Island Nights' Entertainments
by Robert Louis Stevenson
Contents:
The Beach of Falesa
A south sea bridal
The Ban
The Missionary
Devil-work
Night in the bush
The Bottle Imp
The Isle of voices
THE BEACH OF FALESA.
CHAPTER I. A SOUTH SEA BRIDAL.
I SAW that island first when it was neither night nor morning. The
moon was to the west, setting, but still broad and bright. To the
east, and right amidships of the dawn, which was all pink, the
daystar sparkled like a diamond. The land breeze blew in our
faces, and smelt strong of wild lime and vanilla: other things
besides, but these were the most plain; and the chill of it set me
sneezing. I should say I had been for years on a low island near
the line, living for the most part solitary among natives. Here
was a fresh experience: even the tongue would be quite strange to
me; and the look of these woods and mountains, and the rare smell
of them, renewed my blood.
The captain blew out the binnacle lamp.
"There!" said he, "there goes a bit of smoke, Mr. Wiltshire, behind
the break of the reef. That's Falesa, where your station is, the
last village to the east; nobody lives to windward - I know
why. Take my glass, and you can make the houses out."
I took the glass; and the shores leaped nearer, and I saw the
tangle of the woods and the breach of the surf, and the brown roofs
and the black insides of houses peeped among the trees.
"Do you catch a bit of white there to the east'ard?" the captain
continued. "That's your house. Coral built, stands high, verandah
you could walk on three abreast; best station in the South Pacific.
When old Adams saw it, he took and shook me by the hand. 'I've
dropped into a soft thing here,says he. - 'So you have,says I,
'and time too!Poor Johnny! I never saw him again but the once,
and then he had changed his tune - couldn't get on with the
natives, or the whites, or something; and the next time we came
round there he was dead and buried. I took and put up a bit of a
stick to him: 'John Adams, OBIT eighteen and sixty-eight. Go thou
and do likewise.I missed that man. I never could see much harm
in Johnny."
"What did he die of?" I inquired.
"Some kind of sickness," says the captain. "It appears it took him
sudden. Seems he got up in the night, and filled up on Pain-Killer
and Kennedy's Discovery. No go: he was booked beyond Kennedy.
Then he had tried to open a case of gin. No go again: not strong
enough. Then he must have turned to and run out on the verandah,
and capsized over the rail. When they found him, the next day, he
was clean crazy - carried on all the time about somebody watering
his copra. Poor John!"
"Was it thought to be the island?" I asked.
"Well, it was thought to be the island, or the trouble, or
something," he replied. "I never could hear but what it was a
healthy place. Our last man, Vigours, never turned a hair. He
left because of the beach - said he was afraid of Black Jack and
Case and Whistling Jimmie, who was still alive at the time, but got
drowned soon afterward when drunk. As for old Captain Randall,
he's been here any time since eighteen-forty, forty-five. I never
could see much harm in Billy, nor much change. Seems as if he
might live to be Old Kafoozleum. No, I guess healthy."
"There's a boat coming now," said I. "She's right in the pass;
looks to be a sixteen-foot whale; two white men in the stern
sheets."
"That's the boat that drowned Whistling Jimmie!" cried the Captain;
"let's see the glass. Yes, that's Case, sure enough, and the
darkie. They've got a gallows bad reputation, but you know what a
place the beach is for talking. My belief, that Whistling Jimmie
was the worst of the trouble; and he's gone to glory, you see.
What'll you bet they ain't after gin? Lay you five to two they
take six cases."
When these two traders came aboard I was pleased with the looks of
them at once, or, rather, with the looks of both, and the speech of
one. I was sick for white neighbours after my four years at the
line, which I always counted years of prison; getting tabooed, and
going down to the Speak House to see and get it taken off; buying
gin and going on a break, and then repenting; sitting in the house
at night with the lamp for company; or walking on the beach and
wondering what kind of a fool to call myself for being where I was.
There were no other whites upon my island, and when I sailed to the
next, rough customers made the most of the society. Now to see
these two when they came aboard was a pleasure. One was a negro,
to be sure; but they were both rigged out smart in striped pyjamas
and straw hats, and Case would have passed muster in a city. He
was yellow and smallish, had a hawk's nose to his face, pale eyes,
and his beard trimmed with scissors. No man knew his country,
beyond he was of English speech; and it was clear he came of a good
family and was splendidly educated. He was accomplished too;
played the accordion first-rate; and give him a piece of string or
a cork or a pack of cards, and he could show you tricks equal to
any professional. He could speak, when he chose, fit for a
drawing-room; and when he chose he could blaspheme worse than a
Yankee boatswain, and talk smart to sicken a Kanaka. The way he
thought would pay best at the moment, that was Case's way, and it
always seemed to come natural, and like as if he was born to it.
He had the courage of a lion and the cunning of a rat; and if he's
not in hell to-day, there's no such place. I know but one good
point to the man: that he was fond of his wife, and kind to her.
She was a Samoa woman, and dyed her hair red, Samoa style; and when
he came to die (as I have to tell of) they found one strange thing
- that he had made a will, like a Christian, and the widow got the
lot: all his, they said, and all Black Jack's, and the most of
Billy Randall's in the bargain, for it was Case that kept the
books. So she went off home in the schooner MANU'A, and does the
lady to this day in her own place.
But of all this on that first morning I knew no more than a fly.
Case used me like a gentleman and like a friend, made me welcome to
Falesa, and put his services at my disposal, which was the more
helpful from my ignorance of the native. All the better part of
the day we sat drinking better acquaintance in the cabin, and I
never heard a man talk more to the point. There was no smarter
trader, and none dodgier, in the islands. I thought Falesa seemed
to be the right kind of a place; and the more I drank the lighter
my heart. Our last trader had fled the place at half an hour's
notice, taking a chance passage in a labour ship from up west. The
captain, when he came, had found the station closed, the keys left
with the native pastor, and a letter from the runaway, confessing
he was fairly frightened of his life. Since then the firm had not
been represented, and of course there was no cargo. The wind,
besides, was fair, the captain hoped he could make his next island
by dawn, with a good tide, and the business of landing my trade was
gone about lively. There was no call for me to fool with it, Case
said; nobody would touch my things, everyone was honest in Falesa,
only about chickens or an odd knife or an odd stick of tobacco; and
the best I could do was to sit quiet till the vessel left, then
come straight to his house, see old Captain Randall, the father of
the beach, take pot-luck, and go home to sleep when it got dark.
So it was high noon, and the schooner was under way before I set my
foot on shore at Falesa.
I had a glass or two on board; I was just off a long cruise, and
the ground heaved under me like a deck. The world was like
all new painted; my foot went along to music; Falesa might have
...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Go to the beginning of the document
Go to previous page
Go to next page
Go to the end of document
