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40. The Project Gutenberg eBook of Wine-Dark
Seas and Tropic Skies: Reminiscences and a
Romance of the South Seas
41. This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.
Title: Wine-Dark Seas and Tropic Skies: Reminiscences and a
Romance of the South Seas
Author: A. Safroni-Middleton
Release date: May 17, 2019 [eBook #59530]
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Chris Whitehead, Linda Cantoni, Barry
Abrahamsen, and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team
at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from
images
generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WINE-DARK SEAS
AND TROPIC SKIES: REMINISCENCES AND A ROMANCE OF THE
SOUTH SEAS ***
42. The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public
domain.
47. PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED
EDINBURGH
48. I dedicate this book to you,
To your wild songs and laughter,
And to the half-remembered light
Here in my dreams years after;
To you, the men who sailed with me
Beyond each far sky-line,
And my dead self—the boy I knew
In days of auld lang syne.
50. CONTENTS
PAGE
Foreword 11
Chapter I 19
Chapter II 28
Chapter III 43
Chapter IV 50
Chapter V 54
Chapter VI 59
Chapter VII 74
Chapter VIII 80
Chapter IX 83
Chapter X 93
Chapter XI 104
Chapter XII 112
Chapter XIII 128
Chapter XIV 138
Chapter XV 142
Chapter XVI 150
Chapter XVII 167
Chapter XVIII 179
Chapter XIX 196
Chapter XX 201
Chapter XXI 205
53. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
LAGOON SCENE, APIA Frontispiece
MOUNTAIN SCENERY, NUKA
HIVA
24
NATIVE TATTOOED WITH
ARMORIAL BEARINGS
80
FOREST SCENE, MARQUESAS
GROUP
114
PINEAPPLE PLANTATION, FIJI 198
BANANA PLANTATION, FIJI 220
BY APIA HARBOUR 268
HALF-CASTE SAMOAN CHIEF 294
55. I
FOREWORD
N this volume of reminiscences and impressions I have
endeavoured to express some of the elements of romance that
remain in my memory of wanderings in the South Seas.
My characters are all taken from life, both the settlers and the
natives. I have striven to give an account of native life, modes and
codes, and to describe the general characteristics of certain island
tribes that are now extinct.
My attempt is not so much the wanderer’s usual book with its
inevitable blemishes, for the reason that it is one voluminous
blemish, but I’m hoping that, after a lapse of years, my mind has
retained the something that’s worth the recording. Besides, I’ve
smashed about so much in this grey, swashbuckling world of Grand
Old Liars, knighted thieves, rogues and successful hypocrites, that
the background of my life in early boyhood seems a dim fairyland,
whereover I roamed at will from wonder to wonder, laden with the
wealth of cheek and impudence enormous. Reaping such wonders I
fail to find in pages of romance experiences that outrival those of my
boyhood, which leads me to imagine that I can paint down, out of
the Past, some of the sparkling atmosphere that buoyed me up in
the wide travels of my youth.
Wonderful and unsuspected are the unheard harmonies that guide
the footsteps of romantic vagabonds. They know not that deep in
the heart of their existence bubble the eternal springs of beauty,
and, as they tramp on, their footsteps beat to the rhythm of the
song they will not hear—until they be older! And stranger still have
been my own immediate experiences. I once officiated as chief
56. mourner at the burial of a romantic old trader who had suddenly
died through the effects of a great spree! He had a wooden leg, a
limb that he had extemporised from good, green wood. We stuck
that sad heritage (it was all that he could leave us) over his grave in
the forest, having made a cross of it. On visiting the spot about
three months afterwards I observed that the old wooden leg had
burst into leaf—had blossomed forth into pretty blue flowers! Sure
am I that neither our old dead pal, in his wildest and most romantic
moods, nor indeed one of us, had dreamed of the hidden
potentialities of that wooden leg—how one day it would once more
come to the poor body’s assistance, making his very grave in the
solitude beautiful.
Well, in a way, I would think that my book is like unto that
wooden leg; for, as that artificial member—being green—did not
snap as it helped our stumbling pal along, so has the romance in
these pages helped me along on my travels, buoying me up in my
weakest hours. And now I feel that, like my old pal’s wooden leg, my
half-remembered romance, reviving, may blossom over the long-
buried light of other days.
So, should anyone notice that I sometimes write in a reflective
strain when describing my experiences and those of my characters,
it is because it is in that way the past is now presented to my mind.
All that I wish to attempt is to throw my different characters into
clear relief, and bring to the surface a hint of the undercurrents that
moved them on their wandering ways.
Looking back, it seems like some wild dream that I arrived in that
romantic world of islands when a boy; that I once stood in the
presence of tawny, majestic, tattooed potentates who loved to hear
me play the violin. Yet ’tis true enough. I have lingered by the side
of dethroned kings and romantic queens, taken their hands in
fellowship, lending a willing ear to their griefs. For I was in at the
death of that tottering, barbarian dynasty of mythological splendour
—the aristocratic world of force—which has now faded into the
historic pages of romantic, far-off, forgotten things.
57. Not only those chiefs and chiefesses of the forests impressed my
imagination, but also the white men, the settlers of those days. They
were self-exiled men. Some belonged to the lost brigade, drifting to
the security of those palmy isles.
When I think of that wild crew, their manly ways, keen eyes and
strong, sunburnt faces, their diversified types, their brave, strangely
original characters, it almost seems that I went away ages ago to
another world, where I explored the regions of wonderful minds.
And now I stare across the years into the nebulous memories of far-
off, bright constellations of friendly eyes and hopes. Such hopes!
I now recall those rough men revealed to me the best and most
interesting phases of the human mind roaming the plains of life,
some staring at the stars with earnest wonder, and some searching
for the lights of distant grog shanties!
Much of my apparently strained philosophical reflections may
appear like strange digressions and slightly unbalanced rhapsodies.
My excuse for this is, that I am endowed with a strange mixture of
misanthropy and misplaced humour. Humour is like poetry, it cannot
be defined. The humour that I possess is something of an
unrecognisable quality, and I have often spent sleepless nights
laughing convulsively over my own jokes! Often have I sat in some
South Sea grog shanty telling my most exquisite joke, only to look
up to see all the rough men burst into tears! On one occasion I told
what I thought to be the most pathetic incident I knew—lo! men
smacked me on the back and were seized with paroxysms of ecstatic
laughter!
When I dwelt for a brief period in England I listened to many
thousands of British jokes, but I cannot recall that I laughed more
than twice. This fact alone convinces me that I am incorrigibly dull
and devoid of recognised mirth. So, whoever takes up my book with
the idea of gathering laughter will lay it down disappointed. I feel
that it is better to make this confession at the outset.
58. Well, the men who travelled the South Seas in the days when I
was a boy will vouch for the truth of what I say about the strange
characters who lived in those wild parts—and they were wild in
those days. I guarantee that, as I proceed with my chapters, my
only artificial colouring will be introduced to enable me to touch up
some of my characters so that they may be presented to polite
readers in polite form.
When I think of those castaways from civilised lands, how I
tramped across vast plains in their company, sat by their camp-fires
far away in the Australian and New Zealand bush, I feel that I once
met humanity in its most blessed state. Often they would sit and
sing some old English, Irish or Scots song, as the whimpering
’possums leapt across the moonlit branches of our roof. Listening to
their tales of better days, it seemed incredible that there really was a
civilised world thousands of miles across the seas. The memories of
the great cities appeared like far-off opéra bouffe, where the actors
rushed across the phantom limelight in some terrified fright from
their own dreams. The thought of vigilant policemen on London’s
streets, the cataclysm of running wheels, crowds of huddled women
and men staring in lamp-lit, serrated shop windows, pale-faced
street arabs shouting “Evening News! Star and Echo!” swearing bus-
men, shrieking engines, trains pulling back to the suburbs cargoes of
wretched people who thought they were intensely happy—seemed
something absurd, something that I dreamed before my soul fledged
its wings and flew away from the homestead surrounded by the
windy poplar trees—away to the steppes of another world.
Yet—and strange it is—had an English thrush, in some mysterious
way, commenced to sing somewhere down the wide groves of
banyans and karri-karri trees, our hearts’ blood would have pulsed to
the soul of England!
One may ask, in this sceptical old world, why such fine fellows as
my old beachcombers and shellbacks turned out such apparent
rogues. I must say that I, too, have pondered on the mystery of it
all. The only conclusion that I can arrive at is, that they were, very
59. often, men who had been spirited, courageous, romantic-minded
boys, and so had once aspired beyond the beaten track and made a
bold plunge into pioneer life.
All men have some besetting sin, and it is so easy to slip and fall
by the wayside, to wrap one’s robe of shattered dreams about one,
and tell the civilised communities to go and hang themselves.
In reference to the half-caste girl and the white girl, Waylaos and
Paulines exist in this grey old world by millions, and will do so as
long as skies are blue and fields are green. Waylao was a half-caste
Marquesan girl; and Pauline—well, she was Pauline! Neither are the
leper lovers introduced for scenic effects. They, too, were terribly
real. Their whitened bones still lie clasped together in the island cave
in the lone Pacific. Terrible as their fate may appear, believe me, the
terror, the horror of the leper dramas enacted on the desolate seas
by Hawaii are only faintly touched upon in my book.
Old Matafa and his wife I number amongst my dearest Samoan
comrades. It was with them that I stayed during my last two
sojourns in Apia. The grog shanty near Tai-o-hae has possibly
vanished. Could I be convinced that it still stands beneath the
plumed palms, with its little door facing the moonlit sea, the dead
men, out of their graves, roaring their rollicking sea chanteys, what
should I do? I would long to speed across the seas, to become some
swift, silent old sea-gull. Yes, to be numbered with the dead so that
I might rejoin those ghosts and find such good company again.
As for Abduh Allah, the Malay Indian, I have expressed my opinion
of that worthy in the book. I have no personal grudge against
Mohammedanism in the South Seas, any more than I have for the
Mohammedans and their white converts in the Western Seas. The
islands—especially Fiji—through the immigration of men from the
Indian, China, and Malay archipelagos are rapidly becoming South
Sea India, the white man’s creed being converted into a kind of pot-
pourri of Eastern, Southern and Western theology, doing the can-
can.