His Mother's People
The hurricane season ended in a fortnight of calm before the
trade came up from the southeast, announcing its arrival with a
three days' gale that caught our schooner among the outer islands
of the group. It was by no means a great storm, yet the constant
fury of the wind, unbroken by lull or gust, and the lines of huge
breaking seas running under a cloudless sky impressed me more than
anything I have experienced in ships. By day we lived in a world of
blue-and-white--pale-blue sky; sea of a dark, angry blue; acres of
white foam. To go on deck by night and watch the leaping ridges of
salt water rear up to windward--formless, threatening, fringed with
wan phosphorescence--was to revise any beliefs one might have had
regarding the friendliness of nature.
On the evening of the second day we were laid-to under a rag of
foresail, riding the seas obliquely, a few points off the wind.
The schooner took them like an eider duck; it was so thick in the
cabin that I slid back the hatch and squeezed through into the
clean turmoil above. The mood of the Pacific was too impressive for
pleasure, but I was glad at least of the fresh air and able to derive
a species of awed enjoyment from what went on about me. It may have
been fatigue, or carelessness, or inexperience--at any rate, the
man at the wheel suddenly allowed the schooner to bear off; she was
climbing the slope of a sea at the time--the crest of it caught her
weather side with a crash and next instant a rush of solid water
swept the decks. Thin and faint as the voices of sea birds above the
roaring of the wind, the cries of native passengers drifted back,
"_Aue! Aue!_"; the hatch slid back abruptly; the skipper burst on
deck--bristling, gesticulating, clad in a waistcloth--to deliver an
address in passionate Mangaian, insulting and only partially audible.
Under the swinging lamp in the cabin I found Tari--our singular
and philosophic supercargo, whose calm no ordinary gale could
disturb--bending over his books, a bottle and a glass in racks at
his elbow. A mat was spread on the floor and on it--huddled under a
quilt of bright patchwork--lay Apakura, his young native wife. Her
feet were bound in a _pareu_ and the quilt pulled over her head, for
the cockroaches were everywhere. I entered my stateroom to lie down.
A large cockroach, insolent and richly perfumed, trotted along the
springs of the upper berth and halted just above my face. Waves of
the hand had no effect on him--I had reasons for not wishing to crush
him in his tracks. One of his comrades began a tentative nibbling
at my hair--something tickled my foot--I started convulsively.
The sudden rolls of the schooner flung me against her side; it was
useless to try to sleep. As I sat down beside him, Tari closed his
books and motioned me to fill a glass.
A faint noise of shouting came from on deck; the engine-room bell
sounded a sudden and peremptory signal. The hatch opened with a gust
of spray--the head of the skipper appeared dimly in the swaying
light. "_Atitu_," he shouted; "I'm going to run into the lee and
stand off and on till this blows over." The engine started and Tari
and I went on deck for a glimpse of the land, looming close and vague
in the starlight. Presently, as we took our seats in the cabin, the
schooner ceased her violent pitching and began to ride a long, easy
swell. Tari rose, stepped to where his wife lay sleeping, picked up
the slender bundle in the quilt, and disappeared into his stateroom;
next moment he was beside me again, uncorking a fresh bottle of rum.
"She's had a bad time of it," he said, "with a berth on the weather
side; she was spilled on the floor half a dozen times before she gave
up and came out here. I shouldn't have let her come along--I had
my doubts of the weather, but it was a chance to see the relatives
she's got scattered through the group. They're constantly visiting
one another; blood means a lot down here where they recognize degrees
of consanguinity absurdly farfetched to our minds. First cousins
are like brothers, second and third cousins considered members of
one's immediate family, and so on through the descendants of remote
ancestors. When you stop to think of it, this respect for ties of
blood--in the isolated communities of Polynesia--rests on a solid
base."
I asked him a question concerning the end of these island
people--whether they will fade away and disappear, like our own
Narragansett and Seminole, without leaving their mark on the
supplanting race or whether they will be absorbed gradually,
developing in the process of absorption a new type. Tari set down his
glass.
"One thing is certain," he replied--"if left to themselves they
would soon be extinct. Wherever you go among the islands you will
find couple after couple of full-blooded natives--young, strong,
wholesome, and childless. No doubt the white man is partially to
blame, but, for myself, I believe the race is worn out with isolation
and old age. They are justified in their dread of being childless,
but an infusion of European blood--however small--works a miracle;
you must have noticed this, to me a most striking and significant
fact. It is the cross of white and brown that is repopulating the
islands to-day; one can venture a glimpse into the future and see
the process of absorption complete--the Polynesian is not fated to
disappear without leaving a trace behind ... and perhaps it will
be more than a trace, for half-caste children cling strongly to the
distaff side.
"The question of half-castes is an interesting one, particularly to
men like me--but it is a waste of time to struggle against nature;
in the end the solution is nearly always the same. Varana's children
furnish the best example I have run across--you've never been to
Rimarutu, I fancy; it is not often visited nowadays; probably you've
never heard of Varana. And yet he was an extraordinary man, his life
an almost unique study in extremes. Like everything real, the story
has no beginning, unless one were able to trace back the strain that
gifted the man with his exceptional temperament; as for an end, that
is still working itself out on Rimarutu. It is, in fact, no story at
all, but a bit of life itself--unmarked by any dominating situation,
haphazard, inconclusive, grimly logical. No one can know the whole of
it--the play of motives, the decisions, the pure chance--but I worked
with Varana for years and have patched his story together after a
fashion. Now and then, when the mood struck him, he used to speak of
himself; sometimes at night when we were working his schooner from
island to island; sometimes by day, as we lay smoking under the palms
of a remote atoll, while the canoes of the divers dotted the lagoon.
On those occasions I had glimpses of a man not to be judged by the
standards of everyday life--a man actuated by motives as simple as
they were incomprehensible to those about him. His death, if he is
dead--But I will speak of that in its place.
"His real name was Warner--a big, blue-eyed man, slow-spoken and
a little dreamy in manner, with an immense blond mustache and a
serenity nothing could disturb. I never knew him to hesitate in
making a decision or to speak unless he had something to say. All
decent men liked him, and the natives, who were better able than
a white man to fathom his simplicity, took to him from the first.
He had been miserably out of place in England--squeezed through
Cambridge, which he detested, unhappily married, done out of a
fortune by the defaulting brother-in-law whose last debt he paid, and
divorced just before he came out here.
"It is often observed that when an Englishman's feelings are hurt
he travels, and in this respect Varana was not exceptional. One
day, a little more than a generation ago, he stepped off the mail
boat at Papeete--a rather typical English tourist, I fancy--dressed
in tropical costumes from Bond Street and accompanied by an
extraordinary quantity of luggage. At the club he ran across Jackson
of the Atoll Trading Company--the old man liked him from the first
and they used to spend the evenings together, lingering over their
glasses, talking a little in low tones. A fortnight later Varana left
as quietly as he had come--outbound in one of Jackson's schooners for
a cruise through the Paumotus.
"It was the year of the hurricane at Motutangi. Varana's boat,
commanded by a native skipper, had drifted through the group in a
desultory way, touching at an island here and there to pick up a
few tons of copra or a bit of shell. One can imagine the effect on a
newcomer of those early days among the atolls--long sunlit days when
gentle breezes filled the sails of the vessel skirting the shores
of the lagoons--waters of unearthly peace and loveliness, bordered
by leagues of green. And the nights ashore, when the moon rose at
the end of a path of rippling silver, and the people gathered before
their thatched houses to sing.... It was not long before Varana
realized that he had found his anodyne.
"At home he had been a yachtsman of sorts; by the time they reached
Motutangi the brown skipper was leaving a good part of the working of
the schooner to his guest. They were diving in the lagoon that year
at the end of a long _rahui_ on the shell--a sort of closed season,
scrupulously respected by the natives; half a dozen schooners were
anchored off the village, where every house overflowed with people
from the surrounding islands, and by day their canoes blackened the
water above the patches of shell.
"The hurricane gave ample warning of its approach--Varana told
me as much as that. He had spent the night ashore with a trader,
whose old glass rose and fell spasmodically, sinking always a
little lower, until it stood at a figure which sent the trader
off, white and cursing, to break open a fresh case of gin. None of
the divers went out at daybreak; with the other people, they stood
in little frightened groups before the houses. The older men were
already beginning to hack off the tops of the stout palms in which
they planned to roost. By the time Varana came off in a canoe the
schooners were double anchored, the wind was shifting uneasily in
sharp gusts, and a tremendous surf was thundering on the outer beach.
The native skipper, like the people ashore, knew perfectly well what
was coming and, like most of his kind, his spirit broke in the face
of a large emergency--before the feeling that the forces of nature
were about to overwhelm him. Well, I've been through one hurricane--I
can't say that I blame him much! Varana found him not exactly in a
funk, but in a state of passive resignation, hoping vaguely that his
two anchors would let him ride it out inside. The crew was clustered
on the after deck, exchanging scared whispers. Varana, who had the
instinct of a deep-water sailor, took in the situation at a glance,
and next moment he had taken command of the schooner.
"Without a word of protest the men reefed, got sail on her, heaved
up one anchor, and cut the other cable. Varana had very little to
say about the rest--how he edged out through the pass and managed
to claw off just as the cyclone struck Motutangi--but afterward the
story went the rounds of every group. All the other schooners in the
lagoon, as well as most of the people ashore, were lost. How Varana
weathered it, without piling up his vessel on any one of half a dozen
atolls, is a sort of miracle.
"A week later, when he had sailed his battered schooner--the only
survivor of the disaster at Motutangi--into Papeete harbor, he found
himself famous by nightfall, for the native captain gave him entire
credit for the achievement. Old Jackson's imagination was touched,
or perhaps it was the destruction of so many rival schooners in the
shell and copra trade--at any rate, he acted on impulse for once in
his life, sent for Varana, and offered him a remarkably good berth
with a fat screw attached. But the wanderer only smiled and shook his
head--he had had a taste of the outer islands. It shakes one's faith
in Providence to realize that most men die without finding the place
in life for which they were designed.
"It was old Jackson who told him of Rimarutu--probably during one of
their almost silent evenings at the club. It was a mistake--Jackson
thought--to believe that a man could shut himself off from the world;
the mood would pass in time, but if Varana wished seriously to try
it, he would find no better place than Rimarutu. There was some copra
to be had and a little shell in the lagoon; the people numbered about
two hundred, a quiet, pleasant lot, not given to wandering from their
island. Varana had salvaged a few thousand pounds from the wreck
of his affairs at home; Jackson helped him pick up a schooner at a
bargain and load her with what was needed; there was some difficulty
about a crew, but his uncanny gift with the natives got him three men
content to follow his fortunes. On the morning when he shook hands
with the old man, stepped aboard his boat, and sailed out of the
harbor, Varana severed the last tie with the world he had known.
"I could tell you a good deal about his life on the island--I worked
with him for nearly ten years. He began by renting a bit of land--for
his store and copra shed--from the chief and setting himself to learn
the language. The Polynesian is a shrewd judge of character; they
saw that this man was just, kindly, fearless, and to be trusted.
Those who had traveled a little declared Varana a phenomenon--a
white trader who respected women and never lay on his veranda in a
stupor, surrounded by empty bottles. He seemed to know instinctively
the best way to take these people, with whom, from the very first,
he found himself on terms of a mutual understanding. They regarded
him with a mixture of liking and respect, not accorded us, perhaps,
as often as we are apt to think; he worked with them, he played with
them, and finally took a daughter of the island as his wife--yet it
was characteristic that he never permitted himself to run barefoot
and that even after twenty years of friendship the native entering
Varana's house took off his hat. I remember Tupuna as a woman of
thirty--tall, robust, and grave, with delicate hands and masses of
bright, rippling hair; the years were kind to her--even in middle
life she did not lose a certain quiet charm. Make no mistake--they
were happily mated, this man, turned out by what Englishmen believe
the highest civilization in the world, and the daughter of an island
chief whose father had been a savage and an eater of men. She was
not spoiled like so many traders' wives; when they had been on the
reef she walked home behind, carrying the torches and the fish--but
he felt for her an affection deep as it was undemonstrative, a strong
attachment, proven at the end in his own extreme and romantic way.
"During the early years of his life on Rimarutu, Varana had enough to
do with his store, his occasional trips for supplies, and his work
for the betterment of the island people. He found them living on
fish and coconuts, depending for all their luxuries on a dwindling
production of copra. He showed them how to thin their palms, how to
select nuts for new plantings, how to dry their copra with a minimum
of effort. The shell in the lagoon was nearly exhausted; he persuaded
the chiefs of the two villages to forbid diving for a term of years.
After experiments conducted with Tupuna's aid he set the men to
catching flying fish, which swarmed in the waters about the island,
and taught the women to split them, rub in salt, and dry them on
lines in the sun. Rimarutu is high, as atolls go--five or six yards
above the sea in spots; he laid out beds of _puraka taro_, and had
pits dug on the high portions of the island, lined the bottoms with
rock to keep the taproots from salt water, filled them with humus and
topsoil--scraped up in handfuls--and planted breadfruit, mango, and
lime, brought from the high islands to the north. At long intervals,
when in need of something that only civilization could supply--paint,
rigging, or a new set of sails--he went north with a cargo of copra
and dried fish and took on a brief charter with Jackson. On these
trips he visited scores of islands, and came to know the people of a
thousand miles of ocean.
"It was not until his son was born that Varana began to think
seriously of money. His daughters had given him no concern; he
explained to me once his peculiar philosophy as to their future.
Perhaps he was right. With their happiness in mind, he preferred
to bring them up as island girls--without education or knowledge
of the outside world and no greater prospects than those of their
full-blooded playmates--rather than give them the chances of the
usual half-caste: half-educated and partially Europeanized, whose
most brilliant hope is marriage with a white man of the inferior
sort. But the birth of Terii set the father to thinking.
"The child was about ten when I saw him first, a fine strong boy,
very fair for a half-caste, with his father's eyes, a high carriage
of the head, and skin touched with a faint bloom of the sun. Tupuna
was immensely proud of him. I was a youngster then and new to the
islands, but I had heard of Varana before Jackson introduced me to
him. It was at Jackson's place, on the upper veranda, that he told
me how he had leased Fatuhina; some one had spoken of my work. I had
operated diving machines? He needed a man familiar with them, for he
had leased an atoll with some big shell patches in the lagoon, and
machines would be necessary to work the deeper portions. I was doing
nothing at the time. I liked what I had heard of Varana, and I liked
the man better still. In an hour we had come to an understanding. I
worked with him, off and on, from that time until the beginning of
the war.
"Without caring in the least for wealth, Varana had set out to make
himself rich. Long before I knew him he had decided the question of
his son: Terii was to have the same chances that his father had had
before him--was to see both sides and choose for himself.
"Even Varana's friends spoke of his luck; to my mind his success
was inevitable. Regarded with an almost superstitious affection
by the people of widely scattered groups, he possessed channels of
information closed forever to the ordinary man. It was in this way
that he learned of the shell in Fatuhina lagoon; perhaps he did not
know that the native who approached him, one evening on a distant
atoll, to speak casually of the matter and stroll away, had paddled
across twelve miles of sea with no other object than to bring the
news to Varana. When the _Gaviota_ was beached he was the first to
learn of it--that affair alone brought him a neat fortune; and when
men had fine pearls to sell they saw him before they went to the
Jews. By the time his son was twelve Varana was a rich man.
"I was on Rimarutu when he left to take the boy to England. Tupuna
shed a few tears, but there was no scene--she knew he would return.
'I go to take our son to my own land,' he told her; 'there will
be six moons before I come.' Five months later I was waiting with
the schooner when he stepped off the mail boat. That night, as he
lay on a mat on the afterdeck, dressed in a _pareu_ and a pair of
slippers, he spoke of England briefly in the midst of our talk on
island matters. 'Damned senseless treadmill,' he remarked; 'I can't
think how I stood it so many years.' The ordinary man, who had left
home under a cloud of misfortune to return twenty years later, after
wanderings in distant lands, with a fortune and a beautiful child,
would have lingered not without a certain relish. But Varana was
different; he grudged every moment spent in civilization and lived
only for the day when he would again take the wheel of his schooner
and watch the ridges of Tahiti sink beneath the horizon.
"The years passed rapidly and tranquilly on Rimarutu. The days of
Varana's activity were over; he was no longer young, though he kept
his store and took the schooner out at long intervals for supplies.
Then came the outbreak of the war.
"I was in Gallipoli when the letter reached me, written in the
native language by Varana's old mate. It told a story fantastically
unreal--incredible from the viewpoint of everyday life--and yet to
me who knew him, as to the people of his island, the end of Varana
seemed a natural thing, in keeping with what had gone before.
Tupuna had fallen ill (the old man wrote) and had died suddenly and
peacefully, as natives do. Varana stood beside her grave with no
great display of grief, returned to his house and spent three days
putting his affairs in order. On the fourth day he gave the mate
a thick envelope of documents, called together the people of the
island and bade each one of them farewell. When he turned to leave
they did not disperse; the women had begun to sob--they felt already
the desolation of a final parting. It was the hour of sunset, when
the trade wind dies away and the lagoon lies like a mirror under an
opalescent sky.... I can see in imagination those simple and friendly
islanders, standing in little groups before the settlement--raising
no voice in protest, moving no hand in restraint--while the man they
loved walked to the ocean beach, launched a tiny canoe in the surf,
and paddled out to the west. The nearest land in that direction is
distant six hundred miles. When he had passed the breakers--they
say--Varana did not once turn his head; the watchers stood motionless
while the sky faded, their eyes fixed on the dot that was his
canoe--a dwindling dot, swallowed up at last in the night."
* * * * *
Tari ceased to speak. He was sitting propped on the lounge, arms
folded, legs stretched out, eyes staring at the table. Without
seeming aware of what he did, he filled his glass, raised it to his
lips, and drank. Presently he emerged from his revery to light a
pipe.
* * * * *
"In due time," he went on, "I had word from the lawyers, inclosing
a copy of the will and informing me that I had been named executor
with old Jackson, who seemed to have discovered the secret of eternal
life. There was also a letter from Varana, written after Tupuna's
death--a friendly and casual note, with a mere line at the end,
asking me to do what I could for his boy. The land Tupuna had brought
him was to be divided equally among his daughters; all the rest was
for Terii, saving his parting gift to me. Only one condition was
attached--Terii must visit Rimarutu before inheriting the property of
his father; once he had set foot on the island, he would be his own
master, free to choose his path in life.
"The boy was nineteen when the war broke out; he joined up at once as
a cadet in the Flying Corps. During the second year I began to hear
of Lieutenant Warner--he had shot down a German plane near Zeebrugge;
he had been wounded; he had received the Military cross. Once I saw
his picture in the _Sphere_--a handsome lad, very smart in the old
uniform of the R. F. C., with a jaunty cap over one eye and ribbons
on his breast. This was the little savage whose shrill cries I used
to hear at dawn, when he raced with his half-naked companions on the
beach! At the end of the war he was Captain Terry Warner, a celebrity
in a small way.... I felt a certain pride in him, of course. We had
done our best to meet, but something always happened to prevent my
getting a glimpse of him.
"I ran across him as I was homeward bound, leaving San Francisco for
the islands. I had already gone aboard and was standing by the rail,
watching the last of the luggage swing over the side in nets, when a
motor drove up to discharge a party of men and women--fashionables of
the city, from their looks. One of them, a lean, tanned boy, with the
overcoat of a British officer over his civilian clothes, was saying
good-by to the others, shaking hands and smiling very attractively.
A little later, when the lines were being cast off, I saw him close
beside me at the rail. A girl in blue was standing on the dock,
waving up at him. 'Good-by, Terry!' she called. I looked closely;
there could be no doubt--it was the son of Varana.
"We had long talks on the voyage south; the lad had not forgotten
me. The memory of the old life--of the island, of his mother, of
his father--would always be fresh in his mind, but he regarded those
days as a distant and beautiful episode, now forever closed. He was
going to visit Rimarutu for the last time--to bid farewell to those
who remembered him. He had not forgotten the friends of his boyhood;
there were many little presents in his boxes, and he told me that
the schooner--reported sound as on the day of her launching--would
be his gift to Varana's old mate. Afterward he would return to San
Francisco, where opportunities had been offered him; he had brought
letters to America and had been well received.
"The schooner was in port when we arrived. Varana's mate met us on
the dock; there were tears in the old man's eyes as he took the boy's
hands in his own and murmured in a trembling voice, '_O Terii iti
e._' The tourists descending the gangplank looked with interest at
the spectacle of Captain Warner, almost embracing an old barefoot
_kanaka_, dressed in dungarees and a faded shirt, wrinkled brown
face working with emotion. As Terii shook hands with the crew--some
of them boys with whom he had played in childhood--I noticed that a
phrase or two of the native came to his lips--twelve years had not
been sufficient to blot out all memory of his mother's tongue.
"We had a long passage south, beating against the trade; Varana
had installed an engine in the schooner, but time is cheaper than
petrol in this part of the world. Terii delighted in handling the
boat; there was salt water in his blood; and his father had seen
to his training in navigation and the ways of the sea. With each
new day I perceived symptoms of a change in the boy. White suits
and canvas slippers gave way to pajamas and bare feet; finally the
pajamas were replaced by a _pareu_, taken from the trade-room stock.
The summers at home had not been wasted; I used to watch him at the
wheel, working the schooner to windward, an eye on the canvas aloft,
steering with the easy certain movements of a seaman born. He was
in love with the schooner before we had been out a week, and he had
reason--Frisco-built for the last of the pelagic sealing, Varana's
boat was the fastest thing of her tonnage in the South Seas. More
than once in our talks Terii seemed to forget the plans he had
confided to me.... She needed a new foresail; the set of this one did
not please him; he was going to have her copper renewed in places;
she was getting dingy below; the cabin needed a touch of paint. At
times, speaking of these things, he stopped short in the midst of a
sentence and changed the talk to other subjects. The language came
back to him surprisingly; he was able to understand and make himself
understood before we raised the palms of Rimarutu.
"The mate took her in through the pass. It was late afternoon, cool
and cloudless, with a gentle sea nuzzling at the reef. The island
was like the memory of a dream--fresh green palms, snowy beaches,
cat's-paws ruffling the lagoon in long, blue streaks--so beautiful
that the sight of it made one's heart ache and the breath catch
in one's throat. A dozen canoes put out to meet us from the first
settlement; there were greetings from friends and relatives--embraces
and tears. Terii lay silent, propped on his elbows and staring ahead,
as we slipped across the lagoon; the island people spoke in tones so
low that I could hear the crisp sound of the schooner's bows parting
the landlocked water. The other village lay beyond the beach ahead of
us, Varana's village, where Terii had been born--a place of dreams
in the mystery of the evening light. It was not difficult to guess
at the boy's thoughts--the moment was one of those which make up the
memories of a lifetime. Every man has known them--rapture, pain, the
enjoyment of supreme beauty, the flavor of exotic and unrepeatable
experience; but not every man is permitted to taste such contrasts
as this boy had known in twenty-four years of life.... I was a little
envious, I think, of the rarity of that poignant home-coming.
"On the first evening, when we had greeted the people of the village,
Terii was led away by his old aunt, Tupuna's sister. Just before
bedtime I saw them at his mother's grave--a lonely shrine, roofed
over in island fashion, where the light of a lamp shone on stunted
bushes of frangipani. My eccentricities were not forgotten; they
had spread my mat under the palms before Varana's house, and toward
midnight Terii came quietly and lay down close by. I was wakeful in a
revery, living over the old days with my friend, wondering, with the
usual idle and somber doubt, if we were destined to meet again. Low
over the palm tops a planet glimmered like a shaded lamp; the Milky
Way arched overhead through a sky powdered with fixed stars--remote
suns, about which revolve myriads of worlds like ours.... I rebelled
at the thought that the strong soul of Varana should be snuffed
out. Terii said nothing for a long time; I thought he had dropped
off to sleep, but suddenly I heard his voice: 'I have the strangest
feeling to-night,' he said, thoughtfully; 'if my father were here
I could believe that I had never been away, that everything since
I left--England, school, my friends, the war--was no more than a
dream. I can't explain to you, but somehow this island seems the most
real thing in the world. I've been talking with my aunt--I'd almost
forgotten her name, you know--and I managed to understand a good bit
of what she had to say.... There is no doubt she believes it herself.
My father comes to her every now and then, she says, for a talk on
family matters; last night he told her we would come to-day, and that
I would stop here to take his old place among the people. It seems
they are good enough to want me to stay--I almost wish I could.'...
"The drums were going at daybreak--the feast in Terii's honor was
the greatest the island had known since heathen days. The entire
population was on hand; the beach black with canoes; dozens of
good-humored babies on mats under the trees, with small brothers
and sisters stationed to fan the flies away. The people sat in
long rows in the shade, strings of shell about their necks, their
heads wreathed in hibiscus and sweet fern. Terii was placed between
the chief of the other village and Tehina, the chief's daughter, a
full-blooded Rimarutu girl of sixteen, barefoot, dressed in a white
frock, with gold pendants in her ears and a thick, shining braid of
hair. There is an uncommon charm about the women of that island--a
stamp of refinement, a delicacy of frame and feature, remarked as
long ago as the days of Spanish voyaging in the Pacific. Blood counts
for something in Polynesia, and one needed only a glance at Tehina
to know that the best blood of the island flowed in her veins; her
ancestor--if tradition may be credited--was in the long canoe with
Penipeni when the god pulled Rimarutu up from the bottom of the sea.
I like those people, and in spite of the night's depression I managed
to enjoy the fun--I even danced a bit! Finally I saw that the dancers
were taking their seats; voices were lowered, heads were turned.
"Tehina was dancing alone to the rhythm of a hundred clapping hands.
In twenty years of the islands I have never seen a girl step more
daintily. Little by little she moved toward Terii until she stood
directly before him, inviting him to dance, hands fluttering, swaying
with an unconscious grace, smiling into his eyes. Every head turned;
there were smiles, good-humored chuckles, nudges; they were proud of
this girl and anxious that the son of Varana should dance with her.
They had not long to wait. Next moment Terii had leaped to his feet
and was dancing, with more enthusiasm than skill, to a long burst of
cheers and clapping.
"When the canoes put off at nightfall I noticed that Tehina did
not leave; she had stopped to visit her uncle, the parson of the
village church. I saw Terii with her often during the days that
followed--fishing on the lagoon, swimming in the cove, lying on mats
in the moonlight where groups of young people were telling their
interminable stories of the past. He seemed a little shy of me, and
no longer exchanged confidences in the hour which precedes sleep.
One evening, smoking and strolling alone after dinner, I passed the
parson's house and became aware of the vague figure of Terii, walking
to and fro impatiently beside the veranda. He stopped--I heard the
rattle of a coral pebble on the roof. A moment later Tehina glided
like a phantom around the corner of the house, and they went off arm
in arm along the path to the sea. I thought to myself that the lad
was not doing badly after his twelve years away from the island, but
the blood was in him, of course--there was instinct in his manner of
tossing the pebble and in the unhesitating way he had led the girl
toward the outer beach: the haunt of dreadful presences, a place
no ordinary islander would visit after dark. I fancied him sitting
there--the rumble of the surf in his ears, watching the lines of
breakers rear up under the moon--with Tehina beside him, admiring
and afraid. When his eye was not on her she would glance right and
left along the beach and back toward the bush, half expecting to see
some monstrous thing, crouched and watching with fiery eyes. As for
the boy, one could only guess at the troubled flow of his thoughts,
stirred by cross-currents of ancestry and experience. In her own
environment Tehina was a girl to make any man look twice; for him,
with his mother's blood and the memories of his childhood, she must
have possessed a powerful appeal--the touch of her hand; her voice,
soft and low-pitched, murmuring the words of a half-forgotten tongue;
her dark eyes shining in the moonlight; the scent of the strange
blossoms in her hair. It was the test, the final conflict Varana had
foreseen. I had my own opinion of the result, and yet the other life
pulled hard.
"The days passed in pleasant island fashion; the loading of the
schooner went on; there was no mention of a change in plans. The
chief came to take his daughter home, and when she had gone Terii
spoke to me, not too convincingly, of his return to civilization.
My trip to Rimarutu was a matter of pleasure alone; I was already
planning to take this berth, and was not sorry when Terii announced
one morning that we would sail north that afternoon. One seems
perpetually saying good-by down here--these islands are havens of
a brief call, of sad farewells, of lingering and regretful memory.
Our parting from the people of Rimarutu was more than usually
painful; they had hoped to the last that Terii would leave some word,
some promise; but he remained silent, though I could see that the
leave-taking was not without effect.
"Finally the last canoe put off for shore; the anchor came up, the
motor started, and Terii steered across the lagoon for the pass. The
sails were still furled, for there was a light head wind. I watched
his face as he stood in silence at the wheel; there was a look in his
eyes which made me sorry for the boy. We crossed the lagoon, glided
past green islets, and drew abreast of the other village. The people
lined the shore, fluttering handkerchiefs, shouting good wishes and
farewells.
"Beyond the settlement the pass led out, blue and deep, between
sunken piers of coral, where the surf thundered in patches of white.
All at once the old mate sang out and pointed--a dot was on the water
ahead of us, a swimmer moving out from land to cut us off. The son of
Varana turned the wheel; the schooner swung inshore; I heard a quick
command and felt the speed of the engine slacken.
"Terii was staring ahead with a strange intensity--instinct or
premonition was at work. I looked again as we drew near; a cloud of
dark hair floated behind the swimmer's head; it was a woman--Tehina!
Terii sprang to the rail. A moment later she had been lifted over the
side and was standing beside him in the cockpit, dripping, trembling
a little with cold and fear, doing her best to smile. The mate
was pulling at Terii's arm and pointing back toward the village. A
whaleboat had put out from shore and was heading for us at the top
speed of the rowers; it was the chief himself, I believe, who stood
in the stern and whose shouts were beginning to reach our ears.
"At that moment Terii proved that he was his father's son. He glanced
back once, and then, without the smallest interval of hesitation, his
arm went about the wet shoulder of Tehina.
"'Full speed ahead,' he ordered in a cool voice."
* * * * *
Tari poured rum into my glass, and tilted the last of the bottle into
his own. The schooner was taking it easily with her engine at half
speed, riding a gentle swell. The ship's bell rang twice, paused, and
rang again--a sharp and mellow sound. It was long past midnight.
* * * * *
"If you ever get down to Rimarutu," said Tari, as he rose to go on
deck, "you will find Terii there--he bids fair to leave the island
even less than Varana did."