By the World Forgot: A Double Romance of the East and West

by Cyrus Townsend Brady

After sailing many days, the Good Intent was run into the vast cuplike harbor. Evidently there had been an opening through the barrier reef at that time. They had beached her and made their way to the top of the island, which they found uninhabited, but fertile and teeming with plant life. They had stripped the ship of her cargo and equipment, and it had been Captain Van Rooy's intention to build a boat out of her when his heterogeneous company had recovered from the hardships of the terrible voyage, during the latter part of which they had suffered greatly from the dreadful scourge of scurvy; but some catastrophe had swept the hulk out of the harbor and had blocked up the opening in the reef. Beekman could not gather what it was, an earthquake or a tidal wave. Whatever it was, Captain Van Rooy had been marooned with a dozen surviving Dutch soldiers and sailors and his brother and mate Jacobus; Handen, the supercargo; with eight women, the wives of as many soldiers, and the captain's own wife, together with half a dozen Polynesian men and twice as many women.[#]

[#] There is historic parallel to this incident in a similar settlement of Dutch and natives on the little Island of Kissa, where they were left unvisited and forgotten for over two hundred years.--C.T.B.

The book described in detail the building of the settlement. The stone was easily quarried. They were solid and substantial people, these Dutchmen. They had built their houses in that way. They had built a church, too; had endeavored to act as civilized, God-fearing Christians should. The counting of time had soon been lost. Entries in the log book, at first very full, grew more and more infrequent. There was, indeed, little to note. Nothing happened. Life was as monotonously pleasant then as now. They had saved seeds and plants, and some European animals such as dogs and pigs--the animals multiplied; the seeds, being planted, grew and offered a welcome supplement to the fruits of the tropic island.

By and by the entries were confined to records of marriages, births, deaths. The Polynesian men appeared to have died first. Captain Van Rooy, while he lived, had acted as the schoolmaster and the spiritual leader of the inhabitants. He had married them in due and proper form. Their marriages were recorded in the log book. The births of their children were entered. He had allotted to these records a section of the book which was even yet not full. It was possible to trace the lines of descent of different families for as many as six generations.

When he had died, others, obviously less skillful with the pen, less well informed, but with good intent, took up the task of keeping the records. Beekman afterwards made calculations based upon the probable duration of lives, and found that they had managed to keep the record, although more and more imperfectly, until the birth of old Kobo, the present patriarch of the island, who was Truda's grandfather--descendant of the first Jacobus, certainly. Of course all of these things did not come to Beekman at once, but gradually. As the summary of his investigations is alone necessary for this history, they are set down.

He discovered that old Captain Van Rooy had alone among the Dutchmen apparently been proud of his line, and had kept his children and grandchildren from any intermarriage with those who had Polynesian blood in them. Evidently the custom, or his habit, had become a fetish for his descendants; for in so far as it was possible, and Beekman noted this with delight, in one family at least the pure Dutch blood had been maintained. It was not possible to avoid all admixture, but there was less of it in Jacobus and Truda than in any other dwellers upon the island, and next to her and old Jacobus in the purity of blood was Hano of the supercargo's line, although his strain did not compare with that of the woman.

The records of the first fifty years on the island were fairly complete, but after that there was only the register of marriages, births, and deaths among these people whom the world forgot, and by whom it was soon apparent the world itself was forgotten.

The joy which filled Beekman's heart as he disentangled the story from the confusions of the blurred, faded, time-worn records of the past which he had discovered, indicated to the man the depth of his feeling for Truda. He had to the full the white man's pride in and sense of superiority to any other race, and the unpleasant thought that the woman who was so impregnably entrenching herself in his heart had any large admixture of Polynesian blood had been one against which he had struggled, with not a great deal of success. To be sure, that objection did not bulk very large upon an unknown island in the South Seas; it would be no bar whatever to any irregular connection, which would have been natural enough with most men under the strange circumstances in which he found himself. But Beekman was of a different breed. He honestly loved the girl with a passion which was sufficiently great to consider her future before his own gratification. Inevitably, while pondering any real and lasting future relationship with her, he realized that her purity of blood--white blood, that is--would be a much more important consideration when they got back to civilization, if they ever did. And in the case of children, if any ever came, a preponderance of Polynesian blood might create an almost unbearable situation.

Beekman had not a particle of the spirit of the beachcomber. The good blood of decent, God-fearing America at its best pulsed in his veins. Nothing would have induced him to settle down in some lotus-eating, non-moral life of dolce far niente on some golden South Sea strand with his wild, primitive goddess for a moment longer than he could help. He wanted her for a wife, and a wife of whom he could be proud even before the men and women of his kind.

The sudden realization that the woman he loved was a meet and fitting mate for him, not only in beauty and intellect, but in blood as well, was wonderfully stimulating. Naturally, he had often thought of escape from the island, but he had never considered it before as he would consider it hereafter. He did not see any way as yet, but he was persuaded that a way would be opened eventually. He had confidence enough in his own ability to devise it, he thought, as soon as it was necessary. Meanwhile he had another task, and that was to complete, or to continue--for the completion would be long deferred--the finely progressing education of Truda--Gertrude Van Rooy, as she undoubtedly was.