Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1732 page)

The dawn showed them in the distance a glorious green island, not marked in the ship’s charts — an island girt about by a coral-reef, and having in its midst a high-peaked mountain which looked, through the telescope, like a mountain of volcanic origin. Mr. Duncalf, taking his morning draught of rum-and-water, shook his groggy old head and said (and swore): ‘My lads, I don’t like the look of that island.’ The captain was of a different opinion. He had one of the ship’s boats put into the water; he armed himself and six of his crew who accompanied him; and away he went in the morning sunlight to visit the island.

Skirting round the coral reef, they found a natural breach, which proved to be broad enough and deep enough not only for the passage of the boat, but of the ship herself if needful. Crossing the broad inner belt of smooth water, they approached the golden sands of the island, strewed with magnificent shells, and crowded by the dusky islanders — men, women, and children, all waiting in breathless astonishment to see the strangers land.

The captain kept the boat off, and examined the islanders carefully. The innocent, simple people danced, and sang, and ran into the water, imploring their wonderful white visitors by gestures to come on shore. Not a creature among them carried arms of any sort; a hospitable curiosity animated the entire population. The men cried out, in their smooth musical language, ‘Come and eat!’ and the plump black-eyed women, all laughing together, added their own invitation, ‘Come and be kissed!’ Was it in mortals to resist such temptations as these? The captain led the way on shore, and the women surrounded him in an instant, and screamed for joy at the glorious spectacle of his whiskers, his complexion, and his gloves. So the mariners from the far north were welcomed to the newly-discovered island.

III.

T
HE
morning wore on. Mr. Duncalf, in charge of the ship, cursing the island, over his rum and water, as a ‘beastly green strip of a place, not laid down in any Christian chart,’ was kept waiting four mortal hours before the captain returned to his command, and reported himself to his officers as follows:

He had found his knowledge of the Polynesian dialects sufficient to make himself in some degree understood by the natives of the new island. Under the guidance of the chief he had made a first journey of exploration, and had seen for himself that the place was a marvel of natural beauty and fertility. The one barren spot in it was the peak of the volcanic mountain, composed of crumbling rock; originally no doubt lava and ashes, which had cooled and consolidated with the lapse of time. So far as he had seen, the crater at the top was now an extinct crater. But, if he had understood rightly, the chief had spoken of earthquakes and eruptions at certain bygone periods, some of which lay within his own earliest recollections of the place.

Adverting next to considerations of practical utility, the captain announced that he had seen sandal-wood enough on the island to load a dozen ships, and that the natives were willing to part with it for a few toys and trinkets generally distributed among them. To the mate’s disgust, the ‘Fortuna’ was taken inside the reef that day, and was anchored before sunset in a natural harbour. Twelve hours of recreation, beginning with the next morning, were granted to the men, under the wise restrictions in such cases established by the captain. That interval over, the work of cutting the precious wood and loading the ship was to be unintermittingly pursued.

Mr. Duncalf had the first watch after the ‘Fortuna’ had been made snug. He took the boatswain aside (an ancient sea-dog like himself), and he said in a gruff whisper: ‘My lad, this here ain’t the island laid down in our sailing orders. See if mischief don’t come of disobeying orders before we are many days older.’

Nothing in the shape of mischief happened that night. But at sunrise the next morning a suspicious circumstance occurred; and Mr. Duncalf whispered to the boatswain: ‘What did I tell you?’ The captain and the chief of the islanders held a private conference in the cabin, and the captain, after first forbidding any communication with the shore until his return, suddenly left the ship, alone with the chief, in the chief’s own canoe.

What did this strange disappearance mean? The captain himself, when he took his seat in the canoe, would have been puzzled to answer that question.

‘Shall we be a long time away from the ship?’ he asked.

The chief answered mysteriously: ‘Long time or short time, your life depends on it, and the lives of your men.’

Paddling his light little vessel in silence over the smooth water inside the reef, the chief took his visitor ashore at a part of the island which was quite new to the captain. The two crossed a ravine, and ascended an eminence beyond. There the chief stopped, and silently pointed out to sea.

The captain looked in the direction indicated to him, and discovered a second and a smaller island, lying away to the southwest at a distance of under two miles. Taking out his telescope from the case by which it was slung at his back, he examined the place through his glass. Two of the native canoes were lying off the shore of the new island; and the men in them appeared to be all kneeling or crouching in curiously chosen attitudes. Shifting his range a little, the captain next beheld the figure of a tall and solitary man — the one inhabitant of the island whom he could discover. The man was standing on the highest point of a rocky cape. A fire was burning at his feet. Now he lifted his arms solemnly to the sky; now he dropped some invisible fuel into the fire, which made a blue smoke; and now he cast other invisible objects into the canoes floating beneath him, which the islanders reverently received with bodies that crouched in abject submission. Lowering his telescope, the captain looked round at the chief for an explanation. The chief gave the explanation readily. His language may be interpreted in these terms:

‘Wonderful white stranger! the island you see yonder is a Holy Island. As such it is
Taboo
— an island sanctified and set apart. The honourable person whom you notice on the rock is an all-powerful favourite of the gods. He is by vocation a Sorcerer, and by rank a Priest. You now see him casting charms and blessings into the canoes of our fishermen, who kneel to him for fine weather and great plenty of fish. If any profane person, native or stranger, presumes to set foot on that island, my otherwise peaceable subjects will (in the performance of a religious duty) put that person to death. Mention this to your men. They will be fed by my male people, and fondled by my female people, so long as they keep clear of the Holy Isle. As they value their lives, let them respect this prohibition. Is it understood between us? Wonderful white stranger! my canoe is waiting for you. Let us go back.’

Understanding enough of the chief’s language (illustrated by his gestures) to receive in the right spirit the communication thus addressed to him, the captain repeated the warning to the ship’s company in the plainest possible English. The officers and men then took their holiday on shore, with the exception of Mr. Duncalf, who positively refused to leave the ship. For twelve delightful hours they were fed by the male people, and fondled by the female people, and then they were mercilessly torn from the flesh-pots and the arms of their new friends, and set to work on the sandal-wood in good earnest. Mr. Duncalf superintended the loading, and waited for the mischief that was to come of disobeying the owners’ orders with a confidence worthy of a better cause.

IV.

S
TRANGELY
enough, chance once more declared itself in favour of the mate’s point of view. The mischief did actually come; and the chosen instrument of it was a handsome young islander, who was one of the sons of the chief.

The captain had taken a fancy to the sweet-tempered, intelligent lad. Pursuing his studies in the dialect of the island, at leisure hours, he had made the chief’s son his tutor, and had amused himself by instructing the youth in English by way of return. More than a month had passed in this intercourse, and the ship’s lading was being rapidly completed, when, in an evil hour, the talk between the two turned on the subject of the Holy Island.

‘Does nobody live on the island but the Priest?’ the captain asked.

The chief’s son looked round him suspiciously. ‘Promise me you won’t tell anybody!’ he began very earnestly.

The captain gave his promise.

‘There is one other person on the island,’ the lad whispered; ‘a person to feast your eyes upon, if you could only see her! She is the Priest’s daughter. She was taken to the island in her infancy, and has never left it since. In that sacred solitude she has never looked on any human beings but her father and her mother. I once saw her from my canoe, taking care not to attract her notice, or to approach too near the holy soil. Oh, so young, dear master, and, oh, so beautiful!’ The chief’s son completed the description by kissing his own hands in silent rapture.

The captain’s fine blue eyes sparkled. He asked no more questions; but, later on that day, he paid a secret visit to the eminence which overlooked the Holy Island. The next day, and the next, he stole away to the same place. On the fourth day, fatal Destiny favoured him. He saw the nymph of the island through his telescope, standing alone upon the cape on which he had already discovered her father. She was feeding some tame birds, which looked like turtle-doves. The glass showed the captain her pure white robe, fluttering in the sea-breeze; her long black hair falling to her heels; her slim and supple young figure; her simple grace of attitude, as she turned this way and that, attending to the wants of her birds. Before her was the blue ocean; behind her was the lustrous green of the island forest. The captain’s vivid imagination supplied the inevitable defects of the glass. He looked and looked until his eyes and his arms ached. And when she flitted lightly back into the forest, with her birds after her, the captain shut up his telescope with a sigh, and said to himself: ‘I have seen an angel!’

From that hour he became an altered man; he was languid, silent, interested in nothing. General opinion decided that he was going to be taken ill.

A week more elapsed, and the officers and crew began to talk of the voyage to their market in China. The captain refused to fix a day for sailing. He even took offence at being asked to decide. Instead of sleeping in his cabin, he went ashore for the night.

Not many hours afterward, just before daybreak, Mr. Duncalf, snoring in his cabin on deck, was aroused by a hand laid on his shoulder. The swinging lamp, still alight, showed him the dusky face of the chief’s son, convulsed with terror. By wild signs, by disconnected words in the little English which he had learnt, the lad tried to make the mate understand him. Dense Mr. Duncalf, understanding nothing, hailed the second officer, on the opposite side of the deck. The second officer was young and intelligent; he rightly interpreted the terrible news that had come to the ship.

The captain had broken his own rules. Watching his opportunity, under cover of the night, he had taken a canoe, and had secretly crossed the channel to the Holy Island. No one had been near him at the time but the chief’s son. The lad had vainly tried to induce him to abandon his desperate enterprise, and had vainly waited on the shore in the hope of hearing the sound of the paddle announcing his return. Beyond all reasonable doubt, the infatuated man had set foot on the shores of the tabooed island.

The one chance for his life was to conceal what he had done, until the ship could be got out of the harbour, and then (if no harm had come to him in the interval) to rescue him after nightfall. It was decided to spread the report that he had really been taken ill, and that he was confined to his cabin. The chief’s son, whose heart the captain’s kindness had won, could be trusted to do this, and to keep the secret faithfully for the captain’s sake.

Towards noon, the next day, they attempted to take the ship to sea, and failed for want of wind. Hour by hour, the heat grew more and more oppressive. As the day declined, there were ominous appearances in the western heaven. The natives, who had given some trouble during the day by their anxiety to see the captain, and by their curiosity to know the cause of the sudden preparations for the ship’s departure, all went ashore together, looking suspiciously at the sky, and reappeared no more. Just at midnight, the ship (still in her snug berth inside the reef) suddenly trembled from her keel to her mast-heads. Mr. Duncalf, surrounded by the startled crew, shook his knotty fist at the island as if he could see it in the dark. ‘My lads, what did I tell you? That was a shock of earthquake.’

With the morning the threatening aspect of the weather unexpectedly disappeared. A faint hot breeze from the land, just enough to give the ship steerage-way, offered Mr. Duncalf a chance of getting to sea. Slowly the ‘Fortuna,’ with the mate himself at the wheel, half sailed, half drifted into the open ocean. At a distance of barely two miles from the island the breeze was felt no more, and the vessel lay becalmed for the rest of the day.