On his return to Scotland the spell of his own land fell upon R.L.S. for the first time. He realized now how he loved it spite of its bad climate, how much there was at home waiting for him. "After all," he said, "new countries, sun, music, and all the rest, can never take down our gusty, rainy, smoky, grim old city out of the first place it has been making for itself in the bottom of my soul."
But he had returned only to be banished. The doctors found his lungs too weak to risk Edinburgh winters and advised him to try the Alps.
Accordingly a cottage was rented in Davos Platz, a health resort. There and at similar places near by they spent the next few winters with visits to England and France between. Switzerland never suited Stevenson. He disliked living among invalids, and with his love for exploring the nooks and corners of any spot he was in he felt like a prisoner when he found himself shut in a valley among continual snow with few walks possible for him to take. "The mountains are about me like a trap," he complained. "You can not foot it up a hillside and behold the sea on a great plain, but live in holes and corners and can change only one for the other."
Tobogganing was the only sport of Davos Platz he really enjoyed, and he pursued that to his heart's content. "Perhaps the true way to toboggan is alone and at night," he said. "First comes the tedious climb dragging your instrument behind you. Next a long breathing space, alone with the snow and pine woods, cold, silent and solemn to the heart. Then you push off; the toboggan fetches away, she begins to feel the hill, to glide, to swim, to gallop. In a breath you are out from under the pine-trees and the whole heaven full of stars reels and flashes overhead."
He accomplished little work at this time. Sometimes for days he would be unable to write at all. But the little boy who had once told his mother, "I have been trying to make myself happy," was the same man now who could say: "I was never bored in my life." When unable to do anything else he would build houses of cards or lie in bed and model little figures in clay. Anything to keep his hands busy and his mind distracted from the stories that crowded his brain and he had not strength to put on paper. His one horror, the fear that urged him on to work feverishly when he was suffering almost beyond endurance, was the thought that his illness might one day make him a helpless invalid.
The splendid part to think of is that no hint of his dark days and pains crept into his writings or saddened those who came to see him. Complaint he kept to himself, prayed that he might "continue to be eager to be happy," lived with the best that was in him from day to day, and the words that went forth from his sick-room have cheered and encouraged thousands.
When asked why he wrote so many stories of pirates and adventurers with few women to soften them he replied: "I suppose it's the contrast; I have always admired great strength, even in a pirate. Courage has interested me more than anything else."
He and his stepson had grown to be great chums. At Silverado Lloyd had been seized with a desire to write stories and had set up a toy printing-press which turned off several tales. At Davos Platz they both tried their hand at illustrating these stories with pictures cut on wood-blocks and gayly colored. Lloyd's room was quite a gallery of these artistic attempts. But their favorite diversion was to play at a war game with lead soldiers. In after-years Lloyd wrote his recollections of the days they spent together enjoying this fun and he says: "The war game was constantly improved and elaborated, until from a few hours, a war took weeks to play, and the critical operations in the attic monopolized half our thoughts. This attic was a most chilly and dismal spot, reached by a crazy ladder, and unlit save for a single frosted window; so low at the eaves and so dark that we could seldom stand upright, nor see without a candle. Upon the attic floor a map was roughly drawn in chalks of different colors, with mountains, rivers, towns, bridges, and roads of two classes. Here we would play by the hour, with tingling fingers and stiffening knees, and an intentness, zest, and excitement that I shall never forget.
"The mimic battalions marched and counter-marched, changed by measured evolutions from column formation into line, with cavalry screens in front and massed support behind, in the most approved military fashion of to-day."
Neither of them ever grew too old for this sport. Year after year they went back to the game. Even when they went to Samoa they laid out a campaign room with maps chalked on the floor.
In the spring of 1885 Thomas Stevenson purchased a house at Bournemouth, England, near London, as a present for his daughter-in-law.
They named the cottage "Skerryvore," after the famous lighthouse he had helped to build in his young days, and it was their home for the next three years—busy ones for R.L.S.
It was a real joy to have his father and mother and Bob Stevenson with them again and his friends in London frequently drop in for a visit.
His health was never worse than during the Bournemouth days. He seldom went beyond his own garden-gate but lived, as he says, "like a weevil in a biscuit." Yet he never worked harder or accomplished more. He wrote in bed and out of bed, sick or well, poems, plays, short stories, and verses.
He finished "Treasure Island," the book that gained him his first popularity, and wrote "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," which made him famous at home and abroad.
"Treasure Island" had been started some time previous to please Lloyd, who asked him to write a "good story." It all began with a map. Stevenson always loved maps, and one day during a picture-making bout he had drawn a fine one. "It was elaborately and (I thought) beautifully colored," he says. "The shape of it took my fancy beyond expression; it contained harbors that pleased me like sonnets.... I ticketed my performance Treasure Island."
Immediately the island began to take life and swarm with people, all sorts of strange scenes began to take place upon it, and as he gazed at his map Stevenson discovered the plot for the "good story."
"It is horrid fun," he wrote, "and begins in the Admiral Benbow public house on the Devon coast; all about a map and a treasure and a mutiny, and a derelict ship ... and a doctor and a sea-cook with one leg with the chorus 'yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum,' ... No women in the story, Lloyd orders."
Parts of the coast at Monterey flashed back to his mind and helped him to picture the scenery of his "Treasure Island." "It was just such a place as the Monterey sand hills the hero John Hawkins found himself on leaving his mutinous shipmates. It was just such a thicket of live oak growing low along the sand like brambles, that he crawled and dodged when he heard the voices of the pirates near him and saw Long John Silver strike down with his crutch one of his mates who had refused to join in his plan for murder."
As the story grew he read each new chapter aloud to the family in the evening. He was writing it for one boy, but found he had more in his audience. "My father," he says, "not only heard with delight the daily chapter, but set himself actively to collaborate. When the time came for Billy Bones' chest to be ransacked, he must have passed the better part of a day preparing on the back of a legal envelope an inventory of its contents, which I exactly followed, and the name of Flint's old ship, the Walrus, was given at his particular request."
When the map was redrawn for the book it was embellished with "blowing whales and sailing ships; and my father himself brought into service a knack he had of various writing, and elaborately forged the signature of Captain Flint and the sailing directions of Billy Bones."
These daily readings were rare treats to those at Skerryvore, for Stevenson was a most dramatic reader. "When he came to stand in the place of Silver you could almost have imagined you saw the great one-legged John Silver, joyous-eyed, on the rolling sea."
The book was not long in springing into popularity. Not only the boys enjoyed it but all sorts of staid and sober men became boys once more and sat up long after bedtime to finish the tale. Mr. Gladstone caught a glimpse of it at a friend's house and did not rest the next day until he had procured a copy for himself, and Andrew Lang said: "This is the kind of stuff a fellow wants. I don't know when, except Tom Sawyer and the Odyssey, that I ever liked a romance so well."
It was translated into many different languages, even appearing serially in certain Greek and Spanish papers.
"Kidnapped" followed; a story founded on the Appan murder. David Balfour, the hero, was one of his own ancestors; Alan Breck had actually lived, and the Alison who ferried Alan and David over to Torryburn was one of Cummie's own people. The Highland country where the scenes were laid, he had traversed many times, and the Island of Earraid, where David was shipwrecked, was the spot where he had spent some of his engineering days.
Stevenson had often said the "brownies" in his dreams gave him ideas for his tales. At Skerryvore they came to him with a story that among all his others is counted the greatest.
"In the small hours one morning," says his wife, "I was awakened by cries of horror from Louis. Thinking he had a nightmare I awakened him. He said angrily, 'Why did you wake me? I was dreaming a fine bogey tale.'"
The dream was so vivid that he could not rest until he had written off the story, and it so possessed him that the first draft was finished within three days. It was called "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."
This story instantly created much discussion. Articles were written about it, sermons were preached on it, and letters poured in from all sorts of people with their theories about the strange tale. Six months after it was published nearly forty thousand copies were sold in England alone; but its greatest success was in America where its popularity was immediate and its sale enormous.
One day he was attracted by a book of verses about children by Kate Greenaway, and wondered why he could not write some too of the children he remembered best of all. Scenes and doings in the days spent at Colinton with his swarm of cousins; the games they had played and the people they had known all trooped back with other memories of Edinburgh days. As he recalled these children, they tripped from his pen until he had a delightful collection of verses and determined to bring them together in a book.
First he called it "The Penny Whistle," but soon changed the title to "A Child's Garden of Verses" and dedicated it, with the following poem, to the only one he said who would really understand the verses, the one who had done so much to make his childhood days happy:
TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM
FROM HER BOY
"For the long nights you lay awake
And watched for my unworthy sake;
For your most comfortable hand
That led me through the uneven land;
For all the story-books you read;
For all the pains you comforted;
For all you pitied, all you bore
In sad and happy days of yore;—
My second Mother, my first wife,
The angel of my infant life—
From the sick child, now well and old,
Take, nurse, the little book you hold!
"And grant it, Heaven, that all who read,
May find as dear a nurse at need,
And every child who lists my rhyme,
In the bright fireside, nursery clime,
May hear it in as kind a voice
As made my childish days rejoice."
"Of course," he said, speaking of this dedication when he wrote to Cummie about the book, "this is only a flourish, like taking off one's hat, but still a person who has taken the trouble to write things does not dedicate them to anyone without meaning it; and you must try to take this dedication in place of a great many things that I might have said, and that I ought to have done; to prove that I am not altogether unconscious of the great debt of gratitude I owe you."
If Thomas Stevenson had been one of the first to doubt his boy's literary ability, he was equally quick to acknowledge himself mistaken. He was proud of his brilliant son, keenly interested in whatever he was working on and, during the days spent together at Skerryvore, gave him valuable aid in his writing.
To have this old-time comradeship with his father, to enjoy his sympathy and understanding once more was Stevenson's greatest joy at this time; a joy which he sorrowfully realized he must soon part with forever as his father's health was failing rapidly.
Thomas Stevenson remained at Skerryvore until April, 1887, when he left for a short visit to Edinburgh. While there he became suddenly worse and died on the 8th of May.
Louis's greatest reason for remaining in England was gone now, and he determined to cross the ocean with his family once more.
His mother willingly gave up her home, her family, her friends, and the comforts she had always enjoyed to go with him to a new country, on any venture he might propose if his health could only be improved thereby.
On August 21, 1887, Louis bade good-by to Scotland for the last time and sailed away from London on the steamship Ludgate Hill for New York.
CHAPTER VII
SECOND VISIT TO AMERICA
"Tis a good land to fall in with men, and a pleasant land to see."
—(Words spoken by Hendrik Hudson when he first brought his ship through the Narrows and saw the Bay of New York.)
Stevenson's second landing in New York was a great contrast to his first. The "Amateur Emigrant" had no one to bid him welcome and Godspeed but a West Street tavern-keeper, and now when Mr. Will Low, his old friend of Fontainebleau days, hastened to the dock to welcome him on the Ludgate Hill, he found the author of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" already surrounded by reporters.
The trip had done him good in spite of their passage having been an unusually rough one, with numerous discomforts. The Ludgate Hill was not an up-to-date liner and she carried a very mixed cargo. The very fact of her being a tramp ship and that the passengers were free to be about with the men and officers, stay in the wheel-house, and enjoy a real sea life, delighted Stevenson, and he wrote back to Sidney Colvin:
"I enjoyed myself more than I could have hoped on board our floating menagerie; stallions and monkeys and matches made our cargo; and the vast continent of the incongruities rolled the while like a haystack; and the stallions stood hypnotized by the motion, looking through the port at our dinner table, and winnied when the crockery was broken; and the little monkeys stared at one another in their cages ... and the big monkey, Jacko scoured about the ship and rested willingly in my arms ... the other passengers, when they were not sick, looked on and laughed. Take all this picture, and make it roll till the bell shall sound unexpected notes and the fittings shall break loose in our state rooms, and you have the voyage of the Ludgate Hill. She arrived in the port of New York without beer, porter, soda-water, curaçoa, fresh meat, or fresh water, and yet we lived and we regret her."
After a short visit with friends in Newport they returned to New York and settled down for a time in the Hotel St. Stephen, on 11th Street, near University Place, to make plans for their winter's trip.
Soon after their arrival "Jekyll and Hyde" was dramatized and produced with great success. When it was known that the author of this remarkable story was in the city, people flocked from all sides to call on him, and fairly wearied him with their attentions, although he liked to see them and made many interesting acquaintances at the time.
Washington Square was one of his favorite spots in New York, and he spent many hours there watching the children playing about. A day he always recalled with special pleasure was the one when he had spent a whole forenoon in the Square talking with Mark Twain.
Among those who were anxious to know Stevenson was the American sculptor Augustus St. Gaudens. He had been delighted with his writings and regretted he had not met him in Paris when he and Mr. Low had been there together. "If Stevenson ever comes to New York," he said to Mr. Low, "I want to meet him," and added that he would consider it a great privilege if Stevenson would permit him to make his portrait.
It was with much pleasure, therefore, that Mr. Low brought them together, and they took to one another immediately. "I like your sculptor. What a splendid straightforward and simple fellow he is," said Stevenson; and St. Gaudens's comment after their first meeting was: "Astonishingly young, not a bit like an invalid and a bully fellow."
Stevenson readily consented to sit for his portrait, and they spent many delightful hours together while the sketches were being made for it.
One day the sculptor brought his eight-year-old son, Homer, with him, and years afterward gave the following description of the child's visit:
"On the way I endeavored to impress on the boy the fact that he was about to see a man whom he must remember all his life. It was a lovely day and as I entered the room Stevenson lay as usual on rather a high bed. I presented Homer to him ... but since my son's interest, notwithstanding my injunctions, was to say the least far from enthusiastic, I sent him out to play.
"I then asked Stevenson to pose but that was not successful ... all the gestures being forced and affected. Therefore I suggested to him that if he would try to write, some natural attitude might result. He assented and taking a sheet of paper ... he pulled his knees up and began. Immediately his attitude was such that I was enabled to create something of use and continued drawing while he wrote with an occasional smile. Presently I finished and told him there was no necessity for his writing any more. He did not reply but proceeded for quite a while. Then he folded the paper with deliberation, placed it in an envelope, addressed it, and handed it to me. It was to 'Master Homer St. Gaudens.'
"I asked him: 'Do you wish me to give this to the boy?'
"'Yes,'
"'When? Now?'
"'Oh, no, in five or ten years, or when I am dead.'
"I put it in a safe and here it is:
"May 27, 1888.
"Dear Homer St. Gaudens—Your father has brought you this day to see me and tells me it is his hope you may remember the occasion. I am going to do what I can to carry out his wish; and it may amuse you, years after, to see this little scrap of paper and to read what I write. I must begin by testifying that you yourself took no interest whatever in the introduction, and in the most proper spirit displayed a single-minded ambition to get back to play, and this I thought an excellent and admirable point in your character. You were also,—I use the past tense with a view to the time when you shall read rather than to that when I am writing,—a very pretty boy, and to my European views startlingly self-possessed. My time of observation was so limited that you must pardon me if I can say no more ... but you may perhaps like to know that the lean, flushed man in bed, who interested you so little, was in a state of mind extremely mingled and unpleasant; harassed with work which he thought he was not doing well, troubled with difficulties to which you will in time succeed, and yet looking forward to no less a matter than a voyage to the South Seas and the visitation of savage and desert islands.
"Your father's friend,
"Robert Louis Stevenson."
The portrait was finished in bas-relief and many copies were made of it. The most familiar is the one giving only Stevenson's head and shoulders, but the splendid big one placed as a memorial to him in St. Giles's Cathedral in Edinburgh shows him as he must have looked that day lying in bed, writing to Homer St. Gaudens.
Another man in New York whom Stevenson had admired for years and longed to meet was General Sherman. The war was long past, and he was then an old gentleman living very quietly. One day St. Gaudens took Stevenson to call on him, and he was asked afterward if he was at all disappointed in his hero.
"Disappointed," he exclaimed. "It was simply magnificent to stand in the presence of one who has done what he has, and then to find him so genial and human. It was the next thing to seeing Wellington, and I dare say the Iron Duke would not have been half so human."
The anticipation of a train trip across the continent was so distasteful that a proposed visit to Colorado was given up, and they decided to try the climate of the Adirondacks for the winter instead.
They chose Saranac, not far from the Canadian border, and rented a cottage there.
The climate was as unpleasant as possible. It rained, snowed, sleeted, and froze continually. The cold at times was arctic, the thermometer dropping thirty degrees below zero in January. "Venison was crunching with ice after being an hour in the oven, and a large lump of ice was still unmelted in a pot where water was steaming all around it."
Their cottage was dubbed "Hunter's Home." It was far from the railroad, few luxuries were to be had, and they lived a simple life in earnest.
Of course, they had a dog; no "hunter's home" would be complete without one, but Louis scouted the idea of adding things as unfitting as plush table-covers and upholstered footstools. The table went bare, and he fashioned a footstool for his mother out of a log, in true backwoods fashion.
His wife and mother found the cold hard to bear, but he stood it remarkably well and benefited by it. Saranac reminded him of Scotland, he said, without the smell of peats and the heather.
Dressed in a buffalo coat, astrakhan cap, and Indian boots, he and Lloyd walked, skated, or went sleighing every day.
His pen was kept busy also. A new novel, "The Master of Ballantrae," was started, and he contributed a series of articles to Scribner's Magazine. For these he was paid a regular sum offered by the publishers and agreed upon in advance—a new experience. It made him feel "awfu' grand," he told a Scotch friend.
A venture he had been longing to make since a boy was a cruise among the islands of the South Seas. While enduring the bitter cold of Saranac such hazy ideas as he had had about such a trip began to form themselves into a definite scheme. He was anxious for a long voyage; perhaps the warm sea air might cure him after all else had failed.
So night after night he and Lloyd eagerly pored over books and maps, and the family discussed plans for such an expedition.
When spring came Mrs. Stevenson started for San Francisco to secure, if possible, a yacht in which they might undertake such a cruise. If all went well Louis and his mother and Lloyd would follow.
While they waited for results they spent the time at Manasquan, on the New Jersey coast. There Stevenson and his son enjoyed the sailing, and their New York friends came often to see them.
Mr. Low tells of the day at Manasquan when word was received from Mrs. Stevenson that she had found a schooner-yacht satisfactory for the voyage.
An answer must be sent at once. Her husband telegraphed that they would come, but it was not without misgivings that he made this final decision. There was much at stake in an uncertain venture of the kind. It meant a sacrifice of comfort for his wife and mother, big expense, and perhaps no better health in the end.
However, it seemed worth the risk, and having decided to go he began to look forward to the trip with boyish delight. "It will be horrid fun," he said, "to be an invalid gentleman on board a yacht, to walk around with a spy-glass under your arm, to make landings and trade beads and chromos for cocoanuts, and to have the natives swim out to meet you."
He and Lloyd spent hours laying their course and making out lists of stores with which to furnish the schooner, regardless of the doubt expressed by their friends as to the capacity of the boat. "They calmly proceeded with their interminable lists and scorned the criticism of a mere land-lubber. All conversation that was not of a nautical character failed to hold their interest."
Cheered with strong hopes for Louis's future, the family departed for San Francisco on the 28th of May, 1888. Their one regret was the good friends they were leaving behind. This particularly affected Louis, but he tried to hide his feelings by making all sorts of lively and impossible proposals for their joining him later on.
His parting words to Mr. Low were: "There's England over there—and I've left it—perhaps I may never go back—and there on the other side of this big continent there's another sea rolling in. I loved the Pacific in the days when I was at Monterey, and perhaps now it will love me a little. I am going to meet it; ever since I was a boy the South Seas have laid a spell upon me."
CHAPTER VIII
IN THE SOUTH SEAS
"Since long ago, a child at home,
I read and longed to rise and roam,
Where'er I went, what'er I willed,
One promised land my fancy filled.
Hence the long road my home I made;
Tossed much in ships; have often laid
Below the uncurtained sky my head,
Rain-deluged and wind buffeted;
And many a thousand miles I crossed,
And corners turned—love's labor lost,
Till, Lady, to your isle of sun
I came, not hoping, and like one
Snatched out of blindness, rubbed my eyes,
And hailed my promised land with cries."
Once, while Louis was a discontented student at the University of Edinburgh, the premier of New Zealand, Mr. Seed, spent an evening with his father and talked about the South Sea Islands until the boy said he was "sick with desire to go there."
From that time on a visit to that out-of-the-way corner of the earth was a cherished dream, and he read everything he could lay hands on that told about it.
While in California, the first time, Mr. Virgil Williams, an artist, aroused his interest still more by the accounts of his own trip in the South Seas.
Now his opportunity to see them had actually come. He already knew much of the kind of places and people they were going among.
Three thousand miles across the open sea lay the Marquesas Islands, the first group they hoped to visit, and it was for that port their schooner, the Casco, turned her head when she was towed out of the Golden Gate at dawn on the 28th of June.
Besides the family and a servant, Valentine Roch, who had been with them since Bournemouth days, the party consisted of the skipper, Captain Otis, who was well acquainted with the Pacific, a crew of four deck-hands, and a Japanese cook.
The Casco was a fore-and-aft schooner, ninety-five feet in length, of seventy tons' burden. "She had most graceful lines and with her lofty masts, white sails and decks, and glittering brass work, was a lovely craft to the eye as she sat upon the water."
"I must try to describe the vessel that is to be our home for so long," Mrs. Stevenson, senior, wrote to her sister at Colinton. "From the deck you step down into the cockpit, which is our open air drawing room. It has seats all around, nicely cushioned, and we sit or lie there most of the day. The compass is there, and the wheel, so the man at the wheel always keeps us company.... At the bottom of the stairs on the right hand side is the captain's room. Straight ahead is the main—or after—cabin, a nice bright place with a skylight and four portholes. There are four sofas that can be turned into beds if need be, and there are lockers under them in which our clothes are stored away. Above and behind each sofa is a berth concealed by white lace curtains on brass rods, and in these berths we three women are laid away as on shelves each night to sleep.
"Opposite the entrance is a mirror let into the wall, with two small shelves under it. On each side of this is a door. The one to the right leads ... to Lloyd's cabin, and beyond that again is the forward cabin, or dining room. The door to the left opens into ... Louis' sleeping-room. It is very roomy with both a bed and a sofa in it, so that he will be very comfortable....
"The dining room has a long table and chairs. Between the doors a very ugly picture of fruit and cake. Louis would fain cover it up if we could spare a flag with which to do it. The doors at the further end lead to the pantry and galley and beyond these are the men's quarters."
No expense had been spared in building the Casco to make her comfortable. She was intended, however, for cruising in the California waters and was hardly suited to the rough handling she received during the squally weather of the next few months. Fortunately she stood the test well and her passengers suffered few discomforts.
Once under way and settled for living, the trip proved quite uneventful. The long days were spent on deck reading or working, and Stevenson began to gather material for a book on the South Seas. The ship's life suited him admirably; every strange fish and new star interested him, and he grew stronger hourly in the warm air.
"Since the fifth day," he wrote, "we were left behind by a full-rigged English ship ... bound round the Horn, we have not spied a sail, nor a land bird, nor a shred of sea-weed. In impudent isolation, the toy schooner has plowed her path of snow across the empty deep, far from all track of commerce, far from any hand of help; now to the sound of slatting sails and stamping sheet blocks, staggering in the turmoil of that business falsely called a calm, now, in the assault of squalls burying her lee-rail in the sea.... Flying fish, a skimming silver rain on the blue sea; a turtle fast asleep in the early morning sunshine; the Southern Cross hung thwart the forerigging like the frame of a wrecked kite—the pole star and the familiar plough dropping ever lower in the wake; these build up thus far the history of our voyage. It is singular to come so far and see so infinitely little."
The squalls that came very quickly, frequently broke the monotony of the trip. One moment the Casco would be sailing along easily and the "next moment, the inhabitants of the cabin were piled one upon another, the sea was pouring into the cockpit and spouting in fountains through forgotten deadlights, and the steersman stood spinning the wheel for his life in a halo of tropical rain."
After twenty-two days at sea they sighted their first island, Nukahiva, one of the Marquesan group, and were all on deck before dawn anxiously watching for it. They not only looked forward eagerly to the sight of land again after so many days on the open ocean, but it was indeed an adventure to come to a country totally strange to all of them, where few white people had been before.
"Not one soul aboard the Casco had set foot upon the Islands," says Stevenson, "or knew except by accident one word of any of the island tongues; and it was with something perhaps of the same anxious pleasure as thrilled the bosom of the discoverers that we drew near these problematic shores.
"Before yet the anchor plunged a canoe was already paddling from the hamlet. It contained two men: one white, one brown and tattooed across the face with bands of blue, both immaculate with white European clothes.... Canoe followed canoe till the ship swarmed with stalwart, six foot men in every stage of undress ... the more considerable tattooed from head to foot in awful patterns ... all talking and we could not understand one word; all trying to trade with us who had no thought of trading, or offering us island curios at prices palpably absurd."
All this charmed and delighted Stevenson, who had dreamed many times of witnessing just such a scene. He wrote to Cummie that he was living all over again many of the stories she had read to him and found them coming true about himself.
For six weeks they cruised about among these islands, frequently dropping anchor and going ashore for several days. When the natives were convinced that they had neither come to trade or to make trouble, but were simply interested in them and their country, they made the visitors most welcome and showered presents of fruit, mats, baskets, and fans upon them.
All were eager to visit the schooner, which they called Pahi Mani, meaning the shining or the silver ship. The chiefs tried to measure its dimensions with their arms. The liveliest curiosity was shown about everything; the red velvet cushions, the looking-glasses, and the typewriter pleased particularly. A photograph of Queen Victoria hung in the fore-cabin and was always described to the island callers as Vahine Haka-iki Beritano, which meant literally, woman-great-chief Britain. It was a surprise to find how much many of them already knew about her.
Some afternoons the Casco swarmed with these strange visitors who were always delighted at the refreshments of ship's biscuits and pineapple syrup and water offered them. A certain chief was particularly taken with a pair of gloves belonging to Mrs. Stevenson, senior. He smelled of them, called them British tattooing, and insisted on her putting them on and off a great many times.
The entire family fell quickly into the island mode of living; dressed as the white inhabitants did; ate all the strange kinds of native food; and when ashore lived in the native houses, which resembled bird-cages on stilts. The climate suited them to perfection, and Stevenson particularly benefited by it, bathing daily in the warm surf and taking long walks along the beach in search of strange shells.
"Here we are," his mother wrote to Cummie, "in a little bay surrounded by green mountains, on which sheep are grazing, and there are birds very like our own 'blackies' singing in the trees. If it were not for the groves of cocoanut palms, we might almost fancy ourselves in our own dear land. But the climate here is simply perfect. Of course it is hot, but there are always fresh breezes.... We have our principal meal at twelve o'clock, and spend the after part of the day on shore ... bathing, gathering shells, knitting, or reading. Our Japanese cook and steward just sets out the table with cold meats, fruit, and cake so that we can take our other meal at any time in the evening that suits us.
"Fanny and I are dressed like natives, in two garments. As we have to wade to and from the boat in landing and coming back, we discard stockings, and on the sands we usually go barefoot entirely. Louis wears only a shirt and trousers with the legs and arms rolled up as far as they will go, and he is always barefooted. You will therefore not be surprised to hear that we are all as red as lobsters. It is a strange irresponsible half savage life, and I sometimes wonder if we shall ever be able to return to civilized habits again.
"The natives are very simple and kindly people. The Roman Catholic priests have persuaded them to give up their constant wars and the practice of cannibalism, though only within recent years....
"Louis has learned a good many words of the language, and with the help of signs can contrive to carry on a conversation, but I have stuck fast with two words: 'ka-oha' which means 'How do you do?' 'thank you,' and 'good bye,' and I am not quite sure how much else, and 'Mitai,' meaning good, nice, pretty, kind. I don't expect to get beyond these, but it is wonderful how much one can express with them....
"The natives have got names for us all. Louis was at first 'the old man,' much to his distress; but now they call him 'Ona' meaning owner of the yacht, a name he greatly prefers to the first. Fanny is Vahine, or wife; I am the old woman, and Lloyd rejoices in the name of Maté Karahi, the young man with glass eyes (spectacles). Perhaps it is a compliment here to be called old, as it is in China, at any rate, one native told Louis that he himself was old, but his mother was not!...
"A native dance was got up for our benefit. None of the dancing-women appeared, but five men dressed in shirt and trousers, danced together with spirit and grace. The music was provided by a drum, made out of an old tin box. Many of the steps reminded me of a Highland reel, but were curiously mixed up with calisthenic, and even gymnastic exercises; the hands in particular were used very gracefully, and they often took off their hats and waved them to and fro. But they also climbed on each other's shoulders, and did other strange things. After dancing for some time, they sang songs to us in a curious, low, weird kind of crooning. Altogether it was a strange sort of afternoon party!"
The Marquesas Islands belong to the French, and the commandant in charge was most cordial to Stevenson, inviting him to his house frequently during his stay in the islands. When at the expiration of six weeks it was time for the Casco to weigh anchor and the party sailed on to explore still farther, they left behind them many friends who regretted their departure. Here as elsewhere in the South Seas, Stevenson showed his sympathy and kindliness toward the island people regardless of who they were or their rank. White or half-caste priest, missionary, or trader, all were treated the same. No bribe, he said, would induce him to call the natives savages.
Mr. Johnstone, an English resident in the South Seas at the time of Stevenson's visit, says: "His inborn courtesy more than any of his other good traits, endeared him to his fellows in the Pacific ... in the hearts of our Island people he built a monument more lasting than stone or brass."
The recollection of the history of his own wild Scottish Islands, the people and conditions his grandfather found among them, helped him to understand these people and account for many of their actions. Though at opposite ends of the earth, many of their customs and legends corresponded. The dwellers in the Hebrides in the old days likewise lived in clans with their chief and struggled to retain their independence against an invading power.
Tahiti, one of the group of Society Islands, was their next stopping place. Before starting a new mate was shipped, who was more familiar with the course, which lay through the Dangerous Archipelago—a group of low, badly lighted islands.
The Society Islands are most beautiful, Tahiti probably the gem of them all, but on arriving Stevenson was in no condition to appreciate their loveliness. A cold contracted on the trip made him quite ill. The trip had proved very dangerous even with the aid of a pilot, and twice they gave themselves up for lost when they were becalmed and drifted in toward the shore. "The reefs were close in," wrote Stevenson, "with my eye! What a surf! The pilot thought we were gone and the captain had a boat cleared, when a lucky squall came to our rescue."
After landing his condition became so much worse his wife grew desperate and determined to find a comfortable spot for him. After much trouble a Chinaman with a team was secured, who agreed to drive the entire family to Tautira, the largest village, sixteen miles away over a road crossed by no less than twenty-one streams. On this uncertain venture they started, with the head of the family in a state of collapse, knowing nothing of the village they were going to or the living it would afford them.
None of them ever regretted the perseverance which led them on, however, for in all their wanderings in the South Seas before or after no place ever charmed them more, or were they received with greater hospitality than in Tautira.
The day after their arrival, Moe, an island princess and an ex-queen, visited them. When she found Stevenson ill she insisted he and his family be moved to her own house where they could have more comforts. The house at the time was occupied by Ori, a subchief, a subject and relative of the princess. But he and his family gladly turned out to make room for the visitors and lived in a tiny house near by.
"Ori is the very finest specimen of native we have seen yet," wrote Mrs. Stevenson. "He is several inches over six feet, of perfect though almost gigantic proportions."
As soon as her husband was strong enough to be about again he and Ori became great friends. Finally, according to an island custom, Stevenson was adopted into Ori's clan and became his brother. This likewise meant exchanging names and Ori became Rui, the nearest possible approach to Louis since there is no L or S in the Tahitian language. Louis in turn became Teriitera (pronounced Tereeterah), which was Ori's Christian name, Ori standing merely for his clan title.
To show their gratitude for the hospitality shown them by Ori and the people of the village, Stevenson decided to give a public feast.
The feast day was set for Wednesday, and the previous Sunday a chief issued the invitations from the Farehau, a house resembling an enormous bird-cage in the centre of the village, from which all the news was read aloud to the people once a week.
A feast of such size necessitated much preparation.
"The chief, who was our guide in the matter," wrote Mrs. Stevenson, "found four large fat hogs, which Louis bought, and four cases of ship's biscuit were sent over from the Casco, which is lying at Papeete for repairs.... Our hogs were killed in the morning, washed in the sea, and roasted whole in a pit with hot stones. When done they were laid on their stomachs in neat open coffins of green basket work, each hog with his case of biscuits beside him. Early in the morning the entire population began bathing, a bath being the preliminary to everything. At about three o'clock—four was the hour set—there was a general movement toward our premises, so that I had to hurry Louis into his clothes, all white even to his shoes. Lloyd was also in white, but barefoot.... The chief, who speaks French very well, stood beside Louis to interpret for him. By the time we had taken our respective places on the veranda in front of our door, an immense crowd had assembled. They came in five detachments.... Each set of people came bending under the weight of bamboo poles laden with fruits, figs, fowls, etc. All were dressed in their gayest and many had wreaths of leaves or flowers on their heads. The prettiest sight of all was the children, who came marching two and two abreast, the bamboo poles lying lengthwise across their shoulders.
"When all the offerings had been piled in five great heaps upon the ground, Louis made his oration to the accompaniment of the squealing of pigs, the cackling of hens, and the roar of the surf.... A speech was made in return on behalf of the village.... Each speaker finished by coming forward with one of the smaller things in his hand, which he offered personally to Louis, and then shook hands with us all and retired. Among these smaller presents were many fish-hooks for large fishing, laboriously carved from mother-of-pearl shell. One man came with one egg in each hand saying 'carry these to Scotland with you, let them hatch into cocks, and their song shall remind you of Tautira.' The schoolmaster, with a leaf-basket of rose apples, made his speech in French."
While overhauling the Casco two or three days before they planned to leave Tautira, Captain Otis was shocked to find the whole upper half of the main masthead completely eaten out by dry-rot. This necessitated taking the schooner around to Papeete, on the other side of the island, for repairs. Under ordinary circumstances the setting of a new masthead need to have delayed them but a few days; in the South Seas, however, it was a different matter. Only after searching for days in Papeete was he able to find a man who knew anything of ship-carpentering, and when found he worked according to his own sweet will. So it was five weeks before the Casco was ready to return for her passengers, who in the meantime were in a state of anxiety as to her whereabouts.
During their enforced stay Ori treated the entire family like a brother indeed, doing everything in his power to make their visit pleasant.
At last, on Christmas Day, they were ready to depart. The entire population of Tautira came to the beach to bid them farewell, and as the Casco swung out of the harbor one of the French officials fired a salute of twenty-one guns with his army rifle and the schooner returned it with a heavy-tongued Winchester.
Tautira had grown to seem like a real home to all of them. To leave it with very little hope of ever returning to see such good friends as Princess Moe and Ori was a real grief, while they in their turn were quite heart-broken. Stevenson's friendship had brought something into their lives they had never had before.
Honolulu was the goal of the Casco now, and all eagerly looked forward to the letters waiting for them there—the first word from home since leaving San Francisco.
Bad weather attended the Casco all the way. They were delayed by a succession of hurricanes and calms until the supply of food ran very low and they were reduced to a diet of "salt-horse" and ship-biscuit.
The last forty-eight hours of their run was made in the very teeth of a furious gale when the captain took big risks by carrying full sail, with the hope of making port before their supply of food and water was entirely exhausted. In spite of the danger, Stevenson enjoyed this daring run hugely. Later, when he and Lloyd wrote "The Wrecker" together, this very episode figured in the story, Captain Otis under the name of Captain Nares performing a similar sail-carrying feat on the schooner Norah Creina.
Mrs. Strong, Stevenson's stepdaughter, and her family were waiting in Honolulu and gave them a warm welcome. The travellers soon found themselves the centre of interest among Mrs. Strong's large circle of friends and it was with difficulty Stevenson found time to finish the last chapters of "The Master of Ballantrae," which he had been working on since leaving Saranac.
Honolulu, with its street-cars, shops, electric lights, and mixture of native and foreign population, seemed strangely crowded and modern after the scenes they had recently left; too modern by far to suit Stevenson, who preferred the unconventional wild life of the islands they had come from.
At the Royal Palace in Honolulu, Kalakaua, the last of the Hawaiian kings, still held court. He enjoyed R.L.S. and invited him often to the palace and told him the history and legends of many of the islands of the South Seas. It was from Kalakaua he first learned to know the troubled history of the Samoan Islands and of Apia, which was to be his future home.
The Island of Molokai, the leper colony, lay not far off. While in Honolulu he spent several days there, in the place where Father Damien had lately done his splendid work.
According to their original scheme they were to return home from Honolulu, but having come so far they were eager to see more. They had tasted the dangers and fascination of the life among the wild islands, each so different, and it had only whetted their appetites for what lay still beyond. The chances of coming so far again were slight; it seemed too good an opportunity to miss. So Stevenson wrote to the friends at home, whom he longed daily to see: "Yes—I own up—I am untrue to friendship and (what is less, but still considerable) to civilization. I am not coming home for another year.... But look here and judge me tenderly. I have had more fun and pleasure of my life these past months than ever before, and more health than any time in ten long years.... And this precious deep is filled with islands which we may still visit, and though the sea is a dreadful place, I like to be there, and like squalls (when they are over) and to draw near to a new island I can not say how much I like....
"Remember me as I was at home, and think of me sea-bathing and walking about, as jolly as a sand boy; you will own the temptation is strong; and as the scheme, bar fatal accidents, is bound to pay into the bargain, sooner or later, it seems it would be madness to come home now, with an imperfect book ... and perhaps fall sick again by autumn.
"It is a singular thing that as I was packing up old papers ere I left Skerryvore, I came on the prophecies of a drunken Highland sibyl, when I was sixteen. She said I was to be very happy,—to visit America and to be much upon the sea.... I can not say why I like the sea ... my poor grandfather it is from him I inherit the taste I fancy, and he was around many islands in his day; but I, please God, shall beat him at that before the recall is sounded."
So the Casco was shipped back to San Francisco, Mrs. Stevenson, senior, returned to Scotland for a visit, and the trading schooner Equator was chartered for a trip among the Marshall, Gilbert, and Samoan Islands.
Just before leaving, the following letter came from Ori, which Stevenson says he would rather have received than written "Red Gauntlet" or the "Sixth Æneid."
"I make you to know my great affection. At the hour when you left us, I was filled with tears; my wife Rui Telime, also, and all my household. When you embarked I felt great sorrow. It is for this that I went upon the road, and you looked from that ship, and I looked at you on the ship with great grief until you had raised the anchor and hoisted the sail. When the ship started I ran along the beach to see you still; and when you were in the open sea I cried out to you 'Farewell Louis,' and when I was coming back to my house I seemed to hear your voice crying, 'Rui, farewell.' Afterwards I watched the ship as long as I could until the night fell; and when it was dark I said to myself: 'If I had wings I should fly to the ship to meet you,'... I wept then ... telling myself continually, 'Teriitera returns to his own country and leaves his dear Rui in grief.'... I will not forget you in my memory. Here is the thought: I desire to meet you again. It is my Teriitera makes the only riches I desire in this world. It is your eyes that I desire to see again. It must be that your body and my body shall eat together at one table, there is what would make my heart content. But now we are separated. May God be with you all. May His word and His mercy go with you, so that you may be well and we also, according to the words of Paul.
"ORI A ORI, that is to say, RUI."
"All told," said Stevenson, "if my books have enabled or helped me to make this voyage, to know Rui, and to have received such a letter, they have ... not been writ in vain."
CHAPTER IX
VAILIMA
"We thank Thee for this place in which we dwell; for the love that unites us; for the peace accorded us this day; for the hope with which we expect the morrow; for the health, the work, the food, and the bright skies that make our lives delightful, for the friends in all parts of the earth, and our friendly helpers in this foreign isle.... Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind. Spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies. Bless us, if it may be, in all our innocent endeavors. If it may not, give us strength to encounter that which is to come, that we may be brave in peril, constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath, and in all changes of fortune, and down to the gates of death, loyal and loving one to another." R.L.S.
—Prayer used with the household at Vailima.