TAIO-HAIE TO PAPEETE
Before leaving Nukahiva the four of us from the _Lurline_, under
the guidance of our good friend McGrath, journeyed on pony-back
across the island to visit Queen Mareu of Hatiheu. The road led over
two 3,000-foot mountain passes and along the whole length of the
incomparable Typee Valley, immortalized by Herman Melville, and
though something like eight inches of rain fell during the nine hours
we were in the saddle, there were ample intervals between cataclysms
in which to glimpse the beauties by the way. Lovely as we had found
Taio-haie and Typee, however, the glamour of their charms paled before
the supreme grandeur of the bay of Hatiheu, the most sublime
combination of mountain, vale, and sea that my eyes have ever
rested on.
The cliff-girt bay of Hatiheu, like those others of Nature's
superlatives, the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, the Victoria Falls of
the Zambesi and the Himalayas from Darjeeling, is one of the kind of
things that makes a man feel foolish to attempt to describe, and I pay
my silent tribute in the thrill which never fails to stir my heart
at the mention of the name. My photograph gives a suggestion--just a
suggestion--of what a single _coup d'oeil_ reveals.
Hatiheu was McGrath's headquarters where, in addition to conducting a
trading business with the natives, he appeared to act as a sort of "Lord
Chamberlain" to the Queen. Her Highness seemed very fond of the
attractive young Canadian, and told us that she never took action in
important "affairs of state" without first securing his advice. His word
appeared to be law in the village, and I never heard him give an order
that was not instantly carried out. He told off a body servant to look
after each of us during our visit to Hatiheu, the one allotted to
Claribel being a grizzled old cannibal, with a black band like a
highwayman's mask tattooed across his face, who gave her a stone
knife which he swore he had himself used in carving "long-pig," and
who wept disconsolately on her departure.
One morning McGrath took us down to the beach and showed us with
justifiable pride a half-completed cutter--an open boat of about
thirty feet in length designed to be rigged as a sloop--which he was
building to use in picking up copra from other villages along the coast
of the island. All of the wood used had been hewed from trees felled
within a hundred feet of the beach, he told us, and all of the work
was being done with his own hands. The Commodore discoursed
learnedly on the lines and construction of the little craft, and the
rest of us commended its builder for his industry and ingenuity. No
one of us dreamed that we were looking at the frame of a boat which
was destined shortly to make a voyage that must be rated for all time
as one of the miracles of deep sea sailing.
Our intercourse with Queen Mareu was somewhat restricted as a result
of having to be carried on through the medium of an interpreter. We
found her a most personable young lady of about twenty-five, with a
striking face and figure and a glint of sombre fire slumbering in the
depths of her dark eyes that indicated temper or temperament, and
probably both. She had ascended the "throne" a year previously, after
her father, the late King, had slipped on a ripe mango in endeavouring
to elude the charge of a wild bull he was hunting. Her manifest
determination to rule her home as well as her people was responsible,
it was said, for the flight to Tahiti of her husband--a young half-caste
of little account--a month or two later. Since then she had ruled alone.
Of what mind she was in the matter of taking a "Prince Consort," we
were unable to learn; but a tender light in the sloe eyes when "Lord
Chamberlain" McGrath was about might have furnished a clue to the
trend of her intentions. Whatever these might have been, however,
Fate, as far as the near future was concerned, had other plans
incubating for the slender, blue-eyed trader to whom every one that
came in contact with him seemed to become so much attached.
The print _holakau_ or Mother Hubbard wrapper--which descended
upon the South Seas with the missionaries--would ordinarily hardly
be rated as a regal garment; but Mareu, with the sweeping lines of
her Dianesque figure softly outlined by the clinging calico, carried
hers as if it was a Grecian robe, and was distinctly--well, I noted
that even the Commodore was keeping his weather eye lifting
whenever she hove above the horizon. But she was at her best
when, in a bathing suit improvised from a _pareo_, she sported
with the gay abandon of a porpoise in a natural pool of pink and
blue coral where the beach curved up to the base of the great cliff,
or, perched cross-legged in the stern of her little out-rigger canoe,
sent that slender craft, a sliver of shining silver, speeding through
the surf-swept mazes of the outer reef. She was indeed a
consummate canoeist--quite the best I have ever seen--and in the
light of subsequent events I have often recalled the words with
which McGrath once referred to her skill with the paddle.
[Illustration: "HATIHEU, THE MOST SUBLIME
COMBINATION OF MOUNTAIN, VALE AND SEA
THAT MY EYES HAVE EVER RESTED UPON"]
[Illustration: A MARQUESAN FISHERMAN OF
HATIHEU]
We watched from the thatched roofed veranda of McGrath's quarters one
dewy-fresh morning when the whistling Trade had whipped up a more
than usually stiff sea outside, the course of Mareu's canoe where, with
Claribel as a passenger, she was shooting the breakers as they came
booming in across the reef. Suddenly the even line of the horizon was
blotted out by the loom of a roller of huge bulk and weight--"the
Seventh Son of a Seventh Son," as the sailors call it when they don't
use a stronger term.
"She'll hardly try that one," muttered McGrath decisively; "it's big
enough to founder a war canoe." And then, as the helio flashes from the
blade of a swiftly plied paddle told him his surmise was wrong, "Good
God, there she goes!"
The canoe gathered momentum, hung for a few moments on the back of the
mounting comber, and then "caught on" and commenced to race. Slowly the
wave gathered itself together and, as the water shallowed above the
edge of the reef, curled over and broke with a roar that rattled the
glasses on the arms of our chairs. For an instant nothing was visible
but foam and spray and tossing waters; then, clinging tenaciously to
the comber's flying mane--as a panther, teeth in neck and safe from
the animal's horns, rides the stag he has tackled--appeared the little
canoe. On it darted like the flash of a sunbeam, a smoke of spray
rising from its bows and the floundering out-rigger trailing like a
broken wing. Twice or thrice, as the tossing waters gave way beneath
the prow and the slender craft seemed on the point of "somersaulting"
over the breaker's brink, there came the flash of a steadying paddle
and the equilibrium was restored. Now the roughest of the ride was over
and a swift dash of a hundred yards remained before still water was
reached. Claribel, game but chastened, still lay low in an instinctive
endeavour to keep the centre of gravity down near the keel where it
belonged; but Mareu, mad with the ecstasy of swift motion, leapt up to
a hair-poised balance and, swathed in sheets of flying spray, finished
the run after the fashion of that other Venus who was born of the
sea-foam where the breakers travailed on the Cyprean coast.
I saw the Commodore lower his glass with a gesture of relief where he
had watched with the Mater from the veranda of the Queen's "palace,"
but McGrath was only smiling.
"If there was a reef and a surf hedging in the jaws of hell, that girl
would try and shoot the passage with never a thought for what she was
going into beyond," he said evenly as he watched her beach the canoe
and help Claribel to alight.
Absorbed in his thoughts, but still with his eye on the girl, McGrath
poured himself another glass of absinthe. Disdaining the aid of a
couple of her boat-pullers, she dumped the water from the canoe and
hauled it up to its shelter of thatch above high-tide mark; then, like
a spaniel that has finished its swim, she gave herself a vigorous shake,
so that her wealth of glistening blue-black hair came tumbling down
and swathed her spray-wet body to the knees.
"And by God!--" McGrath gave vocal expression to the thoughts that
were in his eyes--"with Mareu at the paddle I'd run the jaws of hell
myself!"
I had no inkling at the time of the struggle that was going on in the
man's heart, but later events, coupled with a recollection of those
sudden passionate words, brought me to something of an understanding.
On the last day of our visit to Hatiheu the Queen gave a great feast
to all of her subjects, the members of our party being the guests of
honour. The food consisted of the usual run of Marquesan delicacies,
but the _piece de resistance_ was the great bull secured on the wild
cattle hunt which McGrath finally succeeded in arranging at the last
moment. It was cooked whole in a huge underground oven lined with
stones, from which it was drawn in a condition to suit the taste of an
epicure. Like the Mexican _barbecue_, this method of cooking results
in meat that is delicious enough to counteract the dis-appetizing
effects of the disgusting methods of handling it. McGrath kept a
careful eye on the toddy calabashes, so that the feast, as Marquesan
feasts go, was a very prim and proper affair. Claribel, who was in
splendid voice, sang several English and Hawaiian songs, and finally,
the Marseillaise, from the "palace" veranda. The latter, with which
many of the natives appeared to be familiar, was received with
tumultuous applause.
At the Queen's command a bevy of very comely misses from the mission
school started a _himine_ or hymn, to the tune of a couple of tom-toms
and a concertina. Others joined in, and by imperceptible degrees the air
was changed until, almost before we knew what had happened, it had
become a rollicking _hula_. The frantic protests of the Mother Superior
passed unnoticed in the excitement, and not until that outraged
individual had seized one of the recalcitrants (who, yielding to the
delirious abandon of the seductive air, had begun to dance), and led her
off by the ear was she able to re-establish her authority. The indignant
Mareu, who had no love for the missionaries and who said she was just
getting in a mood to dance herself, promptly declared in favour of
bringing the spirited little singers back by force and letting the
festivities go on; but the diplomatic McGrath, scenting "civil war" in
the kingdom of Hatiheu, suggested that, as we all were to start at
daybreak for the long ride back to Taio-haie, it might be well to turn
in and get a few hours' sleep. The Queen continued obdurate and would
probably have carried her point had not a heavy squall come roaring in
from the ocean and driven the whole company to shelter.
My opportunities for studying the _hula_ in Nukahiva, which was once
famous as the home of the greatest dancers in the South Pacific, were
so limited that it would be presumptuous of me to dogmatise. I might
record the impression, however, that it is a spirited and soul-stirring
performance, and has this in common with modern "ragging" and "jazzing"
and "shimmy-ing," that it leaves nothing to the imagination on the
points to which it is endeavouring to give expression. For this
reason, if for no other, it may be worth preserving against the time
when the Pampas, the Sahara and the Barbary Coast of California are
incapable longer of giving a wriggle or a "writhe" sufficiently
suggestive to stir the jaded soul of Society. Pulses that have long
refused to throb a beat faster in the tangle of the "tango," may yet
have the life to quicken in the sensuous abandon of the Marquesan
_hula_. And in fancy cannot one hear it all over again? "The 'Hatiheu
Hug' and the 'Taio-haie Throttle'--who says they're disgusting? If one
_wants_ to dance them disgustingly, of course--" How long will it
be, I wonder?
* * * * *
Queen Mareu and her retinue, Her Highness in a flowing habit of print
and tapa and sitting an imported French side-saddle, accompanied us
back to Taio-haie, and on the evening preceding our departure came
off to the yacht for dinner and fireworks. Queen Taone of Anaho, who
chanced to be visiting in Taio-haie, was another of the distinguished
guests on this occasion. Besides royalty, invitations had been sent to
every one of foreign blood on the island, and all, with the exception
of John Hilyard, the tattooed man, had responded. French officialdom,
brave in gold lace and with straggles of orders across its breasts, was
out en masse; three of the genial Fathers from the Catholic mission,
one of whom entertained us with several selections from "Faust,"
"Carmen" and "Trovatore," sung in a magnificent tenor, also honoured
us with their presence, as did four officers from trading schooners in
the harbour, two of whom were in pajamas and barefooted. Cramer,
the German trader, was choking till his eyes bulged in the uniform of
an officer of a Prussian cavalry regiment which he had worn as a
slender youth, ten years before. McGrath put us all to shame by
appearing in a dress suit, the fine cut of which puzzled me not a
little until, later in the evening when he had thrown it aside in my
cabin, I noticed a tab with "Poole" upon it on the inside of the collar.
Entertaining royalty is ordinarily a thing not lightly to be courted,
but one has to get used to it in the South Pacific and after a while
comes to take it quite as a matter of course. The principal accessories
required are a phonograph or a music box, a cabin-ful of plate glass
mirrors, plenty of cool drinks, a few cases of fireworks, unlimited
bolts of print and an inexhaustible supply of barrels of salt beef and
boxes of canned salmon. These items, properly used, will insure social
success to the veriest tyro. In those calid latitudes, where everything
else appears more or less _en deshabille_, court etiquette is also
stripped of its surplus frills and, save for occasional disconcerting
surprises, contains little to baffle the uninitiated.
Queen Mareu had dined with foreigners many times before and her manners
were impeccable. Her Highness, Teona, had enjoyed fewer advantages than
her sister sovereign of Hatiheu, but even she--except for a little bad
luck in inhaling some champagne which she was endeavouring to make run
down her throat and thereby inducing coughing fits which nothing but
rolling on the carpet seemed to have any efficacy in checking--deported
herself most creditably. She was, to be sure, irresistibly attracted
by the agreeable salty taste of a long lock of her foretop which
got into the soup in the opening round, so that she returned to it
in all of the intervals between the courses which followed, and the
careless informality of her action in emptying the contents of the bowl
of lump sugar into the bosom of her _holakau_ might have been greeted
with raised eyebrows at Newport, or Cowes, or Cannes, but the quiet,
unconscious dignity of it all proved that she was at least "to the manor
born" in the South Pacific and quite disarmed criticism.
Dinner over, Queen Mareu retired to a reclining chair by the taffrail
and sat apart, moody and distrait, all of the evening, not any too
pleased, apparently, to have her handsome "Lord Chamberlain" so
much monopolized by the visitors. Queen Teona, on the other hand,
glad of the chance to become the centre of interest, was all smiles
and animation. Seated at ease on the rail of the cockpit, with one
dainty brown foot thrust through the spokes of the wheel and the
other polishing the brass binnacle, she related--through Cramer as
interpreter--stories which she had heard from her grandfather of the
time when Nukahiva was the rendezvous of the Pacific whaling fleet,
tales only less terrible than those of the days when the buccaneers
held high revel in the old cannibal feast ground at Hatiheu; recitals,
in fact, which I rather fancy the shrewd Teuton toned down considerably
in translation.
At little tables on the quarter deck the French officers mixed cool
green drinks from specially-provided bottles of absinthe, and in the
cabin, bowed over a chart, the trading captains gave the Commodore
careful directions for threading the passages of the treacherous
Paumotos. On the forward deck Their Highnesses' retinues fraternized
with the _Lurline's_ crew over a case of Yankee beer, now the sailors
raising their voices in a chantey, now the natives in a _himine_, and
now both together in indiscriminate "chantey-himines" and
"himine-chanteys."
In the whole cruise's necklace of tropical nights that one shines forth
with a sparkle all its own. As the afterglow faded above the opaque
mass of cliffs behind the village, the trade-wind shifted slightly
and came to us across the blossom-clothed spurs to the southeast,
suffusing, as with a draught of incense from the open door of an
Eastern temple, the whole hollow of the bay in the drowsy perfume of
the yellow _cassi_. As the purple shadows banked deeper on the ebony
water and night crept out from the black valleys of the mountains
lights began twinkling here and there in the bush, and presently the
lines of the verandas of the official residence were picked out in rows
of coloured lanterns. The surf broke uproariously along the shore in
bursts of phosphorescent flame, and in its pauses the barbaric cadences
of _himines_ and _hulas_ floated out to us across the star-paved
surface of the bay. On this, though they seemed to tickle the royal
fancies, the fireworks broke somewhat in the nature of an anti-climax.
To the good Teona's passion for "seeing the wheels go round" was due
the fact that the fireworks tickled something besides her royal fancy.
She had been permitted to pull the lanyard of the signal gun for half
a dozen salutes, to put the match to several kicking rockets, and had
just touched off her second fistful of Roman candles when the trouble
occurred. The paper tubes were popping forth their multi-coloured
contents in blazing showers when Her Highness, her face ashine
with perspiration and pleasure, reversed them in an ill-advised
attempt to see where the bright little balls came from.
In an instant a good half dozen or more of the purple pellets had
popped into the neck of the unlucky queen's voluminous _holakau_,
seeking extinguishment somewhere in the oil-glistening reaches of Her
Highness' plump shoulders. That the sufferer raked, as with a gatling
gun, the rest of the party with her sputtering candles in the pain
and consternation of the first touch of the burning balls of calcium
is hardly to be wondered at under the circumstances; and it only made
the more admirable the manner in which she pulled herself together and
tossed the spitting fire-sticks overboard before dignifiedly retiring
down the gangway to bathe her burns in salt water. Later in the evening
she rose to another trying emergency with equal aplomb in seizing an
erupting ginger ale bottle from one of her befuddled hand-maidens
and smothering it in the latter's flowered _pareo_ in order to save
the dignity and the gold-laced uniform of the Residente who, being
corpulent, had become temporarily wedged in his deck chair and was
unable to dodge the sizzling amber jet. This, I may mention, was only
the forerunner of many trying experiences that were in store for us
as the result of the violent unrest that enters into the contents of
a bottle of champagne or mineral water that is carried in imperfectly
protected lockers on tropical seas.
* * * * *
At noon, on the 15th of April, the _Nukahiva_, a French schooner of
about seventy tons--the "greyhound" of the Marquesan trading
fleet--hove up anchor and got under weigh for the entrance with the
courteously avowed intention of showing us the way to Tahiti.
"_Venez nous voir en arrivant a Papeete!_" her captain shouted as she
came up past us and went about; and "_Merci--avec plasir!_" we faltered
back as we waved him a vigorous _au revoir_ with our napkins from the
companionway.
At one o'clock we were under weigh ourselves, beating out against such
baffling puffs of the trade-wind as found their way to the inner bay.
Sailing within four points of the wind in the smooth water of the
narrow passage, by two o'clock _Lurline_ had overcome the hour's lead
of the _Nukahiva_, and a few minutes later passed ahead and well to the
windward of her through the "Sentinels."
A number of our newly-made friends had come down to the beach to wave
us bon voyage, but the one to whom our glasses turned the oftenest
was a white clad figure that had stood immovable under the shade of
a coco palm while the yacht was in sight and which, as the southerly
"Sentinel" began to blot our tower of sail, had sunk down into a
dejected heap upon the coral clinkers. The memories and the thoughts of
the "Outside World" which our coming had conjured up for McGrath, the
man who was trying to forget the "Outside World," had proved almost too
much for him.
That pathetic little white heap on the beach of Taio-haie was the
last we ever saw of the young trader who had done so much to make our
visit to Nukahiva a memorable one, and whom we had all come to like
so well. Some weeks later, in Tahiti, I received a letter from Cramer
telling how McGrath, accompanied by a single native boy and with a
pitifully small stock of provisions, had been blown off to sea during a
storm in the little cutter he was building when we were at Hatiheu, and
had been given up for lost. And it was as lost that we mourned our good
friend during all the rest of the cruise and for many months afterward
until, one day, came the following letter, written from Tahiti: (I give
the essential parts of it verbatim for the especial benefit of those
yachtsmen who are prone to feel themselves the victims of hard luck at
having to spend a summer night out of port in a snug, decked-over
forty-footer.)
"I have had a rather exciting time of it for the last six months,
having been blown away from the Marquesas group in the little
boat which I was building when you called at the islands. It was
owing to the unshipping of the rudder, and as the boat had an
overhanging stern it was impossible for us to re-ship it for four
days, owing to the heavy sea. We had no oars with which to guide
the boat, otherwise I might have fetched the lee of Nukahiva.
We were more than two hundred miles west of the group when we
finally succeeded in getting the rudder repaired, and had but a
gallon of water left. As it then fell calm I decided to run for
Caroline, with the breeze and strong current in our favour, and
made the island O.K. within an hour of the time I calculated.
To say that I had a hell of a time is putting it mildly. After
trying twice to make Tahiti, and running into a southeast gale
each time, I ran for Samoa, and the last five days of the run had
the full force of the hurricane which swept the whole of the South
Pacific from June 12th to 18th. It was so fierce that the
_Sierra_--a 6,300-ton steamer of the American-Australian Line--was
blown away from the Samoas and could not effect an entrance.
Several vessels were piled up in the neighbourhood of Samoa, and
many dismasted; yet my boy and I lived it out in a perfectly
open boat.
"We were blown away on the 7th of May, and made Tutuila on the
18th of June, after having sailed more than 3,000 miles. The boat
filled once, twelve miles from Pago Pago, and almost sank, but we
threw everything overboard to lighten her, baled her out, and then
slashed her through it with reefed foresail. She was the finest sea
boat that ever split a wave, and at Samoa beat a twenty-tone
schooner seventeen hours in a gale of wind from Savaii to Apia--a
dead beat of sixty miles."
McGrath's letter went on to tell of how he had sold his little cutter
in Samoa, journeyed to Sydney by steamer, travelled for some months
in Australasia, and was finally in Tahiti en voyage to his old post in
the Marquesas. Subsequent letters received by the Commodore from
Tahiti were calculated to cast considerable doubt on McGrath's story
of having been blown away from Nukahiva in a storm, and hinted at
shortages of accounts and other things. It is quite possible these
charges are true--it will make no difference with our memory of the
man if they are--but if they are, the question that suggests itself is,
"Why did McGrath, after successfully reaching Australia, come back
again to the Marquesas?" At last accounts he was back under the
shadow of the great cliffs of Hatiheu where, I sincerely hope, his
high-strung spirit has ceased to be troubled by the conflicting
impulses to which he was a prey during the final days of our visit
to Nukahiva. The story of McGrath cannot be told yet, for the reason
that one of the strangest of its drama is still unplayed; when it is
written, if ever, I have gleaned just enough of what has gone before
to know that the record will be one of the most remarkable that has
ever been given to the world.
Of McGrath's voyage in an open boat from the Marquesas to Samoa, I
will comment here no more than to say that, whether he was cast away
or deliberately embarked upon it, it has gone on record as one of
the most remarkable achievements of its kind in marine history. The
_Lurline_ encountered, between Samoa and Fiji, the same hurricane
which McGrath refers to in his letter, and when I describe that
stupendous disturbance as it appeared to us on one of the staunchest
ninety-footers ever built, I will also call attention to the fact that,
five hundred miles to the northeast, a white man and a Marquesan boy,
half dead from lack of food and sleep, were pointing up the prow of a
pitiful little thirty-foot open cutter to the same mountainous seas and
roaring winds.
* * * * *
Clearing the harbour of Taio-haie, sheets were slacked off and, with
a strong beam wind, we bowled away on a S.W. 1/2 S. course at a gait
which presaged a lively passage if it could be kept up. At 3:15 we took
our departure with the conspicuous Cape Maartens bearing N.E. and an
unnamed point on the west end of the island N. by W. At this time the
_Nukahiva_ was already hull down astern.
Encouraged by the first prospect of a steady and favourable slant of
wind since we left San Pedro, a good spread of sail was hoisted, which,
as the barometer was high and the sky unthreatening, it was hoped could
be carried all night. The sea was light, and in a gushingly fresh wind
the yacht reeled off ten and eleven knots an hour all through the first
watch. The breeze fell lighter after midnight, however, and squalls in
the morning and early forenoon made it impossible to carry the light
sails, considering which the run of 195 miles for the twenty-two hours
ending at noon of the 16th was very creditable work.
By the afternoon of the 16th we were clear of the treacherous squall
belt around the islands, and the strong, steady Trade from the E.S.E.
drove the yacht along at an almost undeviating speed, the log varying
scarcely two-tenths from ten knots for any hour. Toward evening the
benefit of a strengthening wind was offset by a rising sea, and through
the latter hours of the night we proceeded under shortened sail. At
daybreak the light sails were clapped on again and for several hours of
the forenoon but a shade under eleven knots was averaged. At noon the
dead-reckoning showed close to 230 miles logged in the last twenty-four
hours, and when the position by observation was figured it appeared
that a favourable set of current had added enough to this to bring the
day's run up to an even 240 miles. The temperature of the air was 86°
this day--the highest recorded during the voyage--and that of the water
was 82°.
At four o'clock on the afternoon of the 17th a ragtag of fringe was
reported off to the S.S.W., and word went around that we were sighting
the first of the dread Paumotos. This group--often down on the charts
as the Tuamotu, Low or Dangerous Archipelago,--is a cluster of a
hundred or more coral atolls covering several degrees of both latitude
and longitude of the extreme southwest corner of Polynesia. They are
noted for their treacherous currents and terrific hurricanes, and
are reputed to have had more schooners piled up on their white coral
beaches than any other half dozen groups in the South Pacific. The name
is a byword for all that is bad with every skipper who has sailed among
them, and "_Aussi sâle que dans ces maudits Paumotos_" is the last
degree of superlative in describing desperate navigating conditions. Of
harbours there is none save the lagoons of the atolls themselves, and
the entrances to these are so narrow and so beset by currents that the
passage of them is almost impossible except at the turn of the tide,
and is highly dangerous even then. Once inside the lagoon, however, the
protection from everything but hurricanes is perfect.
The average life of a trading or pearling schooner in the Paumotos
is but four or five years, and so notoriously world-wide is their
reputation as a marine graveyard that neither in Europe, Australia nor
America can a ship be insured that is plying in their trade. It is even
the custom to insert in the policy of a vessel running to adjacent
islands a clause declaring that no insurance will be paid should the
ship, by any chance, be lost in the Paumotos.
The island we had sighted turned out to be Ahii, one of the largest of
the group, and by five o'clock it had grown from a colourless horizontal
blur to a solid wall of white and brown and green, where the snowy
beach ran up to the dark boles of the coco palms, and these in turn ran
out in fringes of lacquered verdancy. At a distance of half a mile our
course was altered slightly to parallel that of the shore line, and in a
rapidly smoothing sea, but with an unabated breeze, we began running
down the low, even leeward coast of the strange island. From the deck
only the coco palm barrier, a tossing mass of up-ended feather dusters,
met the eye to windward, but from the shrouds, through rifts in the line,
could be seen great green gashes of the smooth lagoon. Farther still, in
blended brown and olive, the windward rim of the island stood out
sharply against a vivid turquoise ribbon of open sea, itself defined
against a dusky mass of cumulo-nimbus that was rolling in before the
Trade from the southeast.
Here followed a spell of the prettiest sailing that the good _Lurline_,
sapient of the seas of many latitudes, ever did, or probably ever
will do. We were sufficiently close to the steep-to lee shore of the
great atoll to be sailing in a sea as smooth as the land-locked lagoon
itself, yet at the same time were far enough beyond the barrier of
the coco palms still to enjoy the full force of a moderately strong
and remarkably steady breeze. We were anxious not to get too far in
among the islands during the night, and for this reason no light sails
were set; yet under mainsail, foresail, forestay-sail and jib the log
was shortly spinning up mile after mile with six minutes and less of
interval between each bell.
The wind was on the port beam, and blowing so smoothly that the
yacht, unshaken by the lift or slap of waves, held to her even heel
as though chocked over in the ways. Of pitch or roll or shiver there
was no sign, and for all the motion but that swift, undeviating
forward glide, she might have been frozen up in a fresh water lake.
She simply shore her way through the water as a draper's clerk
runs his unworked scissors down a length of silk.
At dinner in the cabin the unprecedented stillness was almost
oppressive. The familiar creaking of the inlaying on the mainmast at
the head of the table was no longer heard, nor the crash of waves and
the rattle of spray to windward, nor the shrill of spinning sheaves
and the rat-a-tat of the foresheet block on the deck. The only sounds
were unwonted ones--the tick of the cabin clock, the rattle of pans in
the galley, the not over-elegant flow of post-prandial conversation in
the forecastle, and running through all, the hissing rush of the water
along the sides.
The sun had set while we were at dinner, and the afterglow, in swift
tropic transitions, had flamed and faded and flamed again, and was
fading out for the last time as we came on deck. The sea to the west
still glimmered here and there in patches of dull rose from the
reflections of a few still-lighted tufts of cirrus cloud. North and
south it was darkly purple, shading to a misty slatiness where water
and sky merged in banks of low-hanging strati, and east to the island
it lay dead and opaque, save for the spots where it was pricked into
life by the images of the brightening stars. Overhead the Pleiades and
Orion's Belt and Sirius, the Dog Star, were turning from pale yellow
to orange, and from orange to lambent gold; to the north the Big
Dipper, half submerged in the sea, was tipping up slowly to pour out
its nocturnal libation to its stately _vis-à-vis_, the Southern Cross.
And under it all, swiftly, silently, mysteriously as the Flying
Dutchman, her track marked for a mile astern by a comet-like wake
of vivid gold, _Lurline_ went slipping down the lee of the long atoll
at an easy, even, effortless ten knots an hour.
Presently, just as twilight was giving way to full darkness, a red
light was reported crossing our bows, and we shortly made out a
two-masted schooner beating in toward the entrance to the lagoon,
nearly opposite to which we were then sailing. Several times across the
still water came the strangely mixed jumble of French and Kanaka and
English orders, mingling with the creak of booms as she was put about,
and finally the voice of the skipper cursing fluently because the tide
was running faster in the passage than was to his apparent taste. Then
a great yellow moon got up and sat upon the farther fringe of the
lagoon, and back and forth across the face of it we watched the little
schooner beat in safely through the narrow passage. As she left the
moon path a bonfire sprang into life somewhere upon the inner beach,
and through the serried ranks of the coco palms we saw her pink sails
crumple up as halyards were let go, while the sharp staccato of a chain
running through a hawse pipe floating down the wind told that she had
won her anchorage.
At nine o'clock it was decided to pass to the west of the island of
Rangaroa, instead of to the east as had been our intention, and to
this end the course was altered to W. by S. To minimize the chance of
overrunning our reckoning in the treacherous currents and thereby
piling up the yacht on the beach of Tikehau which lay beyond Rangaroa,
foresail and jib were furled, only the mainsail and forestay-sail
remaining set. Even under this greatly reduced sail seven knots an
hour were averaged all night, daybreak finding us off the northwest
corner of Rangaroa. Down the lee of this island--under sailing
conditions only less perfect than those of the previous evening--we
ran all the forenoon of the 18th, sinking its southwest corner early
in the afternoon, just as we raised a peak of the combined coral
and volcanic island of Makatea.
Makatea is famous as having been the rendezvous of the notorious
Marquesan half-caste, Boraki, quite the most picturesque pirate who
ever operated in that corner of the South Pacific. The story of the
retributive justice which overtook Boraki while endeavouring to cut out
and capture a missionary schooner sent to conciliate and convert him is
one of the most amazing yarns ever told, and the antithetic variations
of it that come from the opposite poles of "traderdom" and "missiondom"
are alone worth journeying to the South Seas to listen to. I shall
endeavour, later, to set down the account we heard--from the lips of
one of the principal actors in the remarkable drama--on a memorable
evening when the yacht lay at anchor in Suva Bay, Fiji.
As day broke on the 19th the mist-wreathed peak of Orohena, the
backbone of Tahiti, took form a point or two off the port bow, and
a little later the jumbled skyline of Moorea began to appear in a
similar position to starboard. The sun rose gorgeously behind a flank
of the larger island, the blazing southeast setting off in marvellous
silhouette the matchless "Diadem," the crown jewel of all Tahiti's
beauty. "The Diadem" is the name given to a row of little peaks
occupying the divide between the two great volcanoes that dominate
the east and west ends of the island. They are so symmetrically and
evenly set that the most unimaginative cannot fail to see their
resemblance to the points of a king's crown, a likeness all the more
striking when each point is tipped with gold and the whole
surmounted with a halo of light from the rising sun.
At seven o'clock the tall, white pillar of the Point Venus Light--so
called because Captain Cook took his observations of the transit
of the planet Venus from this promontory on June 3rd, 1769--could
be discerned towering above the coco palms that engulfed its base,
and an hour later it was abeam, with the bay of Papeete opening
up beyond. This name, meaning "Basket of Water," gives a
comprehensive description of Tahiti's chief harbour. The bay itself
is but half land-locked by the mainland, but across what would
otherwise be a comparatively open roadstead runs a partially
submerged reef, which, except for the narrowest of passages,
completely cuts it off from the sea. Inside is a mile of deep water
and a shore so bold-to that the trading schooners tie up to the
trees and load from and discharge to the bank.
At 8:30 we were off the entrance, and, as the sailing directions were
plain and the marks unmistakable, the Commodore decided to go in
without a pilot. The wind, which we had carried on our port quarter
since daybreak, was brought up abeam as we altered our course and
headed into the passage. It blew strongly and steadily, and to the
nine or ten-knot gait at which it was driving us was added the four
or five-knot run of a flood tide. The yacht raced through the passage,
as the Port Captain shortly tried to tell us in broken English, "like ze
diable try catch her," and during all of our stay in the island we were
constantly called upon to deny the persistent rumour that she was
equipped with power. Several who witnessed our entrance from the
shore even went so far as to aver that they distinctly saw blue smoke
trailing off astern, a phenomenon which never came nearer to
explanation than when Gus, a big Swede of the mate's watch who
was at the wheel on the occasion in question, admitted that he did
"sware a leetle when she go joost lak hell" out of sheer excitement.
We anchored a couple of cable's lengths off the British Consulate,
having made the 800 miles from Nukahiva in a little over three and
three-quarters days, eleven hours of which were run under mainsail
and forestay-sail only in the lee of Rangaroa. The best previous
record was between four and five days.