We’d go off together and get some job on the plantations, get a little cash, then loaf by the beach, and by night sit together beneath the palms and dream.
The surroundings of Tai-o-hae by night were something that, once seen, clung to the memory like some scene of enchantment.
I wish I had the power to give a picture of that spot as night crept over the mountains, bringing its mystery. We would sit beneath the feathery palms and watch the snow-white tropic-bird wave its crimson tail as it swooped shoreward. Far away the sun, sinking like a burning brand into the ocean, fired the sky-line waves. The chanting chorus of cicadæ (locusts) would commence tuning up in the bread-fruits, as the O le manu-ao (twilight nightingale) and one or two of its feathered brethren sought the heights of the giant palms to warble thanksgiving to the great god of Polotu, the heathen god of Elysium. So the natives told us when they crept from the huts hard by, and made fantastic, heathenish incantations with their faces to the sky, while the birds warbled.
One songster was like an English blackbird. It would sit on the topmost bough and pour forth its song, “recapturing its first fine careless rapture,” and looking like some tiny Spanish cavalier serenading the starlit walls of heaven, as the sky darkened and the wind ruffled the blue, feathery scarf that seemed to be flung carelessly about its throbbing throat.
Then we would hear the forest silence disturbed by the faint booming of the native drums in the villages, beating in the stars as, in one’s imagination, those far-off starry battalions were marshalled slowly across the sky.
The moon rose, brightening the pinnacles of the palm-clad mountains, bringing into clear relief the wild shores and quiet lagoons. The scene, for miles, would appear like some vast canvas picture done in magical oils, daubs of moonlight, mysterious splashes of rich-hued tropical trees standing beneath the wonderful perspective of stars twinkling across the tremendous dark blue canvas of night.
Far away, tiny twirls of smoke rose from the huts of the villages and ascended into the moonlit air.
But to me the sight of all was where some great artist of night seemed to have toiled to transcendental perfection on a bas-relief just visible by the promontory of that little island world: a figure cut out in perfect lines of emblematical grief, the sad symbol of aspiring humanity, a beautiful, legendary woman, her carved arms outstretched, appealing eternally to the dim, greenish-blue horizon—the old hulk’s figurehead.
Only the curl and whitening of a wave by that wreck told of something real. Just up the shore stood the grog shanty, a ghostly light gleaming through its windows, and one pale flush streaming through the half-open door up the tall, plumed palms that half leaned over the corrugated tin roof. That was real enough; for who ever heard of a grog shanty on the oil painting of a tropical landscape with wild song issuing from its inwards and echoing to the hills?
Such was a characteristic scene of Tai-o-hae by night before my eyes, while Grimes snored beside me. For we slept out for several nights, preferring the beach to the bowels of that old hulk. I’ll tell you why. An escape, a Frenchman—from Noumea, I think—went raving mad one night down in that hold. Suddenly we were all awakened by terrible yells; we jumped from our bunks and rubbed our eyes. I grasped an iron stanchion, determined to sell my life dearly, for I thought that the natives were aboard seeking “long-pig” for some cannibal feast. We soon realised the truth, for the poor escape had been peculiar for several days. He rushed up and down that dark hold shouting “Mon Dieu! Merci!” for he thought that he was about to be guillotined.