South-Sea Idyls Part 3

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!"

n.o.body heard me. I looked again. Down they came upon the sh.o.r.e, 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 s.p.a.ce of time.

"Hail, little friend!" said I; "great love to you. How is it on sh.o.r.e now?"

He replied that it was decidedly nice on sh.o.r.e 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 sh.o.r.e. 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 rus.h.i.+ng breakers, s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 s.h.i.+p, 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 sh.o.r.e in our little triumphal procession, and there I was embraced in a very emphatic manner by savages of every conceivable s.e.x, 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 a.s.semblage, two or three times over, but saw not the one I sought.

What could it mean? Was he hunting in the mountains, or fis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sed 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 amus.e.m.e.nt. 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-fas.h.i.+oned bed--our old-fas.h.i.+oned 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 a.s.sert 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 a.s.sociations, 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 G.o.ds 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 G.o.ds were inexorable; and, after several days upon the solitary sea, a shadow, a mote, drifted toward the valley,--a canoe, with a famis.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 fas.h.i.+on. I read the letters, which had since become an epitaph. They were these:--

"KaNA-ANa, _aet. 16 yrs._"

Under them were three initials,--my own,--cut by the hand of Kana-ana, 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-cla.s.s savage than a fourth-rate Christian, any day.

I interrupted him at this alarming a.s.sertion. "The philosophers would call your faith a superst.i.tion, Niga; they do not realize that there is no true faith unmixed with superst.i.tion, since faith implies a belief in something unseen, and is, therefore, itself a superst.i.tion. 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 G.o.d?"

"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 G.o.d! 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 G.o.d, above all; that we have no other G.o.ds before him; yet, who of us will give up wealth, home, friends, and follow him? Not one! The G.o.d 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 fas.h.i.+on, or not. We'd rather not have other G.o.ds before him: one is as many as we find it convenient to serve. The lover kisses pa.s.sionately a miniature. It is not, however, an image of his Creator, nor any memorial of his Redeemer's pa.s.sion, but only a portrait of his mistress. Do you blame us, Niga? It is the strongest instinct of our nature to wors.h.i.+p 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 G.o.d and the future state, from conversations overheard after the return of Kana-ana. He tried to console me with the a.s.surance that Kana-ana 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 a.s.sured me of his fidelity to me, his white brother, adding that Kana-ana had, more than once, expressed the deepest regret at not having brought me back with him.