I asked him what they had to gain by stirring themselves.

"Gain?" he said. "They have everything to gain. There are only two

frame houses on the place. The rest of them are miserable little

shelters of coconut thatch. I haven't sold them enough corrugated iron

in ten years to cover this cockpit. You remember Takaroa and Niau and

Fakahina? Well, there's my idea of islands. Nice European

furniture--iron beds, center tables, phonographs, bicycles--"

A further catalogue of the comforts and conveniences of civilization

which the inhabitants of Rutiaro might have and didn't convinced me that

this was the atoll I had been looking for, and I regretted that our stay

there was to be so brief. I did not begrudge the inhabitants of richer

atolls their phonographs and bicycles. They got an incredible amount of

amusement out of them; listened with delight to the strange music, and

spent entire evenings taking turns with the bicycles, riding them back

and forth from the lagoon beach to the ocean shore. But the frame

houses were blots on the landscape, crude, barnlike structures, most of

them, which offend the eye like factory chimneys in a green valley.

Rutiaro had none of these things, and, having no interest in it from the

commercial point of view, I awaited impatiently our arrival there.

At ten o'clock we were three miles to windward of the village island.

It lay at the narrower end of the lagoon, the inner shore line curving

around a broad indentation where the village was. The land narrowed in

one direction to a ledge of reef. At the farther end there was a small

_motu_ not more than three hundred yards in length by one hundred broad,

separated from the main island by a strip of shallow water. Seen from

aloft, the two islands resembled, roughly, in outline, an old-fashioned,

high-pooped vessel with a small boat in tow. I could see the whole of

the atoll from the mainmast crosstrees, the lagoon, shimmering into

green over the shoals, darkening to an intense blue over unlit valleys

of ocean floor; a solitude of sunlit water, placid as a lake buried in

the depths of inaccessible mountains. I followed the shore line with my

glasses. Distant islands, ledges of barren reef, leaped forward with an

effect of magic, as though our atom of a vessel, the only sail which

relieved the emptiness of the sea, had been swept in an instant to

within a few yards of the surf. Great combers, green and ominous

looking in the sunlight, broke at one rapidly advancing point, toppled

and fell in segments, filling the inner shallows with a smother of foam.

Beyond it lay the broad fringe of white, deserted beach, the narrow

forest of shrub and palm, the empty lagoon, a border of misty islands on

the farther side. I had seen the same sort of a picture twenty times

before, always with the same keen sense of its desolate beauty, its

allurement, its romantic loveliness. Tino had said, "When you've seen

one you've seen them all," and an old skipper once told me that "the

atolls are as much alike as the reef points on that sail." It is true.

They are as monotonous as the sea itself and as fresh with varying

interest.

The village was hidden among the trees, but I saw the French flag flying

near a break in the reef which marked the landing place for small boats.

Farther back, a little knot of people were gathered, some of them

sitting in the full glare of the sun, others in the deep shade, leaning

against the trees in attitudes of dreamy meditation. Three girls were

combing their hair, talking and laughing in an animated way. They were

dressed in all their European finery, gowns of flowered muslin pulled up

around their bare legs to prevent soilure. A matronly woman in a red

wrapper had thrown the upper covering aside and sat, naked to the waist,

nursing a baby. I put down my glasses, feeling rather ashamed of my

scrutiny, as though I had been peeping through a window at some intimate

domestic scene. The island leaped into the distance; the broad circle

of foam and jagged reef narrowed to a thread of white, and the _Caleb S.

Winship_ crept landward again under a light breeze, an atom of a ship on

a vast and empty sea. Eight bells struck, a tinkling sound, deadened,

scarcely audible in the wide air. I heard Tino's voice as though coming

from an immense distance: "Hello, up there! _Kai-kai's_ ready!" I

said: "All right! I'm coming," and was surprised at the loudness of my

own shout. But I waited for a moment to indulge myself in a last

reflection: "It is thirty-one years since the _Prince Edward_ put in

here. Excepting a few traders and missionaries, there isn't probably

one man in one hundred thousand who has ever heard of this atoll; not

one in a million who has ever seen it or ever will see it. What a piece

of luck for me!" Then I saw Oro at the galley door with a huge platter

of boiled beef and sweet potatoes. The sight of it reminded me that I

was very hungry. As I climbed down to the deck I was conscious of the

fact that a healthy appetite and a good digestion were a piece of luck,

too, and that as long as one could hold it the lure of islands would

remain, and one's love of living burn with a clear flame. Jack, the

monkey, seemed to divine my thought, to agree with it. As Oro, the food

bearer, passed him, he reached down from his perch in the rigging,

seized the largest sweet potato on the platter, and clambered out of

reach. Assured of his safety, he fell to greedily, looking out

wistfully toward the land.

The pass was at the farther end of the lagoon, and in order to save time

in getting the work ashore under way, the supercargo and I, with three

of the sailors, put off in the whaleboat, to land on the ocean side of

the village. Half a dozen men rushed into the surf, seized and held the

boat as the backwash poured down the steep incline at the edge of the

reef. Among them was the chief, a man of huge frame, six feet two or

three in height. Like the others who assisted at the landing, he was

clad only in a _pareu_, but he lost none of his dignity through his

nakedness. He was fifty-five years old, as I afterward learned, and as

he stood bidding us welcome I thought of the strange appearance certain

of the chief men in America or France or England would make under

similar circumstances, deprived of the kindly concealment of clothing.

What a revelation it would be of skinniness or pudginess! What an

exhibition of scrawny necks, fat stomachs, flat chests, flabby arms! To

be strictly accurate, I had seen some fat stomachs among elderly

Paumotuans, but they were exceptions, and always remarkable for that

reason. And those who carried them had sturdy legs. They did not give

one the uneasy feeling, common at home, at the sight of the great

paunches of sedentary men toppling unsteadily along a strip of crimson

carpet, from curb to club doorway.

Wherever one goes in Polynesia one is reminded, by contrast, of the cost

physically to men of our own race of our sheltered way of living. There

on every hand are men well past middle life, with compact, symmetrical

bodies and the natural grace of healthy children. One sees them

carrying immense burdens without exertion, swimming in the open sea for

an hour or two at a time while spearing fish, loafing ashore with no

greater apparent effort for yet longer periods. Sometimes, when they

have it, they eat enormous quantities of food at one sitting, and at

others, under necessity, as sparingly as so many dyspeptics. It would

be impossible to formulate from their example any rules for rational

living in more civilized communities. The daily quest for food under

primitive conditions keeps them alert and sound of body, so that,

whether they work or loaf, feast or fast, they seem always to acquire

health by it.

There had been no boats at Rutiaro in five months and the crowd on the

beach was unfeignedly glad to see us. The arrival of a schooner at that

remote island was an event of great importance; the sight of new faces

lighted their own with pleasure, which warmed the heart toward them at

once. We had brought ashore a consignment of goods for Moy Ling, the

Chinese storekeeper, and when the handshaking was over they gathered

around it as eagerly as a group of American children at a Christmas

tree. Even the village constable seemed unconscious of any need for a

show of dignity or authority. The only badge of his office was a

cigarette-card picture of President Poincare, fastened with a safety pin

to his old felt hat. He neglected his duties as a keeper of order, and

was one of the most excited of Moy Ling's helpers with the cargo. He

kept patting him affectionately on the back, saying, "_Maitai! maitai!_"

which in that situation may be freely translated as, "You know me, Moy

Ling!" And the old Chinaman smiled the pleasant, noncommittal smile of

his countrymen the world over.

Tino's was the only sour face on the beach. He moved through the crowd,

giving orders, grumbling and growling half to himself and half to me.

"I told you they were a lazy lot," he said. "They've seen us making in

for three hours, and what have they been doing? Loafing on the beach,

waiting for us instead of getting their copra together! Moy Ling is the

only one in the village who is ready to do business. Five tons all

sacked for weighing. He's worth a dozen Kanakas. Well, I'll set 'em to

work in quick time now. You watch me! I'm going to be loaded and out

of here by six o'clock."

But chance, using me as an innocent accomplice, ordered it otherwise.

It was Sir Thomas Browne who said, "Those who hold that all things are

governed by fortune had not erred had they not persisted there." He may

be right, although I don't remember now where his own nonpersistence

lay. But there are some things, some events, which chance or

fortune--whatever one wishes to call it--governs from the outset with an

amazing show of omnipotence. Tracing them back, one becomes almost

convinced of a fixed intent, a far-sighted, unwavering determination in

its apparently haphazard functioning. It is clear to me now that,

because I had been fond of playing marbles as a boy, I was to be

marooned, fifteen years later, on a fragment of land, six thousand miles

from the lumber yard of S. M. Brown & Son. Tino had no more to do with

that result than I did. He merely lost his temper because chance

disorganized his plans for an early departure; tried to quench his anger

in rum, and became more furious still because he was drunk. Then off he

went in the _Caleb S. Winship_, leaving me stranded ashore. I can still

hear his parting salutation which he roared at me though a megaphone

across the starlit lagoon, "You can stay--" But this is anticipating.

The story moves in a more leisurely fashion.

As I have said, my box of marbles came to light again only a few hours

before we reached Rutiaro. I took them ashore with me, thinking they

might amuse the children. They had a good knowledge of the technic of

shooting, acquired in a two-handed game common among the atolls, which

is played with bits of polished coral. But theirs had always seemed to

me a tame pastime, lacking the interest of stakes to be won or lost. I

instructed them in the simple rules of "bull-ring" and "Tom's-dead,"

which they quickly mastered. Then I divided the marbles equally among

them and gave them to understand that the winner held his gains,

although marbles, like trade goods, might be bartered for. I emphasized

that feature of the game because of a recollection remaining from my own

marble-playing days, of the contempt in which boys were held who refused

to hazard their marbles in a test of skill. They refused to play "for

keeps," and the rest of us had nothing to do with them. The youngsters

of Rutiaro were not of that stamp. They took their losses in good part.

When I saw that I left them to themselves and went for a walk through

the village. I knew--at least I thought I did--that our stay was to be

brief and I wanted to make the most of it.

I followed the street bordering the lagoon, past the freshly thatched

houses with their entryways wide to the sun and wind, and came at length

to a small burying ground which lay in an area of green shadow far from

the village. There were a dozen or more graves within the inclosure,

some of them neatly mounded over with broken coral and white shell,

others incased in a kind of sarcophagus of native cement to keep more

restless spirits from wandering abroad. Most of them were unmarked.

Two or three had wooden headboards, one of which was covered with a long

inscription in Chinese. Beneath this the word "Repose" was printed in

English, as though it had some peculiar talismanic significance for the

Chinaman who had placed it there. It was the grave of a predecessor of

Moy Ling's. I fell to thinking of him as I sat there, and of all the

Chinamen I had met in the earlier days, lonely, isolated figures, most

of them, without family or friends or the saving companionship of books.

What was it that kept them going? What goal were they striving toward

through lives which held so little of the comfort or happiness essential

to the rest of humankind? Repose? A better end than that, surely. The

air rang with the sound of the word, the garish sunlight fell pitilessly

on the print of it. To most men, I believe, with the best of life still

before them, there is something terrible, infamous, in the thought of

the unrelieved blackness of an endless, dreamless sleep. I turned from

the contemplation of it; let my thoughts wander in a mist of dreams, of

half-formed fancies which glimmered through consciousness like streaks

of sunlight in a dusty attic. These vanished at length and for a time I

was as dead to thought or feeling as Moy Ling's predecessor, sleeping

beside me.

I was awakened by some one shaking me by the shoulder. A voice said,

"_Haere i te pai!_" ("Come down to the boat!") and a dark figure ran on

before, turning from time to time to urge me to greater speed. It was

almost night, although there was still light enough to see by. I

remembered that Tino had told me to be at the copra sheds at five. The

tide would serve for getting through the pass until eight, but I

hurried, nevertheless, feeling that something unusual had happened.

Rounding a point of land which cut off the view from the village and the

inner lagoon, I saw the schooner, about three hundred yards off shore,

slim and black against a streak of orange cloud to the northward. She

was moving slowly out, under power; the whaleboat was being hoisted over

the side, and at the wheel I saw the familiar silhouette of the

supercargo.

I shouted: "Hi! Tino! Wait a minute! You're not going to leave me

behind, are you?"

A moment of silence followed. Then came the answer with the odd

deliberation of utterance which I knew meant Tahiti rum:

"You can stay there and play marbles till hell freezes over! I'm

through with you!"

What had happened, as nearly as I could make out afterward, was this: my

box of marbles which I had brought ashore for the amusement of the

children, interested the grown-ups as well, particularly the hazard of

stakes in the games I had shown them. Paumotuans have a good deal of

Scotch acquisitiveness in their make-up. They coveted those

marbles--they were really worth coveting--and it was not long until play

became general, a family affair, the experts in one being pitted against

those in another, regardless of age or sex. Tino's threats and

entreaties had been to no purpose. All work came to an end, and the

only copra which got aboard the _Winship_ was Moy Ling's five tons,

carried out by the sailors themselves. Evidently Puarei, the chief, had

been one of the most enthusiastic players. He was not a man to be

bulldozed or browbeaten. He had great dignity and force of character,

for all his boyish delight in simple amusements. What right had Tino to

say that he should not play marbles on his own island? He gave me to

understand, by means of gestures, intonation, and a mixture of French

and Paumotuan, that this was what the supercargo had done. At last,

apparently, Tino had sent Oro on an unsuccessful search for me. He

thought, I suppose, that, having been the cause of the marble-playing

mania, I might be able and willing to check it. Balked there, he went on

board in a fit of violent temper and had not been seen again, although

his voice was heard for an hour thereafter. Of a sudden anchor was

weighed and I was left, as he assured me, to play marbles with the

inhabitants of Rutiaro for an impossibly long time.

Most of these details I gathered afterward. At the moment I guessed

just enough of the truth not to be wholly mystified. The watery

sputtering of the _Winship's_ twenty-five horse-power engine grew faint.

Then, with a ghostly gleam of her mainsail in the starlight, she was

gong. I was thinking, "By Jove! I wouldn't have missed this experience

for all the copra in the Cloud of Islands!" I was glad that there were

still adventures of that sort to be had in a humdrum world. It was so

absurd, so fantastically unreal as to fit nothing but reality. And the

event of it was exactly what I had wanted all the time without knowing

it. There was no reason why I shouldn't stop at Rutiaro. To be sure, I

was shortly to have met my friend Nordhoff at Papeete, but our

rendezvous was planned to be broken. We were wandering in the South

Pacific as opportunity and inclination should direct, which, I take it,

is the only way to wander.

For a few moments I was so deeply occupied with my own thoughts that I

was not conscious of what was taking place around me. All the village

was gathered there, watching the departing schooner. As she vanished a

loud murmur ran through the crowd, like a sough of wind through trees--a

long-drawn-out Polynesian, "_Aue!_" indicative of astonishment,

indignation, pity. Paumotuan sympathies are large, and I had been the

victim of treachery, they thought, and was silently grieving at the

prospect of a long exile. They gathered around, patting me on the back

in their odd way, expressing their condolences as best they could, but I

soon relieved their minds, on that score. Then Huirai, the constable

with the cigarette-card insignia, pushed his way through with the first

show of authority I had seen him make.

"I been Frisco," he said, with an odd accent on the last syllable. He

had made the journey once as a stoker on one of the mail boats. Then he

added, "You go to hell, me," his eyes shining with pride that he could

be of service as a reminder of home to an exiled American. He was about

to take charge of me, in view of his knowledge of English, but the chief

waved him away with a gesture of authority. I was to be his guest, he

said, at any rate for the present. He began his duties as host by

entertaining me at dinner at Moy Ling's store. I was a little surprised

that we did not go to his house for the meal until I remembered that the

Chinaman had received the only consignment of exotic food left by the

_Winship_. Puarei ordered the feast with the discrimination of a

gourmet and the generosity of a sailor on shore leave for the first time

in months. We had smoked herring for _hors-d'oeuvre_, followed by soup,

curried chicken and rice, edible birds' nests flavored with crab meat,

from China, and white bread. For dessert we had small Chinese pears

preserved in vinegar, which we ate out of the tin--"Woman Brand Pears,"

the label said. There was a colored picture on it of a white woman, in

old-fashioned puffed sleeves and a long skirt, seated in a garden, while

a Chinaman served her deferentially with pears out of the same kind of a

container. Underneath was printed in English: "These pears will be

found highly stimulating. We respectfully submit them to our

customers." That was the first evidence I had seen of China's bid for

export trade in tinned fruit. "Stimulating" may not have been just the

word, but I liked the touch of Chinese courtesy which followed it. It

didn't seem out of place, even coming from a canning factory.

Puarei gave all his attention to his food, and consumed an enormous

quantity. My own appetite was a healthy one, but I had not his capacity

of stomach; furthermore, he ate with his fingers, while I was

handicapped from the first with a two-prong fork and a small tin spoon.

I believe they were the only implements of the sort on the island, for

the village had been searched for them before they were found. It was

another evidence to me of the unfrequented nature of Rutiaro, and of its

slender contact, even with the world of Papeete traders. At most of the

islands we had visited, knives and forks were common, although rarely

used except in the presence of strangers. The onlookers at the

feast--about half the village, I should say--watched with interest my

efforts to balance mouthfuls of rice on a two-prong fork. I could see

that they regarded it as a ridiculous proceeding. They must have thought

Americans a strange folk, checking appetite and worrying digestion with

such doubtful aids. Finally I decided to follow the chief's example and

set to with my fingers. They laughed at that, and Puarei looked up from

his third plate of rice and chicken to nod approval. It was a strange

meal, reminding me of stories I had read as a boy, of Louis XV dining in

public at Versailles, with a roomful of visitors from foreign courts

looking on; whispering behind fans and lace cuffs; exchanging awestruck

glances at the splendor of the service, the richness of the food, and

the sight of majesty fulfilling a need common to all humankind. There

was no whispering among the crowd at the Chinaman's shop, no awestruck

glances other than Moy Ling's, at the majesty of Puarei's appetite. I

felt sorry for him as he trotted back and forth from his outdoor

kitchen, bringing in more food, thinking of his depleted stock, smiling

with an expression of wan and worried amiability. Louis XV would have

given something, I'll venture, for that old Paumotuan chief's zest for

food, for the kingly weight of bone and muscle which demanded such a

store of nourishment. He pushed back his chair at length, with a sign

of satisfaction, and a half-caste girl of seventeen or eighteen removed

the empty dishes.

Paumotuan hospitality is an easy, gracious thing, imposing obligations

on neither host nor guest. Dinner over, I told Puarei that I wanted to

take a walk, and he believed me. I was free at once, and I knew that he

would not be worrying meanwhile about my entertainment. I would not be

searched for presently, and pounced upon with the dreaded: "See here!

I'm afraid you are not having a good time," of the uneasy host. I was

introduced to no one, dragged nowhere to see anything, free from the

necessity of being amused. I might do as I liked--rare and glorious

privilege--and I went outside, grateful for it, and for the cloak of

darkness which enabled me to move about unobserved. It lifted here and

there in the glow of supper fires, or a streak of yellow lamplight from

an open doorway. I saw family groups gathered around their meals of

fish and coconuts, heard the loud intake of breath as they sucked the

_miti_ sauce from their fingers. Dogs were splashing about in the

shallows of the lagoon, seeking their own supper of fish. They are a

strange breed, the dogs of the atolls, like no other that I have ever

seen, a mixture of all breeds one would think, a weird blending of good

blood and bad. The peculiar environment and the strange diet have

altered them so that they hardly seem dogs at all, but, rather,

semiamphibious animals, more at home in the sea than on land. They are

gentle-mannered with their masters and with strangers, but fierce

fighters among themselves. I sat down behind a clump of bushes,

concealed from the light of one of the smoldering supper fires, and

watched a group of Rutiaroan dogs in their search for food. They had

developed a sort of team work in the business, leaped toward the shore

all together with a porpoise-like curving of their bodies, and were as

quick as a flock of terns to see and to seize their prey.

Returning from my walk, I found the village street deserted and all of

the people assembled back of Moy Ling's shop. He was mixing bread at a

table while one of the sons of his strange family piled fresh fuel on

the fire under a long brick oven. It was a great event, the bread

making, after the long months of dearth, and of interest to everyone.

Mats were spread within the circle of the firelight. Puarei was there,

with his wife--a mountain of a woman--seated at his side. She was

dressed in a red-calico wrapper, and her long black hair fell in a pool

of shadow on the mat behind her. She was a fit wife for a chief, in

size, in energy, in the fire and spirit living in the huge bulk of

flesh. Her laughter came in a clear stream which it was a delight to

hear. There was no undertone of foreboding or bitter remembrance, and

the flow of it, as light-hearted as a child's, heightened the

merrymaking mood of the others. There was a babble of talk, bursts of

song, impromptu dancing to the accompaniment of an accordion and the

clapping of hands. As I looked on I was minded of an account I had read

of the Paumotuans in which they were described as "a dour people,

silent, brooding, and religious." Religious some of them assuredly are,

despite a good deal of evidence to the contrary, and they are often

silent in the dreamy way of remote island people whose moods are drawn

from the sea, whose minds lie fallow to the peace and the beauty of it.

But "dour and brooding" is very far from the truth.

I took a place among them as quietly as possible, for I knew by repeated

experience how curious they are about strangers, and first meetings were

usually embarrassing. Without long training as a freak with a circus,

it would try any man's courage to sit for an hour among a group of

Paumotuans while he was being discussed item by item. There is nothing

consciously brutal or callous in the manner of it, but, rather an

unreflecting frankness like that of children in the presence of

something strange to their experience. I knew little of the language,

although I caught a word here and there which indicated the trend of the

comment. It was not general, fortunately, but confined to those on

either side of me. Two old grandmothers started a speculation as to

whether or not I had any children, and from this a discussion rose as to

which of the girls of Rutiaro would be best suited as a wife for me. I

was growing desperate when Chance, the godfather of all wanderers,

intervened again in my favor.

Moy Ling's fire was burning brightly and it occurred to several of the

youngsters to resume their marble playing. I saw Puarei's face light

with pleasure, and he was on his feet at once with his stake in the

ring. Others followed, and soon all those who had marbles were in the

sport. I understood clearly then how helpless Tino had been. I could

easily picture him rushing from group to group, furious at the thought

of his interests being neglected through such childish folly. Those

marbles were more desirable than his flour and canned goods, which he

stood ready to exchange for copra. The explanation of this astounding

fact may have been that no one thought he would go off as he did, and

to-morrow would do just as well for getting down to business. Since he

had gone, there was an end of that. It was futile to worry about the

lost food. Certainly it was forgotten during the great tournament which

took place that evening. Moy Ling worked at his bread making unnoticed.

His fire died down to a heap of coals, but another was built and the

play went on. Puarei was a splendid shot, in marble playing as in other

respects, the best man of the village; but there was a slip of a girl

who was even better. During the evening she accumulated nearly half of

the entire marble supply, and at length these two met for a test of

skill. It was a long-drawn-out game. I had never seen anything to

equal the interest of both players and spectators; not even at Brown's

lumber yard when the stakes were a boy's most precious possessions,

cornelian stone taws. No one thought of sleep except a few of the old

men and women, who dozed off at intervals with their heads between their

knees.

The lateness of the hour--the bizarre setting for a game so linked with

memories of boyhood, combined to give me an impression of unreality. I

had the feeling that the island and all the people on it might vanish at

any moment, and the roar of the surf resolve itself into the rumble of

street traffic in some gray city. And, though it were the very city

where marbles are made, where in the length or breadth of it could there

be found anyone who knew the use of them, with either the time or the

inclination to play? I might search it, street by street, to the

soot-stained suburbs; I might go on to the green country, perhaps; visit

all the old-time marble-playing rendezvous from one coast to the other,

with no better success. And, though I passed through a thousand

villages of the size of Rutiaro, could an evening's amusement be

provided in any one of them, for men, women, and children, at an outlay

of four dollars, American? The possibility would not be worth

considering. People at home live too fast in these days, and they want

too much. I could imagine Tino, in a sober mood, giving a grudging

assent to this. "But, man!" he would have added, "I wish they had more

of their marble-making enthusiasm at Rutiaro. I would put in here three

times a year and fill the _Winship_ with copra to within an inch of the

main boom every trip."

Moy Ling had enough of it for the whole island, it seemed to me. His

ovens were opened as the tournament came to an end, and for half an hour

he was kept busy passing out crisp brown loaves and jotting down the

list of creditors in his account book. It must have been nearly

midnight. The crowd began to disperse. Puarei joined me, smiling

ruefully, holding out empty hands. He had lost all of his marbles to a

mite of a girl whom he could have put in his vest pocket had he owned

one. His wife teased him about it on the way home, laughed heartily at

his explanations and excuses. They discussed the events of the day long

after the other members of the household had retired to their mats on

the veranda. At last I heard their quiet breathing, and a strip of

light from the last quarter moon revealed them asleep, two massive heads

on the same pillow. I lay awake for a much longer time, thinking of one

thing and another--of my friend Crichton at Tanao, the loneliest atoll

in the world I should say; of the _Winship_ far out to sea, homeward

bound with one hundred and forty tons of copra in her hold; of Tino with

his fits of temper, and his passion for trade which blinded him to so

much of the beauty and the joy of life. But, after all, I thought, it

is men like Tino who keep wheels turning and boats traveling the seas.

If he were to die, his loss would be felt; there would be an eddy in the

current of life around him. But men like Crichton or myself--we should

go down in our time, and the broad stream would flow over our heads

without a ripple to show where we had been, without a bubble rising to

the surface to carry with it for a moment the memory of our lives. It

was not a comforting thought, and I tried to evade it; but I realized

that my New England conscience was playing a part in these reflections

and was not to be soothed in any such childish manner. "How much copra

have you ever produced or carried to market?" it appeared to say. I

admitted that the amount was negligible. "How do you mean to justify

your presence here?" was the next question, and before I could think of

a satisfactory answer, "What good will come of this experience, either

to yourself or to anyone else?" That was a puzzler until I happened to

think of Findlay's _South Pacific Directory_. I remembered that his

information about Rutiaro was very scant, the general remarks confined,

as I have already said, to a single sentence, "A lonely atoll, numbering

a population of between seventy-five and one hundred inhabitants." As a

sop to my conscience, it occurred to me that I might write to the

publishers of that learned work, suggesting that, in the light of recent

investigations, they add to that description, "Fond of playing marbles."

[Illustration: Chapter VI tailpiece]

*CHAPTER VII*

*A Debtor of Moy Ling*

Puarei's house stood halfway down the village street at Rutiaro, facing

a broad indentation from the lagoon. The Catholic church adjoined it on

one side, the Protestant church on the other. Neither of them was an

imposing structure, but they towered above the small frame dwelling of

the chief with an air of protection, of jealous watchfulness. On sunny

days they shaded his roof in turn; and, when it rained, poured over it

streams of water, through lead pipes projecting from their own ampler

roofs--a purely utilitarian function, since the drainage from the three

buildings furnished the fresh-water supply of the settlement. If the

showers were light the overflow from the largess of the rival churches,

plashing on the sheets of corrugated iron, filled the house with a

monotonous murmur, like the drowsy argument of two soft-voiced

missionaries; but during a heavy downpour the senses were stunned by the

incessant thunder, as though one were inclosed in an immense drum,

beaten with nonsectarian vigor by all the Salvation Armies in the world.

It was during such a deluge, one day in early spring, that I lay on the

guest bed in Puarei's one-room house, watching Poura, his wife, who had

washed my linen with her own hands and was then ironing it. It was not,

strictly speaking, linen. The articles were three--a sleeveless gauze

singlet, a cotton handkerchief, and a faded khaki shirt. A pair of

khaki trousers, a pair of canvas tennis shoes, and a pandanus hat

completed my wardrobe. Since I needed the whole of it when going abroad

about the island, it was necessary to go to bed on washing day, and to

wait there until the laundering was finished, and such repairs made as

constant wear had caused and further wear demanded. How to replenish it

and to meet other simple urgent needs gave me cause for some concern,

and I was going over the problem as I lay on Puarei's guest bed. It was

toward the end of my second week at Rutiaro, and already I was beginning

to look decidedly shabby. My shoes were rotted out with sea water, and

both shirt and trousers, which were far from new at the time of my

arrival, gave evidence of early dissolution. Poura had washed, sewed on

buttons, drawn seams together, but the garments were chronically ailing,

as hopeless of effective repair as an old man far gone in senile decay.

Poura was becoming discouraged about them, and I knew that she must be

wondering why I didn't buy some fresh ones. I had a very good reason

for not doing so--I had no money. I had been left at Rutiaro without so

much as a twenty-five-centime piece, and the Banque de l'Indo-Chine was

six hundred miles away.

It would not occur to either Puarei or his wife that I was in need of

funds. Theirs was one of the more primitive atolls of the Low

Archipelago, where all white men are regarded as mysteriously affluent.

If, instead of being marooned at Rutiaro through Tino's fit of temper, I

had been discovered a mile outside the reef, making toward the land clad

only in a pair of swimming trunks, upon reaching it my rescuers would

have expected me, as a matter of course, to take a bulky parcel of

thousand-franc notes from beneath that garment. I had, in fact, made a

secret inventory of my wealth after the sudden departure of the _Caleb

Winship_, hoping there might be a forgotten bank note in one of my

trousers pockets. What I found was a cotton handkerchief, a picture

post card of the Woolworth Building, and a small musical instrument

called an _ocharina_, or, more commonly, a sweet-potato whistle. The

handkerchief I needed; the post card seemed of no practical use as a

means of barter; and, while I might have given up the _ocharina_, it had

but a slight monetary value, and Moy Ling, the Chinese storekeeper of

the village, was not interested in it. I didn't offer it to him

outright. Instead, I played on it, in front of his shop, "The March of

the Black Watch," which I could render with some skill. Thereafter

every youngster on the island coveted the instrument, but Moy Ling made

no offers and the prospect of a wardrobe was as far away as ever.

His supply of European clothing was limited, but ample to supply my

wants. He found for me three undershirts, size forty-four, two gingham

outer shirts of less ample proportions, a pair of dungaree overalls, and

a pair of rope-sole shoes. I asked him to put these articles aside and

went off to reflect upon ways and means of opening a credit account with

the canny Chinaman. There was one possible method open to me; I might

adopt the _pareu_ as a costume. I could buy three of them for the price

of one undershirt, and I believed that Moy Ling would trust me to that

extent. Nearly all of the natives wore _pareus_. They had put aside

their trousers and shirts and gingham dresses now that I was no longer a

stranger to them, and were much more comfortable in their simple,

knee-length garments, those of the men reaching from the waist, those of

the women twisted tightly under the arms. Simple and convenient though

it was, I felt that it would be absurd for me to assume that style of

dress, since I was not accustomed to it. Furthermore, I remembered the

ridiculous appearance of Americans and Europeans I had seen at

Tahiti--queer people from all sorts of queer places, who come and go

through the capital of French Oceania. They rushed into _pareus_ the

moment of their arrival at Papeete, and before a week had passed were

more primitive in a sophisticated way than the Tahitians themselves. I

had no desire to join the ranks of the amateur cannibals, even though

there was some excuse for it at Rutiaro; and I knew that the Paumotuans

would have more respect for me if I dressed after the manner of my own

race.

But how obtain clothing without money--without divulging to anyone that

I had no money? The question dinned through my brain with annoying

persistence, like the thunder of falling water on Puarei's iron roof.

Would it, after all, be best to confide in the chief? I could tell him

of my bank account at Papeete, and he knew, of course, that the _Caleb

Winship_ had left me without a word of warning, taking my sea chest with

her. I was tempted to make a confession of my predicament, but pride or

a kind of childish vanity prevented me.

"No, by Jove!" I said. "I'll be hanged if I do! Puarei, his wife--all

the rest of them--expect me to live up to their traditional conceptions

of white men. I am supposed to be mysteriously affluent, and I owe it to

them to preserve that myth in all its romantic glamour."

I had no feeling of guilt in making this decision; rather, a sense of

virtue, like that of an indulgent father upon assuring his children that

there is a Santa Claus. I decided to be not only mysteriously, but

incredibly, affluent. Therefore, when the rain had passed I put on my

mended garments and went to Moy Ling's shop.

I found him splitting coconuts in front of his copra shed, and beckoned

to him in a careless way. He came forward, smiling pleasantly as usual,

but there was a shrewd glitter in his eyes which said, quite as plainly

as words, "Honorable sir, I bow before you, but I expect an adequate

monetary return for the service." I was not intimidated, however, and

when he brought forth the articles I had selected earlier I waved them

aside--all of them excepting the rope-sole shoes, the only male footgear

of any kind on the island. I explained that I had not before seen the

bolt of white drill--the most expensive cloth in his shop--and that I

wanted enough of it to make four suits. I saw at once that I had risen

in his estimation about 75 per cent, and, thus encouraged, I went on

buying lavishly--white-cotton cloth for underwear and shirts; some

pencils and his entire supply of notebooks for my voluminous

observations on the life and character of the Paumotuans; a Night-King

flash lamp; a dozen silk handkerchiefs of Chinese manufacture; a dozen

pairs of earrings and four lockets and chains; ten kilos of flour and

two of coffee; three bottles of perfume in fancy boxes; four large bolts

of ribbon--enough to reach from one end of the village to the other;

side and back combs for women, superbly ornamented with bits of colored

glass; a bolt of mosquito netting; a monkey wrench; two Beacon lanterns;

a pandanus mat; and one bow tie already made up, the kind sold at home

in "gents' furnishings" shops.

At the beginning I had no thought of going in so recklessly. But as I

went from article to article the conviction grew upon me that the deeper

I plunged the greater the impression I should make upon Moy Ling, and it

was essential that I should convince him that my mythical wealth was

real. He became more and more deferential as my heap of purchases

increased in size. I made no inquiry as to the price of anything,

believing that to be in keeping with the mysteriously affluent

tradition. At my back I heard a hum of excited conversation. The shop

was filled with people. I felt the crush behind me, but took no notice

of it and went on with my passionless orgy of spending: two bolts of

women's dress goods; four pocketknives; a can of green paint and another

of white--but details are tiresome. It is enough to say that I bought

lavishly, and selected odds and ends of things because Moy's shop

contained nothing else. He had a large supply of food, but in other

respects his stock was low, and when I had finished, some of his shelves

were almost bare. On one there remained only a box of chewing gum. An

inscription printed on the side of it read: "Chew on, MacDuff! You

can't chew out the original mint-leaf flavor" of somebody's pepsin

gum--words to that effect. That product of American epicureanism is to

be found, strangely enough, at nearly every Chinaman's store in the Low

Archipelago. I bought twenty packages of it, since there were no other

confections to be had, and distributed them among the children. The

youthful MacDuffs chewed on for some thirty seconds and then swallowed,

believing, in their unenlightened way, that gum is a sort of food. I

had read of monkeys dying in zoos because of the same practice; but, in

so far as I know, there were no ill effects from it at Rutiaro, either

then or later.

I succeeded very well in impressing Puarei. He was astonished at the

number of my purchases; and Poura said, "Au-e!" shooed out the

mint-breathed porters who carried them to the house, and sat down in the

doorway, her enormous body completely blocking the entrance. On the

veranda the conversation crackled and sparkled with conjecture. I could

hear above the others the voice of Paki, wife of the constable,

enumerating the things I had bought. It sounded odd in Paumotuan--a

high-pitched recitative of strange words, most of them adapted from the

English since all of the articles were unknown to the natives before the

coming of the traders--_faraoa_ (flour), _ripine_ (ribbon), _peni_

(pencil or pen), _taofe_ (coffee), etc.

I myself was wondering what use I could make of some of my wealth. The

flour I would give to Puarei, and his ten-ton cutter was badly in need

of paint. Poura would be glad to have the dress goods for herself and

her girls, for the Rutiaroans put aside their _pareus_ on Sunday and

dressed in European costume. I could also give her the mosquito netting

as a drapery for the guest bed. I had, in fact, bought it with that end

in mind, for on windless nights, particularly after a rain, the

mosquitoes were a fearful nuisance. Puarei's household was used to

them, but I tossed and tumbled, and at last would have to paddle out on

the lagoon and stay there till morning. The coffee, likewise, was for

my own use, Puarei believing that the drinking of either tea or coffee

was forbidden by his variety of the Christian religion. Tobacco, too,

was a product of evil, and the use of it made broad the way to hell. It

is impossible to believe that any missionary would wander so far to

preach such theology. What had happened, very likely, was that one of

the more austere churchmen who visit Rutiaro at rare intervals had

condemned those white man's comforts as injurious to health. He must

have been severe in his denunciation, for Puarei had got the idea that

abstinence from the enjoyment of them was exacted in a sort of amendment

to the Ten Commandments. I did my best to corrupt him, for breakfast at

his house was to me a cheerless meal. His faith was not to be shaken,

however, although he admitted that coffee drinking might not damn me,

since I had been taught to believe that it would not.

I was thinking with pleasure of his tolerance and of the comforting

beverage I should have the following morning when I remembered that mine

was green Tahiti coffee which must be taken to Moy Ling for roasting.

His shop was deserted. I could see it at the end of the sunlit street,

steaming with moisture after the rain. The open doorway was a square of

black shadow. It lightened with a misty glimmer as I watched, and

suddenly Moy flashed into view. He ran quickly down the steps, halted

irresolutely, and stood for a moment, shading his eyes with his hand,

looking in the direction of Puarei's house. Then he turned, mounted the

steps again, and vanished slowly in the gloom. I was uneasy, knowing

what he was thinking; but an island less than three miles long, with an

average width of four hundred yards, offers a poor refuge for a

faint-hearted debtor. And so, having stowed my other purchases under

the guest bed, I took the bag of coffee and returned to Moy's store,

hoping that I might quiet his fears by increasing my obligation to him.

When one is without them, clothing, coffee, tobacco, and other such

necessities assume a place of exaggerated importance, which is the

reason why the memories of the earlier part of my stay at Rutiaro are

tinged with the thought of them. But I had not come to the Low Islands

to spend all of my time and energy in the mere fight for a comfortable

existence. I could have done that quite as well at home, with greater

results in the development of a more or less Crusoe-like

resourcefulness. At Rutiaro the life was strange and new to me, and I

found the days too short for observing it and the nights for reflecting

upon it. My first interest, of course, was Puarei's household--the

chief, his wife, two sons, and three daughters all housed in that

one-room frame building. The room was commodious, however, about

twenty-five feet by fifteen, and on the lagoon side there was a broad

veranda where Poura and her daughters did much of their work and passed

their hours of leisure. Behind the house was a large cistern, built of

blocks of cemented coral, and a small outkitchen made of the odds and

ends of packing cases and roofed with thatch.

I wondered at Puarei's preference for a board box covered with

corrugated iron, to the seemly houses of the other Rutiaroans. He

thought it a palace, and, being a chief, the richest man of the atoll,

it was in keeping with the later Paumotuan tradition that he should have

a white man's kind of dwelling. Unsightly though it was without, the

economy of furnishing gave the interior an air of pleasant spaciousness,

like that of the island itself with its scarcity of plant life and of

trees other than the coconut. There was no European furniture with the

exception of a sewing machine and the guest bed, an old-fashioned,

slatted affair which looked strange in that environment. On it was a

mattress of _kspok_ and two immense pillows filled with the same

material. The linen was immaculate, and the outer coverlet decorated

with hibiscus flowers worked in silk. I had no hesitation in accepting

the bed, for it would not have held Puarei and his wife. The slats would

have given away at once under their weight, and Poura assured me that

the children preferred sleeping on their mats on the veranda. The rest

of the furnishings were like those of the other houses--two or three

chests for clothing; pandanus mats for the floor; paddles, fishing

spears, and water glasses stacked in a corner or lying across the

rafters. An open cabinet of native manufacture held the toilet articles

of the women--a hand mirror, a few combs, and a bottle of unscented

coconut oil, the one cosmetic of the Low Islands, which was used by all

members of the family. There were also several articles of jewelry such

as the traders sell, some fishing hooks of pearl shell, and, on a lower

shelf, a Tahitian Bible. The walls were hung with branches of curiously

formed coral, hat wreaths and necklaces of shell wrought in beautiful

and intricate designs. There were no pictures other than the open

windows looking out on the lagoon in one direction, and in the other,

across the level, shaded floor of the island toward the sea.

We spent but little time indoors. All of the cooking was done in the

open, and we had our food there, sitting cross-legged around a cloth of

green fronds. The trees around us furnished the dishes. I had not used

my tin spoon and the two-pronged fork since the evening of my arrival,

and learned to suck the _miti_ sauce from my fingers with as loud a zest

as any of them. Usually we had two meals a day at Rutiaro, but there

was no regularity about the time of serving them. We ate when we were

hungry and food was to be had, sometimes in the middle of the afternoon,

and as late as ten in the evening. That is one reason why I remember so

well the feasts prepared by Poura and her daughters, and served by them,

for they never sat down to their own food until we had finished. Feasts

of a simple kind, but, by Jove! how good everything tasted after a day

of fishing and swimming in the lagoon or out at sea. I didn't tire of

coconuts as quickly as I had feared I should; and the fish were prepared

in a variety of ways--boiled, roasted over hot stones, grilled on the

coals, or we ate them raw with a savor of _miti_ sauce. Puarei's dog,

one of the best fishers of the island, was the only member of the family

discriminating in his requirements. He often came up while we were at

dinner, with a live fish in his mouth, which he would lay at Poura's

feet, looking at her appealingly until she cooked it for him.

Sometimes, to tease him, she threw it away, but he would bring it back,

and, no matter how hungry he might be, refuse to eat it raw.

The sea furnished occasional variety of diet in the way of turtles and

devilfish; and I contributed rice, tinned meat, and other preserved food

which I bought of Moy Ling whenever I imagined his confidence in me was

beginning to falter. That was a risky procedure, only to be undertaken

on the days when I was so filled with animal spirits that I more than

half believed in my wealth, in my power to draw money or anything else I

wanted out of the clear, dry air of Rutiaro.

One thing I had wanted from the first, above all others--a house. The

idea of imposing indefinitely upon Puarei's hospitality was distasteful,

and no boats were expected within five or six months. I had not, in

years, lived for so long a period at any one place. Here was an

opportunity I had often dreamed of for having a home of my own. I

should have to ask the chief for it, and at first thought the request

seemed a large one. Then, too, how could I say to him with any show of

logic: "Puarei, I am not willing to bother you longer by occupying the

guest bed in your house. Therefore, will you please give me a house to

myself?" He might think I had peculiar ideas of delicacy. But further

reflection convinced me that, while I could not ask him for a pair of

trousers--not even for so trifling a thing as a shirt button, since he

would have to purchase it at Moy Ling's store--I might legitimately

suggest the gift of a house. It would cost only the labor of making it,

and that was not great. At Rutiaro houses were built in less time than

was needed to sail across the lagoon and back. The inhabitants might

reasonably have adopted the early Chinese method of roasting pig by

putting the carcasses in their dwellings and setting fire to the thatch.

It would have been a sensible procedure, employed at times when the old

thatch needed renewal. Nothing permanent would have been destroyed

except the framework of poles, and that could be replaced as easily as

firewood could be cut for a Maori oven.

The upshot of the matter was that I was given not only a house, but an

island of my own to set it on--I who had lived much of my life up four

or five flights of stairs, in furnished rooms looking out on chimney

pots and brick courts filled with odors and family washings. The site

was a small _motu_ lying at the entrance to the lagoon, four miles from

the village island. It had a name which meant, "The place where the

souls were eaten." Once, a man, his wife, and two children went there

to fish on the reef near the pass. All of them were taken ill of some

mysterious disease, and died on the same day. As their souls left their

bodies they were seized and eaten by some vindictive human spirits in

the form of sea birds. The legend was evidently a very ancient one, and

the events which it described had happened so long ago that fear of the

place had largely vanished. Nevertheless, the chief tried to persuade

me to choose another site; and Poura, when she learned that I wanted to

live on the Soul-Eaters' Island, was deeply concerned. Neither of them

could understand why I should want to live away from the village island.

I wince, even now, when I think of the appalling tactlessness of that

request; but the fact is that the Paumotuans themselves, by their

example, had got me into the vicious habit of truth-telling in such

matters. There is no word in their language for tact. They believe

that a man has adequate, although sometimes hidden, reasons for doing

what he wants to do, and they understand that it explains seemingly

uncourtly behavior.

I had accepted, almost unconsciously, their own point of view, so that

it didn't occur to me to invent any polite falsehoods. But my knowledge

of Paumotuan was more limited than Paurei's knowledge of French, and how

was I to explain my desire for so lonely a place as the Soul-Eaters'

Island? The Paumotuans, from their scarcity of numbers, the isolation

of their fragments of land, the dangers of the sea around them, are

drawn together naturally, inevitably. How make clear to them the

unnatural gregariousness of life in great cities? Suddenly I thought of

my picture post card of the Woolworth Building. I told them that in

America many people, thousands of them, were cooped together in houses

of that sort. I had been compelled to spend several years in one and

had got such a horror of the life that I had come all the way to the

Cloud of Islands, searching for a place where I might be occasionally

alone.

While the post card was passing from hand to hand, Huirai, the

constable, loyal friend in every emergency, gave color to my explanation

by describing--for the thousand and first time, I suppose--his

adventures in San Francisco. Dusk deepened, the last ghostly light

faded from the clouds along the northern horizon, and still he talked

on; and the idlers on the chief's veranda listened with as keen interest

as though they had never heard the story before. Poura, who was at work

on my new wardrobe, lit a lamp and placed it on the floor beside her,

shading it from her eyes with a piece of matting. The light ran

smoothly over her brown hands, and the mountain of shadow behind her

blotted out the forms of the trees. Now and then she put down her work

and gazed intently in Huirai's direction. His voice rose and fell,

thrilled with excitement, died away to a deep whisper of awe as he told

of the wonders he had seen, the street cars, the lofty buildings, the

elevators which rose to an immense height as swiftly as a coconut would

fall, the trains, the motors, the ships, the pictures which were alive.

He imitated sounds with amazing fidelity, and his gestures, vaguely seen

in the gloom, were vividly pictorial of the marvels he had met with in

his travels.

The story ended abruptly and Huirai sat down, conscious of the effect he

had produced. No one spoke for a long while. Then the chief, who was

sitting beside me, broke the silence with that strange Polynesian

exclamation of wonder too great for words, "Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah!" uttered

with distinct, rapid precision, like the staccato of machine-gun fire.

He laid his hand on my knee affectionately, with an air of

possessorship; and at the contact a feeling of pride rose in me, as

though I were the planner of the cities, the magician whose brain had

given birth to the marvels Huirai had described. But conceit of that

kind may be measurably reduced by a moment of reflection, and I

remembered that the extent of my contribution to my native land was that

I had left it. Small cause for vanity there. However, I had no mind for

another tussle with my conscience. I had been the indirect cause of

eloquence in Huirai and of enjoyment in his auditors. That was enough

for one evening on the credit side. On the other side, to Puarei, to

Poura, to his children, and to all the kindly, hospitable people of

Rutiaro I was under an obligation which I could never hope to cancel.

But they didn't expect me to cancel it. I was not even under the

necessity of showing appreciation. Just as there is no word in their

language for "tact," there is none approaching our word "gratitude" in

meaning. To a man in my position, owner of Soul-Eaters' Island, and of a

house to be built there the following day, that was something to be

grateful for.

The Chinese language is richer, I believe, in terms implying obligation.

I was reminded, less pleasantly, of another account on the debit side,

by the flare of a match which lit up for a moment the pensive,

cadaverous face of Moy Ling.

[Illustration: Chapter VII tailpiece]

*CHAPTER VIII*

*An Adventure in Solitude*

I awoke sometime during the latter part of the night with the bemused

presentiment that a longed-for event was approaching or in the process

of happening. Hands had passed lightly over my face--either that or I

had dreamed it--and I heard a faint shout coming from the borderland

between sleeping and waking. Puarei's guest bed, with its billowy

mattress of kapok, seemed strangely hard, which led to the discovery

that I was not lying on a bed, but on a mat in the corner of an empty

room. The floor was covered with crushed krora shell which made a faint

radiance in the gloom, and a roof of green thatch was alight with the

reflections of moving water. I was trying to puzzle out whose house

this could be when I heard the shout again, clearly this time, in a

pause of silence between deafening claps of thunder. From nearer at

hand came the sound of subdued laughter. Something elfish,

light-hearted in the quality of it, stirred a dim memory and there

flashed into mind the lines of an old poem:

Come, dear children, come out and play.

The moon is shining as bright as day,

Up the ladder and over the wall--

Raising my head quickly, I saw through the open doorway their perfect

illustration. The wall was the smooth wall of the sea, with a waning

moon rising just clear of it, sending a path of light to the strip of

white beach in front of the house. The palm trees bordering the shore

swarmed with children who were throwing down nuts. One ancient tree,

its stem a fantastic curve, held its foliage far out over the water at a

point where the floor of the narrow outer lagoon shelved steeply toward

the reef some fifty yards distant. Both boys and girls were shinning up

the trunk, one after the other, diving from the plumed top, dropping

feet foremost, jumping with their hands clasped around their knees into

the foaming water--the wreckage of huge combers which broke on the reef

pouring across it into the inner shallows. A second group had gathered

in the moonlit area just before the doorway. Several youngsters were

peering intently in my direction. Others were playing a sort of

handclapping game to the accompaniment of an odd little singsong. A

small girl, with a baby riding astride her hip, walked past, and I saw

another, of ten or twelve, standing at the edge of the track of

shimmering light, holding a coconut to her lips with both hands. Her

head was bent far back and her hair hung free from her shoulders as she

drained the cool liquid to the last drop.

Imagine coming out of the depths of sleep to the consciousness of such a

scene! I was hardly more sure of the reality of it than I had been of

the shout, the touch of hands. It was like a picture out of a book of

fairy tales, but one quick with life, the figures coming and going

against a background of empty sea where the long swell broke in lines of

white fire on a ledge of coral. I remembered where I was, of course: in

my own house, which stood on the ocean side of a small motu known in the

Paumotuan legend as "The island where the souls were eaten." The house

had been built for me only the day before by the order of Puarei, chief

of the atoll of Rutiaro; and the motu was one of a dozen uninhabited

islands which lay on the thirty-mile circumference to the lagoons.

It was ordered--by chance, which took me there, perhaps--that I was

never to see the place in the clear light of usual experience, but

rather through a glamour like that of remembered dreams--a long

succession of dreams in which, night after night, events shape

themselves according to the heart's desire, or even more fantastically,

with an airy disregard for any semblance to reality. So it was, waking

from sleep on the first night which I spent under my own roof. I was

almost ready to believe that my presence there was not the result of

chance. Waywardness of fancy is one of the most godlike of the

attributes of that divinity, but the display of it is as likely as not

to be unfriendly. Here there seemed to be reasoned kindly action.

"Providence," I said to myself--"Providence without a doubt; a little

repentant, perhaps, because of questionable gifts in the past." A

whimsical Providence, too, which delighted in shocking my sense of

probability. What could those children be doing on Soul-Eaters' Island

in the middle of the night? I, myself, had left the village island,

four miles distant, only a few hours earlier, and at that time everyone

was asleep. There was not a sound of human activity in the settlement;

not a glimmer of light to be seen anywhere excepting in Moy Ling's, the

Chinaman's, shop, and on the surface of the lagoon where lay the misty

reflections of the stars. "Perhaps," I thought, "these are not earthly

children. Maybe they are the ghosts of those whose souls were eaten

here so many years ago." I was more than half serious in thinking of

that possibility. Stranger things had happened on islands not so far

removed from the world of men.

I dressed very quietly and went to the door, taking care to keep well in

the shadow so that I might look on for a moment without being seen. My

doubts vanished at once. Not only the children had come out to play;

fathers and mothers, as well. Tamitanga was there and Rikitia and Nahea

and Pohu and Tahere and Hunga; Nui-Tane and Nui-Vahine, Tamataha,

Manono, Havaiki; and I saw old Rangituki, who was at least seventy and a

grandmother several times over, clapping her hands with others of her

generation and swaying from side to side in time to the music of

Kaupia's accordion. All the older people were grouped around Puarei,

who was seated in an old deck chair, a sort of throne which was carried

about for him wherever he went. Poura, his wife, lay on a mat beside

him, her chin propped on her hands. Both greeted me cordially, but

offered no explanation for the reason of the midnight visit. I was glad

that they didn't. I liked the casualness of it, which was quite in

keeping with habits of life at Rutiaro. But I couldn't help smiling,

remembering my reflections earlier in the evening. I believed then that

I was crossing the threshold of what was to be an adventure in solitude,

and was in a mood of absurdly youthful elation at the prospect. "I was

to delve deeply, for the first time, into my own resources against

loneliness. I had known the solitude of cities, but there one has the

comfortable sense of nearness to others; the refuge of books, pictures,

music--all the distractions which prevent any very searching examination

of one's capacity for a life of retirement. At Soul-Eaters' Island I

would have no books, no pictures, excepting a colored post card of the

Woolworth Building which had won me this opportunity; and for music I

was limited to what I could make for myself with my _ocharina_, my

sweet-potato whistle which had a range of one octave. Thus scantly

provided with diversions, I was to learn how far my own thoughts would

serve to make a solitary life not only endurable, but pleasant."

So I had dreamed as I paddled down the lagoon, with my island taking

form against the starlit sky to the eastward. It was one of those

places which set one to dreaming, which seem fashioned by nature for the

enjoyment of a definite kind of experience. Seeing it, whether by day

or by night, the most gregarious of men, I am sure, would have become

suddenly enamored of his own companionship and the most prosaic would

have discovered a second, meditative self which pleads for indulgence

with gentle obstinacy. But, alas! my own unsocial nature gained but a

barren victory, being robbed, at the outset, of the fruits of it, by the

seventy-five convivial inhabitants of Rutiaro. Here within six hours

was half the village at my door, and Puarei told me that the rest of it,

or as many as were provided with canoes, was following. Evidently he

had suggested the invasion. My new house needed warming--or the

Paumotuan equivalent to that festival--so they had come to warm it.

Preparations were being made on an elaborate scale. The children were

gathering green nuts for drinking and fronds for the cloth at the feast.

Women and girls were grating the meat of ripe nuts, pressing out the

milk for the _miti haari_; cleaning fish; preparing shells for dishes.

Some of the men and the older boys were building native ovens--eight of

them, each one large enough for roasting a pig. All of this work was

being carried out under Puarei's direction and to the accompaniment of

Kaupia's accordion. I wish that I might in some way make real to others

the unreal loveliness of the scene. It must be remembered that it took

place on one of the loneliest of a lonely cloud of islands which lay in

the midmost solitude of an empty ocean. The moonlight must be

remembered, too, and how it lay in splinters of silver on the motionless

fronds of the palms as though it were of the very texture of their

polished surfaces. And you must hear Kaupia's accordion, and the shouts

of the children as they dove into the pool of silvered foam. The older

ones, out of respect to me, I think, wore wisps of parou cloth about

their loins, but the babies were as naked as on the day they were born.

Tereki was standing among these five-and-six-year-olders, who were too

small for the climb to the diving place, taking them up, sometimes two

at once, and tossing them into the pool among the others, where they

were as much at home as so many minnows. Watching them, I thought with

regret of my own lost opportunities as a child. I felt a deep pity for

all the children of civilization who must wear clothing and who never

know the joy of playing at midnight, and by moonlight too. Mothers'

clubs and child-welfare organizations would do well to consider the

advisability of repealing the old "to bed at seven" law, the bugbear of

all children. Its only merits, if it may be so called, is that it

fosters in children, a certain melancholy intellectual enjoyment in such

poems as, "Up the ladder and over the wall," where the forbidden

pleasures are held out to them as though they were natural ones--which

most of them are, of course--and quite possible of attainment.

I was sorry that Tino, supercargo of the _Caleb S. Winship_, could not

be present to see how blithely the work went forward. He had called the

people of Rutiaro a lazy lot, and he was right--they were lazy,

according to the standards of temperate climates. But when they worked

toward an end which pleased them their industry was astonishing. Tino's

belief was that man was made to labor, whether joyfully or not, in order

that he might increase his wealth, whether he needed it or not, and that

of the world at large. I remember meeting somewhat the same point of

view in reading the lives and memoirs of some of the old missionaries to

the islands. It seems to have irked them terribly, finding a people who

had never heard that doleful hymn, "Work, for the Night Is Coming."

They, too, believed that the needs of the Polynesians should be

increased, but for ethical reasons, in order that they should be

compelled to cultivate regular habits of industry in order to satisfy

them. Although I didn't agree with it, Tino's seemed to me the sounder

conviction. The missionaries might have argued as reasonably for a

general distribution of Job-like boils, in order that the virtues of

patience and fortitude might have wider dissemination. But neither

trade nor religion had altered to any noticeable extent the habits of

life at Rutiaro. The people worked, as they had always done, under the

press of necessity. Their simple needs being satisfied, their inertia

was a thing to marvel at. I have often seen them sitting for hours at a

time, moving only with the shadows which sheltered them. There was

something awe-inspiring in their immobility, in their attitude of

profound reverie. I felt at times that I was living in a land under a

perpetual enchantment of silence and sleep. These periods of calm--or,

as Tino would say, laziness--were usually brought to an end by Puarei.

It was a fascinating thing to watch him throwing off the enchantment, so

gradual the process was and so strange the contrast when he was

thoroughly awakened and had roused the village from its long sleep.

Then would follow a period of activity--fishing, copra making, canoe

building, whatever there was to do would be done, not speedily, perhaps,

but smoothly, and fasts would be broken--in the case of many of the

villagers for the first time in two or three days. My house was built

during such a period. I was still living with Puarei on the village

island, wondering when, if ever, I was to have the promised dwelling.

Then one afternoon, while I was absent on a shell-gathering expedition,

the village set out _en masse_ for Soul-Eaters' Island, cut the timbers,

branded the fronds, erected, swept, and garnished my house, and were at

the settlement again before I myself had returned. That task finished,

here they were back for the warming festival, and the energy spent in

preparing for it would have more than loaded Tino's schooner with copra.

I couldn't flatter myself that all of this was done solely to give me

pleasure. They found pleasure in it too, and, furthermore, I knew that

an unusually long interval of fasting called for compensation in the way

of feasting.

Puarei was in a gay mood. Religion sat rather heavily upon him

sometimes--by virtue of his Papeete schooling, he was the chief elder of

his church; but once he sloughed off his air of Latter Day Saintliness

he made a splendid master of revels; and he threw it aside the moment

the drums began to beat, and led a dozen of the younger men in a dance

which I had not seen before. It was very much like modern Swedish drill

set to music, except that the movements were as intricate and graceful

as they were exhausting. Three kinds of drums were used--one, an empty

gasoline tin, upon which the drummer kept up a steady roll while the

dance was in progress. The rhythm for the movements was indicated by

three others, two of them beating hollowed cylinders of wood, while a

third was provided with an old French army drum of the Napoleonic

period. The syncopation was extraordinary. Measures were divided in an

amazing variety of ways, and often when the opportunity seemed lost the

fragments joined perfectly just as the next one was at hand. The music

was a kaleidoscope in sound, made up of unique and startling variations

in tempo, as the dance moved from one figure to the next.

At the close of it Kaupia took up her accordion again, and dancing by

some of the women followed. At length, Rangituki, grandmother though

she was, could resist the music no longer. The others gave way to her,

and in a moment she was dancing alone, proudly, with a sort of wistful

abandon, as though she were remembering her youth, throwing a last

defiance in the teeth of Time. Kaupia sang as she played to an air

which had but four changes in it. The verse was five words long and

repeated endlessly.

Tu fra to potta mi,

Tu fra to potta mi.

Both the words and the air had a familiar sound. They called to mind a

shadowy picture of three tall, thin women in spangled skirts, all of

them beating tambourines in unison and dancing in front of a painted

screen. I couldn't account for the strange vision at first. It

glimmered faintly, far in the depths of subconscious memory, like a

colored newspaper supplement, lying in murky water at the end of a pier.

Suddenly it rose into focus, drawn to the surface by the buoyant

splendor of a name--the Cherry Sisters. I remembered then a vaudeville

troupe which long ago made sorry capital of its lack of comeliness; and

I saw them again on the island where the souls were eaten as clearly as

ever I had as a youngster, knocking their tambourines on bony elbows,

shaking their curls, and singing

"Shoe, fly, don't bother me,"

in shrill, cracked voices. Kaupia's version was merely a phonetic

translation of the words. They meant nothing in the Paumotuan dialect;

and--old woman though she was--Rangituki's dance, which accompanied the

music, played in faster and faster time, was in striking contrast to the

angular movements of the Cherry Sisters, tripping it in the background,

across the dim footlights of the eighteen nineties.

Other canoes were arriving during this time, and at last a large canoe,

which had put off from the ocean side of the village island, was seen

making in toward the pass. It was loaded with pigs and chickens, the

most important part of the feast, and had been eagerly awaited for more

than an hour. Shouts of anticipation went up from the shore as the boat

drew in with its wished-for freight; but these were a little premature.

There was a stretch of ugly, broken water to be passed, where the swift

ebb from the lagoon met the swell of the open sea. The canoe was badly

jostled in crossing it, and some of the chickens, having worked loose

from their bonds, escaped. Like the dogs of the atolls, the chickens

are of a wild breed, and they took the air with sturdy wings. The chase

from the shore began at once, but it was a hopeless one. Soul-Eaters'

Island is five hundred yards long by three hundred broad, and there is

another, on the opposite side of the pass, which is more than a mile in

extent. We made frantic efforts to prevent them from reaching it. We

threw sticks and stones, tried to entice them with broken coconuts, the

meat temptingly accessible. It was to no purpose. They had been

enticed before; their crops were full, and several hours of captivity

had made them wary. Furthermore, like all Polynesian chickens, they

seemed to have a racial memory of what they had been in other times, in

less congenial environments--of the lean days when they had been caught

and eaten at will, chased by dogs, run down by horses. They were not so

far from all that as to have lost conscious pride in their regained

prerogative of flight. The last we saw of them they were using it to

splendid advantage over the rapid stream which separated the two

islands. One old hen, alone, remained perched in the top of a coconut

tree on Soul-Eaters' Island. She was in no hurry to leave. She knew

that she could follow the others whenever she liked, and she knew that

we knew it. She seemed drunk with a sense of freedom and power, and

cackled proudly, as though more than half convinced that the nuts

clustered in the nest of foliage beneath her were eggs which she had

laid.

Knowing the wholesomeness of the Paumotuan appetite, I could understand

why the loss of the chickens was regarded seriously. A dozen of them

remained, and we had eight pigs weighing from one hundred to one hundred

and fifty pounds each, to say nothing of some fifty pounds of fish. All

of this was good, in so far as it went, but there was a gloomy shaking

of heads as we returned from our fruitless chase. Not that the

Paumotuans are particularly fond of chicken; on the contrary, they don't

care greatly for fowl of any sort, but it serves to fill odd corners of

their capacious stomachs. It was this they were thinking of, and the

possible lack, at the end of the feast, of the feeling of almost painful

satiety which is to them an essential after-dinner sensation. In this

emergency I contributed four one-pound tins of beef and salmon, my

entire stock of substantial provisions for the adventure in solitude;

but I could see that Puarei, as well as the others, regarded this as a

mere relish--a wholly acceptable but light course of _hors-d'oeuvre_.

Fortunately there was at hand an inexhaustible reservoir of food--the

sea--and we prepared to go there for further supplies. I never lost an

opportunity to witness those fish-spearing expeditions. Once I had

tried my hand as a participant and found myself as dangerously out of my

element as a Paumotuan would be at the joy stick of an airplane. I saw

a great many fish, but I could not have speared one of them if it had

been moored to the bottom, and after a few absurd attempts was myself

fished into the boat, half drowned. I lay there for a few minutes,

gasping for breath, my ear drums throbbing painfully from the attempt to

reach unaccustomed depths.

The experiment convinced me that fish spearing in the open sea is not an

easily acquired art, but one handed down in its perfection through at

least twenty generations of Low Island ancestors. It is falling into

disuse in some of the atolls where wealth is accumulating and tinned

food plentiful; but the inhabitants of Rutiaro still follow it with

old-time zest. They handle their spears affectionately, as anglers

handle and sort their lies. These are true sportsman's weapons,

provided with a single unbarbed dart, bound with sinnet to a tapering

shaft from eight to ten feet long. Their water goggles, like their

spears, they make for themselves. They are somewhat like an aviator's

goggles, disks of clear glass fitted in brass rims, with an inner

cushion of rubber which cups closely around the eyes, preventing the

entrance of water. When adjusted they give the wearer an owlish

appearance, like the horn-rimmed spectacles which used to be affected by

American undergraduates. Thus equipped, with their _pareus_ girded into

loin cloths, a half dozen of the younger men jumped into the rapid

current which flows past Soul-Eaters' Island and swam out to sea.

Tohetika, Tehina, Pinga (the boat steerer), and I followed in a canoe.

Dawn was at hand and, looking back, I saw the island, my house, and the

crowd on the beach in the suffused, unreal light of sun and fading moon.

In front of us the swimmers were already approaching the tumbled waters

at the entrance to the pass. Upon reaching it they disappeared

together, and I next saw them far on the other side, swimming in a

direction parallel to the reef, and some fifty yards beyond the breaking

point of the surf. When we joined them the sun was above the horizon

and they were already at the sport. They lay face down on the surface

of the water, turning their heads now and then for a breath of air.

They swam with an easy breast stroke and a barely perceptible movement

of the legs, holding their spears with their toes, near the end of the

long shaft. Riding the long, smooth swell, it was hard to keep them in

view, and they were diving repeatedly, coming to the surface again at

unexpected places.

Through the clear water I could see every crevice and cranny in the

shelving slope of coral; the mouths of gloomy caverns which undermined

the reef, and swarms of fish, as strangely colored as the coral itself,

passing through them, flashing across sunlit spaces, or hovering in the

shadows of overhanging ledges. It was a strange world to look down upon

and stranger still to see men moving about in it as though it were their

natural home. Sometimes they grasped their spears as a poniard would be

held for a downward blow; sometimes with the thumb forward, thrusting

with an underhand movement. They were marvelously quick and accurate at

striking. I had a nicer appreciation of their skill after my one

attempt, which had proven to me how difficult it is to judge precisely

the distance, the location of the prey, and the second, for the thrust.

A novice was helpless. He suffered under the heavy pressure of the

water, and the long holding of his breath cost him agonized effort.

Even though he were comfortable physically he might chase, with as good

result, the dancing reflections of a mirror, turned this way and that in

the sunlight.

As they searched the depths to the seaward side the bodies of the

fishers grew shadowy, vanished altogether, reappeared as they passed

over a lighter background of blue or green which marked an invisible

shoal. At last they would come clearly into view, the spear held erect,

rising like embodied spirits through an element of matchless purity

which seemed neither air nor water. The whistling noises which they made

as they regained the surface gave the last touch of unreality to the

scene. I have never understood the reason for this practice which is

universal among the divers and fishers of the Low Islands, unless it is

that their lungs, being famished for air, they breathe it out grudgingly

through half-closed teeth. Heard against the thunder of the surf, the

sounds, hoarse or shrill, according to the wont of the diver, seemed

anything but human.

We returned in an hour's time with the canoe half filled with

fish--square-nosed _tinga-tingas_, silvery _tamures_, brown spotted

_kitos, gnareas_; we had more than made good the loss of the chickens.

The preparations for the feast had been completed. The table was set

or, better, the cloth of green fronds was laid on the ground near the

beach. At each place there was a tin of my corned beef or salmon; the

half of a coconut shell filled with raw fish, cut into small pieces in a

sauce of _miti haari_--salted coconut milk--and a green coconut for

drinking. Along the center of the table were great piles of fish, baked

and raw; roast pork and chicken; mounds of bread stacked up like cannon

balls. The bread was not of Moy Ling's baking, but made in native

fashion--lumps of boiled dough of the size and weight of large grape

fruit. One would think that the most optimistic stomach would ache at

the prospect of receiving it, but the Paumotuan stomach is of

ostrichlike hardihood and, as I have said, after long fasting it demands

quantity rather than quality in food.

It was then about half past six, a seasonable hour for the feast, for

the air was still cool and fresh. The food was steaming on the table,

but we were not yet ready to sit down to it. Fete days, like Sundays,

required costumes appropriate to the occasion, and everyone retired into

the bush to change clothing. I thought then that I was to be the only

disreputable banqueter of the lot, and regretted that I had been so

eager to see my new house. Not expecting visitors, I had come away from

the village with only my supply of food. Fortunately, Puarei had been

thoughtful for me. I found not only my white clothing, but my other

possessions--bolts of ribbon, perfume, the cheap jewelry, etc., which I

had bought, on credit, of Moy Ling. And the house itself had been

furnished and decorated during the hour when I was out with the fish

spearers. There was a table and a chair, made of bits of old packing

cases, in one corner; and on the sleeping mat a crazy quilt and a pillow

with my name worked in red silk within a border of flowers. Hanging

from the ceiling was a faded papier-mache bell, the kind one sees in

grocers' windows at home at Christmas time. This was originally the

gift of some trader; and the pictures, too, which decorated the walls.

They had been cut from the advertising pages of some American magazine.

One of them represented a man, dressed in a much-advertised brand of

underwear, who was smiling with cool solicitude at two others who were

perspiring heavily and wishing--if the legend printed beneath was

true--that their underwear bore the same stamp as that of their

fortunate comrade. There was another, in color, of a woman smiling

across a table at her husband, who smiled back while they ate a

particular brand of beans. The four walls of my house were hung with

pictures of this sort, strung on cords of coconut fiber--Huirai's work,

I was sure, done out of the kindness of his heart. He was merely an

unconscious agent of the gods, administering this further reproof for my

temerity in seeking consciously an adventure in solitude. As I changed

my clothing I pondered the problem as to how I could get rid of the

gallery without giving Huirai offense, and from this I fell to thinking

of the people smiling down at me. Is our race made up, in large part,

of such out-and-out materialists, whose chief joy in life lies in

discovering some hitherto untried brand of soup or talcum powder? Do

they live, these people? They looked real enough in the picture. I

seemed to know many of them, and I remembered their innumerable

prototypes I had met in the world I had left only the year before.

"Well, if they are real," I thought, "what has become of the old

doomsday men and women who used to stand at street corners with bundles

of tracts in their hands, saying to passers-by, 'My friend, is your soul

saved?'?" No answer came from the smiling materialists on all sides of

me. They smiled still, as though in mockery of my attempt to elude them

in whatsoever unfrequented corner of the world; as though life were

merely the endless enjoyment of creature comforts, the endless,

effortless use of labor-saving devices. One man, in his late fifties,

who really ought to have been thinking about his soul, had in his eyes

only the light of sensual gratification. He was in pajamas and half

shaven, announcing to me, to the world at large: "At last! A razor!"

The sight of him offering me his useful little instrument put an end to

my meditation. I rubbed ruefully a three days' growth of beard,

thinking of the torture in store for me when I should next go to Pinga

for a shave. He was the village barber, as well as its most skillful

boat steerer. His other customers were used to his razor and his

methods, and their faces were inured to pain; for had not their

ancestors, through countless generations, had their beards plucked out

hair by hair? I, on the other hand, was the creature of my own land of

creature comforts. The anticipation of a shave was agony, and the

realization--Pinga sitting on my chest, holding my head firm with one

immense hand while he scraped and rasped with his dull razor--that was

to die weekly and to live to die again. I got what amusement I could

from the thought of the different set of values at Rutiaro. I had only

to ask for a house, and Puarei had given me one, with an island of my

own to set it on. He thought no more of the request than if I had asked

him for a drinking coconut. But not all the wealth of the Low Island

pearl fisheries, had it been mine to offer, could have procured for me a

safety razor with a dozen good blades.

I heard Puarei shouting, "_Haere mai ta maa!_" and went out to join the

others, my unshaved beard in woeful contrast to my immaculate white

clothing. But my guests, or hosts, had the native courtesy of many

primitive people, and I was not made conscious of my unreaped chin.

Furthermore, everyone was hungry, and so, after Puarei had said grace

for the Church of Latter Day Saints, and Huirai a second one for the

Reformed Church of Latter Day Saints, and Nui-Tano a third as the

Catholic representative, we fell to without further loss of time.

The enjoyment of food is assuredly one of the great blessings of life,

although it is not a cause for perpetual smiling, as the writers of

advertisements would have one believe. According to the Low Island way

of thinking, it is not a subject to be talked about at any length. I

liked their custom of eating in silence, with everyone giving undivided

attention to the business in hand. It gave one the privilege of doing

likewise, a relief to a man weary of the unnatural dining habits of more

advanced people. It may be a trifle gross to think of your food while

you are eating it, but it is natural and, if the doctors are to be

believed, an excellent aid to digestion. Now and then Puarei would say,

"_E mea maitai, tera_" ("A thing good, that"), tapping a haunch of roast

pork with his forefinger. And I would reply, "_E, e mea maitai roa,

tera_" ("Yes, a thing very good, that"). Then we would fall to eating

again. On my right, Hunga went from fish to pork and from pork to

tinned beef, whipping the _miti haari_ to his lips with his fingers

without the loss of a drop. Only once he paused for a moment and let

his eyes wander the length of the table. Shaking his head with a sigh

of satisfaction, he said, "_Katinga ahuru katinga_" ("Food and yet more

food"). There is no phrase sweeter to Paumotuan ears than that one.

Huirai, the constable, was the only one who made any social demands upon

me. As already related, he had once made a journey from Papeete to San

Francisco as a stoker on one of the mail boats and was immensely proud

of the few English phrases which he had picked up during the voyage. He

didn't know the meaning of them, but that made no difference. He could

put on side before the others, make them believe that he was carrying on

an intelligent conversation. "What's the matter?" "Oh yes!" "Never

mind" were among his favorite expressions--unusually mild ones, it

seemed to me, for one who had been associated with a gang of cockney

stokers; and he brought them out apropos of nothing. He was an

exasperating old hypocrite, but a genial one, and I couldn't help

replying to some of his feints at conversation. Once, out of curiosity,

wondering what his reply would be, I said, "Huirai, you're the worst old

four-flusher in the seventy-two islands, aren't you?" He smiled and

nodded, and came back with the most telling of all his phrases, "You go

to hell, me." On that occasion it was delivered with what seemed

something more than mere parrotlike aptness of reply.

Clipped to his undershirt he wore a fountain pen, which was as much a

part of his costume on those dress occasions as his dungaree trousers

and pandanus hat. It had a broken point, was always dry, and, although

Huirai read fairly well, he could hardly write his own name. No matter.

He would no more have forgotten his pen than a French soldier his _Croix

de guerre_. But he was not alone in his love for these implements of

the _popaa's_ (white man's) culture. There was Havaiki, for example, who

owned a small folding camera which he had bought from some trader. The

two men were very jealous of each other. Huirai had traveled and had a

fountain pen, but Havaiki's camera was a much more complicated

instrument. There had never been any films for it, but he was quite

satisfied without them. The camera stood on a shelf at his house, an

ever-present proof of his better title to distinction. His chief

regret, I believe, was that he couldn't wear it, as Huarai did his pen.

But he often carried it with him on Sundays and went through the

pretense of taking pictures. Some of the more sanguine still believed

that he would one day surprise the village by producing a large number

of magnificent photographs.

A further account of the feast at Soul-Eaters' Island would be nothing

more than a detailed statement of the amount of food consumed, and it

would not be credited as truthful. It is enough to say that it was a

Latter Day miracle, comparable to the feeding of the five thousand, with

this reversal of the circumstances--that food for approximately that

number was eaten by twenty-two men. At last Puarei sat back with a

groan of content and said, "_Aue! Paia 'huru paia to tatou_." It is

impossible to translate this literally, but the exact meaning is, "We

are all of us full up to the neck." It was true. We were. That is,

all of the men. The women and children were waiting, and as soon as we

gave them place they set to on the remnants. Fortunately, there was, as

Hunga had said, food and yet more food, so that no one went hungry. At

the close of the feast I saw old Rangituki take a fragment of coconut

frond and weave it into a neat basket. Then she gathered into it all of

the fish bones and hung the basket from one of the rafters of my house.

Rangituki was pure heathen, one of the unredeemed of the Rutiaroans, but

I noticed that some of the Catholics and Latter Day Saints, even the

Reformed Saints of the later Latter Day persuasion, all in good standing

in their churches, assisted her in making the collection. I had observed

the same practice at other islands. At the beginning of a meal thanks

were given to the God of Christians for the bounty of the sea; but

fisherman's luck was a matter of the first importance, and, while the

old gods might be overthrown, there seemed to be a fairly general belief

that it would not do to trifle with immemorial custom.

It was midmorning before the last of the broken meats had been removed

and the beach made tidy. The breeze died away, and the shadows of the

palms moved only with the imperceptible advance of the sun. It was a

time for rest, for quiet meditation, and all of the older people were

gathered in the shade, gazing out over a sea as tranquil as their minds,

as lonely as their lives had always been and would always be. I knew

that they would remain thus throughout the day, talking a little, after

the refreshment of light slumbers, but for the most part sitting without

speech or movement, their consciousness crossed by vague thoughts which

would stir it scarcely more than the cat's-paw ruffled the surface of

the water. No sudden, half-anguished realization of the swift passage

of time would disturb the peace of their reverie; no sense of old loss

to be retrieved would goad them into swift and feverish action.

A land crab moved across a strip of sunlight and sidled into his hole,

pulling his grotesque little shadow after him; and the children,

restless little spirits, splashed and shouted in the shallows of the

lagoon, maneuvering fleets of empty beef and salmon tins reminders of

the strange beginning of my adventure in solitude.

[Illustration: Chapter VIII tailpiece]

*CHAPTER IX*

*The Starry Threshold*

The only visible reminder which I have now of my residence on "the

island where the souls were eaten" is a pocket notebook of penciled

comment, with a dozen pages, blank and fair, at the back--in themselves

a reminder of the fragmentary nature of that adventure in solitude, of

the blank pages at the close of every chapter of experience, awaiting

the final comment which is never set down. It is a small notebook of

Chinese manufacture, with a pretty fantasy of flowers woven through the

word "Memoranda," and butterflies with wings of gold-and-blue hovering

over it, meant to suggest, perhaps, that one's memories, however happy

or however seemingly enduring, are as ephemeral as they and must soon

fade and die. But I am not willing to accept such a suggestion, to

believe that I can ever forget even the most trivial of the events which

took place at Rutiaro or at Soul-Eaters' Island. By some peculiar

virtue of their own they stand out with the vividness of portions of

childhood experience which remains fixed in the memory when other more

important happenings have been long forgotten.

The casual reader of the notebook would never guess this from the

comment written there. Did he know the length and the nature of my

residence at the atoll, he would be surprised, merely, that with so much

leisure for observation there should be such poverty of recorded fact.

I, myself, am surprised and a little appalled when I think how the weeks

slipped by, leaving me nothing to show for them. I became a spendthrift

of time. I was under the delusion that my own just share of it had been

immeasurably increased, that in some unaccountable way I had fallen heir

to a legacy of hours and days which could never be exhausted. The

delusion was of gradual growth, like the habit of reverie which fastens

itself at last upon the most restless of wanderers among the atolls. In

the beginning I was full of business. I remember with what earnestness

of purpose I wrote on the first page of the notebook, "Rutiaro:

Observations on Life and Character in the Low Archipelago." I had

ambitious plans. I meant to go back and forth between my hermitage and

the village island, notebook in hand saying, "_Eaha tera?_" ("What is

that?"), "_Nafea ia parau Paumotu?_" ("How do you say this in

Paumotuan?"). And when I had learned the language and had completed my

studies of flora and fauna I was to be the Boswell of the atoll,

curious, tireless, not to be rebuked by the wind rustling the fronds of

the palms nor by the voice of the sea when the wind was low, saying,

"Sh-h-h, sh-h-h," on thirty miles of coral reef. But I was rebuked--or

so it seemed to me--and now, I fear, the learned monograph is never to

be written. A faltering purpose is plainly indicated in the notebook.

It becomes apparent in the first observation on "The Life and Character

of the Paumotuans," which reads:

Before the starry threshold of Jove's court

My mansion is; where those immortal shapes

Of bright aerial spirits live ensphered

In regions mild, of calm and serene air.

The president of the Polynesian society would say, and rightly, no

doubt, that this is not germane to the subject. But at the time I wrote

it it was so accurately descriptive of the place where my house stood

that it might have been embodied with scarcely the exchange of a word in

an exact real-estate announcement of the location of my property. I set

it down one evening in early summer, the evening of my first day's

residence at Soul-Eaters' Island. The completion of my house had been

celebrated with a feast, and toward midnight I was left alone, watching

the departure of the last of the villagers, who were returning in their

canoes along the ocean side of the atoll. The sea was as calm as I have

ever seen it, and as they went homeward, dipping their paddles into the

shining tracks of the stars, my guests were singing an old chant. It

was one of innumerable verses, telling of an evil earth spirit in the

form of a sea bird which was supposed to make its home on the _motu_,

and at the end of each verse the voices of the women rose in the refrain

which I could hear long after the canoes had passed from sight:

"_Aue! Aue!_

_Te nehenehe e!_"

("Alas! Alas!

How beautiful it is!")

a lament that a spirit so vindictive, so pitiless, should be so fair to

outward seeming.

Standing at the starry threshold, listening to the ghostly refrain, I

translated its application--its meaning, too--from the bird to the

island where, perhaps, I would one day see it in my rambles. I

regretted that it was so inaccessible, so remote and hidden from the

world, as though that were not more than half the reason for its

untarnished beauty. It is a maudlin feeling, that of sadness at the

thought of loveliness hidden from appraising eyes; and I am inclined to

think that it springs, not so much from an unselfish desire to share it,

as from a vulgar longing to say to one's gregarious fellows: "See what I

have found! Can you show me anything to equal it in beauty, you dwellers

in cities?" Whatever its source in this case, I was glad that it passed

quickly. No tears stained my pillow, even though I knew that Rutiaro

could never be the goal of Sunday excursionists. But I was not quite

easy in mind as I composed myself for sleep. I had made a poor

beginning as a diarist. The first entry was fanciful and, furthermore,

not my own. What original contribution to truth or beauty could I make

as a result of the day's events? Finally I rose, lit my lamp, and

wrote, underneath the Comus quotation:

"The Paumotuans are very fond of perfume. This is probably due to the

fact that their islands, being scantly provided with flowers and

sweet-smelling herbs, they take this means of satisfying their craving

for fragrant odors."

Alas! Alas!

How erroneous it was!

that observation. But I thought when I made it that it was based upon a

careful enough consideration of the facts. During the afternoon I had

distributed some gifts among my guests, chiefly among the children. I

had some bolts of ribbon and dress goods, some earrings and bracelets,

thinly washed in gold, which I had bought, on credit, of Moy Ling, the

Chinaman, and I had been saving them for just such an occasion as the

feast at Soul-Eaters' Island. I also had a case of perfume which Moy

had been very reluctant to part with--perfume and toilet waters in fancy

bottles, with quaint legends printed on the labels--"June Rose," which

the makers admitted had "as much body as higher-priced perfumes"; "Wild

Violet: Like a faint breath from the forest floor"; "Khiva Bouquet: The

Soul of the Exquisite Orient"; etc. This gift was greatly coveted.

Pinga immediately took charge of the three bottles I had given his

daughters and packed them carefully in a _pareu_, together with a bottle

of bay rum presented to him by virtue of his office as village barber.

Rangituki went among her grandchildren scolding and rating, until she

had made a similar collection, and in a short time all of the perfume

was in the hands of a few of the older people. This seemed to me rather

high-handed procedure, but it was not my place to interfere with

parental and grandparental authority. And it was as well, perhaps, that

the children should be restrained. Otherwise they would have saturated

their clothing and their hair, and the atoll would have smelled to

heaven or very near it.

I thought no more of the episode until the following Sunday when I went

to church at the village. A combined service of Latter Day Saints and

the Reformed Church of Latter Day Saints was being held, an amicable

arrangement which would have scandalized the white missionaries of those

rival denominations. But at Rutiaro Saints and Reformed Saints live

together peaceably enough and, being few in numbers, they often join

forces for greater effect in the _himines_. The meeting was held in the

Reformed church, a sightly structure built entirely of _niau_--the

braided fronds of coconut palms--and the earthern floor was covered with

mats of the same material. At one end of the room there was a raised

platform and a deal table which served as a pulpit. The walls

lengthwise were built to prop open outward, giving free circulation to

the air and charming views of the shaded floor of the island and the

blue waters of the lagoon.

The church was full, the men sitting on one side and the women on the

other, according to island custom, and the children playing about on the

floor between the benches. Many of the older people, too, sat on the

floor with their backs to the posts which supported the roof. Interest

lagged during the intervals between the singing, and although Huarai was

preaching in his usual forceful, denunciatory manner, I found my own

thoughts wandering on secular paths. Of a sudden it occurred to me that

June Rose should be discernible among the women of the congregation if

it had as much body as had been claimed for it. But I could not detect

its presence nor did the faintest breath reach me from the forest floor.

I was conscious only of the penetrating odor of drying copra which came

through the open windows and the not unpleasant smell of coconut oil.

What had become of the perfume, I wondered. On Sunday, if at all, it

should have been in evidence, for the women were in white dresses and

before coming to church had made their most elaborate toilet of the

week. But Huirai was warming to his theme and demanded attention, at

least from me, not having heard him preach before. He had removed his

coat and was perspiring and exhorting in a way which would have pleased

the most devout and gloomy of missionaries. He had a peculiar oratorical

manner. His face foretold clearly the birth of an idea. One could read

there the first vague impulse in the brain which gave rise to it; see it

gathering lucidity, glimmering, like heat lightning on a summer evening,

in his cloudy mind, until it was given utterance in a voice of thunder,

which rumbled away to silence as the light of creation died out of his

eyes. Then he would stand motionless, gazing on vacancy, profoundly

unself-conscious, as though he were merely the passionless mouthpiece of

some higher power. The abruptness of his outbursts and his ferocious

aspect when delivering them were disconcerting; and it was even worse

when, at intervals, his eyes met mine. Even though he were in the midst

of a sentence he would pause and his face would beam with a radiant

smile, in striking contrast to the forbidding scowl of the moment

before. Remembering his mission, he would then proceed in his former

manner. Without understanding his discourse, one would have said that he

was condemning all of his auditors, who had evidently been guilty of the

most frightful sins. But this was not the case. His sentences were

short and in the periods of silence between them I had time to make a

translation.

"_Ua taparahi Kaina ia Abela_ (Cain killed Abel).... Why did he kill

him? ... Because he was a bad man, a very bad man--(_taata ino roa_)....

He was jealous of Abel, whom God loved because he willingly brought him

gifts from his plantation.... Abel did not keep everything for

himself.... He said to God, '_Teie te faraoa na Oe_' ('Here is bread

for you').... He gave other things, too, many things, and he was glad

to give them."

Huirai talked at great length on this theme, the members of the

congregation sometimes listening and sometimes conversing among

themselves. They had no scruples about interrupting the sermon. While

Huirai was awaiting further inspiration hymns were started by the women

and taken up at once by the others. Pinga, who sang bass parts, rocked

back and forth to the cadence, one hand cupped over his right ear, the

better to enjoy the effect of the music. Rangituki, who went to the

different churches in turn, because of the _himines_, had one of her

granddaughters in her lap, and while she sang made a careful examination

of the child's head, in search of a tiny parasite which favored that

nesting place. Nui-Vahine sat with her breast bare, suckling a

three-months-old baby. Old men and women and young, even the children,

sang. Huirai alone was silent, gazing with moody abstraction over the

heads of the congregation as he pondered further the ethical points at

issue in the Cain and Abel story.

I had witnessed many scenes like this during the months spent in

cruising among the atolls on the _Caleb S. Winship_--scenes to interest

one again and again and to furnish food for a great deal of futile

speculation. How important a thing in the lives of these primitive

people is this religion of ours which has replaced their old beliefs and

superstitions? It would be absurd to say, "how fundamental," for

religious faith is of slow growth and it was only yesterday, as time is

counted, that the ship _Duff_, carrying the first missionaries who had

ever visited this southern ocean, came to anchor at Tahiti. One of

Huirai's remarks called to mind an account I had read of that first

meeting between Christian missionaries and the heathen they had come to

save. It is to be found in the narrative of the _Duff's_ three years'

voyage in the south Pacific, published in 1799, by the London Missionary

Society:

_Sunday, March 6, 1797_.

The morning was pleasant, and with a gentle breeze we had, by seven

o'clock, got abreast of the district of Atahooroo, whence we saw several

canoes putting off and paddling toward us with great speed; at the same

time it fell calm, which, being in their favor, we soon counted

seventy-four canoes around us, many of them double ones, containing

about twenty persons each. Being so numerous, we endeavored to keep

them from crowding on board; but, in spite of all our efforts to prevent

it, there were soon not less than one hundred of them dancing and

capering like frantic persons about our decks, crying, "_Tayo! Tayo!_"

and a few broken sentences of English were often repeated. They had no

weapons of any kind among them; however, to keep them in awe, some of

the great guns were ordered to be hoisted out of the hold whilst they,

as free from apprehension as the intention of mischief, cheerfully

assisted to put them on their carriages. When the first ceremonies were

over, we began to view our new friends with an eye of inquiry; their

wild, disorderly behavior, strong smell of coconut oil, together with

the tricks of the _arreoies_, lessened the favorable opinion we had

formed of them; neither could we see aught of that elegance and beauty

in their women for which they have been so greatly celebrated. This at

first seemed to depreciate them in the estimation of our brethren; but

the cheerfulness, good nature, and generosity of these kind people soon

removed the momentary prejudices.... They continued to go about the

decks till the transports of their joy gradually subsided, when many of

them left us of their own accord.... Those who remained, in number

about forty, being brought to order, the brethren proposed having divine

service on the quarterdeck. Mr. Cover officiated; he perhaps was the

first that ever mentioned with reverence the Saviour's name to these

poor heathens. Such hymns were selected as had the most harmonious

tunes--first, "O'er the Gloomy Hills of Darkness"; then, "Blow Ye the

Trumpet, Blow"; and at the conclusion, "Praise God, from Whom All

Blessings Flow." ... The whole service lasted about an hour and a

quarter.

How clear a picture one has of the scene, described by men whose purity

of faith, whose sincerity of belief, were beyond question. But one

smiles a little sadly at the thought of their austerity, their total

lack of that other divine attribute--a sense of humor. "_Tayo! Tayo!_"

("Friend! Friend!") the Tahitians cried, and the missionaries, to

requite them for their kindly welcome, organized a prayer meeting an

hour and a quarter in length, and sang, "O'er the Gloomy Hills of

Darkness." It was a prophecy, that song. The Tahitians and others of

the Polynesian family have gone far on that road since 1797.

Of course one doesn't blame the missionaries for this; but it seems to

me that the chief benefit resulting from the Christianizing process is

that it has offset some of the evils resulting from the rest of the

civilizing process. This was not the opinion of Tino, supercargo of the

_Caleb S. Winship_, however. I remember a conversation which I had with

him on the subject, when Rutiaro itself lay within view, but still far

distant. For the sake of argument I had made some willfully disparaging

remark about traders, and Tino had taken exception to it.

"You're wrong," he said. "You know as well as I do--or maybe you

don't--what these people used to be: cannibals, and not so many years

ago at that. I don't suppose you would call it a genteel practice?

Well, what stopped it? I'll tell you what stopped it--tinned beef."

That was a new angle of vision to me. I said nothing, but I thought I

could detect a hint of a smile in his eyes as he waited for the

statement to sink in.

"I have had some fun in my time," he went on, "arguing this out with the

missionaries. I say tinned beef and they say the four gospels. Can't

be proved either way, of course. But suppose, right now, every trading

schooner in the archipelago was to lay a course for Papeete. Suppose

not one of them was to go back to the atolls for the next twenty-five

years. Leave the people to themselves, as you say, and let them have

their missionaries, with the Golden Rule in one hand and the Ten

Commandments in the other. What chance would they have of dying a

natural death? The missionaries, I mean. About as much chance as I have

of getting old Maroaki at Taka Raro to pay me the eight hundred francs

he owes me.

"What makes me laugh inside is that the missionaries are so serious

about the influence they have had on the natives. I could tell them

some things--but what would be the use? They wouldn't believe me. Just

before we left Papeete this time I was talking to one of the

Protestants. He told me that his Church had two thousand converts in

French Oceania, while the Catholics had only around six hundred, I

believe it was. I said that I knew how he could get that extra six

hundred into his own fold, and probably a good many more if he wanted

to. All he had to do was to charter my schooner, load her with Tahiti

produce--bananas, mangoes, oranges, breadfruit; he needn't take a single

gallon of rum unless he wanted to. Then we would make a tour of the

islands, holding church festivals, with refreshments, at every one; and

at the end of the cruise I would guarantee that there wouldn't be a

Catholic left in all the Paumotus. He didn't take to the plan at all,

and of course it did have one weak point--if the Brothers tried the same

game they would have just the same success, and nobody could tell from

one week to the next which were Protestants and which were Catholics.

"That's about what happened at Taka Raro the last time I was down there.

The population is supposed to be divided about half and half between the

Latter Day Saints and the Catholics. There are no missionaries living

on the island. The head churches in Papeete send their men around when

they can to see how things are going with their flocks. That is usually

about once a year for each of them. Boats don't often put in at Taka

Raro. I've been there only four times in ten years, myself, and the

last time I brought down a young fellow from the Protestant crowd. He

had been with me the whole cruise, holding services at the islands where

I had put in for copra. I hadn't gone to any of them, but at Taka Raro

I felt the need of some religion. I had spent the whole day chasing

that Maroaki I spoke about. The old rascal has owed me that eight

hundred francs since nineteen ten. He is an elder in his church too.

The minute he makes out my schooner standing in toward the pass off he

goes on important business to the far end of the lagoon. I went after

him that day, with my usual luck. He wasn't to be found, and I came

back to the village feeling a bit ruffled up.

"It was just time for the meeting, and I decided that I might as well go

as to loaf around finding that old hypocrite while my copra was being

loaded. The church was packed when I went in. There wasn't a Catholic

in the village that evening. All of those who had been Catholics were

taking part in the _himine_ and singing the Protestant songs as well as

the Latter Day Saints'. No one seemed to pay much attention to the

sermon, though. The young missionary didn't understand the language

very well, and the preaching was hard for him. But he seemed to feel

pretty good about the meeting, and when we left, the next day, he went

down to the cabin to write a report of the progress his church had made

at Taka Raro. He must have had a lot to say, for he was at it all the

morning. He didn't know that we passed the Ata just after we got out of

the pass. That made me feel good, for Louis Germaine, her skipper, has

been a rival of mine for years, and I had every kilo of dry copra there

was on the island. I got the megaphone and was about to yell, 'Good

luck to you, Louis!' when I saw that he had a missionary aboard, too--a

priest with a knee-length beard and a black cloak; so I only waved my

hand and Louis shook his fist and shouted something I couldn't make out.

I was going to the westward, stood close inshore, and passed the village

from the outside an hour later. The priest hadn't lost any time getting

his congregation together. Since there was no copra to be bought, I

suppose Louis told him he had to get a move on. There had been another

religious landslide. I was sure of that from the singing, which I heard

clear enough, the wind being offshore. Great singers these Paumotuans,

and it doesn't make very much difference to them whether the song is

'Happy Day' or 'Jerusalem, the Golden.' Of course I didn't say anything

to my missionary. As the old saying is, 'What you don't know won't hurt

you.'"