Annie Proulx - Barkskins

Mr. Bone’s chief adviser was a missionary of obscure Protestant denomination, the Reverend Mr. Edward Torrents Rainburrow, possessed of a thick jaw blue with crowding whiskers, a mouth as wide as his face and inside it a set of pale green teeth. His basso completed the picture of an overbearing bully, but he had tamed his voice to a quiet pitch, and he smiled.

• • •

There were a dozen travelers at the meeting. A tall-headed fellow speculated how long the voyage from London to New Zealand might take. “Depending on weather and the favor of God it might be as swift as five months — or considerably more,” said a jowly missionary who repeatedly filled his wineglass. “First port of call will be Port Jackson, the convict colony which will also be the departure point for New Zealand. The convict transports go on to that island and pick up a load of masts before returning to England. The trees are of high quality.”

One of Mr. Bone’s correspondents had sent him a letter saying the Maori inhabitants, embroiled in constant wars with one another, were the most ferocious savages on the planet, bloodthirsty cannibals. Their faces were scarified in hideous whorls and dots. As for clothing, they dressed in vegetable matter.

Another missionary — there were seven in the group — Mr. Boxall, with a young girlish face, spoke directly to Mr. Bone. “I have heard differently — that the Maori are an intelligent and even spiritual people held under the sway of the Prince of Darkness. They are hungry for messages of peace.” Mr. Rainburrow resented this incursion into his own friendship with Mr. Bone, and, after their dinner of pork cheek and withered potatoes prepared by one of the missionary wives, he put his lips close to the factory man’s ear. “Dear Mr. Bone, I will let you know about passage from Australia to New Zealand, accommodation I am trying to secure even as we speak.” From the other side of the table Jinot begged his attention: “Sir, Mr. Bone, I wish to return to Boston. I have no desire to meet those wild people.” But Mr. Bone was enthusiastic about visiting the cannibals. “Thank you, Reverend Rainburrow,” he said, then turned to Jinot and said in a low, severe voice, “I sincerely doubt that they are truly eaters of human flesh. It is one of those sailors’ tales. And you, of all people, are being unjust. I can well believe they are only protecting their land from men who would seize it unfairly. With kind treatment, in time they will come to see how pleasant their lives would become with some of the whiteman’s inventions.”

• • •

Frugal missionaries often took passage on convict transport, and though Jinot objected he found himself swept aboard the Doublehail with Mr. Bone. Seasickness doubled most of the passengers, but not Mr. Rainburrow, who continued to enjoy his morning bacon. Jinot had never seen such a busy man, for the missionary rushed about from first light to lanterns-out. Mr. Boxall, his friend again, followed in his wake with his little yellow notebook.

Belowdecks the dangerous felons crouched in chains and cramping cubbies, the convicts England was pleased to remove from her finer population.

• • •

Jinot was wearied by pitching decks, the missionaries’ zeal, the ocean’s monotonous view of a horizon as flat as a sawed plank. Everywhere the spread of ocean showed it was not the Atlantic, which had given Jinot the odor of life forever. Even deep in the Maine lumber camps certain weatherly days would bring the salt taste of it to him a hundred miles distant. Stern, cold, inimical, resentful of men, rock-girt and often flashing with cruel storms, for him, for all Mi’kmaq, it was the only true ocean, and like a salmon he longed to go back to it.

When Australia finally came in sight as a great recumbent sausage at the edge of the world, he wondered how he could bear to sail still farther on to New Zealand. Only the thought of the interminable return voyage to Boston and a lack of passage money — for Mr. Bone had paid him no wages since they left Boston — kept him silent. He was fated to continue with the ax maker.

Port Jackson smelled different and unfamiliar, a somewhat dry roasty odor like parched coffee and burning twigs.

Through the strange trees flew birds of shocking colors, iridescent and violently noisy, birds with headdresses and wings like burning angels, flying apparitions from dreams. But in the month the travelers lingered in the colony awaiting passage, whenever they walked out they saw creatures that surpassed any nightmare, springing fur-covered beasts with rudder-like tails, lizards swelling out their throats in gruesome puffs, assorted spiders said to be fatally poisonous.

In Port Jackson the missionary arranged with a Maori who had come to sell New Zealand flax, that he should give lessons in his language to himself and Mr. Bone. Soon Mr. Bone was flinging such words as tapu, waka, wahine, iti, ihu about, and imagining himself a fluent speaker of this Polynesian language.

• • •

Jinot was disheartened to see that the same detestable Doublehail that had carried them from England would now take them to New Zealand. There were several Maoris on board and Mr. Bone spoke to them in what he imagined was their language. The energetic Mr. Rainburrow had better luck and began proselytizing whenever he caught one of the Maoris gazing out to sea. Jinot was surprised to see that they listened with interest and asked questions. As for Jinot, the natives immediately classed him as an inferior servant to Mr. Bone and ignored him.

• • •

They sailed up a river past gullied stumpland and the voyage ended in a busy settlement. The dominant building was near the wharf, a trader’s huge whare hoka. Next to this warehouse stood a chandler’s shop ornamented with an old anchor for a sign. Two shacks leaned off to one side. The larger bore a sign that said NEW ZEALAND COMPANY. The houses of the pakeha traders and government men ranged along streets terracing the hillside. Behind a screen of distant trees was the Maori village— pa —fenced round with poles; farther back loomed a fantastic tangle of ferns, trees, creepers and exotic fragrances, a fresh world.

“A translator will soon join you, Mr. Bone. You must excuse me as I am going to see the site chosen for our mission,” said Mr. Rainburrow.

Mr. Bone and Jinot waited for the translator, a Scotsman, John Grapple, whom they could see descending the steep path. Grapple walked gingerly and Jinot guessed he was wary of falling on the precipitous way. He reached them at the same time a Maori canoe drew up on the beach and a muscular native man jumped out and walked toward them. They came together under a motte of trees.

“Well, then,” said Grapple, showing his crimson face and fiery nose. “This chief speaks no English, so I will translate for you.” The moment Mr. Bone heard John Grapple’s Scots burr he loved him and the two talked for a quarter hour working out a remote kinship before they turned to the Maori who stood waiting, his heavy arms folded across his chest. Mr. Bone showed off some of his Maori words and amazingly, this man, his brown face a map of curled and dotted tattoos and clad in a sinuous flaxen cloak that tickled his ankles, understood some of the compromised phrases. At first the two men seemed pleased with each other. The chief wondered if Mr. Bone had come to buy flax. No? Sealskins? No? Spars? No? What then?

Mr. Bone, casting his limited vocabulary aside, looked at John Grapple to translate as he tried to describe ax making and his plan for a factory. With a stick he drew figures on the ground that represented an ax on a forge and a looming trip-hammer. To further illustrate Mr. Bone removed a Penobscot model ax he carried in his valise and handed it to the chief.