An hour before dawn she bade me good-bye, urging me to remain, and rest with her earless lover for a day or two, instead of coming on to Siumu, where there was an outbreak of measles.
“When I come to-morrow night,” she said, “I will bring a piece of kava root and make kava for you.”
The news about the measles decided me. I resolved to at least spend another day and night with my host. He was pleased.
Soon after breakfast he showed me around. His retreat was practically impregnable. One man with a supply of breech-loading ammunition could beat off a hundred foes. On the roof of the cave was a hole large enough to let a man pass through, and from the top itself there was a most glorious view. A mile away on the starboard hand, and showing through the forest green, was a curving streak of bright red—it was the road, or rather track, that led to Siumu. We filled our pipes, sat down and talked.
How long had he lived there? I asked. Five months. He had found the cave one day when in chase of a wild sow and her litter. Afraid of being shot by the Siumu people? No, he was on good terms with them. Very often he would shoot a wild pig and carry it to a certain spot on the road, and leave it for the villagers. But he could not go into the village itself. It was too risky—some one might be tempted to get those hundred Chile dollars from the Germans. Food? There was plenty. Hundreds of wild pigs in the mountains, and thousands of pigeons. The pigs he shot with his Snider, the pigeons he snared, for he had no shot gun, and would very much like to have one. Twice every week Sa Laea brought him food. Tobacco too, sometimes, when she could buy it or beg it from the trader at Siumu. Sometimes he would cross over to the northern watershed and catch a basketful of the big speckled trout which teem in the mountain pools. Some of these he would send by Sa Laea to the chief of Siumu, who would send him in return a piece of kava, and some young drinking coconuts as a token of good-will. Once when he went to fish he found a young Samoan and two girls about to net a pool. The man fired at him with his pigeon gun and the pellets struck him in the chest. Then he (Te-bari) shot the man through the chest with his Winchester. No, he did not harm the girls—he let them run away.
Sa Laea was a very good girl. Whenever he trapped a manu-mea (the rare Didunculus, or tooth-billed pigeon) she would take it to Apia and sell it for five dollars—sometimes ten. He was saving this money. When he had forty dollars he and Sa Laea were going to leave Samoa and go to Maiana. Kapitan Cameron had promised Sa Laea to take them there when they had forty dollars. Perhaps when his schooner next came to Siumu they would have enough money, etc.
During the day I shot a number of pigeons, and when Sa Laea appeared soon after sunset we had them cooked and ready. We made a delicious meal, but before eating the lady offered up the usual evening prayer in Samoan, and Te-bari the Earless sat with closed eyes like a saint, and gave forth a sonorous A-mene! when his ladylove ceased.
I left my outlaw friend next morning. Sa Laea came with me, for I had promised to buy him a pigeon gun (costing ten dollars), a bag of shot, powder and caps. I fulfilled my promise and the woman bade me farewell with protestations of gratitude.
A few months later Te-bari and Sa Laea left the island in Captain Cameron's schooner, the Manahiki. I trust they “lived happily ever afterwards”.