Chapter 2 No.2

Jack landed in Oa Bay, the possessor, except for the clothes upon his back, of nothing but his rugged health, his stout heart, and a determination to make good his footing with his new friends. He remembered drawing apart from the others, as the welcoming throng came down to greet them in the dusk, forlornly struggling with his embarrassment and the penetrating sense of his own helplessness and isolation.

Would he ever forget, standing there as he did, unremarked, solitary, shivering in his rags, the soft hand that felt through the darkness for his own, the voice so gentle, low, and sweet that whispered to him, "Come, Jack, you my white mans now!"

This was the beginning of Jack's new life. He became a member of the chief's family, sleeping with the others at night on the outspread mats, and taking his share, by day, of all the work and play of the little Samoan village. He weeded taro, he carried stones for the building of the new church, he helped to lay out nets, he speared fish, he played cricket and ta ti'a. By nature neither an idler nor a shirk, he was consumed, besides, with a desire to repay the kindness and hospitality of his hosts; and the old chief, his friend from the start, now became his captain, to whom he rendered the unquestioning obedience of a seaman. And old Faalelei, whose loose authority was often disregarded by his own subjects, delighted in the possession of this stalwart white, so willing, so eager, so ingenious in the mending of boats and nets-a man to whom the mechanism of a gun had no secrets, and in whose hands a single hatchet became a tool chest.

Living thus among the only mild, courteous, and refined people he had ever known, Jack insensibly altered and improved. His loud voice grew softer, his boisterous laugh less explosive, and his rough ways gave place to a clumsy imitation of Samoan good manners. Little by little the uncouth sailor patterned himself on the model of his new friends, and he, whose every second word had been an oath, whose only repartee a blow, now set himself to learn the most ceremonious language in the world, and the only one, perhaps, in which one cannot swear!

And Fetuao? When he had first taken up his abode in Faalelei's house he had never doubted, seeing the girl's extravagant affection for him, and knowing the laxity of the native people, that it would not be long before he might form with her one of those irregular connections so common in the islands; and, indeed, it grew daily more plain to him that he had but to ask to have. But Jack, not a little to his own astonishment, and stirred by undreamed-of instincts and undreamed-of scruples, put the idea from him with a hesitation he could hardly explain to himself. In his wicked and lawless past he had known every kind of woman but a good woman; he had seen, in a thousand water-side dives, every variety of feminine degradation and feminine shame, and had sounded in his time all the squalid depths of sailor vice. With the memory of these unspeakable contrasts, Fetuao's freshness, purity, and beauty shone with a sort of angelic brightness. No, by God, she should never come to harm through him; and, clenching his huge hands together, he would repeat these words to himself when he sometimes felt his resolution falter. For the sailor, who never until then had known a modest woman, who had starved his whole life long for what his money could never buy, whose heart at thirty was as virgin as a boy's, now found himself moved by a sublime passion for the only creature that had ever loved him.

For she did love him; of that, indeed, he had never the need to reassure himself; and in the knowledge of her love he became, almost in spite of himself, a better man. In her girlish self-abandonment Fetuao lacked the artifices which older women would have used; she never thought to guard herself, or to coquette with him. At night, as they walked hand in hand about the village, or sat close together on some log or boat, she would take his arm and draw it around her; she would lay her head against his breast; she would press herself so close to him that he could hear her beating heart. There was much of the mother in her love for him. He was her great baby, to be caressed, kissed, crooned over, to be petted and encouraged. Her tender laughter was always in his ears; she corrected him as she might a child, with a sweet seriousness, and an implication that his shame was hers whenever he blundered in Samoan etiquette; she prompted him and pushed him through scenes of trying formality, and drilled him assiduously in politeness.

In the moonlight, when they were alone together, she taught him how to receive the 'ava cup; how to spill the libation to the gods; how to invoke a proper blessing on the company. She taught him how to say "O susunga, lau susunga fo'i," on entering a strange house; how to pull the mat over his knee to express his fictitious dependence; how to join in the chorus of "Maliu mai, susu mai" when others entered after him; how, indeed, to comport himself everywhere with the finished courtesy of a Samoan chief.

Thus the bright days passed, and months melted into months, and still Jack remained an inmate of Faalelei's household. At first he had accepted this strange life as a sort of holiday, never doubting but that, in the end, he must turn his back on these pleasant people, and see, from a dizzy yardarm, their exquisite island sink forever behind him. The place thus possessed for him the charm of something he was destined soon to lose, and he clung to it as a man clings to his fading youth, with a sense that it is slipping from him. He sighed as he thought of the forecastle that he knew somewhere awaited him; how he would recall those still nights in Oa when he would be roused by the boatswain's handspike on the hatch, and the hoarse cry of "All hands on deck!"

One day, when he was out in Faalelei's boat, an accident occurred that came very near to being the end of Jack. They were pursuing a school of bonito, and Pulu, the chief's brother, was standing in the bow with a stick of dynamite and was in the nick of letting it fly when it exploded prematurely in his hand. Pulu was killed, the rickety old boat parted and sank, and Jack, with his shoulder laid open to the bone, was towed in by a neighboring canoe, and carried up to the house. They laid him on the floor, pale and groaning, while the children ran out screaming for Fetuao. She came in like a whirlwind, still wet from the river, and threw herself on her knees beside him. With passionate imperiousness she made the rest of the household wait upon her bidding as she busied herself in stanching the flow of blood and in picking the splinters from the wound. Jack knew how wont she was, in common with all Samoans, to shrink from disagreeable sights. It touched him to see how love had conquered her repugnance; nor could he resist a smile when she began to tear her little wardrobe into bandages, those chemises and lavalavas that she used to iron under the trees, and put away with such care into the camphor-wood chest with the bell lock.

For the better part of a fortnight Jack lay where they had placed him on the mats, undergoing, with intermissions of fever and delirium, the tedious stages of convalescence. Fetuao seemed never to leave him, attending to his wants, brushing away the flies, feeding and washing him with an anxious solemnity that at times almost awed the sailor. Her brilliant eyes, as black and limpid as some wild animal's, watched him with an unceasing stare. He often wondered what was passing in her graceful head as he lay looking up at her, too weak to speak, the drowsy hours succeeding one another in an unbroken silence. Once, when he ran his hand over his face and recollected with a pang how old and ugly he must seem to her, she had understood the sigh that expressed his own self-disgust, and had bent over and kissed him on the lips. From that moment his love for her deepened into an emotion transcending anything he had ever felt before. He saw now that to separate himself from her would be to break both their hearts; that, for good or evil, he was hers and she his; that fate had indeed joined them forever.

When at last he grew strong enough to walk, he went with her across to the native pastor's house, where together they stood up before the Rev. Tavita Singua and were married. This was the prelude to another and more binding ceremony before the American Consul in Apia, whither they both went in a canoe borrowed from Faalelei. The official books were withdrawn from the safe and the thirty-six Americans in Samoa were increased by two new names: "Jack Wilson, aged thirty-one, birthplace Bath, Me., occupation seaman, present residence Oa Bay; and Fetuao Wilson, supposed to be seventeen, daughter of Faalelei, chief of Oa Bay, his lawful wife." (See Consular Marriage Record, p. 18.)

As he stood there before the consul, painfully conscious of his bare feet, of his unkempt and ragged appearance, of the contrast between himself and that benignant official, he timidly brought up the subject of the fee. No doubt there is some kind of damage, he said, and might he leave this ring-his mother's wedding ring-in pawn until he might earn a little money and square the matter? The consul took the ring, looked at it a moment without a word, and then in a rough, friendly way seized Fetuao's hand and slipped it on her finger.

"I think it belongs here," he said.

"But the fee," said Jack.

"Oh, damn the fee!" said the consul.

With that he went into an inner office and returned with a sheepish air, as of a man about to do something he was ashamed of.

"Here's ten dollars," he said. "Take it; it's a wedding present, you know. I never married anybody before."

Jack refused the gift a little ungraciously, though his voice trembled in doing so.

"Have a drink, then?" said the consul.

"No, I thank you, sir," Jack blurted out.

Embarrassment in a cloud descended on all three. The consul, like the worthy fellow he was, wished to do something for these waifs, and his eyes roved about the big, hot room in search of he knew not what. Jack and Fetuao, no less ill at ease, stood close together and waited submissively. Finally, noticing the new boat flag lying on his desk, the consul took it up in both his hands. "Wilson," he said oratorically, "this is my flag, and your flag, and it is now Mrs. Wilson's flag, for I've made her as good an American as the pair of us. Take it along with you, and if you have children, bring them up to love and honor Old Glory as we do, and teach them at your knee what it stands for-freedom, justice; and equal rights for every man born under it. And if there should ever be any trouble here-war, riot, or any little unpleasantness-just hoist it above your house, and its bright folds will protect you as though the whole U-nited States army lay in a mighty camp around you!"

Jack took the flag respectfully, much impressed by the consul's speech, and tremendously pleased, besides, that Fetuao should see that an American, even a common, low-down American seaman like himself, counted for something in the official world. Would a Britisher, or one of those stinking Dutchmen, have acted like this consul did? His consul, by God!-and his breast heaved with gratitude and patriotic fervor. Afterwards, when Fetuao and he ate their lunch under a tree, he spread out the consul's gift on the ground beside him, and the words freedom, justice, and equal rights boomed sonorously in his ears. To Fetuao, in her simplicity, the bunting appeared a sort of sanction or certificate of their civil marriage; and when she returned home she explained that it was all settled, the faamasino having written their names in the book and given them the fua Ameleke!