Island Nights' EntertainmentsStevenson, Robert Louis
General
Island Nights' Entertainments
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Islands of the Pacific -- Fiction; Short stories
And so the captain and mate lay down on the house together, and Keola
was left to himself.
“This island will do very well for me,” he thought; “if no traders deal
there, the mate will never come. And as for Kalamake, it is not
possible he can ever get as far as this.”
With that he kept edging the schooner nearer in. He had to do this
quietly, for it was the trouble with these white men, and above all
with the mate, that you could never be sure of them; they would all be
sleeping sound, or else pretending, and if a sail shook, they would
jump to their feet and fall on you with a rope’s end. So Keola edged
her up little by little, and kept all drawing. And presently the land
was close on board, and the sound of the sea on the sides of it grew
loud.
With that, the mate sat up suddenly upon the house.
“What are you doing?” he roars. “You’ll have the ship ashore!”
And he made one bound for Keola, and Keola made another clean over the
rail and plump into the starry sea. When he came up again, the schooner
had payed off on her true course, and the mate stood by the wheel
himself, and Keola heard him cursing. The sea was smooth under the lee
of the island; it was warm besides, and Keola had his sailor’s knife,
so he had no fear of sharks. A little way before him the trees stopped;
there was a break in the line of the land like the mouth of a harbour;
and the tide, which was then flowing, took him up and carried him
through. One minute he was without, and the next within: had floated
there in a wide shallow water, bright with ten thousand stars, and all
about him was the ring of the land, with its string of palm trees. And
he was amazed, because this was a kind of island he had never heard of.
The time of Keola in that place was in two periods—the period when he
was alone, and the period when he was there with the tribe. At first he
sought everywhere and found no man; only some houses standing in a
hamlet, and the marks of fires. But the ashes of the fires were cold
and the rains had washed them away; and the winds had blown, and some
of the huts were overthrown. It was here he took his dwelling, and he
made a fire drill, and a shell hook, and fished and cooked his fish,
and climbed after green cocoanuts, the juice of which he drank, for in
all the isle there was no water. The days were long to him, and the
nights terrifying. He made a lamp of cocoa-shell, and drew the oil of
the ripe nuts, and made a wick of fibre; and when evening came he
closed up his hut, and lit his lamp, and lay and trembled till morning.
Many a time he thought in his heart he would have been better in the
bottom of the sea, his bones rolling there with the others.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account