I took the Father’s hand and led him away. I called a native woman who passed to take his other arm. He was old and tremulous, and I saw the truth.
“So that’s the end of all your life’s self-sacrifice, your reward,” I muttered to myself as we led the demented old man away.
That night the natives in the village hard by the mission-room could not sleep, neither could I, as the Father lay calling out wild prayers to the silent night, and strange names echoed in his room. That’s almost the last I saw, or rather heard, of him.
My last visit in Tai-o-hae was to a place that anyone may go and see to this very day. For the little track that lies north-west of the bay leads suddenly upon a little plateau by Calaboose Hill. It is a lonely spot, sheltered on one side by coco-palms and a few bread-fruit trees. It is half fenced in by rough wooden railing. Across its hollows are many piles of earth and stones. Old-time chiefs and missing white men sleep there. Jungle grass and hibiscus blossoms almost hide the cross where Waylao sleeps, and not so far away Pauline also lies at rest.
It was night when I last stood there—the winds seemed to strike the giant bread-fruits with a frightened breath. Far away the ocean winds were lifting the seas in their arms beneath the stars, till the ocean looked like some mighty hissing cauldron of thwarted desires.
I could just hear faintly the echoes of wild song coming in from a ship in the bay, and from the new generation of shellbacks in the grog shanty.
It’s years since I packed up my traps and sailed away from Tai-o-hae. I called in at Samoa and saw the Matafas. When I had told them the history and end of Waylao and Tamafanga, they both laid their old heads on the hut table and cried like two children.
No wonder I love heathens and hate the memory of Mr and Mrs Christian Pink, of Suva township.
And what is the moral of the foregoing reminiscences and impressions? The moral will be understood or ignored according to the temperament of the reader. Some will sneer, and some will understand and feel as I have felt. I’m sure to find good company among many; I’ve travelled the world and met many of my own type. I’m common enough, thank God.
“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever,” said the poet. So is sorrow. Nothing really dies; it’s all the same as it was long before, in some new form being washed in again by the tide. The bird that sings to us to-day sang to the reapers in the corn-fields of Assyria. I dare say that I helped to build the Pyramids.