or, Enchanted Isles
by Herman Melville
SKETCH EIGHTH.
NORFOLK ISLE AND THE CHOLA WIDOW.
“At last they in an island did espy A seemly woman sitting by the shore, That with great sorrow and sad agony Seemed some great misfortune to deplore; And loud to them for succor called evermore.”
“Black his eye as the midnight sky. White his neck as the driven snow, Red his cheek as the morning light;– Cold he lies in the ground below. My love is dead, Gone to his death-bed, ys All under the cactus tree.”
“Each lonely scene shall thee restore, For thee the tear be duly shed; Belov’d till life can charm no more, And mourned till Pity’s self be dead.”
Far to the northeast of Charles’s Isle, sequestered from the rest, liesNorfolk Isle; and, however insignificant to most voyagers, to me,through sympathy, that lone island has become a spot made sacred by thestrangest trials of humanity.
It was my first visit to the Encantadas. Two days had been spent ashorein hunting tortoises. There was not time to capture many; so on thethird afternoon we loosed our sails. We were just in the act of gettingunder way, the uprooted anchor yet suspended and invisibly swayingbeneath the wave, as the good ship gradually turned her heel to leavethe isle behind, when the seaman who heaved with me at the windlasspaused suddenly, and directed my attention to something moving on theland, not along the beach, but somewhat back, fluttering from a height.
In view of the sequel of this little story, be it here narrated how itcame to pass, that an object which partly from its being so small wasquite lost to every other man on board, still caught the eye of myhandspike companion. The rest of the crew, myself included, merely stoodup to our spikes in heaving, whereas, unwontedly exhilarated, at everyturn of the ponderous windlass, my belted comrade leaped atop of it,with might and main giving a downward, thewey, perpendicular heave, hisraised eye bent in cheery animation upon the slowly receding shore.Being high lifted above all others was the reason he perceived theobject, otherwise unperceivable; and this elevation of his eye wasowing to the elevation of his spirits; and this again–for truth mustout–to a dram of Peruvian pisco, in guerdon for some kindness done,secretly administered to him that morning by our mulatto steward. Now,certainly, pisco does a deal of mischief in the world; yet seeing that,in the present case, it was the means, though indirect, of rescuing ahuman being from the most dreadful fate, must we not also needs admitthat sometimes pisco does a deal of good?
Glancing across the water in the direction pointed out, I saw some whitething hanging from an inland rock, perhaps half a mile from the sea.
“It is a bird; a white-winged bird; perhaps a–no; it is–it is ahandkerchief!”
“Ay, a handkerchief!” echoed my comrade, and with a louder shoutapprised the captain.
Quickly now–like the running out and training of a great gun–the longcabin spy-glass was thrust through the mizzen rigging from the highplatform of the poop; whereupon a human figure was plainly seen upon theinland rock, eagerly waving towards us what seemed to be thehandkerchief.
Our captain was a prompt, good fellow. Dropping the glass, he lustilyran forward, ordering the anchor to be dropped again; hands to stand bya boat, and lower away.
In a half-hour’s time the swift boat returned. It went with six and camewith seven; and the seventh was a woman.
It is not artistic heartlessness, but I wish I could but draw incrayons; for this woman was a most touching sight; and crayons, tracingsoftly melancholy lines, would best depict the mournful image of thedark-damasked Chola widow.
Her story was soon told, and though given in her own strange languagewas as quickly understood; for our captain, from long trading on theChilian coast, was well versed in the Spanish. A Cholo, or half-breedIndian woman of Payta in Peru, three years gone by, with her youngnew-wedded husband Felipe, of pure Castilian blood, and her one onlyIndian brother, Truxill, Hunilla had taken passage on the main in aFrench whaler, commanded by a joyous man; which vessel, bound to thecruising grounds beyond the Enchanted Isles, proposed passing close bytheir vicinity. The object of the little party was to procure tortoiseoil, a fluid which for its great purity and delicacy is held in highestimation wherever known; and it is well known all along this part ofthe Pacific coast. With a chest of clothes, tools, cooking utensils, arude apparatus for trying out the oil, some casks of biscuit, and otherthings, not omitting two favorite dogs, of which faithful animal all theCholos are very fond, Hunilla and her companions were safely landed attheir chosen place; the Frenchman, according to the contract made eresailing, engaged to take them off upon returning from a four months’cruise in the westward seas; which interval the three adventurers deemedquite sufficient for their purposes.
On the isle’s lone beach they paid him in silver for their passage out,the stranger having declined to carry them at all except upon thatcondition; though willing to take every means to insure the duefulfillment of his promise. Felipe had striven hard to have this paymentput off to the period of the ship’s return. But in vain. Still theythought they had, in another way, ample pledge of the good faith of theFrenchman. It was arranged that the expenses of the passage home shouldnot be payable in silver, but in tortoises; one hundred tortoises readycaptured to the returning captain’s hand. These the Cholos meant tosecure after their own work was done, against the probable time of theFrenchman’s coming back; and no doubt in prospect already felt, that inthose hundred tortoises–now somewhere ranging the isle’s interior–theypossessed one hundred hostages. Enough: the vessel sailed; the gazingthree on shore answered the loud glee of the singing crew; and ereevening, the French craft was hull down in the distant sea, its maststhree faintest lines which quickly faded from Hunilla’s eye.
The stranger had given a blithesome promise, and anchored it with oaths;but oaths and anchors equally will drag; naught else abides on fickleearth but unkept promises of joy. Contrary winds from out unstableskies, or contrary moods of his more varying mind, or shipwreck andsudden death in solitary waves; whatever was the cause, the blithestranger never was seen again.
Yet, however dire a calamity was here in store, misgivings of it ere duetime never disturbed the Cholos’ busy mind, now all intent upon thetoilsome matter which had brought them hither. Nay, by swift doom cominglike the thief at night, ere seven weeks went by, two of the littleparty were removed from all anxieties of land or sea. No more theysought to gaze with feverish fear, or still more feverish hope, beyondthe present’s horizon line; but into the furthest future their ownsilent spirits sailed. By persevering labor beneath that burning sun,Felipe and Truxill had brought down to their hut many scores oftortoises, and tried out the oil, when, elated with their good success,and to reward themselves for such hard work, they, too hastily, made acatamaran, or Indian raft, much used on the Spanish main, and merrilystarted on a fishing trip, just without a long reef with many jaggedgaps, running parallel with the shore, about half a mile from it. Bysome bad tide or hap, or natural negligence of joyfulness (for thoughthey could not be heard, yet by their gestures they seemed singing atthe time) forced in deep water against that iron bar, the ill-madecatamaran was overset, and came all to pieces; when dashed bybroad-chested swells between their broken logs and the sharp teeth ofthe reef, both adventurers perished before Hunilla’s eyes.
Before Hunilla’s eyes they sank. The real woe of this event passedbefore her sight as some sham tragedy on the stage. She was seated on arude bower among the withered thickets, crowning a lofty cliff, a littleback from the beach. The thickets were so disposed, that in looking uponthe sea at large she peered out from among the branches as from thelattice of a high balcony. But upon the day we speak of here, the betterto watch the adventure of those two hearts she loved, Hunilla hadwithdrawn the branches to one side, and held them so. They formed anoval frame, through which the bluely boundless sea rolled like a paintedone. And there, the invisible painter painted to her view thewave-tossed and disjointed raft, its once level logs slantinglyupheaved, as raking masts, and the four struggling armsindistinguishable among them; and then all subsided into smooth-flowingcreamy waters, slowly drifting the splintered wreck; while first andlast, no sound of any sort was heard. Death in a silent picture; a dreamof the eye; such vanishing shapes as the mirage shows.
So instant was the scene, so trance-like its mild pictorial effect, sodistant from her blasted bower and her common sense of things, thatHunilla gazed and gazed, nor raised a finger or a wail. But as good tosit thus dumb, in stupor staring on that dumb show, for all thatotherwise might be done. With half a mile of sea between, how could hertwo enchanted arms aid those four fated ones? The distance long, thetime one sand. After the lightning is beheld, what fool shall stay thethunder-bolt? Felipe’s body was washed ashore, but Truxill’s never came;only his gay, braided hat of golden straw–that same sunflower thing hewaved to her, pushing from the strand–and now, to the last gallant, itstill saluted her. But Felipe’s body floated to the marge, with one armencirclingly outstretched. Lock-jawed in grim death, the lover-husbandsoftly clasped his bride, true to her even in death’s dream. Ah,heaven, when man thus keeps his faith, wilt thou be faithless whocreated the faithful one? But they cannot break faith who never plightedit.
It needs not to be said what nameless misery now wrapped the lonelywidow. In telling her own story she passed this almost entirely over,simply recounting the event. Construe the comment of her features as youmight, from her mere words little would you have weened that Hunilla washerself the heroine of her tale. But not thus did she defraud us of ourtears. All hearts bled that grief could be so brave.
She but showed us her soul’s lid, and the strange ciphers thereonengraved; all within, with pride’s timidity, was withheld. Yet was thereone exception. Holding out her small olive hand before her captain, shesaid in mild and slowest Spanish, “Seor, I buried him;” then paused,struggled as against the writhed coilings of a snake, and cringingsuddenly, leaped up, repeating in impassioned pain, “I buried him, mylife, my soul!”
Doubtless, it was by half-unconscious, automatic motions of her hands,that this heavy-hearted one performed the final office for Felipe, andplanted a rude cross of withered sticks–no green ones might be had–atthe head of that lonely grave, where rested now in lasting un-complaintand quiet haven he whom untranquil seas had overthrown.
But some dull sense of another body that should be interred, of anothercross that should hallow another grave–unmade as yet–some dull anxietyand pain touching her undiscovered brother, now haunted the oppressedHunilla. Her hands fresh from the burial earth, she slowly went back tothe beach, with unshaped purposes wandering there, her spell-bound eyebent upon the incessant waves. But they bore nothing to her but a dirge,which maddened her to think that murderers should mourn. As time wentby, and these things came less dreamingly to her mind, the strongpersuasions of her Romish faith, which sets peculiar store byconsecrated urns, prompted her to resume in waking earnest that pioussearch which had but been begun as in somnambulism. Day after day, weekafter week, she trod the cindery beach, till at length a double motiveedged every eager glance. With equal longing she now looked for theliving and the dead; the brother and the captain; alike vanished, neverto return. Little accurate note of time had Hunilla taken under suchemotions as were hers, and little, outside herself, served for calendaror dial. As to poor Crusoe in the self-same sea, no saint’s bell pealedforth the lapse of week or month; each day went by unchallenged; nochanticleer announced those sultry dawns, no lowing herds thosepoisonous nights. All wonted and steadily recurring sounds, human, orhumanized by sweet fellowship with man, but one stirred that torridtrance–the cry of dogs; save which naught but the rolling sea invadedit, an all-pervading monotone; and to the widow that was the least lovedvoice she could have heard.
No wonder, that as her thoughts now wandered to the unreturning ship,and were beaten back again, the hope against hope so struggled in hersoul, that at length she desperately said, “Not yet, not yet; my foolishheart runs on too fast.” So she forced patience for some further weeks.But to those whom earth’s sure indraft draws, patience or impatience isstill the same.
Hunilla now sought to settle precisely in her mind, to an hour, how longit was since the ship had sailed; and then, with the same precision, howlong a space remained to pass. But this proved impossible. What presentday or month it was she could not say. Time was her labyrinth, in whichHunilla was entirely lost.
And now follows–
Against my own purposes a pause descends upon me here. One knows notwhether nature doth not impose some secrecy upon him who has been privyto certain things. At least, it is to be doubted whether it be good toblazon such. If some books are deemed most baneful and their saleforbid, how, then, with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Thosewhom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, notbooks, should be forbid. But in all things man sows upon the wind, whichbloweth just there whither it listeth; for ill or good, man cannot know.Often ill comes from the good, as good from ill.
When Hunilla–
Dire sight it is to see some silken beast long dally with a goldenlizard ere she devour. More terrible, to see how feline Fate willsometimes dally with a human soul, and by a nameless magic make itrepulse a sane despair with a hope which is but mad. Unwittingly I impthis cat-like thing, sporting with the heart of him who reads; for if hefeel not he reads in vain.
–”The ship sails this day, to-day,” at last said Hunilla to herself;”this gives me certain time to stand on; without certainty I go mad. Inloose ignorance I have hoped and hoped; now in firm knowledge I will butwait. Now I live and no longer perish in bewilderings. Holy Virgin, aidme! Thou wilt waft back the ship. Oh, past length of weary weeks–all tobe dragged over–to buy the certainty of to-day, I freely give ye,though I tear ye from me!”
As mariners, tost in tempest on some desolate ledge, patch them a boatout of the remnants of their vessel’s wreck, and launch it in theself-same waves, see here Hunilla, this lone shipwrecked soul, out oftreachery invoking trust. Humanity, thou strong thing, I worship thee,not in the laureled victor, but in this vanquished one.
Truly Hunilla leaned upon a reed, a real one; no metaphor; a realEastern reed. A piece of hollow cane, drifted from unknown isles, andfound upon the beach, its once jagged ends rubbed smoothly even as bysand-paper; its golden glazing gone. Long ground between the sea andland, upper and nether stone, the unvarnished substance was filed bare,and wore another polish now, one with itself, the polish of its agony.Circular lines at intervals cut all round this surface, divided it intosix panels of unequal length. In the first were scored the days, eachtenth one marked by a longer and deeper notch; the second was scored forthe number of sea-fowl eggs for sustenance, picked out from the rockynests; the third, how many fish had been caught from the shore; thefourth, how many small tortoises found inland; the fifth, how many daysof sun; the sixth, of clouds; which last, of the two, was the greaterone. Long night of busy numbering, misery’s mathematics, to weary hertoo-wakeful soul to sleep; yet sleep for that was none.
The panel of the days was deeply worn–the long tenth notches halfeffaced, as alphabets of the blind. Ten thousand times the longing widowhad traced her finger over the bamboo–dull flute, which played, on,gave no sound–as if counting birds flown by in air would hastentortoises creeping through the woods.
After the one hundred and eightieth day no further mark was seen; thatlast one was the faintest, as the first the deepest.
“There were more days,” said our Captain; “many, many more; why did younot go on and notch them, too, Hunilla?”
“Seor, ask me not.”
“And meantime, did no other vessel pass the isle?”
“Nay, Seor;–but–”
“You do not speak; but _what_, Hunilla?”
“Ask me not, Seor.”
“You saw ships pass, far away; you waved to them; they passed on;–wasthat it, Hunilla?”
“Seor, be it as you say.”
Braced against her woe, Hunilla would not, durst not trust the weaknessof her tongue. Then when our Captain asked whether any whale-boatshad–
But no, I will not file this thing complete for scoffing souls to quote,and call it firm proof upon their side. The half shall here remainuntold. Those two unnamed events which befell Hunilla on this isle, letthem abide between her and her God. In nature, as in law, it may belibelous to speak some truths.
Still, how it was that, although our vessel had lain three days anchorednigh the isle, its one human tenant should not have discovered us tilljust upon the point of sailing, never to revisit so lone and far a spot,this needs explaining ere the sequel come.
The place where the French captain had landed the little party was onthe further and opposite end of the isle. There, too, it was that theyhad afterwards built their hut. Nor did the widow in her solitude desertthe spot where her loved ones had dwelt with her, and where the dearestof the twain now slept his last long sleep, and all her plaints awakedhim not, and he of husbands the most faithful during life.
Now, high, broken land rises between the opposite extremities of theisle. A ship anchored at one side is invisible from the other. Neitheris the isle so small, but a considerable company might wander for daysthrough the wilderness of one side, and never be seen, or their halloosheard, by any stranger holding aloof on the other. Hence Hunilla, whonaturally associated the possible coming of ships with her own part ofthe isle, might to the end have remained quite ignorant of the presenceof our vessel, were it not for a mysterious presentiment, borne to her,so our mariners averred, by this isle’s enchanted air. Nor did thewidow’s answer undo the thought.
“How did you come to cross the isle this morning, then, Hunilla?” saidour Captain.
“Seor, something came flitting by me. It touched my cheek, my heart,Seor.”
“What do you say, Hunilla?”
“I have said, Seor, something came through the air.”
It was a narrow chance. For when in crossing the isle Hunilla gained thehigh land in the centre, she must then for the first have perceived ourmasts, and also marked that their sails were being loosed, perhaps evenheard the echoing chorus of the windlass song. The strange ship wasabout to sail, and she behind. With all haste she now descends theheight on the hither side, but soon loses sight of the ship among thesunken jungles at the mountain’s base. She struggles on through thewithered branches, which seek at every step to bar her path, till shecomes to the isolated rock, still some way from the water. This sheclimbs, to reassure herself. The ship is still in plainest sight. Butnow, worn out with over tension, Hunilla all but faints; she fears tostep down from her giddy perch; she is fain to pause, there where sheis, and as a last resort catches the turban from her head, unfurls andwaves it over the jungles towards us.
During the telling of her story the mariners formed a voiceless circleround Hunilla and the Captain; and when at length the word was given toman the fastest boat, and pull round to the isle’s thither side, tobring away Hunilla’s chest and the tortoise-oil, such alacrity of bothcheery and sad obedience seldom before was seen. Little ado was made.Already the anchor had been recommitted to the bottom, and the shipswung calmly to it.
But Hunilla insisted upon accompanying the boat as indispensable pilotto her hidden hut. So being refreshed with the best the steward couldsupply, she started with us. Nor did ever any wife of the most famousadmiral, in her husband’s barge, receive more silent reverence ofrespect than poor Hunilla from this boat’s crew.
Rounding many a vitreous cape and bluff, in two hours’ time we shotinside the fatal reef; wound into a secret cove, looked up along a greenmany-gabled lava wall, and saw the island’s solitary dwelling.
It hung upon an impending cliff, sheltered on two sides by tangledthickets, and half-screened from view in front by juttings of the rudestairway, which climbed the precipice from the sea. Built of canes, itwas thatched with long, mildewed grass. It seemed an abandoned hay-rick,whose haymakers were now no more. The roof inclined but one way; theeaves coming to within two feet of the ground. And here was a simpleapparatus to collect the dews, or rather doubly-distilled and finestwinnowed rains, which, in mercy or in mockery, the night-skies sometimesdrop upon these blighted Encantadas. All along beneath the eaves, aspotted sheet, quite weather-stained, was spread, pinned to short,upright stakes, set in the shallow sand. A small clinker, thrown intothe cloth, weighed its middle down, thereby straining all moisture intoa calabash placed below. This vessel supplied each drop of water everdrunk upon the isle by the Cholos. Hunilla told us the calabash, wouldsometimes, but not often, be half filled overnight. It held six quarts,perhaps. “But,” said she, “we were used to thirst. At sandy Payta, whereI live, no shower from heaven ever fell; all the water there is broughton mules from the inland vales.”
Tied among the thickets were some twenty moaning tortoises, supplyingHunilla’s lonely larder; while hundreds of vast tableted black bucklers,like displaced, shattered tomb-stones of dark slate, were also scatteredround. These were the skeleton backs of those great tortoises fromwhich Felipe and Truxill had made their precious oil. Several largecalabashes and two goodly kegs were filled with it. In a pot near bywere the caked crusts of a quantity which had been permitted toevaporate. “They meant to have strained it off next day,” said Hunilla,as she turned aside.
I forgot to mention the most singular sight of all, though the firstthat greeted us after landing.
Some ten small, soft-haired, ringleted dogs, of a beautiful breed,peculiar to Peru, set up a concert of glad welcomings when we gained thebeach, which was responded to by Hunilla. Some of these dogs had, sinceher widowhood, been born upon the isle, the progeny of the two broughtfrom Payta. Owing to the jagged steeps and pitfalls, tortuous thickets,sunken clefts and perilous intricacies of all sorts in the interior,Hunilla, admonished by the loss of one favorite among them, neverallowed these delicate creatures to follow her in her occasionalbirds’-nests climbs and other wanderings; so that, through longhabituation, they offered not to follow, when that morning she crossedthe land, and her own soul was then too full of other things to heedtheir lingering behind. Yet, all along she had so clung to them, that,besides what moisture they lapped up at early daybreak from the smallscoop-holes among the adjacent rocks, she had shared the dew of hercalabash among them; never laying by any considerable store againstthose prolonged and utter droughts which, in some disastrous seasons,warp these isles.
Having pointed out, at our desire, what few things she would liketransported to the ship–her chest, the oil, not omitting the livetortoises which she intended for a grateful present to our Captain–weimmediately set to work, carrying them to the boat down the long,sloping stair of deeply-shadowed rock. While my comrades were thusemployed, I looked and Hunilla had disappeared.
It was not curiosity alone, but, it seems to me, something differentmingled with it, which prompted me to drop my tortoise, and once moregaze slowly around. I remembered the husband buried by Hunilla’s hands.A narrow pathway led into a dense part of the thickets. Following itthrough many mazes, I came out upon a small, round, open space, deeplychambered there.
The mound rose in the middle; a bare heap of finest sand, like thatunverdured heap found at the bottom of an hour-glass run out. At itshead stood the cross of withered sticks; the dry, peeled bark stillfraying from it; its transverse limb tied up with rope, and forlornlyadroop in the silent air.
Hunilla was partly prostrate upon the grave; her dark head bowed, andlost in her long, loosened Indian hair; her hands extended to thecross-foot, with a little brass crucifix clasped between; a crucifixworn featureless, like an ancient graven knocker long plied in vain. Shedid not see me, and I made no noise, but slid aside, and left the spot.
A few moments ere all was ready for our going, she reappeared among us.I looked into her eyes, but saw no tear. There was something whichseemed strangely haughty in her air, and yet it was the air of woe. ASpanish and an Indian grief, which would not visibly lament. Pride’sheight in vain abased to proneness on the rack; nature’s pride subduingnature’s torture.
Like pages the small and silken dogs surrounded her, as she slowlydescended towards the beach. She caught the two most eager creatures inher arms:–”Mia Teeta! Mia Tomoteeta!” and fondling them, inquired howmany could we take on board.
The mate commanded the boat’s crew; not a hard-hearted man, but his wayof life had been such that in most things, even in the smallest, simpleutility was his leading motive.
“We cannot take them all, Hunilla; our supplies are short; the winds areunreliable; we may be a good many days going to Tombez. So take thoseyou have, Hunilla; but no more.”
She was in the boat; the oarsmen, too, were seated; all save one, whostood ready to push off and then spring himself. With the sagacity oftheir race, the dogs now seemed aware that they were in the very instantof being deserted upon a barren strand. The gunwales of the boat werehigh; its prow–presented inland–was lifted; so owing to the water,which they seemed instinctively to shun, the dogs could not well leapinto the little craft. But their busy paws hard scraped the prow, as ithad been some farmer’s door shutting them out from shelter in a winterstorm. A clamorous agony of alarm. They did not howl, or whine; they allbut spoke.
“Push off! Give way!” cried the mate. The boat gave one heavy drag andlurch, and next moment shot swiftly from the beach, turned on her heel,and sped. The dogs ran howling along the water’s marge; now pausing togaze at the flying boat, then motioning as if to leap in chase, butmysteriously withheld themselves; and again ran howling along the beach.Had they been human beings, hardly would they have more vividly inspiredthe sense of desolation. The oars were plied as confederate feathers oftwo wings. No one spoke. I looked back upon the beach, and then uponHunilla, but her face was set in a stern dusky calm. The dogs crouchingin her lap vainly licked her rigid hands. She never looked be her: butsat motionless, till we turned a promontory of the coast and lost allsights and sounds astern. She seemed as one who, having experienced thesharpest of mortal pangs, was henceforth content to have all lesserheartstrings riven, one by one. To Hunilla, pain seemed so necessary,that pain in other beings, though by love and sympathy made her own, wasunrepiningly to be borne. A heart of yearning in a frame of steel. Aheart of earthly yearning, frozen by the frost which falleth from thesky.
The sequel is soon told. After a long passage, vexed by calms andbaffling winds, we made the little port of Tombez in Peru, there torecruit the ship. Payta was not very distant. Our captain sold thetortoise oil to a Tombez merchant; and adding to the silver acontribution from all hands, gave it to our silent passenger, who knewnot what the mariners had done.
The last seen of lone Hunilla she was passing into Payta town, ridingupon a small gray ass; and before her on the ass’s shoulders, she eyedthe jointed workings of the beast’s armorial cross.
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