OUT of the night the dawn came creeping over the ranges like a maiden with her sandals dipped in light, the glory of the stars fading in her hair as she stood on the brightening clouds of the eastern mountain peaks of Nuka Hiva, and with her golden bugle of silence she blew transcendent streaks of crimson along the grey horizon—to awaken the day.

The sounds of the natives beating their drums aroused the echoes of the hills.

“Wailo oooe! wailo ooooeeee!” called some nameless bird from the forest shadows where now the last of the Marquesan race sleep by their beloved seas.

The harbour was silent. Not an oath echoed from the grog shanty. The traders and sailormen still slept. I could not sleep. As I stood by the shore-sheds it seemed impossible that such tragedy should live in such beautiful surroundings. I was not sorry that I had secured a berth on the s.s. ——, a three-masted ship anchored out in the bay. She was due to sail on the Saturday morning, so I still had three more days in Nuka Hiva.

All the familiar faces had gone. News came in the Apia Times that the Bell Bird schooner had gone down in a typhoon, lost with all hands off Savaii Isle. The only evidence that the crew ever existed were several small, dark spots sighted by a passing ship’s skipper, fading away on the sky-line—the old peaked and oilskin caps of my old shellbacks drifting away on the waste of waters, travelling N.N.W.

The Hebrew prophet might well have spoken of such a place as that wooden grog bar of Tai-o-hae when he said: “One generation passeth away and another cometh. Only the mountains abideth for ever.” Ah, Koheleth, your wisdom was the wisdom of truth. The sun sets and rises again, the winds blow eternally on appointed courses; the river flows to the sea; but whither shall I go? And where is he who went away ten thousand years ago?

Not only in the South Seas will you hear of the tragedy of Waylao. She is at your door wailing—if you have eyes to see and ears to hear. She walks the ghostly London streets by night, calling for her lost lover. And one may pass her nameless grave wherever the dead are buried.

Perhaps my pages smack too much of sorrow; but I would say that even our sorrows are too brief. Life itself is little more than this:

A man and a woman awoke in the hills of Time.

“How beautiful is the sun that I see,” said the man, after admiring the beauty of the woman who had so mysteriously appeared before him. Still the man stared at the sun, but so brief was his existence that, when he turned to gaze once more on the glory of the woman beside him, she had wrinkled up to a wraith of skin and bone.

“What is this terrible thing that has happened?” he said, as he wept to see so terrible a change in that which he loved. “What have I done?” he moaned.

Then the woman wept and said: “You too have altered since you turned your face to the sun; it is wrinkled, and your cheeks look like the cheeks of that big toad.”

Hearing this, the man rushed off into the forest and prayed to his shadow in the lake, thinking it was Omnipotence!

Rushing back to see if his prayer had been answered, he saw a little heap of dust: it was all that was left of the beautiful woman. He shouted his hatred to the sky, then he fell prostrate and prayed fervently, and then—he was struck deaf, dumb and blind; and only the sun laughed over the hills again so that the flowers could blossom over their dust.

So one will see that it is natural that sorrow as well as rum and wild song should reign in Tai-o-hae.

When I went to say good-bye to the old priest, I was astonished to see the change in him. But I must confess that I was more astonished when he gazed steadily at me and said:

“My son, I have discovered the great secret. We are both nearer the sorrow of Calvary and the joy of Paradise than I ever dreamed!”

Saying this, the old man took my hand, and said in his rich, musical voice, that strangely thrilled me: “Come!”

In wonder I followed him beneath the palms.

As we passed down into the hollows, the sea-gulls swept swiftly away from the surfaces of the hidden lagoons, their wild cries sounding like the ghostly echoes of bugles.

The priest led me up the tiny track that led to the path by the mountains, not far from the cross-roads that led to the calaboose of Nuke Hiva. I began to wonder what on earth it could all mean, for the old priest had a strange look on his face and was running his fingers through his beads.

Suddenly he turned to me and said, in a cracked voice: “My son, lift thine eyes, and breathe the hallowed name of Him who died for sinners.”

I made a mighty effort and obeyed. After I had looked up at the sky with due decorum, he looked stealthily around him, and said in a tense whisper: “My son, to think I have dwelt so near and never known.”

“Known what, Father?” I ejaculated, my heart full of wonder. (I noticed that his eyes were unearthly bright.)

“My son,” he said, in a hushed voice, “it is here where our Lord Jesus Christ died! I have discovered the remains of the old Cross!”

“No! Never!” I ejaculated, as he fell on his knees and lifted up a large lump of grey coral stone. I admit that it looked like the remnant of some tomb’s edifice. Under the influence of the Father’s earnest manner I was thrilled with curious wonder as I stared at the lump of stone. My belief at that moment was as firm as the rock that the priest still held.

“’Tis the very stone, the cross that our Redeemer was crucified upon,” said he, as he stared at me.

“How did it come here, all the way from Jerusalem?” I said, in a hushed voice, as I gazed on the sacred relic.

“I know not, my son, but there it is. Canst thou not see it with thine own eyes?”

“Assuredly I can, Father,” I murmured, as I looked at that old stone, and thought how like an ordinary cross stone off a mortal’s grave it seemed. True enough, the cemetery was close by, the spot where they buried sad, home-sick men, women and children—and did she not lie there, the dead convict girl?

I took the Father’s hand and led him away. I called a native woman who passed to take his other arm. He was old and tremulous, and I saw the truth.

“So that’s the end of all your life’s self-sacrifice, your reward,” I muttered to myself as we led the demented old man away.

That night the natives in the village hard by the mission-room could not sleep, neither could I, as the Father lay calling out wild prayers to the silent night, and strange names echoed in his room. That’s almost the last I saw, or rather heard, of him.

My last visit in Tai-o-hae was to a place that anyone may go and see to this very day. For the little track that lies north-west of the bay leads suddenly upon a little plateau by Calaboose Hill. It is a lonely spot, sheltered on one side by coco-palms and a few bread-fruit trees. It is half fenced in by rough wooden railing. Across its hollows are many piles of earth and stones. Old-time chiefs and missing white men sleep there. Jungle grass and hibiscus blossoms almost hide the cross where Waylao sleeps, and not so far away Pauline also lies at rest.

It was night when I last stood there—the winds seemed to strike the giant bread-fruits with a frightened breath. Far away the ocean winds were lifting the seas in their arms beneath the stars, till the ocean looked like some mighty hissing cauldron of thwarted desires.

I could just hear faintly the echoes of wild song coming in from a ship in the bay, and from the new generation of shellbacks in the grog shanty.

It’s years since I packed up my traps and sailed away from Tai-o-hae. I called in at Samoa and saw the Matafas. When I had told them the history and end of Waylao and Tamafanga, they both laid their old heads on the hut table and cried like two children.

No wonder I love heathens and hate the memory of Mr and Mrs Christian Pink, of Suva township.

And what is the moral of the foregoing reminiscences and impressions? The moral will be understood or ignored according to the temperament of the reader. Some will sneer, and some will understand and feel as I have felt. I’m sure to find good company among many; I’ve travelled the world and met many of my own type. I’m common enough, thank God.

“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever,” said the poet. So is sorrow. Nothing really dies; it’s all the same as it was long before, in some new form being washed in again by the tide. The bird that sings to us to-day sang to the reapers in the corn-fields of Assyria. I dare say that I helped to build the Pyramids.

Is Grimes dead? No! He lives to-day, buckles on his armour, and with a grim, brave look in his English eyes goes forth to battle, that the helpless may live.

And Pauline? She still sings of England to exiled men, wherever Waylao has wept for her race in the savage, ravished South.

I often hear their old songs as the winds and birds sing in the windy poplars, in the green woods and English fields. I never go forth in the summer nights but I can hear her shadow-feet pattering down the dusky lanes beside me, and the sweetest songs of far-off romance echo in my ears. Ah! could I catch the beauty of those songs, what a composer would I be. But I can only write down the spindrift of those glorious strains.

I often sit dreaming far into the night. It is then that she comes back from the shadows and kneels with me at the altar of my dreams—and sings some far-off strain of my beautiful, dead Romance.