Stone Gods (15 page)

The men alone remain at the site and, to my surprise, two of the strongest in build step forward to fell the Palm.

While this strange matter is taking place, and I am ranging my Glass around and about the scene, I light upon a face that is not the face of a Native but the face of a European man, such as myself, yet older.

My excitement very nearly causes my discovery, as I stand to see him better, but at the very second the tree falls, and the noise of its crack is joined with the wailing of the women. The men take it up and away, bearing it on their shoulders, and very soon the site is empty, and after some short time I debate with myself that I can as well go forward as remain. I am to die, and may as well do so in the pursuit of some interest though it deliver no advantage.

At the stump of the tree there is evidence that this lonely specimen lately felled had been part of a grove or an area of forest. Yet if this dismal island had at some time boasted forests and groves, why had no pains been taken to maintain such as is needed for the minimum requirements of life?

I bethought me back to the Natives who had swarmed the Ship when we anchored a mile out. Their thievery had not been for iron stuff, in which they shewed scant interest, but wooden items of little value — discarded broom handles, broken splints, split barrels, wormy boards, a sea-sodden chest used for rope-ends. One of our men had obtained the promise of three virgins for the price of a breadboard. And yet, the breadboard given, the virgins had yet to be seen, and yet with Edgecombe's shot, it was all too late, too late.

But I am the one left behind, and if I could shrink my body to the size of my courage I would find the breadboard and make me a raft and never come back.

I gazed at the stump of the Palm. Why would a man destroy the very thing he most needs?

I followed the trail, easy to do, across the island, its grass so poor and thin that no sheep or goat could home there, and fowls must be pressed to scratch a living. The Natives themselves were not tall or numerous, and famine, I supposed, had kept them in check. I began to wonder what I should eat, and such am I that hunger seemed worse to me than death, and death by starvation far worse than death at a blow. I had in my bag two small bananas given by the Natives and a piece of dried meat brought from the Ship. My water-bottle was full but I had eaten nothing since yesterday night and I resolved to look for a settlement of some kind, reasoning that if a ceremony or rite was taking place, it would be left unguarded.

Reaching the top of the cliff, I looked out and, with my Glass, saw in the distance the last I would ever see of the
Resolution
: my knife and spoon in its pouch, my tankard on its hook, my clean shirt and breeches in a bundle in the corner of my hammock, my parrot that shouted, 'Billy-boy, Eyes Down', and my ration of rum, in other mouths. So be it. Life is all partings. James Hogan, First Mate. I loved him with the patience of an oyster longing for a pearl.

So be it.

Smoke below. The few huts we spied from the Ship are beneath me. Eyes down, the rest to follow; truly the eyes are the window of temptation. Tho' it must be said that there is small stuff here to tempt even the easiest pleased. The settlement is poor and without adornment, patched and shabby. A low charcoal fire burns in a ring of stones. A line of fishes is drying above it, fishes so modest that the scant smoke of the fire blows their tails backward and forward, as tho' they are trying to swim in their new element of air.

Swiftly, I stole the entire line and made off to consume them behind one of the huts. There I was, bones, heads, tails in my mouth like a dog, when a hand came from behind and seized my collar. I near enough choked to death, my heart pumping for terror, and when I looked up, there was a Native, brown and painted, a spear in his hand.

He took the fishes from me and speedily ate what remained.

Then he prodded me forward, speaking I knew not what, and we set out, away from the settlement towards the shore, and towards the strange and silent stone idols we had sighted from the Ship.

I hardly know how to describe what I saw.

These Idols, staring out to sea with their massy stone faces, stood many feet high, dark and heavy and impassive, and seated upon great plinths of wood and stone. I could not fathom to myself how they had been carved by these Natives, nor how dragged to this place. I reasoned that the skill that could execute such design would shew other works: their dwellings would be more ingenious, their manner of living better considered. Where were their boats, their tackle, their meeting-houses?

I had little time to think on these things as I was pushed forward in the circle of men, who soon had me stripped down to my breeches. My cutlass and knife and Glass were taken with much delight, and my coat and shirt and hat made the subject of great dispute among the Natives. It was all the power I had to keep my breeches, but I resolved to be murdered on the spot rather than be parted from them, for a man without breeches must either be a woman or an ass.

Out of sport or humour or the quick loss of purpose that is common among Natives, my tormentors let me alone as a group of children might do a puppy.

Looking about me for means of escape, it was then that I saw, at the base of the Idols, piles of human bones, like an open grave, and what courage remained to me leaked through the sieve of my terror.

As I stood, a Native came forward, his eyebrows and head shaved. Most curious were his fingernails, something above six inches long, and painted. The others seemed in awe and wonder at the man, and I guessed him to be a priest of the Idols. He made a sign, and two Natives came forward and roped my hands together, after which they pointed to a place a little way off, and I understood I was to walk there. At the spot, I sat down and my ankles were tied together. The Natives returned to the Idols and, to my great astonishment, joined together and began to rock the largest Idol at its base. To begin with I understood their actions as a form of worship, but as their labour increased, I saw that it was their intention to shatter the Idol on the ground.

My mind was dizzy from the sun and from fear. Such prodigious labour as had been employed to make such a thing could surely not be wasted in its shattering?

It must be that others, not of this island, had at some time imposed their gods on the Natives, and this was the people's revenge.

As I sat, the Idol began to topple, and the earth to shake under me. There was a crack like a splitting-axe at a rotten tree, and the blind stone god fell face to the ground. The sea-waves washed at its ruin.

There was silence among the Natives. Then, into the space between one moment and the next, a man in a white feather headdress, his person decorated about with white feathers, ran forward along the sands, followed by others, waving spears and shouting in a mixed and boiling broth of rage and pain.

At once the two parties fell to fighting, using the slain mountain of the Idol as a kind of barricade on both sides. I could do nothing, and nothing I did do until, with a great cry, the Native with the talons seemed to order his men to desert the scene. As the battle ended, this Bird Man drew with his nails some sign on the Stone God and, appearing to fear no further reprisal, turned his back on his foes and made away.

The rival chief, for so I thought him, walked slowly to the thing of stone, lying like a whale that has lost the sea, and inspected the sign. Then he shook his head, and began to walk backwards, away from the Idol.

As I watched, my nostrils twitched with smoke, and I looked towards the settlement. The great plumes of smoke I saw were not made by a charcoal fire for smoking fishes. It must be that the few huts were on fire. This, then, was the reason for the sudden retreat of the Bird Man and his followers: they were burning the village.

All at once I was alone. The great noise and commotion and effort of the passing few hours was done. It was as tho' I did not exist. Perhaps I had been forgotten, perhaps left to die as a sacrifice to a fallen Idol, or to the power that had destroyed it.

I hopped up on my feet and jumped both feet together down towards the sea, a puny, pitiful, tied thing, no better than a cat in a sack. I looked out across the Ocean, and determined to drown myself

I was up to my chin when the shout came, and I will never forget it. Never. For it seems to me that any hope in life is such a shout; a voice that answers the silent place of despair. It is silence that most needs an answering — when I can no longer speak, hear me.

I turned.

Him that I had spied through my Glass was waving at me from the shore. He quickly waded and swam and came near me, and I would hazard that he was a man of forty years, yet wonderfully preserved, lean and strong, and with a cheerful, inquisitive face that reminded me of a good dog that never had a bad master. He smiled, and his teeth were white and whole. 'English man,' he said, pointing at me, and I surely would have drowned in astonishment, had he not caught me and quickly untied my wrists, then dived down into the water and untied my legs. He slapped my bare shoulders, and made that we should wade back to the shore.

As we came near the Idol, he paused and looked sorrowful. 'Dead,' he said, giving me cause to think that he was more a Native than a European man.

He took my hand, and ran with me about a mile along the sand until we came to a honeycomb of caves low in the cliff A simple canoe was pulled outside one of these. He took me inside the cave and embraced me, and I could feel straight away that he was eager of a reward for his pains. I put my hand down to where he was stiff and soon had him tidy and soft again, for I am used to such things from the Ships, and it means little to me to steady a man. He made to handle me in return, but I shook my head. I was weak and fearful out of all that had passed, and wanted rest.

My companion soon made a small fire of charcoal and dried seaweed and began to roast a seabird.

'Spikkers,' he said, pointing at his own chest. 'Roggeweins' Ship.'

His English was poor, but it was English nonetheless, and I discovered that his father had landed at Easter Island with the Dutch Captain Roggeweins in 1722. As far as I could understand it, his father had deserted the vessel and remained on the island with one of the women. By sign he shewed me that his parents were now dead, and that all his brothers and sisters were dead, for want of food or in some conflict. His father had taught him Dutch, Spanish and some English. His only wish was to escape the island and settle in his father's great sailing city —Amsterdam, 'much wood, many houses'.

I had visited Amsterdam myself, and I described to him the wonders of that city: its canals, its bridges, its tall houses with their hoists for hauling merchandise. I told of its burghers and its matrons, of its warehouses piled with grain, of its trade with the Indies, splendid and jewelled, of an elephant I had seen — tho' the elephant was difficult to describe so that I was obliged to draw it crudely on the cave wall in charcoal.

'And its trunk,' I said, 'can lift a man six feet nearer to God.'

When I said 'God', Spikkers went to the back of the cave and pulled out a wooden box. 'Wood,' he said, bowing to the box.

I saw at once it was a Bible box and, sure enough, inside were three Bibles; one written in Dutch, one in Spanish, and the King James.

'Read,' he said.

I opened the Bible. 'In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth, and the Earth was without Form and Void, and darkness moved on the face of the Deep.'

'MakeMake build the world, and this the world,' said Spikkers, pointing round and down, by which I had to guess he meant the island. 'Out There, after the sea, Hiva, where the Living go, and Po, where the Dead go.'

'Where is Amsterdam?' I asked, for sake of play.

Spikkers nodded, certain that he knew the answer to that, and when it grew dark, he led me outside the cave and shewed me to lie down beside him.

'My father lies on earth, this so, and he tells me his dreams. When he has made much dreaming, he points to his home.'

Spikkers pointed up to a bright and steady star close to the moon. With his other hand he held mine and kissed it. 'Holland,' he said, kissing my fingers, one by one by one by one, and until my hand became a five-pointed star.

And the
Resolution
, and Plymouth, and my mother's house dock-side at Chatham, and the Green Dragon that sells oysters and whitebait, and the barrels of rum waiting to be loaded, and the boys that would stowaway in a bale of cloth, and the stories as long as a two-year voyage South, and the last meal of fresh beef and onions, and the cheers from the town, and the flag up, and the people waving waving smaller smaller, and the smell of casked apples and the last sight of a known shore and, faintly, the sound of a Church bell, are these things nearer than a Holland star — or easier to believe?

When day came, I attempted to discover the meaning of what I had seen with the Idol. Spikkers grew in agitation and, with gestures and broken English, explained, or so I think, that the island had two leaders, at bitter war — the Bird Man and the White Man. The White Man, called the Ariki Mau, was the pale Native dressed in feathers, the priest-man with supernatural powers who was able to fly with the Dead, and bring visions to the Living. The islanders still revered him, but they feared more the Bird Man, with his shaved brows and head and his talon-fingers. The Bird Man had control of a kind of army, and ruled the island with this mob. Food was scarce, and the best of everything went first to the Bird Man to favour among his followers.