He hung his head and looked like a whipped hound as I said that to him. I felt more ashamed at heart than he did, as I added quickly: “Tamafanga, I know that your voice is beautiful, but it is really necessary to sleep when I come below. I am not a Samoan, I am only a sleepy-headed white man, see? Tamafanga, old pal, that makes all the difference.”
“Master, I promise that I will only sing four hours in the evening, as you wish,” and then, saying this to me, he burst into song on the spot, though he promised to sing no more that night.
All the sailors liked Tamafanga. One night they gave him some rum. They deceived him by saying: “Tamafanga, you sing so beautifully that we have decided to give you this nice stuff, which is specially prepared for the voice. You will sing like a blackbird after you drink that.”
“You’ll hear and know I guess,” said the sailor, as he coaxed and, at length, lured Tamafanga to drink the grog.
After he had taken that potion, he clapped his hands and sang till the forecastle echoed with song and wild laughter.
I am afraid I laughed too, for poor Tamafanga had never drunk rum before, and I never saw a fellow dance and somersault as he did that night. Suddenly he went on his knees before me and sang a weird song, ending up with an extemporisation to Waylao’s eyes.
Ah! Tamafanga, when I think of all that happened after, my heart bleeds.
Next morning he had a face as long as a fiddle. The cook offered him some rum as a pick-me-up, but he shook his head fiercely. Wise youth!
The events of that voyage are fixed in my memory, I do not think anything on earth will make me forget all that happened.
A week after we left Apia we were becalmed for many days. The heat was terrific. The pitch in the seams of the deck planks boiled and oozed out, and stuck to our bare feet as we trod the deck.
Tamafanga seemed to be the only one who was cool: he cast off his old seaman’s coat that he had bought at a store in Apia and reverted back to the primitive lava-lava. To tell the truth I envied that scanty attire. If we had been the only two on board as we lay becalmed in that infinite, glassy ocean I should have dressed in exactly the same fashion.
After the first week of calm, a slight breeze came up after sunset and filled the sails, dragging us along about three or four knots, but at sunrise, up came the steaming vapours and down poured the terrific windless heat from the sky.