MAGIC

By H. de Vere Stacpoole

Author of “Picaroons,” “A Man of Iron,” Etc.

    Whether it is an island in the South Seas or a great city,
    the spell of one’s homeland holds, and the sight of
    homeland face, when far afield, can work wonders in the
    human heart, as Tauti and Uliami lived to learn.


In Tilafeaa there lived, many years ago, two young men, Tauti and Uliami
by name, and brothers in all things but birth.

Tilafeaa is a high island, very large, and many ships come there for
copra and turtle and beche de mer, and at night you can see the reef
alight with the torches of the fish spearers, and there is a club where
the white captains and the mates from the ships meet with the traders to
drink and talk.

The town is larger than the town here at Malaffii, but more spread, with
trees everywhere, and between the houses, artus and palms and bread
fruit, so that at night the lights of the town show like fireflies in
the thick bush.

Tauti’s house lay near the middle of the great street, near to the
church, while the house of Uliami was the last in all that street but
one, a pleasant house under the shadow of the true woods and close to
the mountain track that goes over the shoulder of Paulii and beyond.

It was at the house of Uliami that these two chiefly met, for Uliami was
the richer man and his house was the pleasanter house and he himself was
the stronger of the two--not in power of limb but in person. You will
have noticed that, of two men equal in the strength of the body, one
will be greater than the other, so that men and women will come to him
first, and he will be able to get the better price for his copra, and in
any public place he will find more consideration shown to him.

It was so with Uliami. He was first of these two as he might have been
the elder brother, and, though first, always put himself last, so great
was his spirit and love for Tauti. When they went fishing together,
though he caught more, it was always Tauti that brought home the
heaviest basket. The ripest fruit was always for Tauti, and once, at the
risk of his own, he had saved Tauti’s life.

As for Tauti, he was equally fine in spirit. Though Uliami might fill
his basket the fullest, he always tried to contrive that in the end
Uliami had the better fish and fruit, and once he, too, had risked his
life to save a man--and that man was Uliami.

Now since these two were inseparable and had given in spirit the life of
the one for the life of the other, nothing, you will say, could separate
them but Death which separates all things.




II.


One day Tauti, coming up alone from the fishing and taking a byway
through the trees, came across a girl crouched beneath the shelter of a
bread fruit whose leaves were so great that one of them could have
covered her little body.

It was Kinei, the daughter of Sikra the basket maker, and she was
stringing flowers which she had plucked to make a chaplet. He knew her
well, and he had often passed her; she was fourteen, or a little more,
and had for nickname the “Laughing One,” for she was as pleasant to look
at as the sunshine through leaves on a shadowed brook. She was so young
that he had scarcely thought of her as being different from a man, and
she had always, on meeting him, had a smile for him, given openly as a
child may give a pretty shell in the palm of its hand.

But to-day, as she looked up, she had no smile for him. He drew near and
sat down close to her and handed her the flowers for her to string.
Then, as he looked into her eyes, he saw that they were deep as the
deepest sea, and full of trouble.

He made inquiry as to the cause of the trouble and Kinei, without
answering him, looked down. He raised her chin and, looking at him full,
her eyes filled with tears. Then he knew. He had found Love, suddenly,
like a treasure, or like a flower just opened and filled with dew.

On leaving her that day he could have run through the woods like a man
distracted and filled with joy, but, instead he sought his own house,
and there he sat down to contemplate this new thing that had befallen
him.

Now, in the past, when any good had come to Tauti, no sooner was it in
his hand than he carried it to Uliami to show; and his eyes now turned
that way. But, look hard as he would, he could not see Uliami, for there
was now no one else in the world for him but Kinei.

He could not tell his news, but hid it up, and when Uliami met him and
asked him what was on his mind, he replied “Nothing.” And so things went
on, till one day Uliami, walking in the woods, came upon Kinei with
Tauti in her arms.

He would sooner have come upon his own death, for he, too, had learned
to love the girl, but his love for her had made him as weak as a maiden
and as fearful as a child in the dark of the high woods, when there is
no moon. Love is like that, making some men bold as the frigate bird in
its flight, and some timorous as the dove, and the strongest are often
the weakest when taken in the snare.

Uliami, having gazed for two heartbeats, passed away like a shadow among
the trees and sought his own house and sat down to consider this new
thing that had come to him. Any bad fortune of the past he had always
carried to Tauti to share it with him, and his eyes turned toward Tauti
now, but not with that intent.

At first, and for some time covering many days, he felt no ill will--no
more than a man feels toward the matagi that blows suddenly out of a
clear sky, driving him off shore to be drowned.

Then came the marriage of Tauti to Kinei, and a year that passed, and a
son that was born to them.

And then slowly, as the great storms rise, the storm that had been
gathering in the heart of Uliami rose and darkened, and what caused that
storm was the fact that Tauti, in his happiness, had forgotten their
old-time bond of brotherhood, and was so happy in his wife and his
little affairs that Uliami might as well not have been on that island.

Tauti had robbed him not only of Kinei but of himself; Kinei had robbed
him not only of herself but of Tauti--and they were happy. But the storm
might never have burst, for Uliami was no evil man, had he not one day
discovered that Kinei was no longer faithful to Tauti. She was of that
sort, and the devil, who knows all things, did not leave the matter long
to rest, but took Uliami by the ear and showed him the truth.

Now what the devil does to a man that man does often to another. Uliami
showed Tauti the truth, and in such a manner that Tauti struck him on
the mouth.

“So be it,” said Uliami, wiping his mouth. “All is ended between us, and
now I will kill you--not to-day, but to-morrow, and as sure as the sun
will rise.”

Tauti laughed.

“There are two to that game,” said he. “As you say, all is ended between
us, and to-morrow I will kill you as sure as the sun will set.”

Then they each went their ways, not knowing that their words had been
overheard by Sikra, the father of Kinei, who had been hiding in the
bushes by the path where they had met.




III.


This Sikra was only a basket maker and knew only one trade, but for all
that he was the wisest man on that island, and the most cunning, and the
most evil. And Sikra said to himself, “If these two men kill one another
over Kinei and her conduct, all may be discovered openly which is now
known only secretly and to a few.”

He went to the lagoon edge, and there, in the shelter of the canoe
houses, he sat down, and, with his hands before him, began contemplating
the matter, twisting the facts, this way and that, with the fingers of
his mind, just as the fingers of his body had been accustomed to twist
the plaited grass, this way and that, into the form of his baskets.

He knew that this thing was a death feud, and that by the morrow’s
sunset one of the two men would be no longer alive, unless they were
separated and one taken clean away from that island. But more than that,
he said to himself, “Of what use is there in taking one away, for if
Tauti is left he will maltreat my daughter and search more deeply into
this matter and bring more confusion upon us. And if I were to kill
Uliami to-night in his sleep, as has just occurred to me, would not the
deed be put down to Tauti, who, in trying to free himself, might in some
way bring the deed home to me? And if I were to kill Tauti, might not
the same thing happen?”

Thinking so, his wandering mind crossed the lagoon to the two ships
there at anchor--a schooner and a brig--and both due to leave by the
flood of the morrow’s dawn. It was then, with the suddenness of the
closing of a buckle, that a great thought came to Sikra, making him
laugh out loud so that the echoes of the canoe house made answer.

He rose up and, leaving the beach, made through the trees in the
direction of Tauti’s house. There, when he reached it, was Kinei, seated
at the doorway. He knew, by this, that Tauti was not at home, and so,
nodding to his daughter, he withdrew, making along that street toward
the sea end where presently he met his man leaving the forge of Tomassu,
the smith, who makes and mends in iron things and sharpens fish spears
and knives. Tauti had a knife in his girdle, and, noting it, Sikra drew
him aside into the lane that goes through the bushes of mammee apple,
past the chief trader’s house to the far end of the beach.

Here he stopped, when they had passed beyond earshot of the trader’s
house, and, placing his finger on the breast of the other, says he:

“Tauti, what about that knife you were having sharpened just now at the
forge of Tomassu?”

“To-morrow,” said Tauti, “I have to kill a pig.”

“You are right,” said Sikra. “He is a pig. I heard you both when you
were talking on the path, and I heard the name he gave my daughter, and
I saw you strike him. But you will not kill him to-morrow.”

“But why?” asked Tauti.

“Because,” said Sikra, “he has left the island.”

Tauti laughed, disbelieving the other.

“Since when,” asked he, “has Uliami taken wings?”

“An hour ago,” replied Sikra. “I rowed him over to the schooner that
lies there in the lagoon; most of the crew were ashore getting fruit,
and the rest were asleep, and the captain and his mate were at the club
drinking, and the hatch was open and Uliami crept on board and hid
himself among the cargo. His lips were white with fear.”

“But Uliami is no coward,” said the other.

“Did he return your blow?” asked the cunning Sikra.

“That is true,” replied Tauti, “but hiding will not save him. I have
sworn his death and my hatred is as deep as the sea. I will go on board
the schooner now and tell the captain what sort of cockroach lies hidden
in his ship; and when they bring him out I will kill him.”

“And then the white men will hang you,” said Sikra. “Child that you are,
will you listen to me?”

“I listen,” said Tauti.

“Well,” said Sikra, “you go aboard the schooner now and become one of
the crew. They are in need of hands, as, indeed, is also that brig that
lies by her. Then in a day or less, when Uliami knocks to be let out,
you will be on board and on some dark night, or peradventure at the next
port the schooner reaches, you can do the business you have set your
heart to.”

Now this counsel fell in not only with Tauti’s desire for blood, but
also with his wish to be shut of that island for a while and the wife
who had betrayed him.

He thought for a moment on the matter, and then he fell in with the idea
of Sikra, and, not even returning to his house, just as he was, let
himself be led to the far end of the beach, where Sikra, borrowing a
canoe, rowed him to the schooner, whose captain was right glad to have
him, being, as Sikra had stated truly enough, short of hands.




IV.


Sikra, having got rid of one of his men, paddled back ashore, and,
waiting till dark had nearly fallen, took himself to Uliami’s house.
Here he found Uliami seated with a fish spear across his knees and a
whetstone in his hands; a knife that had just been sharpened lay beside
him.

“You are busy?” said Sikra, “but your labor is useless, for the man you
would kill has flown. Hiding in the bushes I heard all that passed
between you and Tauti. He has left the island for fear of you and has
crept on board the brig that lies at anchor in the lagoon. With the help
of a friend who is one of the crew, he has hidden himself in the hold
with the cargo.”

“Then,” said the other, and almost in the words Tauti had used, “I will
row off to the brig and tell the captain what sort of reptile has hidden
in his hold, and when they drag him forth I will kill him.”

“And the white men will hang you,” said Sikra. “Child, listen to the
words of Sikra, who is old enough to be your father. Go on board the
brig pretending nothing, become one of the crew, and then, when Tauti
knocks to be let out, you can have your way with him some dark night, or
peradventure, at the first port the ship touches at. I wish to be shut
of him as a son-in-law for many reasons, but I do not want him killed on
this island.”

Uliami brooded for a moment on this. Then he rose, and, taking only the
knife, followed the other to the beach.

It was now dark. When they reached the side of the brig the captain was
called, and glad enough he was to get a new hand and willing to pay
three dollars a month, which is better pay by a dollar than what they
were giving on the plantations--and paid in dollars, not trade goods.

Uliami climbed on board, and then Sikra put back ashore, where he sat on
the beach for a while, looking at the lights of the two ships and
holding his stomach with laughter. Then he made for the house of Tauti
and beat Kinei, and took possession of all the belongings of her
husband. Next day he went to the house of Uliami and took the best of
the things there, assured in his mind that neither Tauti nor Uliami
would ever get back to that island again.




V.


Now when a man finds himself in his grave he may like it or not, but he
cannot get out; and so it is with a ship.

Uliami presently found himself in the fo’c’s’le of that ship where the
hands were having their supper by the light of a stinking lamp, and so
far from eating, it was all he could do to breathe.

Neither did the men please him, being different from the men he had
always met with. There were men from the Solomons, with slit ears and
nose rings; and there were men from the low islands, whose language he
could scarcely understand; and he would have been the unhappiest man in
the world, just then, had it not been for the thought of Tauti so close
to him hidden among the cargo and fancying himself safe.

At the same time, on board the schooner, Tauti was in the same way,
wishing himself in any other place, but upheld by the thought of Uliami
hiding from him, yet so close.

Then, with an empty belly, but a full mind, Uliami turned in, to be
aroused just before break of day by the mate. On deck he was put to haul
on ropes to raise the sails, and on the deck of the schooner, lying
close by, he might have seen, had there been light, Tauti hauling
likewise.

Then he was put to the windlass which pulls in the chain that raises the
anchor, and as the sun laid his first finger upon Paulii the anchor came
in and the brig, with the tide and the first of the land wind, drew
toward the reef opening and passed it. Uliami, looking back, saw
Tilafeaa standing bold from the sea and the reef and the opening with
the schooner passing through it, and he wished himself back for a
moment, till the remembrance of Tauti came to him and the picture of him
hidden there among the cargo.

He reckoned that he would knock to be let out as soon as the ship told
him by her movement that she was well on her voyage, and, being on the
morning watch, he managed to keep close to the cargo hatch with his ears
well open to any sound. At first the straining and creaking of the masts
and timbers confused him, but he got used to these, but he heard no
sound. An hour might have gone by when a new thought came to Uliami. He
would lay no longer waiting for the other to make a move, but go
straight to the captain and tell him that a man was hidden there under
the hatch, for he was more hungry for the sight of Tauti’s face and the
surprise on it at their meeting than a young maiden is for the sight of
her lover.

At that moment the captain himself came on deck and began to look at the
sun, holding to his face a thing so strangely formed that Uliami would
have laughed, only that laughter and all gay thoughts were now as far
from him as Tilafeaa.

The captain was a big man with a red face, and when he had done looking
at the sun, and when he heard what Uliami had to say, he swore a great
oath, and, calling to the mate, he ordered the tarpaulins to be taken
off the hatch and the locking bars undone, and then the hatch was
opened, but there was no man there.

Then the captain kicked Uliami, and the mate kicked him, and at that
very time, or near it, they were kicking Tauti on board the schooner for
also giving them word that a man was hidden in the cargo.

Of a truth these two, who had set out so gayly to kill one another, were
receiving payment through the hands of Sikra; each of these men had
seized the devil by the tail and they could not let go, and here he was
galloping over the world with them, from wave to wave, like a horse over
hurdles, for the brig and the schooner, though separated by many
leagues, were going in the same direction.




VI.


They passed islands, and there was not an island they passed that did
not make Uliami feel as though he had swallowed Paulii and it had risen
in his throat.

As first, and for many days, he noticed in his ears a sound which was
yet not a sound. Then he knew it was the sound of the reef that had been
in his ears since childhood, but had now drawn away and gone from him,
leaving only its memory. The food displeased him, and the work and the
faces of his companions, and he would have given his pay and all he
possessed for a sniff of the winds blowing from the high woods, or a
sight of the surf on the shores of Tilafeaa.

He had only one companion--his anger against Tauti. He saw now that he
had been served a trick, and put the whole matter down to the wiles of
the other, little thinking that it was Sikra who had played this game
against them both.




VII.


One day the brig, always butting like a ram against the blue sky and
empty sea, gave them view of a mountain and land, stretching in the
distance from north to south as though all the islands of the ocean had
been drawn and joined together making one solid piece.

Then presently, as they drew in, Uliami saw a break in the land near the
mountain. They told him it was the Golden Gate and the city of San
Francisco where all the rich men in the world lived, but he had little
time to listen to their tales. For they were now on the bar, and the
brig was tumbling this way and that, and the mate and captain cursing
and kicking those in the way, and giving orders to haul now on this
rope, now on that.

Uliami had been used to swearing and cursing on board that brig, but,
when they got to the wharf, what he heard overpassed all he had heard in
that way, as though all the curses in the world, like all the men, and
all the houses, and all the ships, had come to roost at that spot.

But Uliami did not mind. He was filled with one great desire--to go
ashore to see for himself the great houses and the rich men and the new
things to be seen. Next morning when the crew were paid and he had
received five dollars as his pay, he joined up with Sru, a man from the
low islands, who had been friendly to him on the voyage, and the pair,
crossing the plank, set their feet on the wharf, and Sru, landing, made
for the first tavern. That was the sort of man Sru was, old in the ways
of harbors and ports, and with a liking for rum. But Uliami had no
stomach for drink and, presently, he left the other and found himself in
the streets round the dockside.

It was very windy here and his thin coat and trousers flapped around him
as a flag flaps on its staff, and the dust blew with the wind in great
clouds. And, just as things touched by a wizard change and alter, so the
mind of Uliami began to wither in him, for here there were no rich men
to be seen, only dirty children playing their games, and there was not a
child that did not see in him a man new to the place. They called after
him, ridiculing him, and the houses were not proper houses set in
gardens, but all of a piece and evil-looking beyond words.

Then pursuing his way he found himself in a broader street where cars
ran without horses and where there were so many people that no one
noticed him.

And that was the most curious thing that had happened to him yet, for at
Tilafeaa every one had a nod or a smile or a word for every one else,
but here the people all passed along in two streams, rapidly, like
driven fish, with not a word for each other, nor a look nor a smile, so
that, in all that crowd, Uliami felt more alone than in the woods yet
not alone--for here were men and women, almost in touch, by the hundred
and the thousand.

Then the shops took him where the traders exposed their goods, not in
the open but behind windows of glass, each ten hundred times bigger than
the window of glass in the church at Raupee. But the goods exposed were
things, many of them, which he had never seen before, and they caused no
desire in his mind, only distress and more loneliness, till he came to a
shop where great bunches of bananas hung just as though they had been
new cut down from the trees at Tilafeaa.

Here he hung, disregarding the other fruit exposed, and with tears
filling his eyes, till the man of the shop spoke to him roughly, asking
him what he wanted and bidding him be gone.




VIII.


Now at Tilafeaa the day was always cut out in pieces, with things to do
in each piece, and on board the brig it was the same, but here the day
was all one, with nothing to do but walk from street to street, among
people blind to one another and always hurrying like leaves blown by a
wind.

Uliami stood a while at a corner and watched these people, and it seemed
to him, now, that they were each, like the cars that went without
horses, or the boats in the bay that went without stern or side wheels,
driven by some purpose that no man could see.

He felt that it was no good purpose that made men disregard one another
and push one another aside and be blind to a stranger as though he were
a ghost they could not see. He felt sick at heart, for even the sun had
changed and here its light fell on nothing good. The great buildings and
the little, it was all the same, they were equally hard with the
hardness that lay in the faces of the people.

It was on noon when, wandering like a lost dog, he found himself in a
most dismal place passing along by a great wall. Beyond the wall lay a
building reaching the skies with chimneys that smoked and fumed, and
here in the lane lay refuse and old empty tins and such truck with the
sun shining on them and the light of it turned to mournfulness and
desolation. Turning a corner of this lane he came face to face with
Tauti, whose ship had come in to the bay only the morning before, and
who, like Uliami, had been wandering hither and thither, like a lost
dog.

Each man had still his knife in his girdle, and thus they stood facing
one another, as they had stood when they parted last, in the woods of
Tilafeaa. And surely, for a killing, no place was better suited than
this, where there was no one to watch or take notice or care except the
devil of desolation lurking in that lane, which of all places in the
city seemed his truest home.

For a moment, as they stood, all things were shattered around them;
everything wiped away but themselves, and their minds sprang back to the
point of anger as a bow springs back to the straight, and who knows what
might have happened between these two, but at that moment from the great
building there came a howl like the voice of the whole city howling out
in pain because of its own desolation.

It was the voice of the horn that is blown at midday for the work
people, and as Tauti and Uliami looked round them in fear and wonder it
seemed to them the voice of the dust, and the high walls and the
streets, and the rubbish on the ground, and the hard-faced people on the
foot walks. When it ceased, and they faced one another again, they were
no longer alone, for that voice had reached Tilafeaa, and the high woods
had come trooping to its call right across the sea, and they were
standing as they had stood when they parted last in the company of the
trees and amid the beauty of the flowers, and all anger had passed from
their hearts where there was nothing now but the grief of exile and
love.

Surely that was magic greater than the magic of the pictures that move,
or the machines that speak, and surely places are the true gods that
rule over man, for the voice of the city had brought an island from a
thousand leagues away, and the island had brought love to Tauti and
Uliami.

No man could have reconciled these two.

But Tauti died. Before ever he could get back to Tilafeaa a fever took
him. It was many years ago.

I am Uliami.


[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the December 7, 1920 issue
of The Popular Magazine.]