One day a trading vessel lay becalmed off Tatakoto, in the Paumotu
Archipelago, and the captain and supercargo, taking a couple of native
sailors with them, went ashore at dawn to catch some turtle. The turtle
were plentiful and easily caught, and after half a dozen had been put
in the boat, the two white men strolled along the white hard beach. The
captain--old, grizzled, and grim--seemed to know the place well, and
led the way.
* * * * *
The island is very narrow, and as they left the beach and gained the
shade of the forest of coconuts that grew to the margin of high-water
mark, they could see, between the tall, stately palms, the placid
waters of the lagoon, and a mile or so across, the inner beach of the
weather side of the island.
For a quarter of a mile or so the two men walked on till the widest
part of the island was reached. Here, under the shadow of some giant
PUKA trees, the old skipper stopped and sat down on a roughly hewn slab
of coral, the remains of one of those MARAE or heathen temples that are
to be found almost anywhere in the islands of Eastern Polynesia.
"I knew this place well, once," he said, as he pulled out his pipe. "I
used to come here when I was sailing one of Brander's vessels out of
Tahiti. As we have done now we did then--came here for turtle. No
natives have lived here for the past forty years. Did you ever hear of
Brantley?"
"Yes," answered the supercargo, "but he died long ago, did he not?"
"Aye, he died here, and his wife and sister too. They all lie here in
this old MARAE."
And then he told the story of Brantley.
* * * * *
I
It was six years since Brantley, with his companions in misery, had
drifted ashore at lonely Vahitahi in the Paumotu Group, and the
kindly-hearted people had gazed with pitying horror upon the dreadful
beings that, muttering and gibbering to each other, lay in the bottom
of the boat, and pointed with long talon-like fingers to their burnt
and bloody thirst-tortured lips.
* * * * *
And now as he sits in the doorway of his thatched house, and gazes
dreamily out upon the long curve of creamy beach and wind-swayed line
of palms that fringe the leeward side of his island home, Brantley
passes a brown hand slowly up and down his sun-bronzed cheek, and
thinks of the past.
He was so full of life--of the very joy of living--that time six years
ago when he sailed from Auckland on that fateful voyage in the DORIS.
It was his first voyage as captain, and the ship was his own, and even
now he remembers with a curious time-dulled pang the last words of his
only sister--the Doris after whom he had called his new ship--as she
had kissed him farewell--"I am so glad, Fred, to hear them call you
'Captain Brantley.'"
And the voyage--the wild feverish desire to make a record passage to
'Frisco and back; the earnest words of poor old white-headed Lutton,
the mate, "not to carry on so at night going through the Paumotu
Group"; that awful midnight crash when the DORIS ran hopelessly into
the wild boil of roaring surf on Tuanake Reef; the white, despairing
faces of five of his men, who, with curses in their eyes upon his
folly, were swept out of sight into the awful blackness of the night.
And then the days in the boat with the six survivors! Ah! the memory of
that will chill his blood to his dying day. Men have had to do that
which he and the two who came through alive with him had done.
How long they endured that black agony of suffering he knew not. By
common consent none of them ever spoke of it again.
Three months after they had drifted ashore, a passing sperm whaler,
cruising through the group, took away the two seamen, and then
Brantley, after bidding them a silent farewell, had, with bitter
despair gnawing at his heart, turned his face away from the ship, and
walked back into the palm-shaded village.
* * * * *
"I will never go back again," he had said to himself. And perhaps he
was right; for when the DORIS went to pieces on Tuanake his hope and
fortunes went with her, and, save for that other Doris, there was no
one in the world who cared for him. He was not the man to face the
world again with: "Why, he lost his first ship!" whispered among his
acquaintances.
And this is how Brantley--young, handsome, and as smart a seaman (save
for that one fatal mistake) as ever trod a deck--became Paranili the
PAPALAGI, and was living out his life among the people of solitary
Vahitahi.
* * * * *
Ere a year had passed a trading captain bound to the Gambier Islands
had given him a small stock of trade goods, and the thought of Doris
had been his salvation. Only for her he would have sunk to the life of
a mere idle, gin-drinking, and dissolute beach-comber. As it was, his
steady, straightforward life among the people of the island was a big
factor to his business success. And so every year he sent money to
Doris by some passing whaler or Tahitian trading schooner, but twice
only had he got letters from her; and each time she had said: "Let me
come to you, Fred. We are alone in the world, and may never meet again
else. Sometimes I awake in the night with a sudden fear. Let me come;
my heart is breaking with the loneliness of my life here, so far away
from you."
* * * * *
But two years ago he had done that which would keep Doris from ever
coming to him, he thought. He had married a young native girl--that is,
taken her to wife in the Paumotuan fashion--and surely Doris, with her
old-fashioned notions of right and wrong, would grieve bitterly if she
knew it.
Presently he rose, talking to himself as is the wont of those who have
lived long apart from all white associations, and sauntered up and down
the shady path at the side of his dwelling, thinking of Doris, and if
he would ever see her again. Then he entered the house.
* * * * *
Seated on the matted floor with her face turned from him was a young
native girl--Luita, his wife. She was making a hat from the bleached
strands of the pandanus leaf, and as she worked she sang softly to
herself in the semi-Tahitian tongue of her people.
Brantley, lazily stretching himself out on a rough mat-covered couch,
turned towards her, and watched the slender, supple fingers--covered,
in Polynesian fashion, with heavy gold rings--as they deftly drew out
the snow-white strands of the pandanus. The long, glossy, black waves
of hair that fell over her bare back and bosom like a mantle of night
hid her face from his view, and the man let his glance rest in
contented admiration upon the graceful curves of the youthful figure;
then he sighed softly, and again his eyes turned to the wide, sailless
expanse of the Pacific, that lay shimmering and sparkling before him
under a cloudless sky of blue, and he thought again of Doris.
* * * * *
Steadily the little hands worked in and out among the snowy strands,
and now and then, as she came to the TARI, or refrain, of the old
Paumotuan love-song, her soft liquid tones would blend with the
quavering treble of children that played outside.
"Terunavahori, teeth of pearl,
Knit the sandals for Talaloo's feet,
Sandals of AFA thick and strong,
Bind them well with thy long black hair."
Suddenly the song ceased, and with a quick movement of her shoulders
she threw back the cloud of hair that fell around her arms and bosom,
looked up at Brantley and laughed, and, striking the mat on which she
sat with her open palm, said--
"HAERE MAI, PARANILI."
He rose from the couch and stooped beside her, with his hands resting
on his knees, and bending his brow in mock criticism, regarded her
handiwork intently.
Springing to her feet, hat in hand, and placing her two hands on his
now erect shoulders, she looked into his face--darker far than her
own--and said with a smile--
"Behold, Paranili, thy PULOU is finished, save for a band of black
PU'AVA which thou shalt give me from the store."
"Mine?" said Brantley, in pretended ignorance. "Why labour so for me?
Are there not hats in plenty on Vahitahi?"
"True, O thankless one! but the women of the village say that thou
lookest upon me as a fool because I can neither make mats nor do many
other things such as becometh a wife. And for this did Merani, my
cousin, teach me how to make a wide hat of FALA to shield thy face from
the sun when thou art out upon the pearling grounds. AI-E-EH! my
husband, but thy face and neck and hands are as dark as those of the
people of Makatea--they who are for ever in their canoes.... See,
Paranili, bend thy head. AI-E-EH! thou art a tall man, my husband," and
she trilled a happy, rippling laugh as she placed the hat on his head.
He placed one hand around the pliant waist and under the mantle of
hair, and drew her towards him, and then, moved by a sudden emotion,
kissed her soft, red lips.
"Luita," he asked, "would it hurt thee if I were to go away?"
The girl drew away from him, and, for the first time in two years
Brantley saw an angry flush tinge her cheek a dusky red.
* * * * *
"Ah!"--the contemptuous ring in her voice made the man's eyes
drop--"thou art like all White Men--was there ever one who was
faithful? What other woman is it that thou desirest? Is it Nia of
Ahunui--she who, when thy boat lay anchored in the lagoon, swam off at
night and asked thee for thy love--the shameless Nia?"
The angry light in the black eyes shone fiercely, and the dull red on
her cheeks had changed to the livid paleness of passion.
Brantley, holding the rim of the hat over his mouth, laughed secretly,
pleased at her first outburst of jealousy. Then his natural manliness
asserted itself.
"Come here," he said.
Somewhat sullenly the girl obeyed and edged up beside him with face
bent down. He put his hand upon hers, and for a few seconds looked at
the delicate tracery of tattooing that, on the back, ran in thin blue
lines from the finger tips to the wrists.
"What a d----d pity!" he muttered to himself; "this infernal tattooing
would give the poor devil away anywhere in civilization. Her skin is
not as dark as that pretty creole I was so sweet on in Galveston ten
years ago ... Well, she's good enough for a broken man like me--but I
can't take her away--that's certain."
A heavy tear splashed on his hand, and then he pulled her to him,
almost savagely.
"See, Luita. I did but ask to try thee. Have no fear. Thy land is mine
for ever."
The girl looked up, and in an instant her face, wet with tears, was
laid against his breast. Still caressing the dark head that lay upon
his chest, Brantley stooped and whispered something. The little
tattooed hand released its clasp of his arm and struck him a playful
blow.
"And would that bind thee more to me, and to the ways of these our
people of Vahitahi," she asked, with still buried face.
"Aye," answered the ex-captain slowly, "for I have none but thee in the
world to care for."
She turned her face up. "Is there none--not even one woman in far-off
Beretania, whose face comes to thee in the darkness."
Brantley shook his head sadly. Of course there was Doris, he thought,
but he had never spoken of her. Sometimes when the longing to see her
again would come upon him, he would have talked of her to his native
wife, but he was by nature an uncommunicative man, and the thought of
how Doris must feel her loneliness touched him with remorse and made
him silent.
* * * * *
Another year passed, and matters had gone well with Brantley. Ten
months before he had dropped on one of the best patches of shell in the
Paumotus, and to-day, as he sits writing and smoking in the big room of
his house, he looks contentedly out through the open door to a little
white painted schooner that lay at anchor on the calm waters of the
lagoon. He had just come back from Tahiti with her, and the two
thousand dollars he had paid for the vessel was an easy matter for a
man who was now making a thousand dollars a month.
"What a stroke of luck!" he writes to Doris. "Had I gone back to
Sydney, where would I be now?--a mate, I suppose, on some deep-sea
ship, earning twelve or fourteen pounds a month. Another year or two like
this, and I can go back a made man. Some day, my dear, I may; but I will
come back here again. The ways of the people have become my ways."
* * * * *
He laid down his pen and came to the door, and stood thinking awhile
and listening to the gentle rustle of the palms as they swayed their
lofty plumes to the breezy trade wind.
"Yes," he thought, "I would like to go and see Doris, but I can't take
Luita, and so it cannot be. How that girl suspects me even now. When I
went to Tahiti to buy the schooner, I believe she thought she would
never see me again.... What a fool I am! Doris is all right, I suppose,
although it is a year since I had a letter ... and I--could any man
want more. I don't believe there's a soul on the island but thinks as
much of me as Luita herself does; and, by G-d! she's a pearl--even
though she is only a native girl. No, I'll stay here; 'Kapeni Paranili'
will always be a big man in the Paumotus, but Fred Brantley would be
nobody in Sydney--only a common merchant skipper who had made money in
the islands.... And perhaps Doris is married."
* * * * *
So he thought and talked to himself, listening the while to the soft
symphony of the swaying palm-tops and the subdued murmur of the surf as
the rollers crashed on the distant line of reef away to leeward. Of
late these fleeting visions of the outside world--that quick, busy
world, whose memories, save for those of Doris, were all but dead to
him--had become more frequent; but the calm, placid happiness of his
existence, and that strange, fatal glamour that for ever enwraps the
minds of those who wander in the islands of the sunlit sea--as the old
Spanish navigators called Polynesia--had woven its spell too strongly
over his nature to be broken. And now, as the murmur of women's voices
caused him to turn his head to the shady end of the verandah, the dark,
dreamy eyes of Luita, who with her women attendants sat there playing
with her child, looked out at him from beneath their long lashes, and
told him his captivity was complete.
* * * * *
A week afterwards the people of Vahitahi were clustered on the beach
putting supplies of native food in the schooner's boat. That night he
was to sail again for the pearling grounds at Matahiva lagoon, and
would be away three months.
One by one the people bade him adieu, and then stood apart while he
said farewell to Luita.
"E MAHINA TOLU [Only three months], little one," he said, "why such a
gloomy face?"
The girl shook her head, and her mouth twitched. "But the MITI [dream],
Paranili--the MITI of my mother. She is wise in the things that are
hidden; for she is one of those who believe in the old gods of
Vahitahi.... And there are many here of the new LOTU [Faith, i.e.
Christianity] who yet believe in the old gods. And, see, she has dreamed
of this unknown evil to thee twice; and twice have the voices of those who
are silent in the MARAE called to me in the night, and said: 'He must not
go; he must not go.'"
Knowing well how the old superstitious taint ran riot in the
imaginative native mind, Brantley did not attempt to reason, but sought
to gently disengage her hands from his arm.
She dropped on the sand at his feet and clasped his knees, and a long,
wailing note of grief rang out--
"AUE! AUE! my husband! if it so be that thou dost not heed the voices
that call in the night, then, out of thy love for me and our child, let
me come also. Then, if evil befall thee, let us perish together."
Brantley raised his hand and pointed to the bowed and weeping figure.
Some women came and lifted her up. Then taking the tender face between
his rough hands, he bent his head to hers, sprang into the boat, and
was gone.
* * * * *