Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (832 page)

Cunning by nature, and versed for forty years in the government of men, it must not be supposed that he is cheated blindly, or has resigned himself without resistance to be the milch-cow of the passing trader.  His efforts have been even heroic.  Like Nakaeia of Makin, he has owned schooners.  More fortunate than Nakaeia, he has found captains.  Ships of his have sailed as far as to the colonies.  He has trafficked direct, in his own bottoms, with New Zealand.  And even so, even there, the world-enveloping dishonesty of the white man prevented him; his profit melted, his ship returned in debt, the money for the insurance was embezzled, and when the
Coronet
came to be lost, he was astonished to find he had lost all.  At this he dropped his weapons; owned he might as hopefully wrestle with the winds of heaven; and like an experienced sheep, submitted his fleece thenceforward to the shearers.  He is the last man in the world to waste anger on the incurable; accepts it with cynical composure; asks no more in those he deals with than a certain decency of moderation; drives as good a bargain as he can; and when he considers he is more than usually swindled, writes it in his memory against the merchant’s name.  He once ran over to me a list of captains and supercargoes with whom he had done business, classing them under three heads: ‘He cheat a litty’ - ‘He cheat plenty’ - and ‘I think he cheat too much.’  For the first two classes he expressed perfect toleration; sometimes, but not always, for the third.  I was present when a certain merchant was turned about his business, and was the means (having a considerable influence ever since the bag) of patching up the dispute.  Even on the day of our arrival there was like to have been a hitch with Captain Reid: the ground of which is perhaps worth recital.  Among goods exported specially for Tembinok’ there is a beverage known (and labelled) as Hennessy’s brandy.  It is neither Hennessy, nor even brandy; is about the colour of sherry, but is not sherry; tastes of kirsch, and yet neither is it kirsch.  The king, at least, has grown used to this amazing brand, and rather prides himself upon the taste; and any substitution is a double offence, being at once to cheat him and to cast a doubt upon his palate.  A similar weakness is to be observed in all connoisseurs.  Now the last case sold by the
Equator
was found to contain a different and I would fondly fancy a superior distillation; and the conversation opened very black for Captain Reid.  But Tembinok’ is a moderate man.  He was reminded and admitted that all men were liable to error, even himself; accepted the principle that a fault handsomely acknowledged should be condoned; and wound the matter up with this proposal: ‘Tuppoti I mi’take, you ‘peakee me.  Tuppoti you mi’take, I ‘peakee you.  Mo’ betta.’

After dinner and supper in the cabin, a glass or two of ‘Hennetti’ - the genuine article this time, with the kirsch bouquet, - and five hours’ lounging on the trade-room counter, royalty embarked for home.  Three tacks grounded the boat before the palace; the wives were carried ashore on the backs of vassals; Tembinok’ stepped on a railed platform like a steamer’s gangway, and was borne shoulder high through the shallows, up the beach, and by an inclined plane, paved with pebbles, to the glaring terrace where he dwells.

CHAPTER II - THE KING OF APEMAMA: FOUNDATION OF EQUATOR TOWN

Our first sight of Tembinok’ was a matter of concern, almost alarm, to my whole party.  We had a favour to seek; we must approach in the proper courtly attitude of a suitor; and must either please him or fail in the main purpose of our voyage.  It was our wish to land and live in Apemama, and see more near at hand the odd character of the man and the odd (or rather ancient) condition of his island.  In all other isles of the South Seas a white man may land with his chest, and set up house for a lifetime, if he choose, and if he have the money or the trade; no hindrance is conceivable.  But Apemama is a close island, lying there in the sea with closed doors; the king himself, like a vigilant officer, ready at the wicket to scrutinise and reject intrenching visitors.  Hence the attraction of our enterprise; not merely because it was a little difficult, but because this social quarantine, a curiosity in itself, has been the preservative of others.

Tembinok’, like most tyrants, is a conservative; like many conservatives, he eagerly welcomes new ideas, and, except in the field of politics, leans to practical reform.  When the missionaries came, professing a knowledge of the truth, he readily received them; attended their worship, acquired the accomplishment of public prayer, and made himself a student at their feet.  It is thus - it is by the cultivation of similar passing chances - that he has learned to read, to write, to cipher, and to speak his queer, personal English, so different from ordinary ‘Beach de Mar,’ so much more obscure, expressive, and condensed.  His education attended to, he found time to become critical of the new inmates.  Like Nakaeia of Makin, he is an admirer of silence in the island; broods over it like a great ear; has spies who report daily; and had rather his subjects sang than talked.  The service, and in particular the sermon, were thus sure to become offences: ‘Here, in my island,
I
‘peak,’ he once observed to me.  ‘My chieps no ‘peak - do what I talk.’  He looked at the missionary, and what did he see?  ‘See Kanaka ‘peak in a big outch!’ he cried, with a strong ring of sarcasm.  Yet he endured the subversive spectacle, and might even have continued to endure it, had not a fresh point arisen.  He looked again, to employ his own figure; and the Kanaka was no longer speaking, he was doing worse - he was building a copra-house.  The king was touched in his chief interests; revenue and prerogative were threatened.  He considered besides (and some think with him) that trade is incompatible with the missionary claims.  ‘Tuppoti mitonary think “good man”: very good.  Tuppoti he think “cobra”: no good.  I send him away ship.’  Such was his abrupt history of the evangelist in Apemama.

Similar deportations are common: ‘I send him away ship’ is the epitaph of not a few, his majesty paying the exile’s fare to the next place of call.  For instance, being passionately fond of European food, he has several times added to his household a white cook, and one after another these have been deported.  They, on their side, swear they were not paid their wages; he, on his, that they robbed and swindled him beyond endurance: both perhaps justly.  A more important case was that of an agent, despatched (as I heard the story) by a firm of merchants to worm his way into the king’s good graces, become, if possible, premier, and handle the copra in the interest of his employers.  He obtained authority to land, practised his fascinations, was patiently listened to by Tembinok’, supposed himself on the highway to success; and behold! when the next ship touched at Apemama, the would-be premier was flung into a boat - had on board - his fare paid, and so good-bye.  But it is needless to multiply examples; the proof of the pudding is in the eating.  When we came to Apemama, of so many white men who have scrambled for a place in that rich market, one remained - a silent, sober, solitary, niggardly recluse, of whom the king remarks, ‘I think he good; he no ‘peak.’

I was warned at the outset we might very well fail in our design: yet never dreamed of what proved to be the fact, that we should be left four-and-twenty hours in suspense and come within an ace of ultimate rejection.  Captain Reid had primed himself; no sooner was the king on board, and the Hennetti question amicably settled, than he proceeded to express my request and give an abstract of my claims and virtues.  The gammon about Queen Victoria’s son might do for Butaritari; it was out of the question here; and I now figured as ‘one of the Old Men of England,’ a person of deep knowledge, come expressly to visit Tembinok’s dominion, and eager to report upon it to the no less eager Queen Victoria.  The king made no shadow of an answer, and presently began upon a different subject.  We might have thought that he had not heard, or not understood; only that we found ourselves the subject of a constant study.  As we sat at meals, he took us in series and fixed upon each, for near a minute at a time, the same hard and thoughtful stare.  As he thus looked he seemed to forget himself, the subject and the company, and to become absorbed in the process of his thought; the look was wholly impersonal; I have seen the same in the eyes of portrait-painters.  The counts upon which whites have been deported are mainly four: cheating Tembinok’, meddling overmuch with copra, which is the source of his wealth, and one of the sinews of his power,
‘peaking
, and political intrigue.  I felt guiltless upon all; but how to show it?  I would not have taken copra in a gift: how to express that quality by my dinner-table bearing?  The rest of the party shared my innocence and my embarrassment.  They shared also in my mortification when after two whole meal-times and the odd moments of an afternoon devoted to this reconnoitring, Tembinok’ took his leave in silence.  Next morning, the same undisguised study, the same silence, was resumed; and the second day had come to its maturity before I was informed abruptly that I had stood the ordeal.  ‘I look your eye.  You good man.  You no lie,’ said the king: a doubtful compliment to a writer of romance.  Later he explained he did not quite judge by the eye only, but the mouth as well.  ‘Tuppoti I see man,’ he explained.  ‘I no tavvy good man, bad man.  I look eye, look mouth.  Then I tavvy.  Look
eye
, look mouth,’ he repeated.  And indeed in our case the mouth had the most to do with it, and it was by our talk that we gained admission to the island; the king promising himself (and I believe really amassing) a vast amount of useful knowledge ere we left.

The terms of our admission were as follows: We were to choose a site, and the king should there build us a town.  His people should work for us, but the king only was to give them orders.  One of his cooks should come daily to help mine, and to learn of him.  In case our stores ran out, he would supply us, and be repaid on the return of the
Equator
.  On the other hand, he was to come to meals with us when so inclined; when he stayed at home, a dish was to be sent him from our table; and I solemnly engaged to give his subjects no liquor or money (both of which they are forbidden to possess) and no tobacco, which they were to receive only from the royal hand.  I think I remember to have protested against the stringency of this last article; at least, it was relaxed, and when a man worked for me I was allowed to give him a pipe of tobacco on the premises, but none to take away.

The site of Equator City - we named our city for the schooner - was soon chosen.  The immediate shores of the lagoon are windy and blinding; Tembinok’ himself is glad to grope blue-spectacled on his terrace; and we fled the neighbourhood of the red
conjunctiva
, the suppurating eyeball, and the beggar who pursues and beseeches the passing foreigner for eye wash.  Behind the town the country is diversified; here open, sandy, uneven, and dotted with dwarfish palms; here cut up with taro trenches, deep and shallow, and, according to the growth of the plants, presenting now the appearance of a sandy tannery, now of an alleyed and green garden.  A path leads towards the sea, mounting abruptly to the main level of the island - twenty or even thirty feet, although Findlay gives five; and just hard by the top of the rise, where the coco-palms begin to be well grown, we found a grove of pandanus, and a piece of soil pleasantly covered with green underbush.  A well was not far off under a rustic well-house; nearer still, in a sandy cup of the land, a pond where we might wash our clothes.  The place was out of the wind, out of the sun, and out of sight of the village.  It was shown to the king, and the town promised for the morrow.

The morrow came, Mr. Osbourne landed, found nothing done, and carried his complaint to Tembinok’.  He heard it, rose, called for a Winchester, stepped without the royal palisade, and fired two shots in the air.  A shot in the air is the first Apemama warning; it has the force of a proclamation in more loquacious countries; and his majesty remarked agreeably that it would make his labourers ‘mo’ bright.’  In less than thirty minutes, accordingly, the men had mustered, the work was begun, and we were told that we might bring our baggage when we pleased.

It was two in the afternoon ere the first boat was beached, and the long procession of chests and crates and sacks began to straggle through the sandy desert towards Equator Town.  The grove of pandanus was practically a thing of the past.  Fire surrounded and smoke rose in the green underbush.  In a wide circuit the axes were still crashing.  Those very advantages for which the place was chosen, it had been the king’s first idea to abolish; and in the midst of this devastation there stood already a good-sized maniap’ and a small closed house.  A mat was spread near by for Tembinok’; here he sat superintending, in cardinal red, a pith helmet on his head, a meerschaum pipe in his mouth, a wife stretched at his back with custody of the matches and tobacco.  Twenty or thirty feet in front of him the bulk of the workers squatted on the ground; some of the bush here survived and in this the commons sat nearly to their shoulders, and presented only an arc of brown faces, black heads, and attentive eyes fixed on his majesty.  Long pauses reigned, during which the subjects stared and the king smoked.  Then Tembinok’ would raise his voice and speak shrilly and briefly.  There was never a response in words; but if the speech were jesting, there came by way of answer discreet, obsequious laughter - such laughter as we hear in schoolrooms; and if it were practical, the sudden uprising and departure of the squad.  Twice they so disappeared, and returned with further elements of the city: a second house and a second maniap’.  It was singular to spy, far off through the coco stems, the silent oncoming of the maniap’, at first (it seemed) swimming spontaneously in the air - but on a nearer view betraying under the eaves many score of moving naked legs.  In all the affair servile obedience was no less remarkable than servile deliberation.  The gang had here mustered by the note of a deadly weapon; the man who looked on was the unquestioned master of their lives; and except for civility, they bestirred themselves like so many American hotel clerks.  The spectator was aware of an unobtrusive yet invincible inertia, at which the skipper of a trading dandy might have torn his hair.