More premonitions. Triplett's curious behavior. A call from Baahaabaa. We visit William Henry Thomas. His bride. The christening. A hideous discovery. Pros and cons. Our heart-breaking decision. A stirrup-cup of lava-lava.
It was two weeks after the great Competition before the celebrations which followed it terminated, the tumult and the shouting died, and the last of our amiable visitors paddled homeward, some being towed by new-found wives, while not a few remained in our own community, infusing our society with the novelty and fresh gossip of their islands. Little by little we settled back into domestic quiet.
A blithe incident enlivened that peaceful period, preceding tragic events which must be told in their proper place.
On the fairest of tropical mornings Kippy and I heard a gentle tapping at the trunk of our tree and, peering over the floor, saw below Baahaabaa, his face shining with happiness.
"Katia?" we questioned, but he was mysterious and led us quietly to the trees occupied by the Swanks, the Whinneys and finally Triplett, all of whom he roused as he had us.
"Katia?" we repeated.
"Hoko," he answered, and to our surprise, again motioned us forward. For twenty minutes we threaded a forest trail in which still lurked the shadows of night. At a giant palm tree our leader again tapped gently.
Who should look over the edge of the densely screened dwelling but William Henry Thomas!
At first glimpse of us he hastily drew back and I heard the muttered sound of old-fashioned, New England cursing. Reassured by Baahaabaa, however, he slid down to join us, followed by his wife.
It was the first time I had ever really seen her and I must say that I was completely bowled over by the sight. Plainly not of the same social class as the beautiful women whom Baahaabaa had selected for us, she yet possessed an eerie charm of her own which instantly stirred strange emotions in my breast. I heard Swank gasp and Whinney's face was white and drawn, his favorite expression when deeply moved. She stood close to her husband, half-twined about him with the grace and strength of aneva-evavine while her kindling eyes burned questioningly, her lithe body tense and protective. "He is to be christened," said Baahaabaa, with a magnificent gesture toward William Henry Thomas.
We could only look our astonishment.
"Yes," continued the chief, smiling benignly, "first among you all is he to have his name recorded in our ancient fashion."
As he pronounced these words Baahaabaa lifted his left foot solemnly and pointed to his own royal appellation tattooed on the sole. Our wives did likewise.
"What is his name?" Whinney asked.
William Henry Thomas's head rose proudly as his wife replied in thrilling, woodland tones, "Fatakahala."
"Fatakahala!" repeated Baahaabaa, "Flower of Darkness," and William Henry Thomas raised his head as high as it would go.
"When does the ceremony take place?" asked Whinney. Baahaabaa pointed to the distant peak of the mountain.
"Tonight. Maka, the Tattooer, is ready; the fishbones are sharpened; the juice of the tupa-berries fills the holy shell. We go."
All that day we strung ceremonial garlands about the base of the mountain, which, with its circumference of a mile and three-quarters, was no small task. But sunset found it completed. We supped on the beach and at nine, under a rising moon, climbed toward the summit. The peak was reserved for William Henry Thomas, Maka and her four attendants who bore the utensils and long ropes ofeva-eva—"to tie him with," whispered Baahaabaa.
0172
This is without question the most extraordinary picture which has ever been taken of any natural history subject. It corroborates in most convincing manner the author's claim to the discovery of the wonderful fatu-liva bird with its unique gift of laying square eggs. Here we see the eggs themselves in all the beauty of their cubical form and quaint marking; here we see the nest itself, made of delicately woven haro and brought carefully from the tree's summit by its discoverer, Babai-Alova-Babai. An extremely interesting feature of the picture is the presence in the nest of lapa or signal-feather. By close observation, Mr. Whinney, the scientist of the expedition, discovered that whenever the mother-bird left the nest in search of food she always decorated her home with one of her wing feathers which served as a signal to her mate that she would return shortly, which she invariably did. Skeptics have said that it would be impossible to lay a square egg. To which the author is justly entitled to say: "The camera never lies."]
At exactly ten, by the shadow of the mountain on the atoll, William Henry Thomas stepped forth into the moonlight to face his ordeal—alone.
In the darkness we waited, Kippy clinging close to me. Then came a sound at which I could but shudder. It was a giggle, the voice plainly that of William Henry Thomas. This was followed by a hysterical sob of laughter.
"The christening has begun," murmured Kippy.
You can not imagine anything more horrible.Neverbefore to my knowledge had William Henry Thomas laughed. Now, wilder and yet more wild rang his uncontrollable mirth, rising at times to demoniac screams, anon sinking to convulsive chuckles. The worst of it was that it was infectious.
Conscious though we were of the poor wretch's suffering, we could not help joining his vocal expression of it, and thus we sat, in the darkness, our peals of laughter bursting forth at every fresh paroxysm. Tears of distress rolled down Swank's cheeks.
An hour later the vines parted and a recumbent form was borne gently down the mountain; William Henry Thomas, that was, his new name wrapped in soft leaves over which his wife sobbed in tender ecstasy.
On the day following a bolt fell from the blue.
Swank and I were spending the afternoon with Triplett on board the Kawa where the captain was explaining the workings of various home-made navigating instruments which he had manufactured.
"This here is a astrolabe," he said, "jackass quadrant, I call it." He displayed a sort of rudimentary crossbow. "An' this here is a perspective-glass, kind of a telescope, see? Made'er bamboo. The lenses ain't very good; had to use fish-skin. Got my compass-plant nicely rooted in sand, see—she's doin' fine."
"What's this all for?" asked Swank.
Triplett smiled malevolently.
"Don't you want to know where you be? I've got it all figgered out. Got a chart, too."
He unrolled a broad leaf on which he had drawn a rough sketch of the island, probable north and possible latitude and longitude.
Again the chill of dismay and apprehension which I had felt before in Triplett's presence ran up and down my spine. It was beginning to dawn upon me that Triplett was planning a get-away. "My God!" I cried, "take that thing away! What you trying to do, Triplett? Hook us up to civilization with all its deviltry and disease and damned conventions? Don't you appreciate the beauty of getting outside of the covers of a geography?"
The old devil only grinned, his very leer seeming to say, "I've got a trump card up my sleeve, young man."
What might have been a bitter scene was interrupted by something much more serious.
We saw Whinney running along the edge of the lagoon into which he presently plunged and began swimming madly in our direction. As he drew near I saw that he was deathly white. When we dragged him over the rail he collapsed in the scuppers and burst into tears.
"What is it?" we questioned.
He jerked out his answer in hoarse, broken fragments, while our blood froze.
"It's come.... I was afraid of it.... from the first... it's here... we've done it... we've got to get out... it is not fair..."
"For heaven's sake," I shouted. "What's here? What have we done?"
"Disease!" he panted. "Disease! You know ... how the other islands... Marquesas... Solomons... Tongas... dying, all dying."
His voice sank and he covered his face with his hands, shoulders shaking.
"What... what is it? Who has it?"
It was then that Whinney made the supreme call on his nerve, stiffened visibly and answered in a dead voice, "My wife, Babai-Alova-Babai, has prickly-heat!"
It seemed to me in that moment that the entire atoll revolved rapidly in one direction while the mountain twirled in the other. Through my brain crashed a sequence of sickening pictures, the lepers of Molokai with their hideous affliction imported from China, the gaunt, coughing wrecks of Papeete, the scarecrows of Samoa—and now this!
And Whinney was right.Wehad done it; who individually, I know not, nor cared, but collectively we were guilty. Into this Eden, this Paradise in which I had never seen or heard of the slightest ailment, we, the prideful whites, had brought this deadly thing!
Should we remain, I dared not face the consequences.
"Is it... bad?" I managed to ask.
"Pretty," moaned poor Whinney. "Left knee, small of back... spreading."
"I'm going home," I said. "We'll meet here tomorrow afternoon at the same tune. If this thing develops" ...
I finished my sentence by diving overboard.
Early next morning I knew the worst. Daughter of Pearl and Coral was restless during the night. When the sun rose a single glance at her polished shoulders and my heart broke, never to be repaired. Folding her gently in my arms, I trembled in a paroxysm of grief.
We spent the entire day together, I in an agony of soul which I could not quite conceal and which my beloved tried to dispel by the tenderest tributes of her consuming love. I cannot speak more of what lies too deeply in my heart.
It was by the rarest good fortune that Dr. Traprock was able to secure what is probably the only living specimen now in captivity of the hitherto unknown fatu-liva bird. Immediately upon his arrival at Papeete efforts were made to secure a mother bird of any kind which would hatch out the four fatu-liva eggs then in the explorer's possession. Owing to their angular and uncomfortable shape it was found impossible to keep a bird brooding for more than three minutes at a time. After much effort one egg was finally hatched from which was derived the handsome specimen shown in the illustration. The youngster is now doing finely in the Bronx aviary. Unfortunately he is a male, so that his hope of posterity rests entirely upon the success of another expedition to the Filbert Islands.]
It was a tragic trio which reassembled on the Kawa's deck as the late afternoon sun spread its golden hand across the lagoon. The purple shadow of the Mountain rested on our tiny craft but a shadow yet deeper shrouded our hearts. Each of us carried the consciousness of a terrible duty. We ought to leave the Filberts.
Broken-heartedly we talked over the situation.
"Getting worse," was Whinney's report. "Saw Baahaabaa scratching his leg this morning—probably got it."
Poor Baahaabaa, how my heart ached for him.
"We ought to leave," I said.
It was the first time any of us had dared state the hideous truth in plain words. They fell like lead on our spirits. Swank's sensitive soul was perhaps the most harrowed of all.
He sat moaning on the taffrail taking little or no part in the discussion. All at once he sprang up with blazing eyes.
"I can't do it!" he shouted. "I can't—and I won't. Blessed little Lupoba,—my Mist-on-the-Mountain. How can I desert you? How can we any of us desert our wives—let us stay, let us live, and, if we must, let us die. Love is more than life."
It was a powerful appeal. Overwrought as I was, I nearly succumbed to the false reasoning which was but the expression of my desire. And then once more the vision of those deadly inroads of disease rose before me.
"Whinney," I asked, "is there no cure for this awful thing? No antitoxin?"
He shook his head sadly.
"We have been studying it for years. The only hope is in their complete isolation. If we stay here ... and a second epidemic breaks out.... "; he shrugged hopelessly and Swank buried his face in the bilge-sponge.
"Enough!" I said sternly. "Triplett, when can we leave?"
"Tonight, sir," he answered with his old subservience. "I've got her completely stored, watered and ready."
"Come on," I said shortly. "We must get William Henry Thomas."
We swam ashore dejectedly, each, I know, contemplating suicide. For an hour we visited our friends. For them it was but a friendly call, for us the agony of parting.
Gentle, dignified Baahaabaa, shall I ever forget you as you stood with your hands resting on my shoulder, confidently expecting to see me on the morrow!—Merry Hitoia-Upa, kindly Ablutiluti, and Moolitonu, oh! that I might send some message across the waste of waters to tell your loving hearts of the love which still kindles in mine.
We did not dare visit our wives.
At dusk, that our conference might be unnoticed, we found our way to the William Henry Thomas family tree.
He came down instantly. All his old deference was gone. Something in the straight look of his eye told me that his christening had worked a tremendous moral change in the man, but I was not prepared for its extent.
"Not me," he said briefly, when we explained the necessity of our departure. "Not by a damn sight."
In vain we reasoned, urged and argued.
"Don't you want to go back to your own people?" asked Swank weakly.
A mocking laugh was the reply.
"My own people! Who was I among my own people? Just a bunch of first names—no last name at all. William Henry Thomas! That's a hell of a bunch of names. Who am I here? Fatakahala—Flower of Darkness—I guess that'll be about all. Good night, gentlemen."
With the agility of a monkey he bounded up his tree and disappeared. I stood at the foot of the tree and tried to argue further with him. "Remember Henry James," I shouted. "Think of Charles Henry George." It was in vain.
Swank started after him, but as he reached the floor-level a largehola-nutstruck him squarely on the top of the head and he fell back, stunned.
Still further depressed we made our way back to the Kawa, our hearts aching as with the hurt of burns, a dull, throbbing torture.
"Drink?" said Captain Triplett in his most treacly manner. He held out a cup oflava-lava, the most deadly beverage of the islands. It is mixed with phosphorus and glows and tastes like hell-fire. I saw his plan and for once was grateful. We took the bowl from his hands and filed into the tiny cabin—each picking out a corner to fall in.
In silence we filled our shells and raised them to our lips, the last thought of each of us for our lost loved ones!
Hours—perhaps days—later I was dimly aware of a soft sobbing sound near my ear. Was it Swank crying? And then I realized that it was the chuckling of water under the Kawa's counter as manned by the intrepid Triplett she merrily footed it over the wrinkled sea.
Once more the "Kawa" foots the sea. Triplett's observations and our assistance. The death of the compass-plant. Lost! An orgy of desperation. Oblivion and excess. The "Kawa" brings us home. Our reception in Papeete. A celebration at the Tiare.
That Triplett's refitting of the Kawa had been thorough and seamanlike was amply proven by the speed with which she traveled under the favoring trades. When our saddened but still intrepid ship's company reassembled on our limited quarterdeck there was no sign of land visible in any direction. The horizon stretched about our collective heads like an enormous wire halo. It was as if the Filberts had never existed.
The captain alone was cheerful. Joy bubbled from that calloused heart of his in striking contrast to the gloom of his companions. Most of the time he was our helmsman, his eye cocked aloft at the taut halyards ofeva-eva, occasionally glancing from the sun to the compass-plant which bloomed in a shell of fresh water lashed to an improvised binnacle.
At regular intervals he took observations, figured the results, and jotted down our probable course on his chart. This document we could scarcely bear to look at for upon it our beloved island figured prominently. But the course of the Kawa interested us. It was a contradictory course and even Triplett seemed puzzled by the results of his calculations.
"Can't quite figger it out," he would mutter, lowering the astrolabe from its aim at the sun—"accordin' to this here jackass-quadrant we orter be dee-creesing our latitude—but the answer comes out different."
"Too much jackass and too little quadrant," snapped Swank, whose nerves were still like E strings.
Little by little, however, the calm of the great ocean invaded our souls and that well-known influence (mentioned in so many letters of consolation), "the hand of time," soothed the pain in our hearts. I think it was the quiet, self-contained Whinney who brought the most reasoned philosophy to bear on the situation.
"They will forget," he said one evening, as we sat watching the Double Cross slowly revolve about its axis. "We must remember that they are a race of children. They have no written records of the past, no anticipations of the future. They live for the present. Childlike, they will grieve deeply, for a day maybe; then another sun will rise, Baahaabaa will give another picnic—" he sighed deeply.
"The tragedy of it is that their memories should be so short and ours so long," I commented.
"Yes," agreed Swank, "but I suppose we ought to be thankful. They were a wonderful people, it was a wonderful experience. And no matter what art-juries of the future may do to me, my pictures were a success in the Filberts."
Blessed old Swank, he always looked on the bright side of things!
Day by day matters mended—and our spirits rose. We began to think more and more of getting in touch with civilization. What a tale we should have to tell. How we should put it over the other explorers with their trite Solomons and threadbare Marquesas!
"Where do you think we'll land, Captain?" I asked Triplett.
"Hard to say," he answered, "accordin' to compass-plant I'm steerin' a straight course for anywhere, but accordin' to the jackass (he had dropped the word "quadrant" since Swank's thrust) we're spinnin' a web round these seas from where we started to nowhere via where we be."
0192
In all the history of great friendships there is nothing more touching and more noble than the beautiful bond which existed between Baahaabaa, the simple, primitive chief of the Filbertines and the white men who spent the happiest months of their lives on his island and then so strangely vanished. For several days after their departure he spoke no word. But every evening at sunset he took his place opposite an opening in the reef where the Kawa had first made her appearance and there he sat until darkness covered him. "Whom are you awaiting?" his chieftains asked him. He shook his head mournfully; memories in the Filberts are mercifully short. Then placing his hand over his heart he said, "I know not who it is, but something is gone—from here."
Three weeks later when this photograph was taken he was still keeping up his lonely vigil.]
We tried to help him. While the Captain pointed his astrolabe sunward and announced the figures Whinney and I, like tailors' assistants, took them down, Whinney doing the adding, I the subtracting and Swank the charting. The results were confusion worse confounded.
And then a dreadful thing happened.
The compass-plant sickened and died.
Whether some sea-water splashed into the shell or whether it was just change of environment, I do not know. But day by day it drooped and faded.
I shall never forget the night she breathed her last. With white faces we sat about the tiny brown bowl in which lay our hope of orientation. In Triplett's great rough paw was a fountain-pen filler of fresh water which he gently dropped on the flowerlet's unturned face. At exactly one-thirty, solar time, the tiny petals fluttered faintly and closed.
"She's gone," groaned Triplett, and dashed a tear, the size of a robin's egg, from his furrowed cheek. In that ghastly light we stared at each other.
We were lost!
From then on we gave up all attempts at navigation and went in for plain sailing. Taking an approximate north from sun and stars we simply headed our tight little craft on her way and let her pound.
A sort of desperate feeling, the panic which always comes to those who are lost, led us to wild outbursts of gaiety and certain excesses in the matter of use of our supplies. Every evening we opened fresh gourds ofhoopaand made large inroads into our stores ofpai, pickledgobangsand raw crawfish.
How long this kept up I cannot say, for we had given up time reckoning along with other forms of arithmetic. But I well remember that it was the Captain who had to intervene at last.
"Look here, boys," he said. "Do you realize that you're eatin' an' drinkin' yourselves outer house an' home? We got jest a week's grub in our lockers, if we go on short rations. Beyond that,"—he waved his arm toward the ocean, as if to say "overboard for ours."
"Look here!" cried Swank excitedly, "do you suppose I want to go in for one of these slow starvation stunts, perishing miserably on half a biscuit a day! O man! that's old stuff. Every explorer that ever wrote has done that, you know—falling insensible in the boat, drifting around for weeks, being towed into port, sunbaked, like mummies. Not on your life! What I propose is one final party—let's eat the whole outfit tonight, hook, line and sinker."
We carried the proposition by acclamation, except Triplett who spat sourly to windward, a thing few men can do. And we were as good as our word.
Late into the night we roared our sea-songs over the indifferent ocean, pledging our lost ones, singing, laughing and weeping with the abandon of lost sheep. With Triplett it was a case of forcible feeding for he kept trying to secrete his share of the menu in various parts of his person, slipping fistsful of crawfish in his shirt-bosom and pouring his cup ofhoopainto an old fire-extinguisher which rolled in the ship's waist. Pinioning his arms we squirted the fiery liquid between his set jaws, after which he too gave himself up to unrestrained celebration.
Our supplies lasted for two days, and for two days our wild orgy continued.
We have all read of the hunter lost in trackless forest wilds who finally falls exhausted on his pommel and is brought safely home by his loose-reined mustang.
That is exactly what happened to us. I know I am departing from literary custom when I abandon the picture of slow starvation, with its attractive episodes of shoe-eating, sea-drinking, madness, cannibalism and suicide which make up the final scene of most tales of adventure. But I must tell the truth.
While we caroused, our helm was free, the tiller banging, sail flapping, boom gibing, blocks rattling. It was as if we had thrown the reins of guidance on the neck of our staunch little seahorse and she, superbly sturdy creature, proceeded to bring us home. On we went across the waters, steered only by fate.
In the midst of a rousing rendering of "Hail, hail, the gang's all here," we were startled by a grinding crash that threw us in a heap on the floor. Down the companion way burst a flood of green water through which we struggled to the steeply slanting deck, where on ourport bow I glimpsed the picture of a pleasant sandy beach, trees, ships, docks, a large white hotel and hundreds of people—white and brown, in bathing! In one thundering burst of amazement the truth swept over me; we were in the harbor of Papeete! In the next instant strong arms seized me and I was borne through the breakers and up the beach.
Well, they were all there! O'Brien—dear old Fred, and Martin Johnson, just in from the Solomons with miles of fresh film; McFee, stopping over night on his way to the West Indies; Bill Beebe, with his pocket full of ants; Safroni, "Mac" MacQuarrie, Freeman, "Cap" Bligh—thinner than when I last saw him in Penang—and, greatest surprise of all, a bluff, harris-tweeded person who peered over the footboard of my bed and roared in rough sea-tones:
"Well, as I live and breathe, Walter Traprock!"
It was Joe Conrad.
I told my story that night in the dining-room of the Tiare, or, at least, I told just enough of it to completely knock my audience off their seats. For many good reasons I avoided exact details of latitude, longitude, and the like.
No island is sacred among explorers.
"Gentlemen," I said, rather neatly, "I cannot give you the Filberts' latitude or longitude. But I will say that their pulchritude is 100!"
The place was in an uproar. They plied me with questions, and Dr. Funk's! It was a night of rejoicing and triumph which I shall never forget, and which only Fred O'Brien can describe.
The later results are too well known to need recital, Swank's success, Whinney's position in the Academy of Sciences, my own recognition by the Royal Geographic Society.
The tight little Kawa still rides the seas, Triplett in command. She is kept fully stocked, ready to sail at a moment's notice. Soon, perhaps, the wanderlust will seize us again and, throwing down our lightly won honors, we will once more head for the trackless trail.
But we will not make for the Filberts. Too tender are the memories which wreathe those opal isles, too irrevocable the changes which must have taken place. Rather let us preserve their undimmed beauty in our hearts.
On our next trip we have agreed, all of us, that by far the best plan will be to leave the choice of our route, destination and return (if any) to the Kawa herself.
Who's Hula in Hawaii 1899Dances, Near-dances and No-dances of theFar East 1902Through Borneo on a Bicycle 1904Curry-Dishes for Moderate Incomes 1907Sobs from the South Seas-Poems 1912Around Russia on Roller Skates 1917Crazy With Tahiti-Translations from NativeFolklore 1918How to Explore, and What 1919
NOTE:—Most of the above are out of print. The author still has a few copies of "Curry-Dishes for Moderate Incomes" which may be had at the publication price, $200.
S. S.Love-Nest, sailing from San Francisco, June 1st, Sept. 3rd, Dec 2nd and March 7th. Three months' cruise.
See the cute cannibals. Excursion rates for round trip with stops at all important islands. Everybody's doing it. Don't be a back number.