To the eastward Ua-huka was being blotted out by an evening rain-squall that was fast overtaking the Snark.But that little craft, her big spinnaker filled by the southeast trade, was ****** a good race of it.Cape Martin, the southeasternmost point of Nuku-hiva, was abeam, and Comptroller Bay was opening up as we fled past its wide entrance, where Sail Rock, for all the world like the spritsail of a Columbia River salmon-boat, was ****** brave weather of it in the smashing southeast swell.
"What do you make that out to be?" I asked Hermann, at the wheel.
"A fishing-boat, sir," he answered after careful scrutiny.
Yet on the chart it was plainly marked, "Sail Rock."But we were more interested in the recesses of Comptroller Bay, where our eyes eagerly sought out the three bights of land and centred on the midmost one, where the gathering twilight showed the dim walls of a valley extending inland.How often we had pored over the chart and centred always on that midmost bight and on the valley it opened--the Valley of Typee."Taipi" the chart spelled it, and spelled it correctly, but I prefer "Typee," and I shall always spell it "Typee." When I was a little boy, I read a book spelled in that manner--Herman Melville's "Typee"; and many long hours I dreamed over its pages.Nor was it all dreaming.I resolved there and then, mightily, come what would, that when I had gained strength and years, I, too, would voyage to Typee.For the wonder of the world was penetrating to my tiny consciousness--the wonder that was to lead me to many lands, and that leads and never pails.The years passed, but Typee was not forgotten.Returned to San Francisco from a seven months' cruise in the North Pacific, I decided the time had come.The brig Galilee was sailing for the Marquesas, but her crew was complete and I, who was an able-seaman before the mast and young enough to be overweeningly proud of it, was willing to condescend to ship as cabin-boy in order to make the pilgrimage to Typee.Of course, the Galilee would have sailed from the Marquesas without me, for I was bent on finding another Fayaway and another Kory-Kory.Idoubt that the captain read desertion in my eye.Perhaps even the berth of cabin-boy was already filled.At any rate, I did not get it.
Then came the rush of years, filled brimming with projects, achievements, and failures; but Typee was not forgotten, and here Iwas now, gazing at its misty outlines till the squall swooped down and the Snark dashed on into the driving smother.Ahead, we caught a glimpse and took the compass bearing of Sentinel Rock, wreathed with pounding surf.Then it, too, was effaced by the rain and darkness.We steered straight for it, trusting to hear the sound of breakers in time to sheer clear.We had to steer for it.We had naught but a compass bearing with which to orientate ourselves, and if we missed Sentinel Rock, we missed Taiohae Bay, and we would have to throw the Snark up to the wind and lie off and on the whole night--no pleasant prospect for voyagers weary from a sixty days'
traverse of the vast Pacific solitude, and land-hungry, and fruit-hungry, and hungry with an appetite of years for the sweet vale of Typee.
Abruptly, with a roar of sound, Sentinel Rock loomed through the rain dead ahead.We altered our course, and, with mainsail and spinnaker bellying to the squall, drove past.Under the lea of the rock the wind dropped us, and we rolled in an absolute calm.Then a puff of air struck us, right in our teeth, out of Taiohae Bay.It was in spinnaker, up mizzen, all sheets by the wind, and we were moving slowly ahead, heaving the lead and straining our eyes for the fixed red light on the ruined fort that would give us our bearings to anchorage.The air was light and baffling, now east, now west, now north, now south; while from either hand came the roar of unseen breakers.From the looming cliffs arose the blatting of wild goats, and overhead the first stars were peeping mistily through the ragged train of the passing squall.At the end of two hours, having come a mile into the bay, we dropped anchor in eleven fathoms.And so we came to Taiohae.
In the morning we awoke in fairyland.The Snark rested in a placid harbour that nestled in a vast amphitheatre, the towering, vine-clad walls of which seemed to rise directly from the water.Far up, to the east, we glimpsed the thin line of a trail, visible in one place, where it scoured across the face of the wall.
"The path by which Toby escaped from Typee!" we cried.
We were not long in getting ashore and astride horses, though the consummation of our pilgrimage had to be deferred for a day.Two months at sea, bare-footed all the time, without space in which to exercise one's limbs, is not the best preliminary to leather shoes and walking.Besides, the land had to cease its nauseous rolling before we could feel fit for riding goat-like horses over giddy trails.So we took a short ride to break in, and crawled through thick jungle to make the acquaintance of a venerable moss-grown idol, where had foregathered a German trader and a Norwegian captain to estimate the weight of said idol, and to speculate upon depreciation in value caused by sawing him in half.They treated the old fellow sacrilegiously, digging their knives into him to see how hard he was and how deep his mossy mantle, and commanding him to rise up and save them trouble by walking down to the ship himself.
In lieu of which, nineteen Kanakas slung him on a frame of timbers and toted him to the ship, where, battened down under hatches, even now he is cleaving the South Pacific Hornward and toward Europe--the ultimate abiding-place for all good heathen idols, save for the few in America and one in particular who grins beside me as I write, and who, barring shipwreck, will grin somewhere in my neighbourhood until I die.And he will win out.He will be grinning when I am dust.