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

IV

THE RAID

It chanced that as Rua sat in the valley of silent fallsHe heard a calling of doves from high on the cliffy walls.Fire had fashioned of yore, and time had broken, the rocks;There were rooting crannies for trees and nesting-places for flocks;And he saw on the top of the cliffs, looking up from the pit of the shade,A flicker of wings and sunshine, and trees that swung in the trade.“The trees swing in the trade,” quoth Rua, doubtful of words,“And the sun stares from the sky, but what should trouble the birds?”Up from the shade he gazed, where high the parapet shone,And he was aware of a ledge and of things that moved thereon.“What manner of things are these? Are they spirits abroad by day?Or the foes of my clan that are come, bringing death by a perilous way?”The valley was gouged like a vessel, and round like the vessel’s lip,With a cape of the side of the hill thrust forth like the bows of a ship.On the top of the face of the cape a volley of sun struck fair,And the cape overhung like a chin a gulf of sunless air.“Silence, heart! What is that? – that, which flickered and shone,Into the sun for an instant, and in an instant gone?Was it a warrior’s plume, a warrior’s girdle of hair?Swung in the loop of a rope, is he making a bridge of the air?”Once and again Rua saw, in the trenchant edge of the sky,The giddy conjuring done. And then, in the blink of an eye,A scream caught in with the breath, a whirling packet of limbs,A lump that dived in the gulf, more swift than a dolphin swims;And there was a lump at his feet, and eyes were alive in the lump.Sick was the soul of Rua, ambushed close in a clump;Sick of soul he drew near, making his courage stout;And he looked in the face of the thing, and the life of the thing went out.And he gazed on the tattooed limbs, and, behold, he knew the man:Hoka, a chief of the Vais, the truculent foe of his clan:Hoka a moment since that stepped in the loop of the rope,Filled with the lust of war, and alive with courage and hope.Again to the giddy cornice Rua lifted his eyes,And again beheld men passing in the armpit of the skies.“Foes of my race!” cried Rua, “the mouth of Rua is true:Never a shark in the deep is nobler of soul than you.There was never a nobler foray, never a bolder plan;Never a dizzier path was trod by the children of man;And Rua, your evil-doer through all the days of his years,Counts it honour to hate you, honour to fall by your spears.”And Rua straightened his back. “O Vais, a scheme for a scheme!”Cried Rua and turned and descended the turbulent stair of the stream,Leaping from rock to rock as the water-wagtail at homeFlits through resonant valleys and skims by boulder and foam.And Rua burst from the glen and leaped on the shore of the brook,And straight for the roofs of the clan his vigorous way he took.Swift were the heels of his flight, and loud behind as he wentRattled the leaping stones on the line of his long descent.And ever he thought as he ran, and caught at his gasping breath,“O the fool of a Rua, Rua that runs to his death!But the right is the right,” thought Rua, and ran like the wind on the foam,“The right is the right for ever, and home for ever home.For what though the oven smoke? And what though I die ere morn?There was I nourished and tended, and there was Taheia born.”Noon was high on the High-place, the second noon of the feast;And heat and shameful slumber weighed on people and priest;And the heart drudged slow in bodies heavy with monstrous meals;And the senseless limbs were scattered abroad like spokes of wheels;And crapulous women sat and stared at the stones anighWith a bestial droop of the lip and a swinish rheum in the eye.As about the dome of the bees in the time for the drones to fall,The dead and the maimed are scattered, and lie, and stagger, and crawl;So on the grades of the terrace, in the ardent eye of the day,The half-awake and the sleepers clustered and crawled and lay;And loud as the dome of the bees, in the time of a swarming horde,A horror of many insects hung in the air and roared.Rua looked and wondered; he said to himself in his heart:“Poor are the pleasures of life, and death is the better part.”But lo! on the higher benches a cluster of tranquil folkSat by themselves, nor raised their serious eyes, nor spoke:Women with robes unruffled and garlands duly arranged,Gazing far from the feast with faces of people estranged;And quiet amongst the quiet, and fairer than all the fair,Taheia, the well-descended, Taheia, heavy of hair.And the soul of Rua awoke, courage enlightened his eyesAnd he uttered a summoning shout and called on the clan to rise.Over against him at once, in the spotted shade of the trees,Owlish and blinking creatures scrambled to hands and knees;On the grades of the sacred terrace, the driveller woke to fear,And the hand of the ham-drooped warrior brandished a wavering spear.And Rua folded his arms, and scorn discovered his teeth;Above the war-crowd gibbered, and Rua stood smiling beneath.Thick, like leaves in the autumn, faint, like April sleet,Missiles from tremulous hands quivered around his feet;And Taheia leaped from her place; and the priest, the ruby-eyed,Ran to the front of the terrace, and brandished his arms and cried:“Hold, O fools, he brings tidings!” and “Hold, ’tis the love of my heart!”Till lo! in front of the terrace, Rua pierced with a dart.Taheia cherished his head, and the aged priest stood by,And gazed with eyes of ruby at Rua’s darkening eye.“Taheia, here is the end, I die a death for a man.I have given the life of my soul to save an unsavable clan.See them, the drooping of hams! behold me the blinking crew;Fifty spears they cast, and one of fifty true!And you, O priest, the foreteller, foretell for yourself if you can,Foretell the hour of the day when the Vais shall burst on your clan!By the head of the tapu cleft, with death and fire in their hand,Thick and silent like ants, the warriors swarm in the land.”And they tell that when next the sun had climbed to the noonday skies,It shone on the smoke of feasting in the country of the Vais.

TICONDEROGA

A LEGEND OF THE WEST HIGHLANDS

TICONDEROGA

This is the tale of the manWho heard a word in the nightIn the land of the heathery hills,In the days of the feud and the fight.By the sides of the rainy sea,Where never a stranger came,On the awful lips of the dead,He heard the outlandish name.It sang in his sleeping ears,It hummed in his waking head:The name – Ticonderoga,The utterance of the dead.

I

THE SAYING OF THE NAME

On the loch-sides of Appin,When the mist blew from the sea,A Stewart stood with a Cameron:An angry man was he.The blood beat in his ears,The blood ran hot to his head,The mist blew from the sea,And there was the Cameron dead.“O, what have I done to my friend,O, what have I done to mysel’,That he should be cold and dead,And I in the danger of all?“Nothing but danger about me,Danger behind and before,Death at wait in the heatherIn Appin and Mamore,Hate at all of the ferries,And death at each of the fords,Camerons priming gun-locksAnd Camerons sharpening swords.”But this was a man of counsel,This was a man of a score,There dwelt no pawkier StewartIn Appin or Mamore.He looked on the blowing mist,He looked on the awful dead,And there came a smile on his faceAnd there slipped a thought in his head.Out over cairn and moss,Out over scrog and scaur,He ran as runs the clansmanThat bears the cross of war.His heart beat in his body,His hair clove to his face,When he came at last in the gloamingTo the dead man’s brother’s place.The east was white with the moon,The west with the sun was red,And there, in the house-doorway,Stood the brother of the dead.“I have slain a man to my danger,I have slain a man to my death.I put my soul in your hands,”The panting Stewart saith.“I lay it bare in your hands,For I know your hands are leal;And be you my targe and bulwarkFrom the bullet and the steel.”Then up and spoke the Cameron,And gave him his hand again:“There shall never a man in ScotlandSet faith in me in vain;And whatever man you have slaughtered,Of whatever name or line,By my sword and yonder mountain,I make your quarrel mine.27I bid you in to my fireside,I share with you house and hall;It stands upon my honourTo see you safe from all.”It fell in the time of midnight,When the fox barked in the den,And the plaids were over the facesIn all the houses of men,That as the living CameronLay sleepless on his bed,Out of the night and the other world,Came in to him the dead.“My blood is on the heather,My bones are on the hill;There is joy in the home of ravensThat the young shall eat their fill.My blood is poured in the dust,My soul is spilled in the air;And the man that has undone meSleeps in my brother’s care.”“I’m wae for your death, my brother,But if all of my house were dead,I couldna withdraw the plighted hand,Nor break the word once said.”“O, what shall I say to our father,In the place to which I fare?O, what shall I say to our mother,Who greets to see me there?And to all the kindly CameronsThat have lived and died long-syne —Is this the word you send them,Fause-hearted brother mine?”“It’s neither fear nor duty,It’s neither quick nor dead,Shall gar me withdraw the plighted hand,Or break the word once said.”Thrice in the time of midnight,When the fox barked in the den,And the plaids were over the facesIn all the houses of men,Thrice as the living CameronLay sleepless on his bed,Out of the night and the other worldCame in to him the dead,And cried to him for vengeanceOn the man that laid him low;And thrice the living CameronTold the dead Cameron, no.“Thrice have you seen me, brother,But now shall see me no more,Till you meet your angry fathersUpon the farther shore.Thrice have I spoken, and now,Before the cock be heard,I take my leave for everWith the naming of a word.It shall sing in your sleeping ears,It shall hum in your waking head,The name – Ticonderoga,And the warning of the dead.”Now when the night was overAnd the time of people’s fears,The Cameron walked abroad,And the word was in his ears.“Many a name I know,But never a name like this;O, where shall I find a skilly manShall tell me what it is?”With many a man he counselledOf high and low degree,With the herdsman on the mountainsAnd the fishers of the sea.And he came and went unweary,And read the books of yore,And the runes that were written of oldOn stones upon the moor.And many a name he was told,But never the name of his fears —Never, in east or west,The name that rang in his ears:Names of men and of clans;Names for the grass and the tree,For the smallest tarn in the mountains,The smallest reef in the sea:Names for the high and low,The names of the craig and the flat;But in all the land of Scotland,Never a name like that.

II

THE SEEKING OF THE NAME

And now there was speech in the south,And a man of the south that was wise,A periwig’d lord of London,28Called on the clans to rise.And the riders rode, and the summonsCame to the western shore,To the land of the sea and the heather,To Appin and Mamore.It called on all to gatherFrom every scrog and scaur,That loved their fathers’ tartanAnd the ancient game of war.And down the watery valleyAnd up the windy hill,Once more, as in the olden,The pipes were sounding shrill;Again in Highland sunshineThe naked steel was bright;And the lads, once more in tartan,Went forth again to fight.“O, why should I dwell hereWith a weird upon my life,When the clansmen shout for battleAnd the war-swords clash in strife?I canna joy at feast,I canna sleep in bed,For the wonder of the wordAnd the warning of the dead.It sings in my sleeping ears,It hums in my waking head,The name – Ticonderoga,The utterance of the dead.Then up, and with the fighting menTo march away from here,Till the cry of the great war-pipeShall drown it in my ear!”Where flew King George’s ensignThe plaided soldiers went:They drew the sword in Germany,In Flanders pitched the tent.The bells of foreign citiesRang far across the plain:They passed the happy Rhine,They drank the rapid Main.Through Asiatic junglesThe Tartans filed their way,And the neighing of the war-pipesStruck terror in Cathay.29“Many a name have I heard,” he thought,“In all the tongues of men,Full many a name both here and there,Full many both now and then.When I was at home in my father’s house,In the land of the naked knee,Between the eagles that fly in the liftAnd the herrings that swim in the sea,And now that I am a captain-manWith a braw cockade in my hat —Many a name have I heard,” he thought,“But never a name like that.”

III

THE PLACE OF THE NAME

There fell a war in a woody place,Lay far across the sea,A war of the march in the mirk midnightAnd the shot from behind the tree,The shaven head and the painted face,The silent foot in the wood,In the land of a strange, outlandish tongueThat was hard to be understood.It fell about the gloaming,The general stood with his staff,He stood and he looked east and westWith little mind to laugh.“Far have I been, and much have I seen,And kennt both gain and loss,But here we have woods on every handAnd a kittle water to cross.Far have I been, and much have I seen,But never the beat of this;And there’s one must go down to that water-sideTo see how deep it is.”It fell in the dusk of the nightWhen unco things betide,The skilly captain, the Cameron,Went down to that waterside.Canny and soft the captain went;And a man of the woody land,With the shaven head and the painted face,Went down at his right hand.It fell in the quiet night,There was never a sound to ken;But all of the woods to the right and the leftLay filled with the painted men.“Far have I been, and much have I seen,Both as a man and boy,But never have I set forth a foot,On so perilous an employ.”It fell in the dusk of the nightWhen unco things betide,That he was aware of a captain-manDrew near to the water-side.He was aware of his comingDown in the gloaming alone;And he looked in the face of the man,And lo! the face was his own.“This is my weird,” he said,“And now I ken the worst;For many shall fall the morn,But I shall fall with the first.O, you of the outland tongue,You of the painted face,This is the place of my death;Can you tell me the name of the place?”“Since the Frenchmen have been hereThey have called it Sault-Marie;But that is a name for priests,And not for you and me.It went by another word,”Quoth he of the shaven head:“It was called TiconderogaIn the days of the great dead.”And it fell on the morrow’s morning,In the fiercest of the fight,That the Cameron bit the dustAs he foretold at night;And far from the hills of heather,Far from the isles of the sea,He sleeps in the place of the nameAs it was doomed to be.

HEATHER ALE

A GALLOWAY LEGEND

From the bonny bells of heatherThey brewed a drink long-syne,Was sweeter far than honey,Was stronger far than wine.They brewed it and they drank it,And lay in a blessed swoundFor days and days togetherIn their dwellings underground.There rose a king in Scotland,A fell man to his foes,He smote the Picts in battle,He hunted them like roes.Over miles of the red mountainHe hunted as they fled,And strewed the dwarfish bodiesOf the dying and the dead.Summer came in the country,Red was the heather bell;But the manner of the brewingWas none alive to tell.In the graves that were like children’sOn many a mountain head,The Brewsters of the HeatherLay numbered with the dead.The king in the red moorlandRode on a summer’s day;And the bees hummed, and the curlewsCried beside the way.The king rode, and was angry,Black was his brow and pale,To rule in a land of heatherAnd lack the Heather Ale.It fortuned that his vassals,Riding free on the heath,Came on a stone that was fallenAnd vermin hid beneath.Rudely plucked from their hiding,Never a word they spoke:A son and his aged father —Last of the dwarfish folk.The king sat high on his charger,He looked on the little men;And the dwarfish and swarthy coupleLooked at the king again.Down by the shore he had them;And there on the giddy brink —“I will give you life, ye vermin,For the secret of the drink.”There stood the son and father;And they looked high and low;The heather was red around them,The sea rumbled below.And up and spoke the father,Shrill was his voice to hear:“I have a word in private,A word for the royal ear.“Life is dear to the aged,And honour a little thing;I would gladly sell the secret,”Quoth the Pict to the king.His voice was small as a sparrow’s,And shrill and wonderful clear;“I would gladly sell my secret,Only my son I fear.“For life is a little matter,And death is nought to the young;And I dare not sell my honourUnder the eye of my son.Take him, O king, and bind him,And cast him far in the deep:And it’s I will tell the secret,That I have sworn to keep.”They took the son and bound him,Neck and heels in a thong,And a lad took him and swung him,And flung him far and strong,And the sea swallowed his body,Like that of a child of ten; —And there on the cliff stood the father,Last of the dwarfish men.“True was the word I told you:Only my son I feared;For I doubt the sapling courageThat goes without the beard.But now in vain is the torture,Fire shall never avail;Here dies in my bosomThe secret of Heather Ale.”

CHRISTMAS AT SEA

The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand;The decks were like a slide, where a seaman scarce could stand;The wind was a nor’-wester, blowing squally off the sea;And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee.They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day;But ’twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay.We tumbled every hand on deck instanter, with a shout,And we gave her the maintops’l, and stood by to go about.All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and the North;All day we hauled the frozen sheets, and got no further forth;All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread,For very life and nature we tacked from head to head.We gave the South a wider berth, for there the tide-race roared;But every tack we made we brought the North Head close aboard:So’s we saw the cliffs and houses, and the breakers running high,And the coastguard in his garden, with his glass against his eye.The frost was on the village roofs as white as ocean foam;The good red fires were burning bright in every ’long-shore home;The windows sparkled clear, and the chimneys volleyed out;And I vow we sniffed the victuals as the vessel went about.The bells upon the church were rung with a mighty jovial cheer;For it’s just that I should tell you how (of all days in the year)This day of our adversity was blessèd Christmas morn,And the house above the coastguard’s was the house where I was born.O well I saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there,My mother’s silver spectacles, my father’s silver hair;And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves,Go dancing round the china-plates that stand upon the shelves.And well I knew the talk they had, the talk that was of me,Of the shadow on the household and the son that went to sea;And O the wicked fool I seemed, in every kind of way,To be here and hauling frozen ropes on blessèd Christmas Day.They lit the high sea-light, and the dark began to fall.“All hands to loose topgallant sails,” I heard the captain call.“By the Lord, she’ll never stand it,” our first mate, Jackson, cried.… “It’s the one way or the other, Mr. Jackson,” he replied.She staggered to her bearings, but the sails were new and good,And the ship smelt up to windward just as though she understood,As the winter’s day was ending, in the entry of the night,We cleared the weary headland, and passed below the light.And they heaved a mighty breath, every soul on board but me,As they saw her nose again pointing handsome out to sea;But all that I could think of, in the darkness and the cold,Was just that I was leaving home and my folks were growing old.

NOTES TO THE SONG OF RAHÉRO

Introduction. – This tale, of which I have not consciously changed a single feature, I received from tradition. It is highly popular through all the country of the eight Tevas, the clan to which Rahéro belonged; and particularly in Taiárapu, the windward peninsula of Tahiti, where he lived. I have heard from end to end two versions; and as many as five different persons have helped me with details. There seems no reason why the tale should not be true.

NOTES TO THE FEAST OF FAMINE

In this ballad I have strung together some of the more striking particularities of the Marquesas. It rests upon no authority; it is in no sense, like “Rahéro,” a native story; but a patchwork of details of manners and the impressions of a traveller. It may seem strange, when the scene is laid upon these profligate islands, to make the story hinge on love. But love is not less known in the Marquesas than elsewhere; nor is there any cause of suicide more common in the islands.

NOTES TO TICONDEROGA

Introduction. – I first heard this legend of my own country from that friend of men of letters, Mr. Alfred Nutt, “there in roaring London’s central stream,” and since the ballad first saw the light of day in Scribner’s Magazine, Mr. Nutt and Lord Archibald Campbell have been in public controversy on the facts. Two clans, the Camerons and the Campbells, lay claim to this bracing story; and they do well: the man who preferred his plighted troth to the commands and menaces of the dead is an ancestor worth disputing. But the Campbells must rest content: they have the broad lands and the broad page of history; this appanage must be denied them; for between the name of Cameron and that of Campbell the muse will never hesitate.

NOTE TO HEATHER ALE

Among the curiosities of human nature this legend claims a high place. It is needless to remind the reader that the Picts were never exterminated, and form to this day a large proportion of the folk of Scotland, occupying the eastern and the central parts, from the Firth of Forth, or perhaps the Lammermoors, upon the south, to the Ord of Caithness on the north. That the blundering guess of a dull chronicler should have inspired men with imaginary loathing for their own ancestors is already strange; that it should have begotten this wild legend seems incredible. Is it possible the chronicler’s error was merely nominal? that what he told, and what the people proved themselves so ready to receive, about the Picts, was true or partly true of some anterior and perhaps Lappish savages, small of stature, black of hue, dwelling underground – possibly also the distillers of some forgotten spirit? See Mr. Campbell’s “Tales of the West Highlands.”

SONGS OF TRAVEL AND OTHER VERSES

I

THE VAGABOND

(TO AN AIR OF SCHUBERT)Give to me the life I love,Let the lave go by me,Give the jolly heaven aboveAnd the byway nigh me.Bed in the bush with stars to see,Bread I dip in the river —There’s the life for a man like me,There’s the life for ever.Let the blow fall soon or late,Let what will be o’er me;Give the face of earth aroundAnd the road before me.Wealth I seek not, hope nor love,Nor a friend to know me;All I seek, the heaven aboveAnd the road below me.Or let autumn fall on meWhere afield I linger,Silencing the bird on tree,Biting the blue finger.White as meal the frosty field —Warm the fireside haven —Not to autumn will I yield,Not to winter even!Let the blow fall soon or late,Let what will be o’er me;Give the face of earth around,And the road before me.Wealth I ask not, hope nor love,Nor a friend to know me.All I ask, the heaven aboveAnd the road below me.

II

YOUTH AND LOVE – I

Once only by the garden gateOur lips were joined and parted.I must fulfil an empty fateAnd travel the uncharted.Hail and farewell! I must arise,Leave here the fatted cattle,And paint on foreign lands and skiesMy Odyssey of battle.The untented Kosmos my abode,I pass, a wilful stranger:My mistress still the open roadAnd the bright eyes of danger.Come ill or well, the cross, the crown,The rainbow or the thunder,I fling my soul and body downFor God to plough them under.

III

YOUTH AND LOVE – II

To the heart of youth the world is a highwayside.Passing for ever, he fares; and on either hand,Deep in the gardens golden pavilions hide,Nestle in orchard bloom, and far on the level landCall him with lighted lamp in the eventide.Thick as the stars at night when the moon is down,Pleasures assail him. He to his nobler fateFares; and but waves a hand as he passes on,Cries but a wayside word to her at the garden gate,Sings but a boyish stave and his face is gone.