A. Safroni-Middleton

“ I stayed that night with the missionary, and the next day and night also, and heard many strange things. Beautiful were some of the legends of the forest children that my host told me. The stars were the eyes of the fiercer gods, and the falling stars the bright tears of the powerful Muburto and Nedengi’s warriors. Fijian maidens and youths prayed to the eyes of shadow-land, and if, as their impassioned lips met, a star fell and arched over them in the vault of night, great was their sorrow, for a god had shed a tear over the grief that would befall the life of the first-born. ”

“ You are never really lonely in the African bush, for as you tramp along the bush tracks with your swag—a flask of whisky and insect powder wrapped up in your mosquito net—strange things follow you, singing and blowing tiny flutes in your ears as they circle round your head, a dancing ring of tiny bodies on wings. Some of them hum at sunset, and if you feel poetical you can fancy you are out on the lonely track, with all the stars singing round you, as like some burdened creator you mumble to yourself and move along with your myriad satellites following you. ”

“ He wears the primitive ridi to his bony knees and a large shawl of native tappu-cloth round his brown shoulders; tall and majestic-looking, with strong, imaginative face, when he stands quite still and lifts one arm to heaven he looks like an exiled scapegrace god.
With eyes shining brilliantly he tells you the tale of creation, how man- and woman-kind came on earth. Ages ago a giant turtle, like a fish that walked on a thousand legs, came up from the bottom of the ocean and saw the blue sky for the first time, and far away the coral reefs and forest-clad shores of Samoa. ”

“ Samoa still rises silently in moonlight out of the sea of my dreams. I can hear the barbarian orchestra clanging away down in the native village, as Samoan girls and youths, and two or three white men, waltz under the palms just below the plateau, where groves of orange-trees hang their golden fruit amongst dark leaves. As I play the violin the semi-savage people whirl to the wild rhythm of the forest ballroom music of a tribal waltz. ”

“ The moon at once shone out in the sky and the old leader put his hand up to the orb and filled his arms with beautiful moonlight ere he struck the cloud with his magic breath and the thick, dark mist dissolving fell as sparkling rain softly to the isle far below. The bright moonlight clinging to the falling drops made ropes of moonbeams dangle to the forest tree-tops, on which the laughing stars slid as they went down, down—as beautiful youths, to fall into the outstretched arms of the surprised maidens. And that’s how man and woman first came to the Samoan Isles! ”

“ The island country is very beautiful. In the springtime the landscapes and valleys are dotted with yellow things called primroses; other wild flowers grow on the hedgerow banks. Little birds sing in old trees to the sunsets; the grass grows, and grows high ere they cut it down. The woods smell of peat; the native homesteads in the villages burn wood, and you can smell its delightful odour along the lanes as you tramp by. It is a beautiful country; but violin-playing, music and poetry are not appreciated by the natives as they are appreciated in the South Seas. ”

“ Just over the side I watch the mirrored masts and rigging glide along with us as though a ghostly ship is following; and the hours fly and dawn breaks greyly, and once more the tramp steamer is surrounded by blue sky-lines, till sunset sinks to a wild blaze in the western arch of the sky. The sailors go on watch. The cook washes his pots and pans ere he cuts his corns and turns into his bunk.
The wind’s voice murmurs mournfully in the rigging and round the bridge awnings; as the night grows older it swells to a tremendous voice that is really me! ”

“ Samoan girls with wild, bright eyes, round, plump, brown faces, and curved figures as perfect as sculptural art, pass and repass up the forest tracks. They are singing Samoan songs that intensify the romantic, dream-like atmosphere of the tropical night—an atmosphere not even to be dispelled by the wailing cry of the native babies, who give short, wild, smothered screams as they lose and then suddenly recover the breasts of sleeping mothers in those thatched homes by the palms and banana groves. The vast night sky, agleam with stars, shines like a mighty mirror. ”

“ I also seemed to have frozen and become a part of the machine which is called civilisation. The songs of sails aloft, the noise of forest winds and soundings across deep waters, had faded from my dreams into a wail of selfishness. Imagination is the soul of the Universe, and grief is its Bible; but, alas, I felt a gross craving for food.
So my ambition to outrival Paganini on the violin had subsided from its state of enthusiastic fire and had left in my heart a dull callousness. One intense wish survived: to get a sound pair of boots and a new suit! ”

“ But for the throb of the engines and thrashing screw, the vessel’s motion, and the stewards’ sea-legs aslant to the deck’s list as they walk the saloons and cabin alley-ways, you could half think you were in some subterannean hotel. Travel on a liner, and the wild poetry of the sailing ships swerving to the swell of travelling seas, the climbing sailors aloft singing their chanteys among the storm-beaten sails, the flying clouds overhead that race the moon, all seem to be something that you dreamed of, or lived through ages ago. ”

“ Well, I feel a bit ashamed of my incorrigible personality, and yet how much my soul is burdened with the thought that I must aspire to higher things, and go off to the city each day like Mr W.’s son does, to sit on a stool. I can never be the pride and joy of the family, and as I sit alone and dream I am miserable with dim forebodings. On the back of the chair is my very high white collar and the smart tweed suit, and by my washstand my beloved fiddle. Just over it, on a peg by my bed, is my big-rimmed Australian hat. Alas! that hat speaks of tropical sunshine and coco-palms. ”

“ As he spoke a strange bird screamed afar off in the forest palms, and with his dark finger to his lips he said: “Woi! Vanaka! the dead speak! and they who were unfaithful to men and maids are being punished by the gods”; for ere he finished many screams came to our ears, as a flock of migrating wings flapped under the moon that was right overhead.
Mabau, who had heard this, clapped her hands with delight, and I knew then that she had but little faith in Vituo’s promises; for I understood from Bones that he had seen Vituo, and he had pledged his faithfulness to poor Mabau. ”

“ Now Mabau was a Fijian maid of rare beauty. She had shining dark eyes and a thick mop of hair; the graceful curves of her bare brown body as she glided ’neath the sunlit palms made many Fijian youths gaze enviously upon her. The Chief Kaifa, her father, sat by his hut door; he had been one of the high chiefs of Thakambau, the last of the Fijian kings. Kaifa was a majestic-looking man; in spite of his thick lips he had fine features, with earnest eyes, and was straight-figured as a coco-palm. ”

“ It is a beautiful face. I gaze from the wharf at it with fascinated eyes: all is silent except for the plomp of the waters against the ship’s side as the tide ebbs. Still I gaze at her praying hands, as with wide-opened eyelids she stares across the moonlit quay at the sleeping city.
I went back to my room and dreamed of that perfect face. So strangely was I impressed by its beauty that I felt a longing to find some living type resembling it. The next day I walked up the Sydney streets and earnestly scanned the faces of the Colonial girls. ”

“ Men were hard and mercenary. Only violinists and musicians had souls. I looked at my violin; it was my dear, abused comrade, and I clung to its reputation more than ever. No mother on earth ever leaned over her child with thoughts that outdid the tenderness of mine as I leaned over my tiny, responsive comrade, silent in its coffin-shaped bed. The dead child of my musical aspirations it seemed to me, for they were gone, and my mighty ambition lay a dead failure. Oh, you aspirants, you musicians and poets of this world, all you who love art for art’s sake, for you, and you alone, I write this. ”

“ So, notwithstanding heathenism and the gruesome cannibalistic customs of the old times, much innocence and poetry softened the hearts of the wild native children of those dim lands. It was a common sight by night in the shade of the coco-palms to see love-sick maids in the arms of the Fijian youths, gazing at the skies, yearning for the sight of the vast gods shedding starry tears on their behalf, and often great was their delight to find the foretold grief to their first-born overthrown by the power of other gods. ”

“ I am a boy again, and am thrilled with such a feeling as a poet has when he treads visionary worlds and forgets his sad reality. How happy I feel as I move along in the white moonlight from wharf to wharf, gazing on each wooden ship and wondering on their past voyages, what seas they crossed ere I was born, and what the seaports looked like when they came sailing down, with weather-beaten sailors staring from the fo’c’sle head. ”

“ I can hear the arguing voices of bushmen in the grog shanty by “Bummer’s Creek,” and the trade wind in the shore banyans as the beachcomber laughs and nudges his pal in the ribs.
I cannot sleep, for the parrots are flying and muttering across the sky of my dreams; I hear the crack of the stock-whips on the slopes as the scampering, flying sheep go racing across my bedroom floor. I close my eyes, and the natives start singing in the Fijian village, and the drums are beating the sunset out ere I am wide awake, through the civilised jingle of the milkman’s cans in the cold, windy street below. ”

“ Sometimes the figures and events stand out vividly, and at other times are illusive, and seem some sad, intangible thing far away in the background of life.
The old bushman’s red beard and twinkling eyes; the squatting savages by their huts; the sensitive mouths and wondering eyes of the native girls; old scallawags; beachcombers; the noise of sailors on ships in the bay; Horncastle’s jovial face aglow with joy and drink; the palm-clad shores, and Apia’s primitive town, seem far-off dreams. I can still see Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa ”

“ On deck, like iced wine to my lips, I drink in the fresh sea breeze. It is dark. I cannot turn in, for I should not sleep, so I go into the fo’c’sle and watch the sailors playing cards, then return on deck and look over the ship’s side. Under the pendulous, curved moon—for it seems to sway to the roll of the rigging—the mate’s form moves to and fro as he tramps the bridge. The sailing ship that we sighted on the weather-side at sunset is now only a tiny travelling star low down on the ocean darkness far astern, where her mast head-light shines. ”

“ Down in the magical world of words, before the mind’s eye and ear, we should have seen the vast tropical Pacific, and the stars over it reflected in the lagoons of the far-scattered isles clad with coco-palms as if painted by the magical silver oils of moonlight. We should have heard the cry of the traders and seen the beachcombers’ ragged clothes fluttering by tossing waters, and paddled canoes filled with the swarthy faces of wild men, on the waves that were breaking over the shores of his wonderful pages. ”

“ As I write, in a dream I see the slopes rising from the sea, lying silent in the moonlight. The curling smoke from the camp fires steals above the still coco-palms that shelter the huts of the native villages. The big, hive-shaped houses are musical with humming melody and the jabbering voices of rough-haired native girls and women. Some squat cross-legged by door-holes, whence emerge tiny, brown, naked children, to turn head over heels, or race like joyful puppies after each other round the dens. ”

“ Yes, to be ashore on some far-away isle, clasping the savage maid in your arms by the coco-palms, gazing in the delicious orbs of the Universe—infinity in beams of eyelight. To breathe the present, yet be alive in the past, far away down the centuries of the modern dark ages! To walk by primeval forest and tumbling moonlit seas where they break over coral reefs. To rest by camp fires and huts, talking with bush women and men, and girls with sparkling eyes, eyes clear as heaven with her moon and stars. ”

“ Just across the track is the bazaar, wooden cabins under the mangroves and coco-palms, where the Indians sell jewellery, the Koran, and richly coloured dress materials to the Samoan women. The Indians appear fine-looking men when dressed, with their dark, brilliant eyes and curly, close-cropped beards. They swear to all things by the holy prophet Mahomet, and wear a poetic smile that enlarges when you are not looking to a sardonic grin! Native women meet them at dark under the coco-palms, stroke their beards and gaze secretly up into their faces with passionate admiration. ”

“ Away from respectability that whitewashes men, back away from the mighty orchestra of moving cogs and wheels, and from the crowds of cold eyes, thirsting for the gold which is necessary to keep them warm in white-collared respectability, back over the seas to the forests of Maori land, to the cry of the curlew and huja in the trees, by the old pahs of Orakan, where Herowera, the old-time warrior, sat by the rushing river waters. ”

“ I think God gathers all His beauty from grief; that, enthroned in loneliness, He gazes eternally across His stars and across His dark infinities and sees some Long Ago! For not in the vastness of things, or the mighty ocean of space, can we see or feel so much of Infinity as we can see in the derelict eyes of the friendless; as I saw, and see now, in the tramping Maori girl of my spiritual passion. ”

“ Big full-blooded Samoan chiefs smile and show their white teeth as they roll banana-leaf cigarettes between their dusky fingers. Across the flat lies Apia town with its one main street; beyond the inland plateaux rise, and far off you can see the moonlit waves breaking into patches like white moss on the level ocean plains.
By the copra and coco plantations are the emigrant settlements, where tired coolies, most of them Malay Indians, rest after their toil. Native women linger near them, for they are generous men those coolies, and give the velvet-skinned native girls sham jewellery. ”

“ Forest lands, caves and mountain fastnesses and unknown isles of security are fast disappearing from the world as it becomes polite.
Where the bokai feast roared and revelled, and the Fijian war dancers in the moonlight of other years whirled, in bloodthirsty revelry, by the Rewa river, now rise the church spires! Where the ambushed tribe once watched from the jungle with gleaming eyes pass austere university men clad in gowns, with Bibles in their hands, to lecture on Christianity to open-mouthed natives. ”

“ He seems to hate respectable people, and only goes down to the Apia bar-rooms to mix with old sailors and traders and the remnants of the beach; he stands treat and is a godsend to them, for he seems to have plenty of cash. One old shellback entertains him for hours with wonderful tales of other days, and his comrades sit by and silently smoke and drink as the bar becomes hazy with tobacco smoke. The lights grow dim as the old sailor’s yarn rolls the world back, and in the now romantic atmosphere of the bar shades of old pioneers dance ghostly wise ”

“ Only the mechanical pumping of our breath could be heard as we raced across the slopes. Presently I saw that I was gaining in the flight; my nose was moving through space just about one inch beyond Slick’s nose! The savages were shouting behind us! I distinctly heard the wild, savage wails, and looking back I saw their dark faces coming through the forest of palms. Slick’s face had gone white; mine, I think, had turned ashen-grey! The sound of running in the forest just behind us grew louder. If we did not reach the village before they overtook us we should have to fight for our lives. ”

“ That pretty Samoan girl, with staring, romantic eyes and rough, bronze-coloured hair, who only a week ago gave herself body and soul to some Indian, the scum of the East, sits alone under the dark mangroves by the lagoon and thinks and thinks of the day before her fall. A red, decorated loin-cloth reaches to her waist, the forest winds kiss the maiden curves of her brown, flower-like bosom. She is very young: her childhood’s dolls are still unbroken, and are being loved and nursed by her little sisters who live on the neighbouring Savaii Isle. ”

“ Melodies from the sails aloft, gliding under the stars, still sing beautifully to me as I watch the sleeping sailors, far out at sea, in their tossing bunks. Then they stand by the galley door, with their mugs for the hot coffee, while the chief mate tramps away the night to and fro on the poop, humming Soon we’ll be in London Town. Then, as I dream, the sails crumble in the moonlight, the decks are awash, sink and disappear; sailors are struggling in the moonlit waters. Their white hands are tossed up as they sink, one by one ”

“ If you go up the slope and stand on the plateau, away inland, when dawn is stealing in grey tints along the ocean horizon, awakening the birds on Vaea Mountain, and the native homes are astir, you can distinctly see afar something that looks like a cow-shed by coco-palms and thick jungle growth. It is Vailima, the home of Robert Louis Stevenson. One light gleams in the large shed-room, and the intellectual, sensitive face of the poet-author moves there in the gloom. ”

“ I fancy I hear the hounds of death racing across the wild sea moors as shadows dropping from the flying clouds go running over the moonlit sea, and now, as though a door in the sky is opened, the stars and moon are driven and shut away in the outer Universe. For a mighty sheet of storm-cloud slides across the heavens. The world is changed to an infinity of dark and wind, and the one dim figure of the look-out man on the fo’c’sle head. ”

“ Some are devoid of personality and only perform the stock pieces that are fashionable. Others revel in melody that tells of the light side of life, its gaiety, or the pathos of dramatic existence on the stage, the tragedian’s mock grief before the footlights ere the curtain falls. Others find their musical heaven vaguely expressed by playing those pieces that seem to murmur, as a sea-shell murmurs of the ocean, that indefinable note of poetry, the voice of the unknown, the intense inner life of our existence. ”

“ Still I fancy I hear pretty Rewaro, the Maori maid, singing her chant as she listens to the old chief’s reminiscences of mighty deeds and battles of yore. In the birch and eucalyptus trees sigh old winds, and from the mysterious gloom of moonlit Arcadia come soft, weird sounds of Maori musical instruments. I could write chapters about the Maoris and their habits, and their wonderful poetic legends of dead chiefs singing in the forest, and maidens made of sea-foam brightly dancing in the glimpsing moonlight of forest rivers. ”

“ Though I heard Stevenson make several attempts to play the violin, and also heard him pedalling at the harmonium, I cannot recall that he accomplished anything that struck me as showing musical talent—that is, talent revealing a quick ear to distinguish the scales and intervals of mechanical music. Indeed the pedals made more noise and sounded more rhythmical than the time he played; and he looked like some careworn priest toiling away on the treadmill of penance to save his soul. But still I can say that Stevenson had a gift that was something much greater than an ear for light melody. ”