At the swamp we had a glorious day's sport, although there were altogether too many black snakes about for my taste. We camped there that night, and returned to the port next day with a heavy load of black duck, some “whistlers,” and a few brace of pigeons.
I bade farewell to my good-natured host with a feeling of regret. Some years later, on my next visit to Australia, I heard that he had returned to his boyhood's home—Gippsland in Victoria—and had married and settled down. He was one of the most contented men I ever met, and a good sportsman.
CHAPTER XIX ~ TE-BARI, THE OUTLAW
The Island of Upolu, in the Samoan group, averages less than fifteen miles in width, and it is a delightful experience to cross from Apia, or any other town on the north, to the south side. The view to be obtained from the summit of the range that traverses the island from east to west is incomparably beautiful—I have never seen anything to equal it anywhere in the Pacific Isles.
A few years after the Germans had begun cotton planting in Samoa, I brought to Apia ninety native labourers from the Solomon Islands to work on the big plantation at Mulifanua. I also brought with me something I would gladly have left behind—the effects of a very severe attack of malarial fever.
A week or so after I had reached Apia I gave myself a few days' leave, intending to walk across the island to the town of Siumu, where I had many native friends, and try and work some of the fever poison out of my system.
Starting long before sunrise, I was well past Vailima Mountain—the destined future home of Stevenson—by six o'clock. After resting for an hour at each of the bush villages of Magiagi and Tanumamanono—soon to be the scene of a cruel massacre in the civil war then raging—I began the long, gradual ascent from the littoral to the main range, inhaling deeply of the cool morning air, and listening to the melodious croo! croo! of the great blue pigeons, and the plaintive cry of the ringdoves, so well termed manu-tagi (the weeping bird) by the imaginative Samoans.
Walking but slowly, for I was not strong enough for rapid exercise, I reached the summit of the first spur, and again spelled, resting upon a thick carpet of cool, dead leaves. With me was a boy from Tanumamanono named Suisuega-le-moni (The Seeker after Truth), who carried a basket containing some cooked food, and fifty cartridges for my gun. “Sui,” as he was called for brevity, was an old acquaintance of mine and one of the most unmitigated young imps that ever ate taro as handsome “as a picture,” and a most notorious scandalmonger and spy. He was only thirteen years of age, and was of rebel blood, and, child as he was, he knew that his head stood very insecurely upon his shoulders, and that it would be promptly removed therefrom if any of King Malietoa's troops could catch him spying in flagrante delicto. Two years before, he had attached himself to me, and had made a voyage with me to the Caroline Islands, during which he had acquired an enormous vocabulary of sailors' bad language. This gave him great local kudos.
Sui was to accompany me to the top of the range, and then return, as otherwise he would be in hostile territory.