Part III Barbarian Days
We had been watching intently the faint, shadowy outline along the horizon, and wondering whether it were really land, or but a cloudy similitude of it; while we bore down upon it all the afternoon in fine style, and the breeze freshened as evening came on. It was all clear sailing, and we were in pretty good spirits,—which is not always the case with landsmen at sea.
Sitting there on the after-deck, I had asked myself, more than once, If life were made up of placid days like this, how long would life be sweet? I gave it up every time; for one is not inclined to consider so curiously as to press any problem to a solution in those indolent latitudes.
Perhaps it was Captain Kidd who told me he had sailed out of a twelve-knot breeze on a sudden,—slipping off the edges of it, as it were,—and found his sails all aback as he slid into a dead calm. There, rocking in still weather, he saw another bark, almost within hail, blown into the west and out of sight, like a bird in a March gale.
I wonder what caused me to think of Kidd’s experiences just then? I can’t imagine, unless it was some prescient shadow floating in my neighborhood,—the precursor of the little event that followed. Such things do happen, and when we least expect it; though, fortunately, they don’t worry us as a general thing. I didn’t worry at all, but sat there by myself, while some of my fellow-passengers took a regular “constitutional” up and down the deck, and over and over it, until the nervous woman below in the cabin “blessed her stars,” and wished herself ashore.
I preferred sitting and pondering over the cloud that seemed slowly to rise from the sea, assuming definite and undeniable appearances of land.
I knew very well what land it must be: one of a group of islands every inch of which I had traversed with the zeal of youthful enthusiasm; but which of them, was a question I almost feared to have answered. Yet, what difference could it make to me! The land was providentially in our course, but not on our way-bill. If we were within gunshot of its loveliest portion, we must needs pass on as frigidly as though it were Charybdis, or something equally dreadful; and I began to think it might be something of the sort, because of its besetting temptations.
There was not the slightest doubt as to the certainty of its being land, when we went down to supper; and at sunset we knew the dark spots were valleys, and the bright ones hills. I fancied a hundred bronze-hued faces were turned toward us, as we seemed to twinkle away off in their sunset sea like a fallen star, or something of that sort. I thought I could almost hear the sea beating upon the crusts of the reef in the twilight; but perhaps I didn’t, for the land was miles away, and night hid it presently, while the old solitude of the ocean impressed us all as though we were again in the midst of its unbroken, circular wastes. Then they played whist in the cabin,—all but me. I hung over the ship’s side, resolved to watch all night for the lights on shore,—the flickering watch-fires in the mountain camps; for I knew I should see them, as we were bound to pass the island before morning.
The night was intensely dark; clouds muffled the stars, and not a spark of light was visible in any direction over the waters. A shower could easily have quenched the beacons I was seeking, and my vigil soon became tedious; so presently I followed the others and turned in, rather disconsolate and disgusted.
Toward midnight the wind fell rapidly, and within half an hour we found ourselves in a dead calm, when the moan of the breakers was quite audible on our starboard quarter. The Captain was nervous and watchful; the currents in the channel were strong, and he saw, by the variation in the compass, that the vessel was being whirled in a great circle around a point of the island.
Fortunately it began to get light before the danger grew imminent. At three o’clock we were within soundings, and shortly after we plumped the anchor into the rough coral at the bottom of a pretty little harbor, where, the Captain informed us, we must ride all day and get out with the land-breeze, that would probably come down at night. I rushed up in the gray dawn, and bent my gaze upon the shore. I think I must have turned pale, or trembled a little, or done something sensational and appropriate, though no one observed it; whereat I was rather glad, on the whole, for they could not have understood it if I had done my best to explain,—which I had not the least idea of doing, however, for it was none of their affair.
I knew that place the moment I saw it,—the very spot of all I most desired to see; and I resolved, in my secret soul, to go ashore, there and then; amicably if I might, forcibly if I must.
The Captain was not over-genial that morning, either; he hated detention, and was a trifle nervous about being tied up under the lee of the land for twelve or twenty hours. So he growled if any one approached him all that day, and positively refused to allow the ship’s boat to be touched, unless we drifted upon the rocks, broadside,—which, he seemed to think, was not entirely out of the question. I was sure there would be a canoe—perhaps several—alongside by sunrise; so I said nothing, but waited in silence, determined to desert when the time came; and the Captain might whistle me back if he could.
Presently the time came. We were rocking easily on the swell, directly to the eastward of a deep valley. The sky was ruddy; the air fresh and invigorating, but soft as the gales of Paradise. We were in the tropics. You would have known it with your eyes shut; the whole wonderful atmosphere confessed it. But, with your eyes open, those white birds, sailing like snow-flakes through the immaculate blue heavens, with tail-feathers like our pennant; the floating gardens of the sea, through which we had been ruthlessly ploughing for a couple of days back; the gorgeous sunrises and sunsets,—all were proofs positive of our latitude.
What a sunrise it was on that morning! Yet I stood with my back to it, looking west; for there I saw, firstly, the foam on the reef—as crimson as blood—falling over the wine-stained waves; then it changed as the sun ascended, like clouds of golden powder, indescribably magnificent, shaken and scattered upon the silver snow-drifts of the coral reef, dazzling to behold, and continually changing.
Beyond it, in the still water, was reflected a long, narrow strip of beach; above it, green pastures and umbrageous groves, with native huts, like great bird’s-nests, half hidden among them; and the weird, slender cocoa-palms were there,—those exclamation-points in the poetry of tropic landscape. All this lay slumbering securely between high walls of verdure; while at the upper end, where the valley was like a niche set in the green and glorious mountains, two waterfalls floated downward like smoke-columns on a heavy morning. Angels and ministers of grace! do you, in your airy perambulations, visit haunts more lovely than this?—as lovely as that undiscovered country from whose bourn the traveller would rather not look back, premising that the traveller were as singularly constituted as I am; which is, per-adventure, not probable.
They knew it was morning almost as soon as we did, though they lived a few furlongs farther west, and had no notion of the immediate proximity of a strange craft,—by no means rakish in her rig, however; only a simple merchantman, bound for Auckland from San Francisco, but the victim of circumstances, and, in consequence, tied to the bottom of the sea when half-way over.
They knew it was morning. I saw them swarming out of their grassy nests, brown, sleek-limbed, and naked. They regarded with amazement our floating home. The news spread, and the groves were suddenly peopled with my dear barbarians, who hate civilization almost as much as I do, and are certainly quite as idolatrous and indolent as I ever aspire to be.
I turned my palms outward toward them; I lifted up my voice, and cried, “Hail, my brothers! We hasten with the morning; we follow after the sun. Greetings to you, dwellers in the West!”
Nobody heard me. I looked again. Down they came upon the shore, wading into the sea. Then such a carnival as they celebrated in the shallow water was a novelty for some of my cabin friends; but I knew all about it. I’d done the same thing often enough myself, when I was young, and free, and innocent, and savage. I knew they were asking themselves a thousand questions as to our sudden appearance in their seas, and would rather like to know who we were, and where we were going, but scorned to ask us. They had once or twice been visited by the same sort of whitish-looking people, and they had found those colorless faces uncivil, and the bleached-out skins by no means to be trusted with those whom they considered their inferiors. They didn’t know that it is one of the Thirty-nine Articles of Civilization to bully one’s way through the world. Then I prayed that they might be moved to send out a canoe, so that I could debark and go inland for the day. I prayed very earnestly, and out she came,—one of their tiny, fragile canoes, looking like a deserted chrysalis, with the invisible wings of the spiritual, tutelary butterfly wafting it over the waves. In this chrysalis dug-out sat a tough little body, with a curly head, which I recognized in a minute as belonging to a once friend and comrade in my delightful exile, when I was a successful prodigal, and wasted my substance in the most startling and effectual manner, and enjoyed it a great deal better than if I had kept it in the bank, as they advised me to do. On he came, beating the sea with his broad paddle, alternately by either side of the canoe, and regarding us with a commendable degree of suspicion. I greeted him in his peculiar dialect. The gift of tongues seemed suddenly to have descended upon me, for I found little difficulty in saying everything I wanted to say, in a remarkably brief space of time.
“Hail, little friend!” said I; “great love to you. How is it on shore now?”
He replied that it was decidedly nice on shore now, and that his love for me was as much as mine for him, and more too, and that consequently he was prepared to conduct me thither, regardless of expense.
I went with that lovely boy on shore. The Captain could not resist my persuasive appeals for a short leave of absence, and so I went. Perhaps it would not have been advisable for him to have suppressed me; and he made a courteous virtue of necessity.
I had leave to stop till evening, unless I heard a signal-gun, upon hearing which I was to return immediately on board, or suffer the consequences.
Now, I am free to confess, that the consequences didn’t appall me as we swung off from the vessel, where I had been an uneasy prisoner for many days; and I fell to chatting with Niga, my dusky friend, in a sort of desperate joy.
Niga was a regular trump. He had more than once piled on horseback behind me, in the sweet days when we used to ride double,—yea, and even treble, if necessary. There was usually a great deal more boy than horse on the premises; hence this questionable economy in our cavalry regulations. Niga told me many things as we drew near the reef: he talked of nearly everybody and everything; but of all that he told me, he said nothing of the one I most longed to hear about. Yet, somehow or other, I could not quite bring myself to ask him, out and out, this question. You know, sometimes it is hard to shape words just as you want them shaped, and the question is never asked in consequence.
The reef was growling tremendously. We were drawing nearer to it every moment. I thought the chances were against us; but Niga was self-possessed, and, as he had crossed it once that morning,—and in the more dangerous direction of the two, that is, against the grain of the waves,—I concluded there was no special need of my making a scene; and in the next moment we were poised on a terrific cataract of glittering and rushing breakers, snatched up and held trembling in mid-air, with the canoe half filled with water, and I perfectly blind with spray.
It was a memorable moment in a very short voyage; and the general verdict on board ship, where they were watching us with some interest, was, that it served me right.
When my eyes were once more free of the water, I found myself in the midst of the natives, who had been waiting just inside of the reef to receive us; and, as they recognized me, they laid a hand on the canoe, as many as could crowd about it, fairly lifting it out of the water on our way to the shore, all the while wailing at the top of their voices their mournful and desolate wail.
It was impossible for me to decide whether that chant of theirs was an expression of joy, or sorrow: the nature of it is precisely the same, in either case.
So we went on shore in our little triumphal procession, and there I was embraced in a very emphatic manner by savages of every conceivable sex, age, and color. Having mutely submitted to their genuine expressions of love, I was conducted—a willing and bewildered captive—along the beach, around the little point that separates the river from the sea, and thence by the river-bank to the house I knew so well. I believe I looked at every dusky face in that assemblage, two or three times over, but saw not the one I sought.
What could it mean? Was he hunting in the mountains, or fishing beyond the headland, or sick, or in prison, that he came not to greet me? Surely, something had befallen him,—something serious and unusual,—or he would have been the first to welcome me home to barbarism!
A strange dread clouded my mind: it increased and multiplied as we passed on toward the house that had been home to me. Then, having led me to the outer door, the people all sat there upon the ground, and began wailing piteously.
I hastily crossed the narrow outer room, lifted the plaited curtain, and entered the inner chamber, where I had spent my strange, wild holiday long months before. I looked earnestly about me, while my eyes gradually became familiar with the dull light. Nothing seemed changed. I could point at once to almost every article in the room. It seemed but yesterday that I had stolen away from them in the gray dawn, and repented my desertion too late.
I soon grew accustomed to the sombre light of the room. I saw sitting about me, in the corners, bowed figures, with their faces hidden in grief. There was no longer any doubt as to the nature of their emotion. It was grief that had stricken the household, and the grief that death alone occasions. I counted every figure in the room; I recognized each, the same that I had known when I dwelt among them: he alone was absent.
I don’t know what possessed me at that moment. I felt an almost uncontrollable desire to laugh, as though it were some masque gotten up for my amusement. Then I wished they would cease their masking, for I felt too miserable to laugh. Then I was utterly at a loss to know what to do; so I walked to the old-fashioned bed—our old-fashioned bed—in the corner, looking just as it used to. I think the same old spider was there still, clinging to the canopy; the very same old fellow, in his harlequin tights, that we used to watch, and talk about, and wonder what he was thinking of, to stop so still, day after day, and week after week, up there on the canopy. I threw myself upon the edge of the bed, my feet resting upon the floor; and there I tried to think of everything but that one dreadful reality that would assert itself, in spite of my efforts to deny it.
Where was my friend? Where could he be, that these, his friends, were so bowed with sorrow? The question involved a revelation, already anticipated in my mind. That revelation I dreaded as I would dread my own death-sentence. But it came at last. A woman who had been humbling herself in the dust moved toward me from the shadow that half concealed her. She did not rise to her feet; she was half reclining on the mats of the floor, her features veiled in the long, black hair of her race. One hand was extended toward me, then the other; the body followed; and so she moved, slowly and painfully, toward the bedside.
It was his mother. I knew her intuitively. Close to the bed she came, and crouched by me, upon the floor. There, with one hand clasped close over mine, the other flooded with her copious tears, and her forehead bowed almost to the floor, she poured forth the measure of her woe. The moment her voice was heard, those out of the house ceased wailing, and seemed to be listening to the elegy of the bereaved.
Her voice was husky with grief; broken again and again with sobs. I seemed to understand perfectly the nature of her story, though my knowledge of the dialect was very deficient.
The mother’s soul was quickened with her pathetic theme. The frenzy of the poet inspired her lips. It was an epic she was chanting, celebrating the career of her boy-hero. She told of his birth, and wonderful childhood; of his beautiful strength; of his sublime affection, and the friend it had brought him from over the water.
She referred frequently to our former associations, and seemed to delight in dwelling upon them. Then came the story of his death,—the saddest canto of the melancholy whole.
How shall I ever forgive myself the selfish pleasure I took in striving to remodel an immortal soul? What business had I to touch so sensitive an organism; susceptible of infinite impressions, but incapable, in its prodigality, of separating and dismissing the evil, and retaining only the good,—therefore fit only to increase and develop in the suitable atmosphere with which the Creator had surrounded it?
Why did I not foresee the climax?
I might have known that one reared in the nursery of Nature, as free to speak and act as the very winds of heaven to blow whither they list, could ill support the manacles of our modern proprieties. Of what use to him could be a knowledge of the artifices of society? Simply a temptation and a snare!
What was the story of his fate? That he came safely home, rejoicing in his natural freedom; that he could not express his delight at finding home so pleasant; that his days were spent in telling of the wonderful things he had seen: more sects than the gods of the South Seas; more doubters than believers; contradictions, and insults, and suspicions, everywhere. They laughed again, when they thought of us, and pitied us all the while.
But his exhilaration wore off, after a time. Then came the reaction. A restlessness; an undefined, unsatisfied longing. Life became a burden. The seed of dissension had fallen in fresh and fallow soil: it was a souvenir of his sojourn among us. He, the child of Nature, must now follow out the artificial and hollow life of the world, or die unsatisfied; for he could not return to his original sphere of trust and contentment. He had learned to doubt all things, as naturally as any of us.
For days he moaned in spirit, and was troubled; nothing consoled him; his soul was broken of its rest; he grew desperate and melancholy.
I believe he was distracted with the problem of society, and I cannot wonder at it. One day, when his condition had become no longer endurable, he stole off to sea in his canoe, thinking, perhaps, that he could reach this continent, or some other; possibly hoping never again to meet human faces, for he could not trust them.
It was his heroic exit from a life that no longer interested him. Great was the astonishment of the Islanders, who looked upon him as one possessed of the Evil Spirit, and special sacrifices were offered in his behalf; but the gods were inexorable; and, after several days upon the solitary sea, a shadow, a mote, drifted toward the valley,—a canoe, with a famishing and delirious voyager, that was presently tossed and broken in the surges; then, a dark body glistened for a moment, wet with spray, and sank forever, while the shining coral reef was stained with the blood of the first-born.
I heard it all in the desolate wail of the mother, yet could not weep; my eyes burned like fire.
Little Niga came for me presently, and led me into the great grove of kamane-trees, up the valley. He insisted upon holding me by the hand: it was all he could do to comfort me, and he did that with his whole soul.
In silence we pressed on to one of the largest of the trees. I recognized it at once. Niga and I, one day, went thither, and I cut a name upon the soft bark of the tree.
When we reached it we paused. Niga pointed with his finger; I looked. It was there yet,—a simple name, carved in the rudest fashion. I read the letters, which had since become an epitaph. They were these:—
“Kána-aná, Æt. 16 yrs.”
Under them were three initials,—my own,—cut by the hand of Kána-aná, after his return from America.
We sat down in the gloomy grove. “Tell me,” I said, “tell me, Niga, where has his spirit gone?”
“He is here, now,” said Niga; “he can see us. Perhaps, some day, we shall see him.”
“You have more faith than our philosophers, for they have reasoned themselves out of everything. Would you like to be a philosopher, Niga?” I asked.
Niga thought, if they were going to die, body and soul, that he wouldn’t like to be anything of the sort, and that he had rather be a first-class savage than a fourth-rate Christian, any day.
I interrupted him at this alarming assertion. “The philosophers would call your faith a superstition, Niga; they do not realize that there is no true faith unmixed with superstition, since faith implies a belief in something unseen, and is, therefore, itself a superstition. Blessed is the man who believes blindly,—call it what you please,—for peace shall dwell in his soul. But, Niga,” I continued, “where is God?”
“Here, and here, and here,” said Niga, pointing me to a grotesque carving in the sacred grove, to a monument upon the distant precipice, and to a heap of rocks in the sea; and the smile of recognition with which the little votary greeted his idols was a solemn proof of his sincerity.
“Niga,” I said, “we call you and your kind heathens. It is a harmless anathema, which cannot, in the least, affect you personally. Ask us if we love God! Of course we do. Do we love him above all things, animate or inanimate? Undoubtedly! Undoubtedly is easily said, and let us give ourselves credit for some honesty. We believe that we do love God, above all; that we have no other gods before him; yet, who of us will give up wealth, home, friends, and follow him? Not one! The God we love is a very vague, invisible, forbearing essence. He can afford to be lenient with us while we are debating whether our neighbor is serving him in the right fashion, or not. We’d rather not have other gods before him: one is as many as we find it convenient to serve. The lover kisses passionately a miniature. It is not, however, an image of his Creator, nor any memorial of his Redeemer’s passion, but only a portrait of his mistress. Do you blame us, Niga? It is the strongest instinct of our nature to worship something. Man is a born idolater, and not one of us is exempted by reason of any scruples under the sun. You see it daily and hourly: each one has his idols.”
Little Niga, who sympathized deeply with me, seemed to have gotten some knowledge of our peculiarly mixed theories concerning God and the future state, from conversations overheard after the return of Kána-aná. He tried to console me with the assurance that Kána-aná died a devoted and unshaken adherent to the faith of his fathers.
I couldn’t but feel that his blood was off my hands when I learned this; and I believe I gave Niga a regular hug in that moment of joy.
Then we walked here and there, through the valley, and visited the old haunts, made memorable by many incidents in that romantic and chivalrous life of the South. Every one we met had some word to add concerning the Pride of the Valley, dead in his glorious youth.
Over and over, they assured me of his fidelity to me, his white brother, adding that Kána-aná had, more than once, expressed the deepest regret at not having brought me back with him.
He even meditated sending for me, in the same manner that I had sent for him; and, if he had done so, it was his purpose to see that I was at once made familiar with their Articles of Faith; for he anticipated a willing convert in me, and it was the desire of his heart that I should know that perfect trust, peculiar to his people, and which is begotten of the brief gospel, so often quoted out of place: namely, that “seeing is believing.”
It was a kind thought of his, and I wish he had carried it into execution, for then he might have lived. It was his susceptible nature that had come in contact with the great world, and received its death-wound. Had I been there to help him, I would have planned something to divert his mind until he had recovered himself, and was willing to submit to the monotony of life over yonder. Had he not done as much for me? Had he not striven, day after day, to charm me with his barbarism, and come very near to success? I should say he had. Dear little martyr! was he not the only boy I ever truly loved,—dead now in his blossoming prime!
O Kána-aná! Little Niga and I sat talking of you, down by the sea, and we wept for you at last; for the tears came by and by, when I began to fully realize the greatness of my loss. All your youth, and beauty, and freshness, in destruction, and your body swallowed up in the graves of the sea!
The meridian sun blazed overhead, but it made little difference to us. Afternoon passed, and evening was coming on almost unheeded; for our thoughts were buried with him, under the waves, and life was nothing to us, then.
I no longer cared to observe the lights and shadows on the cliffs, nor the poppy nodding in the wind, nor the seaward prospect: that was spoiled by our vessel,—the seclusion was broken in upon. I cared for nothing any longer, for I missed everywhere his step, patient and faithful as a dog’s, and his marvellous face, that could look steadily at the sun without winking, and deluge itself with laughter all the while, for there was nothing hidden or corrupting in it.
Presently I returned into the sacred grove, touching the three letters he had carved there, and calling on his spirit to regard me as respecting his dumb idols, which were nothing but the representatives of his jealous gods,—dear to him as the Garden of Gethsemane, the Mount of Olives, and the shining summits of Calvary to us. Then down I ran to the bathing-pools, and from place to place I wandered in a hurried and nervous tour, for it was growing dark. I saw the ship’s lights flickering over the water, while the first cool whispers of the night-wind came down from the hills, filling me with warnings; in the midst of which there was a flash of flame and a sudden, thunderous report,—enough to awaken the dead of the valley,—and I turned to go. I believe, if dear Kána-aná had been there, as I prayed he might be, I would have laughed at that signal, and hastened inland to avoid discovery; for I was sick of the world. I might have had reason to regret it afterward, because friendship is not elastic, and the best of friends cannot long submit to being bored by the best of fellows. Perhaps it was just as it should be: I had no time to consider the matter there. I hurried to his mother, and she clung to me; others came about me, and laid hold of me: so that I feared I should be held captive until it was too late to board the vessel. Her sails were even then shaking in the wind; and I heard the faint click of the capstan tugging at the anchor-chains.
With a quick impulse I broke away from them, and ran to the beach, where Niga and I entered his canoe, and slid off from the sloping sands. Down we drifted toward the open sea, while the natives renewed their wailing, and I was half crazed with sorrow. It is impossible to resist the persuasive eloquence of their chants. Think, then, with what a troubled spirit I heard them, as we floated on between the calm stars in the heavens and the whirling stars in the sea.
We went out to the ship’s side, and little Niga was as noisy as any of them when I pressed upon him a practical memorial of my visit; and away he drifted into the night, with his boyish babble pitched high and shrill; and the Present speedily became the Past, and grew old in a moment.
Then I looked for the last time upon that faint and cloudy picture, and seemed almost to see the spirit of the departed beckoning to me with waving arms and imploring looks; and I longed for him with the old longing, that will never release me from my willing bondage. I blessed him in his new life, and I rejoiced with exceeding great joy that he was freed at last from the tyranny of life,—released from the unsolvable riddles of the ages. The night-wind was laden with music, and sweet with the odors of ginger and cassia; the spume of the reef was pale as the milk of the cocoa-nuts, and the blazing embers on shore glowed like old sacrificial fires.
Then I heard a voice crying out of the shadow,—an ancient and eloquent voice,—saying: “Behold my fated race! Our days are numbered. Long have we feasted in the rich presence of a revealed deity. We sat in ashes under the mute gods of Baal; we fled before the wrath of Moloch, the destroyer; we were as mighty as the four winds of heaven: but the profane hand of the Iconoclast has desecrated our temples, and humbled our majesty in the dust. O impious breakers of idols! Why will ye put your new wines into these old bottles, that were shaped for spring waters only, and not for wine at all! Lo! ye have broken them, and the wine is wasted. Be satisfied, and depart!”
So that spirit of air sang the death-song of his tribe, and the sad music of his voice rang over the waters like a lullaby.
Then I heard no more, and I said, “My asylum is the great world; my refuge is in oblivion”; and I turned my face seaward, never again to dream fondly of my island home; never again to know it as I have known it; never again to look upon its serene and melancholy beauty: for the soul of the beloved is transmitted to the vales of rest, and his ashes are sown in the watery furrows of the deep sea!