OF the beauties of Anaho books might be written. I remember waking about three, to find the air temperate1 and scented2. The long swell3 brimmed into the bay, and seemed to fill it full and then subside4. Gently, deeply, and silently the CASCO rolled; only at times a block piped like a bird. Oceanward, the heaven was bright with stars and the sea with their reflections. If I looked to that side, I might have sung with the Hawaiian poet:
UA MAOMAO KA LANI, UA KAHAEA LUNA,
UA PIPI KA MAKA O KA HOKU.
(The heavens were fair, they stretched above,
Many were the eyes of the stars.)
And then I turned shoreward, and high squalls were overhead; the mountains loomed5 up black; and I could have fancied I had slipped ten thousand miles away and was anchored in a Highland6 loch; that when the day came, it would show pine, and heather, and green fern, and roofs of turf sending up the smoke of peats; and the alien speech that should next greet my ears must be Gaelic, not Kanaka.
And day, when it came, brought other sights and thoughts. I have watched the morning break in many quarters of the world; it has been certainly one of the chief joys of my existence, and the dawn that I saw with most emotion shone upon the bay of Anaho. The mountains abruptly7 overhang the port with every variety of surface and of inclination8, lawn, and cliff, and forest. Not one of these but wore its proper tint9 of saffron, of sulphur, of the clove10, and of the rose. The lustre11 was like that of satin; on the lighter12 hues13 there seemed to float an efflorescence; a solemn bloom appeared on the more dark. The light itself was the ordinary light of morning, colourless and clean; and on this ground of jewels, pencilled out the least detail of drawing. Meanwhile, around the hamlet, under the palms, where the blue shadow lingered, the red coals of cocoa husk and the light trails of smoke betrayed the awakening14 business of the day; along the beach men and women, lads and lasses, were returning from the bath in bright raiment, red and blue and green, such as we delighted to see in the coloured little pictures of our childhood; and presently the sun had cleared the eastern hill, and the glow of the day was over all.
The glow continued and increased, the business, from the main part, ceased before it had begun. Twice in the day there was a certain stir of shepherding along the seaward hills. At times a canoe went out to fish. At times a woman or two languidly filled a basket in the cotton patch. At times a pipe would sound out of the shadow of a house, ringing the changes on its three notes, with an effect like QUE LE JOUR ME DURE, repeated endlessly. Or at times, across a corner of the bay, two natives might communicate in the Marquesan manner with conventional whistlings. All else was sleep and silence. The surf broke and shone around the shores; a species of black crane fished in the broken water; the black pigs were continually galloping15 by on some affair; but the people might never have awaked, or they might all be dead.
My favourite haunt was opposite the hamlet, where was a landing in a cove16 under a lianaed cliff. The beach was lined with palms and a tree called the purao, something between the fig17 and mulberry in growth, and bearing a flower like a great yellow poppy with a maroon18 heart. In places rocks encroached upon the sand; the beach would be all submerged; and the surf would bubble warmly as high as to my knees, and play with cocoa-nut husks as our more homely19 ocean plays with wreck20 and wrack21 and bottles. As the reflux drew down, marvels22 of colour and design streamed between my feet; which I would grasp at, miss, or seize: now to find them what they promised, shells to grace a cabinet or be set in gold upon a lady’s finger; now to catch only MAYA of coloured sand, pounded fragments and pebbles23, that, as soon as they were dry, became as dull and homely as the flints upon a garden path. I have toiled26 at this childish pleasure for hours in the strong sun, conscious of my incurable27 ignorance; but too keenly pleased to be ashamed. Meanwhile, the blackbird (or his tropical understudy) would be fluting28 in the thickets29 overhead.
A little further, in the turn of the bay, a streamlet trickled30 in the bottom of a den24, thence spilling down a stair of rock into the sea. The draught31 of air drew down under the foliage32 in the very bottom of the den, which was a perfect arbour for coolness. In front it stood open on the blue bay and the CASCO lying there under her awning33 and her cheerful colours. Overhead was a thatch34 of puraos, and over these again palms brandished35 their bright fans, as I have seen a conjurer make himself a halo out of naked swords. For in this spot, over a neck of low land at the foot of the mountains, the trade-wind streams into Anaho Bay in a flood of almost constant volume and velocity36, and of a heavenly coolness.
It chanced one day that I was ashore37 in the cove, with Mrs. Stevenson and the ship’s cook. Except for the CASCO lying outside, and a crane or two, and the ever-busy wind and sea, the face of the world was of a prehistoric38 emptiness; life appeared to stand stock — still, and the sense of isolation39 was profound and refreshing40. On a sudden, the trade-wind, coming in a gust41 over the isthmus42, struck and scattered43 the fans of the palms above the den; and, behold44! in two of the tops there sat a native, motionless as an idol45 and watching us, you would have said, without a wink46. The next moment the tree closed, and the glimpse was gone. This discovery of human presences latent over-head in a place where we had supposed ourselves alone, the immobility of our tree-top spies, and the thought that perhaps at all hours we were similarly supervised, struck us with a chill. Talk languished47 on the beach. As for the cook (whose conscience was not clear), he never afterwards set foot on shore, and twice, when the CASCO appeared to be driving on the rocks, it was amusing to observe that man’s alacrity48; death, he was persuaded, awaiting him upon the beach. It was more than a year later, in the Gilberts, that the explanation dawned upon myself. The natives were drawing palm-tree wine, a thing forbidden by law; and when the wind thus suddenly revealed them, they were doubtless more troubled than ourselves.
At the top of the den there dwelt an old, melancholy49, grizzled man of the name of Tari (Charlie) Coffin50. He was a native of Oahu, in the Sandwich Islands; and had gone to sea in his youth in the American whalers; a circumstance to which he owed his name, his English, his down-east twang, and the misfortune of his innocent life. For one captain, sailing out of New Bedford, carried him to Nuka-hiva and marooned51 him there among the cannibals. The motive52 for this act was inconceivably small; poor Tari’s wages, which were thus economised, would scarce have shook the credit of the New Bedford owners. And the act itself was simply murder. Tari’s life must have hung in the beginning by a hair. In the grief and terror of that time, it is not unlikely he went mad, an infirmity to which he was still liable; or perhaps a child may have taken a fancy to him and ordained53 him to be spared. He escaped at least alive, married in the island, and when I knew him was a widower54 with a married son and a granddaughter. But the thought of Oahu haunted him; its praise was for ever on his lips; he beheld55 it, looking back, as a place of ceaseless feasting, song, and dance; and in his dreams I daresay he revisits it with joy. I wonder what he would think if he could be carried there indeed, and see the modern town of Honolulu brisk with traffic, and the palace with its guards, and the great hotel, and Mr. Berger’s band with their uniforms and outlandish instruments; or what he would think to see the brown faces grown so few and the white so many; and his father’s land sold, for planting sugar, and his father’s house quite perished, or perhaps the last of them struck leprous and immured56 between the surf and the cliffs on Molokai? So simply, even in South Sea Islands, and so sadly, the changes come.
Tari was poor, and poorly lodged57. His house was a wooden frame, run up by Europeans; it was indeed his official residence, for Tari was the shepherd of the promontory58 sheep. I can give a perfect inventory59 of its contents: three kegs, a tin biscuit-box, an iron saucepan, several cocoa-shell cups, a lantern, and three bottles, probably containing oil; while the clothes of the family and a few mats were thrown across the open rafters. Upon my first meeting with this exile he had conceived for me one of the baseless island friendships, had given me nuts to drink, and carried me up the den ‘to see my house’ — the only entertainment that he had to offer. He liked the ‘Amelican,’ he said, and the ‘Inglisman,’ but the ‘Flessman’ was his abhorrence60; and he was careful to explain that if he had thought us ‘Fless,’ we should have had none of his nuts, and never a sight of his house. His distaste for the French I can partly understand, but not at all his toleration of the Anglo — Saxon. The next day he brought me a pig, and some days later one of our party going ashore found him in act to bring a second. We were still strange to the islands; we were pained by the poor man’s generosity61, which he could ill afford, and, by a natural enough but quite unpardonable blunder, we refused the pig. Had Tari been a Marquesan we should have seen him no more; being what he was, the most mild, long-suffering, melancholy man, he took a revenge a hundred times more painful. Scarce had the canoe with the nine villagers put off from their farewell before the CASCO was boarded from the other side. It was Tari; coming thus late because he had no canoe of his own, and had found it hard to borrow one; coming thus solitary62 (as indeed we always saw him), because he was a stranger in the land, and the dreariest63 of company. The rest of my family basely fled from the encounter. I must receive our injured friend alone; and the interview must have lasted hard upon an hour, for he was loath64 to tear himself away. ‘You go ‘way. I see you no more — no, sir!’ he lamented65; and then looking about him with rueful admiration67, ‘This goodee ship — no, sir! — goodee ship!’ he would exclaim: the ‘no, sir,’ thrown out sharply through the nose upon a rising inflection, an echo from New Bedford and the fallacious whaler. From these expressions of grief and praise, he would return continually to the case of the rejected pig. ‘I like give present all ‘e same you,’ he complained; ‘only got pig: you no take him!’ He was a poor man; he had no choice of gifts; he had only a pig, he repeated; and I had refused it. I have rarely been more wretched than to see him sitting there, so old, so grey, so poor, so hardly fortuned, of so rueful a countenance68, and to appreciate, with growing keenness, the affront69 which I had so innocently dealt him; but it was one of those cases in which speech is vain.
Tari’s son was smiling and inert70; his daughter-in-law, a girl of sixteen, pretty, gentle, and grave, more intelligent than most Anaho women, and with a fair share of French; his grandchild, a mite71 of a creature at the breast. I went up the den one day when Tari was from home, and found the son making a cotton sack, and madame suckling mademoiselle. When I had sat down with them on the floor, the girl began to question me about England; which I tried to describe, piling the pan and the cocoa shells one upon another to represent the houses, and explaining, as best I was able, and by word and gesture, the over-population, the hunger, and the perpetual toil25. ‘PAS DE COCOTIERS? PAS DO POPOI?’ she asked. I told her it was too cold, and went through an elaborate performance, shutting out draughts72, and crouching73 over an imaginary fire, to make sure she understood. But she understood right well; remarked it must be bad for the health, and sat a while gravely reflecting on that picture of unwonted sorrows. I am sure it roused her pity, for it struck in her another thought always uppermost in the Marquesan bosom74; and she began with a smiling sadness, and looking on me out of melancholy eyes, to lament66 the decease of her own people. ‘ICI PAS DE KANAQUES,’ said she; and taking the baby from her breast, she held it out to me with both her hands. ‘TENEZ— a little baby like this; then dead. All the Kanaques die. Then no more.’ The smile, and this instancing by the girl-mother of her own tiny flesh and blood, affected75 me strangely; they spoke76 of so tranquil77 a despair. Meanwhile the husband smilingly made his sack; and the unconscious babe struggled to reach a pot of raspberry jam, friendship’s offering, which I had just brought up the den; and in a perspective of centuries I saw their case as ours, death coming in like a tide, and the day already numbered when there should be no more Beretani, and no more of any race whatever, and (what oddly touched me) no more literary works and no more readers.
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1
temperate
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| adj.温和的，温带的，自我克制的，不过分的 | |
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scented
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| adj.有香味的；洒香水的；有气味的v.嗅到(scent的过去分词) | |
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swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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subside
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| vi.平静，平息；下沉，塌陷，沉降 | |
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loomed
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| v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的过去式和过去分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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highland
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| n.(pl.)高地，山地 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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inclination
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| n.倾斜；点头；弯腰；斜坡；倾度；倾向；爱好 | |
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tint
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| n.淡色，浅色；染发剂；vt.着以淡淡的颜色 | |
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clove
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| n.丁香味 | |
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lustre
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| n.光亮，光泽；荣誉 | |
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12
lighter
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| n.打火机，点火器；驳船；v.用驳船运送；light的比较级 | |
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13
hues
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| 色彩( hue的名词复数 )； 色调； 信仰； 观点 | |
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awakening
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| n.觉醒，醒悟 adj.觉醒中的；唤醒的 | |
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15
galloping
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| adj. 飞驰的, 急性的 动词gallop的现在分词形式 | |
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16
cove
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| n.小海湾，小峡谷 | |
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fig
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| n.无花果(树) | |
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maroon
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| v.困住，使（人）处于孤独无助之境；n.逃亡黑奴；孤立的人；酱紫色，褐红色；adj.酱紫色的，褐红色的 | |
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homely
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| adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的 | |
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wreck
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| n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难 | |
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wrack
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| v.折磨；n.海草 | |
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marvels
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| n.奇迹( marvel的名词复数 )；令人惊奇的事物（或事例）；不平凡的成果；成就v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的第三人称单数 ) | |
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23
pebbles
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| [复数]鹅卵石； 沙砾； 卵石，小圆石( pebble的名词复数 ) | |
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24
den
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| n.兽穴；秘密地方；安静的小房间，私室 | |
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toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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26
toiled
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的过去式和过去分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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incurable
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| adj.不能医治的，不能矫正的，无救的；n.不治的病人，无救的人 | |
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fluting
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| 有沟槽的衣料； 吹笛子； 笛声； 刻凹槽 | |
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thickets
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| n.灌木丛( thicket的名词复数 )；丛状物 | |
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trickled
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| v.滴( trickle的过去式和过去分词 )；淌；使)慢慢走；缓慢移动 | |
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31
draught
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| n.拉，牵引，拖；一网（饮，吸，阵)；顿服药量，通风；v.起草，设计 | |
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foliage
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| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
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awning
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| n.遮阳篷；雨篷 | |
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thatch
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| vt.用茅草覆盖…的顶部；n.茅草(屋) | |
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brandished
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| v.挥舞( brandish的过去式和过去分词 )；炫耀 | |
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velocity
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| n.速度，速率 | |
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ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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prehistoric
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| adj.（有记载的）历史以前的，史前的，古老的 | |
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isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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refreshing
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| adj.使精神振作的，使人清爽的，使人喜欢的 | |
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gust
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| n.阵风，突然一阵（雨、烟等），（感情的）迸发 | |
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isthmus
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| n.地峡 | |
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43
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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idol
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| n.偶像，红人，宠儿 | |
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46
wink
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| n.眨眼，使眼色，瞬间；v.眨眼，使眼色，闪烁 | |
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47
languished
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| 长期受苦( languish的过去式和过去分词 )； 受折磨； 变得（越来越）衰弱； 因渴望而变得憔悴或闷闷不乐 | |
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48
alacrity
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| n.敏捷，轻快，乐意 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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50
coffin
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| n.棺材，灵柩 | |
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51
marooned
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| adj.被围困的；孤立无援的；无法脱身的 | |
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52
motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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53
ordained
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| v.任命（某人）为牧师( ordain的过去式和过去分词 )；授予（某人）圣职；（上帝、法律等）命令；判定 | |
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54
widower
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| n.鳏夫 | |
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55
beheld
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| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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56
immured
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| v.禁闭，监禁( immure的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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lodged
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| v.存放( lodge的过去式和过去分词 )；暂住；埋入；（权利、权威等）归属 | |
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promontory
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| n.海角；岬 | |
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inventory
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| n.详细目录，存货清单 | |
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abhorrence
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| n.憎恶；可憎恶的事 | |
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generosity
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| n.大度，慷慨，慷慨的行为 | |
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solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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63
dreariest
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| 使人闷闷不乐或沮丧的( dreary的最高级 )； 阴沉的； 令人厌烦的； 单调的 | |
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loath
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| adj.不愿意的；勉强的 | |
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65
lamented
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| adj.被哀悼的，令人遗憾的v.（为…）哀悼，痛哭，悲伤( lament的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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66
lament
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| n.悲叹，悔恨，恸哭；v.哀悼，悔恨，悲叹 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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affront
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| n./v.侮辱，触怒 | |
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inert
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| adj.无活动能力的，惰性的；迟钝的 | |
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mite
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| n.极小的东西；小铜币 | |
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72
draughts
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| n. <英>国际跳棋 | |
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crouching
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的现在分词 ) | |
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bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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tranquil
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| adj. 安静的, 宁静的, 稳定的, 不变的 | |
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