Summer Cruising in the South Seas

by Charles Warren Stoddard

Deborah did me the compliment to absorb a tear in the broad hem of her apron, at the conclusion of my episode, whereat my beautiful Zebra regarded her in utter amazement, then turned his queer face—ringed, streaked, and striped—up to mine, and laughed his barbaric laugh. He was wonderful to see, with his breast like a pigeon; his round, supple, almost voluptuous limbs, peculiar to his amphibious tribe; his head crowned with a turban of thick wool, so fine and flossy, it looked as though it had been carded: it stood two inches deep at a tangent from his oval pate.

From his woolly crown to the soles of his feet, my Zebra was frescoed in the most brilliant and artistic fashion. Every colour under the sun seemed pricked into his skin (there he discounted the zebras, who are limited in their combinations of light and shade): this, together with the multiplicity of figures therein wrought, was a never-failing joy to me. O my Zebra! how did you ever grow so splendid off yonder in the South Seas?

We chatted that evening by Gail's fire, till my Zebra's wholly head went clean to the floor, and he looked like some prostrate idol about to be immolated on that Christian hearth; and the baby cannibals were as funny as two little brown rabbits, with their ears clipped, nestling at Gail's patient feet.

It was fully nine o'clock by this time, so Deborah got the Bible, smoothed out her apron, and opened it thereon, while she read a chapter. We sat by the fire and listened. I heard the earnest voice of the reader, while the autumn winds rose in gusts, and puffed out the curtains now and then. I thought of the chilly nights and frosty mornings we were to endure,—we exiles of the South. I thought of the snows that were to follow, and of the little idolaters sleeping through the gospel, with deaf ears, while their hearts panted high in some dream of savage joy.

There was a big bed made upon the floor of my room,—the best chamber at Gail's,—and there I laid out my little pets, tucking them in with infinite concern; for they looked so like three diminutive dummies, as they lay there, that I did not know whether they would think it worth while to wake up again in life; and what should I be worth then, without my wild boys? I, who was born, by some mischance, out of my tropical element, and whose birthright is Polynesia! Gail laughed when she saw me fretting so, and she patted the curly heads of the babies, and stroked the Zebra's shaggy pate, and said "Good-night" to us, as her step measured the hall, and a door closed in the distance; whereupon, instead of freezing in the icy linen of the spare bed at the other end of the room, I crept softly into the nest of the cannibals, and we slept like kittens until morning.

At a seasonable hour the next days, I got my jewels—my little inhuman jewels—into their thick, winter clothes again, and we trotted down to breakfast, as hungry as bears. Deborah was good enough to embrace both the little ones, but she gave the Zebra a wide berth, and was not entirely satisfied at leaving him loose in the house.

He was rather odd-looking, I confess. He used to curl up under the table and go to sleep, at all hours of the day,—I think it was the cold weather that encouraged him in it,—stretching himself, now and then, like a spaniel, and showing his sharp saw-teeth in a queer way, when he laughed in his dreams. Presently Gail came in, and we sat at table, and came near to eating her out of house and home. Deborah said grace,—rather a long one, considering we were so hungry,—a grace in which my babies were not forgotten, and the Zebra was made the subject of a special prayer. To my horror Zebra was helping himself surreptitiously to the nearest dish, the while. It was a merry meal. I rose in the midst of it, and laid before Gail an enormous placard, printed in as many colours as even the Zebra could boast, and Gail read it out to Deborah:

JENKINS' HALL.
I M M E N S E A T T R A C T I O N !
FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY!
HOKY AND POKY,
BRACE OF SOUTH-SEA BABIES, FROM THE ANCIENT RIVERS
OF KABALA-KUM,
—AND—
THE WONDERFUL BOY
ZEBRA,
A CANNIBAL PRINCE FROM THE PALMY PLAINS OF POTTOBOKEE
IN THEIR GRAND MORAL DIVERSION,
☛The first and only opportunity is now afforded the great public
to observe with safety how the heathen, in his blindness,
bows down to wood and stone.
☛These are the only original and genuine representatives of the
Kabalakumists and Pottobokees that ever left
their coral strand.
ADMISSION, ——, CHILDREN, HALF PRICE.

Deborah was awed into silence, and Gail was apparently thinking over the possible result of this strange advertisement, for she said nothing, but took deliberate sips of coffee, and broke the dry toast between her fingers, while she looked at all four of us savages in a peculiar and ominous manner. Nothing was said, however, to disparage any farther announcement of the entertainment; and, having appeased our hunger, we adjourned to the reading of another chapter, during which the South Sea babies would play cat's-cradles under Gail's writing-table, and the Zebra put his foot into the middle of her work-basket, and was very miserable indeed.

I was as full of work as could be. As an impressario I had to rush about all day, mustering the Great Public for the evening. Out I went, full of it, while the bronze midgets were left in charge of Gail and Deborah, and the Zebra was locked in an upper room, with plenty to eat, and no facilities for getting into mischief. I saw the leading men in town: the preacher, who was deeply interested, proposing to take up a collection on the next sabbath, for our benefit,—which proposition I received with graceful acquiescence peculiarly my own; the professor, at the Seminary, who was less affable, but whose pupils were radiant at the prospect of getting into the cannibals at reduced rates; and the editor, who desired to print full biographies of myself and cannibals, with portraits and facsimile of autographs. He strongly urged the plausibility of this new method of winning the heart of the Great Public, and was willing to take my note for thirty days, in consideration of his personal friendship for me, and his sympathy, as a public man and a member of the press, with the show business.