The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

SOUTH SEA FOAM

A. SAFRONI-MIDDLETON

SOUTH SEA FOAM

THE ROMANTIC ADVENTURES

OF A MODERN DON QUIXOTE

IN THE SOUTHERN SEAS

BY

A. SAFRONI-MIDDLETON

NEW YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1920,

BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO

G. B. S.-M.

“On the open window-sill of the universal soul the ancient æolian harp awakes.”—Andrew Millar, Robes of Pan.

PREFACE

THOUGH the adventures recorded in this book may set up the impression that I am a kind of Don Quixote of the South Seas, I do not claim to have sought to redress wrongs done to beauteous dusky maidens. It was the ardent, adventurous spirit of youth that brought me to the side of such original characters as Fae Fae, Soogy, and Fanga, and gave me the charming friendship of those pagan chiefs who have inspired me to write this book. It is possible that many stay-at-homes will think I have romanced, will think it incredible that such characters as I have attempted to portray really existed. Well, all I can say is, that my greatest literary effort in the following pages has been to keep to the truth of the whole matter, even though such frankness should leave me, at the end of this volume, with a blackened name.

As I have introduced several Polynesian legends and myths in this book, I would like to make a few remarks with reference thereto. In recording my memories of Island folk-lore I have to use, of course, my own order of intelligence—as compared with that of the wild people who told the stories—when I attempt to recreate the legendary lore, the poetry, and the loveliness of the natural world as it must have appeared to the imagination of primitive minds believing in them. In doing this I merely accept the inevitable transmutation which all legends and myths of primitive peoples must undergo when written down.

Myths in their earliest stage were the poetic babblings of the children of nature. It is certain that folk-lore which comes to us in written form has been subjected to obvious transformation. All creation-myths and subtle moving legends that are representative of human passions and yearning, be they from the lore of the ancient Finns, Hindoos, Babylonians, Japanese, Egyptians, or Greeks, have been completely transformed before they reached us. Legends are told, retold, and embellished in accordance with the storyteller’s notion of what seems compatible with and faithful to primitive conceptions, until, out of the imaginative fires of a dozen or so narrators, we get the poetic picture which the primitive mind probably conceived, but was unable to express. There is little doubt, I imagine, that, if it were possible to trace our great epic poems to their remote original sources, we should find them based on simple poetic superstition which had its origin in the minds of the lowest tribes of primitive man. Thus, through the influence of mind on mind, the world’s great epic, when compared to that far-off original, will resemble it as much as the nightingale’s egg of this summer will resemble the full-fledged bird’s midnight-song to next year’s moon.

So much would I say for my method in writing my reminiscences of heathen fairy-land. As for idol-worship, I have written about it just as O’Hara and I saw it with our own eyes, distinct and solid as are the biblical images of stone in the churches of our own sacred creed.

I make no attempt to trace outside influences on the mythologies of Island creeds; indeed, no influences can be traced. The only influence I was aware of, or ever heard discussed, was this, that with the advent of the missionary, Island mythology and heathen legends were sponged off the map of existence. The missionaries, naturally enough, could see no use in preserving legendary creeds founded on idol-worship and sacrificial cannibalism, and all that was certainly “not the correct thing” in a world where morals and manners differ so greatly from our own. In this way, both the old legends and the crude, primitive conceptions of religious worship have long since been swept away, and sometimes also the tribes that cherished these crude ideas were swept away with their creeds.

Islands that twenty years ago had populations numbering many thousand, to-day have a scattered population of a hundred or so. The blue-blooded Marquesan tribes have been wiped out. The survivors are so mixed in blood that they do not seem the children of their fathers. So rapid has been the change that many old chiefs are still living who recall the days when the voices of the winds and mountains were mutterings of the mighty gods of shadowland. Born under the influences of new conditions, the natives of to-day do not look back beyond the lotu times. Their imaginations are steeped in the atmosphere of the biblical stories they learn in the mission-room. Having a sense of shame for the sins of their fathers, they deny even the far-off wonders of the tapu-groves. In these tapu-groves, and beneath the sacred banyan trees, there once stood the heathen temples (mareas), the dwelling-places of those terrible priests who, empowered by superstitious reverence, officiated at the sacrificial altars. These priests were more powerful in their profession than cannibal chiefs or heathen kings. Looking at the ruins of the altars overgrown with weeds, it seems incredible that human hands were once lifted in supplication to relentless captors before they were sacrificed to the bigotry of heathen gospel. It forces upon us the similarity of their fate and that of our old English martyrs. In the forest, hard by, slept the dead—the dead who were the strange, wild peoples that once made every shadow a lurking god, their superstitious eyes seeing the starlit forest’s height as some mighty dark-branched brain of a heathen deity’s glittering thoughts.

The Polynesians believed that their great ancestors were metamorphosed into stars; in this belief there is something of the Egyptian and Hellenic touch. There are many star-legends concerning the origin of the conspicuous constellations of their lovely skies, legends that strangely resemble those of Greek mythology. As Circé turned Odysseus’ comrades into swine, so did the heathen goddesses turn Samoan warriors into crabs, snakes, and cuttle-fish. Travellers have often been struck by this resemblance in South-Sea mythology to the folk-lore of the western world. The resemblance, I think, is easy enough to understand, for Man is man wherever one goes in this wide world. Be he black, tawny, or white, his innermost hopes and aspirations are much the same.

The South-Sea savage gazed with the same wondering eyes of hope on the travelling sun, moon, and stars. To his childlike mind they were the movements of his mighty deities and ancestors. He too peopled the visible universe with gods and goddesses, as did the ancient Greeks; the phenomena of nature impressed his mind in much the same way as it has impressed mankind from the remotest ages. The same kind of sorrow dwelt in the hearts of those old-time savages when they gazed on the dead child in the forest. The sunsets blew the silent bugles of mysterious hues along their horizons, touching their lovely skylines with unheard but visible melodies over the briefness of all living things. They too crept out of their forests long ages ago, and stared with wonder on the rainbow that shone over their empurpled seas. Those old rainbows, sunsets, and stars left the first etherealized impressions of beauty in the heart of primeval Man the world over. And those old rainbows, sunsets, and stars still exist, are shining to-day in Man’s imagination, in all those longings for the beautiful that we call “Strivings after Art.” Thus there is a strong link, a twinship between us and those past savage races. Their old symbols of the stars, drifting clouds, fading sunsets, and moons that once hung in the wide galleries of their heaven still exist in all our poetic conceptions of that which is wild and beautiful. Through the alchemy of man’s transmuting mind, the wonders of that old world are represented in all that is highest in our Art; the very landscape-painting that hangs on our homestead walls to-day faintly expresses the poetic light that once sparkled in the eyes of those who lived when the world dreamed in its savage childhood. The music maestro to-day stands before the footlights, not of the stars, but before Man’s artificial splendour of lamplit halls, a highly-cultured savage, some wonderful embodiment of the genius who once blew in the magical conch-shell—that old barbarian musician who instinctively caught the harmonies of creation from the resounding primeval seas, the winds in the forests, and the songs of the first birds, applying them as sympathetic symbols of sound that he might please the earnest longings, the deepest dreams of that shaggy-haired, fierce audience that assembled in their barbarian forest halls. So it seems that nothing that pleases our eyes and senses belong to civilization or is of our own making. I imagine that it has all been derived from the first tremendous blackboard—the primitive days and starlit nights of heathen lands. And, so, the first wild children of creation were our masters, who unconsciously studied in the great school of Art under God’s mysterious tuition that we might feel the pride and glory of all that is beautiful and divine, with hope in this far-away New Day! We dwell to-day in a materialistic age of brassy-blare and “advanced thought.” We have weighted ourselves with the thick armour of civilization, till we fight on with curved spines, hardly listing where we may fall. The old mythological light of the stars is now switched on the pounding machinery of our cities, instead of being fixed on our imaginations. We grope in some darkness of our own making, as a thousand sects mumble in their beards about some dubious hope beyond the grave. We are chained prisoners in the stone cells of our own vaunted ambitions. No flower or singing bird is a true symbol of hope, delight, or wonder; all that we see is divested of the fairy-wings of that imagination that brings us wealth beyond our fleshly selves. The true poetry of life has gone for ever. The wild bird’s song steams in our old stew-pot—we like it better that way! But one must suppose that all this is as it should be. Nevertheless, we are the old savages, the Dark Ages, in a double sense, dreaming that we are the children of the Golden Age! The nursery tale told to the children as they sat by some Kentish homestead’s fireside last night, was whispered into the ears of wondering children of the South Seas long ages ago.

In reference to the general style of my book, I have written on the theory that autobiographical writing should be inspired, not by any idea of the apparent merits of those things which the author may feel that he has done well, but from his indwelling regret over the many things which he has never succeeded in doing at all. I imagine that it is so easy to convince the world of our faults and so difficult to interest it by putting down on paper those virtues we all secretly hope we possess. However that may be, my reader can rest assured that my memoirs are based on my happy meditations over all the great, worldly things that I have never succeeded in doing, and so, whatever interest my book lacks, is not lacking through any fault of my own.

I feel that it is necessary to admit here that I have been obliged to dig deep whilst resuscitating from the legendary dark the old mummies, the gods and goddesses which I found buried in the pyramids of heathen mythology. It is I who have breathed the new breath of life into their dusty nostrils as I unrolled their spiced, rotting swathings so that they might have some resemblance to the time when they had true visionary existence before the wondering eyes of those wild, savage peoples of a mythological past. I have placed them, with a little diffidence, on their crumbling feet, refashioning them with their unsewn eyelids and mouths somewhat awry, on show in the temple of my memoirs, in full view, standing along the aisles of dim remembrance, faintly lit up, I hope, by the light of my own imagination.

As books of an autobiographical nature usually devote a chapter or so to incidents connected with the author’s birth and childhood, and as some of the critics of my previous books wished to know something of my genesis, I am pleased to say that I am still full of go, still following the sea-birds and land-birds on my vagabond travels. Through my parentage I can claim the blood of three nations—English, Scottish, and a strain of Italian—my mother being a descendant of Thomas Haynes Bayly, the English ballad-writer; my father, a literary man, a descendant of Charles, the second Earl of Middleton, and a lady of the Italian Court: I believe this lady wrote some revolutionary songs, which were the direct cause of her enforced flight from her own country. Having said this much, I will retire as gracefully as possible by saying that I have only stepped on the stage of this book as one of its humblest actors, as a hollow-voiced prompter who would bolster up the reputations of his old friends of the past with the weight of his fleshly self. And so I am here in the spirit of good comradeship, the far-away echo of my violin on the South-Sea buskin march assisting those who are scattered or dead, and no longer able to help themselves on this new stage of a shadowy drama in which I have placed them.

A. S.-M.

CONTENTS

PART ONE

Author’s Heritage—Arrives at Samoa—Disillusioned—Illusive Romance—Golden-skinned Polynesian Maids—Meets great Heathen Philosophers—The Samoan Chief, O Le Tao

I ship with a genuine Old-time Crew—Poetic Nightmares—Tattooed Manuscripts of the Seas!—I learn the Art of Forcible Expression—Tar-pots—The Storm—Washed Overboard—Papeete—Pokara—How the first Coco-nuts came—Star Myths

Pokara tells me how the first Idol came to be Worshipped

The Hut in the Mountains—A Modern Fairy—The Escape—Love’s Hospitality—The Stranger from the Infinite Seas!

I meet O’Hara—The Emotional Irish Temperament—The Tahitian Temperament—O’Hara and I go Pearl-hunting—Tapee, the Old-time Idol-worshipper

O’Hara in Love—Fae Fae’s Midnight Elopement—Chased—A Melodramatic Race for Life—The Innocence of Eve—Temptation—The Lost Bride—The Madness of Romance—Outbound for Honolulu

Tangalora the Samoan Scribe—Where the Gods and Goddesses first met in Council—The Materials of which the first Mortal Children were Fashioned—The first Wondering Men—The first Women—How the first Babies came to their Mothers

A Heathen Monastery—A Scene of Primitive Heathenism—My unsolicited Professional Engagement—I imbibe Kava—I am made “Taboo”—Things that I may not Confess—My Escape—Fanga Loma—A Native Village—The Enchantress of the Forest—Temptation—In Suva again

(A Fijian Legend for Young and Old Children)

A Goddess in the Garb of Mortality—A Garden of Eden—Temptation—Kasawayo and Kora the Mortal—The Battle Flight to Shadowland

PART TWO

A Pagan Poet—Influence of Byron and Keats—Star-myths Enchanted Crab

O Le Langi’s Influence—Heathen Magic—Poetic Aspirations—Ramao and Essimao-Samoan Types—Robert Louis Stevenson and the “Beautiful White Woman”—O Le Langi becomes a Part of the Forest—“Here lies O Le Langi”—A Great Truth

A Child of American Democracy—Rajah Barab—Barbarossa—Brown-Slave Traffic Methods—Motavia’s Grave—The Magic Casement—The Splendour of Rose-coloured Spectacles—Mohammedanistic Desires—Giovanni’s Love Affairs—Exit Barab

In Tai-o-hae—I come across a widowed Marquesan Queen—Am received with Dignity—The Artistic Tattoo on Loi Vakamoa’s Royal Person—The Queen tells how she was married to a certain Martin Smith of New South Wales—An aged Queen’s Vanity—A Heathen Necropolis

Impressionistic Scene in Nuka Hiva—Tissemao listens to the Luring Voice of a Cuttle-fish—The Love-stricken Cuttle-fish—When Crabs are Brave

I fall from Space—Court Violinist—Arrive in Fiji—With the Great Missing

The Wild White Girl—The Wagner of Storms—A Pagan Citadel—Pagan Democracy—Ye Old Britisher—A Battle in the Dark

Poetry’s Legitimate Child—Music’s Fairyland—A Civilized Old Man of the Sea—A Clerical Hat is the Symbol of Modern Religion

The Modern Old Man of the Sea—Fifty Pounds!—A Human Octopus—Adrift at Sea—Sorrow—Saved—In Tonga—Our Old Man’s last Hiding-place—Retrospect

TO YOU MEN OF THE CITIES

Come! follow me o’er the sun-bleached sands by the seas where the small grog-shanty stands

On the Wallaby track to Falaboo.

Come! drink of the sunsets, rich old wine from the wandering sinful days of mine,

For ’tis only in dreams the world rings true.

Come! dream of some magic, far-off day, some lone backyard in the Milky way!

I’ll fiddle; how the wandering stars will dance!

We’ll sing together—“Yo ho! yo ho!” as on the mighty God-winds blow

Through the dreams of my world of gay romance.

I’ve tramped the tracks to Malabo, I’ve been the way the fallen go!

When times were bad my fiddle wailed their grief—

Till, by the camp-fires on the steep, one by one they fell asleep:

(I’ve buried three, dead in their boots beneath

The breadfruit trees, with all their dreams and Heaven knows what thwarted schemes!)

We’d tramped the cities, then we sought the huts.

And now?—secure on heathen isles, my pals still sport their hopeful smiles:

We’re looking thin on rum and coco-nuts!

So read these pioneer strains of mine, and drink deep, friend, as men do wine,

Of sunsets on the ocean’s foaming rim,

Of far-away and long ago where the scented trade winds blow

Till skylines sigh the stars full to the brim!

As on I tramp through sun-parched days or camp beside the trackless ways,

Here with my fiddle in the jungle curl’d,

Weighed down with wealth!—my tropic seas, my roof of stars above palm trees,

My home the hills and highways of the world!

But—if you men of far-off towns have got a few spare old half-crowns,

Just buy my book, it’s really not the worst

Man ever wrote, but nearly so, and that’s quite near enough, you know;

So, be my friend—and read it “till you burst.”

Part One

SOUTH SEA FOAM

PART ONE

CHAPTER I. SAMOA: FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Author’s Heritage—Arrives at Samoa—Disillusioned—Illusive Romance—Golden-skinned Polynesian Maids—Meets great Heathen Philosophers—The Samoan Chief, O Le Tao.

I’d fiddled in Australia, lived on cheek,

Cursed all the gold-fields ever found down South,

Lived with mosquitoes down by Bummer’s Creek—

To say the least, I’d felt down in the mouth.

I’d tramped the seaboard cities with my fiddle

To make my fortune, but ne’er solved the riddle.

I’d got quite thin on nuts and grins and smiles,

So emigrated to the South Sea Isles—

That Eldorado where men yawned and seemed to make their piles!

EVEN the wind, my boon companion—for are we not both born roamers?—seems to blow chunks of old memories through the moonlit, tossing pines that are sighing to-night outside this wayside inn. It’s here that we rest awhile, my fiddle and I, as I take up my pen to record some of the incidents from my early travels. Time, in its everlasting hurry, gives me the briefest space to say all I wish to say; and ere the month ends I shall be, once more, outbound on the western ocean.

Personally, I think that to have inherited a pair of rose-coloured spectacles from one’s ancestors is to have been endowed at birth with inexhaustible wealth, as well as being born a king in one’s own right. Such an inheritance enables one to conjure up the finest illusions, helps one to surmount apparently impossible heights, and also cheers one in each inevitable precipitous fall. I’ve often blessed the fates in the thought that they so kindly enabled me to warm my hands and heart by an imaginary fire when the winds were blowing cold. So much would I say, in complete humbleness, about my special gift. Possibly the aforesaid gift is the only inherited privilege that entitles me to write this book dealing with my life and travels in the South Seas. So far as the world’s and my own opinion goes, I’ve no violent claim to write more than three books. For, true enough, it does not make for notoriety and a keen interest in one’s self from a wide public to have done the things that I’ve done. I seriously doubt if my effigy will be seen in Madame Tussaud’s waxwork show when I come to die. The plain fact is, that it is not considered highly respectable to have slept in a wharf-dustbin in a strange land, unashamed, and with the lid on! And to have knelt in the complete obeisance of idolatry before a wooden idol with a tattooed heathen poet, and deliberately worshipped at the old shrine of the stars, is, to say the least, not quite the thing. Neither does a wandering vagabond life, and a deep feeling of kinship with strange old shellbacks, ragged derelicts, and tattooed chiefs, lay a suitable foundation for recording one’s omissions and sins in polite form. However that may be, I believe that to have dined deeply on salt-horse and weevily hard-tack, and to have played the fiddle on the “Wallaby track” from Maoriland to the Solomon Isles, is to have gathered an outfit of dire accomplishments that I hope may have inspired me with something to say.

First of all, I will say that, though I had been smashing about the seaports from Shanghai to Callao, and had trekked across the Never-Never land, generally bound for Nowhere, I still had strange hopes that wild pioneer life and romance, as I had read about it ere I ran away to sea, existed somewhere in the world. I was down in the dumps, stranded in Sydney, when the great opportunity presented itself. By the wharf, in the harbour, lay a three-masted ship. When I went aboard I heard that she was bound for the South Sea Islands—the Isles of the Blest!

“Any chance of a job?” I said to the chief mate. He solemnly shook his head, then critically scanned me, then pointing towards the cuddy aft, referred me to the skipper. Entering the gloom of the cuddy’s small alley-way, I bumped up against the “Old Man.”

“What yer wan?”

“Any chance of a job, sir?” I murmured in my very best longing-for-work voice. The skipper stood stroking his whiskers, and, after scrutinizing me from head to feet, demanded to see my discharges.

“Git yer traps and come aboard.”

I was engaged as a member of the crew.

Next day we were towed down the harbour by a tug, and by midnight had a steady wind on the quarter, which took us out with all sails set into the Pacific.

It was a monotonous, long voyage. The “Saga,” for that was the name of the ship, wasn’t a “Cutty Sark” or a “Thermopylae” for speed.[^[1]] Anyway, the length of the voyage helped to warm my ardent longing to arrive at the palmy coral isles.

[1]. The “Cutty Sark” and “Thermopylae” were two of the fastest sailing ships running from London to Sydney. The author sailed before the mast from Sydney to San Francisco on the “Cutty Sark.”

I think I was the happiest member of the crew when, after much buffeting with wild weather and stinking pork and maggoty hard-tack, our old wind-jammer hugged the outer reefs of the Samoan Isles. Ah, the music of the long-drawn sounds of the surges beating over the barrier reefs! I half fancied I could hear the palms sighing lyrical melodies as the winds crept like overflowing zephyrs from some great scented dream across that pagan world. On the dim blue horizon rose ranges of mountains, apparently touching the tropic sky: they were, to me, the peaks of romance!

The dry tongues of the aged, seasoned sailors hung out as they rubbed their tarry hands and sniffed the distant grog-saloon. Old M’Dougal, the ship’s carpenter, danced a jig and looked human for the first time. The Dutch boatswain pulled his red beard, gave a terrific grin in the moonlight, and muttered something about “Voomen and vine.” Then I got my few belongings together, packed my violin carefully, and was ready to go ashore.

It was quite dark when I found myself being rowed, or rather paddled, ashore in an outrigger canoe. As I went gliding by the moon-ridden lagoons, I felt that at last I had surely entered some magical harbour of a fairy-land.

Even when sunrise came like a silent crash of liquid gold over the wide Pacific, touching the mountain peaks and the scattered bee-hive-shaped huts of the forest townships, I was not disillusioned. All seemed as I had so fondly anticipated; it was as I had read about it all. Men yarned and argued dogmatically as they stood, fierce-eyed, before the bar of the wooden grog-shanty; there they stood, attired in large slouched hats, telling such mighty things about their thrilling travels that even old Homer, could he have heard, might well have sighed with envy!

When dusk came and I heard the tribal drums beating the stars in far away up in the forest villages, I thought, “Here at least I shall find rest from the hot-footed turbulency of civilized humanity; here I can dwell beneath the Eden-like shades of feathery palms, and listen to the wind-blown melodies as they come in from the sea and run across the island trees.” I revelled in such like thoughts. I felt that I had come across a pagan world where no more should I hear servile mumblings of a conventional people. I would peer into savage bright eyes and listen to the poetic lore of people who worshipped at the shrine of the stars and counted their days by the fading moons. But when the fierce-eyed, tattooed chief, leaning on his war-club before the rough customers of the grog-shanty’s bar, looked straight into the eyes of an old shellback, and, bringing his club down with a crash, said, with much vehemence, that he preferred Solomon’s Songs to the second chapter of the Corinthians, I rubbed my eyes and thought I dreamed! My chagrin was immense; those delectable palm-clad isles of primitive lore and romance had come under the blighting influence of civilization and of missionaries!

I was in Apia, Samoa, R. L. S., attired in his velvet coat, walked into the bar-room and then suddenly said, “Damn!” when the Beachcomber trod on his toe, bowed, and said, “Beg pawden, soir!” I strolled afar and discovered that bright-eyed babies, nestling at the bosoms of their shaggy-haired, handsome mothers, slept as “safe as houses” in doorless, small-thatched dens under the moonlit palms. And, wandering on, I saw star-eyed, nymph-like girls with tossing, coral-dyed hair, pass and repass me on the lonely forest track, singing merrily in a musical tongue as they dived once more into the shadows of the coco-palms.[^[2]] All this was extremely pleasing. But one may imagine how my tenacious illusions were grossly shattered when the majestic ex-king Malaetoa of the proud O Le Solu Dynasty, last of his ancient line, followed me into the isolated grog-shanty hard by, gazed into my eyes with fondest affection, and said, “Mine’s a bitter!”

[2]. The Samoans are not tawny or mahogany-coloured, but are of a pleasing, golden-skinned hue, sometimes fairer than Europeans.

O, illusive Romance!

Nevertheless adventure abounded. Those semi-savage men sang weird soulful songs, melodious ballads, about half-forgotten legends, and battles long ago; and their love-songs were as pleasing as the beauty and innocence of their womenkind. I roamed those palm-clad shores for days, and was considerably enlightened in an educational way, for I came across clans of strange old heathens, who seemed to me to be the disciples of the one true transcendent democracy. They were semi-naked heathen philosophers, old men clad in loin-cloths only. My pleasure was immense when I observed them sitting by their coral cave doors, solemnly chewing nuts, apparently as happy as the sunny, livelong day. It was sunset, and when they all commenced to beat their drums violently, beating the stars in, it seemed that their hoarse, quaintly musical voices, wailed out, “Behold! we are the people! Creation hath nobly toiled through the ages till, lo! the blessed sun warms our aged bones as nature casts into our trembling hands digestible nuts and sweet-scented taro!”

Could I help liking the companionship of such happy, wise old philosophers?

Many of those old-time natives were endowed with wonderful poetic intellect. And I vow that such an intellect my old Samoan friend, O Le Tao, possessed. I came across Tao about three weeks after arriving in Upolu. And I may say, that though I’ve played the fiddle under a palm tree outside a barbarian queen’s royal seraglio, and have been given the Freedom of the pagan city in consequence, I can recall no one who was more hospitable to me than O Le Tao. And so, before proceeding with the wild life and adventures which I experienced after leaving Samoa for Tahiti, I would like just to touch on O Le Tao’s character and genius by the way. In fact, O Le Tao was interesting, if only on account of his physiognomy, which strangely resembled the weird scenery of Samoa by moonlight—scenery that I feel is an eminently suitable background for introducing him, and not in an impressionistic sketch either, but just as I knew him in his meditative old age.

First, I would tell you that it was a lovely sight to see the tropical orange flush of evening fade to a deep, fairy-like green on the sea’s horizon beyond the scimitar-shaped bay off Apia. Then, one by one, the stars peeped out, not down from the sky, but wistful-like up from the lagoons along the shore. It was an Olympian scene and one that I should imagine would inspire the most unimaginative observer. The native villages were silent; the mountains, like mighty sentinels staring out to sea, stood with tangled forest beards, sighing down to their rugged knees. Moonlit lines of palms waved like majestic plumes against the crystalline skies; a falling star seemed a pale ember blown out of the far-off constellations. But for the tiny pagan city of huts, nestling as it were in the crevice of the mountain’s hip, it might have been an uninhabited island world. Far down in the lower regions, in the vicinity of the mountain’s vast feet, a canoe was paddled out from the hairy growths between those mighty toes. It was a savage, wrinkled old man of another age, paddling off for the silent waters in a canoe, that was, to him, a small argosy bearing him away to the wonders of shadowland! But it wasn’t as weird as all that; it was simply the Samoan chief, O Le Tao, stealing away under the cover of night to one of the neighbouring islets, so that he might worship his hidden idol. Though I cannot claim to have been there on that special night, I well know it was none other than O Le Tao. And how I know this is my own secret. Possibly I’ve been a heathen too, and have prostrated myself before an idol; I’m queer enough for anything. However that may be, I recall that I met O Le Tao next day. I was travelling along in the vicinity of Mount Vala. I had just had an appetizing meal of Bass’s Ale and monkey-nuts—and was feeling in good humour. Coco-palms, breadfruits, and other picturesque trees sheltered me from the hot sunlight and my banana-leaf socks hardly swished as I softly trod the beautifully woven carpet of flower and fern that Nature’s patient hand had spread across the forest floor. The sea breeze swept pungent whiffs, like iced wine, to my nostrils, as I followed the track made by soft-footed savages for ages. Suddenly I was startled by seeing a frizzly, partially bald head protrude through the bamboos. It was O Le Tao’s cranium.

“What you wanter here?” he said.

“Talofa! e maloto ea oe” (I greet you, comrade, and hope you are well), I responded, as the chief’s brow puckered up with suspicion.

“What you gotter there—moosic?”

“Yes,” I responded, as he eyed my violin.

“You no tafoa vale?”

“No; I’m a friend,” I replied, as I handed him a mark. This largesse changed his aggressive look into a broad smile of welcome. Following him, I entered his hut. I sat on his best mat and drank refreshing coco-nut milk. Suddenly we were disturbed by hearing loud grunts, heavy breathing, and smashing of twigs. In another moment an aged Samoan woman entered the hut. She was a fine-looking old woman, and had kind eyes. She was carrying a huge calabash of water beneath one arm. Its cumbersome weight did not deter her from further efforts—in the other hand she held a coco-nut, a basketful of fish—all alive O!—on her back a bunch of bananas, and between her teeth two fishing rods. She was O Le Tao’s industrious better half. She too made me welcome. Then pretty Cenerita, their daughter, arrived. She had pretty hair, and eyes that outshone the gleams of the three coco-nut-oil lamps, hanging from the hut’s low roof that night; for it all ended in O Le Tao asking me to stay the night with them.

When the hour was late, I felt very contented as I squatted by their homestead’s door by Cenerita’s side. Then the old chief commenced to tell me about the grand old freebooting times.

O Le Tao was over seventy years of age, and so was a reliable authority on the old sins and wonders of the heathen period of his palmy isles.

As the old chief spoke on, and his wife, Cenerita, and I sat by the doorway that faced the ocean, I too became transformed into a semi-heathen, the Samoan underworld becoming some dim, far-off reality to my brain. The moon shone over the dark waters, and the voices coming from the dark shore caves just below seemed to drum out muffled echoes from the old gods of shadowland, as I listened to all that O Le Tao told.

Cenerita had ceased to sing. We could faintly hear the o le sanga (red-winged nightingale) whistling its melodious song somewhere up in the mountain breadfruits. And still O Le Tao spoke on in this wise:

“O Papalagi, you must know and believe that, in those far-off days, the great spirits of shadowland did walk about the native villages by night. Often would the gods knock at the doors of the great Atuiis (high chiefs), bidding them strive for their mighty requirements; which were many. And sad enough for us in the great sacrificial month!” said O Le Tao after a pause; then he continued: “O white man, I must tell you that Lao-mio was my kinsman’s child and was a maid beautiful to gaze upon.”

“Doubtless,” I said, as he continued.

“And of course she was daughter of great chief, so to fall in love with a low-caste youth, as she did, was a terrible disgrace to me and my people. Also the gods, Tangaloa, Tuli, Tane, and the goddesses of O E Langi (Elysium) were dark-browed with anger about it all. ’Tis true that the low-caste youth was handsome to look upon, straight as a coco-palm, with eyes like a katafa bird’s. But such things do not make up for the lack of great blood and the pride of the gods in one’s heart.”

“No, certainly not,” said I, as O Le Tao’s wrinkled physiognomy revealed the pride he felt over those old ancestors that he claimed. Then he continued:

“One night, when we were all fast asleep in our village by Tewaka, we did all leap suddenly up from our sleeping mats, for lo! the conch-shells of the gods in shadowland were blowing! True enough the gods and goddesses were rushing about the forests in great anger! We did know that something terrible had occurred, for their voices sounded like to thunder and echoed to the mountain tops. As all my people did rush from their huts, the gods disappeared in the moonlight, but we were all just in time to see a canoe being fast paddled across the bay out to sea! Ah, Papalagi, ’twas great insult; for it was that low-caste youth Ko-Ko, for that was his name, and Lao-mio, the high-caste maid, in flight together. For a moment we gazed dumb-struck, the horror of the scene before us being on the faces of all the chiefs. And the O tausalas (high-class girls and women) weep to see so wicked a sight.”

Saying the foregoing, O Le Tao placed his wrinkled hand to his brow and gazed in deep reflection on the scene that was apparently before his memory. Then, as his old wife handed him a goblet of kava (he swallowed it at a gulp), he cast his eyes skyward and continued:

“Suddenly we all recover our senses, and go rushing down to the shore. But it was too late. The cunning Ko-Ko had severed the sennet tackles and had cast all our canoes adrift, so that we could not follow him. He was very low-caste too, for, as the canoe turned round by the promontory, he did turn his face to us and waved his paddle jeeringly! And though my kinsmen and many of the tausalas did dance with much rage on the shore at this act of Ko-Ko’s, I did myself keep calm, as great chief should keep; crossing my arms on my breast, I did spit seaward. It was then that we all turned, and rushing way back to the village we looked into the hut wherein Lao-mio had slept. Lo, master, we found all her clothes—she had left them behind! ’Twas sad enough, this act of an erstwhile modest tausala maid, but we did all beat our chests when we find the maid had left a note behind her too, and this note said: ‘O stink chiefs of Samoa, I go away with my true love Ko-Ko, for his eyes are like unto the gods! And I would have you know, O meddling people of the village, that my children shall bless me for having so god-like a husband!’

“At reading this insult about the godliness of a low-caste, we did all beat our limbs and bodies till the blood fell. And as we did this act we heard the mighty, far-off voices of the gods cursing our village, to think that a high-caste tausala should elope with a cheeky low-caste like Ko-Ko. The next day the great toas (high chiefs) went away in sorrow to the sacred altars at Manono, and, paying obeisance to the autiis (priests), asked them to find out what the gods would have them do about the whole matter. After many libations of ceremonial kava and sacred offerings to the God of gods, the vassals of shadowland did say: ‘You disgraced people of Manono must away go into the forest by Lauii; and when you are there you must play sweetest music on the vuvu and the magic conch-shells while the moon shines over the sea. It is then that the spirits will hear, and will tell you what is best to be done to enable you to catch the wicked lovers.’”

Saying this, O Le Tao paused a moment, then, swelling his tattooed chest to its full proportions, and with his arms crossed high thereon, he gazed majestic-wise upon Cenerita, his wife, and my humble self. Then, turning his head and face round in the direction of the mountains, he gazed in such a manner that it was plainly evident he was about to divulge something reflecting no small amount of glory upon his person. He continued:

“When the village did hear that which the gods wished to be done, they all meet by the sacred banyans, and say, ‘Who? Who in our village am great enough to respond to the wishes of the gods?’ And, Papalagi, I would have you know that, whilst this talk go on, I sit in full humbleness behind the assembled tribe in deep shadow of breadfruit trees.” (I nodded my head, intimating that I quite understood O Le Tao’s humility.) Then he coughed, and proceeded: “For awhile I keep my face bowed towards the earth; but still they call in one great voice again, and yet again! And so, knowing well that one cannot cast the power, the glory, and majesty from one’s own person, I slowly did arise, and, standing forth into the clear light of the moon’s fullness, I say, ‘Who is this that calls aloud for O Le Tao?’

“And, in this wise, was I chosen above all others, O Papalagi!

“That same night I and Lao-mio’s father, who was a kinsman of mine, did go away to seek the magic caves where dwelt the vassals of the gods of the underworld. When we arrived by the seashore we perceive four young coco-palms growing, that had not been there before. And, as we blew the conch-shells, the four coco-palms did commence to quiver in the light of the moon, the plumes and bunches of nuts that sprouted at the tops starting to swell visibly. Still we did blow and blow the vuvu and conch-shell; and still the coco-nuts swell and swell till they gleam in the moonlight, and lo! they were the big faces of the gods! We did then notice that the trunks of the palms were their legs. My kinsman and I did lean one against the other, so great was our surprise to hear their voices. For, lifting their shivering arms to the sky, they say, ‘O great O Le Tao, and he too who am shadowed in your presence.’”

“I suppose the gods alluded to your kinsman?” said I, interrupting the old chief.

“That am so, Papalagi,” said Tao, as I struck a match on my knee and intimated by a nod of my head that I wished him to proceed. Then he continued in this wise: “The gods looked down upon us and said, ‘If you would once more get Lao-mio the maid back to your village, you must go along the coast and approach the caves wherein dwells the beautiful goddess Pafuto. She will stand in your presence, and then lead you across the sea to Savaii Isle so that you may get at the maid Lao-mio.’

“At saying these things they did look upon myself and my kinsman with deep concern shining like a shadow on moonlit waters in their eyes, and then, again said: ‘You are mortals, and so we would tell you that, whatever you do, you must not gaze upon the goddess Pafuto’s face or form with amorous eyes, neither may you let your hearts hold such thoughts as one may have when gazing upon a beauteous mortal maid.’

“Well, Papalagi, this wish of the gods did not trouble us; but pulling my tappa robe around me I did at once commence to go with my kinsman to the spot where we might see the great goddess. When we did at length come to the sea, the moonlight lay fast asleep on the deep waters. The o le manu ao (Samoan nightingale), hearing our approach, started singing its midnight song to its favourite goddess Langi (heaven). We listened until our hearts were charmed very much, so much so that we both felt that our hearts were fit to urge our voices to speak out those things which the gods had told. And so I stepped forward, and say, ‘O le sanga oa e magi langi.’ At hearing me speak, the o le manu at once cease its song. Silence did fall and run on silvery moonlight feet across the forest. Then, lo, a shadow fell slantwise across the lagoon that faced the sleeping ocean. We turn our eyes, and there, stepping forth from her big shore cave, was the goddess Pafuto!

“Ah, Papalagi, never before did my eyes behold so beautiful a goddess. Her raiment was made from the finest wove seaweed. Her hair tresses, falling like a golden river on the sunset mountains, made a wonderful mat for her nicest of feet.”

At this moment the old chief’s story was interrupted by the arrival of Cenerita’s fiancé, a handsome youth named Tamariki. As the youth sat at Cenerita’s feet, O Le Tao gave him a freezing look that he should intrude at such a moment. Then the old man placed his hand archwise over his eyes in some memory of the dazzling beauty of the goddess Pafuto, and continued: “The goddess gaze on us with magical light stealing through her eyes, then she plucked a reed from the lagoon’s edge and blew out a note of sweetest music. At once the o le manu ao commenced to sing again, and out of the cavern to the right of us came floating a taumualua (native boat). My kinsman and I at once did that which the goddess commanded, for we at once jump into the taumualua. As we sat in the magic canoe, she did softly step into it and give a magic sign. It was with much sorrow that I did notice that the taumualua carry no paddles, for, Papalagi, I feel that the goddess may be for voyaging beneath the sea instead of moving over the waters. But just as I did look into my kinsman’s eyes in sorrow, the goddess did stand upright between us. She was as tall as a mast and as straight. Uplifting her robes and stretching her curved arms out like unto sails of a ship, the night wind did at once commence to softly blow. It was a wonderful sight to see her robes gently fill out like big sails to the blowing airs as the magical canoe start to move silently across the moonlit waters.

“As we did glide over the sea we could distinctly see her shadow reflected in the water beside us, beside the imaged moon that was full of brightness. Ah, Papalagi, it was this uprightness of the goddess that did bring about the fall of my kinsman. Alas, as she became like to sails of a taumualua, because of the uplifting of her robes there beside us, her graceful limbs were revealed to half a finger’s length above the knees. Truly, Papalagi, it was a sight to tempt even the gods, let alone us poor mortals as we sat there, one each side of that wondrous figure, my cheek almost touching the right flank, and my kinsman’s the left knee.

“Knowing deep in our hearts what the gods had warned us about, we tried, more than I may tell, not to behold or dream of her gracefulness and the secret glory of such womanly loveliness, as we could have done had she been a mortal.

“So, Papalagi, I did perspire overmuch through trying to kill those thoughts that will afflict us poor mortals. I sighed and prayed, and even sang a short lotu-song (hymn) to help stifle those thoughts that dare not rise from my heart. It was during this misery of mine in endeavouring to keep faith with the gods and our promises that I did notice my kinsman breathing heavily. I look long upon him, and then see that he was near to being fauti (in a fit) for trying also to stay his deeper thoughts. Much fright came to my soul at seeing the state of one whom I loved much and who was near to me in blood. I did look eagerly across the sea, and with much sorrow notice that we were still more than a mile from the lonely shores of Savaii Isle. The promontory was just visible far away to the north.

“‘What shall we do? What shall we do?’ I mutter as I did see my kinsman’s form writhe in the agony of his desires.

“At this moment the goddess slightly swerved her outstretched arms around to the north-east so that she might catch the fairer wind. In this sudden action of hers, her mass of beautiful hair fell about our shoulders, for she had slowly moved her head likewise, so that her face should be turned to the south-west; so that, while her left arm point north-east, her face turn south-west. Whether it was this movement of the changing winds that made her tresses fall and prove my kinsman’s undoing, I know not. But it is certain that, as her masses of hair fell tenderwise on his face and shoulders, her eyes, inclined sideways, gazed on him and on me in such a way as surely goddess never gazed to tempt mortals before. And then, alas, whether the knees moved through the soft swaying of the canoe or through the sudden veering of the night wind, I know not, but my kinsman’s lips did suddenly touch the left knee of the goddess!

“In a moment, as though lightning swept across the moonlit waters, a flash of light leapt from the goddess’s eyes—the canoe wherein we sat vanished—was as nothing!

“For longer time I did swim and swim. And when at length I sat on the shore, only the great goddess Pafuto sat beside me! It was then I knew that my sad kinsman had been unable to control his mortal thoughts, and so was lying somewhere dead at the bottom of the moana uli (the blue sea). Gazing upon me, the goddess said, ‘O Le Tao, thou art a great chief. Thou hast seen mucher beauty of the goddesses of Langi in their true nakedness, and thou hast proven that thou lovest the light of heaven in their eyes only.’

“At hearing this, I felt much pride. Yet, true enough, my heart did quake overmuch, for well I knew how near I was to falling as my kinsman fell.”

The old Samoan chief ceased for a moment. The night winds blew softly, drifting the scents of ripe lemons and breaths of decaying flowers to our nostrils. Cenerita, under the influence of her parent’s story, peered into the forest glooms. The grand chiefess, Madame O Le Tao, puffed her cigarette and revealed by the erect pose of her scraggy neck that she realized the import of her position as O Le Tao’s faithful spouse. The old chief, continuing his story, said:

“O Papalagi, when the goddess Pafuto said that to me which I have just told you, I feel much proud and thankful for her mercy. I well knew that she know in her heart that I too had been near to breaking my promise when the taumualua swayed. But, still, she know what great soul O Le Tao am!—so she say no more. Indeed, it was at this moment that she did bend forward, softly touching me on the shoulder with her lips, and so did make me taboo (a sacred personage). When I did get back to the village and told the chiefs all that had happened, they, though much grieved to hear of my kinsman’s death, thought little more of the flight of the lovers, Lao-mio and K-ko-ko. They did at once prepare great festival to celebrate the glory that the goddess Pafuto had sent back such a great one as I to still dwell amongst them.”

When he had made an end, the old chief lifted his shoulders majestically, surveying me keenly the while with his dim eyes. It was then that I realized how those island chiefs and the ancestors of knights and kings of all lands had first gained their power, their possessions, and mighty insignia. I instinctively knew that not only in those wild isles were men gifted with an imagination that made them have firm belief in all that they dreamed of over their own greatness. I half envied O Le Tao’s gifts—gifts he had so well utilized. For as he sat there I saw that he was enthroned on the heights of magnificent imagination and lived in the light of respect from all men’s eyes.

Such was O Le Tao’s story of the goddess Pafuto, as told me while the Samoan night doves moaned musically in the tamanu trees.

During my stay the semi-heathen chief took me to many interesting places, showing me spots in the forests and along the shores where once some great tribal battle had been fought, or some cave wherein, on certain occasions, gods and goddesses met in midnight council. After that, O Le Tao took Cenerita, Tamariki, and myself to a night dance in the shore village near Monono. I am assured that Man cannot improve on Nature’s handiwork in building roomy halls for secret congregations of human beings who would indulge in heathenish capers that endeavour to express the inherent impulses of mankind. The gnarled pillars and flower-bespangled curtains of that wonderful forest opera-house, decorated by Nature’s artless, silent-moving hands, left nothing to be desired even by the most critical Maestro who might happen to perform on the wide, branch-roofed stage. The moon hanging in the vaulted roof of space over the trees, was sufficient for all purposes. The acoustic properties were perfect, the neighbouring hills echoing back each orchestral crescendo and each encore in obsequious, weird diminuendos. In the intervals of silence it would often seem that I heard some phantom-like accompaniment, and faint encores coming from the gods of shadowland, ere the barbaric orchestra of fifes, bone flutes, and drums once more recommenced its terrific ensemble. I was more than astonished to see O Le Tao suddenly throw his stiff legs out as he commenced to dance with an elderly chiefess of enormous girth. A hundred dusky Eyes seemed to tempt a hundred willing Adams as the sarong-like robes swished to tripping feet when the whole audience began to dance before the footlights of the stars! With the characteristic restraint of my race, I clenched my fist in a great mental, virtuous effort, but only to fail through my miserable fallibility, for, opening my closed eyelids, I stared with unblushing effrontery at the prima donna’s exquisitely woven concert-robe—the equivalent of the South Sea fig-leaf!

She still danced on, a fascinating being, with the golden light of some witchery in her eyes. Her clustered tresses were distinctly visible by the pale glimmerings of the moon that silvered the huge colonnades of the stage. And, all the while she danced, she sang an ear-haunting melody, swaying her limbs, a scarlet blossom nestling in the hollow of her bosom. “Aue! Aue! Talofa!” came from the lips of the tiers of gay warriors and great high chiefs who squatted in the royal boxes. When the handsome young chief, Tusita Le Salu—the head-dancer’s affianced—stepped down from his perch in the breadfruit tree on the stage, the hubbub was immense. He at once faced the dancer in a god-like style, and commenced to sing a duet with her. They danced and tumbled about in a marvellous way. And when she lifted the pretty blue sarong robe up to her knees, I distinctly heard the aged O Le Tao groan through some pathetic realization over his departed youth. Yet the most fastidious could have gazed with delight on that scene: the whole thing was fairy-like, the girl’s dancing creating an atmosphere that was full of poetic mystery and nothing more.

The festival’s orchestra helped in no small way to enhance the poetic beauty of the whole scene. The bamboo flutes and bone-clappers (made from the skeletons of dead chiefs) played a suitable accompaniment to the many “turns” that I witnessed. The special music that was performed on this occasion was something between a Marquesan Tapriata and a Samoan Siva dance. Though I cannot reproduce the moaning of the resounding seas on the shore below or the echoes in the mountains, I give here an impressionist piano-forte arrangement of the wild music I heard that night.

It is many years since O Le Tao departed for the legendary splendours of his beloved shadowland: that much I certainly know. For, on a voyage bound for the Malay Archipelago, not so long ago, my ship put into Samoa, and, standing in the small village cemetery near Safuta, I gazed in sorrow on a little wooden cross, and distinctly made out these words, written in English and Samoan:

“Here lieth the mortal remains of High Chief

O LE TAO

Died, aged 83, in the year of our Lord, 1903.”

“In my Father’s House are Many Mansions.”

Gazing on that grave, I realized the briefness of all living things, be they great or small. There was something pathetic too in so humble a tomb for one who had dwelt in such imaginative splendour. For the island nightingale still sang its passionate song in the breadfruit, as the same aged tamanu trees sighed in their glory by the sea. But, doubtless, the children of a new age still whisper his name in wonder, telling how he was favoured by the goddess Pafuto for the majesty and inborn virtue of his mighty heart.

When I left O Le Tao’s hospitable homestead it was with feelings of regret, and it was a long time before I returned to Samoa. Brief as was my stay with that old chief, it was of long enough duration to influence me; indeed, I might say that I became a semi-pagan too. Cenerita no longer pointed in vain to the moonlit mountains, attempting to show my blind eyes the shadow-gods that she declared were stalking across the moon-ridden hills—I too saw them! I became a veritable heathen. My personality became robed in the weird atmosphere of pagan dreams. Civilization fell from me like an immaculate tall hat knocked off one’s head with a brick. The stern, dull, drab colour of the world changed for me. The bright-winged katafa, the brown-robed O Le mao bird, and bronzed-winged Samoan doves became warm-throated goddesses sitting in the breadfruit trees over our heads, their eyes bright with discovery as I played heathenish melodies and Cenerita sang. I was happy enough, for I lived in a small native house all alone; it had two rooms and was allotted me by the kindness of O Le Tao. That hut was my tiny grand ancestral hall. Just beyond my threshold waved the plumes of my coat-of-arms—a coco-nut tree crowned with a tawny bunch of fruit. My clock, far away over the wide waters of my blue demesne, chimed each sunset on the wave! Sometimes, when I played my violin far into the night, I saw ghostly shadows moving under my lovely garden trees; then I knew that I had awakened the wild people of another world, who came to listen with delight to the Tusitala of the “magic-stick” from the lands beyond the setting suns. Sometimes I would invite Tamariki, Cenerita, and a few more sweet-minded Samoan children to spend the evening with me. They would sing part-songs, melodies of which none knew the composer, wonderful strains that had been mysteriously blown into some old Samoan musician’s soul from the moonlit ocean caves. Crude as some of those songs were, I heard the true note. Metaphorically speaking, I threw all my music studies away. Away with such rubbish! No western music ever thrilled me as I was thrilled by the haunting poetry of wild sweet sounds such as I heard on those Samoan nights. It often seemed unbelievable, dream-like, when I sat on a fibre mat before the limelight of the stars and whiffed the odours of wild flowers and listened to the perfect strains of that great University of Samoan elemental musical art. Often when I heard the final chant of some musical genius I would arise and cheer loudly, as the rough, tattooed audience beat their drums and whistled their encores. Sometimes a sun-varnished maid would stand before the forest audience and sing some masterpiece that expressed all the impassioned melody of music’s far-away, forgotten childhood. I would hear the seawinds sigh their long-drawn accompaniment across the lovely wild-stringed harp of forest trees; a cloud would pass away from the moon and so lift a great silver curtain of ghostly light from the leafy, gnarled colonnades. And then the dusky, star-eyed prima donna of the forest would bow with a grace that was seemingly quite out of place as one listened to the wild hubbub of the fierce-eyed, tawny men who waved their arms as they cheered from the orchestral stalls of jungle, bush, and fern. Such sights, such experiences might well turn the brain of a much more sober head than I claim to possess.

Listen:

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[Music: MARQUESAN TAPRIATA.

(Dance.) A. S. M.

Andante

Piano ff

mf Drum effects

etc.

p Tambourine.

f etc.

]

I’d sooner be a pagan in this hut,

Wherein the singing spheres creep thro’ my door,

And dance and dance upon my bedroom floor,

As ’tween the sheets I watch with eyes unshut,

And on my bed-rail, wailing o’er the din,

A gnat plays on its tiny violin!

I’m wrapt in some fine madness of a sense

That robes me with the magic of those things

That lend imagination lyric-wings,

Imparadising all my dreams intense.

’Twill fade away, I know, and once again

I shall half-weep—to find I am quite sane!

Alas! I’ve worshipped stricken things called “Men”;

I’ve travelled down their groves and found their light

Hid magic splendours of the glorious night

Of things unseen. And now?—clear to my ken,

The sad old trees are whispering on the wind

The harmonies that maestros seek to find!

Last night those old trees said: “Oh, brother, stay!

That song you played just now we seem to know,

We heard it sung a million years ago!”

I said “It’s mine!” They sighed. I passed away;

And even the flowers along the lonely track

Said: “Poor, brief thing with feet and weary back.”

’Twas then the River, old and full of tears,

Stopped by the hills and called, inquired of me—

“Comrade, is this the right way to the sea?”

I kissed its breast, I soothed its wandering fears

As on we tramped; then, at the close of day,

It said “Good-bye, old friend,” and crept away.

And now?—a beauteous melody I hear,

As constellations tumbling from the skies,

Are dancing on the floor before my eyes;

Nor do I dream at all, for, sitting near,

A gnat plays perfectly the sweeping strain

That Man’s ambitious mind strives for—in vain!

I could cry out in spite to think for years

I’ve sought applause, played to sad men and kings,

To find, at last, the universe, of all things,

Lo, hires a gnat to make the starry spheres

Trip to and fro, go gaily o’er and o’er

In perfect time across my bedroom floor!

And still they dance and dance, and still the trees

Sigh grand adagios as that maestro

Sits on my bed-rail sweeping from its bow

The music of the grand infinite seas,

Till ’neath the sheets I hide my head for shame

To think, alas, a gnat achieves such fame!

After leaving O Le Tao I came across a kind of South Sea Mozart. He was a young Samoan of about fourteen years. He possessed a cheap German fiddle, and on its frayed strings extemporized melodies of the weirdest beauty.

“What’s that song, Pango-Pango?” said I.

He shook his curly head and said, “Me knower not, nice songer camer me out of win’ (wind) of the forest, from moan of sea-cave and stars of big sky-land.”

Saying that, he once more placed his fiddle (’cello style) between his knees, and performed a melody that might well have haunted the brain of a Brahms, a Schubert, or an Elgar. He was a handsome little fellow, with beautiful bird-like eyes. He was absolutely unconscious of the gift he possessed. He seemed, to me, the sun-varnished, perfect-limbed personification of Music itself, Music’s youth, light-winged, passionate, beautiful with elemental sweetness, the ecstasy of melancholy and inartistic carelessness. He played to his shadow in the lagoons. There was a fascinating witchery in all his ways. Yet I doubt whether such a soul as Pango’s could ever develop into that stage of music which men call “Classic.” His genius was the genius of youth, and could never grow old, and, rusting, develop into the austere ossification of the fashionable musical cranium, that awful unvibrant curvature of the musical spine that seems the melody of beauteous youth. Pango was as natural in his art as are the flowers and birds on the hillside. He could never have attained that decrepitude of imagination that invests itself in a robe of artistries, making sad old men and women imagine they hear the beautiful by having their unresponsive spines forcibly shaken by the thunderous crash, the multitudinous rumble and groan of artificial musical art. Ah, memory of Pango! Though a true musician, he would have been nowhere as a music-hall composer. Nor could he place suggestive words to music. He lacked British spiciness, too. But I vow that he did put the stars and forest streams to music as he sat out on the promontory’s edge by moonlight, looking like some young Grecian god as he hummed and played a strain that sounded like infinity in pain. To my great regret I lost sight of Pango-Pango for quite a year after that. The fact is, I left Samoa. How I left, and of the wonders of the sea, I will tell in the next chapter.

CHAPTER II. TROUBADOURING IN TAHITI

I ship with a genuine Old-time Crew—Poetic Nightmares—Tattooed Manuscripts of the Seas!—I learn the Art of Forcible Expression—Tar-pots—The Storm—Washed Overboard—Papeete—Pokara—How the first Coco-nuts came—Star Myths.

THERE are many sceptics who may disbelieve my account of the crew of the “Zangwahee,” but away with such people!

About a week after losing sight of Pango-Pango I went across to Savaii Isle. I had heard that there was an old sailing-ship anchored off Matautu, and that she was bound on a long voyage across the Pacific. I shall never forget the wonder I felt on first sighting the “Zangwahee” as she lay out in the bay. “Looks like an old Spanish galleon,” I thought, as I stared at the yellowish canvas sails and the antiquated rigging imaged in the dark-toned waters of the bay. For a moment I eyed the outlines of that craft with intense curiosity. The beautifully carven emblematical figure-head (a goddess with outstretched praying hands) kept my eyes spellbound. The poetry of the artist’s brain, the magic that had inspired the human hands to carve such outlines, seemed to enter my soul, as the light of the setting sun touched the saffron-hued sails and glimmered across the silent, blue lagoons. The movements of a man’s form on her deck made me realize the truth; for in some credulous fancy I had half thought that she was some long-lost treasure-trove ship that had lain there for centuries!

“Where you bound for?” I cried, hailing a weird-looking seadog who had suddenly stared over the bulwark side.

Placing his hand to his lips, he yelled back, “Bound for Tarhoyti!”

“Where the h——’s Tarhoyti?” I yelled back. But no response came; the old sailor simply pulled his dilapidated cap over his eyes and spat melancholy-wise into the ocean. In a few moments I had taken one of the beach canoes and paddled out to the “Zangwahee.” Clambering up the rope gangway, I went on board. As I stood on deck, I stared in astonishment. The crew, who were busy coiling up the ropes on deck, all stood up, and looked like rows of mummies clad in rags. They were wrinkled and sun-tanned to a yellowish hue! They might have been the crew of the “Flying Dutchman,” so weird did they look, those old-time sailormen. And talk about blasphemous oaths, when I meekly asked if they thought there was any chance of a job!

“Captain Vanderdecken aboard?” I said, hoping to break the ice by such an evident bit of humour on my part. One old sailorman, who had a Rip Van Winkle look about him, stared at my blue serge suit of the nineteenth century, and then, touching his cap respectfullike, said, “Thar’s the Ole Man aft; cawn’t ye see ’im?”

Looking aft, I got a bit of a shock, I can tell you. The skipper looked as ancient as his ship! He had a monstrous grey beard and O, the expression on his face! I might have made a bolt over the side but for the fact that he had already spotted me. Going straight aft, I looked him in the face and said, “Any chance of a job, sir?”

Metaphorically speaking, he picked me up by the heels, smelt me, looked at my teeth, screwed my neck round twice, examined my spine, thumped me on the ribs, and said, “Um!”

I fancied I saw the dust of ages on his bony neck as a whiff of wind came across the Pacific and divided the tresses of his beard. Then he looked down on the deck and said, “Wha’s thawt?”

“My violin, sir,” I responded, as curiosity toned down much of the funk I was in.

“Ho ho! He he! Haw haw!” he yelled, as he gazed on the deck at my fiddle-case. In obedience to his commands, I at once took my instrument from its case and commenced to play! It was like seeing God smile as his wrinkled face lit up with delight. “Yoom’ll do,” he said. Then, taking hold of me by the scruff of the neck, he pitched me headlong down the alley-way into the dingy cuddy (saloon). Alighting gently on a rather soft-plushed settee of prehistoric pattern, I murmured my thanks. You see, I had sailed on sailing ships and well knew that the treatment I was receiving was of marked courtesy in comparison with that which I had experienced whilst on the Clipper Lines.

So did I become a member of a crew who, I should think, were the last of the genuine old seadogs.

Next day the yards were squared to a stiff, fair breeze, and to the strain of some old Spanish chanty I found myself bound for Tahiti! My description of this voyage and the crew may appear like some gross exaggeration; but I can assure the reader that I could not possibly describe that crew and their ancient craft without appearing to exaggerate. I even remember the thrill that went through me when I saw the ancient-looking yellowish sails belly to the Pacific wind as we passed beyond the barrier reefs and caught the outer foam. But alas! the thrill passed away when I sat down in the forecastle with those marvellous old shellbacks and had my first meal.

I might say that the salt-horse and biscuits of the “Zangwahee” were as ancient as the crew appeared to be. Perhaps it was natural enough that there should be an affinity between the ancient members of that crew (a few members belonged to my own century) and the horses that had apparently roamed the primeval Arabian plains! Only a great poet could describe the antique “Menu” of that forecastle. I have a brilliant imagination, and so it was easy enough for me to imagine that the corn that those biscuits were made of had ripened in Assyrian cornfields! I only had to eat a foc’sle biscuit to enter at once the realms of enchantment. Just as good wine intoxicates the brain, the fumes of those cast-iron mouldy biscuits created a gassy atmosphere in my stomach and inspired my brain with weird poetic fancies. I imagined I saw Ruth standing amid the “alien corn”; and, taking another nibble, I had visions of old rivers flowing by ancient walls, and of the desert towers of the Pharaohs! I saw tired harvest girls, sickle in hand, sleeping by their garnered heaps under Assyrian suns. Yes, reader, such dreams were mine when I had poetic nightmares after partaking of the “Zangwahee’s” forecastle menu of salt-horse and hard-tack.

Though I could fill reams with the wonders of the “Zangwahee’s” menu and all that my brain fancied, I have only space to set down the stern facts that apply to the “Zangwahee’s” crew. As I’ve said, they were hairy-chested men, real seadogs of another age. To see their thick-bearded lips and their crooked noses, as they sang and climbed aloft, made me half fancy that I had been blown across a century into the Nelson period. Notwithstanding the old skipper’s rough exterior, I found him quite human. Surely few young men who have gone to sea have had the experiences I have had, for that old skipper would get blind drunk, and, lying in his bunk, roar mighty encores as I played selections on my violin to him! He loved sea hymns, and, when I played “For those in peril on the sea,” he would mumble deep in his beard, his eyes becoming wet with tears! Though I liked that strange old captain (and I believed he liked me), my chief delight was to come off watch and sit in the forecastle with the crew as they tugged their beards, shook their fists, cursed the mate, the skipper, and the Universe! As they sat on their sea-chests in the dim-lit forecastle, they looked exactly what they were—genuine high priests who worshipped at the altar of monstrous yarns and the best rum!

Some of them had fine, fierce, kind eyes, and bearded lips that never tired of yelling forth the wild mystery of the sea and oaths of inexhaustible beauty! They were able to express, in one neat phrase, the pictorial ruggedness of their adventurous, unholy careers. They were true sea-poets—possessing forcible descriptive genius that enabled one to conjure up weird visions of the wondrous countries they had seen and the “charming” women they had known. And I vow that they made their verse scan, subtle verse devoid of any direct influence from the idyllic school of romanticism. Some hailed from ’Frisco, Japan, Callao, New York, London Town, Norway, etc., so there was a splendid mixture of the world’s maritime literature. Consequently that forecastle’s audience made a terrific school of the “Sturm und Drang” persuasion, a school that fairly hummed with the unrestraint of Rousseau’s Confessions, at the same time favouring Mallarmé and Browning for concentrated expression. A forcible accent came on their rhymes too! One epic punch-rhyme would make one’s eyes see stars! What hairy fists they had! But those older hands seldom quarrelled. O Le Tao’s frame was as bare as an egg when compared to the hieroglyphics and tattooed sea-heraldry inscribed on their carcases. I had never seen such living art before, such brazen display as they revealed when they sat by their bunks and undressed in that forecastle. Watching by the mingy oil-lamp that hung from the fo’c’sle roof-beam, I seemed to be witnessing some life-like, wondrous Madame Tussaud’s waxwork of the sea, as one by one they pulled their coats and vests off, revealing their herculean, muscular frames in the nude! What a sight I beheld!—the tattooed storied history of their adventurous careers! On one old sea-weary sailor’s chest was engraved, in curves of red and blue, a goddess-like girl, the one great romantic love of his youth. She was exquisitely designed, and one unloosed tress fell down to her bare shoulders. I was fascinated as, leaning forward, I made out the faint words inscribed beneath the feet—“My Lucille,” then again, over the crown of hair, “Mizpah.” Others were veritable living volumes, depicting all those things that influence sailormen in the seaports of the world: shapely-limbed maids of Shanghai, Tokio, Callao, ’Frisco, New York, and London Town adorned their figures. “My True love Harriet,” Lucille, Unita, Mary Ann, Bill’s Alice, Ducky-Sarah, Angelina, Una, Fan-Tan, all were there, pug-nosed, and some, alas, indelicately underclad. I do not exaggerate when I say that I was initiated into the storied, tragical history of the oceans, of wrecks, the morals and poetic characteristics of strange womenkind in distant lands, and the shattered hopes of faithful sailormen, as I studied those weather-beaten manuscripts of the seas. For many of those tattooesque designs were sentimental symbols telling of fidelity in love, some deep faith in “Alice, dated 1879,” and lo, the recorded disillusionment with the later date—1880—the design of a heart with a dagger through it, revealing something of the bitterness brought to those old sailors’ hearts through the faithlessness of those old loves whose names were tattooed on their massive, hairy chests and muscular arms! It would indeed be a weird chapter of memoirs that told of my brazen explorations, of my astonished exclamations, as I curiously scanned and studied the tattooesque history of those violent old manuscripts. Many of the inscriptions had faded with age. Old Hans, who had sailed the seas fifty years, before I was born, would yarn for hours as I frequently interrupted to stare at his chest, his arms, wrists, and fingers.

“Who was she?” I’d ask.

He would shake his head sadly and tell me how Unita jilted him; how Kum-Kum slept in Tokio, and Leila in Kensal Green, and Singa-Samber in some old cemetery in the South Seas. Once he put forth his tarry thumbnail, and by the mingy gleams of the fo’c’sle’s hanging oil-lamp helped me to trace out a faint figure on his big wrinkled chest, and, lo! I plainly discerned the face, legs, and shoulders of some old pal hanging on a foreign gibbet! I often thought that I must be dreaming it all, as they sat there in the shadows, yarning away, as the Pacific combers banged against the vessel’s side, and we rolled along on our lonely course bound for old Papeete. It took some time before that crew acknowledged me as one of their legitimate members, for they were often cantankerous devils.

Ah, memory of it all—and my first oath! For, though I had been many voyages and roughed it “on the wallaby” with old sundowners in Australia and New Zealand, I had not blossomed into a true sea-poet of the great unromantic school of the oceans. No unfledged prima donna, no débutante, ever rehearsed her first part as I did, I know. I’d show them how to swear! After deep meditation, I gathered together the finest swear words extant. Over and over again I repeated those vile phrases until they fell glibly, naturally, from my tongue—full-blooded adjectives that resolved into monstrous illegitimate pronouns that I may not print here! I longed to publish those words, so to speak, to inflict them, sear them on the soul of one of those cantankerous old seadogs, for they played many scurvy tricks upon me, such tricks as must remain unrecorded. Though many opportunities presented themselves before I got the swear-phrases off by heart, I had to wait quite four days before I could get my own back in a legitimate way. At last the desired moment came. It was just at sunset. I was standing on deck gazing on the horizon, admiring the expanse of peace, the ineffable beauty of awakening stars and approaching night. Suddenly the modern sailor, who hailed from a local pub, Houndsditch, London, walked out of the forecastle, looked at me as I stared over the bulwark, then yawned, and dabbed me negligently—smash! in the mouth with a coal-tar brush, and calmly asked me if “Me mother knew I was out?”

I clapped my hand to my tar-smeared face; then I let forth my pent-up volley of oaths, which I well punctuated with a splendid driving blow on that son of Houndsditch’s nasal organ. The applause and calls of encore from the whole crew, who had rushed up to see the fight, were terrific. They cheered and cheered. Then I gave them something more to cheer about—I picked up the nearest tar-pot—there was a row of them by the galley door—and crash! it fitted like a cap over my opponent’s cranium, hiding his brow, eyes, nose, and mouth too! It was splendid. The cheer that followed that unrehearsed act of mine soothed my ruffled nerves considerably. I was declared the winner, and, metaphorically speaking, was awarded on the spot the Nobel prize for swearing! I gained and maintained the highest respect from those seasoned sailormen. They nudged me in the ribs when “Houndsditch” passed me on deck, and reviewed my contributions to ocean-poetry in the most friendly spirit as I swore and swore. So have I slowly and painfully educated myself that I may compete with my fellow-man and fight the world with my sleeves up. I recall that I was quite comfortable on board after that fight. Ah! I often think to myself, that if I were a king or a millionaire, how I should purchase thousands of tar-pots, and fix them—crash!—over the heads of some people I know. But why digress to record one’s personal viciousness? Except for the incidents recorded it was a monotonous voyage; and I was delighted when we caught a good trade wind and, with all sails set, the “Zangwahee” fairly danced and bowed as she did her ten knots toward old Papeete.

I had been to Papeete before, so knew what I was up against. I wasn’t touring the world with a camera and a thousand a year; and, though “South Sea palm-clad isles and wine-dark seas” sounds poetic and comfortable like, you have to rough it a bit if you’ve only got fourpence halfpenny in the exchequer. But these facts didn’t trouble me overmuch, since I could play the fiddle and swear.

The cook of the “Zangwahee” was a most grotesque character. He swore like the much-maligned trooper, banged his pots and pans about, and behaved like a lunatic when we stood by the galley door and held our noses, as we cynically praised the terrible effluvia of the cooking salt-horse. He, too, belonged to another age. He was sun-tanned to a yellowish hue, and had a large, drooping nose with bristly hair on the end. He would purse his lips up and, giving me a contemptuous glance as I smelt the galley odours, would say: “You call yerself a saylorman! yer God-damned galoot, clear art of it!” But in the end he and I became quite chummy. He would sit by his galley doorway and tell about the good old days, curse the modern sailormen and seafaring ways, as I agreed with all he had to say. “You orter been a-living in our time, when men was sailors,” he’d say, as I softly pressed him to take another sip of rum from the flask which I always carried, so that I might with ease bribe those dogmatic seafarers. After that he would cook a small bit of salted horse in fresh water instead of sea-water for my especial benefit. He even gave me fresh-made biscuits at times. So did I manage to exist on the “Zangwahee”; otherwise I should have been buried over the side and gone out of this story years ago. When rum was plentiful, the cook would stop on deck dancing half the night. Through being bow-legged, he looked like some mammoth frog clad in an apron, as he shuffled in a jig in the moonlight, close by his galley door. The songs he sang were quite tuneless, consequently he sang and sang. He would fold his arms on his breast and open his mouth like a puppet, as I played the violin and he danced. I’ve never played an obligato to a frog’s solo; but for tune and tempo give me the frog! (I don’t think it’s usually known, but the Polynesian swamp frog was the original inventor of the syncopated accent of the modern cake-walk.) Its chant goes:

Listen:

[[audio/mpeg]] [[MIDI]]

Music XML:

[[MusicMXL]]

[Music:

Bis

Clack, click, click. Clack, click, clack.

]

And to sit in a South Sea forest by moonlight and hear an old marsh-frog conduct an orchestra composed of the weird denizens of the forest—the Samoan nightingale wrapt in its green and bluish velvet robe, singing exquisitely as prima donna, the mosquitoes buzzing on their weird flutes, while the grey, swallow-tailed gnat, sitting on the tall fern-spray, sweeps majestic strains from its wondrous violin, as the old forest trees waltz—is a musical treat and sight to be ever remembered.