CHAPTER XXXVII

A visit to the hermit of Taha-Uka valley; the vengeance that made the Scallamera lepers; and the hatred of Mohuto.

Le Verogose, a Breton planter who lived in Taka-Uka Valley, was full of camaraderie, esteeming friendship a genuine tie, and given to many friendly impulses. He had a two-room cabin set high on the slope of the river bank, unadorned, but clean, and though his busy, hardworking days gave him little time for social intercourse, he occasionally invited me there to dinner with him and his wife.

One Sunday he dined me handsomely on eels stewed in white wine, tame duck, and codfish balls, and after the dance, in which his wife, Ghost Girl, Malicious Gossip, Water, and the host joined, we sat for some time singing "Malbrouck se va t'en guerre," "La Carmagnole," and other songs of France. Stirred by the memories of home, these melodies awakened, Le Vergose remembered a countryman who lived nearby.

"There is a hermit who lives a thousand feet up the valley," said he. "We might take him half a litre of rum. He is a Breton of Brest who has been here many years. He eats nothing but bananas, for he lives in a banana grove, and he is able only to totter to the river for water. He never moves from his little hut except to pick a few bananas. He lives alone. Hardly any one sees him from year to year. I think he would be glad to have a visitor."

A wet and slippery trail through the forest along the river bank led toward the hermit's grove. Toiling up it, sliding and clutching the boughs that overhung and almost obliterated it, we passed a small native house of straw, almost hidden by the trees, and were hailed by the voice of a woman.

"I hea? Where do you go?" The words were sharp, with a tone almost of anxiety, of fear.

"We go to see Hemeury Francois," replied Le Vergose.

The woman who had spoken came half-way down the worn and dirty steps of her paepae. She was old, but with an age more of bitter and devastating emotion than of years. Her haggard face, drawn and seamed with cruel lines, showed still the traces of a beauty that had been hard and handsome rather than lovely. She said nothing more, but stood watching our progress, her tall figure absolutely motionless in its dark tunic, her eyes curiously intent upon us. I felt relief when the thick curtains of leaves shut us from her view.

"That is Mohuto," said Le Vergose. "She is a solitary, too. All her people have died, and she has become hard and bitter. That is a strange thing, for an islander. But she was beautiful once. Perhaps she broods upon that."

We entered the banana-grove, an acre or two of huge plants, thirty feet high, so close together that the sun could not touch the soil. The earth was dank and dark, almost a swamp, and the trees were like yellowish-green ghosts in the gloom. Their great soft leaves shut out the sky, and from their limp edges there was a ceaseless drip of moisture. A horde of mosquitos, black and small, emerged from the shadows, thousands upon thousands, and smote us upon every exposed part. In a few minutes our faces were smeared with blood from their killing. Curses in Breton, in Marquesan, and American rent the stillness.

In this dismal, noisome spot was a wretched hut built of purau saplings, as crude a dwelling as the shelter a trapper builds for a few days' habitation. It was ten feet long and four wide, shaky and rotten. Inside it was like the lair of a wild beast, a bed of moldy leaves. A line stretched just below the thatched roof held a few discolored newspapers.

On the heap of leaves sat the remnant of a man, a crooked skeleton in dirty rags, his face a parchment of wrinkles framed by a mass of whitening hair. He looked ages old, his eyes small holes, red rimmed, his hands, in which he held a shaking piece of paper, foul claws. His flesh, through his rags, was the deadly white of the morgue. He looked a Thing no soul should animate.

"Ah! Hemeury Francois," said Le Vergose in the Breton dialect that recalled their childhood home, "I have brought an American to see you. You can talk your English to him."

"By damn, yes," croaked the hermit, in the voice of a raven loosed from a deserted house. But he made no movement until Le Vergose held before his bone-like nose a pint of strong Tahiti rum. Far back in his eyes, away beyond the visible organs, there came a gleam of greater consciousness, a realization of life around him. His mouth, like a rent in an old, battered purse, gaped, and though no teeth were there, the vacuity seemed to smile feebly.

He felt about the litter of paper and leaves and found a dirty cocoanut-shell and a calabash of water. Shaking and gasping, he poured the bottle of rum into the shell, mixed water with it and lifted the precious elixir tremblingly to his lips. He made two choking swallows, and dropped the shell--empty.

His eyes, that had been lost in their raw sockets, scanned me. Then in mixed French and English he began to talk of himself. From his rags he produced a rude diary blocked off on scraps of paper, a minute record of the river and the weather, covering many years.

"Torrent, torrent, torrent." That word was repeated many tunes. Hause appeared often, signifying that the brook had risen. Every day he had noted its state. The river had become his god. Alone among those shadowing, dripping banana-plants, with no human companionship, he had made his study of the moods of the stream a worship. Pages and pages were inscribed with lines upon its state.

"Bacchus," I saw repeated on the dates July 13, 14, 15.

"Another god on the altar then?" I asked. "Mais, oui," he answered in his rusty voice. "The Fall of the Bastile. Le Vergose sent me a bottle of rum to honor the Republic."

What he had just drunk was seething in him. Little by little he commanded that long disused throat, he recalled from the depths of his uncertain mind words and phrases. In short, jerky sentences, mostly French, he spun his tale.

"Brest is my home, in Finnistere. I have been many years in these seas. I forget how many. How many years--? Sacré! I was on the Mongol. She was two thousand tons, clipper, and with skysails. The captain was Freeman. We brought coals from Boston to San Francisco. That was long ago. I was young. I was young and handsome. And strong. Yes, I was strong and young.

"That was it--the Mongol. A clipper-ship from Boston, two thousand tons, and with skysails. Around the Horn it almost blew the sticks out of that Mongol. We froze; we worked day and night. It was terrible. The seas almost drowned us. Ah, how we cursed! Tonnerre de dieu! Had we known it we were in Paradise. The inferno--we were coming to the inferno."

It took him long to tell it. He wanted to talk, but weakness overcame him often, and the words were almost hushed by his breath that came short and wheezing.

"One day we opened the hatches to get coal for the galley. The smell of gas arose. The coal was making gas. No fire. Just gas. If there was fire we never knew it. We felt no heat. We could find no fire. But every day the gas got worse.

"It filled the ship. The watch below could not sleep because of it. If we went aloft, still we smelled it. The food tasted of gas. Our lungs were pressed down by it. Day after day we sailed, and the gas sailed with us.

"The bo'sn fell in a fit. A man on the t'gallant yard fell to the deck and was killed. Three did not awake one morning. We threw their bodies over the side. The mate spat blood and called on God as he leaped into the sea. The smell of the gas never left us.

"The captain called us by the poop-rail, and said we must abandon the ship any time.

"We were twenty men all told. We had four whale-boats and a yawl. Plenty for all of us. We provisioned and watered the boats. But we stayed by the Mongol. We were far from any port and we dared not go adrift in open boats.

"Then came a calm. The gas could not lift. It settled down on us. It lay on us like a weight. It never left us for a moment. Men lay in the scuppers and vomited. Food went untouched. No man could walk without staggering. At last we took to the boats. Two thousand miles from the Marquesas. We lit a fuse, and pushed off. Half a mile away the Mongol blew up.

"We suffered. Mon dieu, how we suffered in those boats! But the gas was gone. We struck Vait-hua on the island of Tahuata. It was heaven. Rivers and trees and women. Women! Sacré! How I loved them!

"I came to Taha-Uka with Mathieu Scallamera. We worked for Captain Hart in the cotton, driving the Chinese and natives. Bill Pincher was a boy, and he worked there, too. In the moonlight on the beach there were dances. The women danced naked on the beaches in the moonlight. And there was rum. Mohuto danced. Ah, she was beautiful, beautiful! She was a devil.

"Scallamera and I built a house, and put on the door a lock of wood. It was a big lock, but it had no key. The natives stole everything. We could keep nothing. Scallamera was angry. One day he hid in the house while I went to work. When a hand was thrust through the opening to undo the lock, Scallamera took his brush knife and cut it off. He threw it through the hole and said, 'That will steal no more.'"

The hermit laughed, a laugh like the snarl of a toothless old tiger.

"That was a joke. Scallamera laughed. By gar! But that without a hand lived long. He gave back all that he had taken. He smiled at Scallamera, and laughed, too. He worked without pay for Scallamera. He became a friend to the man who had cut off his hand. A year went by and two years and three and that man gave Scallamera a piece of land by Vai-ae. He helped Scallamera to build a house upon it.

"Land from hell it was, land cursed seven times. Did not Scallamera become a leper and die of it horribly? And all his twelve children by that Henriette? It was the ground. It had been leprous since the Chinese came. Oh, it was a fine return for the cut-off hand!"

Gasping and choking, the ghastly creature paused for breath, and in the shuddering silence the banana-leaves ceaselessly dripped, and the hum of innumerable mosquito-wings was sharp and thin.

"I did not become a leper. I was young and strong. I was never sick. I worked all day, and at night I was with the women. Ah, the beautiful, beautiful women! With souls of fiends from hell. Mohuto is not dead yet. She lives too long. She lives and sits on the path below, and watches. She should be killed, but I have no strength.

"I was young and strong, and loved too many women. How could I know the devil behind her eyes when she came wooing me again? I had left her. She was with child, and ugly. I loved beautiful women. But she was beautiful again when the child was dead. I was with another. What was her name? I have forgotten her name. Is there no more rum? I remember when I have rum.

"So I went again to Mohuto. The devil from hell! There was poison in her embraces. Why does she not die? She knew too much. She was too wise. It was I who died. No, I did not die. I became old before my time, but I am living yet. The Catholic mission gave me this land. I planted bananas. I have never been away. How long ago? Je ne sais pas. Twenty years? Forty? I do not see any one. But I know that Mohuto sits on the path below and waits. I will live long yet."

He was like a two-days' old corpse. He rose to his feet, staggered, and lay down on the heap of soggy leaves. The mosquitos circled in swarms above him. They were devouring us, but the hermit they never lighted on. Le Vergose and I fled from the hut and the grove.

"He is an example like those in Balzac or the religious books," said the Breton, crossing himself. "I have been here many years, and never before did I come here, and again. Jamais de la vie! I must begin to go to church again."

We said nothing more as we slid and slipped downward on the wet trail, but when we came again to the straw hut hidden in the trees Mohuto was still on the paepae, watching us, and I paused to speak to her.

"You knew Hemeury Francois when he was young?"

She put her hand over her eyes, and spat.

"He was my first lover. I had a child by him. He was handsome once." Her eyes, full of malevolence, turned to the dark grove. "He dies very slowly."

The memory of her face was with me when at midnight I went alone to my valley. On my pillows I heard again the cracked voice of the hermit, and saw the blue-white skin upon his shaking bones. He could not believe in Po, the Marquesan god of Darkness, or in the Veinehae, the Ghost-Woman who watches the dying; nor did I believe in them or in Satan, but about me in my Golden Bed until midnight was long past the spirits that hate the light moaned and creaked the hut.