Chapter 7

Awake, Melvill reaches for his crutch. The hut is empty except for Tinor, who is preparing breakfast. Hungry, Melvill involuntarily thinks of a beefsteak and fried eggs, and flatcakes with maple syrup. Since the morning of Marheyo's ceremony life among the Typees has returned to its normal routine. Melvill counts the days: three mornings since the ceremony, or has it been four? It is easy to lose track but he is determined not to allow the time to melt away, like tallow, until it is a seamless indeterminate puddle. 

He is outside when he realizes his leg no longer ails him. He takes a few cautious steps without supporting his weight on the crutch. There is the vaguest hint of stiffness at the hip joint--otherwise his limb is completely flexible and free of pain. He walks about taking giant strides. He hops. He skips. 

"What's going on?" Toby has returned unnoticed. 

"My leg, Tobias, it is cured--completely cured!" Melvill, holding the crutch in the air, dances a clumsy jig to illustrate. 

"It doesn't pain you in the least?" 

"No. There is a trace of rigidity here," says Melvill touching his hip, "but even that seems to be fading." 

Marheyo and Korykory have also returned; they appear astonished. 

"I am quite all better," Melvill says to the islanders, who are standing staring. "I must go; I must explore. Being free of the pain is so liberating." He sets off for the Ti grove, the crutch still in hand but not using it. 

Toby trails after him: "Yes, but you mustn't overdo it--we don't want a relapse." 

Almost at a run Melvill hears his friend's advice but ignores it. Melvill is amazed at how close the Ti seems to be at this pace. Reaching it before has been so laborious. The world has suddenly shrunk. The Hawaiian Islands feel within swimming distance. The sky is bright on this new day and the air fresh, like from the snowpeaked Alleghenys or the Atlantic, where glaciers float as if phantoms in the icy waters. 

At the Ti grove Melvill studies the network of paths, feeling dazed and a little drunk. He says to Toby, who has caught up, "I must go but I can't decide where. You decide." 

"I think you should stop and rest a moment, and make certain your leg is truly shipshape." Korykory is there too-dispatched to contain the lunatic. 

"Sound advice no doubt, Tobias, but I cannot--I feel as though the sea is surging inside of me. The sea. . . ." Melvill tosses the crutch aside and runs toward the sea path, knowing it is a psychologically painful decision: He will view the ocean, its blue waves folding like bolts of silk, he will feel its wind on his face and arms--yet there will be no escape from the Typee Valley. Then he thinks, What if this is Providence? What if we discover a friendly ship moored in the harbor? Melvill pictures it there, a clipper with its sails secured at rest, only its flag--American or British or Australian--whipping in the breeze. It feels good to work his legs. His lungs are taking in the still air without laboring. He assumes the pace of a long-distance runner through the verdant jungle and has no concept of the miles as his mind remains focused on the hope of a ship, which becomes more and more real to him. The sea path opens out of the jungle, and Melvill glances behind to see that more than Toby and Korykory are following him: several natives, adolescent boys mainly, have joined the mad race to the sea. Melvill is breathing hard and sweating--it stings his eyes--but he cannot stop. The sea path slopes down between grassy hillocks to the wide plain. He notices gulls crisscrossing ahead of him, their wings arced and holding the wind like sails. 

At last Melvill comes to the gun shack and slows to a walk. He wonders if the ancient Typee is still within keeping his vigil. There is the sea, not as blue as he was thinking. Only slightly winded, he walks to the edge of the plain, before the steep decline to the ocean. Toby and the island boys and Korykory are following behind like a restless mob. 

Melvill observes every detail of the final quarter mile: the narrow brown path cutting through waving grasses, knee-high when perfectly upright, the whitesand beach, deserted except for a large piece of driftwood and the lonely gulls that float above the blue water: angels in search of lost souls. There is a dull throb at Melvill's hip but he disregards it and runs down the final hill. The tips of the tall grasses nip at his legs. Then there is sand underfoot. Melvill has almost forgotten the difficulty of running on the beach. But it feels good to move like this. He is in the wet sand and falling to his knees but not from exhaustion. A quest completed. The cool ocean rushes in and soaks him to the waist. Again. . . . A salty drop hits him on the cheek and rolls into the corner of his lips. 

Perhaps because of the wind in his ears or because of the vigorous splashing of the Typee boys but for a moment Melvill does not recognize the sound filling the air around him, then he understands it is his laughter: deep, robust--like a fullmoon lunatic's baying. Melvill falls forward then onto his back in the surf, laughing laughing. 

It is some time before he calms down, the sun a blinding white spot when he glances toward it. A gull, two gulls glide through his field of vision. The exhilaration of being fit has left him, taking with it his energies. It seems like a long long way back to Marheyo's settlement. Where is Toby? Korykory? Melvill turns onto his elbows and finds them sitting together on the beach, beyond the ocean's reach, facing him. They are silently watching him--or past him, to the sea, to oblivion. Korykory's waistcloth has fallen aside and his prick is in plain view, lying on the white sand like a dead darkscaled fish. 

As Melvill pushes himself upright he fully realizes his folly. The pain is spreading from his hip joint, and there is already a limp in his gait. Toby and Korykory are standing brushing themselves off. He thinks to say to Toby, "I was foolish," but there is no need. By the time Melvill reaches the gun shack he needs Toby's help to continue. Leaning heavily on his friend Melvill slowly presses on. The island boys at first were following but now, impatient, they rush ahead and are quickly out of sight past the hillocks. 

Melvill is losing touch. At some point Korykory takes him and that is how he completes the journey--semiconscious on the Typee's strong back, like the first days in the valley. In Marheyo's hut Melvill swallows the coconut milk that is dribbled into his mouth then he gives in to the darkness overtaking his mind. It is complete. Like the deepest bowel of the Acushnet. Like the crypt.