Читать книгу Mid-Pacific - James Norman Hall - Страница 5

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Several months later I was sitting on the deck of a sixty-ton schooner, eating a dish of rice and red beans. The schooner was called the Toafa. There were six of us aboard—a Chinaman named Chan Lee, captain and owner of the vessel, four Polynesian sailors, natives of the Low Archipelago, and myself. We were carrying a cargo of general merchandise to be exchanged among the Low Islands for copra and pearl-shell. The tiny cabin was alive with cockroaches and copra bugs, and day after day for many weeks we had been sharing with them our rice and red beans. Nevertheless, although I was conscious, at moments, of a wistful longing for the flesh-pots of New York, I wouldn’t have gone back there—not for any consideration, and at this particular moment I had only to lift my eyes to see, on the port bow, an island so lost in the immense waste of the Pacific that it may truthfully be called one of the authentic ends of the earth.

Its Polynesian name is Hopéaroa, which means ‘The Farthest Land,’ or more literally, ‘The Very Last.’ This is not quite true, however. Another crumb of land lies one hundred miles farther to the south. After calling at Hopéaroa, the Toafa was to proceed to this other island and return to Hopéaroa for cargo and a supply of rain-water before continuing the homeward voyage. I decided that an island called ‘The Farthest Land’ was far enough for me. Furthermore, I was a little tired of rice and red beans, so I decided to go ashore here and wait till Chan Lee came back.

All atolls are very much alike in their general features, but one never tires of seeing them, and it is hard even to imagine that places so solitary can belong to the world of reality. Hopéaroa was smaller than most of those I had seen, and Chan told me there were about one hundred inhabitants. In shape it is an almost perfect circle, three quarters of it barren reef enclosing a lagoon five miles wide. Four small islands are threaded on the reef, the largest of them, where the village is, being a mile and a half long. Another, of about the same size, lies to windward across the lagoon. There is a good pass through the reef where the water shoals to three fathoms over a forest of coral of every conceivable variety of shape and color. We came abreast of it shortly after noon, and as the current was favorable, the Toafa was carried gently past two islets, on either side of the entrance, into the quiet waters of the lagoon. A cloud of white terns rose at our approach, fluttered noiselessly over the bush and around the tops of a few tall coconut palms, and settled again like scraps of wind-blown paper. We crept along with a light breeze, skirting the shore of the main island which was so narrow in places that it looked like a causeway rather than an island. Through the trees I could see the surf piling up on the outer beaches, but there was no other sound than this, and we moved along in the midst of a silence that seemed never to have been broken.

Presently, rounding a point of land, we came within view of the settlement, and I was surprised to see another schooner, considerably larger than the Toafa, at anchor about one hundred yards offshore. The paint on her top sides, once white, was now a dirty yellow, blistered and peeling. The seams gaped; thick streams of rust extended from her chain-plates to the luxuriant growth of marine vegetation which covered her bottom. The standing rigging hung slack, and the ends of the springstay, which had parted, dangled from the masts, swaying gently with the imperceptible motion of the vessel. An awning made of bits of rotten canvas and pieces of sacking stitched together, was stretched over the main boom, and lying asleep in the shade of it was a native who looked as ancient and weather-beaten as the vessel itself. Another, a lean old man with white hair, naked except for a wisp of cloth about his loins, stood amidships, with his back to us, working the handle of a ship’s pump. He too appeared to be asleep, for his head was sunk on his breast. Nevertheless he moved slowly back and forth with the regularity of a pendulum on a grandfather’s clock, and a stream of clear water, its flow keeping time with his movements, gushed over the ship’s side.

We approached so noiselessly that he was not aware of our presence until the anchor was let go. At the sound of the splash the old man turned in amazement. The one asleep under the awning raised his head too, and both of them gazed at us without speaking.

‘What in the world is this old wreck doing here, Chan?’ I asked.

‘Stay long time—hlee, four year,’ said Chan. ‘I come Hopéaroa once year. Always see old mans, pump, pump. No pump, go down below with fish.’

‘Why don’t they let her go down? That’s certainly where she belongs.’

‘She got popaa captain.’ (‘Popaa’ is the native term for white man.) ‘He say fine ship, only want fix up little bit. Bimeby maybe he get some money, make more better.’

‘What do you think about it?’

‘No good. Captain dlink, dlink, alltime dlink. Plitty soon he finish too.’

The village was quickly astir. The natives came crawling out of thatched huts scarcely larger than dog-kennels, and gathered on the beach. They were the most primitive-looking islanders I had seen in that part of the Pacific. All the children were naked, but the men and women wore European clothing of a sort. The men were bare to the waist, with dungarees, in all stages of raggedness, for nether garments. They were a healthy, happy-looking lot, and it was evident from their excitement and pleasure that the arrival of Chan’s schooner was a great event in their lives.

Near the beach, in the center of the village, there was one house of European style, covered with a roof of corrugated iron. Although not large as houses go in other parts of the world, it towered like a palace above the huts around it. The eaves were ornamented with a great deal of gingerbread scroll-work, and a wide veranda faced the lagoon. A faded French flag hung from a staff slanted out over the stairway. I asked Chan whose house it was.

‘Flenchman, half-caste—got native mamma,’ he replied. ‘He belong government. Get dless up now. Bimeby he come.’

When he did come, the Toafa’s small boat was lowered and Chan and I were rowed ashore. My host—at least I hoped he was to be my host—awaited us at the end of a rickety landing-stage. He was a man of fifty, a giant in stature, swarthy in complexion, with iron-gray hair and blue-gray eyes. He was dressed very warmly for the tropics in a double-breasted serge suit, a white shirt with an old-fashioned ‘choker’ collar, a black derby hat, and yellow shoes. The shoes, evidently, were much too small for him. He kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other. The sweat streamed down his face, and the stiff collar had melted by the time we had reached him. There was something gentle and deprecatory in his manner, and his smile was so friendly and engaging that my heart warmed to him at once.

He shook my hand cordially and presented me with a card which read:

Monsieur Raoul Clémont

Administrateur

Hopéaroa

He greeted me in fluent French, but Chan having made some remark about my being a ‘Melican man,’ he immediately changed to English which he spoke with a quaintness I cannot hope to render here. I asked him whether I might stay at the island until the return of the Toafa, two weeks later.

‘You wish to do so?’ he said, beaming upon me. ‘Then it shall arrange. You shall stay in my house. This is the greatest honor for me!’

Immediately he gave orders to one of Chan’s sailors to fetch my things. Chan went aboard again, for there was some merchandise to be sent ashore, and he wanted to get away as early as possible. I followed my host to his house.

The loud squeaking of his shoes seemed to give voice to the pain they caused him. I was relieved when he asked if he might remove them.

‘Please do,’ I said. ‘It is a very warm day. Make yourself comfortable.’

He excused himself and returned a moment later, barefoot, but he had put on another stiff collar which melted at once, as the first had done. I was tempted to suggest that he remove his heavy serge coat, but he seemed to feel that his position as administrator demanded both the coat and the collar.

My arrival caused him an immense amount of concern, but he was so pleased at having some official business to transact that, clearly, no apology was necessary. He conducted me to his ‘bureau’ where he spent nearly two hours over the matter of getting me registered as a ‘Temporary Resident.’ He transcribed my passport word for word in his ledger, beginning with the ‘Notice’ on the inside front cover, and ending with the six abstracts from the passport regulations at the back.

‘I wish to have everything in due process of law,’ he explained. So I waited while he wrote everything out in a neat Spencerian hand. While copying the ‘Caution’ on the inside cover, which tells what is to be done in case a passport is lost, he stopped and read aloud this sentence: ‘New passports in such cases can be issued only after exhaustive inquiry.’

‘Exhaustive, exhaustive,’ he said, musingly. ‘I have forgotten this meaning. But no! I remember! When I am tired I say I am exhaustive. This is true?’

I explained the sense of it and he thanked me with warmth and sincerity, as though I had done him a great service. Upon reaching the ‘Description of Bearer,’ he again paused and looked at me with an expression of deep respect.

‘My guest! You are journalist! You write and write, and many people read what you write! This is the greatest honor for me! What journal in America have you the duty to be their author?’

‘Oh, I’m not really a journalist,’ I replied. ‘As a matter of fact——’

He thought I was being modest.

‘But you shall be!’ he insisted eagerly. ‘Your Government says you are journalist. The Secrétaire de l’État of your great nation’—he turned for reference to the passport—‘insists that your value be known. You are journalist, he writes. You must be safe and free, and have all lawful aid and protection.’

I wish I could convey an idea of the deep seriousness with which he said this. Had I been carrying a personal letter from the President of the United States, it could hardly have made a more profound impression than my passport had done. His belief more than half convinced me that I was a journalist after all. Of a sudden a new light dawned in his eyes.

‘Here too you must write,’ he said. ‘You must meet my friend, Captain Handy. He has had a life of great deeds. I am sure of it! He wishes his memoirs to be written into a book. How glad he shall be if you will help him with his history!’

‘Who is Captain Handy?’ I asked. ‘Is that his schooner lying offshore?’

‘Yes. He is an aged man. We shall go to see him. He shall be happy.’

Nothing would do but we must go at once. I had, I confess, a good deal of curiosity to see the captain of this ancient vessel which looked as though all the waters of the Pacific had been pumped through her. What was he doing at Hopéaroa? I made some inquiries as we were paddling out, but my host merely told me what I already knew, that the vessel had been for some years at the island. He gave me to understand that I should learn everything from the captain himself.

The canoe leaped across the water. At every powerful stroke of the paddle my head was flung back and I expected to see Monsieur Clémont’s coat burst into tatters. We were alongside in no time, the canoe was made fast, and we clambered aboard. The old native who had been asleep when the Toafa came in, was now taking his shift at the pump. He looked at us with a worried expression, and said something in the native tongue to Monsieur Clémont who hesitated for a moment, and then turned to me.

‘All day the captain sleeps,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Perhaps he shall be uneasy that I speak to him now, but your coming is the great reason. He should know this. I shall try to be bold to tell him.’

I followed him down the companionway into a cabin as dilapidated and dirty as the rest of the vessel. There was a small table in the middle of the floor, heaped with piles of old newspapers. Glancing at one, I saw that it was the ‘Brooklyn Eagle’ of a date more than three years past. A tin lamp with a rusty shade hung above the table. Against one wall was a curtained recess. Monsieur Clémont stopped irresolutely before it, then with the air of making a heroic decision, he put back the curtains, revealing a bunk over a chest of drawers. There lay Captain Handy, asleep.

He was naked to the waist, a tiny man, with a body incredibly thin and hairy. In fact his arms as well as his chest were covered with a matting of thick white hair. His head was enormous, long and lean and angular. His temples were deep hollows, and the skull was quite bald on top, but the hair of his beard mingled with the growth on his chest and reached almost to his waist. I could divine rather than see the long bony jaw beneath it, which looked even longer than it was, for his chin had fallen down and he was breathing noisily through his mouth. The skin was of the color of fungus, as though it had not been touched by sunlight in many months. I was conscious of a feeling of uneasiness as I gazed at this gnomelike little man. He seemed scarcely human.

Monsieur Clémont reached over to touch him on the shoulder, but before he had done so he drew his hand quickly back and seized it nervously with the other as though to prevent a second attempt.

‘Should I awaken him?’ he whispered, looking at me anxiously.

‘I don’t see why not, now that we have come,’ I replied. ‘Would he object, do you think?’

‘Only once before have I done this,’ he said. At length he called in a low voice, ‘Captain!’ There was no response. Then with one huge finger, nearly as thick through as the old man’s arm, he touched his shoulder and called again.

‘He’s a sound sleeper,’ I said. ‘You’d better shake him, hadn’t you?’

After a good deal of hesitation he did so, very gently, and immediately looked at me with a frightened expression, as though he had committed a sacrilege.

The mouth snapped shut, and the captain made a frightful grimace as though he had bitten into something nauseating.

‘All right, all right,’ he said with a petulant intonation. His voice was amazingly deep and resonant. It was hard to realize that so great a volume of sound could come so easily from such a wraith of a man. Then he opened his eyes, glassy blue and cold. The light of recognition came into them slowly, but once it had he quickly raised himself on one elbow.

‘What’s this?’ he roared.

‘Captain! You will excuse me? The Toafa is here. We have a——’

With a great effort the old man got to his knees and grasped the edge of his bunk, and at the same moment Monsieur Clémont seemed to be pushed by invisible hands backward to the companionway where he paused for the fraction of a second, gave me a frightened, apologetic look, and disappeared. The captain remained motionless for a moment, staring at the empty doorway, then the baleful light died from his eyes. The muscles of his face relaxed, his head dropped as though its weight were too much for his strength; he balanced unsteadily on his knees, then collapsed on his side and lay still. I waited until I again heard his regular breathing, whereupon I went quietly out. Monsieur Clémont was already in the canoe.

‘Well!’ I said, as I climbed in. ‘He wasn’t so happy to see us as you expected.’

He looked at me sorrowfully.

‘I was too bold,’ he said. ‘In the daytime Captain Handy sleeps, and he is uneasy to be awakened.’

‘Is he always like that?’

‘Oh, no! You shall not think of him by this meeting. In the evening time when he has had his breakfast, you shall see! I shall tell him you are journalist. He shall be glad. And he plays the zither. Sometimes he permits me to listen. It is beautiful! I am never tired to hear.’

Chan Lee was awaiting us on the beach. The breeze had freshened a little, and as the current was now running out of the lagoon, he planned to sail at once. He would be back in a week’s time, or ten days at the latest, he said. We watched the schooner until she had vanished beyond the point; then Monsieur Clémont showed me my room. I saw at once that it was his own, but he insisted that I should occupy it.

‘I have not often a guest from the great world,’ he said. ‘Not since eight years has a visitor come. This shall be a souvenir for me.’

‘Have you always lived at Hopéaroa?’

‘Yes. I am born here. My mother is of this island. But you have understood that I am of the French blood by my father? He was an honored man of that great nation. See! He is there!’

On the wall over a table was a framed photograph of a French naval officer in full-dress uniform. Despite his black beard there was a very perceptible likeness between this man and Monsieur Clémont. One hand rested on a pedestal and the other was lightly clasped around the hilt of his sword. Across the bottom of the photograph was written:

A ma petite Manukura,

Souvenir affectueux de nos promenades sur la belle isle de Hopéaroa.

Raoul Clémont

Cap^ne de Frégate Le 5 Aout, 1875

‘I wish to have known my father,’ he said wistfully, after a moment of silence. ‘His ship of war came but once to Hopéaroa. Manukura is my mother. She loved him but she heard of him no more. She gave me his name. But you shall see a beautiful picture of my father I have had made from this one. It is in my mother’s room. Should you wish to meet her?’

I said I should like very much to do so, and he led me down a narrow hallway to the other end of the house. He paused at the door.

‘My mother has lost her health since five years,’ he said. ‘Now she remains in her bed.’

He rapped gently, then opened the door and motioned me to follow. We entered a large chamber filled to overflowing with furniture upholstered in faded red plush. A brass lamp ornamented with innumerable glass pendants hung from the center of the ceiling, and the walls were covered with a great variety of shell ornaments in beautiful designs and colors. But my attention was at first drawn to the bed where my host’s mother lay, propped up by pillows.

She was of the finest type of full-blooded Polynesian, rarely seen in these days except on such remote islands as Hopéaroa. Her face was full of beauty and character, and it was easy to imagine how lovely she must have been as a young girl. Although now a woman of seventy, her hair was but lightly streaked with gray. It was parted in the middle and lay in two thick braids on the counterpane. As we entered she turned her head slowly, and her face lighted up with pleasure and surprise. Her son addressed her in the native dialect, explaining who I was. Then he turned to me.

‘My mother says you are welcome here. You shall be our guest.’

She took one of my hands in hers and spoke to me direct, and although I did not understand, I was in no doubt of the sincerity of her welcome. She again spoke to her son, eagerly, and at some length. When she had finished, he said,

‘My mother wishes to know if you have heard in other lands of my father, le Capitaine de Frégate, Raoul Clémont?’

I confessed, reluctantly, that I had not, adding that doubtless I would have heard of him had I been of French nationality.

The colored enlargement hung on the wall facing her bed. With its huge gilt frame it must have covered twelve square feet. The cheeks and lips were red, the hair and beard a bluish black, the uniform a bright blue, and the sword, buttons, and epaulettes, gilt. Every line and wrinkle had been smoothed out of the face which looked like that of a wax figure. The inscription, too, had been enlarged, of course, and one might have read it from a great distance. In one corner was printed, in bold type, ‘Midwest Art-Photo Company, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.’

Having returned to my room I spoke of some books on a shelf above the table. I was surprised to find on that remote island an edition of Tennyson’s Poems, Coleridge’s ‘Biographia Literaria,’ Jeremy Taylor’s ‘Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying,’ and a volume of ‘Selected English and American Poems.’ All four volumes had been well thumbed, and a copy of a French-English conversation manual had been worn to tatters with use. Monsieur Clémont told me they had belonged to a missionary of the French Protestant church who had died at Hopéaroa many years ago.

‘He was so good to me,’ he said gratefully. ‘He gave me the lessons in English. Since then I am aptly self-taught. Every day I read in these books. I know how to say many poesies in your language. Should you wish to hear one?’

He then recited with fervor, many vehement gestures, and quaint mispronunciations:

‘Come into the garden, Maud

For the black bat, Night, hath flown.’

It sounded so odd that I had difficulty in maintaining a grave face, but I managed somehow, and commended him warmly at the close. He was much pleased.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I speak the English very well. But the writing I cannot. How I should wish to do this! Then I should have pleasure to compose. Perhaps I should help Captain Handy with his history.’

‘Has he written much of it?’

‘Oh, yes. He says it will be printed in a book, and he shall be a rich man when this is done.’

‘Chan Lee told me that he drinks rather heavily.’

‘It is true, he has too much of the drink,’ he replied sadly. ‘He had many barrels of rum in his vessel when he came here four years ago. It is still not exhaustive.’

‘Did he have a supply of food as well?’ I asked.

‘No, he had forgotten to bring this. It has been my duty to——’

He broke off abruptly, as though he had said more than he meant to say. Then he went on to tell me of the captain’s zither playing which was so beautiful that he sometimes wept to hear it. I asked no further questions, but as Monsieur Clémont was the storekeeper as well as the administrator at Hopéaroa, I concluded that he had been furnishing the captain with food, and judging by the appearance of the schooner and the length of time she had been there, he had not been paid for it. I was more than ever convinced of this later in the evening when, at my host’s suggestion, I took a walk to the far end of the island. I had not been gone long when I saw a small fleet of canoes stealing out from the village to the schooner. When they came alongside I heard the captain’s booming voice, ‘What’s this? My supplies?’ I was sure, then, that my host had wished to send the captain, unobserved, some of the provisions he had received by the Toafa. If he had been doing that for four years, it seemed to me that he was paying rather heavily for the captain’s zither playing, however ravishing that might be.

I went on to the extremity of the island, and it was late before I returned to the village. Light was streaming from the port-holes of Captain Handy’s schooner. I listened intently for the sound of music, but all I heard was the faint creaking of the pump and the rhythmical splash of water over the side. In the settlement there was much coming and going. The natives stood in a line before Monsieur Clémont’s store, a small building adjoining his house, and he was hard at work passing out the newly arrived provisions.

‘My guest!’ he exclaimed. ‘I have searched for you. I have seen Captain Handy. He wishes to greet you.’

‘Has he come ashore?’

‘Oh, no. He comes not often to the land. But I have told him you are journalist. He is pleased. He wishes to offer you to prepare his history. Soon I shall be ready if you will go.’

‘Wouldn’t it be better to wait until to-morrow?’ I suggested. ‘I’m rather tired to-night.’

He regarded me with an expression of compassion.

‘Of course! You wish for your sleep. Well, to-morrow evening we will go. Now you retire to your bed.’

But I was not really sleepy, so I said I would wait until he had finished his work. It was interesting to watch the crowd of natives pressing eagerly forward for supplies. Case after case of bully beef was disposed of. The mere sight of those familiar tins with their familiar labels, ‘Hellaby’s Corned Beef,’ ‘Armour & Company,’ etc., made me feel squeamish at the stomach. It brought back the very feel of the war, and a vivid recollection of the rending roar of nine-inch shells, the smell of lyddite, gas, decaying human flesh. I remembered the peculiar odor of trenches and damp dugouts filled with unwashed men. No ex-soldier, surely, can ever again look with complacency at a tin of beef.

The expression of anticipation on the faces of Monsieur Clémont’s customers convinced me that there were no ex-soldiers at Hopéaroa. But it was not only beef they craved. Four already emptied casks testified to the demand for sour pickles. I saw one old man eat a quart of them within five minutes, whereupon he ordered a fresh supply which he carried outside. No money changed hands, nor was there any bookkeeping. Monsieur Clémont told me there was no need to keep a record of his sales. Every one knew what he had bought and would pay for his purchases in copra before the return of Chan Lee’s schooner.

‘I keep store only these few days each year when the Toafa comes,’ he explained. ‘Then no more food. All is finished.’

Certainly an immense amount of it was being finished on this first evening. Soon the whole settlement had gathered around fires of coconut husks in the vicinity of the store. I never again expect to see a beef-and-pickle orgy to be compared with this one. Empty tins were scattered everywhere. Some of the natives, having eaten to repletion, were lying with their heads pillowed on their arms, asleep. Others who had overestimated their capacity for sour pickles, were sitting cross-legged, rocking back and forth, groaning with faint dolefulness. But their misery had not the slightest deterrent effect upon those whose pickles were yet to be consumed. Monsieur Clémont himself was not at all alarmed. The same thing happened each year, he said, upon the arrival of the Toafa.

‘They like so much these delicacies, and they are not used to them. Always afterward there are stomach pains.’

He left me at the door of my room.

‘Good-night,’ he said. ‘I hope you shall sleep with comfort.’

And as I had eaten but a fragment of one pickle, I did sleep soundly until morning.