A frank statement. We vote on the question of matrimony. A triple wedding. An epithalmic verse. We remember the "Kawa." An interview with William Henry Thomas. Triplett's strategy. Safe within the atoll.
In most volumes on the South Seas the chapter which I am about to write would be omitted. I mean to say that we have reached a point in my narrative in which the status of our relations with the Filbertine women, as such, must either be discussed frankly and openly, or treated in the usual tongue-in-cheek fashion which seems to be the proper thing with English and American writers.
I have looked them all over carefully (the writers, I mean), and find them divided into two categories, those who take their wives along as a guarantee of virtue, or those who are by nature Galahads, Parsifals and St. Anthonys. This latter group is to me particularly trying. They revel in descriptions of desirous damsels with burning eyes who crave companionship, but when an artfully devised encounter throws one of these passionate persons across the path of the man behind the pen, does he falter or swerve or make a misstep? Never. Right there is where the blood of the Galahads tells. Supremely he rises above temptation! Gracefully he sidesteps! Innocently he falls asleep!
I don't believe a word of it. I think it's just a case of literary men sticking together.
Two days after the Grand Banquet described in the last chapter, Whinney, Swank and I awoke with a sigh of simultaneous satisfaction, completely rested and restored. Ten minutes later we were engaged in a brisk debate in which the question before the house was, stated boldly, Should we or should we not "go native?" In other words, should we hold ourselves aloof, live contrary to the customs of the country and mortally offend our hosts,—to say nothing of our hostesses,—or should we fulfil our destinies, take unto ourselves island brides and eat our equatorial fruit, core and all?
For the purpose of discussion Whinney was designated to uphold the negative, and for an hour we argued the matter pro and con. Whinney advanced a number of arguments, the difference in our nationalities, our standing in our home communities (which I thought an especially weak point), our lack of a common language, and several other trivial objections, all of which Swank and I demolished until Whinney got peevish and insisted that he and I change sides.
I spoke very seriously of the lack of precedent for the step which we were considering and of what my people in Derby, Conn., would say when they learned that a Traprock had married a Filbert. Swank replied with some heat that he didn't believe that anything could be said in Derby that hadn't been said already and Whinney was much more eloquent on the affirmative than he had been on the negative. Finally when I thought we had talked enough I said—
"Well, gentlemen, are you ready for a ballot?"
"We are," said Swank and Whinney.
"Remember," I warned, "The green nuts are for the affirmative,—the black ones for the negative. Secret ballots, of course."
Wrapping our votes in metani leaves we dropped them in the ballot shell. Whinney was teller. It was an anxious moment until he looked up and said with a hysterical quiver in his voice:
"Unanimously green."
"Let's go!" shouted Swank, but I stopped him.
"Hold on," I said. "Triplett is in on this. We agreed that it must be unanimous."
My companions' faces lengthened like barrel-staves.
"Damn," muttered Whinney. "I hadn't thought of him."
You can imagine our disgust when we interviewed the Captain.
"Not on your life!" he said decidedly. "Why, boys, I got two a 'em a-ready, one in Noo Bedford—she's my lawful,—and one—a sort of 'erdeependence, in Sausalito. But boys, I don't go for to commit trigonometry, no sir!"
Thunder rested on our brows but the Captain continued,—
"But you—you boys, you ain't married, leastways if you are I don't know about it, and if you ain't"—he looked at us severely,—"if you ain't, it's high time you was. And what's more, if you want to be, I kin do it for you." "What do you mean?" we gasped.
"Justice of the peace," he said proudly, "dooly signed and registered in Dartmouth County, Mass."
We were overwhelmed. This was more than we dared hope for,—more than we had even dreamed of!
"Now, boys," said the Captain in a fatherly tone, "lemme tell you something. While I've been a-roostin' up here in my perch, I've been a-watchin' you boys; a-watchin' an' a-worryin'. What have you been a-doin'? You've been a-raisin' hell, you have. Son, you ain't a rote a word, have yer? An' you, Whinney—boy, you ain't ketched a bug nor a beetle, have yer? And you, ole Swanko-panko, you ain't drawed a line, have yer?"
We hung our heads like schoolboys before the master. Of course if Triplett put it that way, on moral grounds, so to speak, there was no more to be said.
"Well, what's the answer?" he continued. "It's time you got married an' settled down, ain't it? When is it to be?"
* * *
It was a triple wedding, the first and probably the last in the Filbert Islands, and one of the most charming affairs I have ever seen. We left the selection of our brides to Baahaabaa and, believe me, he showed himself a master-picker. The ceremony took place on the beach at high midnight, the fashionable island hour.
How happy we all were! Triplett's qualifications had completely cleared the atmosphere of any moral misgivings which might have clouded the beauty of the gorgeous tropical night. The Captain read a service of his own composition full of legal whereases and aforesaids and containing one reference to the laws of the Commonwealth of the State of Massachusetts which struck me as rather far-fetched but which under the circumstances I decided to let pass.
Mrs. Traprock, of whom I can even now write only with deep emotion, was an exquisite creature, constructed in accordance with the best South Sea specifications in every particular. Swank and Whinney were equally fortunate. We would not have traded wives for ten tons of copra though Moolitonu, who was my best man, explained that this was perfectly possible in case we were not satisfied.
The gayest of wedding breakfasts followed at which all the ushers behaved in the orthodox manner after which we were conducted to our individual trees with appropriate processional and epithalamic chorals. The ladies' singing society had composed for the occasion a special ode which ran as follows:
Hooio-hoaio uku kai unio,
Kipiputuonaa aaa titi huti,
O tefi tapu, O eio hoki
Hoio-hooio ona haasi tui.
This was set to a slow five-eighths rhythm. A crude translation of the words, lacking entirely the onomatopoetic quality of the original goes something like this:
Stay, O stay, Moon in your ascending!
Daughter of Pearl and Coral to the Moon up-goes,
Stay, O stay, Moon with light unending,
Coral, Pearl and Moonlight, guard them from falling cocoanuts.
I should stand convicted of ingratitude if I did not here and now pay tribute to the sound common-sense of Captain Triplett at whose instigation we had embarked upon this our great adventure. As Triplett had predicted, ere a few days had passed we found awakening within us the fires of ambition which had sunk lower and lower in our breasts during our two weeks of carousing. We were now responsible married men. We wanted to do something to take our places in the community.
I began to scribble furtively on the back of an old manuscript—the book of an operetta I had once written, a musical version of Les Miserables called "Jumping Jean," in reference to which one of the New York producers, Dillingham, I think, wrote me: "You have out-Hugo-ed Hugo; this is more miserable than Les Miserables itself!" I noticed also that Swank began to use his atelier jargon of "tonal values" and "integrity of line," while Whinney showed up one morning in the village circle with a splendid blossom of the bladder-campion (Silene latifolia) pinned to the center of his helmet.
It was doubtless this renaissance of mental activity that reminded us of the Kawa and of William Henry Thomas. Great heavens, what would he think of us? Here nearly a month had elapsed, we were mostly married and had never given him a thought. We were filled with compunction. On top of this Triplett came to us with the announcement that Baahaabaa had informed him that we might expect a big wind about this time. Remembering what we had been through the Captain was worried about our tight little craft.
"He allows," said Triplett, jerking his thumb at the chief, "that we orter git the Tree-with-Wings in out'er the wet. The question is, where be she?"
I explained our anxieties to Ablutiluti who, after a glance at Moolitonu's diagrammatic shoulder blades, immediately set out along a winding path to the shore. I was surprised at the shortness of the distance. A half-hour's walk brought us to the beach and there lay the Kawa as handy as you please. She had been considerably tidied up since our departure. Our blanket-sail had been stowed and between the dingey-oars, which were rigged fore-and-aft, stretched a rope of eva-eva from which, to our surprise, hung an undershirt and a dainty feminine rigolo. But no sign of William Henry Thomas. In vain we shouted, "Kawa ahoy!" and hurled lumps of coral. All was mysteriously quiet.
Triplett finally pulled out his Colt and, being a dead shot, drilled the undershirt through the second button. This had the desired effect. Our crew almost immediately appeared on deck and shouted peevishly, "Hey there, quit it."
I will not repeat what we said in reply as this is a book for the home, but it had a surprising result.
"Is that so?" yelled William Henry Thomas and proceeded to step jauntily over the rail and walk in our direction. I knew he couldn't swim a stroke and yet here he was, performing an apparent miracle right in our faces. Then it suddenly dawned on me—he was walking on the coral branches!
It was not a particularly pleasant interview.
Readers of the text may have noticed that animal life plays a very unimportant part in the life of the Filbertines. Exception must be made in the case of a magnificent ooka-snake, the only one on the islands, which was the proudest possession of lovely Lupoba, who later became the wife of Herman Swank. The ooka-snake lives entirely upon cocoanut milk which gives him a gentle disposition admirably adapted for petting. Mr. Swank has confessed that his wife's fondness for the creature stirred in him a very real jealousy which, in view of the charming testimony of her portrait, we can well understand. A painting of Mrs. Swank by her husband has recently been purchased by the Corcoran Art Gallery of Washington, D.C.]
After apologizing for our absence, which we attributed to illness, we broke the news as gently as possible that we were married.
"Well," said William Henry Thomas, "so be I ... the lady's on board."
"You old land-crab!" blazed Whinney. "Who married you?"
"She did," he replied.
"But who performed the ceremony?" asked Swank.
"Me," answered William Henry.
In vain we tried to explain the necessity of proper rites. His only rejoinder was, "You're too late."
But what made our sailor-man maddest was the information that the yawl had to be moved.
"Here I be as snug as a bug in a rug," he stormed, "an' you go gallivantin' round marrying an' what all, an' now you show up an boost me out. Its e-viction, that's what it is, e-viction."
This was a long speech for William Henry Thomas; fortunately it was his last. While he was delivering it I heard a slight splash and turned just in time to see a seal-like form slip over the Kawa's counter and disappear. I watched in vain for her reappearance. Doubtless like all Filbertines she could stay under water for hours at a time. After that Thomas sullenly did Triplett's bidding and half-heartedly assisted in the work of getting the Kawa into the atoll.
It was an arduous task. For four days we labored, working our vessel close in shore opposite a clearing in the forest, where the outer island was not more than quarter of a mile wide and free from trees. Instructed by Triplett, we paved the highway to the lagoon with cocoanuts. Our wives and friends thinking it was a game, assisted us. If they had known it was work they would, of course, have knocked off immediately. And then the promised storm broke and I saw Triplett's plan.
It was such a storm as this, undoubtedly, that had struck us on July 4th. This time, crouched in the shelter of the near-by trees, clinging to the matted haro, we were free to watch a stupendous spectacle. Triplett alone went aboard and lashed himself to the improvised steering post. Our sail had been stretched and rigged with hundreds of yards of eva-eva, in addition to which four large taa-taas were lashed along the scuppers.
In less time than it takes to tell, the wind had risen to super-hurricane force. Suddenly Baa-haabaa let out a yell of warning and pointed seaward. Rushing toward us at lightning speed was a wall of white water, sixty feet high! In a trice we were all in the treetops, my wife hauling me after her with praiseworthy devotion. All, did I say? All but Triplett. He was sublime. Then for the first time I knew that he was, in truth, our chief. Waving his free arm at the advancing maelstrom, he yelled defiance. Then this towering seawall hit him square in the stern.
I caught one fleeting glimpse of the Kawa gallantly riding the foam. An instant later she was flung with a tremendous crash far down the leafy lane. Fully half the distance she must have gone in that first onslaught. The last eighth-of-a-mile she ground her way through a torrent of sea and cocoanuts. The forest rang with the bellowing wind, the snapping coral branches and the screams of the whistling-trout fighting vainly against the current. What a plan was Triplett's! The cocoanuts, being movable, rolled with the flood and actually acted as ball bearings. Without them our craft must certainly have burst asunder.
The storm passed as quickly as it had come and by the time we had clambered to the ground and rushed across the atoll there lay our tight with Triplett on her quarter-deck immersed in the New Bedford "Argus."
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