“Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest,
Yo! Ho! Ho! for a bottle of rum!”
The young lady who had so annoyed Stevenson joined in, and revealed the fact that her voice as a musical medium was a deal more pleasant than when it tried to flatter a writer of books. Stevenson seemed delighted to find such an opportunity insidiously to apologise for his previous irritability, and so at once started to applaud the lady’s singing in an almost exaggerated fashion.
A bottle of whisky was opened, and the skipper drank half-a-tumblerful, just to sample it and see if he had really opened the special brand which he had been recommending to his visitors. Finding there was no mistake, with all the liberality of a sailor, he allotted to each a due portion; whereby the dimly lit cabin festival was immensely enhanced. Stevenson’s mirth was frequently stimulated by the drunken mate, who repeatedly poked his head into the cuddy door and, with a half-apologetic leer at the ladies, looked at the skipper and said: “All’s well, sir. I’m going ashore.” The skipper, who was half-seas-over himself, looked at him contemptuously and said: “Clear out of it.” “Ay, ay, sir,” responded the mate, and in a few minutes he was back again, and out came the same information, “All’s well, sir. I’m off ashore.”
Suddenly the skipper arose and went on deck and a loud argument commenced, interspersed with those maritime epithets which enforce sea law and are not to be found in navigation books. After a brief interval of silence the skipper could be heard shouting out oaths as he shook his fist to the mate, who was being rowed away ashore by the natives who always haunted the gangways of anchored ships.
At sunset the party left the schooner, and the skipper went with them, and we heard their laughter fading away over the darkening waters as the singing natives paddled them away to Apia’s island town.
That same night I also went ashore with the sailors. Timbo sat in the middle of the ship’s boat; he had been entertained by the hands in the forecastle. As soon as I arrived on the beach I made my way to my friendly natives’ home, for the hour was late and I wanted to get Timbo off to bed. I was deep in thought, and as he toddled beside me I held his hand. Suddenly I was startled by hearing the child make throaty gurgles as though he wanted to be sick, his little brown face wrinkling up as he made fearful grimaces. “What’s the matter, Timbo?” I said, somewhat alarmed, and for answer he looked up at me helplessly and dropped several objects in the scrub. I picked them up and found that he had been sucking away at a large, rank meerschaum pipe, which I at once recognised as belonging to the boatswain of the schooner which we had just left. The boy had also stolen a purse with a few coppers in it and a small leather belt purse full of brass buttons. I felt pretty wild with the little fellow at first, because it meant that I had to go back to the schooner and return the things.
Taking Timbo up, I sat on a log and laid him across my knees, ready to give him a good spanking, for it was not his first misdemeanour; indeed, he had done many things which I have left untold. As I laid him face downwards, so that I might administer chastisement, he twisted his little curly head round and looked appealingly up at me with his big brown eyes: as if to say: “Oh, noble white man from the far-off moral integrity of Western civilisation, may I beg of you to overlook the sad indiscretion of a Samoan child?” That part whereon I was about to administer justice looked so small and helpless that I did that which I should have liked to have been done to me in my earlier years, for I relented and stood Timbo on his feet. Then I said: “Timbo, for that which you have done you will be arrested and taken to Mulinuu Jail, where the wicked chiefs are imprisoned.” Hearing this, he clung to me and sobbed, and large tears rolled down his cheeks and splashed on to his small mahogany-coloured toes. So I said: “Timbo, I forgive you.” For I knew, deep down in my heart, that, though I was white, I had in my childish days committed several little indiscretions very similar to Timbo’s. He was only a tiny fellow, and I thought of English babies who at his age were still in arms and busy sucking dummies; and I knew that civilisation itself was a monstrous baby, devoid of wit, sucking away at the dry, windy dummy and soothing itself with the thought that it was swallowing kindly feeding milk. As I thought I looked at Timbo, and the expression of gratitude on his little half-wild face, as he stood on his head and waved his feet to the skies, seemed to applaud my mild philosophy.
In all that I recall of Robert Louis Stevenson—his manner to strangers, his ever-ready attention to those who would earnestly tell him something, his kindness to the natives and to all who were in a conventional sense beneath him—was revealed a large mind with a sympathetic, human outlook.
Often little actions, something done on the impulse of the moment, told of simplicity and tenderness and the greatness which reveals a spirit that sees the link of fellowship between men, no matter what their caste or position in human affairs.