The Poisoned Island by Lloyd Shepherd

Author:Lloyd Shepherd [Shepherd, Lloyd]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Washington Square Press
Published: 2014-03-15T22:33:11+00:00

SIX

If the universe bears a greater likeness to animal bodies and to vegetables than to the works of human art, it is more probable that its cause resembles the cause of the former than of the latter, and its origin ought rather to be ascribed to generation or vegetation than to reason or design.

David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, 1751

TAHITI

The two young princes—the one of the island, the other of England—climbed ever higher into the center of Tahiti, sweating in the morning sun. The day was still and hot and clear, as all the days had been since the arrival of the English ship. They had been walking for almost an hour, since the prince had met his friend at the point where the thick green forest met the open plantation land down near the sea.

“I have a great surprise for you,” the island prince had said the previous evening. They had been sitting near the Englishman’s tent watching girls dance in the firelight. The Englishman, like all his countrymen, watched the girls hungrily, his eyes half closed, his palms rubbing together as if under their own volition. “Meet me tomorrow morning, and I will show you something which will change the way you think and feel.” The prince had been serious-faced and sober, and his friend had laughed distractedly, his blue eyes dancing along with the girls. This island had already given so much. How could there possibly be yet more?

It had been three weeks since the arrival of the English ship. The men from the northern hemisphere were now well established, their little encampment just above the shoreline a busy conjunction of the island’s different worlds. Prostitutes and fishermen came to sell their wares, desperate as their fathers had been for the iron which the English brought with them. Even the whores could be paid for in nails.

Since their first meeting, the prince and his new friend had spent many hours together, walking and discussing and exploring. The Englishman could not believe how accomplished the prince was with his own language, and took the opportunity to be taught a few island words. The prince had been preparing for this friendship, and the opportunities it brought, for months. He had been trained in the English language by the lonely half-breed, who was shunned by the islanders and had for company only the fierce old missionary who had adopted him.

The half-breed and his stepfather came to the English encampment every day to warn the sailors of the dangers of the island’s syphilitic whores and to offer their redemptive services to the depraved and lost souls of the visitors. To start with, they were ignored. Increasingly, they were verbally abused or even worse. The prince had come across the young half-breed at the back of the beach the previous evening. He had been staring out to sea, tears in his eyes. The prince saw in those eyes the same longing he felt: to be far away from here, over the blue edge of the world, on the way to the northern island paradise of England.

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