The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 17Stevenson, Robert Louis
History
The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 17
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Islands of the Pacific -- Fiction; Samoan Islands -- History; 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 be all
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 cocoa-nuts, 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.
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