Summer Cruising in the South Seas

by Charles Warren Stoddard

I went to the river to bathe while the beasts were being saddled, and returned anon to find Kahéle sound asleep, and as persistent in his slumbers as ever. The afternoon waned; I began to see the fitness of the name that had at first seemed to me inappropriate to the valley; everybody slept or lazed during the hot hours of the day, and a census-taker might easily have imagined the place a solitude. At sunset, there was more fishing and more surf-swimming. It seemed to me the fish smelt stronger, and the swimmers swam less skilfully than on the evening previous; possibly it was quite as pretty a spectacle as the one that first charmed me, but blessings are bores when they come out of season.

Night drew on apace; the moon rose, and the inhabitants pretended to rest, but were shortly magnetized out of their houses, where they danced till daybreak. The sweets of that sort of thing began to cloy, and I resolved upon immediate action. Kahéle was taken by the ears at the very next sunrise, and ordered to get up the mules at once. He was gone nearly all day, and came in at last with a pitiful air of disappointment that quite unmanned me; his voice, too, was sympathetic, and there was something like a tear in his eye when he assured me that the creatures had gone astray, but might be found shortly,—perhaps even then they were approaching; and the young scamp rose to reconnoitre, glad, no doubt, of an excuse for escaping from my natural but ludicrous discomfiture. It is likely that my boy Kahéle would have danced till doomsday, had I not shown spleen. It is as likely, also, that the chief and all his people would have helped him out in it, had I not offered such reward as I thought sufficient to tempt greed; but, thank heaven, there is an end to everything!

On the morning of the fourth day, two travellers might have been seen struggling up the face of the great cliff that walls in the valley of Méha to the south. The one a pale-face, paler than usual, urging on the other, a dark-face, darker than was its wont. Never did animals so puzzle their wits to know whether they were indeed desired to hasten forward, or to turn back at the very next crook in the trail. We were at big odds, Kahéle and I; for another idol of mine had suddenly turned to clay, and, though I am used to that sort of thing, I am never able to bear it with decent composure. On we journeyed, working at cross purposes, and getting nearer to the sky all the while, and finally losing sight of the bewitching valley that had demoralized and so nearly divorced us; getting wet in the damp grasses on the highlands, and sometimes losing ourselves for a moment in the clouds that lie late on the mountains; seeing lovely, narrow, and profound vales, wherein the rain fell with a roar like hail; where the streams swelled suddenly like veins, and where often there was no visible creature discernible, not even a bird; where silence brooded, and the world seemed empty.

A very long day's journey brought us out of the green and fertile land that lies with its face to the trade-wind; there the clouds gather and shed their rains; but all of the earth lying in the lee of the great central peak of the island is as dust and ashes,—unwatered, unfruitful, and uninteresting, save as a picture of deep and dreadful desolation. No wonder that Kahéle longed to tarry in the small Eden of Méha, knowing that we were about to journey into the deserts that lie beyond it. No wonder that the shining shores of the valley beguiled him, when he knew that henceforth the sea would break upon long reaches of black lava, as unpicturesque as a coal-heap, the path along which was pain, and the waysides anguish of spirit; where fruit was scarce, and water brackish, and every edible dried and deceitful.

Having slept the sleep of the just,—for I felt that I had done what I could to reclaim my backsliding Kahéle,—I awoke on a Sabbath morning that presented a singular spectacle. Its chief features were a glittering, metallic-tinted sea, and a smoking plain backed by naked sand-hills. The low brush, scattered thinly over the earth, tried hard to look green, but seldom got nearer to it than a dusty grey. Evidently there was no sap in those charred twigs, for they snapped like coral when you tested their pliancy. A few huts, dust-coloured and ragged, were scattered along the trail; they had apparently lost all hope, and paused by the wayside, to end their days in despair.

The halé-pulé, or prayer-house, chief of the forlorn huts, by virtue of extraordinary hollowness and a ventilation that was only exceeded by all out-of-doors,—this prayer-house, or church, was thrown open to the public; and, to my amazement, Kahéle suggested the propriety of our attending worship, even before the first conch had been blown from the rude door by the deacon himself.

We went along the chalky path that led to the front of the house, and sat in the shelter of the eaves for an hour or more. Seven times that conch was blown, and on each occasion the neighbourhood responded, though stingily; a few worshippers would issue out of the wilderness and draw slowly toward us. One or two men came on horseback, and were happy in their mood, exhibiting the qualities of their animals on the flats before us. Some came on foot, with their shoes in hand; the shoes were carefully put on at the church door, but put off again a few moments after entering the rustic pews. Dogs came, about one for every human; these lay all over the floor, or mounted the seats, or were held in the arms of the congregation, as the case might be. Children came, and played a savage version of leap-frog in the lee of the church, but they were bleak-looking youngsters, not at all like the little human vegetables that flourished in the genial atmosphere of the valley of Méha.

The conch was blown again; the most melancholy sound that ever issued from windy cavity floated up and down that disconsolate land, and seemed to be saying, in pathetic gusts, "Come to meeting! Come to meeting!" Probably every one that could come had come; at any rate no one else followed, and, after a decent pause, the services of the morning were begun. The brief interval of ominous silence that preceded the opening was enlivened by the caprices of a fractious horse, and at least two stampedes of the canine persuasion, at which time the dogs seemed possessed of devils, and were running down in a body towards the sea, but thought better of it, and stole noiselessly back again, one after the other, just in season for the opening prayer, to which they entered with a low-comedy cast of countenance, and a depressed tail.

That prayer bubbled out of the savage throat like a clear fountain of vowels. The dignity of the man was impressive, and his face the picture of devotion; his deportment, likewise, was all that could be desired in any one, under the circumstances. Either he was a rare specimen of the very desirable convert from barbarism, or he was a consummate actor; I dare not guess which of the two beguiled me with his grave and euphonious prayer.

I regret to state that, during the energetic expounding of the Scriptures, a few of the congregation forgot themselves and slept audibly; a few arose and went under the eaves to smoke; children went down on all-fours, and crawled under the pews in chase of pups as restless and incorrigible as themselves. At a later period, some one announced an approaching schooner, and the body of the house was unceremoniously cleared, for a schooner was as rare a visitor to that part of the island as an angel to any quarter of the globe. Further ceremony was out of the question, at least until the excitement had subsided; the parson, with philosophical composure, precipitated his doxology, and we all walked out into the dreary afternoon to watch the schooner blowing in toward shore.