It must have taken a deal of talking to win my mother's consent, but
Uncle Harry proved equal to the task. When we had breakfasted he sat
with her for an hour in the courtyard, and afterward, when I saw her
alone, she kissed me and told me that I was to go.
We had guests that day--old friends who had known my uncle when he was
a boy. I sat at dinner with the others, but all I can remember of the
meal is that Uncle Harry praised my ducks. I was still dazed at my
good fortune: my dreams of adventure and of distant wanderings were to
come true at last! A cruise on the Tara in the South Seas--a quest for
pearls in a tropical lagoon--a part in the sequel of my uncle's
tale--indeed, the prospect was enough to intoxicate any boy of fifteen.
Iriatai! There was magic in the word alone, and I repeated it under my
breath while the older people about me spoke of commonplace things.
The sun was low over the Pacific when we said good-bye. The others
accompanied us to the beach: my father and mother, Marion, and our
guests; and in a little group of people from the Santa Brigida I saw
old Juana sobbing, with a shawl pulled over her head. The two sailors
rolled the whaleboat into the wash of the sea; after the final
handclasps, Uncle Harry and I took our places in the stern. The ocean
was calmer than on the day before. Ivi and Ofai watched their time,
ran the boat out in a lull, leaped in to seize their oars, and pulled
seaward through the gentle surf. The mate of the Tara had seen us with
his glasses and the schooner was headed toward the land. Presently we
came alongside, scrambled over the rail, and helped the sailors haul
the boat on deck. My uncle shouted a command; the sheets were slacked
away, and the Tara bore off to the southwest.
I turned for a last look at the watchers on the beach, already so far
distant that they were no more than a patch of color against the dunes.
There was a lump in my throat--it was the first time that I had been
away from home.
"I hate to leave," remarked Uncle Harry, who was standing at my side,
"but we're off now; in the morning we'll be out of sight of land. Come
below and have a look at your quarters. I think you'll like the Tara;
she's my only child!"
The Tara, as I have said, was schooner-rigged--a vessel of a hundred
tons, fast, comfortable, and designed to ride out any sea. A glance
convinced me of her owner's love. The sides were snowy with fresh
paint; the decks of white pine were holystoned till they gleamed
spotless against their seams of pitch; the masts and spars were newly
varnished, and no spot of mildew stained the sails. On the after deck
a shallow cockpit contained the wheel and binnacle. Forward of the
cockpit, the companionway led down to the saloon, where a pair of
curtained doors gave on staterooms to starboard and to port. The
woodwork was of bright mahogany. On either side of the saloon there
was a leather-upholstered lounge, and half a dozen chairs were screwed
fast to the floor about a handsome dining-table. Forward of the saloon
was the engine-room, shut off by a bulkhead from the main hold where
burlapped bales and packing-cases were piled high between decks. The
galley was on deck, and the forecastle was placed far up in the bows,
furnished with a deal-table and berths made of piping on which lengths
of heavy canvas had been stretched.
My uncle's was the larger of the two staterooms. It was fitted with a
washstand and a single berth; a few framed photographs hung on the
walls, a large porthole gave a view of the sea outside, and a steel
safe was built into one corner of the room. The cabin opposite was
assigned to me--it was here that the half-caste son of von Tesmar had
breathed his last.
"You're not afraid of ghosts, eh?" my uncle asked me with a smile.
"The poor devil died in that very bunk, but he's never troubled us
since, and if he did appear, he'd be harmless enough. Come--I want you
to know my boys; excepting the cook I shipped in 'Frisco, I've known
them all for years."
They were Kanakas--brown Polynesians of the islands, akin to the
Hawaiian people and to the Maoris of far-away New Zealand. Ivi and
Ofai I already knew. Fatu, the mate, was a huge silent fellow with a
smile in his quick dark eyes--a nobly proportioned giant. The
engineer, Pahuri, was an elderly Rarotongan with a passion for fishing:
a small man, gray, wrinkled, and talkative. He had followed the sea
since boyhood and had visited many parts of the world on whaling
vessels and on merchant ships. His heart was kind, but he possessed a
biting tongue and his travels had made him cynical. Then came Rairi,
the half-caste cook my uncle had found stranded in San Francisco after
a voyage before the mast. He was a shade lighter than the others, with
a handsome, sullen face: a tall man and powerfully built, though
dwarfed in the presence of the mate. Rairi spoke a little English,
picked up along the waterfront, and had a pleasant manner when he
wished to make himself agreeable, but at other times his features were
of a forbidding cast. He cooked, and cooked well, in his box of a
galley, set on the forward deck above the hold. Outside of his duties
he had little to do with the men, as if his strain of white blood
caused him to hold aloof. Last of all came Marama the cabin boy, who
served our meals, polished brasses, and made himself useful whenever
there was an odd job on hand. He was a brown lad of my own age, though
larger and much stronger than I, and I liked him from the moment we
met. He was a cheerful worker, his black eyes were bright with humor
and intelligence, and he never lost his temper when a lurch of the deck
threw a potful of hot coffee over his feet. His father, Uncle Harry
told me, was a chief on Raiatea.
"We're heading straight for Raiatea," said my uncle as we sat at dinner
that night. "I want you to stop there while I run across to unload my
cargo at Tahiti. It's a fine island and the chief of Faatemu is a
great friend of mine. You can put up at his house; I'll leave young
Marama to keep you company. He knows a bit of English--that will help
you at first. By the way, you'll need to pick up the native as fast as
you can; the man who can't speak with them is handicapped. It's easy
to learn; why not work at it during our passage South? I'll help you
and so will any of the men; it always pleases them to find one of us
interested in their language. Try memorizing a few words a day at the
start, then the simple phrases will come to you, and before you know
it, you'll be yarning with the crew.
"The quieter we keep this business the less trouble we'll have, and for
that reason I'm going to pick up my men on Raiatea. There's a Paumotan
colony on the island--we'll have no trouble in getting all the divers
we need. They work two in a canoe, and we'll want fifteen canoes to be
on the safe side. They'll have to be built specially; I want you to
stay in Faatemu to see that they are ready when I return. It's a great
place for fishing and pig-hunting--you'll have a lot of fun!"
When dinner was over we sat on deck for a time, while my uncle smoked
one of his slender black cigars. The sails were furled, for the wind
had died away an hour after sunset. An oily swell was running from the
west and the pulsing of the Tara's engine drove us steadily away from
land. By the dim light of the binnacle I could see that Ofai, at the
wheel, was shivering. Finally he called to Ivi, and the other came aft
with a thick woollen jacket on his arm. Uncle Harry tossed the stump
of his cigar overboard; I heard it hiss for an instant as it struck the
sea.
"Come," he said; "let's turn in before we're both frozen. My blood's
too thin for these chilly winters of yours!"
Next day we left the zone of coastwise calms and ran into the northeast
trade. The engine was stopped and the Tara headed southward with all
sails set, running almost free. It is a brave wind, the trade, and it
blew strong and fair, making the whitecaps dance on the dark blue
swells, and driving us southward day after day till we were within a
few degrees of the Line. Each day, at noon, my uncle fetched his
sextant on deck to observe the sun, and I watched him afterward,
bending over the chart in his stateroom, marking off our position with
dividers and scale. Finally, with a very sharp pencil, he made a tiny
cross, and I knew that this mark on the great blank spaces of the
mid-Pacific was where the schooner had been at twelve o'clock.
Sometimes the wind fell away at sunset and the engine chugged steadily
throughout the night; once, when the trade blew day and night without
abating, the Tara reeled off two hundred knots from noon to noon.
The weather grew warmer day by day. Shoes, stockings, and warm
clothing were stowed away, and the men went about their work in
waistcloths, with brown chests bare. One morning Uncle Harry called me
into the trade-room at the after end of the hold, and handed me half a
dozen _pareus_--strips of cotton print, dyed in barbaric patterns of
scarlet and white, a yard wide and two yards long.
"If I were you," he said, "I'd put away my trousers from now on--shirts
too, if you're not afraid of the sun. My friends call me a savage, but
aboard my own schooner I dress as I please. The natives invented the
pareu, and it's the most sensible dress for this part of the world.
It's cooler than pyjamas at night, and in the morning you have merely
to hitch a fresh one around your waist and you're dressed for the day.
Let me show you the trick of putting it on." He wrapped the cloth
about my waist, tucked in the ends and made a tight roll at the top.
"There," he remarked with a smile, "that's quick dressing, eh?"
From that day we went barefoot and bare-chested as the sailors did, and
I was soon burned to a uniform deep ruddy brown, only a shade paler
than the native crew.
We were in the tropics now. The ocean was of a vivid blue that I had
never seen. Shoals of flying fish rose before the Tara's cutwater to
skim off above the waves, and sometimes the water about us was alive
with the predatory fish which rove the open sea. One afternoon Marama
showed me how to catch my first albicore in native fashion.
We were standing by the rail, on the after deck. Suddenly, close to
the schooner's side, a dozen great steel-blue fish flashed into the
air, leaping like porpoises. "Albicore!" exclaimed my companion, as he
darted away toward the forecastle. A moment later he was back,
brandishing a twelve-foot pole of heavy bamboo. To the small end of it
he made fast a length of strong cotton line, terminating in a lure of
mother-of-pearl tinted in iridescent shades of yellow and green and
fitted with a barbless hook of brass. The shell was cut and polished
to resemble a six-inch flying-fish, with a tuft of white horsehair
projecting on either side to represent the wings.
The albicore were still leaping and flashing alongside, now darting
ahead, now circling to follow in our wake. Marama tossed his lure
overboard and allowed it to skitter on the waves, holding the butt of
the rod strongly with both hands. There was a flash of blue in the
sea; the lure disappeared; the line snapped taut; the bamboo bent with
the struggles of a powerful fish. A yell burst from my companion's
lips. He braced himself to heave with all his strength, and a
thirty-pound albicore, vibrant and flashing in the sunlight, broke from
the water, sailed over the rail, and thudded to the deck.
"Quick!" shouted Marama. "You try! I kill this one--take him
forward--Seroni no like blood on deck."
My own blood was up and the hint was enough. In an instant the lure
was overboard and I was doing my best with unskilled hands to make it
skitter as the native boy had done. The fish had circled and were
following astern; I could see the spray of their leaping in the
schooner's wake. Then, as I gazed into the clear water, I saw a single
monstrous albicore rushing at my hook. His jaws gaped wide--there was
a mighty wrench; I found myself doubled over the rail, clinging to the
rod with all my strength and shouting for help. Marama had turned to
come aft and his quick eye took in the situation at a glance. He
bounded to the forecastle and came running along the deck, holding
aloft a long, four-pointed spear. "_Tapea maitai!_" he shouted--"Don't
let go!" At that moment, Seroni himself--for that was my uncle's
native name--appeared on deck. He seized the spear from Marama's hand
and sprang to the rail. I was beginning to learn that Uncle Harry
prided himself on excelling the natives in their own pursuits. His arm
shot out in a swift dexterous thrust which transfixed the wallowing
fish, so heavy that we could not lift it till a noose had been thrown
over its tail.
That night, for the first time in my life, I tasted the characteristic
dish of Polynesia: raw fillets of fish, soaked in vinegar and served as
an appetizer.
The trade wind held for sixteen days, and when it died away at last we
were only four hundred miles north of the Line. Then the Tara's sails
were furled and for three days and three nights the engine drove us
southward over a sea ruffled by light airs from the west. I shall
never forget those equatorial nights, when all the others, saving the
steersman and myself, were asleep on deck--the steady pulsing of the
Tara's motor; the calm sea, heaving gently as a sleeper's breast; the
Southern Cross, low down among the blazing constellations. Each day at
dawn the air cooled and freshened; presently the sky to the east began
to pale, the little clouds on the horizon grew luminous with rosy
light, and the sun appeared above the rim of the sea, a disk of
dazzling brightness, glaring like burnished brass. The sunsets, on
evenings when masses of cloud were piled along the western sky, were
still more beautiful. Long after the sun had sunk beyond the slope of
the world the clouds were tinted with opal and rose, and pierced by
lofty shafts of golden light.
We crossed the Line and met the southeast trade, blowing from the
far-off Chilean coast. Then the sheets were close-hauled and the Tara
began to beat southward, pitching and bucking into the head sea.
Marama brought racks to hold the dishes on our table; we moved about
the deck in short runs, grasping at the rail or a convenient stay; and
for the first time I felt a landsman's seasick qualms. The constant
tossing made all hands irritable, and brought on the trouble between
Pahuri and the cook.
I heard from Marama how the affair began. Fatu and the engineer ate
their meals forward with the men, old friends and natives like
themselves, with whom there was no occasion to enforce strict
discipline. Pahuri, the little Rarotongan engineer, was the oldest man
and the recognized story-teller of the crew. He had seen many strange
parts of the world, and no doubt, like other story-tellers I have
known, he was quite ready to describe other places he had never seen.
No matter how often the story had been told, nor how obviously
embellished by a resourceful imagination, the men always listened
eagerly when Pahuri began his tale. Rairi, the half-caste cook, was
the only skeptic of the lot, and his comment on the engineer's accounts
of Sydney and Wellington and Singapore, coupled with his own white
blood and pretense of superiority, caused daily friction between the
two. There was soup on the day of the trouble, scalding-hot soup,
carried to the forecastle by Rairi's own hands, and a plate of it,
poured down the engineer's neck when the Tara gave a sudden violent
lurch, brought Pahuri raging to his feet. Rairi was Paumotan on the
native side; to a man of his kind no epithet could have been more
offensive than the engineer's angry: "_Uri Paumotu!_--Paumotan dog!"
But the mate's presence tied his hands and he retired sullenly to the
galley, trembling with rage. The sequel came late that night.
Pahuri had been working on his engine and he came on deck, a little
after midnight, for a breath of air. He was leaning on the rail by the
shrouds when strong hands seized his throat and he heard a fierce
whisper in his ear:--
"Ah!--Pig of a Rarotongan!"
Pahuri was a wiry little man and he struggled frantically in the
other's grasp, for he realized at once that the cook intended to
strangle him into silence and heave him overboard. He twisted his body
about, gripped the shrouds like a monkey, doubled up his knees and
drove both heels into Rairi's stomach. The cook relaxed his hands for
a moment with a grunt of pain, and Pahuri managed to give a stifled
shout. But the half-caste's fingers tightened once more, and the
engineer felt his senses leaving him. His hands fell from the shrouds
to which he had clung, his body was lifted to the height of the rail,
and he thought numbly that the end was near. Then, suddenly as he had
been seized, he was dropped to the deck, where he lay gasping for a
time before he realized what had occurred.
The giant mate was standing over him, gazing down with an expression of
concern. There was a waning moon, and by its light Pahuri saw that
Fatu held the cook with one huge outstretched hand, the thumb and
fingers sunk in the half-caste's corded neck. He held him easily as
one lifts a puppy by the scruff.
"What is this?" the mate asked mildly, in his soft deep voice. "Has
this man tried to do you harm?"
The man at the wheel had given the alarm, and my uncle came on deck a
moment later, dressed only in a pareu, his chest and powerful shoulders
bare. I had been sleeping, but the noises of the scuffle awakened me,
and I followed close behind. Pahuri was able to speak when we arrived
and he told a story that left out no detail of the affair. For a
moment, no one thought of the half-caste, struggling weakly in Fatu's
mighty grip. Even in the moonlight, I could see that his face was
blackening--I pointed and touched my uncle's arm.
"Let him go, Fatu!" he ordered sharply. "You'll kill the man!"
The mate had been listening intently to Pahuri's tale, and at Uncle
Harry's words he dropped Rairi with an air of surprise, as if he had
forgotten him. The cook had fainted; we could not revive him until a
bucket of sea water had been dashed over his face. At that he sat up
feebly, groaning as his hands went up to feel his neck. My uncle
glanced down, his dark eyes burning with a glitter that made Rairi turn
away his face.
"Feel better now?" asked my uncle in a hard vibrant voice. "I'm glad
of that, for I've something to say to you. You understand English, eh?
You needn't do any talking--I know all about this affair. You tried to
kill Pahuri--an old man half your size and your superior on board.
These boys would like to heave you into the sea; I fancy they're right,
it would be a riddance of damned poor trash. The only difficulty is
that I need a cook. We're going to Raiatea first, and if you value
your skin, you'll stick close aboard. Then I'm going to Tahiti and
I'll drop you there. If you behave yourself from now on, I'll say
nothing to the authorities; but if you try any more tricks, if any
member of the crew goes overboard accidentally at night, or if anyone
so much as falls ill before we reach Tahiti, I'll feel it my duty to
turn you over to the French, who know me well. They guillotine their
murderers down there--it's not a pleasant way to die! Think it over.
You can go forward now."
Rairi struggled to his feet and tottered forward with a hand on the
rail. At that moment, moved by a boy's emotion, I felt almost sorry
for him, but as he passed me I caught a glimpse of his face in the
moonlight--dark handsome features distorted by passion. I drew back as
if he had raised his hand to strike me, but the others had not seen
what I had seen, and I stifled the cry of warning which rose to my lips.
There was no more trouble with Rairi while he remained aboard the Tara;
he went about his duties in silence, ignored by the sailors and sitting
alone in his galley during the slack hours of the day. But I know now
that it would have been better for us, and better for him, perhaps, in
the long run, if my uncle had given his men their way--had let them
throw the revengeful half-caste to the sharks.
On the morning after the trouble we raised our first land--the western
islands of the Marquesas. At sunset we had seen flocks of birds flying
steadily southeast, and my uncle told me that if we followed them they
would lead us to the land. At dawn, when I came on deck, I heard the
ringing shout of landfall from aloft, and gazing eastward, I made out
the high silhouette of Hatutu, a faint outline against the flushing
sky. An hour later we drew abreast of Eiao, a saw-toothed ridge,
falling away gently at either end; and toward midday we raised the rock
of Motu Iti, and the long highlands of Nukuhiva, veiled in masses of
black thundercloud. At nightfall, in the darkling east, the pinnacled
skyline of Uapou faded and disappeared.
"A beautiful group," remarked my uncle, standing by the rail. "When I
was trading there I knew every bay from Hanavave to Tai-O-Hae. The
larger islands have a fascination--a gloomy beauty that gets into one's
blood. The people, though they were cannibals, were a fine savage
race, who had developed, during the course of centuries in their
isolated group, an interesting culture of their own. But their blood
was too wild to stand contact with our civilization, and when the white
man came they died off, as the Indian and the buffalo disappeared from
our American plains. Now the valleys where people once dwelt in
thousands are silent and deserted, the lonely burial-places of a
vanished race. I suppose I'm a heathen, but I can see the savage's
point of view--he asked no more than to be left in peace, a favor we
white men have never been willing to grant...."
Two days afterward I had my first glimpse of the coral islands. The
moon was bright that evening as we passed through the twelve-mile
channel separating the atolls of Rangiroa and Tikehau. I climbed to a
perch in the shrouds and lingered there as we coasted the western end
of Rangiroa; the night-breeze blowing off the land brought to my
nostrils a faint sweet perfume, the odor of pandanus blossoms. The
line of palms, growing on the low ring of land, stood out sharply in
the moonlight, and at times, when we passed a region of sparser
vegetation, I had glimpses of the great lagoon beyond, silvered by the
moon and stretching away to the horizon without land in sight.
It was close to midnight when the atoll dropped away astern and I
climbed down to the deck, stiff from my long vigil aloft. I found
Uncle Harry busy over some papers at the little desk in his stateroom.
He swung about in his chair and lit a cigar as I sat down on the berth.
"Been having a look at Rangiroa, eh," he remarked. "There's a kind of
beauty about the atolls, especially on a moonlight night. Iriatai is
the same sort of place, though on a much smaller scale. There's no
other group in the world like the Paumotus: eighty lagoon islands, some
of them of immense size, strung out northwest and south-east in a
cluster a thousand miles long. Darwin believed that they were the
peaks of a submerged mountain-range, on which the coral polyps have
built, as the mountains sank little by little beneath the sea. The
lagoons are accounted for on the ground that the polyps tend to die in
calm water, and thrive best in the froth and spray of breaking seas.
As time went on, you see, the ones on the outside would build higher
and higher, while the ones inside would die. Then, as the island
continued gradually to sink, with the live polyps all working in the
wash of the sea along the outer run, a deepening lagoon would form
inside--and there you have your atoll. The passes are believed to be
caused by fresh water, the heavy rainfall of these latitudes, finding
an outlet to the sea. Running out at low tide over the lowest portion
of the reef, it kills the coral-builders and causes the slow formation
of a pass, often deep enough to allow large vessels to enter the lagoon.
"There was a day, perhaps, two thousand years ago, when the Paumotus
lay lonely and uninhabited, spread out like a vast net, a thousand
miles long and four hundred miles across, to catch the canoes of
wanderers who had missed the higher and richer islands to the west.
The Polynesians were daring seamen, but their methods of navigation
were of the most primitive sort--by the stars, the clouds, the trade
wind, and the flight of birds. Hundreds of their great double canoes
with clumsy sails of matting must have left Samoa for the eastern
groups, and some of them, missing the Cook Islands or Tahiti, of which
they had only half-legendary accounts, fetched up along this chain of
atolls. The Paumotan people of to-day are their descendants. The
names of the islands still show the wonder of those ancient wanderers
at the strange sea in which they found themselves, and the joy and
relief the landfalls brought--'The Spread-out Heavens'; 'The Place of
Rejoicing'; 'The Windward Rainbow'; 'The Land of Great Beacon-Fires.'
But perhaps this doesn't interest you very much--I have a way of
preaching when I start on the subject of the islands!" My uncle tilted
his chair and smiled at me through a cloud of smoke.
"The wind is shifting toward the north," he went on, "and with a little
luck we'll sight Raiatea before dark to-morrow night. As I said, I'll
leave young Marama with you; you're getting on well with the language,
but you'll need an interpreter for the present. I'll be gone a month,
at least, and when I return I'd like to be able to start at once for
Iriatai. You'll stop with Marama's father, the chief of Faatemu Bay.
I'll be careful to explain what I want to the old man, but remember
that a native hasn't the least notion of the passage of time. I'm
leaving this to you--if you don't keep after old Taura every day, the
canoes may not be finished for months. I want fifteen strongly made
canoes of hibiscus wood, about twenty feet long, and complete with
outriggers, cinnet for lashings, and a pair of paddles with each. Then
we'll need twenty-five or thirty pairs of diving-goggles, with the
glass set in wood or horn. Some of the men will have their own, but
they're always losing them, and once his goggles are lost, a diver is
no more use. I'll leave you the glass and the diamond to cut it with;
Marama will find you men who understand this work. I have a store at
Faatemu; you can take the keys and advance a certain amount of goods to
the canoe-builders, but don't let them get too far ahead of you! Old
Taura, the chief, is as good a native as I know, and he'll see that you
enjoy your stay on the island. You'll be swimming, and spearing fish,
and hunting wild pig in the mountains--I only wish that I were stopping
over, myself!"
The north wind blew all night with sudden fierce gusts and squalls of
rain. The day broke wild and gray, but toward noon the sun shone out,
and presently the clouds were left behind, sinking along the horizon to
the north. At four bells land was in sight--the peaks of Huahine,
bearing a little west of south, minute irregularities on the line where
sea met sky. It was an afternoon such as one sees rarely in the
tropics: a cloudless horizon and an atmosphere clear as the air above
our deserts at home. An hour before sundown the Leeward Islands were
all in view, strung out in the shape of a great half-moon on the sea
ahead of us. The tall mountain rising abruptly in the north was Bora
Bora; Tahaa and Raiatea, sheltered within the same circling
barrier-reef, lay straight before the Tara's bows; and Huahine made the
southern horn--beautiful as some land remembered from a dream.
At midnight we saw the torches of fishermen on the Raiatea reef, and
dawn found us off Faatemu Bay. The sails were furled, Pahuri started
the engine, and we glided in through the Nao Nao passage, past the
green islet of Haaio, past Tuuroto Point, and into the deep inlet where
the thatched roofs of the village clustered beneath the palms.