Sestrina: A romance of the South Seas

A dusky maid stood ’neath a lone palm tree Down Makewayo beach, on Savaii Isles; A perfect shape and curved lips had she As stared her bright eyes o’er the lone sea miles; Maids have grown old, brave men seen their best day, But she was made of terra-cotta clay— In beauty by the sea still stands and smiles!

“O SWEET is woman clad in modest smiles and grass!”

The speaker, Royal Clensy, was an ardent dreamer, romanticist and mystic. He did not wear a flowing robe or seer’s beard, he was simply a handsome young Englishman attired in a serge suit, wearing a topee as he leaned against the stem of a palm tree. And had our hero have been able to express his opinions in distinguished poetic style, instead of in the crude phrase which opens this chapter, it is an extremely dubious point as to whether he would ever have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Vers Libre. However, though Clensy was ambitious, he was quite devoid of pretence, which was as well since competition seems keen wherever one goes.

“Cah! Cah! Cah! Too whoo Ha He!” said a second voice. It was the voice of wisdom, the philosophy of the ages was expressed on the wrinkled brow, in the solemn bright eyes and on the shining grey and crimson striped homespun suit, as away, in its own private aeroplane, it sailed over the palms—out of this story! It was a full-blooded native of the Marquesas Isles—a cockatoo!

The first speaker, who still stood under a palm by the lagoons, swished his hand and scattered the swarm of sandflies that buzzed before his eyes obstructing his curious gaze at the pretty, symmetrical brown maid who glided under the palms and then vanished! It was a common enough sight to see a modest maid or youth clad only in smallest green attire stitched on by invisible stiff grass thread, run from the village doorways into another hut opposite. It was a sight to sweep a dreamer’s reflective mind into the golden age of Eden’s fountains before the Tree of Knowledge upset the innocence and beauty of the first sylvan shades. And oh, the prevailing terrific heat, and the coolness suggested by such artless attire. True enough the glowing tropic heat had its drawbacks on those Isles. But Old Dame Nature toiled on, patiently and artlessly for art’s sake, devising suitable clothes, mysteriously sewing and stitching wonderfully hued patterns and greenest, cheapest materials for her artless children. And what a fascinating code of morals was hers! An ill-timed sneeze before the altar, and the dusky bride’s wedding-robe—her mass of shining hair—lo, became disarranged, and made the amorous chiefs sigh. How awful!

No wonder the young Englishman meditated profoundly and continued his preposterous reflections: “Who knows, I may have been happier had I have been born here, in Temeroka village, within sounds of the tribal drums instead of the chimes of Bow Bells.” He gazed down on his much worn boots and wondered what would happen when they fell off! “How on earth can I ever get them re-soled and heeled here, on Isles where men and women wipe their noses on sweet-scented leaves, where the highest social society discuss morals and politics as they somersault in these shore lagoons. Truly, a sylvan utopia of fierce happiness and clotheless modesty. God’s finest sculptural art done in smooth terra-cotta clays, sun-varnished, finished off with muscular curves, and, to say the least, picturesque feminine outlines as folk roam under these coco-palms.” Our hero’s reflections did him credit, nothing was truer. Even the first wonder over creation seemed to gleam in the eyes of those wild peoples. Only one odious odour disturbed the rich scents of tropic flowers. It came from the copra sheds round the bend of the bay, by the primitive wharf where a fore-and-aft schooner lay. It was at that spot where beggared tattooed chiefs and melancholy kings and queens of fallen dynasties cracked nuts ready for the extraction of suspicious looking fats to smear on the artificial breadfruit and well-combed smooth hair of civilised Man! O world of inscrutable mystery!

“‘Ow gloryhus is rum, woman and coco-nuts!” grunted a third voice. Our hero was not startled. It was the voice of one of a noble lineage, that presumably dated back to Bacchus down in Thebes. It was none other than Beer de Beer Adams who spoke thus. It’s a crying shame to have to introduce such a character to polite society. He would never have entered these pages, but for the fact that he stood by Royal Clensy that day. Adams was a derelict sailorman. Even as he spoke he conclusively proved how unfit he was to enter the society of the humblest pages of polite literature, except, perhaps, as a character of the most menial position—lo, he pursed his vulgar lips and sent a stream of filthy tobacco-juice across the line of Clensy’s vision. But what cared our hero? He was young! twenty years of age!

As this script will probably be the only serious, authentic record of Clensy’s life from that time when he left Hiva-oa on a schooner for the South American coast, to arrive eventually at Port-au-Prince, Hayti, it will be as well to let the uninformed know something about his mode of life at the date when he met Adams. It will be sufficient to say that Clensy had been roaming about the various isles of the Marquesan group for three months before he decided to go farther afield. Adams was a destitute drunken reprobate—and he looked it. To be seen in his company was sufficient to exclude one from any decent society that might exist between Terra del Fuego and the Coral Sea. Probably that is why Clensy cottoned to Adams like a shot when he first ran across him in Taiohae. Clensy was out to see the world and enjoy the vigorous novelty of roughing it; and Adams was out to cadge from unsophisticated young men. (Adams is not to be taken as a specimen of an honest South Sea shellback.) As for Royal Clensy, he was physically perfect. He had a fine brow, and eyes that shone with the light of a gay personality. His mind was in the spongy state that readily absorbs good and bad influences; but his belief in the goodness of human nature sent the mud to the bottom of the living-waters to nourish and help the roots of the lilies grow in the summer of his days. His temperament was, under sunny conditions, sanguine and decidedly amorous. Anyone who knew him well was not likely to die of shock were they suddenly informed that he had eloped with a princess or a pretty serving maid. However, he did neither of these things, and they are only suggested to help explain that which is so difficult to explain—temperament. Like all men who have good in them, he was his own godly priest, and instinctively knelt at the altar of his own secret faith to confess his sins to a remorseful conscience. Consequently his religion was sincere and quite devoid of hypocrisy. He was bound to improve with time, as the mud settled down, and the lilies took firm root. So much for Clensy’s embryo sins and virtues. This gay young Englishman was of good birth; that was certain. Earlier incidents connected with his life cannot be given. Whether on first entering into the light of mundane things he was bottle or breast-fed, or was reared in suitable surroundings for so erratic a temperament, is immaterial. It can, however, be relied upon that he was born as he was, inheriting all those peculiarities which made him solely responsible for the drama of passion that put his life out of joint before he was twenty-one years of age. All wise men agree that temperament is the ruling passion that controls man’s actions, all impulses good or bad, be they successfully curbed or blazed before an admiring or shocked world, as the case may be. Adams swallowing rum or gassing Royal Clensy with smoke from his filthy clay pipe, was Adams proper; and Clensy standing beneath the coco palms staring with serious eyes, wondering what would become of him should his people not soon send his remittance, was, and, without a libellous statement on the reputation of his great natural mother, Dame Nature, none other than the legitimate, handsome, sun-tanned inconsequential Royal Clensy.

Instead of Clensy being shocked over Adams’s wicked yarns and disgusted to see a man squirt tobacco-juice with such marvellous precision over his shoulder, he stared his admiration of such vulgarity, and then roared with laughter.

“So yer wants ter git to ther coast of Sarth America, do yer?” said Adams. Then he added. “Look ye here, Myster Clensy, you’re a young gent, anyone can spot that by the cut of yer jib. And anyones who knows me, knows I’m ther man ter be an honest fren’ and guide ter yer.”

“You really do seem a good sort,” responded Clensy as he tugged the little tip of his virgin moustache and looked critically at Adams’s wrinkled, semi-humorous, rum-stricken countenance. Then Clensy, summing up his inward thoughts, murmured to himself: “You look like a hardened old sinner to me, blessed if you don’t.”

Adams who only saw the distinct surface of things, thought he had made a fine impression. He rolled his solitary eye (he had lost his right eye during a brawl in a heathen seraglio, New Guinea) and said: “So you’re a remittance man, and want ter git ter a plyce wheres yer can ’ave the spondulicks sent?”

Clensy nodded, and said, “I want to get to Acapulco, on the South American coast, my uncle’s British Consul there.”

“‘Is E indyed!” gasped Adams as he at once obsequiously began to brush an imaginary speck of dust from Clensy’s shoulder. Visions of coming affluence loomed before his solitary eye.

“How can it be managed? I must leave this place soon or I’ll be dead broke,” said Clensy. Thereupon Adams immediately informed the young Englishman that the French tramp steamer, La Belle France, was leaving Hiva-oa for the South American coast with a cargo of copra in a few days. “She puts into Acapulco, so the thing’s done—if yer’ve got the cash for passages?”

“I have,” said Clensy, then he handed the sailorman a sovereign on account.

“Leave it all to me, I’ll get passages for about ten quid each,” said the old reprobate as he spat on the golden coin for luck. So was the matter settled between them. Two days after that, Adams informed Clensy that he had managed to secure berths as deck passengers at twelve pounds apiece. He watched Clensy’s face, and then smiled his inward delight, for he had made five pounds over the deal with the skipper of the La Belle France. Clensy, who guessed that he had secured berths for less money than he said, made no remark.

“She’s sailing day after termorrer, so we’d better go and say good-bye to our fren’s on the islets tother side; agreed?”

And so Clensy agreed to go to the neighbouring isle to say good-bye to Adams’s old friend, the widowed queen, Mara Le Vakamoa. “You must see heathen royalty afore you leaves these islands,” said Adams.

That same night Adams paddled Clensy in a canoe across the narrow strip of ocean that divided them from the isle where dwelt several pagan kings and much-married queens. When Clensy arrived at the unpalatial-looking wooden building which was the residence of Queen Mara Le Vakamoa, much of the glamour which Adams’s description of native royalty had conjured up in his mind faded. They only stopped one night and day in the royal village. True enough the queen and high chiefs were extremely courteous and paid great homage to the noble papalagai’s (white men). But though Adams was in his element when in the company of full-blooded South Sea royalty, Clensy soon sickened of the ceaseless chattering and royal display of limbs. The fact is, that the queens and princesses belonged to an ancient dynasty, and had long since passed the zenith of their beauty. Even Adams screwed up his lean, humorous-looking mouth and took in a deep breath when the Queen Vakamoa opened her enormous thick-lipped mouth and gave him a smacking farewell kiss. Then Clensy, too, bowed before the inevitable, took a large nip of Hollands gin from Adams’s flask, and saluted the queen likewise. It was only when the pretty native girls took flowers from their hair, and handed them to Clensy as they murmured, “Aloah, papalagi”; that he really took an interest in the farewell ceremonies. Then they trekked down to the beach and paddled away in their canoe. It all seemed like some weird dream to Clensy as Adams chewed tobacco plug and diligently paddled back for the shore lagoons of the mainland. Night had swept the lovely tropic stars over the dusky skies, and they could faintly hear the musical cries of “Aloah, e mako, papalagi,” as they faded away into the ocean’s silence.