By Reef and Palm, Page 8

  A BASKET OF BREAD-FRUIT

  It was in Steinberger's time [Colonel Steinberger, who in 1874 succeededin forming a government in Samoa]. A trader had come up to Apia in hisboat from the end of Savaii, the largest of the Samoan Group, and was onhis way home again, when the falling tide caused him to stop awhile atMulinu'u Point, about two miles from Apia. Here he designed to smoke andtalk, and drink kava at the great camp with some hospitable nativeacquaintances, during the rising of the water. Soon he was taking hisease on a soft mat, watching the bevy of AUA LUMA [The local girls] makinga bowl of kava.

  Now this trader lived at Falealupo, at the extreme westerly end ofSavaii; but the Samoans, by reason of its isolation and extremity, havefor ages called it by another name--an unprintable one--and so some ofthe people present began to jest with the trader for living in such aplace. He fell in with their humour, and said that if those presentwould find for him a wife, a girl unseared by the breath of scandal, hewould leave Falealupo for Safune, where he had bought land.

  "Malie!" said an old dame, with one eye and white hair, "thePAPALAGI [foreigner] is inspired to speak wisdom to-night; for at Safunegrow the sweetest nuts and the biggest taro and bread-fruit; and lo! hereamong the kava-chewers is a young maid from Safune--mine owngrand-daughter Salome. And against her name can no one in Samoa laugh inthe hollow of his hand," and the old creature, amid laughter and cries ofISA! E LE MA LE LO MATUA (The old woman is without shame), crept over tothe trader, and, with one skinny hand on his knee, gazed steadily into hisface with her one eye.

  * * * * *

  The trader looked at the girl--at Salome. She had, at her grandmother'sspeech, turned her head aside, and taking the "chaw" of kava-root fromher pretty mouth, dissolved into shame-faced tears. The trader was aman of quick perceptions, and he made up his mind to do in earnest whathe had said in jest--this because of the tears of Salome. He quicklywhispered to the old woman, "Come to the boat before the full of thetide, and we will talk."

  When the kava was ready for drinking the others present had forgottenall about the old woman and Salome, who had both crept away unobserved,and an hour or two was passed in merriment, for the trader was a manwell liked. Then, when he rose and said TO FA, [good-bye] they begged himnot to attempt to pass down in his boat inside the reef, as he was sure tobe fired upon, for how were their people to tell a friend from an enemy inthe black night? But the white man smiled, and said his boat was tooheavily laden to face the ocean swell. So they bade him TO FA, and calledout MANUIA OE! [Bless you!] as he lifted the door of thatch and went.

  * * * * *

  The old woman awaited him, holding the girl by the hand. On the groundlay a basket strongly tied up. Salome still wept, but the old womanangrily bade her cease and enter the boat, which the crew had nowpushed bow-on to the beach. The old woman lifted the basket andcarefully put it on board.

  "Be sure," she said to the crew, "not to sit on it for it is very ripebread-fruit that I am taking to my people in Manono."

  "Give them here to me," said the trader, and he put the basket in thestern out of the way. The old woman came aft, too, and crouched at hisfeet and smoked a SULUI [a cigarette rolled in dried banana leaf]. Thecool land-breeze freshened as the sail was hoisted, and thenthe crew besought the trader not to run down inside the reef. Bullets,they said, if fired in plenty, always hit something, and the sea wasfairly smooth outside the reef. And old Lupetea grasped his hand andmuttered in his ear, "For the sake of this my little daughter gooutside. See, now, I am old, and to lie when so near death as I am isfoolish. Be warned by me and be wise; sail out into the ocean, and atdaylight we shall be at Salua in Manono. Then thou canst set my feet onthe shore--I and the basket. But the girl shall go with thee. Thoucanst marry her, if that be to thy mind, in the fashion of thePAPALAGI, or take her FA'A SAMOA [Samoan fashion]. Thus will I keep faithwith thee. If the girl be false, her neck is but little and thy fingersstrong."

  Now the trader thought in this wise: "This is well for me, for if I getthe girl away thus quietly from all her relations I shall save much inpresents," and his heart rejoiced, for although not mean he was acareful man. So he steered his boat seaward, between the seething surfthat boiled and hissed on both sides of the boat passage.

  * * * * *

  As the boat sailed past the misty line of cloud-capped Upolu, thetrader lifted the girl up beside him and spoke to her. She was notafraid of him, she said, for many had told her he was a good man, andnot an ULA VALE (scamp), but she wept because now, save her oldgrandmother, all her kinsfolk were dead. Even but a day and a half agoher one brother was killed with her cousin. They were strong men, butthe bullets were swift, and so they died. And their heads had beenshown at Matautu. For that she had grieved and wept and eaten nothing,and the world was cold and dark to her.

  "Poor little devil!" said the trader to himself--"hungry." Then heopened a locker and found a tin of sardines. Not a scrap of biscuit.There was plenty of biscuit, though, in the boat, in fifty-pound tins,but on these mats were spread, where-on his crew were sleeping. He wasabout to rouse them when he remembered the old dame's basket of ripebread-fruit. He laughed and looked at her. She, too, slept, coiled upat his feet. But first he opened the sardines and placed them besidethe girl, and motioned her to steer. Her eyes gleamed like diamonds inthe darkness as she answered his glance, and her soft fingers graspedthe tiller. Very quickly, then, he felt among the packages aft till hecame to the basket.

  A quick stroke of his knife cut the cinnet that lashed the sidestogether. He felt inside. "Only two, after all, but big ones, and nomistake. Wrapped in cloth, too! I wonder--Hell and Furies! what'sthis?"--as his fingers came in contact with something that felt like ahuman eye. Drawing his hand quickly back, he fumbled in his pockets fora match, and struck it. Bread-fruit! No. Two heads with closed eyes andlivid lips blue with the pallor of death, showing their white teeth.And Salome covered her face and slid down in the bottom of the boatagain, and wept afresh for her cousin and brother, and the boat came upin the wind, but no one awoke.

  * * * * *

  The trader was angry. But after he had tied up the basket again he putthe boat on her course once more and called to the girl. She creptclose to him and nestled under his overcoat, for the morning air cameacross the sea from the dew-laden forests, and she was chilled. Thenshe told the story of how her granddam had begged the heads from thoseof Malietoa's troops who had taken them at Matautu, and then gone tothe camp at Mulinu'u in the hope of getting a passage in some boat toManono, her country, where she would fain bury them. And that night hehad come, and old Lupetea had rejoiced, and sworn her to secrecy aboutthe heads in the basket. And that also was why Lupetea was afraid ofthe boat going down inside the passage, for there were many enemies tobe met with, and they would have shot old Lupetea because she was ofManono. That was all. Then she ate the sardines, and, leaning her headagainst the trader's bosom, fell asleep.

  * * * * *

  As the first note of the great grey pigeon sounded the dawn, thetrader's boat sailed softly up to the Salua beach, and old Lupetearose, and, bidding the crew good-bye, and calling down blessings on thehead of the good and clever white man, as she rubbed his and the girl'snoses against her own, she grasped her Basket of Bread-fruit and wentashore. Then the trader, with Salome nestling to his side, sailed outagain into the ocean towards his home.