The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 14

II

THE VENGING OF TÁMATÉA

Thus was Rahéro’s treason; thus and no further it sped.The king sat safe in his place and a kindly fool was dead.But the mother of Támatéa arose with death in her eyes.All night long, and the next, Taiárapu rang with her cries.As when a babe in the wood turns with a chill of doubtAnd perceives nor home, nor friends, for the trees have closed her about,The mountain rings and her breast is torn with the voice of despair:So the lion-like woman idly wearied the airFor a while, and pierced men’s hearing in vain, and wounded their hearts.But as when the weather changes at sea, in dangerous parts,And sudden the hurricane wrack unrolls up the front of the sky,At once the ship lies idle, the sails hang silent on high,The breath of the wind that blew is blown out like the flame of a lamp,And the silent armies of death draw near with inaudible tramp:So sudden, the voice of her weeping ceased; in silence she roseAnd passed from the house of her sorrow, a woman clothed with repose,Carrying death in her breast and sharpening death in her hand.Hither she went and thither in all the coasts of the land.They tell that she feared not to slumber alone, in the dead of night,In accursed places; beheld, unblenched, the ribbon of light11Spin from temple to temple; guided the perilous skiff,Abhorred not the paths of the mountain and trod the verge of the cliff;From end to end of the island, thought not the distance long,But forth from king to king carried the tale of her wrong.To king after king, as they sat in the palace door, she came,Claiming kinship, declaiming verses, naming her nameAnd the names of all of her fathers; and still, with a heart on the rack,Jested to capture a hearing and laughed when they jested back;So would deceive them a while, and change and return in a breath,And on all the men of Vaiau imprecate instant death;And tempt her kings – for Vaiau was a rich and prosperous land,And flatter – for who would attempt it but warriors mighty of hand?And change in a breath again and rise in a strain of song,Invoking the beaten drums, beholding the fall of the strong,Calling the fowls of the air to come and feast on the dead.And they held the chin in silence, and heard her, and shook the head;For they knew the men of Taiárapu famous in battle and feast,Marvellous eaters and smiters: the men of Vaiau not least.To the land of the Námunu-úra, to Paea,12 at length she came,To men who were foes to the Tevas and hated their race and name.There was she well received, and spoke with Hiopa the king.13And Hiopa listened, and weighed, and wisely considered the thing.“Here in the back of the isle we dwell in a sheltered place,”Quoth he to the woman, “in quiet, a weak and peaceable race.But far in the teeth of the wind lofty Taiárapu lies;Strong blows the wind of the trade on its seaward face, and criesAloud in the top of arduous mountains, and utters its songIn green continuous forests. Strong is the wind, and strongAnd fruitful and hardy the race, famous in battle and feast,Marvellous eaters and smiters: the men of Vaiau not least.Now hearken to me, my daughter, and hear a word of the wise:How a strength goes linked with a weakness, two by two, like the eyes.They can wield the ómare well and cast the javelin far;Yet are they greedy and weak as the swine and the children are.Plant we, then, here at Paea a garden of excellent fruits;Plant we bananas and kava and taro, the king of roots;Let the pigs in Paea be tapu14 and no man fish for a year;And of all the meat in Tahiti gather we threefold here.So shall the fame of our plenty fill the island and so,At last, on the tongue of rumour, go where we wish it to go.Then shall the pigs of Taiárapu raise their snouts in the air;But we sit quiet and wait, as the fowler sits by the snare,And tranquilly fold our hands, till the pigs come nosing the food:But meanwhile build us a house of Trotéa, the stubborn wood,Bind it with incombustible thongs, set a roof to the room,Too strong for the hands of a man to dissever or fire to consume;And there, when the pigs come trotting, there shall the feast be spread,There shall the eye of the morn enlighten the feasters dead.So be it done; for I have a heart that pities your state,And Nateva and Námunu-úra are fire and water for hate.”All was done as he said, and the gardens prospered; and nowThe fame of their plenty went out, and word of it came to Vaiau.For the men of Námunu-úra sailed, to the windward far,Lay in the offing by south where the towns of the Tevas are,And cast overboard of their plenty; and lo! at the Tevas’ feetThe surf on all the beaches tumbled treasures of meat.In the salt of the sea, a harvest tossed with the refluent foam;And the children gleaned it in playing, and ate and carried it home;And the elders stared and debated, and wondered and passed the jest,But whenever a guest came by eagerly questioned the guest;And little by little, from one to another, the word went round:“In all the borders of Paea the victual rots on the ground,And swine are plenty as rats. And now, when they fare to the sea,The men of the Námunu-úra glean from under the treeAnd load the canoe to the gunwale with all that is toothsome to eat;And all day long on the sea the jaws are crushing the meat,The steersman eats at the helm, the rowers munch at the oar,And at length, when their bellies are full, overboard with the store!”Now was the word made true, and soon as the bait was bare,All the pigs of Taiárapu raised their snouts in the air.Songs were recited, and kinship was counted, and tales were toldHow war had severed of late but peace had cemented of oldThe clans of the island. “To war,” said they, “now set we an end,And hie to the Námunu-úra even as a friend to a friend.”So judged, and a day was named; and soon as the morning broke,Canoes were thrust in the sea, and the houses emptied of folk.Strong blew the wind of the south, the wind that gathers the clan;Along all the line of the reef the clamorous surges ran;And the clouds were piled on the top of the island mountain-high,A mountain throned on a mountain. The fleet of canoes swept byIn the midst, on the green lagoon, with a crew released from care,Sailing an even water, breathing a summer air,Cheered by a cloudless sun; and ever to left and right,Bursting surge on the reef, drenching storms on the height.So the folk of Vaiau sailed and were glad all day,Coasting the palm-tree cape and crossing the populous bayBy all the towns of the Tevas; and still as they bowled along,Boat would answer to boat with jest and laughter and song,And the people of all the towns trooped to the sides of the sea,And gazed from under the hand or sprang aloft on the treeHailing and cheering. Time failed them for more to do;The holiday village careened to the wind, and was gone from viewSwift as a passing bird; and ever as onward it bore,Like the cry of the passing bird, bequeathed its song to the shore —Desirable laughter of maids and the cry of delight of the child.And the gazer, left behind, stared at the wake and smiled.By all the towns of the Tevas they went, and Pápara last,The home of the chief, the place of muster in war; and passedThe march of the lands of the clan, to the lands of an alien folk.And there, from the dusk of the shoreside palms, a column of smokeMounted and wavered and died in the gold of the setting sun,“Paea!” they cried. “It is Paea.” And so was the voyage done.In the early fall of the night Hiopa came to the shore,And beheld and counted the comers, and lo, they were forty score;The pelting feet of the babes that ran already and played,The clean-lipped smile of the boy, the slender breasts of the maid,And mighty limbs of women, stalwart mothers of men.The sires stood forth unabashed; but a little back from his kenClustered the scarcely nubile, the lads and maids, in a ring,Fain of each other, afraid of themselves, aware of the kingAnd aping behaviour, but clinging together with hands and eyes,With looks that were kind like kisses, and laughter tender as sighs.There, too, the grandsire stood, raising his silver crest,And the impotent hands of a suckling groped in his barren breast.The childhood of love, the pair well married, the innocent brood,The tale of the generations repeated and ever renewed —Hiopa beheld them together, all the ages of man,And a moment shook in his purpose.But these were the foes of his clan,And he trod upon pity, and came, and civilly greeted the king,And gravely entreated Rahéro; and for all that could fight or sing,And claimed a name in the land, had fitting phrases of praise:But with all who were well-descended he spoke of the ancient days.And “’Tis true,” said he, “that in Paea the victual rots on the ground;But, friends, your number is many; and pigs must be hunted and found,And the lads must troop to the mountains to bring the féis down,And around the bowls of the kava cluster the maids of the town.So, for to-night, sleep here; but king, common, and priestTo-morrow, in order due, shall sit with me in the feast.”Sleepless the live-long night, Hiopa’s followers toiled.The pigs screamed and were slaughtered; the spars of the guest-house oiled,The leaves spread on the floor. In many a mountain glenThe moon drew shadows of trees on the naked bodies of menPlucking and bearing fruits; and in all the bounds of the townRed glowed the cocoa-nut fires, and were buried and trodden down.Thus did seven of the yottowas toil with their tale of the clan,But the eighth wrought with his lads, hid from the sight of man.In the deeps of the woods they laboured, piling the fuel highIn fagots, the load of a man, fuel seasoned and dry,Thirsty to seize upon fire and apt to blurt into flame.And now was the day of the feast. The forests, as morning came,Tossed in the wind, and the peaks quaked in the blaze of the day —And the cocoa-nuts showered on the ground, rebounding and rolling away:A glorious morn for a feast, a famous wind for a fire.To the hall of feasting Hiopa led them, mother and sireAnd maid and babe in a tale, the whole of the holiday throng.Smiling they came, garlanded green, not dreaming of wrong;And for every three, a pig, tenderly cooked in the ground,Waited; and féi, the staff of life, heaped in a moundFor each where he sat; – for each, bananas roasted and rawPiled with a bountiful hand, as for horses hay and strawAre stacked in a stable; and fish, the food of desire,15And plentiful vessels of sauce, and bread-fruit gilt in the fire; —And kava was common as water. Feasts have there been ere now,And many, but never a feast like that of the folk of Vaiau.All day long they ate with the resolute greed of brutes,And turned from the pigs to the fish, and again from the fish to the fruits,And emptied the vessels of sauce, and drank of the kava deep;Till the young lay stupid as stones, and the strongest nodded to sleep.Sleep that was mighty as death and blind as a moonless nightTethered them hand and foot; and their souls were drowned, and the lightWas cloaked from their eyes. Senseless together, the old and the young,The fighter deadly to smite and the prater cunning of tongue,The woman wedded and fruitful, inured to the pangs of birth,And the maid that knew not of kisses, blindly sprawled on the earth.From the hall Hiopa the king and his chiefs came stealthily forth.Already the sun hung low and enlightened the peaks of the north;But the wind was stubborn to die and blew as it blows at morn,Showering the nuts in the dusk, and e’en as a banner is torn,High on the peaks of the island, shattered the mountain cloud.And now at once, at a signal, a silent, emulous crowdSet hands to the work of death, hurrying to and fro,Like ants, to furnish the fagots, building them broad and low,And piling them high and higher around the walls of the hall.Silence persisted within, for sleep lay heavy on allBut the mother of Támatéa stood at Hiopa’s side,And shook for terror and joy like a girl that is a bride,Night fell on the toilers, and first Hiopa the wiseMade the round of the hose, visiting all with his eyes;And all was piled to the eaves, and fuel blockaded the door;And within, in the house beleaguered, slumbered the forty score.Then was an aito despatched and came with fire in his hand,And Hiopa took it. – “Within,” said he, “is the life of a land;And behold! I breathe on the coal, I breathe on the dales of the east,And silence falls on forest and shore; the voice of the feastIs quenched, and the smoke of cooking; the roof-tree decays and fallsOn the empty lodge, and the winds subvert deserted walls.”Therewithal, to the fuel, he laid the glowing coal;And the redness ran in the mass and burrowed within like a mole,And copious smoke was conceived. But, as when a dam is to burst,The water lips it and crosses in silver trickles at first,And then, of a sudden, whelms and bears it away forthright;So now, in a moment, the flame sprang and towered in the night,And wrestled and roared in the wind, and high over house and tree,Stood, like a streaming torch, enlightening land and sea.But the mother of Támatéa threw her arms abroad,“Pyre of my son,” she shouted, “debited vengeance of God,Late, late, I behold you, yet I behold you at last,And glory, beholding! For now are the days of my agony past,The lust that famished my soul now eats and drinks its desire,And they that encompassed my son shrivel alive in the fire.Tenfold precious the vengeance that comes after lingering years!Ye quenched the voice of my singer? – hark, in your dying ears,The song of the conflagration! Ye left me a widow alone?– Behold, the whole of your race consumes, sinew and boneAnd torturing flesh together: man, mother, and maidHeaped in a common shambles; and already, borne by the trade,The smoke of your dissolution darkens the stars of night.”Thus she spoke, and her stature grew in the people’s sight.

III

RAHÉRO

Rahéro was there in the hall asleep: beside him his wife,Comely, a mirthful woman, one that delighted in life;And a girl that was ripe for marriage, shy and sly as a mouse;And a boy, a climber of trees: all the hopes of his house.Unwary, with open hands, he slept in the midst of his folk,And dreamed that he heard a voice crying without, and awoke,Leaping blindly afoot like one from a dream that he fears.A hellish glow and clouds were about him; – it roared in his earsLike the sound of the cataract fall that plunges sudden and steep;And Rahéro swayed as he stood, and his reason was still asleep.Now the flame struck hard on the house, wind-wielded, a fracturing blow,And the end of the roof was burst and fell on the sleepers below;And the lofty hall, and the feast, and the prostrate bodies of folk,Shone red in his eyes a moment, and then were swallowed of smoke.In the mind of Rahéro clearness came; and he opened his throat;And as when a squall comes sudden, the straining sail of a boatThunders aloud and bursts, so thundered the voice of the man.– “The wind and the rain!” he shouted, the mustering word of the clan,16And “Up!” and “To arms, men of Vaiau!” But silence replied,Or only the voice of the gusts of the fire, and nothing beside.Rahéro stooped and groped. He handled his womankind,But the fumes of the fire and the kava had quenched the life of their mind,And they lay like pillars prone; and his hand encountered the boy,And there sprang in the gloom of his soul a sudden lightning of joy.“Him can I save!” he thought, “if I were speedy enough.”And he loosened the cloth from his loins, and swaddled the child in the stuff:And about the strength of his neck he knotted the burden well.There where the roof had fallen, it roared like the mouth of hell.Thither Rahéro went, stumbling on senseless folk,And grappled a post of the house, and began to climb in the smoke:The last alive of Vaiau; and the son borne by the sire.The post glowed in the grain with ulcers of eating fire,And the fire bit to the blood and mangled his hands and thighs;And the fumes sang in his head like wine and stung in his eyes;And still he climbed, and came to the top, the place of proof,And thrust a hand through the flame, and clambered alive on the roof.But even as he did so, the wind, in a garment of flames and pain,Wrapped him from head to heel; and the waistcloth parted in twain;And the living fruit of his loins dropped in the fire below.About the blazing feast-house clustered the eyes of the foe,Watching, hand upon weapon, lest ever a soul should flee,Shading the brow from the glare, straining the neck to see.Only, to leeward, the flames in the wind swept far and wide,And the forest sputtered on fire; and there might no man abide.Thither Rahéro crept, and dropped from the burning eaves,And crouching low to the ground, in a treble covert of leavesAnd fire and volleying smoke, ran for the life of his soulUnseen; and behind him under a furnace of ardent coal,Cairned with a wonder of flame, and blotting the night with smoke,Blazed and were smelted together the bones of all his folk.He fled unguided at first; but hearing the breakers roar,Thitherward shaped his way, and came at length to the shore.Sound-limbed he was: dry-eyed; but smarted in every part;And the mighty cage of his ribs heaved on his straining heartWith sorrow and rage. And “Fools!” he cried, “fools of Vaiau,Heads of swine – gluttons – Alas! and where are they now?Those that I played with, those that nursed me, those that I nursed?God, and I outliving them! I, the least and the worst —I, that thought myself crafty, snared by this herd of swine,In the tortures of hell and desolate, stripped of all that was mine:All! – my friends and my fathers – the silver heads of yoreThat trooped to the council, the children that ran to the open doorCrying with innocent voices and clasping a father’s knees!And mine, my wife – my daughter – my sturdy climber of trees,Ah, never to climb again!”Thus in the dusk of the night(For clouds rolled in the sky and the moon was swallowed from sight),Pacing and gnawing his fists, Rahéro raged by the shore.Vengeance: that must be his. But much was to do before;And first a single life to be snatched from a deadly place,A life, the root of revenge, surviving plant of the race:And next the race to be raised anew, and the lands of the clanRepeopled. So Rahéro designed, a prudent manEven in wrath, and turned for the means of revenge and escape:A boat to be seized by stealth, a wife to be taken by rape.Still was the dark lagoon; beyond on the coral wall,He saw the breakers shine, he heard them bellow and fall.Alone, on the top of the reef, a man with a flaming brandWalked, gazing and pausing, a fish-spear poised in his hand.The foam boiled to his calf when the mightier breakers came,And the torch shed in the wind scattering tufts of flameAfar on the dark lagoon a canoe lay idly at wait:A figure dimly guiding it: surely the fisherman’s mate.Rahéro saw and he smiled. He straightened his mighty thews:Naked, with never a weapon, and covered with scorch and bruise,He straightened his arms, he filled the void of his body with breath,And, strong as the wind in his manhood, doomed the fisher to death.Silent he entered the water, and silently swam, and cameThere where the fisher walked, holding on high the flame.Loud on the pier of the reef volleyed the breach of the sea;And hard at the back of the man, Rahéro crept to his kneeOn the coral, and suddenly sprang and seized him, the elder handClutching the joint of his throat, the other snatching the brandEre it had time to fall, and holding it steady and high.Strong was the fisher, brave, and swift of mind and of eye —Strongly he threw in the clutch; but Rahéro resisted the strain,And jerked, and the spine of life snapped with a crack in twain,And the man came slack in his hands and tumbled a lump at his feet.One moment: and there, on the reef, where the breakers whitened and beat,Rahéro was standing alone, glowing, and scorched and bare,A victor unknown of any, raising the torch in the air.But once he drank of his breath, and instantly set him to fishLike a man intent upon supper at home and a savoury dish.For what should the woman have seen? A man with a torch – and thenA moment’s blur of the eyes – and a man with a torch again.And the torch had scarcely been shaken. “Ah, surely,” Rahéro said,“She will deem it a trick of the eyes, a fancy born in the head;But time must be given the fool to nourish a fool’s belief.”So for a while, a sedulous fisher, he walked the reef,Pausing at times and gazing, striking at times with the spear:– Lastly, uttered the call; and even as the boat drew near,Like a man that was done with its use, tossed the torch in the sea.Lightly he leaped on the boat beside the woman; and sheLightly addressed him, and yielded the paddle and place to sit;For now the torch was extinguished the night was black as the pit.Rahéro set him to row, never a word he spoke,And the boat sang in the water urged by his vigorous stroke.– “What ails you?” the woman asked, “and why did you drop the brand?We have only to kindle another as soon as we come to land.”Never a word Rahéro replied, but urged the canoe.And a chill fell on the woman. – “Atta! speak! is it you?Speak! Why are you silent? Why do you bend aside?Wherefore steer to the seaward?” thus she panted and cried.Never a word from the oarsman, toiling there in the dark;But right for a gate of the reef he silently headed the bark,And wielding the single paddle with passionate sweep on sweep,Drove her, the little fitted, forth on the open deep.And fear, there where she sat, froze the woman to stone:Not fear of the crazy boat and the weltering deep alone;But a keener fear of the night, the dark, and the ghostly hour,And the thing that drove the canoe with more than a mortal’s powerAnd more than a mortal’s boldness. For much she knew of the deadThat haunt and fish upon reefs, toiling, like men, for bread,And traffic with human fishers, or slay them and take their ware,Till the hour when the star of the dead17 goes down, and the morning airBlows, and the cocks are singing on shore. And surely she knewThe speechless thing at her side belonged to the grave.18It blewAll night from the south; all night, Rahéro contended and keptThe prow to the cresting sea; and, silent as though she slept,The woman huddled and quaked. And now was the peep of day.High and long on their left the mountainous island lay;And over the peaks of Taiárapu arrows of sunlight struck.On shore the birds were beginning to sing: the ghostly ruckOf the buried had long ago returned to the covered grave;And here on the sea, the woman, waxing suddenly brave,Turned her swiftly about and looked in the face of the man.And sure he was none that she knew, none of her country or clan:A stranger, mother-naked, and marred with the marks of fire,But comely and great of stature, a man to obey and admire.And Rahéro regarded her also, fixed, with a frowning face,Judging the woman’s fitness to mother a warlike race.Broad of shoulder, ample of girdle, long in the thigh,Deep of bosom she was, and bravely supported his eye.“Woman,” said he, “last night the men of your folk —Man, woman, and maid, smothered my race in smoke.It was done like cowards; and I, a mighty man of my hands,Escaped, a single life; and now to the empty landsAnd smokeless hearths of my people, sail, with yourself, alone.Before your mother was born, the die of to-day was thrownAnd you selected: – your husband, vainly striving, to fallBroken between these hands: – yourself to be severed from all,The places, the people, you love – home, kindred, and clan —And to dwell in a desert and bear the babes of a kinless man.”

THE FEAST OF FAMINE

MARQUESAN MANNERS

I

THE PRIEST’S VIGIL

In all the land of the tribe was neither fish nor fruit,And the deepest pit of popoi stood empty to the foot.19The clans upon the left and the clans upon the rightNow oiled their carven maces and scoured their daggers bright;They gat them to the thicket, to the deepest of the shade,And lay with sleepless eyes in the deadly ambuscade.And oft in the starry even the song of morning rose,What time the oven smoked in the country of their foes;For oft to loving hearts, and waiting ears and sight,The lads that went to forage returned not with the night.Now first the children sickened, and then the women paled,And the great arms of the warrior no more for war availed.Hushed was the deep drum, discarded was the dance;And those that met the priest now glanced at him askance.The priest was a man of years, his eyes were ruby-red,20He neither feared the dark nor the terrors of the dead,He knew the songs of races, the names of ancient date;And the beard upon his bosom would have bought the chief’s estate.He dwelt in a high-built lodge, hard by the roaring shore,Raised on a noble terrace and with tikis21 at the door.Within it was full of riches, for he served his nation well,And full of the sound of breakers, like the hollow of a shell.For weeks he let them perish, gave never a helping sign,But sat on his oiled platform to commune with the divine,But sat on his high terrace, with the tikis by his side,And stared on the blue ocean, like a parrot, ruby-eyed.Dawn as yellow as sulphur leaped on the mountain height:Out on the round of the sea the gems of the morning light,Up from the round of the sea the streamers of the sun; —But down in the depths of the valley the day was not begun.In the blue of the woody twilight burned red the cocoa-husk,And the women and men of the clan went forth to bathe in the dusk,A word that began to go round, a word, a whisper, a start:Hope that leaped in the bosom, fear that knocked on the heart:“See, the priest is not risen – look, for his door is fast!He is going to name the victims; he is going to help us at last.”Thrice rose the sun to noon; and ever, like one of the dead,The priest lay still in his house, with the roar of the sea in his head;There was never a foot on the floor, there was never a whisper of speech;Only the leering tikis stared on the blinding beach.Again were the mountains fired, again the morning broke;And all the houses lay still, but the house of the priest awoke.Close in their covering roofs lay and trembled the clan,But the aged, red-eyed priest ran forth like a lunatic man;And the village panted to see him in the jewels of death again,In the silver beards of the old and the hair of women slain.Frenzy shook in his limbs, frenzy shone in his eyes,And still and again as he ran, the valley rang with his cries.All day long in the land, by cliff and thicket and den,He ran his lunatic rounds, and howled for the flesh of men;All day long he ate not, nor ever drank of the brook;And all day long in their houses the people listened and shook —All day long in their houses they listened with bated breath,And never a soul went forth, for the sight of the priest was death.Three were the days of his running, as the gods appointed of yore,Two the nights of his sleeping alone in the place of gore:The drunken slumber of frenzy twice he drank to the lees,On the sacred stones of the High-place under the sacred trees;With a lamp at his ashen head he lay in the place of the feast,And the sacred leaves of the banyan rustled around the priest.Last, when the stated even fell upon terrace and tree,And the shade of the lofty island lay leagues away to sea,And all the valleys of verdure were heavy with manna and musk,The wreck of the red-eyed priest came gasping home in the dusk.He reeled across the village, he staggered along the shore,And between the leering tikis crept groping through his door.There went a stir through the lodges, the voice of speech awoke;Once more from the builded platforms arose the evening smoke.And those who were mighty in war, and those renowned for an artSat in their stated seats and talked of the morrow apart.