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Title: Atolls of the Sun
Author: O'Brien, Frederick
Language: English
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ATOLLS OF THE SUN
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
Photo from L. Gauthier
Nature’s mirror showed him why he could not leave
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ATOLLS
OF THE SUN
BY
FREDERICK O’BRIEN
Author of “MYSTIC ISLES OF THE SOUTH SEAS,” “WHITE SHADOWS
IN THE SOUTH SEAS,” etc.
WITH MANY
ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM
PAINTINGS, DRAWINGS AND PHOTOGRAPHS
[Illustration]
TORONTO
McCLELLAND & STEWART
1922
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright, 1922, by
THE CENTURY CO.
PRINTED IN U. S. A.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
To G——
------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOREWORD
“Atolls of the Sun” is a book of experiences, impressions, and dreams in
the strange and lonely islands of the South Seas. It does not aim to be
literal, or sequential, though everything in it is the result of my
wanderings in the far and mysterious recesses of the Pacific Ocean.
I am not a scientist or scholar, and can relate only what I saw and
heard, felt and imagined, in my dwelling with savage and singular races
among the wonderful lagoons of the coral atolls, and poignant valleys of
disregarded islands.
If I can make my reader see and feel the sad and beautiful guises of
life in them, and the secrets of a few unusual souls, I shall be
satisfied. The thrills of adventure upon the sea and in the shadowy
glens, the odors of rare and sweet flowers, the memories of lovable
humans, are here written to keep them alive in my heart, and to share
them with my friends.
Life is not real. It is an illusion, a screen upon which each one writes
the reactions upon himself of his sensory knowledge. The individual is
the moving camera, and what he calls life is his projection of the
panorama about him—not more actual than the figures and storms upon the
cinema screen. In this book I have put the film that passed through my
mind in wild places, and among natural people.
It is useless to look to find in the South Seas what I have found. It is
there, glowing and true, and yet, as each beholder conjures a different
vision of the human spectacle about him, each can see the islands of
romance only by the lens life has fitted upon his soul.
To seek a replica of experience or scenes is to spoil a possession.
If this book has interest, one may read and laugh, be entertained or
repelled with thanks that one can sit at ease, and watch this picture
made on another’s mind in long journeys and in many days and nights of
hazard and delight.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
Leaving Tahiti—The sunset over 3
Moorea—Bound for the Paumotu
Atolls—The Schooner _Marara, Flying
Fish_—Captain Jean Moet and others
aboard—Sighting and Landing on Niau
CHAPTER II
Meeting with Tommy Eustace, the 23
trader—Strange soil of the atoll—A
bath in the lagoon—Momuni, the thirsty
bread baker—Off for Anaa
CHAPTER III
Perilous navigation—Curious green 40
sky—Arrival at Anaa—Religion and the
movies—Character of Paumotuans
CHAPTER IV
The copra market—Dangerous passage to 58
shore at Kaukura—Our boat overturns in
the pass—I narrowly escape
death—Josephite Missionaries—The
deadly nohu—The himene at night
CHAPTER V
Captain Moet tells of Mapuhi, the great 80
Paumotuan—Kopcke tells about
women—Virginie’s jealousy—An
affrighting waterspout—The wrecked
ship—Landing at Takaroa
CHAPTER VI
Diffidence of Takaroans—Hiram Mervin’s 96
description of the cyclone—Teamo’s
wonderful swim—Mormon missionaries
from America—I take a bath
CHAPTER VII
Breakfast with elders—The great Mapuhi 114
enters—He tells of San Francisco—Of
prizefighters and Police gazettes—I
reside with Nohea—Robber-crabs—The
cats that warred and caught fish
CHAPTER VIII
I meet a Seventh Day Adventist 135
missionary, and a descendant of a
mutineer of the Bounty—They tell me
the story of Pitcairn island—An epic
of isolation
CHAPTER IX
The fish in the lagoon and sea—Giant 157
clams and fish that poison—Hunting the
devilfish—Catching bonito—Snarling
turtles—Trepang and sea cucumbers—The
mammoth manta
CHAPTER X
Traders and divers assembling for the 175
diving—A story told by Llewellyn at
night—The mystery of Easter
Island—Strangest spot in the
world—Curious statues and
houses—Borrowed wives—Arrival of
English girl—Tragedy of the Meke Meke
festival
CHAPTER XI
Pearl hunting in the lagoon—Previous 211
methods wasteful—Mapuhi shows me the
wonders of the lagoon—Marvelous
stories of sharks—Woman who lost her
arm—Shark of Samoa—Deacon who rode a
shark a half-hour—Eels are terrible
menace
CHAPTER XII
History of the pearl hunger—Noted jewels 230
of past—I go with Nohea to the
diving—Beautiful floor of the
Lagoon—Nohea dives many times—Escapes
shark narrowly—Descends 148 feet—No
pearls reward us—Mandel tells of
culture pearls
CHAPTER XIII
Story of the wondrous pearls planted in 249
the lagoon of Pukapuka—Tepeva a
Tepeva, the crippled diver, tells
it—How a European scientist improved
on nature—Tragedy of Patasy and
Mauraii—The robbed coral bank—Death
under the sea
CHAPTER XIV
The palace of the governor of the 271
Marquesas in the vale of
Atuona—Monsieur L’Hermier des Plantes,
Ghost Girl, Miss Tail, and Song of the
Nightingale—_Tapus_ in the South
Seas—Strange conventions that regulate
life—A South Seas Pankhurst—How women
won their freedom
CHAPTER XV
The dismal abode of the 294
Peyrals—Stark-white daughter of
Peyral—Only white maiden in the
Marquesas—I hunt wild bulls—Peyral’s
friendliness—I visit his house—He
strikes me and threatens to kill me—I
go armed—Explanation of the bizarre
tragic comedy
CHAPTER XVI
In the valley of Vaitahu—With Vanquished 319
Often and Seventh Man He Is So Angry
He Wallows in the Mire—Worship of
beauty in the South Seas—Like the
ancient Greeks—Care of the
body—Preparations for a belle’s
début—Massage as a cure for ills
CHAPTER XVII
Skilled tattooers of Marquesas Islands a 336
generation ago—Entire bodies covered
with intricate tattooed designs—The
foreigner who had himself tattooed to
win the favor of a Marquesan
beauty—The magic that removed the
markings when he was recalled to his
former life in England
CHAPTER XVIII
A fantastic but dying language—The 364
Polynesian or Maori Tongue—Making of
the first lexicons—Words taken from
other languages—Decay of vocabularies
with decrease of population—Humors and
whimsicalities of the dictionary as
arranged by foreigners
CHAPTER XIX
Tragic Mademoiselle Narbonne—Whom shall 384
she marry?—Dinner at the home of
Wilhelm Lutz—The _Taua_, the
sorcerer—Lemoal says Narbonne is a
leper—I visit the _Taua_—The prophecy
CHAPTER XX
Holy Week—How the rum was saved during 414
the storm—An Easter Sunday
“Celebration”—The Governor,
Commissaire Bauda and I have a
discussion—Paul Vernier, the
Protestant Pastor, and his church—How
the girls of the Valley imperilled the
immortal souls of the first
missionaries—Jimmy Kekela, his
family—A watch from Abraham Lincoln
CHAPTER XXI
Paul Gauguin, the famous French-Peruvian 439
Artist—A Rebel against the society
that rejected him while he lived, and
now cherishes his paintings
CHAPTER XXII
Monsieur l’Inspecteur des Etablissements 460
Français de l’Océanie—How the school
house was inspected—I receive my
congé—The runaway pigs—Mademoiselle
Narbonne goes with Lutz to Papeete to
be married—Père Siméon, about whom
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote
CHAPTER XXIII
McHenry gets a caning—The fear of the 482
dead—A visit to the grave of Mapuhi—En
voyage
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Nature’s mirror showed him why _Frontispiece_
he could not leave
PAGE
Map 7
The atoll of Niau 16
The anchorage at Tahauku. Atuona lies 17
just around the first headland to the
right
A Paumotu atoll after a blow 32
A squall approaching Anaa 33
Picking up the atoll of Anaa from the 48
deck of the schooner _Flying Fish_
Canoes and cutters at atoll of Anaa, 49
Paumotu Islands
The road from the beach 64
An American Josephite missionary and his 65
wife, and their church
Typical and primitive native hut, 80
Paumotu Archipelago
Copra drying 81
Atoll of Hikuera after the cyclone 96
The wrecked _County of Roxburgh_ 97
Mormon elders baptizing in the lagoon 112
Over the reef in a canoe 113
Robber-crab ascending tree at night. One 128
of the few photographs taken of the
marauder in action
Where the _Bounty_ was beached and 129
burned
The church on Pitcairn Island 144
The shores of Pitcairn Island 145
Spearing fish 160
A canoe on the lagoon 161
Ready for the fishing 161
Spearing fish in the lagoon 176
The Captain and two sailors of the _El 177
Dorado_
Beach dancers at Tahiti 192
After the bath in the pool 193
Old cocoanut-trees 208
The dark valley of Taaoa 209
Launch towing canoes to diving grounds 224
in lagoon
Divers voyaging in Paumotu atolls 225
Ghost Girl 256
A double canoe 257
A young palm in Atuona 272
Atuona valley and the peak of Temetiu 273
Malicious Gossip, Le Brunnec, and his 304
wife, At Peace
Exploding Eggs and his chums packing 304
copra
Frederick O’Brien and Dr. Malcolm 305
Douglas at home in Tahiti
Some friends in my valley 320
Wash-day in the stream by my cabin 321
Te Ipu, an old Marquesan chief, showing 336
tattooing
The famous tattooed leg of Queen Vaikehu 337
Tattooing at the present day 352
Easter Islander in head-dress and with 353
dancing-wand
My tattooed Marquesan friend 353
The author with his friends at council 368
House of governor of Paumotu Islands. 369
Atoll of Fakarava
Nakohu, Exploding Eggs 384
Haabuani, the sole sculptor of Hiva-Oa 385
The coral road and the traders’ stores 416
Scene on beach a few miles west of 417
Papeete
Tahiatini, Many Daughters, the little 432
leper lass
François Grelet, the Swiss, of Oomoa 433
Brunneck, the boxer and diver 464
A village maid in Tahiti 465
A Samoan maiden of high caste 465
Throwing spears at a cocoanut on a stake 480
The raised-up atoll of Makatea 481
Paumotuans on a heap of brain coral 496
Did these two eat Chocolat? 496
The stonehenge men in the South Seas 497
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ATOLLS OF THE SUN
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ATOLLS OF THE SUN
CHAPTER I
Leaving Tahiti—The sunset over Moorea—Bound for the Paumotu Atolls—The
Schooner _Marara, Flying Fish_—Captain Jean Moet and others
aboard—Sighting and Landing on Niau.
_“NOUS partons!_ We air off—off!” shouted _Capitaine_ Moet, gaily, as
the _Marara_, the schooner _Flying Fish_, slipped through the narrow,
treacherous pass of the barrier-reef of Papeete Harbor. “_Mon ami_, you
weel by ’n’ by say dam Moet for take you to ze _Iles Dangereuses_. You
air goin’ to ze worse climate in ze _sacré mundo_. Eet ees hot and ze
win’ blow many time like ’urricane. An’ you nevaire wash, because ze
wataire ees salt _como_ se o-c-ean.”
We had waited for a wafting breeze all afternoon, the brown crew alert
to raise the anchor at every zephyr, but it was almost dark when we were
clear of the reef and, with all sails raised, fair on our voyage to the
mysterious atolls of the Paumotu Archipelago. Often I had planned that
pilgrimage in my long stay in Tahiti. At the Cercle Bougainville, the
business club, where the pearl and shell traders and the copra buyers
drank their rum and Doctor Funks, I had heard many stories of a nature
in these Paumotus strangely different of aspect from all other parts of
the world, of a native people who had amazing knowledge of the secrets
of the sea and its inhabitants, and of white dwellers altered by
residence there to a pattern very contrary from other whites. For scores
of years these traders and sailors or their forerunners had played all
the tricks of commerce on the Paumotuans, and they laughed reminiscently
over them; yet they hinted of demons there, of ghosts that soared and
whistled, and of dancers they had seen transfixed in the air. What was
true or untrue I had not known; nor had they, I believed.
Llewellyn, the Welsh-Tahitian gentleman, after four or five glasses of
_Pernoud_, would ask, “Do you know why the Paumotus are unearthly?” and
would answer in the same liquorish breath, “Because they haven’t any
earth about them. They’re all white bones.”
Woronick, the Parisian expert in pearls, referred often to the wonderful
jewel he had bought in Takaroa from a Paumotuan, and the fortune he had
made on it.
“That pearl was made by God and fish and man, and how it was grown and
Tepeva a Tepeva got it, is a something to learn; unique. It is bizarre,
_effrayant_. I will not recite it here, for you must go to Takaroa to
hear it.”
And Lying Bill and McHenry, in a score of vivid phrases, told of the
cyclones that had swept entire populations into the sea, felled the
trees of scores of years’ growth, and left the bare atoll as when first
it emerged from the depths.
“I knew a Dane who rode over Anaa on a tree like a bloody ’orse on the
turf,” said Lying Bill to me, with a frightening bang of his tumbler on
the table. “’E was caught by the top of a big wave, an’ away ’e drove
from one side of the bleedin’ island to the other, and come right side
up. A bit ’urt in the ’ead, ’e was, but able to take ’is bloomin’ oath
on what ’appened.”
I had not depended on these _raconteurs_ for a vicarious understanding
of the Paumotus; for I had read and noted all that I could find in books
and calendars about them, but yet I had felt that these unlettered
actors in the real dramas laid there gave me a valid picture. My hopes
were fixed in finding in spirit what they saw only materially.
Moet stood by the wheel until we cleared the waters where the lofty bulk
of the island confused the winds, and I, when the actions of the sailors
in shifting the sails with his repeated orders had lost newness, looked
with some anguish at that sweet land I was leaving. It had meant so much
to me.
A poetic mood only could paint the swiftly changing panorama as the
schooner on its seaward tacks moved slowly under the faint vesper
breeze; the mood of a diarist could tell how “the sun setting behind
Moorea in a brilliant saffron sky, splashed with small golden and
mauve-colored clouds, threw boldly forward in a clear-cut, opaque purple
mass that fantastically pinnacled island, near the summit of whose
highest peak there glittered, star-like, a speck of light—the sky seen
through a hole pierced in the mountain. How in the sea, smooth as a
mirror, within the reef, and here and there to seaward, blue ruffled by
a catspaw, away to the horizon was reflected the saffron hue from above;
how against purple Moorea a cocoa-crowned islet in the harbor appeared
olive-green—a gem set in the yellow water. How the sunlight left the
vivid green shore of palm-fringed Tahiti, and stole upward till only the
highest ridges and precipices were illuminated with strange pink and
violet tints springing straight from the mysterious depth of dark-blue
shadow. How from the loftiest crags there floated a long streamer
cloud—the cloud-banner of Tyndal. Then, as the sun sank lower and lower,
the saffron of the sky paled to the turquoise-blue of a brief tropical
twilight, the cloud-banner melted and vanished, and the whole color
deepened and went out in the sudden darkness of the night.”
If one must say farewell to Tahiti, let it be in the evening, in the
tender hues of the sunset, the effacing shadows of the sinking orb in
sympathy with the day’s tasks done; the screen of night being drawn amid
flaming, dying lights across a workaday world, the dream pictures of the
Supreme Artist appearing and fainting in the purpling heavens. I was
leaving people and scenes that had taught me a new path in life, or, at
least, had hung lamps to guide my feet in an appreciation of values
before unknown to me.
I came back to the deck of the schooner with Moet’s call for a
steersman, and his invitation to go below for food and drink. I refused
despite his “_Sapristi!_ Eef you no eat by ’n’ by you cannot drink!” and
when he disappeared down the companion-ladder I climbed to the roof of
the low cabin. The moon was now high—a plate of glowing gold in an
indigo ceiling. The swelling sea rocked the vessel and now and then
lifted her sharp prow out of the water and struck it a blow of
friendship as it rejoined it. I unrolled a straw mat, and, placing it
well aft so that the jibing boom would not touch me, lay upon my back,
and visioned the prodigious world I was seeking. The very names given by
discoverers were suggestive of extravagant adventure. The Half-drowned
Islands, the Low Archipelago, the Dangerous Isles, the Pernicious
Islands, were the titles of the early mariners. For three hundred years
the Paumotus had been dimly known on the charts as set in the most
perilous sea in all the round of the globe. I had read that they were
more hazardous than any other shores, as they were more singular in
form. They had excited the wonder of learned men and laymen by even the
scant depiction of their astounding appearance. For decades after the
eyes of a European glimpsed them they were thought by many bookish men
to be as fabulous as Atlantis or Micomicon; too chimerical to exist,
though witches then were a surety, and hell a burning reality.
I fell asleep, and as during the night the wind shifted and with it the
schooner veered, I had but a precarious hold upon the mat and was
several times stood on my feet in the narrow passageway. The dream
_jinn_ seized these shiftings and twistings, the shouts of the mate in
charge, the chants of the sailors at work, the whistle of the wind
through the cordage, and wove them into fantasies,—ecstasies or
nightmares,—and thus warded off my waking.
But the sun, roused from his slumber beneath the dip of the sphere,
could be put off with no fine frenzies. When even half above the dipping
horizon his beams opened my eyes as if a furnace door had been flung
wide, and I turned over to see my hard couch occupied by others. Beside
me was McHenry, next to him Moet, and furthest, the one white woman
aboard, the captain’s wife. We yawned in unison; and, with a quick,
accustomed movement, she dropped below. The day had begun on the
schooner.
The _Marara_ was once a French gunboat of these seas when cannons were
needed to prevent dishonor to the tricolor by failure to obey French
discipline, while France was making good colonists or corpses of all
peoples hereabout. She was the very pattern of the rakish craft in which
the blackbirders and pirates sailed this ocean for generations—built for
speed, for entering threatening passes, for stealing silently away under
giant sweeps, and for handling by a small number of strong and fearless
men. The bitts on the poop were still marked by the gun emplacements,
and the rail about the stern was but two feet high.
Now her owners were a company of Tahiti Europeans who, trusting largely
to the seamanship and business shrewdness of her master, despatched her
every few weeks or months on voyages about the French islands within a
thousand miles or so to sell the natives all they would buy, and to get
from them at the least cost the copra, shells, and pearls which were
virtually the sole products of these islands.
[Illustration:
TUAMOTU ARCHIPELAGO
(PACIFIC OCEAN)
click on map for a larger view
]
The cabin was one room, stuffy and hot, and malodorous of decades of
cargo. A small table in the center for dining was alone free from
shelves and boxes holding merchandise, which was displayed as in a
country store. Besides all kinds of articles salable to a primitive
people, there were foods in barrels, boxes, tins, and glass, for whites
and for educated native palates.
Jean Moet, the commander of the _Marara_, was of the type of French
sailor encountered in the Mediterranean, and especially about Marseilles
and Spanish ports. He had a slight person, with hair and moustache black
as the stones of Papenoo beach—nervous, excitable, moving incessantly,
gesturing with every word. Twenty-eight of his forty years had been
passed in ships. He had visited the _Ile du Diable_, and had seen
Dreyfus there; he chattered of New York, Senegal, Yokohama, Cayenne, was
full of French ocean oaths, breaking into English or Spanish to
enlighten me or press a point, singing a Parisian music-hall
_chansonette_, or a Spanish _cancioncita_. His language was a curious
hodge-podge bespeaking the wanderings of the man and his intensely
mercurial temperament.
His wife, who sailed with him on all voyages since their marriage five
years before, was his opposite—large-boned and heavy, like a Millet
peasant, looking at her brilliant husband as a wistful cow at her
master, but not fearing to caution him against extravagance in stimulant
or money. Her life had begun in Tahiti, and she had always been there
until the dashing son of the _Midi_ had lifted her from the house of her
father—a petty official—to the deck of the _Flying Fish_. She was a
housekeeper and accountant.
She paid especial attention to the shelves of pain-killers, cough cures,
perunas, bitters and medical discoveries from America, which, in islands
where all alcoholic liquors were forbidden to the aborigines, sold
readily to all who sickened for them. Moet was affectionate but stern
toward Virginie, the wife, and talked to her as does a kind but wise
master to a trained seal.
For breakfast, the captain, Madame Moet, McHenry, and I had canned
sardines, canned hash from Chicago, California olives, canned pineapple
from Hawaii, and red wine from Bordeaux.
Virginie explained in Tahitian French that Jean had forgotten to get
aboard stores of fresh food. He had been at the Cercle Bougainville
until we had gone aboard, she said caustically. Jean put his arm about
her fat waist.
“_Mais_, dar-leeng,” he said, soothingly, “_tais-toi!_” And then to me,
“We are _camarades, ma femme y mi, compañeros buenos_. Ma wife she wash
ze _linge_. That good, eh? _Amerique_ ze woman got boss hand now.
_Diable! C’est_ rottan! _Hombre_, ze wife ees for ze _cuisine_, and ze
babee.”
He pressed her middle, and advised her to clear up the table while we
went on deck for a smoke.
He became confidential with me after a _pousse café_ or two.
“We _faire_ ze _chose économique_, Virginie _y mi_,” he said. “Maybee
som’ day we weesh _avoir_ leetle farm _en France. En vérité, mon ami_, I
forget ze vegetable an’ ze meat because I beat McHenry at _écarté_ in ze
Cercle Bougainville, jus’ _avant_ we go ’way from Papeete. I nevaire
play ze _carte_ on ze schoonaire! _Jamais de la vie!_”
The captain had aboard a brown pup, a mongrel he had found in the
Marquesas Islands. He had named him Chocolat, and passed hours each day
in teaching him tricks—to lie down and sit up at command, to stand and
to bark. The dog liked to run over the roof of the cabin and to crouch
upon the low rail at the stern. As any roll or pitch of the vessel might
toss him into the ocean, I feared for his longevity, but
Chocolat—pronounced by Moet “Shockolah”—was able to fall inboard
whenever the motion jeopardized his safety.
“_Eh, petit chien_,” Jean Moet would cry, when Chocolat skated down the
inclined deck into the scuppers, or hung for a moment indecisively on
the rail, “you by ’n’ by goin’-a be eat by ze _requin_. Ze big shark
getta you, _perrillo_, an’ you forget all my teach you, _mi querido_!”
He whipped Chocolat many times a day, when the puppy let down from
“attention” before told, or when he attacked his food before a certain
whistled note.
“What will you do with him when his education is complete?” I asked
Moet.
“When he ees educate, _hein_? He will be like ze saircuss animal. One
year old, maybe, he make turnover, fight ze _boxe_, drink wine, an’,
_puedeser_, he talk leetle. Zen I sell heem some tourist, some crazee
_Americain_ who zink he do for heem like me. I sharge five hunder
franc.”
McHenry, who kicked Chocolat whenever he had an opportunity unseen,
ridiculed Moet’s dream of gain.
“You will like hell!” said McHenry. “When you’ve got the dirty little
bastard sayin’, ‘Good mornin’, ‘nice an’ proper, he’ll sneak ashore in
some boat-load o’ truck, an’ some Paumotuan ’ll hotpot him. Wait till
he’s fat! You know what they’ll do for fresh meat.”
“_Non, non!_” answered the captain, angrily. “I am not afraid of zat. I
teach heem I keel heem he go in boat, but maybe you take heem an’ sell
heem on ze quiet, McHenry.”
The small, cold eyes of McHenry gleamed, and a queer smile twisted his
mouth.
“Well, keep him from under my feet!” he warned, and laughed at some
thought now fully formed in his mind. I could see it squirming in his
small brain.
McHenry was as rollicking a rascal as I knew in all the South Seas. He
was bitter and yet had a flavor of real humor at odd times. Without
schooling except that of a wharf-rat in Liverpool, New York, and San
Francisco, he had come into these latitudes twenty years before. Cunning
yet drunken, cruel but now and again doing a kindness out of sheer
animal spirits or a desire to show off, he had many enemies, and yet he
had a few friends. When the itching for money or the desire to feel
power over those about him urged him, as most of the time, he proved
himself the ripest and rottenest product of his early and present
environment. He had had desperate fights to keep from being a decaying
beachcomber, a parasite without the law; but a certain Scotch caution, a
love of making and amassing profits, and, as I learned later, a firm and
towering native wife, had kept him at least out of jail and in the
groove of trading.
Boasting was his chief weakness. He would go far to find the chance to
ease his latent sense of inferiority to an audience that did not know
fully his poverty of character and attainment. After years of ups and
downs he had now quarreled with his recent employers, and was going to
pitch his trade tent on some Paumotu atoll where copra and pearl-shell
might be found. He thought that he might stay a while in Takaroa, one of
our ports, because the diving season was about to open there. He and I
being the only ones whose language was English, we were much together,
but I always half despised myself for not speaking my mind to him.
Still, those lonely places make a man compromise as much as do cities.
What one might fear most would be having no one to talk with.
We lived on deck, all four of us, the Moets, McHenry, and I, along with
a half-caste mate, sleeping always on the roof of the cabin, and taking
our meals off it, except in rain. In that moist case we bundled on the
floor of the cabin. There was no ceremony. The cook brought the food
through the cabin, and we handed up and down the dishes through the
after scuttle, helping ourselves at will to the wine and rum which were
in clay bottles on the roof. McHenry and I were the only passengers, and
the crew of six Tahitians was ample for all tasks. They were Piri a
Tuahine, the boat-steerer; Peretia a Huitofa, Moe a Nahe, Roometua a
Terehe, Piha a Teina, and Huahine, with Tamataura, the cook.
The whole forward deck of the schooner was crowded with native men,
women, and children, the families of church leaders who were returning
to their Paumotu homes after attending a religious festival in Tahiti.
They lay huddled at night, sleeping silently in the moonlight and under
the stars. All day, and until eight or nine o’clock, they conversed and
ate, and worked with their hands, plaiting hats of _pandanus_,
sugar-cane, bamboo, and other materials. White laborers massed in such
discomfort would have quarreled, squabbled for place, and eased their
annoyance in loud words, but the Polynesian, of all races, loves his
fellow and keeps his temper.
These were the first Paumotuan people I had seen intimately, and I
listened to them and asked them questions. A deacon who at night removed
a black coat and slept in a white-flowered blue loin-cloth, the _pareu_
of all the Polynesians, gazed at the heavens for hours. He knew many of
the stars.
“Our old people,” he said, “believed that the gods were always making
new worlds in distant sky places beyond the Milky Way, the
_Maoroaheita_. When a new world was made by the strong hands of the
gods, the _Atua_, it went like a great bird to the place fixed for it.
That star, _Rehua_,”—he pointed toward Sirius “was first placed by the
_Atua_ near the _Tauha_, the Southern Cross, but afterwards they changed
it, and sent it to where it is now.”
I looked at the glowing cross, and remembered the emotion its first
sight had stirred in me. I was tossing on the royal yard of a bark bound
for Brazil, up a hundred feet and more from deck, when, raising my head
from the sail I had made fast, there burst upon me the wonderful form
and brilliance of the constellation which five thousand years ago
entranced the Old World but which is hidden from it now.
The deacon again raised his hand and indicated the spot where _Rehua_
had shone before the divine mind had changed. It was the Coal-sack, the
black vacancy in the Magellan Clouds, so conspicuous below the cross
when all the rest of the sky is cloudless and clear. The Maori mind had
wisely settled upon that vast space in the stellar system in which not
even an atom of stellar dust sheds a single flicker of luminosity as the
point from which the gods had plucked _Rehua_. I had no such lucid
reason for this amazing, celestial void as the half-naked deacon on the
deck of the _Marara_.
We had a poor wind for two days, and I looked long hours in the water,
so close to the deck, at the manifestations of organic and vegetable
vitality. All life of the ocean, I knew, depended ultimately on minute
plants. The great fish and mammals fed on plant forms which were
distributed throughout the seas. These grew in the waters themselves or
were cast into them along their shores or by the thousands of rivers
which eventually feed the ocean. The flora of all the earth, seeds,
nuts, beans, leaves, kernels, swam or sank in the majority element, and
aided in the nourishment of the creatures there. They had, also, taken
root on shores foreign to their birth, and had, from immigrants, become
esteemed natives of many lands. They had increased man’s knowledge, too,
as the sea-beans found on the shores of Scotland led to the discovery of
that puzzle of all currents, the Gulf Stream. After all was said, the
land was insignificant compared to the water—little more than a fourth
of the surface of the globe, and in mass as puny. The average elevation
of the land was less than a fifth of a mile, while the average depth of
the sea was two miles, or thirty times the mass of the land. If the
solid earth were smoothed down to a level, it would be entirely covered
a mile deep by the water. I felt very close to the sea, and fearful of
its might. I envied the natives their assurance, or, at least,
stolidity.
The days were intensely hot. When the sails were furled or flapped idly,
and the _Marara_ lay almost still, listening for even a whisper of wind,
I suffered keenly. The second noon our common exasperation broke out in
the inflammable Moet.
The captain shouted to Huahine, a sailor, to cover his head with a hat.
The man was a giant, weighing more than two hundred and fifty pounds,
but Moet addressed him as he would a child.
“_Sapristi!_” he yelled, _“Taupoo! Maamaa!_ Your hat, you fool!”
“_Diablo! amigo_,” he said, testily. “Zose nateev air babee. I have ze
men paralyze by ze sun in ze Marqueses. In ze _viento_, when ze win’
blow, no dan-gair, but when no blow—_sacré!_ ze sun melts ze brain
off-off.”
Captain Moet was dramatic. Whatever he said he acted with face, hands
and arms, feet, and even his whole body. He made a gesture that caused
me to touch my own hat, to consider its resistance to the sun, to feel
an anticipation of harm. Suddenly he took the arm of the sailor at the
wheel, Piha a Teina, a Tahitian, and, releasing the spokes from his
hands, himself began to steer.
“Go there in the lee of the mainsail,” he said in Tahitian, “and tell
the American about your terrible adventure when you almost died of
thirst!”
“Look at him!” said Moet to me. “He is old before his time. The sun did
that.”
[Illustration:
Photo from L. Gauthier
The atoll of Niau
]
Piha a Teina stood beside me, shy, slow to begin his epic. He was
shriveled and withered, pitifully marked by some experience unusual even
to these Maori masters of this sea. I gave him a cigarette, and,
lighting it, he began;
“I am Piha a Teina,” he said. “I was living in the island of Marutea in
the Paumotus when this thing happened. I set out one day in a cutter for
Manga Reva. That island was seven hundred miles away, and we were sent,
Pere Ani, my friend, and I, to bring back copra. The cutter was small,
not so large as a ship’s boat. We had food for eight or nine days, and
as the wind was as we wanted it, blowing steadily toward Manga Reva, we
felt sure we would arrive there in that time. But we lost the stars.
They would not show themselves, and soon we did not know which way to
steer. This schooner has a compass, but we could not tell the direction
by the sun as we had not the _aveia_. We became uneasy and then afraid.
Still we kept on by guess and hope, believing the wind could not have
changed its mind since we started. On the tenth day we ate the last bite
of our food. We had not stinted ourselves until the eighth day, and then
we felt sure the next day or the next would bring the land.
[Illustration:
The anchorage at Tahauku. Atuona lies just around the first headland
to the right
]
“But on the eleventh day we saw nothing but the sea. I had a pearl hook
and with it we caught _bonito_. We ate them raw. They made us thirsty,
and we drank all our water. It did not rain for many days, and we drank
the salt water. When it rained we had nothing in which to catch and keep
the fresh water. We could only suck the wet sail which we had taken down
because we had become too weak to handle it if the gale had caught us
with it up. We drifted and drifted with the current. The sun beat upon
us and we were burned like the breadfruit in the oven. I could not touch
my breast in the daytime it was so hot. The time went on as slowly as
the cocoanut-tree grows from the nut we plant. We left in the month you
call October. Days and nights we floated without using the tiller except
to keep the cutter before the wind when it blew hard. We had been asleep
maybe a day or two when a storm came. We did not wake up, but it cast us
on the island of Rapa-iti. Pere Ani never woke up, but I am here. The
sun killed him.”
“How long were you in the cutter?” I asked.
Moet heard my question and replied:
“_Mais_, zey lef’ Marutea in _octobre_, an’ ze Zelee, the Franche
war-sheep, fin’ zem on Rapa-iti in Januaire. Zey was—_yo no se_—more zan
seexty day in ze boat.”
Piha a Teina expressed neither gladness nor sorrow that he had escaped
the fate of Pere Ani. He knew, as his race, that fate was inexorable,
and he contemplated life as the gift of a powerful force that could not
be argued with nor threatened by prayers, though, to be in the mode, he
might make such supplications.
“If I had had such a _hohoa moana_, a chart of the sea, as we formerly
made of sticks,” he said, “I could have found Manga Reva without the
stars. We made them of straight and curved pieces of wood or bamboo, and
we marked islands on them with shells. They showed the currents from the
four quarters of the sea, and with them we made journeys of thousands of
miles to the Marquesas and to Hawaii and Samoa. But we have forgotten
how to make them, and I know nothing of the paper charts the white man
has, but I can read the _aveia_, the compass of the schooner. We did not
take our _hooa_ in our canoes, but studied them at home.”
The captain whistled, caught my eye, touched his forehead to signify
Piha a Teina was wandering mentally, and summoned the sailor to take the
wheel.
“He ees _maamaa_ evvair since zat leetle voyage,” he said, sagely.
On the morning of the fourth day from Papeete the first of the eighty
Paumotu atolls raised a delicate green fringe of trees four or five
miles away. It lay so low that from the deck of the schooner it could
not be seen even on the clearest days at a greater distance. One heard
the surf before the island appeared. It was only a few feet above the
plane of the sea, flat, with no hill or eminence upon it, a leaf upon
the surface of a pond. I could hardly believe it part of the familiar
globe. It was more like the fairy-island of childhood, the coral strand
of youth, the lotus land of poesy. It was, in reality, the most
beautiful, fascinating, inconceivable sight upon the ocean.
McHenry and I stood with Chocolat and watched the slow rise of the atoll
of Niau, as the _Marara_, under lessened sail and with Captain Moet at
the helm, cautiously approached the land. We crept up to it, as one
might to a trap in which one hoped to snare a hare but feared to find a
wolf. All hands stood by for orders. Though the sky was azure and the
sun broiling, one never knew in the Pernicious Islands when the
unforeseen might happen.
Seven miles long and five wide, Niau was a matchless bracelet of ivory
and jade. Grieg Island, some Anglo-Saxon discoverer once named it, but
Grieg had fame abroad only. None spoke his name as we advanced warily
over the road, familiar to them all as the Sulu Sea to me. The cargo for
Niau came through the hatches, thrown up from the hold, sailor to
sailor, and was piled on deck until all was checked. Madame Moet was on
the poop by the after door of the cabin, hanging over each item and
marking it off upon her inventory, while Jean hummed the “Carmagnole,”
and swung the _Flying Fish_ about on short tacks for her goal. Between
the shifting of the canvas the long-boat was lowered, and the goods
heaped in it: boxes and barrels, bales and buckets, edibles and
clothing, matches and tobacco, gimcracks and patent medicines.
As closer we went, I saw that Niau was a perfect oval, composed of a
number of separate islets or _motus_. These formed the land on which
were the trees and shrubs and the people, but this oval itself was
inclosed by a hidden reef, several hundred feet wide, on which the
breakers crashed and spilled in a flood of foaming billows.
There was no enthusiasm over the beauty of Niau except in my heaving
breast, and I concealed it as I would free thinking in a monastery. To
McHenry and Jean and Virginia, a lovely atoll was but a speck upon the
ocean on which to cozen inferior creatures.
“_Madre de Dios!_” vociferated the skipper, when, a mile from the
gleaming teeth of the reef, he brought the _Marara_ up into the wind and
halted her like a panting mare thrown upon her haunches. “Mc’onree et
M’sieu’ O’Breeon, eef you go ’shore, tomble een, _pronto_!”
He released the wheel to the mate, and we three scrambled over the rail
and jumped upon the cargo as the boat rose on a wave, joining the four
Tahitians who were at the heavy oars, with Piri a Tuahine at the stern,
holding a long sweep for a rudder. It was attached by a bight of rope,
and by a longer rope kept from floating away in case of mishap.
Now came as delicate a bit of action with sails as a yachtsman, with his
mother-in-law as a guest, might recklessly essay. Captain Moet sang out
from his perch on a barrel to the half-caste at the wheel to go ahead,
and the _Flying Fish_, which for a few minutes had been trembling in
leash, turned on her heel and headed directly for the streak of foam,
the roar of which drowned our voices at that distance.
Eight hundred feet away, when it must have looked to a landsman on the
schooner that she was almost in the breakers, we cast off the line and
took to our oars. It was nice seamanship to save time by minimizing
rowing, but certainly not in Lloyd’s rules of safety. Those who reckon
dangers do not laugh in these parts. A merry rashness helps ease of
mind.
In five minutes our boat was in the surf, rolling and tumbling, and I on
my merchandise peak clasped a bale fervently, though McHenry and Moet
appeared glued to barrels which they rode jauntily. It was now I saw the
art of the Polynesians, the ablest breaker boatmen in the world.
All about seemed to me solid coral rock or distorted masses of limestone
covering and uncovering with the surging water, but suddenly there came
into my altering view, as the steersman headed toward it, a strange pit
in the unyielding strata. Into this maelstrom the water rushed
furiously, drawn in and sucked out with each roll of the ocean. The
Tahitians, at a word, stopped rowing, while Piri a Tuahine scrutinized
intently the onrushing waves. He judged the speed and force of each as
it neared him, and on his accuracy of eye and mind depended our lives.
The oarsmen tugged with their blades to hold the boat against the
sweeping tide, and abruptly, with a wild shout, Piri a Tuahine set them
to pulling like mad, while he with his long oar both steered and
sculled.
“_Tamau te paina!_” all yelled amid the boom of the surf.
“Hold on to the wood!” and down into the pit we tore; down and in, the
boat raced through the vortex of the chute, the pilot avoiding narrowly
the coffin-like sides of the menacing depression, and the sailors, with
their oars aloft for the few dread seconds, awaiting with joyous shouts
the emergence into the shallows. All was in the strong hands and steady
nerves of Piri a Tuahine. A miscalculated swerve of his sturdy lever,
and we would have been smashed like egg-shells, boat and bodies, against
the massive sides. But spirit and wood were stedfast, and I rode as high
and dry from the imminent Scylla as if on a camel in the Sahara.
In a few twinklings of an eye we were past the reef, and in the moat in
fast shoaling, quiet water, studded with hummocks and heaps of coral.
The sailors leaped into it shoulder-deep, and guided and forced the boat
as far shoreward as possible, to curtail the cargo-carrying distance.
Captain Moet, McHenry, and I went up to our waists, and reached the
beach.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER II
Meeting with Tommy Eustace, the trader—Strange soil of the atoll—A bath
in the lagoon—Momuni, the thirsty bread baker—Off for Anaa.
THE crusader who entered Jerusalem had no deeper feeling of realization
of a long-cherished hope than I when my foot imprinted its mold in the
glistening sand of the atoll of Niau. I stood in my track and scanned
it, as _Crusoe_ the first human mark other than his own he saw on his
lonely island. Not with his dismay, but yet with a slight panic, a
pleasant but alarmed perturbation, an awe at the wonder of the scene.
The moment had the tenseness of that when I saw my first cocoanut-palm;
it mingled a fear that I had passed one of the great climacterics of
visual emotion.
Here was I in the arcanum of romance, the promised land of chimera,
after years of faint expectation. I was almost stunned by the reality,
and I felt sensibly the need of some one to share the pathos that
oppressed me. I did not forsake my love for Tahiti. That was fixed, but
this atoll was not the same. Tahiti was an adored mistress, this a light
o’ love, a dazzling, alien siren, with whom one could not rest in
safety; a fanciful abode for a brief period, as incomparable to Tahiti
as an ice-field to a garden.
“What the bloody hell’s eatin’ on you?” exclaimed the irked McHenry,
questioningly as he glared at me. “Aren’t your feet mates? Let’s see
Tommy Eustace! He might have a bottle o’ beer buried in a cool place.”
Moet was shaking the salt water from his long, inky hair. He had
stumbled and dipped his head in the brine.
“_’Sus-Maria!_” he swore. “Virginie she say Jean been drink.”
A shed-like building of rough boards, with unpainted corrugated iron
roof, was a hundred steps from the water, the store and warehouse of the
single trader, who supplied the wants and ambitions of the hundred
inhabitants of Niau and endeavored to monopolize a meager output of
copra and pearl-shell. It was on a rude road, which stretched along the
beach, edged by a dozen houses, small, wooden huts, or thatched straw
shanties, much more primitive and poor than in Tahiti. All the remainder
of Niau was coral, water, and cocoanut-trees, except a scanty
vegetation.
Thomas Eustace, the trader, or Tomé, as the natives called him, was in
the doorway of his establishment, awaiting the sailors who had begun at
once to carry the _Marara’s_ freight from the boat through the moat. A
quarter of a century ago, a broth of a boy from Ireland, he had stepped
off a ship alongside the Papeete quay, and had never left the South Seas
since.
“_Faix_, I had the divil’s own toime to shtay,” say Tomé, as we four sat
by an empty barrel head and drank the warmish beer he had offered us
with instant hospitality.
“I waz that atthracted by the purty gir-ruls, the threes, and the
foine-shmellin’ flowers that the ould man of the ship nivir could dhraw
me back to the pots an’ pans iv the galley. I waz the flunky in the
kitchin iv a wind-jammin’ Sassenach bark, peelin’ praties, an’ waitin’
on sailormin. The father iv a darlin’ hid me out be Fautaua falls, an’
the _jondarmy_ hunted an’ hunted, wid nothin’ for their thrubble.”
A stoutish, quizzical man was Tomé, with brown face and throat and
hands, a stubby, chewed mustache and sleepy, laughing eyes. By the
purling steam of Fautaua, where Loti had lived his idyl with Rarahu and
I had walked with a princess, Thomas Eustace became Tomé forever and
ever. He was well satisfied to be bashaw of an atoll, unused to greater
comfort as he was, and enamored of reef and palm, and the lazy,
unstandardized life of the South Seas.
“Ye may picther me,” he went on, as he poured the beer, “jumpin’ out iv
the p’isonous galley iv that wind-jammin’ man-killer, an’ fallin’, be
the grace iv God, into a grove iv cocoanuts, wid roas’ pig, breadfruit,
and oranges fur breakfus, _deejunee_, an’ dinner, to whistle low about a
brown fairy that swung on the same branch wid me! The Emerald Isle the
divil! ‘Tis Tahiti’s the Tir-na’n-Og! This beats the bogs an’ the peat
an’ the stirabout, wid no peeler to move you on, an’ no _soggarth_ to
tell ye ye’re a sinner!”
Tomé was ten years in Penrhyn, the noted pearl island belonging to New
Zealand, and known as Tongareva. Lying Bill, McHenry, and Eustace were
fellow-traders in that lonely spot. “Fellow” in such relations meant the
affectionate intercourse of wolves who united to chase the sheep and
quarrel over the carcass. McHenry and Tomé had greeted each other with
cold familiarity, each knowing the other through and through, wondering
how the other would beat him, and yet not averse to an exchange of trade
news and the gossip of Tahiti and the Group, as they called the
Paumotus.
“How’s old Lovaina?” asked Tomé.
“Chargin’ as much as ever for her cheap scoffin’s,” replied McHenry, who
had never eaten a better meal than that served at the Tiaré Hotel.
Eustace, I doubted not, was a square and genial man, but among his
business kind he had to fight bludgeon with bludgeon. He opened a fresh
cocoanut and diverted the mouth of an infant from its natural fount to
make it swallow a few drops. The mother, a handsome, young woman, proud
of her armful, gestured smilingly that Tomé was its father.
“_Mavourneen dheelish!_” he called her, and the baby, “Molly.”
Cocoanuts differ in kind and quality as much as apples, and Eustace gave
me a _kaipoa_, which at his direction I ate, husks and all, and found it
delicious.
Leaving the two merchants to continue their armed banter, I stepped
outside the store and struck off the road toward the center of the
island, through fields of broken coral, mysterious in its oppositeness
from all other terrestrial formations. There was no earth that one could
see or feel, but a matted vegetation in spots showed that even in these
whited sepulchers of the coral animals outlandish plants had found the
substance of life. The flora, though desperate in its poverty, was
heartening in that it could survive at all. The lofty cocoanut-palm,
standing straight as a mast or curving in singular grace, grew
luxuriantly—the evergreen banner of this giant fleet of anchored ships
of stone. Through a few hundred yards of this weird desert-jungle, I
reached the lagoon which the inner marge of the great coral reef
inclosed.
No lake that I have seen approached this mere in simple beauty, nor had
artist’s vision wrought a more startling, extravagant, yet perfect work
of color. The lagoon of Niau was small enough to encompass with a glance
from where I stood. I felt myself in an enchanted spot. Niau was not all
wooded. For long stretches only the white coral lined the shores, with
here and there the plumy palms refreshing the eyes—brilliant in contrast
with the bare sheen of the coral, and softly rustling in the breeze.
The water of the lagoon was palest blue, verging to green, clear almost
as the pure air, and the beach shelved rapidly into depths.
The beach was made up of tiny shells crumbling into sand, billions and
billions of them in the twenty miles about the lagoon. In each of the
legion coral isles this was repeated, so that the mind contemplating
them was confused at the incalculable prodigality of the life expended
to build them and the oddity of the problem arranged by the power
planning them.
“Every single atom, from the least particle to the largest fragment of
rock, in this great pile,” said Darwin, “bears the stamp of having been
subjected to organized arrangement. We feel surprised when travelers
tell us of the vast dimensions of the Pyramids and other great ruins,
but how utterly insignificant are the greatest of these when compared to
these mountains of stone accumulated by the agency of various minute and
tender animals. This is a wonder which does not at first strike the eye
of the body, but, after reflection, the eye of reason.”
I sat down under a dwarf cocoanut and let my eyes and mind dwell upon
the gorgeousness of the prospect and the insight into nature’s
reticences it afforded. Everywhere were the tombs or skeletons of the
myriad creatures who had labored and died to construct these footstools
of Might. Could man assume that these eons of years and countless
births, efforts, and deaths, were for any concern of his? But else, he
asked, why were they? To show the boundless power and caprice of the
Creator? Was not the world made for humanity?
An atoll was to an island as a comet to a star—a freak or sport in the
garden of the sea-gods. It was as if the Designer had planned to set up,
in the thousand miles of ocean through which the Dangerous Islands
stretched, a whimsical cluster of shallower salt lakes, and so had
hidden trillions of tiny beings to inclose them. For, after all, an
atoll was but a lagoon surrounded by a reef of coral, or rather two
reefs, for in the plan of the Architect there was built a second reef
for every atoll, and this outer barrier was sunken, as the one through
which we had come, but yet took the brunt of the waves, and prevented
them from washing away and destroying the inner and habitable reef on
which I then sat.
This hidden shoal belted the beach regularly, so that it made a moat
between the two; and yet in most atolls there was such an opening as
that through which we had come, often a mere depression, sometimes a
deep and wide mouth. One was forced to consider whether the Architect
had not taken man into his scheme, for without such an opening no people
could reach the shore and lagoon. But the grievous fact was that in some
atolls the minute workers had left no door and that man himself had torn
one open with tools and explosives. Even once within the moat, our boat
was in comparative safety only in the mildest weather, for the moat was
studded with lumps and boulders of coral, and the most crafty
guardianship was imperative to keep our craft whole.
If there had been an entry through the inner shore into the peaceful
lagoon by which I lolled, then would anchorage and calm have been
assured. So, of course, nature had in some other atolls than Niau
attended to this detail, and these I was to find more inhabited and more
developed, for in some even schooners might seek the haven of the lake,
and a fleet lie there in security. The lagoons were thus, generally,
safe and unflurried, though sometimes terribly harried by cyclones, such
as Lying Bill described the Dane as riding from sea to sea across the
entire island of Anaa.
Each of the Paumotus was made up of a number of _motus_, or islets,
parted by lower strata in which was the moat water. This string of
_motus_ assumed many dissimilar figures. One had fifty pieces in its
puzzle—a puzzle not fully solved by science, or, at least, still in
dispute. The _motus_ were all formed of coral rock of comparatively
recent origin geologically. Were these atolls the mountain-tops of a
lost Atlantis or thrust-up marine plateaus? The wise men differed. A
theory was that the atolls were coral formations upon volcanic islands
that had slowly sunk, each a monument marking an engulfed island or
mountain peak.
Another, that volcanic activity, which mothered the high islands in
these seas, caused to rise from the bottom of the ocean a series of
submerged tablelands, leveled by the currents and waves, on which the
coral insects erected the reefs—reefs just peeping above the surface of
the water—and on which the storms threw great blocks of madrepores and
coral broken from the mass. When in this condition, mere rocky rings of
milky coral, over which each billow swept, without life or aught else
than the structures of the marvelous zoöphytes, floors cut and broken
here and there by the surging and pounding breakers, the hand of the
Master raised them up, as through Polynesia other islands had been
raised, and fixed these Paumotus as the fairest growths of Neptune’s
park.
Lifted above the watery level, they were able to begin their task of
usefulness. Seeds carried by currents, borne by the winds, or brought by
those greatest of all pioneers and settlers of new countries, the
sea-birds, were flung on these ready, but yet barren, atolls, and
vegetation gave them an entrancing present.
Volcano and insect combined to make these coral blossoms of the South
Seas so different from any other mundane formations that the man with
any dreaming in his soul stood awe-struck at the wonder and artistry of
nature. They were the most wonderful and simple of nature’s works. They
eluded portrayal by brush and camera. No canvas or film could grasp
their symmetry and grace, seize more than a fragment of their alluring
form or hint of their admirable colors. Ravishing scenes from the deck
of a ship, and marvels of construction and hue when upon them, they were
sad and disappointing to the dweller, like a lovely woman who has a bad
disposition.
Circles, ovals, and horseshoes, regular and irregular, a few miles or a
hundred in circumference, the Paumotus were always essentially the
same—the lagoon and the fringe of reef and palm. These _Iles
Dangereuses_ were the supreme in creation in harmonious light and shade.
They were the very breath of imagination. My thoughts harked back to the
dawn of life, and the struggle between the land and water in which
continents and islands were drowned, and others rose to be the home of
beast and man, when God said, “Let the dry land appear.”
These atolls had fought the ceaseless war which slowly, but eternally,
shifted our terrestrial foothold. Makatea, nearer Tahiti, lifted its
strange cliffs two hundred feet in the air. It had been raised by
subterranean force thirty-five fathoms from the sea-level, and its
coasts were vertical walls of that height.
The young Darwin’s theory appealed even with these examples of
resurgence. It was improbable that an elevatory force would uplift
through an immense area great, rocky banks within twenty or thirty
fathoms of the surface of the sea, and not a single point above that
level. Where on the surface of the globe was a chain of mountains, even
a few hundred miles in length, with their many summits rising within a
few feet of a given level, and not one pinnacle above it? Yet that was
the condition in these atolls, for the coral animal could not live more
than thirty fathoms or so below the atmosphere, so that the basic
foundations of the atolls, on which the mites laid their offerings and
their bones, were fewer than two hundred feet under the surface. The
polyp gnome died from the pressure of water at greater depths. Just
outside the reefs or between the atolls, the depths were often greater
than a mile or two.
The vague science I possessed stimulated the memories of my reading of
that oldest civilization in tradition, the immense continent of Pan,
which a score of millenniums ago, according to the poet archæologists,
flourished in this Pacific Ocean. Its cryptogram attended in many spots
the discovery of a new Rosetta stone. I myself had seen huge monoliths,
half-buried pyramids and High Places, hieroglyphs and carvings,
certainly the fashioning of no living races. Were these Paumotus, and
many other islands from Japan to Easter, the tops of the submerged
continent, Pan, which stretched its crippled body along the floor of the
Pacific for thousands of leagues? There were legends, myths, customs,
inexplicable absences of usages and knowledge on the part of present
peoples, all perhaps capable of interpretation by this fascinating
theory of a race lost to history before Sumer attained coherence or
Babylon made bricks.
[Illustration:
A Paumotu atoll after a blow
]
Over this land bridge, mayhap, ventured a Caucasian people, the dominant
blood in Polynesia to-day, and when the connecting links in the chain to
their cradle fell from the sights of sun and stars, the survivors were
isolated for ages on the islands like Tahiti and the Marquesas. On the
mountain-tops, plateaus beneath the water, the coral insect built up
these atolls until they stood in their wondrous shapes splendid examples
of nature’s self-arrested labor, sculptures of unbelievable brilliancy.
[Illustration:
Photo by Dr. Theodore P. Cleveland
A squall approaching Anaa
]
To them came first Caucasians who had been spared in the cataclysm, and
later the new sailors of giant canoes who followed from Asia the line of
islets and atolls, fighting with and conquering the Caucasians, and
merging into them in the course of generations. These first and
succeeding migrations must have been forced by devastating natural
phenomena, by terrible economic pressure, by wars and tribal feuds. It
was not probable that any people deliberately chose these atolls in
preference to the higher lands, but that they occupied them in lieu of
better on account of evil fortune.
These eighty Paumotu islands averaged about forty miles apart, with only
two thousand people in all of them, which would allow, if equally
distributed, only twenty-five inhabitants to each. On more than half of
them no person lived, and all the others were scantily peopled. Three or
four hundred might occupy one atoll where shell and cocoanuts were
bountiful and fish plentiful and good, while two score and more atolls
were left for the frigate-bird to build its nest and for the robber-crab
to eat its full of nuts.
The thud of a cocoanut beside me stirred me from my reverie. I was wet
with the wading ashore and the sweat of my walk, and so I removed my few
garments and plunged into the lagoon. Going down to test the declivity a
yard or so from the water’s edge I dropped twenty feet and touched no
bottom. The water was limpid, delicious, and I could see the giant coral
fans waving fifty feet below me.
As I loitered on my back in the water, and looked down into the crystal
depths and at the cloudless sky, I had a moment’s phantasm of a great
city, its lofty trade battlements, its crowded streets, the pale, set
faces of its people, the splendor of the rich houses, the squalor of the
tenements, the police with clubs and guns, and the shrieking traffic.
Here was the sweetest contrast, where man had hardly touched the
primitive work of nature. It was long from Sumer, and far from Gotham.
I was floating at ease when I heard a voice. It seemed to come out of
the water. It was soft and almost etheric.
“_Maitai!_” it said, which meant, “You’re all right.”
I turned on my side, and by my garments was a long, gaunt Niauan, with a
loose mouth, loafing there, with his eyes fawning upon me. He smiled
sweetly, and said, “Goodanighta!”
As it was hardly seven o’clock in the morning, the sun a ball of fire,
and the glare of the reef like the shine of a boy’s mirror in one’s
eyes, I argued against his English education. But courtesy is not
correction. I said in kind, “Goodanighta!” He came into the water and
repaid me by shaking my hand, and with a movement toward the beach,
said, “Damafina!”
“_Maitai!_” I corroborated his opinion, and then he beckoned to me to
leave the lagoon and follow him. I dressed, all moist as I was, and we
returned toward the village, I wondering what design on me he had.
“She canna fik (fix) you show Niau,” my cicerone explained, as he waved
toward the island.
“All right, good, number one,” I assented.
He laughed with pleased vanity at his success in conversing with me in
my tongue and at the envious looks of the people on their tiny porches
as we passed them, and I saluted them.
“_Momuni! Momuni!_” they called after him with scornful laughter, and
beckoned me to leave him and join them.
“_Haere mai!_” they said, sweetly to me. Come to us!
My guide did not like either the name they gave him or their efforts to
alienate us. He retorted with an impolite gesticulation, and cried,
“_Popay! Popay!_” _Momuni_, though, was plainly nervous, and afraid that
I might be won over by the opposition. He plucked me by my wet sleeve
and directed me to a shanty of old boards set upon a platform of coral
rocks four feet from the bed of the atoll. In its single room on a white
bedspread were a dozen loaves of bread, crisp and white, and smelling
appetizingly. He lifted one, squeezed it to show its sponginess, and put
it to my nose. He sniffed, and said, “She the greata coo-ooka.”
I guessed that he referred to himself as the baker. He pointed out
toward the schooner and made me understand that this baking was a
present to me. I was embarrassed, and with many flourishes explained
that the Tahitian cook of the _Marara_ could not be compared with him as
a bread-maker, but that he was of a jealous disposition and might resent
bitterly the gift. My companion was cast down for a moment, but
brightened with another idea. Through a hundred yards more of coral
bones we plowed to his oven, a huge, coral stove like a lime-kiln, with
a roof, and bags of Victor flour from the Pacific Coast beside it.
Pridefully he made me note everything, as an artist might his studio.
_Momuni_ then touched my arm, and said, “_Haere!_ We can do.”
We walked along the beach of the lagoon and found a road that paralleled
the one we had come. It was lower than the other and the rain had
flooded it. The water was brown and stagnant, even red in pools, like
blood. Uncanny things shot past my feet or crawled upon them, and once
something that had not the feel of anything I knew of climbed the calf
of my leg, and when I turned and saw it dimly I leaped into the air and
kicked it off. I heard it plop into the dark water.
Down this marsh we plodded and paddled, floundered and splashed for half
a mile. The cocoanut-palms arched across it, but there was not a person
nor a habitation in view. I wondered why “she the great cook” had led me
into this morass. _Momuni_ looked at me mysteriously several times, and
his lips moved as if he had been about to speak.
He studied my countenance attentively, and several times he patted and
rubbed my back affectionately and said, “You damafina.” Then, slimy and
sloppy as I was, covered with the foul water up to my waist, when we
were in the darkest spot _Momuni_ halted and drew me under a palm.
He would either seek to borrow money or to cut my throat, I thought
hastily. Again he scanned me closely, and I, to soften his heart and
avert the evil, tried to appear firm and unafraid. To my astonishment he
took from his pocket five five-franc notes, those ugly, red-inked bills
which are current in all the _Etablissements Français de l’Oceanie_, and
held them under my nose. He smiled and then made the motion of pulling a
cork, and of a bottle’s contents gurgling through his loose mouth and
down his long neck.
I shuddered at my thoughts. Could it be that in this dry atoll, with
intoxicants forbidden, and prison the penalty of selling or giving them
to a native, this hospitable Niauan had offered me his bread and shown
me his oven, and the glories of the isle, and was displaying those five
red notes to seduce me into breaking the law, into smuggling ashore a
bottle of rum or wine?
I was determined to know the worst. I drew from my drawers (I had worn
no trousers) an imaginary corkscrew, and from my undershirt an
unsubstantial bottle. I pulled a supposititious cork, and took a long
drink of the unreal elixir. _Momuni_ was transfixed. His jaws worked,
and his tongue extended. He squeezed my hand with happiness and hope,
and left in it the five scarlet tokens of the _Banque de l’Indo-Chine_.
“Wina damafina; rumma damafina,” he confided. The man would be content
with anything, so it bit his throat and made him a king for an evil
hour.
Tomé was dealing out tobacco when we reached his store. His wife and
baby, an Irish-Penrhyn baby, were now eating a can of salmon and Nabisco
wafers.
“Who is this gentleman, Mr. Eustace?” I asked, pointing to _Momuni_.
“He’s an _omadhaun_, a nuisance, that he is, sure,” said Tomé. “He’s a
Mormon deacon that peddles bread an’ buys his flour from some one else
because I won’t trust him. He’s the only Mormon in this blessed island.
Every last soul is a Roman Cat’lic, except me, and I’m a believer in the
_leprechawn_. Has that hooligan been thryin’ to work ye for a bottle of
rum? He’ll talk a day for a drink.”
“What’s _Momuni_ and _Popay_?”
“_Momuni_ is the way they say ‘Mormons.’ The other’s the pope wid the
accint on the last syllable. It’s the name for Cat’lics all over these
seas, because they worship the pope iv Rome. The Popays run this island,
but the Momunis have got Takaroa and some others by the tail.”
I turned to look at my guide, the bread-maker. I had new admiration for
him. It took courage to be the one Mormon among a hundred Catholics, and
to try to sell them the staff of life. But he could not withstand the
withering glances of Tomé, and fled, with gestures to me which I could
only hazard to mean to meet him later in the fearsome swamp, with the
rum.
“Does _Momuni_ owe you any money?” I asked the trader, who was lighting
his wife’s cigarette.
“Does he? He owes me forty francs for flour, and I’ll nivir see the
shadow iv them. I’ll tell ye, though, he’s the best baker in the Group,
an’ they’re crazy about his bread.”
Eustace had no cargo for us, and McHenry and I caught the last boat for
the _Marara_, Moet having stayed for one trip only.
“Come an’ shtay wid us a month or two,” said Tomé in farewell. “We’ll
make ye happy and find ye a sweetheart! ’Tis here ye can shpend yer
valibil time doin’ nawthin’ at all, at all.”
He laughed heartily at his joke on virtue, and as we dashed through the
surf to climb into the boat I turned to see him telling the assembling
villagers some story that might provoke a laugh and keep their copra a
monopoly for him.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER III
Perilous navigation—Curious green sky—Arrival at Anaa—Religion and the
movies—Character of Paumotuans.
A CURRENT set against us all night. Now I understood fully the alarms
and misgivings that had caused the first and following discoverers of
the “Pernicious Islands” to curse them by the titles they gave them. Our
current was of the mischievous sort that upset logarithms and dead
reckoning, and put ships ashore.
“This group is a graveyard of vessels,” said McHenry, “and there’d be
ten times as many wrecked, if they come here. Wait till you see the
_County of Roxburgh_ at Takaroa! I’ve been cruisin’ round here more’n
twenty years, and I never saw the current the same. The Frog Government
at Papeete is always talkin’ about puttin’ lighthouses on a half dozen
of these atolls, but does nothin’. Maybe the chief or a trader hangs a
lantern on top of his house when he expects a cargo for him, but you
can’t trust those lights, and you can’t see them in time to keep from
hittin’ the reef. There’s no leeway to run from a wind past beating.
It’s lee shore in some bloody direction all the time.
“There’s a foot or two between high and low, and it’s low in the lagoon
when the moon is full. It’s high when the moon rises and when it sets.
In atolls where there’s a pass into the lagoon, there’s a hell of a
current in the lagoon at the lowerin’ tide, and in the sea near the
lagoon when the tide is risin’. We’re goin’ to beat those tides with
engines. In five years every schooner in the group will have an
auxiliary. There’s only one now, the _Fetia Taiao_, and she’s brand new.
It used to be canoes, and then whale-boats, and then cutters here, and
purty soon it’ll be gasolene schooners.”
Then will the cry arise that romance has perished of artificiality. But
the heart of man is always the same, and nothing kills romance but
sloth.
We battled with the current and a fresh wind during the long, dark
hours, Jean Moet never leaving the deck, and I keeping him company.
Below on a settee Virginie said her beads or slept. I could see her by
the smudgy cabin lamp, and hear her call to her husband two or three
times, hours apart, “_Ça va bien?_” Jean would answer in Tahitian, as to
a sailor, “_Maitai_,” and invariably would follow his mechanical reply,
with “_Et toi, dors-tu?_”
Ever light-hearted, currents nor squalls could burden his Gascon spirit.
He looked at the stars, and he looked at the water, he consulted with
the mate, and gave orders to the steersman.
“_Eh b’en_,” he said to me, “_moi_, I am _comme monsieur_ ze
_gouverneur_ ov ze Paumotu who live een Favarava, over zere.” He pointed
into the darkness. “’E ’as a leetle schoonaire an’ ’e keep ze court and
ze calaboose, bot mos’ly ’e lis’en to ze _musique_ an’ make ze dance.
_La vie est triste; viva la bagatelle!_ Maybee we pick op Anaa in ze
morning. Eef not, _amigo mio_, Virginie she weel pray for _nous_ both.”
Anaa, or Chain Island, as Captain Cook named it because of its eleven
_motus_ or islets, strung like emeralds and pearls in a rosary, was not
visible at daybreak, but as I studied the horizon the sky turned to a
brilliant green. I thought some dream of that Tir-na’n-Og spoken of by
Tomé in Niau obsessed me. I turned my back and waited for my eyes to
right themselves. One sees green in the rainbow and green in the sunset,
but never had I known a morning sky to be of such a hue. McHenry came on
deck in his pajamas, and looked about.
“_Erin go bragh!_” he remarked. “Ireland is castin’ a shadow on the
bloody heaven. There,” he pointed, “is the sight o’ the bleedin’ world.
You’ve never seen it before an’ you won’t see it again, unless you come
to Anaa in the mornin’ or evenin’ of a purty clear day. It’s the shinin’
of the lagoon of Anaa in the sky, an’ it’s nowhere else on the ball.
There’s many a Kanaka in ’is canoe outa sight o’ land has said a prayer
to his god when he seen that green. He knew he was near Anaa. You can
see that shine thirty or thirty-five miles away, hours before you raise
the atoll.”
Some curious relation of the lagoon to the sky had painted this hazy
lawn on high. It was like a great field of luscious grass, at times
filmy, paling to the color of absinthe touched with water, and again a
true aquamarine, as I have seen the bay of Todos Santos, at Enseñada of
Lower California. Probably it is the shallowness of the waters, which in
this lagoon are strangely different from most of the inland basins of
the South Sea Isles. To these mariners, who moved their little boats
between them, the mirage was famed; and the natives had many a legend of
its origin and cause, and of their kind being saved from starvation or
thirst by its kindly glint.
McHenry called down the companionway, “Hey, _monster_, you can see the
grass on Anaa. _Vite-vite!_”
Moet, who was below, drinking a cup of coffee, leaped up the
companionway. He called out swift orders to go over on the other tack,
and headed straight for the mirage. The schooner heeled to the breeze,
now freshening as the sun became hotter, and we reeled off six or seven
knots with all canvas drawing. In an hour the celestial plot of green
had vanished, fading out slowly as we advanced, and we began to glimpse
the cocoanuts on the beach, though few trees showed on the sky-line, and
they were twisted as in travail.
Anaa, as others of these islands and Tahiti, too, had suffered terribly
by a cyclone a few years ago. More than any other island of this group
Anaa had felt the devastating force of the _matai rorofai_, the “wind
that kills”—the wind that slew Lovaina’s son and made her cut her hair
in mourning. Hikueru lost more people, because there were many there;
but Anaa was mangled and torn as a picador’s horse by the horns of the
angry bull. A half-mile away we could plainly see the havoc of wind and
wave. The reef itself had been broken away in places, and coral rocks as
big as houses hurled upon the beach.
“I was there just after the cyclone,” said McHenry. “It was a bloomin’
garden before then, Anaa. It was the only island in the Paumotus in
which they grew most of the fruits as in Tahiti, the breadfruit, the
banana, the orange, lime, mango, and others. It may be an older island
than the others or more protected usually from the wind; but, anyhow, it
had the richest soil. The Anaa people were just like children, happy and
singin’ all the time. That damned storm knocked them galley-west. It
tore a hole in the island, as you can see, killed a hundred people, and
ended their prosperity. There was a Catholic church of coral, old and
bloody fine, and when I got here a week after the cyclone I couldn’t
find the spot where the foundations had been. I came with the vessels
the Government sent to help the people. You never seen such a sight. The
most of the dead were blown into the lagoon or lay under big hunks of
coral. People with crushed heads and broken legs and arms and ribs were
strewn all around. The bare reef is where the village was, and the
people who went into the church to be safe were swept out to sea with
it.”
As at Niau, the schooner lay off the shore, and the long-boat was
lowered. In it were placed the cargo, and with Moet, McHenry, and me,
men, women, and children passengers, four oarsmen and the boat-steerer,
it was completely filled, we sitting again on the boxes.
Once more the _Flying Fish_ towed the boat very near to the beach, and
at the cry of “Let go!” flung away the rope’s end and left us to the
oars. The passage through the reef of Anaa was not like that of Niau.
There was no pit, but a mere depression in the rocks, and it took the
nicest manœuvering to send the boat in the exact spot. As we approached,
the huge boulders lowered upon us, threatening to smash us to pieces,
and we backed water and waited for the psychological moment. The surf
was strong, rolling seven or eight feet high, and crashing on the stone
with a menacing roar, but the boat-steerer wore a smile as he shouted,
“_Tamau te paina!_”
The oars lurched forward in the water, the boat rose on the wave, and
onward we surged; over the reef, scraping a little, avoiding the great
rocks by inches almost, and into milder water. The sailors leaped out,
and with the next wave pulled the boat against the smoother strand; but
it was all coral, all rough and all dangerous, and I considered well the
situation before leaving the boat. I got out in two feet of water and
raced the next breaker to the higher beach, my camera tied on my head.
There was no beach, as we know the word—only a jumbled mass of coral
humps, millions of shells, some whole, most of them broken into bits,
and the rest mere coarse sand. On this were scattered enormous masses of
coral, these pieces of the primitive foundation upheaved and divided by
the breakers when the cyclone blew. The hand of a Titan had crushed them
into shapeless heaps and thrown them hundreds of feet toward the
interior, the waves washing away the soil, destroying all vegetation,
and laying bare the crude floor of the island. From the water’s edge I
walked over this waste, gleaming white or milky, for a hundred yards
before I reached the copra shed of Lacour, a French trader, and sat down
to rest. The sailors bore the women and children on their shoulders to
safety, and then commenced the landing of the merchandise for Lacour.
Flour and soap, sugar, biscuit, canned goods, lamps, piece goods; gauds
and gewgaws, cheap jewelry, beads, straw for making hats, perfumes and
shawls.
Lacour, pale beneath his deep tan, black-haired and slender, greeted us
at the shed with the dead-and-alive manner of many of these island
exiles, born of torrid heat, long silences, and weariness of the driven
flesh. A cluster of women lounged under a _tohonu_ tree, the only shade
near-by, and they smiled at me and said, “_Ia ora na oe!_”
I strolled inland. It was an isle of desolation, ravaged years ago, but
prostrated still, swept as by a gigantic flail. Everywhere I beheld the
results of the cataclysm.
Picking up shells and bits of coral at haphazard, I came upon the bone
of a child, the forearm, bleached by wind and rain. Few of the bodies of
the drowned had been interred with prayer, but found a last
resting-place under the coral débris or in the maws of the sharks that
rode upon the cyclone’s back in search of prey.
It was very hot. These low atolls were always excessively warm, but not
humid. It was a dry heat. The reflection of the sunlight on the blocks
of coral and the white sand made a glare that was painful to whites, and
made colored glasses necessary to shield their eyes. Temporary blindness
was common among new-comers, thus unprotected.
I walked miles and never lost the evidence of violence and loss. There
was an old man by a coral pen, in which were three thin, measly pigs, a
grayish yellow in color. He showed me to a small, wooden church.
“There are four Catholic churches in Anaa,” he said, “with one priest,
and there are three hundred souls all told in this island. The priest
goes about to the different churches, but money is scarce. This New Year
the contribution was so trifling, the priest, who knew the bishop in
Papeete would demand an accounting, sent word to know why—and what do
you think he got back? That Lacour, the trader, with his accursed
cinematograph, had taken all the money. He charged twenty-five cocoanuts
to see the views in his copra shed, and they are wonderful; but the
churches are empty. We are all _Katorika_.”
“_Katorika?_” I queried. “That is Popay?”
The old man frowned.
“Popay! That is what the _Porotetani_ [Protestants] call the Katorika. I
am the priest’s right hand. But we are poor, and Lacour, with his store
and now with his machine that sets the people wild over cowaboyas, and
shows them the Farani [French] and the Amariti [Americans] in their own
islands—there is no money for the church.”
I interrupted the jeremiad of the ancient acolyte.
“Was there nothing left of the old church?” I asked.
The hater of cinematographs took me into the humble wooden structure,
and there were a bronze crucifix and silver candlesticks that had been
in the coral edifice.
“I saved them,” he said proudly. “When I saw the wind was too great,
when the church began to rock, I took them and buried them in a hole I
dug. I did this before I climbed the tree which saved me from the big
wave. Ah, that was a real cathedral. The people of Anna are changed. The
best died in the storm. They want now to know what is going on in
Papeete, the great world.”
A hundred years ago the people of Anaa erected three temples to the god
of the Christians. For a century they have had the Jewish and Christian
scriptures.
Anaa had witnessed a bitter struggle between contending churches to win
adherents. When France took hold, France was Catholic, and the priests
had every opportunity and assistance to do their pious work. The schools
were taught by Catholic nuns. Their governmental subsidy made it
difficult for the English Protestants to proselytize, and with grief
they saw their flocks going to Rome. Only the most zealous Protestant
missionaries were unshaken by the change. When the anti-clerical feeling
in France triumphed, the Concordat was broken, and the schools laicized,
the priests and nuns in these colonies were ousted from the schools; the
Catholic church was not only not favored, but, in many instances, was
hindered by officials who were of anti-clerical feelings. The Protestant
sects took heart again, and made great headway. The Mormons returned,
the Seventh Day Adventists became active, and many nominal Catholics
fell away. The fact was that it was not easy to keep Polynesians at any
heat of religion. They wanted entertainment and amusement, and if a
performance of a religious rite, a sermon, revival, conference, or other
solace or diversion was not offered, they inclined to seek relaxation
and even pleasure where it might be had. Monotony was the substance of
their days, and relief welcomed in the most trifling incident or change.
[Illustration:
Photo from Underwood and Underwood
Picking up the atoll of Anaa from the deck of the schooner _Flying
Fish_
]
Lacour’s wife, granddaughter of a Welshman but all native in appearance,
sat with the other women under the _tohonu_ tree when I returned. I had
seen thousands of fallen cocoanut-trees rotting in the swamps, and had
climbed over the coral fields for several miles. There was no earth,
only coral and shells and white shell-sand. Chickens evidently picked up
something to eat, for I saw a dozen of them. In the lagoon, fish darted
to and fro.
[Illustration:
Photo from L. Gauthier
Canoes and cutters at atoll of Anaa, Paumotu Islands
]
Lacour’s wife had a yellowish baby in her lap, and she wore earrings, a
wedding-ring, and a necklace and bracelets.
The boat was plying from the schooner to the shore, and I watched its
progress. Piri a Tuahine held the steering oar, laughing, calling to his
fellows to pull or not to pull, as I could see through a glass. A
current affected the surf, increasing or decreasing its force at
intervals, and it was now at its height. The boat entered the passage on
a crest, but a following wave struck it hard, turned it broadside, and
all but over. A flood entered the boat, but the men leaped out and,
though up to their shoulders in the water, held it firm, and finally
drew it close to the beach. The flour and the boxes and beds of native
passengers were wetted, but they ran to the boat and carried their
belongings near to the copra shed, and spread them to dry. Lacour cursed
the boat and the sailors.
Near Lacour’s store was a house, in which lived Captain Nimau, owner of
a small schooner. Nimau invited me to sleep there and see the moving
pictures. We had brought Lacour a reel or so, and in anticipation, the
people of Anaa had been gathering cocoanuts for a week. The films were
old ones that Tahiti had wearied of, and Lacour got them for a trifle.
The theater was his copra house, and there were no seats nor need of
them.
He set the hour of seven for the show, and I alone stayed ashore for it.
By six o’clock the residents began flocking to the shed with their
entrance-fees. Each bore upon his back twenty-five cocoanuts, some in
bags and others with the nuts tied on a pole by their husk. Fathers
carried double or even triple quantities for their little ones, and
each, as he arrived at Lacour’s, counted the nuts before the trader.
The women brought their own admission tickets. The acolyte, who had
inveighed against the cinematograph, was second in line, and secured the
best squatting space. His own cocoanuts were in Lacour’s bin.
When the screen was erected and the first picture flashed upon it, few
of the people of Anaa were absent, and Lacour’s copra heap was piled
high. There were a hundred and sixty people present, and four thousand
nuts in the box-office.
The first film was concerned with the doings of _Nick Winter_, an
English detective in France, a burlesque of _Sherlock Holmes_, and other
criminal literatures. The spectators could not make a head nor tail of
it, but they enjoyed the scenes hugely and were intensely mystified by
many pictures. An automobile, which, by the trickery of the camera, was
made to appear to climb the face of a sky-scraper, raised cries of
astonishment and assertions of _diablerie_. The devil was a very real
power to South Sea Islanders, whether they were Christians or not, and
they had fashioned a composite devil of our horned and cloven-hoofed
chap and their own demons, who was made responsible for most trouble and
disaster that came to them, and whose machinations explained sleight of
hand, and even the vagaries of moving pictures.
What pleased them most were cow-boy pictures, the melodramatic life of
the Wild West of America, with bucking bronchos, flying lassos, painted
Indians whom they thought tattooed, and dashes of _vaqueros_, border
sheriffs, and maidens who rode cayuses like Comanches. Tahiti was daft
over cow-boys, and had adopted that word into the language, and these
Anaans were vastly taken by the same life. Lacour explained the pictures
as they unrolled, shouting any meanings he thought might pass; and I
doubted if he himself knew much about them, for later he asked me if all
cow-boys were not Spaniards.
This was the first moving picture machine in these islands. Lacour had
only had it a few weeks. He purposed taking it through the Group on a
cutter that would transport the cocoanut receipts. Lacour, Nimau, and I
sat up late. These Frenchmen save for a few exceptions were as courteous
as at home. Peasants or sailors in France, they brought and improved
with their position that striking cosmopolitan spirit which
distinguishes the Gaul, be he ever so uneducated. The English and
American trader was suspicious, sullen or blatant, vulgar and often
brutal in manner. The Frenchman had _bonhomie_, politeness. England and
America in the South Seas considered this a weakness, and aimed at the
contrary. Manners, of course, originated in France.
“This island is on the French map as _La Chaîne_,” said Captain Nimau,
“but we who traverse these seas always use the native names. Those old
admirals who took word to their king that they had discovered new
islands always said, too, that they had named them after the king or
some saint. A Spaniard selected a nice name like the Blessed Sacrament
or the Holy Mother of God, or some Spanish saint, while a Frenchman
chose something to show the shape or color of the land. The Englishman
usually named his find after some place at home, like New England, New
Britain, and so on. But we don’t give a _sacré_ for those names. How
could we? All those fellows claimed to have been here first, and so all
islands have two or three European names. We who have to pick them up in
the night, or escape from them in a storm, want the native name as we
need the native knowledge of them. The landmarks, the clouds, the
smells, the currents, the passes, the depths—those are the items that
save or lose us our lives and vessels. Let those _vieux capitaines_
fight it out below for the honor of their nomenclature and precedence of
discovery!”
What recriminations in Hades between Columbus and Vespucci!
“Take this whole archipelago!” continued Nimau. “The Tahitians named it
the Poumotu or pillar islands, because to them the atolls seemed to rise
like white trees from the sea. But the name sounded to the people here
like Paumotu, which means conquered or destroyed islands, and so, after
a few petitions or requests by proud chiefs, the French in 1852
officially named them Tuamotu, distant, out of view, or below the
horizon. That was more than a half century ago, but we still call them
the Paumotu. There’s nothing harder to change than the old names of
places. You can change a man’s or a whole island’s religion much
easier.”
Near the little hut in which we were, Nimau’s house, a bevy of girls
smoked cigarettes and talked about me. They had learned that I was not a
sailor, not one of the crew of the _Marara_, and not a trader. What
could I be, then, but a missionary, as I was not an official, because
not French? But I was not a Catholic missionary, for they wore black
gowns; and I could not be Mormoni nor Konito, because there in public I
was with the Frenchmen, drinking beer. Two, who were handsome, brown,
with teeth as brilliant as the heart of the nacre, and eyes and hair
like the husks of the ripe cocoanut, came into the house and questioned
Lacour.
“They want to know what you are doing here,” interpreted Lacour.
“I am not here to make money nor to preach the Gospel,” I replied.
The younger came to me and put her arms about me, and said: “_Ei aha e
reva a noho io nei!_” And that meant, “Stay here always and rest with
me!”
After a while the acolyte joined us, and I put them all many questions.
The Paumotuans were a quiet people, dour, or at least serious and
contemplative. They were not like the Tahitians, laugh-loving,
light-hearted, frenzied dancers, orators, music worshipers, feasters.
The Tahitians had the joy of living, though with the melancholy strain
that permeated all Polynesia. The folk of the Dangerous Archipelago were
silent, brooding, and religious. The perils they faced in their general
vocation of diving, and from cyclones, which annihilated entire
populations of atolls, had made them intensely susceptible to fears of
hell-fire and to hopes of heaven. The rather Moslem paradise of
Mormonism made strong appeal, but was offset by the tortures of the
damned, limned by other earnest clerics who preached the old
Wesley-Spurgeon everlasting suffering for all not of their sect.
Had religion never affected the Paumotuans, their food would have made
them a distinct and a restrained people. We all are creatures of our
nourishment. The Tahitians had a plentitude of varied and delicious
food, a green and sympathetic landscape, a hundred waterfalls and gentle
rills. The inhabitants of these low isles had cocoanut and fish as
staples, and often their only sustenance for years. No streams meander
these stony beds, but rain-water must be caught, or dependence placed on
the brackish pools and shallow wells in the porous rocks or compressed
sand, which ebbed and flowed with the tides.
To a Tahitian his brooks were his club, where often he sat or lay in the
laughing water, his head crowned with flowers, dreaming of a life of
serene idleness. Once or twice a day he must bathe thoroughly. He was
clean; his skin was aglow with the effect of air and water. No European
could teach him hygiene. He was a perfect animal, untainted and
unsoiled, accustomed to laving and massage, to steam, fresh, and salt
baths, when Europeans, kings, courts, and commoners went unwashed from
autumn to summer; when in the “_Lois de la Galanterie_,” written for
beaux and dandies in 1640, it was enjoined that “every day one should
take pains to wash one’s hands, and one should wash one’s face almost as
often.”
Environment, purling rivulets under embowering trees, the most
enchanting climate between pole and pole, a simple diet but little
clothing, made the Tahitian and Marquesan the handsomest and cleanest
races in the world. Clothes and cold are an iron barrier to cleanliness,
except where wealth affords comfort and privacy. Michelangelo wore a
pair of socks many years without removing them. Our grandfathers counted
a habit of frequent bathing a sign of weakness. In old New England many
baths were thought conducive to immorality, by some line of logic akin
to that of my austere aunt, who warned me that oysters led to dancing.
The Paumotuan, before the white man made him a mere machine for
gathering copra and pearl-shell and pearls, had a very distinct culture,
savage though it was. He was the fabric of his food and the actions
induced in him by necessity. Ellis, the interesting missionary diarist
of Tahiti and Hawaii, recorded that in 1817, when at Afareaitu, on
Moorea, he was printing for the first time the Bible in Tahitian “among
the various parties in Afareaitu ... were a number of natives of the
Paumotu, or Pearl Islands, which lie to the northwest of Tahiti and
constitute what is called the Dangerous Archipelago. These numerous
islands, like those of Tetuaroa to the north, are of coralline
formation, and the most elevated parts of them are seldom more than two
or three feet above high-water mark. The principal, and almost only,
edible vegetable they produce is the fruit of the cocoanut. On these,
with the numerous kinds of fishes resorting to their shores or among the
coral reefs, the inhabitants entirely subsist. They appear a hardy and
industrious race, capable of enduring great privations. The Tahitians
believe them to be cannibals.... They are in general firm and muscular,
but of a more spare habit of body than the Tahitians. Their limbs are
well formed, their stature generally tall. The expression of their
countenance, and the outline of their features, greatly resemble those
of the Society Islanders; their manners are, however, more rude and
uncourteous. The greater part of the body is tattooed, sometimes in
broad stripes, at others in large masses of black, and always without
any of the taste and elegance frequently exhibited in the figures marked
on the persons of the Tahitians.”
One who traveled much in the isolated parts of the world was often
struck by the unfitness of certain populated places to support in any
comfort and safety the people who generation after generation persisted
in living in them. For thousands of years the slopes of Vesuvius have
been cultivated despite the imminent horror of the volcano above. The
burning Paumotu atolls are as undesirable for residences as the desert
of Sahara. Yet the hot sands are peopled, and have been for ages, and in
the recesses of the frozen North the processes of birth and death, of
love and greed, are as absorbing as in the Edens of the earth. Hateful
as a lengthy enforced stay in the Paumotus might be to any of us, I have
seen two Paumotuan youths dwelling abroad for the first time in their
lives, eating delicious food and hardly working at all, weep hours upon
hours from homesickness, a continuous longing for their atoll of
Puka-ruhu, where they had half starved since birth, and where the
equatorial typhoon had raped time and again. Nature, in her insistence
that mankind shall continue, implanted that instinct of home in us as
one of the most powerful agents of survival of the species. Enduring
terrible privation, even, we learned to love the scenes of our
sufferings. Never was that better exemplified than in these melancholy
and maddening-atolls of the half-browned Archipelago.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER IV
The copra market—Dangerous passage to shore at Kaukura—Our boat
overturns in the pass—I narrowly escape death—Josephite
Missionaries—The deadly nohu—The himene at night.
WORD we got at Anaa of a few tons of copra at Kaukura sent us hurrying
there. The wind was against us, and we drew long sides of a triangle
before we reached that atoll, which was, as our starting-point, at the
base of the isosceles. Kaukura was a divergence from our intended
course, but these schooners were like birds of the air, which must take
their sustenance as fortune wills. Copra was scarce, and competition in
buying, fierce. The natives received about four cents a pound, but as
payment was usually in goods, the Tahiti traders, who shipped copra to
America and Europe, profited heavily. There were grades in copra, owing
to the carelessness of the natives in drying it. Green or poorly-dried
nuts shrank, and the nuts parched in kilns developed more undesirable
creosote than sun-dried. All copra was sold by weight and quality, and
it continually lessened in weight by evaporation of oil. Time was the
essence of a good bargain. The sooner to the presses of the mainland,
the greater the return. Crude mills in the Paumotus or Tahiti crushed
out the oil formerly, and it was sealed in bamboo lengths, and these
exported. These tubes, air-tight, were common mediums of exchange, as
wampum among Indians, or gold-dust in Alaska. Modern processes extracted
double the oil of the old presses, and the eight-foot sections of the
long grass were almost obsolete for cocoanut-oil, and used mostly for
sauces sold in the Papeete market-place.
“Trade ain’t what it was,” said McHenry. “There’s more traders than
natives, almost. I remember when they were so crazy to exchange our
stuff for their produce, we’d have the trade-room crowded all day, an’
had to keep guns handy to chase the mob away, to add up the bloody
figures. Now every atoll has its store, and the trader has to pat his
copra-makers an’ divers on the back, instead o’ kickin’ them the way we
used to. The damn Frogs treat these Kanakas like they were white people,
an’ have spoiled our game. We can’t trade in the Paumotus unless the
schooner has a French registry and a French captain,—Lyin’ Bill is a
Frog citizen for not stealin’ a vessel he had a chance to,—an’ when you
leave the Papeete you’ve got to register every last drop o’ booze you’ve
got aboard. It’s supposed to be only for us on the schooner, and for the
whites in the Paumotus, or a few chieves who have permits, for bein’
Froggy. But it’s the rotten missionaries who hurt us, really. We could
smuggle it in, but they tell on us.”
We had not caught a fish from the schooner, despite having a tackle
rigged most of the days. I had fixed a bamboo rod, about eighteen feet
long and very strong, on the rail of the waist of the vessel, and from
it let trail a hundred feet or so of tough line. The hook was the most
perfect for the purpose ever made by man. It was cut out of the
mother-of-pearl lining of the Paumotuan pearl-oyster shell. It was about
six inches long, and three quarters wide, shaped rudely like a
flying-fish, and attached to it on the concave side was a barb of bone
about an inch and a half in length, fastened with _purau_ fiber, and a
few hog’s bristles inserted. The line was roved through the hole where
the barb was fastened, and, being braided along the inner side of the
pearl shank, was tied again at the top, forming a chord to the arch.
Unbaited, the hook, by the pull of the schooner, skipped along the
surface of the sea like a flying-fish. I had made a telltale of a piece
of stick, and while McHenry and I talked and Jean Moet slept it snapped
before my eyes. To seize the rod and hold on was the act of a second. I
let out the entire five hundred feet of line, before the fish tired, and
then it took four of us to drag him to the deck. He was a _roroa_, a
kind of barracuda, about ten feet long, and weighing a couple of hundred
pounds.
The fish made a welcome change in our diet and was enough for all,
including a number of Paumotuans who were returning to Takaroa for the
opening of the diving season. Chocolat nibbled a head, but preferred the
remnants of a can of beef. He improved daily in his tricks and in his
agility in avoiding being hurtled into the water by the roll or pitch of
the schooner. He had an almost incredible instinct or acquired knowledge
of the motion of the _Marara_, and when I felt sure we had lost him—that
he would fall overboard in another instant—he would leap to the deck and
frolic about the wheel. The spokes of it were another constant threat to
his health, for one blow when they spun fast might kill him; but he was
reserved for a more horrid fate.
Kaukura rose from the sea at dawn, after a night of wearing and tacking.
It was an atoll, irregularly annular in shape, twenty-six miles long and
ten wide, wooded in patches, and with vast stretches where only the
dazzling coral shone. It, too, had been spoiled in prosperity by an
inimical wind and tide, and the cocoa-palms had been annihilated that
had once grown upon all its many component islets. The cocoanut-tree
lives more than eighty years, and does not fruit until seven years old,
so that the loss of thousands of these life-giving palms was a fearful
blow. Each tree bore a hundred nuts annually, and that crop was worth to
the owner for copra nearly a dollar, besides being much of his food.
Landmarks we gradually discerned; a village, two churches, and a row of
houses, and then the French tricolor on a pole. The surf broke with a
fierce roaring on the reef, and when McHenry and I left the schooner,
Moet stayed aboard, as the wind was ominous. There was no pass into the
lagoon at this village, and even the pit in the barrier-reef had been
made by French engineers. They had blown up the madrepore rock, and made
a gateway for small boats.
The schooner did not take our painter, for the breeze was too stiff for
the venture, and so we had a half-mile to row. When we neared the reef
and entered the pit, I felt that it was touch-and-go, for we rose and
tottered on the huge swells, and dived into their hollows, with a
prophetic certainty of capsizing. I could hardly keep on the box under
me, and swayed forebodingly. Then suddenly the steering oar caught under
a bank of coral. I barely heard the cry of Piri a Tuahine, “_E era!_
There she goes!” when the boat rose on its stern with a twisting motion,
as if a whale had struck it with its fluke, and turned turtle. I was
slighted into the water at its topmost teeter, falling yards away from
it, and in the air I seemed to see the Tahitians leaping for safety from
its crushing thwarts and the cargo.
McHenry’s “What the bloody——!” as we both somersaulted, was in my ears
as I was plunged beneath the surface.
With the fear of encountering the boat, the dark bulk of which I saw
dimly above me, I swam hard under the water a dozen strokes, and rose to
find myself beneath the reef, which grew in broken ledges. When my head
in stunning contact with the rock knelled a warning to my brain, I
opened my eyes. There was only blackness. I dived again, a strange
terror chilling me, but when I came up, I was still penned from air in
abysmal darkness.
Now fear struck me weak. I realized my extraordinary peril, a peril
glimpsed in nightmares. I had penetrated fifteen or twenty feet under
the ledge, and I had no sense of direction of the edge of the coral. My
distance from it was considerable; I knew by the invisible gloom. With a
fleeting recollection of camera films in my shirt pocket, came the
choking dread of suffocation, and death in this labyrinth.
I supposed I invoked God and his Son to save me. Probably in my agony I
promised big things to them and humanity if I survived. I kept my eyes
open and struck out. After swimming a few yards I felt the coral
shelving inwardly. I realized that I had gone farther from my only goal
of life. I felt the end was close, but still in desperation moved my
limbs vigorously.
Then I felt the water lashing about me. Something seized my arm. Shark
stories leaped from my memory’s cold storage to my very soul. My blood
was an icy stream from head to toes. Singular to relate, I was aware of
a profound regret for my murders of many sharks—who, after all, I
reasoned with an atavistic impulse of propitiation, were but working out
the wise plan of the Creator. But the animal that grasped my arm did not
bite. It held me firmly, and dragged me out from that murky hell, until
in a few seconds the light, God’s eldest and loveliest daughter,
appeared faintly, and then, bright as lightning, and all of a sudden, I
was in the center of the sun, my mouth open at last, my chest heaving,
my heart pumping madly, and my head bursting with pain. I was in the
arms of Piri a Tuahine, who, as all the other Tahitians, had swum under
the reef in search of me.
In the two or three minutes—or that half-hour—during which I had been
breathless, the sailors had recaptured the boat and were righting it,
the oars still fastened to the gunwales. I was glad to be hauled into
the empty boat, along with McHenry, who was sputtering and cursing.
“Gorbli-me!” he said, as he spat out salt water, “you made a bloody fool
o’ yerself doin’ that! Why didn’t ye look how I handled meself? But I
lost a half-pound of tobacco by that christenin’.”
I was laid down on the cargoless seats, and the men rowed through the
moat, smiling at me with a worthy sense of superiority, while McHenry
dug the soaked tobacco out of his trousers pocket.
“Ye can always trust the Kanaka to get ye out o’ the water if ye
capsize,” said he, artfully. “We’ve taught him to think o’ the white man
first. He damn well knows where he’d get off, otherwise.”
A hundred feet farther, we came to a spit of rocks, which stopped
progress. A swarm of naked children were playing about it. Assisted by
the Tahitians I was lifted to my feet, and, with McHenry, continued to
the sand.
There I took stock of my physical self. I was battered and bruised, but
no bones were broken. My shins were scraped and my entire body bleeding
as if a sharp steel comb had raked me. My head was bloody, but my skull
without a hole in it, or even marked depression, except my usual one
where phrenologists locate the bump of reverence. I was sick at my
stomach, and my legs bent under me. I knew that I would be as well as
ever soon, unless poisoned, but would bear the marks of the coral. All
these white men who journeyed about the Paumotus bore indelible scars of
coral wound.
[Illustration:
The road from the beach
]
[Illustration:
An American Josephite missionary and his wife, and their church
]
My friend, the poet, Rupert Brooke, had been made very ill by coral
poisoning. He wrote from the Tiare Hotel in Papeete: “I’ve got some
beastly coral-poisoning into my legs, and a local microbe on top of
that, and made the places worse by neglecting them, and sea-bathing all
day, which turns out to be the worst possible thing. I was in the
country, at Mataiea, when it came on bad, and tried native remedies,
which took all the skin off, and produced such a ghastly appearance that
I hurried into town. I’ve got over it now and feel spry.” His nickname,
_Pupure_, meant leprous, as well as fair, and was a joking _double
entendre_ by the natives.
I was later, in the Marquesas, to see a man die of such poison received
in the Paumotus. But, in Kaukura, I had to make the best of it, and
after a short rest began to see the sights. There was a crowd of people
about, men and women, and still more children, all lighter than the
Paumotuans in complexion and stouter in body. They were dressed up. The
men were in denim trousers and shirts, and some with the stiff white
atrocities suffered by urbanites in America and Europe. The women wore
the conventional night-gowns that Christian propriety of the early
nineteenth century had pulled over their heads. They were not the
spacious _holokus_ of Hawaii. These single garments fitted the portly
women on the beach as the skin of a banana its pulpy body—and between me
and the sun hid nothing of their roly-poly forms. I recognized the _ahu
vahine_ of Tahiti.
“_Ia ora na i te Atua!_” the people greeted me, with winning smiles.
“God be with you!” was its meaning, and their accent confirmed their
clothing. They were Tahitians. I spoke to them, and they commiserated my
sad appearance, and pointed out a tall young white man who came striding
down the beach, his mouth pursed in an anxious question as he saw me.
“Got any medicine on that hay wagon?” he asked. “We’ve got a bunch of
dysentery here.”
I knew at once by his voice issuing through his nostrils instead of his
mouth, and by the sharp cut of his jib, that he was my countryman, and
from the Middle West. He had the self-satisfied air of a Kansan.
“The trade-room of the _Marara_ is full of medical discoveries, perunas,
Jamaica ginger, celery compounds, and other hot stuff,” I replied, “but
what they’ll cure I don’t know. We have divers patent poisons known to
prohibition.”
“That’s all rotten booze. My people don’t use the devilish stuff,” he
commented, caustically. He continued on, wading to the boat, and, after
a parley, proceeding with it to the schooner.
McHenry had half determined to plant himself, at least temporarily, in
Kaukura, and left me to spy on the store of a Chinese, who had brought a
stock of goods from Papeete. I walked toward an enormous thatched roof,
under which, on the coral strand, were nearly a thousand persons. The
pungent smoke from a hundred small fires of cocoanut husks gave an
agreeable tang to the air; the lumps of coral between which they were
kindled were red with the heat, the odors rose from bubbling pots. All
the small equipment of Tahitian travelers was strewn about. Upon
mattresses and mats in the shed, the sides of which were built up
several feet to prevent the intrusion of pigs and dogs, lay old people
and children, who had not finished their slumbers. Stands for the sale
of fruits, ice, confections, soda-water, sauces, and other ministrants
to hunger and habit bespoke the acquired tastes of the Tahitians; but
most of the people were of Kaukura and other atolls.
Kaukura alone had nearly a thousand inhabitants. Its lagoons were the
richest in pearl of all the group. Being one of the nearest of the
Paumotus to Tahiti, it had been much affected by the proselytizing and
commercializing spirits of that island—spirits often at variance but now
and again joined, as on a greater scale trust magnates capitalize and
direct missions and religious institutions with the left hand, while
their right takes toll of life-killing mill and mine.
The village was as attractive as a settlement could be in these
benighted islands, the houses stretching along one or two roads, some in
gala color. A small, sprightly white man was donning shirt and trousers
on the veranda of the best residence at the end of the street. He was
about forty years old, with a curiously keen face, a quick movement, and
an eye like an electric light through a keyhole.
“Hello,” he said, briskly, “by golly, you’re not an American, are you?
I’m getting my pants on a little late. We were up all hours last night,
but I flatter myself God was glad of it. Kidd’s my name; Johnny Kidd,
they call me in Lamoni. I’m glad to meet you, Mr. ——?”
“O’Brien, Frederick O’Brien, of almost anywhere, except Lamoni,” I
replied, laughingly, his good-natured enthusiasm being infectious.
He looked at me, inquiringly.
“Not in my line, are you?” he asked, with an appraising survey of me.
My head bleeding and aching, my body quivering with the biting pain of
its abraded surface, I still surrendered to the irony of the question. I
guessed that he was a clergyman from his possessive attitude toward God,
but he was so simple and natural in manner, with so little of a clerical
tone or gesture, that I would have thought him a street-faker or
professional gambler had I had no clue to his identity. I remembered,
too, the oft-quoted: “In my Father’s house are many mansions.”
“I’m merely a beachcomber,” I assured him. “I take a few notes now and
then.”
“Oh, you’re not a sky-pilot,” he went on, in comic relief. “You never
can tell. Those four-flushing Mormons have been bringing a whole gang of
young elders from Utah to Tahiti to beat us out. I’m an elder myself of
the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. They
usually call us the Josephites. In these islands we are Konito or
Tonito. We’ve been having a grand annual meeting here. Over sixty from
Tahiti, and altogether a thousand and seventy members. They’ve been
gathering from most of the Paumotus for weeks, coming with the wind, but
we’re about over now.”
“But I thought the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was the
Mormons,” said I, puzzled.
“Mormon!” There was such vigor in his explosive catching up of my query
that I may well be pardoned if I thought he placed the common name for
Sheol after that of the sect. But it stands to reason that he did not.
His whole training would stop such a word ere it escaped him.
“Mormon! I should say not! Those grafters and polygamists are not our
kind. They stole our name. We were the same until Brigham Young split
off and led his crowd to Utah. Our headquarters is at Lamoni, Iowa, but
I. N. Imbel, who’s gone to the schooner, my partner, and I are the
missionaries in these islands. We’re properly authorized ministers who
make this our regular and whole business. My pal and I live in Papeete,
but run through the Paumotus when there’s anything doing.”
The reverend fellow had no airs about him.
“Sit down and take off your clothes and dry them, and I’ll rub your cuts
with some liniment,” he invited. “They’ll dry in the sun, and here’s a
_pareu_ to slip over you. I’d like to tell you more about our work, so’s
you won’t mix us up with those Mormons. They’re a tough bunch. My
father’s the head of our mission in England, and I’m in charge of these
islands. Every year we have a business meeting. That’s what this is; not
a revival. We don’t believe in that emotion game. We call it a
‘reasonable service.’ We take up a collection, of course. We invite the
natives to investigate our claims. We have the custom to get converts by
debating with the Mormons, but after we had accepted a challenge to meet
them in Papeete the French governor stopped the show, because a French
law forbade such meetings. They used to have riots in France, it seems.
The Mormons teach polygamy and other abominations. They’ll tell you they
don’t, but they do. You ask any Mormon native if he believes in plural
wives, and he’ll say yes, that the elders from America teach that it’s
right. Those Mormons ran away from here once, when the French government
scared them, and we got in and had most of the natives in the Paumotus
that the Catholics hadn’t kept. Then when the Mormons saw there was no
danger, they came back here from Salt Lake. Oh, they’re a bad outfit.
We’re regularly ordained ministers, not farmers off on a lark. This
temple here cost a thousand dollars, without the labor. That was all
voluntary. Wait a minute!”
He dashed into a room, and returned with a pamphlet which purported to
be the findings of the Court of Lake County, Ohio, and he read from it a
decree that the Utah Mormons were a fragment and split off from the real
simon-pure religion established by Joseph Smith in New York. I wished
that Stevenson had been there to hear him, for I remembered his page of
bewilderment at the enigma of the “_Kanitu_” and _Mormoni_ in the
Paumotus, and how he made comparisons of the Holy Willies of Scotland,
and a New Guinea god named Kanitu. His uninquiring mind had not solved
the problem.
“We beat those wolves in sheep’s clothing in this court,” said Elder
Kidd, animatedly. “We’re the real church, and the Brighamites are a
hollow sham.”
Mr. Kidd engaged my interest, true or pseudo-disciple of Joseph Smith.
He was so human, so guileful, and had such an engaging smile and wink.
He seemed to feel that he was in a soul-saving business thoroughly
respectable, yet needing to be explained and defended to the Gentile.
His competitors’ incompetency he deemed worthy of emphasis.
“Not long ago,” he said, “in certain of these Paumotus there had been a
good deal of backsliding from our church. Nobody had stirred them up,
and with these people you have got to keep their souls awake all the
time or they’ll go to sleep, or, worse, get into the control of those
Mormons. They’ll steal a convert like you’d peel a banana, and that’s
what I call the limit of a dirty trick. The Mormons thought they had a
puddin’ in these backsliders to pull them over to their side. I heard
about it, and without a word to any one I took a run through the group.
I went through that crowd of backsliders with a spiritual club, and I
not only redeemed the old Josephites, but I baptized seventy-five others
before you could run a launch from here to Anaa. It was like stealin’
persimmons from a blind farmer whose dog is chained. I was talkin’ to
the head Mormon in Papeete shortly afterward, and he asked me what we
were doin’. I counted off the seventy-five new ones, and he had to
acknowledge his church hadn’t made a count in a long time. I offered to
bet him anything he was beat to a finish, but he quit cold.”
The Reverend Mr. Kidd excused himself to go to the meeting-house and get
his breakfast with some of his deacons. McHenry had returned from his
tour of espionage. He was cast down at the poor chance for business.
“There’s nothing doin’,” he said. “Twenty years ago I was here with a
schooner o’ booze to a Konito meetin’ like this. There was kegs o’ rum
with bloody tops knocked in right in the road. An’ wimmin’! You’d a-gone
nuts tryin’ to choose. This is what religi’n does to business. A couple
o’ bleedin’ chinks sellin’ a few bottles o’ smell water, an’ a lot o’
Tahitians with fruit an’ picnic stuff. A thousand Kanakas in one bunch
an’ not one drunk. By cripes, the mishes have ruined the trade. The
American Government ought to interfere. You and me had better skin out
to west’ard where there ain’t so many bloody preachers, an’ you can
handle the Kanaka the way you want. To-night this mob’ll be in that
meetin’-house singin’ their heads off, instead o’ buyin’ rum and dancin’
like they used to. Them two sky-pilots has got all the francs. Even the
Chinks hasn’t made a turn. Kopcke of Papeete is here an’ ain’t made a
sou. He’s goin’-a go to leeward.”
“McHenry,” I interrogated, “do you never consider the other fellow?
Aren’t these poor people better off chanting hymns and praying than
getting drunk and dancing the hula, just to make you money.”
He regarded me with contemptuous malice.
“I knew after all you were a bloody missionary,” he said, acridly. “I
been on to you. You’ll be in that straw shed to-night singin’ ‘Come to
Jesus.’ You’d better look out after your cuts! You’ll be sore’n a boil
to-morrow when they get stiff. Let’s go back to the schooner and get
drunk!”
I was tempted to return to the _Marara_ to ease my misery, and only the
promise of Elder Kidd to assuage it with liniment, and an ardent desire
to attend the Josephite services that night, detained me in the heat of
the atoll. McHenry persisting in his decision to cool his coppers in
rum, and I to see everything of Kaukura, I joined with a friendly native
for a stroll. The Josephite temple was a small coral edifice, washed
white with coral lime. An old and uncared-for Catholic church was
near-by. Most of the residences were thatched huts, or shacks made of
pieces of boxes and tin and corrugated iron, with a few formal wooden
cottages, painted red, white, and blue. They were very poor, these
Kaukurans, from our point of view, earning barely enough to sustain them
in strength, and with few comforts in their huts, except the universal
sewing-machine. Everywhere that was the first ambition of the
uncivilized woman roused to modern vanities, as of the poor woman in all
countries.
Walking along the beach I narrowly escaped a more serious accident than
the disaster of the reef, for only the warning of my companion stayed me
from treading upon a _nohu_, the deadliest underfoot danger of the
Paumotus. It was a fish peculiarly hateful to humans, yet gifted by
nature with both defensive disguise and offensive weapons, a remnant of
the fierce struggle for survival in which so many forms of life had
disappeared or altered in changing environment. The _nohu_ lay on the
coral strand where the tide lapped it, looking the twin of a battered,
mossy rock, so deceiving that one must have the sight of the aborigine
to avoid stepping upon it, if in one’s way. Put a foot on it, and before
one could move, the _nohu_ raised the bony spines of its dorsal fin and
pierced one’s flesh as would a row of hatpins; not only pierced, but
simultaneously injected through its spines a virulent poison that lay at
the base of a malevolent gland. The _nohu_ possessed a protective
coloring and shape more deluding than any other noxious creature I know,
and kept its mouth shut except when it swallowed the prey for which it
lay in wait. Its mouth is very large, and a brilliant lemon-color
inside, so that if it parts its lips it betrays itself. Brother to the
_nohu_ in evil purpose is the _tataraihau_. But what a trickster is
nature! The _nohu_ is as ugly as a squid, and the _tataraihau_ beautiful
as a piece of the sunset, a brilliant red, with transverse bands of
chocolate, bordered with ebony.
“If you can spit on the _nohu_ before he sticks his _taetae_ into you,
it will not poison you,” sagely said my savior, as he stabbed the wretch
with his knife.
Pliny, as translated by Holland, said:
All men carry about them that which is poyson to serpents: for
if it be true that is reported, they will no better abide the
touching with man’s spittle than scalding water cast upon them:
but if it happen to light within their chawes or mouth,
especially if it comes from a man that is fasting, it is present
death.
Pliny in his day may have known of quick-witted people who, when
assailed by a snake, had presence of mind to expectorate in his chawes,
but the most hungry, salivary man could hardly avail himself of this
prophylactic unless he recognized the _nohu_ before treading upon him.
The Paumotuans employ the _mape_, the native chestnut, the _atae_,
_ape_, and _rea moeruru_. These are all “yarb” remedies, and the first,
the juice of the chestnut, squeezed on the head and neck, they swear by.
The French doctors advise morphine injection or laudanum externally, or
to suck the wound and cup it. Coagulating the poison _in situ_ by
alcohol, acids, or caustic alkali, or the use of turpentine, is also
recommended. If the venom is not speedily drawn out or nullified, the
feet of the victim turn black and coma ensues. The French called the
_nohu_, _La Mort_, The Death.
My Paumotuan friend and Elder Kidd together gave me this information,
and when we brought the _nohu_ to the house in which he lived the
clergyman said we would eat it. The native heated an old iron pipe and,
after flaying the skin off the fish, boiled it. The flesh was remarkably
sweet and tender.
I lay on a mat, and, after the American had laved me with the liniment,
the Paumotuan, a Konito elder, massaged me for an hour, during which
grievous process I fell asleep, and woke after dark when the “reasonable
service” was beginning.
The people were ranged under the immense roof in orderly ranks, the
Tahitians being in one knot. Both the American elders were upon a
platform, surrounded by the native elders, who aided in the conduct of
the program, which was in Paumotuan. The Paumotuan language is a dialect
closely allied to the Maori, which includes the Tahitian, Hawaiian,
Marquesan, New Zealand, Samoan, and other island tongues. The Paumotuan
was crossed with a strange tongue, the origin of which was not fixed,
but which might be the remains of an Aino or negroid race found in the
Paumotus by the first Polynesian immigrants. Tahitians easily understood
the Paumotuans, though many words were different, and there were many
variations in pronunciation and usage. The Tahitians had been living
closely with Europeans for a hundred years, and their language had
become a mere shadow of its past form. The Paumotuan had remained more
primitive, for the Paumotuan was a savage when the Tahitians were the
most cultivated race of the South Seas; not with a culture of our kind,
but yet with elaborated ceremonials, religious and civil, ranks of
nobility, drama, oratory, and wit.
It being the conclusion of the grand annual meeting of the Josephites, a
summing up of the business condition of the sect in these waters was the
principal item. Elders Kidd and Imbel stressed dependence of the
Almighty upon his apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors, and of
these called-of-God men upon the francs collected at such gatherings as
this.
Both the divines spoke earnestly, and mentioned Jehovah and Joseph Smith
many times, with Aarona, Timoteo, Pauro, and other figures from the
Scriptures. They struck the pulpit when they spoke of the _Mormoni_, and
the faces of the congregation took on expressions of holy disdain.
Somewhat like the modern preacher of the larger cities, the elders
strove to entertain as well as instruct, edify, and command their flock.
They proposed a charade or riddle, which they said was of very ancient
origin, and perhaps had been told in the time of the Master’s sojourn
among men. They spoke it very slowly and carefully and repeated it
several times, so that it was thoroughly understood by all:
He walked on earth,
He talked on earth,
He reproved man for his sin;
He is not in earth,
He is not in heaven,
Nor can he enter therein.
This mysterious person was written about in the Bible, said Elder Kidd.
_Aue!_ That was a puzzler! Who could it be? Many scratched their heads.
Others shook theirs despairingly. A few older men, of the diaconate,
probably, smiled knowingly. Some began to eliminate likely biblical
characters on their fingers. Iesu-Kirito, Aberahama, Ioba, Petero, and
so on through a list of the more prominent notables of Scripture. But
after five minutes of guesses, which were pointed out by Mr. Kidd not to
comply with the specifications of the charade, the answer was announced
with impressive unction:
“Asini Balaama.”
Balaam’s ass. _Aue!_ Why, of course. I had named to myself every
_persona dramatis_ of the Book I could recall, but the talkative steed
had escaped me. We all laughed. Most of the congregation had never seen
an ass or even a horse, and the word itself was pulled into their
language by the ears. But they could conjure up a life-like picture of
the scene from their pastor’s description, and there were many
interchanges between neighbors about the wisdom of the beast, and his
kindness in saving Balaam from the angry angel who would have killed
him.
But in time the prose part of the service came to an end, and the
singing began. I moved myself to the shadows outside the pale, and
stretching at full length on a mat on the sand, gave myself to the
rapture of their poetry, and the waking dreams it brought.
_Himene_, all mass singing was called in these islands—the missionary
hymn Polynesianized. They had only chants when the whites came; proud
recitatives of valor in war, of the beginnings of creation, of the
wanderings of their heroes, challenges to the foe, and prayers to the
mysterious gods and demons of their supernal regions. They learned
awedly the hymns of Christianity, and struggled decades with the airs.
Confused with these were songs of the white sailors, the spirited
bowline and windlass chanteys of the British and American tars, the
trivial or obscene lays of beach-combers and soldiers, and later the
popular tunes of nations and governments. Out of all these the
Polynesians had evolved their _himenes_, singing as different from any
ever heard in Europe or America as the bagpipe from the violin, but
never to be forgotten when once heard to advantage, for its barbaric
call, its poignancy of utterance, and its marvelous harmony.
In the great shed outside which I lay under the purple sky, the men and
women were divided, and the women led the _himene_. One began a wail, a
high note, almost a shriek, like the keening of a wake, and carrying but
a phrase. Others met her voice at an exact interval, and formed a
chorus, into which men and women entered, apparently at will, but each
with a perfect observance of time, so that the result was an
overwhelming symphony of vocal sounds which had in them the power of a
pipe-organ to evoke thought. I heard the cry of sea-birds, the crash of
the waves on the reef, the thrashing of the giant fronds of the
cocoa-palms, the groans of afflicted humans, and the pæans of victory of
embattled warriors. The effect was incredibly individual. Each white
heard the _himene_ differently, according to his own cosmos.
There under the stars on Kaukura, cast down and conscious as I had been
of my trivial hurts, and of a certain loneliness of situation, I forgot
all in the thrill of emotion caused by the exquisite though unstudied
art of these simple Josephites, worshipers, whose voices pierced my
heart with the sorrows and aspirations of an occult world. The Reverends
Kidd and Imbel were forgotten, and all but the mysterious conflict of
man with his soul. I fell asleep as the _himene_ went on for hours, and
was awakened by Kopcke, the trader, who said that the _Marara_ was to
sail at midnight, and that he had been asked to bring me aboard.
Chocolat barked a welcome from the taffrail as we boarded the schooner,
and with the offshore wind we welcomed I could hear a faint human noise
which I interpreted as the benediction of the Reverend Johnny Kidd.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER V
Captain Moet tells of Mapuhi, the great Paumotuan—Kopcke tells about
women—Virginia’s jealousy—An affrighting waterspout—The wrecked
ship—Landing at Takaroa.
_“Maintenant_”, said Captain Moet, as he gave orders for the course, “we
weel veesit ze king ov ze Paumotu. Monsieur O’Breeon, ’e got no nose,
bot ’e ees _magnifique_. ’E like out ov ze story-book. Ze bigges’
tradaire, ze bes’ divaire, ze _bon père_ ov ze Paumotu. An’ ’e ees
reech, eef ’e don’ geeve ’way ev’rysing. Nevaire ’ave I know one
_hombre_ like ‘eem!”
“He’s lost his grip since he got old,” McHenry interrupted, in his
contrary way. “They say he’s got a million francs out in bad accounts to
natives. He’s rotten easy, and spoils trade for a decent white man, by
cripes!”
“_Nom d’une pipe!_” cried the Marseillais. “Mac, you nevaire see anysing
nice. ’E ees not easy; ’e ees not rotten. ’E ’as got old, an’
_maintenant_, ’e ees ’fraid ov ze devil, ze _diablo malo_. Mac, eef you
waire so nice as Mapuhi, I geeve you wan hug an’ kees. ’E ees ’onnes’,
Mac, _vous savez_! Mapuhi say somesing, eet ees true. Zat bad for you,
eh?”
[Illustration:
Photo by Brown Bros.
Typical and primitive native hut, Paumotu Archipelago
]
Mapuhi! In Tahiti, among the Paumotu traders at the Cercle Bougainville,
his name was every-day mention. He was the outstanding figure of the
Paumatuan race. Lying Bill had narrated a dozen stories about him over
our glasses, and Goeltz, Hallman, all the skippers and supercargos, had
spoken of him.
[Illustration:
Copra drying
]
“Mapuhi’s som’mat for looks without ’is nose,” said Captain Pincher.
“I’ve known ’im thirty years, an’ ’e’s the biggest man in the group in
all that time. ’E’s got Mormonism stronger now, an’ ’e’s bloody well
afraid of ’ell, the ’ell those Mormon missionaries tell about; but ’e’s
the best navigator in these waters.”
“He’s past eighty now, big-hearted but shrewd, and loving his own
people,” said Woronick, the Parisian, and cunningest of Tahiti pearl
merchants, except Levy. “He’s gone on Mormonism, but he’s smart with all
his religion. The trouble is he’s let charity run away with business
principles, and divers and others get into him for hundreds of thousands
of francs. I’d take his word for anything, and you know me! They didn’t
keep me out of the United States because I’m a dummy, _hein_?”
“He’s a remarkable man, this Kanaka,” joined in Winnie Brander, master
of a sieve of a schooner, as he drank his Doctor Funk. “When he was a
boy he was a savage. His father ate his enemies. For fifty years Mapuhi
has been sailing schooners in the Paumotus. He’s the richest man there,
and the best skipper in these waters that ever weathered the New Year
gales. I’m captain of a schooner and I have sailed the Group since a
boy, but, matching my experience against his,—and I haven’t had a tenth
of his,—Mapuhi knows more by instinct of weather, of reefs, of passes,
and of seamanship than I have learned. He’s known from Samoa to Tahiti
as a wizard for sailing. He knows every one of the eighty Paumotus by
sight. Wake him up anywhere in the Group in sight of land, and he’ll
take a squint and tell where they are. God knows that’s the hardest bit
of spying there is, because these atolls are mostly all alike at a
distance—just a few specks of green, then a bunch of palms, and a line
of coral. It’s something uncanny the way this fellow can locate himself.
They say he can tell them at night by the smell.”
“’E’s a bloody Rockefeller down ’ere,” Lying Bill took up the story.
“’E’s combed this ’ere ’ole ocean. I remember when ’e lost the _Tavaroa_
’e ’ad built by Matthew Turner in California, and four other schooners,
in the cyclone of 1906. Many a boat ’e built ’imself. ’E was the devil
for women, with the pick of the group an’ ’im owin’ ’alf the families in
debt. Then the Mormons got a ’olt of ’im, an’ ’e began prayin’ an’
preachin’, and stuck by ’is proper wife. You’ll see that big church, if
you go to Takaroa, ’e built, an’ where ’is ol’ woman is buried.”
And now I was bound for the atoll of this mighty chief of his tribe, and
was to see him face to face. From Kaukura, the _Marara_ raced and lagged
by turn. The glass fell, and I spoke to McHenry about it, pointing to
the recording barometer.
“There’s trouble comin’,” he said, testily. “I know that. I don’t need
any barometer. We South Sea men have got enough mercury in us to tell
the weather without any barometer.”
The rain fell at intervals, but not hard enough for a bath on deck, the
prized weather incident of these parts. With no fresh water in Niau,
Anaa, or Kaukura, or not enough for bathing, and with only a dole on the
_Marara_ for hands and faces, I, with remembrance of Rupert Brooke’s
complaint about the effect of sea-water on coral wounds, was about
half-crazy for a torrential shower. But the rain passed, and the sunset
soothed my sorrow. Never had I known such skies. In this heaven’s prism
were hues not before seen by me. Manila, I had thought, was of all the
world apart for the beauty and brilliancy of its sunsets. Such bepainted
clouds as hung over the hill of Mariveles when I rode down the Malecon
in the days of the Empire! But Manila was here surpassed in startling
shape and blazing color.
A great bank of ocher held the western sky—a perfect curtain for a stage
upon which gods might enact the fall of the angels. It depended in folds
and fringes over stripes of gold—a startling, magnificent design which
appeared too regular in form and color to be accident of clouds. One had
to remember the bits of glass in the kaleidoscope.
The gold grew red, the stripes became a sheet of scarlet, and that
vermilion and maroon, swiftly changing as deeper dipped the sun into the
sea, until the entire sky was broken into mammoth fleecy white tiles,
the tesselated ceiling of Olympus. The canopy grew gray, and night
dropped abruptly. A wind came out of the darkness and caught the
_Marara_ under full canvas. It drove her through the fast-building waves
at eleven knots. The hull groaned in tune with the shrieking cordage.
The timbers that were long from the forest, and had fought a thousand
gales, lamented their age in moans and whines, in grindings and fierce
blows. The white water piled over the bows, deluged the deck, and foamed
on the barrier of the cabin rise. I stripped and went forward to meet
it. I could have danced in it for joy. Oh! the joy of sail! Steam and
motor made swift the path of the ship, but they had in them no
consonance with nature. They were blind and deaf to the wind and wave,
which were the very life of the schooner. They brought no sense of
participation in speed as did the white wings of the _Marara_, nor of
kinship with the main. They were alive, those swelling and careening
sheets of canvas, that swung to and fro with the mind of the breeze, and
cried and laughed in stress of labor.
The rain blanketed the ocean, the vessel heeled over to starboard until
her rail was salty, the jibs pleaded for relief, but man was implacable.
For hours we held our course, driving fast in the obscure night toward
the home of the wondrous diver, the man without a nose, Mapuhi, the
uncrowned king of the Dangerous Isles.
But when the moon lit the road to Takaroa, she lulled the wind. The
eleven knots fell to seven, and to five, and at midnight we drifted in a
zephyr.
When I went below in a light squall, sure sign of near-by land, Kopcke,
the handsome trader, and a native girl were asleep on a mat in the
passageway beside and partly under my bunk. I had to step over them. Her
red tunic was drawn up over her limbs in her restless slumber, and a
sheet covered closely her head. He lay on his back, his eyes facing the
cabin lamp, his breathing that of a happy child after a day of hard
play. As a matter of fact he had drunk a half dozen tots of rum since he
had brought me aboard.
Kopcke had failed at Kaukura, and like McHenry was bound for Takaroa, to
set up a store for the diving season. He was a ne’er-do-well who existed
without hard work merely because of familiarity with the people and
languages of the islands. After a few glasses on board he had spilled
his affairs to me, and especially his amorous adventures, in the
boasting way of his kind. “Mary pity women!” A quarter-Tahitian, his
father a European, and his mother French Tahitian, he was remarkably
good-looking, in the style of a cinema idol. He had first married the
half-caste daughter of Lying Bill, one of the many children of that
Bedouin of the Pacific, who, in more than three decades of roaming the
islands, had, according to his brag, scores of descendants. She had
died, and Kopcke had left their child to charity, and taken up with
another whom he had deserted after a year, leaving her their new-born
infant.
“She would not obey me,” Kopcke explained to Virginie and me. “I was
good to her, but she was obstinate, and I had to send her to Takepoto.
She had a good thing but could not appreciate me. I then took this girl
here, whose father is an old diver in Takaroa, with a good deal of
money. He once picked up a single pearl worth a big fortune. She is
sixteen, and is easily managed. You’ve got to get them young, _mon ami_,
to learn your ways. That Takepoto girl feels sorry now. Women are queer,
all of them, _mon vieux, n’est-ce pas_?”
Virginie was all Huguenot French blood though born in Tahiti, and Kopcke
went against her puritan grain. She thought him a bad example for her
Jean, who, though as devoted a husband as seaman, was dangerously
attractive to the native girls. Moet could _tutoyer_ them in their own
tongue, with a roughish but alluring manner toward them that, though it
crowded the trade-room of the _Marara_ with customers for finery and
cologne water, tortured Virginie. His endearing terms, his gentle slaps
on their hips, and momentary arm about their waists, rended Virginie
between jealousy and profits.
“_Mais_,” Jean would exclaim, after an interchange of bitter words, in
which _cochon_ had been applied to him, “how zat _femme_ zink I do
bees’ness. Wiz kicks ‘an go-to-’ells? She count ze money wiz _plaisir_,
bot Jean Moet, ’er ’usbin’, ’e mos’ be like wan mutton. ’Sus-Maria! I
will make show ’oo ees boss!”
Kopcke was rather more honest in his dealings with women than the white
men. His quarter-native strain made him less ruthless, and more
understanding of them. The ordinary European or American in the South
Seas had not his own home’s standards in such affairs. He released
himself with a prideful assertiveness from such restraints, and went to
an opposite ethic in his breaking of the chain. His usual attitude to
women here was that of the average man toward domesticated animals—to
pet and feed them, and to abuse them when disobedient or at whim.
Of course, the white flotsam and jetsam of humanity in these islands,
who in their own countries had probably starved for caresses, and who
may never have known women other than the frowzy boughten ones of the
cabaret and brothel, were here giving back to the sex what it had
bestowed on them in more formalized circles. The soft, loving women of
Polynesia paid for the sex starvation enforced by economic conditions
among the superior whites. A feast brought the ingratitude of the
beggar.
All day, with half a gale, we sailed past atolls and bare reefs, groves
of palms and rudest rocks, primal strata and beaches of softest and
whitest sand. The schooner went close to these islands, so that it
appeared I could throw my hat upon them; but distances here were
deceptive, and I suppose we were never less than a thousand feet away.
Yet we were near enough to hear the smash of the surf and to see the big
fish leap in the lagoon, to drink the intoxicating draft of oneness with
the lonely places, and to feel the secrets of their isolation. I was
happy that before I died I had again seen the Thing I had worshipped
since I began to read.
I slipped off the coat of years and was a boy on a pirate schooner, my
hand on Long Tom, the brass gun, ready to fire if the cannibals pushed
nearer in their canoes. Again I had trained my hand and eye so that I
brought down the wild pigeon with my sling, and I outran the furious
turtle on the beach. I dived under the reef into the cave where the
freebooters had stored their ill-gotten treasure, and reveled in the
bags of pieces of eight, and the bars of virgin gold. I thought of
_Silver_, and sang:
“Fifteen men on the Dead Man’s Chest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”
“_Mais vous êtes gai_,” said Jean Moet. “_Qu’est cela?_ You not drink
wan bottle when I no look?”
At three o’clock in the afternoon the gale had almost died away. The sun
was struggling to break through the lowering sky. McHenry and Kopcke
were engaged in their usual bombast of personal achievement with women
and drink, and I, to shut out their _blague_, was playing with Chocolat.
Suddenly Kopcke broke off in a sentence and shouted to Moet, who was in
the trade-room.
“_Capitaine! Capitaine!_” he called loudly through the window of the
cabin. “There is a flood in air. _Puahiohio!_ On deck! On deck!”
His voice vibrated with alarm, and Moet made three jumps and was at the
wheel. He looked ahead, and I, too, saw, directly on the course we were
steering, a convolute stem of water stretching from the sea to the sky.
Well I knew what it was. I whirled McHenry around.
“Look!” I said, and pointed to the oncoming spectacle.
“A bloody waterspout!” yelled McHenry. “By cripes—here’s where we pay
up!”
I heard the native passengers and the sailors forward shouting
confusedly, and saw them throwing themselves flat on deck, where they
held on to the hatch lashings and other stable objects. Moet, with a
fierce oath, ordered the sailors to the halyards.
“Off with every stitch!” he commanded, as he threw the wheel hard over.
“_Vave! Vave!_”
“_Trombe!_” he warned his wife, who was in the cabin with Kopcke’s girl.
“Hold on, Virginie, hold on! Pray, and be quick about it!”
McHenry, Kopcke, and I sprang to the main boom, and helped to take down
the canvas and make it fast. The jibs were still standing, when the
_Marara_ turned on her heel like a hare pursued by a hound. The
waterspout was yet miles distant, but rushing toward us, as we made slow
starboard progress from our previous wake. The daylight faded; the air
seemed full of water. The sailors were again prone, and we, at the calm
though sharp word of Moet, pulled over the companion cover. I shrank
behind the house, and McHenry tucked his head into the bend of my body,
while Kopcke, on his knees, held on to the traveler.
“_Sacramento!_” said Moet, as if to himself. “Maybe she no can meet
zat!”
With pounding heart, but every sense alert, I watched the mad drive of
the sable column. The _Marara_ was now in smooth water,—the glassy
circle of the _Puahiohio_,—and so near was the terrifying, twisting mass
of dark foam and spindrift that it seemed impossible we could avoid it.
Every inch the master, Moet alone stood up. Chocolat was huddled
whimpering between his feet. I saw the captain pull up the straps that
held the wheel when in light airs we drifted peacefully, and attach them
so that the helm was fixed. There was a dreadful roaring a short way off
and nearing every second. The spout was bigger than any of the great
trees I had seen in the California forests, and from its base a leaden
tower of hurrying water seemed to wind in a spiral stream to the clouds.
“She’s going to drop,” said McHenry in my ear. “Now hold on, and we’ll
see who comes out of the bloody wash!”
The roar was that of a blast-furnace, and so close, so fearful, I ceased
to breathe. Captain Moet crouched by the steadfast wheel, his hand on
the spokes. Forward, I saw two Tahitians with their palms upon their
ears.
Suddenly the _Marara_ heeled over. The starboard rail was in the water,
and Kopcke, McHenry, and I, a tangled heap against the rail, as we
struggled to keep our heads above the foam. Farther and farther the
schooner listed. It was certain to me that we must meet death under it
in another instant. Moet’s feet were deep in the water, and now the
wheel held him up. We clutched madly at the stanchions of the rail, as
we choked with the salt flood.
Came the supreme moment. The waterspout rose above us on the port bow
like a cliff, solid as stone. A million trumpets blew to me the call of
Judgment Day. Then the wall of water passed by a hundred feet to port.
In another breath the _Marara_ regained her poise and was on an even
keel. The peril was over.
“_Mais, tonnère de Dieu!_” cried Moet, excitedly, “zat was a _cochon_ ov
a watairespouse! Zere air many in zese latitude. Some time I see seex,
seven, playin’ ‘round at wan time. I sink we make ze sail, and take wan
drink queeck. Eh, Virginie, _ici! Donne-moi un baiser_, little cabbage!
Deed you pray ’ard?”
Over his _petit verre_, the captain said to me, confidentially, “_Moi_,
I was almos’ become a _bon catholique_ again.”
Chocolat, who must have thought he had borne his part bravely in the
crisis, frisked wildly about the wheel, risking his own brown hide at
every leap, to testify his joy at his safety.
McHenry and Kopcke, with the heartening rum in their stomachs, resumed
their palaver.
“That spout didn’t come within fifty feet of us,” said McHenry. “I’ve
seen one in which a bird was bein’ carried up, whirlin’ round and round,
and not able to fly away. It was comin’ toward us like lightnin’ when I
jumped into the shrouds with a big tin tub, an’ banged it like bloody
hell. It scared the spout away, an’ it busted far enough from us not to
hurt us. Bill an’ Tommy Eustace can swear to that.”
“_Diable!_” Kopcke broke in. “Mapuhi and his daughter were in a cutter
coming from Takepoto when they were attacked by a _trombe_. It did not
strike them but the force of it overturned their cutter, four miles from
shore, and knocked the girl insensible, so that Mapuhi had to swim to
shore with her.”
They are fearsome spectacles at their best, these phenomena of the sea,
comparable only in awe-inspiring qualities to the dread composants of
St. Elmo’s Fire, those apparitions of flame which appear on mastheads
and booms on tempestuous nights, as if the spirits of hell had come to
welcome the sailor to Davy Jones’s locker. Waterspouts I had seen many
times. They were common in these waters,—more frequent, perhaps, than
anywhere else,—and to the native they were the most alarming
manifestation of nature. Many a canoe had been sunk by them. There were
legends of destruction by them, and of how the gods and devils used them
as weapons to destroy the war fleets of the enemies of the
legend-telling tribes.
When I went to sleep at ten o’clock that night, we were ranging up and
down between Takepoto and Takaroa, steering no course but that of
prudence, and waiting for the dawn.
I came on deck again at four. The moon was two thirds down the steep
slope of the west, a golden sphere vaster than ever before. The sea was
bright and quaking, and shoals of fish were waking and parting the
shining surface of the water.
Suddenly from out of the gloom of the distance there loomed as strange a
vision as ever startled a wayfarer.
A huge ship, under bare poles, solemn and lonely of aspect and almost
out of the water, lifted a black bulk as if bearing down upon us. Somber
and ominous, void of light or life, fancy peopled it with a ghostly
crew. I almost expected to read upon its quarter the name of
Vanderdecken’s specter-ship, and to hear the mournful voice of the
_Flying Dutchman’s_ skipper report that he had at last reached a haven.
The weirdness of this unexpected sight was incredibly surprising. It
electrified me, dismayed me, as few phenomena have.
Piri a Tuahine, at the wheel, called down to the captain.
“_Paparai te pahi matai!_” he announced in the even tone of the Maori
sailor. “The ship wrecked in the cyclone!”
Moet came on deck in pajamas, surveyed the spectacle of desolation, said
“_Bon jour!_” to me, gave an order to the sailor to “Keep her off,” and
returned to snatch another nap. I saw through the stripped masts of the
wrecked ship the fires of the bakers who mix their flour with
cocoanut-milk, and wrap their loaves in cocoanut-leaves to bake. They
were comforting as tokens of the living, contrasted with the sorrowful
skeleton of one-time glory in that isolated cradle of rocks. Kopcke
stuck his head through the companionway to observe our bearings,
squinted at the somber wraith through his heavy eyes,—he and McHenry had
played _écarté_ most of the night,—and replied to my query:
“As you say, _mon garçon_, it is the _County of Roxburgh_, that English
ship. She lost her reckoning, and in a big hurricane crashed upon the
reef. Her crew put over a boat but it was smashed at once, and those who
reached the shore were badly bruised and broken by the coral. When the
people of Takaroa—my girl’s father was one of them—rushed to succor
them, they fought them off, because their books said the Paumotuans were
savages and cannibals. It wasn’t till they saw Takauha, the _gendarme_,
and he showed them his red stripe on the sleeve of his jacket, that they
realized they were not on a cannibal isle. Takauha brought Monsieur
George Fordham, an Englishman, to interpret for them, and they were
taken care of. They had broken arms and legs, and heads, too. Mapuhi
bought the ship from Lloyd’s for fifteen hundred francs. Think of that!
He took everything off he could, but the hull, masts, and yards stayed
on. He made thousands of dollars out of the ship, and in his store you
will find the doors and chests and the glass. She was built in
Scotland.”
Her hull and decks of heavy metal, and her masts and yards, great iron
tubes, she had defied even that master wrecker, Mapuhi, to disrobe her
of more than her ornaments. Carried over the reef upon a gigantic wave,
and perched upon a bed of coral in which she now fitted as snugly as in
a dry-dock, she had withstood the storms and tides of years, and
doubtless must stay in that solitary spot until time should disintegrate
her metal and dissolve its atoms in the eternal sea.
The palms on the atoll paraded in battalions, waving their dark heads
like shakos, and the surf shone in silver splashes, as I sat on the
cabin house and watched the dawn unfold. Slowly the moon withdrew. At
half-past five o’clock, the mother of life and her coldly brilliant
satellite were in concert, and the ocean was exquisitely divided by
sunbeams and moonbeams matching for favor in my admiring eyes.
Kopcke reappeared with a cigarette. He had an unusual chance to find me
alone, and was hungry for information.
“There is a passage in the reef at Takaroa,” he said, “but you can bet
the _Marara_ won’t go through it. It is plenty big enough to let her in,
but that takes seamanship. Now, I have seen Mapuhi sail his schooner
through this passage in half a gale of wind, and swing her about inside
in the space most chauffeurs in Tahiti need to turn their automobiles.
No one else would try it. He won’t go in; but Mapuhi would have his crew
stand by, and, with the wheel in his own hands, would tear through the
opening as if he had all the seven seas about him.”
I was below washing my hands, when the roar of the breakers came to my
ears with the call of Moet that a boat was leaving. I rushed to the
waist of the schooner and, catching hold of a belayed rope’s end,
dropped on the dancing thwart. Chocolat made a bound and landed on his
master’s lap. Moet swore, but we were away.
There was a high sea, and for a few seconds it was pitch and toss
whether we could keep right side up. However, we struck the gait of the
rollers, and, with Piri a Tuahine at the long steering oar, moved toward
the beach, urged on by rowers and breakers, but opposed by a strong
outsetting current.
The dexterity of the steersman saved us a dozen times from capsizing.
Often we climbed waves that, but for an expert guidance, would have
crashed over us. Many and many a boat turns over in these “landings” and
spills its life freight to death or hurt. Nearing the passage, a white
and brawling two hundred feet between murderous rocks, the boat had to
be swung obliquely to enter, and we hung upon a comber’s peak for a
seeming age, the rowers sweating furiously at the oars, until Piri a
Tuahine gave a staccato signal. Oars inboard, we rushed down the shore
side of the breaker, and were at peace in a lovely lagoon.
Of the many miles of circumference of Takaroa, a tiny _motu_ was
inhabited by the hundred and fifty people, and on it they had built a
stone quay for small boats. We made fast to it and sprang ashore.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VI
Diffidence of Takaroans—Hiram Mervin’s description of the
cyclone—Teamo’s wonderful swim—Mormon missionaries from America—I
take a bath.
THERE was no stir on the quay of Takaroa. In these latitudes the
civilized stranger is shocked by the indifference to his arrival of the
half-naked native. It enrages a prideful white. He perhaps remembers the
pages of Cook and the other discoverers, who wrote of the overflowing
enthusiasm of the new-found aborigines for them; but he forgets the
pages of history since national, religious, and business rivalries
invaded the South Seas. These Paumotuans, and, indeed, most Polynesian
peoples, are kin to pet cats who madden mistresses by pretending not to
hear calls, and by finding views from windows interesting when asked to
show their accomplishments or fine coats. Though they may have seen no
outsider for months, these Paumotuans will appear as unconcerned at a
white visitor’s coming as if circuses dropped in their midst daily. Yet
every movement, every word of a newcomer is as alluring to their
imaginations, bored by the sameness of their days, as a clown’s antics
to a child.
“It is a politeness and pride, not indifference,” had explained my
friend, that first gentleman of Tahiti, the Chevalier Tetuanui, of
Mataiea. “We simple islanders have been so often rebuffed by
uncultivated whites that we wait for advances. It is our etiquette.”
The main thoroughfare of the village stretched up from the quay half a
mile, with one or two ramifying byways, along which straggled the humble
homes of the Takaroans. There were not the usual breakfast fires before
them, as in Tahiti, where breadfruit and _feis_ are to be cooked, nor
did the appetizing odor of coffee rise, as in Tahiti, for Mormonism
forbade coffee to its adherents as it did alcohol and tobacco. Beside
the quay were dozens of cutters, and a small launch. Canoes were being
relegated to lesser civilizations by the fast sailing cutters. Motor
power was new here; almost new in Tahiti. But a few years and it would
be common, for while the islander cared nothing for time, he was
attracted to labor-saving machines.
Captain Moet set the sailors to unload the _Marara’s_ boat, and the
chief of Takaroa appeared. The French, whose island possessions in
Polynesia occupy sea room in spots from eight to twenty-seven degrees
below the equator, and from 136 to 155 west of Greenwich, have left
survive, in title at least, the chieftaincies, the form of government
they found upon seizure. “_Monsieur le Chef_,” they said of the native
officials here, as they did of a head cook in a restaurant. These
chiefs, though nominally the representatives of French sovereignty,
were, in pitiable reality, wretchedly-paid tax collectors, policemen,
and bailiffs. But they often were gentlemen—gentlemen of rich color. The
strapping fellow who had _viséd_ the documents of the _Marara_, though
wearing only denim overalls, lacked nothing in courtesy. A rent
disclosed that the “alls” were over his birth-suit.
[Illustration:
Atoll of Hikuera after the cyclone
]
[Illustration:
The wrecked _County of Roxburgh_
]
I was not arrayed very smartly, having left collar, cravat, and socks,
as well as shirt and undershirt, aboard. Pongee coat and trousers, with
flexible shoes, were in this tropic an ideal compromise with culture.
Open the coat, and the breeze had access to one’s _puris naturalibus_,
and, if one had to swim or wade, little clothing was wetted. The chief
surveyed me, saw that I took no interest in the cargo, and drew his own
conclusion.
“_Ia ora na!_” he said gently, and led me toward the village.
It was seven years earlier that the last great cyclone had devastated
these islands. Takaroa was mute witness of its ruin. The houses were
almost all mere shacks of corrugated iron—walls and roofs of hideous
gray metal. A few wooden buildings, including two stores, were the
exceptions. The people had neither courage nor money to rebuild
comfortable abodes. Lumber must be brought from Tahiti and carpenters
employed. No more unsuitable material than iron for a house in this
climate could be chosen, except glass, but it was comparatively cheap,
easily put together, and a novelty. It was as unharmonious a note among
the palms as rag-time music in a Greek theater, and in the next cyclone
each separate sheet would be a guillotine. Nothing more than a few feet
above the ground withstands these hurricanes, which fell cocoanuts as
fire eats prairie-grass.
We had not walked a hundred yards before a powerful half-caste stopped
me with a soft “_Bon jour!_” A good-looking, clean-cut man of thirty
years, the white blood in him showed most in his efficient manner and
his excellent French.
“You are American,” he said in that tongue in the wildest voice.
“_Mais oui._” I replied.
“I am Hiram Mervin, son of Captain Mervin, owner of the schooner
_France-Austral_. My father is American, and I am half American, though
I speak no English. You may have read of me. I repaired his boat, the
_Shark_, for that American author, Jack. His engine was broken down. He
wanted me to go to Australia as his mechanician, but my father said no,
and when an American says no, he means that, _n’est-ce pas, Monsieur?_”
“Where were you,” I inquired, “when the last cyclone blew?”
His fine brown face wrinkled. Hiram had a firm chin, a handsome black
mustache, and teeth as hard and white as the keys of a new piano.
“Ah, you have heard of how we escaped? _Non? Alors, Monsieur_, I will
tell you. I am a diver, and here I keep a store. We were at Hikueru, my
father and I, when it began to storm. Father watched the barometer, and
the sea. The mercury lowered fast, and the waves rolled bigger every
hour.
“‘The barometer is sinking fast. The ocean will drown the island,’ said
my father. ‘Noah built an ark, but we cannot float on one; we must get
above the water.’
“There were four cocoanut-trees, solid and thick-trunked, that grew a
few feet from one another. Bad planting, _oui_, but most useful. He set
me and some others, his close friends, to climbing these trees and
cutting off their heads, so that they stood like pillars of the temple.
It was a pity, I thought, for we ruined them. Then we took heavy planks
and lifted them to the tops of these trees and spiked and roped them in
a platform.
“_Attendez, Monsieur!_ All this time the cyclone increased. My father
was not with us. It was the diving season on Hikueru, and people were
gathered from all over the atolls, and from Tahiti, hundreds of Maoris,
and many whites. My father was directing the efforts of the people to
save their property. We had not yet thought of our lives being in great
danger. We islanders could not live if we expected the worst.
“A gale from the east, strong but not dangerous, had lashed the water of
the lagoon and made it like the ocean, and then, turning to the west,
had driven the ocean mad. Now the ocean was coming over the reef, the
waves very high and threatening. We knew that if ever the sea and the
lagoon met to fight, we would be the victims. Thus, Monsieur, the lagoon
surrounded by the island, and the usually calm waters inside the outer
reef, were both in a frightful state, and we began to fear what had been
in other atolls. My father was wise, but, being a Mormon and also an
American, he must not think of himself first. My father came to us and
tested the platform, and showed us where to strengthen it.
“‘The island will be covered by the sea and the lagoon,’ he said. ‘Make
haste, in the name of God!’
“Some one, a woman, called to him for help, and he ran to her. A sheet
of iron from a roof came through the air, and wounded him. I thought his
head was almost cut off, from the quantity of blood. _Mais, Monsieur,
c’etait terrible!_ We caught hold of my father, and made a sling with
our ropes, and lifted him, unconscious, to the platform at the top of
the trees. He raised his head and looked around.
“‘Go down again!’ he commanded. ‘Cut down those three trees. If they
fall they will strike us.’
“Monsieur, that was my father, the American, who spoke, though nearly
dead. He was wise. We did as he said, as quickly as we could, and
climbed back to the platform. The great breakers of the ocean were now
far up on our beach at each end of the tide. The whole width of the land
from the edge of the beach to the lagoon is but the length of four or
five cocoanut-trees. The water below the atoll was forced up through the
coral sand, Monsieur, until it was like the dough of the baker when he
first pours in the cocoanut juice. People still on the ground went up to
their arms in it. We feared the atoll would be taken back to the depths.
Our platform was nearer the lagoon than the moat—to be exact, two
hundred feet from the moat, and a hundred from the lagoon. My father had
us tie him to the platform and to the trees. We had brought plenty of
ropes for that.
“_Mon Dieu!_ Below the poor people were tying themselves to the trunks
of the cocoanut-trees, and climbing them, if they could, and roosting in
the branches like the wild birds of the air. They were shrieking and
praying. There were many whites, too, because all the pearl-shell and
pearl buyers, and the keepers of stores like us, were there from
Papeete. The little children who could not climb were crying, and many
parents stayed with them to die. The sea was now like the reef, white as
the noon clouds with foam. We had bound my father’s wounds with my
shirt, but the blood dripped on the boards where he lay with his eyes
open and watching the cyclone.”
The chief, who had accompanied me, became restless. He understood no
French.
“_Monsieur l’Americain_, do I detain you?” Hiram Mervin asked me.
I signed for him to continue.
“Then came the darkness. There were only the sounds of the wind and
water, the crash of the cocoanut-trees as they fell with their human
fruit. We heard the houses being swept away; we thought we caught
glimpses of vessels riding on the breakers, and we imagined we caught
the shrieks of those being destroyed. But the wind itself sounded like
the voices of people. I heard many calling my name.
“‘Hiram Mervin, pray for us! Save us!’ said the cyclone.
“Ah, I cannot tell it! It was too dreadful. It was hours after darkness
that the sea reached its height. Those below were torn from hummocks of
coral, from the roofs of houses, and from trees. We knew that the sharks
and other devils of the sea were seizing them. The sea rushed over the
land into the lagoon and the lagoon returned to the sea. When they met
under us, they fought like the bulls of Bashan. Hikueru was being
swallowed as the whale swallowed _Iona_, the _perofeta_. We held on
though our trees bent like the mast of a schooner in a typhoon. We
called often to one another to be sure none was lost. When morning came,
after night on night of darkness, the waters receded, and we saw the
work of the demon. Almost every house had been cut down, and most of the
trees. The cemeteries were washed up, and the bodies, bones, and skulls
of our dead for decades were strewn about or in the ocean. The lagoon
was so full of corpses old and new that our people would not fish nor
dive for shells there for a long time. The spirits are still seen as
they fly through the air when there is a gale. But, Monsieur, our four
cocoanut-trees had stood as the pillars of the temple of Birigi’ama
Iunga. Not for nothing was my father born in America. _Mais, Monsieur_,
the chief is waiting. The _mitinare_ will be glad to see you. _Au
revoir._”
Hiram took a step to return to the quay when he called back to me. “Ah,
there is Teamo, who is the Living Ghost,” and he pointed to a Paumotuan
woman who was coming up from the quay towards where we three stood.
Teamo had the balanced gait of one who sits or stands much in canoes,
and she strode like a man, her powerful figure showing under her red
Mother-Hubbard which clung close to her stoutish form. Short, she was
like most of the Paumotuans, of middle height, but with her head set
upon a pillar of a neck, and her bare chocolate arms, rounded, but
hinting of the powerful muscles beneath the skin. Her hair was piled
high on her head like a crown, and upon it was a basket in which were
two chickens. A live pig was under her arm. She was carrying this stock
from our boat.
“There,” said Hiram, “there is Teamo, who is the greatest swimmer of all
these seas, and who went through the great cyclone as does a fish.
_Haere mai!_” he called, “This _monsieur_, who is an American, like my
father, wants to hear about your swimming of the seas in the _matai
rorofai_.”
Teamo put down her pig and the chickens from her head, sat upon her
haunches, and drawing a diagram in the coral sand, she told her strange
tale in her own language.
“The water is coming over the atoll, and the lagoon and the sea are
one,” said Teamo, “when my brother and sisters and I climbed the great
cocoanut-tree by our house, because it is death below. You know the
cocoanut-trees. You see they have no limbs. You know that it is hard to
hold on because the great trees shake in the wind, and there is no place
to sit. Only we could put our arms around the leaves and hold as best we
might. When it comes on dark we feel the wind roaring louder about us,
and we hear the cries of those who are in other trees. Then far out on
the reef we hear the pounding of the sea and the waves begin more and
more to come over the atoll until they cover it deeper and deeper, and
each succeeding wave climbs higher and higher toward where we cling. We
know that soon there will come a wave whose teeth will tear us from the
tree.
“That wave came all of a sudden. It was like a cloud in the sky. It
lifted me out of the cocoanut-leaves as the diver tears the shell from
the bank at the bottom of the lagoon. It lifted me and took me over the
lagoon, over the tops of all trees, and when it went back to the ocean,
it carried me miles with it. I was on the top of its back, almost in the
sky, and it was as black as the spittle of the devilfish.”
The chief was listening attentively, for she spoke in Paumotuan. Hiram
Mervin interposed:
“Teamo went away from Hikueru on that wave and stayed three days,” said
he. “She was numbered with the dead when the count of the living was
made by my father.”
Teamo squatted on the sand of the road. I was afraid she would weary in
her relation, as do her race. “_Parau vinivini!_” I said, and smoothed
her shoulders.
“I kept upon its back,” she resumed. “All through that night I swam or
floated, fighting the waves, and fearing the sharks. I called on
Birigi’ama Iunga and on Ietu Kirito, and on God. Hours and hours I kept
up until the dawn. Then I saw a coral-reef, and swam for it. I was
nearly crushed time and time on the rocks, but at last I crawled up on
the sand above the water, and fell asleep.
“When I awoke I was all naked. The waves had torn my dress from me, and
the sun was burning my body. I was bruised and wounded, but I prayed my
thanks to the God of the Mormons. I stood upon my feet, and I saw all
about me the _pohe roa_, the blackening and broken bodies of people of
Hikueru. They, too, had floated on the same wave, but they had perished.
They were all about me. I searched for cocoanuts, for I was drying up
with thirst and shaking with hunger. At last I found one under the body
of my cousin, and, breaking it with a rock, I drank the water in it, and
again fell asleep.
“Now when I awoke I was stronger, and a distance away in the water I saw
a box floating. I broke it open, and found it had in it tins of salmon.
They were from some store in Hikueru, for I soon knew there was no
living human on that atoll but me. I could not open the tins of salmon
but pierced holes in them with a piece of coral and sucked out the fish.
God was even better to me, for I found a camphor-wood chest with a shirt
and _pareu_ in it, and I put them on. I then found a canoe thrown up on
the beach, and it was half full of rain-water. I made up my mind to
return to my home in the canoe. It was broken and there was no paddle. I
patched it, I found the outrigger, and tied it on with cocoanut-fiber
which I plaited. I made a paddle from the top of the salmon case, and
lashed it to the handle of a broom I found. I kept enough fresh water in
the canoe, and after two days of eating and resting I pushed out in the
canoe, with the remainder of the salmon. I could not see any other
atoll, but I trusted to God and prayed as I paddled. I pushed over the
reef at daybreak of the third day, and paddled until the next morning,
when I saw Hikueru, and reached the remnants of my village.”
Teamo gathered up her burdens and, with a reminiscent smile, walked on.
“_Monsieur l’Americain_,” said Hiram, “you may be sure that when she
returned to Hikueru from Tekokota—that atoll was fifteen miles away—they
were afraid of her, as the friends of Lataro when Ietu Kirito raised him
from the dead.”
The chief’s restlessness increased, as if he must deliver me somewhere
quickly; but I thought of the man they called the king of the Paumotus.
“The house of Mapuhi, is it—”
“The chief is taking you there now,” said Hiram. “The elders are there.
My father was long-time the partner of Mapuhi. They sailed their
schooners together and had their divers.”
“You and your father are Mormons?”
“_Nous sommes bons Mormons_,” replied the half-caste, seriously. “Am I
not named for the king who built the temple of Solomon. It is a shame,
Monsieur, that those _Konito_ are permitted in these islands. They
corrupt the true religion.”
The chief touched my arm, and we proceeded, after an exchange of bows
with the son of the American. We walked to the very end of the small
_motu_ or islet. The _motus_ are often long but always very narrow,
between three hundred and fifteen hundred feet.
The people of Takaroa had chosen to pitch their huts on this spot of the
whole atoll because of the pass into the lagoon being there. That was
the determining factor just as the banks of rivers and bays were
selected by American pioneers. Where the salt water was on three
sides—the moat, the lagoon, and the channel between the next _motu_—was
the residence of our seeking.
It was a neat domicile of dressed lumber, raised ten feet from the
ground on stilts. It was fenced about, and here and there a banana-plant
or fig-tree grew in a hole dug in the coral, surrounded by a little wall
of coral and with rotting tin cans heaped about. Driven in the trunks
were nails. I asked the chief the reason, and he replied vaguely that
the trees needed the iron of the cans and the nails.
We were entering the grounds now, and I guessed it was Mapuhi’s house.
“Mapuhi is here?” I inquired.
“_’E_, he is at prayer, maybe.”
The chief shrank back, as we were on the porch.
“_Faaea oe; tehaeri nei au._ You stay; I go,” he said.
On the side veranda, a girl of seventeen or so, in a black gown, lay on
a mattress and yawned as she scratched her knee with her toes—not of the
same leg. She was almost naked, slender and very brown. These Paumotuans
are darkened by the sun, their hair is not long and beautiful like the
Tahitians’. Beauty is a matter of food and fresh water. She lay on this
bare mattress, without sheets or pillows, evidently just awakening for
the day. She made quite a picture when she smiled. The daughter of the
king, doubtless.
There was a noise in response to my knock, and the door opened. A
tousled pompadour of yellowish-red hair above hazel eyes peeped out, the
eyes snapped in amazement, and their owner, a strapping chap of
twenty-five, put out his hand.
“Hello! Where are you from?” he said.
“Off the _Marara_ just now, and from the United States not long ago.”
“Well, gee cricketty, I’m glad to see you! My name’s Overton, T. E.
Overton of Logan, Utah. Come here, Martin! He’s Martin De Kalb of
Koosharem, Utah. We’re Mormon elders. Say, it’s good to talk United
States!”
A body leaped out of bed in an inner room, and a pair of blue eyes under
brown hair, an earnest face, supported by an athletic figure in pajamas,
rushed out. The owner seized my hand.
“I’ll be doggoned! I didn’t know anything was in sight. The _Marara_!
Any mail for me? Come in, and we’ll dress.”
The king’s daughter had fled when the missionaries appeared. I entered
the living-room and found a chair, while the elders flooded me with
questions from their sleeping quarters, as they put on their clothes.
While I answered, I looked at the home of this foremost of the
Paumotuans, whose father and mother had eaten their kind.
A dining-room table and half a dozen cheap chairs were all the
furniture. South Sea Islanders found sitting in chairs uncomfortable,
and these were plainly guest seats, for governors and pearl-buyers and
missionaries.
The walls held prints curiously antagonistic. Brigham Young, founder of
the Utah Mormon colony, with a curly white beard, smooth upper lip, and
glorified countenance, sat in an arm-chair, holding a walking-stick of
size, with a gilded head. A splendiferous colored lithograph of the
temple at Salt Lake flanked the portrait.
On the other wall was a double pink page from a New York gazette,
usually found in barber-shops and on boot-black stands, with pictures of
two prize-fighters, Jeffries and Johnson, one white and the other black,
glaring viciously at each other, and with threatening gloved fists.
Beneath this picture was in handwriting:
_Teferite e Tihonitone
na
Taata Moto_
Emerging from their bedroom, the elders caught my eyes fastened on the
pink page, and they looked grieved, as housewives whose kitchen is found
in disorder.
“They’re crazy about boxing,” said Overton. “That’s young Mapuhi who put
that up and wrote that. We reprove them for such ungodly interests, but
they are good Mormons, anyhow.”
I led the conversation to their own work in this group. They became
enthusiastic. Sincere faces they had, simple and strong, of the pioneer
type. They were sons of healthy peasantry, and products of plain living
in the open. De Kalb had left a wife and child in Koosharem, and Overton
a sweetheart in Logan, to take their part in spreading their gospel
among these natives. They were voluntary missionaries, paying their own
expenses for the two or three years they were to give to proselytizing,
according to the rule of their church, they said. They were eager to
return to their women and their farms, and their service was soon to be
at an end. Each had spent a year or so in Papeete in the Mormon Mission
House, learning the Paumotuan language and the routine of their duties,
and now for a year and more they had journeyed from atoll to atoll where
they had churches, preaching and making converts, they said. They talked
with fervor of their success.
“The Lord has been mighty good to us,” said De Kalb, who was in his
twenties. “We’ve got this island hog-tied. If it weren’t for the
Josephites and some of those Catholic priests, we’d have every last one.
Those Josephites are sorest, because they are deserters from Mormonism.
Why are they? Why, their so-called prophet was Joseph. I forget his
other name. Oh, no, he was not our martyr, Joseph Smith. They split off
from the real church. They don’t amount to a hill of beans, but when the
Mormons left these islands, because the French were hostyle, these
Josephites sneaked in and got quite a hold by lying about us, before we
got on to their game and came back here. They’re out for the stuff. The
real name of our church here is, _Te Etaretia a Jesu Metia e te feia
mo’a i te Mau Mahana Hopea Nei_.”
“Gosh, I’d like to get my hair cut and roached,” said Elder Overton. “It
was fine, when I left Papeete. I just have to let it go,” and he stirred
his golden shock with the air of a man who has abandoned comfort for an
ideal.
“Do the Paumotuans cling to their heathen customs?” I asked.
Overton looked at the floor, but De Kalb, the older, spoke up.
“They will circumcise,” he said hesitatingly. “We try to stop it, but
they say it is right; that it makes them a separate people. They often
wait until thirteen years of age before prompted to perform the rite.
The kids don’t appreciate it.”
“And tithes? Your church members give a tenth of their incomes?”
Again De Kalb replied:
“They should,” he said. “These Takaroans are just beginning to see the
beauty of that divine law. It is hard to make them exact. Perhaps they
give a twentieth. It’s cocoanuts, you know, and it’s hard to keep
account.”
“Of course, polygamy is—” I was about to say “forbidden,” when I felt
that I had broached a delicate topic. I was stupid. Here in a lagoon
surrounded by a narrow fringe of coral, to bang the eternal polyangle of
one man and many women! The elders looked pained. I was about to
withdraw the remark with an apology, but Westover made the most of his
twenty-four years and waived aside my amends.
“It must be met,” he said. “We obey the laws of the land. The American
law forbids plural marriages, and our church expressly forbids them. We
are loyal Americans. We say to these people that polygamy is not to be
practised. That’s true, no matter what the Josephites say.”
Elder De Kalb, who was watching me, interposed:
“I suppose you’re not a Mormon, but, as a matter of fact, isn’t
polygamy, with wives and children to the extent of a man’s purse, all
avowed and cherished, better than adultery?”
Overton got upon his feet. “You bet it is,” he declared, with intense
feeling. “It’s nature’s law. There are more women than men by millions.
Men are polygamous by instinct. And, by heavens! look at all those old
maids at home and in England!”
[Illustration:
Photo from Underwood and Underwood
Mormon elders baptizing in the lagoon
]
Considering the sorrows of old maids, I felt my standards being
endangered, but was saved from downright perversion by accepting the
royal favor of a tub of fresh water from a cistern that caught the
rain-water from the roof. I was seeking to immerse myself in the
inadequate bath when I saw the daughter of the king gazing at me
interestedly, and I hope that I blushed. But the princess distinctly
winked in the direction of my hosts as I attempted to sink into oblivion
in the ten-gallon pail.
[Illustration:
Over the reef in a canoe
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VII
Breakfast with elders—The great Mapuhi enters—He tells of San
Francisco—Of prizefighters and Police gazettes—I reside with
Nohea—Robber crabs—The cats that warred and caught fish.
TIMES in my life a bath had been a guerdon after days of denial in
desert and at sea, but seldom so grateful as that in the stony garden of
Mapuhi under the tropical sun. My wounds were healing, but the new skin
forming in a score of places bound me like patches of plaster. Not many
houses in the Paumotus were constructed to impound rain, even for
drinking purposes. The cocoanut furnished the liquid for quenching
thirst, or the brackish rain-water retained in holes dug five or six
feet in the coral was drunk by the natives. The Europeans of any
permanent residence gathered the rain in barrels or cisterns, and
sometimes made ample reservoirs, while in a few atolls were little fresh
lakes fed by rains, the bottoms of which were formed by a coral
limestone impervious to water. Such lakes were very precious.
When I went up the steps to the house, I found the Mormon elders fully
dressed and preparing breakfast for three. A can of California peaches,
a small broiled fish, and pilot biscuits were all the meal, but the
grace was worthy of a feast. They bowed their heads, closed their eyes,
and implored God to bless their fare, to make it strengthen them for the
affairs of this world only as they conduced to His greater honor and
glory. And they put in a word for me, “Our brother who has come among us
all unannounced, but doubtless for some good purpose known to Him who
directs the sparrow’s fall, and the sphere’s movements.”
“We have to economize dreadfully,” said De Kalb, apologetically. “We are
spending our savings. Canned goods are dear. But we are saving souls
right along. There is to be a service in the temple in half an hour, and
we would like you to attend. We are going to pray for a successful
_rahui_, the diving season, and for the safety of the divers. You know
they never know when they’re going to come up dying or dead from the
bottom of the lagoon.”
As he spoke there was framed in the doorway a native whom I knew
instinctively to be the monarch of this cluster of atolls. He wore only
a dark-blue _pareu_ stamped with white flowers, but some men have an air
which makes you know at first sight that they are masters of those about
them. So was this Mapuhi, who, of all Paumotuans in a hundred years, had
become distinguished among whites. Mapuhi was a giant in stature, a man
solidly planted on spreading bare feet of which each toe was articulated
as the fingers of a master pianist’s hand. His legs were rounded
columns, the muscles hidden under the pad of flesh, his chest a great
barrel, and below it a mighty belly, the abdomen of a Japanese or
Chinese god of plenty. He was almost black from a life upon and in the
salt water.
His head was huge, a mass of grizzled hair low upon his forehead. His
eyes, very large and luminous, gentle but piercing, gave an impression
of absolute fearlessness, of breadth of mind, and of devotion to his
idea, be it ideal or indulgence. His chin was round and powerful, but
not prognathous. His mouth was well-formed, big and sensual under the
short gray mustache, and not lacking in humor or a trace of irony. His
nose was all but missing, for once when building a schooner an adz had
slipped and cut it off. His face was thus flattened, with a slight
suggestion of a fragment of a Greek gladiator’s head; but it was not so
disfigured as one might think, and preserved a mien of dignity and
reserve force, of moral grandeur and superiority which one might call
kingly were kings as of old. But it was in his eyes I read the reasons
for his rise from the ruck of his race to lordship over it, and to the
admiration of the white traders and mariners whom he bested in all their
own ways—navigation, ship-building, and even trade.
When Mapuhi saw me, he looked inquiringly at the elders, and then
smiled. I saw two rows of teeth, large as my thumb nail, and as
brilliant as the pearl-shell from which he had wrung his vast fortune.
He stood upright, straight as a mast, solid as a tree, and commanding in
every sense. More than seventy years of wrestling with the devils of the
sea and lagoon, and the outcasts of Europe and America, had failed to
bow him an inch or to take from him apparently a single attribute of his
vigorous manhood except that across his broad face ran a score of
wrinkles, which criss-crossed his forehead into diamond panes, and made
one know he had learned the secrets of man and wind and water by fearful
experience.
Thus was Mapuhi who had made the winds and currents his sport, who in
the dark of night ran the foaming passes that the white mariner shunned
even in daylight, and who had made the trees and lagoons of his isles
pay him princely toll. This was the man who alone had outwitted the
white trader who came to take much and give little.
“Good morning,” said Mapuhi, in English, of which he knew only a few
words. He gave me a probing glance, and retired, to appear in a few
minutes in black calico trousers, a pink undershirt, and a belt of red
silk. His eyes asked me if I was a trader come to compete with him. He
sat down in a great chair that vaguely resembled a throne, wrought of
bamboo, and carved, and trussed to bear the exceeding weight of the man,
for Mapuhi was over three hundred pounds. As he sat he inquired of the
elders the reason for my being there. He did it with his foot. He
twisted his toes into the most expressive interrogation, which was a
plain question to the elders. They said in Paumotuan that I was an
American, an important man, but precisely what were my affairs they did
not know. I was interested in Mormonism, in Takaroa, and in the career
of Mapuhi. Assured that I was not another Tahiti trader, Mapuhi put out
his great hands and took into them one of mine, and pressed it, as he
said in Paumotuan, “My island is yours.”
I was loath to talk my poor Paumotuan, because I wanted to get as
closely as possible to the mind of this noblest of his tribe; and so I
conversed in French, except when I appealed to the elders for more exact
meanings in Paumotuan.
“Mapuhi,” I began, “even in San Francisco sailors know your skill in
these dangerous waters.”
“Ah, San Francisco!” said Mapuhi, regretfully. “I was there. I had a
ship built there, and I sailed it to Takaroa. I lived there a week in
your great house into which one drives with horses.”
I conjured a picture of Mapuhi coming in a hack from the dock in San
Francisco to the Palace Hotel, and of the striking contrast between this
mighty man of these isles and the little men of finance and of commerce
who must have dined about him. Kalakaua, king of the Hawaiian Islands,
had lived there, and had died there. But charming as was that prince of
_bons vivants_, he was nevertheless the victim of the white man’s vices,
and as years passed, his appearance became that of an overfed,
over-ginned head porter. Even the patrons of the Palace must have had
some vision of this man Mapuhi on the deck of his schooner, his vast
chest and arms bare, his hair blown by the wind. Or, emerging from the
waters of the lagoon, arising from the plunge to the coral cave where
the lethal shark looks for prey. This was what he spoke in face and form
to me.
“I had seven nights,” said Mapuhi, “in your great house, and seven days
in your streets. The people were like the fish in the lagoon of
Pukapuka, where no man seeks them, and where they crowd each other until
they kill. I went in a room from the ground to where I slept, a room
that moved on a cord; and I rode in other rooms that moved about the
roads on iron bands in which people sat who never said a word to one
another, and who never spoke to me. As I walked in the roads they were
dark as in the cocoanut-groves, for your houses make caves of the roads,
as under the barrier-reef.”
“But, Mapuhi,” I said, “we are happy in our way.”
“You do not laugh much,” returned the chief. “Only I heard the laughter
from the houses in which you sold rum. I am a good Mormon. I do not now
drink your mad waters, but in your city only the mad waters made men
happy. I was a gentile myself many years and did not know the truth. I,
too, drank the mad waters.”
Mapuhi’s eyes sought the picture of Brigham Young which was on the wall,
but mine went to the figures of the prize-fighters, Jeffries and
Johnson. Mapuhi intercepted my glance and immediately became alert.
“Was it possible that I had ever seen _Teferite_ or _Tihonitone_?”
This question was put to Elder Overton, who hesitated to interpret. The
subject was a scandal throughout the Paumotus. I read that in the
preacher’s face, but, comprehending the import of the words, I said that
I knew _Teferite_; that he lived very near me, and that I saw him often
in his store. Once or twice I had bought goods of him. He was getting
very fat since _Tihonitone_ had whipped him, and most of his time he
hunted fish and wild animals. _Tihonitone_, the _neega_, as the
Paumotuans call Afro-Americans, I had seen more than once, I said.
“That _neega_ knocked down the white _Teferite_ and took the hundreds of
thousands of francs given the winner,” said Mapuhi, with spirit. “They
are both great men, but the _neega_ is the greatest. Next to the chiefs
of the Mormon church, they are the greatest Americans.”
“Have you never heard of Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt?” I demanded.
He did not know the man. An acquaintance in Tahiti sent him now and then
the pink paper which contained the pictures of fighting men, of fighting
dogs, and of women whose bosoms and legs were bare. America must now be
full of these fights, and of beautiful women almost naked, he said.
“Your two most famous men, _Teferite and Tihonitone_, sell rum. The
goods you bought of _Teferite_ was rum, for he keeps a rum store in Los
Angelese, and the _neega_, in Keekago.”
Each sentence tore the elders’ hearts, but Mapuhi salved their wounds.
“These men are gentiles, I know,” he concluded. “The elders have
informed me. Mormons sell no rum. But tell me, is _Tihonitone_ master of
his white wife? I have her picture. She is beautiful.”
Overton frowned.
“Mapuhi,” he said, gently, “you make too much of those ‘Police Gazette’
pictures. The godly in America never see them. They are for the
rum-drinkers, and are found only in the resorts of the wicked. Strength
is admirable, but the fighting men of our country are the Philistines
whom Jehovah chastised.”
To me, in English, the Utahan said: “That coon’s licking the white man
has cost the whole white race dear. A preacher in India told me England
could better have afforded to give Johnson five million dollars, for
what it has cost in troops. The same in Africa. The evil of
prize-fighting, was never better exemplified. Jeffries’ beating has hurt
religion seriously.”
Mapuhi and the elders left the room, and returned in a few minutes in
black broadcloth coats and high white collars, in which they sweated
woefully. We all walked to the temple. It was close beside the beach,
built of coral blocks, smeared with cement, white as the ocean foam. Its
iron roof, painted crimson, was the only spot of color on the _motu_,
except the nodding palms.
“It is like the blood of the martyrs,” exclaimed Overton, piously. “The
temple was begun over twenty years ago. Nine years it took to build it,
because the converts were few and poor, and labor scarce. Twice cyclones
leveled it. Ten years ago the Takaroans began it again, and for two
years it has been completed. I know of no more sublime monument to the
true religion than this little temple. Every block of coral is a
redeemed soul. If only the gentiles in America knew the work we were
doing!”
We entered the temple reverently, the congregation, already seated,
nearly filling it. On its rude coral floor were rough benches
accommodating five or six persons each. A pulpit of gingerbread
scrollwork, the only other furniture, was apologized for by De Kalb.
“It was the plainest we could get. It was made for the Catholics. They
like ’em fancy, like their religion.”
Elder Overton preached the sermon. De Kalb read from the Bible and the
“Book of Mormon.” The people who filled the edifice paid all attention.
Serious always in their demeanor, except when affected by alcohol, they
were positively melancholy in religion. All who could afford it wore
black, and the oldsters had long frock coats of funereal hue, and
collars like the Americans.
After the services, I broached to the elders my necessity of a
habitation. With the diving season opening in a few weeks, divers and
traders would be at Takaroa from all about, and the 140 people of the
atoll would be multiplied three or four times. Most of these divers
would crowd in the houses of the natives, and the majority of the
traders would live on their schooners. Mapuhi regretted that all his
accommodations were bespoken.
The elders took me to the house of Nohea, a small, neat cottage, at the
end of the avenue leading from the mole, an avenue all shining white
with coral sand. It reminded me of the shell roads of my native State,
Maryland, in my childhood. It was lined with the shanties and huts of
the inhabitants.
Nohea greeted me quietly. He was a dark man, six feet four inches in
height, big all over, his muscles well insulated by deep fat, and with
the placid giantism of a Yeddo wrestler. He was taciturn, reserved, and
melancholy. Most of these natives became spiritually strained when, as
commonly, late in life, they gave up the wicked pleasures of the
flesh—alcohol, tobacco, and philandering. They lost toleration for
unrighteousness, and the joy that in their unregenerate state had oozed
from their wicked pores turned to acid.
A friend and sometime partner of Mapuhi, and as devout a Mormon, Nohea
was, next to Mapuhi, the foremost figure in the archipelago. He was not
a trader, except that he sold his pearls, shell, and copra for money and
merchandise; but he had dignity, strength, and personality—not quite as
had Mapuhi, but more than any other Takaroan. Among Paumotuans few men
showed distinctive character. Nohea possessed that, and also physical
strength and skill for the diving, for the handling of boats, and for
the making of copra. When there was no white missionary at Takaroa, he
was the hierophant of the Mormon church. He conducted the services and
advised the faithful, collected the tithes, and admonished the sinners.
He did not fail in zeal for that task. Nohea painted a hell darker than
a shark’s jaws, a pit of horror, lit by black flames which burned the
non-Mormons, and a heaven on earth where baked pig was a free dish at
all hours. The Mormon heaven is nearer the Mussulman’s than the
Christian’s. Food and rills of fresh water, many beautiful and
passionate wives, song and feasting, were promised the Paumotuan. Golden
harps and streets of pearl would hardly have brought their tithes to the
church treasury.
The very day I joined him I began to see things through his eyes. I was
bathing at dusk in the clear waters of the lagoon near our home. The
severe heat of the equatorial day had passed, and the still salt lake
was as refreshing to my sun-stricken and coral-scratched body as the
spring of the oasis to the parched traveler. The night was riding fast
after the sunken sun, and driving the last gleam of color from the sky.
As I floated at ease upon the quiet surface of the pale-green lagoon,
the sounds of the murmurous twilight—the rustling of the trees and the
splash of the surf on the outer shore—were made discordant by a peculiar
scraping noise near-by. I turned lazily over on my face and raised my
head from the water.
On the coral in the deceptive half-light of the crepuscule was a
hideous, shell-backed monster, which had emerged from an unseen lair,
and moved slowly and lumberingly toward the cocoanut-trees. Its motions
and appearance, in the semi-obscurity, took on the quality of a
dream-beast, affrighting in its amazing novelty. It was like a great
paper-mâché animal in a pantomine.
I was beset by apprehension that it might advance to the lagoon and
approach me in an element in which it would be my master. I swam swiftly
to shore and called, “Nohea!”
My companion came from near our hut, where on the red-hot coral stones,
which had been made to glow by a fire of cocoanut-husks, he cooked the
fish he had caught that afternoon.
He looked at me inquiringly, and I pointed to the alarming creature now
disappearing in the palm-grove.
“_Aue!_” he cried irascibly, and sprang after the nightmare. When I
overtook him, he was standing at the foot of a lofty cocoanut-tree and
shaking his fist at the object of his pursuit, which was climbing with
unbelievable speed up the slippery gray trunk.
“_I teienei!_ It is the _kaveu_, that devil of the night who robs us of
our cocoanuts while we sleep. But wait! I made a vow to destroy the next
one I found thieving!”
Nohea went a hundred yards to where a banana plant was growing in earth
brought from Tahiti. He gathered clay and leaves, and with painstaking
effort fashioned a wreath of the mixture six inches wide and several
feet in length. I stood in wonderment, guessing that he was making a
charm to bring about the death of the despoiler of the groves.
Nohea took a length of _coir_, the rope the Paumotuans make of
cocoanut-fiber,—from the tree which feeds them, clothes them, and houses
them,—and, tying it into a girdle but little larger than the girth of
the palm, put it about his wrists. The cocoanut-tree had, at regular
intervals upon its trunk, projecting bands of its tough bark, and about
the first of these above his head Nohea slipped the rope. He pulled
himself up by it, and, clasping the tree with his legs, seized a higher
holding-place. Thus he proceeded with ease until he had reached a point
half-way of the lofty column. There he halted, and, taking from his
shoulders his matted band, he plastered it firmly around the trunk.
He then slipped to the ground. I was as puzzled as a boy who was told at
sailing that the ship was weighing its anchor, and saw no scale.
“That will do for him,” said Nohea, “as the reef shatters the canoe when
the steersman fails to find the pass.”
He returned to the fire, and soon we were absorbed in the pleasant
processes of supper. We lived simply, becoming near-to-nature folk, but
we had plenty. First, we ate _popo_, tiny fish we had snared in our
traps, and which we swallowed raw, after a soaking in the juice of
limes. With our _bonito_ steak we had broiled cocoanut-meat, and for
drink we opened the wondrous chalices of the green nuts and enjoyed the
cool wine. There was no breadfruit, for these islands of stone afforded
no nourishment to such delicate and rich plants. But we had ship’s
biscuit from the schooner, and for desert a pot of loganberry jam.
Nohea, his stomach full, sat contemplatively on his haunches. Now and
then he cocked his ear toward the cocoanut-grove, but he said nothing.
The crown of the tree in which the giant crustacean had vanished was
lost in the gloom of night. A slight breeze sprang up from the distance
toward the Land of the War Fleet, and _pandanus_ and _mikimiki_ bushes
nodded and gave forth little noises as their leaves and branches rubbed
together.
Over all was the atmosphere of mystic aloofness which the white feels so
keenly in these far-away dots—the utter difference of scene and incident
from the accustomed one of the home land. I mused about my own future in
these little known tropics—
Nohea cautiously raised himself to his feet, and, motioning me to be
silent, directed my attention to the tree up which had gone the ugly
marauder an hour before. We heard plainly a grating, incisive noise, and
in a moment a huge cocoanut fell from among the swaying leaves to the
earth.
A smothered exclamation of fury broke from the Paumotuan, but he made no
step and continued pointing at the palm. Then I heard a scratching, and
peering through the darkness with the aid of my electric torch, I saw
the colossal crab coming down the trunk. He held on to the slippery bark
by the sharp points of his walking legs, and backwardly descended with
extreme care.
Nohea watched intently as the animal neared the girdle of clay and
leaves. I noted his excitement, but still could not resolve his plan. It
flashed upon me as its success was established in an instant of action.
The robber-crab, touching the clay, moved less carefully, and suddenly,
to my astonishment, let go his hold, and with claws wildly beating the
air, whirled downward from the height of forty feet, crashing on the
rocks at the foot of the tree. In a second Nohea was upon him with a
club of purau wood. But there was no need for further punishment. The
drop had caused instant death. The immense shell was smashed and the
monster lay inert upon the coral stones.
The diver sprang in the air and clapped his hands rapidly, as might a
winning better at a prize-fight.
“The fool!” he said. “He has no _koekoe_—no bowels of wisdom. He thought
the clay was the bottom, and that he was already with the nut he had
robbed me of, and which he could open and eat. Many I have killed like
that one, but it takes time. I have had such a thief steal my _pareu_
for his house, and a bottle of kerosene for mere mischief. We will eat
the flesh of this one’s legs, and I will melt his fat against the
_rahui_ when I might have rheumatism.”
Nohea showed me a great mass of blue fat under the _kaveu’s_ tail, and
from this he boiled down a quart of the finest oil. It was not only a
specific for rheumatism but the best possible lubricant for
sewing-machines and clocks, he said. He put some of the oil in the sun,
and when thickened it made butter, though not with a milky taste.
This thievish crab seemed marked by his star—doubtless of the Cancer
constellation—to play a deceptive part in the crustacean world, for not
only had he practically abandoned the water as his element, learned to
climb trees, and to eat food utterly foreign to his natural appetite,
but he had a habit of hiding his tail when the rest of his body was in
full view. He would stick it in any convenient hole, under a log, or
even in the cocoanut-shell he had emptied. He was over-conscious and
seemingly ashamed of it, like an awkward man of his hands at a wedding.
The _kaveu’s_ descent from the hermit-crab family might explain his
tail-concealment custom, for the hermit concealed his entire body in a
borrowed shell, and so, perhaps, the robber-baron was but showing an
atavistic remnant of the disguise instinct. The whole crab tribe seemed
tainted with this fear of being merely themselves. Many of them picked
up a piece of seaweed and stuck in on their projecting curved bristles,
and let it grow as a kind of permanent bonnet. Others took pieces of
live sponge, and fastened them to hooks on their backs. One clever chap
stitched seaweed threads together to form a tube, and then crawled into
it. And one masonic crab mixed a sandy cement and plastered its back
with it until it looked like the floor of its pond.
These specious masqueraders selected colors, too, to suit their
background, and the seaweed or sponge must match the environment or be
rejected. Older and hardened backsliders invited oysters and other
mollusks and worms that live in limestone pipes to dwell on their
shells, and move about with them. I was convinced that these
low-down-in-the-scale beings knew more about their environment, and
practised “safety first” more assiduously, than did man himself. The
biggest robber-crab in the Takaroa groves could not have got a humble
hermit brother to volunteer to go to war against a crab colony, or risk
his life to glorify the crab state.
[Illustration:
Photo by Dr. Theodore P. Cleveland
Robber-crab ascending tree at night. One of the few photographs taken
of
the marauder in action
]
In carrying a cocoanut, the robber crab held it under some of its
walking legs, and retired, raised high on the tips of its other members
a foot from the ground. Its body measured two feet long by eighteen
inches wide. It did not use its claws in ascending the tree, but clung
with the sharp points of its legs; and I saw it go up steep rocks upon
these. The remarkable strength of this mollusk was proved when one was
placed in an ordinary tin cracker-box, which it could not take hold of,
and a few hours later had twisted off the lid. Nohea said that they were
not easy to trap, and that more than once a Paumotuan, who had climbed a
tree in the night to procure nuts, to his great horror had had his hair
seized by a crab. He said that usually they bit off from six to ten nuts
upon each ascent of a palm.
[Illustration:
Photo from Dr. Theodore P. Cleveland
Where the _Bounty_ was beached and burned
]
“The _kaveu_ likes to eat the young turtles when they are hatched and
making their first journey to the water,” Nohea informed me. “The crab,
knowing where the eggs are buried, watches them as they mature in the
sand.”
I told Nohea of the crabs I had seen in Japanese waters, some stretching
seven or eight feet, and another which bore a human face upon its back.
To see one of the latter crawling upon the sand was to see what
apparently was a human mask moving across the beach. The Japanese said
that these crabs were never known until after a fleet of pirates had
been destroyed, and the leading villains beheaded upon the sea-shore.
Against the rat, which was perhaps a worse enemy of the beneficent
cocoanut than the crab, my friend Nohea had no safeguard. He could not
afford to encircle his trees with bands of tin, as did corporate owners
of plantations in Tahiti, but he told me, with great appreciation, the
story of Willi, the clever American dentist, and his atoll of Tetiaroa,
near Tahiti. Once it was the resort of the kings and aristocracy of
Tahiti, the sanatorium to which they went when jaded, or wounded in war
or sport, and to which the belles retired to whiten their complexion by
wearing off the sunburn in the shade of the banyans and cocoanuts. It
was famed in the annals of the _Arioi_, the ancient minstrels of Tahiti,
as a scene of orgiastic dances.
“The atoll of Tetiaroa,” said Nohea, “had always many cocoanut-trees.
The lagoon is as rich in fish as is Takaroa. Never had many people lived
there, for it was _tabu_, and only for the _Arii_, the nobles, and the
_Arioi_. But now it belongs to the man who takes away teeth from the
head, and who hammers gold upon those that remain.”
The master diver spun his tale vividly but slowly. Often he repeated the
same statement, for the Paumotuan speech, like that of all Polynesia, is
a picture language, and iteration and harping is the soul of it, as of
the ancient Hebrew chronicles.
Upon my mat and gazing into the expressive eyes of the diver, I recalled
what I myself had been told by the owner of Tetiaroa, and, with Nohea’s
story, pieced together the facts.
Dr. Walter Johnstone Williams, the dentist of Tahiti for twenty years,
had, as related Nohea, taken away the teeth of the South Sea Islanders
or gilded those which remained. They love those shiny, precious-metal
teeth, these children of the tropics, and would give almost anything to
gain the golden smile they admired. So when the royal family of Tahiti
fell in debt to Dr. Williams, they bartered, in exchange for fillings
and pullings, facings and bridges, and for other good and sufficient
consideration, the wondrous atoll of Tetiaroa. Upon it the shrewd and
skillful dentist found tens of thousands of cocoanut-palms which had
grown as volunteers in the generous way of tropic verdure, and he
himself planted tens of thousands more in order to increase the copra
crop. He found a plague of rats, and, being unwilling to expend the
large sum that would be needed for the metal bands which would frustrate
the rats, he longed for a Pied Piper to lead the pests into the sea. But
he bethought himself of the proverbial appetite of the domestic cat for
the rat, and, lacking a magic whistler, he advertised for cats, offering
to pay a franc for each one brought to his house by the Papeete quay. He
had copies of his advertisement struck off on the press and posted upon
the trees in and about Papeete, as was the custom.
The result was a flood, a deluge, a typhoon of cats. The Tahitian boy
was as eager as his American brother to earn a few coins to spend on
luxuries; and so the cats, much like our own in appearance except for
their tails, which were curved like a question-mark, came in bags, in
boxes, and in nets, while others were personally conducted, yowling, in
the arms of the Tahitian youth.
Dentist Williams had not expected so many, and had much trouble in
finding places for them to reside until he could remove them to
Tetiaroa.
There were cats in his office, cats on the landings, cats in every room,
and his garden was a boarding-place of felines. When more than a
thousand had been collected, he posted a notice to ward off any further
sellers, and, chartering a schooner, hastened with his live cargo to the
atoll. There was no necessity of putting down a gangway from the vessel
to the little wharf at Tetiaroa, for once she was made fast it needed
but the loosening of their bonds to cause the thousand cats to reach the
shore in one bound from the deck.
Of course, the cats set immediately about their pleasant business of
catching and eating the rodents. There were tens of thousands of them,
perhaps hundreds of thousands, because the island had been little
inhabited for many years and the rats had been multiplying unmolested.
But with a thousand South Sea Island cats to prey upon them, the easy
supply of rats was soon exhausted. Then the cats chased them up and down
the trees, in and out of caves and from every refuge, so that there came
a day when the last rat was in the maw of a cat.
Meanwhile, with such rich meat diet the cats increased mightily. When
the rats were all gone, they were confronted with the problem of
existence for uncounted thousands of cats. They might have learned to
eat cocoanuts, but they had become such confirmed meat-eaters that they
would not abandon their carnal appetites. They did what greed does the
world over—what the Russians did recently—they began to eat one another.
And they followed the example of industrialism which takes the young in
factories.
First toms and tabbies lay in wait for the children of other cats, and
soon there was not a kitten left alive, nor could the parents prevent
the devouring of their children because of the avid hunger of the
adults.
With the kittens gone, began a struggle, with the death of all as the
apparent end in view. Swifter and stronger cats slew weaker cats, and
the cats which allied themselves in bands, attacked distant strongholds
of cats. Slowly and surely went on this internecine warfare, with the
seeming certainty that, if not halted, one day the last two cats on
Tetiaroa would face each other in the final contest of prowess. Then one
lone cat might remain doomed to certain death from starvation, because
there would be no meat left.
Once on a leviathan Atlantic liner, when the usual exterminating process
of hydrocyanic gas could not be used, all food was removed, and the rats
were left to starve, with a dozen cats to hasten the end. But the rats
ate the cats, and then the leather cushions, and finally their weaker
brethren, until the last rat died of starvation.
But on Tetiaroa when there were but a few dozen of the quickest,
cleverest, and strongest cats remaining, the process suddenly stopped.
Atavism, heredity, or the stern battle for life, developed in the
survivors unusual intelligence, or they had a return of plain cat-sense.
Perhaps they held a powwow, or meowmeow, or whatever a council of cats
should be called, and decided upon the one course that would preserve
their species. In any event, they saved themselves by ending the
warfare. They reverted to the habits of their forefathers, and went
fishing. It is as natural for a cat to fish as for a dog to hunt a
rabbit. Falconer marked the ferocious jaguars of South America lying in
wait upon the shores of the river Plata to seize the fish that passed by
the roots of the trees. My goldfish ponds in California were raided by
cats many times.
“I myself,” said Nohea, “have seen the fisher-cats of Tetiaroa stretched
at length on the shores of the lagoon, awaiting their prey. I have seen
a mother cat, with her kittens stringing in a cue behind her, snaring in
silence, and with paws fierce to strike, the small fish which come in
the eddies of the shallow pools. I have seen the good parent pass a
small fish back to her child and smile under her bristling whiskers at
her cleverness in providing such fare for her little ones.”
The diver ceased speaking, and unrolled his mat. He knelt a moment and
prayed, and then he laid him down, and in a moment his deep breathing
was informing of his serene slumber.
I lay there a few minutes thinking of his story, of the robber-crabs and
the fisher-cats, and above me the vast fronds of the cocoas inclined to
and fro, while, doubtless, other industrious crabs, unwarned by their
kindred’s fate, were climbing for nuts.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VIII
I meet a Seventh Day Adventist missionary, and a descendant of a
mutineer of the Bounty—They tell me the story of Pitcairn island—An
epic of isolation.
MAPUHI, though a zealous Mormon, was not illiberal in his posture toward
other faiths. In his long years he had entertained a number of them as
ways to salvation before the apostles of Salt Lake sent their
evangelists to Takaroa. A day or two after landing he brought to Nohea’s
hut two aliens, whom, he said, I should know, because their language was
my own. He introduced them as Jabez Leek, _mahana maa mitinare_, a
“Saturday missionary,” and Mayhew December Christian, his assistant.
They had come to the atoll to dive in living waters for souls. A few
words and they were revealed as exceptional men, from far-away places.
The Reverend Jabez Leek was my countryman, as were the opposing elders I
had met here and at Kaukura. He said, with our half-defiant local pride,
that he came from the home of “postum and grape nuts.” A divine of the
Seventh Day Adventist persuasion, he cheerfully associated diet and
religion, as do most sects, the Jews with kosher foods and no pork; the
Catholics with abstinence from meat on certain days, and Mormons from
alcohol, coffee, and tea; and Protestants with the partaking of the
Lord’s Supper.
“I am hoping to win for the true Christ a few souls for saving from the
lake of fire in that final day,” said the Reverend Mr. Leek, with the
accent of sincerity. There are few hypocrites among missionaries. They
believe in their remedies.
Mapuhi, when Mr. Leek’s declaration was interpreted to him by Mayhew
December Christian, was stirred. He said so, and the most interesting
subject in the world to elderly people the world over—the state of man
after death—was discussed eagerly, though with the reserve of
proselytizing disputants. They agreed that in Mormonism and Seventh Day
Adventism they had in common the personal reign of Christ on earth and
prophecy. Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet, the pastor from Battle
Creek, Michigan, compared with the God-inspired Ellen G. White, who, he
said, had led humanity back to the infallibility and perfection of the
Bible as the sole rule of life and faith. They both believed in a
Supreme God, and that only in the last century, two thousand years after
his son had been here in person, God had raised up men and women to
conduct sinners to paradise. It had been a revolutionary century in
revealed religion. The Battle Creek preacher began to tell of the
apocalyptic Mrs. White and her prophetic announcements, and Mapuhi was
beginning to prick up his big brown ears when he was called away. The
Mormon elders needed him in a conference. The slow, interpreted speech
of the minister flowed into rapid English as he directed his words to me
and Mr. Christian. The latter was evidently of mixed blood, with
Anglo-Saxon features, light-brown hair, dark-blue eyes, but a dark skin
and the voluptuous mouth of these seas. His voice, too, had a unique
timbre, and his English was slightly confused by Polynesian arrangement
of sentences.
“God has set his seal upon rebellion for his own purposes,” continued
Leek. “The conflict with Satan is fiercer every year, but the Lord
listens to those who supplicate him. He is proof of his mercy.”
He put his hand on the shoulder of Mayhew December Christian.
“The first white settlers in the South Seas were rebels. They were
traitors to their king, murderers, and revolters against religion,
morals, and society. They were in the hands of Satan, and some of them
must perish in the lake of fire after the final judgment. But Christian
here is a true sample of the strange way God works out his plans. He is
a great-grandson of Fletcher Christian, who led the mutiny of the
British ship _Bounty_, and he is a Seventh Day Adventist and a
missionary of our denomination.”
The mutiny of the _Bounty_! A phrase projects a hazy page of history or
raises the curtain upon an almost-forgotten episode. Fletcher Christian!
There was a name. They frightened children with it while he was still
alive, and it became a synonym for insubordination at sea. A thousand
sailors in two generations were spread-eagled or hailed to the mast and
given the cat while the offended officer shouted, “You’d be a damned
Christian, would you? I’ll take the Christian out o’ you!” He and his
desperate gang had committed the most romantically infamous crime of
their time, and their story had been for a hundred years singular in the
manifold annals of violent deeds in the tropics. Their rebellion and its
outcome was written scarlet in the records of admiralty, and for long
was a mysterious study for psychologists, a dreadful illustration to the
godly of sin’s certain punishment, and the most fascinating of
temptations to seamen and adventurers.
The _Bounty_ had gone to Tahiti from England to transport
breadfruit-trees to the West Indies. George III was on the throne of
maritime England, and between the equator and the polar circle his flag
flew almost undisputed. Captain Cook had carried home knowledge of the
marvelous fruit in Tahiti, “about the size and shape of a child’s head,
and with a taste between the crumb of wheaten bread and Jerusalem
artichoke.” The West Indies had only the scarcely wholesome roots of the
manioc and cassava as the main food of the African slaves, and their
owners believed that if the breadfruit were plentiful there, the negroes
would be able to work harder. Lieutenant Bligh, Cook’s sailing-master,
was despatched with forty-four men in the two-hundred-ton _Bounty_ to
secure the trees in the Society Islands, and fetch them to St. Vincent
and Jamaica. When they at last reached maturity there, the slaves
refused to eat them, and another dream of perfection went by the board.
Bligh was a hell-roarer of the quarter-deck, of the stripe less common
to-day than then, only because of such mutinies as it prompted. Crowded
in a leaky ship, with moldy and scanty provisions, half around Cape
Horn, and all around Cape of Good Hope, after twenty-seven thousand
miles of sailing, and a year and two months of harsh discipline and
depressing lack of decent food or sufficient water, the green and lovely
shores of Tahiti were a haven to the weary tars. They were greeted as
heaven-sent, and for six months they ate the fruits of the Isle of
Venus, swam in its clear streams, and were made love to by its
passionate and free-giving women in its groves. When, with a thousand
breadfruit shoots aboard, Bligh ordered up-anchor and away, the contrast
between the sweets of the present and the prospect of another year of
Bligh’s tyranny, with a certainty of poverty in England or hardship at
sea, turned the scale against the commander. An attempt to wreck the
ship by cutting its cable failed, but the second night of the homeward
voyage Fletcher Christian, master’s mate, who had made three voyages
under Bligh, being in charge of the deck, led a mutiny. Bligh was seized
in his bunk, bound, and, with eighteen of the crew who were not in the
plot, and a small amount of food and water, set adrift in a small boat.
Bligh’s party reached Malaysia after overcoming overwhelming dangers and
sufferings, and most of them went from there in a merchant’s ship to
London, where Bligh’s account of the mutiny, and his and his loyal men’s
wanderings, “filled all England with the deepest sympathy, as well as
horror of the crime by which they had been plunged into so dreadful a
situation.” The frigate _Pandora_, with twenty-four guns and 166
fighting men, blessed by bishops, and with a special word from the king,
but just temporarily recovered from his recurrent insanity, sailed
speedily to “apprehend the mutineers.”
Those hearties had meanwhile arranged their own fates. The _Bounty_ was
now a democracy with Christian as president, and the vote, after an
experiment in another islet, was to go back to the fair ones in the
groves of Tahiti. There sixteen of the twenty-five aboard, determined to
become landsmen, and, with the joyous shouts and hula harmonies of their
native friends, transferred their share of the plunder on the ship to
the shore, and went to dancing among the breadfruits. Christian was
shrewder. He knew well the long arm of the British monarchy, and warned
his shipmates their haven would be but for a little while. They were
capering to the pipes of Pan and would not listen, and so with nine
Englishmen, six Tahitian men, ten Tahitian belles, and a girl of
fifteen, the _Bounty_ weighed and steered a course unknown to those who
stayed.
These latter weltered in an Elysium of freedom from humiliations,
discipline, work, and unrequited cravings for mates, and in a perfection
of warmth, delicious viands, exaltation of rank, and amorous damsels.
Chiefs adopted them, maidens caressed them, the tender zephyrs healed
their vapors, and they were happy; until the _Pandora_ arrived, snared
them, and took them in chains to England, where they were tried and
three hanged in chains at Spithead. The _Pandora_ reported that no trace
could be found of the _Bounty_, and the most that could be done was to
anathematize Christian and the mutineers, and to make the path of the
ordinary seaman more thorny, as a deterrent to others.
For twenty-four years England heard nothing of the further movements of
the pirates. The new generation forgot them, but Christian’s name
lingered as a threat and a curse. The ship and crew disappeared as
completely as though at the bottom of the sea; and when their refuge
finally was disclosed, horrifying and also wonderfully poignant chapters
were added to the log of the _Bounty_, and one of the most curious and
affecting conditions of humanity brought to light. The bare outline of
all this is in every Pacific chronography, but one must have heard its
obscure intricacies from a scion of a participant to appreciate fully
their lights and shadows. Mayhew December Christian told me these, and
the Reverend Jabez Leek commented and pointed the moral.
“My great grandfatheh want go farthes’ from Engalan’,” said Mayhew, “and
he look on chart of _Bounty_ an’ fin’ small islan’ not printed but jus’
point of pencil made by cap’in where English ship some years before
find. It was call’ Pitcairn for midshipman who firs’ see it from mas.’
He steer there an’ in twenty-three day _Bounty_ arrive. That where I was
born.”
Not by any spelling or clipping of letters could I convey the speech and
accent of the islander, English, Tahitian, and American,—Middle
Western,—combined into a peculiar _patois_, soft at times, and strident
at others, with admixture of Tahitian words. He went on to tell how his
ancestor and his companions looked with hope at the land which must give
them safety or death. They reached the shore through a rocky inlet and
rough breakers, and, on finding stone images, hatchets, and traces of
heathen temples, were cast down by fear of savages. But as days passed,
and they gradually wandered over the entire island without trace of any
present inhabitants, they felt secure. Its smallness in that vast and
then trackless waste of waters below the line reassured them of its
insignificance to mariners or rulers, it being only five miles long by
two wide, and with no harbor or protected bay. Rugged in outline, and
uninviting from the deck, with peaks and precipices sheer and
sterile-looking, the mutineers were gladdened to walk through forests of
beautiful and useful trees, with fruit and grasses for making native
clothes; and about its borders to be able to catch an abundance of fish
and crustaceans.
They drove and warped the ship into the inlet against the cliff, and
fastened it by a cable to a mighty tree, and in a few weeks removed
everything useful to the upland where they pitched their first camp.
Christian, with the determination and foresight that saved his group
from the ignominious end of those who would not abjure the ease of
Tahiti, insisted on burning the _Bounty_, to remove all indication of
their origin to visitors, and, doubtless, to make impossible belated
efforts to desert their sanctuary. They lived in tents made of the
canvas until they built houses from the ship’s planks, and these among
the spreading trees so that they were completely unseen from the sea.
They had ample provisions from the stores until they could raise a crop
of vegetables, and the plants they brought might supplement those
indigenous. The island was covered with luxurious growths, there was
water, and they extracted salt from pools among the rocks. They parceled
out all the land among the Englishmen, and each with his Tahitian wife
set up his own home. The Tahitian men helped different ones in their
building and cultivation, and in peace and comparative plenty they began
one of the most startling experiments of mankind.
Nine Englishmen, mostly rude sailors, with ten Tahitian women and a
girl, and six Tahitian men,—unevenly divided as to sex, whites and
Polynesians unable to converse except meagerly, with totally different
inheritance and habits,—were there as the experimenters, with no
restraint upon passions or covetings except the feeble check of mutual
interests. A hamlet in the ripest civilization has difficulty to govern
by these. Compromise through a supposed expression of the will of the
majority in elections has become an accepted solvent, but in reality the
determined and organized minority wins usually. On Pitcairn, as in Eden,
a woman caused the failure. After two years of associated achievement,
the wife of Williams, a mutineer, having fallen to death from a cliff
while gathering sea-birds’ eggs, that subject of King George demanded
and was awarded the wife of a Tahitian comrade. The committee of the
whole, Anglo-Saxon whole, in contemplation of their own naked souls,
could not deny Williams. The woman left the hut of her husband and
shared the couch of the victor in the award. There was no appeal, for
the supreme court, as in America, was final, no matter what the congress
of the people wished. The lady was complacent, but the cuckolded
Tahitian got together his color majority and protested. He was told to
nurse his wrath in hell, and the court administered summary sentences to
all who disputed its power or equity. Timiti had murmured, but, as mere
treason was too sublimated a charge, they brought another against him,
and the tribunal was assembled, with the entire citizenry as witnesses
and auditors. Christian walked up and down in the house as evidence was
offered, and once, as he turned, Timiti, sure of the court’s finding,
flew out of the door. He escaped to the other shore of the island, but
after weeks was decoyed by false promises and murdered as his deceivers
combed his tangled hair, a sign of friendship.
[Illustration:
Photo from Dr. Theodore P. Cleveland
The church on Pitcairn Island
]
The remaining Tahitian males formed a committee of vigilance, and voted
to rid the island of the entire supreme court. Its members were saved
from immediate assassination by their wives, who, in the way of women on
continent and islet, loved them because they were the fathers of their
children. Moreover, since Cook claimed as paramour in Hawaii the
Princess Lelemahoalani, dark women have been fired by ambition for
social and environmental climbing on a white family tree. The wives of
the English in Pitcairn were able to inform their husbands through the
gossip of the wives of the Tahitians, who also sided with the whites.
One carried her adherence far enough to murder her spouse while he
slept. Life was made fearful for these wives, and once they constructed
a raft and were beyond the breakers to sail to Tahiti or oblivion, when
the Englishmen’s women’s wailing and pleading induced them to return.
For months more it was touch and go as to survival. Murder stalked
hourly, and the oppression of the whites became that of masters towards
slaves. Then the Tahitians crept into their huts and secured the
firearms, and with these hunted down the Europeans. They killed first
John Williams, the successful litigant, and then Fletcher Christian, the
chief justice, and, quickly, John Mills, Isaac Martin, and William
Brown. William McCoy, John Quintal, and John Adams were fleet enough to
reach the woods, and Edward Young, midshipman of the _Bounty_, beloved
of all the women, was secreted by them. John Adams when hunger-pressed
showed himself, and was shot and badly wounded. He ran to the bluff
above the sea, and was about to hurl himself to destruction when induced
to refrain by his pursuers, whose hearts failed them. Adams, Young,
McCoy, and Quintal, but a quartet of the nine mutineers, remained, and
five of the six Tahitian men. The latter had cut down the four to a
minority of the male populace, and were delighted to swear eternal
amity. Adams recovered, and, at a midnight session, the whites released
themselves from their oaths and decreed the wiping out of every male but
themselves. They swore as allies the widows of the other sailors, and,
as fast as dark opportunity offered, the decree was executed. They were,
shortly, the only men.
[Illustration:
Photo from Dr. Theodore P. Cleveland
The shores of Pitcairn Island
]
Now was a second chance for peace and success. The experiment of putting
together without higher authority a band of white men with women and
slaves as spoils had miscarried. The inferior tribesmen were finished,
but there were four of the higher race, and eleven native women, still
subjects for further probation. One would say for certain that on that
lonely speck of land, having glutted any blood lust, and with twelve of
their number already dead, these four men of the same race, religion,
and profession would get along somehow. It was not to be.
“McCoy,” said Mayhew December Christian, “liked to drink liquor. Before
he was a seaman he worked in a distillery in England, and on Pitcairn he
distilled _ti_ leaves in his tea-kettle. They all had drunk his alcohol,
and it had been a factor in the quarrels. He got worse as he became
older, and he and Quintal kept up a continuous spree until the devil
gripped McCoy for his own, and McCoy tied a rock around his waist and
leaped into the sea. Three whites were left, and Quintal had learned
nothing from the past. He drank the _ti_ liquor, and when his wife came
from fishing with too few fish he bit off her ear. When she fell from
the cliff and was drowned, Quintal, with all the other women to choose
from, demanded the wife of one of his two shipmates. He made terrible
threats against both of them, and they knew he meant what he said.”
In the first case since its institution the court of Pitcairn divided.
Adams and Young, taunted by the continuing insults of Quintal to their
matrimonial integrity, and faced with the probability of extinction
unless they acted vigorously, seceded from the minority. They deluded
Quintal into a momentary incautiousness when the recurrent insistence of
his demand was being quarreled over in the presence of the entire
community, and butchered him with a hatchet.
“I heard the daughter of John Mills, an old woman, relate the incident,”
said Mayhew. “They were gathered together, children and all, in Adams’s
house, when he and Young jumped upon Quintal and chopped him to pieces.
The blood was everywhere, she said, and we grew up with a song about it.
My mother used to croon it to me on her lap.”
Young, midshipman, of gentle breeding, and a serious man at his
lightest, faded away, and in his last, melancholy days, uttered the name
of God. Convinced that Adams would not strike him down, he gave way to a
conviction of sin, the remembrance of his childhood at home. He died
begging for mercy, which Adams assured him would be granted to a
contrite heart. They laid him in a grave upon the land he had
cultivated, and over him was said the first word of funeral sermon
pronounced in Pitcairn. John Adams, the preacher, of the fifteen males
who had sailed in the _Bounty_ from Tahiti, was sole survivor. Fourteen
had perished, thirteen violently, in the search for happiness and
freedom from restraint. Man had almost annihilated his brother.
John Adams had a dream in which it was pointed out to him that upon his
head was not merely the blood of the many who had been murdered, but
that the bodies and souls of the innocents remaining were in his care.
“Thou art thy brother’s keeper,” said the scroll in his vision. He
counted his human kind. The feud had swallowed fourteen strong and
wilful men, but nature, as it had allowed their crops to grow and their
trees to become fruitful, had preserved eight of the women, and their
fertility had given twenty-three children to the mutineers. Christian
had fathered three, McCoy three, Quintal the bold, five, Young six,
Mills two, and Adams four. Adams drew about him these thirty-one beings,
and commenced a new regimen. He forswore the democracy of Pitcairn, and
in the sweat of his soul dedicated the island to the God of the Bible
and prayer-book that had molded on a shelf until then. In tears and with
vows he gathered his flock about him and daily and nightly expounded to
them verses and read them prayers. He did not lose sight of the material
needs in his flinging himself on the compassion of heaven, but gave
every one a task and saw that it was done. He taught the children
English from these, the only books saved, and it was not the least of
his accomplishments that he was able to make his language theirs, for
their mothers knew nothing of it. The thirty-two became one family, the
eight widows looking upon him as their father, as did the little ones.
Morning and evening, and all Sunday, a stream of prayers for their
welfare and salvation was directed by him toward the seat of the
Almighty, and the theocracy of Pitcairn waxed fat and sweet. With one
head, and many hands, yearly increasing as the children grew, they
perfected their fields and bowers, their fewer houses and their gear,
and, born into the environment, the adolescents became marvelously
adapted to its necessities. When the scene was unveiled to the outer
world, it would have needed a Rousseau to describe its felicity.
Captain Mayhew Folger, a sealer from Boston, commanding the _Topaz_,
lifted the curtain twenty years after the mutiny and ten years after
Adams had become its sole survivor. He sailed to Pitcairn to look for
seals, and offshore was hailed in English by three youths in a boat who
offered him cocoanuts, and told him an Englishman was there. He landed,
and was received with warm hospitality. He put down Adams’s statement in
the _Topaz’s_ log, with the comment that whatever his crimes in the
past, he was now “a worthy man, and might be useful to navigators who
traverse this immense ocean.” He also recorded that Adams gave him hogs,
cocoanuts, and plantains.
England did not gain a clue to the “mystery of the _Bounty_” through the
_Topaz_ log. Captain Folger tarried a day at Pitcairn, and his ship was
confiscated at Valparaiso shortly afterwards by the Spanish governor of
Chile. Young America and England were not close friends, and their
navies and merchant marines were at odds. Six years elapsed before even
the British admiralty knew the facts. They were gained on an expedition
of immense interest to Americans. Captain Porter, of the Yankee navy,
had been not long before in the Marquesas Islands, to which he had taken
prize ships captured in the war between Great Britain and the United
States, and where he had flown the American flag in token of possession,
and killed many helpless natives to indicate his power. The British
captured Porter in the _Essex_, undid at Nuku-Hiva what he had done, and
did it over in the name of King George. Bound from the Marquesas to
Chile, Captain Staines of the _Briton_ unexpectedly sighted Pitcairn and
was confounded at the signs of human life in huts and laid-out fields,
but more so when Thursday October Christian and George Young shouted
from a small boat to “throw them a rope.” Invited aboard the _Briton_
and put at table, they asked a blessing in English, and said they had
been taught by John Adams of the _Bounty_ to reverence God in every act.
The _Briton_ commander, amazed at this apparition of civilization from
the ghostly past, put ashore a party, and investigated the colony of
forty-eight. The stupified Pitcairn folk were afraid that Adams would be
taken prisoner, and he doubtless would have been except for the
pleadings of the young, and especially of Adams’s “beautiful grown
daughter.” The captain stayed a few hours and reported to the admiralty
in England the answer to the _Bounty_ riddle, and that never in his
lifetime had he seen such a model settlement or such virtuous and happy
people. England was at war with Napoleon, and left Adams to time. Ten
years later came a British whaler, and Adams confessed himself old to
its captain. He begged for a helper in governing his commonwealth, and
especially in teaching them. The captain assembled the crew and asked
for a volunteer. John Buffet, twenty-six, cabinet-maker, twice
shipwrecked, and a lover of his fellow, stepped out and was accepted. He
knew that it meant years of isolation from Europe, but that was what he
had craved in his rovings. When his ship was ready to sail, Johnny
Evans, nineteen, Buffett’s chum, was missing. He had hidden in a hollow
stump. The community was obliged to receive him. And so two white men,
fresh from Europe, became members of a family of several score
half-breeds who, in an idyllic simplicity and a gentle savagery, had
lived for years undisturbed by a foreign or dissentient element, and who
in their common affection and openness of heart were remindful of the
Christians of the catacombs. The second period of Pitcairn was ended.
It continued as a secluded handful of people, but new theocracies began
to govern them. God had been always their dependence and lord paramount,
but his vicegerents had guided them in tortuous paths toward his throne.
The Reverend Jabez Leek, who had often supplied links in the chain which
had led the relation of Mayhew December Christian from the mutiny to the
coming of Buffett and Evans, said this:
“I was induced to go to Pitcairn by the devotion of one of its sons to
the place of his birth,” he explained. “I met him in California. He was
a young man, and one of the few Pitcairners who had ever been to
America. He had voyaged to England as a sailor on a ship that had
touched at Pitcairn, and was trying to return home. That seemed
impossible. Twice he had shipped on vessels bound for Australia, with
promises to land him if the wind permitted, and once had sighted his
island, but his ships were driven past both times, and he had been
forced to go half-way round the world on them. He told me that he had
left home in order to earn money to start married life better. He had
engaged himself to a Pitcairn girl, and, as is the custom there, the
marriage day was put three years away. It was already two years and a
half since he had departed. He had not the means to charter a ship,—that
would have cost thousands,—and his health was fast going. Just
homesickness. It was nothing else. The doctors said there was nothing
the matter with his body, but he got weaker. There was no ship offering,
and I doubt if he could have passed muster, but daily he examined the
shipping lists, and often went to the docks and offices to get a chance.
It was he who told me about Pitcairn and its God-fearing people, and he
first introduced me to the true religion of Christ. He was a sincere
Seventh Day Adventist, and confident of the coming of Christ on earth
and of his own salvation. It was pitiful to see him fail. We lodged in
the same house, and I talked to him daily. He said that when he saw
Pitcairn receding in the distance after seven months on the
_Silverhorn_, he could not leave the rail of the ship, and remained
there when night came peering into the darkness until at dawn he had to
take up his duties. His only hope was in God, but he was destined to
wait until the first resurrection, unknowing time or space, until he
comes before the judgment of God. As the day set for his marriage came
nearer, he abandoned desire to live past it, and the only sorrow he had
was that his sweetheart could not know his inability to keep his troth.
He died the day before the three years expired, and in his last moments
advised me that God had made him the channel through which the truth of
religion might be made known to me. His death opened my eyes, and I
accepted the gospel.
“I studied for our ministry, and, with service in other fields, I was
fortunate enough to be chosen to go to Pitcairn after expressing my
earnest desire to see God’s will and power shown in such manifest ways.
Our denomination had its own missionary vessel, the _Pitcairn_, doing
the Master’s work in these seas, and I went on it. On the thirty-third
day we came to Bounty Bay and anchored, and in the boat that put off to
greet us, besides two of our own elders, was this young man,
great-grandson of the Fletcher Christian who had, we fear, died without
knowing God’s mercy. I remained on Pitcairn a long time, a fruitful,
peaceful span, for all there were devout members of our church, and God
had blessed them greatly in faith and works. They had not been without
religious trials, though, and it was only in 1886 that they received the
gift of the truth. Buffett, the young Englishman upon whom Adams put the
teaching, married Midshipman Young’s daughter, Dorothy; and Evans, John
Adams’s girl, Rachel. They were there a half dozen years when George Hun
Nobbs arrived with an American named Bunker. They came from Chile in a
yawl. Nobbs had heard there the _Bounty_ story, and was so excited over
it that he induced Bunker to start out with him for Pitcairn in a small
boat. Nobbs said he was the son of a Marquis, and soon claimed the hand
of Sarah Christian, the mutineer’s granddaughter. Bunker tried for her
sister, Peggy, and when she refused, threw himself from a cliff, as
McCoy had done long before. Nobbs built a house out of the lumber of his
boat, and, because he was the best educated man, took Buffett’s place as
schoolmaster. Buffett was angry, but the people chose Nobbs because
Buffett had fallen once into a very terrible sin. Everybody knew it, and
though he had repented bitterly, it was remembered. Then John Adams died
after forty years on Pitcairn, and thirty of contrition, and Nobbs
became pastor, too.
“A tremendous change came about then. Tahiti was controlled by the
London Protestant missionaries; and they made an arrangement with the
Pitcairners to give them land, and transportation to Tahiti. Every one
was moved to Tahiti, and Pitcairn left uninhabited. In Papeete they saw
for the first time in their lives, money, immorality, saloons, vile
dances, gambling, and scarlet women. Buffett and his family returned
within a few weeks, and after fourteen had died of fever, a schooner was
chartered to take all back. It was paid for by the copper stripped from
the _Bounty_, which had been carried to Tahiti. Back in their old homes,
all was not as before. Adams had never broken the still used by McCoy
and Quintal, and it began to be more active. Nobbs and Buffett, though
good men, liked a drop of the _ti_ juice, and there was a let-down in
strict morality. Things were at a pass when Joshua Hill arrived. In
England he had learned about Pitcairn, and through Hawaii and Tahiti had
come a roundabout route. Hill pretended to have been deputized by the
British Government, and declared he was the governor and pastor, both.
He fired out Nobbs from the church and school, and made no bones of what
he thought of Buffett and Evans, the other Englishmen. Hill was past
seventy, but he had his way. Nobbs, Buffet, and Evans were supported by
Charles Christian, Fletcher’s son, but Hill ruled with an iron hand. He
had Buffett beaten with a cat-o’-nine-tails in public, and announced
that he was going to reform Pitcairn if he had to flog every person. He
quoted Jesus’s action in the temple, and when he heard that several of
the women had been talking about his own dereliction, he called
everybody in prayer to judge them. His own prayer was:
“‘O Lord, if these women die the common death of all men, thou hast not
sent me.’”
“This was going too far, and there were no amens, which made Hill
furious. I have heard this from one who was present. When he learned
about Buffett’s sin, and that it had been concealed from him, he made up
his mind to give Buffett an unforgettable lesson with a whip. Then he
put the three whites on the first vessel touching Pitcairn, and exiled
them. This was the straw that broke Hill’s rule. A schooner captain
brought back the trio, and they and others opposed Hill. An elder’s
daughter took some yams that did not belong to her, and at her trial
Hill said she should be executed for her crime. The father indignantly
opposed any severe sentence. Hill, who had felt his authority lessening,
rushed into his room and returned with a sword, and shouted out for the
father to confess his sins as he intended to kill him immediately. A
grandson of Quintal, who had bitten his wife’s ear off, leaped over a
table, and though he threw Hill down, he could not prevent Hill from
stabbing him many times. Others came to his rescue, and Hill was
disarmed. He was soon deported, as the Englishmen had written to the
British admirality in Chile about his madness, and a war vessel came to
quiet things. Nobbs took hold again, and when our missionary came, they
were ready for the real word of God. Within two weeks they all had given
up Sunday as the Sabbath and were keeping Saturday, the Seventh Day, the
Sabbath instituted at the end of creation, and the day Christ and his
apostles rigidly observed. I loved the Pitcairn brethren. When my time
came to go into other fields, I brought with me Mayhew December
Christian, who had been selected for his understanding of our beliefs
and his spiritual growth.”
The Reverend Mr. Leek stopped, and Nohea, who had awakened with a start
from a fitful slumber, said loudly, “_Amene!_”
“You should read the account of Pitcairn by Buffett’s granddaughter,”
said the minister. “Mayhew, we will sing before we go to sleep our hymn
of Pitcairn, fifth and last verses!”
The descendant of the arch-mutineer led in a mellow baritone, which Mr.
Leek supported in a firm bass:
“We own the depths of sin and shame,
Of guilt and crime from which we came;
Thy hand upheld us from despair,
Else we had sunk in darkness there.
“Thou know’st the depths from whence we sprung;
Inspire each heart, unloose each tongue,
That all our powers may join to bless
The Lord, our strength and righteousness.”
When they had said good night, I felt as sinful as Mary Magdalene; and
Nohea, though the words were Greek to him, sensed their meaning, and
before taking to his mat knelt and groaned deeply.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER IX
The fish in the lagoon and sea—Giant clams and fish that poison—Hunting
the devilfish—Catching bonito—Snarling turtles—Trepang and sea
cucumbers—The mammoth manta.
THE schooner _Marara_ unloaded her cargo of supplies after several days
of riding on and off the lee of the island, and went on her voyage to
other atolls. McHenry and Kopcke joined interests for the nonce, and
tried to draw me into the net they said they were spreading for the
natives. I was convinced that I was as edible fish for them as the
Paumotuans, and, besides, I was determined to avail myself of the
leisure of the wise Nohea before the _rahui_, to learn all about the
fish in the lagoon and sea. An ignorant amateur of the life of the
ocean, I was devoured with curiosity to peer into it under his guidance,
and I was resolute to spend my days in such sport instead of in sleep
after roistering of nights with the traders.
“Nohea,” I said, “will you show me what the Creator has put in the
water? In my country I know the fish, but not here. Soon you will go to
the _rahui_, but we have a few weeks yet, and you are skilled in these
matters.”
The diver replied, “_E_, I will show you”; and he kept his word, with a
prideful exactitude. Days and nights I returned dog-weary, from the sea
and the lagoon, but never once threw myself on my mat and counted my
pains for naught, as scores of times I had on the brooks, bays, and
oceans of America. With our variety of edibles in islands and continents
where there are real soil and domestic animals of many kinds, we can
hardly appreciate the desperate necessity of the Paumotuans to comb the
waters of their bare atolls for food.
The pig, the only domestic mammifer before the whites came a century
ago, ate only cocoanuts, and, like fowls, was generally small and thin,
as well as too expensive for other meals than feasts. Few were the birds
in these white islands. In many only the sandpiper, the frigate, the
curlew, and the tern were found, but in uninhabited atolls others
abounded. I saw many pigeons, black with rusty spots which lived in the
_tohonu_ tree and ate its seeds and also those of the _nono_. Green
pigeons or doves, called _oo_, were sometimes seen. None of these
constituted any part of the diet.
Except for cocoanuts, the atoll yielded few growths of value. The most
characteristic was a small tree or bush with white flowers, the
_mikimiki_, the wood of which was very dense. It grew even in the most
solid coral blocks, and was formerly much used for the great
shark-hooks, for harpoons, and handles for their shovels of shells. The
_huhu_, another little tree, with yellow blossoms and the general
appearance of the _mikimiki_, was useless for timber, but the _kahia_,
with deliciously-perfumed flowers, made an excellent fuel. The _geogeo_
furnished boat-knees, the _tou_ was fit for canoes, and the _pandanus_,
the screw-pine, filled almost as many needs as the cocoanut-palm. Its
fruit was eaten by poor islanders, its wood and leaves formed their
houses, its leaves also made mats and hats and the sails of the _pahi_,
the sailing canoes, and, as throughout Polynesia, the wrappers of
cigarettes. All the clothing was formerly made of this prince of trees
for native wants. The _tamanu_ was scarce, and _purau_; but there were
some herbaceous plants, the _cassytha filiformis_, which climbed on the
_huhu_ and the _mikimiki_; a little _lepturus repens_; a heliotrope; a
cruciferous plant, and a purslane that afforded a poor salad, and was
also boiled. I also saw the _nono_, not here the arrow of Cupid as in
Tahiti, but a sour fruit, eaten only when hunger compelled.
In Takaroa, particularly favored by absence of cyclones, by safety of
harbor, breadth and depth of pass into the lagoon, and plentitude of
cocoa-palms and pearl-shell, herculean efforts had been made by bringing
whole schooner cargoes of soil to grow some of the food plants and trees
of Tahiti, but all such growths were a trivial item in the daily demand
for sustenance.
When Polynesians in their legends spoke of a rich island, they described
it as abounding in fish, as the Jews, pastoral tribes, sang of milk and
honey, the red Indian of happy hunting-grounds, and Christians of
streets of gold, and harps and hymns.
Shell-fish, mollusks and crustaceans, played as important a part in
their aliment as ordinary fish, and _ia_ or _ika_ meant both. In some
islands the people were forced to subsist largely on _taclobo_, the
furbelowed clam or giant _tridacna_ called _pahua_ here and _benitier_
in Europe, where the shells were used for holy water fonts. The flesh of
the _pahua_ was sold in the Papeete market but was not a delicacy. The
clam itself weighed up to fifty pounds or more, and the pair of shells
from a dozen to eight hundred pounds according to the age of the living
clams. The shells were so hard that they furnished the blades of the
shovels with which the native had anciently dug wells to hold the
brackish water.
“The _pahua_ is also a devil,” said Nohea. “In the lagoon he lies with
his shells open to catch his prey. Many a shark has torn off his tail in
trying to get free when the _pahua_ has closed on him, or has died in
the trap. When a young man, I put my hand into a shell not bigger than
your face, and it shut upon it. I was feeling for pearl-shell under
fifty feet of water. I could not reach the threads that anchor the clam
to the rock because it was in a crevice. If I could have cut them I
could have freed myself, but I was able after a minute to force my knife
beside my hand and stab the _pahua_ so that it let me go. Paumotuans
have often lost their lives in the _pahua’s_ shells, and one cut off his
fingers and left them to the fish. I always drive my knife into him, and
then cut the cord that ties him to the rock. They are hard to lift,—the
big _pahua_,—and often we must leave them. Sometimes they have pearls in
them that are very fine—not like oyster-pearls, but just like the white
inside of the clam-shell itself, which is like the marble of the
tombstone of Mapuhi’s wife.”
[Illustration:
Photo by Brown Bros.
Spearing fish
]
[Illustration:
Photo by Dr. Theodore P. Cleveland
A canoe on the lagoon
]
[Illustration:
Photo by Dr. Theodore P. Cleveland
Ready for the fishing
]
Nohea rubbed me every day with the oil from the robber-crab’s tail, and
my wounds healed quickly, although the scars remained. He said that
Paumotuans died of coral poisoning, but usually recovered, unless their
blood was tainted by _tona_, the syphilis brought originally by the
white, and which the Paumotuan cured with native remedies. He pointed to
a species of corals which stung one if touched. The stony branches or
plates when fresh from the water had a harsh feeling and a bad smell,
but were not slimy. They pricked me when pressed against my arm, and the
sting lasted from a few minutes to half an hour, with different
specimens. The sensation was as painful as from nettles or the
_Physalia_, the Portuguese man-of-war. One coral, sulphurous or dark in
color, Nohea warned me not to touch, saying it would cause my hand and
arm to swell for days. There was a jellyfish, he said, the _keakea_,
that in certain months, January, February, and March, almost filled the
lagoon, and they stung so fiercely, especially about the eyes, that
diving ceased as soon as they appeared.
There were fish, too, that were deadly to eat, some at one time and some
at another, as fish venomous in one lagoon were innocuous in another.
Some isles were blessed by having no poisonous fish, as Hao, Amanu,
Negonego, Marokau, Hikueru, Vahitahi, Fakahina, and Pukapuka. Marutea of
the north, Raraka, Kauehi, Katiu, Makemo, Takume, Moruroa, and Marutea
of the south, were cursed by the opposite condition. In Rangira only the
_haamea_ of the pass was hurtful. The _meko_ was the most feared fish at
Marutea of the south, occasioning a terrible dysentery with cramps,
which ended in vertigo and extreme weakness. Mullets, also, were often
harmful in certain lagoons, and the _muraena_ killed.
What made these fish poisonous? Science guessed that the larvæ of the
coral animals were the cause. These fish ate the coral, and it was
noticed that in December, January, and February, at the time the corals
expelled their larvæ,—were in blossom, as the expression went,—the
toxicity of the fish was highest. Other fish were made poisonous by
eating the sea-centipede, curious creatures which looked like yards of
black string and wound themselves around the corals. They had thousands
of minute legs.
While all land-crabs were safe to eat, certain sea-crabs were injurious,
one in particular, a stark-white species, which was death to swallow,
and which despairing Paumotuans had bolted as a suicide potion. Even
certain starfish must be avoided, one, a lovely cone-shaped kind, being
deadly, their barbs injecting a virulent poison which speedily dilated
the arm and then the body hugely, and made the heart stop beating. To
the native such illnesses were awesome mysteries, yet he had learned
ages ago to distinguish the baneful fishes by the empire path of pain
and death which all races have trod toward safety from the enemies of
mankind. His more open foes, whom he hunted for food, the native met
fearlessly, and fought with adroitness.
The devilfish, or octopus, frequented mostly the outside of the reef and
preyed on mollusks and crustaceans, being naturally timid and
inoffensive, though capable of affrighting attack when molested. They
commonly took up their abode in some cavern or crevice, and lay safely
ensconced in the shadow, simulating the color of their surroundings so
artfully that their victims hardly ever saw them until grasped by the
suckers of the many long, muscular arms.
“In Samoa,” said Nohea, when we went to a certain spot to seek out the
devilfish, “is the _Fale o le Fe’e_, the House of the Octopus. It is
very large, with black basalt walls, and has a pillar in the center. It
was built to guard against the tribe of giants who once traded with
Samoa.”
The devilfish was, as I said, at most times shy and harmless but, when
roused, the most dangerous of antagonists. We met one at close quarters
the third time we paddled to the caves or recesses in the coral rock. It
was near sunset, and there were already black shadows about the ledge,
which at low tide disclosed the niches wrought in it by the action of
the water. In one of these I saw two fiery eyes with white rims as big
as dinner-plates, and Nohea said to beware, that they belonged to an
enormous _fe’e_. Nohea had a mighty spear or grain with three points of
solid iron, and a heavy, long shaft, on a rope attached to the prow of
the canoe. Better still I carried a rifle with bullets that would kill a
wild bull. Nohea steered the canoe up to the nook and thrust out a long,
light stick toward the glittering eyes. The cuttlefish threw out one
tentacle upon it. Nohea teased him as one might tease a cat, and another
tentacle took hold. Again the stick was manipulated, and finally, after
half an hour, ten arms were fastened tightly upon the rod. Nohea gently
drew the rod toward him, and the _fe’e_ emerged from his den, so that,
though the light was growing dim, I was able for a minute to survey him
in the fullest detail, as I sat with my rifle to my shoulder.
His body, bigger than a barrel, was like a dirty gray bag, with one end
three-cornered for use as a steering-fin, or rudder. His mouth was like
an opening in a sack, with a thick, circular lip and a great parrot-like
beak, which was almost hidden at the moment. His tentacles were in a
circle around the mouth, and were large at the trunk and tapering to the
ends. Two main arms with which he supported himself against the rock
were twice as long as the others, and differently formed. The fiery eyes
were serpent-like, and set back of the arms.
“If he were not so strong I would jump on him now that I have his
tentacles engaged, and would bite the back of his neck till he died,”
said Nohea, with anger. “I have slain many that way. But this one would
destroy me in a moment. Once we hooked one by mistake when we were
fishing for barracuda from a canoe. My companion hauled him to the side
of the canoe, when the octopus threw his arms about him and pulled him
into the sea. I sprang after him, and put my thumbs in the eyes of the
beast. He moaned and cried, and covered us with his black fluid; but he
let go, and fled, blinded.”
The octopus was regarding us with apparent calm. The rod he held was
twenty-five feet in length, so that our canoe was more than twenty feet
from his eyes. Nohea now agitated the rod, and the _fe’e_ retained his
grasp, but began to change from a slaty gray to red, with black
mottlings.
“He is enraged,” said Nohea, warningly. “Prepare to shoot if the
_tavero_ fails!”
He stood up in the canoe, and, resting the bamboo rod on the gunwale,
poised his spear. The devilfish felt the menace of his attitude, and his
two longest tentacles began to writhe in the air, as he measured our
distance. Then Nohea, with a step back, launched the grain, and with so
true an aim that it penetrated the eye of the grisly creature and half
unbalanced him. Instantly the air was filled with the cloud of sepia he
ejected,—a confession of defeat,—and the terrible arms with their
twisting, coiling tips were thrust at us in lightning movements. But
Nohea had seized a paddle, and parted us by thirty feet. The _fe’e_ was
pulled into the water, but was not yet dead. He struggled as if
drowning, the great arms rising and falling upon the surface, and a
direful groaning issuing with the bubbles that covered the surface. I
fired twice at his bulk seen clearly in the water, and after ten minutes
it relaxed utterly. A musky, delicious odor filled the air.
With immense difficulty we brought his abhorrent corpse partly upon the
ledge to measure it, and to cut off some of the tentacles for broiling.
Nohea said it weighed a thousand pounds, but that he had seen one that
weighed two tons, and whose arms stretched seventy feet. The two longest
limbs of our octopus were rounded from the body to within two feet of
their tips, when they flattened out like blades. Along the edges were
rows of suckers, each with a movable membrane across it. When these
suckers fastened on an object, the membrane reacted and made a vacuum
under each sucker. Nohea explained that wherever the suckers touched
one’s flesh it puckered and blistered, and two months would elapse
before it healed. He showed me scars upon his own skin. Our octopus had
two thousand and more suckers on its tentacles.
“In Japan,” I told Nohea, “I have seen the men at night sink in the sea
earthenware jars, very tall and stout, and in the morning find them
occupied each by a devilfish, who must have thought them suitable to its
condition in life.”
We had other methods of catching the _fe’e_. One was to tie many pieces
of shell on a large stick with the pointed ends up, and from our canoe
to strike the water with this. The resulting noise or vibration
attracted the octopi, who thought the bait alive, and, eager to examine,
threw themselves upon it and were killed and hoisted aboard. Nohea would
strike the canoe sometimes with his paddle in a rhythmical manner, and
draw them to hear the concert, when he would spear them.
At the rookeries of the hair seals on Puget Sound, bounty hunters lure
these destroyers of salmon nets and traps, by the wailing of a fiddle
string, the wheeze of an accordian, a hymn upon a mouth organ, or almost
any musical note. The hair seal rises to the surface to listen to the
entrancing notes, and is shot by the hunter from his boat.
The smaller devilfish Nohea eviscerated and ate, or gave to his friends.
I could not look at them as food. The sepia still contained in their
sacs he dried for bait for small-mouthed fish, and we used also the
bellies of hermit-crabs, the tentacles of squid, and the tails of
various kinds of fish. For the larger, scaled fish, Nohea preferred
hooks of _mikimiki_, which he carved from the bushes, or of turtle-shell
or whalebone, though the stores had the modern ones of steel. For
_bonito_ we used only the pearl-hook without barb, and, of course,
unbaited. The advantage of the barbless hook—that is, lacking the
backward-projecting point which makes extraction difficult—could,
perhaps, be appreciated only by seeing our way of fishing.
When we came into a school of _bonito_ pursuing flying-fish, I took the
paddle, and Nohea, with a fifteen-foot _purau_ rod, and a line as long,
trailed the _pa_, the pearly hook, on the surface, so that it skipped
and leaped as does the _marara_. When a _bonito_ took the lure, Nohea
with a dexterous jerk raised the fish out of the water, and brought it
full against his chest. He hugged it to him a second and, without
touching the hook, threw it hard into the bottom of the canoe where I
could strike it sharply over the head with the edge of my paddle. The
whole manœuver was a continuous motion on Nohea’s part. The fish seized
the hook, the rod shot up straight, the _bonito_ came quickly to his
bosom, he embraced it, and, with no barb to release, it slipped off the
bone into his powerful grip, and was hurled upon the hard wood. Thus no
time was lost, and the hook was in the water in another instant. Once or
twice when I failed in my part the _bonito_ raised itself on the end of
its tail, and shot through the air to its element. That Nohea was not
hurt by the fish when they were brought bang against his chest, can be
explained only by his dexterity, which doubtless avoided the full impact
of the heavy blow. The _bonito_ weighed from thirty to a hundred pounds.
The turtle-shell for the hooks Nohea got from the turtles which he
caught. They were a prime dish in the Paumotus, especially the great
green turtle. The very word for turtle, _honu_, meant also to be gorged,
associating the reptile itself with feasting. The thought of turtle
caused Nohea, a fairly abstemious man, to water at the mouth and to rub
his stomach in concentric circles, as if aiding in its digestion. The
_honu_ was in the days of heathenry sacred to high livers, the priests
and chiefs, and was eaten with pomp and circumstance; to make sure of
their husbanding, they were, in the careful way of the old Maoris, taboo
to women and children under pain of death. An old cannibal chief was
called the Turtle Pond because he had a record of more than a hundred
humans eaten by him. Turtles were of two hundred species, and were found
six feet long and weighing eight hundred pounds, but more ordinarily in
the Paumotus from a hundred to four hundred. After a feast the pieces of
turtle meat were put into cocoanut-shells, with the liquid fat poured
over them, and sealed with a heated leaf, for a reserve, as we put up
mince-meat.
The best season for turtles was when the Matariki, the Pleiades, rose in
the east, and the time of egg-laying arrived. Then the turtles came from
long journeys by sea, and looked for a place to deposit their eggs far
from the haunts of humans. They came two by two, like proper married
folk, and, leaving the husband on the barrier-reef, the wife, alone, dug
a hole from one to two feet in depth in the coral sand, above the
high-water mark, and in it scooped a deeper and smaller pipe, to lay
five or six score eggs, white and rough, like enlarged golf-balls. The
moon was usually full when this most important deed of the turtle’s
career was done with intense secrecy. The sand was painstakingly
replaced and smoothed, and the wife swam back to the reef and at high
tide touched flippers again with her patient spouse. The operation
occupied less than an hour.
McHenry, whom I met every day when I walked to the village, said that it
was the Southern Cross and not the Pleiades that governed the dropping
of the eggs, and that the _honu_ did not approach the beach until the
four stars forming the cross had reached a position exactly
perpendicular to the horizon.
“Those turtles are better astronomers than Lyin’ Bill,” said McHenry.
“They savvy the Southern Cross like Bill does a Doc Funk.”
The turtle returned to her eggs on the ninth night, but if she saw
evidences of enemies about, she left immediately, and waited another
novendial period and, if again scared, came back on the twenty-seventh
evening. But when that fatal night had passed she surrendered to the
inevitable. Nohea knew the habits of the _honu_ as well as she did
herself. He knew the broad tracks she made, which she tried in vain to
obliterate, and he often removed the eggs to eat raw, or freshly cooked.
Nohea could swim to the beach where the mother turtle was, and land so
quietly that she would not have notice of his coming, and so could not
escape to the lagoon or the moat; or he could swim noiselessly to the
reef, and forelay the uxorious male napping until the arrival of his
consort from her oviposition. To rush upon either male or female and
turn it over on its back was the act of a moment, if strength permitted,
but Paumotuans seldom hunted alone for turtles, the fencing them from
the water being better achieved by two or more. Even when we saw one at
sea, Nohea would spring from the canoe and fasten a hook about the neck
and front flipper which rendered the _honu_ as helpless as if a human
were bound neck and leg. Once fast, the turtle was turned, and then
pulled to the beach. Nohea could attach such a device to a turtle, and
without a canoe swim with him to the beach or to a schooner. The turtle
was put under a roof of cocoanut-leaves, until desire for his meat
brought death to him.
Nohea often picked up _rori_ to make soup. They were to me the most
repulsive offering of the South Seas, long, round, thin echinoderms,
shaped like cucumbers or giant slugs, and appalling in their
hideousness. The Malays called them trepang, the Portuguese
_bicho-do-mar_, or sea-slug, and the scientists holothurian. Slimy,
disgusting, crawling beings, they were like sausage-skins or starved
snakes six inches or six feet long, and stretchable to double that
length. One end had a set of waving tentacles by which they drew in the
sand and coral animalculæ. They crept along the bottom or swam slowly.
There was a small trade in these dried trepang, or _bêche de mer_, which
were shipped to Tahiti and thence to San Francisco, for transshipment to
China, for purchase by Chinese gourmets. The Chinese usually put them in
their gelatinous soups. I had eaten them at feasts in Canton and Chifu.
They were considered a powerful aphrodisiac, as swallows’-nests and
ginseng.
No race so eagerly sought such love philters as the Chinese. They had a
belief that certain parts and organs of animals strengthened the similar
parts or organs in humans. Our own medical men often verged on the same
theory, making elixirs, as the Chinese had for countless centuries. At a
Chinese feast where the heart of a tiger was the _pièce de résistance_,
I had been assured that a slice of it would make me brave. There may
have been something in it, for after eating I felt I was brave to have
done so.
The fishing for _rori_ was sometimes on a considerable scale. McHenry
had often taken a score of Paumotuan men and women on his schooner to
one of the unpopulated atolls. They built huts ashore for themselves,
and others for curing the trepang. They searched for them with long
grains or forks, going in calm weather to the outer edge of the reef
where they found the red rori, which ranked second in the grading by the
Chinese, but the black they had to dive for in the lagoon to great
depths. Some trepang had spicules, or prickles, on their skin, and some
were smooth, while others had teats or ambulacral feet, in rows; and
these, known to the trade as teat-fish, and to the Chinese as
_Se-ok-sum_, were _bonnes bouches_ to a Pekinese gourmand. Next in order
were the red, the black, and the lolly. These latter we found in great
quantities on the reef at low tide in shallow places. They exuded, when
stepped on, a horrid red liquid, like blood, from all the surface of
their body.
Against mankind these _rori_ had no defense when stabbed with the fork
or grain, but to touch one of the elongated _Blutwursts_ with any part
of one’s body was to rue one’s temerity. They were like skins filled
with a poisonous fluid, and this they ejected with force, so that if
contacted with a scratch or sore, or one’s eye, it set up immediate
inflammation, and caused hours of agony. Many Paumotuans had thus
suffered serious injury to their eyes. The leopard trepang, olive-green
with orange spots, disgorged sticky threads when molested, and these
clung fast to the human skin and raised painful blisters. Nature had
armed them for protection. The native never gathered the _rori_ in
baskets or sacks, but made a box to drag about on land or float on the
water, into which he put them.
The pawky Paumotuan gave no thought to the aphrodisiacal qualities of
the _rori_, as did the Chinese. The filling of his belly or his purse
was his sole idea. The trepang must be cooked as quickly as possible
after removal from the water because it quickly dissolved, like a salted
slug, into a jellied mass. If the native had no caldron in which to boil
the _rori_, he threw them on red-hot stones, covered them with leaves,
and left them to steam. In an hour they were shriveled and rid of their
poisonous power. They were slit with a sharp knife and boiled for
several hours in salt water until the outer skin was removed. Taken from
the pot, they were placed on screens made of the spinal columns of the
cocoanut-palm leaves, and underneath the screens was built a fire of
cocoanut-husks. When thoroughly dried and smoked, the trepang was put in
sacks, with great precaution against dampness. If not shipped at once
they were from time to time dried in the sun, because the presence of
any moisture prejudiced them to the palates of the Chinese epicures. In
China they sold for a high price, having the place in their _cuisine_
that rare caviar might have in ours.
Nohea and I essayed every kind of fishing afforded by the atoll. We
often went out at midnight, according to the moon, and speared swordfish
by the light of torches, and I also caught these warriors of the sea on
hook and line. We hooked sharks and many sorts of fish, and had many
strange and stirring adventures.
For rousing hatred and fear, neither the devilfish, with his frightful
tentacles and demoniacal body and eyes, nor the swordfish, which could
hurl his hundred or thousand pounds against the body or craft of the
fishermen, were peers of the _manta birostris_, the gigantic ray, called
the “winged devil of the deep passes,” which was seen only in the depths
between the atolls, and which was never fished for because worthless to
commerce or as food.
Nohea, Kopcke, and I were out one day in a cutter. This was a sailing
craft of about ten tons, which was used to pick up copra at points away
from villages and to bring it to the village or to the waiting schooner.
It was about noon. We had hooked a dozen _bonito_, and were having
luncheon when a sailor shouted to us to look at a sight near-by. We saw
a number of the largest _mantas_ any of us had ever seen. A dozen of
these mammoth rays were swimming round and round, in circles not more
than a hundred feet in diameter. They were about twenty-five feet
across, and twenty feet from head to tip of tail, and each one raised a
tip of an outer fin two feet or so above the water. The fin toward the
center of the circle was correspondingly depressed, and they appeared
like a flock of incredible bats. Every few minutes one threw itself into
the air and turned completely over, displaying a dazzlingly white belly.
Their long, whip-like tails were armed with dagger spines, double-edged
with saw-teeth. Their mouths were large enough to swallow a man, and
their teeth, as they gleamed, flat as jagged stones.
Nohea said they used these fins to wave their prey, fish and
crustaceans, into their maws. He expressed intense terror of them and
urged Kopcke to steer away from them.
The _manta_ had lifted the anchor of a vessel in harbor by pushing
against the chain, and had towed the vessel a considerable distance.
When harpooned, he had dragged as many as fourteen catamarans or boats
without apparent weariness. Well might the Paumotuan in his frail
fishing-canoe dread the sea-devil! He had known him rise beneath his
pirogue, and with a blow of his fearful fins shatter fisherman and
craft. Not vicious in pursuit of man as the shark, or lithe and able to
impale his victims as the swordfish, yet more terrible when aroused by
the impotent Paumotuan, the “winged devil of the deep passes” stood for
all that was perilous and awesome among the beasts of the ocean. When
harpooned from a schooner large enough not to be in danger from the
_manta’s_ strength, the Paumotuan or Tahitian sailor loved to vent his
hate upon the giant ray, and he had names for him then that he would not
dare to call him from a smaller boat.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER X
Traders and divers assembling for the diving—A story told by Llewellyn
at night—The mystery of Easter Island—Strangest spot in the
world—Curious statues and houses—Borrowed wives—Arrival of English
girl—Tragedy of the Meke Meke festival.
THE scene at Takaroa was now remindful in a diminutive way of the bustle
and turmoil before the opening of a camp-meeting in the United States.
The traders and pearl-buyers of Tahiti began to assemble, and divers and
their families of other islands to arrive. Soon the huddle had the mild
disorder and excitement of an old-fashioned southern revival. Chinese,
the cunning Cantonese, two generations in Tahiti, set up stands for
selling sweetmeats and titbits, and the merchants spread out samples of
their goods in competition with Mapuhi’s and Hiram Mervin’s stores. The
whites developed artful schemes for circumventing one another in
securing the best divers. These, until contracts were signed, were
importuned and made much of as desirable members are solicited by
college clubs. The narrow strand of the atoll crowded up with new-comers
who every few days alighted from schooner, cutter, and canoe. All day
the moat and sea were alive with boats unloading the belongings and
merchandise of the visitors. The housing problem was settled by each
family’s or group’s erecting for itself flimsy abodes of the scant
building material growing on the isle, pieced out with boards or bits of
flattened tin cans or canvas, while others contented themselves with
lean-tos or leafy kennels. All was good nature, anticipation of profits,
and hope of miraculous drafts from the lagoon.
In the evenings on the verandas or about the bivouacs, there was an
incessant chatter. The bargaining, the reuniting of former friends or
acquaintances, the efforts of deacons and missionaries, the sly actions
of the traders, the commencements of courtships, and love-making of the
free-and-easy foreigners filled the balmy night air with laughter,
whisperings, and conversation. A hundred stories were told—jokes,
adventures, slanders, and curious happenings. Religion, business, mirth,
and obscenity vied for interest.
Llewellyn, the Welsh Tahitian vanilla-planter, with Lying Bill, McHenry,
Kopcke, Aaron Mandel, and others, formed a nightly circle. Sitting on
boxes or reclining on mats under the cocoanut-trees, with a lantern or
two above them and pipes aglow, these pilgrims of the deep recited
moving tales of phenomena and accident, of wanderings and hardships, and
small villainies.
[Illustration:
Photo from Dr. Theodore P. Cleveland
Spearing fish in the lagoon
]
“Sailors are damn fools,” said Captain Nimau, whom I had met in Lacour’s
shed on Anaa. “There was a ship’s boat passed here some time ago. It was
from the wrecked American schooner _El Dorado_, and the three men in it
with eight others of the crew had spent months on a lonely island and
were beating up for Tahiti. They did not reach Papeete for days after I
sighted them from Lacour’s, yet they wouldn’t spare the time to touch at
Anaa where they might have gotten plenty of food and water, and rested a
day or two. I wondered who they were until O’Brien here told me. I saw
them only through my glass.”
[Illustration:
The Captain and two sailors of the _El Dorado_
]
“The skipper of the _El Dorado_ who was in the boat wouldn’t let it
stop,” said McHenry. “He was hurryin’ to Tahiti to find a steamer for
America to report to his owners an’ to get a new billet. I saw him in
Papeete, hustlin’ his bleedin’ boat and dunnage on the steamer for
‘Frisco after three weeks’ wait. The sailors weren’t in no rush for they
know’d they be cheated outa their rights, anyway. The squarehead capt’in
had the goods on the owners of the _El Dorado_ because they couldn’t
collect insurance for her without his say. He scooted away from Easter
Island in that small boat after four months there, leavin’ all but those
two bloody fools who came with him.”
“He mentioned to me that he was buying a house on the instalment plan,
and would lose everything if he didn’t get back to make his payment,” I
said. “So he ventured 3,600 miles in a small boat to save his home.”
“Any one would have enough of that lonely island in four months,” said
Llewellyn, reminiscently. His deep, melancholy voice came from the
shadows where he sat on a mat. “I lived years there. It is a place to go
mad in. It isn’t so much that it is the last bit of land between here
and South America, and is bare and dry, without trees or streams, and
filled with beetles that gnaw you in your sleep, but there’s something
terrible about it. It has an air of mystery, of murder. I have never
gotten over my life there. I wish I had never seen it, but I still dream
about it.”
Llewellyn was a university man. He had drunk as deeply of the lore of
books and charts as he had of the products of the stills of Scotland and
the winepresses of France. In his library in Tahiti, his birthplace,
were many rare brochures, manuscripts, and private maps of untracked
parts of the Pacific, and keys to Polynesian mazes impenetrable by the
uninstructed. Seventy years before, his father had come here, and
Llewellyn as child and man had roamed wide in his vessels in search of
secret places that might yield gold or power. He had worn bare the
emotions of his heart, and frayed his nerves in the hunt for pleasure
and excitement. Now in his fifties he felt himself cheated by fate of
what he might have been intellectually.
“I suppose I’m the only man here who has ever been on Rapa Nui,” he went
on. “It’s like Pitcairn, far off steam and sailing routes, and with no
cargoes to sell or buy. Only a ship a year from Chile now, they say, or
a boat from a shipwreck like the _El Dorado’s_. But the scientific men
will always go there. They think Easter, or Rapa Nui, as the natives
call it now, has the solution of the riddle of the Pacific, of the lost
continent. You know it had the only written language in the South Seas,
a language the Easter Islanders, the first whites found there, knew
apparently little of.”
McHenry interrupted Llewellyn, to set in movement about the group a
bottle of rum and a cocoanut-shell, first himself quaffing a gill of the
scorching molasses liquor. Llewellyn downed his portion hastily, as if
putting aside such an appetite while engaged on an abstruse subject. He
knew that rum made all equal; and he was an aristocrat, and now beyond
the others in thought.
“_Allez!_” said Captain Nimau. “I am curious. _Dites!_ What did you find
out?”
Llewellyn’s eyes smoldering in somber-thatched cells lit a moment as he
returned to his enigmatic theme.
“I was a young man not long from a German university and travel in
Europe when I was sent to Easter Island,” he said, with dignity. “A
commercial firm in Tahiti, a Frenchman and a Scotchman, had control of
the island, which was not under the flag of any country, and was
employed by them to look after their interests. The firm had a schooner
that sailed there now and then, and with me went a young American. He
was a graduate of some Yankee college, and had drifted into the South
Seas a few months before. For some reason we did not know about, he was
eager to go to Easter Island. He could speak none of the lingos
hereabouts, and the firm at first refused him, but on his insistence,
and willingness to agree to stay two years and to work for a trifle,
they sent him with me.
“He was about twenty-four, handsome and gay, but a student. I liked him
from the start. Ralph Waldo Willis was his name, and I was glad that I
had such a companion for there was nobody else but natives to talk to,
except Timi Linder, a half-Tahitian who was older than us and who was
our boss. Our cockroach schooner was a month in getting there. It’s more
than a thousand miles as the tropic bird goes, but for us it was sailing
the wrong way many days, making half-circles or beating dead against the
wind. We were about ready to turn round and sail back when we caught a
breeze and made sight of land. I hated it at first view. It was nothing
like our South Sea islands, with black, frowning cliffs worn into a
thousand caves and recesses. The ocean broke angrily against the stern
basalt, or entered these huge pits and sprang out of them in welling
masses of foam and spray. An iron-bound coast that defied the heart, or
any sentiment but wonder and fear. Boulders as big as ships were half
attached to the precipices or lay near-by to attest the continuous
devouring of the land by the sea. Coming from Tahiti, with its beautiful
reefs and beaches, and the clouds like wreaths of _reva-reva_, with
cocoanut-palms and breadfruit-trees and bananas covering all the land,
this Easter Island seemed terribly bare and forbidding. There wasn’t a
flower on it.”
Llewellyn halted and lit his pipe. In the glow of the match his eyes had
the inversion of the relator who is remote from his audience.
McHenry, who had been quiet a few minutes, must call attention to
himself.
“Is there any fightin’ or women in this yarn?” he burst out, with a
guffaw.
Llewellyn came back to the present in a dark fume.
“I’ll chuck it,” he said irritably. “You want only stories that stink!”
Nimau, the Frenchman, took McHenry’s arm.
“_Nom d’une pipe!_” he rapped out. “Take that bottle, McHenry, and throw
it and yourself into the lagoon. Monsieur Llewellyn, please go on! The
night is just begun. That _Ile de Pâcques_ is a very curious place.”
McHenry, offended, jumped up. “Go to hell, all of you!” he blurted.
“I’ll go and stir up the Mormons. If they smell my breath, it’ll make
’em jealous.”
Llewellyn took up his narration.
“It’s a cursed place,” he assented. “There’s been nothing but death
since the white man found out there was anything to steal there. They
were the healthiest people in the world, but we whites knew how to
destroy them. Our schooner came into the roadstead of Hanga Roa at
daybreak. I could see the huge, dead volcano, Rana Roraku, from the
masthead. Other extinct volcanos were all over the rolling land. _Te
Pito te Henua_, the old islanders called it; the Navel and the Womb.
That monster crater, Rano Raraku, must have given it the latter name,
for out of it came all those wonderful images of stone. The Navel was
one of many rounded, shallower craters all about. When we landed at
sunrise and the slanting rays shone on them they were for all the world
like the navels of giants. I fancied each of them belonging to a
colossus who had turned to stone. At first, the island was just a gray
bulk, the surface in several sweeping curves dotted with mole-hills. As
we climbed upon the cliffs and the details of the land grew in the
sunlight, the impression was of a totally different part of the globe,
of a cut-off place where scenes and people were of an ancient sort, of a
mystery that stunned as thoughts crowded in on one. That impression
never left me. I can feel it now after these years. The American,
Willis, was fair overcome. He turned pale and put his hand to his
stomach as if sick.
“‘What’s the matter?’ I asked, though I really knew.
“‘I feel like when I was a little boy and saw the wax-works in New
York,’ he said. ‘All the spirits of the dead and great seem to be
around. But I’ve waited years to come here.’
“As we walked from point to point that first day, the spectacle was
incredible, absolutely bewildering. The whole island was a charnel-house
and a relic shrine. It seemed to have been furnished by a race whose
mind was fixed on death instead of life, and who worked for remembrance
instead of happiness. Oblivion was their most desperate fear, or, at
least, they must have thought that the preservation of their bones and
the building of images of the dead were the chief duties of the living.
At intervals all around the coast were immense platforms or High Places
of slabs of stone, gigantic stages for tremendous statues. These bases
were called _ahu_, and were some three or four hundred feet long, and on
them at regular intervals had been mammoth sculptures. Scores of these
lay half buried in the scrub, and some were covered over entirely by the
growth of the grass. Some were fifty or even seventy feet high and
others three or four feet, as if the makers sized them by the power or
fame of the dead men they represented. They were like gray ghosts of the
departed.
“I can’t quite tell you the sensation we had at our first stroll about.
Our house was at the base of the volcano, and Timi Linder, who came off
to the schooner in a boat to meet us, took us to it. He was a cousin of
mine—some of you remember him—and a fine fellow. He didn’t make anything
of all those images or the tombs. Sheep were his gods, and we had twenty
thousand of them to take care of, besides hundreds of horses and cattle.
Our house, Willis’s and mine, was at Mataveri, at the base of the crater
Rana Kao, and Timi’s was five miles away at Vaihu. It used to be a
Catholic mission. We were soon settled down to a regular routine.
“We were on horseback all day. Some of the going was so bad it meant
hours of barely walking the horses. The lower part of the island was all
broken sheets of lava, grown over or about with tough grass, and it was
worth your neck to travel fast in it. On the slopes of the hills it was
smoother, the ash from the volcanos having been leveled more in the
thousands of years since the last eruption. Another horrible thing about
living there was that we had to get all our water like in these Paumotus
by catching rain on our iron roof into tanks. God! How I used to long
for a drink out of a Tahiti brook! When we were out in the scrub and
noon came it was salvation to find a piece of shade. It was not so
terribly hot, because Easter is out of the tropics, and, as I say, the
climate is perfectly healthful, but the sun came down like lightning on
that lava and the hard grass, and the glare and the heat combined, with
the fatigue of the riding, would lay us out. The nights were cool, with
heavy dews which supplied the sheep with enough moisture.
“Timi left us much to ourselves and said that he wanted us to go about
without any duties and to learn the lay of the land. So we did that. The
island was about thirty-four miles around, but it took us many weeks to
make the circuit, because we followed the indentations of most of the
inlets or bays, determined to see everything of the marvels before we
got down to work. Those were the days we suffered from thirst. Except
for the lakes in the craters which I’ll tell you about, the so-called
_puna_ or springs were far apart, and then only shoal excavations among
the boulders into which surface water ran and had been protected by
rocky roofs from the sun and animals. Just a few bucketsful in each at a
time, and rank it was. The queer thing was the natives drank but little
water. They would be surprised every day at our thirst.
“We ascended the crater Rana Kao near our home. It was a quarter of a
mile high, and nearly a mile across, a perfect, unbroken circle at its
edge except where the lava had cut through and run down to the sea. The
inside was magnificent, like a vast colosseum, and, at the bottom, a
lake unlike any I had ever seen. Six hundred feet below the rim it was,
and more than three hundred feet deep by our soundings, and the sides of
the volcano were like a regular cone. We saw many cattle feeding or
drinking in the midst of lush vegetation, and on getting close to the
lake itself we found that they were standing or walking on a floating
garden. So dense and profound was this matting or raft of green and
brown, in which were bushes and even small trees, that the cattle moved
on it without fear. Yet in places we saw the water rippled by the wind,
and at times the cows or bulls drew back from their paths as if they
sensed danger. The water was foul with vegetable and animal matter, but
probably once this lake had been cared for, and its waters had quenched
the thirst of many thousands of people.”
“Ah!” said I, “Llewellyn, I was going to ask you. So far you have been
on an uninhabited island. What about the people you found there. I am
more interested in them even than in the wonderful images and tombs.”
“’E won’t say too bloody much about them,” said Lying Bill, caustically.
“‘Is family killed off most of ’em.”
Again it seemed that we would hear Llewellyn to no conclusion. He got on
his feet, and shook out his pipe.
“A gentleman has no place in the Paumotus,” he said, bitterly. “Mr.
O’Brien, you must not judge South Sea traders by McHenry or Pincher.”
“Judge and be bloomin’ well damned!” interrupted Lying Bill. “I’ll go
an’ see where McHenry is. Maybe the bottle’ll ’ave a drink in it, an’
you can stay an’ spin your yarn your own way. I know the bleedin’
truth.”
Captain Pincher retreated, muttering, in the darkness toward the sound
of the surf on the reef. The gentle breeze agitated the cocoanuts above
our heads, and Kopcke, a child in mentality though a man, begged
Llewellyn to keep on.
“Pay no attention, please, to those bums!” said Kopcke in his politest
French. “Now, me, I want to learn everything.”
Nimau and I apologized for humanity, and insisted that the scholar
proceed. Mollified, and with his pipe refilled, the quarter-caste
graduate of Leipsic resumed his account.
“I was going to tell about the people, and I’ll begin at the beginning,”
he said, thoughtfully. “A Dutch ship discovered Easter Island two
hundred years ago, and shot some of the natives. Every succeeding
discoverer did the same. Peruvian blackbirders killed hundreds and
carried off five thousand of them to die in the guano deposits of the
Chincha Islands and the mines of Peru. Almost every leading man, the
king and every chief, was killed or captured. The prisoners nearly all
died in slavery, and only Pakomeo came back. He lived near us, and told
me all about it. Timi Martin believed there were twenty thousand people
on the island near the time of the Peruvian raid.
“From then on, with all the livest men gone, the people paid no
attention to any authority. There had been a hereditary monarchy for
ages, and while the clans might go to battle for any reason, no one ever
touched the king or his family. But with Maurata, the king, kidnapped,
and most of the head men, there was no boss. Then _Frère_ Eugène, a
Belgian priest of Chile, brought back three youths who had been taken by
the Peruvians. One was Tepito, the heir of King Maurata, and the priest
thought maybe he could use him to convert the islanders. He had a hard
time, but he did it. You must say for those old missionaries that they
stuck to their jobs though hell popped. He had fifty narrow escapes from
being assassinated by natives who thought him much like the Peruvians,
and just when he was baptizing the last of the Rapa Nuiis, and complete
peace had settled down, trouble began again. A Frenchman who was looking
about for a fortune arrived there and took up his residence. He saw
there was plenty of land not used for growing yams, the only crop, and
so he went into partnership with a Scotchman in Tahiti to grow sheep,
cattle, and horses. He gave a few yards of calico for a mile of land,
and started his ranch with the Scotchman’s animals.
“The Frenchman took up with a common woman who had been the wife of a
chief but who was not of the chief caste, and he had her made queen.
Queen Korato was her name, and she was a caution—like a society woman
and a Jezebel, mixed. She bossed everything but her husband. She started
a row between him and _Frère_ Eugène, who claimed authority through the
church. There being no regular government, the priest said that, through
God and the pope, he was the ruler. He was a strong man, and I must say
from all accounts kind to the natives. They started to work and built
again, but the feud between the church and the queen became fiercer and
fiercer, and finally after personal combats between leaders, and a few
deaths, _Frère_ Eugène gathered all his adherents and, securing a vessel
through his bishop, transported them to the Gambier Islands.
“Now the struggle commenced of getting the land away from the natives.
Without any government, and the land of each district owned in community
by each clan, the queen and the Frenchman had to get title by cunning
and force. They did not succeed in that without blood. Booze and guns
and meat did it. The remaining head men gave away the land for sheep to
eat, for gin and rum to drink, and for guns to shoot those who objected
to having their land taken. Of course, it was really a community, with
no private property inside the clans, but the chiefs signed papers they
couldn’t read, and the firm claimed everything soon. It was legal as
things go, as legal as England taking New Zealand or Australia, or
France taking my Tahiti. The people divided into factions, headed by
self-appointed chiefs, and went to fighting. Some were driven into
craters, and some hid in caves. The crowd that had the upper hand chased
the other groups. They all began to steal the sheep for food, and the
Frenchman hired a band to stop the marauding and end the war. Then the
real massacres began. Natives were so pressed they took up cannibalism
again, and without fire they ate their meat raw. Ure Vaeiko told me how
he warmed a slice of a man’s body in his armpit to make it better
eating.
“In the end a kind of peace was made by the terrible misery of all. But
the Frenchman who had gotten the land did not live long to enjoy his
bargain. They caught him unawares when he was on a ladder helping to
repair the very house we lived in, and which he built. They struck him
down with a club, and buried him near-by. Other whites all but lost
their lives later when they tried to prevent the islanders from stealing
sheep when hungry. They were besieged in our house, but finally were
saved by the arrival of a vessel. Now, with their potato plantations
destroyed, their houses burned, the natives were done for. They
consented to sign contracts to work in the hot sugar-fields of Tahiti.
Five hundred were removed there. I often saw them, poor devils. They
were homesick to death, and they never were brought back as promised.
They died in Tahiti, crying for their own land.
“It was not long after that I went to Easter with the American, Willis.
Queen Korato had followed the Frenchman into the grave, and the
Scotchman had become the sole owner of the island. No one disputed him,
and when Willis and I took up our residence in the former royal
residence at Mataveri, Timi Linder was the virtual king. The entire
population either lived on small plantations which they had to wall in
to keep the cattle and sheep from eating their yams, or they worked for
us looking after the cattle and horses, and shearing the sheep. The
fighting was over, for the spirit of the wild islanders was extinct as
was almost all the twenty thousand Linder said were there a few years
before. The two or three hundred left lived in the ruins of the ancient
stone houses, cairns, and platforms, the tombs of the dead Rapa Nuiis
for ages. The living piled up more stones or roofed in the walls with
slabs and earth, and got along somehow. They had lost all reverence for
the past, and often brought us the skulls of their ancestors to trade
for a biscuit or two or a drink of rum.
“Willis and I were young, and though both of us were intensely
interested in the mystery of the island, and the unknown throngs who had
built the gigantic sepulchers and carved the monoliths, we had many dull
hours. When it rained or at night we thought of the outside world. The
howling of the sheep-dogs, the moaning of the wind, and the frightful
pests of insects made the evenings damnable. The fleas were by the
millions, and the glistening brown cockroaches, two or three inches
long, flew at our lights and into our food, while mosquitoes and hordes
of flies preyed on us. We often sat with nets on our heads and denim
gloves on, and on our cots we stuffed our ears with paper to keep out
snapping beetles. Willis was wrapped up in trying to read the wooden
tablets Linder had collected, on which were rows and rows of picture
symbols. First, he had to learn the Rapa Nui language. There’s one way
to do that in these islands. We all know that, and it was easy there.
They had always had a custom by which a husband leased his wife to
another man for a consideration. Linder attended to that, and sent over
to us two girls to teach us the lingo. They were beautiful and merry,
being young, and looked after our household. Taaroa was assigned to
Willis and Tokouo to me. We got along famously until one day, after a
year or so, a schooner arrived to take away wool, and on it was a white
girl and her father. That changed everything for us.”
In Llewellyn’s air and low, mournful voice there was confession. In his
words there had been anger at Captain Pincher’s accusation, but with
Lying Bill and McHenry, mockers at all decency, missing from the circle,
we others became impressed, I might say, almost oppressed, by impending
humiliation. In an assemblage, a public meeting, or a pentecostal
gathering, one withstands the self reproach and contrition of others,
or, perhaps, experiences keen pleasure in announced guilt and remorse,
but among a few, it hurts. One’s soul shrinks at its own secrets, and
there is not the support and excitement of the throng. We moved
uneasily, with a struggling urge to call it a night, but Llewellyn,
absorbed in his progress toward unveilment, went on without noticing our
disquiet.
“My God! What a change for Willis and me! The schooner was in the offing
one morning when we got up. We calculated that the wind would not let
her anchor at Hanga Piko, and started out on horses for Rana Raraku to
photograph the largest image we had found on the island. You have been
in Egypt, O’Brien?”
I nodded assent, and the lamp threw a spot of light on Llewellyn’s
gloomy face.
“You remember the biggest obelisk in the world is still unfinished in
the quarry at Syene. This one, too, was still in the rough. It lay in an
excavation on the slope of the huge crater, not fully cut out of the
rocky bank, but incredibly big. We measured it as quite seventy feet
long. It was as all those images, a half-length figure, the long,
delicate hands almost meeting about the body, the belly indrawn—pinched,
and the face with no likeness to the Rapa Nui face, or to any of the
Polynesians, but harsh and archaic, perhaps showing an Inca or other
austere race, and also the wretchedness of their existence. Life must
have been dour for them by their looks and by their working only for the
dead. How they ever expected to move this mass we could not understand.
They had no wood, even, to make rollers, as the Egyptians had, because
their thickest tree was the _toromiro_, not three inches in diameter,
but they had to depend on slipping the monstrous stones down slopes and
dragging them up hills or on the level by ropes of native hemp and main
strength. Hundreds or thousands of sculptors and pullers must have been
required for the 555 monoliths we found carved or almost finished. But
they never were of the race the whites saw there.
“Before we began the descent of Rana Rauraku we stopped a moment to
survey the scene. The sun was setting over La Perouse Bay, and the side
of the crater on which we were was deepening in shadow. As we went down
the hill the many images reared themselves as black figures of terror
and awe against the scarlet light. Willis was in a trance. He was a
queer fellow, and there was something inexplicable in his attachment to
those paradoxes of rock dolls. He thought he had discovered some clue to
the race of men or religious cult which he believed once went almost all
over the world and built monuments or stonehenges long before metal was
known as a tool. We rode across the swelling plain past the quarry in
the Teraai Hills where the hats for the images were carved of the red
sandstone, and we stayed a minute to see again a monster twelve feet
across and weighing many tons. It was a proper head-covering for the
sculpture in the quarry. What had caused the work to stop all of a
sudden? There were hundreds of tools, stone adzes and hammers, dropped
at a moment, statues near finished or hardly begun, some half-way to the
evident place of fixation, and others almost at them. What dreadful bell
had sounded to halt it all?
[Illustration:
Photo by International Newsreel
Beach dancers at Tahiti
]
“Talking about all that, we came to where we could see the Hanga Piko
landing, and our company schooner anchored a little offshore. The
captain and some of the crew were engaged in bringing supplies ashore,
and it was not until we rode into the ground of Queen Korato’s palace,
our home, that we saw there were white strangers arrived. Imagine the
situation! When we called to Taaroa and Tokouo to get a man to care for
the horses, out came a beautiful English girl in a white frock, and
apologized for having entered the house in our absence. Her father
joined her, and we soon knew him, Professor Scotten Dorey, for the
greatest authority on Polynesian languages, myths, and migrations. There
he was, by the favor of the Tahiti owners, come to stay indefinitely and
to study the Rapa Nui language. His daughter was his scribe, she said,
and saved his eyes as much as possible by copying his notes. We were up
against it, as O’Brien would say. Our conveniences were scant,—the queen
had not been much for linen or dishes,—and you know how we fellows live
even in such nearer places like Takaroa.
[Illustration:
After the bath in the pool
]
“Then there was the matter of Taaroa and Tokouo; borrowed wives,
recognized as the custom was. Willis took one look at Miss Dorey, and
went white as when he first saw the sweep of Easter Island. He was as
sensitive as a child about certain things. There we had been all alone,
I used to doing what I damn please, anyhow, and he without any old
_bavarde_ to chatter, or even to see. I won’t say, too, that we hadn’t
had some drinking bouts, nights when we had scared away even the
cockroaches and the ear-boring beetles with our songs, and the love
dances of Taaroa and Tokouo. For me, I’m a gentleman, and I was a
student under Nietzsche at Basel, but I hate being interfered with. I’ve
lived too long in the South Seas. But for the American, a young chap
just out of college, it was like being seen in some rottenness by a
member of his family. You fellows may laugh, but that’s the way he felt.
He used to talk about a younger sister to me on our voyage up.
“We assured the daughter and father we would care for them. There was
room enough, four or five chambers in the place, and we could improvise
beds for them, rough as they might be, but the daily living, the meals
and the evenings, confronted us hatefully. I would mind nothing but the
being so close to probably very particular people, the lack of freedom
of undress, and the pretense about Tokouo, but Willis was in a funk. He
wanted to go to live with Timi Linder, but I knew that he could not
endure that. Linder was island-born and almost a native, insects were
nothing to him, and he made no pretense of regular meals like a white.
Besides he was boss, and wanted to live his own life. I told Willis
plainly he had to make the best of it for a few months. He finally said
he would break off his intimacy with Taaroa, and I said that that was
his lookout.
“So we took the Doreys into our _ménage_. We gave them two rooms
together, and Willis and I doubled up. Taaroa and Tokouo had their mats
in the fourth, and the fifth was the living- and dining-room. The
cook-house was detached. We improvised a big table for the professor on
which he could spread his dictionaries and comparative lists of South
Seas languages, and there day after day he delved into the _Te Pito te
Henua_ mystery. Chief Ure Vaeiko and Pakomeo were interpreters of the
tablets and reciters of legends, but, as the professor had not yet
mastered the Rapa Nui tongue, a go-between in English was needed. For a
few days Timi Linder volunteered for this job, but soon it was the
American who was called upon. He had made good use of his year or so and
knew the dialect well. It is only a dialect of the Malayo-Polynesian
language, and the professor himself in three months knew more of it than
any of us because he spoke six or seven other branches of it from New
Zealand Maori to Tahitian.
“The schooner, after a month of unloading supplies and taking on wool
and cattle, sailed for Tahiti, and Timi Linder went with her, as he had
been three years away from his relations. This left me in charge, and as
the principal settlement was at Vaihu, the former mission, I was ordered
by Linder to move there, and Willis to stay at Hanga Piko. You can see
easily how fate was shaping things for the American. I took Tokouo with
me, and, the year’s lease of Taaroa expiring, she was demanded back by
her husband. An elderly Tahitian couple replaced them as helpers in the
palace. As I was five miles away, with a poor road, and had to keep the
accounts of births and deaths of people and animals, look after the
warehouse, and be a kind of chief and doctor, I saw less and less of the
Doreys, and not much more of Willis. He had to run his gang, attend to
the cattle, the water-holes, and sheep that got in distress in the
craters or caves. Of course, now and then he came over to see me, or I
to see him and the English people,—I’m Welsh myself, three quarters,—and
I met him often in the scrub.
“Everything seemed going along all right after a few months. The Doreys
came in the seventh month of the Rapa Nui year, _Koro_, which
corresponds to our January, Timi Linder left in _Tuaharo_, February, and
Taaroa returned to her husband the last of that month. The month is
divided in half, beginning with the new moon and the full moon. On the
first of the full moon in _Vaitu-nui_, May, we had a party to visit the
_ahu_ of Hananakou. The professor, his daughter, and Willis joined me at
Vaihu as it was on the trail, and in company with several islanders we
started. It so happened that Taaroa was at my house to visit Tokouo, and
when Willis rode into the inclosure she was the first person he saw.
“‘_Kohomai!_’ he said, which is the usual greeting. It is like ‘Good
day’ or ‘How do you do,’ but it actually means ‘Come to me!’ You answer,
‘_Koe!_’ which is ‘Thou!’ A dozen times a day you might meet and say
this, pleasantly or automatically, but I heard Taaroa reply with
astonishing bitterness, ‘_Koe kovau aita paihenga!_’ ‘Thou! I am not a
dog!’ She turned her back on him as Miss Dorey followed in, and I saw on
his face a look of puzzlement and fear. I was struck for the first time
by the contrasting beauty of the two girls, Taaroa the finest type of
Polynesian, as fine as the best Marquesan, and the white girl the real
_tea-tea_, the blond English, the pink-white flesh, the violet eyes and
rich brown hair. I tell you I’d like to have been lover to them both.
Taaroa looked intently at Miss Dorey, who spoke to her negligently
though kindly, and the incident was over. Anyhow, for the time being.
“The _ahu_ of Hananakou was a grim sight in the moonlight. About eighty
yards long, and but four wide, it loomed on the sea-cliff like the fort
at Gibraltar, black, broken, and remindful of the past. The front was of
huge blocks of fire-rocks, all squared as neatly as the pyramids, and
carved in curious faces and figures barely traceable in the brilliant
night. Among these was the swastika or fylfot. Human remains filled the
inner chambers, and bones were lying loose among the boulders. The
professor took my arm—he was in his sixties then—and led me to where a
fallen statue lay prone on the steep slope toward the sea.
“‘Agassiz guessed it,’ he said quietly. ‘The Pacific continent once
extended due west from South America to here, pretty nearly from the
Galapagos to the Paumotus. The people who built these statues were the
same as the Incas of Peru. In my room now is a drawing made by my
daughter of the figures on the rocks at Orongo. I have its duplicate on
a piece of pottery I dug up in an Inca grave. There is the swastika as
in ancient Troy, India, and in Peru. The Maori legend known from Samoa
to New Zealand was correct. Probably it came from Rapa Nui people who
survived the cataclysm that lowered the continent under the ocean.
“Instinctively I turned my head towards the great land of South America
now two thousand miles away, and in the moonbeams I saw Willis clasping
the English girl’s hand. Her face was close to his and her eyes had
happy tears in them. A jealous feeling came over me. As a matter of
fact, I never made love to a white woman since I left Europe. I’m
satisfied with the part-native who don’t ask too much time or money.
But, by God, I envied him that night, and when we returned to Queen
Korato’s palace I hated him for his luck.
The mood of Llewellyn was growing more self-accusatory, and his voice
less audible. Perhaps Aaron Mandel, an old pearl-buyer, had heard him
tell the story before, because he interrupted him, and said:
“What the devil’s the good of openin’ old graves, T’yonni?”
He said it, indulgently, calling him by his familiar Tahitian name, but
Llewellyn was set to tell it all. I felt again and more certainly that
it was confession, and excused my impatient interest by the need of his
making it.
“Let him finish!”
Llewellyn’s gaze was that of a man relieved from imminent prison.
“It’s not my grave, Mandel,” he said; “I could not foresee the future.
When I got back to Vaihu, Tokouo brought me some rum and water, and
Taaroa sat on the mat with us. She had questions in her black eyes, and
I had to answer something after what I had heard her say to Willis.
“‘We went to Hananakou,’ I began.
“‘He does not need me now,’ she broke in angrily. ‘He has gotten all my
words, and gives them to the _Via tea-tea_ (white woman). He is a
_toke-toke_, a thief!’
“Remember that Miss Dorey was undoubtedly the first white female Taaroa
had ever seen, and that jealousy among women or men in Rapa Nui was
unknown. They hated, like us, but jealousy they had no word for. And
because I was amazed at her emotion, I said:
“‘I saw them _hohoi_ (embrace).’
“Taaroa showed then the heat of this new flame on Easter Island. She
gave a mocking laugh, repeated it, then choked, and burst into wailing.
You could have told me that moment I knew nothing of the Maori, and I
would not have denied it. I was struck dumb, and swallowed my drink. And
as I poured another, and sat there in the old mission-house where
_Frère_ Eugène had gathered his flock years before, Taaroa began the
love song of her race, written in the picture symbols on the wooden
tablet I have in my house in Tahiti now. It is the _Ate-a-renga-hokan
iti poheraa_. You know how it goes. I can hear Taaroa now:
“Ka tagi, Renga-a-manu—hakaopa;
Ohiu runarme a ita metua.
Ka ketu te nairo hihi—O te hoa!
Eaha ton tiena—e te hoa—e!
“Ta hi tiena ita have.
Horoa ita have.
Horoa moni e fahiti;
Ita ori miro;
Ana piri atu;
Ana piri atu;
Ana tagu atu.”
Even a quarter of Maori blood with childhood spent in Polynesia lends a
plaintive quality to the voice of men and women, and gives them an
ability to sing their own songs in a powerfully affecting manner—the
outpouring of the sad, confused hearts of a destroyed people. Under the
cocoanut-trees of Takaroa, the lamps all but expiring by then, the man
who had sat under Nietzsche at Basel rendered the song of Takaroa, the
primitive love cry of the Rapa Nuiis, so that I was transported to the
Land of Womb and Navel, and saw as he did the lovely savage Taaroa in
her wretchedness.
“_Auwe!_” Kopcke exclaimed. “She could love!”
“_Eiaha e ru!_ You shall see!” murmured Llewellyn, forebodingly. “After
that I didn’t meet Taaroa for two months. She stopped visiting Tokouo,
and my girl said she was _heva_, which is wrong in the head. Tokouo
couldn’t even understand jealousy. But I did, and I envied the American
having two women, the finest on the island, in love with him. About a
month later I was at the palace to have supper with them. My word, Miss
Dorey had straightened out things. There were the best mats, those the
natives make of bulrushes, everywhere. The table was spread as fine as
wax, and we had a leg of mutton, tomatoes, and other fresh vegetables.
She said they owed the green things to Willis, who had hunted the
islands for them, and found some wild and some cultivated by natives who
had the seed from war-vessels that had come years before. The professor
had out my tablets after dinner, and his daughter read the translation
into English of the song Taaroa had sung. She had brought with her on
the schooner a tiny organ about as big as a trunk, and she had set the
_ute_ to music, as wild as the wind. The words went like this:
“Who is sorrowing? It is Renga-a-manu-hakopa!
A red branch descended from her father.
Open thine eyelids, my true love.
Where is your brother, my love?
At the Feast in the Bay of Salutation
We will meet under the feathers of your clan.
She has long been yearning after you.
Send your brother as a mediator of love between us,
Your brother who is now at the house of my father.
Oh, where is the messenger of love between us?
When the feast of driftwood is commemorated
There we will meet in loving embrace.
“She was dressed all in white, with a blue sash, and a blue ribbon in
her hair, and when she sang I could see her white bosom as it rose and
fell. She was making love to the American right before me. Her father,
with the tablet beside him, thought of nothing but the translation, and
she had forgotten me. I could see that this was one of many such
evenings. Willis stood and turned the leaves on which she had written
her words and air, and when she sang the word ‘love’ their bodies seemed
to draw each other. There was a girl I knew in Munich—but hell! After
the tablets were put away, we talked about the yearly festival of the
god Meke Meke, which was about the last of the ancient days still
celebrated. The schooner was due back, and would take away the visitors,
and they hoped that it would not go before thirty days yet, when it
would be _Maro_, the last month in the Rapa Nui year, our July. That was
the real winter month, and then the sea-birds came by the tens of
thousands to lay their eggs. Mostly they preferred the ledges and
hollows of the cliffs, but the first comers frequented two islets or
points of rock in the sea just below the crater Rano Kao. Both Chief Ure
Vaeiko and the old Pakomeo said that always there had been a ceremony to
the god Meke Meke at that time. We had witnessed the one the previous
year, and could tell the English pair about it.
“All the strong men of the island, young and old, met at Orongo after
the birds were seen to have returned, and raced by land and water to the
rocks, Motu Iti and Motu Nui, to seize an egg. The one who came back to
the king and crowd at Orongo was highly honored. The great spirit of the
sea, Meke Meke, was supposed to have picked him out for regard, and all
the year he was well fed and looked after by those who wanted the favor
of the god. The women especially were drawn to him as a hero, and a
likely father of strong children. In times gone, said Ure Vaeiko, many
were killed or hurt in the scramble of thousands, and in the fights for
precedence that came in the struggle to break the eggs of competitors.
Now one or two might be drowned or injured, but, with the few left to
take part, often no harm was done anybody.
“When I left that night Willis walked a little distance with me as I led
my horse. He was under stress and, after fencing about a bit, said that
he would like to go away on the schooner. His two years were not
complete, but he was anxious to get back to America. He had gathered
material for a thesis on the tablets and sculptures of Rapa Nui, with
which he believed he could win his doctor’s degree. That was really what
he had come for, he said. I was sore because I knew the truth. I didn’t
doubt about the thesis. That explained his being there at all, but his
wanting to go on that next vessel was too plain. I said to him that he
was not a prisoner or a slave, but that I hoped he would stay, unless
Timi Linder was aboard, when it would be all right, as only two white
men were needed, one at each station. We left it that way, though he did
not say yes or no.
“Well, Linder was on the schooner, and she came into Hanga Piko Cove two
weeks before the Meke Meke feast, so that her sailing was set for the
day after, and Willis was told by Linder it was all right for him to go.
Linder had letters for everybody, and new photographic films for Willis.
I unloaded the vessel, and Willis rode over the island with Linder to
show him the changes, the increase of cattle and sheep, and pick out
certain cattle and horses the schooner was to carry to Tahiti. He made
dozens of pictures for his thesis. Meanwhile the natives had absolutely
quit all work and moved in a body from their little plantations to the
old settlement at Orongo to prepare for the race. Orongo was the
queerest place in the world. If Rapa Nui was strange, then Orongo was
the innermost secret of it. It was a village of stone houses in two
rough rows, built on the edge of the volcano Rana Kao, and facing the
sea. There were fifty houses, all pretty much alike. They were built
against the terraces and rocks of the crater slope, without design, but
according to the ground. The doorways to the houses were not two feet
wide or high, and the rooms, though from a dozen to forty feet long,
never more than five feet wide, and the roofs not more than that high.
They were built of slabs of stone, and the floors were the bare earth.
The doorposts were sculptured and the inside walls painted, and the
rocks all about marked with hieroglyphics and figures. There were
lizards, fishes, and turtles, and a half-human, mythical beast with
claws for legs and arms, but mostly the Meke Meke, the god which
Professor Dorey had discovered the likeness of in the Inca tombs in
Peru. The old people said that Orongo had never been occupied except at
the time of the feast of Meke Meke.
“So there they were, all that were left of the once many thousands,
living again in those damp, squat tombs, and cooking in the ovens by the
doorways that were there before Judas hanged himself. All knew that
Orongo was more ancient than the platforms or the images, and those were
built by the same folk who put up the stonehenges in Britain and in the
Tonga Islands. Pakomeo, who had escaped from the slavery in Peru, was in
charge of the Meke Meke event, because Chief Ure Vaeiko was in his
eighties. We donated a number of sheep, and, with yams, bananas, and
sugar-cane,—we grew a little of these last two,—the show was mostly of
food. A few went to Orongo several days before the bird-eggs trial, but
all slept there the night before. The moon was at its biggest, and the
women danced on the terrace in front of the houses. Professor Dorey and
his daughter with Willis were there when Timi Linder and I arrived after
supper. They had waited for us, to begin, and the drums were sounding as
we rounded the curve of the crater.
“The English girl was entranced by the beauty of the night, the weird
outlines of the Orongo camp, the over-reaching rise of the volcano, the
sea in the foreground, and the _kokore toru_, the moon that shone so
brightly on that lone speck of land thousands of miles from our homes. I
heard her singing intimately to him an old English air. The schooner was
to leave the next day, and her lover would go with her.
“When we were seated on mats, Pakomeo struck his hands together, and
called out, ‘_Riva-riva maitai!_’ Two women danced, both so covered with
mat garments and wearing feather hats drooping over their heads that I
did not know them. The tom-tom players chanted about the Meke Meke, and
the women moved about the circle, spreading and closing their mats in
imitation perhaps of the Meke Meke’s actions in the sea or air. I was
bored after a few minutes, and watched Willis and Miss Dorey. They were
in the shadow sitting close to each other, their hands clasped, and from
his sweet words to her I learned her first name. The father always said
simply ‘daughter,’ but Willis called her Viola. It was a good name for
her, it seemed to me, for she was grave and pathetic like the viola’s
notes. The two women were succeeded by others, who put in pantomine the
past of their people, the building of the _ahu_ and the images, the
fishing and the wars, the heroic feats of the dead, and the vengeance of
the gods. Christianity had not touched them much. They still believed in
the _atua_, their name for both god and devil.
“Now the heaps of small fuel brought days before by severe labor were
lit, and when the fires were blazing low a single dancer appeared. She
had on a white tapa cloak, flowing and graceful, and in her hair the
plumage of the _makohe_, the tropic bird, the long scarlet feathers so
prized by natives. As she came into the light I saw that she was Taaroa.
Her long black hair was in two plaits, and the _makohe_ feathers were
like a coronet. She had a dancing-wand in each hand, the _ao_, light and
with flattened ends carved with the heads of famous female dancers of
long ago. The three drums began a slow, monotonous thump, and Taaroa a
gentle, swaying movement, with timid gestures, and coquettish
glances—the wooing of a maiden yet unskilled in love. The drums beat
faster, and the simulated passion of the dancer became more ardent. Her
eyes, dark-brown, brilliant, and liquid, commenced to search for the
wooed one, and roved around the circle. They remained fixed an instant
on the American in startling appeal. I glanced and saw Miss Dorey look
at him surprisedly and inquiringly, and then resentfully at Taaroa. But
she was carrying on her pantomine, and she ended it with a burst of
passion, the _hula_ that we all know, though even more attractive than
Miri’s or Mamoe’s in Tahiti.
“I suppose Miss Dorey had never in her life seen such an expression of
_amour_, and didn’t know that women told such things. Her face was like
the fire, and she moved slightly away from Willis. But now Taaroa was
dancing again, and altogether differently. She stood in one spot, and as
the drums beat softly, raised her arms as if imploring the moon, and
sang the mourning _ute_ of Easter Island:
“‘Ka ihi uiga—te ki ati,—
Auwe te poki, e—’
“The sail of my daughter,
Never before broken by the force of foreign clans!
Ever victorious in all her fights,
She would not drink the poison waters in the cup of obsidian glass.
“We all felt depressingly the sudden reversal of sentiment, and, when
Taaroa had finished, Miss Dorey said she would like to leave. She
shivered. The air was a little cold, but the Rapa Nuiis built up their
fires and prepared to dance through the night. We whites, with Timi
Linder, went home with a promise to meet at noon to-morrow for the egg
ceremony. As Timi and I rode to Vaihu, seven or eight miles it was, he
remarked that Taaroa had gotten much handsomer while he was away. He
asked if she was still friendly with Willis, and I explained things.
Timi didn’t make much of those troubles, but ‘Anyhow,’ he said, ‘they’ll
all sail away to-morrow, and her husband can lease her to me.’”
Llewellyn hesitated. His story had been long. The lamps were out.
“There isn’t much more,” he said, apologetically though pleadingly.
“When the race started at Orongo, we four, the English people, Willis,
and I, went to the sea where we could watch the swimming. Timi Linder
stayed with Ure Vaeiko and Pakomeo to award the prize. The runners came
swarming down the cliff, some taking paths around and others trying to
climb straight down. They wore loin-cloths only, and were mad as
fighters with the excitement. Some fell but got up, and away they went,
and some leaped into the sea from the bluff at forty or fifty feet high.
The rocks were about a hundred fathom off shore, and that is a short
swim for Kanakas. But it was the carrying the egg whole and getting up
the bluff again that tested skill and luck. Well, it was over in a
little while, and when we returned to Orongo, Matatoa, the husband of
Taaroa, had been made the choice of the god Meke Meke for the year.
“As the passengers had their goods already stowed, but intended to go
aboard the schooner before nightfall to wait for a favoring wind, Willis
proposed that we all go back to the beach and have a last bath together.
Most of the Rapa Nuiis went with us, and the victor and Taaroa among
them. We all wore _pareus_ and I tell you those two young people made a
magnificent pair. That year and a half on Rapa Nui had done wonders for
Willis. He was like a wrestler, and Miss Dorey in her _pareu_ was a
picture.
“Some one spoke of the spring under the sea, and proposed that we all
drink from it. It was like that one at Nâgone. The fresh water runs into
the ocean about ten feet under the ocean at the bottom of the cliff.
Willis shouted out that he had never had a drink under the sea, and
would try it first. Nobody, they said, had been down there for years,
but in war time it had been a prized spot. Willis was a good diver, and
down he went while we watched from the rocks twenty feet above on which
we climbed. Now, to stay down there long enough to drink, some one else
had to stand on your shoulders, and some one else on theirs. Willis
plunged in, and, of those sporting in the water, Taaroa was first to
follow him down. Her husband, the winner, was the second, and we,
laughing and joking about the American’s heavy burden, waited for him to
come up spluttering.
“You know how long it seems. We had no watches, but after about a
minute, Matatoa suddenly tottered and then dived. The water was not very
clear there because of the issuance of the spring, and mud stirred up,
and we could not see beneath the surface. But we knew something
unexpected had happened, and Miss Dorey seized my arm.
“‘For God’s sake, go down and help him,’ she shrieked.
[Illustration:
Old cocoanut trees
]
[Illustration:
From the painting by Oscar F. Schmidt
The dark valley of Taaoa
]
“I hesitated. I didn’t think anything was wrong, but even then I had a
feeling of not risking anything to save him if it was. He had too much
already. Rotten! I know it. But that’s my nature. I couldn’t have done
any good. Matatoa came up and went down again and then a half dozen
dived to the place where Willis and Taaroa were out of sight. One came
up and yelled that he could not find them, and then we knew the worst.
They were gone by this time more than three minutes. Then I leaped in,
too, but there were so many of us we got tangled up with one another
under the water, and as Matatoa came near me I told every one else to
move aside, and that we two would make the search.
“Well, we found that at the spring a frightful sponge of seaweed and
kelp had grown, and that Willis and Taaroa had become fastened in it. We
had to take down knives to cut them out, and we brought them up
together. She had him clasped in her arms so tightly we had to tear them
apart. They were like dead. His heart was not beating, but we carried
them up the rocky path and with as much speed as possible to the fires
which the natives still had for cooking. There Pakomeo and Ure Vaeiko
directed the holding of them in the smoke which, as you know, does
sometimes bring them back, but they were dead as Queen Korato. We put
the body of the American on a horse and took it to the palace. Taaroa
remained at Orongo, and her tribe began at once preparations to bury her
in one of the burrows. Miss Dorey was quiet. Except that one shriek I
did not hear her cry. I went to Vaihu that night and left Timi Linder
with them. I got drunk, and Timi said in the morning that the English
girl stayed alone all night with Willis in the living room.”
I had sat so long listening to Llewellyn that when, with the tension
off, I tried to stand up, I reeled. He sat with his head bowed. Captain
Nimau grasped my arm to help himself up, and said, “_Mais, mon Dieu!_
that was terrible. You buried the American there, and the Doreys left
soon.”
“The next day, after the burial. I remained two years more, and, by the
great Atua of Rano Roraku, I wasn’t sober a week at a time.”
Kopcke lit a cigarette, and, as we prepared to separate, said
sententiously: “_Mon vieux_, I know women and I know the Kanaka, and I
do not think Taaroa drowned the American for love. She didn’t know about
the sea-grass being there.”
Llewellyn did not answer. He only said, vexedly, “Well, for heaven’s
sake, let’s get a few drinks before we go to sleep!”
I left them to go to Nohea’s shack. On my mat I pitied Llewellyn. He had
a real or fancied contrition for his small part in the tragedy of Rapa
Nui. But my last thought was of the violet eyes of Miss Dorey. Those
months to England must have been over-long.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XI
Pearl hunting in the lagoon—Previous methods wasteful—Mapuhi shows me
the wonders of the lagoon—Marvelous stories of sharks—Woman who lost
her arm—Shark of Samoa—Deacon who rode a shark a half hour—Eels are
terrible menace.
THE lagoon of Takaroa was to be the scene of intense activity and of
incredible romance for the period of the open season for hunting the
pearl-oyster. Eighty years or more of this fishing had been a profitable
industry in Takaroa, especially for the whites who owned or commanded
the vessels trading here. A handful of nails would at one time buy the
services of a Paumotuan diver for a day. Trifles, cheap muskets, axes,
and hammers, were exchanged for shells and pearls, often five dollars
for five hundred dollars’ worth. The Paumotuan was robbed unconscionably
by cheating him of his rights under contracts, by intimidation, assault,
and murder, by getting him drunk, and the usual villainous methods of
unregulated trade all over the world. The Sons of Belial were
hereabouts. They had to haul down the black flag under compulsion, but
they sighed for the good old days, and did not constitute themselves
honest guardians for the natives even now.
The piratical traders of the early decades sailed from atoll to atoll,
bartering for pearls and shells, or engaging the Paumotuans to dive for
them, either by the month or season, at a wage or for a division of the
gains. For their part, the traders supplied firearms, salt meat, and
biscuit or flour, though rum or other alcoholic drink was their
principal merchandise. The average native would continue to sell his
soul for the godlike exaltation of the hours of drunkenness, and forget
the hell of the aftermath. He did sell his body, for often the diver
found himself in debt to the traders at the end of the year. If so, he
was lost, for he remained the virtual slave of the creditor, who gave
him still enough rum to make him quiescent, and to continue in debt till
he died from the accidents of his vocation, or from excesses.
The lagoons were emptied of their shells in improvident manner, shells
of any size being taken, and no provision made for the future nor for
the growth and propagation of the oysters. The industry was the usual
fiercely competitive struggle that marks a new way of becoming rich
quickly. The disorder and wasteful methods of the early days of gold
digging in California, and later in Alaska, matched the reckless roguery
and foolish mishandling of these rich pearl-fisheries before the French
Government tardily ended the reign of lawlessness and prodigality.
Gambling became a fever, and the white man knew the cards better than
the brown. Driven by desire for rum and for more money to hazard, the
Paumotuan risked terrible depths and killed himself, or ruined his
health by too many descents in a day. Atoll and sea must soon have been
deprived of people and oysters.
Thirty years ago, the secretary of the _Collège de France_, summoned to
Tahiti to find a remedy, reported that, if laws were not made and
enforced against the conditions he found, the industry would speedily
pass. Schooners of many nationalities frequented the atolls. Pearls were
not rare, and magnificent shells were found in many of the eighty
lagoons. Their size surpassed all found now. The continuous search had
impoverished the beds, which were the result of centuries, and had
robbed them of shells of age and more perfect growth, as war took the
strongest and bravest men of a nation, and left the race to be
perpetuated by cowards, weaklings, and the rich or politic who evaded
the front of battle.
It took five years to grow a fine shell. The sixth year often doubled
the value in mother-of-pearl, and the seventh year doubled it again. The
Chinese, in a certain famous fishery off their coast, sought the shells
only every ten or fifteen years; but those yellow people had the last
word in conservation of soil and every other source of gain, forced to a
sublimated philosophy by the demands of hundreds of millions of hungry
bellies.
Warned by the Parisian professor, the French Government made strict
regulations to prevent the extinction of the pearl-oyster, and,
incidentally, of the Paumotuan. For the oyster they instituted the
closed season or _rahui_, forbidding the taking of shells from certain
atolls except at times stated. Experts examined the lagoons, and upon
their recommendations a schedule of the _rahui_ was drawn out, so that
while diving might be permitted in one lagoon for successive seasons it
might be prohibited in another over a term of years. This had caused a
peripatetic school of divers, who went about the group from open lagoon
to open lagoon, as vagrants follow projects of railroad building. But
the lagoons would never be again what they had been in wealth. The
denuding had been too rapacious. However, the oysters were now given
time to breed, and their food was taken care of to a degree, though
France, the most scientific of nations, with the foremost physicists,
chemists, and physicians, did not send her genius to her colonies.
To protect the divers and their families, alcohol was made contraband.
It was unlawful to let a Paumotuan have intoxicants. The scenes of
riotous debauchery once common and which always marked the diving
season, in the merciless pitting of pearl- and shell-buyers against one
another, were rare, but surreptitious sale and donation of drink were
still going on.
Mormonism, Josephitism, and Seventh Day Adventism, strict sects as to
stimulants, had aided the law, and the Lying Bills and McHenrys, the
Mandels and the Kopckes, had a white god against them in their
devil-take-the-hindmost treatment of the natives. France also confined
the buying and selling in the Paumotus to French citizens, so that the
non-Gauls by blood had been driven to kiss the flag they contemned. But
business excused all subterfuges.
* * * * *
One day when the diving term was almost on, Mapuhi and I were talking on
his veranda about the ventures of his life, and especially of his
experiences under the sea.
“Come!” he said, with an indulgent smile upon his flawed but noble face,
“American, you and I will go upon the lagoon, and I will show you what
may be strange to you.”
Going to the end of his spit of land, we entered a canoe, and, with the
chief paddling swiftly, moved towards the other side of the lagoon, away
from the habitations of the Paumotuans. When a hundred yards or two
offshore, Mapuhi shipped his paddle and let the outrigger canoe lie idly
on the water.
“Look!” he said, appraisingly, “See the wonders of God prepared for his
children!”
I took the _titea mata_ he handed me, the four-sided wooden box with a
pane of ordinary glass fixed in it, about fifteen inches square, and
notched for the neck of the observer. Putting the glass below the
surface and gazing through it, I was in fairy-land.
The floor of the lagoon was the superbest garden ever seen by the eye of
man. A thousand forms of life, fixed and moving, firm and waving, coral
and shells, fish of all the colors of the rainbow, of beauteous, of
weird, and of majestic shape and size, decorated and animated this
strange reserve man had invaded for food and profit. The giant
furbelowed clams, largest of all mollusks, white, or tinged with red and
saffron or brown-yellow, a corruscating glare of blue, violet, and
yellow from above, reposed like a bed of dream tulips upon the shining
parterre.
The coral was of an infinitude of shape: emerald one moment and sapphire
the next, shot with colors from the sun and the living and growing
things beneath. Springing from the sea-floor were cabbages and roses,
cauliflower and lilies, ivory fans and scarlet vases, delicate fluted
columns, bushes of pale yellow coral, bouquets of red and green coral,
shells of pink and purple, masses of weeds, brown and black sponges. It
was a magic maze of submarine sculpture, fretwork, and flowers, and
through all the interstices of the coral weaved in and out the
brilliant-colored and often miraculously-molded fish and crustaceans.
There were great masses of dark or sulphur-hued coral into which at any
alarm these creatures darted and from which they peeped when danger
seemed past. Snakes, blue, gold, or green bars on a velvet black-brown,
glided in and out of the recesses, or coiled themselves about branches.
Big and small were these denizens of the lagoon. The tiny hermit-crab in
a stolen mollusk-shell had on his movable house his much smaller
paramour, who, also in her appropriated former tenement of a dead enemy,
would spend the entire mating season thus waiting for his embrace. And
now and again as I looked through the crystal water I saw the giant
bulks of sharks, conger-eels, and other huge fish. These I pointed out
to Mapuhi.
He peered through the _titea mata_.
“_E!_” he exclaimed. “For fifty years I have fought those demons. They
will take one of us this _rahui_ as before. It may be God’s will, but I
think the devil fights on the side of the beasts below. I myself have
never been touched by them though I have killed many. When I think of
the many years I entered the water all over these seas, and in blackest
sin, I understand more and more what the elders say, that God is ever
watching over those He intends to use for His work. I have seen or known
men to lose parts of themselves to the sharks, but to escape death. They
prayed when in the very jaws of the _mao_, and were heard.”
Mapuhi blew out his breath loudly, as if expelling an evil odor.
“_Tavana_, tell me about some of the bad deeds of sharks,” I said.
“_Aue!_ There are no good ones,” he replied. “In Raiatea, near Tahiti,
they were fishing at night for the _ava_, the fish something like the
salmon. They had a net five meters high, and, after the people of the
village had drawn the net round so that no fish could escape, a number
of men dived from their canoes. You know they try to catch the _ava_ by
the tail and make it swim for the air, pulling the fisherman with it.
That is an _arearea_ [game]. The torches held by the women and children
and the old people were lighting the water brightly when Tamaehu came up
with his fish. He was baptized Tamaehu, but his common name was Marae.
Just as he brought the _ava_, or the _ava_ brought Tamaehu, to his
canoe, and the occupants were about to lift the _ava_ into the canoe, a
shark caught Tamaehu by the right foot. He caught hold of the outrigger
and tried to shake it off. It was not a big shark, but it was hungry. He
shouted, and his companions leaned over and drove a harpoon into the
shark, which let go his foot, tore out the harpoon, and swam away. Poor
Tamaehu was hauled in, with his foot hanging loose, but in Raiatea the
French doctor sewed it on again. You can see him now limping about, but
he praises God for being alive.”
“He well may; and there are many others to join with him?” I ventured,
inquisitively.
“Do you know Piti, the woman of Raroia, in these Paumotu islands?” he
asked. “No? If you go there, look for her. You will know her, for she
has but one arm. Raroia has a large door to its lagoon. The bigger the
door the bigger the sharks inside. The lagoons to which only small boats
can enter have small sharks only. Piti was diving in the lagoon of
Raroia during the season. She was bringing up shell from fifty feet
below, and had several already in her canoe. She dived again, and, after
seizing one shell, started to come up. Suddenly she saw a shark dart out
of a coral bank. She became afraid. She did not pray. She forgot even to
swim up. A man like me would not have been afraid. It is the shark that
takes you when you do not see him that is to fear. Piti did nothing, and
the _mao_ took her left arm into his mouth. He closed his teeth and
dragged off the flesh down to the elbow where he bit her arm in two. You
know how when a shark bites, after he sinks his teeth into the meat, he
twists his mouth, so as to make his teeth cut. That is the way God made
him. This shark twisted and stripped off Piti’s flesh as he drew down
his teeth. When he bit off her lower arm he swam off to eat it, and she
rose to the top. She put her good arm over the outrigger, and those
other women paddled to her and pulled her into the canoe. The bone stuck
out six inches below the flesh the shark had left. There were no
doctors, but they put a healing plant over the arm. The wound would not
heal, and ate and ate inside for several years until the upper arm fell
off at the shoulder-joint. Then she got well.”
“Is the shark himself never frightened? A human being must seem a very
queer fish to a shark. They do not always attack, do they?” I said. “I
have swum where they were, and Jack of the _Snark_, Monsieur London,
told that at Santa Ana in the Solomon Islands, when they were putting
dynamite in the water to get a supply of fish, the natives leaped into
the water and fought with the sharks for the fish. He said that the
sharks had learned to rush to the spot whenever they heard dynamite
exploded. The Solomon people had to grab the stunned fish away from the
sharks, and one man who started for the surface with a fish came to the
boat with only half of it, as a shark had taken away the head.”
“_E!_” answered Mapuhi, “Sharks are devils, but the devils are not
without fear, and sometimes they become _neneva_, and do things perhaps
they did not think about. At Marutea Atoll, Tau, a strong man, caught a
shark about four feet long. They had a feast on the beach, and Tau, to
show how strong he was, picked up the shark and played with it after it
had been on the sand for some minutes. The mouth of the _mao_ was near
his arm, and it opened and closed, and took off the flesh of the upper
arm. He got well, but he never could use that arm. Right here in
Takaroa, in the _rahui_ of seven years ago, a man, diving for shell, met
a shark on the bottom. He was crawling along the bottom, looking for a
good shell, when the shark turned a corner and struck him square in the
mouth. The shark was a little one, not more than three feet long, but so
frightened was he that he bit the man’s two cheeks right off, the cheeks
and the lips, so that to-day you see all his teeth all the time. He has
become a good Mormon.”
Mapuhi laughed. I looked at him, and his face was filled with mirth. He
was not deceived as to the heart of man. Devout he was, but he had dealt
too long with brown and white, and had been too many years a
sinner—indeed, one of the vilest, if rumor ran true—not to have drunk
from the well-springs of the passions. Mapuhi wore a blue loin-cloth and
a white shirt. The tails of the latter floated in the soft breeze, and
the bosom was open, displaying his Herculean chest. We could see his
house in the distance across the lagoon, and now and then he kept it in
his eyes for a minute. He had gone far for a man whose father had been a
savage and an eater of his enemies. The Mormon tenets permit a proper
pride of possession, like the Mohammedan philosophy. One can rejoice
that God has signaled one out for holding in trust the material assets
of life. The bankers of the world have long known this about their God.
Mapuhi had become thoughtful, and, as I was sure he had other and more
astonishing facts about the sharks not yet related, I suggested that
other archipelagos were also cursed by the presence and rapacity of the
_mao_.
“In Samoa,” said Mapuhi, “the shark is not called _mao_ or _mako_ as in
Nuku-Hiva, but _mălie_. There are no lagoons in Samoa, for there are no
atolls, but high mountains and beaches. Now the _mălie_ is the shark
that swims around the islands, but the deep-sea shark, the one that
lives out of sight of land, is the mălietua. The Samoans are a wise
people in a rich country. They are not like us poor Paumotuans with only
cocoanuts and fish, but the Samoans have bananas, breadfruit, taro,
oranges, and cocoanuts and fish, too. They are a happy people. Of
course, I am a Paumotuan, and I would not live away from here. Once, a
woman I had—when I was not a Mormon—wanted me to take my money and go
and live in Tahiti, which is gay. I considered it, and even counted my
money. But when I thought of my home and my people, I thrust her out as
a bad woman. Now in Manua in Samoa was a half-caste, and his daughter
was the queen of Manua. The half-caste’s name was Alatua Iunga, and he
was one day fishing for _bonito_ in the way we do, with a pearl-shell
hook, when one of the four or five Samoans with him said, ‘There is a
small shark. Put on a piece of _bonito_, and we will catch the _mălie_.’
They did so, and then they let their canoe float while they ate boiled
taro and dried squid.
“Then one of the Samoans said, ‘I see a shark.’ Others looked, and they
said, also, ‘A shark is rising from the deep.’ Now a deep-water shark,
as I said, is a _mălietua_ and is not to be smiled at. Iunga said, ‘Get
the big hook and bait it!’ Then the shark rose, twenty feet of its body
out of the water, and its jaws opened. They closed on the outrigger of
the canoe, and bit one end clear off. Iunga said again, ‘Get the hook!’
He thought the shark would take the baited hook, and then they could
throw the rope attached to the hook overboard, and the _mălietua_ would
be troubled with the rope at the end of his nose and would cease to
attack them. They could see the shark all this time. He was a blue shark
with a flat tail, and was forty feet long at least. Their canoe was just
half as long, and they thought of Iona [Jonah]. The _perofeta_ was
swallowed by a shark, because a whale can swallow only little fish. The
_mălietua_ would not take the hook, and, leaving the outrigger, rammed
the stern of the canoe. The shock almost threw them into the water. All
were paddling hard to escape, for they knew that this shark was a real
devil and sought to destroy them. Iunga, who was steering the _va aalo_,
rose up and struck the shark many times on his nose. This angered him,
but Iunga kept it up, as their one chance of safety. There is a saying
in Samoa, ‘_O le mălie ma le tu’tu’_, which is, ‘Each shark has its
pay.’ Iunga and all the Samoans were religious men, though not Mormons,
and they sang a hymn as they paddled hard. They made their peace with
the Creator, who heard them. For over two miles the race was run. The
_mălietua_ pursued the _va aalo_, and Iunga jabbed him with the big
paddle. At last they were nearly all dead from weariness, and so Iunga
sheered the canoe abruptly to the right, intending to smash on the reef
as a chance for their lives. But just as the _va aalo_ swerved, to
strike upon the coral rocks, they rested on their paddles, and they saw
that the shark had disappeared. If that shark had kept on for another
minute it would have killed itself on the reef.”
“Mapuhi,” I verified, “I, too, have been to Manua, and heard the story
from the kin of Alatua Iunga, whom I knew as Arthur Young, the trader.
He became very pious after that, and was a great help to the
_mitinare_.”
The republican king of the atolls may have thought he detected in my
voice or manner a raillery I did not mean to imply, for he inspected my
countenance seriously. He had long ago discovered that white men often
speak with a forked tongue. But I was sincere, because I had never known
a joyous, unfrightened person to become suddenly religious, while I had
witnessed a hundred conversions from fear of the devil, hunger, or the
future. However, Mapuhi, who was an admirable story-teller, with a
dramatic manner and a voice of poesy, had reserved his _chef d’œuvre_
for the last.
“American,” he said, “If I were a scoffer or unbeliever to-day and I met
Huri-Huri and he informed me of what God had done for him, and his
neighbors who had seen the thing itself brought their proof to his
words, I would believe in God’s goodness. Have you seen Huri-Huri at
Rangiora? He lives at the village of Avatoru. He has a long beard. Ah,
you have not seen him. Yes, very few Paumotuans have beards, but no
Paumotuan ever had the experience of Huri-Huri. He was living in his
village of Avatoru, and was forty years old. He was a good diver but
getting old for that work. It takes the young to go deep and stay down
long. As we grow older that weight of water hurts us. Huri-Huri was
lucky. He was getting many large shells, and he felt sure he would pick
up one with a valuable pearl in it. He drank the rum the white trader
poisons my people with, and he spent his money for tobacco, beef, and
cloth. He had a watch but it did not go, and he had some foolish things
the trader had sold him. But here he was forty years old, and so poor
that he had to go from atoll to atoll wherever there was a _rahui_
because he wanted all these foreign goods.
“This time he was diving in the lagoon of Rangiroa. He was all alone in
his canoe, and was in deep water. He had gone down several times, and
had in his canoe four or five pairs of shells. He looked again and saw
another pair, and plunged to the bottom. He had the shells in his sack
and was leaving the bank when he saw just above him a shark so big that,
as he said, it could have bitten him in half as a man eats a banana. The
shark thrust down its nose toward Huri-Huri, and he took out his shells
and held them against the beast. He kept its nose down for half a minute
but then was out of breath. He was about to die, he believed, unless he
could reach the air without the shark following him. He threw himself on
the shark’s back, and put his hands in the fish’s gills, and so stopped
or partly stopped the shark’s breathing. The shark did not know what to
make of that, and hurried upward, headed for the surface by the diver.
Huri-Huri was afraid to let go even there, because he knew the _mao_
would turn on him and tear him to pieces. But he took several long
breaths in the way a diver understands, and still held on and tore the
shark’s breathing-places.
[Illustration:
Launch towing canoes to diving grounds in lagoon
]
[Illustration:
Divers voyaging in Paumotu atolls
]
“Now the shark was angry and puzzled, and so rushed to the bottom again,
but with the man on his back. The shark had not been able to enjoy the
air at the top because he breathes water and not air. Huri-Huri closed
his gill openings, and piloted him, and so he came up again and again
descended. By pulling at the gills the shark’s head was brought up and
he had to rise. All this time Huri-Huri was thinking hard about God and
his own evil life. He knew that each second might be his last one in
life, and he prayed. He thought of Iona who was saved out of the shark’s
belly in the sea where Christ was born, and he asked Iona to aid him.
And all the while he jerked at the gills, which are the shark’s lungs.
He knew that the shark was dying all the time, but the question was how
long could the shark himself hold out, and which would weaken first. Up
and down they went for half an hour, the shark’s blood pouring out over
Huri-Huri’s hands as he minute after minute tore at the gills. Now he
could direct the shark any way, and often he guided him toward the beach
of the lagoon. The shark would swim toward it but when he felt the
shallow water would turn. But after many minutes the shark had to stay
on top altogether, because he was too far gone to dive, and finally
Huri-Huri steered him right upon the sand. Huri-Huri fell off the _mao_
and crawled up further, out of reach of him.
“When the people on shore who had watched the strange fight between the
_mao_ and the man came to them both, the fish could barely move his
tail, and Huri-Huri was like dead. Every bit of skin was rubbed off his
chest, legs, and arms, and he was bleeding from dozens of places. The
shark’s body is as rough as a file. When Huri-Huri opened his eyes on
his mat in his house, and looked about and heard his wife speak to him,
and heard his friends about say that he was the bravest and strongest
Paumotuan who ever lived, he said: ‘My brothers, praise God! I called on
Iona, and the prophet heard me, and taught me how to conquer the devil
that would have killed me in my sin!’ They listened and were astonished.
They thought the first thing Huri-Huri would say would be, ‘Give me a
drink of rum!’ American, that man is seventy years old now, and for
thirty years he has preached about God and sin. Iona was three days and
nights in the shark’s belly, but nobody could ride a shark for a
half-hour, and conquer him, except a Paumotuan and a diver.”
Mapuhi was glad to be corroborated by Linnæus in his opinion that a
white shark and not a whale had been the divine instrument in teaching
the doubting Jonah to upbraid Nineveh even at the risk of his life. The
great Swedish naturalist says:
Jonam Prophetum ut veteris Herculem trinoctem, in hujus
ventriculo, tridui spatro baesisse, verisimile est.
Also, Mapuhi was deeply interested by my telling him that at Marseilles
a shark was caught in which was a man in complete armor. He had me
describe a suit of armor as I had seen it in the notable collection in
Madrid. He was struck by its resemblance to the modern diver’s suit.
“In the Paumotus,” he said, “the French Government forbids the use of
the _scaphandre_ because it cheated the native of his birthright. The
merchants, the rich men of Tahiti, could buy and use such diving
machinery, but the Paumotuan could not. The natives asked the French
government to send away the _scaphandre_, and to permit the searching
for shells by the human being only. I had one of the machines. I could
go deeper in it than any diver in the world, so the merchants said. I
would go out in my cutter with my men and the _scaphandre_. I did not
put on the whole suit, but only the rubber jacket, on the brass collar
of which the helmet was screwed. I fixed this jacket tightly around my
waist so that no water could enter, and fastened it about my wrists.
Then, with my legs uncovered, I jumped into the lagoon. I had big pieces
of lead on my back and breast so as not to be overturned by the weight
of the helmet, and an air-hose from the helmet to the pump in the
cutter. I would work three hours at a time, but had to come up many
times for relief from the pressure.
“One day I was in this suit at the bottom of the lagoon of Hikueru. I
had filled my net with shells, and had signaled for it to be hauled up.
I was examining a ledge of shells when I felt something touch my helmet.
It was a sea-snake about ten feet long and of bright color. It had a
long, thin neck, and it was poisonous. I snatched my knife from my belt,
and before the snake could bite me I drove the knife into it. It was
attacking the glass of my helmet, and not my legs, fortunately. That
snake has its enemy, too, for when it lies on the surface to enjoy the
sun the sea-eagle falls like a thunderbolt from the sky, seizes it by
the back of the head, and flies away with it.
“Another time when I was in the suit, a _puhi_, a very big eel, wrapped
itself about me. I had a narrow escape but I killed it with my knife. In
the olden days in Hikueru I would have perished, for that _puhi_ eel,
the conger-eel, was taboo, sacred as a god, here and in many islands. To
eat that eel or harm him was to break the taboo. More than eighty people
of Fakaofa were driven from that island for eating the _puhi_, and they
drifted for weeks before they reached Samoa. The _vaaroa_, the
long-mouthed eel, is dangerous to the diver. It is eight feet long, and
Amaru, of Fakarava had the calf of his leg bitten off by one.”
A week I could have listened to Mapuhi. I was back in my childhood with
Jules Verne, Ballantyne, and Oliver Optic. Actual and terrifying as were
the harrowing incidents of the diving related by the giant, they found
constant comparison in my mind with the deeds of my boyish heroes. After
all, these Paumotuans were children—simple, honest, happy children. The
fate that had denied them the necessaries of our environment, or even
the delicious foods and natural pleasures of the high islands, Tahiti
and the Marquesas, had endowed them with health, satisfaction with a
rigid fare, and an incomparable ability to meet the hardships of their
life and the blows of extraordinary circumstance with fortitude and
persistent optimism. They had no education and were happier for the lack
of it. The white man had impressed their instincts and habits but
shallowly. Even their very austerity of surroundings had kept them freer
than the Tahitians from the poisonous gifts and suicidal customs of the
foreigner. Their God was near and dear to them, and a mighty fortress in
time of trouble.
While Mapuhi talked the canoe had returned with the currents nearer to
his house, from which we had embarked. It was conspicuous over all the
other homes on the _motu_, though it was a very ordinary wooden
structure of five or six rooms. It was not a fit frame for Mapuhi, I
thought. This son of the sea and lagoon was suited better to a canoe, a
cutter, or the deck of a schooner. He had a companionship with this warm
salt water, with the fish in it, and the winds that blew over it,
exceeding that of any other man. He drove the canoe on the sand, and we
stepped ashore. I lingered by the water as he walked on to his store. In
his white, fluttering shirt, and his blue _pareu_, bare legged and
bareheaded, there was a natural distinction and atmosphere of dignity
about him that was grandeur. Kingship must have originated in the force
and bearing of such men, shepherds or sea-rovers.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XII
History of the pearl hunger—Noted jewels of past—I go with Nohea to the
diving—Beautiful floor of the lagoon—Nohea dives many times—Escapes
shark narrowly—Descends 148 feet—No pearls reward us—Mandel tells of
culture pearls.
MUCH of the mystery and myth of these burning atolls was concerned with
the quest of pearls. In all the world those gems had been a subject of
romance, and legend had draped their search with a myriad marvels. Poets
and fictionists in many tongues had embroidered their gossamer fabric
with these exquisite lures, the ornament of beauty, the treasures of
queen and odalisque, _mondaine_ and dancer, image and shrine, since
humans began to adorn themselves with more delicate things than the
skins and teeth of animals. A thousand crimes had their seed in greed
for the possession of these sensuous sarcophagi of dead worms. A million
men had labored, fought, and died to hang them about the velvet throats
of the mistresses of the powerful. Hundreds of thousands had perished to
fetch them from the depths of the sea. History and novel were filled
with the struggle of princes and Cyprians, merchants, adventurers, and
thieves for ropes of pearls or single specimens of rarity. Krishna
discovered pearls in the ocean and presented them to his goddess
daughter. The Ethiopians all but worshiped them, and the Persians
believed them rain-drops that had entered the shells while the oysters
sunned themselves on the beach. Two thousand years before our era, a
millennium before Rome was even mud, the records of the Middle Kingdom
enumerated pearls as proper payments for taxes. When Alexander the Great
was conquering, the Chinese inventoried them as products of their
country. The “Url-Ja,” a Chinese dictionary of that date, says “they are
very precious.”
Solomon’s pearls came from the Persian Gulf, India, and Ceylon, and the
queen of Sheba’s too. Rivers of Britain gave the author of the
“Commentaries” pearls to dedicate to Venus Genetrix, and to present to
that lovely assassin who melted two, costing ten million sesterces, for
a love philter, and seduced two Cæsars. Who can forget the salad Philip
II of Spain, the uxorious inquisitor, set upon the royal table for his
wife, Elizabeth of Valois, the leaves of which were of emeralds, the
vinegar of rubies, the oil of topazes, and the salt of pearls? What more
appetizing dish for a royal bride? The Orientals make medicine of them
to-day, and I myself have seen a sultan burn pearls to make lime for
chewing with the betel-nut.
The New World offered fresh preserves to pearl-hunters; primeval grounds
drew a horde of lusty blades to harry the red men’s treasure-house.
South and Central America fed the pearl hunger that grew with the more
even distribution of wealth through commerce, and the rise of stout
merchants on the Continent and the British Islands. The Spanish king who
gave his name to the Philippines got from Venezuela a pearl that
balanced an eighth of a pound. I saw it in Madrid. These Paumotus and
Australasia were the last to answer yes to man’s ceaseless demand that
the earth and the waters thereof yield him more than bread for the sweat
of his brow. On many maps these atolls are yet inscribed as the Pearl
Islands. About their glorious lagoons was a mist of obscurity and of
wonder for centuries. Besides dangers to vessels, the cannibalism of
savages, the lack of any food except cocoanuts and fish, and stories of
strange happenings, there were accounts of divers who sank deeper in the
sea than science said was possible, and of priceless pearls plundered or
bought for a drinking-song.
Custom-houses and organized commerce had rung down the curtain on the
extravaganza of the past, but the romance of man wrestling with the
forces of nature in the element from which he originally came, now so
deadly to him, was yet a supreme attraction. The day of the opening of
the _rahui_ came none too soon for me. Nohea, my host, was to dive, and
we had arranged that I was to be in his canoe. I was assured by Mapuhi,
and by Captain Nimau and Kopcke, that despite the fact that his youth
was gone, Nohea was the best diver in Takaroa, and especially the
shrewdest judge of the worth of a piece of diving ground.
All the village went to the scene of the diving in a fleet of cutters
and canoes, sailing or paddling according to the goal and craft. Nohea
and I had a largish canoe, which, though with a small sail woven of
pandanus straw, could easily be paddled by us. He had staked out a spot
upon the lagoon that had no recognizable bearings for me, but which he
had long ago selected as his arena of action. He identified it by its
distance from certain points, and its association with the sun’s
position at a fixed hour.
We had risen before dawn to attend the Mormon church service initiating
the _rahui_. The rude coral temple was crowded when the young elders
from Utah began the service. Mapuhi, Nohea, and leaders of the village
sat on the forward benches. The prayer of elder Overton was for the
physical safety of the elected in the pursuit they were about to engage
in.
“Thou knowest, O God,” he supplicated, “that in the midst of life we are
in death.”
“_E! E! Parau mau!_” echoed the old divers, which is, “Yea, Verily!”
“These, thy children, O God, are about to go under the sea, but not like
the Chosen People in Israel, for whom the waters divided and let them go
dry-shod. But grant, O God, who didst send an angel to Joseph Smith to
show him the path to Thee through the Book of Mormon, who didst lead thy
new Chosen People through the deserts and over the mountains, among wild
beasts and the savages who knew Thee not, to Thy capital on earth, Salt
Lake City, that thy loving worshipers here assembled shall come safely
through this day, and that Thy sustaining hand shall support them in
those dark places where other wild beasts lie in wait for them!”
“_Parau mau!_” said all, and the eyes of some of the women were wet, for
they thought of sons and lovers, fathers and brothers, mothers and
sisters, who had gone out upon the lagoon, and who had died there among
the coral rocks, or of whom only pieces had been brought back. They sang
a song of parting, and of commending their bodies to the Master of the
universe, and then with many greetings and hearty laughter and a hundred
jests about expected good fortune, we parted to put the final touches on
the equipment for _la pêche des huitres nacrières_. Forgetting the
quarter of an hour of serious prayer and song in the temple, the natives
were now bubbling with eagerness for the hunt. Mapuhi himself was like a
child on the first day of vacation. These Paumotuans had an almost
perfect community spirit, for, while a man like Mapuhi became rich,
actually he made and conserved what the duller natives would have failed
to create from the resources about them, or to save from the clutches of
the acquisitive white, and he was ready to share with his fellows at any
time. He, as all other chiefs, was the choice of the men of the atoll at
a quadrennial election, and held office and power by their sufferance
and his own merits. None might go hungry or unhoused when others had
plenty. Civilization had not yet inflicted on them its worst
concomitants. They were too near to nature.
After a light breakfast of bread and savory fried fish, to which I added
jam and coffee for myself, Nohea and I pushed off for our
wonder-fishing. In the canoe we had, besides paddles, two _titea mata_,
the glass-bottomed boxes for seeing under the surface of the water, a
long rope, an iron-hooped net, a smaller net or bag of _coir_, twenty
inches deep and a foot across, with three-inch meshes, a bucket, a pair
of plain-glass spectacles for under-water use, a jar of drinking-water,
and food for later in the day.
The sun was already high in the unclouded sky when we lifted the mat
sail, and glided through the pale-blue pond, the shores of which were a
melting contrast of alabaster and viridescence. All about us were our
friends in their own craft, and the single motor-boat of the island,
Mapuhi’s, towed a score of cutters and canoes to their appointed places.
A slender breeze sufficed to set us, with a few tacks, at our exact
spot. We furled our sail, stowed it along the outrigger, and were ready
for the plunge. We did not anchor the canoe because of the profundity of
the water and because it is not the custom to do so. I sat with a paddle
in my hand for a few minutes but laid it down when Nohea picked up the
looking-glass. He put the unlidded box into the water and his head into
it and gazed intently for a few moments, moving the frame about to sweep
the bottom of the lagoon with his wise eyes.
The water was as smooth as a mirror. I saw the bed of the inland sea as
plainly as one does the floor of an aquarium a few feet deep. No streams
poured débris into it, nor did any alluvium cloud its crystal purity.
Coral and gravel alone were the base of its floor and sides, and the
result was a surpassing transparency of the water not believable by
comparison with any other lake.
“How far is that _toa aau_?” I asked, and pointed to a bank of coral.
Nohea sized up the object, took his head from the _titea mata_, and
replied, “Sixty feet.”
At that distance I could, unaided, see plainly a piece of coral as big
as my hand. The view was as variegated as the richest landscape—a
wilderness of vegetation, of magnificent marine verdure, sloping hills
and high towers with irregular windows, in which the sunshine streamed
in a rainbow of gorgeous colors; and the shells and bodies of scores of
zoöphytes dwelling upon the structures gleamed and glistened like jewels
in the flood of light. About these were patches of snow-white sand,
blinding in refracted brilliancy, and beside them green bushes or trees
of herbage-covered coral, all beautiful as a dream-garden of the Nereids
and as imaginary. Even when I withdrew my eyes from this fantastic
scene, the lagoon and shore were hardy less fabulous. The palms waved
along the beach as banners of seduction to a sense of sheer animism, of
investiture of their trunks and leaves with the spirits of the atoll.
Not seldom I had heard them call my name in the darkness, sometimes in
invitation to enchantment and again in warning against temptation. The
cutters or canoes of the village were like lily-pads upon the placid
water, far apart, white or brown, the voices of the people whispers in
the calm air. I wished I were a boy to know to the full the feeling of
adventure among such divine toys which had brought glad tears to my eyes
in my early wanderings.
The canoe had drifted, and Nohea slipped over its side and again spied
with the glass. I, too, looked through mine and saw where he indicated a
ridge or bank of coral upon which were several oyster-shells. Nohea
immediately climbed into the canoe and, resting upon the side prayed a
few moments, bowing his head and nodding as if in the temple. Then he
began to breathe heavily. For several minutes he made a great noise,
drawing in the air and expelling it forcibly, so that he seemed to be
wasting energy. I was almost convinced that he exaggerated the value of
his emotions and explosive sounds, but his impassive face and
remembrance of his race’s freedom from our exhibition conceit, drove the
foolish thought away. His chest, very capacious normally, was bursting
with stored air, a storage beyond that of our best trained athletes; and
without a word he went over the side and allowed his body to descend
through the water. He made no splash at all but sank as quietly as a
stone. I fastened my head in the _titea mata_ and watched his every
movement. He had about his waist a _pareu_ of calico, blue with large
white flowers,—the design of William Morris,—and a sharp sailor’s
sheath-knife at the belt. Around his neck was a sack of cocoanut-fiber,
and on his right hand a glove of common denim. Almost all his robust
brown body was naked for his return to the sea-slime whence his first
ancestor had once crawled.
Down he went through the pellucid liquid until at about ten feet the
resistance of the water stopped his course and, animated bubble as he
was, would have pushed him to the air again. But Nohea turned in a
flash, and with his feet uppermost struck out vigorously. He forced
himself down with astonishing speed and in twenty seconds was at his
goal. He caught hold of a gigantic goblet of coral and rested himself an
instant as he marked his object, the ledge of darker rocks on which grew
the shells. There were sharp-edged shapes and branching plant-like
forms, which, appearing soft as silk from above would wound him did he
graze them with his bare skin. He moved carefully about and finally
reached the shells. One he gripped with the gloved hand, for the shell,
too, had serrated edges, and, working it to and fro, he broke it loose
from its probable birthplace and thrust it into his sack. Immediately he
attacked the other, and as quickly detached it. He stooped down and
looked closely all about him. He then sprang up, put his arms over his
head, his palms pressed one on the other, and shot toward the surface. I
could see him coming toward me like a bolt from a catapult. I held a
paddle to move the canoe from his path if he should strike it, and to
meet him the trice he flashed into the ether.
The diver put his right arm over the outrigger boom, and opening his
mouth gulped the air as does the _bonito_ when first hauled from the
ocean. I was as still as death. In a séance once I was cautioned not to
speak during the materializations, as the disturbance might kill the
medium. I recalled that unearthly silence, for the moment of emergence
was the most fatal to the diver. His senses after the terrible pressure
of such a weight upon his body were as abnormal and acute as a man’s
whose nerves have been stripped by flaying. The change in a few seconds
from being laden and hemmed in by many tons of water to the lightness of
the atmosphere was ravaging. Slowly the air was respired, and gradually
his system,—heart, glands, lungs, and blood,—resumed its ordinary
rhythm, and his organs functioned as before his descent. Several minutes
passed before he raised his head from the outrigger, opened his eyes,
which were suffused with blood, and said in a low tone of the deaf
person, “_E tau Atua e!_” He was thanking his God for the gift of life
and health. He had been tried with Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego,
though not by fire.
Nohea lifted himself into the canoe, and took the sack of _coir_ from
his neck. I removed the two pairs of shells with the reverence one might
assume in taking the new-born babe from its first cradle. They were Holy
Grails to me who had witnessed their wringing from the tie-ribs of
earth. They were shaped like a stemless palm-leaf fan, about eight
inches tall and ten wide, rough and black; and still adhering to their
base was a tangle of dark-green silky threads, the byssus or strong
filament which attaches them to their fulcrum, the ledge. It was the
byssus which Nohea had to wrench from the rock. I laid down the shells
and restored the sack to Nohea, who sat immobile, perhaps thoughtless.
Another brief space of time, and he smiled and clapped his hands.
“That was ten fathoms,” he said. “Paddle toward that clump of trees”
(they were a mile away), “and we will seek deeper water.”
A few score strokes and we were nearer the center of the lagoon. With my
bare eyes I could not make out the quality of the bottom but only its
general configuration. Nohea said the distance was twenty fathoms. The
looking-glass disclosed a long ledge with a flat shelf for a score of
feet, and he said he made out a number of large shells. It took the
acutest concentration on my part to find them, with his direction, for
his eyes were twice as keen as mine from a lifetime’s usage upon his
natural surroundings. We sacrificed our birthright of vivid senses to
artificial habits, lights, and the printed page. Nohea made ready to go
down, but changed slightly his method and equipment. He dropped the
iron-hooped net into the water by its line and allowed it to sink to the
ledge. Then he raised it a few feet so that it would swing clear of the
bottom.
“It will hold my shells and indicate to me exactly where the canoe is,”
he explained. “At this depth, 120 feet, I want to rest immediately on
reaching the surface, and not to have to swim to the canoe. I have not
dived for many months, and I am no longer young.”
He attached the line to the outrigger, and then, after a fervent prayer
to which I echoed a nervous amen, he began his breathing exercises.
Louder than before and more actively he expanded his lungs until they
held a maximum of stored oxygen, and then with a smile he slid through
the water until he reversed his body and swam. In his left hand now he
had a shell, a single side of a bivalve; and this he moved like an oar
or paddle, catching the water with greater force, and pulling himself
down with it and the stroke of the other arm, as well as a slight motion
of the feet. The entire movement was perfectly suited to his purpose,
and he made such rapid progress that he was beside the hoop-net in less
than a minute. He had a number of pairs of shells stripped from the
shelf and in the swinging net in a few seconds more, and then, drawn by
others he discerned further along the ledge, he swam, and dragged
himself by seizing the coral forms, and reached another bank. I paddled
the canoe gently behind him. I lost sight of him then completely. Either
he was hidden behind a huge stone obelisk or he had gone beyond my power
of sight.
A gigantic black shape swam into view near the oscillating hoop, and a
horror swept over me. It disappeared, but Nohea was still missing. The
time beat in my veins like a pendulum. Every throb seemed a second, and
they began to count themselves in my brain. How long was it since Nohea
had left me? A minute and a half? Two minutes? That is an age without
breathing. Something must have injured him. Slowly the moments struck
against my heart. I could not look through the _titea mata_ any longer.
Another sixty seconds and despair had chilled me so I shook in the hot
sunshine as with ague. I was cold and weak. Suddenly I felt a pull at
the rope, the canoe moved slightly, and hope grew warm in me. I
perceived an agitation of the water gradually ascending, and in a few
instants the diver sprang out of the lagoon to his waist. He threw his
arm over the outrigger, and bent down in agony. His suffering was
written in the contortion of his face, the blood in his eyes, and a
writhing of his whole body. He gasped madly at his first emergence, and
then his bosom rose and fell in lessening spasms. The cramp which had
convulsed his form relaxed, and, as minute after minute elapsed, his
face lost its rigidity, his pulse slackened to normal, and he said
feebly, “_E tau Atua e!_” With my assistance he hauled himself into the
canoe and lay half prone.
“You saw no shark?” I asked.
“I saw his shadow, but it was not he that detained me. I saw a bank
which might hold shells and I explored it. We will see what I have.”
We pulled up the hoop-net, and in it were thirteen pairs of shells.
These were larger than the others, older, and, as he said, from a more
advantageous place for feeding, so that their residents, being better
nourished had made larger and finer houses for themselves. Some of the
thirteen were eighteen inches across. He said that he had roamed seventy
feet on the bottom, and he had been down two and a half minutes. He had
made observation of the ledges all about and intended going a little
deeper. I had but to look at the rope of the net to gage the distance
for it was marked with knots and bits of colored cotton to give the
lengths like the marks on a lead-line on shipboard. I wanted to demur to
his more dangerous venture, but I did not. This was his avocation and
adventure, his war with the elements, and he must follow it and conquer
or fail.
Again he dived, and this time at 148 feet. This was almost the limit of
men in suits with air pumps or oxygen-tanks, and they were always let
down and brought up gradually, to accustom their blood to the altering
pressure. Half an hour or an hour was often consumed in hauling a diver
up from the depth from which Nohea sprang in a few seconds. His
transcendent courage and consummate skill were matched by his body’s
trained resistance to the effect of such extreme pressure of water and
the remaining without breathing for so long a time. I could appreciate
his achievements more than most people, for I had seen the divers of
many races at work in many waters. Ninety feet was the boundary of all
except the Paumotuans and those who used machines. But here was Nohea
exceeding that by sixty feet in my view, and I knew that greater depths
must be attained. Impelled by an instantaneous urge to contrast my own
capabilities with Nohea’s, I measured off thirty feet on the line, and,
putting it in his hands to hold, I breathed to my fullest and leaped
overboard. At three lengths of my figure, less than eighteen feet, I
experienced alarm and pain. I unloosed the hoop and it swayed down to
the end of the five fathoms of rope, while I kicked and pulled, and
after an interminable period I had barely touched it again before I
became convinced that if I did not breathe in another second I would
open my mouth. Nohea knew my plight, for he yanked at the rope, and with
his effort and my own frantic exertion I made the air, and humbly hugged
the outrigger until I was myself. Thirty feet! And Nohea had brought up
the shells from 148.
He paid dearly. Several times of the score that he probed the deeper
retreats of the oysters, he was prostrated for minutes upon his egress
and in throes of severe pain during the readjustment of pressure; but he
continued to pursue his fascinating and near-fatal employment until by
afternoon a heap of heavy, darkish bivalves lay in the canoe. My
curiosity had been heated since I had lifted the first shell, and it was
with increasing impatience that I waited for the milder but not less
interesting phase of his labor, the scrutiny of the interior of the
shells for pearls.
There are two moments in a divers life;
One, when, a beggar, he prepares to plunge;
Then, when, a prince, he rises with his pearl.
The poet visioned Nohea’s emotions, perhaps, but he had schooled himself
to postpone his satisfaction until the days harvest was gathered. When
we had paddled the canoe into shallow waters, and the sun was slanting
fast down the western side of earth, Nohea surrendered himself to the
realization or dissipation of his dream. He knew that a thousand shells
contain no pearls, that the princely state came to few in decades. But
the diver had the yearning and credulous mind of the gold prospector,
and lived in expectation as did he. The glint of a pebble, the sheen of
yellow sand, set his pulse to beating more rapidly; and so with the
diver. He knew that pearls of great value had been found many times, and
that one such trove might make him rich for life, independent of daily
toil, and free of the traps and pangs of the plunge.
Nohea thrust his knife between the blades of a bivalve and pried open
his resisting jaws. True pearls lie in the tissues of the oyster,
generally in the rear of the body and sealed in a pocket. Nohea laid
down the parted shell and seized the animal, and dissected his boneless
substance in a gesture of eager inquiry. I watched his actions with as
sharp response, and sighed as each oyster in turn was thrown into the
bucket, in which was sea-water. When all had been submitted to the test
and no pearl had flashed upon our hopeful eyes we examined the shells,
trusting that though the true pearls had escaped us we might find
blisters, those which, having a point of contact with the shell, are
thus not perfect in shape and skin, but have a flaw. These often have
large value, if they can be skinned to advantage; and the diver put his
smaller hopes upon them.
With pearls, orient or blister, eliminated, the primary and actually
more important basis of the industry appealed to Nohea. He estimated the
weight and value of the shells, which would be transported to London for
manufacture in the French Department of the Oise into the black pearl
buttons that ornament women’s dresses. These Paumotuan shells were
celebrated for their black borders, _nacre á bord noir_, more valuable
than the gold-lipped product of the Philippines, but a third cheaper
than the silver-lipped shells of Australia. With at least the comfort of
a heavy catch of this less remunerative though hardly less beautiful
creation of the oyster, Nohea pointed out to me that the formation of
the mother-of-pearl or nacre on the shells was from left to right, as if
the oyster were right minded.
“When the whorls of a shell are from right to left,” he said, “that
shell is valuable as a curiosity. The people of Asia, the Chinese, pay
well for it, and a Chinese shell-buyer now here told me that in Initia
[India] they weighed it with gold in old times. In China they keep such
shells in the temples to hold the sacred oil, and the priests administer
magic medicine in them.”
Nohea completed the round of the day’s undertaking by macerating the
oysters and throwing them into the lagoon that their spawn might be
released for another generation. He cut off and threaded the adhesive
muscle of the oyster, the _tatari ioro_, to eat when dried. It was
something like the scallop or abalone abductor muscle sold in our
markets. The shells would be put into the sheds or warehouses to dry and
to be beaten and rubbed so as to reduce the bulk of their backs, which
have no value but weigh heavily.
After we had supped, Nohea and the older divers gathered at Mapuhi’s for
a discussion of the day’s luck, and I went along to the coterie of
traders by Lying Bill’s firm’s store. A cocoanut-husk fire was burning,
and about it sat Bill, McHenry, Llewellyn, Nimau, Mandel, Kopcke, and
others. Mandel was the most notable pearl-buyer and expert here, with an
office in Paris and a warehouse in Papeete. He was huge and with gross
features, and was rated as the richest man in these South Seas. His own
schooner had dropped anchor off Takaroa a few days before with Mrs.
Mandel in command. He might make the bargain for pearls, but she would
do the paying and squeeze the most out of the price to the native. She
ruled with no soft hand, and in her long life had solved many difficult
problems in money-grubbing in this archipelago. Her husband was the head
of the Mandel tribe, but sons and daughter all knew the dancing boards
of the schooner and the intricacies of the pearl-market. Usually Mandel
stayed in Tahiti or visited Paris, but the _rahui_ in Takaroa was too
promising a prize for any of them to remain away, and all of the family
were diligent in intrigue and negotiation. Mandel had handled the finest
pearls of the Paumotus for many years. I had seen Mrs. Mandel come
ashore, in a sheeny yellow Mother-Hubbard or Tahitian _ahu vahine_ and a
cork helmet; but she made her home on her schooner, to which she invited
those from whom her good man had purchased shell or pearls.
Pearls were, of course, the subject of the talk about the fire. Toae, a
Hikueru man, had found one, and Mandel had it already. He showed it to
me, a pea-shaped, dusky object, with no striking beauty.
“I may be mistaken,” said Mandel, “but I believe this outside layer is
poorer than one inside. In Paris my employees will peel it and see. It
is taking a chance, but we have a second sight about it. You know a
pearl is like an onion, with successive skins, and we take off a number
sometimes. It reduces the size but may increase the luster. Also we are
using the ultra-violet ray to improve color. I saw a pearl that cost a
hundred thousand francs sold for three hundred thousand after the ray
was used on it. You know a pearl is produced only by a sick oyster. It
is a pathological product like gall-stones, and it is mostly caused by a
tapeworm getting into the oyster’s shell, though a grain of sand is
often the nucleus. The oyster feels the grating or irritating thing and
secretes nacre to cover it. The tapeworm is embalmed in this
mother-of-pearl, and the sand smoothed with it. The material, the nacre,
is the same as the interior of the shell, and the oyster seems not to
stop covering the intruder when the itching has stopped but keeps on out
of habit. And so forms small and big pearls. Now a blister is generally
over a bug or snail, though sometimes it is a stop-gap to keep out a
borer who is drilling through the shell from the outside. The blisters
are usually hollow, whereas a pearl has a yellow center with the
carbonate of lime in concentric prisms. An orient or true pearl is
formed in the muscles of the oyster and does not touch the shell; but
the blister, which generally is part of the shell, may have been started
in the oyster’s sac or folds, and have dropped out or been released to
hold between the oyster and the shell. With these we cut away the
outside down to the original pearl. A blister itself is only good for a
brooch or an ornament, but I have gotten five or ten thousand francs for
the best.”
Captain Nimau, who was only less clever than Mandel in the lore of
pearls, said that, as the lagoons were often three hundred feet or
deeper in places, it was probable that larger pearls than ever yet
brought up were in these untouched caches.
“The Paumotuan has descended 180 feet,” said Nimau. “I have plumbed his
dive. A diver with a suit cannot go any deeper, and so we never have
explored the possible beds ’way down. The whole face of the outer reef
may be a vast oyster-bed, but the surf prevents us from investigating. I
have seen in December and March of many years millions of baby oysters
floating into the lagoons with the rising tide, to remain there. They
never go out again but prefer the quiet life where they can grow up
strong and big. The singular thing about these pearl-oysters is that
they can move about. When you try to break them loose from the ledge
they prove to be very firmly attached by their byssus, but they travel
from one shelf to another when they need a change of food. It is not
sand they are most afraid of. They can spit their nacre on it if it gets
in their shells; but it is the little red crab that bothers them most.
You know how often you find the crab living happily in the pearl-shell
because when the oyster feeds he gets his share, and he is too active
for the oyster to kill as it does the worm, by spitting its nacre on him
and entombing him. Some day divers in improved suits will search for the
thousands of pearls that have fallen upon the bottom from dead oysters,
and maybe make millions. _Mais, après tout_, pearls may soon have little
value, for they say that the Japanese and other people are growing them
like mushrooms, and, though they have not yet perfected the orient or
true pearl, they may some day. One man, some kind of foreigner, who used
to be around here, discovered the secret, but it’s lost now.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XIII
Story of the wondrous pearls planted in the lagoon of Pukapuka—Tepeva a
Tepeva, the crippled diver, tells it—How a European scientist
improved on nature—Tragedy of Patasy and Mauraii—The robbed coral
bank—Death under the sea.
THE palace of the governor was within half a mile of my abode in the
vale of Atuona, on the island of Hiva-Oa, the capital of the Marquesan
Archipelago. It was a broad and deep valley, “the most beautiful, and by
far the most ominous and gloomy, spot on earth,” said Stevenson.
Umbrageous and silent, it was watered by a stream, which, born in the
distant hills, descended in falls and rills and finally a chattering
brook to the bay. Magnificent forests of many kinds of trees, a hundred
vines and flowers, with rarest orchids, and a tangled mass of grasses
and creepers, lined the banks of the little river, and filled the rising
confines of the dell, which, as it climbed, grew narrower and darker,
and more melancholy of aspect, the poignant melancholy of a sad
loveliness past telling or analyzing. A huge fortress of rocks rose
almost sheer above my cottage, lowering in shadow and terrible in storm,
the highest point in the Marquesas. In sunshine it was the brilliant
rampart of the world-god’s battlement, reflecting his flashing rays, and
throwing a sheen of luminosity upon the depths of the strath. This lofty
peak of Temetiu, nearly a mile in the sky, was the tower of a vast
structure of broken hills, gigantic columns, pinnacles, tilted and
vertical rocks, ruins of titanic battles of fire and water in ages gone.
I had but to lift my eyes and lower them to know that man here as in the
Paumotus had but triflingly affected his environment. From the
castellated summits to the beach where I had landed, the dwellings of
humans seemed lost in the dense foliage dominated by the lofty cocoanuts
and the spreading breadfruits.
The palace of the young French administrator was in a garden in which
grew exotic flowers brought by predecessors who sought to assuage their
nostalgia by familiar charms. The palace had large verandas, and they
were most of it, as in all tropical countries where mosquitoes are not
too menacing. The reading and lounging, the eating and drinking, took
place there, and generally a delicious breeze cooled the humid air and
drove away any insects that might annoy. Almost daily I was the guest of
the governor at a meal, or in the evening after dinner, for a merry hour
or two. We might be alone, or with André Bauda, the tax collector,
postmaster, and chief of police, or not seldom with one or more of the
fairest of the Marquesan girls of the island of Hiva-Oa. For the
governor was host not only to the beauties of our valley of Atuona, but
sent Flag, the native _mutoi_, or policeman, of the capital, to other
villages over the mountains, to invite those whom Flag thought would
lessen his _ennui_. Far from his beloved Midi, the governor retained a
Gallic and gallant attitude toward young women, and never tired of their
prattle, their insatiable thirst for the beverages of France, and their
light laughter when lifted out of their habitual gravity by these.
Determined to learn their tongue as quickly as possible, being no longer
resident than I in the Marquesas, he kept about him a lively lexicon or
two to furnish him words and practice. Midnight often came with the rest
of the village already hours upon their sleeping-mats, but on the palace
porches a gabble of conversation, the lilt of a chant, or perhaps the
patter of a hula dance of bare feet upon the boards. The Protestant and
Catholic missionaries, though opposed to each other upon doctrinal and
disciplinary subjects, united in condemnation of the conduct of the high
representative of sovereignty. But, like the governor of the Paumotus,
he replied: “_La vie est triste; vive la bagatalle._” Life is sad; let
joy be unconfined.
The governor’s _ménage_ had only one attendant, Song of the Nightingale,
and he served only because he was a prisoner, and preferred the domestic
duties to repairing trails or sitting all day in the calaboose by the
beach. There was no servant in the Marquesas. Whatever civilization had
done to them,—and it had undone them almost entirely,—it had not made
them menials. There was never a slave. Here death was preferable. In
Tahiti one might procure native domestics with extreme difficulty
through their momentary craving for gauds, or through affection, but one
bought no subservience. The silent, painstaking European or American or
Asiatic, the humble, sir-ring butler and footman, could not be matched
in the South Seas. If they liked one, these indolent people would work
for one now and then, but must be allowed to have their own way and say,
and, if reproved, it must be in the tone one used to a child or a
relative. The governor himself was compelled to endure Song of the
Nightingale’s lapses and familiarities, because he was the only
procurable cook in the islands. He could not buy or persuade one of his
lovely guests, clothed as they were but in a single garment, to wash a
plate or shake a mat. I, it was true, was assisted by Exploding Eggs, a
boy of fourteen years, but I made him an honored companion and neophyte
whom I initiated into the mysteries of coffee-making and sweeping, and
he, too, often wandered away for a day or two without warning.
The table was spread on the veranda when at seven o’clock I opened the
garden gate of the palace. Flag had delivered to me an enveloped card
with studious ceremony, the governor sometimes observing the extreme
niceties of official hospitality, and again throwing them to the winds,
especially in very hot weather. Flag, barelegged and barefooted as
always, wore the red-striped jacket of the _mutoi_ and a loin-cloth, and
carried a capacious leather pouch from which he had extracted the
made-in-Paris _carte d’invitation_. To him it was a mysterious summons
to a Lucullan feast which he might not even look upon. The governor was
dressing when I mounted the porch, and I was received by Song of the
Nightingale. He was a middle-aged desperado, with a leering face, given
a Mephistophelian cast by a black whisker extending from ear to ear, and
by heavy lines of blue tattooing upon his forehead. He had white blood
in him, I felt sure, for he had a cunning wickedness of aspect that
lacked the simplicity of the Marquesan. He had been a prisoner many
years for various offenses, but mostly for theft or moonshining, at
which he was adept, and he was the one Marquesan I would not trust; he
had been too much with whites. One wondered at times whether one’s life
was not the pawn of a mood of such a villain, but the French had
hammered their dominion upon these sons of man-eaters with lead and
steel in the early days, though they were easy and negligent rulers over
the feeble remnant.
The handsome governor came from his boudoir as Vehine-hae and Tahia-veo
said “_Kaoha!_” Vehine-hae and Tahia-veo were their names in Marquesan,
which translated exactly Ghost Girl and Miss Tail. The latter was a
_petite_, engaging girl of seventeen, a brunette in color, and modest
and sweet in disposition. Ghost Girl was the enigma of her sex there,
nineteen or twenty, living alone in a detached hut, and singularly
beautiful. She was as dark as a Nubian, with a voluptuous figure, small
hands and feet, and baggage eyes of melting sepia that promised devotion
unutterable. Her nose was straight and perfect, and her sensual mouth
filled with shining teeth. Of all the Marquesan girls she wore a
travesty of European dress. They in public wore a tight-fitting
_peignoir_ or tunic, and in private a _pareu_, but Ghost Girl had on a
silk bodice open to disclose her ripe symmetry, and a lace petticoat
about which she wore a silk kerchief. In her ebon heap of hair she wore
the phosphorescent flowers of the Rat’s Ear. Her mind was that of a
child of ten, inquisitive and acquisitive, exhibitive and demanding.
The governor seated us, the ladies opposite each other, and the dinner
began with appetizers of vermouth. The aromatic wine, highly fortified
as it was, burned the throat of Miss Tail, but Ghost Girl drank hers
with zest, and said, “_Motaki!_ That’s fine!” Neither of the girls spoke
more than a few sentences of French, though they had both been in the
nuns’ school, but we were able with our knowledge of Marquesan and
Song’s fragmentary French to carry on a lively interchange of words, if
not of thought.
The governor had shot a few brace of _kuku_, the green doves of the
forest, and Song had spitted them over a _purau_ wood fire. With the
haunch of a wild goat from the hills we had excellent fare, with claret
and white wine from Sauterne. We two palefaces wielded forks, but as no
Polynesians use such very modern inventions the ladies lifted their meat
to their months without artificial aid. Ghost Girl, as befitting her
European attire, tried to use a fork, but shrieked with pain when she
succeeded in putting only the tines into her tongue. We hardly realize
the pains our mothers were at to teach us table-manners, nor that
gentlemen of Europe ate with their fingers at a period when chop-sticks
were in common use in China and Japan, except in time of mourning.
Song of the Nightingale, who, doubtless, had indulged his convict
hankering for alcohol in the secret recesses of the kitchen, laughed
loudly at Ghost Girl’s pain, and when he placed a platter of the _kuku_
on the cloth, and she refused to accept one of the grilled birds his
snigger became derisive. He took up the carving-fork and stuck it deep
into a _kuku’s_ breast and put it on her plate. She shuddered and
started back, with her hands covering her long-lashed eyes. The governor
demanded in a slightly angry tone to know what Song had done to frighten
her. The cook explained that Ghost Girl was of Hanavave, on the island
of Fatuhiva, a day’s journey distant, and that the _bon dieu_ or god—he
said _pony-too_—of Fatuhiva was the _kuku_. She had been appalled at his
suggestion that she should eat the symbolic tenement of her mother’s
deity, though she herself ate the transubstantiated host at communion in
the Catholic church at Atuona. Not content with his insult to her
ancestral god, and, taking his cue from the governor’s roar of laughter
at his French or his explanation, the cruel Song said a bitter thing to
Ghost Girl.
“Eat the _kuku_!” he said. “It will taste better than your grandmother
did.”
“_Tuitui!_ Shut your mouth!” retorted Vehine-hae. “There were no thieves
in our tribe.”
That was a hot shot at Song’s crimes and penal record, and so animated
became their repartee that the governor had to call a halt and demand
mutual apologies. The _chef_ informed him that his father in a foray
upon Hanavave had taken as a prize of war the grandmother of Ghost Girl,
and had eaten her, or at least, whatever tidbit he had liked. It was
history that she had been eaten in Taaoa, Song’s home, in the next
valley to Atuona. No more vindictive remark than this, nor more hateful
action than his offering the _kuku_ to Ghost Girl, could be imagined in
the rigid etiquette of Marquesas society. The tears were in the soft
eyes of Vehine-hae, and the alarmed governor dismissed Song from further
service that evening and took the weeping Fatuhivan in his arms to
console her.
“_Tapu!_ _Tapu!_” sobbed Ghost Girl. The _kuku_ was _tapu_ to her teeth,
as the American flag would be to the feet of a patriot. Song was without
other belief than in the delight of drink, but Ghost Girl was a woman,
the support of every new cult and the prop of every old one.
Superstition the world over will die last in the breast of the female.
She survives subjugated races, and conserves the past, because her
instincts are stronger and her faculties less active than man’s, and her
need of worship overwhelming.
That word _tapu_ was still one to conjure with in the Marquesas. Flag,
the policeman, and sole deputy of _Commissaire_ Bauda on the island of
Hiva-Oa, had invoked it a few days before, after an untoward incident.
Bauda and I had returned on horseback from a journey to the other side
of the island, and, at the post-tax-police office near the beach where
Bauda lived, encountered Flag, drunk. Son of a famous dead chief, and
himself an amiable, bright man of thirty, he had not resisted the
temptation of Bauda’s being gone for a day, to abstract a bottle of
absinthe from a closet and consume the quart. Bauda upbraided him and
ordered him to his house, but Flag seized a loaded rifle and sounded an
ancient battle-cry. It had the blood-curdling quality of an Indian
whoop.
Neither Bauda nor I was armed, and I was for shelter behind a
cocoanut-tree. That would not do for Bauda, nor for discipline.
“Me with six campaigns in Africa! _Moi qui parle!_” exclaimed the former
officer of the Foreign Legion, as he tapped his breast and voiced his
astonishment at Flag’s temerity. He strode toward the staggering
_mutoi_, and, with utter disregard of the rifle, reached his side. He
wrenched the weapon from him, and with a series of kicks drove him into
the calaboose and locked the door on him.
[Illustration:
Photo from L. Gauthier
Ghost girl
]
[Illustration:
A double canoe
]
“That means ten years in Noumea for him,” said the _commissaire_,
savagely. But after dinner, which I got, when he had meditated upon
Flag’s willingness as a cook and his ability to collect taxes, he
lessened the sentence to a year at hard labor. I was not surprised to
meet Flag at noon the next day with his accustomed white jacket with its
red stripe upon the arm. Man cannot live without cooks, and perhaps I
had aided leniency by burning a bird.
Flag explained to me, though sheepishly, that, overcome by the _litre_
of absinthe as he was, he would not have injured a hair of Bauda’s head.
“Bauda is _tapu_. I would meet an evil fate did I touch him,” said Flag,
when sober and sorry.
I stumbled on _tapus_ daily. Vai Etienne, my neighbor, gave me a feast
one day, and half a dozen of us, all men, sat at table. Vai Etienne,
having lived several years in Tahiti had Frenchified ways. His mother,
the magnificent Titihuti, who was splendidly tattooed from toe to waist,
and who was my adopted mother, waited upon us. Offering her a glass of
wine, and begging her to sit with us, I discovered that the glass her
son drank from and the chair a man sat in were _tapu_ to her. She took
her wine from a shell, but would not sit at table with us. Of course,
she never sat in chairs, anyhow, nor did Vai Etienne, but he had
provided these for the whites.
The subject of the _tapus_ of the South Seas was endless. The custom,
_tabu_ or _kapu_ in Hawaiian, and _tambu_ in Fijian, was ill expressed
in our “taboo,” which means the pressure of public sentiment, or family
or group feeling. _Tapus_ here were the conventions of primitive people
made awe-inspiring for enforcement because of the very willfulness of
these primitives. The custom here and throughout society dated from the
beginning of legend. Laws began with the rules laid down by the old man
of the family and made dread in the tribe or sept by the hocus-pocus of
the medicine man. _Tapus_ may have been the foundation of all penal laws
and etiquette. The Jews had a hundred niceties of religious, sanitary,
and social _tapus_. Warriors were _tapu_ in Homer’s day, and land and
fish were _tapu_ to Grecian warriors, according to Plato. Confucius in
the “Li Ki,” ordained men and women not to sit on the same mat, nor have
the same clothes-rack, towel, or comb, nor to let their hands touch in
giving and receiving, nor to do a score of other trivial things. The old
Irish had many _tapus_ and totems, and many legends of harm wrought by
their breaking, a famous one being “The Destruction of Da Derga’s
Hostel.”
In the Marquesas _tapus_ were the most important part of life, as
ceremony was at the court of the kings of France. They governed almost
every action of the people, as the rules of a prison do convicts, or the
precepts of a monastery monks. Death followed the disobedience of many,
and others preserved one from the hands of enemies. There being no
organized government in Polynesia, _tapus_ took the place of laws and
edicts. They were, in fact, spiritual laws, superstition being the force
instead of a penal code. They imposed honesty, for if a man had any dear
possession, he had the priest _tapu_ it and felt secure. _Tapus_
protected betrothed girls and married women from rakes.
A young woman who worked at the convent in Atuona, near me, was made
_tapu_ against all work. She was never allowed to touch food until it
had been prepared for her. If she broke the _tapu_ the food was thrown
away. From infancy, when a _taua_ had laid the prohibition upon her, she
lived in disagreeable idleness, afraid to break the law of the priest.
Only in recent years did the nuns laugh away her fears, and set her to
helping in their kitchen. She told me that she could not explain the
reason for her having been _tapu_ from effort, as the _taua_ had died
who chained her, without informing her.
If a child crawled under a house in the building, the house was burned.
If I were building a boat, and, for dislike of me, some one named aloud
the boat after my father, I destroyed the boat. Blue was _tapu_ to women
in Nuku-Hiva, and red, too. They could not eat bonito, _squid_, _popii_,
and _koehi_. They might not eat bananas, cocoanuts, fresh breadfruit,
pigs of brown color, goats, fowls and other edibles.
Females were forbidden to climb upon the sacred _paepaes_, to enter the
men’s club-houses (this _tapu_ was enforced in America until the last
few years), to eat with men, to smoke inside the house, to carry mats on
their heads, and, saddest of all, to weep. Children might not carry one
another pickaback. The _kuavena_ fish was _tapu_ to fishermen, as also
_peata_, a kind of shark.
To throw human hair upon the ground was strictly prohibited. It might be
trodden on, and bring mischief upon the former wearer. So the chiefs
would never walk under anything that might be trodden on, and aboard
ships never went below deck, for that reason. Perhaps our superstition
as to walking under ladders is derived from such a _tapu_. To stretch
one’s hand or an object over the head of any one was _tapu_. There were
a hundred things _tapu_ to one sex. Men had the advantage in these
rules, for they were made by men.
The earthly punishments for breaking _tapus_ ran from a small fine to
death, and from spoliation to ostracism and banishment. Though there
were many arbitrary _tapus_, the whims and fantasies of chiefs, or the
wiles of priests, the majority of them had their beginning in some real
or fancied necessity or desirability. Doubtless they were distorted,
but, like circumcision and the Mosaic barring of pork to the Jews, here
was health or safety of soul or body concerned. One might cite the Ten
Commandments as very old _tapus_.
The utter disregard for the _tapus_ of the Marquesans shown by the
whites eventually had caused them to fall into general disrepute. They
degenerated as manners decayed under the influx of barbarians into Rome,
as Greek art fell before the corruption of the people. The Catholic, who
bowed his head and struck his breast at the exaltation of the host,
could understand the veneration the Marquesans had for their chief
_tapus_, and their horror at the conduct of the rude sailors and
soldiers who contemned them. But when they saw that no gods revenged
themselves upon the whites, that no devil devoured their vitals when
they ate _tapu_ breadfruit or fish or kicked the high priest from the
temple, the gentle savages made up their minds that the magic had lost
its potency. So, gradually, though to some people _tapus_ were yet very
sacred, the fabric built up by thousands of years of an increasingly
elaborate system of laws and rites, melted away under the breath of
scorn. The god of the white man was evidently greater than theirs.
Titihuti, a constant attendent of the Catholic church, yet treasured a
score of _tapus_, and associated with them these others, the dipping of
holy water from the _bénitier_, the crossing herself, the kneeling and
standing at mass, the telling of her beads, and the kissing of the
cross.
The abandonment of _tapus_ under the ridicule and profanation of the
whites relaxed the whole intricate but sustaining Marquesan economy.
Combined with the ending of the power of chiefs of hereditary caste, the
doing away with _tapus_ as laws set the natives hopelessly adrift on an
uncharted sea. Right and wrong were no longer right or wrong.
This fetish system was very aptly called a plague of sacredness.
“Whoever was sacred infested everything he touched with consecration to
the gods, and whatever had thus the microbe of divinity communicated to
it could communicate it to other things and persons, and render them
incapable of common use or approach. Not till the priest had removed the
divine element by ceremonies and incantations could the thing or person
become common or fit for human use or approach again.”
The Marquesan priests strove with might and main to extend the _tapus_,
for they meant power and gain. Wise and strong chiefs generally had
private conferences with the priests and looked to it that _tapus_ did
not injure them.
Allied with _tapuism_ was what is called in Hawaii _kahunaism_, that is
the witchcraft of the priests, the old wizards, who combined with the
imposing and lifting of the bans, the curing or killing of people by
enchantment. Sorcery or spells were at the basis of most primitive
medicine. At its best it was hypnotism, mesmerism, or mind power. After
coming through thousands of years of groping in physic and surgery, we
are adopting to a considerable degree the methods of the ancient
priests, the theurgy, laying on of hands, or invoking the force of mind
over matter, or stated Christly methods of curing the sick. In Africa
witchcraft or voodooism attains more powers than ever here, but even in
Polynesia the test of a priest’s powers was his ability to kill by
willing it. In the New Zealand witchcraft schools no man was graduated
until he could make some one die who was pointed out as his subject. A
belief in this murderous magic is shared by many whites who have lived
long in Polynesia or New Zealand. It was still practised here, and held
many in deadly fear. The victims died under it as if their strength ran
out like water.
The most resented exclusion against women in the Marquesas, and one of
the last to be broken, was from canoes. Lying Bill, as the first seaman
who sailed their ships here, had met shoals of women swimming out miles
to the vessel as it made for port. In his youth they did not dare enter
a canoe in Hiva-Oa. They tied their _pareus_ on their heads and swam
out, clambered aboard the ships miles from land with the _pareus_ still
dry.
“They’d jump up on the bulwarks,” said Lying Bill, “an’ make their
twilight before touchin’ the deck. The men would come out in canoes an’
find the women had all the bloomin’ plunder.”
This _tapu_, most important to the men, was maintained until a Pankhurst
sprang from the ranks of complaining but inactive women. There being
many more men, women had always had a singular sex liberty, but, as I
have said, the artful men had invoked rigid _tapus_ to keep them from
all water-craft. The females might have three or four husbands, might
outshine an Aspasia in spell of pulchritude and collected tribute, and
the portioned men must submit for passion’s sake, but when economics had
concern, the pagan priests brought orders directly from deity.
The dread gods of the High Place, the demons of the _Paepae Tapu_, had
centuries before sealed canoes against women. In canoes women might
wander; they might visit other bays and valleys, even other islands, and
learn of the men of other tribes. They might go about and fall victims
to the enemies of the race. They might assume to enter the Fae Enata,
the House of Council, which was on a detached islet.
And they certainly would catch other fish than those they now snared
from rocks or hooked, as both swam in the sea. Fish are much the diet of
the Marquesans, and were propitiations to maid and wife—the current coin
of the food market. To withhold fish was to cause hunger. The men alone
assumed the hazard of the tossing canoe, the storms, the hot eye of the
vertical sun, and the devils of the deep who grappled with the fisher;
and theirs was the reward, and theirs the weapons of control.
But there were always women who grumbled, women who even laughed at such
sacred things, and women who persisted. Finally the very altar of the
Forbidden Height was shaken by their madness. How and what came of it
were told me by an old priest or sorcerer, as we sat in the shade of the
great banyan on the beach and waited for canoes to come from the
fishing.
The sorcerer and I passed the ceremonial pipe, and his words were slow,
as becoming age and a severe outlook on life.
“There were willful women who would destroy the _tapu_ against entering
canoes?” I asked, to urge his speech.
“_E_, it was so!” he said.
“_Me imui?_ What happened?” I queried further.
“A long time this went on. My grandfather told me of a woman who talked
against that _tapu_ when he was a boy.”
“And she—?”
“She enraged the gods. She corrupted even men. A council was held of the
wise old men, and the words went forth from it. She was made to keep
within her house, and a _tapu_ against her made it forbidden to listen
to her wildness. In each period another woman arose to do the same, and
more were corrupted. Some women stole canoes and were drowned. The
sharks even hated them for their wickedness. We pointed out what fate
had befallen them, but other women returned boasting. We slew some of
these. But still it went on. You know, foreigner, how the _pokoko_
enters a valley. One coughs and then another, and from the sea to the
peak of Temetiu, many are made sick by the evil. It was so with us, and
that revolt against religion.”
He sighed and rubbed his stomach.
“Is it not time they came?” he asked.
“_Epo_, by and by,” I answered. “Why did you men not yield? After all,
what did it really matter?”
“_O te Etua e!_ The gods of the High Place forbade, for the women’s own
sake!” he said indignantly, and muttered further.
To break down every sacred relation of centuries! To shatter the
tradition of ages! To unsex their beloved mothers, wives, and sisters by
the license of canoe riding! The dangers and the hardships of the carven
tree were to be spared the consolers of men’s labor and perils.
“Did the gods speak out plainly and severely?”
The _taua_ looked at me quizzically. Foreigners mock holy things of
nature. The bishop here had kicked the graven image of the deity of the
cocoanut-tree.
“_Ea!_ Po, the god of night, who rules the hereafter, spoke. The priest,
the high priest, received the message. You know that grove by the Dark
Cave. He heard the voice from the black recesses. _Tapu haa_, it said. A
double _tapu_ against any woman even lifting a paddle, or putting one
toe, or her heel, or her shadow within a canoe. All the women were not
wicked. Many believed their place was in the _huaa_, the home. These
refused to join the brazen hussies, the deserters of the _popoi_ pit.
But the dance was dull, and there was strife. The _huona_, the artists,
the women who rejoice men when they are merry, the women with three or
more husbands, they all seemed to have the madness. They gained some of
the younger men to their side, and they built that long house by those
breadfruit-trees. They held their palaver there, and they refused to lie
under their own _faa_, their roofs of pandanus. They would not dance by
the light of the blazing candlenuts the mad _hura-hura_, nor let those
bravers of the sea share their mats on the _paepae_ of the valley. Many
husbands fought one another when their wife did not return. The tribe
grew apart.”
He sighed and took a shark’s tooth from his loin-cloth, with which he
scraped our pipe.
I went and lay where the curling sea caressed my naked feet. I was
within easy distance of the _taua’s_ voice. One must not hurry even in
speech in these Isles of Leisure. The old man blew through the bowl and
then the stem, and, taking pieces of tobacco from his _pareu_, he packed
the pipe and lit it. He drew a long whiff first, as one pours wine first
in one’s own glass, and handed it to me.
He responded when I put the pipe again between his trembling fingers.
“The gods grew weary. Messages but few came from them. Priests’ wives
even ceased to cook the breadfruit on the hot stones, and went to live
in that accursed _haa ite_.”
“We esteem such a long house, and call it a club,” I interposed in
subconscious defense of my own habits.
“_Oti_! Maybe. Your island forgot wisdom early. You even cook your fish.
We will make the fire now.”
I rose and shook off the warm salt water from my body. My _pareu_ of
blue with white stars was on a descending branch of the banyan. I put it
about my thighs and folded it for holding. Then arm in arm we walked to
our own house on the raised _paepae_ of great basalt stones.
I heaped the dried cocoanut fiber in a hollow of a rock, and about it
set the polished coral of our kitchen. A spark from the pipe set it
afire, and, heaped with more fiber and wood of the hibiscus, before long
the stones blushed with the heat, and, growing redder yet, were ready
for their service.
The priest of old had withdrawn to make a sauce of limes and sea-water,
which he brought out within the half-hour from the penthouse in which we
stored our simple goods. It was in a _tanoa_ formerly used for _kava_, a
trencher of the false ebony, black in life, but turned by the years of
decoction of the mysterious narcotic to a marvelous green. It was like
an ancient bronze in the open. Here we were both ready for our delayed
food, I, beside the glowing coral stones, the bones of once living
organisms, and the old man, with his bowl of sauce. But the food
tarried.
He fluttered about the _paepae_ and chewed a bit of the hibiscus wood to
stay his hunger. In the breadfruit-grove the _komako_, the Marquesan
nightingale, deceived by a lowering cloud or perhaps impelled by a
sudden passion, was early pouring his soul into the shadowy air. I
tended my fire and wondered at man’s small relation to most of creation.
“Go, my son,” said the _taua_ impatiently, “to the opening of the
forest, and see if they do not come over the waves!”
I strolled to where the beach met the jungle. An outrigger canoe was
coming through the surf. A faint shout from it reached me. I ran back to
him where he still chewed an inedible splinter.
“_Epo_,” I said, and made the fire fiercer. He stirred his _mitiaroa_,
the sauce, and watered his lips.
“How was the _tapu_ broken finally?” I asked, casually.
“They are long away,” he observed with his eyes on the break in the
trees.
“They are just now beaching the canoe,” I said soothingly. “We will eat
in a moment. But _taua_, you leave me hungry for that last word.
“The women of Oomoa tried to break down your _tapu_ of time immemorial
against their entering canoes, and there was trouble. The gods were
against them, and yet to-day—”
“The gods got tired,” he interrupted me. “The chiefs became afraid of
the continuous _hakapahi i te faufau_, the excitement and turmoil. You
know the chiefs and priests decided all things. Now the women cried out
for a _vavaotina_, for each one of the tribe to lay a candlenut in one
of two _popoi_ troughs. One was assent to the _tapu_, and the other
against it.”
There was argument first, said the _taua_. After the priests had called
down the curse of Po and other gods of might on all who would invoke a
popular judgment of a sacred and time-webbed commandment, the chiefs
pictured the dangers to women and to canoes, to the tribe and the
valley, if women broke loose from the centuried bonds that forbade
canoeing. Older women and some younger beauties, the latter fearing hurt
to their prestige by less luxurious belles, urged the inviolability of
the _tapu_.
The women of the Long House, the rebels, merely demanded instant casting
of the _ama_ nuts into the _hoana_. He himself, the _taua_ said, then
made the great error of his life. He swiftly counted in his mind those
for and against, and, convinced that he had a huge majority for the
prevailing law and order, shouted out that the _vavaotina_, though long
disused, was just and truly Marquesan.
The troughs were brought from a near-by house to the beach, and the
trial was staged.
“At that moment,” said the old priest, “a canoe which had been cunningly
making its way to the shore, as if by a prearranged signal, suddenly
took the breakers and came careening upon the sand. Out of it stepped
Taipi, a woman of that red-headed tribe of Tahuata, arranged her kilt of
_tapa_, and advanced. She was like an apparition, but fatal to my count.
She was a _moi kanahau_, beautiful and strong, and the first woman who
had ever come except as a prisoner from that fierce island. But she was
stronger in her desires than any man. She was unbelieving and unafraid
of sacred things. A hundred men sprang forward to greet Taipi. American,
she was as the red jasmine, as the fire of the oven, odorous and lovely,
but hot to the touch and scorching to know. That woman laughed at the
men, and, as if word had been sent her, took her place among the women.
She seized a candlenut and threw it exactly into the unholy _hoana_.
“‘O men of Oomoa,’ she cried, ‘so you fear that women may paddle faster
and better than you! _Haametau hae!_ You are cowards. Look, I have come
a night and a day alone, and no shark god has injured me and I am not
weary.’
“There followed a shower of candlenuts into the demon trough, as the
stones from the slings in battle. We were beaten, as youth ever defeats
age when new gods are powerful. Our day and the power of all _tapus_
waned and ended soon. Once in the canoes those women made us release the
_tapu_ against their eating bananas and, later, pig. In a thousand years
no Marquesan woman had tasted a banana or eaten pig. They were for the
men and there were good reasons known to the gods. But let woman leave
ever so little way the narrow path of obedience and of doing without
things that are evil for her, and she knows no limits. She is without
the _koekoe_, the spirit that is in man. The race has fallen on sorrow.”
He sat down on his powerful haunches and chanted an improvisation about
the lost splendor. Low and mournful, the psalm of a Jeremiah, his deep
voice rumbled as he fixed his dark eyes on the great globes of the
breadfruit hanging by the plaited roof of the hut.
And through an opening of the forest came the two women of his
household, Very White and Eyes of the Great Stars, heavily laden with
their morning’s catch of fish. They came tripping over the green carpet
of the forest, laughing at some incident of their fishing, and threw
down beside him the strung circles of shining _ika_, large and brilliant
_bonito_, the mackerel of brilliancy, and the _maoo_, the gay and gaudy
flying-fish.
“Oh, ho! sorcerer,” said I. “Did ever men match with the cunning of
these scaly ones with greater luck? The stones are ready for their
broiling.”
The _taua_ made a wry face and stirred his sauce. He dipped a _popo_
into it and ate it greedily, bones and all.
“_E, e!_” he said and spat out the words. “_Piau!_ The women catch their
own fish now.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XIV
The palace of the governor of the Marquesas in the vale of
Atuona—Monsieur L’Hermier des Plantes, Ghost Girl, Miss Tail, and
Song of the Nightingale—_Tapus_ in the South Seas—Strange
conventions that regulate life—A South Seas Pankhurst—How women won
their freedom.
IN Mapuhi’s store, on the counter, taken from the cabin of the _County
of Roxburgh_, lay twenty-five pearls. They were of different values, two
or three magnificent in size, in shape, and in luster, the fruit of
Mapuhi’s tribe’s harvest in Takaroa Lagoon. He displayed them to me and
others the night before I was to sail with Lying Bill for the Marquesas
Islands. Aaron Mandel was about to buy them, and as the Parisian dealer
and Mapuhi discussed their worth, Bill, McHenry, Kopcke, Nimau, and
others added their opinions.
“If you paid for these pearls what they cost in suffering, and in
proportion to the earnings of a diver in his lifetime, you would offer
me ten times what you do,” said Mapuhi. “The white women who wear these
_poe_ can never know the dangers or the pain endured by our people. Two
have _aninia_, vertigo, and one has been made permanently deaf this
_rahui_.”
“I agree with you,” replied Mandel, “that nothing of money can balance
what you Paumotuans go through to gather shells, but in many parts of
the world divers of other races are doing the same. They don’t go as
deep as you do, because their waters are shallower, but they fix the
price for pearls. I have seen them from Ceylon to Australia, and I have
to meet their competition when I take these pearls to Paris where the
market is. Also, Mapuhi, the culture pearl is every year hurting our
trade more and more, and some day may make pearls so cheap that you will
get a third of what you do now. You remember the Taote of _Pukapuka!_”
“That was the devil’s magic, and it will not be again,” said Mapuhi.
“Man who loves and serves the true God will never interfere with his
secrets, but will accept what he offers for man’s struggles and
torments. The Taote was tempted by Satan, and his sin was terribly
punished.”
Mandel smiled.
[Illustration:
From the painting by Oscar F. Schmidt
A young palm in Atuona
]
[Illustration:
From the painting by Oscar F. Schmidt
Atuona valley and the peak of Temetiu
]
“Yes the Taote got a rough deal,” he admitted. “But his pearls made
another man’s fortune, and astonished all who saw them in Paris. Let me
tell you! Last year I visited three culture fields, and they are doing
wonderful things. The Japanese for many years only copied the methods of
the Chinese. They forced the fresh water mussel and the abalone to coat
with nacre substances they inserted within their folds, but they got no
pearls of the best size, shape, or luster. Now, Kokichi Mikimoto has
gone much further than anybody. I spent a week with him at his pearl
farm in the bay of Ago in the Inland Sea of Japan. The bay is a dozen
miles long and five wide, with an average depth of sixty feet, but it is
remarkably free from currents and severe storms. Mikimoto is a scientist
as was the _Taote_. He opens a three-year-old shell and lays a head of
nacre on the outer, shell-secreting skin of the oyster. This skin is
then dissected off the oyster and fitted about the bead like a sac. This
sac is then transplanted into the tissues of another oyster in its
shell, an astringent is sprinkled on the wound, and the second oyster is
planted in the prepared bed at anywhere from twenty-five to eighty feet.
It stays there from three to seven years, and then his girl diver brings
it up. Mind you, he has laid down suitable rocks in certain shallow
places, and when they are covered with oyster spat they are removed to
deeper beds and set out in order. It is these which are dissected at
three years of age, and the nuclei inserted in them. These beads are of
all colors, mother-of-pearl or pink or blue coral, and the pearls are of
the color, white or pink or blue, of the beads. The oysters often spit
them out, the starfish and octopus ravage the beds, and the red current
sometimes spoils everything for a year. They have similar farms in other
parts of Japan, and in Australia and Ceylon, but Mikimoto has done most.
He sells millions of pearls every year. Of course they are blisters and
so not orient or perfect, because the bead has touched the shell while
growing, and has not remained in the folds of the oyster. But I am
afraid, for I was told a few months ago that Mikimoto and others were
making perfect pearls. If they do they will ruin the market.”
“You can tell the difference between natural and culture pearls in any
case?” I asked.
“_Mais oui!_ If you cut open the grafted pearl you find the center a
bead or bit of coral, but in the true pearl the center is a grain of
sand, or a hollow formerly occupied by the tapeworm or parasite. Well,
you won’t make any money cutting pearls open, so we use the ultra-violet
ray. Most of Mikimoto’s pearls are about as big as French peas, and, as
I say, lack sphericity because of attachment to the inner shells. But,
mind you, his oysters are merely the avicule or wing-shelled kind, and
small. Here are these Paumotu shells from six to eighteen inches across
and the oysters in proportion. Think of what they might do, if they were
put to work by science and—”
“They were once,” broke in Kopcke. “My girl’s father knows all about
it.”
“I know much about it, too,” said Mandel; “and I have never known just
what to believe. I only know that some one sold a string of pearls in
Paris finer than any in the world, and they are now in New York.
“The Empress Eugénie’s necklace came from here, and so did Queen
Victoria’s five-thousand-pound pearl, but these were said to be finer.”
“For heaven’s sake!” I exclaimed. “Tell me what you do know of this
mysterious _Taote_ and his tragedy. Mapuhi has put the devil to work in
it. I have been hearing talk about it since I landed in Tahiti.”
“Come down to my shack,” said Kopcke, “and I will get old Tepeva a
Tepeva to tell you his part of it.”
“I will finish with Mapuhi,” Mandel said, “and will be along in ten
minutes.”
That the fixing of a price for the twenty-five pearls was not to be
concluded in public was evident, and so Kopcke, Lying Bill, and we
others sauntered to Kopcke’s hut. Nowhere do whites despise one another
as feelingly as in the South Seas. Their competition in business and in
love is so intimate and so acute that there are no distances nor
withholdings of emotion. The finesse and impersonal euchering of rivals
practised on mainlands is not copied in this hotter and more primitive
mart where adversaries are of ruder breed, and courtesy is considered
weakness. As we strolled under the palms to Kopcke’s house, McHenry said
to me, “This _Taote_, this doctor or magician they gab about, I knew
better than anybody else, an’ he was a bloomin’ queer ’un. I kept a
store at Penrhyn for years, and this fellow was around there studyin’
the lagoon. Everybody called him Doc, but whether he was a M.D. I don’t
know. He had a tool-chest, though, like a bloody sawbones, and could fix
a cut or saw off an arm fine. He had michaelscropes and all sorts o’
professor junk, an’ he was good-hearted, and had money enough, too.”
“I remember the fellow well,” Lying Bill interposed. “’E was a han’some
man, big as Landers, and dark as Llewellyn. ’E ’ad gold ’air, but never
wore a ’at, blow ’igh, blow low, an’ so ’is ’air was so bleedin’
sunburned, it was all colors. ’E was a furriner, an’ ’ad studied in
Germany,—if ’e wasn’t a German,—though ’e was a reg’ler pollyglut and
parlayed every lingo. ’E ’ad a ’ole chemist shop with ’im on Penrhyn. I
used to see ’im treatin’ the lepers and studyin’ oysters night an’ day.
At first, I thought he might be a buyer, an’ watched ’im, but he ’ad no
time for tradin’. In the divin’ season ’e was always around the lagoons,
an’ ’e’d look at every pearl and the shell it come out of. ’E was a
myst’ry, ’e was, an’ made no friends with anybody. The natives called
’im _Itataupoo Taote_, ’Atless Doctor. ’E played a deep game, ’e did.”
At Kopcke’s shack he made us welcome. Lamps were lighted, and cigarettes
and a black bottle of rum set on the counter.
“I’ll go and hunt up the old man to spin you the yarn,” said Kopcke, and
disappeared in the darkness of the outside. Mandel came before he
returned, and as the talk was still on the _Taote_ he gathered up his
thread of it.
“This magician’s name was Horace Sassoon, and he was of a rich and fine
family in England,” said Mandel. “I knew much about him because I cashed
his drafts more than once. He was a medical doctor, educated in Germany,
France, and England, and he had been seven or eight years in India.
While in Ceylon or the Arabian Gulf he investigated the pearl fisheries
and got interested in the processes of mother-of-pearl secretion by
oysters. I think he was a real savant, and that he had a strong interest
in the treatment of lepers by the chaulmoogra oil and the X-ray. He told
me that he wanted to endow a great institution in India, but that he was
unable to raise the funds. Me, I am credulous, but I believe the
institution was a beautiful woman who spent much money. He had an income
sent from Paris to Tahiti, and the drafts, not large, came through my
house. I would meet him, as you men did, in Papeete or in these atolls,
or Penrhyn, wherever there was diving, but I never suspected his game,
though three or four times he said to me, ‘I will have all the money I
need some day if I am right in my theories.’ I lost track of him, and
did not associate with him the big pearls that came to Paris until I saw
the pearl Woronick bought, and heard Tepeva a Tepeva’s account. I won’t
spoil it by repeating it, and anyhow, here he is himself!”
Kopcke entered with his girl and her father. The latter was a very big
man, the wreck of a giant. He was sadly afflicted; he would take a step,
and stop, and then his head would roll over on his shoulder. Each time
he started to move, he went through convulsive tremors as if winding
himself up for the next step—and I recognized the paralysis which seizes
the diver who has dived too often and too deep.
“_Maite rii, Tamahine!_ Go slow, daughter!” he was saying, as he seized
a post and let himself down to the floor, where he squatted.
“He was about the best diver in the group, but the bends have got him,”
said Kopcke.
“’E’s a Mormon,” Lying Bill blurted, “an’ ’e won’t touch the rum.” Bill
helped himself, stood the bottle before him, and began to doze.
“My father,” said Kopcke, “here is a _Marite_ from far across the sea,
who wants to know of your adventure with the _Taote_ who gave you the
pearl.”
Tepeva a Tepeva shaded his eyes with his hand and peered at me. “_Oia
ia!_ It is well!” he stuttered. His eyes fell upon the bottle, and
remained fastened upon it.
“Would not Tepeva a Tepeva wish to refresh himself?” I said quietly, and
passed the bottle to the cripple. He took it, weighed it, removed the
cork, smelt the contents, and poured out a shellful,—a third of a
pint,—tossed it off, smacked his lips as if it were cocoanut-milk, and
began to speak more freely.
“_Ea_, that _ramu_ is good. I do not drink it as a Mormon but because I
am weak. It is _makivi_, this thing I tell you. It is stranger than the
stick of Moses turning into a sea-snake. It costs me dear, as you see,
though it paid me well. I am as I am, a cracked canoe, because of it.
But I have my house, and all the debts of my family are paid, and I owe
Mapuhi a Mapuhi not a _sou_. It is good to be free. I was a diver at
Penrhyn for the British when I met the foreigner. He was a _Taote_. He
said that he was trying to cure the lepers. He had a wonderful medicine.
He did not let them drink it, but put it into their arms through a pipe.
But also he watched the diving. Doc, they called him, and he never
covered his head. But no man said _Itataupoo_ to him. He was no man to
laugh at. He spat his words and was done, but he would mend a broken
bone, or cure a coral cut or the wound of a swordfish. He looked through
a tube with a glass in it at blood from the lepers, and at pearls and
oysters. He had lamps that made a light like the blue sky. Through his
tube the water from our wells was as a fish-pond. Hours and hours he
watched the shells being opened, and every pearl he must see, and the
shell from which it came. I thought he searched for a pearl to charm the
leprosy. All through the _rahui_ he stayed in Penrhyn. He went to Tahiti
on the _Pani_. I was on the _Pani_, and much we talked about oysters and
the different lagoons.
“I came to Takaroa, my home. Months afterward the _Taote_ arrived here
in a ten-ton cutter. He had but one sailor, a Tahitian, Terii. They
lived in that house over there. I would not go into that house now for
ten tons of shell. It is _ihoiho_. When the moon is dark a spirit dances
there, the spirit of Mauraii. He was my cousin, and the _Taote_ hired
him to help the other man. One day the _Taote_ began to buy provisions,
a great quantity which were stored in the cutter with other big boxes,
as if for a long voyage. They sailed away, Terii and Mauraii, too.
‘Nuku-Hiva will see me next,’ said the _Taote_ to us all. That was a
lie, but I did not know it then. They went to Pukapuka. It is a little
atoll, toward the Marquesas, and far from any other island. Mauraii had
dived there, and the _Taote_ knew that. Five moons later the cutter
sailed into this lagoon. Mauraii was with the _Taote_, but Terii was
not. The _Taote_ paid Mauraii, and left in the cutter with another
sailor. For two years Mauraii lived without labor. For two years his
jaws remained tight as the jaws of the _pahua_. He spoke well of the
_Taote_, but he was afraid. When I asked him more about Terii, he would
not talk. Terii had eaten poisonous fish, he said once. He had trodden
on the _nohu_, he said another time. I knew Mauraii had not been to the
Marquesas. He was a Mormon, Mauraii, and he prayed like a man with a
secret.
“We forget soon, and it was four years when Patasy came in the _Potii
Taaha_, his own cutter. He was of Irélani, and drank much _ramu_. The
cutter was leaky, and Mauraii worked to calk the seams. Patasy gave him
hardly any money, but food, and night rum. Mauraii, with rum in him,
would now make many words to Patasy, and to me. He spoke of a secret
that lay between him and the _Taote_. He spoke of an oath he had sworn
on the book of Mormon and the picture of Birigahama Younga. He spoke of
something at Pukapuka that was growing bigger and bigger. The _Taote_
was in his native land, and would return soon, and they would both be
very rich. Mauraii’s talk was like a cloudy day that does not let one
see far. Sometimes I would ask him about Terii, who had gone with
Mauraii, and who had not come back. That would still his big
word-making. He would shake a little then, all over. He would say: ‘I
must not talk, Tepeva a Tepeva; I must not talk.’ But with more rum he
would talk. He was worried, though. He stopped going to the temple; he
lived on Patasy’s cutter. Often I saw him lying on the deck, full of
drink.
“One night he came to my house late. His heart was very heavy. He had
been drinking with Patasy, and he had done something wrong. He cursed
Patasy. He said that Patasy had forced him to do evil—that he, Mauraii,
had taken an oath, and that now, this night, he had broken it. It would
bring him harm. The _Taote_ was coming back soon. Mauraii shook when he
said that, shook just as he did when I would ask him what had become of
the companion who had gone with him to Pukapuka and had never come back.
“_E mea au!_ I am not the man to search the heart of a brother for what
should be hidden. But having broken his oath and told his secret to
Patasy, I thought it right he should tell it to me. But he would say no
more. And he sailed away alone with Patasy.
“For many weeks we heard nothing more of Mauraii. Then from sailors who
came from Tahiti we heard that he and Patasy had returned to Papeete in
a month. Then we heard that Patasy had sold his cutter and had taken
steamship away to his own country. He never came back.
“Mauraii stayed in Papeete. Every little while we heard about him. He
had much money, and he was drinking all day in the Paris rum store, and
dancing the nights with the Tahiti Magadalenas in the Cocoanut House.
“When Mauraii had spent all his money the French Government brought him
back to Takaroa, and he was mad. Something had broken in his belly,
where the thinking-parts are. He would sit all day, looking at the
lagoon and saying nothing. Never did he say anything. Sometimes he would
shake all over. And all the time his back was bent as if some one was
coming from behind to strike him.
“It was a long time after this that the _Taote_ returned, on the
_Moana_. He came first to my house. He asked me where Mauraii was, and I
told him Mauraii was here, but was _maamaa_, that he was possessed of
the demon. He asked me if it was a talking demon, if it made Mauraii say
everything there was in his head. I told him it was the other way. The
poor man said nothing, but sat by the lagoon all day, and was fed and
cared for by the women.
“‘Let us go to see Mauraii!’ he said. He was angry, and I was afraid,
and I went with him. I knew where Mauraii would be, and I pointed him
out. He was sitting in the shade of a _purau_ tree, looking at the
lagoon. The _Taote_ went to him and spoke to him. Mauraii fell flat, and
then he crawled about the sand, and shouted to me not to let the _Taote_
kill him, _too_. This made him more angry, and he said that Mauraii was
really _maamaa_, and that nothing could be done for him. Mauraii ran to
his house when he had turned his back. After the _Moana_ had gone on her
way to Nuku-Hiva, the _Taote_ asked me if I could go with him to another
island. I did not want to go. If I had not gone, I would not be as I am,
but then I would not have my house, and all the debts paid of my family.
“I said that I had work here. But he said he would be gone but a couple
of weeks, and that he would give me ten _taras_ a day, and that I would
have no hard work. Mapuhi and Nohea were absent. No white elders were
here to advise me. Finally I said I would go, though when I looked at
Mauraii and saw what he was, I was afraid. He said we must take Mauraii
with us. We had hard work to get Mauraii on the cutter. When we did,
which was at night, we put him in the hold and closed the hatch and
sailed out of the pass. It was my own cutter, but the _Taote_ had
provided food, and his big boxes were in the hold with Mauraii.
“Once outside the reef, the _Taote_ said he would go almost due east,
and that Pukapuka was our island. I said that Pukapuka had no people on
it, and he said that was true. I said that Pukapuka was closed to the
diving, and he said that was true. But we went on toward Pukapuka. When
we slid the cover off the hatch to the hold, Mauraii came up, and when
he saw we were at sea and that the _Taote_ was so near him, he shivered
like a diver who has had a struggle with a shark. I thought he would
leap into the water, and often he looked at it with longing. But the
_Taote_ talked to him strongly, and put medicine in his arm.
“We steered and trimmed sail by turn. The wind was fair, and we reached
Pukapuka in five days. We had a hard time to get the boxes ashore. There
is no pass, and you cannot reach the lagoon from the sea. We had brought
a small boat lashed on the deck, and this we carried to the lagoon. It
took us a day to move it, and we made Mauraii help. The man had changed
since we landed on Pukapuka. He was not wild, but _taata ravea paari_.
He was cunning. He smiled to himself sometimes in an evil way. We were
no sooner on the lagoon than the _Taote_ ordered me and that madman to
build a hut and to rest ourselves for a day.
“Pukapuka had not a man upon it. It is like a cocoanut-shell, round all
about, and the lagoon deep, and full of yellow shell with yellow pearls.
There are no poison fish in the water, as in some other islands. I
thought of that, and of the man who had been here with Mauraii and had
never come back. I was afraid. The _Taote_ could make Mauraii sleep and
sleep with one touch of a silver pipe on his arm. I was afraid.
“The island is loved by the birds; it was their time for nesting, and
the air was filled with them. That was the only sound. The _Taote_ wore
no hat, though the sun upon the coral was as stones heated to cook fish.
When we had rested a day, the _Taote_, who had been most of the hours
upon the lagoon, spoke to me of our mission, and we three rowed a little
distance until I judged we were in water of seventeen fathoms.
“‘It is long,’ said the _Taote_. ‘It is five years since I was here, but
I am sure of the spot. There was a cocoanut-tree that hid the village if
I rowed from that rock we put there on shore, due west, five _umi_.
There is the cocoanut, and it hides the huts the divers live in when the
lagoon is open.’
“You see how quiet this lagoon is? Well, that lagoon of Pukapuka was ten
times more still. It made me shake as had Mauraii. But now he did not
shake. He was all brightness, and his eyes were shining, though he said
not a word.
“The _Taote_ took the _titea mata_ and looked into the water. He could
see little; his eyes were not strong. I went into the water, took the
_titea mata_, stuck my head into it and gazed down into the sea.
“‘Do you see shell, large shell?’ he asked quickly, like a man who knows
what is in a place.
“‘I see shell,’ I said.
“‘Then dive and bring it up,’ he commanded.
“I said the prayer to Adam and to Birigahama Younga. I breathed long,
and I went down. There was in my heart a fear of something strange. The
bottom was at seventeen fathoms, a jungle of coral as big as the trees
in Tahiti, with black caves and large flowers and sponges, and also many
of the _pahua_, the great shell which closes like a trap and can drown a
man. Dropping straightaway, I swam upon a ledge raised above the floor
of the lagoon. There was a pair of shells, very large. But where there
had been many, only this single pair remained. I moved along the ledge,
and found that scores had been ripped from the same bed. A diver sees
easily where shells have been.
“‘Robbed!’ I said to myself. ‘There has been a thief here.’ Pukapuka had
been closed to diving for six years, and it was forbidden to remove a
shell. I swam over the face of the ledge, and was sure I had the sole
remaining pair of this bed. I rose to the surface with them.”
The _Taote_ was hanging over the boat with his head in the _titea mata_,
watching me as I came up. As I hung on the boat to breathe, I saw
Mauraii regarding him with a hateful eye, and I shook my fist at the
fool. The foreigner took the shell quickly, and opened it, pulled the
oyster out into a bowl, and searched it. Then with a little cry he held
up a pearl, a _poe matauiui_, big and like a ball, as shiny as an eye.
Bigger it was than any pearl I have ever seen. It was perfect in shape,
and with a skin like the gleam of the sun on the lagoon. What Mauraii
had said of the _Taote_ growing things to make him rich came to my mind,
as I saw this wonder-pearl shining in the _Taote’s_ hand. The foreigner
for a moment was as mad as Mauraii, and, taking hold of that man’s hand,
shook it and shook it.
“‘Ah, Mauraii,’ he shouted, ‘now we are paid for those weeks of hell
here! You shall have enough to eat and drink always.’
“He laughed and clapped Mauraii on the shoulder, and the _maamaa_
laughed foolishly, and began to dance in the boat. We had to pull him
down, or he would have overturned it.
“‘There are more than a hundred pearls like that,’ said the _Taote_. ‘I
am richer than King Mapuhi, ten times as rich, and I can make all I
want. I made it. I worked and worked to find out, and Mauraii put the
things in the shell. I am a _te Tumu_!’
“I did not like that. _Te Tumu_ is the creator. It is wrong to boast
like that. And where was Terii, who had gone with Mauraii from Takaroa
to Pukapuka? He would share in no wealth. And the madman beside me—what
happiness left for him?
“‘_I teienei_,’ said the _Taote_, as he rubbed the pearl. ‘Go down and
bring up as many as you can. When we did the sowing, I worked in a
diver’s dress. I have that machine in those boxes on the cutter. Maybe
we should get it, for we will want more seed.’
“‘There are no more shells in that bed,’ I said. ‘This was the only one
there.’
“‘No more shells there!’ he screamed. ‘You are mad like this fellow. We
found a hundred and seven there, and we planted seed in each one. Each
of them has a pearl as fine as this.’
“He tried to be gentle again, though he sweated. He tried to explain. He
had discovered the secret of the pearl; he had planted something in each
shell as one might a cocoanut-sprout in the earth. There was much I did
not understand, for no man had ever tried such blasphemy. The God that
made these lagoons had wrapped them in the unknown, and had made pearls
the dispensation of His will.
“‘Whatever was done here by you,’ I said, ‘there are no more shells in
that _tiamaha_. I searched it all about.’
“He tried to laugh, but failed, and he looked at Mauraii.
“‘A hundred and seven shells! It took us weeks,’ he said. ‘That was the
number, Mauraii?’
“The man possessed of the devil nodded his head and really laughed. It
was an evil laugh.
“‘A hundred and seven, and one—this one—makes a hundred and six,’ said
he. He smiled, and I went cold. I knew that before he went mad, Mauraii
did not know how to count. The devil was in him.
“The _Taote_ breathed hard. ‘Tepeva a Tepeva,’ he said, ‘go down again.
It is possible that this is not the bed. We placed a small anchor beside
it. Look for that. I worked seventeen years for this day.’
“Again I went into the water, and to the bottom. I found the place where
I had pried off the oyster with the great pearl. Digging in the sand and
ooze, I found the anchor. I saw plainly the empty cups of the oysters
that had been, and I counted them roughly and made them about a hundred.
I stayed a full minute and a half, and I hated to go up. I did not like
to meet that wise man looking at me in a terrible way when he should see
me empty-handed. But I had to go. I was exhausted when I reached the
sunlight, and until I had gained my breath and my blood was quiet, I did
not turn to the _Taote_.
“‘No more shell?’ he said quietly. ‘You are lying! You are lying! You
are trying to cheat me. Look out! Look out! Ask Mauraii what I did
to—but the shell are there. I can see them with the glass. Come, we will
get the diving-machine.’
“He cursed me, and said I was trying to steal his wealth. What he saw
through the _titea mata_ was the gleam of the _pahua_, the great shell
the priests use for holy water. I said no more, and with Mauraii went to
the beach. It was night when we had brought the machine to the boat, and
we returned to the cutter for food. I shall not forget that night. The
foreigner could not sleep, and he talked to me. He talked as if he had a
fever. He said he had tried for years to find out what made pearls in
oysters, and to do the work of God. While others had made small ones
that clung to the shell, he alone had found the way to put in the shells
large beginnings for the oysters to cover. He had chosen Pukapuka
because it had a lagoon without a pass, and so free from currents, and
because it was closed to diving and no one lived there. No one knew of
it, he said—no one but himself and Mauraii.
“I thought of Patasy, of the _Potii Taaha_. Of what Mauraii had told me
when in rum. Of his going away with Patasy and coming back to Tahiti,
there to drink and dance in the Cocoanut House.
“But I said nothing, for I was afraid. Mauraii had slept ashore. In the
morning we found him praying and singing by the lagoon. We went out in
the boat, and set up the diving-machine, and the _Taote_ told me to put
on the dress.
“‘I and Mauraii will work the pump,’ he said. ‘You stay down ten minutes
at least, and search the bottom all about there. Maybe we were mistaken
in the exact spot.’ He spoke like a good friend, now.
“I had said nothing about the anchor, because I was afraid. I sank down
to the bottom, and first looked that the air came freely and that I was
not entangled. Then I walked about and saw that a diver had been there.
The whole bank had been gathered. The one shell had escaped merely
because the thief had so willed it. I sat down and waited for the ten
minutes to go, and I wished I was in Takaroa. Pukapuka Lagoon had many
sharks. In the years that had passed since the last diving season they
had grown big. When I was still, they came by me, and through the
glasses I saw their ugly faces staring at me. I frightened them away
with the air from my wrist, or I clapped my hands in a diver’s way. I
had my back to the rock bank. At last a signal came on the rope, and I
had to let them pull me up.”
Tepeva a Tepeva’s voice was weak. He poured himself the last drink of
rum. Kopcke had gone to attend to the loading and Lying Bill was snoring
on the floor.
“Slowly they lifted me, but it seemed to me like a second.
“What look the _Taote_ had, I do not know. I did not turn to him until
my helmet was unscrewed, and I had taken off the coat. Without meeting
his eyes, I said, ‘No shells.’
“‘No shells! My God!’ he said. ‘Are you blind? Did you not the first
time bring up this? Mauraii knows well there are a hundred and six more.
Is not that true, Mauraii?’ he said, coaxingly.
“The madman laughed. ‘A hundred and six more,’ he replied; ‘and to hell
with Patasy.’
“This moment the eyes of the _Taote_ met me. He was shivering, as
Mauraii had shivered when he left Takaroa.
“‘Give me the helmet!’ he ordered. ‘Help me put it on. I will know. I
will know!’
“He put the pearl in a purse, and the purse in a pocket of the
diving-coat. A knife was in his belt. I fastened the coat and the belt
and tied the strings at the wrist. I put the lead weights on his breast
and back, and lowered him into the water. Before I screwed the helmet
tight, I said to him: ‘Go slowly! Walk carefully! Don’t bend too low!’
“Mauraii fed the pump as I let out the line, and when I felt the weight
of the line, I took the pump myself. Now, a man like me, who has dived
with the machine for years, knows every motion of the line.
The _Taote_ was not moving slowly and cautiously. He stopped, and for
five minutes there was little motion.
“_Aueo!_” I thought. He has found the robbed bank, and the anchor. He
knows the truth. He will come up now. What will I do? He will be
terrible.
“Suddenly I felt a drag at the rope, swift and hard; not the steady pull
of walking.
“He has fallen, tripped and fallen, and cannot get up! That was my
thought.
“‘Mauraii,’ I said, ‘you man the pump alone. Go smoothly! If you fail, I
will kill you!’
“I leaped in, and swam straight down. The foreigner was on the bottom,
lying on his face. I raised his body, light as a shell in that depth.
There was a great rip in the front of the coat. The air rushed from it,
but there was no motion of his body. The knife in his hand had been used
to destroy himself. He had seen the work of the thief and had cut open
the coat. The devil of despair had done that with him.
“A diver thinks quickly. I could not bring him to the top unless Mauraii
aided. I signaled by the rope. There was no reply. The air was not being
pumped. It had stopped as I lifted him. Mauraii had left his duty. I had
one chance. I might unscrew the heavy helmet, and cut the leads and
carry him, with the aid of the line, to the surface. He might not be
dead yet. I seized the helmet, cut the hose, and began to turn the metal
helmet. As I did so, I saw a shadow over my head, and laid hold of my
knife. It was not a shark. It was Mauraii. He was dancing and smiling,
dancing and smiling, as in the Cocoanut House in Papeete. He slowly
settled down in the water. He took hold of me as I twisted at the
helmet, and he smiled at me, and danced on a ledge of coral. Below this,
I saw one of those giant _pahua_. _Aue! Marite!_ This pair was as long
as I am, and as deep as my legs. The great animal in it had opened his
doors to eat, and as Mauraii leaped about in his mad dancing from rock
to rock, he stepped into the jaws of the _pahua_. _Aue!_ They closed as
the jaws of the turtle upon the fish, and held the fool as if he was
buried. He was fast to the knees, and fell over upon me as I worked at
the helmet, his head hanging down by my feet.
“My lungs were bursting, my heart beating my breast. I had been more
than three minutes a hundred feet below the air. I had been using my
strength. I pushed the fool away. Suddenly I felt my leg seized, and the
grip of teeth upon my flesh. I sprang up, pulling at the rope to give me
force, and calling on Adam for help.
“Minutes it was before I could crawl into the boat. I lay there many
minutes before I could stand up. The blood was upon my leg, and the
marks of teeth. They were not the teeth of a fish, but of a man. I
prayed for guidance. The _Taote_ was dead, and Mauraii, too. What could
I do for them? Nothing! Yet I heard a whisper in my ear to go down. I
slipped into the water and swam to the bottom. I never touched the sand.
I saw the bodies of the _Taote_ and Mauraii fought over by a dozen
sharks. I had prayed, and I had a knife in my hand. Even a shark fears a
bold man. I struck at them right and left and reached the ledge where
the _Taote_ lay. I slashed at the coat and cut away the pocket. The
water was red with blood about me, but I shot up past the sharks with
the purse, and reached the boat. I took the oars and rowed as fast as I
could to shore. There I knelt and thanked Adam and Ietu Kirito for my
life.
“I ran across the reef and swam to the cutter. I cut away the anchor and
raised the sail and left the abode of the demon. Fakaina I reached in
two days; and, with a Takaroa man who was there, I put the cutter about
and sailed for home.
“What does the Book say? In the midst of life we are in death. I had
stayed under too long in the lagoon of Pukapuka. Like a thunderbolt came
on me the diver’s sickness—and I am as I am.”
Lying Bill had been awake for several minutes.
“You did mighty well,” he commented. “You saved the pearl and the Doc’s
money for yourself. There’s three men et up by sharks. You sold the
pearl to Woronick for twenty-five thousand francs.... And by the bloody
star of Mars, you’ve drunk all the rum while I’ve been asleep! Come on,
O’Brien! Let’s get the bloomin’ ’ell out of ’ere to the schooner! We’ve
got to sail at sun-up for the Marquesas.”
Tepeva a Tepeva, the man stricken by the bends, was still squatting on
the floor immersed in his pregnant memories when I shook his hand, and
went to bid good-by to my friends of the atolls where life is harder but
simpler and sweeter than elsewhere in the world. Mapuhi and Nohea rubbed
my back, and commended me to God. The wind was fluttering wildly the
fronds of the cocoanut-trees, and the surf was heavy as we rowed through
the passage and moat and struck the breakers on the outer reef. From the
sea for a few minutes the lanterns in the houses were like fireflies in
the cane, but soon the darkness hid them, and I saw only the black
shadow of the _motus_, and the gleam of the foaming crests of the waves
in the faint starlight. I lay down on a mat by the steering-wheel of the
_Fetia Taiao_, and dreamed of the _Taote_ and the dancing Mauraii in the
trap of the giant _pahua_.
I awoke with the cries of the sailors raising the mainsail, and the
motion of the vessel through the water. We were off with a fair wind for
the Land of the War Fleet.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XV
The dismal abode of the Peyrals—Stark-white daughter of Peyral—Only
white maiden in the Marquesas—I hunt wild bulls—Peyral’s
friendliness—I visit his house—He strikes me and threatens to kill
me—I go armed—Explanation of the bizarre tragic comedy.
AS I walked up from the beach of Atuona, where I had touched the shore
of the Marquesas for the first time, I had remarked a European dwelling,
squalid, forbidding and peculiarly desolate. Painted black originally,
the heat and storms of years had worn and defaced it, the sun had shrunk
the boards from one another, and posts and beams had gone awry. It was
set in a cocoanut-grove, the trees so close together that their huge
fronds joined and roofed out sky and light. The narrow road along the
grove had been raised later, and formed a dike so that with the heavy
rains of the season the land all about was a gloomy marsh to which the
sun seldom penetrated. The dingy gallery of the house fronting the road
had a broken rail and dilapidated stairs, and in the shallow swamp and
about the entrance were cast-off articles of household and plantation. A
dismaying mingling of decayed European inventions with native bareness
framed a dismal and foreboding scene, contrasting with the brilliancy of
nature in the open.
I had felt a sudden fear of the possibilities of degradation, as if the
dreary house were a symbol of the white man’s deterioration in these
wild places. A sense of physical and spiritual abandonment to alien
environment, without fitness of soul or habit, depressed me.
As we passed, I saw on the veranda a girl of sixteen or seventeen, with
a white face and light blue eyes. Her long yellow hair was slightly
confined by a piece of ribbon, but hung down loose on her rounded
shoulders. She wore a blue cotton gown, becoming and not in keeping with
her soiled and frayed surroundings. She seemed not to notice us until we
were opposite her, when she raised her head and glanced at us a moment.
Those off the schooner she must have known, for she fixed her eyes on me
the fleeting instant of her gaze. They had the innocence and appeal of a
fawn and the melancholy and detachment of a cloistered nun. There was no
curiosity in them, though we were the only white visitors in months, and
had come with the new governor, who had landed but the day before. A
second or two her eyes met mine and conveyed an unconscious message of
youth and sorrow, of budding womanhood that had had no guidance or
companionship, and only sad dreams.
From the room opening on the gallery a man came and shouted to us “_Bon
jour!_” in a raven-like croak. He was in soiled overalls, barefooted,
and reeling drunk. His brown hair and beard had not been cut for months
or years, and rudely margined his bloated, grievous face, of rugged
strength, in which grim despair contended with fierce pride.
“That is Peyral,” said Ducat, the second mate of the _Fetia Taiao_. He
is always half-seas over, except when he sews. He is the village tailor,
and makes the priest’s gowns and clothes for any one who will buy them.
That daughter of his is the only white girl in the Marquesas. She is all
white, and he keeps her chained in that dark house as if he was afraid
some one would eat her.”
“You know bloody well why ’e keeps ’er there,” said Lying Bill. “’E
knows you an’ me and ’Allman and ’earty bucks like us is not to be
trusted; ’at’s why! I knew ’er mother and ’er grandparents. ’E was a
British calvary officer ’oo ’ad served in Injia, an’ come ’ere with ’is
wife, an Irish lady, to take charge of the store an’ plantation now
owned by the Germans at Tahaaku. They ’ad one daughter. Peyral was a
non-com. on a French war-ship that come ’ere to shoot up the natives,
an’ ’e was purty good to look at then. ’E could do anything, an’ when ’e
got ’is papers from the French navy ’e went to work for the plantation,
courted the girl, an’, when ’er parents weren’t lookin’, married ’er.
They died, an’ ’e set up a proper ’ouse ’ere, an’ was bloomin’
prosp’rous till ’is wife died o’ the _pokoko_, this gallopin’
consumption that takes off the natives. Then he give in, and went to
’ell. ’E ’as three girls, two little ones, an’ ‘ow they live I don’t
know. When ’is wife died ’e painted that ’ouse black, an’ ’e ain’t
touched it since. ’E gathers ’is copra, an’ makes a few clo’s now an’
’en, an’ spends all the money on absinthe. The girl looks after ’er
sisters, but ’e guards ’er like a bleedin’ dragon. She never goes off
the veranda there now except to church on Sundays and ’olidays. I don’t
know what’ll ’e do with ’er, but ’e’ll kill any one that goes too near
’er like Ducat ’ere or meself.”
When I was settled in the House of the Golden Bed, as the Marquesans
called the cabin I had rented from Apporo, the wife of Great Fern, in
exchange for my brass bed at my departure, I went almost every day with
Exploding Eggs to the beach to fish or swim or to ride the surf on a
board. The road wended from my house past the garden of the palace and
thence to the sea. Between the governor’s and the beach was only
Peyral’s noisome residence, and twice a day I passed it within a few
feet. Sometimes he was at his sewing-machine on the veranda, or
gathering the cocoanuts that had fallen and drying them in the sun, but
generally the shaggy Breton was in a stupor or murmurously intoxicated,
sitting on a bench or lying on the ground, and talking to himself in the
way of morose, unsocial men when inebriated. His daughter was usually on
the veranda sewing by hand, or apparently wrapt in thoughts which
obscured her consciousness and painted despondence on her countenance. I
tried not to stare at her, but when I made sure that she was oblivious
of me, or intentionally not seeing, I observed her narrowly.
How could she have preserved that miraculous blondness in these islands?
It was amazing. Her skin was like the inside of a cocoanut, smooth as
satin. The years in that shadowy house had bleached her white flesh
until it was pearl-like in transparency, the blue veins as in fine
marble. Though hardly seventeen her figure was the luxuriant one of
these latitudes, rounded as the breadfruit, curving in opulency under
her single garment, a diaphanous tunic. Her hair that I had judged
yellow at first sight was silver-gold, almost as white as her flesh, but
with glints of topaz and amber. Silky, glistening, as fine as the
filament of a web, it did not hide her shapely ears and fell in
profusion almost to her waist. I never saw her smile. Her azure eyes had
wept until their fountains were dried. She was numb, mute, never having
seen aught in sleep but ghosts. She was, in this voluptuous atmosphere,
herself voluptuous in contour and color, but frozen. A thousand brutal
words from Peyral must have made her so. In drunkenness he was harsh,
and in less violent hours sullen and suspicious. The children feared him
as _Nancy_ had _Bill Sykes_, but there was a powerful attachment between
them. He must have described to her horrible things that he guarded her
against, and have threatened unspeakable punishments if she disobeyed
him.
Daughter of Europeans, granddaughter of Celt and Anglo-Saxon, this girl
did not know her father’s or mother’s language but feebly, and had no
more knowledge of or contact with the world of her forefathers than if
she were all Marquesan. I fancied her spirit infinitely confused by her
blood and her surroundings, vague aspirations perhaps stirring her to
desire for other things than the savage and stupid ones about her. In
the church she must have had some respite. I watched her there a number
of times, bowed over her Marquesan book of the ritual, reciting the
prayers, and beating her sweet breast at the _mea culpa_ as might the
most repentant sinner or worst hypocrite.
No one called on Peyral save a very occasional buyer of copra or an
infrequent customer for clothes. These, prevalently, met him on the
trail or at church, and dealt with him there. Either his jealous
solitude was respected, or disagreeable experiences had caused the
villagers to shun his dwelling. He himself infrequently dropped in at
the store of Le Brunnec, or the German’s establishment at Tahaaku where
he had wooed the daughter of the English officer and the Irish exile. At
the Catholic church only was he a regular attendant, sitting in the rear
by the _pahua_ shell holy-water font, and mumbling the responses. The
children were in the pews, the sexes separated, and I, the few times I
was there, at the door where the breeze was freshest and I might go out
unseen. One Sunday he spoke to me. I was as astonished as if Father
David had begun a _hula_ at the altar.
“You are American,” he said in French, his voice hoarse and broken.
I said I was and that I had come to the islands to stay an uncertain
length of time. We exchanged the day’s greetings after that, and when
Painter Le Moine and I were examining the remains of the studio of Paul
Gauguin, who had died here ten years before, it was Peyral who showed us
how everything had been and who told me of his daily intercourse with
the famous symbolist. Thus we struck up a real acquaintance, if not
friendship, and he would tarry a quarter of an hour on my _paepae_ to
drink a shell of rum and to talk about copra and the coming and going of
schooners. He drew me out about my plans, whether I was going to settle
in the Marquesas or return to my own country, and evinced a flattering
interest in my future. And I was flattered, as I am easily by the
friendliness of unfriendly people, and did not question his genuine
liking for me.
Ah Suey, the Chinese baker and storekeeper, who had been tried for the
murder of an American, and who spoke English he had learned at Los
Angeles and at sea, might have enlightened me, but that I was beyond
doubt. I was at Ah Suey’s to dance a jig and to sing “The Good Old
Summertime” to amuse him. The saturnine Chinese, after a drink of rum,
said:
“Peylalee all time come you housee takee dlinkee. He no good. More
better you tell him _poponihoó_ go hellee! Makee tlubble for you his
daughtah.”
Ah Suey puzzled me, but I do not like advice or warning, and I shunted
the subject.
Peyral was a hunter. He would wander, always alone, in the upper
valleys, to shoot _kuku_, or along the beach for salt-water birds,
walking slowly and not alertly; but he was a crack shot and hardly ever
failed to bring back a bag of game. He had learned marksmanship at sea,
or perhaps in his native Brittany, and his cartridges went far. He was
not contented with birds, but also tramped to the mountains to kill
goats or even the wild bulls that were growing scarce there under a
promiscuous use of firearms. Le Brunnec, the trader, an amiable and
intelligent Breton, and I met him there, fortunately, at a critical
moment for me. We had, Le Brunnec and I, climbed on horses in the late
afternoon to a plateau high up in the hills and camped there the night.
In that altitude it was cool after the sun had set, and we sat about a
fire of twigs and branches until we were sleepy. We were considerably
past the line of cocoanut-palms, and in a rich and varied flora.
Magnificent chestnut, ironwood, rose-apple, and other tropical trees
formed dark groups about us, and masses of _huetu_ or mountain plantains
lined the slopes. We had washed down our dinner with a bottle of
Moselle, and had a mellow and philosophical hour before sleep.
Far above us we could see a pair of ducks, a kind of non-migratory
mallard. They lived only in the lonely valleys or woods, and nested on
the tops of distant ridges where they laid a half dozen eggs. The
ducklings must be carried by their parents to the feeding grounds
hundreds of feet below.
We talked about the decimation of the Marquesans—Le Brunnec in ten years
had seen them depopulated almost 50 per cent.
“They are unhappy and soul-sick,” he said. “They are animals, and, when
they had freedom under their own rule, prospered enormously. Now there
are a couple of thousand instead of the hundred thousand the whites
found. They are in the cage of civilization and cannot stand the bars.
We are adaptable because we are an admixture of many races, and have had
to exist in changing environments or die. Millions must have died from
the same thing that destroys the Marquesans, but there were enough to
keep on and build up again. The quality of adaptability, of making the
best of it, is wonderful. One time in Tahiti I was at the Annexe
lodging-house of Lovaina when a Frenchman arrived by steamer from
Martinique. He had with him his four children. The mother, a native of
that island, was dead, and the oldest child was a girl of thirteen, a
child-woman, naive but clever, and very charming. For four years she had
been mother to the other three, since she was nine, and they were as
neat as a gunboat. She was tiny and undeveloped physically, but
necessity had adapted her perfectly to her task. The father was looking
for work, and, not finding it in Tahiti, was off to Dacca, in Africa,
leaving the babies in her care. _Mon Dieu!_ It was brave to see her
bathing them, brushing their hair, reproving them, and feeding them. If
she had been five years older I would have tried to marry her, and the
whole flock. Now, you see, she could keep on because she was continuing
the white race customs and ideals, and understood them, hard as it was;
but these poor people have been told to do something they don’t
understand, and that is not their ideal. Now take that girl of old
Peyral! Her mother spoke English, and her father is French, and she went
to the nuns’ school here for four or five years. Yet she can hardly
speak anything but Marquesan, and in that tongue she replies to her
father, and talks to her sisters. She is almost a Marquesan, and as they
are unhappy in their prison so is she. She is the only white woman here,
and she has no companions, and her father won’t let her be a native.
_Pauvre enfant!_ Now, her I wouldn’t marry for all the cocoanuts on this
island. There is one other, Mademoiselle Narbonne, who is the richest
person in the Marquesas, for she, too, is fit neither for native life
nor for white. The nuns have spoiled her, as her mother spoiled the
Peyral girl.”
And so to bed on the grass with a blanket about us.
In the morning we were up at daybreak, and, after coffee and hardtack,
we rode toward the sea. There was a faint trail, but Le Brunnec was a
skilled tracker and picked up the spoor in a few minutes. After half an
hour we saw fresher traces of our prey, and began to make plans for the
attack. We felt sure we were the only ones on the plateau, and so were
safe, for Marquesans are reckless with guns, and when we heard a horse
coming toward us we halted and waited. It was Peyral. We could see his
frowsy head a quarter of a mile away as it bobbed in the trot.
“_Eh bien!_” said Le Brunnec, philosophically. “He is not so bad here.
It is curious that when Peyral has been drunk for a month, and reforms
so as not to die, he goes to the mountains for a week and shoots an
animal.”
We said _bon jour_, and he joined us. Le Brunnec proposed that we try to
kill two bulls, share the labor of carrying the meat to Atuona, and
divide it there. Peyral gruffly assented, and, as he was the more
skillful _chasseur_, gave us our stations. We were to start up one or
more _taureaux sauvages_ and to endeavor to refrain from firing at them
until they were as near as possible to the cliff. We were successful and
had felled one, when another appeared.
“_Prennez garde!_” shouted Le Brunnec. “That _hakiuka_ has blood in his
eye.”
“Go around to the left and drive him toward me,” commanded Peyral.
I was riding fast about his flank when my horse put his foot in a rat’s
hole. I had my rifle on my right arm and I must have used it as a
vaulting-pole unwittingly, for I struck the earth about ten feet from my
mount. I was struggling to my feet when I became aware that the
_hakiuka_ was approaching with malice in his snortings. My horse had got
up but too late to bear me to security, and my rifle was choked with
mud. I rushed for a tree but could see none with low branches. I had a
big knife in my belt, a kind of Bowie, and, as I felt the hot breath of
the animal on me and saw his horns magnified to elephant’s tusks, I drew
the weapon. The beast was within five feet of me when he dropped. Peyral
had put a Winchester bullet in his heart. His head was at my feet as he
gave it a mighty toss, and laid it on the sward of maidenhair ferns in
submission to man’s invention.
When I had made sure of the poor _hakiuka’s_ being absolutely dead, and
had shaken myself together, finding no injuries, I thanked Peyral, whom
Le Brunnec was already extolling for marksmanship and quickness of
thought.
“_Rien!_ It is nothing!” replied the shaggy man. “I like to kill.”
We put ropes over the horns of the victims, and forced our horses to
drag them to a certain spot at the edge of the cliff. Below was a wide
shelf of rocks at water-level. We pushed the stiffening bodies over the
edge and let them fall. Then we rode back to Atuona, and in a big canoe
with three Marquesans, Great Fern, Mouth of God, and Exploding Eggs,
went for the carcasses. To retrieve them into the craft was a difficult
task.
[Illustration:
Malicious Gossip, Le Brunnec, and his wife, at peace
]
[Illustration:
Photo by Dr. Malcolm Douglas
Exploding Eggs and his chums packing copra
]
[Illustration:
Frederick O’Brien and Dr. Malcolm Douglas at home in Tahiti
]
The sea surged against the rocks so that we could not tie up close to
them, but several of us jumped on them while others remained in the
canoe, with a line ashore and a kedge-anchor aft. The Marquesans cut up
the bulls into quarters, and each we tied to a rope and dragged through
the water into the canoe. Over our heads a cloud of heron and sea-gulls
shrieked for their share, and when we had left the rocks these birds
screamed and fought for the entrails. They had been attracted when the
bulls were killed, and for hours had peeked vainly at the carcasses. The
dragging them over the land and hurling them to the ledge, and their
hours of lying there, had drawn an immense concourse of the sea-birds.
There were many thousands before we got away, and so rapacious were they
that they circled over our heads and snatched at the bloody meat in the
canoe. We had to wave our shirts at them to frighten them away. Sharks
smelling the blood swam about the canoe, and we were not a little
afraid. We had brought no guns in the canoe, and we were forced to
strike at them with paddles, and shout imprecations at them. They did
not enter the breakers, which we ran to the sand. At the beach near
_Commissaire_ Bauda’s residence and offices, we turned over to Peyral
his third, and, taking the remainder into the village, Great Fern with
saw and knife provided every household, including the Catholic and
Protestant clergy and the nuns, with ample for a meal or two. Peyral
threw his part over his horse’s back and left us, muttering that he
would salt it down for the uncertain future.
Peyral became increasingly friendly, and a number of times stopped me on
my way to and from the shore to invite me to drink with him. Le Brunnec
said that this was something new for Peyral, and that he must be “going
crazy.” But, like Ah Suey, Le Brunnec hid his real thought from me when
I defended Peyral and said that he was sinned against overmuch. Peyral’s
daughter—I hardly ever caught sight of the younger two—would desert the
veranda if I came upon it, but once he called her, and when she did not
respond immediately added a “_sacré_” to his order for her to come and
be presented to me.
“She is a fine girl, but shy,” he said, and patted her clumsily.
Mademoiselle Peyral trembled under his heavy caress, and with merely a
slight, awkward bow to me hurried into the sombre chamber.
“She is shy,” he repeated as he drank his absinthe with mouthing and
grimacing. “She needs a man to train her right, a husband, eh, a
gentleman, _mon garçon_. Is not that right?”
Peyral’s voice was almost gentle, but his mood changed in a breath. He
struck the board hard with his shell, and yelled, “Do you understand,
American, I said a gentleman. Her mother was aristocrat. Do you get that
into your noddle?”
Exploding Eggs, who had waited for me on the road with my towels,
laughed as we ran toward the surf.
“Peyral _paeá_,” he said. “Too much drink, too much fight.”
I did not stop after that when he bade me have a _goutte_ with him, for
I was sensible of a deep pity for the girl and an ardent desire to save
her embarrassment, the deadly unreasoning shame or perplexity that
overwhelmed her at her father’s gross attitude and my presence. After a
few weeks, Peyral did not sing out to me any more, and I was conscious
of a coldness, of a return of his first relation to me, and then of fits
and starts of friendship. I felt oppressed by his changing tempers, and
attributed them to his varying degrees of inebriety.
I split my rain-coat one day, and, after making a bad job of repairing
it, thought of Peyral and his skill as a tailor. With the coat on my arm
I climbed the stairs to his porch, and, finding no one there, called out
Peyral’s name. My voice echoed through the house, and, with the
intention of scribbling a note and leaving the coat, I entered the
nearest room. Mademoiselle Peyral was sitting near the machine but was
not sewing. She trembled as I approached her, and looked frightened. I
am timid with women, and her nervousness communicated itself to me. I
wished I was not there. She was half uncovered, having on only a
chemise, and her dishabille added to my confusion, though that very
morning I had bathed in the river nude with Titihuti and others.
“Please give your father this coat, and ask him to repair it,” I said,
and put it down. Her downcast eyes and heaving bosom, her evident
extreme timidity, and her pitiable situation overcame me. She was of my
own race, and she was so white and so fair. Before I could restrain
myself, I said in English, “Don’t be afraid of me! I am very sorry for
you,” and I patted her shoulder as I might have a child’s.
She shrank from me in apparent horror, and ran from the room into a
farther one, screaming in Marquesan. I started to follow her to explain
or to appease her, but reconsidered.
Though I was conscious of no wrong, the familiar incidents in newspapers
and gossip of misinterpreted gestures and of false allegations rose to
my mind as her cries resounded through the black and tristful house. I
moved toward the porch to leave, and deliberated, and awaited some one’s
coming. Better to tell the fact and make a stand there and then, said
common sense. But no one answered her alarm, and after a few minutes I
left, with the coat, and returned to my own cabin. For half an hour my
mind was actively going over the affair to find out what might be at the
bottom of it, and, of course, to make certain of my clearance of the
least onus of guilt.
Perhaps I was the first man other than her father who had put his hand
on her, and I had done that, no matter how innocently! The nuns had
overbalanced her standard of modesty, and her father’s brutal
admonitions had made her hysterical! I tried myself and, having found
myself not guilty of even forwardness or discourtesy, I cooked my
dinner, poured myself a shell of Munich beer that had been cooled in the
river, and dismissed the trifle.
The next afternoon as I passed the governor’s garden on the road to the
beach, I saw Peyral on the veranda with the official. I thought of the
rent in my rain-coat, and entered the grounds to speak to him about it.
As I approached the steps I heard the tailor speaking loudly and
vehemently to Monsieur l’Hermier, and spilling the absinthe in the glass
in his hand.
“_Kaoha!_” I said, and Peyral turned and saw me. His face purpled, and
he shouted in French something I did not understand, and appealed to the
governor for corroboration. A twinge of privity with his emotion swept
over me, and I am sure I flushed and looked the culprit. I hadn’t much
time for analysis, for Peyral stood up and flung his glass at my head.
It went wide. I took a step toward him and asked:
“What’s the matter with him, _Monsieur l’Administrateur_? Is he drunker
than usual?”
“_Je ne sais pas_,” replied the governor, with a shrug of his shoulder.
“He has come here to lodge a complaint against you of maltreating his
daughter. He wants you tried and sent to prison, and he wants to
institute a suit against you for damages. I have told him to return when
he is sober. He is bitter, Monsieur, and he is, after all, a Frenchman.”
Peyral got up from his chair, unsteadily. The governor discreetly left
the veranda and entered his study. I sat down in sheer weariness, when
suddenly the frenzied drunkard confronted me.
“_Sacré Americain!_” he yelled. “You will insult the daughter of a
French patriot. _Cochon!_ I will show you what I do to such people as
you!”
He flung himself upon me and struck me in the face. Peyral was fifty
pounds heavier than I, but he was very drunk. I drove my fist into his
chin, and, following the blow with another, sent him sprawling. I
regretted my violence as I saw the poor devil staggering to his feet
unsteadily, but when, with the most blasphemous profanity and the basest
epithets in the dialect of Brest, he lurched at me again with his two
hundred pounds of rank bulk, charity fled from my panting heart, and I
realized that I must fight or retreat. Years of addiction to alcohol had
not made my assailant anything but tough and strong physically, and I
was no match for him if he was not reeling. He plunged toward me as a
drunken elephant might go to combat. I decided not to run, because I
wanted to continue to live in Atuona underided, and so I sprang to meet
him, and hitting him full tilt in the chin and chest, carried him hard
down to the boards, where we grappled and exchanged powerless blows.
We had knocked over table, bottle, glasses, and chairs, and the uproar
was immense. Song of the Nightingale, Exploding Eggs, Ghost Girl and
Many Daughters, the little leper lass, had come scurrying from the
kitchen. Maybe the governor had a plan, or his dignity was offended,
for, without appearing, he gave an order to Song, and the quartet of
natives threw themselves on us, and disentangled us. Song, who later
confessed to me that he had a grudge against the tailor, took the
opportunity in the hurly-burly to deal him vicious blows, and then drove
the cursing, struggling Breton through the garden and out the gateway.
Peyral’s last words were a threat to kill me the next time we met. The
village had gathered, and Apporo, my landlady, Mouth of God, Malicious
Gossip, his wife, and a dozen others were running toward the palace.
Song dismissed them with a grandiloquent gesture, and his obscene
badinage dissolved their curiosity in gales of laughter.
With the disturbance abated, the governor joined me, his ordinary merry
self again, and we drank a libation to Mars. My clothes were torn, my
jaw ached, and my body was bruised from the clutches of the tailor.
“Do not molest yourself!” said the executive. “I do not entertain any
evil of you. When the allegation is formally made, I, as magistrate,
will hear the evidence. According to his own statement, no one was there
but his daughter and you. I believe you a man of honor. And women? _Mon
vieux_, I have known and loved many of them. I am a doctor, and a
student of life. They are incomprehensible. But we must take
precautions. He has said he will kill you, so you must be on guard. You
have no pistol? _Eh bien!_ I will lend you my Browning automatic I had
in Senegal. It is loaded. Defend yourself, but do not step on his
property. _Nous verrons!_”
The governor was dramatic, not to say melodramatic, and, to my nervous
conception, he took too lightly the crime upon my person. I was the one
to bring a charge, not Peyral. Assaulted in the palace, at the throne of
justice, in the presence of the judge, I was handed a deadly firearm by
the arbiter, and told to protect myself. It was like the Wild West, or a
stage farce. But I had come a thousand miles with him on a small vessel,
and knew his delight in the least diversion that would relieve his
_ennui_ in a monotonous period of service. This was but a scherzo in a
slow program. However, I thanked him and, with the heavy pistol, went to
the House of the Golden Bed. The girl was uppermost in my unstable
reflections.
What had possessed her to lie so? She must have distorted my ingenuous
action damnably to cause her father to beset me before the governor, and
to swear to kill me! I pictured her as I had last seen her, and try as I
would I could not hate her. I lay down with the Browning beside me, and
dreamed that she was testifying against me at the seat of judgment, and
that an austere God pointed downward. Exploding Eggs was cooking a
rasher of bacon on my improvised stove on the _paepae_ the next morning,
when Flag, the _mutoi_, brought a note, he acting as general messenger
of the island. It was in a strange hand and on dirty paper. I could not
make out the language except a few French words, and the signature not
at all, and so after breakfast I took it to Le Brunnec at his store.
Le Brunnec glanced over it and looked puzzled. Then he spoke low, in
French, so that the natives in the room might not glean a word.
“_Mais_,” he said, “it is from Peyral, and it is written in Breton and
absinthe. I translate it for you into your English:
“‘Monsieur: You cannot _éviter_’—what you say?—‘escape—from your insult
to _ma fille_. You have insulted and struck me, too. I will not seek the
tribunal to make your apology. The governor has told me you are
Irishman, and so you are of the same blood like the grandparent of my
child. In France what you have done must be paid for in blood or by
marriage. Even if you make intention to return to your own country no
matter. You must marry my daughter or you will be buried in _Calvaire
cimetière_—what you say—graveyard?—It is necessary that you send me word
by to-morrow or I will make justice on you.’ He says he is yours
respectful. Well, by gar, it is a situation, my friend, but I say to you
one thing: do not be afraid. He slip back already. You have a revolver?
Yes? Keep it in the hand or the pants.”
The merchant took up his sugar scoop to begin business. My wholeness or
health seemed not to interest him seriously. I sauntered up the path in
meditation. My feet took me into the mission churchyard, and I sat on
the roots of a gigantic banian-tree near the colossal crucifix brought
from France by the priests for the jubilee of 1900. The mad note of
Peyral had stunned me, and, instead of thinking hard and clearly upon my
situation, I fell into fatuous reverie.
A gentle and lovely savage she was, and unspoiled by civilization. What
a singular and perhaps entrancing task to teach her only the best in it,
to unfold through English or French the music and literature of the
world, to take her perhaps to the great cities? Or if I myself was done
with civilization, as I sometimes persuaded myself I was, what more
delightful companion than this simple virgin of Atuona? To fish, to
swim, to roam the plateaus; to have a library and to get the reviews and
the new books by the schooners, to create a living idyll! Love would
undoubtedly be the response of kindness, of sympathy, of tenderness, of
love itself. But could I love her? There would be children. And they
would grow up here. I remembered her own white feet in the mud of this
village. Their mother! And with Peyral’s blood in them! Peyral! Damn
him! What had I done to make him attack me, to say he would kill me? To
spoil my peace? I would wear the Browning about my waist, and if he
winked an eyelash I would shoot first. He had brought it on himself. She
had lied to him. I had no liking to be in Calvary with Gauguin. My grave
would be forgotten like his. A man here was a bubble in the breeze. It
burst and was nothing.
All these ideas rushed through my head as I returned to my house. I had
concluded not to pass Peyral’s house unarmed, so I tied a string about
my middle over my _pareu_ and fastened the revolver to it. With one pull
the knot undid and the gun came loose into my hand. I wore a light linen
coat over my bare body, and no one was the wiser.
Thus ready for my would-be murderer or father-in-law, I whistled to
Exploding Eggs the next forenoon, and, he with towels in hand, we walked
toward the sands. There was no one on the veranda of the palace. Except
for the residence of the lepers by the cemetery there was no other house
toward the beach but that of my enemy.
Obscure under the heavy-leaved palms, I could not be sure that Peyral
was not ensconced on his gallery with a bottle of absinthe and a
shot-gun or rifle waiting to pot-shot me. He knew my habit of bathing
every day, and maybe was chuckling over scaring me from the spot. I
walked boldly and briskly past his house. There was no figure on the
porch but that of a girl. I glimpsed her only, for an emotion of
shame—inexplicable shame—directed my eyes away from her. I continued on
to the water, and, hiding my revolver in the trailing _pahue_ with its
morning-glory blossoms, I took up my surfboard and forgot Peyral in that
most exhilarating of sports.
Exploding Eggs dragged his tiny canoe from the bushes, and we launched
it and pushed it through the surf. With rare dexterity he paddled it
seaward, I with my board on my knees, a calm admirer of his marvelous
control of the little craft: he and it the first Marquesan and the first
canoe I had seen in this archipelago. When we were out half a mile or so
we lay still for the right breaker. He watched and after a few minutes
began to paddle with intense energy until the wave caught him. We swung
to its crest and clung there as we dashed in at a fast pace without
motion on our part. But, when half-way, Exploding Eggs took my board
from me, and, handing me the paddle, he suddenly plunged with it from
the canoe and, extended full on the board in rhythm with the billow I
rode, accompanied me to shore.
The sun was dropping down the western sky when we dressed to leave the
beach, Exploding Eggs in his loin-cloth and I in mine, with my coat over
the Browning. The hours in the salt water with the exercise and the
laughter had cleared the cobwebs of blame from my brain. My innocent
blood would be on the guilty head of Peyral did he kill me. That was
comforting. However, I made sure that the knot slipped easily, and with
my valet beside me I made the start.
I had gained half-way when I saw Peyral coming toward me, a thousand
feet away, with a shot-gun over his shoulder. He was silhouetted against
the setting sun and could not be mistaken. His burly form, his beard,
his general shagginess made him unmistakable, as was also the outline of
the weapon.
There was no stopping. The swamp was on either side of the ten-foot
road, the beach behind me. Fleeing was out of the question. I might have
taken a side road had there been one, but just such conditions as
presented themselves then must be met daily. I kept on, and, as we came
nearer, our eyes joined and remained steadily fixed. I do not know how
Peyral felt, but I was as fascinated as the proverbial bird by the
snake. I moved as if by magnetic power toward my probable slayer, and he
toward me. Neither of us made a movement except that of our legs and
stiff bodies.
There came a second when we were about four feet apart, each hugging the
edge of the road. Our eyes were held straight ahead, and mine remained
so. We appeared to hesitate as if we might whirl and seize each other or
draw our weapons. The shot-gun was on his shoulder but in the flash of
an eye might be brought down to the level of my vitals. But the eye did
not flash. The gun swayed only with his footfalls, and we continued our
mechanical advance away from each other.
Prudence whispered to me to turn and protect myself from a rear attack,
but the message did not affect my legs. I winced momentarily for the
expected load of shot in my back, but I walked stiffly as if a great ray
of light were penetrating my cerebellum. Exploding Eggs, who knew only
about our fight upon the palace balcony and nothing of my having the
Browning, was chanting about the god of night, Po, and paid no attention
to Peyral, except to say quite audibly, “_Peyralé aoe metai!_ Peyral is
no good!” That did not add to my surety, and the imagined missile or
missiles from behind did not become less vivid until I was beyond
shooting distance. Just as I calculated with incredible relief that the
crisis was past, Peyral’s gun roared out.
My muscles squirmed, my heart leaped, my knees bent, and my chin touched
my bosom. Exploding Eggs laughed.
“_Peyralé puhi kuku_,” he said regretfully; “Peyral has shot a
_kuku_”—as if I should have shot it. I laughed heartily with him. The
joke was on me, but I enjoyed it to the echo. I recalled that often of
an evening my enemy replenished his larder with an expenditure of Number
Four shot. It was funny, and when I reached the palace I was trembling
with the reverberations of the absurd climax to my fears.
L’Hermier des Plantes was dancing opposite Many Daughters a _hura-hura_,
and Song of the Nightingale was fetching cold water from the brook to
water the wine, in the temperate French way.
“_Hola!_” called out the governor. “Come in, _mon ami_! Sit down and
have a _goutte de Pernod_. You are jolly. What? You met Peyral, and he
shot not you but a _kuku_? _O lalala!_ You give me back the Browning?
All right. You could not have done much harm with it. See, the
cartridges are blanks for firing a salute on the Fall of the Bastille
_fête_. _O sapristi!_ It is droll! I will die!”
He held his stomach while he laughed and laughed. I grinned with fury.
“What the devil is the _drôlerie_?” I questioned, earnestly.
The governor wiped his eyes, and emptied his glass.
“_Attendez!_” he answered. You were not in any great danger or I would
have come to your rescue. You know I have here a _dossier_ of every one
in these islands who has been complained against, or has complained. The
first week I was here Peyral declared that _Commissaire_ Bauda had
insulted his daughter, and that he must marry her or he would kill him.
Bauda denied the charge, and Peyral did nothing. Then I opened his
_dossier_, and in two years he had made three such charges, one against
a professor who was here a month, and one against Le Brunnec. _C’est
curieux._ The man is mad with alcohol, but more so with a determination
to marry that stark daughter of his to a white man who might take her
away. Others have been eliminated after such foolishness as this. See,
there was no one but you. Lutz is after higher game, and besides he is a
German, and Peyral hates him. _Voilà, mon garçon._ You were the _parti_
inevitable. It is strange the way he goes about getting a son-in-law.
One might expect a _dot_, or a little hospitality, but no, he runs true
to type, and he is not a _chic_ type. But, _c’est fini_. He has tried
and failed. You have met him, and knocked him down, and now you know his
gun is for _kuku_. Well, we will drink to the health of the _pauvre
diable_, and a good husband for the girl. But not you, eh?”
I drank with as much grace as I could, but when I walked in the upper
valley at dusk, and was alone by the _paepae tapu_, the shattered and
grown-over temple of the old Marquesan gods, I could have cried for pity
for that girl.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XVI
In the valley of Vaitahu—With Vanquished Often and Seventh Man He Is So
Angry He wallows in the Mire—Worship of beauty in the South
Seas—Like the ancient Greeks—Care of the body—Preparations for a
belle’s début—Massage as a cure for ills.
ACROSS the Bordelaise Channel from Atuona, many hours of sailing in an
outrigger canoe, lay the island of Tahuata. Its principal settlement was
Vaitahu, and there I went with Exploding Eggs, my adopted brother of
fourteen, to stay awhile in the house of the chief, Seventh Man Who Is
So Angry He Wallows in the Mire, as Neo Efitu, his short name, meant.
Atuona personified the brooding spirit of melancholy that possessed the
race, the shadow of the white upon the Marquesan spirit, but Vaihatu had
as _genus loci_ a blithe and domestic sprite, which had kept the tiny
village—formerly of thousands—in the habits and moods of the old ways.
Waited on as an honored guest by the chief, his wife, and his niece,
Vanquished Often, the friend and playmate of the few score inhabitants,
I had happy weeks of simple pleasures, and of intense interest in
searching into the past of the Marquesans, and especially into their
customs and manners in relation to esthetics.
The only foreigner in the valley, by my earnest wish and laughable
example, life resumed for a time much of the old Marquesan method and
appearance. The mission church, the first Christian edifice within a
thousand miles, was rejoining the wilderness. Without clergy or
adherent, its walls were fast falling into decay, and its
precisely-planned garden was jungle. The artist-schoolmaster, Le Moine,
who had taught Vaitahu’s children to say, “_La France est le plus bon
pays du monde_,” was gone to seek other models for painting as ravishing
as Vanquished Often, or men as majestic as Kahuiti, the cannibal of
Taaoa. Existence, almost as devoid of invention and artificiality as
before the white came, I was able to rebuild in my mind the structure of
Marquesan taste, and to view in imagination the attractive aspect of
Vaitahu in its idyllic days of old. We brought out of the chests the
native garments of _tapa_, and we lived as much as possible—like
children playing Indians—a perspective of the past.
I looked from my mat upon the _paepae_ of Seventh Man Who Wallows to see
Vanquished Often by the _Vai Puna_, the spring of Vaitahu. She had taken
off her _ahu_ or tunic of pink muslin and bent over to receive the full
stream of cool water from the hills which flowed through the bamboo
pipes. Her beautiful body, the blood mantling under her silken skin,
perfect in development at thirteen years, glowed in the dazzling light
and under the silvery cascade, and her long, unconfined hair shone
red-gold in the sunbeams. My mind reverted to the descriptions of the
women, the men, and the scenes described by these who voyaged here
decades ago.
[Illustration:
Photo by Dr. Theodore P. Cleveland
Some friends in my valley
]
[Illustration:
Wash-day in the stream by my cabin
]
Not any people in all the world, ancient or modern, ranked human beauty
higher in the list of life’s gifts than did the people of these islands.
In the star-scattered archipelagos of the Pacific tropics a dozen tawny
races or breeds of superb physical endowment made their bodies wondrous
temples for their free souls. The loveliness and grace of women, the
symmetry and strength of men, were, before the white came to destroy
them, the fascinating labor of their days, their vivid religion, and the
expression of their joy of living.
They brought the culture of beauty and the rhythm of motion to an
unequaled perfection, and in the adornment of their bodies and
development of their natural attractions reached a pitch of splendor and
artistry which, though seeming savage to us of this period, struck
beholders, even of our kind, as entrancing and marvelous.
While all over Polynesia these conditions obtained when the first
Anglo-Saxons threw down the anchors of their ships in the enchanting
harbors of these tropics, they remained longest in the Marquesas
Archipelago.
In their simple dress, their practice of manipulation in the development
of their bodies, their use of scents, unguents, and lotions, their
wearing of flowers and ornaments, their singular and astounding art of
the story-teller, the dance and the pantomime, and the exquisite
tattooing of their persons, they showed a delicacy of feeling and an
understanding of elegance unsurpassed in the records of the nations of
the earth.
As I sat under the _pandanus_ thatch of Seventh Man Who Is So Angry He
Wallows in the Mire, I recalled what that eminent moralizer, Lecky, had
said:
The intense esthetic enthusiasm that prevailed was eminently
fitted to raise the most beautiful to honor. In a land and
beneath a sky where natural beauty developed to the highest
point, supreme physical perfection was crowned by an assembled
people. In no other period of the world’s history was the
admiration of beauty in all its forms so passionate or so
universal. It colored the whole moral teaching of the time, and
led the chief moralists to regard virtue simply as the highest
kind of supersensual beauty. It led the wife to pray, before all
other prayers, for the beauty of her children. The courtesan was
often the queen of beauty.
Lecky wrote that of ancient Greece to contrast it with the morals of the
Europe of his day, but I considered the striking likeness between the
condition he described and the attitude of the ancient Marquesans. Here
in these tiny islands, separated by ten thousand miles of billow from
the land of Pericles and Aspasia, a people whose origin was only guessed
at by science, erected the same goal of attainment, and like standards
of harmony of form and movement. Doubtless at that very day these Greeks
of the tropics, considering their environment, most distant from the
birthplace of humanity and from the example of other peoples, were
comparable in brilliancy of person and ease of motion to the Homeric
figures.
The American sea-fighter, Captain David Porter, who ran up the Stars and
Stripes in the breadfruit groves of these islands, said:
The men of the Marquesas are remarkably handsome, of large
stature and well-proportioned; they possess every variety of
countenance and feature, and a great difference is observable in
the color of the skin, which for the most part is of a copper
color. But some are as fair as the generality of working people
much exposed to the sun of a warm climate.
The young girls were handsome and well-formed; their skins were
remarkably soft and smooth and their complexions no darker than
many brunettes in America, celebrated for their beauty. Their
modesty was more evident than that of the women of any place we
had visited since leaving our own country; and if they suffered
themselves (though with apparent timidity and reluctance) to be
presented naked to strangers, may it not be in compliance with a
custom which taught them to sacrifice to hospitality all that is
most estimable?
Why, and how had this strange race, so far from others’ strivings,
attained so singular a state of natural beauty that discoverer after
discoverer and diarist after diarist, from the bloody Spaniard, Mendaña,
to the gentle Louis Stevenson, set it down as the “handsomest on earth?”
One must guess at the beginnings of the Marquesans. Scientists make
explorations to find the route of the Caucasian people who thousands of
years ago—maybe, before the Hebrews deserted Jehovah for
Baal-Peor—migrated through the unknown and fearsome wastes of ocean
toward these misty islands of the far south. What equipment of body and
soul they brought with them we do not know, but they were or became the
masters of their seas, and in their frail canoes dared even the long
voyage to New Zealand and to Hawaii, when Europeans and Asiatics in
keeled ships crept carefully about their own coasts, or crossed the
Mediterranean Sea only within the threatening Pillars of Hercules.
During the thousands of years the Marquesans were separated from Europe
they developed a policy of government, a paternalistic democracy, or
communism, which was perfectly adapted to their nature and surroundings.
A very large part of it was concerned with beauty, manners, and
entertainment, with personal decoration, carving of stone and wood,
building of temples and houses, oratory, dances, and chants. All of
these were carefully regulated by cults, gilds, and _tapus_. They must
have been an extremely prolonged growth, for they had come to a fixed
standard of detail and exactness, and an acme of art, bizarre and exotic
as it was, that could have been but the minute accretion of many
centuries. When the first explorers came into the uncharted spaces of
these warm seas, they found a culture totally beyond the understanding
of most of them, and abhorrent to state and church, but which a few fine
souls glimpsed as an astonishing revelation of the natural development
of the human, and, by foil, of the decadence of civilization. They found
health and high spirits abounding to a degree utterly strange to them,
the hardiest and most adventurous of Europeans and Americans, and they
were provoked by the innocence, radiance, and naturalness of the women.
This Edenic condition astounded the Yankee Porter, who went to sea at
sixteen, and who slew scores of Marquesans, for he put in his log:
The Hawaiians, Tahitians, and New Zealanders had by residence
among whites become corrupt; they had fallen into their vices
and ate the same food. They were no longer in a state of nature;
they had, like us, become corrupt, and while the honest,
guileless faces of the Marquesans shone with benevolence, good
nature and intelligence, the downcast eye and sullen look of the
others marked their inferiority and degeneracy. Guilt, of which
by intercourse with us they had become sensible, had already
marked their countenances. Every emanation of their souls could
not be perceived upon their countenances as with those of the
naked Marquesans.
War, murder, mutiny, desertion, and horrible orgies marked the reaction
of these forecastle denizens, scourings of slums and dull villages, to
the spontaneity, ease, and liberty they found here, in contrast with
their ugly and restricted lives aboard ship or in the hard climes and
rough grooves of their homes. The sight of such intense individual
happiness, glowing vitality, and exquisite bodies, of a coöperative
existence without kings or commoners, business or money, palaces or
hovels, disease or dirt, prudery or prostitutes, shocked them by the
abrupt differences from their own countries. They wrote the Marquesans
down as barbarians, as the Greeks did the Romans; and church,
government, and trade made haste to hack down their achievement, and to
make over the pieces as the wretched patchwork of their own hands. They
hated it, subconsciously, for its giving the lie to their own boasted
institutions. They ended it that it might not mock the degradation and
futility of their own conduct and the opposition between their decalogue
and their deeds. The merchant condemned and altered it to make a market
for what it did not then need or desire.
The first approach to change after subjugation and conversion was
through clothing, because the most obvious difference between the whites
and the browns was that the latter largely exposed their bodies. The
missionary paved the way for the dealer who had cottons to sell by
saying that God abhorred nakedness. Livingston himself acted likewise.
The Marquesans, in truth, had a small variety of clothing. Much of the
time both sexes wore only the single garment, the _pareu_ or loin-cloth.
Their clothes of _Tapa_ or bark were, except mattings, the only stuffs
made by the Marquesans. They were of a remarkable texture and coloring,
considering the materials available. The inner barks of the banian,
breadfruit, and particularly the mulberry trees were used. The outer
rind was scraped off with a shell, and the inner slightly beaten and
allowed to ferment. It was then beaten over wooden forms with clubs of
ironwood about eighteen inches long, grooved coarsely on one side and
finely on the reverse, a process that united so closely the fibers that
in the finished cloth one could not guess the processes of its making.
Bleached in the sun on the beaches to a dazzling white, this fabric was
either dyed black or brown, yellow or red, or fashioned as it was into
the few varieties of garments they affected. All wore the _pareu_ about
the loins; a strip two yards or more in length, and a yard wide, which
is passed twice about the waist and tucked in for holding, as the sarong
of the Malay. It hangs above the knees, and like the _fundoshi_ of
Japan, worn by royalty and beggar, is capable, for strenuous movements,
such as swimming, of being gathered up to form a diaper or breech-cloth.
The _cahu_ or _ahu_, a long and flowing piece of _tapa_, was worn by the
females, hanging from the shoulders, knotted about or covering one or
both breasts at the whim of the wearer. For the coloring of this and the
_pareu_, rich and alluring dyes were found in the plants and trees and
even the sea-animals of the beaches. The outlines of the hibiscus
flowers and carven objects were imprinted upon these tapas, and
astronomical, mystic, or tribal signs or records drawn upon them in
fantastic but artistic design.
The method of wearing the _cahu_ for hiding or disclosing the charms of
the female was as varied as the _toilettes_ of Parisian fashion. The
conceit of the girl or woman, the occasion, and the weather decided its
being draped in any one of a score of manners. A belle might think it
ungenerous to cover too much, and an old or homely woman find the entire
surface too scant. When human nature has freest fling, prudery is the
fig-leaf of ugliness, here, as in the salon of Mayfair, or behind the
footlights of Broadway.
For the men, while the _pareu_, always as now, was the common apparel,
they had a hundred ornaments, in a diversity more numerable than those
of the females. Whenever man has not sacrificed his masculine craving
for adornment to religious or economic pressure, he is the gaudier of
the sexes. From the fiddler-crab with his rampant claw to the mandrill
with his crimson and lilac callosities, nature has so ordained it, and
man rejoiced in his privilege. Not until European man felt the iron hand
of the machine age, when the rifle displaced the bow and the pistol the
sword, the factory the home loom, and the foundry the smithy; not until
money became the chief pursuit of all ranks, and puritanism a general
blight upon brilliancy of costume, did the white man relinquish his
gewgaws to the parasitic woman. Then he made it a vicarious pride by
decorating her with his riches and making her the vehicle of his pomp in
ornature, and the advertisement of his prosperity.
The Marquesans, struck by the glitter of brass buttons and gold braid,
of broadcloth and fur, unfamiliar with metal, and admiring everything
foreign, fell facile victims to vestures, and when the new-fangled
religions that followed hot upon the discoverers, enforced covering by
dogma and even by punishment, they clothed themselves and sweated in
fashion and sanctity. But clothes irk the Marquesans as they do all
people living close to a kindly nature. Our own babes resent even the
swaddles which bind them in the cradle. The first years of childhood are
a continuing struggle against garments, until, having lost plasticity
and the instant response of muscle to mind that distinguishes the
Marquesans, the result is rationalized by adolescents into modesty and
convention. After youth, clothing is welcomed by us to enhance imperfect
charms and to hide defects, to screen our unhandsome and puny bodies.
The lean shanks, protuberant abdomens, and anatomical grotesqueries in a
public bath bear witness to our sacrifice. Marriage is often a
disclosure of unguessed flaws.
“The gods are naked and in the open,” said Seneca.
Pigalle sculptured the frail old Voltaire in the nude, yet attained
dignity. Even Broadway smiles at frocked heroes in bronze, and must have
its ideals in marble or bronze undraped.
How often, when I lived at the spacious home of my friend, Ariioehau
Ameroearao, the chief at Mataiea in Tahiti, I have seen him, chevalier
of the Legion of Honor, come in from the highway in stiff white linen or
in religious black, and in a twinkling reduce his garb to a loin-cloth!
His walls were hung with portraits of princes and distinguished
travelers, guests of his in the past score of years, and none was more
distinguished, though in brilliant uniform and gorgeously decorated,
than the old chief in his strip of cotton print.
“Three kings naked have I seen, and never a sign of royalty,” said the
cynical Bismarck.
Plato understood very well the spirit in which the Polynesians were
clothed by the whites, the crass prurience that pointed out to them the
wickedness of nudity, that hid their beautiful bodies under tunics and
pantaloons, that laughed at their simplicity.
In the “Republic” he says:
Not long since it was thought discreditable and ridiculous among
the Greeks, as it is now among most barbarian nations, for men
to be seen naked. And when the Cretans first, and after them the
Lacedæmonians, began the practice of gymnastic exercises, the
wits of the time had it in their power to make sport of those
novelties. But when experience has shown that it was better to
strip than to cover up the body and when the ridiculous effect
that this plan had to the eye had given way before the arguments
establishing its superiority, it was at the same time, as I
imagine, demonstrated that he is a fool who thinks anything
ridiculous but that which is evil, and who attempts to raise a
laugh by assuming any object to be ridiculous but that which is
unwise and evil.
The Marquesans, perfect animals, had their senses extraordinarily
attuned to the faintest vibrations of value to their survival or
delight. They heard sounds plainly that I, with rather better than
ordinary civilized hearing, did not catch. I was with Vanquished Often
when she spoke to Exploding Eggs two hundred feet away in a
conversational tone. I tested them, and found they could talk with each
other intelligibly when I heard but an indistinct whisper from the
farthest. So with smell. Ghost Girl and Mouth of God, my neighbor at
Atuona, could detect any intimates by their odor in pitch darkness at
twenty feet, though Marquesans, because they have little bodily hair and
are the cleanest people I know, have less personal odor than we. They
enjoyed life through scent infinitely more than do we. They had no
kisses but rubbed noses and smelled each other with indrawings of their
breath. Odoriferous herbs, flowers, and seeds were continually about
their necks, both men and women, tucked behind their ears, or in their
hair, and their bodies after bathings were anointed with the
_hinano_-scented cocoanut-oil. Their noses were sources of sensuous
enjoyment to them beyond my capability. They inhaled emanations from
flowers too subtle to touch my olfactory nerves.
The Marquesan woman has ever been an arch-coquette, paying infinite
attention to her appearance, and enduring pain and _ennui_ to improve
her beauty. Her complexion was as much a pride as with a fashionable
American woman to-day. The beauty parlors of our cities were matched by
the steam baths, the use of saffron, of oils, and of massage, and by
weeks or even months of preparation before some great festival. To burst
upon the assembled clan, white as the sea-foam, with skin as smooth as a
polished calabash, hair oiled and wreathed, and body rounded from
dancing practice and much sleep, and to set beating wildly the pulses of
the young men, so that, strive as they might to remain mute, they would
be forced to yield mad plaudits, was a result worth months of effort. To
be the belle of the ball was a distinction a woman remembered a
lifetime. It was an honor comparable to the warrior’s wounds, or
possession of the heads of the enemies. Parents felt keenly the success
of their daughters. Titihuti and others have told me of their triumphs,
as Bernhardt or Patti might recite of packed houses and a score of
encores.
A curious secrecy or modesty was attached to the making of the toilet
and the enhancement of the natural charms. No Marquesan or Tahitian or
Hawaiian would ever have looked at herself in a portable mirror—if she
had one—as do many of our females, and the whitening and reddening of
cheeks and lips in public places would have caused a blush of shame for
her sex to suffuse the face of a Marquesan, to whom such intimate
gestures were for the privacy of her home or the bank of the limpid
stream in a grove dedicated to the Marquesan Venus.
Near Tahiti was the atoll of Tetuaroa where for hundreds of years the
belles of Tahiti resorted to lose their sunburn in the bowered groves
and to spend a season in beautification by banting, special foods,
dancing, swimming, massage, baths, oils, and lotions.
Here in the Marquesas, as in all Polynesia, a period of voluntary
seclusion preceded the début of the maiden, or the preparation for a
special _pas seul_ by a noted beauty.
Seclusion of the girl was practiced at the time of puberty. It has a
curious analogy in such far separated places as Torres Straits and
British Columbia, one Australasia and the other North America. The girls
of a tribe in Torres Straits are hidden for three months behind a circle
of bushes in their parent’s house at the first signs of womanhood. No
sun must reach them, and no man, even though he be the father, enter the
house, nor must they feed themselves. The Nootkas of British Columbia
also conceal their nubile virgins, and insist that they touch their own
bodies for a period only with a comb or a bone, never laying their hands
upon it.
It would seem that all this mystery had the same purpose, that of adding
to the attractiveness of the girls and heightening the romance of their
new condition. Our coming-out parties parallel the goal of these strange
peoples, announcements, formal introductions, as brilliant as possible,
being considered desirable both among savages and ourselves to give
notice of a marriageable state. Our débuts have not departed far from
aboriginal ideas.
The Junoesque wife of Seventh Man Who Wallows had just come from the
_via puna_ in her accustomed bathing attire, and, still dripping, seated
herself in the sun near me to dry. She had added a jasmine blossom to
the heavy gold hoops in her ears and had lit her pipe, and her handsome,
large face was twisted between smiles and frowns as she tried to put in
understandable words and gestures her recital of these customs:
“Our girls, daughters of chiefs, such as I am, were kept hidden for
months before we appeared for the first time in public in the tribal
dance. The _tapu_ was strict. We were secret in our mother’s house and
inclosure, without supposedly even being seen by any one but our
relatives and their retainers. It was death to gaze upon us. We were
_tapu tapu_. If we had cause to go out, our official guardian blew a
conch-shell to warn all from the neighborhood. Not until the day of the
dance or marriage ceremony, not until the feast was spread and the
accepted suitor present to claim us, or the drums booming for the dance,
were we shown to the multitude; we had had months of _omi omi_, and
would be in perfect condition and most beautiful.”
It was this _omi omi_, or massage, that many of the earlier chroniclers
of the South Seas believed to be the cause of the chiefs and headmen of
all these islands being much bigger and handsomer than the common
people. The _hakaiki_, or chiefs, men and women, throughout Polynesia
astonished the voyagers and missionaries by their huge size. Often they
were from four to six inches above six feet tall, and framed in
proportion. Hardly a writing sailor or visitor to Hawaii, Tahiti, Samoa,
or the Marquesas but remarks this striking fact. Many thought these
headmen a different race than the others, but scientists know that
family, food, and the curious effect of the strenuous massage from
infancy account for the differences. The _omi omi_ of these islands, the
_tarumi_ of Tahiti, and the _lomi lomi_ of the Hawaiians all have a
relation to the _momi-ryoji_, practiced by the tens of thousands of
whistling blind itinerants throughout Japan.
I had a remarkable illustration of the curative merits of _omi omi_
when, having bruised my back by awkwardness in sliding down a rocky
waterfall into a once tabooed pool with Vanquished Often and Exploding
Eggs, I submitted myself to the ministrations of Juno and Vanquished
Often. They would have me in the glare of the early morning sun on
Seventh Man’s _paepae_, and there were gales of laughter as they shouted
out my physical differences from the Marquesans, my excellences, and my
blemishes. On one side and on the other, both squatted, they handled me
as if they understood the locations of each muscle and nerve. They
pinched and pulled, pressed and hammered, and otherwise took hold of and
struck me, but all with a most remarkable skill and seeming exact
knowledge of their method and its results. I was in agony over their
treatment of me, but after a day as well as ever.
Before I was given the _omi omi_, I was bathed by the two ladies with a
care and nicety not to be bought at our best hammams. A tiny penthouse
was made quickly of cocoanut-leaves, and in this was placed a great
wooden trencher of water in which white hot stones were dropped. On a
tiny stool I sat in the resulting steam, the delicious odor of _kakaa_
leaves thrown into the boiling water aiding the vapor in effect on skin
and nerves. Quite ten minutes I was compelled to remain in the
penthouse, my fair jailers remaining obdurate outside despite my
imploring cries to be released, my protestations that I was being
dissolved and would emerge a thing of shreds and patches. When I could
not have stood it another second, my lungs bursting with restraint, and
my body hot enough to hurt my nervously caressing hands, I was suddenly
let out and hurried to the beach, where Vanquished Often rushed with me
into the beating surf.
The sea seemed cold as an Adirondack lake, and I was for swimming beyond
the breakers in fullest enjoyment of the relief, but my doctors would
not allow me another minute and hand in hand rushed me to the chief’s
_paepae_, now my own, for my lenitive kneading. The bruises I had got in
my awkward essay to emulate the agility of Exploding Eggs and Vanquished
Often were deep and painful, but after half an hour of their pounding I
fell asleep and remained unconscious six hours. I was to myself a
celestial musical instrument, a human xylophone, from which houris
struck notes that made the stars whirl, and to the music of which
Vanquished Often danced in the purple moonlight upon a milky cloud.
Their cessation of the _omi omi_ woke me. It was past noon when I joined
them and the whole merry populace of Vaitahu in the warm ocean waves. I
was without pain or stiffness, and reborn to a childhood I had
forgotten.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XVII
Skilled tattooers of Marquesas Islands a generation ago—Entire bodies
covered with intricate tattooed designs—The foreigner who had
himself tattooed to win the favor of a Marquesan beauty—The magic
that removed the markings when he was recalled to his former life in
England.
TATTOOING, the marking of designs on the human skin in life, is an art
so old that its beginnings are lost to records. It was practised when
the Neolithic brute went out to club his fellows and drag in his body to
the fire his mate kept ever burning. Its origin, perhaps, was
contemporaneous with vanity, and that was in the heart of man before he
branched from the missing limb of evolution. It perhaps followed in the
procession of art the rude scratchings on bone and daubing on rock. In
the caves of Europe with these childish distortions are found the
implements with which the savage whites who lived in the recesses of the
rocks tattooed their bodies. The Jews were forbidden by Moses to tattoo
themselves, and the Arabs, with whom they had much converse, yet
practise it. In 1066 William of Malmesbury said that the English
“adorned their skins with punctured designs.” Kingsley, with regard for
accuracy, makes _Hereward the Wake_, son of the _Lady Godiva_, have blue
tattooing marks on wrists, throat, and knee; a cross on his throat and a
bear on the back of his hand. The Romans found the Britons stained with
woad. The taste for such marks existing to-day is evidenced by the pain
and price paid by sailors and aristocrats of all white nations for them.
Tattooing has faded under clothing which covers it and a less personal
civilization which condemns it. In the Marquesas Islands it reached its
highest development, and here was the most beautiful form of art known
to the most perfect physical people on earth.
[Illustration:
From an old drawing
Te Ipu, an old Marquesan chief, showing tattooing
]
[Illustration:
The famous tattooed leg of Queen Vaikehu
]
Until the overthrow of Marquesan culture, the island of Fatuhiva was the
Florence of the South Seas. The most skillful workers at tattooing as
well as carving lived in its valleys of Oomoa and Hanavave. During the
weeks I have resided in them I delved into the history and curiosities
of this most intimate of fine arts, now expiring if not dead. Nataro,
the most learned Marquesan alive, took me into its intricacies and made
me know it for the proud, realistic performance it was, a dry-point
etching on a growing plate from which no prints were to be made.
Nataro’s wife had one hand that is as famous and as admired in Fatuhiva
as “Mona Lisa’s” portrait in Paris. A famous _tuhuka_ wrought its
design, a man equal in graphic genius, relatively, to Dürer or
Rembrandt. Age and work had faded and wrinkled the picture, but I can
believe her husband that, as a young woman, when the art was not cried
down, people came from far valleys to view it. I recalled the right leg
of the late Queen Vaekehu, the most notable piece of art in all the
Marquesas until it went with its possessor into the grave at Taiohae. In
late years the former queen of cannibals and last monarch of the
Marquesas would not show her limb—a modest attitude for a recluse who
lived with nuns and thought only of death. Stevenson confessed he never
saw it above the ankle, though the queen dined with him on the Casco. He
had a poet’s delicacy, an absolute lack of curiosity, and Mrs. Stevenson
was with him. But he expressed a real sympathy for the iconoclastic
ignorance that was destroying tattooing here.
The queen, who had been the prize of bloody feuds and had danced at the
feast of “long pig,” had gone to her reward after years of beseechment
of the Christian God for mercy, but I could almost see her once glorious
leg in the life because of the two of my Atuona mother, Titihuti, which
for months have passed my hut daily. They are replicas of the Queen’s,
said Nataro, with the difference that Titihuti’s, beginning at her toe
nails, reached a gorgeous cincture at her waist, while Vaekehu’s did not
reach her hip, being, indeed, a permanent stocking. Some of the Easter
Island women had an imitation of drawers delineated upon them, giving
weight to the theory that these perpetuated the idea of clothing they
wore in a colder clime, but of which they had preserved not even a
legend.
Women were seldom tattooed above the waist, except their hands, and fine
lines about the mouth and upon the insides of the lips. This
lip-coloring was, doubtless, the efforts of invaders to make the red
lips of the Caucasian women, the first Polynesian immigrants, conform to
the invaders’ inherited standards, as the Manchus put the queue on the
Chinese. The Marquesan men like dark men. The last conquerors here were
probably a darker race than the conquered, and they preserved their
ideals of color, but, having come without women and seized the women
they found, they let them preserve their own standards, except for red
lips, which they tattooed blue. These latest comers thought much pigment
meant strong bones, and after a battle they searched the field for the
darkest bodies to furnish fishhooks and tools for canoe-making and
carving. They thought the whites who first arrived were gods, and when
they found they were men, with their same passions, they thought they
were ill. That is the first impression one who lives long with
Polynesians has when he meets a group of whites. They look sickly,
sharp-faced, and worried. They pay dear for factories and wheeled
vehicles.
Very probably the beginning of tattooing was the wish to frighten one’s
enemy, as masks were worn by many tribes, and as the American painted
his face with ocher. That state was followed by the natural desire of
the warrior, as evident yet as in Hector’s day, to look manly and
individualistic before the maidens of his tribe. And finally, as
heraldry became complicated, tattooing grew, at least in Polynesia, into
a record of sept and individual accomplishments and distinguishing
marks. Here it had, as an art, freed itself from the bonds of religion,
so that the artist had liberty to draw the Thing as he saw it, and had
not to conform to priest-craft, a rule which probably hurt Egyptian art
greatly.
In New Zealand, where the Polynesians went from Samoa, a sometime
rigorous climate demanded clothing, and the head became the _pièce de
résistance_ of the tattooer. There was a considerable trade among whites
in the preserved heads of New Zealanders until the supply ran out. White
dealers procured the raiding of villages to sell their victim’s visages.
Museums and collectors of such curios paid well for these tattooed
faces, but the demand exhausted the best efforts of the whites. After
the rarest examples were dead and smoked, there was no stimulating the
supply. The goods refused to be manufactured. The Solomon Islands now
supply smoked human heads, but they have no adornment.
Birds, fish, temples, trees, and plants—all the cosmos of the
Marquesan—was a model for the _tuhuka_. He often drew his designs in
charcoal on the skin, but sometimes proceeded with his inking _sans_
pattern. He never copied, but drew from memory, though the same lines
and tableaux might be repeated a thousand times; and always he bore in
mind the caste, tribe, and sex of the subject. Thus at a glance one
could tell the valley and rank of any one, much as in Japan the station,
age, moral standing, and other artificial qualities of women are
indicated by their coiffure and _obi_, or sash.
The craft did not require any elaborate tools. The _ama_ or candlenut
soot with water, a graduated set of bone-needles, of human and pig
origin, and a mallet were all the requirements. The paint or ink was of
but one color, black or brown, which on a dark skin looked bluish and on
a fair skin black. The marking of the parts most delicate and sensitive
to pain, as the eyelids, was a parcel of the endeavor to promote
stoicism and to show the foe the mettle of his opponent. Man did not
consent for thousands of years to share his ornamentation with women,
and then insisted that the _motif_ be beauty or the accentuation of sex.
The tattooers, in order to learn from one another, to have art chats, to
discuss prices and perhaps dead beats or slow payers, had societies or
unions, in which were degrees and offices, the most favored in ability
and by patronage being given the highest rank, though now and again a
white man, by his superior magic and force, though no _tuhuka_ at all,
held the supreme position.
A shark upon the forehead was the card of membership in the tattooers’
lodge, to which were admitted occasionally enthusiastic and discerning
patrons of art.
At festival times, when _tapus_ were to some degree suspended and the
intertribal enmities forgotten for the nonce, thousands of men, women,
and children gathered to eat, drink, and be merry, and to be tattooed,
as one at country fairs buys new dresses and trinkets. It was to these
_fêtes_ that the pot-boilers, fakers, and beginners among the talent
came; men who would make a sitter a scrawl for a heap of _pipi_, shells
and gewgaws, a few squealing pigs, a roll of tapa, or, most precious of
all, a whale’s tooth. Like our second- and third-class painters, our
wretched daubers who turn out canvases by the foot (though
hand-painted), these tramps, who, by a dispensation of the priests and a
mocking providence, were _tapu_, not to be attacked in any valley,
strolled from tribe to tribe, promising much and giving little. Some
worked largely on repair jobs, doing over spots where the skin had been
abraded by injuries in battles, or by rocks or fire. The man who was
well dressed in a suit of tattoo, or the lady who was clothed from toes
to waist in a washable _peau de femme_, kept these garments in as good
condition as possible, but when accident or the fortune of war injured
the _ensemble_ they hastened to have it touched up.
An artist of the first rank, one who in a Marquesan salon would have a
medal of honor, disdained such commissions, but dauber and South Sea Da
Vinci alike often had their work hung upon the line, when they were
taken by the enemy and suspended at the High Place before being dropped
into the pit for the banquets of the cannibal victors.
It was always of interest to me to wonder how men learned tattooing.
Painters, carvers, etchers, and sculptors have material ever available
for their lessons. They can waste an infinity of canvas, wood, copper,
or marble if they have the money to spend, but how about the apprentice
or student who must have live mediums even for practice?
Well, just as there are Chinese who, for a consideration, take the place
of persons condemned to death (though they do not, as alleged, make a
living out of it), and others who, though it exhaust and finally kill
them, enter deadly trades or hire out for war, there were Marquesans who
offered themselves as kit-cats for these students and sold their surface
at so much an inch for any vile design or miserable execution. I can see
these fellows, well covered with _tapa_, hiding whenever possible the
caricatures and travesties that made them a laughing show. These
Hessians had no pride in complexion. Their skins they wanted full of
food, nor cared at all for their outside if the inside man was replete.
There were others who, too poor to pay even the itinerant wall-painters,
let the students wreak their worst upon them, merely to be tattooed,
good or bad, and many of these, like our millionaire picture buyers,
were luckily denied any appreciation of art and did not know the
imperfections of the _skin_ pictures put upon them.
“Tattooing in these islands,” said Nataro, “was usually begun upon those
able to pay for it at the age of puberty; but there were many exceptions
of tattooing commenced upon boys soon after their infancy or deferred
until mature manhood. Illness, poverty, or other obstacle might prevent,
and the desire of parents might cause early tattooing. The father or
other relative or protector of the youth or girl paid the _tuhuka_ but
at the festivals even the very poor orphans were given opportunities to
be tattooed by a general contribution, or the chief of the valley paid
the fee. Years were occupied at intervals in the covering of the entire
body of men, which was the aim; but many had to be content with having a
part pictured, and often elaborate designs were never finished. You see
many bare places, meant to be covered when the _tuhuka_ began his work.
Queen Vaekehu was converted to Christianity with but one leg done and
forewent further beautification to serve her new God. Though begun in
boyhood, the full adornment of a man could hardly be terminated before
his thirtieth year. During his lifetime of sixty years he might have it
renewed twice, and as each pore could not be duplicated exactly the
third coat would make him a solid mass of color, the goal of manly
beauty.
“Though men usually sought to look terrible so that when they faced
their enemies they would inspire fear, with women the sex _motif_ was
dominant,” said Nataro. “Girls with beautiful bodies and legs are much
more attractive when tattooed, and we selected the best formed for the
most elaborate designs. These were drawn so that, as the girls danced
naked, the whole patterns were obvious, and those who were the most
symmetrical won high honors in the great public exhibitions. If in the
wide circle that chanted a _utanui_, while the old folks watched, a
woman by exposing her beauty in a dance caused the voices of the young
men to falter, or some one of them to become so entranced as to leap
into the ring and seize her, she won a prize of acclamation for her
parents which no other equaled. The dance stopped and all united in
cheering the dancer. These beauties danced with their legs close
together, so as to keep the design intact, lifting the heels backward
and showing the shapeliness of figure and the fineness of tattooing.”
To analyze thoroughly the meanings of the different designs upon the
bodies of the Maoris, or upon the canoes, paddles, and bowls, was
impossible now. It might be compared to the study of heraldry. Tattooing
in the South Seas was a combination of art and heraldry, racial and
individual pride’s sole written or graven record.
In the Marquesas, the art reached its zenith. It was the Marquesans’
national expression, their art, their proof of Spartan courage, the
badge of the warrior, and the glory of sex. In the man it marked
ambition to meet the enemy and to win the most beautiful women. In the
weaker vessel it was a coquetry, highly developed among daughters of
chiefs and women of personal force; and it afforded those who had
submitted to the efforts of the best craftsmen opportunities to display
their charms in public to the most striking advantage.
Nataro said that when the law against tattooing was enforced here a few
years ago a number went to prison rather than obey it, but that when it
was abrogated the art was already dead. It is kept alive now, except in
a few cases, only by the placing of names upon the arms of the girls.
Many _tuhukas_ were still living, but there was little call for their
work.
“They were our highest class, next to the chiefs,” said Nataro. “We
looked up to them as you do to your great. They were fêted and made much
of, and their schools were our art centers, teaching besides tattooing,
the carving of wood, bowls, canoes, clubs, and paddles. Now we buy tin
cans and china plates. Von den Steinen, the German philologist,
connected with the Berlin museum, who was here ten years ago, copied
every tattoo pattern he saw, and in many he found a relation to Indian
or Asiatic and perhaps other hieroglyphics and figures of thousands of
years ago.”
With the ridiculing of it by the missionaries, who associated it with
heathenry, and the making of it a crime by the missionary-directed
chiefs of Tahiti, tattooing vanished there almost a hundred years ago,
but here the law against it was very recent. The law written by the
English Protestant missionaries in Tahiti was as follows:
No person shall mark with tatau, it shall be entirely
discontinued. It belongs to ancient evil customs. The man or
woman that shall mark with tatau, if it be clearly proved, shall
be tried and punished. The punishment shall be this—he shall
make a piece of road ten fathoms long for the first marking,
twenty for the second; or stone work four fathoms long and two
wide; if not this, he shall do some work for the king. This
shall be the woman’s punishment—she shall make two large mats,
one for the king and one for the governor; or four small mats,
for the king two, and for the governor two. If not this, native
cloth twenty fathoms long and two wide; ten fathoms for the king
and ten for the governor. The man and woman that persist in
tatauing themselves successively four or five times, the figures
marked shall be destroyed by blacking them over, and the
individuals shall be punished as above written.
To achieve a fairly complete picture upon one’s body meant many months
of intense suffering, the expenditure of wealth, and a decade of years
of very gradual progress toward the goal after manhood was attained; but
for a man in the former days to lack the Stripes of Terror upon his
face, to have a bare countenance, or one not yet marked by the initial
strokes of the hammer of the tattooer was to be a poltroon and despised
of his tribe.
Such a one must expect to have no apple of love thrown at him, to awaken
no passion in womankind, nor ever to find a wife to bear him children.
He was as the giaour among the Turks. He had no honor in life or death,
no foothold in the ranks of the warriors, or place among the shades of
Po.
So when white men were cast by shipwreck in those isles, or fled from
duty on whalers or warships, and sought to stay among the Marquesans,
they acceded to the honored customs of their hosts, and adopted their
facial adornment and often in the course of years their whole bizarre
garb. The courage that did not shrink from dwelling among cannibals
could not wilt at the blow of the _hama_.
The explorer in the far North, who lets his face become covered with a
great growth of hair, when he intends to return to civilization can with
a few strokes of a razor be again as before. But once the curious ink of
the tattooer has bitten into the skin, it is there forever. It is like
the pits of smallpox; it can never be erased. Through all his life, and
into the grave itself, the human canvas must bear the pictures painted
by the artist of the needles. It was a chain as strong as steel, riveted
on him, that fastened him to these lotus isles. So men of America or
Europe did not return to their native land from the Marquesas, but died
here. The whorls and lines in the _ama_ dye wrote exile forever from the
loved ones at home.
Is that wholly true? Had not science or sorcery nepenthe for the
afflicted by such a horror—horror if unwanted? Is there not one who has
escaped such a fate when life had become fearful under it?
I asked that question of all, and in the valley of Hanavave was
answered. I had rowed to Hanavave in the whaleboat of Grelet, and, when
he returned to Oomoa, stayed on a month for the fishing with Red Chicken
and discussions with _Père_ Olivier.
“There is a sorcerer in the hills near here,” said the old French
priest, thirty-five years there without leaving, “who was said to be the
best tattooer on Fatuhiva. He is still a pagan, and has a wonderful
memory. Take some tobacco and a pipe, and go to visit him. He may be in
league with the devil, but he is worthy an hour’s journey.”
Puhi Enata was still vigorous, though very old. The designs upon his
face and body were a strange green, the verde antique which the _ama_
ink becomes on the flesh of the confirmed _kava_ drinker. I greeted him
with “Kaoha!” and soon, with the chunk of tobacco beside him and the new
pipe lit, I led him to the subject. The story is not mine but his, and
it has all the weird flavor of these exotic gardens of mystery. It is
true without question, and I have often thought since of the American
concerned in it, and wondered at his after fate.
We were seated, Puhi Enata and I, upon the _paepae_ of his home, the
platform of huge stones on which all houses in the Land of the War Fleet
are built.
In the humid air of that tropic parallel he made pass before me a
panorama of fantastic tragedy as real as the life about me, but as
astounding and as vivid in its facts and its narration as the recital of
a drama of ancient Athens by a master of histrionics. I laughed or
shuddered with the incidents of the story. He spoke in his native
tongue, and I have given his words as they filtered through the screen
of my alien mind, not always exactly, but in consonance with the cast of
thought of that far-away and unknown land.
“We had no whites here when he came, this man of your islands. Other
valleys had them, but Hanavave, no. Few ships have come to this bay.
Taiohae, a day and a night and more distant, they sought for food and
water and now for copra, but Hanavave was, as always, lived in by us
only. Yet we ever welcomed the _haoe_, the stranger, for he had ways of
interest, and often magic greater than ours.
“He came one day on a ship from far, this white man I tell about, and of
whom even now I often meditate. He was not of the sea, but on the ship
as one who pays to move about over the waters, looking for something of
interest. That thing he found here. He brought ashore his guns and
powder, his other possessions of wonder, and let the ship go away
without him. He had seen Titihuti, and his _koekoe_, his spirit, was set
aflame.”
I needed no description by the _tuhuka_ to bring before me Titihuti, to
see that maddening, matchless child-woman, nor to know the desperate
plight of a white who fell in love with her. She must have been the
Helen of these Pacific Greeks, for men came from other islands to woo
her, fought over her, and embroiled tribes in bloody warfare at her
whim. Her affairs had been the history of her valley for a brief period,
and were immortalized in chants and in legends though she still lived.
Many had related to me stories of her beauty, her spell over men, and
her wicked pleasure in deceiving them.
She was the daughter of a chief, of a long line of _hakaiki_, of noble
mothers and of warriors, and an adept in the marvelous cult of beauty,
of sex expression, which to the Marquesan woman was the field of her
dearest ambition, the professional stage and the salon of society.
“The day he came to this beach,” said the sorcerer, “was the day she
first danced in the Grove of the Mei, at the annual gathering of the
tribe. All the people of the ship were invited, and not least he who had
no duties but his desires, and who brought from the vessel a barrel of
rum as his gift to the people. It was as rich as the full moon, as
strong as the surf in storm, and in every drop a dream of fortune. It
made that foreigner of note at once, and he was given a seat at the
_Hurahura_, the Dance of Passion, in which Titihuti for the first time
took her place as a woman and an equal of others. She was then thirteen
years old, a _moi kanahau_, her form as the bud of the _pahue_ flower,
her hair red-gold, like the fish of the lagoon, and her skin as the
fresh-opened breadfruit. The Grove of the Mei you have been in, but you
cannot imagine that scene. A hundred torches of candlenuts, strung on
the spine of the palm-leaf, lit the dancing mead. The grass had been cut
to a smoothness, and all the valley was there. As is usual in these
annual débuts of our girls, at the height of the breadfruit season, a
dozen were allowed to show their beauty and skill. These danced to the
music of drums and of hand-clapping and chanting before the entire tribe
seated on the grass.”
The old man lit the pipe, which had gone out, and puffed out the blue
clouds of smoke as if they were recollections of the past.
“Finally, as the custom is, the plaudits of the crowd narrowed the
contest to three. Each as she danced appealed for approval, and each had
followers. By the judgment of the throng all had retired but three after
a first effort. These began the formal _titii e te epo_. This is the
dance of love, the dance we Marquesans have ever made the test of the
female’s fascination.
“Before the first of the three danced, the rum was passed. It was drunk
from cups of leaves, and each in turn drew from the cask. It ran through
our veins like fire through the _pandanus_. The great drum then sounded
the call.
“Tahiatini came from the shadow of the trees. She wore a dress of
_tapa_, made from the pith of the mulberry-tree, and as the dance became
faster she tossed it off until she moved about quite nude. For this, of
course, is part of the test. A hundred men, mostly young, stood and
watched her, and watching them were the judges, the elders of the race,
men and women. For, Menike, in the expression, the heat, or the coolness
of those standing men was counted the success or failure of the dancer.
And they were taught by pride and by the rules of the event to conceal
every feeling, as did the warrior who faced the launched spear. They
were to be as the stones of the _paepae_.
“Tahiatini passed back into the trees, and Moeo succeeded her. She
seemed to feel that Tahiatini had not scored heavily. She danced
marvelously for one who had never before been in the Grove of Mei, and
the shrewd judges reckoned more than one of the silent hundred who could
not restrain from some mark of approval. There was, when she fell back,
a shout of praise from the crowd, and the judges conferred while the rum
was handed about for the second time.
“Then Titihuti was thrust out from the darkness, and from her first step
we realized that a new enchantress had come to torment the warriors. I
have lived long, and many of those dances in the Grove of Mei I have
seen. Never before or since that night have I known a girl to do what
she did. Her _kahu_ of _tapa_ was as red as the sun when the sea
swallows it, and hung over one shoulder, so that her bosom, as white as
the ripe cocoanut, gleamed in the light of the burning _ama_.
“Her hair was in two plaits of flame, and the glittering ghost flowers
were over her ears. You know she had for months been out of the day and
under the hands of those who prepare the dancers. Her body was as
rounded as the silken bamboo, and her skin shone with the gloss of
ceaseless care.
“She advanced before the silent hundred, moving as the slow waters of
the brook, and as she passed each one she looked into his eyes and
challenged him, as the fighting man his enemy. Only she looked love and
not hatred. Then she bounded into the center of the line and, casting
off her _kahu_, she stood before them, and for the first time bared her
beautiful body in the _titii e te epo_, the Dance of the Naked. She
fluttered as a bird a few moments, the bird that seeks a mate, the
_kuku_ of the valley. On her little saffroned feet she ran about, and
the light left her now in brilliancy and now in shadow. She was
searching for the way from childhood to womanhood.
“Then the great _pahu_, the war-drum of human skin, was struck by O
Nuku, the sea-shells blew loudly, and the _Hurahura_ was proclaimed. You
know that. Few are the men who resist. Titihuti was as one aided by
Veinehae, the Woman Demon. She flung herself into that dance with
madness. All her life she and her mother had awaited that moment. If she
could tear the hearts of those warriors so that their breasts heaved,
their limbs twitched, and their eyes fell before her, her honor was as
the winner of a battle. It was the supreme hour of a woman’s existence.
[Illustration:
Photo from Brown Bros.
Tattooing at the present day
]
[Illustration:
Photo from Dr. Theodore P. Cleveland
Easter Islander in head-dress and with dancing-wand
]
[Illustration:
Photo from Dr. Theodore P. Cleveland
My tattooed Marquesan friend
]
“The judges seized the flambeaux and scrutinized closely the faces of
the men. First one yielded and then another. Try as they might to be as
the rocks of the High Place, they felt the heat and melted. A dozen were
told off in the first few minutes of Titihuti’s dance, though Tahiatini
and Moeo had won but two or three. Faster grew the music, and faster
spun about her hips the torso of Titihuti. The judges caught the rhythm.
They themselves were convulsed by the spell of the girl. The whole line
of the silent hundred was breaking when, as the breadfruit falls from
the tree, suddenly sprang upon the mead the foreigner who had come but
that day. Though others of the ship tried to hold him, he broke from
them, and, clasping Titihuti in his arms, declared that she was his, and
that he would defend his capture. The drums were quieted, the judges
rushed to the pair, and, for the time of a wave’s lapping the beach,
spears were seized.
“But the ritual of the rum began, and in the crush about the cask the
judges awarded Titihuti the Orchid of the Bird, the reward of the First
Dancer. She stood in the light of the now dying torches, and when the
foreigner would embrace her and lead her away she turned her laughing
eyes toward him and called out so that many heard:
“‘You are without ornament, O Haoe. Cover your face as do Marquesan
lovers, or get you back to your island!’
“Then she hurried away to receive the praise and to taste the glory of
her achievement among her own family.”
The _Taua_ took his long knife and with repeated blows hacked off the
upper half of a cocoanut to make ready another drink. I had a very vivid
idea of the situation he had described. That handsome young man of
Europe, belike of wealth, seeking to surrender to his vagrant fancies in
this contrasting environment, and finding that among these savages he
had position only as his rum bought it with the men, and was without it
at all among the women. One could fancy him all afire after that dance
of abandon, ready on the instant to yield to the deepest of all
instincts, and surprised, astounded, almost unbelieving at his repulse.
He might have learned that such repulse was not even in the manner of
the Marquesans, but solely the whim of Titihuti, the beginning of that
career of whimsical passion and _insouciance_ which carried her fame
from island to island and fetched other proud whites from afar to know
her favor. He himself had come a long way to be the unwitting victim of
the most prankish girl and woman who ever danced a tribe to death and
destruction, but who withal was worth more than she who launched the
thousand ships to batter Ilium’s towers.
“And did he cover his face?” I demanded, hurrying to follow the windings
of fate.
“_E!_” said the sorcerer. “He gained the friendship of chiefs. He let
his ship sail away with but a paper with words to his tribe, and he
stayed on. He hunted, he swam, and he drank, but he could not touch his
nose to the nose of Titihuti, for his nose was naked. Weeks passed, but
not his passion. He hovered about her as the great moth seeks the
fireflies, but ever she was busied with her pomades and her massage, the
_ena_ unguent and the baths, the _omi omi_ and the combing of her
red-gold tresses. She had set him aflame, but had no alleviation for
him.
“And then when the moon was at its height she danced again, this time
alone, as the undisputed _vehine haka_ of Fatuhiva. The foreigner sat
and gazed, and when Titihuti glided to where he was and, planting her
feet a _metero_ away, addressed herself to him, he shook with longing.
She was perfumed with the jasmine, and about her breasts were rings of
those pink orchids of the mountains. The foreigner felt the warmth of
her presence as she posed in the attitudes of love. He bounded to his
feet and, clasping her for the second time to him, he shouted that he
would be tattooed, he would be a man among men in the Marquesas.
“There was no delay; I myself tattooed him. As always the custom, I took
him into the mountains and built the _patiki_, the house for the rite.
That is as it should be, for tattooing is of our gods and of our
religion before the whites destroyed it. I was and am the master of our
arts. I did not sketch out my design upon his skin with burned bamboo,
as do some, but struck home the _ama_ ink directly. My needles were the
bones of one whom I had slain, an enemy of the Oi tribe. I myself
gathered the candlenuts and, burning them to powder, mixed that with
water and made my color. My mallet, or _hama_, was the shin of another
whom I had eaten.”
Such a man as Leonardo, who painted “Mona Lisa” and designed a hundred
other beautiful things, or Cellini of the book and a vast creation of
intricate marvels, would have understood the exactness of that art of
tattooing in the Marquesas. Suppose “Mona Lisa” herself, an expanse of
her fair back, and not mere linen, bore her picture. What infinite
pains! Not more than took the _taua_ in such a task. In his mind his
plan, he dipped his needle in the _ama_ soot, and, placing the point
upon a pore of the flesh, he lightly tapped the other extremity of the
bone with his _hama_ of shin and impressed the sepia into the living
skin, for each point of flesh making a stroke.
Followed fever after several hours of frightful anguish. The dentist is
the ministrant of caresses, his the loved hand of pleasure, compared
with the suffering caused to the quivering body by the blows of those
needles. A séance of tattooing followed, and several days of sickness.
He had not the strength of the natives in the pain, and often he cried
out, but yet he signed that the tattooing should go on.
“Across his eyes upon the lids, and from ear to ear, I made a line as
wide as two of your teeth, and I crossed lines as wide from the corners
of his forehead to the corners of his chin. As he was to be admitted to
the Lodge of Tattooers, I put upon his brow the sacred shark as big as
Titihuti’s hand. I was four moons in all that, and all the time he must
lie within his hut, never leaving it or speaking. I handed him food and
nursed him between my work. Upon our darker skin the black candlenut ink
is, as you know, as blue as the deep waters of the sea, but on him it
was black as night, for his flesh was white.
“He was handsome as ever god of war in the High Place, that foreigner,
and terrible to behold. His eyes of blue in their black frames were as
threatening as the thunders of the ocean, and above the black shark
glistened his hair, as yellow as the sands of the shore. A breadfruit
season had passed when we descended the mountain, and he was received
into the tribe of Hanavave. We called him Tohiki for his splendor,
though his name was Villee, as we could say it.”
There is a curious quibble in the recital of the Polynesian. He arrives
at a crisis of his tale, and avoids it for a piece of wit or an idle
remark. Perhaps it is to pique the listener’s interest, to deepen his
attention, or it is but the etiquette of the bard.
“Titihuti?” I interposed.
“_Tuitui!_” he ejaculated. “You put weeds in my mouth. That girl, that
Titihuti, had left her _paepae_ and vanished. Some said she dwelt with a
lover in another valley. Others that she had been captured at night by
the men of Oi Valley. It was always our effort to seize the women of
other tribes. They made the race stronger. But Titihuti was not in Oi or
with a lover. Her love was her beauty, and soon we learned that she was
gone into the hills herself to be tattooed. You, American, have seen her
legs, and know the full year she gave to those. They are even to-day the
_hana metai oko_, the loveliest and most perfect of all living things.”
“And Willie, the splendid Tokihi, what said he?”
“_Aue!_ He dashed up and down the valleys seeking her. He offered gifts
for her return. He cried and he drank. But the tattooing is _tabu_, and
it would have been death to have entered the hut where she was against
the wish of the artist. Then he turned on me and cursed me, and often he
sat and looked at himself in the pool in the brook by his own _paepae_.
That foreigner lost his good heart. No longer was he kind and gentle. It
was he who led us against the valley of Oomoa, and with his gun wrought
great harm to those people. It was he who was ready to fight at but the
drop of a cocoanut upon his roof. He took no women, and he became the
fiercest man of Hanavave. When the year had gone, and Titihuti came
back, he would not see her in the dance, though in it she showed her
decorative legs for the first time. He cursed her, too, and said she was
a sister of the _feki_, the devilfish. He dwelt among us for several
years as one who leads the tribe, but is not of it. Often he but missed
death by the breadth of a grain of sand, for he flung himself on the
spears, he fought the sea when it was angered, and he drank each night
of the _namu_, the wine of the cocoanut flower grown old, until he
reeled to his mat as a canoe tossing at the fishing.
“Then one day came a canoe from Taiohae, with words on paper for him
from his own people. A ship from his island was there and had sent on
the paper. That was a day to remember. There were with the paper _tiki_,
those faces of people you make on paper. Villee seized those things,
and, running to his _paepae_, he sat him down and began to look them
over. He eyed the words, and he put the _tiki_ to his lips. Then he lay
down upon his mat and wept. For much time he was like a child. He rolled
about as if he had been struck in the body by a war-club, and at last he
called me. I went to him with a shell of _namu_.
“‘Drink!’ I said. ‘It will lift you up.’
“He knocked the shell from my hand.
“‘I will drink no more,’ he cried. ‘My father is dead, and my brother. I
am the chief of my tribe. I have land and houses and everything good in
my own island, but, alas! I have this!’
“He pointed to the black shark upon his forehead, and then he shouted
out harsh words in his own language. I left him, for he was like one
from whom the spirit has gone, but who still lives. I thought of the
strangeness of tribes. In ours he was a noble and honored man for that
shark, and yet in his own as hateful as the barefaced man here. Man is,
as the wind cloud, but a shifting vapor.
“Often, a hundred times, I saw him sitting by the pool and gazing into
it as though to wash out by his glances the marks on his countenance. He
was as deep in the mire of despair as the victim awaiting the oven.
Nature’s mirror showed him why he could not leave for his land and his
chieftaincy. And, American, for a woman, too. I saw him many times look
at that _tiki_ and read the words. Maybe he had fled from her in anger.
Now he was great among his people, and she called him. Maybe. My own
heart was heavy for him when he fixed his eyes on that still water.
“After weeks of melancholy he summoned me one day.
“‘_Taua_,’ he said, ‘is there no magic, no other ink, no bones, that
will quit me of this?’
“He swept his hand over his face.
“‘I will give you my gun, my canoe, my coats, and I will send you by the
ship barrels of rum and many things of wonder.’
“He took my hand, and the tears followed the lines of the tattooing down
his cheeks.
“‘Tokihi,’ I replied, ‘no man in the Marquesas has ever wanted to take
from his skin that which made him great to his race, yet there is a
legend that wanders through my stomach. I will consult the lodge. It
would be magic, and it may be _tapu_.’
“The next day I found him lying on his _paepae_, his face down. He was a
leaf that slowly withers.
“‘Villee,’ I said, and rubbed his back, ‘there is for you perhaps
happiness yet. I have talked with the wise old men of the lodge.’
“He raised himself, and fixed his dull eyes on me.
“‘One Kihiputona says that the milk of a woman will work the magic. I
can not say, for it is with the gods.’
“The foreigner sprang to his feet.
“‘Come, let us lose no time!’ he cried. ‘It is that or the _eva_.’
“Marquesans, when tired of life, eat the _eva_ fruit. I made all ready,
and, taking my daughter and her babe, with food, and the things of the
tattooing, we again went to the hut in the mountains. Together we built
it over, and made all ready for the trial.
“‘Remember, foreigner,’ I said, ‘this is all before the _Etuá_, the
rulers of each one’s good and evil. I have never done this, nor even the
wisest of us has ought but a faint memory of a memory that once a white
man thus was freed to go back to his kin.’
“‘_E aha a_—no matter,’ he said. ‘There is no choice. Begin!’
“I warned him not to utter a word until I released the _tapu_. I made
all ready. Then I had him lie down, his head fixed in a bamboo section,
and I began the long task.”
The sorcerer sighed, and spat through his fingers.
“Two moons he was there, silent. I worked faster than before, because I
had no designs to make. I only traced those of the years before. But the
suffering was even greater, and when I struck the bone-needles upon his
eyelids he groaned through his closed mouth. Every day I worked as long
as he could endure. Sometimes he all but died away, but the _omi omi_,
the rubbing, made him again aware, and as I went on I gained hope
myself. His own skin was by nature as that of the white orchid, and the
weeks in the _patiki_ out of the sunlight, with the oil and the saffron,
made it as when he was child. The milk was driven into a thousand little
holes in the flesh, and by magic it changed the black of _ama_ to white.
I think some wonder made it do so, but you should know such things. I
left the shark until the last, but long before I came to it the gods had
spoken. Faded slowly the candlenut soot, and crept out, as the
silver-fish in the caves of Hana Hevane, the bright color of that
foreigner.
“Many times his eyes, when I let loose the lids, lifted to mine in
inquiry, but I was without answer. Yet nearer I felt the day when I
would possess that gun and canoe and the barrels of rum.
“It came. A week had gone since I had touched with the needles his face,
and most of it he had slept. Now he was round with sleep and food, and
one morning when he awoke, I seized him by the hand and said, ‘_Kaoha!_’
The _tapu_ was ended; the task was done.”
“And he?” I said greedily.
“He was as a man who wakes from a dream of horror. He said not a word,
but went with me and with my daughter and the babe down the trail to
this village. Here he stole silently to his pool, and, lying down, he
looked long into it. Then he made a wild cry as if he had come to a
precipice in the dark and been kept from falling to death by the mere
gleam of fungus on a tree. He fell back, and for a little while was
without mind. Awake again, he rushed about the village clasping each one
he met in his arms, rubbing noses with the girls, and singing queer
songs—_himenes to e aave_—of his island. His laughter rang in the
groves. Now he was as when he had come to us, gay, kind, and without
deep thought.
“The gods had for that moon made him theirs, for soon came a canoe with
news that a ship of his country was at Taiohae. Never did a man act more
quickly. He made a feast, and to it he invited the village. A day it
took to prepare it, the pigs in the earth, the _popoi_, the fish cooked
on the coral stones, the fruits, and the nuts. To it he gave all his
rum, and he handed me his gun, the paddles of his canoe, and his coats.
“But Po, the devil of night, crouched for him. The canoe to take him to
Taiohae was in the water, waiting but the end of the _koina kai_.
Plentifully all drank the rich rum, but Tokihi most. Titihuti even he
had greeted, and she sat beside him. She was now loath to have him go;
you know woman. She leaned against him, and her eyes promised him aught
that he would. She was more beautiful than on that night when she had
spurned him, and she struck from him a spark of her own willful fancy.
He took her a moment to his bosom, held her as the wave holds the rock
before it recedes, and then, as the madness she ever made crept upon
him, he drew back from her, held her again a fierce moment, and, dashing
his cup to the earth, he turned upon her in fury.
“It was the evil noon. The eye of the sun was straight upon him, and as
he cursed her, and shouted that now he was free from her, the blood
rushed into his face, and painted there scarlet as the hibiscus the
marks of the tattooing. The black _ama_ the magic had erased now shone
red. The stripes across his eyes and face were like the scars a burning
brand leaves, and the shark of the lodge was a leper’s sign upon his
brow.
“‘_Mutu!_’ I cried, for I saw death in the air if he knew, and all the
gifts lost to me. ‘Silence!’ And the tribe heeded. No quiver, no glance
showed the foreigner that one had seen what he himself had not. Titihuti
fastened her gaze on him a fleeting second, and then began the dance of
leave-taking.
“We raised the chant:
‘_Apae!
Kaoha! te Haoe.
Mau oti oe anao nei._’
“To the canoe we bore him, and thrusting it into the breakers, we called
the last words, ‘_E avei atu!_’
“He was gone forever from Fatuhiva. And thus I got this latter name I
have, Puhi Enata, the Man with the Gun.”
The old sorcerer rolled a leaf of _pandanus_ about a few grains of
tobacco.
“And you never had word of him?”
“_Aoe_, no,” he said meditatively. “He went upon that ship at Taiohae.
But, American, I think often that when that man who was Tokihi came to
dance in his own island, to sit at his own tribe’s feasts, or when the
ardor of love would seize him, always he tried to be calm.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XVIII
A fantastic but dying language—The Polynesian or Maori Tongue—Making of
the first lexicons—Words taken from other languages—Decay of
vocabularies with decrease of population—Humors and whimsicalities
of the dictionary as arranged by foreigners.
MALICIOUS Gossip and Le Brunnec taught me Marquesan in the “man-eating
isle of Hiva-Oa,” as Stevenson termed my home. After supper or dinner I
had a lesson in my _paepae_; often in a mixed group, for the beginnings
of democracy are in the needs of company. Here were the governor, the
highest official, an army officer and surgeon; Le Brunnec, a small
trader; Kekela, a Hawaiian; Puhe, the hunchback servant of Bapp, the
trader; Exploding Eggs, Ghost Girl, and Malicious Gossip and her
husband, Mouth of God. The governor spoke French and a very little
English, Le Brunnec those and Marquesan, Mouth of God and his wife
Marquesan and a trifle of French, Kekela Marquesan and English, and the
hunchback Marquesan only. Ghost Girl, of course, knew only that, but she
never spoke at all except to beg for rum or tobacco. Lonesomeness made
us intimate despite our difference of origin, status and language. We
talked about the Marquesan language, and we two comparative new-comers
strove to enlarge our vocabulary.
The derivation of words is an absorbing pursuit. Enwrapped in it are
history and romance, the advance from the primitive, the gradual march
of civilization, and, besides, many a good laugh; for man made merry as
he came up, and the chatterings of the missing links are often heard in
the chase through the buried centuries for the beginnings of language.
The Aryan, English’s ancestor, was originally made up of a single
consonant between two vowels, and I fancied I was speaking my ancestral
words in this aboriginal tongue.
“There is nothing more fascinating than etymologies. To the uninitiated
the victim seems to have eaten of ‘insane roots that take the reason
prisoner’; while the illuminate too often looks upon the stems and
flowers of language, the highest achievements of thought and poesy, as
mere handles by which to pull up the grim tubers that lie at the base of
articulate expression, sacred knobs of speech, sacred to him as the
potato to the Irishman.” James Russell Lowell had himself eaten of that
maddening weed. These Marquesan verbal radicals engaged me both by their
interest and their humor.
The erudite philologist may harken back to the Chaldaic or another dead
language of Asia or Africa and make ponderous tomes upon his research,
but the amateur can dig as he plays only by being actually with a
simple, semi-savage people, as I was, and finding among them, still
active, the base and slight growth of human thought and emotion in
speech. The most alluring tongue in sound and origin is the Maori, and
Marquesan is Maori. It is spoken from Hawaii to New Zealand, and is
termed the “grand Polynesian” language. The people of those two groups
of islands, as well as those of the Marquesan, Society, Friendly,
Paumotuan, Samoan, Tongan, and some other small archipelagos, have it as
their vernacular, though its variations are so great as to prevent
converse except limitedly between the different islands. The Maori
tongue is as full of melancholy as are those passing races. Soon it will
be lost to use, like the ancient Greek or the mellifluous idiom of the
cultivated Incas. It is decaying so fast now that a few years mark a
decided loss of words, and lessen the adherence to any standard. Yet it
is the most charming of all present expressions of thought or emotion,
and it is a great pity that it perishes. One sighs for a South Seas Sinn
Fein to revivify it.
The Polynesians, as scientists call them, know themselves, and therefore
their tongue as Maori. And just as “British” to an Englishman is a word
of pride, and “American” to our patriotic schoolboys and orators the
greatest word ever coined, so “Maori” actually means first-class,
excellent, fine. The Maoris were hundred per centers before the Chosen
People.
I have lived much with Maori folk in many archipelagos and listened for
years to their soft and simple, sweet and short words. Their speech is
like the rippling of gentle waters, the breezes through the
breadfruit-trees. It has color and rhythm and a euphonism unequalled.
Language begins as poetry and ends as algebra, but here the algebraic
stage was not reached, and there remained something of the unconscious
uprush of its beginning, and the subliminal laws of mind which shaped
its construction. For the Maori is a very old language, older than Greek
or Latin, and was cut off from other languages at the outset of culture,
before the mud of the Tigris was made into pots. The Marquesan indigene
was never so complex, as in acute civilization, that his language could
not tell what he thought and felt, though he, too, had art to supplement
words, as his tattooing, carving, houses, and temples prove.
The Maori has one inflexible rule, that no word shall end in a
consonant, that no two consonants shall be together, and that all
letters in a word be sounded.
There are only fifteen letters, or sounds, in the pure alphabet, b, c,
d, j, h, l, q, s, w, x, and y being unknown. In some dialects other
letters have been introduced in the adaptation of foreign words. They
are not, however, properly Polynesian. Words are usually unchangeable,
but pronouns and the auxiliary verb “to be” and many adjectives and
verbs have curious doubling quality, like _ino iino; horo, hohoro,
horohoro; haere, hahaere_. _Ii_ in Marquesan means “anger”; _iiii_ means
“red in the face from anger.” The adjective follows the noun, as in _moa
iti_, little chicken, _iti_ is the adjective. The subject comes after
the verb “to be,” expressed or understood, or after the verb that
denotes the action of the subject.
The Maoris knew no genders except those for beings by nature male or
female, and these they indicate by following words. In Tahitian, _tane_
means “man,” and _vahine_ “woman,” or “male and female.” Thus I was
called often O’Brien _tane_, and, where the same proper names are
applied to men and women, the word _tane_ or _vahine_ indicates the sex:
The sign of a well-known merchant in Papeete, the capital of Tahiti and
the entrepôt of the South Seas reads, “Tane Meuel,” the Tane being the
name his proud parents gave him when born to show their delight at his
being a boy.
While there is a dispute over the origin of the Maori, my friend,
McMillan Brown of New Zealand, a supreme authority, believes it
separated from the primeval Aryan a millennium or two ago, in the stone
age, and came into the Pacific with the migration that first brought
women into these waters. Some scholars say the language is to be classed
with the modern European tongues, and especially with English. They cite
the reduction of inflection to a minimum, the expression of the
grammatical relationship of words by their order in the sentence, the
use of auxiliaries and participles, the power of interchanging the
significant parts of speech as occasion requires; the indication of the
number of nouns by articles or other definitives, cases by prepositions,
gender by the addition of the word for male or female, the degree of
adjectives by a separate word, and the mood and tense of verbs by a
participle.
As English spoken in isolated mountain regions—among the poor whites of
the Middle West and South of the United States—becomes attenuated and
broken, so in many of these islands and archipelagos the Maori language
became differentiated by climate and environment, and shriveled by the
limitations of its use. The Marquesan has been weakened by phonetic
decay, the l and r almost disappearing, and in some places, too, the k
being hardly ever heard.
[Illustration:
The author with his friends at council
]
As a nation perishes, so does its language. As its numbers decrease, the
vocabulary of the survivors shrinks. It does not merely cease to grow;
it lessens. Cornwall proved that and Wales; Ireland and Scotland
exemplify it now. A language waxes with the mass and activities of its
speakers. Scholars may preserve a grammar, as the school Latin, or as
the Sinn Fein is doing in Ireland, but the body and blood of the vulgate
speech waste and ebb without the pulse of growth. Speech fattens with
usage. The largest number of words in any language is found in that
language which most people speak. The most enterprising race spreads its
language farthest by religion, commerce, and conquest.
[Illustration:
Photo from L. Gauthier
House of governor of Paumotu Islands. Atoll of Fakarava
]
All these Polynesian tongues are dying with the people. Corrupted first
by the admixture of European words, their glossaries written by men
unborn to the land, the racial interests that fed them killed by the
destruction of customs and ambitions, these languages are moribund, and
as unlike those spoken before the white came as is the bison to the
family cow.
The French observer Bovis said seventy years ago that only a few
Tahitians understood and spoke pure Tahitian. No one does now. Yet,
obsolescent and garbled as are these spiritual victims of pale-face
domination, the South Sea folk cling to them affectionately. I attended
the first sessions of the Hawaiian legislature under American
territorial government. All proceedings were in both English and
Hawaiian, many of the legislators not understanding English after eighty
years of intimate relations with England and America. They, like the
other Maoris, had not learned other tongues, but had let their own lapse
into a bastard _patois_.
The Hawaiian is akin to the Marquesan. The variations consist in not
using in one dialect words in use in another, in the sense attached to
the same words, in the changing of vowels and of consonants in the same
words, and also by the replacement of consonants by a click of the
tongue. Almost all dialects have these unuttered consonants expressed by
the guttural accentuation of the vowel following.
I must know French to approach Marquesan, because these islands are
French for eighty years, and I know of no practical grammar except that
of Monseigneur Dordillon, written in 1857, and of no procurable
dictionary but his. Both are in French.
A tragedy originating in petty discipline or episcopal jealousy saddened
the last days of the writer, Bishop Dordillon. He had created out of the
mouths of his neophytes the written Marquesan tongue, and he made his
dictionary his life-work. They would not let him publish it.
Ecclesiastical authorities, presumably of Chile,—for all Catholic
missionaries here were under that see in early days,—forbade it. After
forty years of labor upon the book, he was allowed to put it to print,
but not to affix his name as author. Against this prohibition the sturdy
prelate set his face.
“Not for himself,” said the vicar, _Père_ David, to me, “but for the
church and our order, he would not be robbed of the honor. He died very
old, and confided his manuscript to a fellow-priest. For fifty years
each missionary to these islands copied it for his personal use. Ten
thousand nights have thus passed because of the jealousy of some prelate
in Valparaiso or in Paris. Pierre Chaulet, of our order, the _Sacré
Cœur_, revised the book after forty-five years’ residence here.”
The Tahitian was the first Maori language reduced to writing. No
Polynesian race had a written literature nor an alphabet. Writing was
not invented nor thought of when they left their European home, nor did
they acquire it in Malaysia. The Polynesians marked certain epochs and
events by monuments, and consecrated them with ceremonies. These events
also marked their language, which was peculiarly susceptible to change
and addition. It was abundant, and all the details of their material
life and history were impressed upon the language in shades of meanings
and words. In Tahiti the finer meanings disappeared ninety years ago,
and the adverbs and degrees of comparison were lost. In the Marquesas,
because of the lesser infiltration of whites, the language in its purity
lasted longer. One of the mutineers of the _Bounty_, Midshipman Peter
Heywood, who chose to remain in Tahiti rather than sail with Christian,
wrote the first vocabulary of Tahitian in prison at Execution Dock in
England. Bligh had determined to hang Heywood, and, awaiting his
seemingly assured death, the young officer in his death cell set down
the words he had learned in the happy days in the Isle of Venus, with
their connotation in English. One may imagine it was a sad yet consoling
task to live again the scenes of his joyous exile, and that each word of
Tahitian he wrote conjured for him a picture of the scene in which he
had learned it, and perhaps of the soft lips that had often repeated it
to him. It is pleasant to know that the youthful lexicographer did not
mount the gallows, and that his vocabulary was eagerly studied by the
first missionaries leaving England for the South Seas on the _Duff_. The
first word the clerics heard when the Tahitians boarded the _Duff_ was
_taio_, friend, and the reverends wrote to England that as the “heathen
danced on the deck in sign of hospitality and friendship, we sang them,
‘O’er the gloomy hills of darkness.’” With Heywood’s list as a
preparation, they established an alphabet for Tahiti which fitted the
dulcet sounds as they registered on their untuned ears. The general rule
was to give the vowels their Italian value and to sound the consonants
as in English. Their fonts of type were limited, and they had to use
makeshifts of other letters when they ran out of the proper ones. They
made monumental errors in their monumental toil, errors unavoidably due
to their not being philologists, nor even well educated—errors
perpetuated and incorporated in the language as finally written. This
Tahitian dictionary and grammar formed the basis of all similar books in
the Marquesan, Hawaiian, and other dialects. What store of ancient
tongues the missionaries had, they put into linguafacturing religious
words for the Tahitians. In fact, they were so busy inventing words for
ordinary use, and for their prayers, sermons, and the translation of the
Bible, they did not record many native words. They bowdlerized the whole
Polynesian language, and emasculated an age-old tongue from which we
might have gathered in its strength something of the spirit of our Aryan
forefathers.
A chief difficulty of the makers of the written Polynesian languages was
the adjectives. Primitive peoples have not the wealth of these that
civilized nations possess, and fine shadings here are often expressed by
intonation, grimace, or gesture.
There is no available Tahitian-English lexicon. The London Missionary
Society published one before the French seized Tahiti in the forties. It
is out of print, and as obsolete as to present-day Tahitian as Dr.
Johnson’s once-famous tome is as to English. The only copies are in the
hands of the Mormon, Josephite and other English-speaking missionaries
in Tahiti, and in the libraries of collectors. It cannot be bought in
Tahiti. Monseigneur Tepano Jaussen wrote one in French. I have it, dated
at Paris, 1898; but so fast is the Tahitian tongue degrading into a
bloodless wretched jumble that it, too, is almost archaic.
“A Vocabulary of the Nukahiwa Language; including a Nukahiwa-English
Vocabulary and an English-Nukahiwa Vocabulary” was printed in Boston in
1848. No living Nukahiwan, or Marquesan, would understand much of it, as
there has been such radical change and degeneracy in the dialect in the
seventy years since it was written, and so few Marquesans survive.
The language shows that at one time they did not count beyond four, and
the higher numbers were expressed by multiples of four. Afterward they
came to five, which they made _lima_ or the fingers of one hand. When
the ten or denary system was adopted, the word _umi_, or whiskers, was
chosen to mean ten, or a multitude.
The cardinal numbers are sometimes tiresome. For instance, thirty-one is
_E tahi tekau me te onohuu me te mea ke e tahi_. I once remarked to a
Marquesan chief that the Marquesan people said many words to mean a
trifle and took a long time to eat their food.
“What else have we to do?” he asked me.
Strangely, the larger numbers are shorter. Twenty thousand is _tini_.
Should I wish to say “once,” meaning at one time, I say, _mamua mamua
mamua_; more anciently _kakiu kakiu kakiu kakiu_; “a very long time
ago,” _tini tini tini tini_; “quite a long time ago,” _tini hahaa tini
hahaa tini hahaa tini hahaa_; but “always” is _anatu_ and “soon” _epo_.
This last word is a custom as well as a word, for it is like the Spanish
_mañana_ and the Hawaiian _mahope_, the Tahitian _ariana_, or our own
dilatory “by and by.”
The variations between the dialects in the different groups is great,
and even in the same group, or on the same island, meanings are not the
same. In the Marquesas, the northwestern islands have a distinct dialect
from the southeastern. Valleys close together have different words for
the same object. These changes consist of dropping or substituting
consonants, t for k, l for r, etc., but to the beginner they are
baffling. Naturally, the letters, as written, have the Latin value.
Thus, Tahiatini is pronounced Tah-heea-teenee, and Puhei, Poo-hay-ee.
For me words have color, form, character: They have faces,
ports, manners, gesticulations;—they have moods, humours,
eccentricities:—they have tints, tones, personalities.
Lafcadio Hearn might have written that about the Maori tongue.
The Marquesan language is sonorous, beautiful, and picturesque, lending
itself to oratory, of which the Polynesians are past masters. Without a
written tongue until the last century, they perfected themselves in
speaking. It was a treat to hear a Marquesan in the full flood of
address, recalling the days of old and the glories departed, or a
preacher telling the love of God or the tortures reserved for the
damned. They were graceful and extremely witty. They kept their audience
laughing for minutes or moved them quickly to tears. Their fault was
that shared by most European and American orators, long-windedness. The
Marquesans have many onomatopes, or words imitating natural sounds, and
they are most pleasing and expressive. The written words hardly convey
the close relation they bear to the reality when spoken. The _kivi_, a
bird, says, “_Kivi! kivi! kivi!_” The cock says, “_Kokoao! va tani te
moa! Kokoao!_” The god that entered the spirit of the priestess made a
noise in doing so that was like this: “_A u u u u u u u u u a! A u u u u
u a!_”
When the pig eats, the sound he makes is thus: “_Afu! afu! afu! afu!
afu! afu! afu! apu! apu! apu! apu! apu! apu! apu!_” In repeating these
sounds the native abates no jot of the whole. The pig’s _afus_ are just
so many; no more, no fewer.
When the cocoanut falls to the ground the sound is “_tu!_” The drinker
who takes a long draft makes the noise, “_Aku! aku! aku! aku! aku!
aku!_”
_Moemoe_ is “the cry one makes of joy after killing any one.”
It is notable that in English the names for edible animals when alive
are usually the foundational Saxon, but when dead and ready for food
they are Norman. Ox, steer, bull, and cow are Saxon. Beef and viand are
Norman. Calf is Saxon, but veal is Norman; sheep is Saxon, mutton
Norman. Probably the caretaker of these animals, the Saxon villain who
tended them, made his names for them stick in the composite language,
while the sitters at table, the Normans and those who aped their tongue,
applied the names of the prepared meat as they plied their knives. Pig
and hog, the latter meaning a gilded pig, are English, but pork is
Norman.
So in the study of Marquesan one finds that the common objects have
older names than those less usual. The missionaries had a hard time
suiting a word to the devil. With their vision of him, horns, hoof and
tail, they had to be content with _kuhane anera maaa_. _Kuhane_ means
soul or spirit, _anera_ means heavenly spirit, and _maaa_ means wicked,
and also a firebrand or incendiary. So Great Fern, my Presbyterian
neighbor, gave me his idea that the devil—Tatana, as Satan is
pronounced—was a kind of cross between a man and a wild boar running
along with a bunch of lighted candlenuts, setting fire to the houses of
the wicked.
It is not easy to learn well the Marquesan language, but it is not hard
to acquire a smattering of the Lingua Franca spoken by natives to whites
and whites to natives. The language itself has been so corrupted by this
intercourse that few speak it purely.
Amusing are the English words adapted or melted into the native tongue,
and it is interesting to trace their derivation. They call any tin or
metal box _tipoti_ (pronounced “teepotee”). The first metal receptacles
they saw aboard the first ships were the teapots of the sailors, and
they took the word as applicable to all pots and boxes of metal. The
dictionary says “_Tipoti—petite boite en fer-blanc_.”
Beef is _Pifa_ (peefa). _Poteto_—pronounced potato—means ship’s biscuits
or American crackers or cakes. The early whalesmen held out their
hardtack to the natives and offered to exchange it for potatoes or yams.
The natives took it that the biscuits were potatoes, and call them so
to-day.
A curious and mixed meaning is that of _fishuka_, which one might think
meant a fish-hook. It means a safety-pin, and is a sought-for article by
the women. The Marquesans had fishhooks always, and a name for them, and
so gave the English name to safety-pins, which appear like unto them.
_Metau_ is a fish-hook, and a pin is _piné_ (pee-nay). There are
hundreds of queer and distorted words like these. Bread is faraoa,
pronounced frowwa, which is flower, with an r instead of an l, as they
have no l in their alphabet. In Tahiti, _taofe_ is coffee. K and t and l
and r are interchangeable in many Polynesian languages, and fashion has
at times banned one or the other or exchanged them. Whims or even
decrees by the pagan priests have expelled letters and words from their
vocabularies, and some have been taboo to certain classes or to all.
Papeete was once upon a time Vaiete, which means the same, a basket of
water, the site conserving the streams of the hills. Vaiete was
smothered under a clerical bull and forgotten along with other words
thought not up-to-date.
I have heard an aged and educated American woman born in Honolulu call
it Honoruru, and Waikiki, Waititi, as she had learned when a girl.
Coffee here is _kahe_, not unlike the Japanese _kohi_.
Area is the same word in Latin and Maori, and virtually in English. It
means space, in all. _Ruma_, a house, is much like room, and _poaka_ or
_puaka_, a pig, is akin to the Latin _porcus_, and the Spanish _puerca_.
When the missionaries here sought to translate a beloved phrase, “The
sacred heart of Jesus,” familiar in Catholic liturgy, they were puzzled.
The Polynesian believes with some of the Old Testament writers that the
seat of sentiment is in the bowels. “My very bowels yearned” is a
favorite expression of Oriental authors.
_Koekoe_ is the Marquesan word for entrails. It means also intelligence,
character, and conscience. A man of good heart is in Marquesan a man of
good bowels. The good fathers were sore put to it to write their
invocation to the “bleeding heart of the Savior,” and one finds a
warning in Bishop Dordillon’s dictionary:
Les Canaques mettent dans les entrailles (_koekoe_) les
sentiments que nous mettons dans le cœur (_houpo_).
Quelquefois il convient de traduire ad sensum pluto que ad
verbum et vice versa; Le cœur de Jesus—te houpo a Ietu.
Extreme unction, the sacrament, is _eteremaotio_, pronounced,
“aytairaymahoteeo.”
The daily usage of common English words fixed certain ideas in the minds
of the islanders for all time.
_Oli mani_, a corruption of old man, is used for anything old; hence a
blunt, broken knife or a ragged pair of trousers is _oli mani_.
A clergyman is _mitinané_, pronounced mitt-in-ahny, an effort at
missionary. In Tahiti the word is _mitinare_ or _mikonare_, and is one
of ribald humor. It is also a bitter epithet against one who is
sanctimonious. The white traders, beachcombers, and officials have given
the word this significance by their ridicule of religion and its
professors.
What more picturesque record of the introduction of cattle into Samoa
than _bullamacow_? It is the generic name in those islands for beef,
canned beef, and virtually all kinds of canned meats. A child could
trace it to the male and female bovine ruminants first put ashore there,
and nominated by the whites “bull and a cow.”
The good Bishop Dordillon notes that a cook is _enata tunu kai_, but
that the common word is _kuki_, and for kitchen _fae kuki_. That _kuki_
is our own cook, as the Marquesans heard the sailors call him—cooky.
_Fae_ is house.
A pipe is _paifa_ (pyfa), and tobacco _paké_ (pahkay), rough
pronunciations of the English words.
All through Polynesia the generic name among foreigners for a native is
Kanaka, which is the Hawaiian word for man, or the human race. The
Marquesan man is _kenana_ or _enata_ or _enana_, and woman _vehine_. The
Tahitians and Hawaiians say _taata_ or _tane_ for man, and _vahine_ or
_wahine_ for woman. The French word for Kanaka is _canaque_. This word
is opprobrious or not according to the degree of civilization. The
Marquesans often call themselves _canaques_, as a negro calls himself a
negro; but I have seen a Tahitian of mixed blood weep bitterly when
termed a Kanaka. Perhaps it is as in the Southern part of the United
States, where the colored people refer to one another commonly as
niggers, but resent the word from a white.
Pig in Marquesan is _puaa_ or _puaka_.
Piggishness in English means greediness; but _cochonnerie_, the French
verbal equivalent, means filth or obscenity, and in Marquesan has its
counterpart in _haa puaa_, to be indecent; _hee haa puaa_, to go naked,
and _kaukau haa puaa_, to bathe naked, words doubtless originating under
missionary tutelage, as when the Catholic priests were all-powerful,
they made laws forbidding nudity in public. In fact, a noted English
writer who spent some time here was arrested and fined for sleeping upon
his veranda one hot noon in the garb of Adam before the apple episode.
The Catholic missionaries here never bathed in the rivers or sea, and
had no bath arrangements in their house. Godliness has no relation to
cleanliness. Celibate man the world over had the odor of sanctity.
Shark is _mako_, and, curiously, _tumu mako_ is a gross eater, or “pig”
in our adopted sense, while _vehine mako_ is a prostitute. _E haa mako_
is to deliver over to prostitution. Probably this last phrase has been
coined by the clergy for lack of a more opposite one. _Hateté_ in
Tahitian is chastity, for which the natives had no word nor idea.
When card-playing was introduced by the whites, its nomenclature was
adapted. _Peré_ or _pepa_ are cards. _Pere_ is play, pronounced p’ray,
and _pepa_ is paper. _Taimanu_, _heata_, _tarapu_, and _pereda_ are
diamonds, hearts, clubs, and spades; _teata_ is the knave; _te hai_—the
high—is the ace; and _furu_ is a full. _Faráoa_ is flour or bread and
_faráoa peré_—flour play, flour or bread-like playing-cards—are biscuits
or crackers. _Afa miniti_ is a half-minute, or a little while. Others of
the hundreds of bastard words now in the language and dictionary are:
_Niru_, needle; _pia_, beer; _poti_, boat; _purumu_, broom; _putete_,
potato; _punu_, spoon; _Roretona_, London; _tara_, dollar; _tavana_,
governor or chief; _tohita_, sugar; _uaina_, wine; _tihu, dix sous_, or
half a franc; _fira_, fiddle; _puka_, book. I must not omit the
delightful _verkuti_ for very good, or all right, or the stiff
_eelemosina_, for alms, for which also, the Polynesians had no word, as
no one was a beggar.
As did the American Indians, the Polynesians learned English and other
European tongues through religion. The discoverers, who were officials,
traders, or adventurers gained a smattering of the native language, but
hardly ever had the perseverance, if the education, to gather a thorough
knowledge. Almost all the first modern dictionaries and grammars were
written by clerics. The prime reason for their endeavors was to
translate the sacred Scriptures into their neophytes’ language and to be
able to preach them. The Bible has been the first book of all outlandish
living languages to be reduced to writing for hundreds of years.
Consequently, its diction, its mode of speech, and its thoughts have
molded the island tongues. Words lacking to translate biblical ideas had
to be invented, and the missionaries became the inventors. Some with
Hebrew and Greek and Latin at their service used bits of them to create
new words, and others drew on their imaginations, as do infants in
naming people and things about them. In writing their dictionaries, they
limited the European vocabulary to necessary, nice, or religious words,
and the vernacular to all they could find, with a strict omission of
those conveying immodest ideas. As the Polynesians had no morals from
the Christian point of view, a great number of their commonest words
were lost.
The Bible was done into Marquesan in the forties by English Protestants,
and the old Hawaiian missionaries in the Marquesas made much of it in
their teachings. It is not popular in French, and few copies survive.
The Catholics do not recommend it to the laity. Protestantism is
apathetic; yet I have seen a leper alone on his _paepae_ deep in the
Scriptures, and when I asked him if he got comfort from them, I was
answered, “They are strong words for a weak man, and better than pig.”
The same corruptions that have destroyed the original purity of the
Hawaiian and Tahitian tongues has marred that of these islands. The
French officials had hardly ever remained long enough to encompass the
language here, and seldom had they been of the scholarly type.
Rulers over colonies make feeble effort to speak well their subjects’
tongues. Perhaps two of the dozen governors, military and civil, the
Philippines have had under American ownership could talk Spanish fairly
well, and none spoke the aboriginal tongues which are the key to native
thought. They knew the governed through interpreters, and therefore knew
nothing really of them. As our boys laugh at foreigners’ ignorance, so
do foreign colonists laugh at ours. I saw a famous American governor
stand aghast when, asking his Filipino host, as he thought, for “a night
lamp then and there,” the astounded _presidente_ of a village brought
before the assembled company a something never paraded in polite
society.
The missionary dictionaries of the Polynesian dialects, preserving only
a very limited number of the words once existing, and hardly any of the
light and shade, the idioms and picture phrases, of these close
observers of nature, remind one of Shakespeare’s criticism, “They have
been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.”
The English missionaries put the Marquesan sounds into English letters,
but when their day was done in Tahiti, and the French came to power
because of French Catholic missionaries being expelled at the
instigation of Protestant clerics, the poor Marquesans had to unlearn
their English and take up French.
In Marquesan there never was an English dictionary circulated that I
know of, and so the natives’ first European language was French as far
back as books and schools were concerned; but the commerce has been
mostly in English, the whalers and the traders talk English, and all
Polynesia is stamped by the heel of the Saxon.
A German army officer who traveled with me lamented that in German Samoa
the language used is English when not Samoan, even the German officials
being forced to use it.
On the schooners all commands are in English, though the captains are
French and the crews Tahitian, whose English is confined to these words
alone. At the German traders’ in Taha-Uku the accounts are in English or
American. It is the effect of the long dominance of the English on the
sea and in commerce.
A chief difficulty of the makers of the written Polynesian languages was
the adjectives. Primitive peoples have not the wealth of these that
civilized nations possess, and fine shadings here are often expressed by
intonation, grimace, or gesture.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XIX
Tragic Mademoiselle Narbonne—Whom shall she marry?—Dinner at the home of
Wilhelm Lutz—The _Taua_, the Sorcerer—Lemoal says Narbonne is a
Leper—I visit the _Taua_—The prophecy.
AS long as I live, I shall have, as my avatar of tragedy, Mademoiselle
Narbonne. Fate had marked her for desolation. The grim drama of the
half-caste whose spirit is riven by heredity and environment, fighting
for supremacy of the soul, was enacted here in scenes of rare intensity
and mournful fitness. While I did not await its final dénouement I saw
enough to stamp its pitiable acts upon my memory, and later I learned of
the last blows of an inevitable destiny.
Not even the pitiful plight of the bone-white daughter of the drunkard,
Peyral, appealed to me as did the conspiracy of life and ungenerous men
against the happiness of this singular creature, Mademoiselle Narbonne.
[Illustration:
From the painting by Oscar F. Schmidt
Nakohu, Exploding Eggs
]
[Illustration:
From the painting by Oscar F. Schmidt
Haabuani, the sole sculptor of Hiva-Oa
]
I recall the impression the first sight of her made upon me. I was by
the door of the Catholic Church, the service half over, when she came
in, and knelt at a _prie-dieu_ especially placed for her. Wealth had its
privilege in the house of God here as in the temple of Solomon. But
Mademoiselle Narbonne had another claim to distinction though it did not
win favor with the church. She was exotically beautiful, a distracting
and fascinating contrast with the almost savage girls who knelt in the
pews in their cotton tunics of red or white or pink. She had the grace
of a hothouse flower among these blossoms of half-savage nature. She was
an orchid among wild roses.
Peyral was then in process of winning me into his family, and both
communicative and monitory.
“She is old Narbonne’s daughter,” he croaked. “The richest person in the
Marquesas, now that her father is dead, but I wouldn’t be her with all
her money. Me, I value my skin!”
My whole attention was upon her, and the possible sinister meaning of
his comment escaped me. Whites blackguarded other whites so commonly in
the South Seas that one discounted or denied every judgment. I was to
understand his implication later. Mademoiselle Narbonne had no part in
the life of our valley of Atuona, nor did she come to it other times
than when she attended the services at the Catholic church or visited
the nuns with whom she had been from childhood until the death of her
father a few months before. Upon inheriting his vast cocoanut-groves and
considerable money she had said good-bye to her ascetic guardians and
left the convent walls to take possession of her dead parent’s house and
estate. These were in the adjoining valley of Taaoa, and with her in the
ugly European home built by him lived the stepmother she had known, and
the mother whom he had driven away with blows, years before, when he
caught her in a tryst with Song of the Nightingale.
I met her towards sunset a week later. During that time, I had often
wondered what her temperament might be, and what the future would spin
for her. Many Daughters, Ghost Girl, and other all Marquesan girls were
striking in their aboriginal, hatched-carved beauty, but seemed at
opposite poles to Mademoiselle Narbonne in sophistication and elegance.
And yet at times I caught in her a glimpse of savagery, of wilful
passion and abandonment to her senses beyond that upon the faces of
these daughters of cannibals. The key to that occasional shift into
barbarity I found in her home. Her father had been a driving, sober, and
fierce Frenchman, a native of Cayenne, in Guiana, where the French in
three hundred years have achieved only a devil’s island for convicts
with cruelty and foulness festering under the tricolor. Narbonne in the
Marquesas had risen from a discharged corporal of marines to manager of
the Catholic mission properties, and, by hook and crook, owner of
countless cocoanut-trees. This child of his thirty years of banishment
from his own deadly natal land was the one treasure he had cherished
besides property. He had endured dangers in his early career here,
fought and subdued swaggering chief and tropical nature, to erect a
massive tomb of concrete, and to leave this daughter. She was already
apathetic to his memory, and disregardful of the advice he had given
always with mingled caresses and cuffs.
Her mother, Climber of Trees Who Was Killed and Eaten, who had been
banished from his house for her unfaithfulness, had returned after his
death to share it with Daughter of a Piece of Tattooing, who had
replaced her. Between the two women was no jealousy, both enjoying the
ease their hard years of serving the _Cayennais_ had earned them. In
Climber of Trees I traced the source of those pagan moods which now and
then swept from the face of Barbe Narbonne the least vestige of the mask
the nuns had taught her to wear, and let be read the undammed passion
and wind-free will of the real Marquesan woman.
“I will not be a _sœur_,” she said to me. “The nuns are dear to me, and
they want me to come into the convent, or to go to France for training
to return here. I am waiting to know life. I am not satisfied with the
love of the saints and of the Blessed Virgin.”
“You are able to go where you please,” I answered. “You do not have to
go to France as a Religious. Paris would welcome you. Board the next
schooner for Tahiti, and you are on the way to the wide world.”
Mademoiselle Narbonne made a gesture of fear. Few Marquesans had ever
gone abroad; there were terrors in the thought. It had been _tapu_ to
leave their island home, and, though, as far as Christianity might work
the miracle, she had in the convent been purged of most of her mother’s
superstitions, she had not rid herself of this one.
“I would not care to go that great distance,” she said, dreamingly, “but
I would like to go to Tahiti, to see the cinema, and perhaps the
celebration of the fourteenth of July. I have for years sent to Paris
for my clothes. I have read many novels despite the sisters forbid it. I
have one here that I wish you might talk to me about. Many nights I have
sat up to read it.”
She handed me a yellow paper-covered book, “Jean et Louise,” by Antonin
Dusserre, a story of pastoral and village life in Auvergne, and the
unfortunate loves of a simple peasant youth and maid. Its atmosphere was
of the clean earth, the herds, and the harvests in a lost corner of
France. Its action did not cover ten miles, yet the hate and injustice,
the desires and defeats of its little world were drawn with such skill
that they became universal. The author, himself a man in _sabots_, had
breathed into his model of common clay the life of all humanity. I had
read the book, and I was eager to hear her opinion of it; of an
existence, artless as it was, still as alien to her knowledge as ancient
Greece.
“What do you think about it?” I asked. She spoke French vividly, though
with many Marquesan insets.
“Jean and Louise loved each other,” she replied, “and, because she was
poor and had no money to give a husband, his father separated them; and
Jean allowed it. Already, Monsieur Frederick, the girl had shown her
true love for him by spending the night with him in the hills with their
sheep, and everybody knew she would have a child. That Jean was an
assassin and a coward. Me, I would kill such a man if I loved him, but I
could not love that kind.”
Barbe Narbonne’s black eyes flashed with her feeling.
“I am frank with you, Monsieur, because you are a stranger. You are not
French nor Marquesan. I am both, and I hate and love both. I hate the
French for what they have done to my mother’s race, and I hate the
Marquesans for not preferring to die than to be conquered. I have not
had a lover. I cannot find one here that can satisfy me. If I did, he
might have all my money and land. I would want a man who could read
books, who was honest and strong, but who knew and liked this island of
Hiva-Oa, who could ride and fight. He must love me as”—she paused to
weigh her comparison—“as nuns love Christ, for whom they leave their
homes in France.”
Father David, seeing me with Mademoiselle Narbonne one day, spoke of her
to me.
“We have hoped all along that Jean Narbonne’s daughter would remain with
us,” he said, inquisitively. “But the sacred heart of Jesus does not
call every one. The church leaves all free to choose a vocation of
service to God or not. We know she can find happiness only with the
nuns, for there is only wickedness outside the convent. Barbe is now a
woman, and unfortunately too much like her mother, who was a Magdalen.
She cannot marry a native because she cannot live in the brush. What
white can she select. There is the governor and Bauda and Le Brunnec,
all bad Catholics, and who else?”
“There is Lutz, the big trader at Tahauku,” I said.
“Lutz? No, no! He is a German, an enemy of France, and he is a
Protestant, and, besides, he has had his own woman fourteen years. He is
not married to her, but God knows even the devil could not excuse
putting away such an old companion. What would he want of her but her
money?”
“He has some property himself.”
“No, no! It would be impossible. He is a German, a heretic, and I tell
you he has that Tahitian woman ever since he has been here. Some day he
will return to Germany, the Germany of Martin Luther, and leave behind
any woman here. These Europeans who come here, except the Fathers, have
no consciences. When they have made a little fortune, unless they are
like Guillitoue, or Hemeury François, who are more _Canaque_ than the
_Canaques_, they go back to marry innocent and unsuspecting women.”
I cannot imagine why I mentioned Lutz. I had never seen him with
Mademoiselle Narbonne, and she had not sounded his name. Of course, he
was the only possibly eligible man other than the whites already
enumerated. However, such thoughts did not come by chance, for the
apostolic vicar’s solicitude against him was matched by the boisterous
roarings of _Commissaire_ Bauda, the reincarnated musketeer. Over a
Doctor Funk at his beach house, my repeating of what Father David had
said brought from him an oath and a spluttering:
“_Sacré cochon!_ That Lutz will go too far on French territory. He has
the best lands, most of the trade, and is the only one who can sell
liquor. Do we not all pay tribute to him? Now, me, I have not thought of
marrying, but if that daughter of a French corporal should look for a
suitable mate, who but Bauda? I am a soldier, a veteran of wars in
Africa, I have the medal General Devinne pinned here,”—he slapped his
chest,—“and I am a Frenchman. I could not agree to live here, but why
not for her a house in Marseilles where there are so many dark people of
our colonies? I could be there, say half the year, and the rest of it in
Paris. I would defend her against the world, and in turn, would take my
pleasure in the capital. I do not seek it, but rather than the robber,
Lutz, should take the money to Germany, as I know he wants to do, it
might, perhaps, be arranged. And, _pire alors!_ I would soon send to the
devil all those notions the church has put in her little head. A drop of
absinthe, _mon vieux_? Bauda has his eyes on Lutz.”
I had met Herr Lutz each time that I had gone to his store at Tahauku,
but our social relations began when he sent me, by his cook, a Tongan, a
formal invitation to dinner. Like the young governor, this European
merchant, as often as the small voice of his civilization spoke to him,
cultivated the customs of his _bourgeois_ class in order to reassure
himself of his retaining them. I have the letter before me:
Tahauka, le 11 avril.
Dear Mr. O. Brien,
In case that you having nothing else to do, I shall be glad to
see you at Tahauku to-night. Do not bother please about
dressing, the roads are too bad. If it suits you, I invite you
to stay here over night.
With kindest regards,
Yours
WILHELM LUTZ
Certainly I had nothing else to do, except to explain to Exploding Eggs
that I would not need his services to gather cocoanut husks for my
dinner fire, and at five o’clock to start for Tahauku. Lutz’s kindly
sentence about not dressing was to me a joke, for I had to cross both
the Atuona and the Tahauku rivers, and a storm, the day before, had made
the trails—there were no roads—merely muddy indications of the
direction. The Atuona stream I was able to wade with my trousers rolled
and canvas shoes in my hands, and when I reached the Tahauku River, I
found it waist-deep, and the footing uncertain. A Chinese was gathering
the coarse grass by the river’s bank for Lutz’s horse. It is a rare man
who does not make a slave of his inferior who by conquest or necessity
is forced to do his will. A man’s a man for a’ that only when fighting
equality or mass strength makes him so. I myself, who abhor inequality,
proved a sinner there. Averse to getting my clothes wet, I tried to make
the Chinese understand my wish that he take me on his back across the
stream. Stupidity or a dislike to play horse caused him to assume a
vacant look, the Oriental blankness which is maddening to Occidentals. I
took him by the shoulder, mounted him, and drove him through the hundred
feet of rushing water. On the other side, I thanked him, but his slit
eyes gleamed balefully as he turned away.
The sky was racked with clouds, and they hung on the mountain like smoky
draperies. The evening air was humid and depressing. Tahauku was a
lonely, beautiful place, typical of the Marquesas, isolated, gloomy, but
splendid. There were no craft in the bay except two small cutters moored
near the foot of the stone stairs. A group of wooden buildings in an
extensive clearing lined the road that led along the cliffs, and about
it were thousands and thousands of palms, the finest cocoanut-grove that
I had ever seen in the South Seas or Asia or India. They were planted
regularly, not crowded, but with space for roots and for air. They had
been set out two generations ago by the grandfather of the stark
daughter of Peyral, the Irish cavalry officer, who was buried among
them. Then a thousand Marquesans had led there the life of their
ancestors; a score remained.
In the commodious house erected by the latter, Lutz lived in a
determined though inadequate effort to preserve his German birthright.
In the sitting-room in which he welcomed me stiffly, though courteously,
were the hangings and cheap ornaments of a Prussian lower middle-class
family, tidies, mottos, and books, including a large brass-bound Bible
and the kaiser’s portrait in colors. A bitters was drunk before the
meal. Lutz sat at the head of a longish table, and his two white
employees, a Hamburg apprentice just out, and Jensen, a Dane, joined us.
The talk was in English, and it was curious, in this far-away island
ruled by the French for seventy years, to find my tongue, as in almost
every corner of the world, the powerful solvent of our mixed thoughts.
Lutz talked about America, through which he had come from Germany on his
way to Tahiti and the Marquesas. He praised our strength in trade, and
derided the French and English, predicting that the Germans would divide
the South Seas commerce with us, to the exclusion of others.
I liked Lutz, and, after the Hamburg apprentice and the Dane had gone to
play chess, he and I passed some hours in chatting about music, books,
and history. He had the solid foundation of the German schools below the
universities, and he had read constantly his German reviews. Stolid,
ambitious, swift to take a business advantage, he lived in this
aloofness from the things he liked, in order to save enough to raise his
social status on his return to his fatherland. Just before he showed me
to my room for the night, he said:
“My old woman is going back to Tahiti. She is tired of it here after so
many years. When Captain Pincher comes in with the _Morning Star_, I’m
sending her back with him. She’s getting lonesome for her kin. You know
how those Tahitians are.”
I had seen but a glimpse of the “old woman” that evening. She had not
appeared openly, perhaps because of the rigid rule of Lutz, or perhaps
from pique. On the road, though, I had said good day to her, a huge sack
of a middle-aged creature, long past comeliness, but with an engaging
and strong personality. The words of _Père_ David and of Bauda recurred
to me before I slept. The “old woman” had been here fourteen years, and
her sudden repatriation coincided with Mademoiselle Narbonne’s coming
into her fortune, and her restlessness for a white husband.
I sensed a conflict. Tahitian women, as well as all these Polynesians,
were seldom afflicted by sexual jealousy, the soul-ravaging curse of
culture, yet they had a pride, an overwhelming dignity of personal
relations, which often brought the same dire results. The rejected one
many times had eaten the _eva_, the poisonous fruit, or leaped to death
from a cliff, though she would have shared the house mats with her rival
as a friend. That was because they ranked mere physical alliance as but
a part of friendship between men and women, often an unimportant
beginning, in the natural way of propertyless races.
“Lutz will not get rid of Maná so easily.” François Grelet, the shrewd
Swiss, of Oomoa, on the island of Fatuhiva, whom I had visited following
my evening with Lutz, had remarked to me: “She has as much strength of
will as he has. Her father was the chief of Papenoo, in Tahiti, and Lutz
had to steal her away to bring her here. I remember her then because the
schooner, on which they were, made port in Oomoa for a few days. Lutz
was in his twenties, with a year in Tahiti to learn the business before
his firm sent him to the Marquesas. Now, you know, for Maná to leave her
folks and her island meant a very unusual courage and will, and she has
stuck with Lutz all this time. He is heavy-handed, too, when vexed over
waste. I don’t think it will be a matter of settling with her as to
support; they all have a living at home. Also, the Tahitians do not love
the Marquesans. You will see!”
I had returned from my visit to Grelet, when, arriving at night in a
canoe to the stone steps at the Tahauku landing, Tetuahunahuna, the
steersman, pointed out to me the dark bulk of a schooner swinging at
anchor.
“_Fetia Taiao_,” he said. It was the schooner on which Lutz’s old woman
was to depart from her long-time abode.
In the weeks that had elapsed during my stay with Grelet, the affair of
Mademoiselle Narbonne and Herr Lutz had actually become the gossip of
Atuona. The church, the French nation, the masculinity of all the other
whites, were concerned. The suitor was said to pay almost daily visits
to the Narbonne house in Taaoa, and I saw him galloping past my house in
the afternoons, and heard sometimes in the night, his shod horse’s hoofs
on the pebbly road.
“It is terrible,” Sister Serapoline said to me, when I took her a catch
of _popo_ to the convent. “That German is a heathen, and has been living
in sin with a good woman for years. Now he will drag down to hell the
soul of our dear Barbe. We are offering a novena to Joan of Arc to bring
her to us. She has not been in the church or convent for a month. She
would make a wonderful sister, for she has a good heart and a true
devotion to Joan of Arc. And, to tell the truth, her money would be put
to a divine purpose instead of going into his business here or being
wasted in Germany.”
“What about Maná?” I asked. “Is she satisfied to go away?”
“That I doubt, but Maná, too, has not been inside the church for a long
time. Monsieur, I have heard that she has fallen from the true religion,
and is dealing with sorcery. The devil is astir in Atuona now.”
Song of the Nightingale was of Taaoa, the valley of Mademoiselle
Narbonne, and, as I said, had once been the lover of her mother. Through
serving a term of imprisonment for making intoxicants of oranges and of
the juice of the flower of the cocoanut-tree, his servitude spent as
cook for the Governor allowed him leisure for a few stolen hours with
his tribe. Song was a very evil man; of that perverse disposition which
afflicts great murderers like Gilles de Raiz or the Marquis de Sade, and
also cowardly ones who do in mean words and accursed inuendoes what the
arch villains do in deeds. He hated because he was thwarted. Before the
white régime he would have set valley against valley, and island against
island for mad spleen. I had seen his vileness in a ludicrous light when
he had put Ghost Girl’s god, the _kuku_, before her as food, and had
reviled her grandmother eaten by his clan. He often made fun of the
governor to me, and of me, doubtless, to many.
Song stopped at my house one night late. He was returning from Taaoa,
and had drunk deeply of the illicit _namu enata_, the cocoanut brandy.
He begged me for a drink of rum, and I could ill refuse him as he had
filled my glass so frequently at the palace. He tossed off a shell of
the ardent liquor, and filled his pipe from my tin. Then he began to
talk loosely and boastfully as was his habit. He ridiculed the churches,
and their teachings, and spoke of Gauguin, and his carven caricature of
the bishop. Gauguin was a “_chick tippee_,” he said again, and not any
more afraid of the sacrament than was he.
“They cannot hurt you if you are _tapu_ as I am,” he went on. “The
priest talks of Satan and his red-hot fork, and calls the _taua_, our
one remaining priest, a child of Satan. I have been to see that _taua_.
He is of my family, and, though he is very old, he does not believe in
the Christian magic, but in our own. He can do anything he wants to a
Marquesan. He can make them sick or well.”
“How about a white?” I asked, negligently.
“I don’t say that. The _taua_ might work his sorcery with some, but he
does not try. Do you know whom I saw in his hut to-night? Maná, the
woman of Lutz, the _Heremani_. What did she there? Why do you go to the
mission? To get the _bon Dieu_ to help you. Maná went to Taaoa to ask
the Marquesan Po, the god of night, to help her. The _Taua_ did not
inform me, but Maná said to me that if she sailed on the _Fetia Taiao_
to Tahiti, Ma’m’selle would never marry Lutz. The _taua_ would make her
_tapu_ to the _Heremani_, who would be afraid to take her to his bed.”
Song of the Nightingale poured himself another drink, and, muttering an
incantation in his own language, slunk out toward the palace to hoodwink
the governor. My heart misgave me, for I had a sincere admiration for
Mademoiselle Narbonne, and I could not help a kindly feeling for the
_Heremani_, Lutz, who had heaped favors on me. When my money had run
out, he had trusted me for months, though he had my bare word that I
expected a draft from America. My sympathies were divided odiously. Lutz
seemed to be mercenary in his pursuit of Narbonne’s daughter, and yet
might not love move him? He had been faithful to Maná for fourteen
years, according to everybody, which was a marvel for a white man. Maná
was to be pitied, and her endeavor to circumvent her competitor not to
be despised. I could not sneer at the sorcery of the _taua_. In Hawaii,
I had seen a charming half-English girl, educated and living in a
cultured home, yield to a belief in the necromancy of a Hawaiian
_kahuna_, and die. Her strength “ran out like water.” With everything to
live for, she faded into the grave at twenty.
How was _taua_ to aid _Maná_ to keep the affections of Lutz? The philter
that Julia sought on the slopes of Vesuvius to win the love of Glaucus
came to mind, but the _tauas_, I remembered, used no physical means to
work their spells. They depended entirely on the mind. They studied its
every intricacy, and the power of suggestion was, I reasoned, their
weapon and medicine as it was with Charcot, Freud, or Coué, the modern
_tauas_ of Europe. In my travels and residence of a dozen years in Asia
and the South Seas, I had been confronted often with phenomena
inexplicable except through control of others’ minds by the
thaumaturgist. Nevertheless, I had so frequently had such an opinion
shattered by a more artful and cunning material explanation that at each
instance I wavered as to the method of the mage.
The schooner _Morning Star_, the _Fetia Taiao_, swung about the
Marquesan group, from Tahauku to Taiohae, Oomoa, and Vaitahu, and after
a month dropped anchor again near the stone steps of Lutz’s _magazin_.
Lying Bill I met at the governor’s, and heard him say that he had as
passenger for Papeete the “old woman of the Dutchman.”
“I’ll sail with the first ‘an’ful o’ wind after we load our copra,” he
said. “That’ll be in three days. Maná is bloomin’ well angry at Lutz.
I’m wonderin’ if she won’t go over to Taaoa and ’ook out those purty
eyes o’ Ma’m’selle. ’E oughta ’ave Mc’Enry’s woman to deal with. She’d
take a war-club to im.”
Lutz had me to dinner again the night before the schooner left, and at
table were, besides Jensen and the Hamburg apprentice, Captain Pincher
and Ducat, his mate. I did not get a glimpse of Maná, though Lutz
appeared uneasy, and occasionally went out into the kitchen and once
into the garden. The good Patzenhofer beer was plentifully served by the
Tongan, and, un-iced as it was, we drank several cases of it with
“_Hochs!_” from Lutz and the Hamburger, “_Skoals!_” from Jensen, and
“‘Ere’s yer bloody ’ealths!” from Lying Bill.
McHenry, I learned, was keeping a store on the atoll of Takaroa. The
_rahui_ at Takaroa was finished, and the divers dispersed. No great
pearl had been brought up, though Mapuhi and his tribe had had a
bountiful season. Our party broke up about midnight, and, after the
seafarers had gone down the basalt stairs to their boat, and his clerks
were in bed, Lutz and I sat a few minutes. He, perhaps, wanted to avow
his intentions regarding Barbe Narbonne, to justify himself about Maná,
and to gain from me the comfort of my concurrence in his ethics and
ambitions, but his stiff Prussian bringing-up forbade him. Instead, he
spoke of his childhood at Frankfort, his education, and his failure to
go to a University on account of poverty. At seventeen, he had been put
to work in an exporting house in Hamburg, and had passed seven years as
an underling with small pay. His chance had come when debts due the
company in Tahiti called for an experienced man in goods and finance to
go to Papeete and wring a settlement from the debtor. He had been able
to please his firm, and to buy out the failing concern by Hamburg
backing. In the fourteen years since, he had been exiled in Tahauku, and
despite his grinding efforts and many voluntary privations, had not
amassed much. His mother and father in Germany were dependent on him,
and he had not been able once to visit them because of the expense.
Maybe the Patzenhofer had mellowed my sympathies, for I agreed with him
that he was a dutiful son and a worthy merchant, and that life had not
been quite fair to him. There was a moment when I feared he was about to
divulge his secret, but a noise outside made him start, and after he had
listened with frowning brow a minute he said good night. He did not wish
to be alone, it was evident, for he said he would sleep on a straw couch
in my room. I heard him tossing as I fell asleep.
From the hill of Calvary the next afternoon I saw the _Morning Star_ as
she glided past the opposite cliffs of Tahauku. At least the main
barrier to Lutz’s plans had gone from the Marquesas. As Mademoiselle
Narbonne no longer came to Atuona, I had not seen her for many Sundays,
and, although I still saw Lutz on his peregrinations, and from my Golden
Bed hearkened to the iron of his horse’s heels, I had no direct nor even
fairly certain knowledge that he had won her hand. Gradually a desire to
see her, to make sure of her intentions, grew in me, and I had fixed the
following Sunday as a date for my journey to Taaoa, when a stupefying
incident disarranged my scheme.
Le Brunnec, the trader, my companion of the wild cattle hunting, was
ever on the outlook for information or entertainment for me. Speaking a
little English, and by nature friendly, he now and again sent to my
cabin a stranger, with a sealed note explaining the bearer’s particular
interest to me. One day, there appeared an American citizen, Lemoal, a
twisted, haggard native of Paimpol, who had been an adventurer and
vagabond all about the world. After a shell of rum, he had boasted a
while, and then when I had given him another drop with a gesture of
farewell, he had said with a leer and a curse, that he had seen me with
Mademoiselle Narbonne, and that “I would better beware.”
“She is a leper, that rich girl,” he had said; “everybody here knows it
but you. Let the accursed German of Tahauku get it, not you!”
He ambled down the trail like an old kobold, a spirit of evil and filth,
wagging his long beard, and sucking at his pipe. I threw away the shell
from which he had drunk. But in my horror at what he had said, I could
not forget that Mademoiselle Narbonne had asked me a strange question,
at first meeting—whether it was true that the Government was segregating
the lepers in Tahiti, and immuring them in a leprosarium. I had answered
in the affirmative, and thought curiosity dictated the query. Now, with
Lemoal gone, his statement and her question rose together. Le Brunnec’s
note said that Lemoal was not to be believed always. He might have told
Le Brunnec about Barbe. It could not be true! Yet, the missionary’s
daughter a half a mile away from me was a leper, and Tahiatini, Many
Daughters, was suspect. The Chinese imported by the American, Hart, had
brought the terrible disease from Canton, and many had died from it in
the Marquesas. Those who had it were free to live as they pleased, for
there was no care of them by the authorities. But in Tahiti, for the
first time, they had taken them from their families, and were keeping
them in a separate estate. It was easy, with the abominable assertion of
Lemoal agitating me, to exaggerate or misinterpret the meaning of
Mademoiselle Narbonne’s interrogation.
Did the visit of Maná to the _taua_ have anything to do with Lemoal’s
wretched slander or gossip?
I should be a fool, I reckoned, to believe Lemoal. Even the vicar
apostolic had intimated that the Protestant pastor was a rake, and I
knew him to be a virtuous man. Gauguin had written in his journal that
the bishop was a “goat,” and I believed him a vow-observing celibate.
Much, then, I was to credit this lifetime villain, Lemoal! Men who
stayed too long in the South Seas became natural, simple children of the
sweet soil, or decayed and rejected, rotten fruit of civilization when
unsuited to assimilation.
A week after Lemoal had poisoned my mind with his intimation, I met
Mademoiselle Narbonne at Otupotu, the divide between the valleys of
Atuona and Taaoa, where Kahuiti, the magnificent cannibal of Taaoa, had
trapped the Mouth of God’s grandfather and eaten him. It was a precipice
facing the valleys of the island of Hiva-Oa, as it curved eastward. The
brilliant stretch of sea contrasted with dark glens in the torn,
convulsed panorama—gloomy gullies, suggestive of the old pagan days when
the Marquesans were free and strong. Above the shadowy caverns, the
mountains caught the light of the dying sun and shone green or black
under the cloudless sky. To sit there as the day declined and to view
the tragic marvel of the advent of night was to me a rapturous
experience made sorrowful by the final sinking of the sun. No long
twilight, no romantic gloaming followed the plunge of terror. I have
always peopled it with afrits and leprechawns, mischievous if not
malicious.
It was an hour before dusk when I arrived, and soon I heard, far down
the glade of Taaoa, the slow approach of a horse. As the rider came in
view, I waved my hand, and the daughter of the _Cayennais_ called to me,
with a trifle of surprise in her soft voice. She dismounted and sat
beside me. She had changed. In what exactly I could not define. She was
less self-centered, silent, melancholy. The savage had fled from her
face, and animation with it.
“I am half French, but all Marquesan,” she had said to me once.
She was all white this evening. The rich color had deserted her cheeks,
and in her pallor was tenderness and longing. I was drawn to her as
never before. Her delicate hand crept into mine, and we remained hushed
a few minutes. Curiously, the words of Lemoal did not recur. She was so
perfect, so beautiful, the nightfall so embracing, other thoughts were
banished. We were in a wild expanse, in a bed of ferns, and landward a
prodigal glory of palm and plant, vine and orchid. Nature had spent its
richest colors and scents, its rarest shapes and oddest forms, for bird
and insect, star and sun, to look upon and rejoice in, and with no count
of man. In her grandest or most subtle manifestations, nature had no
thought to suit herself to man, and only as he adapted himself to her
thousand smiles and frowns, could he remain alive upon an
inconsequential planet which was nothing with the blazing star now going
down in the west. A shudder, and man died by myriads; a breath, and he
perished. But ever nature swelled the seeds of her unthinking creations
and ornamented her body with fresh fruitage.
Sunset and death, the heat of the day and of life, and then the lapsing
years in the descent toward the cold grave, often stumbling and
trembling, and without the cadence and the color of the passing day; and
both ending in murk and fear. These tropical islands were for youth,
when every sense was a well of enjoyment. Age must only regret not
having known them sooner.
The slim hand of Barbe Narbonne, folded in mine, excited no pleasanter
thoughts than these as we sat at Otupoto. I felt that I must have drawn
them from her, for I was happy, and the tide of life running strong in
my veins.
She broke the quiet.
“What do you think of Monsieur Lutz?” she said suddenly.
“What do I think of Monsieur Lutz?” I parried. “I like him. Why do you
ask me that?”
“Because, Monsieur, he has asked me to marry him; and I am thinking.”
She took away her hand and smoothed her brow as if she swept away
cobwebs.
The crisis had come in which her future was at pitch and toss. The years
of childhood make most of us what we are. The white surrounded by
Polynesians in the early years of life, learning their language first,
and having them as playmates, willy-nilly becomes more than half
Polynesian. Their tastes, dreads, superstitions, pleasures, and ideals
become his. Barbe Narbonne had the savage blood of her mother to
accentuate her environment. The exigency that now confronted her had
kindled in her divided soul for the first time the conflict between the
white and the brown. From infancy she had been in the convent, and now
she had had a few months of unrestraint in the society of her two
mothers, and recently of release even from the rigors of the
confessional and the nuns’ admonitions. She had been slipping back fast
into the ways of the Marquesans; the palm-groves had claimed her, and
the jungle was closing in upon her. The courtship of the European, Lutz,
was a challenge to her white strain, but it was confusing, for it added
a third element. Her mothers’ semi-savagery, and the convent strictness
of rule were in strife now with this offer of relief from both by the
most important white in the Marquesas except the governor.
“Do you love him?” I asked her, and looked into her eyes.
She cast them down a moment in confusion or meditation. No longer she
wore black. That had been in imitation of the sisters’ dull dress, and
she had put it aside with the mass and the confession. Her tunic, the
simple flowing garment of the valley, was of pale blue. Her hair was
parted on her low, delicate forehead. Her legs were stockingless, her
feet thrust into small, brown shoes.
She raised her eyes, and replied slowly, seeking the answer herself,
maybe, at the moment.
“Monsieur Lutz is a gentleman. He says he loves me. I must marry a white
man. Who else is there? If I stay in Taaoa, I shall become a Marquesan
pure. It is so easy.”
Her manner was naïve and confiding, and affected me deeply. Where lay
her chance for happiness?
Abruptly, the accusation of Lemoal rung in my ears; and I could hardly
refrain from voicing it, in a wish to hear her fierce denial. Never had
she been more attractive, more the pattern of the most wholesome and
fairest of her mingled parentage. I could not resist saying:
“You know Lemoal?”
“That _canaille_! He worked for my father for long and cheated him. Ah,
he is a bad one! Only the last few weeks he has been hanging about my
house to wheedle food and drink from me without return. He is of no
account. Why do you ask?”
“He says that you are ill.”
“Ill! I?”
Her eyes closed, and her body became limp an instant. A flush spread
over her face.
“Lemoal said that!” she cried. “It is a lie! What ill have I?
Tuberculosis? Do I cough? Am I thin? The _miserable!_ It is strange.
Kahuiti and two others have asked me in the past few days if I were ill.
Monsieur Frederick, you are my friend. Look at me! Am I not well?”
She leaped to her feet. An instant she entertained the suggestion of
stripping her tunic from her, and revealing her entire body for
judgment. She bared her girlish bosom, and her hands tore at the gown,
and then the convent inhibitions conquered, and she hastily covered
herself.
She blushed darkly, and turned from me. The mortal sin of immodesty had
been the daily preachment of the nuns.
“I must go home before the night,” she said weakly. “I will not go on to
the convent. Good-by, my friend. Pray for me!”
The dusk was already thick as she mounted her horse, and I made out the
trail to Atuona with difficulty. Dimly, I discerned the workings of an
unholy spell, or my sympathy for her and my hatred for Lemoal conjured
up a web of witchcraft that would affright her suitor, and bind her to
the scene of her birth. How far this web had been spun I could only
guess. I put the matter flatly to Le Brunnec. Yes, he had had the same
story from Lemoal, and so had many others. As to Lutz’s hearing it, he
did not know, but Lemoal was despised by Lutz, who had quarreled with
him long ago. He would not dare to carry his tale to Tahauku, nor would
any one. The Prussian trader in his dealings had inculcated respect and
a decent fear of himself.
That evening I sent Exploding Eggs to tell Song of the Nightingale I
wanted to see him at my house. When he came, I referred, after the
customary drink of rum, to the _taua_, and declared my eager wish to
meet him. I knew Kahuiti, of the valley of Taaoa, who was still a
cannibal, and I must know the last of the pagan priests there. The cook
was well pleased, and we agreed that the first evening the governor took
his dinner at the house of Bauda he would come for me. Le Brunnec smiled
when I let him know my plan.
“Go ahead!” he said. “I am no believer in anything but a reasonable
profit, and a merry time. You can do nothing if you are trying to help
Mademoiselle Narbonne. I have seen too often the meddling white fail
with these Marquesans. They know more about many important things than
we do, even if they don’t wear shoes or eat with a fork. That old _taua_
may be a fool, but they don’t think so, and there’s the secret.”
Song of the Nightingale appeared at six, a few evenings later, and we
started on the five miles’ ride to Taaoa. I had borrowed a horse of
Mouth of God, and the prisoner-cook had no difficulty in finding one.
Too many people dreaded his bitter tongue and violent disposition to
refuse him. As we went through the pass at Otupotu and descended the
winding trail to the adjoining valley, the sun was below the far tops of
the green hills and was tinting all the sky in shades of softest red.
Clouds, edged with brilliant gold, were like lilies in a garden of
roses. The air was still and heavy when we rode by the sulphurous
springs where Mouth of God’s grandfather was slain by Kahuiti’s spear.
My guide avoided the village of Taaoa, and took a path which led by a
graveyard.
On an obelisk had been inscribed half a century before:
_Inei Teavi o te mata einana o Taaoa._
“Here lie the bodies of the people of Taaoa.” An all-inclusive
tombstone, for there was no other, but, instead, banana-plants,
_badamiers_, _vi_-apples, and chile peppers, the fiery-red pods of the
latter bright against the green and black. Behind the burial-place were
two great _aoa_ trees, giant banyans that must have been there when the
first adventurous white cast anchor in these waters. In the lessening
light, they had a mysterious air of life in death; they were moribund
with age, twisted and gnarled like those century-old Mission Indians of
California who sit outside their adobe hovels and show a thousand
wrinkles on their naked bodies. Yet these banyans were filled with life,
for a hundred new shoots were thrusting from above into the rich mold of
the earth, and presaging renewal of the dead limbs and greater growth of
the whole.
The trees covered acres, overpowering in their immensity, with columns
of regular and solemn symmetry. Their ponderous buttresses were like
towers, but divided into many separate chambers where the branches had
descended from heights to become roots, and later other columns. These
trees were individuals, shattered and worn by existence, broken by
storms, the boughs arching a hundred feet from the ground to let down
grotesque and curving branches that blindly groped for a grasp upon the
soil. They were tragedies in wood, and stirred in me memories of old
French tales of darksome wolds, of the shadowy, dripping spinneys where
the _loup garou_ lay in wait for the bodies and souls of his victims.
Into one of the cells of the banyan, Song of the Nightingale led me. As
large as an average room, it was divided by a _tapa_ hanging, and from
behind this came, at his call, the _taua_. He had a snow-white beard and
long hair, and was very old. His body was quite covered with tattooing,
the most elaborate designs I had seen. The candlenut ink, originally
blackish-brown upon his dark skin, had, as the result of decades of kava
drinking, turned to a verde-antique, like the patina upon an ancient
bronze.
“_Moa taputoho_,” said Song, with extreme seriousness. “A sacred
hermit.” One who had forsaken all the common things of existence to
commune with the gods.
The sorcerer’s surrounding were druidic, remindful of the Norns, who
dwelt beneath the world-tree Ygdrasil, Urd and Verdande and Skuld, and
decided the fate of men.
He gazed at me intently, raised his hand in a grave manner, and said
something to my companion which I did not understand.
“He asks if you want anything of him,” explained the convict.
“Yes, I do,” I replied. “Ask him if the daughter of Liha-liha is a
leper?”
My interpreter did not put the question direct, but I comprehended his
many sentences to state my meaning.
The _taua_ pursed his lips and withdrew behind the curtain. From his
hidden fane issued the deep rumbling of his voice in a chant.
“He is asking the _tiki_, the image of the god,” said Song, fearfully.
I confess I was aware of a depression approaching fear. It was dark in
the banyan cell, and a torch of candlenuts threw a fitful glimmer on the
_tapa_ and the scabrous walls.
Soon above the indistinct voice of the _taua_ was the sound of something
in the branches of the banyan, of a flapping of wings, and a knocking.
“It is a bat,” I whispered to Song.
“It is the god coming to answer,” said he, cowering with real horror.
A dreadful thing it is not to believe in the supernatural when in
ordinary surroundings, and yet to be subject to horrible misgivings when
circumstances conjure up visions of terror.
The uncanny noises in the tree increased, and then the mammoth banyan
shook as though an earthquake vibrated it. Song and I were now flat on
the ground, and I repeated an invocation of my childhood:
“From the powers of Lucifer, O, Mary, deliver us!”
I said it over and over again, and it numbed my senses during the few
minutes that the pandemonium continued.
When the _taua_ emerged, Song turned his back upon him, and, taking my
hand, reversed me, too.
“_Tapu!_” he said, nervously.
“_Tuitui!_” began the _moa taputoho_. “Be silent!” and in a staccato
manner pronounced his divination. His tone was orotund and dignified,
and impressive of sincerity. The words were symbolic, and of other
generations, and Song waited until he had finished to translate them.
Before he could do this, the _taua_ said, “_Apae!_” a word of dismissal,
and retired. Song seized me by the hand as I went toward the curtain,
and pulled me away; but, for a second, I had a glimpse of a rude, basalt
altar built against the trunk of the tree, and on it a stone image
before which was a heap of fruit. I was directed speedily away from the
banyan, and not until we had mounted our horses and galloped a hundred
feet did the convict answer my question.
“The _moa taputoho_ said that this girl will offend the god if she
marries a _haoe_, a foreigner, and that she knows already how the god
will punish her if she leaves her own valley of Taaoa.”
And flinging out the words as we pounded up the hill, it was as if the
maker of moonshine was more prophetical than the _taua_ himself, or was
a most interested mouthpiece, for he put into them a malevolence missing
from the aged hermit’s voice. That had been majestic though forboding,
while the intonation of Song of the Nightingale was personal and harsh.
Maybe he hated Lutz as did Lemoal. Le Brunnec corroborated my suspicion.
“Lutz found him stealing a demijohn of rum, and had him sent to prison
for several months,” said the Breton. “But, granted that every one hates
the German,” he continued, “you are wasting your sympathy and time. I
predict that Lutz will get Mademoiselle Narbonne, but that the _taua_
and his magic will snare her finally. These people are born to be
unhappy and to die under our Christian dispensation.”
So, from day to day, the rumor of her dismaying condition spread, until
it was known to almost everyone of the few thousand Marquesans in all
the islands, and to all others except Lutz. His wooing had not ceased,
and when the day’s work was done at Tahauku, and his evening meal
despatched, as for months, he thought nothing of the ten slippery miles
in the pitchy blackness to and from the home of his Golden Maid. His
hoof-beats entered into my dreams, and after midnight I often awoke as
they resounded on the little bridge across the stream by the Catholic
Church, Poor devil! He was to pay dear for his brief dream.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XX
Holy Week—How the rum was saved during the storm—An Easter Sunday
“Celebration”—The Governor, Commissaire Bauda and I have a
discussion—Paul Vernier, the Protestant pastor, and his Church—How
the girls of the valley imperilled the immortal souls of the first
missionaries—Jimmy Kekela, his family—A watch from Abraham Lincoln.
HOLY Week passed in a riot of uncommon amusement. Its religious
significance—the most sacred period of the year both for Catholics and
Protestants—was emphasized by priest and preacher with every observance
of the church, but the lay white harked back to the mood of the ancient
feast of spring and drew the natives with them. Permits to buy rum and
wine were much sought for by the Marquesans, to whom drink was
forbidden. The governor was of an easy disposition, and few who had the
price of a _dame-jeanne_ of rum or wine failed to secure it. As Lutz,
the German trader at Tahauku, the adjoining valley, was the only
importer of intoxicants, the canoes were active between our beach of
Atuona and the stone steps at Tahauku, while others rode a-horse or
walked. On Holy Thursday an uninformed new-comer might have pronounced
the Marquesans a bustling race with a liquid diet.
Cloudbursts had swollen the streams, and made the trails troughs of mud,
so that when Exploding Eggs and Mouth of God and I arrived at Atuona
beach with our empties we were glad to place the receptacles in the
canoe of a fisherman for transport to Lutz’s. A gesture of my cupped
hand to my mouth made him eager to oblige me. We walked up the hill and
past the Scallamera leper-house. My friends’ bare feet and skill made it
hard for me to keep up with them. Shoes are clumsy shifts for naked
soles. After a glass of Munich beer and a pretzel with Lutz, Exploding
Eggs finding his own little canoe at the stone steps, we loaded the
demi-johns in it and the fisherman’s. I went with the latter, and Mouth
of God with my valet. The canoes were narrow and they sank to the
gunwales with the weight. The tide of the swollen river tore through the
bay, and soon Mouth of God cried out that we must take Exploding Eggs in
our craft. The boy transferred himself deftly, and Mouth of God’s canoe
shot ahead. It became necessary for us to bail, for the water poured in
over the unprotected sides, and the boy and I used our hats actively.
Suddenly the fisherman in agonizing voice announced that we could not
stay afloat. He gave no thought to our bodily plight, the racing
current, and the rapacious sharks, but laid stress on our freight.
“_Aue!_ The rum will be lost!” he shouted, as the canoe weltered deeper,
and then, without ado, both he and Exploding Eggs leaped into the brine.
The canoe staggered and rose, and, after freeing it from water, I
paddled it to shore, while the pair swam alongside, watching the
precious burden.
All night the torrent roared near my home. The big boulders rolled down
the rocky bed, groaning in travail. The solid shot of cocoanut and
breadfruit, sped by the gale, fell on my iron roof while the furious
rain was like cannister. The trees made noises as a sailing ship in a
storm, singing wildly, whistling as does the cordage, and the crash of
their fall sounding as the freed canvas banging on the yards. Sleep was
not for me, but I smoked and wrote, and listened to the chorus of
angered nature until daybreak.
In the first light I saw Father David, in _soutane_ and surplice,
attended by two barelegged acolytes, fording the breast-high river. He
held aloft the golden box containing the sacred bread, and one of the
acolytes carried a bell of warning. Paro had the black leprosy, and in
his hut far up the valley, on his mat of suffering, waited for the
comfort of communion. All day three priests moved up and down urging the
people to confess and “make their Easter.”
Titihuti, the magnificently tattooed matron, went with me to the
ceremony of _Honi Peka_, the Kissing of the Crucifix. Honi really meant
to rub noses or smell each other’s faces, for the Marquesans had no
labial kiss. The Catholic church was well filled, and each native in
turn approached the railing of the channel, and rubbed his nose over the
desolate figure of the Savior. It was a wonderful magic to them. The
next day, Good Friday or _Venini Tapu_, I asked Great Fern what event
that day commemorated.
“Ietu Kirito was killed by his enemies, the tribe of Iuda,” he replied,
as he might relate a tribal feud in these islands.
[Illustration:
Photo from Underwood and Underwood
The Coral road and the traders’ stores
]
Holy Saturday was a joyous holiday, and on Easter Sunday the climax of
the feasting and merriment came. The communion-rail was crowded, many
complying with the church compulsion of taking the sacrament once a year
under pain of mortal sin. There was compensation for celibacy and exile
in Father David’s expression of delight as he put into each
communicant’s mouth the host. He was the leading actor in a divine
drama, the conversion by his few words of consecration of a flour wafer
into the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ. The histrionic was mixed
with and a moving part of his exaltation.
[Illustration:
Photo by Brown Bros.
Scene on beach a few miles west of Papeete
]
He gave to all, including Peyral and me, the only white attendants, a
little loaf of bread he had blessed; _faraoa benetitio_ in Marquesan, or
flour _benedicto_. Ah Suey took communion, and after mass hurried to me.
The reputed murderer of Wagner, the American, was prideful because he
was the baker of the _faraoa benetitio_.
“How you likee that bleadee?” he asked me. “My bake him bleadee, pliest
make him holee. Bimeby me ketchee heaven,” he said in all seriousness.
Titihuti, my neighbor, joined me to walk to our homes, and, knowing her
to miss no masses on Sundays, I asked her why she had not received the
sacrament. She said she had never partaken of it, that she had yet to
make her first communion of the Lord’s supper.
“But, Titihuti,” I remonstrated, “you know that you are in danger of
hell-fire. You believe in the Catholic doctrine, you say, and despite
that you disregard its strict order.”
Titihuti I realized was a heathen, still full of animist superstitions,
and I was not unprepared to hear her answer:
“If I took the host into my mouth I would die. The _manakao_ would seize
me. I will wait until I am about to die, and then Père David will give
me the _viaticum_, and I will go straight to _aki_.”
The _manakao_ is a demon, and _aki_ is paradise. Titihuti was intending
to take the chance that kings and others took in the early days of
Christianity, when, being taught that baptism wiped out all sins, they
kept an alert clergyman always near them to sprinkle them and speed them
to heaven, and meanwhile they sinned as they pleased.
By noon the entire village was chanting and dancing. The unusual removal
of the restriction against beverages made Easter a pagan rout. The
natives became uninhibited, if not natural, for a few hours. Several
times the governor had had groups at his palace to give exhibitions of
their aboriginal dances, but this feast-day he extended a general
invitation to a levee. Fifty or sixty men or women enjoyed the utmost
hospitality. The young ruler was bent on seeing their fullest expression
of mirth, without any restraint of sobriety. The noise of their songs
echoed to the mission, where the nuns prayed that some brand might be
spared from the holocaust. Swaggering chiefs and beauteous damsels
abandoned themselves to the spirit of the day. The dances were without
order. Whenever a man or woman felt the urge they sprang to their feet
and began the _tapiriata_. Under the palms, upon the verandas, in the
_salle à manger_, in every corner of the palace and its grounds, the
people, astonished at such unwonted freedom and such lavish bounty,
showed their appreciation in movements of their bodies and legs. The
fairest girls surrounded the host, and with sinuous circlings and a
thousand blandishments entertained and thanked him. The chants by the
elders were of his greatness. The young sang of passion.
From the hill near the cemetery where Guillitoue, the anarchist, dwelt,
sounded the drums. I was the especial guest there in the afternoon, and
those who were not too deep in the pool of pleasure at the palace
climbed the mountain. The orator had built a shelter of bamboo and
cocoanut leaves, graceful and clean, and upon its carpet of leaves we
sat. Guillitoue in a loin-cloth and black frock-coat moved about among
the three score with a _dame-jeanne_ in each hand, and poured rum or
wine at request. Occasionally he broke into a wild _hula_, grotesque as
he whirled about with the wickered bottles at arms-length. From other
valleys whites and natives had come to the _koina_. Thirty horses were
tied to the cemetery railing. Amiable gaiety and ludicrous baboonery
passed the afternoon.
Frederick Tissot, a storekeeper at Puamau, a Swiss in his fifties, ten
years in the Foreign Legion of Algiers, a worker upon the Chicago
Exposition buildings in the early nineties, and seventeen years here,
spoke of the “good time” when he worked at Zinkand’s restaurant in San
Francisco.
“I drank thirty quarts of beer a day. I was cook, and the bartenders
stood in with me for _bonnes bouches_. I never tasted solid food. I had
soup and booze. I nearly died in a year, and had to leave.”
He sighed at the memory of those golden days. Later I saw him falling
off his horse, and laid upon a mat in a native house.
James Nichols, son of a Chicagoan, dignified, tall and thin, almost
white, with side-whiskers, a black cutaway, overalls, and bare feet, a
shoeless butler for all the world, had a tale for me of his father’s
marrying in Tahiti a member of the royal family of Pomaré, and of
himself being born on Christmas Island.
“A wild island that,” said the quasi-butler in English. “Captain Cook
discovered it when he was steering north from Borabora on Christmas day.
He stayed there a few weeks and saw an eclipse of the sun. He took away
three hundred turtles. When I lived there they melted cocoanuts into
oil, and my father was the cooper. Cook had planted cocoanuts there. It
is an atoll, a lonely place, and I was glad to leave. I learned English
from my father, and married a Paumotu lady. I was in Tahiti until eight
years ago, when the cyclone wiped me out. Here I work for the mission,
making copra, and I am the tinker and tinsmith. Here’s looking at you!”
Jensen, the young and engaging Dane, who will never return to
civilization, trod a measure with a charming girl from Hanamenu.
“The clan of the Puna has left its bare _paepaes_ all over her valley,”
he said. “She is the last.”
At dark the cavalcade reeled down the hill, leaving Pierre Guillitoue
sleeping beside the drum. Despite his late fifties and his, to say the
least, irregular way of living, Pierre is strong and healthy.
Captain Cook marveled in his diary that “since the arrival of the ship
in Batavia [Java] every person belonging to her has been ill, except the
sailmaker, who was more than seventy years old; yet this man got drunk
every day while we remained there.”
A white man lured away the consort of Ahi, an agreeable young man much
in love. I found the lorn husband screaming in grief.
“Tahiatauani, my wife, my wife!” he cried out. The Marquesan weeps with
facility. Hour after hour this stalwart fellow let fall tears, lying on
the ground in agony. Then he rose and said no more about it.
Easter Sunday went out in a blaze of riotous glory. I saw Ah Suey after
nightfall inquiring anxiously and angrily for his daughter. The nuns had
reported to him that she had failed to appear for vespers. That night in
the breadfruit-grove by the High Place they enacted the old orgies of
pre-Christian days. Thirty men and women, mostly young, sang the ancient
songs and danced by the lights of lanterns, of candlenuts and fagots,
and to the sound of the booming drums.
I sat at wine the next day with Father David in the mission-house. It
was bare and ugly as all convents, having the scant, ascetic,
uncomfortable atmosphere that monks and nuns dwell in all over the
world—no ornaments, no good pictures, no ease. Stark walls, stiff
chairs, and the staring, rude crucifix over the door. The apostolic
vicar censured the Government severely. He plucked his long, black beard
nervously, and spoke his feelings in the imperious manner of a mortal
who holds the keys of the kingdom of heaven, castigating fools who
wouldn’t even learn there was a door. There was no trace of personal
pride.
“The government here and in France is unjust to the church. We suffer
from the impiety and wickedness of French officials. The people of
France are right at heart, but the politicians are Antichrists. The
Protestants are bad enough, but the French are Catholics, or should be.
This young governor here is a veritable heathen, and has shown the
people the road to hell again, when they had hardly trod the _via trita,
via tuta_. He and Bauda are godless men. Monsieur, rum is forbidden to
be given to a Marquesan, yet the valley floats in rum. I know that to
get copra made one must stretch the strict rod of the law a trifle, but
not to drunkenness, nor to dances of the devil, dances, that, frowned
upon, might be forgotten.”
The governor, _Commissaire_ Bauda, and I dined that night on the palace
veranda, and afterward we had an animated discussion. I wrote it down
verbatim:
GOVERNOR. What was it _Père_ David said to you, _mon ami_?
I. He said that the Catholic church was badly treated by the officials
here.
GOVERNOR. Yes, he wants another great slice of land. Oh, that church is
insatiable! One of my predecessors, Grosfillez, fought them. Here is his
report in the archives: He says that, contrary to their claims that they
have caused the republic to be loved here, that they have taught the
Franch language, and have raised the natives from savagery, from
immorality and evil manners, the facts are that they have not changed a
particle the morals of the Marquesans, that they taught in their schools
a trifling smattering of French, and that they did not make France loved
and respected, but sought the domination of their order, the Picpus
Congregation, at the expense of the Government. This domination they
forced in the early days at the point of the bayonet, to the sacrifice
of the lives of French officers and soldiers.
BAUDA. That is true here and everywhere we French have gone. We have
died to spread the power of the church. _Nom d’un chien!_ Six campaigns
in Africa, me! _Et pire alors!_ Did not General La Grande pin this
decoration on me?
GOVERNOR. Here is the very letter of Grosfillez to the authorities. He
says that he visited the school at Taiohae, and that when he spoke to
the pupils, many of them three or four years in the school, the good
sister asked permission to translate his simple words into _canaque_ so
they could understand. _Sapristi!_ Is that teaching French? Is not the
calendar of the church here filled with foolishness, and almost all in
_canaque_? _Hein_? Read this:
The governor thrust into my hands the almanac written by Father Simeon
Delmas, of Taiohae, and published by the mission. It was in hektograph,
neatly and beautifully written, and contained the religious calendar of
the year, and sermons, admonitions, and anecdotes, in Marquesan, with a
small minority in French; a photograph of Monseigneur Etienne Rouchouze,
former vicar apostolic to Oceanica, with praise for his career; an
anecdote of Bernadette of Lourdes, the famous peasant girl to whom the
Virgin Mary appeared, together with a list of the apparitions of the
Virgin in France, beginning in 1830, the other dates being ’46, ’58,
’71, and ’76; a prayer to Joan of Arc, with an attack on Protestantism
(_Porotetane_) for burning her, and something about the Duke of Guise; a
stirring article on Nero’s persecution of the Christians; an account of
the Fall of the Bastille; a comparison between Clovis, king of France,
and Napoleon; a tale of Charles V; and a table showing that the Catholic
church had established missions in all the inhabited islands of this
group since 1858, and giving the number of children in the schools when
they were closed by the government as clerical.
“The mountain groaned and brought forth a mouse, a soldier,” said the
almanac.
“That is treason,” said the governor, looking over my shoulder, “and
what has all that foolishness to do with a dying race that does not know
what it means? The church has done nothing for these people. They are
not changed except for the worse. What has the church done for their
health? Nothing. My predecessor wanted to stop the eating of _popoi_. He
knew that it is dirty, not healthful, and the promiscuous way of eating
it spreads disease. The church fought him and said _popoi_ was all
right. France! Have we not suffered enough by that church since the
Edict of Nantes? Since time immemorial? The church is a corporation,
selfish, scheming, always against any government it does not control. It
has been the evil genius of France. Only Napoleon harnessed the beast
and made it do his work, but it saw his humbling. The priests tell the
_canaques_ the Government is against the church, and that the church is
in the right; that it is the duty of every Catholic to love the church
first, because the church is Christ. They do not preach disaffection.
_Peut-être, non._ But they do not preach affection.
I. But you must admit that these priests lead lives of self-sacrifice;
that personally they gain nothing. A meager fare and hard work. They
visit the sick——
GOVERNOR. Visit the sick? They do that, and they bury the dead. But they
do nothing to better conditions. We teach sanitation. The priests are
themselves either ignorant or neglectful of sanitation. Their calendars,
their tracts, their preaching, say not a word about health, cleanliness;
nothing about the body, but all about the soul, about duties to the
church. I am here primarily to study and aid the lepers, the
consumptives and the other sick. To try and halt the disease which has
killed thousands of unborn children, and the tuberculosis which takes
most of the Marquesans in youth. I am a soldier, experienced in Africa,
used to leprosy, and the care of natives. In Africa the church gives
nothing to the people but its ritual. What has the church done here
after seventy years?
I. Ah, governor, that is the very question _Père_ David asked me as to
the Government. He says they looked after the lepers when they had a
free hand here.
GOVERNOR. Looked after them. They were not physicians. Those men are
peasants crammed with a pitiful theology. They shall have nothing from
me but the law.
He attacked the intermezzo of “Cavalleria Rusticana” on his flute, as
Many Daughters arrived. Over her ear was a sprig of fern, and about her
neck a string of fragrant nuts. Her very large eyes were singularly
brilliant.
“_C’est toi qui pousse le pu me metai._” she complimented and tutoyed.
“_C’est toi qui n’a pas la pake?_ It is thou who playest the flute
wonderfully. It is thou who has not any tobacco?”
“Ah, _ma fille_, you are well? You will have a drop of absinthe?” said
the governor.
“With pleasure; I am as dry as the inside of an old skull.”
“But, my friend,” I remonstrated with the executive, aside. “She is a
leper. Her sister is, too. Are you not afraid? She drinks from our
glasses.”
“Me? I am a soldier, and a student of leprosy. It is my hobby. It is
mysterious, that disease. I watch her closely.”
If the apostolic vicar felt keenly his inability to manage the affairs
of the village and the islands to suit his ideas of morality and
religion, so did the Protestant pastor. My house was very near the
mission, and it was some days after I had arrived before I went to the
dissenting church, half a mile across the valley. Monsieur Paul Vernier,
the Protestant pastor, had been many years in the Marquesas. He was
respected by the ungodly. Guillitoue hailed him as a brother, anarchist
and infidel though he was himself. Vernier alternated between hunting
souls to save and bulls to shoot, for he was a very son of Cush, and his
quest of the wild cattle of the mountains had put him upon their horns
more than once. Salvation he held first, and he was canny in copra, but
many nights he lay upon the tops of the great hills when pursuit of game
had led him far.
Vernier had a background, for, though born in Tahiti, his father had
been a man of culture and his mother a charming Frenchwoman, whose home
in Tahiti was memorable to visitors. Vernier had devoted his life to the
Marquesans, and lived in this simple atmosphere without regret for
Tahiti. The apostolic vicar said that Vernier was Antichrist made
manifest in the flesh, but that was on account of the _odium
theologicum_, which here was as bitter as in Worms or Geneva of old. The
spirit of _Père_ David was pierced by the occasional defections from his
flock caused by the proselytizing of Vernier. Before I met him I had
gone to his church with Great Fern and Apporo. It was a box-like,
redwood building, its interior lacking the imagery and coloring of the
Roman congregation. The fat angels of Brother Michel, the cherubim and
seraphim in plaster on the _façade_ of Father David’s structure were
typical of the genius of that faith, round, smiling, and breathing good
will to the faithful. Protestantism was not in accord with the palms,
the flowers, and the brilliancy of the sunlight. Thirty made up the
congregation, of whom fourteen were men, twelve women, and four
children, though the benches would seat a hundred. The women, as in the
Catholic church, wore hats, but I was the only person shod.
Men and women sat apart. During the service, except when they sang, no
man paid any attention to the preacher, nor did but three or four of the
men. They seemed to have no piety. The women with children walked in and
out, and four dogs coursed up and down the aisle. No one stirred a hand
or tongue at them.
Fariura, a Tahitian preacher, who replaced Vernier, was a devout figure
in blackest alpaca suit and silk tie, but barefooted. As he stood on a
platform by a deal table and read the Bible, I saw his toes were well
spread, which in this country was like the horny hand of the laborer,
proof of industry. Climbing the cocoanut-trees made one’s toes ape one’s
fingers in radiation.
Tevao Kekela led the singing in a high-pitched coppery voice, and those
who sang with her had much the same intonation and manner. Often the
sound was like that of a Tyrolean yodel, and the lingering on the last
note was fantastic. They sang without animation, rapidly, and as if
repeating a lesson. In the Catholic church the natives were assisted by
the nuns. These words were, of course, Marquesan, and I copied down a
stanza or two:
Haere noara ta matorae
Va nia i te ea tiare,
Eare te pure tei rave,
Hiamai, na roto i te,
Taehae ote merie?
O te momona rahi
O te paraue otou, ta mata noaraoe?
Momona rahi roa
O te reira eiti to te merie?
Parau mai nei Ietue
Etimona Peteroe tia mai nioe,
Haa noara vau i tei nei po
Areva tuai aue.
Fariura prayed melodiously and pleadingly for ten minutes, during which
Tevao Kekela’s father never raised his head but remained bowed in
meditation. A tattooed man in front of me bent double and groaned
constantly during the invocation. The others were occupied with their
thoughts.
Then said Fariura, “_Ma teinoa o Ietu Kirito, Metia_ _kaoha nui ia_, in
the name of Jesus Christ, a good day to all the world.”
He began his hour’s sermon. The discourse was about Rukifero and his
fall from Aki, and I discovered that Rukifero was Lucifer and Aki was
paradise. He described the fight preceding the drop as much like one of
the old Marquesan battles, with bitter recriminations, spears, clubs,
and slings as weapons, and Jehovah narrowly escaping Goliath’s fate. In
fact, the preacher said He had to dodge a particularly well-aimed stone.
Fariura, Kekela, Terii, the catechist, and his wife, Toua, received
communion, with fervent faces, while the others departed, lighting
cigarettes on the steps, some mounting horses, and the women fording the
river with their gowns rolled about their foreheads.
The preacher shook hands with me, the only white. He was in a lather
from the heat and his unusual clothes, and the rills of sweat coursed
down his body. His pantomime of the heavenly faction fight had been
energetic. I took him to my house for a swig of rum, and we had a long
chat on the activities of the demon, and ways of circumventing his
wiles.
Men like Vernier were not deceived by dry ecclesiasticism. They knew how
little the natives were changed from paganism, and how cold the once hot
blast of evangelism had grown. Religion was for long the strongest tide
in the affairs of the South Seas both under the heathen and the
Christian revelation. Government was not important under Marquesan
communism, for government is mostly concerned with enforcing opportunity
for acquisitive and ambitious men to gain and hold wealth and power. In
the days of the _tapus_ gods and devils made sacred laws and religious
rites. The first missionaries in the Marquesas, who sailed from Tahiti,
were young Englishmen, earnest and confident, but they met a severe
rebuff. They relate that a swarm of women and girls swam out to their
vessel and boarded it.
“They had nothing on,” says the chronicle, “but girdles of green ferns,
which they generously fed to the goats we had on board, who seemed to
them very strange beings. The goats, deprived for long of fresh food,
completely devastated the garments of the savage females, and when we
had provided all the cloth we had to cover them, we had to drive the
others off the ship for the sake of decency.”
Harris, one of the English missionaries, ventured ashore, and the next
morning returned in terror, declaring that nothing would induce him to
remain in the Marquesas. He feared for his soul. He said that despite
his protestations and prayers the girls of the valley had insisted on
examining him throughout the night hours to see if he was like other
humans, and that he had to submit to excruciating intimacies of a
“diabolical inspiration.” Crooks, Harris’s partner, dared these and
other dangers and remained a year. Crooks said that in Vaitahu, the
valley in which Vanquished Often and Seventh Man Who Wallows in the Mire
lived, there were deified men, called _atuas_, who, still in life,
wielded supernatural power over death, disease, the elements, and the
harvests, and who demanded human sacrifices to appease their wrath.
Crooks believed in the supremacy of Jehovah, but, like all his cloth
then, did not doubt diabolism and the power of its professors.
For half a century American and English centers of evangelism despatched
missionaries to the Marquesas, but all failed. The _tapus_ were too much
feared by the natives, and the sorcerers and chiefs held this power
until the sailors and traders gradually broke it. They sold guns to the
chiefs, and bought or stole the stone and wooden gods to sell to museums
and collectors. They ridiculed the temples and the _tapus_, consorted
with the women, and induced them for love or trinkets to sin against
their code, and they corrupted the sorcerers with rum and gauds. They
prepared the ground for the Christian plow, but it was not until
Hawaiian missionaries took the field that the harvest was reaped. Then
it was because of a man of great and loving soul, a man I had known, and
whose descendants I met here.
I was picking my way along the bank of a stream when a deep and ample
pool lured me to bathe in it. I threw off my _pareu_ and was splashing
in the deliciously cool water when I heard a song I had last heard in a
vaudeville theater in America. It was about a newly-wedded pair, and the
refrain declared that “all night long he called her Snookyookums.” The
voice was masculine, soft, and with the familiar intonation of the
Hawaiian educated in American English. I swam further and saw a big
brown youth, in face and figure the counterpart of Kamehameha I, the
first king of Hawaii, whose gold and bronze statue stands in Honolulu.
He was washing a shirt, and singing in fair tune.
“Where’s your Snookyookums?” I asked by way of introduction.
He was not surprised. Probably he heard and saw me before I did him.
“Back on Alakea Street in Honolulu,” he replied, smilingly, “where I
wish I was. You’re the _perofeta_ [prophet] they talk about. I been
makin’ copra or I’d been see you before. My name is Jimmy Kekela, and I
was born here in that house up on the bank, but I was sent to school in
Honolulu, and I played on the Kamehameha High scrub team. The only
foot-ball I play now is with a cocoanut. I had a job as chauffeur for
Bob Shingle, who married a sister of the Princess Kawananakoa, but my
father wrote me to come back here. I’ll wring out this shirt, and we’ll
go up and see my folks.”
The Kekela home was a large, bare house of pine planks from California
raised a dozen feet on a stone _paepae_. Unsightly and unsuitable, it
was characteristic of the architecture the white had given the Marquesan
for his own graceful and beautiful houses of hard wood, bamboo, and
thatch, of which few were left. I wrung out my _pareu_, replaced it, and
scrambled up the bank with him. The house was in a cocoanut forest, the
trees huge and lofty, some growing at an amazing angle owing to the wind
shaping them when young. They twisted like snakes, and some so
approached parallelism that a barefooted native could walk up them
without using his hands, by the mere prehensility of his toes and his
accustomed skill. In front of the steps to the veranda of the home were
mats for the drying of the copra, and a middle-aged man, very brown and
stout, was turning over the halves of the cocoanut meat to sun them all
over.
[Illustration:
Tahiatini, Many Daughters, the little leper lass
]
[Illustration:
François Grelet, the Swiss, of Oomoa
]
“My father,” said Jimmy to me, and “_Perofeta_” to him. He shook hands
gingerly in the way all people do who are unaccustomed to that greeting,
and said, “_Kaoha!_” My answer, “_Aloha nui oe!_” surprised him, for it
was the Hawaiian salute. On the veranda I was presented to the entire
Kekela family, four generations. By ones and twos they drifted from the
room or the grounds. Hannah, the widow of Habuku, was very old, but was
eager to talk.
“I am a Hawaiian,” she said in that language, “and I have been in
Atuona, on this piece of land, sixty years. My husband brought me here,
and he was pastor in that church till he died. _Auwe!_ What things went
on here then! I have seen many men being carried by toward the _Pekia_,
the High Place of Atuona, for roasting and eating. That was in war time,
when they fought with the people of Taaoa, or other valley. Kekela and
my husband with the help of God stopped that evil thing. Matanui, a
chief, came to Hawaii in a whale-ship, and asked for people to teach his
people the word of the true God. Four Hawaiians listened to Matanui, and
returned with him to Hanavave, where the French priest Father Olivier,
is now. A week later a French ship arrived with a Catholic priest.
_Auwe!_ He was angry to find the Protestants and tried to drive them
out. They stayed with the help of the Lord, though they had a hard time.
Then Kekela and we came, and we have seen many changes. He was a
warrior, and not afraid of anything, even the devil. There are his sons,
Iami and Tamueli, and his grandsons and granddaughters and their
children. We are Hawaiian. We have no drop of Marquesan blood in us. Did
you know Aberahama Linoconi?”
Hannah lifted herself from the mat on the floor, and brought from the
house a large gold watch, very heavy and ornate, of the sort successful
men bought fifty years ago. It was inscribed to James Kekela from
Abraham Lincoln in token of his bravery and kindness in saving the life
of an American seaman, and the date was 1864.
“That watch,” she said, “was given to Kekela by the big chief of
America. When he died he gave it to his son, Tamueli. Tell the prophet
why Aberahama Linoconi gave it to your grandfather, Iami!”
Jimmy, the former chauffeur, tried to persuade his uncle, Samuel, a
missionary on another island, to tell the story, but finally himself
narrated it in English.
“Grandfather Kekela was at Puamau, across this island, when he got this
watch. He had been at Puamau some years and teachin’ people stop
fightin’ an’ go church, when a whale-ship come in from Peru, an’ shot up
the town. The Peru men killed a lot of Marquesans, and stole plenty of
them to work in the mines like slave. They had guns an’ the poor Puamau
native only spear and club, so that got away with it good an’ strong.
Well, nex’ year come American whale-ship, an’ the mate come up the
valley to ketch girl. He saw girl he love an’ chase her up the valley.
The Puamau people let him go, an’ ask him go further. Then they tie him
up and beat him like the Peru people beat them, and then they got the
oven ready to cook him. The chief of Puamau come tell my grandfather
what they goin’ do, an’ he was some sore. He put on his Sunday clothes
he bring from Hawaii, an’ high collar an’ white necktie, an’ he go start
something. He was young and not afraid of all hell. The mate was tied in
a straw house, an’ everybody ‘roun’ was getting paralyzed with _namu
enata_—you know that cocoanut booze that is rougher than sandpaper gin
in Hawaii.
“They were scarin’ the mate almost to death when grandfather come along.
The mate could see the _umu_ heatin’ up, and the stones bein’ turned
over on which he was goin’ to be cooked. Grandfather went in the hut.
The mate was lyin’ on his back with his hands an’ feet tied with a
_purau_ rope, an’ his face was as white as a shirt. I remember
grandfather used to say how white his face was. Kekela knelt down an’
prayed for the mate, an’ he prayed that the chief would give him his
life. He prayed an’ prayed, and the chief listen an’ say nothin’. ‘Long
toward mornin’ the chief couldn’t hold out no longer, an’ said if
grandfather would give him the whale-boat he brought from Hawaii, his
gun, an’ his black coat, he would let him go. Grandfather handed them
all over, an’ took the mate to our house, and cured his wounds, and
finally got him on a boat an’ away. It was no cinch, for the American
ship had sailed away, and he had to keep the mate till another ship
came. Many time the young men of Puamau tried to get the mate, to eat
him, an’ when another ship arrived, an’ Kekela put the mate on board,
they followed in their canoes to grab him. They pretty near were killin’
grandfather for what he did.
“The mate must have told the Pres’ent of United States about his trouble
here, for grandfather got a bag of money, this watch, a new whaleboat,
an’ a fine black coat brought him by an American ship with a letter from
Mr. Lincoln. Father wrote back to Pres’ent Lincoln in Hawaiian, an’
thank him proper.”
“He must have lived to be a very old man,” I said, “because I was in
_Kawaiahao_ Church in Honolulu when he preached. He was asking for money
for this church, and he took out the watch Lincoln gave him, and banged
it on the pulpit so that we thought he would break it. He was greatly
excited. I wrote a piece about his sermon in the Honolulu paper and it
was printed in the _Nupepa Kukoa_, the Hawaiian edition of the _Honolulu
Advertiser_.”
Samuel Kekela leaped to his feet and rushed into the house, from which
he came with a yellowed copy of the _Nupepa Kukoa_, containing the
article, with Kekela’s picture. To my own astonishment I read that the
fourteen Hawaiians of the Kekela families who had accompanied the aged
pioneer to Honolulu had journeyed in a schooner captained by my own
shipmate, Lying Bill. I had seen the schooner in Honolulu Harbor.
Here was a remarkable group, a separate and alien sept, which, though
living since before Lincoln’s Presidency in this wild archipelago, had
preserved their Hawaiian inheritances and customs almost intact. This
had been due to the initial impetus given them by their ancestor, and it
had now ceased to animate them, so that they were declining into
commonplace and dull copra makers, with but a tiny spark of the flame of
piety that had lighted the soul of their progenitor.
“I am not the man my father was,” said John, the father of Jimmy. “I am
an American because I am a Hawaiian citizen. My father had us all sent
to Hawaii to be educated and to marry.”
The old Kekela had been a patriarch in Israel. Not alone had he lessened
cannibalism and the rigidity of the _tapu_ in the “great, cannibal isle
of Hiva-Oa,” but he had instructed them in foreign ways. He had acquired
lands, and now this family was the richest in the Marquesas. Only the
Catholic mission owned more acres. They were proud, and convinced that
they were anointed of the Lord, though Jimmy, being young, had no
interest at all in religion. If Kekela the first had not been a
missionary he would have been a chief or a capitalist. Hannah showed me
the photographs of the kings and queen of Hawaii since Kamehameha IV
with their signatures and affectionate words for Kekela. Now they were
disintegrating, and another generation would find them as undone as the
Marquesans. The contempt of government, trader, and casual white for all
religion had affected them, who for two generations had been Christian
aristocrats and leaders among a mass of commoners and admiring
followers. The ten commandments were as dead as the _tapus_, and the
church had become here what it is in America, a social and entertainment
focus for people bored by life. The German philosopher has said that the
apparent problem of all religions was to combat a certain weariness
produced by various causes which are epidemic. Christianity for
civilized people may be “a great storehouse of ingenuous sedatives, with
which deep depression, leaden languor, and sullen sadness of the
physiologically depressed might be relieved,” but for the Marquesans it
had been a narcotic, perhaps easing them into the grave dug by the new
dispensation brought by civilized outsiders. The gentle Jesus had been
betrayed by the culture that had developed in his name, but which had no
relation to his teaching or example. These good-willed Kekelas were as
feeble to arrest the decay of soul and body of their charges as was the
excellent Pastor Vernier or the self-sacrificing Father David. In the
dance at the governor’s the flocks, at least, had an expression,
corrupted as it was, of their desire for pleasure and forgetfulness of
the stupid present.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXI
Paul Gauguin, the famous French-Peruvian artist—a rebel against the
society that rejected him while he lived, and now cherishes his
paintings.
ABOVE the village of Atuona was the hill of Calvary, as the French named
the Catholic cemetery. Often in the late afternoon I went there to watch
the sun go down behind the peak of Temetiu, and to muse over what might
come into my mind. My first visit had been with Charles Le Moine, the
school teacher of Vaitahu, and the only painter living in the Marquesas.
We had gone to search for the grave of Paul Gauguin, the famous
French-Peruvian artist, and had found no trace of it.
“That woman who swore to keep it right has buried another lover since,”
said Le Moine, cynically.
A small man, with a long French nose, a red, pointed beard and mustache,
twinkling blue eyes, and dressed in faded denim, Le Moine, though many
years in these archipelagos, was out of the Latin Quarter. Two front
teeth missing, he had a childish air; one thought his whiskers might be
a boy’s joke. He was a _blageur_ about life, but he was very serious
about painting, and utterly without thought of else.
“I work at anything the Government will give me to earn leisure and a
bare living so as to paint here,” he said.
Alas! Le Moine was not a great artist. His pictures were so-so.
Doubtless the example and fame of Gauguin inspired him to achieve. We
had often talked of him.
“When he died,” said Le Moine, “I was here, and I attended the night
services in the church over his remains. The chief _gendarme_ or _agent
special_, like Bauda now, took charge of his house and effects. You may
imagine the care he took when I tell you that Gauguin was under sentence
to prison for reviling the _gendarme_ and the law. He auctioned off
everything with a jest, and made fun of the dead man and his work. He
said to us: ‘Gauguin is dead. He leaves many debts, and nothing here to
pay for them, but a few paintings without value. He was a decadent
painter.’ Gauguin would have expected that. I had only a few _sous_, but
was able to buy what I needed most, his brushes and palette. Peyral got
‘Niagara Falls,’ as the _gendarme_ shouted its name. It was Gauguin’s
last picture; a Brittany village in winter, snow everywhere, a few
houses and trees, and the dusk in blue and red and violet tones. He made
that, _mon ami_, when he was dying. It was his reaching back to his old
painting ground in his last thoughts. I think Peyral sold it to
Polonsky, the Tahitian banker, who was here looking to buy anything of
Gauguin. Lutz got his cane, carved by Gauguin, and the other things went
for a trifle, including the house, which was torn down for the lumber,
because nobody here wanted a studio. I admired Gauguin, but he had
nothing to do with me because I was white and of the Government. He was
absorbed with the Marquesans, and to them he was all kindness and
generosity. He was the simplest educated white man in his needs I have
ever known, and I myself, as you know, have few demands. Gauguin wanted
drink, paint and canvas. He always kept a bottle of absinthe in a little
pool by his house.”
Lying Bill had said that Gauguin was a seaman.
“’Is ’ands was as tough an’ rough as mine,” said Captain Pincher. “’E’d
been to sea on merchant ships an’ in the French navy. Gauguin was no
bloomin’ pimp like most artists. ’E knew every rope in the schooner, an’
could reef an’ steer. ’E looked like a Spaniard, an’ ’e could drink like
a Yarmouth bloater. Many a time I brought ’im absinthe to Atuona on my
ship. But ’e was a ’ard worker. I used to sit with ’im sometimes when
’e’d play ’is organ. ’E wasn’t bad at it, either. Women didn’t care much
for ’im. ’E never made much of them, but ’e ’ad plenty. A bleedin’ queer
frog, ’e was.”
“He was a _chic type_.” said Song of the Nightingale, the prisoner-cook
of the palace. Song said _chick tippee_, but he meant that Gauguin was a
good man to know. “When there was a big storm here, and all the land of
the man next to him was washed away by the river, Gauguin gave him a
piece. _Ea!_ He gave him, too, a paper which made the land his. The
family has it to-day, and they are my relatives.”
Pastor Vernier, Father David, Peyral, Flag, Song of the Nightingale, and
others had spoken of Gauguin, but his name never came to their lips
spontaneously. Being dead ten years, he was as never having been, to the
Marquesans. To Vernier his note was of small interest and to the vicar
apostolic an annoyance. In these seas when a man was dead he was
forgotten unless he had left an estate, or his ghost walked. The
Marquesan and the Paumotuan held the dead in great fear at times, but
not in reverence. The spirit of the artist had remained with his body,
and that was lost in the matted earth of the graveyard on the height.
His dust had long ago united with the cocoanut-palms that rose from his
burial-place on that lonely hill. The purple blossoms of the _pahue_
vine, which crawled over his unmarked grave and sent its shoots to
search the heart of the unhappiest of men, were the only tribute ever
laid there. The woman who had vowed to keep its formal outline unbroken
and to bedew it with her tears smiled at my recalling it. Gauguin here
was a name’s faint echo, but in America and Europe they bartered for
Gauguin’s pictures as if they were of gold, schools of imitators and
emulators were active, and novelists and critics seized upon his
utterances and deeds, his savage ways and maddening canvases, to fit
fictional characters to them, or to tell over and over again the
mystifying story of his career and his work. Here, among the fascinating
scenes nature fashions for those who love its extravagances, he died in
poverty. More is paid to-day for one of his pictures than he earned in a
lifetime.
The man Gauguin persisted as a legend wherever painting or Polynesia was
much discussed. There was in him a seed of anarchism, a harking back to
the absolute freedom of the individual, a fierce hatred of the
overlordship of money and fixed decency, of _comme il faut_, which
lightened the eye of many conforming people, as a glimpse of light
through a distant door in a dark tunnel. In this stark, brooding,
wounded _insurrecto_, this child of France and the ardent tropic of
South America, each of us who had suffered, and rebelled, if only in our
hearts, gained a vicarious expression, and an outlet for our atavistic
and fearful desires. Time that had led man from the anthropoid to the
artist had betrayed Gauguin. He had yielded to the impulse we all feel
at times, and had tried to escape from the cage formed by heredity,
habits, and the thoughts of his countrymen. Space he had conquered, and
in these wilds was hidden from the eyes of civilization, but time he
could not blot out, for he was of his age, and even its leader in the
evolution of painting. The savage in man he let take control of himself,
or willed it to be, and was spoiled by the inexorable grasp upon him of
his forebears and his decades of Europe. He was saturated with the ennui
of the West. He wanted to be primitive, and had to use morphine,
absinthe, and organ music to remain in the East. He asserted that he
wanted to be “wise and a barbarian.” He was a great artist but no
barbarian.
He wrote: “Civilization is falling from me little by little. Under the
continual contact with pebbles my feet have become hardened and used to
the ground. My body, almost constantly nude, no longer suffers from the
sun. I am beginning to think simply, to feel very little hatred for my
neighbor—rather, to love him. All the joys, animal and human, are mine.
I have escaped everything that is artificial, conventional, customary. I
am entering into the truth, into nature. In the certitude of a
succession of days like this present one, equally free and beautiful,
peace descends on me.”
He never knew peace. His was a tortured soul and body, torn by
conflicting desires, and absence of the fame and slight fortune he
craved. He had courage and stoicism. In scores of letters to his friend
Montfried he complained of his fate, of his desperate poverty, his lack
of painting materials, the _bourgeois_ whites about him, and his lack of
recognition in Europe. He wanted to return there, and Montfried had to
tell him in plain terms that he would destroy by his presence in Paris
any sale there was for his pictures. Gauguin realized that, for it
carried out his own motto, one that he had put over his door: “Be
mysterious and you will be happy!”
Gauguin was like all cultivated whites who go to the South Seas after
manhood, like me, unfitted by the poisons of civilization to survive in
a simple, semi-savage environment. We demand the toxins of our machine
bringing-up and racial ideals, as the addict his drug. Gauguin was
already forty-three when he stepped ashore at Tahiti, and fifty-three
when he came to the Marquesas, but at least he had put into a proper
_milieu_ his portrait of himself made when he said to his opponents, in
Paris: “I am a savage. Every human work is a revelation of the
individual. All I have learned from others has been an impediment to me.
I know little, but what I do know is my own.”
Paul Gauguin was dead at fifty-five. An ancestor was a centenarian. The
family was famed in its environment for its vitality, but Paul wasted
his energy in bitter blows against the steel shield of society, and
spoiled his body with the vices of both savage and civilized.
“He was smiling when I saw him dead,” said Mouth of God, who had served
him for the love of him.
That smile was his ever-brave defiance of life, but, too, a thought for
France—for the France he adored, and which he dreamed of so often though
it had rejected him. That last picture, painted in these humid Marquesas
in his house set in a grove of cocoanut-palms and breadfruit-trees, was
of Brittany and was a snow scene. He did not defeat his enemy, but sank
into his last sleep content to go because the struggle had become too
anguishing. He knew he was beaten, but he flew no flag of surrender. He
passed alone, with only the smile as a token of his final moment of
consciousness, and the emotion that stirred his soul.
As was said best by his friend and biographer, Charles Morice, Gauguin
was one of the most necessary artists of the nineteenth century. His
name now signified a distinctive conception of the nature of art, a
certain spirit of creation and mastery of strange technique, and a
revolt against established standards and methods which constituted an
opposition to the accepted thoughts and morals of art—if not a school,
at least a distinct class of graphic achievement. As the French say, it
was a _catégorie_. For the conservatives, the regular painters and
critics, he had created _un frisson nouveau_, a new shudder in art, as
Hugo said Baudelaire had in literature.
Gauguin was not a distinguished writer. “Noa Noa” was written by his
friend, Morice, in Paris, from letters to him. The painter commented
upon the book that it was “not the result of an ordinary collaboration,
that is, of two authors working in common, but that I had the idea,
speaking for non-civilized people, to contrast their characters with
ours, and I had enough originality to write it simply, just like a
savage, and to ask Morice, for his part, to put it in civilized words.”
His “Intimate Journals” are actually revelatory of the man, but “Noa
Noa” is a tropical dish seasoned with sophistries, though beautiful,
and, to a large degree, true. It is a poetical interpretation by Morice,
a Parisian, of Gauguin’s adventures in Tahiti.
Gauguin spent little time in writing. Every fiber of his weakening body
and every lucubration of his mind were bent on expressing himself in
painting, or in clay or wood, but he thought clearly and
individualistically, and wrote forcefully and with wit. He was not a
poet, nor had he felicity of language.
I revived Gauguin’s memory in the South Seas. Having known about him in
Tahiti, I was interested to find out all I could of his brief life and
sorrowful death here. Lovaina, the best known woman in the South Seas,
at whose Hotel Tiaré I lived in Tahiti, spoke of Gauguin one day. She
had heard a whisper between Temanu and Taata-Mata, two of her handmaids,
that I might leave the Tiaré, her impossible _auberge_ in Papeete, to
lodge with Madame Charbonnier or Madame Fanny.
Lovaina, three quarters American by blood, but all Tahitian in looks,
language, and heart, was not assured that her impossible hotel was the
only possible one within thousands of miles, as it was really, and she
said:
“Berina, I think more better you go see that damn house before you make
one bargain. You know what Gauguin say. He have room with Madame
Charbonnier, and eve’y day, some time night, she come make peep his
place. He had glass door between that room for him and for other man,
and he say one day to me (I drink one Pernod with him):
“‘That _sacré_ French women she make peep me. I beelong myself. I make
one damn pictu’e stop that.’
“You go look for yourse’f to-day. You see that door. Gauguin say he make
ugly so nobody make look.”
“That Gauguin was a very happy man in my _maison_,” said Madame
Charbonnier in French to me. “He and I had but one disagreement. One day
a native woman accompanied him here. I knew he must have models, but I
want no hussies in my house. I am a respectable citizeness of France. I
looked through the glass door, and I warned him, though he had paid in
advance, I must preserve my reputation. _O, la la la!_ He painted that
_mauvaise_ picture of that very Tahitian girl on my door to spite me.
_La voila!_ Is it not affrighting?”
It was a double-panelled door, and a separate painting covered each; to
the left a seated girl wearing a _pareu_ and to the right a girl playing
the _vivo_, the Tahitian flute, a female figure standing, and the white
rabbit Gauguin introduced afterward into many paintings. I might have
bought the door of Madame Charbonnier or somewhat similar windows and
doors in another house occupied by Gauguin for a hundred francs or
perhaps two or three times that much. At any rate, for an inconsiderable
sum, because they had no value as examples of the painter’s ability nor
were they intrinsically beautiful or attractive. Stephen Haweis, a
talented English artist, who was there with me, bought the door, and W.
Somerset Maugham a window, which I saw afterward in a New York gallery
for sale at some thousands of dollars.
I was mentioning Gauguin’s name at Mataiea, in Tahiti, at the house of
the chief of that district, Tetuanui, a gentleman of charming manners
and great knowledge of things Tahitian. Rupert Brooke and I had walked
to the ancient _marai_, or temple, and the poet and I had tried to
rebuild the ruin in our imagination. I had seen _marais_ better
preserved, and I had talked with many who had studied their formation
and history.
This one, very famous in the annals of Tahiti, was not far from
Tetuanui’s home, and on it had been enacted strange and bloody
sacrifices in the days of heathenry. It was on the sea-shore, and,
indeed, much of it had fallen into the water, or the surf had encroached
upon the land. We had spent some hours about it, and had wondered about
the people who had made it their cathedral a few score years ago. Here
we were living with their grandchildren. The father of the chief’s
father might have participated in the ceremonies there, might have seen
the king accept and eat the eye of a victim, or feign to do so, for
cannibalism had long passed in Tahiti even a century ago.
Walking back to Mataiea, we met the chief returning from his day’s labor
directing the repair of roads, for, though a chevalier of the Legion of
Honor, a former warrior for the French against tribes of other islands,
Tetuanui had small means, and was forced to be a civil servant of the
conquerers.
“We have been to see the _marai_,” said Brooke.
“_Oia mau anei teie?_” replied Tetuanui. “Is that so? I have not been
there for a long time. The last time was with that white painter
Gauguin. He lived near here, and one day I spoke of the _marai_, and he
asked me to show it to him. We walked down there together, but he was
disappointed that it was so broken down.”
Once again the chevalier gave me a glimpse of the barbarian. He and his
amiable wife took occasional boarders, and there were two San Francisco
salesgirls there for a week. They were shocked at our bathing nude in
the lagoon in front of the house, although we wore loin-cloths to walk
to the beach and back. They complained to the chief, who was astonished,
for Brooke was strikingly handsome, and the Tahitian girls were open in
their praise of his beauty.
“They should have seen that Gauguin,” said Tetuanui, as he begged our
pardon for telling their indignation. “He was always semi-nude and often
nude. He became as brown as a Tahitian in a few months. He liked to lie
in the sun, and I have seen him at the hottest part of the day sitting
at his easel. You know, he had a wife here in the way that the whites
take our women, and one day he and she were in swimming, and came out on
the road before putting on _pareus_. A good missionary complained of
them—it was not quite proper, truly, and the _gendarme_ warned both of
them. Gauguin was furious, for he hated the _gendarmes_ before that.”
Ten years were gone since Gauguin, having fled from Tahiti and a fate
that he could not escape, had expired here in Atuona in a singular
though anguished resignation. His _atelier_ and dwelling had been just
below Peyral’s on the opposite side of the road I trod so often to and
from the beach, and Peyral had known him as well as such a man can know
a master. Mouth of God, the husband of Malicious Gossip, saw Gauguin
dead in his house, and it was he who told me that Kahuiti, the recent
cannibal chief, had a _tiki_ made by Gauguin. I went to Taaoa, past the
Stinking Springs and the house of Mademoiselle Narbonne, to see it.
I remembered that James Huneker said, “In the huts of the natives where
cataloguing ceases, many pictures may be found.”
Kahuiti had one, and dear to the heart of that remarkable
anthropophagus. It was a striking figure of an old god, and a couple of
feet square, and in the painter’s most characteristic style.
When I asked him to sell it to me, he opened wide those large brown eyes
which had looked a hundred times at the advancing spear, and had watched
the cooking of his slain enemy. He said nothing but the words, “_Tiki
hoa pii!_ An image by my dear friend!”
I smoked a pipe with him, and went back to Atuona thoughtful.
Gauguin made many enemies, but he kept his friends even in death.
“_Toujours tout a vous de cœur_,” he had signed his letters to his one
or two friends, with rare sincerity.
Gauguin had deserted Tahiti because of his frequent quarrels with the
representatives of the Government there, and with the church. He
precipitated a similar situation in Atuona almost immediately. In his
“Intimate Journals,” he tells of it:
The first news that reached me on my arrival at Atuona was that
there was no land to be bought or sold, except at the
mission.... Even so, as the bishop was away, I should have to
wait a month. My trunks and a shipment of building lumber waited
on the beach. During this month, as you can well imagine, I went
to mass every Sunday, forced as I was to play the rôle of a good
Catholic and a railer against the Protestants. My reputation was
made, and His reverence, without suspecting my hypocrisy, was
quite willing (since it was I) to sell me a small plot of ground
filled with pebbles and underbrush for 650 francs. I set to work
courageously, and, thanks once more to some men recommended by
the bishop, I was soon settled.
Hypocrisy has its good points. When my hut was finished, I no
longer thought of making war on the Protestant pastor, who was a
well-brought-up young man with a liberal mind besides; nor did I
think any longer of going to church. A chicken had come along,
and war had begun again. When I say a chicken I am modest, for
all the chickens had arrived, and without any invitation. His
Reverence is a regular goat, while I am a tough old cock and
fairly well-seasoned. If I said the goat began it, I should be
telling the truth. To want to condemn me to a vow of chastity!
That’s a little too much; nothing like that, Lizette!
To cut two superb pieces of rose-wood and carve them after
the Marquesan fashion was child’s play for me. One of them
represented a horned devil (the bishop), the other a
charming woman with flowers in her hair. It was enough to
name her Thérèse for every one without exception, even the
school-children, to see in it an allusion to this celebrated
love affair. Even if this is all a myth, still it was not I
who started it.
Pastor Vernier told me of his acquaintance with Gauguin and of his last
days. Vernier acknowledged that he had never been his friend. I would
have known that, for to Gauguin, professors of theology were as absurd
and abhorrent as he to them.
Gauguin’s residence was a half-mile away from Vernier’s. Two years he
had lived there after ten in Tahiti. Always disappointment, always
bodily suffering, and the reaction from alcohol and drugs; an invalid a
dozen years.
“He was a savage, but a charming man,” said Pastor Vernier to me. “I
could have nothing to say to him, ordinarily, and he did not seek me
out. He had no respect for the law and less for the _bon Dieu_. The
Catholics especially he quarreled with, for he made a caricature of the
Bishop, and of a native woman, about whom there was a current scandal.
It was common talk, and the natives laughed uproariously, which angered
the bishop greatly. It was unfit to be seen by a savage. You can imagine
it!
“I had not seen him for some time when I had a note from Gauguin,
scrawled on a piece of wrapping-paper. It said:
“Will it be asking too much for you to come to see me? My sight
is all of a sudden leaving me. I am very ill, and cannot move.”
“I went down the trail to his house, and found Mouth of God with him, as
also the old Tioka. His legs were terribly ulcerated. He had on a red
loin-cloth and a green tam-o’-shanter cap. His skin was as red as fire
from the eczema he had long been afflicted with, and the pain must have
been very severe. He shut his lips tight at moments, but he did not
groan. He talked of art for an hour or two, passionately advocating his
ideas, and without reference to his approaching end. I think he sent for
me for conversation and no more. It was then he presented me with books
and his portrait of Mallarmé.
“We chatted long and I was filled with admiration for the courage of
Gauguin and his prepossession with painting, at the expense of his
_doleur_. About a fortnight later I went back when Tioka summoned me,
and found him worse, but still forgetful of everything else but his art.
It was the eighth of May Tioka came again. Gauguin now was in agony. He
had had periods of unconsciousness. He must have known his danger, but
he talked fitfully of Flaubert and of Poe, of ‘Salammbô’ and of
‘Nevermore.’ When I said adieu he was praising Poe as the greatest poet
in English.
“A few hours afterward I heard the shouts of the natives that Gauguin
was dead.
“‘_Haoe mate!_’ they called to me. ‘The white is dead.’
“I found Gauguin on his cot, one leg hanging down to the floor. Tioka
was urging him in Marquesan to speak, and was rubbing his chest. I took
his arms and tried to cause respiration, but in vain. He was already
beginning to grow cold. Do you know, _Monsieur Americain_, that the
vicar went down there at night before I was aware of it, and, though
Gauguin despised him and his superstitions, forced an entrance and, had
the body carried to the Catholic Cemetery, with mass, candles, and other
mummeries.”
The good Vicar, _Père_ David, had another tale. He told it over our wine
at the mission. My House of the Golden Bed was but the toss of a mango
away, and we often discussed the fathers, especially Anthony, Jerome,
and Francis of Assisi.
“It is not true,” he said, plucking his long, black beard nervously, as
was his wont. “Gauguin was born in the church. Did he not tell me he was
the descendant of a Borgia? He was at the Jesuits’ school. The devil got
hold of him early. Ah, that France is punished for its breaking of the
Concordat. Napoleon knew what was needed. Gauguin did make much trouble
here. I do not care what he did to the Government. That Government is
usually atheist. But he made an obscene image of the bishop. He never
entered our mission, after he had secured his land from us, and labor to
build his house. He derided the sacred things of religion, and when he
came to die he sent for the Protestant. I had hoped always that he would
recant his atheism and change his ways. He was immoral, but then so is
nearly everybody here except the fathers, and the nuns. That very
pastor—Non! I guard my secret. _Mais_, it is not a secret, for all the
world knows. N’importe! I close my lips.”
He was determined to be charitable, but, as for me, I knew the charge
well, and had disproved it by personal research. John Kekela, the
Hawaiian, had sworn on the Bible given his father by Kalakaua, the last
Hawaiian king, that it was a lie, and Kekela would know for sure, and
would not kiss the book falsely for fear of death or, at least, the
dreaded _fefe_, which makes one’s legs as big as those of an elephant.
“But despite the antagonism of Gauguin to the church and his immorality,
you took charge of his body and gave him a Catholic funeral,” I said.
“Who am I to judge the soul of a man?” replied the vicar, deprecatingly,
his right hand lifted in appeal. “He was alone in his last moments.
Doubtless the Holy Virgin or perhaps even the patron of the Marquesas,
the watchful Joan of Arc, aided him. Each one has his guardian angel who
never deserts him. When the shadows of death darken the room, then does
that angel fight with the demons for the soul of his charge. I learned
that Gauguin was dead from the catechist. Daniel Vaimai. It was then
evening of the day he had died, and I had been ministering to a sick
woman in Hanamate, an hour’s ride away. I met Daniel Vaimai at the
cross-roads and he informed me of Gauguin’s death. I felt deeply sorry
that he had not had the holy oils in his extremity, and had not received
absolution after confession, but the devil is like a roaring lion of
Afrique, seeking what he may devour.”
“He is especially active here,” I ventured, interested as I am in all
such vital matters. The vicar, who had been talking animatedly and
gazing at an invisible congregation, fixed his eyes on me.
“Here in the Marquesas and wherever whites are,” he replied acridly.
“But to return to Gauguin! I immediately arranged for the interment of
the dead man the next morning. In this climate decay follows death fast.
As a matter of fact, some of us, including two of the _Frères de la
doctrine chrètienne_, had hastened to Gauguin’s house when his death was
announced the day before. They had planned his funeral for two o’clock
the next morning, but we made it a trifle earlier, and removed him to
the church of Atuona shortly after one. There we had mass for the dead,
and did the poor _cadavre_ all honor, or, rather, we thought of the soul
that had fled to its punishment or reward. We carried the body to
Calvary and put it in the earth.”
“I find no stone nor any mark at all of his grave,” I said.
“_Peut-être_, that may well be,” said the vicar calmly. “I do not know
if one was placed. He had no kin here nor intimates other than natives.”
“But Pastor Vernier says Gauguin had asked long ago to be buried with
civil rites only, and that he had wanted to assist in them. He says that
you deceived him as to the hour of removal to the church, and that when
he arrived at two o’clock Gauguin was already in the mission which he
could not enter.”
The vicar shrugged his shoulders.
“I cannot enter into a controversy as to what Vernier says. Gauguin was
of Catholic parentage. Have I not said he claimed to be a descendant of
a Borgia, and Borgias were popes? What more or less could the church
have done? Stern as that Mother may be to wayward children in life, she
spares no effort even in death to comfort those remaining, and to help
by prayer and ceremony the spirit that wrestles with purgatory. We ever
give the benefit of the doubt. A second before he succumbed to that
heart stroke, or the laudanum, Gauguin may have asked for forgiveness.
Only God knows that, and in His infinite mercy He may have bestowed on
him that final penitence. You will not forget the thief on Calvary.”
That villainous Song of the Nightingale might have given success to my
quest for the grave of Gauguin. I cannot remember now that I ever
mentioned to him my looking for it. He pointed it out to a recent
governor of the Marquesas Islands, Dr. L. Sasportas, who, in a letter to
Count Charles du Parc, now of San Francisco, tells of it:
Gauguin, of whom you wrote, had not departed from the tradition
of adopting native customs; and unfortunately, his influence
among the Marquesans was rather bad than good. I have gathered
some details about him, which may interest those who know that
sad end of this talented painter who came to the Marquesas, to
escape the civilized world, its taxes, ugliness and evils. He
found here the government, police, the tax collector, etc. If
these islands enjoy an eternal summer, disease is not lacking in
them.
Gauguin, morphinomaniac, lived close to a bottle of absinthe
that he kept fresh in his well. He was condemned to serve in
jail for three months, and one morning he was found dead near-by
a phial of laudanum. He committed suicide. Nothing remains of
him. His house has been demolished, and his land is a field of
potatoes. His last paintings have been carried away, not by
admirers, but by merchants who did not ignore the value of his
work.
My wife and I went once to a little French cemetery which lies
on top of the hill and among a hundred Christian tombs we looked
for Gauguin’s. About three quarters of the crosses, worm-eaten,
had fallen. One after the other we threw them over to find the
name of Gauguin. It was in vain. After we had come down, we
inquired of our cook, prisoner and drunkard, who lived here at
the time of Gauguin. We learned that the tomb was for a long
time abandoned. We finally found it, and we had a wreath of
natural flowers that he loved so much, rose-laurel, hibiscus,
gardenia and others, placed upon the spot. They are decayed now,
alas, as is Gauguin.
That again was Gauguin. Fleeing from Europe, from civilization, from the
_redingote_, and even there, in that most distant isle, thousands of
miles from any mainland, being pursued by the _gendarme_! Had he not
abandoned Tahiti after a decade for a wilder spot, yet a thousand miles
farther, hidden in a bywater of the vast ocean, and in the “great
cannibal isle of Hiva-Oa” been harassed by the law and the church?
He saw there was no escape, and that, after all, the fault was in him.
He demanded the impossible from a world corrupted to its horizon. He,
too, could say of himself, as he wrote of the Tahitians, and then of the
Marquesans:
The gods are dead and I am dead of their death.
“He had verses on that god he made for his garden,” said Le Moine. “They
began:
‘Les dieux sont mort et Atuona meurt de leur mort.’
That was it. Gauguin was like the Marquesans of his, of my, village of
Atuona. Their old gods were dead, and they perished of the lack of
spiritual substance.
Le Moine was to go mad, and to die, as I would have if I had not fled.
The air was one of death.
“Le soleil autrefois qui l’enflammait l’endort
D’un sommeil désolé d’affreux sursauts de rêve,
Et l’effroi du futur remplit les yeux de l’Eve.
Dorée: elle soupire en regardant son sein,
Or, stérile scellé par les divins desseins.”
When I returned to America and wrote of Gauguin, I received a letter
from his son:
... novel couldn’t hurt Gauguin as an artist. We men aren’t
insulted when apes yelp at us; but we are sometimes obliged to
live amongst them, so when you defend Gauguin against the
quadrumanes, you make it easier for his son to move in their
midst.
I therefore thank you and beg you to believe me your most
grateful friend and admirer,
EMILE GAUGUIN.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXII
Monsieur l’Inspecteur des Etablissements Français de l’Océanie—How the
School House was Inspected—I Receive My Congé—The Runaway
Pigs—Mademoiselle Narbonne goes with Lutz to Papeete to be
Married—Père Siméon, about whom Robert Louis Stevenson wrote.
ONE must admit that the processes of government in my islands were
simple. Since only a couple of thousand Marquesans, of an original
myriad, were alive, after three score years of colonialism, officialdom
had lessened according to the mortuary statistics. Sovereignty was
evidenced by the tricolor that Song of the Nightingale occasionally
raised in the palace garden, while _Commissaire_ Bauda and two
_gendarmes_ aided the merry governor in exercising a lazy authority.
There was no hospital, nor school to distract the people from copra
making, and, excepting for the court sessions of Saturdays, to hear
moonshine cases, or a claim against Chinese rapacity, we might have
thought ourselves living in an ideal state of anarchy.
One morning we awoke to the reality of empire and the solicitude of
Paris. Flag, the _mutoi_, peered through the windowless aperture of my
cabin, shortly after dawn, and announced, with the pompousness of a
bumbailiff, that the French gunboat _Zélée_ was at Tahauku, and would
shortly land _Monsieur l’Inspecteur des Etablissements Français de
l’Océanie_. Flag called the visitor _’Sieu Ranisepatu_, and in pantomime
indicated his rank and power. The Zélée sent him ashore at the stone
steps of Lutz’s store, and departed for Vaitahu, ostensibly for a fresh
water-supply, but, as Painter Le Moine said with an oath, the commander
had gone to Le Moine’s adopted village, Vaitahu, to make love to
Vanquished Often, the artist’s model.
The inspector of colonies occupied the spare room at the palace and our
pleasant parties were suspended. He was a gross, corpulent man, in a
colonel’s gilded uniform. One could not see his collar, front or back,
for the rolls of his fat neck and his spacious beard. The _tapis_ was
full of troublesome affairs. The governor and Bauda had fallen out. Rum
was responsible. The governor had given Taiao Koe, Flatulent Fish, one
of my tattooed neighbors, a permit to buy a gallon of rum for Lutz.
Flatulent Fish lightened his jug too much. _Commissaire_ Bauda met him
wobbling from port to starboard on his horse, and took the jug. That for
Bauda, censor of morals! But the same day, during the difficult work of
repairing Bauda’s arm-chair, Bauda cheered the natives with rum, and
two, made utterly reckless, invaded the palace garden in search of more.
The inspector was stupefied, and the governor drove them away with
threats of prison and indignant exclamations that such a thing had never
happened before. Of course, Bauda had to let the inspector know of his
action in saving Flatulent Fish from a more wobbly state, and he did so
in ignorance of his chair-repairers having betrayed to the inspector his
own liberality. The governor did not fancy Flatulent Fish’s permit for
rum being brought before the inspector’s notice. So the great man had to
decide whether the Governor or the _Commissaire_ was supreme in rum
matters, rum, of course, being absolutely forbidden to the natives.
After two days, this matter was settled. The inspector became restless.
Every day he said, “I must see the schoolhouse. It is necessary that I
see that important building.”
He meant a tumbledown, unoccupied cabin up the valley, a dirty, cheap,
wooden building, bare planks and an iron roof.
Rain did not permit the inspector to go at once, for he did not stir out
of the Governor’s house while it was wet; but after three days of fair
weather he said very firmly, “I will visit the schoolhouse. It is my
duty and I wish to report on that.”
So, with the governor, he advanced up the broken road to the river,
which must be crossed to go up the valley. The river was two feet deep.
There were crossing-stones placed for him, but he was stout and they
were three feet apart. One must jump from one stone to the other. The
governor, in boots, plunged into the purling rill. The inspector cried
to the governor, “_Mais, mon brave, prenez garde aux accidents!_”
“It is not dangerous,” said the governor, who in five strides had
reached the other bank.
“But I may get my shoes wet,” said the inspector.
“It is better to take them off,” advised the governor.
“Yes, that is true. Naturally one removes one’s shoes when one crosses a
river on foot. And, in such a case as this, one must take chances. It is
imperative that I inspect the schoolhouse. _Mais, nom d’un chien!_ Where
shall I sit to take off my shoes?”
The governor suggested a certain boulder, but it was too low; another
was too high. But, after inspecting many boulders, one was found that
suited the _embonpoint_ of the big man. He bent over, then looked at the
river, and sat up straight.
“It is a wooden schoolhouse?” he queried.
“Yes, plain wood,” said the executive.
“And, _par conséquence_, it has a roof and a floor and sides, and maybe
some wooden desks for the scholars. Steps to enter, _n’est-ce pas?_ And
a _tableau noir_, to write the alphabet on. As a matter of fact, there
is little difference between schoolhouses. You have seen that
schoolhouse, _mon ami_?
“_Oui, Monsieur l’Inspecteur_, I have seen it. It is exactly as you
describe it. _Très simple_, and the blackboard is there, but a trifle
disfigured.”
“Ah, the blackboard is in bad condition! _Bien_, we must remedy that. I
am well satisfied. I will return to your house. These stones are very
hot.”
The _bon homme_ marched back, puffing, combing his fan-like whiskers
with his fingers, with that quietly exultant air of one who has done his
duty despite all risks.
The _Zélée_ returning, and this being the total of his inspection, he
ordered it to speed forthwith to Tahiti, where, doubtless, as in Paris,
he recited the dangers and difficulties of life in the cannibal islands.
He forgot to have the blackboard repaired. I learned by letter from
Malicious Gossip, two years after his notation, of its deplorable state.
The ingratitude of colonies toward their foster-mothers is proverbial.
Our own fat men, secretaries of war, senators, and congressmen, make as
cursory examinations of our American vassals in the Pacific and
Atlantic, and with as little help to them.
[Illustration:
Brunneck, the boxer and diver
]
[Illustration:
Photo from L. Gauthier
A village maid in Tahiti
]
[Illustration:
A Samoan maiden of high caste
]
The inspector’s _congé_ was almost synchronous with mine. The _Saint
François_ of Bordeaux, the first merchant steamship in the Marquesas,
arrived from Tahiti, to swing about the ports of my archipelago and
return to Papeete. My heart ached at leaving; the tendrils of the
purple-blossomed _pahue_-vine were about it. How could I forsake forever
my loved friends of Atuona and Vaitahu, Malicious Gossip, Mouth of God,
Vanquished Often, Seventh Man Who Is So Angry, Great Fern, Ghost Girl,
and the little leper lass, Many Daughters? I must make my choice, and
swiftly. If I stayed much longer, I would never live again in America;
the jungle would creep over me and I should lie, some day, on Calvary’s
hill near the lost remains of Paul Gauguin. There was Le Brunnec, the
best of the whites, but he was a Breton peasant, born to the sun and
simplicity and nature’s riches; I was of the shade and artificiality, of
pavements and libraries. Nor could I show an unabraded surface to these
savage tropics as did Lutz. His Prussianism, his Lutheranism, preserved
him cold, and ready to escape at fortune’s opening. My Irish forebears
and American generations gave me no such buckler, nor ambition.
The one passenger of the _Saint François_ who came ashore on our beach
weighted the balance for America. He was Brunneck, an American swimmer,
diver, and boxer, whom I had seen Sarah Bernhardt kiss when at Catalina
Island he rose through the clear waters of Avalon Bay to her
glass-bottomed boat and presented her with an abalone shell. I traded
him my coffee-pot and utensils for the memory of Sarah’s moment of
abandon, and Brunneck tipped the scales for me toward the America he had
deserted. He was an atavist in a grass skirt and a crown of ferns,
hatless, purseless, a set of boxing-gloves his only impedimenta. I could
not equal his serenity, that of a civilized being again in harmony with
the earth. I hurried aboard the steamship in Tahauku roadstead to decide
my vacillation.
By dark, the Tahauku River, into which some weary cloud had emptied,
sent a menacing current down the roadstead. The steamship rolled and
swung wildly. As madder grew the fresh torrent, the anchors dragged, and
the vessel drifted broadside toward the rocky cliff. Steam was down and
the engines would not turn. The captain yelling from the bridge, the
Breton sailors in noisy _sabots_, prancing alarmedly about the decks, a
search-light playing upon the rocks, and lighting the groups of natives
watching from the headlands, the shouting and swearing in French and
Breton with a word or two for my benefit in English, all made a dramatic
incident with a spice of danger.
The _Saint François_ swung until the rail on which I stood was four feet
from the jagged wall. A wild chant rose from the Marquesans on shore in
the moment of most peril. I made ready to leap, but soon heard the hum
of the screw as it began fighting the current. We gained little by
little, and, once clear of the rocks, pointed the prow for the
Bordelaise Channel and comparative safety. The cargo boats had not been
hoisted aboard, and they banged to pieces as, urged by the rushing
river, we drove through the door of the bay and out to sea.
I lay down on a bench, and when I awoke at dawn we were heading back for
Tahauku to finish loading. Exploding Eggs was beside me. I had not known
he was aboard. The adventures of the night, the fires, the engines, the
electric lights, and the danger had delighted him.
“_Sacré!_” muttered the red-faced captain at breakfast. “These Marquesas
are as bad as the Paumotus.”
No lighthouses, charts inaccurate, shore-guides lacking, treacherous
tides, winds, currents, reefs, and passages. Lying Bill said it took
“bloody near a gen’us to escape with his life after thirty years of
navigation in these waters.”
The Polynesians believed that souls animate flowers and plants, that
these are organized beings. For pigs, they had a special heaven,
_Ofetuna_. Each pig had a distinct and arbitrary name, which was never
changed, though men changed their names often.
On the deck of the _Saint François_ were half a dozen slender pigs that
had once played about my _paepae_ and were now engaged in resisting the
monopolistic tendencies of Alphonse, a ram bought from the trader. By
uniting, they made his habitat painful, and his outcries brought the
steward, who attempted to correct the ram, but was butted into profanity
and flight.
“You’re no lam’ o’ goodness! You’ll be chops mighty soon!” the negro
shouted, and threw a pan at him. The ram bolted, knocked open a swinging
port, and, followed by the pork, dived into the bay. He may have sensed
the threat of the steward.
“_A la chasse!_ _A la chasse!_” ordered the captain from the bridge.
“_Tonnerre de Dieu!_ Our meat is going ashore.”
If a boat coming to the _Saint François_ had not intercepted the bold
deserters, they would have succeeded in their break for liberty, and
probably have taken to the wilds. The recovering them was no easy task,
but, diverted from the rocks, they were run down, after half an hour of
fierce commands through a megaphone from the captain. They were fast
swimmers, being encumbered by no fat. Their adventure dispelled for me
the myth that pigs cannot swim. The story ran that in swimming pigs cut
their throats with their hoofs.
I had recognized in the English-African accent of the steward the lingo
of the West-India negro, and oddly, I remembered having seen the man
himself at Kowloon, in China, where he had been bartender at the Kowloon
Hotel. With no word of French, and ten days aboard from Tahiti, the
black man was bursting with conversation. Serving me with a bottle of
Bordeaux beer, he spoke of his hardships, and of familiar figures of his
happier days at Kowloon:
“Yes, sir, men can stand more than animiles,” he said. “They can, sir,
work or play. You remember that goriller that Osborne had in the Kowloon
Hotel grounds? He perished, sir, from his drinking habits. He took his
reg’lar with the soldiers and tourists, and his favoryte tonoc was gin
and whiskey mixed, but after he was started, he would ‘bibe near
anything ’toxicating. You remember how big he was? Big as Sikh, that
goriller was. He was a African ape like the white perfesser says he is
descended from.
“Week before Chrismus, that infantry regiment in barricks, in Kowloon,
kept him late every night, and I seen him climb to his house in that
tree hardly able to hold onto the limbs. Chrismus eve he let nothing
slip his paws. He began with the punch—you remember, sir, the punch I
used to make? and he overdone it, though he had a stummick like a India
major’s. He drank with the officers and he drank with the Tommies. When
I opened the bar, Chrismus morning, he was dead on the ground. He hadn’t
never been able to reach his home. Osborne gave him a Christian berrial
under the comquat trees, but as sure as you’re born every officer and
soldier turned up for more drink that night. Men can stand more than
animiles, sir.”
All morning I sat on the deck and took my fill of the scenes on either
shore, while copra was hoisted aboard from canoes and boats. Exploding
Eggs was examining minutely the wonders of the steamship, reporting to
me occasionally some astounding discovery. Until then I had refused to
consider taking him away from his people, but, in a moment of
selfishness, I drew a plat of America, to attract his thirteen
years,—the lofty buildings, motor-cars, telephones, ice and ice-cream,
snow and sleighs, roller-skates and moving pictures. He had seen none of
these, nor read of them, but, nevertheless, the fear of homesickness
caused him, after a few minutes to say:
“_Aoe metai, Nakohu mata!_” which meant, “No good; Exploding Eggs would
die!”
Characteristic of all primitive peoples was this nostalgia, and, far
from being sentiment easily smothered, it was more often than physical
ailment the predisposing, or even actual, cause of death when they were
separated from their homes. The Pitcairn youth who died in California
and the Easter Islanders who could not endure even their exile in Tahiti
were examples. The Maori Napoleon, Te Rauparaha, gazed upon his old
home, Kawhia, and wept in farewell. His legendary song says:
O my own home! Ah me! I bid farewell to you,
And still, at distance, bid farewell.
Before noon, I was overcome by a longing to see Atuona again. The voices
of the friends who had chanted their grief were in my ears. I landed at
Tahauku in one of the copra boats which were coming and going, and
walked along the cliffs until I came within sight of the beach where, so
often, I had ridden the surf. I went at a fast pace down the hill,
hoping for a familiar face. At a point overlooking the cove, that very
spot Stevenson thought the most beautiful on earth, I heard shouts and
merry laughter.
I moved to where I could survey the spot. There was a group of natives,
half the village, at least, and in the center of the chattering crowd
was Brunneck, naked to the waist, boxing with Jimmy Kekela, the
Hawaiian. The yellow hair of the American gleamed against his sun-burnt
skin, as he toyed with the amateur. Ghost girl, an absorbed spectator,
held the wreath of the American. Mouth of God, Haabuani, and Great Fern
were dancing about the circle in glee. Exploding Eggs, who had
accompanied me, left me without a word, and ran to the ring. I stood
fifty feet away, unnoticed. A new god had been thrown up by the sea. I
returned to the _Saint François_ more content to leave.
When I awoke from a siesta, in the late afternoon, I found preparations
for immediate departure. The anchors were being hauled short, the
hatches battened down, and the cargo booms uphoisted. We waited only the
final accounts from Lutz. He brought them himself in the last boat, in
which were also Mademoiselle Narbonne and two nuns. She was again in
black, and greeted me in a distraught manner with “_Kaoha!_” the native
salutation, as if in her hour of departure from her own island she clung
to its language. She went below to the cabins with the sisters, and only
after the screw had revolved and we turned head for the sea did the
three come on deck.
Tears suffused her eyes as we passed the opening of Atuona Bay. When
Exploding Eggs and others, including Song of the Nightingale, shouted
“_Kaoha_” to us from their canoes, she put her head upon the breast of
Sister Serapoline and wept passionately. The night drew on as, after
many bursts of her sad emotion, she leaned exhausted on the bosom so
long her shelter. In the flooding moonlight, she slept, while the nun
placidly counted her rosary.
The _Saint François_, steering in a smooth sea for Taiohae, on the
island of Nuku-hiva, the captain, Lutz, and I gathered about the table
for supper and wine. The vessel had narrowly escaped shipwreck in the
Paumotus, and had lain for six days on a reef while the barrels of
cement, intended for some improvement at Atuona, were thrown overboard
to lighten her.
Lutz did not seek any moment of intimacy with me, and said nothing to
explain Mademoiselle Narbonne’s presence aboard. Conforming to strict
native etiquette, he paid no attention to her, and a stranger would have
thought he hardly knew her. Lutz said that he had business affairs in
Tahiti and had jumped at the chance of a quick passage in the steamship.
At dawn, we were off the island of Nuku-hiva; high up on a green
mountain-side, we saw a silver thread which we knew to be the waterfall
of Typee Valley, the valley in which Hermann Melville had lived in
captivity and happiness. We rounded Cape Martens, and, as the sun lit
the rocky forelands guarding the bay of Taiohae, the morning breeze
brought from Typee the delicious odor of the wild flowers, the _hinano_,
the _tiare_, and the _frangipani_. This beach of Taiohae, months before,
I had visited in a whale-boat from Atuona. I hoped to see again my
friend, the good priest, Père Siméon Delmas, who had held the citadel of
God here for half a century.
In the first boat ashore went the captain and Lutz, and, when after
breakfast I asked the mate to be put on land, Mademoiselle Narbonne,
seeing me descending the ladder, joined me.
“Where do you go?” she asked, when we set foot on the sand.
“I have a message for Prince Stanislao from Le Brunnec,” I answered.
“I must be back before the nuns miss me, but I will go with you,” she
said.
Leaving the settlement, we were soon on a trail with which I was
familiar and reached a little wood. She took me by the sleeve.
“_Attendez_,” she half whispered. “I am going to be married to Monsieur
Lutz in Papeete. He is a foreigner, and the priest could not marry us.
At Papeete the judge can do it. The nuns are going with me to make sure.
They oppose, but I am determined. It is my one chance. Tell me,
American, do I make a mistake?”
“Do you love him?”
“Love him?” she said hesitatingly. “I do not know what love is. The nuns
have not taught me. Always it has been Joan of Arc, or the Sacred Heart
of Jesus. I want love and freedom, but I am afraid of staying there at
Taaoa alone with those two old women. They are true _Canaques_, and
would make me like them, and I am afraid of the convent. _Mon dieu!_ I
am puzzled by life!”
“Come!” I said, “you will have an hour of light-heartedness with
Stanislao. I am puzzled, too.”
Hardly more than a youth, Stanislao was the last of the blood royal of
the family that had ruled the Marquesas. Temoana had been the only king.
The Marquesans were communists, with chiefs, and had not the corroding
egocentrism of nationality until the French crowned Temoana. He had been
one of the few travelers from here. Kidnapped, a dime-museum man in
foreign seaports, he returned on a whaler to find favor with the bishop
and to be set on a Catholic throne. Prince Stanislao was not even chief
of Taiohae, for a half-Hawaiian, of the Kekela tribe, had that office,
and did the French policeman’s chores.
We entered the house of Stanislao and met, besides him, Antoinette, an
odalisque, most beautiful of dancers, who, like Ghost Girl, flitted from
island to island by the grace of her charms. I had known her in the
Cocoanut House in Papeete and her sister, Caroline. Neither she nor
Stanislao accepted the gospel of Christianity. Her warm blood had in it
an admixture of French and Italian, giving an archness and spice to her
manner and a coquetry to her eyes—black and dancing—that maddened many.
In the days about the fourteenth of July, when the French at Tahiti
celebrated the Fall of the Bastille, she was a prize exhibit, for then
governors and bankers, deacons and acolytes, lost the grace of God.
These three, Barbe, Antoinette, and Stanislao, were extraordinary in
their unity with the teeming vivid life here, the ferns and orchids and
flowers on the sward, the palms and breadfruit in the grove. By the
alchemy of the brilliant morning and the company of this pair of
youthful lovers, Barbe’s mood was suddenly transmuted into joyousness. I
took an accordion off a shelf, and played the _upaupahura_ of Tahiti.
Without a moment’s hesitation, and with no sense of consciousness, the
three danced on the grass.
Carlyle praises that countryman who, matching the boast of a doctor that
“his system was in high order,” answered that, for his part, “he had no
system.”
Few mortals, it is to be feared, are permanently blessed with
that felicity of “having no system”; nevertheless, most of us,
looking backward on young years, may remember seasons of a light
aerial translucency and elasticity and perfect freedom; the body
had not yet become the prison-house of the soul, but was its
vehicle and implement, like a creature of the thought, and
altogether pliant to its bidding. We knew not that we had limbs,
we only lifted, hurled and leapt; through eye and ear and all
avenues of sense came clear, unimpeded tidings from without, and
from within issued clear victorious forces. We stood as in the
center of Nature, giving and receiving in harmony with it all;
unlike Virgil’s husbandman, “too happy because we did not know
our blessedness.”
Stanislao seized the instrument and I danced. We four were the spirits
of a rare and vital esthetic, a harmony with being that denied all
knowledge but that of our acute and delicately-poised senses of warmth,
delicious odors, fresh colors of the plants, and mutual attraction. The
ship, Lutz, the nuns, heaven and hell, the _Taua_ and the _Tapus_ were
forgotten by me and by Barbe in the glowing hour of dance and play.
Tired we threw ourselves on the grass and drank from the cocoanuts which
Stanislao climbed a tree to bring us. The prince told us, with solemnity
in which Marquesans speak of olden things, an incident related to him by
his uncle:
“A French governor here forbade the girls to go to the war-ships in the
bay. They ruined discipline, he said. Nevertheless, three daughters of a
powerful chief swam out to a war vessel. The commander, discovering them
in the morning, sent them ashore to the governor, who put them in prison
for three days.
“Their father’s rage was terrible. It had ever been the custom for the
young women to visit the ships, he said, and that his daughters should
be the victims of a governor’s whim, abetted by French sailors
themselves, was a deadly insult.
“He sent a message to the governor: ‘I am a chief who has eaten my
enemies all my life. I will wash the hands of my daughters in French
blood.’
“The sailors were forbidden by their officers to leave the beach. They
had been going up the river to bathe in shady spots, but they were
warned of danger and a line was drawn beyond which they were not to go.
A guard was stationed a little higher up the stream, and for weeks the
barrier was not crossed. But sailors know no authority when woman
beckons,”—it has been so since Jason sought the Golden Fleece,—“and,
when, through the glade, they saw the alluring forms of the three
sisters, the governor’s orders were damned as tyranny. They outwitted
the guard and climbed the trail to the paepae of their inamoratas. The
chief and his warriors trapped six of them after a struggle. One sailor,
a man famed for strength, killed several with his hands. They were
outnumbered and were brought, some wounded and some dead, to an altar up
the valley, and there the daughters, at the command of their father,
bathed their hands in the men’s blood, as he had sworn. Parts of the
bodies were eaten and the remains fed to the pigs.
“The governor had troops brought ashore to pursue the chief. For a year
he evaded them, but then Vaekehu, the widow of Temoana, sent him word to
come to Taiohae and be shot. He obeyed, of course, and met death near
the hill of the fort.
“That was the palace of Queen Vaekehu,” said the prince, pointing up the
hill. It was by a pool, under a gigantic banyan, a lonely site, a
palisade of cocoanuts and tamarinds not availing to soften the gloomy
impression. Long before she died the queen forsook her royal residence
for the shelter of the convent, where all day she told her beads, or sat
in silent contemplation.
Bishop Dordillon who had written my dictionary, had given the queen a
Trinity, a Mother of God, and a band of saints to dwell upon, and more,
a bottomless pit of fire, with writhing sufferers and devils from it
ever at her ear to whisper distraction and temptation.
Mademoiselle Narbonne, hearing a warning whistle of the _Saint
François_, bethought her of her strange position, of the sisters and of
Lutz. She trembled, turned pale, and begged to be excused as she started
running to the beach to catch a boat about to shove off. I also bade
good-by to the two, with a sigh for their fleeting felicity, and
strolled to the Catholic mission.
_Père_ Siméon was seated at a table under an umbrageous _hao_ tree,
writing. He was in a frayed and soiled cassock of black. His hair was
white, and his beard grizzled, both long and uncut and flowing over his
religious gown. His face was broad and rubicund, and his remarkable
eyes—a deep, shining brown, eyes of childish faith—proclaimed him poet
and artist. Aged, he had yet the strength and heartiness of middle age,
and when I greeted him he rose and kissed me with warmth.
“Ah,” he exclaimed, “Monsieur O’Brien, you have returned to hear more of
Jeanne d’Arc, is not that so? You have been too long in Atuona. You
should stay in Taiohae, and see what we have here. We go along well.
Joan of Arc looks after us.”
We entered the sitting-room of the mission, and were soon with a bottle
of wine, and cigarettes, in a discussion of affairs.
I asked to see any recent poems he had written, and, blushingly, he
handed me the paper over which he had been bending.
“There has been an excess of drinking recently,” he said ruefully, as he
took a sip of his mild claret. I read his stanzas aloud:
“Comment peut-on pour un moment d’ivresse,
Par le démon se laisser entrainer?
Que de regrets suivraient cette faiblesse!
Je n’ai qu’une âme et je veux la sauver.
“Oh! que je crains la perte de mon âme!
Pour la sauver je saurai tout braver,
J’ai mon refrain pour quiconque me blâme,
Je n’ai qu’une âme et je veux la sauver.”
Now I have no skill in rime, but, inspired by his ready gift, I took his
paper and wrote what might be called a free translation. I read it to
him as follows:
Oh, how can a man for a moment’s bibacity
Let the demon take hold of his soul?
Remorse is the fruit of such wicked vivacity;
Hell follows the flowing bowl.
“Oh, how I fear that I weakly may lose it,
And, to guard it, will everything brave!
I’ll tell the world that would tempt me to bruise it;
I have but one soul to save.
“_Hélas_!” commented the priest, “I cannot understand one word of it.
Doubtless it surpasses my poor lines in excellence. “I will multiply
copies of this poem on my hectograph,” said _Père_ Siméon, “and I will
distribute them where they will do most good.”
“Captain Capriata will receive one?” I ventured, recalling that in the
procession in honor of Joan of Arc’s anniversary the old Corsican
skipper had fallen with the banner of the Maid of Orleans.
_Père_ Siméon’s face glowed with zeal.
“I will name no names,” he said, “but Capriata is a good man and comes
often to church now.”
For months, I had desired to ask a question of _Père_ Siméon, since Lutz
had told me that Robert Louis Stevenson had written about him. The
trader had shown me his copy of “In the South Seas,” and had pointed out
the error of the printer, who had made Stevenson’s “Father Simeon
Delmas” “Father Simeon Delwar.”
“_Père_ Siméon,” I said, “a writer about the islands mentions you in his
book. He was here a long time ago in a little yacht, the _Casco_, and he
says that he went with you from Hatiheu, to a native High Place, and
that you named the trees and plants for him. You had a portfolio, he
said, from which you read.”
The missionary stopped a moment, and plucked his beard, inquiringly.
“There have been many come here, in fifty years,” he said slowly,
“yachtsmen and students. I do not recall the name Stevenson.”
Something pricked his recollection, and he took me into the rectory and
produced his portfolio.
“Here is the list; I must have read that author,” he said.
“You gave an abstract of the virtues of the trees and plants, Stevenson
says in his volume.”
“_Le voilà_” replied the priest. “Stevenson? Do you mean perhaps Louis,
who was a consumptive?”
He made a rapid movement of the hand to his face, and drew upon the air
a mustache and imperial, a slender figure with a slight stoop—in a word,
the very shadow of the master of romance.
“He was much with Stanislao, the king’s son. He was _très distingué_. He
was here but a little time. However, I remember him well, because he was
very _sympathique_, and a gentleman.
“I will tell you why he impressed me particularly. He was not French,
but he spoke it as I do, and he was curious about the cannibalism which
was then practically eradicated. There was another priest with me who
was then very ill. He died in my arms. I remember the evening he told
Stevenson of how he had saved the life of a foolish French governor.
There had been rumors of a cannibal feast at Hatiheu, and the governor
was incensed. He feared that the incident might be reported to Paris and
injure his prestige. He blamed the chief, and sent him word that if it
were proved he would personally blow out his brains.
“Soon word came that the Hatiheu people—I was pastor there for a quarter
of a century—had killed several of their enemies, and were eating them
and drinking _namu enata_. The governor started off in haste from
Taiohae, for Hatiheu and the priest went with him, as also several
_gendarmes_.
“Hundreds of natives were grouped in the public place, chanting,
dancing, and drinking.
“‘Where is the chief?’ demanded the governor.
“‘I am here,’ said a voice, stern and menacing, and the chief broke from
the throng and advanced toward the governor.
“The latter drew his revolver. ‘You have permitted this breaking of the
law, after I sent you word that I would kill you if you ate human
flesh?’
“‘_E!_’ replied the chief in a high voice. ‘I am the master in Hatiheu.
Do you wish to be eaten?’
“The war-drums sounded and the grim warriors began to surround the
party. My friend, who was, for safety, an adopted son of the chief, and
thus taboo, seized the governor and led him to the boat. They got away
by sheer courage on the priest’s part. He described this to Louis, who
wrote it down. I recall it clearly, because the poor martyr died the
next week. Did Louis write of the Marquesas much?”
I said that he had. I should have liked to stay and gain from _Père_
Siméon all I could of his memories of the poet, but a boy came running
up the road to say that the _Saint François_ was to leave very soon.
I embraced _Père_ Siméon. He kissed me on both cheeks, and gave me his
blessing. It had been worth a voyage to know him.
Jerome Capriata, the eater of cats, was outside his house. He invited me
in to meet his wife, a barefooted Frenchwoman who sat in a
scantily-furnished room, musing over a bottle of absinthe. I could stay
only a minute, as the _Saint François_ whistled insistently. His wife
set out the bottle and glasses before us, and we drank the farewell
_goutte_.
[Illustration:
Photo from Underwood and Underwood
Throwing spears at a cocoanut on a stake
]
[Illustration:
The raised-up atoll of Makatea
]
On the way to the beach I met Mrs. Fisher, whom Bishop Dordillon, my
dictionary writer, had as adopted mother, when he was old enough to be
her grandfather. That was because Queen Vaekehu had adopted him as a
grandson, and Mrs. Fisher as a daughter, and the bishop had observed the
pseudo-relationship strictly.
“Mrs. Stevenson gave me a shawl,” said Mrs. Fisher. “I have shown that
to many people. Madame Jack London wore it when she was here with her
husband on the _Snark_. They lived with Lutz, the German, who was then
here. _Pauvre Stevenson!_ He had to die young, and here I am, after all
these years!”
I waded through the surf to the boat, and reached the _Saint François_
to find all the others aboard. We shipped the buoy and were away in a
trice. The last sight I had of the shore was of the promontory where
Captain Porter raised the American flag a hundred years before. I was
never to see the Marquesas Islands again. The fresh breath of nature was
too foul with the worst of civilization.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXIII
McHenry gets a caning—The fear of the dead—A visit to the grave of
Mapuhi—En voyage.
IMAGINE my delight when the captain of the _Saint François_ set our
course for Takaroa, the atoll of Mapuhi, Nohea, and the crippled diver
who had possessed the great pearl of Pukapuka! The Marquesas Islands are
only eight hundred miles from the Society Islands, of which Tahiti is
one, and between the Marquesas and the Society Islands lie the strewn
eighty atolls of the _Iles Dangereuses_ or Paumotu group. With steam we
ran the half-thousand miles or so from Taiohae in two nights and two
days, and at daybreak of the second day were due to see the familiar,
lonely figure of the wrecked _County of Roxburgh_ on an uninhabited
_motu_ of Takaroa. It was this startling sight that informed the Londons
in the _Snark_ that they were out of their course and in danger, and it
was Takaroa the Stevensons in the _Casco_ looked for, only to fetch up
at Tikei, thirty miles to windward. I had no confidence in our Breton
captain, to whom these waters were as unknown as the Indies to Columbus.
I breathed a sigh of relief when the lofty iron masts of the dismantled
vessel loomed on the horizon.
After so many months in the frowning islands of the war fleet, with
their thunderous headlands, gleaming streams, and green and black
valleys, the spectacle of the slender ring of white sand and coral, the
verdant banners of this first of the Low Islands lying flat upon the
jeweled waters, aroused in me again sensations of wonder at the
ineffable variety of creation; the myriad-mindedness of the Creator. The
crash of the surf upon the outer reef, the waving of the breeze-stirred
cocoanuts, the flight of a solitary bird, contrasted with the marvelous
fabrication of man, the metal ship, thrown by a toss of the sea and a
puff of the wind among these evidences of a beautiful yet deadly design.
The _Saint François_ crept along the coast of the atoll and anchored
opposite the pass, a good mile from the breakers. Everybody was on deck,
the black-gowned nuns with Mademoiselle Narbonne—she also in a tunic of
religious hue. Since we had left Nuku-hiva they had not appeared. The
contrary currents and confused trade-winds among these Pernicious
Islands had kept them in their cabin. The six-hundred-ton hull of the
_Saint_ had see-sawed through the two hundred leagues of the tropic of
Capricorn, and only hardened trenchermen like the ship’s officers and
myself could find appetite for food. Lutz, too, had raised a mournful
face to the deck but seldom. A few hundred sacks of copra awaited us at
Takaroa, and we put off a life-boat to bring it aboard. Lutz and I
accompanied the second officer with a command from the captain to stay
no longer than the cargo’s loading. Lying Bill’s schooner, the _Morning
Star_, was in the lagoon, and, seeing it there, I wondered if Mapuhi,
the great sailor of these atolls, had steered it through the narrow
pass. About the landing, despite the uniqueness of the steamship’s
arrival, was an unusual quietude, a hush that moved me to fear, as a
presage of evil. A cholera-stricken village in the Philippines had that
same dismal aura. A few natives were upon the coral mole, and the
_Mutoi_ came forward to examine our papers.
“Let us go to the house of Mapuhi,” I said to Lutz.
“_Ja wohl_,” he replied; “I have not met him in many years.”
We left the mate and walked along the path past the traders’ stores. The
thousand feet that trod the coral road and had gone in and out the dozen
shops of the dealers and pearl-buyers during my stay on Takaroa were
missing, but more than the stir and hum of the _rahui_ was absent. A
depressing torpor possessed the little village. Mapuhi’s store was
closed tightly, and from no house or hut did a head show or a greeting
come.
We saw that the door of one shop was ajar, and, going in, happened on a
pleasant and illuminating scene. Angry words in Tahitian we heard as we
mounted the steps, and smothered exclamations of a profane sort in
English which had a familiar note. Back of the counter was a very large
Tahitian woman who, with a heavy fishing-rod of bamboo, was thrashing a
white man. She was, between blows, telling him that if he got drunk or
spoke rudely to her again, she would “treat him as a Chinaman did his
horse in Tahiti,” which is a synonym for roughness. He was evading the
strokes of the bamboo by wriggling, and guarding with his arms, and was
cursing in return, but was plainly afraid of her. He was McHenry, my
ofttime companion of revels at the _Cercle Bougainville_ in Papeete, who
had come on the _Flying Fish_ with me from Tahiti, and had remained in
Takaroa.
Many times he had boasted of his contempt for native women.
“I’ve had my old lady nineteen years,” he said once, “and she wouldn’t
speak to me if she met me on the streets of this town. She wouldn’t dare
to in public until I recognized her.”
Lutz and I did not utter a sound, but quickly descended the steps.
“I never before saw a native wife beating her husband,” he commented
caustically. “That McHenry deserves it. Lying Bill often said McHenry’s
_vahine_ took a stick to him. Tahitian women will not be whipped
themselves.”
Lutz should know. He had had fourteen years with a Tahitian mistress, a
wife in her own eyes as much as if wedded in a cathedral. Would he not
have to face her in Papeete when he should be married to Mademoiselle
Narbonne? Perhaps she had a stronger weapon than a rod! The _taua’s_
sorcery might stretch over the ocean, and be potent in Tahiti.
Lutz and I were almost at Mapuhi’s residence when we met Nohea, my host
of the fishing and diving. Nohea was in a black cloth coat and a blue
_pareu_, and his countenance was distressed.
“_Ia ora na_, Nohea!” I called to him. “Is Mapuhi a Mapuhi at home?”
“Mapuhi?” he repeated and shuddered. “Mapuhi _máte!_”
Mapuhi dead! It did not seem possible; the giant I had known so
recently!
Nohea began to weep and left us. Outside the inclosure of Mapuhi’s house
were a dozen men, and among them Hiram Mervin, the Paumotu-American who
had described to me the cyclone of Hikueru. We shook hands, and I asked
of what Mapuhi had died. Surely not of disease. The reef must have
beaten him at last. I could not think of that super-man yielding to a
clot or a kidney. He, who had made the wind and currents his sport, who
in the dark of night had sailed through foaming passes the white mariner
shunned in broad daylight, who had given largesse to his people for
decades, and who had made the shells and nuts of his isles pay him
princely toll, despite the cunning of the white, the _papaa_, who came
to take much and give little.
“He was eighty,” said Hiram Mervin. “He took sick on Reitoru, that tiny
island near here. He was brought here. Some one wanted to give him
medicine.
“‘No,’ he said, ‘my time has come. I will not live by things. I die
content. I have been a good Mormon since I accepted the Word. What I did
before was in darkness, when I was a gentile.’
“He passed away peacefully. We lost a bulwark of the church, but he will
reign with Christ.”
Lutz and I did not wish to intrude upon the kin of Mapuhi, nor to remain
longer within the sound of the wailing that now issued from the house at
the news that I, the American, had come back on the steamship. This
extemporized burst of lamentation was a special honor to me and to the
decedent, an expression of a tie between us, and, though it swelled
suddenly at my arrival, was not the crying of hired mourners but the
lacrymation of sincere grief. In wakes among the Irish I had found
exactly the same spirit—an increase or instant renewal of the keening or
shrieking when one who had been dear to the dead person appeared.
We two walked away, and encountered McHenry, who had learned of our
presence. McHenry was shaken by the castigation given him by his wife,
and assumed an air of brazen indecency and bluster to hide his
condition.
“One bottle of booze and I’ll make ’em all quit their catabawlin’ an’
dance a hula,” he said. “Much they care for except the bloomin’ francs
the ol’ boy left ’em!”
McHenry exposed his own vulturous desires, and not the feelings of the
tribe of Mapuhi. To them the passing of Mapuhi was as to the Jews that
of their leader by Nebo’s lonely mountain. The great man had expired the
night before, and preparations were being made to bury him. In this
climate the body hastens to rejoin the elements. The chief was not to
lie in the common charnel in a grove on another _motu_ of Takaroa. As
suitable to his rank and wealth and his generosity to the Mormon church,
he had retained for himself a piece of ground beside the temple. A coral
wall inclosed the small necropolis. Within a hundred feet of the sea, in
the brilliant coral sand, rugged and bare, it was fit anchoring ground
for this ship among canoes. One tombstone leaned against the wall, a
plain slab of marble, inscribed:
_Punau Mapuhi tei pohe ite 30 Me 1899_
Punau was the wife he had clung to under Mormonism, and who had borne
him the son and daughter I knew. Many years he had survived her, and had
not married another. The religion of polygamy had made of the old
barbarian an ascetic, who had been a Grand Turk under Protestantism and
Catholicism, between which he had wavered according to the novelty
offered.
The body of Mapuhi was laid out in the principal room of his house, the
room in which I had met him and the American elders on my first landing.
Nohea and others had worked through the night to build a coffin. They
had used the strong planks the dead man had gathered from the deck or
cabin of the _County of Roxburgh_, and had polished them with
cocoanut-oil, so that they shone. The coffin was lined with the
sleeping-mat of Mapuhi, and in it he reposed, dressed in his churchly
clothes, a black frock coat, white trousers, and a stiff white shirt. No
collar cumbered his neck, nor were shoes upon the ample feet that had
walked on the floor of the sea. Most of the people of Takaroa took a
last look at him, but some did not, for fear. I gazed a few minutes at
his face. More than in life, the likeness to a mutilated Greek statue
struck me; perhaps the head of a Goth seen in the Vatican Gallery.
Strength, repose, and mystery were in the powerful mold of it, the
broad, low forehead, the rounded chin, and wide-open eyes. I had seen
many so-called important men in death, when as a reporter I wrote
obsequies at a penny a line. This Paumotuan chief’s corpse had more
majesty and peace than any of them—a nearer relation to my conception of
an old and wise child of the eternal unity, glad to be freed from the
illusion of life.
In the village, the huts were still closed. No fisherman put off in a
canoe, and none sat making or mending nets. McHenry and I paddled out to
the _Morning Star_. The skipper was on deck with Ducat, the mate. Some
native had hurried to them with the amusing gossip of McHenry’s _vahine_
beating him, and he had to bear a storm of ridicule. Lying Bill
rehearsed his boasts about her inferiority, and Ducat, who had
humiliated him before me long ago, taunted him with his submission to
her.
“I didn’t want to kill her,” was all McHenry could retort. McHenry had a
story of Chocolat which was distracting. Captain Moét of the _Flying
Fish_ had come into Takaroa a month or two before with Chocolat, a
fair-sized dog. The tricks Chocolat did when I was on Moét’s schooner
were incomparable with his later education.
“The bloomin’ pup would stand on his hind legs and dance to a tune Moét
whistled,” said McHenry. “He could count up to five with cards, and
could pick all the aces out of a piquet pack. He would let Moét throw
him overboard in port, and catch a rope’s end with his teeth and hold on
while he was pulled up. He was a reg’lar circus performer. You know Moét
and I ain’t very close. He done me a dirty turn once. I knew if I could
ever get Chocolat to Papeete, an’ on the steamer from San Francisco, I
could sell him to a bloody American tourist for a thousand francs. Moét
watched me like a gull does the cook when he empties his pail overside.
Now, you know me; I ain’t nobody to say to you can’t do this or that. I
laid for that pup, and, when I went aboard the schooner just before she
sailed, I took a little opium I got from the Chink pearl-buyer here; and
I put a pill of it in a piece of fresh pork, and took it aboard in my
pocket. Just before I was goin’ into my boat, after a drink or two with
Jean, I’d been watchin’ Chocolat stretched out nappin’ on the deck. I
put the meat alongside of his mouth, and he ate it like a shark does a
chunk o’ salt horse. Soon I saw he was knocked out, an’ I asked Moét to
go down into the trade-room an’ get me a piece o’ tobacco. He’d no
sooner ducked than I grabbed the bloody pup by the scruff an’ stuffed
him into my trousers’ front. He was like dead. I was in the boat in a
second with no one seein’ him, and reached up to get the tobacco from
Moét’s hand.
“Of course the purp never let out a bloomin’ whimper, an’ I got away and
to shore with no proof that I had snared the bow-wow. Moét had trained
Chocolat to let out a hell of a yell if any one as much as took him
toward the rail, and so he would have to think that the cur had fallen
overboard on his own hook. I took him to my store unbeknown to any one,
and tied him to a chair. He never come to for three hours, an’ was
sluggery for a day or two. I was waitin’ for Moét to sail, but the next
day he comes ashore an’ makes a bee-line for my joint. I saw his boat
puttin’ off, an’ I give Chocolat to my Penrhyn boy who tied him in a
canoe, an’ hiked out in the lagoon with him. Moét looks me up an’ down,
curses his _sacres_ an’ his Spanish _diablos_ an’ _’Sus-Marias_, an’
crawled through my place from top to bottom, shoutin’, ‘Chocolat!
Chocolat! _Pettee sheen!_’ an’ half cryin’. He had to trip his anchor
the next day, and I had the _sheen_ all right.
“I was goin’ to smuggle him on board Lyin’ Bill’s cockroach tub an’ to
Papeete, when one day I come back from Mapuhi’s and found him gone, an’
his string chewed through. He had skinned out, an’, though I asked
everybody on this island about him, everybody knew nothin’. After three
days I give the beast up. I know the Kanaka, an’ I knew that no fat
little dogs are let run loose very long. About two weeks later, I went
to another _motu_ to buy some copra, an’ the first native I run into was
wearin’ Chocolat’s collar on his arm. He was a Mormon churchman, too,
but he swore he found the collar in a canoe.”
Poor little brown Chocolat! He had entertained me often on the _Flying
Fish_ with his antics, and Jean Moét had such dreams of his future! A
kindly fate may have bestowed on him the favor of a quick death by
hotpotting rather than the ignominy of circus one-night stands or the
pampered kennel of a millionaire. He had had his year at sea, and died
in the full flush of doghood.
The news that Lutz was a passenger on the _Saint François_ with
Mademoiselle Narbonne brought a prolonged whistle from Ducat, and an
exclamation from Lying Bill:
“Well, ’e’ll bloody well get ’is! Maná won’t take a club to ’im because
the ’usban’ does the beatin’ when ’e’s a Dutchman, but she’s not lettin’
’im walk over ’er so easy. I ’ad a long palaver with ’er on the voyage
up. She says everybody in Taaoa knows Barbe is a leper, an’ she’s
preparin’ to ’ave the bleedin’ Frog doctors cage ’er up out there by
Papenoo, if she goes to Tahiti.”
“I never heard before that she had leprosy,” said Ducat. “I think that
Maná is spreading that report to scare Lutz.”
“I feel sure that it has not reached him,” I said. “Nobody in Atuona
would mention it to him.”
Abruptly there occurred to me the cryptic assertion of Peyral at my
first sight of Barbe in the mission church.
“I wouldn’t be her with all her money,” he had said. “Me, I value my
skin.”
That was weeks or months before Lemoal had come to me, or I had known of
the _taua_, or of Lutz’s courtship. If there had been a plot against her
happiness, it must have been laid early, or what did Peyral mean?
McHenry broke in on my train of reasoning.
“I’ll see that the German sausage learns about it damn soon,” he said
spitefully. “He’s doin’ too good a business in both copra an’ women.”
The whistle of the _Saint François_ blew the recall of boats and crew.
“Why don’t you stay, an’ go to Papeet’ with me,” asked Captain Pincher.
“We’ll ’ead out in a day or two when the wind is right. You’re in no
‘’urry. You want to see ’em lay ol’ Mapuhi in the grave.”
I agreed, and paddled to shore with McHenry. Natives were taking the
last load of copra out to the steamship, and I rode on the bags with
McHenry. On the deck of the _Saint François_ I passed Barbe and the nuns
on my way below to get my trifling belongings. McHenry stayed above,
and, when I had bidden good-by to the captain and the first officer, I
sought the three women, with my canvas bag in hand. The sisters were my
friends, and I shook their hands. I was about to say _au revoir_ to
Barbe when she walked with me a few yards to the gangway. I explained my
intention not to continue on the steamship.
“What shall I do?” she implored, as she squeezed my hand nervously. “I
am afraid of everything—”
The whistle sounded again.
Lutz, who was talking with McHenry, approached me, and drew from me my
reason for carrying my assets with me. I thought he appeared relieved at
my leaving, and that his hopes to see me in Papeete were shammed. In the
boat I glanced up to see Mademoiselle Narbonne leaning over the rail,
her black cloud of hair framing her pale face with its look of sadness
and perplexity, and her eyes still demanding of me the answer to her
question.
“I bloody well put a roach in Lutz’s ear,” said McHenry, as we rowed
back.
That he had even mentioned Barbe’s name I did not believe. Lutz would
have taken him by the throat, and thrown him overboard. On the strand at
the atoll again, I saw the smoke streaming from the steamship’s funnel
as she set out for Papeete; and I sent an unspoken message of good will
to the groping ill-matched pair whom I could not call lovers, and yet
both of whom were searching for the satisfaction of heart and ambition I
too sought.
Mapuhi was interred that afternoon an hour before sunset. In these
atolls where there is no soil, and where water lies close under the
coral surface, even burial is difficult. Cyclones as in Hikueru have
torn the coral coverings off the graves, and swept the coffins, corpses,
and bones into the lagoon and the maws of the sharks and the voracious
barracuda. For Mapuhi a marble cenotaph would be ordered in Tahiti, and
cover him when made in a few weeks.
Nohea and two elders dug the grave. About four feet deep, it was wide
enough to rest the huge body in the glistening coffin. This was borne on
the shoulders of six young men, nephews of Mapuhi, and in the cortège
were all of the Takaroans of age. Solemnly and silently they marched
down the road. All who owned black garments wore them, and others were
in white trousers, some with and others without shirts, but all treading
ceremoniously with bowed heads and serious faces. Nohea was the leader,
carrying the large Book of Mormon from the temple, and at the grave he
read from it verses about the resurrection, the near approach of the
coming of Christ, and Mapuhi’s being quiet in the grave until the
trumpet rang for the assembling of the just, the unjust on opposite
sides for judgment.
“Mapuhi a Mapuhi will sit very close to Brigham Young in the judgment
and afterward will be among the great on earth when the rejected are
cast into the terrible pit of fire, and the elect live in plenty and
happiness here.”
The heavy ivory sand rattled on the wood, and the remains of Mapuhi,
last link between the healthy savagery and the present semi-civilization
of the Paumotuan race, were one with the mysterious beach he had so long
dwelt upon. He had been born before the white man ruled it, and his life
had spanned the rise of the imperial industrialism which had destroyed
the Polynesian.
After the funeral I took my bag to the hut of Nohea, to live the few
days until the _Morning Star_ left for Papeete. Our frugal meal was soon
eaten, and the old diver and I sat outside his door in the cool of the
sunset glow. We talked of Mapuhi.
“We had the same father but different mothers,” said Nohea. “Mapuhi was
twenty years older than I. For many years he was as my father to me.”
“Where is Mapuhi now?” I asked, to discover his beliefs about the soul.
Nohea trembled, and looked about him.
“Is he not in the hole in the coral?” he said, with alarm.
“Oh, yes, Nohea,” I replied, “the body of Mapuhi is in the coral, but
where is that part that knew how to dive, to steer the schooner, to grow
rich, and to pray? Where is that _varua_ or spirit which loved you?”
Nohea responded quickly: “That is with the gods, with Adam, Christ,
Joseph Smith, and Brigham Young. Mapuhi is with them making souls for
the bodies of Mormon babies on earth. When Israel gathers by and by, I
will see him again, for we will all live in America and be happy.”
“But Nohea,” I protested, “you will not be happy away from Takaroa. Your
canoe and your fishing-nets and spears will be left behind.”
Nohea was confused, but his faith was strong.
“The elders have explained that in America, where all the saved people
shall live after the judgment, we shall have everything we want. The
fish will jump on the hook, the canoe will paddle itself, and the
cocoanuts will be always ready for eating or cool for drinking.”
I tried to draw our conversation around to Mapuhi again, but Nohea, as
the darkness grew thicker, busied himself in making a fire of cocoanut
husks and leaves, and evaded any reference to the dead.
Only after the moon began to come up, he said, “I must now go to keep
watch at the grave of Mapuhi. It is my duty, and I must go.”
He brought from his hut a crazy-quilt, and wrapped it about him, and
with extreme hesitancy walked away through the obscurity to carry out
the obligation of friendship.
Hardly can we guess at the horror he had to overcome to do this. The
remnant of fear of the dead that our slight inheritance of ancestral
delusions causes to linger in some of us is the merest shadow of the
all-pervading terror that weakens the Paumotuan at thought of the ghost
of the defunct which stays near the corpse to threaten and perhaps to
seize and eat the living. Associated, maybe, with the former
cannibalism, when the living consumed the dead, Nohea, though earnest
Mormon, believed that the _tupapau_ hovered over the grave or in the
tree-tops, to accomplish this ghastly purpose. Had Punau, the widow of
Mapuhi, been living, she would have had to spend her nights for several
weeks by his sepulcher. Being a chief, there were many to perform this
devoir, and before I entered the hut to sleep I saw several small fires
burning about the spot where the watchers cowered and whispered through
the night. Of the dangers of this office of friendship or widowhood,
every atoll in the Paumotus had a hundred tales, and Tahiti and the
Marquesas more. In Tahiti, the _tupapau_, the disembodied and malign ego
of the dead, entered the room where the remains were laid out.
[Illustration:
Photo by Dr. Theodore P. Cleveland
Paumotuans on a heap of brain coral
]
[Illustration:
Photo by Dr. Theodore P. Cleveland
Did these two eat Chocolat?
]
[Illustration:
Photo from Brown Bros.
The Stonehenge men in the South Seas
]
A frightening noise was heard in the room or in that part of the house,
followed by sounds and movements of a struggle, and in the morning gouts
of blood were on the walls. In Moorea, near Tahiti, I met an educated
Englishman, there twenty-five years, who said that on analysis the blood
proved to be human. A cynic in most things, he would not deny that he
believed the circumstance supernatural.
The _tupapau_ had many manifestations: knocks at doors and on thatched
roofs, cries of sorrow and of hate. White it was in the night, and often
hovering over the house or the grave. It might be that the Ghost Bird,
the _burong-hantu_, a reality which is white, and whose wings make
little or no noise when flying, was the foundation of this phantom.
In the meanwhile the schooner _Morning Star_ had gone to Tikei for
cargo. Lying Bill was to anchor off the pass of Takaroa in a few days on
his voyage to Tahiti and to send ashore a boat for me. For nine nights
the vigil was kept by the grave of Mapuhi. About four o’clock each
morning the ward by the grave was abandoned, and Nohea threw himself
wearily on his mat near me. Only one time, on the last evening, I
questioned him about the _tupapau_, and then realized my discourtesy; it
was for him to initiate this subject.
“Have you heard or seen anything _rima atua nianatura_? Anything by the
hand of the spirit?”
Nohea wrapped himself more tightly in his quilt, and his answer came
from under it:
“This morning I heard a scratching. This is our last night, thank the
gods. I think it was the _tupapau_ saying farewell. We never look at the
grave.”
About two the next morning Nohea shook me.
“The _Fetia Taiao_ is off the passage,” he said.
He had heard in the still air the faint slap of her canvas as she jibed,
I thought, but that could not have been, as she was too far away. His
awareness was not of the ear or eyes, but something different—the
keenness of the conscious and unconscious, which had preserved the
Paumotuan race in an environment which had meant starvation and death to
any other people.
I had my possessions already on the schooner, and, forbidding Nohea to
wait with me at the mole, I embraced him and left him. A wish to look at
the grave took hold of me, and I walked along the path to it. The sun,
though below the horizon, was lessening the sombrous color of the small
hours, and I could discern vaguely the outline of the walled
burial-ground. The splash of oars in the water and the rattle of
rowlocks warned me of the approach of the boat for me, but I still had
five minutes.
I sat down on the wall at the farthest end away from the grave. Soon I
would be in my own country, among the commonplace scenes of cities and
countryside. I would resume the habits and conventions of my nation, and
enter into the struggle for survival and for repute. Those goals shrunk
in importance on this strip of coral. Never would I be able to express
in myself the joy and heat of life, and the conquest of nature at its
zenith of mystery, as had the man whose tenement of clay was so near.
Love had been his animating emotion. In all the welter of low passions,
of conflicting religions, and commercial standards imported to his
island by the whites, he had remained a son of the atoll, brother and
father of his tribe, disdainful of the inventions and luxuries offered
him for his wealth, but shaping his course adroitly for his race’s
happiness.
Deep in this strain of reflection, I was recalled to actuality by a
grating sound, a queer crunching and creaking. It came from about the
tomb, and was like a hundred rats dragging objects on a stone
floor—slithering discordant, offensive. If I could have fainted it would
have been relief, for I was seized with mortal terror. I could not
reason. The boat from the schooner was nearing fast, and would be at the
mole in a minute or two. I must go, but I could not move. Then suddenly
a bar of light flung up from the sea, the first of the dawn, and by its
feeble glimmer I saw a swarm of creatures about the barrow. They were
the robber-crabs who had come out from the groves, and they were pulling
the pieces of coral off the burial heap, and digging to pierce the
coffin. Scores of the grisly vampires were working with their huge claws
at the pile, and, as they rushed to and fro on their tall, obscene legs,
they were the very like of ghouls in animal form. This was the
“scratching” Nohea had heard when with their back to the grave he and
his fellow-watchers dared not turn to see them.
I should have thrown rocks at the foul monsters, have scattered them
with kicks and curses, but my deliverance from the supernatural was so
comforting I could only burst into nervous laughter and run down the
road to the mole. I leaped into the boat, and gave the order to shove
off. In half an hour I was aboard the _Morning Star_ and our sails
spread for Tahiti and California.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
AFTERWARD
A LETTER FROM EXPLODING EGGS
Atuona, Hiva-Oa, Aperiri, 1922.
O Nakohu.
O au Kaoha tuuhoa Koakoau itave tekao ipatumai to Brunnec; Na
Brunnec paki mai iau, tuu onotia Kaoha oko au iave; Atahi au ame
tao ave oe itiki iau Aua oto maimai omua ahee taua I Menike ua
ite au Ta Panama ohia umetao au ua hokotia au eoe Ite aoe.
Mea meitai ote mahina ehee mai oe I Tahiti ahaka ite mai oe iau
Eavei tau I Tahiti etahi Otaua fiti tia mai mei Tahiti Ta maimai
oe eavei tau I Tahiti Patu mai oe itatahi hamani nau naete inoa
Brunnec.
Eahaa iapati mai oe ukoana iau totaua pae ua pao tuu tekao iave
Kaoha oe iti haa metaino iau tihe ite nei mouehua Upeau oe iau
eiva ehua ua Vei hakaua taua oia tau ete taiene ohua iva ehua.
Kaoha nui I Obriand.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
FROM EXPLODING EGGS
Atuona, Hiva-Oa, April, 1922.
It is I, Nakohu, always, my dear master. I have been very glad
to receive news of you by Le Brunnec, and I have seen that you
have not forgotten me.
It has given me much sorrow that I did not go with you. I should
have seen Panama and many things, but I was afraid that you
would grow tired of me and sell me to other Americans.
If it is true that you will return here, write to me in advance
by Le Brunnec, and I will go to get you in Papeete. For your
stay in Atuona, fear nothing. I have now a nice house of my own
on the edge of the river. There you will live and it will be my
wife who will do the cooking and I will go to get the food for
all of us; that will be much better than before.
I am very happy that you have not forgotten me in so long. It is
true that you had told me that you would come back before nine
years. I shall wait always.
Love to you, Obriand.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LETTER FROM MALICIOUS GOSSIP
Atuona, Hiva-Oa, Iunio, 1915.
E tuu ona hoa:
U Koana i au taoe hama ni, koakoa oko an i te ite i ta oe tau te
kao. A oe e koe te peau o Mohotu Vehine-hae, i te a te tekao,
mimi, pake, namu, Tahiatini, aoe i koe toia, ate, totahi teoko,
tohutohui toia hee, mehe ihepe Purutia i tihe mai nei io matou.
Titihuti, na mate ite hitoto. Te moi a Kake ua mate ite hitoto,
i tepo na mate, titahi, popoui ua mate, tatahi, popoui ua mate,
titahi, popoui ua mate, te moupuna o Titihuti. U fanau an i te
tama e moi o (Elizabethe Taavaupoo) toia inoa pahoe kanahau
tautau oko, aoe e hoa e koe to mana metao ia oe, ua inu matou i
te kava kona oko Bronec, kona oko Tahiapii, kona oko au, ia tihe
to matou metao ia oe, ua too matou i te pora Kava à la santé te
Freterick. Ena ua tuu atu nei i te ata na oe, upeau au ia ia
Lemoine a tuu mai te ata na Freterick. Mea nui tau roti i tenei
u fafati au e ua, roti ua tuu i una ou, mea Kaoha ia oe, me ta
oe vehine. Kaoha atu nei A poro me Puhei ia oe, Kaoha atu nei
Moetai kamuta ia oe. Kaoha atu nei Nakohu.
Kaoha atu nei Timoia oe, Kaoha nui Kaoha nui Ua pao tete kao.
Apae, umoi e koe tooe metao ia matou.
Nau na tooe hoa.
TAVAHI.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Atuona, Hiva-Oa, June, 1915.
Ah my dear friend:
I have received your letter. I was very happy to have news of
you.
Ghost Girl has not forgotten and still says, “Dance, tobacco,
rum.”
Many Daughters is not over her sickness; she is worse; when she
walks she rolls like the Prussian ship that came here.
Titihuti died of dysentery. The little daughter of Kaké died of
dysentery. The one died in the evening, Titihuti; in the morning
the little girl of Titihuti died. I have given birth to a little
daughter; her name is Elizabeth Taavaupoo, a pretty little girl,
healthy and plump.
We have not stopped thinking of you, dear friend. We drank kava.
Happy was Le Brunnec, happy was Tahiapii (sister of Tavati, the
little woman in blue). I too was happy. Our thoughts went out to
you.
We took the bowl of kava and drank to the health of Frederick.
Here I send you as a present my picture. I told Le Moine to take
my photograph for you.
I have many roses now; I took two of them which I put on my head
as a souvenir for you and your lady. In this letter you have the
love of Aporo and Puhei, of Moetai, the carpenter, and of Nakohu
and of Timoteo.
Great love to you; great love to you.
I have finished speaking; farewell, and may you not forget us in
your thoughts.
I, your friend,
MALICIOUS GOSSIP.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LETTER FROM MOUTH OF GOD
E tuu ona hoa:
E patu atu nei au i tenei hamani ia oe me tou Kaoha nui. Mea
meitai matou paotu. E tiai nei an i taoe hamani, me te Kakano
pua, me te mana roti, u haa mei—tai au i titahi keke fenua kei
oko, mea tanu roti. Eia titahi mea aoe au e kokoa koe nui oe i
kokoa koe nui oe i kaoha mai ian Koakoa oko nui matou i taoe
hamani A patu oe i titahi hamani i tooe hoa, o Vai Etienn ena
ioto ote Ami Koakoa, Apatu oe ia Vehine-hae ena i tohe ahi, o te
haraiipe.
E na Tahiatini i Tarani me L’Hermier, Mea meitai a fiti mai oe i
Atuona nei Kanahau oko to matou fenua me he fenua Farani
meitaioko tu uapu O Hinatini ena ioto ote papu meitai Kaoha atu
nei tooe hoa Timo ia oe, u tuhaa ia mei a oe, e aha a, ave oe i
tuhaa meia ia.
E metao anatu ia ia oe. Kaoha atu nei Kivi ia oe, E hee anatu i
te ika hake Ua pao te tekao kaoha nui.
Tavahi T, MM. TIMOTHEO.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ah my dear friend:
I write you this letter to send you my good wishes. We are all
well. I have awaited in vain a letter from you with the flower
seeds you promised me. I have inherited a very large piece of
land where I could plant roses.
We have been very sorry that you have not given us more of your
news. We have missed you much.
If you wish to write to your friend Vai Etienne, he is in heaven
far away.
As for Ghost Girl, she must have fallen into hell.
Many Daughters’ soul must have rejoined l’Hermier in France.
You would do well to return to Atuona. Our land is very
beautiful—our roads like those in France.
Vanquished Often is dead, but she must be in paradise.
Your friend, Timoteo, sends you greeting. If you have forgotten
him, he has not forgotten you. Come back and we will again drink
the kava together.
Kivi tells me that he still thinks of you and that he still goes
fishing.
It is finished.
Kaoha nui, MOUTH OF GOD.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LETTER FROM LE BRUNNEC TO FREDERICK O’BRIEN AT SAUSALITO, CALIFORNIA.
(Translation)
Atuona, Hiva-Oa, June, 1922.
Cher ami:
You ask me what has become of Barbe Narbonne, of the valley of
Taaoa. I will tell you briefly, and probably some of what I
shall say you already know. She was married to Wilhelm Lutz, the
Tahauku trader, in Tahiti, and all went well. Her mother was at
the wedding, but not Maná, his long-time companion in Taiohae
and Atuona. The married pair occupied the upper floor of the
German firm’s big store. There was much gaiety among the Germans
and her Tahitian friends. For the first time Barbe rode in an
automobile, saw a moving picture, heard a band of music, and
attended prize-fights. They were married at the first of July,
and on the fourteenth was celebrated the Fall of the Bastille,
with tremendous hulas, much champagne, and speeches by the
governor, and even by the friendly Germans, such as Monsieur
Lutz.
_Hélas!_ The _Scharnhorst_ and _Gneisenau_, the kaiser’s
cruisers, came here to Atuona, robbed my store, took Jensen, the
Dane, and steamed to Tahiti. When the authorities there saw
them, they must fire a pop-gun at them, and provoke in turn a
rain of six-inch shells. A Chinese was killed, every one ran to
the woods, and many stores were set on fire and burned.
When the cruisers were gone, Monsieur Lutz and all the Germans
were imprisoned on Motu-Uta, the beautiful little islet a
thousand feet from Lovaina’s Annexe Hotel. Madame Lutz was
reproached by the church, the government, and by every one not
in prison, for marrying the “animal” Lutz, and immediately they
began to give her a divorce on that very ground—that the husband
was a German, and therefore not a human being, but an animal. It
did not take long, and again she was Mademoiselle Narbonne.
Now she was free, rich, and in civilization. She danced and sang
and was dressed in your American clothes, for no ships came from
France. But, as in Atuona, rumors began that she was leprous.
That did not matter much to the Tahitians who, if they like one,
care nothing for what one has, but the whites ceased to be in
her company. They did not say aloud what they thought, but only
that she had loved a German.
Maná went every day of good weather in a little canoe about the
islet of Motu-Uta, at a certain distance prescribed by the
guards, and made a gesture to Monsieur Lutz, who sat or stood
within an enclosure and looked out to sea. Poor Lutz! He died of
an aneurism, or, if you will, of a broken Prussian heart.
Mademoiselle Narbonne one day went toward Papenoo. At Faaripoo
she saw the inclosure of the leprosarium, where the three or
four score lepers are confined. She returned to the Marquesas
Islands.
_Pauvre fille! Personne n’a voulu se marier avec elle et elle
vit avec un vieux Canaque de Taaoa. Elle est retournée à la
brousse_—Poor girl! Nobody wants to marry her and she lives with
an old Kanaka of Taaoa. She has returned to the jungle.
I will tell you, my friend, that no matter what Lemoal has said,
or her own fears, Mademoiselle Narbonne is not a leper. But the
sorcery of the _taua_ has ended her. These Marquesans, even if
half white, are yet heathen.
Daughter of the Pigeon is dead of tuberculosis. Ghost Girl died
of influenza in Tahiti, where she had gone to continue her
joyous life. Peyral and his white daughters have fled to France.
Exploding Eggs has taken the daughter of Titihuti; and her
husband, from whom he seized her, is content to live with them.
Governor L’Hermier des Plantes is governor of the Congo. Song of
the Nightingale is in prison for making cocoanut rum. Seventh
Man Who Is So Angry has lost his wife of tuberculosis.
Vanquished Often died of leprosy in childbirth. Le Moine, the
artist, went mad and is dead. Grelet, the Swiss, is dead. _Père_
David, _Père_ Simeon, _Père_ Victorin, are well, as all the
nuns. Jimmy Kekela is well; his sister is shut up in a leper
hospital. McHenry has been expelled from Tahiti for selling
alcoholic liquors to the natives of the Paumotus. Lemoal is
dead. Hemeury François and Scallamera are dead. Vai Etienne, son
of Titihuti, is dead. _Commissaire_ Bauda went to the wars.
I have named my second child after you, Frederick. You remember
her mother, At Peace, the sister of Malicious Gossip. We dwell
in comfort and happiness. Return to live with us.
Votre dévoué
LE BRUNNEC.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
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