CHAPTER II

"The coral waxes, the palm grows, but man departs." _From an old Tahitian proverb._

We entered the land-locked harbour of Vavau in all the glory of a moon scarcely past the full. And what a contrast to the islands from which we had just parted! On every side of us towered mountains, broken, rugged, height upon height, peak above peak. In every crevice of the mountain the forest harboured, and everywhere flourished the feathery palm, that Giraffe of Vegetables, as Stevenson so humorously describes it, nestling, crowding, climbing to the summit.

It was midnight before we anchored alongside the jetty. The morning light showed us all the varied beauty of the port of Neiaufu. In place of the level shores, rising only a few feet above high-water mark, bold and rugged headlands jutted seawards, and every islet in the Archipelago was clear and definite. Let Stevenson, however, here speak in person, for though he is not dealing with this particular island, yet his description might have been written for it. "The land heaved up in peaks and rising vales; it fell in cliffs and buttresses; its colour ran through fifty modulations in a scale of pearl, rose and olive; and it was crowned above by opalescent clouds. The suffusion of vague hues deceived the eye; the shadows of clouds were confounded with the articulations of the mountain, and the isle and its unsubstantial canopy rose and shimmered before us like a single mass."

Wooded hills, which spring from the water's edge, surround what seems to be a beautiful lagoon, some four miles long and two wide. At the eastern end there is a very narrow boat-passage. Our entrance was effected by the western passage, which is also narrow but has deep water at the point. On either side were white signal beacons, such as I have seen at the mouth of the Brisbane. The great wharf to which we were moored was approached by a road of coral, white to the point of dazzlement in the tropic sunshine. The foreshore was being reclaimed by prison labour; the prisoners, men as well as women, looked sleek and well favoured, they chanted songs as they worked, and showed no signs about them whatever of ill-usage or over-strain.

There is no beach at Vavau. On the sloping banks, which are green to the water's edge, thatched houses peep through the orange-trees; indeed the whole island seems one delightful orange grove, the sward was everywhere littered with the freshly fallen fruit, the air was fragrant with the subtle essence of blossom and fruit combined. With the exception of the coral road leading to the jetty, all the paths at Nieaufu (as at Nukualofa) are simply long stretches of green sward, overspread with orange-trees. We climbed a steep hill, and while we rested on the top, feasted our eyes upon a sight which was one to dream of. Everywhere little cone-shaped islands outlined with big-fronded palms, everywhere that wonderful violet sea, and between the golden gleam of the oranges we saw the deep blue of the sky. It was an ecstasy in colour, a vision rather than a prospect. From henceforth my standard of the beautiful was lifted to a higher plane, and the words "The eye hath not seen, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive," had, for me, acquired a deeper and intenser significance.

On the way back we encountered a French Catholic priest, and after a little chat the old man took us to his house and initiated us into the mysteries of Kava drinking. Stevenson tells us so much about Kava and Kava feasts, that I make no apology for describing the process. The priest's room was very plainly furnished, in the centre was the bowl carved out of a solid block of wood and standing on four legs. That it had been long in use was evident from the fine opalescent enamelling of the inside. Beside it were the Kava stones.

Two native girls appeared bearing the Kava--the root of the _Piper Methysticum_, about which in its raw state there was nothing at all distinctive. Pieces of the Kava were torn, or bitten off, pounded between the two stones and cast into the bowl. Then while one of the girls brought water and poured it upon the pounded root, the other, with shapely brown arms bare to the shoulder, kneaded the mass, until the whole virtue of the Kava was expressed into the water.

Not until the bowl was half full of a frothy, muddy mixture did the straining process begin. A lump of fibre, made from the bark of the yellow hibiscus, was cast into the Kava, and the girls with arms dipped in the mixture up to the elbow, proceeded to take up the liquor with this improvised sponge, wring it over the bowl till it was dry, and fill it again, repeating this process until the fibre had absorbed all the gritty particles.

The Kava was now ready for drinking, and with great ceremony one of the girls filled a half coconut shell with the liquor and handed it to one of our number, who, as the custom is, drained it without drawing a breath, and then sent the empty cup spinning like a tee-to-tum across the floor to the girls.

My turn came soon and I never saw a more uninviting looking drink, nevertheless I boldly followed the example set me and emptied the shell. The bitter, hot, acrid taste seemed to me at first nauseating to the last degree--but after! To appreciate Kava you must estimate it from the standpoint of _After_. My mouth felt clean, cool, wholesome, and invigorated as it had never felt before, and never will again until by good chance I light upon another bowl of Kava.

"Have you found it good?" inquired the old priest in French. My "Mais oui, Monsieur, apres," raised a general laugh. Nevertheless the opinion was unanimous that it is only in the "Apres" that you can enjoy Kava. To define a sensation is difficult, but most of us are familiar with the effect of the external application of menthol. Transfer that effect to an internal sensation (on a very hot day), and you will then know something of the delights of Kava drinking.

That afternoon we hired a sailing-boat and paid a visit to a cave some four miles down the harbour. The entrance looked impossible for so large a boat as ours, but our native boatman hauled down the sail and assured us that it was all right. Like Brer Rabbit, we "lay low," and when we lifted ourselves up we were inside.

Wonderful, dreamlike, unreal, impossible: that was the general verdict. Like giant icicles that had never felt the touch of frost the huge, green, semi-transparent and sharply pointed stalactites clustered about the entrance. From floor to vaulted roof rose buttressed columns dividing the cave into shadowy alcoves, and as for size--you could put the Blue Grotto at Capri into one of those alcoves. The lofty arched roof was fretted like that of a cathedral, but it was the light, not the vast outlines, that arrested me, and held me spellbound--the weird effect of the sunshine without reflected through the medium of this dim water world.

I can describe what I saw, but I cannot hope to convey any idea of the sensation produced by the eye-witness. Gliding to and fro in sinuous coils were long striped water-snakes, blue and black, pink and black, green and black. Did Matthew Arnold dream of such a cavern when he wrote:

"When the sea snakes coil and turn, Dry their mail, and bask in the brine"?

Our boatman caught two of the sheeny, harmless creatures, and after hooding them we carried them back to the steamer, but pity proved stronger than the lust of possession and we gave them their liberty. I can see them now (as one after the other I threw them over the side) making directly for the cave. Did they reach it? Who shall say?

Glued to the fretted roof were the nests of innumerable swallows, and in the dim innermost recesses queer bat-like creatures hung suspended by their claws. An eerie feeling possessed us, a sudden silence reigned, the impossible seemed possible here, the real unreal. One of our native boatmen struck the rock with the butt-end of an oar--it gave back a strange, reverberant, hollow sound, then from the darkness within came a weird, mocking echo.

With the help of a rope, furnished by our helmsman, I climbed a sort of natural stairway, and crouching on an overhanging ledge, looked down. The peculiar malachite green of the water now seemed intensified a hundred-fold, and the boat, its occupants, even the coral garden below, became green under my eyes. The cave was as cold as winter inside, in spite of the tropical heat without--cold and yet airless, as if the spell of an enchantment held the place in thrall. One and all we were glad to back out of it, re-hoist the sail, and return to our floating home.

Not far from this cave was a barren rock, standing out above the sea, stark and sheer, a veritable All-Alone-Stone, only that there was no Madam Gairfowl perched thereon. Below this rock is a submarine cavern, only to be reached by diving. Here, so the legend goes, an island chief once held a beautiful maiden in thrall, until he won her to his will. He had stolen her from her tribe and here he hid her. In this same cavern, too, in more recent years, a maiden of Vavau saved the life of her wounded lover by nursing him secretly during the course of a tribal feud. For the details of these pretty stories, however, I must refer my readers to Mariner's "Tonga." I was further told that the captain of a British man-of-war once had the hardihood to dive in search of the entrance of this cave, and that he found it to be all that it was described, but that in returning to the surface he grazed his back against the coral, and died a few days later of acute blood poisoning.

At sunset we heaved the anchor and steamed for Apia. Our course was still in a north-easterly direction and so continued for three hundred and forty-five miles, when we attained the Samoan or Navigator group. This last name was given by their discoverer, Bougainville, who christened them thus out of compliment to the dexterity of the natives, whom he found sailing their canoes far out at sea.

The group consists of ten inhabited islands, of which the principal are Savaai, Upolu, Tutuila, Manu'a Olosenga, Ofu, Manono, and Apolima. Upolu--Stevenson's Island--although not the largest, is by far the most important. It is forty miles long and ten broad. We passed along the eastern end, coasting along two lovely rocky islets covered with vegetation of the most varied green.

The capital of Upoli is Apia, and this town gives its name to the bay.

The Bay of Apia is crescent-shaped, having the point of Mulinuu for the western, and the point of Matatu for the eastern, tip of the horn. Although the coral reef stretches from tip to tip, there is, in the very middle, a natural gap in the submarine coral wall, deep enough and broad enough to give passage even to a man-of-war.

We cast anchor at daylight, and as I looked over the side of the steamer a sense of familiarity pervaded the landscape, possibly to be accounted for by the fact that the slender, feathery palms had ceased to be distinctive features; not that palms were lacking, but that their long, straight stems were crowded out by a dense growth of other trees. In one of his letters Stevenson himself comments on this, and implies that this "home likeness" formed one of the attractions which drew him to Upolu.

The little town of Apia nestles at the foot of a peaked and forest-clad mountain; indeed the whole of the shore, which is everywhere green and level, is overshadowed by inland mountain tops.

At last I had attained the goal of my pilgrimage; at last I was within hail of that lonely plateau, where all that was mortal of Robert Louis Stevenson was laid to rest some eight years ago.

I looked shoreward with eyes full of reverence and wonder. This island with its wooded peak was the "surfy palm-built bubble" of Gosse's wonderful poem. The rhythm of the words made music in my brain.

"Now the skies are pure above you, Tusitala, Feathered trees bow down before you, Perfumed winds from shining waters Stir the sanguine-leaved hibiscus, That your kingdom's dusk-eyed daughters Weave about their shining tresses, Dew-fed guavas drop their viscous Honey at the sun's caresses, Where eternal summer blesses Your ethereal musky highlands." "You are circled, as by magic, In a surfy palm-built bubble, Tusitala. Fate hath chosen, but the choice is Half delectable, half tragic, For we hear you speak like Moses, And we greet you back enchanted, But reply's no sooner granted Than the rifted cloud-land closes."

This poem, which forms the dedication to _Russet and Silver_, was received by Stevenson only a few days before his death. The fact that he had barely read it ere the "rifted cloud-land" did indeed close upon him imparts an almost prophetic significance to the last two lines.