Summer Cruising in the South Seas

by Charles Warren Stoddard

Once only was that midnight festival interrupted. We all awoke suddenly and simultaneously, though we scarcely knew why; then the dog began to mouth horribly. My blanket-fellows—beds we had none—knew there was mischief brewing, and rushed out with their guns cooked. Presently the dog came in from the brush, complaining bitterly, and one of the miners shot at a rag fluttering among the bushes. In the morning we found a horse gone, and a couple of bullet-holes in a shirt spread out to dry. As soon as the excitement was over, we returned to the blankets and the floor. The eunuch tuned his harp anew, and, after a long while, dawn looked in at the uncurtained window, with a pale, grey face, freckled with stars.

Kahéle saw it as soon as I did, and was up betimes. I fancy he slept little or none that night, for he was fond of music, and especially fond of such music as had made the last few hours more or less hideous. Everybody rose with the break of day, and there was something to eat long before sunrise, after which our caravan, with new vigour, headed for the summit.

Wonderful clouds swept by us; sometimes we were lost for a moment in their icy depths. I could scarcely see the tall ears of my mule when we rode into those opaque billows of vapour that swept noiselessly along the awful heights we were scaling. It was a momentary but severe bereavement, the loss of those ears and the head that went with them, because I cared not to ride saddles that seemed to be floating in the air. What was Prince Firouz Schah to me, or what was I to the Princess of Bengal, that I should do this thing!

There are pleasanter sensations than that of going to heaven on horseback; and we wondered if we should ever reach the point where we could begin to descend again to our natural level, and talk to people infinitely below us just then. Ten thousand perpendicular feet in the air; our breath short; our animals weak in the knees; the ocean rising about us like a wall of sapphire, on the top of which the sky rested like a cover,—we felt as though we were shut in an exhausted receiver, the victims of some scientific experiment for the delectation of the angels. We were at the very top of the earth. There was nothing on our side of it nearer to Saturn than the crown of our heads. It was deuced solemn, and a trifle embarrassing. It was as though we were personally responsible for the planet during the second we happened to be uppermost in the universe. I felt unequal to the occasion in that thin, relaxing atmosphere. The special guide, I knew, would shirk this august investiture, as he shirked everything else, save only the watchful care of my collapsing porte-monnaie. Kahéle, perhaps, would represent us to the best of his ability,—which was not much beyond an amazing capacity for food and sleep, coupled with cheek for at least two of his size. There is danger in delay, saith the copybook; and while we crept slowly onward toward the rim of the crater, the sun rose, and we forgot all else save his glory. We had reached the mouth of the chasm. Below us yawned a gulf whose farther walls seemed the outlines of some distant island, within whose depths a sea of cloud was satisfied to ebb and flow, whose billows broke noiselessly at the base of the sombre walls among whose battlements we clung like insects. I wonder that we were not dragged into that awful sea, for strange and sudden gusts of wind swept past us, coming from various quarters, and rushing like heralds to the four corners of the heavens. We were far above the currents that girdle the lower earth, and seemed in a measure cut off from the life that was past. We lived and breathed in cloud-land. All our pictures were of vapour; our surroundings changed continually. Forests laced with frost; silvery, silent seas; shores of agate and of pearl; blue, shadowy caverns; mountains of light, dissolving and rising again transfigured in glorious resurrection, the sun tinging them with infinite colour. A flood of radiance swept over the mysterious picture,—a deluge of blood-red glory that came and went like a blush; and then the mists faded and fled away, and gradually we saw the deep bed of the crater, blackened, scarred, distorted,—a desert of ashes and cinders shut in by sooty walls; no tinge of green, no suggestion of life, no sound to relieve the imposing silence of that literal death of Nature. We were about to enter the guest-chamber of the House of the Sun. If we had been spirited away to the enchanted cavern of some genii, we could not have been more bewildered. The cloud-world had come to an untimely end, and we were left alone among its blackened and charred ruins. That magician, the sun, hearing the approach of spies, had transformed his fairy palace into a bare and uninviting wilderness. But we were destined to explore it notwithstanding; and our next move was to dismount and drive our unwilling animals over into the abyss. The angle of our descent was too near the perpendicular to sound like truth, in print. I will not venture to give it; but I remember that our particular guide and his beast were under foot, while Kahéle and his beast were overhead, and I and my beast, sandwiched between, managed to survive the double horror of being buried in the débris that rained upon us from the tail-end of the caravan, and slaying the unfortunate leaders ahead with the multitude of rocks we sent thundering down the cliff. A moving avalanche of stones and dust gradually brought us to the bed of the crater, where we offered thanks in the midst of an ascending cloud of cinders, every soul of us panting with exhaustion, and oozing like a saturated sponge. The heat was terrific; shelter there was none; L——'s coffee was all that saved as from despair. Before us stretched miles and miles of lava, looking like scorched pie-crust; two thousand feet above us hung heavy masses of baked masonry, unrelieved by any tinge of verdure. To the windward there was a gap in the walls, through which forked tongues of mist ran in, but curled up and over the ragged cliffs, as though the prospect were too uninviting to lure them farther. It behoved us to get on apace, for life in the deserted House of the Sun was, indeed, a burden, and moreover there was some danger of our being locked in. The wind might veer a little, in which case an ocean of mist would deluge the crater, shutting out light and heat, and bewildering the pilgrim so that escape were impossible. The loadstone bewitched the compass in that fixed sea, and there were no beacons and no sounding signals to steer by. Across the smooth, hard lava occasional traces of a trail were visible, like scratches upon glass. Close to the edges of this perilous path yawned chasms. Sometimes the narrow way led over a ridge between two sandy hollows, out of which it was almost impossible to return, if one false step should plunge you into its yielding vortex. There was a long pull toward afternoon, and a sweltering camp about three p.m., where we finished L——'s lunch, and were not half satisfied. Even the consoling weed barely sustained our faulting spirits, for we knew that the more tedious portion of the journey was yet to come.

The windward vestibule wound down toward the sea, a wild gorge through which the molten lava had poured its destructive flood. There it lay, a broad, uneven pass of dead, black coal,—clinkers, as ragged and sharp as broken glass,—threaded by one beaten track a few inches in breadth. To lose this trail was to tear the hoofs from your suffering beasts in an hour or two, and to lacerate your own feet in half the time. Having refreshed ourselves on next to nothing, we pressed forward. Already the shadows were creeping into the House of the Sun, and as yet we had scarcely gained the mouth of the pass. As we rode out from the shelter of a bluff, a cold draught struck us like a wave of the sea. Down the bleak, winding chasm we saw clouds approaching, pale messengers that travel with the trade-wind and find lodgment in the House of the Sun. They were hastening home betimes, and had surprised us in the passage. It was an unwelcome meeting. Our particular guide ventured to assume an expression of concern, and cautiously remarked that we were palikia,—that is, in trouble! For once he was equal to an emergency; he knew of a dry well close at hand; we could drop into it and pass the night, since it was impossible to feel our way out of the crater through clouds almost as dense as cotton. Had we matches? No. Had we dry sticks? Yes, in the well, perhaps. Kahéle could make fire without phosphorus, and we could keep warm till morning, and then escape from the crater as early as possible. After much groping about, in and out of clouds, we found the dusty well and dropped into it. Ferns—a few of them—grew about its sides; a dwarfed tree, rejoicing in four angular branches, as full of mossy elbows as possible, stood in the centre of our retreat, and at the roots of this miserable recluse the Kanakas contrived to grind out a flame by boring into a bit of decayed wood with a dry stick twirled rapidly between their palms. Dead leaves, dried moss, and a few twigs made a short-lived and feeble fire for us. Darkness had come upon the place. We watched the flaming daggers stab the air fitfully, and finally sheathe themselves for good. We filled our shallow cave with smoke that drove us into the mouth of it, from time to time, to keep from strangulation. We saw our wretched beasts shaking with cold; we saw the swift, belated clouds hurrying onward in ghostly procession; we could do nothing but shudder and return to our dismal bed. No cheerful cricket blew his shrill pipe, like a policeman's whistle; the sea sang not for us with its deep, resounding voice; the Hawaiian harp was hushed. A stone, loosened by some restless lizard, rattled down the cliff; a goat, complaining of the cold, bleated once or twice. The wind soughed; the dry branches of our withering tree sawed across each other: these were our comforters during that almost endless night.

Once the heavens were opened to us. Through the rent in the clouds we saw a great shoulder of the cliff above us, bathed in moonlight. A thousand grotesque shadows played over the face of it. Pictures came and went,—a palimpsest of mysteries. Gargoyles leered at us from under the threatening brows of the bluff; and a white spectre, shining like a star, stood on the uppermost peak, voiceless and motionless,—some living creature lost in admiration of the moon. Then the sky fell on us, and we were routed to our solitary cave.

There is a solitude of the sea that swallows up hope; the despairing spirit hangs over a threatening abyss of death; yet above it and below it there are forms of life rejoicing in their natural element. But there is a solitude of the earth that is more awful; in it Death taunts you with his presence, yet delays to strike. At sea, one step, and the spirit is set at liberty,—the body is entombed for ever. But alas! within the deserts of the earth no sepulchre awaits the ashes of him who has suffered, and nought but the winds or the foul-feeding vultures shall cleanse that bleaching skeleton where it lies.

We tried to sleep on our stony pillows. Kahéle woke and found the guide and me dozing; later, the guide roused himself to the discovery that Kahéle and I were wrapped in virtuous unconsciousness. Anon I sat up among the rocks, listened to the two natives breathing heavily, and heard the wind sighing over the yawning mouth of our cavern. I heard the beasts stamping among the clinkers, and covered my head again with the damp blanket, and besieged sleep. Then we all three started from our unrefreshing dreams, and lo! the clouds were rising and fleeing away, and a faint, rosy light over the summit-peaks looked like sunrise; so we rose and saddled the caravan, and searched about us for the lost trail. Hour after hour we drew nearer to the mouth of the crater. Our progress was snail-like; each one of us struck out for himself, having lost confidence in the cunning of the other. From small elevations we took our reckoning, and he who got the farthest toward the sea lifted up his voice in triumph, and was speedily joined by the rest of the party.

At last we came upon the bluffs that overhang the green shores of the island. We were safely out of the Sun's Tabernacle, but not yet free to pass into the lowly vales of the earth. Again and again we rode to the edges of the cliffs, whose precipitous walls forbade our descent. Sometimes we clung to the bare ribs of the mountain, where a single misstep might have sent us headlong into the hereafter. Frequently we rejoiced in a discovery that promised well; but anon a sheltered chasm unveiled its hideous depths, or an indigo-jungle laid hold of us and cut us off in that direction.

Below us lay the verdant slopes of Kaupo. From their dried-grass houses flocked the natives, looking like ants and their hills. They watched us for hours with amused interest. Now and then they called to us with faint and far-off voices,—suggestions that were lost to us, since they sounded like so many bird-notes floating in the wind. All day we saw the little village lying under us temptingly peaceful and lazy. Clouds still hung below us: some of them swept by, pouring copious drops, that drove our audience within doors for a few moments; but the rain was soon over, the sun shone brighter than over, the people returned to watch us, and the day waned. We surprised flock upon flock of goats in their rocky retreats; but they dispersed in all directions like quicksilver, and we passed on. About dusk we got into the grassy land, and thanked God for deliverance.