  “It is getting hotter,” he said. “The wind seems to have changed, and to be now blowing northwest.”

  After a little more conversation in this vein, Mr. Thinkwell mentioned Orphan Island.

  “The merest gamble, of course,” he said. “The chances of finding any European life there are, roughly speaking, about one in a hundred thousand.”

  “Nigger life,” said Mr. Merton, “is certainly more probable, if there should be life at all.”

  “There might be both,” Mr. Thinkwell suggested. “That,” he mused, “would be a curious event.”

  “Lot o’ half castes,” said the trader. “That’s what that would mean.”

  “You regard it, then, as quite impossible that the two strains should co-inhabit the island unmixed?”

  “Not for long,” said Mr. Merton. “Not likely.”

  “That would be a very interesting and remarkable contingency indeed,” Mr. Thinkwell said. “An island community of mixed race, like Pitcairn Island. What would be their standards and habits, I wonder?”

  “Nigger,” said Mr. Merton briefly. “Nigger always wins out. You’d find the women would sink, in one generation, to nigger notions of morality.”

  “The women, you think, more rapidly than the men?”

  “Oh, the men. … I was speaking of morality—female virtue.”

  “And what about male virtue?”

  “Honesty, you mean, and industry, and so forth. … Well, those qualities aren’t quite so quickly affected.”

  “I perceive,” said Mr. Thinkwell, “that you are one of those who think of virtue in the two sexes in different terms. An interesting state of mind, and one often to be met with, especially among persons rather of action than of thought. You can trace it back many thousands of years. …”

  “Now he’s back to primitive man,” thought Mr. Merton. He said, “As to thought, I’ve thought a bit in my time. You have to, in the islands. But it doesn’t get you much further. In my case, it only led to my having to chuck the preaching job. Too much thought isn’t healthy.”

  “A mind,” Mr. Thinkwell classified Mr. Merton in his thoughts, “neither relevant, logical, nor very sincere. He finds a difficulty in sticking to a point. He digresses. This is often one of the effects of continued intemperance.”

  He got back to practical matters, and they talked of the probability or otherwise of their striking the precise island required. Mr. Thinkwell was inclined, as a theorist, to hold that this depended wholly on the accuracy of the chart. Mr. Merton, as a person of action rather than thought, knew the affair to be more of a hazard than this.

  “Islands,” he said, “are chancey little devils. They lie doggo, saying nothing, just below the horizon, while you steam by. Other times, you’ll catch them napping—surprise them, so to speak. Chancey little devils.”

  “You surprise me,” said Mr. Thinkwell.

  But Rosamond, who was standing near with Captain Paul, peering through a spy-glass, was not surprised at all. Of course islands were like that; she had always known it.

  Suddenly, “An island,” cried Rosamond. “Oh… lots of islands.” Captain Paul agreed.

  “The Low Archipelago,” he said. “The Paumotu Group. Some of them lie pretty close together. We’re going to do some business there. You’ll have seen them before, on your voyage out—a day’s run from Tahiti.”

  “We passed them in the night,” said Mr. Thinkwell. “Nothing to be seen.”

  But now they were to be seen, in the clear, late afternoon light. Remote at first, the shadows of moths’ wings on transparent opal spaces; here one, there another, great pale widths between. Then, as the Typee approached, they took on substance and colour, and turned, before the voyagers’ eyes, into emerald green crescents or circles ringing or ringed with blue lagoons, like the coral islands of which one has always heard.

  Jewels, green enamelled jewels, painted like parrots’ wings, thought Charles.

  Captain Paul and Mr. Merton thought sailors’ and traders’ thoughts of navigation and of trade.

  Mr. Thinkwell thought, “It will be very interesting to see these island populations at close quarters.”

  William thought he could see gannets fishing on the beach, and tried to identify the vegetation that climbed back from the shores.

  But Rosamond merely thought, “Islands—coral islands. …”

  In the evening they anchored a quarter of a mile off one of the larger islands. The air they breathed became sweet with the smell of tropical plants and flowers. Mr. Thinkwell thought it was probably unwholesome, and recalled how sailors had sometimes swooned on first inhaling it. But no one on board the Typee swooned, or experienced any sensation but that of pleasure.

  Mr. Merton took a boat ashore, to negotiate with the local traders. The Thinkwell family came ashore too, and were very greatly entranced with what they saw, heard, and smelt upon the island.

  In the lagoon, the colour of still, clear flame in the sunset, brown men dived for pearls, watched by a Presbyterian missionary. This missionary cut Mr. Merton, for he did not care for him or think him a good man. So he did not join in the general rush to be in at the landing of the trader’s boat. Mr. Merton did a brisk trade with several natives and a Frenchman, and they returned to the Typee by moonlight with a cargo of copra, pearls, and oil.

  2

  The Low Archipelago group of islands stretches for over a thousand miles, and for over a week the Typee cruised among them, sometimes landing to trade, sometimes signalling so that any one who wished to do business could come out to the schooner. And out they came, in long canoes, loaded with copra and oil; white traders, brown Polynesians, giggling, goggle-eyed girls and grave men, the natives for the most part rummaging among the goods for exchange that were piled in the Typee’s hold, the white men taking payment in cash.

  Mr. Thinkwell, much interested, observed the habits, appearance, and speech of the native islanders. But it was, as he remarked, all pretty much as one had always been told. There are few discoveries possible now in Polynesia—unless one should be so fortunate as to come on a hitherto overlooked island.

  “Monotonous,” said Captain Paul, and yawned. “A monotonous life.”

  Rosamond felt sorry that he found it so; to her, she knew, it must be always otherwise, but she felt compassion for him, compelled to rove from island to island and buy things he did not really want from persons who bored him. Perhaps, as an officer and a gentleman, he had a feeling about trade. �
��

  Looking up, and finding her gray eyes inquiringly and compassionately upon his face, Captain Paul laughed and ventured for the first time to kiss her, for they were standing in the dark alone. Rosamond coloured a good deal, for she was not a kissing kind of girl and did not really enjoy it; it made her shy and awkward.

  “You darling baby,” said Captain Paul. “I suppose now you’re offended, and will tell papa.”

  “No,” said Rosamond. “I’m not offended. How could I be? And I shan’t tell father. He wouldn’t be interested. He’d only think it rather vulgar.”

  “Well, then,” said Captain Paul, “I may do it again, mayn’t I,” and did it again, and Rosamond coloured still more. Men were funny, she knew already. She meant by this that, whereas she had quite a strong and thrilling emotion for Captain Paul, but did not want to kiss him in the least, he had no feeling for her beyond a playful tenderness and yet did want to kiss her.

  “I would rather,” said Rosamond politely, “it didn’t happen often, if you don’t mind,” and he laughed again.

  Rosamond did not wish it to happen often, not because she agreed with her father that it was rather vulgar, for of vulgarity, refinement, and such qualities, she knew, in spite of having been reared in Cambridge, remarkably little, as little, almost, as some young non-human animal might be supposed to know; but she had no particular liking for the act of kissing, and felt also that, coming from Captain Paul to her, it was a step down on his part, unworthy, as it were, of a man of action and travel, whose heart should be all set on adventure. She preferred him to tell her stories of the sea.

  Chapter IV

  THE ARRIVAL

  THE voyage passed, like a strange and lovely dream. For days and nights they flew full-sail before the favouring trades; then, for days and nights again, they steamed against contrary winds.

  They passed the region of close-lying islands, and seemed alone on vast blue seas, then an island, or a group, would loom up on the horizon, and off they would make for it. Some islands they would leave alone, expecting no profitable business there; some were mere untenanted, lonely reefs, others had a reputation for fierce, or even cannibal inhabitants, and on these the Typee made no call.

  There came a morning when, according to the chart, they should be within a day and a night’s journey of Orphan Island. Mr. Thinkwell and Charles began to be excited and anxious, lest the chart should be at fault, or the whole affair a hoax. They had sceptical, excitable natures. William and Rosamond, more placid, were not anxious at all. Besides, Rosamond knew that the chart was quite accurate enough for its purpose and that her great grandfather had not hoaxed them. Always Rosamond believed everything; her nature was credulous.

  Rosamond, as we know, was right this time, and when they came on deck early in the pearly loveliness of the morning, what should they see through their glasses but, on the far horizon, a transparent shape that seemed like two islands joined by a thin neck of land.

  “That should be it,” said Captain Paul. “It’s the only island for two hundred miles.”

  Mr. Thinkwell was relieved and pleased. His grandfather, then, had guided them aright so far.

  “Now,” said Charles, loudly and firmly, “now I believe the whole story. Now I believe we shall find the island full of orphans and descendants of orphans.”

  “More likely,” said Mr. Merton, who was something of a pessimist, “that the whole crowd of ‘em perished right off, or were massacred by savages. Eaten,” he added, after a pause. “Eaten right up,” and he looked at Rosamond to see how she took that. But Rosamond, who had read such a very great deal of literature about persons who had been eaten right up, or had been in grave danger of being eaten but had escaped, was not in the least shocked by the thought. It seemed to her quite a natural, commonplace end. And, anyhow, she knew well that the orphans had not been eaten. Unless, indeed, the doctor and Miss Smith should have eaten them, when hard pressed for other food. Persons on islands, Rosamond had heard, develop strange tastes. They will eat raw fish sometimes. One may not judge them.

  Through the pearly morning the Typee drove before the west wind towards Orphan Island, which grew, moment by moment, less transparent, more coloured, till the voyagers could distinguish the line of reef that circled it, the glisten of white beach, the clustering woods. And then they saw houses. Not the white buildings that Europeans erect on other islands, but wooden dwellings of all sizes, thatched with palm, or little round-topped huts. Obviously habitations put up by people without building resources at command beyond what they could obtain from the woods. But people of intelligence; these were no savage dwellings. Both peninsulas of the island were dotted with them.

  It was now the hour of noon, and very warm and still. Orphan Island seemed to sleep. But, as the Typee neared its shores, life woke on it. Through their glasses the travellers saw tiny forms stirring, creeping out of the dwellings, gesticulating, pointing out to sea. Soon a crowd was gathered on the shore, showing every evidence of excitement.

  “Can you make them out yet?” Mr. Thinkwell inquired of Captain Paul. “Their colour, I mean?”

  After a pause and a long look the captain replied, “Whites. No doubt as to that, Mr. Thinkwell. They are surely a white colony, however they may have got there.”

  “One up to great-grandpapa,” said Charles. “This grows interesting. The veritable orphans … and their seed, apparently, is as the sands of the sea.”

  “I told you,” said William, “that there would be thousands of them, if any.”

  “Trade,” Mr. Merton murmured. “New ground. Pearls—who knows?”

  Mr. Thinkwell was firm. “No exploitation, if you please. No trade, even. I must see these people exactly as they are, as they have developed without outside influence.”

  “Well, it’s your show. Later, perhaps?”

  “Later, we shall see.”

  As they steamed nearer, they could see, through their glasses, the forms and faces of the crowd on the beach. Brown faces, freckled faces, red faces, sallow faces, white faces, rosy faces of children—unmistakable faces of white-skinned people who have been for long exposed to fierce suns. Bare brown legs and arms; but, except the small children, the Orphans were not naked; they wore garments of brown stuff which, said Mr. Merton, came from the palm tree, or of a lighter and finer material which might, the trader said, be made from bark. The ladies’ costumes were skirt-shaped, and fell to the knee, where they were tied in, like the Princess dresses of the eighteen-seventies; the gentlemen wore trousers, also only to the knee. Many of the ladies seemed also adorned with coloured feathers. This much the arrivals could plainly see as their schooner neared the island shores.

  They dropped anchor at a gap in the coral reef which was the entrance to the lagoon. Here they lowered a boat, in which the Thinkwells, Captain Paul, and Mr. Merton were rowed in.

  Strange it was, thought Charles, very lovely and strange, the voyage through that blue and glassy sea, where swam fish more brightly-hued than rainbows, more oddly shaped than Gothic devils, each dip of the oars carrying the boat nearer that land unvisited for close on seventy years. Strange and lovely and exciting to Charles, and like a poet’s dream; strange, exciting, and deeply interesting to Mr. Thinkwell, the sociologist; to William, the youth of science, natural enough, and a new field for exploration and investigation. And to Rosamond this and the whole voyage were like sailing out of an alien, irrelevant world of illusion into reality, to Rosamond it was like coming home. But, seeing so many persons gathered together, Rosamond felt them too many, preferring islands to be solitary. Would the Orphans be bored that they had come, breaking thus into the happy peace of seventy years? Oh, they did not look bored; excited they looked, and pleased and amazed, as they ran out into the lapping waves and helped to pull the boat ashore.

  When they were all got out, and stood in a group on the beach, surrounded by the population, there stepped forward a large, handsome, dignified man with sweeping chestnut whiskers (a fashion affec
ted by most of the elder gentlemen, though the majority of the younger were completely shaved) and addressed them with great politeness.

  “Good-day, my dear sirs. Good-day, madam. This is an unexpected and a quite unwonted pleasure. No one has called here for a prodigious great while. Very probably you are missionaries.”

  Chapter V

  ON THE BEACH

  “NOT at all,” said Mr. Thinkwell. “Not in the least. We are, in point of fact, a rescue party.” He paused on the phrase. Were they? Less and less, now he saw the size of this community, he thought so. Still, for the moment he let it pass at that. “We are,” he added, “a little delayed, I admit, but I can assure you that no time was lost after we were informed of your predicament.”

  “Our predicament. …” The word was perhaps outside the Orphan vocabulary (which must, after all, have been limited) for they repeated it, puzzled.

  “Your plight,” Mr. Thinkwell amended. “Your being, I mean, marooned upon this island, all those years ago.”

  “He is referring,” said a bright-faced young woman, languidly fanning herself with a palm fan, “to the beginning of our history, when our grandparents came over.”

  “Our parents,” corrected a man of about fifty.

  “Ourselves,” quavered a little hook-nosed old lady. “Eight years old, I was, and I recollect it as if it was yesterday. I recollect the shipwreck, and poor Anne-Marie that was drowned. I recollect——”

  “There’s plenty of us who recollect as well as you, Leah,” another old female voice interrupted. “Let the gentlemen talk.”