Chapter 14

Melvill awakes to Tinor's entreaties. The old woman keeps pointing at him and covering her nose. He remembers these gestures and strips off his clothes, removing his breeches while still under the sheet. She takes the pile, the fish smell clinging to them heavily. He awkwardly covers himself in the togalike sheet, leaving his left arm exposed and most of his right leg. His shoes are there by the mat but he chooses not to put them on. Melvill goes out of the hut into the bright day. It must be almost noon: he has slept all morning. The fishy taste of his breath assures him that his recollections of the night's proceedings are real. 

The village is lazy and none of Marheyo's clan is in view. Melvill is acutely hungry. He recalls the bananas and other fruit in the hut but at the moment he has more pressing needs and walks toward the stream. There he is struck by how natural and comfortable the Typees' methods of toilet have become to him. He thinks of the privy in the afterhouse on the Acushnet and of carrying the sloshing stinking pot to the side of the ship as the whaler rolls and bucks on the ocean. 

On his way back to Marheyo's hut to find something to eat Korykory intercepts him. He is with a group of his young friends--five dark men-boys lively and eager. Korykory insists that Melvill join them and they herd him along. 

"I need to get something to eat--kiki--but I will join you later. Where will you be? At the Ti?" 

They smile and chatter and continue to steer Melvill toward a jungle path. Two of the men-boys are carrying large earthen jugs; another has something wrapped in an old smudged sheet, about the size of a baby, which he holds pinned under one arm. Korykory is the tallest and strongest built of the young men--he is probably the eldest. 

Melvill ceases his objections and goes with them. The path they begin is the one leading to the place of the cannibal ritual but soon they diverge onto a less traveled path, so narrow they form a singlefile line and still heavy waxy leaves continually thump against Melvill's exposed arm. They seem to be in a rush, which is not a normal pace for the Typees, unless going to war or to meet a trading ship. But they are not heading toward the mountains for an encounter with the Happars nor toward the sea. 

They move through the jungle, Melvill in the middle of the line. The path is slightly uneven underfoot and Melvill wishes he had put on his shoes. 

Suddenly there is an opening in the vegetation where several logs lie around a tree stump that is still rooted to the ground. The natives sit on the logs while the one with the shrouded object places it on the stump then removes the soiled cover with a jerk. It is a small statue, one of their myriad gods no doubt. This is a smiling beatific god. Its size and its grinning countenance make it a stark contrast to Boolaa, the god carved in the mountain, although the gray stone is the same. 

This god is "Moa Artua," according to the young men, who keep repeating the name and patting the idol affectionately, like an old faithful dog. The flat nose and the square shoulders of the statue remind Melvill of the one guarding Marheyo's bamboo shrine, Marheyo's granite avatar. They were possibly rendered by the same artisan. 

Melvill smiles and says the god's name to demonstrate his comprehension. 

Korykory makes a few opening remarks; it seems almost that he is introducing Melvill to the little god. Then the men-boys with the jugs drink from them and hand them off--one to Melvill. He immediately knows the scent of arva-wai, and it instantly twists his gut in recollection. Nevertheless he takes a bitter sip and passes the jug along. 

The natives alternately tell stories or make claims, all sounding highly boastful. Often Happar this or Happar that. And the jugs are passed steadily. Melvill thinks about how much the Typees are defined by the Happars. Without their ancient enemies, the Typees would not be who they are. So if to have a life, one must have purpose--then the Happars are lifegiving to the Typees, and vice versa: ironic. Melvill thinks of the French encampment at Nukuheva Bay and their mounting encroachment. One day the Typees and Happars may have to join forces against a common enemy. Melvill takes another drink. That day--when that alliance is declared--both cultures will cease to exist. All the indigenous cultures of the island will cease in time. All the natives will be like Marnoo, an odd assortment of many tribes but not recognizably one tribe. Then inevitably the European blood will mix with the islanders'. No doubt it already has and the mixture courses through the veins of bastard children. Melvill takes another drink. And then what will there be here, in a generation? In two, three? Melvill sees an archipelago of European-island-not-European-not-island peoples. With no common culture to recall and to honor. . . . 

Melvill takes another drink. He aches for home. 

He is suddenly sick of listening to the gibberish of Korykory and his friends. He stands off-balance and begins teetering down the path. Korykory calls to him--"Hermes! Hermes!"--but he does not respond and the islander does not try to stop him. The white sheet Melvill is wearing is in disarray and part of it drags on the ground. A shoot from some vegetation scratches his arm at the shoulder but Melvill barely notices, numb from the arva-wai. 

Barefoot, he hurries along the path faster and faster, as if it is downhill and he is gaining momentum. His thoughts run to Fayaway. He sees her eating the fishes until he forces that image from his mind: instead the day she swam in the lake, her wet hair black and pressed closed to her head and neck and shoulders, her lovely face oval and radiant . . . then the watersnake coiled around her arm. 

He shakes that picture out of his mind too. 

Melvill emerges onto the more traveled path and immediately meets a pair of Typees, a couple, man and woman. They look at him strangely as he plunges past, still off balance on the level terrain. In New Bedford or New York City he could wander the crowded streets virtually unnoticed, all day all night, as if invisible. But here he is an oddity, a twoheaded toad, a flightless bird. 

Melvill propels himself in the direction of Fayaway's hut, though he is disoriented and not at all certain of his course. He walks for what seems like a long while. At an intersection of paths he meets another Typee couple--this pair is young and Melvill imagines he knows their purpose in sneaking off to the jungle. He asks, "Fayaway? The home of Fayaway?" 

They looked puzzled at first then the boy motions emphatically down the path that crosses to Melvill's right. The girl, pretty but not as pretty as Fayaway, agrees and motions emphatically too. It occurs to Melvill that they may be simply trying to rid themselves of him but he follows their direction nonetheless. 

He strides along quickly, not quite so drunk now, his leg indicating no signs of distress. Melvill's sheet snags on something on the ground, and in freeing it with a hard jerk it rips. Now his toga is dirty, disheveled, torn. He continues on. At length the path ends at a settlement. Melvill stands in the clearing, unsure, then he determines that it is Fayaway's, but looking strange from this new perspective. 

He gathers and straightens his tappa sheet as best he can and starts for Fayaway's hut. What time of day is it? he wonders. 

The ubiquitous gang of children playing in the yard sees him coming and rushes to him, their brown feet kicking up brown dust. Before they even reach him they begin chattering in the negative: Fayaway is not in her hut? 

"Where is she?" The children, a dozen or more, encircle him, some smiling and touching his ragged covering, worse than the mantle of a beggar. "Where is Fayaway?" 

The children do not try to communicate a response even though they must know what he asks. In fact they are strangely silent. Melvill is befuddled, there at the center of these children, his head beginning to ache, his feet sore. He feels so exhausted that he is tempted to fall to the hard dusty ground and sleep there. Then there is a hand on his arm. A little girl is touching his shoulder where he has been cut. Blood is leaking from a superficial wound. The child looks into his eyes for a moment weighing something then she begins to lead him by the hand. A few of her playmates raise a protest but quickly stop; perhaps they are afraid of making too much noise. 

The girl takes Melvill behind a row of huts and onto another jungle path which is narrow and rocky. Then Melvill realizes these are not rocks underfoot: the natives have placed seashells on the ground, broken apart and cracked from traffic. The sharp edges dig into his feet and Melvill misses the numbness of the arva-wai. 

The way of shells only continues about twenty yards before becoming smooth again. The little girl stops and points ahead, unwilling to step beyond the broken shells. "Fayaway," she says as she rushes away, back across the seashells and out of sight. 

Melvill is left alone there on the jungle path, his sheet dirty and torn, his arm, his feet, his head throbbing with pain--not even certain why he has been seeking Fayaway. But there is nothing left to do now except complete his quest. He continues on, holding his sheet around himself, like a city lady crossing a muddy, manured street, he thinks. 

After a bend in the path Melvill finds a small bamboo hut that has only three sides, not too dissimilar from the death shrines the Typees build their warriors. He thinks of Marheyo's recently completed shrine with its ugly little totem waiting patiently for the old man to perish. The floor of this three-sided hut is covered with strips of leaves, and there are gourds of food and water, folded tappa sheets too. 

Fayaway is not there but in a moment Melvill hears a rustling in the jungle and he realizes there is an ill-defined path there. Not paying attention, Fayaway is fully in the small clearing before she realizes Melvill is there. She is speechless but only for a moment--soon she is ranting at him, angry and afraid, her voice strange with tears. Melvill does not know what to say or do, so he stands there absorbing her hurt and hostility. She steps toward him as she continues to rail. When she is close he instinctively reaches out to her; doing so, his tattered sheet falls to the ground. He holds her close and she continues to scold him, not as vehemently now and seemingly without purpose. Her breath is hot on his shoulder. Fayaway stops when he kisses her forehead. Through the strands of her long dark hair he can feel the bones of her back. It is like holding a cat, he realizes, very much all skin and angular bones. Against his stomach he can sense the soft rises of her breasts. She reaches around and hugs him. 

Though she says nothing her breath is still hot and sticky on his shoulder. They stand there for a long while. Melvill hears the caw of exotic birds, some distant, others close by. He cannot help but think of Genesis, of Adam and Eve: The man and his wife were both naked, yet they felt no shame. He listens for the slither of the Serpent. 

He notices a scent, strange but not wholly unfamiliar. Similar to the bedding of Madeline, the New Bedford prostitute, and to the smell of the privy at home sometimes after his mother or sisters had finished. 

He wishes he had a father. An older brother is not the same. 

But the thought is fleeting as Melvill feels his arousal prod up against Fayaway--suddenly a third party with them in the jungle, singleminded, intense. She feels it too and her body tenses. They continue to hold each other, Melvill bobbing aginst Fayaway's coarseness. 

Fayaway then looks up and kisses Melvill on the lips, and drops to her knees. She stares at Melvill as if it is a strange creature just arrived in the clearing, the Serpent come after all. Melvill's heart is pounding so that he is short of wind. She quickly kisses it-- 

Melvill lifts her to her feet: "Not this way, my sweet girl." He picks her up, she weighs nothing, and carries her to the leafy floor of the hut. 

She is happy there. They are happy there. 

When they are finished Melvill rolls onto his back keeping his fingers lightly on Fayaway's face. He cannot grasp her feelings. She looks older, her hair matted, her cheeks and upper lip, tattooed with the two dots, damp with perspiration. It is not until he hears the hum of tiny flying insects that Melvill realizes he has dark sticky blood from his knees to his stomach. 

Fayaway looks away, ashamed. 

"It's all right," he says but the smell is beginning to nauseate him. He retrieves the dirty tappa sheet and attempts to clean himself; it does little good however. 

Fayaway, still avoiding his eyes, offers him a gourd of water. He manages only to smear the gore in wider circles on his skin. He thinks of Karky and what the tattoo artisan might say about such a horrific design. Melvill's penis looks as if it has been attacked and injured. The winged insects swarm around it. 

He realizes Fayaway is crying silent tears. Blood is on her thighs and her flat dimpled stomach. "It's all right," he repeats and kisses her salty cheek. "I'll be back. I promise." 

He knows that she does not understand. He arranges his torn, dirty, bloodstained toga and begins down the path. He recalls his headache, and his scratched arm. He looks at the wound hopefully: Is it believable that so much blood came from the scratch? Of course not. 

The path's broken shells prick painfully at his feet. He steps lightly. When Melvill emerges into the area of huts the children are still playing but they disregard him. Even the little girl who led him to Fayaway. Melvill wants to reach Marheyo's hut and the bathing stream by some obscure little-traveled path but he only knows the one way, back through the Ti grove, which will no doubt be busy this time of day. The sun is high. 

He asks for a sudden torrential rain, a regular happening on the island. No god is responding--neither his nor any of the myriad carved idols all around. The sky remains its unyielding tropical blue. 

Melvill makes it beyond the cluster of huts and onto the next path. He thinks of poor Fayaway in the jungle--bloodied, ashamed, and no doubt feeling totally alone. He vows to return to her as quickly as possible. Might she become pregnant? He envisions a little boy or girl half his and half island beauty. He thinks of the half French bastards at Nukuheva Bay and he feels guilt. He assures himself that Fayaway cannot become pregnant now. Again he wishes for a father. 

He continues along the path. He imagines that he must look like some ancient Greek beggar, or a traveler who has been robbed and left for dead on the road, or perhaps a survivor of the Trojan War, a poet caught unaware on the battlefield. The smell that emanates from him however is not man sweat and horse sweat and warrior blood nobly spilled, though there is something of each of those in the pungent scent. 

Melvill longs for the cooling waters of the stream and for his comfortable mat in Marheyo's home. His thoughts are interrupted by voices calling from somewhere ahead on the path: "Hermes! Hermes!" 

Impulsively Melvill crashes through the thick jungle vegetation and crouches still on the ground, hiding. 

Breathing as silently as possible, he estimates that two or three minutes elapse before the two young warriors pass him. He can barely see them through the leaves and vines but they might be from the cadre that guarded Toby when they first arrived in the valley. How long now? Can it only have been a few weeks? Damn you, Toby. The warriors call his name again. Korykory must assume he is lost and has his people out searching. Or Fayaway's violation has been discovered and there is an angry mob out looking for him. No--word cannot travel so fast in the valley, he feels certain. 

Melvill waits another few minutes before leaving his hiding place and continuing on. He chides himself for acting like a criminal and avoiding the searchers. It's best not to try to explain anything. Let them concoct their own theories regarding his whereabouts. He knows that round the turn there is a crossing of paths, thus multiplying his chances of encountering more searchers. He is surprised by how familiar he has become with the maze of paths, to know what lies ahead. 

By the time he hears them it is too late. . . . 

Mowmow, the one-eyed captain, and two warriors are standing face to face with Melvill--all four equally surprised. Melvill feels Mowmow's solitary eye probing him, the Typee explaining Melvill's appearance to his own satisfaction. 

Melvill is afraid. 

The warrior captain, who is wearing a colorful cape of feathers, speaks calmly to his men and they instantly seize Melvill. He is too surprised to shout in protest. They take him along one of the cross paths. "Let me go. What are you doing?" Mowmow does not respond but the half smile on his lips, strangely contorting his face and emphasizing his bull's-eye, heightens Melvill's anxiety. He has seen that expression: Taggart, aboard the Acushnet right before he had young Jones flogged, navystyle, for "thiefing" he said, and "b'havior ins'bord'nate." It was only a few days later that Jones was lost, fallen overboard during a perfectly peaceful watch. Melvill recalls the search boats circling aft, their lanterns like luminous eyes of seamonsters in the dark. 

When they are far from the main path Mowmow commands his warriors to stop. They continue to firmly hold Melvill by the arms. He tries to keep himself from trembling. Mowmow continues to look him over with his eye, the singularity of which makes it all the more terrifying, then begins sniffing Melvill, Mowmow's broad nose actually twitching like a huntingdog's. His flaring nostrils move along Melvill's chest and stomach. All at once Mowmow snatches the sheet away. 

Melvill is standing there naked and shrunken, the blood dried rustbrown. He thinks of the color of the ocean when a whale has been mortally harpooned and its salty blood flows out into the salty ocean, ashes to ashes. 

"It isn't what you think," Melvill says quietly and stupidly. He tries halfheartedly to break free from the warriors' grip. 

Mowmow, who looks ridiculously ceremonial in the cape of feathers, begins speaking in scratchy ominous tones then reaches behind his back, under the feather cape, and brings forth a longbladed knife. 

In Melvill's mind flash stories of natives' circumcision rituals. He wills himself not to lose control of his bowel. "I intended no harm . . . she is not harmed in fact . . . Fayaway is just fine . . . Talk to Fayaway--" 

Her name elicits a reaction from Mowmow. He looks into Melvill's eyes, the Typee's eye darting from side to side; then he stares at Melvill's bloodied organ. Fayaway's name seems to have fractured his resolve. Before Mowmow can recover his will the name "Hermes!" is called from somewhere along the path, ahead or behind. 

When the name is called again, Melvill responds, "Yes--yes, I'm here!" He feels the warriors' grip loosen. Melvill breaks free and runs down the path, not sure where he is going other than away from Mowmow and his long knife. He hears the captain give orders to his young warriors and Melvill senses they are pursuing him. He has perhaps a fifty-yard lead and feels strong, the blood pumping hard through his body. He can run all day if necessary. 

He hears "Hermes!" a third time, closer now. It might be Korykory or it might be some other group of islanders out to retaliate Fayaway's violation. Or perhaps it is Korykory out to revenge her violation. 

Melvill's wind is coming easily to him. His legs are working in a furious but smooth rhythm. His bare feet, their tenderness vanished, touch lightly on the jungle path. His bloodstained part thumps up and down, its furious rhythm equal to his legs. 

At the crossing of paths Melvill notices a group of three Typees to his left--maybe they were calling to him. They do shout as he flies past . . . no, the sound is not right . . . some other group is shouting . . . behind? . . . to the right? Is the whole damned cannibal nation hunting for him? Running, running, Melvill risks a glance backward. Mowmow's warriors have stopped to consult the other group. Melvill runs harder still to exploit their halting. He sees a path, narrower and lesser used, that splits from the main thoroughfare. On impulse he takes the new path, hoping it will confuse whatever pursuit remains. Immediately he senses that this way slopes downhill. 

When he feels he is out of view he stops. Listens. Tries to master his breathing. Looks behind along the narrow path. Through the vegetation he can barely see the summit of a mountain the islanders call "Kweekway," which gives him some general idea of his location. If he is correct he has taken a series of paths that have led more or less toward the coast. But he is far from Marheyo's hut and farther still from Fayaway, in her temporary feminine exile. 

Melvill recalls the shack of firearms near the ocean. It is the only logical place to go. If the old old man is still its only sentinel, Melvill should at least be able to arm himself. He thinks especially of the Wheeler revolving flintlock. 

Against the entire cannibal nation? He pushes the question from his mind, there is no use for it. 

He moves on, hoping he is correct about his general direction, hoping he will soon feel the fresh salt air on his skin. He loves the ocean, even when it is the color of death. It is a shame that one must sign on with a den of thieves in order to sail. That one must risk more than one's safety. He sees Taggart's rat face; he hears the sounds in the dark storeroom, young Jones no doubt terrified and burning with humiliation--his sullenness afterward, a soul rented like cracked earth, then his unaccountable death: fallen overboard during his watch, on a calm night, the southern hemisphere stars glittering like distant torches, the moon a waning crescent in the boundless sky. 

The path descends steeply and feeds into a wider one. Melvill hesitates. He listens for any human noises. There is only wind in his ears . . . and the cry of a gull. Then he is close. The ocean must lie to his right. Melvill steps into the open. The terrain is similar to the sea path he has taken before but it is not that path, he feels certain. He commits to finishing his journey to the ocean. Perhaps it shall end there. 

Melvill stands at the edge of the rugged terrain before the path slopes down finally to the beach. The quickest route to the guns would be to descend to the beach and walk the quarter mile (half mile?) to the main sea path then proceed up to the shack. However that would leave a great distance to travel in plain view. Suspecting his destination, Typees may already be on the beach. Would they not also suspect the gun shack? Melvill will not allow himself to ponder the question. 

The only route then is between the hillocks to his left, which are like a pod of whales surfacing on the plain. His hope is that he will find himself very near the shack when he reaches the end of the hillocks. 

The sun is hot on his shoulders as he begins the serpentine path through the green hillocks, each rising so gently and sloping so perfectly, as if a manmade mount, and each high enough to obstruct his view of the ocean. Melvill can hear the surf though and the scores of seabirds calling forlornly to sea. He thinks of Coleridge's albatross, and that he is so exhausted it feels like a heavy weight is strung about his neck. His mind wanders and he imagines himself in a boat among this pod of whales. The ground seems to pitch beneath his feet. He envisions harpoons protruding from the humpbacks. And the blood pouring out and pouring out, an endless quantity spilled into the bottomless ocean. The blood rolls down the hillocks forming a crimson stream where Melvill walks; the ground is almost slippery with whale gore. . . . 

The series of hillocks is longer than Melvill anticipated but they finally end and the open plain is before him. He can see the weathered gray shack, perhaps two hundred yards distant. Melvill crouches in the wiry grass--no one appears to be here. Better to sneak his way to the shack, or to run across the open field? There is no way to sneak per se, other than to crawl the two hundred yards on his belly, his bare sunburned bloodstained belly. 

Run it is. 

As soon as he is in the open the ocean breeze hits him in full, the salt smell in the fresh cool air. And another scent, familiar, but his brain will not place it. Melvill reaches the shack and stops himself against the grayplanked wall. He breathes hard pressing himself flat against the shack--a splinter pricks his backside. He moves cautiously to the corner of the shack and peers up the path. No one is there. Perhaps the natives have not inferred his whereabouts after all. He hurries into the shack hoping the ancient Typee guardian is not there; but he is. Sitting as placidly and as obliviously as ever. Melvill stands there looking at him for a moment before going to the guns. He looks for the best piece, the Wheeler revolving flintlock. For a few seconds he cannot find it, then it is there propped in a corner. 

"You are lucky, old fellow," Melvill says to the aged warrior as he inspects the bulky firearm. "Your world is no doubt the one you recall from your youth. You sit there all day running through grassy fields and being with your first maiden." The barrel and the stock are fine. He looks for .52-caliber ammunition. "So what if you soil yourself here in this place. Your other place, inside your mind, is what matters." He finds the ammunition and begins loading the cylinder which allows seven shots before reloading, a mechanical marvel. It sticks a little at first then works freely. "The fruit is always sweet, the opponents always easy, the maidens always accommodating--and you must always have your family about you, parents, grandparents, children, children's children--a family picnic every day." Melvill is surprised when he feels a tear trickle down his cheek. There are serviceable pistols but he has no way of carrying one, nor extra ammunition for that matter. 

Now what? He has achieved his goal of arming himself. Now what? 

If he can reach Marheyo's hut surely the old man and Korykory will provide him asylum--unless they know about Fayaway and are angry too. He thinks of her there alone in the jungle. He can only see the dark, almost black, gore on her thighs. And smell its smell. Clearly Korykory is attracted to Fayaway, perhaps thinking of marrying her. Now. . . . Melvill must not contemplate it. Returning to Marheyo's family seems to be his only option. 

Melvill stands in the doorway of the shack for a moment and looks back at the old warrior. "Enjoy the remainder of your reverie, my friend. It will end soon enough." 

Melvill steps out into the world holding the loaded flintlock. Gulls cry overhead. The wind blows his hair and beard. Again that scent on the breeze, a scent from an unsettling dream. He is only a few yards from the shack when he sees the first natives on the hill. Melvill stands frozen, his mind thinking of everything and nothing at once, thoughts fly past but none catch in the webwork. 

He finally decides to run back into the shack but it is too late: they have seen him and the shack is no fortification. Desperately he tries to identify the Typees, who are now hurrying toward him, less than a quarter mile. There are a dozen or more. And another group coming over the rise. The first group is close enough that he recognizes Mowmow, his feathered cape flapping in the wind. 

Melvill readies his weapon. "Stop! Stop now!" He levels the Wheeler at the advancing group. But they continue. "Stop. Now!" Without intending to, his tense finger squeezes the trigger and the explosive shot rings out. The gun bucks against his shoulder, and the cloud of smoke disappears on the wind. 

None of the Typees fall as if hit but they all crouch low to the ground, all except Mowmow who continues his pace unimpressed by Melvill's flintlock. Melvill manually advances the cylinder and fires again, again not taking specific aim. Mowmow has his knife in hand, his stride is murderously purposeful. His bull's-eye seems luminous among his dark features. 

Melvill is trembling as the next shot is fired. It is on target enough to remove two feathers from Mowmow's cape--green and white they flutter in the air. 

Now Mowmow is close enough that Melvill cannot miss--and the captain's mortality seems finally to cross his mind. He stops, holding but not raising the knife. 

Melvill is breathing hard but cannot catch his breath. The flintlock barrel bobs up and down slightly. He stares down the site with one eye, in line with Mowmow's tattooed target. His finger feels the trigger, knows how little pressure is needed to end Mowmow's life, toys with the pressure. He wonders if Mowmow's shrine is built, or if it might become the work of his relatives. 

He feels the trigger. . . . 

"Melvill?" a voice calls. "Herman Melvill?" The wind has twisted the words. Their origin is uncertain, perhaps his own overtaxed imagination. "Herman Melvill!" Up the hill standing erect among the crouched figures, three men--and one is dressed as a white man dresses, as a sailor dresses. "Don't kill the bastard, my boy!" The sailor has an accent, British maybe or Australian. The three men continue the descent. Meanwhile Melvill continues to watch Mowmow, who has not turned to see the new arrivals. Perhaps he knows of them already, or perhaps he is too intent on spilling Melvill's blood. 

As the three men come down the hill--Korykory and the native ambassador Marnoo are with the sailor--the Typees begin to stand and relax, no longer afraid of Melvill's shooting them. The sailor is an older man with white in his hair and beard, a striped shirt and blue trousers. 

That smell--Melvill knows it now. He turns toward the sea and there it sits at anchor in the bay, a squarerigged whaleship, slightly smaller than the Acushnet. The smell which had sickened him for so many months now is the sweet scent of survival, of liberation. Deus ex machina, he thinks incredulously. 

Too late he hears "Watch yer back, boy!" Mowmow has knocked him to the ground. The Wheeler has discharged pointlessly as it flies from his hands. Melvill is only able to roll onto his back before Mowmow has him pinned and his knife at his throat. His eye bores into Melvill's skull like a shipwright's drill. The tip of Mowmow's knife pierces his skin. Melvill feels the blood trickle down the side of his neck. For the moment Mowmow does not puncture more deeply. 

The sailor is close now. Korykory and Marnoo are speaking to Mowmow, Korykory excitedly, Marnoo calmly slowly. 

The Typee captain holds the knife point in Melvill's skin. Melvill says nothing as he waits for death or life. He thinks of nothing, not of his past or his future. His mind is a mirror reflecting only what he sees: Mowmow's disfigured face framed by the bluest sky . . . a sailor's dream of a sky-- 

Melvill thinks of his prey for so many months, of the magnificent whales, rising from the depths for life's breath and being greeted with a harpoon in the back, then a second and a third, their red blood pouring forth as they struggle against the unprovoked attack, tugging the whale boats through the waves, the men laughing like children on a toboggan in the snow, until finally no energy is left, a lung pierced, the liver, maybe the brain itself, and the giant corpse can be dragged to the ship to be dissected and processed, another life ended at sea. . . . 

--Mowmow withdraws the knifeblade, gets up from Melvill and slowly walks away. 

The sailor helps Melvill stand. "I'm secondmate on the Lucy Ann there." He leads Melvill toward a dinghy on the beach; already the tide is going out. "We've had a rough time of it--sickness and a freak storm drowned twelve good men--we're desperate for harpooners specially. We happened to cross the London Packet and a Tobias Greene told us his tale, said you was in need of rescuing as much as we need of men with whaling knowhow." They are at the dinghy and the Australian is pushing it into the waves. "Get in, mate. Best be takin no more time." 

Melvill steps into the boat mechanically. The Aussie gets the dinghy on the water and hops in. "Grab an oar and we'll be aboard in no time." 

Melvill does as he is told and puts his back into the stroke. 

"My lord, mate, you're a sight. That lad who speaks some English and me been scourin the whole devil valley lookin for you. Half the Typee out to look too." 

Korykory has come down to the water's edge. He raises a hand but Melvill keeps moving the oars. Beyond Korykory is the hill with its worn path leading out of sight. Beyond the hill not even the mountains are in view. Somewhere in that verdant nothingness is Fayaway. He tries to recall her face but her features will not come to him. He can only recall the heat of her bloody sex, the taste of her sweaty skin. Korykory is still standing watching, just a manshape on the beach now, not even waving, motionless as driftwood. 

"There be a slicker under the seat, mate--best be putting it on." 

Melvill finds the long coat in a wad. It is foul with sweat and sea salt, whale gore and lord knows what else. He slips it on and buckles it tight; it's a fair fit. 

When they reach the starboard side of the Lucy Ann Melvill glances back one final time and the manshape is retreating. In a moment it will be gone for good. Melvill takes the ropeladder in his hands and looks heavenward. The sailors peering back are black against the blinding tropical sky, mere featureless shadows staring over the gunwale. 

Melvill begins to climb, as the small boat bucks beneath him on the eternally restless waves.  

THE END