Part 5

Night over isle and sea rolled her curtain of stars, Then a trouble awoke in the air, the east was banded with bars; Dawn as yellow as sulphur leaped on the mountain height; Dawn, in the deepest glen, fell a wonder of light; High and clear stood the palms in the eye of the brightening east, And lo! from the sides of the sea the broken sound of the feast! As, when in days of summer, through open windows, the fly Swift as a breeze and loud as a trump goes by, But when frosts in the field have pinched the wintering mouse, Blindly noses and buzzes and hums in the firelit house: So the sound of the feast gallantly trampled at night, So it staggered and drooped, and droned in the morning light.

IV. THE RAID

IT chanced that as Rua sat in the valley of silent falls, He 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 gulph of sunless air. “Silence, heart! What is that?—that, that 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 gulph, more swift than a dolphin swims; And there was the 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-dealer 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 home Flits 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 went Rattled 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 anigh With 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 folk Sat 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 eyes, And 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.

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.

{61} Note 1, page 61. “Pit of Popoi.” Where the breadfruit was stored for preservation.

{62a} Note 2, page 62. “Ruby-red.” The priest’s eyes were probably red from the abuse of kava. His beard (ib.) is said to be worth an estate; for the beards of old men are the favourite head adornment of the Marquesans, as the hair of women formed their most costly girdle. The former, among this generally beardless and short-lived people, fetch to-day considerable sums.

{62b} Note 3, page 62. “Tikis.” The tiki is an ugly image hewn out of wood or stone.

{67} Note 4, page 67. “The one-stringed harp.” Usually employed for serenades.

{69} Note 5, page 69. “The sacred cabin of palm.” Which, however, no woman could approach. I do not know where women were tattooed; probably in the common house, or in the bush, for a woman was a creature of small account. I must guard the reader against supposing Taheia was at all disfigured; the art of the Marquesan tattooer is extreme; and she would appear to be clothed in a web of lace, inimitably delicate, exquisite in pattern, and of a bluish hue that at once contrasts and harmonises with the warm pigment of the native skin. It would be hard to find a woman more becomingly adorned than “a well-tattooed” Marquesan.

{72} Note 6, page 72. “The horror of night.” The Polynesian fear of ghosts and of the dark has been already referred to. Their life is beleaguered by the dead.

{74} Note 7, page 74. “The quiet passage of souls.” So, I am told, the natives explain the sound of a little wind passing overhead unfelt.

{78} Note 8, page 78. “The first of the victims fell.” Without doubt, this whole scene is untrue to fact. The victims were disposed of privately and some time before. And indeed I am far from claiming the credit of any high degree of accuracy for this ballad. Even in a time of famine, it is probable that Marquesan life went far more gaily than is here represented. But the melancholy of to-day lies on the writer’s mind.

TICONDEROGA A LEGEND OF THE WEST HIGHLANDS

TICONDEROGA

THIS is the tale of the man Who heard a word in the night In 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 heather In Appin and Mamore, Hate at all of the ferries And death at each of the fords, Camerons priming gunlocks And Camerons sharpening swords.”

But this was a man of counsel, This was a man of a score, There dwelt no pawkier Stewart In Appin or Mamore. He looked on the blowing mist, He looked on the awful dead, And there came a smile on his face And there slipped a thought in his head.

Out over cairn and moss, Out over scrog and scaur, He ran as runs the clansman That bears the cross of war. His heart beat in his body, His hair clove to his face, When he came at last in the gloaming To 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 bulwark From the bullet and the steel.”