The occasional great treat was pig cooked in the native oven, an excellent kitchen arrangement. A hole was dug in the ground, the object to be cooked was wrapped up in leaves and placed between hot stones; the whole was then covered up with earth and left long enough for the meat to be thoroughly soft and cooked through; when opened nothing could be more tender.
KING MALIETOA
Among other entertainments we were invited to dine by King Malietoa, to whom we had already paid a formal visit of ceremony. The banquet, which took place about three in the afternoon, was laid on a long cloth spread on the ground and consisted of all sorts of native delicacies, including a dish of a peculiar kind of worm, and, besides pig and pigeon, of vegetables cooked in various ways. The staff of the monarch included an orator or “Talking Man,” and a jester, thereby recalling the attendants of the Duke of Austria in The Talisman.
The Talking Man, whose badge of office was a fly-whisk, carried over his shoulder, had had his innings at our formal reception, but the jester came in very useful at the banquet. We were told that one of his most successful jokes was to snatch away pieces of the food placed before the King. On this occasion he was crouched just behind Malietoa and myself. Part of the regal etiquette was for the monarch to give me a piece of any delicacy in his fingers, but he always tactfully looked the other way when he had done so, thereby giving me the chance of slipping it into the hands of the jester, who consumed it chuckling with glee.
Malietoa was a gentle, amiable being who seemed rather oppressed by the position into which he had been thrust by the Powers. His rival Mataafa was undoubtedly the stronger character of the two, and appealed to the romantic instincts of Stevenson, who was his personal friend.
Stevenson and Haggard between them therefore concocted a plot whereby I was to visit incognita the camp in the mountains of the rebel potentate. As it would not do to keep my own name, my husband being then Governor of New South Wales, I was to become Stevenson’s cousin, Amelia Balfour, and he wrote beforehand to ask that accommodation should be provided for me with the ladies of this royal house, as I was not well accustomed to Island customs.
This is how Stevenson later on described the encounter in the very fragmentary “Samoid”:
“Two were the troops that encountered; one from the way of the shore,
And the house where at night, by the timid, the Judge[2] may be heard to roar,
And one from the side of the mountain. Now these at the trysting spot
Arrived and lay in the shade. Nor let their names be forgot.
········
So these in the shade awaited the hour, and the hour went by;
And ever they watched the ford of the stream with an anxious eye;
And care, in the shade of the grove, consumed them, a doubtful crew,
As they harboured close from the bands of the men of Mulinuu
But the heart of the Teller of Tales (Tusitala) at length could endure no more,
He loosed his steed from the thicket, and passed to the nearer shore,
And back through the land of his foes, steering his steed, and still
Scouting for enemies hidden. And lo! under Vaca Hill
At the crook of the road a clatter of hoofs and a glitter of white!
And there came the band from the seaward, swift as a pigeon’s flight.
Two were but there to return: the Judge of the Titles of land;
He of the lion’s hair, bearded, boisterous, bland;
And the maid that was named for the pearl,[3] a maid of another isle,
Light as a daisy rode, and gave us the light of her smile.
But two to pursue the adventure: one that was called the Queen
Light as the maid, her daughter, rode with us veiled in green,
And deep in the cloud of the veil, like a deer’s in a woodland place,
The fire of the two dark eyes, in the field of the unflushed face.
And one her brother[4] that bore the name of a knight of old,
Rode at her heels unmoved; and the glass in his eye was cold.
Bright is the sun in the brook; bright are the winter stars,
Brighter the glass in the eye of that captain of hussars.”
The adventurous party consisted of R.L.S., his stepson Lloyd Osbourne, his stepdaughter Mrs. Strong (née Osbourne), and a young native chief Henry Simele, my brother, and myself. It was arranged with infinite, but somewhat futile, secrecy that Mr. Haggard, my daughter and I, with Rupert should ride out in the afternoon and find the Vailima party awaiting us at the Gasi-gasi Ford. This duly came off; we were rather late, and found our companions crouching, excited, at the appointed spot in the attitude proper for conspirators.
THE ENCHANTED FOREST