Island Nights’ Entertainments(岛上夜间的娱乐)

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Island Nights' Entertainments

Island Nights'

Entertainments

Robert Louis Stevenson.

1905 Edition.

Island Nights' Entertainments

CONTENT

A south sea bridal

The Ban

The Missionary

Devil-work

Night in the bush

The Bottle Imp

The Isle of voices

Island Nights' Entertainments

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 don't 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;

Island Nights' Entertainments

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 it's

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

Island Nights' Entertainments

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

Island Nights' Entertainments

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 ship's deck. The world was like all new

painted; my foot went along to music; Falesa might have been Fiddler's

Green, if there is such a place, and more's the pity if there isn't! It was

good to foot the grass, to look aloft at the green mountains, to see the

men with their green wreaths and the women in their bright dresses, red

and blue. On we went, in the strong sun and the cool shadow, liking

both; and all the children in the town came trotting after with their

shaven heads and their brown bodies, and raising a thin kind of a cheer

in our wake, like crowing poultry.

"By-the-bye," says Case, "we must get you a wife."

"That's so," said I; "I had forgotten."

There was a crowd of girls about us, and I pulled myself up and

looked among them like a Bashaw. They were all dressed out for the

sake of the ship being in; and the women of Falesa are a handsome lot to

see. If they have a fault, they are a trifle broad in the beam; and I was

just thinking so when Case touched me.

Island Nights' Entertainments

"That's pretty," says he.

I saw one coming on the other side alone. She had been fishing; all

she wore was a chemise, and it was wetted through. She was young

and very slender for an island maid, with a long face, a high forehead,

and a shy, strange, blindish look, between a cat's and a baby's.

"Who's she?" said I. "She'll do."

"That's Uma," said Case, and he called her up and spoke to her in the

native. I didn't know what he said; but when he was in the midst she

looked up at me quick and timid, like a child dodging a blow, then down

again, and presently smiled. She had a wide mouth, the lips and the

chin cut like any statue's; and the smile came out for a moment and was

gone. Then she stood with her head bent, and heard Case to an end,

spoke back in the pretty Polynesian voice, looking him full in the face,

heard him again in answer, and then with an obeisance started off. I

had just a share of the bow, but never another shot of her eye, and there

was no more word of smiling.

"I guess it's all right," said Case. "I guess you can have her. I'll

make it square with the old lady. You can have your pick of the lot for

a plug of tobacco," he added, sneering.

I suppose it was the smile stuck in my memory, for I spoke back

sharp. "She doesn't look that sort," I cried.

"I don't know that she is," said Case. "I believe she's as right as the

mail. Keeps to herself, don't go round with the gang, and that. O no,

don't you misunderstand me - Uma's on the square." He spoke eager, I

thought, and that surprised and pleased me. "Indeed," he went on, "I

shouldn't make so sure of getting her, only she cottoned to the cut of

your jib. All you have to do is to keep dark and let me work the mother

my own way; and I'll bring the girl round to the captain's for the

marriage."

I didn't care for the word marriage, and I said so.

"Oh, there's nothing to hurt in the marriage," says he. "Black Jack's

the chaplain."

By this time we had come in view of the house of these three white

men; for a negro is counted a white man, and so is a Chinese! a strange

Island Nights' Entertainments

idea, but common in the islands. It was a board house with a strip of

rickety verandah. The store was to the front, with a counter, scales, and

the poorest possible display of trade: a case or two of tinned meats; a

barrel of hard bread; a few bolts of cotton stuff, not to be compared with

mine; the only thing well represented being the contraband, firearms and

liquor. "If these are my only rivals," thinks I, "I should do well in

Falesa." Indeed, there was only the one way they could touch me, and

that was with the guns and drink.

In the back room was old Captain Randall, squatting on the floor

native fashion, fat and pale, naked to the waist, grey as a badger, and his

eyes set with drink. His body was covered with grey hair and crawled

over by flies; one was in the corner of his eye - he never heeded; and the

mosquitoes hummed about the man like bees. Any clean-minded man

would have had the creature out at once and buried him; and to see him,

and think he was seventy, and remember he had once commanded a ship,

and come ashore in his smart togs, and talked big in bars and consulates,

and sat in club verandahs, turned me sick and sober.

He tried to get up when I came in, but that was hopeless; so he

reached me a hand instead, and stumbled out some salutation.

"Papa's (1) pretty full this morning," observed Case. "We've had an

epidemic here; and Captain Randall takes gin for a prophylactic - don't

you, Papa?"

"Never took such a thing in my life!" cried the captain indignantly.

"Take gin for my health's sake, Mr. Wha's-ever-your- name - 's a

precautionary measure."

"That's all right, Papa," said Case. "But you'll have to brace up.

There's going to be a marriage - Mr. Wiltshire here is going to get

spliced."

The old man asked to whom.

"To Uma," said Case.

"Uma!" cried the captain. "Wha's he want Uma for? 's he come

here for his health, anyway? Wha' 'n hell's he want Uma for?"

"Dry up, Papa," said Case. "'Tain't you that's to marry her. I guess

you're not her godfather and godmother. I guess Mr. Wiltshire's going

Island Nights' Entertainments

to please himself."

With that he made an excuse to me that he must move about the

marriage, and left me alone with the poor wretch that was his partner

and (to speak truth) his gull. Trade and station belonged both to

Randall; Case and the negro were parasites; they crawled and fed upon

him like the flies, he none the wiser. Indeed, I have no harm to say of

Billy Randall beyond the fact that my gorge rose at him, and the time I

now passed in his company was like a nightmare.

The room was stifling hot and full of flies; for the house was dirty

and low and small, and stood in a bad place, behind the village, in the

borders of the bush, and sheltered from the trade. The three men's beds

were on the floor, and a litter of pans and dishes. There was no

standing furniture; Randall, when he was violent, tearing it to laths.

There I sat and had a meal which was served us by Case's wife; and

there I was entertained all day by that remains of man, his tongue

stumbling among low old jokes and long old stories, and his own

wheezy laughter always ready, so that he had no sense of my depression.

He was nipping gin all the while. Sometimes he fell asleep, and awoke

again, whimpering and shivering, and every now and again he would ask

me why I wanted to marry Uma. "My friend," I was telling myself all

day, "you must not come to be an old gentleman like this."

It might be four in the afternoon, perhaps, when the back door was

thrust slowly open, and a strange old native woman crawled into the

house almost on her belly. She was swathed in black stuff to her heels;

her hair was grey in swatches; her face was tattooed, which was not the

practice in that island; her eyes big and bright and crazy. These she

fixed upon me with a rapt expression that I saw to be part acting. She

said no plain word, but smacked and mumbled with her lips, and

hummed aloud, like a child over its Christmas pudding. She came

straight across the house, heading for me, and, as soon as she was

alongside, caught up my hand and purred and crooned over it like a great

cat. From this she slipped into a kind of song.

"Who the devil's this?" cried I, for the thing startled me.

"It's Fa'avao," says Randall; and I saw he had hitched along the floor

Island Nights' Entertainments

into the farthest corner.

"You ain't afraid of her?" I cried.

"Me 'fraid!" cried the captain. "My dear friend, I defy her! I don't

let her put her foot in here, only I suppose 's different to- day, for the

marriage. 's Uma's mother."

"Well, suppose it is; what's she carrying on about?" I asked, more

irritated, perhaps more frightened, than I cared to show; and the captain

told me she was making up a quantity of poetry in my praise because I

was to marry Uma. "All right, old lady," says I, with rather a failure of

a laugh, "anything to oblige. But when you're done with my hand, you

might let me know."

She did as though she understood; the song rose into a cry, and

stopped; the woman crouched out of the house the same way that she

came in, and must have plunged straight into the bush, for when I

followed her to the door she had already vanished.

"These are rum manners," said I.

"'s a rum crowd," said the captain, and, to my surprise, he made the

sign of the cross on his bare bosom.

"Hillo!" says I, "are you a Papist?"

He repudiated the idea with contempt. "Hard-shell Baptis'," said he.

"But, my dear friend, the Papists got some good ideas too; and tha' 's one

of 'em. You take my advice, and whenever you come across Uma or

Fa'avao or Vigours, or any of that crowd, you take a leaf out o' the

priests, and do what I do. Savvy?" says he, repeated the sign, and

winked his dim eye at me. "No, SIR!" he broke out again, "no Papists

here!" and for a long time entertained me with his religious opinions.

I must have been taken with Uma from the first, or I should certainly

have fled from that house, and got into the clean air, and the clean sea, or

some convenient river - though, it's true, I was committed to Case; and,

besides, I could never have held my head up in that island if I had run

from a girl upon my wedding- night.

The sun was down, the sky all on fire, and the lamp had been some

time lighted, when Case came back with Uma and the negro. She was

dressed and scented; her kilt was of fine tapa, looking richer in the folds

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IslandNights'Entertainments1IslandNights'EntertainmentsRobertLouisStevenson.1905Edition.IslandNights'Entertainments2CONTENTAsouthseabridalTheBanTheMissionaryDevil-workNightinthebushTheBottleImpTheIsleofvoicesIslandNights'Entertainments3THEBEACHOFFALESA.CHAPTERI.ASOUTHSEABRIDAL.ISAWthatislandfirstwhe...

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