Marooned on Mataora
The sun was low when the _Faaite_ steamed out through the pass and
headed for the Cook group, six hundred miles west and south. Dark
clouds hung over Raiatea--Rangi Atea of Maori tradition, the Land
of the Bright Heavens--but the level sunlight still illuminated the
hillsides of Tahaa, the lovely sister island, protected by the same
great oval reef. Far off to the north, the peak of Bora Bora towered
abruptly from the sea.
It was not yet the season of the Trades, and the northeast breeze
which followed us brought a sweltering heat, intolerable anywhere
but on deck. Worthington was sitting beside me--a lean man, darkly
tanned, with very bright blue eyes. His feet were bare; he wore a
singlet, trousers of white drill, and a Manihiki hat--beautifully
plaited of bleached pandanus leaf--a hat not to be bought with money.
The dinner gong sounded.
"I'm not going down," he remarked; "too hot below. I had something to
eat at Uturoa. How about you?"
I shook my head--it needed more than a normal appetite to drive one
to the dining saloon. Banks of squall cloud, shading from gray to an
unwholesome violet, were gathering along the horizon, and the air was
so heavy that one inhaled it with an effort.
"This is the worst month of the hurricane season," Worthington
went on; "it was just such an evening as this, last year, that
the waterspout nearly got us--the night we sighted Mataora. I was
five months up there, you know--marooned when Johnson lost the old
_Hatutu_.
"I was pretty well done up last year, and when I heard that the
_Hatutu_ was at Avarua I decided to take a vacation and go for a six
weeks' cruise with Johnson. Ordinarily he would have been laid up in
Papeete until after the equinox, but the company had sent for him to
make a special trip to Penrhyn. We had a wretched passage north--a
succession of squalls and broiling calms. The schooner was in bad
shape, anyway: rotten sails, rigging falling to pieces, and six
inches of grass on her bottom. On a hot day she had a bouquet all her
own--the sun distilled from her a blend of cockroaches and mildewed
copra that didn't smell like a rose garden. On the thirtieth day the
skipper told me we were two hundred miles from Penrhyn and so close
to Mataora that we might sight the palm tops. I'd heard a lot about
the place (it has an English name on the chart)--how isolated it was,
what a pleasant crowd the natives were, and how it was the best place
in the Pacific to see old-fashioned island life.
"We had been working to windward against a light, northerly breeze,
but the wind began to drop at noon, and by three o'clock it was
glassy calm. There was a wicked-looking mass of clouds moving toward
us from the west, but the glass was high and Johnson said we were
in for nothing worse than a squall. As the clouds drew near I could
see that they had a sort of purplish-black heart, broad at the top,
pointed at the bottom, and dropping gradually toward the water. There
was something queer about it; the mate was pointing, and Johnson's
Kanakas were all standing up. Suddenly I heard a rushing sound, like
a heavy squall passing through the bush; the point of the funnel
had touched the sea three or four hundred yards away from us--a
waterspout! There wasn't a breath of air, and the _Hatutu_ had no
engine. It was moving straight for us, so slowly that I could watch
every detail of its formation. The boys slid our boat overboard;
the mate sang out something about all hands being ready to leave the
schooner.
"I've heard of waterspouts ever since I was a youngster, but I
never expected to see one as close as we did that day. As the point
of cloud dropped toward the sea it was ragged and ill defined; but
when it touched the water and the noise began I saw its shape change
and its outlines grow hard. It was now a thin column, four or five
feet in diameter, rising a couple of hundred feet before it swelled
in the form of a flat cone, to join the clouds above. Curiously
enough, it was not perpendicular, but had a decided sagging curve.
Nearer and nearer it came, until I could make out the great swirling
hole at its base, and see the vitreous look of this column of solid
water, revolving at amazing speed. It hadn't the misty edges of a
waterfall. The outside was sharply defined as the walls of a tumbler.
I wondered what would happen when it struck the _Hatutu_. The mate
was shouting again, but just then the skipper pushed a rifle into
my hands. 'Damned if I leave the old hooker,' he swore. 'Shoot into
the thing--maybe we can break it up.' And, believe me or not, we did
break it up.
"It didn't come down with a crash, as one might have expected. When
we had pumped about twenty shots into it, and it was not more than
fifty yards away, it began to dwindle. The column of water became
smaller and drew itself out to nothing; the rushing noise ceased; the
hole in the sea disappeared in a lazy eddy; the dark funnel rose and
blended with the clouds above.
"A fine southeast breeze sprang up as the clouds dispersed, and we
were reaching away for Penrhyn when a boy up forward gave a shout and
pointed to the northwest. Sure enough there was a faint line on the
horizon--the palms of Mataora. A sudden idea came to me. I was fed up
with the schooner. Why not ask to be put ashore and picked up on the
_Hatutu's_ return from Penrhyn? She would be back in a fortnight, and
it was only a few miles out of her way to drop me and pick me up.
"Johnson is a good fellow; his answer to my proposition was to
change his course at once and slack away for the land twelve miles
to leeward. 'You'll have a great time,' he said; 'I wish I were going
with you. Old Tari will put you up--I'll give you a word to him. Take
along two or three bags of flour and a few presents for the women.'
"At five o'clock we were off the principal village, with canoes all
about us and more coming out through the surf. The men were a fine,
brawny lot, joking with the crew, and eager for news and small trade.
I lowered my box, some flour, tobacco, and a few bolts of calico,
into the largest canoe, and said good-by to Johnson.
"It was nearly a year before I saw him again; as you know, he lost
the _Hatutu_ on Flying Venus Shoal. They made Penrhyn in the boat
and got a passage to Tahiti two months later. Everyone knew I was on
Mataora, but it was five months before a schooner could come to take
me off.
"There is no pass into the lagoon. As we drew near the shore I saw
that the easy, deceptive swell reared up to form an ugly surf ahead
of us. At one point, where a crowd of people was gathered, there
was a large irregular fissure in the coral, broad and deep enough
to admit the passage of a small boat, and filled with rushing water
each time a breaker crashed on the reef. My two paddlers stopped
opposite this fissure and just outside the surf, watching over their
shoulders for the right wave. They let four or five good-sized ones
pass, backing water gently with their paddles; but at last a proper
one came, rearing and tossing its crest till I thought it would
break before it reached us. My men dug their paddles into the water,
shouting exultantly as we darted forward. The shouts were echoed
on shore. By Jove! it was a thriller! Tilting just on the break of
the wave, we flew in between jagged walls of coral, up the fissure,
around a turn--and before the water began to rush back, a dozen men
and women had plunged in waist deep to seize the canoe.
"Mataora is made up of a chain of low islands--all densely covered
with coconut palms--strung together in a rough oval to inclose a
lagoon five miles by three. Though there is no pass, the surf at high
tide breaches over the gaps between the islands. The largest island
is only a mile and a half long, and none of them are more than half
a mile across. Dotted about the surface of the lagoon are a number
of _motu_--tiny islets--each with its flock of sea fowl, its clump
of palms, and shining beach of coral sand. Set in a lonely stretch of
the Pacific, the place is almost cut off from communication with the
outside world; twice or three times in the course of a year a trading
schooner calls to leave supplies and take off copra. Undisturbed
by contact with civilization, the life of Mataora flows on--simple,
placid, and agreeably monotonous--very little changed, I fancy, since
the old days. It is true that they have a native missionary, and use
calico, flour, and tobacco when they can get them; but these are
minor things. The great events in their annals are the outrage of
the Peruvian slavers in eighteen sixty-two, when many of the people
were carried off to labor and die in the Chinchas Islands, and the
hurricane of nineteen thirteen.
"After presenting myself to the missionary and the chief I was
escorted by a crowd of youngsters to the lagoon side of the island,
where Tairi lived, in a spot cooled by the trade wind and pleasantly
shaded by coconuts. The old chap was a warm friend of Johnson's and
made me welcome; I soon arranged to put up with him during my stay on
the island. His house, like all the Mataora houses, was worth a bit
of study.
"Pandanus logs, five or six inches in diameter and set four feet
apart, made the uprights. On each side of these logs, and extending
from top to bottom, a groove was cut. Thin laths, split from the
aërial roots of the pandanus, were set horizontally into the grooves,
making a wall which permitted the free circulation of air. At the
windward end of the house, a large shutter of the same material was
hung on hinges of bark; on warm days it could be opened to admit
the breeze. The plates and rafters were made of the trunks of old
coconut palms--a beautiful hard wood which blackens with age and can
be polished like mahogany. The roof was thatched with _kakao_--strips
of wood over which were doubled selected leaves of pandanus, six feet
long and four inches across. The _kakao_ are laid on like shingles,
so deeply overlapped that only six inches of each is exposed, and
the result is a cool and perfectly water-tight roof which lasts for
years.
"The floor of Tari's house was of fine white gravel, covered with
mats. A bed of mats, a few odds and ends of fishing gear, and a Bible
in the Rarotongan language made up the furniture. The old man had
been a pearl diver for many years; he knew all the lagoons of this
part of the Pacific, and could give the history of every large pearl
discovered in these waters. Twenty fathoms he considered an ordinary
depth for the naked divers--twenty-five, the limit. One day he went
too deep, and since then he had been a cripple with paralyzed legs,
dependent for care on the kindly people of his island. He busied
himself in carving out models of the ancient Polynesian sailing
canoes, beautifully shaped and polished, inlaid with shell, and
provided with sails of mother-of-pearl. Now and then he presented a
canoe to the captain of a trading schooner visiting the island, and
received in return a bag of flour or a few sticks of tobacco.
"I had some interesting yarns with Tari--I speak Rarotongan, and
the Mataora language is a good deal the same. They have three extra
consonants, by the way--the f, l, and h. What a puzzle these island
dialects are!
"Tairi told me a lot about pearl fishing. The people had divided
their lagoon into three sections, one of which was fished each year.
In this way each section got a two years' rest. The shell is the
object of the diving--pearls are a secondary issue. The divers are
not much afraid of sharks, but dread the tonu and the big conger
eel. Some years before, when Tari was resting in a boat after a spell
under water, one of his companions failed to return to the surface.
Looking through his water glass, he saw a great tonu lying on the
bottom, sixty feet beneath him--the legs of his comrade hanging from
its jaws. Fancy the ugly brute, ten feet long and all head, like an
overgrown rock cod, with a man in his mouth. Tairi and several others
seized their spears and were over the side next moment; they killed
the tonu, but too late to save the life of their companion.
"Conger eels grow to enormous size in the pearl lagoons, and the
divers keep a close watch for them. They lie in holes and crevices of
the coral and dart out their heads to seize a passing fish, or the
wrist of a diver stooping and intent on his task. When the conger's
jaws close on wrist or ankle, the diver needs a cool head; no amount
of struggling will pull the eel from his hole. One must wait quietly,
Tairi told me, until the conger relaxes his jaws preparatory to
taking a better grip. Then a quick wrench, and one is free.
"On an atoll like Mataora, where the food supply is limited to fish
and coconuts, with a chicken or a piece of pork as an occasional
treat, fishing plays a large part in the life of the people. The
men were all expert fishermen, and used a variety of ingenious
methods to catch the different kinds of fish. Tairi, of course, was
no longer able to go out; but a friend of his--an old fellow named
Tamatoa--used to take me with him. He was a fine specimen--six feet
tall, muscular and active as a boy, with clear eyes and thick gray
hair. One day he proposed trying for koperu, a small variety of
mackerel.
"The settlement is on the lee side of the island, where a coral shoal
runs out half a mile to sea, covered with twenty to forty fathoms
of water. It was early in the morning--a dead calm--when we launched
the big canoe and slipped out through the surf. About a quarter of a
mile offshore Tamatoa asked me to hold the canoe stationary while he
went about his fishing. Fastening a twenty-foot rope to the thwart,
he made a noose at the other end and passed it under his arms. Then
he took a ripe coconut, split it, and gouged out the meat with his
knife. With the white pulp in one hand, he slipped overboard and
swam down as far as the rope would let him. Through my water glass I
watched him put pieces of coconut into his mouth and blow out clouds
of the finely chewed stuff, which drifted and eddied about him in the
gentle current. He seemed to stay under indefinitely--the lungs of a
pearl diver are wonderful things! Now and then he came to the surface
for a fresh supply of chum, and finally--at first in twos and threes,
and then in shoals--the koperu began to appear from the depths.
Little by little he enticed them close to the surface, until they
swam all about him fearlessly, gobbling the morsels of coconut. At
last the old man reached up for his fishing tackle--an eighteen-inch
twig, with a bit of doubled sewing cotton and a tiny barbless hook.
He baited the hook with a particle of coconut and dangled it under
the nose of the nearest koperu. While he hung on the shortened rope,
just beneath the surface, his right arm broke water in a series of
jerks, and each time it rose a fish tumbled into the canoe until they
lay in the bottom by dozens.
"Though the people of Mataora made sport of their work, they had
plenty of leisure for other things. In the evening, when the tasks of
the day had been completed by lighting the lamps in the roofed-over
sleeping places of the dead, the young people loved to gather for
a session of _akatu talanga_--story telling. They met in some one's
house or brought mats to spread in the bright moonlight outside; and
while the others lay about, intent on the tale, one after another
related the adventures of some Polynesian hero or the loves of some
legendary island princess--strange fragments from the old days, full
of specters and devils and monstrous heathen gods. There was a girl
named Porima who told her stories marvelously well--a tall youngster
of seventeen, with a dash of off-island blood; Hawaiian, I think. She
was an artist in her way; one could imagine in her the pioneer of
a literature to come. Her broad forehead, the masses of black hair
which from time to time, with an impatient gesture, she shook back
over her shoulders, and the slumberous eyes, with a suggestion of
hypnotic power, made her a person not easily forgotten. Although she
had told them many times, Porima's stories never failed to hold her
audience; the whispering ceased when she began, and every head turned
toward where she sat, her hands continually in motion, her voice
rising in excitement, or dying away to a murmur, while the listeners
held their breath. As the hours passed, both audience and performers
used to grow weary and drop off to sleep, one by one; finally a
rooster crowed and one awoke with a start to realize that it was day.
"One evening, at a story telling, I heard a shout from the beach
and remembered that I had been invited to go after flying fish.
A dozen canoes were putting out through the surf, each manned by
four paddlers. I made a fourth in the last canoe; we shot out of
the opening with a receding wave, paddled desperately through the
surf, and a moment later were rocking gently beyond the breakers.
The canoes were formed into a rough line; each stern-man lit a torch
of coconut leaves bound with bark, and a man forward took his place
standing--net in hand. The net is like a shallow landing net, set
on a haft of stiff bamboo, and can be handled only after years of
unconscious training. My position, paddling amidships, enabled me
to watch how the net was managed--one doesn't often see such an
exhibition of dexterity and strength. The art consists in clapping
the net over the fish just at the moment when he is lying at the
surface, hesitating before taking flight; at any instant the netter
may see a fish to port, to starboard, or directly ahead. Our man
swung his net continually, and each time it passed over the canoe he
flipped it upside-down to drop a fish. Think of the muscles needed
for this sort of thing; the quickness of eye and hand, where a
delicate balance must be maintained, and one is constantly alert to
guard one's face against the fish, which whizz past at all angles.
Then remember that it is a pretty serious matter to capsize in this
torch-lit water, swarming with sharks, where it is imprudent even to
trail one's hand overboard.
"In the bend of a bow-shaped islet at the north end of the lagoon,
under the palms behind a shore of blue water and dazzling sand,
lived an old chap named Ruri, who introduced me to another kind of
fishing. Ruri was close to seventy, but a strong man still; his
only complaint was lack of teeth, which compelled him to live on
_varuvaru_--the grated-up meat of the young coconut, mixed with its
own milk. The ambition of his life was a trip to Tahiti to get a
set of false teeth. He was not a native of Mataora--his mother was
a Gilbert-Islander and his father a Samoan. For many years Ruri had
followed the sea--cabin boy under Bully Hayes; deserter (to keep
a whole skin) from the famous _Leonora_; blackbirder in the New
Hebrides and Solomon Islands; pearl fisher in Penrhyn and the lagoons
of the Paumotu. At last, on a black night of storm, his vessel
struck and went to pieces on the coral of Mataora, and Ruri's days of
wandering were over. He married a woman of the island, but now she
was dead and the old man lived alone, a mile from the settlement,
occupied with his simple wants and immersed in dreams of the past.
Close beside his house was the grave of his wife--a tomb of cement
inclosed in a neat building of octagonal shape, with a door and a
small curtained window. A fine lamp, carefully tended and lit every
evening at sunset, hung above the grave, and a few stunted gardenias
and frangipanis, brought from enormous distances, were planted
about the door. Ruri's little plantation of coconuts and coarse taro
was free from weeds, and the neatness of his house, shipshape and
scrupulously clean, betrayed the old sailor.
"After a spell of calm weather, when the breaching surf had ceased to
cloud the waters of the lagoon, and the suspended particles of coral
sand had settled to the bottom, Ruri offered to show me how to catch
tenu--a fine fish, inhabiting the lagoon in ten to twenty fathoms
of water--speckled like a trout on a ground of brown and gold, and
reaching a weight of twenty pounds.
"In the absurdly complicated process of obtaining bait, tenu-fishing
is typical of the South Pacific. The night before, Ruri had spent two
hours with a torch, catching hermit crabs; now, using these crabs for
bait, we had to catch some ku ta--a small, prickly fish which alone
has power to interest the tenu. We set out in Ruri's leaky canoe
and paddled to a big, coral mushroom, which rose to within a yard
of the surface. Here the old man smashed the shells of his hermit
crabs with a stone, broke off the claws, set the soft bodies to one
side, and mashed the claws to a paste, which he dropped overboard and
allowed to drift into a dark hole in the coral. Then he produced a
short line, baited the hook with a body of a crab, and let it sink
out of sight into the darkness of the hole. In ten minutes a dozen
ku ta were gasping in the bottom of the canoe--fantastic little
fish, colored scarlet and vermilion, with enormous black eyes and a
dorsal fin which seemed to be carved out of red sealing wax. We put
them in a basket, trailed overboard to keep them alive, and began
the real fishing of the day. I paddled slowly, while Ruri--who did
not believe in fishing till the fish was in sight--leaned over the
side, scrutinizing the bottom through his water glass. Finally he
signaled me to stop--his eye had caught the movement of a tenu among
the masses of live coral, forty feet below us. The rest was simple:
one hooked a ku ta under the dorsal fin, tossed him overboard, and
allowed the weight of the hook and line to carry him to the bottom.
By means of the water glass, one could watch the approach of the
tenu, see him seize the bait, and judge the proper moment to strike.
"The bonito, which they call atu, is the most important of all fish
to the people of Mataora. Almost any fine day one could see a fleet
of canoes working offshore, busy at bonito catching, surrounded
by a cloud of the sea birds which guide one to the schools. They
use a pretty lure for this fishing--a sort of jig cut out of
mother-of-pearl, equipped with a tuft of red-dyed coconut husk and
a barbless hook of shell. Each fisherman carries a stiff bamboo rod
and half a dozen of these lures--ranging in color from pale green
to black--attached to ten-foot lengths of line. The islanders have
discovered that the condition of the water and the variations of
light make certain colors more attractive than others at a given
time; and when a school is found they try one shade after another
till they discover which the bonito prefer. Then the jigs not in
use are hooked to a ring at the base of the pole, and the fisherman
begins to pull bonito from the water, heaving them out by main
strength, without a moment's play. The barbless hook releases itself
the moment the fish is in the canoe, and the lure goes overboard
without the loss of an instant.
"One day, after a period of low tides, I saw another method of
fishing--rarely practised nowadays--an ora, or fish-poisoning
picnic. You know the barringtonia, probably--the big tree from
which they make their drums; it grows on all the high islands, and
sometimes one finds it on the richer atolls. There were a few on
Mataora. Ever notice the flower? It is a lovely thing--a tassel of
silky cream-colored stamens, shading to old rose at the ends, and
tipped with golden beads. The fruit is odd-looking, like a squarish
pomegranate, and it has odd properties, for when pounded up and put
into shallow water it seems to stupefy the fish.
"I was sitting in the shade beside Tari's house when a boy came
through the settlement, blowing melancholy blasts on a conch shell
and announcing that the chief wanted everyone to be on hand that
afternoon at a certain part of the lagoon, where an ora was to be
held. We set out at noon, the women carrying the crushed seeds of
the barringtonia in hastily woven baskets of green coconut frond. A
crowd from the other settlements was awaiting our arrival; and when
the babies had been put to sleep in the shade, with small children
stationed beside them to fan away the flies, the fun began. A shallow
stretch of lagoon lay before us, half a mile long by a quarter wide,
and into this plunged the women and girls, wading and swimming in all
directions, trailing behind them their baskets of poison. As time
went on, a faint and curious odor began to rise from the water--a
smell which reminded me vaguely of potassium cyanide. Soon the
spearmen were busy--wild brown figures, naked except for scarlet loin
cloths--pursuing the half-stupefied fish among the crevices of the
coral. Before the effect of the poison wore off and the reviving fish
began to make their escape to deeper water the men were returning
to the beach, the strings of hibiscus bark at their belts loaded and
dragging.
"On another day I joined a party of young people for a picnic across
the lagoon. It was glassy calm; the water was like a mirror in
which the palms of the wooded islets were reflected with motionless
perfection. The beaches on the far side, invisible on an ordinary
day, seemed to rise far out of water in the mirage. We landed on an
uninhabited island, hauled up our canoes, and set out on a hunt for
coconut crabs.
"They are extraordinary creatures, these crabs, enormous, and
delicious to eat. You will not find many on the high islands; but in
a place like Mataora there are hundreds of them, and they do a lot
of damage to the coconuts. During the day they hide in their holes,
deep among the roots of some big trees; at night they come out, climb
the palms, nip off the nuts with their powerful claws, descend to
the ground, tear off the husks, break open the shells, and devour the
meat. To catch them, one can either dig them out or build a fire at
the mouth of the hole, which never fails to draw them. Fire simply
fascinates the brutes. They must be handled warily, for their claws
can grip like a pair of pipe tongs and shear off a man's finger
without an effort.
"We lit a fire under the shade of a puka tree and liberated the crabs
we had captured. It sounds incredible, but they walked into the fire,
and sat down quietly on the embers to roast! One of the boys climbed
a palm and brought us some coconuts of a variety called nu mangaro,
with an edible husk, sweet and fibrous, like sugar cane. After lunch
we had a swim in the deep water close inshore and lay about smoking
while the girls wove us wreaths of sweet fern. It was an idyllic sort
of a day.
"I spent five months on Mataora. At first, when the schooner did not
appear, I was worried and used to fret a little; but as time went
on I grew to like the easy-going, dreamy life, and when at last a
schooner came to take me off I didn't know whether to be glad or
sorry--there were moments when I almost decided to send for a few
things and follow the example of old Ruri.
"During those five months I knew more disinterested kindliness than
I had supposed existed in the world; my heart warmed to the people of
Mataora.
"Finally the day came when the schooner dropped anchor in the lee of
the village--Whitmore's _Tureia_. Canoe after canoe shot out through
the surf; the women gathered in the shade of the canoe houses on the
beach, awaiting the landing of the boatmen, who would bring news of
husbands diving for shell in distant lagoons, or relatives scattered
among far-off groups of islands. As I shook hands with Whitmore I
heard a prolonged wailing from the village--the _tangi_ of a new
widow.
"When I went to the house to get my things together Tari informed me
that, as the schooner would not leave till next day, the people were
preparing a farewell feast in my honor. It was held in the assembly
house of the village, decorated with arches of palm frond, garlands
of scented fern, and the scarlet flowers of the hibiscus. Everyone
brought a gift for the departing stranger--a fan, a hat, a pearl
fishhook, a drinking cup of ornamented coconut shell, a carved paddle
of porcupine wood inlaid with mother-of-pearl. I distributed what
little I had to offer, wishing it were a dozen times as much.
"On the beach next morning the people of Mataora gathered for a last
handclasp; smile cynically if you will--there were tears shed; I
wasn't too happy myself when I heard their plaintive song of farewell
floating out across the water."
Worthington ceased speaking and leaned forward to scratch a match.
The squall had passed long since; the immense arch of the Milky Way
stretched overhead, and low in the south--beyond Hull Island and
Rimatara, over the loneliest ocean in the world--the Southern Cross
was rising. Lying on mats behind us, a party of Cook-Islanders spoke
in soft tones, their faces illuminated fitfully by the glow of their
cigarettes. My companion was lighting his pipe, and in the flare of
the match I could see that he was smiling to himself.
"Some day," he said, "you will hear that I have closed up my affairs
and disappeared. Don't worry when that happens; you'll know I have
gone to Mataora--this time to stop for good."