Island Nights' Entertainments : consisting of the Beach of Falesá, the Bottle Imp, the Isle of Voices

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Works by R. L. STEVENSON Published by Cassell & Company. sv> ISLAND NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENTS 6/- A FOOTNOTE TO HISTORY . . 6/- TREASURE ISLAND 3/6 MASTER OF BALLANTRAE . . .3/6 KIDNAPPED 3/6 THE BLACK ARROW . . . .3/6 THE WRECKER 6/- (Ey R. L. Stevenson and Lloyd Oseourne.) ISLAND NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENTS ___A, ISLAND NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENTS CONSISTING OF THE BEACH OF FALESA THE BOTTLE IMP THE ISLE OF VOICES BY EOBEET LOUIS STEVENSON WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY GORDON BROWNE AND W. HATHEEELL EIGHTS THOUSAND CASSELL & COMPANY Limited LONDON PARIS f MELBOURNE 1893 [all eights reserved] TO THREE OLD SHIPMATES AMONG THE ISLANDS HARRY HENDERSON BEN HIRD JACK BTJCKLAND THEIR FRIEND R. L. S. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. THE BEACH OF FALESA. PAGE Cma Face Title Sketch Map of the Beach Face p. 1 " TJma showed the best rearing for a bride conceivable" . 15 "'What does fussy-ocky mean?' I asked oe Uma" . . 31 " 'Have you had enough?' cried I" 63 " ' I'm no missionary, nor missionary lover ' " . . .67 " i kept posting him up on master case and the beach of Falesa " 75 " 'Will you know what was in his heart?' cries he" . 83 "Looking rou.vd the corner I saw a shining face" . .109 "We stuck just the way we were" 113 " The Winchester cracked again, and down she went" . 135 "I HAD HIM BY THE ANKLE" 139 THE BOTTLE IMP.

" 'This is the bottle,' said the man" 155 "The imp looked out of the bottle" 171 " ' I thought I knew everyone in this country ' " . . . 175 " ' Keawe of the Bright House is out of spirits ' " . . 185 " The young man fell upon his knees. ' For God's sake buy it ! ' he cried " 191 ' ' There, under the bananas, lay Keawe, his mouth in the dust, and as he lay he moaned " 203 ' ' There was Kokua on the floor, the lamp at her side ; before her was a milk-white bottle, with a round belly and a long neck" 213 ' ' SO OFF HE WENT DOWN THE AVENUE TOWARDS TOWN, AND THERE GOES THE BOTTLE OUT OF THE STORY " . ' . . . . LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. X THE ISLE OF VOICES. PAGE "While he was so thinking, there was his father-in-law behind him, looking vexed " 229 ' ' the herbs caught strongly afire, and the flames beat upon Keola" 233 "'Back!' cried Keola. 'Back! the leaves are near done ' " 239 ' ' There he was striding and dwindling, and he held the lamp high over his head, and the waves broke white about him as he went" 247 "IN A WIDE SHALLOW WATER, BRIGHT WITH TEN THOUSAND STARS, AND ALL ABOUT HIM WAS THE RING OF THE LAND, WITH ITS STRING OF PALM TREES" 255 ' When the fires sprang up, he charged for them like a bull" 265 " Came into the borders of the wood, and stood astonished " . 271 "And the missionary was very sharp on him for taking the second wife in the low isiand " THE BEACH OF FALESA (BEING THE NARRATIVE OF A SOUTH SEA TRADER) '_____-_.(_.> 0_-IH_08H01_._: ci__v Hovaa HHX ÆO rlVK hoj__:_is THE BEACH OF FALESA.

CHAPTEE I. A SOUTH SEA BRIDAL. I saw that island first when it was neither night nor morning. The moon was to the west, set ting, but still broad and bright. To the east, and right amidships of the dawn, which was all pink, the day star 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 vears on a low island near the line, living for the most part solitary among natives. Here was a fresh eA\perience : 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.

Chapter II. The Ban

I came on the verandah just before the sun rose on the morrow. My house was the last on the east; there was a cape of woods and cliffs behind that hid the sunrise. To the west, a swift cold river ran down, and beyond was the green of the village, dotted with cocoa-palms and breadfruits and houses. The shutters were some of them down and some open ; I saw the mosquito bars still stretched, with shadows of people new-awakened sitting up inside ; and all over the green others were stalking silent, wrapped in their many-coloured sleeping clothes like Bedouins in Bible pictures. It was mortal still and solemn and chilly, and the light of the dawn on the lagoon was like the shining of a fire. But the thing that troubled me was nearer hand. Some dozen young men and children made a piece of a half-circle, flanking my house : the river divided them, some were on the near side, some on the far, and one on a boulder in F ALES A. 24 the midst ; and they all sat silent, wrapped in their sheets, and stared at me and my house as straight as pointer dogs.

I thought it strange as I went out. When I had bathed and come back again, and found them all there, and two or three more along with them, I thought it stranger still. What could they see to gaze at in my house, I wondered, and went in. But the thought of these starers stuck in my mind, and presently I came out again. The sun was now up, but it was still behind the cape of woods. Say a quarter of an hour had come and gone. The crowd was greatly increased, the far bank of the river was lined for quite a way — perhaps thirty grown folk, and of children twice as many, some standing, some squatted on the ground, and all staring at my house. I have seen a house in a South Sea village thus surrounded, but then a trader was thrashing his wife inside, and she singing out. Here was nothing : the stove was alight, the smoke going up in a Christian manner; all was shipshape and Bristol fashion.

To be sure, there was a stranger come, but they had a chance to see that stranger yesterday, and took it quiet enough. AVhat ailed them now? I leaned my arms on the rail and stared back. Devil a wink THE BAN. 25 they had in them ! Now and then I could see the children chatter, but they spoke so low not even the hum of their speaking came my length. The restwere like graven images : they stared at me, dumb and sorrowful, with their bright eyes ; and it came upon me things would look not much different if I were on the platform of the gallows, and these good folk had come to see me hanged. I felt I was getting daunted, and began to be afraid I looked it, which would never do. Up I stood, made believe to stretch myself, came down the verandah stair, and strolled towards the river. There went a short buzz from one to the other, like what you hear in theatres when the curtain goes up ; and some of the nearest gave back the matter of a pace.

I saw a girl lay one hand on a young man and make a gesture upward with the other; at the same time she said something in the native with a gasping voice. Three little boys sat beside my path, where I must pass within three feet ot them. Wrapped in their sheets, with their shaved heads and bits of top-knots, and queer faces, they looked like figures on a chimney piece. Awhile they sat their ground, solemn as judges. I came up hand over fist, doing my FAIFSA. 26 five knots, like a man that meant business ; and I thought I saw a sort of a wink and gulp in the three faces. Then one jumped up (he was the farthest off) and ran for his mammy. The other two, trying to follow suit, got foul, came to ground together bawling, wriggled right out of their sheets mother-naked, and in a moment there were all three of them scampering for their lives and singing out like pigs.

The natives, who would never let a joke slip, even at a burial, laughed and let up, as short as a dog's bark. They say it scares a man to be alone. No such thing. What scares him in the dark or the high bush is that he can't make sure, and there might be an army at his elbow. What scares him worst is to be right in the midst of a crowd, and have no guess of what they're driving at. When that laugh stopped, I stopped too. The boys had not yet made their offing, they were still on the full stretch going the one way, when I had already gone about ship and was sheering off the other. Like a fool I had come out, doing my five knots ; like a fool I went back again. It must have been the funniest thing to see, and what knocked me silly, this time no one laughed ; only one old woman gave a kind of THE BAN. 27 pious moan, the way you have heard Dissenters in their chapels at the sermon.

" I never saw such fools of Kanakas as your people here," I said once to Uma, glancing out of the window at the starers. " Savvy nothing," says Uma, with a kind of disgusted air that she was good at. And that was all the talk we had upon the matter, for I was put out, and Uma took the thing so much as a matter of course that I was fairly ashamed. All day, off and on, now fewer and now more, the fools sat about the west end of my house and across the river, waiting for the show, whatever that was — fire to come down from heaven, I suppose, and consume me, bones and baggage. But by evening, like real islanders, they had wearied of the business, and got away, and had a dance instead in the big house of the village, where I heard them singing and clapping hands till, maybe, ten at night, and the next day it seemed they had forgotten I existed.

If fire had come down from heaven or the earth opened and swallowed me, there would have been nobody to see the sport or take the lesson, or whatever you like to call it. But I was to find they hadn't forgot either, and kept an eye lifting for phenomena over my way. I was hard at it both these days getting my trade in order and taking stock of what Vigours had left. This was a job that made me pretty sick, and kept me from thinking on much else. Ben had taken stock the trip before — -I knew I could trust Ben — but it was plain somebody had been making free in the meantime. I found I was out by what might easily cover six months' salary and profit, and I could have kicked myself all round the village to have been such a blamed ass, sitting boozing with that Case instead of attending to my own affairs and taking stock.

However, there's no use crying over spilt milk. It was done now, and couldn't be undone. All I could do was to get what was left of it, and my new stuff (my own choice) in order, to go round and get after the rats and cockroaches, and to fix up that store regular Sydney style. A fine show I made of it ; and the third morning when I had lit my pipe and stood in the door way and looked in, and turned and looked far up the mountain and saw the cocoanuts waving and posted up the tons of copra, and over the village green and saw the island dandies and reckoned up the yards of print they wanted for THE BAN. 29 their kilts and dresses, I felt as if I was in the right place to make a fortune, and go home again and start a public-house. There was I, sitting in that verandah, in as handsome a piece of scenery as you could find, a splendid sun, and a fine fresh healthy trade that stirred up a man's blood like sea-bathing ; and the whole thing was clean gone from me, and I was dreaming England, which is, .after all, a nasty, cold, muddy hole, with not enough light to see to read by ; and dreaming the looks of my public, by a cant of a broad high-road like an avenue, and with the sign on a green tree.

So much for the morning, but the day passed and the devil anyone looked near me, and from all I knew of natives in other islands I thought this strange. People laughed a little at our firm and their fine stations, and at this station of Falesa in particular ; all the copra in the district wouldn't pay for it (I had heard them say) in fifty years, which I supposed was an exaggera tion. But when the day went, and no business came at all, I began to get downhearted ; and, about three in the afternoon, I went out for a stroll to cheer me up. On the green I saw a white man coming with a cassock on, by which and by the face of him I knew he was a priest. He was a good-natured old soul to look at, gone a little grizzled, and so dirty you could have written with him on a piece of paper. " Good day, sir," said I. He answered me eagerly in native " Don't you speak any English ?

" said I. " French," says he. " Well," said I, " I'm sorry, but I can't do anything there." He tried me awhile in the French, and then again in native, which he seemed to think was the best chance. I made out he was after more than passing the time of day with me, but had some thing to communicate, and I listened the harder. I heard the names of Adams and Case and of Randall — Randall the oftenest — and the word "poison," or something like it, and a native word that he said very often. I went home, repeating it to myself. "What does fussy-ocky mean?" I asked of Uma, for that was as near as I could come to it. Make dead," said she. " The devil it does ! " says I. " Did ever you hear that Case had poisoned Johnnie Adams ? " "Every man he savvy that," says Uma, scornful-like. " Give him white sand — bad ;l ' WHAT DOES FUSSY-OC_Y MEAN . ' I ASKED OF UMA " (p. THE BAN. 33 sand.

He got the bottle still. Suppose he give you gin, }rou no take him." Now I had heard much the same sort of story in other islands, and the same white powder always to the front, which made me think the less of it. For all that, I went over to Randall's place to see what I could pick up, and found Case on the doorstep, cleaning a gun. " Good shooting here ? " says I. "A 1," says he. "The bush is full of all kinds of birds. I wish copra was as plenty," says he — I thought, slyly — " but . there don't seem anything doing." I could see Black Jack in the store, serving a customer. " That looks like business, though," said I. " That's the first sale we've made in three weeks," said he. "You don't tell me?" says I. "Three weeks ? Well, well." " If you don't believe me," he cries, a little hot, "you can go and look at the copra-house.

It's half empty to this blessed hour." " I shouldn't be much the better for that, you see," says I. " For all I can tell, it might have been whole empty yesterday." " That's so," says he, with a bit of a laugh. i' " By-the-bye," I said, " what sort of a party is that priest? Seems rather a friendly sort." At this Case laughed right out loud. " Ah ! says he, " I see what ails you now. Galuchet's been at you." Father Galoshes was the name he went by most, but Case always gave it the French quirk, which was another reason we had for thinking him above the common. "Yes, I have seen him," I says. "I made out he didn't think much of }rour Captain Randall." " That lie don't ! " says Case. " It was the trouble about poor Adams. The last day, when he lay dying, there was young Buncombe round. Ever met Buncombe ?

" I told him no. "He's a cure, is Buncombe!" laughs Case. " Well, Buncombe took it in his head that, as there was no other clergyman about, bar Kanaka pastors, we ought to call in Father Galuchet, and have the old man administered and take the sacrament. It was all the same to me, you may suppose ; but I said I thought Adams was the fellow to consult. He was jawing away about watered copra and a sight of foolery. ' Look here,' I said, 'you're pretty sick. Would you like to see Goloshes ? ' He sat right up on his THE BAN. 35 elbow. ' Get the priest,' says he, ' get the priest ; don't let me die here like a dog ! ' He spoke kind of fierce and eager, but sensible enough. There was nothing to say against that, so we sent and asked Galuchet if he would come. You bet he would. He jumped in his dirty linen at the thought of it.

But we had reckoned without Papa. He's a hard-shell Baptist, is Papa ; no Papists need apply. And he took and locked the door. Buncombe told him he was bigoted, and I thought he would have had a fit. ' Bigoted ! ' he says. ' Me bigoted ? Have I lived to hear it from a jackanapes like you ? ' And he made for Buncombe, and I had to hold them apart ; and there was Adams in the middle, gone luny again, and carrying on about copra like a born fool. It was good as the play, and I was about knocked out of time with laughing, when all of a sudden Adams sat up, clapped his hands to his chest, and went into the horrors. He died hard, did John Adams," says Case, with a kind of a sudden sternness. " And what became of the priest ? " I asked. " The priest ? " says Case. " 0 ! he was hammering on the door outside, and crying on the natives to come and beat it in, and singing out it was a 'soul he wished to save, and that.

D He was in a rare taking, was the priest. But what would you have ? Johnny had slipped his cable ; no more Johnny in the market ; and the administration racket clean played out. Next thing, word came to Randall the priest was praying upon Johnny's grave. Papa was prett}' full, and got a club, and lit out straight for the place, and there was Galoshes on his knees, and a lot of natives looking on. You wouldn't think Papa cared that much about anything, unless it was liquor ; but he and the priest stuck to it two hours, slanging each other in native, and every time Galoshes tried to kneel down Papa went for him with the club. There never were such larks in Falesa. The end of it was that Captain Randall knocked over with some kind of a fit or stroke, and the priest got in his goods after all.

But he was the angriest priest you ever heard of, and complained to the chiefs about the outrage, as he called it. That was no account, for our chiefs are Protestant here ; and, anyway, he had been making trouble about the drum for morning school, and they were glad to give him a wipe. Now he swears old Randall gave Adams poison or something, and when the two meet they grin at each other like baboons." He told this story as natural as could be, THE BAN. 37 and like a man that enjoyed the fun ; though, now I come to think of it after so long, it seems rather a sickening yarn. However, Case never set up to be soft, only to be square and hearty, and a man all round ; and, to tell the truth, he puzzled me entirely. I went home and asked Uma if she were a Popey, which I had made out to be the native word for Catholics.

"Eleai!" says she. She always used the native when she meant " no " more than usually strong, and, indeed, there's more of it. " No good Popey," she added. Then I asked her about Adams and the priest, and she told me much the same yarn in her own way. So that I was left not much farther on, but inclined, upon the whole, to think the bottom of the matter was the row about the sacrament, and the poisoning only talk. The next day was a Sunday, when there was no business to be looked for. Uma asked me in the morning if I was going to " pray " ; I told her she bet not, and she stopped home herself with no more words. I thought this seemed unlike a native, and a native woman, and a woman that had new clothes to show off; FALLS A. however, it suited me to the ground, and I made the less of it. The queer thing was that I came next door to going to church after all, a thing I'm little likely to forget.

I had turned out for a .stroll, and heard the hymn tune up. You know how it is. If you hear folk singing, it seems to draw you ; and pretty soon I found myself alongside the church. It was a little long low place, coral built, rounded off at both ends like a whale-boat, a big native roof on the top of it, windows without sashes and doorways without doors. I stuck my head into one of the windows, and the sight was so new to me — for things went quite different in the islands I was acquainted with — that I stayed and looked on. The congregation sat on the floor on mats, the women on one side, the men on the other, all rigged out to kill — the women with dresses and trade hats, the men in white jackets and shirts. The hymn was over ; the pastor, a big buck Kanaka, was in the pulpit, preaching for his life ; and by the way he wagged his hand, and worked his voice, and made his points, and seemed to argue with the folk, I made out he was a gun at the business.

Well, he looked up suddenly and caught my eye, and I give you my word he staggered in the pulpit ; his eyes bulged out of THE BAN. 39 his head, his hand rose and pointed at me like as if against his will, and the sermon stopped right there. •It isn't a fine thing to say for yourself, but I ran away ; and if the same kind of a shock was given me, I should run away again to morrow. To see that palavering Kanaka struck all of a heap at the mere sight of me gave me a feeling as if the bottom had dropped out of the world. I went right home, and stayed there, and said nothing. You might think I would tell Uma, but that was against my system. You might have thought I would have gone over and consulted Case ; but the truth was I was ashamed to speak of such a thing, I thought everyone would blurt out laughing in my face.

So I held my tongue, and thought all the more ; and the more I thought, the less I liked the business. By Monday night I got it clearly in my head I must be tabooed. A new store to stand open two days in a village and not a man or woman come to see the trade was past believing. "Uma," said I, "I think I'm tabooed." " I think so," said she. I thought awhile whether I should ask her more, but it's a bad idea to set natives up with FA LES A. 40 any notion of consulting them, so I went to Case. It was dark, and he was sitting alone, as he did mostly, smoking on the stairs. " Case," said I, " here's a queer thing. I'm tabooed." "0, fudge!" says he; "'tain't the practice in these islands." " That may be, or it mayn't," said I. " It's the practice where I was before. You can bet I know what it's like ; and I tell it you for a fact, I'm tabooed."

" Well," said he, " what have you been doing ? " " That's what I want to find out," said I. " 0, you can't be," said he ; " it ain't possible. However, I'll tell you what I'll do. Just to put your mind at rest, I'll go round and find out for sure. Just you waltz in and talk to 1_ " apa. "Thank you," I said, "I'd rather stay right out here on the verandah. Your house is so close." " I'll call Papa out here, then," says he "My dear fellow," I says, "I wish you wouldn't. The fact is, I don't take to Mr. Randall." Case laughed, took a lantern from the store, THE BAN. 41 and set out into the village. He was gone per haps a quarter of an hour, and he looked mighty serious when he came back. " Well," said he, clapping down the lantern on the verandah steps, " I would never have be lieved it. I don't know where the impudence of these Kanakas '11 go next ; they seem to have lost all idea of respect for whites.

What we want is a man-of-war — a German, if we could — they know how to manage Kanakas." " I am tabooed, then ? " I cried. " Something of the sort," said he. " It's the worst thing of the kind I've heard of yet. But I'll stand by you, Wiltshire, man to man. You come round here to-morrow about nine, and we'll have it out with the chiefs. They're afraid of me, or they used to be ; but their heads are so big by now, I don't know what to think. Understand me, Wiltshire ; I don't count this your quarrel," he went on, with a great deal of resolution, " I count it all of our quarrel, I count it the White Man's Quarrel, and I'll stand to it through thick and thin, and there's my hand on it." " Have you found out what's the reason ? " I asked. " Not yet," said Case. " But we'll fix them down to-morrow."

F ALES A. Altogether I was pretty well pleased with his attitude, and almost more the next day, when we met to go before the chiefs, to see him so stern and resolved. The chiefs awaited us in one of their big oval houses, which was marked out to us from a long way off by the crowd about the eaves, a hundred strong if there was one — men, women, and children. Many of the men were on their way to work and wore green wreaths, and it put me in thoughts of the 1st of May at home. This crowd opened and buzzed about the pair of us as we went in, with a sudden angry animation. Five chiefs were there ; four mighty stately men, the fifth old and puckered. They sat on mats in their white kilts and jackets ; they had fans in their hands, like fine ladies ; and two of the younger ones wore Catholic medals, which gave me matter of reflection.

Our place was set, and the mats laid for us over against these grandees, on the near side of the house ; the midst was empty ; the crowd, close at our backs, murmured and craned and jostled to look on, and the shadows of them tossed in front of us on the clean pebbles of the floor. I was just a hair put out b}r the excitement of the commons, but the quiet civil appearance of the chiefs reassured me, all the more when their spokesman began THE BAN. 43 and made a long speech in a low tone of voice, sometimes waving his hand towards Case, some times toward me, and sometimes knocking with his knuckles on the mat. One thing was clear : there was no sign of anger in the chiefs. " What's he been saying ? " I asked, when he had done. " 0, just that they're glad to see you, and they understand by me you wish to make some kind of complaint, and you're to fire away, and they'll do the square thing."