The Project Gutenberg eBook, South-Sea Idyls, by Charles Warren Stoddard

SOUTH-SEA IDYLS.

BY

CHARLES WARREN STODDARD.

BOSTON:
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,
Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co.
1873.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873,
BY CHARLES WARREN STODDARD,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co.,
Cambridge.

CONTENTS.

TO MY DEAR FRIEND ANTON ROMAN.

THE COCOA-TREE.

Cast on the water by a careless hand,
Day after day the winds persuaded me:
Onward I drifted till a coral tree
Stayed me among its branches, where the sand
Gathered about me, and I slowly grew,
Fed by the constant sun and the inconstant dew.

The sea-birds build their nests against my root,
And eye my slender body's horny case.
Widowed within this solitary place
Into the thankless sea I cast my fruit;
Joyless I thrive, for no man may partake
Of all the store I bear and harvest for his sake.

No more I heed the kisses of the morn;
The harsh winds rob me of the life they gave;
I watch my tattered shadow in the wave,
And hourly droop and nod my crest forlorn,
While all my fibres stiffen and grow numb
Beck'ning the tardy ships, the ships that never come!

SOUTH-SEA IDYLS.

IN THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP.

FORTY days in the great desert of the sea,—forty nights camped under cloud-canopies, with the salt dust of the waves drifting over us. Sometimes a Bedouin sail flashed for an hour upon the distant horizon, and then faded, and we were alone again; sometimes the west, at sunset, looked like a city with towers, and we bore down upon its glorified walls, seeking a haven; but a cold gray morning dispelled the illusion, and our hearts sank back into the illimitable sea, breathing a long prayer for deliverance.

Once a green oasis blossomed before us,—a garden in perfect bloom, girded about with creaming waves; within its coral cincture pendulous boughs trailed in the glassy waters; from its hidden bowers spiced airs stole down upon us; above all, the triumphant palm-trees clashed their melodious branches like a chorus with cymbals; yet from the very gates of this paradise a changeful current swept us onward, and the happy isle was buried in night and distance.

In many volumes of adventure I had read of sea-perils: I was at last to learn the full interpretation of their picturesque horrors. Our little craft, the Petrel, had buffeted the boisterous waves for five long weeks. Fortunately, the bulk of her cargo was edible: we feared neither famine nor thirst. Moreover, in spite of the continuous gale that swept us out of our reckoning, the Petrel was in excellent condition, and, as far as we could judge, we had no reason to lose confidence in her. It was the gray weather that tried our patience and found us wanting; it was the unparalleled pitching of the ninety-ton schooner that disheartened and almost dismembered us. And then it was wasting time at sea. Why were we not long before at our journey's end? Why were we not threading the vales of some savage island, and reaping our rich reward of ferns and shells and gorgeous butterflies?

The sea rang its monotonous changes,—fair weather and foul, days like death itself, followed by days full of the revelations of new life, but mostly days of deadly dulness, when the sea was as unpoetical as an eternity of cold suds and blueing.

I cannot always understand the logical fitness of things, or, rather, I am at a loss to know why some things in life are so unfit and illogical. Of course, in our darkest hour, when we were gathered in the confines of the Petrel's diminutive cabin, it was our duty to sing psalms of hope and cheer, but we didn't. It was a time for mutual encouragement: very few of us were self-sustaining, and what was to be gained by our combining in unanimous despair?

Our weather-beaten skipper,—a thing of clay that seemed utterly incapable of any expression whatever, save in the slight facial contortion consequent to the mechanical movement of his lower jaw,—the skipper sat, with barometer in hand, eying the fatal finger that pointed to our doom; the rest of us were lashed to the legs of the centre-table, glad of any object to fix our eyes upon, and nervously awaiting a turn in the state of affairs, that was then by no means encouraging.

I happened to remember that there were some sealed letters to be read from time to time on the passage out, and it occurred to me that one of the times had come—perhaps the last and only—wherein I might break the remaining seals and receive a sort of parting visit from the fortunate friends on shore.

I opened one letter and read these prophetic lines: "Dear child,"—she was twice my age, and privileged to make a pet of me,—"dear child, I have a presentiment that we shall never meet again in the flesh."

That dear girl's intuition came near to being the death of me. I shuddered where I sat, overcome with remorse. It was enough that I had turned my back on her and sought consolation in the treacherous bosom of the ocean; that, having failed to find the spring of immortal life in human affection, I had packed up and emigrated, content to fly the ills I had in search of change; but that parting shot, below the water-line as it were,—that was more than I asked for, and something more than I could stomach. I returned to watch with the rest of our little company, who clung about the table with a pitiful sense of momentary security, and an expression of pathetic condolence on every countenance, as though each was sitting out the last hours of the others.

Our particular bane that night was a crusty old sea-dog whose memory of wrecks and marine disasters of every conceivable nature was as complete as an encyclopædia. This "old man of the sea" spun his tempestuous yarn with fascinating composure, and the whole company was awed into silence with the haggard realism of his narrative. The cabin must have been air-tight,—it was as close as possible,—yet we heard the shrieking of the wind as it tore through the rigging, and the long hiss of the waves rushing past us with lightning speed. Sometimes an avalanche of foam buried us for a moment, and the Petrel trembled like a living thing stricken with sudden fear; we seemed to be hanging on the crust of a great bubble that was, sooner or later, certain to burst, and let us drop into its vast, black chasm, where, in Cimmerian darkness, we should be entombed forever.

The scenic effect, as I then considered, was unnecessarily vivid; as I now recall it, it seems to me strictly in keeping and thoroughly dramatic. At any rate, you might have told us a dreadful story with almost fatal success.

I had still one letter left, one bearing this suggestive legend: "To be read in the saddest hour." Now, if there is a sadder hour in all time than the hour of hopeless and friendless death, I care not to know of it. I broke the seal of my letter, feeling that something charitable and cheering would give me strength. A few dried leaves were stored within it. The faint fragrance of summer bowers reassured me: somewhere in the blank world of waters there was land, and there Nature was kind and fruitful; out over the fearful deluge this leaf was born to me in the return of the invisible dove my heart had sent forth in its extremity. A song was written therein, perhaps a song of triumph. I could now silence the clamorous tongue of our sea-monster, who was glutting us with tales of horror, for a jubilee was at hand, and here was the first note of its trumpets.

I read:—

"Beyond the parting and the meeting
I shall be soon;
Beyond the farewell and the greeting,
Beyond the pulse's fever-beating,
I shall be soon."

I paused. A night black with croaking ravens, brooding over a slimy hulk, through whose warped timbers the sea oozed,—that was the sort of picture that rose before me. I looked further for a crumb of comfort:—

"Beyond the gathering and the strewing,
I shall be soon;
Beyond the ebbing and the flowing,
Beyond the coming and the going,
I shall be soon."

A tide of ice-water seemed rippling up and down my spinal column; the marrow congealed within my bones. But I recovered. When a man has supped full of horror and there is no immediate climax, he can collect himself and be comparatively brave. A reaction restored my soul.

Once more the melancholy chronicler of the ill-fated Petrel resumed his lugubrious narrative. I resolved to listen, while the skipper eyed the barometer, and we all rocked back and forth in search of the centre of gravity, looking like a troupe of mechanical blockheads nodding in idiotic unison. All this time the little craft drifted helplessly, "hove to" in the teeth of the gale.

The sea-dog's yarn was something like this: He once knew a lonesome man who floated about in a waterlogged hulk for three months; who saw all his comrades starve and die, one after another, and at last kept watch alone, craving and beseeching death. It was the stanch French brig Mouette, bound south into the equatorial seas. She had seen rough weather from the first: day after day the winds increased, and finally a cyclone burst upon her with insupportable fury. The brig was thrown upon her beam-ends, and began to fill rapidly. With much difficulty her masts were cut away, she righted, and lay in the trough of the sea rolling like a log. Gradually the gale subsided, but the hull of the brig was swept continually by the tremendous swell, and the men were driven into the foretop cross-trees, where they rigged a tent for shelter and gathered what few stores were left them from the wreck. A dozen wretched souls lay in their stormy nest for three whole days in silence and despair. By this time their scanty stores were exhausted, and not a drop of water remained; then their tongues were loosened, and they railed at the Almighty. Some wept like children, some cursed their fate. One man alone was speechless,—a Spaniard, with a wicked light in his eye, and a repulsive manner that had made trouble in the forecastle more than once.

When hunger had driven them nearly to madness they were fed in an almost miraculous manner. Several enormous sharks had been swimming about the brig for some hours, and the hungry sailors were planning various projects for the capture of them. Tough as a shark is, they would willingly have risked life for a few raw mouthfuls of the same. Somehow, though the sea was still and the wind light, the brig gave a sudden lurch and dipped up one of the monsters, who was quite secure in the shallow aquarium between the gunwales. He was soon despatched, and divided equally among the crew. Some ate a little, and reserved the rest for another day; some ate till they were sick, and had little left for the next meal. The Spaniard with the evil eye greedily devoured his portion, and then grew moody again, refusing to speak with the others, who were striving to be cheerful, though it was sad enough work.

When the food was all gone save a few mouthfuls that one meagre eater had hoarded to the last, the Spaniard resolved to secure a morsel at the risk of his life. It had been a point of honor with the men to observe sacredly the right of ownership, and any breach of confidence would have been considered unpardonable. At night, when the watch was sleeping, the Spaniard cautiously removed the last mouthful of shark hidden in the pocket of his mate, but was immediately detected and accused of theft. He at once grew desperate, struck at the poor wretch whom he had robbed, missed his blow, and fell headlong from the narrow platform in the foretop, and was lost in the sea. It was the first scene in the mournful tragedy about to be enacted on that limited stage.

There was less disturbance after the disappearance of the Spaniard. The spirits of the doomed sailors seemed broken; in fact, the captain was the only one whose courage was noteworthy, and it was his indomitable will that ultimately saved him.

One by one the minds of the miserable men gave way; they became peevish or delirious, and then died horribly. Two, who had been mates for many voyages in the seas north and south, vanished mysteriously in the night; no one could tell where they went or in what manner, though they seemed to have gone together.

Somehow, these famishing sailors seemed to feel assured that their captain would be saved; they were as confident of their own doom, and to him they intrusted a thousand messages of love. They would lie around him,—for few of them had strength to assume a sitting posture,—and reveal to him the story of their lives. It was most pitiful to hear the confessions of these dying men. One said: "I wronged my friend; I was unkind to this one or to that one; I deserve the heaviest punishment God can inflict upon me"; and then he paused, overcome with emotion. But another took up the refrain: "I could have done much good, but I would not, and now it is too late." And a third cried out in his despair, "I have committed unpardonable sins, and there is no hope for me. Lord Jesus, have mercy!" The youngest of these perishing souls was a mere lad; he, too, accused himself bitterly. He began his story at the beginning, and continued it from time to time as the spirit of revelation moved him; scarcely an incident, however insignificant, escaped him in his pitiless retrospect. O, the keen agony of that boy's recital! more cruel than hunger or thirst, and in comparison with which physical torture would have seemed merciful and any death a blessing.

While the luckless Mouette drifted aimlessly about, driven slowly onward by varying winds under a cheerless sky, sickness visited them. Some were stricken with scurvy; some had lost the use of their limbs and lay helpless, moaning and weeping hour after hour; vermin devoured them; and when their garments were removed, and cleansed in the salt water, there was scarcely sunshine enough to dry them before night, and they were put on again, damp, stiffened with salt, and shrunken so as to cripple the wearers, who were all blistered and covered with boils. The nights were bitter cold: sometimes the icy moon looked down upon them; sometimes the bosom of an electric cloud burst over them, and they were enveloped for a moment in a sheet of flame. Sharks lingered about them, waiting to feed upon the unhappy ones who fell into the sea overcome with physical exhaustion, or who cast themselves from that dizzy scaffold, unable longer to endure the horrors of lingering death. Flocks of sea-fowl hovered over them; the hull of the Mouette was crusted with barnacles; long skeins of sea-grass knotted themselves in her gaping seams; myriads of fish darted in and out among the clinging weeds, sporting gleefully; schools of porpoises leaped about them, lashing the sea into foam; sometimes a whale blew his long breath close under them. Everywhere was the stir of jubilant life,—everywhere but under the tattered awning stretched in the foretop of the Mouette.

Days and weeks dragged on. When the captain would waken from his sleep,—which was not always at night, however, for the nights were miserably cold and sleepless,—when he wakened he would call the roll. Perhaps some one made no answer; then he would reach forth and touch the speechless body and find it dead. He had not strength now to bury the corpses in the sea's sepulchre; he had not strength even to partake of the unholy feast of the inanimate flesh. He lay there in the midst of pestilence; and at night, under the merciful veil of darkness, the fowls of the air gathered about him and bore away their trophy of corruption.

By and by there were but two left of all that suffering crew,—the captain and the boy,—and these two clung together like ghosts, defying mortality. They strove to be patient and hopeful: if they could not eat, they could drink, for the nights were dewy, and sometimes a mist covered them,—a mist so dense it seemed almost to drip from the rags that poorly sheltered them. A cord was attached to the shrouds, the end of it carefully laid in the mouth of a bottle slung in the rigging. Down the thin cord slid occasional drops; one by one they stole into the bottle, and by morning there was a spoonful of water to moisten those parched lips,—sweet, crystal drops, more blessed than tears, for they are salt; more precious than pearls. A thousand prayers of gratitude seemed hardly to quiet the souls of the lingering ones for that great charity of Heaven.

There came a day when the hearts of God's angels must have bled for the suffering ones. The breeze was fresh and fair; the sea tossed gayly its foam-crested waves; sea-birds soared in wider circles; and the clouds shook out their fleecy folds, through which the sunlight streamed in grateful warmth. The two ghosts were talking, as ever, of home, of earth, of land. Land,—land anywhere, so that it were solid and broad. O, to pace again a whole league without turning! O, to pause in the shadow of some living tree! To drink of some stream whose waters flowed continually; flowed, though you drank of them with the awful thirst of one who has been denied water for weeks and and weeks and weeks, for three whole months,—an eternity, as it seemed to them.

Then they pictured life as it might be if God permitted them to return to earth once more. They would pace K—— Street at noon, and revisit that capital restaurant where many a time they had feasted, though in those days they were unknown to one another; they would call for coffee, and this dish and that dish, and a whole bill of fare, the thought of which made their feverish palates grow moist again. They would meet friends whom they had never loved as they now loved them; they would reconcile old feuds and forgive everybody everything; they held imaginary conversations, and found life very beautiful and greatly to be desired; and somehow they would get back to the little café and there begin eating again, and with a relish that brought the savory tastes and smells vividly before them, and their lips would move and the impalpable morsels roll sweetly over their tongues.

It had become a second nature to scour the horizon with jealous eyes; never for a moment during their long martyrdom had their covetous sight fixed upon a stationary object. But it came at last. Out of a cloud a sail burst like a flickering flame. What an age it was a coming! how it budded and blossomed like a glorious white flower, that was transformed suddenly into a bark bearing down upon them! Almost within hail it stayed its course, the canvas fluttered in the wind; the dark hull slowly rose and fell upon the water; figures moved to and fro,—men, living and breathing men! Then the ghosts staggered to their feet and cried to God for mercy. Then they waved their arms, and beat their breasts, and lifted up their imploring voices, beseeching deliverance out of that horrible bondage. Tears coursed down their hollow cheeks, their limbs quaked, their breath failed them; they sank back in despair, speechless and forsaken.

Why did they faint in the hour of deliverance when that narrow chasm was all that separated them from renewed life? Because the bark spread out her great white wings and soared away, hearing not the faint voices, seeing not the thin shadows that haunted that drifting wreck. The forsaken ones looked out from their eyrie, and watched the lessening sail until sight failed them; and then the lad, with one wild cry, leaped toward the speeding bark, and was swallowed up in the sea.

Alone in a wilderness of waters. Alone, without compass or rudder, borne on by relentless winds into the lonesome, dreary, shoreless ocean of despair, within whose blank and forbidding sphere no voyager ventures; across whose desolate waste dawn sends no signal and night brings no reprieve; but whose sun is cold, and whose moon is clouded, and whose stars withdraw into space, and where the insufferable silence of vacancy shall not be broken for all time.

O pitiless Nature! thy irrevocable laws argue sore sacrifice in the waste places of God's universe!...

The Petrel gave a tremendous lurch, that sent two or three of us into the lee corners of the cabin; a sea broke over us, bursting in the companion-hatch, and half filling our small and insecure retreat. The swinging lamp was thrown from its socket and extinguished; we were enveloped in pitch darkness, up to our knees in salt water. There was a moment of awful silence; we could not tell whether the light of day would ever visit us again; we thought perhaps it wouldn't. But the Petrel rose once more upon the watery hill-tops and shook herself free of the cumbersome deluge; and at that point, when she seemed to be riding more easily than usual, some one broke the silence: "Well, did the captain of the Mouette live to tell the tale?"

Yes, he did. God sent a messenger into the lonesome deep, where the miserable man was found insensible, with eyes wide open against the sunlight, and lips shrunken apart,—a hideous, breathing corpse. When he was lifted in the arms of the brave fellows who had gone to his rescue, he cried, "Great God! am I saved?" as though he couldn't believe it when it was true; then he fainted, and was nursed through a long delirium, and was at last restored to health and home and happiness.

Our cabin-boy managed to fish up the lamp, and after a little we were illuminated; the agile swab soon sponged out the cabin, and we resumed our tedious watch for dawn and fairer weather.

Somehow, my mind brooded over the solitary wreck that was drifting about the sea. I could fancy the rotten timbers of the Mouette clinging together, by a miracle, until the Ancient Mariner was taken away from her, and then, when she was alone again, with nothing whatever in sight but blank blue sea and blank blue sky, she lay for an hour or so, bearded with shaggy sea-moss and looking about a thousand years old. Suddenly it occurred to her that her time had come,—that she had outlived her usefulness, and might as well go to pieces at once. So she yawned in all her timbers, and the sea reached up over her, and laid hold of her masts, and seemed to be slowly drawing her down into its bosom. There was not an audible sound, and scarcely a ripple upon the water; but when the waves had climbed into the foretop, there was a clamor of affrighted birds, and a myriad bubbles shot up to the surface, where a few waifs floated and whirled about for a moment. It was all that marked the spot where the Mouette went down to her eternal rest.

"Ha, ha!" cried our skipper, with something almost like a change of expression on his mahogany countenance, "the barometer is rising!" and sure enough it was. In two hours the Petrel acted like a different craft entirely, and by and by came daybreak, and after that the sea went down, down, down, into a deep, dead calm, when all the elements seemed to have gone to sleep after their furious warfare. Like half-drowned flies we crawled out of the close, ill-smelling cabin to dry ourselves in the sun: there, on the steaming deck of the schooner, we found new life, and in the hope that dawned with it we grew lusty and jovial.

Such a flat, oily sea as it was then! So transparent that we saw great fish swimming about, full fathom five under us. A monstrous shark drifted lazily past, his dorsal fin now and then cutting the surface like a knife and glistening like polished steel, his brace of pilot-fish darting hither and thither, striped like little one-legged harlequins.

Flat-headed gonies sat high on the water, piping their querulous note as they tugged at something edible, a dozen of them entering into the domestic difficulty: one after another would desert the cause, run a little way over the sea to get a good start, leap heavily into the air, sail about for a few minutes, and then drop back on the sea, feet-foremost, and skate for a yard or two, making a white mark and a pleasant sound as it slid over the water.

The exquisite nautilus floated past us, with its gauzy sail set, looking like a thin slice out of a soap-bubble; the strange anemone laid its pale, sensitive petals on the lips of the wave and panted in ecstasy; the Petrel rocked softly, swinging her idle canvas in the sun; we heard the click of the anchor-chain in the forecastle, the blessedest seasound I wot of; a sailor sang while he hung in the ratlines and tarred down the salt-stained shrouds. The afternoon waned; the man at the wheel struck two bells,—it was the delectable dog-watch. Down went the swarthy sun into his tent of clouds; the waves were of amber; the fervid sky was flushed; it looked as though something splendid were about to happen up there, and that it could hardly keep the secret much longer. Then came the purplest twilight; and then the sky blossomed all over with the biggest, ripest, goldenest stars,—such stars as hang like fruits in sun-fed orchards; such stars as lay a track of fire in the sea; such stars as rise and set over mountains and beyond low green capes, like young moons, every one of them; and I conjured up my spells of savage enchantment, my blessed islands, my reefs baptized with silver spray; I saw the broad fan-leaves of the banana droop in the motionless air, and through the tropical night the palms aspired heavenward, while I lay dreaming my sea-dream in the cradle of the deep.

CHUMMING WITH A SAVAGE.

PART I.
KÁNA-ANÁ.

THERE was a little brown rain-cloud, that blew over in about three minutes; and Bolabola's thatched hut was dry as a haystack in less than half that time. Those tropical sprays are not much, anyhow; so I lounged down into the banana-patch, for I thought I saw something white there, something white and fluttering, moving about. I knew pretty well what it was, and didn't go after it on an uncertainty.

The Doctor looked savage. Whenever he slung those saddle-bags over his left shoulder, and swung his right arm clean out from his body, like the regulator of a steam-engine, you might know that his steam was pretty well up. I turned to look back, as he was strapping up his beast of burden till the poor animal's body was positively waspish; then he climbed into his saddle, and sullenly plunged down the trail toward the precipice, and never said "Good by," or "God bless you," or any of those harmless tags that come in so well when you don't know how to cut off your last words.

I solemnly declare, and this without malice, the Doctor was perfectly savage.

Now, do you know what demoralized that Doctor? how we came to a misunderstanding? or why we parted company? It was simply because here was a glorious valley, inhabited by a mild, half-civilized people, who seemed to love me at first sight. I don't believe I disliked them, either. Well! they asked me to stop with them, and I felt just like it. I wanted to stop and be natural; but the Doctor thought otherwise of my intentions; and that was the origin of the row.

The next thing I knew, the Doctor had got up the great precipice, and I was quite alone with two hundred dusky fellows, only two of whom could speak a syllable of English, and I the sole representative of the superior white within twenty miles. Alone with cannibals,—perhaps they were cannibals. They had magnificent teeth, at any rate, and could bite through an inch and a half sugar-cane, and not break a jaw.

For the first time that summer I began to moralize a little. Was it best to have kicked against the Doctor's judgment? Perhaps not! But it is best to be careful how you begin to moralize too early; you deprive yourself of a great deal of fun in that way. If you want to do anything particularly, I should advise you to do it, and then be sufficiently sorry to make it all square.

I'm not so sure that I was wrong, after all. Fate, or the Doctor, or something else, brought me first to this loveliest of valleys, so shut out from everything but itself that there were no temptations which might not be satisfied. Well! here, as I was looking about at the singular loveliness of the place,—you know this was my first glimpse of its abrupt walls, hung with tapestries of fern and clambering convolvulus; at one end two exquisite waterfalls, rivalling one another in whiteness and airiness, at the other the sea, the real South Sea, breaking and foaming over a genuine reef, and even rippling the placid current of the river that slipped quietly down to its embracing tide from the deep basins at these waterfalls,—right in the midst of all this, before I had been ten minutes in the valley, I saw a straw hat, bound with wreaths of fern and maile; under it a snow-white garment, rather short all around, low in the neck, and with no sleeves whatever.

There was no sex to that garment; it was the spontaneous offspring of a scant material and a large necessity. I'd seen plenty of that sort of thing, but never upon a model like this, so entirely tropical,—almost Oriental. As this singular phenomenon made directly for me, and, having come within reach, there stopped and stayed, I asked its name, using one of my seven stock phrases for the purpose; I found it was called Kána-aná. Down it went into my note-book; for I knew I was to have an experience with this young scion of a race of chiefs. Sure enough, I have had it. He continued to regard me steadily, without embarrassment. He seated himself before me; I felt myself at the mercy of one whose calm analysis was questioning every motive of my soul. This sage inquirer was, perhaps, sixteen years of age. His eye was so earnest and so honest, I could return his look. I saw a round, full, rather girlish face; lips ripe and expressive, not quite so sensual as those of most of his race; not a bad nose, by any means; eyes perfectly glorious,—regular almonds,—with the mythical lashes "that sweep," etc., etc. The smile which presently transfigured his face was of the nature that flatters you into submission against your will.

Having weighed me in his balance,—and you may be sure his instincts didn't cheat him; they don't do that sort of thing,—he placed his two hands on my two knees, and declared, "I was his best friend, as he was mine; I must come at once to his house, and there live always with him." What could I do but go? He pointed me to his lodge across the river, saying, "There was his home and mine." By this time, my native without a master was quite exhausted. I wonder what would have happened if some one hadn't come to my rescue, just at that moment of trial, with a fresh vocabulary? As it was, we settled the matter at once. This was our little plan,—an entirely private arrangement between Kána-aná and myself: I was to leave with the Doctor in an hour; but, at the expiration of a week we should both return hither; then I would stop with him, and the Doctor could go his way.

There was an immense amount of secrecy, and many vows, and I was almost crying, when the Doctor hurried me up that terrible precipice, and we lost sight of the beautiful valley. Kána-aná swore he would watch continually for my return, and I vowed I'd hurry back; and so we parted. Looking down from the heights, I thought I could distinguish his white garment; at any rate, I knew the little fellow was somewhere about, feeling as miserably as I felt,—and nobody has any business to feel worse. How many times I thought of him through the week! I was always wondering if he still thought of me. I had found those natives to be impulsive, demonstrative, and, I feared, inconstant. Yet why should he forget me, having so little to remember in his idle life, while I could still think of him, and put aside a hundred pleasant memories for his sake? The whole island was a delight to me. I often wondered if I should ever again behold such a series of valleys, hills, and highlands in so small a compass. That land is a world in miniature, the dearest spot of which, to me, was that secluded valley; for there was a young soul watching for my return.

That was rather a slow week for me, but it ended finally; and just at sunset, on the day appointed, the Doctor and I found ourselves back on the edge of the valley. I looked all up and down its green expanse, regarding every living creature, in the hope of discovering Kána-aná in the attitude of the watcher. I let the Doctor ride ahead of me on the trail to Bolabola's hut, and it was quite in the twilight when I heard the approach of a swift horseman. I turned, and at that moment there was a collision of two constitutions that were just fitted for one another; and all the doubts and apprehensions of the week just over were indignantly dismissed, for Kána-aná and I were one and inseparable, which was perfectly satisfactory to both parties!

The plot, which had been thickening all the week, culminated then, much to the disgust of the Doctor, who had kept his watchful eye upon me all these days—to my advantage, as he supposed. There was no disguising our project any longer, so I out with it as mildly as possible. "There was a dear fellow here," I said, "who loved me, and wanted me to live with him; all his people wanted me to stop, also; his mother and his grandmother had specially desired it. They didn't care for money; they had much love for me, and therefore implored me to stay a little. Then the valley was most beautiful; I was tired; after our hard riding, I needed rest; his mother and his grandmother assured me that I needed rest. Now, why not let me rest here awhile?"

The Doctor looked very grave. I knew that he misunderstood me,—placed a wrong interpretation upon my motives; the worse for him, I say. He tried to talk me over to the paths of virtue and propriety; but I wouldn't be talked over. Then the final blast was blown; war was declared at once. The Doctor never spoke again, but to abuse me; and off he rode in high dudgeon, and the sun kept going down on his wrath. Thereupon I renounced all the follies of this world, actually hating civilization, and feeling entirely above the formalities of society. I resolved on the spot to be a barbarian, and, perhaps, dwell for ever and ever in this secluded spot. And here I am back to the beginning of this story, just after the shower at Bolabola's hut, as the Doctor rode off alone and in anger.

That resolution was considerable for me to make. I found, by the time the Doctor was out of sight and I was quite alone, with the natives regarding me so curiously, that I was very tired indeed. So Kána-aná brought up his horse, got me on to it in some way or other, and mounted behind me to pilot the animal and sustain me in my first bareback act. Over the sand we went, and through the river to his hut, where I was taken in, fed, and petted in every possible way, and finally put to bed, where Kána-aná monopolized me, growling in true savage fashion if any one came near me. I didn't sleep much, after all. I think I must have been excited. I thought how strangely I was situated: alone in a wilderness, among barbarians; my bosom friend, who was hugging me like a young bear, not able to speak one syllable of English, and I very shaky on a few bad phrases in his tongue. We two lay upon an enormous old-fashioned bed with high posts,—very high they seemed to me in the dim rushlight. The natives always burn a small light after dark; some superstition or other prompts it. The bed, well stocked with pillows, or cushions, of various sizes, covered with bright-colored chintz, was hung about with numerous shawls, so that I might be dreadfully modest behind them. It was quite a grand affair, gotten up expressly for my benefit. The rest of the house—all in one room, as usual—was covered with mats, on which various recumbent forms and several individual snores betrayed the proximity of Kána-aná's relatives. How queer the whole atmosphere of the place was! The heavy beams of the house were of some rare wood, which, being polished, looked like colossal sticks of peanut candy. Slender canes were bound across this framework, and the soft, dried grass of the meadows was braided over it,—all completing our tenement, and making it as fresh and sweet as new-mown hay.

The natives have a passion for perfumes. Little bunches of sweet-smelling herbs hung in the peak of the roof, and wreaths of fragrant berries were strung in various parts of the house. I found our bedposts festooned with them in the morning. O, that bed! It might have come from England in the Elizabethan era and been wrecked off the coast; hence the mystery of its presence. It was big enough for a Mormon. There was a little opening in the room opposite our bed; you might call it a window, I suppose. The sun, shining through it, made our tent of shawls perfectly gorgeous in crimson light, barred and starred with gold. I lifted our bed-curtain, and watched the rocks through this window,—the shining rocks, with the sea leaping above them in the sun. There were cocoa-palms so slender they seemed to cast no shadow, while their fringed leaves glistened like frost-work as the sun glanced over them. A bit of cliff, also, remote and misty, running far into the sea, was just visible from my pyramid of pillows. I wondered what more I could ask for to delight the eye. Kána-aná was still asleep, but he never let loose his hold on me, as though he feared his pale-faced friend would fade away from him. He lay close by me. His sleek figure, supple and graceful in repose, was the embodiment of free, untrammelled youth. You who are brought up under cover know nothing of its luxuriousness. How I longed to take him over the sea with me, and show him something of life as we find it. Thinking upon it, I dropped off into one of those delicious morning naps. I awoke again presently; my companion-in-arms was the occasion this time. He had awakened, stolen softly away, resumed his single garment,—said garment and all others he considered superfluous after dark,—and had prepared for me, with his own hands, a breakfast, which he now declared to me, in violent and suggestive pantomime, was all ready to be eaten. It was not a bad bill of fare,—fresh fish, taro, poe, and goat's milk. I ate as well as I could, under the circumstances. I found that Robinson Crusoe must have had some tedious rehearsals before he acquired that perfect resignation to Providence which delights us in book form. There was a veritable and most unexpected table-cloth for me alone. I do not presume to question the nature of its miraculous appearance. Dishes there were,—dishes, if you're not particular as to shape or completeness; forks, with a prong or two,—a bent and abbreviated prong or two; knives that had survived their handles; and one solitary spoon. All these were tributes of the too generous people, who, for the first time in their lives, were at the inconvenience of entertaining a distinguished stranger. Hence this reckless display of tableware. I ate as well as I could, but surely not enough to satisfy my crony; for, when I had finished eating, he sat about two hours in deep and depressing silence, at the expiration of which time he suddenly darted off on his bareback steed and was gone till dark, when he returned with a fat mutton slung over his animal. Now, mutton doesn't grow wild thereabout, neither were his relatives shepherds; consequently, in eating, I asked no questions for conscience' sake.

The series of entertainments offered me were such as the little valley had not known for years: canoe-rides up and down the winding stream; bathings in the sea and in the river, and in every possible bit of water, at all possible hours; expeditions into the recesses of the mountains, to the waterfalls that plunged into cool basins of fern and cresses, and to the orange grove through acres and acres of guava orchards; some climbings up the precipices; goat hunting, once or twice, as far as a solitary cavern, said to be haunted,—these tramps always by daylight; then a new course of bathings and sailings, interspersed with monotonous singing and occasional smokes under the eaves of the hut at evening.

If it is a question how long a man may withstand the seductions of nature, and the consolations and conveniences of the state of nature, I have solved it in one case; for I was as natural as possible in about three days.

I wonder if I was growing to feel more at home, or more hungry, that I found an appetite at last equal to any table that was offered me! Chicken was added to my already bountiful rations, nicely cooked by being swathed in a broad, succulent leaf, and roasted or steeped in hot ashes. I ate it with my fingers, using the leaf for a platter.

Almost every day something new was offered at the door for my edification. Now, a net full of large guavas or mangoes, or a sack of leaves crammed with most delicious oranges from the mountains, that seemed to have absorbed the very dew of heaven, they were so fresh and sweet. Immense lemons perfumed the house, waiting to make me a capital drink. Those superb citrons, with their rough, golden crusts, refreshed me. Cocoa-nuts were heaped at the door; and yams, grown miles away, were sent for, so that I might be satisfied. All these additions to my table were the result of long and vigorous arguments between the respective heads of the house. I detected trouble and anxiety in their expressive faces. I picked out a word, here and there, which betrayed their secret sorrow. No assertions, no remonstrances on my part, had the slightest effect upon the poor souls, who believed I was starving. Eat I must, at all hours and in all places; and eat, moreover, before they would touch a mouthful. So Nature teaches her children a hospitality which all the arts of the capital cannot affect.

I wonder what it was that finally made me restless and eager to see new faces! Perhaps my unhappy disposition, that urged me thither, and then lured me back to the pride of life and the glory of the world. Certain I am that Kána-aná never wearied me with his attentions, though they were incessant. Day and night he was by me. When he was silent, I knew he was conceiving some surprise in the shape of a new fruit, or a new view to beguile me. I was, indeed, beguiled; I was growing to like the little heathen altogether too well. What should I do when I was at last compelled to return out of my seclusion, and find no soul so faithful and loving in all the earth beside? Day by day this thought grew upon me, and with it I realized the necessity of a speedy departure.

There were those in the world I could still remember with that exquisitely painful pleasure that is the secret of true love. Those still voices seemed incessantly calling me, and something in my heart answered them of its own accord. How strangely idle the days had grown! We used to lie by the hour—Kána-aná and I—watching a strip of sand on which a wild poppy was nodding in the wind. This poppy seemed to me typical of their life in the quiet valley. Living only to occupy so much space in the universe, it buds, blossoms, goes to seed, dies, and is forgotten.

These natives do not even distinguish the memory of their great dead, if they ever had any. It was the legend of some mythical god that Kána-aná told me, and of which I could not understand a twentieth part; a god whose triumphs were achieved in an age beyond the comprehension of the very people who are delivering its story, by word of mouth, from generation to generation. Watching the sea was a great source of amusement with us. I discovered in our long watches that there is a very complicated and magnificent rhythm in its solemn song. This wave that breaks upon the shore is the heaviest of a series that preceded it; and these are greater and less, alternately, every fifteen or twenty minutes. Over this dual impulse the tides prevail, while through the year there is a variation in their rise and fall. What an intricate and wonderful mechanism regulates and repairs all this!

There was an entertainment in watching a particular cliff, in a peculiar light, at a certain hour, and finding soon enough that change visited even that hidden quarter of the globe. The exquisite perfection of this moment, for instance, is not again repeated on to-morrow, or the day after, but in its stead appears some new tint or picture, which, perhaps, does not satisfy like this. That was the most distressing disappointment that came upon us there. I used to spend half an hour in idly observing the splendid curtains of our bed swing in the light air from the sea; and I have speculated for days upon the probable destiny awaiting one of those superb spiders, with a tremendous stomach and a striped waistcoat, looking a century old, as he clung tenaciously to the fringes of our canopy.

We had fitful spells of conversation upon some trivial theme, after long intervals of intense silence. We began to develop symptoms of imbecility. There was laughter at the least occurrence, though quite barren of humor; also, eating and drinking to pass the time; bathing to make one's self cool, after the heat and drowsiness of the day. So life flowed out in an unruffled current, and so the prodigal lived riotously and wasted his substance. There came a day when we promised ourselves an actual occurrence in our Crusoe life. Some one had seen a floating object far out at sea. It might be a boat adrift; and, in truth, it looked very like a boat. Two or three canoes darted off through the surf to the rescue, while we gathered on the rocks, watching and ruminating. It was long before the rescuers returned, and then they came empty-handed. It was only a log after all, drifted, probably, from America. We talked it all over, there by the shore, and went home to renew the subject; it lasted us a week or more, and we kept harping upon it till that log—drifting slowly, O how slowly! from the far mainland to our island—seemed almost to overpower me with a sense of the unutterable loneliness of its voyage. I used to lie and think about it, and get very solemn, indeed; then Kána-aná would think of some fresh appetizer or other, and try to make me merry with good feeding. Again and again he would come with a delicious banana to the bed where I was lying, and insist upon my gorging myself, when I had but barely recovered from a late orgie of fruit, flesh, or fowl. He would mesmerize me into a most refreshing sleep with a prolonged and pleasing manipulation. It was a reminiscence of the baths of Stamboul not to be withstood. From this sleep I would presently be wakened by Kána-aná's performance upon a rude sort of harp, that gave out a weird and eccentric music. The mouth being applied to the instrument, words were pronounced in a guttural voice, while the fingers twanged the strings in measure. It was a flow of monotones, shaped into legends and lyrics. I liked it amazingly; all the better, perhaps, that it was as good as Greek to me, for I understood it as little as I understood the strange and persuasive silence of that beloved place, which seemed slowly but surely weaving a spell of enchantment about me. I resolved to desert peremptorily, and managed to hire a canoe and a couple of natives, to cross the channel with me. There were other reasons for this prompt action.

Hour by hour I was beginning to realize one of the inevitable results of Time. My boots were giving out; their best sides were the uppers, and their soles had about left them. As I walked, I could no longer disguise this pitiful fact. It was getting hard on me, especially in the gravel. Yet, regularly each morning, my pieces of boot were carefully oiled; then rubbed, or petted, or coaxed into some sort of a polish, which was a labor of love. O Kána-aná! how could you wring my soul with those touching offices of friendship!—-those kindnesses unfailing, unsurpassed!

Having resolved to sail early in the morning, before the drowsy citizens of the valley had fairly shaken the dew out of their forelocks, all that day—my last with Kána-aná—I breathed about me silent benedictions and farewells. I could not begin to do enough for Kána-aná, who was, more than ever, devoted to me. He almost seemed to suspect our sudden separation, for he clung to me with a sort of subdued desperation. That was the day he took from his head his hat—a very neat one, plaited by his mother—insisting that I should wear it (mine was quite in tatters), while he went bareheaded in the sun. That hat hangs in my room now, the only tangible relic of my prodigal days. My plan was to steal off at dawn, while he slept; to awaken my native crew, and escape to sea before my absence was detected. I dared not trust a parting with him, before the eyes of the valley. Well, I managed to wake and rouse my sailor boys. To tell the truth, I didn't sleep a wink that night. We launched the canoe, entered, put off, and had safely mounted the second big roller just as it broke under us with terrific power, when I heard a shrill cry above the roar of the waters. I knew the voice and its import. There was Kána-aná rushing madly toward us; he had discovered all, and couldn't even wait for that white garment, but ran after us like one gone daft, and plunged into the cold sea, calling my name, over and over, as he fought the breakers. I urged the natives forward. I knew if he overtook us, I should never be able to escape again. We fairly flew over the water. I saw him rise and fall with the swell, looking like a seal; for it was his second nature, this surf-swimming. I believe in my heart I wished the paddles would break or the canoe split on the reef, though all the time I was urging the rascals forward; and they, like stupids, took me at my word. They couldn't break a paddle, or get on the reef, or have any sort of an accident. Presently we rounded the headland,—the same hazy point I used to watch from the grass house, through the little window, of a sunshiny morning. There we lost sight of the valley and the grass house, and everything that was associated with the past,—but that was nothing. We lost sight of the little sea-god, Kána-aná, shaking the spray from his forehead like a porpoise; and this was all in all. I didn't care for anything else after that, or anybody else, either. I went straight home and got civilized again, or partly so, at least. I've never seen the Doctor since, and never want to. He had no business to take me there, or leave me there. I couldn't make up my mind to stay; yet I'm always dying to go back again.

So I grew tired over my husks. I arose and went unto my father. I wanted to finish up the Prodigal business. I ran and fell upon his neck and kissed him, and said unto him, "Father, if I have sinned against Heaven and in thy sight, I'm afraid I don't care much. Don't kill anything. I don't want any calf. Take back the ring, I don't deserve it; for I'd give more this minute to see that dear, little, velvet-skinned, coffee-colored Kána-aná, than anything else in the wide world,—because he hates business, and so do I. He's a regular brick, father, moulded of the purest clay, and baked in God's sunshine. He's about half sunshine himself; and, above all others, and more than any one else ever can, he loved your Prodigal."

PART II.
HOW I CONVERTED MY CANNIBAL.

When people began asking me queer questions about my chum Kána-aná, some of them even hinting that "he might possibly have been a girl all the time," I resolved to send down for him, and settle the matter at once. I knew he was not a girl, and I thought I should like to show him some American hospitality, and perhaps convert him before I sent him back again.

I could teach him to dress, you know; to say a very good thing to your face, and a very bad one at your back; to sleep well in church, and rejoice duly when the preacher got at last to the "Amen." I might do all this for his soul's sake; but I wanted more to see how the little fellow was getting on. I missed him so terribly,—his honest way of showing likes and dislikes; his confidence in his intuitions and fidelity to his friends; and those quaint manners of his, so different from anything in vogue this side of the waters.

That is what I remarked when I got home again, and found myself growing as practical and prosy as ever. I awoke no kindred chord in the family bosom. On the contrary, they all said, "It was no use to think of it: no good could come out of Nazareth." The idea of a heathen and his abominable idolatry being countenanced in the sanctity of a Christian home was too dreadful for anything. But I believed some good might come out of Nazareth, and I believed that, when it did come, it was the genuine article, worth hunting for, surely. I thought it all over soberly, finally resolving to do a little missionary work on my own account. So I wrote to the Colonel of the Royal Guards, who knows everybody and has immense influence everywhere, begging him to catch Kána-aná, when his folks weren't looking, and send him to my address, marked C. O. D., for I was just dying to see him. That was how I trapped my little heathen and began to be a missionary, all by myself.

I informed the Colonel it was a case of life and death, and he seemed to realize it, for he managed to get Kána-aná away from his distressed relatives (their name is legion, and they live all over the island), fit him out in real clothing,—the poor little wretch had to be dressed, you know; we all do it in this country,—then he packed him up and shipped him, care of the captain of the bark S——. When he arrived, I took him right to my room and began my missionary work. I tried to make all the people love him, but I'm afraid they found it hard work. He wasn't half so interesting up here anyhow! I seemed to have been regarding him through chromatic glasses, which glasses being suddenly removed, I found a little, dark-skinned savage, whose clothes fitted him horribly, and appeared to have no business there. Boots about twice too long, the toes being heavily charged with wadding; in fact, he looked perfectly miserable, and I've no doubt he felt so. How he had been studying English on the voyage up! He wanted to be a great linguist, and had begun in good earnest. He said "good mornin'" as boldly as possible about seven P. M., and invariably spoke of the women of America as "him." He had an insane desire to spell, and started spelling-matches with everybody, at the most inappropriate hours and inconvenient places. He invariably spelled God d-o-g; when duly corrected,—thus, G-o-d,—he would triumphantly shout, dog. He jumped at these irreverent conclusions about twenty times a day.

What an experience I had, educating my little savage! Walking him in the street by the hour; answering questions on all possible topics; spelling up and down the blocks; spelling from the centre of the city to the suburbs and back again, and around it; spelling one another at spelling,—two latter-day peripatetics on dress parade, passing to and fro in high and serene strata of philosophy, alike unconscious of the rudely gazing and insolent citizens, or the tedious calls of labor. A spell was over us: we ran into all sorts of people, and trod on many a corn, loafing about in this way. Some of the victims objected in harsh and sinful language. I found Kána-aná had so far advanced in the acquirement of our mellifluous tongue as to be very successful in returning their salutes. I had the greatest difficulty in convincing him of the enormity of his error. The little convert thought it was our mode of greeting strangers, equivalent to their more graceful and poetic password, Aloha, "Love to you."

My little cannibal wasn't easily accustomed to his new restraints, such as clothes, manners, and forbidden water-privileges. He several times started on his daily pilgrimage without his hat; once or twice, to save time, put his coat on next his skin; and though I finally so far conquered him as to be sure that his shirt would be worn on the inside instead of the outside of his trousers (this he considered a great waste of material), I was in constant terror of his suddenly disrobing in the street and plunging into the first water we came to,—which barbarous act would have insured his immediate arrest, perhaps confinement; and that would have been the next thing to death in his case.

So we perambulated the streets and the suburbs, daily growing into each other's grace; and I was thinking of the propriety of instituting a series of more extended excursions, when I began to realize that my guest was losing interest in our wonderful city and the possible magnitude of her future.

He grew silent and melancholy; he quit spelling entirely, or only indulged in rare and fitful (I am pained to add, fruitless) attempts at spelling God in the orthodox fashion. It seemed almost as though I had missed my calling; certainly, I was hardly successful as a missionary.

The circus failed to revive him; the beauty of our young women he regarded without interest. He was less devout than at first, when he used to insist upon entering every church we came to and sitting a few moments, though frequently we were the sole occupants of the building. He would steal away into remote corners of the house, and be gone for hours. Twice or three times I discovered him in a dark closet, in puris naturalibus, toying with a singular shell strung upon a feather chain. The feathers of the chain I recognized as those of a strange bird held as sacred among his people. I began to suspect the occasion of his malady: he believed himself bewitched or accursed of some one,—a common superstition with the dark races. This revelation filled me with alarm; for he would think nothing of lying down to die under the impression that it was his fate, and no medicine under the heaven could touch him further.

I began telling him of my discovery, begging his secret from him. In vain I besought him. "It was his trouble; he must go back!" I told him he should go back as soon as possible; that we would look for ourselves, and see when a vessel was to sail again. I took him among the wharves, visiting, in turn, nearly all the shipping moored there. How he lingered about them, letting his eyes wander over the still bay into the mellow hazes that sometimes visit our brown and dusty hills!

His nature seemed to find an affinity in the tranquil tides, the far-sweeping distances, the alluring outlines of the coast, where it was blended with the sea-line in the ever-mysterious horizon. After these visitations, he seemed loath to return again among houses and people; they oppressed and suffocated him.

One day, as we were wending our way to the city front, we passed a specimen of grotesque carving, in front of a tobacconist's establishment. Kána-aná stood eying the painted model for a moment, and then, to the amazement and amusement of the tobacconist and one or two bystanders, fell upon his knees before it, and was for a few moments lost in prayer. It seemed to do him a deal of good, as he was more cheerful after his invocation,—for that day, at least; and we could never start upon any subsequent excursion without first visiting this wooden Indian, which he evidently mistook for a god.

He began presently to bring tributes, in the shape of small cobble-stones, which he surreptitiously deposited at the feet of his new-found deity, and passed on, rejoicing. His small altar grew from day to day, and his spirits were lighter as he beheld it unmolested, thanks to the indifference of the tobacconist and the street contractors.

His greatest trials were within the confines of the bath-tub. He who had been born to the Pacific, and reared among its foam and breakers, now doomed to a seven-by-three zinc box and ten inches of water! He would splash about like a trout in a saucer, bemoaning his fate. Pilgrimages to the beach were his greatest delight; divings into the sea, so far from town that no one could possibly be shocked, even with the assistance of an opera-glass. He used to implore a daily repetition of these cautious and inoffensive recreations, though, once in the chilly current, he soon came out of it, shivering and miserable. Where were his warm sea-waves, and the shining beach, with the cocoa-palms quivering in the intense fires of the tropical day? How he missed them and mourned for them, crooning a little chant in their praises, much to the disparagement of our dry hills, cold water, and careful people!

In one of our singular walks, when he had been unusually silent, and I had sought in vain to lift away the gloom that darkened his soul, I was startled by a quick cry of joy from the lips of the young exile,—a cry that was soon turned into a sharp, prolonged, and pitiful wail of sorrow and despair. We had unconsciously approached an art-gallery, the deep windows of which were beautified with a few choice landscapes in oil. Kána-aná's restless and searching eye, doubtless attracted by the brilliant coloring of one of the pictures, seemed in a moment to comprehend and assume the rich and fervent spirit with which the artist had so successfully imbued his canvas.

It was the subject which had at first delighted Kána-aná,—the splendid charm of its manipulation which so affected him, holding him there wailing in the bitterness of a natural and incontrollable sorrow. The painting was illuminated with the mellowness of a tropical sunset. A transparent light seemed to transfigure the sea and sky. The artist had wrought a miracle in his inspiration. It was a warm, hazy, silent sunset forever. The outline of a high, projecting cliff was barely visible in the flood of misty glory that spread over the face of it,—a cliff whose delicate tints of green and crimson pictured in the mind a pyramid of leaves and flowers. A valley opened its shadowy depths through the sparkling atmosphere, and in the centre of this veiled chasm the pale threads of two waterfalls seemed to appear and disappear, so exquisitely was the distance imitated. Gilded breakers reeled upon a palm-fringed shore; and the whole was hallowed by the perpetual peace of an unbroken solitude.

I at once detected the occasion of Kána-aná's agitation. Here was the valley of his birth,—the cliff, the waterfall, the sea, copied faithfully, at that crowning hour when they are indeed supernaturally lovely. At that moment, the promise to him of a return would have been mockery. He was there in spirit, pacing the beach, and greeting his companions with that liberal exchange of love peculiar to them. Again he sought our old haunt by the river, watching the sun go down. Again he waited listlessly the coming of night.

It was a wonder that the police did not march us both off to the station-house; for the little refugee was howling at the top of his lungs, while I endeavored to quiet him by bursting a sort of vocal tornado about his ears. I then saw my error. I said to myself, "I have transplanted a flower from the hot sand of the Orient to the hard clay of our more material world,—a flower too fragile to be handled, if never so kindly. Day after day it has been fed, watered, and nourished by Nature. Every element of life has ministered to its development in the most natural way. Its attributes are God's and Nature's own. I bring it hither, set it in our tough soil, and endeavor to train its sensitive tendrils in one direction. There is no room for spreading them here, where we are overcrowded already. It finds no succulence in its cramped bed, no warmth in our practical and selfish atmosphere. It withers from the root upward; its blossoms are falling; it will die!" I resolved it should not die. Unfortunately, there was no bark announced to sail for his island home within several weeks. I could only devote my energies to keeping life in that famishing soul until it had found rest in the luxurious clime of its nativity.

At last the bark arrived. We went at once to see her; and I could hardly persuade the little homesick soul to come back with me at night. He who was the fire of hospitality and obliging to the uttermost, at home, came very near to mutiny just then.

It was this civilization that had wounded him, till the thought of his easy and pleasurable life among the barbarians stung him to madness. Should he ever see them again, his lovers? ever climb with the goat-hunters among the clouds yonder? or bathe, ride, sport, as he used to, till the day was spent and the night come?

Those little booths near the wharves, where shells, corals, and gold-fish are on sale, were Kána-aná's favorite haunts during the last few days he spent here. I would leave him seated on a box or barrel by one of those epitomes of Oceanica, and return two hours later, to find him seated as I had left him, and singing some weird méle,—some legend of his home. These musical diversions were a part of his nature, and a very grave and sweet part of it, too. A few words, chanted on a low note, began the song, when the voice would suddenly soar upward with a single syllable of exceeding sweetness, and there hang trembling in bird-like melody till it died away with the breath of the singer.

Poor, longing soul! I would you had never left the life best suited to you,—that liberty which alone could give expression to your wonderful capacities. Not many are so rich in instincts to read Nature, to translate her revelations, to speak of her as an orator endowed with her surpassing eloquence.

It will always be a sad effort, thinking of that last night together. There are hours when the experiences of a lifetime seem compressed and crowded together. One grows a head taller in his soul at such times, and perhaps gets suddenly gray, as with a fright, also.

Kána-aná talked and talked in his pretty, broken English, telling me of a thousand charming secrets; expressing all the natural graces that at first attracted me to him, and imploring me over and over to return with him and dwell in the antipodes. How near I came to resolving, then and there, that I would go, and take the consequences,—how very near I came to it! He passed the night in coaxing, promising, entreating; and was never more interesting or lovable. It took just about all the moral courage allotted me to keep on this side of barbarism on that eventful occasion; and in the morning Kána-aná sailed, with a face all over tears, and agony, and dust.

I begged him to select something for a remembrancer; and of all that ingenuity can invent and art achieve he chose a metallic chain for his neck,—chose it, probably, because it glittered superbly, and was good to string charms upon. He gave me the greater part of his wardrobe, though it can never be of any earthly use to me, save as a memorial of a passing joy in a life where joys seem to have little else to do than be brief and palatable.

He said he "should never want them again"; and he said it as one might say something of the same sort in putting by some instrument of degradation,—conscious of renewed manhood, but remembering his late humiliation, and bowing to that remembrance.

So Kána-aná, and the bark, and all that I ever knew of genuine, spontaneous, and unfettered love sailed into the west, and went down with the sun in a glory of air, sea, and sky, trebly glorious that evening. I shall never meet the sea when it is bluest without thinking of one who is its child and master. I shall never see mangoes and bananas without thinking of him who is their brother, born and brought up with them. I shall never smell cassia, or clove, or jessamine, but a thought of Kána-aná will be borne upon their breath. A flying skiff, land in the far distance rising slowly, drifting sea-grasses, a clear voice burdened with melody,—all belong to him, and are a part of him.

I resign my office. I think that, perhaps, instead of my having converted the little cannibal, he may have converted me. I am sure, at least, that if we two should begin a missionary work upon one another, I should be the first to experience the great change. I sent my convert home, feeling he wasn't quite so good as when I first got him; and I truly wish him as he was.

*****

I can see you, my beloved,—sleeping, naked, in the twilight of the west. The winds kiss you with pure and fragrant lips. The sensuous waves invite you to their embrace. Earth again offers you her varied store. Partake of her offering, and be satisfied. Return, O troubled soul! to your first and natural joys: they were given you by the Divine hand that can do no ill. In the smoke of the sacrifice ascends the prayer of your race. As the incense fadeth and is scattered upon the winds of heaven, so shall your people separate, nevermore to assemble among the nations. So perish your superstitions, your necromancies, your ancient arts of war, and the unwritten epics of your kings.

Alas, Kána-aná! As the foam of the sea you love, as the fragrance of the flower you worship, shall your precious body be wasted, and your untrammelled soul pass to the realms of your fathers.

Our day of communion is over. Behold how Night extends her wings to cover you from my sight! She may, indeed, hide your presence; she may withhold from me the mystery of your future: but she cannot take from me that which I have; she cannot rob me of the rich influences of your past.

Dear comrade, pardon and absolve your spiritual adviser, for seeking to remould so delicate and original a soul as yours; and, though neither prophet nor priest, I yet give you the kiss of peace at parting, and the benediction of unceasing love.

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!

TABOO.—A FÊTE-DAY IN TAHITI.

IT was on one of those vagabond pilgrimages to nowhere in particular, such as every stranger is bound to make in a strange land, that I first stumbled upon my royal Jester, better known in Tahiti as Taboo.

Great Jove! what a night it was! A wild ravine full of banyan and pandanus trees, and of parasite climbers, and the thousand nameless leafing and blossoming creatures that intermarry to such an alarming extent in the free-loving tropics, had tempted me to pasture there for a little while. I was wandering on among roots and trailing branches, and under ropes upon ropes of flowers that seemed to swing suddenly across my path on purpose to keep me from finding too easily the secret heart of the mountain. I felt it was right that I should be made to realize how sacred a spot that sanctuary of Nature was, but I fretted somewhat at the persistency of those speechless sentinels who guarded its outer door so faithfully. There was a waterfall within, that I had prayed to see,—one of those mysterious waterfalls that descend noiselessly from the bosom of a cloud, stealing over cushions of moss, like a ray of light in a dream, or something else equally intangible.

You never find this sort of waterfall in the common way. No one can exactly point it out to you; but you must search for it yourself, and listen for its voice,—and usually listen in vain,—till, suddenly, you come upon it in a moment, almost as if by accident; and its whole quivering length glitters and glistens with jewels, where it hangs, like a necklace, on the bosom of a great cliff. It is the only visible chain that binds earth to heaven; and no wonder you gaze at it with questioning eyes!

Well, while I was looking about me, expecting every moment to feel the damp breath of the waterfall upon my forehead, night came down. Where was I? In the midst of a pathless forest; between cliffs whose sleek, mossy walls were so steep as to forbid even the goat's sharp hoof. Down the hollow of the ravine, among round, slippery rocks, and between trellises of giant roots, tumbled a mountain torrent. No human form visible, probably none to be looked for on that side of the inaccessible dome of the mountain; yet fearlessly I toiled on, knowing that food and shelter were on every side, and that no hand, whose clasp was as fervent as the clasp of the vine itself, would be raised against me; and, thank Heaven! outsiders were scarce.

In the midst of the narrowing chasm, with the night thickening, and the wood growing more and more objectionable, I heard a sound as of stumbling feet before me. My first thought was of color! I would scarcely trust a White Man in that predicament. What well-disposed White would be prowling, like a wild animal, alone in a forest at night? It occurred to me that I was white, or had passed as such; but I know and have always known that, inwardly, I am purple-blooded, and supple-limbed, and invisibly tattooed after the manner of my lost tribe! I was startled at the sound, and slackened my pace to listen: the footsteps paused with mine. I plunged forward, accusing the Echoes of playing me false. Again the mysterious one rushed awkwardly on before me, with footfalls that were not like mine, nor like any that I could trace: they were neither brute nor human, but fell clumsily among the roots and stones, out of time with me; therefore, no echo, and beyond my reckoning entirely.

At this hour the moon, of a favorable size, looked over the cliff, flooding the chasm with her soft light. I rejoiced at it, and hoped for a revelation of the Unknown, whose tottering steps had mocked mine for half an hour.

We were in the midst of a dense grove of breadfruit-trees. Scarcely a ray of light penetrated their thick-woven branches; but, against the faint light of the open distance, I marked the weird outline of one who might once have been human, but was no longer a tolerable image of his Maker. The figure was like the opposite halves of two men bodily joined together in an amateur attempt at human grafting. The trunk was curved the wrong way; a great shoulder bullied a little shoulder, and kept it decidedly under; a long leg walked right around a short leg that was perpetually sitting itself down on invisible seats, or swinging itself for the mere pleasure of it. One arm clutched a ten-foot bamboo about three inches in diameter, and wielded it as though it were a bishop's crook, and something to be proud of; the other arm—it must have belonged to a child when it stopped growing—was hooked up over one ear, looking as though it had been badly wired by some medical student, and was worn as a lasting reproach to him. A shaggy head was set on the down-slope of the big shoulder, and seemed to be continually looking over the little shoulder and under the little arm for some one always expected, but who was very long in coming.

Upon this startling discovery I turned to flee, but the figure immediately followed. It was evidently too late to escape an interview, and, taking heart, I walked toward it, when, to my amazement, it hastily staggered away from me, looking always over its shoulder, quickening its pace with mine, slackening its speed with me, and keeping, or seeking to keep, within a certain distance of me all the while. My curiosity was excited, and, as I saw it bore me no ill-will, I made a quick plunge forward, hoping to capture it. With an energetic effort it strove to escape me; but, with the head turned the wrong way, it stumbled blindly into a bit of jungle, where it lay whining piteously. I assisted it to its feet, with what caution and tenderness I could, and, finding it still wary, walked on slowly, leading the way to the edge of the grove, where the moonlight was almost as radiant as the dawn. It followed me like a dog, and was evidently grateful for my company. I walked slowly that it might not stumble, and, as we emerged from the shadow of the breadfruits, I manœuvered so as to bring its face toward the moonlight, and I saw—a hideous visage, with all its features sliding to one corner; and nothing but the two soft, sleepy-looking eyes saved me from yielding to the disgust that its whole presence awakened. As it was, I involuntarily started back with a shudder, and a slight exclamation that attracted its attention. "Taboo! Taboo!" moaned the poor creature, half in introduction, half in apology and explanation.

He was well named the "forbidden one": set apart from all his fellows; incapable of utterance; maimed in body; an outcast among his own people; homeless, yet at home everywhere; friendless, though welcomed by all for his entertaining and ludicrous simplicity; feeding, like the birds, from Nature's lap, and, like the birds, left to the winds and waters for companionship.

Somehow I felt that Taboo could lead me at once to the waterfall; and I tried to seek out the small door to his brain, and impress him with my anxiety to reach the place. O, what darkness was there, and what doubts and fears seemed to cloud the hidden portals of his soul! He made an uncouth noise for me. Perhaps he meant it as music: it was frightful to hear it up there in the mountain solitudes. He got me fruits and a little water in the palm of his hand, which he expected me to drink with a relish. He lay down at my feet in a broken heap of limbs, crooning complacently. He was playful and thoughtful alternately; at least, he lost himself in long silences from time to time, while his eyes glowed with a deep inward light, that almost made me hope to startle his reason from its dreadful sleep; but a single word broke the spell, and set him to laughing as though he would go all to pieces; and his joy was more pitiful than his sorrow.

In one of his silent moods he suddenly staggered to his feet, and shambled into a narrow trail to one side of the gorge. I wondered at his unexpected impulse, and feared that he had grown tired of me already, preferring the society of his feathered comrades, a few of whom sounded their challenge-note, that soared like silver arrows in the profound stillness of the ravine. It seemed not, however: in a few moments he returned, and signalled me with his expressive grunt, and I followed him. Through thickets of fern, arching high over our heads, down spongy dells, and over rims of rock jutting from the base of the mountain, Taboo and I clambered in the warm moonlight. Anon we came upon a barricade of bamboos, growing like pickets set one against another. I know not how broad the thicket might have been,—possibly as broad as the ravine itself,—but into the thick of it Taboo edged himself; and close upon his heels I followed. In a few moments we had crushed our way through the midst of the bamboos, that clashed together after us so that a bird might not have tracked us, and lo! a crystal pool in the heart of a wonderful garden; and to it, silently, from heaven itself descended that mysterious waterfall, whose actual existence I had seriously begun to question. It lay close against the breast of the mountain, strangely pale in the full glow of the moon, while, like a vein of fire, it seemed to throb from end to end; or like a shining thread with great pearls slipping slowly down its full length, taking the faint hues of the rainbow as they fell, playing at prisms, until my eyes, weary of watching, closed of their own accord. I sank down by Taboo, who was sleeping soundly in the hollow of a great tree; and the one cover for both of us was the impenetrable shadow that is never lifted from that silent sanctuary of the Most High.

The sky was as saffron when we woke from our out-of-door sleep, and the whole atmosphere was less poetical and impressive than on the night previous. Stranger than all else, there was no visible trace of the mysterious waterfall. I even began to question my own senses, and thought it possible that I had been dreaming. Yet there sat Taboo in his frightful imperfection, as happy and indifferent as possible. Of course, he could tell me nothing of the magical waters. He had doubtless already forgotten the episode of the hour previous. He lived for the solitary moment, and his mind seemed unable to grasp the secrets of ten seconds on either side of his narrow present. In fact, he was playing with a splendid lizard when I returned from my brief and fruitless reconnoissance; and as I came up he wondered at me, as he never ceased to wonder, with fresh bewilderment, whenever I came back to him, after never so brief an absence.

I soon learned to play upon Taboo's one stop; to point a finger at him, and bore imaginary auger-holes right into him anywhere; for he always winced and whined, like a very baby, and yielded at once to my pantomimic suggestion. But what a wreck was here! A delicate instrument, full of rifts and breakages, with that single key readily answerable to the slightest touch of my will. I have often wished that it had been a note more deep, profound, or sympathetic. It was simply merry and shrill, and incapable of any modulation whatever. Point a finger at him, make a few coils in the air that grow to a focus as they draw nearer to him, and he would run over with uncontrollable jollity that was at times a little painful in its boisterousness.

I knew well enough that I had sucked the honey from that particular cell in the mountain, and that I might as well resume my pilgrimage. There was to be a Fête Napoléon in Papeete. We hadn't heard, up to that hour, of the wreck of the great Empire, and, being in a loyal French colony, it behooved us to have the very best time possible. Said I to myself, "Taboo will find sufficient food for merriment in our mode of fêting an Emperor; therefore Taboo shall go with me to town and enjoy himself." I suggested an immediate adjournment to Papeete with the tip of my forefinger, whereat Taboo doubled up, as usual, and, in his own fashion, implored me to stop being so funny. We at once started; returning through the bamboo-brakes, fording the stream in some awkward way, and slowly working our passage back to town.

The Tahitians have but one annual holiday. As this, however, is seventy-two hours in length, while everything relating to it is broad in proportion, it is about as much as they can conscientiously ask for.

Taboo and I entered the town on the eve of the first day, together with multitudes from the neighboring districts, flocking thither in their best clothes. The lovely bay of Papeete was covered with fleets of canoes, hailing from all the seaside villages on the island, and many of them from Moorea, and islands even more distant. No sea is too broad to be compassed by an ambitious Kanack, who scents a festival from afar.

Along the crescent shores of the bay, the canoes were heaped, tier upon tier. It was as though a whole South Sea navy had been stranded, for the town was crowded with canoe-boys and all manner of natives, in gala dress. The incessant rolling of drums, the piping of bamboo-flutes, and the choruses of wandering singers began early in the dawn of the 14th August, and were expected to continue, uninterruptedly, to the evening of the 16th. Taboo regarded it all with singular indifference. Everybody seemed to know him, and to take particular delight in greeting him. His sleepy disregard of them was considered extremely laughable, and they went their way roaring with merriment, that contrasted strongly with the grave, listless face of the simple one, who was apparently oblivious of everything.

The morning after we appeared in Papeete was Sunday, according to the calendar. The little cathedral, with banana-leaves rustling in the open windows, was thronged with worshippers of all colors, doubly devout in the excessive heat. Various choirs relieved one another during Mass, and some diminutive fellows, under ten years of age, chanted Latin hymns in a pleasingly plaintive voice, led by a friar in long clothes and a choker. Taboo crouched by the open door during service, raking the gravel-walk with his crooked fingers, and hitching about with indefatigable industry. After the last gospel, we all went into the middle of the street—for there were no sidewalks—and got our boots very dusty. Little knots of friends seemed to sit down in the way wherever they pleased, and to talk as long as they liked; while everybody else accommodatingly turned out for them, or paused, and listened to the conversation, without embarrassment on either side. Liquor was imbibed on the sly; some eyes were beginning to swim perceptibly, and some tongues to wag faster and looser than ever. The Admiral's flagship was one pyramid of gorgeous bunting, and his band delighted a great audience, gathered upon the shore, with a matinée gratis. At sunset the imperial batteries belched their sulphurous thunder, that came as near to breaking the sabbath as possible. In the evening more music, up at the Governor's garden,—waltzes, polkas, and quadrilles, so brilliantly executed that the listeners were half mad with delight; and you couldn't for the life of you tell what day it had been, nor what night it was, but Sunday was positively set down against it in the calendar. At ten P. M. a signal-gun says "Good-night" to the citizens of Papeete, and it behooves all those who are dark-skinned to retire instantly, on pain of arrest and a straw-heap in the calaboose.

In the midst of our Sunday festival, while yet the streets were hilarious, slap-bang went this impudent piece of ordnance, and at once the crowd began to disperse in the greatest confusion. Taboo, who had been an inanimate spectator during the day's diversions, seemed to comprehend the necessity of hasty flight to some quarter or other; and, with a confusion of ideas peculiar to him, he began careering in great circles through the swaying multitudes, and continued to revolve around an uncertain centre, until I seized him and sought to pilot him to some convenient place of shelter. I thought of the great market, that, like those ancient cities of refuge, was always open to the benighted wanderer; and thither we hastened. A lofty roof, covering a good part of a block, kept the rain from a vast enclosure, stored with stalls, tables, and benches. It was simply shelter of the barest kind, but sufficient for all needs in that charitable climate. There was a buzzing of turbulent throngs as we edged our way toward the centre of the market-place; you would think that all the bees of Tahiti were swarming in unison, from the noise thereof. The commotion was long in quieting. It had to subside like the sea at flood-tide. Every little while a brace of gendarmes strutted past the premises, feeling mighty fine in their broad white pants, like a ship with studding-sails out, and with those comical bobtails sprouting out of the small of their backs. I know that Taboo and I, having laid ourselves on somebody's counter, listened and nudged each other for two or three hours, and that it began to feel like morning before there was sleep enough to go entirely around the establishment.

The man who is the first to wake in Papeete lights his lamp and goes to market. As soon as he makes his untimely appearance, the community begins to stir; a great clatter of drowsy voices and dozens of yawns are the symptoms of returning day; and in ten minutes the market is declared open, though it is still deep and tranquil starlight overhead, with not a trace of dawn as yet visible.

When the market opens before 3 A. M.—and the hour happens to be the blackest of the four-and-twenty—it is highly inconvenient for any foreigner and his royal jester who may be surreptitiously passing the night upon one of the fruit counters, but there is no help for them: sleepy heads give way to fresh-gathered bread-fruits and nets of fragrant oranges; bananas are swung up within tempting reach of everybody; all sorts of natives come in from the four quarters of the Papeetean globe, with back-loads of miscellaneous viands, a mat under one arm, and a flaming torch in hand. Rows upon rows of girls sell fruits and flowers to the highest bidder; withering old women haggle over the prices of their perfumed and juicy wares; solitary men offer their solitary strings of fish for a real each, and refuse to be beaten down by any wretch of a fellow who dares to insinuate that the fish are a trifle too scaly; boys sit demurely over their meagre array of temptations in the shape of six tomatoes, three eggs, a dozen or so of guavas, and one cucumber. These youngsters usually sit with a passionless countenance that forbids any hope of a bargain at reduced prices, and they pass an hour or two with scarce a suggestion of custom; but it is suddenly discovered that they have something desirable, and a dozen purchasers begin quarrelling for it, during which time some one else quietly makes his purchase from one corner of the boy's mat; and, having closed out his stock in less than ten minutes, he quietly pockets his reales, and departs without having uttered a syllable.

Taboo and I went from one mat to another, eying the good things for breakfast. I offered him the best that the market afforded; and I could easily do so, for in no land is the article cheaper or better. Taboo, having made the circuit of the entire establishment, upon mature deliberation concluded to take nothing. At every point he was greeted uproariously by the noisy and good-natured people, who were willing to give him anything he might choose to take. They, probably, felt that it was worth more than the price of the article to see the sublime scorn on the poor fellow's face as he declined their limes, feis, mangoes, or whatever delicious morsel it might have been. As for me, I couldn't resist those seductions. I made my little purchases and withdrew to the seaside, where I could break my fast by sunrise, and enjoy comparative quiet. Taboo grinned in the market-place till he was weary of the applause showered upon him by the ungodly, who made light of his irreparable misfortune and took pleasure in his misery. He hunted me up, or, rather, stumbled upon me again, and stayed by me, amusing himself with pelting the fish that sported, like sunbeams and prisms, in the sea close at our feet.

It was fête-day in Tahiti. I sat, at sunrise, by the tideless margin of a South Sea lagoon, bristling with coral and glittering with gem-like fish; in either hand I held a mango and banana. I raised the mango to my lips. What a marvel it was! A plump vegetable egg, full of delusion, and stuffed with a horny seed nearly as large as itself. It had a fragrance as of oils and sirups; it purged sweet-scented and resinous gums. Its hide was, perhaps, too tough for convenience, but its inner lusciousness tempted me to persevere in the consumption of it. With much difficulty I broke the skin. Honey of Hymettus! It seemed as though the very marrow of the tropics were about to intoxicate my palate. Alas, for the hopes of youthful inexperience! What was so fair to see proved but a meagre mouthful of saturated wool; that colossal and horny seed asserted itself everywhere. The more I strove to handle it with caution, the more slippery and unmanageable it became. It shot into my beard, it leaped lightly into my shirt-bosom, and skated over the palms of both hands. Small rivulets of liquor trickled down my sleeves, making disagreeable puddles at both elbows. My fingers were webbed together in a glutinous mass. My whole front was in a shocking state of smear. My teeth grew weary of combing out the beguiling threads of the fruit. The thing seemed, to my imagination, a small, flat head, covered with short, blond hair, profusely saturated with some sweet sort of ointment, that I had despaired of feasting on; and I was not sorry when the slippery stone sprang out of my grasp, and peppered itself with sea-sand.

I knew that there still remained to me a morsel that was of itself fit food for the gods. I poised aloft, with satisfaction, the rare-ripe banana, beautiful to the eye as a nugget of purest gold. The pliant petals were pouting at the top of the fruit. I readily turned them back, forming an unique and convenient gilded salver for the column of flaky manna that was, as yet, swathed in lace like folds. These gauzy ribbons fell from it almost of their own accord, and hung in fleecy festoons about it.

Here was a repast of singularly appropriate mould, being about the size of a respectable mouth, and containing just enough mouthfuls to temporarily satisfy the appetite. Not a morsel of it but was full of mellowness, and sweet flavor, and fragrance. Not an atom of it was wasted; for, no sooner had I thrown aside the cool, clean, flesh-like case, than it was made way with by a fowl, that had, no doubt, been patiently awaiting that abundant feast.

Mangoes and bananas! Their very names smack of shady gardens, that know no harsher premonition of death than the indolent and natural decay of all things. The nostril is excited with the thought of them; the palate grows moist and yearns for them; and the soul feasts itself, for a moment, with a memory of mangoes and bananas past, whose perfection was but another proof of immortality, since it is impossible ever to forget them individually. Mangoes and bananas! the prime favorites at Nature's most bountiful board; the realization of a dream of the orchards of the Hesperides; alike excellent, yet so vastly dissimilar in their excellences, it seems almost incredible that the same beneficent Providence can have created the two fruits!

It was the memorable 15th of August, 1870; but I have reason to believe the bananas were no better on that particular occasion than almost always in their own latitude. The 15th of August, —where was the Emperor then? I forget; I know that we rejoiced in the blissful confidence that we were to have a grand time at all hazards. There were guns at sunrise from ship and shore; a grand national procession of French and Tahitians to High Mass at 10.30; guns—twenty-one of them—together with the ringing of bells, and a salute of flags, at the elevation of the Host, so that you would have known the supreme moment had you been miles away. Then came a sumptuous public breakfast for the Frenchmen; and for the natives, games of several sorts.

Taboo and I, having properly observed the more solemn ceremonials of the day, gave ourselves up to the full enjoyment of these latter diversions. There was a greased pole, with shining cups; and flowing prints, both useful and ornamental, hung at the top of it. Several naked and superbly built fellows shinned up it with infinite difficulty, and were so fatigued when they got there, they were only too willing to clutch the first article within reach, which was, of course, the least desirable, and scarcely worth the trouble of getting. O, such magnificent grouping at the foot of the pole, as the athletes shouldered one another in a sort of co-operative experiment at getting up sooner; such struggles to rise a little above the heads of the impatient climbers beneath as made the aspiring Kanack quite pale,—that is, greenish yellow; such losing of grips, and fainting of hearts, and slidings back to earth in the midst of taunts and jeers, but all in the best of humors and the hottest of suns! such novelties as these were a very great delight to Taboo and myself. He, however, didn't deign to laugh heartily: he merely smiled in a superior manner that seemed to imply that he knew of something that was twice as much fun and not half the trouble, but he didn't choose to disclose it. He nearly always seemed to know as much as any ten of us; and it was like an assumption of innocence, that queer, vacant expression of his face. I'm not sure that he was not possessed of some rare instinct beyond our comprehension, which was to him an abundant compensation for the fragmentary body he was obliged to trundle about.

Early in the afternoon, there were fresh arrivals in the bay: two mammoth double war-canoes, of fifty paddles each, came in from a remote sea-district; they were the very sort of water-monsters that went out to greet my illustrious predecessor, Captain Cook, nearly a century ago. Taboo and I were only too glad to sit meekly among the ten thousand spectators that blackened the great sweep of the shore, while these savages matched their prowess. With one vigorous plunge of the paddles the canoes sprang from the beach into the watery arena. How strange they looked! Long, low sides, scarce eight inches above water, and stained like fish-scales; big, yawning jaws in their snakelike heads, and the tail of a dragon in their wakes; every man of the hundred stripped to the skin and bareheaded; their brawny bodies glistening in the sun as though they had been oiled, while, with mechanical accuracy, the crews beat the water with their paddles, and chanted their guttural chants, with the sea flashing and foaming under them. The race was a tie; perhaps it was fortunate that it proved so. I fear if one crew had beaten the other crew the breadth of a paddle, that other would have lain to and eaten that one right under our very eyes. They had their songs of triumph, both sounding the chorus, during which they drummed with their paddles on the sides of their canoes, till the frail things shivered and groaned in genuine misery. Then they renewed the race, because they couldn't possibly be still for a moment; and they looked like a brace of mastodon-centipedes trying to get out of the water, with death hissing in their throats.

The evening of the great day was drawing to a close. Taboo and I again went out into the narrow, green lanes of Papeete, seeking what we might devour with all our eyes and ears. They were very charming, those long arbors of densely leaved trees, with little tropical vignettes set in the farther end of them. It was almost like getting a squint through the wrong end of a telescope, pointed toward some fairy-land or other. As it grew dark, a thousand ready hands began illuminating the avenues that lead to the Governor's house. Up and down its deep veranda swung ropes of lanterns; and as the guards at the garden-gate presented arms at the approach of the Admiral, or some distinguished and decorated foreigner, the strains of Strauss, deliciously played, filled the illuminated grove with an air of romance that was very Oriental in its mellowness, and quickened every foot that was so happy as to touch the soil of Tahiti in so fortunate an hour. On every part of the public lawns the revels were conducted after the native fashion. Bands of singers and dancers sang and danced in the streets, and were frequently rewarded with liberal potations. Taboo looked on as amiably as usual, and for some time as passively also; but there was something intoxicating in the air, and it began to have a visible effect upon him. It was not long before he strove to emulate the singers. St. Cecilia! what a song was his! I could scarcely endure to hear that royal Jester striving to tune his inharmonious voice to the glib, though monotonous Tahitian madrigals. I walked away by myself, or rather went into another part of the village, and sought a change of scene; for there was no seclusion to be hoped for on a fête-night.

From the Governor's halls came the entrancing harmony of flutes and harps; from every lane and alley the piping of nose-fifes and the droning of nasal chorals; from the sea rolled in the deep, hoarse booming of the reef, the rhythmical plash of oars, or the clear, prolonged cry of some one in the watery distance hailing some one close at hand. Even so savage and picturesque a spectacle as this grew wearisome after a time, and I turned my steps toward a place of shelter, and suggested to myself sleep.

In one lane was a throng of natives, wilder in their demonstrations of joy than all the others. My curiosity was excited, and I hastened to join them. Having with some difficulty wedged my way into the front row of spectators, I beheld the subject of their riotous applause. In the centre of a small ring was an ungainly figure, writhing in grotesque contortions; tom-toms were being beaten with diabolical energy and wildness; flutes and shrill voices were chiming in rapid and bewildering chromatics; the audience—the half-crazed and utterly inhuman audience—gloated over the shocking spectacle with devilish delight. In one moment I comprehended all: Taboo, overcome by the general and unusual excitement, had succumbed to its depraving influences; and, unable longer to control himself, he was broadly burlesquing, in his helplessness, one of the national dances. Music had at last reached his impenetrable soul, awakened his long-slumbering sympathies, and found him her willing slave. A pity that some diviner strain had not first led him captive, that he might have been spared this disgrace!

I saw his unhappy body ambling to the shame of all. I saw those pitiful, unshapen shoulders undulating in vain attempts at passional expression; the helpless arm waving at every movement of the body, while the withered hand spun like a whirligig above his ears; his eyes, having lost their accustomed mild light, stared distractedly about, seeking rescue and protection, as I thought. In a few moments I attracted his notice, though he seemed but partly to recognize me. There was his usual uncertain recognition grown more doubtful,—nay, even hopeless,—as his face betrayed. Again I caught his eye: I felt that but one course was left me, and at once I aimed my finger at him. He winced in his delirious dance. I coiled it round and round, weaving airy circle within circle; quicker and quicker I wove my spell, and at last shot the whole hand at him, as though I would run him through. He doubled, like one struck with a fatal blow, and went to the ground all of a senseless heap. There was a disturbance in the audience. Some of them thought I had bewitched Taboo; and it behooved me to go at once, rather than seek to make explanation of the singular result of my presence there. I went, and spent a dull night, accusing myself of being the possible spiritual murderer of Taboo. I had no business to bring him to the metropolis at that unfortunate season; I had no right to leave him with his traducers: and that was the whole statement of the case.

The last day of the fête was, of course, less joyous to me. A score of nameless nags were to be ridden by light weights in breech-cloths; and I sought consolation in the prospect of seeing some bewitching horsemanship. The track, in use but once every twelvemonth, and yielding annually a young orchard of guava-trees, presented to the astonished gaze of the foreign sporting-gentleman who happened to be on the ground—if, indeed, there was such a one present—a half-mile course, with numerous stones and hollows relieving its surface, while the rope that enclosed it kept giving way every few moments, letting in a mixed multitude among the half-broken horses.

The Queen was present at the races,—Pomare, whose life has been one long, sorrowful romance; the Admiral was also there; and many a petty officer, with abundant gilt and tinsel. At a signal from the trumpeter the horses were entered unannounced, and everybody betted wildly. One little African jockey, mounted upon the cleverest piece of flesh and blood in the field, called for the larger stakes; and he would certainly have won, but for an unavoidable accident: the little African was pressing in on the home-stretch, and everything looked lovely for the winning mare, when, unluckily, she put her nigh leg in a crab-hole, and snapped her shin-bone square off. The undaunted little African tried his best to finish the heat on his own responsibility, and went off into the air in fine style, but missed his calculation, and burrowed about three lengths from the goal. His neck was driven in nearly up to the ears, and the mare had to be shot; but the races went mercilessly on until a tremendous thunder-storm flooded the track and washed the population back to town. Dance after dance consumed the afternoon hours; and song upon song, eternally reiterated, finally failed to create any special enthusiasm.

I saw no further traces of Taboo. Again and again I followed knots of the curious into the larger native houses, where the lascivious dances were given with the utmost abandon; thither—I suspected—Taboo would most likely be impelled, for the music was wilder and the applause more boisterous and unrestrained.

The evening of the last day of the fête was darkening; most people were growing a little weary of the long-drawn festivities; many had succumbed to their fatigue, and slept by the wayside, or, it may be, they had known too well the nature of the Tahitian juices, such as no man may drink and not fall!

The palace of Pomare—a great, hollow, incomplete shell, whose windows have never been glazed, and whose doors have never been hung—was the scene of the concluding ceremonials of the season. The long verandas were thickly hung with numberless paper-lanterns, swinging continually in the soft night-winds that stole down from the star-lit slopes of Fautahua; the broad lawns in front of the palace were blocked out in squares, like the map of a liliputian city. Each one of these plats was set apart for a band of singers, and there were as many bands as districts in Tahiti and Moorea, together with delegations from islands more remote. Soon the choruses began to assemble. Choirs of fifty voices each, male and female, led by tight-headed drums and screaming fifes, drew toward the palace-gardens, and were formally admitted by the proper authorities, who were very much swollen with the pomp of office and, perhaps, a little sprinkle of the exhilarating accompaniments of the season. One after another the white-robed processions approached,—each fresh arrival looking more like the chorus in "Norma" than the last, though it then seemed impossible that any Druid could presume to appear more gracefully ghostlike. Each singer wore a plume of cocoa-leaves, whose feathers were more lovely than the downy wands of the ostrich. They were made of knots of long, slender ribbons, softer than satin, veined like clouded silver, as transparent as the clearest isinglass, and as delicate as the airiest gauze.

Out of the core of the palm-tree, in the midst of its rich, dark mass of foliage, springs a tuft of leaves as tender as the first sprouts of a lily-bulb. These budding leaves are carefully removed, split edgewise, and the enamelled sheets laid open to the sun; then, with the thumb-nail, passed skilfully over the inner surface, a filmy membrane is separated, and spread in the air to dry. A single tree yields but a small cluster of these pale, cloud-like leaves, scarcely a handful in all, yet the tree withers when they pluck the heart of it. It is the very soul of the Southern palm, with every leaf spiritualized, and looking vapory as tangible moonlight.

The leader of the concert having challenged the choruses from the veranda of the palace, at once twenty choirs struck into their particular anthem with the utmost zeal. A discord about six acres in extent was the result. It seemed as though each choir was seeking whom it might drown out with superior vocal compass and volume. With much difficulty the several bands of singers were persuaded to await their turn for a solo effort that might be listened to with no small degree of pleasure. From time to time, during the entire evening, some obstreperous chorus would break loose, spite of every precaution; and it had always to sing itself out before order could be restored. Taboo would have thoroughly enjoyed those two thousand singers, each singing his or her favorite roundelay, independent of all laws of time and melody. He might have been there, as it was, offering his inharmonious chant with the mob of contestants.

By the time the series of prize-songs had been sung, the sky grew cloudy, and the torches began to flicker in the increasing wind; a few great drops of rain spat down in the midst of the singers, and the reef moaned loudly, like the baying of signal-guns. It was ominous of coming storms. At the climax of a choral revolution, in which every man's voice seemed raised against his neighbor's, a roar as of approaching armies was heard, mingled with the accompanying crash of artillery. A sudden puff of wind extinguished the major part of the torches, and wrecked many of the lanterns in the palace porch. It was simply a tropical shower in all its magnificence; but it was enough! The fête concluded then and there, in the promptest manner. The narrow streets of Papeete were clogged with retreating hosts, who continually shouted a sort of general adieu to everybody, as they gathered their skirts about them, and, with shoes in hand, turned their bare feet homeward.

Since the end had at last come, and I had no further claims upon the people, nor the people upon me,—if, indeed, either of us were ever anything in particular to one another,—I drifted with the majority, and soon found myself in the suburban wilderness that girdles the small capital of the queendom. I wandered on till the noise of the revellers grew more and more indistinct. They were scattering themselves over the length and breadth of the island, carrying their songs with them. Now and then a fresh gust of wind bore down to me an echo of a refrain that had grown familiar during the days of the fête, and will not soon be forgotten; but the past was rapidly fading, and the necessities of the future began to present themselves with unusual boldness. Instinctively I turned into the winding trail that once before had led me toward that mysterious mountain sacristy, over whose font fell the spiritual and dreamlike rivulet whose baptismal virtues Taboo and I had sought together. I felt certain that I could find it without guidance; for the broken clouds let slip such floods of moonlight as made day of darkness, and rendered the smallest landmark easily distinguishable.

I paused for rest in the breadfruit grove where first I met with my weird companion. Presently I resumed my pilgrimage, wending my way toward the slender path that led through fern, forest, and bamboo-jungle, to the crystal lake and waterfall. In vain I sought it; the slightest traces of the trail seemed obliterated. I wandered up and down the winding way, till I was in despair of finding the slightest clew to the mystery. I sat down and thought how a slight accident of forgetfulness was lending a sense of enchantment to the whole valley, when I heard a stumbling step, too marked to be soon forgotten. I crept into a shadow, and awaited the approach of the solitary wanderer. How he tottered as he drew near! He seemed to have lost part of his small skill since I last saw him. He was laughing quietly to himself while he journeyed: perhaps some memory of the fête still pleased him. He passed me, unconscious of my presence. I ran cautiously, and followed him at a safe distance. We threaded the old path, by stream and cliff and brake, and, after a little, reached the secluded and silent borders of the lake. Once or twice he had heard me as I brushed past the bamboos or a twig snapped under foot, but those forest-sounds scarcely disconcerted him; he was too well used to them. He paused at the margin of the lake, stooped awkwardly and drank of it, went a little to one side where an outlet fed the torrent we had forded some distance down the valley, and there he bathed. Having started once or twice, as though with some remembered and definite purpose, he paused a moment or two, looked about him helplessly, and returned to the foot of the great tree where we slept the first night of our acquaintance.

There was a faint suggestion of the fall across the sombre breast of the cliff opposite, but whether it were real or a delusion, I could scarcely determine. Taboo was soon asleep among the roots of the banyan; and I, weary of seeking some revelation of the island mysteries, lay down near him, and gradually sank into unconsciousness. Once in the night I awoke: the clouds had blown over, and the moon was more resplendent than I ever remember to have seen it. Out on the mossy rim of the lake stood Taboo, gazing wistfully upon the mountains. Instinctively my eyes followed his, and there I beheld the waterfall in all its glory, leaping, like a ray of light, from the bosom of the sky. I could scarcely determine whether or no it really fell into the lake, for the foliage about its shores was too profuse. It flashed like handfuls of diamond-dust thrown into the light, and descended as noiselessly and airily as vapor.

The clouds soon gathered again. I slept, overcome with weariness; and when I awoke at dawn, Taboo was missing, as well as all traces of the fall. This, however, scarcely surprised me, for I had grown to look upon it as some lunar effect that came and went with the increasing or decreasing splendor of the moon; or it might have been the short-lived offspring of the showers that sweep over the island at uncertain intervals. It was probably the only dramatic result to be looked for in the career of Taboo. You never can depend upon one of those veering minds, whose north-star has burned out in oblivion. I believe it was his destiny to disappear with that rainbow, and, perhaps, return with it when the fall should noiselessly steal down the mountain once more.

He may have had an object in secreting himself for a season; perhaps he was renewing his youthful innocence in some more solitary spot. He may have gone apart to laugh by the hour at the folly of the foreigners who fête a disgraced emperor; or was he making his queer noises to hear the queerer echoes that came back to him, and all the while caring no more for life or death than a parrot or a magpie, or even a poor, half-shapen soul,—one of those sacred idiots that have found worshippers before now, and never yet failed to awaken a chord of sympathy in the heart that is fashioned after the Divine pattern of the Son of God?

JOE OF LAHAINA.

I.

I WAS stormed in at Lahaina. Now, Lahaina is a little slice of civilization, beached on the shore of barbarism. One can easily stand that little of it, for brown and brawny heathendom becomes more wonderful and captivating by contrast. So I was glad of dear, drowsy, little Lahaina; and was glad, also, that she had but one broad street, which possibly led to destruction, and yet looked lovely in the distance. It didn't matter to me that the one broad street had but one side to it; for the sea lapped over the sloping sands on its lower edge, and the sun used to set right in the face of every solitary citizen of Lahaina, just as he went to supper.

I was waiting to catch a passage in a passing schooner, and that's why I came there; but the schooner flashed by us in a great gale from the south, and so I was stormed in indefinitely.

It was Holy Week, and I concluded to go to housekeeping, because it would be so nice to have my frugal meals in private, to go to mass and vespers daily, and then to come back and feel quite at home. My villa was suburban,—built of dried grasses on the model of a haystack, dug out in the middle, with doors and windows let into the four sides thereof. It was planted in the midst of a vineyard, with avenues stretching in all directions, under a network of stems and tendrils.

"Her breath is sweeter than the sweet winds
That breathe over the grape-blossoms of Lahaina."

So the song said; and I began to think upon the surpassing sweetness of that breath, as I inhaled the sweet winds of Lahaina, while the wilderness of its vineyards blossomed like the rose. I used to sit in my veranda and turn to Joe (Joe was my private and confidential servant), and I would say to Joe, while we scented the odor of grape, and saw the great banana-leaves waving their cambric sails, and heard the sea moaning in the melancholy distance,—I would say to him, "Joe, housekeeping is good fun, isn't it?" Whereupon Joe would utter a sort of unanimous Yes, with his whole body and soul; so that question was carried triumphantly, and we would relapse into a comfortable silence, while the voices of the wily singers down on the city front would whisper to us, and cause us to wonder what they could possibly be doing at that moment in the broad way that led to destruction. Then we would take a drink of cocoa-milk, and finish our bananas, and go to bed, because we had nothing else to do.

This is the way that we began our co-operative housekeeping: One night, when there was a riotous sort of a festival off in a retired valley, I saw, in the excited throng of natives who were going mad over their national dance, a young face that seemed to embody a whole tropical romance. On another night, when a lot of us were bathing in the moonlight, I saw a figure so fresh and joyous that I began to realize how the old Greeks could worship mere physical beauty and forget its higher forms. Then I discovered that face on this body,—a rare enough combination,—and the whole constituted Joe, a young scapegrace who was schooling at Lahaina, under the eye—not a very sharp one—of his uncle. When I got stormed in, and resolved on housekeeping for a season, I took Joe, bribing his uncle to keep the peace, which he promised to do, provided I gave bonds for Joe's irreproachable conduct while with me. I willingly gave bonds—verbal ones—for this was just what I wanted of Joe: namely, to instil into his youthful mind those counsels which, if rigorously followed, must result in his becoming a true and unterrified American. This compact settled, Joe took up his bed,—a roll of mats,—and down we marched to my villa, and began housekeeping in good earnest.

We soon got settled, and began to enjoy life, though we were not without occasional domestic infelicities. For instance, Joe would wake up in the middle of the night, declaring to me that it was morning, and thereupon insist upon sweeping out at once, and in the most vigorous manner. Having filled the air with dust, he would rush off to the baker's for our hot rolls and a pat of breakfast butter, leaving me, meantime, to recover as I might. Having settled myself for a comfortable hour's reading, bolstered up in a luxurious fashion, Joe would enter with breakfast, and orders to the effect that it be eaten at once and without delay. It was useless for me to remonstrate with him: he was tyrannical.

He got me into all sorts of trouble. It was Holy Week, and I had resolved upon going to mass and vespers daily. I went. The soft night-winds floated in through the latticed windows of the chapel, and made the candles flicker upon the altar. The little throng of natives bowed in the impressive silence, and were deeply moved. It was rest for the soul to be there; yet, in the midst of it, while the Father, with his pale, sad face, gave his instructions, to which we listened as attentively as possible,—for there was something in his manner and his voice that made us better creatures,—while we listened, in the midst of it I heard a shrill little whistle, a sort of chirp, that I knew perfectly well. It was Joe, sitting on a cocoa-stump in the garden adjoining, and beseeching me to come out, right off. When service was over, I remonstrated with him for his irreverence. "Joe," I said, "if you have no respect for religion yourself, respect those who are more fortunate than you." But Joe was dressed in his best, and quite wild at the entrancing loveliness of the night. "Let's walk a little," said Joe, covered with fragrant wreaths, and redolent of cocoanut-oil. What could I do? If I had tried to do anything to the contrary, he might have taken me and thrown me away somewhere into a well, or a jungle, and then I could no longer hope to touch the chord of remorse,—which chord I sought vainly, and which I have since concluded was not in Joe's physical corporation at all. So we walked a little. In vain I strove to break Joe of the shocking habit of whistling me out of vespers. He would persist in doing it. Moreover, during the day he would collect crusts of bread and banana-skins, station himself in ambush behind the curtain of the window next the lane, and, as some solitary creature strode solemnly past, Joe would discharge a volley of ammunition over him, and then laugh immoderately at his indignation and surprise. Joe was my pet elephant, and I was obliged to play with him very cautiously.

One morning he disappeared. I was without the consolations of a breakfast, even. I made my toilet, went to my portmanteau for my purse,—for I had decided upon a visit to the baker,—when lo! part of my slender means had mysteriously disappeared. Joe was gone, and the money also. All day I thought about it. In the morning, after a very long and miserable night, I woke up, and when I opened my eyes, there, in the doorway, stood Joe, in a brand-new suit of clothes, including boots and hat. He was gorgeous beyond description, and seemed overjoyed to see me, and as merry as though nothing unusual had happened. I was quite startled at this apparition. "Joseph!" I said in my severest tone, and then turned over and looked away from him. Joe evaded the subject in the most delicate manner, and was never so interesting as at that moment. He sang his specialties, and played clumsily upon his bamboo flute,—to soothe me, I suppose,—and wanted me to eat a whole flat pie which he had brought home as a peace-offering, buttoned tightly under his jacket. I saw I must strike at once, if I struck at all; so I said, "Joe, what on earth did you do with that money?" Joe said he had replenished his wardrobe, and bought the flat pie especially for me. "Joseph," I said, with great dignity, "do you know that you have been stealing, and that it is highly sinful to steal, and may result in something unpleasant in the world to come?" Joe said, "Yes," pleasantly, though I hardly think he meant it; and then he added, mildly, "that he couldn't lie,"—which was a glaring falsehood,—"but wanted me to be sure that he took the money, and so had come back to tell me."

"Joseph," I said, "you remind me of our noble Washington"; and, to my amazement, Joe was mortified. He didn't, of course, know who Washington was, but he suspected that I was ridiculing him. He came to the bed and haughtily insisted upon my taking the little change he had received from his costumers, but I implored him to keep it, as I had no use at all for it, and, as I assured him, I much preferred hearing it jingle in his pocket.

The next day I sailed out of Lahaina, and Joe came to the beach with his new trousers tucked into his new boots, while he waved his new hat violently in a final adieu, much to the envy and admiration of a score of hatless urchins, who looked upon Joe as the glass of fashion, and but little lower than the angels. When I entered the boat to set sail, a tear stood in Joe's bright eye, and I think he was really sorry to part with me; and I don't wonder at it, because our housekeeping experiences were new to him,—and, I may add, not unprofitable.

II.

Some months of mellow and beautiful weather found me wandering here and there among the islands, when the gales came on again, and I was driven about homeless, and sometimes friendless, until, by and by, I heard of an opportunity to visit Molokai,—an island seldom visited by the tourist,—where, perhaps, I could get a close view of a singularly sad and interesting colony of lepers.

The whole island is green, but lonely. As you ride over its excellent turnpike, you see the ruins of a nation that is passing, like a shadow, out of sight. Deserted garden-patches, crumbling walls, and roofs tumbled into the one state-chamber of the house, while knots of long grass wave at halfmast in the chinks and crannies. A land of great traditions, of magic, and witchcraft, and spirits. A fertile and fragrant solitude. How I enjoyed it; and yet how it was all telling upon me, in its own way! One cannot help feeling sad there, for he seems to be living and moving in a long revery, out of which he dreads to awaken to a less pathetic life. I rode a day or two among the solemn and reproachful ruins with inexpressible complacence, and, having finally climbed a series of verdant and downy hills, and ridden for twenty minutes in a brisk shower, came suddenly upon the brink of a great precipice, three thousand feet in the air. My horse instinctively braced himself, and I nervously jerked the bridle square up to my breastbone, as I found we were poised between heaven and earth, upon a trembling pinnacle of rock. A broad peninsula was stretched below me, covered with grassy hills; here and there clusters of brown huts were visible, and to the right, the white dots of houses to which I was hastening, for that was the leper village. To that spot were the wandering and afflicted tribes brought home to die. Once descending the narrow stairs in the cliff under me, never again could they hope to strike their tents and resume their pilgrimage; for the curse was on them, and necessity had narrowed down their sphere of action to this compass,—a solitary slope between sea and land, with the invisible sentinels of Fear and Fate forever watching its borders.

I seemed to be looking into a fiery furnace, wherein walked the living bodies of those whom Death had already set his seal upon. What a mockery it seemed to be climbing down that crag,—through wreaths of vine, and under leafy cataracts breaking into a foam of blossoms a thousand feet below me; swinging aside the hanging parasites that obstructed the narrow way,—entering the valley of death, and the very mouth of hell, by these floral avenues!

A brisk ride of a couple of miles across the breadth of the peninsula brought me to the gate of the keeper of the settlement, and there I dismounted, and hastened into the house, to be rid of the curious crowd that had gathered to receive me. The little cottage was very comfortable, my host and hostess friends of precious memory; and with them I felt at once at home, and began the new life that every one begins when the earth seems to have been suddenly transformed into some better or worse world, and he alone survives the transformation.

Have you never had such an experience? Then go into the midst of a community of lepers; have ever before your eyes their Gorgon-like faces; see the horrors, hardly to be recognized as human, that grope about you; listen in vain for the voices that have been hushed forever by decay; breathe the tainted atmosphere; and bear ever in mind that, while they hover about you,—forbidden to touch you, yet longing to clasp once more a hand that is perfect and pure,—the insidious seeds of the malady may be generating in your vitals, and your heart, even then, be drunk with death!

I might as well confess that I slept indifferently the first night; that I was not entirely free from nervousness the next day, as I passed through the various wards assigned to patients in every stage of decomposition. But I recovered myself in time to observe the admirable system adopted by the Hawaiian government for the protection of its unfortunate people. I used to sit by the window and see the processions of the less afflicted come for little measures of milk, morning and evening. Then there was a continuous raid upon the ointment-pot, with the contents of which they delighted to anoint themselves. Trifling disturbances sometimes brought the plaintiff and defendant to the front gate, for final judgment at the hands of their beloved keeper. And it was a constant entertainment to watch the progress of events in that singular little world of doomed spirits. They were not unhappy. I used to hear them singing every evening: their souls were singing while their bodies were falling rapidly to dust. They continued to play their games, as well as they could play them with the loss of a finger-joint or a toe, from week to week: it is thus gradually and thus slowly that they died, feeling their voices growing fainter and their strength less, as the idle days passed over them and swept them to the tomb.

Sitting at the window on the second evening, as the patients came up for milk, I observed one of them watching me intently, and apparently trying to make me understand something or other, but what that something was I could not guess. He rushed to the keeper and talked excitedly with him for a moment, and then withdrew to one side of the gate and waited till the others were served with their milk, still watching me all the while. Then the keeper entered and told me how I had a friend out there who wished to speak with me,—some one who had seen me somewhere, he supposed, but whom I would hardly remember. It was their way never to forget a face they had once become familiar with. Out I went. There was a face I could not have recognized as anything friendly or human. Knots of flesh stood out upon it; scar upon scar disfigured it. The expression was like that of a mummy, stony and withered. The outlines of a youthful figure were preserved, but the hands and feet were pitiful to look at. What was this ogre that knew me and loved me still?