Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated)

by Robert Louis Stevenson

  He told this story as natural as could be, and like a man that enjoyed the fun; though, now I come to think of it after so long, it seems rather a sickening yarn. However, Case never set up to be soft, only to be square and hearty, and a man all round; and, to tell the truth, he puzzled me entirely.

  I went home and asked Uma if she were a Popey, which I had made out to be the native word for Catholics.

  “E le ai!” says she. She always used the native when she meant “no” more than usually strong, and, indeed, there’s more of it. “No good Popey,” she added.

  Then I asked her about Adams and the priest, and she told me much the same yarn in her own way. So that I was left not much farther on, but inclined, upon the whole, to think the bottom of the matter was the row about the sacrament, and the poisoning only talk.

  The next day was a Sunday, when there was no business to be looked for. Uma asked me in the morning if I was going to “pray”; I told her she bet not, and she stopped home herself with no more words. I thought this seemed unlike a native, and a native woman, and a woman that had new clothes to show off; however, it suited me to the ground, and I made the less of it. The queer thing was that I came next door to going to church after all, a thing I’m little likely to forget. I had turned out for a stroll, and heard the hymn tune up. You know how it is. If you hear folk singing, it seems to draw you; and pretty soon I found myself alongside the church. It was a little long low place, coral built, rounded off at both ends like a whale-boat, a big native roof on the top of it, windows without sashes and doorways without doors. I stuck my head into one of the windows, and the sight was so new to me — for things went quite different in the islands I was acquainted with — that I stayed and looked on. The congregation sat on the floor on mats, the women on one side, the men on the other, all rigged out to kill — the women with dresses and trade hats, the men in white jackets and shirts. The hymn was over; the pastor, a big buck Kanaka, was in the pulpit, preaching for his life; and by the way he wagged his hand, and worked his voice, and made his points, and seemed to argue with the folk, I made out he was a gun at the business. Well, he looked up suddenly and caught my eye, and I give you my word he staggered in the pulpit; his eyes bulged out of his head, his hand rose and pointed at me like as if against his will, and the sermon stopped right there.

  It isn’t a fine thing to say for yourself, but I ran away; and if the same kind of a shock was given me, I should run away again to-morrow. To see that palavering Kanaka struck all of a heap at the mere sight of me gave me a feeling as if the bottom had dropped out of the world. I went right home, and stayed there, and said nothing. You might think I would tell Uma, but that was against my system. You might have thought I would have gone over and consulted Case; but the truth was I was ashamed to speak of such a thing, I thought everyone would blurt out laughing in my face. So I held my tongue, and thought all the more; and the more I thought, the less I liked the business.

  By Monday night I got it clearly in my head I must be tabooed. A new store to stand open two days in a village and not a man or woman come to see the trade was past believing.

  “Uma,” said I, “I think I’m tabooed.”

  “I think so,” said she.

  I thought awhile whether I should ask her more, but it’s a bad idea to set natives up with any notion of consulting them, so I went to Case. It was dark, and he was sitting alone, as he did mostly, smoking on the stairs.

  “Case,” said I, “here’s a queer thing. I’m tabooed.”

  “O, fudge!” says he; “‘tain’t the practice in these islands.”

  “That may be, or it mayn’t,” said I. “It’s the practice where I was before. You can bet I know what it’s like; and I tell it you for a fact, I’m tabooed.”

  “Well,” said he, “what have you been doing?”

  “That’s what I want to find out,” said I.

  “O, you can’t be,” said he; “it ain’t possible. However, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Just to put your mind at rest, I’ll go round and find out for sure. Just you waltz in and talk to Papa.”

  “Thank you,” I said, “I’d rather stay right out here on the verandah. Your house is so close.”

  “I’ll call Papa out here, then,” says he.

  “My dear fellow,” I says, “I wish you wouldn’t. The fact is, I don’t take to Mr. Randall.”

  Case laughed, took a lantern from the store, and set out into the village. He was gone perhaps a quarter of an hour, and he looked mighty serious when he came back.

  “Well,” said he, clapping down the lantern on the verandah steps, “I would never have believed it. I don’t know where the impudence of these Kanakas ‘ll go next; they seem to have lost all idea of respect for whites. What we want is a man-of-war — a German, if we could — they know how to manage Kanakas.”

  “I am tabooed, then?” I cried.

  “Something of the sort,” said he. “It’s the worst thing of the kind I’ve heard of yet. But I’ll stand by you, Wiltshire, man to man. You come round here to-morrow about nine, and we’ll have it out with the chiefs. They’re afraid of me, or they used to be; but their heads are so big by now, I don’t know what to think. Understand me, Wiltshire; I don’t count this your quarrel,” he went on, with a great deal of resolution, “I count it all of our quarrel, I count it the White Man’s Quarrel, and I’ll stand to it through thick and thin, and there’s my hand on it.”

  “Have you found out what’s the reason?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” said Case. “But we’ll fix them down to-morrow.”

  Altogether I was pretty well pleased with his attitude, and almost more the next day, when we met to go before the chiefs, to see him so stern and resolved. The chiefs awaited us in one of their big oval houses, which was marked out to us from a long way off by the crowd about the eaves, a hundred strong if there was one — men, women, and children. Many of the men were on their way to work and wore green wreaths, and it put me in thoughts of the 1st of May at home. This crowd opened and buzzed about the pair of us as we went in, with a sudden angry animation. Five chiefs were there; four mighty stately men, the fifth old and puckered. They sat on mats in their white kilts and jackets; they had fans in their hands, like fine ladies; and two of the younger ones wore Catholic medals, which gave me matter of reflection. Our place was set, and the mats laid for us over against these grandees, on the near side of the house; the midst was empty; the crowd, close at our backs, murmured and craned and jostled to look on, and the shadows of them tossed in front of us on the clean pebbles of the floor. I was just a hair put out by the excitement of the commons, but the quiet civil appearance of the chiefs reassured me, all the more when their spokesman began and made a long speech in a low tone of voice, sometimes waving his hand towards Case, sometimes toward me, and sometimes knocking with his knuckles on the mat. One thing was clear: there was no sign of anger in the chiefs.

  “What’s he been saying?” I asked, when he had done.

  “O, just that they’re glad to see you, and they understand by me you wish to make some kind of complaint, and you’re to fire away, and they’ll do the square thing.”

  “It took a precious long time to say that,” said I.

  “O, the rest was sawder and bonjour and that,” said Case. “You know what Kanakas are.”

  “Well, they don’t get much bonjour out of me,” said I. “You tell them who I am. I’m a white man, and a British subject, and no end of a big chief at home; and I’ve come here to do them good, and bring them civilisation; and no sooner have I got my trade sorted out than they go and taboo me, and no one dare come near my place! Tell them I don’t mean to fly in the face of anything legal; and if what they want’s a present, I’ll do what’s fair. I don’t blame any man looking out for himself, tell them, for that’s human nature; but if they think they’re going to come any of their native ideas over me, they’ll find themselves mistaken. And tell them plain that I demand the reason of this treatment as a w
hite man and a British subject.”

  That was my speech. I know how to deal with Kanakas: give them plain sense and fair dealing, and — I’ll do them that much justice — they knuckle under every time. They haven’t any real government or any real law, that’s what you’ve got to knock into their heads; and even if they had, it would be a good joke if it was to apply to a white man. It would be a strange thing if we came all this way and couldn’t do what we pleased. The mere idea has always put my monkey up, and I rapped my speech out pretty big. Then Case translated it — or made believe to, rather — and the first chief replied, and then a second, and a third, all in the same style, easy and genteel, but solemn underneath. Once a question was put to Case, and he answered it, and all hands (both chiefs and commons) laughed out aloud, and looked at me. Last of all, the puckered old fellow and the big young chief that spoke first started in to put Case through a kind of catechism. Sometimes I made out that Case was trying to fence, and they stuck to him like hounds, and the sweat ran down his face, which was no very pleasant sight to me, and at some of his answers the crowd moaned and murmured, which was a worse hearing. It’s a cruel shame I knew no native, for (as I now believe) they were asking Case about my marriage, and he must have had a tough job of it to clear his feet. But leave Case alone; he had the brains to run a parliament.

  “Well, is that all?” I asked, when a pause came.

  “Come along,” says he, mopping his face; “I’ll tell you outside.”

  “Do you mean they won’t take the taboo off?” I cried.

  “It’s something queer,” said he. “I’ll tell you outside. Better come away.”

  “I won’t take it at their hands,” cried I. “I ain’t that kind of a man. You don’t find me turn my back on a parcel of Kanakas.”

  “You’d better,” said Case.

  He looked at me with a signal in his eye; and the five chiefs looked at me civilly enough, but kind of pointed; and the people looked at me and craned and jostled. I remembered the folks that watched my house, and how the pastor had jumped in his pulpit at the bare sight of me; and the whole business seemed so out of the way that I rose and followed Case. The crowd opened again to let us through, but wider than before, the children on the skirts running and singing out, and as we two white men walked away they all stood and watched us.

  “And now,” said I, “what is all this about?”

  “The truth is I can’t rightly make it out myself. They have a down on you,” says Case.

  “Taboo a man because they have a down on him!” I cried. “I never heard the like.”

  “It’s worse than that, you see,” said Case. “You ain’t tabooed — I told you that couldn’t be. The people won’t go near you, Wiltshire, and there’s where it is.”

  “They won’t go near me? What do you mean by that? Why won’t they go near me?” I cried.

  Case hesitated. “Seems they’re frightened,” says he, in a low, voice.

  I stopped dead short. “Frightened?” I repeated. “Are you gone crazy, Case? What are they frightened of?”

  “I wish I could make out,” Case answered, shaking his head. “Appears like one of their tomfool superstitions. That’s what I don’t cotton to,” he said. “It’s like the business about Vigours.”

  “I’d like to know what you mean by that, and I’ll trouble you to tell me,” says I.

  “Well, you know, Vigours lit out and left all standing,” said he. “It was some superstition business — I never got the hang of it but it began to look bad before the end.”

  “I’ve heard a different story about that,” said I, “and I had better tell you so. I heard he ran away because of you.”

  “O! well, I suppose he was ashamed to tell the truth,” says Case; “I guess he thought it silly. And it’s a fact that I packed him off. ‘What would you do, old man?’ says he. ‘Get,’ says I, ‘and not think twice about it.’ I was the gladdest kind of man to see him clear away. It ain’t my notion to turn my back on a mate when he’s in a tight place, but there was that much trouble in the village that I couldn’t see where it might likely end. I was a fool to be so much about with Vigours. They cast it up to me to-day. Didn’t you hear Maea — that’s the young chief, the big one — ripping out about ‘Vika’? That was him they were after. They don’t seem to forget it, somehow.”

  “This is all very well,” said I, “but it don’t tell me what’s wrong; it don’t tell me what they’re afraid of — what their idea is.”

  “Well, I wish I knew,” said Case. “I can’t say fairer than that.”

  “You might have asked, I think,” says I.

  “And so I did,” says he. “But you must have seen for yourself, unless you’re blind, that the asking got the other way. I’ll go as far as I dare for another white man; but when I find I’m in the scrape myself, I think first of my own bacon. The loss of me is I’m too good-natured. And I’ll take the freedom of telling you you show a queer kind of gratitude to a man who’s got into all this mess along of your affairs.”

  “There’s a thing I am thinking of,” said I. “You were a fool to be so much about with Vigours. One comfort, you haven’t been much about with me. I notice you’ve never been inside my house. Own up now; you had word of this before?”

  “It’s a fact I haven’t been,” said he. “It was an oversight, and I am sorry for it, Wiltshire. But about coming now, I’ll be quite plain.”

  “You mean you won’t?” I asked.

  “Awfully sorry, old man, but that’s the size of it,” says Case.

  “In short, you’re afraid?” says I.

  “In short, I’m afraid,” says he.

  “And I’m still to be tabooed for nothing?” I asked

  “I tell you you’re not tabooed,” said he. “The Kanakas won’t go near you, that’s all. And who’s to make ‘em? We traders have a lot of gall, I must say; we make these poor Kanakas take back their laws, and take up their taboos, and that, whenever it happens to suit us. But you don’t mean to say you expect a law obliging people to deal in your store whether they want to or not? You don’t mean to tell me you’ve got the gall for that? And if you had, it would be a queer thing to propose to me. I would just like to point out to you, Wiltshire, that I’m a trader myself.”

  “I don’t think I would talk of gall if I was you,” said I. “Here’s about what it comes to, as well as I can make out: None of the people are to trade with me, and they’re all to trade with you. You’re to have the copra, and I’m to go to the devil and shake myself. And I don’t know any native, and you’re the only man here worth mention that speaks English, and you have the gall to up and hint to me my life’s in danger, and all you’ve got to tell me is you don’t know why!”

  “Well, it is all I have to tell you,” said he. “I don’t know — I wish I did.”

  “And so you turn your back and leave me to myself! Is that the position?” says I.

  “If you like to put it nasty,” says he. “I don’t put it so. I say merely, ‘I’m going to keep clear of you; or, if I don’t, I’ll get in danger for myself.’”

  “Well,” says I, “you’re a nice kind of a white man!”

  “O, I understand; you’re riled,” said he. “I would be myself. I can make excuses.”

  “All right,” I said, “go and make excuses somewhere else. Here’s my way, there’s yours!”

  With that we parted, and I went straight home, in a hot temper, and found Uma trying on a lot of trade goods like a baby.

  “Here,” I said, “you quit that foolery! Here’s a pretty mess to have made, as if I wasn’t bothered enough anyway! And I thought I told you to get dinner!”

  And then I believe I gave her a bit of the rough side of my tongue, as she deserved. She stood up at once, like a sentry to his officer; for I must say she was always well brought up, and had a great respect for whites.

  “And now,” says I, “you belong round here, you’re bound to understand this. What am I tabooed for, anyway? Or
, if I ain’t tabooed, what makes the folks afraid of me?”

  She stood and looked at me with eyes like saucers.

  “You no savvy?” she gasps at last.

  “No,” said I. “How would you expect me to? We don’t have any such craziness where I come from.”

  “Ese no tell you?” she asked again.

  (Ese was the name the natives had for Case; it may mean foreign, or extraordinary; or it might mean a mummy apple; but most like it was only his own name misheard and put in a Kanaka spelling.)

  “Not much,” said I.

  “D-n Ese!” she cried.

  You might think it funny to hear this Kanaka girl come out with a big swear. No such thing. There was no swearing in her — no, nor anger; she was beyond anger, and meant the word simple and serious. She stood there straight as she said it. I cannot justly say that I ever saw a woman look like that before or after, and it struck me mum. Then she made a kind of an obeisance, but it was the proudest kind, and threw her hands out open.

  “I ‘shamed,” she said. “I think you savvy. Ese he tell me you savvy, he tell me you no mind, tell me you love me too much. Taboo belong me,” she said, touching herself on the bosom, as she had done upon our wedding-night. “Now I go ‘way, taboo he go ‘way too. Then you get too much copra. You like more better, I think. Tofâ, alii,” says she in the native — ”Farewell, chief!”

  “Hold on!” I cried. “Don’t be in such a hurry.”

  She looked at me sidelong with a smile. “You see, you get copra,” she said, the same as you might offer candies to a child.

  “Uma,” said I, “hear reason. I didn’t know, and that’s a fact; and Case seems to have played it pretty mean upon the pair of us. But I do know now, and I don’t mind; I love you too much. You no go ‘way, you no leave me, I too much sorry.”