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All the labor and expense they bore themselves, which amounted to no small matter. Ala Loto Alofa, they called it, the Road of the Loving Hearts. Warlike outbreaks were not infrequent near Vailima. The woods were often full of scouting parties and the roll of drums could be heard. One day as Stevenson and Mrs. Strong were writing together they were interrupted by a war party crossing the lawn.
"Thus was Taalolo introduced into the Vailima kitchen, never to leave it for four years save when the war-drum called him to the front with a six-shooter and a 'death-tooth' the Samoan war-cutlass or head-knife. He became in time not only an admirable chef, but the nucleus of the whole native establishment and the loyalest of our whole Samoan family.
When, after her husband's death, she finally left Vailima, the diary was inadvertently left behind, eventually making its way to London and falling into the hands of an English lady, Miss Gladys Peacock, who, thinking it might be of some use to the family, sent it to Lloyd Osbourne, with a note saying that "of course she had not read it."
I was, in fact, so hard put to it in the matter of cash, that when the hotel-keeper asked three dollars for a pony on which to ride to Vailima, I refused to pay it, and went away believing that after all I should not see him whom I most desired to meet. Yet it was possible, if not likely, that he would come down to visit the one fortnightly link with the great world from which he was an exile.
It was not without a feeling of reverential awe that I received the books so nearly directly from the hand of Tusitala, 'who sleeps in the forest. Aolele, the Spray will cherish your gift! "On another day the family from Vailima went to visit the Spray. The sloop being in the stream, we boarded her from the beach abreast, in the little razeed Gloucester dory, which had been painted a smart green.
I was alarmed about Louis, but it did him no harm whatever. We were happy to be at pleasant Vailima again. "January 3. There has been a terrific storm, lasting three days, but the hurricane shutters were put up, and proved a great protection, though the house was dark and airless. Trees went crashing all around us.
A croquet-ground and tennis-court were laid out, and Vailima was the scene of balls, dinners, and parties of all kinds. No birthday or holiday, English, American, or Samoan, was allowed to pass unnoticed, and the natives were included in these festivities whenever possible. The first Christmas at Vailima they had a party for the children who had never before seen a Christmas tree.
They counted it an honour to be asked to hew a track through the tropic forest up which they bore him to his chosen resting-place on the mountain top of Vaea, overlooking Vailima, There a table tombstone, like that over the martyrs' graves on the hills of home, marks where this kindly Scot is laid, with the Pacific for ever booming his dirge.
The trip was a disappointment, for he was taken quite seriously ill there, and his wife had to take steamer and go after him, arriving in a state of great anxiety. Under her tender care he soon recovered and they returned to Vailima.
From his own book, Sailing Alone Around the World, I have taken the following account of his meeting with Mrs. Stevenson: "The next morning after my arrival, bright and early, Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson came to the Spray and invited me to visit Vailima the following day.
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