to Sidney Colvin

Schooner ‘Equator,’ at sea. 190 miles off Samoa.
Monday, December 2nd, 1889

MY DEAR COLVIN,—We are just nearing the end of our long cruise.  Rain, calms, squalls, bang—there’s the foretopmast gone; rain, calm, squalls, away with the staysail; more rain, more calm, more squalls; a prodigious heavy sea all the time, and the Equator staggering and hovering like a swallow in a storm; and the cabin, a great square, crowded with wet human beings, and the rain avalanching on the deck, and the leaks dripping everywhere: Fanny, in the midst of fifteen males, bearing up wonderfully.  But such voyages are at the best a trial.  We had one particularity: coming down on Winslow Reef, p. d. (position doubtful): two positions in the directory, a third (if you cared to count that) on the chart; heavy sea running, and the night due.  The boats were cleared, bread put on board, and we made up our packets for a boat voyage of four or five hundred miles, and turned in, expectant of a crash.  Needless to say it did not come, and no doubt we were far to leeward.  If we only had twopenceworth of wind, we might be at dinner in Apia to-morrow evening; but no such luck: here we roll, dead before a light air—and that is no point of sailing at all for a fore and aft schooner—the sun blazing overhead, thermometer 88°, four degrees above what I have learned to call South Sea temperature; but for all that, land so near, and so much grief being happily astern, we are all pretty gay on board, and have been photographing and draught-playing and sky-larking like anything.  I am minded to stay not very long in Samoa and confine my studies there (as far as any one can forecast) to the history of the late war.  My book is now practically modelled: if I can execute what is designed, there are few better books now extant on this globe, bar the epics, and the big tragedies, and histories, and the choice lyric poetics and a novel or so—none.  But it is not executed yet; and let not him that putteth on his armour, vaunt himself.  At least, nobody has had such stuff; such wild stories, such beautiful scenes, such singular intimacies, such manners and traditions, so incredible a mixture of the beautiful and horrible, the savage and civilised.  I will give you here some idea of the table of contents, which ought to make your mouth water.  I propose to call the book The South Seas: it is rather a large title, but not many people have seen more of them than I, perhaps no one—certainly no one capable of using the material.

Part I.  General.  ‘Of schooners, islands, and maroons.’

CHAPTER

I.

Marine.

 

II.

Contraband (smuggling, barratry, labour traffic).

 

III.

The Beachcomber.

 

IV.

Beachcomber stories.  i. The Murder of the Chinaman.  ii. Death of a Beachcomber.  iii. A Character.  iv. The Apia Blacksmith.

Part II.  The Marquesas.

 

V.

Anaho.  i. Arrival.  ii. Death.  iii. The Tapu.  iv. Morals.  v. Hoka.

 

VI.

Tai-o-hae.  i. Arrival.  ii. The French.  iii. The Royal Family.  iv. Chiefless Folk.  v. The Catholics.  vi. Hawaiian Missionaries.

 

VII.

Observations of a Long Pig.  i. Cannibalism.  ii. Hatiheu.  iii. Frère Michel.  iv.  Toahauka and Atuona.  v. The Vale of Atuona.  vi. Moipu.  vii. Captain Hati.

Part III.  The Dangerous Archipelago.

 

VIII.

The Group.

 

IX.

A House to let in a Low Island.

 

X.

A Paumotuan Funeral.  i. The Funeral.  ii. Tales of the Dead.

Part IV.  Tahiti.

 

XI.

Tautira.

 

XII.

Village Government in Tahiti.

 

XIII.

A Journey in Quest of Legends.

 

XIV.

Legends and Songs.

 

XV.

Life in Eden.

 

XVI.

Note on the French Regimen.

Part V.  The Eight Islands.

 

XVII.

A Note on Missions.

 

XVIII.

The Kona Coast of Hawaii.  i. Hookena.  ii. A Ride in the Forest.  iii. A Law Case.  iv. The City of Refuge.  v. The Lepers.

 

XIX.

Molokai.  i. A Week in the Precinct.  ii. History of the Leper Settlement.  iii. The Mokolii.  iv. The Free Island.

Part VI.  The Gilberts.

 

XX.

The Group.  ii. Position of Woman.  iii. The Missions.  iv. Devilwork.  v. Republics.

 

XXI.

Rule and Misrule on Makin.  i. Butaritari, its King and Court.  ii. History of Three Kings.  iii. The Drink Question.

 

XXII.

A Butaritarian Festival.

 

XXIII.

The King of Apemama.  i. First Impressions.  ii. Equator Town and the Palace.  iii. The Three Corselets.

Part VII.  Samoa.

which I have not yet reached.

Even as so sketched it makes sixty chapters, not less than 300 Cornhill pages; and I suspect not much under 500.  Samoa has yet to be accounted for: I think it will be all history, and I shall work in observations on Samoan manners, under the similar heads in other Polynesian islands.  It is still possible, though unlikely, that I may add a passing visit to Fiji or Tonga, or even both; but I am growing impatient to see yourself, and I do not want to be later than June of coming to England.  Anyway, you see it will be a large work, and as it will be copiously illustrated, the Lord knows what it will cost.  We shall return, God willing, by Sydney, Ceylon, Suez and, I guess, Marseilles the many-masted (copyright epithet).  I shall likely pause a day or two in Paris, but all that is too far ahead—although now it begins to look near—so near, and I can hear the rattle of the hansom up Endell Street, and see the gates swing back, and feel myself jump out upon the Monument steps—Hosanna!—home again.  My dear fellow, now that my father is done with his troubles, and 17 Heriot Row no more than a mere shell, you and that gaunt old Monument in Bloomsbury are all that I have in view when I use the word home; some passing thoughts there may be of the rooms at Skerryvore, and the black-birds in the chine on a May morning; but the essence is S. C. and the Museum.  Suppose, by some damned accident, you were no more: well, I should return just the same, because of my mother and Lloyd, whom I now think to send to Cambridge; but all the spring would have gone out of me, and ninety per cent. of the attraction lost.  I will copy for you here a copy of verses made in Apemama.

I heard the pulse of the besieging sea
Throb far away all night.  I heard the wind
Fly crying, and convulse tumultuous palms.
I rose and strolled.  The isle was all bright sand,
And flailing fans and shadows of the palm:
The heaven all moon, and wind, and the blind vault—
The keenest planet slain, for Venus slept.
The King, my neighbour, with his host of wives,
Slept in the precinct of the palisade:
Where single, in the wind, under the moon,
Among the slumbering cabins, blazed a fire,
Sole street-lamp and the only sentinel.
   To other lands and nights my fancy turned,
To London first, and chiefly to your house,
The many-pillared and the well-beloved.
There yearning fancy lighted; there again
In the upper room I lay and heard far off
The unsleeping city murmur like a shell;
The muffled tramp of the Museum guard
Once more went by me; I beheld again
Lamps vainly brighten the dispeopled street;
Again I longed for the returning morn,
The awaking traffic, the bestirring birds,
The consentaneous trill of tiny song
That weaves round monumental cornices
A passing charm of beauty: most of all,
For your light foot I wearied, and your knock
That was the glad réveillé of my day.
   Lo, now, when to your task in the great house
At morning through the portico you pass,
One moment glance where, by the pillared wall,
Far-voyaging island gods, begrimed with smoke,
Sit now unworshipped, the rude monument
Of faiths forgot and races undivined;
Sit now disconsolate, remembering well
The priest, the victim, and the songful crowd,
The blaze of the blue noon, and that huge voice
Incessant, of the breakers on the shore.
As far as these from their ancestral shrine,
So far, so foreign, your divided friends
Wander, estranged in body, not in mind.

R. L. S.