She takes me for walks, too, the cunningest. There is a wild cave at the western end, where one of the mutineers, ever haunted by the dread of that avenging ship, used to entrench himself against possible attempts at capture that were never made. He would sit there whole summer days, his eye on a narrow rim of rock that led to his cavern, and that one man might, with ease, have kept inviolate against a hundred. He was provisioned and stored for a long siege, and a hard fight; and as he sat watching through the long hours, no doubt he had his thoughts. The eastern end has its cave too, another sanctuary, but of far-off aboriginal man, who carved sun, moon and stars on its walls, and then retired into eternal oblivion and the night of things. The vanished one’s modest avoidance of publicity could not fail to be remarked, in spite of him. He had found, or made, his cavern, in the face of a wall of rock that rose some six hundred feet sheer from the foaming sea. A few feet from the summit, there was a ledge just wide enough to support a man, and this was the pathway to his chapel of little ease.
At our first visit, Victoria dropped on the ledge with the mingled lightness and precision of fall of a weighted feather, forbidding me to follow, on pain of death. I did follow, in spite of the prohibition, whereupon she stood stock still on the ledge, till I could recover touch of her, and then burst into tears. The tears saved me, for I was beginning to look down the wall into the surf, and that way self-murder lay. They made me look up at Victoria, though I could not see her face. She recovered herself in a moment. ‘Now you will shut your eyes,’ she said, ‘lay both hands on my shoulders, and walk straight on after me.’ So we reached the cave, when she turned and faced me, and began to cry once more. ‘How am I to get you back? Why, not all our people can walk here—only the youngest! I will never take you out again, never; I mean, perhaps I never will.’ I examined the curiosities of the cave meanwhile, and assumed a silent, remorseful air. Then came the return journey. ‘Try to forget all about the scolding,’ said Victoria, ‘I take it back—for the present—and do just as you did before.’ It was done; and I declare the indefinable charm of companionship with her in peril was a sufficient antidote to fear. ‘Now,’ she said, when we reached the end of the pathway, ‘keep your eyes shut, and hold on to this till I come to you.’ And she guided my hand to a small projection, and scrambled, by what I afterwards found was an almost perpendicular facet, to the top of the rock. In a few seconds, something soft touched my face; it was a long woollen girdle, that Victoria sometimes wore, and she had lowered it to my aid. I, too, reached the level at last. ‘I shall not speak to you for some time,’ she said, resuming the quarrel, and she stalked on ahead, I meekly following without a word. She turned as we reached the path leading to the settlement. ‘Do you unfeignedly repent?’ When she was most serious she often talked the English of the Church Service, and without the faintest sense of incongruity. ‘Victoria, I can hardly find words—’ ‘Very well, then: I forgive you from my heart, though, you know, I am not obliged to forgive you till sundown. But it would be a pity to waste an afternoon.’
We finished the day in great amity, under the shade of a banyan tree, whither we retired for consultation on a matter that gave Victoria some perplexity of spirit. She had lately bought a Milton from a passing ship—with her own savings in potatoes—and had read it through so often that she knew long passages by heart. The work had left in her mind an impression of unfairness in the treatment of Satan, and she was most anxious to submit this difficulty to the judgment of a friend. I was at first disposed to make light of it, but I soon saw that Victoria took it very seriously indeed. They had but few books; each book went the round of the settlement; and it was taken in most edifying good faith, as a report from that visionary outer world, that unexplored planet, whose laws, customs, institutions, ways of being and doing were such a mystery to the worldlet of the rock. The hero of the latest volume to hand, novel, history or poem, no matter what its date, was always the personage of the day at Pitcairn. His difficulties were the living issues in politics, morals, and the art of life.
‘I am going to say something about it at the meeting to-morrow night; but I thought I should like to speak to you first. I do not think he was properly treated, though Mr. John Milton seems to have no pity for him, and he ought to know. Yet I cannot think it. I could hardly sleep at all, last night; it troubled me so.’
‘Well, Victoria, I suppose he staked his stake, and lost, and had to put up with the consequences; that is all I see.’
‘Yes, but perhaps if they had only been kinder to him, he might have repented. He was very proud, you know, and there was no one to soothe him. I think Gabriel was very haughty and hard with him, and Zephon quite disrespectful, considering his place. Do you always approve of Gabriel?’ she asked, with much earnestness, and looking me straight in the eyes, as though our friendship depended on the answer. ‘Surely,’ she said, with rising warmth, ‘you would never stand up for that speech at the end of the fourth book. Rulers should not be so high and distant, just clearing their throats, and giving their commands, as though all others were servants. Suppose father ruled like that—who would obey the laws? I know Satan felt it. It is a pity he had no good female angel to take care of him—only there is no marrying, nor giving in marriage there: so they say,’ and she sighed. ‘People may meet again, though, without marrying,’ she said after a pause, and with her eyes fixed on the vacancy of sea and sky. ‘Thank God for that! But oh what meetings, if they have not been true!’ She seemed to have forgotten Satan for a moment, I thought, but I soon brought her back to the case before the court.
‘There was an attempt to bring feminine influence to bear on him, I believe, but it hardly turned out well.’
‘When? where? Mr. John Milton says nothing about it.’
‘No, that comes from another reporter, a Frenchman. It did not answer. A pitying angel left Paradise, to come and speak comfort to him, as he lay writhing on his hot bed. She was fearful, though compassionate, and she meant always to keep out of arm’s length. But her pity drew her too near, all the same, and he clutched her, and dragged her down. So runs the tale.’
‘I don’t believe a word of it,’ said Victoria firmly, ‘I think he never had a chance. I shall say so at the meeting; and you back me up.’