Island Nights' EntertainmentsStevenson, Robert Louis
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Island Nights' Entertainments
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Islands of the Pacific -- Fiction; Short stories
“It was a by-day when I was here before,” he thought, “for it was
nothing to this.”
And his head was dizzy with the thought of these millions and millions
of dollars, and all these hundreds and hundreds of persons culling them
upon the beach and flying in the air higher and swifter than eagles.
“And to think how they have fooled me with their talk of mints,” says
he, “and that money was made there, when it is clear that all the new
coin in all the world is gathered on these sands! But I will know
better the next time!” said he.
And at last, he knew not very well how or when, sleep feel on Keola,
and he forgot the island and all his sorrows.
Early the next day, before the sun was yet up, a bustle woke him. He
awoke in fear, for he thought the tribe had caught him napping: but it
was no such matter. Only, on the beach in front of him, the bodiless
voices called and shouted one upon another, and it seemed they all
passed and swept beside him up the coast of the island.
“What is afoot now?” thinks Keola. And it was plain to him it was
something beyond ordinary, for the fires were not lighted nor the
shells taken, but the bodiless voices kept posting up the beach, and
hailing and dying away; and others following, and by the sound of them
these wizards should be angry.
“It is not me they are angry at,” thought Keola, “for they pass me
close.”
As when hounds go by, or horses in a race, or city folk coursing to a
fire, and all men join and follow after, so it was now with Keola; and
he knew not what he did, nor why he did it, but there, lo and behold!
he was running with the voices.
So he turned one point of the island, and this brought him in view of a
second; and there he remembered the wizard trees to have been growing
by the score together in a wood. From this point there went up a hubbub
of men crying not to be described; and by the sound of them, those that
he ran with shaped their course for the same quarter. A little nearer,
and there began to mingle with the outcry the crash of many axes. And
at this a thought came at last into his mind that the high chief had
consented; that the men of the tribe had set-to cutting down these
trees; that word had gone about the isle from sorcerer to sorcerer, and
these were all now assembling to defend their trees. Desire of strange
things swept him on. He posted with the voices, crossed the beach, and
came into the borders of the wood, and stood astonished. One tree had
fallen, others were part hewed away. There was the tribe clustered.
They were back to back, and bodies lay, and blood flowed among their
feet. The hue of fear was on all their faces; their voices went up to
heaven shrill as a weasel’s cry.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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