Being around him was like being around a young boy. After breakfast, we went to a quiet lagoon, where he plunged in for a morning bath with a giant splash. I tried again to ask about what business he was conducting on the island, but his reply was that such things could wait. After bathing, we gathered crabs into a basket for an afternoon meal, and continued on our way. He was almost galloping.
The island was of such a narrow and curving shape, and had so many glittering rock and coral formations around it, we were always near some shoreline. But the breakers did not create the usual rhythmic, back-and-forth flow of the ocean. Instead, the noise of the waves was constant, like the engines of the trains where I used to dwell.
Unlike the terrain in Samoa, there were no mountains here. It was mostly low and flat, with some small hills throughout. When we gained enough ground to have a new view of one of the inlets, Mr. Fergins pointed out a surprising sight: a warship, rusty but upright and armed, basking in the light.
“My understanding was that there are no foreign powers here,” I said. “I thought that is what you made their constitution to prevent.”
“The frigate belongs to no foreign nation.”
“Then who?”
“Me!” he exclaimed.
I tried to assess whether this was one of his little jokes. “You are serious, Mr. Fergins.”
“Indeed. This was the German ship wrecked at Apia years ago in a hurricane. Since the Germans did not want to spend money to repair it, I convinced the King of Tonga to negotiate for us to tow it in and work on it. We still have some final repairs to make, but we are getting closer.”
“What will you do with a warship?”
“Well,” he said, seeming to think hard, “nothing personally. But one never knows what you will need to protect your own property. Come, we’ll walk through the village.”
We passed a massive stone formation, with twenty-or thirty-foot slabs covered in moss and creepers placed perpendicularly on top of pillars of similar sizes. What they meant, and how they were placed that way, explained my host, the modern generation of natives could not say. I followed as we climbed up a steep path, through a dusty hamlet of small huts and one larger, a wooden church painted white. I was still overflowing with questions from the day before.
“Can you tell me what happened to Vao?” I asked.
“Only what I’ve heard. That she eventually married a great warrior of a nearby village and dedicated herself to the local wars against the king and his German allies who had ordered her village burned.”
“I had the impression that you had fallen in love with her when she helped you after your release from the jail.”
He paused for a moment, shaking his soft, silky beard of the last few drops of water while he looked me over. “Me? Do not be ridiculous! I have told you my life before this was about books; my heart and head were stacked with them from floor to ceiling. There was no room for love. Vao was a dear girl but never the same after her misbegotten liaison with Davenport. After her quest for vengeance against Belial, I think the darker matters consumed her, and that beautiful young girl, the girl who had loved Tulagi so desperately, was gone forever.”
It seemed to me he had misjudged the native girl entirely, that she had not been corrupted out of some state of purity, but had long been enveloped in grief for her father, waiting for her first opportunity to break free to fight the injustices, and might have felt an understanding from Davenport from his own grief over not saving Kitten. It made me wonder what else he might have understood incorrectly, and what I might have learned if I could have heard the same story from the lips of Vao herself, or from Davenport or even Belial.
He continued, ready to move on. “Here is what I am very excited for you to see.”
As we came out of the bush into the beating sun, I heard a strange murmur, as though a thousand butterflies and flowers around us whispered a secret into the air at the same moment. There beyond a field stood a massive house, four times the size of the building where I had spent the night, with giant windows and long verandahs running on the upper and lower levels. It was like another Vailima. Such an unexpected place to encounter on this tiny, forsaken island.
Two natives escorted us inside. I was so distracted I only vaguely noticed that the helpful pair of men were extreme opposites: one tiny, the other nearly a giant. The first man was hardly the size of one of the other’s legs. The house—if that is what it was—was built on an elevation and commanded remarkable views of the ocean breaking against the borders of the islands nearby. The interior of the palace, painted yellow and white, was filled with long tables with a peculiar variety of men and women sitting and reading books—dwarves, hunchbacks, old men and women with elephantiasis in a limb or severe trembling in a hand, one-eyed men, a young lady with a cleft palate, persons with limbs too long or too short. They were all natives, but the tints of their skin suggested they were assembled from a range of island populations rather than a single race. Those who were not seated were making their way from one part of the place to another. Occasionally one of these occupants would pass by us, whispering to themselves. I recognized some lines being spoken from books I had read—The Odyssey, Gulliver’s Travels, a passage from an adventure tale by Dumas, even something from Stevenson himself. Each speaker bowed their heads at Mr. Fergins, keeping their eyes averted. The cacophony of whispers drifted through the house and, added to the heat and the jolt of recent revelations, left me dizzy.
“What on earth is going on in this place, Mr. Fergins? Have you made yourself some kind of despot?”
“Poor Tulagi. He was the hero in all this, Mr. Clover—a guardian angel of all that is worth protection. These dwarves—along with hunchbacks and the others you see who have come together here—are considered useless in society on these islands because they cannot partake in battle and other ordinary obligations, but I have recruited them all for a great endeavor. They work hard to prove they are capable since others no longer believe they are, or never believed it.”