Dec. ^, J902.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
808 
" 'That's good,' says Casey. 'Faith, you rouse me cour- 
age, Tim. But see, there's the dawn.' 
"■'Sure enough,' says I. 'Lord! how strange it looks!' 
"Whin we haven't slept we look at the world with dif- 
ferent eyes. Ay, ay, so we do. 
"I will pass over two days that followed this, whin we 
wandered about God knows where, starvin' and miserable. 
How we survived I don't know, but I suppose the youth 
that was in us kept us alive. I don't want to dwell on 
thira days and nights, so I will pass thim over and come 
to the third day. 
"It was evenin' and we were tliryin' as a last chance to 
make our waj"- to a spur of the mountains that com- 
manded an extinsive view. I'd often heard that there 
were hunters' camps scatthered about and I knew that 
our onh^ hope now was to discover one of thim. But 
I feared we'd niver get there in time to see smoke,_if 
by chance there was any to be seen. It was beginnin' 
to grow dusk, and we were crossin' a sort of clearin' 
more like two specthres than live min. Casey was 
ahead of me, for he was the waker of the two, and I 
wanted to encourage him by makin' him think he was 
walkin' me down. For a minute I stopped to take breath 
and look back. Something caught me eye that sint a 
could shiver down me spine. It was a mere shadow as I 
may say flittin' across the clearin' into the black belt of 
the pines. A'most before I could realize it, it was gone. 
I hoped it was nothing but the vapors in me head risin' 
from me impty stomach, and yet I feared— oh, how I 
feared ! But, however, I said nothing and wint on afther 
Casey. I didn't want' to look back again, but prisently 
something seemed to magnetize me from behind and I 
turned round. As I looked me heart gave a bound and 
thin seemed to stop. A hundred feet away right on our 
thracks was a big gray wolf! Seein' ine stop he stopped 
too and cocked his ears, thin disappeared like a shadow as 
before. 
"The perspiration broke out all over me and I had a 
feelin' of sickness as if I was goin' to vomit, savin' your 
prisence. 
" 'What's the matther, Tim?' says Casey, tumin' rouiid, 
for he missed me footsteps behind him. 'Ain't you feelin' 
well?' 
" 'Oh, a little passin' wakeness,' says I. 'I'll be all right 
in a minute.' 
"Casey limped back to me. 
" 'Come lane on me,' says the poor soul. T'll help you 
along.' 
"By the powers, gintlemin, if this speech of Casey's 
didn't make me as brave as a lion and I felt as if I'd en- 
counther a whole pack of wolves to save that poor unsel- 
fish frind. 
" 'On Casey !' says I. 'If there's any lanin' to be done 
it won't be done by Timothy Mulcahy! All the same,' 
says I, takin' his hand, 'thank you kindly, Dan, for your 
offer.' 
"We hadn't gone more than a hundred yards whin we 
got to the ind of the clearin' and thin what should we 
spy but a little log cabin. It was like the sight of a 
plank to a drownin' man. 
" 'Casey,' says I, 'the luck begins to turn.' 
"We inthered the cabin and found it spread with pine 
needles and mountain grass, comfortable as a parlor. In 
one corner was a place for a fire. The dure was sthrong 
and swung on two hinges. I looked about to see if by 
chance there was any remains of ould hide or ould bones 
or anything to make a supper on, but nary a thing could 
I see. Well, says I to meself, if we've got to give out 
to night at laste the wolves won't ate us. 
"No sooner had I said this than I started with an idea 
that flashed through me mind. I was going to tell it to 
Casey, iDut the poor man was so done up that he'd gone 
right to sleep standin' as he was, with his head up against 
the side of the cabin. I took him in me arums and laid 
him on the flure, thin wrapped his blanket about him and 
covered up his feet with the withered grass and left him 
to sleep — maybe for the last time. 
"As I said the dure was sthrong with an iron bolt and a 
wooden bar and if once closed a dozen wolves couldn't 
break it down.' But I didn't close it, but left it ajar, or 
about a foot open and thin took a sate behind it with me 
eves to a chink. 
' "Night was fallin' fast, but there was a full moon, and 
afther it was dark it was brighter than it was before.* 
I he hours slipped by and there I sat with me eyes to the 
chink in a state of horrible suspinse. For the time bein', 
howiver, the htmger had stopped gnawin' me vitals. 
Casey slept without a move or a sound, so that you'd 
think he was dead. Once I took alarum at his bein' so 
quiet and crept over and put me hand on his chest. It 
was heavin', though with me ear a'most down to his 
mouth I could scarcely hear him brathe. But he was 
alive and that satisfied me, so I crept back to me place 
by the dure. 
"Everything remained quiet till about the middle of the 
night, as I judge — the moonlight stramin' down on the 
while snow and the pines all standin' up black against 
the sky. Once or twice I heard an owl whinnyin' like a 
horse (Ugh! 'tis the sthrange church-yard birrd!) but 
that was all. But about the hour mintioned I gave a sud- 
den start and me flesh all crept on me bones, for there 
was that shadow on the snow again! I grabbed me jack- 
knife that I had open by my side and waited, with me 
eves glued to the chink. 
' "For a whole hour the shadow — for it scarce seemed 
more — came and wint, but always nearer and nearer. At 
Inst it came within a few yards of the dure and sniffed, 
but on a suddin darted back and wint prowlin' round in 
the rear. I heard it snififin' throttgh the logs — oh! how 
me heart bate !• — and thin retratin' once more. For half 
an hour maybe — sure it seemed half a cintury — I seen 
nor heard no more of it, whin without warnin' there 
was the shadow before the door again. This time it 
came right up under me nose and listened. I held me 
breath. The next minute the wolf had his head in 
tln-ough the openin' and sniffed. Quick as a flash I 
jammed the dure to and had him by the neck. He made 
a hijous outcry, but I quickly silenced him with me knife. 
"i was thrimblin' like an aspen lafe whin I turned 
round to see if Casey was awake. But he was sleepin' as 
pacefully as if nothing had happened. 
* It is to be feared that this exquisite Irish bull was lost on 
Tim's audience. 
"'So much the betther,' says I; I'll give him a sur- 
prise.' 
"I set to work at once and skinned the wolf. This done, 
I lit a fire and thin, gintlemin — well, yez may be squamish 
and I don't want to spoil your digestion on this evenin' 
above all, so I won't inther into details. 
"The next day, afther a fine sleep, we made the spur 
of the mountains, and luck bein' on the turn, as yez 
know, we didn't cast our eyes about in vain. Less than a 
m.ile away we seen a thin column of smoke risin' through 
the trees in the mornin' air. We made for that and 
found a cotiple of hunters who took us in and thrated us 
like hunters — I need say no more. In twinty-four hours 
we were ourselves again and thin we were sint to our 
destination with a guide. And, in troth, whin it was 
all over I thought it was only a dhrame, but bad cess to 
me if it ain't the truth, the whole truth and nothing but 
the truth." 
"Let us for the notary publics send!" said Jake, the 
scoffer. 
Wirt Zaender was so much awed that he didn't even 
smile. 
Rainy Chasel of the Robber Crab. 
Christmas only a week off, at the end of a wet fort- 
night still raining cats and dogs, and Talolo felt himself 
up against a proposition. 
It wasn't so much the weather, though even Samoans 
do not find unalloyed enjoyment in their rainy season 
from November to March when it rains all the time, and 
frequently more so. ■ The rain beats on their bare backs 
like so much small shot thrown in unremitting hand fuls, 
and they say it stings. It messes up their hair as well 
and drapes their scanty garments about them as so much 
wet rag. The rainy season is the hot season as well, a 
combination of tropical misery to which no mere words 
can begin to do justice. 
But it wasn't climate that was wearying Talolo's soul, 
or the nearest Samoan equivalent to, or substitute for, 
that organ. When one is born to a dispensation of Provi- 
dence that supplies an annual rainfall of fifteen feet com- 
ing all in a bunch and runs the thermometer close to a 
hundred at the same time, there comes a certain sense of 
resignation which, after all, is the best any one can do 
about any weather. It was Christmas that was worrying 
the lad, Christmas and his "mea alofa," his loving things 
as the islanders say, the love proving uniformly a mer- 
cenary sort of emotion in which a little gift is to elicit a 
much larger one. Talolo was by no means fretting about 
what he was going to give me. That was easy in his 
simple savage state and I already knew what it was to be. 
He had taken the pains to tell Tonga so that the knowl- 
edge might come to me indirectly and govern me in set- 
tling upon my "mea alofa" to him. He had already ran- 
sacked the simple treasures of Salatemu, his mother at 
that particular time of the current series, had laid pur- 
loining hands on two baskets woven of gaudily dyed fibre, 
together with a large sleeping mat. He had asked Tonga 
if she did not think that in return for his doing so much 
for me I must make a really princely return, perhaps even 
the "shoot gun." Poor boy, he was always hoping against 
hope for that regular companion of our excursions into 
the deeper jungle. He knew that the Consulate was a 
place at which laws were made for Samoa and it was 
beyond his power to comprehend why that did not give 
the same right to break laws, in particular that which 
forbade the sale or gift of arms and ammunition to 
Samoans. So far as I was concerned Christmas involved 
for him neither cost nor worry. 
But there were others. Those others were of his own 
race and quite up to all his little games and devious wiles. 
A small gift to me might win a rich return because I was 
a Papalangi, one of those innocent foreigners who were 
ever such easy marks for Samoan craft. But with his 
own he knew that the presents that should come to him 
would depend entirely on the scope and magnitude of his 
love to the giver as measured by the gifts he himself 
gave. The proposition that confronted him was money 
to enable him to go to the traders around the Matautu 
corner and down in Apia; and money was hard to get. 
Early in our acquaintance we had settled on the gift that 
I was unfailingly to render as the offering on the sacred 
altar of friendship, a tin of salmon or corned beef and 
four hardtack to be eaten on or off the premises. But 
money — well, when Talolo got money from me it was in 
return for real service rendered. A sixpence was not 
difficult to get, that meant only the fetching in of another 
bunch of bananas to hang mellowing on the verand-i. 
Bttt in the holiday emergency what was a sixpence? No 
less than a dollar would carry through his Christmas 
present making on the scale that befitted the son of the 
chief of Vaiala and particularly one so close to the ad- 
ministration as Talolo boasted himself to be. But the lad 
had early learned the lesson that it is not always so easy 
to get a dollar; so far as I was concerned he knew it 
was not to be had for the mere asking. 
All these facts came out when Talolo paid me a call 
in a pouring rain when Christma? was right upon him 
and that dollar still far out of reach. 
Now, in Samoa when it rains it rains. It surely was 
out there that they concocted the proverb about its never 
raining, but it pours. From so many directions did the 
rain come at once that there was not a dry spot on the 
veranda, and we were driven into the stuffy interior of 
the house with every door and window shut and caulked 
tight. The walls and windows were tearful with the 
drops of condensing humidity. One could actually s*ee 
the blue mould grow on the leather of shoes and belts 
and the mildew spotting the linen of our duck garments. 
Out of the storm into the merely soggy dampness of 
the interior enter Talolo, shining with the rain, clothed 
in clammy rags, bonneted with a close-fitting cap made of 
banana leaf twisted up to keep his hair dr}^ vainly strug- 
gling in the fierce blast of the hot north wind to make 
banana leaf serve the purpose of an mmbrella. Over all 
was an air of the most ponderable gloom, a misery that 
oozed from every pore. He was quite too wet to be al- 
lowed to bring his melancholy inside the house and he 
was promptly sent down to the cook house to put on a 
dry lavalava belonging to Tanoa and to get his rations. 
These details satisfactorily settled, Talolo was admitted 
to the house, clothed and dry but still gloomy. That 
looked bad, for a melancholy that could last though a 
mere trille of between two or three pounds of solid 
nourishment had been consumed, argued a serious state 
of affairs for Talolo. The reason soon came to light 
as above set forth, Talolo must have a dollar, he was 
so completely in need of it that he would actually work 
for it. 
"Tama'ita'i e !" said the sorrowful Talolo when his tale 
of woe seemed to suggest to me no ray of hope gleaming 
with "le tala e tasi" or one dollar; "Tama'ita'i e! Ta te 
tiitulimanu !" 
"Tutulimanu !" ejaculated Tonga with fine scorn. "Pur- 
sue animals, indeed! I think so, you fool boy. What 
animals, think you, the Tama'ita'i will pursue in the Vai- 
palclo, the season of the rains on the coasts and the rains 
on the mountain backbone, the rains on Samoa 'uma all- 
over always? Come now you great pursuer of animals, 
where are the lupe pigeons in the Vaipalolo? Are tliey 
here along the coast feeding on the berries or are they on 
the Tuasivi lean and hungry in the rain? Or when the 
blows from the north until great ships go to smash at 
their anchors in Apia think you that the Tama'ita'i has 
the powerful arm t;o fish for great fish with the rod that 
is in three pieces and has bird feathers on the hook and 
the noisy spool for its line?" 
This burst of eloquence checked Tanoa, who, at the 
first mention of hunting had started to get out the shot 
gun even though it had been carefully swathed in greasy 
rags to protect it from the dampness until some other 
day after the rains had gone away. Tanoa was as faith- 
ful as could be, but his intelligence was not such as to 
startle. 
But Talolo bore the scolding with an aggrieved air. 
His rank was not quite higii enough for him to venture 
on answering Tonga back, yet it was not sufficiently re- 
moved below her position to preclude him from at least 
looking the things he might not speak. 
"True it is, 'I'ama'ita'i, that the lupe are far away in 
the great swamp on top of the mountains and they are 
no longer good to eat. And when the rain is heavy on 
the waters you cannot fish after the way you fish, but 
only as the Samoan women fish, by wading in the water 
with their nets. I'lUl on the back of the island there is a 
cave that they say is filled with birds that live in the 
darkness and only fly out for food. Yon might take fire 
sticks and shoot them and thereby I might get the dollar 
for my Christmas gifts." 
".Still you are a fool boy," exclaimed Tonga. "How 
shall the Tama'ita'i cross over the mountains to Falealili 
in the rains when scarcely will a Samoan venture on the 
Ala Sopo road? And besides, those birds that you know 
nothing of are little swallows not fit to eat, and you need 
not shoot them, you can kill them by the hundred with 
a switch." 
'it is all true," said Tanoa, "in the Vaipalolo there is 
no animal to pursue nor fish to take, the only thing is the 
robber cral)." 
Talolo was quick to see his opportimity. "Tama'ita'i, 
will you give me the dollar if I take you to hunt the 
Uu, the crab that steals our cocoaniits?" 
No less protnpt was Tonga in deprecating the sugges- 
tion with an angry glance at Tanoa for making it. "You 
must not go to hunt the Uu," she said. "If it should 
fall on yotir head it would kill you dead extremely. If 
it should hit you with its claw it would break your leg. 
Such hunting is only for strong Samoan men, it is not for 
a lady. Besides, you will get very wet in the rain." 
And Tanoa tried to square himself with Tonga for the 
unfortunate suggestion. "It is not well to pursue the 
Uu," he said, "for it can only be done at night and then 
the aitu are in the bush and it is not well to have the 
aitu hurt you, for then you die and perhaps wander a 
weary road." 
Waving aside this domestic opposition, to which I was 
well accustomed, I asked Talolo if for the dollar he so 
much wanted he w^ould undertake to bring me face to 
face with the robber crab, ghost or no ghost. He ac- 
cepted gleefully, only asking for delay sufficient to enable 
him to learn from old Lauta when the moon would be 
right for the capjture of the giant crab. It might prove 
an interesting branch of astronomy for somebody to 
study out the connection of the moon with the affairs of 
Samoa. l\iy experience has been that everything I wished 
to do in the foi"est or along the streams had to be regu- 
lated by some sort of lunar calendar, of which only the 
very old men, such as Lauta in particular, were fully in- 
formed and had to be consulted for some such fee as a 
box of matches or enough kerosene to fill their lamp. 
While Talolo is off in the rnin consulting the elders as 
to what the moon says about the hunting ot robber crabs, 
one may try to for.n some estimate of whether Talolo 
was really a sports-boy or only a meat hunter. It mu.st 
be confessed that ^^hen he went after game he deemed 
it absolutely essential that at the appropriate time he 
should be found with the goods on him. I can count up 
dozens of times when Talolo has led me to the killing of 
things for which I could make no sort of use, but which 
proved acccptaable to the housekeeping of Chief Patu 
and Salatemu and Talolo himself as a junior of that 
household. But that is, after all, a very narrow view to 
take of Talolo's hunting. It soon broke upon me that 
Talolo's sportsmanship was brought best into play before 
ever we started out oti our many expeditions. Talolo was 
after better game than fur, fin or feather, and I was it. 
His skill in stalking me, the way he baited the ground to 
which I was to be led, his absolute ingenuity in devising 
the always changing lures — all these stamp Talolo as a 
clever sportsman. His unfailing cheerfulness when I 
broke away from his best laid schemes, his readiness in 
devising new attractions — all these things showed that he 
played the game for the pure sport of it. If I was his 
game at least I was appreciative of his skill. This is a 
season when one can say this sort of thing with all 
peace and good-will. Those who have become ac- 
quainted with other of my adventures with my happy 
little Samoan companion may have seen through his 
little game: this is said only by way of serving notice 
that T, too, was not unaware of the tricksome devices 
with which he made his own tiny profit while giving 
me such rich pleasure afield or afloat. 
After no long absence Talolo returned with a supply 
of information. Being as he thought on an official errand 
he had to be equipped with a raincoat and an umbrella. 
