That same night a cloud was leisurely travelling across the clear skies with a cargo of male stars asleep on its breast; and as it passed right over the very spot where the new girls were climbing and clinging to the trees, the high chief of the stars, who was old and grey, looked over the side of the cloud and was astonished, for he saw the girls and at once called loudly to the youthful, sleeping stars, who rubbed their eyes and jumped up. They were beautiful youths with bright faces. “Look down there,” said the old, grey star, and all the young stars looked and saw the Samoan maidens climbing about the tree-tops. “Oh, what shall we do to get down to them?” they all wailed, and the old, grey star said, “Ah, you were happy till I awoke you from sleep, but now your passions are awake and you cry aloud for sorrow.” Then they all became impatient and fierce, and cried out: “Stop the cloud, stop the cloud”; and the old, grey-bearded star sighed and said: “So shall it be.” The moon at once shone out in the sky and the old leader put his hand up to the orb and filled his arms with beautiful moonlight ere he struck the cloud with his magic breath and the thick, dark mist dissolving fell as sparkling rain softly to the isle far below. The bright moonlight clinging to the falling drops made ropes of moonbeams dangle to the forest tree-tops, on which the laughing stars slid as they went down, down—as beautiful youths, to fall into the outstretched arms of the surprised maidens. And that’s how man and woman first came to the Samoan Isles!
Many more were the strange but really poetic tales told by him and by other wandering authors, but their memories and the children of their poetic imaginations are forgotten for ever. I do not think many of the old-time South Sea legends have ever been collected and translated, and so they only survive in the biographical writing of men who visited the islands and happened to have retentive memories for such things as poetic lore, and so preserved some of those old fragments of Samoan stories, as I have attempted to do from my recollection of many of them.
The lore of the South Seas has faded and has been replaced by tragic human drama and rumour. Subject matter for three-volume novels is plentiful in Samoa; indeed throughout the whole of the South Seas you could draw and never drain dry the living fountains of human drama.
Peaceful-looking homesteads, clean, religious and happy, abound, but some are tense with passion. By the mission room down at Mulinuu lives pretty Lavo; she is only sixteen and deeply religious. She loves the handsome white missionary with all her soul, but dares not speak out or confess. Eventually he goes away back to his own country, and a few days later they find poor Lavo’s body in the lagoon. She looks beautiful even in death, as she still clutches the photograph of the homeward-bound missionary. Her native relatives wring their hands and wail; they lay her in the native cemetery just by the plateau, and sing sadly of her childhood till she is forgotten.
A white man was found with the side of his head blown off last night; he arrived at Apia a week ago, looking worried and haggard. All evidence of his identity had been destroyed by him, excepting a torn, half-obliterated letter which reads like this:
“My own dear R——. Yes, I still love you, and will not believe you did that. I read the full account in this morning’s Chronicle. My heart is heavy, dear; give yourself up and face it. Oh, my darling, don’t leave the country. I love you, and will die, I am sure, if you go away. Meet me to-night at same place. I long to see your poor dear face. God watch over you. Yours ever,
E——.”
The German High Commissioner kept the revolver that was found by the dead man’s side, and his fat old wife took possession of the photograph that was found on him. She has tacked it up on her bedroom wall; it’s such a nice, happy-looking, girlish face. They buried the suicide in the whites’ cemetery, at the far end, among the “no-name graves.”
On the slopes around Apia a few emigrants from far-off countries live in comfortable bungalows. They are happy with their wives and children. Their memory of the cities and turmoil of the old country is sweeter for the dreaming distance; they were a bit homesick at first, but now they have become contented and love the new peaceful surroundings, and look forward to the arrival of the mails. They still suffer, though, with the unrestful disease of the far-away suburban towns of advanced civilisation, and so cannot sleep for wondering who the strange couple are who rent the solitary bungalow on the edge of the forest up in the hills. It is quite evident that the new-comer is a gentleman, for he speaks well and has polished ways, but his wife talks like a servant-girl; she’s pretty, though. They arrived suddenly in Apia, and three months after the baby was born. He seems very fond of the baby, and the mother too, but he often gets very despondent. He’s a handsome man and does not look a bit practical; indeed he looks as though for the sake of affection and his word he would sacrifice all ambition and leave the world behind him. He seems to hate respectable people, and only goes down to the Apia bar-rooms to mix with old sailors and traders and the remnants of the beach; he stands treat and is a godsend to them, for he seems to have plenty of cash. One old shellback entertains him for hours with wonderful tales of other days, and his comrades sit by and silently smoke and drink as the bar becomes hazy with tobacco smoke. The lights grow dim as the old sailor’s yarn rolls the world back, and in the now romantic atmosphere of the bar shades of old pioneers dance ghostly wise; old schooners and slave galleons are anchored in the harbour; you can hear the laughter and song of dead sailors and traders. They are dancing jigs, their sea-boots shuffle, under the coco-palms just outside the bar-room, the bright eyes of dark native girls shine as they whirl clinging to their arms: how they welcome the white men from the far-away Western world—the men whose ships long ago died down the seaward sunsets, and faded away beyond the sky-line into Time’s silent sea ere our generation was born.
Out on the promontory sits the high chief Tuputo in his homestead. He has a noble, wrinkled, tattooed face, and, though he belongs to the old school, he wears glasses. The lizard slips across his moonlit floor, and through his door he can see the silvered waves and the wind-stirred coco-nut trees twinkling by the barrier reefs; the waves are breaking and wailing as they wailed and broke in his childhood. He has been a sailor in the South Seas; he remembers tribal wars in Fiji and Samoa and has refused many invitations to secret cannibalistic festivals. Now he sits reading the English newspapers, for long ago they taught him to read English, and he is a staunch Catholic. Often he reads and wonders over the terrible crimes that are reported in the police news of his late-dated London newspapers. He had once, long ago, thought that England and New York were sinless lands ethereal with Christian dreams, imparadised cities, their spires glittering in the sunlight of the Golden Age. If not, why did missionaries leave them to come across the big seas to Samoa, and all the isles of the Southern Seas?