Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson

“ There is an element of appeal in it, reminding one of a child who can bear the tedium no longer. It is always directed to Louis or, he being absent, to me as his representative. He wanted to go home very soon after that luncheon. In the evening we could hear the dancers in the big "speak house," clapping, stamping, and singing. The sounds were so savage, so like an immense pack of dogs fighting in a mass, that we did not realise what it was, but thought that some form of riot was going on. An absolute tyrant like Tembinoka walks amid dangers of which he is fully conscious. ”

“ Topsy sat for her portrait most conscientiously as though it were a photograph, not moving a hair's breadth, nor hardly winking. After each sitting she returned to exactly the same position. I tried in vain to make her take it more easily; when I talked to her (she knew half a dozen words of English) she responded with stiff lips, trying to speak without moving them. I took her a wreath which delighted her, and just before we left I came across a red silk bodice with a smocked yoke and embroidered cuffs; just the thing, I felt, for Topsy. ”

“ The whole island seemed interested; the King, not too well pleased, suffered Fani to sit beside Louis in the speak-house on the sofa of honour during the dance. Women came up and commented on the resemblance between Fani and Fanny and Etetera and Teritera (Louis's Tahitian name) . On a table in front of us were the lights—a half shell of cocoanut-oil with a twist of fibre swimming on top and a glass bottle with the same oil and a wick. In the side of the bottle a round hole had been ingeniously cut through the glass for the convenience of cigarette smokers. ”

“ I see a man hurrying along a path, a little child with him and their black pig following like a terrier. Sometimes piggy stops a moment to smell or root at the foot of a palm, but always with a glance over his shoulder; if the distance seems growing too wide between [55] himself and his family, he rushes after them, and for a moment or two trots soberly at his master's side.
After luncheon we went over to the village in one of the boats going for shell, landing at the white trader's house. From the first, I had been puzzled by a strange figure on the trader's veranda. ”

“ Before the great earthquake in Java there were plenty of good fish fit for eating. The half-caste can remember when a poisonous fish was a thing unknown; now all outside the reef are poisonous, and many inside. The worst of it is that a fish, to-day innocuous, may to-morrow become deadly. Turtle do not come to the islands at all; so there is no food besides copra except what chance vessels may bring. I fear this poor man is simply dying of starvation. A steward on board the missionary ship, who knew a little about medicine, had told him that he only needed iron and good food. ”

“ To-day we came to anchor off Savage Island, or Nuieue, having on board some eight natives of the place who were being returned home by the company. It was pleasant to see the happy, excited faces of the "boys" as we drew near their native land. They were all dressed for the occasion in new clothes, every man with a pair of strong new boots on his feet. A couple of dandies wore velvet smoking-caps with tassels, and red sashes. It is a smaller and lighter-coloured race than we have been accustomed to, their features and expression reminding one of pretty, sweet-faced Chinamen. ”

“ The Janet Nichol was an iron-screw cargo boat, topsail schooner rigged, of some six hundred tons gross. Her large, airy saloon and cabins were placed amidship on the main deck, with ports opening forward, the "trade room" being at the extreme aft. There was a comfortable bathroom and space enough on deck for exercise; but, for that matter, we might walk, sit, or sleep where we would. I have slept in the chart room and on the platform of the captain's bridge; though the after hatch, over which a great awning was spread, was the place chosen by the most of us for permanent night quarters. ”

“ It seems easier to explain our relation with Tembinoka, King of Apemama, at whose island I hoped we would call, by giving an extract from a former diary written on the trading schooner Equator:
We have been now about a month on the island of the redoubtable Tembinoka, an absolute monarch, who holds the lives of his subjects (our own also) in the hollow of his hand. He says: "I kill plenty men, him 'praid (afraid) now. I no kill any more." That he does not mean to kill any more his subjects do not believe, nor I, quite, myself. ”

“ Fishing would be no more than play for them; but I fear neither fish, flesh, nor fowl can save him now.
The missionary who came aboard showed Louis his eye, in which he was blind, the effect of measles, and begged for a cure. Of course there was none, but Louis advised him to live as generously as possible and, instead of a continual diet of pandanus seeds, to try and get some fish. As soon as it was dark the sea was crowded with fishing-boats, lighted up with flaring torches, made by wrapping sennit round a dry cocoanut leaf; so we hope our poor trader may receive some benefit, also. ”

“ The shell I afterward gave to the cook and another to the second steward, who, by this time, was almost insane with excitement and pleasure. We had a very busy day receiving shell and packing it in the wooden cases that are still being made on the forward deck. The black sailors work extraordinarily well and with perfect willingness and good nature. They make play of everything, and in spite of their small stature and slender, elegant figures, handle great weights with the utmost ease and dexterity. The little native boys work as hard as any in helping pack the shell. ”

“ The scene was one of the wildest excitement and I am sure they all had headaches. All came down to the reef to see us off; Joe and Jim were to take us out; the ladies stood a little back up to their knees, and when the boat was launched, I saw Mrs. Joe make a sudden plunge under her skirts, and next moment her gaudy lava-lava was flying in the air for a signal of farewell. When a native woman dons a civilised garment she still retains her native garment, the lava-lava twisted round her body. ”

“ All about the trader's house were great piles of timber, and in one of the rooms a piano woefully out of tune, and other signs of the wreck of a big ship. It was a timber vessel, they told us, this last one, that went to pieces just outside the reef. Numbers of houses are being built of the boards by the more thrifty-minded of the islanders. One of the sailors cast ashore still remains here, a gentle, soft-eyed youth from Edinburgh, now fairly on the way to become a beach-comber. Fortunate lad! His future is assured; no more hard work, no more nipping frosts and chilly winds ”

“ Our own black sailors are the same; we hear them screaming and laughing in the forecastle exactly like girls. We are so used to island life that it has but just struck us as odd and picturesque that our almost naked sailors (they wear only a short lava-lava round their loins) should be working in wreaths like queens of the May. ”

“ Before Cameron left he had given Louis a signed order for the apocryphal manuscript. Of the two men we brought one back with us, Captain Smith, who, having lost his schooner on this island, remained as a trader. He seemed a modest, intelligent young man, rather above the South Sea average. Tom Day, however, is—must be—the "flower of the Pacific." Tom is fifty years of age, with a [121] strong, alert figure and the mobile face of an actor; his eyes are blue-grey in deep orbits, blazing with energy and drink and high spirits. ”

“ Peter Grant is the most hideous ruffian I have ever beheld. The skin of his face has the quality of a burn scar and is crossed with wrinkles in places where no other human being has wrinkles. His forehead is narrow and retreating, his eyes very light, with a strange scaly look, not a pair in size, colour, or movement, and set too close together in a large, gaunt face. ”

“ It is of no use to tell him that [19] it is all an old story to me; he hears nothing but babbles on with shining eyes. I have just overheard this from a white stoker who had also never been in the tropics before: "He's been and swindled me, that native! There's nothing inside this green cocoanut but some kind of water."
Mr. Henderson has just told us as a secret that our next island will be Upolu, Samoa, and we are now as wildly excited as the second steward. On Wednesday afternoon, at four o'clock, we shall arrive at Apia, and the next morning, at break of day, off we fly to Vailima. ”

“ Henderson went ashore very early this morning, at Atafu. He boasts that he ate three chicken legs as well as half a breast and quantities of taro. As I have a little rheumatism from wearing my wet clothes so long at Fakaafo, and it rains, I decided to stay on board and take a dose of salicylate. Later the sun comes out; my rheumatism flies before the salicylate, but too late; Louis has gone in the boat and there is no other for me. I spend a dreary time watching the people with an opera-glass. The wind occasionally brings the sound of singing to my ears. ”

“ Villiero has seen a policeman receive no more than ten cocoanuts for a whole year's work, and he must find his own uniform of which he is not proud. Every portion of the island is owned and the demarcations owned. They are a mean lot here; their fights mere broils, and very little feeling is shown for each other. A canoe drifted away, or a man dead, is almost instantly forgotten. Little or no sour toddy is drunk since the missionaries came. Mr. Clark, the missionary from Samoa, told them that on Sundays when a ship came up to the island they must allow a couple of men to take the trader off ”

“ The two men had pulled the boat in [90] which they came. The pallid one panted and held both hands over his heart as though suffering acutely. I asked him if he liked the island. "Not at all," he answered and went on to describe the people; he said he could not keep chickens, ducks, or pigs; no one could, for their neighbours, jealous that another should have what they had not, would stone the creatures to death. The same with the planting of fruit-trees; the soil was good, and there were a few breadfruits and bananas, but any attempt to grow more is frustrated. ”

“ No one could tell us how this institution, which is known in other islands besides Manihiki, first arose. For one week out of every year all laws are held in abeyance, and the island gives itself up to hilarious enjoyment without fear of consequences, singing, beating the cocoanut-wood drum, and dancing according to the old heathen customs. At any other time the punishment for heathen dances is most severe.
The King of Manihiki in the centre, with the Island Judge on his right and Tin Jack, seated, on his left.
The man squatting in the foreground is one of the beach-combers. ”

“ Two other friends, consistent converts to Christianity, to whom we also carried presents, we left behind us with regret, Nan Tok and his wife; but they were of a different sort from Maka and Mary, being natives of Butaritari and, from Maka's point of view, quite uncivilised, as, in ordinary life the lady (there are only ladies in the South Seas, woman being a word that is tapu in all society, high or low) , a rich, high chief woman, wore the ridi only, while for full dress she appeared in a white chemise fresh from the trader's shelves with the marks where it had been folded still showing. ”

“ Savage Island is a high-low island; that is, it is a coral atoll with a soil, raised more or less unevenly, some two hundred feet above the sea-level. It produces copra, bananas, cotton, breadfruit, bêche-de-mer, and fungus, and is governed by a king with the assistance of four chiefs and four sub-chiefs. Food trees and plants are carefully cultivated, and the people have the reputation of being industrious and willing to work. Captain [17] Henry wished to take a little girl home to his wife, but was not allowed, it being against the law that a female should leave the island. ”

“ In a moment black heads popped up everywhere and the boat was hauled on shore. Another boat was just on the point of crossing when the steersman was snapped off his perch and flung into the sea; he was almost instantly back and crossed in triumph. Every success was cheered from the ship by the watching men.
It is always a great pleasure to the natives to help raise the ship's boats to the davits for the night. They know that white sailors make a sort of cry or "chanty" when hauling on a rope, so they, too, try to do the correct thing. ”

“ She found a moment to bewail her fate to Louis; if only we had come piecemeal, as it were, and not all at once, like a waterspout, she would have been so happy. We shall leave behind us only a memory of hurry and flurry and confusion worse confounded. While we were at table the John Williams ran so close inshore that we were frightened, and Mr. Marriott very anxious, as all his worldly goods were on board. The John Williams left Sydney on Friday the 11th, the same day we did, and now we meet here and possibly may meet again in Samoa. ”