CHAPTER III

"Alas! for Tusitala he sleeps in the forest." _Native Lament._

Vailima is only about three miles from Apia, but the road ascends the whole way, and in this land "where it is always afternoon" one does not care for much exertion; so a carriage was engaged to drive us thither, and we had John Chinaman for coachman.

That morning the captain and a fellow-passenger had urged us not to attempt the ascent of Mount Veea. "Go and see the house by all means, but the grave is impossible for ladies." "Only last trip," said the captain, "two of our passengers, both comparatively young men, got lost in the bush on Mount Veea, never found the grave at all, and returned to the _Manipouri_ dead beat, after keeping me waiting four hours. But I give you due warning, ladies, I shall not wait for you, don't think it for a moment. I shall just go off and leave you here." I can recall now the twinkle in his brown eyes as the captain spoke, a twinkle that gave the lie to his words. Nevertheless, in spite of all warnings, we, the only three ladies on board, adhered to our intention of making the ascent, though we promised to take a native guide to show us the way.

We drove up a long, winding hill, in a very dilapidated wagonette. I sat by the driver, and felt sorry for our pair of lean and scraggy horses as they toiled painfully upwards. The heat was stifling, and the still, tense air vibrated with every sound, like a tightly drawn string. At last we reached the Road of the Loving Heart. This road exists as a touching memorial to the high regard in which Tusitala--the story teller--was held by the natives. And here it may be well to add that the name of Tusitala was given to Stevenson, not because the Samoans knew or loved his books, but because it is their custom to define the individual either by his or her profession, by some trait or characteristic, or even by an article of attire. Hence when the chiefs inquired concerning this new arrival, "What does he do? How does he live?" they were told "He writes books; he tells stories"; and from that day onward he was "Tusitala, the Story Teller," just as Mrs. Strong was (I believe) known as "The Flower-Giver" (I forget the native equivalent), because she was in the habit of giving flowers to her visitors.

This information came from Captain Crawshaw, who was himself a personal friend of the late novelist, and showed me, by the way, quite a number of letters he had received from Stevenson himself. One of them interested me particularly, since in it Stevenson begged the captain to try and discover the whereabouts of a friend of his who had got into trouble. "Save him from his worst enemy--himself. Bring him to me. Spare no expense in the matter. I will be answerable." Such was the substance of this letter as far as I can recall it, and it ended in the following characteristic fashion:--"Signed, sealed, and delivered in the presence of my Maker, and the ink-pot."

"ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON."

But I am wandering into bye-ways, and I must hasten to return to Ala Loto Alofa (which is the Samoan equivalent for the name of the road referred to).[4] Without going into the political details the facts are, briefly, that Stevenson had been very good to the six imprisoned chiefs of Mataafa's following, and when their term of imprisonment expired, these men, out of gratitude, cut a road through the bush to Vailima.

This work was a labour of love, the men who engaged in it were mostly of a high class, and they would neither take wages nor any sort of payment in kind. How this pleased Stevenson may be gathered from the following:--"Now whether or not this impulse will last them through the road does not matter to me one hair. It is the fact that they have attempted it, that they have volunteered, and are now trying to execute, a thing that was never before heard of in Samoa. Think of it! It is road making, the most fruitful cause, after taxes, of all rebellion in Samoa, a thing to which they could not be wiled with money, nor driven by punishment. It does give me a sense of having done something in Samoa after all."[5]

Stevenson had purposed putting up a notice of the new road, with its name in large letters with a few words of thanks for the chiefs, and a board was prepared for the purpose, painted and spaced for the lettering, when the chiefs arrived with their own inscription carefully written out. They begged so earnestly to have this printed instead that their wish was gratified. I was privileged to read the notice at the corner of the wide road leading to the gates of Vailima.[6] The inscription is in Samoan, but translated into English runs as follows: "The Road of the Loving Heart" (Ala Loto Alofa), "Remembering the great care of his Highness Tusitala, and his loving care when we were in prison and sore distressed, we have prepared him an enduring present, this road which we have dug to last for ever. It shall never be muddy, it shall endure, this road that we have dug."

On arrival at the finger-post our Chinaman was fain to be rid of us, so he announced, with a grin on his yellow face, "Horsee too muchee tired, missie walk now, missie catchee Vailima chop-chop." We had, however, been forewarned what to expect by the captain, so I merely remarked, "Savey, John no catchee Vailima, no catchee pay." And John drove on!

The Road of the Loving Heart, if very steep, has a fairly level surface. On either side are palms, bread fruit trees and bananas. Vailima (literally, "Five Rivers") is approached by a short drive, through a gate, into a lovely garden. Mrs. Strong tells me that the present owner has painted on that gate the words--"Villa Vailima." I am happy to say, however, that neither of us observed this atrocity.

The house itself is well designed and has a double verandah; it is built of wood throughout, and stands on very high ground. On the left hand, as we faced the house, was the smaller villa once occupied by Mrs. Strong. On the right, towering up into the blue dome above, was Mount Veea, and on the wooded height (far beyond ken)--THE GRAVE.

Not a soul was visible, the place was bathed in sunshine and "steeped in silentness," not even a dog barked at our approach. The crotons, dracaenas, and other plants of brilliant foliage made patches of vivid colour on the well-kept lawns, and everywhere was the scent of orange blossom, gardenia, and frangipani.

Under the shadow of the broad verandah the air was cool and pleasant, and we three lingered there awhile, as on the threshold of a temple. Before us was the really magnificent hall, some sixty feet long by forty wide, the door standing open, as in the days of Tusitala, but the dark panelling within was a thing of the past, and the walls were now painted a soft cool green.

All his furniture was gone--we were prepared for that--but the window was there, the window below which he lay on the low settle and breathed his last. As I stood there the whole scene flashed across my mental vision, with its awful, and perhaps merciful, unexpectedness.

He had recorded, often enough, his desire for such an end. "I wish to die in my boots, no more Land of Counterpane for me! If only I could secure a violent end, what a fine success! To be drowned, to be shot, to be thrown from a horse, aye, to be hanged, rather than pass again through that slow dissolution."

No less has he left on record his attitude towards impending death. "By all means begin your folio, even if the doctor does not give you a year, even if he hesitates about a month, make one brave push and see what can be accomplished in a week. It is not only in finished undertakings that we ought to honour useful labour. A spirit goes out of the man who means execution which outlives the most untimely end."

The hall of Vailima is (as Mr. Balfour tells us) quite the feature of the house. I have before referred to its size, it covers the whole area of the building. Facing us, as we entered, was the broad polished wooden staircase leading to the upper storey. We passed through the hall and out of a door on the other side of it; somewhere in the back premises we unearthed a Samoan woman, attired in very scanty raiment, busily engaged in peeling potatoes. To her we addressed ourselves, first in English and then in German, but it was all to no purpose. Next we resorted to signs. Pointing to the mountain top, I said, "Tusitala." The word acted as a talisman, the brown face wreathed itself in smiles, the dark eyes kindled into comprehension. Motioning to us to remain where we were, she disappeared, and soon returned with a small brown girl, whose only garment was a ragged blue pinafore sewn up at the back.

The little maiden (she might have been ten or eleven years of age) ran up to us quite gleefully, intimated by smiles and gestures that she was prepared to act as guide, and at once possessed herself of our heavy basket of fruit. We followed her through a little wicket gate which led into a lovely grove with oranges on one side and bananas on the other, the leaves of the latter being larger and more glossy than any I have seen before or since. The play of light and shadow here was something to dream of, and often we stood still too enraptured to pursue our way. Soon we crossed a little mountain stream, clear as crystal, with but a single plank for bridge, and lingered awhile to admire the cream-breasted kingfishers and the numerous little[7] crayfish disporting themselves in and above the water. In time we left the cultivated land behind and followed a slender path into the bush, where under foot was a dense growth of sensitive plant with delicately cut foliage and little fluffy pink ball-like blossoms. Our footsteps were marked by the quivering and shrinking of the shy, tremulous leaves, but as I looked back they once more stood bravely erect. This was the plant that baffled all poor Stevenson's efforts at eradication, living, thriving, ever renewing itself in spite of him.

"A fool," says he, "brought it to this island in a pot, and used to lecture and sentimentalize over the tender thing. The tender thing has now taken charge of this island, and men fight it, with torn hands, for bread and life. A singular insidious thing, shrinking and biting like a weasel, clutching by its roots as a limpet clutches to a rock."[8]

The trees here were simply magnificent, the fern life too was everywhere abundant, exquisite ferns, such as we grow in our hot-houses at home. Trees, ferns, creepers, flowers were tangled together in a vast net-work of luxuriant vegetation, each individual plant fighting for its very existence, contending for its due share of light, and air, and space. Here it was that Stevenson conceived his poem of "The Woodman"; every word of it came home to me with the inevitableness of absolute truth as we fought our way upward and onward.

"I saw the wood for what it was, The lost and the victorious cause, The deadly battle pitched in line, Saw silent weapons cross and shine, Silent defeat, silent assault, A battle and a burial vault."

Stevenson's attitude towards nature was a very remarkable one. Like Wordsworth, he endued her with a real, living personality, but unlike Wordsworth, he never seems to enter into a direct communion with her. She does not soothe him into "a wise passiveness," she rather inspires him with a strange, fierce energy. Take this passage, selected almost at random from one of his published letters to Sidney Colvin: "I wonder if any one ever had the same attitude to nature as I hold and have held for so long. This business (of weeding) fascinates me like a tune or a passion, yet all the while I thrill with a strong distaste. The horror of the thing, objective and subjective, is always present in my mind, the horror of creeping things, a superstitious horror of the void and the powers about me, the horror of my own devastation and continual murders. The life of the plants comes through my finger tips, their struggles go to my heart like supplications, I feel myself blood boltered--then I look back on my cleared grass, and count myself an ally in a fair quarrel, and make stout my heart."

The living individual personality of nature is here as clearly recognised as Wordsworth himself recognised it, but the standpoint of regard is wholly different. Stevenson was aware of the spirit that clothed itself with the visible, but he was no dreamy lover enamoured of that spirit. He was rather (as he so often says) the ally in a fair quarrel, only desirous of bending Nature to his will, of pitting his strength against hers.

But I am digressing, and the mountain top and the grave are before me, and I am in the forest on my way thither. Now and again a tiny bright-coloured bird would flash across the path, now and again a huge trail of giant convolvulus, blue as the sky, would bar our progress. Over an hour had elapsed before we gained the summit, and the latter half of the ascent was by far the most difficult.

Small wonder that sixty natives were required to get the coffin up, and even so the question will always remain, How did they accomplish the feat? One may talk of the Road of the Loving Heart, but this was a veritable Via Dolorosa, a road of Sorrow and of Pity. The path zigzagged through the forest until it ended in a slender, fern-grown, almost imperceptible bush-track. More than once it led over the face of the solid rock, but branches of creepers, by which it was easy to swing oneself up, were abundant, though still the top appeared to recede, and to become more and more unattainable.

The mosquitos made the lives of my two companions a burden; on all sides of us we heard their sinister aereal trumpeting, the heat was insupportable--stifling, the very air seemed stagnant and dead, but, quite unawares, we were gradually nearing our goal. Suddenly our little brown-skinned guide, who was travelling ever so far ahead, in spite of the burden of our heavy basket of fruit, flung herself down on a small plateau just above us, and we, toiling painfully after, knew we had attained.

A minute later and we stood in reverent silence beside a massive sarcophagus, constructed of concrete and surrounded by a broad slab. Not an ideal structure by any manner of means, not even beautiful, and yet in its massive ruggedness it somehow suited the man and the place. The broad slab was strewn with faded wreaths and flowers, and on one side of the sarcophagus were inscribed Stevenson's name, with the date of his birth and death, also these eight lines, familiar to all who have read his poems:

"Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie, Glad did I live and gladly die, And I lay me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me, Here he lies where he longed to be, Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill."

On the other side was an inscription in Samoan, which translated is "Whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people and thy God my God; where thou diest I will die, and there will I be buried." On either side of this text was graven a thistle and a hibiscus flower.

The chiefs have tabooed the use of firearms, or other weapons, on Mount Veea, in order that the birds may live there undisturbed and unafraid, and build their nests in the trees around Tusitala's grave.

We remained on the plateau for over an hour resting our weary limbs, and eating our lunch of fruit; and during that time we sat on the broad sun-warmed slab. A tiny lizard, with a golden head, a green body, and a blue tail, flickered to and fro. Overhead a huge flying fox, with outspread "batty wings" sailed majestically. We seemed alone in the world, we four human beings, and as we gazed about us we saw everywhere, far beneath us, the beautiful "sapphire-spangled marriage-ring of the land," and down from us to the blueness, and beyond us, to an infinitude of distance, billow upon billow of wooded heights. Sitting there, on that green and level plateau on the summit of the mountain, my thoughts turned involuntarily to the last lofty resting-place of Browning's "Grammarian."

"Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place! Hail to your purlieus, All ye high flyers of the feathered race, Swallows and curlews!" "Here, here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form, Lightnings are loosened, Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm, Peace let the dew send!"

The wind sighed softly in the branches of the _Tavau_ trees, from out the green recesses of the _Toi_ came the plaintive coo of the wood-pigeon. In and out of the branches of the magnificent _Fau_ tree, which overhangs the grave, a kingfisher, sea-blue, iridescent, flitted to and fro, whilst a scarlet hibiscus, in full flower, showed up royally against the gray lichened cement. All around was light and life and colour, and I said to myself, "He is made one with nature"; he is now, body and soul and spirit, commingled with the loveliness around. He who longed in life to scale the height, he who attained his wish only in death, has become in himself a parable of fulfilment. No need now for that heart-sick cry:--

"Sing me a song of a lad that is gone, Say, could that lad be I."

No need now for the despairing finality of:--

"I have trod the upward and the downward slopes, I have endured and done in the days of yore, I have longed for all, and bid farewell to hope, And I have lived, and loved, and closed the door."

Death has set his seal of peace on the unequal conflict of mind and matter; the All-Mother has gathered him to herself.

In years to come, when his grave is perchance forgotten, a rugged ruin, home of the lizard and the bat, Tusitala--the story teller--"the man with a heart of gold" (as I so often heard him designated in the Islands) will live, when it may be his tales have ceased to interest, in the tender remembrance of those whose lives he beautified, and whose hearts he warmed into gratitude.

So we left him, "still loftier than the world suspects, living and dying," and once more, following the footsteps of our guide, we took up that ferny moss-grown track. It was scarcely less easy to scramble down the steep descent than it had been to toil upwards. But "time and the hour run through the roughest day," and we eventually arrived at the bottom, torn and scratched and not a little weary, but well content, only somewhat regretful that the visit to the grave was over and not still to come, comforting each other with the recollection that the house yet remained to be explored.

Vailima is not much changed since the days when Robert Louis Stevenson lived there. Where the walls had been, in the late native war, riddled with shot, they had been renewed, but so exactly on the old lines that the change was scarcely perceptible. Although the house has been added to, and in my estimation considerably improved thereby, yet the old part remains intact.

Herr Conrade, the manager for Herr Kunz, the present owner, was kind enough to show us everything, but naturally Stevenson's suite of rooms were the only ones that possessed any special interest. First his bedroom, then his library, and lastly his Temple of Peace, the innermost shrine where he wrote, and which, opening as it did on to the upper verandah, commanded a magnificent view of sea and mountain. From the verandah could be seen the gleam of the sunlight on the breaking surf around the far distant bay. On the left, fronting seaward, were the heights where he was laid to rest.

Between two of the upper rooms (the bedroom and the library), there used to be a square hole, just large enough for a man to crawl through on hands and knees.[9] This was formerly the only entrance, but the present owner has had a door put up on which the outline of the hole is still indicated.

With the exception of these rooms, Vailima might have belonged to any other European of wealth and taste.

The question has been raised, Was Stevenson contented in Samoa? Did those three years bring him pleasure? May we not answer, Yes! and not only pleasure but profit. For the profit, note the books written during this period, _The Master of Ballantrae_, and the unfinished _Weir of Hermiston_!

For the pleasure he shall speak for himself, and mark the subtle distinction he draws between happiness and pleasure. "I was only happy once--that was at Hyeres, it came to an end from a variety of reasons, decline of health, change of place, increase of money, age with his stealing steps; since then, as before then, I know not what it means. But I know pleasure still, pleasure with a thousand faces and none perfect, a thousand tongues all broken, a thousand hands and all of them with scratching nails. High among these I place this delight of weeding out here, alone by the garrulous water, under the silence of the high wood, broken by incongruous sounds of birds."

"Intense in all he did, Tusitala could do nothing by halves," said a man who knew him well. "Whether it was at clearing land or writing books he always worked at the top of his power, and enjoying as he did the life of the gay house party in the evening, he would rise at daylight to make up his loss of time." His was the old, old story of the sword that wore out the scabbard--flesh and spirit at issue, and the flesh so frail, so unequal to the conflict. There was an Austrian Count in Upolu whom the captain took us one day to see, and who, to use the colonial word, "batched" in a little bungalow in the midst of a huge coconut plantation.

The bungalow contained but one room--the bedroom, and the broad encircling verandah served for sitting room. Here we sat and talked about Tusitala, and drank to his memory. The conversation turned on Vailima, and our host took us within and showed us the only two adornments that his room possessed. Over his camp bed hung a framed photograph bearing the inscription "My friend Tusitala," and fronting the bed was another of the house and Mount Veea.

"So," he said, "I keep him there, for he was my saviour, and I wish 'good night' and 'good morning,' every day, both to himself and to his old home." The count then told us that when he was stopping at Vailima he used to have his bath daily on the verandah below his room. One lovely morning he got up very early, got into the bath, and splashed and sang, feeling very well and very happy, and at last beginning to sing very loudly, he forgot Mr. Stevenson altogether. All at once there was Stevenson himself, his hair all ruffled up, his eyes full of anger. "Man," he said, "you and your infernal row have cost me more than two hundred pounds in ideas," and with that he was gone, but he did not address the count again the whole of that day. Next morning he had forgotten the count's offence and was just as friendly as ever, but--the noise was never repeated! Another of the count's stories amused me much. "An English lord came all the way to Samoa in his yacht to see Mr. Stevenson, and found him in his cool Kimino sitting with the ladies and drinking tea on his verandah; the whole party had their feet bare. The English lord thought that he must have called at the wrong time, and offered to go away, but Mr. Stevenson called out to him, and brought him back, and made him stay to dinner. They all went away to dress, and the guest was left sitting alone in the verandah. Soon they came back, Mr. Osborne and Mr. Stevenson wearing the form of dress most usual in that hot climate, a white mess jacket, and white trousers, but their feet were still bare. The guest put up his eyeglass and stared for a bit, then he looked down upon his own beautifully shod feet and sighed. They all talked and laughed until the ladies came in, the ladies in silk dresses, befrilled with lace, but still with bare feet, and the guest took a covert look through his eyeglass and gasped, but when he noticed that there were gold bangles on Mrs. Strong's ankles and rings upon her toes, he could bear no more and dropped his eyeglass on the ground of the verandah breaking it all to bits." Such was my informant's story, which I give for what it is worth.

On our way back to the steamer we visited the lovely waterfall referred to in _Vailima Letters_, also the Girls' School for the daughters of Native Chiefs. The latter affords most interesting testimony to the value of mission work. The principal of the school--a German lady--told us that both Stevenson and his mother took the deepest interest in this school, and subscribed liberally towards its support.

We had, I regret to say, very little time in Apia, and no time for Papasea, or The Sliding Rock, which lies some miles inland. The natives love to shoot this fall, and many of the white folk of both sexes follow their example.

Next morning we were off again, steaming for the other side of the island, where we stayed two days shipping copra. Here I met many of Stevenson's friends, and can recall a chat I had with the photographer to whom I am indebted for several of the photographs in this book. He was a thin spare man, about six-and-twenty years of age, and not so very unlike the pictures of Stevenson himself.

"I had but recently come to Samoa," he said, "and was standing one day in my shop when Mr. Stevenson came in and spoke. "Mon," he said, "I tak ye to be a Scotsman like mysel."

"I would I could have claimed a kinship," deplored the photographer, "but alas! I am English to the back-bone, with never a drop of Scotch blood in my veins, and I told him this, regretting the absence of the blood tie.

"I could have sworn your back was the back of a Scotchman," was his comment, "but," and he held out his hand, "you look sick, and there is a fellowship in sickness not to be denied." I said I was not strong, and had come to the Island on account of my health. "Well then," replied Mr. Stevenson, "it shall be my business to help you to get well; come to Vailima whenever you like, and if I am out, ask for refreshment, and wait until I come in, you will always find a welcome there."

At this point my informant turned away, and there was a break in his voice as he exclaimed, "Ah, the years go on, and I don't miss him less, but more; next to my mother he was the best friend I ever had: a man with a heart of gold; his house was a second home to me."

"You like his books, of course."

"Yes!" (this very dubiously), "I like them, but he was worth all his books put together. People who don't know him, like him for his books. I like him for himself, and I often wish I liked his books better. It strikes me that we in the Colonies don't think so much of them as you do in England, perhaps we are not educated up to his style." And this is the class of comment I heard over and over again in the Colonies, from men who liked the man, but had no especial liking for his books. Is it that Robert Louis Stevenson appeals first and foremost to a cultured audience? Surely not. Putting the essays out of court, his books are one and all tales of adventure, stories of romance. The interest may be heightened by style--by the use of words that fit the subject, as a tailor-made gown fits its wearer--but the subject is never sacrificed to the style. It seems to me that one of my friends on the _Manipouri_ (himself a great reader and no mean critic) came very near solving the problem when he said, "Frankly, much as I like the man, I don't care one straw about his writings. I've got on board this boat _The Master of Ballantrae_, _The Black Arrow_, _Kidnapped_, and _The Ebb Tide_. They all read like so many boys' books, and when I became a man I put away childish things. I've plenty of adventure and excitement in my life, and I want a book that tells me about the home life in the old country, or else an historical novel. Give me Thomas Hardy, or Mrs. Humphry Ward, or Marion Crawford, or Antony Hope. My bad taste, I daresay, but it is so, and I am not alone in my verdict, although I reckon the majority of the folk, this side of the world, would prefer Marie Corelli or Mrs. L. T. Meade."

* * * * *

I cannot leave Samoa without saying a few words about the natives, in whom Tusitala took so deep an interest.

As I write there rises before my mental vision a crowd of brown-skinned men, women, and children, their bodies glistening with coconut oil, and looking as sleek as a shoal of porpoises. Supple of limb, handsome of feature, the men are mostly possessed of reddish or yellow-tinted hair, which stands straight out from their heads in a stiff mop. The colour is due to the rubbing in of a much prized description of red clay, and the stiffness to their constant use of coral lime, for purposes of cleanliness.

All the men wear the kilt of the South Seas, the _sulu_, _ridi_, or _lava-lava_, and as often as not a tunic besides. Nearly all the women are clothed in "pinafore" dresses, infinitely graceful and becoming. Men and women alike adorn themselves with flowers, wreaths of flowers in their hair, flowers interwoven in their _sulu's_, garlands of flowers around the neck, in addition to countless strings of shells and beads.

That they loved Tusitala with a deep and lasting affection is undoubted, and if proof were needed this touching little story may be taken as but one of many evidences. Sosimo, one of his servants, went out of his way to do Tusitala an act of personal kindness. In expressing his gratitude Stevenson said, "Oh! Sosimo, great is the service." "Nay, Tusitala," replied the Samoan, "greater is the love." The following is the Native Lament composed by one of the Chiefs at the time of Stevenson's death. The translation is by Mr. Lloyd Osborne, Stevenson's step-son and able collaborator. I was allowed to copy the poems from the little pamphlet kindly lent me by the Captain.[10]

NATIVE LAMENT FOR TUSITALA.

Listen oh! this world as I tell of the disaster, That befell in the late afternoon, That broke like a wave of the sea, Suddenly and swiftly blinding our eyes. Alas! for Lois who speaks, tears in his voice, Refrain, groan, and weep, oh, my heart in its sorrow! Alas! for Tusitala who rests in the forest.

Aimlessly we wait and wonder, Will he come again? Lament, oh Vailima, waiting and ever waiting; Let us search and inquire of the Captains of Ships, "Be not angry, but has not Tusitala come?" Tuila, sorrowing one, come hither, Prepare me a letter, I will carry it.

Let her Majesty, Queen Victoria, be told, That Tusitala, the loving one, has been taken home. Refrain, groan, and weep, oh, my heart in its sorrow! Alas! for Tusitala, who rests in the forest.

Alas! my heart weeps with anxious pity, As I think of the days before us, Of the white men gathering for the Christmas assembly; Alas! for Alola,[11] left in her loneliness, And the men of Vailima, who weep together, Their leader being taken; Refrain, groan, and weep, oh, my heart in its sorrow! Alas! for Tusitala, who sleeps in the forest.

Alas! oh, my heart, it weeps unceasingly, When I think of his illness, Coming upon him with so fatal a swiftness, Would that it had waited a word or a glance from him, Or some token from us of our love. Refrain, groan, and weep, oh, my heart in its sorrow! Alas! for Tusitala who sleeps in the forest.

Grieve oh, my heart! I cannot bear to look on, At the chiefs who are assembling. Alas! Tusitala, thou art not here; I look hither and thither in vain for thee, Refrain, groan, and weep, oh, my heart in its sorrow! Alas! for Tusitala, he sleeps in the forest.