Author of “The Blue Lagoon,” “The Pearl Fishers,” etc., etc.
I
The night was filled with vanilla and frangipanni odours and the
endless sound of the rollers on the reef. Somewhere away back amidst
the trees a woman was singing, the tide was out, and from the verandah
of Lygon’s house, across the star-shot waters of the lagoon, moving
yellow points of light caught the eye. They were spearing fish by
torchlight in the reef pools.
It had been a shell lagoon once, and in the old days men had come to
Tokahoe for sandal wood; now there was only copra to be had, and just
enough for one man to deal with. Tokahoe is only a little island where
one cannot make a fortune, but where you may live fortunately enough if
your tastes are simple and beyond the lure of whisky and civilisation.
The last trader had died in this paradise, of whisky, or gin--I forget
which--and his ghost was supposed to walk the beach on moonlight
nights, and it was apropos of this that Lygon suddenly put the question
to me “Do you believe in ghosts?”
“Do you?” replied I.
“I don’t know,” said Lygon. “I almost think I do, because every one
does. Oh, I know, a handful of hard-headed super-civilised people say
they don’t, but the mass of humanity does. The Polynesians and
Micronesians do; go to Japan, go to Ireland, go anywhere, and
everywhere you will find ghost believers.”
“Lombrosso has written something like that,” said I.
”Has he? Well it’s a fact, but all the same it’s not evidence, the
universality of a belief scorns to hint at reality in the thing
believed in--yet what is more wanting in real reason than _tabu_. Yet
_tabu_ is universal. You find men here who daren’t touch an artu tree
because artu trees are _tabu_ to them, or eat turtle or touch a dead
body. Well, look at the Jews; a dead body is _tabu_ to a Cohen. India
is riddled with the business, so’s English society--it’s all the same
thing under different disguises.
“Funny that talking of ghosts we should have touched on this, for when
I asked you did you believe in ghosts I had a ghost story in mind and
_tabu_ comes into it. This is it.”
And this is the story somewhat as told by Lygon.
Some fifty years back when Pease was a pirate bold, and Hayes in his
bloom, and the topsails of the _Leonora_ a terror to all dusky
beholders, Maru was a young man of twenty. He was son of Malemake, King
of Fukariva, a kingdom the size of a soup plate, nearly as round and
without a middle--an atoll island, in short; just a ring of coral, sea
beaten and circling, like a bezel, a sapphire lagoon.
Fukariva lies in the Paumotus or Dangerous Archipelago where the
currents run every way and the trades are unaccountable. The
underwriters to this day fight shy of a Paumotus trader, and in the
’60’s few ships came here and the few that came were on questionable
business. Maru up to the time he was twenty years of age only
remembered three.
There was the Spanish ship that came into the lagoon when he was seven.
The picture of her remained with him, burning and brilliant, yet tinged
with the atmosphere of nightmare, a big topsail schooner that lay for a
week mirroring herself on the lagoon-water whilst she refitted, fellows
with red handkerchiefs tied round their heads crawling aloft and laying
out on the spars. They came ashore for water and what they could find
in the way of taro and nuts, and made hay on the beach, insulting the
island women till the men drove them off. Then when she was clearing
the lagoon a brass gun was run out and fired, leaving a score of dead
and wounded on that salt white strand.
That was the Spaniard. Then came a whaler who took what she wanted and
cut down trees for fuel and departed, leaving behind the smell of her
as an enduring recollection, and lastly, when Maru was about eighteen,
a little old schooner slank in one early morning.
She lay in the lagoon like a mangy dog, a humble ship, very unlike the
Spaniard or the blustering whaleman. She only wanted water and a few
vegetables, and her men gave no trouble; then, one evening, she slank
out again with the ebb, but she left something behind her--smallpox. It
cleared the island, and of the hundred and fifty subjects of King
Malemake only ten were left--twelve people in all, counting the king
and Maru.
The king died of a broken heart and age, and of the eleven people left
three were women, widows of men who had died of the smallpox.
Maru was unmarried, and as the king of the community he might have
collected the women for his own household. But he had no thought of
anything but grief, grief for his father and the people who were gone.
He drew apart from the others, and the seven widowers began to arrange
matters as to the distribution of the three widows. They began with
arguments and ended with clubs: three men were killed, and one of the
women killed another man because he had brained the man of her fancy.
Then the dead were buried in the lagoon--Maru refusing to help because
of his _tabu_--and the three newly married couples settled down to live
their lives, leaving Maru out in the cold. He was no longer king. The
women despised him because he hadn’t fought for one of them, and the
men because he had failed in brutality and leadership. They were a hard
lot, true survivals of the fittest, and Maru, straight as a palm tree,
dark eyed, gentle, and a dreamer seemed, amongst them, like a man of
another tribe and time.
He lived alone, and sometimes in the sun blaze on that great ring of
coral he fancied he saw the spirits of the departed walking as they had
walked in life, and sometimes at night he thought he heard the voice of
his father chiding him.
When the old man died Maru had refused to touch the body or help in its
burial. Filial love, his own salvation nothing would have induced Maru
to break his _tabu_.
It was part of him, an iron reef in his character beyond the touch of
will.