Under the Wide and Starry Sky

CHAPTER 64

My dear Fanny Sitwell,

By now Louis has told Sidney that we will be delayed from returning to England. After four months in Honolulu, it is ever clearer that Louis’s health fares best at sea, and truth be told, the social whirl of Honolulu has worn heavily on us. Belle’s friend King Kalakaua has entertained us royally, but we have simpler needs than ever before, and we long for one more cruise, this time to the Gilbert Islands. Louis found a new trading ship, the Equator, which will take us on and allow us to explore di?erent islands while it’s in port, conducting its trading activities. Copra is the main product the Equator crew wants, and it is plentiful in the South Seas. Copra, by the way, is the dried meat of the coconut that they boil in water to make coconut oil.

The captain of the ship is a fresh-faced boy of twenty-three who wears a tam-o’-shanter and whose speech is heavily sauced with a Scots accent. Can you imagine Louis’s pure joy to have a countryman at the wheel? Mrs. Stevenson will return to Scotland for a while, but Lloyd will go with us, continuing on as photographer for the South Seas book. So will Belle’s husband, Joe, who will photograph also (and hopefully straighten out his life under our watch). Belle and her little boy will go on to Sydney to live for four months until we arrive there.

How we miss you! But we will never have another chance to see this part of the world in this way. And so we go.

With dearest affection, believe me,

Fanny V. de G. Stevenson

“You’re about to get your wish, Mr. Stevenson,” Captain Reid said. The slender young Scot, topped as usual by his tartan bonnet, took a ?nal gulp from a tin cup before returning his attention to the ship’s wheel.

“Which wish is that?”

“For a braw adventure, sir. The Equator shall make for Apemama.” “Apemama? The home of …”

“Tembinoka, aye.”

Fanny  saw  Louis’s  back  straighten  and  his  eyes  shoot  sparks.  “The  Napoleon  of  the Gilberts?”

“The same,” Reid replied. Louis giggled jubilantly.

“Have you met him?” Fanny asked.

“Oh, yes. Several times. You will, too—he does all his own trading. He comes aboard and sometimes stays overnight. Eats our food, which is all for the good, because it means we have something that he wants. He has a huge appetite for new objects.” Reid laughed. “He has a huge appetite.”

“And he has copra …”

“Houses of it. That’s how he sells it. By the houseful.” “Are you afraid of him?”

Reid’s brows went up.  “Well, I don’t cross him. He has killed coldheartedly in his day. They say he murdered one of his wives who betrayed him. Put her rotting corpse out in front of his palace as a lesson to the others. He won’t let whites stay on his island but for one broken-down old fellow who is a recluse. Oh, he allowed a missionary to stay around long enough to teach him English, then booted him o?. He won’t even let traveling natives from other islands stay. No, Tembinoka must be the only man in charge, you see. He has a few chaps as lieutenants, but mostly, he is surrounded by his women. Has a whole harem.” Reid turned to his first mate. “Smarten up the ship. We are headed into Apemama.”
In a few minutes, sailors with mops and buckets were scrubbing decks and overhauling the trading room. In the distance, Fanny could see the slender strip of atoll and its interior lagoon. “So small a kingdom for so great an ogre,” she mused aloud.

The Equator edged carefully through shoals until they dropped anchor. The sun was so glaringly bright upon the beach that the glittering white strip seemed to bore into Fanny’s retinas. Onshore she saw a village smattered with high-roofed huts but no people. Apart from the sound of the waves, the scene was eerily quiet.

“Now we wait for our visitor,” Reid said.

Soon enough, a handful of people appeared. A boat carrying the king and a large ladder approached the ship.  “He once had a ship’s ladder collapse under him,” Reid explained. “Now he brings his own.”

Fanny understood the need when she spied the king climbing onto the Equator’s deck. Tembinoka’s large head of black hair came up over the ship’s railing, and then his great brown forearms lifted up a massive body attired in a costume that stole her breath away. It was a cardinal-red velvet uniform so braided and beribboned, she wondered if somehow the king had seen a Gilbert and Sullivan production. If his costume revealed a giddy streak, his face did not. He had a hawkish nose, piercing black eyes, and a ?ercely sober mouth. He’s all business, she thought.

After Reid introduced the king to Louis and Fanny, Tembinoka began his appraisal of the trading room’s contents. Bored quickly by the bolts of fabric and appliances, he moved through the ship, poking his head into every cabin. When he got to Fanny’s room, he spied a dressing case that caught his fancy.

“It is utterly worthless,” she whispered to Louis, “certainly useless for a man. I keep my hair combs and such in there.”

“I am afraid we can’t sell it,” Louis piped up.

The king looked at his face for the ?rst time. “How much?” Tembinoka asked in his high voice, clearly having assumed that Louis was starting a round of haggling.
“Gift from a friend,” Louis said, “so sorry.”

The king looked at him wearily, like a man accustomed to a familiar gambit. “Kaupoi.” He  smirked.  Fanny  suspected  the  word  meant “rich  man”  or,  more  cynically, “Mr. Important.” Tembinoka took a bag of coins from a retainer and spread out twenty pounds in gold. Twenty pounds!

Louis said, “I don’t sell anything. Please accept this as a gift.”

Fanny emptied the case and Louis put it into the king’s hands. They watched in horror as his features melted with shame. He was accustomed to being cheated by white men but was startled by white generosity. When he prepared to depart the boat with Fanny’s case under his arm, Louis seized the moment. “Might my wife and I stay on your island for a couple of weeks while the Equator makes its rounds to other islands?” he blurted out.
The king dropped his head and did not respond, only descended his kingly ladder. Within a  short time, a  carved wooden  jewel box appeared as replacement for the gift, but no answer to Louis’s question came with it.

“Why do you want to stay on his island?” Fanny asked.

“Because he is a story, I can tell already,” Louis said. “He is like no one else.” When Tembinoka returned early the next morning, they were seated at breakfast. Upon
his approach, Fanny surmised the king was bringing one of his women, for she spied a dress in the distance. In fact, it was Tembinoka himself coming into the saloon, attired in a woman’s green silk frock, a pith helmet, and blue glass spectacles. He sat across from them, and after a few syllables of greeting, proceeded to stare silently at each of them. Fanny squirmed under his inspection and made work of chasing her eggs across the plate with her fork so as not to have to look up again. Louis chatted on gaily as if it were all perfectly normal. Captain Reid interjected that Louis was a knowledgeable man whose main interest in the South Seas was to come to Apemama and report back to Queen Victoria all he’d learned. At that point, Louis’s jaw dropped and he fell silent.

After what seemed an eternity of staring, the king said simply, “You good man, you no

lie” and “You good woman. You come my island.”

So it was that they found themselves living in Apemama. Tembinoka ordered that four houses on stilts should be moved to the spot of their choice on the beach. Lloyd and Fanny and  Louis  watched  in  amazement  as  many  sets  of  legs  moved  together  under  the  big upturned-basket houses they called maniaps. If one of the movers tarried in his work, the king aimed his Winchester just above the offender’s head, and the fellow stepped livelier.
“I can only assume some locals have been displaced because we are here,” Louis worried aloud. “That can’t be too good for neighborly relations.”

When the huts were in place, Tembinoka  decreed that his subjects should observe an invisible tapu circle around the group of houses. The king walked the circumference himself so that no misunderstandings might occur. No native was to go inside that circle or disturb the newcomers in any way. Then he made clear his expectations of the Stevensons. He wanted to come to their house when the spirit moved him, to enjoy what they were eating. If he did not come, they were to send a plate of their dinner to his compound. His people would work for Louis and Fanny, but only Tembinoka could give them orders. And one other thing: He liked it quiet. No noise.

The  latter  prohibition  was  stunningly  evident  that  ?rst  night  on  the  beach.  Huddled under a mosquito net with a pot of insect powder burning nearby, Fanny and Louis listened for some sounds of life in the village but heard only the gentle lapping of waves.
In the following days, the king showed them his kingdom. He met them each day in a dazzling  new  costume  ?tted  carefully  to  his  ?gure,  each  garment  bearing  exaggerated dimensions of  features one found in  traditional clothing,  and each  made  up  in  vibrant fabrics  with  decorative  ?ourishes  unlike  any  they’d  ever  seen.  Tembinoka  had  a  style distinctly his own. On the morning he was to show them his storehouses, he appeared in a turquoise silk morning coat with tails that fell to his heels.

“That is a lovely color,” Fanny said, and she meant it. “It is the color of the sea.” Tembinoka nodded at the compliment. He led them to his palace, a collection of rustic
buildings surrounded by a fence. Inside the huts, women of every age, shape, and manner of dress moved about, attending to their responsibilities. Some cleaned, some nursed babies. A few slept on  mats.  Taking  them all in  with  a  sweep  of  his arm,  the king  said,  “My family.” He summoned his ?rst wife and introduced her formally to Fanny and Louis. The oldest of the women, she seemed gracious and on perfectly good terms with the other wives

in the household.

The king summoned a woman in charge of ?rearms, who returned with a case containing a  dissembled pistol  that  he  speci?cally  asked for.  Then  Tembinoka  directed a  di?erent woman—this  one  in  charge  of  napery—to  show  Fanny  recently  acquired  embroidered napkins.

Next  he  took  them  to  a  large  building  where  a  grim-faced  woman  in  charge  of  its contents  unlocked  the  door  and  ushered  them  in.  Piled  from  ?oor  to  ceiling  were  the machinery and fripperies of civilization that the king had managed to lay his hands on: bolts of fabric, piles of blue eyeglasses, feathered hats, high-button  shoes in  every size, barrels  of  tin  cups,  jars  of  ointment  with  lids  gone  rusty,  axes,  Winchesters,  cases  of tobacco, spittoons, inkpots, clocks, and stoves.

After the tour, they sat on the king’s terrace and drank kava. It soon became clear why the  chief  was  allowing  them  to  stay:  He  had  his  own  agenda.  He  pressed  them  with questions. How many fathoms high is Windsor Castle? the palace builder wanted to know. How much did it cost to buy a schooner in Sydney? Evidently, the king’s choice to preserve the islanders from the influence of other cultures meant he was in quarantine, too.
From navigation and building, his thoughts turned to medicine. The girl in charge arrived as instructed, holding a bottle of laxative syrup.

“You savvy?” he asked Fanny.

“Yes, I know it.”

“Good?”

“I use this.” Fanny wrote down the word Castoria for him. “Betta?”

“Much  better,” Fanny  said.  “The  ship  carries it.  We  will get  some  for  you when  the Equator returns.”

The king  pulled a  meerschaum pipe from his pocket.  He signaled a  young  lady  who stayed nearby with matches and tobacco. As all his subjects were required to do when they approached him, she crouched and then crawled over to him.

In his simple English, Tembinoka told the legend of his family’s beginnings—the ?rst parents being a heroic woman and a shark—about the wars his ancestors had waged, the wars he had waged, and the uncle he had to send away from the island for betraying him. He talked of his own power and how he liked things organized. Fanny’s instincts about

Tembinoka were con?rmed as he talked on. Despite his tight-?sted approach to governing, he talked of how deeply he cared for his people. The king was a smart fellow. He was not only the ruler of some three thousand people, he was their chief poet, architect, historian, philosopher, and inventor.

In  the  evening,  as  they  left  the  king’s  quarters,  Fanny  noticed  old  crones  sitting intermittently along the enclosing fence. These were the palace guards, she learned later, who watched through the night for any irregularities. They communicated with each other by throwing stones.

That night Louis and Fanny stayed awake for hours under the mosquito net, scribbling madly into their diaries by the light of a lantern, intent on noting every exotic detail they had witnessed.

“Where are the men?” Fanny wondered aloud.

“They’re  out  there,  in  the  huts  and  elsewhere,  but  they’re  invisible,  aren’t  they? Obviously, they hold inferior positions, except a few of his trusted minions. Did you notice those fellows who came in to confer with Tembinoka about doings in the village? I’m sure they were spies. They must come in every day to fill his ear.”

“The king is keeping a tight lid on his strange little paradise,” Fanny said. Louis scratched his head.  “I suppose Tembinoka thinks he can maintain control of his
kingdom  by  keeping  outsiders  away,  especially  whites.  You  can’t  blame  him.  But  his quarantine  can’t  last.  His little  cache  of  Winchesters is nothing  against  the  German  or French or American powers. When one of those countries decides he has something they want, he is going to topple. And along with him will go the identity of the people—their oral history, the legends, the songs. Isn’t that how these things work?”
In the weeks that followed, no native people came across the tapu line to visit them. They named their clutch of huts Equator Town and watched as life went on around them, just beyond the line. Sometimes they saw the king walk past and out into the water with one of his retainers, where they climbed into a ?shing boat—for the king liked to ?sh—untied the boat’s rope from the anchor—which happened to be a sewing machine—and headed out to sea. When they came back, Fanny would likely be presented with a large ?sh, which meant the king would be joining them for dinner. She planted salad greens that ?ourished and, in time, delighted Tembinoka.

In the mornings, Louis wrote. In the afternoons he and Lloyd collaborated on a novel set

in the Paci?c. After, they fantasized about having their own copra trading boat. In the evenings, Louis walked on the beach under the stars, playing his flageolet.
Fanny couldn’t forget her husband’s dire predictions for the future of this little silver crescent of sand sitting out in the vast blue ocean. She had grown fond of Tembinoka. She heard in his conversation the pride of a man who had built up a society that was modern, compared to the world he had inherited from his predecessors.

The Equator was overdue by nearly two weeks, and Fanny expected it would come any moment. They were all ready to go, their provisions were running short, and they were sorely tired of eating wild chicken. She wanted to give the king a gift before they left. Though the man seemed to have one of everything, he lacked a ?ag for his kingdom. One morning she quickly sketched out a design. She envisioned a banner with three stripes— yellow, green, and red—with a black shark at its center, and below it, the words I bite triply.

“It’s a reference to the shark’s three rows of teeth,” she explained to Louis. That night a copra trading ship called the Tiernan was in harbor. The king threw a big
party with ?reworks and dancing but, strangely, did not invite them. Fanny and Louis were inside their hut when they heard a gunshot near the palace.

“Do you think someone has shot the king?”

“The thought hadn’t occurred to me, but now that you say it  …” Louis got up, loaded their pistols, and put them near at hand.

In their hut in Equator Town, they lay awake listening.

Someone shot at a dog, the king explained when he came by the hut the next morning. Fanny was glad to see Tembinoka alive, though he was, uncharacteristically, a little drunk. She showed him her design for the Apemama ?ag, and he beamed his approval. He didn’t stay long. Louis was not there, and the king seemed like a small, tired child when he said, “I want to go home.”

Louis  arrived  next,  with  urgent  news.”The  captain  of  the Tiernan  says  we  can  take passage with him to Samoa. No one knows what has happened to the Equator.”
“All right.”

“We’ll have to pack quickly. They depart tomorrow.”

The next day, Fanny cast her gaze at their belongings, strewn around the hut, which she couldn’t bring herself to pack. “Captain Reid is expecting us to be here,” she said, but her

shoulders sank and she admitted what was on her mind: “I have this dreadful feeling … I don’t want to go.”

“The lady has a dreadful feeling.” Louis sighed. But he did not pursue his teasing and canceled their passage.

When   the Equator  arrived  the  following  week  and  the  Stevensons  climbed  aboard, Tembinoka wept on the dock.

“Did you get the news about the Tiernan?” Reid asked them over a dinner of octopus and clams on the boat that evening.

Fanny caught her breath.

“Becalmed, they were, just bobbing around with no wind, so everyone went to sleep, I suppose, when up sprang a squall that made the boat turn turtle. It was just a day or two out of Apemama.”

“I can’t believe it,” Louis said. “We just saw them off.” “Sixteen dead,” Reid said gravely.

They  fell  quiet.  Fanny  remembered  the  faces  of  the  men  they  had  befriended  and wondered who among them had died.

In the coming days, when storms chased the Equator from Apemama to Samoa, Fanny settled her blankets in a narrow galley-way so she wouldn’t be thrown from her bed. Waves came  over  the  prow  and poured down  below,  leaving  her  in  a  shallow  lake.  She  was terri?ed, but she would never admit that to Louis. Instead, she lay fully dressed, with an umbrella over her head, thinking about the lost men on the Tiernan, who went from dreams to death in the flutter of an eye.