By Apia Harbour
When I left him he was packing up his few essential requirements for a trip to Papeete, where he would often go when the trader streamer called into the harbour from Hivaoa. My last remembrance of him is when he stood at his hut door by the banyans, waving his hand to me as I went down the little shore by the pauroe-trees and met my dusky comrades. The memory of it all stands out like some experience that I had in another world beyond the stars, some little islet by an immortal mainland, as I paddled my own outrigger canoe and went back to the bread-fruit groves of the opposite shores with a group of singing, dusky cherubims swimming behind me.
The stars were crowding the sky in their millions when the unexpected occurred. I was sitting near the mission-room at the time. It so happened that there was a great commotion in the grog shanty, for a schooner had just arrived in the port of Tai-o-hae. Also, I was feeling a bit out of sorts. John L—— had just been buried in the cemetery by Calaboose Hill. He had succumbed to gout and the best rum—at least that was what they said in the shanty.
I had been comforting Pauline—she was weeping, and I thought things were as bad as they could be.
Though I’d travelled far, lived with the world’s worst men, sought fortunes on gold-fields, been down with fever, lived on bananas and orange peel, buried old pals, I never got such a sorrowful surprise as came to me on this particular night.
Suddenly Father O’Leary poked his face out of the cloistered shadows and said: “My son, my son, come!”
I at once responded. When I arrived in the little room wherein he dwelt, I found he had a companion with him. At first I thought it was some native girl who had come to confess.
The light from his hanging oil-lamp was burning very dimly.