Truly, sailing ships have their rough side as well as a wildly romantic one. Rolling down south, with gales behind bringing the seas up like majestic travelling hills as under the poop they go, and she rolls and swerves as the masts sweep across the sky, is the motion of sea poetry. If you are aloft you look down and could swear that she must turn turtle. Telling you this calls back my feelings when I first went aloft as a boy of fourteen years.
The ship was rolling heavily, and as I looked down on deck something seemed to have happened (I turned pale, I’m sure): she was turning right over. I clung on with might and main as the masts and yards went over; death seemed to stare me in the face: like a wild beast I hooked on with fingers, toes and teeth, prepared for the final plunge into the heaving ocean below, when lo! to the mysterious equal pull of gravity she slowly swerved and rose, the rigging jerked and rattled, the jib-boom lifted and the figure-head at the bows lifted her face from the weather-side and went right over to peep at the lee-side. Overjoyed, I looked over my shoulder astern and saw the chief mate yawning on the poop and the man at the wheel quite unconcerned, when I had instinctively thought they were clinging to anything movable, prepared to dive into the ocean when the ship turned clean over. That bronzed, broad-shouldered mate grinned when I stood on the poop. He asked me how I had felt. He was a good sort. He’s dead now and under the sea, missing these many years; and the red-bearded Scotch skipper, who was like a father to me, is worse off, for the last I heard of him was that he was still alive and missing—mentally. “But this won’t buy the baby a frock,” as they say at sea when you go off dreaming and leave your work to yarn. So I must return to the P. & O. liner as she races across the Mediterranean, bound for Suez.
We had called in at Naples, where we had taken on board a batch of passengers. I remember one of them especially; he was a distinguished old Italian and his profile recalled to my mind the pictures I had seen of Dante. He wore a loose cloak and a cavalier hat, and carried a violin-case. His eyes were eagle-like, yet bilious-looking, for he was suffering from some kind of yellow jaundice and slow circulation. On the hottest nights his teeth chattered with the cold. When we were crossing the Red Sea and the passengers brought their beds on deck to sleep, hoping to get a whiff of air, he went into his cabin in the usual way, with his teeth chattering with the cold, crawled into his bunk and got into his bed-clothes—a large canvas sack heavily lined with wadding; bodily into this he would go and tie the tapes at the head of the sack tightly round his neck, so that no air could possibly get into the sack and give him a chill. The very sight of it all made me perspire and gasp in that stifling hot weather. I felt sorry for him, and I cannot imagine now that he could have lived very long after getting to Australia, where he was going for his health’s sake. He was a splendid violin-player, but did not perform. I used to talk to him on deck, and discovered that he was a Genoese. I was greatly interested to hear that his father, who was also a musician, had known intimately the celebrated violin maestro, Paganini, and had had violin lessons from him. From broken English, and Italian gesticulations, I learnt that the great violinist had peculiar ways. He had stayed for a few days at my friend’s childhood home and while there had upset the quiet routine of the family, for he was extremely superstitious and restless, and walked about the house all night. He declared that a ghostly woman stood with her face at his window whenever he played a certain melody that had come to him in his dreams. Beyond his family’s enthusiastic reminiscences over Paganini’s violin-playing, that is the only incident that vividly impressed me. My friend was a remarkable character and, though he was ill, extremely vivacious and always talking excitably. Sometimes he would sit on deck after dark, and plucking the strings of his violin, pizzicato, guitar style, would sing softly to himself in Italian with a clear, sweet, musical voice that was very effective.
I went with him ashore at Port Said. It was fearfully hot, but as my friend walked down the gangway with me he was well swathed in scarves, and wrapped up in shirts under his large fur-lined cloak. He seemed to have plenty of money and was anything but mean with it. It was a treat to get away from the hubbub of the natives coaling the steamer. I only have a dim, dream-like recollection of that particular visit ashore at Port Said. I remember the town with the white buildings and palm-trees dimly outlined under the stars, and the begging, dark-faced descendants of the Egyptian Pharaohs who rushed forth out of alley-ways and sought our patronage. Signor Niccolo was terribly thirsty, and the English restaurant was so crowded with passengers from the boats that we both went off and sought elsewhere for refreshments. We went up a dark alleyway, directed there by a swarthy man who evidently misunderstood our requirements. In the darkness it seemed like some subterranean passage to an Egyptian ghost-land as we walked along and heard the uncouth voices of the inhabitants issuing from the little barred windows that were let in in the high walls on each side. Shuffling by us went the sandalled feet of black men with white turbans on that looked like towels swathed about their heads. Presently we arrived at a tunnel-like entrance that led into a suspicious, dimly lit little restaurant. As we sat at one of the small tables and sniffed peculiar odours, that smelt like scented tea and aromatic herbs, four dusky beauties came through a little secret door and laughingly revealed their teeth, then asked in broken English what we would like to drink. Signor Niccolo called for wine and I had coffee. Off rushed the dark female attendants to execute our orders. “Funny plaze and funny girlees, eh?” said Signor Niccolo to me. “Seems so,” I answered, for the waitresses were only dressed in little singlets, with a loose piece hanging to their knees and a scarf swathed about their bosoms for modesty’s sake, which was the only modesty that we saw there, as they lifted their scanty robes to dust the furniture. We drank our refreshment and hurriedly escaped from the place.
I do not think there are any missionaries at Port Said; possibly the English and American officials look upon it as hopeless. Port Said was a veritable hell of iniquity in those days, and still is. Passengers often went ashore and lost the boat, or disappeared altogether. After we left a Yankee saloon passenger sat on the settee and told us of his experiences there. He had gone into an isolated restaurant at the north end of the town and called for a drink. In his button-hole he wore a large red camellia blossom which, though he did not know it, was a kind of Masonic sign. So directly he had ordered his whisky and sat down in the large arm-chair, the attendant, who was an old black Arab mute with a heavy grey beard, suddenly touched a spring in the wall, and lo! up went a partition on each side and he was shut in a little room, staring with surprise at the old mute, who, to his astonishment, now spoke in a musical voice. The old man’s beard and eyebrows dropped off and with the old cloak fell rustling to the floor, and there, with shining dark eyes and pouting lips, a dusky harem beauty stood before him! Even the sedate P. & O. chief officer smiled behind his napkin as the Yankee told us that yarn, and we tried to keep straight faces over all the details which I have left out!
Three or four weeks later I arrived in Melbourne, where I stayed a week in Collins Street and at length succeeded in getting a berth on a boat that was bound for the Islands. Eventually I arrived at Honolulu, where I had some luck with my violin-playing which enabled me to take a cheap passage to Apia, where I had lived before.
CHAPTER VI
Changes in Samoa—Curios—A Moonlit Scene—Saints and Fakirs—Indians—Apia Town—Vailima—The Chief Mataaga—A Forest Ballroom—The Wandering Scribe—A Legend of Samoa—An old Shellback’s Yarns—Tuputa and the Sinless Lands—A Tribal Waltz
IT was some time since I had left Samoa. Things there seemed to have considerably changed. Many of my friends, both natives and white men, had gone away to another island. I went up to Mulinuu village, expecting to see my friend Raeltoa, the Samoan, and to my great regret learnt that his wife had died of consumption and that he had gone away to the Line Islands, in the Equatorial Group. Robert Louis Stevenson had died some months before, and was at rest on the top of Vaea Mountain. Indeed with his death the old Samoa seemed to have passed away.