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Other documents randomly have
different content
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Magic
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Magic

Author: H. De Vere Stacpoole

Release date: March 24, 2024 [eBook #73248]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Street & Smith Corporation, 1920

Credits: Roger Frank and Sue Clark

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAGIC ***

 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 a 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.