Poetry’s Legitimate Child—Music’s Fairyland—A Civilized Old Man of the Sea—A Clerical Hat is the Symbol of Modern Religion. HAD it not been for men like D—— and many other striking personalities who enlivened the Organization, we should have cleared out of it sooner than we did. We were considerably in debt to the host of that Sailors’ Home, too. There were no certified bailiffs in the South Seas, but if one’s account was overdue, credit was taken out of the debtor in a novel manner. Bones discovered that one of his customers owed him about fifty dollars for board.
“Goying ter pye up?” said he laconically.
“Hain’t gotter cent ter bless meself with till I gets an adwance note,” replied the stranded one. There was no further parley on the subject. Bones simply caught the culprit by the scruff of the neck, placed one knee in the middle of his back, and then, crash! sent the unfortunate devil through the South Sea bankruptcy court at the end of his boot—right through the open door—bang! on to the sward. And the discharged bankrupt, out of debt, went his way, unworried, free from all his late liabilities. Once or twice there was a fight when the members took sides on behalf of someone who could not pay his way; hats, rum mugs, and tin pots would fly about, but it was soon all over. They would bind up each other’s wounds, shake hands all round, and end up in a tremendous drinking bout. Sometimes highly-cultured men would step out of the great unknown into 319that shanty’s door—actors, musicians, poets, and sad-looking literary men, who would imbibe rum and prove highly entertaining. Some had fine voices, others recited Hamlet, or made the place hum with laughter ere they drank up, clinked their glass in some toast, and then, to the cry of “God speed,” once more departed out into the great unknown.
O’Hara and I would go wandering through the forests, visiting the various tribal villages by the coffee plantations. On these wanderings we were accompanied by our faithful little bodyguard, Soogy, a little native half-caste boy. He was a mystical little beggar, not only in his ways but in his origin. No one knew where he came from.
“You no father? No mother, Soogy?”
He shook his curly head and said: “No; me come down, dropper from sky!”
He had beautiful eyes, and by the paleness of his complexion one easily concluded that he had European blood in his veins. He was about eight years old. Whenever I played the violin he would at once put his little chin on his knees and commence singing. Even G——, who had had a lot to do with native youngsters, said that Soogy was a wonder. I had no doubt at all that the child was a genius. His mother must have lived in a cave within sound of the seas just before he was born, for music was alive in his soul. His brain was splashed over with moonlight, there was no doubt about that.
“Where did you learn that melody, Soogy?” I’d say, when he suddenly burst forth and sang some sweet strain with a lingering, haunting note of sadness running through it. He would simply look up, shake his curly head, and wonder what I meant by asking him where his little brain learned its own mysterious music from.
“Looks older than he is,” said O’Hara. “Got eyes 320like a blessed girl,” my pal continued, as Soogy fondled my hand and stared up into my face, a weird look in his pretty eyes. I could not make it out; but when that kiddie came up to me in the forest, or crept into my hut-room, an old broken-down shack near the river, the world would change, the sun shine with a mysterious shadowy light, a kind of poetic atmosphere pervading the deep gloom of the woods. I was not surprised when O’Hara said:
“Begorra, pal, I wish that kiddie would keep away; he’s like some little beggar of a ghost hanging around. I’m sure he’ll bring us bad luck.”
“Don’t be a fool. How can a little child influence our ways or alter what must happen to-morrow?” I replied, as the child noticed the angry look in my comrade’s eyes, and looked up to see if I too wanted him to go away.
I didn’t send him away, though. To tell the truth, I came under the mystic spell of that weird child of the forest. Sometimes I’d go out of earshot of all the world, accompanied by that mysterious little beggar, and, under the banyans by the lagoon, as fireflies danced in the bamboos, I’d play the violin while he danced. Even the cockatoos, as they cried out, “Ka ka—ka to wooh! ka! ka! ka! to wooh!” seemed to have come under the influence of Soogy’s songs. Somehow, the thought of the world beyond the solitude of that forest seemed to fall away; I would half imagine that Soogy and I sat side by side in some mossy fairy-wood of a world far beyond the stars. We would seem to be two mighty maestros of heathenland, both of us enthroned on the highest pinnacles of fame as I sat there, that weird little kiddie singing wondrous melodies and dancing. It was nothing strange to me when the Old-Man-Frog looked out of the moonlit marsh flowers in surprise, opened its 321weird-slit mouth, and chanted a wonderful accompaniment in perfect tempo as Soogy danced. Then some strange thing with a green, semi-human face would peep out of the vatu weeds and clang its tiny cymbals.
Knowing that the commonplace conception of reality does not exist at all, and that we mortals only see a nose, a mouth, a glance of the eyes—indeed, the Universe itself—in the relation that it assumes by contact with one’s inner self, I felt no wonder as Soogy danced beneath the moonlit palms, no Soogy at all, but a something weirdly beautiful dancing as I played the violin in the shadowland of my own mad eyes, a something that looked to me like two fallen stars fixed in a wonderful little receptacle called a skull poised on swaying, dusky limbs, and possessing a sweet-voiced tongue.
The very forest trees became etherealized to my eyes as their big heads moved and sighed to the soughing night winds, humming out half-forgotten memories of cherished things. And when those old trees tenderly waved their arms over the weird child, then took partners, and commenced to waltz slowly, I didn’t wonder much; I still played on, wailing forth the magical melodies that Soogy sang to my listening ears. It was clear enough that the child had never been taught dancing in any mortal school, for, as his small limbs moved in rhythmical motion, they swerved not one bit from the tempo of the swaying forest flowers as the shifting fingers of the zephyrs tossed them gently one way, and then softly the other way. And my chagrin was complete when I realized that my cultured ear served only to empower me with discernment enough to know that, as a conductor of the most subtle movements in that great orchestra of the forest-night and mighty, waltzing trees, I was simply nowhere where that conductor, an Old-Man-Frog, was concerned, as, with his wonderful clappers 322going “Click-er-tee-c............