Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (831 page)

When Nei Takauti had a headache Nan Tok’ was full of attention and concern.  When the husband had a cold and a racking toothache the wife heeded not, except to jeer.  It is always the woman’s part to fill and light the pipe; Nei Takauti handed hers in silence to the wedded page; but she carried it herself, as though the page were not entirely trusted.  Thus she kept the money, but it was he who ran the errands, anxiously sedulous.  A cloud on her face dimmed instantly his beaming looks; on an early visit to their maniap’ my wife saw he had cause to be wary.  Nan Tok’ had a friend with him, a giddy young thing, of his own age and sex; and they had worked themselves into that stage of jocularity when consequences are too often disregarded.  Nei Takauti mentioned her own name.  Instantly Nan Tok’ held up two fingers, his friend did likewise, both in an ecstasy of slyness.  It was plain the lady had two names; and from the nature of their merriment, and the wrath that gathered on her brow, there must be something ticklish in the second.  The husband pronounced it; a well-directed cocoa-nut from the hand of his wife caught him on the side of the head, and the voices and the mirth of these indiscreet young gentlemen ceased for the day.

The people of Eastern Polynesia are never at a loss; their etiquette is absolute and plenary; in every circumstance it tells them what to do and how to do it.  The Gilbertines are seemingly more free, and pay for their freedom (like ourselves) in frequent perplexity.  This was often the case with the topsy-turvy couple.  We had once supplied them during a visit with a pipe and tobacco; and when they had smoked and were about to leave, they found themselves confronted with a problem: should they take or leave what remained of the tobacco?  The piece of plug was taken up, it was laid down again, it was handed back and forth, and argued over, till the wife began to look haggard and the husband elderly.  They ended by taking it, and I wager were not yet clear of the compound before they were sure they had decided wrong.  Another time they had been given each a liberal cup of coffee, and Nan Tok’ with difficulty and disaffection made an end of his.  Nei Takauti had taken some, she had no mind for more, plainly conceived it would be a breach of manners to set down the cup unfinished, and ordered her wedded retainer to dispose of what was left.  ‘I have swallowed all I can, I cannot swallow more, it is a physical impossibility,’ he seemed to say; and his stern officer reiterated her commands with secret imperative signals.  Luckless dog! but in mere humanity we came to the rescue and removed the cup.

I cannot but smile over this funny household; yet I remember the good souls with affection and respect.  Their attention to ourselves was surprising.  The garlands are much esteemed, the blossoms must be sought far and wide; and though they had many retainers to call to their aid, we often saw themselves passing afield after the blossoms, and the wife engaged with her own in putting them together.  It was no want of only that disregard so incident to husbands, that made Nei Takauti despise the sufferings of Nan Tok’.  When my wife was unwell she proved a diligent and kindly nurse; and the pair, to the extreme embarrassment of the sufferer, became fixtures in the sick-room.  This rugged, capable, imperious old dame, with the wild eyes, had deep and tender qualities: her pride in her young husband it seemed that she dissembled, fearing possibly to spoil him; and when she spoke of her dead son there came something tragic in her face.  But I seemed to trace in the Gilbertines a virility of sense and sentiment which distinguishes them (like their harsh and uncouth language) from their brother islanders in the east.

PART IV: THE GILBERTS - APEMAMA

CHAPTER I - THE KING OF APEMAMA: THE ROYAL TRADER

There is one great personage in the Gilberts: Tembinok’ of Apemama: solely conspicuous, the hero of song, the butt of gossip.  Through the rest of the group the kings are slain or fallen in tutelage: Tembinok’ alone remains, the last tyrant, the last erect vestige of a dead society.  The white man is everywhere else, building his houses, drinking his gin, getting in and out of trouble with the weak native governments.  There is only one white on Apemama, and he on sufferance, living far from court, and hearkening and watching his conduct like a mouse in a cat’s ear.  Through all the other islands a stream of native visitors comes and goes, travelling by families, spending years on the grand tour.  Apemama alone is left upon one side, the tourist dreading to risk himself within the clutch of Tembinok’.  And fear of the same Gorgon follows and troubles them at home.  Maiana once paid him tribute; he once fell upon and seized Nonuti: first steps to the empire of the archipelago.  A British warship coming on the scene, the conqueror was driven to disgorge, his career checked in the outset, his dear-bought armoury sunk in his own lagoon.  But the impression had been made; periodical fear of him still shakes the islands; rumour depicts him mustering his canoes for a fresh onfall; rumour can name his destination; and Tembinok’ figures in the patriotic war-songs of the Gilberts like Napoleon in those of our grandfathers.

We were at sea, bound from Mariki to Nonuti and Tapituea, when the wind came suddenly fair for Apemama.  The course was at once changed; all hands were turned-to to clean ship, the decks holy-stoned, all the cabin washed, the trade-room overhauled.  In all our cruising we never saw the
Equator
so smart as she was made for Tembinok’.  Nor was Captain Reid alone in these coquetries; for, another schooner chancing to arrive during my stay in Apemama, I found that she also was dandified for the occasion.  And the two cases stand alone in my experience of South Sea traders.

We had on board a family of native tourists, from the grandsire to the babe in arms, trying (against an extraordinary series of ill-luck) to regain their native island of Peru.  Five times already they had paid their fare and taken ship; five times they had been disappointed, dropped penniless upon strange islands, or carried back to Butaritari, whence they sailed.  This last attempt had been no better-starred; their provisions were exhausted.  Peru was beyond hope, and they had cheerfully made up their minds to a fresh stage of exile in Tapituea or Nonuti.  With this slant of wind their random destination became once more changed; and like the Calendar’s pilot, when the ‘black mountains’ hove in view, they changed colour and beat upon their breasts.  Their camp, which was on deck in the ship’s waist, resounded with complaint.  They would be set to work, they must become slaves, escape was hopeless, they must live and toil and die in Apemama, in the tyrant’s den.  With this sort of talk they so greatly terrified their children, that one (a big hulking boy) must at last be torn screaming from the schooner’s side.  And their fears were wholly groundless.  I have little doubt they were not suffered to be idle; but I can vouch for it that they were kindly and generously used.  For, the matter of a year later, I was once more shipmate with these inconsistent wanderers on board the
Janet Nicoll
.  Their fare was paid by Tembinok’; they who had gone ashore from the
Equator
destitute, reappeared upon the
Janet
with new clothes, laden with mats and presents, and bringing with them a magazine of food, on which they lived like fighting-cocks throughout the voyage; I saw them at length repatriated, and I must say they showed more concern on quitting Apemama than delight at reaching home.

We entered by the north passage (Sunday, September 1st), dodging among shoals.  It was a day of fierce equatorial sunshine; but the breeze was strong and chill; and the mate, who conned the schooner from the cross-trees, returned shivering to the deck.  The lagoon was thick with many-tinted wavelets; a continuous roaring of the outer sea overhung the anchorage; and the long, hollow crescent of palm ruffled and sparkled in the wind.  Opposite our berth the beach was seen to be surmounted for some distance by a terrace of white coral seven or eight feet high and crowned in turn by the scattered and incongruous buildings of the palace.  The village adjoins on the south, a cluster of high-roofed maniap’s.  And village and palace seemed deserted.

We were scarce yet moored, however, before distant and busy figures appeared upon the beach, a boat was launched, and a crew pulled out to us bringing the king’s ladder.  Tembinok’ had once an accident; has feared ever since to entrust his person to the rotten chandlery of South Sea traders; and devised in consequence a frame of wood, which is brought on board a ship as soon as she appears, and remains lashed to her side until she leave.  The boat’s crew, having applied this engine, returned at once to shore.  They might not come on board; neither might we land, or not without danger of offence; the king giving pratique in person.  An interval followed, during which dinner was delayed for the great man - the prelude of the ladder, giving us some notion of his weighty body and sensible, ingenious character, had highly whetted our curiosity; and it was with something like excitement that we saw the beach and terrace suddenly blacken with attendant vassals, the king and party embark, the boat (a man-of-war gig) come flying towards us dead before the wind, and the royal coxswain lay us cleverly aboard, mount the ladder with a jealous diffidence, and descend heavily on deck.

Not long ago he was overgrown with fat, obscured to view, and a burthen to himself.  Captains visiting the island advised him to walk; and though it broke the habits of a life and the traditions of his rank, he practised the remedy with benefit.  His corpulence is now portable; you would call him lusty rather than fat; but his gait is still dull, stumbling, and elephantine.  He neither stops nor hastens, but goes about his business with an implacable deliberation.  We could never see him and not be struck with his extraordinary natural means for the theatre: a beaked profile like Dante’s in the mask, a mane of long black hair, the eye brilliant, imperious, and inquiring: for certain parts, and to one who could have used it, the face was a fortune.  His voice matched it well, being shrill, powerful, and uncanny, with a note like a sea-bird’s.  Where there are no fashions, none to set them, few to follow them if they were set, and none to criticise, he dresses - as Sir Charles Grandison lived - ‘to his own heart.’  Now he wears a woman’s frock, now a naval uniform; now (and more usually) figures in a masquerade costume of his own design: trousers and a singular jacket with shirt tails, the cut and fit wonderful for island workmanship, the material always handsome, sometimes green velvet, sometimes cardinal red silk.  This masquerade becomes him admirably.  In the woman’s frock he looks ominous and weird beyond belief.  I see him now come pacing towards me in the cruel sun, solitary, a figure out of Hoffmann.

A visit on board ship, such as that at which we now assisted, makes a chief part and by far the chief diversion of the life of Tembinok’.  He is not only the sole ruler, he is the sole merchant of his triple kingdom, Apemama, Aranuka, and Kuria, well-planted islands.  The taro goes to the chiefs, who divide as they please among their immediate adherents; but certain fish, turtles - which abound in Kuria, - and the whole produce of the coco-palm, belong exclusively to Tembinok’.  ‘A’ cobra berong me,’ observed his majesty with a wave of his hand; and he counts and sells it by the houseful.  ‘You got copra, king?’ I have heard a trader ask.  ‘I got two, three outches,’ his majesty replied: ‘I think three.’  Hence the commercial importance of Apemama, the trade of three islands being centred there in a single hand; hence it is that so many whites have tried in vain to gain or to preserve a footing; hence ships are adorned, cooks have special orders, and captains array themselves in smiles, to greet the king.  If he be pleased with his welcome and the fare he may pass days on board, and, every day, and sometimes every hour, will be of profit to the ship.  He oscillates between the cabin, where he is entertained with strange meats, and the trade-room, where he enjoys the pleasures of shopping on a scale to match his person.  A few obsequious attendants squat by the house door, awaiting his least signal.  In the boat, which has been suffered to drop astern, one or two of his wives lie covered from the sun under mats, tossed by the short sea of the lagoon, and enduring agonies of heat and tedium.  This severity is now and then relaxed and the wives allowed on board.  Three or four were thus favoured on the day of our arrival: substantial ladies airily attired in
ridis
.  Each had a share of copra, her
peculium
, to dispose of for herself.  The display in the trade-room - hats, ribbbons, dresses, scents, tins of salmon - the pride of the eye and the lust of the flesh - tempted them in vain.  They had but the one idea - tobacco, the island currency, tantamount to minted gold; returned to shore with it, burthened but rejoicing; and late into the night, on the royal terrace, were to be seen counting the sticks by lamplight in the open air.

The king is no such economist.  He is greedy of things new and foreign.  House after house, chest after chest, in the palace precinct, is already crammed with clocks, musical boxes, blue spectacles, umbrellas, knitted waistcoats, bolts of stuff, tools, rifles, fowling-pieces, medicines, European foods, sewing-machines, and, what is more extraordinary, stoves: all that ever caught his eye, tickled his appetite, pleased him for its use, or puzzled him with its apparent inutility.  And still his lust is unabated.  He is possessed by the seven devils of the collector.  He hears a thing spoken of, and a shadow comes on his face.  ‘I think I no got him,’ he will say; and the treasures he has seem worthless in comparison.  If a ship be bound for Apemama, the merchant racks his brain to hit upon some novelty.  This he leaves carelessly in the main cabin or partly conceals in his own berth, so that the king shall spy it for himself.  ‘How much you want?’ inquires Tembinok’, passing and pointing.  ‘No, king; that too dear,’ returns the trader.  ‘I think I like him,’ says the king.  This was a bowl of gold-fish.  On another occasion it was scented soap.  ‘No, king; that cost too much,’ said the trader; ‘too good for a Kanaka.’  ‘How much you got?  I take him all,’ replied his majesty, and became the lord of seventeen boxes at two dollars a cake.  Or again, the merchant feigns the article is not for sale, is private property, an heirloom or a gift; and the trick infallibly succeeds.  Thwart the king and you hold him.  His autocratic nature rears at the affront of opposition.  He accepts it for a challenge; sets his teeth like a hunter going at a fence; and with no mark of emotion, scarce even of interest, stolidly piles up the price.  Thus, for our sins, he took a fancy to my wife’s dressing-bag, a thing entirely useless to the man, and sadly battered by years of service.  Early one forenoon he came to our house, sat down, and abruptly offered to purchase it.  I told him I sold nothing, and the bag at any rate was a present from a friend; but he was acquainted with these pretexts from of old, and knew what they were worth and how to meet them.  Adopting what I believe is called ‘the object method,’ he drew out a bag of English gold, sovereigns and half-sovereigns, and began to lay them one by one in silence on the table; at each fresh piece reading our faces with a look.  In vain I continued to protest I was no trader; he deigned not to reply.  There must have been twenty pounds on the table, he was still going on, and irritation had begun to mingle with our embarrassment, when a happy idea came to our delivery.  Since his majesty thought so much of the bag, we said, we must beg him to accept it as a present.  It was the most surprising turn in Tembinok’s experience.  He perceived too late that his persistence was unmannerly; hung his head a while in silence; then, lifting up a sheepish countenance, ‘I ‘shamed,’ said the tyrant.  It was the first and the last time we heard him own to a flaw in his behaviour.  Half an hour after he sent us a camphor-wood chest worth only a few dollars - but then heaven knows what Tembinok’ had paid for it.