I went on deck that night and lay alone in the warm darkness, building
castles in Spain. Every lad has dreamed of all that he would do for
his parents when he had gone out into the world and made his fortune,
and now my dreams seemed to have come true at last. I thought of my
mother, and the things I might do to brighten the dullness of her life;
of Marion, and how my good fortune would send her to the Eastern school
she longed for; of my father, who had dreamed for years of improving
and restocking the ranch. The old Santa Brigida where I had been born
and where I hoped to end my days--a sudden understanding came to me, a
rush of gratitude for my father's determined clinging to our land. I
realized as never before how I loved the valley, the brown hills, the
lonely stretch of coast. A home to go back to--that was the best thing
in life!
Teura was to be buried in the morning, and no man on the islet slept
that night. After the native fashion the divers were assembled at
Maruia's house, and all night long their wild and melancholy songs
floated out across the water. The hymns of the islanders have a power
to stir one strangely: the voices of the women wailing in a minor key,
the deep, chanting refrain of the men--gradually, under the influence
of their music, my thoughts wandered, and I fell asleep.
The natives observe Sunday with a strictness unknown among more
civilized Christian races. Saving a few unavoidable tasks like
cooking, no work of any kind is done on that day, and the man bold
enough to break the rule would make an outcast of himself. If he went
fishing, they believe that his fishing would be accursed; if by any
chance he caught a fish, its flesh would be poisonous; and in all
probability a shark would be sent to overturn his canoe and make an end
of the impious Sabbath-breaker. White men are a law unto themselves,
of course, but my uncle had warned me long since that it would be a
mistake to urge Marama to break the rules of his religion. Our
Sundays, therefore, were what Sundays should be--days of rest and
change from the occupations of the week.
Marama and I often persuaded the cook to put up a cold lunch for us,
and set out in our canoe to explore the distant portions of the lagoon.
To amuse ourselves, and for easier traveling on these occasions, we had
rigged a sail--a bamboo mast, a big leg-of-mutton sail of unbleached
cotton, and a spar of tough light wood. We selected from the Tara's
stock of lumber a long two-inch plank, and when we set out for a day's
sailing this plank was lashed to the canoe--one end to the outrigger,
the middle to the gunwales, and the other projecting up and out, six
feet on the starboard beam. We carried a tremendous spread of sail for
so small a craft, and the long narrow canoe, with a fresh breeze astern
or on the beam, skimmed the lagoon at a speed that delighted our
hearts. One of us managed the sheet and steered with an oar from the
whaleboat; the other took his place on the plank, changing sides when
we tacked, and crawling out on the weather beam when the wind freshened
and the canoe lay over--bounding forward to rush through the water with
a tearing sound.
On the Sunday after Teura's burial, we took our lunch and set out for
an all-day sail, and toward the middle of the afternoon the trade wind
fell away and died. We were on the west side of the lagoon, a mile or
two north of the village of the copra-makers, built on the site of the
ancient Paumotan settlement. It was the first time that we had passed
close to the place where the shark had met his death, and as we paddled
slowly along the coral cliffs rising almost to the surface, we watched
for the opening of the cave.
Finally, through the calm blue water, not more than ten or twelve feet
down, we saw the mouth of the cavern where the monster had taken
refuge. The palms alongshore almost overhung the lagoon at this place.
The fringing reef which fell away in a line of submarine cliffs was
only a few yards wide, and beyond it lay the highest land on Iriatai,
the path of an ancient hurricane where the breaching seas of centuries
ago had piled great blocks and masses of coral to a height of eight or
ten yards above the sea. Marama dropped his paddle and took up a pair
of water goggles.
"Hold the canoe here a moment," he said; "I am going overboard for a
look. There was only one shark and I do not believe that a tonu would
live so close to the surface."
Next moment he was over the side and swimming down toward the
cave-mouth, into which I saw his body disappear. Presently, with
leisurely strokes, he swam into sunlit water and rose to take breath,
with a hand on the gunwale of the canoe. "Have patience a little
longer," he said with a smile, as he pulled down his goggles for the
second time. "I am going down once more."
Again he disappeared, and again I waited idly for his reappearance. A
minute passed; a minute and a half; two minutes. I began to be
alarmed. Three minutes were gone. I knew that never before had my
friend stayed down so long. Four minutes--I hauled up the canoe in the
shallows, snapped on my glasses and plunged down to the entrance of the
cavern. As I peered in anxiously, I saw that there was a strange
glimmer of light where only darkness should have been. Suddenly the
light was blotted out, and Marama emerged from the tunnel and rose with
me to the surface of the lagoon. When we had taken breath, his hand
went up to interrupt my hasty demand for an explanation.
"Aué!" he exclaimed in an excited voice, "but that is a strange place!
The hole in the coral rises as it runs inward, and seeing light ahead I
thought that I would swim in a little way. The light grew stronger;
all at once my head was out of water and I was breathing air. When I
pushed up my glasses to look about me, I found that I was swimming in
the midst of a great pool, arched over with a low ceiling of rock. At
the farther end a single ray of sunlight shines through a crack between
two wedged-in boulders, and beneath the light I saw a broad ledge,
sandy and high above the water. On that ledge, where a hundred might
stand together, are things of the old times: a heathen god, spears,
stone axes, the whitened heads of men. I am afraid, but I will go back
if you desire to see."
A sudden memory flashed into my mind--the scent of wood-smoke; the
long, shadowy living room at home; my uncle lying in a rawhide chair
with his feet against the stones of the fireplace; the missing brig;
the savages of Iriatai; the story of the searching-party--beyond doubt
we had stumbled on the cave where the cannibals took refuge on that day
so long ago!
"There is nothing to fear in old bones," I said. "Lead the way, if you
are not weary, and I will follow close behind."
Marama ducked under like a rolling porpoise, to swim down the face of
the cliff with long easy strokes, and I swam after him down the cliff
and into the faintly luminous gloom. The light grew stronger as we
advanced; twenty yards from the entrance my head came out of water and
I breathed the welcome air again. We were swimming in a black pool
which half filled a long shadowy cavern, illuminated by a beam of
sunlight filtering in through a cranny in the rocks. Stalactites of
fantastic shape hung from the low roof, and I saw the broad ledge of
which the native boy had spoken. We were in the hidden refuge of the
savages, the lurking-place of the terrible carcharodon, the shark which
had come so near to making an end of my uncle during our early days on
Iriatai!
It was an eerie place. We swam to the far end, and my heart was
beating faster than usual when my feet touched bottom and we walked
out, side by side, upon the ledge. A glance showed me that the place
had been a heathen temple of some sort. Under the hole which admitted
light stood a small platform of roughhewn coral blocks, a kind of
_marae_, like others to be found throughout the Polynesian islands. On
the platform, with his misshapen back to the ray of afternoon sunlight,
squatted a hideous little god of stone, leering and monstrous, with
hands folded on his belly and with a grinning mouth. A semicircle of
crumbling skulls lay about the idol, and leaning against the rocky wall
I saw carved war-clubs, beautifully fashioned spears, and axes of
polished stone. Marama touched my arm.
"Let us go," he whispered. "This is an ill place, indeed! I have
heard the old men's tales of the days when there were still wild people
in the Paumotus; without doubt that _tiki_ is Ruahatu, to whom you
heard old Maruia pray. These heads are the heads of men slain here in
sacrifice--their bodies were offered to _Atua Mao_, the shark god. Let
us go!"
That night, when I was telling my uncle of the cavern, Maruia came
aboard to show him a pearl that she had found. Her eyes gleamed as he
translated to her the story of our adventure, and she nodded her head
violently in confirmation of each fresh detail.
"Aye," she remarked at the end; "It was thus in the old days among the
Paumotan people. On my island, Matahiva, we had such a place; my
father has told me how in his childhood the women took refuge there
when the warriors went out to meet the men of Rangiroa, raiding in
their great canoes. And that stone god was Ruahatu, the Lord of
Sharks. For know that the shark you killed was not a shark, nor would
you have killed him had you not been a white man! You smile--but I am
speaking true words. For a hundred years, two hundred, since time
beyond reckoning, perhaps, he has lived in that cave and fattened on
the bodies of men, cast to him by the priests. Yet his own people
might swim about him fearlessly, for he knew them, and they were of his
clan. One of my own ancestors, after his death, took on the semblance
of a shark!"
"You'll have an interesting yarn to tell at home," said my uncle, when
the woman was gone. "I've heard of these Paumotan refuge-caves, but I
never knew a man who had laid eyes on one. Some Sunday we'll run down
for a look. I'd like to get those weapons for my collection in Tahiti."
X