Part 9 (1/2)

”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 G.o.d, shall beat him at that before the recall is sounded.”

So the _Casco_ was s.h.i.+pped 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 aeneid.”

”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 s.h.i.+p, and I looked at you on the s.h.i.+p with great grief until you had raised the anchor and hoisted the sail.

When the s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p 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 G.o.d 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_.

On the 7th of December, when the family landed at Upolu, the chief of the Samoas or Samoan Islands, they little dreamed it was to be their home for the next four years and the last the master of the house was ever to know.

It had been frequently borne upon Stevenson, however, while cruising among the Marshall and Gilbert Islands during the past months, that a home in either England or Scotland again was a vain dream for him.

”I do not ask for health,” he said, ”but I will go anywhere and live in any place where I can enjoy the existence of a human being.” He seldom complained and it is rare to find even the brave sort of cry he made against fate to a friend at this time.

”For fourteen years I have not had a day's real health. I have wakened sick and gone to bed weary, and I have done my work unflinchingly. I have written in bed, and written out of it, written in hemorrhages, written in sickness, written torn by coughing, written when my head swam for weakness, and for so long, it seems to me I have won my wager and recovered my glove. I am better now, have been, rightly speaking, since I first came to the Pacific; and still few are the days when I am not in some physical distress. And the battle goes on--ill or well, is a trifle; so as it goes. I was made for a contest, and the Powers have so willed that my battlefield shall be this dingy inglorious one of the bed and the physics bottle.”

Here in the tropics he might hope to live and work years longer--a return to a cold climate, he now knew, would be fatal.

Why not turn traders? Often on starry nights, drifting among the low islands, he and Lloyd and the captain of the _Equator_ had lain out on deck and planned what a lark it would be to buy a schooner, cruise among the islands, and trade with the natives. They would write stories, too, about these strange island dwellers with their many weird superst.i.tions and of the white men who drifted from all corners of the globe to make their home there.

Already Captain Reid had told them many such tales which Stevenson wove into stories. The ”Beach of Falesa” and the ”Isle of Voices” are probably the two most famous, while ”the strange story of the loss of the brigantine Wandering Minstrel and what men and s.h.i.+ps do in that wild and beautiful world beyond the American continent” formed a plot for the story called ”The Wrecker,” which he and Lloyd Osbourne wrote together later on.

Samoa was a place he was eager to visit. King Kalakaua at Honolulu had already told him much of its troubled history. The group of thirteen islands lay about four thousand two hundred miles southwest of San Francisco. At that time they were under the control of England, Germany, and the United States according to a treaty entered into in 1889. These countries appointed a chief justice, a president of the munic.i.p.al council, three consuls, and three land commissioners. A native king was likewise recognized on each island.

This triple control proved most unsatisfactory and for years past there had been constant friction among the officials and warlike outbreaks among the natives.

These complications interested Stevenson. His first idea had been to stop there but a short time. He now found he wanted to remain in Samoa long enough to write its history.

The Samoans are true Polynesians; a strong and handsome race whose reputation is high among all the people of the Pacific. The large majority have become Christians, but in spite of the influence of the missionaries and the foreign powers who control them, they retain many of their old customs and habits. They are naturally peace-loving in spite of their many wars. Fighting does not appeal to them for its own sake, and they enjoy a good family life, treating their women with great respect and lavis.h.i.+ng affection upon their children.

Stevenson wanted those at home to know these people better; his sympathy, which was ever with the weaker side, was instantly aroused in behalf of the natives, and he wanted to tell their side of the story.

If they were to make a home anywhere in the South Seas there could be no better spot than Apia, the princ.i.p.al port and capital of these islands, as it had a good mail service, a most important feature to a writer.

The monthly mail-steamers between San Francisco and Sydney, as well as other Australian mail-boats, stopped there.