Vailima Letters | Page 5

On either hand it plunged into thick bush;
to-morrow I shall see where it goes and get a guess perhaps of what it
means. To-day I know no more than - there it is. A little higher the
brook began to trickle, then to fill. At last, as I meant to do some work
upon the homeward trail, it was time to turn. I did not return by the
stream; knife in hand, as long as my endurance lasted, I was to cut a
path in the congested bush.
At first it went ill with me; I got badly stung as high as the elbows by
the stinging plant; I was nearly hung in a tough liana - a rotten trunk
giving way under my feet; it was deplorable bad business. And an axe -
if I dared swing one - would have been more to the purpose than my
cutlass. Of a sudden things began to go strangely easier; I found stumps,
bushing out again; my body began to wonder, then my mind; I raised
my eyes and looked ahead; and, by George, I was no longer pioneering,
I had struck an old track overgrown, and was restoring an old path. So I
laboured till I was in such a state that Carolina Wilhelmina Skeggs
could scarce have found a name for it. Thereon desisted; returned to the
stream; made my way down that stony track to the garden, where the

smoke was still hanging and the sun was still in the high tree-tops, and
so home. Here, fondly supposing my long day was over, I rubbed down;
exquisite agony; water spreads the poison of these weeds; I got it all
over my hands, on my chest, in my eyes, and presently, while eating an
orange, A LA Raratonga, burned my lip and eye with orange juice.
Now, all day, our three small pigs had been adrift, to the mortal peril of
our corn, lettuce, onions, etc., and as I stood smarting on the back
verandah, behold the three piglings issuing from the wood just opposite.
Instantly I got together as many boys as I could - three, and got the pigs
penned against the rampart of the sty, till the others joined; whereupon
we formed a cordon, closed, captured the deserters, and dropped them,
squeaking amain, into their strengthened barracks where, please God,
they may now stay!
Perhaps you may suppose the day now over; you are not the head of a
plantation, my juvenile friend. Politics succeeded: Henry got adrift in
his English, Bene was too cowardly to tell me what he was after: result,
I have lost seven good labourers, and had to sit down and write to you
to keep my temper. Let me sketch my lads. - Henry - Henry has gone
down to town or I could not be writing to you - this were the hour of
his English lesson else, when he learns what he calls 'long expessions'
or 'your chief's language' for the matter of an hour and a half - Henry is
a chiefling from Savaii; I once loathed, I now like and - pending fresh
discoveries - have a kind of respect for Henry. He does good work for
us; goes among the labourers, bossing and watching; helps Fanny; is
civil, kindly, thoughtful; O SI SIC SEMPER! But will he be 'his
sometime self throughout the year'? Anyway, he has deserved of us,
and he must disappoint me sharply ere I give him up. - Bene - or
Peni-Ben, in plain English - is supposed to be my ganger; the Lord love
him! God made a truckling coward, there is his full history. He cannot
tell me what he wants; he dares not tell me what is wrong; he dares not
transmit my orders or translate my censures. And with all this, honest,
sober, industrious, miserably smiling over the miserable issue of his
own unmanliness. - Paul - a German - cook and steward - a glutton of
work - a splendid fellow; drawbacks, three: (1) no cook; (2) an
inveterate bungler; a man with twenty thumbs, continually falling in the
dishes, throwing out the dinner, preserving the garbage; (3) a dr-, well,
don't let us say that - but we daren't let him go to town, and he - poor,

good soul - is afraid to be let go. - Lafaele (Raphael), a strong, dull,
deprecatory man; splendid with an axe, if watched; the better for a
rowing, when he calls me 'Papa' in the most wheedling tones;
desperately afraid of ghosts, so that he dare not walk alone up in the
banana patch - see map. The rest are changing labourers; and to-night,
owing to the miserable cowardice of Peni, who did not venture to tell
me what