A white tomb overlooks the sea on a mountain in Samoa. It is the final resting place of one the natives called “Tusitala,” the Teller of Tales. Dead men tell no tales, and so it is for this man who told of pirates, knights, and swashbucklers: Robert Louis Stevenson. But his tales live on, despite the silence that hovers smilingly over his grave.
Set into the hard marble of this solemn sepulcher is a weathered bronze plaque presenting a very cheerful bit of poetry.
Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill.
These are the parting words, the last conclusion, of the Scottish storyteller. After a lifetime of struggle to quit his bed and live out the appetite for life that he could only write about, Stevenson sailed to Samoa, in weary pursuit of a climate that would agree with his fragile and failing constitution.
