A. (Arnold) Safroni-Middleton - Wine-Dark Seas and Tropic Skies

Lagoon Scene, Apia

IN this volume of reminiscences and impressions I have endeavoured to express some of the elements of romance that remain in my memory of wanderings in the South Seas.

My characters are all taken from life, both the settlers and the natives. I have striven to give an account of native life, modes and codes, and to describe the general characteristics of certain island tribes that are now extinct.

My attempt is not so much the wanderers usual book with its inevitable blemishes, for the reason that it is one voluminous blemish, but Im hoping that, after a lapse of years, my mind has retained the something thats worth the recording. Besides, Ive smashed about so much in this grey, swashbuckling world of Grand Old Liars, knighted thieves, rogues and successful hypocrites, that the background of my life in early boyhood seems a dim fairyland, whereover I roamed at will from wonder to wonder, laden with the wealth of cheek and impudence enormous. Reaping such wonders I fail to find in pages of romance experiences that outrival those of my boyhood, which leads me to imagine that I can paint down, out of the Past, some of the sparkling atmosphere that buoyed me up in the wide travels of my youth.

Wonderful and unsuspected are the unheard harmonies that guide the footsteps of romantic vagabonds. They know not that deep in the heart of their existence bubble the eternal springs of beauty, and, as they tramp on, their footsteps beat to the rhythm of the song they will not hearuntil they be older! And stranger still have been my own immediate experiences. I once officiated as chief mourner at the burial of a romantic old trader who had suddenly died through the effects of a great spree! He had a wooden leg, a limb that he had extemporised from good, green wood. We stuck that sad heritage (it was all that he could leave us) over his grave in the forest, having made a cross of it. On visiting the spot about three months afterwards I observed that the old wooden leg had burst into leafhad blossomed forth into pretty blue flowers! Sure am I that neither our old dead pal, in his wildest and most romantic moods, nor indeed one of us, had dreamed of the hidden potentialities of that wooden leghow one day it would once more come to the poor bodys assistance, making his very grave in the solitude beautiful.

Well, in a way, I would think that my book is like unto that wooden leg; for, as that artificial memberbeing greendid not snap as it helped our stumbling pal along, so has the romance in these pages helped me along on my travels, buoying me up in my weakest hours. And now I feel that, like my old pals wooden leg, my half-remembered romance, reviving, may blossom over the long-buried light of other days.

So, should anyone notice that I sometimes write in a reflective strain when describing my experiences and those of my characters, it is because it is in that way the past is now presented to my mind. All that I wish to attempt is to throw my different characters into clear relief, and bring to the surface a hint of the undercurrents that moved them on their wandering ways.

Looking back, it seems like some wild dream that I arrived in that romantic world of islands when a boy; that I once stood in the presence of tawny, majestic, tattooed potentates who loved to hear me play the violin. Yet tis true enough. I have lingered by the side of dethroned kings and romantic queens, taken their hands in fellowship, lending a willing ear to their griefs. For I was in at the death of that tottering, barbarian dynasty of mythological splendourthe aristocratic world of forcewhich has now faded into the historic pages of romantic, far-off, forgotten things.

Not only those chiefs and chiefesses of the forests impressed my imagination, but also the white men, the settlers of those days. They were self-exiled men. Some belonged to the lost brigade, drifting to the security of those palmy isles.

When I think of that wild crew, their manly ways, keen eyes and strong, sunburnt faces, their diversified types, their brave, strangely original characters, it almost seems that I went away ages ago to another world, where I explored the regions of wonderful minds. And now I stare across the years into the nebulous memories of far-off, bright constellations of friendly eyes and hopes. Such hopes!

I now recall those rough men revealed to me the best and most interesting phases of the human mind roaming the plains of life, some staring at the stars with earnest wonder, and some searching for the lights of distant grog shanties!

Much of my apparently strained philosophical reflections may appear like strange digressions and slightly unbalanced rhapsodies. My excuse for this is, that I am endowed with a strange mixture of misanthropy and misplaced humour. Humour is like poetry, it cannot be defined. The humour that I possess is something of an unrecognisable quality, and I have often spent sleepless nights laughing convulsively over my own jokes! Often have I sat in some South Sea grog shanty telling my most exquisite joke, only to look up to see all the rough men burst into tears! On one occasion I told what I thought to be the most pathetic incident I knewlo! men smacked me on the back and were seized with paroxysms of ecstatic laughter!

When I dwelt for a brief period in England I listened to many thousands of British jokes, but I cannot recall that I laughed more than twice. This fact alone convinces me that I am incorrigibly dull and devoid of recognised mirth. So, whoever takes up my book with the idea of gathering laughter will lay it down disappointed. I feel that it is better to make this confession at the outset.