He shot the pigs and trapped the rats. Of the
latter, in two weeks he caught fifteen hundred. Everything had to
be carried up on his back. He usually did his packhorse work at
night.
Gradually he began to win out. A grass-walled house was built. On
the fertile, volcanic soil he had wrested from the jungle and jungle
beasts were growing five hundred cocoanut trees, five hundred papaia
trees, three hundred mango trees, many breadfruit trees and
alligator-pear trees, to say nothing of vines, bushes, and
vegetables. He developed the drip of the hills in the canyons and
worked out an efficient irrigation scheme, ditching the water from
canyon to canyon and paralleling the ditches at different altitudes.
His narrow canyons became botanical gardens. The arid shoulders of
the hills, where formerly the blazing sun had parched the jungle and
beaten it close to earth, blossomed into trees and shrubs and
flowers. Not only had the Nature Man become self-supporting, but he
was now a prosperous agriculturist with produce to sell to the city-
dwellers of Papeete.
Then it was discovered that his land, which the government officials
had informed him was without an owner, really had an owner, and that
deeds, descriptions, etc., were on record. All his work bade fare
to be lost. The land had been valueless when he took it up, and the
owner, a large landholder, was unaware of the extent to which the
Nature Man had developed it. A just price was agreed upon, and
Darling's deed was officially filed.
Next came a more crushing blow. Darling's access to market was
destroyed. The road he had built was fenced across by triple barb-
wire fences. It was one of those jumbles in human affairs that is
so common in this absurdest of social systems. Behind it was the
fine hand of the same conservative element that haled the Nature Man
before the Insanity Commission in Los Angeles and that deported him
from Hawaii. It is so hard for self-satisfied men to understand any
man whose satisfactions are fundamentally different. It seems clear
that the officials have connived with the conservative element, for
to this day the road the Nature Man built is closed; nothing has
been done about it, while an adamant unwillingness to do anything
about it is evidenced on every hand. But the Nature Man dances and
sings along his way. He does not sit up nights thinking about the
wrong which has been done him; he leaves the worrying to the doers
of the wrong. He has no time for bitterness. He believes he is in
the world for the purpose of being happy, and he has not a moment to
waste in any other pursuit.
The road to his plantation is blocked. He cannot build a new road,
for there is no ground on which he can build it. The government has
restricted him to a wild-pig trail which runs precipitously up the
mountain. I climbed the trail with him, and we had to climb with
hands and feet in order to get up. Nor can that wild-pig trail be
made into a road by any amount of toil less than that of an
engineer, a steam-engine, and a steel cable. But what does the
Nature Man care? In his gentle ethics the evil men do him he
requites with goodness. And who shall say he is not happier than
they?
"Never mind their pesky road," he said to me as we dragged ourselves
up a shelf of rock and sat down, panting, to rest. "I'll get an air
machine soon and fool them. I'm clearing a level space for a
landing stage for the airships, and next time you come to Tahiti you
will alight right at my door."
Yes, the Nature Man has some strange ideas besides that of the
gorilla pounding his chest in the African jungle. The Nature Man
has ideas about levitation. "Yes, sir," he said to me, "levitation
is not impossible. And think of the glory of it - lifting one's self
from the ground by an act of will. Think of it! The astronomers
tell us that our whole solar system is dying; that, barring
accidents, it will all be so cold that no life can live upon it.
Very well. In that day all men will be accomplished levitationists,
and they will leave this perishing planet and seek more hospitable
worlds. How can levitation be accomplished? By progressive fasts.
Yes, I have tried them, and toward the end I could feel myself
actually getting lighter."
The man is a maniac, thought I.
"Of course," he added, "these are only theories of mine. I like to
speculate upon the glorious future of man. Levitation may not be
possible, but I like to think of it as possible."
One evening, when he yawned, I asked him how much sleep he allowed
himself.
"Seven hours," was the answer. "But in ten years I'll be sleeping
only six hours, and in twenty years only five hours. You see, I
shall cut off an hour's sleep every ten years."
"Then when you are a hundred you won't be sleeping at all," I
interjected.
"Just that. Exactly that. When I am a hundred I shall not require
sleep. Also, I shall be living on air. There are plants that live
on air, you know."
"But has any man ever succeeded in doing it?"
He shook his head.
"I never heard of him if he did. But it is only a theory of mine,
this living on air. It would be fine, wouldn't it? Of course it
may be impossible - most likely it is. You see, I am not
unpractical. I never forget the present. When I soar ahead into
the future, I always leave a string by which to find my way back
again."
I fear me the Nature Man is a joker.
