This conversation with Tino was running through my mind as I strolled

down the village island after the service. Tino, I decided, was

prejudiced. His was the typical trader's point of view. I had heard

many other incidents which bore him out in his findings, but they came

usually from men interested in exploiting the islands commercially.

Huirai's exposition of the old biblical story--was that merely the

result of a prolonged tinned-beef crusade? Remembering the kind of

sacrifice which was discussed, very likely on this very island, in the

days of pure heathendom, such a conclusion seemed fantastical. No, one

must be fair to the missionaries. Perhaps they were over-zealous at

times, oversanguine about the results of their efforts--so were all

human beings in whatever line of endeavor; but their accomplishment had

been undeniably great. Here were people living orderly, quiet lives.

They didn't drink, although in the early days of their contact with

civilization--until quite recently, in fact--there had been terrible

orgies of intoxication. To overcome that was, in itself, a worthwhile

accomplishment on the part of the Church. Only a few weeks before I had

met Monsieur Ferlys, the administrator of the Paumotus, at Taenga. "The

reign of alcohol is over," he had said to the islanders there--strange

words, coming from the lips of a Frenchman. There was to be no more rum

nor gin nor wine for any of the Paumotuans. Henceforth, any trader

found selling it or any native drinking it was to be severely punished.

I continued my walk to the far end of the island and, selecting a shady

spot, sat down to rest. The pressure of a notebook in my hip pocket

interrupted my examination of the problem, "The missionary versus the

trader as a civilizing influence." I was reminded that I had made no

recent observations on the life and character of the Paumotuans, and the

recollection was annoying. Was I never to be able to pursue, in

indolence, my unprofitable musings? Why this persistent feeling that I

must set them down in black and white? Why sully the fair pages of my

notebook? Words, words! The world was buried beneath their visible

manifestations, and still the interminable clacking of innumerable

typewriters, the roar of glutted presses. In the mind's eye I saw

magnificent forests being destroyed to feed this depraved appetite for

words, which were piled mountain high in libraries; which encumbered all

the attics in Christendom. Words, blowing about the streets and

littering the parks on Sundays; filling the ash carts on Mondays. "No,"

I thought, "I will no longer be guilty of adding to the sum of words.

I'll not write my learned monograph." But that inner voice, which

itself is a creature born of many words--an artificial thing, however

insistent its utterance--spoke out loud and clear: "You idler! You

waster of your inheritance of energy! You throwback to

barbarism--write!"

"But why?" I replied. "Tell me that! Why?"

"Sir, because it is your vocation. And have you no convictions? Your

grandfather had them, and your great-grandfather, and those missionaries

of the _Duff_ you have been thinking about. Ah! the decay of

convictions in this age! The lack of that old sublime belief in

something--anything! Now then, I have come down to you through a long

line of ancestors, and I don't mean to die through lack of exercise.

You may not believe in me, but you've got to obey me. Write!"

I know that I should have no peace until I did, so I drew forth my

notebook and, in line with my thoughts of a moment before, wrote,

underneath the last observation on perfume: "The sale and consumption of

alcoholic beverages among these islands is now prohibited by law. It is

strange to find such legislation in territory under French

administration. Is the prohibition movement to become world-wide, then?

Is the reign of alcohol doomed in all lands?"

Exhausted by the mental effort, but somewhat easier in conscience, I

replaced the notebook in my pocket. It was pleasant then to let the

mind lie fallow or to occupy it with the reception of mere visual

impressions. At length, although I didn't sleep, I was scarcely more

animate then the fluted shell lying close by on the beach or the

_kopapa_ bushes which formed a green inclosure around my resting place.

Something whirled through the air over my head and fell with a light

splash in the water before me. I sat gazing at it without curiosity,

hardly moved, so slowly does one come out of the depths of dreamless

reverie. Little waves pushed the object gently shoreward until it lay,

rolling back and forth in a few inches of clear water. "What!" I

shouted. I didn't actually shout--I didn't open my lips; but the shock

of astonishment seemed vocal--as loud as a blare of trumpets or a clash

of cymbals. Before me lay a prettily fashioned bottle, half filled with

sea water, and the label on it read, "Khiva Bouquet: The Soul of the

Exquisite Orient." "Impossible!" I thought. "I am three miles from the

village and no one lives at this end of the island." Then I heard

voices or, better, one voice which I recognized as that of Rangituki.

She was talking in a low monotone, her most effective manner when

reciting one of her interminable stories of former days. Cautiously I

pushed aside the bushes and looked through. Rangituki was sitting about

twenty yards away, in the midst of a company of five. Pinga was one of

them and Tevai another--both fathers of families and both much

concerned, a few days earlier, lest their children should waste the

perfume I had given them. Pinga took a pull at a bottle which I

identified as belonging to Wild Violet. He made a wry face as he did it,

but he took another and then another, before he set it down. The wind

was toward me, and as the corks popped--or, more accurately, as stoppers

were lifted--I was forced to admit that June Rose had body, impalpable,

perhaps, but authentic.

I passed the furtive revelers unnoticed by going along the lagoon beach,

keeping under the screen of kopapa bushes. Should I tell Puarei, the

chief, of this evasion of the law? I decided that I would not, for he

was a stern man and would punish the culprits severely. After all, on an

island where there were so few distractions, what was a little perfume

among friends?

All of which proves plainly enough, it seems to me, the folly of keeping

a notebook; at any rate, the folly of jumping hastily to conclusions.

Or perhaps, more important than this, it gives further light on the

vexed question, Does prohibition prohibit?

I find no other observations on Paumotuan life and character, under this

date, unless the word, "_Mamafaaamu_," scribbled on the margin of a

leaf, may be regarded as a discouraged hint at one; a suggestion for a

commentary on a curious Polynesian relationship, when--and only when--I

should have had time to gather all of the available data concerning it.

This relationship has to do with the transfer of a child, or children,

from the original blood parents to another set known as

"feeding-parents." My interest in the practice dates from the moment

when I made my first notebook reference to it, and it was aroused in a

very casual, leisurely fashion. For this reason it will be best, I

think, to tell the story of it in a leisurely way.

Returning to the village from the scene of the perfume orgy, I found the

church still occupied, although the service was long over. The benches

had been stacked in one corner; the mats shaken out and spread again on

the floor, where fifteen or twenty people were reclining at ease or

sitting native fashion--some of them talking, some sleeping, some

engaged in light tasks such as hat weaving and the fashioning of

pearl-shell fish hooks; others in the yet more congenial task of doing

nothing at all. It was the practice, on Sunday, for the village to

gather at the Reformed church, which they felt at liberty to use for

secular as well as for sacred purposes, for it was a native-built

structure, with walls and roof of thatch, like those of their own

houses. The two other churches were never so used. They were frame

buildings, in the European or American style of church architecture,

with formal furnishings and windows of colored glass. To have done any

sort of work in either of them would have been regarded as a serious

offense, certain to be followed by unmistakable evidence of divine

displeasure. As Tuina once told me, sores, illness, even death might

result as a punishment for such desecration.

I was thinking of this and other primitive reactions to ecclesiastical

furniture, and my hand was faltering toward my notebook pocket when

Huirai's little daughter, Manava, entered the church, carrying a white

cloth which she spread on the pulpit table. She returned a moment later

with a tin of sardines, some boiled rice on a _kahaia_ leaf, and a bowl

of tea. I was Huirai's guest for the day, and had been anxiously

awaiting some evidence that food was on the way; but I had not expected

that it would be served in the church. I had not eaten a church dinner

since boyhood, and, strangely enough, the memory of some of those early

feasts came back to me while Manava was setting the table. As one scene

is superimposed upon another on a moving-picture screen, I saw an

American village of twenty years ago--a village of board sidewalks and

quiet, shaded streets bright with dandelions, taking ghostly form and

transparency among the palms of Rutiaro. Two small boys walked briskly

along, ringing hand bells, and shouting, "Dinner at the Pres-by-terian

church ri-i-i-ight awa-a-a-ay." The G.A.R. band--a fife, two tenor

drums, and one bass--played outside the church where the crowd was

gathering, and horses, attached to buggies and spring wagons, were

pawing the earth around the hitching posts. Then Mrs. MacGregor

appeared in the doorway, her kindly face beaming the warmest of

welcomes. "Come on in and set down, folks. Everything's all ready."

Members of the Ladies' Relief Corps--mothers of large families, used to

catering for large appetites--hurried back and forth with platters of

roast turkey and chicken, roast beef, mashed potatoes of marvelous

smoothness and flakiness--with everything in the way of food which that

hospitable Middle-Western country provides. I heard the pleasant talk

of homely things, smelled the appetizing odors, saw plates replenished

again and again. Throughout the length of the tables old-fashioned

gravy boats sailed from cover to cover--but I spared myself further

contemplation of the scene, further shadowy participation in a feast

which cost the affluent but a quarter, and a bell ringer nothing at all.

The vision faded, but before it was quite gone I heard a voice saying:

"Land sakes! You boys ain't eating a thing! Have some more of these

dumplings? What's the matter with your appetities? Ain't you feelin'

well?" It seemed a thousand years away, that voice; and no doubt it

was, and is, even farther than that.

Church dinners at Rutiaro were not such sumptuous affairs. They were

not, in fact, an integral part of the community life. In so far as I

know, this was the only one ever held there and was the result of

Huirai's peculiar notions of the hospitality due a white man. I told

him that I was not accustomed to dining in churches at home, even on

Sunday, and, furthermore, that I liked companionship at table. But he

was not convinced, and he refused to join me. He and his family had

already eaten, he said; so I sat on a box at the pulpit table, partaking

of a solitary meal, and got through with it as quickly as possible.

I smiled inwardly at the thought of the inheritance of prestige, granted

me without question, at Rutiaro, merely because I was the sole

representative there of a so-called superior race. No white wasters had

preceded me at the atoll. This was fortunate in a way, for it gave me

something to live up to--the ideal Rutiaroan conception of the

_popaa_--white man. Huirai was partly responsible for the fact that it

was ideal. His tales of San Francisco--which, to the Paumotuan, means

America--had been steadily growing in splendor. He seemed to have

forgotten whatever he may have seen there of misery or incompetence or

ugliness. All Americans were divinities of a sort. Their energy was

superhuman; their accomplishment, as exemplified in ships, trains,

buildings, automobiles, moving-picture theaters--beyond all belief

unless one had actually seen those things. And the meanest of them

lived on a scale of grandeur far surpassing that of the governor of the

Paumotus at Fakavava. Yes, I had something to live up to at Rutiaro.

The necessity was flattering, to be sure, but it cost some effort and

inconvenience to meet it. I didn't dare look as slack as I often felt,

both mentally and physically. I could not even sit on the floor, or

stretch out at my ease, when in a native house; and I was compelled,

when eating, to resume the use of my two-pronged fork and the small tin

spoon, although it was much simpler and easier to eat with my fingers as

the rest of them did.

Having finished my meal, I took what comfort prestige permitted by

placing my box by the wall and leaning back against a post. Takiero, a

woman of barbaric beauty, was sitting near by playing, "Conquer the

North" on my ocharina. I taught her the air in an unguarded moment and

had been regretting it ever since. Hunga, her husband, lay at her side,

his strong, fine limbs relaxed in sleep. I would have given all my

gratuitous prestige as a _popaa_ to have exchanged legs or shoulders or

girth of chest with him. It was at about this time, as I remember it,

that my thoughts turned to the subject of feeding-parents. Nui-Vahine

was present, still--or again--nursing the three months' old baby. It

belonged, as I knew, to Takiero, who appeared to be quite capable of

nourishing it herself. Why had she given it to Nui-Vahine? And why had

Hunga, the father of the child, consented to this seemingly unnatural

gift? The transfer of parenthood had been made a month earlier, since

which time Takiero and her husband had shown only a slight, proprietary

interest in their offspring. Takiero sometimes dandled it on her knee,

as any woman might the child of some one else; but no one would have

guessed that she was the mother of it. Nui-Vahine fed, clothed, and

bathed it, and her husband, Nui-Tane, was as fond of it as she herself.

They kept the child at their house, and between them made as much fuss

over it as though it were their own flesh and blood. What could have

been the origin of this strange practice of parenthood by proxy? It was

a common one throughout eastern Polynesia. I had seen a good many

instances of it in the Cook islands, the Marquesas, and the Society

group. Here was a subject worthy of an important chapter in the Life

and Character monograph, and I decided that I might as well begin my

researches at once.

Takiero reluctantly left off her playing and placed herself in a

receptive mood. Why, I asked, had she given her child to Nui-Vahine?

Her reply was, because Nui-Vahine had asked for it. "But, see here,

Takiero," I said, "I should think that you and Hunga would want to keep

your own baby. It is none of my business, of course. I ask you only

because I would like to get some information on this feeding-parent

custom. Can't you feed it yourself? Is that the reason you gave it

away?"

I blundered atrociously in asking that question. Without meaning to, I

touched her pride as a woman, as a mother. Takiero looked at me for a

moment without speaking. Then she tore open her dress and gave me

absolute proof--not that I wanted it--of her ability to nurse her own or

any other child. Following this, she went over to where Nui-Vahine was

sitting, snatched the baby from her arms, and almost smothered it

against her body. She fondled it, kissed it, covered it with her

magnificent hair. I had never before seen such a display of savage and

tender maternal passion.

By that time Nui-Vahine had recovered from her astonishment and came to

the defense of her own. Her month of motherhood gave her claims to the

child, apparently, and she tried to enforce them physically. Takiero

stood her ground, her black eyes flaming and, holding the baby in one

arm, pushed Nui-Vahine away with the other. I expected to see hair

flying, but, luckily, both women found their tongues at the same moment.

They were like--they were, in fact--two superb cats, spitting at each

other. The torrent of words did not flow smoothly. It came in hot,

short bursts, like salvos of machine-gun fire, and, curiously enough, it

was almost pure Paumotuan, not the hybrid Paumotuan-Tahitian commonly

used in their temperate speech. It bristled with snarling ng's, with

flintlike k's from which fire could be struck in passionate argument.

Other women took sides in the quarrel. Had I poked an inquisitive

pencil into a wasps' nest the effect could hardly have been more

disconcerting. Hunga was awakened by the angry voices and looked on

with sleepy perplexity. Nui-Tane grinned reassuringly, as much as to

say: "Don't be upset. You know what women are." Finally, Puarei, the

chief, who had been an impassive spectator, bellowed out a command for

silence. The tumult subsided at once, and the fury of the women with

it. Five minutes later everything was as it had been before. Hunga was

sleeping and Nui-Tane polishing a pearl-shell fish hook; Nui-Vahine had

the baby and Takiero the ocharina. Neither of them showed the least

resentment, either toward me or toward each other. In intensity and

briefness the gust of passion which swept through the little church was

precisely like the squalls of wind and rain which darken the seas of the

Low Archipelago in the midst of the hurricane season, which burst almost

from a clear sky and then as suddenly melt into pure sunlight again.

When I left the village to return to Soul-Eaters' island Takiero was

still playing the old border ballad on my ocharina. It had once been my

favorite air for that instrument. I first heard it in northern France

on a blustering winter evening when a brigade of English regiments was

marching, under heavy shell fire, into one of the greatest battles of

the war, to the music of pipes and drums. Humming the air now, although

I still feel a tightening of the nerves, a quickening of the pulses, it

is not because of the old set of associations. They have been buried

forever beneath a newer set. The village at Rutiaro comes into view,

and I see Takiero, clutching a baby against her naked breast, standing

in the midst of a crowd of turbulent women.

Should there be some other Polynesian scholar who wishes to pursue

farther an inquiry into a curious practice of child adoption I would

advise extreme caution at an atoll far on the southeasterly fringe of

the Low Archipelago.

The place may easily be identified; for he will find there a young woman

of barbaric beauty who will be playing "Conquer the North" on an

ocharina.

[Illustration: Chapter IX tailpiece]

*CHAPTER X*

*Costly Hospitality*

For an authentic test of one's capacity for solitude--or better,

perhaps, for convincing proof of the lack of it--two conditions are

essential: complete isolation--that goes without saying, of course; and

the assurance that such isolation will not be broken into. At

Soul-Eaters' Island I expected to find both of these conditions

fulfilled. My house was four miles from the settlement, but in reality

I had no more seclusion there than a hermit whose retreat is within easy

walking distance of a summer hotel. Visitors came in canoes, in cutters;

and as the pass and the reef on either side of it were a favorite

fishing ground many of them came prepared to spend the day, or the

night, or both.

It is as well, perhaps, that the event fell out as it did. If life is to

keep its fine zest many wished-for experiences must be perpetually

unrealized, and we perpetually following our alluring phantoms until we

tumble headlong out of existence. Not having been put to the proof, I

may still persuade myself that I am a lover of solitude, gifted for the

enjoyment of it beyond other men. Meanwhile, at Soul-Eaters' Island, I

had a further experience with Moy Ling, the Chinese storekeeper, which

convinced me of very definite limitations in another direction.

Some time after I had taken up residence there the village came in a

body to the adjacent island on the other side of the pass. During the

year they moved in this way from one piece of land to another,

collecting the ripe coconuts and making their copra on the spot. The

land was not owned in common, but they worked it in common; and as house

building was a simple matter, instead of going back and forth from the

village, they erected temporary shelters and remained at each island in

turn until the work there was finished. They were not unremitting

toilers. After an hour or two of copra making in the cool of the early

morning they were content to call it a day, and spent the rest of the

time at more congenial occupations--swimming, fishing, visiting back and

forth, talking forever of the arrival of the last trading schooner and

the probable date of arrival of the next one.

During all of this time I kept open house, and since I was indebted to

nearly all of my friendly visitors for past hospitalities I felt that it

was necessary to make returns. Unfortunately, I had nothing to make

returns with, except such supplies of provisions and trade goods as I

was able to purchase on credit of Moy Ling. Fish were abundant in the

lagoon, and a few minutes of fine sport each day more than supplied my

wants; but I knew that fish was not acceptable to palates long

accustomed to little else. Furthermore, having accepted, at the time of

my arrival at Rutiaro, the role of the generous, affluent _popaa_, I had

to carry it through. As previously related, although I had been left at

Rutiaro unexpectedly, the inhabitants took it for granted that I had

plenty of money. The possession of wealth in the form of banknotes is

regarded there as one of the attributes of a white man, as necessary to

his comfort and convenience and as much a part of him as arms and legs.

Pride prevented my disillusioning them at first when I was in desperate

need of a new wardrobe; but it got me into a devil of a hole with Moy,

and I dug myself in more deeply every day.

Having traded upon the native tradition of the mysterious affluence of

all white men by opening up a credit account with the Chinaman I had to

sustain his confidence in my ability to cancel it at once if I choose;

and, feeling inwardly abject, it was all the more necessary to maintain

a reassuring front in the face of his growing anxiety. It was growing.

I could see that. He never actually dunned me, but I escaped the

humiliating experience only by making additional purchases on so vast a

scale, according to island standards, that even Moy seemed to be awed,

for brief periods, into a stupefied acceptance of the mysteriously

affluent myth. I, myself, was awed when I thought of the size of my

bill. Trade goods carried across thousands of miles of ocean are more

than usually expensive. A one-pound tin of bully beef cost nine francs,

and other things were proportionally dear. The worst of it was that

Moy's stock of supplies was much larger than I had at first supposed.

He had a warehouse adjoining his store which was full of them, and so,

with guests making constant demands upon my hospitality, I was forced to

buy with the greater abandon as his confidence waned. But I returned

from these encounters with a washed-out feeling, regretting that I had

ever accepted guile as an ally and longing for relief from a state of

affairs which I knew could not continue indefinitely.

Relief came in histrionic, eleventh-hour fashion. Providence saved me

when I thought Pride was riding me to a starry fall. One evening I

paddled across to the other island for further supplies. Huirai and his

family had been staying with me for several days. Fishing was better on

my side of the lagoon pass, he said, but I think his real purpose in

coming had been to eat my, or, rather, Moy Ling's tinned beef. At any

rate, when they returned I had nothing left. It was still fairly early,

but no one was abroad in the village street. There was a light in Moy's

shop, however, and looking through the open window I saw him sitting at

a table with his adding machine before him. He was counting aloud in

Chinese, his long, slim fingers playing skilfully over the wooden beads

which slid back and forth on the framework with a soft, clicking sound,

and as he bent over columns of figures the lamp light filled the hollows

of his cheeks and temples with pits of shadow. In repose his face was

as expressionless as that of a corpse. I felt my courage going as I

looked at it. What chance had I of carrying through successfully this

game of beggarman's bluff? How long could I hope to maintain the

fiction of affluence before a man wise with the inherited experience of

centuries of shopkeeping ancestors? I had a moment of panic, and before

I realized what I was doing I had entered the shop and had asked for my

bill.

Moy slip-slopped into his back room and returned with a large packet of

old newspapers. He was a frugal soul and kept his accounts, as he

ordered his life--with an eye to avoiding unnecessary expense. The

journals were painted over with Chinese characters--the items of my

various purchases. He arranged the lists in order, sat down to his

counting machine again, and presently gave me the grand total. The

amount was something over four thousand francs.

Thank Heaven for righteous anger! Thank Heaven for anger which is only

moderately righteous. I knew that I had bought lavishly, but I had kept

a rough estimate of the amount of my purchases, and I also knew that Moy

had added at least 10 per cent to his legitimate profit. He had

reasoned, no doubt, that a man who bought on mere whim, without asking

the price of anything, would settle his obligation as thoughtlessly as

he had incurred it. And I would of course. This was necessary if I were

to live up to native tradition in the grand style. But when I saw how

costly the game had become, and how thoroughly Moy had entered into the

spirit of it, too, I felt indignant; and instead of confessing my

predicament as I meant to do, I ordered another case of tinned beef and

a bag of rice and left the shop without further talk.

This righteous wrath was all very well, but now that I had asked for my

bill, I would have to settle it. How was this to be done? If only I had

my sea chest which Tino, supercargo of the _Caleb S. Winship_, had

carried away with him when he left me at Rutiaro! My pocketbook was in

it, containing all of my money, more than enough to cancel the debt with

Moy. I had rather an anxious time during the next few days. I remember

entertaining as usual, but in a faint-hearted way; sleeping badly, and

between times, walking up and down Soul-Eaters' Island, trying to subdue

my pride to the point of confession. Then one afternoon, when I was

sitting on the ocean beach, watching the surf piling up on the barrier

reef, I became aware of a vessel, hull-down, on the horizon. I could

hardly believe my eyes. It was like a far halloo from a world which I

had almost forgotten existed. All through the afternoon she beat

steadily to windward until at dusk she was about two miles distant, and

I saw that she was one of the small schooners, without auxiliary power,

which are used by Papeete trading companies for collecting copra at the

less profitable atolls.

All the village came over to Soul-Eaters' Island, for the anchorage at

this end of the atoll lay just behind it. The schooner was recognized.

It was the _Potii Ravarava_ which visited the atoll about once a year.

She entered the pass with the turn of the tide, lighting her way by the

fire which was burning in a primitive galley, a tin-lined box half

filled with sand. I could see her native skipper at the wheel, a couple

of sailors preparing to take in sail, and two native women sitting on

the poop, with a great pile of luggage behind them. One of these was

Tepera, daughter of Puarei, chief of the atoll, who had been sent to the

Protestant school at Papeete nearly a year ago. The other was Tuarava,

her aunt, with whom she had been living there. The crowd on the beach

waited in deep silence while the schooner anchored and the sails were

being furled. I remember that I could hear very plainly the far-off

rumbling of the surf on the windward side of the atoll and the hissing

of frying fish, or whatever it was, a native boy was cooking at the

galley fire. Then the small boat was lowered and the women brought

ashore with their luggage. Tepera went at once to her father and,

putting her head on his shoulder, began to cry softly. Not a word was

spoken. Tuarava and Poura, her sister, squatted on their heels close

by, their arms around each other, moaning in the same softly audible

way. The women then went in turn among all their relatives, having

their little cry while the rest of the village looked on in sympathetic

silence. When they had finished, a fire was lit on the beach and

everyone gathered around to hear the news and to examine the schooner's

cargo which was being put on shore. More trade goods for Moy Ling, I

thought. Remembering my debt, I couldn't summon any great amount of

interest in the scene. I was about to return to my house when Huirai

came bustling up, carrying my sea chest. "You like this?" he said.

What he meant was, "Is this yours?" but for once he misused his English

with splendid relevancy. I sat down weakly on the box, holding a letter

which he had thrust into my hand. No doubt of it. It was my box, and

the letter was addressed to me in Tino's familiar handwriting. It read,

in part, as follows:

We have just met the _Potii Ravarava_ here at Hao. She is going to

Rutiaro within a few weeks, so I am sending your sea chest by her.

Sorry I left you in that God-forsaken hole; but I was tight that

evening, and pretty mad at the way you upset my plans with your

marble-playing foolishness. Next morning, when I sobered up, I felt

like going back for you. But we had a fair wind, and I had my cargo to

think of. The price of copra is on the down grade, and I've got to get

back to Papeete with mine before the bottom falls out of the market.

You said once you wanted to see all you could of life in the Paumotus.

Well, I guess you'll have your chance at Rutiaro. If I was you I would

come back on the _Potii Ravarava_. She only carries twenty-seven tons

cargo, so she'll probably go direct to Papeete from there. I am also

sending you an empty three-gallon demijohn. Fill this with water before

you leave, if you come back on the _P.R_. Miti, her skipper, is a good

sailor, but all he knows about navigation you could write on a postage

stamp. I met him once about twenty miles south of Fakahina. He was

cruising around looking for Angatau, which was seventy miles to the

northeast. Well, he can't miss Tahiti if he gets within a hundred miles

of it, so you better take a chance and come back with him. But don't

forget to carry your own supply of fresh water. Sometimes these little

native boats get becalmed, and it's no joke being thirsty at sea.

Yours, TINO.

P.S.--Miti has a big bunch of letters for you, from your friend

Nordhoff. I saw the packet. It looks as though it had been traveling

some. Nordhoff, he says, is in Tahiti again. I'll probably see him

there and will tell him to wait for you.

Give my regards to all the marble players.

Good old Tino! He did me nothing but good turns. Late that night when

the rest of the villagers had crossed the pass I pried open the lid of

the chest--having lost the key--and found my belongings just as I had

left them--my camera; my binoculars and charts; and, most important of

all, in the bottom of the chest, wrapped in a pair of trousers, my

pocketbook. I didn't pay Moy until just before the departure of the

schooner, and staged the final episode at an hour when his shop was

filled with loungers. I came away with his receipted bill, one hundred

and twenty francs, and the consciousness of having adequately

safeguarded tradition.

We left Rutiaro the following day. I did not realize until the moment

of leave-taking how painful the farewells would be. As soon as they

were over I went on board, crawled into the little cabin and, despite

the cockroaches and copra bugs, remained there until the schooner had

left the pass and was well out to sea. After our separation at Papeete,

Nordhoff went on to the southwest. He wrote me from an island he called

Ahu Ahu, and from there, apparently, he took passage to Rarotonga, the

principal island of the Cook group. Long before the discovery of New

Zealand Rarotonga was the goal of Polynesian mariners from the north and

west--fearless explorers traveling in their double canoes across

hundreds of leagues of ocean, guided by sun and stars, some of them

arriving at their destination, many others, doubtless, perishing in

search of it.

From Samoa--in the early centuries of our era--came the Karika family to

reign in Rarotonga down to the present day; and Samoa is believed to

have been the principal starting point of the voyagers which peopled the

eastern Pacific. In the language of those old-time voyagers, _tonga_

meant south, and they gave that name to the Friendly Islands. Farther

to the west and south they came upon the Cook group--in those days, no

doubt, the southernmost ends of the earth--and the high island of this

group, the faint blot on the horizon which led the canoes to land, they

called Rarotonga (Under the South).

*Under the South*

[Illustration: Woodcut]

*CHAPTER XI*

*His Mother's People*

The hurricane season ended in a fortnight of calm before the trade came

up from the southeast, announcing its arrival with a three days' gale

that caught our schooner among the outer islands of the group. It was

by no means a great storm, yet the constant fury of the wind, unbroken

by lull or gust, and the lines of huge breaking seas running under a

cloudless sky impressed me more than anything I have experienced in

ships. By day we lived in a world of blue-and-white--pale-blue sky; sea

of a dark, angry blue; acres of white foam. To go on deck by night and

watch the leaping ridges of salt water rear up to windward--formless,

threatening, fringed with wan phosphorescence--was to revise any beliefs

one might have had regarding the friendliness of nature.

On the evening of the second day we were laid-to under a rag of

foresail, riding the seas obliquely, a few points off the wind. The

schooner took them like an eider duck; it was so thick in the cabin that

I slid back the hatch and squeezed through into the clean turmoil above.

The mood of the Pacific was too impressive for pleasure, but I was glad

at least of the fresh air and able to derive a species of awed enjoyment

from what went on about me. It may have been fatigue, or carelessness,

or inexperience--at any rate, the man at the wheel suddenly allowed the

schooner to bear off; she was climbing the slope of a sea at the

time--the crest of it caught her weather side with a crash and next

instant a rush of solid water swept the decks. Thin and faint as the

voices of sea birds above the roaring of the wind, the cries of native

passengers drifted back, "_Aue! Aue!_"; the hatch slid back abruptly;

the skipper burst on deck--bristling, gesticulating, clad in a

waistcloth--to deliver an address in passionate Mangaian, insulting and

only partially audible.

Under the swinging lamp in the cabin I found Tari--our singular and

philosophic supercargo, whose calm no ordinary gale could

disturb--bending over his books, a bottle and a glass in racks at his

elbow. A mat was spread on the floor and on it--huddled under a quilt

of bright patchwork--lay Apakura, his young native wife. Her feet were

bound in a _pareu_ and the quilt pulled over her head, for the

cockroaches were everywhere. I entered my stateroom to lie down. A

large cockroach, insolent and richly perfumed, trotted along the springs

of the upper berth and halted just above my face. Waves of the hand had

no effect on him--I had reasons for not wishing to crush him in his

tracks. One of his comrades began a tentative nibbling at my

hair--something tickled my foot--I started convulsively. The sudden

rolls of the schooner flung me against her side; it was useless to try

to sleep. As I sat down beside him, Tari closed his books and motioned

me to fill a glass.

A faint noise of shouting came from on deck; the engine-room bell

sounded a sudden and peremptory signal. The hatch opened with a gust of

spray--the head of the skipper appeared dimly in the swaying light.

"_Atitu_," he shouted; "I'm going to run into the lee and stand off and

on till this blows over." The engine started and Tari and I went on

deck for a glimpse of the land, looming close and vague in the

starlight. Presently, as we took our seats in the cabin, the schooner

ceased her violent pitching and began to ride a long, easy swell. Tari

rose, stepped to where his wife lay sleeping, picked up the slender

bundle in the quilt, and disappeared into his stateroom; next moment he

was beside me again, uncorking a fresh bottle of rum.

"She's had a bad time of it," he said, "with a berth on the weather

side; she was spilled on the floor half a dozen times before she gave up

and came out here. I shouldn't have let her come along--I had my doubts

of the weather, but it was a chance to see the relatives she's got

scattered through the group. They're constantly visiting one another;

blood means a lot down here where they recognize degrees of

consanguinity absurdly farfetched to our minds. First cousins are like

brothers, second and third cousins considered members of one's immediate

family, and so on through the descendants of remote ancestors. When you

stop to think of it, this respect for ties of blood--in the isolated

communities of Polynesia--rests on a solid base."

I asked him a question concerning the end of these island

people--whether they will fade away and disappear, like our own

Narragansett and Seminole, without leaving their mark on the supplanting

race or whether they will be absorbed gradually, developing in the

process of absorption a new type. Tari set down his glass.

"One thing is certain," he replied--"if left to themselves they would

soon be extinct. Wherever you go among the islands you will find couple

after couple of full-blooded natives--young, strong, wholesome, and

childless. No doubt the white man is partially to blame, but, for

myself, I believe the race is worn out with isolation and old age. They

are justified in their dread of being childless, but an infusion of

European blood--however small--works a miracle; you must have noticed

this, to me a most striking and significant fact. It is the cross of

white and brown that is repopulating the islands to-day; one can venture

a glimpse into the future and see the process of absorption

complete--the Polynesian is not fated to disappear without leaving a

trace behind ... and perhaps it will be more than a trace, for

half-caste children cling strongly to the distaff side.

"The question of half-castes is an interesting one, particularly to men

like me--but it is a waste of time to struggle against nature; in the

end the solution is nearly always the same. Varana's children furnish

the best example I have run across--you've never been to Rimarutu, I

fancy; it is not often visited nowadays; probably you've never heard of

Varana. And yet he was an extraordinary man, his life an almost unique

study in extremes. Like everything real, the story has no beginning,

unless one were able to trace back the strain that gifted the man with

his exceptional temperament; as for an end, that is still working itself

out on Rimarutu. It is, in fact, no story at all, but a bit of life

itself--unmarked by any dominating situation, haphazard, inconclusive,

grimly logical. No one can know the whole of it---the play of motives,

the decisions, the pure chance--but I worked with Varana for years and

have patched his story together after a fashion. Now and then, when the

mood struck him, he used to speak of himself; sometimes at night when we

were working his schooner from island to island; sometimes by day, as we

lay smoking under the palms of a remote atoll, while the canoes of the

divers dotted the lagoon. On those occasions I had glimpses of a man

not to be judged by the standards of everyday life--a man actuated by

motives as simple as they were incomprehensible to those about him. His

death, if he is dead-- But I will speak of that in its place.

"His real name was Warner--a big, blue-eyed man, slow-spoken and a

little dreamy in manner, with an immense blond mustache and a serenity

nothing could disturb. I never knew him to hesitate in making a

decision or to speak unless he had something to say. All decent men

liked him, and the natives, who were better able than a white man to

fathom his simplicity, took to him from the first. He had been

miserably out of place in England--squeezed through Cambridge, which he

detested, unhappily married, done out of a fortune by the defaulting

brother-in-law whose last debt he paid, and divorced just before he came

out here.

"It is often observed that when an Englishman's feelings are hurt he

travels, and in this respect Varana was not exceptional. One day, a

little more than a generation ago, he stepped off the mail boat at

Papeete--a rather typical English tourist, I fancy--dressed in tropical

costumes from Bond Street and accompanied by an extraordinary quantity

of luggage. At the club he ran across Jackson of the Atoll Trading

Company--the old man liked him from the first and they used to spend the

evenings together, lingering over their glasses, talking a little in low

tones. A fortnight later Varana left as quietly as he had

come--outbound in one of Jackson's schooners for a cruise through the

Paumotus.

"It was the year of the hurricane at Motutangi. Varana's boat, commanded

by a native skipper, had drifted through the group in a desultory way,

touching at an island here and there to pick up a few tons of copra or a

bit of shell. One can imagine the effect on a newcomer of those early

days among the atolls--long sunlit days when gentle breezes filled the

sails of the vessel skirting the shores of the lagoons--waters of

unearthly peace and loveliness, bordered by leagues of green. And the

nights ashore, when the moon rose at the end of a path of rippling

silver, and the people gathered before their thatched houses to sing....

It was not long before Varana realized that he had found his anodyne.

"At home he had been a yachtsman of sorts; by the time they reached

Motutangi the brown skipper was leaving a good part of the working of

the schooner to his guest. They were diving in the lagoon that year at

the end of a long _rahui_ on the shell--a sort of closed season,

scrupulously respected by the natives; half a dozen schooners were

anchored off the village, where every house overflowed with people from

the surrounding islands, and by day their canoes blackened the water

above the patches of shell.

"The hurricane gave ample warning of its approach--Varana told me as

much as that. He had spent the night ashore with a trader, whose old

glass rose and fell spasmodically, sinking always a little lower, until

it stood at a figure which sent the trader off, white and cursing, to

break open a fresh case of gin. None of the divers went out at

daybreak; with the other people, they stood in little frightened groups

before the houses. The older men were already beginning to hack off the

tops of the stout palms in which they planned to roost. By the time

Varana came off in a canoe the schooners were double anchored, the wind

was shifting uneasily in sharp gusts, and a tremendous surf was

thundering on the outer beach. The native skipper, like the people

ashore, knew perfectly well what was coming and, like most of his kind,

his spirit broke in the face of a large emergency--before the feeling

that the forces of nature were about to overwhelm him. Well, I've been

through one hurricane--I can't say that I blame him much! Varana found

him not exactly in a funk, but in a state of passive resignation, hoping

vaguely that his two anchors would let him ride it out inside. The crew

was clustered on the after deck, exchanging scared whispers. Varana,

who had the instinct of a deep-water sailor, took in the situation at a

glance, and next moment he had taken command of the schooner.

"Without a word of protest the men reefed, got sail on her, heaved up

one anchor, and cut the other cable. Varana had very little to say about

the rest--how he edged out through the pass and managed to claw off just

as the cyclone struck Motutangi--but afterward the story went the rounds

of every group. All the other schooners in the lagoon, as well as most

of the people ashore, were lost. How Varana weathered it, without

piling up his vessel on any one of half a dozen atolls, is a sort of

miracle.

"A week later, when he had sailed his battered schooner--the only

survivor of the disaster at Motutangi--into Papeete harbor, he found

himself famous by nightfall, for the native captain gave him entire

credit for the achievement. Old Jackson's imagination was touched, or

perhaps it was the destruction of so many rival schooners in the shell

and copra trade--at any rate, he acted on impulse for once in his life,

sent for Varana, and offered him a remarkably good berth with a fat

screw attached. But the wanderer only smiled and shook his head--he had

had a taste of the outer islands. It shakes one's faith in Providence

to realize that most men die without finding the place in life for which

they were designed.

"It was old Jackson who told him of Rimarutu--probably during one of

their almost silent evenings at the club. It was a mistake--Jackson

thought--to believe that a man could shut himself off from the world;

the mood would pass in time, but if Varana wished seriously to try it,

he would find no better place than Rimarutu. There was some copra to be

had and a little shell in the lagoon; the people numbered about two

hundred, a quiet, pleasant lot, not given to wandering from their

island. Varana had salvaged a few thousand pounds from the wreck of his

affairs at home; Jackson helped him pick up a schooner at a bargain and

load her with what was needed; there was some difficulty about a crew,

but his uncanny gift with the natives got him three men content to

follow his fortunes. On the morning when he shook hands with the old

man, stepped aboard his boat, and sailed out of the harbor, Varana

severed the last tie with the world he had known.

"I could tell you a good deal about his life on the island--I worked

with him for nearly ten years. He began by renting a bit of land--for

his store and copra shed--from the chief and setting himself to learn

the language. The Polynesian is a shrewd judge of character; they saw

that this man was just, kindly, fearless, and to be trusted. Those who

had traveled a little declared Varana a phenomenon--a white trader who

respected women and never lay on his veranda in a stupor, surrounded by

empty bottles. He seemed to know instinctively the best way to take

these people, with whom, from the very first, he found himself on terms

of a mutual understanding. They regarded him with a mixture of liking

and respect, not accorded us, perhaps, as often as we are apt to think;

he worked with them, he played with them, and finally took a daughter of

the island as his wife--yet it was characteristic that he never

permitted himself to run barefoot and that even after twenty years of

friendship the native entering Varana's house took off his hat. I

remember Tupuna as a woman of thirty--tall, robust, and grave, with

delicate hands and masses of bright, rippling hair; the years were kind

to her--even in middle life she did not lose a certain quiet charm. Make

no mistake--they were happily mated, this man, turned out by what

Englishmen believe the highest civilization in the world, and the

daughter of an island chief whose father had been a savage and an eater

of men. She was not spoiled like so many traders' wives; when they had

been on the reef she walked home behind, carrying the torches and the

fish--but he felt for her an affection deep as it was undemonstrative, a

strong attachment, proven at the end in his own extreme and romantic

way.

"During the early years of his life on Rimarutu, Varana had enough to do

with his store, his occasional trips for supplies, and his work for the

betterment of the island people. He found them living on fish and

coconuts, depending for all their luxuries on a dwindling production of

copra. He showed them how to thin their palms, how to select nuts for

new plantings, how to dry their copra with a minimum of effort. The

shell in the lagoon was nearly exhausted; he persuaded the chiefs of the

two villages to forbid diving for a term of years. After experiments

conducted with Tupuna's aid he set the men to catching flying fish,

which swarmed in the waters about the island, and taught the women to

split them, rub in salt, and dry them on lines in the sun. Rimarutu is

high, as atolls go--five or six yards above the sea in spots; he laid

out beds of _puraka taro_, and had pits dug on the high portions of the

island, lined the bottoms with rock to keep the taproots from salt

water, filled them with humus and topsoil--scraped up in handfuls--and

planted breadfruit, mango, and lime, brought from the high islands to

the north. At long intervals, when in need of something that only

civilization could supply--paint, rigging, or a new set of sails--he

went north with a cargo of copra and dried fish and took on a brief

charter with Jackson. On these trips he visited scores of islands, and

came to know the people of a thousand miles of ocean.

"It was not until his son was born that Varana began to think seriously

of money. His daughters had given him no concern; he explained to me

once his peculiar philosophy as to their future. Perhaps he was right.

With their happiness in mind, he preferred to bring them up as island

girls--without education or knowledge of the outside world and no

greater prospects than those of their full-blooded playmates--rather

than give them the chances of the usual half-caste: half-educated and

partially Europeanized, whose most brilliant hope is marriage with a

white man of the inferior sort. But the birth of Terii set the father

to thinking.

"The child was about ten when I saw him first, a fine strong boy, very

fair for a half-caste, with his father's eyes, a high carriage of the

head, and skin touched with a faint bloom of the sun. Tupuna was

immensely proud of him. I was a youngster then and new to the islands,

but I had heard of Varana before Jackson introduced me to him. It was

at Jackson's place, on the upper veranda, that he told me how he had

leased Fatuhina; some one had spoken of my work. I had operated diving

machines? He needed a man familiar with them, for he had leased an

atoll with some big shell patches in the lagoon, and machines would be

necessary to work the deeper portions. I was doing nothing at the time.

I liked what I had heard of Varana, and I liked the man better still.

In an hour we had come to an understanding. I worked with him, off and

on, from that time until the beginning of the war.

"Without caring in the least for wealth, Varana had set out to make

himself rich. Long before I knew him he had decided the question of his

son: Terii was to have the same chances that his father had had before

nim--was to see both sides and choose for himself.

"Even Varana's friends spoke of his luck; to my mind his success was

inevitable. Regarded with an almost superstitious affection by the

people of widely scattered groups, he possessed channels of information

closed forever to the ordinary man. It was in this way that he learned

of the shell in Fatuhina lagoon; perhaps he did not know that the native

who approached him, one evening on a distant atoll, to speak casually of

the matter and stroll away, had paddled across twelve miles of sea with

no other object than to bring the news to Varana. When the _Gaviota_

was beached he was the first to learn of it--that affair alone brought

him a neat fortune; and when men had fine pearls to sell they saw him

before they went to the Jews. By the time his son was twelve Varana was

a rich man.

"I was on Rimarutu when he left to take the boy to England. Tupuna shed

a few tears, but there was no scene--she knew he would return. 'I go to

take our son to my own land,' he told her; 'there will be six moons

before I come.' Five months later I was waiting with the schooner when

he stepped off the mail boat. That night, as he lay on a mat on the

afterdeck, dressed in a _pareu_ and a pair of slippers, he spoke of

England briefly in the midst of our talk on island matters. 'Damned

senseless treadmill,' he remarked; 'I can't think how I stood it so many

years.' The ordinary man, who had left home under a cloud of misfortune

to return twenty years later, after wanderings in distant lands, with a

fortune and a beautiful child, would have lingered not without a certain

relish. But Varana was different; he grudged every moment spent in

civilization and lived only for the day when he would again take the

wheel of his schooner and watch the ridges of Tahiti sink beneath the

horizon.

"The years passed rapidly and tranquilly on Rimarutu. The days of

Varana's activity were over; he was no longer young, though he kept his

store and took the schooner out at long intervals for supplies. Then

came the outbreak of the war.

"I was in Gallipoli when the letter reached me, written in the native

language by Varana's old mate. It told a story fantastically

unreal--incredible from the viewpoint of everyday life--and yet to me

who knew him, as to the people of his island, the end of Varana seemed a

natural thing, in keeping with what had gone before. Tupuna had fallen

ill (the old man wrote) and had died suddenly and peacefully, as natives

do. Varana stood beside her grave with no great display of grief,

returned to his house and spent three days putting his affairs in order.

On the fourth day he gave the mate a thick envelope of documents, called

together the people of the island and bade each one of them farewell.

When he turned to leave they did not disperse; the women had begun to

sob--they felt already the desolation of a final parting. It was the

hour of sunset, when the trade wind dies away and the lagoon lies like a

mirror under an opalescent sky.... I can see in imagination those

simple and friendly islanders, standing in little groups before the

settlement--raising no voice in protest, moving no hand in

restraint--while the man they loved walked to the ocean beach, launched

a tiny canoe in the surf, and paddled out to the west. The nearest land

in that direction is distant six hundred miles. When he had passed the

breakers--they say--Varana did not once turn his head; the watchers

stood motionless while the sky faded, their eyes fixed on the dot that

was his canoe--a dwindling dot, swallowed up at last in the night."

Tari ceased to speak. He was sitting propped on the lounge, arms

folded, legs stretched out, eyes staring at the table. Without seeming

aware of what he did, he filled his glass, raised it to his lips, and

drank. Presently he emerged from his revery to light a pipe.

"In due time," he went on, "I had word from the lawyers, inclosing a

copy of the will and informing me that I had been named executor with

old Jackson, who seemed to have discovered the secret of eternal life.

There was also a letter from Varana, written after Tupuna's death--a

friendly and casual note, with a mere line at the end, asking me to do

what I could for his boy. The land Tupuna had brought him was to be

divided equally among his daughters; all the rest was for Terii, saving

his parting gift to me. Only one condition was attached--Terii must

visit Rimarutu before inheriting the property of his father; once he had

set foot on the island, he would be his own master, free to choose his

path in life.

"The boy was nineteen when the war broke out; he joined up at once as a

cadet in the Flying Corps. During the second year I began to hear of

Lieutenant Warner--he had shot down a German plane near Zeebrugge; he

had been wounded; he had received the Military cross. Once I saw his

picture in the _Sphere_--a handsome lad, very smart in the old uniform

of the R.F.C., with a jaunty cap over one eye and ribbons on his breast.

This was the little savage whose shrill cries I used to hear at dawn,

when he raced with his half-naked companions on the beach! At the end

of the war he was Captain Terry Warner, a celebrity in a small way....

I felt a certain pride in him, of course. We had done our best to meet,

but something always happened to prevent my getting a glimpse of him.

"I ran across him as I was homeward bound, leaving San Francisco for the

islands. I had already gone aboard and was standing by the rail,

watching the last of the luggage swing over the side in nets, when a

motor drove up to discharge a party of men and women--fashionables of

the city, from their looks. One of them, a lean, tanned boy, with the

overcoat of a British officer over his civilian clothes, was saying

good-by to the others, shaking hands and smiling very attractively. A

little later, when the lines were being cast off, I saw him close beside

me at the rail. A girl in blue was standing on the dock, waving up at

him. 'Good-by, Terry!' she called. I looked closely; there could be no

doubt--it was the son of Varana.

"We had long talks on the voyage south; the lad had not forgotten me.

The memory of the old life--of the island, of his mother, of his

father--would always be fresh in his mind, but he regarded those days as

a distant and beautiful episode, now forever closed. He was going to

visit Rimarutu for the last time--to bid farewell to those who

remembered him. He had not forgotten the friends of his boyhood; there

were many little presents in his boxes, and he told me that the

schooner--reported sound as on the day of her launching--would be his

gift to Varana's old mate. Afterward he would return to San Francisco,

where opportunities had been offered him; he had brought letters to

America and had been well received.

"The schooner was in port when we arrived. Varana's mate met us on the

dock; there were tears in the old man's eyes as he took the boy's hands

in his own and murmured in a trembling voice, '_O Terii iti e_.' The

tourists descending the gangplank looked with interest at the spectacle

of Captain Warner, almost embracing an old barefoot _kanaka_, dressed in

dungarees and a faded shirt, wrinkled brown face working with emotion.

As Terii shook hands with the crew--some of them boys with whom he had

played in childhood--I noticed that a phrase or two of the native came

to his lips--twelve years had not been sufficient to blot out all memory

of his mother's tongue.

"We had a long passage south, beating against the trade; Varana had

installed an engine in the schooner, but time is cheaper than petrol in

this part of the world. Terii delighted in handling the boat; there was

salt water in his blood; and his father had seen to his training in

navigation and the ways of the sea. With each new day I perceived

symptoms of a change in the boy. White suits and canvas slippers gave

way to pajamas and bare feet; finally the pajamas were replaced by a

_pareu_, taken from the trade-room stock. The summers at home had not

been wasted; I used to watch him at the wheel, working the schooner to

windward, an eye on the canvas aloft, steering with the easy certain

movements of a seaman born. He was in love with the schooner before we

had been out a week, and he had reason--Frisco-built for the last of the

pelagic sealing, Varana's boat was the fastest thing of her tonnage in

the South Seas. More than once in our talks Terii seemed to forget the

plans he had confided to me.... She needed a new foresail; the set of

this one did not please him; he was going to have her copper renewed in

places; she was getting dingy below; the cabin needed a touch of paint.

At times, speaking of these things, he stopped short in the midst of a

sentence and changed the talk to other subjects. The language came back

to him surprisingly; he was able to understand and make himself

understood before we raised the palms of Rimarutu.

"The mate took her in through the pass. It was late afternoon, cool and

cloudless, with a gentle sea nuzzling at the reef. The island was like

the memory of a dream--fresh green palms, snowy beaches, cat's-paws

ruffling the lagoon in long, blue streaks--so beautiful that the sight

of it made one's heart ache and the breath catch in one's throat. A

dozen canoes put out to meet us from the first settlement; there were

greetings from friends and relatives--embraces and tears. Terii lay

silent, propped on his elbows and staring ahead, as we slipped across

the lagoon; the island people spoke in tones so low that I could hear

the crisp sound of the schooner's bows parting the landlocked water.

The other village lay beyond the beach ahead of us, Varana's village,

where Terii had been born--a place of dreams in the mystery of the

evening light. It was not difficult to guess at the boy's thoughts--the

moment was one of those which make up the memories of a lifetime. Every

man has known them--rapture, pain, the enjoyment of supreme beauty, the

flavor of exotic and unrepeatable experience; but not every man is

permitted to taste such contrasts as this boy had known in twenty-four

years of life.... I was a little envious, I think, of the rarity of

that poignant home-coming.

"On the first evening, when we had greeted the people of the village,

Terii was led away by his old aunt, Tupuna's sister. Just before

bedtime I saw them at his mother's grave--a lonely shrine, roofed over

in island fashion, where the light of a lamp shone on stunted bushes of

frangipani. My eccentricities were not forgotten; they had spread my

mat under the palms before Varana's house, and toward midnight Terii

came quietly and lay down close by. I was wakeful in a revery, living

over the old days with my friend, wondering, with the usual idle and

somber doubt, if we were destined to meet again. Low over the palm tops

a planet glimmered like a shaded lamp; the Milky Way arched overhead

through a sky powdered with fixed stars--remote suns, about which

revolve myriads of worlds like ours.... I rebelled at the thought that

the strong soul of Varana should be snuffed out. Terii said nothing for

a long time; I thought he had dropped off to sleep, but suddenly I heard

his voice: 'I have the strangest feeling to-night,' he said,

thoughtfully; 'if my father were here I could believe that I had never

been away, that everything since I left--England, school, my friends,

the war--was no more than a dream. I can't explain to you, but somehow

this island seems the most real thing in the world. I've been talking

with my aunt--I'd almost forgotten her name, you know--and I managed to

understand a good bit of what she had to say.... There is no doubt she

believes it herself. My father comes to her every now and then, she

says, for a talk on family matters; last night he told her we would come

to-day, and that I would stop here to take his old place among the

people. It seems they are good enough to want me to stay--I almost wish

I could.' ...

"The drums were going at daybreak--the feast in Terii's honor was the

greatest the island had known since heathen days. The entire population

was on hand; the beach black with canoes; dozens of good-humored babies

on mats under the trees, with small brothers and sisters stationed to

fan the flies away. The people sat in long rows in the shade, strings of

shell about their necks, their heads wreathed in hibiscus and sweet

fern. Terii was placed between the chief of the other village and

Tehina, the chief's daughter, a full-blooded Rimarutu girl of sixteen,

barefoot, dressed in a white frock, with gold pendants in her ears and a

thick, shining braid of hair. There is an uncommon charm about the

women of that island--a stamp of refinement, a delicacy of frame and

feature, remarked as long ago as the days of Spanish voyaging in the

Pacific. Blood counts for something in Polynesia, and one needed only a

glance at Tehina to know that the best blood of the island flowed in her

veins; her ancestor--if tradition may be credited--was in the long canoe

with Penipeni when the god pulled Rimarutu up from the bottom of the

sea. I like those people, and in spite of the night's depression I

managed to enjoy the fun--I even danced a bit! Finally I saw that the

dancers were taking their seats; voices were lowered, heads were turned.

"Tehina was dancing alone to the rhythm of a hundred clapping hands. In

twenty years of the islands I have never seen a girl step more daintily.

Little by little she moved toward Terii until she stood directly before

him, inviting him to dance, hands fluttering, swaying with an

unconscious grace, smiling into his eyes. Every head turned; there were

smiles, good-humored chuckles, nudges; they were proud of this girl and

anxious that the son of Varana should dance with her. They had not long

to wait. Next moment Terii had leaped to his feet and was dancing, with

more enthusiasm than skill, to a long burst of cheers and clapping.

"When the canoes put off at nightfall I noticed that Tehina did not

leave; she had stopped to visit her uncle, the parson of the village

church. I saw Terii with her often during the days that

followed--fishing on the lagoon, swimming in the cove, lying on mats in

the moonlight where groups of young people were telling their

interminable stories of the past. He seemed a little shy of me, and no

longer exchanged confidences in the hour which precedes sleep. One

evening, smoking and strolling alone after dinner, I passed the parson's

house and became aware of the vague figure of Terii, walking to and fro

impatiently beside the veranda. He stopped--I heard the rattle of a

coral pebble on the roof. A moment later Tehina glided like a phantom

around the corner of the house, and they went off arm in arm along the

path to the sea. I thought to myself that the lad was not doing badly

after his twelve years away from the island, but the blood was in him,

of course--there was instinct in his manner of tossing the pebble and in

the unhesitating way he had led the girl toward the outer beach: the

haunt of dreadful presences, a place no ordinary islander would visit

after dark. I fancied him sitting there--the rumble of the surf in his

ears, watching the lines of breakers rear up under the moon--with Tehina

beside him, admiring and afraid. When his eye was not on her she would

glance right and left along the beach and back toward the bush, half

expecting to see some monstrous thing, crouched and watching with fiery

eyes. As for the boy, one could only guess at the troubled flow of his

thoughts, stirred by cross-currents of ancestry and experience. In her

own environment Tehina was a girl to make any man look twice; for him,

with his mother's blood and the memories of his childhood, she must have

possessed a powerful appeal--the touch of her hand; her voice, soft and

low-pitched, murmuring the words of a half-forgotten tongue; her dark

eyes shining in the moonlight; the scent of the strange blossoms in her

hair. It was the test, the final conflict Varana had foreseen. I had my

own opinion of the result, and yet the other life pulled hard.

"The days passed in pleasant island fashion; the loading of the schooner

went on; there was no mention of a change in plans. The chief came to

take his daughter home, and when she had gone Terii spoke to me, not too

convincingly, of his return to civilization. My trip to Rimarutu was a

matter of pleasure alone; I was already planning to take this berth, and

was not sorry when Terii announced one morning that we would sail north

that afternoon. One seems perpetually saying good-by down here--these

islands are havens of a brief call, of sad farewells, of lingering and

regretful memory. Our parting from the people of Rimarutu was more than

usually painful; they had hoped to the last that Terii would leave some

word, some promise; but he remained silent, though I could see that the

leave-taking was not without effect.

"Finally the last canoe put off for shore; the anchor came up, the motor

started, and Terii steered across the lagoon for the pass. The sails

were still furled, for there was a light head wind. I watched his face

as he stood in silence at the wheel; there was a look in his eyes which

made me sorry for the boy. We crossed the lagoon, glided past green

islets, and drew abreast of the other village. The people lined the

shore, fluttering handkerchiefs, shouting good wishes and farewells.

"Beyond the settlement the pass led out, blue and deep, between sunken

piers of coral, where the surf thundered in patches of white. All at

once the old mate sang out and pointed--a dot was on the water ahead of

us, a swimmer moving out from land to cut us off. The son of Varana

turned the wheel; the schooner swung inshore; I heard a quick command

and felt the speed of the engine slacken.

"Terii was staring ahead with a strange intensity--instinct or

premonition was at work. I looked again as we drew near; a cloud of

dark hair floated behind the swimmer's head; it was a woman--Tehina!

Terii sprang to the rail. A moment later she had been lifted over the

side and was standing beside him in the cockpit, dripping, trembling a

little with cold and fear, doing her best to smile. The mate was

pulling at Terii's arm and pointing back toward the village. A

whaleboat had put out from shore and was heading for us at the top speed

of the rowers; it was the chief himself, I believe, who stood in the

stern and whose shouts were beginning to reach our ears.

"At that moment Terii proved that he was his father's son. He glanced

back once, and then, without the smallest interval of hesitation, his

arm went about the wet shoulder of Tehina.

"'Full speed ahead,' he ordered in a cool voice."

Tari poured rum into my glass, and tilted the last of the bottle into

his own. The schooner was taking it easily with her engine at half

speed, riding a gentle swell. The ship's bell rang twice, paused, and

rang again--a sharp and mellow sound. It was long past midnight.

"If you ever get down to Rimarutu," said Tari, as he rose to go on deck,

"you will find Terii there--he bids fair to leave the island even less

than Varana did."

*CHAPTER XII*

*In the Cook Group*

I was close to beginning this letter with a little fun at your expense;

you would have been mystified--perhaps convinced that my haunted friends

of Ahu Ahu were just a bit uncanny. It is really a pity not to do it!

I should have begun with a vivid glimpse of a seance; the quiet

moonlight outside, seen through an open door; the glimmer of a

turned-down lamp in the house, revealing the rapt sightless face of the

medium; the summoning of old Rakamoana from her sleeping place in the

_marae_; the unnatural voice proclaiming the coming of the spirit.

Then I would have told how a message from the visitor was announced--for

the strange white man vouched for by the mother of Apakura. "I see an

island," the ghostly voice might have gone on--"a little land

surrounding a great lagoon. It is Nukuhina, in the far-off Sea of

Atolls. A schooner lies at anchor in the calm water off the settlement;

she does not move, for the lagoon is very still. A boat is putting off

for shore, and in the stern sits a dear friend of the white man--a

slender man, who gazes eagerly toward the shore with dark eyes like the

eyes of our people. A crowd is gathered on the beach; the girls carry

gifts of necklaces and wreaths; and in the village the old women are

preparing a feast. The man in the boat believes that this welcome is

for the captain of the schooner, not knowing that this people was once a

race of warriors, and that they are gathered to give him welcome--the

first soldier from the army of France to visit their island since the

war. The keel of the boat grates on the sand; a score of men seize her

to pull her up; the women crowd about the stranger (Aue! They are good

to look upon these girls of Nukuhina!), to throw their necklaces over

his head and crown him with wreaths of flowers and shell. His face

grows red; the old men smile; the girls laugh aloud. One, bolder than

the rest, runs at him suddenly, puts her arms about him, and kisses him

after the fashion of the white man. His face grows redder still; at

that, the old men, too, laugh aloud. One after another, pushing and

pulling to be first, the girls scramble to kiss him; he is overwhelmed,

suffocated, and now his face is like fire, but he is not angry, for he

smiles."

Well, what do you think of Ahu Ahu magic? I really ought to refrain

from telling you the truth, which--like the stuff of most spirit

messages--is simple, unexpected, and disillusioning. When we got to

Avarua I found S---- there, over from Tahiti to buy cattle; before his

departure the _Alouette_ had turned up from the Paumotus, bringing word

of your reception on Nukuhina.

I fancy you haven't had much time, in your progress through the Low

Archipelago, for the pursuits of a landsman, so I'll give you an idea of

how I've frittered away the days on Rarotonga.

Soon after our arrival there was a great stir over the coming of a

shipload of parliamentary visitors from New Zealand, making a tour of

the Cook Islands; a feast of welcome was to be given in Avarua, scores

of pigs and hundreds of chickens were set aside for fattening, and the

dancers of each village were to be seen rehearsing in the evenings. We

drove to Avarua on the appointed day and found the government boat

already anchored in the roadstead off the town--an anchorage dreaded by

skippers, for unless the anchor strikes exactly on the summit of a sharp

submerged peak, it will slide clean off soundings. Long before we

reached the settlement the air had been vibrant with the sound of drums,

the visitors were coming ashore, the dancing was in full swing.

The performance, of course, was a perfectly sophisticated one--like

Papeete, Avarua is a small ocean metropolis, the capital of a group--but

it interested me to see that the people, in spite of the efforts of the

missionaries to make them ashamed of everything pertaining to heathen

days, were not entirely without pride in the past. Each village was

represented by a corps of dancers, men and women equally divided, and

had its own drums and drummers, who furnished the sole music of the

dance. The drums are of three varieties. The smallest are merely

hollow sticks--six inches in diameter and a yard long--open on one side,

and producing a loud, resonant click when struck with a bit of wood.

There are others of medium size, standing on short legs and beaten with

the hand, but the huge oldtime drums, suspended from the limbs of trees,

interested me most of all. Imagine a five-foot section of the trunk of

a big _Barringtonia_, carefully hollowed out and smoothed, with the

skins of wild goats stretched over the ends, and sides decorated with

outlandish painting.

The big drums are struck with the heel of the hand--with such furious

energy that the drummer streams perspiration and is soon exhausted. The

deep pulsing sound of them carries for miles in still air; sometimes at

night, when there was dancing in the villages, I have heard it far and

near, rising, falling, throbbing, from Arorangi, from Titikaveka, and

from Ngatangiia, whence the ancients set out on their thousand-league

voyages to the south.

I wish I could make you feel, as I have felt, the quality of this savage

drumming. Monotonous and rhythmic sound, reduced almost to its simplest

form, it is the ancestor of all music, toward which, perhaps, our modern

dance music is a reversion. There is syncopation in it when the big

drum halts at irregular intervals, and the time is carried by the

clicking of hollow wood; but it is solemn and ominous--anything but the

meretricious syncopation of ragtime. One feels in it an appeal to the

primitive emotions, at once vague and charged with meaning; fear and

madness are there, with cruelty, lust, triumph, and a savage melancholy.

Except in the case of the contingent from Manihiki--an atoll far off to

the north--there was little variation in the dances, for which one can

only say that they showed evidence of careful drilling. The women

performed a variety of the dance common to all branches of their

race**basically the same whether called _hula_, _hura_, or _ura_--but

their motions were awkward and stiff, without the abandon and graceful

movements of the arms to be seen in Hawaii or the Society Islands. The

men, who carried long staves like spears, were freer in their motions,

leaping, thrusting out their arms, and clattering their sticks in

unison.

The costumes--unfortunately for the eye of a sensitive spectator--were

slipped on over the wearer's best European clothes; a concession to the

missionary point of view; but the beauty of some of the kilts, tunics

and headdresses, and the trouble evidently taken in braiding them,

showed that the Rarotongans have not wholly forgotten the past.

The dance was followed by speeches, and the speeches by a feast--all

very conventional and uninteresting. I wonder if you are heartily fed

up on baked pig. One needs a dash of Island blood to appreciate it

after the twentieth time! Any other sort of meat would be welcome here

where bully beef and pork are the staples. The need of a change of diet

drives one to the lagoon; fishing becomes a practical as well as a

sporting proposition.

During the proper phases of the moon we lead a most irregular life, for

the hours from 3 to 5 A.M. are often the ones most profitable to spend

on the reef, and the evenings are occupied with a search for hermit

crabs. You have probably made the acquaintance of the hermit crab, but

in case you have been too busy to give him the notice he deserves, I'll

venture to dwell for a bit on his eccentricities. It was not a pure

love of natural history that turned my attention to him; I have been

obliged to study him--at least superficially--by the fact that he is the

dainty preferred by all the fish of this lagoon, and his capture,

therefore, an indispensable preliminary to every fishing expedition.

There must be several varieties of hermit crab--I have counted three

already: the ordinary small brown one called _kakara_, the huge red one

found in deep water, and the black, hairy kind, whose pounded-up body is

mixed with grated coconut to extract the oil. This latter is called

_unga_; in the old days the lowest class of Rarotonga society was known

by the same name--meaning, I suppose, that all of their property could

be carried on their backs. The common variety is a good deal like the

robber crab in habits; the natives go so far as to say that it is the

same creature, in different stages of its existence. I doubt this

theory, for while there are plenty of the little _kakara_ on the

volcanic islands, the robber crab is very rare; he lives on the atolls,

and to my mind it is incredible that he should journey from island to

island, through leagues of deep sea. Like his formidable relative, the

_kakara_ spends most of his time ashore, frequenting the bush along the

water's edge, where he lies hidden throughout the day in a hole or under

a pile of leaves. His first duty of the evening is a trip to salt

water, for he seems to need a thorough wetting once in each twenty-four

hours. After his bath he heads back for the bush to begin his nightly

search for food--nearly any kind of edible refuse--a dead fish on the

beach, the fallen fruit of a pandanus, a coconut, opened by rat or

flying fox, and containing a few shreds of meat.

The size of the _kakara_ can be judged from his shell, which may be as

small as a thimble or as large as an orange. The creature inside is

marvelously adapted to the life he leads. His soft and muscular body

curls into the spiral of the shell and is securely anchored by a twist

of the tail. The fore-end of the crab, which protrudes from the shell

when he is in motion, reminds one of a tiny lobster; the same stalk

eyes, the same legs, the same strong claws. When alarmed he snaps back

into his mobile fortress, and you perceive that legs and claws fold into

a flat armored barrier, sealing up perfectly the entrance of the shell.

Sit still and watch him; presently the claws unfold cautiously and he

emerges little by little, feelers waving and eyes peering about in a

ludicrously apprehensive manner. Finally he gathers courage and starts

off for the bush at his curious rolling gait.

One might suppose the hermit crab the least social of living tilings,

but in reality he is gregarious and seems to enjoy the company of his

friends. They wander in little bands; very often one finds two or three

small ones perched on the back of a larger comrade and enjoying an

effortless trip across the beach to the lagoon. One afternoon I came

upon three of them traveling in single file; the last member of the

party--a frail little chap--crunched under the heel of my boot before I

saw him. I stopped a moment in regret and saw that the two other crabs

were also stopping--warned, by I know not what obscure sense, that all

was not well with their friend. They drew together as they halted, and

went through a hasty and obviously anxious exchange of ideas--face to

face, with feelers waving nervously. One was reminded irresistibly of a

pair of fussy little old gentlemen, halted in the street to decide which

should do an unpleasant errand. At length one of the two settled

himself to wait, while the other faced about and shambled off briskly to

the rear. A few seconds brought him to what was left of his unfortunate

comrade; his eyes seemed to start from his head as he felt over the

crushed wreck. A moment later he turned and hastened back even faster

than he had come. His arrival had an air of palpitating excitement; I

fancied I felt transmitted to me a tiny thrill of horror at the news

about to be communicated. This time the four antennae fairly vibrated--I

imagined the conversation going on an inch above the ground.

"My God!" announced the bearer of ill tidings, breathlessly. "Poor Bill

is dead!"

"Bill dead!" exclaimed the other, shocked in spite of his incredulity;

"but no, you must be wrong--what could have killed him?"

"I don't know; he's dead all the same--crushed and mangled--it upset me

fearfully."

"Come, come--you've been seeing things; he must have taken a short cut

to the beach."

"I tell you he's dead; come and have a look if you don't believe me."

So off they went together for a look at the corpse, and I left them to

mourn their friend--perhaps to eat him.

If you want to see a curious sight get a hermit crab some day and pick

up half a dozen empty shells of the size to fit him. Lay the shells on

the sand in a circle a few inches across, extract the crab without

hurting him from his house, and set him down naked among the empty

shells. To get him out, by the way, is not so easy as it sounds, but

you can do it by taking hold of his claws and maintaining a steady,

gentle pull; in time the muscles of his tail will tire and his grip

relax. You will be amused when you see his first attempts to walk

without his shell, which weighs three or four times as much as the

tenant; it is precisely as a man might act, set down on some planet

where gravity is weaker than on our earth. Naked, helpless, and

worried--_tres, tres inquiet_--the crab makes a dash for one of the

shells, gives it a hasty inspection with his feelers, finds something

not quite right, and hobbles off to the next one. Perhaps this suits

him. He faces about, in goes his tail to take a grip on the whorls, he

snaps in and out a few times as if trying the strategic possibilities of

the new quarters, and next moment you will see him ambling off

blissfully toward the bush.

The chase of the hermit crab is tame sport, no doubt, but not entirely

without interest. One evening we set out just after dark, bucket and

torch in hand--not the old South Sea torch of coconut leaf, but the

modern tube of galvanized iron, filled with kerosene and plugged with

burlap, which acts as a wick. The high beach is best at this hour, for

one's quarry is beginning to emerge from the bush for the evening dip,

and those that have passed will leave spoor in the soft coral sand.

Here is the track of a small one, winding toward the water in eccentric

curves and zigzags; follow it and you find him, motionless in the

torchlight, hoping to escape notice. He goes into the pail with a

clang--you can hear his feet scratching vainly at the smooth sides.

There were not many about on this stretch of beach; they are uncertain

in their habits and seem to be great wanderers. Here is the track of a

monster, broad and corrugated like the trail of a miniature Whippet

Tank; the spoor leads to the lagoon--no signs of him at the water's

edge--he has doubled back. Lift up that rotten coconut frond ... an

_unga_, black, hairy, armed with a vicious pair of claws; you can hear

him raging in the pail, a noise halfway between a whine and a growl--a

crab with a voice!

A stroll of an hour or two along the btuch usually procures enough bait

for a day's fishing, and one turns inland to follow the road home.

Sometimes, when the new moon has set behind the Avarua peaks and thick

darkness settles over the bush--when the surf murmurs almost maudibly in

a stillness broken by the plunge of a fish in the lagoon, or the grating

screech of a flying-fox, quarreling with his mates in the palm tops--one

is not sorry when the lights of the plantation begin to glimmer through

the trees.

We went to bed early that evening, for we had to be up long before

daylight to catch the first of the flood tide, but these island nights

are not meant for sleep--I was soon up again, to spend a couple of hours

alone on the veranda. The feel of the air was like a caress; neither

hot nor cold, and perfumed with the scents of strange flowers--waxen

_Tiare Tahiti_, sweet and heady frangipani, languorous Queen of the

Night. In the mango tree behind the house a mynah twittered--a drowsy

overture to one of their abrupt nocturnal choruses. They are quaint

birds, the mynahs; introduced to the Islands many years ago, they have

increased amazingly in this friendly environment, where they live in a

state of half-domesticated familiarity with mankind. One sees them

everywhere, hopping fearlessly about the streets of villages, fluttering

to the table to finish the bread crumbs left after a meal, perched on

the backs of cattle in the coconut groves. They are intensely

gregarious, gathering in large flocks at sunset to roost in some

thick-foliaged tree--orange, mango, or alligator pear. From time to

time during the night, with an abruptness and perfect unison that make

one suspect the presence of a feathered leader of the orchestra, the two

or three hundred members of the colony burst into deafening song--a

chorus which lasts perhaps twenty seconds, and stops as suddenly as it

began.

At last I knocked the ashes out of my pipe and turned in; at intervals,

before sleep came, I heard the far-off thud of a ripe coconut, or the

faint slither and crash of an old frond, falling from a palm. We were

awakened at three o'clock by the cook's announcement that coffee was

ready; it is a pleasure to live where dressing is only a matter of

slipping on a fresh singlet and hitching the _pareu_ tight about one's

waist. Each man carried a pair of old shoes, for even the leathery feet

of a native must be protected before he ventures on the live coral.

Half a dozen plantation boys followed us to the beach, along a path

leading down an avenue of coconuts, the slender boles illuminated by the

glare of torchlight. In five minutes we were under the dark ironwoods

at the water's edge, where the canoes are hauled up; without waiting for

us, the boys plunged into the lagoon---half swimming, half wading toward

the reef--torches held aloft in their left hands.

The tide was very low; we had only a short paddle to the shallow water

on the inner side of the barrier. It was dead calm--ideal weather for

the spear--but there had been a storm somewhere to the south; lines of

tall glassy combers, faintly visible in the starlight, were curling with

the splitting reports of field artillery--crashing down on the reef

until the coral beneath us seemed to tremble at each shock. The eastern

sky had not yet begun to pale--the constellations glimmered with the

soft glow of the tropics: the Southern Cross, Orion, and the Pleiades.

When the water was only knee-deep we moored the canoe to a coral

mushroom and went overboard in bare legs and tucked-up _pareus_. Wading

slowly, about twenty feet apart--the lagoon so still and clear that it

was not easy to tell where air ended and water began--nothing moving in

the circle of torchlight could escape notice. It was necessary to watch

the bottom and walk warily; the reef is a honeycomb of holes and

passages through which the sea boils in at certain tides. Many of these

holes, only a few feet in diameter at the surface, lead deep down and

out into the caverns lining the edges of the pass--the haunts of octopus

and the man-eating rock-cod called _tonu_. A faint ripple revealed a

big blue parrot fish skulking in the shadow of a bowlder; one of the

native boys slipped his spear close before he thrust with a skill that

needs years to acquire. He killed the fish with a stab just where the

head joins the body, and strung it on the strip of hibiscus bark at his

waist.

These lagoons swarm with strange forms of life unknown in northern

waters; until one learns one's way about there is a certain amount of

danger in wading through the shallows along the reef. A sea scorpion

passed close by us--a wicked-looking thing, all feelers and enormous

fins; a touch of those spines would give you a nasty leg. An even more

poisonous fish is found here--though fortunately not often: the _noo_,

which lies buried in patches of coral sand. I have never seen one, and

do not know its name in English, but the spines of its dorsal fin are

said to be hollow like the fangs of a rattlesnake, and to inject a

poison--when stepped on--that is apt to kill or cripple for life. The

_totara_, or sea porcupine, is another odd creature, but not at all to

be feared; at the approach of danger he blows himself up like a

football, and once inflated, is proof against almost anything--I've seen

a man hurl a heavy stone on one a dozen times without being able to

burst him open. In a different way, the conger eels are nearly as hard

to kill, particularly the big ones, which are no joke to handle when one

is wading barelegged. One must be on the alert every moment--torch

blazing, spear poised. One moment you jump on a mushroom of coral to

avoid a pair of sea snakes, long, slender and spotted--active, fearless

creatures whose bite is said to be a serious matter; a moment later you

are slipping and scrambling at top speed to cut off some large fish,

working his way through the shallows. One of the boys bagged a

_patuki_--a young _tonu_; I was glad to have a look at the ugly little

brute. He was only a foot long--a marvel of protective coloring,

irregularly spotted and blotched so as to be nearly invisible against a

background of coral. The size of the mouth, the power of the jaws, and

the rows of cruel little teeth, convinced me that the full-grown fish

must deserve the bad name given him by the pearl divers.

The light was gray and the cloud banks along the eastern horizon

flushing pale rose when the boys extinguished their torches and set out

across the lagoon, each one trailing a heavy string of fish. My host

had had enough sport for once, but I love to be on the water at dawn, so

when I had landed him I paddled out to the pass to fish for _titiara_.

The current was slack and not a breath of wind stirred the lagoon. The

light grew stronger; the contours of the island developed in sharp

serrations against the sky; presently the sun rose.

I anchored the canoe in a fathom of water at the edge of the pass,

allowing her to swing out over the depths. Through my water-glass I

could examine the precipitous walls of the channel--fifty feet high,

overhanging in places, seamed, pitted, broken by the dark mouths of

caverns. Shoals of fish moved leisurely along the face of the

coral--appearing and disappearing like nesting swallows, seen from a

cliff-top: swinish parrot fish, bright blue and long as a man's arm;

_taputapu_, spangled orange and black--stopping to nibble at the coral;

slender pipefish; swift _nanue_; fish of extraordinary form and

coloring--indescribable, perhaps undescribed. At last I saw what I was

after--a school of _titiara_, working in from the sea.

I wonder if you know this fish; it is new to me, though I have been told

that it exists in the northern Pacific. It is of the true game

type--swift and rapacious--with the conformation of a mackerel, and

related, I should say, to the pompano of American waters. The young

ones, eight to ten inches long, and appearing at certain times of year,

in great schools, are called _aturi_. When medium-sized--running from

two pounds up to twelve--it is known as _titiara_ in the Cook Islands;

_paihere_ in Tahiti and to the east. The fully grown fish, which

attains a weight of a hundred pounds or more, is called _urua_. These

different names for stages in the life of the same fish are interesting

to me, for they illustrate the richness, in certain directions, of a

language so poor in others. We have such terms in English, but they are

rapidly becoming obsolete; I doubt, for example, if the average man at

home knows that a young salmon is called a grilse, and a still younger

one, a parr.

One's outfit for this kind of fishing consists of a pail of hermit

crabs, a couple of stones for crushing them, a hundred feet of stout

cotton line, a single hook on a length of piano wire, and several dozen

pebbles, to be used as sinkers. First of all you smash the shells of a

few crabs, tear off the soft bodies for bait, and crush the claws and

legs to a paste. This chum is thrown overboard little by little to

attrach the fish and keep them about the canoe. When a glance through

the water-glass shows that the fish you want are gathered beneath you, a

pebble is attached to the line by means of a special hitch, which can be

undone by a jerk. Now you lower the line over the side until the bait

is in the required position; a sharp pull frees the sinker, and you are

ready for the first client. The theory of the detachable sinker is that

it enables one to fish at a distance from the boat without having the

hook rest on the bottom, where it is apt to foul in the coral.

On this occasion my sport was ruined by one of those tantalizing

incidents which lend charm to every variety of angling. I had caught

two fish and was lowering my line to try for a third, when the small fry

gobbling my chum suddenly scattered and disappeared. Next moment a

monstrous _titiara_--almost in the _urua_ class--loomed up from the

depths, seized my bait, and made off so fast that the line fairly

scorched my fingers. My tackle was not designed for such game as

this--there was nothing to do but try to play him; but when only a yard

of line remained in my hands I was forced to check the rush. A powerful

wrench, the line slackened dead, he was off, the light hook had snapped

at the bend--and I had no other! The old, old story--it is never the

fingerlings that get away.

Cut into filets and soaked for six hours in lime juice, my two fish made

a raw _hors d'oeuvre_ of the most delicate kind. I took a plate of it

to the house of a neighbor who had asked me to dinner, and this

old-timer in the South Seas pronounced it of the very first order. You

would enjoy knowing him: he has been in this part of the world since the

'seventies--supercargo, skipper, trader on islands seldom visited even

to-day. Now he is retired and lives on a small plantation which

represents the savings of a lifetime. After dinner, as we sat on his

wide veranda with pipes going and glasses on the table between us, he

told me a tale so curious that I cannot resist repeating it to you--the

story of an island far away to the north and west--an island I shall

call _Ariri_.

Atolls are by nature lonely places, but of all atolls in the Pacific,

Ariri is perhaps the loneliest--never visited, far off from any group,

out of the paths of navigation. Not very many years ago Ariri was a bit

of no man's land; though marked on the chart, its existence was ignored

by the Powers--it had never been inhabited, no flag had ever been raised

above its benches of dazzling coral sand. At that time, as for

centuries before, the sea birds nested undisturbed on the islets within

the reef, where all day long the water flashed blue in the sunlight and

the trade wind hummed a song of loneliness among the palm tops.

Then a day came when two Frenchmen--shrewd traders and planters of

coconuts in the Tuamotu--spoke of Ariri. Here was an island capable of

an annual hundred tons of copra, and claimed by no man; they would plant

it and reap the rewards of enterprise. The chief difficulty was to find

a superintendent to take charge of the project; it needed a white man,

but white men willing to undertake a task of such poignant loneliness

were not to be found every day in Papeete. As it chanced, their man was

at hand.

The natives called him Tino--perhaps his name had once been King. Years

among the islands had obliterated whatever stamp of nationality he might

have possessed; it was rumored that he was English by birth, and also

that he had held a commission in the Confederate navy. Tall, strong,

and of fine presence, with a full blond beard and eyes of reckless blue,

a great singer and dancer--always the merriest at a feast and the idol

of the women, a remarkable linguist and story-teller, drunken, brave,

witty, and unprincipled--Tino was of a type which thrives in Polynesia.

When they offered him the position of superintendent at Ariri the two

Frenchmen were not without misgivings. He was on the beach at the time,

though the only sign of that condition was an unusual laxity in

returning the favor when a friend invited him to drink. Tino had no

money, but that was his sole limitation; each of a dozen native families

vied for the honor of transferring his mat and camphorwood box to their

house; when evening came he had his choice of a dozen invitations to

dine, and a dozen girls competed for the joy of doing his laundry and

making hats for him. But this easy-going philosophy and lack of worry

over a situation scarcely respectable in the eyes of Papeete's business

men were calculated to sow distrust. In the case of Ariri, however, it

was difficult to see how he could go astray; there would be no

liquor--they would see to that--and with no visitors and no means of

leaving the island there seemed little chance of trouble. Tino was a

famous handler of native labor.

The agreement was made and in due time a schooner sailed into the Ariri

lagoon to land Tino and a score of Raiatea boys with their wives. The

Frenchmen took care to leave no boat capable of putting out to sea, but

as there were houses and sheds to build they left a considerable variety

of tools and gear, in addition to a year's supply of medicine, food, and

clothing. A day or two later the schooner sailed away.

The superintendent called his men together and appointed a foreman. The

main island was to be cleared, rows staked out, and the nuts brought for

seed to be planted in such a manner. Before this work began, a house

was to be built for each family. That was all, except that Tino needed

five men at once for special work of his own--let them be those most

skilled in woodworking. With that he seems to have dismissed the

business of planting coconuts from his mind.

There was a certain amount of hibiscus on the island, as well as the

trees called _tou_ and _puka_. In seven months' time, with the help of

his men, Tino cut down trees, sawed out timbers and planking, and built

a forty-foot cutter--sturdy, fast, and seaworthy. Her mast was the

smoothed-down trunk of an old coconut palm; her sails a patchwork of

varied fabrics; her cordage of cinnet, twisted and braided coconut

fiber--the work of women, incredibly skillful and patient. For anchor,

she carried a grooved coral bowlder, and her water tanks were

five-gallon kerosene tins. At the end of the seventh month this

improbable vessel was launched, rigged, and provisioned. Tino bade his

men farewell and set sail--promising to return--to the westward,

fearless and alone. His only instrument was a compass, and yet he made

the passage to Fiji--twelve hundred miles--in fifteen days.

I forgot to say that before his departure he had ordered the top of a

tall palm chopped off, and on this stout flagpole had hoisted a homemade

edition of the Union Jack. In Fiji he wasted no time. At the office of

the High Commissioner of the Pacific he announced that he had taken

possession of Ariri in the name of the British Empire, and petitioned

that a fifty years' lease of the island--at nominal rate--be given him.

The request was granted; a few days later Tino was again at sea, still

alone, and headed for his little kingdom.

The story is that he bought a sextant in Fiji, but at any rate,

something went wrong and he was fifty days without a landfall. Think of

this extraordinary man, drifting about alone in his absurd

boat--careless, self-confident, and unworried! Even Captain Slocum,

said to have navigated thousands of miles of ocean with no other

chronometer than a Connecticut alarm clock, performed no madder feat.

Tino fetched up at a big lagoon island, six or seven hundred miles out

of his course. It is enough to say of his stop there that he spent a

week and left, loaded down with provisions and drinking nuts, and

accompanied by five of the younger and prettier girls of the village.

This time all went smoothly; the plural honeymoon party enjoyed a merry

voyage to Ariri, where Tino established his large and amicable family,

and proceeded to the less diverting business of planting coconuts. A

year passed; a day came when the schooner from Tahiti rounded to in the

lagoon and sent a boat ashore. Accompanied by his twenty men, Tino met

the supercargo on the beach. Copra from the old trees? There was not

much, but what there was belonged to him. This was a British island,

and he was the lessee; here were the papers to prove it. He regretted

that as the proprietor he could not allow strangers ashore--demoralize

the labor, you know. The Frenchmen fumed, but they were too shrewd not

to recognize defeat.

The years passed in peaceful and idyllic fashion; a score of Tino's

half-savage offspring fished and swam and raced along the beach. Then

one day Tino fell ill.

While he lay in bed, despondent, and brooding over the unfamiliar

experience, a schooner entered the lagoon and dropped anchor opposite

the settlement. Her boat--trim and smartly manned as a yacht's

gig--brought ashore the first missionary to set foot on Ariri. Tino was

difficult in the beginning, but the moment was perhaps the weakest of

his life; when the missionary left he had married the sick man to

Manini--his favorite wife--and received permission to install a native

teacher for the children of the island.

It amuses me to think of Tino's recovery and probable regret over his

weakness--the thing is so natural, so human; bodily illness and

spiritual reform have always gone hand in hand. But his word had been

given in good faith; he finished the church and schoolhouse he had

promised, and in due time installed the teacher among his flock. The

supreme irony of the affair comes at this point, for the native teacher,

on the lookout for a flirtation, was indiscreet enough to select Manini

as the object of his attentions, and ended by being caught with her

under circumstances of the most delicate and compromising nature. As

Tino said afterward:

"He had a score of women to choose from, beside four of mine who

wouldn't have mattered--and then he picked on Manini! Why, damn it all!

man, I was a bit fond of the old girl!"

The teacher paid dearly for his indiscretion. Tino lashed him to a post

in the sun, where he would probably have died if the missionary schooner

had not appeared just at that time. Cowed and whimpering, the culprit

was thrown into a canoe by the indignant husband, who pushed off and

paddled angrily alongside the schooner.

"Here's your bleeding missionary!" he roared out, as he hurled the

struggling native into the lagoon. "I'm through with him--from now on

this island will have to get along with me for teacher and missionary

and king!"

That is all of the story, except that Tino died not long ago--happy,

rich enough, and surrounded by a numerous tribe of grandchildren.

*CHAPTER XIII*

*At the House of Tari*

You will not find Ahu Ahu--under that name--on any chart, and it would

be equally useless to search for Nukutere; yet both islands exist, and I

like their ancient names better than the modern ones. Glance at your

maps and you will see the eastern Pacific dotted with islands bearing

names like Jarvis, Maiden, and Starbuck--names which suggest no more

than the thought of some wandering skipper, immortalizing himself by

adding new dangers to the chart. Then think of Nukutere--the immemorial

name of an island known wherever the old Polynesians gathered to tell

their tales; Nukutere: The Object of the War Fleet's Voyage ... it needs

a dull imagination not to feel a stir.

It was on Nukutere that I found that curious fellow, Tari, at home.

Friends often smile at my passion for wild fowl, yet I owe this peaceful

adventure entirely to a duck. For several days I had been awaiting a

chance to photograph the sky line of the island, and when, one

afternoon, the clouds about the peaks dispersed, I put my camera into a

small outrigger canoe and paddled down the lagoon, on the lookout for

the viewpoint of greatest beauty. I had gone a number of miles and the

sun was low when I found the view I wanted; though the silhouette of

Nukutere was clear-cut, there were clouds in the west and the light was

not strong enough for an instantaneous picture. The lagoon is narrow at

this point; there was nothing to do but paddle out to the reef and set

up my tripod in the shallow wash of the sea. In this manner I made ten

exposures--pretty things they must have been, with the long evening

shadows, the foreshore of dark bush beyond the water, the high profile

of peaks and jagged ridges against the sky.

I folded the steel tripod and stowed the camera in its case; just as I

pushed off to paddle back to the village I heard the whimper of a duck's

wings in leisurely flight. I have a very fair acquaintance with the

ducks of the northern hemisphere, which winter in considerable numbers

in Hawaii and occasionally drift down as far as Penrhyn Island, nine

degrees south of the equator; but though it must be well known in

scientific quarters, the odd nonmigratory duck of the South Seas is a

puzzle to me. It is an unsocial bird, this Polynesian cousin of the

mallard; a lover of solitude, a haunter of thick woods and lonely

valleys; though I have seen them many times in the distance. I have been

unable to obtain a specimen so far. I used to wonder how they survived

the swarms of bloodthirsty island rats until a friend wrote me from the

Cook group: "On top of the razor-back ridge behind the plantation, the

dogs put up a duck almost under our feet. I found the nest well hidden

in the fern a beautifully constructed affair, edged with a coaming of

down, curled inward. There were eight eggs, standing on end and

arranged to occupy the least possible space. When the ducklings appear

the old bird must carry them down one at a time--a thousand feet or

more--to the swampy feeding grounds."

I could tell by the sound of its wings that the duck approaching me over

the lagoon was closer than any I had seen; in my eagerness for a glimpse

I forgot all about cameras and canoes. I flung myself around to look,

intent and open-mouthed. Next moment the outrigger heaved up with the

speed of a rolling porpoise, described a flashing arc through the air,

and smacked heavily into the water closing over my head. It was a fast

bit of comedy. The coral anchor and my tripod went to the bottom; I

caught the camera instinctively and rose, sputtering, to the surface,

where I managed to balance it on the flat bottom of the canoe. Then, as

the water was not deep, and I had on nothing but a singlet and a

_pareu_, I swam down to get the tripod, and started for shore, pushing

the canoe before me. Ahead on the beach two girls and a boy were dancing

and rolling in the sand; as the water left my ears I could hear their

screams of joy. For the moment I found myself unable to join in the

mirth. My thoughts dwelt on cameras and on a story I had heard the

night before--how a fisherman, not far from where I was, had felt a tug

at his waist as he swam with face submerged, watching the bottom, and

turned to see a shark of imposing size nip off the largest fish on his

string.

The closer sight of me seemed to redouble the appreciation of my

audience, but it was not until I was splashing in the shallows that I

was able to smile. Then I saw that the elder of the girls was Apakura,

the wife of Tari. She had been washing clothes at the mouth of a little

stream and came forward, bare-armed and smiling maliciously, to greet

me.

"Ah, you have come to bathe in the sea," she said, as I took her hand,

and at this enormous joke all three fell into such a convulsion of

laughter that they were obliged to sink down on the sand once more.

When she had caught her breath she turned to call her husband: "_E Tari!

E Tari e! Aere mai ikonei!_" A moment later he stepped out of the

bush, rubbing from his eyes the sleep of an afternoon nap, and I was

shaking his hand.

I know Tari rather well, and have spent a good deal of time within a few

miles of where he lives, yet I had been in his house only once before.

This is characteristic of the islands. There is an agreeable

indifference about the relations of white men down here, a careless

friendliness I find pleasanter than the more strained and effusive

sociality of civilized places. In every part of the world, of course,

this tranquil simplicity--the essence of the finest manner--is to be

found among the few who have studied the art of living, but the average

one of us is neither sure enough of himself nor sufficiently indifferent

to the opinion of others; handicapped by an abnormal sense of

obligation, we permit ourselves both to bore and to be bored. In

certain respects the native is a very well-bred man; perhaps the white

intruder has caught something of his manner--or it may be that distance

from home brings life into a truer focus; in any case, one deals with

the white man of the islands without consciousness of an effort either

to entertain or to impress. When you stop at the house of a strange

planter he will offer you a whisky-and-soda--if you refuse, nothing more

will be said of the matter. At home, with a parching throat, it is

quite conceivable that you might tell your chance host not to bother,

looking forward with hopeful hypocrisy to his persuasion and your own

inevitable acceptance. I think I liked Tari the better for not having

asked me to his house; now that hazard had brought me to the door, he

made me feel that I was really welcome.

The house was set on a little rise of land, with a view of the lagoon at

the end of an avenue of tall coconut palms. The broad veranda, set with

steamer chairs and scarlet-bordered Aitutaki mats, gave on a garden of

small flowering trees--"Frangipani," "_Tiare Tahiti_," "Maid of Moorea,"

"Queen of the Night." Tari showed me to a corner room, and mixed a rum

punch while his wife put buttons on a fresh suit of drill.