South-Sea Idyls Part 6

Then, in another place, a grove of cocoa-palms and a melancholy, monastic-looking building, with splendid palm-branches in its broad windows; for it was just after Palm Sunday, and the building belonged to a Sisterhood. And I remembered how the clouds fell and the rain drove us into a sudden shelter, and we ate tamarind-jam, spread thick on thin slices of bread, and were supremely happy. In this connection, I could not forget how Joe became very unruly about that time, and I got mortified, and found great difficulty in getting him home at all; and yet the memory of it would have been perfect but for this fate. O Joe!

my poor, dear, terrible cobra! to think that I should ever be afraid to look into your face in my life!

Joe wanted to call to my mind one other reminiscence,--a night when we two walked to the old wharf, and went out to the end of it, and sat there looking inland, watching the inky waves slide up and down the beach, while the full moon rose over the superb mountains where the clouds were heaped like wool, and the very air seemed full of utterances that you could almost hear and understand but for something that made them all a mystery. I tried then, if ever I tried in my life, to make Joe a little less bad than he was naturally, and he seemed nearly inclined to be better, and would, I think, have been so, but for the thousand temptations that gravitated to him when we got on solid earth again. He forgot my precepts then, and I'm afraid I forgot them myself.

Joe remembered that night vividly. I was touched to hear him confess it; and I pray earnestly that that one moment may plead for him in the last day, if, indeed, he needs any special plea other than that Nature has published for her own.

"Sing for me, Joe," said I; and Joe, still crouching on the other side of the lattice, sang some of his old songs. One of them, a popular melody, was echoed through the little settlement, where faint voices caught up the chorus, and the night was wildly and weirdly musical. We walked by the sea the next day, and the day following that, Joe taking pains to stay on the leeward side of me,--he was so careful to keep the knowledge of his fate uppermost in his mind: how could I dismiss it from my own, when it was branded in his countenance? The desolated beauty of his face plead for measureless pity, and I gave it, out of my prodigality, yet felt that I could not begin to give sufficient.

Link by link he was casting off his hold on life; he was no longer a complete being; his soul was prostrated in the miry clay, and waited, in agony, its long deliverance.

In leaving the leper village, I had concluded to say nothing to Joe, other than the usual "_aloha_" at night, when I could ride off, in the darkness, and, sleeping at the foot of the cliff, ascend it in the first light of morning, and get well on my journey before the heat of the day.

We took a last walk by the rocks on the sh.o.r.e; heard the sea breathing its long breath under the hollow cones of lava, with a noise like a giant leper in his asthmatic agony. Joe heard it, and laughed a little, and then grew silent; and finally said he wanted to leave the place,--he hated it; he loved Lahaina dearly: how was everybody in Lahaina?--a question he had asked me hourly since my arrival.

When night came I asked Joe to sing, as usual; so he gathered his mates about him, and they sang the songs I liked best. The voices rang, sweeter than ever, up from the group of singers congregated a few rods off, in the darkness; and while they sang, my horse was saddled, and I quietly bade adieu to my dear friends, the keepers, and mounting, walked the horse slowly up the gra.s.s-grown road. I shall never see little Joe again, with his pitiful face, growing gradually as dreadful as a cobra's, and almost as fascinating in its hideousness. I waited, a little way off, in the darkness,--waited and listened, till the last song was ended, and I knew he would be looking for me, to say _Good night_. But he didn't find me; and he will never again find me in this life, for I left him sitting in the dark door of his sepulchre,--sitting and singing in the mouth of his grave,--clothed all in death.

[Decoration]

[Decoration]

THE NIGHT-DANCERS OF WAIPIO.

The afternoon sun was tinting the snowy crest of Mauna Kea, and folds of shadow were draping the sea-washed eastern cliffs of Hawaii, as Felix and I endeavored to persuade our f.a.gged steeds that they must go and live, or stay and die in the middle of a lava-trail by no means inviting. As we rode, we thought of the scandal that had so recently regaled our too willing ears: here it is, in a mild solution, to be taken with three parts of disbelief.

Two venerable and warm-hearted missionaries, whose good works seemed to have found dissimilar expression, equally effective, I trust, proved their specialties to be church-building.

Rev. Mr. A seemed to think the more the merrier, and his pretty little meeting-houses looked as though they had been baked in the lot, like a sheet of biscuits; while Rev. Mr. B condensed his efforts into the consummation of one resplendent edifice. Mr. A was always wondering why Mr. B should waste his money in a single church, while Mr. B was nonplussed at seeing Mr. A break out in a rash of diminutive chapels.

Well, Felix and I were riding northward up the coast, over dozens and dozens of lovely ridges; through scores of deep gullies cus.h.i.+oned with ferns as high as our pommels, and fording numberless streams, white with froth and hurry, eagerly seeking the most exquisite valley in the Pacific, as some call it. We rode till we were tired out twenty times over; again and again we looked forward to the bit of Mardi-life we were about to experience in the vale of the Waipio, while now and then we pa.s.sed one of Mr. A's pretty little churches. Once we were impatient enough to make inquiry of a native who was watching our progress with considerable emotion: there is always some one to watch you when you are wis.h.i.+ng yourself at the North Pole. Our single spectator affected an air of gravity, and seemed quite interested as he said, "Go six or seven churches farther on that trail, and you'll come to Waipio." On we went with renewed spirits, for the churches were frequent, almost within sight of each other. But we faltered presently and lost our reckoning, they were so much alike. Again we asked our way of a solitary watcher on a hill-top, who had had his eye upon us ever since we rose above the rim of the third ridge back: he revealed to us the glad fact that we were only two churches from Paradise! How we tore over the rest of that straight and narrow way with the little life left to us, and came in finally all of a foam, fairly jumping the last mite of a chapel that hung upon the brink of the beautiful valley like a swallow's nest!

And down we dropped into fifty fathoms of the sweetest twilight imaginable,--so sweet it seemed to have been born of a wilderness of the night-blooming cereus and fed forever on jasmine buds.

There were shelter and refreshment for two hungry souls, and we slid out of our saddles as though we had been boned expressly for a cannibal feast.

By this time the rosy flush on Mauna Kea had faded, and its superb brow was pale with an unearthly pallor. "Come in," said the host; and he led us under the thatched gable, that was fragrant as new-mown hay. There we sat, "in," as he called it, though there was never a side to the concern thicker than a shadow.

A stream flowed noiselessly at our feet. Canoes drifted by us, with dusky and nude forms bowed over the paddles. Each occupant greeted us, being guests in the valley, just lifting their slumberous eyelids,--masked batteries, that made Felix forget his danger; they seldom paused, but called back to us from the gathering darkness with inexpressibly tender, contralto voices.

Thereupon we were summoned to dinner in another apartment, screened with vines. The faint flicker of the tapers suggested that what breath of air might be stirring came from the mountain, and it brought with it a message from the orangery up the valley. "How will you take your oranges?" queried Felix; "in pulp, liquid, or perfume?"--and such a dense odor swept past us at the moment, I thought I had taken them in the triple forms. "You are just in time," said our host. "Why, what's up?" asked I. "The moon will be up presently, and after moonrise you shall see the _hula-hula_."

Felix desired to be enlightened as to the nature of the what-you-call-it, and was a.s.sured that it was worth seeing, and would require no explanatory chorus when its hour came.

It was at least a mile to the scene of action; a tortuous stream wound thither, navigable in spots, but from time to time the canoe would have to take to the banks for a short cut into deeper water.

"I can never get there," growled Felix; "I'm full of needles and pins"; to which the host responded by excusing himself for a few moments, leaving Felix and me alone. It was deathly still in the valley, though a thousand crickets sang, and the fish smacked their round mouths at the top of the water. Evening comes slowly in those beloved tropics, but it comes so satisfactorily that there is nothing left out.

A moonlight night is a continuous festival. The natives sing and dance till daybreak, making it all up by sleeping till the next twilight.

Nothing is lost by this ingenious and admirable arrangement. Why should they sleep, when a night there has the very essence of five nights anywhere else, extracted and enriched with spices till it is so inspiring that the soul cries out in triumph, and the eyes couldn't sleep if they would?

At this period, enter to us the host, with several young native girls, who seat themselves at our feet, clasping each a boot-leg encasing the extremities of Felix and myself.

Felix kicked violently, and left the room with some embarra.s.sment, and I appealed to the hospitable gentleman of the house, who was smiling somewhat audibly at our perplexity.

He a.s.sured me that if I would throw myself upon the mats in the corner, two of these maids would speedily relieve me of any bodily pain I might at that moment be suffering with.

I did so: the two proceeded as set down in the verbal prospectus; and whatever bodily pain I may have possessed at the beginning of the process speedily dwindled into insignificance by comparison with the tortures of my novel cure. Every limb had to be unjointed and set over again. Places were made for new joints, and I think the new joints were temporarily set in, for my arms and legs went into angles I had never before seen them in, nor have I since been able to a.s.sume those startling att.i.tudes. The stomach was then kneaded like dough. The ribs were crushed down against the spine, and then forced out by well-directed blows in the back. The spinal column was undoubtedly abstracted, and some mechanical subst.i.tute now does its best to help me through the world. The arms were tied in bow-knots behind, and the skull cracked like the sh.e.l.l of a hard-boiled egg, worked into shape again, and left to heal.

By this time I was unconscious, and for an hour my sleep promised to be eternal. I must have lain flat on the matting, without a curve in me, when Nature, taking pity, gradually let me rise and a.s.sume my own proportions, as though a little leaven had been mixed in my making over.

The awakening was like coming from a bath of the elements. I breathed to the tips of my toes. Perfumes penetrated me till I was saturated with them. I felt a thousand years younger; and as I looked back upon the old life I seemed to have risen from, I thought of it much as a b.u.t.terfly must think of his grub-hood, and was in the act of expanding my wings, when I saw Felix, just recovering, a few feet from me, apparently as ecstatic as myself. I never dared to ask him how he was reduced to submission, for I little imagined he could so far forget himself. There are some sudden and inexplicable revolutions in the affairs of humanity that should not be looked into too closely, because a chaotic chasm yawns between the old man and the new, which no one has ever yet explored. Felix sprang to his feet like Prometheus unbound, and embraced me with fervor, as one might after a hair-breadth escape, exclaiming, "Did you ever see anything like it, Old Boy?" to which the Old Boy, thus familiarly addressed (O. B. is a pet monogram of mine, designed and frequently executed by Felix), responded, "There wasn't much to see, but my feelings were past expression." "What's its name?" asked Felix. "I think they call it _lomi-lomi_," said I. "Pa.s.s _lomi-lomi_!" shouted Felix; and then we both roared again, which summoned the host, who congratulated us and invited us to his canoe.

Felix again endeavored to fathom the mysteries of the _hula-hula_. Was it something to eat?--did they keep it tied in the daytime?--what was its color? etc., till the amused gentleman who was conducting us to an exhibition of the great Unknown nearly capsized our absurdly narrow canoe in the very deepest part of the creek. Bands of fishermen and women pa.s.sed us, wading breast-high in the water, beating it into a foam before them, and singing at the top of their voices as they drove the fish down stream into a broad net a few rods below. Gra.s.s-houses, half buried in foliage, lined the mossy banks; while the dusky groups of women and children, cl.u.s.tering about the smouldering flames that betokened the preparation of the evening meal, added not a little to the poetry of twilight in the tropics.

Felix thought he would like to turn Kanaka on the spot; so we beached the canoe, and approached the fire, built on a hollow stone under a tamarind-tree, and were at once offered the cleanest mat to sit on, and a calabash of _poi_ for our refreshment. How to eat paste without a spoon was the next question. The whole family volunteered to show us; drew up around the calabash in a hungry circle, and dipped in with a vengeance. Six right hands spread their first and second fingers like sign-boards pointing to a focus in the very centre of that _poi_-paste; six fists dove simultaneously, and were buried in the luscious ma.s.s.

There was a spasmodic working in the elbows, an effort to come to the top, and in a moment the hands were lifted aloft in triumph, and seemed to be tracing half a dozen capital O's in the transparent air, during which manoeuvre the ma.s.s of _poi_ adhering to the fingers a.s.sumed fair proportions, resembling, to a remarkable degree, large, white swellings; whereupon they were immediately conveyed to the several mouths, instinctively getting into the right one, and, having discharged freight, reappeared as good as ever, if not better than before.

"Disgusting!" gasped Felix, as he returned to the water-side. I thought him unreasonable in his harsh judgment, a.s.suring him that our own flour was fingered as often before it came, at last, to our lips in the form of bread. "Moreover," I added, "this _poi_ is glutinous: the moment a finger enters it, a thin coating adheres to the skin, and that finger may wander about the calabash all day without touching another particle of the substance. Therefore, six or sixteen fellows fingering in one dish for dinner are in reality safer than we, who eat steaks that have been mesmerized under the hands of the butcher and the cook."

Felix scorned to reply, but breathed a faint prayer for a safe return to Chicago, as we slid into the middle of the stream, and resumed our course.

The boughs of densely leaved trees reached out to one another across the water. We proceeded with more caution as the channel grew narrow; and pressing through a submerged thicket of reeds, we routed a flock of water-fowls that wheeled overhead on heavy wings, filling the valley with their clamor.

Two or three dogs barked sleepily off somewhere in the darkness, and the voice of some one calling floated to us as clear as a bird's note, though we knew it must be far away. We strode through a cane-field, its smoky plumes just tipped with moonlight, and saw the pinnacle of Mauna Kea, as s.p.a.cious and splendid as the fairy pavilion that Nourgihan brought to Pari-Banou, illuminated as for a festival. To the left, a stream fell from the cliff, a ribbon of gauze fluttering noiselessly in the wind.

"O, look!" said Felix, who had yielded again to the influences of Nature. Looking, I saw the moon resting upon the water for a moment, while the dew seemed actually to drip from her burnished disk. Again Felix exclaimed, or was on the point of exclaiming, when he checked himself in awe. I ran to him, and was silent with him, while we two stood wors.h.i.+pping one stately palm that rested its glorious head upon the glowing bosom of the moon, like the Virgin in the radiant aureola.

"Well," said our host, "supposing we get along!" We got along, by land and water, into a village in an orange-grove. There was a subdued murmur of many voices. I think the whole community would have burst out into a song of some sort at the slightest provocation. On we paced, in Indian file, through narrow lanes, under the s.h.i.+ning leaves. Pale blossoms rained down upon us, and the air was oppressively sweet. Groups of natives sat in the lanes, smoking and laughing. Lovers made love in the face of heaven, utterly unconscious of any human presence. Felix grew nervous, and proposed withdrawing; but whither, O Felix, in all these islands, wouldst thou hope to find love unrequited, or lovers shamefaced withal? Much Chicago hath made thee mad!

Through a wicket we pa.s.sed, where a sentinel kept ward. Within the bamboo paling, a swarm of natives gathered about us, first questioning the nature of our visit, which having proved entirely satisfactory, we were welcomed in real earnest, and offered a mat in an inner room of a large house, rather superior to the average, and a disagreeable liquor,--brewed of oranges, very intoxicating when not diluted, and therefore popular.

We were evidently the lions of the hour, for we sat in the centre of the first row of spectators who were gathered to witness the _hula-hula_. We reclined as gracefully as possible upon our mats, supported by plump pillows, stuffed with dried ferns. Slender rushes--strung with _kukui_-nuts, about the size of chestnuts, and very oily--were planted before us like foot-lights, which, being lighted at the top, burned slowly downward, till the whole were consumed, giving a good flame for several hours.

The great mat upon the floor before us was the stage. On one side of it a half-dozen muscular fellows were squatted, with large calabashes headed with tightly drawn goat-skins. These were the drummers and singers, who could beat nimbly with their fingers, and sing the epics of their country, to the unceasing joy of all listeners. "It's an opera!"

shouted Felix, in a frenzy of delight at his discovery. A dozen performers entered, sitting in two lines, face to face,--six women and six men. Each bore a long joint of bamboo, slit at one end like a broom.

Then began a singularly intricate exercise, called _pi-ulu_. Taking a bamboo in one hand, they struck it in the palm of the other, on the shoulder, on the floor in front, to left and right; thrust it out before them, and were parried by the partners opposite; crossed it over and back, and turned in a thousand ways to a thousand metres, varied with chants and pauses. "Then it's a pantomime," added Felix, getting interested in the unusual skill displayed. For half an hour or more the thras.h.i.+ng of the bamboos was prolonged, while we were hopelessly confused in our endeavors to follow the barbarous harmony, which was never broken nor disturbed by the expert and tireless performers.

During the first rest, liquor was served in gourds. Part of the company withdrew to smoke, and the conversation became general and noisy. Felix was enthusiastic, and drank the health of some of the younger members of the _troupe_ who had offered him the gourd.

A rival company then repeated the _pi-ulu_, with some additions; the gourds were again filled and emptied. "Now for the _hula-hula_," said the host, who had imbibed with Felix, though he reserved his enthusiasm for something less childish than _pi-ulu_. It is the national dance, taught to all children by their parents, but so difficult to excel in that the few who perfect themselves can afford to travel on this one specialty.

There was a murmur of impatience, speedily checked, and followed by a burst of applause, as a band of beautiful girls, covered with wreaths of flowers and vines, entered and seated themselves before us. While the musicians beat an introductory overture upon the tom-toms, the dancers proceeded to bind shawls and scarfs about their waists, turban-fas.h.i.+on.

They sat in a line, facing us, a foot or two apart. The loose sleeves of their dresses were caught up at the shoulder, exposing arms of almost perfect symmetry, while their bare throats were scarcely hidden by the necklaces of jasmines that coiled about them.

Then the leader of the band, who sat, gray-headed and wrinkled, at one end of the room, throwing back his head, uttered a long, wild, and shrill guttural,--a sort of invocation to the G.o.ddess of the _hula-hula_. There had, no doubt, been some sort of sacrifice offered in the early part of the evening,--such as a pig or a fowl,--for the dance has a religious significance, and is attended by its appropriate ceremonies. When this clarion cry had ended, the dance began, all joining in with wonderfully accurate rhythm, the body swaying slowly backward and forward, to left and right; the arms tossing, or rather waving, in the air above the head, now beckoning some spirit of light, so tender and seductive were the emotions of the dancers, so graceful and free the movements of the wrists; now, in violence and fear, they seemed to repulse a host of devils that hovered invisibly about them.

The spectators watched and listened breathlessly, fascinated by the terrible wildness of the song and the monotonous thrumming of the accompaniment. Presently the excitement increased. Swifter and more wildly the bare arms beat the air, embracing, as it were, the airy forms that haunted the dancers, who rose to their knees, and, with astonis.h.i.+ng agility, caused the clumsy turbans about their loins to quiver with an undulatory motion, increasing or decreasing with the sentiment of the song and the enthusiasm of the spectators.

Felix wanted to know "how long they could keep that up and live?"