第4章 CHAPTER I(4)

Right in the wild lime hedge which cuts athwart us just homeward of the garden, I found a great bed of kuikui - sensitive plant - our deadliest enemy. A fool brought it to this island in a pot, and used to lecture and sentimentalise over the tender thing. The tender thing has now taken charge of this island, and men fight it, with torn hands, for bread and life. A singular, insidious thing, shrinking and biting like a weasel; clutching by its roots as a limpet clutches to a rock. As I fought him, I bettered some verses in my poem, the WOODMAN; the only thought I gave to letters. Though the kuikui was thick, there was but a small patch of it, and when I was done I attacked the wild lime, and had a hand-to-hand skirmish with its spines and elastic suckers. All this time, close by, in the cleared space of the garden, Lafaele and Mauga were digging. Suddenly quoth Lafaele, 'Somebody he sing out.' - 'Somebody he sing out? All right. I go.' And I went and found they had been whistling and 'singing out' for long, but the fold of the hill and the uncleared bush shuts in the garden so that no one heard, and I was late for dinner, and Fanny's headache was cross; and when the meal was over, we had to cut up a pineapple which was going bad, to make jelly of; and the next time you have a handful of broken blood-blisters, apply pine-apple juice, and you will give me news of it, and I request a specimen of your hand of write five minutes after - the historic moment when I tackled this history. My day so far.

Fanny was to have rested. Blessed Paul began making a duck-house; she let him be; the duck-house fell down, and she had to set her hand to it. He was then to make a drinking-place for the pigs; she let him be again - he made a stair by which the pigs will probably escape this evening, and she was near weeping. Impossible to blame the indefatigable fellow; energy is too rare and goodwill too noble a thing to discourage; but it's trying when she wants a rest. Then she had to cook the dinner; then, of course - like a fool and a woman - must wait dinner for me, and make a flurry of herself. Her day so far. CETERA ADHUC DESUNT.

FRIDAY - I THINK.

I have been too tired to add to this chronicle, which will at any rate give you some guess of our employment. All goes well; the kuikui - (think of this mispronunciation having actually infected me to the extent of misspelling! tuitui is the word by rights) - the tuitui is all out of the paddock - a fenced park between the house and boundary; Peni's men start to-day on the road; the garden is part burned, part dug; and Henry, at the head of a troop of underpaid assistants, is hard at work clearing. The part clearing you will see from the map; from the house run down to the stream side, up the stream nearly as high as the garden; then back to the star which I have just added to the map.

My long, silent contests in the forest have had a strange effect on me. The unconcealed vitality of these vegetables, their exuberant number and strength, the attempts - I can use no other word - of lianas to enwrap and capture the intruder, the awful silence, the knowledge that all my efforts are only like the performance of an actor, the thing of a moment, and the wood will silently and swiftly heal them up with fresh effervescence; the cunning sense of the tuitui, suffering itself to be touched with wind-swayed grasses and not minding - but let the grass be moved by a man, and it shuts up; the whole silent battle, murder, and slow death of the contending forest; weigh upon the imagination. My poem the WOODMAN stands; but I have taken refuge in a new story, which just shot through me like a bullet in one of my moments of awe, alone in that tragic jungle:-

THE HIGH WOODS OF ULUFANUA.

1. A South Sea Bridal.

2. Under the Ban.

3. Savao and Faavao.

4. Cries in the High Wood.

5. Rumour full of Tongues.

6. The Hour of Peril.

7. The Day of Vengeance.

It is very strange, very extravagant, I daresay; but it's varied, and picturesque, and has a pretty love affair, and ends well. Ulufanua is a lovely Samoan word, ulu=grove; fanua=land; grove-land - 'the tops of the high trees.'

Savao, 'sacred to the wood,' and Faavao, 'wood-ways,' are the names of two of the characters, Ulufanua the name of the supposed island.

I am very tired, and rest off to-day from all but letters.