It was quite dark when I found myself being rowed, or rather paddled, ashore in an outrigger canoe. As I went gliding by the moon-ridden lagoons, I felt that at last I had surely entered some magical harbour of a fairy-land.
Even when sunrise came like a silent crash of liquid gold over the wide Pacific, touching the mountain peaks and the scattered bee-hive-shaped huts of the forest townships, I was not disillusioned. All seemed as I had so fondly anticipated; it was as I had read about it all. Men yarned and argued dogmatically as they stood, fierce-eyed, before the bar of the wooden grog-shanty; there they stood, attired in large slouched hats, telling such mighty things about their thrilling travels that even old Homer, could he have heard, might well have sighed with envy!
When dusk came and I heard the tribal drums beating the stars in far away up in the forest villages, I thought, “Here at least I shall find rest from the hot-footed turbulency of civilized humanity; here I can dwell beneath the Eden-like shades of feathery palms, and listen to the wind-blown melodies as they come in from the sea and run across the island trees.” I revelled in such like thoughts. I felt that I had come across a pagan world where no more should I hear servile mumblings of a conventional people. I would peer into savage bright eyes and listen to the poetic lore of people who worshipped at the shrine of the stars and counted their days by the fading moons. But when the fierce-eyed, tattooed chief, leaning on his war-club before the rough customers of the grog-shanty’s bar, looked straight into the eyes of an old shellback, and, bringing his club down with a crash, said, with much vehemence, that he preferred Solomon’s Songs to the second chapter of the Corinthians, I rubbed my eyes and thought I dreamed! My chagrin was immense; those delectable palm-clad isles of primitive lore and romance had come under the blighting influence of civilization and of missionaries!
I was in Apia, Samoa, R. L. S., attired in his velvet coat, walked into the bar-room and then suddenly said, “Damn!” when the Beachcomber trod on his toe, bowed, and said, “Beg pawden, soir!” I strolled afar and discovered that bright-eyed babies, nestling at the bosoms of their shaggy-haired, handsome mothers, slept as “safe as houses” in doorless, small-thatched dens under the moonlit palms. And, wandering on, I saw star-eyed, nymph-like girls with tossing, coral-dyed hair, pass and repass me on the lonely forest track, singing merrily in a musical tongue as they dived once more into the shadows of the coco-palms.[2] All this was extremely pleasing. But one may imagine how my tenacious illusions were grossly shattered when the majestic ex-king Malaetoa of the proud _O Le Solu_ Dynasty, last of his ancient line, followed me into the isolated grog-shanty hard by, gazed into my eyes with fondest affection, and said, “Mine’s a bitter!”