The mystery had been building in our minds since first hearing Whiskey Bill’s description. Why had Stevenson left behind the rest of the world to remain on an island desolate of any trace of culture? I was burning to ask Hines more questions about what he knew of Stevenson’s life on the island, but Davenport wisely returned to his meal and I followed his example.
Our lack of interest had its intended effect. Once he had attention, the merchant wanted to keep it. “Remember the map of Upolu I showed you in my stateroom?” he continued. “Stevenson has a large plot of land he calls Vailima, four hundred acres in all, where he has built quite an impressive mansion.”
“What does it mean, Hines?” I asked. “The name of his property, I mean.”
“‘Five streams.’ Stevenson’s place is high up, right at the edge of a volcano, with some waterfalls, and you can only see the place from out in the ocean. Anywhere else on the island, that vast property of his is invisible to the human eye. He is an island on an island.”
The only other time Stevenson came up in conversation during the voyage was another occasion at the captain’s table, a meal with Captain Ormond present. Ormond was a hardened sailor who, when asked the date, would answer only, “Eighteen hundred and war.” Of course, dates and times meant little to men at sea who lived by latitude and wind direction, the reds of sunrise and oranges of sunset.
“Stevenson, yes, then there’s Mr. Stevenson,” the captain of the Colossus said with apparent admiration. He had been talking about some of the earnest missionaries, the lazy beachcombers, and other white inhabitants to be found on the islands.
Hines, who had been seasick and in a fouler-than-usual mood despite passive weather, grumbled to himself, then asked what the captain thought of the man.
“Splendid! I never met him, though,” Ormond said, taking a smoke from his weathered clay pipe. “He was holed up in that plantation of his during the other times I have been stationed at the Apia port. Nor have I read but one or two of his stories and can’t say I remember those awfully well other than the fact that they were terribly entertaining.”
“I must say though I do not pretend I could write a novel I would also never read one, and for the same reasons. But if you are not some rabid reader, Captain Ormond, then what is it about him that makes you smile like a child sucking on candy?” Hines asked irritably.
Ormond’s admirable face and brittle lips became very serious, even macabre. He put his pipe down. “Because, Mr. Hines, maybe that is what it takes in these parts of the world. A man with a novelist’s romantic imagination, to save those islands from the dark times that the rest of us bring them.”
Hines finished chewing and frowned. “Well, I’ve seen that odd scarecrow Stevenson from time to time riding on his ugly horse in Apia, with his even odder wife. How a man with arms that thin could even write books is a fact beyond my understanding.”
? ? ?
LAND!
Fiction writers have employed their inventive powers to imagine life on other planets, with the strange beings living there among sometimes dreary, sometimes fantastic landscapes. These wordsmiths go to too much trouble. Visit the far reaches of our own earth and you will experience what it is to enter another world. From a distance the islands of the South Seas greet the eye with the most magnificent majesty. Then, steering closer, the land that hours earlier looked lush and dark green becomes rocky and frowning, before turning bright and colorful and welcoming again as you glide along the coast. Conflicting impressions rushed through me as we closed in on the Samoan islands, still small dots of color in the blue horizon. I felt bursts of excitement, of peace; of sanctuary, of peril; of familiarity, of mystery; of being home, of being as far from it as I could ever be.
I asked one of the officers how we would know which island was Upolu. He said I would know it when I saw it.
The staggering sun beat down on the shiny white decks. To my right, Davenport leaned far out over the railing, sending a few seabirds fluttering away. He was once again clean-shaven and looked ten years younger because of it. He was looking over the horizon when the islands came into view about eight miles out and gradually grew in size. He set a cigar between his teeth and tried to light one soggy match after another before giving up. Then he turned away.
“Don’t you want to see the islands for yourself?” I asked, astonished that after nearly a month at sea he would have such fleeting interest. He had come above deck only a few minutes ago.
“I just did,” he said, on his way back belowdecks. “Wake me when we get to port, Fergins,” he called back after me.